columns of the newspaper.
IV. SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY.--(1) A little society is needful to show a man
his failings; for if he lives entirely by himself, he has no occasion to
fall, and like a soldier in time of peace, becomes both weak and vain.
But a little solitude must be used, or we grow content with current
virtues and forget the ideal. In society we lose scrupulous brightness
of honour; in solitude we lose the courage necessary to face our own
imperfections. (2) As a question of pleasure, after a man has reached a
certain age, I can hardly perceive much room to choose between them:
each is in a way delightful, and each will please best after an
experience of the other. (3) But solitude for its own sake should surely
never be preferred. We are bound by the strongest obligations to busy
ourselves amid the world of men, if it be only to crack jokes. The
finest trait in the character of St. Paul was his readiness to be damned
for the salvation of anybody else. And surely we should all endure a
little weariness to make one face look brighter or one hour go more
pleasantly in this mixed world. (4) It is our business here to speak,
for it is by the tongue that we multiply ourselves most influentially.
To speak kindly, wisely, and pleasantly is the first of duties, the
easiest of duties, and the duty that is most blessed in its performance.
For it is natural, it whiles away life, it spreads intelligence; and it
increases the acquaintance of man with man. (5) It is, besides, a good
investment, for while all other pleasures decay, and even the delight in
nature, Grandfather William is still bent to gossip. (6) Solitude is the
climax of the negative virtues. When we go to bed after a solitary day
we can tell ourselves that we have not been unkind nor dishonest nor
untruthful; and the negative virtues are agreeable to that dangerous
faculty we call the conscience. That they should ever be admitted for a
part of virtue is what I cannot explain. I do not care two straws for
all the _nots_. (7) The positive virtues are imperfect; they are even
ugly in their imperfection: for man's acts, by the necessity of his
being, are coarse and mingled. The kindest, in the course of a day of
active kindnesses, will say some things rudely, and do some things
cruelly; the most honourable, perhaps, trembles at his nearness to a
doubtful act. (8) Hence the solitary recoils from the practice of life,
shocked by its unsightlinesses. But if I could only retain that
superfine and guiding delicacy of the sense that grows in solitude, and
still combine with it that courage of performance which is never abashed
by any failure, but steadily pursues its right and human design in a
scene of imperfection, I might hope to strike in the long-run a conduct
more tender to others and less humiliating to myself.
V. SELFISHNESS AND EGOISM.--An unconscious, easy, selfish person shocks
less, and is more easily loved, than one who is laboriously and
egotistically unselfish. There is at least no fuss about the first; but
the other parades his sacrifices, and so sells his favours too dear.
Selfishness is calm, a force of nature: you might say the trees were
selfish. But egoism is a piece of vanity; it must always take you into
its confidence; it is uneasy, troublesome, seeking; it can do good, but
not handsomely; it is uglier, because less dignified, than selfishness
itself. But here I perhaps exaggerate to myself, because I am the one
more than the other, and feel it like a hook in my mouth, at every step
I take. Do what I will, this seems to spoil all.
VI. RIGHT AND WRONG.--It is the mark of a good action that it appears
inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do
otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are
damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only
been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.
VII. DISCIPLINE OF CONSCIENCE.--(1) Never allow your mind to dwell on
your own misconduct: that is ruin. The conscience has morbid
sensibilities; it must be employed but not indulged, like the
imagination or the stomach. (2) Let each stab suffice for the occasion;
to play with this spiritual pain turns to penance; and a person easily
learns to feel good by dallying with the consciousness of having done
wrong. (3) Shut your eyes hard against the recollection of your sins. Do
not be afraid, you will not be able to forget them. (4) You will always
do wrong: you must try to get used to that, my son. It is a small matter
to make a work about, when all the world is in the same case. I meant
when I was a young man to write a great poem; and now I am cobbling
little prose articles and in excellent good spirits, I thank you. So,
too, I meant to lead a life that should keep mounting from the first;
and though I have been repeatedly down again below sea-level, and am
scarce higher than when I started, I am as keen as ever for that
enterprise. Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to
continue to fail, in good spirits. (5) There is but one test of a good
life: that the man shall continue to grow more difficult about his own
behaviour. That is to be good: there is no other virtue attainable. The
virtues we admire in the saint and the hero are the fruits of a happy
constitution. You, for your part, must not think you will ever be a good
man, for these are born and not made. You will have your own reward, if
you keep on growing better than you were--how do I say? if you do not
keep on growing worse. (6) A man is one thing, and must be exercised in
all his faculties. Whatever side of you is neglected, whether it is the
muscles, or the taste for art, or the desire for virtue, that which is
cultivated will suffer in proportion. ---- was greatly tempted, I
remember, to do a very dishonest act, in order that he might pursue his
studies in art. When he consulted me, I advised him not (putting it that
way for once), because his art would suffer. (7) It might be fancied
that if we could only study all sides of our being in an exact
proportion, we should attain wisdom. But in truth a chief part of
education is to exercise one set of faculties _a outrance_--one, since
we have not the time so to practise all; thus the dilettante misses the
kernel of the matter; and the man who has wrung forth the secret of one
part of life knows more about the others than he who has tepidly
circumnavigated all. (8) Thus, one must be your profession, the rest can
only be your delights; and virtue had better be kept for the latter, for
it enters into all, but none enters by necessity into it. You will learn
a great deal of virtue by studying any art; but nothing of any art in
the study of virtue. (9) The study of conduct has to do with grave
problems; not every action should be higgled over; one of the leading
virtues therein is to let oneself alone. But if you make it your chief
employment, you are sure to meddle too much. This is the great error of
those who are called pious. Although the war of virtue be unending
except with life, hostilities are frequently suspended, and the troops
go into winter quarters; but the pious will not profit by these times of
truce; where their conscience can perceive no sin, they will find a sin
in that very innocency; and so they pervert, to their annoyance, those
seasons which God gives to us for repose and a reward. (10) The nearest
approximation to sense in all this matter lies with the Quakers. There
must be no _will_-worship; how much more, no _will_-repentance! The
damnable consequence of set seasons, even for prayer, is to have a man
continually posturing to himself, till his conscience is taught as many
tricks as a pet monkey, and the gravest expressions are left with a
perverted meaning. (11) For my part, I should try to secure some part of
every day for meditation, above all in the early morning and the open
air; but how that time was to be improved I should leave to circumstance
and the inspiration of the hour. Nor if I spent it in whistling or
numbering my footsteps, should I consider it misspent for that. I should
have given my conscience a fair field; when it has anything to say, I
know too well it can speak daggers; therefore, for this time, my hard
taskmaster has given me a holyday, and I may go in again rejoicing to my
breakfast and the human business of the day.
