conquers it, masters it, and with more passion than any preceding
period has shown; in a century that would seem consumed with desire to
comprehend matter, to penetrate, enslave it, possess it once and for
all to repletion, satiety--with the wish, it may be, to ransack its
every resource, lay bare its last secret, thereby freeing the future
from the restless search for a happiness there seemed reason once to
believe that matter contained. So, in like manner, is it necessary
first to have known the love of the flesh before the veritable love can
reveal its deep and unchanging purity. A serious reaction will
probably arise, some day, against this passion for material enjoyment;
but man will never be able to cast himself wholly free. Nor would the
attempt be wise. We are, after all, only fragments of animate matter,
and it could not be well to lose sight of the starting-point of our
race. And yet, is it right that this starting-point should enclose in
its narrow circumference all our wishes, all our happiness, the
totality of our desires? In our passage through life we meet scarcely
any who do not persist, with a kind of unreasoning obstinacy, in
throning the material within them, and there maintaining it supreme.
Gather together a number of men and women, all of them free from life's
more depressing cares--an assembly of the elect, if you will--and
pronounce before them the words "beatitude, happiness, joy, felicity,
ideal." Imagine that an angel, at that very instant, were to seize and
retain, in a magic mirror or miraculous basket, the images these words
would evoke in the souls that should hear them. What would you see in
the basket or mirror? The embrace of beautiful bodies; gold, precious
stones, a palace, an ample park; the philtre of youth, strange jewels
and gauds representing vanity's dreams; and, let us admit it, prominent
far above all would be sumptuous repasts, noble wines, glittering
tables, splendid apartments. Is humanity still too near its beginning
to conceive other things? Has the hour not arrived when we might have
reasonably hoped the mirror to reflect a powerful, disinterested
intellect, a conscience at rest: a just and loving heart, a perception,
a vision capable of detecting, absorbing beauty wherever it be--the
beauty of evening, of cities, of forests and seas, no less than of
face, of a word or a smile, of an action or movement of soul? The
foreground of the magical mirror at present reflects beautiful women,
undraped; when shall we see, in their stead, the deep, great love of
two beings to whom the knowledge has come that it is only when their
thoughts and their feelings, and all that is more mysterious still than
thoughts and feelings, have blended, and day by day become more
essentially one, that the joys of the flesh are freed from the after
disquiet, and leave no bitterness behind? When shall we find, instead
of the morbid, unnatural excitement produced by too copious, oppressive
repasts, by stimulants that are the insidious agents of the very enemy
we seek to destroy--when shall we find, in their place, the contained
and deliberate gladness of a spirit that is for ever exalted because it
for ever is seeking to understand, and to love? . . . These things
have long been known, and their repetition may well seem of little
avail. And yet, we need but to have been twice or thrice in the
company of those who stand for what is best in mankind, most
intellectually, sentiently human, to realise how uncertain and groping
their search is still for the happier hours of life; to marvel at the
resemblance the unconscious happiness they look for bears to the
happiness craved by the man who has no spiritual existence; to note how
opaque, to their eyes, is the cloud which separates all that pertains
to the being who rises from all that is his who descends. Some will
say that the hour is not yet when man can thus make clear division
between the part of the spirit and that of the flesh. But when shall
that hour be looked for if those for whom it should long since have
sounded still suffer the obscurest prejudice of the mass to guide them
when they set forth in search of their happiness? When they achieve
glory and riches, when love comes to meet them, they will be free, it
may be, from a few of the coarser satisfactions of vanity, a few of the
grosser excesses; but beyond this they strive not at all to secure a
happiness that shall be more spiritual, more purely human. The
advantage they have does not teach them to widen the circle of material
exaction, to discard what is less justifiable. In their attitude
towards the pleasures of life they submit to the same spiritual
deprivation as, let us say, some cultured man who may have wandered
into a theatre where the play being performed is not one of the five or
six masterpieces of universal literature. He is fully aware that his
neighbours' applause and delight are called forth, in the main, by more
or less obnoxious prejudices on the subject of honour, glory, religion,
patriotism, sacrifice, liberty, or love--or perhaps by some feeble,
dreary poetical effusion. None the less, he will find himself affected
by the general enthusiasm; and it will be necessary for him, almost at
every instant, to pull himself violently together, to make startled
appeal to every conviction within him, in order to convince himself
that these partisans of hoary errors are wrong, notwithstanding their
number, and that he, with his isolated reason, alone is right.
