It was a relief to find, as I say, that, on a nearer prospect, all the circumstance of greatness vanished into shadow—indeed more than that—it became one of the distinct disadvantages of the position. I felt that time and money and thought would have to be spent on the useless and fatiguing mise-en-scene, and that it would all entail a quantity of futile worry, of tiresome publicity, of intolerable functions, that meant nothing but weariness of spirit. I think that men of high official position are most to be pitied because of the time that they have to spend, not in their work, but in the ornamental appearances entailed on them by their duties. These things have a certain value, I suppose, in stimulating the imagination of gazers; but surely it is a poor value after all. A secretary of state in his study, working out the hard and tiresome details of a plan that will benefit perhaps a whole nation in humble ways, is a more admirable figure than the same man, in ribbon and star, bowing and smiling at an evening party. And yet the dignified trappings of the post are what ordinary men desire.

The next step in my own progress when confronted, as I say, with the prospect of the possibility that I might feel bound to accept an important position, was the consciousness of the anxious and wearing responsibilities that it involved. I felt that a millstone was to be bound round my neck, and that I must bid farewell to what is after all the best gift of heaven, my liberty; a liberty won by anxious years of hard toil.

And here I have no doubt, though I tried hard not to let it affect me, that my desire not to sacrifice my liberty did make me exaggerate the difficulties that lay before me; difficulties which I should probably have unconsciously minimized if I had desired the position which was in prospect. It was a happy moment when I found myself relieved from the responsibility of undertaking an impossible task. I felt, too, that I was further disqualified by my reluctance to attempt the task; a reluctance which a near prospect of the position had poignantly revealed to me. A great task ought to be taken up with a certain buoyancy and eagerness of spirit, not in heaviness and sadness. A certain tremor of nerves, a stage fright, is natural to all sensitive performers. But this is merely a kind of anteroom through which one must needs pass to a part which one desires to play; but if one does not sincerely desire to play the part, it is clear that to attempt it merely from a sense of duty is an ill omen for success. And so I felt sincerely and humbly that I ought not to feel compelled to attempt it. The conviction came in a flash like a divine intuition, and was followed by a peace of mind which showed me that I was acting rightly. I seemed too to perceive that the best work in the world was not the work of administration and organization, but humble and individual ministries performed in a corner without tangible rewards. For such work I was both equipped and prepared, and I turned back to the fallentis semita vitae, which is the true path for the sincere spirit, aware that I had been truly and tenderly saved from committing a grave mistake.

Perhaps if one could have looked at the whole question in a simpler and larger-minded way, the result might have been different. But here temperament comes in, and the very complexities and intricacies that clouded the matter were of themselves evidence that after all it was the temperament that was at fault. Cecil Rhodes, it is recorded, once asked Lord Acton why Mr. Bent, the explorer, did not pronounce certain ruins to be of Phoenician origin. Lord Acton replied with a smile that it was probably because he was not sure. "Ah!" said Cecil Rhodes, "that is not the way that Empires are made." A true, interesting, and characteristic comment; but it also contains a lesson that people who are not sure should not attempt to make empires, or undertake tasks that involve the welfare of many.

And so there remains the duty to me, after my piece of experience, to gather up the fragments that remain, to interpret. Dante assigns the lowest place in the lower world to those who refuse a great opportunity, but he is speaking of those who perversely reject a great task, which is plainly in their power, for some false and low motive. But the case is different for those who have a great temptation put before them, and who, desiring to do what is right, have it brought home to them in a convincing way that it is not their opportunity. No one ought to assume great responsibilities if he is not equal to them. One of the saddest things ever said on a human deathbed was what was said by a great ecclesiastic, who had disappointed the hopes that had been formed of him. In his last moments he turned to one who stood near him and murmured, "I have held a great post, and I have not been equal to it." The misery was that no one could sincerely contradict him. It is not a piece of noble self-sacrifice to have assumed confidently a great responsibility to which one is not equal. It is a mere mistake, and a mistake which is even more reprehensible than the mistake of being over-persuaded into attempting a task for which one is not fitted. One is given reason and common sense and prudence that one may use them, and to act contrary to their dictates because those who do not know you so well as you know yourself advise you cheerfully that it will probably be all right, is an act of criminal folly. Heavy responsibilities are lightly assumed nowadays, because the temptations of power and publicity are very strong, and because too high a value is set upon worldly success. It is a plainer and simpler duty for those who wish to act rightly, and who have formed a deliberate idea of own limitations, to refuse great positions humbly and seriously, if they know that they will be unequal to them.

Of course I knew that I should be reproached with indolence and even cowardice. I knew that I should be supposed to be one of those consistently impracticable people who insist on going off at a tangent when the straight course lies before them. That I should be relegated to the class of persons who have failed in life through some deep-seated defect of will. The worst of a serious decision of the kind is that, whichever step one takes, one is sure to be blamed. I saw all this with painful clearness, but it is better to be arraigned before the tribunal of other men's consciences than to be condemned before one's own. It is better to refuse and be disappointed, than to accept and be disappointed. Failure in the course marked out, in the event of acceptance, would have been disastrous, not only to myself but to the institution I was to be set to rule and guide. Far better that the task should be entrusted to one who had no diffidence, no hesitation, but a sincere confidence in his power of dealing with the difficulties of the situation, and an ardent desire to grapple with them.

The only difficulty, if one believes very strongly, as I do, in a great and wise Providence that guides our path, is to interpret why the possibility of a great task is indicated to one if it is not intended that one should perform it. But the essence of a true belief in the call of Providence seems to me to lie not in the rash acceptance of any invitation that happens to come in one's way, but a stern and austere judgment of one's own faculties and powers. I have not the smallest doubt that Providence intended that this great task should be refused by me; my only difficulty is to see what to make of it, and why it was even suggested. One lesson is that one must beware of personal vanity, another that one should not indulge in the temptation to desire important posts for any reason except the best: the humble hope to do work that is useful and valuable. If I had sternly repressed these tendencies at an earlier stage of life, this temptation would not have been necessary, nor the humiliation which inevitably succeeds it.

But

that is down need fear no fall, He that is low no pride.

And there can be now no more chance of these bitter and self-revealing incidents, which show one, as in a clear mirror, the secret weaknesses of the heart.

But in setting aside the desire for the crowns and thrones of ambition, we must be very careful that we are not merely yielding to temptations of indolence, of fastidiousness, of cowardice, and calling a personal motive unworldliness for the sake of the associations. No man need set himself to seek great positions, but a man who is diffident, and possibly indolent, will do well to pin himself down in a position of responsibility and influence, if it comes naturally in his way. There are a good many men with high natural gifts of an instinctive kind who are yet averse to using them diligently, who, indeed, from the very facility with which they exercise them, hardly know their value. Such men as these—and I have known several—undertake a great responsibility if they refuse to take advantage of obvious opportunities to use their gifts. Men of this kind have often a certain vague, poetical, and dreamy quality of mind; a contemplative gift. They see and exaggerate the difficulties and perils of posts of high responsibility. If they yield to temptations of temperament, they often become ineffective, dilettante, half-hearted natures, playing with life and speculating over it, instead of setting to work on a corner of the tangle. They hang spiritless upon the verge of the battle instead of mingling with the fray. The curse of such temperaments is that they seem destined to be unhappy whichever way they decide. If they accept positions of responsibility, they are fretted and strained by difficulties and obstacles; they live uneasily and anxiously; they lose the buoyancy with which great work should be done; if, on the other hand, they refuse to come forward, they are tortured with regrets for having abstained; they become conscious of ineffectiveness and indecision; they are haunted by the spectres of what might have been.

The only course for such natures is to endeavour to see where their true life lies, and to follow the dictates of reason and conscience as far as possible. They must resolve not to be tempted by the glamour of possible success, but to take the true measure of their powers. They must not yield to the temptation to trust to the flattering judgment that others may form of their capacities, nor light-heartedly to shoulder a burden which they may be able to lift but not to carry. Such natures will sometimes attempt a great task with a certain glow and enthusiasm; but they must ask themselves humbly how they will continue to discharge it when the novelty has worn off, and when the prospect that lies before them is one of patient and unpraised labour. It leads to worse disasters to over-estimate one's powers than to under-estimate them. A man who over-estimates his capacities is apt to grow impatient, and even tyrannical, in the presence of difficulties.

