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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Buried Temple, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Buried Temple
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Translator: Alfred Sutro
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BURIED TEMPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Buried Temple
+
+
+By
+
+Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Alfred Sutro
+
+
+
+
+LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
+
+RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
+
+
+
+
+Published in April 1902
+
+Reprinted:--
+  POCKET EDITION, March 1911
+  November 1911
+  July 1919
+  December 1921
+  October 1924
+
+
+
+Twenty first Thousand
+
+(All rights reserved)
+
+Printed in Great Britain
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Of the five essays in this volume, two only, those on "The Past" and
+"Luck," were written in 1901.  The others, "The Mystery of Justice,"
+"The Evolution of Mystery," and "The Kingdom of Matter," are anterior
+to "The Life of the Bee," and appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ in
+1899 and 1900.  The essay on "The Past" appeared in the March number of
+the _Fortnightly Review_ and of the New York _Independent_; and parts
+of "The Mystery of Justice" in this last journal and _Harper's
+Magazine_.  The author's thanks are due to Messrs. Chapman & Hall,
+Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and the proprietors of _The Independent_ for
+their permission to republish.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I. THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE
+  II. THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY
+ III. THE KINGDOM OF MATTER
+  IV. THE PAST
+   V. LUCK
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE
+
+1
+
+I speak, for those who do not believe in the existence of a unique,
+all-powerful, infallible Judge, for ever intent on our thoughts, our
+feelings and actions, maintaining justice in this world and completing
+it in the next.  And if there be no Judge, what justice is there?  None
+other than that which men have made for themselves by their laws and
+tribunals, as also in the social relations that no definite judgment
+governs?  Is there nothing above this human justice, whose sanction is
+rarely other than the opinion, the confidence or mistrust, the approval
+or disapproval, of our fellows?  Is this capable of explaining or
+accounting for all that seems so inexplicable to us in the morality of
+the universe, that we at times feel almost compelled to believe an
+intelligent Judge must exist?  When we deceive or overcome our
+neighbour, have we deceived or overcome all the forces of justice?  Are
+all things definitely settled then, and may we go boldly on: or is
+there a graver, deeper justice, one less visible perhaps, but less
+subject to error; one that is more universal, and mightier?
+
+That such a justice exists we all of us know, for we all have felt its
+irresistible power.  We are well aware that it covers the whole of our
+life, and that at its centre there reigns an intelligence which never
+deceives itself, which none can deceive.  But where shall we place it,
+now that we have torn it down from the skies?  Where does it weigh good
+and evil, happiness and disaster?  Whence does it issue to deal out
+reward and punishment?  These are questions that we do not often ask
+ourselves, but they have their importance.  The nature of justice, and
+all our morality, depend on the answer; and it cannot be fruitless
+therefore to inquire how that great idea of mystic and sovereign
+justice, which has undergone more than one transformation since history
+began, is being received to-day in the mind and the heart of man.  And
+is this mystery not the loftiest, the most passionately interesting, of
+all that remain to us: does it not intertwine with most of the others?
+Do its vacillations not stir us to the very depths of our soul?  The
+great bulk of mankind perhaps know nothing of these vacillations and
+changes, but for the evolution of thought it suffices that the eyes of
+the few should see; and when the clear consciousness of these has
+become aware of the transformation, its influence will gradually attain
+the general morality of men.
+
+
+2
+
+In these pages we shall naturally have much to say of social justice:
+of the justice, in other words, that we mutually extend to each other
+through life; but we shall leave on one side legal or positive justice,
+which is merely the organisation of one side of social justice.  We
+shall occupy ourselves above all with that vague but inevitable
+justice, intangible and yet so effective, which accompanies and sets
+its seal upon every action of our life; which approves or disapproves,
+rewards or punishes.  Does this come from without?  Does an inflexible,
+undeceivable moral principle exist, independent of man, in the universe
+and in things?  Is there, in a word, a justice that might be called
+mystic?  Or does it issue wholly from man; is it inward even though it
+act from without; and is the only justice therefore psychologic?  These
+two terms, mystic and psychologic justice, comprehend, more or less,
+all the different forms of justice, superior to the social, that would
+appear to exist to-day.
+
+
+3
+
+It is scarcely conceivable that any one who has forsaken the easy, but
+artificially illumined, paths of positive religion, can still believe
+in the existence of a physical justice arising from moral causes,
+whether its manifestations assume the form of heredity or disease, of
+geologic, atmospheric, or other phenomena.  However eager his desire
+for illusion or mystery, this is a truth he is bound to recognise from
+the moment he begins earnestly and sincerely to study his own personal
+experience, or to observe the external ills which, in this world of
+ours, fall indiscriminately on good and wicked alike.  Neither the
+earth nor the sky, neither nature nor matter, neither air nor any force
+known to man (save only those that are in him) betrays the slightest
+regard for justice, or the remotest connection with our morality, our
+thoughts or intentions.  Between the external world and our actions
+there exist only the simple and essentially non-moral relations of
+cause and effect.  If I am guilty of a certain excess or imprudence, I
+incur a certain danger, and have to pay a corresponding debt to nature.
+And as this imprudence or excess will generally have had an immoral
+cause--or a cause that we call immoral because we have been compelled
+to regulate our life according to the requirements of our health and
+tranquillity--we cannot refrain from establishing a connection between
+this immoral cause and the danger to which we have been exposed, or the
+debt we have had to pay; and we are led once more to believe in the
+justice of the universe, the prejudice which, of all those that we
+cling to, has its root deepest in our heart.  And in our eagerness to
+restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact
+that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our
+excess or imprudence been--to use the terms of our infantine
+vocabulary--heroic or innocent.  If on an intensely cold day I throw
+myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if,
+seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of the
+chill will be absolutely the same; and nothing on this earth or beneath
+the sky--save only myself, or man if he be able--will enhance my
+suffering because I have committed a crime, or relieve my pain because
+my action was virtuous.
+
+
+4
+
+Let us consider another form of physical justice: heredity.  There
+again we find the same indifference to moral causes.  And truly it were
+a strange justice indeed that would throw upon the son, and even the
+remote descendant, the burden of a fault committed by his father or his
+ancestor.  But human morality would raise no objection: man would not
+protest.  To him it would seem natural, magnificent, even fascinating.
+It would indefinitely prolong his individuality, his consciousness and
+existence; and from this point of view would accord with a number of
+indisputable facts which prove that we are not wholly self-contained,
+but connect, in more than one subtle, mysterious fashion, with all that
+surrounds us in life, with all that precedes us, or follows.
+
+And yet, true as this may be in certain cases, it is not true as
+regards the justice of physical heredity, which is absolutely
+indifferent to the moral causes of the deed whose consequences the
+descendants have to bear.  There is physical relation between the act
+of the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequent
+suffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whatever
+the intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful.
+And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical heredity
+would appear to be very restricted.  A father may have been guilty of a
+hundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, a
+persecutor of the innocent or despoiler of the wretched, without these
+crimes leaving the slightest trace upon the organism of his children.
+It is enough that he should have been careful to do nothing that might
+injure his health.
+
+
+5
+
+So much for the justice of Nature as shown in physical heredity.  Moral
+heredity would appear to be governed by similar principles; but as it
+deals with modifications of the mind and character infinitely more
+complex and more elusive, its manifestations are less striking, and its
+results less certain.  Pathology is the only region which admits of its
+definite observation and study; and there we observe it to be merely
+the spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essential
+principle: moral heredity being only a sequel, and revealing in its
+elementary stage the same indifference to real justice, and the same
+blindness.  Whatever the moral cause of the ancestor's drunkenness or
+debauch, the same punishment may be meted out in mind and body to the
+descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee.  Intellectual blemish
+will almost always accompany material blemish.  The soul will be
+attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little
+whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal
+instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement:
+the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent
+has followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are less
+perverse than hundreds of other offences that Nature never dreams of
+punishing.  And this penalty, moreover, is inflicted blindly, not the
+slightest heed being paid to the motives underlying the actions,
+motives that may have been excusable perhaps, or indifferent, or
+possibly even admirable.
+
+It would be absurd, however, to imagine that drunkenness and debauchery
+are the only agents in moral heredity.  There are a thousand others,
+all more or less unknown.  Certain moral qualities appear to be
+transmitted as readily as though they were physical.  In one race, for
+instance, we will almost constantly discover certain virtues which have
+probably been acquired.  But who shall say how much is due to heredity,
+and how much to environment and example?  The problem becomes so
+complicated, the facts so contradictory, that it is impossible, amidst
+the mass of innumerable causes, to follow the track of one particular
+cause to the end.  Let it suffice to say that in the only clear,
+striking, definitive cases where an intentional justice could have
+revealed itself in physical or moral heredity, no trace of justice is
+found.  And if we do not find it in these, we are surely far less
+likely to find it in others.
+
+
+6
+
+We may affirm therefore that not above us, or around us, or beneath us,
+neither in this life nor in our other life which is that of our
+children, is the least trace to be found of an intentional justice.
+But, in the course of adapting ourselves to the laws of life, we have
+naturally been led to credit with our own moral ideas those principles
+of causality that we encounter most frequently; and we have in this
+fashion created a very plausible semblance of effective justice, which
+rewards or punishes most of our actions in the degree that they
+approach, or deviate from, certain laws that are essential for the
+preservation of the race.  It is evident that if I sow my field, I
+shall have an infinitely better prospect of reaping a harvest the
+following summer than my neighbour, who has neglected to sow his,
+preferring a life of dissipation and idleness.  In this case,
+therefore, work obtains its admirable and certain reward; and as work
+is essential for the preservation of our existence, we have declared it
+to be the moral act of all acts, the first of all our duties.  Such
+instances might be indefinitely multiplied.  If I bring up my children
+well, if I am good and just to those round about me, if I am honest,
+active, prudent, wise, and sincere in all my dealings, I shall have a
+better chance of meeting with filial piety, with respect and affection,
+a better chance of knowing moments of happiness, than the man whose
+actions and conduct have been the very reverse of mine.  Let us not,
+however, lose sight of the fact that my neighbour, who is, let us say,
+a most diligent and thrifty man, might be prevented by the most
+admirable of reasons--such as an illness caught while nursing his wife
+or his friend--from sowing his ground at the proper time, and that he
+also would reap no harvest.  _Mutatis mutandis_, similar results would
+follow in the other instances I have mentioned.  The cases, however,
+are exceptional where a worthy or respectable reason will hinder the
+accomplishment of a duty; and we shall find, as a rule, that sufficient
+harmony exists between cause and effect, between the exaction of the
+necessary law and the result of the complying effort, to enable our
+casuistry to keep alive within us the idea of the justice of things.
+
+
+7
+
+This idea, however, deeply ingrained though it be in the hearts and
+minds of the least credulous and least mystic of men, can surely not be
+beneficial.  It reduces our morality to the level of the insect which,
+perched on a falling rock, imagines that the rock has been set in
+motion on its own special behalf.  Are we wise in allowing certain
+errors and falsehoods to remain active within us?  There may have been
+some in the past which, for a moment, were helpful; but, this moment
+over, men found themselves once again face to face with the truth, and
+the sacrifice had only been delayed.  Why wait till the illusion or
+falsehood which appeared to do good begins to do actual harm, or, if it
+do no harm, at least retards the perfect understanding that should
+obtain between the deeply felt reality and our manner of interpreting
+and accepting it?  What were the divine right of kings, the
+infallibility of the Church, the belief in rewards beyond the grave,
+but illusions whose sacrifice reason deferred too long?  Nor was
+anything gained by this dilatoriness beyond a few sterile hopes, a
+little deceptive peace, a few consolations that at times were
+disastrous.  But many days had been lost; and we have no days to lose,
+we who at last are seeking the truth, and find in its search an
+all-sufficient reason for existence.  Nor does anything retard us more
+than the illusion which, though torn from its roots, we still permit to
+linger among us; for this will display the most extraordinary activity
+and be constantly changing its form.
+
+But what does it matter, some will ask, whether man do the thing that
+is just because he thinks God is watching; because he believes in a
+kind of justice that pervades the universe; or for the simple reason
+that to his conscience this thing seems just?  It matters above all.
+We have there three different men.  The first, whom God is watching,
+will do much that is not just, for every god whom man has hitherto
+worshipped has decreed many unjust things.  And the second will not
+always act in the same way as the third, who is indeed the true man to
+whom the moralist will turn, for he will survive both the others; and
+to foretell how man will conduct himself in truth, which is his natural
+element, is more interesting to the moralist than to watch his
+behaviour when enmeshed in falsehood.
+
+
+8
+
+It may seem idle to those who do not believe in the existence of a
+sovereign Judge to discuss so seriously this inadmissible idea of the
+justice of things; and inadmissible it does indeed become when
+presented thus in its true colours, as it were, pinned to the wall.
+This, however, is not our way of regarding it in every-day life.  When
+we observe how disaster follows crime, how ruin at last overtakes
+ill-gotten prosperity; when we witness the miserable end of the
+debauchee, the short-lived triumph of iniquity, it is our constant
+habit to confuse the physical effect with the moral cause; and however
+little we may believe in the existence of a Judge, we nearly all of us
+end by a more or less complete submission to a strange, vague faith in
+the justice of things.  And although our reason, our calm observation,
+prove to us that this justice cannot exist, it is enough that an event
+should take place which touches us somewhat more nearly, or that there
+should be two or three curious coincidences, for conviction to fade in
+our heart, if not in our mind.  Notwithstanding all our reason and all
+our experience, the merest trifle recalls to life within us the
+ancestor who was convinced that the stars shone in their eternal places
+for no other purpose than to predict or approve a wound he was to
+inflict on his enemy upon the field of battle, a word he should speak
+in the assembly of the chiefs, or an intrigue he would bring to a
+successful issue in the women's quarters.  We of to-day are no less
+inclined to divinise our feelings for the benefit of our interests; the
+only difference being that, the gods having no longer a name, our
+methods are less sincere and less precise.  When the Greeks, powerless
+before Troy, felt the need of supernatural signal and support, they
+went to Philoctetes, deprived him of Hercules' bow and arrows, and
+abandoned him, ill, naked, and defenceless, on a desert island.  This
+was the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was the
+command of the gods.  And similarly do we, when some iniquity seems
+expedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, of
+humanity, of the fatherland.  On the other hand, should a great
+misfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and that
+there are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and the
+universe is at once repeopled with invisible judges.  If, however, some
+unexpected, disproportionate stroke of good fortune come to us, we are
+quickly convinced that we must possess merits so carefully hidden as to
+have escaped our own observation; and we are happier in their discovery
+than at the windfall they have procured us.
+
+
+9
+
+"One has to pay for all things," we say.  Yes, in the depths of our
+heart, in all that pertains to man, justice exacts payment in the coin
+of our personal happiness or sorrow.  And without, in the universe that
+enfolds us, there is also a reckoning; but here it is a different
+paymaster who measures out happiness or sorrow.  Other laws obtain;
+there are other motives, other methods.  It is no longer the justice of
+the conscience that presides, but the logic of nature, which cares
+nothing for our morality.  Within us is a spirit that weighs only
+intentions; without us, a power that only balances deeds.  We try to
+persuade ourselves that these two work hand in hand.  But in reality,
+though the spirit will often glance towards the power, this last is as
+completely ignorant of the other's existence as is the man weighing
+coals in Northern Europe of the existence of his fellow weighing
+diamonds in South Africa.  We are constantly intruding our sense of
+justice into this non-moral logic; and herein lies the source of most
+of our errors.
+
+
+10
+
+And further, what right have we to complain of the indifference of the
+universe, what right to declare it incomprehensible, and monstrous?
+Why this surprise at an injustice in which we ourselves take so active
+a part?  It is true that there is no trace of justice to be found in
+disease, accident, or most of the hazards of external life, which fall
+indiscriminately on the good and the wicked, the hero and traitor, the
+poisoner and sister of charity.  But we are far too eager to include
+under the title "Justice of the Universe" many a flagrant act that is
+exclusively human, and infinitely more common and more destructive than
+disease, the hurricane, or fire.  I do not allude to war; it might be
+urged that we attribute this rather to the will of the people or kings
+than to Nature.  But poverty, for instance, which we still rank with
+irremediable ills such as shipwreck or plague; poverty, with all its
+crushing sorrows and transmitted degeneration--how often may this be
+ascribed to the injustice of the elements, and how often to the
+injustice of our social condition, which is the crowning injustice of
+man?  Need we, at the sight of unmerited wretchedness, look to the
+skies for a reason, as though a flash of lightning had caused it?  Need
+we seek an impenetrable, unfathomable judge?  Is this region not our
+own; are we not here in the best explored, best known portion of our
+dominion; and is it not we who organise misery, we who spread it
+abroad, as arbitrarily, from the moral point of view, as fire and
+disease scatter destruction or suffering?  Is it reasonable that we
+should wonder at the sea's indifference to the soul-state of its
+victims, when we who have a soul, the pre-eminent organ of justice, pay
+no heed whatever to the innocence of the countless thousands whom we
+ourselves sacrifice, who are our wretched victims?  We choose to regard
+as beyond our control, as a force of fatality, a force that rests
+entirely within our own hands.  But does this excuse us?  Truly we are
+strange lovers of an ideal justice, we are strange judges!  A judicial
+error sends a thrill of horror from one end of the world to another;
+but the error which condemns three-fourths of mankind to misery, an
+error as purely human as that of any tribunal, is attributed by us to
+some inaccessible, implacable power.  If the child of some honest man
+we know be born blind, imbecile, or deformed, we will seek everywhere,
+even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some
+God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor--a
+calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of
+degrading a creature's destiny--we do not dream of interrogating the
+God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires.
+Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas,
+for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge.
+Before we complain of Nature's indifference, or ask at her hands an
+equity she does not possess, let us attack the iniquity that dwells in
+the homes of men; and when this has been swept away, we shall find that
+the part we assign to the injustice of fate will be less by fully
+two-thirds.  And the benefit to mankind would be far more considerable
+than if it lay in our power to guide the storm or govern the heat and
+the cold, to direct the course of disease or the avalanche, or contrive
+that the sea should display an intelligent regard to our virtues and
+secret intentions.  For indeed the poor far exceed in number those who
+fall victims to shipwreck or material accident, just as far more
+disease is due to material wretchedness than to the caprice of our
+organism, or to the hostility of the elements.
+
+
+11
+
+And for all that, we love justice.  We live, it is true, in the midst
+of a great injustice; but we have only recently acquired this
+knowledge, and we still grope for a remedy.  Injustice dates such a
+long way back; the idea of God, of destiny, of Nature's mysterious
+decrees, had been so closely and intimately associated with it, it is
+still so deeply entangled with most of the unjust forces of the
+universe, that it was but yesterday that we commenced the endeavour to
+isolate such elements contained within it as are purely human.  And if
+we succeed; if we can distinguish them, and separate them for all time
+from those upon which we have no power, justice will gain more than by
+all that the researches of man have discovered hitherto.  For indeed in
+this social injustice of ours, it is not the human part that is capable
+of arresting our passion for equity; it is the part that a great number
+of men still attribute to a god, to a kind of fatality, or to imaginary
+laws of Nature.
+
+
+12
+
+This last inactive part shrinks every day.  Nor is this because the
+mystery of justice is about to disappear.  A mystery rarely disappears;
+as a rule, it only shifts its ground.  But it is often most important
+and most desirable that we should bring about this change of abode.  It
+may be said that two or three such changes almost stand for the whole
+progress of human thought: the dislodgment of two or three mysteries
+from a place where they did harm, and their transference to a place
+where they become inoffensive and capable of doing good.  Sometimes
+even, there is no need for the mystery to change its place; we have
+only to identify it under another name.  What was once called "the
+gods," we now term "life."  And if life be as inexplicable as were the
+gods, we are at least the gainers to the extent that none has the right
+to speak or do wrong in its name.  The aim of human thought can
+scarcely be to destroy mystery, or lessen it, for that seems
+impossible.  We may be sure that the same quantity of mystery will ever
+enwrap the world, since it is the quality of the world, as of mystery,
+to be infinite.  But honest human thought will seek above all to
+determine what are the veritable irreducible mysteries.  It will
+endeavour to strip them of all that does not belong to them, that is
+not truly theirs, of the additions made by our errors, our fears, and
+our falsehoods.  And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will the
+ocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mystery
+of life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mystery
+that has been called "the primitive accident," or the "perhaps
+unknowable essence of reality."
+
+
+13
+
+Where had men conceived the mystery of justice to lodge?  It pervaded
+the world.  At one moment it was supposed to rest in the hands of the
+gods, at another it engulfed and mastered the gods themselves.  It had
+been imagined everywhere except in man.  It had dwelt in the sky, it
+had lurked behind rocks, it had governed the air and the sea, it had
+peopled an inaccessible universe.  Then at last we peered into its
+imaginary retreats, we pressed close and examined; and its throne of
+clouds tottered, it faded away; but at the very moment we believed it
+had ceased to be, behold it reappeared, and raised its head once more
+in the very depths of our heart; and yet another mystery had sought
+refuge in man, and embodied itself in him.  For it is in ourselves that
+the mysteries we seek to destroy almost invariably find their last
+shelter and their most fitting abode, the home which they had forsaken,
+in the wildness of youth, to voyage through space; as it is in
+ourselves that we must learn to meet and to question them.  And truly
+it is no less wonderful, no less inexplicable, that man should have in
+his heart an immutable instinct of justice, than it was wonderful and
+inexplicable that the gods should be just, or the forces of the
+universe.  It is as difficult to account for the essence of our memory,
+our will, or intelligence, as it was to account for the memory, will,
+or intelligence of the invisible powers or laws of Nature; and if, in
+order to enhance our curiosity, we have need of the unknown or
+unknowable; if, in order to maintain our ardour, we require mystery or
+the infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown and
+unknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed;
+nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, or
+lessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritable
+mysteries.  Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heart
+of man.  But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that is
+certain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the one
+that is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful one from
+without.  Mystery for mystery, let us no longer parley with the
+messengers, but with the sovereign who sent them; no longer question
+those feeble ones who silently vanish at our first inquiry, but rather
+look into our heart, where are both question and answer; the answer
+which it has forgotten, but, some day perhaps, shall remember.
+
+
+14
+
+Then we shall be able to solve more than one disconcerting problem as
+to the distribution, often very equitable, of reward and punishment
+among men.  And by this we do not mean only the inward, moral reward
+and punishment, but also the reward and punishment that are visible and
+wholly material.  There was some measure of reason in the belief held
+by mankind from its very origin, that justice penetrates, animates as
+it were, every object of this world in which we live.  This belief has
+not been explained away by the fact that our great moral laws have been
+forcibly adapted to the great laws of life and matter.  There is more
+beyond.  We cannot refer all things, in all circumstances, to a simple
+relation of cause and effect between crime and punishment.  There is
+often a moral element also; and though events have not placed it there,
+though it is we alone who have created it, it is not the less powerful
+and real.  Of a physical justice, properly so called, we deny the
+existence; but besides the wholly inward psychologic justice, to which
+we shall soon refer, there is also a psychologic justice which is in
+constant communication with the physical world; and it is this justice
+that we attribute to we know not what invisible and universal
+principle.  And while it is wrong to credit Nature with moral
+intentions, and to allow our actions to be governed by fear of
+punishment or hope of reward that she may have in store for us, this
+does not imply that, even materially, there is no reward for good, or
+punishment for evil.  Such reward and punishment undoubtedly exist, but
+they issue not from whence we imagine; and in believing that they come
+from an inaccessible spot, that they master us, judge us, and
+consequently dispense us from judging ourselves, we commit the most
+dangerous of errors; for none has a greater influence upon our manner
+of defending ourselves against misfortune, or of setting forth to
+attempt the legitimate conquest of happiness.
+
+
+15
+
+Such justice as we actually discover in Nature does not issue from her,
+but from ourselves, who have unconsciously placed it there, through
+becoming one with events, animating them and adapting them to our uses.
+Accident, disease, the thunderbolt, which strike to right or to left,
+without apparent reason or warning, wholly indifferent as to what our
+thoughts may be, are not the only elements in our life.  There are
+other, and far more frequent, cases when we have direct influence on
+the things and persons around us, and invest these with our own
+personality; cases when the forces of nature become the instruments of
+our thoughts, which, when unjust, will make improper use of them,
+thereby calling forth retaliation and inviting punishment and disaster.
+But in Nature there is no moral reaction; for this emanates from our
+own thoughts or the thoughts of other men.  It is not in things, but in
+us, that the justice of things resides.  It is our moral condition that
+modifies our conduct towards the external world; and if we find this
+antagonistic, it is because we are at war with ourselves, with the
+essential laws of our mind and our heart.  The attitude of Nature
+towards us is uninfluenced by the justice or injustice of our
+intentions; and yet these will almost invariably govern our attitude
+towards Nature.  Here once more, as in the case of social justice, we
+ascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible, eternal, fatal
+principle, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say that justice,
+heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to punish or
+to avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish man, it
+is human nature that rises in revolt, and human justice that avenges.
+
+
+16
+
+In a former essay I referred to Napoleon's three crowning acts of
+injustice: the three celebrated crimes that were so fatally unjust to
+his own fortune.  The first was the murder of the Duc d'Enghien,
+condemned by order, without trial or proof, and executed in the
+trenches of Vincennes; an assassination that sowed insatiable hatred
+and vengeance in the path of the guilty dictator.  Then the detestable
+intrigues whereby he lured the too trustful, easy-going Bourbons to
+Bayonne, that he might rob them of their hereditary crown; and the
+horrible war that ensued, a war that cost the lives of three hundred
+thousand men, swallowed up all the morality and energy of the empire,
+most of its prestige, almost all its convictions, almost all the
+devotion it inspired, and engulfed its prosperous destiny.  And finally
+the frightful, unpardonable Russian campaign, wherein his fortune came
+at last to utter shipwreck amid the ice of the Berezina and the
+snow-bound Polish steppes.
+
+"These prodigious catastrophes," I said, "had numberless causes; but
+when we have slowly traced our way through all the more or less
+unforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change in
+Napoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, and
+violence which this genius committed; when we have seen how
+deliberately he brought disaster to his smiling fortune, may we not
+almost believe that what we behold, standing erect at the very
+fountain-head of calamity, is no other than the silent shadow of
+misunderstood human justice?  Human justice, wherein there is nothing
+supernatural, nothing very mysterious, but built up of many thousand
+very real little incidents, many thousand falsehoods, many thousand
+little offences of which each one gave rise to a corresponding act of
+retaliation--human justice, and not a power that suddenly, at some
+tragic moment, leaps forth like Minerva of old, fully armed, from the
+formidable, despotic brow of destiny.  In all this there is only one
+thing of mystery, and that is the eternal presence of human justice;
+but we are aware that the nature of man is very mysterious.  Let us in
+the meanwhile ponder this mystery.  It is the most certain of all, it
+is the profoundest, it is the most helpful, it is the only one that
+will never paralyse our energy for good  And though that patient,
+vigilant shadow be not as clearly defined in every life as it was in
+Napoleon's, though justice be not always as active or as undeniable, we
+shall none the less do wisely to study a case like this whenever
+opportunity offers.  It will at least give rise to doubt within us, it
+will stimulate inquiry; and these things are worth far more than the
+idle, short-sighted affirmation or denial that we so often permit
+ourselves: for in all questions of this kind our endeavour should not
+be to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to create a certain grave,
+courageous respect for all that yet remains unexplained in the actions
+of men, in their subjection to what appear to be general laws, and in
+the results that ensue."
+
+
+17
+
+Let us now try to discover in what way this great mystery of justice
+does truly and inevitably work itself out within us.  The heart of him
+who has committed an unjust act becomes the scene of ineffaceable
+drama, the paramount drama of human nature; and it becomes the more
+dangerous, and deadlier, in the degree of the man's greatness and
+knowledge.
+
+A Napoleon will say to himself, at such troubled moments, that the
+morality of a great life cannot be as simple as that of an ordinary
+one, and that an active, powerful will has rights which the feeble,
+inert will cannot claim.  He will hold that he may the more
+legitimately sweep aside certain conscientious scruples, inasmuch as it
+is not ignorance or weakness that causes him to disregard these, but
+the fact that he views them from a standpoint higher than that of the
+majority of men; and further, that his aim being great and glorious,
+this passing deliberate callousness of his is therefore truly a victory
+won by his strength and his intellect, since there can be no danger in
+doing wrong when it is done by one who does it knowingly, and has his
+very good reason.  All this, however, does not for a moment delude that
+which lies deepest within us.  An act of injustice must always shake
+the confidence a man had in himself and his destiny; at a given moment,
+and that generally of the gravest, he has ceased to rely upon himself
+alone; and this will not be forgotten, nor will he ever again be wholly
+himself.  He has confused, and probably corrupted, his fortune by the
+introduction of strange powers.  He has lost the exact sense of his
+personality and of the force that is in him.  He can no longer clearly
+distinguish between what is his own and comes from himself, and what he
+is constantly borrowing from the pernicious collaborators whom his
+weakness has summoned.  He has ceased to be the general who has none
+but disciplined soldiers in the army of his thoughts; he becomes the
+usurping chief around whom are only accomplices.  He has forsworn the
+dignity of the man who will have none of the glory at which his heart
+can only smile as sadly as an ardent, unhappy lover will smile at a
+faithless mistress.
+
+He who is truly strong will examine with eager care the praise and
+advantages that his actions have won for him, and will silently reject
+whatever oversteps a certain line that he has drawn in his
+consciousness.  And the stronger he is, the more nearly will this line
+approach the one that has already been drawn by the secret truth that
+lies at the bottom of all things.  An act of injustice is almost always
+a confession of weakness; and very few such confessions are needed to
+reveal to the enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul.  He who
+commits an unjust deed that he may gain some measure of glory, or
+preserve the little glory he has, does but admit that what he desires
+or what he possesses is beyond his deserving, and that the part he has
+sought to play exceeds his powers of loyal fulfilment.  And if,
+notwithstanding all, he persist in his endeavour, his life will soon be
+beset by falsehoods, errors, and phantoms.
+
+And at last, after a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable
+self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement
+only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and
+sustain us.  For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only
+our past that can come to us, in our moments of doubt, and say: "Since
+you were able to do that thing, it shall lie in your power to do this
+thing also.  When that danger confronted you, when that terrible grief
+laid you prostrate, you had faith in yourself, and you conquered.  The
+conditions to-day are the same; do you but preserve your faith in
+yourself, and your star will be constant."  But what reply shall we
+make if our past can only whisper: "Your success has been solely due to
+injustice and falsehood, wherefore it behoves you once more to deceive
+and to lie"?  No man cares to let his eyes rest on his acts of
+disloyalty, weakness, or treachery; and all the events of bygone days
+which we cannot contemplate calmly and peacefully, with satisfaction
+and confidence, trouble and restrict the horizon which the days that
+are not yet are forming far away.  It is only a prolonged survey of the
+past that can give to the eye the strength it needs in order to sound
+the future.
+
+
+18
+
+No, it was not the inherent justice of things that punished Napoleon
+for his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for our
+own in a less startling, but not less painful, fashion.  Nor was it an
+unyielding, incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the very
+vault of heaven."  We are punished because our entire moral being, our
+mind no less than our character, is incapable of living and acting
+except in justice.  Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we are
+carried, as it were, into a planet of which we know nothing, where the
+ground slips from under our feet, and all things disconcert us; for
+while the humblest intellect feels itself at home in justice, and can
+readily foretell the consequences of every just act, the most profound
+and penetrating mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself
+has created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue.
+The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has
+at heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be stranger
+still should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes:
+for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect,
+creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same
+time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient
+barriers of instinct.  The moment we cross the primitive frontier of
+equity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to a
+hundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels.  If
+justice be in us we may march along boldly, for there are certain
+things to which the basest cannot be false; but if injustice possess us
+we must beware of the justest of men, for there are things to which
+even these cannot remain faithful.  As our physical organism was
+devised for existence in the atmosphere of our globe, so is our moral
+organism devised for existence in justice.  Every faculty craves for
+it, and is more intimately bound up with it than with the laws of
+gravitation, of light or heat; and to throw ourselves into injustice is
+to plunge headlong into the hostile and the unknown.  All that is in us
+has been placed there with a view to justice; all things tend thither
+and urge us towards it: whereas, when we harbour injustice, we battle
+against our own strength; and at last, at the hour of inevitable
+punishment, when, prostrate, weeping and penitent, we recognise that
+events, the sky, the universe, the invisible are all in rebellion, all
+justly in league against us, then may we truly say, not that these are,
+or ever have been, just, but that we, notwithstanding ourselves, have
+contrived to remain just even in our injustice.
+
+
+19
+
+We affirm that Nature is absolutely indifferent to our morality, and
+that were this morality to command us to kill our neighbour, or to do
+him the utmost possible harm, Nature would aid us in this no less than
+in our endeavour to comfort or serve him.  She as often would seem to
+reward us for having made him suffer as for our kindness towards him.
+Does this warrant the inference that Nature has no morality--using the
+word in its most limited sense as meaning the logical, inevitable
+subordination of the means to the accomplishment of a general mission?
+This is a question to which we must not too hastily reply.  We know
+nothing of Nature's aim, or even whether she have an aim.  We know
+nothing of her consciousness, or whether she have a consciousness; of
+her thoughts, or whether she think at all.  It is with her deeds and
+her manner of doing that we are solely concerned.  And in these we find
+the same contradiction between our morality and Nature's mode of action
+as exists between our consciousness and the instincts that Nature has
+planted within us.  For this consciousness, though in ultimate analysis
+due to her also, has nevertheless been formed by ourselves, and, basing
+itself upon the loftiest human morality, offers an ever stronger
+opposition to the desires of instinct.  Were we to listen only to these
+last, we should act in all things like Nature, which would invariably
+seem to justify the triumph of the stronger, the victory of the least
+scrupulous and best equipped; and this in the midst of the most
+inexcusable wars, the most flagrant acts of injustice or cruelty.  Our
+one object would be our own personal triumph; nor should we pay the
+least heed to the rights or sufferings of our victims, to their
+innocence or beauty, moral or intellectual superiority.  But, in that
+case, why has Nature placed within us a consciousness and a sense of
+justice that have prevented us from desiring those things that she
+desires?  Or is it we ourselves who have placed them there?  Are we
+capable of deriving from within us something that is not in Nature; are
+we capable of giving abnormal development to a force that opposes her
+force; and if we possess this power, must not Nature have reasons of
+her own for permitting us to possess it?  Why should there be only in
+us, and nowhere else in the world, these two irreconcilable tendencies,
+that in every man are incessantly at strife, and alternately
+victorious?  Would one have been dangerous without the other?  Would it
+have overstepped its goal, perhaps; would the desire for conquest,
+unchecked by the sense of justice, have led to annihilation, as the
+sense of justice without the desire for conquest might have lured us to
+inertia?  Which of these two tendencies is the more natural and
+necessary, which is the narrower and which the vaster, which is
+provisional and which eternal?  Where shall we learn which one we
+should combat and which one encourage?  Ought we to conform to the law
+that is incontestably the more general, or should we cherish in our
+heart a law that is evidently exceptional?  Are there circumstances
+under which we have the right to go forth in search of the apparent
+ideal of life?  Is it our duty to follow the morality of the species or
+race, which seems irresistible to us, being one of the visible sides of
+Nature's obscure and unknown intentions; or is it essential that the
+individual should maintain and develop within him a morality entirely
+opposed to that of the race or species whereof he forms part?
+
+
+20
+
+The truth is that the question which confronts us here is only another
+form of the one which lies at the root of evolutionary morality, and is
+probably scientifically unsolvable.  Evolutionary morality bases itself
+on the justice of Nature--though it dare not speak out the word; on the
+justice of Nature, which imposes upon each individual the good or evil
+consequences of his own character and his own actions.  But when, on
+the other hand, it is necessary for evolutionary morality to justify
+actions which, although intrinsically unjust, are necessary for the
+prosperity of the species, it falls back upon what it reluctantly terms
+Nature's indifference or injustice.  Here we have two unknown aims,
+that of humanity and that of Nature; and these, wrapped as they are in
+a mystery that may some day perhaps pass away, would seem to be
+irreconcilable in our mind.  Essentially, all these questions resolve
+themselves into one, which is of the utmost importance to our
+contemporary morality.  The race would appear to be becoming conscious,
+prematurely it may be, and perhaps disastrously, not, we will say, of
+its rights, for that problem is still in suspense, but of the fact that
+morality does not enter into certain actions that go to make history.
+
+This disquieting consciousness would seem to be slowly invading our
+individual life.  Thrice, and more or less in the course of one year,
+has this question confronted us, and assumed vast proportions: in the
+matter of America's crushing defeat of Spain (although here the issues
+were confused, for the Spaniards, besides their present blunders, had
+been guilty of so many acts of injustice in the past, that the problem
+becomes very involved); in the case of an innocent man sacrificed to
+the preponderating interests of his country; and in the iniquitous war
+of the Transvaal.  It is true that the phenomenon is not altogether
+without precedent.  Man has always endeavoured to justify his
+injustice; and when human justice offered him no excuse or pretext, he
+found in the will of the gods a law superior to the justice of man.