VIII. GRATITUDE TO GOD.--(1) To the gratitude that becomes us in this
life, I can set no limit. Though we steer after a fashion, yet we must
sail according to the winds and currents. After what I have done, what
might I not have done? That I have still the courage to attempt my life,
that I am not now overladen with dishonours, to whom do I owe it but to
the gentle ordering of circumstances in the great design? More has not
been done to me than I can bear; I have been marvellously restrained and
helped; not unto us, O Lord! (2) I cannot forgive God for the suffering
of others; when I look abroad upon His world and behold its cruel
destinies, I turn from Him with disaffection; nor do I conceive that He
will blame me for the impulse. But when I consider my own fates, I grow
conscious of His gentle dealing: I see Him chastise with helpful blows,
I feel His stripes to be caresses; and this knowledge is my comfort that
reconciles me to the world. (3) All those whom I now pity with
indignation, are perhaps not less fatherly dealt with than myself. I do
right to be angry: yet they, perhaps, if they lay aside heat and temper,
and reflect with patience on their lot, may find everywhere, in their
worst trials, the same proofs of a divine affection. (4) While we have
little to try us, we are angry with little; small annoyances do not bear
their justification on their faces; but when we are overtaken by a great
sorrow or perplexity, the greatness of our concern sobers us so that we
see more clearly and think with more consideration. I speak for myself;
nothing grave has yet befallen me but I have been able to reconcile my
mind to its occurrence, and see in it, from my own little and partial
point of view, an evidence of a tender and protecting God. Even the
misconduct into which I have been led has been blessed to my
improvement. If I did not sin, and that so glaringly that my conscience
is convicted on the spot, I do not know what I should become, but I feel
sure I should grow worse. The man of very regular conduct is too often a
prig, if he be not worse--a rabbi. I, for my part, want to be startled
out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my own eyes; I want to
feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually reminded of my own
weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my
spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction
of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences
of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; shall I then be so
mad as to complain that all cannot be deciphered? Shall I not rather
wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, that in so vast a scheme I
seem to have been able to read, however little, and that that little was
encouraging to faith?
IX. BLAME.--What comes from without and what from within, how much of
conduct proceeds from the spirit or how much from circumstances, what is
the part of choice and what the part of the selection offered, where
personal character begins or where, if anywhere, it escapes at all from
the authority of nature, these are questions of curiosity and eternally
indifferent to right and wrong. Our theory of blame is utterly
sophisticated and untrue to man's experience. We are as much ashamed of
a pimpled face that came to us by natural descent as by one that we have
earned by our excesses, and rightly so; since the two cases, in so much
as they unfit us for the easier sort of pleasing and put an obstacle in
the path of love, are exactly equal in their consequence. We look aside
from the true question. We cannot blame others at all; we can only
punish them; and ourselves we blame indifferently for a deliberate
crime, a thoughtless brusquerie, or an act done without volition in an
ecstasy of madness. We blame ourselves from two considerations: first,
because another has suffered; and second, because, in so far as we have
again done wrong, we can look forward with the less confidence to what
remains of our career. Shall we repent this failure? It is there that
the consciousness of sin most cruelly affects us; it is in view of this
that a man cries out, in exaggeration, that his heart is desperately
wicked and deceitful above all things. We all tacitly subscribe this
judgment: Woe unto him by whom offences shall come! We accept
palliations for our neighbours; we dare not, in sight of our own soul,
accept them for ourselves. We may not be to blame; we may be conscious
of no free will in the matter, of a possession, on the other hand, or
an irresistible tyranny of circumstance,--yet we know, in another sense,
we are to blame for all. Our right to live, to eat, to share in
mankind's pleasures, lies precisely in this: that we must be persuaded
we can on the whole live rather beneficially than hurtfully to others.
Remove this persuasion, and the man has lost his right. That persuasion
is our dearest jewel, to which we must sacrifice the life itself to
which it entitles us. For it is better to be dead than degraded.
X. MARRIAGE.--(1) No considerate man can approach marriage without deep
concern. I, he will think, who have made hitherto so poor a business of
my own life, am now about to embrace the responsibility of another's.
Henceforth, there shall be two to suffer from my faults; and that other
is the one whom I most desire to shield from suffering. In view of our
impotence and folly, it seems an act of presumption to involve another's
destiny with ours. We should hesitate to assume command of an army or a
trading-smack; shall we not hesitate to become surety for the life and
happiness, now and henceforward, of our dearest friend? To be nobody's
enemy but one's own, although it is never possible to any, can least of
all be possible to one who is married. (2) I would not so much fear to
give hostages to fortune, if fortune ruled only in material things; but
fortune, as we call those minor and more inscrutable workings of
providence, rules also in the sphere of conduct. I am not so blind but
that I know I might be a murderer or even a traitor to-morrow; and now,
as if I were not already too feelingly alive to my misdeeds, I must
choose out the one person whom I most desire to please, and make her the
daily witness of my failures, I must give a part in all my dishonours to
the one person who can feel them more keenly than myself. (3) In all our
daring, magnanimous human way of life, I find nothing more bold than
this. To go into battle is but a small thing by comparison. It is the
last act of committal. After that, there is no way left, not even
suicide, but to be a good man. (4) She will help you, let us pray. And
yet she is in the same case; she, too, has daily made shipwreck of her
own happiness and worth; it is with a courage no less irrational than
yours, that she also ventures on this new experiment of life. Two who
have failed severally, now join their fortunes with a wavering hope. (5)
But it is from the boldness of the enterprise that help springs. To take
home to your hearth that living witness whose blame will most affect
you, to eat, to sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence most
exacting judge, is not this to domesticate the living God? Each becomes
a conscience to the other, legible like a clock upon the chimney-piece.
