LAST WORDS.
"By carrying calves Milo, 'tis said, grew strong,
Until with ease he bore a bull along."
It is, I believe, unquestionable that, if he ever lived, a man who had
attained to absolute control over his own mind, must have been the
most enviable of mortals. MONTAIGNE illustrates such an ideal being by
a quotation from VIRGIL:
"Velut rupes vastum quæ prodit in æquor
Obvia ventorum furiis, exposta que ponto,
Vim cunctum atque minas perfert cælique marisque
Ipsa immota manens."
"He as a rock among vast billows stood,
Scorning loud winds and the wild raging flood,
And firm remaining, all the force defies,
From the grim threatening seas and thundering skies."
And MONTAIGNE also doubted whether such self-control was possible. He
remarks of it:
"Let us never attempt these Examples; we shall never come up to them.
This is too much and too rude for our common souls to undergo. CATO
indeed gave up the noblest Life that ever was upon this account, but
it is for us meaner spirited men to fly from the storm as far as we
can."
Is it? I may have thought so once, but I begin to believe that in this
darkness a new strange light is beginning to show itself. The victory
may be won far more easily than the rather indolent and timid Essayist
ever imagined. MONTAIGNE, and many more, believed that absolute
self-control is only to be obtained by iron effort, heroic and
terrible exertion--a conception based on bygone History, which is all
a record of battles of man against man, or man with the Devil. Now the
world is beginning slowly to make an ideal of peace, and disbelieve in
the Devil. Science is attempting to teach us that from any beginning,
however small, great results are sure to be obtained if resolutely
followed up and fully developed.
It requires thought to realize what a man gifted to some degree with
culture and common sense must enjoy who can review the past without
pain, and regard the present with perfect assurance that come what may
he need have no fear or fluttering of the heart. Spenser has asked in
"The Fate of the Butterfly":
"What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"
To which one may truly reply that all delight is fitful and uncertain
unless bound or blended with the power to be indifferent to
involuntary annoying emotions, and that self-command is in itself the
highest mental pleasure, or one which surpasses all of any kind. He
who does not overestimate the value of money or anything earthly is
really richer than the millionaire. There is a foolish story told by
COMBE in his Physiology of a man who had the supernatural gift of
never feeling any pain, be it from cold, hunger, heat, or accident.
The rain beat upon him in vain, the keenest north wind did not chill
him--he was fearless and free. But this immunity was coupled with an
inability to feel pleasure--his wine or ale was no more to his palate
than water, and he could not feel the kiss of his child; and so we are
told that he was soon desirous to become a creature subject to all
physical sensations as before. But it is, as I said, a foolish tale,
because it reduces all that is worth living for to being warm or
enjoying taste. His mind was not affected, but that goes for nothing
in such sheer sensuality. However, a man without losing his tastes or
appetites may train his Will to so master Emotion as to enjoy delight
with liberty, and also exclude what constitutes the majority of all
suffering with man.
It is a truth that there is very often an extremely easy, simple and
prosaic way to attain many an end, which has always been supposed to
require stupendous efforts. In an Italian fairy tale a prince besieges
a castle with an army--trumpets blowing, banners waving, and all the
pomp and circumstances of war--to obtain a beautiful heroine who is
meanwhile carried away by a rival who knew of a subterranean passage.
Hitherto, as I have already said, men have sought for self-control
only by means of heroic exertion, or by besieging the castle from
without; the simple system of Forethought and Self-Suggestion enables
one, as it were, to steal or slip away with ease by night and in
darkness that fairest of princesses, La Volonté, or the Will.
For he who wills to be equable and indifferent to the small and
involuntary annoyances, teasing memories, irritating trifles, which
constitute the chief trouble in life to most folk, can bring it about,
in small measure at first and in due time to greater perfection. And
by perseverance this rivulet may to a river run, the river fall into a
mighty lake, and this in time rush to the roaring sea; that is to say,
from bearing with indifference or quite evading attacks of _ennui_, we
may come to enduring great afflictions with little suffering.
Note that I do not say that we can come to bearing all the
bereavements, losses, and trials of life with _absolute_ indifference.
Herein MONTAIGNE and the Stoics of old were well nigh foolish to
imagine such an impossible and indeed undesirable ideal. But it may be
that two men are afflicted by the same domestic loss, and one with a
weak nature is well nigh crushed by it, gives himself up to endless
weeping and perhaps never recovers from it, while another with quite
as deep feelings, but far wiser, rallies, and by vigorous exertion
makes the grief a stimulus to exertion, so that while the former is
demoralized, the latter is strengthened. There is an habitual state of
mind by which a man while knowing his losses fully can endure them
better than others, and this endurance will be greatest in him who has
already cultivated it assiduously in minor matters. He who has swam in
the river can swim in the sea; he who can hear a door bang without
starting can listen to a cannon without jumping.
The method which I have described in this book will enable any person
gifted with perseverance to make an equable or calm state of mind
habitual, moderately at first, more so by practice. And when this is
attained the experimenter can progress rapidly in the path. It is
precisely the same as in learning a minor art, the pupil who can
design a pattern (which corresponds to Foresight or plan), only
requires, as in wood-carving or repoussé, to be trained by very easy
process to become familiar with the use and feel of the tools, after
which all that remains to be done is to keep on at what the pupil can
do without the least difficulty. Well begun and well run in the end
will be well done.
But glorious and marvelous is the power of him who has habituated
himself by easy exercise of Will to brush away the minor, meaningless
and petty cares of life, such as, however, prey on most of us; for
unto him great griefs are no harder to endure than the getting a coat
splashed is to an ordinary man.