+But our excuse or pretext of to-day is fraught with the more peril to
+our morality inasmuch as it reposes on a law, or at least a habit, of
+Nature, that is far more real, more incontestable and universal than
+the will of an ephemeral and local god.
+
+Which shall prevail in the end, justice or force?  Does force contain
+an unknown justice that will absorb our human justice, or is the
+impulse of justice within us, that would seem to resist blind force,
+actually no more than a devious emanation from that force, tending to
+the same end; and is it only the point of deviation that escapes us?
+This is not a question that we can answer, we who ourselves form part
+of the mystery we seek to solve; the reply could come only from one who
+might be gazing upon us from the heights of another world: one who
+should have learned the aim of the universe and the destiny of man.  In
+the meanwhile, if we say that Nature is right, we say that the instinct
+of justice, which she has placed in us, and which therefore also is
+nature, is wrong; whereas if we approve this instinct, our approval is
+necessarily derived from the exercise of the very faculty that is
+called in question.
+
+
+21
+
+That is true; but it is no less true that the endeavour to sum up the
+world in a syllogism is one of the oldest and vainest habits of man.
+In the region of the unknown and unknowable, logic-chopping has its
+perils; and in the present case all our doubts would seem to arise from
+another hazardous syllogism.  We tell ourselves--boldly at times, but
+more often in a whisper--that we are Nature's children, and bound
+therefore in all things to conform to her laws and copy her example.
+And since Nature regards justice with indifference, since she has
+another aim, which is the sustaining, the renewing, the incessant
+development of life, it follows. . . .  So far we have not formulated
+the conclusion, or, at least, this conclusion has not yet openly dared
+to force its way into our morality; but, although its influence has
+hitherto only been remotely felt in that familiar sphere which includes
+our relations, our friends, and our immediate surroundings, it is
+slowly penetrating into the vast and desolate region whither we
+relegate all those whom we know not and see not, who for us have no
+name.  It is already to be found at the root of many of our actions; it
+has entered our politics, our industry, our commerce; indeed it affects
+almost all we do from the moment we emerge from the narrow circle of
+our domestic hearth, the only place for the majority of men where a
+little veritable justice is still to be found, a little benevolence, a
+little love.  It will call itself economic or social law, evolution,
+competition, struggle for life; it will masquerade under a thousand
+names, forever perpetrating the selfsame wrong.  And yet nothing can be
+less legitimate than such a conclusion.  Apart from the fact that we
+might with equal justification reverse the syllogism, and cause it to
+declare that there must be a certain justice in Nature, since we, her
+children, are just, we need only consider it as it stands to realise
+how doubtful and contestable is at least one of its premisses.
+
+We have seen in the preceding chapters that Nature does not appear to
+be just from our point of view; but we have absolutely no means of
+judging whether she be not just from her own.  The fact that she pays
+no heed to the morality of our actions does not warrant the inference
+that she has no morality, or that ours is the only one there can be.
+We are entitled to say that she is indifferent as to whether our
+intentions be good or evil, but have not the right to conclude that she
+has therefore no morality and no equity; for that would be tantamount
+to affirming that there are no more mysteries or secrets, and that we
+know all the laws of the universe, its origin and its end.  Her mode of
+action is different from our own, but, I say it once more, we know not
+what her reason may be for acting in this different fashion; and we
+have no right to imitate what seems to us iniquitous and cruel, so long
+as we have no precise knowledge of the profound and salutary reasons
+that may underlie such action.  What is the aim of Nature?  Whither do
+the worlds tend that stretch across eternity?  Where does consciousness
+begin, and is its only form that which it assumes in ourselves?  At
+what point do physical laws become moral laws?  Is life unintelligent?
+Have we sounded all the depths of Nature, and is it only in our
+cerebro-spinal system that she becomes mind?  And finally, what is
+justice when viewed from other heights?  Is the intention necessarily
+at its centre; and can no regions exist where intentions no longer
+shall count?  We should have to answer these questions, and many
+others, before we could tell whether Nature be just or unjust from the
+point of view of masses whose vastness corresponds to her own.  She
+disposes of a future, a space, of which we can form no conception; and
+in these there exists, it may be, a justice proportioned to her
+duration, to her extent and aim, even as our own instinct of justice is
+proportioned to the duration and narrow circle of our own life.  The
+wrong that she may for centuries commit she has centuries wherein to
+repair; but we, who have only a few days before us, what right have we
+to imitate what our eye cannot see, understand, or follow?  By what
+standard are we to judge her, if we look away from the passing hour?
+For instance, considering only the imperceptible speck that we form in
+the worlds, and disregarding the immensity that surrounds us, we are
+wholly ignorant of all that concerns our possible life beyond the tomb;
+and we forget that, in the present state of our knowledge, nothing
+authorises us to affirm that there may not be a kind of more or less
+conscious, more or less responsible after-life, that shall in no way
+depend on the decisions of an external will.  He would indeed be rash
+who should venture to maintain that nothing survives, either in us or
+in others, of the efforts of our good intentions and the acquirements
+of our mind.  It may be--and serious experiments, though they do not
+seem to prove the phenomenon, may still allow us to class it among
+scientific possibilities--it may be that a part of our personality, of
+our nervous force, may escape dissolution.  How vast a future would
+then be thrown open to the laws that unite cause to effect, and that
+always end by creating justice when they come into contact with the
+human soul, and have centuries before them!  Let us not forget that
+Nature at least is logical, even though we call her unjust; and were we
+to resolve on injustice, our difficulty would be that we must also be
+logical; and when logic comes into touch with our thoughts and our
+feelings, our intentions and passions, what is there that
+differentiates it from justice?
+
+
+22
+
+Let us form no too hasty conclusion; too many points are still
+uncertain.  Should we seek to imitate what we term the injustice of
+Nature, we would run the risk of imitating and fostering only the
+injustice that is in ourselves.  When we say that Nature is unjust, we
+are in effect complaining of her indifference to our own little
+virtues, our own little intentions, our own little deeds of heroism;
+and it is our vanity, far more than our sense of equity, that considers
+itself aggrieved.  Our morality is proportioned to our stature and our
+restricted destiny; nor have we the right to forsake it because it is
+not on the scale of the immensity and infinite destiny of the universe.
+
+And further, should it even be proved that Nature is unjust at all
+points, the other question remains intact: whether the command be laid
+upon man to follow Nature in her injustice.  Here we shall do well to
+let our own consciousness speak, rather than listen to a voice so
+formidable that we hear not a word it utters, and are not even certain
+whether words there be.  Reason and instinct tell us that it is right
+to follow the counsels of Nature; but they tell us also that we should
+not follow those counsels when they clash with another instinct within
+us, one that is no less profound: the instinct of the just and the
+unjust.  And if instincts do indeed draw very near to the truth of
+Nature, and must be respected by us in the degree of the force that is
+in them, this one is perhaps the strongest of all, for it has struggled
+alone against all the others combined, and still persists within us.
+Nor is this the hour to reject it.  Until other certitudes reach us, it
+behoves us, who are men, to continue just in the human way and the
+human sphere.  We do not see far enough, or clearly enough, to be just
+in another sphere.  Let us not venture into a kind of abyss, out of
+which races and peoples to come may perhaps find a passage, but
+whereinto man, in so far as he is man, must not seek to penetrate.  The
+injustice of Nature ends by becoming justice for the race; she has time
+before her, she can wait, her injustice is of her girth.  But for us it
+is too overwhelming, and our days are too few.  Let us be satisfied
+that force should reign in the universe, but equity in our heart.
+Though the race be irresistibly, and perhaps justly, unjust, though
+even the crowd appear possessed of rights denied to the isolated man,
+and commit on occasions great, inevitable, and salutary crimes, it is
+still the duty of each individual of the race, of every member of the
+crowd, to remain just, while ever adding to and sustaining the
+consciousness within him.  Nor shall we be entitled to abandon this
+duty till all the reasons of the great apparent injustice be known to
+us; and those that are given us now, preservation of the species,
+reproduction and selection of the strongest, ablest, "fittest," are not
+sufficient to warrant so frightful a change.  Let each one try by all
+means to become the strongest, most skilful, the best adapted to the
+necessities of the life that he cannot transform; but, so far, the
+qualities that shall enable him to conquer, that shall give the fullest
+play to his moral power and his intelligence, and shall truly make him
+the happiest, most skilful, the strongest, and "fittest"--these
+qualities are precisely the ones that are the most human, the most
+honourable, and the most just.
+
+
+23
+
+"Within me there is more," runs the fine device inscribed on the beams
+and pediment of an old patrician mansion at Bruges, which every
+traveller visits; filling a corner of one of those tender and
+melancholy quays, that are as forlorn and lifeless as though they
+existed only on canvas.  And so too might man exclaim, "Within me there
+is more;" every law of morality, every intelligible mystery.  There may
+be many others, above us and below us; but if these are to remain for
+ever unknown, they become for us as though they were not; and should
+their existence one day be revealed to us; it can only be because they
+already are in us, already are ours.  "Within me there is more;" and we
+are entitled to add, perhaps, "I have nothing to fear from that which
+is in me."
+
+This much at least is certain, that the one active, inhabited region of
+the mystery of justice is to be found within ourselves.  Other regions
+lack consistency; they are probably imaginary, and must inevitably be
+deserted and sterile.  They may have furnished mankind with illusions
+that served some purpose, but not always without doing harm; and though
+we may scarcely be entitled to demand that all illusions should be
+destroyed, they should at least not be too manifestly opposed to our
+conception of the universe.  To-day we seek in all things the illusion
+of truth.  It is not the last, perhaps, or the best, or the only one
+possible; but it is the one which we at present regard as the most
+honourable and the most necessary.  Let us limit ourselves therefore to
+recognising the admirable love of justice and truth that exists in the
+heart of man.  Proceeding thus, yielding admiration only where it is
+incontestably due, we shall gradually acquire some knowledge of this
+passion, which is the distinguishing note of man; and one thing, most
+important of all, we shall most undoubtedly learn--the means whereby we
+can purify it, and still further increase it.  As we observe its
+incessant activity in the depths of our heart, the only temple where it
+can truly be active: as we watch it blending with all that we think,
+and feel, and do, we shall quickly discover which are the things that
+throw light upon it, and which those that plunge it in darkness; which
+are the things that guide it, and which those that lead it astray; we
+shall learn what nourishes it and what atrophies, what defends and what
+attacks.
+
+Is justice no more than the human instinct of preservation and defence?
+Is it the purest product of our reason; or rather to be regarded as
+composed of a number of those sentimental forces which so often are
+right, though directly opposed to our reason--forces that in themselves
+are a kind of unconscious, vaster reason, to which our conscious reason
+invariably accords its startled approval when it has reached the
+heights whence those kindly feelings long had beheld what itself was
+unable to see?  Is justice dependent on intellect, or rather on
+character?  Questions, these, that are perhaps not idle if we indeed
+would know what steps we must take to invest with all its radiance and
+all its power the love of justice that is the central jewel of the
+human soul.  All men love justice, but not with the same ardent,
+fierce, and exclusive love; nor have they all the same scruples, the
+same sensitiveness, or the same deep conviction.  We meet people of
+highly developed intellect in whom the sense of what is just and unjust
+is yet infinitely less delicate, less clearly marked, than in others
+whose intellect would seem to be mediocre; for here a great part is
+played by that little-known, ill-defined side of ourselves that we term
+the character.  And yet it is difficult to tell how much more or less
+unconscious intellect must of necessity go with the character that is
+unaffectedly honest.  The point before us, however, is to learn how
+best to illumine, and increase within us, our desire for justice; and
+it is certain that, at the start, our character is less directly
+influenced by the desire for justice than is our intellect, the
+development of which this desire in a large measure controls; and the
+co-operation of the intellect, which recognises and encourages our good
+intention, is necessary for this intention to penetrate into, and
+mould, our character.  That portion of our love of justice, therefore,
+which depends on our character, will benefit by its passage through the
+intellect; for in proportion as the intellect rises, and acquires
+enlightenment, will it succeed in mastering, enlightening, and
+transforming our instincts and our feelings.
+
+But let us no longer believe that this love must be sought in a kind of
+superhuman, and often inhuman, infinite.  None of the grandeur and
+beauty that this infinite may possess would fall to its portion; it
+would only be incoherent, inactive, and vague.  Whereas by seeking it
+in ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening to
+it, marking how it profits by every acquirement of our mind, every joy
+and sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do to
+purify and increase it.
+
+
+24
+
+Our task within these limits will be sufficiently long and mysterious.
+To increase and purify within us the desire for justice: how shall this
+thing be done?  We have some vague conception of the ideal that we
+would approach; but how changeable still, and illusory, is this ideal!
+It is lessened by all that is still unknown to us in the universe, by
+all that we do not perceive or perceive incompletely, by all that we
+question too superficially.  It is hedged round by the most insidious
+dangers; it falls victim to the strangest oblivion, the most
+inconceivable blunders.  Of all our ideals it is the one that we should
+watch with the greatest care and anxiety, with the most passionate,
+pious eagerness and solicitude.  What seems irreproachably just to us
+at the moment is probably the merest fraction of what would seem just
+could we shift our point of view.  We need only compare what we were
+doing yesterday with what we do to-day; and what we do to-day would
+appear full of faults against equity, were it granted to us to rise
+still higher, and compare it with what we shall do to-morrow.  There
+needs but a passing event, a thought that uses, a duty to ourselves
+that takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenly
+made clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totter
+and be transformed.  Slow as our advance may have been, we still should
+find it impossible to begin life over again in the midst of many a
+sorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement to
+which we unconsciously gave rise; and yet, when these things came into
+being around us, we appeared to be in the right, and did not consider
+ourselves unjust.  And even so are we convinced to-day of our excellent
+intentions, even so do we tell ourselves that we are the cause if no
+suffering and no tears, that we stay not a murmur of happiness, shorten
+no moment of peace or of love; and it may be that there passes,
+unperceived of us, to our right or our left, an illimitable injustice
+that spreads over three-fourths of our life.
+
+
+25
+
+I chanced to-day to take up a copy of the "Arabian Nights," in the very
+remarkable translation recently published by Dr. Mardrus; and I
+marvelled at the extraordinary picture it gives of the ancient,
+long-vanished civilisations.  Not in the Odyssey or the Bible, in
+Xenophon or Plutarch, could their teaching be more clearly set forth.
+There is one story that the Sultana Schahrazade tells--it is one of the
+very finest the volume contains--that reveals a life as pure and as
+admirable as mankind ever has known; a life replete with beauty,
+happiness, and love; spontaneous and vivid, intelligent, nourishing,
+and refined; an abundant life that, to a certain point, comes as near
+truth as a life well can.  It is, in many respects, almost as perfect
+in its moral as in its material civilisation.  And the pillars on which
+this incomparable structure of happiness rests--like pillars of light
+supporting the light--are formed of ideas of justice so exquisitely
+delicate, counsels of wisdom so deeply penetrating, that we of to-day,
+being less fine in grain, less eager and buoyant, have lost the power
+to formulate, or to discern, them.  And for all that, this abode of
+felicity, that harbours a moral life so active and vigorous, so
+graciously grave, so noble--this palace, wherein the purest and holiest
+wisdom governs the pleasures of rejoicing mankind, is in its entirety
+based on so great an injustice, is enclosed by so vast, so profound, so
+frightful an iniquity, that the wretchedest man of us all would shrink
+in dismay from its glittering, gem-bestrewn threshold.  But of this
+iniquity they who linger in that marvellous dwelling have not the
+remotest suspicion.  It would seem that they never draw near to a
+window; or that, should one by some chance fly open and reveal to their
+sorrowful gaze the misery strewn in the midst of the revels and
+feasting, they still would be blind to the crime which was infinitely
+more revolting, infinitely more monstrous, than the most appalling
+poverty--the crime of the slavery, and the even more terrible
+degradation, of their women.  For these, however exalted their
+position, and at the moment even when they are speaking to the men
+round about them of goodness and justice--when they are reminding them
+of their most touching and generous duties--these women never are more
+than objects of pleasure, to be bought or sold, or given away in a
+moment of gratitude, ostentation, or drunkenness, to any barbarous or
+hideous master.
+
+
+26
+
+"They tell us," says the beautiful slave Nozhatan, as, concealed behind
+a curtain of silk and of pearls, she speaks to Prince Sharkan and the
+wise men of the kingdom; "they tell us that the Khalif Omar set forth
+one night, in the company of the venerable Aslam Abou-Zeid, and that he
+beheld, far away from his palace, a fire that was burning; and drew
+near, as he thought that his presence might perhaps be of service.  And
+he saw a poor woman who was kindling wood underneath a cauldron; and by
+her side were two little wretched children, groaning most piteously.
+And Omar said, 'Peace unto thee, O woman!  What dost thou here, alone
+in the night and the cold?'  And she answered, 'Lord, I am making this
+water to boil, that my children may drink, who perish of hunger and
+cold; but for the misery we have to bear Allah will surely one day ask
+reckoning of Omar the Khalif.'  And the Khalif, who was in disguise,
+was much moved, and he said to her, 'But dost thou think, O woman, that
+Omar can know of thy wretchedness, since he does not relieve it?'  And
+she answered, 'Wherefore then is Omar the Khalif, if he be unaware of
+the misery of his people and of each one of his subjects?'  Then the
+Khalif was silent, and he said to Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'Let us go quickly
+from hence.'  And he hastened until he had reached the storehouse of
+his kitchens, and he entered therein and drew forth a sack of flour
+from the midst of the other sacks, and also a jar that was filled to
+the brim with sheep-fat, and he said to Abou-Zeid, 'O Abou-Zeid, help
+thou me to charge these on my back.'  But Abou-Zeid refused, and he
+cried, 'Suffer that I carry them on my back, O Commander of the
+Faithful.'  And Omar said calmly to him, 'Wilt thou also, O Abou-Zeid,
+bear the weight of my sins on the day of resurrection?'  And Abou-Zeid
+was obliged to lay the jar filled with fat, and the sack of flour, on
+the Khalif's back.  And Omar hastened, thus laden, until he had once
+again reached the poor woman; and he took of the flour, and he took of
+the fat, and placed these in the cauldron, over the fire; and with his
+own hands did he then get ready the food, and he quickened the fire
+with his breath; and as he bent over, his beard being long, the smoke
+from the wood forced its way through the beard of the Khalif.  And at
+last, when the food was prepared, Omar offered it unto the woman and
+the two little children; and with his breath did he cool the food while
+they ate their fill.  Then he left them the sack of flour and the jar
+of fat; and he went on his way, and said unto Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'O
+Abou-Zeid, the light from this fire I have seen to-day has enlightened
+me also.'"
+
+
+27
+
+And it is thus that, a little further on, there speaks to a very wise
+king one of five pensive maidens whom this king is invited to purchase:
+"Know thou, O king," she says, "that the most beautiful deed one can do
+is the deed that is disinterested.  And so do they tell us that in
+Israel once were two brothers, and that one asked the other, 'Of all
+the deeds thou hast done, which was the most wicked?'  And his brother
+replied, 'This.  As I passed a hen-roost one day, I stretched out my
+arm and I seized a chicken and strangled it, and then flung it back
+into the roost.  That is the wickedest deed of my life.  And thou, O my
+brother, what is thy wickedest action?'  And he answered, 'That I
+prayed to Allah one day to demand a favour of him.  For it is only when
+the soul is simply uplifted on high that prayer can be beautiful.'"
+
+And one of her companions, captive and slave like herself, also speaks
+to the king: "Learn to know thyself," she says.  "Learn to know
+thyself!  And do thou not act till then.  And do thou then only act in
+accordance with all thy desires, but having great care always that thou
+do not injure thy neighbour."
+
+To this last formula our morality of today has nothing to add; nor can
+we conceive a precept that shall be more complete.  At most we could
+widen somewhat the meaning of the word "neighbour," and raise, render
+somewhat more subtle and more elastic, that of the word "injure."  And
+the book in which these words are found is a monument of horror,
+notwithstanding all its flowers and all its wisdom  a monument of
+horror and blood and tears, of despotism and slavery.  And they who
+pronounce these words are slaves.  A merchant buys them I know not
+where, and sells them to some old hag who teaches them, or causes them
+to be taught, philosophy, poetry, all Eastern sciences, in order that
+one day they may become gifts worthy of a king.  And when their
+education is finished, and their beauty and wisdom call forth the
+admiration of all who approach them, the industrious, prudent old woman
+does indeed offer them to a very wise, very just king.  And when this
+very wise, very just king has taken their virginity from them, and
+seeks other loves, he will probably bestow them (I have forgotten the
+end of this particular story, but it is the invariable destiny of all
+the heroines of these marvellous legends) on his viziers.  And these
+viziers will give them away in exchange for a vase of perfume or a belt
+studded with jewels; or perhaps despatch them to a distant country,
+there to conciliate a powerful protector, or a hideous, but dreaded,
+rival.  And these women, so fully conscious of themselves, whose gaze
+can penetrate so deeply into the consciousness of others--these women
+who forever are pondering the loftiest, grandest problems of justice,
+of the morality of men and of nations--never throw one questioning
+glance on their fate, or for an instant suspect the abominable
+injustice whereof they are the victims.  Nor do those suspect it either
+who listen to them, and love and admire them, and understand them.  And
+we who marvel at this--we who also reflect on justice and virtue, on
+pity and love--are we so sure that they who come after us shall not
+some day find, in our present social condition, a spectacle no less
+disconcerting?
+
+
+28
+
+It is difficult for us to imagine what the ideal justice will be, for
+every thought of ours that tends towards it is clogged by the injustice
+wherein we still live.  Who shall say what new laws or relations will
+stand revealed when the misfortunes and inequalities due to the action
+of man shall have been swept away; when, in accordance with the
+principles of evolutionary morality, each individual shall "reap the
+results, good or bad, of his own nature, and of the consequences that
+ensue from that nature"?  At present things happen otherwise; and we
+may unhesitatingly declare that, as far as the material condition of
+the vast bulk of mankind is concerned, the connection between conduct
+and consequences--to use Spencer's formula--exists only in the most
+ludicrous, arbitrary, and iniquitous fashion.  Is there not some
+audacity in our imagining that our thoughts can possibly be just when
+the body of each one of us is steeped to the neck in injustice?  And
+from this injustice no man is free, be it to his loss or his gain:
+there is not one whose efforts are not disproportionately rewarded,
+receiving too much or too little; not one who is not either advantaged
+or handicapped.  And endeavour as we may to detach our mind from this
+inveterate injustice, this lingering trace of the sub-human morality
+needful for primitive races, it is idle to think that our thoughts can
+be as strenuous, independent, or clear as they might have been had the
+last vestige of this injustice disappeared; it is idle to think that
+they can achieve the same result.  The side of the human mind that can
+attain a region loftier than reality is necessarily timid and
+hesitating.  Human thought is capable of many things; it has, in the
+course of time, brought startling improvement to bear upon what seemed
+immutable in the species or the race.  But even at the moment when it
+is pondering the transformation of which it has caught a distant
+glimpse, the improvement that it so eagerly desires, even then it is
+still thinking, feeling, seeing like the thing that it seeks to alter,
+even then it lies captive beneath the yoke.  All its efforts
+notwithstanding, it is practically that which it would change.  For the
+mind of man lacks the power to forecast the future; it has been formed
+rather to explain, judge, and co-ordinate that which was, to help,
+foster, and make known what already exists, but so far cannot be seen;
+and when it ventures into what is not yet, it will rarely produce
+anything very salutary or very enduring.  And the influence of the
+social condition in which we exist lies heavy upon it.  How can we
+frame a satisfactory idea of justice, and ponder it loyally, with the
+needful tranquillity, when injustice surrounds us on every side?
+Before we can study justice, or speak of it with advantage, it must
+become what it is capable of being: a social force, irreproachable and
+actual.  At present all we can do is to invoke its unconscious, secret,
+and, as it were, almost imperceptible efforts.  We contemplate it from
+the shores of human injustice; never yet has it been granted us to gaze
+on the open sea beneath the illimitable, inviolate sky of a conscience
+without reproach.  If men had at least done all that it was possible
+for them to do in their own domain, they would then have the right to
+go further, and question elsewhere; and their thoughts would probably
+be clearer, were their consciences more at ease.
+
+
+29
+
+And further, a heavy reproach lies on us and chills our ardour whenever
+we try to grow better, to increase our knowledge, our love, our
+forgiveness.  Though we purify our consciousness and ennoble our
+thoughts, though we strive to render life softer and sweeter for those
+who are near us, all our efforts halt at our threshold, and have no
+influence on what lies outside our door; and the moment we leave our
+home we feel that we have done nothing, that there is nothing for us to
+do, and that we are taking part, ourselves notwithstanding, in the
+great anonymous injustice.  Is it not almost ludicrous that we, who
+within our four walls strive to be noble and faithful, pitiful, simple
+and loyal; we whose consciousness balances the nicest, most delicate
+problems, and rejects even the suspicion of a bitter thought, have no
+sooner gone into the street and met faces that are unfamiliar, than, at
+that very instant, and without the least possibility of our having it
+otherwise, all pity, equity, love, should be completely ignored by us?
+What dignity, what loyalty, can there be in this double life, so wise
+and humane, uplifted and thoughtful, this side the threshold, and
+beyond it so callous, so instinctive and pitiless!  For it is enough
+that we should feel the cold a little less than the labourer who passes
+by, that we should be better fed or clad than he, that we should buy
+any object that is not strictly indispensable, and we have
+unconsciously returned, through a thousand byways, to the ruthless act
+of primitive man despoiling his weaker brother.  There is no single
+privilege we enjoy but close investigation will prove it to be the
+result of a perhaps very remote abuse of power, of an unknown violence
+or ruse of long ago; and all these we set in motion again as we sit at
+our table, stroll idly through the town, or lie at night in a bed that
+our own hands have not made.  Nay, what is even the leisure that
+enables us to improve, to grow more compassionate and gentler, to think
+more fraternally of the injustice others endure--what is this, in
+truth, but the ripest fruit of the great injustice?
+
+
+30
+
+These scruples, I know, must not be carried too far: they would either
+induce a spirit of useless revolt, possibly disastrous to the species
+whose mild and mighty sluggishness we are bound to respect; or they
+would lead us back to I know not what mystic, inert renouncement,
+directly opposed to the most evident and unchanging desires of life.
+Life has laws that we call inevitable; but we are already becoming more
+sparing in our use of the word.  And here especially do we note the
+change that has come over the attitude of the wise and upright man.
+Marcus Aurelius--than whom perhaps none ever craved more earnestly for
+justice, or possessed a soul more wisely impressionable, more nobly
+sensitive--Marcus Aurelius never asked himself what might be happening
+outside that admirable little circle of light wherein his virtue and
+consciousness, his divine meekness and piety, had gathered those who
+were near him, his friends and his servants.  Infinite iniquity, he
+knew full well, stretched around him on every side; but with this he
+had no concern.  To him it seemed a thing that must be, a thing
+mysterious and sacred as the mighty ocean; the boundless domain of the
+gods, of fatality, of laws unknown and superior, irresistible,
+irresponsible, and eternal.  It did not lessen his courage; on the
+contrary, it enhanced his confidence, his concentration, and spurred
+him upwards, like the flame that, confined to a narrow area, rises
+higher and higher, alone in the night, urged on by the darkness.  He
+accepted the decree of fate, that allotted slavery to the bulk of
+mankind.  Sorrowfully but with full conviction, did he submit to the
+irrevocable law; wherein he once again gave proof of his piety and his
+virtue.  He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless,
+motionless void, became still more just, still more humane.  And in
+each succeeding century do we find a similar ardour, self-centred and
+solitary, among those who were wise and good.  The name of more than
+one immovable law might change, but its infinite part remained ever the
+same; and each one regarded it with the like resigned and chastened
+melancholy.  But we of to-day--what course are we to pursue?  We know
+that iniquity is no longer necessary.  We have invaded the region of
+the gods, of destiny, and unknown laws.  These may still control
+disease or accident, perhaps, no less than the tempest, the
+lightning-flash, and most of the mysteries of death--we have not yet
+penetrated to them--but we are well aware that poverty, wretchedness,
+hopeless toil, slavery, famine, are completely outside their domain.
+It is we who organise these, we who maintain and distribute them.
+These frightful scourges, that have grown so familiar, are wielded by
+us alone; and belief in their superhuman origin is becoming rarer and
+rarer.  The religious, impassable ocean, that excused and protected the
+retreat into himself of the sage and the man of good, now only exists
+as a vague recollection.  To-day Marcus Aurelius could no longer say
+with the same serenity: "They go in search of refuges, of rural
+cottages, of mountains and the seashore; thou too art wont to cherish
+an eager desire for these things.  But is this not the act of an
+ignorant, unskilled man, seeing that it is granted thee at whatever
+hour thou pleasest to retire within thyself?  It is not possible for
+man to discover a retreat more tranquil, less disturbed by affairs,
+than that which he finds in his soul; especially if he have within him
+those things the contemplation of which suffices to procure immediate
+enjoyment of the perfect calm, which is no other, to my mind, than the
+perfect agreement of soul."
+
+Other matters concern us to-day than this agreement of soul; or let us
+rather say that what we have to do is to bring into agreement there
+that from which the soul of Marcus Aurelius was free--three-fourths of
+the sorrows of mankind, in a word--which have become real to us,
+intelligible, human, and urgent, and are no longer regarded as the
+inexplicable, immutable, intangible decrees of fatality.
+
+
+31
+
+This does not imply, however, that we should abandon the old sages'
+desire for "agreement"; and even though we may not be entitled to
+expect such perfect "agreement" as they derived from their pardonable
+egoism, we may still look for agreement of a provisional, conditional
+kind.  And although such "agreement" be not the last word of morality,
+it is none the less indispensable that we should begin by being as just
+as we possibly can within ourselves and to those round about us, our
+neighbours, our friends, and our servants.  It is at the moment when we
+have become absolutely just to these, and within our own consciousness,
+that we realise our great injustice to all the others.  The method of
+being more practically just towards these last is not yet known to us;
+to return to great, heroic renouncements would effect but little, for
+these are incapable of unanimous action, and would probably run counter
+to the profoundest laws of nature, which rejects renouncement in every
+form save that of maternal love.
+
+This practical justice, therefore, remains the secret of the race.  Of
+such secrets it has many, which it reveals one by one, at such moments
+of history as become truly critical; and the solutions it offers to
+insuperable difficulties are almost always unexpected, and of strangest
+simplicity.  The hour approaches, perhaps, when it will speak once
+more.  Let us hope, without being too sanguine; for we must bear in
+mind that humanity has yet by no means emerged from the period of
+"sacrificed generations."  History has known no others; and it is
+possible that, to the end of time, all generations may call themselves
+sacrificed.  Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the sacrifices,
+however unjust and useless they still may be, are growing ever less
+inhuman and less inevitable; and that the laws which govern them are
+becoming better and better known, and would seem to draw nearer and
+nearer to those that a lofty mind might accept without being pitiless.
+
+
+32
+
+It must be admitted, however, that a majestic, redoubtable slowness
+attends the movements of these "ideas of the species."  Centuries had
+to pass before it dawned upon primitive men, who fled from each other,
+or fought when they met at the mouth of their caverns, that they would
+do well to form into groups, and unite in defence against the mighty
+enemies who threatened them from without.  And besides, these "ideas"
+of the species will often be widely different from those that the
+wisest man might hold.  They would seem to be independent, spontaneous,
+often based on facts of which no trace is shown by the human reason of
+the epoch that witnessed their birth; and indeed there is no graver or
+more disturbing problem before the moralist or sociologist than that of
+determining whether all his efforts can hasten by one hour or divert by
+one hair's-breadth the decisions of the great anonymous mass which
+proceeds, step by step, towards its indiscernible goal.
+
+Long ago--so long indeed that this is one of the first affirmations of
+science when, quitting the bowels of the earth, the glaciers and
+grottoes, it ceased to call itself geology and palaeontology and became
+the history of man--humanity passed through a crisis not wholly unlike
+that which now lies ahead of it, or is actually menacing it at the
+moment; the difference being only that in those days the dilemma seemed
+vastly more tragic and more unsolvable.  It may truly be said that
+mankind never has known a more perilous or more decisive hour, or a
+period when it drew nearer its ruin; and the fact that we exist to-day
+would appear to be due to the unexpected expedient which saved the race
+at the moment when the scourge that fed on man's very reason, on all
+that was best and most irresistible in his instinct of justice and
+injustice, was actually on the point of destroying the heroic
+equilibrium between the desire to live and the possibility of living.
+
+I refer to the acts of violence, rapine, outrage, murder, which were of
+natural occurrence among the earliest human groups.  These crimes,
+which will probably have been of the most frightful description, must
+have very seriously endangered the existence of the race; for vengeance
+is the terrible, and, as it were, the epidemic form which the craving
+for justice at first assumes.  Now this spirit of vengeance, abandoned
+to itself and forever multiplying--revenge followed by the revenge of
+revenge--would finally have engulfed, if not the whole of mankind, at
+least all those of the earliest men who were possessed of energy or
+pride.  We find, however, that among these barbarous races, as among
+most of the existing savage tribes whose habits are known to us, there
+comes a time, usually at the period when their weapons are growing too
+deadly, when this vengeance suddenly halts before a singular custom,
+known as the "blood-tribute," or the "composition for murder;" which
+allows the homicide to escape the reprisals of the victim's friends and
+relations by payment to them of an indemnity, that, from being
+arbitrary at the start, soon becomes strictly graduated.
+
+In the whole history of these infant races, in whom impulse and heroism
+were the predominant factors, there is nothing stranger, nothing more
+astounding, than this almost universal custom, which for all its
+ingenuity would seem almost too long-suffering and mercantile.  May we
+attribute it to the foresight of the chiefs?  We find it in races among
+whom authority might almost be said to be entirely lacking.  Did it
+originate among the old men, the thinkers, the sages, of the primitive
+groups?  That is not more probable.  For underlying this custom there
+is a thought which is at the same time higher and lower than could be
+the thought of an isolated prophet or genius of those barbarous days.
+The sage, the prophet, the genius--above all, the untrained genius--is
+rather inclined to carry to extremes the generous and heroic tendencies
+of the clan or epoch to which he belongs.  He would have recoiled in
+disgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacred
+revenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love.
+Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attained
+sufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyond
+the noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, and to behold
+only the superior interest of the tribe or the race: that mysterious
+desire for life, which the wisest of the wise among us to-day are
+generally unable to perceive or to justify until they have wrought
+grave and painful conquest over their isolated reason and their heart.
+
+No, it was not the thought of man which found the solution.  On the
+contrary, it was the unconsciousness of the mass, compelled to act in
+self-defence against thoughts  too  intrinsically, individually human
+to satisfy the irreducible exigencies of life on this earth.  The
+species is extremely patient, extremely long-suffering.  It will bear
+as long as it can and carry as far as it can the burden which reason,
+the desire for improvement, the imagination, the passions, vices,
+virtues, and feelings natural to man, may combine to impose upon it.
+But the moment the burden becomes too overwhelming, and disaster
+threatens, the species will instantaneously, with the utmost
+indifference, fling it aside.  It is careless as to the means; it will
+adopt the one that is nearest, the simplest, most practical, being
+doubtless perfectly satisfied that its own idea is the justest and
+best.  And of ideas it has only one, which is that it wishes to live;
+and truly this idea surpasses all the heroism, all the generous dreams,
+that may have reposed in the burden which it has discarded.
+
+And indeed, in the history of human reason, the greatest and the
+justest thoughts are not always those which attain the loftiest
+heights.  It happens somewhat with the thoughts of men as with a
+fountain; for it is only because the water has been imprisoned and
+escapes through a narrow opening that it soars so proudly into the air.
+As it issues from this opening and hurls itself towards the sky, it
+would seem to despise the great, illimitable, motionless lake that
+stretches out far beneath it.  And yet, say what one will, it is the
+lake that is right.  For all its apparent motionlessness, for all its
+silence, it is tranquilly accomplishing the immense and normal task of
+the most important element of our globe; and the jet of water is merely
+a curious incident, which soon returns into the universal scheme.  To
+us the species is the great, unerring lake; and this even from the
+point of view of the superior human reason that it would seem at times
+to offend.  Its idea is the vastest of all, and contains every other;
+it embraces limitless time and space.  And does not each day that goes
+by reveal more and more clearly to us that the vastest idea, no matter
+where it reside, always ends by becoming the most just and most
+reasonable, the wisest and the most beautiful?
+
+
+33
+
+There are times when we ask ourselves whether it might not be well for
+humanity that its destinies should be governed by the superior men
+among us, the great sages, rather than by the instinct of the species,
+that is always so slow and often so cruel.
