IV

Once I said:

"Which kind of people do you find it hardest to help along?"

"The young people," said Amroth, with a smile.

"Youth!" I said. "Why, down below, we think of youth as being so

generous and ardent and imitative! We speak of youth as the time to

learn, and form fine habits; if a man is wilful and selfish in

after-life, we say that it was because he was too much indulged in

childhood--and we attach great importance to the impressions of youth."

"That is quite right," said Amroth, "because the impressions of youth

are swift and keen; but of course, here, age is not a question of years

or failing powers. The old, here, are the wise and gracious and patient

and gentle; the youth of the spirit is stupidity and unimaginativeness.

On the one hand are the stolid and placid, and on the other are the

brutal and cruel and selfish and unrestrained."

"You confuse me greatly," I said; "surely you do not mean that spiritual

life and progress are a matter of intellectual energy?"

"No, not at all," said he; "the so-called intellectual people are often

the most stupid and youngest of all. The intellect counts for nothing:

that is only a kind of dexterity, a pretty game. The imagination is what

matters."

"Worse and worse!" I said. "Does salvation belong to poets and

novelists?"

"No, no," said Amroth, "that is a game too! The imagination I speak of

is the power of entering into other people's minds and hearts, of

putting yourself in their place--of loving them, in fact. The more you

know of people, the better chance there is of loving them; and you can

only find your way into their minds by imaginative sympathy. I will

tell you a story which will show you what I mean. There was once a

famous writer on earth, of whose wisdom people spoke with bated breath.

Men went to see him with fear and reverence, and came away, saying, 'How

wonderful!' And this man, in his age, was waited upon by a little maid,

an ugly, tired, tiny creature. People used to say that they wondered he

had not a better servant. But she knew all that he liked and wanted,

where his books and papers were, what was good for him to do. She did

not understand a word of what he said, but she knew both when he had

talked too much, and when he had not talked enough, so that his mind was

pent up in itself, and he became cross and fractious. Now, in reality,

the little maid was one of the oldest and most beautiful of spirits. She

had lived many lives, each apparently humbler than the last. She never

grumbled about her work, or wanted to amuse herself. She loved the silly

flies that darted about her kitchen, or brushed their black heads on

the ceiling; she loved the ivy tendrils that tapped on her window in the

breeze. She did not go to church, she had no time for that; or if she

had gone, she would not have understood what was said, though she would

have loved all the people there, and noticed how they looked and sang.

But the wise man himself was one of the youngest and stupidest of

spirits, so young and stupid that he had to have a very old and wise

spirit to look after him. He was eaten up with ideas and vanity, so that

he had no time to look at any one or think of anybody, unless they

praised him. He has a very long pilgrimage before him, though he wrote

pretty songs enough, and his mortal body, or one of them, lies in the

Poets' Corner of the Abbey, and people come and put wreaths there with

tears in their eyes."

"It is very bewildering," I said, "but I see a little more than I did.

It is all a matter of feeling, then? But it seems hard on people that

they should be so dull and stupid about it all,--that the truth should

lie so close to their hand and yet be so carefully concealed."

"Oh, they grow out of dulness!" he said, with a movement of his hand;

"that is what experience does for us--it is always going on; we get

widened and deepened. Why," he added, "I have seen a great man, as they

called him, clever and alert, who held a high position in the State. He

was laid aside by a long and painful illness, so that all his work was

put away. He was brave about it, too, I remember; but he used to think

to himself how sad and wasteful it was, that when he was most energetic

and capable he should be put on the shelf--all the fine work he might

have done interrupted; all the great speeches he would have made

unuttered. But as a matter of fact, he was then for the first time

growing fast, because he had to look into the minds and hearts of all

sorrowful and disappointed people, and to learn that what we do matters

so little, and that what we are matters so much. When he did at last

get back to the world, people said, 'What a sad pity to see so fine a

career spoilt!' But out of all the years of all his lives, those years

had been his very best and richest, when he sat half the day feeble in

the sun, and could not even look at the papers which lay beside him, or

when he woke in the grey mornings, with the thought of another miserable

day of idleness and pain before him."

I said, "Then is it a bad thing to be busy in the world, because it

takes off your mind from the things which matter?"

"No," said Amroth, "not a bad thing at all: because two things are going

on. Partly the framework of society and life is being made, so that men

are not ground down into that sordid struggle, when little experience is

possible because of the drudgery which clouds all the mind. Though even

that has its opportunities! And all depends, for the individual, upon

how he is doing his work. If he has other people in mind all the time,

and does his work for them, and not to be praised for it, then all is

well. But if he is thinking of his credit and his position, then he does

not grow at all; that is pomposity--a very youthful thing indeed; but

the worst case of all is if a man sees that the world must be helped and

made, and that one can win credit thus, and so engages in work of that

kind, and deals in all the jargon of it, about using influence and

living for others, when he is really thinking of himself all the time,

and trying to keep the eyes of the world upon him. But it is all growth

really, though sometimes, as on the beach when the tide is coming in,

the waves seem to draw backward from the land, and poise themselves in a

crest of troubled water."

