blunder, lured Epicurus, or Marcus Aurelius, or Antoninus Pius into the
snares that she laid around Oedipus? I will even assume that she might
have compelled Antoninus, for instance, to murder his father, and, all
unwittingly, to profane the couch of his mother. Would that noble
sovereign's soul have been hopelessly crushed? Would the end of it all
not have been as the end of all dramas must be wherein the sage is
attacked--great sorrow surely, but also great radiance that springs
from this sorrow, and already is partly triumphant over the shadow of
grief? Needs must Antoninus have wept as all men must weep; but tears
can quench not one ray in the soul that shines with no borrowed light.
To the sage the road is long that leads from grief to despair; it is a
road untravelled by wisdom. When the soul has attained such loftiness
as the life of Antoninus shows us that his had acquired, then is each
falling tear illumined by beautiful thought and by generous feeling. He
would have taken calamity to him, to all that was purest, most vast, in
his soul; and misfortune, like water, espouses the form of the vase
that contains it. Antoninus, we say, would have brought resignation to
bear; but this is a word that too often conceals the true working of a
noble heart. There is no soul so petty but what it too may believe that
it is resigned. Alas! it is not resignation that comforts us, raises
and chastens; but indeed the thoughts and the feelings in whose name we
embrace resignation; and it is here that wisdom doles out the rewards
they have earned to her faithful.
Some ideas there are that lie beyond the reach of any catastrophe. He
will be far less exposed to disaster who cherishes ideas within him
that soar high above the indifference, selfishness, vanities of
everyday life. And therefore, come happiness or sorrow, the happiest
man will be he within whom the greatest idea shall burn the most
ardently. Had fate so desired it, Antoninus also, perhaps, had been
guilty of incest and parricide; but his inward life would not have been
crushed thereby, as was that of Oedipus; nay, these very catastrophes
would have given him mightier strength, and destiny would have fled in
despair, strewing the ground by the emperor's palace with her nets and
her blunted weapons; for even as triumph of dictators and consuls could
be celebrated only in Rome, so can the true triumph of Fate take place
nowhere save in our soul.
17. Where do we find the fatality in "Hamlet," "King Lear," in
"Macbeth"? Is its throne not erected in the very centre of the old
king's madness, on the lowest degree of the young prince's imagination,
at the very summit of the Thane's morbid cravings? Macbeth we may well
pass by; not need we linger over Cordelia's father, for his absence of
consciousness is all too manifest; but Hamlet, Hamlet the thinker--is
he wise? Is the elevation sufficient wherefrom he looks down on the
crimes of Elsinore? He seems to regard them from the loftiest heights
of his intellect; but in the light-clad mountain range of wisdom there
are other peaks that tower far above the heights of the intellect--the
peaks of goodness and confidence, of indulgence and love. If he could
have surveyed the misdeeds of Elsinore from the eminence whence Marcus
Aurelius or Fenelon, for instance, had surely surveyed them, what would
have resulted then? And, first of all, does it not often happen that a
crime which is suddenly conscious of the gaze of a mightier soul will
pause, and halt, and at last crawl back to its lair; even as bees cease
from labour when a gleam of sunshine steals into the hive?
