TIME
Considering the countless ages that man has lived upon this globe, it
seems a strange thing that he has so little learned to acquiesce in the
normal conditions of humanity. How large a proportion of the melancholy
which is reflected in the poetry of all ages, and which is felt in
different degrees in every human soul, is due not to any special or
peculiar misfortune, but to things that are common to the whole human
race! The inexorable flight of time; the approach of old age and its
infirmities; the shadow of death; the mystery that surrounds our being;
the contrast between the depth of affection and the transitoriness and
uncertainty of life; the spectacle of the broken lives and baffled
aspirations and useless labours and misdirected talents and pernicious
energies and long-continued delusions that fill the path of human
history; the deep sense of vanity and aimlessness that must sometimes
come over us as we contemplate a world in which chance is so often
stronger than wisdom; in which desert and reward are so widely
separated; in which living beings succeed each other in such a vast and
bewildering redundance--eating, killing, suffering, and dying for no
useful discoverable purpose,--all these things belong to the normal lot
or to the inevitable setting of human life. Nor can it be said that
science, which has so largely extended our knowledge of the Universe, or
civilisation, which has so greatly multiplied our comforts and
alleviated our pains, has in any degree diminished the sadness they
bring. It seems, indeed, as if the more man is raised above a purely
animal existence, and his mental and moral powers are developed, the
more this kind of feeling increases.
In few if any periods of the world's history has it been more
perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and
temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or
lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely
affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the
most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds its true
expression in the lines of Raleigh:
Even such is time; which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have!
And pays us nought but age and dust,
Which in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
And from which grave and earth and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
Sometimes it takes the tone of a lighter melancholy touched with
cynicism:
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d'amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis--bon jour.
La vie est brève,
Un peu d'espoir,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis--bon soir.[74]
There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually
before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not
squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that
are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally
used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its
duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is
one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are
never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted
by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and
repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are
pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness,
satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the
useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a
nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time
is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest
experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work,
and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional
life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some
favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when
circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in
this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art
of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or
intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are
lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are
others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through,
and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with
both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless
thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and
almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character,
for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this
respect between different ages of history, and between different
generations in the same country, between town and country life, and
between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle
of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be
insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a
Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work
of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded
Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those
countries where time seems almost without value.
On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised
nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply
that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due
to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown
more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old
age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore
increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms
of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not
without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is
largely and fully used.
All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form
of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all
departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it
often breaks down health--most of what is attributed to this cause is
probably rather due to anxiety than to work--as because it seldom fails
to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in
the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully
spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical
energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature.
Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true
proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares.
How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and
decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been
allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep!
'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a
careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and
restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in
those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is
probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which
undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is
not in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly
spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep,
which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply
to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.
Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of
the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,'
and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the
dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man,
have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds
from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to
materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a
higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable
of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same
proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has
been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled
in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep;
that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at
once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect
than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something
analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral
natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not,
and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and
we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while
thus shielded from the distracting influences of the phenomenal world
than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not
precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in
our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would
deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements,
necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to
the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours
that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to
interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the
will.'[75]
Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least
sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life
depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe
carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions,
tendencies, and temptations, and--perhaps with more reason--Burton and
Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of
the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life.
This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient
ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely
influenced by moral causes.
Somnia quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
Nec delubra deum, nec ab æthere numina mittunt,
Sed sibi quisque facit.
To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright,
unremorseful life, to cultivate the power of governing by the will the
current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated
anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for
banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a
little to the unhappiness of many lives.
An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some
healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so
unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and
distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the
ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its
power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours
is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or
speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of
committing poetry--and especially religious poetry--to memory is most
important.
In estimating the value of those intermissions of labour which are not
spent in active enjoyment one other consideration may be noted. There
are times when the mind should lie fallow, and all who have lived the
intellectual life with profit have perceived that it is often in those
times that it most regains the elasticity it may have lost and becomes
most prolific in spontaneous thought. Many periods of life which might
at first sight appear to be merely unused time are, in truth, among the
most really valuable.
We have all noticed the curious fact of the extreme apparent
inequalities of time, though it is, in its essence, of all things the
most uniform. Periods of pain or acute discomfort seem unnaturally
long, but this lengthening of time is fortunately not true of all the
melancholy scenes of life, nor is it peculiar to things that are
painful. An invalid life with its almost unbroken monotony, and with the
large measure of torpor that often accompanies it, usually flies very
quickly, and most persons must have observed how the first week of
travel, or of some other great change of habits and pursuits, though
often attended with keen enjoyment, appears disproportionately long.
Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the
power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many
landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are
not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions,
and labours follow each other in swift and distinct succession, seems
the most long, and youth, with its keen susceptibility to impressions,
appears to move much more slowly than apathetic old age. How almost
immeasurably long to a young child seems the period from birthday to
birthday! How long to the schoolboy seems the interval between vacation
and vacation! How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of
each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and
when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an
ever-increasing celerity. Campbell has justly noticed as a beneficent
provision of nature that it is in the period of life when enjoyments are
fewest, and infirmities most numerous, that the march of time seems most
rapid.
