ESSAY XI. On the Sun.
Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled
Coil within coil, at noon-tide? For the Word
Yields, if with unpresumptuous faith explored,
Power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold,
His drowsy rings. Look forth! that stream behold,
That stream upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease while nations have effaced
Nations, and death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty kings—look forth, my soul!
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,
Till they have reached the eternal city built—
For the perfected spirits of the just!
WORDSWORTH.
THERE is
one truth to human experience which all admit and nearly all forget. It is
pain. Pain is the immediate cause of religious thought. It is difficult to
think of any religious speculations which could develop otherwise. There is no
cure for pain, it is ours; it is the means by which a mortal being can reach a
near pinnacle of God’s own glory, and no other force has so generally ensured
survival and prosperity. Yet in the dread and horror of pain people will often
follow the most extraordinary paths, and end their journeys in the most absurd
places. Perhaps too much confidence is placed in man as an animal or too much
expectation made of his life. We are not the sublime beings we sometimes
conceive ourselves to be, we are little better than some animals and worse than
most. Of course we can achieve great things, and through our worship of God be
almost deified, but we are still in the gutter. Nor do I excessively envy the
excellent health and physique of a Nietzschean superman or a Grecian Hercules.
Doubtless to be more actively animal, more fully in tune with one’s body,
produces its measure of satisfaction, but none are free of the baseness of a
condition which requires us for twenty-five thousand days to drench our gullets
in water and stuff our stomachs with matter, to excrete what cannot be
retained, and lie immobile in darkness for eight hours a night, simply to
prepare for the same maddening ritual.
This mortal life is indeed crudely but
accurately defined as a series of consumptions and excretions, and the dilemma
of an aspiration is of course quite obvious. A man is caught always between
what he wants to do and what he wishes to feel. The noblest actions and the
noblest characters are known to be good because they are painful, because they
show a superiority to self-indulgence. Jesus Christ was the noblest of men
because, in spite of all the power which His followers afforded Him—power which
might very readily have put Him, as it put Mahomet, at the head of an army of
inexorable fervour and almost irresistible strength—He still preferred the
agonies of a short life of virtue to the a long and fulfilling life of vice.
In truth, many find mortality ultimately
unendurable; it yearns variously for sustenance and water, light and shade,
activity and rest, and if it is long ignored it is soon wasted, and if it is
ever heeded it is maintained only to prolong its irresistible degradation. Few
live long unaware of this deleterious advance of the human frame, even the most
short-sighted of individuals are more apt to overestimate than to underestimate
any slight illness or frailty. Most are conscious of the body's weakness, and
only the foolhardy never expect disease. Yet the larger part of the wise
rationalists who witness, with a sense of their own physical fragility, the
helplessness of the elderly, the miseries of the dissolute, and the sufferings
of the infirm, never doubt of their minds what they ever doubt of their bodies.
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
These little things are great to little man;
And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind
Exults in all the good of all mankind. GOLDSMITH.
To endure suffering is bad but to cause it
is worse, and there are some such people who try to allay theirs by causing
another’s. Howbeit there are but two questions to answer if
future ages are to be freed of such ills, namely, how might strength be made
from weakness, and how might weakness not be made from strength. As I believe I
have established for an opinion in this work, it is through faith in the one
true God, the God not bent double by the restraints of a purblind dogma, but
understood truly and utterly to be manifest in all things, and limitless in His
variety. Through such a faith the pride of strength is diminished and the
wretchedness of weakness melted. It is not through the hedonism which is
frankly become orthodox in this twenty-first century. For the great fallacy of
the pursuit of happiness is that the pursuit frights the happiness, which flees
away like a deer before a blundering huntsman; and the great fallacy of a
pursuit of pleasure is that there is no pleasure in it, it is too much expected
and too poorly effected, ‘planned merriment is doomed’; the great merit of the
pursuit of virtue is that it wins
happiness, as love wins loyalty, by the great attribute of courage. When
happiness is sought the effect is vice, when virtue is sought the effect is
happiness.
Shrive the ailing
spirit. What
is there otherwise except the gratifying of appetite? As Francis Bacon
expressed, ‘They that deny a God, destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is
of kinn to the beasts by his body: and if he be not of kinn to God by his spirit,
he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the
raising of humane nature: for take an example of a dogg, and mark what a
generosity and courage he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a
man, who to him is instead of a God, or melior
natura. Which courage is manifestly such, as that creature without that
confidence of a better nature than his own could never attain. So man, when he
resteth and assureth himself upon Divine protection and favour, gathereth a
force and faith which human nature in itself could not obtain.’
