meditation, which I trust I may be pardoned for venturing to name. It is
the grand occasion afforded by the laudable custom of patiently
listening to dull speakers or readers in the lecture-room or the pulpit.
A moment’s reflection will surely enable the reader to corroborate the
remark that we seldom think out the subject of a new book or article, or
elaborate a political or philanthropic scheme, a family compact, or the
_menu_ of a large dinner, with so much precision and lucidity as when
gazing with vacant respectfulness at a gentleman expatiating with
elaborate stupidity on theology or science. The voice of the charmer as
it rises and falls is almost as soothing as the sound of the waves on
the shore, but not quite equally absorbing to the attention; while the
repose of all around gently inclines the languid mind to alight like a
butterfly on any little flower it may find in the arid waste, and suck
it to the bottom. This beneficent result of sermon and lecture-hearing
is, however, sometimes deplorably marred by the stuffiness of the room,
the hardness and shallowness of the seats (as in that place of severe
mortification of the flesh, the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street),
and lastly by the unpardonable habit of many orators of lifting their
voices in an animated way, as if they really had something to say, and
then solemnly announcing a platitude,—a process which acts on the nerves
of a listener as it must act on those of a flounder to be carried up
into the air half a dozen times in the bill of a heron and then dropped
flat on the mud. Under trials like these, the tormented thoughts of the
sufferer, seeking rest and finding none, are apt to assume quite
unaccountable and morbid shapes, and indulge in freaks of an irrational
kind, as in a dream. The present writer and some sober-minded
acquaintances have, for example, all felt themselves impelled at such
hours to perform aërial flights of fancy about the church or
lecture-room in the character of stray robins or bats. “Here,” they
think gravely (quite unconscious for the moment of the absurdity of
their reflection), “here, on this edge of a monument, I might stand and
take flight to that cornice an inch wide, whence I might run along to
the top of that pillar; and from thence, by merely touching the bald tip
of the preacher’s head, I might alight on the back of that plump little
angel on the tomb opposite, while a final spring would take me through
the open pane of window and perch me on the yew-tree outside.” The whole
may perhaps be reckoned a spontaneous mythical self-representation of
the Psalmist’s cry: “Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I
flee away and be at rest.”
Another kind of meditation under the same aggravated affliction is
afforded by making fantastic pictures out of the stains of damp and
tracks of snails on the wall, which often (in village churches
especially) supply the young with a permanent subject of contemplation
in “the doctor with his boots,” the “old lady and her cap,” and the huge
face which would be quite perfect if the spectator might only draw an
eye where one is missing, as in the fresco of Dante in the Bargello.
Occasionally, the sunshine kindly comes in and makes a little lively
entertainment on his own account by throwing the shadow of the
preacher’s head ten feet long on the wall behind him, causing the action
of his jaws to resemble the vast gape of a crocodile. All these,
however, ought perhaps to be counted as things of the past; or, at
least, as very “Rural Recreations of a Country Parishioner,” as A. K. H.
B. might describe them. It is not objects to distract and divert the
attention which anybody can complain of wanting in the larger number of
modern churches in London.
But, if our thoughts are wont to wander off into fantastic dreams when
we are bored, they have likewise a most unfortunate propensity to swerve
into byways of triviality no less misplaced when, on the contrary, we
are interested to excess, and our attention has been fixed beyond the
point wherein the tension can be sustained.
Every one has recognized the truth of Dickens’s description of Fagin, on
his trial, thinking of the pattern of the carpet; and few of us can
recall hours of anguish and anxiety without carrying along with their
tragic memories certain objects on which the eye fastened with
inexplicable tenacity. In lesser cases, and when we have been listening
to an intensely interesting political speech, or to a profoundly
thoughtful sermon (for even _Habitans in Sicco_ may sometimes meet such
cases), the mind seems to “shy” suddenly, like a restive horse, from the
whole topic under consideration, and we find ourselves, intellectually
speaking, landed in a ditch.
