Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the
relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or
less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our
constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so
built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so
circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very
sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue
will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own
reward, except for the self-centred and—I had almost said—the unamiable.
No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do
better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid the penalties
of the law, and the minor _capitis diminutio_ of social ostracism, is an
affair of wisdom—of cunning, if you will—and not of virtue.
In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit
by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or
why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not
ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must
try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it,
he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comes in
here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbour
happy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so
hard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound to
be his brother’s keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How far
must he resent evil?
The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ’s sayings on the
point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them)
hard to accept. But the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in
our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon
all; it is _our_ cheek we are to turn, _our_ coat that we are to give
away to the man who has taken _our_ cloak. But when another’s face is
buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are
to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable and
surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice;
its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own
quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the
quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person’s happiness is
as sacred as another’s; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one
with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we
have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of
action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to go
to glory; and neither knows what he does.
The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant
mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though
they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of duties.
Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises;
this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more patience
and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in
almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady
quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour’s
vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.