AT LARGE

By

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

Haec ego mecum

1908

Contents

 I. THE SCENE II. CONTENTMENT III. FRIENDSHIP IV. HUMOUR V. TRAVEL VI. SPECIALISM VII. OUR LACK OF GREAT MEN VIII. SHYNESS IX. EQUALITY X. THE DRAMATIC SENSE XI. KELMSCOTT AND WILLIAM MORRIS XII. A SPEECH DAY XIII. LITERARY FINISH XIV. A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM XV. SYMBOLS XVI. OPTIMISM XVII. JOY XVIII. THE LOVE OF GOD EPILOGUE

I

THE SCENE

Yes, of course it is an experiment! But it is made in corpore vili. Itis not irreparable, and there is no reason, more's the pity, why Ishould not please myself. I will ask--it is a rhetorical question whichneeds no answer--what is a hapless bachelor to do, who isprofessionally occupied and tied down in a certain place for just halfthe year? What is he to do with the other half? I cannot live on in mycollege rooms, and I am not compelled to do so for economy. I have nearrelations and many friends, at whose houses I should be made welcome. But I cannot be like the wandering dove, who found no repose. I have agreat love of my independence and my liberty. I love my own fireside, my own chair, my own books, my own way. It is little short of tortureto have to conform to the rules of other households, to fall in withother people's arrangements, to throw my pen down when the gong sounds, to make myself agreeable to fortuitous visitors, to be led whither Iwould not. I do this, a very little, because I do not desire to losetouch with my kind; but then my work is of a sort which brings me intoclose touch day after day with all sorts of people, till I crave forrecollection and repose; the prospect of a round of visits is one thatfairly unmans me. No doubt it implies a certain want of vitality, butone does not increase one's vitality by making overdrafts upon it; andthen too I am a slave to my pen, and the practice of authorship isinconsistent with paying visits. Of course the obvious remedy ismarriage; but one cannot marry from prudence, or from a sense of duty, or even to increase the birth-rate, which I am concerned to see isdiminishing. I am, moreover, to be perfectly frank, a transcendentaliston the subject of marriage. I know that a happy marriage is the finestand noblest thing in the world, and I would resign all the conveniencesI possess with the utmost readiness for it. But a great passion cannotbe the result of reflection, or of desire, or even of hope. One cannotargue oneself into it; one must be carried away. "You have never letyourself go, " says a wise and gentle aunt, when I bemoan my unhappyfate. To which I reply that I have never done anything else. I havelain down in streamlets, I have leapt into silent pools, I have madebelieve I was in the presence of a deep emotion, like the dear littlegirl in one of Reynolds's pictures, who hugs a fat and lolling spanielover an inch-deep trickle of water, for fear he should be drowned. I donot say that it is not my fault. It is my fault, my own fault, my owngreat fault, as we say in the Compline confession. The fault has beenan over-sensibility. I have desired close and romantic relations somuch that I have dissipated my forces; yet when I read such a book asthe love-letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, I realise atonce both the supreme nature of the gift, and the hopelessness ofattaining it unless it be given; but I try to complain, as the belovedmother of Carlyle said about her health, as little as possible. 

Well, then, as I say, what is a reluctant bachelor who loves hisliberty to do with himself? I cannot abide the life of towns, though Ilive in a town half the year. I like friends, and I do not care foracquaintances. There is no conceivable reason why, in the pursuit ofpleasure, I should frequent social entertainments that do not amuse me. What have I then done? I have done what I liked best. I have taken abig roomy house in the quietest country I could find, I have furnishedit comfortably, and I have hitherto found no difficulty in inducing myfriends, one or two at a time, to come and share my life. I shall havesomething to say about solitude presently, but meanwhile I willdescribe my hermitage. 

The old Isle of Ely lies in the very centre of the Fens. It is a rangeof low gravel hills, shaped roughly like a human hand. The river runsat the wrist, and Ely stands just above it, at the base of the palm, the fingers stretching out to the west. The fens themselves, vast peatyplains, the bottoms of the old lagoons, made up of the accumulation ofcenturies of rotting water-plants, stretch round it on every side; faraway you can see the low heights of Brandon, the Newmarket Downs, theGogmagogs behind Cambridge, the low wolds of Huntingdon. To the norththe interminable plain, through which the rivers welter and the greatlevels run, stretches up to the Wash. So slight is the fall of the landtowards the sea, that the tide steals past me in the huge Hundred-footcut, and makes itself felt as far south as Earith Bridge, where theOuse comes leisurely down with its clear pools and reed-beds. At theextremity of the southernmost of all the fingers of the Isle, a bighamlet clusters round a great ancient church, whose blunt tower isvisible for miles above its grove of sycamores. More than twelvecenturies ago an old saint, whose name I think was Owen, though it wasLatinised by the monks into Ovinus, because he had the care of thesheep, kept the flocks of St. Etheldreda, queen and abbess of Ely, onthese wolds. One does not know what were the visions of this rude andardent saint, as he paced the low heights day by day, looking over themonstrous lakes. At night no doubt he heard the cries of the marsh-fowland saw the elfin lights stir on the reedy flats. Perhaps some touch offever kindled his visions; but he raised a tiny shrine here, and herehe laid his bones; and long after, when the monks grew rich, theyraised a great church here to the memory of the shepherd of the sheep, and beneath it, I doubt not, he sleeps. 

What is it I see from my low hills? It is an enchanted land for me, andI lose myself in wondering how it is that no one, poet or artist, hasever wholly found out the charm of these level plains, with their richblack soil, their straight dykes, their great drift-roads, that run asfar as the eye can reach into the unvisited fen. In summer it is afeast of the richest green from verge to verge; here a clump of treesstands up, almost of the hue of indigo, surrounding a lonely shepherd'scote; a distant church rises, a dark tower over the hamlet elms; farbeyond, I see low wolds, streaked and dappled by copse and wood; far tothe south, I see the towers and spires of Cambridge, as of somespiritual city--the smoke rises over it on still days, hanging like acloud; to the east lie the dark pine-woods of Suffolk, to the north aninterminable fen; but not only is it that one sees a vast extent ofsky, with great cloud-battalions crowding up from the south, but allthe colour of the landscape is crowded into a narrow belt to the eye, which gives it an intensity of emerald hue that I have seen nowhereelse in the world. There is a sense of deep peace about it all, theherb of the field just rising in its place over the wide acres; the airis touched with a lazy fragrance, as of hidden flowers; and there is asense, too, of silent and remote lives, of men that glide quietly toand fro in the great pastures, going quietly about their work in aleisurely calm. In the winter it is fairer still, if one has a tastefor austerity. The trees are leafless now; and the whole flat islightly washed with the most delicate and spare tints, the pasturetinted with the yellowing bent, the pale stubble, the rich plough-land, all blending into a subdued colour; and then, as the day declines andthe plain is rimmed with a frosty mist, the smouldering glow of theorange sunset begins to burn clear on the horizon, the grey laminatedclouds becoming ridged with gold and purple, till the whole fades, likea shoaling sea, into the purest green, while the cloud-banks grow blackand ominous, and far-off lights twinkle like stars in solitary farms. 

Of the house itself, exteriorly, perhaps the less said the better; itwas built by an earl, to whom the estate belonged, as a shooting-box. Ihave often thought that it must have been ordered from the Army andNavy Stores. It is of yellow brick, blue-slated, and there has been apathetic feeling after giving it a meanly Gothic air; it is ill-placed, shut in by trees, approached only by a very dilapidated farm-road; andthe worst of it is that a curious and picturesque house was destroyedto build it. It stands in what was once a very pretty and charminglittle park, with an ancient avenue of pollard trees, lime and elm. Youcan see the old terraces of the Hall, the mounds of ruins, thefish-ponds, the grass-grown pleasance. It is pleasantly timbered, and Ihave an orchard of honest fruit-trees of my own. First of all I expectit was a Roman fort; for the other day my gardener brought me in halfof the handle of a fine old Roman water-jar, red pottery smeared withplaster, with two pretty laughing faces pinched lightly out under thevolutes. A few days after I felt like Polycrates of Samos, thatover-fortunate tyrant, when, walking myself in my garden, I descriedand gathered up the rest of the same handle, the fractures fittingexactly. There are traces of Roman occupation hereabouts in mounds andearthworks. Not long ago a man ploughing in the fen struck an old redvase up with the share, and searching the place found a number of thesame urns within the space of a few yards, buried in the peat, as freshas the day they were made. There was nothing else to be found, and theplace was under water till fifty years ago; so that it must have been aboatload of pottery being taken in to market that was swamped there, how many centuries ago! But there have been stranger things than thatfound; half a mile away, where the steep gravel hill slopes down to thefen, a man hoeing brought up a bronze spear-head. He took it to thelord of the manor, who was interested in curiosities. The squirehurried to the place and had it all dug out carefully; quite a numberof spear-heads were found, and a beautiful bronze sword, with the holeswhere the leather straps of the handle passed in and out. I have heldthis fine blade in my hands, and it is absolutely undinted. It may beRoman, but it is probably earlier. Nothing else was found, except somemouldering fragments of wood that looked like spear-staves; and this, too, it seems, must have been a boatload of warriors, perhaps someraiding party, swamped on the edge of the lagoon with all their unusedweapons, which they were presumably unable to recover, if indeed anysurvived to make the attempt. Hard by is the place where the greatfight related in Hereward the Wake took place. The Normans wereencamped southwards at Willingham, where a line of low entrenchments isstill known as Belsar's Field, from Belisarius, the Norman Duke incommand. It is a quiet enough place now, and the yellow-hammers singsweetly and sharply in the thick thorn hedges. The Normans made acauseway of faggots and earth across the fen, but came at last to theold channel of the Ouse, which they could not bridge; and here theyattempted to cross in great flat-bottomed boats, but were foiled byHereward and his men, their boats sunk, and hundreds of stout warriorsdrowned in the oozy river-bed. There still broods for me a certainhorror over the place, where the river in its confined channel now runsquietly, by sedge and willow-herb and golden-rod, between its highflood banks, to join the Cam to the east. 

But to return to my house. It was once a monastic grange of Ely, afarmstead with a few rooms, no doubt, where sick monks and ailingnovices were sent to get change of air and a taste of country life. There is a bit of an old wall still bordering my garden, and a strip ofpale soil runs across the gooseberry beds, pale with dust of mortar andchips of brick, where another old wall stood. There was a greatpigeon-house here, pulled down for the shooting-box, and the garden isstill full of old carved stones, lintels, and mullions, and capitals ofpillars, and a grotesque figure of a bearded man, with a tunic confinedround the waist by a cord, which crowns one of my rockeries. But it isall gone now, and the pert cockneyfied house stands up among theshrubberies and walnuts, surveying the ruins of what has been. 

But I must not abuse my house, because whatever it is outside, it isabsolutely comfortable and convenient within: it is solid, well built, spacious, sensible, reminding one of the "solid joys and lastingtreasure" that the hymn says "none but Zion's children know. " And, indeed, it is a Zion to be at ease in. 

One other great charm it has: from the end of my orchard the groundfalls rapidly in a great pasture. Some six miles away, over the darkexpanse of Grunty Fen, the towers of Ely, exquisitely delicate andbeautiful, crown the ridge; on clear sunny days I can see the sunshining on the lead roofs, and the great octagon rises with all itsfretted pinnacles. Indeed, so kind is Providence, that the huge brickmass of the Ely water-tower, like an overgrown Temple of Vesta, blendsitself pleasantly with the cathedral, projecting from the western frontlike a great Galilee. 

The time to make pious pilgrimage to Ely is when the apple-orchards arein bloom. Then the grim western tower, with its sombre windows, thegabled roofs of the canonical houses, rise in picturesque masses overacres of white blossom. But for me, six miles away, the cathedral is anever-ending sight of beauty. On moist days it draws nearer, as ifcarved out of a fine blue stone; on a grey day it looks more like afantastic crag, with pinnacles of rock. Again it will loom a ghostlywhite against a thunder-laden sky. Grand and pathetic at once, for itstands for something that we have parted with. What was the outward andstately form of a mighty idea, a rich system, is now little more thanan aesthetic symbol. It has lost heart, somehow, and its significanceonly exists for ecclesiastically or artistically minded persons; itrepresents a force no longer in the front of the battle. 

One other fine feature of the countryside there is, of which one nevergrows tired. If one crosses over to Sutton, with its huge church, thetower crowned with a noble octagon, and the village pleasantly perchedalong a steep ridge of orchards, one can drop down to the west, past abeautiful old farmhouse called Berristead, with an ancient chapel, built into the homestead, among fine elms. The road leads out upon thefen, and here run two great Levels, as straight as a line for manymiles, up which the tide pulsates day by day; between them lies a widetract of pasture called the Wash, which in summer is a vastgrazing-ground for herds, in rainy weather a waste of waters, like agreat estuary--north and south it runs, crossed by a few roads orblack-timbered bridges, the fen-water pouring down to the sea. It is agreat place for birds this. The other day I disturbed a brood ofredshanks here, the parent birds flying round and round, pipingmournfully, almost within reach of my hand. A little further down, notmany months ago, there was observed a great commotion in the stream, asof some big beast swimming slowly; the level was netted, and theyhauled out a great sturgeon, who had somehow lost his way, and wastrying to find a spawning-ground. There is an ancient custom that allsturgeon, netted in English waters, belong by right to the sovereign;but no claim was advanced in this case. The line between Ely and Marchcrosses the level, further north, and the huge freight-trains gosmoking and clanking over the fen all day. I often walk along thegrassy flood-bank for a mile or two, to the tiny decayed village ofMepal, with a little ancient church, where an old courtier lies, anEnglishman, but with property near Lisbon, who was agentleman-in-waiting to James II. In his French exile, retiredinvalided, and spent the rest of his days "between Portugal and ByallFen"--an odd pair of localities to be so conjoined!

And what of the life that it is possible to live in my sequesteredgrange? I suppose there is not a quieter region in the whole ofEngland. There are but two or three squires and a few clergy in theIsle, but the villages are large and prosperous; the people eminentlyfriendly, shrewd and independent, with homely names for the most part, but with a sprinkling both of Saxon appellations, like Cutlack, whichis Guthlac a little changed, and Norman names, like Camps, inheritedperhaps from some invalided soldier who made his home there after thegreat fight. There is but little communication with the outer world; onmarket-days a few trains dawdle along the valley from Ely to St. Ivesand back again. They are fine, sturdy, prosperous village communities, that mind their own business, and take their pleasure in religion andin song, like their forefathers the fenmen, Girvii, who sang theirthree-part catches with rude harmony. 

Part of the charm of the place is, I confess, its loneliness. One maygo for weeks together with hardly a caller; there are no socialfunctions, no festivities, no gatherings. One may once in a month havea chat with a neighbour, or take a cup of tea at a kindly parsonage. But people tend to mind their own business, and live their own lives intheir own circle; yet there is an air of tranquil neighbourliness allabout. The inhabitants of the region respect one's taste in choosing sohomely and serene a region for a dwelling-place, and they know thatwhatever motive one may have had for coming, it was not dictated by afeverish love of society. I have never known a district--and I havelived in many parts of England--where one was so naturally and simplyaccepted as a part of the place. One is greeted in all directions witha comfortable cordiality, and a natural sort of good-breeding; and thusthe life comes at once to have a precise quality, a character of itsown. Every one is independent, and one is expected to be independenttoo. There is no suspicion of a stranger; it is merely recognised thathe is in search of a definite sort of life, and he is made frankly andunostentatiously at home. 

And so the days race away there in the middle of the mighty plain. Noplans are ever interrupted, no one questions one's going and coming asone will, no one troubles his head about one's occupations or pursuits. Any help or advice that one needs is courteously and readily given, andno favours asked or expected in return. One little incident gave meconsiderable amusement. There is a private footpath of my own whichleads close to my house; owing to the house having stood for some timeunoccupied, people had tended to use it as a short cut. The kindlyfarmer obviated this by putting up a little notice-board, to indicatethat the path was private. A day or two afterwards it was removed andthrown into a ditch. I was perturbed as well as surprised by this, supposing that it showed that the notice had offended some localsusceptibility; and being very anxious to begin my tenure onneighbourly terms, I consulted my genial landlord, who laughed, andsaid that there was no one who would think of doing such a thing; andto reassure me he added that one of his men had seen the culprit atwork, and that it was only an old horse, who had rubbed himself againstthe post till he had thrown it down. 

The days pass, then, in a delightful monotony; one reads, writes, sitsor paces in the garden, scours the country on still sunny afternoons. There are many grand churches and houses within a reasonable distance, such as the great churches near Wisbech and Lynn--West Walton, WalpoleSt. Peter, Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of others--greatcruciform structures, in every conceivable style, with fine woodworkand noble towers, each standing in the centre of a tiny rustic hamlet, built with no idea of prudent proportion to the needs of the placesthey serve, but out of pure joy and pride. There are houses likeBeaupre, a pile of fantastic brick, haunted by innumerable phantoms, with its stately orchard closes, or the exquisite gables of Snore Hall, of rich Tudor brickwork, with fine panelling within. There is no lackof shrines for pilgrimage--then, too, it is not difficult to persuadesome like-minded friend to share one's solitude. And so the quiet hourstick themselves away in an almost monastic calm, while one's book growsinsensibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on the edge of the dyke. 

I do not say that it would be a life to live for the whole of a year, and year by year. There is no stir, no eagerness, no brisk interchangeof thought about it. But for one who spends six months in a busy andpeopled place, full of duties and discussions and conflictinginterests, it is like a green pasture and waters of comfort. The dangerof it, if prolonged, would be that things would grow languid, listless, fragrant like the Lotos-eaters' Isle; small things would assume undueimportance, small decisions would seem unduly momentous; one would tendto regard one's own features as in a mirror and through a magnifyingglass. But, on the other hand, it is good, because it restores anotherkind of proportion; it is like dipping oneself in the seclusion of amonastic cell. Nowadays the image of the world, with all its sheets ofdetailed news, all its network of communications, sets too deep a markupon one's spirit. We tend to believe that a man is lost unless he isoverwhelmed with occupation, unless, like the conjurer, he is keeping adozen balls in the air at once. Such a gymnastic teaches a manalertness, agility, effectiveness. But it has got to be proved that onewas sent into the world to be effective, and it is not even certainthat a man has fulfilled the higher law of his being if he has made alarge fortune by business. A sagacious, shrewd, acute man of the worldis sometimes a mere nuisance; he has made his prosperous corner at theexpense of others, and he has only contrived to accumulate, behind alittle fence of his own, what was meant to be the property of all. Ihave known a good many successful men, and I cannot honestly say that Ithink that they are generally the better for their success. They haveoften learnt self-confidence, the shadow of which is a good-naturedcontempt for ineffective people; the shadow, on the other hand, whichfalls on the contemplative man is an undue diffidence, an indolentdepression, a tendency to think that it does not very much matter whatany one does. But, on the other hand, the contemplative man sometimesdoes grasp one very important fact--that we are sent into the world, most of us, to learn something about God and ourselves; whereas if wespend our lives in directing and commanding and consulting others, weget so swollen a sense of our own importance, our own adroitness, ourown effectiveness, that we forget that we are tolerated rather thanneeded. It is better on the whole to tarry the Lord's leisure, than totry impatiently to force the hand of God, and to make amends for Hisapparent slothfulness. What really makes a nation grow, and improve, and progress, is not social legislation and organisation. That is onlythe sign of the rising moral temperature; and a man who sets an exampleof soberness, and kindliness, and contentment is better than apragmatical district visitor with a taste for rating meek persons. 

It may be asked, then, do I set myself up as an example in this matter?God forbid! I live thus because I like it, and not from anyphilosophical or philanthropical standpoint. But if more men were tofollow their instincts in the matter, instead of being misled andbewildered by the conventional view that attaches virtue toperspiration, and national vigour to the multiplication of unnecessarybusiness, it would be a good thing for the community. What I claim isthat a species of mental and moral equilibrium is best attained by acareful proportion of activity and quietude. What happens in the caseof the majority of people is that they are so much occupied in theprocess of acquisition that they have no time to sort or dispose theirstores; and thus life, which ought to be a thing complete in itself, and ought to be spent, partly in gathering materials, and partly indrawing inferences, is apt to be a hurried accumulation lasting to theedge of the tomb. We are put into the world, I cannot help feeling, toBE rather than to DO. We excuse our thirst for action by pretending toourselves that our own doing may minister to the being of others; butall that it often effects is to inoculate others with the same restlessand feverish bacteria. 

And anyhow, as I said, it is but an experiment. I can terminate itwhenever I have the wish to do so. Even if it is a failure, it will atall events have been an experiment, and others may learn wisdom by mymistake; because it must be borne in mind that a failure in adeliberate experiment in life is often more fruitful than aconventional success. People as a rule are so cautious; and it is ofcourse highly disagreeable to run a risk, and to pay the penalty. Lifeis too short, one feels, to risk making serious mistakes; but, on theother hand, the cautious man often has the catastrophe, without evenhaving had the pleasure of a run for his money. Jowett, the high priestof worldly wisdom, laid down as a maxim, "Never resign"; but I havefound myself that there is no pleasure comparable to disentanglingoneself from uncongenial surroundings, unless it be the pleasure ofmaking mild experiments and trying unconventional schemes. 

II

CONTENTMENT

I have attempted of late, in more than one book, to depict a certainkind of tranquil life, a life of reflection rather than of action, ofcontemplation rather than of business; and I have tried to do this fromdifferent points of view, though the essence has been the same. Iendeavoured at first to do it anonymously, because I have no desire torecommend these ideas as being my own theories. The personal backgroundrather detracts from than adds to the value of the thoughts, becausepeople can compare my theories with my practice, and show howlamentably I fail to carry them out. But time after time I have beenpulled reluctantly out of my burrow, by what I still consider a whollymisguided zeal for publicity, till I have decided that I will lurk nolonger. It was in this frame of mind that I published, under my ownname, a book called Beside Still Waters, a harmless enough volume, Ithought, which was meant to be a deliberate summary or manifesto ofthese ideas. It depicted a young man who, after a reasonable experienceof practical life, resolved to retire into the shade, who in thatposition indulged profusely in leisurely reverie. The book wascarefully enough written, and I have been a good deal surprised to findthat it has met with considerable disapproval, and even derision, onthe part of many reviewers. It has been called morbid and indolent, anddecadent, and half a hundred more ugly adjectives. Now I do not for aninstant question the right of a single one of these conscientiouspersons to form whatever opinion they like about my book, and toexpress it in any terms they like; they say, and obviously feel, thatthe thought of the book is essentially thin, and that the vein in whichit is written is offensively egotistical. I do not dispute thepossibility of their being perfectly right. An artist who exhibits hispaintings, or a writer who publishes his books, challenges thecriticisms of the public; and I am quite sure that the reviewers whofrankly disliked my book, and said so plainly, thought that they weredoing their duty to the public, and warning them against teaching whichthey believed to be insidious and even immoral. I honour them for doingthis, and I applaud them, especially if they did violence to their ownfeelings of courtesy and urbanity in doing so. Then there were somegood-natured reviewers who practically said that the book was simply acollection of amiable platitudes; but that if the public liked to readsuch stuff, they were quite at liberty to do so. I admire thesereviewers for a different reason, partly for their tolerant permissionto the public to read what they choose, and still more because I liketo think that there are so many intelligent people in the world who arewearisomely familiar with ideas which have only slowly and graduallydawned upon myself. I have no intention of trying to refute or convincemy critics, and I beg them with all my heart to say what they thinkabout my books, because only by the frank interchange of ideas can wearrive at the truth. 

But what I am going to try to do in this chapter is to examine thetheory by virtue of which my book is condemned, and I am going to tryto give the fullest weight to the considerations urged against it. I amsure there is something in what the critics say, but I believe thatwhere we differ is in this. The critics who disapprove of my book seemto me to think that all men are cast in the same mould, and that theprinciples which hold good for some necessarily hold good for all. WhatI like best about their criticisms is that they are made in a spirit ofmoral earnestness and ethical seriousness. I am a serious man myself, and I rejoice to see others serious. The point of view which they seemto recommend is the point of view of a certain kind of practicalstrenuousness, the gospel of push, if I may so call it. They seem tohold that people ought to be discontented with what they are, that theyought to try to better themselves, that they ought to be active, andwhat they call normal; that when they have done their work asenergetically as possible, they should amuse themselves energeticallytoo, take hard exercise, shout and play, "Pleased as the Indian boy to run And shoot his arrows in the sun, "

and that then they should recreate themselves like Homeric heroes, eating and drinking, listening comfortably to the minstrel, and taketheir fill of love in a full-blooded way. 

That is, I think, a very good theory of life for some people, though Ithink it is a little barbarous; it is Spartan rather than Athenian. 

Some of my critics take a higher kind of ground, and say that I want tominimise and melt down the old stern beliefs and principles of moralityinto a kind of nebulous emotion. They remind me a little of an oldcountry squire of whom I have heard, of the John Bull type, whoseyounger son, a melancholy and sentimental youth, joined the Church ofRome. His father was determined that this should not separate them, andasked him to come home and talk it over. He told his eldest son that hewas going to remonstrate with the erring youth in a simple andaffectionate way. The eldest son said that he hoped his father would doit tactfully and gently, as his brother was highly sensitive, to whichhis father replied that he had thought over what he meant to say, andwas going to be very reasonable. The young man arrived, and was usheredinto the study by his eldest brother. "Well, " said the squire, "veryglad to see you, Harry; but do you mean to tell me that your mother'sreligion is not good enough for a damned ass like you?"

Now far from desiring to minimise faith in God and the Unseen, I thinkit is the thing of which the world is more in need than anything else. What has made the path of faith a steep one to tread is partly that ithas got terribly encumbered with ecclesiastical traditions; it has beenmended, like the Slough of Despond, with cartloads of texts andinsecure definitions. And partly too the old simple undisturbed faithin the absolute truth and authority of the Bible has given way. It isadmitted that the Bible contains a considerable admixture of thelegendary element; and it requires a strong intellectual and moral gripto build one's faith upon a collection of writings, some of which, atall events, are not now regarded as being historically and literallytrue. "If I cannot believe it all, " says the simple bewildered soul, "how can I be certain that any of it is indubitably true?" Only thepatient and desirous spirit can decide; but whatever else fades, theperfect insight, the Divine message of the Son of Man cannot fade; thedimmer that the historical setting becomes, the brighter shine theparables and the sayings, so far beyond the power of His followers tohave originated, so utterly satisfying to our deepest needs. What Idesire to say with all my heart is that we pilgrims need not bedismayed because the golden clue dips into darkness and mist; itemerges as bright as ever upon the upward slope of the valley. If onedisregards all that is uncertain, all that cannot be held to besecurely proved in the sacred writings, there still remain theessential facts of the Christian revelation, and more deep and fruitfulprinciples than a man can keep and make his own in the course of alifetime, however purely and faithfully he lives and strives. To myselfthe doubtful matters are things absolutely immaterial, like the debrisof the mine, while the precious ore gleams and sparkles in everyboulder. 

What, in effect, these critics say is that a man must not discussreligion unless he is an expert in theology. When I try, as I have onceor twice tried, to criticise some current conception of a Christiandogma, the theological reviewer, with a titter that resembles thetitter of Miss Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, says that a writer whopresumes to discuss such questions ought to be better acquainted withthe modern developments of theology. To that I demur, because I am notattempting to discuss theology, but current conceptions of theology. Ifthe advance in theology has been so enormous, then all I can say isthat the theologians fail to bring home the knowledge of that progressto the man in the street. To use a simple parable, what one feels aboutmany modern theological statements is what the eloquent bagman said inpraise of the Yorkshire ham: "Before you know where you are, there--it's wanished!" This is not so in science; science advances, andthe ordinary man knows more or less what is going on; he understandswhat is meant by the development of species, he has an inkling of whatradio-activity means, and so forth; but this is because science ismaking discoveries, while theological discoveries are mainly of aliberal and negative kind, a modification of old axioms, a loosening ofold definitions. Theology has made no discoveries about the nature ofGod, or the nature of the soul; the problem of free will and necessityis as dark as ever, except that scientific discovery tends to show moreand more that an immutable law regulates the smallest details of life. I honour, with all my heart, the critics who have approached the Biblein the same spirit in which they approach other literature; but theonly definite result has been to make what was considered a matter ofblind faith more a matter of opinion. But to attempt to scare men awayfrom discussing religious topics, by saying that it is only a matterfor experts, is to act in the spirit of the Inquisition. It is likesaying to a man that he must not discuss questions of diet and exercisebecause he is not acquainted with the Pharmacopoeia, or that no one mayargue on matters of current politics unless he is a trained historian. Religion is, or ought to be, a matter of vital and daily concern forevery one of us; if our moral progress and our spiritual prospects areaffected by what we believe, theologians ought to be grateful to anyone who will discuss religious ideas from the current point of view, ifit only leads them to clear up misconceptions that may prevail. If Ineeded to justify myself further, I would only add that since I beganto write on such subjects I have received a large number of lettersfrom unknown people, who seem to be grateful to any one who willattempt to speak frankly on these matters, with the earnest desire, which I can honestly say has never been absent from my mind, toelucidate and confirm a belief in simple and essential religiousprinciples. 

And now I would go on to say a few words as to the larger object whichI have had in view. My aim has been to show how it is possible forpeople living quiet and humdrum lives, without any opportunities ofgratifying ambition or for taking a leading part on the stage of theworld, to make the most of simple conditions, and to live lives ofdignity and joy. My own belief is that what is commonly called successhas an insidious power of poisoning the clear springs of life; becausepeople who grow to depend upon the stimulus of success sink intodreariness and dulness when that stimulus is withdrawn. Here my criticshave found fault with me for not being more strenuous, more virile, more energetic. It is strange to me that my object can have been sosingularly misunderstood. I believe, with all my heart, that happinessdepends upon strenuous energy; but I think that this energy ought to beexpended upon work, and everyday life, and relations with others, andthe accessible pleasures of literature and art. The gospel that Idetest is the gospel of success, the teaching that every one ought tobe discontented with his setting, that a man ought to get to the front, clear a space round him, eat, drink, make love, cry, strive, and fight. It is all to be at the expense of feebler people. That is a detestableideal, because it is the gospel of tyranny rather than the gospel ofequality. It is obvious, too, that such success depends upon a manbeing stronger than his fellows, and is only made possible by shovingand hectoring, and bullying the weak. The preaching of this violentgospel has done us already grievous harm; it is this which has tendedto depopulate country districts, to make people averse to dischargingall honest subordinate tasks, to make men and women overvalueexcitement and amusement. The result of it is the lowest kind ofdemocratic sentiment, which says, "Every one is as good as every oneelse, and I am a little better, " and the jealous spirit, which says, "If I cannot be prominent, I will do my best that no one else shallbe. " Out of it develops the demon of municipal politics, which makes aman strive for a place, in the hope being able to order things forwhich others have to pay. It is this teaching which makes power seemdesirable for the sake of personal advantages, and with no care forresponsibility. This spirit seems to me an utterly vile and detestablespirit. It tends to disguise its rank individualism under a pretence ofdesiring to improve social conditions. I do not mean for a moment tosay that all social reformers are of this type; the clean-handed socialreformer, who desires no personal advantage, and whose influence is amatter of anxious care, is one of the noblest of men; but now thatschemes of social reform are fashionable, there are a number of blatantpeople who them for purposes of personal advancement. 

What I rather desire is to encourage a very different kind ofindividualism, the individualism of the man who realises that the hopeof the race depends upon the quality of the life, upon the number ofpeople who live quiet, active, gentle, kindly, faithful lives, enjoyingtheir work and turning for recreation to the nobler and simpler sourcesof pleasure--the love of nature, poetry, literature, and art. Of coursethe difficulty is that we do not, most of us, find our pleasures inthese latter things, but in the excitement and amusement of sociallife. I mournfully admit it, and I quite see the uselessness of tryingto bring pleasures within the reach of people when they have no tastefor them; but an increasing number of people do care for such things, and there are still more who would care for them, if only they could beintroduced to them at an impressionable age. 

If it is said that this kind of simplicity is a very tame andspiritless thing, I would answer that it has the advantage of beingwithin the reach of all. The reason why the pursuit of socialadvancement and success is so hollow, is that the subordinate life isafter all the life that must fall to the majority of people. We cannotorganise society on the lines of the army of a lesser German state, which consisted of twenty-four officers, covered with militarydecorations, and eight privates. The successful men, whatever happens, must be a small minority; and what I desire is that success, as it iscalled, should fall quietly and inevitably on the heads of those whodeserve it, while ordinary people should put it out of their thoughts. It is no use holding up an ideal which cannot be attained, and whichthe mere attempt to attain is fruitful in disaster and discontent. 

I do not at all wish to teach a gospel of dulness. I am of the opinionof the poet who said:

 "Life is not life at all without delight, Nor hath it any might. "

But I am quite sure that the real pleasures of the world are thosewhich cannot be bought for money, and which are wholly independent ofsuccess. 

Every one who has watched children knows the extraordinary amount ofpleasure that they can extract out of the simplest materials. To keep ashop in the corner of a garden, where the commodities are pebbles andthistle-heads stored in old tin pots, and which are paid for indaisies, will be an engrossing occupation to healthy children for along summer afternoon. There is no reason why that kind of zest shouldnot be imported into later life; and, as a matter of fact, people whopractise self-restraint, who are temperate and quiet, do retain agracious kind of contentment in all that they do or say, or think, toextreme old age; it is the jaded weariness of overstrained lives thatneeds the stimulus of excitement to carry them along from hour to hour. Who does not remember the rigid asceticism of Ruskin's childhood? Abunch of keys to play with, and a little later a box of bricks; theBible and The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe to read; a summarywhipping if he fell down and hurt himself, or if he ever cried. Yet noone would venture to say that this austerity in any way stuntedRuskin's development or limited his range of pleasures; it made himperhaps a little submissive and unadventurous. But who that ever sawhim, as the most famous art-critic of the day, being mercilesslysnubbed, when he indulged in paradoxes, by the old wine-merchant, orbeing told to hold his tongue by the grim old mother, and obeyingcheerfully and sweetly, would have preferred him to have been loud, contradictory, and self-assertive? The mischief of our present systemof publicity is that we cannot enjoy our own ideas, unless we canimpress people with them, or, at all events, impress people with asense of our enjoyment of them. There is a noble piece ofcharacter-drawing in one of Mr. Henry James's novels, The Portrait of aLady, where Gilbert Osmond, a selfish dilettante, finding that hecannot make a great success or attain a great position, devotes himselfto trying to mystify and provoke the curiosity of the world by retiringinto a refined seclusion, and professing that it affords him anexquisite kind of enjoyment. The hideous vulgarity of his attitude isnot at first sight apparent; he deceives the heroine, who is aconsiderable heiress, into thinking that here, at last, is a man who isliving a quiet and sincere life among the things of the soul; andhaving obtained possession of her purse, he sets up house in adignified old palace in Rome, where he continues to amuse himself byinviting distinguished persons to visit him, in order that he may havethe pleasure of excluding the lesser people who would like to beincluded. 

This is, of course, doing the thing upon an almost sublime scale; butthe fact remains that in an age which values notoriety above everythingexcept property, a great many people do suffer from the disease of notenjoying things, unless they are aware that others envy theirenjoyment. To people of an artistic temperament this is a soretemptation, because the essence of the artistic temperament is itsegotism, and egotism, like the Bread-and-butter fly, requires a specialnutriment, the nutriment of external admiration. 

And here, I think, lies one of the pernicious results of anover-developed system of athletics. The more games that people play, the better; but I do not think it is wholesome to talk about them forlarge spaces of leisure time, any more than it is wholesome to talkabout your work or your meals. The result of all the talk aboutathletics is that the newspapers get full of them too. That is onlynatural. It is the business of newspapers to find out what interestspeople, and to tell them about it; but the bad side of it is that youngathletes get introduced to the pleasures of publicity, and thatambitious young men think that athletics are a short cut to fame. Tohave played in a University eleven is like accepting a peerage; youwear for the rest of your life an agreeable and honourable sociallabel, and I do not think that a peerage is deserved, or should beaccepted, at the age of twenty. I do not think it is a good kind offame which depends on a personal performance rather than upon a man'susefulness to the human race. 

The kind of contentment that I should like to see on the increase isthe contentment of a man who works hard and enjoys work, both in itselfand in the contrast it supplies to his leisure hours; and, further, whose leisure is full of varied interests, not only definite pursuits, but an interest in his relations with others, not only of aspectatorial kind, but with the natural and instinctive desire tocontribute to their happiness, not in a priggish way, but from a senseof cordial good-fellowship. 

This programme may seem, as I have said, to be unambitious and prosaic, and to have very little that is stirring about it. But my belief isthat it can be the most lively, sensitive, fruitful, and enjoyableprogramme in the world, because the enjoyment of it depends upon thevery stuff of life itself, and not upon skimming the cream off andthrowing away the milk. 

My critics will say that I am only appearing again from my cellar, withmy hands filled with bottled platitudes; but if they are platitudes, bywhich I mean plain and obvious truths, why do we not find more peoplepractising them? What I mean by a platitude is a truth so obvious thatit is devoid of inspiration, and has become one of the things thatevery one does so instinctively, that no reminder of them is necessary. Would that it were so in the present case! All I can say is that I knowvery few people who live their lives on these lines, and that most ofthe people I know find inspiration anywhere but in the homely stuff oflife. Of course there are a good many people who take life stolidlyenough, and do not desire inspiration at all; but I do not mean thatsort of life in the least. I mean that it ought to be possible anddelightful for people to live lives full of activity and perception andkindliness and joy, on very simple lines indeed; to take up their workday by day with an agreeable sense of putting out their powers, to findin the pageant of nature an infinite refreshment, and to let art andpoetry lift them up into a world of hopes and dreams and memories; andthus life may become a meal to be eaten with appetite, with a wholesomeappreciation of its pleasant savours, rather than a meal eaten insatiety or greediness, with a peevish repining that it is not moreelaborate and delicate. 

I do not claim to live my own life on these lines. I started, as allsensitive and pleasure-loving natures do, with an expectation offinding life a much more exciting, amusing, and delightful thing than Ihave found it. I desired to skip from peak to peak, without troublingto descend into the valleys. But now that I have descended, partly outof curiosity and partly out of inefficiency, no doubt, into thelow-lying vales, I have found them to be beautiful and interestingplaces, the hedgerows full of flower and leaf, the thickets musicalwith the voices of birds, the orchards loaded with fruit, the friendlyhomesteads rich with tranquil life and abounding in quiet friendlypeople; and then the very peaks themselves, past which my wayoccasionally conducts me, have a beautiful solemnity of pure outlineand strong upliftedness, seen from below, which I think they tend tolose, seen from the summit; and if I have spoken of the quieter joys, it is--I can say this with perfect honesty--because I have been pleasedwith them, as a bird is pleased with the sunshine and the berries, andsings, not that the passers-by may admire his notes, but out of simplejoy of heart; and, after all, it is enough justification, if a pilgrimor two have stopped upon their way to listen with a smile. That alonepersuades me that one does no harm by speaking, even if there are otherpassers-by who say what a tiresome note it is, that they have heard ita hundred times before, and cannot think why the stupid bird does notvary his song. Personally, I would rather hear the yellow-hammer utterhis sharp monotonous notes, with the dropping cadence at the end, thanthat he should try to imitate the nightingale. 

However, as I have said, I am quite willing to believe that the criticsspeak, or think they speak, in the interests of the public, and with atender concern that the public should not be bored. And I will take myleave of them by saying, like Miss Flite, that I will ask them toaccept a blessing, and that when I receive a judgment, I shall conferestates impartially. 

But my last word shall be to my readers, and I will beg of them not tobe deceived either by experts or by critics; on the one hand, not to befrightened away from speculating and reflecting about the possiblemeanings of life by the people who say that no one under the degree ofa Bachelor of Divinity has any right to tackle the matter; and, on theother hand, I would implore them to believe that a quiet life is notnecessarily a dull life, and that the cutting off of alcohol does notnecessarily mean a lowering of physical vitality; but rather that ifthey will abstain for a little from dependence upon excitement, theywill find their lives flooded by a new kind of quality, which heightensperception and increases joy. Of course souls will ache and ail, and wehave to bear the burden of our ancestors' weaknesses as well as theburden of our own; but just as, in the physical region, diet andexercise and regularity can effect more cures than the strongestmedicines, so, in the life of the spirit, self-restraint and deliberatelimitation and tranquil patience will often lead into a vigorous andeffective channel the stream that, left to itself, welters and wandersamong shapeless pools and melancholy marshes. 

III

FRIENDSHIP

To make oneself beloved, says an old French proverb, this is, afterall, the best way to be useful. That is one of the deep sayings whichchildren think flat, and which young men, and even young women, despise; and which a middle-aged man hears with a certain troubledsurprise, and wonders if there is not something in it after all; andwhich old people discover to be true, and think with a sad regret ofopportunities missed, and of years devoted, how unprofitably, to otherkinds of usefulness! The truth is that most of us who have anyambitions at all, do not start in life with a hope of being useful, butrather with an intention of being ornamental. We think, like joseph inhis childish dreams, that the sun and moon and the eleven stars, to saynothing of the sheaves, are going to make obeisance to us. We want tobe impressive, rich, beautiful, influential, admired, envied; and then, as we move forward, the visions fade. We have to be content if, in aquiet corner, a single sheaf gives us a nod of recognition; and as forthe eleven stars, they seem unaware of our very existence! And then wemake further discoveries; that when we have seemed to ourselves mostimpressive, we have only been pretentious; that riches are only atalisman against poverty, and even make suffering and pain and griefmore unendurable; that beauty fades into stolidity or weariness; thatinfluence comes mostly to people who do not pursue it, and that thebest kind of influence belongs to those who do not even know that theypossess it; that admiration is but a brilliant husk, which may or maynot contain a wholesome kernel; and as for envy, there is poison inthat cup! And then we become aware that the best crowns have fallen tothose who have not sought them, and that simple-minded and unselfishpeople have won the prize which has been denied to brilliance andambition. 

That is the process which is often called disillusionment; and it is asad enough business for people who only look at one side of the medal, and who brood over the fact that they have been disappointed and havefailed. For such as these, there follow the faded years of cynicism anddreariness. But that disillusionment, that humiliation, are thefreshest and most beautiful things in the world, for people who havereal generosity of spirit, and whose vanity has been of a superficialkind; because they thus realise that these great gifts are real andtrue things, but that they must be deserved and not captured; and thenperhaps such people begin their life-work afresh, in a humble andhopeful spirit; and if it be too late for them to do what they mighthave once done, they do not waste time in futile regret, but aregrateful for ever so little love and tenderness. After all, they havelived, they have learnt by experience; and it does not yet appear whatwe shall be. Somewhere, far hence--who knows?--we shall make a betterstart. 

Some philosophers have devoted time and thought to tracing backwardsall our emotions to their primal origin; and it is undoubtedly truethat in the intensest and most passionate relationships of life--thelove of a man for a woman, or a mother for a child--there is a largeadmixture of something physical, instinctive, and primal. But the factalso remains that there are unnumbered relationships between all sortsof apparently incongruous persons, of which the basis is not physicaldesire, or the protective instinct, and is not built up upon any hopeof gain or profit whatsoever. All sorts of qualities may lend a hand tostrengthen and increase and confirm these bonds; but what lies at thebase of all is simply a sort of vital congeniality. The friend is theperson whom one is in need of, and by whom one is needed. Life is asweeter, stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend'sexistence, whether he be near or far: if the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away, he is still there, to think of, towonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experiencewith, to serve, to honour, to admire, to love. But again it is amistake to think that one makes a friend because of his or herqualities; it has nothing to do with qualities at all. If the friendhas noble qualities, we admire them because they are his; if he hasobviously bad and even noxious faults, how readily we condone them oroverlook them! It is the person that we want, not what he does or says, or does not do or say, but what he is: that is eternally enough. 

Of course, it does sometimes happen that we think we have made afriend, and on closer acquaintance we find things in him that are aliento our very being; but even so, such a friendship often survives, if wehave given our heart, or if affection has been bestowed uponus--affection which we cannot doubt. Some of the richest friendships ofall are friendships between people whose whole view of life is sharplycontrasted; and then what blessed energy can be employed in defendingone's friend, in explaining him to other people, in minimising faults, in emphasising virtues! "While the thunder lasted, " says the old Indianproverb, "two bad men were friends. " That means that a common dangerwill sometimes draw even malevolent people together. But, for most ofus, the only essential thing to friendship is a kind of mutual trustand confidence. It does not even shake our faith to know that ourfriend may play other people false: we feel by a kind of secretinstinct that he will not play us false; and even if it be provedincontestably that he has played us false, why, we believe that he willnot do so again, and we have all the pleasure of forgiveness. 

Who shall explain the extraordinary instinct that tells us, perhapsafter a single meeting, that this or that particular person in somemysterious way matters to us? The person in question may have noattractive gifts of intellect or manner or personal appearance; butthere is some strange bond between us; we seem to have sharedexperience together, somehow and somewhere; he is interesting, whetherhe speaks or is silent, whether he agrees or disagrees. We feel that insome secret region he is congenial. Est mihi nescio quid quod me tibitemperat astrum, says the old Latin poet--"There is something, I knownot what, which yokes our fortunes, yours and mine. " Sometimes indeedwe are mistaken, and the momentary nearness fades and grows cold. Butit is not often so. That peculiar motion of the heart, that secretjoining of hands, is based upon something deep and vital, somespiritual kinship, some subtle likeness. 

