THE INITIAL EFFORT
I
It is very easily seen that there is no one
point in a man's life or experience where he
is nearer the soul of things than at any other.
That soul, the sublime essence, which fills the
air with a burnished glow, is there, behind the
Gates it colors with itself. But that there is no
one pathway to it is immediately perceived
from the fact that this soul must from its very
nature be universal. The Gates of Gold do
not admit to any special place; what they do
is to open for egress from a special place.
Man passes through them when he casts off
his limitation. He may burst the shell that
holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides
him from the eternal, at any point where it is
easiest for him to do so, and most often this
point will be where he least expects to find it.
Men go in search of escape with the help of
their minds, and lay down arbitrary and limited
laws as to how to attain the, to them, unattainable.
Many, indeed, have hoped to pass
through by the way of religion, and instead they
have formed a place of thought and feeling so
marked and fixed that it seems as though long
ages would be insufficient to enable them to
get out of the rut! Some have believed that
by the aid of pure intellect a way was to be
found; and to such men we owe the philosophy
and metaphysics which have prevented the race
from sinking into utter sensuousness. But the
end of the man who endeavors to live by
thought alone is that he dwells in fantasies,
and insists on giving them to other men as
substantial food. Great is our debt to the meta-physicians
and transcendentalists; but he who
follows them to the bitter end, forgetting that
the brain is only one organ of use, will find
himself dwelling in a place where a dull
wheel of argument seems to turn forever on
its axis, yet goes nowhither and carries no
burden.
Virtue (or what seems to each man to be
virtue, his own special standard of morality
and purity) is held by those who practise it to
be a way to heaven. Perhaps it is, to the heaven
of the modern sybarite, the ethical voluptuary.
It is as easy to become a gourmand in pure
living and high thinking as in the pleasures of
taste or sight or sound. Gratification is the
aim of the virtuous man as well as of the drunkard;
even if his life be a miracle of abstinence
and self-sacrifice, a moment's thought shows
that in pursuing this apparently heroic path he
does but pursue pleasure. With him pleasure
takes on a lovely form because his gratifications
are those of a sweet savor, and it pleases him
to give gladness to others rather than to enjoy
himself at their expense. But the pure life and
high thoughts are no more finalities in themselves
than any other mode of enjoyment; and
the man who endeavors to find contentment
in them must intensify his effort and continually
repeat it,--all in vain. He is a green
plant indeed, and the leaves are beautiful; but
more is wanted than leaves. If he persists in
his endeavor blindly, believing that he has
reached his goal when he has not even perceived
it, then he finds himself in that dreary
place where good is done perforce, and the
deed of virtue is without the love that should
shine through it. It is well for a man to lead
a pure life, as it is well for him to have clean
hands,--else he becomes repugnant. But
virtue as we understand it now can no more
have any special relation to the state beyond
that to which we are limited than any other
part of our constitution. Spirit is not a gas
created by matter, and we cannot create our
future by forcibly using one material agent
and leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life
on which matter rests, as does the rocky world
on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can
break our limitations we find ourselves on that
marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw
the gleam of the gold. When we enter there
all the present must disappear alike,--virtue
and vice, thought and sense. That a man reaps
what he has sown must of course be true also;
he has no power to carry virtue, which is of the
material life, with him; yet the aroma of his
good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the
odor of crime and cruelty. Yet it may be,
however, that by the practice of virtue he will
fetter himself into one groove, one changeless
fashion of life in matter, so firmly that it is
impossible for the mind to conceive that death
is a sufficient power to free him, and cast him
upon the broad and glorious ocean,--a sufficient
power to undo for him the inexorable
and heavy latch of the Golden Gate. And
sometimes the man who has sinned so deeply
that his whole nature is scarred and blackened
by the fierce fire of selfish gratification is at
last so utterly burned out and charred that
from the very vigor of the passion light leaps
forth. It would seem more possible for such
a man at least to reach the threshold of the
Gates than for the mere ascetic or philosopher.
But it is little use to reach the threshold of
the Gates without the power to pass through.
And that is all that the sinner can hope to
do by the dissolution of himself which comes
from seeing his own soul. At least this appears
to be so, inevitably because his condition is
negative. The man who lifts the latch of the
Golden Gate must do so with his own strong
hand, must be absolutely positive. This we can
see by analogy. In everything else in life, in
every new step or development, it is necessary
for a man to exercise his most dominant will
in order to obtain it fully. Indeed in many
cases, though he has every advantage and
though he use his will to some extent, he will
fail utterly of obtaining what he desires from
lack of the final and unconquerable resolution.
