experiment--and this it will quickly do when the danger becomes more
acute; nay, for all we know, the expedient may have already been found,
and, entirely unsuspected of us, be already transforming part of our
destinies--until such time, while bound to act in external matters as
though our brothers' salvation depended entirely on our exertions, it
is open to us, no less than to the sages of old, to retire occasionally
within ourselves. We in our turn shall perhaps find there "one of
those things" of which the contemplation shall suffice to bring us
instantaneous enjoyment, if not of the perfect calm, at least of an
indestructible hope. Though nature appear unjust, though nothing
authorise us to declare that a superior power, or the intellect of the
universe, rewards or punishes, here below or elsewhere, in accordance
with the laws of our consciousness or with other laws that we shall
some day admit; and, finally, though between man and man, in other
words, in our relations with our fellows, our admirable desire for
equity translate itself into a justice that is always incomplete, at
the mercy of every error of reason, of every ambush laid by personal
interest, and of all the evil habits of a social condition that still
is sub-human, it is none the less certain that an image of that
invisible and incorruptible justice, which we have vainly sought in the
sky or the universe, reposes in the depths of the moral life of every
man. And though its method of action be such as to cause it to pass
unperceived of most of our fellows, often even of our own
consciousness, though all that it does be hidden and intangible, it is
none the less profoundly human and profoundly real. It would seem to
hear, to examine, all that we say and think and strive for in our
exterior life; and if it find a little sincerity beneath, a little
earnest desire for good, it will transform these into moral forces that
shall extend and illumine our inner life, and help us to better
thoughts, better speech, better endeavour in the time to come. It will
not add to, or take from, our wealth; it will bring no immunity from
disease or from lightning; it will not prolong by one hour the life of
the being we cherish; but if we have learned to reflect and to love,
if, in other words, heart and brain have both done their duty, it will
establish in heart and brain a contentment that, though perhaps
stripped of illusion, shall still be inexhaustible and noble; it will
confer a dignity of existence, and an intelligence, that shall suffice
to sustain our life after the loss of our wealth, after the stroke of
disease or of lightning has fallen, after the loved one has for ever
quitted our arms. A good thought or deed brings a reward to our heart
that it cannot, in the absence of an universal judge of nature, extend
to the things around. It endeavours to create within us the happiness
it is unable to produce in our material life. Denied all external
outlet, it fills our soul the more. It prepares the space that soon
shall be required by our developing intellect, our expanding peace and
love. Helpless against the laws of nature, it is all-powerful over
those that govern the happy equilibrium of human consciousness. And
this is true of every stage of thought, of every class of action. A
vast distance might seem to divide the labourer who brings up his
children honourably, lives his humble life and honourably does the work
that falls to his lot, from the man who steadfastly perseveres in moral
heroism; but each of these is acting and living on the same plane as
the other, and the same loyal, consoling region receives them both.
And though it be certain that what we say and do must largely influence
our material happiness, yet, in ultimate analysis, it is only by means
of the spiritual organs that even material happiness can be fully and
permanently enjoyed. Hence the preponderating importance of thought.
But of supreme importance, from the point of view of the reception we
shall offer to the joys and sorrows of life, is the character, the
frame of mind, the moral condition, that the things we have said and
done and thought will have created within us. Here is evidence of
admirable justice; and the intimate happiness that our moral being
derives from the constant striving of the mind and heart for good,
becomes the more comprehensible when we realise that this happiness is
only the surface of the goodly thought or feeling that is shining
within our heart. Here may we indeed find that intelligent, moral bond
between cause and effect that we have vainly sought in the external
world; here, in moral matters, reigning over the good and evil that are
warring in the depths of our consciousness, may we in truth discover a
justice exactly similar to the one which we could desire to recognise
in physical matters. But whence do we derive this desire if not from
the justice within us; and is it not because this justice is so mighty
and active in our heart that we are reluctant to believe in its
non-existence in the universe?