Of course, we differ vastly in our power of attracting and feelingattraction. I confess that, for myself, I never enter a new companywithout the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps THE friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousanddisappointments; yet most of us tend to make fewer friends as time goeson, partly because we have not so much emotional activity to spare, partly because we become more cautious and discreet; and partly, too, because we become more aware of the responsibilities which lie in thebackground of a friendship, and because we tend to be more shy ofresponsibility. Some of us become less romantic and more comfortable;some of us become more diffident about what we have to give in return;some of us begin to feel that we cannot take up new ideas--none of themvery good reasons perhaps; but still, for whatever reason, we makefriends less easily. The main reason probably is that we acquire apoint of view, and it is easier to keep to that, and fit people in whoaccommodate themselves to it, than to modify the point of view withreference to the new personalities. People who deal with lifegenerously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to theend. 

Of course, as I have said, there are infinite grades of friendship, beginning with the friendship which is a mere camaraderie arising outof habit and proximity; and every one ought to be capable of formingthis last relationship. The modest man, said Stevenson, finds hisfriendships ready-made; by which he meant that if one is generous, tolerant, and ungrudging, then, instead of thinking the circle in whichone lives inadequate, confined, and unsympathetic, one gets the bestout of it, and sees the lovable side of ordinary human beings. Suchfriendships as these can evoke perhaps the best and simplest kind ofloyalty. It is said that in countries where oxen are used for ploughingin double harness, there are touching instances of an ox pining away, and even dying, if he loses his accustomed yoke-fellow. There are suchhuman friendships, sometimes formed on a blood relationship, such asthe friendship of a brother and a sister; and sometimes a marriagetransforms itself into this kind of camaraderie, and is a very blessed, quiet, beautiful thing. 

And then there are infinite gradations, such as the friendships of oldand young, pupils and masters, parents and children, nurses andnurslings, employers and servants, all of them in a way unequalfriendships, but capable of evoking the deepest and purest kinds ofdevotion: such famous friendships have been Carlyle's devotion to hisparents, Boswell's to Johnson, Stanley's to Arnold; till at last onecomes to the typical and essential thing known specially asfriendship--the passionate, devoted, equal bond which exists betweentwo people of the same age and sex; many of which friendships areformed at school and college, and which often fade away in a sort ofcordial glow, implying no particular communion of life and thought. Marriage is often the great divorcer of such friendships, andcircumstances generally, which sever and estrange; because, unlessthere is a constant interchange of thought and ideas, increasing agetends to emphasise differences. But there are instances of men, likeNewman and FitzGerald, who kept up a sort of romantic quality offriendship to the end. 

I remember the daughter of an old clergyman of my acquaintance tellingme a pathetic and yet typical story of the end of one of thesefriendships. Her father and another elderly clergyman had been devotedfriends in boyhood and youth. Circumstances led to a suspension ofintercourse, but at last, after a gap of nearly thirty years, duringwhich the friends had not met, it was arranged that the old comradeshould come and stay at the vicarage. As the time approached, herfather grew visibly anxious, and coupled his frequent expression of theexquisite pleasure which the visit was going to bring him withelaborate arrangements as to which of his family should be responsiblefor the entertainment of the old comrade at every hour of the day: thedaughters were to lead him out walking in the morning, his wife was totake him out drives in the afternoon, and he was to share thesmoking-room with a son, who was at home, in the evenings--the oneobject being that the old gentleman should not have to interrupt hisown routine, or bear the burden of entertaining a guest; and heeventually contrived only to meet him at meals, when the two oldfriends did not appear to have anything particular to say to eachother. When the visit was over, her father used to allude to his guestwith a half-compassionate air: "Poor Harry, he has aged terribly--Inever saw a man so changed, with such a limited range of interests;dear fellow, he has quite lost his old humour. Well, well! it was agreat pleasure to see him here. He was very anxious that we should goto stay with him, but I am afraid that will be rather difficult tomanage; one is so much at a loose end in a strange house, and thenone's correspondence gets into arrears. Poor old Harry! What a livelycreature he was up at Trinity, to be sure!" Thus with a sigh dust iscommitted to dust. 

"What passions our friendships were!" said Thackeray to FitzGerald, speaking of University days. There is a shadow of melancholy in thesaying, because it implies that for Thackeray at all events that kindof glow had faded out of life. Perhaps--who knows?--he had accustomedhimself, with those luminous, observant, humorous eyes, to look toodeep into the heart of man, to study too closely and too laughingly theseamy side, the strange contrast between man's hopes and hisperformances, his dreams and his deeds. Ought one to be ashamed if thatkind of generous enthusiasm, that intensity of admiration, thatvividness of sympathy die out of one's heart? Is it possible to keepalive the warmth, the colour of youth, suffusing all the objects nearit with a lively and rosy glow? Some few people seem to find itpossible, and can add to it a kind of rich tolerance, a lavishaffectionateness, which pierces even deeper, and sees even moreclearly, than the old partial idealisation. Such a large-heartedaffection is found as a rule most often in people whose lives havebrought them into intimate connection with their fellow-creatures--inpriests, doctors, teachers, who see others not in their guarded andsuperficial moments, but in hours of sharp and poignant emotion. Inmany cases the bounds of sympathy narrow themselves into the family andthe home--because there only are men brought into an intimateconnection with human emotion; because to many people, and to theAnglo-Saxon race in particular, emotional situations are a strain, andonly professional duty, which is a strongly rooted instinct in theAnglo-Saxon temperament, keeps the emotional muscles agile andresponsive. 

Another thing which tends to extinguish friendships is that many of thepeople who desire to form them, and who do form them, wish to have thepleasures of friendship without the responsibilities. In theself-abandonment of friendship we become aware of qualities and strainsin the friend which we do not wholly like. One of the most difficultthings to tolerate in a friend are faults which are similar withoutbeing quite the same. A common quality, for instance, in theAnglo-Saxon race, is a touch of vulgarity, which is indeed the qualitythat makes them practically successful. A great many Anglo-Saxon peoplehave a certain snobbishness, to give it a hard name; it is probably thepoison of the feudal system lurking in our veins. We admire successunduly; we like to be respected, to have a definite label, to know theright people. 

I remember once seeing a friendship of a rather promising kind formingbetween two people, one of whom had a touch of what I may call "county"vulgarity, by which I mean an undue recognition of "the glories of ourbirth and state. " It was a deep-seated fault, and emerged in a formwhich is not uncommon among people of that type--namely, a tendency tomake friends with people of rank, coupled with a constant desire todetect snobbishness in other people. There is no surer sign of innatevulgarity than that; it proceeds, as a rule, from a dim consciousnessof the fault, combined with the natural shame of a high-minded naturefor being subject to it. In this particular case the man in questionsincerely desired to resist the fault, but he could not avoid makinghimself slightly more deferential, and consequently slightly moreagreeable, to persons of position. If he had not suffered from thefault, he would never have given the matter a thought at all. 

The other partner in the friendly enterprise had a touch of a differentkind of snobbishness--the middle-class professional snobbishness, whichpays an undue regard to success, and gravitates to effective anddistinguished people. As the friendship matured, each becameunpleasantly conscious of the other's defect, while remainingunconscious of his own. The result was a perpetual little friction onthe point. If both could have been perfectly sincere, and could haveconfessed their weakness frankly, no harm would have been done. Buteach was so sincerely anxious to present an unblemished soul to theother's view, that they could not arrive at an understanding on thepoint; each desired to appear more disinterested than he was; and so, after coming together to a certain extent--both were fine natures--thepresence of grit in the machinery made itself gradually felt, and thefriendship melted away. It was a case of each desiring the unalloyedpleasure of an admiring friendship, without accepting theresponsibility of discovering that the other was not perfection, andbearing that discovery loyally and generously. For this is the worst ofa friendship that begins in idealisation rather than in comradeship;and this is the danger of all people who idealise. When two such cometogether and feel a mutual attraction, they display instinctively andunconsciously the best of themselves; but melancholy discoveriessupervene; and then what generally happens is that the idealisingfriend is angry with the other for disappointing his hopes, not withhimself for drawing an extravagant picture. 

Such friendships have a sort of emotional sensuality about them; and tobe dismayed by later discoveries is to decline upon Rousseau's vice ofhanding in his babies to the Foundling Hospital, instead of trying tobring them up honestly; what lies at the base of it is the indolentshirking of the responsibilities for the natural consequences offriendship. The mistake arises from a kind of selfishness, theselfishness that thinks more of what it wants and desires to get, thanof taking what there is soberly and gratefully. 

It is often said that it is the duty and privilege of a friend to warnhis friend faithfully against his faults. I believe that this is awholly mistaken principle. The essence of the situation is rather acordial partnership, of which the basis is liberty. What I mean byliberty is not a freedom from responsibility, but an absence ofobligation. I do not, of course, mean that one is to take all one canget and give as little as one likes, but rather that one must respectone's friend enough--and that is implied in the establishment of therelation--to abstain from directing him, unless he desires and asks fordirection. The telling of faults may be safely left to hostile critics, and to what Sheridan calls "damned good-natured" acquaintances. But thefriend must take for granted that his friend desires, in a general way, what is good and true, even though he may pursue it on different lines. One's duty is to encourage and believe in one's friend, not todisapprove of and to censure him. One loves him for what he is, not forwhat he might be if he would only take one's advice. The point is thatit must be all a free gift, not a mutual improvement society--unlessindeed that is the basis of the compact. After all, a man can only feelresponsible to God. One goes astray, no doubt, like a sheep that islost; but it is not the duty of another sheep to butt one back into theright way, unless indeed one appeals for help. One may have pastors anddirectors, but they can never be equal friends. If there is to besuperiority in friendship, the lesser must willingly crown the greater;the greater must not ask to be crowned. The secure friendship is thatwhich begins in comradeship, and moves into a more generous andemotional region. Then there is no need to demand or to questionloyalty, because the tie has been welded by many a simple deed, many afrank word. The ideal is a perfect frankness and sincerity, which laysbare the soul as it is, without any false shame or any fear ofmisunderstanding. A friendship of this kind can be one of the purest, brightest, and strongest things in the world. Yet how rare it is! Whatfar oftener happens is that two people, in a sensitive and emotionalmood, are brought together. They begin by comparing experiences, theysearch their memories for beautiful and suggestive things, and eachfeels, "This nature is the true complement of my own; what light itseems to shed on my own problems; how subtle, how appreciative it is!"Then the process of discovery begins. Instead of the fair distant city, all spires and towers, which we discerned in the distance in a sort ofglory, we find that there are crooked lanes, muddy crossings, dullmarket-places, tiresome houses. Odd misshapen figures, fretful andwearied, plod through the streets or look out at windows; here is aruin, with doleful creatures moping in the shade; we overturn a stone, and blind uncanny things writhe away from the light. We begin toreflect that it is after all much like other places, and that our fineromantic view of it was due to some accident of light and colour, sometransfiguring mood of our own mind; and then we set out in search ofanother city which we see crowning a hill on the horizon, and leave thedull place to its own commonplace life. But to begin with comradeshipis to explore the streets and lanes first; and then day by day, as wego up and down in the town, we become aware of its picturesqueness andits charm; we realise that it has an intense and eager life of its own, which we can share as a dweller, though we cannot touch it as avisitor; and so the wonder grows, and the patient love of home. And wehave surprises, too: we enter a door in a wall that we have not seenbefore, and we are in a shrine full of fragrant incense-smoke; thefallen day comes richly through stained windows; figures move at thealtar, where some holy rite is being celebrated. The truth is that afriendship cannot be formed in the spirit of a tourist, who is aboveall in search of the romantic and the picturesque. Sometimes, indeed, the wandering traveller may become the patient and contentedinhabitant; but it is generally the other way, and the best friendshipsare most often those that seem at first sight dully made for us byhabit and proximity, and which reveal to us by slow degrees theirbeauty and their worth. 

 * * * * *

Thus far had I written, when it came into my mind that I should like tosee the reflection of my beliefs in some other mind, to submit them tothe test of what I may perhaps be forgiven for calling a spirit-level!And so I read my essay to two wise, kindly, and gracious ladies, whohave themselves often indeed graduated in friendship, and taken thehighest honours. I will say nothing of the tender courtesy with whichthey made their head-breaking balms precious; I told them that I hadnot finished my essay, and that before I launched upon my lastantistrophe, I wanted inspiration. I cannot here put down the phrasesthey used, but I felt that they spoke in symbols, like two initiatedpersons, for whom the corn and the wine and the oil of the sacrificestand for very secret and beautiful mysteries; but they said in effectthat I had been depicting, and not untruly, the outer courts andcorridors of friendship. What they told me of the inner shrine I shallpresently describe; but when I asked them to say whether they couldtell me instances of the best and highest kind of friendship, existingand increasing and perfecting itself between two men, or between a manand a woman, not lovers or wedded, they found a great difficulty indoing so. We sifted our common experiences of friendships, and we couldfind but one or two such, and these had somewhat lost their bloom. Itcame then to this: that in the emotional region, many women, but veryfew men, can form the highest kind of tie; and we agreed that mentended to find what they needed in marriage, because they were ratherinterested in than dependent upon personal emotion, and becausepractical life, as the years went on--the life of causes, andmovements, and organisations, and ideas, and investigations--tended toabsorb the energies of men; and that they found their emotional life inhome ties; and that the man who lived for emotional relations wouldtend to be thought, if not to be, a sentimentalist; but that the realsecret lay with women, and with men of perhaps a feminine fibre. Andall this was transfused by a kind of tender pity, without any touch ofcomplacency or superiority, such as a mother might have for thewhispered hopes of a child who is lost in tiny material dreams. But Igathered that there was a region in which the heart could be entirelyabsorbed in a deep and beautiful admiration for some other soul, andrejoice whole-heartedly in its nobleness and greatness; so that noquestion of gaining anything, or even of being helped to anything, camein, any more than one who has long been pent in shadow and gloom andillness, and comes out for the first time into the sun, thinks of anybenefits that he may receive from the caressing sunlight; he merelyknows that it is joy and happiness and life to be there, and to feelthe warm light comfort him and make him glad; and all this I had nodifficulty in understanding, for I knew the emotion that they spoke of, though I called it by a different name. I saw that it was love indeed, but love infinitely purified, and with all the sense of possession thatmingles with masculine love subtracted from it; and how such a relationmight grow and increase, until there arose a sort of secret and vitalunion of spirit, more real indeed than time and space, so that, even ifthis were divorced and sundered by absence, or the clouded mind, ordeath itself, there could be no shadow of doubt as to the permanence ofthe tie; and a glance passed between the two as they spoke, which mademe feel like one who hears an organ rolling, and voices rising in sweetharmonies inside some building, locked and barred, which he may notenter. I could not doubt that the music was there, while I knew thatfor some dulness or belatedness I was myself shut out; not, indeed, that I doubted of the truth of what was said, but I was in the positionof the old saint who said that he believed, and prayed to One to helphis unbelief. For I saw that though I projected the lines of my ownexperience infinitely, adding loyalty to loyalty, and admiration toadmiration, it was all on a different plane. This interfusion ofpersonality, this vital union of soul, I could not doubt it! but itmade me feel my own essential isolation still more deeply, as when thestreaming sunlight strikes warmth and glow out of the fire, revealingcrumbling ashes where a moment before had been a heart of flame. 

 "Ah te meae si partem animae rapit Maturior vis, quid moror altera?"--

"Ah, if the violence of fate snatch thee from me, thou half of my soul, how can I, the other half, still linger here?" So wrote the oldcynical, worldly, Latin poet of his friend--that poet whom, for all hisdeftness and grace, we are apt to accuse of a certain mundaneheartlessness, though once or twice there flickers up a sharp flamefrom the comfortable warmth of the pile. Had he the secret hidden inhis heart all the time? If one could dream of a nearness like that, which doubts nothing, and questions nothing, but which teaches the soulto move in as unconscious a unison with another soul as one's two eyesmove, so that the brain cannot distinguish between the impressions ofeach, would not that be worth the loss of all that we hold most sweet?We pay a price for our qualities; the thistle cannot become the vine, or the oak the rose, by admiration or desire. But we need not doubt ofthe divine alchemy that gives good gifts to others, and denies them toourselves. And thus I can gratefully own that there are indeed thesehigh mysteries of friendship, and I can be glad to discern them afaroff, as the dweller on the high moorland, in the wind-swept farm, cansee, far away in the woodland valley, the smoke go up from happycottage-chimneys, nestled in leaves, and the spire point a hopefulfinger up to heaven. Life would be a poorer thing if we had all that wedesired, and it is permitted to hope that if we are faithful with ourfew things, we may be made rulers over many things!

IV

HUMOUR

There is a pleasant story of a Cambridge undergraduate finding itnecessary to expound the four allegorical figures that crown theparapet of Trinity Library. They are the Learned Muses, as a matter offact. "What are those figures, Jack?" said an ardent sister, labouringunder the false feminine impression that men like explaining things. "Those, " said Jack, observing them for the first time in hislife--"those are Faith, Hope, and Charity, of course. " "Oh! but thereare FOUR of them, " said the irrepressible fair one. "What is theother?" Jack, not to be dismayed, gave a hasty glance; and, observingwhat may be called philosophical instruments in the hands of thestatue, said firmly, "that is Geography. " It made a charming quaternion. 

I have often felt myself that the time has come to raise another figureto the hierarchy of Christian Graces. Faith, Hope, and Charity, weresufficient in a more elementary and barbarous age; but, now that theworld has broadened somewhat, I think an addition to the trio isdemanded. A man may be faithful, hopeful, and charitable, and yet leavemuch to be desired. He may be useful, no doubt, with that equipment, but he may also be both tiresome, and even absurd. The fourth qualitythat I should like to see raised to the highest rank among Christiangraces is the Grace of Humour. 

I do not think that Humour has ever enjoyed its due repute in theethical scale. The possession of it saves a man from priggishness; andthe possession of faith, hope, and charity does not. Indeed, not onlydo these three virtues not save a man from priggishness--they sometimeseven plunge him in irreclaimable depths of superiority. I suppose thatwhen Christianity was first making itself felt in the world, the onequality needful was a deep-seated and enthusiastic earnestness. Thereis nothing that makes life so enjoyable as being in earnest. It is notthe light, laughter-loving, jocose people who have the best time in theworld. They have a chequered career. They skip at times upon the hillsof merriment, but they also descend gloomily at other times into thevalleys of dreariness. But the man who is in earnest is generallyneither merry nor dreary. He has not time to be either. The earlyChristians, engaged in leavening the world, had no time for levity orlistlessness. A pioneer cannot be humorous. But now that the world isleavened and Christian principles are theoretically, if notpractically, taken for granted, a new range of qualities comes insight. By humour I do not mean a taste for irresponsible merriment; forthough humour is not a necessarily melancholy thing, in this imperfectworld the humorist sighs as often as he smiles. What I mean by it is akeen perception of the rich incongruities and absurdities of life, itsundue solemnity, its guileless pretentiousness. To be true humour, itmust not be at all a cynical thing--as soon as it becomes cynical, itloses all its natural grace; it is an essentially tender-heartedquality, apt to find excuse, ready to condone, eager to forgive. Thepossessor of it can never be ridiculous, or heavy, or superior. Wit, ofcourse, is a very small province of humour: wit is to humour whatlightning is to the electric fluid--a vivid, bright, crackling symptomof it in certain conditions; but a man may be deeply and essentiallyhumorous, and never say a witty thing in his life. To be witty, one hasto be fanciful, intellectual, deft, light-hearted; and the humoristneed be none of these things. 

In religion, the absence of a due sense of humour has been the cause ofsome of our worst disasters. All rational people know that what hasdone most to depress and discount religion is ecclesiasticism. Thespirit of ecclesiasticism is the spirit that confuses proportions, thatloves what is unimportant, that hides great principles under minuterules, that sacrifices simplicity to complexity, that adores dogma, anddefinition, and labels of every kind, that substitutes the letter forthe spirit. The greatest misfortune that can befall religion is that itshould become logical, that it should evolve a reasoned system frominsufficient data; but humour abhors logic, and cannot pin its faith oninsecure deductions. The heaviest burden which religion can have tobear is the burden of tradition, and humour is the determined foe ofeverything that is conventional and traditional. The Pharisaical spiritloves precedent and authority; the humorous spirit loves all that isswift and shifting and subversive and fresh. One of the reasons why theorthodox heaven is so depressing a place is that there seems to be noroom in it for laughter; it is all harmony and meekness, sanctified bynothing but the gravest of smiles. What wonder that humanity isdejected at the thought of an existence from which all possibility ofinnocent absurdity and kindly mirth is subtracted--the only thingswhich have persistently lightened and beguiled the earthly pilgrimage!That is why the death of a humorous person has so deep an added tingeof melancholy about it, because it is apt to seem indecorous to thinkof what was his most congenial and charming trait still finding scopefor its exercise. We are never likely to be able to tolerate thethought of Death, while we continue to think of it as a thing whichwill rob humanity of some of its richest and most salientcharacteristics. 

Even the ghastly humour of Milton is a shade better than this. It willbe remembered that he makes the archangel say to Adam that astronomyhas been made by the Creator a complicated subject, in order that thebewilderment of scientific men may be a matter of entertainment to Him!

 "He His fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide. "

Or, again, we may remember the harsh contortions of dry cachinnationindulged in by the rebel spirits, when they have succeeded in topplingover with their artillery the armed hosts of Seraphim. Milton certainlydid not intend to subtract all humour from the celestial regions. Theonly pity was that he had not himself emerged beyond the childishstage, which finds its deepest amusement in the disasters andcatastrophes of stately persons. 

It may be asked whether we have any warrant in the Gospel for theChristian exercise of humour. I have no doubt of it myself. The imageof the children in the market-place who cannot get their peevishcompanions to join in games, whether merry or mournful, as illustratingthe attitude of the Pharisees who blamed John the Baptist forasceticism and Christ for sociability, is a touch of real humour; andthe story of the importunate widow with the unjust judge, who betrayedso naively his principle of judicial action by saying "Though I fearnot God, neither regard men, yet will I avenge this widow, lest by hercontinual coming she weary me, " must--I cannot believe otherwise--havebeen intended to provoke the hearers' mirth. There is not, of course, any superabundance of such instances, but Christ's reporters were notlikely to be on the look-out for sayings of this type. Yet I find itimpossible to believe that One who touched all the stops of the humanheart, and whose stories are among the most beautiful and vivid thingsever said in the world, can have exercised His unequalled power overhuman nature without allowing His hearers to be charmed by manyhumorous and incisive touches, as well as by more poetical andemotional images. No one has ever swayed the human mind in so unique afashion, without holding in his hand all the strings that move and stirthe faculties of delighted apprehension; and of these faculties humouris one of the foremost. The amazing lightness of Christ's touch uponlife, the way in which His words plumbed the depths of personality, make me feel abundantly sure that there was no dreary sense ofoverwhelming seriousness in His relations with His friends anddisciples. Believing as we do that He was Perfect Man, we surely cannotconceive of one of the sweetest and most enlivening of all humanqualities as being foreign to His character. 

Otherwise there is little trace of humour in the New Testament. St. Paul, one would think, would have had little sympathy with humorists. He was too fiery, too militant, too much preoccupied with the workingout of his ideas, to have the leisure or the inclination to take stockof humanity. Indeed I have sometimes thought that if he had had sometouch of the quality, he might have given a different bias to thefaith; his application of the method which he had inherited from theJewish school of theology, coupled with his own fervid rhetoric, wasthe first step, I have often thought, in disengaging the Christiandevelopment from the simplicity and emotion of the first uncloudedmessage, in transferring the faith from the region of pure conduct andsweet tolerance into a province of fierce definition and intellectualinterpretation. 

I think it was Goethe who said that Greek was the sheath into which thedagger of the human mind fitted best; and it is true that one findsamong the Greeks the brightest efflorescence of the human mind. Whoshall account for that extraordinary and fragrant flower, the flower ofGreek culture, so perfect in curve and colour, in proportion and scent, opening so suddenly, in such a strange isolation, so long ago, upon thehuman stock? The Greeks had the wonderful combination of childish zestside by side with mature taste; charis, as they called it--a perfectcharm, an instinctive grace--was the mark of their spirit. And weshould naturally expect to find, in their literature, the samesublimation of humour that we find in their other qualities. Unfortunately the greater number of their comedies are lost. OfMenander we have but a few tiny fragments, as it were, of a delectablevase; but in Aristophanes there is a delicious levity, an incomparableprodigality of laughter-moving absurdities, which has possibly neverbeen equalled. Side by side with that is the tender and charming ironyof Plato, who is even more humorous, if less witty, than Aristophanes. But the Greeks seem to have been alone in their application of humourto literature. In the older world literature tended to be rather aserious, pensive, stately thing, concerned with human destiny andartistic beauty. One searches in vain for humour in the energetic andardent Roman mind. Their very comedies were mostly adaptations from theGreek. I have never myself been able to discern the humour of Terenceor Plautus to any great extent. The humour of the latter is of a brutaland harsh kind; and it has always been a marvel to me that Luther saidthat the two books he would take to be his companions on a desertisland would be Plautus and the Bible. Horace and Martial have acertain deft appreciation of human weakness, but it is of the nature ofsmartness rather than of true humour--the wit of the satirist rather;and then the curtain falls on the older world. When humour next makesits appearance, in France and England pre-eminently, we realise that weare in the presence of a far larger and finer quality; and now we have, so to speak, whole bins full of liquors, of various brands andqualities, from the mirthful absurdities of the English, the pawkygravity of the Scotch, to the dry and sparkling beverage of theAmerican. To give an historical sketch of the growth and development ofmodern Humour would be a task that might well claim the energies ofsome literary man; it seems to me surprising that some Germanphilosopher has not attempted a scientific classification of thesubject. It would perhaps be best done by a man without appreciation ofhumour, because only then could one hope to escape being at the mercyof preferences; it would have to be studied purely as a phenomenon, asymptom of the mind; and nothing but an overwhelming love ofclassification would carry a student past the sense of itsunimportance. But here I would rather attempt not to find a formula ora definition for humour, but to discover what it is, like argon, byeliminating other characteristics, until the evasive quality aloneremains. 

It lies deep in nature. The peevish mouth and the fallen eye of theplaice, the helpless rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape androlling glance of the goldfish, the furious and ineffective mien of thebarndoor fowl, the wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa and thewart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot, --if such things as thesedo not testify to a sense of humour in the Creative Spirit, it is hardto account for the fact that in man a perception is implanted whichshould find such sights pleasurably entertaining from infancy upwards. I suppose the root of the matter is that, insensibly comparing thesefacial attributes with the expression of humanity, one credits theanimals above described with the emotions which they do not necessarilyfeel; yet even so it is hard to analyse, because grotesqueexaggerations of human features, which are perfectly normal andnatural, seem calculated to move the amusement of humanity quiteinstinctively. A child is apt to be alarmed at first by what isgrotesque, and, when once reassured, to find in it a matter of delight. Perhaps the mistake we make is to credit the Creative Spirit with humanemotions; but, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how complexemotions, not connected with any material needs and impulses, can befound existing in organisms, unless the same emotions exist in the mindof their Creator. If the thrush bursts into song on the bare bush atevening, if the child smiles to see the bulging hairy cactus, theremust be, I think, something joyful and smiling at the heart, the inmostcell of nature, loving beauty and laughter; indeed, beauty and mirthmust be the natural signs of health and content. And then there strikein upon the mind two thoughts. Is, perhaps, the basis of humour a kindof selfish security? Does one primarily laugh at all that is odd, grotesque, broken, ill at ease, fantastic, because such things heightenthe sense of one's own health and security? I do not mean that this isthe flower of modern humour; but is it not, perhaps, the root? Is notthe basis of laughter perhaps the purely childish and selfish impulseto delight, not in the sufferings of others, but in the sense which alldistorted things minister to one--that one is temporarily, at least, more blest than they? A child does not laugh for pure happiness--whenit is happiest, it is most grave and solemn; but when the sense of itshealth and soundness is brought home to it poignantly, then it laughsaloud, just as it laughs at the pleasant pain of being tickled, becausethe tiny uneasiness throws into relief its sense of secure well-being. 

And the further thought--a deep and strange one--is this: We see howall mortal things have a certain curve or cycle of life--youth, maturity, age. May not that law of being run deeper still? we think ofnature being ever strong, ever young, ever joyful; but may not the veryshadow of sorrow and suffering in the world be the sign that nature toogrows old and weary? May there have been a dim age, far back beyondhistory or fable or scientific record, when she, too, was young andlight-hearted? The sorrows of the world are at present not like thesorrows of age, but the sorrows of maturity. There is no decrepitude inthe world: its heart is restless, vivid, and hopeful yet; itsmelancholy is as the melancholy of youth--a melancholy deeply tingedwith beauty; it is full of boundless visions and eager dreams; thoughit is thwarted, it believes in its ultimate triumph; and the growth ofhumour in the world may be just the shadow of hard fact falling uponthe generous vision, for that is where humour resides; youth believesglowingly that all things are possible, but maturity sees that to hopeis not to execute, and acquiesces smilingly in the incongruity betweenthe programme and the performance. 

Humour resides in the perception of limitation, in discerning how oftenthe conventional principle is belied by the actual practice. The oldworld was full of a youthful sense of its own importance; it held thatall things were created for man--that the flower was designed to yieldhim colour and fragrance, that the beast of the earth was made to givehim food and sport. This philosophy was summed up in the phrase thatman was the measure of all things; but now we have learnt that man isbut the most elaborate of created organisms, and that just as there wasa time when man did not exist, so there may be a time to come whenbeings infinitely more elaborate may look back to man as we look backto trilobites--those strange creatures, like huge wood-lice, that werein their day the glory and crown of creation. Perhaps our dreams ofsupremacy and finality may be in reality the absurdest things in theworld for their pomposity and pretentiousness. Who can say?

But to retrace our steps awhile. It seems that the essence of humour isa certain perception of incongruity. Let us take a single instance. There is a story of a drunken man who was observed to feel his wayseveral times all round the railings of a London square, with theintention apparently of finding some way of getting in. At last he satdown, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears, saying, with deep pathos, "I am shut in!" In a sense it was true: if the restof the world was his prison, and the garden of the square representedliberty, he was undoubtedly incarcerated. Or, again, take the story ofthe Scotchman returning from a convivial occasion, who had jumpedcarefully over the shadows of the lamp-posts, but on coming to theshadow of the church-tower, ruefully took off his boots and stockings, and turned his trousers up, saying, "I'll ha'e to wade. " The reason whythe stories of drunken persons are often so indescribably humorous, though, no doubt, highly deplorable in a Christian country, is that thevictim loses all sense of probability and proportion, and lamentsunduly over an altogether imaginary difficulty. The appreciation ofsuch situations is in reality the same as the common and barbarous formof humour, of which we have already spoken, which consists in beingamused at the disasters which befall others. The stage that is butslightly removed from the lowest stage is the theory of practicaljokes, the humour of which is the pleasure of observing the actions ofa person in a disagreeable predicament which is not so serious as thevictim supposes. And thus we get to the region illustrated by the twostories I have told, where the humour lies in the observation of one ina predicament that appears to be of a tragic character, when the tragicelement is purely imaginary. And so we pass into the region ofintellectual humour, which may be roughly illustrated by such sayingsas that of George Sand that nothing is such a restorative as rhetoric, or the claim advanced by a patriot that Shakespeare was undoubtedly aScotchman, on the ground that his talents would justify thesupposition. The humour of George Sand's epigram depends upon theperception that rhetoric, which ought to be based upon a profoundconviction, an overwhelming passion, an intense enthusiasm, is oftenlittle more than the abandonment of a personality to a mood ofintoxicating ebullience; while the humour of the Shakespeare story liesin a sense of the way in which a national predilection will overrideall reasonable evidence. 

It will be recognised how much of our humour depends upon our keenperception of the weaknesses and imperfections of other nationalities. A great statesman once said that if a Scotchman applied for a post andwas unsuccessful, his one object became to secure the post for anotherScotchman; while if an Irishman made an unsuccessful application, hisonly aim was to prevent any other Irishman from obtaining the post. That is a humorous way of contrasting the jealous patriotism of theScot with the passionate individualism of the Celt. The curious factorof this species of humour is that we are entirely unable to recognisethe typicality of the caricatures which other nations draw ofourselves. A German fails to recognise the English idea of the Germanas a man who, after a meal of gigantic proportions and incrediblepotations, among the smoke of endless cigars, will discuss theterminology of the absolute, and burst into tears over a verse ofpoetry or a strain of music. Similarly the Englishman cannot divinewhat is meant by the Englishman of the French stage, with his longwhiskers, his stiff pepper-and-salt clothes, walking arm-in-arm with araw-boned wife, short-skirted and long-toothed, with a bevy ofshort-skirted and long-toothed daughters walking behind. 

But if it requires a robust humorist to perceive the absurdity of hisown nation, what intensity of humour is required for a man to see theabsurdity of himself! To acquiesce in appearing ridiculous is theheight of philosophy. We are glad enough to amuse other peopleintentionally, but how many men does one know who do not resent amusingother people unintentionally? Yet if one were a true philanthropist, how delighted we ought to be to afford to others a constant feast ofinnocent and joyful contemplation. 

But the fact which emerges from all these considerations is the factthat we do not give humour its place of due dignity in the moral andemotional scale. The truth is that we in England have fallen into acertain groove of humour of late, the humour of paradox. The formulawhich lies at the base of our present output of humour is the formula, "Whatever is, is wrong. " The method has been over-organised, and theresult is that humour can be manufactured in unlimited quantities. Thetype of such humour is the saying of the humorist that he went aboutthe world with one dread constantly hanging over him--"the dread of notbeing misunderstood. " I would not for a moment deny the quality of suchhumour, but it grows vapid and monotonous. It is painful to observe theclever young man of the present day, instead of aiming at theexpression of things beautiful and emotional, which he is often wellequipped to produce, with all the charm of freshness and indiscretion, turn aside to smart writing of a cynical type, because he cannot bearto be thought immature. He wants to see the effect of his cleverness, and the envious smile of the slower-witted is dearer to him than thesecret kindling of a sympathetic mind. Real humour is a broader and adeeper thing, and it can hardly be attained until a man has had someacquaintance with the larger world; and that very experience, innatures that are emotional rather than patient, often tends toextinguish humour, because of the knowledge that life is really rathertoo sad and serious a business to afford amusement. The man who becomesa humorist is the man who contrives to retain a certain childlike zestand freshness of mind side by side with a large and tender tolerance. This state of mind is not one to be diligently sought after. Thehumorist nascitur non fit. One sees young men of irresponsible levitydrawn into the interest of a cause or a profession, and we say sadly ofthem that they have lost their sense of humour. They are probably bothhappier and more useful for having lost it. The humorist is seldom anapostle or a leader. But one does occasionally find a man of realgenius who adds to a deep and vital seriousness a delightful perceptionof the superficial absurdities of life; who is like a river, at oncestrong and silent beneath, with sunny ripples and bright water-breaksupon the surface. Most men must be content to flow turbid and sullen, turning the mills of life or bearing its barges; others may dash andflicker through existence, like a shallow stream. Perhaps, indeed, itmay be said that to be a real humorist there must be a touch ofhardness somewhere, a bony carapace, because we seldom see one of verystrong and ardent emotions who is a true humorist; and this is, Isuppose, the reason why women, as a rule, are so far less humorous thanmen. We have to pay a price for our good qualities; and though I hadrather be strong, affectionate, loyal, noble-minded, than be the besthumorist in the world, yet if a gift of humour be added to thesegraces, you have a combination that is absolutely irresistible, becauseyou have a perfect sense of proportion that never allows emotion todegenerate into gush, or virtue into rigidity; and thus I say thathumour is a kind of divine and crowning grace in a character, becauseit means an artistic sense of proportion, a true and vital tolerance, apower of infinite forgiveness. 

V

TRAVEL

There are many motives that impel us to travel, to change our sky, asHorace calls it--good motives and bad, selfish and unselfish, noble andignoble. With some people it is pure restlessness; the tedium ofordinary life weighs on them, and travel, they think, will distractthem; people travel for the sake of health, or for business reasons, orto accompany some one else, or because other people travel. And thesemotives are neither good nor bad, they are simply sufficient. Somepeople travel to enlarge their minds, or to write a book; and the worstof travelling for such reasons is that it so often implants in thetraveller, when he returns, a desperate desire to enlarge otherpeople's minds too. Unhappily, it needs an extraordinary gift of vividdescription and a tactful art of selection to make the reflections ofone's travels interesting to other people. It is a great misfortune forbiographers that there are abundance of people who are stirred, partlyby unwonted leisure and partly by awakened interest, to keep a diaryonly when they are abroad. These extracts from diaries of foreigntravel, which generally pour their muddy stream into a biography on thethreshold of the hero's manhood, are things to be resolutely skipped. What one desires in a biography is to see the ordinary texture of aman's life, an account of his working days, his normal hours; and tomost people the normal current of their lives appears so commonplaceand uninteresting that they keep no record of it; while they often keepan elaborate record of their impressions of foreign travel, which aregenerally superficial and picturesque, and remarkably like theimpressions of all other intelligent people. A friend of mine returnedthe other day from an American tour, and told me that he received asevere rebuke, out of the mouth of a babe, which cured him ofexpatiating on his experiences. He lunched with his brother soon afterhis return, and was holding forth with a consciousness of brilliantdescriptive emphasis, when his eldest nephew, aged eight, towards theend of the meal, laid down his spoon and fork, and said piteously tohis mother, "Mummy, I MUST talk; it does make me so tired to hear Unclegoing on like that. " A still more effective rebuke was administered bya clever lady of my acquaintance to a cousin of hers, a young lady whohad just returned from India, and was very full of her experiences. Thecousin had devoted herself during breakfast to giving a livelydescription of social life in India, and was preparing to spend themorning in continuing her lecture, when the elder lady slipped out ofthe room, and returned with some sermon-paper, a blotting-book, and apen. "Maud, " she said, "this is too good to be lost: you must write itall down, every word!" The projected manuscript did not come to verymuch, but the lesson was not thrown away. 

Perhaps, for most people, the best results of travel are that theyreturn with a sense of grateful security to the familiar scene: themonotonous current of life has been enlivened, the old relationshipshave gained a new value, the old gossip is taken up with a comfortablezest; the old rooms are the best, after all; the homely language isbetter than the outlandish tongue; it is a comfort to have done withsqueezing the sponge and cramming the trunk: it is good to be at home. 

But to people of more cultivated and intellectual tastes there is anabundance of good reasons for the pursuit of impressions. It is worth alittle fatigue to see the spring sun lie softly upon the unfamiliarfoliage, to see the delicate tints of the purple-flowered Judas-tree, the bright colours of Southern houses, the old high-shouldered chateaublinking among its wooded parterres; it is pleasant to see mysteriousrites conducted at tabernacled altars, under dark arches, and to smellthe "thick, strong, stupefying incense-smoke"; to see well-knownpictures in their native setting, to hear the warm waves of the canallapping on palace-stairs, with the exquisite moulded cornice overhead. It gives one a strange thrill to stand in places rich with dimassociations, to stand by the tombs of heroes and saints, to see thescenes made familiar by art or history, the homes of famous men. Suchtravel is full of weariness and disappointment. The place one haddesired half a lifetime to behold turns out to be much like otherplaces, devoid of inspiration. A tiresome companion casts dreariness asfrom an inky cloud upon the mind. Do I not remember visiting thePalatine with a friend bursting with archaeological information, wholed us from room to room, and identified all by means of a foldingplan, to find at the conclusion that he had begun at the wrong end, andthat even the central room was not identified correctly, because thenumber of rooms was even, and not odd?

But, for all that, there come blessed unutterable moments, when themood and the scene and the companion are all attuned in a soft harmony. Such moments come back to me as I write. I see the mouldering brickworkof a crumbling tomb all overgrown with grasses and snapdragons, far outin the Campagna; or feel the plunge of the boat through the reed-bedsof the Anapo, as we slid into the silent pool of blue water in theheart of the marsh, where the sand danced at the bottom, and thesprings bubbled up, while a great bittern flew booming away from areedy pool hard by. Such things are worth paying a heavy price for, because they bring a sort of aerial distance into the mind, they touchthe spirit with a hope that the desire for beauty and perfection isnot, after all, wholly unrealisable, but that there is a sort oftreasure to be found even upon earth, if one diligently goes in searchof it. 

Of one thing, however, I am quite certain, and that is that travelshould not be a feverish garnering of impressions, but a delicious andleisurely plunge into a different atmosphere. It is better to visit fewplaces, and to become at home in each, than to race from place toplace, guide-book in hand. A beautiful scene does not yield up itssecrets to the eye of the collector. What one wants is not definiteimpressions but indefinite influences. It is of little use to enter achurch, unless one tries to worship there, because the essence of theplace is worship, and only through worship can the secret of the shrinebe apprehended. It is of little use to survey a landscape, unless onehas an overpowering desire to spend the remainder of one's days there;because it is the life of the place, and not the sight of it, in whichone desires to have a part. Above all, one must not let one's memoriessleep as in a dusty lumber-room of the mind. In a quiet firelit hourone must draw near, and scrutinise them afresh, and ask oneself whatremains. As I write, I open the door of my treasury and look round. What comes up before me? I see an opalescent sky, and the great softblue rollers of a sapphire sea. I am journeying, it seems, in no mortalboat, though it was a commonplace vessel enough at the time, twentyyears ago, and singularly destitute of bodily provision. What is thatover the sea's rim, where the tremulous, shifting, blue line of billowsshimmers and fluctuates? A long, low promontory, and in the centre, over white clustered houses and masts of shipping, rises a white domelike the shrine of some celestial city. That is Cadiz for me. I daresay the picture is all wrong, and I shall be told that Cadiz has atower and is full of factory chimneys; but for me the dome, ghostlywhite, rises as though moulded out of a single pearl, upon the shiftingedges of the haze. Whatever I have seen in my life, that at least isimmortal. 

Or again the scene shifts, and now I stumble to the deck of anotherlittle steamer, very insufficiently habited, in the sharp freshness ofthe dawn of a spring morning. The waves are different here--not thegreat steely league-long rollers of the Atlantic, but the sharp azurewaves, marching in rhythmic order, of the Mediterranean; what is theland, with grassy downs and folded valleys falling to grey cliffs, uponwhich the brisk waves whiten and leap? That is Sicily; and the thoughtof Theocritus, with the shepherd-boy singing light-heartedly upon theheadland a song of sweet days and little eager joys, comes into myheart like wine, and brings a sharp touch of tears into the eyes. Theocritus! How little I thought, as I read the ugly brown volume withits yellow paper, in the dusty schoolroom at Eton ten years before, that it was going to mean that to me, sweetly as even then, in a momenttorn from the noisy tide of schoolboy life, came the pretty echoes ofthe song into a little fanciful and restless mind! But now, as I sawthose deserted limestone crags, that endless sheep-wold, with no signof a habitation, rising and falling far into the distance, with thefresh sea-breeze upon my cheek--there came upon me that tender sorrowfor all the beautiful days that are dead, the days when the shepherdswalked together, exulting in youth and warmth and good-fellowship andsong, to the village festival, and met the wandering minstrel, with hiscoat of skin and his kind, ironical smile, who gave them, after theirhalting lays, a touch of the old true melody from a master's hand. Whatdo all those old and sweet dreams mean for me, the sunlight that breakson the stream of human souls, flowing all together, alike through darkrocks where the water chafes and thunders, and spreading out intotranquil shining reaches, where the herons stand half asleep? What doesthat strange drift of kindred spirits, moving from the unknown to theunknown, mean for me? I only know that it brings into my mind a strangeyearning, and a desire of almost unearthly sweetness for all that isdelicate and beautiful and full of charm, together with a sombre pityfor the falling mist of tears, the hard discipline of the world, thecries of anguish, as life lapses from the steep into the silent tide ofdeath. 

Or, again, I seem once more to sit in the balcony of a house that looksout towards Vesuvius. It is late; the sky is clouded, the air is still;a grateful coolness comes up from acre after acre of gardens climbingthe steep slope; a fluttering breeze, that seems to have lost his wayin the dusk, comes timidly and whimsically past, like Ariel, singing assoft as a far-off falling sea in the great pine overhead, making alittle sudden flutter in the dry leaves of the thick creeper; likeAriel comes that dainty spirit of the air, laden with balmy scents andcool dew. A few lights twinkle in the plain below. Opposite, the skyhas an added blackness, an impenetrability of shade; but what is thestrange red eye of light that hangs between earth and heaven? And, stranger still, what is that phantasmal gleam of a lip of crags high inthe air, and that mysterious, moving, shifting light, like a paleflame, above it? The gloomy spot is a rent in the side of Vesuviuswhere the smouldering heat has burnt through the crust, and where a dayor two before I saw a viscid stream of molten liquor, with the flamesplaying over it, creeping, creeping through the tunnelled ashes; and inthe light above is the lip of Vesuvius itself, with its restlessfurnace at work, casting up a billowy swell of white oily smoke, whilethe glare of the fiery pit lights up the underside of the risingvapours. A ghastly manifestation, that, of sleepless and stern forces, ever at work upon some eternal and bewildering task; and yet sostrangely made am I, that these fierce signal-fires, seen afar, butblend with the scents of the musky alleys for me into a thrill ofunutterable wonder. 

There are hundreds of such pictures stored in my mind, each stampedupon some sensitive particle of the brain, that cannot be obliterated, and each of which the mind can recall at will. And that, too, is a factof surpassing wonder: what is the delicate instrument that registers, with no seeming volition, these amazing pictures, and preserves themthus with so fantastic a care, retouching them, fashioning them anew, detaching from the picture every sordid detail, till each is as alyric, inexpressible, exquisite, too fine for words to touch?

