The Buried Temple

By

Maurice Maeterlinck

Translated by Alfred Sutro

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 

RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W. C. 1

Published in April 1902

Reprinted:-- POCKET EDITION, March 1911 November 1911 July 1919 December 1921 October 1924

Twenty first Thousand

(All rights reserved)

Printed in Great Britain

NOTE

Of the five essays in this volume, two only, those on "The Past" and"Luck, " were written in 1901. The others, "The Mystery of Justice, ""The Evolution of Mystery, " and "The Kingdom of Matter, " are anteriorto "The Life of the Bee, " and appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ in1899 and 1900. The essay on "The Past" appeared in the March number ofthe _Fortnightly Review_ and of the New York _Independent_; and partsof "The Mystery of Justice" in this last journal and _Harper'sMagazine_. The author's thanks are due to Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and the proprietors of _The Independent_ fortheir permission to republish. 

CONTENTS

 I. THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE II. THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY III. THE KINGDOM OF MATTER IV. THE PAST V. LUCK

I

THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE

1

I speak, for those who do not believe in the existence of a unique, all-powerful, infallible Judge, for ever intent on our thoughts, ourfeelings and actions, maintaining justice in this world and completingit in the next. And if there be no Judge, what justice is there? Noneother than that which men have made for themselves by their laws andtribunals, as also in the social relations that no definite judgmentgoverns? Is there nothing above this human justice, whose sanction israrely other than the opinion, the confidence or mistrust, the approvalor disapproval, of our fellows? Is this capable of explaining oraccounting for all that seems so inexplicable to us in the morality ofthe universe, that we at times feel almost compelled to believe anintelligent Judge must exist? When we deceive or overcome ourneighbour, have we deceived or overcome all the forces of justice? Areall things definitely settled then, and may we go boldly on: or isthere a graver, deeper justice, one less visible perhaps, but lesssubject to error; one that is more universal, and mightier?

That such a justice exists we all of us know, for we all have felt itsirresistible power. We are well aware that it covers the whole of ourlife, and that at its centre there reigns an intelligence which neverdeceives itself, which none can deceive. But where shall we place it, now that we have torn it down from the skies? Where does it weigh goodand evil, happiness and disaster? Whence does it issue to deal outreward and punishment? These are questions that we do not often askourselves, but they have their importance. The nature of justice, andall our morality, depend on the answer; and it cannot be fruitlesstherefore to inquire how that great idea of mystic and sovereignjustice, which has undergone more than one transformation since historybegan, is being received to-day in the mind and the heart of man. Andis this mystery not the loftiest, the most passionately interesting, ofall that remain to us: does it not intertwine with most of the others?Do its vacillations not stir us to the very depths of our soul? Thegreat bulk of mankind perhaps know nothing of these vacillations andchanges, but for the evolution of thought it suffices that the eyes ofthe few should see; and when the clear consciousness of these hasbecome aware of the transformation, its influence will gradually attainthe general morality of men. 

2

In these pages we shall naturally have much to say of social justice:of the justice, in other words, that we mutually extend to each otherthrough life; but we shall leave on one side legal or positive justice, which is merely the organisation of one side of social justice. Weshall occupy ourselves above all with that vague but inevitablejustice, intangible and yet so effective, which accompanies and setsits seal upon every action of our life; which approves or disapproves, rewards or punishes. Does this come from without? Does an inflexible, undeceivable moral principle exist, independent of man, in the universeand in things? Is there, in a word, a justice that might be calledmystic? Or does it issue wholly from man; is it inward even though itact from without; and is the only justice therefore psychologic? Thesetwo terms, mystic and psychologic justice, comprehend, more or less, all the different forms of justice, superior to the social, that wouldappear to exist to-day. 

3

It is scarcely conceivable that any one who has forsaken the easy, butartificially illumined, paths of positive religion, can still believein the existence of a physical justice arising from moral causes, whether its manifestations assume the form of heredity or disease, ofgeologic, atmospheric, or other phenomena. However eager his desirefor illusion or mystery, this is a truth he is bound to recognise fromthe moment he begins earnestly and sincerely to study his own personalexperience, or to observe the external ills which, in this world ofours, fall indiscriminately on good and wicked alike. Neither theearth nor the sky, neither nature nor matter, neither air nor any forceknown to man (save only those that are in him) betrays the slightestregard for justice, or the remotest connection with our morality, ourthoughts or intentions. Between the external world and our actionsthere exist only the simple and essentially non-moral relations ofcause and effect. If I am guilty of a certain excess or imprudence, Iincur a certain danger, and have to pay a corresponding debt to nature. And as this imprudence or excess will generally have had an immoralcause--or a cause that we call immoral because we have been compelledto regulate our life according to the requirements of our health andtranquillity--we cannot refrain from establishing a connection betweenthis immoral cause and the danger to which we have been exposed, or thedebt we have had to pay; and we are led once more to believe in thejustice of the universe, the prejudice which, of all those that wecling to, has its root deepest in our heart. And in our eagerness torestore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the factthat the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of ourexcess or imprudence been--to use the terms of our infantinevocabulary--heroic or innocent. If on an intensely cold day I throwmyself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if, seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of thechill will be absolutely the same; and nothing on this earth or beneaththe sky--save only myself, or man if he be able--will enhance mysuffering because I have committed a crime, or relieve my pain becausemy action was virtuous. 

4

Let us consider another form of physical justice: heredity. Thereagain we find the same indifference to moral causes. And truly it werea strange justice indeed that would throw upon the son, and even theremote descendant, the burden of a fault committed by his father or hisancestor. But human morality would raise no objection: man would notprotest. To him it would seem natural, magnificent, even fascinating. It would indefinitely prolong his individuality, his consciousness andexistence; and from this point of view would accord with a number ofindisputable facts which prove that we are not wholly self-contained, but connect, in more than one subtle, mysterious fashion, with all thatsurrounds us in life, with all that precedes us, or follows. 

And yet, true as this may be in certain cases, it is not true asregards the justice of physical heredity, which is absolutelyindifferent to the moral causes of the deed whose consequences thedescendants have to bear. There is physical relation between the actof the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequentsuffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whateverthe intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful. And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical hereditywould appear to be very restricted. A father may have been guilty of ahundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, apersecutor of the innocent or despoiler of the wretched, without thesecrimes leaving the slightest trace upon the organism of his children. It is enough that he should have been careful to do nothing that mightinjure his health. 

5

So much for the justice of Nature as shown in physical heredity. Moralheredity would appear to be governed by similar principles; but as itdeals with modifications of the mind and character infinitely morecomplex and more elusive, its manifestations are less striking, and itsresults less certain. Pathology is the only region which admits of itsdefinite observation and study; and there we observe it to be merelythe spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essentialprinciple: moral heredity being only a sequel, and revealing in itselementary stage the same indifference to real justice, and the sameblindness. Whatever the moral cause of the ancestor's drunkenness ordebauch, the same punishment may be meted out in mind and body to thedescendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemishwill almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will beattacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but littlewhether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminalinstincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement:the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could inventhas followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are lessperverse than hundreds of other offences that Nature never dreams ofpunishing. And this penalty, moreover, is inflicted blindly, not theslightest heed being paid to the motives underlying the actions, motives that may have been excusable perhaps, or indifferent, orpossibly even admirable. 

It would be absurd, however, to imagine that drunkenness and debaucheryare the only agents in moral heredity. There are a thousand others, all more or less unknown. Certain moral qualities appear to betransmitted as readily as though they were physical. In one race, forinstance, we will almost constantly discover certain virtues which haveprobably been acquired. But who shall say how much is due to heredity, and how much to environment and example? The problem becomes socomplicated, the facts so contradictory, that it is impossible, amidstthe mass of innumerable causes, to follow the track of one particularcause to the end. Let it suffice to say that in the only clear, striking, definitive cases where an intentional justice could haverevealed itself in physical or moral heredity, no trace of justice isfound. And if we do not find it in these, we are surely far lesslikely to find it in others. 

6

We may affirm therefore that not above us, or around us, or beneath us, neither in this life nor in our other life which is that of ourchildren, is the least trace to be found of an intentional justice. But, in the course of adapting ourselves to the laws of life, we havenaturally been led to credit with our own moral ideas those principlesof causality that we encounter most frequently; and we have in thisfashion created a very plausible semblance of effective justice, whichrewards or punishes most of our actions in the degree that theyapproach, or deviate from, certain laws that are essential for thepreservation of the race. It is evident that if I sow my field, Ishall have an infinitely better prospect of reaping a harvest thefollowing summer than my neighbour, who has neglected to sow his, preferring a life of dissipation and idleness. In this case, therefore, work obtains its admirable and certain reward; and as workis essential for the preservation of our existence, we have declared itto be the moral act of all acts, the first of all our duties. Suchinstances might be indefinitely multiplied. If I bring up my childrenwell, if I am good and just to those round about me, if I am honest, active, prudent, wise, and sincere in all my dealings, I shall have abetter chance of meeting with filial piety, with respect and affection, a better chance of knowing moments of happiness, than the man whoseactions and conduct have been the very reverse of mine. Let us not, however, lose sight of the fact that my neighbour, who is, let us say, a most diligent and thrifty man, might be prevented by the mostadmirable of reasons--such as an illness caught while nursing his wifeor his friend--from sowing his ground at the proper time, and that healso would reap no harvest. _Mutatis mutandis_, similar results wouldfollow in the other instances I have mentioned. The cases, however, are exceptional where a worthy or respectable reason will hinder theaccomplishment of a duty; and we shall find, as a rule, that sufficientharmony exists between cause and effect, between the exaction of thenecessary law and the result of the complying effort, to enable ourcasuistry to keep alive within us the idea of the justice of things. 

7

This idea, however, deeply ingrained though it be in the hearts andminds of the least credulous and least mystic of men, can surely not bebeneficial. It reduces our morality to the level of the insect which, perched on a falling rock, imagines that the rock has been set inmotion on its own special behalf. Are we wise in allowing certainerrors and falsehoods to remain active within us? There may have beensome in the past which, for a moment, were helpful; but, this momentover, men found themselves once again face to face with the truth, andthe sacrifice had only been delayed. Why wait till the illusion orfalsehood which appeared to do good begins to do actual harm, or, if itdo no harm, at least retards the perfect understanding that shouldobtain between the deeply felt reality and our manner of interpretingand accepting it? What were the divine right of kings, theinfallibility of the Church, the belief in rewards beyond the grave, but illusions whose sacrifice reason deferred too long? Nor wasanything gained by this dilatoriness beyond a few sterile hopes, alittle deceptive peace, a few consolations that at times weredisastrous. But many days had been lost; and we have no days to lose, we who at last are seeking the truth, and find in its search anall-sufficient reason for existence. Nor does anything retard us morethan the illusion which, though torn from its roots, we still permit tolinger among us; for this will display the most extraordinary activityand be constantly changing its form. 

But what does it matter, some will ask, whether man do the thing thatis just because he thinks God is watching; because he believes in akind of justice that pervades the universe; or for the simple reasonthat to his conscience this thing seems just? It matters above all. We have there three different men. The first, whom God is watching, will do much that is not just, for every god whom man has hithertoworshipped has decreed many unjust things. And the second will notalways act in the same way as the third, who is indeed the true man towhom the moralist will turn, for he will survive both the others; andto foretell how man will conduct himself in truth, which is his naturalelement, is more interesting to the moralist than to watch hisbehaviour when enmeshed in falsehood. 

8

It may seem idle to those who do not believe in the existence of asovereign Judge to discuss so seriously this inadmissible idea of thejustice of things; and inadmissible it does indeed become whenpresented thus in its true colours, as it were, pinned to the wall. This, however, is not our way of regarding it in every-day life. Whenwe observe how disaster follows crime, how ruin at last overtakesill-gotten prosperity; when we witness the miserable end of thedebauchee, the short-lived triumph of iniquity, it is our constanthabit to confuse the physical effect with the moral cause; and howeverlittle we may believe in the existence of a Judge, we nearly all of usend by a more or less complete submission to a strange, vague faith inthe justice of things. And although our reason, our calm observation, prove to us that this justice cannot exist, it is enough that an eventshould take place which touches us somewhat more nearly, or that thereshould be two or three curious coincidences, for conviction to fade inour heart, if not in our mind. Notwithstanding all our reason and allour experience, the merest trifle recalls to life within us theancestor who was convinced that the stars shone in their eternal placesfor no other purpose than to predict or approve a wound he was toinflict on his enemy upon the field of battle, a word he should speakin the assembly of the chiefs, or an intrigue he would bring to asuccessful issue in the women's quarters. We of to-day are no lessinclined to divinise our feelings for the benefit of our interests; theonly difference being that, the gods having no longer a name, ourmethods are less sincere and less precise. When the Greeks, powerlessbefore Troy, felt the need of supernatural signal and support, theywent to Philoctetes, deprived him of Hercules' bow and arrows, andabandoned him, ill, naked, and defenceless, on a desert island. Thiswas the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was thecommand of the gods. And similarly do we, when some iniquity seemsexpedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, ofhumanity, of the fatherland. On the other hand, should a greatmisfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and thatthere are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and theuniverse is at once repeopled with invisible judges. If, however, someunexpected, disproportionate stroke of good fortune come to us, we arequickly convinced that we must possess merits so carefully hidden as tohave escaped our own observation; and we are happier in their discoverythan at the windfall they have procured us. 

9

"One has to pay for all things, " we say. Yes, in the depths of ourheart, in all that pertains to man, justice exacts payment in the coinof our personal happiness or sorrow. And without, in the universe thatenfolds us, there is also a reckoning; but here it is a differentpaymaster who measures out happiness or sorrow. Other laws obtain;there are other motives, other methods. It is no longer the justice ofthe conscience that presides, but the logic of nature, which caresnothing for our morality. Within us is a spirit that weighs onlyintentions; without us, a power that only balances deeds. We try topersuade ourselves that these two work hand in hand. But in reality, though the spirit will often glance towards the power, this last is ascompletely ignorant of the other's existence as is the man weighingcoals in Northern Europe of the existence of his fellow weighingdiamonds in South Africa. We are constantly intruding our sense ofjustice into this non-moral logic; and herein lies the source of mostof our errors. 

10

And further, what right have we to complain of the indifference of theuniverse, what right to declare it incomprehensible, and monstrous?Why this surprise at an injustice in which we ourselves take so activea part? It is true that there is no trace of justice to be found indisease, accident, or most of the hazards of external life, which fallindiscriminately on the good and the wicked, the hero and traitor, thepoisoner and sister of charity. But we are far too eager to includeunder the title "Justice of the Universe" many a flagrant act that isexclusively human, and infinitely more common and more destructive thandisease, the hurricane, or fire. I do not allude to war; it might beurged that we attribute this rather to the will of the people or kingsthan to Nature. But poverty, for instance, which we still rank withirremediable ills such as shipwreck or plague; poverty, with all itscrushing sorrows and transmitted degeneration--how often may this beascribed to the injustice of the elements, and how often to theinjustice of our social condition, which is the crowning injustice ofman? Need we, at the sight of unmerited wretchedness, look to theskies for a reason, as though a flash of lightning had caused it? Needwe seek an impenetrable, unfathomable judge? Is this region not ourown; are we not here in the best explored, best known portion of ourdominion; and is it not we who organise misery, we who spread itabroad, as arbitrarily, from the moral point of view, as fire anddisease scatter destruction or suffering? Is it reasonable that weshould wonder at the sea's indifference to the soul-state of itsvictims, when we who have a soul, the pre-eminent organ of justice, payno heed whatever to the innocence of the countless thousands whom weourselves sacrifice, who are our wretched victims? We choose to regardas beyond our control, as a force of fatality, a force that restsentirely within our own hands. But does this excuse us? Truly we arestrange lovers of an ideal justice, we are strange judges! A judicialerror sends a thrill of horror from one end of the world to another;but the error which condemns three-fourths of mankind to misery, anerror as purely human as that of any tribunal, is attributed by us tosome inaccessible, implacable power. If the child of some honest manwe know be born blind, imbecile, or deformed, we will seek everywhere, even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for someGod whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor--acalamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity ofdegrading a creature's destiny--we do not dream of interrogating theGod who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires. Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas, for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge. Before we complain of Nature's indifference, or ask at her hands anequity she does not possess, let us attack the iniquity that dwells inthe homes of men; and when this has been swept away, we shall find thatthe part we assign to the injustice of fate will be less by fullytwo-thirds. And the benefit to mankind would be far more considerablethan if it lay in our power to guide the storm or govern the heat andthe cold, to direct the course of disease or the avalanche, or contrivethat the sea should display an intelligent regard to our virtues andsecret intentions. For indeed the poor far exceed in number those whofall victims to shipwreck or material accident, just as far moredisease is due to material wretchedness than to the caprice of ourorganism, or to the hostility of the elements. 

11

And for all that, we love justice. We live, it is true, in the midstof a great injustice; but we have only recently acquired thisknowledge, and we still grope for a remedy. Injustice dates such along way back; the idea of God, of destiny, of Nature's mysteriousdecrees, had been so closely and intimately associated with it, it isstill so deeply entangled with most of the unjust forces of theuniverse, that it was but yesterday that we commenced the endeavour toisolate such elements contained within it as are purely human. And ifwe succeed; if we can distinguish them, and separate them for all timefrom those upon which we have no power, justice will gain more than byall that the researches of man have discovered hitherto. For indeed inthis social injustice of ours, it is not the human part that is capableof arresting our passion for equity; it is the part that a great numberof men still attribute to a god, to a kind of fatality, or to imaginarylaws of Nature. 

12

This last inactive part shrinks every day. Nor is this because themystery of justice is about to disappear. A mystery rarely disappears;as a rule, it only shifts its ground. But it is often most importantand most desirable that we should bring about this change of abode. Itmay be said that two or three such changes almost stand for the wholeprogress of human thought: the dislodgment of two or three mysteriesfrom a place where they did harm, and their transference to a placewhere they become inoffensive and capable of doing good. Sometimeseven, there is no need for the mystery to change its place; we haveonly to identify it under another name. What was once called "thegods, " we now term "life. " And if life be as inexplicable as were thegods, we are at least the gainers to the extent that none has the rightto speak or do wrong in its name. The aim of human thought canscarcely be to destroy mystery, or lessen it, for that seemsimpossible. We may be sure that the same quantity of mystery will everenwrap the world, since it is the quality of the world, as of mystery, to be infinite. But honest human thought will seek above all todetermine what are the veritable irreducible mysteries. It willendeavour to strip them of all that does not belong to them, that isnot truly theirs, of the additions made by our errors, our fears, andour falsehoods. And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will theocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mysteryof life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mysterythat has been called "the primitive accident, " or the "perhapsunknowable essence of reality. "

13

Where had men conceived the mystery of justice to lodge? It pervadedthe world. At one moment it was supposed to rest in the hands of thegods, at another it engulfed and mastered the gods themselves. It hadbeen imagined everywhere except in man. It had dwelt in the sky, ithad lurked behind rocks, it had governed the air and the sea, it hadpeopled an inaccessible universe. Then at last we peered into itsimaginary retreats, we pressed close and examined; and its throne ofclouds tottered, it faded away; but at the very moment we believed ithad ceased to be, behold it reappeared, and raised its head once morein the very depths of our heart; and yet another mystery had soughtrefuge in man, and embodied itself in him. For it is in ourselves thatthe mysteries we seek to destroy almost invariably find their lastshelter and their most fitting abode, the home which they had forsaken, in the wildness of youth, to voyage through space; as it is inourselves that we must learn to meet and to question them. And trulyit is no less wonderful, no less inexplicable, that man should have inhis heart an immutable instinct of justice, than it was wonderful andinexplicable that the gods should be just, or the forces of theuniverse. It is as difficult to account for the essence of our memory, our will, or intelligence, as it was to account for the memory, will, or intelligence of the invisible powers or laws of Nature; and if, inorder to enhance our curiosity, we have need of the unknown orunknowable; if, in order to maintain our ardour, we require mystery orthe infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown andunknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed;nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, orlessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritablemysteries. Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heartof man. But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that iscertain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the onethat is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful one fromwithout. Mystery for mystery, let us no longer parley with themessengers, but with the sovereign who sent them; no longer questionthose feeble ones who silently vanish at our first inquiry, but ratherlook into our heart, where are both question and answer; the answerwhich it has forgotten, but, some day perhaps, shall remember. 

14

Then we shall be able to solve more than one disconcerting problem asto the distribution, often very equitable, of reward and punishmentamong men. And by this we do not mean only the inward, moral rewardand punishment, but also the reward and punishment that are visible andwholly material. There was some measure of reason in the belief heldby mankind from its very origin, that justice penetrates, animates asit were, every object of this world in which we live. This belief hasnot been explained away by the fact that our great moral laws have beenforcibly adapted to the great laws of life and matter. There is morebeyond. We cannot refer all things, in all circumstances, to a simplerelation of cause and effect between crime and punishment. There isoften a moral element also; and though events have not placed it there, though it is we alone who have created it, it is not the less powerfuland real. Of a physical justice, properly so called, we deny theexistence; but besides the wholly inward psychologic justice, to whichwe shall soon refer, there is also a psychologic justice which is inconstant communication with the physical world; and it is this justicethat we attribute to we know not what invisible and universalprinciple. And while it is wrong to credit Nature with moralintentions, and to allow our actions to be governed by fear ofpunishment or hope of reward that she may have in store for us, thisdoes not imply that, even materially, there is no reward for good, orpunishment for evil. Such reward and punishment undoubtedly exist, butthey issue not from whence we imagine; and in believing that they comefrom an inaccessible spot, that they master us, judge us, andconsequently dispense us from judging ourselves, we commit the mostdangerous of errors; for none has a greater influence upon our mannerof defending ourselves against misfortune, or of setting forth toattempt the legitimate conquest of happiness. 

15

Such justice as we actually discover in Nature does not issue from her, but from ourselves, who have unconsciously placed it there, throughbecoming one with events, animating them and adapting them to our uses. Accident, disease, the thunderbolt, which strike to right or to left, without apparent reason or warning, wholly indifferent as to what ourthoughts may be, are not the only elements in our life. There areother, and far more frequent, cases when we have direct influence onthe things and persons around us, and invest these with our ownpersonality; cases when the forces of nature become the instruments ofour thoughts, which, when unjust, will make improper use of them, thereby calling forth retaliation and inviting punishment and disaster. But in Nature there is no moral reaction; for this emanates from ourown thoughts or the thoughts of other men. It is not in things, but inus, that the justice of things resides. It is our moral condition thatmodifies our conduct towards the external world; and if we find thisantagonistic, it is because we are at war with ourselves, with theessential laws of our mind and our heart. The attitude of Naturetowards us is uninfluenced by the justice or injustice of ourintentions; and yet these will almost invariably govern our attitudetowards Nature. Here once more, as in the case of social justice, weascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible, eternal, fatalprinciple, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say that justice, heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to punish orto avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish man, itis human nature that rises in revolt, and human justice that avenges. 

16

In a former essay I referred to Napoleon's three crowning acts ofinjustice: the three celebrated crimes that were so fatally unjust tohis own fortune. The first was the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, condemned by order, without trial or proof, and executed in thetrenches of Vincennes; an assassination that sowed insatiable hatredand vengeance in the path of the guilty dictator. Then the detestableintrigues whereby he lured the too trustful, easy-going Bourbons toBayonne, that he might rob them of their hereditary crown; and thehorrible war that ensued, a war that cost the lives of three hundredthousand men, swallowed up all the morality and energy of the empire, most of its prestige, almost all its convictions, almost all thedevotion it inspired, and engulfed its prosperous destiny. And finallythe frightful, unpardonable Russian campaign, wherein his fortune cameat last to utter shipwreck amid the ice of the Berezina and thesnow-bound Polish steppes. 

"These prodigious catastrophes, " I said, "had numberless causes; butwhen we have slowly traced our way through all the more or lessunforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change inNapoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, andviolence which this genius committed; when we have seen howdeliberately he brought disaster to his smiling fortune, may we notalmost believe that what we behold, standing erect at the veryfountain-head of calamity, is no other than the silent shadow ofmisunderstood human justice? Human justice, wherein there is nothingsupernatural, nothing very mysterious, but built up of many thousandvery real little incidents, many thousand falsehoods, many thousandlittle offences of which each one gave rise to a corresponding act ofretaliation--human justice, and not a power that suddenly, at sometragic moment, leaps forth like Minerva of old, fully armed, from theformidable, despotic brow of destiny. In all this there is only onething of mystery, and that is the eternal presence of human justice;but we are aware that the nature of man is very mysterious. Let us inthe meanwhile ponder this mystery. It is the most certain of all, itis the profoundest, it is the most helpful, it is the only one thatwill never paralyse our energy for good And though that patient, vigilant shadow be not as clearly defined in every life as it was inNapoleon's, though justice be not always as active or as undeniable, weshall none the less do wisely to study a case like this wheneveropportunity offers. It will at least give rise to doubt within us, itwill stimulate inquiry; and these things are worth far more than theidle, short-sighted affirmation or denial that we so often permitourselves: for in all questions of this kind our endeavour should notbe to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to create a certain grave, courageous respect for all that yet remains unexplained in the actionsof men, in their subjection to what appear to be general laws, and inthe results that ensue. "

17

Let us now try to discover in what way this great mystery of justicedoes truly and inevitably work itself out within us. The heart of himwho has committed an unjust act becomes the scene of ineffaceabledrama, the paramount drama of human nature; and it becomes the moredangerous, and deadlier, in the degree of the man's greatness andknowledge. 

A Napoleon will say to himself, at such troubled moments, that themorality of a great life cannot be as simple as that of an ordinaryone, and that an active, powerful will has rights which the feeble, inert will cannot claim. He will hold that he may the morelegitimately sweep aside certain conscientious scruples, inasmuch as itis not ignorance or weakness that causes him to disregard these, butthe fact that he views them from a standpoint higher than that of themajority of men; and further, that his aim being great and glorious, this passing deliberate callousness of his is therefore truly a victorywon by his strength and his intellect, since there can be no danger indoing wrong when it is done by one who does it knowingly, and has hisvery good reason. All this, however, does not for a moment delude thatwhich lies deepest within us. An act of injustice must always shakethe confidence a man had in himself and his destiny; at a given moment, and that generally of the gravest, he has ceased to rely upon himselfalone; and this will not be forgotten, nor will he ever again be whollyhimself. He has confused, and probably corrupted, his fortune by theintroduction of strange powers. He has lost the exact sense of hispersonality and of the force that is in him. He can no longer clearlydistinguish between what is his own and comes from himself, and what heis constantly borrowing from the pernicious collaborators whom hisweakness has summoned. He has ceased to be the general who has nonebut disciplined soldiers in the army of his thoughts; he becomes theusurping chief around whom are only accomplices. He has forsworn thedignity of the man who will have none of the glory at which his heartcan only smile as sadly as an ardent, unhappy lover will smile at afaithless mistress. 