3
Indeed, when we consider the relation of man to matter, it is
surprising to find how little light has yet been thrown upon it, how
little has been definitely fixed. Elementary, imperious, as this
relation undoubtedly is, humanity has always been wavering, uncertain,
passing from the most dangerous confidence to the most systematic
distrust, from adoration to horror, from asceticism and complete
renouncement to their corresponding extremes. The days are past when
an irrational, useless abstinence was preached, and put into
practice--an abstinence often fully as harmful as habitual excess. We
are entitled to all that helps to maintain, or advance, the development
of the body; this is our right, but it has its limits; and these limits
it would be well to define with the utmost exactness, for whatever may
trespass beyond must infallibly weaken the growth of that other side of
ourselves, the flower that the leaves round about it will either stifle
or nourish. And humanity, that so long has been watching this flower,
studying it so intently, noting its subtlest, most fleeting perfumes
and shades, is most often content to abandon to the caprice of the
temperament, be this evil or good, to the passing moment, or to chance,
the government of the unconscious forces that will, like the leaves, be
discreetly active, sustaining, life-giving, or profoundly selfish,
destructive, and fatal. Hitherto, perhaps, this may have been done
with impunity; for the ideal of mankind (which at the start was
concerned with the body alone) wavered long between matter and spirit.
To-day, however, it clings, with ever profounder conviction, to the
human intelligence. We no longer strive to compete with the lion, the
panther, the great anthropoid ape, in force or agility; in beauty with
the flower or the shine of the stars on the sea. The utilisation by
our intellect of every unconscious force, the gradual subjugation of
matter and the search for its secret--these at present appear the most
evident aim of our race, and its most probable mission. In the days of
doubt there was no satisfaction, or even excess, but was excusable, and
moral, so long as it wrought no irreparable loss of strength or actual
organic harm. But now that the mission of the race is becoming more
clearly defined, the duty is on us to leave on one side whatever is not
directly helpful to the spiritual part of our being. Sterile pleasures
of the body must be gradually sacrificed; indeed, in a word, all that
is not in absolute harmony with a larger, more durable energy of
thought; all the little "harmless" delights which, however inoffensive
comparatively, keep alive by example and habit the prejudice in favour
of inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to the
satisfactions of the intellect. These last differ from those of the
body, whose development some may assist and others retard. Into the
elysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with it
youth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world on
which the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch,
of eagerness, comprehension, and wonder.
4
The time must come, sooner or later, when our morality will have to
conform to the probable mission of the race; when the arbitrary, often
ridiculous restrictions whereof it is at present composed will be
compelled to make way for the inevitable logical restrictions this
mission exacts. For the individual, as for the race, there can be but
one code of morals--the subordination of the ways of life to the
demands of the general mission that appears entrusted to man. The axis
will shift, therefore, of many sins, many great offences; until at last
for all the crimes against the body there shall be substituted the
veritable crimes against human destiny; in other words, whatever may
tend to impair the authority, integrity, leisure, liberty, or power of
the intellect.
But by this we are far from suggesting that the body should be regarded
as the irreconcilable enemy which the Christian theory holds it. Far
from that, we should strive, first of all, to endow it with all
possible vigour and beauty. But it is like a capricious child:
exacting, improvident, selfish; and the stronger it grows the more
dangerous does it become. It knows no cult but that of the passing
moment. In imagination, desires, it halts at the trivial thought, the
primitive, fleeting, foolish delight of the little dog or the negro.