Few would deny that the purpose of human
life lies in the improvement of something, be it of happiness, society,
devotion, the sciences, or the arts. If this be granted, the conundrum of
existence might perhaps be simplified: either this improvement, of whichever
kind so ever it be, is an improvement of people and the things to do with
people, or of nature and the things to do with nature, or of both. In the first
instance, if (as seems to be the almost universal conviction of to-day’s
agnosticism) the individual man did not exist before his birth, nor will exist
beyond his death, the question may be very frankly asked: is there any real
value or use in his improving himself? Except in so far as such improvements
would please the man himself in his lifetime, or his associates in theirs, he
is of no lasting purpose at all. Even the world’s posterity, however long lived
they should be, must be of no real significance if they are only to incur the same
fateful dissolution.
In the second instance, it may really be
questioned in what wise people can wreak any enduring change at all upon
nature. Even the most annihilating nuclear war would be undone in a few million
years, a mere weekend in the planet’s history, and, as we find it a good deal
easier to destroy than to create, we may furthermore ask, what writing, music,
building, or work of any kind, is not doomed to suffer the same eradication of
time? Surely, none?
If the third instance be true, as most in
their hazy fashion believe, the remaining question is: wherein the relationship
between man and nature so differs that man is not natural and nature is not
manlike. If, in this unique relation between strangers, some lasting good is
effected by each upon each, how could this lasting good be sustained, and what
furthermore is its character? Well, thus far in these peripatetic essays I have
made but scarce mention of the afterlife. This has been intentional; the belief
in an afterlife being one truly different from the belief in God. Neither
requires the other. Buddha believed in the afterlife, but was uncertain as to
God, and Spinoza believed in God, but was uncertain as to the afterlife.
Of the two, the belief in God is the more
necessary as it is not vital that men should live on forevermore if their God
may do so instead. Yet, of the two, perhaps the belief in an afterlife is the
more attractive. There is an especial love for oneself which seems to exceed
the rather simple and certainly sour judgment of selfishness. All charity and
altruism somewhat relies on their beneficiaries’ selfishness. Though it is not
absurd to suppose that the death of a man is a thing different to the death of
a frog or a tree, certainly the life was a thing different. If it be true that
their deaths are equal, why were their lives so unequal? Yet it would seem
rather likelier than otherwise that the doctrines of heaven and hell were
conceived as a means of justifying morality and damning immorality. It was
doubtless felt, most commendably, that every means of convincing mankind of
morality must be tried. A sure and eventual punishment for deeds of wickedness,
the influence of fear, was a potent means, only equalled by the sure and
promised eternity of bliss, the influence of hope, rewarded for a life of
virtue. One may readily comprehend the use of such doctrines. May one as
readily comprehend their validity however?
Happiness, or diminutive discontent, is such
a thing as settles upon those least conscious of themselves, and their
judgments of themselves. Who studies his content wants it. This is in all
likelihood due to the insufficiency of man's intellect to bear the implications
of truth and the conundrums of purpose. Consequently many people, some of
comparatively excellent understanding, spend their lives attempting to forget
themselves, and perhaps to remember what they are not. Then also, regarding
pain, it has often been my lot to observe that it is transmutable but not
eradicable. I once went to sea, for three days, and found the toil frankly
painful, but when I returned home, for ten years, a different pain, less
clamant but more subtle, instilled itself in me. A form of melancholy I
suppose, so that I soon began to pine for the sea on land as I had pined for the
land at sea.
Now, it will be admitted that the doctrine
of heaven embodies ultimate pleasure, or bliss, as the doctrine of hell
embodies ultimate pain, or agony. To rationalise either doctrine must therefore
be to rationalise pleasure and pain. Is pleasure the absence of pain and pain
the absence of pleasure? If pleasure is the complete absence of pain, why is it
well attested that pain may follow pleasure? Surely the entirely absent,
implying as it must its entirely present opposite, could not be only partly
entirely absent but must be continuously entirely absent—if it is entirely
absent.
The life of man has been well attested as
variable; no part, not pleasure nor happiness, not pain nor sadness, has ever
been found in an individual to be absolute or constant. This can only be
because its maintenance depends upon a number of variable conditions, failing
which impairment or death must result. No optimist could be really happy upon
the point of starvation, no pessimist could be truly miserable at the moment of
quenched thirst. Firstly, because purest optimism would not be allayed by want,
secondly, because purest pessimism would not be relieved by satisfaction. The
inference must follow therefore that a man's lot is seemingly to be ever in the
presence of pain and pleasure and never in the absence of either.
