spoke of a woman whose friend asked her, wonderingly, "Can any man be
worthy of your love?" The same question might have been asked of Emily
Bronte, as indeed of many others; and in this world there are thousands
of souls, of loftiest intention, that do yet forfeit the best years of
love in constant self-interrogation as to the future of their
affections. Nay, more--in the empire of destiny it is to the image of
love that the great mass of complaints and regrets come flocking; the
image of love around which hover sluggish desire, extravagant hope, and
fears engendered of vanity. At root of all this is much pride, and
counterfeit poetry, and falsehood. The soul that is misunderstood is
most often the one that has made the least effort to gain some
knowledge of self. The feeblest ideal, the one that is narrowest,
straitest, most often will thrive on deception and fear, on exaction
and petty contempt. We dread above all lest any should slight, or pass
by unnoticed, the virtues and thoughts, the spiritual beauty, that
exist only in our imagination. It is with merits of this nature as it
is with our material welfare--hope clings most persistently to that
which we probably never shall have the strength to acquire. The cheat
through whose mind some momentary thought of amendment has passed, is
amazed that we offer not instant, surpassing homage to the feeling of
honour that has, for brief space, found shelter within him. But if we
are truly pure, and sincere, and unselfish; if our thoughts soar aloft
of themselves, in all simpleness, high above vanity or instinctive
selfishness, then are we far less concerned than those who are near us
should understand, should approve, or admire. Epictetus, Marcus
Aurelius, Antoninus Pius are not known to have ever complained that men
could not understand them. They hugged no belief to themselves that
something extraordinary, incomprehensible, lay buried within them; they
held, on the contrary, that whatever was best in their virtue was that
which it needed no effort for all men to grasp and admit. But there are
some morbid virtues that are passed by unnoticed, and not without
reason--for there will almost always be some superior reason for the
powerlessness of a feeling--morbid virtues to which we often ascribe
far too great an importance; and that virtue will surely be morbid that
we rate over highly and hold to deserve the respectful attention of
others. In a morbid virtue there is often more harm than there is in a
healthy vice; in any event it is farther removed from truth; and there
is but little to hope for when we are divided from truth. As our ideal
becomes loftier so does it become more real; and the nobler our soul,
the less does it dread that it meet not a soul of its stature; for it
must have drawn near unto truth, in whose neighbourhood all things must
take of its greatness. When Dante had gained the third sphere, and
stood in the midst of the heavenly lights, all shining with uniform
splendour, he saw that around him naught moved, and wondered was he
standing motionless there, or indeed drawing nearer unto the seat of
God? So he cast his eyes upon Beatrice; and she seemed more beautiful
to him; wherefore he knew that he was approaching his goal. And so can
we too count the steps that we take on the highway of truth, by the
increase of love that comes for all that goes with us in life; the
increase of love and of glad curiosity, of respect and of deep
admiration.
106. Men, as a rule, sally forth from their homes seeking beauty and
joy, truth and love; and are glad to be able to say to their children,
on their return, that they have met nothing. To be for ever complaining
argues much pride; and those who accuse love and life are the ones who
imagine that these should bestow something more than they can acquire
for themselves. Love, it is true, like all else, claims the highest
possible ideal; but every ideal that conforms not with some strenuous
inward, reality is nothing but falsehood--sterile and futile,
obsequious falsehood. Two or three ideals, that lie out of our reach,
will suffice to paralyse life. It is wrong to believe that loftiness of
soul is governed by the loftiness of desire or dream. The dreams of the
weak will be often more numerous, lovelier, than are those of the
strong; for these dreams absorb all their energy, all their activity.
The perpetual craving for loftiness does not count in our moral
advancement if it be not the shadow thrown by the life we have lived,
by the firm and experienced will that has come in close kinship with
man. Then, indeed, as one places a rod at the foot of the steeple to
tell of its height by the shadow, so may we lead forth this craving of
ours to the midst of the plain that is lit by the sun of external
reality, that thus we may tell what relation exists between the shadow
thrown by the hour and the dome of eternity.
107. It is well that a noble heart should await a great love; better
still that this heart, all expectant, should cease not from loving; and
that, as it loves, it should scarcely be conscious of its desire for
more exquisite love. In love as in life, expectation avails us but
little; through loving we learn to love; and it is the so-called
disillusions of pettier love that will, the most simply and faithfully,
feed the immovable flame of the mightier love that shall come, it may
be, to illumine the rest of our life.
