gives us life, is right for us; of that we need never be in any doubt,
provided always that our delight is not won at the expense of others;
and we must allow and encourage exactly the same liberty in others to
choose their own rest, their own pleasure, their own refreshment. What
would one think of a host, whose one object was to make his guests eat
and drink and do exactly what he himself enjoyed? And yet that is
precisely what many of the most conscientious people are doing all day
long, in other regions of the soul and mind.
The one thing which we have to fear, in all this, is of lapsing into
indolence and solitary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our own
happiness. We must measure the effectiveness of our enjoyment by one
thing and one thing alone--our increase of affection and sympathy,
our interest in other minds and lives. If we only end by desiring to
be apart from it all, to gnaw the meat we have torn from life in a
secret cave of our devising, to gain serenity by indifference, then we
must put our desires aside; but if it sends us into the world with
hope and energy and interest and above all affection, then we need
have no anxiety; we may enter like the pilgrims into comfortable
houses of refreshment, where we can look with interest at pictures and
spiders and poultry and all the pleasant wonders of the place; we may
halt in wayside arbours to taste cordials and confections, and enjoy
from the breezy hill-top the pleasant vale of Beulah, with the
celestial mountains rising blue and still upon the far horizon.
XIX
SCIENCE
I read the other day a very downright book, with a kind of dry
insolence about it, by a man who was concerned with stating what he
called the _mechanistic_ theory of the universe. The worlds, it
seemed, were like a sandy desert, with a wind that whirled the sands
about; and indeed I seemed, as I looked out on the world through the
writer's eyes, to see nothing but wind and sand! One of his points was
that every thought that passed through the mind was preceded by a
change in the particles of the brain; so that philosophy, and
religion, and life itself were nothing but a shifting of the sand by
the impalpable wind--matter and motion, that was all! Again and again
he said, in his dry way, that no theory was of any use that was not
supported by facts; and that though there was left a little corner of
thought, which was still unexplained, we should soon have some more
facts, and the last mystery would be hunted down.
But it seemed to me, as I read it, that the thoughts of man were just
as much facts as any other facts, and that when a man had a vision of
beauty, or when a hope came to him in a bitter sorrow, it was just as
real a thing as the little particle of the brain which stirred and
crept nearer to another particle. I do not say that all theories of
religion and philosophy are necessarily true, but they are real
enough; they have existed, they exist, they cannot die. Of course, in
making out a theory, we must not neglect one set of facts and depend
wholly on another set of facts; but I believe that the intense and
pathetic desire of humanity to know why they are here, why they feel
as they do, why they suffer and rejoice, what awaits them, are facts
just as significant as the blood that drips from the wound, or the
leaf that unfolds in the sun. The comforting and uplifting conclusion
which the writer came to was that we were just a set of animated
puppets, spun out of the drift of sand and dew by the thing that he
called force. But if that is so, why are we not all perfectly
complacent and contented, why do we love and grieve and wish to be
different? I do still believe that there is a spirit that mingles with
our hopes and dreams, something personal, beautiful, fatherly, pure,
something which is unwillingly tied to earth and would be free if it
could. The sense that we are ourselves wholly separate and distinct,
with experience behind us and experience before us, seems to me a fact
beside which all other facts pale into insignificance. And next in
strength to that seems the fact that we can recognise, and draw near
to, and be amazingly desirous of, as well as no less strangely hostile
to, other similar selves; that our thought can mingle with theirs,
pass into theirs, as theirs into ours, forging a bond which no
accident of matter can dissolve.
Does it really satisfy the lover, when he knows that his love is
answered, to realise that it is all the result of some preceding
molecular action of the brain? That does not seem to me so much a
truculent statement as a foolish statement, shirking, like a glib and
silly child, the most significant of data. And I think we shall do
well to say to our scientist, as courteously as Sir Lancelot said to
the officious knight, who proffered unnecessary service, that we have
no need for him at this time.