Even the expiring sinner, in the agony of
dying and the torment of regret, is not without some apparent pleasure. Each
breath, however increasingly haggard, is a relief from suffocation and
therefore a pleasure; each heartbeat is an assurance of continued life; even
each blink of the eyelids is a relief from ocular dryness and irritation.
However minor its manifestation, pleasure is ever present in the life of man,
or rather pain is ever present, for it is impossible to rationalise pleasure
except as an occasionally noticeable lessening of mortality's true currency:
pain.
It is not a pleasure to eat, rather is it a
relief not to starve; it is not the body's pleasure to reproduce, rather is it
a relief from racial extinction; it is not a pleasure to be drunk, rather is it
a relief not to be acutely conscious; it is not a pleasure to be healthy but
rather a relief not to be dying; it is not a pleasure to be interested but
rather a relief to be distracted. If pleasure existed of itself, if there were
a purely pleasurable sensation, then it would long have resolved all the ills
of mankind. But all the raptures of the artistically appreciative, all the
solace of the devout, all the vanity of the beautiful, would be as nothing to
the man set on fire or drowning underwater. This is no nihilistic conceit but a
necessary truth. Immortal existence, requiring no conditions for its
sustainment, must be painless, but mortal existence, requiring, as it does, a
great multitude of conditions for its sustainment, reeks with the pain of
imperfect fulfilment.
Some men indeed live their lives in an
almost continuously felicitous state, and a life of great contentedness, of
familial affection, intellectual advancement, professional success, and moral
progress, could hardly be designated painful. Yet it is only by the diminutive
presence of pain in this exampled life that the fancied notion of pleasure is
perceived. Almost everything in this paragon of mortal existence adequately
fulfils the often disharmonious instincts and proclivities of man. Therein lies
the keystone of worldly happiness; for by fulfilling the conditions of life's
maintenance is pain averted, and when pain is most averted mortal life is come
closest to the absolution of death, or rather the absolution of the immortal
existence.
That which is called pleasure is therefore
but pain in abeyance, satisfaction at a consciousness of relief, and likewise
that which is called wisdom is but a peculiarly relieved ignorance. Such are
the pangs of imperfect life, of mortal existence, brought about by impertinent
matter and only resolved by its eventual failure in imitation consummated by
death. For God's immortal life is like a tree whose very virility causes
imitation of itself in branches and twigs. Individuality is therefore a
punishment of itself because it apes God to its own great sufferance. The
individual, who has arisen in the ardour of an aberrant branch of God, cannot
sustain himself even as the image of God; his absolution of pleasure and of
intellect foregone in his insufficiency, his body plagued with needs, his mind
plagued with wants, his little existence wracked with pain, and all to the end
that he should be a reflection, a god,
rather than a well-served constituent of the
God.
Alas! by some degree of woe
We every bliss must gain;
The heart can ne'er a transport know
That never feels a pain. LYTTLETON.
This life is the real hell: the life in
disharmony with the universe of God. The life which lives continuously without
faith, without order. Continuous sufferance, happily neither eternal nor ever
undimmed, is its definitive quality. The difficulty of sustaining the
conditions of mortality is the evident cause, for all pain arises by unmet need
and want, or desire as Buddha said. Consequently it is logically impossible
that death could possibly cause any suffering, as it is a transference from a
conditional to an unconditional state of existence. In fact, the state of
mortal death and immortal life becomes the conception of the true heaven. Then
are all the impediments and restraints of insufficient life disintegrated, then
is all the pain of impossible aspiration evaporated, then are the meagre
morsels of knowledge, as gathered by a meagre comprehension, laid aside before
the great banquet of utmost understanding. When we are returned unto the bosom
of God, when our rebellious branches wither their ways back from whence they
emerged, when our plays are ended, shall all the sublime promises of heaven,
Olympus, and nirvana, not only be fulfilled but exceeded, for in those
doctrines are merely promised the paltry pleasures of earth, smoked salmon,
leather chairs, beds of duck-down, blankets of silk, all of which we know only
to lessen our lives’ agonies but never to conquer them. That triumph of
release, that liberation of existence, we can only fulfil in our happy return
to immortality. Even the hopeful anticipation of meeting old friends would be
as nothing, the merest earthly comfort, to this sublime release.