Each offers to his mate a figure of the consequence of human acts. And
while I may still continue by my inconsiderate or violent life to spread
far-reaching havoc throughout man's confederacy, I can do so no more, at
least, in ignorance and levity; one face shall wince before me in the
flesh; I have taken home the sorrows I create to my own hearth and bed;
and though I continue to sin, it must be now with open eyes.
XI. IDLENESS AND INDUSTRY.--I remember a time when I was very idle; and
lived and profited by that humour. I have no idea why I ceased to be so,
yet I scarce believe I have the power to return to it; it is a change of
age. I made consciously a thousand little efforts, but the determination
from which these arose came to me while I slept and in the way of
growth. I have had a thousand skirmishes to keep myself at work upon
particular mornings, and sometimes the affair was hot; but of that great
change of campaign, which decided all this part of my life, and turned
me from one whose business was to shirk into one whose business was to
strive and persevere,--it seems as though all that had been done by some
one else. The life of Goethe affected me; so did that of Balzac; and
some very noble remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the
"Cousine Bette." I daresay I could trace some other influences in the
change. All I mean is, I was never conscious of a struggle, nor
registered a vow, nor seemingly had anything personally to do with the
matter. I came about like a well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel
that unknown steersman whom we call God.
XII. COURAGE.--Courage is the principal virtue, for all the others
presuppose it. If you are afraid, you may do anything. Courage is to be
cultivated, and some of the negative virtues may be sacrificed in the
cultivation.
XIII. RESULTS OF ACTION.--The result is the reward of actions, not the
test. The result is a child born; if it be beautiful and healthy, well:
if club-footed or crook-back, perhaps well also. We cannot direct ...
[1878?]
XV
THE IDEAL HOUSE
Two things are necessary in any neighbourhood where we propose to spend
a life: a desert and some living water.
There are many parts of the earth's face which offer the necessary
combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great
prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied; even
greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and the eye
measure differently. Bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than
distant Alps, and the thick fern upon a Surrey heath makes a fine forest
for the imagination, and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. A
Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll,
or one of those rocky sea-side deserts of Provence overgrown with
rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where the mind is
never weary. Forests, being more enclosed, are not at first sight so
attractive, but they exercise a spell; they must, however, be
diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered
perfect without conifers. Even sand-hills, with their intricate plan,
and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert.
The house must be within hail of either a little river or the sea. A
great river is more fit for poetry than to adorn a neighbourhood; its
sweep of waters increases the scale of the scenery and the distance of
one notable object from another; and a lively burn gives us, in the
space of a few yards, a greater variety of promontory and islet, of
cascade, shallow goil, and boiling pool, with answerable changes both
of song and colour, than a navigable stream in many hundred miles. The
fish, too, make a more considerable feature of the brook-side, and the
trout plumping in the shadow takes the ear. A stream should, besides, be
narrow enough to cross, or the burn hard by a bridge, or we are at once
shut out of Eden. The quantity of water need be of no concern, for the
mind sets the scale, and can enjoy a Niagara Fall of thirty inches. Let
us approve the singer of
"Shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."
If the sea is to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a
heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small havens and
dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a first necessity,
rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock on a calm day is a
better station than the top of Teneriffe or Chimborazo. In short, both
for the desert and the water, the conjunction of many near and bold
details is bold scenery for the imagination and keeps the mind alive.
Given these two prime luxuries, the nature of the country where we are
to live is, I had almost said, indifferent; after that, inside the
garden, we can construct a country of our own. Several old trees, a
considerable variety of level, several well-grown hedges to divide our
garden into provinces, a good extent of old well-set turf, and thickets
of shrubs and evergreens to be cut into and cleared at the new owner's
pleasure, are the qualities to be sought for in your chosen land.
Nothing is more delightful than a succession of small lawns, opening one
out of the other through tall hedges; these have all the charm of the
old bowling-green repeated, do not require the labour of many trimmers,
and afford a series of changes. You must have much lawn against the
early summer, so as to have a great field of daisies, the year's morning
frost; as you must have a wood of lilacs, to enjoy to the full the
period of their blossoming. Hawthorn is another of the spring's
ingredients; but it is even best to have a rough public lane at one side
of your enclosure which, at the right season, shall become an avenue of
bloom and odour. The old flowers are the best and should grow carelessly
in corners. Indeed, the ideal fortune is to find an old garden, once
very richly cared for, since sunk into neglect, and to tend, not repair,
that neglect; it will thus have a smack of nature and wildness which
skilful dispositions cannot overtake. The gardener should be an idler,
and have a gross partiality to the kitchen plots: an eager or toilful
gardener mis-becomes the garden landscape; a tasteful gardener will be
ever meddling, will keep the borders raw, and take the bloom off nature.
Close adjoining, if you are in the south, an olive-yard, if in the
north, a swarded apple-orchard reaching to the stream, completes your
miniature domain; but this is perhaps best entered through a door in the
high fruit-wall; so that you close the door behind you on your sunny
plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, when you go down to watch the
apples falling in the pool. It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden
for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. Nor must the
ear be forgotten: without birds, a garden is a prison-yard. There is a
garden near Marseilles on a steep hill-side, walking by which, upon a
sunny morning, your ear will suddenly be ravished with a burst of small
and very cheerful singing: some score of cages being set out there to
sun the occupants. This is a heavenly surprise to any passer-by; but the
price paid, to keep so many ardent and winged creatures from their
liberty, will make the luxury too dear for any thoughtful
pleasure-lover. There is only one sort of bird that I can tolerate
caged, though even then I think it hard, and that is what is called in
France the Bec-d'Argent. I once had two of these pigmies in captivity;
and in the quiet, bare house upon a silent street where I was then
living, their song, which was not much louder than a bee's, but airily
musical, kept me in a perpetual good humour. I put the cage upon my
table when I worked, carried it with me when I went for meals, and kept
it by my head at night: the first thing in the morning, these
_maestrini_ would pipe up. But these, even if you can pardon their
imprisonment, are for the house. In the garden the wild birds must plant
a colony, a chorus of the lesser warblers that should be almost
deafening, a blackbird in the lilacs, a nightingale down the lane, so
that you must stroll to hear it, and yet a little farther, tree-tops
populous with rooks.