The real destiny, the inner destiny would in any event have followed
its course in the souls of Claudius and Gertrude; for these sinful ones
had delivered themselves into its hands, as must needs be the case with
those whose ways are evil; but would it have dared to spread its
influence abroad if one of those sages had been in the palace? Would it
have dared to overstep the shining, denouncing barrier that his
presence would have imposed, and maintained, in front of the palace
gates? When the sage's destiny blends with that of men of inferior
wisdom, the sage raises them to his level, but himself will rarely
descend. Neither on earth nor in the domain of fatality do rivers flow
back to their source. But to return: let us imagine a sovereign,
all-powerful soul--that of Jesus, in Hamlet's place at Elsinore; would
the tragedy then have flown on till it reached the four deaths at the
end? Is that conceivable? A crime may be never so skilfully
planned--when the eyes of deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a
trivial show that we offer to very small children at nightfall: some
magic-lantern performance, whose tawdry imposture a last gleam of
sunshine lays bare. Can you conceive Jesus Christ--nay, any wise man
you have happened to meet--in the midst of the unnatural gloom that
overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical
impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? and does
it need superhuman effort to recognise that revenge never can be a
duty? I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but that he is by no means
wise. He cannot conceive where to look for the weak spot in destiny's
armour. Lofty thoughts suffice not always to overcome destiny; for
against these destiny can oppose thoughts that are loftier still; but
what destiny has ever withstood thoughts that are simple and good,
thoughts that are tender and loyal? We can triumph over destiny only by
doing the very reverse of the evil she fain would have us commit. For
no tragedy can be inevitable. At Elsinore there is not a soul but
refuses to see, and hence the catastrophe; but a soul that is quick
with life will compel those around it to open their eyes. Where was it
written that Laertes, Ophelia, Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, should
die--where, save in Hamlet's pitiful blindness? But was this blindness
inevitable? Why speak of destiny when a simple thought had sufficed to
arrest all the forces of murder? The empire of destiny is surely
sufficiently vast. I acknowledge her might when a wall crashes down on
my head, when the storm drives a ship on the rocks, when disease
attacks those whom I love; but into man's soul she never will come,
uncalled. Hamlet is unhappy because he moves in unnatural darkness; and
his ignorance puts the seal upon his unhappiness. We have but to issue
commands and fate will obey--there is nothing in the world that will
offer such long and patient submission. Horatio, up to the last, could
have issued commands; but his master's shadow lay on him, and he lacked
the courage to shake himself free. Had there been but one soul
courageous enough to cry out the truth, then had the history of
Elsinore not been shrouded in tears of hatred and horror. But
misfortune, that bends beneath the fingers of wisdom like the cane that
we cut from the tree, becomes iron, and murderously rigid, in the hand
of unconsciousness. Once again, all depended here, not on destiny, but
on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore did he, by
his presence, become the centre of the drama of Elsinore; and on
himself only did the wisdom of Hamlet depend.
18. And if you look distrustfully on imaginary tragedies, you have only
to investigate some of the greatest dramas of authentic history to find
that in these too the destinies of men are no different: that their
ways are the same, and their petulance, their revolt and submission.
You will discover that there too it is a force of man's own creating
that plays the most active part in what if pleases us to term
"fatality." This fatality, it is true, is enormous, but rarely
irresistible. It does not leap forth at a given moment from an
inexorable, inaccessible, unfathomable abyss. It is build up of the
energy, the desires and suffering, the thoughts and passions of our
brothers; and these passions should be well known to us, for they
differ not from our own. In our most inexplicable moments, in our most
mysterious, unexpected misfortunes, we rarely find ourselves struggling
with an invisible enemy, or one that is entirely foreign to us. Why
strive of our own free will to enlarge the domain of the inevitable?
They who are truly strong are aware that among the forces that oppose
their schemes there are some that they know not; but against such as
they do know they fight on as bravely as though no others existed; and
these men will be often victorious. We shall have added most strangely
to our safety and happiness and peace the day that our sloth and our
ignorance shall have ceased to term fatal. What should truly be looked
on as human and natural by our intelligence and our energy.
19. Let us consider one noteworthy victim of destiny, Louis XVI. Never,
it would seem, did relentless fatality clamour so loudly for the
destruction of an unfortunate man; of one who was gentle, and good, and
virtuous, and honourable. And yet, as we look more closely into the
pages of history, do we not find that fatality distils her poison from
the victim's own wavering feebleness, his own trivial duplicity,
blindness, unreason, and vanity? And if it be true that some kind of
predestination governs every circumstance of life, it appears to be no
less true that such predestination exists in our character only; and to
modify character must surely be easy to the man of unfettered will, for
is it not constantly changing in the lives of the vast bulk of men? Is
your own character, at thirty, the same as it was when you were ten
years younger? It will be better or worse in the measure that you have
believed that disloyalty, wickedness, hatred and falsehood have
triumphed in life, or goodness, and truth, and love. And you will have
thought that you witnessed the triumph of hatred or love, of truth or
of falsehood, in exact accord with the lofty or baser idea as to the
happiness and aim of your life that will slowly have arisen within you.