And after all it may be said that humility is a rarer virtue than confidence; and though it is not so popular, though it does not appeal so much to the imagination, it is a quality that may well be exercised, if it is done without self-consciousness, in these busy days and in these active western climes. The best work of the world is done, as I have said, not by those who organize on a large scale, but by those who work faithfully on individual lines, in corners and byways. Indeed, the success of those who organize and rule is due in part no doubt to the power that they may possess of inspiring silent effort, but is still more largely due to the faithful workers whose labours are unnoted, who carry out great designs in a simple and quiet spirit. There is strong warrant in the teaching of Christ for the work of those who are faithful in a few things. There is no warrant for the action of those who stride into the front, and clamour to be entrusted with the destinies of others. There can be no question that Christ does not admit the value of ambition in any form as a motive for character. The lives that He praises are the lives of quiet, affectionate persons, more concerned with the things of the spirit than with the things of the intellect. The Christian must concern himself, not with grasping at influence, not even with setting his mark upon the world, but with the quality of his decisions, his work, his words, his thoughts. The only thing possible for him is to go forward step by step, trusting more to the guidance of God than to his own designs, to what are called intuitions more than to reasoned conclusions. In that spirit, if he can attain to it, he begins to be able to estimate things at their true value. Instead of being dazzled with the bright glare which the world throws upon the objects of his desire, he sees all things in a pale, clear light of dawn, and true aims begin to glow with an inner radiance. He may tremble and hesitate before a decision, but once taken there is no looking back; he knows that he has been guided, and that God has told him, by silent and eloquent motions of the spirit, what it is that He would have him to do; he has but to interpret and to trust.

But even supposing that one has learnt one's own lesson in the school of ambition, the question comes in as to how far it should be used as a motive for the young, by those who are entrusted with educational responsibilities. It is one of the most difficult things to decide as to what extent it is permissible to use motives that are lower than the highest, because they may possess a greater effectiveness in the case of immature minds. It is easy enough to say sincerely that one ought always to appeal to the highest possible motive; but when one is conscious that the highest motive is quite out of the horizon of the person concerned, and practically is no motive at all, is it not merely pedantry to insist upon appealing to the highest motive for one's own satisfaction? It is not perhaps so difficult where the lower reason for a course of action is still a sound reason in itself, as, for instance, if one is trying to help a man out of drunken habits. The highest motive to appeal to is the truth that in yielding to sensual impulses, in such a matter, a man is falling short of his best ideal; but a more practical motive is to point out the loss of health and respectability that results from the practice. Yet when one appeals to a boy's ambition, and encourages him to be ambitious, one cannot be quite certain whether one is not appealing to a false motive altogether. The excuse for using it is the hope that, when for the sake of ambition he has learnt diligence and perseverance, he may grow to perceive that the competitive instinct, which in its barest form is the desire to obtain desirable things at the expense of others, is not in reality a good motive at all. With immature characters part of the joy of success is that others have been beaten, the pride of having carried off a prize which others are disappointed of obtaining. And if one talks to an ambitious boy, and tries to inculcate the principle that one should do one's best without caring about results, one is generally conscious that he believes it to be only a tiresome professional platitude, the kind of sentiment in which older people think fit to indulge for the purpose, if possible, of throwing cold water on innocent enjoyment.

Yet, after all, how very few people there are who do learn the further lesson! The successful man generally continues to show to the end of his life a contempt for unsuccessful persons, which is only good-humoured because of the consciousness of his own triumph; how rare, again, it is to find an unsuccessful person who does not attempt, if he can, to belittle the attainments of his successful rival, or who at least, if he overcomes that temptation from a sense of propriety, feels entitled to nourish a secret satisfaction at any indication of failure on the part of the man who has obtained the prize that he himself coveted in vain. Yet if one has ever seen, as I have, the astonishing change of both work and even character which may come over a boy or a young man who is perhaps diffident and indolent, if one can get him to do a successful piece of work, or push an opportunity in his way and help him to seize it, one hesitates before ruling out the use of ambition as an incentive. Perhaps it is uneasy and casuistical morality to shrink from using this incentive, so long as one faithfully puts the higher side of the question before a boy as well. But when one is quite sure that the larger aspect of the case will fall on deaf ears, and that only the lower stimulus will be absorbed, one is apt to hesitate. I am inclined, however, to think that such hesitation is on the whole misplaced, and that in dealing with immature minds one must be content to use immature motives. There is a temptation to try and keep the education of people too much in one's own hands, and to feel oneself to be too responsible in the matter. I have a friend who errs in this respect, and who is apt to assume too wide a responsibility in dealing with others, who was gently rebuked by a wise-hearted teacher of wide and deep experience, who said on one occasion, when over-anxiety had spoilt the effect of my friend's attempts, that he ought to be content to leave something for God to do.

But for oneself, one must try to learn the large lesson in the course of time, to learn that the sense of ambition is often, in reality, only a sense of personal vanity and self-confidence disguised; and that the one possible attitude of mind is to go humbly and patiently forward, desiring the best, labouring faithfully and abundantly, neither seeking nor avoiding great opportunities, not failing in courage nor giving way to rash impulses, and realizing the truth of the wise old Greek proverb that the greatest of all disasters for a man is to be opened and found to be empty; the wise application of which to life is not to avoid the occasions of opening, but to make sure that if the opening comes inevitably, we shall be found not to have devoted ourselves to the adorning of the casket, but to have piled with careful hands the treasure high within.



XIV

THE SIMPLE LIFE

There is a good deal of talk just now about "the simple life," and though I would not go so far as to say that there is a movement in the direction of it, yet the talk that one hears on many sides proves, at all events, that people take a certain interest in the question.

Part of it is a pose no doubt; there is a distinguished, and I would add very charming, lady of my acquaintance, who has the subject constantly on her lips. Her method of practising simplicity is a delightful one, as all her methods are. In addition to the three magnificent residences which she already possesses, she has bought a cottage in a secluded part of the country; she has spent a large sum of money in adding to it; it is furnished with that stately austerity which can only be achieved at great expense. She motors down there, perhaps three times in the year, and spends three days there, on each visit, with two or three friends who are equally in love with simplicity; I was fortunate enough, the other day, to be included in one of these parties; the only signs of simplicity to the complex mind were that there were only five courses at dinner, that we drank champagne out of rather old-fashioned long glasses, and that two goats were tethered in a corner of the lawn. The goats I understood were the seal and symbol of the simple life. No use was made of them, and they were decidedly in the way, but without them life would have been complicated at once.

When we went off again in the motor, my charming hostess waved her hand at the little cottage, as we turned the corner, with a sigh, as of one condemned by a stern fate to abjure the rural felicity which she loved, and then settled down with delighted zest to discuss her programme of social engagements for the next few weeks.

It had certainly been very delightful; we had talked all day long; we had wandered, adoring simplicity, on the village green; we had attended an evening service in the church; we had consumed exquisitely cooked meals about an hour before the usual time, because to breakfast at eight and to dine at seven was all part of the pretty game. I ventured to ask my hostess how she would like to spend six months in her cottage comparatively alone, and she replied with deep conviction, "I should adore it; I would give all I possess to be able to do it." "Then it is nothing," I said, "but a sense of duty that tears you away?" To which she made no answer except to shake her head mournfully, and to give me a penetrating smile.

I cannot help wondering whether the people who talk about the simple life have any idea what it means; I do not think that my fair hostess's desire for it is altogether a pose. One who lives, as she does, in the centre of the fashionable world, must inevitably tire of it from time to time. She meets the same people over and over again, she hears the same stories, the same jokes; she is not exactly an intellectual woman, though she has a taste for books and music; the interest for her, in the world in which she lives, is the changing relations of people, their affinities, their aversions, their loves and hates, their warmth and their coldness. What underlies the shifting scene, the endless entertainments, the country-house visits, the ebb and flow of society, is really the mystery of sex. People with not very much to do but to amuse themselves, with no prescribed duties, with few intellectual interests, become preoccupied in what is the great underlying force in the world, the passion of love; the talk that goes on, dull and tiresome as it appears to an outsider, is all charged with the secret influence; it is not what is said that matters; it is what is implied by manner and glance and inflection of tone. This atmosphere of electrical emotion is, for a good many years of their lives, the native air of these fair and unoccupied women. Men drift into it and out of it, and it provides for them often no more than a beautiful and thrilling episode; they become interested in sport, in agriculture, in politics, in business; but with women it is different; lovers and husbands, emotional friendships with other women—these constitute the business of life for a time; and then perhaps the tranquillizing and purer love of children, the troubles and joys of growing boys and girls, come in to fill the mind with a serener and kindlier, though not less passionate an emotion; and so life passes, and age draws near.

It is thus easier for men to lead the simple life than women, because they find it natural to grow absorbed in some definite and tangible occupation; and, after all, the essence of the simple life is that it can be lived in any milieu and under any circumstances. It does not require a cottage orne and a motor, though these are not inconsistent with it, if only they are natural.