"But is a great position in the world," I said, "whether inherited or

attained, a dangerous thing?"

"Nothing is _dangerous_, child," he said. "You must put all that out of

your mind. But men in high posts and stations are often not progressing

evenly, only in great jogs and starts. They learn very often, with a

sudden surprise, which is not always painful, and sometimes is very

beautiful and sweet, that all the ceremony and pomp, the great house,

the bows and the smiles, mean nothing at all--absolutely nothing, except

the chance, the opportunity of not being taken in by them. That is the

use of all pleasures and all satisfactions--the frame of mind which made

the old king say, 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have

builded?'--they are nothing but the work of another class in the great

school of life. A great many people are put to school with

self-satisfaction, that they may know the fine joy of humiliation, the

delight of learning that it is not effectiveness and applause that

matters, but love and peacefulness. And the great thing is that we

should feel that we are growing, not in hardness or indifference, nor

necessarily even in courage or patience, but in our power to feel and

our power to suffer. As love multiplies, suffering must multiply too.

The very Heart of God is full of infinite, joyful, hopeful suffering;

the whole thing is so vast, so slow, so quiet, that the end of suffering

is yet far off. But when we suffer, we climb fast; the spirit grows old

and wise in faith and love; and suffering is the one thing we cannot

dispense with, because it is the condition of our fullest and purest

life."

V

I said suddenly, "The joy of this place is not the security of it, but

the fact that one has not to think about security. I am not afraid of

anything that may happen, and there is no weariness of thought. One does

not think till one is tired, but till one has finished thinking."

"Yes," said Amroth, "that was the misery of the poor body!"

"And yet I used to think," I said, "in the old days that I was grateful

to the body for many pleasant things it gave me--breathing the air,

feeling the sun, eating and drinking, games and exercise, and the

strange thing one called love."

"Yes," said Amroth, "all those things have to be made pleasant, or to

appear so; otherwise no one could submit to the discipline at all; but

of course the pleasure only got in the way of the thought and of the

happiness; it was not what one saw, tasted, smelt, felt, that one

desired, but the real thing behind it; even the purest thing of all, the

sight and contact of one whom one loved, let us say, with no sensual

passion at all, but with a perfectly pure love; what a torment that

was--desiring something which one could not get, the real fusion of

feeling and thought! But the poor body was always in the way then,

saying, 'Here am I--please me, amuse me.'"

"But then," I said, "what is the use of all that? Why should the pure,

clear, joyful, sleepless life I now feel be tainted and hampered and

drugged by the body? I don't feel that I am losing anything by losing

the body."

"No, not losing," said Amroth, "but, happy though you are, you are not

gaining things as fast now--it is your time of rest and refreshment--but

we shall go back, both of us, to the other life again, when the time

comes: and the point is this, that we have got to win the best things

through trouble and struggle."

"But even so," I said, "there are many things I do not understand--the

child that opens its eyes upon the world and closes them again; the

young child that suffers and dies, just when it is the darling of the

home; and at the other end of the scale, the helpless, fractious

invalid, or the old man who lives in weariness, wakeful and tortured,

and who is glad just to sit in the sun, indifferent to every one and

everything, past feeling and hoping and thinking--or, worst of all, the

people with diseased minds, whose pain makes them suspicious and

malignant. What is the meaning of all this pain, which seems to do

people nothing but harm, and makes them a burden to themselves and

others too?"

"Oh," said he, "it is difficult enough; but you must remember that we

are all bound up with the hearts and lives of others; the child that

dies in its helplessness has a meaning for its parents; the child that

lives long enough to be the light of its home, that has a significance

deep enough; and all those who have to tend and care for the sick, to

lighten the burden and the sorrow for them, that has a meaning surely

for all concerned? The reason why we feel as we do about broken lives,

why they seem so utterly purposeless, is because we have the proportion

so wrong. We do not really, in fact, believe in immortality, when we are

bound in the body--some few of us do, and many of us say that we do. But

we do not realise that the little life is but one in a great chain of

lives, that each spirit lives many times, over and over. There is no

such thing as waste or sacrifice of life. The life is meant to do just

what it does, no more and no less; bound in the body, it all seems so

long or so short, so complete or so incomplete; but now and here we can

see that the whole thing is so endless, so immense, that we think no

more of entering life, say, for a few days, or entering it for ninety

years, than we should think of counting one or ninety water-drops in the

river that pours in a cataract over the lip of the rocks. Where we do

lose, in life, is in not taking the particular experience, be it small

or great, to heart. We try to forget things, to put them out of our

minds, to banish them. Of course it is very hard to do otherwise, in a

body so finite, tossed and whirled in a stream so infinite; and thus we

are happiest if we can live very simply and quietly, not straining to

multiply our uneasy activities, but just getting the most and the best

out of the elements of life as they come to us. As we get older in

spirit, we do that naturally; the things that men call ambitions and

schemes are the signs of immaturity; and when we grow older, those slip

off us and concern us no more; while the real vitality of feeling and

emotion runs ever more clear and strong."