Are our immortal longings for an everlasting
life of inadequacy? No it is exultation we seek. Death is therefore the
incomparable Life, and life, as we hold it, is a comparable death; a death of
bliss for a life of pain, a death of omniscience for a life of ignorance, a
death of light for a life of shadows. 'I cried when I was born and every day
shows why.' This might be felt a call to suicide. There is nothing mad in such
an act, it is most rational. Whether we kill ourselves with bullets or
longevity, we kill ourselves the same. Life advances on death, or rather
mortality advances on immortality, with a sound wisdom of what is in its
interest. Yet he who has the courage to die has the courage to live.
A seaworthy pragmatism may ward off that act
of intentional suicide which is so
widely and justly condemned by the enlightened. For any deliberate act of
self-destruction carries with it so heavy a toll of mental anguish, so taxing a
strain of emotions, so unpleasant a series of material consequences, especially
for one's friends, that any right-minded individual may see that it is
preferable to eat one's marmalade and say one's prayers than it is to suffocate
in brine. Immortality is painless, but being pulled out of mortality's squeezes
is frightful, and if one may endure the eventually necessary transference with
a sense of moral equanimity, with a feeling that despite all one endured, and
held generally true to the well tested sentiments of civilisation, then indeed
might ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Moreover we have a duty in this life, gifted
to us we know not why, to follow our lights and try to espy something of the
reflected glory which we know exists around us. As an instance of this
absolution, I humbly ask the reader to think back upon his earliest years and
rediscover a single memory, such as he will undoubtedly have, of a full and
perfect happiness. When perhaps, as in my case, it was a summer’s day and the
sun shone unimpeded, to gild all things below in many bright and vivid emanative
colours. There was a light breeze notwithstanding, and the world was large, for
I was small, but abounding with noble prospects, ever offering its cup-filled
bounties of hope and good cheer, and I an heir to virtues’ glorious largesse.
Every contour seemed a hill, every daisy seemed a rose; the grass was a forest,
the sky was the sea, music was honey, my mother’s eyes were sapphires. I ran
about for the very joy of all things, and never dreamt of ill or woe. Such, I
think at least, I recall; such is the remnant tincture of that day which, if it
occurred, was left to my memory. Such memories, or rather such experiences, become
lifelines in the years to come.
As I write presently it is also a summer’s
day, it may be a one finer than before, and yet it seems not so to me. My eyes
are faded of their light, and tired, though yet youthful. ‘Life has passed with
me but roughly’ since those warm and joyful years, forever passed from my
mortal possession. Even so, let it be. Providence is my master and I its humble
servant; it softens life’s bruises’ aches and blunts man’s evil stings. Blessed
be the name of the Lord and a blessing be His providence; and that is my
comfort, and this is my all: that where my purpose began and must end, His
purpose ever did, and ever will, run on.
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find?
Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant Mind?
Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the Torrent of his Fate?
Must no Dislike alarm, no Wishes rise,
No Cries invoke the Mercies of the Skies?
Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain,
Which Heav'n may hear nor deem Religion vain.
Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice,
But leave to Heav'n the Measure and the Choice.
Safe in his Pow'r, whose eyes discern afar
The secret Ambush of a specious Pray'r.
Implore his Aid, in his Decisions rest,
Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
Yet when the Sense of sacred Presence fires,
And strong Devotion to the Skies aspires,
Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind,
Obedient Passions, and a Will resign'd;
For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;
For Patience sov'reign o'er transmuted Ill;
For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat,
Counts Death kind Nature's Signal of Retreat:
These Goods for Man the Laws of Heav'n ordain,
These Goods he grants, who grants the Pow'r to gain;
With these celestial Wisdom calms the Mind,
And makes the Happiness she does not find.
JOHNSON.
Thus I come towards the close of this book
of mine, a darling of I think seven years’ composition and in fact the only
notable achievement of my life. It has been a long and painful process, but I
am ultimately satisfied with it. It conveys all I have in me, and I am content
to rest upon its conclusions after years of mental struggle. Originally I
prefaced an eighteenth century advertisement to it, which I later removed due
to its striking the wrong chord, but I think I will print it here as it puts
some of my present feelings quite well:
ADVERTISMENT TO THE WORK.
