 
Nothing is more dangerous than a mass of discontent which does not know what remedy is to be sought. All sorts of cures will be tried, many of them mere quackery, and their failure will make matters worse. 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. 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. 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. 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! The highest education is that which teaches us to guide ourselves by motives which are intangible, remote, incapable of direct and material appreciation. 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. 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. To understand a thing is to understand all its laws. The thing is then nothing but law, and mere matter seems to disappear. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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! 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. 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. 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. ‘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. 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. What cardboard puppets are the creations of fiction compared with a common man or woman intimately known! 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! 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. This sunset, which is common to the whole county, is more to me than anything exclusively mine. If emotion be profound, symbolism, as a means of expression, is indispensable. 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. 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. 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. People are often unkind, not from malignity, but from ineptitude. 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. 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. 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. 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. By the third, which is neither ourselves nor the object, do we recognise it. The third is the celestial light. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Principles are dangerous tools for a fool. What awful mischief they have done! 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. We have no capitalised happiness, nothing on which to draw when temporary sources fail. 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. 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. When we struggle to see more than we possibly can see we undervalue what we indubitably see. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The blue sky is more beautiful because we know it is not painted opacity, but transparent. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ‘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. 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. 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. The sun, we say, is the cause of heat, but the heat is the sun, here on this window-ledge. 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. 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. We cannot really understand a religion unless we have believed it. 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. Never be afraid of being commonplace. Never turn aside from the truth because it is commonplace. A nightmare is not scattered while we are asleep. It disappears simply by—waking. 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.’ 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. 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. 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. 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. Everybody in these civilised, intercommunicative days seems arrested: everybody is a compromise. It is rare that we meet with a person who has been let alone, whose own particular self has been developed free from intrusion. People believe the truth more readily if something difficult of belief or incredible is mixed with it. I want no more beliefs. What I want is active strength in those I have. I know there is no ghost round the corner, but I dare not go. There is always a point in our insistence or persuasion when it is most effective, and generally it is much lower than we suppose. One degree above it is waste and impediment. Keep a watch upon your tongue when you are in particularly good health. Early morning before sunrise: the valley was filled with mist; red clouds in the sky. For a minute or two the mist took the colour, but fainter, of the clouds. What patience is required in order to see! The sun had not risen, the grass in the field was obviously green, but not without intent fixture of the eyes upon it was the dark, twilight shade of green recognised which was its peculiar meaning and beauty. To most of us, perhaps not to artists, it is more difficult to look than to think. The just judgment is not that of the judge who has no interest in it. The most unjust judgments are due to indifference. The sun is setting in crimson, delicate blue and green. I think of the earth as a revolving ball. ‘This was the Creator’s design, or, if we prefer so to speak, this was the law, that there should be a ball and that it should turn on its axis. But just as surely was it the design or law that there should be these colours, crimson, blue, and green, and that I should be affected by them. This affection was rolled up in the primal impulse which started the planet and is as necessary as its revolution. Zeal in proselytising is often due to an uneasy suspicion that we only half-believe. We should take pains to be polite to those whom we love. Politeness preserves love, is a kind of sheath to it. The hornbeam hedge is coming into leaf in patches although all parts of each side face the same point of the compass. The leaves of some patches are fully expanded, while in others they are only in bud. The dry, brown, dead leaves of last year have remained through the winter and early spring, but they are dropping off now that the new leaves begin to shoot. We ought not to expect every child to be religious. The religious temper is an endowment like that for painting or poetry. A. and B. meet on the road. B. is a retired official and has nothing to do. B. ‘Meant to have come to see you several times’ (has not called for nine months), ‘but I have so many engagements.’ (Shows a basket.) ‘Look here, just had to take some eggs to C. for my wife.’ ‘If a man turns to Christ, nothing in him is to be left behind. Every passion must be brought to Him to be transformed by Him. Otherwise the man does not come, but only a part of him.’ [Said to me years ago by a pious friend now dead.] The real proportion between vice and virtue in a man is often misjudged because the vice is before us continually, while the virtue does not obtrude. If you are to live in happiness and peace with the woman you love, you must not permit the daily course of life to have its way unchecked. There must be hours of removal to a distance when in silence you create anew her ideal and proper form, when you think of her as sculptured in white marble. Blacksmiths forging one on this side of the anvil and the other on the opposite side. Each keeps his own time, not regulating his stroke by watching his mate. There is in man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp. Went into the cathedral and heard morning service. Miracle of miracles! Into the soul of a carpenter’s son more than eighteen centuries ago came a thought, and it is returned to us to-day in majestic architecture, music of voice and organ. Disbelief in Christianity is not so much to be dreaded as its acceptance with a complete denial of it in society and politics. The love that has lasted for years; which has resisted all weakness and defect; has been constant in all moods and circumstances better and worse; has exacted nothing; has been content with silence; always soft and easy as the circumambient air, a love with no reserve; what is there in any relationship to person or thing worth a straw compared with it! We ought to endeavour to give our dreams reality, but in Reality we should preserve the dream. If her unhappiness does not destroy my happiness, and if her happiness does not make me happy, I do not love her. There are problems which cannot be solved, for directly we have stated them, as we suppose, they elude the statement and are outside. Who can say what is the meaning of the question, ‘Does God exist?’ There is always a multitude of reasons both in favour of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them. How beautiful is a rapid rivulet trying to clear itself from stirred-up mud. The most foolish things we say are said from another person’s point of view and not from our own. On a siding at one of the stations on the Great Western Railway were a number of old engines waiting to be broken up. There they stood, uncleaned, their bright parts rusted and indistinguishable from the others. Some were back to back and some front to front. There they stood and saw the expresses rush past them with their new engines. Went out this afternoon to call on C. and his wife. They are certainly the most cultivated people I know. They travel a good deal, and each of them can speak two or three languages besides English. They read the best books, and do not read those which are bad. Some friends were there, and I was entertained with intelligent criticism of literature, music, and pictures, and learned much that was worth knowing. But I came away unsatisfied, and rather dazed. On my way back—it was a singularly warm, clear evening in February—I turned in to see an old lady who lives near me. She was sitting wrapped up at her wide-open window, looking at the light that was still left in the south-west. I said, of course, that I hoped she would not take cold. ‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘I often sit here, and so long as I keep myself warm I come to no harm. I cannot read by candlelight, and I am thankful that this room faces the south. I know the stars much better than when I was young.’ I took the chair beside her, and for ten minutes neither of us spoke, but I was not conscious for an instant of the disagreeable feeling that silence must be broken, and search be made for something with which to break it. If two persons are friends in the best sense of the word, they are not uncomfortable if they do not talk when they are together. Presently she told me that she had received news that morning of the birth of a granddaughter. She was much pleased. The mother already had two sons and desired a girl. I stayed for about half an hour, and went home in debt to her for peace. Bacon observes that whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion. Naturally so, because it is nearly certain to be something merely personal to ourselves. Excepting in one word, the betrayal of Jesus, the defection of Peter, the examination before Pilate and Herod, and the crucifixion, are recorded, as Spedding notices, without any vituperation. The excepted word, not named by Spedding, is ‘blasphemously’ (Luke xxii. 65). Coleridge says that great minds are never wrong but in consequence of being right, which is perfectly true; but it may be added that they are also right through being wrong. ‘When he is moderate and regular in any of these things, out of a sense of Christian sobriety and self-denial, that he may offer unto God a more reasonable and holy life, then it is, that the smallest rule of this kind is naturally the beginning of great piety. For the smallest rule in these matters is of great benefit, as it teaches us some part of the government of ourselves, as it keeps up a tenderness of mind, as it presents God often to our thoughts, and brings a sense of religion into the ordinary actions of our common life.’—(Law’s Serious Call.) Men are restrained by fear of consequences, but it is Law’s rule which gives strength and dignity. Living in a certain way because Perfection demands it produces a result different from that obtained by living in the same way through fear of injury to health. Man is the revelation of the Infinite, and it does not become finite in him. It remains the Infinite. Luther says somewhere, ‘Do not anxiously search for the pillars which are to keep the sky from falling.’ Many of us have been afraid all our lives that the sky would fall, and have anxiously searched for the pillars. There are none, and yet the sky will not fall. Idolatry is the worship of that which is non-significant. The worship of one God, as Coleridge says, may be idolatry. What a man is conscious of, is not himself, but that which is not himself. Without a belief in the existence of an external world, I could not believe in my own existence. The dialectic of Socrates is positive in so far as it shows the futility of reasoning as a means of reaching the truth. If we wish to know whether courage is knowledge, we must face imminent danger. The omnipotence of God—that is to say, absolute omnipotence, a power which knows no resistance—is an utterly inconceivable abstraction. Yet much speculation is based on it. There is a great reserve of incomprehensibility in all the few friends for whom I really care. It is better that it should be so. What would a comprehensible friend be worth? The impenetrable background gives the beauty to that which is in front of it. The most unfathomable also of my friends are those who are most sincere and luminous. Note on a picture.—The sea-shore; low cliffs topped with grass; a small cove; the open sea, calm, intensely blue; sky also deep blue, but towards the horizon there are soft, white clouds. On a little sandy ridge sit a brown fisher-boy and fisher-girl, immortal as the sea, cliffs, and clouds which are a setting or frame for them. The strength of the argument in favour of a philosophy or religion is proportionate to the applicability of the philosophy or religion to life. If in all situations we find it ready, it is true. Bacon observes that ‘interpretations’ of Nature, that is to say real generalisations elicited from facts by a just and methodical process, ‘cannot suddenly strike the understanding’ like ‘anticipations’ collected from a few instances. I have often noticed that ‘striking’ is seldom a sign of truth, and that those things which are most true, the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables for example, do not ‘strike.’ We foolishly exaggerate ingratitude to us. Ought we to require of those whom we have served, that they should be always confessing their obligations to us? Why should we care about neglect? ‘Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His name.’ The worship of the idol is often more passionate than that of God. People prostrate themselves in ecstasy before the idol, and remain unmoved in the presence of a starry night. A starry night does not provoke hysterics. The adoration of the veritably divine is calm. ‘It is a sad thing,’ said she, ‘that so kind and good a man should be an infidel.’ ‘It is a sad thing to me,’ said her terrible sister, ‘that an infidel should be what you call kind and good.’ Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit. ‘Certainty of knowledge,’ says Dr. Johnson in the Idler (No. 84), ‘not only excludes mistake, but fortifies veracity. . . . That which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of conscience: of understanding, the lover of truth; of conscience, the sentinel of virtue.’ At the present day we are chiefly taken up with that which is beyond our grasp. Our literature is the newspapers, and nine-tenths of what we read in them morning and evening we do not understand. Everybody is expected to take sides in politics, but not one person in a thousand can give an intelligible account of political questions. The difficulty of so doing is much increased by the absence of systematic information. We get leading articles and columns of telegrams, but seldom concise exposition or carefully edited and connected history. An object is of importance to us in inverse proportion to the square of the distance, but men worry themselves about the news from China and will not give five minutes’ thought in a week to their own souls or to those of wife or child. It is pathetic to see how excited they become about remote events which cannot affect their happiness one iota. Why should we not occupy ourselves with that which is definite when there is so much of it? Political problems confront us, but if they are too big for us, let us avoid them by every means in our power. If we are in doubt we ought not to vote. The question which we are incapable of settling will be settled better by Time than by the intermeddling of ignorance. In religion, and science also, we dare not say I do not know. We must always be dabbling in matters on which we can come to no conclusion worth a rotten nut. We busy ourselves with essays on the dates and composition of the books of the Old Testament and cannot tell the story of Joshua or Saul; we listen to lectures on radium, or the probable exhaustion of the sun’s energy, and have never learned the laws of motion. Few people estimate properly the evil of habitual intercourse with that which is vague and indeterminate. The issues before us not being clearly cut and comprehensible, the highest faculties of our minds are not exercised. We lazily wander over the surface without coming to a definite conclusion. Perhaps we pick up by chance some irrational notion, which we defend with obstinacy, for we are more dogmatic concerning that which we cannot prove than we are concerning a truth which is incontrovertible. The former is our own personal property, the latter is common. One step further, and by constantly affirming and denying when we have no demonstration, lying becomes easy. There is much which is called criticism that is poisonous, not because it is mistaken, but because it invites people to assert beyond their knowledge or capacity. A popular lecturer discusses the errors of Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Bronte, or George Eliot before an audience but superficially acquainted with the works of these great authors and not qualified to pass judgment upon them. He is considered ‘cheap’ if he does not balance
If we will be content with admiring, we are on much surer ground. It is by admiration and not by criticism that we live, and the main purpose of criticism should be to point out something to admire, which we should not have noticed. One great advantage of studying Nature is that we are not tempted to criticise her. We go to the Academy, and for a whole morning contrast faults with merits. If the time so spent had been passed in the fields with the clouds we should have gone home less conceited. It is an awful thought that behind human speech, incapable by its very nature of anything but approximate expression, and distorted by weakness and wilfulness, lies the TRUTH as it is, exact without qualification. The long apprenticeship has ended in little or nothing. What I was fifty years ago I am now; certainly no better, with no greater self-control, with no greater magnanimity. How much I might have gained had I taken life as an art I cannot say. I have been looking at a cabinet of flies. Hundreds of them, each different, were arranged in order and named. Some I had to examine through a microscope. Their beauty was marvellous, but more marvellous was their variety. The differences, although the type was preserved, seemed inexhaustible, and all reasons for them broke down. If a particular modification is an advantage, why is it confined to one species? Why this range of colour? Why these purely fantastic forms? The only word we can say with certainty is that Nature is infinite and tends to infinite expression. Verum ego me satis clare ostendisse puto, a summa Dei potentia sive infinita natura infinita infinitis modis, hoc est, omnia necessario effluxisse, vel semper eadem necessitate sequi; eodem modo, ac ex natura trianguli ab Æterno et in Æternum sequitur ejus tres angulos Æquari duobus rectis. Quare Dei omnipotentia actu ab Æterno fuit et in Æternum in eadem actualitate manebit. Johnson is religious through and through, but there are passages in the Rambler and Idler dark as starless, moonless midnight. ‘None would have recourse to an invisible power, but that all other subjects have eluded their hopes . . . That misery does not make all virtuous, experience too certainly informs us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greatest part.’ There is seldom in life any occasion for great virtues, and we must not be disappointed if it passes without great passion. We must expect to be related to one another by nothing more than ordinary bonds and satisfied if human beings give us pleasure without excitement. I have good reason to believe that I am passing on life’s journey through what almost all wayfarers therein have had to pass through, but nobody has told me of it. How wonderful is the withdrawal of heat! It silently departs, the iron grows cold, but the heat spreads and lives!
With increase of reading we have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of God the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and there is Darkness. |
|