+
+It is doubtful whether this question could be answered to-day in quite
+the same fashion as formerly.  It would surely have been highly
+dangerous to confide the destinies of the species to Plato or
+Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, or Montesquieu.  At the very
+worst moments of the French Revolution the fate of the people was in
+the hands of philosophers of none too mean an order.  It cannot be
+denied, however, that in our time the habits of the thinker have
+undergone a great change.  He has ceased to be speculative or Utopian;
+he is no longer exclusively intuitive.  In politics as in literature,
+in philosophy as in all the sciences, he displays less imagination, but
+his powers as an observer have grown.  He inclines rather to
+concentrate his attention on the thing that is, to study it and strive
+at its organisation, than to precede it, or to endeavour to create what
+is not yet, or never shall be.  And therefore he may possibly have some
+claim to more authoritative utterance; nor would so much danger attend
+his more direct intervention.  It must be admitted, however, that there
+is no greater likelihood now than in former times of such intervention
+being permitted him.  Nay, there is less, perhaps; for having become
+more circumspect and less blinded by narrow convictions, he will be
+less audacious, less imperious, and less impatient.  And yet it is
+possible that, finding himself in natural sympathy with the species
+which he is content merely to observe, he will by slow degrees acquire
+more and more influence; so that here again, in ultimate analysis, it
+is the species that will be right, the species that will decide: for it
+will have guided him who observes it, and therefore, in following him
+whom it has guided, it will truly only be following its own
+unconscious, formless desires, which shall have been expressed by him,
+and by him brought into light.
+
+
+34
+
+Until such time as the species shall discover the new and needful
+experiment--and this it will quickly do when the danger becomes more
+acute; nay, for all we know, the expedient may have already been found,
+and, entirely unsuspected of us, be already transforming part of our
+destinies--until such time, while bound to act in external matters as
+though our brothers' salvation depended entirely on our exertions, it
+is open to us, no less than to the sages of old, to retire occasionally
+within ourselves.  We in our turn shall perhaps find there "one of
+those things" of which the contemplation shall suffice to bring us
+instantaneous enjoyment, if not of the perfect calm, at least of an
+indestructible hope.  Though nature appear unjust, though nothing
+authorise us to declare that a superior power, or the intellect of the
+universe, rewards or punishes, here below or elsewhere, in accordance
+with the laws of our consciousness or with other laws that we shall
+some day admit; and, finally, though between man and man, in other
+words, in our relations with our fellows, our admirable desire for
+equity translate itself into a justice that is always incomplete, at
+the mercy of every error of reason, of every ambush laid by personal
+interest, and of all the evil habits of a social condition that still
+is sub-human, it is none the less certain that an image of that
+invisible and incorruptible justice, which we have vainly sought in the
+sky or the universe, reposes in the depths of the moral life of every
+man.  And though its method of action be such as to cause it to pass
+unperceived of most of our fellows, often even of our own
+consciousness, though all that it does be hidden and intangible, it is
+none the less profoundly human and profoundly real.  It would seem to
+hear, to examine, all that we say and think and strive for in our
+exterior life; and if it find a little sincerity beneath, a little
+earnest desire for good, it will transform these into moral forces that
+shall extend and illumine our inner life, and help us to better
+thoughts, better speech, better endeavour in the time to come.  It will
+not add to, or take from, our wealth; it will bring no immunity from
+disease or from lightning; it will not prolong by one hour the life of
+the being we cherish; but if we have learned to reflect and to love,
+if, in other words, heart and brain have both done their duty, it will
+establish in heart and brain a contentment that, though perhaps
+stripped of illusion, shall still be inexhaustible and noble; it will
+confer a dignity of existence, and an intelligence, that shall suffice
+to sustain our life after the loss of our wealth, after the stroke of
+disease or of lightning has fallen, after the loved one has for ever
+quitted our arms.  A good thought or deed brings a reward to our heart
+that it cannot, in the absence of an universal judge of nature, extend
+to the things around.  It endeavours to create within us the happiness
+it is unable to produce in our material life.  Denied all external
+outlet, it fills our soul the more.  It prepares the space that soon
+shall be required by our developing intellect, our expanding peace and
+love.  Helpless against the laws of nature, it is all-powerful over
+those that govern the happy equilibrium of human consciousness.  And
+this is true of every stage of thought, of every class of action.  A
+vast distance might seem to divide the labourer who brings up his
+children honourably, lives his humble life and honourably does the work
+that falls to his lot, from the man who steadfastly perseveres in moral
+heroism; but each of these is acting and living on the same plane as
+the other, and the same loyal, consoling region receives them both.
+And though it be certain that what we say and do must largely influence
+our material happiness, yet, in ultimate analysis, it is only by means
+of the spiritual organs that even material happiness can be fully and
+permanently enjoyed.  Hence the preponderating importance of thought.
+But of supreme importance, from the point of view of the reception we
+shall offer to the joys and sorrows of life, is the character, the
+frame of mind, the moral condition, that the things we have said and
+done and thought will have created within us.  Here is evidence of
+admirable justice; and the intimate happiness that our moral being
+derives from the constant striving of the mind and heart for good,
+becomes the more comprehensible when we realise that this happiness is
+only the surface of the goodly thought or feeling that is shining
+within our heart.  Here may we indeed find that intelligent, moral bond
+between cause and effect that we have vainly sought in the external
+world; here, in moral matters, reigning over the good and evil that are
+warring in the depths of our consciousness, may we in truth discover a
+justice exactly similar to the one which we could desire to recognise
+in physical matters.  But whence do we derive this desire if not from
+the justice within us; and is it not because this justice is so mighty
+and active in our heart that we are reluctant to believe in its
+non-existence in the universe?
+
+
+35
+
+We have spoken at great length of justice; but is it not the great
+mystery of man, the one that tends to take the place of most of the
+spiritual mysteries that govern his destiny?  It has dethroned more
+than one god, more than one nameless power.  It is the star evolved
+from the nebulous mass of our instincts and our incomprehensible life.
+It is not the word of the enigma; and when, in the fulness of time, it
+shall become clearer to us, and shall truly reign all over the earth,
+there will come to us no greater knowledge of what we are, or why we
+are, whence we come or whither we go; but we shall at least have obeyed
+the first word of the enigma, and shall proceed, with a freer spirit
+and a more tranquil heart, to the search for its last secret.
+
+Finally, it comprises all the human virtues; and none but itself can
+offer the welcoming smile whereby these are ennobled and purified, none
+but itself can accord them the right to penetrate deep into our moral
+life.  For every virtue must be maleficent and steeped in artifice that
+cannot support the fixed and eager regard of justice.  And so do we
+find it too at the heart of our every ideal.  It is at the centre of
+our love of truth, at the centre of our love of beauty.  It is kindness
+and pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the acts
+of justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive that
+justice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies before
+him, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, but
+that they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighbouring destinies,
+beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond what
+he seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond his
+doubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of the
+men, his brothers.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY
+
+It is not unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest of life,
+all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the destiny of man, reposes
+almost entirely in the mystery that surrounds us; in the two mysteries,
+it may be, that are mightiest, most dreadful of all--fatality and
+death.  And indeed there are many whom the fatigue induced in their
+minds by the natural uncertainties of science has almost compelled to
+accept this belief.  I too believe, though in a somewhat different
+fashion, that the study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest to
+which the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been the
+occupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy and
+literature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portray
+the trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life.  And
+we find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth of
+their insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded with
+the respect in which they held all they did not know, with the dignity
+that their mind or imagination was able to confer on the sum of
+unknowable forces.  Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we have
+being gives life a meaning and grandeur which must of necessity be
+absent if we persist in considering only the things that are known to
+us; if we too readily incline to believe that these must greatly
+transcend in importance the things that we know not yet.
+
+
+2
+
+It behoves every man to frame for himself his own general conception of
+the world.  On this conception reposes his whole human and moral
+existence.  But this general conception of the world, when closely
+examined, is truly no more than a general conception of the unknown.
+And we must be careful; we have not the right, when ideas so vast
+confront us, ideas the results of which are so highly important, to
+select the one which seems most magnificent to us, most beautiful, or
+most attractive.  The duty lies on us to choose the idea which seems
+truest, or rather the only one which seems true; for I decline to
+believe that we can sincerely hesitate between the truth that is only
+apparent and the one that is real.  The moment must always come when we
+feel that one of these two is possessed of more truth than the other.
+And to this truth we should cling: in our actions, our words, and our
+thoughts; in our art, in our science, in the life of our feelings and
+intellect.  Its definition, perhaps, may elude us.  It may possibly
+bring not one grain of reassuring conviction.  Nay, essentially,
+perhaps, it may be but the merest impression, though profounder and
+more sincere than any previous impression.  These things do not matter.
+It is not imperative that the truth we have chosen should be
+unimpeachable or of absolute certainty.  There is already great gain in
+our having been brought to experience that the truths we had loved
+before did not accord with reality or with faithful experience of life;
+and we have every reason, therefore, to cherish our truth with
+heartiest gratitude until its own turn shall come to experience the
+fate it inflicted on its predecessor.  The great mischief, the one
+which destroys our moral existence and threatens the integrity of our
+mind and our character, is not that we should deceive ourselves and
+love an uncertain truth, but that we should remain constant to one in
+which we no longer wholly believe.
+
+
+3
+
+If we sought nothing more than to invest our conception of the unknown
+with the utmost possible grandeur and tragedy, magnificence and might,
+there would be no need of such restrictions.  From many points of view,
+doubtless, the most beautiful, most touching, most religious attitude
+in face of mystery is silence, and prayer, and fearful acceptance.
+When this immense, irresistible force confronts us--this inscrutable,
+ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignly
+intelligent, and, for all we know, even personal--must it not, at first
+sight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission,
+trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot a
+patient, laborious investigation?  But is the choice possible to us;
+have we still the right to choose?  The beauty or dignity of the
+attitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment.  It is truth
+and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all
+things--how much more when mystery confronts us!  In the past, the
+prostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because of
+what, in the past, seemed to be true.  We have acquired no fresh
+certitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the past
+has ceased to be true.  We have not bridged the unknown; but still,
+though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; and
+it is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to be
+once more assumed by us.  For although it has not, perhaps, been
+incontrovertibly proved that the unknown is neither vigilant nor
+personal, neither sovereignly intelligent nor sovereignly just, or that
+it possesses none of the passions, intentions, virtues and vices of
+man, it is still incomparably more probable that the unknown is
+entirely indifferent to all that appears of supreme importance in this
+life of ours.  It is incomparably more probable that if, in the vast
+and eternal scheme of the unknown, a minute and ephemeral place be
+reserved for man, his actions, be he the strongest or weakest, the best
+or the worst of men, will be as unimportant there as the movements of
+the obscurest geological cell in the history of ocean or continent.
+Though it may not have been irrefutably shown that the infinite and
+invisible are not for ever hovering round us, dealing out sorrow or joy
+in accordance with our good or evil intentions, guiding our destiny
+step by step, and preparing, with the help of innumerable forces, the
+incomprehensible but eternal law that governs the accidents of our
+birth, our future, our death, and our life beyond the tomb, it is still
+incomparably more probable that the invisible and infinite, intervene
+as they may at every moment in our life, enter therein only as
+stupendous, blind, indifferent elements; and that though they pass over
+us, in us, penetrate into our being, and inspire and mould our life,
+they are as careless of our individual existence as air, water, or
+light.  And the whole of our conscious life, the life that forms our
+one certitude, that is our one fixed point in time and space, rests
+upon "incomparable probabilities" of this nature; but rarely are they
+as "incomparable" as these.
+
+
+4
+
+The hour when a lofty conviction forsakes us should never be one of
+regret.  If a belief we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within
+us; if we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, this is
+proof of vitality, progress, of our marching steadily onwards, and
+making good use of all that lies to our hand.  We should rejoice at the
+knowledge that the thought which so long has sustained us is proved
+incapable now of even sustaining itself.  And though we have nothing to
+put in the place of the spring that lies broken, there need still be no
+cause for sadness.  Far better the place remain empty than that it be
+filled by a spring which the rust corrodes, or by a new truth in which
+we do not wholly believe.  And besides, the place is not really empty.
+Determinate truth may not yet have arrived, but still, in its own deep
+recess, there hides a truth without name, which waits and calls.  And
+if it wait and call too long in the void, and nothing arise in the
+place of the vanished spring, it still shall be found that, in moral no
+less than in physical life, necessity will be able to create the organ
+it needs, and that the negative truth will at last find sufficient
+force in itself to set the idle machinery going.  And the lives that
+possess no more than one force of this kind are not the least
+strenuous, the least ardent, or the least useful.
+
+And even though our belief forsake us entirely, it still will take with
+it nothing of what we have given, nor will there be lost one single
+sincere, religious, disinterested effort that we have put forth to
+ennoble this faith, to exalt or embellish it.  Every thought we have
+added, each worthy sacrifice we have had the courage to make in its
+name, will have left its indelible mark on our moral existence.  The
+body is gone, but the palace it built still stands, and the space it
+has conquered will remain for ever unenclosed.  It is our duty, and one
+we dare not renounce, to prepare homes for truths that shall come, to
+maintain in good order the forces destined to serve them, and to create
+open spaces within us; nor can the time thus employed be possibly
+wasted.
+
+
+5
+
+These thoughts have arisen within me through my having been compelled,
+a few days ago, to glance through two or three little dramas of mine,
+wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itself
+wholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, but
+not so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency.  The keynote of
+these little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us.  I, or
+rather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerest
+of poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feeling
+of their art and the thoughts of their real life), seemed to believe in
+a species of monstrous, invisible, fatal power that gave heed to our
+every action, and was hostile to our smile, to our life, to our peace
+and our love.  Its intentions could not be divined, but the spirit of
+the drama assumed them to be malevolent always.  In its essence,
+perhaps, this power was just, but only in anger; and it exercised
+justice in a manner so crooked, so secret, so sluggish and remote, that
+its punishments--for it never rewarded--took the semblance of
+inexplicable, arbitrary acts of fate.  We had there, in a word, more or
+less the idea of the God of the Christian blent with that of ancient
+fatality, lurking in nature's impenetrable twilight, whence it eagerly
+watched, contested, and saddened the projects, the feelings, the
+thoughts and the happiness of man.
+
+
+6
+
+This unknown would most frequently appear in the shape of death.  The
+presence of death--infinite, menacing, for ever treacherously
+active--filled every interstice of the poem.  The problem of existence
+was answered only by the enigma of annihilation.  And it was a callous,
+inexorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious way with only
+chance to guide it; laying its hands preferentially on the youngest and
+the least unhappy, since these held themselves less motionless than
+others, and that every too sudden movement in the night arrested its
+attention.  And around it were only poor little trembling, elementary
+creatures, who shivered for an instant and wept, on the brink of a
+gulf; and their words and their tears had importance only from the fact
+that each word they spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf,
+and were at times so strangely resonant there as to lead one to think
+that the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could send
+forth so confused and muffled a sound.
+
+
+7
+
+Such a conception of life is not healthy, whatever show of reason it
+may seem to possess; and I would not allude to it here were it not for
+the fact that we find this idea, or one closely akin to it, governing
+the hearts of most men, however tranquil, or thoughtful, or earnest
+they may be, at the approach of the slightest misfortune.  There is
+evidently a side to our nature which, notwithstanding all we may learn
+and master and the certitudes we may acquire, destines us never to be
+other than poor, weak, useless creatures, consecrated to death, and
+playthings of the vast and indifferent forces that surround us.  We
+appear for an instant in limitless space, our one appreciable mission
+the propagation of a species that itself has no appreciable mission in
+the scheme of a universe whose extent and duration baffle the most
+daring, most powerful brain.  This is a truth; it is one of those
+profound but sterile truths which the poet may salute as he passes on
+his way; but it is a truth in the neighbourhood of which the man with
+the thousand duties who lives in the poet will do well not to abide too
+long.  And of truths such as this many are lofty and deserving of all
+our respect, but in their domain it were unwise to lay ourselves down
+and sleep.  So many truths environ us that it may safely be said that
+few men can be found, of the wickedest even, who have not for counsel
+and guide a grave and respectable truth.  Yes, it is a truth--the
+vastest, most certain of truths, if one will--that our life is nothing,
+and our efforts the merest jest; our existence, that of our planet,
+only a miserable accident in the history of worlds; but it is no less a
+truth that, to us, our life and our planet are the most important, nay,
+the only important phenomena in the history of worlds.  And of these
+truths which is the truer?  Does the first of necessity destroy the
+second?  Without the second, should we have had the courage to
+formulate the first?  The one appeals to our imagination, and may be
+helpful to it in its own domain; but the other directly interests our
+actual life.  It is well that each have its share.  The truth that is
+undoubtedly truest from the human point of view must evidently appeal
+to us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point of
+view.  Ignorant as we are of the aim of the universe, how shall we tell
+whether or no it concern itself with the interests of our race?  The
+probable futility of our life and our species is a truth which regards
+us indirectly only, and may well, therefore, be left in suspense.  The
+other truth, that indicates clearly the importance of life, may perhaps
+be more restricted, but it has a direct, incontestable, actual bearing
+upon ourselves.  To sacrifice or even subordinate it to an alien truth
+must surely be wrong.  The first truth should never be lost sight of;
+it will strengthen and illumine the second, whose government will thus
+become more intelligent and benign: the first truth will teach us to
+profit by all that the second does not include.  And if we allow it to
+sadden our heart or arrest our action, we have not sufficiently
+realised that the vast but precarious space it fills in the region of
+important truths is governed by countless problems which as yet are
+unsolved; while the problems whereon the second truth rests are daily
+resolved by real life.  The first truth is still in the dangerous,
+feverish stage, through which all truths must pass before they can
+penetrate freely into our heart and our brain; a stage of jealousy,
+truculence, which renders the neighbourhood of another truth
+insupportable to them.  We must wait till the fever subsides; and if
+the home that we have prepared in our spirit be sufficiently spacious
+and lofty, we shall find very soon that the most contradictory truths
+will be conscious only of the mysterious bond that unites them, and
+will silently join with each other to place in the front rank of all,
+and there help and sustain, that truth from among them which calmly
+went on with its work while the others were fretfully jangling; that
+truth which can do the most good, and brings with it the uttermost hope.
+
+
+The strangest feature of the present time is the confusion which reigns
+in our instincts and feelings--in our ideas, too, save at our most
+lucid, most tranquil, most thoughtful moments--on the subject of the
+intervention of the unknown or mysterious in the truly grave events of
+life.  We find, amidst this confusion, feelings which no longer accord
+with any precise, living, accepted idea; such, for instance, as concern
+the existence of a determinate God, conceived as more or less
+anthropomorphic, providential, personal, and unceasingly vigilant.  We
+find feelings which, as yet, are only partially ideas; as those which
+deal with fatality, destiny, the justice of things.  We find ideas
+which will soon turn into feelings; those that treat of the law of the
+species, evolution, selection, the will-power of the race, &c.  And,
+finally, we discover ideas which still are purely ideas, too uncertain
+and scattered for us to be able to predict at what moment they will
+become feelings, and thus materially influence our actions, our
+acceptance of life, our joys, and our sorrows.
+
+
+9
+
+If in actual life this confusion is not so apparent, it is only because
+actual life will but rarely express itself, or condescend to make use
+of image or formula to relate its experience.  This state of mind,
+however, is clearly discernible in all those whose self-imposed mission
+it is to depict real life, to explain and interpret it, and throw light
+on the hidden causes of good and evil destiny.  It is of the poets I
+speak, of dramatic poets above all, who are occupied with external and
+active life; and it matters not whether they produce novels, tragedies,
+the drama properly so called, or historical studies, for I give to the
+words poets and dramatic poets their widest significance.
+
+It cannot be denied that the possession of a dominant idea, one that
+may be said to exclude all others, must confer considerable power on
+the poet, or "interpreter of life;" and in the degree that the idea is
+mysterious, and difficult of definition or control, will be the extent
+of this power and its conspicuousness in the poem.  And this is
+entirely legitimate, so long as the poet himself has not the least
+doubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poets
+who have never hesitated, paused, or doubted.  Thus it is that we find
+the idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies of
+Corneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that of
+the tyranny of destiny in the works of Sophocles.
+
+
+10
+
+Of these three ideas, that of heroic duty is the most human and the
+least mysterious; and although far more restricted to-day than at the
+time of Corneille--for there are few such duties which it would not now
+be reasonable, and even heroic, perhaps, to call into question, and it
+becomes ever more and more difficult to find one that is truly
+heroic--conditions may still be imagined under which recourse thereto
+may be legitimate in the poet.
+
+But will he discover in faith--to-day no more than a shadowy memory to
+the most fervent believer--that inspiration and strength, by whose aid
+Corneille was able to depict the God of the Christians as the august,
+omnipresent actor of his dramas, invisible but untiringly active, and
+sovereign always?  Or is it possible still for a reasonable being,
+whose eyes rest calmly on the life about him, to believe in the tyranny
+of fate; of that sluggish, unswerving, preordained, inscrutable force
+which urges a given man, or family, by given ways to a given disaster
+or death?  For though it be true that our life is subject to many an
+unknown force, we at least are aware that these forces would seem to be
+blind, indifferent, unconscious, and that their most insidious attacks
+may be in some measure averted by the wisest among us.  Can we still be
+allowed, then, to believe that the universe holds a power so idle, so
+wretched, as to concern itself solely in saddening, frustrating, and
+terrifying the projects and schemes of man?
+
+Immanent justice is another mysterious and sovereign force, whereof use
+has been made; but it is only the feeblest of writers who have ventured
+to accept this postulate in its entirety: only those to whom reality
+and probability were matters of smallest moment.  The affirmation that
+wickedness is necessarily and visibly punished in this life, and virtue
+as necessarily and visibly rewarded, is too manifestly opposed to the
+most elementary daily experience, too wildly inconsistent a dream, for
+the true poet ever to accept it as the basis of his drama.  And, on the
+other hand, if we refer to a future life the bestowal of reward and
+punishment, we are merely entering by another gate the region of divine
+justice.  For, indeed, unless immanent justice be infallible,
+permanent, unvarying, and inevitable, it becomes no more than a
+curious, well-meaning caprice of fate; and from that moment it no
+longer is justice, or even fate: it shrinks into merest chance--in
+other words, almost into nothingness.
+
+There is, it is true, a very real immanent justice; I refer to the
+force which enacts that the vicious, malevolent, cruel, disloyal man
+shall be morally less happy than he who is honest and good,
+affectionate, gentle, and just.  But here it is inward justice whose
+workings we see; a very human, natural, comprehensible force, the study
+of whose cause and effect must of necessity lead to psychological
+drama, where there no longer is need of the vast and mysterious
+background which lent its solemn and awful perspective to the events of
+history and legend.  But is it legitimate deliberately to misconceive
+the unknown that governs our life in order that we may reconstruct this
+mysterious background?
+
+
+11
+
+While on this subject of dominant and mysterious ideas, we shall do
+well to consider the forms that the idea of fatality has taken, and for
+ever is taking: for fatality even to-day still provides the supreme
+explanation for all that we cannot explain; and it is to fatality still
+that the thoughts of the "interpreter of life" unceasingly turn.
+
+The poets have endeavoured to transform it, to make it attractive, to
+restore its youth.  They have contrived, in their works, a hundred new
+and winding canals through which they may introduce the icy waters of
+the great and desolate river whose banks have been gradually shunned by
+the dwellings of men.  And of those most successful in making us share
+the illusion that they were conferring a solemn, definitive meaning on
+life, there are few who have not instinctively recognised the sovereign
+importance conferred on the actions of men by the irresponsible power
+of an ever august and unerring destiny.  Fatality would seem to be the
+pre-eminent tragical force; it no sooner appears in a drama than it
+does of itself three-fourths of all that needs doing.  It may safely be
+said that the poet who could find to-day, in material science, in the
+unknown that surrounds us, or in his own heart, the equivalent for
+ancient fatality--a force, that is, of equally irresistible
+predestination, a force as universally admitted--would infallibly
+produce a masterpiece.  It is true, however, that he would have, at the
+same time, to solve the mighty enigma for whose word we are all of us
+seeking, so that this supposition is not likely to be realised very
+soon.
+
+
+12
+
+This is the source, then, whence the lustral water is drawn with which
+the poets have purified the cruellest of tragedies.  There is an
+instinct in man that worships fatality, and he is apt to regard
+whatever pertains thereto as incontestable, solemn, and beautiful.  His
+cry is for freedom; but circumstances arise when he rather would tell
+himself that he is not free.  The unbending, malignant goddess is more
+acceptable often than the divinity who only asks for an effort that
+shall avert disaster.  All things notwithstanding, it pleases us still
+to be ruled by a power that nothing can turn from its purpose; and
+whatever our mental dignity may lose by such a belief is gained by a
+kind of sentimental vanity in us, which complacently dwells on the
+measureless force that for ever keeps watch on our plans, and confers
+on our simplest action a mysterious, eternal significance.  Fatality,
+briefly, explains and excuses all things, by relegating to a sufficient
+distance in the invisible or the unintelligible all that it would be
+hard to explain, and more difficult still to excuse.
+
+
+13
+
+Therefore it is that so many have turned to the dismembered statue of
+the terrible goddess who reigned in the dramas of Euripides, Sophocles,
+and Aeschylus, and that the scattered fragments of her limbs have
+provided more than one poet with the marble required for the fashioning
+of a newer divinity, who should be more human, less arbitrary, and less
+inconceivable than she of old.  The fatality of the passions, for
+instance, has thus been evolved.  But for a passion truly to be fatal
+in a soul aware of itself, for the mystery to reappear that shall make
+crime pardonable by investing it with loftiness and lifting it high
+above the will of man: for these we require the intervention of a God,
+or some other equally irresistible, infinite force.  Wagner, therefore,
+in "Tristram and Iseult," makes use of the philtre, as Shakespeare of
+the witches in "Macbeth," Racine of the oracle of Calchas in
+"Iphigenia" and of Venus' hatred in "Phèdre."  We have travelled in a
+circle, and find ourselves back once more at the very heart of the
+craving of former days.  This expedient may be more or less legitimate
+in archaic or legendary drama, where there is room for all kinds of
+poetic fantasy; but in the drama which pretends to actual truth we
+demand another intervention, one that shall seem to us more genuinely
+irresistible, if crimes like Macbeth's, such a deed of horror as that
+to which Agamemnon consented: perhaps, too, the kind of love that
+burned in Phèdre, shall achieve their mysterious excuse, and acquire a
+grandeur and sombre nobility that intrinsically they do not possess.
+Take away from Macbeth the fatal predestination, the intervention of
+hell, the heroic struggle with an occult justice that for ever is
+revealing itself through a thousand fissures of revolting nature, and
+Macbeth is merely a frantic, contemptible murderer.  Take away the
+oracle of Calchas, and Agamemnon becomes abominable.  Take away the
+hatred of Venus, and what is Phèdre but a neurotic creature, whose
+"moral quality" and power of resistance to evil are too pronouncedly
+feeble for our intellect to take any genuine interest in the calamity
+that befalls her?
+
+
+
+14
+
+The truth is that these supernatural interventions to-day satisfy
+neither spectator nor reader.  Though he know it not, perhaps, and
+strive as he may, it is no longer possible for him to regard them
+seriously in the depths of his consciousness.  His conception of the
+universe is other.  He no longer detects the working of a narrow,
+determined, obstinate, violent will in the multitude of forces that
+strive in him and about him.  He knows that the criminal whom he may
+meet in actual life has been urged into crime by misfortune, education,
+atavism, or by movements of passion which he has himself experienced
+and subdued, while recognising that there might have been circumstances
+under which their repression would have been a matter of exceeding
+difficulty.  He will not, it is true, always be able to discover the
+cause of these misfortunes or movements of passion; and his endeavour
+to account for the injustice of education or heredity will probably be
+no less unsuccessful.  But, for all that, he will no longer incline to
+attribute a particular crime to the wrath of a God, the direct
+intervention of hell, or to a series of changeless decrees inscribed in
+the book of fate.  Why ask of him, then, to accept in a poem an
+explanation which he refuses in life?  Is the poet's duty not rather to
+furnish an explanation loftier, clearer, more widely and profoundly
+human than any his reader can find for himself?  For, indeed, this
+wrath of the gods, intervention of hell, and writing in letters of
+fire, are to him no more to-day than so many symbols that have long
+ceased to content him.  It is time that the poet should realise that
+the symbol is legitimate only when it stands for accepted truth, or for
+truth which as yet we cannot, or will not, accept; but the symbol is
+out of place at a time when it is truth itself that we seek.  And,
+besides, to merit admission into a really living poem, the symbol
+should be at least as great and beautiful as the truth for which it
+stands, and should, moreover, precede this truth, and not follow a long
+way behind.
+
+
+15
+
+We see, therefore, how surpassingly difficult it must have become to
+introduce great crimes, or cruel, unbridled, tragical passions, into a
+modern work, above all if that work be destined for stage presentation;
+for the poet will seek in vain for the mysterious excuse these crimes
+or passions demand.  And yet, for all that, so deeply is this craving
+for mysterious excuse implanted within us, so satisfied are we that man
+is, at bottom, never as guilty as he may appear to be, that we are
+still fully content, when considering passions or crimes of this
+nature, to admit some kind of fatal intervention that at least may not
+seem too manifestly unacceptable.
+
+This excuse, however, will be sought by us only when the persons guilty
+of crimes which are contrary to human nature, when the victims of
+misfortunes which they could not foresee, and which seem undeserved to
+us, inexplicable, wholly abnormal, are more or less superior beings,
+possessed of their fullest share of consciousness.  We are loath to
+admit that an extraordinary crime or disaster can have a purely human
+cause.  In spite of all, we persistently seek in some way to explain
+the inexplicable.  We should not be satisfied if the poet were simply
+to say to us: "You see here the wrong that was done by this strong,
+this conscious, intelligent man.  Behold the misfortune this hero
+encountered; this good man's ruin and sorrow.  See, too, how this sage
+is crushed by tragic, irremediable wickedness.  The human causes of
+these events are evident to you.  I have no other explanation to offer,
+unless it be perhaps the indifference of the universe towards the
+actions of man."  Our dissatisfaction would vanish if he could succeed
+in conveying to us the sensation of this indifference, if he could show
+it in action; but, as it is the property of indifference never to
+interfere or act, that would seem to be more or less unachievable.
+
+
+16
+
+But when we turn to the by no means inevitable jealousy of Othello, or
+to the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet, which were surely not
+preordained, we discover no need of explanation, or of the purifying
+influence of fatality.  In another drama, Ford's masterpiece, "'Tis
+Pity She's a Whore," which revolves around the incestuous love of
+Giovanni for his sister Annabella, we are compelled either to turn away
+in horror, or to seek the mysterious excuse in its habitual haunt on
+the shore of the gulf.  But even here, the first painful shock over, we
+find it is not imperative.  For the love of brother for sister, viewed
+from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but
+not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of
+palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blinds
+them.  Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death,
+has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this
+last can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred.  The disasters that
+weighed so heavily on the lovers of Verona were due to the inexperience
+of the victims, to the manifest disproportion between their strength
+and that of their enemies; and although we may pity the man who
+succumbs to superior human force, his downfall does not surprise us.
+We are not impelled to seek explanation elsewhere, to ask questions of
+fate; and unless he appear to fall victim to superhuman injustice, we
+are content to tell ourselves that what has happened was bound to
+happen.  It is only when disaster occurs after every precaution is
+taken that we could ourselves have devised, that we become conscious of
+the need for other explanation.
+
+
+17
+
+We find it difficult, therefore, to conceive or admit as naturally,
+humanly possible that a crime shall be committed by a person who
+apparently is endowed with fullest intelligence and consciousness; or
+that misfortune should befall him which seems in its essence to be
+inexplicable, undeserved, and unexpected.  It follows, therefore, that
+the poet can only place on the stage (this phrase I use merely as an
+abbreviation: it would be more correct to say, "cause us to assist at
+some adventure whereof we know personally neither the actors nor the
+totality of the circumstances") faults, crimes, and acts of injustice
+committed by persons of defective consciousness, as also disasters
+befalling feeble beings unable to control their desires--innocent
+creatures, it may be, but thick-sighted, imprudent, and reckless.
+Under these conditions there would seem to be no call for the
+intervention of anything beyond the limit of normal human psychology.
+But such a conception of the theatre would be at absolute variance with
+real life, where we find crimes committed by persons of fullest
+consciousness, and the most inexplicable, inconceivable, unmerited
+misfortunes befalling the wisest, the best, most virtuous and prudent
+of men.  Dramas which deal with unconscious creatures, whom their own
+feebleness oppresses and their own desires overcome, excite our
+interest and arouse our pity; but the veritable drama, the one which
+probes to the heart of things and grapples with important truths--our
+own personal drama, in a word, which for ever hangs over our life--is
+the one wherein the strong, intelligent, and conscious commit errors,
+faults, and crimes which are almost inevitable; wherein the wise and
+upright struggle with all-powerful calamity, with forces destructive to
+wisdom and virtue: for it is worthy of note that the spectator, however
+feeble, dishonest even, he may be in real life, still enrols himself
+always among the virtuous, just, and strong; and when he reflects on
+the misfortunes of the weak, or even witnesses them, he resolutely
+declines to imagine himself in the place of the victims.
+
+
+18
+
+Here we attain the limit of the human will, the gloomy boundary-line of
+the influence that the most just and enlightened of men is able to
+exert on events that decide his future happiness or sorrow.  No great
+drama exists, or poem of lofty aim, but one of its heroes shall stray
+to this frontier where his destiny waits for the seal.  Why has this
+wise, this virtuous man committed this fault or this crime?  Why has
+that woman, who knows so well the meaning of all that she does,
+hazarded the gesture which must so inevitably summon everlasting
+sorrow?  By whom have the links been forged of the chain of disaster
+whose fetters have crushed this innocent family?  Why do all things
+crumble around one, and fall into ruins, while the other, his
+neighbour, less active and strong, less skilful and wise, finds ever
+material by him to build up his life anew?  Why do tenderness, beauty,
+and love flock to the path of some, where others meet hatred only, and
+malice, and treachery?  Why persistent happiness here, and yonder,
+though merits be equal, nought but unceasing disaster?  Why is this
+house for ever beset with the storm, while over that other there shines
+the peace of unvarying stars?  Why genius, and riches, and health on
+this side, and yonder disease, imbecility, poverty?  Whence has the
+passion been sent that has wrought such terrible grief, and whence the
+passion that proved the source of such wonderful joy?  Why does the
+youth whom yesterday I met go on his tranquil road to profoundest
+happiness, while his friend, with the same methodical, peaceful,
+ignorant step, proceeds on his way to death?
+
+
+19
+
+Life will often place such problems before us; but how rarely are we
+compelled to refer their solution to the supernatural, mysterious,
+superhuman, or preordained!  It is only the fervent believer who will
+still be content to see there the finger of divine intervention.  Such
+of us, however, as have entered the house where the storm has raged, as
+well as the house of peace, have rarely departed without most clearly
+detecting the essentially human reasons of both peace and storm.  We
+who have known the wise and upright man who has been guilty of error or
+crime, are acquainted also with the circumstances which induced his
+action, and these circumstances seem to us in no way supernatural.  As
+we draw near to the woman whose gesture brought misery to her, we learn
+very soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in her
+place, we should have refrained.  The friends of the man around whom
+all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up
+his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will
+fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil.  And though poverty,
+sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of
+human existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears of
+bygone days  We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent,
+unconscious, blind.  We know that they recognise none of the ideal laws
+which we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often has
+happened that at the very moment we were whispering to ourselves of
+"purification, trial, reward, punishment," their undiscerning caprice
+gave the lie to the too lofty, too moral title which we were about to
+bestow.
+
+
+20
+
+Our imagination, it is true, is inclined to admit, perhaps to desire,
+the intervention of the superhuman; but, for all that, there are few,
+even among the most mystic, who are not convinced that our moral
+misfortunes are, in their essence, determined by our mind and our
+character; and, similarly, that our physical misfortunes are due in
+part to the workings of certain forces which often are misunderstood,
+and in part to the generally ill-defined relation of cause to effect:
+nor is it unreasonable to hope that light may be thrown on these
+problems as we penetrate further into the secrets of nature.  We have
+here a certitude upon which our whole life depends; a certitude which
+is shaken only when we consider our own misfortunes, for then we shrink
+from analysing or admitting the faults we ourselves have committed.
+There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant that
+the cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wave
+which dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insect
+whose little wings gleam for an instant in the light of the sun till
+the passing bird absorbs its existence.
