Ignorant, as I inevitably am, dear reader, of your intellectual and
spiritual upbringing, I can hardly guess whether the title of my article
will impress you as a platitude or as a paradox. Goodness knows, some
men and women think quite enough of themselves as it is, and, from a
certain momentary point of view, there may seem little occasion indeed
to remind man of his importance.
I refer to your intellectual and spiritual upbringing, because I venture
to wonder if it was in the least like my own. I was brought up, I
rejoice to say, in the bosom of an orthodox Puritan family. I was led
and driven to believe that man was everybody, and that God was
somebody--and that not merely the Sabbath, but the whole universe, was
made for man: that the stars were his bedtime candles, and that the sun
arose to ensure his catching the 8.37 of a morning.
On this belief I acted for many years. Every young man believes that
there is no god but God, and that he is born to be His prophet--though
perhaps that belief is not so common nowadays. I am speaking of many
years ago.
Science, however, has long since changed all that. Those terrible Muses,
geology, astronomy, and particularly biology, have reduced man to a
humility which, if in some degree salutary, becomes in its excess highly
dangerous. Why should one maggot in this great cheese of the world take
itself more seriously than others? Why dream mightily and do bravely if
we are but a little higher than the beasts that perish? Nature cares
nothing about us, and her giant forces laugh at our fancies. The world
has no such meaning as we thought. Poets and saints, deluded by
unhealthy imaginations, have misled us, and it is quite likely that the
wild waves are really saying nothing more important than 'Beecham's
Pills.'
'Give us a definition of life,' I asked a certain famous scientist and
philosopher whom I am privileged to call my friend.
'Nothing easier!' he gaily replied. 'Life is a product of solar energy,
falling upon the carbon compounds, on the outer crust of a particular
planet, in a particular corner of the solar system.'
'And that,' I said, 'really satisfies you as a definition of life--of
all the wistful wonder of the world!' And as I spoke I thought of Moses
with mystically shining face upon the Mount of the Law, of Ezekiel rapt
in his divine fancies, of Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, of
Christ's agony in the garden; the golden faces of the great of the world
passed as in a dream before me,--soldiers, saints, poets, and lovers. I
thought of Horatius on the bridge, of the holy and gentle soul of St.
Francis, of Chatterton in his splendid despair, and in fancy I went with
the awestruck citizens of Verona to reverently gaze at the bodies of two
young lovers who had counted the world well lost if they might only
leave it together.
The carbon compounds!
I took down _Romeo and Juliet_, listened to its passionate spheral
music, and the carbon compounds have never troubled me again.
Love laughs at the carbon compounds, and a great book, a noble act, a
beautiful face, make nonsense of such cheap formula for the mystery of
human life.
Yet this parable of the carbon compounds is a fair sample of all that
science can tell us when we come to ultimates. We go away from its
oracles with a mouthful of sounding words, which may seem very
impressive till we examine their emptiness. What, for example, is all
this rigmarole about solar energy and the carbon compounds but a more
pompous way of putting the old scriptural statement that man was made of
the dust of the ground? To say that God took a handful of dust and
breathed upon it and it became man, is no harder to realise than that
solar rays falling upon that dust should produce humanity and all the
various phantasmagoria of life. If anything, it is more explanatory. It
leaves us with an inspiring mystery for explanation.
In saying this, I do not forget our debt to science. It has done much
in clearing our minds of cant, in popularising more systematic thinking,
and in instituting sounder methods of observation. In some directions it
has deepened our sense of wonder. It has broadened our conception of the
universe, though I fear it has been at the expense of narrowing our
conception of man. With Hamlet it contemptuously says, 'What is this
quintessence of dust!' It is so impressed by the mileage and tonnage of
the universe, so abased before the stupendous measurements of the
cosmos, the appalling infinity and eternity of its space and time, that
it forgets the marvel of the mind that can grasp all these conceptions,
forgets, too, that, big and bullying as the forces of nature may be, man
has been able in a large measure to control, indeed to domesticate,
them. Surely the original fact of lightning is little more marvellous
than the power of man to turn it into his errand-boy or his horse, to
light his rooms with it, and imprison it in pennyworths, like the genius
in the bottle, in the underground railway. Mere size seems unimpressive
when we contemplate such an extreme of littleness as say the ant, that
pin-point of a personality, that mere speck of being, yet including
within its infinitesimal proportions a clever, busy brain, a soldier, a
politician, and a merchant. That such and so many faculties should have
room to operate within that tiny body--there is a marvel before which,
it seems to me, the billions of miles that keep us from falling into the
jaws of the sun, and the tonnage of Jupiter, are comparatively
insignificant and conceivable.