For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If
your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil
triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on
sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, deep down in all
things, the silent overpowering victory of that which you love.
20. It is scarcely from this point of view, however, that Louis XVI.
should be Judged. Let us rather imagine ourselves in his place, in the
midst of his doubt and bewilderment, his darkness and difficulties. Now
that we know all that happened it is easy enough to declare what should
have been done; but are we ourselves, at this moment, aware of what is
our duty? Are we not contending with troubles and doubts of our own?
and were it not well that they who one day shall pass judgment upon us
should seek out the track that our footsteps have left on the sands of
the hillock we climbed, hoping thence to discover the future? Louis
XVI. was bewildered: do we know what ought to be done? Do we know what
we best had abandon, what we best had defend? Are we wiser than he as
we waver betwixt the rights of human reason and those that circumstance
claims? And when hesitation is conscientious, does it not often possess
all the elements of duty? There is one most important lesson to be
learned from the example of this unfortunate king: and it is that when
doubt confronts us which in itself is noble and great, it is our duty
to march bravely onwards, turning neither to right nor to left of us,
going infinitely further than seems to be reasonable, practical, just.
The idea that we hold to-day of duty, and justice, and truth, may seem
clear to us now, and advanced and unfettered; but how different will it
appear a few years, a few centuries later! Had Louis XVI. done what we
should have done--we who now are aware of what had been the right thing
to do--had he frankly renounced all the follies of royal prerogative,
and loyally adopted the new truth and loftier justice that had sprung
into being, then should we to-day be admiring his genius. And the king
himself, perhaps--for he was not a foolish man, or wicked--may have for
one instant beheld his own situation with the clear eye of an impartial
philosopher. That at least is by no means impossible, historically or
psychologically. Even in our most solemn hours of doubt it is rare that
we know not where we should look for the fixed point of duty, its
unalterable summit; but we feel that there stretches a distance too
wide to be travelled between the actual thing to be done and this
mountain-peak, that glitters afar in its solitude. And yet it is proved
by man's whole history--by the life of each one of us--that it is on
the loftiest summit that right has always its dwelling; and that to
this summit we too at the end must climb, after much precious time has
been lost on many an intermediate eminence. And what is a sage, a great
man, a hero, if not one who has dared to go, alone and ahead of the
others, to the deserted table-land that lay more or less within sight
of all men?
21. We do not imply that Louis XVI. should necessarily have been a man
of this stamp, a man of genius; although to have genius seems almost
the duty of him who sways in his hands the destiny of vast numbers of
men. Nor do we claim that the best men among us to-day would have been
able to escape his errors, or the misfortunes to which they gave rise.