35
We have spoken at great length of justice; but is it not the great
mystery of man, the one that tends to take the place of most of the
spiritual mysteries that govern his destiny? It has dethroned more
than one god, more than one nameless power. It is the star evolved
from the nebulous mass of our instincts and our incomprehensible life.
It is not the word of the enigma; and when, in the fulness of time, it
shall become clearer to us, and shall truly reign all over the earth,
there will come to us no greater knowledge of what we are, or why we
are, whence we come or whither we go; but we shall at least have obeyed
the first word of the enigma, and shall proceed, with a freer spirit
and a more tranquil heart, to the search for its last secret.
Finally, it comprises all the human virtues; and none but itself can
offer the welcoming smile whereby these are ennobled and purified, none
but itself can accord them the right to penetrate deep into our moral
life. For every virtue must be maleficent and steeped in artifice that
cannot support the fixed and eager regard of justice. And so do we
find it too at the heart of our every ideal. It is at the centre of
our love of truth, at the centre of our love of beauty. It is kindness
and pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the acts
of justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive that
justice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies before
him, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, but
that they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighbouring destinies,
beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond what
he seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond his
doubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of the
men, his brothers.
II
THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY
It is not unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest of life,
all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the destiny of man, reposes
almost entirely in the mystery that surrounds us; in the two mysteries,
it may be, that are mightiest, most dreadful of all--fatality and
death. And indeed there are many whom the fatigue induced in their
minds by the natural uncertainties of science has almost compelled to
accept this belief. I too believe, though in a somewhat different
fashion, that the study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest to
which the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been the
occupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy and
literature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portray
the trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life. And
we find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth of
their insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded with
the respect in which they held all they did not know, with the dignity
that their mind or imagination was able to confer on the sum of
unknowable forces. Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we have
being gives life a meaning and grandeur which must of necessity be
absent if we persist in considering only the things that are known to
us; if we too readily incline to believe that these must greatly
transcend in importance the things that we know not yet.
2
It behoves every man to frame for himself his own general conception of
the world. On this conception reposes his whole human and moral
existence. But this general conception of the world, when closely
examined, is truly no more than a general conception of the unknown.
And we must be careful; we have not the right, when ideas so vast
confront us, ideas the results of which are so highly important, to
select the one which seems most magnificent to us, most beautiful, or
most attractive. The duty lies on us to choose the idea which seems
truest, or rather the only one which seems true; for I decline to
believe that we can sincerely hesitate between the truth that is only
apparent and the one that is real. The moment must always come when we
feel that one of these two is possessed of more truth than the other.
And to this truth we should cling: in our actions, our words, and our
thoughts; in our art, in our science, in the life of our feelings and
intellect. Its definition, perhaps, may elude us. It may possibly
bring not one grain of reassuring conviction. Nay, essentially,
perhaps, it may be but the merest impression, though profounder and
more sincere than any previous impression. These things do not matter.
It is not imperative that the truth we have chosen should be
unimpeachable or of absolute certainty. There is already great gain in
our having been brought to experience that the truths we had loved
before did not accord with reality or with faithful experience of life;
and we have every reason, therefore, to cherish our truth with
heartiest gratitude until its own turn shall come to experience the
fate it inflicted on its predecessor. The great mischief, the one
which destroys our moral existence and threatens the integrity of our
mind and our character, is not that we should deceive ourselves and
love an uncertain truth, but that we should remain constant to one in
which we no longer wholly believe.
3
If we sought nothing more than to invest our conception of the unknown
with the utmost possible grandeur and tragedy, magnificence and might,
there would be no need of such restrictions. From many points of view,
doubtless, the most beautiful, most touching, most religious attitude
in face of mystery is silence, and prayer, and fearful acceptance.