I would try to trace what I believe the essence of the simple life to be; it lies very far down in the spirit, among the roots of life. The first requisite is a perfect sincerity of character. This implies many things: it means a joyful temperance of soul, a certain clearness and strength of temperament. The truly simple person must not be vague and indeterminate, swayed by desire or shifting emotion; he must meet others with a candid frankness, he must have no petty ambitions, he must have wide and genial interests, he must be quick to discern what is beautiful and wise; he must have a clear and straightforward point of view; he must act on his own intuitions and beliefs, not simply try to find out what other people are thinking and try to think it too; he must in short be free from conventionality. The essence of the really simple character is that a man should accept his environment and circle; if he is born in the so-called world, he need not seek to fly from it. Such a character as I have described has a marvellous power of evoking what is sincere and simple in other natures; such a one will tend to believe that other people are as straightforward and genuine as himself; and he will not be wholly mistaken, because when they are with him, they will be simple too. The simple person will have a strong, but not a Pharisaical, sense of duty; he will probably credit other people with the same sense of duty, and he will not often feel himself bound to disapprove of others, reserving his indignation for any instances of cruelty, meanness, falseness, and selfishness that he may encounter. He will not be suspicious or envious. Yet he will not necessarily be what is called a religious man, because his religion will be rather vital than technical. To be religious in the technical sense of the word—to care, that is, for religious services and solemnities, for priestly influences, for intricate doctrinal emotions—implies a strong artistic sense, and is often very far removed from any simplicity of conduct. But on the other hand the simple man will have a strong sense of responsibility, a deep confidence in the Will of God and His high purposes.

And thus the simple man will scarcely be a man of leisure, because there is so much that he will desire to do, and which he will feel called upon to do. Whatever he considers to be his work, he will do with a cheerful energy, which will sustain him far beyond the threshold of fatigue. His personal wants will be few; he will not care for spending money for the sake of spending it, but he will be liberal and generous whenever there is need. He will be uneasy in luxury. He will be a lover of the open air and of the country, but his aim will be exercise, and the sense of health and vigour, rather than amusement. He will never be reduced to asking himself how he is going to spend the day, for the present day, and a long perspective of days ahead, will already be full by anticipation. He will take work, amusement, people, as they come, and he will not be apt to make plans or to arrange parties, because he will expect to find in ordinary life the amusement and the interest that he desires. He will be above all things tender-hearted, kind, and fearless. He will not take fancies to people, or easily discard a friend; but he will be courteous, kind to all weakness, compassionate to awkwardness, fond of children, good-natured, loving laughter and peacefulness; he will not be easily disappointed, and he will have no time to be fretful, if things do not turn out exactly as he desires.

I have known such persons in every rank of life. They are the people who can be depended upon to do what they undertake, to understand the difficulties of others, to sympathize, to help. The essence of it all is a great absence of self-consciousness, and such people as I have described would be genuinely surprised, as a rule, if they were told that they were living a different life from the lives of others.

This simplicity of nature is not often found in conjunction with very great artistic or intellectual gifts; but when it is so found, it is one of the most perfect combinations in the world.

The one thing that is entirely fatal to simplicity is the desire to stimulate the curiosity of others in the matter. The most conspicuous instance of this, in literature, is the case of Thoreau, who is by many regarded as the apostle of the simple life. Thoreau was a man of extremely simple tastes, it is true. He ate pulse, whatever that may be, and drank water; he was deeply interested in the contemplation of nature, and he loved to disembarrass himself of all the apparatus of life. It was really that he hated trouble more than anything in the world; he found that by working six weeks in the year, he could earn enough to enable him to live in a hut in a wood for the rest of the twelvemonth; he did his household work himself, and his little stock of money sufficed to buy him food and clothes, and to meet his small expenses. But Thoreau was indolent rather than simple; and what spoilt his simplicity was that he was for ever hoping that he would be observed and admired; he was for ever peeping out of the corner of his eye, to see if inquisitive strangers were hovering about to observe the hermit at his contemplation. If he had really loved simplicity best, he would have lived his life and not troubled himself about what other people thought of him; but instead of that he found his own simplicity a deeply interesting and refreshing subject of contemplation. He was for ever looking at himself in the glass, and describing to others the rugged, sunbrowned, slovenly, solemn person that he saw there.

And then, too, it was easier for Thoreau to make money than it would be for the ordinary artisan. When Thoreau wrote his famous maxim, "To maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime," he did not add that he was himself a man of remarkable mechanical gifts; he made, when he was disposed, admirable pencils, he was an excellent land-surveyor, and an author as well; moreover, he was a celibate by nature. He would no doubt have found, if he had had a wife and children, and no aptitude for skilled labour, that he would have had to work as hard as any one else.

Thoreau had, too, a quality which is in itself an economical thing. He did not care in the least for society. He said that he would rather "keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven." He was not a sociable man, and sociability is in itself expensive. He had, it is true, some devoted friends, but it seems that he would have done anything for them except see them. He was a man of many virtues and no vices, but he was most at his ease with faddists. Not that he avoided his fellow-men; he was always ready to see people, to talk, to play with children, but on the other hand society was not essential to him. Yet, just and virtuous as he was, there was something radically unamiable about him: "I love Henry," one of his friends said of him, "but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree." He was in fact an egotist with strong fancies and preferences; and, though he was an ascetic by preference, he cannot be called a simple-minded man, because the essence of simplicity is not to ride a hobby hard. He thought and talked too much about simplicity; and the fact is that simplicity, like humility, cannot exist side by side with self-consciousness. The moment that a man is conscious that he is simple and humble, he is simple and humble no longer. You cannot become humble by reminding people constantly, like Uriah Heep, of your humility; similarly you cannot become simple, by doing elaborately, and making a parade of doing, the things that the simple man would do without thinking about them.

It is almost true to say that the people who are most in love with simplicity are often the most complicated natures. They become weary of their own complexity, and they fancy that by acting on a certain regimen they can arrive at tranquillity of soul. It is in reality just the other way. One must become simple in soul first, and the simple setting follows as a matter of course. If a man can purge himself of ambition, and social pride, and ostentation, and the desire of praise, his life falls at once into a simple mould, because keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world; to begin with eating pulse and drinking water, is as if a man were to wear his hair like Tennyson, and expect to become a poet thereby. Asceticism is the sign and not the cause of simplicity. The simple life will become easy and common enough when people have simple minds and hearts, when they do the duties that lie ready to their hand, and do not crave for recognition.

Neither can simplicity be brought about by a movement. There is nothing which is more fatal to it than that people should meet to discuss the subject; it can only be done by individuals, and in comparative isolation. A friend of mine dreamed the other day that she was discussing the subject of mission services with a stranger; she defended them in her dream with great warmth and rhetoric: when she had done, her companion said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't believe in people being inspired IN ROWS." This oracular saying has a profound truth in it—that salvation is not to be found in public meetings; and that to assemble a number of persons, and to address them on the subject of simplicity, is the surest way to miss the charm of that secluded virtue.

The worst of it is that the real, practical, moral simplicity of which I have been speaking is not an attractive thing to a generation fond of movement and excitement; what they desire is a picturesque mise-en-scene, a simplicity which comes as a little pretty interlude to busy life; they do not desire it in its entirety and continuously. They would find it dull, triste, ennuyant.

Thus it must fall into the hands of individuals to practise it, who are sincerely enamoured of quietness and peace. The simple man must have a deep fund of natural joy and zest; he must bring his own seasoning to the plain fare of life; but if he loves the face of nature, and books, and his fellow-men, and above all, work, there is no need for him to go out into the wilderness in pursuit of a transcendental ideal. But those whose spirits flag and droop in solitude; who open their eyes upon the world, and wonder what they will find to do; who love talk and laughter and amusement; who crave for alcoholic mirth, and the song of them that feast, had better make no pretence of pursuing a spirit which haunts the country lane and the village street, the rough pasture beside the brimming stream, the forest glade, with the fragrant breeze blowing cool out of the wood. Simplicity, to be successfully attained, must be the result of a passionate instinct, not of a picturesque curiosity; and it is useless to lament that one has no time to possess one's soul, if, when one visits the innermost chamber, there is nothing there but cobwebs and ugly dust.



XV

GAMES

It requires almost more courage to write about games nowadays than it does to write about the Decalogue, because the higher criticism is tending to make a belief in the Decalogue a matter of taste, while to the ordinary Englishman a belief in games is a matter of faith and morals.