And yet there is one thing certain: that of all these misfortunes none
had super-human origin; not one was supernaturally, or too
mysteriously, inevitable. They came not from another world; they were
launched by no monstrous god, capricious and incomprehensible. They
were born of an idea of justice that men failed to grasp; an idea of
justice that suddenly had wakened in life, but never had lain asleep in
the reason of man. And is there a thing in this world can be more
reassuring, or nearer to us, more profoundly human, than an idea of
justice? Louis XVI. may well have regretted that this idea, that
shattered his peace, should have awakened during his reign; but this
was the only reproach he could level at fate; and when we murmur at
fate ourselves our complaints have much the same value. For the rest,
it is legitimate enough to suppose that there needed but one single act
of energy, absolute loyalty, disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to
change the whole course of events. If the flight to Varennes--in itself
an act of duplicity and culpable weakness--had only been arranged a
little less childishly, foolishly (as any man would have arranged it
who was accustomed to the habits of life), there can be not a doubt
that Louis XVI. would never have died on the scaffold. Was it a god, or
his blind reliance on Marie Antoinette, that led him to entrust de
Fersen--a stupid, conceited, and tactless creature--with the
preparations and control of this disastrous journey? Was it a force
instinct with great mystery, or only his own unconsciousness,
heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange apathetic
submission--such as the weak and the idle will often display at moments
of danger, when they seem almost to challenge their star--that induced
him again and again, at each change of horses, to put his head out of
the carriage window, and thus be recognised three or four times? And at
the moment that decided all, in that throbbing and sinister night of
Varennes--a night indeed when fatality should have been an immovable
mountain governing all the horizon--do we not see this fatality
stumbling at every step, like a child that is learning to walk and
wonders, is it this white pebble or that tuft of grass that will cause
it to fall to right or to left of the path? And then, at the tragic
halt of the carriage, in that black night: at the terrible cry sent
forth by young Drouet, "In the name of the Nation!" there had needed
but one order from the king, one lash of the whip, one pull at the
collar--and you and I would probably not have been born, for the
history of the world had been different. And again, in presence of the
mayor, who stood there, respectful, disconcerted, hesitating, ready to
fling every gate open had but one imperious word been spoken; and at
the shop of M. Sauce, the worthy village grocer; and, last of all, when
Goguelat and de Choiseul had arrived with their hussars, bringing
rescue, salvation--did not all depend, a hundred times over, on a mere
yes or no, a step, a gesture, a look? Take any ten men with whom you
are intimate, let them have been King of France, you can foretell the
issue of their ten nights. Ah, it was that night truly that heaped
shame on fatality, that laid bare her weakness! For that night revealed
to all men the dependence, the wretched and shivering poverty of the
great mysterious force that, in moments of undue resignation, seems to
weigh so heavily on life! Never before has she been beheld so
completely despoiled of her vestments, of her imposing, deceptive
robes, as she incessantly came and went that night, from death to life,
from life to death; throwing herself at last, like a woman distraught,
into the arms of an unhappy king, whom she besought til dawn for a
decision, an existence, that she herself never can find save only in
the depths of the will and the intellect of man.
22. And yet this is not the entire truth. It is helpful to regard
events in this fashion, thus seeking to minimise the importance of
fatality, looking upon it as some vague and wandering creature that we
have to shelter and guide. We gain the more courage thereby, the more
confidence, initiative; and these are qualities essential to the doing
of anything useful; and they shall stand us in good stead, too, when
our own hour of danger draws nigh. But for all that, we do not pretend
that there truly is no other force--that all things can be governed by
our will and our intellect. These must be trained to act like the
soldiers of a conquering army; they must learn to thrive at the cost of
all that opposes them; they must find sustenance even in the unknown
that towers above them. Those who desire to emerge from the ordinary
habits of life, from the straitened happiness of mere pleasure-seeking
men, must march with deliberate conviction along the path that is known
to them, yet never forget the unexplored regions through which this
path winds. We must act as though we were masters--as though all things
were bound to obey us; and yet let us carefully tend in our soul a
thought whose duty it shall be to offer noble submission to the mighty
forces we may encounter. It is well that the hand should believe that
all is expected, foreseen; but well, too, that we should have in us a
secret idea, inviolable, incorruptible, that will always remember that
whatever is great most often must be unforeseen. It is the unforeseen,
the unknown, that fulfil what we never should dare to attempt; but they
will not come to our aid if they find not, deep down in our heart, an
altar inscribed to their worship. Men of the mightiest will--men like
Napoleon--were careful, in their most extraordinary deeds, to leave
open a good share to fate. Those within whom there lives not a generous
hope will keep fate closely confined, as they would a sickly child; but
others invite her into the limitless plains man has not yet the
strength to explore, and their eyes follow her every movement.
23. These feverish hours of history resemble a storm that we see on the
ocean; we come from far inland; we rush to the beach, in keen
expectation; we eye the enormous waves with curious eagerness, with
almost childish intensity. And there comes one along that is three
times as high and as fierce as the rest. It rushes towards us like some
monster with diaphanous muscles. It uncoils itself in mad haste from
the distant horizon, as though it were bearer of some urgent, complete
revelation. It ploughs in its wake a track so deep that we feel that
the sea must at last be yielding up one of her secrets; but all things
happen the same as on a breathless and cloudless day, when languid
wavelets roll to and fro in the limpid, fathomless water; from the
ocean arises no living thing, not a blade of grass, not a stone.
