wisdom means more than perpetual triumph of reason over inferior
instincts. Such triumphs can help us but little if our reason be not
taught thereby to offer profoundest submission to another and different
instinct--that of the soul. These triumphs are precious, because they
reveal the presence of diviner instinct, that grows ever diviner still.
And their aim is not in themselves; they serve but to clear the way for
the destiny of the soul, which is a destiny, always, of purification
and light.
27. Reason flings open the door to wisdom; but the most living wisdom
befinds itself not in reason. Reason bars the gate to malevolent
destiny; but wisdom, away on the horizon, throws open another gate to
propitious destiny. Reason defends and withdraws; forbids, rejects, and
destroys. Wisdom advances, attacks, and adds; increases, creates, and
commands. Reason produces not wisdom, which is rather a craving of
soul. It dwells up above, far higher than reason; and thus is it of the
nature of veritable wisdom to do countless things whereof reason
disapproves, or shall but approve hereafter. So was it that wisdom one
day said to reason, It were well to love one's enemies and return good
for evil. Reason, that day, tiptoe on the loftiest peak in its kingdom,
at last was fain to agree. But wisdom is not yet content, and seeks
ever further, alone.
28. If wisdom obeyed reason only, and sought nothing more than to
overcome instinct, then would wisdom be ever the same. There would be
but one wisdom for all, and its whole range would be known to man, for
reason has more than once explored its entire domain.
Certain fixed points there well may be that are common to all classes
of wisdom; but there exists none the less the widest possible
difference between the atmospheres that enwrapped the wisdom of Jesus
Christ and of Socrates, of Aristides and Marcus Aurelius, of Fenelon
and Jean Paul. Let the same event befall these men on the self-same
day: if it fall into the running waters of their wisdom, it will
undergo complete transformation, becoming different in every one; if it
fall into the stagnant water of their reason, it will remain as it was,
unchanged. If Jesus Christ and Socrates both were to meet the
adulterous woman, the words that their reason would prompt them to
speak would vary but little; but belonging to different worlds would be
the working of the wisdom within them, far beyond words and far beyond
thoughts. For differences such as these are of the very essence of
wisdom. There is but one starting-point for the wise--the threshold of
reason. But they separate one from the other as soon as the triumphs of
reason are well understood; in other words, as soon as they enter
freely the domain of the higher unconsciousness.
29. To say "this is reasonable" is by no means the same as to say "this
is wise." The thing that is reasonable is not of necessity wise, and a
thing may be very wise and yet be condemned by over-exacting reason. It
is from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom;
and goodness, we are told by Plutarch, "extends much further than
justice." Is it to reason or wisdom that heroism should be ascribed?
Wisdom, perhaps, is only the sense of the infinite applied to our moral
life. Reason, it is true, has the sense of the infinite also, but dare
not do more than accord it bare recognition. It would seem opposed to
the very instinct of reason to regard the sense of the infinite as
being of importance in life; but wisdom is wise in the measure that the
Infinite governs all she procures to be done.
In reason no love can be found--there is much love in wisdom; and all
that is highest in wisdom entwines around all that is purest in love.
Love is the form most divine of the infinite, and also, because most
divine, the form most profoundly human. Why should we not say that
wisdom is the triumph of reason divine over reason of man?
30. We cannot cultivate reason too fully, but by wisdom only should
reason be guided. The man is not wise whose reason has not yet been
taught to obey the first signal of love. What would Christ, all the
heroes, have done had their reason not learned to submit? Is each deed
of the hero not always outside the boundary of reason? and yet, who
would venture to say that the hero is not wiser by far than the
sluggard who quits not his chair because reason forbids him to rise?
Let us say it once more--the vase wherein we should tend the true
wisdom is love, and not reason. Reason is found, it is true, at the
root-springs of wisdom, yet is wisdom not reason's flower. For we speak
not of logical wisdom here, but of wisdom quite other, the favourite
sister of love.
Reason and love battle fiercely at first in the soul that begins to
expand; but wisdom is born of the peace that at last comes to pass
between reason and love; and the peace becomes the profounder as reason
yields up still more of her rights to love.
31. Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love,
sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes
ever the nearer to love. If you love, you must needs become wise; be
wise, and you surely shall love. Nor can any one love with the
veritable love but his love must make him the better; and to grow
better is but to grow wiser. There is not a man in the world but
something improves in his soul from the moment he loves--and that
though his love be but vulgar; and those in whom love never dies must
needs continue to love as their soul grows nobler and nobler. Love is
the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within
which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise. Wisdom and
love are one; and in Swedenborg's Paradise the wife is "the love of the
wisdom of the wise."