I will begin by saying frankly that I do not like games; but I say it, not because any particular interest attaches to my own dislikes and likes, but to raise a little flag of revolt against a species of social tyranny. I believe that there are a good many people who do not like games, but who do not dare to say so. Perhaps it may be thought that I am speaking from the point of view of a person who has never been able to play them. A vision rises in the mind of a spectacled owlish man, trotting feebly about a football field, and making desperate attempts to avoid the proximity of the ball; or joining in a game of cricket, and fielding a drive with the air of a man trying to catch an insect on the ground, or sitting in a boat with the oar fixed under his chin, being forced backwards with an air of smiling and virtuous confusion. I hasten to say that this is not a true picture. I arrived at a reasonable degree of proficiency in several games: I was a competent, though not a zealous, oar; I captained a college football team, and I do not hesitate to say that I have derived more pleasure from football than from any other form of exercise. I have climbed some mountains, and am even a member of the Alpine Club; I may add that I am a keen, though not a skilful, sportsman, and am indeed rather a martyr to exercise and open air. I make these confessions simply to show that I do not approach the subject from the point of view of a sedentary person but indeed rather the reverse. No weather appears to me to be too bad to go out in, and I do not suppose there are a dozen days in the year in which I do not contrive to get exercise.

But exercise in the open air is one thing, and games are quite another. It seems to me that when a man has reached an age of discretion, he ought no longer to need the stimulus of competition, the desire to hit or kick balls about, the wish to do such things better than other people. It seems to me that the elaborate organization of athletics is a really rather serious thing, because it makes people unable to get on without some species of excitement. I was staying the other day at a quiet house in the country, where there was nothing particular to do; there was not, strange to say, even a golf course within reach. There came to stay there for a few days an eminent golfer, who fell into a condition of really pitiable dejection. The idea of taking a walk or riding a bicycle was insupportable to him; and I think he never left the house except for a rueful stroll in the garden. When I was a schoolmaster it used to distress me to find how invariably the parents of boys discoursed with earnestness and solemnity about a boy's games; one was told that a boy was a good field, and really had the makings of an excellent bat; eager inquiries were made as to whether it was possible for the boy to get some professional coaching; in the case of more philosophically inclined parents it generally led on to a statement of the social advantages of being a good cricketer, and often to the expression of a belief that virtue was in some way indissolubly connected with keenness in games. For one parent who said anything about a boy's intellectual interests, there were ten whose preoccupation in the boy's athletics was deep and vital.

It is no wonder that, with all this parental earnestness, boys tended to consider success in games the one paramount object of their lives; it was all knit up with social ambitions, and it was viewed, I do not hesitate to say, as of infinitely more importance than anything else. I do not mean to say that many of the boys did not consider it important to be good, and did not desire to be conscientious about their work. But as a practical matter games were what they thought about and talked about, and what aroused genuine enthusiasm. They were disposed to despise boys who could not play games, however virtuous, kindly, and sensible they might be; an entire lack of conscientiousness, and even grave moral obliquity, were apt to be condoned in the case of a successful athlete. We masters, I must frankly confess, did not make any serious attempt to fight the tendency. We spent our spare time in walking about the cricket and football fields, in looking on, in discussing the fine nuances in the style of individual players. It was very natural to take an interest in the thing which was to the boys a matter of profound concern; but what I should be inclined to censure was that it was really a matter of profound concern with ourselves; and we did not take a kindly and paternal interest in the matter, so much as the interest of enthusiasts and partisans.

It is very difficult to see how to alter this. Probably, like other deep-seated national tendencies, it will have to cure itself. It would be impossible to insist that the educators of youth should suppress the interest which they instinctively and genuinely feel in games, and profess an interest in intellectual matters which they do not really feel. No good would come out of practising hypocrisy in the matter, from however high a motive. While schoolmasters rush off to golf whenever they get a chance, and fill their holidays to the brim with games of various kinds, it would be simply hypocritical to attempt to conceal the truth; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that, while parents and boys alike feel as they do about the essential importance of games, head-masters are more or less bound to select men for masterships who are proficient in them; because whatever else has to be attended to at school, games have to be attended to; and, moreover, a man whom the boys respect as an athlete is likely to be more effective both as a disciplinarian and a teacher. If a man is a first-rate slow bowler, the boys will consider his views on Thucydides and Euclid more worthy of consideration than the views of a man who has only a high university degree.

The other day I was told of the case of a head-master of a small proprietary private school, who was treated with open insolence and contempt by one of his assistants, who neglected his work, smoked in his class-room, and even absented himself on occasions without leave. It may be asked why the head-master did not dismiss his recalcitrant assistant. It was because he had secured a man who was a 'Varsity cricket-blue, and whose presence on the staff gave the parents confidence, and provided an excellent advertisement. The assistant, on the other hand, knew that he could get a similar post for the asking, and on the whole preferred a school where he might consult his own convenience. This is, of course, an extreme case; but would to God, as Dr. Johnson said, that it were an impossible one! I do not wish to tilt against athletics, nor do I at all undervalue the benefits of open air and exercise for growing boys. But surely there is a lamentable want of proportion about the whole view! The truth is that we English are in many respects barbarians still, and as we happen at the present time to be wealthy barbarians, we devote our time and our energies to the things for which we really care. I do not at all want to see games diminished, or played with less keenness. I only desire to see them duly subordinated. I do not think it ought to be considered slightly eccentric for a boy to care very much about his work, or to take an interest in books. I should like it to be recognized at schools that the one quality that was admirable was keenness, and that it was admirable in whatever department it was displayed; but nowadays keenness about games is considered admirable and heroic, while keenness about work or books is considered slightly grovelling and priggish.

The same spirit has affected what is called sport. People no longer look upon it as an agreeable interlude, but as a business in itself; they will not accept invitations to shoot, unless the sport is likely to be good; a moderate performer with the gun is treated as if it was a crime for him to want to shoot at all; then the motoring craze has come in upon the top of the golfing craze; and all the spare time of people of leisure tends to be filled up with bridge. The difficulty in dealing with the situation is that the thing itself is not only not wrong, but really beneficial; it is better to be occupied than to be idle, and it is hard to preach against a thing which is excellent in moderation and only mischievous in excess.

Personally I am afraid that I only look upon games as a pis-aller. I would always rather take a walk than play golf, and read a book than play bridge. Bridge, indeed, I should regard as only one degree better than absolutely vacuous conversation, which is certainly the most fatiguing thing in the world. But the odd thing is that while it is regarded as rather vicious to do nothing, it is regarded as positively virtuous to play a game. Personally I think competition always a more or less disagreeable thing. I dislike it in real life, and I do not see why it should be introduced into one's amusements. If it amuses me to do a thing, I do not very much care whether I do it better than another person. I have no desire to be always comparing my skill with the skill of others.

Then, too, I am afraid that I must confess to lamentably feeble pleasure in mere country sights and sounds. I love to watch the curious and beautiful things that go on in every hedgerow and every field; it is a ceaseless delight to see the tender uncrumpling leaves of the copse in spring, and no a pleasure to see the woodland streaked and stained with the flaming glories of autumn. It is a joy in high midsummer to see the clear dwindled stream run under the thick hazels, among the lush water-plants; it is no less a joy to see the same stream running full and turbid in winter, when the banks are bare, and the trees are leafless, and the pasture is wrinkled with frost. Half the joy, for instance, of shooting, in which I frankly confess I take a childish delight, is the quiet tramping over the clean-cut stubble, the distant view of field and wood, the long, quiet wait at the covert-end, where the spindle-wood hangs out her quaint rosy berries, and the rabbits come scampering up the copse, as the far-off tapping of the beaters draws near in the frosty air. The delights of the country-side grow upon me every month and every year. I love to stroll in the lanes in spring, with white clouds floating in the blue above, and to see the glade carpeted with steel-blue hyacinths. I love to walk on country roads or by woodland paths, on a rain-drenched day of summer, when the sky is full of heavy inky clouds, and the earth smells fresh and sweet; I love to go briskly homeward on a winter evening, when the sunset smoulders low in the west, when the pheasants leap trumpeting to their roosts, and the lights begin to peep in cottage windows.

Such joys as these are within the reach of every one; and to call the country dull because one has not the opportunity of hitting and pursuing a little white ball round and round among the same fields, with elaborately contrived obstacles to test the skill and the temper, seems to me to be grotesque, if it were not also so distressing.

I cannot help feeling that games are things that are appropriate to the restless days of boyhood, when one will take infinite trouble and toil over anything of the nature of a make-believe, so long as it is understood not to be work; but as one gets older and perhaps wiser, a simpler and quieter range of interests ought to take their place. I can humbly answer for it that it need imply no loss of zest; my own power of enjoyment is far deeper and stronger than it was in early years; the pleasures I have described, of sight and sound, mean infinitely more to me than the definite occupations of boyhood ever did. But the danger is that if we are brought up ourselves to depend upon games, and if we bring up all our boys to depend on them, we are not able to do without them as we grow older; and thus we so often have the melancholy spectacle of the elderly man, who is hopelessly bored with existence, and who is the terror of the smoking-room and the dinner-table, because he is only capable of indulging in lengthy reminiscences of his own astonishing athletic performances, and in lamentations over the degeneracy of the human race.

