eagle--that is what we all desire! Indeed it would seem at first sight
that, to gain happiness, the best way would be, if one could, to
prolong the untroubled zest of childhood, when everything was
interesting and exciting, full of novelty and delight. Some few people
by their vitality can retain that freshness of spirit all their life
long. I remember how a friend of R. L. Stevenson told me, that
Stevenson, when alone in London, desperately ill, and on the eve of a
solitary voyage, came to see him; he himself was going to start on a
journey the following day, and had to visit the lumber-room to get out
his trunks; Stevenson begged to be allowed to accompany him, and,
sitting on a broken chair, evolved out of the drifted accumulations of
the place a wonderful romance. But that sort of eager freshness we
most of us find to be impossible as we grow older; and we are
confronted with the problem of how to keep care and dreariness away,
how to avoid becoming mere trudging wayfarers, dully obsessed by all
we have to do and bear. Can we not find some medicine to revive the
fading emotion, to renew the same sort of delight in new thoughts and
problems which we found in childhood in all unfamiliar things, to
battle with the dreariness, the daily use, the staleness of life?
The answer is that it is possible, but only possible if we take the
same pains about it that we take to provide ourselves with comforts,
to save money, to guard ourselves from poverty. Emotional poverty is
what we most of us have to dread, and we must make investments if we
wish for revenues. We are many of us hampered, as I have said, by the
dreariness and dulness of the education we receive. But even that is
no excuse for sinking into melancholy bankruptcy, and going about the
world full of the earnest capacity for woe, disheartened and
disheartening.
A great teacher has the extraordinary power, not only of evoking the
finest capacities from the finest minds, but of actually giving to
second-rate minds a belief that knowledge is interesting and worth
attention. What we have to do, if we have missed coming under the
influence of a great teacher, is resolutely to put ourselves in touch
with great minds. We shall not burst into flame at once perhaps, and
the process may seem but the rubbing of one dry stick against another;
one cannot prescribe a path, because we must advance upon the slender
line of our own interests; but we can surely find some one writer who
revives us and inspires us; and if we persevere, we find the path
slowly broadening into a road, while the landscape takes shape and
design around us. The one thing fortunately of which there is enough
and to spare in the world is good advice, and if we find ourselves
helpless, we can consult some one who seems to have a view of finer
things, whose delight is fresh and eager, whose handling of life
seems gracious and generous. It is as possible to do this, as to
consult a doctor if we find ourselves out of health; and here we stiff
and solitary Anglo-Saxons are often to blame, because we cannot bring
ourselves to speak freely of these things, to be importunate, to ask
for help; it seems to us at once impertinent and undignified; but it
is this sort of dreary consideration, which is nothing but distorted
vanity, and this still drearier dignity, which withholds from us so
much that is beautiful.
The one thing then that I wish to urge is that we should take up the
pursuit in an entirely practical way; as Emerson said, with a splendid
mixture of common sense and idealism, "hitch our waggon to a star." It
is easy enough to lose ourselves in a vague sentimentalism, and to
believe that only our cramped conditions have hindered us from
developing into something very wonderful. It is easy too to drift into
helpless materialism, and to believe that dulness is the natural lot
of man. But the realm of thought is a very free citizenship, and a
hundred doors will open to us if we only knock at them. Moreover, that
realm is not like an over-populated country; it is infinitely large,
and virgin soil; and we have only to stake out our claim; and then, if
we persevere, we shall find that our _Joyous Gard_ is really rising
into the air about us--where else should we build our castles?--with
all the glory of tower and gable, of curtain-wall and battlement,
terrace and pleasaunce, hall and corridor; our own self-built
paradise; and then perhaps the knight, riding lonely from the sunset
woods, will turn in to keep us company, and the wandering minstrel
will bring his harp; and we may even receive other visitors, like the
three that stood beside the tent of Abraham in the evening, in the
plain of Mamre, of whom no one asked the name or lineage, because the
answer was too great for mortal ears to hear.