32. "Our reason," said Fenelon, "is derived from the clearness of our
ideas." But our wisdom, we might add--in other words, all that is best
in our soul and our character, is to be found above all in those ideas
that are not yet clear. Were we to allow our clear ideas only to govern
our life, we should quickly become undeserving of either much love or
esteem. For, truly, what could be less clear than the reasons that bid
us be generous, upright, and just; that teach us to cherish in all
things the noblest of feelings and thoughts? But it happily so comes to
pass that the more clear ideas we possess, the more do we learn to
respect those that as yet are still vague. We must strive without
ceasing to clarify as many ideas as we can, that we may thus arouse in
our soul more and more that now are obscure. The clear ideas may at
times seem to govern our external life, but the others perforce must
march on at the head of our intimate life, and the life that we see
invariably ends by obeying the invisible life. On the quality, number,
and power of our clear ideas do the quality, number, and power depend
of those that are vague; and hidden away in the midst of these vague
ones, patiently biding their hour, there may well lurk most of the
definite truths that we seek with such ardour. Let us not keep them
waiting too long; and indeed, a beautiful crystal idea we awaken within
us shall not fail, in its turn, to arouse a beautiful vague idea; which
last, growing old, and having itself become clear (for is not perfect
clearness most often the sign of decrepitude in the idea?), shall also
go forth, and disturb from its slumber another obscure idea, but
loftier, lovelier far than it had been itself in its sleep; and thus,
it may be, treading gently, one after the other, and never
disheartened, in the midst of those silent ranks--some day, by mere
chance, a small hand, scarce visible yet, shall touch a great truth.
33. Clear ideas and obscure ideas; heart, intellect, will, and reason,
and soul--truly these words that we use do but mean more or less the
same thing: the spiritual riches of man. The soul may well be no more
than the most beautiful desire of our brain, and God Himself be only
the most beautiful desire of our soul. So great is the darkness here
that we can but seek to divide it; and the lines that we trace must be
blacker still than the sections they traverse. Of all the ideals that
are left to us, there is perhaps only one that we still can accept; and
that one is to gain full self-knowledge; but to how great an extent
does this knowledge truly depend on our reason--this knowledge that at
first would appear to depend on our reason alone? Surely he who at last
had succeeded in realising, to the fullest extent, the place that he
filled in the universe--surely he should be better than others, be
wiser and truer, more upright; in a word, be more moral? But can any
man claim, in good faith, to have grasped this relation; and do not the
roots of the most positive morals lie hidden beneath some kind of
mystic unconsciousness? Our most beautiful thought does no more than
pass through our intelligence; and none would imagine that the harvest
must have been reaped in the road because it is seen passing by. When
reason, however precise, sets forth to explore her domain, every step
that she takes is over the border. And yet is it the intellect that
lends the first touches of beauty to thought; the rest lies not wholly
with us; but this rest will not stir into motion until intellect
touches the spring. Reason, the well-beloved daughter of intellect,
must go take her stand on the threshold of our spiritual life, having
first flung open the gates of the prison beneath, where the living,
instinctive forces of being lie captive, asleep. She must wait, with
the lamp in her hand; and her presence alone shall suffice to ward off
from the threshold all that does not yet conform with the nature of
light. Beyond, in the regions unlit by her rays, obscure life
continues. This troubles her not; indeed, she is glad. ... She knows
that, in the eyes of the God she desires all that has not yet crossed
her arcade of light--be it dream, be it thought, even act--can add
nothing to, can take nothing from, the ideal creature she is craving to
mould. She watches the flame of her lamp; needs must it burn brightly,
and remain at its post, and be seen from afar. She listens, untroubled,
to the murmur of inferior instincts out there in the darkness. But the
prisoners slowly awake; there are some who draw nigh to the threshold,
and their radiance is greater than hers. There flows from them a light
less material, softer and purer than that of the bold, hard flame which
her hand protects. They are the inscrutable powers of goodness and
love; and others follow behind, more mysterious still, and more
infinite, seeking admission. What shall she do? If, at the time that
she took her stand there on the threshold, she had still lacked the
courage to learn that she could not exist alone, then will she be
troubled, afraid; she will make fast the gates; and should these be
ever reopened, she would find only quivering cinders at the foot of the
gloomy stairs. But if her strength be unshaken; if from all that she
could not learn she has learned, at least, that in light there can
never be danger, and that reason itself may be freely staked where
greater brightness prevails--then shall ineffable changes take place on
the threshold, from lamp unto lamp. Drops of an unknown oil will blend
with the oil of the wisdom of man; and when the white strangers have
passed, the flame of her lamp shall rise higher, transformed for all
time; shall shed purer and mightier radiance amidst the columns of the
loftier doorway.
