This last inactive part shrinks every day. Nor is this beca_The Buried Temple

Produced by Al Haines

The Buried Temple

Maurice Maeterlinck

Translated by Alfred Sutro

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1

Published in April 1902

Reprinted:--

POCKET EDITION, March 1911

November 1911

July 1919

December 1921

October 1924

Twenty first Thousand

Printed in Great Britain

NOTE

Of the five essays in this volume, two only, those on "The Past" and

"Luck," were written in 1901. The others, "The Mystery of Justice,"

"The Evolution of Mystery," and "The Kingdom of Matter," are anterior

to "The Life of the Bee," and appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ in

1899 and 1900. The essay on "The Past" appeared in the March number of

the _Fortnightly Review_ and of the New York _Independent_; and parts

of "The Mystery of Justice" in this last journal and _Harper's

Magazine_. The author's thanks are due to Messrs. Chapman & Hall,

Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and the proprietors of _The Independent_ for

their permission to republish.

CONTENTS

I. THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE

II. THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY

III. THE KINGDOM OF MATTER

IV. THE PAST

V. LUCK

THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE

I speak, for those who do not believe in the existence of a unique,

all-powerful, infallible Judge, for ever intent on our thoughts, our

feelings and actions, maintaining justice in this world and completing

it in the next. And if there be no Judge, what justice is there? None

other than that which men have made for themselves by their laws and

tribunals, as also in the social relations that no definite judgment

governs? Is there nothing above this human justice, whose sanction is

rarely other than the opinion, the confidence or mistrust, the approval

or disapproval, of our fellows? Is this capable of explaining or

accounting for all that seems so inexplicable to us in the morality of

the universe, that we at times feel almost compelled to believe an

intelligent Judge must exist? When we deceive or overcome our

neighbour, have we deceived or overcome all the forces of justice? Are

all things definitely settled then, and may we go boldly on: or is

there a graver, deeper justice, one less visible perhaps, but less

subject to error; one that is more universal, and mightier?

That such a justice exists we all of us know, for we all have felt its

irresistible power. We are well aware that it covers the whole of our

life, and that at its centre there reigns an intelligence which never

deceives itself, which none can deceive. But where shall we place it,

now that we have torn it down from the skies? Where does it weigh good

and evil, happiness and disaster? Whence does it issue to deal out

reward and punishment? These are questions that we do not often ask

ourselves, but they have their importance. The nature of justice, and

all our morality, depend on the answer; and it cannot be fruitless

therefore to inquire how that great idea of mystic and sovereign

justice, which has undergone more than one transformation since history

began, is being received to-day in the mind and the heart of man. And

is this mystery not the loftiest, the most passionately interesting, of

all that remain to us: does it not intertwine with most of the others?

Do its vacillations not stir us to the very depths of our soul? The

great bulk of mankind perhaps know nothing of these vacillations and

changes, but for the evolution of thought it suffices that the eyes of

the few should see; and when the clear consciousness of these has

become aware of the transformation, its influence will gradually attain

the general morality of men.

In these pages we shall naturally have much to say of social justice:

of the justice, in other words, that we mutually extend to each other

through life; but we shall leave on one side legal or positive justice,

which is merely the organisation of one side of social justice. We

shall occupy ourselves above all with that vague but inevitable

justice, intangible and yet so effective, which accompanies and sets

its seal upon every action of our life; which approves or disapproves,

rewards or punishes. Does this come from without? Does an inflexible,

undeceivable moral principle exist, independent of man, in the universe

and in things? Is there, in a word, a justice that might be called

mystic? Or does it issue wholly from man; is it inward even though it

act from without; and is the only justice therefore psychologic? These

two terms, mystic and psychologic justice, comprehend, more or less,

all the different forms of justice, superior to the social, that would

appear to exist to-day.

It is scarcely conceivable that any one who has forsaken the easy, but

artificially illumined, paths of positive religion, can still believe

in the existence of a physical justice arising from moral causes,

whether its manifestations assume the form of heredity or disease, of

geologic, atmospheric, or other phenomena. However eager his desire

for illusion or mystery, this is a truth he is bound to recognise from

the moment he begins earnestly and sincerely to study his own personal

experience, or to observe the external ills which, in this world of

ours, fall indiscriminately on good and wicked alike. Neither the

earth nor the sky, neither nature nor matter, neither air nor any force

known to man (save only those that are in him) betrays the slightest

regard for justice, or the remotest connection with our morality, our

thoughts or intentions. Between the external world and our actions

there exist only the simple and essentially non-moral relations of

cause and effect. If I am guilty of a certain excess or imprudence, I

incur a certain danger, and have to pay a corresponding debt to nature.

