care to live a day, think more kindly of those to whom the interludes of
toil are often harder than the toil itself. Of your charity believe our
fate ordained and not the choice of our own perversity; for what man
born of woman would choose a path so sad, were there not within him some
guiding and possessing devil which he could in nowise cast out? Never
will in maddest hours of freedom consented to such doom; we were
condemned at birth, our threads were spoiled upon the fingers of the
Norns.
* * * * *
Such in its broader outlines seemed the infirmity which had grown with
my growth, and now had to be reckoned with, like the bridle of Theages,
as a permanent hindrance to a reasonable happiness. Old hopes lay
shattered about me--well, I had to pick up the fragments and piece
together a less ambitious ideal.
I will not linger over the forces which helped my resolution, the great
and general remedies which come to the relief of men in like evil case.
Religion, philosophy, art, science, literature--all promised their
anodynes against despair; slowly they stirred in me anew those springs
of interest in life which disillusion seemed to have choked for ever. I
rose up, and looking round upon the world saw that it was still good;
and there came into my memory brave words which a golden book puts in
the mouths of its indomitable knights: "I will take the adventure which
God shall ordain me." I now perceived that if evil fortune had unhorsed
me it had yet left me endurance to continue the combat on foot. My
second failure was more final and disastrous than the first discomfiture
in earlier life, but now the plague of pessimism was stayed by a
greater recuperative power. Those long hours of the long eastern day,
spent under the verandah with books of many ages and languages, had not
been altogether fruitless; they had helped to mature a wider and more
catholic taste than that of restless youth, the kind of culture that
brings not rebellion but peace.
In my eastern watch-tower I had re-read the great books from a new point
of vantage, and let the eye roam over fields of literature which lie
beyond the undergraduate's bounds; by a still permeation of fine
influence, my crude philosophy was unconsciously mellowed, as the
surface of ivory, according to Roman belief, by the bland air of Tibur.
For by the mere being in an atmosphere of serenity our nature grows
porous to gracious influences streaming in we know not how or when, and
taking their abode in our very grain and structure. And so without
consciousness of good desert, I found myself confident in a new
discipline, and looking for the word of command from wiser leaders than
Byron or the youthful Shelley. Queen Mab was now the saddest rhetoric,
and Childe Harold's plaint unseemly lamentation; I had erased from my
calendar of saints the names of apostles of affliction once held in
honour; the Caliph Amurath with his tale of fourteen happy days out of a
long life of royal opportunity; Swift with his birthday lection from
Jeremiah. Rather there trooped into memory with a quiet pomp and
induction of joy, forms of men who, though justified in rebellion by
every human suffrage, remained loyal to the end and proved by endurance
a more imperial humanity. Socrates unperturbed by mortal injustice;
Dante a deep harmonious voice amid jangling destinies; William the
Silent serene in every desperate conjecture--these seemed now the more
perfect captains. If exile had done no more than transfer my allegiance
to such as these, I had not borne the lash in vain.
But at the first setting out upon this later stage I had still mistakes
to make, and the ascent to tranquillity was not to be accomplished
without stumbling. It was the old Roman creed which first drew me away
from fretting memories; in its high restraint, as of a hushed yet mighty
wind, it breathed a power of valiant endurance, and promised before
nightfall the respite of a twilight hour. For stoicism has qualities
which seem foreordained for the bracing of shy souls, as if the men who
framed its austere laws had prescience of our frailty and consciously
legislated to its intention. It is the philosophy of the individual
standing by himself, as the shy must always stand, over against a world
which he likes not but may not altogether shun. And in this proud
estrangement it promises release from all the inquisition of morbid
fears, and an imperturbable calm above the need of earthly friends or
comfort or happiness; it plants the feet upon that path of nature along
which a man may go strongly, consoled in solitude by a god-like sense of
self-reliance. This immutable confidence is the essential power of
stoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame
personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of
adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance,
its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to
self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is medical
to their timidity.
