Dr. Arnold somewhere says that the schoolmaster's experience of being
continually in the presence of the hard mechanical high spirits of
boyhood is an essentially depressing thing. It seemed to him depressing,
just because that happiness was so purely incidental to youth and
health, and did not proceed from any sense of principle, any reserve of
emotion, any self-restraint, any activity of sympathy. I confess that
in my own experience as a schoolmaster the particular phenomenon was
sometimes a depressing thing and sometimes a relief. It was depressing
when one was overshadowed by a fretful anxiety or a real sorrow, because
no appeal to it seemed possible: it had a heartless quality. But again
it was a relief when it distracted one from the pressure of a troubled
thought, as when, in the Idylls of the King, the sorrowful queen
was comforted by the little maiden "who pleased her with a babbling
heedlessness, which often lured her from herself."
One felt that one had no right to let the sense of anxiety overshadow
the natural cheerfulness of boyhood, and then one made the effort to
detach oneself from one's preoccupations, with the result that they
presently weighed less heavily upon the heart.
The blessing would be if one could find in experience a quality of
joy which should be independent of natural high spirits altogether, a
cheerful tranquillity of outlook, which should become almost instinctive
through practice, a mood which one could at all events evoke in such a
way as to serve as a shield and screen to one's own private troubles,
or which at least would prevent one from allowing the shadow of our
discontent from falling over others. But it must be to a certain
extent temperamental. Just as high animal spirits in some people are
irrepressible, and bubble up even under the menace of irreparable
calamity, so gloom of spirit is a very contagious thing, very difficult
to dissimulate. Perhaps the best practical thing for a naturally
melancholy person to try and do, is to treat his own low spirits,
as Charles Lamb did, ironically and humorously; and if he must spin
conversation incessantly, as Dr. Johnson said, out of his own bowels,
to make sure that it is the best thread possible, and of a gossamer
quality.
The temperamental fact upon which the possibility of such a
philosophical cheerfulness is based is after all an ultimate
hopefulness. Some people have a remarkable staying power, a power of
looking through and over present troubles, and consoling themselves with
pleasant visions of futurity. This is commoner with women than with men,
because women derive a greater happiness from the happiness of those
about them than men do. A woman as a rule would prefer that the people
who surround her should be cheerful, even if she were not cheerful
herself; whereas a man is often not ill-pleased that his moods should be
felt by his circle, and regards it as rather an insult that other
people should be joyful when he is ill-at-ease. Some people, too, have
a stronger dramatic sense than others, and take an artistic pleasure
in playing a part. I knew a man who was a great invalid and a frequent
sufferer, who took a great pleasure in appearing in public functions. He
would drag himself from his bed to make a public appearance of any kind.
I think that he consoled himself by believing that he did so from a
strong and sustaining sense of duty; but I believe that the pleasure of
the thing was really at the root of his effort, as it is at the root of
most of the duties we faithfully perform. I do not mean that he had
a strong natural vanity, though his enemies accused him of it. But
publicity was naturally congenial to him, and the only sign, as a rule,
that he was suffering, when he made such an appearance, was a greater
deliberation of movement, and a ghastly fixity of smile. As to the
latter phenomenon, a man with the dramatic sense strongly developed,
will no doubt take a positive pleasure in trying to obliterate from his
face and manner all traces of his private discomfort. Such stoicism is
a fine quality in its way, but the quality that I am in search of is an
even finer one than that. My friend's efforts were ultimately based on
a sort of egotism, a profound conviction that a public part suited him,
and that he performed it well. What one rather desires to attain is
a more sympathetic quality, an interest in other people so vital and
inspiring that one's own personal sufferings are light in the scale when
weighed against the enjoyment of others. It is not impossible to develop
this in the face of considerable bodily suffering. One of the most
inveterately cheerful people I have ever known was a man who suffered
from a painful and irritating complaint, but whose geniality and
good-will were so strong that they not only overpowered his malaise, but
actually afforded him considerable relief. Some people who suffer can
only suffer in solitude. They have to devote the whole of their nervous
energies to the task of endurance; but others find society an agreeable
distraction, and fly to it as an escape from discomfort. I suppose that
every one has experienced at times that extraordinary rebellion, so to
speak, of cheerfulness against an attack of physical pain. There have
been days when I have suffered from some small but acutely disagreeable
ailment, and yet found my cheerfulness not only not dimmed but
apparently enhanced by the physical suffering. Of course there are
maladies even of a serious kind of which one of the symptoms is a great
mental depression, but there are other maladies which seem actually to
produce an instinctive hopefulness.