He who is truly strong will examine with eager care the praise andadvantages that his actions have won for him, and will silently rejectwhatever oversteps a certain line that he has drawn in hisconsciousness. And the stronger he is, the more nearly will this lineapproach the one that has already been drawn by the secret truth thatlies at the bottom of all things. An act of injustice is almost alwaysa confession of weakness; and very few such confessions are needed toreveal to the enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul. He whocommits an unjust deed that he may gain some measure of glory, orpreserve the little glory he has, does but admit that what he desiresor what he possesses is beyond his deserving, and that the part he hassought to play exceeds his powers of loyal fulfilment. And if, notwithstanding all, he persist in his endeavour, his life will soon bebeset by falsehoods, errors, and phantoms. 

And at last, after a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpableself-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragementonly, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire andsustain us. For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is onlyour past that can come to us, in our moments of doubt, and say: "Sinceyou were able to do that thing, it shall lie in your power to do thisthing also. When that danger confronted you, when that terrible grieflaid you prostrate, you had faith in yourself, and you conquered. Theconditions to-day are the same; do you but preserve your faith inyourself, and your star will be constant. " But what reply shall wemake if our past can only whisper: "Your success has been solely due toinjustice and falsehood, wherefore it behoves you once more to deceiveand to lie"? No man cares to let his eyes rest on his acts ofdisloyalty, weakness, or treachery; and all the events of bygone dayswhich we cannot contemplate calmly and peacefully, with satisfactionand confidence, trouble and restrict the horizon which the days thatare not yet are forming far away. It is only a prolonged survey of thepast that can give to the eye the strength it needs in order to soundthe future. 

18

No, it was not the inherent justice of things that punished Napoleonfor his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for ourown in a less startling, but not less painful, fashion. Nor was it anunyielding, incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the veryvault of heaven. " We are punished because our entire moral being, ourmind no less than our character, is incapable of living and actingexcept in justice. Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we arecarried, as it were, into a planet of which we know nothing, where theground slips from under our feet, and all things disconcert us; forwhile the humblest intellect feels itself at home in justice, and canreadily foretell the consequences of every just act, the most profoundand penetrating mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itselfhas created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue. The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant hasat heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be strangerstill should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes:for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect, creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the sametime strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancientbarriers of instinct. The moment we cross the primitive frontier ofequity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to ahundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels. Ifjustice be in us we may march along boldly, for there are certainthings to which the basest cannot be false; but if injustice possess uswe must beware of the justest of men, for there are things to whicheven these cannot remain faithful. As our physical organism wasdevised for existence in the atmosphere of our globe, so is our moralorganism devised for existence in justice. Every faculty craves forit, and is more intimately bound up with it than with the laws ofgravitation, of light or heat; and to throw ourselves into injustice isto plunge headlong into the hostile and the unknown. All that is in ushas been placed there with a view to justice; all things tend thitherand urge us towards it: whereas, when we harbour injustice, we battleagainst our own strength; and at last, at the hour of inevitablepunishment, when, prostrate, weeping and penitent, we recognise thatevents, the sky, the universe, the invisible are all in rebellion, alljustly in league against us, then may we truly say, not that these are, or ever have been, just, but that we, notwithstanding ourselves, havecontrived to remain just even in our injustice. 

19

We affirm that Nature is absolutely indifferent to our morality, andthat were this morality to command us to kill our neighbour, or to dohim the utmost possible harm, Nature would aid us in this no less thanin our endeavour to comfort or serve him. She as often would seem toreward us for having made him suffer as for our kindness towards him. Does this warrant the inference that Nature has no morality--using theword in its most limited sense as meaning the logical, inevitablesubordination of the means to the accomplishment of a general mission?This is a question to which we must not too hastily reply. We knownothing of Nature's aim, or even whether she have an aim. We knownothing of her consciousness, or whether she have a consciousness; ofher thoughts, or whether she think at all. It is with her deeds andher manner of doing that we are solely concerned. And in these we findthe same contradiction between our morality and Nature's mode of actionas exists between our consciousness and the instincts that Nature hasplanted within us. For this consciousness, though in ultimate analysisdue to her also, has nevertheless been formed by ourselves, and, basingitself upon the loftiest human morality, offers an ever strongeropposition to the desires of instinct. Were we to listen only to theselast, we should act in all things like Nature, which would invariablyseem to justify the triumph of the stronger, the victory of the leastscrupulous and best equipped; and this in the midst of the mostinexcusable wars, the most flagrant acts of injustice or cruelty. Ourone object would be our own personal triumph; nor should we pay theleast heed to the rights or sufferings of our victims, to theirinnocence or beauty, moral or intellectual superiority. But, in thatcase, why has Nature placed within us a consciousness and a sense ofjustice that have prevented us from desiring those things that shedesires? Or is it we ourselves who have placed them there? Are wecapable of deriving from within us something that is not in Nature; arewe capable of giving abnormal development to a force that opposes herforce; and if we possess this power, must not Nature have reasons ofher own for permitting us to possess it? Why should there be only inus, and nowhere else in the world, these two irreconcilable tendencies, that in every man are incessantly at strife, and alternatelyvictorious? Would one have been dangerous without the other? Would ithave overstepped its goal, perhaps; would the desire for conquest, unchecked by the sense of justice, have led to annihilation, as thesense of justice without the desire for conquest might have lured us toinertia? Which of these two tendencies is the more natural andnecessary, which is the narrower and which the vaster, which isprovisional and which eternal? Where shall we learn which one weshould combat and which one encourage? Ought we to conform to the lawthat is incontestably the more general, or should we cherish in ourheart a law that is evidently exceptional? Are there circumstancesunder which we have the right to go forth in search of the apparentideal of life? Is it our duty to follow the morality of the species orrace, which seems irresistible to us, being one of the visible sides ofNature's obscure and unknown intentions; or is it essential that theindividual should maintain and develop within him a morality entirelyopposed to that of the race or species whereof he forms part?

20

The truth is that the question which confronts us here is only anotherform of the one which lies at the root of evolutionary morality, and isprobably scientifically unsolvable. Evolutionary morality bases itselfon the justice of Nature--though it dare not speak out the word; on thejustice of Nature, which imposes upon each individual the good or evilconsequences of his own character and his own actions. But when, onthe other hand, it is necessary for evolutionary morality to justifyactions which, although intrinsically unjust, are necessary for theprosperity of the species, it falls back upon what it reluctantly termsNature's indifference or injustice. Here we have two unknown aims, that of humanity and that of Nature; and these, wrapped as they are ina mystery that may some day perhaps pass away, would seem to beirreconcilable in our mind. Essentially, all these questions resolvethemselves into one, which is of the utmost importance to ourcontemporary morality. The race would appear to be becoming conscious, prematurely it may be, and perhaps disastrously, not, we will say, ofits rights, for that problem is still in suspense, but of the fact thatmorality does not enter into certain actions that go to make history. 

This disquieting consciousness would seem to be slowly invading ourindividual life. Thrice, and more or less in the course of one year, has this question confronted us, and assumed vast proportions: in thematter of America's crushing defeat of Spain (although here the issueswere confused, for the Spaniards, besides their present blunders, hadbeen guilty of so many acts of injustice in the past, that the problembecomes very involved); in the case of an innocent man sacrificed tothe preponderating interests of his country; and in the iniquitous warof the Transvaal. It is true that the phenomenon is not altogetherwithout precedent. Man has always endeavoured to justify hisinjustice; and when human justice offered him no excuse or pretext, hefound in the will of the gods a law superior to the justice of man. But our excuse or pretext of to-day is fraught with the more peril toour morality inasmuch as it reposes on a law, or at least a habit, ofNature, that is far more real, more incontestable and universal thanthe will of an ephemeral and local god. 

Which shall prevail in the end, justice or force? Does force containan unknown justice that will absorb our human justice, or is theimpulse of justice within us, that would seem to resist blind force, actually no more than a devious emanation from that force, tending tothe same end; and is it only the point of deviation that escapes us?This is not a question that we can answer, we who ourselves form partof the mystery we seek to solve; the reply could come only from one whomight be gazing upon us from the heights of another world: one whoshould have learned the aim of the universe and the destiny of man. Inthe meanwhile, if we say that Nature is right, we say that the instinctof justice, which she has placed in us, and which therefore also isnature, is wrong; whereas if we approve this instinct, our approval isnecessarily derived from the exercise of the very faculty that iscalled in question. 

21

That is true; but it is no less true that the endeavour to sum up theworld in a syllogism is one of the oldest and vainest habits of man. In the region of the unknown and unknowable, logic-chopping has itsperils; and in the present case all our doubts would seem to arise fromanother hazardous syllogism. We tell ourselves--boldly at times, butmore often in a whisper--that we are Nature's children, and boundtherefore in all things to conform to her laws and copy her example. And since Nature regards justice with indifference, since she hasanother aim, which is the sustaining, the renewing, the incessantdevelopment of life, it follows. . . . So far we have not formulatedthe conclusion, or, at least, this conclusion has not yet openly daredto force its way into our morality; but, although its influence hashitherto only been remotely felt in that familiar sphere which includesour relations, our friends, and our immediate surroundings, it isslowly penetrating into the vast and desolate region whither werelegate all those whom we know not and see not, who for us have noname. It is already to be found at the root of many of our actions; ithas entered our politics, our industry, our commerce; indeed it affectsalmost all we do from the moment we emerge from the narrow circle ofour domestic hearth, the only place for the majority of men where alittle veritable justice is still to be found, a little benevolence, alittle love. It will call itself economic or social law, evolution, competition, struggle for life; it will masquerade under a thousandnames, forever perpetrating the selfsame wrong. And yet nothing can beless legitimate than such a conclusion. Apart from the fact that wemight with equal justification reverse the syllogism, and cause it todeclare that there must be a certain justice in Nature, since we, herchildren, are just, we need only consider it as it stands to realisehow doubtful and contestable is at least one of its premisses. 

We have seen in the preceding chapters that Nature does not appear tobe just from our point of view; but we have absolutely no means ofjudging whether she be not just from her own. The fact that she paysno heed to the morality of our actions does not warrant the inferencethat she has no morality, or that ours is the only one there can be. We are entitled to say that she is indifferent as to whether ourintentions be good or evil, but have not the right to conclude that shehas therefore no morality and no equity; for that would be tantamountto affirming that there are no more mysteries or secrets, and that weknow all the laws of the universe, its origin and its end. Her mode ofaction is different from our own, but, I say it once more, we know notwhat her reason may be for acting in this different fashion; and wehave no right to imitate what seems to us iniquitous and cruel, so longas we have no precise knowledge of the profound and salutary reasonsthat may underlie such action. What is the aim of Nature? Whither dothe worlds tend that stretch across eternity? Where does consciousnessbegin, and is its only form that which it assumes in ourselves? Atwhat point do physical laws become moral laws? Is life unintelligent?Have we sounded all the depths of Nature, and is it only in ourcerebro-spinal system that she becomes mind? And finally, what isjustice when viewed from other heights? Is the intention necessarilyat its centre; and can no regions exist where intentions no longershall count? We should have to answer these questions, and manyothers, before we could tell whether Nature be just or unjust from thepoint of view of masses whose vastness corresponds to her own. Shedisposes of a future, a space, of which we can form no conception; andin these there exists, it may be, a justice proportioned to herduration, to her extent and aim, even as our own instinct of justice isproportioned to the duration and narrow circle of our own life. Thewrong that she may for centuries commit she has centuries wherein torepair; but we, who have only a few days before us, what right have weto imitate what our eye cannot see, understand, or follow? By whatstandard are we to judge her, if we look away from the passing hour?For instance, considering only the imperceptible speck that we form inthe worlds, and disregarding the immensity that surrounds us, we arewholly ignorant of all that concerns our possible life beyond the tomb;and we forget that, in the present state of our knowledge, nothingauthorises us to affirm that there may not be a kind of more or lessconscious, more or less responsible after-life, that shall in no waydepend on the decisions of an external will. He would indeed be rashwho should venture to maintain that nothing survives, either in us orin others, of the efforts of our good intentions and the acquirementsof our mind. It may be--and serious experiments, though they do notseem to prove the phenomenon, may still allow us to class it amongscientific possibilities--it may be that a part of our personality, ofour nervous force, may escape dissolution. How vast a future wouldthen be thrown open to the laws that unite cause to effect, and thatalways end by creating justice when they come into contact with thehuman soul, and have centuries before them! Let us not forget thatNature at least is logical, even though we call her unjust; and were weto resolve on injustice, our difficulty would be that we must also belogical; and when logic comes into touch with our thoughts and ourfeelings, our intentions and passions, what is there thatdifferentiates it from justice?

22

Let us form no too hasty conclusion; too many points are stilluncertain. Should we seek to imitate what we term the injustice ofNature, we would run the risk of imitating and fostering only theinjustice that is in ourselves. When we say that Nature is unjust, weare in effect complaining of her indifference to our own littlevirtues, our own little intentions, our own little deeds of heroism;and it is our vanity, far more than our sense of equity, that considersitself aggrieved. Our morality is proportioned to our stature and ourrestricted destiny; nor have we the right to forsake it because it isnot on the scale of the immensity and infinite destiny of the universe. 

And further, should it even be proved that Nature is unjust at allpoints, the other question remains intact: whether the command be laidupon man to follow Nature in her injustice. Here we shall do well tolet our own consciousness speak, rather than listen to a voice soformidable that we hear not a word it utters, and are not even certainwhether words there be. Reason and instinct tell us that it is rightto follow the counsels of Nature; but they tell us also that we shouldnot follow those counsels when they clash with another instinct withinus, one that is no less profound: the instinct of the just and theunjust. And if instincts do indeed draw very near to the truth ofNature, and must be respected by us in the degree of the force that isin them, this one is perhaps the strongest of all, for it has struggledalone against all the others combined, and still persists within us. Nor is this the hour to reject it. Until other certitudes reach us, itbehoves us, who are men, to continue just in the human way and thehuman sphere. We do not see far enough, or clearly enough, to be justin another sphere. Let us not venture into a kind of abyss, out ofwhich races and peoples to come may perhaps find a passage, butwhereinto man, in so far as he is man, must not seek to penetrate. Theinjustice of Nature ends by becoming justice for the race; she has timebefore her, she can wait, her injustice is of her girth. But for us itis too overwhelming, and our days are too few. Let us be satisfiedthat force should reign in the universe, but equity in our heart. Though the race be irresistibly, and perhaps justly, unjust, thougheven the crowd appear possessed of rights denied to the isolated man, and commit on occasions great, inevitable, and salutary crimes, it isstill the duty of each individual of the race, of every member of thecrowd, to remain just, while ever adding to and sustaining theconsciousness within him. Nor shall we be entitled to abandon thisduty till all the reasons of the great apparent injustice be known tous; and those that are given us now, preservation of the species, reproduction and selection of the strongest, ablest, "fittest, " are notsufficient to warrant so frightful a change. Let each one try by allmeans to become the strongest, most skilful, the best adapted to thenecessities of the life that he cannot transform; but, so far, thequalities that shall enable him to conquer, that shall give the fullestplay to his moral power and his intelligence, and shall truly make himthe happiest, most skilful, the strongest, and "fittest"--thesequalities are precisely the ones that are the most human, the mosthonourable, and the most just. 

23

"Within me there is more, " runs the fine device inscribed on the beamsand pediment of an old patrician mansion at Bruges, which everytraveller visits; filling a corner of one of those tender andmelancholy quays, that are as forlorn and lifeless as though theyexisted only on canvas. And so too might man exclaim, "Within me thereis more;" every law of morality, every intelligible mystery. There maybe many others, above us and below us; but if these are to remain forever unknown, they become for us as though they were not; and shouldtheir existence one day be revealed to us; it can only be because theyalready are in us, already are ours. "Within me there is more;" and weare entitled to add, perhaps, "I have nothing to fear from that whichis in me. "

This much at least is certain, that the one active, inhabited region ofthe mystery of justice is to be found within ourselves. Other regionslack consistency; they are probably imaginary, and must inevitably bedeserted and sterile. They may have furnished mankind with illusionsthat served some purpose, but not always without doing harm; and thoughwe may scarcely be entitled to demand that all illusions should bedestroyed, they should at least not be too manifestly opposed to ourconception of the universe. To-day we seek in all things the illusionof truth. It is not the last, perhaps, or the best, or the only onepossible; but it is the one which we at present regard as the mosthonourable and the most necessary. Let us limit ourselves therefore torecognising the admirable love of justice and truth that exists in theheart of man. Proceeding thus, yielding admiration only where it isincontestably due, we shall gradually acquire some knowledge of thispassion, which is the distinguishing note of man; and one thing, mostimportant of all, we shall most undoubtedly learn--the means whereby wecan purify it, and still further increase it. As we observe itsincessant activity in the depths of our heart, the only temple where itcan truly be active: as we watch it blending with all that we think, and feel, and do, we shall quickly discover which are the things thatthrow light upon it, and which those that plunge it in darkness; whichare the things that guide it, and which those that lead it astray; weshall learn what nourishes it and what atrophies, what defends and whatattacks. 

Is justice no more than the human instinct of preservation and defence?Is it the purest product of our reason; or rather to be regarded ascomposed of a number of those sentimental forces which so often areright, though directly opposed to our reason--forces that in themselvesare a kind of unconscious, vaster reason, to which our conscious reasoninvariably accords its startled approval when it has reached theheights whence those kindly feelings long had beheld what itself wasunable to see? Is justice dependent on intellect, or rather oncharacter? Questions, these, that are perhaps not idle if we indeedwould know what steps we must take to invest with all its radiance andall its power the love of justice that is the central jewel of thehuman soul. All men love justice, but not with the same ardent, fierce, and exclusive love; nor have they all the same scruples, thesame sensitiveness, or the same deep conviction. We meet people ofhighly developed intellect in whom the sense of what is just and unjustis yet infinitely less delicate, less clearly marked, than in otherswhose intellect would seem to be mediocre; for here a great part isplayed by that little-known, ill-defined side of ourselves that we termthe character. And yet it is difficult to tell how much more or lessunconscious intellect must of necessity go with the character that isunaffectedly honest. The point before us, however, is to learn howbest to illumine, and increase within us, our desire for justice; andit is certain that, at the start, our character is less directlyinfluenced by the desire for justice than is our intellect, thedevelopment of which this desire in a large measure controls; and theco-operation of the intellect, which recognises and encourages our goodintention, is necessary for this intention to penetrate into, andmould, our character. That portion of our love of justice, therefore, which depends on our character, will benefit by its passage through theintellect; for in proportion as the intellect rises, and acquiresenlightenment, will it succeed in mastering, enlightening, andtransforming our instincts and our feelings. 

But let us no longer believe that this love must be sought in a kind ofsuperhuman, and often inhuman, infinite. None of the grandeur andbeauty that this infinite may possess would fall to its portion; itwould only be incoherent, inactive, and vague. Whereas by seeking itin ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening toit, marking how it profits by every acquirement of our mind, every joyand sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do topurify and increase it. 

24

Our task within these limits will be sufficiently long and mysterious. To increase and purify within us the desire for justice: how shall thisthing be done? We have some vague conception of the ideal that wewould approach; but how changeable still, and illusory, is this ideal!It is lessened by all that is still unknown to us in the universe, byall that we do not perceive or perceive incompletely, by all that wequestion too superficially. It is hedged round by the most insidiousdangers; it falls victim to the strangest oblivion, the mostinconceivable blunders. Of all our ideals it is the one that we shouldwatch with the greatest care and anxiety, with the most passionate, pious eagerness and solicitude. What seems irreproachably just to usat the moment is probably the merest fraction of what would seem justcould we shift our point of view. We need only compare what we weredoing yesterday with what we do to-day; and what we do to-day wouldappear full of faults against equity, were it granted to us to risestill higher, and compare it with what we shall do to-morrow. Thereneeds but a passing event, a thought that uses, a duty to ourselvesthat takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenlymade clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totterand be transformed. Slow as our advance may have been, we still shouldfind it impossible to begin life over again in the midst of many asorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement towhich we unconsciously gave rise; and yet, when these things came intobeing around us, we appeared to be in the right, and did not considerourselves unjust. And even so are we convinced to-day of our excellentintentions, even so do we tell ourselves that we are the cause if nosuffering and no tears, that we stay not a murmur of happiness, shortenno moment of peace or of love; and it may be that there passes, unperceived of us, to our right or our left, an illimitable injusticethat spreads over three-fourths of our life. 

25

I chanced to-day to take up a copy of the "Arabian Nights, " in the veryremarkable translation recently published by Dr. Mardrus; and Imarvelled at the extraordinary picture it gives of the ancient, long-vanished civilisations. Not in the Odyssey or the Bible, inXenophon or Plutarch, could their teaching be more clearly set forth. There is one story that the Sultana Schahrazade tells--it is one of thevery finest the volume contains--that reveals a life as pure and asadmirable as mankind ever has known; a life replete with beauty, happiness, and love; spontaneous and vivid, intelligent, nourishing, and refined; an abundant life that, to a certain point, comes as neartruth as a life well can. It is, in many respects, almost as perfectin its moral as in its material civilisation. And the pillars on whichthis incomparable structure of happiness rests--like pillars of lightsupporting the light--are formed of ideas of justice so exquisitelydelicate, counsels of wisdom so deeply penetrating, that we of to-day, being less fine in grain, less eager and buoyant, have lost the powerto formulate, or to discern, them. And for all that, this abode offelicity, that harbours a moral life so active and vigorous, sograciously grave, so noble--this palace, wherein the purest and holiestwisdom governs the pleasures of rejoicing mankind, is in its entiretybased on so great an injustice, is enclosed by so vast, so profound, sofrightful an iniquity, that the wretchedest man of us all would shrinkin dismay from its glittering, gem-bestrewn threshold. But of thisiniquity they who linger in that marvellous dwelling have not theremotest suspicion. It would seem that they never draw near to awindow; or that, should one by some chance fly open and reveal to theirsorrowful gaze the misery strewn in the midst of the revels andfeasting, they still would be blind to the crime which was infinitelymore revolting, infinitely more monstrous, than the most appallingpoverty--the crime of the slavery, and the even more terribledegradation, of their women. For these, however exalted theirposition, and at the moment even when they are speaking to the menround about them of goodness and justice--when they are reminding themof their most touching and generous duties--these women never are morethan objects of pleasure, to be bought or sold, or given away in amoment of gratitude, ostentation, or drunkenness, to any barbarous orhideous master. 

26

"They tell us, " says the beautiful slave Nozhatan, as, concealed behinda curtain of silk and of pearls, she speaks to Prince Sharkan and thewise men of the kingdom; "they tell us that the Khalif Omar set forthone night, in the company of the venerable Aslam Abou-Zeid, and that hebeheld, far away from his palace, a fire that was burning; and drewnear, as he thought that his presence might perhaps be of service. Andhe saw a poor woman who was kindling wood underneath a cauldron; and byher side were two little wretched children, groaning most piteously. And Omar said, 'Peace unto thee, O woman! What dost thou here, alonein the night and the cold?' And she answered, 'Lord, I am making thiswater to boil, that my children may drink, who perish of hunger andcold; but for the misery we have to bear Allah will surely one day askreckoning of Omar the Khalif. ' And the Khalif, who was in disguise, was much moved, and he said to her, 'But dost thou think, O woman, thatOmar can know of thy wretchedness, since he does not relieve it?' Andshe answered, 'Wherefore then is Omar the Khalif, if he be unaware ofthe misery of his people and of each one of his subjects?' Then theKhalif was silent, and he said to Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'Let us go quicklyfrom hence. ' And he hastened until he had reached the storehouse ofhis kitchens, and he entered therein and drew forth a sack of flourfrom the midst of the other sacks, and also a jar that was filled tothe brim with sheep-fat, and he said to Abou-Zeid, 'O Abou-Zeid, helpthou me to charge these on my back. ' But Abou-Zeid refused, and hecried, 'Suffer that I carry them on my back, O Commander of theFaithful. ' And Omar said calmly to him, 'Wilt thou also, O Abou-Zeid, bear the weight of my sins on the day of resurrection?' And Abou-Zeidwas obliged to lay the jar filled with fat, and the sack of flour, onthe Khalif's back. And Omar hastened, thus laden, until he had onceagain reached the poor woman; and he took of the flour, and he took ofthe fat, and placed these in the cauldron, over the fire; and with hisown hands did he then get ready the food, and he quickened the firewith his breath; and as he bent over, his beard being long, the smokefrom the wood forced its way through the beard of the Khalif. And atlast, when the food was prepared, Omar offered it unto the woman andthe two little children; and with his breath did he cool the food whilethey ate their fill. Then he left them the sack of flour and the jarof fat; and he went on his way, and said unto Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'OAbou-Zeid, the light from this fire I have seen to-day has enlightenedme also. '"

27

And it is thus that, a little further on, there speaks to a very wiseking one of five pensive maidens whom this king is invited to purchase:"Know thou, O king, " she says, "that the most beautiful deed one can dois the deed that is disinterested. And so do they tell us that inIsrael once were two brothers, and that one asked the other, 'Of allthe deeds thou hast done, which was the most wicked?' And his brotherreplied, 'This. As I passed a hen-roost one day, I stretched out myarm and I seized a chicken and strangled it, and then flung it backinto the roost. That is the wickedest deed of my life. And thou, O mybrother, what is thy wickedest action?' And he answered, 'That Iprayed to Allah one day to demand a favour of him. For it is only whenthe soul is simply uplifted on high that prayer can be beautiful. '"

And one of her companions, captive and slave like herself, also speaksto the king: "Learn to know thyself, " she says. "Learn to knowthyself! And do thou not act till then. And do thou then only act inaccordance with all thy desires, but having great care always that thoudo not injure thy neighbour. "

To this last formula our morality of today has nothing to add; nor canwe conceive a precept that shall be more complete. At most we couldwiden somewhat the meaning of the word "neighbour, " and raise, rendersomewhat more subtle and more elastic, that of the word "injure. " Andthe book in which these words are found is a monument of horror, notwithstanding all its flowers and all its wisdom a monument ofhorror and blood and tears, of despotism and slavery. And they whopronounce these words are slaves. A merchant buys them I know notwhere, and sells them to some old hag who teaches them, or causes themto be taught, philosophy, poetry, all Eastern sciences, in order thatone day they may become gifts worthy of a king. And when theireducation is finished, and their beauty and wisdom call forth theadmiration of all who approach them, the industrious, prudent old womandoes indeed offer them to a very wise, very just king. And when thisvery wise, very just king has taken their virginity from them, andseeks other loves, he will probably bestow them (I have forgotten theend of this particular story, but it is the invariable destiny of allthe heroines of these marvellous legends) on his viziers. And theseviziers will give them away in exchange for a vase of perfume or a beltstudded with jewels; or perhaps despatch them to a distant country, there to conciliate a powerful protector, or a hideous, but dreaded, rival. And these women, so fully conscious of themselves, whose gazecan penetrate so deeply into the consciousness of others--these womenwho forever are pondering the loftiest, grandest problems of justice, of the morality of men and of nations--never throw one questioningglance on their fate, or for an instant suspect the abominableinjustice whereof they are the victims. Nor do those suspect it eitherwho listen to them, and love and admire them, and understand them. Andwe who marvel at this--we who also reflect on justice and virtue, onpity and love--are we so sure that they who come after us shall notsome day find, in our present social condition, a spectacle no lessdisconcerting?