Another remarkable fact about the conventionality that attends games is that certain games are dismissed as childish and contemptible while others are crowned with glory and worship. One knows of eminent clergymen who play golf; and that they should do so seems to constitute so high a title to the respect and regard with which normal persons view them, that one sometimes wonders whether they do not take up the practice with the wisdom of the serpent that is recommended in the Gospels, or because of the Pauline doctrine of adaptability, that by all means they may save some.

But as far as mere air and exercise goes, the childish game of playing at horses is admirably calculated to increase health and vigour and needs no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon drawn in to repress the curvetting of the gaitered steed? There is nothing in reality more undignified about that than in hitting a little ball about over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice trundled hoops round and round after breakfast in the gravelled space behind the Horse Guards, who could allege that they would not be the better for the exercise? Yet they would be held for some mysterious reason to have forfeited respect. To the mind of the philosopher all games are either silly or reasonable; and nothing so reveals the stupid conventionality of the ordinary mind as the fact that men consider a series of handbooks on Great Bowlers to be a serious and important addition to literature, while they would hold that a little manual on Blind-man's Buff was a fit subject for derision. St. Paul said that when he became a man he put away childish things. He could hardly afford to say that now, if he hoped to be regarded as a man of sense and weight.

I do not wish to be a mere Jeremiah in the region of prophecy, and to deplore, sarcastically and incisively, what I cannot amend. What I rather wish to do is to make a plea for greater simplicity in the matter, and to try and destroy some of the terrible priggishness in the matter of athletics, which appears to me to prevail. After all, athletics are only one form of leisurely amusement; and I maintain that it is of the essence of priggishness to import solemnity into a matter which does not need it, and which would be better without it. Because the tyranny is a real one; the man of many games is not content with simply enjoying them; he has a sense of complacent superiority, and a hardly disguised contempt for the people who do not play them.

I was staying in a house the other day where a distinguished philosopher had driven over to pay an afternoon call. The call concluded, he wished to make a start, so I went down to the stable with him to see about putting his pony in. The stables were deserted. I was forced to confess that I knew nothing about the harnessing of steeds, however humble. We discovered portions of what appeared to be the equipment of a pony, and I held them for him, while he gingerly tried them on, applying them cautiously to various portions of the innocent animal's person. Eventually we had to give it up as a bad job, and seek for professional assistance. I described the scene for the benefit of a lively lady of my acquaintance, who is a devotee of anything connected with horses, and she laughed unmercifully at the description, and expressed the contempt, which she sincerely felt, in no measured terms. But, after all, it is no part of my business to harness horses; it is a convenience that there should be persons who possess the requisite knowledge; for me horses only represent a convenient form of locomotion. I did not mind her being amused—indeed, that was the object of my narrative—but her contempt was just as much misplaced as if I had despised her for not being able to tell the difference between sapphics and alcaics, which it was my business to know.

It is the complacency, the self-satisfaction, that results from the worship of games, which is one of its most serious features. I wish with all my heart that I could suggest a remedy for it; but the only thing that I can do is to pursue my own inclinations, with a fervent conviction that they are at least as innocent as the pursuit of athletic exercises; and I can also, as I have said, wave a little flag of revolt, and rally to my standard the quieter and more simple-minded persons, who love their liberty, and decline to part with it unless they can find a better reason than the merely comfortable desire to do what every one else is doing.



XVI

SPIRITUALISM

I was sitting the other day in a vicarage garden with my friend the vicar. It was a pretty, well-kept place, with old shrubberies and umbrageous trees; to the right, the tower of the church rose among its elms. We sate out of the wind, looking over a rough pasture field, apparently a common, divided from the garden by a little ha-ha of brick. The surface of the field was very irregular, as though there had been excavations made in it for gravel at some time or other; in certain parts of the field there appeared fragments of a stone wall, just showing above the ground.

The vicar pointed to the field. "Do you see that wall?" he said; "I will tell you a very curious story about that. When I came here, forty years ago, I asked the old gardener what the field was, as I never saw any one in it, or any beasts grazing there; and yet it was unfenced, and appeared to be common land—it was full of little thickets and thorn-bushes then. He was not very willing to tell me, I thought, but by dint of questions I discovered that it was a common, and that it was known locally by the curious name of Heaven's Walls. He went on to say that it was considered unlucky to set foot in it; and that, as a matter of fact, no villager would ever dream of going there; he would not say why, but at last it came out that it was supposed to be haunted by a spirit. No one, it seemed, had ever seen anything there, but it was an unlucky place.

"Well, I thought no more of it at the time, though I often went into the field. It was a quiet and pretty place enough; full of thickets, as I have said, where the birds built unmolested—there was generally a goldfinch's nest there.

"It became necessary to lay a drain across it, and a big trench was dug. One day they came and told me that the workmen had found something—would I go and look at it? I went out and found that they had unearthed a large Roman cinerary urn, containing some calcined bones. I told the lord of the manor, who is a squire in the next parish, and he and I after that kept a look-out over the workmen. We found another urn, and another, both full of bones. Then we found a big glass vessel, also containing bones. The squire got interested in the thing, and eventually had the whole place dug out. We found a large enclosure, once surrounded by a stone wall, of which you see the remains; in two of the corners there was an enormous deposit of wood ashes, in deep pits, which looked as if great fires had burnt there; and the walls in those two corners were all calcined and smoke-stained. We found fifty or sixty urns, all full of bones; and in another corner there was a deep shaft, like a well, dug in the chalk, with handholds down the sides, also full of calcined bones. We found a few coins, and in one place a conglomeration of rust that looked as if it might have been a heap of tools or weapons. We set the antiquaries to work, and they pronounced it to be what is called a Roman Ustrinum—that is to say, a public crematorium, where people who could not afford a separate funeral might bring a corpse to be burnt. If they had no place to deposit the urn, in which the bones were enclosed, they were allowed, it seems, to bury the urn there, until such time as they cared to remove it. There was a big Roman settlement here, you know. There was a fort on the hill there, and the sites of several large Roman villas have been discovered in the neighbourhood. This place must have stood rather lonely, away from the town, probably in the wood which then covered the whole of this county; but it is curious, is it not?" said the vicar, "that the tradition should have been handed down through all these centuries of its being an ill-omened place, long after any tradition of what the uses of the spot were!"

It was curious indeed! The vicar was presently called away, and I sate musing over the strange old story. I could fancy the place as it must have been, standing with its high blank walls in a clearing of the forest, with perhaps a great column of evil-smelling smoke drifting in oily waves over the corner of the wall, telling of the sad rites that were going on within. I could fancy heavy-eyed mourners dragging a bier up to the gates, with a silent form lying upon it, waiting in pale dismay until the great doors were flung open by the sombre rough attendants of the place; until they could see the ugly enclosure, with the wood piled high in the pit for the last sad service. Then would follow the burning and the drenching of the ashes, the gathering of the bones—all that was left of one so dear, father or mother, boy or maiden—the enclosing of them in the urn, and the final burial. What agonies of simple grief the place must have witnessed! Then, I suppose, the place was deserted by the Romans, the walls crumbled down into ruin, grass and bushes grew over the place. Then perhaps the forest was gradually felled and stubbed up, as the area of cultivation widened; but still the sad tradition of the spot left it desolate, until all recollection of its purpose was gone. No doubt, in Saxon days, it was thought to be haunted by the old wailing, restless spirits of those who had suffered the last rites there; so that still the place was condemned to a sinister solitude.

I went on to reflect over the strange and obstinate tradition that lingers still with such vitality among the human race, that certain places are haunted by the spirits of the dead. It is hard to believe that such tradition, so widespread, so universal, should have no kind of justification in fact. And yet there appears to be no justification for the idea, unless the spiritual conditions of the world have altered, unless there were real phenomena, which have for some cause ceased to manifest themselves, which originated the tradition. But there is certainly no scientific evidence of the fact. The Psychical Society, which has faced some ridicule for its serious attempt to find out the truth about these matters, have announced that investigations of so-called haunted houses have produced no evidence whatever. They seem to be a wholly unreliable type of stories, which always break down under careful inquiry. I am inclined myself to believe that such stories arose in a perfectly natural way. It is perfectly natural to simple people to believe that the spirit which animated a mortal body would, on leaving it, tend to linger about the scene of suffering and death. Indeed, it is impossible not to feel that, if the spirit has any conscious identity, it would be sure to desire to remain in the neighbourhood of those whom it loved so well. But the unsatisfactory element in these stories is that it generally appears to be the victim of some heinous deed, and not the perpetrator, who is condemned to make its sad presence known, by wailing and by sorrowful gestures, on the scene of its passion. But once given the belief that a spirit might tend to remain for a time in the place where its earthly life was lived, the terrors of man, his swift imagination, his power of self-delusion, would do the rest.