But the question is whether it is possible, by sustained effort, to
behave independently of one's mood, and what motive is strong enough
to make one detach oneself resolutely from discomforts and woes. Good
manners provide perhaps the most practical assistance. The people who
are brought up with a tradition of highbred courtesy, and who learn
almost instinctively to repress their own individuality, can generally
triumph over their moods. Perhaps in their expansive moments they lose
a little spontaneity in the process; they are cheerful rather than
buoyant, gentle rather than pungent. But the result is that when the
mood shifts into depression, they are still imperturbably courteous and
considerate. A near relation of a great public man, who suffered greatly
from mental depression, has told me that some of the most painful
minutes he has ever been witness of were, when the great man, after
behaving on some occasion of social festivity with an admirable and
sustained gaiety, fell for a moment into irreclaimable and hopeless
gloom and fatigue, and then again, by a resolute effort, became
strenuously considerate and patient in the privacy of the family circle.
Some people achieve the same mastery over mood by an intensity of
religious conviction. But the worst of that particular triumph is that
an attitude of chastened religious patience is, not unusually, a rather
depressing thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it tends to
deprive life of natural and unaffected joy. If it is patient and
submissive in affliction, it is also tame and mild in cheerful
surroundings. It issues too frequently in a kind of holy tolerance
of youthful ebullience and vivid emotions. It results in the kind of
character that is known as saintly, and is generally accompanied by
a strong deficiency in the matter of humour. Life is regarded as too
serious a business to be played with, and the delight in trifles,
which is one of the surest signs of healthy energy, becomes ashamed and
abashed in its presence. The atmosphere that it creates is oppressive,
remote, ungenial. "I declare that Uncle John is intolerable, except when
there is a death in the family--and then he is insupportable," said a
youthful nephew of a virtuous clergyman of this type in my presence the
other day, adding, after reflection, "He seems to think that to die is
the only really satisfactory thing that any one ever does." That is the
worst of carrying out the precept, "Set your affections on things above,
not on things of the earth," too literally. It is not so good a precept,
after all, as "If a man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how
shall he love God, Whom he hath not seen?" It is somehow an incomplete
philosophy to despise the only definite existence we are certain of
possessing. One desires a richer thing than that, a philosophy that ends
in temperance, rather than in a harsh asceticism.
The handling of life that seems the most desirable is the method which
the Platonic Socrates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but
yet there are few figures more real. There we have an elderly man of
incomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perennially youthful,
bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration.
With what a delicious mixture of irony and tenderness he treats the
young men who surround him! When some lively sparks made up their minds
to do what we now call "rag" him, dressed themselves up as Furies, and
ran out upon him as he turned a dark corner on his way home, Socrates
was not in the least degree disturbed, but discoursed with them readily
on many matters and particularly on temperance; when at the banquet the
topers disappear, one by one, under the table, Socrates, who, besides
taking his due share of the wine, had filled and drunk the contents of
the wine-cooler, is found cheerfully sitting, crowned with roses, among
the expiring lamps, in the grey of the morning, discussing the higher
mathematics. He is never sick or sorry; he is poor and has a scolding
wife; he fasts or eats as circumstances dictate; he never does anything
in particular, but he has always infinite leisure to have his talk
out. Is he drawn for military service? he goes off, with an entire
indifference to the hardships of the campaign. When the force is routed,
he stalks deliberately off the field, looking round him like a great
bird, with the kind of air that makes pursuers let people alone, as
Alcibiades said. And when the final catastrophe draws near, he defends
himself under a capital charge with infinite good-humour; he has cared
nothing for slander and misrepresentation all his life, and why should
he begin now? In the last inspired scene, he is the only man of the
group who keeps his courteous tranquillity to the end; he had been
sent into the world, he had lived his life, why should he fear to
be dismissed? It matters little, in the presence of this august
imagination, if the real Socrates was a rude and prosy person, who came
by his death simply because the lively Athenians could tolerate anything
but a bore!
The Socratic attitude is better than the high-bred attitude; it is
better than the stoical attitude; it is even better than the pious
attitude, because it depends upon living life to the uttermost, rather
than upon detaching oneself from what one considers rather a poor
business. The attitude of Socrates is based upon courage, generosity,
simplicity. He knows that it is with fear that we weight our melancholy
sensibilities, that it is with meanness and coldness that we poison
life, that it is with complicated conventional duties that we fetter our
weakness. Socrates has no personal ambitions, and thus he is rid of all
envy and uncharitableness; he sees the world as it is, a very bright and
brave place, teeming with interesting ideas and undetermined problems.
Where Christianity has advanced upon this--for it has advanced
splendidly and securely--is in interpreting life less intellectually.