28

It is difficult for us to imagine what the ideal justice will be, forevery thought of ours that tends towards it is clogged by the injusticewherein we still live. Who shall say what new laws or relations willstand revealed when the misfortunes and inequalities due to the actionof man shall have been swept away; when, in accordance with theprinciples of evolutionary morality, each individual shall "reap theresults, good or bad, of his own nature, and of the consequences thatensue from that nature"? At present things happen otherwise; and wemay unhesitatingly declare that, as far as the material condition ofthe vast bulk of mankind is concerned, the connection between conductand consequences--to use Spencer's formula--exists only in the mostludicrous, arbitrary, and iniquitous fashion. Is there not someaudacity in our imagining that our thoughts can possibly be just whenthe body of each one of us is steeped to the neck in injustice? Andfrom this injustice no man is free, be it to his loss or his gain:there is not one whose efforts are not disproportionately rewarded, receiving too much or too little; not one who is not either advantagedor handicapped. And endeavour as we may to detach our mind from thisinveterate injustice, this lingering trace of the sub-human moralityneedful for primitive races, it is idle to think that our thoughts canbe as strenuous, independent, or clear as they might have been had thelast vestige of this injustice disappeared; it is idle to think thatthey can achieve the same result. The side of the human mind that canattain a region loftier than reality is necessarily timid andhesitating. Human thought is capable of many things; it has, in thecourse of time, brought startling improvement to bear upon what seemedimmutable in the species or the race. But even at the moment when itis pondering the transformation of which it has caught a distantglimpse, the improvement that it so eagerly desires, even then it isstill thinking, feeling, seeing like the thing that it seeks to alter, even then it lies captive beneath the yoke. All its effortsnotwithstanding, it is practically that which it would change. For themind of man lacks the power to forecast the future; it has been formedrather to explain, judge, and co-ordinate that which was, to help, foster, and make known what already exists, but so far cannot be seen;and when it ventures into what is not yet, it will rarely produceanything very salutary or very enduring. And the influence of thesocial condition in which we exist lies heavy upon it. How can weframe a satisfactory idea of justice, and ponder it loyally, with theneedful tranquillity, when injustice surrounds us on every side?Before we can study justice, or speak of it with advantage, it mustbecome what it is capable of being: a social force, irreproachable andactual. At present all we can do is to invoke its unconscious, secret, and, as it were, almost imperceptible efforts. We contemplate it fromthe shores of human injustice; never yet has it been granted us to gazeon the open sea beneath the illimitable, inviolate sky of a consciencewithout reproach. If men had at least done all that it was possiblefor them to do in their own domain, they would then have the right togo further, and question elsewhere; and their thoughts would probablybe clearer, were their consciences more at ease. 

29

And further, a heavy reproach lies on us and chills our ardour wheneverwe try to grow better, to increase our knowledge, our love, ourforgiveness. Though we purify our consciousness and ennoble ourthoughts, though we strive to render life softer and sweeter for thosewho are near us, all our efforts halt at our threshold, and have noinfluence on what lies outside our door; and the moment we leave ourhome we feel that we have done nothing, that there is nothing for us todo, and that we are taking part, ourselves notwithstanding, in thegreat anonymous injustice. Is it not almost ludicrous that we, whowithin our four walls strive to be noble and faithful, pitiful, simpleand loyal; we whose consciousness balances the nicest, most delicateproblems, and rejects even the suspicion of a bitter thought, have nosooner gone into the street and met faces that are unfamiliar, than, atthat very instant, and without the least possibility of our having itotherwise, all pity, equity, love, should be completely ignored by us?What dignity, what loyalty, can there be in this double life, so wiseand humane, uplifted and thoughtful, this side the threshold, andbeyond it so callous, so instinctive and pitiless! For it is enoughthat we should feel the cold a little less than the labourer who passesby, that we should be better fed or clad than he, that we should buyany object that is not strictly indispensable, and we haveunconsciously returned, through a thousand byways, to the ruthless actof primitive man despoiling his weaker brother. There is no singleprivilege we enjoy but close investigation will prove it to be theresult of a perhaps very remote abuse of power, of an unknown violenceor ruse of long ago; and all these we set in motion again as we sit atour table, stroll idly through the town, or lie at night in a bed thatour own hands have not made. Nay, what is even the leisure thatenables us to improve, to grow more compassionate and gentler, to thinkmore fraternally of the injustice others endure--what is this, intruth, but the ripest fruit of the great injustice?

30

These scruples, I know, must not be carried too far: they would eitherinduce a spirit of useless revolt, possibly disastrous to the specieswhose mild and mighty sluggishness we are bound to respect; or theywould lead us back to I know not what mystic, inert renouncement, directly opposed to the most evident and unchanging desires of life. Life has laws that we call inevitable; but we are already becoming moresparing in our use of the word. And here especially do we note thechange that has come over the attitude of the wise and upright man. Marcus Aurelius--than whom perhaps none ever craved more earnestly forjustice, or possessed a soul more wisely impressionable, more noblysensitive--Marcus Aurelius never asked himself what might be happeningoutside that admirable little circle of light wherein his virtue andconsciousness, his divine meekness and piety, had gathered those whowere near him, his friends and his servants. Infinite iniquity, heknew full well, stretched around him on every side; but with this hehad no concern. To him it seemed a thing that must be, a thingmysterious and sacred as the mighty ocean; the boundless domain of thegods, of fatality, of laws unknown and superior, irresistible, irresponsible, and eternal. It did not lessen his courage; on thecontrary, it enhanced his confidence, his concentration, and spurredhim upwards, like the flame that, confined to a narrow area, riseshigher and higher, alone in the night, urged on by the darkness. Heaccepted the decree of fate, that allotted slavery to the bulk ofmankind. Sorrowfully but with full conviction, did he submit to theirrevocable law; wherein he once again gave proof of his piety and hisvirtue. He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless, motionless void, became still more just, still more humane. And ineach succeeding century do we find a similar ardour, self-centred andsolitary, among those who were wise and good. The name of more thanone immovable law might change, but its infinite part remained ever thesame; and each one regarded it with the like resigned and chastenedmelancholy. But we of to-day--what course are we to pursue? We knowthat iniquity is no longer necessary. We have invaded the region ofthe gods, of destiny, and unknown laws. These may still controldisease or accident, perhaps, no less than the tempest, thelightning-flash, and most of the mysteries of death--we have not yetpenetrated to them--but we are well aware that poverty, wretchedness, hopeless toil, slavery, famine, are completely outside their domain. It is we who organise these, we who maintain and distribute them. These frightful scourges, that have grown so familiar, are wielded byus alone; and belief in their superhuman origin is becoming rarer andrarer. The religious, impassable ocean, that excused and protected theretreat into himself of the sage and the man of good, now only existsas a vague recollection. To-day Marcus Aurelius could no longer saywith the same serenity: "They go in search of refuges, of ruralcottages, of mountains and the seashore; thou too art wont to cherishan eager desire for these things. But is this not the act of anignorant, unskilled man, seeing that it is granted thee at whateverhour thou pleasest to retire within thyself? It is not possible forman to discover a retreat more tranquil, less disturbed by affairs, than that which he finds in his soul; especially if he have within himthose things the contemplation of which suffices to procure immediateenjoyment of the perfect calm, which is no other, to my mind, than theperfect agreement of soul. "

Other matters concern us to-day than this agreement of soul; or let usrather say that what we have to do is to bring into agreement therethat from which the soul of Marcus Aurelius was free--three-fourths ofthe sorrows of mankind, in a word--which have become real to us, intelligible, human, and urgent, and are no longer regarded as theinexplicable, immutable, intangible decrees of fatality. 

31

This does not imply, however, that we should abandon the old sages'desire for "agreement"; and even though we may not be entitled toexpect such perfect "agreement" as they derived from their pardonableegoism, we may still look for agreement of a provisional, conditionalkind. And although such "agreement" be not the last word of morality, it is none the less indispensable that we should begin by being as justas we possibly can within ourselves and to those round about us, ourneighbours, our friends, and our servants. It is at the moment when wehave become absolutely just to these, and within our own consciousness, that we realise our great injustice to all the others. The method ofbeing more practically just towards these last is not yet known to us;to return to great, heroic renouncements would effect but little, forthese are incapable of unanimous action, and would probably run counterto the profoundest laws of nature, which rejects renouncement in everyform save that of maternal love. 

This practical justice, therefore, remains the secret of the race. Ofsuch secrets it has many, which it reveals one by one, at such momentsof history as become truly critical; and the solutions it offers toinsuperable difficulties are almost always unexpected, and of strangestsimplicity. The hour approaches, perhaps, when it will speak oncemore. Let us hope, without being too sanguine; for we must bear inmind that humanity has yet by no means emerged from the period of"sacrificed generations. " History has known no others; and it ispossible that, to the end of time, all generations may call themselvessacrificed. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the sacrifices, however unjust and useless they still may be, are growing ever lessinhuman and less inevitable; and that the laws which govern them arebecoming better and better known, and would seem to draw nearer andnearer to those that a lofty mind might accept without being pitiless. 

32

It must be admitted, however, that a majestic, redoubtable slownessattends the movements of these "ideas of the species. " Centuries hadto pass before it dawned upon primitive men, who fled from each other, or fought when they met at the mouth of their caverns, that they woulddo well to form into groups, and unite in defence against the mightyenemies who threatened them from without. And besides, these "ideas"of the species will often be widely different from those that thewisest man might hold. They would seem to be independent, spontaneous, often based on facts of which no trace is shown by the human reason ofthe epoch that witnessed their birth; and indeed there is no graver ormore disturbing problem before the moralist or sociologist than that ofdetermining whether all his efforts can hasten by one hour or divert byone hair's-breadth the decisions of the great anonymous mass whichproceeds, step by step, towards its indiscernible goal. 

Long ago--so long indeed that this is one of the first affirmations ofscience when, quitting the bowels of the earth, the glaciers andgrottoes, it ceased to call itself geology and palaeontology and becamethe history of man--humanity passed through a crisis not wholly unlikethat which now lies ahead of it, or is actually menacing it at themoment; the difference being only that in those days the dilemma seemedvastly more tragic and more unsolvable. It may truly be said thatmankind never has known a more perilous or more decisive hour, or aperiod when it drew nearer its ruin; and the fact that we exist to-daywould appear to be due to the unexpected expedient which saved the raceat the moment when the scourge that fed on man's very reason, on allthat was best and most irresistible in his instinct of justice andinjustice, was actually on the point of destroying the heroicequilibrium between the desire to live and the possibility of living. 

I refer to the acts of violence, rapine, outrage, murder, which were ofnatural occurrence among the earliest human groups. These crimes, which will probably have been of the most frightful description, musthave very seriously endangered the existence of the race; for vengeanceis the terrible, and, as it were, the epidemic form which the cravingfor justice at first assumes. Now this spirit of vengeance, abandonedto itself and forever multiplying--revenge followed by the revenge ofrevenge--would finally have engulfed, if not the whole of mankind, atleast all those of the earliest men who were possessed of energy orpride. We find, however, that among these barbarous races, as amongmost of the existing savage tribes whose habits are known to us, therecomes a time, usually at the period when their weapons are growing toodeadly, when this vengeance suddenly halts before a singular custom, known as the "blood-tribute, " or the "composition for murder;" whichallows the homicide to escape the reprisals of the victim's friends andrelations by payment to them of an indemnity, that, from beingarbitrary at the start, soon becomes strictly graduated. 

In the whole history of these infant races, in whom impulse and heroismwere the predominant factors, there is nothing stranger, nothing moreastounding, than this almost universal custom, which for all itsingenuity would seem almost too long-suffering and mercantile. May weattribute it to the foresight of the chiefs? We find it in races amongwhom authority might almost be said to be entirely lacking. Did itoriginate among the old men, the thinkers, the sages, of the primitivegroups? That is not more probable. For underlying this custom thereis a thought which is at the same time higher and lower than could bethe thought of an isolated prophet or genius of those barbarous days. The sage, the prophet, the genius--above all, the untrained genius--israther inclined to carry to extremes the generous and heroic tendenciesof the clan or epoch to which he belongs. He would have recoiled indisgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacredrevenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love. Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attainedsufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyondthe noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, and to beholdonly the superior interest of the tribe or the race: that mysteriousdesire for life, which the wisest of the wise among us to-day aregenerally unable to perceive or to justify until they have wroughtgrave and painful conquest over their isolated reason and their heart. 

No, it was not the thought of man which found the solution. On thecontrary, it was the unconsciousness of the mass, compelled to act inself-defence against thoughts too intrinsically, individually humanto satisfy the irreducible exigencies of life on this earth. Thespecies is extremely patient, extremely long-suffering. It will bearas long as it can and carry as far as it can the burden which reason, the desire for improvement, the imagination, the passions, vices, virtues, and feelings natural to man, may combine to impose upon it. But the moment the burden becomes too overwhelming, and disasterthreatens, the species will instantaneously, with the utmostindifference, fling it aside. It is careless as to the means; it willadopt the one that is nearest, the simplest, most practical, beingdoubtless perfectly satisfied that its own idea is the justest andbest. And of ideas it has only one, which is that it wishes to live;and truly this idea surpasses all the heroism, all the generous dreams, that may have reposed in the burden which it has discarded. 

And indeed, in the history of human reason, the greatest and thejustest thoughts are not always those which attain the loftiestheights. It happens somewhat with the thoughts of men as with afountain; for it is only because the water has been imprisoned andescapes through a narrow opening that it soars so proudly into the air. As it issues from this opening and hurls itself towards the sky, itwould seem to despise the great, illimitable, motionless lake thatstretches out far beneath it. And yet, say what one will, it is thelake that is right. For all its apparent motionlessness, for all itssilence, it is tranquilly accomplishing the immense and normal task ofthe most important element of our globe; and the jet of water is merelya curious incident, which soon returns into the universal scheme. Tous the species is the great, unerring lake; and this even from thepoint of view of the superior human reason that it would seem at timesto offend. Its idea is the vastest of all, and contains every other;it embraces limitless time and space. And does not each day that goesby reveal more and more clearly to us that the vastest idea, no matterwhere it reside, always ends by becoming the most just and mostreasonable, the wisest and the most beautiful?

33

There are times when we ask ourselves whether it might not be well forhumanity that its destinies should be governed by the superior menamong us, the great sages, rather than by the instinct of the species, that is always so slow and often so cruel. 

It is doubtful whether this question could be answered to-day in quitethe same fashion as formerly. It would surely have been highlydangerous to confide the destinies of the species to Plato orAristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, or Montesquieu. At the veryworst moments of the French Revolution the fate of the people was inthe hands of philosophers of none too mean an order. It cannot bedenied, however, that in our time the habits of the thinker haveundergone a great change. He has ceased to be speculative or Utopian;he is no longer exclusively intuitive. In politics as in literature, in philosophy as in all the sciences, he displays less imagination, buthis powers as an observer have grown. He inclines rather toconcentrate his attention on the thing that is, to study it and striveat its organisation, than to precede it, or to endeavour to create whatis not yet, or never shall be. And therefore he may possibly have someclaim to more authoritative utterance; nor would so much danger attendhis more direct intervention. It must be admitted, however, that thereis no greater likelihood now than in former times of such interventionbeing permitted him. Nay, there is less, perhaps; for having becomemore circumspect and less blinded by narrow convictions, he will beless audacious, less imperious, and less impatient. And yet it ispossible that, finding himself in natural sympathy with the specieswhich he is content merely to observe, he will by slow degrees acquiremore and more influence; so that here again, in ultimate analysis, itis the species that will be right, the species that will decide: for itwill have guided him who observes it, and therefore, in following himwhom it has guided, it will truly only be following its ownunconscious, formless desires, which shall have been expressed by him, and by him brought into light. 

34

Until such time as the species shall discover the new and needfulexperiment--and this it will quickly do when the danger becomes moreacute; nay, for all we know, the expedient may have already been found, and, entirely unsuspected of us, be already transforming part of ourdestinies--until such time, while bound to act in external matters asthough our brothers' salvation depended entirely on our exertions, itis open to us, no less than to the sages of old, to retire occasionallywithin ourselves. We in our turn shall perhaps find there "one ofthose things" of which the contemplation shall suffice to bring usinstantaneous enjoyment, if not of the perfect calm, at least of anindestructible hope. Though nature appear unjust, though nothingauthorise us to declare that a superior power, or the intellect of theuniverse, rewards or punishes, here below or elsewhere, in accordancewith the laws of our consciousness or with other laws that we shallsome day admit; and, finally, though between man and man, in otherwords, in our relations with our fellows, our admirable desire forequity translate itself into a justice that is always incomplete, atthe mercy of every error of reason, of every ambush laid by personalinterest, and of all the evil habits of a social condition that stillis sub-human, it is none the less certain that an image of thatinvisible and incorruptible justice, which we have vainly sought in thesky or the universe, reposes in the depths of the moral life of everyman. And though its method of action be such as to cause it to passunperceived of most of our fellows, often even of our ownconsciousness, though all that it does be hidden and intangible, it isnone the less profoundly human and profoundly real. It would seem tohear, to examine, all that we say and think and strive for in ourexterior life; and if it find a little sincerity beneath, a littleearnest desire for good, it will transform these into moral forces thatshall extend and illumine our inner life, and help us to betterthoughts, better speech, better endeavour in the time to come. It willnot add to, or take from, our wealth; it will bring no immunity fromdisease or from lightning; it will not prolong by one hour the life ofthe being we cherish; but if we have learned to reflect and to love, if, in other words, heart and brain have both done their duty, it willestablish in heart and brain a contentment that, though perhapsstripped of illusion, shall still be inexhaustible and noble; it willconfer a dignity of existence, and an intelligence, that shall sufficeto sustain our life after the loss of our wealth, after the stroke ofdisease or of lightning has fallen, after the loved one has for everquitted our arms. A good thought or deed brings a reward to our heartthat it cannot, in the absence of an universal judge of nature, extendto the things around. It endeavours to create within us the happinessit is unable to produce in our material life. Denied all externaloutlet, it fills our soul the more. It prepares the space that soonshall be required by our developing intellect, our expanding peace andlove. Helpless against the laws of nature, it is all-powerful overthose that govern the happy equilibrium of human consciousness. Andthis is true of every stage of thought, of every class of action. Avast distance might seem to divide the labourer who brings up hischildren honourably, lives his humble life and honourably does the workthat falls to his lot, from the man who steadfastly perseveres in moralheroism; but each of these is acting and living on the same plane asthe other, and the same loyal, consoling region receives them both. And though it be certain that what we say and do must largely influenceour material happiness, yet, in ultimate analysis, it is only by meansof the spiritual organs that even material happiness can be fully andpermanently enjoyed. Hence the preponderating importance of thought. But of supreme importance, from the point of view of the reception weshall offer to the joys and sorrows of life, is the character, theframe of mind, the moral condition, that the things we have said anddone and thought will have created within us. Here is evidence ofadmirable justice; and the intimate happiness that our moral beingderives from the constant striving of the mind and heart for good, becomes the more comprehensible when we realise that this happiness isonly the surface of the goodly thought or feeling that is shiningwithin our heart. Here may we indeed find that intelligent, moral bondbetween cause and effect that we have vainly sought in the externalworld; here, in moral matters, reigning over the good and evil that arewarring in the depths of our consciousness, may we in truth discover ajustice exactly similar to the one which we could desire to recognisein physical matters. But whence do we derive this desire if not fromthe justice within us; and is it not because this justice is so mightyand active in our heart that we are reluctant to believe in itsnon-existence in the universe?

35

We have spoken at great length of justice; but is it not the greatmystery of man, the one that tends to take the place of most of thespiritual mysteries that govern his destiny? It has dethroned morethan one god, more than one nameless power. It is the star evolvedfrom the nebulous mass of our instincts and our incomprehensible life. It is not the word of the enigma; and when, in the fulness of time, itshall become clearer to us, and shall truly reign all over the earth, there will come to us no greater knowledge of what we are, or why weare, whence we come or whither we go; but we shall at least have obeyedthe first word of the enigma, and shall proceed, with a freer spiritand a more tranquil heart, to the search for its last secret. 

Finally, it comprises all the human virtues; and none but itself canoffer the welcoming smile whereby these are ennobled and purified, nonebut itself can accord them the right to penetrate deep into our morallife. For every virtue must be maleficent and steeped in artifice thatcannot support the fixed and eager regard of justice. And so do wefind it too at the heart of our every ideal. It is at the centre ofour love of truth, at the centre of our love of beauty. It is kindnessand pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the actsof justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive thatjustice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies beforehim, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, butthat they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighbouring destinies, beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond whathe seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond hisdoubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of themen, his brothers. 

II

THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY

It is not unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest of life, all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the destiny of man, reposesalmost entirely in the mystery that surrounds us; in the two mysteries, it may be, that are mightiest, most dreadful of all--fatality anddeath. And indeed there are many whom the fatigue induced in theirminds by the natural uncertainties of science has almost compelled toaccept this belief. I too believe, though in a somewhat differentfashion, that the study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest towhich the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been theoccupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy andliterature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portraythe trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life. Andwe find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth oftheir insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded withthe respect in which they held all they did not know, with the dignitythat their mind or imagination was able to confer on the sum ofunknowable forces. Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we havebeing gives life a meaning and grandeur which must of necessity beabsent if we persist in considering only the things that are known tous; if we too readily incline to believe that these must greatlytranscend in importance the things that we know not yet. 

2

It behoves every man to frame for himself his own general conception ofthe world. On this conception reposes his whole human and moralexistence. But this general conception of the world, when closelyexamined, is truly no more than a general conception of the unknown. And we must be careful; we have not the right, when ideas so vastconfront us, ideas the results of which are so highly important, toselect the one which seems most magnificent to us, most beautiful, ormost attractive. The duty lies on us to choose the idea which seemstruest, or rather the only one which seems true; for I decline tobelieve that we can sincerely hesitate between the truth that is onlyapparent and the one that is real. The moment must always come when wefeel that one of these two is possessed of more truth than the other. And to this truth we should cling: in our actions, our words, and ourthoughts; in our art, in our science, in the life of our feelings andintellect. Its definition, perhaps, may elude us. It may possiblybring not one grain of reassuring conviction. Nay, essentially, perhaps, it may be but the merest impression, though profounder andmore sincere than any previous impression. These things do not matter. It is not imperative that the truth we have chosen should beunimpeachable or of absolute certainty. There is already great gain inour having been brought to experience that the truths we had lovedbefore did not accord with reality or with faithful experience of life;and we have every reason, therefore, to cherish our truth withheartiest gratitude until its own turn shall come to experience thefate it inflicted on its predecessor. The great mischief, the onewhich destroys our moral existence and threatens the integrity of ourmind and our character, is not that we should deceive ourselves andlove an uncertain truth, but that we should remain constant to one inwhich we no longer wholly believe. 

3

If we sought nothing more than to invest our conception of the unknownwith the utmost possible grandeur and tragedy, magnificence and might, there would be no need of such restrictions. From many points of view, doubtless, the most beautiful, most touching, most religious attitudein face of mystery is silence, and prayer, and fearful acceptance. When this immense, irresistible force confronts us--this inscrutable, ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignlyintelligent, and, for all we know, even personal--must it not, at firstsight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission, trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot apatient, laborious investigation? But is the choice possible to us;have we still the right to choose? The beauty or dignity of theattitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment. It is truthand sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of allthings--how much more when mystery confronts us! In the past, theprostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because ofwhat, in the past, seemed to be true. We have acquired no freshcertitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the pasthas ceased to be true. We have not bridged the unknown; but still, though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; andit is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to beonce more assumed by us. For although it has not, perhaps, beenincontrovertibly proved that the unknown is neither vigilant norpersonal, neither sovereignly intelligent nor sovereignly just, or thatit possesses none of the passions, intentions, virtues and vices ofman, it is still incomparably more probable that the unknown isentirely indifferent to all that appears of supreme importance in thislife of ours. It is incomparably more probable that if, in the vastand eternal scheme of the unknown, a minute and ephemeral place bereserved for man, his actions, be he the strongest or weakest, the bestor the worst of men, will be as unimportant there as the movements ofthe obscurest geological cell in the history of ocean or continent. Though it may not have been irrefutably shown that the infinite andinvisible are not for ever hovering round us, dealing out sorrow or joyin accordance with our good or evil intentions, guiding our destinystep by step, and preparing, with the help of innumerable forces, theincomprehensible but eternal law that governs the accidents of ourbirth, our future, our death, and our life beyond the tomb, it is stillincomparably more probable that the invisible and infinite, interveneas they may at every moment in our life, enter therein only asstupendous, blind, indifferent elements; and that though they pass overus, in us, penetrate into our being, and inspire and mould our life, they are as careless of our individual existence as air, water, orlight. And the whole of our conscious life, the life that forms ourone certitude, that is our one fixed point in time and space, restsupon "incomparable probabilities" of this nature; but rarely are theyas "incomparable" as these. 