Now, I am not saying, in all this, that the investigation of science
is wrong or futile. It is exactly the reverse; the message of God is
hidden in all the minutest material things that lie about us; and it
is a very natural and even noble work to explore it; but it is wrong
if it leads us to draw any conclusions at present beyond what we can
reasonably and justly draw. It is the inference that what explains the
visible scheme of things can also explain the invisible. That is
wrong!
Let me here quote a noble sentence, which has often given me
much-needed help, and served to remind me that thought is after all as
real a thing as matter, when I have been tempted to feel otherwise. It
was written by a very wise and tender philosopher, William James, who
was never betrayed by his own severe standard of truth and reality
into despising the common dreams and aspirations of simpler men. He
wrote:
"I find it preposterous to suppose that if there be a
feeling of unseen reality, shared by numbers of the best
men in their best moments, responded to by other men in
their deep moments, good to live by, strength-giving--I find
it preposterous, I say, to suppose that the goodness of that
feeling for living purposes should be held to carry no
objective significance, and especially preposterous if it
combines harmoniously with an otherwise grounded philosophy
of objective truth."
That is a very large and tolerant utterance, both in its suspension of
impatient certainties and in its beautiful sympathy with all ardent
visions that cannot clearly and convincingly find logical utterance.
What I am trying to say in this little book is not addressed to
professional philosophers or men of science, who are concerned with
intellectual investigation, but to those who have to live life as it
is, as the vast majority of men must always be. What I rather beg of
them is not to be alarmed and bewildered by the statements either of
scientific or religious dogmatists. No doubt we should like to know
everything, to have all our perplexities resolved; but we have reached
that point neither in religion nor in philosophy, nor even in science.
We must be content not to know. But because we do not know, we need
not therefore refuse to feel; there is no excuse for us to thrust the
whole tangle away and out of sight, and just to do as far as possible
what we like. We may admire and hope and love, and it is our business
to do all three. The thing that seems to me--and I am here only
stating a personal view--both possible and desirable, is to live as
far as we can by the law of beauty, not to submit to anything by which
our soul is shamed and insulted, not to be drawn into strife, not to
fall into miserable fault-finding, not to allow ourselves to be
fretted and fussed and agitated by the cares of life; but to say
clearly to ourselves, "that is a petty, base, mean thought, and I will
not entertain it; this is a generous and kind and gracious thought,
and I will welcome it and obey it."
One of the clearly discernible laws of life is that we can both check
and contract habits; and when we begin our day, we can begin it if we
will by prayer and aspiration and resolution, as much as we can begin
it with bath and toilet. We can say, "I will live resolutely to-day in
joy and good-humour and energy and kindliness." Those powers and
possibilities are all there; and even if we are overshadowed by
disappointment and anxiety and pain, we can say to ourselves that we
will behave as if it were not so; because there is undoubtedly a very
real and noble pleasure in putting off shadows and troubles, and not
letting them fall in showers on those about us. We need not be stoical
or affectedly bright; we often cannot give those who love us greater
joy than to tell them of our troubles and let them comfort us. And we
can be practical too in our outlook, because much of the grittiest
irritation of life is caused by indulging indolence when we ought not,
and being hurried when we might be leisurely. It is astonishing how a
little planning will help us in all this, and how soon a habit is set
up. We do not, it is true, know the limits of our power of choice. But
the illusion, if it be an illusion, that we have a power of choice, is
an infinitely more real fact to most of us than the molecular motion
of the brain particles.
And then too there is another fact, which is becoming more and more
clear, namely, what is called the power of suggestion. That if we can
put a thought into our mind, not into our reason, but into our inner
mind of instinct and force, whether it be a base thought or a noble
thought, it seems to soak unconsciously into the very stuff of the
mind, and keep reproducing itself even when we seem to have forgotten
all about it. And this is, I believe, one of the uses of prayer, that
we put a thought into the mind, which can abide with us, secretly it
may be, all the day; and that thus it is not a mere pious habit or
tradition to have a quiet period at the beginning of the day, in which
we can nurture some joyful and generous hope, but as real a source of
strength to the spirit as the morning meal is to the body. I have
myself found that it is well, if one can, to read a fragment of some
fine, generous, beautiful, or noble-minded book at such an hour.