Now it is useless to dictate to others the aims and methods of travel:each must follow his own taste. To myself the acquisition of knowledgeand information is in these matters an entirely negligible thing. To methe one and supreme object is the gathering of a gallery of pictures;and yet that is not a definite object either, for the whimsical andstubborn spirit refuses to be bound by any regulations in the matter. It will garner up with the most poignant care a single vignette, a tinydetail. I see, as I write, the vision of a great golden-grey carpswimming lazily in the clear pool of Arethusa, the carpet ofmesembryanthemum that, for some fancy of its own, chose to involve thewhole of a railway viaduct with its flaunting magenta flowers and itsfleshy leaves. I see the edge of the sea, near Syracuse, rimmed with aline of the intensest yellow, and I hear the voice of a guideexplaining that it was caused by the breaking up of a strandedorange-boat, so that the waves for many hundred yards threw up on thebeach a wrack of fruit; yet the same wilful and perverse mind willstand impenetrably dumb and blind before the noblest and sweetestprospect, and decline to receive any impression at all. What is perhapsthe oddest characteristic of the tricksy spirit is that it oftenchooses moments of intense discomfort and fatigue to master some scene, and take its indelible picture. I suppose that the reason of this isthat the mind makes, at such moments, a vigorous effort to protestagainst the tyranny of the vile body, and to distract itself frominstant cares. 

But another man may travel for archaeological or even statisticalreasons. He may wish, like Ulysses, to study "manners, councils, customs, governments. " He may be preoccupied with questions ofarchitectural style or periods of sculpture. I have a friend who takesup at intervals the study of the pictures of a particular master, andwill take endless trouble and undergo incredible discomfort, in orderto see the vilest daubs, if only he can make his list complete, and saythat he has seen all the reputed works of the master. This instinct is, I believe, nothing but the survival of the childish instinct forcollecting, and though I can reluctantly admire any man who spares notrouble to gain an end, the motive is dark and unintelligible to me. 

There are some travellers, like Dean Stanley, who drift from theappreciation of natural scenery into the pursuit of historicalassociations. The story of Stanley as a boy, when he had his firstsight of the snowy Alps on the horizon, always delights me. He dancedabout saying, "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?" But, in laterdays, Stanley would not go a mile to see a view, while he would travelall night to see a few stones of a ruin, jutting out of a farmyardwall, if only there was some human and historical tradition connectedwith the place. I do not myself understand that. I should not wish tosee Etna merely because Empedocles is supposed to have jumped down thecrater, nor the site of Jericho because the walls fell down at thetrumpets of the host. The only interest to me in an historical scene isthat it should be in such a condition as that one can to a certainextent reconstruct the original drama, and be sure that one's eyes restupon very much the same scene as the actors saw. The reason whySyracuse moved me by its acquired beauty, and not for its historicalassociations, was because I felt convinced that Thucydides, who givesso picturesque a description of the sea-fight, can never have set eyeson the place, and must have embroidered his account from scantyhearsay. But, on the other hand, there are few things in the world moreprofoundly moving than to see a place where great thoughts have beenconceived and great books written, when one is able to feel that thescene is hardly changed. The other day, as I passed before the sacredgate of Rydal Mount, I took my hat off my head with a sense ofindescribable reverence. My companion asked me laughingly why I did so. "Why?" I said. "From natural piety, of course! I know every detail hereas well as if I had lived here, and I have walked in thought a hundredtimes with the poet, to and fro in the laurelled walks of the garden, up the green shoulder of Nab Scar, and sat in the little parlour, whilethe fire leapt on the hearth, and heard him 'booing' his verses, to becopied by some friendly hand. "

I thrill to see the stately rooms of Abbotsford, with all their shamfeudal decorations, the little staircase by which Scott stole away tohis solitary work, the folded clothes, the shapeless hat, the uglyshoes, laid away in the glass case; the plantations where he walkedwith his shrewd bailiff, the place where he stopped so often on theshoulder of the slope, to look at the Eildon Hills, the rooms where hesat, a broken and bereaved man, yet with so gallant a spirit, towrestle with sorrow and adversity. I wept, I am not ashamed to say, atAbbotsford, at the sight of the stately Tweed rolling his silvery floodpast lawns and shrubberies, to think of that kindly, brave, andhonourable heart, and his passionate love of all the goodly andcheerful joys of life and earth. 

Or, again, it was a solemn day for me to pass from the humble tenementwhere Coleridge lived, at Nether Stowey, before the cloud of sad habithad darkened his horizon, and turned him away from the wells of poetryinto the deserts of metaphysical speculation, to find, if he could, some medicine for his tortured spirit. I walked with a holy awe alongthe leafy lanes to Alfoxden, where the beautiful house nestles in thegreen combe among its oaks, thinking how here, and here, Wordsworth andColeridge had walked together in the glad days of youth, and planned, in obscurity and secluded joy, the fresh and lovely lyrics of theirmatin-prime. 

I turn, I confess, more eagerly to scenes like these than to scenes ofhistorical and political tradition, because there hangs for me a gloryabout the scene of the conception and genesis of beautiful imaginativework that is unlike any glory that the earth holds. The natural joy ofthe youthful spirit receiving the impact of mighty thoughts, ofpoignant impressions, has for me a liberty and a grace which nohistorical or political associations could ever possess. I could notglow to see the room in which a statesman worked out the details of aBill for the extension of the franchise, or a modification of theduties upon imports and exports, though I respect the growing powers ofdemocracy and the extinction of privilege and monopoly; but thesemeasures are dimmed and tainted with intrigue and manoeuvre andstatecraft. I do not deny their importance, their worth, theirnobleness. But not by committees and legislation does humanity triumph. In the vanguard go the blessed adventurous spirits that quicken themoral temperature, and uplift the banner of simplicity and sincerity. The host marches heavily behind, and the commissariat rolls grumblingin the rear of all; and though my place may be with the work-a-dayherd, I will send my fancy afar among the leafy valleys and the far-offhills of hope. 

But I would not here quarrel with the taste of any man. If a mortalchooses to travel in search of comfortable rooms, new cookery andwines, the livelier gossip of unknown people, in heaven's name let himdo so. If another wishes to study economic conditions, standards oflife, rates of wages, he has my gracious leave for his pilgrimage. Ifanother desires to amass historical and archaeological facts, measurements of hypaethral temples, modes of burial, folk-lore, fortification, God forbid that I should throw cold water on the quest. But the only traveller whom I recognise as a kindred spirit is the manwho goes in search of impressions and effects, of tone and atmosphere, of rare and curious beauty, of uplifting association. Nothing that hasever moved the interest, or the anxiety, or the care, or the wonder, ofhuman beings can ever wholly lose its charm. I have felt my skinprickle and creep at the sight of that amazing thing in the Dublinmuseum, a section dug bodily out of a claypit, and showing therough-hewn stones of a cist, deep in the earth, the gravel over it andaround it, the roots of the withered grass forming a crust many feetabove, and, inside the cist, the rude urn, reversed over a heap ofcharred ashes; it was not the curiosity of the sight that moved me, butthe thought of the old dark life revealed, the dim and savage world, that was yet shot through and pierced, even as now, with sorrow fordeath, and care for the beloved ashes of a friend and chieftain. Such asight sets a viewless network of emotion, which seems to interlace farback into the ages, all pulsating and stirring. One sees in a flashthat humanity lived, carelessly and brutally perhaps, as we too live, and were confronted, as we are confronted, with the horror of the gap, the intolerable mystery of life lapsing into the dark. Ah, therelentless record, the impenetrable mystery! I care very little, Ifear, for the historical development of funereal rites, and hardly morefor the light that such things throw on the evolution of society. Ileave that gratefully enough to the philosophers. What I care for isthe touch of nature that shows me my ancient brethren of the dimpast--who would have mocked and ridiculed me, I doubt not, if I hadfallen into their hands, and killed me as carelessly as one throwsaside the rind of a squeezed fruit--yet I am one of them, and perhapseven something of their blood flows in my veins yet. 

As I grow older, I tend to travel less and less, and I do not care if Inever cross the Channel again. Is there a right and a wrong in thematter, an advisability or an inadvisability, an expediency or aninexpediency? I do not think so. Travelling is a pleasure, if it isanything, and a pleasure pursued from a sense of duty is a very fatuousthing. I have no good reason to give, only an accumulation of smallreasons. Dr. Johnson once said that any number of insufficient reasonsdid not make a sufficient one, just as a number of rabbits did not makea horse. A lively but misleading illustration: he might as well havesaid that any number of sovereigns did not make a cheque for a hundredpounds. I suppose that I do not like the trouble, to start with; andthen I do not like being adrift from my own beloved country. Then Icannot converse in any foreign language, and half the pleasure oftravelling comes from being able to lay oneself alongside of a newpoint of view. Then, too, I realise, as I grow older, how little I havereally seen of my own incomparably beautiful and delightful land, sothat, like the hero of Newman's hymn, "I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. "

And, lastly, I have a reason which will perhaps seem a far-fetched one. Travel is essentially a distraction, and I do not want to be distractedany more. One of the mistakes that people make, in these Westernlatitudes, is to be possessed by an inordinate desire to drown thought. The aim of many men whom I know seems to me to be occupied in someabsolutely definite way, so that they may be as far as possible unawareof their own existence. Anything to avoid reflection! A normalEnglishman does not care very much what the work and value of hisoccupation is, as long as he is occupied; and I am not at all sure thatwe came into the world to be occupied. Christ, in the Gospel story, rebuked the busy Martha for her bustling anxieties, her elaborateattentions to her guests, and praised the leisurely Mary for desiringto sit and hear Him talk. Socrates spent his life in conversation. I donot say that contemplation is a duty, but I cannot help thinking thatwe are not forbidden to scrutinise life, to wonder what it is allabout, to study its problems, to apprehend its beauty and significance. We admire a man who goes on making money long after he has made farmore than he needs; we think a life honourably spent in editing Greekbooks. Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues quotes the opinion of aphilosopher to the effect that when a man has made enough to live upon, he should begin to practise virtue. "I think he should begin evenearlier, " says the interlocutor; and I am wholly in agreement with him. Travel is one of the expedients to which busy men resort, in order thatthey may forget their existence. I do not venture to think this exactlyculpable, but I feel sure that it is a pity that people do not do lessand think more. If a man asks what good comes from thinking, I can onlyretort by asking what good comes from the multiplication of unnecessaryactivity. I am quite as much at a loss as any one else to say what isthe object of life, but I do not feel any doubt that we are not sentinto the world to be in a fuss. Like the lobster in The Water-Babies, Icry, "Let me alone; I want to think!" because I believe that thatoccupation is at least as profitable as many others. 

And then, too, without travelling more than a few miles from my door, Ican see things fully as enchanting as I can see by ranging Europe. Iwent to-day along a well-known road; just where the descent begins tofall into a quiet valley, there stands a windmill--not one of the uglyblack circular towers that one sometimes sees, but one of the old crazyboarded sort, standing on a kind of stalk; out of the little loopholesof the mill the flour had dusted itself prettily over theweather-boarding. From a mysterious hatch half-way up leaned themiller, drawing up a sack of grain with a little pulley. There isnothing so enchanting as to see a man leaning out of a dark doorwayhigh up in the air. He drew the sack in, he closed the panel. The sailswhirled, flapping and creaking; and I loved to think of him in thedusty gloom, with the gear grumbling among the rafters, tipping thegolden grain into its funnel, while the rattling hopper below pouredout its soft stream of flour. Beyond the mill, the ground sank to avalley; the roofs clustered round a great church tower, the belfrywindows blinking solemnly. Hard by the ancient Hall peeped out from itsavenue of elms. That was a picture as sweet as anything I have everseen abroad, as perfect a piece of art as could be framed, and moreperfect than anything that could be painted, because it was a piece outof the old kindly, quiet life of the world. One ought to learn, as theyears flow on, to love such scenes as that, and not to need to have theblood and the brain stirred by romantic prospects, peaked hills, well-furnished galleries, magnificent buildings: mutare animum, that isthe secret, to grow more hopeful, more alive to delicate beauties, moretender, less exacting. Nothing, it is true, can give us peace; but weget nearer it by loving the familiar scene, the old homestead, the tinyvalley, the wayside copse, than we do by racing over Europe on thetrack of Giorgione, or over Asia in pursuit of local colour. After all, everything has its appointed time. It is good to range in youth, to rubelbows with humanity, and then, as the days go on, to take stock, toremember, to wonder, "To be content with little, to serve beauty well. "

VI

SPECIALISM

It is a very curious thing to reflect how often an old platitude oraxiom retains its vitality, long after the conditions which gave itbirth have altered, and it no longer represents a truth. It would notmatter if such platitudes only lived on dustily in vapid andill-furnished minds, like the vases of milky-green opaque glassdecorated with golden stars, that were the joy of Early Victorianchimney-pieces, and now hold spills in the second-best spare bedroom. But like the psalmist's enemies, platitudes live and are mighty. Theyremain, and, alas! they have the force of arguments in the minds ofsturdy unreflective men, who describe themselves as plain, straightforward people, and whose opinions carry weight in a communitywhose feelings are swayed by the statements of successful men ratherthan by the conclusions of reasonable men. 

One of these pernicious platitudes is the statement that every oneought to know something about everything and everything aboutsomething. It has a speciously epigrammatic air about it, dazzlingenough to persuade the common-sense person that it is an intellectualjudgment. 

As a matter of fact, under present conditions, it represents animpossible and even undesirable ideal. A man who tried to knowsomething about everything would end in knowing very little aboutanything; and the most exhaustive programme that could be laid down forthe most erudite of savants nowadays would be that he should knowanything about anything, while the most resolute of specialists must becontent with knowing something about something. 

A well-informed friend told me, the other day, the name and date of aman who, he said, could be described as the last person who knewpractically everything at his date that was worth knowing. I haveforgotten both the name and the date and the friend who told me, but Ibelieve that the learned man in question was a cardinal in thesixteenth century. At the present time, the problem of the accumulationof knowledge and the multiplication of books is a very serious oneindeed. It is, however, morbid to allow it to trouble the mind. Likeall insoluble problems, it will settle itself in a way so obvious thatthe people who solve it will wonder that any one could ever havedoubted what the solution would be, just as the problem of thedepletion of the world's stock of coal will no doubt be solved in someperfectly simple fashion. 

The dictum in question is generally quoted as an educational formula infavour of giving every one what is called a sound general education. And it is probably one of the contributory causes which account for thepresent chaos of curricula. All subjects are held to be so important, and each subject is thought by its professors to be so peculiarlyadapted for educational stimulus, that a resolute selection ofsubjects, which is the only remedy, is not attempted; and accordinglythe victim of educational theories is in the predicament of the mandescribed by Dr. Johnson who could not make up his mind which leg ofhis breeches he would put his foot into first. Meanwhile, said theDoctor, with a directness of speech which requires to be palliated, theprocess of investiture is suspended. 

But the practical result of the dilemma is the rise of specialism. Thesavant is dead and the specialist rules. It is interesting to try totrace the effect of this revolution upon our national culture. 

Now, I have no desire whatever to take up the cudgels against thespecialists: they are a harmless and necessary race, so long as theyare aware of their limitations. But the tyranny of an oligarchy is theworst kind of tyranny, because it means the triumph of an average overindividuals, whereas the worst that can be said of a despotism is thatit is the triumph of an individual over an average. The tyranny of thespecialistic oligarchy is making itself felt to-day, and I should liketo fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, whose boast it is todetest tyranny in all its forms, whether it is the tyranny of anenlightened despot, or the tyranny of a virtuous oligarchy, or thetyranny of an intelligent democracy. 

The first evil which results from the rule of the specialist is thedestruction of the AMATEUR. So real a fact is the tyranny of thespecialist that the very word "amateur, " which means a leisurely loverof fine things, is beginning to be distorted into meaning aninefficient performer. As an instance of its correct and idiomatic use, I often think of the delightful landlord whom Stevenson encounteredsomewhere, and upon whom he pressed some Burgundy which he had withhim. The generous host courteously refused a second glass, saying, "Yousee I am an amateur of these things, and I am capable of leaving younot sufficient. " Now, I shall concern myself here principally withliterature, because, in England at all events, literature plays thelargest part in general culture. It may be said that we owe some of thebest literature we have to amateurs. To contrast a few names, taken atrandom, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Dr. Johnson, De Quincey, Tennyson, and Carlyle were professionals, it is true; but, on the other hand, Milton, Gray, Boswell, Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Shelley, Browning, and Ruskin were amateurs. It is not a question of how much a man writesor publishes, it is a question of the spirit in which a man writes. Walter Scott became a professional in the last years of his life, andfor the noblest of reasons; but he also became a bad writer. A goodpair to contrast are Southey and Coleridge. They began as amateurs. Southey became a professional writer, and his sun set in the mists ofvaluable information. Coleridge, as an amateur, enriched the languagewith a few priceless poems, and then got involved in the morass ofdialectical metaphysics. The point is whether a man writes simplybecause he cannot help it, or whether he writes to make an income. Thelatter motive does not by any means prevent his doing first-rateartistic work--indeed, there are certain persons who seem to haverequired the stimulus of necessity to make them break through aninitial indolence of nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray forhaving times of the year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal tothe autumnal equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if heset himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly isnot to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a finersight for a moralist to see a man performing an appointed task heavilyand faithfully, with grim tenacity, than it is to see an artist in afrenzy of delight dashing down an overpowering impression of beauty;but what has always hampered the British appreciation of literature isthat we cannot disentangle the moral element from it: we are interestedin morals, not in art, and we require a dash of optimistic piety in allwriting that we propose to enjoy. 

The real question is whether, if a man sets himself doggedly to work, the appetite comes with eating, and whether the caged bird begins toflutter its wings and to send out the song that it learnt in the greenheart of the wood. When Byron said that easy writing made damned hardreading, he meant that careless conception and hasty workmanship tendto blur the pattern and the colour of work. The fault of the amateur isthat he can make the coat, but he cannot be bothered to make it fit. But it is not by any means true that hard writing makes easy reading. The spirit of the amateur is the spirit of the lover, who trembles atthe thought that the delicate creature he loves may learn to love himin return, if he can but praise her worthily. The professional spiritis the spirit in which a man carefully and courteously woos an elderlyspinster for the sake of her comfortable fortune. The amateur has anirresponsible joy in his work; he is like the golfer who dreams ofmighty drives, and practises "putting" on his back lawn: theprofessional writer gives his solid hours to his work in aconscientious spirit, and is glad in hours of freedom to put thetiresome business away. Yet neither the amateur nor the professionalcan hope to capture the spirit of art by joy or faithfulness. It is akind of divine felicity, when all is said and done, the kindly gift ofGod. 

Now into this free wild world of art and literature and music comes thespecialist and pegs out his claim, fencing out the amateur, who isessentially a rambler, from a hundred eligible situations. Inliterature this is particularly the case: the amateur is told by thehistorian that he must not intrude upon history; that history is ascience, and not a province of literature; that the time has not cometo draw any conclusions or to summarise any tendencies; thatpicturesque narrative is an offence against the spirit of Truth; thatno one is as black or as white as he is painted; and that to triflewith history is to commit a sin compounded of the sin of Ananias andSimon Magus. The amateur runs off, his hands over his ears, andhenceforth hardly dares even to read history, to say nothing of writingit. Perhaps I draw too harsh a picture, but the truth is that I did, asa very young man, with no training except that provided by a sketchyknowledge of the classics, once attempt to write an historicalbiography. I shudder to think of my method and equipment; I skipped thedull parts, I left all tiresome documents unread. It was a sad farragoof enthusiasm and levity and heady writing. But Jove's thunder rolledand the bolt fell. A just man, whom I have never quite forgiven, totell the truth, told me with unnecessary rigour and acrimony that I hadmade a pitiable exhibition of myself. But I have thanked God eversince, for I turned to literature pure and simple. 

Then, too, it is the same with art-criticism; here the amateur again, who, poor fool, is on the look-out for what is beautiful, is told thathe must not meddle with art unless he does it seriously, which meansthat he must devote himself mainly to the study of inferiormasterpieces, and schools, and tendencies. In literature it is thesame; he must not devote himself to reading and loving great books, hemust disentangle influences; he must discern the historical importanceof writers, worthless in themselves, who form important links. Intheology and in philosophy it is much the same: he must not read theBible and say what he feels about it; he must unravel Rabbinical andTalmudic tendencies; he must acquaint himself with the hereticalleanings of a certain era, and the shadow cast upon the page byapocryphal tradition. In philosophy he is still worse off, because hemust plumb the depths of metaphysical jargon and master the criticismof methods. 

Now, this is in a degree both right and necessary, because the blindmust not attempt to lead the blind; but it is treating the whole thingin too strictly scientific a spirit for all that. The misery of it isthat the work of the specialist in all these regions tends to set ahedge about the law; it tends to accumulate and perpetuate a vastamount of inferior work. The result of it is, in literature, forinstance, that an immense amount of second-rate and third-rate books goon being reprinted; and instead of the principle of selection beingapplied to great authors, and their inferior writings being allowed tolapse into oblivion, they go on being re-issued, not because they haveany direct value for the human spirit, but because they have ascientific importance from the point of view of development. Yet forthe ordinary human being it is far more important that he should readgreat masterpieces in a spirit of lively and enthusiastic sympathy thanthat he should wade into them through a mass of archaeological andphilological detail. As a boy I used to have to prepare, on occasions, a play of Shakespeare for a holiday task. I have regarded certain playswith a kind of horror ever since, because one ended by learning up theintroduction, which concerned itself with the origin of the play, andthe notes which illustrated the meaning of such words as "kerns andgallowglasses, " and left the action and the poetry and the emotion ofthe play to take care of themselves. This was due partly to theblighting influence of examination-papers set by men of sterile, conscientious brains, but partly to the terrible value set by Britishminds upon correct information. The truth really is that if one beginsby caring for a work of art, one also cares to understand the mediumthrough which it is conveyed; but if one begins by studying the mediumfirst, one is apt to end by loathing the masterpiece, because of thedusty apparatus that it seems liable to collect about itself. 

The result of the influence of the specialist upon literature is thatthe amateur, hustled from any region where the historical andscientific method can be applied, turns his attention to the field ofpure imagination, where he cannot be interfered with. And this, Ibelieve, is one of the reasons why belles-lettres in the more precisesense tend to be deserted in favour of fiction. Sympathetic andimaginative criticism is so apt to be stamped upon by the erudite, whocry out so lamentably over errors and minute slips, that the novelseems to be the only safe vantage-ground in which the amateur maydisport himself. 

But if the specialist is to the amateur what the hawk is to the dove, let us go further, and in a spirit of love, like Mr. Chadband, inquirewhat is the effect of specialism on the mind of the specialist. I havehad the opportunity of meeting many specialists, and I sayunhesitatingly that the effect largely depends upon the naturaltemperament of the individual. As a general rule, the great specialistis a wise, kindly, humble, delightful man. He perceives that though hehas spent his whole life upon a subject or a fraction of a subject, heknows hardly anything about it compared to what there is to know. Thetrack of knowledge glimmers far ahead of him, rising and falling like aroad over solitary downs. He knows that it will not be given to him toadvance very far upon the path, and he half envies those who shall comeafter, to whom many things that are dark mysteries to himself will beclear and plain. But he sees, too, how the dim avenues of knowledgereach out in every direction, interlacing and combining, and when hecontrasts the tiny powers of the most subtle brain with all the widerange of law--for the knowledge which is to be, not invented, butsimply discovered, is all assuredly there, secret and complex as itseems--there is but little room for complacency or pride. Indeed, Ithink that a great savant, as a rule, feels that instead of beingseparated by his store of knowledge, as by a wide space that he hascrossed, from smaller minds, he is brought closer to the ignorant bythe presence of the vast unknown. Instead of feeling that he has soaredlike a rocket away from the ground, he thinks of himself rather as aflower might think whose head was an inch or two higher than a greatcompany of similar flowers; he has perhaps a wider view; he sees thebounding hedgerow, the distant line of hills, whereas the humblerflower sees little but a forest of stems and blooms, with the lightfalling dimly between. And a great savant, too, is far more ready tocredit other people with a wider knowledge than they possess. It is thelesser kind of savant, the man of one book, of one province, of oneperiod, who is inclined to think that he is differentiated from thecrowd. The great man is far too much preoccupied with real progress towaste time and energy in showing up the mistakes of others. It is thelesser kind of savant, jealous of his own reputation, anxious to showhis superiority, who loves to censure and deride the feebler brother. If one ever sees a relentless and pitiless review of a book--anexposure, as it is called, by one specialist of another's work--one maybe fairly certain that the critic is a minute kind of person. Again, the great specialist is never anxious to obtrude his subject; he israther anxious to hear what is going on in other regions of mentalactivity, regions which he would like to explore but cannot. It is thelesser light that desires to dazzle and bewilder his company, totyrannise, to show off. It is the most difficult thing to get a greatsavant to talk about his subject, though, if he is kind and patient, will answer unintelligent questions, and help a feeble mind along, itis one of the most delightful things in the world. I seized theopportunity some little while ago, on finding myself sitting next to agreat physicist, of asking him a series of fumbling questions on thesubject of modern theories of matter; for an hour I stumbled like achild, supported by a strong hand, in a dim and unfamiliar world, amongthe mysterious essences of things. I should like to try to reproduce ithere, but I have no doubt I should reproduce it all wrong. Still, itwas deeply inspiring to look out into chaos, to hear the rush andmotion of atoms, moving in vast vortices, to learn that inside thehardest and most impenetrable of substances there was probably afeverish intensity of inner motion. I do not know that I acquired anyprecise knowledge, but I drank deep draughts of wonder and awe. Thegreat man, with his amused and weary smile, was infinitely gentle, andleft me, I will say, far more conscious of the beauty and the holinessof knowledge. I said something to him about the sense of power thatsuch knowledge must give. "Ah!" he said, "much of what I have told youis not proved, it is only suspected. We are very much in the dark aboutthese things yet. Probably if a physicist of a hundred years hencecould overhear me, he would be amazed to think that a sensible mancould make such puerile statements. Power--no, it is not that! Itrather makes one realise one's feebleness in being so uncertain aboutthings that are absolutely certain and precise in themselves, if wecould but see the truth. It is much more like the apostle who said, 'Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief. ' The thing one wonders at isthe courage of the men who dare to think they KNOW. "

In one region I own that I dread and dislike the tyranny of thespecialist, and that is the region of metaphysical and religiousspeculation. People who indulge themselves in this form of speculationare apt to be told by theologians and metaphysicians that they ought toacquaint themselves with the trend of theological and metaphysicalcriticism. It seems to me like telling people that they must not ascendmountains unless they are accompanied by guides, and have studied thehistory of previous ascents. "Yes, " the professional says, "that isjust what I mean; it is mere foolhardiness to attempt these arduousplaces unless you know exactly what you are about. "

To that I reply that no one is bound to go up hills, but that every onewho reflects at all is confronted by religious and philosophicalproblems. We all have to live, and we are all more or less experts inlife. When one considers the infinite importance to every human spiritof these problems, and when one further considers how very littletheologians and philosophers have ever effected in the direction ofenlightening us as to the object of life, the problem of pain and evil, the preservation of identity after death, the question of necessity andfree-will, surely, to attempt to silence people on these mattersbecause they have not had a technical training is nothing more than anattempt wilfully to suppress evidence on these points? The only way inwhich it may be possible to arrive at the solution of these things isto know how they appeal to and affect normal minds. I would rather hearthe experience of a life-long sufferer on the problem of pain, or of afaithful lover on the mystery of love, or of a poet on the influence ofnatural beauty, or of an unselfish and humble saint on the question offaith in the unseen, than the evidence of the most subtle theologian ormetaphysician in the world. Many of us, if we are specialists innothing else, are specialists in life; we have arrived at a point ofview; some particular aspect of things has come home to us with aspecial force; and what really enriches the hope and faith of the worldis the experience of candid and sincere persons. The specialist hasoften had no time or opportunity to observe life; all he has observedis the thought of other secluded persons, persons whose view has beenboth narrow and conventional, because they have not had the opportunityof correcting their traditional preconceptions by life itself. 

I call, with all the earnestness that I can muster, upon allintelligent, observant, speculative people, who have felt the problemsof life weigh heavily upon them, not to be dismayed by the disapprovalof technical students, but to come forward and tell us what conclusionsthey have formed. The work of the trained specialist is essentially, inreligion and philosophy, a negative work. He can show us how erroneousbeliefs, which coloured the minds of men at certain ages and eras, grewup. He can show us what can be disregarded, as being only theconventional belief of the time; he can indicate, for instance, how afalse conception of supernatural interference with natural law grew upin an age when, for want of trained knowledge, facts seemed fortuitousoccurrences which were really conditioned by natural laws. The poet andthe idealist make and cast abroad the great vital ideas, which thespecialist picks up and analyses. But we must not stop at analysis; wewant positive progress as well. We want people to tell us, candidly andsimply, how their own soul grew, how it cast off conventional beliefs, how it justified itself in being hopeful or the reverse. There neverwas a time when more freedom of thought and expression was conceded tothe individual. A man is no longer socially banned for being heretical, schismatic, or liberal-minded. I want people to say frankly what realpart spiritual agencies or religious ideas have played in their lives, whether such agencies and ideas have modified their conduct, or havebeen modified by their inclinations and habits. I long to know athousand things about my fellow-men--how they bear pain, how theyconfront the prospect of death, the hopes by which they live, the fearsthat overshadow them, the stuff of their lives, the influence of theiremotions. It has long been thought, and it is still thought by manynarrow precisians, indelicate and egotistical to do this. And theresult is that we can find in books all the things that do not matter, while the thoughts that are of deep and vital interest are withheld. 

Such books as Montaigne's Essays, Rousseau's Confessions, Mrs. Carlyle's Letters, Mrs. Oliphant's Memoirs, the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon, to name but a few books that come into my mind, are the sort ofbooks that I crave for, because they are books in which one sees rightinto the heart and soul of another. Men can confess to a book what theycannot confess to a friend. Why should it be necessary to veil thisessence of humanity in the dreary melodrama, the trite incident of anovel or a play? Things in life do not happen as they happen in novelsor plays. Oliver Twist, in real life, does not get accidentally adoptedby his grandfather's oldest friend, and commit his sole burglary in thehouse of his aunt. We do not want life to be transplanted into trimgarden-plots; we want to see it at home, as it grows in all its nativewildness, on the one hand; and to know the idea, the theory, theprinciple that underlie it on the other. How few of us there are whoMAKE our lives into anything! We accept our limitations, we drift withthem, while we indignantly assert the freedom of the will. The bestsermon in the world is to hear of one who has struggled with life, bentor trained it to his will, plucked or rejected its fruit, but all uponsome principle. It matters little what we do; it matters enormously howwe do it. Considering how much has been said, and sung, and written, and recorded, and prated, and imagined, it is strange to think howlittle is ever told us directly about life; we see it in glimpses andflashes, through half-open doors, or as one sees it from a traingliding into a great town, and looks into back windows and yardssheltered from the street. We philosophise, most of us, about anythingbut life; and one of the reasons why published sermons have such vastsales is because, however clumsily and conventionally, it is with lifethat they try to deal. 

This kind of specialising is not recognised as a technical form of itat all, and yet how far nearer and closer and more urgent it is for usthan any other kind. I have a hope that we are at the beginning of anera of plain-speaking in these matters. Too often, with the literarystandard of decorum which prevails, such self-revelations are brushedaside as morbid, introspective, egotistical. They are no more so thanany other kind of investigation, for all investigation is conditionedby the personality of the investigator. All that is needed is that anobserver of life should be perfectly candid and sincere, that he shouldnot speak in a spirit of vanity or self-glorification, that he shouldtry to disentangle what are the real motives that make him act orrefrain from acting. 

As an instance of what I mean by confession of the frankest order, dealing in this case not only with literature but also with morality, let me take the sorrowful words which Ruskin wrote in his Praeterita, as a wearied and saddened man, when there was no longer any need forhim to pretend anything, or to involve any of his own thoughts orbeliefs in any sort of disguise. He took up Shakespeare at Macugnaga, in 1840, and he asks why the loveliest of Shakespeare's plays should be"all mixed and encumbered with languid and common work--to one's besthope spurious certainly, so far as original, idle and disgraceful--andall so inextricably and mysteriously that the writer himself is notonly unknowable, but inconceivable; and his wisdom so useless, that atthis time of being and speaking, among active and purposefulEnglishmen, I know not one who shows a trace of ever having felt apassion of Shakespeare's, or learnt a lesson from him. "

That is of course the sad cry of one who is interested in lifeprimarily, and in art only so far as it can minister to life. It may bestrained and exaggerated, but how far more vital a saying than toexpand in voluble and vapid enthusiasm over the insight and noblenessof Shakespeare, if one has not really felt one's life modified by thatmysterious mind!

Of course such self-revelation as I speak of will necessarily fall intothe hands of unquiet, dissatisfied, melancholy people. If life is acommon-place and pleasant sort of business, there is nothing particularto say or to think about it. But for all those--and they are many--whofeel that life misses, by some blind, inevitable movement, being thegracious and beautiful thing it seems framed to be, how can such asthese hold their peace? And how, except by facing it all, and lookingpatiently and bravely at it, can we find a remedy for its soresicknesses? That method has been used, and used with success in everyother kind of investigation, and we must investigate life too, even ifit turns out to be all a kind of Mendelism, moved and swayed byabsolutely fixed laws, which take no account of what we sorrowfullydesire. 

Let us, then, gather up our threads a little. Let us first confront thefact that, under present conditions, in the face of the mass of recordsand books and accumulated traditions, arts and sciences must makeprogress little by little, line by line, in skilled technical hands. Fine achievement in every region becomes more difficult every day, because there is so much that is finished and perfected behind us; andif the conditions of our lives call us to some strictly limited path, let us advance wisely and humbly, step by step, without pride orvanity. But let us not forget, in the face of the frigidities ofknowledge, that if they are the mechanism of life, emotion and hope andlove and admiration are the steam. Knowledge is only valuable in so faras it makes the force of life effective and vigorous. And thus if wehave breasted the strange current of life, or even if we have beenourselves overpowered and swept away by it, let us try, in whateverregion we have the power, to let that experience have some value forourselves and others. If we can say it or write it, so much the better. There are thousands of people moving through the world who are weariedand bewildered, and who are looking out for any message of hope and joythat may give them courage to struggle on; but if we cannot do that, wecan at least live life temperately and cheerfully and sincerely: if wehave bungled, if we have slipped, we can do something to help othersnot to go light-heartedly down the miry path; we can raise them up ifthey have fallen, we can cleanse the stains, or we can at least givethem the comfort of feeling that they are not sadly and insupportablyalone. 

VII

OUR LACK OF GREAT MEN

It is often mournfully reiterated that the present age is not an age ofgreat men, and I have sometimes wondered if it is true. In the firstplace I do not feel sure that an age is the best judge of its owngreatness; a great age is generally more interested in doing the thingswhich afterwards cause it to be considered great, than in wonderingwhether it is great. Perhaps the fact that we are on the look-out forgreat men, and complaining because we cannot find them, is the bestproof of our second-rateness; I do not imagine that the Elizabethanwriters were much concerned with thinking whether they were great ornot; they were much more occupied in having a splendid time, and insaying as eagerly as they could all the delightful thoughts which camecrowding to the utterance, than in pondering whether they were worthyof admiration. In the annals of the Renaissance one gets almost wearyof the records of brilliant persons, like Leo Battista Alberti andLeonardo da Vinci, who were architects, sculptors, painters, musicians, athletes, and writers all in one; who could make crowds weep bytwanging a lute, ride the most vicious horses, take standing jumps overthe heads of tall men, and who were, moreover, so impressionable thatbooks were to them as jewels and flowers, and who "grew faint at thesight of sunsets and stately persons. " Such as these, we may dependupon it, had little time to give to considering their own effect uponposterity. When the sun rules the day, there is no question about hissupremacy; it is when we are concerned with scanning the sky for lesserlights to rule the night that we are wasting time. To go aboutsearching for somebody to inspire one testifies, no doubt, to a certainlack of fire and initiative. But, on the other hand, there have beenmany great men whose greatness their contemporaries did not recognise. We tend at the present time to honour achievements when they have begunto grow a little mouldy; we seldom accord ungrudging admiration to aprophet when he is at his best. Moreover, in an age like the present, when the general average of accomplishment is remarkably high, it ismore difficult to detect greatness. It is easier to see big trees whenthey stand out over a copse than when they are lost in the depths ofthe forest. 

Now there are two modes and methods of being great; one is bylargeness, the other by intensity. A great man can be cast in a big, magnanimous mould, without any very special accomplishments orabilities; it may be very difficult to praise any of his faculties veryhighly, but he is there. Such men are the natural leaders of mankind;they effect what they effect not by any subtlety or ingenuity. They seein a wide, general way what they want, they gather friends andfollowers and helpers round them, and put the right man on at the rightpiece of work. They perform what they perform by a kind of voluminousforce, which carries other personalities away; for lesser natures, as arule, do not like supreme responsibility; they enjoy what is toordinary people the greatest luxury in the world, namely, the beingsympathetically commandeered, and duly valued. Inspiration andleadership are not common gifts, and there are abundance of capablepeople who cannot strike out a novel line of their own, but can doexcellent work if they can be inspired and led. I was once for a shorttime brought into close contact with a man of this kind; it wasimpossible to put down on paper or to explain to those who did not knowhim what his claim to greatness was. I remember being asked by anincredulous outsider where his greatness lay, and I could not name asingle conspicuous quality that my hero possessed. But he dominated hiscircle for all that, and many of them were men of far greaterintellectual force than himself. He had his own way; if he asked one todo a particular thing, one felt proud to be entrusted with it, andamply rewarded by a word of approval. It was possible to take adifferent view from the view which he took of a matter or a situation, but it was impossible to express one's dissent in his presence. A fewhalting, fumbling words of his were more weighty than many a facile andvoluble oration. Personally I often mistrusted his judgment, but Ifollowed him with an eager delight. With such men as these, posterityis often at a loss to know why they impressed their contemporaries, orwhy they continue to be spoken of with reverence and enthusiasm. Thesecret is that it is a kind of moral and magnetic force, and thelamentable part of it is that such men, if they are not enlightened andwise, may do more harm than good, because they tend to stereotype whatought to be changed and renewed. 

That is one way of greatness; a sort of big, blunt force thatoverwhelms and uplifts, like a great sea-roller, yielding at a hundredsmall points, yet crowding onwards in soft volume and ponderous weight. 

Two interesting examples of this impressive and indescribable greatnessseem to have been Arthur Hallam and the late Mr. W. E. Henley. In thecase of Arthur Hallam, the eulogies which his friends pronounced uponhim seem couched in terms of an intemperate extravagance. The fact thatthe most splendid panegyrics upon him were uttered by men of highgenius is not in itself more conclusive than if such panegyrics hadbeen conceived by men of lesser quality, because the greater that a manis the more readily does he perceive and more magniloquentlyacknowledge greatness. Apart from In Memoriam, Tennyson's recordedutterances about Arthur Hallam are expressed in terms of almosthyperbolical laudation. I once was fortunate enough to have theopportunity of asking Mr. Gladstone about Arthur Hallam. Mr. Gladstonehad been his close friend at Eton and his constant companion. His eyeflashed, his voice gathered volume, and with a fine gesture of his handhe said that he could only deliberately affirm that physically, intellectually, and morally, Arthur Hallam approached more nearly to anideal of human perfection than any one whom he had ever seen. And yetthe picture of Hallam at Eton represents a young man of an apparentlysolid and commonplace type, with a fresh colour, and almost whollydestitute of distinction or charm; while his extant fragments of proseand poetry are heavy, verbose, and elaborate, and without any memorablequality. It appears indeed as if he had exercised a sort of hypnoticinfluence upon his contemporaries. Neither does he seem to haveproduced a very gracious impression upon outsiders who happened to meethim. There is a curious anecdote told by some one who met Arthur Hallamtravelling with his father on the Continent only a short time beforehis sudden death. The narrator says that he saw with a certainsatisfaction how mercilessly the young man criticised and exposed hisfather's statements, remembering how merciless the father had oftenbeen in dealing summarily with the arguments and statements of his owncontemporaries. One asks oneself in vain what the magnetic charm of hispresence and temperament can have been. It was undoubtedly there, andyet it seems wholly irrecoverable. The same is true, in a differentregion, with the late Mr. W. E. Henley. His literary performances, withthe exception of some half-a-dozen poetical pieces, have no greatpermanent value. His criticisms were vehement and complacent, butrepresent no great delicacy of analysis nor breadth of view. Histreatment of Stevenson, considering the circumstances of the case, wasungenerous and irritable. Yet those who were brought into close contactwith Henley recognised something magnanimous, noble, and fiery abouthim, which evoked a passionate devotion. I remember shortly before hisdeath reading an appreciation of his work by a faithful admirer, whodescribed him as "another Dr. Johnson, " and speaking of his criticaljudgment, said, "Mr. Henley is pontifical in his wrath; it pleased him, for example, to deny to De Quincey the title to write English prose. "That a criticism so arrogant, so saugrenu, should be re-echoed withsuch devoted commendation is a proof that the writer's independentjudgment was simply swept away by Henley's personality; and in boththese cases one is merely brought face to face with the fact thatthough men can earn the admiration of the world by effectiveperformance, the most spontaneous and enduring gratitude is given toindividuality. 

The other way of greatness is the way of intensity, that focuses allits impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash oflightning. Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supremeand dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is oftensacrificed to one radiant faculty. Their power, in some one singledirection, is absolutely distinct and unquestioned; and these are themen who, if they can gather up and express the forces of some vague andwidespread tendency, some blind and instinctive movement of men'sminds, form as it were the cutting edge of a weapon. They do not supplythe force, but they concentrate it; and it is men of this type who areoften credited with the bringing about of some profound andrevolutionary change, because they summarise and define some huge forcethat is abroad. Not to travel far for instances, such a man wasRousseau. The air of his period was full of sentiments and emotions andideas; he was not himself a man of force; he was a dreamer and a poet;but he had the matchless gift of ardent expression, and he was able tosay both trenchantly and attractively exactly what every one wasvaguely meditating. 

Now let us take some of the chief departments of human effort, some ofthe provinces in which men attain supreme fame, and consider what kindsof greatness we should expect the present day to evoke. In thedepartment of warfare, we have had few opportunities of late todiscover high strategical genius. Our navy has been practicallyunemployed, and the South African war was just the sort of campaign toreveal the deficiencies of an elaborate and not very practical peaceestablishment. Though it solidified a few reputations and pricked thebubble of some few others, it certainly did not reveal any subtleadaptability in our generals. It was Lord North, I think, who, whendiscussing with his Cabinet a list of names of officers suggested forthe conduct of a campaign, said, "I do not know what effect these namesproduce upon you, gentlemen, but I confess they make me tremble. " TheSouth African war can hardly be said to have revealed that we have manygenerals who closely corresponded to Wordsworth's description of theHappy Warrior, but rather induced the tremulousness which Lord Northexperienced. Still, if, in the strategical region, our solitary recentcampaign rather tends to prove a deficiency of men of supreme gifts, itat all events proved a considerable degree of competence and devotion. I could not go so far as a recent writer who regretted the terminationof the Boer War because it interrupted the evolution of tacticalscience, but it is undoubtedly true that the growing aversion to war, the intense dislike to the sacrifice of human life, creates anatmosphere unfavourable to the development of high military genius;because great military reputations in times past have generally beenacquired by men who had no such scruples, but who treated the materialof their armies as pawns to be freely sacrificed to the attainment ofvictory. 

Then there is the region of statesmanship; and here it is abundantlyclear that the social conditions of the day, the democratic currentwhich runs with increasing spirit in political channels, isunfavourable to the development of individual genius. The prize fallsto the sagacious opportunist; the statesman is less and less of anavigator, and more and more of a pilot, in times when popular feelingis conciliated and interpreted rather than inspired and guided. To befar-seeing and daring is a disadvantage; the most approved leader isthe man who can harmonise discordant sections, and steer round obviousand pressing difficulties. Geniality and bonhomie are more valuablequalities than prescience or nobility of aim. The more representativethat government becomes, the more does originality give place tomalleability. The more fluid that the conceptions of a statesman are, the greater that his adaptability is, the more acceptable he becomes. Since Lord Beaconsfield, with all his trenchant mystery, and Mr. Gladstone, with his voluble candour, there have been no figures ofunquestioned supremacy on the political stage. Even so, the effect inboth cases was to a great extent the effect of personality. The furtherthat these two men retire into the past, the more that they are judgedby the written record, the more does the tawdriness of LordBeaconsfield's mind, his absence of sincere convictions appear, as wellas the pedestrianism of Mr. Gladstone's mind, and his lack of criticalperception. I have heard Mr. Gladstone speak, and on one occasion I hadthe task of reporting for a daily paper a private oration on a literarysubject. I was thrilled to the very marrow of my being by the address. The parchment pallor of the orator, his glowing and blazing eyes, hisleonine air, the voice that seemed to have a sort of physical effect onthe nerves, his great sweeping gestures, all held the audiencespellbound. I felt at the time that I had never before realised thesupreme and vital importance of the subject on which he spoke. But whenI tried to reconstruct from the ashes of my industrious notes themental conflagration which I had witnessed, I was at a complete loss tounderstand what had happened. The records were not only dull, theyseemed essentially trivial, and almost overwhelmingly unimportant. Butthe magic had been there. Apart from the substance, the performance hadbeen literally enchanting. I do not honestly believe that Mr. Gladstonewas a man of great intellectual force, or even of very deep emotions. He was a man of extraordinarily vigorous and robust brain, and he was asupreme oratorical artist. 

There is intellect, charm, humour in abundance in the parliamentaryforces; there was probably never a time when there were so many ableand ambitious men to be found in the rank and file of parliamentarians. But that is not enough. There is no supremely impressive and commandingfigure on the stage; greatness seems to be distributed rather thanconcentrated; but probably neither this, nor political conditions, would prevent the generous recognition of supreme genius, if it werethere to recognise. 