The only class of stories, say the investigators, which appear to be proved beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt, is the class of stories dealing with apparitions at the time of death; and this they explain by supposing a species of telepathy, which is indeed an obscure force, but obviously an existing one, though its conditions and limitations are not clearly understood. Telepathy is the power of communication between mind and mind without the medium of speech, and indeed in certain cases exercised at an immense distance. The theory is that the thought of the dying person is so potently exercised on some particular living person, as to cause the recipient to project a figure of the other upon the air. That power of visualization is not a very uncommon one; indeed, we all possess it more or less; we can all remember what we believe we have seen in our dreams, and we remember the figures of our dreams as optical images, though they have been purely mental conceptions, translated into the terms of actual sight. The impression of a dream-figure, indeed, appears to us to be as much the impression of an image received upon the retina of the eye, as our impressions of images actually so received. The whole thing is strange, of course, but not stranger than wireless telegraphy. It may be that the conditions of telepathy may some day be scientifically defined; and in that case it will probably make a clear and coherent connection between a number of phenomena which we do not connect together, just as the discovery of electricity connected together phenomena which all had observed, like the adhering of substances to charged amber, as well as the lightning-flash which breaks from the thunder-cloud. No one in former days traced any connection between these two phenomena, but we now know that they are only two manifestations of the same force. In the same way we may find that phenomena of which we are all conscious, but of which we do not know the reason, may prove to be manifestations of some central telepathic force—such phenomena, I mean, as the bravery of armies in action, or the excitement which may seize upon a large gathering of men.

We ought, I think, to admire and praise the patient work of the Psychical Society,—though is common enough to hear quite sensible people deride it,—because it is an attempt to treat a subject scientifically. What we have every right to deride is the dabbling in spiritualistic things by credulous and feeble-minded persons. These practices open to our view one of the most lamentable and deplorable provinces of the human mind, its power of convincing itself of anything which it desires to believe, its debility, its childishness. If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion finds its richest field?

A friend of mine told me the other day what he evidently felt to be an extremely impressive story about a dignitary of the Church. This clergyman was overcome one day by an intense mental conviction that he was wanted at Bristol. He accordingly went there by train, wandered about aimlessly, and finally put up at a hotel for the night. In the morning he found a friend in the coffee-room, to whom he confided the cause of his presence in Bristol, and announced his intention of going away by the next train. The friend then told him that an Australian was dying in the hotel, and that his wife was very anxious to find a clergyman. The dignitary went to see the lady, with the intention of offering her his services, when he discovered that he had met her when travelling in Australia, and that her husband had been deeply impressed by a sermon which he had then delivered, and had been entreating for some days that he might be summoned to administer the last consolations of religion. The clergyman went in to see the patient, administered the last rites, comforted and encouraged him, and was with him when he died. He afterwards told the widow the story of his mysterious summons to Bristol, and she replied that she had been praying night and day that he might come and that he had no doubt come in answer to her prayers.

But the unsatisfactory part of the story is that one is asked to condone the extremely unbusinesslike, sloppy, and troublesome methods employed by this spiritual agency. The lady knew the name and position of the clergyman perfectly well, and might have written or wired to him. He could thus have been spared his aimless and mysterious journey, the expense of spending a night at the hotel; and moreover it was only the fortuitous meeting with a third person, not closely connected with the story, which prevented the clergyman from leaving the place, his mission unfulfilled. One cannot help feeling that, if a spiritual agency was at work, it was working either in a very clumsy way, or with a relish for mystery which reminds one of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes; if one is expected to accept the story as a manifestation of supernatural power, one can only conceive of it as the work of a very tricksy spirit, like Ariel in the "Tempest"; it seems like a very elaborate and melodramatic attempt to bring about a result, that could have been far more satisfactorily achieved by a little common sense. If instead of inspiring the lady to earnest prayer—which appears too to have been very slow in its action—why could not the supernatural power at work have inspired her with the much simpler idea of looking at the Clergy List? And yet the story no doubt produces on the ordinary mind an impressive effect, when as a matter of fact, if it is fairly considered, it can only be regarded, if true, as the work of an amiable and rather dilettante power, with a strong relish for the elaborately marvellous.

The truth is that what the ordinary human being desires, in matters of this kind, is not scientific knowledge but picturesqueness. As long as people frankly confess that it is the latter element of which they are in search, that, like the fat boy in Pickwick, they merely want to make their flesh creep, no harm is done. The harm is done by people who are really in search of sensation, who yet profess to be approaching the question in a scientific spirit of inquiry. I enjoy a good ghost story as much as any one; and I am interested, too, in hearing the philosophical conclusions of earnest-minded people; but to hear the question discussed, as one so often hears it, with a pretentious attempt to treat it scientifically, by people who, like the White Queen in Through the Looking-glass, find it pleasant to train themselves to believe a dozen impossible things before breakfast, afflicts me with a deep mental and moral nausea.

One, at least, of the patient investigators of this accumulated mass of human delusion, took up the quest in the hope that he might receive scientific evidence of the continued existence of identity. He was forced to confess that the evidence went all the other way, and that all the tales which appeared to substantiate the fact, were hopelessly discredited. The only thing, as I have said, that the investigations seem to have substantiated, is evidence which none but a determinedly sceptical mind would disallow, that there does exist, in certain abnormal cases, a possibility of direct communication between two or more living minds.

But, as I pondered thus, the day began to darken over the rough pasture with its ruined wall, and I felt creeping upon me that old inheritance of humanity, that terror in the presence of the unseen, which sets the mind at work, distorting and exaggerating the impressions of eye and ear. How easy, in such a mood, to grow tense and expectant—

"Till sight and hearing ache For something that may keep The awful inner sense Unroused, lest it should mark The life that haunts the emptiness And horror of the dark."

Face to face with the impenetrable mystery, with the thought of those whom we have loved, who have slipped without a word or a sign over the dark threshold, what wonder if we beat with unavailing hands against the closed door? It would be strange if we did not, for we too must some day enter in; well, the souls of all those who have died, alike those whom we have loved, and the spirits of those old Romans whose mortal bodies melted into smoke year after year in the little enclosure into which I look, know whatever there is to know. That is a stern and dreadful truth; the secret is impenetrably sealed from us; but, "though the heart ache to contemplate it, it is there."



XVII

HABITS

Walter Pater says, in his most oracular mood, in that fine manifesto of a lofty Epicureanism which is known as the Conclusion to the Renaissance essays, that to form habits is failure in life. The difficulty in uttering oracles is that one is obliged for the sake of being forcible to reduce a statement to its simplest terms; and when one does that, there are generally a whole group of cases which appear to be covered by the statement, which contradict it. It is nearly impossible to make any general statement both simple enough and large enough. In the case of Pater's pronouncement, he had fixed his mental gaze so firmly on a particular phenomenon, that he forgot that his words might prove misleading when applied to the facts of life. What he meant, no doubt, was that one of the commonest of mental dangers is to form intellectual and moral prejudices early in life, and so to stereotype them that we are unable to look round them, or to give anything that we instinctively dislike a fair trial. Most people in fact, in matters of opinion, tend to get infected with a species of Toryism by the time that they reach middle age, until they get into the frame of mind which Montaigne describes, of thinking so highly of their own conjectures as to be prepared to burn other people for not regarding them as certainties. This frame of mind is much to be reprobated, but it is unhappily common. How often does one meet sensible, shrewd, and intelligent men, who say frankly that they are not prepared to listen to any evidence which tells against their beliefs. How rare it is to meet a man who in the course of an argument will say, "Well, I had never thought of that before; it must be taken into account, and it modifies my view." Such an attitude is looked upon by active-minded and energetic men as having something weak and even sentimental about it. How common it is to hear people say that a man ought to have the courage of his opinions; how rare it is to find a man who will say that one ought to have the courage to change one's opinions. Indeed, in public life it is generally considered a kind of treachery to change, because people value what they call loyalty above truth. Pater no doubt meant that the duty and privilege of the philosopher is to keep his inner eye open to new impressions, to be ready to see beauty in new forms, not to love comfortable and settled ways, but to bring the same fresh apprehension that youth brings, to art and to life.

He is merely speaking of a mental process in these words; what he is condemning is the dulling and encrusting of the mind with prejudices and habits, the tendency, as Charles Lamb wittily said, whenever a new book comes out, to read an old one, to get into the fireside-and-slippers frame of mind, to grumble at novelty, to complain that the young men are violating all the sacred canons of faith and art.