34. So much for isolated wisdom; now let us return to the wisdom that
moves to the grave in the midst of the mighty crowd of human destinies;
for the destiny of the sage holds not aloof from that of the wicked and
frivolous. All destinies are for ever commingling; and the adventure is
rare in whose web the hempen thread blends not with the golden. There
are misfortunes more gradual, less frightful of aspect, than those that
befell Oedipus and the prince of Elsinore; misfortunes that quail not
beneath the gaze of truth or justice or love. Those who speak of the
profit of wisdom are never so wise as when they freely admit, without
pride or heart-burning, that wisdom grants scarcely a boon to her
faithful that the foolish or wicked would prize. And indeed, it may
often take place that the sage, as he moves among men, shall pass
almost unnoticed, shall affect them but slightly; be this that his stay
is too brief, that he comes too late, that he misses true contact; or
perchance that he has to contend with forces too overwhelming, amassed
by myriad men from time immemorial. No miracles can he perform on
material things; he can save only that which life's ordinary laws still
allow to be saved; and himself, it may be, shall be suddenly seized in
a great inexorable whirlwind. But, though he perish therein, still does
he escape the fate that is common to most; for at least he will die
without having been forced--for weeks, or it may be for years, before
the catastrophe--to be the helpless, despairing witness of the ruin of
his soul. And to save some one--if we admit that in life there are
truly two lives--does not of necessity mean that we save him from death
and disaster; but indeed that we render him happier, inasmuch as we try
to improve him. Moral salvation is the greatest salvation; and yet,
what a trifle this seems, as everything seems that is done on the
loftiest summits of soul. Was the penitent thief not saved; and that
not alone in the Christian sense of the word, but in its fullest, most
perfect meaning? Still had he to die, and at that very hour; but he
died eternally happy; because at the very last moment he too had been
loved, and a Being of infinite wisdom had declared that his soul had
not been without value; that his soul, too, had been good, and had not
passed through the world unperceived of all men.
35. As we go deeper down into life we discover the secret of more and
more sorrow and helplessness. We see that many souls round us lead idle
and foolish lives, because they believe they are useless, unnoticed by
all, unloved, and convinced they have nothing within them that is
worthy of love. But to the sage the hour must come when every soul that
exists claims his glance, his approval, his love--if only because it
possesses the mysterious gift of existence. The hour must come when he
sees that falsehood and weakness and vice are but on the surface; when
his eye shall pierce through, and discover the strength, and the truth,
and the virtue that lie underneath. Happy and blessed hour, when
wickedness stands forth revealed as goodness bereft of its guide; and
treachery is seen to be loyalty, for ever astray from the highway of
happiness; and hatred becomes only love, in poignant despair, that is
digging its grave. Then, unsuspected of any, shall it be with all those
who are near the good man as it was with the penitent thief; into the
humblest soul that will thus have been saved by a look, or a word, or a
silence, shall the true happiness fall--the happiness fate cannot
touch; that brings to all men the oblivion it gave unto Socrates, and
causes each one to forget, until nightfall, that the death--giving cup
had been drained ere the sun went down.
36. The inner life, perhaps, is not what we deem it to be. There are as
many kinds of inner lives as there are of external lives. Into these
tranquil regions the smallest may enter as readily as he who is
greatest, for the gate that leads thither is not always the gate of the
intellect. It often may happen that the man of vast knowledge shall
knock at this gate in vain, reply being made from within by the man who
knows nothing. The inner life that is surest, most lasting, possessed
of the uttermost beauty, must needs be the one that consciousness
slowly erects in itself, with the aid of all that is purest in the
soul. And he is wise who has learned that this life should be nourished
on every event of the day: he to whom deceit or betrayal serves but to
enhance his wisdom: he in whom evil itself becomes fuel for the flame
of love. He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that
it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes never rest on the shadow it casts
upon those who have sent it towards him. And wiser still is the man to
whom sorrow and joy not only bring increase of consciousness, but also
the knowledge that something exists superior to consciousness even. To
have reached this point is to reach the summit of inward life, whence
at last we look down on the flames whose light has helped our ascent.
But not many can climb so high; and happiness may be achieved in the
less ardent valley below, where the flames spring darkly to life. And
there are existences still more obscure which yet have their places of
refuge. There are some that instinctively fashion inward lives for
themselves. There are some that, bereft of initiative or of
intelligence, never discover the path that leads into themselves, and
are never aware of all that their refuge contains; and yet will their
actions be wholly the same as the actions of those whose intellect
weighs every treasure. There are some who desire only good, though they
know not wherefore they desire it, and have no suspicion that goodness
is the one fixed star of loftiest consciousness. The inner life begins
when the soul becomes good, and not when the intellect ripens. It is
somewhat strange that this inner life can never be formed out of evil.
No inner life is for him whose soul is bereft of all nobleness. He may
have full knowledge of self; he may know, it may be, wherefore he shuns
goodness; and yet shall he seek in vain for the refuge, the strength,
the treasure of invisible gladness, that form the possessions of him
who can fearlessly enter his heart. For the inward life is built up of
a certain rejoicing of soul; and the soul can never be happy if it
possess not, and love not, something that is pure. It may perhaps err
in its choice, but then even will it be happier than the soul to which
it has never been given to choose.
