desire for immaterial good, one gesture must still be worth more than a
thousand intentions; nor is this that intentions are valueless, but
that the least gesture of goodness, or courage, or justice, makes
demands upon us far greater than a thousand lofty intentions.
Chiromantists pretend that the whole of our life is engraved on our
palm; our life, according to them, being a certain number of actions
which imprint ineffaceable marks on our flesh, before or after
fulfilment; whereas not a trace will be left by either thoughts or
intentions. If I have for many long days cherished projects of murder
or treachery, heroism or sacrifice, my hand will tell nothing of these;
but if I have killed some one--involuntarily perhaps, imagining he was
about to attack me; or if I have rescued a child from the flames that
enwrapped it--my hand will bear, all my life, the infallible sign of
love or of murder. Chiromancy maybe delusion or not--it matters but
little; here we are concerned with the great moral truth that underlies
this distinction. The place that I fill in the universe will never be
changed by my thought; I shall be as I was to the day of my death; but
my actions will almost invariably move me forwards or backwards in the
hierarchy of man. Thought is a solitary, wandering, fugitive force,
which advances towards us today and perhaps on the morrow will vanish,
whereas every deed presupposes a permanent army of ideas and desires
which have, after lengthy effort, secured foot-hold in reality.
62. But we find ourselves here far away from the noble Antigone and the
eternal problem of unproductive virtue. It is certain that
destiny--understood in the ordinary sense of the word as meaning the
road that leads only to death--is wholly disregardful of virtue. This
is the gulf, to which all systems of morality must come, as to a
central reservoir, to be purified or troubled for ever; and here must
each man decide whether he will justify fate or condemn it. Antigone's
sacrifice may well be regarded as the type of all such as are made in
the cause of duty. Do we not all of us know of heroic deeds whose
reward has been only misfortune? A friend of my own, one day, as he lay
on the bed he was never to leave save for that other one only which is
eternal, pointed out to me, one after the other, the different
stratagems fate had contrived to lure him to the distant city, where
the draught of poisonous water awaited him that he was to swallow,
wherefrom he must die. Strangely clear were the countless webs that
destiny had spun round this life; and the most trivial event seemed
endowed with marvellous malice and forethought. Yet had my friend
journeyed forth to that city in fulfilment of one of those duties that
only the saint, or the hero, the sage, detects on the horizon of
conscience. What can we say? But let us leave this point for the
moment, to return to it later. My friend, had he lived, would on the
morrow have gone to another city, called thither by another duty; nor
would he have paused to inquire whether it was indeed duty that
summoned him. There are beings who do thus obey the commands that their
heart whispers low. They fret not at fortune's injustice; they care not
though virtue be thankless; theirs it is only to fight the injustice of
men, which is the only injustice whereof they, as yet, seem aware.
Ought we never to hesitate, then? and is our duty most faithfully done
when we ourselves are wholly unconscious that this thing that we do is
a duty? Is it most essential of all that we should attain a height
whence duty no longer is looked on as the choice of our noblest
feelings, but as the silent necessity of all the nature within us?
63. There are some who wait and question themselves, who ponder,
consider, and then at length decide. They too are right, for it matters
but little whether the duty fulfilled be result of instinct or
intellect. The gestures of instinct will often recall the delicate,
naive and vague, unexpected beauty that clings to the child's least
movement, and touches us deeply; but the gestures of matured resolve
have a beauty, too, of their own, more earnest and statelier, stronger.
It is given to very few hearts to be naively perfect, nor should we go
seek in them for the laws of duty. And besides, there is many a
sober-hued duty that instinct will fail to perceive, that yet will be
clearly espied by mature resolution, bereft though this be of illusion;
and man's moral value is doubtless established by the number of duties
he sees and sets forth to accomplish.
It is well that the bulk of mankind should listen to the instinct that
prompts them to sacrifice self on the altar of duty, and that without
too close self-questioning; for long must the questioning be ere
consciousness will give forth the same answer as instinct. And those
who do thus close their eyes, and in all meekness follow their
instinct, are in truth following the light that is borne at their head,
though they know it not, see it not, by the best of their ancestors.
But still this is not the ideal; and he who gives up the least thing of
all for the sake of his brother, well knowing what it is he gives up
and wherefore he does it, stands higher by far in the scale of morality
than the other, who flings away life without throwing one glance behind.