The satisfactions procured by the intellect--the comfort, security,
leisure, the gladness--it regards as no more than its due, and enjoys
in fullest complacency. Left to itself, it would enjoy these so
stupidly, savagely, that it would very soon stifle the intellect from
which it derived these favours. Hence there is need for certain
restrictions, renouncements, which all men must observe; not only those
who have reason to hope, and believe, that they are effectively
striving to solve the enigma, to bring about the fulfilment of human
destiny and the triumph of mind over insensible matter, but also the
crowds in the ranks of the massive, unconscious rearguard, who placidly
watch the phosphorescent evolutions of mind as its light gleams on the
world's elementary darkness. For humanity is a unique and unanimous
entity. When the thought of the mass--that thought which scarcely is
thought--travels downwards, its influence is felt by philosopher and
poet, astronomer and chemist; it has its pronounced effect on their
character, morals, ideals, their sense of duty, habits of labour,
intellectual vigour. If the myriad, uniform, petty ideas in the valley
fall short of a certain elevation, no great idea shall spring to life
on the mountain-peak. Down there the thought may have little strength,
but there are countless numbers who think it; and the influence this
thought acquires may be almost termed atmospheric. And they up above
on the mountain, the precipice, the edge of the glacier, will be helped
by this influence, or harmed, in the degree of its brightness or gloom,
of its reaching them, buoyed up with generous feeling, or heavily
charged with brutal habit and coarse desire. The heroic action of a
people (as, for instance, the French Revolution, the Reformation, all
wars of independence and liberation) will fertilise and purify this
people for more centuries than one. But far less will satisfy those
who toil at the fulfilment of destiny. Let but the habits of the men
round about them become a little more noble, their desires a little
more disinterested; let but their passions and eagerness, their
pleasures and love, be illumined by one ray of brightness, of grace, of
spiritual fervour; and those up above will feel the support, and draw
their breath freely, no longer compelled to struggle with the
instinctive part of themselves; and the power that is in them will obey
the more readily, and mould itself to their hand. The peasant who,
instead of carousing at the beershop, spends a peaceful Sunday at home,
with a book, beneath the trees of his orchard; the humble citizen whom
the emotions or din of the racecourse cannot tempt from some worthy
enjoyment, from the pleasure of a reposeful afternoon; the workman who
no longer makes the streets hideous with obscene or ridiculous song,
but wanders forth into the country, or, from the ramparts, watches the
sunset--all these bring their meed of help: their great assistance,
unconscious though it be, and anonymous, to the triumph of the vast
human flame.
5
But how much there is to be done, and learned, before this great flame
can arise in serene, secure brightness! We have said that man, in his
relation to matter, is still in the experimental, groping stage of his
earliest days. He lacks even definite knowledge as to the kind of food
best adapted for him, or the quantity of nourishment he requires; he is
still uncertain as to whether he be carnivorous or frugivorous. His
intellect misleads his instinct. It was only yesterday that he learned
that he had probably erred hitherto in the choice of his nourishment;
that he must reduce by two-thirds the quantity of nitrogen he absorbs,
and largely increase the volume of hydrocarbons; that a little fruit,
or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances--now the mere
accessory of the too plentiful repasts which he works so hard to
provide, which are his chief object in life, the goal of his efforts,
of his strenuous, incessant labour--are amply sufficient to maintain
the ardour of the finest and mightiest life. It is not my purpose here
to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections
that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these
objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I,
for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit
themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or
restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by
the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow
the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon. But we
must not conclude these pages with an essay on alimentation, reasonable
as such a proceeding might be. For in truth all our justice, morality,
all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial
necessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modification
of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral
existence. Were the belief one day to become general that man could
dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic
revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more
than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less
important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow
a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to
remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage. For we find
that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also;
and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded
pleasures of life. And it is in the passionate craving for these
pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the
most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the
race. Detachment therefrom creates noble leisure, a new order of
desires, a wish for enjoyment that must of necessity be loftier than
the gross satisfactions which have their origin in alcohol. But are
days such as these in store for us--these happier, purer hours? The
crime of alcohol is not alone that it destroys its faithful and poisons
one half of the race, but also that it exercises a profound, though
indirect, influence upon those who recoil from it in dread. The idea
of pleasure which it maintains in the crowd forces its way, by means of
the crowd's irresistible action, into the life even of the elect, and
lessens, perverts, all that concerns man's peace and repose, his
expansiveness, gladness and joy; retarding, too, it may safely be said,
the birth of the truer, profounder ideal of happiness: one that shall
be simpler, more peaceful and grave, more spiritual and human. This
ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little
importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases,
before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far
has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this
statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused
masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be
the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle
for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for
life that to-day means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double
source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double
symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?
6
Whither is humanity tending? This anxiety of man to know the aim and
the end is essentially human; it is a kind of infirmity or
provincialism of the mind, and has nothing in common with universal
reality. Have things an aim? Why should they have; and what aim or
end can there be, in an infinite organism?
