THE MEANING OF PAIN
I
Look into the deep heart of life, whence
pain comes to darken men's lives. She is always
on the threshold, and behind her stands
despair.
What are these two gaunt figures, and
why are they permitted to be our constant
followers?
It is we who permit them, we who order
them, as we permit and order the action of our
bodies; and we do so as unconsciously. But
by scientific experiment and investigation we
have learned much about our physical life, and
it would seem as if we can obtain at least as
much result with regard to our inner life by
adopting similar methods.
Pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys.
Regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint,
it appears as medicine, as a knife, as a
weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an implement,
a thing which is used, evidently. What
we desire to discover is, who is the user; what
part of ourselves is it that demands the
presence of this thing so hateful to the rest?
Medicine is used by the physician, the knife
by the surgeon; but the weapon of destruction
is used by the enemy, the hater.
Is it, then, that we do not only use means,
or desire to use means, for the benefit of our
souls, but that also we wage warfare within
ourselves, and do battle in the inner sanctuary?
It would seem so; for it is certain that if man's
will relaxed with regard to it he would no
longer retain life in that state in which pain
exists. Why does he desire his own hurt?
The answer may at first sight seem to be
that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is
willing to continue on that battlefield where
it wages war with pain for the possession of
him, hoping always that pleasure will win the
victory and take him home to herself. This is
but the external aspect of the man's state. In
himself he knows well that pain is co-ruler
with pleasure, and that though the war wages
always it never will be won. The superficial
observer concludes that man submits to the
inevitable. But that is a fallacy not worthy
of discussion. A little serious thought shows
us that man does not exist at all except by
exercise of his positive qualities; it is but
logical to suppose that he chooses the state
he will live in by the exercise of those same
qualities.
Granted, then, for the sake of our argument,
that he desires pain, why is it that he
desires anything so annoying to himself?
II
If we carefully consider the constitution of
man and its tendencies, it would seem as if
there were two definite directions in which he
grows. He is like a tree which strikes its roots
into the ground while it throws up young
branches towards the heavens. These two lines
which go outward from the central personal
point are to him clear, definite, and intelligible.
He calls one good and the other evil. But
man is not, according to any analogy, observation,
or experience, a straight line. Would
that he were, and that life, or progress, or
development, or whatever we choose to call it,
meant merely following one straight road or
another, as the religionists pretend it does.
The whole question, the mighty problem,
would be very easily solved then. But it is not
so easy to go to hell as preachers declare it
to be. It is as hard a task as to find one's
way to the Golden Gate! A man may wreck
himself utterly in sense-pleasure,--may debase
his whole nature, as it seems,--yet he fails
of becoming the perfect devil, for there is still
the spark of divine light within him. He tries
to choose the broad road which leads to
destruction, and enters bravely on his headlong
career. But very soon he is checked and
startled by some unthought-of tendency in
himself,--some of the many other radiations
which go forth from his centre of self. He
suffers as the body suffers when it develops
monstrosities which impede its healthy action.
He has created pain, and encountered his own
creation. It may seem as if this argument is
difficult of application with regard to physical
pain. Not so, if man is regarded from a loftier
standpoint than that we generally occupy. If
he is looked upon as a powerful consciousness
which forms its external manifestations according
to its desires, then it is evident that physical
pain results from deformity in those desires.
No doubt it will appear to many minds that
this conception of man is too gratuitous, and
involves too large a mental leap into unknown
places where proof is unobtainable. But if the
mind is accustomed to look upon life from
this standpoint, then very soon none other is
acceptable; the threads of existence, which
to the purely materialistic observer appear
hopelessly entangled, become separated and
straightened, so that a new intelligibleness
illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel
Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will
then disappears from the stage; and it is well,
for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and,
worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who
cannot even strut upon the boards without
being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man
comes into this world, surely, on the same
principle that he lives in one city of the earth
or another; at all events, if it is too much to
say that this is so, one may safely ask, why is
it not so? There is neither for nor against
which will appeal to the materialist, or which
would weigh in a court of justice; but I aver
this in favor of the argument,--that no man
having once seriously considered it can go back
to the formal theories of the sceptics. It is
like putting on swaddling-clothes again.
Granting, then, for the sake of this argument,
that man is a powerful consciousness
who is his own creator, his own judge, and
within whom lies all life in potentiality, even
the ultimate goal, then let us consider why he
causes himself to suffer.