64. In this world there are thousands of weak, noble creatures who
fancy that sacrifice always must be the last word of duty; thousands of
beautiful souls that know not what should be done, and seek only to
yield up their life, holding that to be virtue supreme. They are wrong;
supreme virtue consists in the knowledge of what should be done, in the
power to decide for ourselves whereto we should offer our life. The
duty each holds to be his is by no means his permanent duty. The
paramount duty of all is to throw our conception of duty into clearest
possible light. The word duty itself will often contain far more error
and moral indifference than virtue. Clytemnestra devoted her life to
revenge--she murdered her husband for that he had slain Iphigenia;
Orestes sacrificed his life in avenging Agamemnon's death on
Clytemnestra. And yet it has only needed a sage to pass by, saying,
"pardon your enemies," for all duties of vengeance to be banished for
ever from the conscience of man. And so may it one day suffice that
another sage shall pass by for many a duty of sacrifice too to be
exiled. But in the meanwhile there are certain ideas that prevail on
renouncement, resignation, and sacrifice, that are far more destructive
to the most beautiful moral forces of man than great vices, or even
than crimes.
65. There are some occasions in life, inevitable and of general
bearing, that demand resignation, which is necessary then, and good;
but there are many occasions when we still are able to fight; and at
such times resignation is no more than veiled helplessness, idleness,
ignorance. So is it with sacrifice too, which indeed is most often the
withered arm resignation still shakes in the void. There is beauty in
simple self-sacrifice when its hour has come unsought, when its motive
is happiness of others; but it cannot be wise, or of use to mankind, to
make sacrifice the aim of one's life, or to regard its achievement as
the magnificent triumph of the spirit over the body. (And here let us
add that infinitely too great importance is generally ascribed to the
triumph of spirit over body, these pretended triumphs being most often
the total defeat of life.) Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will
pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set
forth on its travels. It is a grave, error to think that the beauty of
soul is most clearly revealed by the eager desire for sacrifice; for
the soul's fertile beauty resides in its consciousness, in the
elevation and power of its life. There are some, it is true, that awake
from their sleep at the call of sacrifice only; but these lack the
strength and the courage to seek other forms of moral existence. It is,
as a rule, far easier to sacrifice self--to give up, that is, our moral
existence to the first one who chooses to take it--than to fulfil our
spiritual destiny, to accomplish, right to the end, the task for which
we were created. It is easier far, as a rule, to die morally, nay, even
physically, for others, than to learn how best we should live for them.
There are too many beings who thus lull to sleep all initiative,
personal life, and absorb themselves wholly in the idea that they are
prepared and ready for sacrifice. The consciousness that never succeeds
in travelling beyond this idea, that is satisfied ever to seek an
occasion for giving all that which it has, is a consciousness whose
eyes are sealed, and that crouches be-numbed at the foot of the
mountain. There is beauty in the giving of self, and indeed it is only
by giving oneself that we do, at the end, begin to possess ourselves
somewhat; but if all that we some day shall give to our brethren is the
desire to give them ourselves, then are we surely preparing a gift of
most slender value. Before giving, let us try to acquire; for this last
is a duty where from we are not relieved by the fact of our giving. Let
us wait till the hour of sacrifice sounds; till then, each man to his
work. The hour will sound at last; but let us not waste all our time in
seeking it on the dial of life.
66. There are many ways of sacrifice; and I speak not here of the
self-sacrifice of the strong, who know, as Antigone knew, how to yield
themselves up when destiny, taking the form of their brothers' manifest
happiness, calls upon them to abandon their own happiness and their
life. I speak of the sacrifice here that is made by the feeble; that
leans for support, with childish content, on the staff of its own
inanity--that is as an old blind nurse, who would rock us in the
palsied arms of renouncement and useless suffering. On this point let
us note what John Ruskin says, one of the best thinkers of our time:
"The will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each other's
happiness and life; not by each other's misery or death. A child may
have to die for its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall
rather live for them; that not by sacrifice, but by its strength, its
joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and
as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right
relations. Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They
are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen
themselves for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful
things which turn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure
but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men
must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught
that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such . . . that they
accept pain and defeat as if these were their appointed portion; never
understanding that their defeat is not the less to be mourned because
it is more fatal to their enemies than to them."
67. You are told you should love your neighbour as yourself; but if you
love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your
neighbour. Learn therefore to love yourself with a love that is wise
and healthy, that is large and complete. This is less easy than it
would seem. There is more active charity in the egoism of a strenuous
clairvoyant soul than in all the devotion of the soul that is helpless
and blind. Before you exist for others it behoves you to exist for
yourself; before giving, you first must acquire. Be sure that, if
deeply considered, more value attaches to the particle of consciousness
gained than to the gift of your entire unconsciousness. Nearly all the
great things of this world have been done by men who concerned
themselves not at all with ideas of self-sacrifice. Plato's thoughts
flew on--he paused not to let his tears fall with the tears of the
mourners in Athens; Newton pursued his experiments calmly, nor left
them to search for objects of pity or sorrow; and Marcus Aurelius above
all (for here we touch on the most frequent and dangerous form of
self-sacrifice) Marcus Aurelius essayed not to dim the brightness of
his own soul that he might confer happiness on the inferior soul of
Faustina. And if this was right in the lives of these men, of Plato and
Newton and Marcus Aurelius, it is equally right in the life of every
soul; for each soul has, in its sphere, the same obligations to self as
the soul of the greatest. We should tell ourselves, once and for all,
that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete,
independent, and great as lies in its power.' Herein is no egoism, or
pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must
be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that
we owe to ourselves. To this end we may sacrifice even the passion for
sacrifice; for sacrifice never should be the means of ennoblement, but
only the sign of our being ennobled.
