Chapter 19

But the pessimism of one who sees the simple life fading out, the ancient quietude invaded, the country caught in the feelers of the town, is not a real pessimism at all, or rather it is a pessimism which results from a deficiency of imagination, and is only a matter of personal taste, perhaps of personal belatedness. Twelve generations of my own family lived and died as Yorkshire yeomen-farmers, and my own preference is probably a matter of instinctive inheritance. The point is not what a few philosophers happen to like, but what humanity likes, and what it is happiest in liking. I should have but small confidence in the Power that rules the world, if I did not believe that the vast social development of Europe, its civilisation, its network of communications, its bustle, its tenser living, its love of social excitement was not all part of a great design. I do not believe that humanity is perversely astray, hurrying to destruction. I believe rather that it is working out the possibilities that lie within it; and if human beings had been framed to live quiet pastoral lives, they would be living them still. The one question for the would-be optimist is whether humanity is growing nobler, wiser, more unselfish; and of that I have no doubt whatever. The sense of equality, of the rights of the weak, compassion, brotherliness, benevolence, are living ideas, throbbing with life; the growth of the power of democracy, much as it may tend to inconvenience one personally, is an entirely hopeful and desirable thing; and if a man is disposed to pessimism, he ought to ask himself seriously to what extent his pessimism is conditioned by his own individual prospect of happiness. It is quite possible to conceive of a man without any hope of personal immortality, or the continuance of individual identity, whose future might be clouded, say, by his being the victim of a painful and incurable disease, and who yet might be a thoroughgoing optimist with regard to the future of humanity. Nothing in the world could be so indicative of the rise in the moral and emotional temperature of the world as the fact that men are increasingly disposed to sacrifice their own ambitions and their own comfort for the sake of others, and are willing to suffer, if the happiness of the race may be increased; and much of the pessimism that prevails is the pessimism of egotists and individualists, who feel no interest in the rising tide, because it does not promise to themselves any increase in personal satisfaction. No man can possibly hold the continuance of personal identity to be an indisputable fact, because there is no sort of direct evidence on the subject; and indeed all the evidence that exists is rather against the belief than for it. The belief is in reality based upon nothing but instinct and desire, and the impossibility of conceiving of life as existing apart from one's own perception. But even if a man cannot hold that it is in any sense a certainty, he may cherish a hope that it is true, and he may be generously and sincerely grateful for having been allowed to taste, through the medium of personal consciousness, the marvellous experience of the beauty and interest of life, its emotions, its relationships, its infinite yearnings, even though the curtain may descend upon his own consciousness of it, and he himself may become as though he had never been, his vitality blended afresh in the vitality of the world, just as the body of his life, so near to him, so seemingly his own, will undoubtedly be fused and blent afresh in the sum of matter. A man, even though racked with pain and tortured with anxiety, may deliberately and resolutely throw himself into sympathy with the mighty will of God, and cherish this noble and awe-inspiring thought--the thought of the onward march of humanity; righting wrongs, amending errors, fighting patiently against pain and evil, until perhaps, far-off and incredibly remote, our successors and descendants, linked indeed with us in body and soul alike, may enjoy that peace and tranquillity, that harmony of soul, which we ourselves can only momentarily and transitorily obtain.

XVII. JOY

Dr. Arnold somewhere says that the schoolmaster's experience of being continually in the presence of the hard mechanical high spirits of boyhood is an essentially depressing thing. It seemed to him depressing, just because that happiness was so purely incidental to youth and health, and did not proceed from any sense of principle, any reserve of emotion, any self-restraint, any activity of sympathy. I confess that in my own experience as a schoolmaster the particular phenomenon was sometimes a depressing thing and sometimes a relief. It was depressing when one was overshadowed by a fretful anxiety or a real sorrow, because no appeal to it seemed possible: it had a heartless quality. But again it was a relief when it distracted one from the pressure of a troubled thought, as when, in the Idylls of the King, the sorrowful queen was comforted by the little maiden "who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness, which often lured her from herself."