4

The hour when a lofty conviction forsakes us should never be one ofregret. If a belief we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps withinus; if we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, this isproof of vitality, progress, of our marching steadily onwards, andmaking good use of all that lies to our hand. We should rejoice at theknowledge that the thought which so long has sustained us is provedincapable now of even sustaining itself. And though we have nothing toput in the place of the spring that lies broken, there need still be nocause for sadness. Far better the place remain empty than that it befilled by a spring which the rust corrodes, or by a new truth in whichwe do not wholly believe. And besides, the place is not really empty. Determinate truth may not yet have arrived, but still, in its own deeprecess, there hides a truth without name, which waits and calls. Andif it wait and call too long in the void, and nothing arise in theplace of the vanished spring, it still shall be found that, in moral noless than in physical life, necessity will be able to create the organit needs, and that the negative truth will at last find sufficientforce in itself to set the idle machinery going. And the lives thatpossess no more than one force of this kind are not the leaststrenuous, the least ardent, or the least useful. 

And even though our belief forsake us entirely, it still will take withit nothing of what we have given, nor will there be lost one singlesincere, religious, disinterested effort that we have put forth toennoble this faith, to exalt or embellish it. Every thought we haveadded, each worthy sacrifice we have had the courage to make in itsname, will have left its indelible mark on our moral existence. Thebody is gone, but the palace it built still stands, and the space ithas conquered will remain for ever unenclosed. It is our duty, and onewe dare not renounce, to prepare homes for truths that shall come, tomaintain in good order the forces destined to serve them, and to createopen spaces within us; nor can the time thus employed be possiblywasted. 

5

These thoughts have arisen within me through my having been compelled, a few days ago, to glance through two or three little dramas of mine, wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itselfwholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, butnot so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency. The keynote ofthese little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us. I, orrather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerestof poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feelingof their art and the thoughts of their real life), seemed to believe ina species of monstrous, invisible, fatal power that gave heed to ourevery action, and was hostile to our smile, to our life, to our peaceand our love. Its intentions could not be divined, but the spirit ofthe drama assumed them to be malevolent always. In its essence, perhaps, this power was just, but only in anger; and it exercisedjustice in a manner so crooked, so secret, so sluggish and remote, thatits punishments--for it never rewarded--took the semblance ofinexplicable, arbitrary acts of fate. We had there, in a word, more orless the idea of the God of the Christian blent with that of ancientfatality, lurking in nature's impenetrable twilight, whence it eagerlywatched, contested, and saddened the projects, the feelings, thethoughts and the happiness of man. 

6

This unknown would most frequently appear in the shape of death. Thepresence of death--infinite, menacing, for ever treacherouslyactive--filled every interstice of the poem. The problem of existencewas answered only by the enigma of annihilation. And it was a callous, inexorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious way with onlychance to guide it; laying its hands preferentially on the youngest andthe least unhappy, since these held themselves less motionless thanothers, and that every too sudden movement in the night arrested itsattention. And around it were only poor little trembling, elementarycreatures, who shivered for an instant and wept, on the brink of agulf; and their words and their tears had importance only from the factthat each word they spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf, and were at times so strangely resonant there as to lead one to thinkthat the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could sendforth so confused and muffled a sound. 

7

Such a conception of life is not healthy, whatever show of reason itmay seem to possess; and I would not allude to it here were it not forthe fact that we find this idea, or one closely akin to it, governingthe hearts of most men, however tranquil, or thoughtful, or earnestthey may be, at the approach of the slightest misfortune. There isevidently a side to our nature which, notwithstanding all we may learnand master and the certitudes we may acquire, destines us never to beother than poor, weak, useless creatures, consecrated to death, andplaythings of the vast and indifferent forces that surround us. Weappear for an instant in limitless space, our one appreciable missionthe propagation of a species that itself has no appreciable mission inthe scheme of a universe whose extent and duration baffle the mostdaring, most powerful brain. This is a truth; it is one of thoseprofound but sterile truths which the poet may salute as he passes onhis way; but it is a truth in the neighbourhood of which the man withthe thousand duties who lives in the poet will do well not to abide toolong. And of truths such as this many are lofty and deserving of allour respect, but in their domain it were unwise to lay ourselves downand sleep. So many truths environ us that it may safely be said thatfew men can be found, of the wickedest even, who have not for counseland guide a grave and respectable truth. Yes, it is a truth--thevastest, most certain of truths, if one will--that our life is nothing, and our efforts the merest jest; our existence, that of our planet, only a miserable accident in the history of worlds; but it is no less atruth that, to us, our life and our planet are the most important, nay, the only important phenomena in the history of worlds. And of thesetruths which is the truer? Does the first of necessity destroy thesecond? Without the second, should we have had the courage toformulate the first? The one appeals to our imagination, and may behelpful to it in its own domain; but the other directly interests ouractual life. It is well that each have its share. The truth that isundoubtedly truest from the human point of view must evidently appealto us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point ofview. Ignorant as we are of the aim of the universe, how shall we tellwhether or no it concern itself with the interests of our race? Theprobable futility of our life and our species is a truth which regardsus indirectly only, and may well, therefore, be left in suspense. Theother truth, that indicates clearly the importance of life, may perhapsbe more restricted, but it has a direct, incontestable, actual bearingupon ourselves. To sacrifice or even subordinate it to an alien truthmust surely be wrong. The first truth should never be lost sight of;it will strengthen and illumine the second, whose government will thusbecome more intelligent and benign: the first truth will teach us toprofit by all that the second does not include. And if we allow it tosadden our heart or arrest our action, we have not sufficientlyrealised that the vast but precarious space it fills in the region ofimportant truths is governed by countless problems which as yet areunsolved; while the problems whereon the second truth rests are dailyresolved by real life. The first truth is still in the dangerous, feverish stage, through which all truths must pass before they canpenetrate freely into our heart and our brain; a stage of jealousy, truculence, which renders the neighbourhood of another truthinsupportable to them. We must wait till the fever subsides; and ifthe home that we have prepared in our spirit be sufficiently spaciousand lofty, we shall find very soon that the most contradictory truthswill be conscious only of the mysterious bond that unites them, andwill silently join with each other to place in the front rank of all, and there help and sustain, that truth from among them which calmlywent on with its work while the others were fretfully jangling; thattruth which can do the most good, and brings with it the uttermost hope. 

The strangest feature of the present time is the confusion which reignsin our instincts and feelings--in our ideas, too, save at our mostlucid, most tranquil, most thoughtful moments--on the subject of theintervention of the unknown or mysterious in the truly grave events oflife. We find, amidst this confusion, feelings which no longer accordwith any precise, living, accepted idea; such, for instance, as concernthe existence of a determinate God, conceived as more or lessanthropomorphic, providential, personal, and unceasingly vigilant. Wefind feelings which, as yet, are only partially ideas; as those whichdeal with fatality, destiny, the justice of things. We find ideaswhich will soon turn into feelings; those that treat of the law of thespecies, evolution, selection, the will-power of the race, &c. And, finally, we discover ideas which still are purely ideas, too uncertainand scattered for us to be able to predict at what moment they willbecome feelings, and thus materially influence our actions, ouracceptance of life, our joys, and our sorrows. 

9

If in actual life this confusion is not so apparent, it is only becauseactual life will but rarely express itself, or condescend to make useof image or formula to relate its experience. This state of mind, however, is clearly discernible in all those whose self-imposed missionit is to depict real life, to explain and interpret it, and throw lighton the hidden causes of good and evil destiny. It is of the poets Ispeak, of dramatic poets above all, who are occupied with external andactive life; and it matters not whether they produce novels, tragedies, the drama properly so called, or historical studies, for I give to thewords poets and dramatic poets their widest significance. 

It cannot be denied that the possession of a dominant idea, one thatmay be said to exclude all others, must confer considerable power onthe poet, or "interpreter of life;" and in the degree that the idea ismysterious, and difficult of definition or control, will be the extentof this power and its conspicuousness in the poem. And this isentirely legitimate, so long as the poet himself has not the leastdoubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poetswho have never hesitated, paused, or doubted. Thus it is that we findthe idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies ofCorneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that ofthe tyranny of destiny in the works of Sophocles. 

10

Of these three ideas, that of heroic duty is the most human and theleast mysterious; and although far more restricted to-day than at thetime of Corneille--for there are few such duties which it would not nowbe reasonable, and even heroic, perhaps, to call into question, and itbecomes ever more and more difficult to find one that is trulyheroic--conditions may still be imagined under which recourse theretomay be legitimate in the poet. 

But will he discover in faith--to-day no more than a shadowy memory tothe most fervent believer--that inspiration and strength, by whose aidCorneille was able to depict the God of the Christians as the august, omnipresent actor of his dramas, invisible but untiringly active, andsovereign always? Or is it possible still for a reasonable being, whose eyes rest calmly on the life about him, to believe in the tyrannyof fate; of that sluggish, unswerving, preordained, inscrutable forcewhich urges a given man, or family, by given ways to a given disasteror death? For though it be true that our life is subject to many anunknown force, we at least are aware that these forces would seem to beblind, indifferent, unconscious, and that their most insidious attacksmay be in some measure averted by the wisest among us. Can we still beallowed, then, to believe that the universe holds a power so idle, sowretched, as to concern itself solely in saddening, frustrating, andterrifying the projects and schemes of man?

Immanent justice is another mysterious and sovereign force, whereof usehas been made; but it is only the feeblest of writers who have venturedto accept this postulate in its entirety: only those to whom realityand probability were matters of smallest moment. The affirmation thatwickedness is necessarily and visibly punished in this life, and virtueas necessarily and visibly rewarded, is too manifestly opposed to themost elementary daily experience, too wildly inconsistent a dream, forthe true poet ever to accept it as the basis of his drama. And, on theother hand, if we refer to a future life the bestowal of reward andpunishment, we are merely entering by another gate the region of divinejustice. For, indeed, unless immanent justice be infallible, permanent, unvarying, and inevitable, it becomes no more than acurious, well-meaning caprice of fate; and from that moment it nolonger is justice, or even fate: it shrinks into merest chance--inother words, almost into nothingness. 

There is, it is true, a very real immanent justice; I refer to theforce which enacts that the vicious, malevolent, cruel, disloyal manshall be morally less happy than he who is honest and good, affectionate, gentle, and just. But here it is inward justice whoseworkings we see; a very human, natural, comprehensible force, the studyof whose cause and effect must of necessity lead to psychologicaldrama, where there no longer is need of the vast and mysteriousbackground which lent its solemn and awful perspective to the events ofhistory and legend. But is it legitimate deliberately to misconceivethe unknown that governs our life in order that we may reconstruct thismysterious background?

11

While on this subject of dominant and mysterious ideas, we shall dowell to consider the forms that the idea of fatality has taken, and forever is taking: for fatality even to-day still provides the supremeexplanation for all that we cannot explain; and it is to fatality stillthat the thoughts of the "interpreter of life" unceasingly turn. 

The poets have endeavoured to transform it, to make it attractive, torestore its youth. They have contrived, in their works, a hundred newand winding canals through which they may introduce the icy waters ofthe great and desolate river whose banks have been gradually shunned bythe dwellings of men. And of those most successful in making us sharethe illusion that they were conferring a solemn, definitive meaning onlife, there are few who have not instinctively recognised the sovereignimportance conferred on the actions of men by the irresponsible powerof an ever august and unerring destiny. Fatality would seem to be thepre-eminent tragical force; it no sooner appears in a drama than itdoes of itself three-fourths of all that needs doing. It may safely besaid that the poet who could find to-day, in material science, in theunknown that surrounds us, or in his own heart, the equivalent forancient fatality--a force, that is, of equally irresistiblepredestination, a force as universally admitted--would infalliblyproduce a masterpiece. It is true, however, that he would have, at thesame time, to solve the mighty enigma for whose word we are all of usseeking, so that this supposition is not likely to be realised verysoon. 

12

This is the source, then, whence the lustral water is drawn with whichthe poets have purified the cruellest of tragedies. There is aninstinct in man that worships fatality, and he is apt to regardwhatever pertains thereto as incontestable, solemn, and beautiful. Hiscry is for freedom; but circumstances arise when he rather would tellhimself that he is not free. The unbending, malignant goddess is moreacceptable often than the divinity who only asks for an effort thatshall avert disaster. All things notwithstanding, it pleases us stillto be ruled by a power that nothing can turn from its purpose; andwhatever our mental dignity may lose by such a belief is gained by akind of sentimental vanity in us, which complacently dwells on themeasureless force that for ever keeps watch on our plans, and conferson our simplest action a mysterious, eternal significance. Fatality, briefly, explains and excuses all things, by relegating to a sufficientdistance in the invisible or the unintelligible all that it would behard to explain, and more difficult still to excuse. 

13

Therefore it is that so many have turned to the dismembered statue ofthe terrible goddess who reigned in the dramas of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and that the scattered fragments of her limbs haveprovided more than one poet with the marble required for the fashioningof a newer divinity, who should be more human, less arbitrary, and lessinconceivable than she of old. The fatality of the passions, forinstance, has thus been evolved. But for a passion truly to be fatalin a soul aware of itself, for the mystery to reappear that shall makecrime pardonable by investing it with loftiness and lifting it highabove the will of man: for these we require the intervention of a God, or some other equally irresistible, infinite force. Wagner, therefore, in "Tristram and Iseult, " makes use of the philtre, as Shakespeare ofthe witches in "Macbeth, " Racine of the oracle of Calchas in"Iphigenia" and of Venus' hatred in "Phèdre. " We have travelled in acircle, and find ourselves back once more at the very heart of thecraving of former days. This expedient may be more or less legitimatein archaic or legendary drama, where there is room for all kinds ofpoetic fantasy; but in the drama which pretends to actual truth wedemand another intervention, one that shall seem to us more genuinelyirresistible, if crimes like Macbeth's, such a deed of horror as thatto which Agamemnon consented: perhaps, too, the kind of love thatburned in Phèdre, shall achieve their mysterious excuse, and acquire agrandeur and sombre nobility that intrinsically they do not possess. Take away from Macbeth the fatal predestination, the intervention ofhell, the heroic struggle with an occult justice that for ever isrevealing itself through a thousand fissures of revolting nature, andMacbeth is merely a frantic, contemptible murderer. Take away theoracle of Calchas, and Agamemnon becomes abominable. Take away thehatred of Venus, and what is Phèdre but a neurotic creature, whose"moral quality" and power of resistance to evil are too pronouncedlyfeeble for our intellect to take any genuine interest in the calamitythat befalls her?

14

The truth is that these supernatural interventions to-day satisfyneither spectator nor reader. Though he know it not, perhaps, andstrive as he may, it is no longer possible for him to regard themseriously in the depths of his consciousness. His conception of theuniverse is other. He no longer detects the working of a narrow, determined, obstinate, violent will in the multitude of forces thatstrive in him and about him. He knows that the criminal whom he maymeet in actual life has been urged into crime by misfortune, education, atavism, or by movements of passion which he has himself experiencedand subdued, while recognising that there might have been circumstancesunder which their repression would have been a matter of exceedingdifficulty. He will not, it is true, always be able to discover thecause of these misfortunes or movements of passion; and his endeavourto account for the injustice of education or heredity will probably beno less unsuccessful. But, for all that, he will no longer incline toattribute a particular crime to the wrath of a God, the directintervention of hell, or to a series of changeless decrees inscribed inthe book of fate. Why ask of him, then, to accept in a poem anexplanation which he refuses in life? Is the poet's duty not rather tofurnish an explanation loftier, clearer, more widely and profoundlyhuman than any his reader can find for himself? For, indeed, thiswrath of the gods, intervention of hell, and writing in letters offire, are to him no more to-day than so many symbols that have longceased to content him. It is time that the poet should realise thatthe symbol is legitimate only when it stands for accepted truth, or fortruth which as yet we cannot, or will not, accept; but the symbol isout of place at a time when it is truth itself that we seek. And, besides, to merit admission into a really living poem, the symbolshould be at least as great and beautiful as the truth for which itstands, and should, moreover, precede this truth, and not follow a longway behind. 

15

We see, therefore, how surpassingly difficult it must have become tointroduce great crimes, or cruel, unbridled, tragical passions, into amodern work, above all if that work be destined for stage presentation;for the poet will seek in vain for the mysterious excuse these crimesor passions demand. And yet, for all that, so deeply is this cravingfor mysterious excuse implanted within us, so satisfied are we that manis, at bottom, never as guilty as he may appear to be, that we arestill fully content, when considering passions or crimes of thisnature, to admit some kind of fatal intervention that at least may notseem too manifestly unacceptable. 

This excuse, however, will be sought by us only when the persons guiltyof crimes which are contrary to human nature, when the victims ofmisfortunes which they could not foresee, and which seem undeserved tous, inexplicable, wholly abnormal, are more or less superior beings, possessed of their fullest share of consciousness. We are loath toadmit that an extraordinary crime or disaster can have a purely humancause. In spite of all, we persistently seek in some way to explainthe inexplicable. We should not be satisfied if the poet were simplyto say to us: "You see here the wrong that was done by this strong, this conscious, intelligent man. Behold the misfortune this heroencountered; this good man's ruin and sorrow. See, too, how this sageis crushed by tragic, irremediable wickedness. The human causes ofthese events are evident to you. I have no other explanation to offer, unless it be perhaps the indifference of the universe towards theactions of man. " Our dissatisfaction would vanish if he could succeedin conveying to us the sensation of this indifference, if he could showit in action; but, as it is the property of indifference never tointerfere or act, that would seem to be more or less unachievable. 

16

But when we turn to the by no means inevitable jealousy of Othello, orto the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet, which were surely notpreordained, we discover no need of explanation, or of the purifyinginfluence of fatality. In another drama, Ford's masterpiece, "'TisPity She's a Whore, " which revolves around the incestuous love ofGiovanni for his sister Annabella, we are compelled either to turn awayin horror, or to seek the mysterious excuse in its habitual haunt onthe shore of the gulf. But even here, the first painful shock over, wefind it is not imperative. For the love of brother for sister, viewedfrom a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, butnot against human nature; and there is at least some measure ofpalliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blindsthem. Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death, has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even thislast can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred. The disasters thatweighed so heavily on the lovers of Verona were due to the inexperienceof the victims, to the manifest disproportion between their strengthand that of their enemies; and although we may pity the man whosuccumbs to superior human force, his downfall does not surprise us. We are not impelled to seek explanation elsewhere, to ask questions offate; and unless he appear to fall victim to superhuman injustice, weare content to tell ourselves that what has happened was bound tohappen. It is only when disaster occurs after every precaution istaken that we could ourselves have devised, that we become conscious ofthe need for other explanation. 

17

We find it difficult, therefore, to conceive or admit as naturally, humanly possible that a crime shall be committed by a person whoapparently is endowed with fullest intelligence and consciousness; orthat misfortune should befall him which seems in its essence to beinexplicable, undeserved, and unexpected. It follows, therefore, thatthe poet can only place on the stage (this phrase I use merely as anabbreviation: it would be more correct to say, "cause us to assist atsome adventure whereof we know personally neither the actors nor thetotality of the circumstances") faults, crimes, and acts of injusticecommitted by persons of defective consciousness, as also disastersbefalling feeble beings unable to control their desires--innocentcreatures, it may be, but thick-sighted, imprudent, and reckless. Under these conditions there would seem to be no call for theintervention of anything beyond the limit of normal human psychology. But such a conception of the theatre would be at absolute variance withreal life, where we find crimes committed by persons of fullestconsciousness, and the most inexplicable, inconceivable, unmeritedmisfortunes befalling the wisest, the best, most virtuous and prudentof men. Dramas which deal with unconscious creatures, whom their ownfeebleness oppresses and their own desires overcome, excite ourinterest and arouse our pity; but the veritable drama, the one whichprobes to the heart of things and grapples with important truths--ourown personal drama, in a word, which for ever hangs over our life--isthe one wherein the strong, intelligent, and conscious commit errors, faults, and crimes which are almost inevitable; wherein the wise andupright struggle with all-powerful calamity, with forces destructive towisdom and virtue: for it is worthy of note that the spectator, howeverfeeble, dishonest even, he may be in real life, still enrols himselfalways among the virtuous, just, and strong; and when he reflects onthe misfortunes of the weak, or even witnesses them, he resolutelydeclines to imagine himself in the place of the victims. 

18

Here we attain the limit of the human will, the gloomy boundary-line ofthe influence that the most just and enlightened of men is able toexert on events that decide his future happiness or sorrow. No greatdrama exists, or poem of lofty aim, but one of its heroes shall strayto this frontier where his destiny waits for the seal. Why has thiswise, this virtuous man committed this fault or this crime? Why hasthat woman, who knows so well the meaning of all that she does, hazarded the gesture which must so inevitably summon everlastingsorrow? By whom have the links been forged of the chain of disasterwhose fetters have crushed this innocent family? Why do all thingscrumble around one, and fall into ruins, while the other, hisneighbour, less active and strong, less skilful and wise, finds evermaterial by him to build up his life anew? Why do tenderness, beauty, and love flock to the path of some, where others meet hatred only, andmalice, and treachery? Why persistent happiness here, and yonder, though merits be equal, nought but unceasing disaster? Why is thishouse for ever beset with the storm, while over that other there shinesthe peace of unvarying stars? Why genius, and riches, and health onthis side, and yonder disease, imbecility, poverty? Whence has thepassion been sent that has wrought such terrible grief, and whence thepassion that proved the source of such wonderful joy? Why does theyouth whom yesterday I met go on his tranquil road to profoundesthappiness, while his friend, with the same methodical, peaceful, ignorant step, proceeds on his way to death?

19

Life will often place such problems before us; but how rarely are wecompelled to refer their solution to the supernatural, mysterious, superhuman, or preordained! It is only the fervent believer who willstill be content to see there the finger of divine intervention. Suchof us, however, as have entered the house where the storm has raged, aswell as the house of peace, have rarely departed without most clearlydetecting the essentially human reasons of both peace and storm. Wewho have known the wise and upright man who has been guilty of error orcrime, are acquainted also with the circumstances which induced hisaction, and these circumstances seem to us in no way supernatural. Aswe draw near to the woman whose gesture brought misery to her, we learnvery soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in herplace, we should have refrained. The friends of the man around whomall fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build uphis life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes willfall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty, sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses ofhuman existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears ofbygone days We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent, unconscious, blind. We know that they recognise none of the ideal lawswhich we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often hashappened that at the very moment we were whispering to ourselves of"purification, trial, reward, punishment, " their undiscerning capricegave the lie to the too lofty, too moral title which we were about tobestow. 

20

Our imagination, it is true, is inclined to admit, perhaps to desire, the intervention of the superhuman; but, for all that, there are few, even among the most mystic, who are not convinced that our moralmisfortunes are, in their essence, determined by our mind and ourcharacter; and, similarly, that our physical misfortunes are due inpart to the workings of certain forces which often are misunderstood, and in part to the generally ill-defined relation of cause to effect:nor is it unreasonable to hope that light may be thrown on theseproblems as we penetrate further into the secrets of nature. We havehere a certitude upon which our whole life depends; a certitude whichis shaken only when we consider our own misfortunes, for then we shrinkfrom analysing or admitting the faults we ourselves have committed. There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant thatthe cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wavewhich dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insectwhose little wings gleam for an instant in the light of the sun tillthe passing bird absorbs its existence. 

21

Let me suppose that a neighbour of mine, whom I know very intimately, whose regular habits and inoffensive manners have won my esteem, shouldsuccessively lose his wife in a railway accident, one son at sea, another in a fire, the third and last by disease. I should, of course, be painfully shocked and grieved; but still it would not occur to me toattribute this series of disasters to a divine vengeance or aninvisible justice, to a strange, ill-starred predestination, or anactive, persistent, inevitable fatality. My thoughts would fly to themyriad unfortunate hazards of life; I should be appalled at thefrightful coincidence of calamity; but in me there would be nosuggestion of a superhuman will that had hurled the train over theprecipice, steered the ship on to rocks, or kindled the flames; Ishould hold it incredible that such monstrous efforts could have beenput forth with the sole object of inflicting punishment and despairupon a poor wretch, because of some error he might have committed--oneof those grave human errors which yet are so petty in face of theuniverse; an error which perhaps had not issued from either his heartor his brain, and had stirred not one blade of grass on the earth'swhole surface. 

22

But he, this neighbour of mine, on whom these terrible blows havesuccessively fallen, like so many lightning-flashes on a black night ofstorm--will he think as I do; will these catastrophes seem natural tohim, and ordinary, and susceptible of explanation? Will not the wordsdestiny, fortune, hazard, ill-luck, fatality, star--the wordProvidence, perhaps--assume in his mind a significance they never haveassumed before? Will not the light beneath which he questions hisconsciousness be a different light from my own, will he not feel roundhis life an influence, a power, a kind of evil intention, that areimperceptible to me? And who is right, he or I? Which of us two seesmore clearly, and further? Do truths that in calmer times lie hiddenfloat to the surface in hours of trouble; and which is the moment weshould choose to establish the meaning of life?

The "interpreter of life, " as a rule, selects the troubled hours. Heplaces himself, and us, in the soul-state of his victims. He showstheir misfortunes to us in perspective; and so sharply, concretely, that we have for the moment the illusion of a personal disaster. And, indeed, it is more or less impossible for him to depict them as theywould occur in real life. If we had spent long years with the hero ofthe drama which has stirred us so painfully, had he been our brother, our father, our friend, we should have probably noted, recognised, counted one by one as they passed, all the causes of his misfortune, which then would not only appear less extraordinary to us, butperfectly natural even, and humanly almost inevitable. But to the"interpreter of life" is given neither power nor occasion to acquaintus with each veritable cause. For these causes, as a rule, areinfinitely slow in their movement, and countless in number, and slight, and of small apparent significance. He is therefore led to adopt ageneral cause, one sufficiently vast to embrace the whole drama, inplace of the real and human causes which he is unable to show us, unable, too, himself to examine and study. And where shall a generalcause of sufficient vastness be found, if not in the two or three wordswe breathe to ourselves when silence oppresses us: words like fatality, divinity, Providence, or obscure and nameless justice?