In art and literature, I am inclined to believe that we shall look backto the Victorian era as a time of great activity and high performance. The two tendencies here which militate against the appearance of thegreatest figures are, in the first place, the great accumulations ofart and literature, and in the second place the democratic desire toshare those treasures. The accumulation of pictures, music, and booksmakes it undoubtedly very hard for a new artist, in whatever region, togain prestige. There is so much that is undoubtedly great and good fora student of art and literature to make acquaintance with, that we areapt to be content with the old vintages. The result is that there are agood many artists who in a time of less productivity would have madethemselves an enduring reputation, and who now must be content to berecognised only by a few. The difficulty can, I think, only be met bysome principle of selection being more rigidly applied. We shall haveto be content to skim the cream of the old as well as of the new, andto allow the second-rate work of first-rate performers to sink intooblivion. But at the same time there might be a great future before anyartist who could discover a new medium of utterance. It seems atpresent, to take literature, as if every form of human expression hadbeen exploited. We have the lyric, the epic, the satire, the narrative, the letter, the diary, conversation, all embalmed in art. But there isprobably some other medium possible which will become perfectly obviousthe moment it is seized upon and used. To take an instance frompictorial art. At present, colour is only used in a genre manner, toclothe some dramatic motive. But there seems no prima facie reason whycolour should not be used symphonically like music. In music we obtainpleasure from an orderly sequence of vibrations, and there seems noreal reason why the eye should not be charmed with colour-sequencesjust as the ear is charmed with sound-sequences. So in literature itwould seem as though we might get closer still to the expression ofmere personality, by the medium of some sublimated form of reverie, thethought blended and tinged in the subtlest gradations, without theclumsy necessity of sacrificing the sequence of thought to thebarbarous devices of metre and rhyme, or to the still more childishdevices of incident and drama. Flaubert, it will be remembered, lookedforward to a time when a writer would not require a subject at all, butwould express emotion and thought directly rather than pictorially. Toutter the unuttered thought--that is really the problem of literaturein the future; and if a writer could be found to free himself from allstereotyped forms of expression, and to give utterance to the strangetexture of thought and fancy, which differentiates each singlepersonality so distinctly, so integrally, from other personalities, andwhich we cannot communicate to our dearest and nearest, he might enterupon a new province of art. 

But the second tendency which at the present moment dominates writersis, as I have said, the rising democratic interest in the things of themind. This is at present a very inchoate and uncultivated interest: butin days of cheap publication and large audiences it dominates manywriters disastrously. The temptation is a grievous one--to takeadvantage of a market--not to produce what is absolutely the best, butwhat is popular and effective. It is not a wholly ignoble temptation. It is not only the temptation of wealth, though in an age of comfort, which values social respectability so highly, wealth is a greattemptation. But the temptation is rather to gauge success by the powerof appeal. If a man has ideas at all, he is naturally anxious to makethem felt; and if he can do it best by spreading his ideas ratherthinly, by making them attractive to enthusiastic people of inferiorintellectual grip, he feels he is doing a noble work. The truth is thatin literature the democracy desires not ideas but morality. All thebest-known writers of the Victorian age have been optimistic moralists, Browning, Ruskin, Carlyle, Tennyson. They have been admired becausethey concealed their essential conventionality under a slight perfumeof unorthodoxy. They all in reality pandered to the complacency of theage, in a way in which Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats did notpander. The democracy loves to be assured that it is generous, high-minded, and sensible. It is in reality timid, narrow-minded, andPharisaical. It hates independence and originality, and loves tobelieve that it adores both. It loves Mr. Kipling because he assuresthem that vulgarity is not a sin; it loves Mr. Bernard Shaw because hepersuades them that they are cleverer than they imagined. The fact isthat great men, in literature at all events, must be content, at thepresent time, to be unrecognised and unacclaimed. They must be contentto be of the happy company of whom Mr. Swinburne writes:--

 "In the garden of death, where the singers, whose names are deathless, One with another make music unheard of men. "

Then there is the region of Science, and here I am not qualified tospeak, because I know no science, and have not even taught it, as Mr. Arthur Sidgwick said. I do not really know what constitutes greatnessin science. I suppose that the great man of science is the man who to apower of endlessly patient investigation joins a splendid imaginative, or perhaps deductive power, like Newton or Darwin. But we who stand atthe threshold of the scientific era are perhaps too near the light, andtoo much dazzled by the results of scientific discovery to say who isgreat and who is not great. I have met several distinguished men ofscience, and I have thought some of them to be men of obviously highintellectual gifts, and some of them men of inert and secretivetemperaments. But that is only natural, for to be great in otherdepartments generally implies a certain knowledge of the world, or atall events of the thought of the world; whereas the great man ofscience may be moving in regions of thought that may be absolutelyincommunicable to the ordinary person. But I do not suppose thatscientific greatness is a thing which can be measured by the importanceof the practical results of a discovery. I mean that a man may hit uponsome process, or some treatment of disease, which may be ofincalculable benefit to humanity, and yet not be really a great man ofscience, only a fortunate discoverer, and incidentally a greatbenefactor to humanity. The unknown discoverers of things like thescrew or the wheel, persons lost in the mists of antiquity, could not, I suppose, be ranked as great men of science. The great man of scienceis the man who can draw some stupendous inference, which revolutionisesthought and sets men hopefully at work on some problem which does notso much add to the convenience of humanity as define the laws ofnature. We are still surrounded by innumerable and awful mysteries oflife and being; the evidence which will lead to their solution isprobably in our hands and plain enough, if any one could but see thebearing of facts which are known to the simplest child. There is littledoubt, I suppose, that the greatest reputations of recent years havebeen made in science; and perhaps when our present age has globeditself into a cycle, we shall be amazed at the complaint that thepresent era is lacking in great men. We are busy in looking forgreatness in so many directions, and we are apt to suppose, from longuse, that greatness is so inseparably connected with some form of humanexpression, whether it be the utterance of thought, or the marshallingof armies, that we may be overlooking a more stable form of greatness, which will be patent to those that come after. My own belief is thatthe condition of science at the present day answers best to theconditions which we have learnt to recognise in the past as thefruitful soil of greatness. I mean that when we put our finger, in thepast, on some period which seems to have been producing great work in agreat way, we generally find it in some knot or school of people, intensely absorbed in what they were doing, and doing it with awhole-hearted enjoyment, loving the work more than the rewards of it, and indifferent to the pursuit of fame. Such it seems to me is thecondition of science at the present time, and it is in science, I aminclined to think, that our heroes are probably to be found. 

I do not, then, feel at all sure that we are lacking in great men, though it must be admitted that we are lacking in men whose supremacyis recognised. I suppose we mean by a great man one who in some regionof human performance is confessedly pre-eminent; and he must furtherhave a theory of his own, and a power of pursuing that theory in theface of depreciation and even hostility. I do not think that great menhave often been indifferent to criticism. Often, indeed, by virtue of agreater sensitiveness and a keener perception, they have beenprofoundly affected by unpopularity and the sense of beingmisunderstood. Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, for instance, were men ofalmost morbid sensibility, and lived in sadness; and, on the otherhand, there are few great men who have not been affected for the worseby premature success. The best soil for greatness to grow up in wouldseem to be an early isolation, sustained against the disregard of theworld by the affection and admiration of a few kindred minds. Then whenthe great man has learned his method and his message, and learned toonot to over-value the popular verdict, success may mature and mellowhis powers. Yet of how many great men can this be said? As a rule, indeed, a great man's best work has been done in solitude anddisfavour, and he has attained his sunshine when he can no longer dohis best work. 

The question is whether the modern conditions of life are unfavourableto greatness; and I think that it must be confessed that they are. Inthe first place, we all know so much too about each other, and there isso eager a personal curiosity abroad, a curiosity about the smallestdetails of the life of any one who seems to have any power ofperformance, that it encourages men to over-confidence, egotism, andmannerism. Again, the world is so much in love with novelty andsensation of all kinds, that facile successes are easily made and aseasily obliterated. What so many people admire is not greatness, butthe realisation of greatness and its tangible rewards. The result ofthis is that men who show any faculty for impressing the world areexploited and caressed, are played with as a toy, and as a toyneglected. And then, too, the age is deeply permeated by socialambitions. Men love to be labelled, ticketed, decorated, differentiatedfrom the crowd. Newspapers pander to this taste; and then the ease andrapidity of movement tempt men to a restless variety of experience, oftravel, of society, of change, which is alien to the settled and sobertemper in which great designs are matured. There is a story, notuncharacteristic, of modern social life, of a hostess who loved toassemble about her, in the style of Mrs. Leo Hunter, notabilities smalland great, who was reduced to presenting a young man who made hisappearance at one of her gatherings as "Mr. ----, whose uncle, you willremember, was so terribly mangled in the railway accident at S----. " Itis this feverish desire to be distinguished at any price which has itscounterpart in the feverish desire to find objects of admiration. Notso can solid greatness be achieved. 

The plain truth is that no one can become great by taking thought, andstill less by desiring greatness. It is not an attainable thing; fameonly is attainable. A man must be great in his own quiet way, and thegreater he is, the less likely is he to concern himself with fame. Itis useless to try and copy some one else's greatness; that is liketrying to look like some one else's portrait, even if it be a portraitby Velasquez. Not that modesty is inseparable from greatness; there areabundance of great men who have been childishly and grotesquely vain;but in such cases it has been a greatness of performance, a marvellousfaculty, not a greatness of soul. Hazlitt says somewhere that modestyis the lowest of the virtues, and a real confession of the deficiencywhich it indicates. He adds that a man who underrates himself is justlyundervalued by others. This is a cynical and a vulgar maxim. It is truethat a great man must have a due sense of the dignity and importance ofhis work; but if he is truly great, he will have also a sense ofrelation and proportion, and not forget the minuteness of anyindividual atom. If he has a real greatness of soul, he will not be aptto compare himself with others, and he will be inclined to an evenover-generous estimate of the value of the work of others. In norespect was the greatness of D. G. Rossetti more exemplified than inhis almost extravagant appreciation of the work of his friends; and itwas to this royalty of temperament that he largely owed his personalsupremacy. 

I would believe then that the lack of conspicuous greatness is due atthis time to the overabundant vitality and eagerness of the world, rather than to any languor or listlessness of spirit. The rise of thedecadent school in art and literature is not the least sign of anyindolent or corrupt deterioration. It rather shows a desperate appetitefor testing sensation, a fierce hunger for emotional experience, afeverish ambition to impress a point-of-view. It is all part of arevolt against settled ways and conventional theories. I do not meanthat we can expect to find greatness in this direction, for greatnessis essentially well-balanced, calm, deliberate, and decadence is a signof a neurotic and over-vitalised activity. 

Our best hope is that this excessive restlessness of spirit willproduce a revolt against itself. The essence of greatness isunconventionality, and restlessness is now becoming conventional. Ineducation, in art, in literature, in politics, in social life, we loseourselves in denunciations of the dreamer and the loafer. We cannotbear to see a slowly-moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, advancing quietly on its discerned path. Instead of being content toperform faithfully and conscientiously our allotted task, which is theway in which we can best help the world, we demand that every oneshould want to do good, to be responsible for some one else, to exhort, urge, beckon, restrain, manage. That is all utterly false and hectic. Our aim should be patience rather than effectiveness, sincerity ratherthan adaptability, to learn rather than to teach, to ponder rather thanto persuade, to know the truth rather than to create illusion, howevercomforting, however delightful such illusion may be. 

VIII

SHYNESS

I have no doubt that shyness is one of the old, primitive, aboriginalqualities that lurk in human nature--one of the crude elements thatought to have been uprooted by civilisation, and security, andprogress, and enlightened ideals, but which have not been uprooted, andare only being slowly eliminated. It is seen, as all aboriginalqualities are seen, at its barest among children, who often reflect theyouth of the world, and are like little wild animals or infant savages, in spite of all the frenzied idealisation that childhood receives fromwell-dressed and amiable people. 

Shyness is thus like those little bits of woods and copses which onefinds in a country-side that has long been subdued and replenished, turned into arable land and pasture, with all the wildness and theirregularity ploughed and combed out of it; but still one comes uponsome piece of dingle, where there is perhaps an awkward tilt in theground, or some ancient excavation, or where a stream-head has cut outa steep channel, and there one finds a scrap of the old forest, a roodor two that has never been anything but woodland. So with shyness; manyof our old, savage qualities have been smoothed out, or glazed over, byeducation and inheritance, and only emerge in moments of passion andemotion. But shyness is no doubt the old suspicion of the stranger, thebelief that his motives are likely to be predatory and sinister; it isthe tendency to bob the head down into the brushwood, or to sneakbehind the tree-bole on his approach. One sees a little child, washedand brushed and delicately apparelled, with silken locks and clearcomplexion, brought into a drawing-room to be admired; one sees theterror come upon her; she knows by experience that she has nothing toexpect but attention, and admiration, and petting; but you will see hersuddenly cover her face with a tiny hand, relapse into dismal silence, even burst into tears and refuse to be comforted, till she is safelyentrenched upon some familiar knee. 

I have a breezy, boisterous, cheerful friend, of transparent simplicityand goodness, who has never known the least touch of shyness from hiscradle, who always says, if the subject is introduced, that shyness isall mere self-consciousness, and that it comes from thinking aboutoneself. That is true, in a limited degree; but the diagnosis is noremedy for the disease, because shyness is as much a disease as a coldin the head, and no amount of effort can prevent the attacks of thecomplaint; the only remedy is either to avoid the occasions of theattacks, --and that is impossible, unless one is to abjure the societyof other people for good and all;--or else to practise resolutely thehardening process of frequenting society, until one gets a sort ofcourage out of familiarity. Yet even so, who that has ever reallysuffered from shyness does not feel his heart sink as he drives up in abrougham to the door of some strange house, and sees a grave butleradvancing out of an unknown corridor, with figures flitting to and froin the background; what shy person is there who at such a moment wouldnot give a considerable sum to be able to go back to the station andtake the first train home? Or who again, as he gives his name to aservant in some brightly-lighted hall, and advances, with a hurriedglance at his toilet, into a roomful of well-dressed people, buzzingwith what Rossetti calls a "din of doubtful talk, " would not prefer tosink into the earth like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and be reckoned nomore among the living?

It is recorded in Tennyson's Life that he used to recommend to ayounger brother the thought of the stellar spaces, swarming withconstellations and traversed by planets at ineffable distances, as acure for shyness; and a lady of my acquaintance used to endeavour as agirl to stay her failing heart on the thought of Eternity at suchmoments. It is all in vain; at the urgent moment one cares very littleabout the stellar motions, or the dim vistas of futurity, and very muchindeed about the cut of one's coat, and the appearance of one's collar, and the glances of one's enemies; the doctrines of the Church, and theprospects of ultimate salvation, are things very light in the scales incomparison with the pressing necessities of the crisis, and thedesperate need to appear wholly unconcerned!

The wild and fierce shyness of childhood is superseded in mostsensitive people, as life goes on, by a very different feeling--theshyness of adolescence, of which the essence, as has been well said, is"a shamefaced pride. " The shyness of early youth is a thing whichsprings from an intense desire to delight, and impress, and interestother people, from wanting to play a far larger and brighter part inthe lives of every one else than any one in the world plays in any oneelse's life. Who does not recognise, with a feeling that is halfcontempt and half compassion, the sight of the eager pretentiousness ofyouth, the intense shame of confessing ignorance on any point, the deepdesire to appear to have a stake in the world, and a well-defined, respected position? I met the other day a young man, of no particularforce or distinction, who was standing in a corner at a big socialgathering, bursting with terror and importance combined. He wasinspired, I would fain believe, by discerning a vague benevolence in myair and demeanour, to fix his attention on me. He had been staying at ahouse where there had been some important guests, and by someincredibly rapid transition of eloquence he was saying to me in aminute or two, "The Commander-in-Chief said to me the other day, " and"The Archbishop pointed out to me a few days ago, " giving, as personalconfidences, scraps of conversation which he had no doubt overheard asan unwelcome adjunct to a crowded smoking-room, with the busy andgenial elders wondering when the boys would have the grace to go tobed. My heart bled for him as I saw the reflection of my own pushingand pretentious youth, and I only desired that the curse should notfall upon him which has so often fallen upon myself, to recallineffaceably, with a blush that still mantles my cheek in the silenceand seclusion of my bedroom, in a wakeful hour, the thought of somesuch piece of transparent and ridiculous self-importance, shamefullyuttered by myself, in a transport of ambitious vanity, long years ago. How out of proportion to the offence is the avenging phantom of memorywhich dogs one through the years for such stupidities! I remember thatas a youthful undergraduate I went to stay in the house of an oldfamily friend in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. The only other maleguest was a grim and crusty don, sharp and trenchant in speech, andwith a determination to keep young men in their place. At Cambridge hewould have taken no notice whatever of me; but there, on alien ground, with some lurking impulse of far-off civility, he said to me when theladies retired, "I am going to have a cigar; you know your way to thesmoking-room?" I did not myself smoke in those days, so foolish was Iand innocent; but recalling, I suppose, some similar remark made by anelderly and genial non-smoker under the same circumstances, I saidpompously--I can hardly bring myself even now to write the words--"Idon't smoke, but I will come and sit with you for the pleasure of atalk. " He gave a derisive snort, looked at me and said, "What! notallowed to smoke yet? Pray don't trouble to come on my account. " It wasnot a genial speech, and it made me feel, as it was intended to do, insupportably silly. I did not make matters better, I recollect, on thefollowing day, when on returning to Cambridge I offered to carry hisbag up from the station, for he insisted on walking. He refusedtestily, and no doubt thought me, as in fact I was, a very spiritlessyoung man. 

I remember, too, another incident of the same kind, happening about thesame time. I was invited by a fellow-undergraduate to come to tea inhis rooms, and to meet his people. After tea, in the lightness of hisheart, my friend performed some singular antics, such as standing onhis head like a clown, and falling over the back of his sofa, alightingon his feet. I, who would not have executed such gambols for the worldin the presence of the fairer sex, but anxious in an elderly way toexpress my sympathy with the performer, said, with what was meant to bea polite admiration: "I can't think how you do that!" Upon which ashrewd and trenchant maiden-aunt who was present, and was delighting inthe exuberance of her nephew, said to me briskly, "Mr. Benson, have younever been young?" I should be ashamed to say how often since I havearranged a neat repartee to that annoying question. At the same time Ithink that the behaviour both of the don and the aunt was distinctlyunjust and unadvisable. I am sure that the one way to train youngpeople out of the miseries of shyness is for older people never to snubthem in public, or make them appear in the light of a fool. Such snubsfall plentifully and naturally from contemporaries. An elder person isquite within his rights in inflicting a grave and serious remonstrancein private. I do not believe that young people ever resent that, if atthe same time they are allowed to defend themselves and state theircase. But a merciless elder who inflicts a public mortification isterribly unassailable and impregnable. For the shy person, who isdesperately anxious to bear a sympathetic part, is quite incapable ofretort; and that is why such assaults are unpardonable, because theyare the merest bullying. 

The nicest people that I have known in life have been the people ofkindly and sensible natures, who have been thoroughly spoilt aschildren, encouraged to talk, led to expect not only toleration, butactive kindness and sympathy from all. The worst of it is that suchkindness is generally reserved for pretty and engaging children, and itis the awkward, unpleasing, ungainly child who gets the slaps inpublic. But, as in Tennyson-Turner's pretty poem of "Letty's Globe, " achild's hand should be "welcome at all frontiers. " Only deliberaterudeness and insolence on the part of children should be publiclyrebuked; and as a matter of fact both rudeness and insolence are faroftener the result of shyness than is easily supposed. 

After the shyness of adolescence there often follows a further stage. The shy person has learnt a certain wisdom; he becomes aware how easilyhe detects pretentiousness in other people, and realises that there isnothing to be gained by claiming a width of experience which he doesnot possess, and that the being unmasked is even more painful thanfeeling deficient and ill-equipped. Then too he learns to suspect thatwhen he has tried to be impressive, he has often only succeeded inbeing priggish; and the result is that he falls into a kind ofspeechlessness, comforting himself, as he sits mute and awkward, undulyelongated, and with unaccountable projections of limb and feature, thatif only other people were a little less self-absorbed, had the gift ofperceiving hidden worth and real character, and could pierce a littlebelow the surface, they would realise what reserves of force andtenderness lay beneath the heavy shapelessness of which he is stillconscious. Then is the time for the shy person to apply himself tosocial gymnastics. He is not required to be voluble; but if he willpractise bearing a hand, seeing what other people need and like, carrying on their line of thought, constructing small conversationalbridges, asking the right questions, perhaps simulating an interest inthe pursuits of others which he does not naturally feel, he may unloosethe burden from his back. Then is the time to practise a sympatheticsmile, or better still to allow oneself to indicate and even expressthe sympathy one feels; and the experimentalist will soon become awarehow welcome such unobtrusive sympathy is. He will be amazed at first tofind that, instead of being tolerated, he will be confided in; he willbe regarded as a pleasant adjunct to a party, and he will soon have theeven pleasanter experience of finding that his own opinions andadventures, if they are not used to cap and surpass the opinions andadventures of others, but to elicit them, will be duly valued. Yet, alas, a good many shy people never reach that stage, but take refuge ina critical and fastidious attitude. I had an elderly relative of thiskind--who does not know the type?--who was a man of wide interests andaccurate information, but a perfect terror in the domestic circle. Hewas too shy to mingle in general talk, but sat with an air of acuteobservation, with a dry smile playing over his face; later on, when thecircle diminished, it pleased him to retail the incautious statementsmade by various members of the party, and correct them with muchacerbity. There are few things more terrific than a man who is bothspeechless and distinguished. I have known several such, and theirpresence lies like a blight over the most cheerful party. It isunhappily often the case that shyness is apt to exist side by side withconsiderable ability, and a shy man of this type regards distinction asa kind of defensive armour, which may justify him in applying to othersthe contempt which he has himself been conscious of incurring. One ofthe most disagreeable men I know is a man of great ability, who wasbullied in his youth. The result upon him has been that he tends tobelieve that most people are inspired by a vague malevolence, and heuses his ability and his memory, not to add to the pleasure of a party, but to make his own power felt. I have seen this particular man passfrom an ungainly speechlessness into brutal onslaughts on inoffensivepersons; and it is one of the most unpleasant transformations in theworld. On the other hand, the modest and amiable man of distinction isone of the most agreeable figures it is possible to encounter. He iskind and deferential, and the indulgent deference of a distinguishedman is worth its weight in gold. 

I was lately told a delightful story of a great statesman staying witha humble and anxious host, who had invited a party of simple andunimportant people to meet the great man. The statesman came in latefor dinner, and was introduced to the party; he made a series ofold-fashioned bows in all directions, but no one felt in a position tooffer any observations. The great man, at the conclusion of theceremony, turned to his host, and said, in tones that had oftenthrilled a listening senate: "What very convenient jugs you have inyour bedrooms! They pour well!" The social frost broke up; the companywere delighted to find that the great man was interested in mundanematters of a kind on which every one might be permitted to have anopinion, and the conversation, starting from the humblest conveniencesof daily life, melted insensibly into more liberal subjects. The factis that, in ordinary life, kindness and simplicity are valued far morethan brilliance; and the best brilliance is that which throws a noveland lambent light upon ordinary topics, rather than the brilliancewhich disports itself in unfamiliar and exalted regions. The hero onlyceases to be a hero to his valet if he is too lofty-minded to enterinto the workings of his valet's mind, and cannot duly appraise thequality of his services. 

And then, too, to go back a little, there are certain defects, afterall, which are appropriate at different times of life. A certain degreeof shyness and even awkwardness is not at all a disagreeablething--indeed it is rather a desirable quality--in the young. Aperfectly self-possessed and voluble young man arouses in one a vaguesense of hostility, unless it is accompanied by great modesty andingenuousness. The artless prattler, who, in his teens, has an opinionon all subjects, and considers that opinion worth expressing, ispleasant enough, and saves one some embarrassment; but such people, alas, too often degenerate into the bores of later life. If a man'sopinion is eventually going to be worth anything, he ought, I think, topass through a tumultuous and even prickly stage, when he believes thathe has an opinion, but cannot find the aplomb to formulate it. He oughtto be feeling his way, to be in a vague condition of revolt againstwhat is conventional. This is likely to be true not only in hisdealings with his elders, but also in his dealings with hiscontemporaries. Young people are apt to regard a youthful doctrinaire, who has an opinion on everything, with sincere abhorrence. He boresthem, and to the young boredom is not a condition of passive suffering, it is an acute form of torture. Moreover, the stock of opinions which ayoung man holds are apt to be parrot-cries repeated without anycoherence from talks overheard and books skimmed. But in a modest andingenuous youth, filled to the brim with eager interest and alertcuriosity, a certain deference is an adorable thing, one of the mostdelicate of graces; and it is a delightful task for an older person, who feels the sense of youthful charm, to melt stiffness away by kindlyirony and gentle provocation, as Socrates did with his sweet-naturedand modest boy-friends, so many centuries ago. 

The aplomb of the young generally means complacency; but one who isyoung and shy, and yet has the grace to think about the convenience andpleasure of others, can be the most perfect companion in the world. Onehas then a sense of the brave and unsophisticated freshness of youth, that believes all things and hopes all things, the bloom of which hasnot been rubbed away by the rough touch of the world. It is only whenthat shyness is prolonged beyond the appropriate years, when it leavesa well-grown and hard-featured man gasping and incoherent, jerky andungracious, that it is a painful and disconcerting deformity. The onlyreal shadow of early shyness is the quite disproportionate amount ofunhappiness that conscious gaucherie brings with it. Two incidentsconnected with a ceremony most fruitful in nervousness come back to mymind. 

When I was an Eton boy, I was staying with a country squire, a mostcourteous old gentleman with a high temper. The first morning, Icontrived to come down a minute or two late for prayers. There was nochair for me. The Squire suspended his reading of the Bible with adeadly sort of resignation, and made a gesture to the portly butler. That functionary rose from his own chair, and with loudly creakingboots carried it across the room for my acceptance. I sat down, coveredwith confusion. The butler returned; and two footmen, who were sittingon a little form, made reluctant room for him. The butler sat down onone end of the form, unfortunately before his equipoise, the secondfootman, had taken his place at the other end. The result was that theform tipped up, and a cataract of flunkies poured down upon the floor. There was a ghastly silence; then the Gadarene herd slowly recovereditself, and resumed its place. The Squire read the chapter in an accentof suppressed fury, while the remainder of the party, withhandkerchiefs pressed to their faces, made the most unaccountablesounds and motions for the rest of the proceeding. I was reallycomparatively guiltless, but the shadow of that horrid event sensiblyclouded the whole of my visit. 

I was only a spectator of the other event. We had assembled for prayersin the dimly-lighted hall of the house of a church dignitary, and thechapter had begun, when a man of almost murderous shyness, who was aguest, opened his bedroom door and came down the stairs. Our hostsuspended his reading. The unhappy man came down, but, instead ofslinking to his place, went and stood in front of the fire, under theimpression that the proceedings had not taken shape, and addressed someremarks upon the weather to his hostess. In the middle of one of hissentences, he suddenly divined the situation, on seeing the row ofservants sitting in a thievish corner of the hall. He took his seatwith the air of a man driving to the guillotine, and I do not think Iever saw any one so much upset as he was for the remainder of his stay. Of course it may be said that a sense of humour should have saved a manfrom such a collapse of moral force, but a sense of humour requires tobe very strong to save a man from the sense of having made aconspicuous fool of himself. 

I would add one more small reminiscence, of an event from which I canhardly say with honesty that I have yet quite recovered, although ittook place nearly thirty years ago. I went, as a schoolboy, with myparents, to stay at a very big country house, the kind of place towhich I was little used, where the advent of a stately footman to takeaway my clothes in the morning used to fill me with misery. The firstevening there was a big dinner-party. I found myself sitting next mydelightful and kindly hostess, my father being on the other side ofher. All went well till dessert, when an amiable, long-haired spanielcame to my side to beg of me. I had nothing but grapes on my plate, andpurely out of compliment I offered him one. He at once took it in hismouth, and hurried to a fine white fur rug in front of the hearth, where he indulged in some unaccountable convulsions, rolling himselfabout and growling in an ecstasy of delight. My host, an irascible man, looked round, and then said: "Who the devil has given that dog agrape?" He added to my father, by way of explanation, "The fact is thatif he can get hold of a grape, he rolls it on that rug, and it is noend of a nuisance to get the stain out. " I sat crimson with guilt, andwas just about to falter out a confession, when my hostess looked up, and, seeing what had happened, said, "It was me, Frank--I forgot forthe moment what I was doing. " My gratitude for this angelicintervention was so great that I had not even the gallantry to own up, and could only repay my protectress with an intense and lastingdevotion. I have no doubt that she explained matters afterwards to ourhost; and I contrived to murmur my thanks later in the evening. But theshock had been a terrible one, and taught me not only wisdom, but theChristian duty of intervening, if I could, to save the shy from theirsins and sufferings. 

 "Taught by the Power that pities me, I learn to pity them. "

But the consideration that emerges from these reminiscences is thesomewhat bewildering one, that shyness is a thing which seems to bepunished, both by immediate discomfort and by subsequent fantasticremorse, far more heavily than infinitely more serious moral lapses. The repentance that follows sin can hardly be more poignant than theagonising sense of guilt which steals over the waking consciousness onthe morning that follows some such social lapse. In fact it must beconfessed that most of us dislike appearing fools far more than wedislike feeling knaves; so that one wonders whether one does not dreadthe ridicule and disapproval of society more than one dreads the senseof a lapse from morality; the philosophical outcome of which would seemto be that the verdict of society upon our actions is at the base ofmorality. We may feel assured that the result of moral lapses willultimately be that we shall have to face the wrath of our Creator; butone hopes that side by side with justice will be found a mercifulallowance for the force of temptation. But the final judgment is in anycase not imminent, while the result of a social lapse is that we haveto continue to face a disapproving and even a contemptuous circle, whowill remember our failure with malicious pleasure, and whose sense ofjustice will not be tempered by any appreciable degree of mercy. Hereagain is a discouraging circumstance, that when we call to mind somesimilarly compromising and grotesque adventure in the life of one ofour friends, in spite of the fact that we well know the distress thatthe incident must have caused him, we still continue to hug, and evento repeat, our recollection of the occasion with a rich sense of joy. Is it that we do not really desire the peace and joy of others? Itwould seem so. How many of us are not conscious of feeling extremelyfriendly and helpful when our friend is in sorrow, or difficulty, ordiscredit, and yet of having no taste for standing by and applaudingwhen our friend is joyful and successful! There is nothing, it seems, that we can render to our friend in the latter case, except the praiseof which he has already had enough!

It seems then that the process of anatomising the nature and philosophyof shyness only ends in stripping off, one by one, as from an onion, the decent integuments of the human spirit, and revealing it everymoment more and more in its native rankness. Let me forbear, consolingmyself with the thought that the qualities of human beings are notmeant to be taken up one by one, like coins from a tray, andscrutinised; but that what matters is the general effect, the blending, the grouping, the mellowed surface, the warped line. I was onlyyesterday in an old church, where I saw an ancient font-cover--a sortof carved extinguisher--and some dark panels of a rood-screen. They hadbeen, both cover and panels, coarsely and brightly painted and gilt;and, horrible to reflect, it flashed upon me that they must have oncebeen both glaring and vulgar. Yet to-day the dim richness of theeffect, the dints, the scaling-off of the flakes, the fading of thepigment, the dulling of the gold, were incomparable; and I began towonder if perhaps that was not what happened to us in life; and thatthough we foolishly regretted the tarnishing of the bright surfaces ofsoul and body with our passions and tempers and awkwardnesses andfeeblenesses, yet perhaps it was, after all, that we were taking on anunsuspected beauty, and making ourselves fit, some far-off day, for theCommunion of Saints!

IX

EQUALITY

It is often said that the Anglo-Saxon races suffer from a lack ofideals, that they do not hold enough things sacred. But there isassuredly one thing which the most elementary and barbarous Anglo-Saxonholds sacred, beyond creed and Decalogue and fairplay and morality, andthat is property. At inquests, for instance, it may be noted how ofteninquiries are solicitously made, not whether the deceased had religiousdifficulties or was disappointed in love, but whether he had anyfinancial worries. We hold our own property to be very sacred indeed, and our respect for other men's rights in the matter is based on thefact that we wish our own rights to be respected. If I were asked whatother ideals were held widely sacred in England and America I shouldfind it very difficult to reply. I think that there is a good deal ofinterest taken in America in education and culture; whereas in EnglandI do not believe that there is very much interest taken in either;almost the only thing which is valued in England, romantically, andwith a kind of enthusiasm, besides property, is social distinction; thedemocracy in England is sometimes said to be indignant at the existenceof so much social privilege; the word "class" is said to be abhorrentto the democrat; but the only classes that he detests are the classesabove him in the social scale, and the democrat is extremely indignantif he is assigned to a social station which he considers to be belowhis own. I have met democrats who despise and contemn the socialtradition of the so-called upper classes, but I have never met ademocrat who is not much more infuriated if it is supposed that he hasnot social traditions of his own vastly superior to the socialtraditions of the lowest grade of precarious mendicity. The reason whysocialism has never had any great hold in England is because equalityis only a word, and in no sense a real sentiment in England. The reasonwhy members of the lowest class in England are not as a rule convincedsocialists is because their one ambition is to become members of themiddle-class, and to have property of their own; and while the sense ofpersonal possession is so strong as it is, no socialism worthy of thename has a chance. It is possible for any intelligent, virtuous, andcapable member of the lower class to transfer himself to the middleclass; and once there he does not favour any system of social equality. Socialism can never prevail as a political system, until we get amajority of disinterested men, who do not want to purchase freedom fromdaily work by acquiring property, and who desire the responsibilityrather than the influence of administrative office. But administrativeoffice is looked upon in England as an important if indirect factor inacquiring status and personal property for oneself and one's friends. 

I am myself a sincere believer in socialism; that is to say, I do notquestion the right of society to deprive me of my private property ifit chooses to do so. It does choose to do so to a certain extentthrough the medium of the income-tax. Such property as I possess has, Ithink it as well to state, been entirely acquired by my own exertions. I have never inherited a penny, or received any money except what Ihave earned. I am quite willing to admit that my work was more highlypaid than it deserved; but I shall continue to cling tenaciously tothat property until I am convinced that it will be applied for thebenefit of every one; I should not think it just if it was taken fromme for the benefit of the idle and incompetent; and I should bereluctant to part with it unless I felt sure that it would pass intothe hands of those who are as just-minded and disinterested as myself, and be fairly administered. I should not think it just if it were takenfrom me by people who intended to misuse it, as I have misused it, fortheir own personal gratification. 

It was made a matter of merriment in the case of William Morris that hepreached the doctrines of socialism while he was a prosperousmanufacturer; but I see that he was perfectly consistent. There is nojustice, for instance, about the principle of disarmament, unless allnations loyally disarm at the same time. A person cannot be called uponto strip himself of his personal property for disinterested reasons, ifhe feels that he is surrounded by people who would use the spoils fortheir own interest. The process must be carried out by a sinceremajority, who may then coerce the selfish minority. I have noconception what I should do with my money if I determined that I oughtnot to possess it. It ought not to be applied to any public purpose, because under a socialist regime all public institutions would besupported by the public, and they ought not to depend upon privategenerosity. Still less do I think that it ought to be divided amongindividuals, because, if they were disinterested persons, they ought torefuse to accept it. The only good reason I should have fordisencumbering myself of my possessions would be that I might set agood example of the simple life, by working hard for a livelihood, which is exactly what I do; and my only misfortune is that my earningsand the interest of my accumulated earnings produce a sum which is farlarger than the average man ought to possess. Thus the difficulty is avery real one. Moreover the evil of personal property is that it tendsto emphasise class-distinctions and to give the possessors of it asense of undue superiority. Now I am democratic enough to maintain thatI have no sense whatever of personal superiority. I do not allow mypossession of property to give me a life of vacuous amusement, for thesimple reason that my work amuses me far more than any other form ofoccupation, If it is asked why I tend to live by preference among whatmay be called my social equals, I reply that the only people one is atease with are the people whose social traditions are the same as one'sown, for the simple reason that one does not then have to think aboutsocial traditions at all. I do not think my social traditions arebetter than the social traditions of any other stratum of society, whether it be described as above or below my own; all I would say isthat they are different from the social traditions of other strata, andI much prefer to live without having to consider such matters at all. The manners of the upper middle-class to which scientifically I belong, are different from the manners of the upper, lower-middle, and lowerclass, and I feel out of my element in the upper class, just as I feelout of my element in the lower class. Of course if I were perfectlysimple-minded and sincere, this would not be so; but, as it is, I am atease with professional persons of my own standing; I understand theirpoint-of-view without any need of explanation; in any class but my own, I am aware of the constant strain of trying to grasp anotherpoint-of-view; and to speak frankly, it is not worth the trouble. I donot at all desire to migrate out of my own class, and I have never beenable to sympathise with people who did. The motive for doing so is notgenerally a good one, though it is of course possible to conceive ahigh-minded aristocrat who from motives based upon our common humanitymight desire to apprehend the point-of-view of an artisan, or ahigh-minded artisan who for the same motive desired to apprehend thepoint-of-view of an earl. But one requires to feel sure that this isbased upon a strong sense of charity and responsibility, and I can onlysay that I have not found that the desire to migrate into a differentclass is generally based upon these qualities. 

The question is, what ought a man who believes sincerely in theprinciple of equality to do in the matter, if he is situated as I amsituated? What I admire and desire in life is friendly contact with myfellows, interesting work, leisure for following the pursuits I enjoy, such as art and literature. I honestly confess that I am not interestedin what are called Social Problems, or rather I am not at allinterested in the sort of people who study them. Such problems havehardly reached the vital stage; they are in the highly technical stage, and are mixed up with such things as political economy, politics, organisation, and so forth, which, to be perfectly frank, are to meblighting and dreary objects of study. I honour profoundly the peoplewho engage in such pursuits; but life is not long enough to take upwork, however valuable, from a sense of duty, if one realises one's ownunfitness for such labours. I wish with all my heart that all classescared equally for the things which I love. I should like to be able totalk frankly and unaffectedly about books, and interesting people, andthe beauties of nature, and abstract topics of a mild kind, with anyone I happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak frankly, I find thatpeople of what I must call the lower class are not interested in thesethings; people in what I will call the upper class are faintlyinterested, in a horrible and condescending way, in them--which isworse than no interest at all. A good many people in my own class areimpatient of them, and think of them as harmless recreations; I fallback upon a few like-minded friends, with whom I can talk easily andunreservedly of such things, without being thought priggish or donnishor dilettanteish or unintelligible. The subjects in which I find themajority of people interested are personal gossip, money, success, business, politics. I love personal gossip, but that can only beenjoyed in a circle well acquainted with each other's faults andfoibles; and I do not sincerely care for talking about the othermatters I have mentioned. Hitherto I have always had a certain amountof educational responsibility, and that has furnished an abundance ofmaterial for pleasant talk and interesting thoughts; but then I havealways suffered from the Anglo-Saxon failing of dislikingresponsibility except in the case of those for whom one's efforts aredefinitely pledged on strict business principles. I cannot deliberatelyassume a sense of responsibility towards people in general; to do thatimplies a sense of the value of one's own influence and example, whichI have never possessed; and, indeed, I have always heartily dislikedthe manifestation of it in others. Indeed, I firmly believe that thebest and most fruitful part of a man's influence, is the influence ofwhich he is wholly unconscious; and I am quite sure that no one who hasa strong sense of responsibility to the world in general can advancethe cause of equality, because such a sense implies at all events aconsciousness of moral superiority. Moreover, my educational experienceleads me to believe that one cannot do much to form character. The mostone can do is to guard the young against pernicious influences, and doone's best to recommend one's own disinterested enthusiasms. One cannotturn a violet into a rose by any horticultural effort; one can only seethat the violet or the rose has the best chance of what is horriblycalled self-effectuation. 

My own belief is that these great ideas like Equality and Justice arethings which, like poetry, are born and cannot be made. That a numberof earnest people should be thinking about them shows that they are inthe air; but the interest felt in them is the sign and not the cause oftheir increase. I believe that one must go forwards, trying to avoidanything that is consciously harsh or pompous or selfish or base, andthe great ideas will take care of themselves. 

The two great obvious difficulties which seem to me to lie at the rootof all schemes for producing a system of social equality are first theradical inequality of character, temperament, and equipment in humanbeings. No system can ever hope to be a practical system unless we caneliminate the possibility of children being born, some of themperfectly qualified for life and citizenship, and others hopelesslydisqualified. If such differences were the result of environment itwould be a remediable thing. But one can have a strong, vigorous, naturally temperate child born and brought up under the meanest andmost sordid conditions, and, on the other hand, a thoroughly worthlessand detestable person may be the child of high-minded, well-educatedpeople, with every social advantage. My work as a practicaleducationalist enforced this upon me. One would find a boy, born undercircumstances as favourable for the production of virtue and energy asany socialistic system could provide, who was really only fitted forthe lowest kind of mechanical work, and whose instincts were utterlygross. Even if the State could practise a kind of refined Mendelism, itwould be impossible to guard against the influences of heredity. If onetraces back the hereditary influences of a child for ten generations, it will be found that he has upwards of two thousand progenitors, anyone of whom may give him a bias. 

And secondly, I cannot see that any system of socialism is consistentwith the system of the family. The parents in a socialistic state canonly be looked upon as brood stock, and the nurture of the risinggeneration must be committed to some State organisation, if one is tosecure an equality of environing influences. Of course, this is done toa certain extent by the boarding-schools of the upper classes; and hereagain my experience has shown me that the system, though a good one forthe majority, is not the best system invariably for types with markedoriginality--the very type that one most desires to propagate. 

These are, of course, very crude and elementary objections to thesocialistic scheme; all that I say is that until these difficultiesseem more capable of solution, I cannot throw myself with any interestinto the speculation; I cannot continue in the path of logicaldeduction, while the postulates and axioms remain so unsound. 

What then can a man who has resources that he cannot wisely dispose of, and happiness that he cannot impart to others, but yet who would onlytoo gladly share his gladness with the world, do to advance the causeof the general weal? Must he plunge into activities for which he has noaptitude or inclination, and which have as their aim objects for whichhe does not think that the world is ripe? Every one will remember thefigure of Mrs. Pardiggle in Bleak House, that raw-boned lady whoenjoyed hard work, and did not know what it was to be tired, who wentabout rating inefficient people, and "boned" her children'spocket-money for charitable objects. It seems to me that many of thepeople who work at social reforms do so because, like Mrs. Pardiggle, they enjoy hard work and love ordering other people about. In a societywisely and rationally organised, there would be no room for Mrs. Pardiggle at all; the question is whether things must first passthrough the Pardiggle stage. I do not in my heart believe it. Mrs. Pardiggle seems to me to be not part of the cure of the disease, butrather one of the ugliest of its symptoms. I think that she is on thewrong tack altogether, and leading other people astray. I do know somewould-be social reformers, whom I respect and commiserate with all myheart, who see what is amiss, and have no idea how to mend it, and wholose themselves, like Hamlet, in a sort of hopeless melancholy about itall, with a deep-seated desire to give others a kind of happiness whichthey ought to desire, but which, as a matter of fact, they do notdesire. Such men are often those upon whom early youth broke, like afresh wave, with an incomparable sense of rapture, in the thought ofall the beauty and loveliness of nature and art; and who lived for alittle in a Paradise of delicious experiences and fine emotions, believing that there must be some strange mistake, and that every onemust in reality desire what seemed so utterly desirable; and then, aslife went on, there fell upon these the shadow of the harsh facts oflife; the knowledge that the majority of the human race had no part orlot in such visions, but loved rather food and drink and comfort andmoney and rude mirth; who did not care a pin what happened to otherpeople, or how frail and suffering beings spent their lives, so long asthey themselves were healthy and jolly. Then that shadow deepens andthickens, until the sad dreamers do one of two things--either immurethemselves in a tiny scented garden of their own, and try to drown theinsistent noises without; or, on the other hand, if they are of thenobler sort, lose heart and hope, and even forfeit their own delight inthings that are sweet and generous and pleasant and pure. A mournfuland inextricable dilemma!

Perhaps one or two of such visionaries, who are made of sterner stuff, have deliberately embarked, hopefully and courageously, upon thePardiggle path; they have tried absurd experiments, like Ruskin, inroad-making and the formation of Guilds; they have taken to journalismand committees like William Morris. But they have been baffled. I donot mean to say that such lives of splendid renunciation may not have adeep moral effect; but, on the other hand, it is little gain tohumanity if a richly-endowed spirit deserts a piece of work that he cando, to toil unsuccessfully at a piece of work that cannot yet be doneat all. 

I myself believe that when Society is capable of using property and thebetter pleasures, it will arise and take them quietly and firmly: andas for the fine spirits who would try to organise things before theyare even sorted, well, they have done a noble, ineffectual thing, because they could not do otherwise; and their desire to mend what isamiss is at all events a sign that the impulse is there, that the sunhas brightened upon the peaks before it could warm the valleys. 

