(Silence.)
L. The probability being that what God does not allow you to see,
He does not wish you to see; nor even to think of?
(Silence prolonged.)
L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you
were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of
the shapes of the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and
of the jagged sutures of the scalp?
(Resolutely whispered No's.)
L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of
nourishment and decay?
(No.)
L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory
conditions of structure, as in the skeleton,--or inferior offices
of structure, as in operations of life and death,--there were
actual disease in the body, ghastly and dreadful. You would try to
cure it; but having taken such measures as were necessary, you
would not think the cure likely to be promoted by perpetually
watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On the contrary, you
would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness: as, in daily
health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled whatever
is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and
has made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that,
both in yourself and in others;--not indeed concealing, or
refusing to believe in sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on
it.
Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the
same. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you
know any means of mending it, take those means, and have done;
when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a
"sinner," that is very cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may
even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar,
a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous wretch,
if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take
steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have
ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you
are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan
over an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less
easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do
not think of your faults; still less of others' faults: in every
person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honor
that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it: and your
faults will drop off like dead leaves, when their time comes. If,
on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm-tree
stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has
its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honeyed fruit, at
top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last,
think that it does not much matter to the universe either what you
were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be;
and rejoice in THEIR nobleness. An immense quantity of modern
confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism;
which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the
centralization of its interest in itself.
MARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did
the old Greek proverb "Know thyself" come to be so highly
esteemed?
L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and
the sun's--but do you think you can know yourself by looking INTO
yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking OUT of
yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare
your own interests with those of others; try to understand what
you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge
of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately; not
positively: starting always with a wholesome conviction of the
probability that there is nothing particular about you. For
instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. Dwell on
your own feelings; and doings:--and you will soon think yourselves
Tenth Muses; but forget your own feeling; and try, instead, to
understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and you will soon
begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls--which is much like
the fact.
So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune,--you
meditate over its effects on you personally: and begin to think
that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the
other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven
have left their business for a little while, that they may watch
its effects on your mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of
your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousand-
fold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier
persons: and your self-consciousness will change into pity and
humility; and you will know yourself so far as to understand that
"there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man."
Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person
of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the
inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they
are often supposed to be by careless readers. But the way in which
common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old
monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was
said), over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What
fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your
hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and
declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture, and
that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the texts
that way. If you want their juice, you must press them in cluster.
Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, insist, as a body,
not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the terrific
distinction between the bad and the good ones. "A good man, out of
the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good;
and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that
which is evil." "They on the rock are they which, in an honest and
good heart, having heard the word, keep it." "Delight thyself in
the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." "The
wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him
that is upright in heart." And so on; they are countless, to the
same effect. And, for all of us, the question is not at all to
ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human
nature; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that
nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed; whether we are
people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of crooked
heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the subject,
this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one you
have chiefly to hold in mind. "Keep thy heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life."
LUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!
L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look
consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window;
--you can just see it from where you sit. I'm glad that it is left
open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a
black spot it looks, in the sunlighted wall?
LUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink.
L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of
it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that
its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very
probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the
sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed:
nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so
to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for
you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one
question for YOU, remember, is not "dark or light?" but "tidy or
untidy?" Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be sure it
is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones at
his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.