Chapter 11
Whatever may be the meaning of the process of the world, however disheartening some steps in its evolution may be, they are necessary, and without them, perhaps, some evil could not thoroughly have been worked out.
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People often manifest a diseased desire to express their will. A theory is adopted, not because the facts force it upon them, but because its adoption shows their power. The larger, the freer the nature, the less there is of this action of the will, the more the mind is led.
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A mere dream, a vague hope may be more potent than certainty in a lesser matter. The faintest vision of God is more determinative of life than a gross earthly certainty.
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The more nearly the performer on a musical instrument approaches perfection, the larger is that part of his execution which is unconscious. Consciousness arises with defect, or sense of something to be overcome. How conscious we are when striving to think and work in ill-health!
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The highest education is that which teaches us to guide ourselves by motives which are intangible, remote, incapable of direct and material appreciation.
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Weak minds find confirmation of their beliefs in the discovery of the same beliefs in other people. They do not take the trouble to find out how their neighbours obtained these beliefs. If they are current at the time, the probability is that the coincidence is worthless as any evidence of validity.
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The certainty which comes of intelligent conviction is a tempered certainty. Its possessor knows the difficulty of the path by which he has reached it, and the reasons which on his way have appeared so potent against it. Fanaticism is the accompaniment of conclusions which are not the result of reason.
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To understand a thing is to understand all its laws. The thing is then nothing but law, and mere matter seems to disappear.
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What is it which governs the selection of truths which make up religions? Why are this and that chosen? Has not the selection a damaging effect upon the great body of truth?
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Every action should be an end in itself as well as a means. The end of getting up in the morning, as Goethe says, is getting up.
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We are always searching for something extraordinary which shall give life its pleasure and value. The extraordinary must be contributed by our own minds and feelings.
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The real object in any human being of my love and worship is that which is not in any table of virtues, nor can I in any way describe it: it is something which perpetually escapes, which is not to be found in anything said or done.
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It is a common mistake to demand a definition of that which can have none. We loosely cover a mass of phenomena which are diverse with a single word. For example, we puzzle over a definition of life, but there is no such thing as life in the sense of a single, distinct entity.
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Religion has done harm by assigning an artificial urgency to insoluble problems. We are all told that we must be certain on matters concerning which the wisest man is ignorant. When we begin to reflect and to doubt, the urgency unhappily remains and we are distressed.
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I know a man who had to encounter three successive trials of all the courage and inventive faculty in him. If he had failed in one he would have been ruined. The odds were desperate against him in each, and against ultimate victory were overwhelming. Nevertheless he made the attempt and was triumphant almost by a miracle in each struggle. How often calculation is folly and cowardice!
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Before we can hear the Divine Voice we must shut out all other voices, so that we may be able to listen, to discern its faintest whisper. The most precious messages are those which are whispered.
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A negative may be really positive. It depends on the extent of that which the negative excludes. If I say of hydrogen that it is not oxygen, nothing is gained. If I say it is not a fluid nor a solid, more is gained. So in the determinations of Spirit, God, etc., although we use negatives, the results may be of value.
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True mental training is a discipline compelling us to _dwell_ on that which is presented to us, to discover what unites it to other objects and what differentiates it from them. To the untrained mind creation is a blur. The moral effect on a child of teaching it to express distinction by significant words is great.
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‘Ought’ is a singular instance of the confusion wrought by words and of their inefficiency. There is no single ‘ought’ and therefore no science of the obligation it implies. ‘Ought’ in the phrase ‘you ought to speak the truth’ refers to an instinct in us to report veraciously what we see. ‘Ought’ of self-sacrifice refers to love, and ‘ought’ of sobriety to the subordination of desires, to a difference in their authority of which we can give no account, excepting that we are creatures fashioned in a certain way.
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In the presence of some people we inevitably depart from ourselves: we are inaccurate, say things we do not feel, and talk nonsense. When we get home we are conscious that we have made fools of ourselves. Never go near these people.
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What cardboard puppets are the creations of fiction compared with a common man or woman intimately known!
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How much of what I say is an echo; how little is myself! Sometimes it seems as if my real self were nothing and that what stands for it were a mere miscellany of odds and ends picked up here and there. What a Self is the Jesus of the Gospels!
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A cousin of mine had an evening class of poor girls. She was trying to explain to them the words ‘liquid’ and ‘solid.’
‘You walked over the bridge; it was a hard road.’
‘Yes, teacher.’
‘If you had gone down by the side of the bridge you could not have walked across there?’
‘No, teacher.’
‘If you were to try and were to put your feet on the water, where would you go?’