But even though our mission be only to fill for an instant a diminutive
space that could as well be filled by the violet or grasshopper,
without loss to the universe of economy or grandeur, without the
destinies of this world being shortened or lengthened thereby by one
hour; even though this march of ours count for nothing, though we move
but for the sake of motion, tending no-whither, this futile progress
may nevertheless still claim to absorb all our attention and interest;
and this is entirely reasonable, it is the loftiest course we can
pursue. If it lay in the power of an ant to study the laws of the
stars; and if, intent on this study, though fully aware that these laws
are immutable, never to be modified, it declined to concern itself
further with the affairs or the future of the anthill--should we, who
stand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand to
ourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to be
dominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all its
universality, regard it as either good or moral?
Reason, at its apogee, becomes sterile; and inertia would be its sole
teaching did it not, after recognising the pettiness, the nothingness,
of our passions and hopes, of our being, and lastly, of reason itself,
retrace its footsteps back to the point whence it shall be able once
more to take eager interest in all these poor trivialities, in this
same nothingness, as holding them the only things in the world for
which its assistance has value.
We know not whither we go, but may still rejoice in the journey; and
this will become the lighter, the happier, for our endeavour to picture
to ourselves the next place of halt. Where will this be? The
mountain-pass lies ahead, and threatens; but the roads already are
widening and becoming less rugged; the trees spread their branches,
crowned with fresh blossom; silent waters are flowing before us,
reposeful and peaceful. Tokens all these, it may be, of our nearing
the vastest valley mankind yet has seen from the height of the tortuous
paths it has ever been climbing! Shall we call it the "First Valley of
Leisure"? Distrust as we may the surprises the future may have in
store, be the troubles and cares that await us never so burdensome,
there still seems some ground for believing that the bulk of mankind
will know days when, thanks, it may be, to machinery, agricultural
chemistry, medicine perhaps, or I know not what dawning science, labour
will become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical,
pitiless. What use will humanity make of this leisure? On its
employment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man. Were it not
well that his counsellors now should begin to teach him to use such
leisure he has in a nobler and worthier fashion? It is the way in
which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as
labour, the moral worth of a nation. It raises or lowers, it
replenishes or exhausts. At present we find, in these great cities of
ours, that three days' idleness will fill the hospitals with victims
whom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed.
7
Thus we return to the happiness which should be, and perhaps in course
of time will be, the real human happiness. Had we taken part in the
creation of the world, we should probably have bestowed more special,
distinctive force on all that is best in man, most immaterial, most
essentially human. If a thought of love, or a gleam of the intellect;
a word of justice, an act of pity, a desire for pardon or sacrifice; if
a gesture of sympathy, a craving of one's whole being for beauty,
goodness, or truth--if emotions like these could affect the universe as
they affect the man who has known them, they would call forth
miraculous flowery, supernatural radiance, inconceivable melody; they
would scatter the night, recall spring and the sunshine, stay the hand
of sickness, grief, disaster and misery; gladness would spring from
them, and youth be restored; while the mind would gain freedom, thought
immortality, and life be eternal. No resistance could check them;
their reward would follow as visibly as it follows the labourer's toll,
the nightingale's song, or the work of the bee. But we have learned at
last that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone; a world
contained in ourselves that bears no relation to matter, upon which its
influence is only of the most exceptional and hazardous kind. But none
the less real, therefore, is this world, or less infinite: and if words
break down when they try to tell of it, the reason is only that words,
after all, are mere fragments of matter, that seek to enter a sphere
where matter holds no dominion. The images that words evoke are for
ever betraying the thoughts for which they stand. When we try to
express perfect joy, a noble, spiritual ecstasy, a profound,
everlasting love, our words can only compare them with animal passion,
with drunkenness, brutal and coarse desire. And not only do they thus
degrade the noblest triumphs of the soul of man by likening them to
primitive instincts, but they incite us to believe, in spite of
ourselves, that the object or feeling compared is less real, less true
or substantial, than the type to which it is referred. Herein lies the
injustice and weakness of every attempt that is made to give voice to
the secrets of men. And yet, be words never so faulty, let us still
pay careful heed to the events of this inner world. For of all the
events it has lain in our power to meet hitherto, they alone truly are
human.
8