Your house should not command much outlook; it should be set deep and
green, though upon rising ground, or, if possible, crowning a knoll, for
the sake of drainage. Yet it must be open to the east, or you will miss
the sunrise; sunset occurring so much later, you can go up a few steps
and look the other way. A house of more than two stories is a mere
barrack; indeed the ideal is of one story, raised upon cellars. If the
rooms are large, the house may be small: a single room, lofty, spacious,
and lightsome, is more palatial than a castleful of cabinets and
cupboards. Yet size in a house, and some extent and intricacy of
corridor, is certainly delightful to the flesh. The reception room
should be, if possible, a place of many recesses, which are "petty
retiring places for conference"; but it must have one long wall with a
divan: for a day spent upon a divan, among a world of cushions, is as
full of diversion as to travel. The eating-room, in the French mode,
should be _ad hoc_: unfurnished, but with a buffet, the table, necessary
chairs, one or two of Canaletto's etchings, and a tile fire-place for
the winter. In neither of these public places should there be anything
beyond a shelf or two of books; but the passages may be one library from
end to end, and the stair, if there be one, lined with volumes in old
leather, very brightly carpeted, and leading half-way up, and by way of
landing, to a windowed recess with a fire-place; this window, almost
alone in the house, should command a handsome prospect. Husband and wife
must each possess a studio; on the woman's sanctuary I hesitate to
dwell, and turn to the man's. The walls are shelved waist-high for
books, and the top thus forms a continuous table running round the wall.
Above are prints, a large map of the neighbourhood, a Corot and a Claude
or two. The room is very spacious, and the five tables and two chairs
are but as islands. One table is for actual work, one close by for
references in use; one, very large, for MSS. or proofs that wait their
turn; one kept clear for an occasion; and the fifth is the map table,
groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and charts. Of all books
these are the least wearisome to read and the richest in matter; the
course of roads and rivers, the contour lines and the forests in the
maps--the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing marks and little
pilot-pictures in the charts--and, in both, the bead-roll of names, make
them of all printed matter the most fit to stimulate and satisfy the
fancy. The chair in which you write is very low and easy, and backed
into a corner; at one elbow the fire twinkles; close at the other, if
you are a little inhumane, your cage of silver-bills are twittering into
song.
Joined along by a passage, you may reach the great sunny, glass-roofed,
and tiled gymnasium, at the far end of which, lined with bright marble,
is your plunge and swimming bath, fitted with a capacious boiler.
The whole loft of the house from end to end makes one undivided chamber;
here are set forth tables on which to model imaginary or actual
countries in putty or plaster, with tools and hardy pigments; a
carpenter's bench; and a spared corner for photography, while at the far
end a space is kept clear for playing soldiers. Two boxes contain the
two armies of some five hundred horse and foot; two others the
ammunition of each side, and a fifth the foot-rules and the three
colours of chalk, with which you lay down, or, after a day's play,
refresh the outlines of the country; red or white for the two kinds of
road (according as they are suitable or not for the passage of
ordnance), and blue for the course of the obstructing rivers. Here I
foresee that you may pass much happy time; against a good adversary a
game may well continue for a month; for with armies so considerable
three moves will occupy an hour. It will be found to set an excellent
edge on this diversion if one of the players shall, every day or so,
write a report of the operations in the character of army correspondent.
I have left to the last the little room for winter evenings. This should
be furnished in warm positive colours, and sofas and floor thick with
rich furs. The hearth, where you burn wood of aromatic quality on silver
dogs, tiled round about with Bible pictures; the seats deep and easy; a
single Titian in a gold frame; a white bust or so upon a bracket; a rack
for the journals of the week; a table for the books of the year; and
close in a corner the three shelves full of eternal books that never
weary: Shakespeare, Moliere, Montaigne, Lamb, Sterne, De Musset's
comedies (the one volume open at _Carmosine_ and the other at
_Fantasio_); the "Arabian Nights," and kindred stories, in Weber's
solemn volumes; Borrow's "Bible in Spain," the "Pilgrim's Progress,"
"Guy Mannering," and "Rob Roy," "Monte Cristo," and the "Vicomte de
Bragelonne," immortal Boswell sole among biographers, Chaucer, Herrick,
and the "State Trials."
The bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of
varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of
books of a particular and dippable order, such as "Pepys," the "Paston
Letters," Burt's "Letters from the Highlands," or the "Newgate
Calendar." ...
[1884?]
LAY MORALS
_The following chapters of a projected treatise on Ethics were
drafted at Edinburgh in the spring of 1879. They are unrevised, and
must not be taken as representing, either as to matter or form, their
author's final thoughts; but they contain much that is essentially
characteristic of his mind._
LAY MORALS
CHAPTER I
The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter.
Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and
profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only
broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from
one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two
experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is
for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is
in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such,
moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon
details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the
best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was
ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or
actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for it is a
knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of
the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour
to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances.
A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, and contempt for
others, try earnestly to set forth as much as they can grasp of this
inner law; but the vast majority, when they come to advise the young,
must be content to retail certain doctrines which have been already
retailed to them in their own youth. Every generation has to educate
another which it has brought upon the stage. People who readily accept
the responsibility of parentship, having very different matters in their
eye, are apt to feel rueful when their responsibility falls due. What
are they to tell the child about life and conduct, subjects on which
they have themselves so few and such confused opinions? Indeed, I do not
know; the least said, perhaps, the soonest mended; and yet the child
keeps asking, and the parent must find some words to say in his own
defence. Where does he find them? and what are they when found?
As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out
of a thousand, he will instil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things;
the terror of public opinion, and, flowing from that as a fountain, the
desire of wealth and applause. Besides these, or what might be deduced
as corollaries from these, he will teach not much else of any effective
value: some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, and how
to walk through a quadrille.
But, you may tell me, the young people are taught to be Christians. It
may be want of penetration, but I have not yet been able to perceive it.
As an honest man, whatever we teach, and be it good or evil, it is not
the doctrine of Christ. What He taught (and in this He is like all other
teachers worthy of the name) was not a code of rules, but a ruling
spirit; not truths, but a spirit of truth; not views, but a view. What
He showed us was an attitude of mind. Towards the many considerations on
which conduct is built, each man stands in a certain relation. He takes
life on a certain principle. He has a compass in his spirit which points
in a certain direction. It is the attitude, the relation, the point of
the compass, that is the whole body and gist of what he has to teach us;
in this, the details are comprehended; out of this the specific precepts
issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied.
