IT seems as if a great deal were attainable in a world where there are so
many marriages and decisive battles, and where we all, at certain hours
of the day, and with great gusto and despatch, stow a portion of victuals
finally and irretrievably into the bag which contains us. And it would
seem also, on a hasty view, that the attainment of as much as possible
was the one goal of man’s contentious life. And yet, as regards the
spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an ascending scale when we
live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series. There
is always a new horizon for onward-looking men, and although we dwell on
a small planet, immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a
brief period of years, we are so constituted that our hopes are
inaccessible, like stars, and the term of hoping is prolonged until the
term of life. To be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not of
how we end, of what we want and not of what we have. An aspiration is a
joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which
we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of
pleasurable activity. To have many of these is to be spiritually rich.
Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some
interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science,
the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they
may very well break their shins. It is in virtue of his own desires and
curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he
is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every
morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and
curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most
enchanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful or fossils
interesting: and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but
if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of
pleasure. Suppose he could take one meal so compact and comprehensive
that he should never hunger any more; suppose him, at a glance, to take
in all the features of the world and allay the desire for knowledge;
suppose him to do the like in any province of experience—would not that
man be in a poor way for amusement ever after?
One who goes touring on foot with a single volume in his knapsack reads
with circumspection, pausing often to reflect, and often laying the book
down to contemplate the landscape or the prints in the inn parlour; for
he fears to come to an end of his entertainment, and be left
companionless on the last stages of his journey. A young fellow recently
finished the works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright,
with the ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. “What!” cried the
young fellow, in consternation, “is there no more Carlyle? Am I left to
the daily papers?” A more celebrated instance is that of Alexander, who
wept bitterly because he had no more worlds to subdue. And when Gibbon
had finished the _Decline and Fall_, he had only a few moments of joy;
and it was with a “sober melancholy” that he parted from his labours.
Happily we all shoot at the moon with ineffectual arrows; our hopes are
set on inaccessible El Dorado; we come to an end of nothing here below.
Interests are only plucked up to sow themselves again, like mustard. You
would think, when the child was born, there would be an end to trouble;
and yet it is only the beginning of fresh anxieties; and when you have
seen it through its teething and its education, and at last its marriage,
alas! it is only to have new fears, new quivering sensibilities, with
every day; and the health of your children’s children grows as touching a
concern as that of your own. Again, when you have married your wife, you
would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin to go downward
by an easy slope. But you have only ended courting to begin marriage.
Falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing
and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some
importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill.
The true love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the
married pair a most beautiful contest of wisdom and generosity, and a
life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay,
surely unattainable, from the very fact that they are two instead of one.
“Of making books there is no end,” complained the Preacher; and did not
perceive how highly he was praising letters as an occupation. There is
no end, indeed, to making books or experiments, or to travel, or to
gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We may study for ever,
and we are never as learned as we would. We have never made a statue
worthy of our dreams. And when we have discovered a continent, or
crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another
plain upon the further side. In the infinite universe there is room for
our swiftest diligence and to spare. It is not like the works of
Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a
private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and
the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a
lifetime there will be always something new to startle and delight us.
There is only one wish realisable on the earth; only one thing that can
be perfectly attained: Death. And from a variety of circumstances we
have no one to tell us whether it be worth attaining.
A strange picture we make on our way to our chimæras, ceaselessly
marching, grudging ourselves the time for rest; indefatigable,
adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it
is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived
for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find
ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of
mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon,
it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but
a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El
Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully
is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.