answer to this question. And now I have the privilege of myself standing
on the pinnacle of age—and of being in the position where some kind of
verdict may be given.
There are two verses about David and Solomon—whose origin I have not
been able to trace, but which run as follows:—
King David and King Solomon
Led very merry lives
With many many concubines
And many many wives.
But when old age came on them
With many many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And David wrote the Psalms.
Perhaps this gives the most general and accepted view on the subject—a
view of old age as something a little dull, a little ineffectual,
consoling itself with verses and good advice and other second-hand joys.
On the whole perhaps a fairly correct view; and yet I cannot but think
that it misses something very important, something which in earlier days
one does not associate with old age—the sense of adventure. Youth is
full of acknowledged adventure; the campaigns of Love and of War are
thrilling and absorbing; but youth does not know—or at any rate only
faintly surmises—how absorbing may be the great adventure of Death.
On the whole I am struck by the singularly _little_ difference I feel in
myself, as I realize it now, from what I was when a boy—say of eighteen
or twenty. In the deeps of course. Superficially there are plenty of
differences, but they relate mostly to superficial things like success
in games, examinations and so forth. I used to go and sit on the beach
at Brighton and dream, and now I sit on the shore of human life and
dream practically the same dreams. I remember about the time that I
mention—or it may have been a trifle later—coming to the distinct
conclusion that there were only two things really worth living for—the
glory and beauty of Nature, and the glory and beauty of human love and
friendship. And to-day I still feel the same. What else indeed _is_
there? All the nonsense about riches, fame, distinction, ease, luxury
and so forth—how little does it amount to! It really is not worth
wasting time over. These things are so obviously second-hand affairs,
useful only and in so far as they may lead to the first two, and short
of their doing that liable to become odious and harmful. To become
united and in line with the beauty and vitality of Nature (but, Lord
help us! we are far enough off from that at present), and to become
united with those we love—what other ultimate object in life _is_ there?
Surely all these other things—these games and examinations, these
churches and chapels, these district councils and money markets, these
top-hats and telephones and even the general necessity of earning one’s
living—if they are not ultimately for that, _what are they for_?
At any rate that is how I feel about it now. I feel that the object of
life at seventy is practically the same as it was at twenty. Only one
thing has been added. One thing. Beneath the surface waves and storms of
youth, beneath the backward and forward fluctuations, deep down, there
has been added the calm of inner realization and union. I know now that
these two primordial and foundational things (or perhaps they are one)
_are_ there. Our union with Nature and humanity is a _fact_,
which—whether we recognize it or not—is at the base of our lives;
slumbering, yet ready to wake in our consciousness when the due time
arrives.
With this assurance one certainly discovers that life—even in old
age—may be delightful. What one loses in the keenness and passion of
sensual and external things one gains in the inward world—in calm and
strength and the deep certainties of life. One can hardly expect to have
it both ways. We may concentrate mainly (though not exclusively) on the
outer life, or we may concentrate mainly on the inner life, but hardly
on both at the same time. And the latter alternative has its advantages.
Socrates, in reply to a friend who condoled with him on the waning of
his sexual passion, asked whether he would not consider a man happy who
had escaped from the clutches of a fierce tiger. “Certainly I should,”
answered the friend. “Then why,” retorted Socrates, “do you not
congratulate instead of commiserating _me_?”
I find there are compensations and consolations in old age. People feel
kindly towards you—partly because they consider you harmless and not
likely to injure them, partly because they are not envious of your
condition. They pity you a little in fact—which pleases them and does no
harm to you. I find I am a little hard of hearing, and people are good
enough—in fact they are compelled—to speak up and speak distinctly. They
have the pleasure of helping me over my deafness, and I have the
satisfaction of getting them out of their mumbling habits of
conversation—a satisfaction so great that were I really not a bit deaf I
feel that I should have to pretend to be! As I think I have said
before[34] old people and infirm folk and chronic invalids and the like
often get needlessly depressed over the impression that they are a
burden and an affliction to their friends, whereas in very truth by
calling out the sympathies, the energy, the resource and the
consideration of those around them they are really conferring the
greatest of benefits; and many a household is really supported and held
together by the one who to all outward appearance seems to be the most
frail and useless member of it. As Lâo-tsze says “The thirty spokes of a
carriage-wheel uniting at the nave are made useful by the hole in the
centre,[35] where nothing exists,” and “To teach without words and to be
useful without action, few among men are capable of this.”
After the fuss and flurry of all the good folk who go about “doing
good,” to find that you can perhaps be most useful by being a “hole in
the centre” is very refreshing.
Unfortunately the world is very unwilling to allow this privilege, and
as a rule in a quite automatic way accords to the aged a good deal of
respect and influence, pushing them up into positions of power and
notoriety. This is all right if you are quite worthy of it, but
dangerous if you are not. And naturally if you _desire_ power (and
notoriety) you are not likely to be worthy of it.
