force which enacts that the vicious, malevolent, cruel, disloyal man
shall be morally less happy than he who is honest and good,
affectionate, gentle, and just. But here it is inward justice whose
workings we see; a very human, natural, comprehensible force, the study
of whose cause and effect must of necessity lead to psychological
drama, where there no longer is need of the vast and mysterious
background which lent its solemn and awful perspective to the events of
history and legend. But is it legitimate deliberately to misconceive
the unknown that governs our life in order that we may reconstruct this
mysterious background?
11
While on this subject of dominant and mysterious ideas, we shall do
well to consider the forms that the idea of fatality has taken, and for
ever is taking: for fatality even to-day still provides the supreme
explanation for all that we cannot explain; and it is to fatality still
that the thoughts of the "interpreter of life" unceasingly turn.
The poets have endeavoured to transform it, to make it attractive, to
restore its youth. They have contrived, in their works, a hundred new
and winding canals through which they may introduce the icy waters of
the great and desolate river whose banks have been gradually shunned by
the dwellings of men. And of those most successful in making us share
the illusion that they were conferring a solemn, definitive meaning on
life, there are few who have not instinctively recognised the sovereign
importance conferred on the actions of men by the irresponsible power
of an ever august and unerring destiny. Fatality would seem to be the
pre-eminent tragical force; it no sooner appears in a drama than it
does of itself three-fourths of all that needs doing. It may safely be
said that the poet who could find to-day, in material science, in the
unknown that surrounds us, or in his own heart, the equivalent for
ancient fatality--a force, that is, of equally irresistible
predestination, a force as universally admitted--would infallibly
produce a masterpiece. It is true, however, that he would have, at the
same time, to solve the mighty enigma for whose word we are all of us
seeking, so that this supposition is not likely to be realised very
soon.
12
This is the source, then, whence the lustral water is drawn with which
the poets have purified the cruellest of tragedies. There is an
instinct in man that worships fatality, and he is apt to regard
whatever pertains thereto as incontestable, solemn, and beautiful. His
cry is for freedom; but circumstances arise when he rather would tell
himself that he is not free. The unbending, malignant goddess is more
acceptable often than the divinity who only asks for an effort that
shall avert disaster. All things notwithstanding, it pleases us still
to be ruled by a power that nothing can turn from its purpose; and
whatever our mental dignity may lose by such a belief is gained by a
kind of sentimental vanity in us, which complacently dwells on the
measureless force that for ever keeps watch on our plans, and confers
on our simplest action a mysterious, eternal significance. Fatality,
briefly, explains and excuses all things, by relegating to a sufficient
distance in the invisible or the unintelligible all that it would be
hard to explain, and more difficult still to excuse.
13
Therefore it is that so many have turned to the dismembered statue of
the terrible goddess who reigned in the dramas of Euripides, Sophocles,
and Aeschylus, and that the scattered fragments of her limbs have
provided more than one poet with the marble required for the fashioning
of a newer divinity, who should be more human, less arbitrary, and less
inconceivable than she of old. The fatality of the passions, for
instance, has thus been evolved. But for a passion truly to be fatal
in a soul aware of itself, for the mystery to reappear that shall make
crime pardonable by investing it with loftiness and lifting it high
above the will of man: for these we require the intervention of a God,
or some other equally irresistible, infinite force. Wagner, therefore,
in "Tristram and Iseult," makes use of the philtre, as Shakespeare of
the witches in "Macbeth," Racine of the oracle of Calchas in
"Iphigenia" and of Venus' hatred in "Phèdre." We have travelled in a
circle, and find ourselves back once more at the very heart of the
craving of former days. This expedient may be more or less legitimate
in archaic or legendary drama, where there is room for all kinds of
poetic fantasy; but in the drama which pretends to actual truth we
demand another intervention, one that shall seem to us more genuinely
irresistible, if crimes like Macbeth's, such a deed of horror as that
to which Agamemnon consented: perhaps, too, the kind of love that
burned in Phèdre, shall achieve their mysterious excuse, and acquire a
grandeur and sombre nobility that intrinsically they do not possess.
Take away from Macbeth the fatal predestination, the intervention of
hell, the heroic struggle with an occult justice that for ever is
revealing itself through a thousand fissures of revolting nature, and
Macbeth is merely a frantic, contemptible murderer. Take away the
oracle of Calchas, and Agamemnon becomes abominable. Take away the
hatred of Venus, and what is Phèdre but a neurotic creature, whose
"moral quality" and power of resistance to evil are too pronouncedly
feeble for our intellect to take any genuine interest in the calamity
that befalls her?