And so in the hour of my bereavement its voice inspired to resistance
like a bugle sounding the advance; its echoes rang with the assurance
that man was not made to be the worm of Eden, darkly creeping in the
dust, but rather its noblest creature, with the light crowning his head
and the winds tossing his hair. And then its strong simplicity, so
masculine and unemotional, was grateful to one now finally dismated, and
so cruelly handled as to have, it seemed, no use for a heart any more.
Better let feeling die than be betrayed by diffidence into the denial of
its true allegiance, or into expressions of the inner life false and wry
as the strange laughter which the doomed suitors in Ithaca could not
control. Though it stifled feeling, the creed of Cleanthes exalted the
intellect, which was all that now remained to me unimpaired; surely it
was the appointed rule for one henceforth to be severed from the
passions and enthusiasms through which humanity errs and is happy.
"The world," the wise Stoic seemed to say, "is twofold in its nature.
Some things may be changed by man, others are by his utmost effort
immutable. God has implanted in you a right reason by which, when it is
well trained, you can infallibly distinguish between the two, avoiding
thus all unworthy fretfulness and all idle kicking against the pricks.
Therefore he has made you for happiness; for the joy of men is an
achievement; and their misery in the coveting of the unattainable end.
If you would fulfil his benevolent design, seek only what has been
placed in your power, frankly resigning all that lies beyond; but be
ever difficult in renunciation; test and sound well every issue, lest
you leave a permitted good undone, than which nothing is a greater sin.
To be loyal, to be contented, to acquiesce in all things save only in
ameliorable evil, this is to live according to nature, which is God's
administration. If you are assiduous in careful choosing, you will learn
at last to make a right use of every event; you will be harassed no
more by vain desire or unreasoning aversion, but will become God's
coadjutor and be always of his mind. So, when external things have
ceased to trouble your spirit, you will no longer be a competitor for
vanities; but, enfranchised from all solicitude, you will have discarded
envy and conceit and intolerance, which are the ill fruits of that vain
rivalry. You will neither cringe before power nor covet great place, for
alike from inordinate affection and from the fear of pain or death you
will be free. Disenamoured of mundane things, you will live simply and
unperturbed, in kindness and cheerfulness and in gratitude to
Providence. Life will be to you as a feast or solemnity, and when it
comes to a close, you will rise up saying, 'I have been well and nobly
entertained, it is fit that I give place to another guest.'"
The strength and mastery thus promised raised my dejected spirits, as
the words of a new and sanguine physician may hearten one who had long
lain stricken yet now dares to hope for the day of recovery. This was a
law which did not denounce the world as illusion or enjoin a cloistral
seclusion upon the mind, but rather proposed each and every appearance
as a touchstone on which the quality of personality should be
unceasingly tried. By the constant application of a high standard to
life, it seemed to implant an incorrupt seed of manliness, and to create
in its disciples that saner mood which holds in equal aversion a
Heliogabalus and a Simeon Stylites. So persuaded, I could join with the
fervour of a neophyte in the Stoic's profession: "Good and evil are in
choice alone, and there is no cause of sorrowing save in my own errant
and wilful desires. When these shall have been overcome, I shall possess
my soul in tranquillity, vexing myself in nowise if, in the world's
illusive good, all men have the advantage over me. For all outward
things I will bear with equal mind, even chains or insults or great
pain, ashamed of this only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the
servitude of care. Let others boast of material goods; mine is the
privilege of not needing these or stooping to their control. I will
have but a temperate desire of things open to choice, as they are good
and present, and the tempter shall find no hold for his hands by which
to draw me astray. I will be content with any sojourn or any company,
for there is none, howsoever perilous, which may not prove and
strengthen the defences of my soul. For I have built an impregnable
citadel whence, if only I am true to myself, I can repel assaults from
the four quarters of heaven. Who shall console one lifted above the
range of grief, whom neither privation nor insolence can annoy? for he
has peace as an inalienable possession, and by no earthly tyranny shall
be perturbed. Bearing serenely all natural impediments to action,
trespassing beyond no eternal landmark, by no foolishness provoked, he
shall become a spectator and interpreter of God's works; he shall ripen
to the harvest in the sunshine and wait tranquilly for the sickle,
knowing that corn is only sown that it may be reaped, and man only born
to die."