23

The question we have to consider is how far this procedure can bebeneficial, or even legitimate; as also whether it be the mission ofthe poet to present, and insist on, the distress and confusion of ourleast lucid hours, or to add to the clear-sightedness of the momentswhen we conceive ourselves to enjoy the fullest possession of our forceand our reason. In our own misfortunes there is something of good, andsomething of good must therefore be found in the illusion of personalmisfortune. We are made to look into ourselves; our errors, ourweaknesses, are more clearly revealed; it is shown to us where we havestrayed. There falls a light on our consciousness a thousand timesmore searching, more active, than could spring from many arduous yearsof meditation and study. We are forced to emerge from ourselves, andto let our eyes rest on those round about us; we are rendered morekeenly alive to the sorrows of others. There are some who will tell usthat misfortune does even more--that it urges our glance on high, andcompels us to bow to a power superior to our own, to an unseen justice, to an impenetrable, infinite mystery. Can this indeed be the best ofall possible issues? Ah, yes, it was well, from the standpoint ofreligious morality, that misfortune should teach us to lift up our eyesand look on an eternal, unchanging, undeniable God, sovereignlybeautiful, sovereignly just, and sovereignly good. It was well thatthe poet who found in his God an unquestionable ideal shouldincessantly hold before us this unique, this definitive ideal. Butto-day, if we look away from the truth, from the ordinary experience oflife, on what shall our eager glance rest? If we discard the more orless compensatory laws of conscience and inward happiness, what shallwe say when triumphant injustice confronts us, or successful, unpunished crime? How shall we account for the death of a child, themiserable end of an innocent man, or the disaster hurled by cruel fateon some unfortunate creature, if we seek explanations loftier, moredefinite, more comprehensive and decisive than those that are foundsatisfactory in everyday life for the reason that they are the onlyones that accord with a certain number of realities? Is it right thatthe poet, in his eager desire to contrive a solemn atmosphere for hisdrama, should arouse from their slumber sentiments, errors, prejudicesand fears, which we would attack and rebuke were we to discover them inthe hearts of our friends or our children? Man has at last, throughhis study of the habits of spirit and brain, of the laws of existence, the caprices of fate and the maternal indifference of nature--man hasat last, and laboriously, acquired some few certitudes, that are worthyof all respect; and is the poet entitled to seize on the moment ofanguish in order to oust all these certitudes, and set up in theirplace a fatality to which every action of ours gives the lie; or powersbefore which we would refuse to kneel did the blow fall on us that hasprostrated his hero; or a mystic justice that, for all it may sweepaway the need for many an embarrassing explanation, bears yet not theslightest kinship to the active and personal justice we all of usrecognise in our own personal life?

24

And yet this is what the "interpreter of life" will more or lessdeliberately do from the moment he seeks to invest his work with alofty spirit, with a deep and religious beauty, with the sense of theinfinite. Even though this work of his may be of the sincerest, thoughit express as nearly as may be his own most intimate truth, he believesthat this truth is enhanced, and established more firmly, by beingsurrounded with phantoms of a forgotten past. Might not the symbols heneeds, the hypotheses, images, the touchstone for all that cannot beexplained, be less frequently sought in that which he knows is nottrue, and more often in that which will one day be a truth? Does theunearthing of bygone terrors, or the borrowing of light from a Hellthat has ceased to be, make death more sublime? Does dependence on asupreme but imaginary will ennoble our destiny? Does justice--thatvast network woven by human action and reaction over the unchangingwisdom of nature's moral and physical forces--does justice become moremajestic through being lodged in the hands of a unique judge, whom thevery spirit of the drama dethrones and destroys?

25

Let us ask ourselves whether the hour may not have come for the earnestrevision of the symbols, the images, sentiments, beauty, wherewith westill seek to glorify in us the spectacle of the world. 

This beauty, these feelings and sentiments, to-day unquestionably bearonly the most distant relation to the phenomena, thoughts, nay even thedreams, of our actual existence; and if they are suffered still toabide with us, it is rather as tender and innocent memories of a pastthat was more credulous, and nearer to the childhood of man. Were itnot well, then, that those whose mission it is to make more evident tous the beauty and harmony of the world we live in, should march everonwards, and let their steps tend to the actual truth of this world?Their conception of the universe need not be stripped of a single oneof the ornaments wherewith they embellish it; but why seek theseornaments so often among mere recollections, however smiling orterrible, and so seldom from among the essential thoughts which havehelped these men to build, and effectively organise, their spiritualand sentient life?

It can never be right to dwell in the midst of false images, eventhough these are known to be false. The time will come when theillusory image will usurp the place of the just idea it has seemed torepresent. We shall not reduce the part of the infinite and themysterious by employing other images, by framing other and justerconceptions. Do what we may, this part can never be lessened. It willalways be found deep down in the heart of men, at the root of eachproblem, pervading the universe. And for all that the substance, theplace of these mysteries, may seem to have changed, their extent andpower remain for ever the same. Has not--to take but one instance--hasnot the phenomenon of the existence, everywhere among us, of a kind ofsupreme and wholly spiritual justice, unarmed, unadorned, unequipped, moving slowly but never swerving, stable and changeless in a worldwhere injustice would seem to reign--has this phenomenon not cause andeffect as deep, as exhaustless--is it not as astounding, asadmirable--as the wisdom of an eternal and omnipresent Judge? Shouldthis Judge be held more convincing for that He is less conceivable?Are fewer sources of beauty, or occasions for genius to exerciseinsight and power, to be found in what can be explained than in whatis, _a priori_, inexplicable? Does not, for instance, a victorious butunjust war (such as those of the Romans, of England to-day, theconquests of Spain in America, and so many others) in the end alwaysdemoralise the victor and thrust upon him errors, habits, and faultswhereby he is made to pay dearly for his triumph; and is not theminute, the relentless labour of this psychological justice asabsorbing, as vast, as the intervention of a superhuman justice? Andmay not the same be said of the justice that lives in each one of us, that causes the space left for peace, inner happiness, love, to expandor contract in our mind and our heart in the degree of our strivingtowards that which is just or is unjust?

26

And to turn to one mystery more, the most awful of all, that ofdeath--would any one pretend that our perception of justice, ofgoodness and beauty, or our intellectual, sentient power, our eagernessfor all that draws near to the infinite, all-powerful, eternal, hasdwindled since death ceased to be held the immense and exclusiveanguish of life? Does not each new generation find the burden lighterto bear as the forms of death grow less violent and its posthumousterrors fade? It is the illness that goes before, the physical pain, of which we are to-day most afraid. But death is no longer the hour ofthe wrathful, inscrutable judge; no longer the one and the terriblegoal, the gulf of misery and eternal punishment. It is slowlybecoming--indeed, in some cases, it has already become--the wished-forrepose of a life that draws to its end. Its weight no longer oppresseseach one of our actions; and, above all--for this is the most strikingchange--it has ceased to intrude itself into our morality. And is thismorality of ours less lofty, less pure, less profound, because of thedisinterestedness it has thus acquired? Has the loss of anoverwhelming dread robbed mankind of a single precious, indispensablefeeling? And must not life itself find gain in the importance wrestedfrom death? Surely: for the neutral forces we hold in reserve withinus are waiting and ready; and every discouragement, sorrow, or fearthat departs has its place quickly filled by a certitude, admiration, or hope. 

27

The poet is inclined to personify fatality and justice, and giveoutward form to forces really within us, for the reason that to showthem at work in ourselves is a matter of exceeding difficulty; andfurther, that the unknown and the infinite, to the extent that they_are_ unknown and infinite--_i. E. _ lacking personality, intelligence, and morality--are powerless to move us. And here it is curious to notethat we are in no degree affected by material mystery, howeverdangerous or obscure, or by psychological justice, however involved itsresults. It is not the incomprehensible in nature that masters andcrushes us, but the thought that nature may possibly be governed by aconscious, superior, reasoning will; one that, although superhuman, hasyet some kinship with the will of man. What we dread, in a word, isthe presence of a God; and speak as we may of fatality, justice, ormystery, it is always God whom we fear: a being, that is, likeourselves, though almighty, eternal, invisible, and infinite. A moralforce that was not conceived in the image of man would most likelyinspire no fear. It is not the unknown in nature that fills us withdread; it is not the mystery of the world we live in. It is themystery of another world from which we recoil; it is the moral and notthe material enigma. There is nothing, for instance, more obscure thanthe combination of causes which produce the earthquake, that mostterrible of all catastrophes. But the earthquake, though it alarm ourbody, will bring no fear to our mind unless we regard it as an act ofjustice, of mysterious vengeance, of supernatural punishment. And soit is, too, with the thunderstorm, with illness, with death, with themyriad phenomena and accidents of life. It would seem as though thetrue alarm of our soul, the great fear which stirs other instinctswithin us than that of mere self-preservation, is only called forth bythe thought of a more or less determinate God, of a mysteriousconsciousness, a permanent, invisible justice, or a vigilant, eternalProvidence. But does the "interpreter of life, " who succeeds inarousing this fear, bring us nearer to truth; and is it his mission toconvey to us sorrow, and trouble, and painful emotion, or peace, satisfaction, tranquillity, and light?

28

It is not easy, I know, to free oneself wholly from traditionalinterpretation, for it often succeeds in reasserting its sway upon usat the very moment we strain every nerve to escape from our bondage. So has it happened with Ibsen, who, in his search for a new and almostscientific form of fatality, erected the veiled, majestic, tyrannicalfigure of heredity in the centre of the very best of his dramas. Butit is not the scientific mystery of heredity which awakens within usthose human fears that lie so much deeper than the mere animal fear;for heredity alone could no more achieve this result than could thescientific mystery of a dreaded disease, a stellar or marinephenomenon. No, the fear that differs so essentially from the onecalled forth by an imminent natural danger, is aroused within us by theobscure idea of justice which heredity assumes in the drama; by thedaring pronouncement that the sins of the fathers are almost invariablyvisited on the children; by the suggestion that a sovereign Judge, agoddess of the species, is for ever watching our actions, inscribingthem on her tablets of bronze, and balancing in her eternal handsrewards long deferred and never-ending punishment. In a word, evenwhile we deny it, it is the face of God that reappears; and frombeneath the flagstone one had believed to be sealed for ever comes onceagain the murmur of the very ancient flame of Hell. 

29

This new form of fatality, or fatal justice, is less defensible, andless acceptable too, than the ancient and elementary power, which, being general and undefined, and offering no too strict explanation ofits actions, lent itself to a far greater number of situations. In thespecial case selected by Ibsen, it is not impossible that some kind ofaccidental justice may be found, as it is not impossible that the arrowa blind man shoots into a crowd may chance to strike a parricide. Butto found a law upon this accidental justice is a fresh perversion ofmystery, for elements are thereby introduced into human morality whichhave no right to be there; elements which we would welcome, which wouldbe of value, if they stood for definite truths; but seeing that theyare as alien to truth as to actual life, they should be ruthlesslyswept aside. I have shown elsewhere that our experience fails todetect the most minute trace of justice in the phenomena of heredity;or, in other words, that it fails to discover the slightest moralconnection between the cause: the fault of the father, and the effect:the punishment or reward of the child. 

The poet has the right to fashion hypotheses, and to forge his wayahead of reality. But it will often happen that when he imagineshimself to be far in advance, he will truly have done no more than turnin a circle; that where he believes that he has discovered new truth, he has merely strayed on to the track of a buried illusion. In thecase I have named, for the poet to have taught us more than experienceteaches, he should have ventured still further, perhaps, in thenegation of justice. But whatever our opinion may be on this point, itat least is clear that the poet who desires his hypotheses to belegitimate, and of service, must take heed that they be not toomanifestly contrary to the experience of everyday life; for in thatcase they become useless and dangerous--scarcely honourable even, ifthe error be deliberately made. 

30

And now, what are we to conclude from all this? Many things, if onewill, but this above all: that it behoves the "interpreter of life, " noless than those who are living that life, to exercise greatest care intheir manner of handling and admitting mystery, and to discard thebelief that whatever is noblest and best in life or in drama must ofnecessity rest in the part that admits of no explanation. There aremany most beautiful, most human, most admirable works which are almostentirely free from this "disquiet of universal mystery. " We derive nogreatness, sublimity, or depth from unceasingly fixing our thoughts onthe infinite and the unknown. Such meditation becomes truly helpfulonly when it is the unexpected reward of the mind that has loyally, unreservedly, given itself to the study of the finite and the knowable;and to such a mind it will soon be revealed how strangely different isthe mystery which precedes what one does not know from the mystery thatfollows closely on what one has learned. The first would seem tocontain many sorrows, but that is only because the sorrows are groupedthere too closely, and have their home upon two of three peaks thatstand too nearly together. In the second is far less sadness, for itsarea is vast; and when the horizon is wide, there exists no sorrow sogreat but it takes the form of a hope. 

31

Yes, human life, viewed as a whole, may appear somewhat sorrowful; andit is easier, in a manner pleasanter even, to speak of its sorrows andlet the mind dwell on them, than to go in search of, and bring intoprominence, the consolations life has to offer. Sorrowsabound--infallible, evident sorrows; consolations, or rather thereasons wherefore we accept with some gladness the duty of life, arerare and uncertain, and hard of detection. Sorrows seem noble, andlofty, and fraught with deep mystery; with mystery that almost ispersonal, that we feel to be near to us. Consolations appearegotistical, squalid, at times almost base. But for all that, andwhatever their ephemeral likeness may be, we have only to draw closerto them to find that they too have their mystery; and if this seem lessvisible and less comprehensible, it is only because it lies deeper andis far more mysterious. The desire to live, the acceptance of life asit is, may perhaps be mere vulgar expressions; but yet they areprobably in unconscious harmony with laws that are vaster, moreconformable with the spirit of the universe, and therefore more sacred, than is the desire to escape the sorrows of life, or the lofty butdisenchanted wisdom that for ever dwells on those sorrows. 

32

Our impulse is always to depict life as more sorrowful than truly itis; and this is a serious error, to be excused only by the doubts thatat present hang over us. No satisfying explanation has so far beenfound. The destiny of man is as subject to unknown forces to-day as itwas in the days of old; and though it be true that some of these forceshave vanished, others have arisen in their stead. The number of thosethat are really all-powerful has in no way diminished. Many attemptshave been made, and in countless fashions, to explain the action ofthese forces and account for their intervention; and one might almostbelieve that the poets, aware of the futility of these explanations inface of a reality which, all things notwithstanding, is ever revealingmore and more of itself, have fallen back on fatality as in somemeasure representing the inexplicable, or at least the sadness of theinexplicable. This is all that we find in Ibsen, the Russian novels, the highest class of modern fiction, Flaubert, &c. (see "War andPeace, " for instance, _L'Education Sentimentale_, and many others). 

It is true that the fatality shown is no longer the goddess of old, orrather (at least to the bulk of mankind) the clearly determinate God, inflexible, implacable, arbitrary, blind, although constantly watchful;the fatality of to-day is vaster, more formless, more vague, less humanor actively personal, more indifferent and more universal. In a word, it is now no more than a provisional appellation bestowed, until betterbe found, on the general and inexplicable misery of man. In this sensewe may accept it, perhaps, though we do no more than give a new name tothe unchanging enigma, and throw no light on the darkness. But we haveno right to exaggerate its importance or the part that it plays; noright to believe that we are truly surveying mankind and events from apoint of some loftiness, beneath a definitive light, or that there isnothing to seek beyond, because at times we become deeply conscious ofthe obscure and invincible force that lies at the end of everyexistence. Doubtless, from one point of view, unhappiness must alwaysremain the portion of man, and the fatal abyss be ever open before him, vowed as he is to death, to the fickleness of matter, to old age anddisease. If we fix our eyes only upon the end of a life, the happiestand most triumphant existence must of necessity contain its elements ofmisery and fatality. But let us not make a wrong use of these words;above all, let us not, through listlessness or undue inclination tomystic sorrow, be induced to lessen the part of what could be explainedif we would only give more eager attention to the ideas, the passionsand feelings of the life of man and the nature of things. Let usalways remember that we are steeped in the unknown; for this thought isthe most fruitful of all, the most sustaining and salutary. But theneutrality of the unknown does not warrant our attributing to it aforce, or designs, or hostility, which it cannot be proved to possess. At Erfurt, in his famous interview with Goethe, Napoleon is said tohave spoken disparagingly of the dramas in which fatality plays a greatpart--the plays that we, in our "passion for calamity, " are apt toconsider the finest. "They belong, " he remarked, "to an epoch ofdarkness; but how can fatality touch us to-day? Policy--_that_ isfatality!" Napoleon's dictum is not very profound: policy is only themerest fragment of fatality; and his destiny very soon made it manifestto him that the desire to contain fatality within the narrow bounds ofpolicy was no more than a vain endeavour to imprison in a fragile vasethe mightiest of the spiritual rivers that bathe our globe. And yet, incomplete as this thought of Napoleon's may have been, it still throwssome light on a tributary of the great river. It was a little thing, perhaps, but on these uncertain shores it is the difference between alittle thing and nothing that kindles the energy of man and confirmshis destiny. By this ray of light, such as it was, he long was enabledto dominate all that portion of the unknown which he declined to termfatality. To us who come after him, the portion of the unknown that hecontrolled may well seem insufficient, if surveyed from an eminence, and yet it was truly one of the vastest that the eye of man has everembraced. Through its means every action of his was accomplished, forevil or good. This is not the place to judge him, or even to wonderwhether the happiness of a century might not have been better servedhad he allowed events to guide him; what we are considering here is thedocility of the unknown. For us, with our humbler destinies, theproblem still is the same, and the principle too; the principle beingthat of Goethe: "to stand on the outermost limit of the conceivable;but never to overstep this line, for beyond it begins at once the landof chimeras, the phantoms and mists of which are fraught with danger tothe mind. " It is only when the intervention of the mysterious, invisible, or irresistible becomes strikingly real, actuallyperceptible, intelligent, and moral, that we are entitled to yield orlay down our arms, meekly accepting the inactive silence they bring;but their intervention, within these limits, is rarer than oneimagines. Let us recognise that mystery of this kind exists; but, until it reveal itself, we have not the right to halt, or relax ourefforts; not the right to cast down our eyes in submission, or resignourselves to silence. 

III

THE KINGDOM OF MATTER

1

In a preceding essay we were compelled to admit that, eager as manmight be to discover in the universe a sanction for his virtues, neither heaven nor earth displayed the least interest in humanmorality; and that all things would combine to persuade the uprightamong us that they merely are dupes, were it not for the fact that theyhave in themselves an approval words cannot describe, and a reward sointangible that we should in vain endeavour to portray its leastevanescent delights. Is that all, some may ask, is that all we mayhope in return for this mighty effort of ours, for our constant denialand pain, for our sacrifice of instincts, of pleasures, that seemed solegitimate, necessary even, and would certainly have added to ourhappiness had there not been within us the desire for Justice--a desirearising we know not whence, belonging, perhaps, to our nature, and yetin apparent conflict with the vaster nature whereof we all form part?Yes, it is open to you, if you choose, to regard as a very poor thingthis unsubstantial justice: since its only reward is a vaguesatisfaction, and that this satisfaction even grows hateful, anddestroys itself, the moment its presence becomes too perceptibly felt. Bear in mind, however, that all things that happen in our moral beingmust be equally lightly held, if regarded from the point of view whenceyou deliver this judgment. Love is a paltry affair, the moment ofpossession once over that alone is real and ensures the perpetuity ofthe race; and yet we find that as man grows more civilised, the act ofpossession assumes ever less value in his eyes if there go not with it, if there do not precede, accompany, and follow it, the insignificantemotion built up of our thoughts and our feelings, of our sweetest andtenderest hours and years. Beauty, too, is a trivial matter: abeautiful spectacle, a beautiful face, or body, or gesture: a melodiousvoice, or noble statue--sunrise at sea, flowers in a garden, starsshining over the forest, the river by moonlight--or a lofty thought, anexquisite poem, an heroic sacrifice hidden in a profound and pitifulsoul. We may admire these things for an instant; they may bring us asense of completeness no other joy can convey; but at the same timethere will steal over us a tinge of strange sorrow, unrest; nor willthey give happiness to us, as men use the word, should other eventshave contrived to make us unhappy. They produce nothing the eye canmeasure, or weigh; nothing that others can see, or will envy; and yet, were a magician suddenly to appear, capable of depriving one of us ofthis sense of beauty that may chance to be in him, possessed of thepower of extinguishing it for ever, with no trace remaining, no hopethat it ever will spring into being again--would we not rather loseriches, tranquillity, health even, and many years of our life, thanthis strange faculty which none can espy, and we ourselves can scarcelydefine? Not less intangible, not less elusive, is the sweetness oftender friendship, of a dear recollection we cling to and reverence;and countless other thoughts and feelings, that traverse no mountain, dispel no cloud, that do not even dislodge a grain of sand by theroadside. But these are the things that build up what is best andhappiest in us; they are we, ourselves; they are precisely what thosewho have them not should envy in those who have. The more we emergefrom the animal, and approach what seems the surest ideal of our race, the more evident does it become that these things, trifling as theywell may appear by the side of nature's stupendous laws, do yetconstitute our sole inheritance; and that, happen what may to the endof time, they are the hearth, the centre of light, to which mankindwill draw ever more and more closely. 

2

We live in a century that loves the material, but, while loving it, conquers it, masters it, and with more passion than any precedingperiod has shown; in a century that would seem consumed with desire tocomprehend matter, to penetrate, enslave it, possess it once and forall to repletion, satiety--with the wish, it may be, to ransack itsevery resource, lay bare its last secret, thereby freeing the futurefrom the restless search for a happiness there seemed reason once tobelieve that matter contained. So, in like manner, is it necessaryfirst to have known the love of the flesh before the veritable love canreveal its deep and unchanging purity. A serious reaction willprobably arise, some day, against this passion for material enjoyment;but man will never be able to cast himself wholly free. Nor would theattempt be wise. We are, after all, only fragments of animate matter, and it could not be well to lose sight of the starting-point of ourrace. And yet, is it right that this starting-point should enclose inits narrow circumference all our wishes, all our happiness, thetotality of our desires? In our passage through life we meet scarcelyany who do not persist, with a kind of unreasoning obstinacy, inthroning the material within them, and there maintaining it supreme. Gather together a number of men and women, all of them free from life'smore depressing cares--an assembly of the elect, if you will--andpronounce before them the words "beatitude, happiness, joy, felicity, ideal. " Imagine that an angel, at that very instant, were to seize andretain, in a magic mirror or miraculous basket, the images these wordswould evoke in the souls that should hear them. What would you see inthe basket or mirror? The embrace of beautiful bodies; gold, preciousstones, a palace, an ample park; the philtre of youth, strange jewelsand gauds representing vanity's dreams; and, let us admit it, prominentfar above all would be sumptuous repasts, noble wines, glitteringtables, splendid apartments. Is humanity still too near its beginningto conceive other things? Has the hour not arrived when we might havereasonably hoped the mirror to reflect a powerful, disinterestedintellect, a conscience at rest: a just and loving heart, a perception, a vision capable of detecting, absorbing beauty wherever it be--thebeauty of evening, of cities, of forests and seas, no less than offace, of a word or a smile, of an action or movement of soul? Theforeground of the magical mirror at present reflects beautiful women, undraped; when shall we see, in their stead, the deep, great love oftwo beings to whom the knowledge has come that it is only when theirthoughts and their feelings, and all that is more mysterious still thanthoughts and feelings, have blended, and day by day become moreessentially one, that the joys of the flesh are freed from the afterdisquiet, and leave no bitterness behind? When shall we find, insteadof the morbid, unnatural excitement produced by too copious, oppressiverepasts, by stimulants that are the insidious agents of the very enemywe seek to destroy--when shall we find, in their place, the containedand deliberate gladness of a spirit that is for ever exalted because itfor ever is seeking to understand, and to love? . . . These thingshave long been known, and their repetition may well seem of littleavail. And yet, we need but to have been twice or thrice in thecompany of those who stand for what is best in mankind, mostintellectually, sentiently human, to realise how uncertain and gropingtheir search is still for the happier hours of life; to marvel at theresemblance the unconscious happiness they look for bears to thehappiness craved by the man who has no spiritual existence; to note howopaque, to their eyes, is the cloud which separates all that pertainsto the being who rises from all that is his who descends. Some willsay that the hour is not yet when man can thus make clear divisionbetween the part of the spirit and that of the flesh. But when shallthat hour be looked for if those for whom it should long since havesounded still suffer the obscurest prejudice of the mass to guide themwhen they set forth in search of their happiness? When they achieveglory and riches, when love comes to meet them, they will be free, itmay be, from a few of the coarser satisfactions of vanity, a few of thegrosser excesses; but beyond this they strive not at all to secure ahappiness that shall be more spiritual, more purely human. Theadvantage they have does not teach them to widen the circle of materialexaction, to discard what is less justifiable. In their attitudetowards the pleasures of life they submit to the same spiritualdeprivation as, let us say, some cultured man who may have wanderedinto a theatre where the play being performed is not one of the five orsix masterpieces of universal literature. He is fully aware that hisneighbours' applause and delight are called forth, in the main, by moreor less obnoxious prejudices on the subject of honour, glory, religion, patriotism, sacrifice, liberty, or love--or perhaps by some feeble, dreary poetical effusion. None the less, he will find himself affectedby the general enthusiasm; and it will be necessary for him, almost atevery instant, to pull himself violently together, to make startledappeal to every conviction within him, in order to convince himselfthat these partisans of hoary errors are wrong, notwithstanding theirnumber, and that he, with his isolated reason, alone is right. 