No education in the world will make a man
an intellectual glory to his age, even if his
powers are great; for unless he positively
desires to seize the flower of perfection, he will
be but a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient
in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel
of memory. And the man who has this positive
quality in him will rise in spite of adverse circumstances,
will recognise and seize upon the
tide of thought which is his natural food, and
will stand as a giant at last in the place he
willed to reach. We see this practically every
day in all walks of life. Wherefore it does not
seem possible that the man who has simply
succeeded through the passions in wrecking the
dogmatic and narrow part of his nature should
pass through those great Gates. But as he is
not blinded by prejudice, nor has fastened
himself to any treadmill of thought, nor
caught the wheel of his soul in any deep rut
of life, it would seem that if once the positive
will might be born within him, he could at
some time not hopelessly far distant lift his
hand to the latch.
Undoubtedly it is the hardest task we have
yet seen set us in life, that which we are now
talking of,--to free a man of all prejudice,
of all crystallized thought or feeling, of all
limitations, yet develop within him the positive
will. It seems too much of a miracle; for in
ordinary life positive will is always associated
with crystallized ideas. But many things which
have appeared to be too much of a miracle for
accomplishment have yet been done, even in
the narrow experience of life given to our
present humanity. All the past shows us that
difficulty is no excuse for dejection, much less
for despair; else the world would have been
without the many wonders of civilization. Let
us consider the thing more seriously, therefore,
having once used our minds to the idea
that it is not impossible.
The great initial difficulty is that of fastening
the interest on that which is unseen. Yet,
this is done every day, and we have only to
observe how it is done in order to guide our
own conduct. Every inventor fastens his interest
firmly on the unseen; and it entirely
depends on the firmness of that attachment
whether he is successful or whether he fails.
The poet who looks on to his moment of
creation as that for which he lives, sees that
which is invisible and hears that which is
soundless.
Probably in this last analogy there is a
clew as to the mode by which success in this
voyage to the unknown bourn ("whence,"
indeed, "no traveller returns") is attained. It
applies also to the inventor and to all who
reach out beyond the ordinary mental and
psychical level of humanity. The clew lies in
that word "creation."
II
The words "to create" are often understood
by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of
evolving something out of nothing. This is
clearly not its meaning; we are mentally obliged
to provide our Creator with chaos from which
to produce the worlds. The tiller of the soil,
who is the typical producer of social life, must
have his material, his earth, his sky, rain, and
sun, and the seeds to place within the earth.
Out of nothing he can produce nothing. Out
of a void Nature cannot arise; there is that
material beyond, behind, or within, from which
she is shaped by our desire for a universe. It
is an evident fact that the seeds and the earth,
air, and water which cause them to germinate
exist on every plane of action. If you talk to
an inventor, you will find that far ahead of
what he is now doing he can always perceive
some other thing to be done which he cannot
express in words because as yet he has not
drawn it into our present world of objects.
That knowledge of the unseen is even more
definite in the poet, and more inexpressible
until he has touched it with some part of that
consciousness which he shares with other men.
But in strict proportion to his greatness he
lives in the consciousness which the ordinary
man does not even believe can exist,--the
consciousness which dwells in the greater
universe, which breathes in the vaster air, which
beholds a wider earth and sky, and snatches
seeds from plants of giant growth.
It is this place of consciousness that we
need to reach out to. That it is not reserved
only for men of genius is shown by the fact
that martyrs and heroes have found it and
dwelt in it. It is not reserved for men of genius
only, but it can only be found by men of
great soul.
In this fact there is no need for discouragement.
Greatness in man is popularly supposed
to be a thing inborn. This belief must be a
result of want of thought, of blindness to facts
of nature. Greatness can only be attained by
growth; that is continually demonstrated to us.
Even the mountains, even the firm globe itself,
these are great by dint of the mode of growth
peculiar to that state of materiality,--accumulation
of atoms. As the consciousness inherent
in all existing forms passes into more
advanced forms of life it becomes more active,
and in proportion it acquires the power
of growth by assimilation instead of accumulation.
Looking at existence from this special
point of view (which indeed is a difficult one
to maintain for long, as we habitually look
at life in planes and forget the great lines
which connect and run through these), we
immediately perceive it to be reasonable to
suppose that as we advance beyond our present
standpoint the power of growth by assimilation
will become greater and probably change into
a method yet more rapid, easy, and unconscious.