+
+
+21
+
+Let me suppose that a neighbour of mine, whom I know very intimately,
+whose regular habits and inoffensive manners have won my esteem, should
+successively lose his wife in a railway accident, one son at sea,
+another in a fire, the third and last by disease.  I should, of course,
+be painfully shocked and grieved; but still it would not occur to me to
+attribute this series of disasters to a divine vengeance or an
+invisible justice, to a strange, ill-starred predestination, or an
+active, persistent, inevitable fatality.  My thoughts would fly to the
+myriad unfortunate hazards of life; I should be appalled at the
+frightful coincidence of calamity; but in me there would be no
+suggestion of a superhuman will that had hurled the train over the
+precipice, steered the ship on to rocks, or kindled the flames; I
+should hold it incredible that such monstrous efforts could have been
+put forth with the sole object of inflicting punishment and despair
+upon a poor wretch, because of some error he might have committed--one
+of those grave human errors which yet are so petty in face of the
+universe; an error which perhaps had not issued from either his heart
+or his brain, and had stirred not one blade of grass on the earth's
+whole surface.
+
+
+22
+
+But he, this neighbour of mine, on whom these terrible blows have
+successively fallen, like so many lightning-flashes on a black night of
+storm--will he think as I do; will these catastrophes seem natural to
+him, and ordinary, and susceptible of explanation?  Will not the words
+destiny, fortune, hazard, ill-luck, fatality, star--the word
+Providence, perhaps--assume in his mind a significance they never have
+assumed before?  Will not the light beneath which he questions his
+consciousness be a different light from my own, will he not feel round
+his life an influence, a power, a kind of evil intention, that are
+imperceptible to me?  And who is right, he or I?  Which of us two sees
+more clearly, and further?  Do truths that in calmer times lie hidden
+float to the surface in hours of trouble; and which is the moment we
+should choose to establish the meaning of life?
+
+The "interpreter of life," as a rule, selects the troubled hours.  He
+places himself, and us, in the soul-state of his victims.  He shows
+their misfortunes to us in perspective; and so sharply, concretely,
+that we have for the moment the illusion of a personal disaster.  And,
+indeed, it is more or less impossible for him to depict them as they
+would occur in real life.  If we had spent long years with the hero of
+the drama which has stirred us so painfully, had he been our brother,
+our father, our friend, we should have probably noted, recognised,
+counted one by one as they passed, all the causes of his misfortune,
+which then would not only appear less extraordinary to us, but
+perfectly natural even, and humanly almost inevitable.  But to the
+"interpreter of life" is given neither power nor occasion to acquaint
+us with each veritable cause.  For these causes, as a rule, are
+infinitely slow in their movement, and countless in number, and slight,
+and of small apparent significance.  He is therefore led to adopt a
+general cause, one sufficiently vast to embrace the whole drama, in
+place of the real and human causes which he is unable to show us,
+unable, too, himself to examine and study.  And where shall a general
+cause of sufficient vastness be found, if not in the two or three words
+we breathe to ourselves when silence oppresses us: words like fatality,
+divinity, Providence, or obscure and nameless justice?
+
+
+23
+
+The question we have to consider is how far this procedure can be
+beneficial, or even legitimate; as also whether it be the mission of
+the poet to present, and insist on, the distress and confusion of our
+least lucid hours, or to add to the clear-sightedness of the moments
+when we conceive ourselves to enjoy the fullest possession of our force
+and our reason.  In our own misfortunes there is something of good, and
+something of good must therefore be found in the illusion of personal
+misfortune.  We are made to look into ourselves; our errors, our
+weaknesses, are more clearly revealed; it is shown to us where we have
+strayed.  There falls a light on our consciousness a thousand times
+more searching, more active, than could spring from many arduous years
+of meditation and study.  We are forced to emerge from ourselves, and
+to let our eyes rest on those round about us; we are rendered more
+keenly alive to the sorrows of others.  There are some who will tell us
+that misfortune does even more--that it urges our glance on high, and
+compels us to bow to a power superior to our own, to an unseen justice,
+to an impenetrable, infinite mystery.  Can this indeed be the best of
+all possible issues?  Ah, yes, it was well, from the standpoint of
+religious morality, that misfortune should teach us to lift up our eyes
+and look on an eternal, unchanging, undeniable God, sovereignly
+beautiful, sovereignly just, and sovereignly good.  It was well that
+the poet who found in his God an unquestionable ideal should
+incessantly hold before us this unique, this definitive ideal.  But
+to-day, if we look away from the truth, from the ordinary experience of
+life, on what shall our eager glance rest?  If we discard the more or
+less compensatory laws of conscience and inward happiness, what shall
+we say when triumphant injustice confronts us, or successful,
+unpunished crime?  How shall we account for the death of a child, the
+miserable end of an innocent man, or the disaster hurled by cruel fate
+on some unfortunate creature, if we seek explanations loftier, more
+definite, more comprehensive and decisive than those that are found
+satisfactory in everyday life for the reason that they are the only
+ones that accord with a certain number of realities?  Is it right that
+the poet, in his eager desire to contrive a solemn atmosphere for his
+drama, should arouse from their slumber sentiments, errors, prejudices
+and fears, which we would attack and rebuke were we to discover them in
+the hearts of our friends or our children?  Man has at last, through
+his study of the habits of spirit and brain, of the laws of existence,
+the caprices of fate and the maternal indifference of nature--man has
+at last, and laboriously, acquired some few certitudes, that are worthy
+of all respect; and is the poet entitled to seize on the moment of
+anguish in order to oust all these certitudes, and set up in their
+place a fatality to which every action of ours gives the lie; or powers
+before which we would refuse to kneel did the blow fall on us that has
+prostrated his hero; or a mystic justice that, for all it may sweep
+away the need for many an embarrassing explanation, bears yet not the
+slightest kinship to the active and personal justice we all of us
+recognise in our own personal life?
+
+
+24
+
+And yet this is what the "interpreter of life" will more or less
+deliberately do from the moment he seeks to invest his work with a
+lofty spirit, with a deep and religious beauty, with the sense of the
+infinite.  Even though this work of his may be of the sincerest, though
+it express as nearly as may be his own most intimate truth, he believes
+that this truth is enhanced, and established more firmly, by being
+surrounded with phantoms of a forgotten past.  Might not the symbols he
+needs, the hypotheses, images, the touchstone for all that cannot be
+explained, be less frequently sought in that which he knows is not
+true, and more often in that which will one day be a truth?  Does the
+unearthing of bygone terrors, or the borrowing of light from a Hell
+that has ceased to be, make death more sublime?  Does dependence on a
+supreme but imaginary will ennoble our destiny?  Does justice--that
+vast network woven by human action and reaction over the unchanging
+wisdom of nature's moral and physical forces--does justice become more
+majestic through being lodged in the hands of a unique judge, whom the
+very spirit of the drama dethrones and destroys?
+
+
+25
+
+Let us ask ourselves whether the hour may not have come for the earnest
+revision of the symbols, the images, sentiments, beauty, wherewith we
+still seek to glorify in us the spectacle of the world.
+
+This beauty, these feelings and sentiments, to-day unquestionably bear
+only the most distant relation to the phenomena, thoughts, nay even the
+dreams, of our actual existence; and if they are suffered still to
+abide with us, it is rather as tender and innocent memories of a past
+that was more credulous, and nearer to the childhood of man.  Were it
+not well, then, that those whose mission it is to make more evident to
+us the beauty and harmony of the world we live in, should march ever
+onwards, and let their steps tend to the actual truth of this world?
+Their conception of the universe need not be stripped of a single one
+of the ornaments wherewith they embellish it; but why seek these
+ornaments so often among mere recollections, however smiling or
+terrible, and so seldom from among the essential thoughts which have
+helped these men to build, and effectively organise, their spiritual
+and sentient life?
+
+It can never be right to dwell in the midst of false images, even
+though these are known to be false.  The time will come when the
+illusory image will usurp the place of the just idea it has seemed to
+represent.  We shall not reduce the part of the infinite and the
+mysterious by employing other images, by framing other and juster
+conceptions.  Do what we may, this part can never be lessened.  It will
+always be found deep down in the heart of men, at the root of each
+problem, pervading the universe.  And for all that the substance, the
+place of these mysteries, may seem to have changed, their extent and
+power remain for ever the same.  Has not--to take but one instance--has
+not the phenomenon of the existence, everywhere among us, of a kind of
+supreme and wholly spiritual justice, unarmed, unadorned, unequipped,
+moving slowly but never swerving, stable and changeless in a world
+where injustice would seem to reign--has this phenomenon not cause and
+effect as deep, as exhaustless--is it not as astounding, as
+admirable--as the wisdom of an eternal and omnipresent Judge?  Should
+this Judge be held more convincing for that He is less conceivable?
+Are fewer sources of beauty, or occasions for genius to exercise
+insight and power, to be found in what can be explained than in what
+is, _a priori_, inexplicable?  Does not, for instance, a victorious but
+unjust war (such as those of the Romans, of England to-day, the
+conquests of Spain in America, and so many others) in the end always
+demoralise the victor and thrust upon him errors, habits, and faults
+whereby he is made to pay dearly for his triumph; and is not the
+minute, the relentless labour of this psychological justice as
+absorbing, as vast, as the intervention of a superhuman justice?  And
+may not the same be said of the justice that lives in each one of us,
+that causes the space left for peace, inner happiness, love, to expand
+or contract in our mind and our heart in the degree of our striving
+towards that which is just or is unjust?
+
+
+26
+
+And to turn to one mystery more, the most awful of all, that of
+death--would any one pretend that our perception of justice, of
+goodness and beauty, or our intellectual, sentient power, our eagerness
+for all that draws near to the infinite, all-powerful, eternal, has
+dwindled since death ceased to be held the immense and exclusive
+anguish of life?  Does not each new generation find the burden lighter
+to bear as the forms of death grow less violent and its posthumous
+terrors fade?  It is the illness that goes before, the physical pain,
+of which we are to-day most afraid.  But death is no longer the hour of
+the wrathful, inscrutable judge; no longer the one and the terrible
+goal, the gulf of misery and eternal punishment.  It is slowly
+becoming--indeed, in some cases, it has already become--the wished-for
+repose of a life that draws to its end.  Its weight no longer oppresses
+each one of our actions; and, above all--for this is the most striking
+change--it has ceased to intrude itself into our morality.  And is this
+morality of ours less lofty, less pure, less profound, because of the
+disinterestedness it has thus acquired?  Has the loss of an
+overwhelming dread robbed mankind of a single precious, indispensable
+feeling?  And must not life itself find gain in the importance wrested
+from death?  Surely: for the neutral forces we hold in reserve within
+us are waiting and ready; and every discouragement, sorrow, or fear
+that departs has its place quickly filled by a certitude, admiration,
+or hope.
+
+
+27
+
+The poet is inclined to personify fatality and justice, and give
+outward form to forces really within us, for the reason that to show
+them at work in ourselves is a matter of exceeding difficulty; and
+further, that the unknown and the infinite, to the extent that they
+_are_ unknown and infinite--_i.e._ lacking personality, intelligence,
+and morality--are powerless to move us.  And here it is curious to note
+that we are in no degree affected by material mystery, however
+dangerous or obscure, or by psychological justice, however involved its
+results.  It is not the incomprehensible in nature that masters and
+crushes us, but the thought that nature may possibly be governed by a
+conscious, superior, reasoning will; one that, although superhuman, has
+yet some kinship with the will of man.  What we dread, in a word, is
+the presence of a God; and speak as we may of fatality, justice, or
+mystery, it is always God whom we fear: a being, that is, like
+ourselves, though almighty, eternal, invisible, and infinite.  A moral
+force that was not conceived in the image of man would most likely
+inspire no fear.  It is not the unknown in nature that fills us with
+dread; it is not the mystery of the world we live in.  It is the
+mystery of another world from which we recoil; it is the moral and not
+the material enigma.  There is nothing, for instance, more obscure than
+the combination of causes which produce the earthquake, that most
+terrible of all catastrophes.  But the earthquake, though it alarm our
+body, will bring no fear to our mind unless we regard it as an act of
+justice, of mysterious vengeance, of supernatural punishment.  And so
+it is, too, with the thunderstorm, with illness, with death, with the
+myriad phenomena and accidents of life.  It would seem as though the
+true alarm of our soul, the great fear which stirs other instincts
+within us than that of mere self-preservation, is only called forth by
+the thought of a more or less determinate God, of a mysterious
+consciousness, a permanent, invisible justice, or a vigilant, eternal
+Providence.  But does the "interpreter of life," who succeeds in
+arousing this fear, bring us nearer to truth; and is it his mission to
+convey to us sorrow, and trouble, and painful emotion, or peace,
+satisfaction, tranquillity, and light?
+
+
+28
+
+It is not easy, I know, to free oneself wholly from traditional
+interpretation, for it often succeeds in reasserting its sway upon us
+at the very moment we strain every nerve to escape from our bondage.
+So has it happened with Ibsen, who, in his search for a new and almost
+scientific form of fatality, erected the veiled, majestic, tyrannical
+figure of heredity in the centre of the very best of his dramas.  But
+it is not the scientific mystery of heredity which awakens within us
+those human fears that lie so much deeper than the mere animal fear;
+for heredity alone could no more achieve this result than could the
+scientific mystery of a dreaded disease, a stellar or marine
+phenomenon.  No, the fear that differs so essentially from the one
+called forth by an imminent natural danger, is aroused within us by the
+obscure idea of justice which heredity assumes in the drama; by the
+daring pronouncement that the sins of the fathers are almost invariably
+visited on the children; by the suggestion that a sovereign Judge, a
+goddess of the species, is for ever watching our actions, inscribing
+them on her tablets of bronze, and balancing in her eternal hands
+rewards long deferred and never-ending punishment.  In a word, even
+while we deny it, it is the face of God that reappears; and from
+beneath the flagstone one had believed to be sealed for ever comes once
+again the murmur of the very ancient flame of Hell.
+
+
+29
+
+This new form of fatality, or fatal justice, is less defensible, and
+less acceptable too, than the ancient and elementary power, which,
+being general and undefined, and offering no too strict explanation of
+its actions, lent itself to a far greater number of situations.  In the
+special case selected by Ibsen, it is not impossible that some kind of
+accidental justice may be found, as it is not impossible that the arrow
+a blind man shoots into a crowd may chance to strike a parricide.  But
+to found a law upon this accidental justice is a fresh perversion of
+mystery, for elements are thereby introduced into human morality which
+have no right to be there; elements which we would welcome, which would
+be of value, if they stood for definite truths; but seeing that they
+are as alien to truth as to actual life, they should be ruthlessly
+swept aside.  I have shown elsewhere that our experience fails to
+detect the most minute trace of justice in the phenomena of heredity;
+or, in other words, that it fails to discover the slightest moral
+connection between the cause: the fault of the father, and the effect:
+the punishment or reward of the child.
+
+The poet has the right to fashion hypotheses, and to forge his way
+ahead of reality.  But it will often happen that when he imagines
+himself to be far in advance, he will truly have done no more than turn
+in a circle; that where he believes that he has discovered new truth,
+he has merely strayed on to the track of a buried illusion.  In the
+case I have named, for the poet to have taught us more than experience
+teaches, he should have ventured still further, perhaps, in the
+negation of justice.  But whatever our opinion may be on this point, it
+at least is clear that the poet who desires his hypotheses to be
+legitimate, and of service, must take heed that they be not too
+manifestly contrary to the experience of everyday life; for in that
+case they become useless and dangerous--scarcely honourable even, if
+the error be deliberately made.
+
+
+30
+
+And now, what are we to conclude from all this?  Many things, if one
+will, but this above all: that it behoves the "interpreter of life," no
+less than those who are living that life, to exercise greatest care in
+their manner of handling and admitting mystery, and to discard the
+belief that whatever is noblest and best in life or in drama must of
+necessity rest in the part that admits of no explanation.  There are
+many most beautiful, most human, most admirable works which are almost
+entirely free from this "disquiet of universal mystery."  We derive no
+greatness, sublimity, or depth from unceasingly fixing our thoughts on
+the infinite and the unknown.  Such meditation becomes truly helpful
+only when it is the unexpected reward of the mind that has loyally,
+unreservedly, given itself to the study of the finite and the knowable;
+and to such a mind it will soon be revealed how strangely different is
+the mystery which precedes what one does not know from the mystery that
+follows closely on what one has learned.  The first would seem to
+contain many sorrows, but that is only because the sorrows are grouped
+there too closely, and have their home upon two of three peaks that
+stand too nearly together.  In the second is far less sadness, for its
+area is vast; and when the horizon is wide, there exists no sorrow so
+great but it takes the form of a hope.
+
+
+31
+
+Yes, human life, viewed as a whole, may appear somewhat sorrowful; and
+it is easier, in a manner pleasanter even, to speak of its sorrows and
+let the mind dwell on them, than to go in search of, and bring into
+prominence, the consolations life has to offer.  Sorrows
+abound--infallible, evident sorrows; consolations, or rather the
+reasons wherefore we accept with some gladness the duty of life, are
+rare and uncertain, and hard of detection.  Sorrows seem noble, and
+lofty, and fraught with deep mystery; with mystery that almost is
+personal, that we feel to be near to us.  Consolations appear
+egotistical, squalid, at times almost base.  But for all that, and
+whatever their ephemeral likeness may be, we have only to draw closer
+to them to find that they too have their mystery; and if this seem less
+visible and less comprehensible, it is only because it lies deeper and
+is far more mysterious.  The desire to live, the acceptance of life as
+it is, may perhaps be mere vulgar expressions; but yet they are
+probably in unconscious harmony with laws that are vaster, more
+conformable with the spirit of the universe, and therefore more sacred,
+than is the desire to escape the sorrows of life, or the lofty but
+disenchanted wisdom that for ever dwells on those sorrows.
+
+
+32
+
+Our impulse is always to depict life as more sorrowful than truly it
+is; and this is a serious error, to be excused only by the doubts that
+at present hang over us.  No satisfying explanation has so far been
+found.  The destiny of man is as subject to unknown forces to-day as it
+was in the days of old; and though it be true that some of these forces
+have vanished, others have arisen in their stead.  The number of those
+that are really all-powerful has in no way diminished.  Many attempts
+have been made, and in countless fashions, to explain the action of
+these forces and account for their intervention; and one might almost
+believe that the poets, aware of the futility of these explanations in
+face of a reality which, all things notwithstanding, is ever revealing
+more and more of itself, have fallen back on fatality as in some
+measure representing the inexplicable, or at least the sadness of the
+inexplicable.  This is all that we find in Ibsen, the Russian novels,
+the highest class of modern fiction, Flaubert, &c. (see "War and
+Peace," for instance, _L'Education Sentimentale_, and many others).
+
+It is true that the fatality shown is no longer the goddess of old, or
+rather (at least to the bulk of mankind) the clearly determinate God,
+inflexible, implacable, arbitrary, blind, although constantly watchful;
+the fatality of to-day is vaster, more formless, more vague, less human
+or actively personal, more indifferent and more universal.  In a word,
+it is now no more than a provisional appellation bestowed, until better
+be found, on the general and inexplicable misery of man.  In this sense
+we may accept it, perhaps, though we do no more than give a new name to
+the unchanging enigma, and throw no light on the darkness.  But we have
+no right to exaggerate its importance or the part that it plays; no
+right to believe that we are truly surveying mankind and events from a
+point of some loftiness, beneath a definitive light, or that there is
+nothing to seek beyond, because at times we become deeply conscious of
+the obscure and invincible force that lies at the end of every
+existence.  Doubtless, from one point of view, unhappiness must always
+remain the portion of man, and the fatal abyss be ever open before him,
+vowed as he is to death, to the fickleness of matter, to old age and
+disease.  If we fix our eyes only upon the end of a life, the happiest
+and most triumphant existence must of necessity contain its elements of
+misery and fatality.  But let us not make a wrong use of these words;
+above all, let us not, through listlessness or undue inclination to
+mystic sorrow, be induced to lessen the part of what could be explained
+if we would only give more eager attention to the ideas, the passions
+and feelings of the life of man and the nature of things.  Let us
+always remember that we are steeped in the unknown; for this thought is
+the most fruitful of all, the most sustaining and salutary.  But the
+neutrality of the unknown does not warrant our attributing to it a
+force, or designs, or hostility, which it cannot be proved to possess.
+At Erfurt, in his famous interview with Goethe, Napoleon is said to
+have spoken disparagingly of the dramas in which fatality plays a great
+part--the plays that we, in our "passion for calamity," are apt to
+consider the finest.  "They belong," he remarked, "to an epoch of
+darkness; but how can fatality touch us to-day?  Policy--_that_ is
+fatality!"  Napoleon's dictum is not very profound: policy is only the
+merest fragment of fatality; and his destiny very soon made it manifest
+to him that the desire to contain fatality within the narrow bounds of
+policy was no more than a vain endeavour to imprison in a fragile vase
+the mightiest of the spiritual rivers that bathe our globe.  And yet,
+incomplete as this thought of Napoleon's may have been, it still throws
+some light on a tributary of the great river.  It was a little thing,
+perhaps, but on these uncertain shores it is the difference between a
+little thing and nothing that kindles the energy of man and confirms
+his destiny.  By this ray of light, such as it was, he long was enabled
+to dominate all that portion of the unknown which he declined to term
+fatality.  To us who come after him, the portion of the unknown that he
+controlled may well seem insufficient, if surveyed from an eminence,
+and yet it was truly one of the vastest that the eye of man has ever
+embraced.  Through its means every action of his was accomplished, for
+evil or good.  This is not the place to judge him, or even to wonder
+whether the happiness of a century might not have been better served
+had he allowed events to guide him; what we are considering here is the
+docility of the unknown.  For us, with our humbler destinies, the
+problem still is the same, and the principle too; the principle being
+that of Goethe: "to stand on the outermost limit of the conceivable;
+but never to overstep this line, for beyond it begins at once the land
+of chimeras, the phantoms and mists of which are fraught with danger to
+the mind."  It is only when the intervention of the mysterious,
+invisible, or irresistible becomes strikingly real, actually
+perceptible, intelligent, and moral, that we are entitled to yield or
+lay down our arms, meekly accepting the inactive silence they bring;
+but their intervention, within these limits, is rarer than one
+imagines.  Let us recognise that mystery of this kind exists; but,
+until it reveal itself, we have not the right to halt, or relax our
+efforts; not the right to cast down our eyes in submission, or resign
+ourselves to silence.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE KINGDOM OF MATTER
+
+1
+
+In a preceding essay we were compelled to admit that, eager as man
+might be to discover in the universe a sanction for his virtues,
+neither heaven nor earth displayed the least interest in human
+morality; and that all things would combine to persuade the upright
+among us that they merely are dupes, were it not for the fact that they
+have in themselves an approval words cannot describe, and a reward so
+intangible that we should in vain endeavour to portray its least
+evanescent delights.  Is that all, some may ask, is that all we may
+hope in return for this mighty effort of ours, for our constant denial
+and pain, for our sacrifice of instincts, of pleasures, that seemed so
+legitimate, necessary even, and would certainly have added to our
+happiness had there not been within us the desire for Justice--a desire
+arising we know not whence, belonging, perhaps, to our nature, and yet
+in apparent conflict with the vaster nature whereof we all form part?
+Yes, it is open to you, if you choose, to regard as a very poor thing
+this unsubstantial justice: since its only reward is a vague
+satisfaction, and that this satisfaction even grows hateful, and
+destroys itself, the moment its presence becomes too perceptibly felt.
+Bear in mind, however, that all things that happen in our moral being
+must be equally lightly held, if regarded from the point of view whence
+you deliver this judgment.  Love is a paltry affair, the moment of
+possession once over that alone is real and ensures the perpetuity of
+the race; and yet we find that as man grows more civilised, the act of
+possession assumes ever less value in his eyes if there go not with it,
+if there do not precede, accompany, and follow it, the insignificant
+emotion built up of our thoughts and our feelings, of our sweetest and
+tenderest hours and years.  Beauty, too, is a trivial matter: a
+beautiful spectacle, a beautiful face, or body, or gesture: a melodious
+voice, or noble statue--sunrise at sea, flowers in a garden, stars
+shining over the forest, the river by moonlight--or a lofty thought, an
+exquisite poem, an heroic sacrifice hidden in a profound and pitiful
+soul.  We may admire these things for an instant; they may bring us a
+sense of completeness no other joy can convey; but at the same time
+there will steal over us a tinge of strange sorrow, unrest; nor will
+they give happiness to us, as men use the word, should other events
+have contrived to make us unhappy.  They produce nothing the eye can
+measure, or weigh; nothing that others can see, or will envy; and yet,
+were a magician suddenly to appear, capable of depriving one of us of
+this sense of beauty that may chance to be in him, possessed of the
+power of extinguishing it for ever, with no trace remaining, no hope
+that it ever will spring into being again--would we not rather lose
+riches, tranquillity, health even, and many years of our life, than
+this strange faculty which none can espy, and we ourselves can scarcely
+define?  Not less intangible, not less elusive, is the sweetness of
+tender friendship, of a dear recollection we cling to and reverence;
+and countless other thoughts and feelings, that traverse no mountain,
+dispel no cloud, that do not even dislodge a grain of sand by the
+roadside.  But these are the things that build up what is best and
+happiest in us; they are we, ourselves; they are precisely what those
+who have them not should envy in those who have.  The more we emerge
+from the animal, and approach what seems the surest ideal of our race,
+the more evident does it become that these things, trifling as they
+well may appear by the side of nature's stupendous laws, do yet
+constitute our sole inheritance; and that, happen what may to the end
+of time, they are the hearth, the centre of light, to which mankind
+will draw ever more and more closely.
+
+
+2
+
+We live in a century that loves the material, but, while loving it,
+conquers it, masters it, and with more passion than any preceding
+period has shown; in a century that would seem consumed with desire to
+comprehend matter, to penetrate, enslave it, possess it once and for
+all to repletion, satiety--with the wish, it may be, to ransack its
+every resource, lay bare its last secret, thereby freeing the future
+from the restless search for a happiness there seemed reason once to
+believe that matter contained.  So, in like manner, is it necessary
+first to have known the love of the flesh before the veritable love can
+reveal its deep and unchanging purity.  A serious reaction will
+probably arise, some day, against this passion for material enjoyment;
+but man will never be able to cast himself wholly free.  Nor would the
+attempt be wise.  We are, after all, only fragments of animate matter,
+and it could not be well to lose sight of the starting-point of our
+race.  And yet, is it right that this starting-point should enclose in
+its narrow circumference all our wishes, all our happiness, the
+totality of our desires?  In our passage through life we meet scarcely
+any who do not persist, with a kind of unreasoning obstinacy, in
+throning the material within them, and there maintaining it supreme.
+Gather together a number of men and women, all of them free from life's
+more depressing cares--an assembly of the elect, if you will--and
+pronounce before them the words "beatitude, happiness, joy, felicity,
+ideal."  Imagine that an angel, at that very instant, were to seize and
+retain, in a magic mirror or miraculous basket, the images these words
+would evoke in the souls that should hear them.  What would you see in
+the basket or mirror?  The embrace of beautiful bodies; gold, precious
+stones, a palace, an ample park; the philtre of youth, strange jewels
+and gauds representing vanity's dreams; and, let us admit it, prominent
+far above all would be sumptuous repasts, noble wines, glittering
+tables, splendid apartments.  Is humanity still too near its beginning
+to conceive other things?  Has the hour not arrived when we might have
+reasonably hoped the mirror to reflect a powerful, disinterested
+intellect, a conscience at rest: a just and loving heart, a perception,
+a vision capable of detecting, absorbing beauty wherever it be--the
+beauty of evening, of cities, of forests and seas, no less than of
+face, of a word or a smile, of an action or movement of soul?  The
+foreground of the magical mirror at present reflects beautiful women,
+undraped; when shall we see, in their stead, the deep, great love of
+two beings to whom the knowledge has come that it is only when their
+thoughts and their feelings, and all that is more mysterious still than
+thoughts and feelings, have blended, and day by day become more
+essentially one, that the joys of the flesh are freed from the after
+disquiet, and leave no bitterness behind?  When shall we find, instead
+of the morbid, unnatural excitement produced by too copious, oppressive
+repasts, by stimulants that are the insidious agents of the very enemy
+we seek to destroy--when shall we find, in their place, the contained
+and deliberate gladness of a spirit that is for ever exalted because it
+for ever is seeking to understand, and to love? . . .  These things
+have long been known, and their repetition may well seem of little
+avail.  And yet, we need but to have been twice or thrice in the
+company of those who stand for what is best in mankind, most
+intellectually, sentiently human, to realise how uncertain and groping
+their search is still for the happier hours of life; to marvel at the
+resemblance the unconscious happiness they look for bears to the
+happiness craved by the man who has no spiritual existence; to note how
+opaque, to their eyes, is the cloud which separates all that pertains
+to the being who rises from all that is his who descends.  Some will
+say that the hour is not yet when man can thus make clear division
+between the part of the spirit and that of the flesh.  But when shall
+that hour be looked for if those for whom it should long since have
+sounded still suffer the obscurest prejudice of the mass to guide them
+when they set forth in search of their happiness?  When they achieve
+glory and riches, when love comes to meet them, they will be free, it
+may be, from a few of the coarser satisfactions of vanity, a few of the
+grosser excesses; but beyond this they strive not at all to secure a
+happiness that shall be more spiritual, more purely human.  The
+advantage they have does not teach them to widen the circle of material
+exaction, to discard what is less justifiable.  In their attitude
+towards the pleasures of life they submit to the same spiritual
+deprivation as, let us say, some cultured man who may have wandered
+into a theatre where the play being performed is not one of the five or
+six masterpieces of universal literature.  He is fully aware that his
+neighbours' applause and delight are called forth, in the main, by more
+or less obnoxious prejudices on the subject of honour, glory, religion,
+patriotism, sacrifice, liberty, or love--or perhaps by some feeble,
+dreary poetical effusion.  None the less, he will find himself affected
+by the general enthusiasm; and it will be necessary for him, almost at
+every instant, to pull himself violently together, to make startled
+appeal to every conviction within him, in order to convince himself
+that these partisans of hoary errors are wrong, notwithstanding their
+number, and that he, with his isolated reason, alone is right.
+
+
+3
+
+Indeed, when we consider the relation of man to matter, it is
+surprising to find how little light has yet been thrown upon it, how
+little has been definitely fixed.  Elementary, imperious, as this
+relation undoubtedly is, humanity has always been wavering, uncertain,
+passing from the most dangerous confidence to the most systematic
+distrust, from adoration to horror, from asceticism and complete
+renouncement to their corresponding extremes.  The days are past when
+an irrational, useless abstinence was preached, and put into
+practice--an abstinence often fully as harmful as habitual excess.  We
+are entitled to all that helps to maintain, or advance, the development
+of the body; this is our right, but it has its limits; and these limits
+it would be well to define with the utmost exactness, for whatever may
+trespass beyond must infallibly weaken the growth of that other side of
+ourselves, the flower that the leaves round about it will either stifle
+or nourish.  And humanity, that so long has been watching this flower,
+studying it so intently, noting its subtlest, most fleeting perfumes
+and shades, is most often content to abandon to the caprice of the
+temperament, be this evil or good, to the passing moment, or to chance,
+the government of the unconscious forces that will, like the leaves, be
+discreetly active, sustaining, life-giving, or profoundly selfish,
+destructive, and fatal.  Hitherto, perhaps, this may have been done
+with impunity; for the ideal of mankind (which at the start was
+concerned with the body alone) wavered long between matter and spirit.
+To-day, however, it clings, with ever profounder conviction, to the
+human intelligence.  We no longer strive to compete with the lion, the
+panther, the great anthropoid ape, in force or agility; in beauty with
+the flower or the shine of the stars on the sea.  The utilisation by
+our intellect of every unconscious force, the gradual subjugation of
+matter and the search for its secret--these at present appear the most
+evident aim of our race, and its most probable mission.  In the days of
+doubt there was no satisfaction, or even excess, but was excusable, and
+moral, so long as it wrought no irreparable loss of strength or actual
+organic harm.  But now that the mission of the race is becoming more
+clearly defined, the duty is on us to leave on one side whatever is not
+directly helpful to the spiritual part of our being.  Sterile pleasures
+of the body must be gradually sacrificed; indeed, in a word, all that
+is not in absolute harmony with a larger, more durable energy of
+thought; all the little "harmless" delights which, however inoffensive
+comparatively, keep alive by example and habit the prejudice in favour
+of inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to the
+satisfactions of the intellect.  These last differ from those of the
+body, whose development some may assist and others retard.  Into the
+elysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with it
+youth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world on
+which the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch,
+of eagerness, comprehension, and wonder.
+
+
+4
+
+The time must come, sooner or later, when our morality will have to
+conform to the probable mission of the race; when the arbitrary, often
+ridiculous restrictions whereof it is at present composed will be
+compelled to make way for the inevitable logical restrictions this
+mission exacts.  For the individual, as for the race, there can be but
+one code of morals--the subordination of the ways of life to the
+demands of the general mission that appears entrusted to man.  The axis
+will shift, therefore, of many sins, many great offences; until at last
+for all the crimes against the body there shall be substituted the
+veritable crimes against human destiny; in other words, whatever may
+tend to impair the authority, integrity, leisure, liberty, or power of
+the intellect.
+
+But by this we are far from suggesting that the body should be regarded
+as the irreconcilable enemy which the Christian theory holds it.  Far
+from that, we should strive, first of all, to endow it with all
+possible vigour and beauty.  But it is like a capricious child:
+exacting, improvident, selfish; and the stronger it grows the more
+dangerous does it become.  It knows no cult but that of the passing
+moment.  In imagination, desires, it halts at the trivial thought, the
+primitive, fleeting, foolish delight of the little dog or the negro.
+The satisfactions procured by the intellect--the comfort, security,
+leisure, the gladness--it regards as no more than its due, and enjoys
+in fullest complacency.  Left to itself, it would enjoy these so
+stupidly, savagely, that it would very soon stifle the intellect from
+which it derived these favours.  Hence there is need for certain
+restrictions, renouncements, which all men must observe; not only those
+who have reason to hope, and believe, that they are effectively
+striving to solve the enigma, to bring about the fulfilment of human
+destiny and the triumph of mind over insensible matter, but also the
+crowds in the ranks of the massive, unconscious rearguard, who placidly
+watch the phosphorescent evolutions of mind as its light gleams on the
+world's elementary darkness.  For humanity is a unique and unanimous
+entity.  When the thought of the mass--that thought which scarcely is
+thought--travels downwards, its influence is felt by philosopher and
+poet, astronomer and chemist; it has its pronounced effect on their
+character, morals, ideals, their sense of duty, habits of labour,
+intellectual vigour.  If the myriad, uniform, petty ideas in the valley
+fall short of a certain elevation, no great idea shall spring to life
+on the mountain-peak.  Down there the thought may have little strength,
+but there are countless numbers who think it; and the influence this
+thought acquires may be almost termed atmospheric.  And they up above
+on the mountain, the precipice, the edge of the glacier, will be helped
+by this influence, or harmed, in the degree of its brightness or gloom,
+of its reaching them, buoyed up with generous feeling, or heavily
+charged with brutal habit and coarse desire.  The heroic action of a
+people (as, for instance, the French Revolution, the Reformation, all
+wars of independence and liberation) will fertilise and purify this
+people for more centuries than one.  But far less will satisfy those
+who toil at the fulfilment of destiny.  Let but the habits of the men
+round about them become a little more noble, their desires a little
+more disinterested; let but their passions and eagerness, their
+pleasures and love, be illumined by one ray of brightness, of grace, of
+spiritual fervour; and those up above will feel the support, and draw
+their breath freely, no longer compelled to struggle with the
+instinctive part of themselves; and the power that is in them will obey
+the more readily, and mould itself to their hand.  The peasant who,
+instead of carousing at the beershop, spends a peaceful Sunday at home,
+with a book, beneath the trees of his orchard; the humble citizen whom
+the emotions or din of the racecourse cannot tempt from some worthy
+enjoyment, from the pleasure of a reposeful afternoon; the workman who
+no longer makes the streets hideous with obscene or ridiculous song,
+but wanders forth into the country, or, from the ramparts, watches the
+sunset--all these bring their meed of help: their great assistance,
+unconscious though it be, and anonymous, to the triumph of the vast
+human flame.