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

The blessing would be if one could find in experience a quality of joy which should be independent of natural high spirits altogether, a cheerful tranquillity of outlook, which should become almost instinctive through practice, a mood which one could at all events evoke in such a way as to serve as a shield and screen to one's own private troubles, or which at least would prevent one from allowing the shadow of our discontent from falling over others. But it must be to a certain extent temperamental. Just as high animal spirits in some people are irrepressible, and bubble up even under the menace of irreparable calamity, so gloom of spirit is a very contagious thing, very difficult to dissimulate. Perhaps the best practical thing for a naturally melancholy person to try and do, is to treat his own low spirits, as Charles Lamb did, ironically and humorously; and if he must spin conversation incessantly, as Dr. Johnson said, out of his own bowels, to make sure that it is the best thread possible, and of a gossamer quality.

The temperamental fact upon which the possibility of such a philosophical cheerfulness is based is after all an ultimate hopefulness. Some people have a remarkable staying power, a power of looking through and over present troubles, and consoling themselves with pleasant visions of futurity. This is commoner with women than with men, because women derive a greater happiness from the happiness of those about them than men do. A woman as a rule would prefer that the people who surround her should be cheerful, even if she were not cheerful herself; whereas a man is often not ill-pleased that his moods should be felt by his circle, and regards it as rather an insult that other people should be joyful when he is ill-at-ease. Some people, too, have a stronger dramatic sense than others, and take an artistic pleasure in playing a part. I knew a man who was a great invalid and a frequent sufferer, who took a great pleasure in appearing in public functions. He would drag himself from his bed to make a public appearance of any kind. I think that he consoled himself by believing that he did so from a strong and sustaining sense of duty; but I believe that the pleasure of the thing was really at the root of his effort, as it is at the root of most of the duties we faithfully perform. I do not mean that he had a strong natural vanity, though his enemies accused him of it. But publicity was naturally congenial to him, and the only sign, as a rule, that he was suffering, when he made such an appearance, was a greater deliberation of movement, and a ghastly fixity of smile. As to the latter phenomenon, a man with the dramatic sense strongly developed, will no doubt take a positive pleasure in trying to obliterate from his face and manner all traces of his private discomfort. Such stoicism is a fine quality in its way, but the quality that I am in search of is an even finer one than that. My friend's efforts were ultimately based on a sort of egotism, a profound conviction that a public part suited him, and that he performed it well. What one rather desires to attain is a more sympathetic quality, an interest in other people so vital and inspiring that one's own personal sufferings are light in the scale when weighed against the enjoyment of others. It is not impossible to develop this in the face of considerable bodily suffering. One of the most inveterately cheerful people I have ever known was a man who suffered from a painful and irritating complaint, but whose geniality and good-will were so strong that they not only overpowered his malaise, but actually afforded him considerable relief. Some people who suffer can only suffer in solitude. They have to devote the whole of their nervous energies to the task of endurance; but others find society an agreeable distraction, and fly to it as an escape from discomfort. I suppose that every one has experienced at times that extraordinary rebellion, so to speak, of cheerfulness against an attack of physical pain. There have been days when I have suffered from some small but acutely disagreeable ailment, and yet found my cheerfulness not only not dimmed but apparently enhanced by the physical suffering. Of course there are maladies even of a serious kind of which one of the symptoms is a great mental depression, but there are other maladies which seem actually to produce an instinctive hopefulness.

But the question is whether it is possible, by sustained effort, to behave independently of one's mood, and what motive is strong enough to make one detach oneself resolutely from discomforts and woes. Good manners provide perhaps the most practical assistance. The people who are brought up with a tradition of highbred courtesy, and who learn almost instinctively to repress their own individuality, can generally triumph over their moods. Perhaps in their expansive moments they lose a little spontaneity in the process; they are cheerful rather than buoyant, gentle rather than pungent. But the result is that when the mood shifts into depression, they are still imperturbably courteous and considerate. A near relation of a great public man, who suffered greatly from mental depression, has told me that some of the most painful minutes he has ever been witness of were, when the great man, after behaving on some occasion of social festivity with an admirable and sustained gaiety, fell for a moment into irreclaimable and hopeless gloom and fatigue, and then again, by a resolute effort, became strenuously considerate and patient in the privacy of the family circle.