VII
INTERPRETATION
Is the secret of life then a sort of literary rapture, a princely
thing, only possible through costly outlay and jealously selected
hours, like a concert of stringed instruments, whose players are
unknown, bursting on the ear across the terraces and foliaged walls of
some enchanted garden? By no means! That is the shadow of the artistic
nature, that the rare occasions of life, where sound and scent and
weather and sweet companionship conspire together, are so exquisite,
so adorable, that the votary of such mystical raptures begins to plan
and scheme and hunger for these occasions, and lives in discontent
because they arrive so seldom.
No art, no literature, are worth anything at all unless they send one
back to life with a renewed desire to taste it and to live it.
Sometimes as I sit on a sunny day writing in my chair beside the
window, a picture of the box-hedge, the tall sycamores, the
stone-tiled roof of the chapel, with the blue sky behind, globes
itself in the lense of my spectacles, so entrancingly beautiful, that
it is almost a disappointment to look out on the real scene. We like
to see things mirrored thus and framed, we strangely made creatures of
life; why, I know not, except that our finite little natures love to
select and isolate experiences from the mass, and contemplate them so.
But we must learn to avoid this, and to realise that if a particle of
life, thus ordered and restricted, is beautiful, the thing itself is
more beautiful still. But we must not depend helplessly upon the
interpretations, the skilled reflections, of finer minds than our own.
If we learn from a wise interpreter or poet the quality and worth of a
fraction of life, it is that we may gain from him the power to do the
same for ourselves elsewhere; we must learn to walk alone, not crave,
like a helpless child, to be for ever led and carried in kindly arms.
The danger of culture, as it is unpleasantly called, is that we get to
love things because poets have loved them, and as they loved them;
and there we must not stay; because we thus grow to fear and mistrust
the strong flavours and sounds of life, the joys of toil and
adventure, the desire of begetting, giving life, drawing a soul from
the unknown; we come to linger in a half-lit place, where things reach
us faintly mellowed, as in a vision, through enfolding trees and at
the ends of enchanted glades. This book of mine lays no claim to be a
pageant of all life's joys; it leaves many things untouched and
untold; but it is a plea for this; that those who have to endure the
common lot of life, who cannot go where they would, whose leisure is
but a fraction of the day, before the morning's toil and after the
task is done, whose temptation it is to put everything else away
except food and sleep and work and anxiety, not liking life so but
finding it so;--it is a plea that such as these should learn how
experience, even under cramped conditions, may be finely and
beautifully interpreted, and made rich by renewed intention. Because
the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently,
grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we
can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not
welter helplessly below it. And the cramped and restricted life is all
the grander for this, that it gives us a nobler chance of conquest
than the free, liberal, wealthy, unrestrained life.
In the _Romaunt of the Rose_ a little square garden is described, with
its beds of flowers, its orchard-trees. The beauty of the place lies
partly in its smallness, but more still in its running waters, its
shadowy wells, wherein, as the writer says quaintly enough, are "_no
frogs_," and the conduit-pipes that make a "noise full-liking." And
again in that beautiful poem of Tennyson's, one of his earliest, with
the dew of the morning upon it, he describes _The Poet's Mind_ as a
garden:
In the middle leaps a fountain
Like sheet lightning,
Ever brightening
With a low melodious thunder;
All day and all night it is ever drawn
From the brain of the purple mountain
Which stands in the distance yonder: ...
And the mountain draws it from Heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love.