+
+
+5
+
+But how much there is to be done, and learned, before this great flame
+can arise in serene, secure brightness!  We have said that man, in his
+relation to matter, is still in the experimental, groping stage of his
+earliest days.  He lacks even definite knowledge as to the kind of food
+best adapted for him, or the quantity of nourishment he requires; he is
+still uncertain as to whether he be carnivorous or frugivorous.  His
+intellect misleads his instinct.  It was only yesterday that he learned
+that he had probably erred hitherto in the choice of his nourishment;
+that he must reduce by two-thirds the quantity of nitrogen he absorbs,
+and largely increase the volume of hydrocarbons; that a little fruit,
+or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances--now the mere
+accessory of the too plentiful repasts which he works so hard to
+provide, which are his chief object in life, the goal of his efforts,
+of his strenuous, incessant labour--are amply sufficient to maintain
+the ardour of the finest and mightiest life.  It is not my purpose here
+to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections
+that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these
+objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry.  I,
+for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit
+themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or
+restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by
+the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow
+the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.  But we
+must not conclude these pages with an essay on alimentation, reasonable
+as such a proceeding might be.  For in truth all our justice, morality,
+all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial
+necessities, whereof the principal one is food.  The least modification
+of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral
+existence.  Were the belief one day to become general that man could
+dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic
+revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more
+than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less
+important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow
+a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to
+remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage.  For we find
+that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also;
+and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded
+pleasures of life.  And it is in the passionate craving for these
+pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the
+most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the
+race.  Detachment therefrom creates noble leisure, a new order of
+desires, a wish for enjoyment that must of necessity be loftier than
+the gross satisfactions which have their origin in alcohol.  But are
+days such as these in store for us--these happier, purer hours?  The
+crime of alcohol is not alone that it destroys its faithful and poisons
+one half of the race, but also that it exercises a profound, though
+indirect, influence upon those who recoil from it in dread.  The idea
+of pleasure which it maintains in the crowd forces its way, by means of
+the crowd's irresistible action, into the life even of the elect, and
+lessens, perverts, all that concerns man's peace and repose, his
+expansiveness, gladness and joy; retarding, too, it may safely be said,
+the birth of the truer, profounder ideal of happiness: one that shall
+be simpler, more peaceful and grave, more spiritual and human.  This
+ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little
+importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases,
+before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far
+has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this
+statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused
+masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort.  But may this not be
+the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle
+for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for
+life that to-day means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double
+source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double
+symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?
+
+
+6
+
+Whither is humanity tending?  This anxiety of man to know the aim and
+the end is essentially human; it is a kind of infirmity or
+provincialism of the mind, and has nothing in common with universal
+reality.  Have things an aim?  Why should they have; and what aim or
+end can there be, in an infinite organism?
+
+But even though our mission be only to fill for an instant a diminutive
+space that could as well be filled by the violet or grasshopper,
+without loss to the universe of economy or grandeur, without the
+destinies of this world being shortened or lengthened thereby by one
+hour; even though this march of ours count for nothing, though we move
+but for the sake of motion, tending no-whither, this futile progress
+may nevertheless still claim to absorb all our attention and interest;
+and this is entirely reasonable, it is the loftiest course we can
+pursue.  If it lay in the power of an ant to study the laws of the
+stars; and if, intent on this study, though fully aware that these laws
+are immutable, never to be modified, it declined to concern itself
+further with the affairs or the future of the anthill--should we, who
+stand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand to
+ourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to be
+dominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all its
+universality, regard it as either good or moral?
+
+Reason, at its apogee, becomes sterile; and inertia would be its sole
+teaching did it not, after recognising the pettiness, the nothingness,
+of our passions and hopes, of our being, and lastly, of reason itself,
+retrace its footsteps back to the point whence it shall be able once
+more to take eager interest in all these poor trivialities, in this
+same nothingness, as holding them the only things in the world for
+which its assistance has value.
+
+We know not whither we go, but may still rejoice in the journey; and
+this will become the lighter, the happier, for our endeavour to picture
+to ourselves the next place of halt.  Where will this be?  The
+mountain-pass lies ahead, and threatens; but the roads already are
+widening and becoming less rugged; the trees spread their branches,
+crowned with fresh blossom; silent waters are flowing before us,
+reposeful and peaceful.  Tokens all these, it may be, of our nearing
+the vastest valley mankind yet has seen from the height of the tortuous
+paths it has ever been climbing!  Shall we call it the "First Valley of
+Leisure"?  Distrust as we may the surprises the future may have in
+store, be the troubles and cares that await us never so burdensome,
+there still seems some ground for believing that the bulk of mankind
+will know days when, thanks, it may be, to machinery, agricultural
+chemistry, medicine perhaps, or I know not what dawning science, labour
+will become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical,
+pitiless.  What use will humanity make of this leisure?  On its
+employment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man.  Were it not
+well that his counsellors now should begin to teach him to use such
+leisure he has in a nobler and worthier fashion?  It is the way in
+which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as
+labour, the moral worth of a nation.  It raises or lowers, it
+replenishes or exhausts.  At present we find, in these great cities of
+ours, that three days' idleness will fill the hospitals with victims
+whom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed.
+
+
+7
+
+Thus we return to the happiness which should be, and perhaps in course
+of time will be, the real human happiness.  Had we taken part in the
+creation of the world, we should probably have bestowed more special,
+distinctive force on all that is best in man, most immaterial, most
+essentially human.  If a thought of love, or a gleam of the intellect;
+a word of justice, an act of pity, a desire for pardon or sacrifice; if
+a gesture of sympathy, a craving of one's whole being for beauty,
+goodness, or truth--if emotions like these could affect the universe as
+they affect the man who has known them, they would call forth
+miraculous flowery, supernatural radiance, inconceivable melody; they
+would scatter the night, recall spring and the sunshine, stay the hand
+of sickness, grief, disaster and misery; gladness would spring from
+them, and youth be restored; while the mind would gain freedom, thought
+immortality, and life be eternal.  No resistance could check them;
+their reward would follow as visibly as it follows the labourer's toll,
+the nightingale's song, or the work of the bee.  But we have learned at
+last that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone; a world
+contained in ourselves that bears no relation to matter, upon which its
+influence is only of the most exceptional and hazardous kind.  But none
+the less real, therefore, is this world, or less infinite: and if words
+break down when they try to tell of it, the reason is only that words,
+after all, are mere fragments of matter, that seek to enter a sphere
+where matter holds no dominion.  The images that words evoke are for
+ever betraying the thoughts for which they stand.  When we try to
+express perfect joy, a noble, spiritual ecstasy, a profound,
+everlasting love, our words can only compare them with animal passion,
+with drunkenness, brutal and coarse desire.  And not only do they thus
+degrade the noblest triumphs of the soul of man by likening them to
+primitive instincts, but they incite us to believe, in spite of
+ourselves, that the object or feeling compared is less real, less true
+or substantial, than the type to which it is referred.  Herein lies the
+injustice and weakness of every attempt that is made to give voice to
+the secrets of men.  And yet, be words never so faulty, let us still
+pay careful heed to the events of this inner world.  For of all the
+events it has lain in our power to meet hitherto, they alone truly are
+human.
+
+
+8
+
+Nor should they be regarded as useless, even though the immense torrent
+of material forces absorb them, as it absorbs the dew that falls from
+the pale morning flower.  Boundless as the world may be wherein we
+live, it is yet as hermetically enclosed as a sphere of steel.  Nothing
+can fall outside it, for it has no outside; nor can any atom possibly
+be lost.  Even though our species should perish entirely, the stage
+through which it has caused certain fragments of matter to pass would
+remain, notwithstanding all ulterior transformations, an indelible
+principle and an immortal cause.  The formidable, provisional
+vegetations of the primary epoch, the chaotic and immature monsters of
+the secondary grounds--Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl--these
+might also regard themselves as vain and ephemeral attempts, ridiculous
+experiments of a still puerile nature, and conceive that they would
+leave no mark upon a more harmonious globe.  And yet not an effort of
+theirs has been lost in space.  They purified the air, they softened
+the unbreathable flame of oxygen, they paved the way for the more
+symmetrical life of those who should follow.  If our lungs find in the
+atmosphere the aliment they need, it is thanks to the inconceivably
+incoherent forests of arborescent fern.  We owe our brains and nerves
+of to-day to fearful hordes of swimming or flying reptiles.  These
+obeyed the order of their life.  They did what they had to do.  They
+modified matter in the fashion prescribed to them.  And we, by carrying
+particles of this same matter to the degree of extraordinary
+incandescence proper to the thought of man, shall surely establish in
+the future something that never shall perish.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PAST
+
+1
+
+Our past stretches behind us in long perspective.  It slumbers on the
+horizon like a deserted city shrouded in mist.  A few peaks mark its
+boundary, and soar predominant into the air; a few important acts stand
+out, like towers, some with the light still upon them, others half
+ruined and slowly decaying beneath the weight of oblivion.  The trees
+are bare, the walls crumble, and shadow slowly steals over all.
+Everything seems to be dead there, and rigid, save only when memory,
+slowly decomposing, lights it for an instant with an illusory gleam.
+But apart from this animation, derived only from our expiring
+recollections, all would appear to be definitively motionless,
+immutable for ever, divided from present and future by a river that
+shall not again be crossed.
+
+In reality it is alive; and, for many of us, endowed with a profounder,
+more ardent life than either present or future.  In reality this dead
+city is often the hot-bed of our existence; and, in accordance with the
+spirit in which men return to it, shall some find all their wealth
+there, and others lose what they have.
+
+
+2
+
+Our conception of the past has much in common with our conception of
+love and happiness, destiny, justice, and most of the vague but
+therefore not less potent spiritual organisms that stand for the mighty
+forces we obey.  Our ideas have been handed down to us ready-made by
+our predecessors; and even when our second consciousness wakes, and,
+proud in its conviction that henceforth nothing shall be accepted
+blindly, proceeds most carefully to investigate these ideas, it will
+squander its time questioning those that loudly protest their right to
+be heard, and pay no heed to the others close by, that as yet, perhaps,
+have said nothing.  Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover these
+others.  They are in us and of us; they wait for us to address them.
+They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence.  Amid the noise and
+babble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real
+life; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfied
+sisters, they will often be far more simple, and far more beautiful too.
+
+
+3
+
+Among the most stubborn of these ready-made ideas are those that
+preside over our conception of the past, and render it a force as
+imposing and rigid as destiny; a force that indeed becomes destiny
+working backwards, with its hand outstretched to the destiny that
+burrows ahead, to which it transmits the last link of our chains.  The
+one thrusts us back, the other urges us forward, with a like
+irresistible violence.  But the violence of the past is perhaps more
+terrible and more alarming.  One may disbelieve in destiny.  It is a
+god whose onslaught many have never experienced.  But no one would
+dream of denying the oppressiveness of the past.  Sooner or later its
+effect must inevitably be felt.  Those even who refuse to admit the
+intangible will credit the past, which their finger can touch, with all
+the mystery, the influence, the sovereign intervention whereof they
+have stripped the powers that they have dethroned; thus rendering it
+the almost unique and therefore more dreadful god of their depopulated
+Olympus.
+
+
+4
+
+The force of the past is indeed one of the heaviest that weigh upon men
+and incline them to sadness.  And yet there is none more docile, more
+eager to follow the direction we could so readily give, did we but know
+how best to avail ourselves of this docility.  In reality, if we think
+of it, the past belongs to us quite as much as the present, and is far
+more malleable than the future.  Like the present, and to a much
+greater extent than the future, its existence is all in our thoughts,
+and our hand controls it; nor is this only true of our material past,
+wherein there are ruins that we perhaps can restore; it is true also of
+the regions that are closed to our tardy desire for atonement; it is
+true above all of our moral past, and of what we consider to be most
+irreparable there.
+
+
+5
+
+"The past is past," we say, and it is false; the past is always
+present.  "We have to bear the burden of our past," we sigh, and it is
+false; the past bears our burden.  "Nothing can wipe out the past," and
+it is false; the least effort of will sends present and future
+travelling over the past to efface whatever we bid them efface.  "The
+indestructible, irreparable, immutable past!"  And that is no truer
+than the rest.  In those who speak thus it is the present that is
+immutable, and knows not how to repair.  "My past is wicked, it is
+sorrowful, empty," we say again; "as I look back I can see no moment of
+beauty, of happiness or love; I see nothing but wretched ruins . . ."
+And that is false; for you see precisely what you yourself place there
+at the moment your eyes upon it.
+
+
+6
+
+Our past depends entirely upon our present, and is constantly changing
+with it.  Our past is contained in our memory; and this memory of ours,
+that feeds on our heart and brain, and is incessantly swayed by them,
+is the most variable thing in the world, the least independent, the
+most impressionable.  Our chief concern with the past, that which truly
+remains and forms part of us, is not what we have done, or the
+adventures that we have met with, but the moral reactions bygone events
+are producing within us at this very moment, the inward being they have
+helped to form; and these reactions, that give birth to our sovereign,
+intimate being, are wholly governed by the manner in which we regard
+past events, and vary as the moral substance varies that they encounter
+within us.  But with every step in advance that our feelings or
+intellect take, a change will come in this moral substance; and then,
+on the instant, the most immutable facts, that seemed to be graven for
+ever on the stone and bronze of the past, will assume an entirely
+different aspect, will return to life and leap into movement, bringing
+us vaster and more courageous counsels, dragging memory aloft with them
+in their ascent; and what was once a mass of ruin, mouldering in the
+darkness, becomes a populous city whereon the sun shines again.
+
+
+7
+
+We have an arbitrary fashion of establishing a certain number of events
+behind us.  We relegate them to the horizon of our memory; and having
+set them there, we tell ourselves that they form part of a world in
+which the united efforts of all mankind could not wipe away a tear, or
+cause a flower to lift its head.  And yet, while admitting that these
+events have passed beyond our control, we still, with the most curious
+inconsistency, believe that they have full control over us; whereas the
+truth is that they can only act upon us to the extent in which we have
+renounced our right to act upon them.  The past asserts itself only in
+those whose moral growth has ceased; then, and not till then, does it
+become redoubtable.  From that moment we have indeed the irreparable
+behind us, and the weight of what we have done lies heavy upon our
+shoulders.  But so long as the life of our mind and character flows
+uninterruptedly on, so long will the past remain in suspense above us;
+and, as the glance may be that we send towards it, will it, complaisant
+as the clouds Hamlet showed to Polonius, adopt the shape of the hope or
+fear, the peace or disquiet, that we are perfecting within us.
+
+
+8
+
+No sooner has our moral activity weakened than accomplished events rush
+forward and assail us; and woe to him who opens the door, and permits
+them to take possession of his hearth!  Each one will vie with the
+other in overwhelming him with the gifts best calculated to shatter his
+courage.  It matters not whether our past has been happy and noble, or
+lugubrious and criminal, there shall still be great danger in allowing
+it to enter, not as an invited guest, but like a parasite settling upon
+us.  The result will be either sterile regret or impotent remorse; and
+remorse and regrets of this kind are equally disastrous.  In order to
+draw from the past what is precious within it--and most of our wealth
+is there--we must go to it at the hour when we are strongest, most
+conscious of mastery; enter its domain, and there make choice of what
+we require, discarding the rest, and laying our command upon it never
+to cross our threshold without our order.  Like all things that only
+can live at the cost of our spiritual strength, it will soon learn to
+obey.  At first, perhaps, it will endeavour to resist.  It will have
+recourse to artifice and prayer.  It will try to tempt us, to cajole.
+It will drag forward frustrated hopes and joys that are gone for ever,
+broken affections, well-merited reproaches, expiring hatred and love
+that is dead, squandered faith and perished beauty; it will thrust
+before us all that once had been the marvellous essence of our ardour
+for life; it will point to the beckoning sorrows, decaying happiness,
+that now haunt the ruin.  But we shall pass by, without turning our
+head; our hand shall scatter the crowd of memories, even as the sage
+Ulysses, in the Cimmerian night, with his sword prevented the
+shades--even that of his mother, whom it was not his mission to
+question--from approaching the black blood that would for an instant
+have given them life and speech.  We shall go straight to the joy, the
+regret or remorse, whose counsel we need; or to the act of injustice we
+wish scrupulously to examine, in order either to make reparation, if
+such still be possible, or that the sight of the wrong we did, whose
+victims have ceased to be, is required to give us the indispensable
+force that shall lift us above the injustice it still lies in us to
+commit.
+
+
+9
+
+Yes, even though our past contain crimes that now are beyond the reach
+of our best endeavours, even then, if we consider the circumstances of
+time and place, and the vast plane of each human existence, these
+crimes fade out of our life the moment we feel that no temptation, no
+power on earth, could ever induce us to commit the like again.  The
+world has not forgiven--there is but little that the external sphere
+will forget or forgive--and their material effects will continue, for
+the laws of cause and effect differ from those which govern our
+consciousness.  At the tribunal of our personal justice, however--the
+only tribunal which has decisive action on our inaccessible life, as it
+is the only one whose decrees we cannot evade, whose concrete judgments
+stir us to our very marrow--the evil action that we regard from a
+loftier plane than that at which it was committed, becomes an action
+that no longer exists for us save in so far as it may serve in the
+future to render our fall more difficult; nor has it the right to lift
+its head again except at the moment when we incline once more towards
+the abyss it guards.
+
+Bitter, surely, must be the grief of him in whose past there are acts
+of injustice whereof every avenue now is closed, who is no longer able
+to seek out his victims, and raise them and comfort them.  To have
+abused one's strength in order to despoil some feeble creature who has
+definitely succumbed beneath the blow; to have callously thrust
+suffering upon a loving heart, or merely misunderstood and passed by a
+touching affection that offered itself--these things must of necessity
+weigh heavily upon our life, and induce a sorrow within us that shall
+not readily be forgotten.  But it depends on the actual point our
+consciousness has attained whether our entire moral destiny shall be
+depressed or lifted beneath this burden.  Our actions rarely die: and
+many unjust deeds of ours will therefore inevitably return to life some
+day to claim their due and start legitimate reprisals.  They will find
+our external life without defence; but before they can reach the inward
+being at the centre of that life, they must first listen to the
+judgment we have already passed on ourselves; and in accordance with
+the nature of that judgment will the attitude be of these mysterious
+envoys, who have come from the depths where cause and effect are poised
+in eternal equilibrium.  If it has indeed been from the heights of our
+newly acquired consciousness that we have questioned ourselves, and
+condemned, they will not be menacing justiciaries whom we shall
+suddenly see surging in from all sides, but benevolent visitors,
+friends we have almost expected, and they will draw near us in silence.
+They know in advance that the man before them is no longer the guilty
+creature they sought; and instead of bringing hatred, revolt, and
+despair, or punishments that degrade and kill, they will come charged
+with ennobling, consoling and purifying thought and penance.
+
+
+10
+
+The things which differentiate the happy and strong from those who weep
+and will not be consoled, all derive from the one same principle of
+confidence and ardour; and thus it is that the manner in which we are
+able to recall what we have done or suffered is far more important than
+our actual sufferings or deeds.  No past, viewed by itself, can seem
+happy; and the privileged of fate, who reflect on what remains of the
+happy years that have flown, have perhaps more reason for sorrow than
+the unfortunate ones who brood over the dregs of a life of
+wretchedness.  Whatever was one day and has now ceased to be, makes for
+sadness; above all, whatever was very happy and very beautiful.  The
+object of our regrets--whether these revolve around what has been or
+might have been--is therefore more or less the same for all men, and
+their sorrow should be the same.  It is not, however; in one case it
+will reign uninterruptedly, whereas in another it will only appear at
+very long intervals.  It must therefore depend on things other than
+accomplished facts.  It depends on the manner in which men will deal
+with these facts.  The conquerors in this world--those who waste no
+time setting up an imaginary irreparable and immutable athwart their
+horizon, those who seem to be born afresh every morning in a world that
+for ever awakes anew to the future--these know instinctively that what
+appears to exist no longer is still existing intact, that what appeared
+to be ended is only completing itself.  They know that the years time
+has taken from them are still in travail; still, under their new
+master, obeying the old.  They know that their past is for ever in
+movement; that the yesterday which was despondent, decrepit and
+criminal, will return full of joyousness, innocence, youth, in the
+track of to-morrow.  They know that their image is not yet stamped on
+the days that are gone; that a decisive deed, or thought, will suffice
+to break down the whole edifice; that however remote or vast the shadow
+may be that stretches behind them, they have only to put forth a
+gesture of gladness or hope for the shadow at once to copy this
+gesture, and, flashing it back to the remotest, tiniest ruins of early
+childhood even, to extract unexpected treasure from all this wreckage.
+They know that they have retrospective action on all bygone deeds; and
+that the dead themselves will annul their verdicts in order to judge
+afresh a past that to-day has transfigured and endowed with new life.
+
+They are fortunate who find this instinct in the folds of their cradle.
+But may the others not imitate it who have it not; and is not human
+wisdom charged to teach us how we may acquire the salutary instincts
+that nature has withheld?
+
+
+11
+
+Let us not lull ourselves to sleep in our past; and if we find that it
+tends to spread like a vault over our life, instead of incessantly
+changing beneath our eye; if the present grow into the habit of
+visiting it, not like a good workman repairing thither to execute the
+labours imposed upon him by the commands of to-day, but as a too
+passive, too credulous pilgrim, content idly to contemplate beautiful,
+motionless ruins--then, the more glorious, the happier that our past
+may have been, with all the more suspicion should it be regarded by us.
+
+Nor should we yield to the instinct that bids us accord it profound
+respect, if this respect induce the fear in us that we may disturb its
+nice equilibrium.  Better the ordinary past, content with its befitting
+place in the shadow, than the sumptuous past which claims to govern
+what has travelled beyond its reach.  Better a mediocre but living
+present, which acts as though it were alone in the world, than a
+present which proudly expires in the chains of a marvellous long ago.
+A single step that we take at this hour towards an uncertain goal, is
+far more important to us than the thousand leagues we covered in our
+march towards a dazzling triumph in the days that were.  Our past had
+no other mission than to lift us to the moment at which we are, and
+there equip us with the needful experience and weapons, the needful
+thought and gladness.  If, at this precise moment, it take from us and
+divert to itself one particle of our energy, then, however glorious it
+may have been, it still was useless, and had better never have been.
+If we allow it to arrest a gesture that we were about to make, then is
+our death beginning; and the edifices of the future will suddenly take
+the semblance of tombs.
+
+More dangerous still than the past of happiness and glory is the one
+inhabited by overpowering and too dearly cherished phantoms.  Many an
+existence perishes in the coils of a fond recollection.  And yet, were
+the dead to return to this earth, they would say, I fancy, with the
+wisdom that must be theirs who have seen what the ephemeral light still
+hides from us: "Dry your eyes.  There comes to us no comfort from your
+tears: exhausting you, they exhaust us also.  Detach yourself from us,
+banish us from your thoughts, until such time as you can think of us
+without strewing tears on the life we still live in you.  We endure
+only in your recollection; but you err in believing that your regrets
+alone can touch us.  It is the things you do that prove to us we are
+not forgotten, and rejoice our manes; and this without your knowing it,
+without any necessity that you should turn towards us.  Each time that
+our pale image saddens your ardour, we feel ourselves die anew, and it
+is a more perceptible, irrevocable death than was our other; bending
+too often over our tombs, you rob us of the life, the courage and love
+that you imagine you restore.
+
+"It is in you that we are, it is in all your life that our life
+resides; and as you become greater, even while forgetting us, so do we
+become greater too, and our shades draw the deep breath of prisoners
+whose prison door is flung open.
+
+"If there be anything new we have learned in the world where we are
+now, it is, first of all, that the good we did to you when we were,
+like yourselves, on the earth, does not balance the evil wrought by a
+memory which saps the force and the confidence of life."
+
+
+12
+
+Above all, let us envy the past of no man.  Our own past was created by
+ourselves, and for ourselves alone.  No other could have suited us, no
+other could have taught us the truth that it alone can teach, or given
+the strength that it alone can give.  And whether it be good or bad,
+sombre or radiant, it still remains a collection of unique masterpieces
+the value of which is known to none but ourselves; and no foreign
+masterpiece could equal the action we have accomplished, the kiss we
+received, the thing of beauty that moved us so deeply, the suffering we
+underwent, the anguish that held us enchained, the love that wreathed
+us in smiles or in tears.  Our past is ourselves, what we are and shall
+be; and upon this unknown sphere there moves no creature, from the
+happiest down to the most unfortunate, who could foretell how great a
+loss would be his could he substitute the trace of another for the
+trace which he himself must leave in life.  Our past is our secret,
+promulgated by the voice of years; it is the most mysterious image of
+our being, over which Time keeps watch.  This image is not dead; a mere
+nothing degrades or adorns it; it can still grow bright or sombre, can
+still smile or weep, express love or hatred; and yet it remains
+recognisable for ever in the midst of the myriad images that surround
+it.  It stands for what we once were, as our aspirations and hopes
+stand for what we shall be; and the two faces blend, that they may
+teach us what we are.
+
+Let us not envy the facts of the past, but rather the spiritual garment
+that the recollection of days long gone will weave around the sage.
+And though this garment be woven of joy or of sorrow, though it be
+drawn from the dearth of events or from their abundance, it shall still
+be equally precious; and those who may see it shining over a life shall
+not be able to tell whether its quickening jewels and stars were found
+amid the grudging cinders of a cabin or upon the steps of a palace.
+
+No past can be empty or squalid, no events can be wretched: the
+wretchedness lies in our manner of welcoming them.  And if it were true
+that nothing had happened to you, that would be the most remarkable
+adventure that any man ever had met with; and no less remarkable would
+be the light it would shed upon you.  In reality the facts, the
+opportunities and possibilities, the passions, that await and invite
+the majority of men, are all more or less the same.  Some may be more
+dazzling than others; their attendant circumstances may differ, but
+they differ far less than the inward reactions that follow; and the
+insignificant, incomplete event that falls on a fertile heart and brain
+will readily attain the moral proportions and grandeur of an analogous
+incident which, on another plane, will convulse a people.
+
+He who should see, spread out before him, the past lives of a multitude
+of men, could not easily decide which past he himself would wish to
+have lived were he not able at the same time to witness the moral
+results of these dissimilar and unsymmetrical facts.  He might not
+impossibly make a fatal blunder; he might choose an existence
+overflowing with incomparable happiness and victory, that sparkle like
+wonderful jewels; while his glance might travel indifferently over a
+life that appeared to be empty whereas it was truly steeped to the brim
+in serene emotions and lofty, redeeming thoughts whereby, though the
+eye saw nothing, that life was yet rendered happy among all.  For we
+are well aware that what destiny has given, and what destiny holds in
+reserve, can be revolutionised as utterly by thought as by great
+victory or great defeat.  Thought is silent; it disturbs not a pebble
+on the illusory road we see; but at the crossway of the more actual
+road that our secret life follows will it tranquilly erect an
+indestructible pyramid; and thereupon, suddenly, every event, to the
+very phenomena of earth and heaven, will assume a new direction.
+
+In Siegfried's life, it is not the moment when he forges the prodigious
+sword that is most important, or when he kills the dragon and compels
+the gods from his path, or even the dazzling second when he encounters
+love on the flaming mountain, but indeed the brief instant wrested from
+eternal decrees, the little childish gesture, when one of his hands,
+red with the blood of his mysterious victim, having chanced to draw
+near his lips, his eyes and ears are suddenly opened; he understands
+the hidden language of all that surrounds him, detects the treachery of
+the dwarf who represents the powers of evil, and learns in a flash to
+do that which had to be done.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LUCK
+
+1
+
+Once upon a time, an old Servian legend tells us, there were two
+brothers of whom one was industrious, but unfortunate, and the other
+lazy, but overwhelmingly prosperous.  One day the unfortunate brother
+meets a beautiful girl who is tending sheep and weaving a golden
+thread.  "To whom do these sheep belong?" he asks.  "They belong to
+whom I belong."  "And to whom do you belong?"  "To your brother: I am
+his luck."  "And where is my luck then?"  "Very far from here."  "Can I
+find it?"  "Yes, if you look for it."
+
+So he wanders away in search of his luck.  And one evening, in a great
+forest, he comes across a poor old woman asleep under a tree.  He wakes
+her and asks who she is.  "Don't you know me?" she answers.  "It is
+true you never have seen me: I am your luck."  "And who can have given
+me so wretched a luck?"  "Destiny."  "Can I find destiny?"  "Yes, if
+you look long enough."
+
+So he goes off in search of destiny.  He travels a very long time, and
+at last she is pointed out to him.  She lives in an enormous and
+luxurious palace; but her wealth is dwindling day by day, and the doors
+and windows of her abode are shrinking.  She explains to him that she
+passes thus, alternately, from misery to opulence; and that her
+situation at a given moment determines the future of all the children
+who may come into the world at that moment.  "You were born," she says,
+"when my prosperity was on the wane; and that is the cause of your
+ill-luck."  The only way, she tells him, to hoodwink or get the better
+of fortune would be to substitute the luck of Militza, his niece, for
+his own, seeing that she was born at a propitious period.  All he need
+do, she says, is to take this niece into his house, and to declare to
+any one who may ask him that all he has belongs to Militza.
+
+He does as she bids him, and his affairs at once take a new turn.  His
+herds multiply and grow fat, his trees are bent beneath the masses of
+fruit, unexpected inheritances come in, his land bears prodigious
+crops.  But one morning, as he stands there, his heart filled with
+happiness, eyeing a magnificent cornfield, a stranger asks him who the
+owner may be of these wonderful ears of wheat that, as they sway to and
+fro beneath the dew, seem twice as heavy and twice as high as the ears
+in the adjoining field.  He forgets himself, and answers, "They are
+mine."  At that very instant fire breaks out in the opposite end of the
+field, and commences its ravages.  Then he remembers the advice that he
+has neglected to follow: he runs after the stranger shouting, "Stop,
+come back: I made a mistake: what I told you was not true!  This field
+is not mine: it belongs to my niece Militza!"  And the flames have no
+sooner heard than they suddenly fall away, and the corn shoots up
+afresh.
+
+
+2
+
+This naive and very ancient image, which might almost serve to-day as
+an illustration of our actual ignorance, proves that the mysterious
+problem of chance has not changed, from the time of man's first
+questioning glance.  We have our thoughts, which build up our intimate
+happiness or sorrow; and upon this events from without have more or
+less influence.  In some men these thoughts will have acquired such
+strength, such vigilance, that without their consent nothing can enter
+the structure of crystal and brass, they have been able to raise on the
+hill that commands the wonted road of adventures.  And we have our
+will, which our thoughts feed and sustain; and many useless or harmful
+events can be held in check by our will.  But around these islets,
+within which is a certain degree of safety, of immunity from attack,
+extends a region as vast and uncontrollable as the ocean, a region
+swayed by chance as the waves are swayed by the wind.  Neither will nor
+thought can keep one of these waves from suddenly breaking upon us; and
+we shall be caught unawares, and perhaps be wounded and stunned.  Only
+when the wave has retreated can thought and will begin their beneficent
+action.  Then they will raise us, and bind up our wounds; restore
+animation, and take careful heed that the mischief the shock has
+wrought shall not reach the profound sources of life.  Their mission
+extends no further, and may, on the surface, appear very humble.  In
+reality, however, unless chance assume the irresistible form of cruel
+disease or death, the workings of will and thought are sufficient to
+neutralise all its efforts, and to preserve what is best and most
+essential to man in human happiness.
+
+
+3
+
+Redoubtable, multitudinous chance is for ever threading its watchful
+way through the midst of the events we have foreseen, and round and
+about our most deliberate actions, wherewith we are slowly tracing the
+broad lines of our existence.  The air we breathe, the time we
+traverse, the space through which we move, are all peopled by lurking
+circumstances, which pick us out from among the crowd.  The least study
+of their habits will quickly convince us that these strange daughters
+of hazard, who should be blind and deaf as their father, by no means
+act in his irresponsible fashion.  They are well aware of what they are
+doing, and rarely make a mistake.  With inexplicable certainty do they
+move to the passer-by whom they have been sent to confront, and lightly
+touch his shoulder.  Two men may be travelling upon the same road, and
+at the same hour; but there will be no hesitation or doubt in the ranks
+of the double, invisible troop whom fortune has ambushed there.
+Towards one a band of white virgins will hasten, bearing palms and
+amphorae, presenting the thousand unexpected delights of the journey;
+as the other approaches, the "Evil Women," whom Aeschylus tells of,
+will hurl themselves from the hedges, as though they were charged to
+avenge, upon this unwitting victim, some inexpiable crime committed by
+him before he was born.
+
+
+4
+
+There is scarcely one of us who has not been able, in some measure, to
+follow the workings of destiny in life.  We have all known men who met
+with a prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of their
+actions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn of
+the road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars,
+undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable.  One, we will say,
+who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knows
+his rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at the
+decisive moment, another, who has counted upon the protection of a most
+influential friend, will see this friend die on the very day when his
+assistance could be of value.  A third, who has neither talent nor
+beauty, will arrive each morning at the Palace of Fortune, Glory or
+Love at the brief instant when every door lies open; while another, a
+man of great merit, who long has pondered the legitimate step he is
+taking, presents himself at the hour when ill-luck shall have closed
+the gate for the next half-century.  One man will risk his health
+twenty times in imbecile feats, and never experience the least
+ill-effect; another will deliberately venture it in an honourable
+cause, and lose it without hope of return.  To help the first,
+thousands of unknown people, who never have seen him, will be obscurely
+working; to hinder the second, thousands of unknown people labour, who
+are ignorant of his existence.  And all, on the one side as well as the
+other, are totally unaware of what they are doing; they obey the same
+minute, widely-distributed order; and at the prescribed moment the
+detached pieces of the mysterious machine join, dovetail, unite; and we
+have two complete and dissimilar destinies set into motion by Time.
+
+In a curious book on "Chance and Destiny," Dr. Foissac gives various
+strange examples of the persistent, inexplicable, fundamental,
+pre-ordained, irreducible iniquity in which many existences are
+steeped.  As we go through page after page, we feel almost as though we
+were being conducted through the disconcerting laboratories of another
+world where, in the absence of every instrument that human justice and
+reason might hold indispensable, happiness and sorrow are being
+parcelled out and allotted.  Take, for instance, the life of
+Vauvenargues, one of the most admirable of men, and certainly, of all
+the great sages, the most unfortunate.  Whenever his fortune hangs in
+the balance, he is attacked and prostrated by cruel disease; and
+notwithstanding the efforts of his genius, his bravery, his moral
+beauty, day after day he is wantonly betrayed or falls victim to
+gratuitous injustice; and at the age of thirty-two he dies, at the very
+moment when recognition is at last awaiting his work.  So too there is
+the terrible story of Lesurques,[1] in which we see a thousand
+coincidences that might have been contrived in hell, blending and
+joining together to work the ruin of an innocent man; while truth,
+chained down by fate, dumbly shrieking, as we do when wrestling with
+nightmare, is unable to put forth a single gesture that shall rend the
+veil of night.  There is Aimar de Ransonnet, President of the
+Parliament of Paris, one of the most upright of men, who first of all
+is suddenly dismissed from his office, sees his daughter die on a
+dunghill before his eyes, his son perish at the hands of the
+executioner, and his wife struck by lightning; while he himself is
+accused of heresy and sent to the Bastille, where he dies of grief
+before he is brought to trial.
+
+The calamities that befell Oedipus and the Atrides are regarded by us
+as improbable and fabulous; and yet we find in contemporary history
+that fatality clings with no less persistence to families such as the
+Stuarts, the Colignys,[2] &c., and hounds to their death, with what
+almost seems personal vindictiveness, pitiable and innocent victims
+like Henrietta of England, daughter of Henry IV., Louise de Bourbon,
+Joseph II., and Marie-Antoinette.
+
+And again in another category, what shall we say of the
+injustice--unintelligent but apparently almost conscious, almost
+systematic and premeditated--of games of chance, duels, battles,
+storms, shipwrecks, and fires?  Or of the inconceivable luck of a
+Chastenet de Puységur who, after forty years' service, in the course of
+which he took part in thirty battles and a hundred and twenty sieges,
+always in the front rank and displaying the most romantic courage, was
+never once touched by shot or steel, while Marshal Oudinot was wounded
+thirty-five times, and General Trézel was struck by a bullet in every
+encounter?  What shall we say of the extraordinary fortune of Lauzun,
+Chamillart, Casanova, Chesterfield, &c., or of the inconceivable,
+unvarying prosperity that attended the crimes of Sylla, Marius, or
+Dionysius the Elder, who, in his extreme old age, after an odious but
+fantastically successful life, died of joy on learning that the
+Athenians had just crowned one of his tragedies?  Or, finally, of
+Herod, surnamed the Great or the Ascalonite, who swam in blood,
+murdered one of his wives and five of his children, put to death every
+upright man who might chance to offend him, and yet was fortunate in
+all his undertakings?
+
+
+6
+
+These famous examples, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are in
+truth no more than the abnormal and historic presentments of what is
+shown to us every day, in a humbler but not less emphatic fashion, by
+the thousand and one caprices of propitious or contrary fortune at work
+on the small and ill-lit stage of ordinary life.
+
+Doubtless, we must, first of all, when closely examining such insolent
+prosperity or unvarying disaster, attribute a royal share to the
+physical or moral causes which are capable of explaining them.  Had we
+ourselves known Vauvenargues, we should probably have detected a
+certain timidity, irresolution or misplaced pride in his character
+whereby he was disabled from allowing the opportunity to mature or from
+seizing it with sufficient vigour.  And Lesurques, it may be, was
+deficient in ability, in one knows not what, in that prodigious
+personal force that one expects to find in falsely-accused innocence.