If pain is the result of uneven development,
of monstrous growths, of defective
advance at different points, why does man not
learn the lesson which this should teach him,
and take pains to develop equally?
It would seem to me as if the answer to
this question is that this is the very lesson
which the human race is engaged in learning.
Perhaps this may seem too bold a statement
to make in the face of ordinary thinking,
which either regards man as a creature of
chance dwelling in chaos, or as a soul bound
to the inexorable wheel of a tyrant's chariot
and hurried on either to heaven or to hell. But
such a mode of thought is after all but the
same as that of the child who regards his
parents as the final arbiters of his destinies,
and in fact the gods or demons of his universe.
As he grows he casts aside this idea, finding
that it is simply a question of coming of age,
and that he is himself the king of life like any
other man.
So it is with the human race. It is king of
its world, arbiter of its own destiny, and there
is none to say it nay. Who talk of Providence
and chance have not paused to think.
Destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist
for the race and for the individual; but who
can ordain this save the man himself? There
is no clew in heaven or earth to the existence
of any ordainer other than the man who suffers
or enjoys that which is ordained. We know
so little of our own constitution, we are so
ignorant of our divine functions, that it is
impossible for us yet to know how much or
how little we are actually fate itself. But this
at all events we know,--that so far as any
provable perception goes, no clew to the
existence of an ordainer has yet been discovered;
whereas if we give but a very little
attention to the life about us in order to
observe the action of the man upon his own
future, we soon perceive this power as an
actual force in operation. It is visible, although
our range of vision is so very limited.
The man of the world, pure and simple,
is by far the best practical observer and
philosopher with regard to life, because he is
not blinded by any prejudices. He will be
found always to believe that as a man sows so
shall he reap. And this is so evidently true
when it is considered, that if one takes the
larger view, including all human life, it makes
intelligible the awful Nemesis which seems
consciously to pursue the human race,--that
inexorable appearance of pain in the midst of
pleasure. The great Greek poets saw this
apparition so plainly that their recorded observation
has given to us younger and blinder
observers the idea of it. It is unlikely that so
materialistic a race as that which has grown
up all over the West would have discovered for
itself the existence of this terrible factor in
human life without the assistance of the older
poets,--the poets of the past. And in this we
may notice, by the way, one distinct value of
the study of the classics,--that the great ideas
and facts about human life which the superb
ancients put into their poetry shall not be
absolutely lost as are their arts. No doubt
the world will flower again, and greater
thoughts and more profound discoveries than
those of the past will be the glory of the men
of the future efflorescence; but until that
far-off day comes we cannot prize too dearly
the treasures left us.
There is one aspect of the question which
seems at first sight positively to negative this
mode of thought; and that is the suffering in
the apparently purely physical body of the
dumb beings,--young children, idiots, animals,--and
their desperate need of the power
which comes of any sort of knowledge to help
them through their sufferings.
The difficulty which will arise in the mind
with regard to this comes from the untenable
idea of the separation of the soul from the
body. It is supposed by all those who look
only at material life (and especially by the
physicians of the flesh) that the body and the
brain are a pair of partners who live together
hand in hand and react one upon another.
Beyond that they recognise no cause and
therefore allow of none. They forget that the
brain and the body are as evidently mere mechanism
as the hand or the foot. There is the
inner man--the soul--behind, using all these
mechanisms; and this is as evidently the truth
with regard to all the existences we know of as
with regard to man himself. We cannot find
any point in the scale of being at which soul-causation
ceases or can cease. The dull oyster
must have that in him which makes him choose
the inactive life he leads; none else can choose
it for him but the soul behind, which makes
him be. How else can he be where he is, or be
at all? Only by the intervention of an impossible
creator called by some name or other.
It is because man is so idle, so indisposed
to assume or accept responsibility, that he falls
back upon this temporary makeshift of a
creator. It is temporary indeed, for it can only
last during the activity of the particular brain
power which finds its place among us. When
the man drops this mental life behind him,
he of necessity leaves with it its magic lantern
and the pleasant illusions he has conjured up
by its aid. That must be a very uncomfortable
moment, and must produce a sense of nakedness
not to be approached by any other sensation.