Some people achieve the same mastery over mood by an intensity of religious conviction. But the worst of that particular triumph is that an attitude of chastened religious patience is, not unusually, a rather depressing thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it tends to deprive life of natural and unaffected joy. If it is patient and submissive in affliction, it is also tame and mild in cheerful surroundings. It issues too frequently in a kind of holy tolerance of youthful ebullience and vivid emotions. It results in the kind of character that is known as saintly, and is generally accompanied by a strong deficiency in the matter of humour. Life is regarded as too serious a business to be played with, and the delight in trifles, which is one of the surest signs of healthy energy, becomes ashamed and abashed in its presence. The atmosphere that it creates is oppressive, remote, ungenial. "I declare that Uncle John is intolerable, except when there is a death in the family--and then he is insupportable," said a youthful nephew of a virtuous clergyman of this type in my presence the other day, adding, after reflection, "He seems to think that to die is the only really satisfactory thing that any one ever does." That is the worst of carrying out the precept, "Set your affections on things above, not on things of the earth," too literally. It is not so good a precept, after all, as "If a man love not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, Whom he hath not seen?" It is somehow an incomplete philosophy to despise the only definite existence we are certain of possessing. One desires a richer thing than that, a philosophy that ends in temperance, rather than in a harsh asceticism.

The handling of life that seems the most desirable is the method which the Platonic Socrates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but yet there are few figures more real. There we have an elderly man of incomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perennially youthful, bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, admiration. With what a delicious mixture of irony and tenderness he treats the young men who surround him! When some lively sparks made up their minds to do what we now call "rag" him, dressed themselves up as Furies, and ran out upon him as he turned a dark corner on his way home, Socrates was not in the least degree disturbed, but discoursed with them readily on many matters and particularly on temperance; when at the banquet the topers disappear, one by one, under the table, Socrates, who, besides taking his due share of the wine, had filled and drunk the contents of the wine-cooler, is found cheerfully sitting, crowned with roses, among the expiring lamps, in the grey of the morning, discussing the higher mathematics. He is never sick or sorry; he is poor and has a scolding wife; he fasts or eats as circumstances dictate; he never does anything in particular, but he has always infinite leisure to have his talk out. Is he drawn for military service? he goes off, with an entire indifference to the hardships of the campaign. When the force is routed, he stalks deliberately off the field, looking round him like a great bird, with the kind of air that makes pursuers let people alone, as Alcibiades said. And when the final catastrophe draws near, he defends himself under a capital charge with infinite good-humour; he has cared nothing for slander and misrepresentation all his life, and why should he begin now? In the last inspired scene, he is the only man of the group who keeps his courteous tranquillity to the end; he had been sent into the world, he had lived his life, why should he fear to be dismissed? It matters little, in the presence of this august imagination, if the real Socrates was a rude and prosy person, who came by his death simply because the lively Athenians could tolerate anything but a bore!

The Socratic attitude is better than the high-bred attitude; it is better than the stoical attitude; it is even better than the pious attitude, because it depends upon living life to the uttermost, rather than upon detaching oneself from what one considers rather a poor business. The attitude of Socrates is based upon courage, generosity, simplicity. He knows that it is with fear that we weight our melancholy sensibilities, that it is with meanness and coldness that we poison life, that it is with complicated conventional duties that we fetter our weakness. Socrates has no personal ambitions, and thus he is rid of all envy and uncharitableness; he sees the world as it is, a very bright and brave place, teeming with interesting ideas and undetermined problems. Where Christianity has advanced upon this--for it has advanced splendidly and securely--is in interpreting life less intellectually. The intellectual side of life is what Socrates adores; the Christian faith is applicable to a far wider circle of homely lives. Yet Christianity too, in spite of ecclesiasticism, teems with ideas. Its essence is an unprejudiced freedom of soul. Its problems are problems of character which the simplest child can appreciate. But Christianity, too, is built upon a basis of joy. "Freely ye have received, freely give," is its essential maxim.