We treat disillusions often with scantiest justice. We conceive them of
sorrowful countenance, pale and discouraged; whereas they are really
the very first smiles of truth. Why should disillusion distress you, if
you are a man of honest intention, if you strive to be just, and of
service; if you seek to be happy and wise? Would you rather live on in
the world of your dreams and your errors than in the world that is
real? Only too often does many a promising nature waste its most
precious hours in the struggle of beautiful dream against inevitable
law, whose beauty is only perceived when every vestige of strength has
been sapped by the exquisite dream. If love has deceived you, do you
think that it would have been better for you all your life to regard
love as something it is not, and never can be? Would such an illusion
not warp your most significant actions; would it not for many days hide
from you some part of the truth that you seek? Or if you imagine that
greatness lay in your grasp, and disillusion has taken you back to your
place in the second rank; have you the right, for the rest of your
life, to curse the envoy of truth? For, after all, was it not truth
your illusion was seeking, assuming it to have been sincere? We should
try to regard disillusions as mysterious, faithful friends, as
councillors none can corrupt, And should there be one more cruel than
the rest, that for an instant prostrates you, do not murmur to yourself
through your tears that life is less beautiful than you had dreamed it
to be, but rather that in your dream there must have been something
lacking, since real life has failed to approve. And indeed the
much-vaunted strength of the strenuous soul is built up of disillusions
only, that this soul has cheerfully welcomed. Every deception and love
disappointed, every hope that has crumbled to dust, is possessed of a
strength of its own that it adds to the strength of your truth; and the
more disillusions there are that fall to the earth at your feet, the
more surely and nobly will great reality shine on you--even as the rays
of the sun are beheld the more clearly in winter, as they pierce
through the leafless branches of the trees of the forest.
108. And if it be a great love that you seek, how can you believe that
a soul shall be met with of beauty as great as you dream it to be, if
you seek it with nothing but dreams? Have you the right to expect that
definite words and positive actions shall offer themselves in exchange
for mere formless desire, and yearning, and vision? Yet thus it is most
of us act. And if some fortunate chance at last accords our desire, and
places us in presence of the being who is all we had dreamed her to
be--are we entitled to hope that our idle and wandering cravings shall
long be in unison with her vigorous, established reality? Our ideal
will never be met with in life unless we have first achieved it within
us to the fullest extent in our power. Do you hope to discover and win
for yourself a loyal, profound, inexhaustible soul, loving and quick
with life, faithful and powerful, unconstrained, free: generous, brave,
and benevolent--if you know less well than this soul what all these
qualities mean? And how should you know, if you have not loved them and
lived in their midst, as this soul has loved and lived? Most exacting
of all things, unskilful, thick-sighted, is the moral beauty,
perfection, or goodness that is still in the shape of desire. If it be
your one hope to meet with an ideal soul, would it not be well that you
yourself should endeavour to draw nigh to your own ideal? Be sure that
by no other means will you ever obtain your desire. And as you approach
this ideal it will dawn on you more and more clearly how fortunate and
wisely ordained it has been that the ideal should ever be different
from what our vague hopes were expecting. So too when the ideal takes
shape, as it comes into contact with life, will it soften, expand, and
lose its rigidity, incessantly growing more noble. And then will you
readily perceive, in the creature you love, all that which is eternally
true in yourself, and solidly righteous, and essentially beautiful; for
only the good in our heart can advise us of the goodness that hides by
our side. Then, at last, will the imperfections of others no longer
seem of importance to you, for they will no longer be able to wound
your vanity, selfishness, and ignorance; imperfections, that is, which
have ceased to resemble your own; for it is the evil that lies in
ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within
others.
109. Let us have the same confidence in love that we have in life; for
confidence is of our essence; and the thought that works the most harm
in all things is the one that inclines us to look with mistrust on
reality. I have known more than one life that love broke asunder; but
if it had not been love, these lives would no doubt have been broken no
less by friendship or apathy, by doubt, hesitation, indifference,
inaction. For that only which in itself is fragile can be rent in the
heart by love; and where all is broken that the heart contains, then
must all have been far too frail. There exists not a creature but must
more than once have believed that his life was crushed; but they whose
life has indeed been shattered, and has fallen to ruin, owe their
misfortune often to some strange vanity of the very ruin. Fortunate and
unfortunate hazards there must of necessity be in love as in all the
rest of our destiny. It may so come about that one whose spirit and
heart are abounding with tenderness, energy, and the noblest of human
desires, shall meet, on his first setting forth, all unsought, the soul
that shall satisfy each single craving of love in the ecstasy of
permanent joy; the soul that shall content the loftiest yearning no
less than the lowliest: the vastest, the mightiest no less than the
daintiest, sweetest: the most eternal no less than the most evanescent.
He, it may be, shall instantly find the heart whereto he can give--the
heart which will ever receive--all that is best in himself. It may
happen that he shall at once have attained the soul that perchance is
unique; the soul that is satisfied always, and always filled with
desire; the soul that can ever receive many thousand times more than is
given, and that never fails to return many thousand times more than it
receives. For the love that the years cannot alter is built up of
exchanges like these, of sweet inequality; and naught do we ever truly
possess but that which we give in our love; and whatever our love
bestows, we are no longer alone to enjoy.
110. Destinies sometimes are met with that thus are perfectly happy;
and each man, it may be, is entitled to hope that such may one day be
his; yet must his hope be never permitted to fasten chains on his life.