No, we must not allow ourselves to be frightened by the mere size and
weight of the universe, or be depressed because our immediate genealogy
is not considered aristocratic. Perhaps, after all, we are sons of God,
and as Mr. Meredith finely puts it, our life here may still be
'... a little holding
To do a mighty service.'
'Things of a day!' exclaims Pindar. 'What is a man? What is a man not?'
It is good for our Nebuchadnezzars, the kings of the world, and
conceited, successful people generally, to measure themselves against
the great powers of the universe, to humble their pride by contemplation
of the fixed stars; but a too humble attitude toward the Infinite, a too
constant pondering upon eternity, is not good for us, unless, so to say,
we can live with them as friends, with the inspiring feeling that,
little as we may seem, there is that in us which is no less infinite, no
less cosmic, and that our passions and dreams have, as Mr. William
Watson puts it, 'a relish of eternity.'
Readers of Amiel's 'Journal' will know what a sterilising, petrifying
influence his trance-like contemplation of the Infinite had upon his
life. Amiel was simply hypnotised by the universe, as a man may
hypnotise himself by gazing fixedly at a star.
Mr. Pater, you will remember, has a remarkable study of a similar
temperament in his _Imaginary Portraits_. Sebastian van Storck, like
Amiel, had become hypnotised by the Infinite. It paralysed in him all
impulse or power 'to be or do any limited thing.'
'For Sebastian, at least,' we read, 'the world and the individual alike
had been divested of all effective purpose. The most vivid of finite
objects, the dramatic episodes of Dutch history, the brilliant
personalities which had found their parts to play in them, that golden
art, surrounding one with an ideal world, beyond which the real world
was discernible indeed, but etherealised by the medium through which it
came to one; all this, for most men so powerful a link to existence,
only set him on the thought of escape--into a formless and nameless
infinite world, evenly grey.... Actually proud, at times, of his
curious, well-reasoned nihilism, he could but regard what is called the
business of life as no better than a trifling and wearisome delay.'
This mood, once confined to a few mystics is likely to become a common
one, is already, one imagines, far from infrequent--so the increase of
suicide would lead us to suppose. Robbed of his hope of a glorious
immortality, stripped of his spiritual significance, bullied and
belittled by science on every hand, man not unnaturally begins to feel
that it is no use taking his life seriously, that, in fact, it betrays a
lack of humour to do so. While he was a supernatural being, a son of
God, it was with him a case of _noblesse oblige_; and while he is happy
and comfortable he doesn't mind giving up the riddle of the world. It is
only the unhappy that ever really think. But what is he to do when agony
and despair come upon him, when all that made his life worth living is
taken from him? How is he to sustain himself? where shall he look for
his strength or his hope? He looks up at the sky full of stars, but he
is told that God is not there, that the city of God is long since a
ruin, and that owls hoot to each other across its moss-grown fanes and
battlements; he looks down on the earth, full of graves, a vast
necropolis of once radiant dreams, with the living for its
phantoms,--and there is no comfort anywhere. Happy is he if some simple
human duty be at hand, which he may go on doing blindly and
dumbly--till, perhaps, the light come again. It is difficult to offer
comfort to such a one. Comfort is cheap, and we know nothing. When life
holds nothing for our love and delight, it is difficult to explain why
we should go on living it--except on the assumption that it matters,
that it is, in some mystical way, supremely important, how we live it,
and what we make of those joys and sorrows which, say some, are but
meant as mystical trials and tests.
Sebastian van Storck refused 'to be or do any limited thing,' but the
answer to his mysticism is to be found in a finer mysticism, that which
says that there is no limited act or thing, but that the significance,
as well as the pathos, of eternity is in our smallest joys and sorrows,
as in our most everyday transactions, and the greatness of God incarnate
in His humblest child.
This, the old doctrine of the microcosm, seems in certain moments,
moments one would wish to say, of divination, strangely plain and
clear--when, in Blake's words, it seems so easy to
'... see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.'
Perhaps in the street, an effect of light, a passing face, yes, even the
plaintive grind of a street organ, some such everyday circumstance,
affects you suddenly in quite a strange way. It has become
universalised. It is no longer a detail of the Strand, but a cryptic
symbol of human life. It has been transfigured into a thing of infinite
pathos and infinite beauty, and, sad or glad, brings to you an
inexplicable sense of peace, an unshakable conviction that man is a
spirit, that his life is indeed of supreme and lovely significance, and
that his destiny is secure and blessed.
Matthew Arnold, ever sensitive to such spiritual states, has described
these trance-like visitations in 'The Buried Life'--
'Only, but this is rare--
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again:
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
'And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.'
'To be or do any limited thing'! What indeed, we ask in such hours, is a
limited thing, when all the humble interests of our daily life are
palpably big with eternity? Is the first kiss of a great love a limited
thing? though there is, unhappily, no denying that it comes to an end!