When this immense, irresistible force confronts us--this inscrutable,
ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignly
intelligent, and, for all we know, even personal--must it not, at first
sight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission,
trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot a
patient, laborious investigation? But is the choice possible to us;
have we still the right to choose? The beauty or dignity of the
attitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment. It is truth
and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all
things--how much more when mystery confronts us! In the past, the
prostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because of
what, in the past, seemed to be true. We have acquired no fresh
certitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the past
has ceased to be true. We have not bridged the unknown; but still,
though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; and
it is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to be
once more assumed by us. For although it has not, perhaps, been
incontrovertibly proved that the unknown is neither vigilant nor
personal, neither sovereignly intelligent nor sovereignly just, or that
it possesses none of the passions, intentions, virtues and vices of
man, it is still incomparably more probable that the unknown is
entirely indifferent to all that appears of supreme importance in this
life of ours. It is incomparably more probable that if, in the vast
and eternal scheme of the unknown, a minute and ephemeral place be
reserved for man, his actions, be he the strongest or weakest, the best
or the worst of men, will be as unimportant there as the movements of
the obscurest geological cell in the history of ocean or continent.
Though it may not have been irrefutably shown that the infinite and
invisible are not for ever hovering round us, dealing out sorrow or joy
in accordance with our good or evil intentions, guiding our destiny
step by step, and preparing, with the help of innumerable forces, the
incomprehensible but eternal law that governs the accidents of our
birth, our future, our death, and our life beyond the tomb, it is still
incomparably more probable that the invisible and infinite, intervene
as they may at every moment in our life, enter therein only as
stupendous, blind, indifferent elements; and that though they pass over
us, in us, penetrate into our being, and inspire and mould our life,
they are as careless of our individual existence as air, water, or
light. And the whole of our conscious life, the life that forms our
one certitude, that is our one fixed point in time and space, rests
upon "incomparable probabilities" of this nature; but rarely are they
as "incomparable" as these.
4
The hour when a lofty conviction forsakes us should never be one of
regret. If a belief we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within
us; if we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, this is
proof of vitality, progress, of our marching steadily onwards, and
making good use of all that lies to our hand. We should rejoice at the
knowledge that the thought which so long has sustained us is proved
incapable now of even sustaining itself. And though we have nothing to
put in the place of the spring that lies broken, there need still be no
cause for sadness. Far better the place remain empty than that it be
filled by a spring which the rust corrodes, or by a new truth in which
we do not wholly believe. And besides, the place is not really empty.
Determinate truth may not yet have arrived, but still, in its own deep
recess, there hides a truth without name, which waits and calls. And
if it wait and call too long in the void, and nothing arise in the
place of the vanished spring, it still shall be found that, in moral no
less than in physical life, necessity will be able to create the organ
it needs, and that the negative truth will at last find sufficient
force in itself to set the idle machinery going. And the lives that
possess no more than one force of this kind are not the least
strenuous, the least ardent, or the least useful.
And even though our belief forsake us entirely, it still will take with
it nothing of what we have given, nor will there be lost one single
sincere, religious, disinterested effort that we have put forth to
ennoble this faith, to exalt or embellish it. Every thought we have
added, each worthy sacrifice we have had the courage to make in its
name, will have left its indelible mark on our moral existence. The
body is gone, but the palace it built still stands, and the space it
has conquered will remain for ever unenclosed. It is our duty, and one
we dare not renounce, to prepare homes for truths that shall come, to
maintain in good order the forces destined to serve them, and to create
open spaces within us; nor can the time thus employed be possibly
wasted.
5
These thoughts have arisen within me through my having been compelled,
a few days ago, to glance through two or three little dramas of mine,
wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itself
wholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, but
not so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency. The keynote of
these little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us. I, or
rather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerest
of poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feeling
of their art and the thoughts of their real life), seemed to believe in
a species of monstrous, invisible, fatal power that gave heed to our
every action, and was hostile to our smile, to our life, to our peace
and our love. Its intentions could not be divined, but the spirit of
the drama assumed them to be malevolent always. In its essence,
perhaps, this power was just, but only in anger; and it exercised
justice in a manner so crooked, so secret, so sluggish and remote, that
its punishments--for it never rewarded--took the semblance of
inexplicable, arbitrary acts of fate. We had there, in a word, more or
less the idea of the God of the Christian blent with that of ancient
fatality, lurking in nature's impenetrable twilight, whence it eagerly
watched, contested, and saddened the projects, the feelings, the
thoughts and the happiness of man.