Another singular phenomenon under such circumstances is that, on
returning, perhaps after the interval of years, to a spot wherein such
excessive mental tension has been experienced, some of us are suddenly
vividly impressed with the idea that we have been sitting there during
all the intervening time, gazing fixedly on the same pillars and
cornices, the same trees projected against the evening sky, or whatever
other objects happen to be before our eyes. It would appear that the
impression of such objects made on the retina, while the mind was wholly
and vehemently absorbed in other things, must be somehow photographed on
the brain in a different way from the ordinary pictures to which we have
given their fair share of notice as they passed before us, and that we
are dimly aware they have been taken so long. The sight of them once
again bringing out this abnormal consciousness is intensely painful, as
if the real self had been chained for years to the spot, and only a
phantom “I” had ever gone away and lived a natural human existence
elsewhere.
Passing, now, from the external conditions of our Thinking, if we
attempt to classify the Thoughts themselves, we shall arrive, I fear, at
the painful discovery that the majority of us think most about the least
things, and least about the greatest; and that, in short, the mass of
our lucubrations is in the inverse ratio of their value. For example, a
share of our thoughts, quite astonishing in quantity, is occupied by
petty and trivial Arrangements. Rich or poor, it is an immense amount of
thought which all (save the most care-engrossed statesmen or absorbed
philosophers) give to these wretched little concerns. The wealthy
gentleman thinks of how and where and when he will send his servants and
horses here and there, of what company he shall entertain, of the
clearing of his woods, the preservation of his game, and twenty matters
of similar import; while his wife is pondering equally profoundly on the
furniture and ornaments of her rooms, the patterns of her flower-beds or
her worsted-work, the _menu_ of her dinner, and the frocks of her little
girls. Poor people need to think much more anxiously of the perpetual
problem, “How to make both ends meet,” by pinching in this direction and
earning something in that, and by all the thousand shifts and devices by
which life can be carried on at the smallest possible expenditure. One
of the very worst evils of limited means consists in the amount of
thinking about sordid little economies which becomes imperative when
every meal, every toilet, and every attempt at locomotion is a
battle-field of ingenuity and self-denial against ever-impending debt
and difficulty. Among men, the evil is most commonly combated by
energetic efforts to _earn_ rather than to _save_; but among women, to
whom so few fields of honest industry are open, the necessity for a
perpetual guard against the smallest freedom of expense falls, with all
its cruel and soul-crushing weight, and on the faces of thousands of
them may be read the sad story of youthful enthusiasm all nipped by
pitiful cares, anxieties, and meannesses, perhaps the most foreign of
all sentiments to their naturally liberal and generous hearts.
Next to actual arrangements which have some practical use, however
small, an inordinate quantity of thought is wasted by most of us on
wholly unreal plans and hypotheses which the thinker never even supposes
to bear any relation with the living world. Such are the endless moony
speculations, “_if_ such a thing had not happened” which did happen, or
“_if_ So-and-so had gone hither” instead of thither, or “_if_ I had only
said or done” what I did not say or do, “there would have
followed”—heaven knows what. Sometimes we pursue such endless and
aimless guessings with a companion, and then we generally stop short
pretty soon with the vivid sense of the absurdity of our behavior;
unless in such a case as that of the celebrated old childless couple,
who, looking back over their fireside on forty years of unbroken union,
proceeded to speculate on what they should have done _if_ they had had
children, and finally quarrelled and separated for ever on a divergence
of opinion respecting the best profession for their (imaginary) second
son. But, when alone, we go on weaving interminable cobwebs out of such
gossamer threads of thought, like poor Perrette with her pot of milk,—a
tale the ubiquity of which among all branches of the Aryan race
sufficiently proves the universality of the practice of building
_châteaux en Espagne_.