And as this imprudence or excess will generally have had an immoral

cause--or a cause that we call immoral because we have been compelled

to regulate our life according to the requirements of our health and

tranquillity--we cannot refrain from establishing a connection between

this immoral cause and the danger to which we have been exposed, or the

debt we have had to pay; and we are led once more to believe in the

justice of the universe, the prejudice which, of all those that we

cling to, has its root deepest in our heart. And in our eagerness to

restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact

that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our

excess or imprudence been--to use the terms of our infantine

vocabulary--heroic or innocent. If on an intensely cold day I throw

myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if,

seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of the

chill will be absolutely the same; and nothing on this earth or beneath

the sky--save only myself, or man if he be able--will enhance my

suffering because I have committed a crime, or relieve my pain because

my action was virtuous.

Let us consider another form of physical justice: heredity. There

again we find the same indifference to moral causes. And truly it were

a strange justice indeed that would throw upon the son, and even the

remote descendant, the burden of a fault committed by his father or his

ancestor. But human morality would raise no objection: man would not

protest. To him it would seem natural, magnificent, even fascinating.

It would indefinitely prolong his individuality, his consciousness and

existence; and from this point of view would accord with a number of

indisputable facts which prove that we are not wholly self-contained,

but connect, in more than one subtle, mysterious fashion, with all that

surrounds us in life, with all that precedes us, or follows.

And yet, true as this may be in certain cases, it is not true as

regards the justice of physical heredity, which is absolutely

indifferent to the moral causes of the deed whose consequences the

descendants have to bear. There is physical relation between the act

of the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequent

suffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whatever

the intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful.

And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical heredity

would appear to be very restricted. A father may have been guilty of a

hundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, a

persecutor of the innocent or despoiler of the wretched, without these

crimes leaving the slightest trace upon the organism of his children.

It is enough that he should have been careful to do nothing that might

injure his health.

So much for the justice of Nature as shown in physical heredity. Moral

heredity would appear to be governed by similar principles; but as it

deals with modifications of the mind and character infinitely more

complex and more elusive, its manifestations are less striking, and its

results less certain. Pathology is the only region which admits of its

definite observation and study; and there we observe it to be merely

the spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essential

principle: moral heredity being only a sequel, and revealing in its

elementary stage the same indifference to real justice, and the same

blindness. Whatever the moral cause of the ancestor's drunkenness or

debauch, the same punishment may be meted out in mind and body to the

descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemish

will almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will be

attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little

whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal

instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement:

the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent

has followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are less

perverse than hundreds of other offences that Nature never dreams of

punishing. And this penalty, moreover, is inflicted blindly, not the

slightest heed being paid to the motives underlying the actions,

motives that may have been excusable perhaps, or indifferent, or

possibly even admirable.

It would be absurd, however, to imagine that drunkenness and debauchery

are the only agents in moral heredity. There are a thousand others,

all more or less unknown. Certain moral qualities appear to be

transmitted as readily as though they were physical. In one race, for

instance, we will almost constantly discover certain virtues which have

probably been acquired. But who shall say how much is due to heredity,

and how much to environment and example? The problem becomes so

complicated, the facts so contradictory, that it is impossible, amidst

the mass of innumerable causes, to follow the track of one particular

cause to the end. Let it suffice to say that in the only clear,

striking, definitive cases where an intentional justice could have

revealed itself in physical or moral heredity, no trace of justice is

found. And if we do not find it in these, we are surely far less

likely to find it in others.

We may affirm therefore that not above us, or around us, or beneath us,

neither in this life nor in our other life which is that of our

children, is the least trace to be found of an intentional justice.