I was reading to-day The Irrational Knot, an early book by Mr. BernardShaw, whom I whole-heartedly admire because of his courage andgood-humour and energy. That book represents a type of the New Man, such as I suppose Mr. Shaw would have us all to be; the book, in spiteof its radiant wit, is a melancholy one, because the novelistpenetrates so clearly past the disguises of humanity, and takes delightin dragging the mean, ugly, shuddering, naked creature into the open. The New Man himself is entirely vigorous, cheerful, affectionate, sensible, and robust. He is afraid of nothing and shocked by nothing. Ithink it would have been better if he had been a little more shocked, not in a conventional way, but at the hideous lapses and failures ofeven generous and frank people. He is too hard and confident to be anapostle. He does not lead the flock like a shepherd, but helps themalong, like Father-o'-Flynn, with his stick. I would have gone toConolly, the hero of the book, to get me out of a difficulty, but Icould not have confided to him what I really held sacred. Moreover theview of money, as the one essential world-force, so frankly confessedin the book, puzzled me. I do not think that money is ever more than aweapon in the hands of a man, or a convenient screening wall, and theNew Man ought to have neither weapons nor walls, except his vigour andserenity of spirit. Again the New Man is too fond of saying what hethinks, and doing what he chooses; and, in the new earth, thatindependent instinct will surely be tempered by a sense, every bit asinstinctive, of the rights of other people. But I suppose Mr. Shaw'spoint is that if you cannot mend the world, you had better make itserve you, as in its folly and debility it will, if you bully itenough. I suppose that Mr. Shaw would say that the brutality of hishero is the shadow thrown on him by the vileness of the world, and thatif we were all alike courageous and industrious and good-humoured, thatshadow would disappear. 

And this, I suppose, is after all the secret; that the world is notgoing to be mended from without, but is mending itself from within; andthus that the best kind of socialism is really the highestindividualism, in which a man leaves legislation to follow and express, as it assuredly does, the growth of emotion, and sets himself, in hisown corner, to be as quiet and disinterested and kindly as he can, choosing what is honest and pure, and rejecting what is base and vile;and this is after all the socialism of Christ; only we are all in sucha hurry, and think it more effective to clap a ruffian into gaol thanto suffer his violence--the result of which process is to make mensympathise with the ruffian--while, if we endure his violence, we toucha spring in the hearts of ruffian and spectators alike, which is morefruitful of good than the criminal's infuriated seclusion, and his justquarrel with the world. Of course the real way is that we should eachof us abandon our own desires for private ease and convenience, in thelight of the hope that those who come after will be easier and happier;whereas the Pardiggle reformer literally enjoys the presence of therefuse, because his broom has something to sweep away. 

And the strangest thing of all is that we move forward, in a bewilderedcompany, knowing that our every act and word is the resultant ofancient forces, not one of which we can change or modify in the leastdegree, while we live under the instinctive delusion, which survivesthe severest logic, that we can always and at every moment do to acertain extent what we choose to do. What the truth is that connectsand underlies these two phenomena, we have not the least conception;but meanwhile each remains perfectly obvious and apparently true. Tomyself, the logical belief is infinitely the more hopeful andsustaining of the two; for if the movement of progress is in the handsof God, we are at all events taking our mysterious and wonderful partin a great dream that is being evolved, far more vast and amazing thanwe can comprehend; whereas if I felt that it was left to ourselves tochoose, and that, hampered as we feel ourselves to be by innumerablechains of circumstance, we could yet indeed originate action and impedethe underlying Will, I should relapse into despair before a problemfull of sickening complexities and admitted failures. Meanwhile, I dowhat I am given to do; I perceive what I am allowed to perceive; Isuffer what is appointed for me to suffer; but all with a hope that Imay yet see the dawn break upon the sunlit sea, beyond the dark hillsof time. 

X

THE DRAMATIC SENSE

The other day I was walking along a road at Cambridge, engulfed in atorrent of cloth-capped and coated young men all flowing one way--goingto see or, as it is now called, to "watch" a match. We met a littlegirl walking with her governess in the opposite direction. There was abaleful light of intellect in the child's eye, and a preponderance offorehead combined with a certain lankness of hair betrayed, I fancy, aningenuous academical origin. The girl was looking round her with anunholy sense of superiority, and as we passed she said to her governessin a clear-cut, complacent tone, "We're quite exceptional, aren't we?"To which the governess replied briskly, "Laura, don't be ridiculous!"To which exhortation Laura replied with self-satisfied pertinacity, "No, but we ARE exceptional, aren't we?"

Ah, Miss Laura, I thought to myself, you are one of those people with adramatic sense of your own importance. It will probably make you veryhappy, and an absolutely insufferable person! I have little doubt thatthe tiny prig was saying to herself, "I dare say that all these men arewondering who is the clever-looking little girl who is walking in theopposite direction to the match, and has probably something better todo than look on at matches. " It is a great question whether one oughtto wish people to nourish illusions about themselves, or whether oneought to desire such illusions to be dispelled. They certainly addimmensely to people's happiness, but on the other hand, if life is aneducative progress, and if the aim of human beings is or ought to bethe attainment of moral perfection, then the sooner that theseillusions are dispelled the better. It is one of the many questionswhich depend upon the great fact as to whether our identity isprolonged after death. If identity is not prolonged, then one wouldwish people to maintain every illusion which makes life happier; andthere is certainly no illusion which brings people such supreme andunfailing contentment as the sense of their own significance in theworld. This illusion rises superior to all failures anddisappointments. It makes the smallest and simplest act seem momentous. The world for such persons is merely a theatre of gazers in which theydischarge their part appropriately and successfully. I know severalpeople who have the sense very strongly, who are conscious from morningtill night, in all that they do or say, of an admiring audience; andwho, even if their circle is wholly indifferent, find food for delightin the consciousness of how skilfully and satisfactorily they dischargetheir duties. I remember once hearing a worthy clergyman, of noparticular force, begin a speech at a missionary meeting by saying thatpeople had often asked him what was the secret of his smile; and thathe had always replied that he was unaware that his smile had anyspecial quality; but that if it indeed was so, and it would be idle topretend that a good many people had not noticed it, it was that heimported a resolute cheerfulness into all that he did. The man, as Ihave said, was not in any way distinguished, but there can be no doubtthat the thought of his heavenly smile was a very sustaining one, andthat the sense of responsibility that the possession of such acharacteristic gave him, undoubtedly made him endeavour to smile likethe Cheshire Cat, when he did not feel particularly cheerful. 

It is not, however, common to find people make such a frank and candidconfession of their superiority. The feeling is generally kept for moreor less private consumption. The underlying self-satisfaction generallymanifests itself, for instance, with people who have no real illusions, say, about their personal appearance, in leading them to feel, after achance glance at themselves in a mirror, that they really do not lookso bad in certain lights. A dull preacher will repeat to himself, witha private relish, a sentence out of a very commonplace discourse of hisown, and think that that was really an original thought, and that hegave it an impressive emphasis; or a student will make a veryunimportant discovery, press it upon the attention of some greatauthority on the subject, extort a half-hearted assent, and will thengo about saying, "I mentioned my discovery to Professor A----; he wasquite excited about it, and urged the immediate publication of it. " Ora commonplace woman will give a tea-party, and plume herself upon theeclat with which it went off. The materials are ready to hand in anylife; the quality is not the same as priggishness, though it is closelyakin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successfulpeople, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an importantconstituent of their success. But the happy part of it is that thedramatic sense is often freely bestowed upon the most inconspicuous andunintelligent persons, and fills their lives with a consciousness ofromance and joy. It concerns itself mostly with public appearances, upon however minute a scale, and thus it is a rich source ofconsolation and self-congratulation. Even if it falls upon one who hasno social gifts whatever, whose circle of friends tends to diminish aslife goes on, whose invitations tend to decrease, it still frequentlysurvives in a consciousness of being profoundly interesting, andconsoles itself by believing that under different circumstances and ina more perceptive society the fact would have received a widerrecognition. 

But, after all, as with many things, much depends upon the way thatillusions are cherished. When this dramatic sense is bestowed upon aheavy-handed, imperceptive, egotistical person, it becomes a terribleaffliction to other people, unless indeed the onlooker possesses thehumorous spectatorial curiosity; when it becomes a matter of delight tofind a person behaving characteristically, striking the hourpunctually, and being, as Mr. Bennet thought of Mr. Collins, fully asabsurd as one had hoped. It then becomes a pleasure, and notnecessarily an unkind one, because it gives the deepest satisfaction tothe victim, to tickle the egotist as one might tickle a trout, to drawhim on by innocent questions, to induce him to unfold and wave his flaghigh in the air. I had once a worthy acquaintance whose occasionalvisits were to me a source of infinite pleasure--and I may add that Ihave no doubt that they gave him a pleasure quite as acute--because heonly required the simplest fly to be dropped on the pool, when he cameheavily to the top and swallowed it. I have heard him deplore the vastsize of his correspondence, the endless claims made upon him forcounsel. I have heard him say with a fatuous smile that there wereliterally hundreds of people who day by day brought their pitcher ofself-pity to be filled at his pump of sympathy: that he wished he couldhave a little rest, but that he supposed that it was a plain duty forhim to minister thus to human needs, though it took it out of himterribly. I suppose that some sort of experience must have lain behindthis confession, for my friend was a decidedly moral man, and would nottell a deliberate untruth; the only difficulty was that I could notconceive where he kept his stores of sympathy, because I had neverheard him speak of any subject except himself, and I suppose that hismethod of consolation, if he was consulted, was to relate some strikinginstance out of his own experience in which grace triumphed over nature. 

Sometimes, again, the dramatic sense takes the form of an exaggeratedself-depreciation. I was reading the other day the life of a verydevoted clergyman, who said on his death-bed to one standing by him, "If anything is done in memory of me, let a plain slab be placed on mygrave with my initials and the date, and the words, 'the unworthypriest of this parish'--that must be all. "

The man's modesty was absolutely sincere; yet what a strange confusionof modesty and vanity after all! If the humility had been PERFECTLYunaffected, he would have felt that the man who really merited such adescription deserved no memorial at all; or again, if he had had nosense of credit, he would have left the choice of a memorial to any whomight wish to commemorate him. If one analyses the feeling underneaththe words, it will be seen to consist of a desire to be remembered, ahope almost amounting to a belief that his work was worthy ofcommemoration, coupled with a sincere desire not to exaggerate itsvalue. And yet silence would have attested his humility far moreeffectually than any calculated speech!

The dramatic sense is not a thing which necessarily increases as lifegoes on; some people have it from the very beginning. I have an elderlyfriend who is engaged on a very special sort of scientific research ofa wholly unimportant kind. He is just as incapable as my sympatheticfriend of talking about anything except his own interests; "You don'tmind my speaking about my work?" he says with a brilliant smile; "yousee it means so much to me. " And then, after explaining some highlytechnical detail, he will add: "Of course this seems to you veryminute, but it is work that has got to be done by some one; it is onlylaying a little stone in the temple of science. Of course I often feelI should like to spread my wings and take a wider flight, but I do seemto have a special faculty for this kind of work, and I suppose it is myduty to stick to it. " And he will pass his hand wearily over his brow, and expound another technical detail. He apologises ceaselessly fordwelling on his own work; but in no place or company have I ever heardhim do otherwise; and he is certainly one of the happiest people I know. 

But, on the other hand, it is a rather charming quality to find incombination with a certain balance of mind. Unless a man is interestingto himself he cannot easily be interesting to others; there is ayouthful and ingenuous sense of romance and drama which can exist sideby side with both modesty and sympathy, somewhat akin to the habitcommon to imaginative children of telling themselves long stories inwhich they are the heroes of the tale. But people who have this facultyare generally mildly ashamed of it; they do not believe that theirfantastic adventures are likely to happen. They only think how pleasantit would be if things arranged themselves so. It all depends whethersuch dramatisation is looked upon in the light of an amusement, orwhether it is applied in a heavy-handed manner to real life. Imaginative children, who have true sympathy and affection as well, generally end by finding the real world, as they grow up into it, suchan astonishing and interesting place, that their horizon extends, andthey apply to other people, to their relationships and meetings, thezest and interest that they formerly applied only to themselves. Thekind of temperament that falls a helpless victim to dramatic egotism isgenerally the priggish and self-satisfied man, who has a fervent beliefin his own influence, and the duty of exercising it on others. Most ofus, one may say gratefully, are kept humble by our failures and even byour sins. If the path of the transgressor is hard, the path of therighteous man is often harder. If a man is born free from grossertemptations, vigorous, active, robust, the chances are ten to one thathe falls into the snare of self-righteousness and moral complacency. Hepasses judgment on others, he compares himself favourably with them. Aspice of unpopularity gives him a still more fatal bias, because hethinks that he is persecuted for his goodness, when he is only dislikedfor his superiority. He becomes content to warn people, and if theyreject his advice and get into difficulties, he is not whollyill-pleased. Whereas the diffident person, who tremblingly assumes theresponsibility for some one else's life, is beset by miserable regretsif his penitent escapes him, and attributes it to his ownmismanagement. The truth is that moral indignation is a luxury thatvery few people can afford to indulge in. And if it is true that a richman can with difficulty enter the kingdom of heaven, it is also truethat the dramatic man finds it still more difficult. He is imperviousto criticism, because he bears it with meekness. He has so good aconscience that he cannot believe himself in the wrong. If he makes anegregious blunder, he says to himself with infinite solemnity that itis right that his self-satisfaction should be tenderly purged away, andglories in his own humility. A far wholesomer frame of mind is that ofthe philosopher who said, when complimented on the mellowness thatadvancing years had brought him, that he still reserved to himself theright of damning things in general. Because the truth is that thethings which really discipline us are the painful, dreary, intolerablethings of life, the results of one's own meanness, stupidity, andweakness, or the black catastrophes which sometimes overwhelm us, andnot the things which we piously and cheerfully accept as ministering toour consciousness of worth and virtue. 

If I say that the dramatic failing is apt to be more common among theclergy than among ordinary mortals, it is because the clerical vocationis one that tempts men who have this temperament strongly developed toenter it, and afterwards provides a good deal of sustenance to theparticular form of vanity that lies behind the temptation. The dramaticsense loves public appearances and trappings, processions andceremonies. The instinctive dramatist, who is also a clergyman, tendsto think of himself as moving to his place in the sanctuary in a solemnprogress, with a worn spiritual aspect, robed as a son of Aaron. Helikes to picture himself as standing in the pulpit pale with emotion, his eye gathering fire as he bears witness to the truth or testifiesagainst sin. He likes to believe that his words and intonations have athrilling quality, a fire or a delicacy, as the case may be, whichscorch or penetrate the sin-burdened heart. It may be thought that thiscriticism is unduly severe; I do not for a moment say that the attitudeis universal, but it is commoner, I am sure, than one would like tobelieve; and neither do I say that it is inconsistent with deepearnestness and vital seriousness. I would go further, and maintainthat such a dramatic consciousness is a valuable quality for men whohave to sustain at all a spectacular part. It very often lendsimpressiveness to a man, and convinces those who hear and see him ofhis sincerity; while a man who thinks nothing of appearances oftenfails to convince his audience that he cares more for his message thanfor the fact that he is the mouthpiece of it. I find it very difficultto say whether it is well for people who cherish such illusions abouttheir personal impressiveness to get rid of such illusions, whenpersonal impressiveness is a real factor in their success. To do athing really well it is essential to have a substantial confidence inone's aptitude for the task. And undoubtedly diffidence and humility, however sincere, are a bad outfit for a man in a public position. I aminclined to think that self-confidence, and a certain degree ofself-satisfaction, are valuable assets, so long as a man believesprimarily in the importance of what he has to say and do, and onlysecondarily in his own power of, and fitness for, saying and doing it. 

There is an interesting story--I do not vouch for the truth of it--thatused to be told of Cardinal Manning, who undoubtedly had a strong senseof dramatic effect. He was putting on his robes one evening in thesacristy of the Cathedral at Westminster, when a noise was heard at thedoor, as of one who was determined on forcing an entrance in spite ofthe remonstrances of the attendants. In a moment a big, strongly-builtperson, looking like a prosperous man of business, labouring under avehement and passionate emotion, came quickly in, looked about him, andadvancing to Manning, poured out a series of indignant reproaches. "Youhave got hold of my boy, " he said, "with your hypocritical and sneakingmethods; you have made him a Roman Catholic; you have ruined thehappiness and peace of our home; you have broken his mother's heart, and overwhelmed us in misery. " He went on in this strain at somelength. Manning, who was standing in his cassock, drew himself up in anattitude of majestic dignity, and waited until the intruder's eloquencehad exhausted itself, and had ended with threatening gestures. Some ofthose present would have intervened, but Manning with an air of commandwaved them back, and then, pointing his hand at the man, he said: "Now, sir, I have allowed you to have your say, and you shall hear me inreply. You have traduced Holy Church, you have broken in upon theSanctuary, you have uttered vile and abominable slanders against theFaith; and I tell you, " he added, pausing for an instant with flashingeyes and marble visage, "I tell you that within three months you willbe a Catholic yourself. " He then turned sharply on his heel and went onwith his preparations. The man was utterly discomfited; he made asthough he would speak, but was unable to find words; he looked round, and eventually slunk out of the sacristy in silence. 

One of those present ventured to ask Manning afterwards about thestrange scene. "Had the Cardinal, " he inquired, "any sudden premonitionthat the man himself would adopt the Faith in so short a time?" Manningsmiled indulgently, putting his hand on the other's shoulder, and said:"Ah, my dear friend, who shall say? You see, it was a very awkwardmoment, and I had to deal with the situation as I best could. "

That was an instance of supreme presence of mind and great dramaticforce; but one is not sure whether it was a wholly apostolical methodof handling the position. 

But to transfer the question from the ecclesiastical region into theregion of common life, it is undoubtedly true that if a man or a womanhas a strong sense of moral issues, a deep feeling of responsibilityand sympathy, an anxious desire to help things forward, then a dramaticsense of the value of manner, speech, gesture, and demeanour is ahighly effective instrument. It is often said that people who wield agreat personal influence have the gift of making the individual withwhom they are dealing feel that his case is the most interesting andimportant with which they have ever come in contact, and of inspiringand maintaining a special kind of relationship between themselves andtheir petitioner. That is no doubt a very encouraging thing for theapplicant to feel, even though he is sensible enough to realise thathis case is only one among many with which his adviser is dealing, andprobably not the most significant. Upon such a quality as this thesuccess of statesmen, lawyers, physicians largely depends. But wherethe dramatic sense is combined with egotism, selfishness, andindifference to the claims of others, it is a terrible inheritance. Itministers, as I have said before, to its possessor's self-satisfaction;but on the other hand it is a failing which goes so deep and whichpermeates so intimately the whole moral nature, that its cure is almostimpossible without the gift of what the Scripture calls "a new heart. "Such self-complacency is a fearful shield against criticism, andparticularly so because it gives as a rule so few opportunities for anyoutside person, however intimate, to expose the obliquity of such atemperament. The dramatic egotist is careful as a rule not to let hisegotism appear, but to profess to be, and even to believe that he is, guided by the highest motives in all his actions and words. A candidremonstrance is met by a calm tolerance, and by the reply that thecritic does not understand the situation, and is trying to hinderrather than to help the development of beneficent designs. 

I used to know a man of this type, who was insatiably greedy ofinfluence and recognition. It is true that he was ready to help otherpeople with money or advice. He was wealthy, and of a good position;and he would take a great deal of trouble to obtain appointments forfriends who appealed to him, or to unravel a difficult situation;though the object of his diligence was not to help his applicants, butto obtain credit and power for himself. He did not desire that theyshould be helped, but that they should depend upon him for help. Nothing could undeceive him as to his own motive, because he gave histime and his money freely; yet the result was that most of the peoplewhom he helped tended to resent it in the end, because he demandedservices in return, and was jealous of any other interference. Chateaubriand says that it is not true gratitude to wish to repayfavours promptly and still less is it true benevolence to wish toretain a hold over those whom one has benefited. 

Sometimes indeed the two strains are almost inextricably intertwined, real and vital sympathy with others, combined with an overwhelmingsense of personal significance; and then the problem is aninconceivably complicated one. For I suppose it must be franklyconfessed that the basis of the dramatic sense is not a very wholesomeone; it is, of course, a strong form of individualism. But while it istrue that we suffer from taking ourselves too seriously, it is alsopossible to suffer from not taking ourselves seriously enough. Ifeffectiveness is the end of life, there is no question that a strongsense of what we like to call responsibility, which is generallynothing more than a sense of one's own importance, decorously framedand glazed, is an immense factor in success. I myself cherish theheresy that effectiveness is very far from being the end of life, andthat the only effectiveness that is worth anything is unintentionaleffectiveness. I believe that a man or woman who is humble and sincere, who loves and is loved, is higher on the steps of heaven than theadroitest lobbyist; but it may be that the world's criterion of what itadmires and respects is the right one; and indeed it is hard to see howso strong an instinct is implanted in the human race, the instinct tovalue strength and success above everything, unless it is put there byour Maker. At the same time one cherishes the hope that there is abetter criterion somewhere, in the Divine Mind, in the fruitful future;the criterion that it is not what a man actually effects that matters, but what he makes of the resources that are given him to work with. 

The effectiveness of the dramatic sense is beyond question. One can seea supreme instance of it in the case of the Christian Science movement, in which a woman of strong personality, by lighting upon an idea latentin a large number of minds, an idea moreover of real and practicalvitality, and by putting it in a form which has all the definitenessrequired by brains of a hazy and emotional order, has contrived toeffect an immense amount of good, besides amassing a colossal fortune, and assuming almost Divine pretensions, without being widelydiscredited. The human race is, speaking generally, so anxious for anyleading that it can get, that if a man or woman can persuade themselvesthat they have a mission to humanity, and maintain a pontifical air, they will generally be able to attract a band of devoted adherents, whose faith, rising superior to both intelligence and common-sense, will endorse almost any claim that the prophet or prophetess likes toadvance. 

But the danger for the prophet himself is great. Arrogance, complacency, self-confidence, all the Pharisaical vices flourishbriskly in such a soil. He loses all sense of proportion, all sense ofdependence. Instead of being a humble learner in a mysterious world, heexpects to find everything made after the pattern revealed to him inthe Mount. The good that he does may be permanent and fruitful; but insome dark valley of humiliation and despair he will have to learn thatGod tolerates us and uses us; He does not need us, "He delighteth notin any man's legs, " as the Psalmist said with homely vigour. To saveothers and be oneself a castaway is the terrible fate of which St. Paulsaw so clearly the possibility; and thus any one who is conscious ofthe dramatic sense, or even dimly suspects that it is there, ought topray very humbly to be delivered from it, as he would from any otherdarling bosom-sin. He ought to eschew diplomacy and practise frankness, he ought to welcome failure and to rejoice when he makes humiliatingmistakes. He ought to be grateful even for palpable faults andweaknesses and sins and physical disabilities. For if we have the hopethat God is educating us, is moulding a fair statue out of the frailand sordid clay, such a faith forbids us to reject any experience, however disagreeable, however painful, however self-revealing it maybe, as of no import; and thus we can grow into a truer sense ofproportion, till at last we may come

 "to learn that Man Is small, and not forget that Man is great. "

XI

KELMSCOTT AND WILLIAM MORRIS

I had been at Fairford that still, fresh, April morning, and hadenjoyed the sunny little piazza, with its pretty characteristicvarieties of pleasant stone-built houses, solid Georgian frontsinterspersed with mullioned gables. But the church! That is amarvellous place; its massive lantern-tower, with solid, softly-mouldedoutlines--for the sandy oolite admits little fineness of detail--allweathered to a beautiful orange-grey tint, has a mild dignity of itsown. Inside it is a treasure of mediaevalism. The screens, thewoodwork, the monuments, all rich, dignified, and spacious. And theglass! Next to King's College Chapel, I suppose, it is the noblestseries of windows in England, and the colour of it is incomparable. Azure and crimson, green and orange, yet all with a firm economy ofeffect, the robes of the saints set and imbedded in a fine intricacy ofwhite tabernacle-work. As to the design, I hardly knew whether to smileor weep. The splendid, ugly faces of the saints, depicted, whetherdesignedly or artlessly I cannot guess, as men of simple passions andhomely experience, moved me greatly, so unlike the mild, polite, porcelain visages of even the best modern glass. But the windows are asthick with demons as a hive with bees; and oh! the irresponsible levitydisplayed in these merry, grotesque, long-nosed creatures, someflame-coloured and long-tailed, some green and scaly, some plated likethe armadillo, all going about their merciless work with infinite gustoand glee! Here one picked at the white breast of a languid, torturedwoman who lay bathed in flame; one with a glowing hook thrust alamentable big-paunched wretch down into a bath of molten liquor; onewith pleased intentness turned the handle of a churn, from the top ofwhich protruded the head of a fair-haired boy, all distorted with painand terror. What could have been in the mind of the designer of thesehateful scenes? It is impossible to acquit him of a strong sense of thehumorous. Did he believe that such things were actually in progress insome infernal cavern, seven times heated? I fear it may have been so. And what of the effect upon the minds of the village folk who saw themday by day? It would have depressed, one would think, an imaginativegirl or boy into madness, to dream of such things as being countenancedby God for the heathen and the unbaptized, as well as for the cruel andsinful. If the vile work had been represented as being done by cloudy, sombre, relentless creatures, it would have been more tolerable. Butthese fantastic imps, as lively as grigs and full to the brim of wickedlaughter, are certainly enjoying themselves with an extremity ofdelight of which no trace is to be seen in the mournful and heavilylined faces of the faithful. Autres temps, autres moeurs! Perhaps thesimple, coarse mental palates of the village folk were none the worsefor this realistic treatment of sin. One wonders what the saintly andrefined Keble, who spent many years of his life as his father's curatehere, thought of it all. Probably his submissive and deferential mindaccepted it as in some ecclesiastical sense symbolical of the mercilesshatred of God for the desperate corruption of humanity. It gave melittle pleasure to connect the personality of Keble with the place, patient, sweet-natured, mystical, serviceable as he was. It seems hardto breathe in the austere air of a mind like Keble's, where the wind ofthe spirit blows chill down the narrow path, fenced in by the high, uncompromising walls of ecclesiastical tradition on the one hand, andstern Puritanism on the other. An artificial type, one is tempted tosay!--and yet one ought never, I suppose, so to describe any flowerthat has blossomed fragrantly upon the human stock; any system thatseems to extend a natural and instinctive appeal to certain definiteclasses of human temperament. 

I sped pleasantly enough along the low, rich pastures, thick withhedgerow elms, to Lechlade, another pretty town with an infinitevariety of habitations. Here again is a fine ancient church with acomely spire, "a pretty pyramis of stone, " as the old Itinerary says, overlooking a charming gabled house, among walled and terraced gardens, with stone balls on the corner-posts and a quaint pavilion, the riverrunning below; and so on to a bridge over the yet slender Thames, wherethe river water spouted clear and fragrant into a wide pool; and acrossthe flat meadows, bright with kingcups, the spire of Lechlade toweredover the clustered house-roofs to the west. 

Then further still by a lonely ill-laid road. And thus, with a mindpleasantly attuned to beauty and a quickening pulse, I drew near toKelmscott. The great alluvial flat, broadening on either hand, with lowwooded heights, "not ill-designed, " as Morris said, to the south. Thencame a winding cross-track, and presently I drew near to a stragglingvillage, every house of which had some charm and quality of style, withhere and there a high gabled dovecot, and its wooden cupola, standingup among solid barns and stacks. Here was a tiny and inconspicuouschurch, with a small stone belfry; and then the road pushed on, to dieaway among the fields. But there, at the very end of the village, stoodthe house of which we were in search; and it was with a touch of awe, with a quickening heart, that I drew near to a place of such sweet andgracious memories, a place so dear to more than one of the heroes ofart. 

One comes to the goal of an artistic pilgrimage with a certain sacredterror; either the place is disappointing, or it is utterly unlike whatone anticipates. I knew Kelmscott so well from Rossetti's letters, fromMorris's own splendid and loving description, from pictures, from thetales of other pilgrims, that I felt I could not be disappointed; and Iwas not. It was not only just like what I had pictured it to be, but ithad a delicate and natural grace of its own as well. The house waslarger and more beautiful, the garden smaller and not less beautiful, than I had imagined. I had not thought it was so shy, so rustic aplace. It is very difficult to get any clear view of the Manor. By theroad are cottages, and a big building, half storehouse, halfwheelwright's shop, to serve the homely needs of the farm. Through theopen door one could see a bench with tools; and planks, staves, spokes, waggon-tilts, faggots, were all stacked in a pleasant confusion. Thencame a walled kitchen-garden, with some big shrubs, bay andlaurustinus, rising plumply within; beyond which the grey house, spreadthin with plaster, held up its gables and chimneys over a stone-tiledroof. To the left, big barns and byres--a farm-man leading in a youngbull with a pole at the nose-ring; beyond that, open fields, with adyke and a flood-wall of earth, grown over with nettles, witheredsedges in the watercourse, and elms in which the rooks were clamorouslybuilding. We met with the ready, simple Berkshire courtesy; we werereferred to a gardener who was in charge. To speak with him, we walkedround to the other side of the house, to an open space of grass, wherethe fowls picked merrily, and the old farm-lumber, broken coops, disused ploughs, lay comfortably about. "How I love tidiness!" wroteMorris once. Yet I did not feel that he would have done other than loveall this natural and simple litter of the busy farmstead. 

Here the venerable house appeared more stately still. Through an opendoor in a wall we caught a sight of the old standards of an orchard, and borders with the spikes of spring-flowers pushing through themould. The gardener was digging in the gravelly soil. He received uswith a grave and kindly air; but when we asked if we could look intothe house, he said, with a sturdy faithfulness, that his orders werethat no one should see it, and continued his digging without heeding usfurther. 

Somewhat abashed we retraced our steps; we got one glimpse of the fineindented front, with its shapely wings and projections. I should liketo have seen the great parlour, and the tapestry-room with the story ofSamson that bothered Rossetti so over his work. I should like to haveseen the big oak bed, with its hangings embroidered with one ofMorris's sweetest lyrics:

 "The wind's on the wold, And the night is a-cold. "

I should like to have seen the tapestry-chamber, and the room whereMorris, who so frankly relished the healthy savour of meat and drink, ate his joyful meals, and the peacock yew-tree that he found in hisdays of failing strength too hard a task to clip. I should like to haveseen all this, I say; and yet I am not sure that tables and chairs, upholsteries and pictures, would not have come in between me and thesacred spirit of the place. 

So I turned to the church. Plain and homely as its exterior is, insideit is touched with the true mediaeval spirit, like the "old febelchapel" of the Mort d'Arthur. Its bare walls, its half-obliteratedfrescoes, its sturdy pillars, gave it an ancient, simple air. But I didnot, to my grief, see the grave of Morris, though I saw in fancy thecoffin brought from Lechlade in the bright farm-waggon, on that day ofpitiless rain. For there was going on in the churchyard the only thingI saw that day that seemed to me to strike a false note; a silly posingof village girls, self-conscious and overdressed, before the camera ofa photographer--a playing at aesthetics, bringing into the village lifea touch of unwholesome vanity and the vulgar affectation of the world. That is the ugly shadow of fame; it makes conventional people curiousabout the details of a great man's life and surroundings, withoutinitiating them into any sympathy with his ideals and motives. Theprice that the real worshippers pay for their inspiration is theslavering idolatry of the unintelligent; and I withdrew in a mournfulwonder from the place, wishing I could set an invisible fence round thescene, a fence which none should pass but the few who had the secretand the key in their hearts. 

And here, for the pleasure of copying the sweet words, let metranscribe a few sentences from Morris's own description of the houseitself:

"A house that I love with a reasonable love, I think; for though mywords may give you no idea of any special charm about it, yet I assureyou that the charm is there; so much has the old house grown up out ofthe soil and the lives of those that lived on it: some thin thread oftradition, a half-anxious sense of the delight of meadow and acre andwood and river; a certain amount (not too much, let us hope) ofcommon-sense, a liking for making materials serve one's turn, andperhaps at bottom some little grain of sentiment--this, I think, waswhat went to the making of the old house. "

And again:

"My feet moved along the road they knew. The raised way led us into alittle field, bounded by a backwater of the river on one side; on theright hand we could see a cluster of small houses and barns, and beforeus a grey stone barn and a wall partly overgrown with ivy, over which afew grey gables showed. The village road ended in the shallow of thebackwater. We crossed the road, and my hand raised the latch of a doorin the wall, and we stood presently on a stone path which led up to theold house. The garden between the wall and the house was redolent ofthe June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with thatdelicious superabundance of small well-tended gardens which at firstsight takes away all thought save that of beauty. The blackbirds weresinging their loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-ridge, therooks in the high elm trees beyond were garrulous among the youngleaves, and the swifts wheeled whirring about the gables. And the houseitself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of summer. 

"O me! O me! How I love the earth, and the seasons, and weather, andall things that deal with it, and all that grows out of it--as this hasdone! The earth and the growth of it and the life of it! If I could butsay or show how I love it!"

The pure lyrical beauty of these passages makes one out of conceit withone's own clumsy sentences. But still, I will say how all thatafternoon, among the quiet fields, with the white clouds rolling upover the lip of the wolds, I was haunted with the thought of that burlyfigure; the great head with its curly hair and beard; the eyes thatseemed so guarded and unobservant, and that yet saw and noted everysmallest detail; the big clumsy hands, apt for such delicacy of work;to see him in his rough blue suit, his easy rolling gait, wanderingabout, stooping to look at the flowers in the beds, or glancing up atthe sky, or sauntering off to fish in the stream, or writing swiftly inthe parlour, or working at his loom; so bluff, so kindly, so blunt inaddress, so unaffected, loving all that he saw, the tide offull-blooded and restless life running so vigorously in his veins; or, further back, Rossetti, with his wide eyes, half bright, halflanguorous, pale, haunted with impossible dreams, pacing, rapt infeverish thought, through the lonely fields. The ghosts of heroes! Andwhether it was that my own memories and affections and visions stirredmy brain, or that some tide of the spirit still sets from theundiscovered shores to the scenes of life and love, I know not, but theplace seemed thronged with unseen presences and viewless mysteries ofhope. Doubtless, loving as we do the precise forms of earthly beauty, the wide green pastures, the tender grace of age on gable and wall, thespringing of sweet flowers, the clear gush of the stream, we are reallyin love with some deeper and holier thing; yet even about the symbolsthemselves there lingers a consecrating power; and that influence waspresent with me to-day, as I went homewards in the westering light, with the shadows of house and tree lengthening across the grass in thestill afternoon. 

Heroes, I said? Well, I will not here speak of Rossetti, though hisimpassioned heart and wayward dreams were made holy, I think, throughsuffering: he has purged his fault. But I cannot deny the name of heroto Morris. Let me put into words what was happening to him at the verytime at which he had made this sweet place his home. He had alreadydone as much in those early years as many men do in a lifetime. He hadwritten great poems, he had loved and wedded, he had made abundantfriends, his wealth was growing fast; he loved every detail of hiswork, designing, weaving, dyeing; he had a band of devoted workers andcraftsmen under him. He could defy the world; he cared nothing at allfor society or honours. He had magnificent vitality, a physique whichafforded him every kind of wholesome momentary enjoyment. 

In the middle of all this happy activity a cloud came over his mind, blotting out the sunshine. Partly, perhaps, private sorrows hadsomething to do with it; partly, perhaps, a weakening of physicalfibre, after a life of enormous productivity and restless energy, madeitself felt. But these were only incidental causes. What began to weighupon him was the thought of all the toiling thousands of humanity, whose lives of labour precluded them from the enjoyment of all ornearly all of the beautiful things that were to him the very essence oflife; and, what was worse still, he perceived that the very faculty ofhigher enjoyment was lacking, the instinct for beauty having beenatrophied and almost eradicated by sad inheritance, He saw that notonly did the workers not feel the joyful love of art and naturalbeauty, but that they could not have enjoyed such pleasures, even ifthey were to be brought near to them; and then came the further anddarker thought, that modern art was, after all, a hollow and a soullessthing. He saw around him beautiful old houses like his own, oldchurches which spoke of a high natural instinct for fineness of formand detail. These things seemed to stand for a widespread and livelyjoy in simple beauty which seemed to have vanished out of the world. Inancient times it was natural to the old builders if they had, say, abarn to build, to make it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttressit with stone, to bestow care and thought upon coign and window-ledgeand dripstone, to prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and to coverit with honest stone tiles, each one of which had an individuality ofits own. But now he saw that if people built naturally, they ran upflimsy walls of brick, tied them together with iron rods, and put acurved roof of galvanised iron on the top. It was bad enough that itshould be built so, but what was worse still was that no one saw orheeded the difference; they thought the new style was more convenient, and the question of beauty never entered their minds at all. Theyremorselessly pulled down, or patched meanly and sordidly, the oldwork. And thus he began to feel that modern art was an essentiallyartificial thing, a luxury existing for a few leisurely people, and nolonger based on a deep universal instinct. He thought that art waswounded to death by competition and hurry and vulgarity andmaterialism, and that it must die down altogether before a sweetnatural product could arise from the stump. 

Then, too, Morris was not an individualist; he cared, one may think, about things more than people. A friend of his once complained that, ifhe were to die, Morris would no doubt grieve for him and even miss him, but that it would make no gap in his life, nor interrupt his energy ofwork. He cared for movements, for classes, for groups of men, more thanhe cared for persons. And thus the idea came to him, in a mournful yearof reflection, that it was not only a mistake, but of the nature ofsin, to isolate himself in a little Paradise of art of his own making, and to allow the great noisy, ugly, bewildered world to go on its way. It was a noble grief. The thought of the bare, uncheered, hopelesslives of the poor came to weigh on him like an obsession, and he beganto turn over in his mind what he could do to unravel the knotted skein. 

"I am rather in a discouraged mood, " he wrote on New Year's Day 1880, "and the whole thing seems almost too tangled to see through and tooheavy to move. " And again:

"I have of late been somewhat melancholy (rather too strong a word, butI don't know another); not so much so as not to enjoy life in a way, but just so much as a man of middle age who has met with rubs (thoughless than his share of them) may sometimes be allowed to be. When oneis just so much subdued one is apt to turn more specially from thinkingof one's own affairs to more worthy matters; and my mind is very fullof the great change which I hope is slowly coming over the world. "

And so he plunged into Socialism. He gave up his poetry and much of hiscongenial work. He attended meetings and committees; he wrote leafletsand pamphlets; he lavished money; he took to giving lectures andaddresses; he exposed himself to misunderstandings and insults. Hespoke in rain at street corners to indifferent loungers; he pushed alittle cart about the squares selling Socialist literature; he hadcollisions with the police; he was summoned before magistrates: the"poetic upholsterer, " as he was called, became an object of bewilderedcontempt to friends and foes alike. The work was not congenial to him, but he did it well, developing infinite tolerance and good-humour, andeven tactfulness, in his relations with other men. The exposure to theweather, the strain, the neglect of his own physical needs, brought on, undoubtedly, the illness of which he eventually died; and worst of allwas the growing shadow of discouragement, which made him graduallyaware that the times were not ripe, and that even if the people couldseize the power they desired, they could not use it. He became awarethat the worker's idea of rising in the social scale was not the ideaof gaining security, leisure, independence, and love of honest work, but the hope of migrating to the middle class, and becoming acapitalist on a small scale. That was the last thing that Morrisdesired. Most of all he felt the charge of inconsistency that wasdinned into his ears. It was held ridiculous that a wealthy capitalistand a large employer of labour, living, if not in luxury, at least inconsiderable stateliness, should profess Socialist ideas withoutattempting to disencumber himself of his wealth. He wrote in answer toa loving remonstrance:

"You see, my dear, I can't help it. The ideas which have taken hold ofme will not let me rest; nor can I see anything else worth thinking of. How can it be otherwise, when to me society, which to many seems anorderly arrangement for allowing decent people to get through theirlives creditably and with some pleasure, seems mere cannibalism; nay, worse (for there ought to be hope in that), is grown so corrupt, sosteeped in hypocrisy and lies, that one turns from one stratum of it toanother with hopeless loathing. . . . Meantime, what a little rufflesme is this, that if I do a little fail in my duty some of my friendswill praise me for failing instead of blaming me. "

And then at last, after every sordid circumstance of intrigue andsquabble and jealousy, one after another of the organisations he joinedbroke down. Half gratefully and half mournfully he disengaged himself, not because he did not believe in his principles, but because he sawthat the difficulties were insuperable. He came back to the old life;he flung himself with renewed ardour into art and craftsmanship. Hebegan to write the beautiful and romantic prose tales, with theirenchanting titles, which are, perhaps, his most characteristic work. Helearnt by slow degrees that a clean sweep of an evil system cannot bemade in a period or a lifetime by an individual, however serious orstrenuous he may be; he began to perceive that, if society is to putideas in practice, the ideas must first be there, clearly defined andwidely apprehended; and that it is useless to urge men to a life ofwhich they have no conception and for which they have no desire. He hadalways held it to be a sacred duty for people to live, if possible, inwhatever simplicity, among beautiful things; and it may be said that noone man in one generation has ever effected so much in this direction. He has, indeed, leavened and educated taste; he has destroyed a vileand hypocritical tradition of domestic art; by his writings he hasopened a door for countless minds into a remote and fragrant region ofunspoilt romance; and, still more than this, he remains an example ofone who made a great and triumphant resignation of all that he heldmost dear, for the sake of doing what he thought to be right. He wasnot an ascetic, giving up what is half an incumbrance and half aterror; nor was he naturally a melancholy and detached person; but hegave up work which he loved passionately, and a life which he lived ina full-blooded, generous way, that he might try to share his blessingswith others, out of a supreme pity for those less richly endowed thanhimself. 

How, then, should not this corner of the world, which he loved sodearly, speak to the spirit with a voice and an accent far louder andmore urgent than its own tranquil habit of sunny peace and green-shadedsweetness! "You know my faith, " wrote Morris from Kelmscott in abewildered hour, "and how I feel I have no sort of right to revengemyself for any of my private troubles on the kind earth; and here Ifeel her kindness very specially, and am bound not to meet it with along face. " Noble and high-hearted words! for he of all men seemed madeby nature to enjoy security and beauty and the joys of living, if everman was so made. His very lack of personal sensitiveness, his unaptnessto be moved by the pathetic appeal of the individual, might have beenmade a shield for his own peace; but he laid that shield down, andbared his breast to the sharp arrows; and in his noble madness toredress the wrongs of the world he was, perhaps, more like one of hisgreat generous knights than he himself ever suspected. 

This, then, I think is the reason why this place--a grey grange at theend of a country lane, among water meadows--has so ample a call for thespirit. A place of which Morris wrote, "The scale of everything of thesmallest, but so sweet, so unusual even; it was like the background ofan innocent fairy-story. " Yes, it might have been that! Many of thesimplest and quietest of lives had been lived there, no doubt, beforeMorris came that way. But with him came a realisation of its virtues, aperception that in its smallness and sweetness it yet held imprisoned, like the gem that sits on the smallest finger of a hand, an ocean oflight and colour. The two things that lend strength to life are, in thefirst place, an appreciation of its quality, a perception of itsintense and awful significance--the thought that we here hold in ourhands, if we could but piece it all together, the elements and portionsof a mighty, an overwhelming problem. The fragments of that mightymystery are sorrow, sin, suffering, joy, hope, life, death. Things oftheir nature sharply opposed, and yet that are, doubtless, somehow andsomewhere, united and composed and reconciled. It is at this sad pointthat many men and most artists stop short. They see what they love anddesire; they emphasise this and rest upon it; and when the surge ofsuffering buffets them away, they drown, bewildered, struggling forbreath, complaining. 

But for the true man it is otherwise. He is penetrated with the desirethat all should share his joy and be emboldened by it. It casts a coldshadow over the sunshine, it mars the scent of the roses, it wailsacross the cooing of the doves--the sense that others suffer and toilunhelped; and still more grievous to him is the thought that, werethese duller natures set free from the galling yoke, their mirth wouldbe evil and hideous, they would have no inkling of the sweeter and thepurer joy. And then, if he be wise, he tries his hardest, in slow andwearied hours, to comfort, to interpret, to explain; in much heavinessand dejection he labours, while all the time, though he knows it not, the sweet ripple of his thoughts spreads across the stagnant pool. Hemay be flouted, contemned, insulted, but he heeds it not; while all thestrands of the great mystery, dark and bright alike, work themselves, delicately and surely, into the picture of his life, and the picture ofother lives as well. Larger and richer grows the great design, till itis set in some wide hall or corridor of the House of Life; and thefigure of the toil-worn knight, with armour dinted and brow dimmed withdust and sweat, kneeling at the shrine, makes the very silence of theplace beautiful; while those that go to and fro rejoice, not in thesuffering and weariness, not in the worn face and the thin, sun-brownedhands, but in the thought that he loved all things well; that his joywas pure and high, that his clear eyes pierced the dull mist thatwreathed cold field and dripping wood, and that, when he sank, outwornand languid after the day's long toil, the jocund trumpets broke outfrom the high-walled town in a triumphant concert, because he had doneworthily, and should now see greater things than these. 

XII

A SPEECH-DAY

In the course of the summer it was my lot to attend the Speech-Dayfestivities of a certain school--indeed, I attended at more than onesuch gathering, vocatus atque non vocatus, as Horace says. They are notthe sort of entertainments I should choose for pleasure; one feels toomuch like a sheep, driven from pen to pen, kindly and courteouslydriven, but still driven. One is fed rather than eats. One meets anumber of charming and interesting people, and one has no time to talkto them. But I am always glad to have gone, and one carries awaypleasant memories of kindness and courtesy, of youth and hope. 

This particular occasion was so very typical that I am going to try andgather up my impressions and ideas. It was an old school and a famousschool, though not one of the most famous. The buildings large andeffective, full of modern and up-to-date improvements, with a mellowcore of antiquity, in the shape of a venerable little courtyard in thecentre. There were green lawns and pleasant gardens and umbrageoustrees; and it was a beautiful day, too, sunny and fresh, so that onewas neither baked nor boiled. The first item was a luncheon, at which Isate between two very pleasant strangers and exchanged cautious viewson education. We agreed that the value of the classics as a staple ofmental training was perhaps a little overrated, and that possibly toomuch attention was nowadays given to athletics; but that after all thepublic-school system was the backbone of the country, and taught boyshow to behave like gentlemen, and how to govern subject races. Weagreed that they were ideal training-grounds for character, and thatour public-schools were the envy of the civilised world. In suchprofound and suggestive interchange of ideas the time sped rapidly away. 