This is not at all the same thing as knowing one's own limitations; every one, whether he be artist or writer, critic or practitioner, ought to take the measure of his forces, and to determine in what regions he can be effective; indeed it is often necessary for a man of artistic impulses to confine his energies to one specific department, although he may be attracted by several. Pater was himself an instance of this. He knew, for instance, that his dramatic sense was weak, and he wisely let drama alone; he found that certain vigorous writers exercised a contagious influence over his own style, and therefore he gave up reading them. But within his own region he endeavoured to be catholic and sympathetic; he never tied up the contents of his mind into packets and labelled them, a task which most men between thirty and forty find highly congenial.

But I desire here to go into the larger question of forming habits; and as a general rule it may be said that Pater's dictum is entirely untrue, and that success in life depends more upon forming habits than upon anything else, except good health. Indeed, Pater himself is an excellent instance in point. He achieved his large output of beautiful literary work, the amazing amount of perfectly finished and exquisitely expressed writing that he gave to the world, by an extreme and patient regularity of labour. He did not, as some writers do, have periods of energetic creation, interrupted by periods of fallow idleness. Perhaps his work might have been more spontaneous if he could, like Milton's friend, have been wise enough "of such delights to judge, and interpose them oft." But the achievement of Pater was to realize and to carry out his own individual method, and it is upon doing this that successful productivity depends.

I could name, if I chose, two or three friends of my own, men of high and subtle intelligence, admirable humour, undiminished zest, who have failed, and will fail, to realize their possibilities, simply by a lack of method. Who does not know the men whom Mr. Mallock so wittily describes, of whom, up to the age of forty, their friends say that they could do anything if they only chose, and after the age of forty that they could have done anything if they had chosen? I have one particular friend in my eye at this moment, the possessor of wealth and leisure, who is a born writer if any man ever was. He has no particular duties, except the duties of a small landowner and the father of a family; he is a wide reader, and a critic of delicate and sympathetic acuteness. He is bent on writing; and he has written a single book crammed from end to end with good and beautiful things, the stuff of which would have sufficed, in the hands of a facile writer, for half-a-dozen excellent books. He is, moreover, sincerely anxious to write, but he does nothing. If you ask him—and I conceive it to be my duty at intervals to chide him for not producing more—what he does with his time, he says with a melancholy smile: "Oh, I hardly know: it goes!" I trace his failure to produce, simply to the fact that he has never set apart any particular portion of the day for writing; he allows himself to be interrupted; he entertains many guests whom he has no particular wish to see; he "sets around and looks ornery," like the frog; he talks delightfully; an industrious Boswell could, by asking him questions and taking careful notes of his talk, fill a charming volume in a month out of his shrewd and suggestive conversation; of course it is possible to say that he practises the art of living, to talk of "gems of purest ray serene" and flowers "born to blush unseen" and all the rest of it. But his talk streams to waste among guests who do not as a rule appreciate it; and if there is any duty or responsibility in the world at all, it is a duty for men of great endowments, admirable humour, and poetical suggestiveness, to sow the seed of the mind freely and lavishly. We English are of course the chosen race; but we should be none the worse for a little more intellectual apprehension, a little more amiable charm. If my friend had been a professional man, obliged to earn a living by his pen, he would, I do not doubt, have given to the world a series of great books, which would have done something to spread the influence of the kingdom of heaven.

Of course there is a sense in which it is a mistake to let habits become too tyrannical; one ought not to find oneself hopelessly distracted and irritated if one's daily programme is interfered with at any point; one ought to be able to enjoy leisure, to pay visits, to converse volubly. Like Dr. Johnson, one ought to be ready for a frolic. But, on the other hand, if a man takes himself seriously—and I am here not speaking of people with definite engagements, but of people, like writers and artists, who may choose their own times to do their work—he ought to have a regular though not an invariable programme. If he is possessed of such superabundant energy as Walter Scott possessed, he may rise at five, and write ten immortal octavo pages before he appears at breakfast. But as a rule the vitality of ordinary people is more limited, and they are bound to husband it, if they mean to do anything that is worth the name; an artist then ought to have his sacred hours, secure from interruption; and then, let him fill the rest of the day with any amusement that he finds to be congenial.

Of course the thing is easy enough if one's work is really the thing in which one is most interested. There is very little danger, in the case of a man who likes and relishes the work he is doing more than he relishes any form of amusement; but we many of us have the unhappy feeling that we enjoy our work very much, if we can once sit down to it; only we do not care about beginning it. We read the paper, we write a few letters, we look out an address in Who's Who, and we become absorbed in the biographies of our fellow-men; very soon it is time for luncheon, and then we think that we shall feel fresher if we take a little exercise; after tea, the weather is so beautiful that we think it would be a pity not to enjoy the long sunset lights; we come in; the piano stands invitingly open, and we must strike a few chords; then the bell rings for dressing, and the day is gone, because we mistrust the work that we do late at night, and so we go to bed in good time. Not so does a big book get written!

We ought rather to find out all about ourselves; when we can work our best, how long we can work continuously with full vigour; and then round these fixed points we should group our sociability, our leisure, our amusement. If we are altruistically inclined, we probably say that it is a duty to see something of our fellow-creatures, that we ought not to grow morose and solitary; there is an abundance of excuses that can be made; but the artist and the writer ought to realize that their duty to the world is to perceive what is beautiful and to express it as resolutely, as attractively as they can; if a writer can write a good book, he can talk in its pages to a numerous audience; and he is right to save up his best thoughts for his readers, rather than to let them flow away in diffuse conversation. Of course a writer of fiction is bound to make the observation of varieties of temperament a duty; it is his material; if he becomes isolated and self-absorbed, his work becomes narrow and mannerized; and it is true, too, that, with most writers, the collision of mind with mind is what produces the brightest sparks.

And then to step into a still wider field, there is no sort of doubt that the formation of reasonable habits, of method, of punctuality, is a duty, not from an exalted point of view, but because it makes enormously for the happiness and convenience of every one about us. In the old-fashioned story-books a prodigious value, perhaps an exaggerated value, was set upon time; one was told to redeem the time, whatever that might mean. The ideal mother of the family, in the little books which I used to read in my childhood, was a lady who appeared punctually at breakfast, and had a bunch of keys hanging at her girdle. Breakfast over, she paid a series of visits, looked into the larder, weighed out stores, and then settled down to some solid reading or embroidered a fire-screen; the afternoon would be spent in visits of benevolence, carrying portions of the midday dinner to her poorer neighbours; the evening would be given to working at the fire-screen again, while some one read aloud. Somehow it is not an attractive picture, though it need not have been so dull as it appears. The point is whether the solid reading had a useful effect or not. In the books I have in view, it generally led the materfamilias into having an undue respect for correct information, and a pharisaical contempt for people who indulged their fancy. In Harry and Lucy, for instance, Lucy, who is the only human figure in the book, is perpetually being snubbed by the terrible hard-headed Harry, with his desperate interest in machinery, by the repellent father who delights to explain the laws of gravity and the parabola described by the stone which Harry throws. What was undervalued in those old, dry, high-principled books was the charm of vivid apprehension, of fanciful imagination, of simple, neighbourly kindliness. The aim was too much to improve everybody and everything, to impart and retain correct information. Nowadays the pendulum has swung a little too far the other way, and children are too much encouraged, if anything, to be childish; but there is a certain austere charm in the old simple high-minded household life for all that.

The point is that habit should be there, like the hem of a handkerchief, to keep the fabric together; but that it should not be relentlessly and oppressively paraded; the triumph is to have habits and to conceal them, just as in Ruskin's celebrated dictum, that the artist's aim should be to be fit for the best society, and then that he should renounce it. One ought to be reliable, to perform the work that one undertakes without ceaseless reminders, to discharge duties easily and satisfactorily; and then, if to this one can add the grace of apparent leisureliness, the power of never appearing to be interrupted, the good-humoured readiness to amuse and to be amused, one is high upon the ladder of perfection. It is absolutely necessary, if one is to play a satisfactory part in the world, to be in earnest, to be serious; and it is no less necessary to abstain from ostentatiously parading that seriousness. One has to take for granted that others are serious too; and far more is effected by example than by precept, in this, as in most matters. But if one cannot do both, it is better to be serious and to show it, than to make a show of despising seriousness and decrying it. It is better to have habits and to let others know it, than to lose one's soul by endeavouring to escape the reproach of priggishness, a quality which in these easy-going days incurs an excessive degree of odium.