But, in the course of adapting ourselves to the laws of life, we have

naturally been led to credit with our own moral ideas those principles

of causality that we encounter most frequently; and we have in this

fashion created a very plausible semblance of effective justice, which

rewards or punishes most of our actions in the degree that they

approach, or deviate from, certain laws that are essential for the

preservation of the race. It is evident that if I sow my field, I

shall have an infinitely better prospect of reaping a harvest the

following summer than my neighbour, who has neglected to sow his,

preferring a life of dissipation and idleness. In this case,

therefore, work obtains its admirable and certain reward; and as work

is essential for the preservation of our existence, we have declared it

to be the moral act of all acts, the first of all our duties. Such

instances might be indefinitely multiplied. If I bring up my children

well, if I am good and just to those round about me, if I am honest,

active, prudent, wise, and sincere in all my dealings, I shall have a

better chance of meeting with filial piety, with respect and affection,

a better chance of knowing moments of happiness, than the man whose

actions and conduct have been the very reverse of mine. Let us not,

however, lose sight of the fact that my neighbour, who is, let us say,

a most diligent and thrifty man, might be prevented by the most

admirable of reasons--such as an illness caught while nursing his wife

or his friend--from sowing his ground at the proper time, and that he

also would reap no harvest. _Mutatis mutandis_, similar results would

follow in the other instances I have mentioned. The cases, however,

are exceptional where a worthy or respectable reason will hinder the

accomplishment of a duty; and we shall find, as a rule, that sufficient

harmony exists between cause and effect, between the exaction of the

necessary law and the result of the complying effort, to enable our

casuistry to keep alive within us the idea of the justice of things.

This idea, however, deeply ingrained though it be in the hearts and

minds of the least credulous and least mystic of men, can surely not be

beneficial. It reduces our morality to the level of the insect which,

perched on a falling rock, imagines that the rock has been set in

motion on its own special behalf. Are we wise in allowing certain

errors and falsehoods to remain active within us? There may have been

some in the past which, for a moment, were helpful; but, this moment

over, men found themselves once again face to face with the truth, and

the sacrifice had only been delayed. Why wait till the illusion or

falsehood which appeared to do good begins to do actual harm, or, if it

do no harm, at least retards the perfect understanding that should

obtain between the deeply felt reality and our manner of interpreting

and accepting it? What were the divine right of kings, the

infallibility of the Church, the belief in rewards beyond the grave,

but illusions whose sacrifice reason deferred too long? Nor was

anything gained by this dilatoriness beyond a few sterile hopes, a

little deceptive peace, a few consolations that at times were

disastrous. But many days had been lost; and we have no days to lose,

we who at last are seeking the truth, and find in its search an

all-sufficient reason for existence. Nor does anything retard us more

than the illusion which, though torn from its roots, we still permit to

linger among us; for this will display the most extraordinary activity

and be constantly changing its form.

But what does it matter, some will ask, whether man do the thing that

is just because he thinks God is watching; because he believes in a

kind of justice that pervades the universe; or for the simple reason

that to his conscience this thing seems just? It matters above all.

We have there three different men. The first, whom God is watching,

will do much that is not just, for every god whom man has hitherto

worshipped has decreed many unjust things. And the second will not

always act in the same way as the third, who is indeed the true man to

whom the moralist will turn, for he will survive both the others; and

to foretell how man will conduct himself in truth, which is his natural

element, is more interesting to the moralist than to watch his

behaviour when enmeshed in falsehood.

It may seem idle to those who do not believe in the existence of a

sovereign Judge to discuss so seriously this inadmissible idea of the

justice of things; and inadmissible it does indeed become when

presented thus in its true colours, as it were, pinned to the wall.

This, however, is not our way of regarding it in every-day life. When

we observe how disaster follows crime, how ruin at last overtakes

ill-gotten prosperity; when we witness the miserable end of the

debauchee, the short-lived triumph of iniquity, it is our constant

habit to confuse the physical effect with the moral cause; and however

little we may believe in the existence of a Judge, we nearly all of us

end by a more or less complete submission to a strange, vague faith in

the justice of things. And although our reason, our calm observation,

prove to us that this justice cannot exist, it is enough that an event

should take place which touches us somewhat more nearly, or that there

should be two or three curious coincidences, for conviction to fade in

our heart, if not in our mind. Notwithstanding all our reason and all

our experience, the merest trifle recalls to life within us the

ancestor who was convinced that the stars shone in their eternal places

for no other purpose than to predict or approve a wound he was to

inflict on his enemy upon the field of battle, a word he should speak

in the assembly of the chiefs, or an intrigue he would bring to a

successful issue in the women's quarters. We of to-day are no less

inclined to divinise our feelings for the benefit of our interests; the

only difference being that, the gods having no longer a name, our

methods are less sincere and less precise. When the Greeks, powerless

before Troy, felt the need of supernatural signal and support, they

went to Philoctetes, deprived him of Hercules' bow and arrows, and

abandoned him, ill, naked, and defenceless, on a desert island. This

was the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was the

command of the gods. And similarly do we, when some iniquity seems

expedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, of

humanity, of the fatherland. On the other hand, should a great

misfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and that

there are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and the

universe is at once repeopled with invisible judges. If, however, some

unexpected, disproportionate stroke of good fortune come to us, we are

quickly convinced that we must possess merits so carefully hidden as to

have escaped our own observation; and we are happier in their discovery

than at the windfall they have procured us.