+Nor can it be denied that the Stuarts, no less than Joseph II. and
+Marie-Antoinette, were guilty of enormous blunders that invited
+disaster; or that Lauzun, Casanova, and Lord Chesterfield had flung to
+the winds those essential scruples that hinder the honest man.  So too
+is it certain that although the existence of Sylla, Marius, Dionysius
+the Elder, and Herod the Ascalonite may have been externally almost
+incomparably fortunate, few men, I fancy, would care to have lurking
+within them the strange, restless, blood-stained phantom, possessed
+neither of thought nor of feeling, on which the happiness must depend
+(if the word happiness be indeed applicable here) that is founded upon
+unceasing crime.  But, this deduction being made, and on the most
+reasonable, most liberal scale (which will become the more generous as
+we see more of life and understand it better, and penetrate further
+into the secrets of little causes and great effects), we shall still be
+forced to admit that there remains, in these obstinately recurring
+coincidences, in these indissoluble series of good or evil fortune,
+these persistent runs of good or bad luck, a considerable, often
+essential, and sometimes exclusive share that can be ascribed only to
+the impenetrable, incontrovertible will of a real but unknown power;
+which is known as Chance, Fatality, Destiny, Luck, Fortune, good or
+evil Star, Angel with the White Wings, Angel with the Black Wings, and
+by many other names, that vary in accordance with the more or less
+imaginative, more or less poetic genius of centuries and peoples.  And
+here we have one of the most serious, most perplexing problems of all
+those that have to be solved by man before he may legitimately regard
+himself as the principal, independent and irrevocable inhabitant of
+this earth.
+
+
+7
+
+Let us reduce the problem to its simplest terms, and submit it to our
+reason.  First, however, let us consider whether it affects man alone.
+We have with us, upon this curiously incomprehensible globe, silent and
+faithful companions of our existence; and we shall often find it
+helpful to let our eyes rest upon these when, having reached certain
+altitudes that perhaps are illusory, giddiness seizes our brain and
+inclines us too readily to the idea that the stars, the gods or the
+veiled representatives of the sublime laws of the universe, are
+concerned solely with us.  These poor brothers of our animal life, that
+are so calmly, so confidently resigned, would appear to know many
+things that we have forgotten; they are the tranquil custodians of the
+secret that we seek so anxiously.  It is evident that animals, and
+notably domestic animals, have also a kind of destiny.  They too know
+what prolonged and gratuitous happiness means; they also have
+encountered the persistent misfortune for which no cause can be found.
+They have the same right as we to speak of their star, their good or
+bad luck, their prosperity or disaster.  Compare the fate of the
+cab-horse, that ends its days at the knacker's, after having passed
+through the hands of a hundred brutal and nameless masters, with that
+of the thorough-bred which dies of old age in the stable of a
+kind-hearted master; and from the point of view of justice (unless we
+accept the Buddhist theory, that life in this world is the reward or
+punishment of an anterior existence) explanation is as completely
+lacking as in the case of the man whom chance has reduced to poverty or
+raised to wealth.  There is, in Flanders, a breed of draught-dogs upon
+which destiny alternately lavishes her favour and her spite.  Some will
+be bought by a butcher, and lead a magnificent life.  The work is
+trifling: in the morning, harnessed four abreast, they draw a light
+cart to the slaughter-house, and at night, galloping joyously,
+triumphantly, home through the narrow streets of the ancient towns with
+their tiny, lit-up gables, bring it back, overflowing with meat.
+Between-times there is leisure, and marvellous leisure, among the rats
+and the waste of the slaughter-house.  They are copiously fed, they are
+fat, they shine like seals, and taste in its fulness the only happiness
+dreamed of by the simple and ferreting instinct of the honest dog.  But
+their unfortunate brethren of the same litter, that the lame
+sand-pedlar buys, or the old collector of household refuse, or the
+needy peasant with his great, cruel clogs--these are chained to heavy
+carts or shapeless barrows; they are filthy, mangy, hairless,
+emaciated, starving; and follow till they die the circles of a hell
+into which they were thrust by a few coppers dropped into some horny
+palm.  And, in a world less directly subject to man, there must
+evidently be partridges, pheasants, deer, hares, which have no luck,
+which never escape the gun; while others, one knows not how or why,
+emerge unscathed from every battue.
+
+They, therefore, are exposed, like ourselves, to incontestable
+injustice.  But it does not occur to us, when considering their
+hardships, to set all the gods in motion or seek explanation from the
+mysterious powers; and yet what happens to them may well be no more
+than the image, naively simplified, of what happens to us.  It is true
+that we play the precise part, in their case, of those mysterious
+powers whom we seek in our own.  But what right have we to expect from
+these last more consciousness, more intelligent justice, than we
+ourselves show in our dealings with animals?  And in any event, if this
+instance shall only have deprived chance of a little of its useless
+prestige and have proportionately augmented our spirit of initiative
+and struggle, there will be a gain the importance of which is by no
+means to be despised.
+
+
+8
+
+Still further allowance must therefore be made; but yet there
+undoubtedly remains--at least as far as the more complex life of man is
+concerned--a cause of good or evil fortune as yet untouched by our
+explanations, in the often visible will of chance, which one might
+almost call the "small change" of fatality.  We know--and this is one
+of those formless but fundamental ideas on the laws of life that the
+experience of thousands of years has turned into a kind of instinct--we
+know that men exist who, other things being equal, are "lucky" or
+"unlucky."  Circumstances permitted me to follow very closely the
+career of a friend of mine who was dogged by persistent ill-fortune.  I
+do not mean to imply by this that his life was unhappy.  It is even
+remarkable that the malign influences always respected the broad lines
+of his veritable happiness; probably because these were well guarded.
+For he had in him a strong moral existence, profound thoughts and
+hopes, feelings and convictions.  He was well aware that these were
+possessions that fortune could not touch: which indeed could not be
+destroyed without his consent.  Destiny is not invincible; through
+life's very centre runs a great inward canal, which we have the power
+to turn towards happiness or sorrow; although its ramifications, that
+extend over our days, and the thousand tributaries that flow in from
+external hazards, are all independent of our will.
+
+It is thus that a beautiful river, streaming down from the heights and
+ashine with magnificent glaciers, passes at length through plains and
+through cities, whence it receives only poisonous water.  For an
+instant the river is troubled; and we fear lest it lose, and never
+recover again, the image of the pure blue sky that the crystal
+fountains had lent: the image that seemed its soul, and the deep and
+the limpid expression of its great strength.  But if we rejoin it, down
+yonder, beneath those great trees, we shall find that it has already
+forgotten the foulness of the gutters.  It has caught the azure again
+in its transparent waves; and flows on to the sea, as clear as it was
+on the days when it first smilingly leapt from its source on the
+mountains.
+
+And so, as regards this friend of mine, although forced more than once
+to shed tears, they were at least not of the kind that memory never
+forgets, not of those that fall from our eyes as we mourn our own
+death.  Every failure, the inevitable disappointment once over, served
+only in effect to knit him the closer to his secret happiness, to
+affirm this within him, and draw a more sombre outline around it, that
+it might thereby appear the more precious, and ardent, and certain.
+But no sooner had he quitted this charmed enclosure than hostile
+incidents vied with each other in their attacks upon him.  As for
+instance--he was a very good fencer: he had three duels, and was
+wounded each time by a less skilful adversary.  If he went on board
+ship, the voyage would rarely be prosperous.  Whatever undertaking he
+put money into was sure to turn out badly.  A judicial error, into
+which a whole series of curiously malevolent circumstances dragged him,
+was productive of long and serious trouble.  Further, although his face
+was agreeable, and the expression of his eyes loyal and frank, he was
+not what one calls "sympathetic": he did not arouse at first sight that
+spontaneous affection which we often give, without knowing why, to the
+unknown who passes, to an enemy even.  Nor was he more fortunate in his
+affections.  Of a loving disposition, and infinitely worthier of being
+loved than most of those to whom he was sacrificed by the
+chance-governed heart of women--here again he met with nothing but
+treachery, deceit and sorrow.  He went his way, extricating himself as
+best he could from the paltry snares that malicious fortune prepared at
+every step; nor was he discouraged or deeply saddened, only somewhat
+surprised at so strange a persistence; until at last there came the
+great and solitary good fortune of his life: a love that was the
+complement of the one that was eager within him, a love that was
+complete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable.  And from that moment it
+was as though he had come under the influence of another star, the
+beneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious events
+grew slowly remoter, fewer, warier of attacking him, tardier in their
+approach.  They seemed reluctantly to abandon their habit of selecting
+him as their victim.  He actually saw his _luck turn_.  And now that he
+has gone back, as it were, into the indifferent and neutral atmosphere
+of chance common to most men, he smiles when he remembers the time when
+every gesture of his was watched by the invisible enemy, and aroused a
+danger.
+
+
+9
+
+Let us not look to the gods for an explanation of these phenomena.
+Until these gods shall have clearly explained themselves, there is
+nothing that they can explain for us.  And destiny, which is merely the
+god of which we know least, has less right than any of the others to
+intervene and cry to us, as it does from the depths of its inscrutable
+night: "It is I who so willed it!"  Nor let us invoke the illimitable
+laws of the universe, the intentions of history, the will of the
+worlds, the justice of the stars.  These powers exist: we submit to
+them, as we submit to the might of the sun.  But they act without
+knowing us; and within the wide circle of their influence a liberty
+remains to us still that is probably immense.  They have better work on
+hand than to be for ever bending over us to lift a blade of grass or
+drop a leaf in the little paths of our anthill.  Since we ourselves are
+here the parties concerned, it is, I imagine, within ourselves that the
+key of the mystery shall be found; for it is probable that every
+creature carries within him the best solution of the problem that he
+presents.  Within us, underlying the conscious existence that our
+reason and will control, is a profounder existence, one side of which
+connects with a past beyond the record of history, the other with a
+future that thousands of years cannot exhaust.  We may safely conceive
+that all the gods lie hidden within it; that those wherewith we have
+peopled the earth and the planets will emerge one by one, in order to
+give it a name and a form that our imagination may understand.  And as
+man's vision grows clearer, as he shows less desire for image and
+symbol, so will the number of these names, the number of these forms,
+tend to diminish.  He will slowly arrive at the stage when there shall
+be one only that he will proclaim, or reserve; when it shall be
+revealed to him that this last form, this last name, is truly no more
+than the last image of a power whose throne was always within him.
+Then will the gods that had gone forth from us be found again in
+ourselves; and it is there that we will question them to-day.
+
+
+10
+
+I hold therefore that it is in this unconscious life of ours, in this
+existence that is so vast, so divine, so inexhaustible and
+unfathomable, that we must seek for the explanation of fortunate or
+contrary chances.  Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, our
+first-born: immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal.
+Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays on
+this inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it.  But our
+intellect is gradually learning that every secret of the human
+phenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and there
+alone.  This unconscious being lives on another plane than our
+intellect, in another world.  It knows nothing of Time and Space, the
+two formidable but illusory walls between which our reason must flow if
+it would not be hopelessly lost.  It knows no proximity, it knows no
+distance; past and future concern it not, or the resistance of matter.
+It is familiar with all things; there is nothing it cannot do.  To this
+power, this knowledge, we have indeed at all times accorded a certain
+varying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we have
+called them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflex
+action, presentiment, intuition, &c.  We credit it more especially with
+the indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of our
+nerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason: a
+force that would appear to be the very fluid of life.  Its nature is
+probably more or less the same in all men; but it has very different
+methods of communicating with the intellect.  In some men this unknown
+principle is enshrined at so great a depth that it concerns itself
+solely with physical functions and the permanence of the species;
+whereas in others it would seem to be for ever on the alert, rising
+again and again to the surface of external and conscious life, which
+its fairy-like presence quickens; intervening at every instant,
+warning, deciding, counselling; blending with most of the essential
+facts of a career.  Whence comes this faculty?  There are no fixed or
+certain laws.  We do not detect, for instance, any constant relation
+between the activity of the unconsciousness and the development of the
+intellect.  This activity obeys rules of which we know nothing.  So far
+as we at present can tell, it would seem to be purely accidental.  We
+discover it in one man, and not in another; nor have we any clue that
+shall help us to guess at the reason of this difference.
+
+
+11
+
+The probable course pursued by fortunate or contrary chances may well
+be as follows.  A happy or untoward event, that has sprung from the
+profound recesses of great and eternal laws, arises before us and
+completely blocks the way.  It stands motionless there: immovable,
+inevitable, disproportionate.  It pays no heed to us; it has not come
+on our account, but for itself, because of itself.  It ignores us
+completely.  It is we who approach the event; we who, having arrived
+within the sphere of its influence, will either fly from it or face it,
+try a circuitous route or fare boldly onwards.  Let us assume that the
+event is disastrous: fire, death, disease, or a somewhat abnormal form
+of accident or calamity.  It waits there, invisible, indifferent,
+blind, but perfect and unalterable; but as yet it is merely potential.
+It exists entire, but only in the future; and for us, whose intellect
+and consciousness are served by senses unable to perceive things
+otherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it were
+not.  Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of a
+shipwreck.  The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; the
+rock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath the
+waves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month is
+slumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies.  Normally,
+were nothing written, had the catastrophe[3] not already taken place in
+the future, fifty passengers would have arrived from five or six
+different countries, and have duly gone on board.  But destiny has
+clearly marked the vessel for its own.  She must most certainly perish.
+And for months past, perhaps for years, a mysterious selection has been
+at work amongst the passengers who were to have departed upon the same
+day.  It is possible that out of fifty who had originally intended to
+sail, only twenty will cross the gangway at the moment of lifting the
+anchor.  It is even possible that not a single one of the fifty will
+listen to the insistent claims of the circumstance that, but for the
+disaster ahead, would have rendered their departure imperative, and
+that their place will be taken by twenty or thirty others in whom the
+voice of Chance does not speak with a similar power.  Here we touch the
+profoundest depths of the profoundest of human enigmas; and the
+hypothesis necessarily falters.  But is it not more reasonable, in the
+fictitious case before us--wherein we merely thrust into prominence
+what is of constant occurrence in the more obscure conjunctures of
+daily life--to regard both decision and action as emanating from our
+unconsciousness, rather than from doubtful, and distant, gods?  Our
+unconsciousness is aware of the catastrophe: it must be: our
+unconsciousness sees it; for it knows neither time nor space, and the
+disaster is therefore happening as actually before its eyes as before
+the eyes of the eternal powers.  The mode of prescience matters but
+little.  Out of the fifty travellers who have been warned, two or three
+will have had a real presentiment of the danger; these will be the ones
+in whom unconsciousness is free and untrammelled, and therefore more
+readily able to attain the first, and still obscure, layers of
+intellect.  The others suspect nothing: they inveigh against the
+inexplicable obstacles and delays: they strain every nerve to arrive in
+time, but their departure becomes impossible.  They fall ill, take a
+wrong road, change their plans, meet with some insignificant adventure,
+have a quarrel, a love affair, a moment of idleness or forgetfulness,
+which detains them in spite of themselves.  To the first it will never
+have even occurred to sail on the ill-starred boat, although this be
+the one that they should logically, inevitably, have been compelled to
+choose.  But the efforts that their unconsciousness has put forth to
+save them have their workings so deep down that most of these men will
+have no idea that they owe their life to a fortunate chance; and they
+will honestly believe that they never intended to sail by the ship that
+the powers of the sea had claimed.
+
+
+12
+
+As for those who punctually make their appearance at the fatal tryst,
+they belong to the tribe of the unlucky.  They are the unfortunate race
+of our race.  When the rest all fly, they alone remain in their places.
+When others retreat, they advance boldly.  They infallibly travel by
+the train that shall leave the rails, they pass underneath the tower at
+the exact moment of its collapse, they enter the house in which the
+fire is smouldering, cross the forest on which lightning shall fall,
+entrust all they have to the banker who means to abscond.  They love
+the one woman on earth whom they should have avoided, they make the
+gesture they should not have made, they do the thing they should not
+have done.  But when fortune beckons and the others are hastening,
+urged by the deep voice of benevolent powers, these pass by, not
+hearing; and, vouchsafed no advice or warning but that of their
+intellect, the very wise old guide whose purblind eyes see only the
+tiny paths at the foot of the mountain, they go astray in a world that
+human reason has not yet understood.  These men have surely the right
+to exclaim against destiny; and yet not on the grounds that they would
+prefer.  They have the right to ask why it has withheld from them the
+watchful guard who warns their brethren.  But, this reproach once
+made--and it is the cardinal reproach against irreducible
+injustice--they have no further cause of complaint.  The universe is
+not hostile to them.  Calamities do not pursue them; it is they who go
+towards calamity  Things from without wish them no ill; the mischief
+comes from themselves.  The misfortune they meet has not been lying in
+wait for them; they selected it for their own.  With them, as with all
+men, events are posted along the course of their years, like goods in a
+bazaar that stand ready for the customer who shall buy them.  No one
+deceives them; they merely deceive themselves.  They are in no wise
+persecuted; but their unconscious soul fails to perform its duty.  Is
+it less adroit than the others: is it less eager?  Does it slumber
+hopelessly in the depths of its secular prison: and can no amount of
+will-power arouse it from its fatal lethargy, and force the redoubtable
+doors that lead from the life that unconsciously is aware of all things
+to the intelligent life that knows nothing?
+
+
+13
+
+A friend in whose presence I was discussing these matters said to me
+yesterday: "Life, whose questions are more searching than those of the
+philosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curious
+problem to those you have stated.  I am wondering what the result will
+be when two 'lucks'--in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of which
+one is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling--meet and in
+some measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking?  Which
+will triumph over the other?  I soon shall know.  This afternoon I
+propose to take a step that will be of supreme importance to the person
+I value above all others in this world.  Her entire future may almost
+be said to depend upon it, her exterior happiness, the possibility of
+her living in accordance with her nature and her rights.  Now to me
+chance has always been a faithful and far-seeing friend; and as I
+glance over my past, and review the five or six decisive moments which,
+as with all men, were the golden pivots on which fortune turned, I am
+induced to believe in my star, and am morally certain that if I alone
+were concerned in the step I am taking to-day, it would be bound to
+succeed, because I am 'lucky.'  But the person on whose behalf I am
+acting has never been fortunate.  Her intellect is remarkably subtle
+and profound, her will is a thousand times stronger and better balanced
+than my own; but, with all this, one can only believe that she
+possesses a foolish or malignant unconsciousness, which has
+persistently, ruthlessly, exposed her to act after act of injustice,
+dishonesty, and treachery, has robbed her again and again of her due,
+and compelled her to travel the path of disastrous coincidence.  Be
+sure that it would have forced her to embark on the ship that you speak
+of.  I ask myself, therefore, what attitude will my vigilant,
+thoughtful unconsciousness adopt towards this indolent and sinning
+brother, in whose name it will have to act, whose place, as it were, it
+will take?
+
+"How, and where, is the momentous decision being at this moment arrived
+at, in search of which I shall so soon set forth?  What power is it
+that now, at this very moment, while I am speaking, is balancing the
+pros and cons, and decreeing the happiness or sorrow of the woman I
+represent?  From which sphere, or perhaps immemorial virtue, from what
+hidden spirit or invisible star, will the weight fall that shall
+incline the scale to light or to darkness?  To judge by outward
+appearance, decision must rest with the will, the reason, the interest
+of the parties engaged; in reality it often is otherwise.  When one
+finds oneself thus face to face with the problem which directly affects
+a person we love, this problem no longer appears quite so simple; our
+eyes open wider, and we throw a startled, anxious, in a sense almost a
+virgin glance, upon all this unknown that leads us and that we are
+compelled to obey.
+
+"I take this step therefore with more emotion, I put forth more zeal
+and vigour, than if it were my own life, my own happiness, that stood
+in peril.  She for whom I am acting is indeed 'more I than I am
+myself,' and for a long time past her happiness has been the source of
+mine.  Of this both my heart and my reason are fully aware; but does my
+unconsciousness know?  My reason and heart, that form my consciousness,
+are barely thirty years old; my unconscious soul, still reminiscent of
+primitive secrets, may well date centuries back.  Its evolution is very
+deliberate.  It is as slow as a world that turns in time without end.
+It will probably therefore not yet have learned that a second existence
+has linked itself to mine, and completely absorbs it.  How many years
+must elapse before the great news shall penetrate to its retreat?  Here
+again we note its diversity, its inequality.  In one man, perhaps,
+unconsciousness will immediately recognise what is taking place in his
+heart; in another, it will very tardily lend itself to the phenomena of
+reason.  There is a love, again, such as that of the mother for her
+child, in which it moves in advance of both heart and reason.  Only
+after a very long time does the unconscious soul of a mother separate
+itself from that of her children; it watches over these at first with
+far more zeal and solicitude than over the mother.  But, in a love like
+mine, who shall say whether my unconsciousness has gathered that this
+love is more essential to me than my life?  I myself believe that it is
+satisfied that the step I propose to take in no way concerns me.  It
+will not appear; it will not intervene.  At the very moment when I
+shall be feverishly displaying all the energy I possess, when I shall
+be striving for victory more keenly than were my salvation at stake, it
+will be tending its own mysterious affairs deep down in its shadowy
+dwelling.  Were I seeking justice for myself, it would already be on
+the alert.  It would know, perhaps, that I had better do nothing
+to-day.  I should probably have not the slightest idea of intervention;
+but it would raise some unforeseen obstacle.  I should fall ill; catch
+a bad cold, be prevented by some secondary event from arriving at the
+unpropitious hour.  Then, when I was actually in the presence of the
+man who held my destiny in his hands, my vigilant friend would spread
+its wings over me, its breath would inspire me, its light would dispel
+my darkness.  It would dictate to me the words that I must say: they
+would be the only words that could meet the secret objections of the
+master of my Fate.  It would regulate my attitude, my silence, my
+gestures; it would endow me with the confidence, the nameless
+influence, which often will govern the decisions of men far more than
+the reasons of reason or the eloquence of interest.  But here I am
+sorely afraid that my unconsciousness will do none of these things.  It
+will remain perfectly passive.  It will not appear on the familiar
+threshold.  In its obtuseness, impervious to the fact that my life has
+ceased to be self-contained, it will act in accordance with its ancient
+traditions, those that have ruled it these hundreds of years; it will
+persist in regarding this matter as one that does not concern me, and
+will believe that in helping my failure it will be doing me service;
+whereas in truth it will afflict me more grievously, cause me more
+sorrow, than if it were to betray me at the approach of death.  I shall
+be importing, therefore, into this affair, only the palest reflection,
+a kind of phantom, of my own luck; and I ask myself with dread whether
+this will suffice to counterbalance the contrary fortune which I have,
+as it were, assumed, and which I represent."
+
+
+14
+
+Some days later my friend informed me that his action had been
+unsuccessful.  It may be that this reverse was only due to chance or to
+his own want of confidence.  For the confidence that sees success ahead
+pursues it with a pertinacity and resource of which hesitation and
+doubt are incapable; nor is it troubled by any of those involuntary
+weaknesses which give so great an advantage to the adversary's
+instinct.  And there may probably be much truth also in his manner of
+depicting unconsciousness.  For truly, there are depths in us at which
+unconsciousness and confidence would seem to blend, and it becomes
+difficult to say where the first begins, or the second leaves off.
+
+We will not pursue this too subtle inquiry, but rather consider the
+other and more direct questions that life is ever putting to us
+concerning one of its greatest problems--chance.  This possesses what
+may be called a daily interest.  It asks us, for instance, what
+attitude we should adopt towards men who are incontestably unlucky; men
+whose evil star has such pernicious power that it infallibly brings
+disaster to whatever comes within the range--often a very wide one--of
+its baleful influence.  Ought we unhesitatingly to fly from such men,
+as Dr. Foissac advises?  Yes, doubtless, if their misfortunes arise
+from an imprudent and unduly hazardous spirit, a heedless, quarrelsome,
+mischief-making, Utopian or clouded mind.  Ill-luck is a contagious
+disease; and one unconsciousness will often infect another.  But if the
+misfortunes be wholly unmerited, or fall upon those who are dear to us,
+flight were unjust and shameful.  In such a case the conscious side of
+our being--which, though it know but little, is yet able to fashion
+truths of a different order, truths that might almost be the first
+flowers of a dawning world--is bound to resist the universal wisdom of
+unconsciousness, bound to brave its warnings and involve it in its own
+ruin, which may well be a victory upon an ideal plane that one day
+perhaps shall appeal to the unconsciousness also.
+
+
+15
+
+We ask ourselves, therefore, whether unconsciousness, which we regard
+as the source of our luck, is really incapable of change or
+improvement.  Have we not all of us noticed how strange are the ways of
+chance?  When we behold it active in a small town, or among a certain
+number of men within the range of our own observation, the goddess
+would seem to become as persistent as a gadfly, and no less fantastic.
+Her very marked personality and character will vary in accordance with
+the event or being whereon she may fasten.  She has all kinds of
+eccentricities, but pursues each one logically to the finish.  Her
+first gesture will tell us nothing; from her second we can predict all
+that she means to do.  Protean divinity that no image could completely
+describe, here she leaps suddenly forth, like a fountain in the midst
+of a desert, to disappear after having given birth to an ephemeral
+oasis; there she returns at regular intervals, collecting and
+scattering, like migratory birds that obey the rhythm of the seasons.
+On our right she fells a man and concerns herself with him no further;
+on our left she bears down another, and furiously worries her victim.
+But, though she bring favour or ruin, she will almost always remain
+astoundingly faithful to the character she has once and for all assumed
+in a particular case.  This man, for instance, who has been
+unsuccessful in war, will continue to be unsuccessful; that other will
+invariably win or lose at cards; a third will infallibly be deceived; a
+fourth will find water, fire, or the dangers of the street especially
+hostile; a fifth will be constantly fortunate or unfortunate in love,
+money matters, &c., and so to the end.  All this may prove nothing, but
+we may regard it at least as some indication that her realm is truly
+within us and not without; and that a hidden force that emanates only
+from us provides her with form and with vestment.
+
+Her habits at times will suddenly alter, one eccentricity producing
+another; some brusque change of front will give the lie to her
+character, to confirm it the instant after in a new atmosphere.  We say
+then that "luck turns."  May it not rather be our unconsciousness that
+is gradually developing, at last displaying some prudence, attention,
+and slowly becoming aware that important events are stirring in the
+world to which it is attached?  Has it gained some experience?  Has a
+ray of intelligence, a spark of will-power, filtered through to its
+lair and hinted at danger?  Does it learn, after years have flown, and
+trial after trial has had to be borne, the wisdom of casting aside its
+confident apathy?  Can external disaster arouse it from perilous
+slumber?  Or, if it always has known what was happening over the roof
+of its prison, is it able, after long and painful effort, at last, at
+the critical moment, to contrive some sort of crevice in the great
+wall, built by the indifference of centuries, that separates it from
+its unknown sisters; and does it thus succeed in entering the ephemeral
+life on which a part of its own life depends?
+
+
+16
+
+And yet we must admit that this hypothesis of unconsciousness will not
+suffice to account for all the injustice of chance.  Its three most
+iniquitous acts are the three disasters--the most terrible of all to
+which man is exposed--that habitually strike him before birth: I refer
+to absolute poverty, disease (especially in the shocking forms of
+physiological degradation and incurable infirmities, of repulsive
+ugliness and deformity), and intellectual weakness.  These are the
+three great priestesses of unrighteousness that lie in wait for
+innocence and brand it, on the threshold of life.  And yet, mysterious
+as their method of choice may appear, the triple source whence they
+derive these three irremediable scourges is less mysterious than one is
+inclined to believe.  We need not look for it in a pre-established
+will, in fatal, hostile, eternal, impenetrable laws.  Poverty has its
+origin in man's own province; and though we may marvel why one should
+be rich and the other poor, we are well aware that the existence, side
+by side, of excessive wealth and excessive misery, is due to human
+injustice alone.  In this wickedness neither gods nor stars have part.
+And as for disease and mental weakness, when we shall have eliminated
+from them what now is due to poverty, mother of most of our moral and
+physical sorrows, as well as to the anterior, and by no means
+inevitable, faults of the parents, then, though some measure of
+persistent and unaccountable injustice may still remain, this relic of
+mystery will very nigh go into the hollow of the philosopher's hand,
+and there he shall, later, examine it at his leisure.  But we of today
+shall be wise in refusing to allow our life to be unnecessarily
+darkened, or hedged round with imaginary maledictions and foes.
+
+As far as ordinary luck is concerned, we shall do well to believe, for
+the moment, that the history of our fortune (which is not necessarily
+the history of our real happiness, since this may be wholly independent
+of luck) is the history of our unconscious being.  There are more
+elements of probability in such a creed than in the assumption that the
+stars, eternity, or the spirit of the universe are taking part in our
+petty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage.  And this
+idea--even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter the
+character of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or of
+Venus--still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; and
+when we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperative
+duty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes.
+Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I know
+not what proud consolation in being able to tell ourselves that it
+issues solely from us, and that we are not the victims of a malign will
+or the playthings of useless chance that in suffering more than our
+brothers we are perhaps only recording, in time and space, the
+necessary form of our own personality.  And so long as calamity do not
+attack the intimate pride of man, he retains the force to continue the
+struggle and accomplish his essential mission: which is, to live with
+all the ardour whereof he is capable, and as though his life were of
+greater consequence than any other to the destinies of mankind.
+
+This idea is also more conformable to the vast law which restores to
+us, one by one, the gods wherewith we had filled the world.  Of these
+gods the greater number were merely the effects of causes that reposed
+in ourselves.  As we progress we shall discover that many a force that
+mastered us and aroused our wonder was only an ill-understood fragment
+of our own power; and this will probably become more apparent every day.
+
+And though we shall not have conquered the unknown force by bringing it
+nearer or enclosing it within us, there yet shall be gain in knowing
+where it abides and where we may question it.  Obscure forces surround
+us; but the one that concerns us most nearly lies at the very centre of
+our being.  All the others pass through it: it is their trysting-place:
+they re-enter and congregate there; and only in the degree of their
+relation to it have they interest for us.
+
+To distinguish this force from the host of others we have called it
+unconsciousness.  And when we shall have succeeded in studying this
+unconsciousness more closely, when its mysterious adroitness, its
+antipathies and preference, its helplessness, shall be better known to
+us, we shall have most strangely blunted the teeth and nails of the
+monster who persecutes us under the name of Fortune, Destiny or Chance.
+At the present hour we are feeding it still as a blind man might feed
+the lion that at last shall devour him.  Soon perhaps the lion will be
+seen by us in its true light, and we shall then learn how to subdue him.
+
+Let us therefore unweariedly follow each path that leads from our
+consciousness to our unconsciousness.  We shall thus succeed in hewing
+some kind of track through the great and as yet impassable roads that
+lead from the seen to the unseen, from man to God, from the individual
+to the universe.  At the end of these roads lies hidden the general
+secret of life.  In the meanwhile let us adopt the hypothesis that
+offers the most encouragement to our existence in this life; in this
+life which has need of us for the solution of its own enigmas, seeing
+that in us its secrets crystallise the most limpidly and most rapidly.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+[1] His history is concisely summed up by Dr. Foissac as follows:--"On
+the eighth Floréal of the year IV. the courier and postillion who were
+taking the mail from Paris to Lyons were attacked and murdered, at nine
+in the evening, in the forest of Senart.  The assassins were Couriol,
+who had taken a seat in the cabriolet by the side of the courier;
+Durochal, Rossi, Vidal, and Dubosq, who had come to meet him on hired
+horses; and lastly Bernard, who had procured the horses, and took part
+in the subsequent distribution of plunder.  For this crime, in which
+five assassins and one accomplice shared, _seven_ individuals, within
+the space of four years, mounted the steps of the guillotine.  Justice,
+therefore, killed one man too many: her sword fell upon one who was
+innocent; nor could he have been one of these six individuals, all of
+whom confessed their crime.  The innocent man was Lesurques, who had
+never ceased to declare that he was not guilty; and all his alleged
+accomplices disavowed any knowledge of him.  How then came this
+unfortunate creature to be implicated in an affair that was to confer
+so sad an immortality upon his name?  Fatality so contrived that, four
+days before the crime, Lesurques, who had left Douai with an income of
+eighteen thousand livres, and had come to Paris that he might give a
+better education to his children, happened to be lunching with a
+fellow-townsman named Guesno when Couriol came in and was invited to
+join them.  Suspicion having at once fallen upon Couriol, the fact of
+this lunch was sufficient to cause Guesno to be put under arrest for a
+moment; but as he was able to prove an alibi, the judge, Daubenton,
+immediately set him at liberty.  Only, as it was late, Daubenton told
+him to come the following day to fetch his papers.
+
+"In the morning of the eleventh Floréal, Guesno, on his way for this
+purpose to the Prefecture of Police, met Lesurques, whom he invited to
+accompany him; an invitation which Lesurques, who had nothing special
+to do, accepted.  While they were waiting in the antechamber for the
+magistrate to arrive, two women were shown in who had been asked to
+attend in connection with the affair; and they, deceived by Lesurques'
+resemblance to Dubosq, who had fled, unhesitatingly denounced him as
+one of the assassins, and unfortunately persisted in this statement to
+the end.  The antecedents of Lesurques pleaded in his favour; and among
+other facts that he cited to prove that he had not left Paris during
+the day of the eighth Floréal, he declared that he had been present at
+certain dealings that had taken place at a jeweller's named Legrand,
+between this last and another jeweller named Aldenoff.  These
+transactions had actually taken place on the eighth; but Legrand, on
+being requisitioned to produce his books, found that he had by a
+clerical blunder inscribed them under the date of the ninth.  He
+thought the best thing he could do would be to scratch out the nine and
+convert it into an eight.  He did this with the idea that he would
+thereby save his fellow-townsman Lesurques, whom he knew to be
+innocent, whereas he actually succeeded in ruining him.  The alteration
+and substitution were easily detected; from that moment the prosecution
+and the jury declined to place the least confidence in the eighty
+witnesses for the defence called by the accused; he was convicted and
+his property confiscated.  Eighty-seven days elapsed between his
+condemnation and execution, a delay that was altogether unusual at that
+period; but grave doubts had arisen as to his guilt.
+
+"The Directorate did not possess the right of reprieve; they felt it
+their duty to refer the case to the Council of Five Hundred, asking
+'whether Lesurques was to die because of his resemblance to a
+criminal?'  The Council passed to the Order of the Day on the report of
+Simeon; and Lesurques was executed, forgiving his judges.  And not only
+had he constantly protested his innocence, but at the moment the
+verdict was given Couriol had cried out, in firm tones, 'Lesurques is
+innocent!'  He repeated this statement both on the fatal hurdle and on
+the scaffold.  All the other prisoners, while admitting their own
+guilt, also declared the innocence of Lesurques.  It was only in the
+year IX. that Dubosq, his double, was arrested and sentenced.
+
+"The fatality that had attacked the head of the family spared none of
+its members.  Lesurques' mother died of grief; his wife went mad; his
+three children languished in insignificance and poverty.  The
+government, however, moved by their great misfortune, restored to the
+family of Lesurques, in two instalments, the five or six hundred
+thousand francs which had been so iniquitously confiscated; but a
+swindler robbed them of the greater part of the money.  Sixty years
+elapsed; of Lesurques' three children two were dead: one alone
+survived, Virginia Lesurques.  Public opinion had for a long time
+already proclaimed the innocence and the rehabilitation of her
+unfortunate father.  She wanted more; and when the law of the 29th June
+1867 was passed, authorising the revision of criminal judgments, she
+hoped that the day had at last come when she might proclaim this
+rehabilitation in the sanctuary of justice; but, by a final fatality,
+the Court of Appeal, arguing on legal subtleties, declared by its
+decree of 17th December 1868 that no cause had been shown for
+re-opening the case, and that Virginia Lesurques had not made good her
+claim to revision."
+
+It is as though one were enthralled by a horrible dream, in which some
+poor wretch was being delivered into the hands of the Furies.  Ever
+since the fatal meal, no less tragic than that of Thyestes, which
+Lesurques took at Guesno's house, events have been dragging him nearer
+and nearer the gulf that yawns at his feet; while his destiny, hovering
+above him like an enormous vulture, hides the light from those who
+approach him.  And the circles from above press magically forward to
+meet those from below: they advance, they contract, and then, uniting
+at last, their eddies blend and fasten upon what is now a corpse.
+
+Here, truly, the combination of murderous fatalities may well seem
+supernatural; and the case is typical, it is formidable, it is as
+symbolic as a myth.  But there can be no doubt that analogous chains of
+circumstances reproduce themselves daily in the countless petty or
+ridiculous mortifications of merely ordinary lives which are beneath
+the influence of an evil or malicious star.