Of course, with every one who has a profession or business of any kind,
a vast quantity of thought is expended necessarily upon its details,
insomuch that to prevent themselves, when in company from “talking shop”
is somewhat difficult. The tradesman, medical man, lawyer, soldier,
landholder, have each plenty to think of in his own way; and in the case
of any originality of work—such as belongs to the higher class of
literature and art—the necessity for arduous and sustained thought in
composition is so great that (on the testimony of a great many wives) I
have come to the conclusion that a fine statue, picture, or book is
rarely planned without at least a week of domestic irritation and
discomfort, and the summary infliction of little deserved chastisement
on the junior branches of the distinguished author or artist’s family.
Mechanical contrivances obviously give immense occupation to those
singular persons who can love Machines, and do not regard them (as I
must confess is my case) with mingled mistrust, suspicion, and
abhorrence, as small models of the Universe on the Atheistic Projection.
Again, for the discovery of any chemical _desideratum_, ceaseless
industry and years of thought are expended; and a Palissy deems a
quarter of a lifetime properly given to pondering upon the best glaze
for crockery. Only by such sacrifices, indeed, have both the fine and
the industrial arts attained success; and happy must the man be counted
whose millions of thoughts expended on such topics have at the end
attained any practical conclusion to be added to the store of human
knowledge. Not so (albeit the thoughts are much after the same working
character) are the endless meditations of the idle on things wholly
personal and ephemeral, such as the inordinate care about the details of
furniture and equipage now prevalent among the rich in England, and the
lavish waste of feminine minds on double acrostics, art, embroidery,
and, above all, Dress! A young lady once informed me that, after having
for some hours retired to repose, her sister, who slept in the same
room, had disturbed her in the middle of the night: “Eugénie, waken up!
I have thought of a trimming for our new gowns!” Till larger and nobler
interests are opened to women, I fear there must be a good many whose
“dream by night and thought by day” is of trimmings.
When we have deducted all these silly and trivial and useless thoughts
from the sum of human thinking,—and evil and malicious thoughts, still
worse by far,—what small residuum of room is there, alas, for anything
like real serious reflection! How seldom do the larger topics presented
by history, science, or philosophy engage us! How yet more rarely do we
face the great questions of the whence, the why, and the whither of all
this hurrying life of ours, pouring out its tiny sands so rapidly! To
some, indeed, a noble philanthropic purpose or profound religious faith
gives not only consistency and meaning to life, but supplies a
background to all thoughts,—an object high above them, to which the
mental eye turns at every moment. But this is, alas! the exception far
more than the rule; and, where there is no absorbing human affection, it
is on trifles light as air and interests transitory as a passing cloud
that are usually fixed those minds whose boast it is that their thoughts
“travel through eternity.”
Alone among Thoughts of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, stands the grim,
soul-chilling thought of Death. It is a strange fact that, face it and
attempt to familiarize ourselves with it as we may, this one thought
ever presents itself as something fresh, something we had never really
thought before,—“_I shall die!_” There is a shock in the simple words
ever repeated each time we speak them in the depths of our souls.
There are few instances of the great change which has passed over the
spirit of the modern world more striking than the revolution which has
taken place in our judgment respecting the moral expediency of
perpetually thinking about Death. Was it that the whole Classic world
was so intensely entrancing and delightful that, to wean themselves from
its fascinations and reduce their minds to composure, the Saints found
it beneficial to live continually with a skull at their side? For
something like sixteen centuries Christian teachers seem all to have
taken it for granted that merely to write up “Memento mori” was to give
to mankind the most salutary and edifying counsel. Has anybody faith in
the same nostrum now, and is there a single Saint Francis or Saint
Theresa who keeps his or her pet skull alongside of his Bible and
Prayerbook?