"One has to pay for all things," we say. Yes, in the depths of our

heart, in all that pertains to man, justice exacts payment in the coin

of our personal happiness or sorrow. And without, in the universe that

enfolds us, there is also a reckoning; but here it is a different

paymaster who measures out happiness or sorrow. Other laws obtain;

there are other motives, other methods. It is no longer the justice of

the conscience that presides, but the logic of nature, which cares

nothing for our morality. Within us is a spirit that weighs only

intentions; without us, a power that only balances deeds. We try to

persuade ourselves that these two work hand in hand. But in reality,

though the spirit will often glance towards the power, this last is as

completely ignorant of the other's existence as is the man weighing

coals in Northern Europe of the existence of his fellow weighing

diamonds in South Africa. We are constantly intruding our sense of

justice into this non-moral logic; and herein lies the source of most

of our errors.

And further, what right have we to complain of the indifference of the

universe, what right to declare it incomprehensible, and monstrous?

Why this surprise at an injustice in which we ourselves take so active

a part? It is true that there is no trace of justice to be found in

disease, accident, or most of the hazards of external life, which fall

indiscriminately on the good and the wicked, the hero and traitor, the

poisoner and sister of charity. But we are far too eager to include

under the title "Justice of the Universe" many a flagrant act that is

exclusively human, and infinitely more common and more destructive than

disease, the hurricane, or fire. I do not allude to war; it might be

urged that we attribute this rather to the will of the people or kings

than to Nature. But poverty, for instance, which we still rank with

irremediable ills such as shipwreck or plague; poverty, with all its

crushing sorrows and transmitted degeneration--how often may this be

ascribed to the injustice of the elements, and how often to the

injustice of our social condition, which is the crowning injustice of

man? Need we, at the sight of unmerited wretchedness, look to the

skies for a reason, as though a flash of lightning had caused it? Need

we seek an impenetrable, unfathomable judge? Is this region not our

own; are we not here in the best explored, best known portion of our

dominion; and is it not we who organise misery, we who spread it

abroad, as arbitrarily, from the moral point of view, as fire and

disease scatter destruction or suffering? Is it reasonable that we

should wonder at the sea's indifference to the soul-state of its

victims, when we who have a soul, the pre-eminent organ of justice, pay

no heed whatever to the innocence of the countless thousands whom we

ourselves sacrifice, who are our wretched victims? We choose to regard

as beyond our control, as a force of fatality, a force that rests

entirely within our own hands. But does this excuse us? Truly we are

strange lovers of an ideal justice, we are strange judges! A judicial

error sends a thrill of horror from one end of the world to another;

but the error which condemns three-fourths of mankind to misery, an

error as purely human as that of any tribunal, is attributed by us to

some inaccessible, implacable power. If the child of some honest man

we know be born blind, imbecile, or deformed, we will seek everywhere,

even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some

God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor--a

calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of

degrading a creature's destiny--we do not dream of interrogating the

God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires.

Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas,

for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge.

Before we complain of Nature's indifference, or ask at her hands an

equity she does not possess, let us attack the iniquity that dwells in

the homes of men; and when this has been swept away, we shall find that

the part we assign to the injustice of fate will be less by fully

two-thirds. And the benefit to mankind would be far more considerable

than if it lay in our power to guide the storm or govern the heat and

the cold, to direct the course of disease or the avalanche, or contrive

that the sea should display an intelligent regard to our virtues and

secret intentions. For indeed the poor far exceed in number those who

fall victims to shipwreck or material accident, just as far more

disease is due to material wretchedness than to the caprice of our

organism, or to the hostility of the elements.

And for all that, we love justice. We live, it is true, in the midst

of a great injustice; but we have only recently acquired this

knowledge, and we still grope for a remedy. Injustice dates such a

long way back; the idea of God, of destiny, of Nature's mysterious

decrees, had been so closely and intimately associated with it, it is

still so deeply entangled with most of the unjust forces of the

universe, that it was but yesterday that we commenced the endeavour to

isolate such elements contained within it as are purely human. And if

we succeed; if we can distinguish them, and separate them for all time

from those upon which we have no power, justice will gain more than by

all that the researches of man have discovered hitherto. For indeed in

this social injustice of ours, it is not the human part that is capable

of arresting our passion for equity; it is the part that a great number

of men still attribute to a god, to a kind of fatality, or to imaginary

laws of Nature.