Then we were gathered into a big hall. It was pleasant to see proudparents and charming sisters, wearing their best, clustered excitedlyround some sturdy and well-brushed young hero, the hope of the race;pleasant to see frock-coated masters, beaming with professionalbenevolence, elderly gentlemen smilingly recalling tales of youthfulprowess, which had grown quite epical in the lapse of time; it wasinspiriting to feel one of a big company of people, all bent on beingfor once as good-humoured and cheerful as possible, and all inspired bya vague desire to improve the occasion. 

The prizes were given away to the accompaniment of a rolling thunder ofapplause; we had familiar and ingenuous recitations from youthfulorators, who desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them theirears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; andthen a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered anaddress. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. Idid not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorsemany of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturallythat one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. Yet I could not help wondering why it is thought advisable always tosay exactly the same things on these occasions. The good man began byasserting that the boys would never be so happy or so important againin their lives as they were at school, and that all grown-up peoplewere envying them. I don't know whether any one believed that; I amsure the boys did not, if I can judge by what my own feelings used tobe on such occasions. Personally I used to think my school a verydecent sort of place, but I looked forward with excitement and interestto the liberty and life of the larger world; and though perhaps in away we elders envied the boys for having the chances before them thatwe had so many of us neglected to seize, I don't suppose that with theparable of Vice Versa before us we would really have changed placeswith them. Would any one ever return willingly to discipline andbarrack-life? [Yes--ed. ] Would any one under discipline refuseindependence if it were offered him on easy terms? I doubt it!

Then the Bishop went on to talk about educational things; and he saidwith much emphasis that in spite of all that was said about moderneducation, we most of us realised as we grew older that all culture wasreally based upon the Greek and Latin classics. We all stamped on theground and cheered at that, I as lustily as the rest, though I am quitesure it is not true. All that the Bishop really meant was that suchculture as he himself possessed had been based on the classics. Now theBishop is a robust, genial, and sensible man, but he is not a strictlycultured man. He is only sketchily varnished with culture. He thinksthat German literature is nebulous, and French literature immoral. Idon't suppose he ever reads an English book, except perhaps anecclesiastical biography; he would say that he had no time to read anovel; probably he glances at the Christian Year on Sundays, andperuses a Waverley novel if he is kept in bed by a cold. Yet heconsiders himself, and would be generally considered, a well-educatedman. I believe myself that the reason why we as a nation love goodliterature so little is because we are starved at an impressionable ageon a diet of classics; and to persist in regarding the classics as thehigh-water mark of the human intellect seems to me to argue amelancholy want of faith in the progress of the race. However, for themoment we all believed ourselves to be men of a high culture, soundlybased on the corner-stone of Latin and Greek. Then the Bishop went onto speak of athletics with a solemn earnestness, and he said, with deepconviction, that experience had taught him that whatever was worthdoing was worth doing well. He did not argue the point as to whetherall games were worth playing, or whether by filling up all the sparetime of boys with them, by crowning successful athletes with glory andworship, by engaging masters who will talk with profound seriousnessabout bowling and batting, rowing and football, one might not bedeveloping a perfectly false sense of proportion. He told the boys toplay games with all their might, and he left on their minds theimpression that athletics were certainly things to be ranked among theChristian graces. Of course he sincerely believed in them himself. Hewould have maintained that they developed manliness and vigour, anddiscouraged loafing and uncleanness. I am not at all sure myself thatgames as at present organised do minister directly to virtue. Thepopularity of the athlete is a dangerous thing if he is not virtuouslyinclined; while the excessive organisation of games discouragesindividuality, and emphasises a very false standard of success in theminds of many boys. But the Bishop was not invited that he might sayunconventional things. He was asked on purpose to bless things as theywere, and he blessed them with all his might. 

Then he went on to say that the real point after all was character andconduct; that intellect was a gift of God, and that conspicuousathletic capacity was a gift--he did not like to say of God, so he saidof Providence; but that in one respect we were all equal, and that wasin our capacity for moral effort; and that the boy who came to thefront was not always the distinguished scholar or the famous athlete, but the industrious, trustworthy, kindly, generous, public-spiritedboy. This he said with deep emotion, as though it were rather a daringand unexpected statement, but discerned by a vigilant candour; and allthis with the air that he was testifying faithfully to the true valuesof life, and sweeping aside with a courageous hand the false glow andglamour of the world. We did not like to applaud at this, but we made asubdued drumming with our heels, and uttered a sort of murmurous assentto a noble and far from obvious proposition. 

But here again I felt that the thing was somehow not quite ashigh-minded as it seemed. The goal designated was, after all, the goalof success. It was not suggested that the unrewarded and self-denyinglife was perhaps the noblest. The point was to come to the frontsomehow, and it was only indicating a sort of waiting game for the boyswho were conscious neither of intellectual nor athletic capacity. Itwas a sort of false socialism, this pretence of moral equality, a kindof consolation prize that was thus emphasised. And I felt that hereagain the assumption was an untrue one. That is the worst of life, ifone examines it closely, that it is by no means wholly run on morallines. It is strength that is rewarded, rather than good desires. TheBishop seemed to have forgotten the ancient maxim that prosperity isthe blessing of the Old Testament, and affliction the blessing of theNew. These qualities that were going to produce ultimatesuccess--conscientiousness, generosity, modesty, public spirit--theyare, after all, as much gifts as any other gifts of intellect andbodily skill. How often has one seen boys who are immodest, idle, frivolous, mean-spirited, and ungenerous attain to the oppositevirtues? Not often, I confess. Who does not know of abundant instancesof boys who have been selfish, worthless, grasping, unprincipled, whohave yet achieved success intellectually and athletically, and havealso done well for themselves, amassed money, and obtained positionsfor themselves in after life. Looking back on my own school days, Icannot honestly say that the prizes of life have fallen to thepure-minded, affectionate, high-principled boys. The boys I rememberwho have achieved conspicuous success in the world have beenhard-hearted, prudent, honourable characters with a certain superficialbonhomie, who by a natural instinct did the things that paid. Strippedof its rhetoric, the Bishop's address resolved itself into a panegyricof success, and the morality of it was that if you could not achieveintellectual and athletic prominence, you might get a certain degree ofcredit by unostentatious virtue. What I felt was that somehow the goalproposed was--dare I hint it?--a vulgar one; that it was aglorification of prudence and good-humoured self-interest; and yet ifthe Bishop had preached the gospel of disinterestedness and quietfaithfulness and devotion, he would have had few enthusiastic hearers. If he had said that an awkward and surly manner, no matter what virtuesit concealed, was the greatest bar to ultimate mundane success, itwould have been quite true, though perhaps not particularly edifying. But what I desired was not startling paradox or cynical comment, butsomething more really manly, more just, more unconventional, moreardent, more disinterested. The boys were not exhorted to care forbeautiful things for the sake of their beauty; but to care forattractive things for the sake of their acceptability. 

And yet in a way it did us all good to listen to the great man. He wasso big and kindly and fatherly and ingenuous; he had made virtue pay; Ido not suppose he had ever had a low or an impure or a spitefulthought; but his path had been easy from the first; he was a scholarand an athlete, and he had never pursued success, for the simple reasonthat it had fallen from heaven like manna round about his dwelling, with perhaps a few dozen quails as well! Boys, parents, masters, youngand old alike, were assembled that day to worship success, and theBishop prophesied good concerning them. It entered no one's head thatsuccess, in its simplest analysis, means thrusting some one else asidefrom a place which he desires to fill. But why on such a day should onethink of the feelings of others? we were all bent on virtuouslygratifying our own desires. The boys who were left out were the weakand the timid, the ailing and the erring, the awkward and theunpopular, the clumsy and the stupid; they were not bidden to takecourage, they were rather bidden to envy the unattainable, and tosubmit with such grace as they could muster. But we pushed all suchvague and unsatisfactory thoughts in the background; we sounded theclarion and filled the fife, and were at case in Zion, while weworshipped the great, brave, glittering world. 

What I desired was that, in the height of our jubilantself-gratulation, some sweet and gracious figure, full of heavenlywisdom, could have twitched the gaudy curtain aside for a moment andshown us other things than these; who could have assured us that weall, however stupid and dreary and awkward and indolent, however vexedwith low dreams and ugly temptations, yet had our share and place inthe rich inheritance of life; and that even if it was to be all arecord of dull failure, commonplace sinfulness cheered by no joyfultriumph, no friendly smile--yet if we fought the fault and did the dulltask faithfully, and desired to be but a little better, a littlestronger, a little more unselfish, that the pilgrimage with all itssandy tracts and terrifying spectres would not be traversed in vain;and then I think we might have been brought together with a sense ofsweeter and truer unity, and might have thought of life as a thing tobe shared, and joy as a thing to be lavished, and not have ratherconceived of the world as a place full of fine things, of which we wereall to gather sedulously as many as we could grasp and retain. 

Or even if the good Bishop had taken a simpler line and told the boyssome old story, like the story of Polycrates of Samos, I should havebeen more comfortable. Polycrates was the tyrant with whom everythingwent well that he set his hand to, so that to avoid the punishment ofundue prosperity he threw his great signet-ring into the sea; but whenhe was served a day or two later with a slice of fish at his banquet, there was the ring sticking in its ribs. The Bishop might have saidthat this should teach us not to try and seize all the good things wecould, and that the reason of it was not, as the old Greeks thought, that the gods envied the prosperity of mortals, but that our prosperitywas often dashed very wisely and tenderly from our lips, because one ofthe worst foes that a man can have, one of the most blinding andbewildering of faults, is the sense of self-sufficiency and security. That would not have spoilt the pleasure of those brisk boys, but wouldhave given them something wholesome to take away and think about, likethe prophet's roll that was sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly. 

It may be thought that I have thus dilated on the Bishop's address forthe sole purpose of showing what a much better address I could havemade. That is not the case at all. I could not have done the thing atall to start with, and, given both the nerve and the presence and thepractice of the man, I could not have done it a quarter as well, because he was in tune with his audience and I should not have been. That was to me part of the tragedy. The Bishop's voice fell heavily andsteadily, like a stream of water from a great iron pipe that fills areservoir. The audience, too, were all in the most elementary mood. Boys of course frankly desire success without any disguise. And parentsless frankly but no less hungrily, in an almost tigerish way, desire itfor their children. The intensity of belief felt by a parent in astupid or even vicious boy would be one of the most pathetic things Iknow, if it were not also one of the primal forces of the world. 

And thus the tide being high the Bishop went into harbour at the top ofthe flood. I don't even complain of the nature of the address; it wasfrankly worldly, such as might have been given by a Sadducee in thetime of Christ. But the interesting thing about it was that most of thepeople present believed it to be an ethical and even a religiousaddress. It was the ethic of a professional bowler and the religion ofa banker. If a boy had been for all intents and purposes a professionalbowler to the age of twenty-three, and a professional bankerafterwards, he would almost exactly have fulfilled the Bishop's ideal. I do not think it is a bad ideal either. I only say that it is not anexalted ideal, and it is not a Christian ideal. It is the world indisguise, the wolf in sheep's clothing over again. We were taken in. Wesaid to ourselves, "This is an animal certainly clothed as a sheep--andwe must remember the old proverb and be careful. " But as the Bishop'saddress proceeded, and the fragrant oil fell down to the skirts of ourclothing, we said, "There is certainly a sheep inside. "

Then a choir of strong, rough, boyish voices sang an old glee ortwo--"Glorious Apollo" and "Hail smiling Morn, " and a school song aboutthe old place that made some of us bite our lips and furtively brushaway an unexpected and inexplicable moisture from our eyes, at thethought of the fine fellows we had ourselves sat side by side withthirty and forty years ago, now scattered to all ends of the earth, andsome of them gone from the here to the everywhere, as the poet says. And then we adjourned to see the School Corps inspected--such solemnlittle soldiers, marching past in their serviceable uniforms, the linerising and falling with the inequalities of the ground, and bowing outa good deal in the centre, at the very moment that the good-natured oldColonel was careful to look the other way. Then there was a leisurelygame of cricket, with a lot of very old boys playing with reallyamazing agility; and then I fell in with an old acquaintance, and westrolled about together, and got a friendly master to show us over theschoolrooms and one of the houses, and admired the excellentarrangements, and peeped into some studies crowded with pleasant boyishlitter, and talked to some of the boys with an attempt at lightjuvenility, and enjoyed ourselves in a thoroughly absurd and leisurelyfashion. And then I was left alone, and walking about, abandoned myselfto sentiment pure and simple; it was hard to analyse that feeling whichwas stirred by the sight of all those fresh-faced boys, flowing like astream through the old buildings, and just leaving their own littlemark, for good or evil, on the place--a painted name on an Honoursboard, initials cut in desk or panel, a memory or two, how soon to growdim in the minds of the new generation, who would be so full ofthemselves and of the present, turning the sweet-scented manuscript ofyouth with such eager fingers, that they could give but little thoughtto the future and none at all to the past. And then one remembered, with a curious sense of wistful pain, how rapidly the cards of lifewere being dealt out to one, and how long it was since one had playedthe card of youth so heedlessly and joyfully away; that at least couldnot return. And then there came the thought of all the hope and lovethat centred upon these children, and all the possibilities which laybefore them. And I began to think of my own contemporaries and of howlittle on the whole they had done; it was not fair perhaps to say thatmost of them had made a mess of their lives, because they were honest, honourable citizens many of them. It was not the poor thing calledsuccess that I was thinking of, but a sort of high-hearted and generousdealing with life, making the most of one's faculties and qualities, diffusing a glow of love and enthusiasm and brave zest about one--howfew of us had done that! We had grown indolent and money-loving andcommonplace. Some of those we looked to to redeem and glorify the worldhad failed most miserably, through unchecked faults of temperament. Some had declined with a sort of unambitious comfort, some had falleninto the trough of Toryism, and spent their time in holding fast toconventional and established things; one or two had flown like Icarusso near the sun that their waxen wings had failed them; and yet some ofus had missed greatness by so little. Was it to be always so? Was italways to be a battle against hopeless odds? Was defeat, earlier orlater, inevitable? The tamest defeat of all was to lapse smoothly intoeasy conventional ways, to adopt the standards of the world, and raketogether contentedly and seriously the straws and dirt of the street. If that was to be the destiny of most, why were we haunted in youthwith the sight of that cloudy, gleaming crown within our reach, thatsense of romance, that phantom of nobleness? What was the significanceof the aspirations that made the heart beat high on fresh sunlitmornings, the dim and beautiful hopes that came beckoning as we lookedfrom our windows in a sunset hour, with the sky flushing red behind theold towers, the sense of illimitable power, of stainless honour, thatcame so bravely, when the organ bore the voices aloft in the lightedchapel at evensong? Was all that not a real inspiration at all, but amere accident of boyish vigour? No, it was not a delusion--that waslife as it was meant to be lived, and the best victory was to keep thathope alive in the heart amid a hundred failures, a thousand cares. 

As I walked thus full of fancies, the boys singly or in groups keptpassing me, smiling, full of delighted excitement and chatter, allintent on themselves and their companions. I heard scraps of theirtalk, inconsequent names, accompanied with downright praise or blame, unintelligible exploits, happy nonsense. How odd it is to note thatwhen we Anglo-Saxons are at our happiest and most cheerful, we expendso much of our steam in frank derision of each other! Yet though I canhardly remember a single conversation of my school days, the thought ofmy friendships and alliances is all gilt with a sense of delightfuleagerness. Now that I am a writer of books, it matters even more how Isay a thing than what I say. But then it was the other way. It was whatwe felt that mattered, and talk was but the sparkling outflow oftrivial thought. What heroes we made of sturdy, unemphatic boys, how werepeated each other's jokes, what merciless critics we were of eachother, how little allowance we made for weakness or oddity, how easilywe condoned all faults in one who was good-humoured and strong! How thelittle web of intrigue and gossip, of likes and dislikes, wove andunwove itself! What hopeless Tories we were! How we stood upon ourrights and privileges! I have few illusions as to the innocence or thejustice or the generosity of boyhood; what boys really admire are graceand effectiveness and readiness. And yet, looking back, one has partedwith something, a sort of zest and intensity that one would fain haveretained. I felt that I would have given much to be able to havecommunicated a few of the hard lessons of experience that I have learntby my errors and mistakes, to these jolly youngsters; but there againcomes in the pathos of boyhood, that one can make no one a present ofexperience, and that virtue cannot be communicated, or it ceases to bevirtue. They were bound, all those ingenuous creatures, to make theirown blunders, and one could not save them a single one, for all one'shankering to help. That is of course the secret, that we are here forthe sake of experience, and not for the sake of easy happiness. Yet onewould keep the hearts of these boys pure and untarnished and strong, ifone could, though even as one walked among them one could see faces onwhich temptation and sin had already written itself in legible signs. 

The cricket drew to an end; the shadows began to lengthen on the turf. The mimic warriors were disbanded. The tea-tables made their appearanceunder the elms, where one was welcomed and waited upon by cheerfulmatrons and neat maidservants, and delightfully zealous and inefficientboys. One had but to express a preference to have half-a-dozen platespressed upon one by smiling Ganymedes. If schools cannot altercharacter, they certainly can communicate to our cheerful English boysthe most delightful manners in the world, so unembarrassed, courteous, easy, graceful, without the least touch of exaggeration orself-consciousness. I suppose one has insular prejudices, for we arecertainly not looked upon as models of courtesy or consideration by ourContinental neighbours. I suppose we reserve our best for ourselves. Iexpressed a wish to look at some of the new buildings, and a younggentleman of prepossessing exterior became my unaffected cicerone. Hewas not one who dealt in adjectives; his highest epithet of praise was"pretty decent, " but one detected an honest and unquestioning pride inthe place for all that. 

Perhaps the best point of all about these schools of ours, is that theaspect of the place and the tone of the dwellers in it does not varyappreciably on days of festival and on working days. The beauty of itis a little focused and smartened, but that is all. There is nocovering up of deficiencies or hiding desolation out of sight. If onegoes down to a public-school on an ordinary day, one finds the samebrave life, the same unembarrassed courtesy prevailing. There is nosense of being taken by surprise; the life is all open to inspection onany day and at any hour. We do not reserve ourselves for occasions inEngland. The meat cuts wholesomely and pleasantly wherever it issampled. 

The disadvantage of this is that we are misjudged by foreigners becausewe are seen, not at our best, but as we are. We do not feel the need ofrecommending ourselves to the favourable consideration of others; notthat that is a virtue, it is rather the shadow of complacency andpatriotism. 

But at last a feeling begins to arise in the minds both of hosts andguests that the play is played out for the day, that the littlefestivity is over. On the part of our hosts that feeling manifestsitself in a tendency to press departing guests to stay a little longer. An old acquaintance of mine, a shy man, once gave a large garden-partyand had a band to play. He did his best for a time and times andhalf-a-time; but at last he began to feel that the strain was becomingintolerable. With desperate ingenuity he sought out the band-master, told him to leave out the rest of the programme, and play "God Save theKing, "--the result being a furious exodus of his guests. Today no suchdevice is needed. We melt away, leaving our kind entertainers to thepleasant weariness that comes of sustained geniality, and to the sensethat three hundred and sixty-four days have to elapse before the nextsimilar festival. 

And, for myself, I carry away with me a gracious memory of a daythrilled by a variety of conflicting and profound emotions; and if Ifeel that perhaps life would be both easier and simpler, if we couldthrow off a little more of our conventional panoply of thought, couldface our problems with a little more candour and directness, yet I havehad a glimpse of a community living an eager, full, vigorous life, guarded by sufficient discipline to keep the members of it wholesomelyand honourably obedient, and yet conceding as much personal liberty ofthought and action as the general interest of the body can admit. Ihave seen a place full of high possibilities and hopes, bestowing atreasure of bright memories of work, of play, of friendship, upon themajority of its members, and upholding a Spartan ideal of personalsubordination to the common weal, an ideal not enforced by law so muchas sustained by honour, an institution which, if it does not encourageoriginality, is yet a sound reflection of national tendencies, and onein which the men who work it devote themselves unaffectedly andungrudgingly to the interests of the place, without sentiment perhaps, but without ostentation or priggishness. A place indeed to which onewould wish perhaps to add a certain intellectual stimulus, a mentalliberty, yet from which there is little that one would desire to takeaway. For if one would like to see our schools strengthened, amplifiedand expanded, yet one would wish the process to continue on theexisting lines, and not on a different method. So, in our zeal forcultivating the further hope, let us who would fain see a purerstandard of morals, a more vigorous intellectual life prevail in ourschools, not overlook the marvellous progress that is daily and hourlybeing made, and keep the taint of fretful ingratitude out of ourdesigns; and meanwhile let us, in the spirit of the old Psalm, wishJerusalem prosperity "for our brethren and companions' sakes. "

XIII

LITERARY FINISH

I had two literary men staying with me a week ago, both of themaccomplished writers, and interested in their art, not professionallyand technically only, but ardently and enthusiastically. I here labelthem respectively Musgrave and Herries. Musgrave is a veteran writer, aman of fifty, who makes a considerable income by writing, and hassucceeded in many departments--biography, criticism, poetry, essay-writing; he lacks, however, the creative and imaginative gift;his observation is acute, and his humour considerable; but he cannotinfer and deduce; he cannot carry a situation further than he can seeit. Herries on the other hand is a much younger man, with an interestin human beings that is emotional rather than spectacular; whileMusgrave is interested mainly in the present, Herries lives in the pastor the future. Musgrave sees what people do and how they behave, whileHerries is for ever thinking how they must have behaved to producetheir present conditions, or how they would be likely to act underdifferent conditions. Musgrave's one object is to discover what hecalls the truth; Herries thrives and battens upon illusions. Musgraveis fond of the details of life, loves food and drink, conviviality andsocial engagements, new people and unfamiliar places--Herries is quiteindifferent to the garniture of life, lives in great personaldiscomfort, dislikes mixed assemblies and chatter, and has a fastidiousdislike of the present, whatever it is, from a sense that possibilitiesare so much richer than performances. Musgrave admits that he has beenmore successful as a writer than he deserves; Herries is likely, Ithink, to disappoint the hopes of his friends, and will not do justiceto his extraordinary gifts, from a certain dreaminess and lack ofvitality. Musgrave loves the act of writing, and is always full to thebrim of matter. Herries dislikes composition, and is yet drawn to it bya sense of fearful responsibility. Neither have, fortunately, the leastartistic jealousy. Herries regards a man like Musgrave with a sort ofincredulous stupefaction, as a stream of inexplicable volume. Herrieshas to Musgrave all the interest of a very delicate and beautiful type, whose fastidiousness he can almost envy. As a rule, literary men willnot discuss their art among themselves; they have generally arrived ata sort of method of their own, which may not be ideal, but which is thebest practical solution for themselves, and they would rather not bedisquieted about it; literary talk, too, tends to partake of the natureof shop, and busy men, as a rule, like to talk the shop of theirrecreations rather than the shop of their employment. But Musgrave willdiscuss anything; and as for Herries, writing is not an occupation, somuch as a divine vocation which he regards with a holy awe. 

The discussion began at dinner, and I was amused to see how it affectedthe two men. Musgrave, by an incredible mental agility, contrived tocontinue to take a critical interest in the meal and the argument atthe same time; Herries thrust away an unfinished plate, refused whatwas offered to him, pushed his glasses about as if they were chessmen, filled the nearest with water at intervals--he is a rigidteetotaller--and drank out of them alternately with an abstracted air. 

The point was the question of literary finish, and the degree to whichit can or ought to be practised. Herries is of the school of Flaubert, and holds that there may be several ways of saying a thing, but onlyone best way, and that it is alike the duty and the goal of the writerto find that way. This he enunciated with some firmness. 

"No, " said Musgrave, "I think that is only a theory, and breaks down, as all theories do, when it is put in practice: look at all the reallybig writers: look at Shakespeare--to me his work gives the impressionof being both hasty and uncorrected. If he says a thing in one way, andwhile he is doing it thinks of a more telling form of expression, hedoesn't erase the first statement; he merely says it over again moreeffectively. He is full of lapses and inappropriate passages--and it isthat very thing which gives him such an air of reality. "

"Well, there is a good deal in that, " said Herries, "but I do not seehow you are going to prove that it is not deliberate. Shakespeare wrotelike that in his plays, breathlessly and eagerly, because that was theaim he had in view; if he makes one of his people say a thing tamely, and then more pointedly, it is because it is exactly what people do inreal life, and Shakespeare was thinking with their mind for the timebeing. He is behind the person he has made, moving his arms, lookingthrough his eyes, breathing through his mouth; and just as life itselfis hurried and inconsequent, so the perfection of art is, not to behurried and inconsequent, but to give one the impression of being so. Idon't believe he left his work uncorrected out of mere impatience. Lookat the way he wrote when he was writing in a different manner--look atthe Sonnets, for instance--there is plenty of calculated art there!"

"Yes, " I said, "there is art there, but I don't think it is verydeliberate art. I don't believe they were written SLOWLY. Of course onecan hardly be breathless in a sonnet. The rhymes are all stretchedacross the ground, like wires, and one has to pick one's way amongthem. "

"Well, take another instance, " said Musgrave. "Look at Scott. He speakshimself of his 'hurried frankness of execution. ' His proof-sheets arethe most extraordinary things, full of impossible sentences, lapses ofgrammar, and so forth. He did not do much correcting himself, but Ibelieve I am right in saying that his publishers did, and spent hoursin reducing the chaos to order. "

"Oh, of course I don't deny, " said Herries, "that volume and vitalityare what matters most. Scott's imagination was at once prodigious andprofound. He seems to me to have said to his creations, 'Let the youngmen now arise and play before us. ' But I don't think his art was thebetter for his carelessness. Great and noble as the result was, I thinkit would have been greater if he had taken more pains. Of course oneregards men of genius like Scott and Shakespeare with a kind ofterror--one can forgive them anything; but it is because they do by asort of prodigal instinct what most people have to do by painfuleffort. If one's imagination has the poignant rightness of Scott's orShakespeare's, one's hurried work is better than most people's finishedwork. But people of lesser force and power, if they get their stitcheswrong, have to unpick them and do it all over again. Sometimes I havean uneasy sense, when I am writing, that my characters are feeling asif their clothes do not fit. Then they have to be undressed, so tospeak, that one may see where the garments gall them. Now, take a booklike Madame Bovary, painfully and laboriously constructed--it seemsobvious enough, yet the more one reads it the more one becomes awarehow every stroke and detail tell. What almost appals me about that bookis the way in which the end is foreseen in the beginning, the way inwhich Flaubert seems to have carried the whole thing in his head allthe time, to have known exactly where he was going and how fast he wasgoing. "

"That is perfectly true, " I said. "But take an instance of another ofFlaubert's books, Bouvard et Pecuchet, where the same method is pursuedwith what I can only call deplorable results. Every detail is perfectof its kind. The two grotesque creatures take up one pursuit afteranother, agriculture, education, antiquities, horticulture, distillingperfumes, making jam. In each they make exactly the absurd mistakesthat such people would have made; but one loses all sense of reality, because one feels that they would not have taken up so many things; itis only a collection of typical absurdities. Given the men and theparticular pursuit, it is all natural enough, but one wearies of thesame process being applied an impossible number of times, just asFlaubert was often so intolerable in real life, because he ran a joketo death, and never knew when to put it down. The result in Bouvard etPecuchet is a lack of proportion and subordination. It is like one ofthe early Pre-Raphaelite pictures, in which every detail is paintedwith minute perfection. It was all there, no doubt, and it was allexactly like that; but that is not how the human eye apprehends ascene. The human mind takes a central point, and groups the accessoriesround it. In art, I think everything depends upon centralisation. Twolovers part, and the birds' faint chirp from the leafless tree, thesmouldering rim of the sunset over misty fields, are true andsymbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal in botany andornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you cloud and dim thecentral point--you digress when you ought only to emphasise. "

"Oh yes, " said Herries with a sigh, "that is all right enough--it alldepends upon proportion; and the worst of all these discussions onpoints of art is that each person has to find his own standard--onecan't accept other people's standards. To me Bouvard et Pecuchet is apiece of almost flawless art--it is there--it lives and breathes. Idon't like it all, of course, but I don't doubt that it happened so. There must be an absolute rightness behind all supreme writing. Artmust have laws as real and immutable and elaborate as those of scienceand metaphysics and religion--that is the central article of my creed. "

"But the worst of that theory is, " I said, "that one lays down canonsof taste, which are very neat and pretty; and then there comes some newwriter of genius, knocks all the old canons into fragments, andestablishes a new law. Canons of art seem to me sometimes nothing morethan classifications of the way that genius works. I find it very hardto believe that there is a pattern, so to speak, for the snuffers andthe candlesticks, revealed to Moses in the mount. It was Moses' idea ofa pair of snuffers, when all is said. "

"I entirely agree, " said Musgrave; "the only ultimate basis of allcriticism is, 'I like it because I like it'--and the connoisseurs ofany age are merely the people who have the faculty of agreeing, I won'tsay with the majority, but with the majority of competent critics. "

"No, no, " said Herries, raising his mournful eyes to Musgrave's face, "don't talk like that! You take my faith away from me. Surely theremust be some central canon of morality in art, just as there is inethics. For instance, in ethics, is it conceivable that cruelty mightbecome right, if only enough people thought it was right? Is there noabsolute principle at all? In art, what about the great pictures andthe great poems, which have approved themselves to the best minds ingeneration after generation? Their rightness and their beauty are onlyattested by critics, they are surely not created by them? My view isthat there is an absolute law of beauty, and that we grow nearer to itby slow degrees. Sometimes, as with the Greeks, people got very near toit indeed. Is it conceivable, for instance, that men could ever come toregard the Venus of Milo as ugly?"

"Why yes, " said Musgrave, laughing, "I suppose that if humanitydeveloped on different lines, and a new type of beauty becamedesirable, we might come to look upon the Venus of Milo as a barbarousand savage kind of object, a dreadful parody of what we had become, like a female chimpanzee. To a male chimpanzee, the wrinkled brow, thelong upper lip, the deeply indented lines from nose to mouth, of afemale chimpanzee in the prime of adolescence, is, I suppose, almostintolerably dazzling and adorable--beauty can only be a relative thing, when all is said. "

"We are drifting away from our point, " I said. "The question really iswhether, as art expands, the principles become fewer or more numerous. My own belief is that the principles do become fewer, but the varietiesof expression more numerous. Keats tried to sum it up by saying, 'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty'; but it is not a successful maxim, because, as a peevish philosopher said, 'Why in that case have twowords for the same thing?'"

"But it is true, in a sense, for all that, " said Herries. "What we HAVElearnt is that the subject is of very little importance in art--it isthe expression that matters. Genre pictures, plots of novels, incidentsof plays--they are all rather elementary things. Flaubert lookedforward to a time in art when there should be no subjects at all, whenart should aspire to the condition of music, and express theintangible. "

"I confess, " said Musgrave, laughing, "that that statement conveysnothing to me. A painter, on that line, would depict nothing, butsimply produce a sort of harmony of colour. A picture would becomesimply a texture of colour-vibrations. My own view is rather that it isa question of accurate observation, followed by an extreme delicacy andsuggestiveness of expression. Some people would say that it was all aquestion of reality; and that the point is that the writer shallsuggest a reality to his reader, even though the picture he evoked inthe reader's mind was not the same as the picture in his own mind--butthat is to me pure symbolism. "

"Exactly, " said Herries, "and the more symbolical that art becomes, thepurer it becomes--that is precisely what I am aiming at. "

"Well, " I said, "that gives me an opportunity of making a confession. Ihave never really been able to understand what technical symbolism inart is. A symbol in the plain sense is something which recalls orsuggests to you something else; and thus the whole of art is puresymbolism. The flick of colour gives you a distant woodland, the phrasegives you a scene or an emotion. Five printed words upon a page makeone suffer or rejoice imaginatively; and my idea of the most perfectart is not the art which gives one a sense of laborious finish, but theart in which you never think of the finish at all, but only of thething described. The end of effort is to conceal effort, as the oldadage says. Some people, I suppose, attain it through a series ofmisses; but the best art of all goes straight to the heart of thething. "

"Yes, " said Musgrave, "my own feeling is that the mistake is toconsider it can only be done in one way. Each person has his own way;but I agree in thinking that the best art is the most effortless. "

"From the point of view of the onlooker, perhaps, " said Herries, "butnot from the point of view of the craftsman. The pleasure of art, forthe craftsman, is to see what the difficulty was, and to discern howthe artist triumphed over it. Think of the delightful individualroughness of old work as opposed to modern machine-made things. Thereis an appropriate irregularity, according to the medium employed. Theworkmanship of a gem is not the same as that of a building; the essenceof the gem is to be flawless; but in the building there is a pleasurein the tool-dints, like the pleasure of the rake-marks on the gravelpath. Of course music must be flawless too--firm, resolute, inevitable, because the medium demands it; but in a big picture--why, the other dayI saw a great oil-painting, a noble piece of art--I came upon it in theAcademy, by a side door close upon it. The background was a greattangled mass of raw crude smears, more like coloured rags patchedtogether than paint; but a few paces off, the whole melted into a greatriver-valley, with deep water-meadows of summer grass and big clumps oftrees. That is the perfect combination. The man knew exactly what hewanted--he got his effect--the structure was complete, and yet therewas the added pleasure of seeing how he achieved it. That is the kindof finish I desire. "

"Yes, of course, " said Musgrave, "we should all agree about that; butmy feeling would be that the way to do it is for the artist to fillhimself to the brim with the subject, and to let it burst out. I do notat all believe in the painful pinching and pulling together of aparticular bit of work. That sort of process is excellent practice, butit seems to me like the receipt in one of Edwin Lear's Nonsense Booksfor making some noisome dish, into which all sorts of ingredients of aloathsome kind were to be put; and the directions end with the words:'Serve up in a cloth, and throw all out of the window as soon aspossible. ' It is an excellent thing to take all the trouble, if youthrow it away when it is done; you will do your next piece of real workall the better; but for a piece of work to have the best kind ofvitality, it must flow, I believe, easily and sweetly from the teemingmind. Take such a book as Newman's Apologia, written in a few weeks, apiece of perfect art--but then it was written in tears. "

"But on the other hand, " said I, "look at Ariosto's Orlando; it tookten years to write and sixteen more to correct--and there is not aforced or a languid line in the whole of it. "

"Yes, " said Musgrave, "it is true, of course, that people must dothings in their own way. But, on the whole, the best work is done inspeed and glow, and derives from that swift handling a unity, a curve, that nothing else can give. What matters is to have a clear sense ofstructure, and that, at all events, cannot be secured by poky andfretful treatment. That is where intellectual grasp comes in. But, evenso, it all depends upon what one likes, and I confess that I like largehandling better than perfection of detail. "

"I believe, " I said, "that we really all agree. We all believe inlargeness and vitality as the essential qualities. But in the lesserkinds of art there is a delicacy and a perfection which areappropriate. An attention to minutiae which the graving of a gem or themaking of a sonnet demands is out of place in a cathedral or an epic. We none of us would approve of hasty, slovenly, clumsy work anywhere;all that is to be demanded is that such irregularity as can be detectedshould not be inappropriate irregularity. What we disagree about isonly the precise amount of finish which is appropriate to theparticular work. Musgrave would hold, in the case of Flaubert, that hewas, in his novels, trying to give to the cathedral the finish of thegem, and polishing a colossal statue as though it were a tinystatuette. "

"Yes, " said Herries mournfully, "I suppose that is right; though when Iread of Flaubert spending hours of torture in the search for a singleepithet, I do not feel that the sacrifice was made in vain if only theresult was achieved. "

"But I, " said Musgrave, "grudge the time so spent. I would rather havemore less-finished work than little exquisite work--though I supposethat we shall come to the latter sometime, when the treasures of arthave accumulated even more hopelessly than now, and when nothing butperfect work will have a chance of recognition. Then perhaps a man willspend thirty years in writing a short story, and twenty more inpolishing it! But at present there is much that is unsaid which maywell be said, and I confess that I do not hanker after this careful andtroubled work. It reminds me of the terrible story of the Chinaman whospent fifty years in painting a vase which cracked in the furnace. Itseems to me like the worst kind of waste. "

"And I, on the other hand, " said Herries gravely, "think that such alife is almost as noble a one as I can well conceive. "

His words sounded to me like a kind of pontifical blessing pronouncedat the end of a liturgical service; and, dinner now being over, weadjourned to the library. Then Musgrave entertained us with an accountof a squabble he had lately had with a certain editor, who hadcommissioned him to write a set of papers on literary subjects, andthen had objected to his treatment. Musgrave had trailed his coatbefore the unhappy man, laid traps for him by dint of asking himingenuous questions, had written an article elaborately constructed toparody derisively the editor's point of view, had meekly submitted itas one of the series, and then, when the harried wretch again objected, had confronted him with illustrative extracts from his own letters. Itwas a mirthful if not a wholly good-natured performance. Herries hadlistened with ill-concealed disgust, and excused himself at the end ofthe recital on the plea of work. 

As the door closed behind him, Musgrave said with a wink, "I am afraidmy story has rather disgusted our young transcendentalist. He has nopleasure in a wholesome row; he thinks the whole thing vulgar--and Ibelieve he is probably right; but I can't live on his level, though Iam sure it is very fine and all that. "

"But what do you really think of his work?" I said. "It is verypromising, isn't it?"

"Yes, " said Musgrave reflectively, "that is just what it is--he has gota really fine literary gift; but he is too uncompromising. Idealism inart is a deuced fine thing, and every now and then there comes a manwho can keep it up, and can afford to do so. But what Herries does notunderstand is that there are two sides to art--the theory and thepractice. It is just the same with a lot of things--education, forinstance, and religion. But the danger is that the theorists becomepedantic. They get entirely absorbed in questions of form, and theplain truth is that however good your form is, you have got to get holdof your matter too. The point after all is the application of art tolife, and you have got to condescend. Things of which the ultimate endis to affect human beings must take human beings into account. If youaim at appealing only to other craftsmen, it becomes an eruditebusiness: you become like a carpenter who makes things which are of nouse except to win the admiration of other carpenters. Of course it maybe worth doing if you are content with indicating a treatment whichother people can apply and popularise. But if you isolate art into atheory which has no application to life, you are a savant and not anartist. You can't be an artist without being a man, and therefore Ihold that humanity comes first. I don't mean that one need be vulgar. Of course I am a mere professional, and my primary aim is to earn anhonest livelihood. I frankly confess that I don't pose, even to myself, as a public benefactor. But Herries does not care either about anincome, or about touching other people. Of course I should like toraise the standard. I should like to see ordinary people capable ofperceiving what is good art, and not so wholly at the mercy ofconventional and melodramatic art. But Herries does not care twopenceabout that. He is like the Calvinist who is sure of his own salvation, has his doubts about the minister, and thinks every one elseirreparably damned. As I say, it is a lofty sort of ideal, but it isnot a good sign when that sort of thing begins. The best art of theworld--let us say Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare--was contributed bypeople who probably did not think about it as art at all. Fancy Homergoing in for questions of form! It is always, I believe, a sign ofdecadence when formalism begins. It is just like religion, which startswith a teacher who has an overwhelming sense of the beauty of holiness;and then that degenerates into theology. These young men are to artwhat the theologians are to religion. They lose sight of the object ofthe whole thing in codification and definition. My own idea of a greatartist is a man who finds beauty so hopelessly attractive and desirablethat he can't restrain his speech. It all has to come out; he cannothold his peace. And then a number of people begin to see that it waswhat they had been vaguely admiring and desiring all the time; and thena few highly intellectual people think that they can analyse it, andproduce the same effects by applying their analysis. It can't be doneso; art must have a life of its own. "

"Yes, " I said, "I think you are right. Herries is ascetic anderemitical--a beautiful thing in many ways; but there is notransmission of life in such art; it is a sterile thing after all, aseedless flower. "

"Let us express the vulgar hope, " said Musgrave, "that he may fall inlove; that will bring him to his moorings! And now, " he added, "we willgo to the music-room and I will see if I cannot tempt the shy bird fromhis roost. " And so we did--Musgrave is an excellent musician. We flungthe windows open; he embarked upon a great Bach "Toccata"; and beforemany bars were over, our idealist crept softly into the room, with anair of apologetic forgiveness. 

XIV

A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM

I suppose that every one knows by experience how certain days in one'slife have a power of standing out in the memory, even in a tract ofpleasant days, all lit by a particular brightness of joy. One does notalways know at the time that the day is going to be so crowned; but theweeks pass on, and the one little space of sunlight, between dawn andeve, has orbed itself

 "into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein. "

The thing that in my own case most tends to produce this "grace ofcongruity, " as the schoolmen say, is the presence of the rightcompanion, and it is no less important that he should be in the rightmood. Sometimes the right companion is tiresome when he should begracious, or boisterous when he should be quiet; but when he is in theright mood, he is like a familiar and sympathetic guide on a mountainpeak. He helps one at the right point; his desire to push on or to stopcoincides with one's own; he is not a hired assistant, but a brotherlycomrade. On the day that I am thinking of I had just such a companion. He was cheerful, accessible, good-humoured. He followed when I wantedto lead, he led when I was glad to follow. He was not ashamed of beingunaffectedly emotional, and he was not vaporous or quixoticallysentimental. He did not want to argue, or to hunt an idea to death; andwe had the supreme delight of long silences, during which our thoughtsled us to the same point, the truest test that there is some subtleelectrical affinity at work, moving viewlessly between heart and brain. 

What no doubt heightened the pleasure for me was that I had beenpassing through a somewhat dreary period. Things had been going wrong, had tied themselves into knots. Several people whose fortunes had beenbound up with my own had been acting perversely and unreasonably--atleast I chose to think so. My own work had come to a standstill. I hadpushed on perhaps too fast, and I had got into a bare sort of moorlandtract of life, and could not discern the path in the heather. There didnot seem any particular task for me to undertake; the people whom itwas my business to help, if I could, seemed unaccountably andaggravatingly prosperous and independent. Not only did no one seem towant my opinion, but I did not feel that I had any opinions worthdelivering. Who does not know the frame of mind? When life seems ratheran objectless business, and one is tempted just to let things slide;when energy is depleted, and the springs of hope are low; when onefeels like the family in one of Mrs. Walford's books, who all go out todinner together, and of whom the only fact that is related is that"nobody wanted them. " So fared it with my soul. 

But that morning, somehow, the delicious sense had returned, of its ownaccord, of a beautiful quality in common things. I had sought it invain for weeks; it had behaved as a cat behaves, the perverse, soft, pretty, indifferent creature. It had stared blankly at my beckoninghand; it had gambolled away into the bushes when I strove to captureit, and looked out at me when I desisted with innocent grey eyes; andnow it had suddenly returned uncalled, to caress me as though I hadbeen a long-lost friend, diligently and anxiously sought for in vain. That morning the very scent of breakfast being prepared came to mynostrils like the smoke of a sacrifice in my honour; the shape and hueof the flowers were full of gracious mystery; the green pasture seemeda place where a middle-aged man might almost venture to dance. Thesharp chirping of the birds in the shrubbery seemed a concert arrangedfor my ear. We were soon astir. Like Wordsworth we said that this oneday we would give to idleness, though the profane might ask to whatthat leisurely poet consecrated the rest of his days. 

We found ourselves deposited, by a brisk train--the very stoker seemedto be engaged in the joyful conspiracy--at the little town of St. Ives. I should like to expatiate upon the charms of St. Ives, its clear, broad, rush-fringed river, its quaint brick houses, with their littlewharf-gardens, where the trailing nasturtium mirrors itself in the slowflood, its embayed bridge, with the ancient chapel buttressed over thestream--but I must hold my hand; I must not linger over the beauties ofthe City of Destruction, which I have every reason to believe was avery picturesque place, when our hearts were set on pilgrimage. Sufficeit to say that we walked along a pretty riverside causeway, underenlacing limes, past the fine church, under the hanging woods ofHoughton Hill--and here we found a mill, a big, timbered place, with atiled roof, odd galleries and projecting pent-houses, all pleasantlydusted with flour, where a great wheel turned dripping in a fern-cladcavern of its own, with the scent of the weedy river-water blown backfrom the plunging leat. Oh, the joyful place of streams! River and leatand back-water here ran clear among willow-clad islands, all fringeddeep with meadow-sweet and comfrey and butterbur and melilot. The sunshone overhead among big, white, racing clouds; the fish poised inmysterious pools among trailing water-weeds; and there was soon no roomin my heart for anything but the joy of earth and the beauty of it. What did the weary days before and behind matter? What did casuistryand determinism and fate and the purpose of life concern us then, myfriend and me? As little as they concerned the gnats that danced sobusily in the golden light, at the corner where the alder dipped herred rootlets to drink the brimming stream. 