It would seem as well to save one's
self this disagreeable experience by refusing to
accept unreal phantasms as things of flesh
and blood and power. Upon the shoulders of
the Creator man likes to thrust the responsibility
not only of his capacity for sinning and
the possibility of his salvation, but of his very
life itself, his very consciousness. It is a poor
Creator that he thus contents himself with,--one
who is pleased with a universe of puppets,
and amused by pulling their strings. If he is
capable of such enjoyment, he must yet be in
his infancy. Perhaps that is so, after all; the
God within us is in his infancy, and refuses
to recognise his high estate. If indeed the soul
of man is subject to the laws of growth, of
decay, and of re-birth as to its body, then there
is no wonder at its blindness. But this is
evidently not so; for the soul of man is of that
order of life which causes shape and form,
and is unaffected itself by these things,--of
that order of life which like the pure, the
abstract flame burns wherever it is lit. This
cannot be changed or affected by time, and is
of its very nature superior to growth and
decay. It stands in that primeval place which
is the only throne of God,--that place whence
forms of life emerge and to which they return.
That place is the central point of existence,
where there is a permanent spot of life as
there is in the midst of the heart of man. It
is by the equal development of that,--first
by the recognition of it, and then by its equal
development upon the many radiating lines of
experience,--that man is at last enabled to
reach the Golden Gate and lift the latch. The
process is the gradual recognition of the god
in himself; the goal is reached when that
godhood is consciously restored to its
right glory.
III
The first thing which it is necessary for the
soul of man to do in order to engage in this
great endeavor of discovering true life is the
same thing that the child first does in its desire
for activity in the body,--he must be able to
stand. It is clear that the power of standing,
of equilibrium, of concentration, of uprightness,
in the soul, is a quality of a marked character.
The word that presents itself most
readily as descriptive of this quality is
"confidence."
To remain still amid life and its changes,
and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a feat
which can only be accomplished by the man
who has confidence in himself and in his
destiny. Otherwise the hurrying forms of life,
the rushing tide of men, the great floods of
thought, must inevitably carry him with them,
and then he will lose that place of consciousness
whence it was possible to start on the
great enterprise. For it _must_ be done knowingly,
and without pressure from without,--this
act of the new-born man. All the great
ones of the earth have possessed this confidence,
and have stood firmly on that place
which was to them the one solid spot in the
universe. To each man this place is of necessity
different. Each man must find his
earth and his own heaven.
We have the instinctive desire to relieve
pain, but we work in externals in this as in
everything else. We simply alleviate it; and
if we do more, and drive it from its first chosen
stronghold, it reappears in some other place
with reinforced vigor. If it is eventually driven
off the physical plane by persistent and successful
effort, it reappears on the mental or
emotional planes where no man can touch it.
That this is so is easily seen by those who
connect the various planes of sensation, and
who observe life with that additional illumination.
Men habitually regard these different
forms of feeling as actually separate, whereas
in fact they are evidently only different sides
of one centre,--the point of personality. If
that which arises in the centre, the fount of
life, demands some hindered action, and consequently
causes pain, the force thus created
being driven from one stronghold must find
another; it cannot be driven out. And all the
blendings of human life which cause emotion
and distress exist for its use and purposes as
well as for those of pleasure. Both have their
home in man; both demand their expression of
right. The marvellously delicate mechanism of
the human frame is constructed to answer to
their lightest touch; the extraordinary intricacies
of human relations evolve themselves, as
it were, for the satisfaction of these two great
opposites of the soul.
Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate,
as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging,
the making the two into one, that joy and deep
sensation and profound peace are obtained.
Where there is neither male nor female
neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in
man dominant, and then is life real.
To state the matter in this way may savor
too much of the dogmatist who utters his
assertions uncontradicted from a safe pulpit;
but it is dogmatism only as a scientist's record
of effort in a new direction is dogmatism.
Unless the existence of the Gates of Gold can
be proved to be real, and not the mere phantasmagoria
of fanciful visionaries, then they
are not worth talking about at all. In the
nineteenth century hard facts or legitimate
arguments alone appeal to men's minds; and
so much the better. For unless the life we
advance towards is increasingly real and
actual, it is worthless, and time is wasted in
going after it. Reality is man's greatest need,
and he demands to have it at all hazards, at
any price. Be it so. No one doubts he is right.
Let us then go in search of reality.