That is a power which we all have, in some degree, to draw into our
souls, or to set running through them, the streams of Heaven--for
like water they will run in the dullest and darkest place if only they
be led thither; and the lower the place, the stronger the stream! I am
careful not to prescribe the source too narrowly, for it must be to
our own liking, and to our own need. And so I will not say "love this
and that picture, read this and that poet!" because it is just thus,
by following direction too slavishly, that we lose our own particular
inspiration. Indeed I care very little about fineness of taste,
fastidious critical rejections, scoffs and sneers at particular
fashions and details. One knows the epicure of life, the man who
withdraws himself more and more from the throng, cannot bear to find
himself in dull company, reads fewer and fewer books, can hardly eat
and drink unless all is exactly what he approves; till it becomes
almost wearisome to be with him, because it is such anxious and
scheming work to lay out everything to please him, and because he will
never take his chance of anything, nor bestir himself to make anything
out of a situation which has the least commonness or dulness in it. Of
course only with the command of wealth is such life possible; but the
more delicate such a man grows, the larger and finer his maxims
become, and the more he casts away from his philosophy the need of
practising anything. One must think, such men say, clearly and finely,
one must disapprove freely, one must live only with those whom one can
admire and love; till they become at last like one of those sad
ascetics, who spent their time on the top of pillars, and for ever
drew up stones from below to make the pillar higher yet.
One is at liberty to mistrust whatever makes one isolated and
superior; not of course that one's life need be spent in a sort of
diffuse sociability; but one must practise an ease that is never
embarrassed, a frankness that is never fastidious, a simplicity that
is never abashed; and behind it all must spring the living waters,
with the clearness of the sky and the cleanness of the hill about
them, running still swiftly and purely in our narrow garden-ground,
and meeting the kindred streams that flow softly in many other glad
and desirous hearts.
In the beautiful old English poem, _The Pearl_, where the dreamer
seems to be instructed by his dead daughter Marjory in the heavenly
wisdom, she tells him that "all the souls of the blest are equal in
happiness--that they are all kings and queens."[1] That is a heavenly
kind of kingship, when there are none to be ruled or chidden, none to
labour and serve; but it means the fine frankness and serenity of mind
which comes of kingship, the perfect ease and dignity which springs
from not having to think of dignity or pre-eminence at all.
Long ago I remember how I was sent for to talk with Queen Victoria in
her age, and how much I dreaded being led up to her by a majestic
lord-in-waiting; she sate there, a little quiet lady, so plainly
dressed, so simple, with her hands crossed on her lap, her sanguine
complexion, her silvery hair, yet so crowned with dim history and
tradition, so great as to be beyond all pomp or ceremony, yet wearing
the awe and majesty of race and fame as she wore her plain dress. She
gave me a little nod and smile, and began at once to talk in the sweet
clear voice that was like the voice of a child. Then came my
astonishment. She knew, it seemed, all about me and my doings, and
the doings of my relations and friends--not as if she had wished to be
prepared to surprise me; but because her motherly heart had wanted to
know, and had been unable to forget. The essence of that charm, which
flooded all one's mind with love and loyalty, was not that she was
great, but that she was entirely simple and kind; because she loved,
not her great part in life, but life itself.
That kingship and queenship is surely not out of the reach of any of
us; it depends upon two things: one, that we keep our minds and souls
fresh with the love of life, which is the very dew of heaven; and the
other that we claim not rights but duties, our share in life, not a
control over it; if all that we claim is not to rule others, but to be
interested in them, if we will not be shut out from love and care,
then the sovereignty is in sight, and the nearer it comes the less
shall we recognise it; for the only dignity worth the name is that
which we do not know to be there.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: See Professor W. P. Ker's _English Literature, Mediæval_,
p. 194.]
VIII
EDUCATION
It is clear that the progress of the individual and the world alike
depends upon the quickening of ideas. All civilisation, all law, all
order, all controlled and purposeful life, will be seen to depend on
these ideas and emotions. The growing conception of the right of every
individual to live in some degree of comfort and security is nothing
but the taking shape of these ideas and emotions; for the end of all
civilisation is to ensure that there shall be freedom for all from
debasing and degrading conditions, and that is perhaps as far as we
have hitherto advanced; but the further end in sight is to set all men
and women free to some extent from hopeless drudgery, to give them
leisure, to provide them with tastes and interests; and further still,
to contrive, if possible, that human beings shall not be born into
the world of tainted parentage, and thus to stamp out the tyranny of
disease and imbecility and criminal instinct. More and more does it
become clear that all the off-scourings and failures of civilisation
are the outcome of diseased brains and nerves, and that self-control
and vigour are the results of nature rather than nurture. All this is
now steadily in sight. The aim is personal freedom, the freedom which
shall end where another's freedom begins; but we recognise now that it
is no use legislating for social and political freedom, if we allow
the morally deficient to beget offspring for whom moral freedom is an
impossibility. And perhaps the best hope of the race lies in firmly
facing this problem.
