and these she handles so innocently at times as almost to provoke a
smile; but where can she have acquired her knowledge of those inner
realities, that are interwoven with all that is profoundest and most
illogical in passion, with all that is most unexpected, most
impossible, and most eternally true? We feel that one must have lived
for thirty years beneath burning chains of burning kisses to learn what
she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such
minuteness, such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two
predestined lovers of "Wuthering Heights"; to mark the self-conflicting
movements of the tenderness that would make suffer and the cruelty that
would make glad, the felicity that prayed for death and the despair
that clung to life; the repulsion that desired, the desire drunk with
repulsion--love surcharged with hatred, hatred staggering beneath its
load of love. ...
And yet it is known to us--for in this poor life of hers all lies
open--that she neither loved nor was loved. May it be true then that
the last word of an existence is only a word that destiny whispers low
to what lies most hidden in our heart? Have we indeed an inner life
that yields not in reality to the outer life; that is no less
susceptible of experience and impression? Can we live, it matters not
where, and love, and hate, listening for no footfall, spurning no
creature? Is the soul self-sufficient; and is it always the soul that
decides, a certain height once gained? Is it only to those whose
conscience still slumbers that events can seem sad or sterile? Did not
love and beauty, happiness and adventure--did not all that we go in
search of along the ways of life congregate in Emily Bronte's heart?
Day after day passed by, with never a joy or emotion; never a smile
that the eye could see or the hand could touch; wherefore none the less
did her destiny find its fulfilment, for the confidence within her, the
eagerness, hope, animation, all were astir; and her heart was flooded
with light, and radiant with silent gladness. Of her happiness none can
doubt. Not in the soul of the best of all those whose happiness has
lasted the longest, been the most active, diversified, perfect, could
more imperishable harvest be found than in the soul Emily Bronte lays
bare. If to her there came nothing of all that passes in joy and in
love, in sorrow, passion, and anguish, still did she possess all that
abides when emotion has faded away. Which of the two will know more of
the marvellous palace--the blind man who lives there, or the other,
with wide-open eyes, who perhaps only enters it once? "To live, not to
live"--we must not let mere words mislead us. It is surely possible to
live without thought, but not to think, without active life. The
essence of the joy or sorrow the event contains lies in the idea the
event gives birth to: our own idea, if we are strong; that of others,
if we are weak. On your way to the grave there may come a thousand
external events towards you, whereof not one, it may be, shall find
within you the force that it needs to turn to moral event. Then may you
truthfully say, and then only, "I have perhaps not lived." The intimate
happiness of our heroine, as of every human being, was in exact
proportion to her morality and her sense of the universe; and these
indeed are the clearings in the forest of accidents whose area it is
well we should know when we seek to measure the happiness a life has
experienced. Who that had gained the altitude of peace and
comprehension whereon her soul reposed would still be wrought to
feeble, bitter, unrefreshing tears by the cares and troubles and
deceptions of ordinary life? Who would not then understand why it was
that she shed no tears, unlike so many of her sisters, who spend their
lives in plaintive wanderings from one broken joy to another? The joy
that is dead weighs heavy, and bids fair to crush us, if we cause it to
be with us for ever; which is as though a wood-cutter should refuse to
lay down his load of dead wood. For dead wood was not made to be
eternally borne on the shoulder, but indeed to be burned, and give
forth brilliant flame. And as we behold the names that soar aloft in
Emily's soul, then are we as heedless as she was of the sorrows of the
dead wood. No misfortune but has its horizon, no sadness but shall know
comfort, for the man who in the midst of his suffering, in the midst of
the grief that must come to him as to all, has learned to espy Nature's
ample gesture beneath all sorrow and suffering, and has become aware
that this gesture alone is real. "The sage, who is lord of his life,
can never truly be said to suffer." wrote an admirable woman, who had
known much sorrow herself. "It is from the heights above that he looks
down on his life, and if to-day he should seem to suffer, it is only
because he has allowed his thoughts to incline towards the less perfect
part of his soul." Emily Bronte not only breathes life into tenderness,
loyalty, and love, but into hatred and wickedness also; nay, into the
very fiercest revengeful ness, the most deliberate perfidy; nor does
she deem it incumbent upon her to pardon, for pardon implies only
incomplete comprehension. She sees, she admits, and she loves. She
admits the evil as well as the good, she gives life to both; well
knowing that evil, when all is said, is only righteousness strayed from
the path. She reveals to us--not with the moralist's arbitrary formula,
but as men and years reveal the truths we have wit to grasp--the final
helplessness of evil, brought face to face with life; the final
appeasement of all things in nature as well as in death, "which is only
the triumph of life over one of its specialised forms." She shows how
the dexterous lie, begotten of genius and strength, is forced to bow
down before the most ignorant, puniest truth; she shows the
self-deception of hatred that sows, all unwilling, the seeds of
gladness and love in the life that it anxiously schemes to destroy. She
is, perhaps, the first to base a plea for indulgence on the great law
of heredity; and when, at the end of her book, she goes to the village
churchyard and visits the eternal resting-place of her heroes, the
grass grows green alike over grave of tyrant and martyr; and she
wonders how "any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the
sleepers in that quiet earth."
