As a little body sometimes has a very big pain; so an aching heart
wonders that it can bear so much. And
What takes place in the quiet deeps of a troubled heart, who shall know?
* * *
The way to the heart is not through the head:
Between heart and heart, there are many channels. But three are in
universal use: the eyes, the lips, and the finger-tips. Now the
greatest of these is the eyes.
* * *
The masculine heart will never wholly understand the feminine, nor the
feminine the masculine. (O the pity o' it!) And yet, after all,
The human heart is much more the same, whether it beats under a cuirass
or under a corset.
Between the masculine heart and the feminine, perfect frankness is
perhaps of questionable import. But why? It is difficult to say.
Perhaps because
The aspirations and desires of the human heart are infinite and
unappeasable. To attempt to formulate them is to frustrate them. For
It is as impossible for any two human hearts, as it is impossible for
any two material things, to occupy the same space. Especially when we
remember that
Between the masculine heart and the feminine is a great gulf fixed. Nay,
rather
From youth to age, each human heart seems unwittingly to build about
itself a high and ever higher-growing wall, impenetrable, indelapidable,
not to be scaled by the look or speech or gesture.
Never can heart coalesce with heart. And yet
The absolute and intimate coalescence of heart with heart--is not this,
after all, the consummation that every lover seeks? To attempt that
consummation by mere speech, it is this that is of questionable import.
Since
Between heart and heart, speech is the paltriest of channels.
What a thin--yet what an invisible and impenetrable--film separates
those two worlds: the one, that of the visible, audible, and tangible,
the world of chatter and laughter, of convention, often of make-believe;
and the other, the world of deep and voiceless emotions, of the feelings
which know not how to give themselves utterance, of affections which
crave so much and are so impotent to say or to seek what they crave! It
is like a layer of ice separating the hidden and soundless deeps from the
aerial world of noise and motion.--What would not one heart give to
break the icy crust and see and know what was really passing in another?
--And how often we drown if we do break through!
The isolation of the individual human heart is complete. It is the most
pathetic past in the universe, and it is that against which the
individual human heart rebels most.
There must be some profound and cosmic problem underlying this fact which
no philosophy--and no religion--can solve. That it is pathetic seems
to prove it temporary, earthly, a matter of time and space; but, when
will the individual human heart coalesce with the Heart of the Universe--
which, perhaps, is the goal of all Life? For
It may be that these little terrestrial human individuals which we call
men and women are after all only tiny and temporary centers of conscious
activity in an ocean of infinite consciousness; as atoms are but tiny and
temporary centers of energy in an ocean of infinite ether. Could we see
the sum total of Supreme and Infinite Consciousness at a glance, perhaps
individual men and women would dissolve into a mighty unity, could see
and comprehend the whole of the luminiferous ether. Well, perhaps
Love is the only known means by which the individual heart can make any
expansion whatsoever beyond its own bounds. Yet, alas!
Nothing seems to break down the barriers of sense. The human heart beats
its ineffectual wings in vain against the walls of its fleshly
tabernacle. Will nothing unite the Boy and the Girl? Will nothing bring
the Man and the Woman really together? Yet the Boy thinks that, were the
Girl wholly his, he and she would be happy; and the Man thinks that, were
the Woman and he to share every thought and every emotion, he and she
would want naught else. Is the amalgamation impossible? Is the
coalescence of thought and feeling outside the bounds of human
possibility? What, then, impels mankind to crave it, to attempt it, to
sacrifice so much for it?--There is a cosmic puzzle here with which nor
philosophy nor psychology nor religion has yet attempted to grapple.
After all, pitiful as it may be, lamentable as it may be, it is true, and
it must be said, that this human heart of ours goes through life hungry,
very hungry and unappeased. For what it hungers, what it has missed,
whereto it looks for sustenance, it itself does not know. Thus,
This feminine heart sighs without ceasing for because that other
masculine heart upon which it staked all its all, and an all that meant
so much, proved callous and indifferent;
That masculine heart ceases not to curse itself for resorting to such
hasty and violent methods by which to obtain for itself an ephemeral and
passing pleasure;
This feminine heart eats out its life with remorse for because it gave
itself so unthinkingly when asked; though of a survey it thought that
asking was a thing prompted by impulses as noble as they seemed divine;
and
That masculine heart, when the tidal wave of heated passion has subsided,
wonders how it was led captive by lures so deceptive and untried.
M regrets, and regrets in vain, that he did not await a purer and more
permanent passion; and
N chews for a life-time the cud of persistent remorse for an hour's
poignant pleasure.
Ach! this human heart knows nothing of itself nor anything of its fellow
beating hearts. If it follows its bent, it is cracked; if it holds
itself in leash, it aches. If it calls reason to aid, its soaring hopes
are dashed, its romance spoiled, and it itself reduced to the level of a
machine that calculates. If it acts on impulse and, meeting a heart that
beats, so it thinks, in unison, unites itself with it, often enough that
other soon palpitates to a different rhythm, or itself cannot keep time,
and all things go awry.
Poor aching, beating, human heart! It cannot reason; it cannot count the
cost. To it seems that impulse, divine and mighty impulse, is the sole
law of the earth; in time it learns that impulse, the mightiest, the
divinest, though it may be law in heaven, is sometimes a veritable
nemesis on earth: it gives freely, gladly, without compunction; it finds
the gift rewarded by consequences too pitiful for tears.
Alas, this human heart! Can no one advise it Is there no advice will help
it? Must it always go wrong, and always suffer?--Well,
--If one loves, one dare not reason; if one reasons, it is difficult to
love.