The mere repetition of these words, so instinct with the spirit of old
Roman fortitude, roused me to a more immediate resolution than any
other form of solace. There are times when a splendour of exaggeration
is the best foil to truth. The Roman's pride is the best corrective to
the earthward bias of the diffident; by its excess of an opposite defect
it drives us soonest into the mean of a simple and manly confidence. It
is better for us first to repeat, "Dare to look up to God and say: Make
use of me for the future as Thou wilt, I am of the same mind, I am equal
with Thee.... Lead me whither Thou wilt," than to dwell upon such words
as these: "It is altogether necessary that thou have a true contempt for
thyself if thou desire to prevail against flesh and blood"--or these:
"If I abase myself ... and grind myself to the dust which I am, Thy
grace will be favourable to me, and Thy light near unto my head.... By
seeking Thee alone and purely loving Thee I have found both myself and
Thee, and by that love have more deeply reduced myself to nothing."
This supreme abnegation may leave the saint unharmed, but it is ill
fitted for those who droop already with the malady of dejection. The
divine wisdom which knows the secrets of all hearts and their
necessities infinitely various, shall exact obedience according to no
adamantine law: it loves not the jots and tittles of formalism, nor the
pretensions of those who would cast all things in one mould. From those
made perfect, from the saints whose links with earth are almost severed,
whose sight begins to pierce gross matter through, it may accept
prostration and endless contrite tears, knowing that to these, upon the
very verge of illumination, the forms of slavery have lost their
vileness. But to those who are still of earth and can but conceive God's
fatherhood according to earthly similitudes, it will not ordain a prone
obeisance. Such it will require to stand erect even in contrition, in
that posture which is the privilege of sons. We who are unperfected
affront God supposing him pleased with the prostration of his children.
It is the ignorance of a feudal age that ascribes to him a Byzantine
love of adulation; but that age is no more, and he disserves the divine
majesty who imputes to it a liking for the _esprit d'antichambre_.
I did not need to dwell upon my weakness and misery but rather upon the
grandeur of humanity, whose kinship and collaboration God himself does
not reject. The Stoic phase was a useful stage on the road of
convalescence, and the majestic words of Epictetus more helpful to a
manlier bearing than the confessions of the saintliest souls. If, as is
not to be doubted, there are others who seek an issue from the same dark
region where I wandered, I do not fear to point them to the Stoic way,
which like a narrow gorge cold with perpetual shadow is yet their
shortest path upward to the high slopes lit with sunlight. Let them
enter it without fear and endure its shadows a while, for by other ways
they will fetch a longer compass and come later to their release.
But when some interval had passed I became aware that this cold ideal
was not the end, and that out of the gall of austerity sweetness should
yet come forth. Wise men have said that all great systems of ethics
meet upon a higher plane, as the branches of forest trees rustle
together in the breeze; for though in the dark earth their roots creep
apart, their summits are joined in the freedom of clear air. As I now
struck inland from the iron shores of shipwreck, my heart warmed to a
brighter and softer landscape, and with Landor I began to wish that I
might walk with Epicurus on the right hand and Epictetus on the left.