And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a
historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and,
in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted
with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have
but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side,
and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify
the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an
enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment
and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human
nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from
point to point, from end to end. This is a degree of trouble which will
be gladly taken by a very humble artist; but not even the terror of
eternal fire can teach a business man to bend his imagination to such
athletic efforts. Yet without this, all is vain; until we understand the
whole, we shall understand none of the parts; and otherwise we have no
more than broken images and scattered words; the meaning remains buried;
and the language in which our prophet speaks to us is a dead language in
our ears.
Take a few of Christ's sayings and compare them with our current
doctrines.
"_Ye cannot_," He says, "_serve God and Mammon_." Cannot? And our whole
system is to teach us how we can!
"_The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the
children of light._" Are they? I had been led to understand the reverse:
that the Christian merchant, for example, prospered exceedingly in his
affairs; that honesty was the best policy; that an author of repute had
written a conclusive treatise "How to make the best of both worlds." Of
both worlds indeed! Which am I to believe then--Christ or the author of
repute?
"_Take no thought for the morrow._" Ask the Successful Merchant;
interrogate your own heart; and you will have to admit that this is not
only a silly but an immoral position. All we believe, all we hope, all
we honour in ourselves or our contemporaries, stands condemned in this
one sentence, or, if you take the other view, condemns the sentence as
unwise and inhumane. We are not then of the "same mind that was in
Christ." We disagree with Christ. Either Christ meant nothing, or else
He or we must be in the wrong. Well says Thoreau, speaking of some texts
from the New Testament, and finding a strange echo of another style
which the reader may recognise: "Let but one of these sentences be
rightly read from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left
one stone of that meeting-house upon another."
It may be objected that these are what are called "hard sayings"; and
that a man, or an education, may be very sufficiently Christian although
it leave some of these sayings upon one side. But this is a very gross
delusion. Although truth is difficult to state, it is both easy and
agreeable to receive, and the mind runs out to meet it ere the phrase be
done. The universe, in relation to what any man can say of it, is plain,
patent, and staringly comprehensible. In itself, it is a great and
travailing ocean, unsounded, unvoyageable, an eternal mystery to man;
or, let us say, it is a monstrous and impassable mountain, one side of
which, and a few near slopes and foothills, we can dimly study with
these mortal eyes. But what any man can say of it, even in his highest
utterance, must have relation to this little and plain corner, which is
no less visible to us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it
will go hard if we cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and most
abstruse flight of a philosopher becomes clear and shallow, in the flash
of a moment, when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his
intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; once we get our
own finger rightly parallel, and we see what the man meant, whether it
be a new star or an old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to
understand, it is because we are thinking of something else.
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our
prophet, and to think of different things in the same order. To be of
the same mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective;
it is not to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not
much debated; it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the
force of his hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision
that whatever he may express, your eyes will light at once on the
original, that whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once
accept. You do not belong to the school of any philosopher, because you
agree with him that theft is, on the whole, objectionable, or that the
sun is overhead at noon. It is by the hard sayings that discipleship is
tested. We are all agreed about the middling and indifferent parts of
knowledge and morality; even the most soaring spirits too often take
them tamely upon trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist,
does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the purpose of any
system looks towards those extreme points where it steps valiantly
beyond tradition and returns with some covert hint of things outside.
Then only can you be certain that the words are not words of course, nor
mere echoes of the past; then only are you sure that if he be indicating
anything at all, it is a star and not a street-lamp; then only do you
touch the heart of the mystery; since it was for these that the author
wrote his book.
Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a
word that transcends all commonplace morality; every now and then He
quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a
pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold poetry
of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday
conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some higher
principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same mind that was in
Christ, who stands at some centre not too far from His, and looks at the
world and conduct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not opposing
attitude--or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ's philosophy--every
such saying should come home with a thrill of joy and corroboration; he
should feel each one below his feet as another sure foundation in the
flux of time and chance; each should be another proof that in the
torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines and great
armaments and empires are swept away and swallowed, he stands immovable,
holding by the eternal stars. But, alas! at this juncture of the ages it
is not so with us; on each and every such occasion our whole fellowship
of Christians falls back in disapproving wonder and implicitly denies
the saying. Christians! the farce is impudently broad. Let us stand up
in the sight of heaven and confess. The ethics that we hold are those of
Benjamin Franklin. _Honesty is the best policy_, is perhaps a hard
saying; it is certainly one by which a wise man of these days will not
too curiously direct his steps; but I think it shows a glimmer of
meaning to even our most dimmed intelligences; I think we perceive a
principle behind it; I think, without hyperbole, we are of the same mind
that was in Benjamin Franklin.
CHAPTER II
But, I may be told, we teach the ten commandments, where a world of
morals lies condensed, the very pith and epitome of all ethics and
religion; and a young man with these precepts engraved upon his mind
must follow after profit with some conscience and Christianity of
method. A man cannot go very far astray who neither dishonours his
parents, nor kills, nor commits adultery, nor steals, nor bears false
witness; for these things, rightly thought out, cover a vast field of
duty.
Alas! what is a precept? It is at best an illustration; it is case law
at the best which can be learned by precept. The letter is not only
dead, but killing; the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered,
alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but familiarity
has a cunning disenchantment; in a day or two she can steal all beauty
from the mountain tops; and the most startling words begin to fall dead
upon the ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too often,
you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear
it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by
assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are
feats of about equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar
means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of
hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl
himself scarlet and beat the pulpit like a thing possessed, but his
hearers will continue to nod; they are strangely at peace; they know all
he has to say; ring the old bell as you choose, it is still the old bell
and it cannot startle their composure. And so with this byword about
the letter and the spirit. It is quite true, no doubt; but it has no
meaning in the world to any man of us. Alas! it has just this meaning,
and neither more nor less: that while the spirit is true, the letter is
eternally false.