* * *
There seems to be something cosmic, something transcending the bounds of
the visible and tangible universe, in the desires and cravings of this
same human heart; this little human heart beating blindly beneath a
waistcoat or a blouse. Its owner is little bigger than a beetle or an
ant, and the habitat of that owner is a speck in space; a pygmy in
comparison with Sirius or Arcturus, and invisible from the
ultra-telescopic confines of vision.
What it makes the desires and cravings of this human heart more
important, more importunate, to its owner than the measuring of the
vastest space? Why is it that the longings, the hopes, the
disappointments, the desperate aspirations, and the passionate loves of
little human hearts should cause to their possessors such prepotent
commotions, such poignant qualms? Rigel and Betelgeuse and Algol rush
through space, and about them probably circle numerous planets inhabited
by countless and curious beings, each and all, perhaps, possessing hearts
as perturbable as our own. And yet, if our own little earthly Jack
cannot get our own little earthly Jill, what cares Jack what happens to
Vega or Capella or to the great nebula in Orion? Jack wants Jill; and
that want is to Jack the only thing in the sidereal heavens that matters.
The curious and perhaps semi-comical but wholly-pathetic thing about the
whole matter is this: that though undoubtedly our little planet is part
of and has a place in this great sidereal universe, and consequently all
our Jacks and Jills are related to all the Jacks and Jills everywhere
else, yet each little human heart behaves as it were the only heart in
the sum-total of created things: if it enjoys, it calls upon all that is,
to congratulate it; if it suffers, it cries aloud to high heaven to
avenge its wrongs: it comports itself as if it and it alone were the only
sensitive things in existence.--That is curious. That it wrongs may
have been wrought by itself; that is fate may have been determined in the
reign of Chaos and Old Night, or ere even cosmic nebulae were born, it
does not dream: if Jill is indifferent or Jack morose,--either is enough
to cause Jack or Jill to curse God and die. Is there some archetypal and
arcanal secret in this the extreme, the supernal egoism of the human
heart?
Of all of which, what is the moral?--Humph! Frankly, I do not know what
is the moral. Only this I see: that each little heart creates its own
little universe: the bee's, the that of its hive and the fields; man's,
that of his earth and the stars. What may be above or beyond the stars,
man no more knows than the bee knows what is beyond the fields. The
heart--be it man's or a bee's--is the centre of its self-made sphere.
Some day, perhaps, man's sphere will extend as far beyond the stars as
today it extends beyond the fields. Then--who knows?--perhaps
unlimited senses and an uncircumcised intellect may find themselves
commensurate with this high-aspiring heart, and an emancipated and
ecstatic Jack unite with a congenial Jill.
That there is a Universe, is apparent; that it is one and complete, we
suppose; that there are in it Jacks and Jills, is indubitable; that these
Jacks and Jills crave mutual support, sympathy, love, friendship,
wifehood, sistership, companionship, brotherhood, is also indubitable.
If therefore the whole scheme of the Universe is not a farce, what does
this craving of Love for Lover mean? And yet,
It is quite impossible to conceive of a Universe of Love, in which all
the claims of Heart and Soul and Senses shall be eternally and infinitely
satisfied? Nevertheless, on this little earth, perhaps
Ill betides the heart that leans overmuch on another. For, alas!
Not even the entire immolation of one heart for another will satisfy that
other.--Indeed, indeed,
In this life, would one seek comfort and solace, one must seek it--in
one's own self, or in one's God. For
Only one of two things can comfort: To put the world under one's feet;
or, to keep a God over one's head: only
He who is "captain of his soul", or he who commits his soul to God, can
rise above fate.
There is a vacuum in every human heart. And the human heart abhors it as
much as nature.
What will fill this cardiac void no mortal to this moment has found out.
Art cries, "Beauty", and tries to depict it; Philosophy cries, "Truth,
and strives to define it; Religion cries, "Good", and does its best to
embody it; and numberless lesser voices in the wilderness cry, "Power",
or "Gold", or "Work",--which is a narcotic, or "Excitement",--which is
an intoxicant; and a many-toned changeful siren with sweetly-saddening
music cries, "Love". And one pursues a phantom, and another clasps a
shadow, and a third cloaks his eyes with a transparent veil, or steeps
his senses in floods that will not drown.--No, what the human heart
wants it does not know. And, what is more,
Pathetic problem amongst problems pathetic, often it puzzles this human
heart to distinguish between the things which it is right and proper to
seek wherewith to fill that void, and the things which are wrong and
improper. Furthermore:
How apt is the heart to seek in the illegitimate for the satisfaction
which the legitimate fails to give!--Problems ancient as Eden.
What does it want, this human heart, what does it so earnestly desire, so
strenuously seek? All about it and about are beauty, friendship, mirth,
and gladness; the sea and the earth and the sky; color and music and
song; and to each, if he wills it, wife, or husband, and children and
home.--Wanting is--what?--Ah!
One lesson this human heart has to learn, so easy to put into words, so
difficult to carry out by deed; is this:
To get, the human heart must give.
The heart eats out itself; causes its own emptiness; creates its own
void.
The selfish and egoistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous
heart.
Would you appease your own hunger? Feed the hungry hearts around you.
Do you crave fullness of joy? Give joy to the joyless.
Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire,
find what you seek? Give--give--give. The more the better, for
The greater the donation, the greater the repletion.
Nature gives, gives lavishly, wantonly, unquestioningly.
Every atom of soil, every drop of sap, goes to produce flowers and fruit
and seed: root and branch and leaf are but carefully constructed means by
which to transmute sunshine and soil and flower and fruit and seed. No
tree lives for itself.
Shall, then, this human heart live for itself; gather and store up for
its own delectation, for its own good?
There is no such thing as one's own good:
Goodness is mutual, is communal; is only guided by giving and receiving.
Wherefore
O frail, weak, human heart, seek thou out carefully constructed means by
which to transmute sunshine and soil and showers into flowers and fruit.
***