[Illustration:
E. C. (1910), AGE 66.
(_Photo: Elliott & Fry._)
]
On August 29, 1914, being my seventieth birthday, some of my friends
were good enough to present me with a congratulatory Address couched in
very friendly and affectionate terms. Though I cannot say that I desired
the thing beforehand—seeing that there is always something painful in
the very idea of being singled out in any such way—yet I must confess
that, being done, it was a consolation and a pleasure to me.[36]
There is one thing however that I think I have not sufficiently dwelt on
as a valid and permanent object of Life—though perhaps in some subtle
way it may be implied in what I have said before. I mean
Self-Expression. Constructive expression of oneself is one of the
greatest joys, and one of the greatest _needs_ of life; and as long as
one’s Life exists—in this or any other sphere—so long I imagine will
that need be present, and the joy in its fulfilment. It is a
foundation-urge of all Creation. At first sight this seems contrary, and
indeed hostile, to the hole-in-the-centre theory; but probably it will
be found not to be so. Probably it is only a question of the _depth_ at
which the Self is functioning. Near the surface the self is very
definite and constructive in _this_ or _that_ direction; it is limited
in its aims and operations, and so far its activity seems to be at
variance with other aims and operations. At the centre it is neither
this nor that, because it is All. It vanishes from sight because it has
become the Whole.
Most healthy work is generated from a desire for, or an effort towards,
self-expression. If one’s feet suffer from cold and exposure to injury
one makes boots to protect and cover them. If boots prove painful and
confining one designs sandals in order to free them. Having made these
for oneself first, other people desire them and adopt the same devices.
One’s work, begun for a private purpose and to satisfy one’s own wants,
is continued for public ends and becomes a kind of extended selfishness.
It is the same with the institutions of society. Finding that they maim
and confine you personally, the best thing you can do is to liberate
yourself by reshaping them. In reshaping them you liberate others, and
are accounted a reformer and general benefactor. But I imagine that no
one is really a useful reformer who does not begin the work from his own
private need, since that is the only way in which he can understand the
true inwardness of the work to be done. And the accusation of
selfishness, which may be preferred against him, saves him from the
awful danger of becoming, or posing as, a public benefactor.
It is truly wonderful to see what activity, what enthusiasm, vast
numbers of people throw into public work of one kind or another. Let us
hope they all do so from the underlying ground of some personal need
which makes them unhappy in the existing conditions and impels them for
their own personal satisfaction to alter those conditions. If so their
work will probably be healthful and successful. It will not wait on
results but will bring its own results with it. Still there is a paradox
in all such action. I cannot personally be comfortable in a society
which makes a fetish, say, of what H. G. Wells calls The Misery of
Boots. Therefore I work for a future society where people shall go
barefoot or freely wear such footgear as suits them. But by the time
such state of society arrives, where shall “I” be? That is the question.
What is the good of my working for a state of things which will
certainly not come in my lifetime? What is the impelling force which
_causes_ me so to work when it would be so much easier not to work, and
merely to let things slide? If, as one must suppose, it is something
organic in Nature, it must be that I “myself” _will_ be there. I, the
superficial one, am working now for the other “I,” the deeper one—who is
also really present even at this moment (although he lies low and says
nothing about it) and who in due time will consume the fruits which he
is now preparing.
I find at the age of seventy that I am getting nearer to that place in
the centre where nothing exists and yet all is done—and _that_ I suppose
is satisfactory. A very simple round of life contents me. As long as I
can have my friend (or friends) and my little corner of Nature, and my
little pastime of constructive work, I really do not know what to wish
for more. (And surely every one ought to be able to command these.)
We are up—my friend and I—at about 7 a.m. in summer, about 8.0 in
winter. In summer a wash and a sunbath on the lawn, for half an hour,
are very much in the order of the day. Then, for me, there is my study
to tidy up and dust and (in winter) my fire to light; there is the front
of the house to sweep, wood to chop, and so forth. George has his
kitchen to attend to, coals to get in, the chickens to feed, and
preparations to make for the work of the day—baking or washing or
whatever it may be. I remember the time when I used to think that to get
up early, perhaps by candlelight, go down into a dishevelled
sitting-room, clean out the grate and light up the fire would surely be
the most dismal of occupations; as a matter of fact I find these little
preliminary duties quite interesting. They stir one’s limbs and one’s
interest in the world, and help to peel off the thin but clinging veil
of sleep.
By 8.30 I find I can settle down to work, either in my study or, if the
weather allows, outside in my little veranda or porch. I thus get a
couple of hours fairly undisturbed. At 10.30 we have breakfast—or what
is called ‘brunch,’ a combination of breakfast and lunch—a good meal of
coffee and milk, oatmeal porridge, an omelet, stewed fruit, or similar
provender, and which one enjoys all the more for its being the first in
the day. Brunch and reading the daily paper occupy an hour; and at 11.30
I am able to start work again and go on to 1.30 or 2.0. I thus get a
good four hours or more in the morning for solid literary work, to some
extent broken into at times by mere business matters and correspondence,
but generally the most satisfactory period of work in the day.