This last inactive part shrinks every day. Nor is this because the

mystery of justice is about to disappear. A mystery rarely disappears;

as a rule, it only shifts its ground. But it is often most important

and most desirable that we should bring about this change of abode. It

may be said that two or three such changes almost stand for the whole

progress of human thought: the dislodgment of two or three mysteries

from a place where they did harm, and their transference to a place

where they become inoffensive and capable of doing good. Sometimes

even, there is no need for the mystery to change its place; we have

only to identify it under another name. What was once called "the

gods," we now term "life." And if life be as inexplicable as were the

gods, we are at least the gainers to the extent that none has the right

to speak or do wrong in its name. The aim of human thought can

scarcely be to destroy mystery, or lessen it, for that seems

impossible. We may be sure that the same quantity of mystery will ever

enwrap the world, since it is the quality of the world, as of mystery,

to be infinite. But honest human thought will seek above all to

determine what are the veritable irreducible mysteries. It will

endeavour to strip them of all that does not belong to them, that is

not truly theirs, of the additions made by our errors, our fears, and

our falsehoods. And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will the

ocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mystery

of life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mystery

that has been called "the primitive accident," or the "perhaps

unknowable essence of reality."

Where had men conceived the mystery of justice to lodge? It pervaded

the world. At one moment it was supposed to rest in the hands of the

gods, at another it engulfed and mastered the gods themselves. It had

been imagined everywhere except in man. It had dwelt in the sky, it

had lurked behind rocks, it had governed the air and the sea, it had

peopled an inaccessible universe. Then at last we peered into its

imaginary retreats, we pressed close and examined; and its throne of

clouds tottered, it faded away; but at the very moment we believed it

had ceased to be, behold it reappeared, and raised its head once more

in the very depths of our heart; and yet another mystery had sought

refuge in man, and embodied itself in him. For it is in ourselves that

the mysteries we seek to destroy almost invariably find their last

shelter and their most fitting abode, the home which they had forsaken,

in the wildness of youth, to voyage through space; as it is in

ourselves that we must learn to meet and to question them. And truly

it is no less wonderful, no less inexplicable, that man should have in

his heart an immutable instinct of justice, than it was wonderful and

inexplicable that the gods should be just, or the forces of the

universe. It is as difficult to account for the essence of our memory,

our will, or intelligence, as it was to account for the memory, will,

or intelligence of the invisible powers or laws of Nature; and if, in

order to enhance our curiosity, we have need of the unknown or

unknowable; if, in order to maintain our ardour, we require mystery or

the infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown and

unknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed;

nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, or

lessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritable

mysteries. Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heart

of man. But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that is

certain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the one

that is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful one from

without. Mystery for mystery, let us no longer parley with the

messengers, but with the sovereign who sent them; no longer question

those feeble ones who silently vanish at our first inquiry, but rather

look into our heart, where are both question and answer; the answer

which it has forgotten, but, some day perhaps, shall remember.

Then we shall be able to solve more than one disconcerting problem as

to the distribution, often very equitable, of reward and punishment

among men. And by this we do not mean only the inward, moral reward

and punishment, but also the reward and punishment that are visible and

wholly material. There was some measure of reason in the belief held

by mankind from its very origin, that justice penetrates, animates as

it were, every object of this world in which we live. This belief has

not been explained away by the fact that our great moral laws have been

forcibly adapted to the great laws of life and matter. There is more

beyond. We cannot refer all things, in all circumstances, to a simple

relation of cause and effect between crime and punishment. There is

often a moral element also; and though events have not placed it there,

though it is we alone who have created it, it is not the less powerful

and real. Of a physical justice, properly so called, we deny the

existence; but besides the wholly inward psychologic justice, to which

we shall soon refer, there is also a psychologic justice which is in

constant communication with the physical world; and it is this justice

that we attribute to we know not what invisible and universal

principle. And while it is wrong to credit Nature with moral

intentions, and to allow our actions to be governed by fear of

punishment or hope of reward that she may have in store for us, this

does not imply that, even materially, there is no reward for good, or

punishment for evil. Such reward and punishment undoubtedly exist, but

they issue not from whence we imagine; and in believing that they come

from an inaccessible spot, that they master us, judge us, and

consequently dispense us from judging ourselves, we commit the most

dangerous of errors; for none has a greater influence upon our manner

of defending ourselves against misfortune, or of setting forth to

attempt the legitimate conquest of happiness.