102. I am well aware that here we are dealing with a woman of genius;
but genius only throws into bolder relief all that can, and actually
does, take place in the lives of all men; otherwise were it genius no
longer, but incoherence or madness. It becomes clear to us, after a
time, that genius is by no means confined to the extraordinary; and
that veritable superiority is composed of elements that every day
offers to every man. But we are not considering literature now; and
indeed, not by her literary gifts, but by her inner life, was Emily
Bronte comforted; for it by no means follows that moral activity waits
on brilliant literary powers. Had she remained silent, nor ever grasped
a pen, still had there been no diminution of the power within her, of
the smile and the fulness of love; still had she worn the air of one
who knew whither her steps were tending; and the profound certainty
that dwelt within her still had proclaimed that she had known how to
make her peace, far up on the heights, with the great disquiet and
misery of the world. We should never have known of her--that is all.
There is much to be learned from this humble life, and yet were it
perhaps not well to hold it forth as an example to such as already
incline overmuch to resignation, for these it might mislead. It is a
life that would seem to have been wholly passive--and to be passive is
not good for all. She died a virgin in her twenty-ninth year: and it is
sad to die a virgin. Is it not the paramount duty of every human being
to offer to his destiny all that can be offered to the destiny of man?
And indeed we had far better leave behind us work unfinished than life
itself incomplete. It is good to be indifferent to vain or idle
pleasures; but we have no right almost voluntarily to neglect the most
important chances of indispensable happiness. The soul that is unhappy
may have within it cause for noble regret. To look largely on the
sadness of one's life is to make essay, in the darkness, of the wings
that shall one day enable us to soar high above this sadness. Effort
was lacking, perhaps, in Emily Bronte's life. (In her soul there was
wealth of passion and freedom and daring, but in her life timidity,
silence, inertness, conventions, and prejudice; the very things that in
thought she despised.) This is the history often of the too-meditative
soul. But it is difficult to pass judgment on an entire existence; and
here there were much to be said of the devotion wherewith she
sacrificed the best years of her youth to an undeserving, though
unfortunate, brother. Our remarks then, in a case such as this, must be
understood generally only; but still, how long and how narrow is the
path that leads from the soul to life! Our thoughts of love, of justice
and loyalty, our thoughts of bold ambition--what are all these but
acorns that fall from the oak in the forest? and must not thousands and
tens of thousands be lost and rot in the lichen ere a single tree
spring to life? "She had a beautiful soul," said, speaking of another
woman, the woman whose words I quoted above, "a wide intellect, and
tender heart, but ere these qualities could issue forth into life they
had perforce to traverse a straitened character. Again and again have I
wondered at this want of self-knowledge, of return to self. The man who
would wish us to see the deepest recess of his life will begin by
telling us all that he thinks and he feels, will lead as to his point
of view; we are conscious, perhaps, of much elevation of soul; then, as
we enter with him still further into his life, he tells of his conduct,
his joys and his sorrows; and in these we detect not a gleam of the
soul that had shone through his thoughts and desires. When the trumpet
is sounded for action, the instincts rush in, the character hastens
between; but the soul stands aloof: the soul, which is man's very
highest, being like the princess who elects to live on in arrogant
penury rather than soil her hands with ordinary labour." Yes, alas, all
is useless till such time as we have learned to harden our hands; to
transform the gold and silver of thought into a key that shall open,
not the ivory gate of our dreams, but the very door of this our
dwelling--into a cup that shall hold, not only the wondrous water of
dreams, but the living water that falls, drop by drop, on our
roof--into scales, not content vaguely to balance schemes for the
future, but that record, with unerring accuracy, what we have done
to-day. The very loftiest ideal has taken no root within us, so long as
it penetrate not every limb, so long as it palpitate not at our
finger-tip. Some there are whose intellect profits by this return to
self; with others, the character gains. The first have clearest vision
for all that concerns not themselves, that calls them not to action;
but it is above all when stern reality confronts them, and time for
action has come, that the eyes of the others glow bright. One might
almost believe in there being an intellectual consciousness, languidly
resting for ever upon an immovable throne, whence she issues commands
to the will through faithless or indolent envoys, and a moral
consciousness, incessantly stirring, afoot, at all times ready to
march. It may be that this latter consciousness depends on the
former--indeed who shall say that she is not the former, wearied from
long repose, wherein she has learned all that was to be learned; that
has at last determined to rise, to descend the steps of inactivity and
sally forth into life? And all will be well, if only she have not
tarried so long that her limbs refuse their office. Is it not
preferable sometimes to act in opposition to our thoughts than never
dare to act in accord with them? Rarely indeed is the active error
irremediable; men and things are quickly on the spot, eager to set it
right; but they are helpless before the passive error that has shunned
contact with the real. Let all this, however, by no means be construed
into meaning that the intellectual consciousness must be starved, or
its growth arrested, for fear lest it outpace the moral consciousness.