IV
One definite lesson learned by all acute
sufferers will be of the greatest service to us
in this consideration. In intense pain a point is
reached where it is indistinguishable from its
opposite, pleasure. This is indeed so, but few
have the heroism or the strength to suffer to
such a far point. It is as difficult to reach
it by the other road. Only a chosen few have
the gigantic capacity for pleasure which will
enable them to travel to its other side. Most
have but enough strength to enjoy and to
become the slave of the enjoyment. Yet man
has undoubtedly within himself the heroism
needed for the great journey; else how is it
martyrs have smiled amid the torture?
How is it that the profound sinner who lives
for pleasure can at last feel stir within himself
the divine afflatus?
In both these cases the possibility has arisen
of finding the way; but too often that
possibility is killed by the overbalance of the
startled nature. The martyr has acquired a
passion for pain and lives in the idea of heroic
suffering; the sinner becomes blinded by the
thought of virtue and worships it as an end,
an object, a thing divine in itself; whereas it
can only be divine as it is part of that infinite
whole which includes vice as well as virtue.
How is it possible to divide the infinite,--that
which is one? It is as reasonable to lend
divinity to any object as to take a cup of water
from the sea and declare that in that is contained
the ocean. You cannot separate the
ocean; the salt water is part of the great sea
and must be so; but nevertheless you do not
hold the sea in your hand. Men so longingly
desire personal power that they are ready to
put infinity into a cup, the divine idea into a
formula, in order that they may fancy themselves
in possession of it. These only are those
who cannot rise and approach the Gates of
Gold, for the great breath of life confuses
them; they are struck with horror to find how
great it is. The idol-worshipper keeps an
image of his idol in his heart and burns a
candle always before it. It is his own, and he
is pleased at that thought, even if he bow in
reverence before it. In how many virtuous and
religious men does not this same state exist?
In the recesses of the soul the lamp is burning
before a household god,--a thing possessed
by its worshipper and subject to him. Men
cling with desperate tenacity to these dogmas,
these moral laws, these principles and modes
of faith which are their household gods, their
personal idols. Bid them burn the unceasing
flame in reverence only to the infinite, and
they turn from you. Whatever their manner
of scorning your protest may be, within themselves
it leaves a sense of aching void. For
the noble soul of the man, that potential king
which is within us all, knows full well that
this household idol may be cast down and
destroyed at any moment,--that it is without
finality in itself, without any real and absolute
life. And he has been content in his possession,
forgetting that anything possessed can only by
the immutable laws of life be held temporarily.
He has forgotten that the infinite is
his only friend; he has forgotten that in its
glory is his only home,--that it alone can be
his god. There he feels as if he is homeless;
but that amid the sacrifices he offers to
his own especial idol there is for him a brief
resting-place; and for this he clings passionately
to it.
Few have the courage even slowly to face
the great desolateness which lies outside themselves,
and must lie there so long as they cling
to the person which they represent, the "I"
which is to them the centre of the world, the
cause of all life. In their longing for a God
they find the reason for the existence of one;
in their desire for a sense-body and a world to
enjoy in, lies to them the cause of the universe.
These beliefs may be hidden very deep beneath
the surface, and be indeed scarcely accessible;
but in the fact that they are there is the reason
why the man holds himself upright. To himself
he is himself the infinite and the God; he
holds the ocean in a cup. In this delusion he
nurtures the egoism which makes life pleasure
and makes pain pleasant. In this profound
egoism is the very cause and source of the
existence of pleasure and of pain. For unless
man vacillated between these two, and ceaselessly
reminded himself by sensation that he
exists, he would forget it. And in this fact lies
the whole answer to the question, "Why does
man create pain for his own discomfort?"
The strange and mysterious fact remains
unexplained as yet, that man in so deluding
himself is merely interpreting Nature backwards
and putting into the words of death the
meaning of life. For that man does indeed
hold within him the infinite, and that the ocean
is really in the cup, is an incontestable truth;
but it is only so because the cup is absolutely
non-existent. It is merely an experience of the
infinite, having no permanence, liable to be
shattered at any instant. It is in the claiming
of reality and permanence for the four walls of
his personality, that man makes the vast
blunder which plunges him into a prolonged
series of unfortunate incidents, and intensifies
continually the existence of his favorite forms
of sensation. Pleasure and pain become to him
more real than the great ocean of which he is
a part and where his home is; he perpetually
knocks himself painfully against these walls
where he feels, and his tiny self oscillates
within his chosen prison.