14
The truth is that these supernatural interventions to-day satisfy
neither spectator nor reader. Though he know it not, perhaps, and
strive as he may, it is no longer possible for him to regard them
seriously in the depths of his consciousness. His conception of the
universe is other. He no longer detects the working of a narrow,
determined, obstinate, violent will in the multitude of forces that
strive in him and about him. He knows that the criminal whom he may
meet in actual life has been urged into crime by misfortune, education,
atavism, or by movements of passion which he has himself experienced
and subdued, while recognising that there might have been circumstances
under which their repression would have been a matter of exceeding
difficulty. He will not, it is true, always be able to discover the
cause of these misfortunes or movements of passion; and his endeavour
to account for the injustice of education or heredity will probably be
no less unsuccessful. But, for all that, he will no longer incline to
attribute a particular crime to the wrath of a God, the direct
intervention of hell, or to a series of changeless decrees inscribed in
the book of fate. Why ask of him, then, to accept in a poem an
explanation which he refuses in life? Is the poet's duty not rather to
furnish an explanation loftier, clearer, more widely and profoundly
human than any his reader can find for himself? For, indeed, this
wrath of the gods, intervention of hell, and writing in letters of
fire, are to him no more to-day than so many symbols that have long
ceased to content him. It is time that the poet should realise that
the symbol is legitimate only when it stands for accepted truth, or for
truth which as yet we cannot, or will not, accept; but the symbol is
out of place at a time when it is truth itself that we seek. And,
besides, to merit admission into a really living poem, the symbol
should be at least as great and beautiful as the truth for which it
stands, and should, moreover, precede this truth, and not follow a long
way behind.
15
We see, therefore, how surpassingly difficult it must have become to
introduce great crimes, or cruel, unbridled, tragical passions, into a
modern work, above all if that work be destined for stage presentation;
for the poet will seek in vain for the mysterious excuse these crimes
or passions demand. And yet, for all that, so deeply is this craving
for mysterious excuse implanted within us, so satisfied are we that man
is, at bottom, never as guilty as he may appear to be, that we are
still fully content, when considering passions or crimes of this
nature, to admit some kind of fatal intervention that at least may not
seem too manifestly unacceptable.
This excuse, however, will be sought by us only when the persons guilty
of crimes which are contrary to human nature, when the victims of
misfortunes which they could not foresee, and which seem undeserved to
us, inexplicable, wholly abnormal, are more or less superior beings,
possessed of their fullest share of consciousness. We are loath to
admit that an extraordinary crime or disaster can have a purely human
cause. In spite of all, we persistently seek in some way to explain
the inexplicable. We should not be satisfied if the poet were simply
to say to us: "You see here the wrong that was done by this strong,
this conscious, intelligent man. Behold the misfortune this hero
encountered; this good man's ruin and sorrow. See, too, how this sage
is crushed by tragic, irremediable wickedness. The human causes of
these events are evident to you. I have no other explanation to offer,
unless it be perhaps the indifference of the universe towards the
actions of man." Our dissatisfaction would vanish if he could succeed
in conveying to us the sensation of this indifference, if he could show
it in action; but, as it is the property of indifference never to
interfere or act, that would seem to be more or less unachievable.
16
But when we turn to the by no means inevitable jealousy of Othello, or
to the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet, which were surely not
preordained, we discover no need of explanation, or of the purifying
influence of fatality. In another drama, Ford's masterpiece, "'Tis
Pity She's a Whore," which revolves around the incestuous love of
Giovanni for his sister Annabella, we are compelled either to turn away
in horror, or to seek the mysterious excuse in its habitual haunt on
the shore of the gulf. But even here, the first painful shock over, we
find it is not imperative. For the love of brother for sister, viewed
from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but
not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of
palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blinds
them. Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death,
has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this
last can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred. The disasters that
weighed so heavily on the lovers of Verona were due to the inexperience
of the victims, to the manifest disproportion between their strength
and that of their enemies; and although we may pity the man who
succumbs to superior human force, his downfall does not surprise us.
We are not impelled to seek explanation elsewhere, to ask questions of
fate; and unless he appear to fall victim to superhuman injustice, we
are content to tell ourselves that what has happened was bound to
happen. It is only when disaster occurs after every precaution is
taken that we could ourselves have devised, that we become conscious of
the need for other explanation.
17
We find it difficult, therefore, to conceive or admit as naturally,
humanly possible that a crime shall be committed by a person who
apparently is endowed with fullest intelligence and consciousness; or
that misfortune should befall him which seems in its essence to be
inexplicable, undeserved, and unexpected. It follows, therefore, that
the poet can only place on the stage (this phrase I use merely as an
abbreviation: it would be more correct to say, "cause us to assist at
some adventure whereof we know personally neither the actors nor the
totality of the circumstances") faults, crimes, and acts of injustice
committed by persons of defective consciousness, as also disasters
befalling feeble beings unable to control their desires--innocent
creatures, it may be, but thick-sighted, imprudent, and reckless.
Under these conditions there would seem to be no call for the
intervention of anything beyond the limit of normal human psychology.