3

Indeed, when we consider the relation of man to matter, it issurprising to find how little light has yet been thrown upon it, howlittle has been definitely fixed. Elementary, imperious, as thisrelation undoubtedly is, humanity has always been wavering, uncertain, passing from the most dangerous confidence to the most systematicdistrust, from adoration to horror, from asceticism and completerenouncement to their corresponding extremes. The days are past whenan irrational, useless abstinence was preached, and put intopractice--an abstinence often fully as harmful as habitual excess. Weare entitled to all that helps to maintain, or advance, the developmentof the body; this is our right, but it has its limits; and these limitsit would be well to define with the utmost exactness, for whatever maytrespass beyond must infallibly weaken the growth of that other side ofourselves, the flower that the leaves round about it will either stifleor nourish. And humanity, that so long has been watching this flower, studying it so intently, noting its subtlest, most fleeting perfumesand shades, is most often content to abandon to the caprice of thetemperament, be this evil or good, to the passing moment, or to chance, the government of the unconscious forces that will, like the leaves, bediscreetly active, sustaining, life-giving, or profoundly selfish, destructive, and fatal. Hitherto, perhaps, this may have been donewith impunity; for the ideal of mankind (which at the start wasconcerned with the body alone) wavered long between matter and spirit. To-day, however, it clings, with ever profounder conviction, to thehuman intelligence. We no longer strive to compete with the lion, thepanther, the great anthropoid ape, in force or agility; in beauty withthe flower or the shine of the stars on the sea. The utilisation byour intellect of every unconscious force, the gradual subjugation ofmatter and the search for its secret--these at present appear the mostevident aim of our race, and its most probable mission. In the days ofdoubt there was no satisfaction, or even excess, but was excusable, andmoral, so long as it wrought no irreparable loss of strength or actualorganic harm. But now that the mission of the race is becoming moreclearly defined, the duty is on us to leave on one side whatever is notdirectly helpful to the spiritual part of our being. Sterile pleasuresof the body must be gradually sacrificed; indeed, in a word, all thatis not in absolute harmony with a larger, more durable energy ofthought; all the little "harmless" delights which, however inoffensivecomparatively, keep alive by example and habit the prejudice in favourof inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to thesatisfactions of the intellect. These last differ from those of thebody, whose development some may assist and others retard. Into theelysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with ityouth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world onwhich the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch, of eagerness, comprehension, and wonder. 

4

The time must come, sooner or later, when our morality will have toconform to the probable mission of the race; when the arbitrary, oftenridiculous restrictions whereof it is at present composed will becompelled to make way for the inevitable logical restrictions thismission exacts. For the individual, as for the race, there can be butone code of morals--the subordination of the ways of life to thedemands of the general mission that appears entrusted to man. The axiswill shift, therefore, of many sins, many great offences; until at lastfor all the crimes against the body there shall be substituted theveritable crimes against human destiny; in other words, whatever maytend to impair the authority, integrity, leisure, liberty, or power ofthe intellect. 

But by this we are far from suggesting that the body should be regardedas the irreconcilable enemy which the Christian theory holds it. Farfrom that, we should strive, first of all, to endow it with allpossible vigour and beauty. But it is like a capricious child:exacting, improvident, selfish; and the stronger it grows the moredangerous does it become. It knows no cult but that of the passingmoment. In imagination, desires, it halts at the trivial thought, theprimitive, fleeting, foolish delight of the little dog or the negro. The satisfactions procured by the intellect--the comfort, security, leisure, the gladness--it regards as no more than its due, and enjoysin fullest complacency. Left to itself, it would enjoy these sostupidly, savagely, that it would very soon stifle the intellect fromwhich it derived these favours. Hence there is need for certainrestrictions, renouncements, which all men must observe; not only thosewho have reason to hope, and believe, that they are effectivelystriving to solve the enigma, to bring about the fulfilment of humandestiny and the triumph of mind over insensible matter, but also thecrowds in the ranks of the massive, unconscious rearguard, who placidlywatch the phosphorescent evolutions of mind as its light gleams on theworld's elementary darkness. For humanity is a unique and unanimousentity. When the thought of the mass--that thought which scarcely isthought--travels downwards, its influence is felt by philosopher andpoet, astronomer and chemist; it has its pronounced effect on theircharacter, morals, ideals, their sense of duty, habits of labour, intellectual vigour. If the myriad, uniform, petty ideas in the valleyfall short of a certain elevation, no great idea shall spring to lifeon the mountain-peak. Down there the thought may have little strength, but there are countless numbers who think it; and the influence thisthought acquires may be almost termed atmospheric. And they up aboveon the mountain, the precipice, the edge of the glacier, will be helpedby this influence, or harmed, in the degree of its brightness or gloom, of its reaching them, buoyed up with generous feeling, or heavilycharged with brutal habit and coarse desire. The heroic action of apeople (as, for instance, the French Revolution, the Reformation, allwars of independence and liberation) will fertilise and purify thispeople for more centuries than one. But far less will satisfy thosewho toil at the fulfilment of destiny. Let but the habits of the menround about them become a little more noble, their desires a littlemore disinterested; let but their passions and eagerness, theirpleasures and love, be illumined by one ray of brightness, of grace, ofspiritual fervour; and those up above will feel the support, and drawtheir breath freely, no longer compelled to struggle with theinstinctive part of themselves; and the power that is in them will obeythe more readily, and mould itself to their hand. The peasant who, instead of carousing at the beershop, spends a peaceful Sunday at home, with a book, beneath the trees of his orchard; the humble citizen whomthe emotions or din of the racecourse cannot tempt from some worthyenjoyment, from the pleasure of a reposeful afternoon; the workman whono longer makes the streets hideous with obscene or ridiculous song, but wanders forth into the country, or, from the ramparts, watches thesunset--all these bring their meed of help: their great assistance, unconscious though it be, and anonymous, to the triumph of the vasthuman flame. 

5

But how much there is to be done, and learned, before this great flamecan arise in serene, secure brightness! We have said that man, in hisrelation to matter, is still in the experimental, groping stage of hisearliest days. He lacks even definite knowledge as to the kind of foodbest adapted for him, or the quantity of nourishment he requires; he isstill uncertain as to whether he be carnivorous or frugivorous. Hisintellect misleads his instinct. It was only yesterday that he learnedthat he had probably erred hitherto in the choice of his nourishment;that he must reduce by two-thirds the quantity of nitrogen he absorbs, and largely increase the volume of hydrocarbons; that a little fruit, or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances--now the mereaccessory of the too plentiful repasts which he works so hard toprovide, which are his chief object in life, the goal of his efforts, of his strenuous, incessant labour--are amply sufficient to maintainthe ardour of the finest and mightiest life. It is not my purpose hereto discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objectionsthat may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of theseobjections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submitthemselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved orrestored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition bythe mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might followthe release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon. But wemust not conclude these pages with an essay on alimentation, reasonableas such a proceeding might be. For in truth all our justice, morality, all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordialnecessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modificationof one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moralexistence. Were the belief one day to become general that man coulddispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economicrevolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes morethan a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not lessimportant and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might followa second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come toremedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage. For we findthat the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also;and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degradedpleasures of life. And it is in the passionate craving for thesepleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that themost formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of therace. Detachment therefrom creates noble leisure, a new order ofdesires, a wish for enjoyment that must of necessity be loftier thanthe gross satisfactions which have their origin in alcohol. But aredays such as these in store for us--these happier, purer hours? Thecrime of alcohol is not alone that it destroys its faithful and poisonsone half of the race, but also that it exercises a profound, thoughindirect, influence upon those who recoil from it in dread. The ideaof pleasure which it maintains in the crowd forces its way, by means ofthe crowd's irresistible action, into the life even of the elect, andlessens, perverts, all that concerns man's peace and repose, hisexpansiveness, gladness and joy; retarding, too, it may safely be said, the birth of the truer, profounder ideal of happiness: one that shallbe simpler, more peaceful and grave, more spiritual and human. Thisideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but littleimportance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so farhas erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of thisstatement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confusedmasses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not bethe expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the strugglefor life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle forlife that to-day means the fight for meat and for alcohol, doublesource of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, doublesymbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?

6

Whither is humanity tending? This anxiety of man to know the aim andthe end is essentially human; it is a kind of infirmity orprovincialism of the mind, and has nothing in common with universalreality. Have things an aim? Why should they have; and what aim orend can there be, in an infinite organism?

But even though our mission be only to fill for an instant a diminutivespace that could as well be filled by the violet or grasshopper, without loss to the universe of economy or grandeur, without thedestinies of this world being shortened or lengthened thereby by onehour; even though this march of ours count for nothing, though we movebut for the sake of motion, tending no-whither, this futile progressmay nevertheless still claim to absorb all our attention and interest;and this is entirely reasonable, it is the loftiest course we canpursue. If it lay in the power of an ant to study the laws of thestars; and if, intent on this study, though fully aware that these lawsare immutable, never to be modified, it declined to concern itselffurther with the affairs or the future of the anthill--should we, whostand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand toourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to bedominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all itsuniversality, regard it as either good or moral?

Reason, at its apogee, becomes sterile; and inertia would be its soleteaching did it not, after recognising the pettiness, the nothingness, of our passions and hopes, of our being, and lastly, of reason itself, retrace its footsteps back to the point whence it shall be able oncemore to take eager interest in all these poor trivialities, in thissame nothingness, as holding them the only things in the world forwhich its assistance has value. 

We know not whither we go, but may still rejoice in the journey; andthis will become the lighter, the happier, for our endeavour to pictureto ourselves the next place of halt. Where will this be? Themountain-pass lies ahead, and threatens; but the roads already arewidening and becoming less rugged; the trees spread their branches, crowned with fresh blossom; silent waters are flowing before us, reposeful and peaceful. Tokens all these, it may be, of our nearingthe vastest valley mankind yet has seen from the height of the tortuouspaths it has ever been climbing! Shall we call it the "First Valley ofLeisure"? Distrust as we may the surprises the future may have instore, be the troubles and cares that await us never so burdensome, there still seems some ground for believing that the bulk of mankindwill know days when, thanks, it may be, to machinery, agriculturalchemistry, medicine perhaps, or I know not what dawning science, labourwill become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical, pitiless. What use will humanity make of this leisure? On itsemployment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man. Were it notwell that his counsellors now should begin to teach him to use suchleisure he has in a nobler and worthier fashion? It is the way inwhich hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or aslabour, the moral worth of a nation. It raises or lowers, itreplenishes or exhausts. At present we find, in these great cities ofours, that three days' idleness will fill the hospitals with victimswhom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed. 

7

Thus we return to the happiness which should be, and perhaps in courseof time will be, the real human happiness. Had we taken part in thecreation of the world, we should probably have bestowed more special, distinctive force on all that is best in man, most immaterial, mostessentially human. If a thought of love, or a gleam of the intellect;a word of justice, an act of pity, a desire for pardon or sacrifice; ifa gesture of sympathy, a craving of one's whole being for beauty, goodness, or truth--if emotions like these could affect the universe asthey affect the man who has known them, they would call forthmiraculous flowery, supernatural radiance, inconceivable melody; theywould scatter the night, recall spring and the sunshine, stay the handof sickness, grief, disaster and misery; gladness would spring fromthem, and youth be restored; while the mind would gain freedom, thoughtimmortality, and life be eternal. No resistance could check them;their reward would follow as visibly as it follows the labourer's toll, the nightingale's song, or the work of the bee. But we have learned atlast that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone; a worldcontained in ourselves that bears no relation to matter, upon which itsinfluence is only of the most exceptional and hazardous kind. But nonethe less real, therefore, is this world, or less infinite: and if wordsbreak down when they try to tell of it, the reason is only that words, after all, are mere fragments of matter, that seek to enter a spherewhere matter holds no dominion. The images that words evoke are forever betraying the thoughts for which they stand. When we try toexpress perfect joy, a noble, spiritual ecstasy, a profound, everlasting love, our words can only compare them with animal passion, with drunkenness, brutal and coarse desire. And not only do they thusdegrade the noblest triumphs of the soul of man by likening them toprimitive instincts, but they incite us to believe, in spite ofourselves, that the object or feeling compared is less real, less trueor substantial, than the type to which it is referred. Herein lies theinjustice and weakness of every attempt that is made to give voice tothe secrets of men. And yet, be words never so faulty, let us stillpay careful heed to the events of this inner world. For of all theevents it has lain in our power to meet hitherto, they alone truly arehuman. 

8

Nor should they be regarded as useless, even though the immense torrentof material forces absorb them, as it absorbs the dew that falls fromthe pale morning flower. Boundless as the world may be wherein welive, it is yet as hermetically enclosed as a sphere of steel. Nothingcan fall outside it, for it has no outside; nor can any atom possiblybe lost. Even though our species should perish entirely, the stagethrough which it has caused certain fragments of matter to pass wouldremain, notwithstanding all ulterior transformations, an indelibleprinciple and an immortal cause. The formidable, provisionalvegetations of the primary epoch, the chaotic and immature monsters ofthe secondary grounds--Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl--thesemight also regard themselves as vain and ephemeral attempts, ridiculousexperiments of a still puerile nature, and conceive that they wouldleave no mark upon a more harmonious globe. And yet not an effort oftheirs has been lost in space. They purified the air, they softenedthe unbreathable flame of oxygen, they paved the way for the moresymmetrical life of those who should follow. If our lungs find in theatmosphere the aliment they need, it is thanks to the inconceivablyincoherent forests of arborescent fern. We owe our brains and nervesof to-day to fearful hordes of swimming or flying reptiles. Theseobeyed the order of their life. They did what they had to do. Theymodified matter in the fashion prescribed to them. And we, by carryingparticles of this same matter to the degree of extraordinaryincandescence proper to the thought of man, shall surely establish inthe future something that never shall perish. 

IV

THE PAST

1

Our past stretches behind us in long perspective. It slumbers on thehorizon like a deserted city shrouded in mist. A few peaks mark itsboundary, and soar predominant into the air; a few important acts standout, like towers, some with the light still upon them, others halfruined and slowly decaying beneath the weight of oblivion. The treesare bare, the walls crumble, and shadow slowly steals over all. Everything seems to be dead there, and rigid, save only when memory, slowly decomposing, lights it for an instant with an illusory gleam. But apart from this animation, derived only from our expiringrecollections, all would appear to be definitively motionless, immutable for ever, divided from present and future by a river thatshall not again be crossed. 

In reality it is alive; and, for many of us, endowed with a profounder, more ardent life than either present or future. In reality this deadcity is often the hot-bed of our existence; and, in accordance with thespirit in which men return to it, shall some find all their wealththere, and others lose what they have. 

2

Our conception of the past has much in common with our conception oflove and happiness, destiny, justice, and most of the vague buttherefore not less potent spiritual organisms that stand for the mightyforces we obey. Our ideas have been handed down to us ready-made byour predecessors; and even when our second consciousness wakes, and, proud in its conviction that henceforth nothing shall be acceptedblindly, proceeds most carefully to investigate these ideas, it willsquander its time questioning those that loudly protest their right tobe heard, and pay no heed to the others close by, that as yet, perhaps, have said nothing. Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover theseothers. They are in us and of us; they wait for us to address them. They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence. Amid the noise andbabble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our reallife; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfiedsisters, they will often be far more simple, and far more beautiful too. 

3

Among the most stubborn of these ready-made ideas are those thatpreside over our conception of the past, and render it a force asimposing and rigid as destiny; a force that indeed becomes destinyworking backwards, with its hand outstretched to the destiny thatburrows ahead, to which it transmits the last link of our chains. Theone thrusts us back, the other urges us forward, with a likeirresistible violence. But the violence of the past is perhaps moreterrible and more alarming. One may disbelieve in destiny. It is agod whose onslaught many have never experienced. But no one woulddream of denying the oppressiveness of the past. Sooner or later itseffect must inevitably be felt. Those even who refuse to admit theintangible will credit the past, which their finger can touch, with allthe mystery, the influence, the sovereign intervention whereof theyhave stripped the powers that they have dethroned; thus rendering itthe almost unique and therefore more dreadful god of their depopulatedOlympus. 

4

The force of the past is indeed one of the heaviest that weigh upon menand incline them to sadness. And yet there is none more docile, moreeager to follow the direction we could so readily give, did we but knowhow best to avail ourselves of this docility. In reality, if we thinkof it, the past belongs to us quite as much as the present, and is farmore malleable than the future. Like the present, and to a muchgreater extent than the future, its existence is all in our thoughts, and our hand controls it; nor is this only true of our material past, wherein there are ruins that we perhaps can restore; it is true also ofthe regions that are closed to our tardy desire for atonement; it istrue above all of our moral past, and of what we consider to be mostirreparable there. 

5

"The past is past, " we say, and it is false; the past is alwayspresent. "We have to bear the burden of our past, " we sigh, and it isfalse; the past bears our burden. "Nothing can wipe out the past, " andit is false; the least effort of will sends present and futuretravelling over the past to efface whatever we bid them efface. "Theindestructible, irreparable, immutable past!" And that is no truerthan the rest. In those who speak thus it is the present that isimmutable, and knows not how to repair. "My past is wicked, it issorrowful, empty, " we say again; "as I look back I can see no moment ofbeauty, of happiness or love; I see nothing but wretched ruins . . . "And that is false; for you see precisely what you yourself place thereat the moment your eyes upon it. 

6

Our past depends entirely upon our present, and is constantly changingwith it. Our past is contained in our memory; and this memory of ours, that feeds on our heart and brain, and is incessantly swayed by them, is the most variable thing in the world, the least independent, themost impressionable. Our chief concern with the past, that which trulyremains and forms part of us, is not what we have done, or theadventures that we have met with, but the moral reactions bygone eventsare producing within us at this very moment, the inward being they havehelped to form; and these reactions, that give birth to our sovereign, intimate being, are wholly governed by the manner in which we regardpast events, and vary as the moral substance varies that they encounterwithin us. But with every step in advance that our feelings orintellect take, a change will come in this moral substance; and then, on the instant, the most immutable facts, that seemed to be graven forever on the stone and bronze of the past, will assume an entirelydifferent aspect, will return to life and leap into movement, bringingus vaster and more courageous counsels, dragging memory aloft with themin their ascent; and what was once a mass of ruin, mouldering in thedarkness, becomes a populous city whereon the sun shines again. 

7

We have an arbitrary fashion of establishing a certain number of eventsbehind us. We relegate them to the horizon of our memory; and havingset them there, we tell ourselves that they form part of a world inwhich the united efforts of all mankind could not wipe away a tear, orcause a flower to lift its head. And yet, while admitting that theseevents have passed beyond our control, we still, with the most curiousinconsistency, believe that they have full control over us; whereas thetruth is that they can only act upon us to the extent in which we haverenounced our right to act upon them. The past asserts itself only inthose whose moral growth has ceased; then, and not till then, does itbecome redoubtable. From that moment we have indeed the irreparablebehind us, and the weight of what we have done lies heavy upon ourshoulders. But so long as the life of our mind and character flowsuninterruptedly on, so long will the past remain in suspense above us;and, as the glance may be that we send towards it, will it, complaisantas the clouds Hamlet showed to Polonius, adopt the shape of the hope orfear, the peace or disquiet, that we are perfecting within us. 

8

No sooner has our moral activity weakened than accomplished events rushforward and assail us; and woe to him who opens the door, and permitsthem to take possession of his hearth! Each one will vie with theother in overwhelming him with the gifts best calculated to shatter hiscourage. It matters not whether our past has been happy and noble, orlugubrious and criminal, there shall still be great danger in allowingit to enter, not as an invited guest, but like a parasite settling uponus. The result will be either sterile regret or impotent remorse; andremorse and regrets of this kind are equally disastrous. In order todraw from the past what is precious within it--and most of our wealthis there--we must go to it at the hour when we are strongest, mostconscious of mastery; enter its domain, and there make choice of whatwe require, discarding the rest, and laying our command upon it neverto cross our threshold without our order. Like all things that onlycan live at the cost of our spiritual strength, it will soon learn toobey. At first, perhaps, it will endeavour to resist. It will haverecourse to artifice and prayer. It will try to tempt us, to cajole. It will drag forward frustrated hopes and joys that are gone for ever, broken affections, well-merited reproaches, expiring hatred and lovethat is dead, squandered faith and perished beauty; it will thrustbefore us all that once had been the marvellous essence of our ardourfor life; it will point to the beckoning sorrows, decaying happiness, that now haunt the ruin. But we shall pass by, without turning ourhead; our hand shall scatter the crowd of memories, even as the sageUlysses, in the Cimmerian night, with his sword prevented theshades--even that of his mother, whom it was not his mission toquestion--from approaching the black blood that would for an instanthave given them life and speech. We shall go straight to the joy, theregret or remorse, whose counsel we need; or to the act of injustice wewish scrupulously to examine, in order either to make reparation, ifsuch still be possible, or that the sight of the wrong we did, whosevictims have ceased to be, is required to give us the indispensableforce that shall lift us above the injustice it still lies in us tocommit. 

9

Yes, even though our past contain crimes that now are beyond the reachof our best endeavours, even then, if we consider the circumstances oftime and place, and the vast plane of each human existence, thesecrimes fade out of our life the moment we feel that no temptation, nopower on earth, could ever induce us to commit the like again. Theworld has not forgiven--there is but little that the external spherewill forget or forgive--and their material effects will continue, forthe laws of cause and effect differ from those which govern ourconsciousness. At the tribunal of our personal justice, however--theonly tribunal which has decisive action on our inaccessible life, as itis the only one whose decrees we cannot evade, whose concrete judgmentsstir us to our very marrow--the evil action that we regard from aloftier plane than that at which it was committed, becomes an actionthat no longer exists for us save in so far as it may serve in thefuture to render our fall more difficult; nor has it the right to liftits head again except at the moment when we incline once more towardsthe abyss it guards. 

Bitter, surely, must be the grief of him in whose past there are actsof injustice whereof every avenue now is closed, who is no longer ableto seek out his victims, and raise them and comfort them. To haveabused one's strength in order to despoil some feeble creature who hasdefinitely succumbed beneath the blow; to have callously thrustsuffering upon a loving heart, or merely misunderstood and passed by atouching affection that offered itself--these things must of necessityweigh heavily upon our life, and induce a sorrow within us that shallnot readily be forgotten. But it depends on the actual point ourconsciousness has attained whether our entire moral destiny shall bedepressed or lifted beneath this burden. Our actions rarely die: andmany unjust deeds of ours will therefore inevitably return to life someday to claim their due and start legitimate reprisals. They will findour external life without defence; but before they can reach the inwardbeing at the centre of that life, they must first listen to thejudgment we have already passed on ourselves; and in accordance withthe nature of that judgment will the attitude be of these mysteriousenvoys, who have come from the depths where cause and effect are poisedin eternal equilibrium. If it has indeed been from the heights of ournewly acquired consciousness that we have questioned ourselves, andcondemned, they will not be menacing justiciaries whom we shallsuddenly see surging in from all sides, but benevolent visitors, friends we have almost expected, and they will draw near us in silence. They know in advance that the man before them is no longer the guiltycreature they sought; and instead of bringing hatred, revolt, anddespair, or punishments that degrade and kill, they will come chargedwith ennobling, consoling and purifying thought and penance. 

10

The things which differentiate the happy and strong from those who weepand will not be consoled, all derive from the one same principle ofconfidence and ardour; and thus it is that the manner in which we areable to recall what we have done or suffered is far more important thanour actual sufferings or deeds. No past, viewed by itself, can seemhappy; and the privileged of fate, who reflect on what remains of thehappy years that have flown, have perhaps more reason for sorrow thanthe unfortunate ones who brood over the dregs of a life ofwretchedness. Whatever was one day and has now ceased to be, makes forsadness; above all, whatever was very happy and very beautiful. Theobject of our regrets--whether these revolve around what has been ormight have been--is therefore more or less the same for all men, andtheir sorrow should be the same. It is not, however; in one case itwill reign uninterruptedly, whereas in another it will only appear atvery long intervals. It must therefore depend on things other thanaccomplished facts. It depends on the manner in which men will dealwith these facts. The conquerors in this world--those who waste notime setting up an imaginary irreparable and immutable athwart theirhorizon, those who seem to be born afresh every morning in a world thatfor ever awakes anew to the future--these know instinctively that whatappears to exist no longer is still existing intact, that what appearedto be ended is only completing itself. They know that the years timehas taken from them are still in travail; still, under their newmaster, obeying the old. They know that their past is for ever inmovement; that the yesterday which was despondent, decrepit andcriminal, will return full of joyousness, innocence, youth, in thetrack of to-morrow. They know that their image is not yet stamped onthe days that are gone; that a decisive deed, or thought, will sufficeto break down the whole edifice; that however remote or vast the shadowmay be that stretches behind them, they have only to put forth agesture of gladness or hope for the shadow at once to copy thisgesture, and, flashing it back to the remotest, tiniest ruins of earlychildhood even, to extract unexpected treasure from all this wreckage. They know that they have retrospective action on all bygone deeds; andthat the dead themselves will annul their verdicts in order to judgeafresh a past that to-day has transfigured and endowed with new life. 

They are fortunate who find this instinct in the folds of their cradle. But may the others not imitate it who have it not; and is not humanwisdom charged to teach us how we may acquire the salutary instinctsthat nature has withheld?

11

Let us not lull ourselves to sleep in our past; and if we find that ittends to spread like a vault over our life, instead of incessantlychanging beneath our eye; if the present grow into the habit ofvisiting it, not like a good workman repairing thither to execute thelabours imposed upon him by the commands of to-day, but as a toopassive, too credulous pilgrim, content idly to contemplate beautiful, motionless ruins--then, the more glorious, the happier that our pastmay have been, with all the more suspicion should it be regarded by us. 

Nor should we yield to the instinct that bids us accord it profoundrespect, if this respect induce the fear in us that we may disturb itsnice equilibrium. Better the ordinary past, content with its befittingplace in the shadow, than the sumptuous past which claims to governwhat has travelled beyond its reach. Better a mediocre but livingpresent, which acts as though it were alone in the world, than apresent which proudly expires in the chains of a marvellous long ago. A single step that we take at this hour towards an uncertain goal, isfar more important to us than the thousand leagues we covered in ourmarch towards a dazzling triumph in the days that were. Our past hadno other mission than to lift us to the moment at which we are, andthere equip us with the needful experience and weapons, the needfulthought and gladness. If, at this precise moment, it take from us anddivert to itself one particle of our energy, then, however glorious itmay have been, it still was useless, and had better never have been. If we allow it to arrest a gesture that we were about to make, then isour death beginning; and the edifices of the future will suddenly takethe semblance of tombs. 

More dangerous still than the past of happiness and glory is the oneinhabited by overpowering and too dearly cherished phantoms. Many anexistence perishes in the coils of a fond recollection. And yet, werethe dead to return to this earth, they would say, I fancy, with thewisdom that must be theirs who have seen what the ephemeral light stillhides from us: "Dry your eyes. There comes to us no comfort from yourtears: exhausting you, they exhaust us also. Detach yourself from us, banish us from your thoughts, until such time as you can think of uswithout strewing tears on the life we still live in you. We endureonly in your recollection; but you err in believing that your regretsalone can touch us. It is the things you do that prove to us we arenot forgotten, and rejoice our manes; and this without your knowing it, without any necessity that you should turn towards us. Each time thatour pale image saddens your ardour, we feel ourselves die anew, and itis a more perceptible, irrevocable death than was our other; bendingtoo often over our tombs, you rob us of the life, the courage and lovethat you imagine you restore. 