37. And thus are we truly saving a man if we bring about that he loves
evil somewhat less than he loved it before; for we are helping that man
to construct, deep down in his soul, the refuge where--against destiny
shall brandish her weapons in vain. This refuge is the monument of
consciousness, or, it may be, of love; for love is nothing but
consciousness, still vaguely in search of itself; and veritable
consciousness nothing but love that at last has emerged from the
shadow. And it is in the deepest recess of this refuge that the soul
shall kindle the wondrous fire of her joy. And this joy of the soul is
like unto no other joy; and even as material fire will chase away
deadly disease from the earth, so will the joy of the soul scatter
sorrow that malevolent destiny brings. It arises not from exterior
happiness; it arises not from satisfied self-love; for the joy that
self-love procures becomes less as the soul becomes nobler, but the joy
of pure love increases as nobility comes to the soul. Nor is this joy
born of pride; for to be able to smile at its beauty is not enough to
bring joy to the soul. The soul that has sought in itself has the right
to know of its beauty; but to brood on this beauty too much, to become
over-conscious thereof, were perhaps to detract somewhat from the
unconsciousness of its love. The joy that I speak of takes not from
love what it adds unto consciousness; for in this joy, and in this joy
alone, do consciousness and love become one, feeding each on the other,
each gaining from that which it gives. The striving intellect may well
know happiness beyond the reach of the satisfied body; but the soul
that grows nobler has joys that are often denied to the striving
intellect. These two will often unite and labour together at building
the house within. But still it will happen at times that both work
apart, and widely different then are the structures each will erect.
And were this to be so, and the being I loved best of all in the world
came and asked me which he should choose--which refuge I held to be
most unattackable, sweetest, profoundest--I would surely advise him to
shelter his destiny in the refuge of the soul that grows nobler.
38. Is the sage never to suffer? Shall no storm ever break on the roof
of his dwelling, no traps be laid to ensnare him? Shall wife and
friends never fail him? Must his father not die, and his mother, his
brothers, his sons--must all these not die like the rest? Shall angels
stand guard at each highway through which sorrow can pass into man? Did
not Christ Himself weep as He stood before Lazarus' tomb? Had not
Marcus Aurelius to suffer--from Commodus, the son who already showed
signs of the monster he was to become; from Faustina, the wife whom he
loved, but who cared not for him? Was not destiny's hand laid heavy on
Paulus Aemilius, who was fully as wise as Timoleon? did not both his
sons die, one five days before his triumph in Rome, and the other but
three days after? What becomes of the refuge, then, where wisdom keeps
watch over happiness? Must we take back all we have said? and is wisdom
yet one more illusion, by whose aid the soul would fain conciliate
reason, and justify cravings that experience is sure to reject as being
opposed to reason?
39. Nay, In truth, the sage too must suffer. He suffers; and suffering
forms a constituent part of his wisdom. He will suffer, perhaps, more
than most men, for that his nature is far more complete. And being
nearer to all mankind, as the wise ever must be, his suffering will be
but the greater, for the sorrows of others are his. He will suffer in
his flesh, in his heart, in his spirit; for there are sides in all
these that no wisdom on earth can dispute against destiny. And so he
accepts his suffering, but is not discouraged thereby; not for him are
the chains that it fastens on those who cringe down before it, unaware
that it is but a messenger sent by a mightier personage, whom a bend in
the road hides from view. Needs must the sage, like his neighbour, be
startled from sleep by the shouts of the truculent envoy, by the blows
at the door that cause the whole house to tremble. He, too, must go
down and parley. But yet, as he listens, his eyes are not fixed on this
bringer of evil tidings; his glance will at times be lifted over the
messenger's shoulder, will scan the dust on the horizon in search of
the mighty idea that perhaps may be near at hand. And indeed, when our
thoughts rest on fate, at such times as happiness enfolds us, we feel
that no great misfortune can be suddenly burst upon us. The proportions
will change, it is true, when the blow falls; but it is equally true
that before the misfortune can wholly destroy the abiding courage
within us, it first must triumph in our heart over all we adore, over
all we admire, and love. And what alien power can expel from our soul a
feeling and thought that we hurl not our selves from its throne?
Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us
except through our thoughts; and whence do our thoughts derive the
weapons wherewith they attack or defend us? We suffer but little from
suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming
sorrow may spring. "His unhappiness was caused by himself," said a
thinker of one whose eyes never looked over the brutal messenger's
shoulder--"his unhappiness was caused by himself; for all misery is
inward, and caused by ourselves. We are wrong in believing that it
comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very
substance."