With a later thinker I reflected that if the Stoic knew more of the
faith and hope of Christianity, the Epicurean came nearer to its
charity. For it is true that Stoicism commands admiration rather than
love. It was indeed too harsh a saying that "the ruggedness of the Stoic
is only a silly affectation of being a god, to wind himself up by
pulleys to an insensibility of suffering": that is the judgment of the
bluff partisan, so shocked by the adversary's opinions that he feels
absolved from any effort to understand them. But even those who in
extremity have been roused to new valour by the precepts as by a Tyrtaean
ode, for all the gratitude which they owe, will not impute to their
deliverers an inhuman perfection. The Stoic does in truth wear a
semblance of academic conceit, as though related to God not as a child
to its father, but as a junior to a senior colleague. And with all its
sufficiency, his philosophy seems too Fabian in its counsels; it is
always withdrawing, passing by on the other side, avoiding battle--so
that as a preparation for the uttermost ordeal it will often prove
inferior to the reckless pugnacity of a narrow zealot.
Then, too, it acts like a frost not merely upon personal, but upon
national ambition, and so keeps the wellspring from the root. Its
assumption of a superhuman fortitude accords but ill with scientific
truth, for if with one bound every man may become as God, he will
despise that infinitely slow upward progression which is the only real
advance. But, above all, it lives estranged from tenderness, in which
alone at certain hours of torment the distracted mind finds God's face
reflected. It preaches renunciation of all vain aversions and desires;
but it repels sweet impulses that are not vain. By exalting apathy in
regard to personal suffering, it becomes insensible to others' pain
also. In the conviction that appeals for sympathy are avowals of
unworthiness, it will have no part in the love of comrades, and it never
discovered the truth that the strength and the compassion of the Divine
are one perfection.
There is a favourite mediaeval legend depicted in one of the windows of
the cathedral at Bourges, which exposes in a characteristic fashion this
weakness of the Stoic's creed. The Evangelist St John, when at Ephesus,
remarked in the forum the philosopher Cratinus giving a lesson of
abnegation to certain rich young men. At the teacher's bidding the
youths had converted all their wealth into precious stones, and these
they were now bidden crush to dust with a heavy hammer in the presence
of the assembled people, that so they might make public profession of
their contempt for riches. But St John was angered at so wasteful a
renunciation. "It is written," he said, "that whoso would be perfect
should not destroy his possessions, but sell them, and give the proceeds
to the poor." "If your master is the true God," replied Cratinus
scornfully, "restore these gems again to their original form, and then
they shall be bestowed according to your desire." St John prayed, and
the precious stones lay there once more perfect in all their brilliance
and splendour. The moral of the old tale is clear--that all virtue
without charity is nothing worth; and that of virtue without charity,
the Stoic's cold renunciation is the chief type and ensample.
The insight into this higher truth did not come by inspiration, but was
gradually imparted during long summer days, when I wandered from dawn to
dark among the fields and woods. Hoping at first no more than to tire
the mind with the body and so win a whole repose, I became by degrees
receptive of a new learning from nature, which created new sympathies
and kindled fresh ambitions. Naturally I again read Wordsworth, and now
for the first time since childhood I knew what joys intimacy brings. I
was one of a brotherhood, and wherever I went was sure of a friendly
salutation. Things that grew in silence became my friends; I was with
them at all hours, in light and shadow, in warmth and cold, watching
their gracious and responsive existences, which reject no good gift, but
radiantly grow towards the light while it endures. Insensibly the spirit
of this gentle expansive life was infused within me, until the heart
which I had deemed useless and outworn, began to open like a flower
scathed by frost, at the full coming of spring. The plants and trees
were human to me, the brooks spoke with articulate voice; by that
ancient witchery of animism, old as the relationship of man and nature,
I was put to school again: until at last, absorbed in the vicissitudes
of small things and surrendering reason to a host of pathetic fallacies,
I was taught the great secret that life may not be centred in itself,
but in the going out of the heart is wisdom. And as among human friends
there are some to whom a man is bound by deeper and tenderer links than
to the rest, so it is with these other friends which have no language,
but only the wild-wood power of growing about the heart. Among their
gracious company each man will discover his own affinity, and having
found it will look on the rest of nature with brighter eyes. Some learn
the great lessons from mountains, lakes, and sounding cataracts; others
from broad rivers peacefully flowing to the sea. To me there spoke no
such romantic voices. My wanderings led me through a country of simple
rural charm, and the friends that became dearest to me were just our
English elms.