6
This unknown would most frequently appear in the shape of death. The
presence of death--infinite, menacing, for ever treacherously
active--filled every interstice of the poem. The problem of existence
was answered only by the enigma of annihilation. And it was a callous,
inexorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious way with only
chance to guide it; laying its hands preferentially on the youngest and
the least unhappy, since these held themselves less motionless than
others, and that every too sudden movement in the night arrested its
attention. And around it were only poor little trembling, elementary
creatures, who shivered for an instant and wept, on the brink of a
gulf; and their words and their tears had importance only from the fact
that each word they spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf,
and were at times so strangely resonant there as to lead one to think
that the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could send
forth so confused and muffled a sound.
7
Such a conception of life is not healthy, whatever show of reason it
may seem to possess; and I would not allude to it here were it not for
the fact that we find this idea, or one closely akin to it, governing
the hearts of most men, however tranquil, or thoughtful, or earnest
they may be, at the approach of the slightest misfortune. There is
evidently a side to our nature which, notwithstanding all we may learn
and master and the certitudes we may acquire, destines us never to be
other than poor, weak, useless creatures, consecrated to death, and
playthings of the vast and indifferent forces that surround us. We
appear for an instant in limitless space, our one appreciable mission
the propagation of a species that itself has no appreciable mission in
the scheme of a universe whose extent and duration baffle the most
daring, most powerful brain. This is a truth; it is one of those
profound but sterile truths which the poet may salute as he passes on
his way; but it is a truth in the neighbourhood of which the man with
the thousand duties who lives in the poet will do well not to abide too
long. And of truths such as this many are lofty and deserving of all
our respect, but in their domain it were unwise to lay ourselves down
and sleep. So many truths environ us that it may safely be said that
few men can be found, of the wickedest even, who have not for counsel
and guide a grave and respectable truth. Yes, it is a truth--the
vastest, most certain of truths, if one will--that our life is nothing,
and our efforts the merest jest; our existence, that of our planet,
only a miserable accident in the history of worlds; but it is no less a
truth that, to us, our life and our planet are the most important, nay,
the only important phenomena in the history of worlds. And of these
truths which is the truer? Does the first of necessity destroy the
second? Without the second, should we have had the courage to
formulate the first? The one appeals to our imagination, and may be
helpful to it in its own domain; but the other directly interests our
actual life. It is well that each have its share. The truth that is
undoubtedly truest from the human point of view must evidently appeal
to us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point of
view. Ignorant as we are of the aim of the universe, how shall we tell
whether or no it concern itself with the interests of our race? The
probable futility of our life and our species is a truth which regards
us indirectly only, and may well, therefore, be left in suspense. The
other truth, that indicates clearly the importance of life, may perhaps
be more restricted, but it has a direct, incontestable, actual bearing
upon ourselves. To sacrifice or even subordinate it to an alien truth
must surely be wrong. The first truth should never be lost sight of;
it will strengthen and illumine the second, whose government will thus
become more intelligent and benign: the first truth will teach us to
profit by all that the second does not include. And if we allow it to
sadden our heart or arrest our action, we have not sufficiently
realised that the vast but precarious space it fills in the region of
important truths is governed by countless problems which as yet are
unsolved; while the problems whereon the second truth rests are daily
resolved by real life. The first truth is still in the dangerous,
feverish stage, through which all truths must pass before they can
penetrate freely into our heart and our brain; a stage of jealousy,
truculence, which renders the neighbourhood of another truth
insupportable to them. We must wait till the fever subsides; and if
the home that we have prepared in our spirit be sufficiently spacious
and lofty, we shall find very soon that the most contradictory truths
will be conscious only of the mysterious bond that unites them, and
will silently join with each other to place in the front rank of all,
and there help and sustain, that truth from among them which calmly
went on with its work while the others were fretfully jangling; that
truth which can do the most good, and brings with it the uttermost hope.
