I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very sanguine
turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and some
fondness for the past; but I am not at all given to build castles in the
air, nor to look forward with much confidence or hope to the brilliant
illusions held out by the future. Hence I have perhaps been led to form
a theory, which is very contrary to the common notions and feelings on
the subject, and which I will here try to explain as well as I can. When
Sterne in the _Sentimental Journey_ told the French Minister, that if
the French people had a fault, it was that they were too serious, the
latter replied that if that was his opinion, he must defend it with all
his might, for he would have all the world against him; so I shall have
enough to do to get well through the present argument.
I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that mighty
difference in the value which mankind generally set upon the past and
future, as if the one was everything, and the other nothing--of no
consequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive that the past is
as real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a _bona
fide_, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human life, as
the future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no importance,
unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has gone by, and is no longer
anything, is an argument that cannot be held to any purpose; for if the
past has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in the
scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has never been
anything. Should any one choose to assert that the present only is of
any value in a strict and positive sense, because that alone has a real
existence, that we should seize the instant good, and give all else to
the winds, I can understand what he means (though perhaps he does not
himself);(1) but I cannot comprehend how this distinction between that
which has a downright and sensible, and that which has only a remote and
airy existence, can be applied to establish the preference of the
future over the past; for both are in this point of view equally ideal,
absolutely nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's eye,
and are thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the one
is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than the
other, and the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous; for
the future, on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass at
all, that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the whole
course of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has
received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. It is
so far then placed beyond the possibility of doubt, or as the poet has
it,
Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate.
It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future is
nothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we are speaking,
yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and of the utmost
interest to the individual, because it will have a real existence, and
we have an idea of it as existing in time to come. Well, then, the
past also has no real existence; the actual sensation and the interest
belonging to it are both fled; but it _has had_ a real existence, and
we can still call up a vivid recollection of it as having once been;
and therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is not a thing perfectly
insignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent to the mind whether it
ever was or not. Oh no! Far from it! Let us not rashly quit our hold
upon the past, when perhaps there may be little else left to bind us
to existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to have been happy or
miserable? Or is it a matter of no moment to think whether I have been
one or the other? Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or a
dream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and folly a pure
fiction, with nothing answering to it in the universe of things and
the records of truth, when I look back with fond delight or with tender
regret to that which was at one time to me my all, when I revive the
glowing image of some bright reality,
The thoughts of which can never from my heart?
Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, when I turn
back in fancy to 'those suns and skies so pure' that lighted up my early
path? Is it to think of nothing, to set an idle value upon nothing, to
think of all that has happened to me, and of all that can ever interest
me? Or, to use the language of a fine poet (who is himself among my
earliest and not least painful recollections)--
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r--
yet am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of it? Or do I not
drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth when I but 'retrace
its footsteps, and its skirts far off adore'? I cannot say with the same
poet--
And see how dark the backward stream,
A little moment past so smiling--
for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance of
reality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the _Confessions_ of
Rousseau is their turning so much upon this feeling. He seems to gather
up the past moments of his being like drops of honey-dew to distil a
precious liquor from them; his alternate pleasures and pains are the
bead-roll that he tells over and piously worships; he makes a rosary of
the flowers of hope and fancy that strewed his earliest years. When
he begins the last of the _Reveries of a Solitary Walker_, 'Il y a
aujourd'hui, jour des Paques Fleuris, cinquante ans depuis que j'ai
premier vu Madame Warens,' what a yearning of the soul is implied in
that short sentence! Was all that had happened to him, all that he had
thought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing?
Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable--a
blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint within
him in trying to grasp all that had once filled it and that had since
vanished, because it was not a prospect into futurity? Was he wrong in
finding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years--which
he did not live to see? Or if he had, what then? Would they have been
worth thinking of, compared with the times of his youth, of his first
meeting with Madame Warens, with those times which he has traced with
such truth and pure delight 'in our heart's tables'? When 'all the life
of life was flown,' was he not to live the first and best part of it
over again, and once more be all that he then was?--Ye woods that crown
the clear lone brow of Norman Court, why do I revisit ye so oft, and
feel a soothing consciousness of your presence, but that your high tops
waving in the wind recall to me the hours and years that are for ever
fled; that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the story of long-cherished
hopes and bitter disappointment; that in your solitudes and tangled
wilds I can wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in the
solitude of my own heart; and that as your rustling branches give the
loud blast to the waste below--borne on the thoughts of other years, I
can look down with patient anguish at the cheerless desolation which
I feel within! Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthine
locks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting me, mocking my waking
thoughts as in a dream; without that smile which my heart could never
turn to scorn; without those eyes dark with their own lustre, still
bent on mine, and drawing the soul into their liquid mazes like a sea
of love; without that name trembling in fancy's ear; without that form
gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what should I
do? how pass away the listless, leaden-footed hours? Then wave, wave on,
ye woods of Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the air; my sighs and
vows uttered by your mystic voice breathe into me my former being, and
enable me to bear the thing I am!--The objects that we have known
in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our
affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future is
like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view;
the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of
unfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? What
subjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant future, but the
well-stored past. Othello, the Moor of Venice, amused himself and his
hearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by 'running through the story
of his life even from his boyish days'; and oft 'beguiled them of their
tears, when he did speak of some disastrous stroke which his youth
suffered.' This plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered if
the past had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use but
to be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for instance, does the
history of the world for the next six thousand years present to the
mind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imagination
or excites any interest in the mighty scene is _what has been_!(2)
***
Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has
the future any advantage over the past. But with respect to our grosser
passions and pursuits it has. As far as regards the appeal to the
understanding or the imagination, the past is just as good, as real,
of as much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future; but there is
another principle in the human mind, the principle of action or will;
and of this the past has no hold, the future engrosses it entirely to
itself. It is this strong lever of the affections that gives so powerful
a bias to our sentiments on this subject, and violently transposes the
natural order of our associations. We regret the pleasures we have
lost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come: we dwell with
satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped (_Posthaec
meminisse iuvabit_)--and dread future pain. The good that is past is
in this sense like money that is spent, which is of no further use, and
about which we give ourselves little concern. The good we expect is
like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment of which we promise
ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think of
no consequence: what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Simply
because the one is still in our power, and the other not--because
the efforts of the will to bring any object to pass or to prevent it
strengthen our attachment or aversion to that object--because the pains
and attention bestowed upon anything add to our interest in it--and
because the habitual and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles the
ardour of our expectations, and converts the speculative and indolent
satisfaction we might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Our
regrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown away upon the past; but the
insisting on the importance of the future is of the utmost use in aiding
our resolutions and stimulating our exertions. If the future were
no more amenable to our wills than the past; if our precautions, our
sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were of as little avail in the one
case as the other; if we could neither soften our minds to pleasure, nor
steel our fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand; if all objects
drifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the will
being purely passive, and as little able to avert the future as to
arrest the past, we should in that case be equally indifferent to both;
that is, we should consider each as they affected the thoughts and
imagination with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but
without the importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throwing
the whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leaving
the other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare to meet it,
we think to ward off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patience
to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with fifty
needless alarms about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over,
the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease to harass or torment
ourselves about it more than we can help. It is not that the one belongs
to the future and the other to time past; but that the one is a subject
of action, of uneasy apprehension, of strong passion, and that the other
has passed wholly out of the sphere of action into the region of