68. Let us be ready to offer, when necessity beckons, our wealth, and
our time, and our life, to our less fortunate brethren, making them
thus an exceptional gift of a few exceptional hours; but the sage is
not bound to neglect his happiness, and all that environs his life, in
sole preparation for these few exceptional hours of greater or lesser
devotion. The truest morality tells us to cling, above all, to the
duties that return every day, to acts of inexhaustible brotherly
kindness. And, thus considered, we find that in the everyday walk of
life the solitary thing we can ever distribute among those who march by
our side, be they joyful or sad, is the confidence, strength, the
freedom and peace, of our soul. Let the humblest of men, therefore,
never cease to cherish and lift up his soul, even as though he were
fully convinced that this soul of his should one day be called to
console or gladden a God. When we think of preparing our soul, the
preparation should never be other than befits a mission divine. In this
domain only, and on this condition, can man truly give himself, can
there be pre-eminent sacrifice. And think you that when the hour sounds
the gift of a Socrates or Marcus Aurelius--who lived many lives, for
many a time had they compassed their whole life around--do you think
such a gift is not worth a thousand times more than what would be given
by him who had never stepped over the threshold of consciousness? And
if God there be, will He value sacrifice only by the weight of the
blood in our body; and the blood of the heart--its virtue, its
knowledge of self, its moral existence--do you think this will all go
for nothing?
69. It is not by self-sacrifice that loftiness comes to the soul; but
as the soul becomes loftier, sacrifice fades out of sight, as the
flowers in the valley disappear from the vision of him who toils up the
mountain. Sacrifice is a beautiful token of unrest; but unrest should
not be nurtured within us for sake of itself. To the soul that is
slowly awakening all appears sacrifice; but few things indeed are so
called by the soul that at last lives the life whereof self-denial,
pity, devotion, are no longer indispensable roots, but only invisible
flowers. For in truth too many do thus feel the need of
destroying--though it be without cause--a happiness, love, or a hope
that is theirs, thereby to obtain clearer vision of self in the light
of the consuming flame. It is as though they held in their hand a lamp
of whose use they know nothing; as though, when the darkness comes on,
and they are eager for light, they scatter its substance abroad on the
fire of the stranger.
Let us beware lest we act as he did in the fable, who stood watch in
the lighthouse, and gave to the poor in the cabins about him the oil of
the mighty lanterns that served to illumine the sea. Every soul in its
sphere has charge of a lighthouse, for which there is more or less
need. The humblest mother who allows her whole life to be crushed, to
be saddened, absorbed, by the less important of her motherly duties, is
giving her oil to the poor; and her children will suffer, the whole of
their life, from there not having been, in the soul of their mother,
the radiance it might have acquired. The immaterial force that shines
in our heart must shine, first of all, for itself; for on this
condition alone shall it shine for the others as well; but see that you
give not away the oil of your lamp, though your lamp be never so small;
let your gift be the flame, its crown.
70. In the soul that is noble altruism must, without doubt, be always
the centre of gravity; but the weak soul is apt to lose itself in
others, whereas it is in others that the strong soul discovers itself.
Here we have the essential distinction. There is a thing that is
loftier still than to love our neighbour as we love ourselves; it is to
love ourselves in our neighbour. Some souls there are whom goodness
walks before, as there are others that goodness follows. Let us never
forget that, in communion of soul, the most generous by no means are
they who believe they are constantly giving. A strenuous soul never
ceases to take, though it be from the poorest; a weak soul always is
giving, even to those that have most; but there is a manner of giving
which truly is only the gesture of powerless greed; and we should find,
it may be, if reckoning were kept by a God, that in taking from others
we give, and in giving we take away. Often indeed will it so come about
that the very first ray of enlightenment will descend on the
commonplace soul the day it has met with another which took all that it
had to give.
71. Why not admit that it is not our paramount duty to weep with all
those who are weeping, to suffer with all who are sad, to expose our
heart to the passer-by for him to caress or stab? Tears and suffering
and wounds are helpful to us only when they do not discourage our life.