At two or so one goes easy. By the ruse of ‘brunch’ one has avoided that
deadly snare, the midday meal. Is it not Thoreau who says that one
should pass by the one o’clock dinner “tied to the mast, like Ulysses,
and deaf to the voice of the Siren”? Certainly George and I never cease
to congratulate ourselves on this arrangement by which the painful
density and lethargy of that period is escaped. It seems to place the
day in its proper order and perspective; and we only regret that most
people owing to professional hours and public duties are not able to
conform to it. From 2.0 or 2.30 to 5.0 one can make a change. There are
oddments of work to do in the garden, there are little outdoor renewals
and repairs round the house, there are visitors and casual guests; at
4.0 or so there is the sociability of afternoon tea. At 5.0 there are
letters to get ready for the post, which goes at 6.30. At 7.0 there is
supper, which is generally a rather more substantial meal than brunch.
Sometimes tea and supper are combined in one intermediate meal, which of
course goes by the name of ‘tupper.’ In the evening there are friends to
see, books to read, notes to make; there is the public-house, which is
an unfailing joy, and the farm-lads’ Club, which is always homely and
cheering. What can one wish for more? It is hard to say.
Yet I ought to say—and it would be less than candid not to say—that
there have been times all through my life when the necessity of escaping
into an altogether bigger world than that provided by my native land has
come upon me with a kind of Berserker rage. As I think I have said, I
come of Cornish ancestry—and my private opinion is that I was left on
the coast of Cornwall some three thousand years ago by a Phœnician
trader. At any rate the leaden skies of England, and something (if I may
say so) rather grey and leaden about the _people_, have since early days
had the effect of making me feel not quite at home in my own country. I
longed for more sunshine, and for something corresponding to sunshine in
human nature—more gaiety, vivacity of heart and openness to ideas. But
everything has its compensation, and the result of being pinned down so
much to a limited and local life on the land has been that every three
or four years I have been able to ‘stick it’ no longer, and have been
compelled in the intervals of my work to make a dash for some warmer and
brighter climate. In this way it has come about that I have seen quite a
little of other lands—not only of the usual resorts in Switzerland and
Italy, but of places like Morocco, Sicily, Corsica, Spain, besides (as
already mentioned) the United States and Ceylon and India. Having a
talent for economical travel I have been able to do this at singularly
small expense. And my knowledge of agriculture and of the working life
of the people at home has in such cases opened up a world of interest in
the comparison of these with the corresponding things abroad—a world
which as a rule is a sealed book to the ordinary tourist. In many cases
my companions have themselves been manual workers, and I have found the
vivacity of their interest in foreign fields and crops or in town-trades
and workshops both encouraging and amazing.
At the age of seventy one does not bother so much about the exceptional
feats, about great exploits, the climbing of the highest mountains. The
ordinary levels of life seem sufficient. I confess that excessive
cleverness and all that sort of thing bores me rather than otherwise. I
seem to see in the general average of human life, in the ordinary daily
needs, a steady force pushing mankind onwards, or rather, gradually
unfolding through mankind—the liberation of a core of goodness and worth
which is undeniable, impossible to ignore, and daily coming more and
more into evidence. I say this deliberately and with full recognition
all the time of the vast masses of cheap and nasty people as well as of
cheap and nasty things which are washed up in the ordinary current of
this our modern life, and with recognition also of the huge whirlpools
of popular madness which occasionally arise, and which accompany crises
like that from which we are now suffering [1915]. Perhaps the madness
and the blind passion—the loosening of the torrents of hate and revenge,
and of the pent-up waters of prejudice and ignorance—are, after all,
better than the dreary stagnation of the cheap and nasty. The whole
commercial period through which we, here in the West, have been passing
for the last hundred years has undoubtedly bred, both in men and goods,
a lamentable commonplaceness and cheapness—a low level and a paltry
standard of human value. Perhaps even the madness of warfare is better
than that.