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages,
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
* * * * *
When Joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why as we reach the Falls of death
Feel we its tide more rapid?
* * * * *
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth a seeming length
Proportioned to their sweetness.
The shortness of life is one of the commonplaces of literature. Yet
though we may easily conceive beings with faculties both of mind and
body adapted to a far longer life than ours, it will usually be found,
with our existing powers, that life, if not prematurely shortened, is
long enough. In the case of men who have played a great part in public
affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a
remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an
assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the
greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law
providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his
duty.[76] In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were
very rare, and in parliamentary life almost unknown. In our own century
there have been brilliant exceptions, but in most cases it will be
found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done
before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active
lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations,
but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties
diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and
intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and
spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to
run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of
age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When
men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when
they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can,
with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a
new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The
feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution,
deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and
prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning
will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly
intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power
of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities.
They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men,
and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable
obstacle to improvement. In the field of politics, in the field of
science, and in the field of military organisation, these truths might
be abundantly illustrated. In the case of great but maleficent genius
the shortness of life is a priceless blessing. Few greater curses could
be imagined for the human race than the prolongation for centuries of
the life of Napoleon.
In literature also the same law may be detected. A writer's best
thoughts are usually expressed long before extreme old age, though the
habit and desire of production continue. The time of repetition, of
diluted force, and of weakened judgment--the age when the mind has lost
its flexibility and can no longer assimilate new ideas or keep pace with
the changing modes and tendencies of another generation--often sets in
while physical life is but little enfeebled. In this case, it is true,
the evil is not very great, for Time may be trusted to sift the chaff
from the wheat, and though it may not preserve the one it will
infallibly discard the other. 'While I live,' Victor Hugo said with some
grandiloquence, but also with some justice, 'it is my duty to produce.
It is the duty of the world to select, from what I produce, that which
is worth keeping. The world will discharge its duty. I shall discharge
mine.' At the same time, no one can have failed to observe how much in
our own generation the long silence of Newman in his old age added to
his dignity and his reputation, and the same thing might have been said
of Carlyle if a beneficent fire had destroyed the unrevised manuscripts
which he wrote or dictated when a very old man.
We are here, however, dealing with great labours, and with men who are
filling a great place in the world's strife. The decay of faculty and
will, that impairs power in these cases, is often perceptible long
before there is any real decay in the powers that are needed for
ordinary business or for the full enjoyment of life. But the time comes
when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable
that a younger generation should take the government of the world,
should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of
influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older
generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from
grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most
honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest
period of life. The struggles, passions, and ambitions of other days
have passed. The mellowing touch of time has allayed animosities,
subdued old asperities of character, given a larger and more tolerant
judgment, cured the morbid sensitiveness that most embitters life. The
old man's mind is stored with the memories of a well-filled and
honourable life. In the long leisures that now fall to his lot he is
often enabled to resume projects which in a crowded professional life he
had been obliged to adjourn; he finds (as Adam Smith has said) that one
of the greatest pleasures in life is reverting in old age to the studies
of youth, and he himself often feels something of the thrill of a second
youth in his sympathy with the children who are around him. It is the
St. Martin's summer, lighting with a pale but beautiful gleam the brief
November day. But the time must come when all the alternatives of life
are sad, and the least sad is a speedy and painless end. When the eye
has ceased to see and the ear to hear, when the mind has failed and all
the friends of youth are gone, and the old man's life becomes a burden
not only to himself but to those about him, it is far better that he
should quit the scene. If a natural clinging to life, or a natural
shrinking from death, prevents him from clearly realising this, it is at
least fully seen by all others.
Nor, indeed, does this love of life in most cases of extreme old age
greatly persist. Few things are sadder than to see the young, or those
in mature life, seeking, according to the current phrase, to find means
of "killing time." But in extreme old age, when the power of work, the
power of reading, the pleasures of society, have gone, this phrase
acquires a new significance. As Madame de Staël has beautifully said,
'On dépose fleur à fleur la couronne de la vie.' An apathy steals over
every faculty, and rest--unbroken rest--becomes the chief desire. I
remember a touching epitaph in a German churchyard: 'I will arise, O
Christ, when Thou callest me; but oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very
weary.'
After all that can be said, most men are reluctant to look Time in the
face. The close of the year or a birthday is to them merely a time of
revelry, into which they enter in order to turn away from depressing
thought. They shrink from what seems to them the dreary truth, that they
are drifting to a dark abyss. To many the milestones along the path of
life are tombstones, every epoch being mainly associated in their
memories with a death. To some, past time is nothing--a closed chapter
never to be reopened.
The past is nothing, and at last,
The future can but be the past.
To others, the thought of the work achieved in the vanished years is the
most real and abiding of their possessions. They can feel the force of
the noble lines of Dryden:
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
He who would look Time in the face without illusion and without fear
should associate each year as it passes with new developments of his
nature; with duties accomplished, with work performed. To fill the time
allotted to us to the brim with action and with thought is the only way
in which we can learn to watch its passage with equanimity.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] Monte-Naken.
[75] See _The Mystery of Sleep_, by John Bigelow.
[76] Seneca, _de Brevitate Vitæ_, cap. XX.