‘To hell, teacher.’
The association of the question, ‘Where would you go?’ was too strong.
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This sunset, which is common to the whole county, is more to me than anything exclusively mine.
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If emotion be profound, symbolism, as a means of expression, is indispensable.
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There would be no objection to ‘telling the truth’ about Burns, Byron, and Shelley if it could be told. But it cannot be told. We are informed that they did this or that, and the thing they did is to us what it would be if done by ourselves.
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We are most vain of that which is least ourselves, of that which is acquired, put on, stuck in. It is not correct to say that a woman is vain of her beauty.
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Controversy is demoralising. Never suffer yourself to become an advocate. Never rely on controversy to convince. Say what you have to say and leave it. _Do_ it if you wish to persuade.
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People are often unkind, not from malignity, but from ineptitude.
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It is of the greatest importance continually to bear in mind that the violation of a law personal to myself is as immoral as the violation of a general law, and may be more mischievous.
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To die is easy when we are in perfect health. On a fine spring morning, out of doors, on the downs, mind and body sound and exhilarated, it would be nothing to lie down on the turf and pass away.
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What we want is wise counsel on particular occasions. Principles we can get by the bushel anywhere. The reason why our friends are so useless is that they will not take trouble. The selection and the application of the principle are difficult.
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It is terrible to live with a person who has a strong, narrow sense of duty without further-reaching thought or love by which the rigidity of duty may be softened.
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By the third, which is neither ourselves nor the object, do we recognise it. The third is the celestial light.
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It is appalling to reflect that there are enormous masses of human energy which can find no proper outlet. The consequence is mischief either through expression in any direction and at any cost, or through suppression. We want an organisation of energy, one of the noblest offices of a true church.
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The tyranny of the imagination is perhaps that which is most to be dreaded. By strength of will we can prevent an act, but no strength of will is able to prevent the invasion of self-created pictures. The only remedies are health and indifference to them when they present themselves. If we worry ourselves about them they become worse. If we let them alone they fade and we forget them.
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Thinking much upon insoluble problems is apt to breed superstition even in the strongest minds. The failure of the reason weakens our reliance on it, and the difference between the incomprehensible and the absurd is very fine.
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In this howling Bedlam of voices, it is of no use to talk or write—no man, if he has anything to say, can be heard. He is reviewed to-day and forgotten to-morrow. To soothe the pangs of a single sufferer, to drain a poor man’s cottage and give him wholesome drinking water, are good things done of which we can be sure.
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Life is a matter of small virtues, but we have to bring them to perfection. This may be done by great principles. The humblest act may proceed from that which is beyond the stars.
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What a vile antithesis is that between a man and his faults! If I love a man, I do not love his faults, for they are abstractions, but I love the man _in_ his faults. Are they not truly himself? He is often more himself in his faults than in his virtues.
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We should not talk as if we were responsible for the effect of what we say. We are responsible for saying it, and for nothing more. A higher power is responsible for the effect which is to follow from each cause.
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_Wisdom for old age_.—Check the propensity to dwell on what you have thought before. Try to get new ideas into your head. Beware of giving trouble or asking for sympathy. Do everything yourself, which you have been in the habit of doing, so long as you can move a muscle, and when you cannot, secure, if possible, paid help: watch what the most devoted of friends or relatives say of continued attendance on the sick: note the relief when the sick man dies. Let not the thought sadden you that six weeks after you are in your grave those to whom you are now dear will be laughing and living just as if you had never existed. Why should they not? Are you of such consequence that they should for ever wear mourning for you? A slow march as you are carried to the churchyard, but when a handful of earth has been thrown on your coffin, let everybody go home to draw up the blinds and open the windows. So much dead already, all passion, so many capacities for enjoyment, why care for this miserable residuum, this poor empty _I_?
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Clear vision is not often the cause of distress. It is rather the cloud of imagination distorting what is before us and preventing distinct view. Science, removing the heavens to an infinite distance, destroying traditions, abolishing our little theologies, does not disturb our peace so seriously as that vague dreaming in which there is no thinking.
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Ah, it is not a quarrel which is so deadly! It is the strange transformation of what were once thought to be charms and virtues. The soft blue eyes are now simply silly; innocence is stupidity; docility is incapacity of resolution; the sweet, even temper is absence of passion.
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Is it true that less evidence is necessary to prove an event which is probable than one that is improbable? The probability of an event is no evidence that it actually happened. Its probability may be the reason why we should examine the evidence more closely, because witnesses are more likely, in the case of a probable event, to refrain from scrutiny than in the case of one not probable. I sit at my window and see a whitish object with four legs in a field. I am short-sighted, but I at once say ‘a cow,’ and take no pains to ascertain whether it is a cow or not. If I had seen a white object apparently with three legs only, I should have gone out, inspected it closely, and should have called other people to look at it.
