KUMAMOTO, August, 1893.
DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... And now for a letter. Your last two letters were
full of curious things that call for no answer, but, in connection with
foregoing ones, certainly invite comment. More and more, reading your
lightning-flash glimpses of life, I think how terribly tragical modern
life is becoming. What is its law? Is it not something like this?--
General: (1) Theoretically, you must be good. (2) Practically you must
be not very good,--unless you wish to starve or live in the
slime. (3) Reconcile these facts very intelligently, without
making any blunders.
Special: (1) If you are not more intelligent than the average man, you
must be both theoretically and practically good,--and resign
yourself to remaining poor and despised all your blessed
life. Don't kick: if you do, you'll die! (2) In proportion
as you are more intelligent than your fellow man, the more
to your interest to depart from abstract moral rules;--the
more, indeed, you _must_. It is quite true that vice and
crime lead to ruin. Still, you must perform your part of
both without getting into trouble. If you don't, you will
die. (3) Reconcile intelligently these seeming
contradictions.
The contradictions can only be fully recognized and reconciled
through a profound knowledge of social conditions, not in the abstract
only, but in the most complex operation. This is the theoretical
recognition. But the practical recognition requires special hereditary
gifts,--intuitions,--instincts,--powers. Mere education in business
alone won't do. That only makes servants. Masters must be _natural_
masters of men. Life is an intellectual battle, but not a battle to
be fought out by mere chess-combinations. It is also a battle of
characters. The combinations required for success are of the most
difficult--comprising force, perception, versatility, resource,--and
enough comprehension of morals as factors in sociology to avoid fatal
mistakes. He who has all this, and strong health, goes to the top. But
he has there to fight for his standing-room. Besides all other fighting,
he has to fight against himself.
In the Buddhist system, the soul, by self-suppression and struggle
against temptation, obtains Light and effects progress. The Past begins
to be remembered, the Future to be foreseen. But always in proportion
to the progress and the enlightenment, the temptations increase. For
example, one reward of virtue is beauty and high sexual power (!) The
more indulgence is despised, the greater these gifts. The Soul reaches
heaven. Then is the greatest of all temptations. Life for thousands of
ages,--supreme beauty and power,--supreme loveliness of celestial beings
offered to feast upon. And here can be no _sin_: it is only a question
of further progress. Indulgence means retrogression. The wise only pass
to Nirvana.--Now I fancy the battle of life has the same moral.
It is a terrible battle now, though; and is becoming fiercer every
year,--and aggravating with a velocity beyond all precedent. (I see
there is a falling-off in the birth-rate of the U.S.--which means
increased difficulty of living.) And ultimately what must come out of
all this? Pain is certainly the only reliable creator,--the only one
whose work endures. Extraordinary intelligence and, mental dynamical
power will be results, of course,--up to a certain time. I do not see
much likelihood, however, of _moral_ development. Indeed, as Mackintosh
long ago said, morals have been at a standstill since the beginning
of history: we have made no apparent progress in that. Then comes the
question, Are we not developing immorally?
I have begun to think immorality must be, in the eternal order of
things, a _moral_ force. That is, some kinds of it,--the aggressive
kinds: those which the whole world agrees to call immoral. For the
physical value and excellence of a life in its relation to other lives
is primarily in its capacity to meet all hostile influences by changes
correspondingly effected within itself. This is called adaptation to
environment. If this be the physical side of the question, what is the
moral side? That the perfect character must be able to oppose or to meet
all hostile influences by corresponding changes within itself. This
necessarily involves a prodigious experience of evil,--a deep, personal,
intimate, artistic, loving knowledge of evil. I see a frightful dualism
only in prospect. No love or mercy outside of the circle of each
active life. As Spencer holds, absolute morality can only begin where
the struggle for existence has ceased. This is not new. The appalling
prospect is this,--How infinitely worse the world must become before it
begins to improve at all!--And surely education ought to be conducted
with a knowledge of these things.
But will the existing state of things continue indefinitely? Surely, it
can't! It is too monstrous, and the suffering too infernal! There must
be social smashings, earthquakes, chaos-breakings-up, recrystallizations
to lighten the burthen. And what will these be?
I cannot send you, because there is no copy here, but I recommend you a
book,--Pearson's "National Character," a study. He takes the ground that
the future is not to the white races,--not to the Anglo-Saxon. I think
this almost certain. I think of the awful cost of life to the white
races,--the more awful cost of character. I think of the vast races
of creatures--behemoths and megatheriums and ichthyosaurians--which
have disappeared from the earth simply because of the cost of their
physical structure. But what is the physical cost of even the structure
of an ichthyosaurus to the cost of the structure of a master of applied
mathematics! It costs one educated European,--receiving, say, a salary
of $100 a month,--exactly as much as it costs twenty educated Orientals
to live--each with a family of at least three persons,--or in other
words 1 European = 120 Orientals. There is an instinctive knowledge,
perhaps, of the future, in the instinctive hatred of the Chinese in
America. There is an instinctive sense of the same kind in the feeling
which prompts the Oriental to exclude Europeans. The latter _over_live
the former; the former underlive the latter. But in all this there are
complicated physiological questions extraordinary.
Ever affectionately,
LAFCADIO HEARN.