There we chartered a boat, and all that hot forenoon rowed lazily on, the oars grunting and dripping, the rudder clicking softly throughavenues of reeds and water-plants, from reach to reach, from pool topool. Here we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in the distance, over which quivered thehot summer air. Here a herd of cattle stood knee-deep in the shallowwater, lazily twitching their tails and snuffing at the stream. Thebirds were silent now in the glowing noon; only the reeds shivered andbowed. There, beside a lock with its big, battered timbers, the waterpoured green and translucent through a half-shut sluice. Now and thenthe springs of thought brimmed over in a few quiet words, that came andpassed like a breaking bubble--but for the most part we were silent, content to converse with nod or smile. And so we came at last to ourgoal; a house embowered in leaves, a churchyard beside the water, and achurch that seemed to have almost crept to the brink to see itselfmirrored in the stream. The place mortals call Hemingford Grey, but ithad a new name for me that day which I cannot even spell--for theperennial difficulty that survives a hundred disenchantments, is tofeel that a romantic hamlet seen thus on a day of pilgrimage, with itsclustering roofs and chimneys, its waterside lawns, is a real place atall. I suppose that people there live dull and simple lives enough, buyand sell, gossip and back-bite, wed and die; but for the pilgrim itseems an enchanted place, where there can be no care or sorrow, nothinghard, or unlovely, or unclean, but a sort of fairy-land, where men seemto be living the true and beautiful life of the soul, of which we arealways in search, but which seems to be so strangely hidden away. Itmust have been for me and my friend that the wise and kindly artist wholives there in a paradise of flowers had filled his trellises withclimbing roses, and bidden the tall larkspurs raise their azure spiresin the air. How else had he brought it all to such perfection for thatgolden hour? Perhaps he did not even guess that he had done it all formy sake, which made it so much more gracious a gift. And then welearned too from a little red-bound volume which I had thought beforewas a guide-book, but which turned out to-day to be a volume of theBook of Life, that the whole place was alive with the calling of oldvoices. At the little church there across the meadows the portly, tender-hearted, generous Charles James Fox had wedded his bride. Here, in the pool below, Cowper's dog had dragged out for him the yellowwater-lily that he could not reach; and in the church itself was alittle slab where two tiny maidens sleep, the sisters of the famousMiss Gunnings, who set all hearts ablaze by their beauty, who marrieddukes and earls, and had spent their sweet youth in a little ruinedmanor-house hard by. I wonder whether after all the two little girls, who died in the time of roses, had not the better part; and whether thegreat Duchess, who showed herself so haughty to poor Boswell, when heled his great dancing Bear through the grim North, did not thinksometimes in her state of the childish sisters with whom she hadplayed, before they came to be laid in the cool chancel beside the slowstream. 

And then we sate down for a little on the churchyard wall, and watchedthe water-grasses trail and the fish poise. In that sweet corner of thechurchyard, at a certain season of the year, grow white violets; theyhad dropped their blooms long ago; but they were just as much alive aswhen they were speaking aloud to the world with scent and colour; I cannever think of flowers and trees as not in a sense conscious; I believeall life to be conscious of itself, and I am sure that the floweringtime is the happy time for flowers as much as it is for artists. 

Close to us here was a wall, with a big, solid Georgian house peepingover, blinking with its open windows and sun-blinds on to a smooth, shaded lawn, full of green glooms and leafy shelters. Why did it allgive one such a sense of happiness and peace, even though one had noshare in it, even though one knew that one would be treated as a rudeand illegal intruder if one stepped across and used it as one's own?

This is a difficult thing to analyse. It all lies in the imagination;one thinks of a long perspective of sunny afternoons, of leisurelypeople sitting out in chairs under the big sycamore, reading perhaps, or talking quietly, or closing the book to think, the memory re-tellingsome old and pretty tale; and then perhaps some graceful girl comes outof the house with a world of hopes and innocent desires in herwide-open eyes; or a tall and limber boy saunters out bare-headed andflannelled, conscious of life and health, and steps down to the puntthat lies swinging at its chain--one hears it rattle as it is untiedand flung into the prow; and then the dripping pole is plunged andraised, and the punt goes gliding away, through zones of glimmeringlight and shadow, to the bathing-pool. All that comes into one's mind;one takes life, and subtracts from it all care and anxiety, all theshadow of failure and suffering, sees it as it might be, and finds itgood. That is the first element of the charm. And then there comes intothe picture a further and more reflective charm, that which Tennysoncalled the passion of the past; the thought that all this beautifullife is slipping away, even as it forms itself, that one cannot stay itfor an instant, but that the shadow creeps across the dial, and thechurch-clock tells the hours of the waning day. It is a mistake tothink that such a sense comes of age and experience; it is rather theother way, for never is the regretful sense of the fleeting quality ofthings realised with greater poignancy than when one is young. When onegrows older one begins to expect a good deal of dissatisfaction andanxiety to be mingled with it all, one finds the old Horatian maximbecoming true:

 "Vitae summa brevis nos spem vitat inchoare longam, "

and one learns to be grateful for the sunny hour; but when one isyoung, one feels so capable of enjoying it all, so impatient of shadowand rain, that one cannot bear that the sweet wine of life should bediluted. 

That is, I believe, the analysis of the charm of such a scene; thepossibility of joy, and permanence, tinged with the pathos that it hasno continuance, but rises and falls and fades like a ripple in thestream. 

The disillusionment of experience is a very different thing from thepathos of youth; for in youth the very sense of pathos is in itself anadded luxury of joy, giving it a delicate beauty which, if it were notso evanescent, it could not possess. 

But then comes the real trouble, the heavy anxiety, the illness, theloss; and those things, which looked so romantic in the pages of poetsand the scenes of story-writers, turn out not to be romantic at all, but frankly and plainly disagreeable and intolerable things. The boywho swept down the shining reaches with long, deft strokes becomes aman--money runs short, his children give him anxiety, his wife becomesailing and fretful, he has a serious illness; and when after a day ofpain he limps out in the afternoon to the shadow of the old plane-tree, he must be a very wise and tranquil and patient man, if he can stillfeel to the full the sweet influences of the place, and be stillabsorbed and comforted by them. 

And here lies the weakness of the epicurean and artistic attitude, thatit assorts so ill with the harder and grimmer facts of life. Life has ahabit of twitching away the artistic chair with all its cushions fromunder one, with a rude suddenness, so that one has, if one is wise, tolearn a mental agility and to avoid the temptation of drowsing in theland where it is always afternoon. The real attitude is to be able toplay a robust and manful part in the world, and yet to be able tobanish the thought of the bank-book and the ledger from the mind, andto submit oneself to the sweet influences of summer and sun. 

 "He who of such delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft is not unwise. "

So sang the old Puritan poet; and there is a large wisdom in the wordOFT which I have abundantly envied, being myself an anxious-minded man!

The solution is BALANCE--not to think that the repose of art is all, and yet on the other hand not to believe that life is always joggingand hustling one. The way in which one can test one's progress is byconsidering whether activities and tiresome engagements are beginningto fret one unduly, for if so one is becoming a hedonist; and on theother hand by being careful to observe whether one becomes incapable oftaking a holiday; if one becomes bored and restless and hipped in acessation of activities, then one is suffering from the disease ofMartha in the Gospel story; and of the two sisters we may remember thatMartha was the one who incurred a public rebuke. 

What one has to try to perceive is that life is designed not wholly fordiscomfort, or wholly for ease, but that we are here as learners, oneand all. Sometimes the lesson comes whispering through the leaves ofthe plane-tree, with the scent of violets in the air; sometimes itcomes in the words and glances of a happy circle full of eager talk, sometimes through the pages of a wise book, and sometimes in grimhours, when one tosses sleepless on one's bed under the pressure of anintolerable thought--but in each and every case we do best when wereceive the lesson as willingly and large-heartedly as we can. 

Perhaps, in some of my writings, those who have read them have thoughtthat I have unduly emphasised the brighter, sweeter, more tranquil sideof life. I have done so deliberately, because I believe that we shouldfollow innocent joy as far as we can. But it is not because I amunaware of the other side. I do not think that any of the windings ofthe dark wood of which Dante speaks are unknown to me, and there arefew tracts of dreariness that I have not trodden reluctantly. I havehad physical health and much seeming prosperity; but to be acutelysensitive to the pleasures of happiness and peace is generally to bemorbidly sensitive to the burden of cares. Unhappiness is a subjectivething. As Mrs. Gummidge so truly said, when she was reminded that otherpeople had their troubles, "I feel them more. " And if I have upheld theduty of seeking peace, it has been like a preacher who preaches mosturgently against his own bosom-sins. But I am sure of this, thathowever impatiently one mourns one's fault and desires to be different, the secret of growth lies in that very sorrow, perhaps in the seemingimpotence of that sorrow. What one must desire is to learn the truth, however much one may shudder at it; and the longer that one persists inone's illusions, the longer is one's learning-time. Is it not a bittercomfort to know that the truth is there, and that what we believe or donot believe about it makes no difference at all? Yes, I think it is acomfort; at all events upon that foundation alone is it possible torest. 

How far one drifts in thought away from the sweet scene which growssweeter every hour. The heat of the day is over now; the breeze curlson the stream, the shadow of the tower falls far across the water. Mycompanion rises and smiles, thinking me lost in indolent content; hehardly guesses how far I have been voyaging

 "On strange seas of thought alone. "

Does he guess that as I look back over my life, pain has so farpreponderated over happiness that I would not, if I could, live itagain, and that I would not in truth, if I could choose, have lived itat all? And yet, even so, I recognise that I am glad not to have thechoice, for it would be made in an indolent and timid spirit, and I doindeed believe that the end is not yet, and that the hour willassuredly come when I shall rejoice to have lived, and see the meaningeven of my fears. 

And then we retrace our way, and like the Lady of Shalott step downinto the boat, to glide along the darkling water-way in the westeringlight. Why cannot I speak to my friend of such dark things as these? Itwould be better perhaps if I could, and yet no hand can help us to bearour own burden. 

But the dusk comes slowly on, merging reed and pasture and glidingstream in one indistinguishable shade; the trees stand out blackagainst the sunset, thickening to an emerald green. A star comes outover the dark hill, the lights begin to peep out in the windows of theclustering town as we draw nearer. As we glide beneath the dark houses, with their gables and chimneys dark against the glowing sky, howeverything that is dull and trivial and homely is blotted out by thetwilight, leaving nothing but a sense of romantic beauty of mysteriouspeace! The little town becomes an enchanted city full of heroic folk;the figure that leans silently over the bridge to see us pass, to whathigh-hearted business is he vowed, burgher or angel? A spell is wovenof shadow and falling light, and of chimes floating over meadow andstream. Yet this sense of something remotely and unutterably beautiful, this transfiguration of life, is as real and vital an experience as thedaily, dreary toil, and to be welcomed as such. Nay, more! it isbetter, because it gives one a deepened sense of value, ofsignificance, of eternal greatness, to which we must cling as firmly aswe may, because it is there that the final secret lies; not in the poorstruggles, the anxious delays, which are but the incidents of thevoyage, and not the serene life of haven and home. 

XV

SYMBOLS

The present time is an era when intellectual persons are ashamed ofbeing credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result ofthe working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlesslyinvestigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discoveredto underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparentlyfortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast where thesystematisation will end. The result is a great inrush of bracing andinvigorating candour. It is not that our liberty of reflection andaction is increased. It is rather increasingly limited. But at least weare growing to discern where our boundaries are, and it is deeplyrefreshing to find that the boundaries erected by humanity are muchcloser and more cramping than the boundaries determined by God. We areno longer bound by human authority, by subjective theories, by pettytradition. We are no longer required to tremble before thaumaturgy andconjuring and occultism. It is true that science has hitherto confineditself mainly to the investigation of concrete phenomena; but the sameprocess is sure to be applied to metaphysics, to sociology, topsychology; and the day will assuredly come when the human race willanalyse the laws which govern progress, which regulate the exactdevelopment of religion and morality. 

The demolition of credulity is, as I have said, a wholly desirable andbeneficial thing. Most intelligent people have found some happiness inlearning that the dealings of God--that is, the creative andoriginative power behind the universe--are at all events not whimsical, however unintelligible they may be. No one at all events is nowrequired to reconcile with his religious faith a detailed belief in theMosaic cosmogony, or to accept the fact that a Hebrew prophet wasenabled to summon bears from a wood to tear to pieces some unhappy boyswho found food for mirth in his personal appearance. That is a puregain. But side by side with this entirely wholesome process, there area good many people who have thrown overboard, together with theircredulity, a quality of a far higher and nobler kind, which may becalled faith. Men who have seen many mysteries explained, and many darkriddles solved in nature, have fallen into what is called materialism, from the mistaken idea that the explanation of material phenomena willhold good for the discernment of abstract phenomena. Yet any one whoapproaches the results of scientific investigation in a philosophicaland a poetical spirit, sees clearly enough that nothing has beenattempted but analysis, and that the mystery which surrounds us is onlythrust a little further off, while the darkness is as impenetrable andprofound as ever. All that we have learnt is how natural law works; wehave not come near to learning why it works as it does. All we havereally acquired is a knowledge that the audacious and unsatisfactorytheories, such, for instance, as the old-fashioned scheme ofredemption, by which men have attempted with a pathetic hopefulness tojustify the ways of God to man, are, and are bound to be, despairinglyincomplete. The danger of the scientific spirit is not that it is tooagnostic, but that it is not agnostic enough: it professes to accountfor everything when it only has a very few of the data in its grasp. The materialistic philosophy tends to be a tyranny which menacesliberty of thought. Every one has a right to deduce what theory he canfrom his own experience. The one thing that we have no sort of right todo is to enforce that theory upon people whose experience does notconfirm it. We may invite them to act upon our assumptions, but we mustnot blame them if they end by considering them to be baseless. I wastalking the other day to an ardent Roman Catholic, who described by aparable the light in which he viewed the authority of the Church. Hesaid that it was as if he were half-way up a hill, prevented fromlooking over into a hidden valley by the slope of the ground. On thehill-top, he said, might be supposed to stand people in whose goodfaith and accuracy of vision he had complete confidence. If theydescribed to him what they saw in the valley beyond, he would not dreamof mistrusting them. But the analogy breaks down at every point, because the essence of it is that every one who reached the hill-topwould inevitably see the same scene. Yet in the case of religion, thehill-top is crowded by people, whose good faith is equallyincontestable, but whose descriptions of what lies beyond are athopeless variance. Moreover all alike confess that the impressions theyderive are outside the possibility of scientific or intellectual tests, and that it is all a matter of inference depending upon a subjectiveconsent in the mind of the discerner to accept what is incapable ofproof. The strength of the scientific position is that the scientificobserver is in the presence of phenomena confirmed by innumerableinvestigations, and that, up to a certain point, the operation of a lawhas been ascertained, which no reasonable man has any excuse fordoubting. Whenever that law conflicts with religious assumptions, whichin any case cannot be proved to be more than subjective assumptions, the unverifiable theory must go down before the verifiable. Religionmay assume, for instance, that life is an educative process; but thattheory cannot be considered proved in the presence of the fact thatmany human beings close their eyes upon the world before they arecapable of exercising any moral or intellectual choice whatever. 

It may prove, upon investigation, that all religious theories and allcreeds are nothing more than the desperate and pathetic attempts ofhumanity, conscious of an instinctive horror of suffering, and of aninalienable sense of their right to happiness, to provide a solutionfor the appalling fact that many human beings seem created only tosuffer and to be unhappy. The mystery is a very dark one; andphilosophy is still not within reach of explaining how it is that asense of justice should be implanted in man by the Power that appearsso often to violate that conception of justice. 

The fact is that the progress of science has created an immense demandfor the quality of faith and hopefulness, by revealing so much that ispessimistic in the operation of natural law. If we are to live with anymeasure of contentment or tranquillity, we must acquire a confidencethat God has not, as science tends to indicate, made all men fornought. We must, if we can, acquire some sort of hope that it is not inmere wantonness and indifference that He confronts us with thenecessity for bearing the things that He has made us most to dread. Itmay be easy enough for robust, vigorous, contented persons to believethat God means us well; but the only solution that is worth anything isa solution that shall give us courage, patience, and even joy, at timeswhen everything about us seems to speak of cruelty and terror andinjustice. One of the things that has ministered comfort in largemeasure to souls so afflicted is the power of tracing a certain beautyand graciousness in the phenomena that surround us. Who is there who inmoments of bewildered sorrow has not read a hint of some vastlovingness, moving dimly in the background of things, in the touch offamiliar hands or in the glances of dear eyes? Surely, they have saidto themselves, if love is the deepest, strongest, and most lastingforce in the world, the same quality must be hidden deepest in theHeart of God. This is the unique strength of the Christian revelation, the thought of the Fatherhood of God, and His tender care for all thathe has made. Again, who is there who in depression and anxiety has nothad his load somewhat lightened by the sight of the fresh green ofspring foliage against a blue sky, by the colour and scent of flowers, by the sweet melody of musical chords? The aching spirit has said, "They are there--beauty, and peace, and joy--if I could but find theway to them. " Who has not had his fear of death alleviated by the happyend of some beloved life, when the dear one has made, as it were, solemn haste to be gone, falling gently into slumber? Who is there, who, speeding homewards in the sunset, has seen the dusky orange veilof flying light drawn softly westward over misty fields, where the oldhouse stands up darkling among the glimmering pastures, and has notfelt the presence of some sweet secret waiting for him beyond the gatesof life and death? All these things are symbols, because the emotionsthey arouse are veritably there, as indisputable a phenomenon as anyfact which science has analysed. The miserable mistake that manyintellectual people make is to disregard what they would call vagueemotions in the presence of scientific truth. Yet such emotions have afar more intimate concern for us than the dim sociology of bees, or theconcentric forces of the stars. Our emotions are far more true andvivid experiences for us than indisputable laws of nature which nevercut the line of our life at all. We may wish, perhaps, that the laws ofsuch emotions were analysed and systematised too, for it is a verytimid and faltering spirit that thinks that definiteness is the same asprofanation. We may depend upon it that the deeper we can probe intosuch secrets, the richer will our conceptions of life and God become. 

The mistake that is so often made by religious organisations, whichdepend so largely upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of thissymbolism to traditional ceremonies and venerable ritual. It has beensaid that religion is the only form of poetry accessible to the poor;and it is true in the sense that anything which hallows and quickensthe most normal and simple experiences of lives divorced fromintellectual and artistic influences is a very real and true kind ofsymbolism. It may be well to give people such symbolism as they canunderstand, and the best symbols of all are those that deal with thecommonest emotions. But it is a lean wisdom that emphasises a limitedrange of emotions at the expense of a larger range; and the spiritwhich limits the sacred influences of religion to particular buildingsand particular rites is very far removed from the spirit of Him whosaid that neither at Gerizim nor in Jerusalem was the Father to beworshipped, but in spirit and in truth. At the same time the naturalimpatience of one who discerns a symbolism all about him, in tree andflower, in sunshine and rain, and who hates to see the rangerestricted, is a feeling that a wise and tolerant man ought to resist. It is ill to break the pitcher because the well is at hand! One doesnot make a narrow soul broader by breaking down its boundaries, but byrevealing the beauty of the further horizon. Even the false feeling ofcompassion must be resisted. A child is more encouraged by listeningpatiently to its tale of tiny exploits, than by casting ridicule uponthem. 

But on the other hand it is a wholly false timidity for one who hasbeen brought up to love and reverence the narrower range of symbols, tochoke and stifle the desires that stir in his heart for the widerrange, out of deference to authority and custom. One must not discard acramping garment until one has a freer one to take its place; but tocontinue in the confining robe with the larger lying ready to one'shand, from a sense of false pathos and unreasonable loyalty, is a pieceof foolishness. 

There are, I believe, hundreds of men and women now alive, who haveoutgrown their traditional faith, through no fault of their own; butwho out of terror at the vague menaces of interested and Pharisaicalpersons do not dare to break away. One must of course weigh carefullywhether one values comfort or liberty most. But what I would say isthat it is of the essence of a faith to be elastic, to be capable ofdevelopment, to be able to embrace the forward movement of thought. Nowso far am I from wishing to suggest that we have outgrown Christianity, that I would assert that we have not yet mastered its simplestprinciples. I believe with all my soul that it is still able to embracethe most daring scientific speculations, for the simple reason that itis hardly concerned with them at all. Where religious faith conflictswith science is in the tenacity with which it holds to the literaltruth of the miraculous occurrences related in the Scriptures. Some ofthese present no difficulty, some appear to be scientificallyincredible. Yet these latter seem to me to be but the perfectly naturalcontemporary setting of the faith, and not to be of the essence ofChristianity at all. Miracles, whether they are true or not, are at allevents unverifiable, and no creed that claims to depend upon theacceptance of unverifiable events can have any vitality. But thepersonality, the force, the perception of Christ Himself emerges withabsolute distinctness from the surrounding details. We may not be in aposition to check exactly what He said and what He did not say, butjust as no reasonable man can hold that He was merely an imaginativeconception invented by people who obviously did not understand Him, sothe general drift of His teaching is absolutely clear and convincing. 

What I would have those do who can profess themselves sincerelyconvinced Christians, in spite of the uncertainty of many of therecorded details, is to adopt a simple compromise; to claim their partin the inheritance of Christ, and the symbols of His mysteries, but notto feel themselves bound by any ecclesiastical tradition. No one canforbid, by peevish regulations, direct access to the spirit of Christand to the love of God. Christ's teaching was a purely individualisticteaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties ofthe position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed forwhat is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deferencefor the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere Christianshould, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols ofunity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher andwider range of symbols, the symbols of natural beauty and art andliterature--all the passionate dreams of peace and emotion that havethrilled the yearning hearts of men. Wherever those emotions have ledmen along selfish, cruel, sensual paths, they must be distrusted, justas we must distrust the religious emotions which have sanctioned suchdivergences from the spirit of Christ. We must believe that the essenceof religion is to make us alive to the love of God, in whatever writingof light and air, of form and fragrance it is revealed; and we mustfurther believe that religion is meant to guide and quicken the tender, compassionate, brotherly emotions, by which we lean to each other inthis world where so much is dark. But to denounce the narrower forms ofreligion, or to abstain from them, is utterly alien to the spirit ofChrist. He obeyed and reverenced the law, though He knew that theexpanding spirit of His own teaching would break it in pieces. Ofcourse, since liberty is the spirit of the Gospel, a libertyconditioned by the sense of equality, there may be occasions when a manis bound to resist what appears to him to be a moral or an intellectualtyranny. But short of that, the only thing of which one must beware isa conscious insincerity; and the limits of that a man must determinefor himself. There are occasions when consideration for the feelings ofothers seems to conflict with one's own sense of sincerity; but I thinkthat one is seldom wrong in preferring consideration for others to thepersonal indulgence of one's own apparent sincerity. 

Peace and gentleness always prevail in the end over vehemence andviolence, and a peaceful revolution brings about happier results for acountry, as we have good reason to know, than a revolution of force. Even now the narrower religious systems prevail more in virtue of thegentleness and goodwill and persuasion of their ministers than throughthe spiritual terrors that they wield--the thunders are divorced fromthe lightning. 

Thus may the victories of faith be won, not by noise and strife, but bythe silent motion of a resistless tide. Even now it creeps softly overthe sand and brims the stagnant pools with the freshening andinvigorating brine. 

But in the worship of the symbol there is one deep danger; and that isthat if one rests upon it, if one makes one's home in the palace ofbeauty or philosophy or religion, one has failed in the quest. It isthe pursuit not of the unattained but of the unattainable to which weare vowed. Nothing but the unattainable can draw us onward. It is restthat is forbidden. We are pilgrims yet; and if, intoxicated and bemusedby beauty or emotion or religion, we make our dwelling there, it is asthough we slept in the enchanted ground. Enough is given us, and nomore, to keep us moving forwards. To be satisfied is to slumber. Themelancholy that follows hard in the footsteps of art, the sadnesshaunting the bravest music, the aching, troubled longing that creepsinto the mind at the sight of the fairest scene, is but the warningpresence of the guide that travels with us and fears that we maylinger. Who has not seen across a rising ground the gables of the oldhouse, the church tower, dark among the bare boughs of the rookery in asmiling sunset, and half lost himself at the thought of the impossiblybeautiful life that might be lived there? To-day, just when the westernsun began to tinge the floating clouds with purple and gold, I saw bythe roadside an old labourer, fork on back, plodding heavily across aploughland all stippled with lines of growing wheat. Hard by a windmillwhirled its clattering arms. How I longed for something that wouldrender permanent the scene, sight, and sound alike. It told me somehowthat the end was not yet. What did it stand for? I hardly know; forlife, slow and haggard with toil, hard-won sustenance, all overhungwith the crimson glories of waning light, the wet road itself catchingthe golden hues of heaven. A little later, passing by the great pauperasylum that stands up so naked among the bare fields, I looked over ahedge, and there, behind the engine-house with its heaps of scoriae andrubbish, lay a little trim ugly burial-ground, with a dismal mortuary, upon which some pathetic and tawdry taste had been spent. There in rowslay the mouldering bones of the failures of life and old sin; not evena headstone over each with a word of hope, nothing but a number on atin tablet. Nothing more incredibly sordid could be devised. Onethought of the sad rite, the melancholy priest, the handful ofrelatives glad at heart that the poor broken life was over and thewretched associations at an end. Yet even that sight too warned one notto linger, and that the end was not yet. Presently, in the gatheringtwilight, I was making my way through the streets of the city. The duskhad obliterated all that was mean and dreary. Nothing but the irregularhousefronts stood up against the still sky, the lighted windows givingthe sense of home and ease. A quiet bell rang for vespers in a churchtower, and as I passed I heard an organ roll within. It all seemed asweetly framed message to the soul, a symbol of joy and peace. 

But then I reflected that the danger was of selecting, out of thesymbols that crowded around one on every side, merely those thatministered to one's own satisfaction and contentment. The sad horror ofthat other place, the little bare place of desolate graves--that mustbe a symbol as well, that must stand as a witness of some part of theawful mind of God, of the strange flaw or rent that seems to runthrough His world. It may be more comfortable, more luxurious to detachthe symbol that testifies to the satisfaction of our needs; but notthus do we draw near to truth and God. And then I thought that perhapsit was best, when we are secure and careless and joyful, to look attimes steadily into the dark abyss of the world, not in the spirit ofmorbidity, not with the sense of the macabre--the skeleton behind therich robe, death at the monarch's shoulder; but to remind ourselves, faithfully and wisely, that for us too the shadow waits; and then thatin our moments of dreariness and heaviness we should do well to seekfor symbols of our peace, not thrusting them peevishly aside as onlyserving to remind us of what we have lost and forfeited, but dwellingon them patiently and hopefully, with a tender onlooking to thegracious horizon with all its golden lights and purple shadows. Andthus not in a mercantile mood trafficking for our delight in themysteries of life--for not by prudence can we draw near to God--but ina childlike mood, valuing the kindly word, the smile that lights up thenarrow room and enriches the austere fare, and paying no heed at all tothe jealousies and the covetous ingathering that turns the temple ofthe Father into a house of merchandise. 

For here, deepest of all, lies the worth of the symbol; that this lifeof ours is not a little fretful space of days, rounded with a sleep, but an integral part of an inconceivably vast design, flooding throughand behind the star-strewn heavens; that there is no sequence of eventsas we conceive, that acts are not done or words said, once and for all, and then laid away in the darkness; but that it is all an ever-livingthing, in which the things that we call old are as much present in themind of God as the things that shall be millions of centuries hence. There is no uncertainty with Him, no doubt as to what shall behereafter; and if we once come near to that truth, we can draw from it, in our darkest hours, a refreshment that cannot fail; for the saddestthought in the mind of man is the thought that these things could havebeen, could be other than they are; and if we once can bring home toourselves the knowledge that God is unchanged and unchangeable, ourfaithless doubts, our melancholy regrets melt in the light of truth, asthe hoar-frost fades upon the grass in the rising sun, when everyglobed dewdrop flashes like a jewel in the radiance of the fiery dawn. 

XVI

OPTIMISM

We Anglo-Saxons are mostly optimists at heart; we love to have thingscomfortable, and to pretend that they are comfortable when theyobviously are not. The brisk Anglo-Saxon, if he cannot reach thegrapes, does not say that the grapes are sour, but protests that hedoes not really care about grapes. A story is told of a great Englishproconsul who desired to get a loan from the Treasury of the Governmentover which he practically, though not nominally, presided. He went tothe Financial Secretary and said: "Look here, T----, you must get me aloan for a business I have very much at heart. " The secretary whistled, and then said: "Well, I will try; but it is not the least use. " "Oh, you will manage it somehow, " said the proconsul, "and I may tell youconfidentially it is absolutely essential. " The following morning thesecretary came to report: "I told you it was no use, sir, and itwasn't; the Board would not hear of it. " "Damnation!" said theproconsul, and went on writing. A week after he met the secretary, whofelt a little shy. "By the way, T----, " said the great man, "I havebeen thinking over that matter of the loan, and it was a mercy you werenot successful; it would have been a hopeless precedent, and we aremuch better without it. "

That is the true Anglo-Saxon spirit of optimism. The most truly Britishperson I know is a man who will move heaven and earth to secure a postor to compass an end; but when he fails, as he does not often fail, hesays genially that he is more thankful than he can say; it would havebeen ruin to him if he had been successful. The same quality runsthrough our philosophy and our religion. Who but an Anglo-Saxon wouldhave invented the robust theory, to account for the fact that prayersare often not granted, that prayers are always directly answeredwhether you attain your desire or not? The Greeks prayed that the godswould grant them what was good even if they did not desire it, andwithhold what was evil even if they did desire it. The shrewd Romansaid: "The gods will give us what is most appropriate; man is dearer tothem than to himself. " But the faithful Anglo-Saxon maintains that hisprayer is none the less answered even if it be denied, and that it ismade up to him in some roundabout way. It is inconceivable to theAnglo-Saxon that there may be a strain of sadness and melancholy in thevery mind of God; he cannot understand that there can be any beauty insorrow. To the Celt, sorrow itself is dear and beautiful, and themournful wailing of winds, the tears of the lowering cloud, afford himsweet and even luxurious sensations. The memory of grief is one of thegood things that remains to him, as life draws to its close; for loveis to him the sister of grief rather than the mother of joy. But thisis to the Anglo-Saxon mind a morbid thing. The hours in which sorrowhas overclouded him are wasted, desolated hours, to be forgotten andobliterated as soon as possible. There is nothing sacred about them;they are sad and stony tracts over which he has made haste to cross, and the only use of them is to heighten the sense of security and joy. And thus the sort of sayings that satisfy and sustain the Anglo-Saxonmind are such irrepressible outbursts of poets as "God's in His heaven;all's right with the world"--the latter part of which is flagrantlycontradicted by experience; and, as for the former part, if it be true, it lends no comfort to the man who tries to find his God in the world. Again, when Browning says that the world "means intensely and meansgood, " he is but pouring oil upon the darting flame of optimism, because there are many people to whom the world has no particularmeaning, and few who can re-echo the statement that it means good. Thatsome rich surprise, in spite of palpable and hourly experience to thecontrary, may possibly await us, is the most that some of us dare tohope. 

My own experience, the older I grow, and the more I see of life, isthat I feel it to be a much more bewildering and even terrifying thingthan I used to think it. To use a metaphor, instead of its being apatient educational process, which I would give all that I possessed tobe able sincerely to believe it to be, it seems to me arranged far moreupon the principle of a game of cricket--which I have always held tobe, in theory, the most unjust and fortuitous of games. You step to thewicket, you have only a single chance; the boldest and most patient manmay make one mistake at the outset, and his innings is over; the timidtremulous player may by undeserved good luck contrive to keep hiswicket up, till his heart has got into the right place, and his eye haswriggled straight, and he is set. 

That is the first horrible fact about life--that carelessness is oftennot penalised at all, whereas sometimes it is instantly and fiercelypenalised. One boy at school may break every law, human and divine, andgo out into the world unblemished. Another timid and good-natured childmay make a false step, and be sent off into life with a permanent cloudover him. School life often emphasises the injustice of the worldinstead of trying to counteract it. Schoolmasters tend to hustle theweak rather than to curb the strong. 

And then we pass into the larger world, and what do we see? A sadconfusion everywhere. We see an innocent and beautiful girl struck downby a long and painful disease--a punishment perhaps appropriate to somerobust and hoary sinner, who has gathered forbidden fruit with both hishands, and the juices of which go down to the skirts of his clothing;or a brave and virtuous man, with a wife and children dependent on him, needed if ever man was, kind, beneficent, strong, is struck down out oflife in a moment. On the other hand, we see a mean and cautious sinner, with no touch of unselfishness and affection, guarded and secured inmaterial contentment. Let any one run over in his mind the memories ofhis own circle, fill up the gaps, and ask himself bravely and franklywhether he can trace a wise and honest and beneficent design allthrough. He may try to console himself by saying that the disasters ofgood people, after all, are the exceptions, and that, as a rule, courage and purity of heart are rewarded, while cowardice andfilthiness are punished. But what room is there for exceptions in aworld governed by God Whom we must believe to be all-powerful, all-just, and all-loving? It is the wilful sin of man, says themoralist, that has brought these hard things upon him. But that is noanswer, for the dark shadow lies as sombrely over irresponsible nature, which groans over undeserved suffering. And then, to make the shadowdarker still, we have all the same love of life, the same inalienablesense of our right to happiness, the same inheritance of love. If wecould but see that in the end pain and loss would be blest, there isnothing that we would not gladly bear. Yet that sight, too, is deniedus. 

And yet we live and laugh and hope, and forget. We take our fill oftranquil days and pleasant companies, though for some of us the thoughtthat it is all passing, passing, even while we lean towards it smiling, touches the very sunlight with pain. "How morbid, how self-tormenting!"says the prudent friend, if such thoughts escape us. "Why not enjoy thedelight and bear the pain? That is life; we cannot alter it. " But noton such terms, can I, for one, live. To know, to have someassurance--that is the one and only thing that matters at all. For if Ionce believed that God were careless, or indifferent, or impotent, Iwould fly from life as an accursed thing; whereas I would give all thepeace, and joy, and contentment, that may yet await me upon earth, andtake up cheerfully the heaviest burden that could be devised ofdarkness and pain, if I could be sure of an after-life that will giveus all the unclouded serenity, and strength, and love, for which wecrave every moment. Sometimes, in a time of strength and calm weather, when the sun is bright and the friend I love is with me, and the scentof the hyacinths blows from the wood, I have no doubt of the love andtenderness of God; and, again, when I wake in the dreadful dawn to thesharp horror of the thought that one I love is suffering and crying outin pain and drifting on to death, the beauty of the world, the familiarscene, is full of a hateful and atrocious insolence of grace andsweetness; and then I feel that we are all perhaps in the grip of somerelentless and inscrutable law that has no care for our happiness orpeace at all, and works blindly and furiously in the darkness, bespattering some with woe and others with joy. Those are the blackestand most horrible moments of life; and yet even so we live on. 

As I write at my ease I see the velvety grass green on the richpasture; the tall spires of the chestnut perch, and poise, and sway inthe sun; a thrush sings hidden in the orchard; it is all caressingly, enchantingly beautiful, and I am well content to be alive. Lookingbackwards, I discern that I have had my share, and more than my share, of good things. But they are over; they are mine no longer. And even asI think the thought, the old church clock across the fields tells outanother hour that is fallen softly into the glimmering past. If I coulddiscern any strength or patience won from hours of pain and sorrow itwould be easier; but the memory of pain makes me dread pain the more, the thought of past sorrow makes future sorrow still more black. Iwould rather have strength than tranquillity, when all is done; butlife has rather taught me my weakness, and struck the garland out of myreluctant hand. 

To-day I have been riding quietly among fields deep with buttercups andfringed by clear, slow streams. The trees are in full spring leaf, onlythe oaks and walnuts a little belated, unfurling their rusty-redfronds. A waft of rich scent comes from a hawthorn hedge where a hiddencuckoo flutes, or just where the lane turns by the old water-mill, which throbs and grumbles with the moving gear, a great lilac-bushleans out of a garden and fills the air with perfume. Yet, as I go, Iam filled with a heavy anxiety, which plays with my sick heart as a catplays with a mouse, letting it run a little in the sun, and thenpouncing upon it in terror and dismay. The beautiful sounds and sightsround me--the sight of the quiet, leisurely people I meet--ought, onewould think, to soothe and calm the unquiet heart. But they do not;they rather seem to mock and flout me with a savage insolence ofcareless welfare. My thoughts go back, I do not know why, to an oldhouse where I spent many happy days, now in the hands of strangers. Iremember sitting, one of a silent and happy party, on a terrace in thedusk of a warm summer night, and how one of those present called to theowls that were hooting in the hanging wood above the house, so thatthey drew near in answer to the call, flying noiselessly, and suddenlyuttering their plaintive notes from the heart of the great chestnut onthe lawn. Below I can see the dewy glimmering fields, the lights of thelittle port, the pale sea-line. It seems now all impossibly beautifuland tranquil; but I know that even then it was often marred bydisappointments, and troubles, and fears. Little anxieties that haveall melted softly into the past, that were easily enough borne, when itcame to the point, yet, looming up as they did in the future, filledthe days with the shadow of fear. That is the phantom that one ought tolay, if it can be laid. And is there hidden somewhere any well ofhealing, any pure source of strength and refreshment, from which we candrink and be calm and brave? That is a question which each has toanswer tor himself. For myself, I can only say that strength issometimes given, sometimes denied. How foolish to be anxious! Yes, buthow inevitable! If the beauty and the joy of the world gave oneassurance in dark hours that all was certainly well, the pilgrimagewould be an easy one. But can one be optimistic by resolving to be? Onecan of course control oneself, one can let no murmur of pain escapeone, one can even enunciate deep and courageous maxims, because onewould not trouble the peace of others, waiting patiently till thegolden mood returns. But what if the desolate conviction forces itselfupon the mind that sorrow is the truer thing? What if one tests one'sown experience, and sees that, under the pressure of sorrow, one afteranother of the world's lights are extinguished, health, and peace, andbeauty, and delight, till one asks oneself whether sorrow is notperhaps the truest and most actual thing of all? That is the ghastliestof moments, when everything drops from us but fear and horror, when wethink that we have indeed found truth at last, and that the answer toPilate's bitter question is that pain is the nearest thing to truthbecause it is the strongest. If I felt that, says the reluctant heart, I should abandon myself to despair. No, says sterner reason, you wouldbear it because you cannot escape from it. Into whatever depths ofdespair you fell, you would still be upheld by the law that bids you be. 

Where, then, is the hope to be found? It is here. One is tempted tothink of God through human analogies and symbols. We think of Him as ofa potter moulding the clay to his will; as of a statesman that sways astate; as of an artist that traces a fair design. But all similitudesand comparisons break down, for no man can create anything; he can butmodify matter to his ends, and when he fails, it is because of somenatural law that cuts across his design and thwarts him relentlessly. But the essence of God's omnipotence is that both law and matter areHis and originate from Him; so that, if a single fibre of what we knowto be evil can be found in the world, either God is responsible forthat, or He is dealing with something He did not originate and cannotovercome. Nothing can extricate us from this dilemma, except the beliefthat what we think evil is not really evil at all, but hidden good; andthus we have firm ground under our feet at last, and can begin to climbout of the abyss. And then we feel in our own hearts how indomitable isour sense of our right to happiness, how unconquerable our hope; howswiftly we forget unhappiness; how firmly we remember joy; and then wesee that the one absolutely permanent and vital power in the world isthe power of love, which wins victories over every evil we can name;and if it is so plain that love is the one essential and triumphantforce in the world, it must be the very heartbeat of God; till we feelthat when soon or late the day comes for us, when our swimming eyesdiscern ever more faintly the awestruck pitying faces round us, and thesenses give up their powers one by one, and the tides of death creep onus, and the daylight dies--that even so we shall find that loveawaiting us in the region to which the noblest and bravest and purest, as well as the vilest and most timid and most soiled have gone. 

This, then, is the only optimism that is worth the name; not the feebleoptimism that brushes away the darker side of life impatiently andfretfully, but the optimism that dares to look boldly into the fiercestmiseries of the human spirit, and to come back, as Perseus came, paleand smoke-stained, from the dim underworld, and say that there is yethope brightening on the verge of the gloom. 

What one desires, then, is an optimism which arises from taking a wideview of things as they are, and taking the worst side into account, notan optimism which is only made possible by wearing blinkers. I wasreading a day or two ago a suggestive and brilliant book by one of ourmost prolific critics, Mr. Chesterton, on the subject of Dickens. Mr. Chesterton is of opinion that our modern tendency to pessimism resultsfrom our inveterate realism. Contrasting modern fictions with the oldheroic stories, he says that we take some indecisive clerk for thesubject of a story, and call the weak-kneed cad "the hero. " He seems tothink that we ought to take a larger and more robust view of humanpossibilities, and keep our eyes steadily fixed upon more vigorous andgenerous characters. But the result of this is the ugly andunphilosophical kind of optimism after all, that calls upon God todespise the work of His own hands, that turns upon all that is feebleand unsightly and vulgar with anger and disdain, like the man in theparable who took advantage of his being forgiven a great debt to exacta tiny one. The tragedy is that the knock-kneed clerk is all in all tohimself. In clear-sighted and imaginative moments, he may realise in asudden flash of horrible insight that he is so far from being what hewould desire to be, so unheroic, so loosely strung, so deplorable--andyet that he can do so little to bridge the gap. The only method ofmanufacturing heroes is to encourage people to believe in themselvesand their possibilities, to assure them that they are indeed dear toGod; not to reveal relentlessly to them their essential lowness andshabbiness. It is not the clerk's fault that his mind is sordid andweak, and that his knees knock together; and no optimism is worth thename that has not a glorious message for the vilest. Or, again, it ispossible to arrive at a working optimism by taking a very dismal viewof everything. There is a story of an old Calvinist minister whosedaughter lay dying, far away, of a painful disease, who wrote her aletter of consolation, closing with the words, "Remember, deardaughter, that all short of Hell is mercy. " Of course if one can takeso richly decisive a view of the Creator's purpose for His creatures, and look upon Hell as the normal destination from which a few, by theoverpowering condescension of God, are saved and separated, one mightfind matter of joy in discovering one soul in a thousand who was judgedworthy of salvation. But this again is a clouded view, because it takesno account of the profound and universal preference for happiness inthe human heart, and erects the horrible ideal of a Creator whodeliberately condemns the vast mass of His creatures to a fate which Hehas no less deliberately created them to abhor and dread. 

Our main temptation after all lies in the fact that we are so impatientof any delay or any uneasiness. We are like the child who, when firstconfronted with suffering, cannot bear to believe in its existence, andwho, if it is prolonged, cannot believe in the existence of anythingelse. What we have rather to do is to face the problem strongly andcourageously, to take into account the worst and feeblest possibilitiesof our nature, and yet not to overlook the fact that the worst andlowest specimen of humanity has a dim inkling of something higher andhappier, to which he would attain if he knew how. 

I had a little object-lesson a few days ago in the subject. It was aBank Holiday, and I walked pensively about the outskirts of a big town. The streets were crowded with people of all sorts and sizes. I confessthat a profound melancholy was induced in me by the spectacle of theyoung of both sexes. They were enjoying themselves, it is true, withall their might; and I could not help wondering why, as a rule, theyshould enjoy themselves so offensively. The girls walked about, tittering and ogling, the young men were noisy, selfish, ill-mannered, enjoying nothing so much as the discomfiture of any passer-by. Theypushed each other into ditches, they tripped up a friend who passed ona bicycle, and all roared in concert at the rueful way in which hesurveyed a muddy coat and torn trousers. There seemed to be not theslightest idea among them of contributing to each other's pleasure. Thepoint was to be amused at the expense of another, and to be securelyobstreperous. 

But among these there were lovers walking, faint and pale with mutualadmiration; a young couple led along a hideous over-dressed child, andhad no eyes for anything except its clumsy movements and fatuousquestions. Or an elderly couple strolled along, pleased and contented, with a married son and daughter. The cure of the vile mirth of youthseemed after all to be love and the anxious care of other lives. 

And thus indeed a gentle optimism did emerge, after all, from thetangle. I felt that it was strange that there should be so much tobreed dissatisfaction. I struck out of the town, and soon was passing amill in broad water-meadows, overhung by great elms; the grass wasgolden with buttercups, the foliage was rich upon the trees. The waterbubbled pleasantly in the great pool, and an old house thrust a prettygable out over lilacs clubbed with purple bloom. The beauty of theplace was put to my lips, like a cup of the waters of comfort. Thesadness was the drift of human life out of sweet places such as this, into the town that overflowed the meadows with its avenues of meanhouses, where the railway station, with its rows of stained trucks, itscindery floor, its smoking engines, buzzed and roared with life. 

But the pessimism of one who sees the simple life fading out, theancient quietude invaded, the country caught in the feelers of thetown, is not a real pessimism at all, or rather it is a pessimism whichresults from a deficiency of imagination, and is only a matter ofpersonal taste, perhaps of personal belatedness. Twelve generations ofmy own family lived and died as Yorkshire yeomen-farmers, and my ownpreference is probably a matter of instinctive inheritance. The pointis not what a few philosophers happen to like, but what humanity likes, and what it is happiest in liking. I should have but small confidencein the Power that rules the world, if I did not believe that the vastsocial development of Europe, its civilisation, its network ofcommunications, its bustle, its tenser living, its love of socialexcitement was not all part of a great design. I do not believe thathumanity is perversely astray, hurrying to destruction. I believerather that it is working out the possibilities that lie within it; andif human beings had been framed to live quiet pastoral lives, theywould be living them still. The one question for the would-be optimistis whether humanity is growing nobler, wiser, more unselfish; and ofthat I have no doubt whatever. The sense of equality, of the rights ofthe weak, compassion, brotherliness, benevolence, are living ideas, throbbing with life; the growth of the power of democracy, much as itmay tend to inconvenience one personally, is an entirely hopeful anddesirable thing; and if a man is disposed to pessimism, he ought to askhimself seriously to what extent his pessimism is conditioned by hisown individual prospect of happiness. It is quite possible to conceiveof a man without any hope of personal immortality, or the continuanceof individual identity, whose future might be clouded, say, by hisbeing the victim of a painful and incurable disease, and who yet mightbe a thoroughgoing optimist with regard to the future of humanity. Nothing in the world could be so indicative of the rise in the moraland emotional temperature of the world as the fact that men areincreasingly disposed to sacrifice their own ambitions and their owncomfort for the sake of others, and are willing to suffer, if thehappiness of the race may be increased; and much of the pessimism thatprevails is the pessimism of egotists and individualists, who feel nointerest in the rising tide, because it does not promise to themselvesany increase in personal satisfaction. No man can possibly hold thecontinuance of personal identity to be an indisputable fact, becausethere is no sort of direct evidence on the subject; and indeed all theevidence that exists is rather against the belief than for it. Thebelief is in reality based upon nothing but instinct and desire, andthe impossibility of conceiving of life as existing apart from one'sown perception. But even if a man cannot hold that it is in any sense acertainty, he may cherish a hope that it is true, and he may begenerously and sincerely grateful for having been allowed to taste, through the medium of personal consciousness, the marvellous experienceof the beauty and interest of life, its emotions, its relationships, its infinite yearnings, even though the curtain may descend upon hisown consciousness of it, and he himself may become as though he hadnever been, his vitality blended afresh in the vitality of the world, just as the body of his life, so near to him, so seemingly his own, will undoubtedly be fused and blent afresh in the sum of matter. A man, even though racked with pain and tortured with anxiety, maydeliberately and resolutely throw himself into sympathy with the mightywill of God, and cherish this noble and awe-inspiring thought--thethought of the onward march of humanity; righting wrongs, amendingerrors, fighting patiently against pain and evil, until perhaps, far-off and incredibly remote, our successors and descendants, linkedindeed with us in body and soul alike, may enjoy that peace andtranquillity, that harmony of soul, which we ourselves can onlymomentarily and transitorily obtain. 

