It would not give a man more concern to know that he should be put to
the rack a year hence, than to recollect that he had been put to it a
year ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, whereas he must sit down
patiently under the consciousness of the other. In this hope he wears
himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts himself to the rack
of his imagination every day he has to live in the meanwhile. When the
event is so remote or so independent of the will as to set aside the
necessity of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it,
it gives us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had already
taken place, or were something to happen in another state of being, or
to an indifferent person. Criminals are observed to grow more anxious as
their trial approaches; but after their sentence is passed, they become
tolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before its
execution.
It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less
importance to past and future events according as they are more or less
engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune
to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of the
past, for it does not contribute greatly to their views: those who have
nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as
in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as
that of the other. The season of hope has an end; but the remembrance of
it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have
leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from
it 'catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn.' The turbulence of
action, and uneasiness of desire, must point to the future: it is only
in the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of pastoral ages,
that a tomb was found with this inscription--'I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!'
Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to life is in
exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one of those
splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all. _Que peu de
chose est la vie humaine_, is an exclamation in the mouths of moralists
and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it is short,
it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and leave out all that
has gone before, which has been one way of looking at the subject. Such
calculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is over, and that
may in their sense be true. If the old rule--_Respice finem_--were to be
made absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day
of his death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon those
conditions, be much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of the
case. A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of
the candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a _little matter_,
whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish
conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or
forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was
young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead.
The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last
steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last
stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our
existence, but the space that parts these two--not our exit nor our
entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there--
that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed it
would be easy to show that it is the very extent of human life, the
infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory and
fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the
hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it
is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity of
events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual
perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in
its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing!
It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to
hold its striking groups, its endless subjects! It is light as vanity,
and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches were
compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with the
blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts,
feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is
composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep and
intense, often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or
reading, for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how many
years in a long life, still occupied with something interesting, still
recalling some old impression, still recurring to some difficult
question and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense
of power, and every moment conscious of 'the high endeavour or the glad
success'; for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and
is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or lively
solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. The division of the map
of life into its component parts is beautifully made by King Henry VI.:--
Oh God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain,
To sit upon a hill as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live:
When this is known, then to divide the times;
So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece:
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years
Past over to the end they were created,
Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave.
I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd: books have been my fleecy
charge, and my thoughts have been my subjects. But these have found me
sufficient employment at the time, and enough to think of for the time
to come.
The passions contract and warp the natural progress of life. They
paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice.
This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood,
the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares
lies like a weight of guilt upon the mind: so that a man of business
often has all the air, the distraction and restlessness and hurry of
feeling of a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes away the freedom
and simplicity of thought as effectually as the contagion of its
example. The artlessness and candour of our early years are open to all
impressions alike, because the mind is not clogged and preoccupied with
other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, make room for
one another, and the spring of the mind is fresh and unbroken, its
aspect clear and unsullied. Hence 'the tear forgot as soon as shed,
the sunshine of the breast.' But as we advance farther, the will
gets greater head. We form violent antipathies and indulge exclusive
preferences. We make up our minds to some one thing, and if we cannot
have that, will have nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy,
to prejudice; which destroys the soundness of our judgments, and the
serenity and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils itself
round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It grows rigid
and callous; and for the softness and elasticity of childhood, full of
proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and perversity of our
passions come in more and more to overlay our natural sensibility and
well-grounded affections; and we screw ourselves up to aim only at those
things which are neither desirable nor practicable. Thus life passes
away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of
disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling
satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are
sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The
machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and
withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any
release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more
insupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between
tormenting desires and the horrors of _ennui_. The impulse of the will,
like the wheels of a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong for
the driver, Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some
idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain; and however ridiculous,
however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of fascination
through life.
Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at work
in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the formal
study of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, and undermines
the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes the
satisfaction to result from the accomplishment. The mind is overstrained
to attain its purpose; and when it is attained, the ease and alacrity
necessary to enjoy it are gone. The irritation of action does not cease
and go down with the occasion for it; but we are first uneasy to get to
the end of our work, and then uneasy for want of something to do. The
ferment of the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure and soft
repose. Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observable in persons of
much intellectual exertion to allay and carry off the over-excitement.
The _improvisatori_ poets (it is recorded by Spence in his _Anecdotes
of Pope_) cannot sleep after an evening's continued display of their
singular and difficult art. The rhymes keep running in their head in
spite of themselves, and will not let them rest. Mechanics and labouring
people never know what to do with themselves on a Sunday, though they
return to their work with greater spirit for the relief, and look
forward to it with pleasure all the week. Sir Joshua Reynolds was never
comfortable out of his painting-room, and died of chagrin and regret
because he could not paint on to the last moment of his life. He used
to say that he could go on retouching a picture for ever, as long as it
stood on his easel; but as soon as it was once fairly out of the house,
he never wished to see it again. An ingenious artist of our own time has
been heard to declare, that if ever the Devil got him into his clutches,
he would set him to copy his own pictures. Thus secure, self-complacent
retrospect to what is done is nothing, while the anxious, uneasy looking
forward to what is to come is everything. We are afraid to dwell upon
the past, lest it should retard our future progress; the indulgence of
ease is fatal to excellence; and to succeed in life, we lose the ends of
being!