Chapter 2
If then, there is to be a festival, why should it not be the festival of Christmas? It can, indeed, be no other. Christmas is most plainly indicated. It is dignified and made precious by traditions which go back much further than the Christian era; and it has this tremendous advantage--it exists! In spite of our declining faith, it has been preserved to us, and here it is, ready to hand. Not merely does it fall at the point which uncounted generations have agreed to consider as the turn of the solar year and as the rebirth of hope! It falls also immediately before the end of the calendar year, and thus prepares us for a fresh beginning that shall put the old to shame. It could not be better timed. Further, its traditional spirit of peace and goodwill is the very spirit which we desire to foster. And finally its customs--or at any rate, its main customs--are well designed to symbolize that spirit. If we have allowed the despatch of Christmas cards to degenerate into naught but a tedious shuffling of paste-boards and overwork of post-office officials, the fault is not in the custom but in ourselves. The custom is a most striking one--so long as we have sufficient imagination to remember vividly that we are all in the same boat--I mean, on the same planet--and clinging desperately to the flying ball, and dependent for daily happiness on one another's good will! A Christmas card sent by one human being to another human being is more than a piece of coloured stationery sent by one log of wood to another log of wood: it is an inspiring and reassuring message of high value. The mischief is that so many self-styled human beings are just logs of wood, rather stylishly dressed.
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And then the custom of present-giving! What better and more convincing proof of sympathy than a gift? The gift is one of these obvious contrivances--like the wheel or the lever--which smooth and simplify earthly life, and the charm of whose utility no obviousness can stale. But of course any contrivance can be rendered futile by clumsiness or negligence. There is a sort of Christmas giver who says pettishly: "Oh! I don't know what to give to So-and-So this Christmas! What a bother! I shall write and tell her to choose something herself, and send the bill to me!" And he writes. And though he does not suspect it, what he really writes, and what So-and-So reads, is this: "Dear So-and-So. It is nothing to me that you and I are alive together on this planet, and in various ways mutually dependent. But I am bound by custom to give you a present. I do not, however, take sufficient interest in your life to know what object it would give you pleasure to possess; and I do not want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of obtaining the object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy something for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of social decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving becomes positively sinister in its working. But managed with the sympathetic imagination which is infallibly produced by real faith in goodwill, its efficacy may approach the miraculous.
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The Christmas ceremony of good-wishing by word of mouth has never been in any danger of falling into insincerity. Such is the power of tradition and virtue of a festival, and such the instinctive brotherliness of men, that on this day the mere sight of an acquaintance will soften the voice and warm the heart of the most superior sceptic and curmudgeon that the age of disillusion has produced. In spite of himself, faith flickers up in him again, be it only for a moment. And, during that moment, he is almost like those whose bright faith the age has never tarnished, like the great and like the simple, to whom it is quite unnecessary to offer a defence and explanation of Christmas or to suggest the basis of a new faith therein.
FIVE
DEFENCE OF FEASTING
And now I can hear the superior sceptic disdainfully questioning: "Yes, but what about the orgy of Christmas? What about all the eating and drinking?" To which I can only answer that faith causes effervescence, expansion, joy, and that joy has always, for excellent reasons, been connected with feasting. The very words 'feast' and 'festival' are etymologically inseparable. The meal is the most regular and the least dispensable of daily events; it happens also to be an event which is in itself almost invariably a source of pleasure, or, at worst, of satisfaction: and it will continue to have this precious quality so long as our souls are encased in bodies. What could be more natural, therefore, than that it should be employed, with due enlargement and ornamentation, as the kernel of the festival? What more logical than that the meal should be elevated into a feast?
"But," exclaims the superior sceptic, "this idea involves the idea of excess!" What if it does? I would not deny it! Assuredly, a feast means more than enough, and more than enough means excess. It is only because a feast means excess that it assists in the bringing about of expansion and joy. Such is human nature, and it is the case of human nature that we are discussing. Of course, excess usually exacts its toll, within twenty-four hours, especially from the weak. But the benefit is worth its price. The body pays no more than the debt which the soul has incurred. An occasional change of habit is essential to well-being, and every change of habit results in temporary derangement and inconvenience.