XVII

JOY

Dr. Arnold somewhere says that the schoolmaster's experience of beingcontinually in the presence of the hard mechanical high spirits ofboyhood is an essentially depressing thing. It seemed to himdepressing, just because that happiness was so purely incidental toyouth and health, and did not proceed from any sense of principle, anyreserve of emotion, any self-restraint, any activity of sympathy. Iconfess that in my own experience as a schoolmaster the particularphenomenon was sometimes a depressing thing and sometimes a relief. Itwas depressing when one was overshadowed by a fretful anxiety or a realsorrow, because no appeal to it seemed possible: it had a heartlessquality. But again it was a relief when it distracted one from thepressure of a troubled thought, as when, in the Idylls of the King, thesorrowful queen was comforted by the little maiden "who pleased herwith a babbling heedlessness, which often lured her from herself. "

One felt that one had no right to let the sense of anxiety overshadowthe natural cheerfulness of boyhood, and then one made the effort todetach oneself from one's preoccupations, with the result that theypresently weighed less heavily upon the heart. 

The blessing would be if one could find in experience a quality of joywhich should be independent of natural high spirits altogether, acheerful tranquillity of outlook, which should become almostinstinctive through practice, a mood which one could at all eventsevoke in such a way as to serve as a shield and screen to one's ownprivate troubles, or which at least would prevent one from allowing theshadow of our discontent from falling over others. But it must be to acertain extent temperamental. Just as high animal spirits in somepeople are irrepressible, and bubble up even under the menace ofirreparable calamity, so gloom of spirit is a very contagious thing, very difficult to dissimulate. Perhaps the best practical thing for anaturally melancholy person to try and do, is to treat his own lowspirits, as Charles Lamb did, ironically and humorously; and if he mustspin conversation incessantly, as Dr. Johnson said, out of his ownbowels, to make sure that it is the best thread possible, and of agossamer quality. 

The temperamental fact upon which the possibility of such aphilosophical cheerfulness is based is after all an ultimatehopefulness. Some people have a remarkable staying power, a power oflooking through and over present troubles, and consoling themselveswith pleasant visions of futurity. This is commoner with women thanwith men, because women derive a greater happiness from the happinessof those about them than men do. A woman as a rule would prefer thatthe people who surround her should be cheerful, even if she were notcheerful herself; whereas a man is often not ill-pleased that his moodsshould be felt by his circle, and regards it as rather an insult thatother people should be joyful when he is ill-at-ease. Some people, too, have a stronger dramatic sense than others, and take an artisticpleasure in playing a part. I knew a man who was a great invalid and afrequent sufferer, who took a great pleasure in appearing in publicfunctions. He would drag himself from his bed to make a publicappearance of any kind. I think that he consoled himself by believingthat he did so from a strong and sustaining sense of duty; but Ibelieve that the pleasure of the thing was really at the root of hiseffort, as it is at the root of most of the duties we faithfullyperform. I do not mean that he had a strong natural vanity, though hisenemies accused him of it. But publicity was naturally congenial tohim, and the only sign, as a rule, that he was suffering, when he madesuch an appearance, was a greater deliberation of movement, and aghastly fixity of smile. As to the latter phenomenon, a man with thedramatic sense strongly developed, will no doubt take a positivepleasure in trying to obliterate from his face and manner all traces ofhis private discomfort. Such stoicism is a fine quality in its way, butthe quality that I am in search of is an even finer one than that. Myfriend's efforts were ultimately based on a sort of egotism, a profoundconviction that a public part suited him, and that he performed itwell. What one rather desires to attain is a more sympathetic quality, an interest in other people so vital and inspiring that one's ownpersonal sufferings are light in the scale when weighed against theenjoyment of others. It is not impossible to develop this in the faceof considerable bodily suffering. One of the most inveterately cheerfulpeople I have ever known was a man who suffered from a painful andirritating complaint, but whose geniality and good-will were so strongthat they not only overpowered his malaise, but actually afforded himconsiderable relief. Some people who suffer can only suffer insolitude. They have to devote the whole of their nervous energies tothe task of endurance; but others find society an agreeabledistraction, and fly to it as an escape from discomfort. I suppose thatevery one has experienced at times that extraordinary rebellion, so tospeak, of cheerfulness against an attack of physical pain. There havebeen days when I have suffered from some small but acutely disagreeableailment, and yet found my cheerfulness not only not dimmed butapparently enhanced by the physical suffering. Of course there aremaladies even of a serious kind of which one of the symptoms is a greatmental depression, but there are other maladies which seem actually toproduce an instinctive hopefulness. 

But the question is whether it is possible, by sustained effort, tobehave independently of one's mood, and what motive is strong enough tomake one detach oneself resolutely from discomforts and woes. Goodmanners provide perhaps the most practical assistance. The people whoare brought up with a tradition of highbred courtesy, and who learnalmost instinctively to repress their own individuality, can generallytriumph over their moods. Perhaps in their expansive moments they losea little spontaneity in the process; they are cheerful rather thanbuoyant, gentle rather than pungent. But the result is that when themood shifts into depression, they are still imperturbably courteous andconsiderate. A near relation of a great public man, who sufferedgreatly from mental depression, has told me that some of the mostpainful minutes he has ever been witness of were, when the great man, after behaving on some occasion of social festivity with an admirableand sustained gaiety, fell for a moment into irreclaimable and hopelessgloom and fatigue, and then again, by a resolute effort, becamestrenuously considerate and patient in the privacy of the family circle. 

Some people achieve the same mastery over mood by an intensity ofreligious conviction. But the worst of that particular triumph is thatan attitude of chastened religious patience is, not unusually, a ratherdepressing thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it tends todeprive life of natural and unaffected joy. If it is patient andsubmissive in affliction, it is also tame and mild in cheerfulsurroundings. It issues too frequently in a kind of holy tolerance ofyouthful ebullience and vivid emotions. It results in the kind ofcharacter that is known as saintly, and is generally accompanied by astrong deficiency in the matter of humour. Life is regarded as tooserious a business to be played with, and the delight in trifles, whichis one of the surest signs of healthy energy, becomes ashamed andabashed in its presence. The atmosphere that it creates is oppressive, remote, ungenial. "I declare that Uncle John is intolerable, exceptwhen there is a death in the family--and then he is insupportable, "said a youthful nephew of a virtuous clergyman of this type in mypresence the other day, adding, after reflection, "He seems to thinkthat to die is the only really satisfactory thing that any one everdoes. " That is the worst of carrying out the precept, "Set youraffections 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 hisbrother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, Whom he hath notseen?" It is somehow an incomplete philosophy to despise the onlydefinite existence we are certain of possessing. One desires a richerthing than that, a philosophy that ends in temperance, rather than in aharsh asceticism. 

The handling of life that seems the most desirable is the method whichthe Platonic Socrates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but yetthere are few figures more real. There we have an elderly man ofincomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perenniallyyouthful, bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration. With what a delicious mixture of irony and tenderness hetreats the young men who surround him! When some lively sparks made uptheir minds to do what we now call "rag" him, dressed themselves up asFuries, and ran out upon him as he turned a dark corner on his wayhome, Socrates was not in the least degree disturbed, but discoursedwith them readily on many matters and particularly on temperance; whenat the banquet the topers disappear, one by one, under the table, Socrates, who, besides taking his due share of the wine, had filled anddrunk the contents of the wine-cooler, is found cheerfully sitting, crowned with roses, among the expiring lamps, in the grey of themorning, discussing the higher mathematics. He is never sick or sorry;he is poor and has a scolding wife; he fasts or eats as circumstancesdictate; he never does anything in particular, but he has alwaysinfinite leisure to have his talk out. Is he drawn for militaryservice? he goes off, with an entire indifference to the hardships ofthe campaign. When the force is routed, he stalks deliberately off thefield, looking round him like a great bird, with the kind of air thatmakes pursuers let people alone, as Alcibiades said. And when the finalcatastrophe draws near, he defends himself under a capital charge withinfinite good-humour; he has cared nothing for slander andmisrepresentation all his life, and why should he begin now? In thelast inspired scene, he is the only man of the group who keeps hiscourteous tranquillity to the end; he had been sent into the world, hehad lived his life, why should he fear to be dismissed? It matterslittle, in the presence of this august imagination, if the realSocrates was a rude and prosy person, who came by his death simplybecause the lively Athenians could tolerate anything but a bore!

The Socratic attitude is better than the high-bred attitude; it isbetter than the stoical attitude; it is even better than the piousattitude, because it depends upon living life to the uttermost, ratherthan upon detaching oneself from what one considers rather a poorbusiness. The attitude of Socrates is based upon courage, generosity, simplicity. He knows that it is with fear that we weight our melancholysensibilities, that it is with meanness and coldness that we poisonlife, that it is with complicated conventional duties that we fetterour weakness. Socrates has no personal ambitions, and thus he is rid ofall envy and uncharitableness; he sees the world as it is, a verybright and brave place, teeming with interesting ideas and undeterminedproblems. Where Christianity has advanced upon this--for it hasadvanced splendidly and securely--is in interpreting life lessintellectually. The intellectual side of life is what Socrates adores;the Christian faith is applicable to a far wider circle of homelylives. Yet Christianity too, in spite of ecclesiasticism, teems withideas. Its essence is an unprejudiced freedom of soul. Its problems areproblems of character which the simplest child can appreciate. ButChristianity, too, is built upon a basis of joy. "Freely ye havereceived, freely give, " is its essential maxim. 

The secret then is to enjoy; but the enjoyment must not be that of thespoiler who carries away all that he can, and buries it in his tent;but the joy of relationship, the joy of conspiring together to behappy, the joy of consoling and sympathising and sharing, because wehave received so much. Of course there remain the limitations oftemperament, the difficulty of preventing our own acrid humours fromoverflowing into other lives; but this cannot be overcome byrepression; it can only be overcome by tenderness. There are very fewpeople who have not the elements of this in their character. I cancount upon my fingers the malevolent men I know, who prefer makingothers uncomfortable to trying to make them glad; and all these menhave been bullied in their youth, and are unconsciously protectingthemselves against bullying still. We grow selfish, no doubt, for wantof 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 avery few experiments will soon convince us that there are few pleasuresin the world so reasonable and so cheap, as the pleasure of givingpleasure. 

But, after all, the resolute cheerfulness that can be to a certainextent captured and secured by an effort of the will, though it isperhaps a more useful quality than natural joy, and no doubt rankstogether in the moral scale, is not to be compared with a certainunreasoning, incommunicable rapture which sometimes, without consciouseffort 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 astupid prosaic passage, of no suggestiveness; a mere statement, theonly beauty of which could be that it should be absolutely lucid; andthis beauty it resolutely refused to assume. Then the agent called tosee me, and we talked business of a dull kind. Then I walked a littleway 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 andalders, the sun set behind a great bastion of clouds that looked like ahuge 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 shelteredplace I found a little golden hawk-weed in full flower. 

It had not been a satisfactory day at all to me. The statement that Ihad toiled so hard all the morning to make clear was not particularlyworth making; it could effect but little at best, and I had worked atit in a British doggedness of spirit, regardless of its value and onlybecause I was determined not to be beaten by it. 

But for all that I came home in a rare and delightful frame of mind, asif I had heard a brief and delicate passage of music, a conspiracy ofsweet sounds and rich tones; or as if I had passed through a sweetscent, such as blows from a clover-field in summer. There was nodefinite thought to disentangle: it was rather as if I had had aglimpse 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 companyof serious people in comely apparel riding blithely on the turf of aforest road, who had waved me a greeting, and left me wondering out ofwhat rich kind of scene they had stepped to bless me. It left mefeeling as though there were some beautiful life, very near me, allaround me, behind the mirror, outside of the door, beyond thegarden-hedges, if I could but learn the spell which would open it tome; left me pleasantly and happily athirst for a life of graciousinfluences and of an unknown and perfect peace; such as creeps over themind for the moment at the sight of a deep woodland at sunset, when theforest is veiled in the softest of blue mist; or at the sound of somecreeping sea, beating softly all night on a level sand; or at theprospect of a winter sun going down into smoky orange vapours over awide expanse of pastoral country; or at the soft close of some solemnmusic--when peace seems not only desirable beyond all things butattainable too. 

How can one account for this sudden and joyful visitation? I am goingto try and set down what I believe to be the explanation, if I canreduce to words a thought which is perfectly clear to me, howevertranscendental it may seem. 

Well, at such a moment as this, one feels just as one may feel whenfrom the streets of a dark and crowded city, with the cold shadow of acloud passing over it, one sees the green head of a mountain over thehousetops, 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 subjectivemood, an imagined thing. It is, I believe, a real and actual thingwhich is there. One's consciousness does not create its impressions, one does not make for oneself the moral and artistic ideas that visitone; one perceives them. Education is not a process of invention--it isa process of discovery; a process of learning the names given to thingsthat are all present in one's own mind. One knows things long beforeone knows the names for them, by instinct and by intuition; and one'sown mind is simply a part of a large and immortal life, which for atime is fenced by a little barrier of identity, just as a tiny pool ofsea-water on a sea-beach is for a few hours separated from the greattide to which it belongs. All our regrets, remorses, anxieties, troubles arise from our not realising that we are but a part of thisgreater and wider life, from our delusion that we are alone and apartinstead 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 touchwith the larger life--to some it comes in religion, to some in love, tosome in art. Perhaps a wave of the onward sweeping tide beats for aninstant into the little pool we call our own, stirring the fringingweed, bubbling sharply and freshly upon the sleeping sand, The sad mistake we make is, when such a moment comes, to feel as thoughit were only the stirring of our own feeble imagination. What we oughtrather to do is by every effort we can make to welcome and comprehendthis dawning of the larger life upon us; not to sink back peevishlyinto our own limits and timidly to deplore them, but resolutely to openthe door again and again--for the door can be opened--to the light ofthe great sun that lies so broadly about us. Every now and then we havesome startling experience which reveals to us our essential union withother individuals. We have many of us had experiences which seem toindicate that there is at times a direct communication with otherminds, independent of speech or writing; and even if we have not hadsuch experiences, it has been scientifically demonstrated that suchthings can occur. Telepathy, as it is clumsily called, which is nothingmore than this direct communication of mind, is a thing which has beendemonstrated in a way which no reasonable person can reject. We maycall it abnormal if we like, and it is true that we do not as yet knowunder what conditions it exists; but it is as much there as electricalcommunication, and just as the electrician does not create the viewlessripples which his delicate instruments can catch and record, but merelymakes it a matter of mechanics to detect them, so the ripple of humanintercommunication is undoubtedly there; and when we have discoveredwhat its laws are, we shall probably find that it underlies manythings, such as enthusiasms, movements, the spirit of a community, patriotism, martial ardour, which now appear to us to be isolated andmysterious phenomena. 

But there is a larger thing than even that behind. In humanity we havemerely a certain portion of this large life, which may spread for allwe know beyond the visible universe, globed and bounded, like the sprayof a fountain, into little separate individualities. Some of the urgentinexplicable emotions which visit us from time to time, immense, far-reaching, mysterious, are, I believe with all my heart, thepulsations of this vast life outside us, stirring for an instant thesilence of our sleeping spirit. It is possible, I cannot help feeling, that those people live the best of all possible lives who devotethemselves to receiving these pulsations. It may well be that infollowing anxiously the movement of the world, in giving ourselves topolitics or business, or technical religion, or material cares, we arebut delaying the day of our freedom by throwing ourselves intently intoour limitations, and forgetting the wider life. It may be that the lifewhich Christ seems to have suggested as the type of Christian life--thelife of constant prayer, simple and kindly relations, indifference toworldly conditions, absence of ambitions, fearlessness, sincerity--maybe the life in which we can best draw near to the larger spirit--forChrist spoke as one who knew some prodigious secret, as one in whosesoul the larger life leapt and plunged like fresh sea-billows; who wasincapable of sin and even of temptation, because His soul had free andopen contact with the all-pervading spirit, and to whom the humanlimitations were no barrier at all. 

We do not know as yet the mechanical means, so to speak, by which theconnection can be established, the door set wide. But we can at leastopen our soul to every breathing of divine influences; and when thegreat wind rises and thunders in our spirits, we can see that no claimof business, or weakness, or comfort, or convention shall hinder usfrom admitting it. 

And thus when one of these sweet, high, uplifting thoughts draws nearand visits us, we can but say, as the child Samuel said in the dim-littemple, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth. " The music comes uponthe 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; weare not the same; we are transfigured. 

Why then, lastly, it may be asked, do these experiences befall us sofaintly, so secretly, so seldom; if it is the true life that beats sourgently into our souls, why are we often so careful and disquieted, why do we fare such long spaces without the heavenly vision, why do wesee, or seem to see, so many of our fellows to whom such things comerarely or not at all? I cannot answer that; yet I feel that the life isthere; 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 heavenare clothed with obscurity, the more they delight and attract; andnothing so much heightens longing as such tender refusal. "

XVIII

THE LOVE OF GOD

How strange it is that what is often the latest reward of the toilerafter holiness, the extreme solace of the outwearied saint, should betoo often made the first irksome article of a childish creed! To tell achild that it is a duty to love God better than father or mother, sisters and brothers, better than play, or stories, or food, or toys, what a monstrous thing is that! It is one of the things that makereligion into a dreary and darkling shadow, that haunts the path of theinnocent. The child's love is all for tangible, audible, and visiblethings. Love for him means kind words and smiling looks, ready comfortand lavished kisses; the child does not even love things for beingbeautiful, but for being what they ARE--curious, characteristic, interesting. He loves the odd frowsy smell of the shut-up attic, thebright ugly ornaments of the chimney-piece, the dirt of the street. Hehas no sense of critical taste. Besides, words mean so little to him, or even bear quaint, fantastic associations, which no one can divine, and which he himself is unable to express; he has no notion of anabstract, essential, spiritual thing, apart from what is actual to hissenses. And then into this little concrete mind, so full of smalldefinite images, so faltering and frail, is thrust this vast, remotenotion--that he is bound to love something hidden and terrible, something that looks at him from the blank sky when he is alone amongthe garden beds, something which haunts empty rooms and the dark brakeof the woodland. Moreover, a child, with its preternaturalsensitiveness to pain, its bewildered terror of punishment, learns, side by side with this, that the God Whom he is to love thus tenderlyis the God Who lays about Him so fiercely in the Old Testament, slayingthe innocent with the guilty, merciless, harsh, inflicting theirreparable stroke of death, where a man would be concerned withdesiring amendment more than vengeance. The simple questions with whichthe man Friday poses Robinson Crusoe, and to which he receives soponderous an answer, are the questions which naturally arise in themind of any thoughtful child. Why, if God be so kind and loving, doesHe not make an end of evil at once? Yet, because such questions areunanswerable by the wisest, the child is, for the convenience of hiseducation, made to feel that he is wicked if he questions what he istaught. How many children will persevere in the innocent scepticismwhich is so natural and so desirable, under a sense of disapproval? Oneof my own earliest experiences in the ugly path of religious gloom wasthat I recognised quite clearly to myself that I did not love God atall. I did not know Him, I had no reason to think Him kind; He wasangry with me, I gathered, if I was ill-tempered or untruthful. I waswell enough aware by childish instinct that my mother did not cease tolove me when I was naughty, but I could not tell about God. And yet Iknew that, with His terrible power of knowing everything, He was wellaware that I did not love Him. It was best to forget about Him as muchas possible, for it spoiled one's pleasure to think about it. All thelittle amusements and idle businesses that were so dear to me, Heprobably disapproved of them all, and was only satisfied when I wassafe at my lessons or immured in church. Sunday was the sort of day Heliked, and how I detested it!--the toys put away, little ugly booksabout the Holy Land to read, an air of deep dreariness about it all. Thus does religion become a weariness from the outset. 

How slowly, and after what strange experience, by what infinite delayof deduction, does the love of God dawn upon the soul! Even then howfaint and subtle an essence it is! In deep anxiety, under unbearablestrain, in the grip of a dilemma of which either issue seemsintolerable, in weariness of life, in hours of flagging vitality, themighty tide begins to flow strongly and tranquilly into the soul. Onedid not make oneself; one did not make one's sorrows, even when theyarose from one's own weakness and perversity. There was a meaning, asignificance about it all; one was indeed on pilgrimage; and then comesthe running to the Father's knee, and the casting oneself in utterbroken weakness upon the one Heart that understands perfectly andutterly, and which does, which must, desire the best and truest. "Giveme courage, hope, confidence, " says the desolate soul. 

 "I can endure Thy bitterest decrees, If CERTAIN of Thy Love. "

How would one amend all this if one had the power? Alas! it could onlybe by silencing all stupid and clumsy people, all rigid parents, alldiplomatic priests, all the horrible natures who lick their lips with afierce zest over the pains that befall the men with whom they do notagree. I would teach a child, in defiance even of reason, that God isthe one Power that loves and understands him through thick and thin;that He punishes with anguish and sorrow; that He exults in forgivenessand mercy; that He rejoices in innocent happiness; that He lovescourage, and brightness, and kindness, and cheerful self-sacrifice;that things mean, and vile, and impure, and cruel, are things that Hedoes not love to punish, but sad and soiling stains that He beholdswith shame and tears. This, it seems to me, is the Gospel teachingabout God, impossible only because of the hardness of our hearts. Butif it were possible, a child might grow to feel about sin, not that itwas a horrible and unpardonable failure, a thing to afflict oneselfdrearily about, but that it was rather a thing which, when oncespurned, however humiliating, could minister to progress, in a way inwhich untroubled happiness could not operate--to be forgotten, perhaps, but certainly to be forgiven; a privilege rather than a hindrance, agate rather than a barrier; a shadow upon the path, out of which onewould pass, with such speed as one might, into the blitheness of thefree air and the warm sun. I remember a terrible lecture which I heardas a little bewildered boy at school, anxious to do right, terrified ofoppression, and coldness, and evil alike; given by a worthy Evangelicalclergyman, with large spectacles, and a hollow voice, and a greatrelish for spiritual terrors. The subject was "the exceeding sinfulnessof sin, " a proposition which I now see to be as true as if one lecturedon the exceeding carnality of flesh. But the lecture spoke of thehorrible and filthy corruption of the human heart, its determineddelight in wallowing in evil, its desperate wickedness. I believed it, dully and hopelessly, as a boy believes what is told him by a volubleelderly person of obvious respectability. But what a detestable theoryof life, what an ugly picture of Divine incompetence!

Of course there are abundance of facts in the world which look likeanything but love;--the ruthless and merciless punishment ofcarelessness and ignorance, the dark laws of heredity, the wastefulnessand cruelty of disease, the dismal acquiescence of stupid, healthy, virtuous persons, without sympathy or imagination, in the hardshipswhich they were strong enough to bear unscathed. One of the primeterrors of religion is the thought of the heavy-handed, unintelligent, tiresome men who would make it a monopoly if they could, and bear ittriumphantly away from the hands of modest, humble, quiet, andtender-hearted people, chiding them as nebulous optimists. 

Who are the people in this short life of ours whom one remembers withdeep and abiding gratitude? Not those who have rebuked, and punished, and satirised, and humiliated us, striking down the stricken, andflattening the prostrate--but the people who have been patient with us, and kind, who have believed in us, and comforted us, and welcomed us, and forgiven us everything; who have given us largely of their love, who have lent without requiring payment, who have given us emotionalrather than prudential reasons, who have cared for us, not as a dutybut by some divine instinct, who have made endless excuses for us, believing that the true self was there and would emerge, who havepardoned our misdeeds and forgotten our meannesses. 

This is what I would believe of God--that He is not our censorious andsevere critic, but our champion and lover, not loving us in spite ofwhat we are, but because of what we are; Who in the days of ourstrength rejoices in our joy, and does not wish to overshadow it, likethe conscientious human mentor, with considerations that we must yet bewithered like grass; and Who, when the youthful ebullience dies away, and the spring grows weak, and we wonder why the zest has died out ofsimple pleasures, out of agreeable noise and stir, is still with us, reminding us that the wisdom we are painfully and surely gaining is adeeper and more lasting quality than even the hot impulses of youth. 

Once in my life have I conceived what might have been, if I had had theskill to paint it, an immortal picture. It was thus. I was attending aChristmas morning service in a big parish church. I was in a pew facingeast; close to me, in a transept, in a pew facing sideways, there sat alittle old woman, who had hurried in just before the service began. Shewas a widow, living, I afterwards learnt, in an almshouse hard by. Shewas old and feeble, very poor, and her life had been a series ofcalamities, relieved upon a background of the hardest and humblestdrudgery. She had lost her husband years ago by a painful and terribleillness. She had lost her children one by one; she was alone in theworld, save for a few distant and indifferent relatives. To get intothe almshouse had been for her a stroke of incredible and inconceivablegood fortune. She had a single room, with a tiny kitchen off it. Shehad very little to say for herself; she could hardly read. No one tookany particular interest in her; but she was a kindly, gallant, unselfish old soul, always ready to bear a hand, full of gratitude forthe kindnesses she had received--and God alone knows how few they hadbeen. 

She had a small, ugly, homely face, withered and gnarled hands; and shewas dressed that day in a little old bonnet of unheard-of age, and indingy, frowsy black clothes, shiny and creased, that came out of theirbox perhaps half-a-dozen times a year. 

But this morning she was in a festal mood. She had tidied up her littleroom; she was going to have a bit of meat for dinner, given her by aneighbour. She had been sent a Christmas card that morning, and hadpored over it with delight. She liked the stir and company of thechurch, and the cheerful air of the holly-berries. She held her book upbefore her, though I do not suppose she was even at the right page. Shekept up a little faint cracked singing in her thin old voice; but whenthey came to the hymn "Hark, the herald angels sing, " which she hadalways known from childhood, she lifted up her head and sang morecourageously:

 "Join the triumph of the skies! With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

It was then that I had my vision. I do not know why, but at the sightof the wrinkled face and the sound of the plaintive uplifted voice, singing such words, a sudden mist of tears came over my eyes. Then Isaw that close behind the old dame there stood a very young andbeautiful man. I could see the fresh curling hair thrown back from theclear brow. He was clothed in a dim robe, of an opalescent hue andmisty texture, and his hands were clasped together. It seemed that hesang too; but his eyes were bent upon the old woman with a look, halfof tender amusement, and half of unutterable lovingness. The angelichost! This was one of that bright company indeed, going about theFather's business, bringing a joyful peace into the hearts of thoseamong whom he moved. And of all the worshippers in that crowded churchhe had singled out the humblest and simplest for his friend and sister. I saw no more that day, for the lines of that presence faded out uponthe air in the gleams of the frosty sunshine that came and went amongthe pillars. But if I could have painted the scene, the pure, untroubled face so close to the old worn features, the robes of lightside by side with the dingy human vesture, it would be a picture thatno living eye that had rested on it should forget. 

Alas, that one cannot live in moments of inspiration like these! Aslife goes on, and as we begin perhaps to grow a little nearer to God byfaith, we are confronted in our own lives, or in the life of one verynear us, by some intolerable and shameful catastrophe. A careless sinmakes havoc of a life, and shadows a home with shame; or some generousor unselfish nature, useful, beneficent, urgently needed, is struckdown with a painful and hopeless malady. This too, we say to ourselves, must come from God; He might have prevented it if He had so willed. What are we to make of it? How are we to translate into terms of lovewhat seems like an act of tyrannous indifference, or deliberatecruelty? Then, I think, it is well to remind ourselves that we cannever know exactly the conditions of any other human soul. How littlewe know of our own! How little we could explain our case to another, even if we were utterly sincere! The weaknesses of our nature areoften, very tenderly I would believe, hidden from us; we thinkourselves sensitive and weak, when in reality we are armed with astubborn breastplate of complacency and pride; or we think ourselvesstrong, only because the blows of circumstance have been spared us. Themore one knows of the most afflicted lives, the more often theconviction flashes across us that the affliction is not a wantonoutrage, but a delicately adjusted treatment. I remember once that afriend of mine had sent him a rare plant, which was set in a bigflower-pot, close to a fountain-basin. It never throve; it livedindeed, putting out in the spring a delicate stunted foliage, though myfriend, who was a careful gardener, could never divine what ailed it. He was away for a few weeks, and the day after he was gone, theflower-pot was broken by a careless garden-boy, who wheeled a barrowroughly past it; the plant, earth and all, fell into the water; the boyremoved the broken pieces of the pot, and seeing that the plant hadsunk to the bottom of the little pool, never troubled his head to fishit out. When my friend returned, he noticed one day in the fountain anew and luxuriant growth of some unknown plant. He made carefulinquiries and found out what had happened. It then came out that theplant was in reality a water-plant, and that it had pined away in thestifling air for want of nourishment, perhaps dimly longing for thefresh bed of the pool. 

Even so has it been, times without number, with some starving andthirsty soul, that has gone on feebly trying to live a maimed life, shut up in itself, ailing, feeble. There has descended upon it whatlooks at first sight like a calamity, some affliction unaccountable andirreparable; and then it proves that this was the one thing needed;that sorrow has brought out some latent unselfishness, or sufferingenergised some unused faculty of strength and patience. 

But even if it is not so, if we cannot trace in our own lives or thelives of others the beneficent influence of suffering, we can alwaystake refuge in one thought. We can see that the one mighty andtransforming power on earth is the power of love; we see people makesacrifices, not momentary sacrifices, but lifelong patientrenunciations, for the sake of one whom they love; we see a great andpassionate affection touch into being a whole range of unsuspectedpowers; we see men and women utterly unconscious of pain and weariness, utterly unaware that they are acting without a thought of self, if theycan but soothe the pain of one dear to them, or win a smile frombeloved lips; it is not that the selfishness, the indolence, is notthere, but it is all borne away upon a mighty stream, as theriver-wrack spins upon the rising flood. 

If then this marvellous, this amazing power of love can cause men tomake, with joy and gladness, sacrifices of which in their loveless daysthey would have deemed themselves and confessed themselves whollyincapable, can we not feel with confidence that the power, which liesthus deepest in the heart of the world, lies also deepest in the heartof God, of Whom the world is but a faint reflection? It cannot beotherwise. We may sadly ponder, indeed, why the love that has been, orthat might have been, the strength of weary lives should be withdrawnor sternly withheld, but we need not be afraid, if we have one generousimpulse for another, if we ever put aside a delight that may please orattract us, for the sake of one who expects or would value any smallestservice--and there are few who cannot feel this--we need not then, Isay, doubt that the love which we desire, and which we have somehowmissed or lost, is there waiting for us, ours all the time, if we butknew it. 

And even if we miss the sweet influence of love in our lives, is thereany one who has not, in solitude and dreariness, looked back upon thetime when he was surrounded by love and opportunities of love, inchildhood or in youth, with a bitter regret that he did not make moreof it when it was so near to him, that he was so blind and selfish, that he was not a little more tender, a little more kind? I will speakfrankly for myself and say that the memories which hurt me most, when Istumble upon them, are those of the small occasions when I showedmyself perverse and hard; when eyes, long since closed, looked at mewith a pathetic expectancy; when I warded off the loving impulse bysome jealous sense of my own rights, some peevish anger at a fanciedinjustice; when I stifled the smile and withheld the hand, and turnedaway in silence, glad, in that poisonous moment, to feel that I couldat all events inflict that pain in base requital. One may know that itis all forgiven, one may be sure that the misunderstanding has faded inthe light of the other dawn, but still the cold base shadow, thethought of one's perverse cruelty, strikes a gloom upon the mind. 

But with God, when one once begins to draw near to Him, one need haveno such poignant regrets or overshadowing memories; one may say to Himin one's heart, as simply as a child, that He knows what one has beenand is, what one might have been and what one desires to be; and onemay cast oneself at His feet in the overwhelming hope that He will makeof oneself what He would have one to be. 

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is not the poor wretch himself, whose miserable motive for returning is plainly indicated--that insteadof pining in cold and hunger he may be warmed and clothed--who is thehero of the story; still less is it the hard and virtuous elder son. The hero of the tale is the patient, tolerant, loving father, who hadacted, as a censorious critic might say, foolishly and culpably, insupplying the dissolute boy with resources, and taking him back withouta word of just reproach. A sad lack of moral discipline, no doubt! Ifhe had kept the boy in fear and godliness, if he had tied him down tohonest work, the disaster need never have happened. Yet the old man, who went so often at sundown, we may think, to the crest of the hill, from which he could see the long road winding over the plain to thefar-off city, the road by which he had seen his son depart, light-heartedly and full of fierce joyful impulses, and along which hewas to see the dejected figure, so familiar, so sadly marred, stumblinghome--he is the master-spirit of the sweet and comforting scene. Hisheart is full of utter gladness, for the lost is found. He smiles uponthe servants; he bids the household rejoice; he can hardly, in hissimple joy of heart, believe that the froward elder brother is vexedand displeased; and his words of entreaty that the brother, too, willenter into the spirit of the hour, are some of the most pathetic andbeautiful ever framed in human speech: "Son, thou art ever with me, andall that I have is thine; it was meet that we should make merry, and beglad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again, and was lost, and is found. "

And this is, after all, the way in which God deals with us. He gives usour portion to spend as we choose; He holds nothing back; and when wehave wasted it and brought misery upon ourselves, and return to Him, even for the worst of reasons, He has not a word of rebuke or caution;He is simply and utterly filled with joy and love. There are a thousandtexts that would discourage us, would bid us believe that God dealshardly with us, but it is men that deal hardly with us, it is we thatdeal hardly with ourselves. This story, which is surely the mostbeautiful story in the world, gives us the deliberate thought of theSaviour, the essence of His teaching; and we may fling aside the bitterwarnings of jealous minds, and cast ourselves upon the supreme hopethat, if only we will return, we are dealt with even more joyfully thanif we had never wandered at all. 

And then perhaps at last, when we have peeped again and again, throughloss and suffering, at the dark background of life; when we have seenthe dreariest corner of the lonely road, where the path grows steep andmiry, and the light is veiled by scudding cloud and dripping rain, there begins to dawn upon us the sense of a beautiful and holypatience, the thought that these grey ashes of life, in which theglowing cinders sink, which once were bright with leaping flame, arenot the end--that the flame and glow are there, although momentlydispersed. They have done their work; one is warmed and enlivened; onecan sit still, feeding one's fancy on the lapsing embers, just as onesaw pictures in the fire as an eager child long ago. That high-heartedexcitement and that curiosity have faded. Life is very different fromwhat we expected, more wholesome, more marvellous, more brief, moreinconclusive; but there is an intenser, if quieter and more patient, curiosity to wait and see what God is doing for us; and the orangestain and green glow of the sunset, though colder and less jocund, isyet a far more mysterious, tender, and beautiful thing than the steadyglow of the noonday sun, when the shining flies darted hither andthither, and the roses sent out their rich fragrance. There isfragrance still, the fragrance of the evening flowers, where thewestern windows look across the misty fields to the thickening shadowsof the tall trees. But there is something that speaks in the gatheringgloom, in the darkening sky with its flush of crimson fire, that didnot speak in the sun-warmed garden and the dancing leaves; and whatspeaks is the mysterious love of God, a thing sweeter and more remotethan the urgent bliss of the fiery noon, full of delicate mysteries andappealing echoes. We have learnt that the darkness is no darkness withHim; and the soul which beat her wings so passionately in the brighterlight of the hot morning, now at last begins to dream of whither she isbound, and the dear shade where she will fold her weary wing. 

How often has the soul in her dreariness cried out, "One effort more!"But that is done with for ever. She is patient now; she believes atlast; she labours no longer at the oar, but she is borne upon themoving tide; she is on her way to the deep Heart of God. 

EPILOGUE

I have wandered far enough in my thought, it would seem, from thelonely grange in its wide pastures, and the calm expanse of fen; and Ishould wish once more to bring my reader back home with me to thesheltered garden, and the orchard knee-deep in grass, and theembowering elms; for there is one word more to be said, and that may bebest said at home; though our experience is not limited by time orplace. It was on the lonely ridge, strewn with boulders and swept bynight-winds, when the darkness closed in drearily about him, thatJacob, a homeless exile, in the hour of his utmost desolation, saw theladder whose golden head was set at the very foot of God, thronged withbright messengers of strength and hope. And again it was in thefamiliar homestead, with every corner rich in gentle memories, that thespirit of terror turned the bitter stream of anguish, as from the ventof some thunderous cloud, upon the sad head of Job. We may turn acorner in life, and be confronted perhaps with an uncertain shape ofgrief and despair, whom we would fain banish from our shuddering sight, perhaps with some solemn form of heavenly radiance, whom we may feelreluctant in our unworthiness to entertain. But in either case, suchtimes as those, when we wrestle all night with the angel, not knowingif he wishes us well or ill, ignorant of his name and his mien alike, are better than hours spent in indolent contentment, in the realisationof our placid and petty designs. For, after all, it is the qualityrather than the quantity of our experience that matters; it is easyenough to recognise that, when we are working light-heartedly andeagerly at some brave design, and seeing the seed we plant springing upall about us in fertile rows in the garden of God. But what of thosedays when our lot seems only to endure, when we can neither scheme norexecute, when the old volubility and vitality desert us, and our onecare is just to make our dreary presence as little of a burden and ashadow as possible to those whom we love? We must then remindourselves, not once or twice, that nothing can separate us from theFather of all, even though our own wilfulness and perversity may havedrawn about us a cloud of sorrow. We are perhaps most in God's mindwhen we seem most withdrawn from Him. He is nearer us when we seek forHim and cannot find Him, than when we forget Him in laughter andself-pleasing. And we must remember too that it is neither faithful norfruitful to abide wilfully in sadness, to clasp our cares close, toluxuriate in them. There is a beautiful story of Mrs. Charles Kingsley, who long survived her husband. Never perhaps had two souls been unitedby so close a bond of chivalry and devotion. "Whenever I find myselfthinking too much about Charles, " she said in the days of her grief, "Ifind and read the most sensational novel I can. People may think itheartless, but hearts were given us to love with, not to break. " And wemust deal with our sorrows as we deal with any other gift of God, courageously and temperately, not faint-heartedly or wilfully; nototherwise can they be blest to us. We must not pettishly rejectconsolation and distraction. Pain is a great angel, but we must wrestlewith him, until he bless us! and the blessings he can bring us arefirst a wholesome shame at our old selfish ingratitude in theuntroubled days, when we took care and pleasure greedily; and next, ifwe meet him faithfully, he can make our heart go out to all ourbrothers and sisters who suffer in this brief and troubled life ofours. For we are here to learn something, if we can but spell it out;and thus it is morbid to indulge regrets and remorse too much over ourfailures and mistakes; for it is through them that we learn. We must beas brave as we can, and dare to grudge no pang that brings us nearer tothe reality of things. 

Reality! that is the secret; for we who live in dreams, who pursuebeauty, who are haunted as by a passion for that sweet quality thatthrills alike in the wayside flower and the orange pomp of the settingsun, that throbs in written word and uttered melody, that calls to ussuddenly and secretly in the glance of an eye and the gesture of ahand, --we, I say, who discern these gracious motions, tend to live inthem too luxuriously, to idealise life, to make out of our dailypilgrimage, our goings and comings, a golden untroubled picture; itneed not be a false or a base effort to escape from what is sordid ordistasteful; but for all that we run a sore risk in yielding tooplacidly to our visions; and as with the Lady of Shalott, it may bewell for us if our woven web be rent aside, and our magic mirrorbroken; nay, even if death comes to us at the close of the mournfulsong. Thus then we draw near and look reluctant and dismayed into thebare truth of things. We see, it may be, our poor pretences tossedaside, and the embroidered robe in which we have striven to drape ourleanness torn from us; but we must gaze as steadily as we can, and praythat the vision be not withdrawn till it has wrought its perfect workwithin us; and then, with energies renewed, we may set out again onpilgrimage, happy in this, that we no longer mistake the arbour ofrefreshment for the goal of our journey, or the quiet house of welcome, that receives us in the hour of weariness, for the heavenly city, withall its bright mansions and radiant palaces. 

It is experience that matters, as I have said; not what we do, but howwe do it. The material things that we collect about us in our passagethrough life, that we cling to so pathetically, and into whichsomething of our very selves seems to pass, these things are littleelse than snares and hindrances to our progress--like the clay thatsticks to the feet of the traveller, like the burden of useless thingsthat he carries painfully with him, things which he cannot bringhimself to throw away because they might possibly turn out to beuseful, and which meanwhile clank and clatter fruitlessly about theladen beast, and weigh him down. What we have rather to do is todisengage ourselves from these things: from the money which we do notneed, but which may help us some day; from the luxuries we do notenjoy; from the furniture we trail about with us from home to home. Allthose things get a hold of us and tie us to earth, even when theassociations with them are dear and tender enough. The mistake we makeis not in loving them--they are or can be signs to us of the love andcare of God--but we must refrain from loving the possession of them. 

Take, for instance, one of the least mundane of things, the knowledgewe painfully acquire, and the possession of which breeds in us suchlively satisfaction. If it is our duty to acquire knowledge and toimpart it, we must acquire it; but it is the faithfulness with which wetoil, not the accumulations we gain that are blessed to us--"knowledgecomes but wisdom lingers, " says the poet--and it is the heavenly wisdomof which we ought to be in search; for what remains to us of ourequipment, when we part from the world and migrate elsewhere, is notthe actual stuff that we have collected, whether it be knowledge ormoney, but the patience, the diligence, the care which we haveexercised in gaining these things, the character, as affected by thework we have done; but our mistake is to feel that we are idle andfutile, unless we have tangible results to show; when perhaps the hoursin which we sat idle, out of misery or mere feebleness, are the mostfruitful hours of all for the growth of the soul. 

The great savant dies. What is lost? Not a single fact or a singletruth, but only his apprehension, his collection of certain truths; nota single law of nature perishes or is altered thereby. We measure worthby prominence and fame; but the destiny of the simplest and vilest ofthe human race is as august, as momentous as the destiny of themightiest king or conqueror; it is not our admiration of each otherthat weighs with God, but our nearness to, our dependence on Him. Yet, even so, we must not deceive ourselves in the matter. We must be surethat it is the peace of God that we indeed desire, and not merely arefined kind of leisure; that we are in search of simplicity, and notmerely afraid of work. We must not glorify a mild spectatorial pleasureby the name of philosophy, or excuse our indolence under the name ofcontemplation. We must abstain deliberately, not tamely hang back; wemust desire the Kingdom of Heaven for itself, and not for the sake ofthe things that are added if we seek it. If the Scribes and Phariseeshave their reward for ambition and self-seeking, the craven soul hasits reward too, and that reward is a sick emptiness of spirit. And thenif we have erred thus, if we have striven to pretend to ourselves thatwe were careless of the prize, when in reality we only feared thebattle, what can we do? How can we repair our mistake? There is but oneway; we can own the pitiful fault, and not attempt to glorify it; wecan face the experience, take our petty and shameful wages and castourselves afresh, in our humiliation and weakness, upon God, rejoicingthat we can at least feel the shame, and enduring the chastisement withpatient hopefulness; for that very suffering is a sign that God has notleft us to ourselves, but is giving us perforce the purification whichwe could not take to ourselves. 

And even thus, life is not all an agony, a battle, an endurance; thereare sweet hours of refreshment and tranquillity between the twilightand the dawn; hours when we can rest a little in the shadow, and seethe brimming stream of life flowing quietly but surely to its appointedend. I watched to-day an old shepherd, on a wide field, moving hiswattled hurdles, one by one, in the slow, golden afternoon; and a wholeburden of anxious thoughts fell off me for a while, leaving me full ofa quiet hope for an end which was not yet, but that certainly awaitedme; of a day when I too might perhaps move as unreflectingly, ascalmly, in harmony with the everlasting Will, as the old man movedabout his familiar task. Why that harmony should be so blurred andbroken, why we should leave undone the things that we desire to do, anddo the things that we do not desire, that is still a deep and sadmystery; yet even in the hour of our utmost wilfulness, we can neverwander beyond the range of the Will that has made us, and bidden us tobe what we are. And thus as I sit in this low-lit hour, there stealsupon the heart the message of hope and healing; the scent of the greatsyringa bush leaning out into the twilight, the sound of the fitfulbreeze laying here and there a caressing hand upon the leaves, the softradiance of the evening star hung in the green spaces of the westernsky, each and all blending into incommunicable dreams.