The secret then is to enjoy; but the enjoyment must not be that of the spoiler who carries away all that he can, and buries it in his tent; but the joy of relationship, the joy of conspiring together to be happy, the joy of consoling and sympathising and sharing, because we have received so much. Of course there remain the limitations of temperament, the difficulty of preventing our own acrid humours from overflowing into other lives; but this cannot be overcome by repression; it can only be overcome by tenderness. There are very few people who have not the elements of this in their character. I can count upon my fingers the malevolent men I know, who prefer making others uncomfortable to trying to make them glad; and all these men have been bullied in their youth, and are unconsciously protecting themselves against bullying still. We grow selfish, no doubt, for want of practice; ill-health makes villains of some of us. But we can learn, if we desire it, to keep our gruffness for our own consumption, and a very few experiments will soon convince us that there are few pleasures in the world so reasonable and so cheap, as the pleasure of giving pleasure.

But, after all, the resolute cheerfulness that can be to a certain extent captured and secured by an effort of the will, though it is perhaps a more useful quality than natural joy, and no doubt ranks together in the moral scale, is not to be compared with a certain unreasoning, incommunicable rapture which sometimes, without conscious effort or desire, descends upon the spirit, like sunshine after rain. Let me quote a recent experience of my own which may illustrate it.

A few days ago, I had a busy tiresome morning hammering into shape a stupid prosaic passage, of no suggestiveness; a mere statement, the only beauty of which could be that it should be absolutely lucid; and this beauty it resolutely refused to assume. Then the agent called to see me, and we talked business of a dull kind. Then I walked a little way among fields; and when I was in a pleasant flat piece of ground, full of thickets, where the stream makes a bold loop among willows and alders, the sun set behind a great bastion of clouds that looked like a huge fortification. It had been one of those days of cloudless skies, all flooded with the pale cold honey-coloured light of the winter sun, until a sense almost of spring came into the air; and in a sheltered place I found a little golden hawk-weed in full flower.

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

But for all that I came home in a rare and delightful frame of mind, as if I had heard a brief and delicate passage of music, a conspiracy of sweet sounds and rich tones; or as if I had passed through a sweet scent, such as blows from a clover-field in summer. There was no definite thought to disentangle: it was rather as if I had had a glimpse of the land which lies east of the sun and west of the moon, had seen the towers of a castle rise over a wood of oaks; met a company of serious people in comely apparel riding blithely on the turf of a forest road, who had waved me a greeting, and left me wondering out of what rich kind of scene they had stepped to bless me. It left me feeling as though there were some beautiful life, very near me, all around me, behind the mirror, outside of the door, beyond the garden-hedges, if I could but learn the spell which would open it to me; left me pleasantly and happily athirst for a life of gracious influences and of an unknown and perfect peace; such as creeps over the mind for the moment at the sight of a deep woodland at sunset, when the forest is veiled in the softest of blue mist; or at the sound of some creeping sea, beating softly all night on a level sand; or at the prospect of a winter sun going down into smoky orange vapours over a wide expanse of pastoral country; or at the soft close of some solemn music--when peace seems not only desirable beyond all things but attainable too.

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

Well, at such a moment as this, one feels just as one may feel when from the streets of a dark and crowded city, with the cold shadow of a cloud passing over it, one sees the green head of a mountain over the housetops, all alone with the wind and the sun, with its crag-bastions, its terraces and winding turf ways.

The peace that thus blesses one is not, I think, a merely subjective mood, an imagined thing. It is, I believe, a real and actual thing which is there. One's consciousness does not create its impressions, one does not make for oneself the moral and artistic ideas that visit one; one perceives them. Education is not a process of invention--it is a process of discovery; a process of learning the names given to things that are all present in one's own mind. One knows things long before one knows the names for them, by instinct and by intuition; and one's own mind is simply a part of a large and immortal life, which for a time is fenced by a little barrier of identity, just as a tiny pool of sea-water on a sea-beach is for a few hours separated from the great tide to which it belongs. All our regrets, remorses, anxieties, troubles arise from our not realising that we are but a part of this greater and wider life, from our delusion that we are alone and apart instead of, as is the case, one with the great ocean of life and joy.

Sometimes, I know not why and how, we are for a moment or two in touch with the larger life--to some it comes in religion, to some in love, to some in art. Perhaps a wave of the onward sweeping tide beats for an instant into the little pool we call our own, stirring the fringing weed, bubbling sharply and freshly upon the sleeping sand.