Do not misunderstand me. Do not push my notion of excess to extremes. When I defend the excess inevitably incident to a feast, I am not seeking to prove that a man in celebrating Christmas is entitled to drink champagne in a public restaurant until he becomes an object of scorn and disgust to the waiters who have travelled from Switzerland in order to receive his tips. Much less should I be prepared to justify him if, in his own home, he sank lower than the hog. Nor would I sympathetically carry him to bed. There is such a thing as excess in moderation and dignity. Every wise man has practised this. And he who has not practised it is a fool, and deserves even a harder name. He ought indeed to inhabit a planet himself, for all his faith in humanity will be exhausted in believing in himself. * * * So much for the feast!
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But the accompaniments of the feast are also excessive. For example, you make a tug-of-war with your neighbour at table, and the rope is a fragile packet of tinselled paper, which breaks with a report like a pistol. You open your half of the packet, and discover some doggerel verse which you read aloud, and also a perfectly idiotic coloured cap, which you put on your head to the end of looking foolish. And this ceremony is continued until the whole table is surrounded by preposterous headgear, and doggerel verse is lying by every plate. Surely no man in his senses, no woman in hers, would, etc., etc. * * *! But one of the spiritual advantages of feasting is that it expands you beyond your common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the putting on of the cap, and the relief, followed by further expansion and ecstasy, which ensues after the putting on. Everybody who has put on a cap is aware that it is a beneficial thing to put on a cap. Quite apart from the fact that the mysterious and fanciful race of children are thereby placated and appeased, the soul of the capped one is purified by this charming excess.
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And the Tree! What an excess of the fantastic to pretend that all those glittering balls, those coloured candles and those variegated parcels are the blossoms of the absurd tree! How excessively grotesque to tie all those parcels to the branches, in order to take them off again! Surely, something less medieval, more ingenious, more modern than this could be devised--if symbolism is to be indulged in at all! Can you devise it, O sceptical one, revelling in disillusion? Can you invent a symbol more natural and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps you would have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill early into the youthful mind that this is a planet of commerce! Perhaps you would abolish the doggerel of crackers, and substitute therefor extracts from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin! Perhaps you would exchange the caps for blazonry embroidered with chemical formula, your object being the advancement of science! Perhaps you would do away with the orgiastic eating and drinking, and arrange for a formal conversation about astronomy and the idea of human fraternity, upon strictly reasonable rations of shredded wheat! You would thus create an original festival, and eliminate all fear of a dyspeptic morrow. You would improve the mind. And you would avoid the ridiculous. But also, in avoiding the ridiculous, you would tumble into the ridiculous, deeply and hopelessly! And think how your very original festival would delight the participators, how they would look forward to it with joy, and back upon it with pleasurable regret; how their minds would dwell sweetly upon the conception of shredded wheat, and how their faith would be encouraged and strengthened by the intellectuality of the formal conversation!
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He who girds at an ancient established festival should reflect upon sundry obvious truths before he withers up the said festival by the sirocco of his contempt. These truths are as follows:--First, a festival, though based upon intelligence, is not an affair of the intellect, but an affair of the emotions. Second, the human soul can only be reached through the human body. Third, it is impossible to replace an ancient festival by a new one. Robespierre, amongst others, tried to do so, and achieved the absurd. Reformers, heralds of new faiths, and rejuvenators of old faiths, have always, when they succeeded, adopted an ancient festival, with all or most of its forms, and been content to breathe into it a new spirit to replace the old spirit which had vanished or was vanishing. Anybody who, persuaded that Christmas is not what it was, feels that a festival must nevertheless be preserved, will do well to follow this example. To be content with the old forms and to vitalize them: that is the problem. Solve it, and the forms will soon begin to adapt themselves to the process of vitalization. All history is a witness in proof.
SIX
TO REVITALIZE THE FESTIVAL
It being agreed, then, that the Christmas festival has lost a great deal of its old vitality, and that, to many people, it is a source of tedium and the cause of insincerity; and it being further agreed that the difficulty cannot be got over by simply abolishing the festival, as no one really wants it to be abolished; the question remains--what should be done to vitalize it? The former spirit of faith, the spirit which made the great Christmas of the golden days, has been weakened; but one element of it--that which is founded on the conviction that goodwill among men is a prime necessity of reasonable living--survives with a certain vigour, though even it has not escaped the general scepticism of the age. This element unites in agreement all the pugnacious sectaries who join battle over the other elements of the former faith. This element has no enemies. None will deny its lasting virtue. Obviously, therefore, the right course is to concentrate on the cultivation of goodwill. If goodwill can be consciously increased, the festival of Christmas will cease to be perfunctory. It will acquire a fresh and more genuine significance, which, however, will not in any way inconvenience those who have never let go of the older significance. No tradition will be overthrown, no shock administered, and nobody will be able to croak about iconoclasm and new-fangled notions and the sudden end of the world, and so on.