When a young husband and wife smile across to each other above the sleep
of their little child--is that a limited thing? When the siren voices of
the world blend together on the lips of a young poet, and with rapt eyes
and hot heart he makes a song as of the morning stars--is that a limited
thing? Are love, and genius, and duty done in the face of death--are
these limited things? I think not--and man, indeed, knows better.
Greatness is not relative. It is absolute. It is not for man to depress
himself by measuring himself against the eternities and the immensities
external to him. What he has to do is to look inward upon himself, to
fathom the eternities and the immensities in his own heart and brain.
And the more man sees himself forsaken by the universe, the more
opportunity to vindicate his own greatness. Is there no kind heart
beating through the scheme of things?--man's heart shall still be kind.
Will the eternal silence make mock of his dreams and his idealisms,
laugh coldly at 'the splendid purpose in his eyes'? Well, so be it. His
dreams and idealisms are none the less noble things, and if the gods do
thus make mock of mortal joy and pain--let us be grateful that we were
born mere men.
Moreover, he has one great answer to the universe--the answer of
courage. He is still Prometheus, and there is no limit to what he can
bear. Let the vultures of pain rend his heart as they will, he can still
hiss 'coward' in the face of the Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at his
sufferings--thanks to the spirit of humour, that most blessed of
ministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had long
since broken, by which man is able to look with a comical eye upon
terrors, as it were taking themselves so seriously, coming with such
Olympian thunders and lightnings to break the spirit of a mere six foot
of earth!
But while his courage and his humour are defences of which he cannot be
disarmed, whatever be the intention of the Eternal, it is by no means
certain that nature does not mean kindly by man. Perhaps the pain of the
world is but the rough horseplay of great powers that mean but jest--and
kill us in it: as though one played at 'tick' with an elephant!
Perhaps, after all,--who knows?--God is love, and His great purpose
kind.
Surely, when you think of it, the existence in man of the senses of love
and pity implies the probability of their existence elsewhere in the
universe too.
'Into that breast which brings the rose
Shall I with shuddering fall.'
So runs the profoundest thought in modern poetry--and need I say it is
Mr. Meredith's?
As the fragrance and colour of the rose must in some occult way be
properties of the rude earth from which they are drawn by the sun, may
not human love also be a kindly property of matter--that mysterious
life-stuff in which is packed such marvellous potentialities? Evidently
love must be somewhere in the universe--else it had not got into the
heart of man; and perhaps pity slides down like an angel in the rays of
the solar energy, while there is the potential beating of a human heart
even in the hard crust of the carbon compounds.
I confess that this seems to me no mere fancy, but a really comforting
speculation. Pain, we say, is inherent in the scheme of the universe;
but is not love seen to be no less inherent, too?
There must be some soul of beauty to animate the lovely face of the
world, some soul of goodness to account for its saints. If the gods are
cruel, it is strange that man should be so kind, and that some pathetic
spirit of tenderness should seem to stir even in the bosoms of beasts
and birds.
Meanwhile, we cannot too often insist that, whatever uncertainties there
be, man has one certainty--himself. Science has really adduced nothing
essential against his significance. That he is not as big as an Alp, as
heavy as a star, or as long-lived as an eagle, is nothing against his
proper importance. Even a nobleman is of more significance in the world
than his acres, and giants are not proverbial for their intellectual or
spiritual qualities. The ant is of more importance than the ass, and the
great eye of a beautiful woman is more significant than the whole clayey
bulk of Mars.
After all the scientific mockery of the old religious ideal of the
importance of man, one begins to wonder if his Ptolemaic fancy that he
was the centre of the universe, and that it was all made for him, is not
nearer the If truth than the pitiless theories which hardly allow him
equality with the flea that perishes.
Suppose if, after all, the stars were really meant as his bedtime
candles, and the sun's purpose in rising is really that he may catch the
8.37!
For, as Sir Thomas Browne says in his solemn English, 'there is surely a
piece of Divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and
owes no homage unto the sun.'
The long winter of materialistic science seems to be breaking up, and
the old ideals are seen trooping back with something more than their old
beauty, in the new spiritual spring that seems to be moving in the
hearts of men.
After all its talk, science has done little more than correct the
misprints of religion. Essentially, the old spiritualistic and poetic
theories of life are seen, not merely weakly to satisfy the cravings of
man's nature, but to be mostly in harmony with certain strange and
moving facts in his constitution, which the materialists
unscientifically ignore.
It was important, and has been helpful, to insist that man is an animal,
but it is still more important to insist that he is a spirit as well. He
is, so to say, an animal by accident, a spirit by birthright: and,
however homely his duties may occasionally seem, his life is bathed in
the light of a sacred transfiguring significance, its smallest acts
flash with divine meanings, its highest moments are rich with 'the
pathos of eternity,' and its humblest duties mighty with the
responsibilities of a god.