We need have no fear; no ideal conceived by man can be too admirable
for life to conform with it. To float the smallest act of justice or
love requires a very torrent of desire for good. For our conduct only
to be honest we must have thoughts within us ten times loftier than our
conduct. Even to keep somewhat clear of evil bespeaks enormous craving
for good. Of all the forces in the world there is none melts so quickly
away as the thought that has to descend into everyday life; wherefore
we must needs be heroic in thought for our deeds to pass muster, or at
the least be harmless.
103. Let us once again, and for the last time, return to obscure
destinies. They teach us that, physical misfortune apart, there is
remedy for all; and that to complain of destiny is only to expose our
own feebleness of soul. We are told in the history of Rome how a
certain Julius Sabinus, a senator from Gaul, headed a revolt against
the Emperor Vespasian, and was duly defeated. He might have sought
refuge among the Germans, but only by leaving his young wife, Eponina,
behind him, and he had not the heart to forsake her. At moments of
disaster and sorrow we learn the true value of life; nor did Julius
Sabinus welcome the idea of death. He possessed a villa, beneath which
there stretched vast subterranean caverns, known only to him and two
freedmen. This villa he caused to be burned, and the rumour was spread
that he had sought death by poison, and that his body was consumed by
the flames. Eponina herself was deceived, says Plutarch, whose story I
follow, with the additions made thereto by the Comte de Champagny, the
historian of Antoninus; and when Martialis the freedman told her of her
husband's self-slaughter, she lay for three days and three nights on
the ground, refusing all nourishment. When Sabinus heard of her grief,
he took pity and caused her to know that he lived. She none the less
mourned and shed floods of tears, in the daytime, when people were
near, but when night fell she sought him below in his cavern. For seven
long months did she thus confront the shades, every night, to be with
her husband; she even attempted to help him escape; she shaved off his
hair and his beard, wrapped his head round with fillets, disguised him,
and then had him sent, in a bundle of clothes, to her own native city.
But his stay there becoming unsafe, she soon brought him back to his
cavern; and herself divided her stay between town and the country,
spending her nights with him, and from time to time going to town to be
seen by her friends. She became big with child, and, by means of an
unguent wherewith she anointed her body, her condition remained
unsuspected by even the women at the baths, which at that time were
taken in common. And when her confinement drew nigh she went down to
her cavern, and there, with no midwife, alone, she gave birth to two
sons, as a lioness throws off her cubs. She nourished her twins with
her milk, she nursed them through childhood; and for nine years she
stood by her husband in the gloom and the darkness. But Sabinus at last
was discovered and taken to Rome. He surely would seem to have merited
Vespasian's pardon. Eponina led forth the two sons she had reared in
the depths of the earth, and said to the Emperor, "These have I brought
into the world and fed on my milk, that we might one day be more to
implore thy forgiveness." Tears filled the eyes of all who were there;
but Caesar stood firm, and the brave Gaul at last was reduced to demand
permission to die with her husband. "I have known more happiness with
him in the darkness," she cried, "than thou ever shalt know, O Caesar,
in the full glare of the sunshine, or in all the splendour of thy
mighty empire."