There is in many people who work hard with their brains a curious and
unreal mood of sadness which hangs about the waking hour, which I have
thought to be a sort of hunger of the mind, craving to be fed; and
this is accompanied, at least in me, by a very swift, clear, and
hopeful apprehension, so that a beautiful thought comes to me as a
draught of water to a thirsty man. So I make haste, as often as may
be, just to drop such a thought at those times into the mind; it falls
to the depths, as one may see a bright coin go gleaming and shifting
down to the depths of a pool; or to use a homelier similitude, like
sugar that drops to the bottom of a cup, sweetening the draught.
These are little homely things; but it is through simple use and not
through large theory that one can best practise joy.
XX
WORK
I came out of the low-arched door with a sense of relief and passed
into the sunshine; the meeting had broken up, and we went our ways. We
had sate there an hour or two in the old panelled room, a dozen
full-blooded friendly men discussing a small matter with wonderful
ingenuity and zest; and I had spoken neither least nor most mildly,
and had found it all pleasant enough. Then I mounted my bicycle and
rode out into the fragrant country alone, with all its nearer green
and further blue; there in that little belt of space, between the thin
air above and the dense-dark earth beneath, was the pageant of
conscious life enacting itself so visibly and eagerly. In the sunlit
sky the winds raced gaily enough, with the void silence of moveless
space above it; below my feet what depths of cold stone, with the
secret springs; below that perhaps a core of molten heat and
imprisoned fire!
What was it all about? What were we all doing there? What was the
significance of the little business that had been engaging our minds
and tongues? What part did it play in the mighty universe?
The thorn-tree thick with bloom, pouring out its homely spicy
smell--it was doing too, beautifully enough, what we had been doing
clumsily. It was living, intent on its own conscious life, the sap
hurrying, the scent flowing, the bud waxing. The yellow-hammer poising
and darting along the hedge, the sparrow twittering round the rick,
the cock picking and crowing, were all intent on life, proclaiming
that they were alive and busy. Something vivid, alert, impassioned was
going forward everywhere, something being effected, something
uttered--and yet the cause how utterly hidden from me and from every
living thing!
The memory of old poetry began to flicker in my mind like summer
lightning. In the orchard, crammed with bloom, two unseen children
were calling to each other; a sunburned, careless, graceful boy,
whose rough clothes could not conceal his shapely limbs and easy
movements, came driving some cows along the lane. He asked me the time
in Dorian speech. The shepherds piping together on the Sicilian
headland could not have made a fairer picture; and yet the boy and I
could hardly have had a thought in common!
All the poets that ever sang in the pleasant springtime can hardly
have felt the joyful onrush of the season more sweetly than I felt it
that day; and yet no philosopher or priest could have given me a hint
of what the mystery was, why so ceaselessly renewed; but it was clear
to me at least that the mind behind it was joyful enough, and wished
me to share its joy.
And then an hour later I was doing for no reason but that it was my
business the dullest of tasks--no less than revising a whole sheaf of
the driest of examination papers. Elaborate questions to elicit
knowledge of facts arid and meaningless, which it was worth no human
being's while to know, unless he could fill out the bare outlines with
some of the stuff of life. Hundreds of boys, I dare say, in crowded
schoolrooms all over the country were having those facts drummed into
them, with no aim in sight but the answering of the questions which I
was manipulating. That was a bewildering business, that we should
insist on that sort of drilling becoming a part of life. Was that a
relation it was well to establish? As the fine old, shrewd, indolent
Dr. Johnson said, he for his part, while he lived, never again desired
even to hear of the Punic War! And again he said, "You teach your
daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder, when you have
done, why they do not desire your company."