Let us never forget that whatever our mission may be in this world,
whatever the aim of our efforts and hopes, and the result of our joys
and our sorrows, we are, above all, the blind custodians of life.
Absolutely, wholly certain is that one thing only; it is there that we
find the only fixed point of human morality. Life has been given
us--for a reason we know not--but surely not for us to enfeeble it, or
carelessly fling it away. For it is a particular form of life that we
represent on this planet--the life of feeling and thought; whence it
follows perhaps that all that inclines to weaken the ardour of feeling
and thought is, in its essence, immoral. Our task let it be then to
foster this ardour, to enhance and embellish it; let us constantly
strive to acquire deeper faith in the greatness of man, in his strength
and his destiny; or, we might equally say, in his bitterness, weakness,
and wretchedness; for to be loftily wretched is no less soul-quickening
than it is to be loftily happy. After all, it matters but little
whether it be man or the universe that we admire, so long as something
appear truly admirable to us, and exalt our sense of the infinite.
Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the
passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we
see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever
we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in
others. If my soul, on awaking this morning, was cheered, as it dwelt
on its love, by a thought that drew near to a God--a God, we have said,
who is doubtless no more than the loveliest desire of our soul--then
shall I behold this same thought astir in the beggar who passes my
window the moment thereafter; and I shall love him the more for that I
understand him the better. And let us not think that love of this kind
can be useless; for indeed, if one day we shall know the thing that has
to be done, it will only be thanks to the few who love in this fashion,
with an ever-deepening love. From the conscious and infinite love must
the true morality spring, nor can there be greater charity than the
effort to ennoble our fellows. But I cannot ennoble you if I have not
become noble myself; I have no admiration to give you if there be
naught in myself I admire. If the deed I have done be heroic, its
truest reward will be my conviction that of an equal deed you are
capable too; this conviction ever will tend to become more spontaneous
within me, and more unconquerable. Every thought that quickens my heart
brings quickening, too, to the love and respect that I have for
mankind. As I rise aloft, you rise with me. But if, the better to love
you, I deem it my duty to tear off the wings from my love, your love
being wingless as yet; then shall I have added in vain to the plaints
and the tears in the valley, but brought my own love thereby not one
whit nearer the mountain. Our love should always be lodged on the
highest peak we can attain. Let our love not spring from pity when it
can be born of love; let us not forgive for charity's sake when justice
offers forgiveness; nor let us try to console there where we can
respect. Let our one never-ceasing care be to better the love that we
offer our fellows. One cup of this love that is drawn from the spring
on the mountain is worth a hundred taken from the stagnant well of
ordinary charity. And if there be one whom you no longer can love
because of the pity you feel, or the tears that he sheds; and if he
ignore to the end that you love him because you ennobled him at the
same time you ennobled yourself, it matters but little after all; for
you have done what you held to be best, and the best is not always most
useful. Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God
whom our heart desires with its highest desire were watching our every
action?
72. In a terrible catastrophe that took place but a short time
ago,[Footnote: The fire at the Bazar de la Charite in Paris.] destiny
afforded yet another, and perhaps the most startling instance of what
it pleases men to term her injustice, her blindness, or her
irresponsibility. She seemed to have singled out for especial
chastisement the solitary external virtue that reason has left us--our
love for our fellow-man. There must have been some moderately righteous
men amongst the victims, and it seems almost certain that there was at
least one whose virtue was wholly disinterested and sincere. It is the
presence of this one truly good man that warrants our asking, in all
its simplicity, the terrible question that rises to our lips. Had he
not been there we might have tried to believe that this act of
seemingly monstrous injustice was in reality composed of particles of
sovereign justice. We might have whispered to ourselves that what they
termed charity, out yonder, was perhaps only the arrogant flower of
permanent injustice.
We seem unwilling to recognise the blindness of the external forces,
such as air, fire, water, the laws of gravity and others, with which we
must deal and do battle. The need is heavy upon us to find excuses for
fate; and even when blaming her, we seem to be endeavouring still to
explain the causes of her past and her future action, conscious the
while of a feeling of pained surprise, as though a man we valued highly
had done some dreadful deed. We love to idealise destiny, and are wont
to credit her with a sense of justice loftier far than our own; and
however great the injustice whereof she may have been guilty, our
confidence will soon flow back to her, the first feeling of dismay
over; for in our heart we plead that she must have reasons we cannot
fathom, that there must be laws we cannot divine. The gloom of the
world would crush us were we to dissociate morality from fate. To doubt
the existence of this high, protecting justice and virtue, would seem
to us to be denying the existence of all justice and of all virtue.