Who that has a heart within him can doubt the truth of her words, or
think without longing of the darkness that so great a love illumined?
Many a dreary, miserable hour must have crawled by as they crouched in
their hiding-place; but are there any, even among those who care only
for the pettiest pleasures of life, who would not rather love with such
depth and fervour in what was almost a tomb, than flaunt a frigid
affection in the heat and light of the sun? Eponina's magnificent cry
is the cry of all those whose hearts have been touched by love; as it
is also the cry of those whose soul has discovered an interest, duty,
or even a hope, in life. The flame that inspired Eponina inspires the
sage also, lost in monotonous hours as she in her gloomy retreat. Love
is the unconscious sun of our soul; and it is when its beams are most
ardent, and purest, that they bear most surprising resemblance to those
that the soul, aglow with justice and truth, with beauty and majesty,
has kindled within itself, and adds to, incessantly. Is not the
happiness that accident brought to the heart of Eponina within reach of
every heart, so the will to possess it be there? Is not all that was
sweetest in this love of hers--the devotion of self, the transformation
of regret into happiness, of pleasure renounced into joy that abides in
the heart for ever; the interest awakened each day by the feeblest
glimmer of light, so it fall on a thing one admires; the immersion in
radiance, in happiness susceptible of infinite expansion, for one has
only to worship the more--are not all these, and a thousand other
forces no less helpful, no less consoling, to be found in the intensest
life of our soul, of our heart, of our thoughts? And was Eponina's love
other than a sudden lightning flash from this life of the soul, come to
her, all unconscious and unprepared? Love does not always reflect;
often indeed does it need no reflection, no search into self, to enjoy
what is best in thought; but, none the less, all that is best in love
is closely akin to all that is best in thought. Suffering seemed ever
radiant in aspect to Eponina, because of her love; but cannot this
thing that love brings about, all unknowing, by fortunate accident, be
also achieved by thought, meditation, by the habit of looking beyond
our immediate trouble, and being more joyous than fate would seem to
demand? To Eponina there came not a sorrow but kindled yet one more
torch in the gloom of her cavern; and does not the sadness that forces
the soul back into itself, to the retreat it has made, kindle deep
consolation there? And, as the noble Eponina has taken us back to the
days of persecution, may we not liken such sorrow to the pagan
executioner who, suddenly touched by grace, or perhaps admiration, in
the very midst of the torture that he was inflicting, flung himself
down headlong at the feet of his victim, speaking words of tenderest
sympathy; who demanded to share her suffering, and finally besought, in
a kiss, to be told the way to her heaven.
104. Go where we will, the plentiful river of life flows on, beneath
the canopy of heaven. It flows between prison walls, where the sun
never gleams on its waters; as it flows by the palace steps, where all
is gladness and glory. Not our concern the depth of this river, or its
width, or the strength of its current, as it streams on for ever,
pertaining to all; but of deepest importance to us is the size and the
purity of the cup that we plunge in its waters. For whatever of life we
absorb must needs take the form of this cup, as this, too, has taken
the form of our thoughts and our feelings; being modelled, indeed, on
the breast of our intimate destiny as the breast of a goddess once
served for the cup of the sculptor of old. Every man has the cup of his
fashioning, and most often the cup he has learned to desire. When we
murmur at fate, let our grievance be only that she grafted not in our
heart the wish for, or thought of, a cup more ample and perfect. For
indeed in the wish alone does inequality lie, but this inequality
vanishes the moment it has been perceived. Does the thought that our
wish might be nobler not at once bring nobility with it; does not the
breast of our destiny throb to this new aspiration, thereby expanding
the docile cup of the ideal--the cup whose metal is pliable, still to
the cold stern hour of death? No cause for complaint has he who has
learned that his feelings are lacking in generous ardour, or the other
who nurses within him a hope for a little more happiness, a little more
beauty, a little more justice. For here all things come to pass in the
way that they tell us it happens with the felicity of the elect, of
whom each one is robed in gladness, and wears the garment befitting his
stature. Nor can he desire a happiness more perfect than the happiness
which he possesses, without the desire wherewith he desired at once
bringing fulfilment with it. If I envy with noble envy the happiness of
those who are able to plunge a heavier cup, and more radiant than mine,
there where the great river is brightest, I have, though I know it not,
my excellent share of all that they draw from the river, and my lips
repose by the side of their lips on the rim of the shining cup.