"It is in you that we are, it is in all your life that our liferesides; and as you become greater, even while forgetting us, so do webecome greater too, and our shades draw the deep breath of prisonerswhose prison door is flung open. 

"If there be anything new we have learned in the world where we arenow, it is, first of all, that the good we did to you when we were, like yourselves, on the earth, does not balance the evil wrought by amemory which saps the force and the confidence of life. "

12

Above all, let us envy the past of no man. Our own past was created byourselves, and for ourselves alone. No other could have suited us, noother could have taught us the truth that it alone can teach, or giventhe strength that it alone can give. And whether it be good or bad, sombre or radiant, it still remains a collection of unique masterpiecesthe value of which is known to none but ourselves; and no foreignmasterpiece could equal the action we have accomplished, the kiss wereceived, the thing of beauty that moved us so deeply, the suffering weunderwent, the anguish that held us enchained, the love that wreathedus in smiles or in tears. Our past is ourselves, what we are and shallbe; and upon this unknown sphere there moves no creature, from thehappiest down to the most unfortunate, who could foretell how great aloss would be his could he substitute the trace of another for thetrace which he himself must leave in life. Our past is our secret, promulgated by the voice of years; it is the most mysterious image ofour being, over which Time keeps watch. This image is not dead; a merenothing degrades or adorns it; it can still grow bright or sombre, canstill smile or weep, express love or hatred; and yet it remainsrecognisable for ever in the midst of the myriad images that surroundit. It stands for what we once were, as our aspirations and hopesstand for what we shall be; and the two faces blend, that they mayteach us what we are. 

Let us not envy the facts of the past, but rather the spiritual garmentthat the recollection of days long gone will weave around the sage. And though this garment be woven of joy or of sorrow, though it bedrawn from the dearth of events or from their abundance, it shall stillbe equally precious; and those who may see it shining over a life shallnot be able to tell whether its quickening jewels and stars were foundamid the grudging cinders of a cabin or upon the steps of a palace. 

No past can be empty or squalid, no events can be wretched: thewretchedness lies in our manner of welcoming them. And if it were truethat nothing had happened to you, that would be the most remarkableadventure that any man ever had met with; and no less remarkable wouldbe the light it would shed upon you. In reality the facts, theopportunities and possibilities, the passions, that await and invitethe majority of men, are all more or less the same. Some may be moredazzling than others; their attendant circumstances may differ, butthey differ far less than the inward reactions that follow; and theinsignificant, incomplete event that falls on a fertile heart and brainwill readily attain the moral proportions and grandeur of an analogousincident which, on another plane, will convulse a people. 

He who should see, spread out before him, the past lives of a multitudeof men, could not easily decide which past he himself would wish tohave lived were he not able at the same time to witness the moralresults of these dissimilar and unsymmetrical facts. He might notimpossibly make a fatal blunder; he might choose an existenceoverflowing with incomparable happiness and victory, that sparkle likewonderful jewels; while his glance might travel indifferently over alife that appeared to be empty whereas it was truly steeped to the brimin serene emotions and lofty, redeeming thoughts whereby, though theeye saw nothing, that life was yet rendered happy among all. For weare well aware that what destiny has given, and what destiny holds inreserve, can be revolutionised as utterly by thought as by greatvictory or great defeat. Thought is silent; it disturbs not a pebbleon the illusory road we see; but at the crossway of the more actualroad that our secret life follows will it tranquilly erect anindestructible pyramid; and thereupon, suddenly, every event, to thevery phenomena of earth and heaven, will assume a new direction. 

In Siegfried's life, it is not the moment when he forges the prodigioussword that is most important, or when he kills the dragon and compelsthe gods from his path, or even the dazzling second when he encounterslove on the flaming mountain, but indeed the brief instant wrested frometernal decrees, the little childish gesture, when one of his hands, red with the blood of his mysterious victim, having chanced to drawnear his lips, his eyes and ears are suddenly opened; he understandsthe hidden language of all that surrounds him, detects the treachery ofthe dwarf who represents the powers of evil, and learns in a flash todo that which had to be done. 

V

LUCK

1

Once upon a time, an old Servian legend tells us, there were twobrothers of whom one was industrious, but unfortunate, and the otherlazy, but overwhelmingly prosperous. One day the unfortunate brothermeets a beautiful girl who is tending sheep and weaving a goldenthread. "To whom do these sheep belong?" he asks. "They belong towhom I belong. " "And to whom do you belong?" "To your brother: I amhis luck. " "And where is my luck then?" "Very far from here. " "Can Ifind it?" "Yes, if you look for it. "

So he wanders away in search of his luck. And one evening, in a greatforest, he comes across a poor old woman asleep under a tree. He wakesher and asks who she is. "Don't you know me?" she answers. "It istrue you never have seen me: I am your luck. " "And who can have givenme so wretched a luck?" "Destiny. " "Can I find destiny?" "Yes, ifyou look long enough. "

So he goes off in search of destiny. He travels a very long time, andat last she is pointed out to him. She lives in an enormous andluxurious palace; but her wealth is dwindling day by day, and the doorsand windows of her abode are shrinking. She explains to him that shepasses thus, alternately, from misery to opulence; and that hersituation at a given moment determines the future of all the childrenwho may come into the world at that moment. "You were born, " she says, "when my prosperity was on the wane; and that is the cause of yourill-luck. " The only way, she tells him, to hoodwink or get the betterof fortune would be to substitute the luck of Militza, his niece, forhis own, seeing that she was born at a propitious period. All he needdo, she says, is to take this niece into his house, and to declare toany one who may ask him that all he has belongs to Militza. 

He does as she bids him, and his affairs at once take a new turn. Hisherds multiply and grow fat, his trees are bent beneath the masses offruit, unexpected inheritances come in, his land bears prodigiouscrops. But one morning, as he stands there, his heart filled withhappiness, eyeing a magnificent cornfield, a stranger asks him who theowner may be of these wonderful ears of wheat that, as they sway to andfro beneath the dew, seem twice as heavy and twice as high as the earsin the adjoining field. He forgets himself, and answers, "They aremine. " At that very instant fire breaks out in the opposite end of thefield, and commences its ravages. Then he remembers the advice that hehas neglected to follow: he runs after the stranger shouting, "Stop, come back: I made a mistake: what I told you was not true! This fieldis not mine: it belongs to my niece Militza!" And the flames have nosooner heard than they suddenly fall away, and the corn shoots upafresh. 

2

This naive and very ancient image, which might almost serve to-day asan illustration of our actual ignorance, proves that the mysteriousproblem of chance has not changed, from the time of man's firstquestioning glance. We have our thoughts, which build up our intimatehappiness or sorrow; and upon this events from without have more orless influence. In some men these thoughts will have acquired suchstrength, such vigilance, that without their consent nothing can enterthe structure of crystal and brass, they have been able to raise on thehill that commands the wonted road of adventures. And we have ourwill, which our thoughts feed and sustain; and many useless or harmfulevents can be held in check by our will. But around these islets, within which is a certain degree of safety, of immunity from attack, extends a region as vast and uncontrollable as the ocean, a regionswayed by chance as the waves are swayed by the wind. Neither will northought can keep one of these waves from suddenly breaking upon us; andwe shall be caught unawares, and perhaps be wounded and stunned. Onlywhen the wave has retreated can thought and will begin their beneficentaction. Then they will raise us, and bind up our wounds; restoreanimation, and take careful heed that the mischief the shock haswrought shall not reach the profound sources of life. Their missionextends no further, and may, on the surface, appear very humble. Inreality, however, unless chance assume the irresistible form of crueldisease or death, the workings of will and thought are sufficient toneutralise all its efforts, and to preserve what is best and mostessential to man in human happiness. 

3

Redoubtable, multitudinous chance is for ever threading its watchfulway through the midst of the events we have foreseen, and round andabout our most deliberate actions, wherewith we are slowly tracing thebroad lines of our existence. The air we breathe, the time wetraverse, the space through which we move, are all peopled by lurkingcircumstances, which pick us out from among the crowd. The least studyof their habits will quickly convince us that these strange daughtersof hazard, who should be blind and deaf as their father, by no meansact in his irresponsible fashion. They are well aware of what they aredoing, and rarely make a mistake. With inexplicable certainty do theymove to the passer-by whom they have been sent to confront, and lightlytouch his shoulder. Two men may be travelling upon the same road, andat the same hour; but there will be no hesitation or doubt in the ranksof the double, invisible troop whom fortune has ambushed there. Towards one a band of white virgins will hasten, bearing palms andamphorae, presenting the thousand unexpected delights of the journey;as the other approaches, the "Evil Women, " whom Aeschylus tells of, will hurl themselves from the hedges, as though they were charged toavenge, upon this unwitting victim, some inexpiable crime committed byhim before he was born. 

4

There is scarcely one of us who has not been able, in some measure, tofollow the workings of destiny in life. We have all known men who metwith a prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of theiractions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn ofthe road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars, undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable. One, we will say, who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knowshis rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at thedecisive moment, another, who has counted upon the protection of a mostinfluential friend, will see this friend die on the very day when hisassistance could be of value. A third, who has neither talent norbeauty, will arrive each morning at the Palace of Fortune, Glory orLove at the brief instant when every door lies open; while another, aman of great merit, who long has pondered the legitimate step he istaking, presents himself at the hour when ill-luck shall have closedthe gate for the next half-century. One man will risk his healthtwenty times in imbecile feats, and never experience the leastill-effect; another will deliberately venture it in an honourablecause, and lose it without hope of return. To help the first, thousands of unknown people, who never have seen him, will be obscurelyworking; to hinder the second, thousands of unknown people labour, whoare ignorant of his existence. And all, on the one side as well as theother, are totally unaware of what they are doing; they obey the sameminute, widely-distributed order; and at the prescribed moment thedetached pieces of the mysterious machine join, dovetail, unite; and wehave two complete and dissimilar destinies set into motion by Time. 

In a curious book on "Chance and Destiny, " Dr. Foissac gives variousstrange examples of the persistent, inexplicable, fundamental, pre-ordained, irreducible iniquity in which many existences aresteeped. As we go through page after page, we feel almost as though wewere being conducted through the disconcerting laboratories of anotherworld where, in the absence of every instrument that human justice andreason might hold indispensable, happiness and sorrow are beingparcelled out and allotted. Take, for instance, the life ofVauvenargues, one of the most admirable of men, and certainly, of allthe great sages, the most unfortunate. Whenever his fortune hangs inthe balance, he is attacked and prostrated by cruel disease; andnotwithstanding the efforts of his genius, his bravery, his moralbeauty, day after day he is wantonly betrayed or falls victim togratuitous injustice; and at the age of thirty-two he dies, at the verymoment when recognition is at last awaiting his work. So too there isthe terrible story of Lesurques, [1] in which we see a thousandcoincidences that might have been contrived in hell, blending andjoining together to work the ruin of an innocent man; while truth, chained down by fate, dumbly shrieking, as we do when wrestling withnightmare, is unable to put forth a single gesture that shall rend theveil of night. There is Aimar de Ransonnet, President of theParliament of Paris, one of the most upright of men, who first of allis suddenly dismissed from his office, sees his daughter die on adunghill before his eyes, his son perish at the hands of theexecutioner, and his wife struck by lightning; while he himself isaccused of heresy and sent to the Bastille, where he dies of griefbefore he is brought to trial. 

The calamities that befell Oedipus and the Atrides are regarded by usas improbable and fabulous; and yet we find in contemporary historythat fatality clings with no less persistence to families such as theStuarts, the Colignys, [2] &c. , and hounds to their death, with whatalmost seems personal vindictiveness, pitiable and innocent victimslike Henrietta of England, daughter of Henry IV. , Louise de Bourbon, Joseph II. , and Marie-Antoinette. 

And again in another category, what shall we say of theinjustice--unintelligent but apparently almost conscious, almostsystematic and premeditated--of games of chance, duels, battles, storms, shipwrecks, and fires? Or of the inconceivable luck of aChastenet de Puységur who, after forty years' service, in the course ofwhich he took part in thirty battles and a hundred and twenty sieges, always in the front rank and displaying the most romantic courage, wasnever once touched by shot or steel, while Marshal Oudinot was woundedthirty-five times, and General Trézel was struck by a bullet in everyencounter? What shall we say of the extraordinary fortune of Lauzun, Chamillart, Casanova, Chesterfield, &c. , or of the inconceivable, unvarying prosperity that attended the crimes of Sylla, Marius, orDionysius the Elder, who, in his extreme old age, after an odious butfantastically successful life, died of joy on learning that theAthenians had just crowned one of his tragedies? Or, finally, ofHerod, surnamed the Great or the Ascalonite, who swam in blood, murdered one of his wives and five of his children, put to death everyupright man who might chance to offend him, and yet was fortunate inall his undertakings?

6

These famous examples, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are intruth no more than the abnormal and historic presentments of what isshown to us every day, in a humbler but not less emphatic fashion, bythe thousand and one caprices of propitious or contrary fortune at workon the small and ill-lit stage of ordinary life. 

Doubtless, we must, first of all, when closely examining such insolentprosperity or unvarying disaster, attribute a royal share to thephysical or moral causes which are capable of explaining them. Had weourselves known Vauvenargues, we should probably have detected acertain timidity, irresolution or misplaced pride in his characterwhereby he was disabled from allowing the opportunity to mature or fromseizing it with sufficient vigour. And Lesurques, it may be, wasdeficient in ability, in one knows not what, in that prodigiouspersonal force that one expects to find in falsely-accused innocence. Nor can it be denied that the Stuarts, no less than Joseph II. AndMarie-Antoinette, were guilty of enormous blunders that inviteddisaster; or that Lauzun, Casanova, and Lord Chesterfield had flung tothe winds those essential scruples that hinder the honest man. So toois it certain that although the existence of Sylla, Marius, Dionysiusthe Elder, and Herod the Ascalonite may have been externally almostincomparably fortunate, few men, I fancy, would care to have lurkingwithin them the strange, restless, blood-stained phantom, possessedneither of thought nor of feeling, on which the happiness must depend(if the word happiness be indeed applicable here) that is founded uponunceasing crime. But, this deduction being made, and on the mostreasonable, most liberal scale (which will become the more generous aswe see more of life and understand it better, and penetrate furtherinto the secrets of little causes and great effects), we shall still beforced to admit that there remains, in these obstinately recurringcoincidences, in these indissoluble series of good or evil fortune, these persistent runs of good or bad luck, a considerable, oftenessential, and sometimes exclusive share that can be ascribed only tothe impenetrable, incontrovertible will of a real but unknown power;which is known as Chance, Fatality, Destiny, Luck, Fortune, good orevil Star, Angel with the White Wings, Angel with the Black Wings, andby many other names, that vary in accordance with the more or lessimaginative, more or less poetic genius of centuries and peoples. Andhere we have one of the most serious, most perplexing problems of allthose that have to be solved by man before he may legitimately regardhimself as the principal, independent and irrevocable inhabitant ofthis earth. 

7

Let us reduce the problem to its simplest terms, and submit it to ourreason. First, however, let us consider whether it affects man alone. We have with us, upon this curiously incomprehensible globe, silent andfaithful companions of our existence; and we shall often find ithelpful to let our eyes rest upon these when, having reached certainaltitudes that perhaps are illusory, giddiness seizes our brain andinclines us too readily to the idea that the stars, the gods or theveiled representatives of the sublime laws of the universe, areconcerned solely with us. These poor brothers of our animal life, thatare so calmly, so confidently resigned, would appear to know manythings that we have forgotten; they are the tranquil custodians of thesecret that we seek so anxiously. It is evident that animals, andnotably domestic animals, have also a kind of destiny. They too knowwhat prolonged and gratuitous happiness means; they also haveencountered the persistent misfortune for which no cause can be found. They have the same right as we to speak of their star, their good orbad luck, their prosperity or disaster. Compare the fate of thecab-horse, that ends its days at the knacker's, after having passedthrough the hands of a hundred brutal and nameless masters, with thatof the thorough-bred which dies of old age in the stable of akind-hearted master; and from the point of view of justice (unless weaccept the Buddhist theory, that life in this world is the reward orpunishment of an anterior existence) explanation is as completelylacking as in the case of the man whom chance has reduced to poverty orraised to wealth. There is, in Flanders, a breed of draught-dogs uponwhich destiny alternately lavishes her favour and her spite. Some willbe bought by a butcher, and lead a magnificent life. The work istrifling: in the morning, harnessed four abreast, they draw a lightcart to the slaughter-house, and at night, galloping joyously, triumphantly, home through the narrow streets of the ancient towns withtheir tiny, lit-up gables, bring it back, overflowing with meat. Between-times there is leisure, and marvellous leisure, among the ratsand the waste of the slaughter-house. They are copiously fed, they arefat, they shine like seals, and taste in its fulness the only happinessdreamed of by the simple and ferreting instinct of the honest dog. Buttheir unfortunate brethren of the same litter, that the lamesand-pedlar buys, or the old collector of household refuse, or theneedy peasant with his great, cruel clogs--these are chained to heavycarts or shapeless barrows; they are filthy, mangy, hairless, emaciated, starving; and follow till they die the circles of a hellinto which they were thrust by a few coppers dropped into some hornypalm. And, in a world less directly subject to man, there mustevidently be partridges, pheasants, deer, hares, which have no luck, which never escape the gun; while others, one knows not how or why, emerge unscathed from every battue. 

They, therefore, are exposed, like ourselves, to incontestableinjustice. But it does not occur to us, when considering theirhardships, to set all the gods in motion or seek explanation from themysterious powers; and yet what happens to them may well be no morethan the image, naively simplified, of what happens to us. It is truethat we play the precise part, in their case, of those mysteriouspowers whom we seek in our own. But what right have we to expect fromthese last more consciousness, more intelligent justice, than weourselves show in our dealings with animals? And in any event, if thisinstance shall only have deprived chance of a little of its uselessprestige and have proportionately augmented our spirit of initiativeand struggle, there will be a gain the importance of which is by nomeans to be despised. 

8

Still further allowance must therefore be made; but yet thereundoubtedly remains--at least as far as the more complex life of man isconcerned--a cause of good or evil fortune as yet untouched by ourexplanations, in the often visible will of chance, which one mightalmost call the "small change" of fatality. We know--and this is oneof those formless but fundamental ideas on the laws of life that theexperience of thousands of years has turned into a kind of instinct--weknow that men exist who, other things being equal, are "lucky" or"unlucky. " Circumstances permitted me to follow very closely thecareer of a friend of mine who was dogged by persistent ill-fortune. Ido not mean to imply by this that his life was unhappy. It is evenremarkable that the malign influences always respected the broad linesof his veritable happiness; probably because these were well guarded. For he had in him a strong moral existence, profound thoughts andhopes, feelings and convictions. He was well aware that these werepossessions that fortune could not touch: which indeed could not bedestroyed without his consent. Destiny is not invincible; throughlife's very centre runs a great inward canal, which we have the powerto turn towards happiness or sorrow; although its ramifications, thatextend over our days, and the thousand tributaries that flow in fromexternal hazards, are all independent of our will. 

It is thus that a beautiful river, streaming down from the heights andashine with magnificent glaciers, passes at length through plains andthrough cities, whence it receives only poisonous water. For aninstant the river is troubled; and we fear lest it lose, and neverrecover again, the image of the pure blue sky that the crystalfountains had lent: the image that seemed its soul, and the deep andthe limpid expression of its great strength. But if we rejoin it, downyonder, beneath those great trees, we shall find that it has alreadyforgotten the foulness of the gutters. It has caught the azure againin its transparent waves; and flows on to the sea, as clear as it wason the days when it first smilingly leapt from its source on themountains. 

And so, as regards this friend of mine, although forced more than onceto shed tears, they were at least not of the kind that memory neverforgets, not of those that fall from our eyes as we mourn our owndeath. Every failure, the inevitable disappointment once over, servedonly in effect to knit him the closer to his secret happiness, toaffirm this within him, and draw a more sombre outline around it, thatit might thereby appear the more precious, and ardent, and certain. But no sooner had he quitted this charmed enclosure than hostileincidents vied with each other in their attacks upon him. As forinstance--he was a very good fencer: he had three duels, and waswounded each time by a less skilful adversary. If he went on boardship, the voyage would rarely be prosperous. Whatever undertaking heput money into was sure to turn out badly. A judicial error, intowhich a whole series of curiously malevolent circumstances dragged him, was productive of long and serious trouble. Further, although his facewas agreeable, and the expression of his eyes loyal and frank, he wasnot what one calls "sympathetic": he did not arouse at first sight thatspontaneous affection which we often give, without knowing why, to theunknown who passes, to an enemy even. Nor was he more fortunate in hisaffections. Of a loving disposition, and infinitely worthier of beingloved than most of those to whom he was sacrificed by thechance-governed heart of women--here again he met with nothing buttreachery, deceit and sorrow. He went his way, extricating himself asbest he could from the paltry snares that malicious fortune prepared atevery step; nor was he discouraged or deeply saddened, only somewhatsurprised at so strange a persistence; until at last there came thegreat and solitary good fortune of his life: a love that was thecomplement of the one that was eager within him, a love that wascomplete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable. And from that moment itwas as though he had come under the influence of another star, thebeneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious eventsgrew slowly remoter, fewer, warier of attacking him, tardier in theirapproach. They seemed reluctantly to abandon their habit of selectinghim as their victim. He actually saw his _luck turn_. And now that hehas gone back, as it were, into the indifferent and neutral atmosphereof chance common to most men, he smiles when he remembers the time whenevery gesture of his was watched by the invisible enemy, and aroused adanger. 

9

Let us not look to the gods for an explanation of these phenomena. Until these gods shall have clearly explained themselves, there isnothing that they can explain for us. And destiny, which is merely thegod of which we know least, has less right than any of the others tointervene and cry to us, as it does from the depths of its inscrutablenight: "It is I who so willed it!" Nor let us invoke the illimitablelaws of the universe, the intentions of history, the will of theworlds, the justice of the stars. These powers exist: we submit tothem, as we submit to the might of the sun. But they act withoutknowing us; and within the wide circle of their influence a libertyremains to us still that is probably immense. They have better work onhand than to be for ever bending over us to lift a blade of grass ordrop a leaf in the little paths of our anthill. Since we ourselves arehere the parties concerned, it is, I imagine, within ourselves that thekey of the mystery shall be found; for it is probable that everycreature carries within him the best solution of the problem that hepresents. Within us, underlying the conscious existence that ourreason and will control, is a profounder existence, one side of whichconnects with a past beyond the record of history, the other with afuture that thousands of years cannot exhaust. We may safely conceivethat all the gods lie hidden within it; that those wherewith we havepeopled the earth and the planets will emerge one by one, in order togive it a name and a form that our imagination may understand. And asman's vision grows clearer, as he shows less desire for image andsymbol, so will the number of these names, the number of these forms, tend to diminish. He will slowly arrive at the stage when there shallbe one only that he will proclaim, or reserve; when it shall berevealed to him that this last form, this last name, is truly no morethan the last image of a power whose throne was always within him. Then will the gods that had gone forth from us be found again inourselves; and it is there that we will question them to-day. 

10

I hold therefore that it is in this unconscious life of ours, in thisexistence that is so vast, so divine, so inexhaustible andunfathomable, that we must seek for the explanation of fortunate orcontrary chances. Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, ourfirst-born: immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal. Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays onthis inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it. But ourintellect is gradually learning that every secret of the humanphenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and therealone. This unconscious being lives on another plane than ourintellect, in another world. It knows nothing of Time and Space, thetwo formidable but illusory walls between which our reason must flow ifit would not be hopelessly lost. It knows no proximity, it knows nodistance; past and future concern it not, or the resistance of matter. It is familiar with all things; there is nothing it cannot do. To thispower, this knowledge, we have indeed at all times accorded a certainvarying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we havecalled them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflexaction, presentiment, intuition, &c. We credit it more especially withthe indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of ournerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason: aforce that would appear to be the very fluid of life. Its nature isprobably more or less the same in all men; but it has very differentmethods of communicating with the intellect. In some men this unknownprinciple is enshrined at so great a depth that it concerns itselfsolely with physical functions and the permanence of the species;whereas in others it would seem to be for ever on the alert, risingagain and again to the surface of external and conscious life, whichits fairy-like presence quickens; intervening at every instant, warning, deciding, counselling; blending with most of the essentialfacts of a career. Whence comes this faculty? There are no fixed orcertain laws. We do not detect, for instance, any constant relationbetween the activity of the unconsciousness and the development of theintellect. This activity obeys rules of which we know nothing. So faras we at present can tell, it would seem to be purely accidental. Wediscover it in one man, and not in another; nor have we any clue thatshall help us to guess at the reason of this difference. 