It has only been after much deliberation that I have decided
to write this short advertisement to the following work. I thought I ought to
inform the patient reader of a few small and practical matters. Firstly, this
work is entitled THE GAMUT because it is the result of my own long and
sustained efforts to make as much out of the wide literary scale as I possibly
could; secondly, it is sub-titled An Impress of Thoughts because that is precisely
what it is, and as such it does not (in common with all impresses) perfectly
capture its originals; thirdly, bearing the former points in mind, its contents
present an assorted collection of poetry, essays, proofs, dialogues,
narratives, reflections, aphorisms, quotations, criticisms, pictures,
paraphrases, imitations, schedules, lists, and as much else besides as I could
imagine, for I could only feel that I had met my purpose once I had admitted
the broadest possible variety. It is withal my attempt to extract the better
part of my brain and put it into binding. It has been written for myself, but
of course with many a hope that others might read it. Thought was put into its
order and arrangement, so that it may be read fluently at first from beginning
to end, and thereafter, if necessary, in a staggered fashion moving from aspect
to point with the aid of its headings and contents page. It is the product of
many years composition, correction, eradication, meditation, isolation, and
even desolation. It has been the obsession of my last five years. This, as I
hope the reader will discover with some degree of interest, is because I placed
the entire justification of my life in the results I attained in its
production. It was, as one might say, the drawn strategy with which I decided
to march forward into the midst of the battle of the future. With this in mind
I commend it to the reader’s liberality, or mercy as the case may be.
When I consider the very many years which I have spent in the contemplation
of God, I wonder what it is that I have wished to effect. Partly, I think, my
own improvement; partly, it is true, the gratification of my own pride or
vanity; but chiefly, I think, I have sought something which the world could not
give me. I have looked through many authors, I have learnt the tales of
science, and I have gathered crumbs at the tables of the Greeks, the Romans,
the French, the Germans, the English, even the Chinese. What did I learn?
Certainly I learnt some patience, and much argument, and expression. For who
has not felt that the truth is in him and must abide, if only his tongue would
speak it? I at least felt this from my boyhood. So I sought expression rather
than knowledge, I studied poems instead of line graphs.
Have I dwelt in truth, or have I sunk in falsity? I am beyond feigning
indifference; I am sure I have dwelt in truth, but I cannot say if I have
expressed it adequately. It is better for each man to go there himself and see
what he finds. Let him who would find truth seek it! It cannot be found in the
mirrors which others have set up, like devious apothecaries, for the gawping
vulgar to stare upon in amaze and misunderstanding. Why have I thought and
written all that I have? When I began this work, as Edward FitzGerald wrote, ‘I
thought I had something to say: but I believe the truth was I had nothing to
do’.
If any reader should
have read this far, a most remote contingency, he would surely deserve the
ripest fruit I could offer. What may I then bequeath? Only this: whoever this
reader be, let him find himself a merciful religion. Not a one unforgiving,
unwilling to bear an infidel or suffer the divergence of taste. Let him find a
one, such as I know in my own interpretation of Christianity, within which he
can peacefully worship. There he will find, as I trust, Peace, Wisdom, and
Hope. If this advice is followed, he might safely forget all else. For I am
convinced that if the whole world were truly Christian, or something equal to
the truly Christian, there would soon be an end to most of the ignorance and
folly of this world. What little remained could then be truly deferred to the
fractious mayhem of its secular institutions.
Now
I feel I must conclude, yet of all the phrases used in common language none is
perhaps so poorly framed as the end,
for there is no end to existence, nor any beginning nor middle. The words mean
something however. Such is human language that they can even mean the opposite
of their immediate appearance; and so with the
end we do not mean an end but a continuance, not the termination but the
persistence of things. A son emigrates from his mother, and the son thinks of
his mother and the mother thinks of her son; a flower is laid on a coffin, and
the mourner walks away for the day; the reader closes his book, and gets on in
the world. Well I know what is meant by illustrated endings, how such and such
‘will never be the same again’. But no moment is ever the same, the seconds are
always fleeting, there is no point or isolation which cannot be called an
ending of some description or kind. That is why it is no ending, the ending is
in the head, it is in the sentiment. All things have been, and all things will
be. Were the former not the case we would not have ourselves, and were the
latter not the case there could not have been the former. The everlasting
endurance of existence repudiates the end. But it is a useful notion all the
same for describing an important feeling.
Therefore
I shall say farewell. Farewell, and know that despite all which others can do
to you, in spite of human wickedness, there are no hopeless circumstances, only
hopeless people, that circumstances change us that we may change our
circumstances, that the day however weary, and the day however long, at length
brings forth its evensong; that though mortal life is a war of energies quiet
good is its bugle of peace; that though yet you must still so falter, though
yet you must be so weak—never despair, but seek your repair; for the prodigal
son who was dead came alive, for the prodigal son who was lost was found; and
history, vast history, throughout all its wearied leaves, of which we too must
become a part, still attests our consolation. God sends the dawn for all.
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm! WHITTIER.
THE END.
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