But such a conception of the theatre would be at absolute variance with
real life, where we find crimes committed by persons of fullest
consciousness, and the most inexplicable, inconceivable, unmerited
misfortunes befalling the wisest, the best, most virtuous and prudent
of men. Dramas which deal with unconscious creatures, whom their own
feebleness oppresses and their own desires overcome, excite our
interest and arouse our pity; but the veritable drama, the one which
probes to the heart of things and grapples with important truths--our
own personal drama, in a word, which for ever hangs over our life--is
the one wherein the strong, intelligent, and conscious commit errors,
faults, and crimes which are almost inevitable; wherein the wise and
upright struggle with all-powerful calamity, with forces destructive to
wisdom and virtue: for it is worthy of note that the spectator, however
feeble, dishonest even, he may be in real life, still enrols himself
always among the virtuous, just, and strong; and when he reflects on
the misfortunes of the weak, or even witnesses them, he resolutely
declines to imagine himself in the place of the victims.
18
Here we attain the limit of the human will, the gloomy boundary-line of
the influence that the most just and enlightened of men is able to
exert on events that decide his future happiness or sorrow. No great
drama exists, or poem of lofty aim, but one of its heroes shall stray
to this frontier where his destiny waits for the seal. Why has this
wise, this virtuous man committed this fault or this crime? Why has
that woman, who knows so well the meaning of all that she does,
hazarded the gesture which must so inevitably summon everlasting
sorrow? By whom have the links been forged of the chain of disaster
whose fetters have crushed this innocent family? Why do all things
crumble around one, and fall into ruins, while the other, his
neighbour, less active and strong, less skilful and wise, finds ever
material by him to build up his life anew? Why do tenderness, beauty,
and love flock to the path of some, where others meet hatred only, and
malice, and treachery? Why persistent happiness here, and yonder,
though merits be equal, nought but unceasing disaster? Why is this
house for ever beset with the storm, while over that other there shines
the peace of unvarying stars? Why genius, and riches, and health on
this side, and yonder disease, imbecility, poverty? Whence has the
passion been sent that has wrought such terrible grief, and whence the
passion that proved the source of such wonderful joy? Why does the
youth whom yesterday I met go on his tranquil road to profoundest
happiness, while his friend, with the same methodical, peaceful,
ignorant step, proceeds on his way to death?
19
Life will often place such problems before us; but how rarely are we
compelled to refer their solution to the supernatural, mysterious,
superhuman, or preordained! It is only the fervent believer who will
still be content to see there the finger of divine intervention. Such
of us, however, as have entered the house where the storm has raged, as
well as the house of peace, have rarely departed without most clearly
detecting the essentially human reasons of both peace and storm. We
who have known the wise and upright man who has been guilty of error or
crime, are acquainted also with the circumstances which induced his
action, and these circumstances seem to us in no way supernatural. As
we draw near to the woman whose gesture brought misery to her, we learn
very soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in her
place, we should have refrained. The friends of the man around whom
all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up
his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will
fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty,
sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of
human existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears of
bygone days We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent,
unconscious, blind. We know that they recognise none of the ideal laws
which we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often has
happened that at the very moment we were whispering to ourselves of
"purification, trial, reward, punishment," their undiscerning caprice
gave the lie to the too lofty, too moral title which we were about to
bestow.
20
Our imagination, it is true, is inclined to admit, perhaps to desire,
the intervention of the superhuman; but, for all that, there are few,
even among the most mystic, who are not convinced that our moral
misfortunes are, in their essence, determined by our mind and our
character; and, similarly, that our physical misfortunes are due in
part to the workings of certain forces which often are misunderstood,
and in part to the generally ill-defined relation of cause to effect:
nor is it unreasonable to hope that light may be thrown on these
problems as we penetrate further into the secrets of nature. We have
here a certitude upon which our whole life depends; a certitude which
is shaken only when we consider our own misfortunes, for then we shrink
from analysing or admitting the faults we ourselves have committed.
There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant that
the cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wave
which dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insect
whose little wings gleam for an instant in the light of the sun till
the passing bird absorbs its existence.
21
Let me suppose that a neighbour of mine, whom I know very intimately,
whose regular habits and inoffensive manners have won my esteem, should
successively lose his wife in a railway accident, one son at sea,
another in a fire, the third and last by disease. I should, of course,
be painfully shocked and grieved; but still it would not occur to me to
attribute this series of disasters to a divine vengeance or an
invisible justice, to a strange, ill-starred predestination, or an
active, persistent, inevitable fatality. My thoughts would fly to the
myriad unfortunate hazards of life; I should be appalled at the
frightful coincidence of calamity; but in me there would be no
suggestion of a superhuman will that had hurled the train over the
precipice, steered the ship on to rocks, or kindled the flames; I
should hold it incredible that such monstrous efforts could have been
put forth with the sole object of inflicting punishment and despair
upon a poor wretch, because of some error he might have committed--one
of those grave human errors which yet are so petty in face of the
universe; an error which perhaps had not issued from either his heart
or his brain, and had stirred not one blade of grass on the earth's
whole surface.