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The fancy of some people will at once run to the formation of a grand international Society for the revivifying of Christmas by the cultivation of goodwill, with branches in all the chief cities of Europe and America, and headquarters--of course at the Hague; and committees and subcommittees, and presidents and vice-presidents; and honorary secretaries and secretaries paid; and quarterly and annual meetings, and triennial congresses! And a literary organ or two! And a badge--naturally a badge, designed by a famous artist in harmonious tints!
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But my fancy does not run at all in this direction. I am convinced that we have already far too many societies for the furtherance of our ends. To my mind, most societies with a moral aim are merely clumsy machines for doing simple jobs with the maximum of friction, expense and inefficiency. I should define the majority of these societies as a group of persons each of whom expects the others to do something very wonderful. Why create a society in order to help you to perform some act which nobody can perform but yourself? No society can cultivate goodwill in you. You might as well create a society for shaving or for saying your prayers. And further, goodwill is far less a process of performing acts than a process of thinking thoughts. To think, is it necessary to involve yourself in the cog-wheels of a society? Moreover, a society means fuss and shouting: two species of disturbance which are both futile and deleterious, particularly in an intimate affair of morals.
You can best help the general cultivation of goodwill along by cultivating goodwill in your own heart. Until you have started the task of personal cultivation, you will probably assume that there will be time left over for superintending the cultivation of goodwill in other people's hearts. But a very little experience ought to show you that this is a delusion. You will perceive, if not at once, later, that you have bitten off just about as much as you can chew. And you will appreciate also the wisdom of not advertising your enterprise. Why, indeed, should you breathe a word to a single soul concerning your admirable intentions? Rest assured that any unusual sprouting of the desired crop will be instantly noticed by the persons interested.
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The next point is: Towards whom are you to cultivate goodwill? Naturally, one would answer: Towards the whole of humanity. But the whole of humanity, as far as you are concerned, amounts to naught but a magnificent abstract conception. And it is very difficult to cultivate goodwill towards a magnificent abstract conception. The object of goodwill ought to be clearly defined, and very visible to the physical eye, especially in the case of people, such as us, who are only just beginning to give to the cultivation of goodwill, perhaps, as much attention as we give to our clothes or our tobacco. If a novice sets out to embrace the whole of humanity in his goodwill, he will have even less success than a young man endeavouring to fall in love with four sisters at once; and his daily companions--those who see him eat his bacon and lace his boots and earn his living--will most certainly have a rough time of it. * * * No! It will be best for you to centre your efforts on quite a small group of persons, and let the rest of humanity struggle on as well as it can, with no more of your goodwill than it has hitherto had.
In choosing the small group of people, it will be unnecessary for you to go to Timbuktu, or into the next street or into the next house. And, in this group of people you will be wise, while neglecting no member of the group, to specialise on one member. Your wife, if you have one, or your husband? Not necessarily. I was meaning simply that one who most frequently annoys you. He may be your husband, or she may be your wife. These things happen. He may be your butler. Or you may be his butler. She may be your daughter, or he may be your father, and you a charming omniscient girl of seventeen wiser than anybody else. Whoever he or she may be who oftenest inspires you with a feeling of irritated superiority, aim at that person in particular.
The frequency of your early failures with him or her will show you how prudent you were not to make an attempt on the whole of humanity at once. And also you will see that you did well not to publish your excellent intentions. If nobody is aware of your striving, nobody will be aware that you have failed in striving. Your successes will appear effortless, and most important of all, you will be free from the horrid curse of self-consciousness. Herein is one of the main advantages of not wearing a badge. Lastly, you will have the satisfaction of feeling that, if everybody else is doing as you are, the whole of humanity is being attended to after all. And the comforting thought is that very probably, almost certainly, quite a considerable number of people are in fact doing as you are; some of them--make no doubt--are doing a shade better. I now come to the actual method of cultivating goodwill.