If aught could discourage the sage--though he is not truly wise whose
astonishment is not enlightened, and his interest quickened, by the
unforeseen thing that discourages--it would be the discovery, in this
French Revolution, of more than one destiny that is infinitely sadder,
more overwhelming, more inexplicable, than that of Louis XVI. I refer
to the Girondins: above all, to the admirable Vergniaud. To-day even,
though we know all that the future kept hidden from him, and are able
to divine what it was that was sought by the instinctive desire of that
exceptional century--to-day even it were surely not possible to act
more nobly, more wisely, than he. Let fortune hurl any man into the
burning centre of a movement that had swept every barrier down, it were
surely not possible to reveal a finer character or loftier spirit.
Could we fashion, deep down in our heart, out of all that is purest
within us, out of all our wisdom and all our love, some beautiful,
spotless creature with never a thought of self, without weakness or
error--such a being would desire a place by the side of Vergniaud, on
those deserted Convention seats, "whereon the shadow of death seemed
already to hover," that he might think as Vergniaud thought, and so
speak, and act. He saw the infallible, eternal, that lay the other side
of that tragical moment; he knew how to be humane and benevolent still,
through all those terrible days when humanity and benevolence seemed
the bitterest enemies of the ideal of justice, whereto he had
sacrificed all; and in his great and noble doubt he marched bravely
onwards, turning neither to right nor to left of him, going infinitely
further than seemed to be reasonable, practical, just. The violent
death that was not unexpected came towards him, with half his road yet
untravelled; to teach us that often in this strange conflict between
man and his destiny, the question is not how to save the life of our
body, but that of our most beautiful feelings, of our loftiest thoughts,
"Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts if I have ceased to exist?"
there are some will ask; to whom others, it may be, will answer, "What
becomes of myself if all that I love in my heart and my spirit must
die, that my life may be saved?" And are not almost all the morals, and
heroism, and virtue of man summed up in that single choice?
24. But what may this wisdom be that we rate thus highly? Let us not
seek to define it too closely; that were but to enchain it. If a man
were desirous to study the nature of light, and began by extinguishing
all the lights that were near, would not a few cinders, a smouldering
wick, be all he would ever discover? And so has it been with those who
essayed definition. "The word wise," said Joubert, "when used to a
child, is a word that each child understands, and that we need never
explain." Let us accept it even as the child accepts it, that it may
grow with our growth. Let us say of wisdom what Sister Hadewijck, the
mysterious enemy of Ruijsbroeck the Admirable, said of love: "Its
profoundest abyss is its most beautiful form." Wisdom requires no form;
her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no
motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne. She is Minerva who
follows us, soars to the skies with us, falls to the earth with us,
mingles her tears with our tears, and rejoices when we rejoice. Truly
wise you are not unless your wisdom be constantly changing from your
childhood on to your death. The more the word means to you, the more
beauty and depth it conveys, the wiser must you become; and each step
that one takes towards wisdom reveals to the soul ever-widening space,
that wisdom never shall traverse.
25. He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real
consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing
that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased
consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on
whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom. The heritage of
unconsciousness is for all men the same; but it is situate partly
within and partly without the confines of normal consciousness. The
bulk of mankind will rarely pass over the border; but true lovers of
wisdom press on, till they open new routes that cross over the
frontier. If I love, and my love has procured me the fullest
consciousness man may attain, then will an unconsciousness light up
this love that shall be quite other than the one whereby commonplace
love is obscured. For this second unconsciousness hedges the animal
round, whereas the first draws close unto God; but needs must it lose
all trace of the second ere it become aware of itself. In
unconsciousness we ever must dwell; but are able to purify, day after
day, the unconsciousness that wraps us around.