All he can do is to make preparation one day to deserve such a love;
and he will be most patient and tranquil who incessantly strives to
this end. It might so have happened that he whom we spoke of just now
should, day after day, from youth to old age, have passed by the side
of the wall behind which his happiness lay waiting, enwrapped in too
secret a silence. But if happiness lie yonder side of the wall, must
despair and disaster of necessity dwell on the other? Is not something
of happiness to be found in our thus being able to pass by the side of
our happiness? Is it not better to feel that a mere slender
chance--transparent, one almost might call it--is all that extends
between us and the exquisite love that we dream of, than to be divided
for ever therefrom by all that is worthless within us, undeserving,
inhuman, abnormal? Happy is he who can gather the flower, and bear it
away in his bosom; yet have we no cause to pity the other who walks
until nightfall, steeped in the glorious perfume of the flower no eyes
can behold. Must the life be a failure, useless and valueless, that is
not as completely happy as it possibly might have been? It is you
yourself would have brought what was best in the love you regret; and
if, as we said, the soul at the end possess only what it has given,
does not something already belong to us when we are incessantly seeking
for chances of giving? Ah yes--I declare that the joy of a perfect,
abiding love is the greatest this world contains; and yet, if you find
not this love, naught will be lost of all you have done to deserve it,
for this will go to deepen the peace of your heart, and render still
braver and purer the calm of the rest of your days.
111. And, besides, we always can love. If our own love be admirable,
most of the joys of admirable love will be ours. In the most perfect
love, the lovers' happiness will not be exactly the same, be their
union never so close; for the better of the two needs must love with a
love that is deeper; and the one that loves with a deeper love must be
surely the happier. Let your task be to render yourself worthy of
love--and this even more for your own happiness than for that of
another. For be sure that when love is unequal, and the hours come
clouded with sorrow, it is not the wiser of the two who will suffer the
most--not the one that shows more generosity, justice, more high-minded
passion. The one who is better will rarely become the victim deserving
our pity. For, indeed, to be truly a victim it must be our own faults,
our injustice, wrongdoing, beneath which we suffer. However imperfect
you be, you still may suffice for the love of a marvellous being; but
for your love, if you are not perfect, that being will never suffice.
If fortune one day should lead to your dwelling the woman adorned with
each gift of heart and of intellect--such a woman as history tells of,
a heroine of glory, happiness, love--you will still be all unaware if
you have not learned, yourself, to detect and to love these gifts in
actual life; and what is actual life to each man but the life that he
lives himself? All that is loyal within you will flower in the loyalty
of the woman you love; whatever of truth there abides in your soul will
be soothed by the truth that is hers; and her strength of character can
be only enjoyed by that which is strong in you. And when a virtue of
the being we love finds not, on the threshold of our heart, a virtue
that resembles it somewhat, then is it all unaware to whom it shall
give the gladness it brings.
112. And whatever the fate your affections may meet with, do you never
lose courage; above all, do not think that, love's happiness having
passed by you, you will never, right up to the end, know the great joy
of human life. For though happiness appear in the form of a torrent, or
a river that flows underground, of a whirlpool or tranquil lake, its
source still is ever the same that lies deep down in our heart; and the
unhappiest man of all men can conceive an idea of great joy. It is true
that in love there is ecstasy that he doubtless never will know; but
this ecstasy would leave deep melancholy only in the earnest and
faithful heart, if there were not in veritable love something more
stable than ecstasy, more profound and more steadfast; and all that in
love is profoundest, most stable and steadfast, is profoundest in noble
lives too--is most stable and steadfast in them. Not to all men is it
given to be hero or genius, victorious, admirable always, or even to be
simply happy in exterior things; but it lies in the power of the least
favoured among us to be loyal, and gentle, and just, to be generous and
brotherly; he that has least gifts of all can learn to look on his
fellows without envy or hatred, without malice or futile regret; the
outcast can take his strange, silent part (which is not always that of
least service) in the gladness of those who are near him; he that has
barely a talent can still learn to forgive an offence with an ever
nobler forgiveness, can find more excuses for error, more admiration
for human word and deed; and the man there are none to love can love,
and reverence, love. And, acting thus, he too will have drawn near the
source whither happy ones flock--oftener far than one thinks, and in
the most ardent hours of happiness even--the source over which they
bend, to make sure that they truly are happy. Far down, at the root of
love's joys--as at the root of the humble life of the upright man from
whom fate has withheld her smile--it is confidence, sincerity,
generosity, tenderness, that alone are truly fixed and unchangeable.
Love throws more lustre still on these points of light, and therefore
must love be sought. For the greatest advantage of love is that it
reveals to us many a peaceful and gentle truth. The greatest advantage
of love is that it gives us occasion to love and admire in one person,
sole and unique, what we should have had neither knowledge nor strength
to love and admire in the many; and that thus it expands our heart for
the time to come, And at the root of the most marvellous love there
never is more than the simplest felicity, an adoration, a tenderness
within the understanding of all, a security, faith, and fidelity all
can acquire an intensely human admiration, devotion--and all these the
eager, unfortunate heart could know too, in its sorrowful life, had it
only a little less impatience and bitterness, a little more initiative
and energy.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Wisdom and Destiny, by Maurice Maeterlinck