The strangest feature of the present time is the confusion which reigns
in our instincts and feelings--in our ideas, too, save at our most
lucid, most tranquil, most thoughtful moments--on the subject of the
intervention of the unknown or mysterious in the truly grave events of
life. We find, amidst this confusion, feelings which no longer accord
with any precise, living, accepted idea; such, for instance, as concern
the existence of a determinate God, conceived as more or less
anthropomorphic, providential, personal, and unceasingly vigilant. We
find feelings which, as yet, are only partially ideas; as those which
deal with fatality, destiny, the justice of things. We find ideas
which will soon turn into feelings; those that treat of the law of the
species, evolution, selection, the will-power of the race, &c. And,
finally, we discover ideas which still are purely ideas, too uncertain
and scattered for us to be able to predict at what moment they will
become feelings, and thus materially influence our actions, our
acceptance of life, our joys, and our sorrows.
9
If in actual life this confusion is not so apparent, it is only because
actual life will but rarely express itself, or condescend to make use
of image or formula to relate its experience. This state of mind,
however, is clearly discernible in all those whose self-imposed mission
it is to depict real life, to explain and interpret it, and throw light
on the hidden causes of good and evil destiny. It is of the poets I
speak, of dramatic poets above all, who are occupied with external and
active life; and it matters not whether they produce novels, tragedies,
the drama properly so called, or historical studies, for I give to the
words poets and dramatic poets their widest significance.
It cannot be denied that the possession of a dominant idea, one that
may be said to exclude all others, must confer considerable power on
the poet, or "interpreter of life;" and in the degree that the idea is
mysterious, and difficult of definition or control, will be the extent
of this power and its conspicuousness in the poem. And this is
entirely legitimate, so long as the poet himself has not the least
doubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poets
who have never hesitated, paused, or doubted. Thus it is that we find
the idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies of
Corneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that of
the tyranny of destiny in the works of Sophocles.
10
Of these three ideas, that of heroic duty is the most human and the
least mysterious; and although far more restricted to-day than at the
time of Corneille--for there are few such duties which it would not now
be reasonable, and even heroic, perhaps, to call into question, and it
becomes ever more and more difficult to find one that is truly
heroic--conditions may still be imagined under which recourse thereto
may be legitimate in the poet.
But will he discover in faith--to-day no more than a shadowy memory to
the most fervent believer--that inspiration and strength, by whose aid
Corneille was able to depict the God of the Christians as the august,
omnipresent actor of his dramas, invisible but untiringly active, and
sovereign always? Or is it possible still for a reasonable being,
whose eyes rest calmly on the life about him, to believe in the tyranny
of fate; of that sluggish, unswerving, preordained, inscrutable force
which urges a given man, or family, by given ways to a given disaster
or death? For though it be true that our life is subject to many an
unknown force, we at least are aware that these forces would seem to be
blind, indifferent, unconscious, and that their most insidious attacks
may be in some measure averted by the wisest among us. Can we still be
allowed, then, to believe that the universe holds a power so idle, so
wretched, as to concern itself solely in saddening, frustrating, and
terrifying the projects and schemes of man?
Immanent justice is another mysterious and sovereign force, whereof use
has been made; but it is only the feeblest of writers who have ventured
to accept this postulate in its entirety: only those to whom reality
and probability were matters of smallest moment. The affirmation that
wickedness is necessarily and visibly punished in this life, and virtue
as necessarily and visibly rewarded, is too manifestly opposed to the
most elementary daily experience, too wildly inconsistent a dream, for
the true poet ever to accept it as the basis of his drama. And, on the
other hand, if we refer to a future life the bestowal of reward and
punishment, we are merely entering by another gate the region of divine
justice. For, indeed, unless immanent justice be infallible,
permanent, unvarying, and inevitable, it becomes no more than a
curious, well-meaning caprice of fate; and from that moment it no
longer is justice, or even fate: it shrinks into merest chance--in
other words, almost into nothingness.