+
+[2] The misfortunes of the Stuarts are well known; those of the
+Colignys are less familiar.  Of these last the author we have already
+cited gives the following lucid account:--"Gaspard de Coligny, Marshal
+of France under Francis I., was married to the sister of the Constable
+Anne de Montmorency.  He was reproached with having delayed by half a
+day his attack on Charles V., at a time when such might have been most
+advantageously offered, and with having thereby let slip an almost
+certain opportunity of victory.  One of his sons, who had been made
+Archbishop and Cardinal, embraced Protestantism, and was married in his
+red cassock.  He fought against the King at the battle of St. Denis,
+and fled to England, where, in the year 1571, a servant of his
+attempted to poison him.  He escaped, however, and, seeking
+subsequently to return to France, was captured at Rochelle, condemned
+to death, and executed.  The Admiral de Coligny, brother of the
+Cardinal, was reputed one of the greatest captains of his time: he did
+marvels at the defence of Saint-Quentin.  The place, however, was taken
+by storm, and he was made a prisoner of war.  Having become the real
+leader of the Calvinists, under the Prince de Condé, he displayed the
+most undaunted courage and extraordinary fertility of resource; neither
+his merit nor his military skill was ever called in question; and yet
+he was uniformly unsuccessful in every one of his enterprises.  In 1562
+he lost the battle of Dreux to the Duc de Guise; that of St. Denis to
+the Constable de Montmorency; and, finally, that of Jarnac, which was
+no less fatal to his party.  He endured yet another reverse at
+Montcontour, in Poitou, but his courage remained unshaken; his skill
+was able to parry the attacks of fortune, and he appeared more
+redoubtable after his defeats than his enemies in the midst of their
+victories.  Often wounded, but always impervious to fear, he remarked
+one day quietly to his friends, who wept as they saw his blood flow:
+'Should not the profession we follow cause us to regard death with the
+same indifference as life?'  A few days before the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew, Maurevert shot him with a carbine from a house in the
+cloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and wounded him dangerously in the
+right hand and left arm.  On the eve of that sanguinary day, Besme, at
+the head of a party of cutthroats, contrived to enter the admiral's
+house, and ran him several times through the body, then flinging him
+out of the window into the courtyard, where he expired, it is said, at
+the feet of the Duc de Guise.  His body was exposed for three days to
+the insults of the mob, and finally hung by the feet to the gibbet of
+Montfaucon.
+
+"Thus, though the Admiral de Coligny passed for the greatest general of
+his time, he was always unfortunate and always defeated; while the Duc
+de Guise, his rival, who had less wisdom but more audacity, and above
+all more confidence in his destiny, was able to take his enemies by
+surprise and render himself master of events.  'Coligny was an honest
+man,' said the Abbe de Mably; 'Guise wore the mask of a greater number
+of virtues.  Coligny was detested by the people; Guise was their idol.'
+It is stated that the Admiral left a diary, which Charles IX. read with
+interest, but the Marshal de Retz had it flung into the fire.  Finally,
+a fatal destiny clinging to all who bore the name of Coligny, the last
+descendant of the family was killed in a duel by the Chevalier de
+Guise."
+
+[3] It is a remarkable and constant fact that great catastrophes claim
+infinitely fewer victims than the most reasonable probabilities might
+have led one to suppose.  At the last moment a fortuitous or
+exceptional circumstance is almost always found to have kept away half,
+and sometimes two-thirds, of the persons who were threatened by the
+still invisible danger.  A steamer that goes to the bottom has
+generally fewer passengers on board than would have been the case had
+she not been destined to go down.  Two trains that collide, an express
+that falls over a precipice, &c., carry less travellers than they would
+on a day when nothing is going to happen.  Should a bridge collapse,
+the accident will generally be found to occur, in defiance of all
+probability, at the moment the crowd has just left it.  In the case of
+fires in theatres and other public places, things unfortunately happen
+otherwise.  But there, as we know, the principal danger does not lie in
+the fire, but in the panic of the terror-stricken crowd.  Again, a
+fire-damp explosion will usually occur at a time when the number of
+miners inside the mine is appreciably inferior to the number that would
+habitually be there.  Similarly, when a powder factory is blown up, the
+majority of the workmen, who would otherwise all have perished, will be
+found to have left the mill for some trifling, but providential,
+reason.  So true is this, that the almost unvarying remark, that we
+read every day in the papers, has become familiar and hackneyed, as: "A
+catastrophe which might have assumed terrible proportions was
+fortunately confined, thanks to such and such a circumstance," &c.,
+&c.; or, "One shudders to think what might have happened had the
+accident occurred a moment sooner, when all the workmen, all the
+passengers," &c.  Is this the clemency of Chance?  We are becoming ever
+less inclined to credit it with a personality, with design or
+intelligence.  There is more reason in the supposition that something
+in man has defined the disaster; that an obscure but unfailing instinct
+has preserved a great number of people from a danger that was on the
+point of taking shape, of assuming the imminent and imperious form of
+the inevitable; and that their unconsciousness, taking alarm, is seized
+with hidden panic, which manifests itself outwardly in a caprice, a
+whim, some puerile and inconsistent incident, that is yet irresistible
+and becomes the means of salvation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Buried Temple, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Buried Temple, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Buried Temple
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Translator: Alfred Sutro
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BURIED TEMPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Buried Temple
+
+
+By
+
+Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Alfred Sutro
+
+
+
+
+LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
+
+RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
+
+
+
+
+Published in April 1902
+
+Reprinted:--
+  POCKET EDITION, March 1911
+  November 1911
+  July 1919
+  December 1921
+  October 1924
+
+
+
+Twenty first Thousand
+
+(All rights reserved)
+
+Printed in Great Britain
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Of the five essays in this volume, two only, those on "The Past" and
+"Luck," were written in 1901.  The others, "The Mystery of Justice,"
+"The Evolution of Mystery," and "The Kingdom of Matter," are anterior
+to "The Life of the Bee," and appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ in
+1899 and 1900.  The essay on "The Past" appeared in the March number of
+the _Fortnightly Review_ and of the New York _Independent_; and parts
+of "The Mystery of Justice" in this last journal and _Harper's
+Magazine_.  The author's thanks are due to Messrs. Chapman & Hall,
+Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and the proprietors of _The Independent_ for
+their permission to republish.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I. THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE
+  II. THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY
+ III. THE KINGDOM OF MATTER
+  IV. THE PAST
+   V. LUCK
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE MYSTERY OF JUSTICE
+
+1
+
+I speak, for those who do not believe in the existence of a unique,
+all-powerful, infallible Judge, for ever intent on our thoughts, our
+feelings and actions, maintaining justice in this world and completing
+it in the next.  And if there be no Judge, what justice is there?  None
+other than that which men have made for themselves by their laws and
+tribunals, as also in the social relations that no definite judgment
+governs?  Is there nothing above this human justice, whose sanction is
+rarely other than the opinion, the confidence or mistrust, the approval
+or disapproval, of our fellows?  Is this capable of explaining or
+accounting for all that seems so inexplicable to us in the morality of
+the universe, that we at times feel almost compelled to believe an
+intelligent Judge must exist?  When we deceive or overcome our
+neighbour, have we deceived or overcome all the forces of justice?  Are
+all things definitely settled then, and may we go boldly on: or is
+there a graver, deeper justice, one less visible perhaps, but less
+subject to error; one that is more universal, and mightier?
+
+That such a justice exists we all of us know, for we all have felt its
+irresistible power.  We are well aware that it covers the whole of our
+life, and that at its centre there reigns an intelligence which never
+deceives itself, which none can deceive.  But where shall we place it,
+now that we have torn it down from the skies?  Where does it weigh good
+and evil, happiness and disaster?  Whence does it issue to deal out
+reward and punishment?  These are questions that we do not often ask
+ourselves, but they have their importance.  The nature of justice, and
+all our morality, depend on the answer; and it cannot be fruitless
+therefore to inquire how that great idea of mystic and sovereign
+justice, which has undergone more than one transformation since history
+began, is being received to-day in the mind and the heart of man.  And
+is this mystery not the loftiest, the most passionately interesting, of
+all that remain to us: does it not intertwine with most of the others?
+Do its vacillations not stir us to the very depths of our soul?  The
+great bulk of mankind perhaps know nothing of these vacillations and
+changes, but for the evolution of thought it suffices that the eyes of
+the few should see; and when the clear consciousness of these has
+become aware of the transformation, its influence will gradually attain
+the general morality of men.
+
+
+2
+
+In these pages we shall naturally have much to say of social justice:
+of the justice, in other words, that we mutually extend to each other
+through life; but we shall leave on one side legal or positive justice,
+which is merely the organisation of one side of social justice.  We
+shall occupy ourselves above all with that vague but inevitable
+justice, intangible and yet so effective, which accompanies and sets
+its seal upon every action of our life; which approves or disapproves,
+rewards or punishes.  Does this come from without?  Does an inflexible,
+undeceivable moral principle exist, independent of man, in the universe
+and in things?  Is there, in a word, a justice that might be called
+mystic?  Or does it issue wholly from man; is it inward even though it
+act from without; and is the only justice therefore psychologic?  These
+two terms, mystic and psychologic justice, comprehend, more or less,
+all the different forms of justice, superior to the social, that would
+appear to exist to-day.
+
+
+3
+
+It is scarcely conceivable that any one who has forsaken the easy, but
+artificially illumined, paths of positive religion, can still believe
+in the existence of a physical justice arising from moral causes,
+whether its manifestations assume the form of heredity or disease, of
+geologic, atmospheric, or other phenomena.  However eager his desire
+for illusion or mystery, this is a truth he is bound to recognise from
+the moment he begins earnestly and sincerely to study his own personal
+experience, or to observe the external ills which, in this world of
+ours, fall indiscriminately on good and wicked alike.  Neither the
+earth nor the sky, neither nature nor matter, neither air nor any force
+known to man (save only those that are in him) betrays the slightest
+regard for justice, or the remotest connection with our morality, our
+thoughts or intentions.  Between the external world and our actions
+there exist only the simple and essentially non-moral relations of
+cause and effect.  If I am guilty of a certain excess or imprudence, I
+incur a certain danger, and have to pay a corresponding debt to nature.
+And as this imprudence or excess will generally have had an immoral
+cause--or a cause that we call immoral because we have been compelled
+to regulate our life according to the requirements of our health and
+tranquillity--we cannot refrain from establishing a connection between
+this immoral cause and the danger to which we have been exposed, or the
+debt we have had to pay; and we are led once more to believe in the
+justice of the universe, the prejudice which, of all those that we
+cling to, has its root deepest in our heart.  And in our eagerness to
+restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact
+that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our
+excess or imprudence been--to use the terms of our infantine
+vocabulary--heroic or innocent.  If on an intensely cold day I throw
+myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if,
+seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of the
+chill will be absolutely the same; and nothing on this earth or beneath
+the sky--save only myself, or man if he be able--will enhance my
+suffering because I have committed a crime, or relieve my pain because
+my action was virtuous.
+
+
+4
+
+Let us consider another form of physical justice: heredity.  There
+again we find the same indifference to moral causes.  And truly it were
+a strange justice indeed that would throw upon the son, and even the
+remote descendant, the burden of a fault committed by his father or his
+ancestor.  But human morality would raise no objection: man would not
+protest.  To him it would seem natural, magnificent, even fascinating.
+It would indefinitely prolong his individuality, his consciousness and
+existence; and from this point of view would accord with a number of
+indisputable facts which prove that we are not wholly self-contained,
+but connect, in more than one subtle, mysterious fashion, with all that
+surrounds us in life, with all that precedes us, or follows.
+
+And yet, true as this may be in certain cases, it is not true as
+regards the justice of physical heredity, which is absolutely
+indifferent to the moral causes of the deed whose consequences the
+descendants have to bear.  There is physical relation between the act
+of the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequent
+suffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whatever
+the intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful.
+And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical heredity
+would appear to be very restricted.  A father may have been guilty of a
+hundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, a
+persecutor of the innocent or despoiler of the wretched, without these
+crimes leaving the slightest trace upon the organism of his children.
+It is enough that he should have been careful to do nothing that might
+injure his health.
+
+
+5
+
+So much for the justice of Nature as shown in physical heredity.  Moral
+heredity would appear to be governed by similar principles; but as it
+deals with modifications of the mind and character infinitely more
+complex and more elusive, its manifestations are less striking, and its
+results less certain.  Pathology is the only region which admits of its
+definite observation and study; and there we observe it to be merely
+the spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essential
+principle: moral heredity being only a sequel, and revealing in its
+elementary stage the same indifference to real justice, and the same
+blindness.  Whatever the moral cause of the ancestor's drunkenness or
+debauch, the same punishment may be meted out in mind and body to the
+descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee.  Intellectual blemish
+will almost always accompany material blemish.  The soul will be
+attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little
+whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal
+instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement:
+the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent
+has followed actions which, as a rule, cause less harm and are less
+perverse than hundreds of other offences that Nature never dreams of
+punishing.  And this penalty, moreover, is inflicted blindly, not the
+slightest heed being paid to the motives underlying the actions,
+motives that may have been excusable perhaps, or indifferent, or
+possibly even admirable.
+
+It would be absurd, however, to imagine that drunkenness and debauchery
+are the only agents in moral heredity.  There are a thousand others,
+all more or less unknown.  Certain moral qualities appear to be
+transmitted as readily as though they were physical.  In one race, for
+instance, we will almost constantly discover certain virtues which have
+probably been acquired.  But who shall say how much is due to heredity,
+and how much to environment and example?  The problem becomes so
+complicated, the facts so contradictory, that it is impossible, amidst
+the mass of innumerable causes, to follow the track of one particular
+cause to the end.  Let it suffice to say that in the only clear,
+striking, definitive cases where an intentional justice could have
+revealed itself in physical or moral heredity, no trace of justice is
+found.  And if we do not find it in these, we are surely far less
+likely to find it in others.
+
+
+6
+
+We may affirm therefore that not above us, or around us, or beneath us,
+neither in this life nor in our other life which is that of our
+children, is the least trace to be found of an intentional justice.
+But, in the course of adapting ourselves to the laws of life, we have
+naturally been led to credit with our own moral ideas those principles
+of causality that we encounter most frequently; and we have in this
+fashion created a very plausible semblance of effective justice, which
+rewards or punishes most of our actions in the degree that they
+approach, or deviate from, certain laws that are essential for the
+preservation of the race.  It is evident that if I sow my field, I
+shall have an infinitely better prospect of reaping a harvest the
+following summer than my neighbour, who has neglected to sow his,
+preferring a life of dissipation and idleness.  In this case,
+therefore, work obtains its admirable and certain reward; and as work
+is essential for the preservation of our existence, we have declared it
+to be the moral act of all acts, the first of all our duties.  Such
+instances might be indefinitely multiplied.  If I bring up my children
+well, if I am good and just to those round about me, if I am honest,
+active, prudent, wise, and sincere in all my dealings, I shall have a
+better chance of meeting with filial piety, with respect and affection,
+a better chance of knowing moments of happiness, than the man whose
+actions and conduct have been the very reverse of mine.  Let us not,
+however, lose sight of the fact that my neighbour, who is, let us say,
+a most diligent and thrifty man, might be prevented by the most
+admirable of reasons--such as an illness caught while nursing his wife
+or his friend--from sowing his ground at the proper time, and that he
+also would reap no harvest.  _Mutatis mutandis_, similar results would
+follow in the other instances I have mentioned.  The cases, however,
+are exceptional where a worthy or respectable reason will hinder the
+accomplishment of a duty; and we shall find, as a rule, that sufficient
+harmony exists between cause and effect, between the exaction of the
+necessary law and the result of the complying effort, to enable our
+casuistry to keep alive within us the idea of the justice of things.
+
+
+7
+
+This idea, however, deeply ingrained though it be in the hearts and
+minds of the least credulous and least mystic of men, can surely not be
+beneficial.  It reduces our morality to the level of the insect which,
+perched on a falling rock, imagines that the rock has been set in
+motion on its own special behalf.  Are we wise in allowing certain
+errors and falsehoods to remain active within us?  There may have been
+some in the past which, for a moment, were helpful; but, this moment
+over, men found themselves once again face to face with the truth, and
+the sacrifice had only been delayed.  Why wait till the illusion or
+falsehood which appeared to do good begins to do actual harm, or, if it
+do no harm, at least retards the perfect understanding that should
+obtain between the deeply felt reality and our manner of interpreting
+and accepting it?  What were the divine right of kings, the
+infallibility of the Church, the belief in rewards beyond the grave,
+but illusions whose sacrifice reason deferred too long?  Nor was
+anything gained by this dilatoriness beyond a few sterile hopes, a
+little deceptive peace, a few consolations that at times were
+disastrous.  But many days had been lost; and we have no days to lose,
+we who at last are seeking the truth, and find in its search an
+all-sufficient reason for existence.  Nor does anything retard us more
+than the illusion which, though torn from its roots, we still permit to
+linger among us; for this will display the most extraordinary activity
+and be constantly changing its form.
+
+But what does it matter, some will ask, whether man do the thing that
+is just because he thinks God is watching; because he believes in a
+kind of justice that pervades the universe; or for the simple reason
+that to his conscience this thing seems just?  It matters above all.
+We have there three different men.  The first, whom God is watching,
+will do much that is not just, for every god whom man has hitherto
+worshipped has decreed many unjust things.  And the second will not
+always act in the same way as the third, who is indeed the true man to
+whom the moralist will turn, for he will survive both the others; and
+to foretell how man will conduct himself in truth, which is his natural
+element, is more interesting to the moralist than to watch his
+behaviour when enmeshed in falsehood.
+
+
+8
+
+It may seem idle to those who do not believe in the existence of a
+sovereign Judge to discuss so seriously this inadmissible idea of the
+justice of things; and inadmissible it does indeed become when
+presented thus in its true colours, as it were, pinned to the wall.
+This, however, is not our way of regarding it in every-day life.  When
+we observe how disaster follows crime, how ruin at last overtakes
+ill-gotten prosperity; when we witness the miserable end of the
+debauchee, the short-lived triumph of iniquity, it is our constant
+habit to confuse the physical effect with the moral cause; and however
+little we may believe in the existence of a Judge, we nearly all of us
+end by a more or less complete submission to a strange, vague faith in
+the justice of things.  And although our reason, our calm observation,
+prove to us that this justice cannot exist, it is enough that an event
+should take place which touches us somewhat more nearly, or that there
+should be two or three curious coincidences, for conviction to fade in
+our heart, if not in our mind.  Notwithstanding all our reason and all
+our experience, the merest trifle recalls to life within us the
+ancestor who was convinced that the stars shone in their eternal places
+for no other purpose than to predict or approve a wound he was to
+inflict on his enemy upon the field of battle, a word he should speak
+in the assembly of the chiefs, or an intrigue he would bring to a
+successful issue in the women's quarters.  We of to-day are no less
+inclined to divinise our feelings for the benefit of our interests; the
+only difference being that, the gods having no longer a name, our
+methods are less sincere and less precise.  When the Greeks, powerless
+before Troy, felt the need of supernatural signal and support, they
+went to Philoctetes, deprived him of Hercules' bow and arrows, and
+abandoned him, ill, naked, and defenceless, on a desert island.  This
+was the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was the
+command of the gods.  And similarly do we, when some iniquity seems
+expedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, of
+humanity, of the fatherland.  On the other hand, should a great
+misfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and that
+there are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and the
+universe is at once repeopled with invisible judges.  If, however, some
+unexpected, disproportionate stroke of good fortune come to us, we are
+quickly convinced that we must possess merits so carefully hidden as to
+have escaped our own observation; and we are happier in their discovery
+than at the windfall they have procured us.
+
+
+9
+
+"One has to pay for all things," we say.  Yes, in the depths of our
+heart, in all that pertains to man, justice exacts payment in the coin
+of our personal happiness or sorrow.  And without, in the universe that
+enfolds us, there is also a reckoning; but here it is a different
+paymaster who measures out happiness or sorrow.  Other laws obtain;
+there are other motives, other methods.  It is no longer the justice of
+the conscience that presides, but the logic of nature, which cares
+nothing for our morality.  Within us is a spirit that weighs only
+intentions; without us, a power that only balances deeds.  We try to
+persuade ourselves that these two work hand in hand.  But in reality,
+though the spirit will often glance towards the power, this last is as
+completely ignorant of the other's existence as is the man weighing
+coals in Northern Europe of the existence of his fellow weighing
+diamonds in South Africa.  We are constantly intruding our sense of
+justice into this non-moral logic; and herein lies the source of most
+of our errors.
+
+
+10
+
+And further, what right have we to complain of the indifference of the
+universe, what right to declare it incomprehensible, and monstrous?
+Why this surprise at an injustice in which we ourselves take so active
+a part?  It is true that there is no trace of justice to be found in
+disease, accident, or most of the hazards of external life, which fall
+indiscriminately on the good and the wicked, the hero and traitor, the
+poisoner and sister of charity.  But we are far too eager to include
+under the title "Justice of the Universe" many a flagrant act that is
+exclusively human, and infinitely more common and more destructive than
+disease, the hurricane, or fire.  I do not allude to war; it might be
+urged that we attribute this rather to the will of the people or kings
+than to Nature.  But poverty, for instance, which we still rank with
+irremediable ills such as shipwreck or plague; poverty, with all its
+crushing sorrows and transmitted degeneration--how often may this be
+ascribed to the injustice of the elements, and how often to the
+injustice of our social condition, which is the crowning injustice of
+man?  Need we, at the sight of unmerited wretchedness, look to the
+skies for a reason, as though a flash of lightning had caused it?  Need
+we seek an impenetrable, unfathomable judge?  Is this region not our
+own; are we not here in the best explored, best known portion of our
+dominion; and is it not we who organise misery, we who spread it
+abroad, as arbitrarily, from the moral point of view, as fire and
+disease scatter destruction or suffering?  Is it reasonable that we
+should wonder at the sea's indifference to the soul-state of its
+victims, when we who have a soul, the pre-eminent organ of justice, pay
+no heed whatever to the innocence of the countless thousands whom we
+ourselves sacrifice, who are our wretched victims?  We choose to regard
+as beyond our control, as a force of fatality, a force that rests
+entirely within our own hands.  But does this excuse us?  Truly we are
+strange lovers of an ideal justice, we are strange judges!  A judicial
+error sends a thrill of horror from one end of the world to another;
+but the error which condemns three-fourths of mankind to misery, an
+error as purely human as that of any tribunal, is attributed by us to
+some inaccessible, implacable power.  If the child of some honest man
+we know be born blind, imbecile, or deformed, we will seek everywhere,
+even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some
+God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor--a
+calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of
+degrading a creature's destiny--we do not dream of interrogating the
+God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires.
+Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas,
+for whatever blemish there is in these will surely be in the judge.
+Before we complain of Nature's indifference, or ask at her hands an
+equity she does not possess, let us attack the iniquity that dwells in
+the homes of men; and when this has been swept away, we shall find that
+the part we assign to the injustice of fate will be less by fully
+two-thirds.  And the benefit to mankind would be far more considerable
+than if it lay in our power to guide the storm or govern the heat and
+the cold, to direct the course of disease or the avalanche, or contrive
+that the sea should display an intelligent regard to our virtues and
+secret intentions.  For indeed the poor far exceed in number those who
+fall victims to shipwreck or material accident, just as far more
+disease is due to material wretchedness than to the caprice of our
+organism, or to the hostility of the elements.
+
+
+11
+
+And for all that, we love justice.  We live, it is true, in the midst
+of a great injustice; but we have only recently acquired this
+knowledge, and we still grope for a remedy.  Injustice dates such a
+long way back; the idea of God, of destiny, of Nature's mysterious
+decrees, had been so closely and intimately associated with it, it is
+still so deeply entangled with most of the unjust forces of the
+universe, that it was but yesterday that we commenced the endeavour to
+isolate such elements contained within it as are purely human.  And if
+we succeed; if we can distinguish them, and separate them for all time
+from those upon which we have no power, justice will gain more than by
+all that the researches of man have discovered hitherto.  For indeed in
+this social injustice of ours, it is not the human part that is capable
+of arresting our passion for equity; it is the part that a great number
+of men still attribute to a god, to a kind of fatality, or to imaginary
+laws of Nature.
+
+
+12
+
+This last inactive part shrinks every day.  Nor is this because the
+mystery of justice is about to disappear.  A mystery rarely disappears;
+as a rule, it only shifts its ground.  But it is often most important
+and most desirable that we should bring about this change of abode.  It
+may be said that two or three such changes almost stand for the whole
+progress of human thought: the dislodgment of two or three mysteries
+from a place where they did harm, and their transference to a place
+where they become inoffensive and capable of doing good.  Sometimes
+even, there is no need for the mystery to change its place; we have
+only to identify it under another name.  What was once called "the
+gods," we now term "life."  And if life be as inexplicable as were the
+gods, we are at least the gainers to the extent that none has the right
+to speak or do wrong in its name.  The aim of human thought can
+scarcely be to destroy mystery, or lessen it, for that seems
+impossible.  We may be sure that the same quantity of mystery will ever
+enwrap the world, since it is the quality of the world, as of mystery,
+to be infinite.  But honest human thought will seek above all to
+determine what are the veritable irreducible mysteries.  It will
+endeavour to strip them of all that does not belong to them, that is
+not truly theirs, of the additions made by our errors, our fears, and
+our falsehoods.  And as the artificial mysteries vanish, so will the
+ocean of veritable mystery stretch out further and further: the mystery
+of life, its aim and its origin; the mystery of thought; the mystery
+that has been called "the primitive accident," or the "perhaps
+unknowable essence of reality."
+
+
+13
+
+Where had men conceived the mystery of justice to lodge?  It pervaded
+the world.  At one moment it was supposed to rest in the hands of the
+gods, at another it engulfed and mastered the gods themselves.  It had
+been imagined everywhere except in man.  It had dwelt in the sky, it
+had lurked behind rocks, it had governed the air and the sea, it had
+peopled an inaccessible universe.  Then at last we peered into its
+imaginary retreats, we pressed close and examined; and its throne of
+clouds tottered, it faded away; but at the very moment we believed it
+had ceased to be, behold it reappeared, and raised its head once more
+in the very depths of our heart; and yet another mystery had sought
+refuge in man, and embodied itself in him.  For it is in ourselves that
+the mysteries we seek to destroy almost invariably find their last
+shelter and their most fitting abode, the home which they had forsaken,
+in the wildness of youth, to voyage through space; as it is in
+ourselves that we must learn to meet and to question them.  And truly
+it is no less wonderful, no less inexplicable, that man should have in
+his heart an immutable instinct of justice, than it was wonderful and
+inexplicable that the gods should be just, or the forces of the
+universe.  It is as difficult to account for the essence of our memory,
+our will, or intelligence, as it was to account for the memory, will,
+or intelligence of the invisible powers or laws of Nature; and if, in
+order to enhance our curiosity, we have need of the unknown or
+unknowable; if, in order to maintain our ardour, we require mystery or
+the infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown and
+unknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed;
+nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, or
+lessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritable
+mysteries.  Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heart
+of man.  But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that is
+certain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the one
+that is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful one from
+without.  Mystery for mystery, let us no longer parley with the
+messengers, but with the sovereign who sent them; no longer question
+those feeble ones who silently vanish at our first inquiry, but rather
+look into our heart, where are both question and answer; the answer
+which it has forgotten, but, some day perhaps, shall remember.
+
+
+14
+
+Then we shall be able to solve more than one disconcerting problem as
+to the distribution, often very equitable, of reward and punishment
+among men.  And by this we do not mean only the inward, moral reward
+and punishment, but also the reward and punishment that are visible and
+wholly material.  There was some measure of reason in the belief held
+by mankind from its very origin, that justice penetrates, animates as
+it were, every object of this world in which we live.  This belief has
+not been explained away by the fact that our great moral laws have been
+forcibly adapted to the great laws of life and matter.  There is more
+beyond.  We cannot refer all things, in all circumstances, to a simple
+relation of cause and effect between crime and punishment.  There is
+often a moral element also; and though events have not placed it there,
+though it is we alone who have created it, it is not the less powerful
+and real.  Of a physical justice, properly so called, we deny the
+existence; but besides the wholly inward psychologic justice, to which
+we shall soon refer, there is also a psychologic justice which is in
+constant communication with the physical world; and it is this justice
+that we attribute to we know not what invisible and universal
+principle.  And while it is wrong to credit Nature with moral
+intentions, and to allow our actions to be governed by fear of
+punishment or hope of reward that she may have in store for us, this
+does not imply that, even materially, there is no reward for good, or
+punishment for evil.  Such reward and punishment undoubtedly exist, but
+they issue not from whence we imagine; and in believing that they come
+from an inaccessible spot, that they master us, judge us, and
+consequently dispense us from judging ourselves, we commit the most
+dangerous of errors; for none has a greater influence upon our manner
+of defending ourselves against misfortune, or of setting forth to
+attempt the legitimate conquest of happiness.
+
+
+15
+
+Such justice as we actually discover in Nature does not issue from her,
+but from ourselves, who have unconsciously placed it there, through
+becoming one with events, animating them and adapting them to our uses.
+Accident, disease, the thunderbolt, which strike to right or to left,
+without apparent reason or warning, wholly indifferent as to what our
+thoughts may be, are not the only elements in our life.  There are
+other, and far more frequent, cases when we have direct influence on
+the things and persons around us, and invest these with our own
+personality; cases when the forces of nature become the instruments of
+our thoughts, which, when unjust, will make improper use of them,
+thereby calling forth retaliation and inviting punishment and disaster.
+But in Nature there is no moral reaction; for this emanates from our
+own thoughts or the thoughts of other men.  It is not in things, but in
+us, that the justice of things resides.  It is our moral condition that
+modifies our conduct towards the external world; and if we find this
+antagonistic, it is because we are at war with ourselves, with the
+essential laws of our mind and our heart.  The attitude of Nature
+towards us is uninfluenced by the justice or injustice of our
+intentions; and yet these will almost invariably govern our attitude
+towards Nature.  Here once more, as in the case of social justice, we
+ascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible, eternal, fatal
+principle, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say that justice,
+heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to punish or
+to avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish man, it
+is human nature that rises in revolt, and human justice that avenges.
+
+
+16
+
+In a former essay I referred to Napoleon's three crowning acts of
+injustice: the three celebrated crimes that were so fatally unjust to
+his own fortune.  The first was the murder of the Duc d'Enghien,
+condemned by order, without trial or proof, and executed in the
+trenches of Vincennes; an assassination that sowed insatiable hatred
+and vengeance in the path of the guilty dictator.  Then the detestable
+intrigues whereby he lured the too trustful, easy-going Bourbons to
+Bayonne, that he might rob them of their hereditary crown; and the
+horrible war that ensued, a war that cost the lives of three hundred
+thousand men, swallowed up all the morality and energy of the empire,
+most of its prestige, almost all its convictions, almost all the
+devotion it inspired, and engulfed its prosperous destiny.  And finally
+the frightful, unpardonable Russian campaign, wherein his fortune came
+at last to utter shipwreck amid the ice of the Berezina and the
+snow-bound Polish steppes.
+
+"These prodigious catastrophes," I said, "had numberless causes; but
+when we have slowly traced our way through all the more or less
+unforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change in
+Napoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, and
+violence which this genius committed; when we have seen how
+deliberately he brought disaster to his smiling fortune, may we not
+almost believe that what we behold, standing erect at the very
+fountain-head of calamity, is no other than the silent shadow of
+misunderstood human justice?  Human justice, wherein there is nothing
+supernatural, nothing very mysterious, but built up of many thousand
+very real little incidents, many thousand falsehoods, many thousand
+little offences of which each one gave rise to a corresponding act of
+retaliation--human justice, and not a power that suddenly, at some
+tragic moment, leaps forth like Minerva of old, fully armed, from the
+formidable, despotic brow of destiny.  In all this there is only one
+thing of mystery, and that is the eternal presence of human justice;
+but we are aware that the nature of man is very mysterious.  Let us in
+the meanwhile ponder this mystery.  It is the most certain of all, it
+is the profoundest, it is the most helpful, it is the only one that
+will never paralyse our energy for good  And though that patient,
+vigilant shadow be not as clearly defined in every life as it was in
+Napoleon's, though justice be not always as active or as undeniable, we
+shall none the less do wisely to study a case like this whenever
+opportunity offers.  It will at least give rise to doubt within us, it
+will stimulate inquiry; and these things are worth far more than the
+idle, short-sighted affirmation or denial that we so often permit
+ourselves: for in all questions of this kind our endeavour should not
+be to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to create a certain grave,
+courageous respect for all that yet remains unexplained in the actions
+of men, in their subjection to what appear to be general laws, and in
+the results that ensue."
+
+
+17
+
+Let us now try to discover in what way this great mystery of justice
+does truly and inevitably work itself out within us.  The heart of him
+who has committed an unjust act becomes the scene of ineffaceable
+drama, the paramount drama of human nature; and it becomes the more
+dangerous, and deadlier, in the degree of the man's greatness and
+knowledge.
+
+A Napoleon will say to himself, at such troubled moments, that the
+morality of a great life cannot be as simple as that of an ordinary
+one, and that an active, powerful will has rights which the feeble,
+inert will cannot claim.  He will hold that he may the more
+legitimately sweep aside certain conscientious scruples, inasmuch as it
+is not ignorance or weakness that causes him to disregard these, but
+the fact that he views them from a standpoint higher than that of the
+majority of men; and further, that his aim being great and glorious,
+this passing deliberate callousness of his is therefore truly a victory
+won by his strength and his intellect, since there can be no danger in
+doing wrong when it is done by one who does it knowingly, and has his
+very good reason.  All this, however, does not for a moment delude that
+which lies deepest within us.  An act of injustice must always shake
+the confidence a man had in himself and his destiny; at a given moment,
+and that generally of the gravest, he has ceased to rely upon himself
+alone; and this will not be forgotten, nor will he ever again be wholly
+himself.  He has confused, and probably corrupted, his fortune by the
+introduction of strange powers.  He has lost the exact sense of his
+personality and of the force that is in him.  He can no longer clearly
+distinguish between what is his own and comes from himself, and what he
+is constantly borrowing from the pernicious collaborators whom his
+weakness has summoned.  He has ceased to be the general who has none
+but disciplined soldiers in the army of his thoughts; he becomes the
+usurping chief around whom are only accomplices.  He has forsworn the
+dignity of the man who will have none of the glory at which his heart
+can only smile as sadly as an ardent, unhappy lover will smile at a
+faithless mistress.
+
+He who is truly strong will examine with eager care the praise and
+advantages that his actions have won for him, and will silently reject
+whatever oversteps a certain line that he has drawn in his
+consciousness.  And the stronger he is, the more nearly will this line
+approach the one that has already been drawn by the secret truth that
+lies at the bottom of all things.  An act of injustice is almost always
+a confession of weakness; and very few such confessions are needed to
+reveal to the enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul.  He who
+commits an unjust deed that he may gain some measure of glory, or
+preserve the little glory he has, does but admit that what he desires
+or what he possesses is beyond his deserving, and that the part he has
+sought to play exceeds his powers of loyal fulfilment.  And if,
+notwithstanding all, he persist in his endeavour, his life will soon be
+beset by falsehoods, errors, and phantoms.
+
+And at last, after a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable
+self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement
+only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and
+sustain us.  For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only
+our past that can come to us, in our moments of doubt, and say: "Since
+you were able to do that thing, it shall lie in your power to do this
+thing also.  When that danger confronted you, when that terrible grief
+laid you prostrate, you had faith in yourself, and you conquered.  The
+conditions to-day are the same; do you but preserve your faith in
+yourself, and your star will be constant."  But what reply shall we
+make if our past can only whisper: "Your success has been solely due to
+injustice and falsehood, wherefore it behoves you once more to deceive
+and to lie"?  No man cares to let his eyes rest on his acts of
+disloyalty, weakness, or treachery; and all the events of bygone days
+which we cannot contemplate calmly and peacefully, with satisfaction
+and confidence, trouble and restrict the horizon which the days that
+are not yet are forming far away.  It is only a prolonged survey of the
+past that can give to the eye the strength it needs in order to sound
+the future.
+
+
+18
+
+No, it was not the inherent justice of things that punished Napoleon
+for his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for our
+own in a less startling, but not less painful, fashion.  Nor was it an
+unyielding, incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the very
+vault of heaven."  We are punished because our entire moral being, our
+mind no less than our character, is incapable of living and acting
+except in justice.  Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we are
+carried, as it were, into a planet of which we know nothing, where the
+ground slips from under our feet, and all things disconcert us; for
+while the humblest intellect feels itself at home in justice, and can
+readily foretell the consequences of every just act, the most profound
+and penetrating mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself
+has created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue.
+The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has
+at heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be stranger
+still should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes:
+for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect,
+creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same
+time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient
+barriers of instinct.  The moment we cross the primitive frontier of
+equity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to a
+hundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels.  If
+justice be in us we may march along boldly, for there are certain
+things to which the basest cannot be false; but if injustice possess us
+we must beware of the justest of men, for there are things to which
+even these cannot remain faithful.  As our physical organism was
+devised for existence in the atmosphere of our globe, so is our moral
+organism devised for existence in justice.  Every faculty craves for
+it, and is more intimately bound up with it than with the laws of
+gravitation, of light or heat; and to throw ourselves into injustice is
+to plunge headlong into the hostile and the unknown.  All that is in us
+has been placed there with a view to justice; all things tend thither
+and urge us towards it: whereas, when we harbour injustice, we battle
+against our own strength; and at last, at the hour of inevitable
+punishment, when, prostrate, weeping and penitent, we recognise that
+events, the sky, the universe, the invisible are all in rebellion, all
+justly in league against us, then may we truly say, not that these are,
+or ever have been, just, but that we, notwithstanding ourselves, have
+contrived to remain just even in our injustice.