SEVEN
THE GIFT OF ONESELF
Children divide their adult acquaintances into two categories--those who sympathise with them in the bizarre and trying adventure called life; and those who don't. The second category is much the larger of the two. Very many people belong to it who think that they belong to the first. They may deceive themselves, but they cannot deceive a child. Although you may easily practise upon the credulity of a child in matters of fact, you cannot cheat his moral and social judgment. He will add you up, and he will add anybody up, and he will estimate conduct, upon principles of his own and in a manner terribly impartial. Parents have no sterner nor more discerning critics than their own children.
And so you may be polite to a child, and pretend to appreciate his point of view; but, unless you really do put yourself to the trouble of understanding him, unless you throw yourself, by the exercise of imagination, into his world, you will not succeed in being his friend. To be his friend means an effort on your part, it means that you must divest yourself of your own mental habit, and, for the time being, adopt his. And no nice phrases, no gifts of money, sweets or toys, can take the place of this effort, and this sacrifice of self. With five minutes of genuine surrender to him, you can win more of his esteem and gratitude than five hundred pounds would buy. His notion of real goodwill is the imaginative sharing of his feelings, a convinced participation in his pains and pleasures. He is well aware that, if you honestly do this, you will be on his side.
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Now, adults, of course, are tremendously clever and accomplished persons and children are no match for them; but still, with all their talents and omniscience and power, adults seem to lack important pieces of knowledge which children possess; they seem to forget, and to fail to profit by, their infantile experience. Else why should adults in general be so extraordinarily ignorant of the great truth that the secret of goodwill lies in the sympathetic exercise of the imagination? Since goodwill is the secret of human happiness, it follows that the secret of goodwill must be one of the most precious aids to sensible living; and yet adults, though they once knew it, have gone and forgotten it! Children may well be excused for concluding that the ways of the adult, in their capricious irrationality, are past finding out.
To increase your goodwill for a fellow creature, it is necessary to imagine that you are he: and nothing else is necessary. This feat is not easy; but it can be done. Some people have less of the divine faculty of imagination than others, but nobody is without it, and, like all other faculties, it improves with use, just as it deteriorates with neglect. Imagination is a function of the brain. In order to cultivate goodwill for a person, you must think frequently about that person. You must inform yourself about all his activities. You must be able in your mind's eye to follow him hour by hour throughout the day, and you must ascertain if he sleeps well at night--because this is not a trifle. And you must reflect upon his existence with the same partiality as you reflect upon your own. (Why not?) That is to say, you must lay the fullest stress on his difficulties, disappointments and unhappinesses, and you must minimise his good fortune. You must magnify his efforts after righteousness, and forget his failures. You must ever remember that, after all, he is not to blame for the faults of his character, which faults, in his case as in yours, are due partly to heredity and partly to environment. And beyond everything you must always give him credit for good intentions. Do not you, though sometimes mistakenly, always act for the best? You know you do! And are you alone among mortals in rectitude?
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This mental exercise in relation to another person takes time, and it involves a fatiguing effort. I repeat that it is not easy. Nor is it invariably agreeable. You may, indeed, find it tedious, for example, to picture in vivid detail all the worries that have brought about your wife's exacerbation--negligent maid, dishonest tradesman, milk in a thunder storm, hypercritical husband, dirt in the wrong place--but, when you have faithfully done so, I absolutely defy you to speak to her in the same tone as you used to employ, and to cherish resentment against her as you used to do. And I absolutely defy you not to feel less discontented with yourself than in the past. It is impossible that the exercise of imagination about a person should not result in goodwill towards that person. The exercise may put a strain upon you; but its effect is a scientific certainty. It is the supreme social exercise, for it is the giving of oneself in the most intimate and complete sense. It is the suspension of one's individuality in favour of another. It establishes a new attitude of mind, which, though it may well lead to specific social acts, is more valuable than any specific act, for it is ceaselessly translating itself into demeanour.
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The critic with that terrible English trait, an exaggerated sense of the ridiculous, will at this point probably remark to himself, smiling: "I suppose the time will come, when by dint of regular daily practice, I shall have achieved perfect goodwill towards the first object of my attentions. I can then regard that person as 'done.' I can put him on a shelf, and turn to the next; and, in the end, all my relations, friends and acquaintances will be 'done' and I can stare at them in a row on the shelf of my mind, with pride and satisfaction * * *." Except that no person will ever be quite "done," human nature, still being human, in spite of the recent advances of civilisation, I do not deprecate this manner of stating the case.