A parallel might also be drawn between the medical and spiritual
treatment in vogue in former times and in our own. Up to our generation,
when a man was ill, the first idea of the physician was to bleed him and
reduce him in every way by “dephlogistic” treatment, after which it was
supposed the disease was “drawn off”; and, if the patient expired, the
survivors were consoled by the reflection that Dr. Sangrado had done all
which science and skill could effect to preserve so valuable a life. In
the memory of some now living, the presence of a medical man with a
lancet in his pocket (instantly used on the emergency of a fall from
horseback or a fit of apoplexy, epilepsy, or intoxication), was felt by
alarmed relations to be quite providential. Only somewhere about the
period of the first visitation of cholera in 1832 this phlebotomizing
dropped out of fashion; and, when the doctors had pretty nearly
abandoned it, a theory was broached that it was the human constitution,
not medical science, which had undergone a change, and that men and
women were so much weaker than heretofore that, even in fever, they now
needed to be supported by stimulants. Very much in the same way it would
appear that in former days our spiritual advisers imagined they could
cure moral disease by reducing the vital action of all the faculties and
passions, and bringing a man to feel himself a “dying creature” by way
of training him to live. Nowadays our divines endeavor to fill us with
warmer feelings and more vigorous will, and tell us that
“’Tis life of which our veins are scant;
O Life, not Death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, _that_ we want.”
Is it possible that human nature is really a little less vigorous and
passionate than it was when Antony and Cleopatra lived on the earth, or
when the genius of Shakspere made them live on the stage?
ESSAY V.
TO KNOW, OR NOT TO KNOW.
The father of Grecian philosophy held that “Man was created to know and
to contemplate.” The father of Hebrew philosophy—whose “Song,” if not
his “Wisdom,” is canonical, and whose judgment, if not his life, is
supposed to have been divinely guided—taught the somewhat different
lesson: “He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
We have been more or less steadily trying the validity of Solomon’s
dictum for about three thousand years. Would it be premature to take
stock of the results, and weigh whether it be really for human
well-being or the reverse that Knowledge is “increasing,” not only at
the inevitable rate of the accumulating experience of generations, but
also at the highly accelerated pace attained by our educational
machinery? It is at least slightly paradoxical that the same State
should call on its clergy to teach as an infallible truth that “he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,” and at the same time decree for
all its subjects, as if it were a highly benevolent measure, universal
compulsory education.
I fear that the prejudice in favor of Knowledge is so potent that no
reader will give me credit for entering on this inquiry in any other
spirit than one of banter. Nevertheless, I propose in the present paper
to examine, to the best of my ability, the general bearings of
book-knowledge upon human happiness and virtue, and so attain to some
conclusion on the matter, and decide whether Solomon did or did not give
proof of profound sagacity in originating the axiom that “Ignorance is
bliss” in the usual negative form of Hebrew verities; and also in
foretelling (nearly thirty centuries before the present London
publishing season) that “of the making of books there is no end.”
Knowledge, like other evils, it seems, is infinitely reproductive.
The larger and simpler objections to book-lore lie on the surface of the
case. First. Health, bodily activity, and muscular strength are almost
inevitably exchanged in a certain measure for learning. Ardent students
are rarely vigorous or agile; and, in the humbler ranks, the loss of
ruddy cheeks and stalwart limbs among the children of the peasantry,
after schools have been established in a village, has been constantly
observed. The close and heated class-rooms in which the poor urchins sit
(often in winter with clothes and shoes drenched through with rain or
snow) form a bad exchange, in a physical point of view, for the scamper
across the common, and the herding of sheep on the mountain. Let us put
the case at its lowest. Suppose that, out of three persons who receive
an ordinary book-education, one always loses a certain share of health;
that he is never so vigorous as he would have been, and is more liable
to consumption, dyspepsia, and other woes incident to sedentary
humanity, of which again he bequeaths a tendency to his offspring. Here
is surely some deduction from the supposed sum of happiness derivable
from knowledge. Can all the flowers of rhetoric of all the poets make
atonement for the loss of the bounding pulse, the light, free step, the
cool brain of perfect health?