Such justice as we actually discover in Nature does not issue from her,

but from ourselves, who have unconsciously placed it there, through

becoming one with events, animating them and adapting them to our uses.

Accident, disease, the thunderbolt, which strike to right or to left,

without apparent reason or warning, wholly indifferent as to what our

thoughts may be, are not the only elements in our life. There are

other, and far more frequent, cases when we have direct influence on

the things and persons around us, and invest these with our own

personality; cases when the forces of nature become the instruments of

our thoughts, which, when unjust, will make improper use of them,

thereby calling forth retaliation and inviting punishment and disaster.

But in Nature there is no moral reaction; for this emanates from our

own thoughts or the thoughts of other men. It is not in things, but in

us, that the justice of things resides. It is our moral condition that

modifies our conduct towards the external world; and if we find this

antagonistic, it is because we are at war with ourselves, with the

essential laws of our mind and our heart. The attitude of Nature

towards us is uninfluenced by the justice or injustice of our

intentions; and yet these will almost invariably govern our attitude

towards Nature. Here once more, as in the case of social justice, we

ascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible, eternal, fatal

principle, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say that justice,

heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to punish or

to avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish man, it

is human nature that rises in revolt, and human justice that avenges.

In a former essay I referred to Napoleon's three crowning acts of

injustice: the three celebrated crimes that were so fatally unjust to

his own fortune. The first was the murder of the Duc d'Enghien,

condemned by order, without trial or proof, and executed in the

trenches of Vincennes; an assassination that sowed insatiable hatred

and vengeance in the path of the guilty dictator. Then the detestable

intrigues whereby he lured the too trustful, easy-going Bourbons to

Bayonne, that he might rob them of their hereditary crown; and the

horrible war that ensued, a war that cost the lives of three hundred

thousand men, swallowed up all the morality and energy of the empire,

most of its prestige, almost all its convictions, almost all the

devotion it inspired, and engulfed its prosperous destiny. And finally

the frightful, unpardonable Russian campaign, wherein his fortune came

at last to utter shipwreck amid the ice of the Berezina and the

snow-bound Polish steppes.

"These prodigious catastrophes," I said, "had numberless causes; but

when we have slowly traced our way through all the more or less

unforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change in

Napoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, and

violence which this genius committed; when we have seen how

deliberately he brought disaster to his smiling fortune, may we not

almost believe that what we behold, standing erect at the very

fountain-head of calamity, is no other than the silent shadow of

misunderstood human justice? Human justice, wherein there is nothing

supernatural, nothing very mysterious, but built up of many thousand

very real little incidents, many thousand falsehoods, many thousand

little offences of which each one gave rise to a corresponding act of

retaliation--human justice, and not a power that suddenly, at some

tragic moment, leaps forth like Minerva of old, fully armed, from the

formidable, despotic brow of destiny. In all this there is only one

thing of mystery, and that is the eternal presence of human justice;

but we are aware that the nature of man is very mysterious. Let us in

the meanwhile ponder this mystery. It is the most certain of all, it

is the profoundest, it is the most helpful, it is the only one that

will never paralyse our energy for good And though that patient,

vigilant shadow be not as clearly defined in every life as it was in

Napoleon's, though justice be not always as active or as undeniable, we

shall none the less do wisely to study a case like this whenever

opportunity offers. It will at least give rise to doubt within us, it

will stimulate inquiry; and these things are worth far more than the

idle, short-sighted affirmation or denial that we so often permit

ourselves: for in all questions of this kind our endeavour should not

be to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to create a certain grave,

courageous respect for all that yet remains unexplained in the actions

of men, in their subjection to what appear to be general laws, and in

the results that ensue."

Let us now try to discover in what way this great mystery of justice

does truly and inevitably work itself out within us. The heart of him

who has committed an unjust act becomes the scene of ineffaceable

drama, the paramount drama of human nature; and it becomes the more

dangerous, and deadlier, in the degree of the man's greatness and

knowledge.