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I pray for a gift which perhaps would be miraculous: simply to be able to see that field of waving grass as I should see it if association and the ‘film of custom’ did not obscure it.
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Why do we admire intellect when it is united with even diabolic disregard of moral laws? Partly because it stands out more prominently; partly because it triumphs over obstacles; but mainly because we are all more or less in sympathy with insurrection and the assertion of individuality.
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As we move higher, personality becomes of less consequence. We do not live in the ‘I,’ but in truths. Something of a metaphysical hint here.
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Principles are dangerous tools for a fool. What awful mischief they have done!
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Never was there a time in which men were less governed by ideas. The Church and the sects are neither Calvinist nor Arminian, orthodox nor rational, and in politics an idea damns a measure at once.
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We have no capitalised happiness, nothing on which to draw when temporary sources fail.
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A decided bent or twist, is not unsuitable in a man, but I do not care for it in a woman. I love that equipoise in the faces of the Greek women in the old statues and sculptures. It appears also in some pictures of the Virgin.
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The duty of the State as to toleration cannot be decided by an appeal to rights. Everybody admits that government is sometimes justified in suppressing what is honestly believed. But if government had not been resisted we should have had no Christianity. The vindication of the authority of the State is a vindication of persecution, and if we dispute this authority we cannot logically disallow dangerous licence. There is no way out of the difficulty so long as we generalise. Toleration is an abstraction, nothing but a word. What we have to decide is, whether it is wise or unwise to send to prison the people now before us who preach bigamy, assassination of kings, or theological heresy.
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When we struggle to see more than we possibly can see we undervalue what we indubitably see.
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There is but little thinking, or perhaps it is more correct to say but little reflection, in the Bible. There is profound sympathy with a few truths, but ideas are not sought for their own sake. Carlyle is Biblical. It has been said scoffingly that he is no thinker. It is his glory that he is not.
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What we have toiled after painfully often lies unused. No opportunity occurs for saying or doing a tithe of it. The hour demands its own special wisdom.
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When we really love we cannot believe that our love is mortal. We feel, not only that it is immortal, but that it is eternal, in the sense in which Spinoza uses the word. It is not the attraction of something entirely limited and personal to that which is also limited and personal.
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We think of rest as natural to bodies, and motion as something added. But the new doctrine is that motion is primary. Nothing is at rest, and, so far as we know, rest has never been. It is an astounding conception.
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There is a certain distance at which each person whom we know is naturally placed from us. It varies with each, and we must not attempt to alter it. We may clasp him who is close, and we are not to pull closer him who is more remote.
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Many people would be much better if they would let themselves be as good as they really are. They seem to take delight in making themselves less.
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We are much misled by characters in fiction or on the stage, for they are always more consistent than men and women in real life. Real men and women are seldom controlled for twenty-four hours by the same motives or principles. If my friend is mean to-day, let me not doubt his generosity to-morrow. Let me joyously believe in it when the morrow comes.
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What a pest is the re-appearance in us of discarded conclusions! It would be of service if we could keep a register of those things which, after careful examination, we have determined to be false.
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Acting from the strongest motives, even if they are bad, is perhaps not so dangerous as acting from none. The evils which arise through deeds done from conspicuous motives attract attention, but the vast sum of misery caused by mere idle, irresolute swaying hither and thither passes unnoticed.
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Pig-headedness is often a sign of weakness of will. The pig-headed person knows he is weak, and to convince himself and others of his resolution holds to any chance purpose with tenacity. The less reasonable the purpose is, the more obstinately he clings to it, because, by so doing, he shows as he thinks his strength of volition.
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If we desire peace we must get beyond the notion of personality. Nothing of any value is bound up with it: it is an illusion.
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Intense feeling gives intellectual precision. The man who feels profoundly the beauty of a cloud is the man who can describe it. But the first effect of intense feeling is often to break up false precision. The ideas of God, life, personality, right and wrong, are examples.
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The blue sky is more beautiful because we know it is not painted opacity, but transparent.
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The slowness of the change in the sky is exquisite, the dying out of the light in the clouds after sunset. The quiet abiding of the grey cloud as darkness thickens is wonderful.
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_June_—Sky and sea pure blue. The blue tint suffuses the distant vessels. One large sailing ship with sails all set is so blue that it differs only by a shade from sky and sea.