The intellectual side of life is what Socrates adores; the Christian
faith is applicable to a far wider circle of homely lives. Yet
Christianity too, in spite of ecclesiasticism, teems with ideas. Its
essence is an unprejudiced freedom of soul. Its problems are problems
of character which the simplest child can appreciate. But Christianity,
too, is built upon a basis of joy. "Freely ye have received, freely
give," is its essential maxim.
The secret then is to enjoy; but the enjoyment must not be that of the
spoiler who carries away all that he can, and buries it in his tent; but
the joy of relationship, the joy of conspiring together to be happy, the
joy of consoling and sympathising and sharing, because we have received
so much. Of course there remain the limitations of temperament, the
difficulty of preventing our own acrid humours from overflowing into
other lives; but this cannot be overcome by repression; it can only
be overcome by tenderness. There are very few people who have not the
elements of this in their character. I can count upon my fingers the
malevolent men I know, who prefer making others uncomfortable to trying
to make them glad; and all these men have been bullied in their youth,
and are unconsciously protecting themselves against bullying still. We
grow selfish, no doubt, for want of practice; ill-health makes villains
of some of us. But we can learn, if we desire it, to keep our gruffness
for our own consumption, and a very few experiments will soon convince
us that there are few pleasures in the world so reasonable and so cheap,
as the pleasure of giving pleasure.
But, after all, the resolute cheerfulness that can be to a certain
extent captured and secured by an effort of the will, though it is
perhaps a more useful quality than natural joy, and no doubt ranks
together in the moral scale, is not to be compared with a certain
unreasoning, incommunicable rapture which sometimes, without conscious
effort or desire, descends upon the spirit, like sunshine after rain.
Let me quote a recent experience of my own which may illustrate it.
A few days ago, I had a busy tiresome morning hammering into shape a
stupid prosaic passage, of no suggestiveness; a mere statement, the only
beauty of which could be that it should be absolutely lucid; and this
beauty it resolutely refused to assume. Then the agent called to see me,
and we talked business of a dull kind. Then I walked a little way among
fields; and when I was in a pleasant flat piece of ground, full of
thickets, where the stream makes a bold loop among willows and alders,
the sun set behind a great bastion of clouds that looked like a huge
fortification. It had been one of those days of cloudless skies, all
flooded with the pale cold honey-coloured light of the winter sun, until
a sense almost of spring came into the air; and in a sheltered place I
found a little golden hawk-weed in full flower.
It had not been a satisfactory day at all to me. The statement that I
had toiled so hard all the morning to make clear was not particularly
worth making; it could effect but little at best, and I had worked at
it in a British doggedness of spirit, regardless of its value and only
because I was determined not to be beaten by it.
But for all that I came home in a rare and delightful frame of mind, as
if I had heard a brief and delicate passage of music, a conspiracy
of sweet sounds and rich tones; or as if I had passed through a sweet
scent, such as blows from a clover-field in summer. There was no
definite thought to disentangle: it was rather as if I had had a glimpse
of the land which lies east of the sun and west of the moon, had seen
the towers of a castle rise over a wood of oaks; met a company of
serious people in comely apparel riding blithely on the turf of a forest
road, who had waved me a greeting, and left me wondering out of what
rich kind of scene they had stepped to bless me. It left me feeling
as though there were some beautiful life, very near me, all around me,
behind the mirror, outside of the door, beyond the garden-hedges, if I
could but learn the spell which would open it to me; left me pleasantly
and happily athirst for a life of gracious influences and of an unknown
and perfect peace; such as creeps over the mind for the moment at the
sight of a deep woodland at sunset, when the forest is veiled in the
softest of blue mist; or at the sound of some creeping sea, beating
softly all night on a level sand; or at the prospect of a winter sun
going down into smoky orange vapours over a wide expanse of pastoral
country; or at the soft close of some solemn music--when peace seems not
only desirable beyond all things but attainable too.
How can one account for this sudden and joyful visitation? I am going to
try and set down what I believe to be the explanation, if I can
reduce to words a thought which is perfectly clear to me, however
transcendental it may seem.
Well, at such a moment as this, one feels just as one may feel when from
the streets of a dark and crowded city, with the cold shadow of a
cloud passing over it, one sees the green head of a mountain over the
housetops, all alone with the wind and the sun, with its crag-bastions,
its terraces and winding turf ways.