A Napoleon will say to himself, at such troubled moments, that the

morality of a great life cannot be as simple as that of an ordinary

one, and that an active, powerful will has rights which the feeble,

inert will cannot claim. He will hold that he may the more

legitimately sweep aside certain conscientious scruples, inasmuch as it

is not ignorance or weakness that causes him to disregard these, but

the fact that he views them from a standpoint higher than that of the

majority of men; and further, that his aim being great and glorious,

this passing deliberate callousness of his is therefore truly a victory

won by his strength and his intellect, since there can be no danger in

doing wrong when it is done by one who does it knowingly, and has his

very good reason. All this, however, does not for a moment delude that

which lies deepest within us. An act of injustice must always shake

the confidence a man had in himself and his destiny; at a given moment,

and that generally of the gravest, he has ceased to rely upon himself

alone; and this will not be forgotten, nor will he ever again be wholly

himself. He has confused, and probably corrupted, his fortune by the

introduction of strange powers. He has lost the exact sense of his

personality and of the force that is in him. He can no longer clearly

distinguish between what is his own and comes from himself, and what he

is constantly borrowing from the pernicious collaborators whom his

weakness has summoned. He has ceased to be the general who has none

but disciplined soldiers in the army of his thoughts; he becomes the

usurping chief around whom are only accomplices. He has forsworn the

dignity of the man who will have none of the glory at which his heart

can only smile as sadly as an ardent, unhappy lover will smile at a

faithless mistress.

He who is truly strong will examine with eager care the praise and

advantages that his actions have won for him, and will silently reject

whatever oversteps a certain line that he has drawn in his

consciousness. And the stronger he is, the more nearly will this line

approach the one that has already been drawn by the secret truth that

lies at the bottom of all things. An act of injustice is almost always

a confession of weakness; and very few such confessions are needed to

reveal to the enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul. He who

commits an unjust deed that he may gain some measure of glory, or

preserve the little glory he has, does but admit that what he desires

or what he possesses is beyond his deserving, and that the part he has

sought to play exceeds his powers of loyal fulfilment. And if,

notwithstanding all, he persist in his endeavour, his life will soon be

beset by falsehoods, errors, and phantoms.

And at last, after a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable

self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement

only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and

sustain us. For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only

our past that can come to us, in our moments of doubt, and say: "Since

you were able to do that thing, it shall lie in your power to do this

thing also. When that danger confronted you, when that terrible grief

laid you prostrate, you had faith in yourself, and you conquered. The

conditions to-day are the same; do you but preserve your faith in

yourself, and your star will be constant." But what reply shall we

make if our past can only whisper: "Your success has been solely due to

injustice and falsehood, wherefore it behoves you once more to deceive

and to lie"? No man cares to let his eyes rest on his acts of

disloyalty, weakness, or treachery; and all the events of bygone days

which we cannot contemplate calmly and peacefully, with satisfaction

and confidence, trouble and restrict the horizon which the days that

are not yet are forming far away. It is only a prolonged survey of the

past that can give to the eye the strength it needs in order to sound

the future.

No, it was not the inherent justice of things that punished Napoleon

for his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for our

own in a less startling, but not less painful, fashion. Nor was it an

unyielding, incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the very

vault of heaven." We are punished because our entire moral being, our

mind no less than our character, is incapable of living and acting

except in justice. Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we are

carried, as it were, into a planet of which we know nothing, where the

ground slips from under our feet, and all things disconcert us; for

while the humblest intellect feels itself at home in justice, and can

readily foretell the consequences of every just act, the most profound

and penetrating mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself

has created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue.

The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has

at heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be stranger

still should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes:

for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect,

creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same

time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient

barriers of instinct. The moment we cross the primitive frontier of

equity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to a

hundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels. If

justice be in us we may march along boldly, for there are certain

things to which the basest cannot be false; but if injustice possess us

we must beware of the justest of men, for there are things to which

even these cannot remain faithful. As our physical organism was

devised for existence in the atmosphere of our globe, so is our moral

organism devised for existence in justice. Every faculty craves for

it, and is more intimately bound up with it than with the laws of

gravitation, of light or heat; and to throw ourselves into injustice is

to plunge headlong into the hostile and the unknown. All that is in us

has been placed there with a view to justice; all things tend thither

and urge us towards it: whereas, when we harbour injustice, we battle

against our own strength; and at last, at the hour of inevitable

punishment, when, prostrate, weeping and penitent, we recognise that

events, the sky, the universe, the invisible are all in rebellion, all

justly in league against us, then may we truly say, not that these are,

or ever have been, just, but that we, notwithstanding ourselves, have

contrived to remain just even in our injustice.