The shadow of a great oak lies abroad upon the ground at noon, perfect,
clear, and stable like the earth. But let a man set himself to mark out
the boundary with cords and pegs, and were he never so nimble and never
so exact, what with the multiplicity of the leaves and the progression
of the shadow as it flees before the travelling sun, long ere he has
made the circuit the whole figure will have changed. Life may be
compared, not to a single tree, but to a great and complicated forest;
circumstance is more swiftly changing than a shadow, language much more
inexact than the tools of a surveyor; from day to day the trees fall and
are renewed; the very essences are fleeting as we look; and the whole
world of leaves is swinging tempest-tossed among the winds of time. Look
now for your shadows. O man of formulae, is this a place for you? Have
you fitted the spirit to a single case? Alas, in the cycle of the ages
when shall such another be proposed for the judgment of man? Now when
the sun shines and the winds blow, the wood is filled with an
innumerable multitude of shadows, tumultuously tossed and changing; and
at every gust the whole carpet leaps and becomes new. Can you or your
heart say more?
Look back now, for a moment, on your own brief experience of life; and
although you lived it feelingly in your own person, and had every step
of conduct burned in by pains and joys upon your memory, tell me what
definite lesson does experience hand on from youth to manhood, or from
both to age? The settled tenor which first strikes the eye is but the
shadow of a delusion. This is gone; that never truly was; and you
yourself are altered beyond recognition. Times and men and circumstances
change about your changing character, with a speed of which no earthly
hurricane affords an image. What was the best yesterday, is it still the
best in this changed theatre of a to-morrow? Will your own Past truly
guide you in your own violent and unexpected Future? And if this be
questionable, with what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we not
watch other men driving beside us on their unknown careers, seeing with
unlike eyes, impelled by different gales, doing and suffering in another
sphere of things?
And as the authentic clue to such a labyrinth and change of scene, do
you offer me these two score words? these five bald prohibitions? For
the moral precepts are no more than five; the first four deal rather
with matters of observance than of conduct; the tenth, _Thou shall not
covet_, stands upon another basis, and shall be spoken of ere long. The
Jews, to whom they were first given, in the course of years began to
find these precepts insufficient; and made an addition of no less than
six hundred and fifty others! They hoped to make a pocket-book of
reference on morals, which should stand to life in some such relation,
say, as Hoyle stands in to the scientific game of whist. The comparison
is just, and condemns the design; for those who play by rule will never
be more than tolerable players; and you and I would like to play our
game in life to the noblest and the most divine advantage. Yet if the
Jews took a petty and huckstering view of conduct, what view do we take
ourselves, who callously leave youth to go forth into the enchanted
forest, full of spells and dire chimeras, with no guidance more complete
than is afforded by these five precepts?
_Honour thy father and thy mother_. Yes, but does that mean to obey? and
if so, how long and how far? _Thou shall not kill_. Yet the very
intention and purport of the prohibition may be best fulfilled by
killing. _Thou shall not commit adultery_. But some of the ugliest
adulteries are committed in the bed of marriage and under the sanction
of religion and law. _Thou shalt not bear false witness_. How? by
speech or by silence also? or even by a smile? _Thou shalt not steal._
Ah, that indeed! But what is _to steal_?
To steal? It is another word to be construed; and who is to be our
guide? The police will give us one construction, leaving the world only
that least minimum of meaning without which society would fall in
pieces; but surely we must take some higher sense than this; surely we
hope more than a bare subsistence for mankind; surely we wish mankind to
prosper and go on from strength to strength, and ourselves to live
rightly in the eye of some more exacting potentate than a policeman. The
approval or the disapproval of the police must be eternally indifferent
to a man who is both valorous and good. There is extreme discomfort, but
no shame, in the condemnation of the law. The law represents that
modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of the ruck of mankind;
but what is that to me, who aim higher and seek to be my own more
stringent judge? I observe with pleasure that no brave man has ever
given a rush for such considerations. The Japanese have a nobler and
more sentimental feeling for this social bond into which we all are born
when we come into the world, and whose comforts and protection we all
indifferently share throughout our lives:--but even to them, no more
than to our Western saints and heroes, does the law of the state
supersede the higher law of duty. Without hesitation and without
remorse, they transgress the stiffest enactments rather than abstain
from doing right. But the accidental superior duty being thus fulfilled,
they at once return in allegiance to the common duty of all citizens;
and hasten to denounce themselves; and value at an equal rate their just
crime and their equally just submission to its punishment.
The evading of the police will not long satisfy an active conscience or
a thoughtful head. But to show you how one or the other may trouble a
man, and what a vast extent of frontier is left unridden by this
invaluable eighth commandment, let me tell you a few pages out of a
young man's life.
He was a friend of mine; a young man like others; generous, flighty, as
variable as youth itself, but always with some high motives and on the
search for higher thoughts of life. I should tell you at once that he
thoroughly agrees with the eighth commandment. But he got hold of some
unsettling works, the New Testament among others, and this loosened his
views of life and led him into many perplexities. As he was the son of a
man in a certain position, and well off, my friend had enjoyed from the
first the advantages of education, nay, he had been kept alive through a
sickly childhood by constant watchfulness, comforts, and change of air;
for all of which he was indebted to his father's wealth.
At college he met other lads more diligent than himself, who followed
the plough in summer-time to pay their college fees in winter; and this
inequality struck him with some force. He was at that age of a
conversible temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and
he spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of man-
and woman-kind. In this way he came upon many depressed ambitions, and
many intelligences stunted for want of opportunity; and this also struck
him. He began to perceive that life was a handicap upon strange,
wrong-sided principles; and not, as he had been told, a fair and equal
race. He began to tremble that he himself had been unjustly favoured,
when he saw all the avenues of wealth, and power, and comfort closed
against so many of his superiors and equals, and held unwearyingly open
before so idle, so desultory, and so dissolute a being as himself. There
sat a youth beside him on the college benches who had only one shirt to
his back, and, at intervals sufficiently far apart, must stay at home to
have it washed. It was my friend's principle to stay away as often as he
dared; for I fear he was no friend to learning. But there was something
that came home to him sharply, in this fellow who had to give over
study till his shirt was washed, and the scores of others who had never
an opportunity at all. _If one of these could take his place_, he
thought; and the thought tore away a bandage from his eyes. He was eaten
by the shame of his discoveries, and despised himself as an unworthy
favourite and a creature of the back-stairs of Fortune. He could no
longer see without confusion one of these brave young fellows battling
up-hill against adversity. Had he not filched that fellow's birthright?