11

The probable course pursued by fortunate or contrary chances may wellbe as follows. A happy or untoward event, that has sprung from theprofound recesses of great and eternal laws, arises before us andcompletely blocks the way. It stands motionless there: immovable, inevitable, disproportionate. It pays no heed to us; it has not comeon our account, but for itself, because of itself. It ignores uscompletely. It is we who approach the event; we who, having arrivedwithin the sphere of its influence, will either fly from it or face it, try a circuitous route or fare boldly onwards. Let us assume that theevent is disastrous: fire, death, disease, or a somewhat abnormal formof accident or calamity. It waits there, invisible, indifferent, blind, but perfect and unalterable; but as yet it is merely potential. It exists entire, but only in the future; and for us, whose intellectand consciousness are served by senses unable to perceive thingsotherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it werenot. Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of ashipwreck. The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; therock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath thewaves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month isslumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies. Normally, were nothing written, had the catastrophe[3] not already taken place inthe future, fifty passengers would have arrived from five or sixdifferent countries, and have duly gone on board. But destiny hasclearly marked the vessel for its own. She must most certainly perish. And for months past, perhaps for years, a mysterious selection has beenat work amongst the passengers who were to have departed upon the sameday. It is possible that out of fifty who had originally intended tosail, only twenty will cross the gangway at the moment of lifting theanchor. It is even possible that not a single one of the fifty willlisten to the insistent claims of the circumstance that, but for thedisaster ahead, would have rendered their departure imperative, andthat their place will be taken by twenty or thirty others in whom thevoice of Chance does not speak with a similar power. Here we touch theprofoundest depths of the profoundest of human enigmas; and thehypothesis necessarily falters. But is it not more reasonable, in thefictitious case before us--wherein we merely thrust into prominencewhat is of constant occurrence in the more obscure conjunctures ofdaily life--to regard both decision and action as emanating from ourunconsciousness, rather than from doubtful, and distant, gods? Ourunconsciousness is aware of the catastrophe: it must be: ourunconsciousness sees it; for it knows neither time nor space, and thedisaster is therefore happening as actually before its eyes as beforethe eyes of the eternal powers. The mode of prescience matters butlittle. Out of the fifty travellers who have been warned, two or threewill have had a real presentiment of the danger; these will be the onesin whom unconsciousness is free and untrammelled, and therefore morereadily able to attain the first, and still obscure, layers ofintellect. The others suspect nothing: they inveigh against theinexplicable obstacles and delays: they strain every nerve to arrive intime, but their departure becomes impossible. They fall ill, take awrong road, change their plans, meet with some insignificant adventure, have a quarrel, a love affair, a moment of idleness or forgetfulness, which detains them in spite of themselves. To the first it will neverhave even occurred to sail on the ill-starred boat, although this bethe one that they should logically, inevitably, have been compelled tochoose. But the efforts that their unconsciousness has put forth tosave them have their workings so deep down that most of these men willhave no idea that they owe their life to a fortunate chance; and theywill honestly believe that they never intended to sail by the ship thatthe powers of the sea had claimed. 

12

As for those who punctually make their appearance at the fatal tryst, they belong to the tribe of the unlucky. They are the unfortunate raceof our race. When the rest all fly, they alone remain in their places. When others retreat, they advance boldly. They infallibly travel bythe train that shall leave the rails, they pass underneath the tower atthe exact moment of its collapse, they enter the house in which thefire is smouldering, cross the forest on which lightning shall fall, entrust all they have to the banker who means to abscond. They lovethe one woman on earth whom they should have avoided, they make thegesture they should not have made, they do the thing they should nothave done. But when fortune beckons and the others are hastening, urged by the deep voice of benevolent powers, these pass by, nothearing; and, vouchsafed no advice or warning but that of theirintellect, the very wise old guide whose purblind eyes see only thetiny paths at the foot of the mountain, they go astray in a world thathuman reason has not yet understood. These men have surely the rightto exclaim against destiny; and yet not on the grounds that they wouldprefer. They have the right to ask why it has withheld from them thewatchful guard who warns their brethren. But, this reproach oncemade--and it is the cardinal reproach against irreducibleinjustice--they have no further cause of complaint. The universe isnot hostile to them. Calamities do not pursue them; it is they who gotowards calamity Things from without wish them no ill; the mischiefcomes from themselves. The misfortune they meet has not been lying inwait for them; they selected it for their own. With them, as with allmen, events are posted along the course of their years, like goods in abazaar that stand ready for the customer who shall buy them. No onedeceives them; they merely deceive themselves. They are in no wisepersecuted; but their unconscious soul fails to perform its duty. Isit less adroit than the others: is it less eager? Does it slumberhopelessly in the depths of its secular prison: and can no amount ofwill-power arouse it from its fatal lethargy, and force the redoubtabledoors that lead from the life that unconsciously is aware of all thingsto the intelligent life that knows nothing?

13

A friend in whose presence I was discussing these matters said to meyesterday: "Life, whose questions are more searching than those of thephilosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curiousproblem to those you have stated. I am wondering what the result willbe when two 'lucks'--in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of whichone is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling--meet and insome measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking? Whichwill triumph over the other? I soon shall know. This afternoon Ipropose to take a step that will be of supreme importance to the personI value above all others in this world. Her entire future may almostbe said to depend upon it, her exterior happiness, the possibility ofher living in accordance with her nature and her rights. Now to mechance has always been a faithful and far-seeing friend; and as Iglance over my past, and review the five or six decisive moments which, as with all men, were the golden pivots on which fortune turned, I aminduced to believe in my star, and am morally certain that if I alonewere concerned in the step I am taking to-day, it would be bound tosucceed, because I am 'lucky. ' But the person on whose behalf I amacting has never been fortunate. Her intellect is remarkably subtleand profound, her will is a thousand times stronger and better balancedthan my own; but, with all this, one can only believe that shepossesses a foolish or malignant unconsciousness, which haspersistently, ruthlessly, exposed her to act after act of injustice, dishonesty, and treachery, has robbed her again and again of her due, and compelled her to travel the path of disastrous coincidence. Besure that it would have forced her to embark on the ship that you speakof. I ask myself, therefore, what attitude will my vigilant, thoughtful unconsciousness adopt towards this indolent and sinningbrother, in whose name it will have to act, whose place, as it were, itwill take?

"How, and where, is the momentous decision being at this moment arrivedat, in search of which I shall so soon set forth? What power is itthat now, at this very moment, while I am speaking, is balancing thepros and cons, and decreeing the happiness or sorrow of the woman Irepresent? From which sphere, or perhaps immemorial virtue, from whathidden spirit or invisible star, will the weight fall that shallincline the scale to light or to darkness? To judge by outwardappearance, decision must rest with the will, the reason, the interestof the parties engaged; in reality it often is otherwise. When onefinds oneself thus face to face with the problem which directly affectsa person we love, this problem no longer appears quite so simple; oureyes open wider, and we throw a startled, anxious, in a sense almost avirgin glance, upon all this unknown that leads us and that we arecompelled to obey. 

"I take this step therefore with more emotion, I put forth more zealand vigour, than if it were my own life, my own happiness, that stoodin peril. She for whom I am acting is indeed 'more I than I ammyself, ' and for a long time past her happiness has been the source ofmine. Of this both my heart and my reason are fully aware; but does myunconsciousness know? My reason and heart, that form my consciousness, are barely thirty years old; my unconscious soul, still reminiscent ofprimitive secrets, may well date centuries back. Its evolution is verydeliberate. It is as slow as a world that turns in time without end. It will probably therefore not yet have learned that a second existencehas linked itself to mine, and completely absorbs it. How many yearsmust elapse before the great news shall penetrate to its retreat? Hereagain we note its diversity, its inequality. In one man, perhaps, unconsciousness will immediately recognise what is taking place in hisheart; in another, it will very tardily lend itself to the phenomena ofreason. There is a love, again, such as that of the mother for herchild, in which it moves in advance of both heart and reason. Onlyafter a very long time does the unconscious soul of a mother separateitself from that of her children; it watches over these at first withfar more zeal and solicitude than over the mother. But, in a love likemine, who shall say whether my unconsciousness has gathered that thislove is more essential to me than my life? I myself believe that it issatisfied that the step I propose to take in no way concerns me. Itwill not appear; it will not intervene. At the very moment when Ishall be feverishly displaying all the energy I possess, when I shallbe striving for victory more keenly than were my salvation at stake, itwill be tending its own mysterious affairs deep down in its shadowydwelling. Were I seeking justice for myself, it would already be onthe alert. It would know, perhaps, that I had better do nothingto-day. I should probably have not the slightest idea of intervention;but it would raise some unforeseen obstacle. I should fall ill; catcha bad cold, be prevented by some secondary event from arriving at theunpropitious hour. Then, when I was actually in the presence of theman who held my destiny in his hands, my vigilant friend would spreadits wings over me, its breath would inspire me, its light would dispelmy darkness. It would dictate to me the words that I must say: theywould be the only words that could meet the secret objections of themaster of my Fate. It would regulate my attitude, my silence, mygestures; it would endow me with the confidence, the namelessinfluence, which often will govern the decisions of men far more thanthe reasons of reason or the eloquence of interest. But here I amsorely afraid that my unconsciousness will do none of these things. Itwill remain perfectly passive. It will not appear on the familiarthreshold. In its obtuseness, impervious to the fact that my life hasceased to be self-contained, it will act in accordance with its ancienttraditions, those that have ruled it these hundreds of years; it willpersist in regarding this matter as one that does not concern me, andwill believe that in helping my failure it will be doing me service;whereas in truth it will afflict me more grievously, cause me moresorrow, than if it were to betray me at the approach of death. I shallbe importing, therefore, into this affair, only the palest reflection, a kind of phantom, of my own luck; and I ask myself with dread whetherthis will suffice to counterbalance the contrary fortune which I have, as it were, assumed, and which I represent. "

14

Some days later my friend informed me that his action had beenunsuccessful. It may be that this reverse was only due to chance or tohis own want of confidence. For the confidence that sees success aheadpursues it with a pertinacity and resource of which hesitation anddoubt are incapable; nor is it troubled by any of those involuntaryweaknesses which give so great an advantage to the adversary'sinstinct. And there may probably be much truth also in his manner ofdepicting unconsciousness. For truly, there are depths in us at whichunconsciousness and confidence would seem to blend, and it becomesdifficult to say where the first begins, or the second leaves off. 

We will not pursue this too subtle inquiry, but rather consider theother and more direct questions that life is ever putting to usconcerning one of its greatest problems--chance. This possesses whatmay be called a daily interest. It asks us, for instance, whatattitude we should adopt towards men who are incontestably unlucky; menwhose evil star has such pernicious power that it infallibly bringsdisaster to whatever comes within the range--often a very wide one--ofits baleful influence. Ought we unhesitatingly to fly from such men, as Dr. Foissac advises? Yes, doubtless, if their misfortunes arisefrom an imprudent and unduly hazardous spirit, a heedless, quarrelsome, mischief-making, Utopian or clouded mind. Ill-luck is a contagiousdisease; and one unconsciousness will often infect another. But if themisfortunes be wholly unmerited, or fall upon those who are dear to us, flight were unjust and shameful. In such a case the conscious side ofour being--which, though it know but little, is yet able to fashiontruths of a different order, truths that might almost be the firstflowers of a dawning world--is bound to resist the universal wisdom ofunconsciousness, bound to brave its warnings and involve it in its ownruin, which may well be a victory upon an ideal plane that one dayperhaps shall appeal to the unconsciousness also. 

15

We ask ourselves, therefore, whether unconsciousness, which we regardas the source of our luck, is really incapable of change orimprovement. Have we not all of us noticed how strange are the ways ofchance? When we behold it active in a small town, or among a certainnumber of men within the range of our own observation, the goddesswould seem to become as persistent as a gadfly, and no less fantastic. Her very marked personality and character will vary in accordance withthe event or being whereon she may fasten. She has all kinds ofeccentricities, but pursues each one logically to the finish. Herfirst gesture will tell us nothing; from her second we can predict allthat she means to do. Protean divinity that no image could completelydescribe, here she leaps suddenly forth, like a fountain in the midstof a desert, to disappear after having given birth to an ephemeraloasis; there she returns at regular intervals, collecting andscattering, like migratory birds that obey the rhythm of the seasons. On our right she fells a man and concerns herself with him no further;on our left she bears down another, and furiously worries her victim. But, though she bring favour or ruin, she will almost always remainastoundingly faithful to the character she has once and for all assumedin a particular case. This man, for instance, who has beenunsuccessful in war, will continue to be unsuccessful; that other willinvariably win or lose at cards; a third will infallibly be deceived; afourth will find water, fire, or the dangers of the street especiallyhostile; a fifth will be constantly fortunate or unfortunate in love, money matters, &c. , and so to the end. All this may prove nothing, butwe may regard it at least as some indication that her realm is trulywithin us and not without; and that a hidden force that emanates onlyfrom us provides her with form and with vestment. 

Her habits at times will suddenly alter, one eccentricity producinganother; some brusque change of front will give the lie to hercharacter, to confirm it the instant after in a new atmosphere. We saythen that "luck turns. " May it not rather be our unconsciousness thatis gradually developing, at last displaying some prudence, attention, and slowly becoming aware that important events are stirring in theworld to which it is attached? Has it gained some experience? Has aray of intelligence, a spark of will-power, filtered through to itslair and hinted at danger? Does it learn, after years have flown, andtrial after trial has had to be borne, the wisdom of casting aside itsconfident apathy? Can external disaster arouse it from perilousslumber? Or, if it always has known what was happening over the roofof its prison, is it able, after long and painful effort, at last, atthe critical moment, to contrive some sort of crevice in the greatwall, built by the indifference of centuries, that separates it fromits unknown sisters; and does it thus succeed in entering the ephemerallife on which a part of its own life depends?

16

And yet we must admit that this hypothesis of unconsciousness will notsuffice to account for all the injustice of chance. Its three mostiniquitous acts are the three disasters--the most terrible of all towhich man is exposed--that habitually strike him before birth: I referto absolute poverty, disease (especially in the shocking forms ofphysiological degradation and incurable infirmities, of repulsiveugliness and deformity), and intellectual weakness. These are thethree great priestesses of unrighteousness that lie in wait forinnocence and brand it, on the threshold of life. And yet, mysteriousas their method of choice may appear, the triple source whence theyderive these three irremediable scourges is less mysterious than one isinclined to believe. We need not look for it in a pre-establishedwill, in fatal, hostile, eternal, impenetrable laws. Poverty has itsorigin in man's own province; and though we may marvel why one shouldbe rich and the other poor, we are well aware that the existence, sideby side, of excessive wealth and excessive misery, is due to humaninjustice alone. In this wickedness neither gods nor stars have part. And as for disease and mental weakness, when we shall have eliminatedfrom them what now is due to poverty, mother of most of our moral andphysical sorrows, as well as to the anterior, and by no meansinevitable, faults of the parents, then, though some measure ofpersistent and unaccountable injustice may still remain, this relic ofmystery will very nigh go into the hollow of the philosopher's hand, and there he shall, later, examine it at his leisure. But we of todayshall be wise in refusing to allow our life to be unnecessarilydarkened, or hedged round with imaginary maledictions and foes. 

As far as ordinary luck is concerned, we shall do well to believe, forthe moment, that the history of our fortune (which is not necessarilythe history of our real happiness, since this may be wholly independentof luck) is the history of our unconscious being. There are moreelements of probability in such a creed than in the assumption that thestars, eternity, or the spirit of the universe are taking part in ourpetty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage. And thisidea--even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter thecharacter of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or ofVenus--still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; andwhen we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperativeduty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes. Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I knownot what proud consolation in being able to tell ourselves that itissues solely from us, and that we are not the victims of a malign willor the playthings of useless chance that in suffering more than ourbrothers we are perhaps only recording, in time and space, thenecessary form of our own personality. And so long as calamity do notattack the intimate pride of man, he retains the force to continue thestruggle and accomplish his essential mission: which is, to live withall the ardour whereof he is capable, and as though his life were ofgreater consequence than any other to the destinies of mankind. 

This idea is also more conformable to the vast law which restores tous, one by one, the gods wherewith we had filled the world. Of thesegods the greater number were merely the effects of causes that reposedin ourselves. As we progress we shall discover that many a force thatmastered us and aroused our wonder was only an ill-understood fragmentof our own power; and this will probably become more apparent every day. 

And though we shall not have conquered the unknown force by bringing itnearer or enclosing it within us, there yet shall be gain in knowingwhere it abides and where we may question it. Obscure forces surroundus; but the one that concerns us most nearly lies at the very centre ofour being. All the others pass through it: it is their trysting-place:they re-enter and congregate there; and only in the degree of theirrelation to it have they interest for us. 

To distinguish this force from the host of others we have called itunconsciousness. And when we shall have succeeded in studying thisunconsciousness more closely, when its mysterious adroitness, itsantipathies and preference, its helplessness, shall be better known tous, we shall have most strangely blunted the teeth and nails of themonster who persecutes us under the name of Fortune, Destiny or Chance. At the present hour we are feeding it still as a blind man might feedthe lion that at last shall devour him. Soon perhaps the lion will beseen by us in its true light, and we shall then learn how to subdue him. 

Let us therefore unweariedly follow each path that leads from ourconsciousness to our unconsciousness. We shall thus succeed in hewingsome kind of track through the great and as yet impassable roads thatlead from the seen to the unseen, from man to God, from the individualto the universe. At the end of these roads lies hidden the generalsecret of life. In the meanwhile let us adopt the hypothesis thatoffers the most encouragement to our existence in this life; in thislife which has need of us for the solution of its own enigmas, seeingthat in us its secrets crystallise the most limpidly and most rapidly. 

THE END

[1] His history is concisely summed up by Dr. Foissac as follows:--"Onthe eighth Floréal of the year IV. The courier and postillion who weretaking the mail from Paris to Lyons were attacked and murdered, at ninein the evening, in the forest of Senart. The assassins were Couriol, who had taken a seat in the cabriolet by the side of the courier;Durochal, Rossi, Vidal, and Dubosq, who had come to meet him on hiredhorses; and lastly Bernard, who had procured the horses, and took partin the subsequent distribution of plunder. For this crime, in whichfive assassins and one accomplice shared, _seven_ individuals, withinthe space of four years, mounted the steps of the guillotine. Justice, therefore, killed one man too many: her sword fell upon one who wasinnocent; nor could he have been one of these six individuals, all ofwhom confessed their crime. The innocent man was Lesurques, who hadnever ceased to declare that he was not guilty; and all his allegedaccomplices disavowed any knowledge of him. How then came thisunfortunate creature to be implicated in an affair that was to conferso sad an immortality upon his name? Fatality so contrived that, fourdays before the crime, Lesurques, who had left Douai with an income ofeighteen thousand livres, and had come to Paris that he might give abetter education to his children, happened to be lunching with afellow-townsman named Guesno when Couriol came in and was invited tojoin them. Suspicion having at once fallen upon Couriol, the fact ofthis lunch was sufficient to cause Guesno to be put under arrest for amoment; but as he was able to prove an alibi, the judge, Daubenton, immediately set him at liberty. Only, as it was late, Daubenton toldhim to come the following day to fetch his papers. 

"In the morning of the eleventh Floréal, Guesno, on his way for thispurpose to the Prefecture of Police, met Lesurques, whom he invited toaccompany him; an invitation which Lesurques, who had nothing specialto do, accepted. While they were waiting in the antechamber for themagistrate to arrive, two women were shown in who had been asked toattend in connection with the affair; and they, deceived by Lesurques'resemblance to Dubosq, who had fled, unhesitatingly denounced him asone of the assassins, and unfortunately persisted in this statement tothe end. The antecedents of Lesurques pleaded in his favour; and amongother facts that he cited to prove that he had not left Paris duringthe day of the eighth Floréal, he declared that he had been present atcertain dealings that had taken place at a jeweller's named Legrand, between this last and another jeweller named Aldenoff. Thesetransactions had actually taken place on the eighth; but Legrand, onbeing requisitioned to produce his books, found that he had by aclerical blunder inscribed them under the date of the ninth. Hethought the best thing he could do would be to scratch out the nine andconvert it into an eight. He did this with the idea that he wouldthereby save his fellow-townsman Lesurques, whom he knew to beinnocent, whereas he actually succeeded in ruining him. The alterationand substitution were easily detected; from that moment the prosecutionand the jury declined to place the least confidence in the eightywitnesses for the defence called by the accused; he was convicted andhis property confiscated. Eighty-seven days elapsed between hiscondemnation and execution, a delay that was altogether unusual at thatperiod; but grave doubts had arisen as to his guilt. 

"The Directorate did not possess the right of reprieve; they felt ittheir duty to refer the case to the Council of Five Hundred, asking'whether Lesurques was to die because of his resemblance to acriminal?' The Council passed to the Order of the Day on the report ofSimeon; and Lesurques was executed, forgiving his judges. And not onlyhad he constantly protested his innocence, but at the moment theverdict was given Couriol had cried out, in firm tones, 'Lesurques isinnocent!' He repeated this statement both on the fatal hurdle and onthe scaffold. All the other prisoners, while admitting their ownguilt, also declared the innocence of Lesurques. It was only in theyear IX. That Dubosq, his double, was arrested and sentenced. 

"The fatality that had attacked the head of the family spared none ofits members. Lesurques' mother died of grief; his wife went mad; histhree children languished in insignificance and poverty. Thegovernment, however, moved by their great misfortune, restored to thefamily of Lesurques, in two instalments, the five or six hundredthousand francs which had been so iniquitously confiscated; but aswindler robbed them of the greater part of the money. Sixty yearselapsed; of Lesurques' three children two were dead: one alonesurvived, Virginia Lesurques. Public opinion had for a long timealready proclaimed the innocence and the rehabilitation of herunfortunate father. She wanted more; and when the law of the 29th June1867 was passed, authorising the revision of criminal judgments, shehoped that the day had at last come when she might proclaim thisrehabilitation in the sanctuary of justice; but, by a final fatality, the Court of Appeal, arguing on legal subtleties, declared by itsdecree of 17th December 1868 that no cause had been shown forre-opening the case, and that Virginia Lesurques had not made good herclaim to revision. "

It is as though one were enthralled by a horrible dream, in which somepoor wretch was being delivered into the hands of the Furies. Eversince the fatal meal, no less tragic than that of Thyestes, whichLesurques took at Guesno's house, events have been dragging him nearerand nearer the gulf that yawns at his feet; while his destiny, hoveringabove him like an enormous vulture, hides the light from those whoapproach him. And the circles from above press magically forward tomeet those from below: they advance, they contract, and then, unitingat last, their eddies blend and fasten upon what is now a corpse. 

Here, truly, the combination of murderous fatalities may well seemsupernatural; and the case is typical, it is formidable, it is assymbolic as a myth. But there can be no doubt that analogous chains ofcircumstances reproduce themselves daily in the countless petty orridiculous mortifications of merely ordinary lives which are beneaththe influence of an evil or malicious star. 

[2] The misfortunes of the Stuarts are well known; those of theColignys are less familiar. Of these last the author we have alreadycited gives the following lucid account:--"Gaspard de Coligny, Marshalof France under Francis I. , was married to the sister of the ConstableAnne de Montmorency. He was reproached with having delayed by half aday his attack on Charles V. , at a time when such might have been mostadvantageously offered, and with having thereby let slip an almostcertain opportunity of victory. One of his sons, who had been madeArchbishop and Cardinal, embraced Protestantism, and was married in hisred cassock. He fought against the King at the battle of St. Denis, and fled to England, where, in the year 1571, a servant of hisattempted to poison him. He escaped, however, and, seekingsubsequently to return to France, was captured at Rochelle, condemnedto death, and executed. The Admiral de Coligny, brother of theCardinal, was reputed one of the greatest captains of his time: he didmarvels at the defence of Saint-Quentin. The place, however, was takenby storm, and he was made a prisoner of war. Having become the realleader of the Calvinists, under the Prince de Condé, he displayed themost undaunted courage and extraordinary fertility of resource; neitherhis merit nor his military skill was ever called in question; and yethe was uniformly unsuccessful in every one of his enterprises. In 1562he lost the battle of Dreux to the Duc de Guise; that of St. Denis tothe Constable de Montmorency; and, finally, that of Jarnac, which wasno less fatal to his party. He endured yet another reverse atMontcontour, in Poitou, but his courage remained unshaken; his skillwas able to parry the attacks of fortune, and he appeared moreredoubtable after his defeats than his enemies in the midst of theirvictories. Often wounded, but always impervious to fear, he remarkedone day quietly to his friends, who wept as they saw his blood flow:'Should not the profession we follow cause us to regard death with thesame indifference as life?' A few days before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Maurevert shot him with a carbine from a house in thecloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and wounded him dangerously in theright hand and left arm. On the eve of that sanguinary day, Besme, atthe head of a party of cutthroats, contrived to enter the admiral'shouse, and ran him several times through the body, then flinging himout of the window into the courtyard, where he expired, it is said, atthe feet of the Duc de Guise. His body was exposed for three days tothe insults of the mob, and finally hung by the feet to the gibbet ofMontfaucon. 

"Thus, though the Admiral de Coligny passed for the greatest general ofhis time, he was always unfortunate and always defeated; while the Ducde Guise, his rival, who had less wisdom but more audacity, and aboveall more confidence in his destiny, was able to take his enemies bysurprise and render himself master of events. 'Coligny was an honestman, ' said the Abbe de Mably; 'Guise wore the mask of a greater numberof virtues. Coligny was detested by the people; Guise was their idol. 'It is stated that the Admiral left a diary, which Charles IX. Read withinterest, but the Marshal de Retz had it flung into the fire. Finally, a fatal destiny clinging to all who bore the name of Coligny, the lastdescendant of the family was killed in a duel by the Chevalier deGuise. "

[3] It is a remarkable and constant fact that great catastrophes claiminfinitely fewer victims than the most reasonable probabilities mighthave led one to suppose. At the last moment a fortuitous orexceptional circumstance is almost always found to have kept away half, and sometimes two-thirds, of the persons who were threatened by thestill invisible danger. A steamer that goes to the bottom hasgenerally fewer passengers on board than would have been the case hadshe not been destined to go down. Two trains that collide, an expressthat falls over a precipice, &c. , carry less travellers than they wouldon a day when nothing is going to happen. Should a bridge collapse, the accident will generally be found to occur, in defiance of allprobability, at the moment the crowd has just left it. In the case offires in theatres and other public places, things unfortunately happenotherwise. But there, as we know, the principal danger does not lie inthe fire, but in the panic of the terror-stricken crowd. Again, afire-damp explosion will usually occur at a time when the number ofminers inside the mine is appreciably inferior to the number that wouldhabitually be there. Similarly, when a powder factory is blown up, themajority of the workmen, who would otherwise all have perished, will befound to have left the mill for some trifling, but providential, reason. So true is this, that the almost unvarying remark, that weread every day in the papers, has become familiar and hackneyed, as: "Acatastrophe which might have assumed terrible proportions wasfortunately confined, thanks to such and such a circumstance, " &c. , &c. ; or, "One shudders to think what might have happened had theaccident occurred a moment sooner, when all the workmen, all thepassengers, " &c. Is this the clemency of Chance? We are becoming everless inclined to credit it with a personality, with design orintelligence. There is more reason in the supposition that somethingin man has defined the disaster; that an obscure but unfailing instincthas preserved a great number of people from a danger that was on thepoint of taking shape, of assuming the imminent and imperious form ofthe inevitable; and that their unconsciousness, taking alarm, is seizedwith hidden panic, which manifests itself outwardly in a caprice, awhim, some puerile and inconsistent incident, that is yet irresistibleand becomes the means of salvation.