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It is not true that guileless people are the most easily deceived. S. G. is not sharp-witted, but she is transparent as a pool of rain on meadow grass, and consequently it is impossible to deceive her, and ridiculous to attempt it: her eyes forbid it. She does not infer insincerity: it is automatically rejected.
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_July_.—North-easterly wind, strong: hateful in the streets and even in the house: dust everywhere. Inclined to shut the windows and stay indoors, but went out for a long walk up to the flag-staff. A perfect day for that view. The bay all shades of blue; here and there deep, and, inshore, the blue is broken with pure white from the tops of the waves: the yellow beach to the farthest point clasping the sea like an arm. So beautiful that it gives pain: it is not possible to extend oneself to it.
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Whether truth does or does not lie in the mean depends on the selection of the extremes. A mechanical choice of the mean is stupidity.
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The Athanasian Creed is not objectionable because of its damnatory clauses. Neglect to observe the finest distinctions continually involves damnation. The difference between a vice and a virtue may be a hair-line. The true reason for rejecting the Creed is that it is manufactured, that it is not a statement of what is seen and felt to be true. There is nevertheless a certain dogmatic pride in it, a desire to affirm as offensively as possible.
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The peace which orthodox religion is said to bring is obtained by clipping the Infinite and reducing it to a finite. The joy of _inclusion_ is great but false.
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‘And thy fats shall overflow with new wine’—Proverbs iii. 10, Revised Version. Called on A. in London. I forget how it came about, but in course of conversation he asked me if ‘fats’ were not a mistake for ‘vats.’ I told him it was not, turning up the word in the dictionary as an equivalent to ‘vats.’ Called on his sister, who was staying three or four miles away and had come up to town that afternoon from the country where she lived. That very evening she asked me the same question her brother had asked. She had not seen him, nor held any communication with him on the subject, nor had it been suggested to them by any person or book. Moreover, neither of them is a frequent reader of the Bible. Yesterday I told the story to A. in his sister’s presence. She confirmed it, and A., who is accustomed to scientific investigation, was quite unable to account for it. If a jury were trying a prisoner charged with murder, and an equally singular concurrence of circumstances were in evidence against him, they would not hesitate to hang him.
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If you are very short-sighted or half blind, it is safer in the twilight to shut the eyes and depend entirely on the touch in moving about.
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The books on the adjustment of astronomical instruments say that if there is a slight error, it is better always to make allowance for it than to attempt to correct it.
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The sun, we say, is the cause of heat, but the heat _is_ the sun, here on this window-ledge.
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The contact of a _system_ of philosophy or religion with reality is that of a tangent with a circle. It touches the circle at one point, but instantly the circle edges away.
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In every man there is something of the Universal Spirit, strangely limited by that which is finite and personal, but still there. Occasionally it makes itself known in a word, look, or gesture, and then he becomes one with the stars and sea.
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We cannot really understand a religion unless we have believed it.
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We ought to cultivate strength of will by doing what we have once decided to do. Subsequent reasons for not doing it may appear plausible, but it will generally be better to adhere to our first resolution. The advantage gained by change will not be equal to that derived from persistence.
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Never be afraid of being commonplace. Never turn aside from the truth because it is commonplace.
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A nightmare is not scattered while we are asleep. It disappears simply by—_waking_.
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_Cursed temperament_.—A long drought broke up. The grass had been burnt, and the cattle were dying for want of water. In one week two inches of rain fell.
_A._ ‘What a blessing this rain is!’
_B._ ‘Yes, but a reaction is sure to follow. I’ve noticed that after weather like this we always have a spell of dry, northerly winds.’
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The prompter which urges us on from one point to another, never discouraged by failure to see in the present moment what it seemed to possess when we pursued it, or rather, not permitting us to stop to find out if there be any failure—this it is by which we live. When it departs it is time to die.
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_January_.—The wind is north-west after yesterday’s fog and rain from the south. Suddenly and silently, just after sunset, the whole south-western sky has blazed up, passing from glowing flame-colour on the horizon to carmine on the zenith. Between the promontories of cloud are lakes and gulfs of the tenderest green and blue. What magnificent pomp, fit to celebrate the death of a god for the world’s salvation! But there is nothing below to explain it. It must be a spectacle displayed for celestial reasons altogether hidden.
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Much misunderstanding would be prevented if we were to say exactly what we believe and not modify it to suit, as we suppose, the person to whom we speak.
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Humour people sometimes in what you do, but not in the expression of your convictions. Go a mile out of your way to please an obstinate friend, but utter with precision what you believe. It is in the sharpness and finish that its value lies.
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