Cannot we somehow learn to simplify life? Must we continue to think
that we can inspire children in rows? Is it not possible for us to be
a little less important and pompous and elaborate about it all, to aim
at more direct relations, to say more what we feel, to do more what
nature bids us do?
The heart sickens at the thought of how we keep to the grim highways
of life, and leave the pleasant spaces of wood and field unvisited!
And all because we want more than we need, and because we cannot be
content unless we can be envied and admired.
The cure for all this, it seems to me, is a resolute avoidance of
complications and intricacies, a determination to live life more on
our own terms, and to open our eyes to the simpler pleasures which lie
waiting in our way on every side.
I do not believe in the elaborate organisation of life; and yet I
think it is possible to live in the midst of it, and yet not to be
involved in it. I do not believe in fierce rebellion, but I do believe
in quiet transformation; and here comes in the faith that I have in
_Joyous Gard_. I believe that day by day we should clear a space to
live with minds that have felt, and hoped, and enjoyed. That is the
first duty of all; and then that we should live in touch with the
natural beauty of the earth, and let the sweetness of it enter into
our minds and hearts; for then we come out renewed, to find the beauty
and the fulness of life in the hearts and minds of those about us.
Life is complicated, not because its issues are not simple enough, but
because we are most of us so afraid of a phantom which we create--the
criticism of other human beings.
If one reads the old books of chivalry, there seems an endless waste
of combat and fighting among men who had the same cause at heart, and
who yet for the pettiest occasions of dispute must need try to inflict
death on each other, each doing his best to shatter out of the world
another human being who loved life as well. Two doughty knights, Sir
Lamorak and Sir Meliagraunce, must needs hew pieces off each other's
armour, break each other's bones, spill each other's blood, to prove
which of two ladies is the fairer; and when it is all over, nothing
whatever is proved about the ladies, nothing but which of the two
knights is the stronger! And yet we seem to be doing the same thing to
this day, except that we now try to wound the heart and mind, to make
a fellow-man afraid and suspicious, to take the light out of his day
and the energy out of his work. For the last few weeks a handful of
earnest clergymen have been endeavouring in a Church paper, with
floods of pious Billingsgate, to make me ridiculous about a technical
question of archæological interest, and all because my opinion differs
from their own! I thankfully confess that as I get older, I care not
at all for such foolish controversy, and the only qualms I have are
the qualms I feel at finding human beings so childish and so fretful.
Well, it is all very curious, and not without its delight too! What I
earnestly desire is that men and women should not thus waste precious
time and pleasant life, but go straight to reality, to hope. There are
a hundred paths that can be trodden; only let us be sure that we are
treading our own path, not feebly shifting from track to track, not
following too much the bidding of others, but knowing what interests
us, what draws us, what we love and desire; and above all keeping in
mind that it is our business to understand and admire and conciliate
each other, whether we do it in a panelled room, with pens and paper
on the table, and the committee in full cry; or out on the quiet road,
with one whom we trust entirely, where the horizon runs, field by
field and holt by holt, to meet the soft verge of encircling sky.
XXI
HOPE
The other day I took up idly some magazine or other, one of those
great lemon-coloured, salmon-hued, slaty paper volumes which lie in
rows on the tables of my club. I will not stop now to enquire why
English taste demands covers which show every mean stain, every soiled
finger-print; but these volumes are always a reproach to me, because
they show me, alas! how many subjects, how many methods of presenting
subjects, are wholly uninteresting and unattractive to my trivial
mind. This time, however, my eye fell upon a poem full of light and
beauty, and of that subtle grace which seems so incomprehensible, so
uncreated--a lyric by Mr. Alfred Noyes. It was like a spell which
banished for an instant the weariness born of a long, hot, tedious
committee, the oppression which always falls on me at the sight and
sound of the cataract of human beings and vehicles, running so
fiercely in the paved channels of London. A beautiful poem, but how
immeasurably sad, an invocation to the memory and to the spirit of
Robert Browning, not speaking of him in an elegiac strain as of a
great poet who had lived his life to the full and struck his
clear-toned harp, solemnly, sweetly, and whimsically too, year after
year; but as of something great and noble wholly lost and separated
from the living world.