We affirm that Nature is absolutely indifferent to our morality, and

that were this morality to command us to kill our neighbour, or to do

him the utmost possible harm, Nature would aid us in this no less than

in our endeavour to comfort or serve him. She as often would seem to

reward us for having made him suffer as for our kindness towards him.

Does this warrant the inference that Nature has no morality--using the

word in its most limited sense as meaning the logical, inevitable

subordination of the means to the accomplishment of a general mission?

This is a question to which we must not too hastily reply. We know

nothing of Nature's aim, or even whether she have an aim. We know

nothing of her consciousness, or whether she have a consciousness; of

her thoughts, or whether she think at all. It is with her deeds and

her manner of doing that we are solely concerned. And in these we find

the same contradiction between our morality and Nature's mode of action

as exists between our consciousness and the instincts that Nature has

planted within us. For this consciousness, though in ultimate analysis

due to her also, has nevertheless been formed by ourselves, and, basing

itself upon the loftiest human morality, offers an ever stronger

opposition to the desires of instinct. Were we to listen only to these

last, we should act in all things like Nature, which would invariably

seem to justify the triumph of the stronger, the victory of the least

scrupulous and best equipped; and this in the midst of the most

inexcusable wars, the most flagrant acts of injustice or cruelty. Our

one object would be our own personal triumph; nor should we pay the

least heed to the rights or sufferings of our victims, to their

innocence or beauty, moral or intellectual superiority. But, in that

case, why has Nature placed within us a consciousness and a sense of

justice that have prevented us from desiring those things that she

desires? Or is it we ourselves who have placed them there? Are we

capable of deriving from within us something that is not in Nature; are

we capable of giving abnormal development to a force that opposes her

force; and if we possess this power, must not Nature have reasons of

her own for permitting us to possess it? Why should there be only in

us, and nowhere else in the world, these two irreconcilable tendencies,

that in every man are incessantly at strife, and alternately

victorious? Would one have been dangerous without the other? Would it

have overstepped its goal, perhaps; would the desire for conquest,

unchecked by the sense of justice, have led to annihilation, as the

sense of justice without the desire for conquest might have lured us to

inertia? Which of these two tendencies is the more natural and

necessary, which is the narrower and which the vaster, which is

provisional and which eternal? Where shall we learn which one we

should combat and which one encourage? Ought we to conform to the law

that is incontestably the more general, or should we cherish in our

heart a law that is evidently exceptional? Are there circumstances

under which we have the right to go forth in search of the apparent

ideal of life? Is it our duty to follow the morality of the species or

race, which seems irresistible to us, being one of the visible sides of

Nature's obscure and unknown intentions; or is it essential that the

individual should maintain and develop within him a morality entirely

opposed to that of the race or species whereof he forms part?

The truth is that the question which confronts us here is only another

form of the one which lies at the root of evolutionary morality, and is

probably scientifically unsolvable. Evolutionary morality bases itself

on the justice of Nature--though it dare not speak out the word; on the

justice of Nature, which imposes upon each individual the good or evil

consequences of his own character and his own actions. But when, on

the other hand, it is necessary for evolutionary morality to justify

actions which, although intrinsically unjust, are necessary for the

prosperity of the species, it falls back upon what it reluctantly terms

Nature's indifference or injustice. Here we have two unknown aims,

that of humanity and that of Nature; and these, wrapped as they are in

a mystery that may some day perhaps pass away, would seem to be

irreconcilable in our mind. Essentially, all these questions resolve

themselves into one, which is of the utmost importance to our

contemporary morality. The race would appear to be becoming conscious,

prematurely it may be, and perhaps disastrously, not, we will say, of

its rights, for that problem is still in suspense, but of the fact that

morality does not enter into certain actions that go to make history.

This disquieting consciousness would seem to be slowly invading our

individual life. Thrice, and more or less in the course of one year,

has this question confronted us, and assumed vast proportions: in the

matter of America's crushing defeat of Spain (although here the issues

were confused, for the Spaniards, besides their present blunders, had

been guilty of so many acts of injustice in the past, that the problem

becomes very involved); in the case of an innocent man sacrificed to

the preponderating interests of his country; and in the iniquitous war

of the Transvaal. It is true that the phenomenon is not altogether

without precedent. Man has always endeavoured to justify his

injustice; and when human justice offered him no excuse or pretext, he

found in the will of the gods a law superior to the justice of man.

But our excuse or pretext of to-day is fraught with the more peril to

our morality inasmuch as it reposes on a law, or at least a habit, of

Nature, that is far more real, more incontestable and universal than

the will of an ephemeral and local god.