The universe is, in fact, full of magnificent
promise for us, if we will but lift our
eyes and see. It is that lifting of the eyes
which is the first need and the first difficulty;
we are so apt readily to be content with
what we see within touch of our hands. It is
the essential characteristic of the man of genius
that he is comparatively indifferent to that
fruit which is just within touch, and hungers
for that which is afar on the hills. In fact
he does not need the sense of contact to arouse
longing. He knows that this distant fruit,
which he perceives without the aid of the
physical senses, is a subtler and a stronger
food than any which appeals to them. And
how is he rewarded! When he tastes that
fruit, how strong and sweet is its flavor, and
what a new sense of life rushes upon him!
For in recognising that flavor he has recognised
the existence of the subtile senses, those
which feed the life of the inner man; and it is
by the strength of that inner man, and by his
strength only, that the latch of the Golden
Gates can be lifted.
In fact it is only by the development and
growth of the inner man that the existence
of these Gates, and of that to which they
admit, can be even perceived. While man is
content with his gross senses and cares nothing
for his subtile ones, the Gates remain literally
invisible. As to the boor the gateway of the
intellectual life is as a thing uncreate and
non-existent, so to the man of the gross senses,
even if his intellectual life is active, that which
lies beyond is uncreate and non-existent, only
because he does not open the book.
To the servant who dusts the scholar's
library the closed volumes are meaningless;
they do not even appear to contain a promise
unless he also is a scholar, not merely a servant.
It is possible to gaze throughout eternity
upon a shut exterior from sheer indolence,--mental
indolence, which is incredulity, and
which at last men learn to pride themselves
on; they call it scepticism, and talk of the reign
of reason. It is no more a state to justify pride
than that of the Eastern sybarite who will not
even lift his food to his mouth; he is "reasonable"
also in that he sees no value in activity,
and therefore does not exercise it. So with the
sceptic; decay follows the condition of inaction,
whether it be mental, psychic, or physical.
III
And now let us consider how the initial
difficulty of fastening the interest on that
which is unseen is to be overcome. Our gross
senses refer only to that which is objective in
the ordinary sense of the word; but just beyond
this field of life there are finer sensations
which appeal to finer senses. Here we find
the first clew to the stepping-stones we need.
Man looks from this point of view like a point
where many rays or lines centre; and if he
has the courage or the interest to detach himself
from the simplest form of life, the point, and
explore but a little way along these lines or
rays, his whole being at once inevitably widens
and expands, the man begins to grow in greatness.
But it is evident, if we accept this illustration
as a fairly true one, that the chief
point of importance is to explore no more
persistently on one line than another: else the
result must be a deformity. We all know how
powerful is the majesty and personal dignity
of a forest tree which has had air enough to
breathe, and room for its widening roots, and
inner vitality with which to accomplish its
unceasing task. It obeys the perfect natural
law of growth, and the peculiar awe it inspires
arises from this fact.
How is it possible to obtain recognition of
the inner man, to observe its growth and
foster it?
Let us try to follow a little way the clew
we have obtained, though words will probably
soon be useless.
We must each travel alone and without
aids, as the traveller has to climb alone when
he nears the summit of the mountain. No beast
of burden can help him there; neither can the
gross senses or anything that touches the gross
senses help him here. But for a little distance
words may go with us.
The tongue recognises the value of sweetness
or piquancy in food. To the man whose
senses are of the simplest order there is no
other idea of sweetness than this. But a finer
essence, a more highly placed sensation of the
same order, is reached by another perception.
The sweetness on the face of a lovely woman,
or in the smile of a friend, is recognised by
the man whose inner senses have even a little--a
mere stirring of--vitality. To the one
who has lifted the golden latch the spring of
sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all
softness arises, is opened and becomes part of
his heritage.
But before this fountain can be tasted, or
any other spring reached, any source found, a
heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart,
an iron bar which holds it down and prevents
it from arising in its strength.
The man who recognises the flow of sweetness
from its source through Nature, through
all forms of life, he has lifted this, he has
raised himself into that state in which there is
no bondage. He knows that he is a part of
the great whole, and it is this knowledge which
is his heritage. It is through the breaking
asunder of the arbitrary bond which holds him
to his personal centre that he comes of age
and becomes ruler of his kingdom. As he
widens out, reaching by manifold experience
along those lines which centre at the point
where he stands embodied, he discovers that
he has touch with all life, that he contains
within himself the whole. And then he has
but to yield himself to the great force which
we call good, to clasp it tightly with the grasp
of his soul, and he is carried swiftly on to the
great, wide waters of real living. What are
those waters? In our present life we have but
the shadow of the substance. No man loves
without satiety, no man drinks wine without
return of thirst. Hunger and longing darken
the sky and make the earth unfriendly. What
we need is an earth that will bear living fruit,
a sky that will be always full of light.
Needing this positively, we shall surely find it.