But, as I say, we have hardly entered upon this stage. We have to deal
with things as they are, with many natures tainted by moral
feebleness, by obliquity of vision, by lack of proportion. The hope at
present lies in the endeavour to find some source of inspiration, in a
determination not to let men and women grow up with fine emotions
atrophied; and here the whole system of education is at fault. It is
all on the lines of an intellectual gymnastic; little or nothing is
done to cultivate imagination, to feed the sense of beauty, to arouse
interest, to awaken the sleeping sense of delight. There is no doubt
that all these emotions are dormant in many people. One has only to
reflect on the influence of association, to know how children who grow
up in a home atmosphere which is fragrant with beautiful influences,
generally carry on those tastes and habits into later life. But our
education tends neither to make men and women efficient for the simple
duties of life, nor to-arouse the gentler energies of the spirit. "You
must remember you are translating poetry," said a conscientious master
to a boy who was construing Virgil. "It's not poetry when I translate
it!" said the boy. I look back at my own schooldays, and remember the
bare, stately class-rooms, the dry wind of intellect, the dull murmur
of work, neither enjoyed nor understood; and I reflect how small a
part any fanciful or beautiful or leisurely interpretation ever played
in our mental exercises; the first and last condition of any fine sort
of labour--that it should be enjoyed--was put resolutely out of sight,
not so much as an impossible adjunct, as a thing positively
enervating and contemptible. Yet if one subtracts the idea of
enjoyment from labour, there is no beauty-loving spirit which does not
instantly and rightly rebel. There must be labour, of course,
effective, vigorous, brisk labour, overcoming difficulties, mastering
uncongenial details; but the end should be enjoyment; and it should be
made clear that the greater the mastery, the richer the enjoyment; and
that if one cannot enjoy a thing without mastering it, neither can one
ever really master it without enjoying it.
What we need, in education, is some sense of far horizons and
beautiful prospects, some consciousness of the largeness and mystery
and wonder of life. To take a simple instance, in my own education. I
read the great books of Greece and Rome; but I knew hardly anything of
the atmosphere, the social life, the human activity out of which they
proceeded. One did not think of the literature of the Greeks as of a
fountain of eager beauty springing impulsively and instinctively out
of the most ardent, gracious, sensitive life that any nation has ever
lived. One knew little of the stern, businesslike, orderly, grasping
Roman temperament, in which poetry flowered so rarely, and the arts
not at all, until the national fibre began to weaken and grow
dissolute. One studied history in those days, as if one was mastering
statute-books, blue-books, gazettes, office-files; one never grasped
the clash of individualities, or the real interests and tastes of the
nations that fought and made laws and treaties. It was all a dealing
with records and monuments, just the things that happened to survive
decay--as though one's study of primitive man were to begin and end
with sharpened flints!
What we have now to do, in this next generation, is not to leave
education a dry conspectus of facts and processes, but to try rather
that children should learn something of the temper and texture of the
world at certain vivid points of its history; and above all perceive
something of the nature of the world as it now is, its countries, its
nationalities, its hopes, its problems. That is the aim, that we
should realise what kind of a thing life is, how bright and yet how
narrow a flame, how bounded by darkness and mystery, and yet how vivid
and active within its little space of sun.