22
But he, this neighbour of mine, on whom these terrible blows have
successively fallen, like so many lightning-flashes on a black night of
storm--will he think as I do; will these catastrophes seem natural to
him, and ordinary, and susceptible of explanation? Will not the words
destiny, fortune, hazard, ill-luck, fatality, star--the word
Providence, perhaps--assume in his mind a significance they never have
assumed before? Will not the light beneath which he questions his
consciousness be a different light from my own, will he not feel round
his life an influence, a power, a kind of evil intention, that are
imperceptible to me? And who is right, he or I? Which of us two sees
more clearly, and further? Do truths that in calmer times lie hidden
float to the surface in hours of trouble; and which is the moment we
should choose to establish the meaning of life?
The "interpreter of life," as a rule, selects the troubled hours. He
places himself, and us, in the soul-state of his victims. He shows
their misfortunes to us in perspective; and so sharply, concretely,
that we have for the moment the illusion of a personal disaster. And,
indeed, it is more or less impossible for him to depict them as they
would occur in real life. If we had spent long years with the hero of
the drama which has stirred us so painfully, had he been our brother,
our father, our friend, we should have probably noted, recognised,
counted one by one as they passed, all the causes of his misfortune,
which then would not only appear less extraordinary to us, but
perfectly natural even, and humanly almost inevitable. But to the
"interpreter of life" is given neither power nor occasion to acquaint
us with each veritable cause. For these causes, as a rule, are
infinitely slow in their movement, and countless in number, and slight,
and of small apparent significance. He is therefore led to adopt a
general cause, one sufficiently vast to embrace the whole drama, in
place of the real and human causes which he is unable to show us,
unable, too, himself to examine and study. And where shall a general
cause of sufficient vastness be found, if not in the two or three words
we breathe to ourselves when silence oppresses us: words like fatality,
divinity, Providence, or obscure and nameless justice?
23
The question we have to consider is how far this procedure can be
beneficial, or even legitimate; as also whether it be the mission of
the poet to present, and insist on, the distress and confusion of our
least lucid hours, or to add to the clear-sightedness of the moments
when we conceive ourselves to enjoy the fullest possession of our force
and our reason. In our own misfortunes there is something of good, and
something of good must therefore be found in the illusion of personal
misfortune. We are made to look into ourselves; our errors, our
weaknesses, are more clearly revealed; it is shown to us where we have
strayed. There falls a light on our consciousness a thousand times
more searching, more active, than could spring from many arduous years
of meditation and study. We are forced to emerge from ourselves, and
to let our eyes rest on those round about us; we are rendered more
keenly alive to the sorrows of others. There are some who will tell us
that misfortune does even more--that it urges our glance on high, and
compels us to bow to a power superior to our own, to an unseen justice,
to an impenetrable, infinite mystery. Can this indeed be the best of
all possible issues? Ah, yes, it was well, from the standpoint of
religious morality, that misfortune should teach us to lift up our eyes
and look on an eternal, unchanging, undeniable God, sovereignly
beautiful, sovereignly just, and sovereignly good. It was well that
the poet who found in his God an unquestionable ideal should
incessantly hold before us this unique, this definitive ideal. But
to-day, if we look away from the truth, from the ordinary experience of
life, on what shall our eager glance rest? If we discard the more or
less compensatory laws of conscience and inward happiness, what shall
we say when triumphant injustice confronts us, or successful,
unpunished crime? How shall we account for the death of a child, the
miserable end of an innocent man, or the disaster hurled by cruel fate
on some unfortunate creature, if we seek explanations loftier, more
definite, more comprehensive and decisive than those that are found
satisfactory in everyday life for the reason that they are the only
ones that accord with a certain number of realities? Is it right that
the poet, in his eager desire to contrive a solemn atmosphere for his
drama, should arouse from their slumber sentiments, errors, prejudices
and fears, which we would attack and rebuke were we to discover them in
the hearts of our friends or our children? Man has at last, through
his study of the habits of spirit and brain, of the laws of existence,
the caprices of fate and the maternal indifference of nature--man has
at last, and laboriously, acquired some few certitudes, that are worthy
of all respect; and is the poet entitled to seize on the moment of
anguish in order to oust all these certitudes, and set up in their
place a fatality to which every action of ours gives the lie; or powers
before which we would refuse to kneel did the blow fall on us that has
prostrated his hero; or a mystic justice that, for all it may sweep
away the need for many an embarrassing explanation, bears yet not the
slightest kinship to the active and personal justice we all of us
recognise in our own personal life?
24