It is curious that for the last twenty years or more there has been a
general feeling—especially among the Socialists and Internationalists of
the various countries—that society was approaching a critical period of
transformation. It had become obvious that the existing order of
things—in Government, Law, Finance, Industry, Commerce, Morality,
Religion, the Capitalist Wage system, the Rivalry of nation with nation,
the administration and cultivation of the Land, and so forth—could not
continue much longer. In each one and all of these matters we have been
heading towards an _impasse_, a block, a point at which further progress
in the old direction must cease, and a new departure begin. We have seen
this; and yet we have been unable to say, for the most part, or even
surmise, _how_ the change would come, what catastrophe would upset the
balance of our highly artificial Commercial Civilization, or in what way
a new order of life, and a more human and rational order, might begin to
establish itself. The Catastrophe has come. We are already in the welter
of a World-war which in magnitude exceeds anything that has ever
occurred in the past, or even been imagined. The nations are in the
melting-pot; the institutions of society are threatened in every
direction. But at present we are still unable to see the outcome, or
even to guess what it will be. The lineaments of the new world are
hidden from us. That the outcome will be far, far greater and grander
than we now suppose, I do not doubt—also that it will take far longer
than we generally think to define itself.
Beneath all the madness of the present conflict—the raging passions, the
insane folly, the frantic delusions, the devilish concentration of all
the wit and ingenuity of man towards purposes of death and torture,
there is, I firmly believe, a method and a meaning. A new life is
preparing to show itself—coming to the surface of society, as it were,
out of the deeps, showing indeed the strangest and most violent
agitation of that surface just before its appearance. Having lived so
long as I have done among the downright manual workers of our towns and
the agricultural rustics—primitives as they are in many ways and
belonging to a period “before civilization”—I do not feel at all
alarmed. I know that the lives of these good solid folk, founded as they
are upon the primal facts of Nature, will not in any case suffer a very
great change. If the whole of our Banking and Financial system collapsed
and fell in, if world-wide Commerce came to a standstill, if the Capital
necessary for huge armaments and general ironworks was not forthcoming,
if Law and Government were paralysed, old-age insurances ceased to be
paid, and Landlords were unable to collect their rents—if all this and
much more happened, my friend who ploughs the fields near my cottage
would go out next morning with his team to his usual work, and scarcely
know the difference. _If anything he would decidedly feel more cheerful
and hopeful._ Some other friend who forges and tempers table-knives by
the score would continue to forge and temper them. The knives would
still be wanted, the power to make them would still be there. And if at
any point combined labour were needed, as to build a workshop or carry
through a steel-making process, the men who do these things now in
forced and servile toil under the Capitalist system would do them ten
times better and more heartily in free co-operation.
No, if all this jerry-built cheapjack Commercial Civilization collapsed
it would not much matter. The longer I live the more I am convinced of
its essential pettiness and unimportance. The great foundational types,
the real workers of the world—whether in England or Germany or France,
or Turkey or Bulgaria or Egypt—will remain, and indeed must remain
because the primal facts of Nature, the sun and the earth and the needs
of human life, continually generate them. They will remain and, once
freed (as one may hope) from the burden of the futile and idiotic
superstructure which they have to support, will rise to a far finer
standard of being than they can now realize. The cheap and aimless types
belonging to the mercantile and middle classes will disappear with the
world to which they belong.
Let me say however, for the consolation of some, that it is not
necessary to suppose that the transformation of Civilization of which I
speak—and which is even now preparing—must necessarily mean that all Law
and Government, and world-wide Commerce and Finance and huge
organization of Industry, and even present-day Art and Morality and
Religion, will collapse and become non-existent. In a sense they will do
so, and in a sense they will not. “In the twinkling of an eye they will
be changed.” In some sense the outer forms of these things will remain;
but the Spirit will be changed; and so greatly changed that their shapes
also will be profoundly modified. When Industry exists really for the
supply of good and useful things and not for the manufacture of profit;
when High Finance is not for gambling, but for the insurance and
security of everybody; when Courts of Law are for the uplifting and not
for the downcasting of criminals, and so on; then the forms of these
institutions will be as different from what they are now as the organs
of a Dragonfly are different from those of the Waterbeetle from which it
sprang.
But before this great and wonderful Transformation takes place, there
must—it is abundantly evident—be great sacrifices. No such huge change
could happen without. Some of the functions and activities of the
present Society must perish; and with them must perish those who are
engaged in these functions. Thousands and millions of individuals must
die in the mere effort to create and establish a new collective order.
Heroisms, exceeding those of the past, will be needed and will be
supplied. We need not fear. We know the great heart of humanity.
It is amazing to see, in the present war, the high spirits, the courage,
the devotion, the loyalty to each other of the combatants in each
nation; and these things would be utterly unintelligible were it not for
the fact that each people (and we need make no exception) thinks and
believes in some obscure way that the cause for which it is fighting is
a noble and an honorable one. Terrible as war is, and terrible the
apparent folly of mankind which allows it to continue, still it is to my
mind obvious that those engaged in it could not give their lives, as
they so constantly do, not only with conscious devotion to some high
purpose, but even with an instinctive exultation and savage joy in the
very act of death, if they were not impelled to do so by the insurgence
of a greater life within—a life within each one more vivid and even more
tremendous than that which he throws away. The willing sacrifice of
life, and the ecstasy of it, would be unintelligible if Death did not
indeed mean Transformation.