"But," I said, "can one revive the old lives at will? Can one look back

into the long range of previous lives? Is that permitted?"

"Yes, of course it is permitted," said Amroth, smiling; "there are no

rules here; but one does not care to do it overmuch. One is just glad it

is all done, and that one has learnt the lesson. Look back if you

like--there are all the lives behind you."

I had a curious sensation--I saw myself suddenly a stalwart savage,

strangely attired for war, near a hut in a forest clearing. I was going

away somewhere; there were other huts at hand; there was a fire, in the

side of a mound, where some women seemed to be cooking something and

wrangling over it; the smoke went up into the still air. A child came

out of the hut, and ran to me. I bent down and kissed it, and it clung

to me. I was sorry, in a dim way, to be going out--for I saw other

figures armed too, standing about the clearing. There was to be fighting

that day, and though I wished to fight, I thought I might not return.

But the mind of myself, as I discerned it, was full of hurtful, cruel,

rapacious thoughts, and I was sad to think that this could ever have

been I.

"It is not very nice," said Amroth with a smile; "one does not care to

revive that! You were young then, and had much before you."

Another picture flashed into the mind. Was it true? I was a woman, it

seemed, looking out of a window on the street in a town with high, dark

houses, strongly built of stone: there was a towered gate at a little

distance, with some figures drawing up sacks with a pulley to a door in

the gate. A man came up behind me, pulled me roughly back, and spoke

angrily; I answered him fiercely and shrilly. The room I was in seemed

to be a shop or store; there were barrels of wine, and bags of corn. I

felt that I was busy and anxious--it was not a pleasant retrospect.

"Yet you were better then," said Amroth "you thought little of your

drudgery, and much of your children."

Yes, I had had children, I saw. Their names and appearance floated

before me. I had loved them tenderly. Had they passed out of my life? I

felt bewildered.

Amroth laid a hand on my arm and smiled again. "No, you came near to

some of them again. Do you not remember another life in which you loved

a friend with a strange love, that surprised you by its nearness? He had

been your child long before; and one never quite loses that."

I saw in a flash the other life he spoke of. I was a student, it seemed,

at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious,

wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong

thing, for whom I had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. I

had always tried to explain him to other people, to justify him; and he

had turned to me fop help and companionship in a singular way. I saw

myself walking with him in the country, expostulating, gesticulating;

and I saw him angry and perplexed.... The vision vanished.

"But what becomes of all those whom we have loved?" I said; "it cannot

be as if we had never loved them."

"No, indeed," said Amroth, "they are all there or here; but there lies

one of the great mysteries which we cannot yet attain to. We shall be

all brought together some time, closely and perfectly; but even now, in

the world of matter, the spirit half remembers; and when one is

strangely and lovingly drawn to another soul, when that love is not of

the body, and has nothing of passion in it, then it is some close

ancient tie reasserting itself. Do you not know how old and remote some

of our friendships seemed--so much older and larger than could be

accounted for by the brief days of companionship? That strange hunger

for the past of one we love is nothing but the faint memory of what has

been. Indeed, when you have rested happily a little longer, you will

move farther afield, and you will come near to spirits you have loved.

You cannot bear it yet, though they are all about you; but one regains

the spiritual sense slowly after a life like yours."

"Can I revisit," I said, "the scene of my last life--see and know what

those I loved are doing and feeling?"

"Not yet," said Amroth; "that would not profit either you or them. The

sorrow of earth would not be sorrow, it would have no cleansing power,

if the parted spirit could return at once. You do not guess, either, how

much of time has passed already since you came here--it seems to you

like yesterday, no doubt, since you last suffered death. To meet loss

and sorrow upon earth, without either comfort or hope, is one of the

finest of lessons. When we are there, we must live blindly, and if we

here could make our presence known at once to the friends we leave

behind, it would be all too easy. It is in the silence of death that its

virtue lies."

"Yes," I said, "I do not desire to return. This is all too wonderful. It

is the freshness and sweetness of it all that comes home to me. I do

not desire to think of the body, and, strange to say, if I do think of

it, the times that I remember gratefully are those when the body was

faint and weary. The old joys and triumphs, when one laughed and loved

and exulted, seem to me to have something ugly about them, because one

was content, and wished things to remain for ever as they were. It was

the longing for something different that helped me; the acquiescence was

the shame."