This was a little part of it:
Singer of hope for all the world,
Is it still morning where thou art,
Or are the clouds that hide thee furled
Around a dark and silent heart?
The sacred chords thy hand could wake
Are fallen on utter silence here,
And hearts too little even to break
Have made an idol of despair.
* * * * *
Come back to England, where thy May
Returns, but not that rapturous light;
God is not in His heaven to-day,
And with thy country nought is right.
I think that almost magically beautiful! But is it true? I hope not
and I think not. The poet went on to say that Paradox had destroyed
the sanctity of Truth, and that Science had done nothing more than
strip the skeleton of the flesh and blood that vested it, and crown
the anatomy with glory. One cannot speak more severely, more gloomily,
of an age than to say that it is deceived by analysis and paradox, and
cares nothing for nobler and finer things. It seems to me to be a
sorrowful view of life that, to have very little faith or prospect
about it. It is true indeed that the paradox-maker is popular now; but
that is because men are interested in interpretations of life; and it
is true too that we are a little impatient now of fancy and
imagination, and want to get at facts, because we feel that fancy and
imagination, which are not built on facts, are very tricksy guides to
life. But the view seems to me both depressed and morbid which cannot
look beyond, and see that the world is passing on in its own great
unflinching, steady manner. It is like the view of a child who,
confronted with a pain, a disagreeable incident, a tedious day of
drudgery, wails that it can never be happy again.
The poem ends with a fine apostrophe to Browning as one "who stormed
through death, and laid hold of Eternity." Did he indeed do that? I
wish I felt it! He had, of course, an unconquerable optimism, which
argued promise from failure and perfection from incompleteness. But I
cannot take such hopes on the word of another, however gallant and
noble he may be. I do not want hopes which are only within the reach
of the vivid and high-hearted; the crippled, drudging slave cannot
rejoice because he sees his warrior-lord gay, heroic, and strong. I
must build my creed on my own hopes and possibilities, not on the
strength and cheerfulness of another.
And then my eye fell on a sentence opposite, out of an article on our
social problems; and this was what I read:
"... the tears of a hunger-bitten philosophy, which is so
appalled by the common doom of man--that he must eat his
bread by the sweat of his brow--that it can talk, write, and
think of nothing else."
I think there is more promise in that, rough and even rude as the
statement is, because it opens up a real hope for something that is
coming, and is not a mere lamentation over a star that is set.
"A hunger-bitten philosophy"--is it not rather that there is creeping
into the world an uneasy sense that we must, if we are to be happy,
_share_ our happiness? It is not that the philosopher is hungry, it is
that he cannot bear to think of all the other people who are condemned
to hunger; and why it occupies his tongue and his pen, is that it
clouds his serenity to know that others cannot now be serene. All this
unrest, this grasping at the comfort of life on the one hand, and the
patience, the justice, the tolerance, with which such claims are
viewed by many possessors on the other, is because there is a spirit
of sympathy growing up, which has not yet become self-sacrifice, but
is on its way to become so.
Then we must ask ourselves what our duty is. Not, I think, with all
our comforts about us, to chant loud odes about its being all right
with the world, but to see what we can do to make it all right, to
equalise, to share, to give.
The finest thing, of course, would be if those who are set in the
midst of comfort could come calmly out of it, and live simpler,
kinder, more direct lives; but apart from that, what can we do? Is it
our duty, in the face of all that, to surrender every species of
enjoyment and delight, to live meanly and anxiously because others
have to live so? I am not at all sure that it would not prove our
greatness if the thought of all the helpless pain and drudgery of the
world, the drift of falling tears, were so intolerable to us that we
simply could not endure the thought; but I think that would end in
quixotism and pessimism of the worst kind, if one would not eat or
drink, because men starve in Russia or India, if one would not sleep
because sufferers toss through the night in pain. That seems a morbid
and self-sought suffering.