XVIII

RELIGION

There is a motto which I should like to see written over the door of every place of worship, both as an invitation and a warning: THOU SHALT MAKE ME TO UNDERSTAND WISDOM SECRETLY. It is an invitation to those who enter, to come and participate in a great and holy mystery; and it is a warning to those who believe that in the formalities of religion alone is the secret of religion to be found. I will not here speak of worship, of the value of the symbol, the winged prayer, the uttered word; I wish rather to speak for a little of religion itself, a thing, as I believe, greatly misunderstood. How much it is misunderstood may be seen from the fact that, though the word itself, religion, stands for one of the most beautiful and simple things in the world, there yet hangs about it an aroma which is not wholly pleasing. What difficult service that great and humble name has seen! With what strange and evil meanings it has been charged! How dinted and battered it is with hard usage! how dimmed its radiance, how stained its purity! It is the best word, perhaps the only word, for the thing that I mean; and yet something dusty and technical hangs about it, which makes it wearisome instead of delightful, dreary rather than joyful. The same is the case with many of the words which stand for great things. They have been weapons in the hands of dry, bigoted, offensive persons, until their brightness is clouded, their keen edge hacked and broken.

By religion I mean the power, whatever it be, which makes a man choose what is hard rather than what is easy, what is lofty and noble rather than what is mean and selfish; that puts courage into timorous hearts, and gladness into clouded spirits; that consoles men in grief, misfortune, and disappointment; that makes them joyfully accept a heavy burden; that, in a word, uplifts men out of the dominion of material things, and sets their feet in a purer and simpler region.

Yet this great thing, which lies so near us that we can take it into our grasp by merely reaching out a hand; which is as close to us as the air and the sunlight, has been by the sad, misguided efforts, very often of the best and noblest-minded men, who knew how precious a thing it was, so guarded, so wrapped up, made so remote from, so alien to, life and thought, that many people who live by its light, and draw it in as simply as the air they breathe, never even know that they have come within hail of it. "Is he a good man?" said a simple Methodist once, in reply to a question about a friend. "Yes, he is good, but not religious-good." By which he meant that he lived kindly, purely, and unselfishly as a Christian should, but did not attend any particular place of worship, and therefore could not be held to have any religious motive for his actions, but was guided by a mere worthless instinct, a preference for unworldly living.

Now, if ever there was a Divine attempt made in the world to shake religion free of its wrappings, it was the preaching of Christ. So far as we can gather from records of obscure and mysterious origin, transcriptions, it would seem, of something oral and traditional, Christ aimed at bringing religion within the reach of the humblest and simplest souls. Whatever doubt men may feel as to the literal accuracy of these records in matters of fact, however much it may be held that the relation of incidents was coloured by the popular belief of the time in the possibility of miraculous manifestations, yet the words and sayings of Christ emerge from the narrative, though in places it seems as though they had been imperfectly apprehended, as containing and expressing thoughts quite outside the range of the minds that recorded them; and thus possess an authenticity, which is confirmed and proved by the immature mental grasp of those who compiled the records, in a way in which it would not have been proved, if the compilers had been obviously men of mental acuteness and far-reaching philosophical grasp.

To express the religion of Christ in precise words would be a mighty task; but it may be said that it was not merely a system, nor primarily a creed; it was a message to individual hearts, bewildered by the complexity of the world and the intricacy of religious observances. Christ bade men believe that their Creator was also a Father; that the only way to escape from the overwhelming difficulties presented by the world was the way of simplicity, sincerity, and love; that a man should keep out of his life all that insults and hurts the soul, and that he should hold the interests of others as dear as he holds his own. It was a protest against all ambition, and cruelty, and luxury, and self-conceit. It showed that a man should accept his temperament and his place in life, as gifts from the hands of his Father; and that he should then be peaceful, pure, humble, and loving. Christ brought into the world an entirely new standard; He showed that many respected and reverenced persons were very far indeed from the Father; while many obscure, sinful, miserable outcasts found the secret which the respectable and contemptuous missed. Never was there a message which cast so much hope abroad in rich handfuls to the world. The astonishing part of the revelation was that it was so absolutely simple; neither wealth, nor intellect, nor position, nor even moral perfection, were needed. The simplest child, the most abandoned sinner, could take the great gift as easily as the most honoured statesman, the wisest sage—indeed more easily; for it was the very complexity of affairs, of motives, of wealth, that entangled the soul and prevented it from realizing its freedom.

Christ lived His human life on these principles; and sank from danger to danger, from disaster to disaster, and having touched the whole gamut of human suffering, and disappointment, and shame, died a death in which no element of disgust, and terror, and pain was wanting.

And from that moment the deterioration began. At first the great secret ran silently through the world from soul to soul, till the world was leavened. But even so the process of capturing and transforming the faith in accordance with human weakness began. The intellectual spirit laid hold on it first. Metaphysicians scrutinized the humble and sweet mystery, overlaid it with definitions, harmonized it with ancient systems, dogmatized it, made it hard, and subtle, and uninspiring. Vivid metaphors and illustrations were seized upon and converted into precise statements of principles. The very misapprehensions of the original hearers were invested with the same sanctity that belonged to the Master Himself. But even so the bright and beautiful spirit made its way, like a stream of clear water, refreshing thirsty places and making the desert bloom like the rose, till at last the world itself, in the middle of its luxuries and pomp, became aware that here was a mighty force abroad which must be reckoned with; and then the world itself determined upon the capture of Christianity; and how sadly it succeeded can be read in the pages of history; until at last the pure creature, like a barbarian captive, bright with youth and beauty, was bound with golden chains, and bidden, bewildered and amazed, to grace the triumph and ride in the very chariot of its conqueror.

Let me take one salient instance. Could there, to any impartial observer, be anything in the world more incredible than that the Pope, surrounded by ritual and pomp, and hierarchies, and policies, should be held to be the representative on earth of the peasant-teacher of Galilee? And yet the melancholy process of development is plain enough. As the world became Christianized, it could not be expected to give up its social order, its ambitions, its love of power and influence. Christianity uncurbed is an inconvenient, a dangerous, a subversive force; it must be tamed and muzzled; it must be robed and crowned; it must be given a high and honoured place among institutions. And so it has fallen a victim to bribery and intrigue and worldly power.

I do not for a moment say that it does not even thus inspire thousands of hearts to simple, loving, and heroic conduct. The secret is far too vital to lose its power. It is a vast force in the world, and indeed survives its capture in virtue of its truth and beauty. But instead of being the most free, the most independent, the most individualistic force in the world, it has become the most authoritarian, the most traditional, the most rigid of systems. As in the tale of Gulliver, it is a giant indeed, and can yet perform gigantic services; but it is bound and fettered by a puny race.

Further, there are some who would divide religion sharply into two aspects, the objective and the subjective. Those who emphasize the objective aspect, would maintain that the theory that underlies all religion is the idea of sacrifice. This view is held strongly by Roman Catholics and by a large section of Anglicans as well. They would hold that the duty of the priest is the offering of this sacrifice, and that the essential truth of the Christian revelation was the sacrifice of God Himself upon God's own altar. This sacrifice, this atonement, they would say, can be and must be made, over and over, upon the altar of God. They would hold that this offering had its objective value, even though it were offered without the mental concurrence of those for whom it was offered. They would urge that the primal necessity for the faithful is that by an act of the will,—not necessarily an emotional act, but an act of pure and definite volition,—they should associate themselves with the true and perfect sacrifice; that souls that do this sincerely are caught up, so to speak, into the heavenly chariot of God, and move upward thus; while the merely subjective and emotional religion is, to continue the metaphor, as if a man should gird up his loins to run in company with the heavenly impulse. They would say that the objective act of worship may have a subjective emotional effect, but that it has a true value quite independent of any subjective effect. They would say that the idea of sacrifice is a primal instinct of human nature, implanted in hearts by God Himself, and borne witness to by the whole history of man.

Those who, like myself, believe rather in the subjective side, the emotional effect of religion, would hold that the idea of sacrifice is certainly a primal human instinct, but that the true interpretation has been put upon it by the teaching of Christ. I should myself feel that the idea of sacrifice belonged wholly to the old dispensation. That man, when he began to form some mental picture of the mysterious nature of the world of which he found himself a part, saw that there was, in the background of life, a vast and awful power, whose laws were mysterious and not, apparently, wholly benevolent; that this power sometimes sent happiness and prosperity, sometimes sorrow and adversity; and that though to a certain extent calamities were brought about by individual misconduct, yet that there were innumerable instances in the world where innocence and even conscientious conduct were just as heavily penalized as guilt and sin. The apparently fortuitous distribution of happiness would alarm and bewilder him. The natural instinct of man, thus face to face with a Deity which he could not hope to overcome or struggle with, would be to conciliate and propitiate him by all the means in his power, as he would offer gifts to a prince or chief. He would hope thus to win his favour and not to incur his wrath.