The peace that thus blesses one is not, I think, a merely subjective
mood, an imagined thing. It is, I believe, a real and actual thing which
is there. One's consciousness does not create its impressions, one does
not make for oneself the moral and artistic ideas that visit one; one
perceives them. Education is not a process of invention--it is a process
of discovery; a process of learning the names given to things that are
all present in one's own mind. One knows things long before one knows
the names for them, by instinct and by intuition; and one's own mind is
simply a part of a large and immortal life, which for a time is fenced
by a little barrier of identity, just as a tiny pool of sea-water on a
sea-beach is for a few hours separated from the great tide to which it
belongs. All our regrets, remorses, anxieties, troubles arise from our
not realising that we are but a part of this greater and wider life,
from our delusion that we are alone and apart instead of, as is the
case, one with the great ocean of life and joy.
Sometimes, I know not why and how, we are for a moment or two in touch
with the larger life--to some it comes in religion, to some in love,
to some in art. Perhaps a wave of the onward sweeping tide beats for
an instant into the little pool we call our own, stirring the fringing
weed, bubbling sharply and freshly upon the sleeping sand.
The sad mistake we make is, when such a moment comes, to feel as though
it were only the stirring of our own feeble imagination. What we ought
rather to do is by every effort we can make to welcome and comprehend
this dawning of the larger life upon us; not to sink back peevishly into
our own limits and timidly to deplore them, but resolutely to open the
door again and again--for the door can be opened--to the light of the
great sun that lies so broadly about us. Every now and then we have some
startling experience which reveals to us our essential union with other
individuals. We have many of us had experiences which seem to indicate
that there is at times a direct communication with other minds,
independent of speech or writing; and even if we have not had such
experiences, it has been scientifically demonstrated that such things
can occur. Telepathy, as it is clumsily called, which is nothing more
than this direct communication of mind, is a thing which has been
demonstrated in a way which no reasonable person can reject. We may call
it abnormal if we like, and it is true that we do not as yet know
under what conditions it exists; but it is as much there as electrical
communication, and just as the electrician does not create the viewless
ripples which his delicate instruments can catch and record, but merely
makes it a matter of mechanics to detect them, so the ripple of human
intercommunication is undoubtedly there; and when we have discovered
what its laws are, we shall probably find that it underlies many things,
such as enthusiasms, movements, the spirit of a community, patriotism,
martial ardour, which now appear to us to be isolated and mysterious
phenomena.
But there is a larger thing than even that behind. In humanity we have
merely a certain portion of this large life, which may spread for all we
know beyond the visible universe, globed and bounded, like the spray
of a fountain, into little separate individualities. Some of the
urgent inexplicable emotions which visit us from time to time, immense,
far-reaching, mysterious, are, I believe with all my heart, the
pulsations of this vast life outside us, stirring for an instant the
silence of our sleeping spirit. It is possible, I cannot help feeling,
that those people live the best of all possible lives who devote
themselves to receiving these pulsations. It may well be that in
following anxiously the movement of the world, in giving ourselves to
politics or business, or technical religion, or material cares, we are
but delaying the day of our freedom by throwing ourselves intently into
our limitations, and forgetting the wider life. It may be that the life
which Christ seems to have suggested as the type of Christian life--the
life of constant prayer, simple and kindly relations, indifference to
worldly conditions, absence of ambitions, fearlessness, sincerity--may
be the life in which we can best draw near to the larger spirit--for
Christ spoke as one who knew some prodigious secret, as one in whose
soul the larger life leapt and plunged like fresh sea-billows; who was
incapable of sin and even of temptation, because His soul had free
and open contact with the all-pervading spirit, and to whom the human
limitations were no barrier at all.
We do not know as yet the mechanical means, so to speak, by which the
connection can be established, the door set wide. But we can at least
open our soul to every breathing of divine influences; and when the
great wind rises and thunders in our spirits, we can see that no claim
of business, or weakness, or comfort, or convention shall hinder us from
admitting it.
And thus when one of these sweet, high, uplifting thoughts draws near
and visits us, we can but say, as the child Samuel said in the dim-lit
temple, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." The music comes upon the
air, in faint and tremulous gusts; it dies away across the garden, over
the far hill-side, into the cloudless sky; but we have heard; we are not
the same; we are transfigured.
Why then, lastly, it may be asked, do these experiences befall us so
faintly, so secretly, so seldom; if it is the true life that beats so
urgently into our souls, why are we often so careful and disquieted, why
do we fare such long spaces without the heavenly vision, why do we see,
or seem to see, so many of our fellows to whom such things come rarely
or not at all? I cannot answer that; yet I feel that the life is there;
and I can but fall back upon the gentle words of the old saint, who
wrote: "I know not how it is, but the more the realities of heaven are
clothed with obscurity, the more they delight and attract; and nothing
so much heightens longing as such tender refusal."