Who but the solitary, artists alone excepted, understand the full charm
of elms in an English landscape? To us there is an especial appeal in
their loneliness, as they range apart along the hedgerows, embayed in
blue air and sunlight which do but play upon the fringe of your huddling
forest. See them on a breezy August morning across a tawny corn-field,
printing their dark feathery contours on a blue sky and holding the
shadows to their bosoms; or on a June evening get them between you and
the setting sun, and mark the droop and poise of the upper foliage
fretted black upon a ground of red fire. Here are no cones or
hemispheres, or shapeless bulks of green, but living beings of
articulated form, clothed in verdure as with the fine-wrought drapery
that enhances rather than conceals the beauty of the statue.
Or at a still later hour, over against the harvest moon, see them rise
congruous with the gentle night, casting round them not palls of ominous
gloom, but clear translucent shadows sifted through traceries of leafage
which do but veil the light. And what variety of form and structure
sunders them from other trees, what irregular persuasive grace. Some are
tall and straight, springing like fountains arrested in the moment when
they turn to fall; others bend oblique without one perpendicular line,
every branch by some subtle instinct evading the hard angles of
earth-measurement as unmeet for that which frames the sky; others again
spread to all the quarters of heaven their vast umbrageous arms. No
trees are so companionable as the elms to the red-roofed homestead which
nestles at their feet and is glad for them. Seen from a distance, how
delightful is this association, how delicate the contrast of tile and
leaf and timbered barn, each lending some complement to the other's
fairest imperfection. Perhaps there will be a whole line of distinct
trees, and then you will see as it were a cliff-side of verdure in
which, beneath the billowy curves of lit foliage, there open caverns and
cool deeps of shadow fit for a Dryad's rest.
To know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and
does not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of
the beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore.
Yet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days,
and painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the
rare flush that lights up the pine-stem. Its leaves are rough and of no
brilliance; its bark is rugged also. But in life the familiar guardian
of home meadows, it has stood by our fathers' landmarks from generation
to generation, and when fallen and hewn and stacked it sheds a
fragrance which, wherever perceived in after years, brings back memories
of wanderings in deep lanes and of the great dim barns where we played
in childhood. In the dull winter days when only yews and cypresses wear
their leaves, I sometimes wander to a place whose walls are hung with
the works of many a seer and lover of elms; there seated before a few
small frames I give them thanks for having read the dear trees truly,
and glorified a close and barren gallery with all the breezes and
colours of the fields: I am beyond all noise and murkiness, walking in
the peace and spaciousness of unsullied air.
To a mind now happily reverted to the primitive confidence in souls
everywhere indwelling and creating sympathies between all things, the
bonds of kinship between man and nature were drawn ever closer, and it
seemed a wholly natural belief that the changes of the visible universe,
affecting things which lived an almost personal existence, should be
instinct with the deeper meaning of events in the drama of human
existence.
Like the every-day life of men with its imperceptible attritions was the
insensible growth and decay of things; as the tumult of his emotions
were the storms and catastrophes that convulse the face of nature. The
movement never ceased; the transforming power was never wearied; the
spectator had but to give rapt attention, to be carried beyond his poor
solicitudes to a participation in elemental processes of change in which
the fates of humanity were mysteriously involved. The thought of this
indissoluble union kept alive the sense of brotherhood within me, of
responsibility in life, of interest in all that happens; and whether it
was the daily contraction of a pond in drought, or a battle of ants by
the wayside, or the first tinge of autumn upon the woods, all was
ennobled by symbolic relationships to man's experience, which in the
unceasing flow of their perception were lustral to a solitary heart,
without them choked and stagnant.