At best was he not coldly profiting by the injustice of society, and
greedily devouring stolen goods? The money, indeed, belonged to his
father, who had worked, and thought, and given up his liberty to earn
it; but by what justice could the money belong to my friend, who had, as
yet, done nothing but help to squander it? A more sturdy honesty, joined
to a more even and impartial temperament, would have drawn from these
considerations a new force of industry, that this equivocal position
might be brought as swiftly as possible to an end, and some good
services to mankind justify the appropriation of expense. It was not so
with my friend, who was only unsettled and discouraged, and filled full
of that trumpeting anger with which young men regard injustices in the
first blush of youth; although in a few years they will tamely acquiesce
in their existence, and knowingly profit by their complications. Yet all
this while he suffered many indignant pangs. And once, when he put on
his boots, like any other unripe donkey, to run away from home, it was
his best consolation that he was now, at a single plunge, to free
himself from the responsibility of this wealth that was not his, and to
battle equally against his fellows in the warfare of life.
Some time after this, falling into ill-health, he was sent at great
expense to a more favourable climate; and then I think his perplexities
were thickest. When he thought of all the other young men of singular
promise, upright, good, the prop of families, who must remain at home to
die, and with all their possibilities be lost to life and mankind; and
how he, by one more unmerited favour, was chosen out from all these
others to survive; he felt as if there were no life, no labour, no
devotion of soul and body, that could repay and justify these
partialities. A religious lady, to whom he communicated these
reflections, could see no force in them whatever. "It was God's will,"
said she. But he knew it was by God's will that Joan of Arc was burnt at
Rouen, which cleared neither Bedford nor Bishop Cauchon; and again, by
God's will that Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, which excused
neither the rancour of the priests nor the timidity of Pilate. He knew,
moreover, that although the possibility of this favour he was now
enjoying issued from his circumstances, its acceptance was the act of
his own will; and he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest and
sunshine. And hence this allegation of God's providence did little to
relieve his scruples. I promise you he had a very troubled mind. And I
would not laugh if I were you, though while he was thus making mountains
out of what you think molehills, he were still (as perhaps he was)
contentedly practising many other things that to you seem black as hell.
Every man is his own judge and mountain-guide through life. There is an
old story of a mote and a beam, apparently not true, but worthy perhaps
of some consideration. I should, if I were you, give some consideration
to these scruples of his, and if I were he, I should do the like by
yours; for it is not unlikely that there may be something under both. In
the meantime you must hear how my invalid acted. Like many invalids, he
supposed that he would die. Now should he die, he saw no means of
repaying this huge loan which, by the hands of his father, mankind had
advanced him for his sickness. In that case it would be lost money. So
he determined that the advance should be as small as possible; and, so
long as he continued to doubt his recovery, lived in an upper room, and
grudged himself all but necessaries. But so soon as he began to perceive
a change for the better, he felt justified in spending more freely, to
speed and brighten his return to health, and trusted in the future to
lend a help to mankind, as mankind, out of its treasury, had lent a help
to him.
I do not say but that my friend was a little too curious and partial in
his view; nor thought too much of himself and too little of his parents;
but I do say that here are some scruples which tormented my friend in
his youth, and still, perhaps, at odd times give him a prick in the
midst of his enjoyments, and which after all have some foundation in
justice, and point, in their confused way, to some honourable honesty
within the reach of man. And at least, is not this an unusual gloss upon
the eighth commandment? And what sort of comfort, guidance, or
illumination did that precept afford my friend throughout these
contentions? "Thou shall not steal." With all my heart! But _am_ I
stealing?
The truly quaint materialism of our view of life disables us from
pursuing any transaction to an end. You can make no one understand that
his bargain is anything more than a bargain, whereas in point of fact it
is a link in the policy of mankind, and either a good or an evil to the
world. We have a sort of blindness which prevents us from seeing
anything but sovereigns. If one man agrees to give another so many
shillings for so many hours' work, and then wilfully gives him a certain
proportion of the price in bad money and only the remainder in good, we
can see with half an eye that this man is a thief. But if the other
spends a certain proportion of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco,
and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or
trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past adventures,
and only the remainder in downright work such as he is paid to do, is
he, because the theft is one of time and not of money,--is he any the
less a thief? The one gave a bad shilling, the other an imperfect hour;
but both broke the bargain, and each is a thief. In piecework, which is
what most of us do, the case is none the less plain for being even less
material. If you forge a bad knife, you have wasted some of mankind's
iron, and then, with unrivalled cynicism, you pocket some of mankind's
money for your trouble. Is there any man so blind who cannot see that
this is theft? Again, if you carelessly cultivate a farm, you have been
playing fast and loose with mankind's resources against hunger; there
will be less bread in consequence, and for lack of that bread somebody
will die next winter: a grim consideration. And you must not hope to
shuffle out of blame because you got less money for your less quantity
of bread; for although a theft be partly punished, it is none the less a
theft for that. You took the farm against competitors; there were others
ready to shoulder the responsibility and be answerable for the tale of
loaves; but it was you who took it. By the act you came under a tacit
bargain with mankind to cultivate that farm with your best endeavour;
you were under no superintendence, you were on parole; and you have
broke your bargain, and to all who look closely, and yourself among the
rest if you have moral eyesight, you are a thief. Or take the case of
men of letters. Every piece of work which is not as good as you can make
it, which you have palmed off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in
execution, upon mankind who is your paymaster on parole and in a sense
your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise
up against you in the court of your own heart and condemn you for a
thief. Have you a salary? If you trifle with your health, and so render
yourself less capable for duty, and still touch, and still greedily
pocket the emolument--what are you but a thief? Have you double
accounts? do you by any time-honoured juggle, deceit, or ambiguous
process, gain more from those who deal with you than if you were
bargaining and dealing face to face in front of God?--What are you but a
thief? Lastly, if you fill an office, or produce an article, which, in
your heart of hearts, you think a delusion and a fraud upon mankind,
and still draw your salary and go through the sham manoeuvres of this
office, or still book your profits and keep on flooding the world with
these injurious goods?--though you were old, and bald, and the first at
church, and a baronet, what are you but a thief? These may seem hard
words and mere curiosities of the intellect, in an age when the spirit
of honesty is so sparingly cultivated that all business is conducted
upon lies and so-called customs of the trade, that not a man bestows two
thoughts on the utility or honourableness of his pursuit. I would say
less if I thought less. But looking to my own reason and the right of
things, I can only avow that I am a thief myself, and that I
passionately suspect my neighbours of the same guilt.
Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in
your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like
a blind, besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is what
you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the
stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience. Even before the lowest of
all tribunals,--before a court of law, whose business it is, not to keep
men right, or within a thousand miles of right, but to withhold them
from going so tragically wrong that they will pull down the whole
jointed fabric of society by their misdeeds--even before a court of law,
as we begin to see in these last days, our easy view of following at
each other's tails, alike to good and evil, is beginning to be reproved
and punished, and declared no honesty at all, but open theft and
swindling; and simpletons who have gone on through life with a quiet
conscience may learn suddenly, from the lips of a judge, that the custom
of the trade may be a custom of the devil. You thought it was easy to be
honest. Did you think it was easy to be just and kind and truthful? Did
you think the whole duty of aspiring man was as simple as a hornpipe?
and you could walk through life like a gentleman and a hero, with no
more concern than it takes to go to church or to address a circular?
And yet all this time you had the eighth commandment! and, what makes it
richer, you would not have broken it for the world!
The truth is, that these commandments by themselves are of little use in
private judgment. If compression is what you want, you have their whole
spirit compressed into the golden rule; and yet there expressed with
more significance, since the law is there spiritually and not materially
stated. And in truth, four out of these ten commands, from the sixth to
the ninth, are rather legal than ethical. The police-court is their
proper home. A magistrate cannot tell whether you love your neighbour as
yourself, but he can tell more or less whether you have murdered, or
stolen, or committed adultery, or held up your hand and testified to
that which was not; and these things, for rough practical tests, are as
good as can be found. And perhaps, therefore, the best condensation of
the Jewish moral law is in the maxims of the priests, "neminem laedere"
and "suum cuique tribunere." But all this granted, it becomes only the
more plain that they are inadequate in the sphere of personal morality;
that while they tell the magistrate roughly when to punish, they can
never direct an anxious sinner what to do.
Only Polonius, or the like solemn sort of ass, can offer us a succinct
proverb by way of advice, and not burst out blushing in our faces. We
grant them one and all and for all that they are worth; it is something
above and beyond that we desire. Christ was in general a great enemy to
such a way of teaching; we rarely find Him meddling with any of these
plump commands but it was to open them out, and lift His hearers from
the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal affair; in the war
of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred
precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy
of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the
time and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate
who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the law, but that the law
applies. Can he convince me? then he gains the cause. And thus you find
Christ giving various counsels to varying people, and often jealously
careful to avoid definite precept. Is He asked, for example, to divide a
heritage? He refuses: and the best advice that He will offer is but a
paraphrase of that tenth commandment which figures so strangely among
the rest. _Take heed, and beware of covetousness._ If you complain that
this is vague, I have failed to carry you along with me in my argument.
For no definite precept can be more than an illustration, though its
truth were resplendent like the sun, and it was announced from heaven by
the voice of God. And life is so intricate and changing, that perhaps
not twenty times, or perhaps not twice in the ages, shall we find that
nice consent of circumstances to which alone it can apply.
CHAPTER III
Although the world and life have in a sense become commonplace to our
experience, it is but in an external torpor; the true sentiment slumbers
within us; and we have but to reflect on ourselves or our surroundings
to rekindle our astonishment. No length of habit can blunt our first
surprise. Of the world I have but little to say in this connection; a
few strokes shall suffice. We inhabit a dead ember swimming wide in the
blank of space, dizzily spinning as it swims, and lighted up from
several million miles away by a more horrible hell-fire than was ever
conceived by the theological imagination. Yet the dead ember is a green,
commodious dwelling-place; and the reverberation of this hell-fire
ripens flower and fruit and mildly warms us on summer eves upon the
lawn. Far off on all hands other dead embers, other flaming suns, wheel
and race in the apparent void; the nearest is out of call, the farthest
so far that the heart sickens in the effort to conceive the distance.
Shipwrecked seamen on the deep, though they bestride but the truncheon
of a boom, are safe and near at home compared with mankind on its
bullet. Even to us who have known no other, it seems a strange, if not
an appalling, place of residence.
But far stranger is the resident, man, a creature compact of wonders
that, after centuries of custom, is still wonderful to himself. He
inhabits a body which he is continually outliving, discarding, and
renewing. Food and sleep, by an unknown alchemy, restore his spirits and
the freshness of his countenance. Hair grows on him like grass; his
eyes, his brain, his sinews, thirst for action; he joys to see and touch
and hear, to partake the sun and wind, to sit down and intently ponder
on his astonishing attributes and situation, to rise up and run, to
perform the strange and revolting round of physical functions. The sight
of a flower, the note of a bird, will often move him deeply; yet he
looks unconcerned on the impassable distances and portentous bonfires of
the universe. He comprehends, he designs, he tames nature, rides the
sea, ploughs, climbs the air in a balloon, makes vast inquiries, begins
interminable labours, joins himself into federations and populous
cities, spends his days to deliver the ends of the earth or to benefit
unborn posterity; and yet knows himself for a piece of unsurpassed
fragility and the creature of a few days. His sight, which conducts him,
which takes notice of the farthest stars, which is miraculous in every
way and a thing defying explanation or belief, is yet lodged in a piece
of jelly, and can be extinguished with a touch. His heart, which all
through life so indomitably, so athletically labours, is but a capsule,
and may be stopped with a pin. His whole body, for all its savage
energies, its leaping and its winged desires, may yet be tamed and
conquered by a draught of air or a sprinkling of cold dew. What he calls
death, which is the seeming arrest of everything, and the ruin and
hateful transformation of the visible body, lies in wait for him
outwardly in a thousand accidents, and grows up in secret diseases from
within. He is still learning to be a man when his faculties are already
beginning to decline; he has not yet understood himself or his position
before he inevitably dies. And yet this mad, chimerical creature can
take no thought of his last end, lives as though he were eternal,
plunges with his vulnerable body into the shock of war, and daily
affronts death with unconcern. He cannot take a step without pain or
pleasure. His life is a tissue of sensations, which he distinguishes as
they seem to come more directly from himself or his surroundings. He is
conscious of himself as a joyer or a sufferer, as that which craves,
chooses, and is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as it were of
an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of aspects, inspirations,
wonders, cruel knocks and transporting caresses. Thus he goes on his
way, stumbling among delights and agonies.