IX
KNOWLEDGE
"Knowledge is power," says the old adage; and yet so meaningless now,
in many respects, do the words sound, that it is hard even to
recapture the mental outlook from which it emanated. I imagine that it
dates from a time when knowledge meant an imagined acquaintance with
magical secrets, short cuts to wealth, health, influence, fame. Even
now the application of science to the practical needs of man has some
semblance of power about it; the telephone, wireless telegraphy, steam
engines, anæsthetics--these are powerful things. But no man is
profited by his discoveries; he cannot keep them to himself, and use
them for his own private ends. The most he can do is to make a large
fortune out of them. And as to other kinds of knowledge, erudition,
learning, how do they profit the possessor? "No one knows anything
nowadays," said an eminent man to me the other day; "it is not worth
while! The most learned man is the man who knows best where to find
things." There still appears, in works of fiction, with pathetic
persistence, a belief that learning still lingers at Oxford and
Cambridge; those marvellous Dons, who appear in the pages of novels,
men who read folios all the morning and drink port all the evening,
where are they in reality? Not at Cambridge, certainly. I would travel
many miles, I would travel to Oxford, if I thought I could find such
an adorable figure. But the Don is now a brisk and efficient man of
business, a paterfamilias with provision to make for his family. He
has no time for folios and no inclination for port. Examination papers
in the morning, and a glass of lemonade at dinner, are the notes of
his leisure days. The belief in uncommercial knowledge has indeed died
out of England. Eton, as Mr. Birrell said, can hardly be described as
a place of education; and to what extent can Oxford and Cambridge be
described as places of literary research? A learned man is apt to be
considered a bore, and the highest compliment that can be paid him is
that one would not suspect him of being learned.
There is, indeed, a land in which knowledge is respected, and that is
America. If we do not take care, the high culture will desert our
shores, like Astræa's flying hem, and take her way Westward, with the
course of Empire.
A friend of mine once told me that he struggled up a church-tower in
Florence, a great lean, pale brick minaret, designed, I suppose, to be
laminated with marble, but cheerfully abandoned to bareness; he came
out on to one of those high balustraded balconies, which in mediæval
pictures seem to have been always crowded with fantastically dressed
persons, and are now only visited by tourists. The silvery city lay
outspread beneath him, with the rapid mud-stained river passing to the
plain, the hill-side crowded with villas embowered in green gardens,
and the sad-coloured hills behind. While he was gazing, two other
tourists, young Americans, came quietly out on to the balcony, a
brother and sister, he thought. They looked out for a time in silence,
leaning on the parapet; and then the brother said softly, "How much
we should enjoy all this, if we were not so ignorant!" Like all
Americans, they wanted to know! It was not enough for them to see the
high houses, the fantastic towers, the great blind blocks of mediæval
palaces, thrust so grimly out above the house-tops. It all meant life
and history, strife and sorrow, it all needed interpreting and
transfiguring and re-peopling; without that it was dumb and silent,
vague and bewildering. One does not know whether to admire or to sigh!
Ought one not to be able to take beauty as it comes? What if one does
not want to know these things, as Shelley said to his lean and
embarrassed tutor at Oxford? If knowledge makes the scene glow and
live, enriches it, illuminates it, it is well. And perhaps in England
we learn to live so incuriously and naturally among historical things
that we forget the existence of tradition, and draw it in with the air
we breathe, just realising it as a pleasant background and not caring
to investigate it or master it. It is hard to say what we lose by
ignorance, is hard to say what we should gain by knowledge. Perhaps to
want to know would be a sign of intellectual and emotional activity;
but it could not be done as a matter of duty--only as a matter of
enthusiasm.
The poet Clough once said, "It makes a great difference to me that
Magna Charta was signed at Runnymede, but it does not make much
difference to me to know that it was signed." The fact that it was so
signed affects our liberties, the knowledge only affects us, if it
inspires us to fresh desire of liberty, whatever liberty may be. It is
even more important to be interested in life than to be interested in
past lives. It was Scott, I think, who asked indignantly,
Lives there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land?
I do not know how it may be in Scotland! Dr. Johnson once said rudely
that the finest prospect a Scotchman ever saw was the high road that
might take him to England; but I should think that if Scott's is a
fair test of deadness of soul, there must be a good many people in
England who are as dead as door-nails! The Englishman is not very
imaginative; and a farmer who was accustomed to kneel down like
Antæus, and kiss the soil of his orchard, would be thought an
eccentric!