Secondly. It is not only the health of life’s noon and evening which is
more or less compromised by study, but the morning hours of life’s
glorious prime, hours such as never can come again on this side heaven,
which are given to dull, dog’s-eared books and dreary “copies,” and
sordid slates, instead of to cowslips and buttercups, the romp in the
hay-field, and the flying of the white kite, which soars up into the
deep dark blue and carries the young eyes after it where the unseen lark
is singing and the child-angels are playing among the rolling clouds of
summer. There was once a child called from such dreams to her
lesson,—the dreary lesson of learning to spell possibly those very words
which her pen is now tracing on this page. The little girl looked at her
peacock, sitting in his glory on the balustrade of the old granite
steps, with nothing earthly ever to do but to sun himself and eat nice
brown bread and call “Pea-ho!” every morning, and the poor child burst
into a storm of weeping, and sobbed, “I wish I were a peacock! I wish I
were a peacock!” Truly Learning ought to have something to show to
compensate for the thousand tears shed in similar anguish! School-rooms
are usually the ugliest, dullest, most airless and sunless rooms in the
houses where they exist; and yet in these dens we ruthlessly imprison
children day after day, year after year, till childhood itself is over,
never, never to return. And _then_ the young man or woman may go forth
freely among the fields and woods, and find them fair and sweet, but
never so fair or so sweet as they were in the wasted years of infancy.
Who can lay his hand on his heart, and say that a cowslip or a daffodil
smells now as it used to smell when it was so very much easier to pluck
it, quite on our own level? Do strawberries taste as they did, and is
there the same drop of honey in each of the flowerets of the red clover?
Are modern kittens and puppies half so soft and so funny as they were in
former days when we were young? No one will dare affirm any of these
things who has reached years of discretion. Is it not then a most
short-sighted policy—giving away of a bird in hand for a bird in the
bush—to sacrifice the joyous hours of young existence for the value of
advantages (if advantages indeed they be) to be reaped in later and
duller years? Watch a child at play, O reader, if you have forgotten
your own feelings. Let it be Coleridge’s
“Little singing, dancing elf,
Singing, dancing by itself.”
Catch, if your dim orbs are sharp enough, those cloudless blue eyes
looking straight into yours, and hear the laugh which only means the
best of all possible jokes, “I _am_ so happy!” Then go to your stupid
desk, and calculate algebraically what amount of classics and
mathematics are equivalent to that ecstasy of young existence, wherein
“Simply to feel that we breathe, that we live,
Is worth the best joy which life elsewhere can give.”
The pagan Irish believed in a paradise for the virtuous dead, and called
it “Innis-na-n’Oge,” the “Island of the Young.” We all live there the
first dozen years of mortality; and, unless we prove unusually
excellent, I fear it may be long before we arrive at a better place.
But hitherto we have taken for granted that the little prisoners of the
school-room are all sure to live and come into their fortunes of
erudition, earned with so many tear-blisters on their lesson-books. Of
course, however, this is far from being the true state of the case. The
poor little child, whose happiness—innocent, certain, and immediate
happiness—is bartered so ruthlessly for the remote and contingent
benefit of his later years, may very probably never see those years at
all; nay, in a fixed average number of cases, it is absolutely certain
that he will not grow into a man. Can anything be much more sad than
such an abortive sacrifice? Who does not remember Walter Scott’s “Pet
Marjory,” with her infantine delight in her visits to the country, and
the calves and the geese, and the “bubbly-jocks”; and how she wrote down
in her private journal that she was learning the multiplication table,
and that seven times seven was a “divlish thing,” and quite impossible
to acquire; and how, when somehow at last even the still more dreadful
“eight times eight” had been lodged in her poor little brains, there
came a day when she cried suddenly to her mother, “Oh, my head! my
head!” and then in a few brief hours there was an end of lessons and
their advantages for Marjory forever?
And yet again, when some ardent lad has passed through school and
college, foregoing all the sports of his age, and receiving prizes and
honors, till he stands a first-class man of Oxford or Cambridge, and his
father’s sacrifices and his mother’s yearnings and all his own gallant
and self-denying labors seem on the point of reaping their reward, how
often does it come to pass that with the close of the struggle come the
reaction, the decline, the hasty journey abroad, the hoping against
hope, and then—death!