+
+
+19
+
+We affirm that Nature is absolutely indifferent to our morality, and
+that were this morality to command us to kill our neighbour, or to do
+him the utmost possible harm, Nature would aid us in this no less than
+in our endeavour to comfort or serve him.  She as often would seem to
+reward us for having made him suffer as for our kindness towards him.
+Does this warrant the inference that Nature has no morality--using the
+word in its most limited sense as meaning the logical, inevitable
+subordination of the means to the accomplishment of a general mission?
+This is a question to which we must not too hastily reply.  We know
+nothing of Nature's aim, or even whether she have an aim.  We know
+nothing of her consciousness, or whether she have a consciousness; of
+her thoughts, or whether she think at all.  It is with her deeds and
+her manner of doing that we are solely concerned.  And in these we find
+the same contradiction between our morality and Nature's mode of action
+as exists between our consciousness and the instincts that Nature has
+planted within us.  For this consciousness, though in ultimate analysis
+due to her also, has nevertheless been formed by ourselves, and, basing
+itself upon the loftiest human morality, offers an ever stronger
+opposition to the desires of instinct.  Were we to listen only to these
+last, we should act in all things like Nature, which would invariably
+seem to justify the triumph of the stronger, the victory of the least
+scrupulous and best equipped; and this in the midst of the most
+inexcusable wars, the most flagrant acts of injustice or cruelty.  Our
+one object would be our own personal triumph; nor should we pay the
+least heed to the rights or sufferings of our victims, to their
+innocence or beauty, moral or intellectual superiority.  But, in that
+case, why has Nature placed within us a consciousness and a sense of
+justice that have prevented us from desiring those things that she
+desires?  Or is it we ourselves who have placed them there?  Are we
+capable of deriving from within us something that is not in Nature; are
+we capable of giving abnormal development to a force that opposes her
+force; and if we possess this power, must not Nature have reasons of
+her own for permitting us to possess it?  Why should there be only in
+us, and nowhere else in the world, these two irreconcilable tendencies,
+that in every man are incessantly at strife, and alternately
+victorious?  Would one have been dangerous without the other?  Would it
+have overstepped its goal, perhaps; would the desire for conquest,
+unchecked by the sense of justice, have led to annihilation, as the
+sense of justice without the desire for conquest might have lured us to
+inertia?  Which of these two tendencies is the more natural and
+necessary, which is the narrower and which the vaster, which is
+provisional and which eternal?  Where shall we learn which one we
+should combat and which one encourage?  Ought we to conform to the law
+that is incontestably the more general, or should we cherish in our
+heart a law that is evidently exceptional?  Are there circumstances
+under which we have the right to go forth in search of the apparent
+ideal of life?  Is it our duty to follow the morality of the species or
+race, which seems irresistible to us, being one of the visible sides of
+Nature's obscure and unknown intentions; or is it essential that the
+individual should maintain and develop within him a morality entirely
+opposed to that of the race or species whereof he forms part?
+
+
+20
+
+The truth is that the question which confronts us here is only another
+form of the one which lies at the root of evolutionary morality, and is
+probably scientifically unsolvable.  Evolutionary morality bases itself
+on the justice of Nature--though it dare not speak out the word; on the
+justice of Nature, which imposes upon each individual the good or evil
+consequences of his own character and his own actions.  But when, on
+the other hand, it is necessary for evolutionary morality to justify
+actions which, although intrinsically unjust, are necessary for the
+prosperity of the species, it falls back upon what it reluctantly terms
+Nature's indifference or injustice.  Here we have two unknown aims,
+that of humanity and that of Nature; and these, wrapped as they are in
+a mystery that may some day perhaps pass away, would seem to be
+irreconcilable in our mind.  Essentially, all these questions resolve
+themselves into one, which is of the utmost importance to our
+contemporary morality.  The race would appear to be becoming conscious,
+prematurely it may be, and perhaps disastrously, not, we will say, of
+its rights, for that problem is still in suspense, but of the fact that
+morality does not enter into certain actions that go to make history.
+
+This disquieting consciousness would seem to be slowly invading our
+individual life.  Thrice, and more or less in the course of one year,
+has this question confronted us, and assumed vast proportions: in the
+matter of America's crushing defeat of Spain (although here the issues
+were confused, for the Spaniards, besides their present blunders, had
+been guilty of so many acts of injustice in the past, that the problem
+becomes very involved); in the case of an innocent man sacrificed to
+the preponderating interests of his country; and in the iniquitous war
+of the Transvaal.  It is true that the phenomenon is not altogether
+without precedent.  Man has always endeavoured to justify his
+injustice; and when human justice offered him no excuse or pretext, he
+found in the will of the gods a law superior to the justice of man.
+But our excuse or pretext of to-day is fraught with the more peril to
+our morality inasmuch as it reposes on a law, or at least a habit, of
+Nature, that is far more real, more incontestable and universal than
+the will of an ephemeral and local god.
+
+Which shall prevail in the end, justice or force?  Does force contain
+an unknown justice that will absorb our human justice, or is the
+impulse of justice within us, that would seem to resist blind force,
+actually no more than a devious emanation from that force, tending to
+the same end; and is it only the point of deviation that escapes us?
+This is not a question that we can answer, we who ourselves form part
+of the mystery we seek to solve; the reply could come only from one who
+might be gazing upon us from the heights of another world: one who
+should have learned the aim of the universe and the destiny of man.  In
+the meanwhile, if we say that Nature is right, we say that the instinct
+of justice, which she has placed in us, and which therefore also is
+nature, is wrong; whereas if we approve this instinct, our approval is
+necessarily derived from the exercise of the very faculty that is
+called in question.
+
+
+21
+
+That is true; but it is no less true that the endeavour to sum up the
+world in a syllogism is one of the oldest and vainest habits of man.
+In the region of the unknown and unknowable, logic-chopping has its
+perils; and in the present case all our doubts would seem to arise from
+another hazardous syllogism.  We tell ourselves--boldly at times, but
+more often in a whisper--that we are Nature's children, and bound
+therefore in all things to conform to her laws and copy her example.
+And since Nature regards justice with indifference, since she has
+another aim, which is the sustaining, the renewing, the incessant
+development of life, it follows. . . .  So far we have not formulated
+the conclusion, or, at least, this conclusion has not yet openly dared
+to force its way into our morality; but, although its influence has
+hitherto only been remotely felt in that familiar sphere which includes
+our relations, our friends, and our immediate surroundings, it is
+slowly penetrating into the vast and desolate region whither we
+relegate all those whom we know not and see not, who for us have no
+name.  It is already to be found at the root of many of our actions; it
+has entered our politics, our industry, our commerce; indeed it affects
+almost all we do from the moment we emerge from the narrow circle of
+our domestic hearth, the only place for the majority of men where a
+little veritable justice is still to be found, a little benevolence, a
+little love.  It will call itself economic or social law, evolution,
+competition, struggle for life; it will masquerade under a thousand
+names, forever perpetrating the selfsame wrong.  And yet nothing can be
+less legitimate than such a conclusion.  Apart from the fact that we
+might with equal justification reverse the syllogism, and cause it to
+declare that there must be a certain justice in Nature, since we, her
+children, are just, we need only consider it as it stands to realise
+how doubtful and contestable is at least one of its premisses.
+
+We have seen in the preceding chapters that Nature does not appear to
+be just from our point of view; but we have absolutely no means of
+judging whether she be not just from her own.  The fact that she pays
+no heed to the morality of our actions does not warrant the inference
+that she has no morality, or that ours is the only one there can be.
+We are entitled to say that she is indifferent as to whether our
+intentions be good or evil, but have not the right to conclude that she
+has therefore no morality and no equity; for that would be tantamount
+to affirming that there are no more mysteries or secrets, and that we
+know all the laws of the universe, its origin and its end.  Her mode of
+action is different from our own, but, I say it once more, we know not
+what her reason may be for acting in this different fashion; and we
+have no right to imitate what seems to us iniquitous and cruel, so long
+as we have no precise knowledge of the profound and salutary reasons
+that may underlie such action.  What is the aim of Nature?  Whither do
+the worlds tend that stretch across eternity?  Where does consciousness
+begin, and is its only form that which it assumes in ourselves?  At
+what point do physical laws become moral laws?  Is life unintelligent?
+Have we sounded all the depths of Nature, and is it only in our
+cerebro-spinal system that she becomes mind?  And finally, what is
+justice when viewed from other heights?  Is the intention necessarily
+at its centre; and can no regions exist where intentions no longer
+shall count?  We should have to answer these questions, and many
+others, before we could tell whether Nature be just or unjust from the
+point of view of masses whose vastness corresponds to her own.  She
+disposes of a future, a space, of which we can form no conception; and
+in these there exists, it may be, a justice proportioned to her
+duration, to her extent and aim, even as our own instinct of justice is
+proportioned to the duration and narrow circle of our own life.  The
+wrong that she may for centuries commit she has centuries wherein to
+repair; but we, who have only a few days before us, what right have we
+to imitate what our eye cannot see, understand, or follow?  By what
+standard are we to judge her, if we look away from the passing hour?
+For instance, considering only the imperceptible speck that we form in
+the worlds, and disregarding the immensity that surrounds us, we are
+wholly ignorant of all that concerns our possible life beyond the tomb;
+and we forget that, in the present state of our knowledge, nothing
+authorises us to affirm that there may not be a kind of more or less
+conscious, more or less responsible after-life, that shall in no way
+depend on the decisions of an external will.  He would indeed be rash
+who should venture to maintain that nothing survives, either in us or
+in others, of the efforts of our good intentions and the acquirements
+of our mind.  It may be--and serious experiments, though they do not
+seem to prove the phenomenon, may still allow us to class it among
+scientific possibilities--it may be that a part of our personality, of
+our nervous force, may escape dissolution.  How vast a future would
+then be thrown open to the laws that unite cause to effect, and that
+always end by creating justice when they come into contact with the
+human soul, and have centuries before them!  Let us not forget that
+Nature at least is logical, even though we call her unjust; and were we
+to resolve on injustice, our difficulty would be that we must also be
+logical; and when logic comes into touch with our thoughts and our
+feelings, our intentions and passions, what is there that
+differentiates it from justice?
+
+
+22
+
+Let us form no too hasty conclusion; too many points are still
+uncertain.  Should we seek to imitate what we term the injustice of
+Nature, we would run the risk of imitating and fostering only the
+injustice that is in ourselves.  When we say that Nature is unjust, we
+are in effect complaining of her indifference to our own little
+virtues, our own little intentions, our own little deeds of heroism;
+and it is our vanity, far more than our sense of equity, that considers
+itself aggrieved.  Our morality is proportioned to our stature and our
+restricted destiny; nor have we the right to forsake it because it is
+not on the scale of the immensity and infinite destiny of the universe.
+
+And further, should it even be proved that Nature is unjust at all
+points, the other question remains intact: whether the command be laid
+upon man to follow Nature in her injustice.  Here we shall do well to
+let our own consciousness speak, rather than listen to a voice so
+formidable that we hear not a word it utters, and are not even certain
+whether words there be.  Reason and instinct tell us that it is right
+to follow the counsels of Nature; but they tell us also that we should
+not follow those counsels when they clash with another instinct within
+us, one that is no less profound: the instinct of the just and the
+unjust.  And if instincts do indeed draw very near to the truth of
+Nature, and must be respected by us in the degree of the force that is
+in them, this one is perhaps the strongest of all, for it has struggled
+alone against all the others combined, and still persists within us.
+Nor is this the hour to reject it.  Until other certitudes reach us, it
+behoves us, who are men, to continue just in the human way and the
+human sphere.  We do not see far enough, or clearly enough, to be just
+in another sphere.  Let us not venture into a kind of abyss, out of
+which races and peoples to come may perhaps find a passage, but
+whereinto man, in so far as he is man, must not seek to penetrate.  The
+injustice of Nature ends by becoming justice for the race; she has time
+before her, she can wait, her injustice is of her girth.  But for us it
+is too overwhelming, and our days are too few.  Let us be satisfied
+that force should reign in the universe, but equity in our heart.
+Though the race be irresistibly, and perhaps justly, unjust, though
+even the crowd appear possessed of rights denied to the isolated man,
+and commit on occasions great, inevitable, and salutary crimes, it is
+still the duty of each individual of the race, of every member of the
+crowd, to remain just, while ever adding to and sustaining the
+consciousness within him.  Nor shall we be entitled to abandon this
+duty till all the reasons of the great apparent injustice be known to
+us; and those that are given us now, preservation of the species,
+reproduction and selection of the strongest, ablest, "fittest," are not
+sufficient to warrant so frightful a change.  Let each one try by all
+means to become the strongest, most skilful, the best adapted to the
+necessities of the life that he cannot transform; but, so far, the
+qualities that shall enable him to conquer, that shall give the fullest
+play to his moral power and his intelligence, and shall truly make him
+the happiest, most skilful, the strongest, and "fittest"--these
+qualities are precisely the ones that are the most human, the most
+honourable, and the most just.
+
+
+23
+
+"Within me there is more," runs the fine device inscribed on the beams
+and pediment of an old patrician mansion at Bruges, which every
+traveller visits; filling a corner of one of those tender and
+melancholy quays, that are as forlorn and lifeless as though they
+existed only on canvas.  And so too might man exclaim, "Within me there
+is more;" every law of morality, every intelligible mystery.  There may
+be many others, above us and below us; but if these are to remain for
+ever unknown, they become for us as though they were not; and should
+their existence one day be revealed to us; it can only be because they
+already are in us, already are ours.  "Within me there is more;" and we
+are entitled to add, perhaps, "I have nothing to fear from that which
+is in me."
+
+This much at least is certain, that the one active, inhabited region of
+the mystery of justice is to be found within ourselves.  Other regions
+lack consistency; they are probably imaginary, and must inevitably be
+deserted and sterile.  They may have furnished mankind with illusions
+that served some purpose, but not always without doing harm; and though
+we may scarcely be entitled to demand that all illusions should be
+destroyed, they should at least not be too manifestly opposed to our
+conception of the universe.  To-day we seek in all things the illusion
+of truth.  It is not the last, perhaps, or the best, or the only one
+possible; but it is the one which we at present regard as the most
+honourable and the most necessary.  Let us limit ourselves therefore to
+recognising the admirable love of justice and truth that exists in the
+heart of man.  Proceeding thus, yielding admiration only where it is
+incontestably due, we shall gradually acquire some knowledge of this
+passion, which is the distinguishing note of man; and one thing, most
+important of all, we shall most undoubtedly learn--the means whereby we
+can purify it, and still further increase it.  As we observe its
+incessant activity in the depths of our heart, the only temple where it
+can truly be active: as we watch it blending with all that we think,
+and feel, and do, we shall quickly discover which are the things that
+throw light upon it, and which those that plunge it in darkness; which
+are the things that guide it, and which those that lead it astray; we
+shall learn what nourishes it and what atrophies, what defends and what
+attacks.
+
+Is justice no more than the human instinct of preservation and defence?
+Is it the purest product of our reason; or rather to be regarded as
+composed of a number of those sentimental forces which so often are
+right, though directly opposed to our reason--forces that in themselves
+are a kind of unconscious, vaster reason, to which our conscious reason
+invariably accords its startled approval when it has reached the
+heights whence those kindly feelings long had beheld what itself was
+unable to see?  Is justice dependent on intellect, or rather on
+character?  Questions, these, that are perhaps not idle if we indeed
+would know what steps we must take to invest with all its radiance and
+all its power the love of justice that is the central jewel of the
+human soul.  All men love justice, but not with the same ardent,
+fierce, and exclusive love; nor have they all the same scruples, the
+same sensitiveness, or the same deep conviction.  We meet people of
+highly developed intellect in whom the sense of what is just and unjust
+is yet infinitely less delicate, less clearly marked, than in others
+whose intellect would seem to be mediocre; for here a great part is
+played by that little-known, ill-defined side of ourselves that we term
+the character.  And yet it is difficult to tell how much more or less
+unconscious intellect must of necessity go with the character that is
+unaffectedly honest.  The point before us, however, is to learn how
+best to illumine, and increase within us, our desire for justice; and
+it is certain that, at the start, our character is less directly
+influenced by the desire for justice than is our intellect, the
+development of which this desire in a large measure controls; and the
+co-operation of the intellect, which recognises and encourages our good
+intention, is necessary for this intention to penetrate into, and
+mould, our character.  That portion of our love of justice, therefore,
+which depends on our character, will benefit by its passage through the
+intellect; for in proportion as the intellect rises, and acquires
+enlightenment, will it succeed in mastering, enlightening, and
+transforming our instincts and our feelings.
+
+But let us no longer believe that this love must be sought in a kind of
+superhuman, and often inhuman, infinite.  None of the grandeur and
+beauty that this infinite may possess would fall to its portion; it
+would only be incoherent, inactive, and vague.  Whereas by seeking it
+in ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening to
+it, marking how it profits by every acquirement of our mind, every joy
+and sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do to
+purify and increase it.
+
+
+24
+
+Our task within these limits will be sufficiently long and mysterious.
+To increase and purify within us the desire for justice: how shall this
+thing be done?  We have some vague conception of the ideal that we
+would approach; but how changeable still, and illusory, is this ideal!
+It is lessened by all that is still unknown to us in the universe, by
+all that we do not perceive or perceive incompletely, by all that we
+question too superficially.  It is hedged round by the most insidious
+dangers; it falls victim to the strangest oblivion, the most
+inconceivable blunders.  Of all our ideals it is the one that we should
+watch with the greatest care and anxiety, with the most passionate,
+pious eagerness and solicitude.  What seems irreproachably just to us
+at the moment is probably the merest fraction of what would seem just
+could we shift our point of view.  We need only compare what we were
+doing yesterday with what we do to-day; and what we do to-day would
+appear full of faults against equity, were it granted to us to rise
+still higher, and compare it with what we shall do to-morrow.  There
+needs but a passing event, a thought that uses, a duty to ourselves
+that takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenly
+made clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totter
+and be transformed.  Slow as our advance may have been, we still should
+find it impossible to begin life over again in the midst of many a
+sorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement to
+which we unconsciously gave rise; and yet, when these things came into
+being around us, we appeared to be in the right, and did not consider
+ourselves unjust.  And even so are we convinced to-day of our excellent
+intentions, even so do we tell ourselves that we are the cause if no
+suffering and no tears, that we stay not a murmur of happiness, shorten
+no moment of peace or of love; and it may be that there passes,
+unperceived of us, to our right or our left, an illimitable injustice
+that spreads over three-fourths of our life.
+
+
+25
+
+I chanced to-day to take up a copy of the "Arabian Nights," in the very
+remarkable translation recently published by Dr. Mardrus; and I
+marvelled at the extraordinary picture it gives of the ancient,
+long-vanished civilisations.  Not in the Odyssey or the Bible, in
+Xenophon or Plutarch, could their teaching be more clearly set forth.
+There is one story that the Sultana Schahrazade tells--it is one of the
+very finest the volume contains--that reveals a life as pure and as
+admirable as mankind ever has known; a life replete with beauty,
+happiness, and love; spontaneous and vivid, intelligent, nourishing,
+and refined; an abundant life that, to a certain point, comes as near
+truth as a life well can.  It is, in many respects, almost as perfect
+in its moral as in its material civilisation.  And the pillars on which
+this incomparable structure of happiness rests--like pillars of light
+supporting the light--are formed of ideas of justice so exquisitely
+delicate, counsels of wisdom so deeply penetrating, that we of to-day,
+being less fine in grain, less eager and buoyant, have lost the power
+to formulate, or to discern, them.  And for all that, this abode of
+felicity, that harbours a moral life so active and vigorous, so
+graciously grave, so noble--this palace, wherein the purest and holiest
+wisdom governs the pleasures of rejoicing mankind, is in its entirety
+based on so great an injustice, is enclosed by so vast, so profound, so
+frightful an iniquity, that the wretchedest man of us all would shrink
+in dismay from its glittering, gem-bestrewn threshold.  But of this
+iniquity they who linger in that marvellous dwelling have not the
+remotest suspicion.  It would seem that they never draw near to a
+window; or that, should one by some chance fly open and reveal to their
+sorrowful gaze the misery strewn in the midst of the revels and
+feasting, they still would be blind to the crime which was infinitely
+more revolting, infinitely more monstrous, than the most appalling
+poverty--the crime of the slavery, and the even more terrible
+degradation, of their women.  For these, however exalted their
+position, and at the moment even when they are speaking to the men
+round about them of goodness and justice--when they are reminding them
+of their most touching and generous duties--these women never are more
+than objects of pleasure, to be bought or sold, or given away in a
+moment of gratitude, ostentation, or drunkenness, to any barbarous or
+hideous master.
+
+
+26
+
+"They tell us," says the beautiful slave Nozhatan, as, concealed behind
+a curtain of silk and of pearls, she speaks to Prince Sharkan and the
+wise men of the kingdom; "they tell us that the Khalif Omar set forth
+one night, in the company of the venerable Aslam Abou-Zeid, and that he
+beheld, far away from his palace, a fire that was burning; and drew
+near, as he thought that his presence might perhaps be of service.  And
+he saw a poor woman who was kindling wood underneath a cauldron; and by
+her side were two little wretched children, groaning most piteously.
+And Omar said, 'Peace unto thee, O woman!  What dost thou here, alone
+in the night and the cold?'  And she answered, 'Lord, I am making this
+water to boil, that my children may drink, who perish of hunger and
+cold; but for the misery we have to bear Allah will surely one day ask
+reckoning of Omar the Khalif.'  And the Khalif, who was in disguise,
+was much moved, and he said to her, 'But dost thou think, O woman, that
+Omar can know of thy wretchedness, since he does not relieve it?'  And
+she answered, 'Wherefore then is Omar the Khalif, if he be unaware of
+the misery of his people and of each one of his subjects?'  Then the
+Khalif was silent, and he said to Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'Let us go quickly
+from hence.'  And he hastened until he had reached the storehouse of
+his kitchens, and he entered therein and drew forth a sack of flour
+from the midst of the other sacks, and also a jar that was filled to
+the brim with sheep-fat, and he said to Abou-Zeid, 'O Abou-Zeid, help
+thou me to charge these on my back.'  But Abou-Zeid refused, and he
+cried, 'Suffer that I carry them on my back, O Commander of the
+Faithful.'  And Omar said calmly to him, 'Wilt thou also, O Abou-Zeid,
+bear the weight of my sins on the day of resurrection?'  And Abou-Zeid
+was obliged to lay the jar filled with fat, and the sack of flour, on
+the Khalif's back.  And Omar hastened, thus laden, until he had once
+again reached the poor woman; and he took of the flour, and he took of
+the fat, and placed these in the cauldron, over the fire; and with his
+own hands did he then get ready the food, and he quickened the fire
+with his breath; and as he bent over, his beard being long, the smoke
+from the wood forced its way through the beard of the Khalif.  And at
+last, when the food was prepared, Omar offered it unto the woman and
+the two little children; and with his breath did he cool the food while
+they ate their fill.  Then he left them the sack of flour and the jar
+of fat; and he went on his way, and said unto Aslam Abou-Zeid, 'O
+Abou-Zeid, the light from this fire I have seen to-day has enlightened
+me also.'"
+
+
+27
+
+And it is thus that, a little further on, there speaks to a very wise
+king one of five pensive maidens whom this king is invited to purchase:
+"Know thou, O king," she says, "that the most beautiful deed one can do
+is the deed that is disinterested.  And so do they tell us that in
+Israel once were two brothers, and that one asked the other, 'Of all
+the deeds thou hast done, which was the most wicked?'  And his brother
+replied, 'This.  As I passed a hen-roost one day, I stretched out my
+arm and I seized a chicken and strangled it, and then flung it back
+into the roost.  That is the wickedest deed of my life.  And thou, O my
+brother, what is thy wickedest action?'  And he answered, 'That I
+prayed to Allah one day to demand a favour of him.  For it is only when
+the soul is simply uplifted on high that prayer can be beautiful.'"
+
+And one of her companions, captive and slave like herself, also speaks
+to the king: "Learn to know thyself," she says.  "Learn to know
+thyself!  And do thou not act till then.  And do thou then only act in
+accordance with all thy desires, but having great care always that thou
+do not injure thy neighbour."
+
+To this last formula our morality of today has nothing to add; nor can
+we conceive a precept that shall be more complete.  At most we could
+widen somewhat the meaning of the word "neighbour," and raise, render
+somewhat more subtle and more elastic, that of the word "injure."  And
+the book in which these words are found is a monument of horror,
+notwithstanding all its flowers and all its wisdom  a monument of
+horror and blood and tears, of despotism and slavery.  And they who
+pronounce these words are slaves.  A merchant buys them I know not
+where, and sells them to some old hag who teaches them, or causes them
+to be taught, philosophy, poetry, all Eastern sciences, in order that
+one day they may become gifts worthy of a king.  And when their
+education is finished, and their beauty and wisdom call forth the
+admiration of all who approach them, the industrious, prudent old woman
+does indeed offer them to a very wise, very just king.  And when this
+very wise, very just king has taken their virginity from them, and
+seeks other loves, he will probably bestow them (I have forgotten the
+end of this particular story, but it is the invariable destiny of all
+the heroines of these marvellous legends) on his viziers.  And these
+viziers will give them away in exchange for a vase of perfume or a belt
+studded with jewels; or perhaps despatch them to a distant country,
+there to conciliate a powerful protector, or a hideous, but dreaded,
+rival.  And these women, so fully conscious of themselves, whose gaze
+can penetrate so deeply into the consciousness of others--these women
+who forever are pondering the loftiest, grandest problems of justice,
+of the morality of men and of nations--never throw one questioning
+glance on their fate, or for an instant suspect the abominable
+injustice whereof they are the victims.  Nor do those suspect it either
+who listen to them, and love and admire them, and understand them.  And
+we who marvel at this--we who also reflect on justice and virtue, on
+pity and love--are we so sure that they who come after us shall not
+some day find, in our present social condition, a spectacle no less
+disconcerting?
+
+
+28
+
+It is difficult for us to imagine what the ideal justice will be, for
+every thought of ours that tends towards it is clogged by the injustice
+wherein we still live.  Who shall say what new laws or relations will
+stand revealed when the misfortunes and inequalities due to the action
+of man shall have been swept away; when, in accordance with the
+principles of evolutionary morality, each individual shall "reap the
+results, good or bad, of his own nature, and of the consequences that
+ensue from that nature"?  At present things happen otherwise; and we
+may unhesitatingly declare that, as far as the material condition of
+the vast bulk of mankind is concerned, the connection between conduct
+and consequences--to use Spencer's formula--exists only in the most
+ludicrous, arbitrary, and iniquitous fashion.  Is there not some
+audacity in our imagining that our thoughts can possibly be just when
+the body of each one of us is steeped to the neck in injustice?  And
+from this injustice no man is free, be it to his loss or his gain:
+there is not one whose efforts are not disproportionately rewarded,
+receiving too much or too little; not one who is not either advantaged
+or handicapped.  And endeavour as we may to detach our mind from this
+inveterate injustice, this lingering trace of the sub-human morality
+needful for primitive races, it is idle to think that our thoughts can
+be as strenuous, independent, or clear as they might have been had the
+last vestige of this injustice disappeared; it is idle to think that
+they can achieve the same result.  The side of the human mind that can
+attain a region loftier than reality is necessarily timid and
+hesitating.  Human thought is capable of many things; it has, in the
+course of time, brought startling improvement to bear upon what seemed
+immutable in the species or the race.  But even at the moment when it
+is pondering the transformation of which it has caught a distant
+glimpse, the improvement that it so eagerly desires, even then it is
+still thinking, feeling, seeing like the thing that it seeks to alter,
+even then it lies captive beneath the yoke.  All its efforts
+notwithstanding, it is practically that which it would change.  For the
+mind of man lacks the power to forecast the future; it has been formed
+rather to explain, judge, and co-ordinate that which was, to help,
+foster, and make known what already exists, but so far cannot be seen;
+and when it ventures into what is not yet, it will rarely produce
+anything very salutary or very enduring.  And the influence of the
+social condition in which we exist lies heavy upon it.  How can we
+frame a satisfactory idea of justice, and ponder it loyally, with the
+needful tranquillity, when injustice surrounds us on every side?
+Before we can study justice, or speak of it with advantage, it must
+become what it is capable of being: a social force, irreproachable and
+actual.  At present all we can do is to invoke its unconscious, secret,
+and, as it were, almost imperceptible efforts.  We contemplate it from
+the shores of human injustice; never yet has it been granted us to gaze
+on the open sea beneath the illimitable, inviolate sky of a conscience
+without reproach.  If men had at least done all that it was possible
+for them to do in their own domain, they would then have the right to
+go further, and question elsewhere; and their thoughts would probably
+be clearer, were their consciences more at ease.
+
+
+29
+
+And further, a heavy reproach lies on us and chills our ardour whenever
+we try to grow better, to increase our knowledge, our love, our
+forgiveness.  Though we purify our consciousness and ennoble our
+thoughts, though we strive to render life softer and sweeter for those
+who are near us, all our efforts halt at our threshold, and have no
+influence on what lies outside our door; and the moment we leave our
+home we feel that we have done nothing, that there is nothing for us to
+do, and that we are taking part, ourselves notwithstanding, in the
+great anonymous injustice.  Is it not almost ludicrous that we, who
+within our four walls strive to be noble and faithful, pitiful, simple
+and loyal; we whose consciousness balances the nicest, most delicate
+problems, and rejects even the suspicion of a bitter thought, have no
+sooner gone into the street and met faces that are unfamiliar, than, at
+that very instant, and without the least possibility of our having it
+otherwise, all pity, equity, love, should be completely ignored by us?
+What dignity, what loyalty, can there be in this double life, so wise
+and humane, uplifted and thoughtful, this side the threshold, and
+beyond it so callous, so instinctive and pitiless!  For it is enough
+that we should feel the cold a little less than the labourer who passes
+by, that we should be better fed or clad than he, that we should buy
+any object that is not strictly indispensable, and we have
+unconsciously returned, through a thousand byways, to the ruthless act
+of primitive man despoiling his weaker brother.  There is no single
+privilege we enjoy but close investigation will prove it to be the
+result of a perhaps very remote abuse of power, of an unknown violence
+or ruse of long ago; and all these we set in motion again as we sit at
+our table, stroll idly through the town, or lie at night in a bed that
+our own hands have not made.  Nay, what is even the leisure that
+enables us to improve, to grow more compassionate and gentler, to think
+more fraternally of the injustice others endure--what is this, in
+truth, but the ripest fruit of the great injustice?
+
+
+30
+
+These scruples, I know, must not be carried too far: they would either
+induce a spirit of useless revolt, possibly disastrous to the species
+whose mild and mighty sluggishness we are bound to respect; or they
+would lead us back to I know not what mystic, inert renouncement,
+directly opposed to the most evident and unchanging desires of life.
+Life has laws that we call inevitable; but we are already becoming more
+sparing in our use of the word.  And here especially do we note the
+change that has come over the attitude of the wise and upright man.
+Marcus Aurelius--than whom perhaps none ever craved more earnestly for
+justice, or possessed a soul more wisely impressionable, more nobly
+sensitive--Marcus Aurelius never asked himself what might be happening
+outside that admirable little circle of light wherein his virtue and
+consciousness, his divine meekness and piety, had gathered those who
+were near him, his friends and his servants.  Infinite iniquity, he
+knew full well, stretched around him on every side; but with this he
+had no concern.  To him it seemed a thing that must be, a thing
+mysterious and sacred as the mighty ocean; the boundless domain of the
+gods, of fatality, of laws unknown and superior, irresistible,
+irresponsible, and eternal.  It did not lessen his courage; on the
+contrary, it enhanced his confidence, his concentration, and spurred
+him upwards, like the flame that, confined to a narrow area, rises
+higher and higher, alone in the night, urged on by the darkness.  He
+accepted the decree of fate, that allotted slavery to the bulk of
+mankind.  Sorrowfully but with full conviction, did he submit to the
+irrevocable law; wherein he once again gave proof of his piety and his
+virtue.  He retired into himself, and there, in a kind of sunless,
+motionless void, became still more just, still more humane.  And in
+each succeeding century do we find a similar ardour, self-centred and
+solitary, among those who were wise and good.  The name of more than
+one immovable law might change, but its infinite part remained ever the
+same; and each one regarded it with the like resigned and chastened
+melancholy.  But we of to-day--what course are we to pursue?  We know
+that iniquity is no longer necessary.  We have invaded the region of
+the gods, of destiny, and unknown laws.  These may still control
+disease or accident, perhaps, no less than the tempest, the
+lightning-flash, and most of the mysteries of death--we have not yet
+penetrated to them--but we are well aware that poverty, wretchedness,
+hopeless toil, slavery, famine, are completely outside their domain.
+It is we who organise these, we who maintain and distribute them.
+These frightful scourges, that have grown so familiar, are wielded by
+us alone; and belief in their superhuman origin is becoming rarer and
+rarer.  The religious, impassable ocean, that excused and protected the
+retreat into himself of the sage and the man of good, now only exists
+as a vague recollection.  To-day Marcus Aurelius could no longer say
+with the same serenity: "They go in search of refuges, of rural
+cottages, of mountains and the seashore; thou too art wont to cherish
+an eager desire for these things.  But is this not the act of an
+ignorant, unskilled man, seeing that it is granted thee at whatever
+hour thou pleasest to retire within thyself?  It is not possible for
+man to discover a retreat more tranquil, less disturbed by affairs,
+than that which he finds in his soul; especially if he have within him
+those things the contemplation of which suffices to procure immediate
+enjoyment of the perfect calm, which is no other, to my mind, than the
+perfect agreement of soul."
+
+Other matters concern us to-day than this agreement of soul; or let us
+rather say that what we have to do is to bring into agreement there
+that from which the soul of Marcus Aurelius was free--three-fourths of
+the sorrows of mankind, in a word--which have become real to us,
+intelligible, human, and urgent, and are no longer regarded as the
+inexplicable, immutable, intangible decrees of fatality.
+
+
+31
+
+This does not imply, however, that we should abandon the old sages'
+desire for "agreement"; and even though we may not be entitled to
+expect such perfect "agreement" as they derived from their pardonable
+egoism, we may still look for agreement of a provisional, conditional
+kind.  And although such "agreement" be not the last word of morality,
+it is none the less indispensable that we should begin by being as just
+as we possibly can within ourselves and to those round about us, our
+neighbours, our friends, and our servants.  It is at the moment when we
+have become absolutely just to these, and within our own consciousness,
+that we realise our great injustice to all the others.  The method of
+being more practically just towards these last is not yet known to us;
+to return to great, heroic renouncements would effect but little, for
+these are incapable of unanimous action, and would probably run counter
+to the profoundest laws of nature, which rejects renouncement in every
+form save that of maternal love.
+
+This practical justice, therefore, remains the secret of the race.  Of
+such secrets it has many, which it reveals one by one, at such moments
+of history as become truly critical; and the solutions it offers to
+insuperable difficulties are almost always unexpected, and of strangest
+simplicity.  The hour approaches, perhaps, when it will speak once
+more.  Let us hope, without being too sanguine; for we must bear in
+mind that humanity has yet by no means emerged from the period of
+"sacrificed generations."  History has known no others; and it is
+possible that, to the end of time, all generations may call themselves
+sacrificed.  Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the sacrifices,
+however unjust and useless they still may be, are growing ever less
+inhuman and less inevitable; and that the laws which govern them are
+becoming better and better known, and would seem to draw nearer and
+nearer to those that a lofty mind might accept without being pitiless.
+
+
+32
+
+It must be admitted, however, that a majestic, redoubtable slowness
+attends the movements of these "ideas of the species."  Centuries had
+to pass before it dawned upon primitive men, who fled from each other,
+or fought when they met at the mouth of their caverns, that they would
+do well to form into groups, and unite in defence against the mighty
+enemies who threatened them from without.  And besides, these "ideas"
+of the species will often be widely different from those that the
+wisest man might hold.  They would seem to be independent, spontaneous,
+often based on facts of which no trace is shown by the human reason of
+the epoch that witnessed their birth; and indeed there is no graver or
+more disturbing problem before the moralist or sociologist than that of
+determining whether all his efforts can hasten by one hour or divert by
+one hair's-breadth the decisions of the great anonymous mass which
+proceeds, step by step, towards its indiscernible goal.
+
+Long ago--so long indeed that this is one of the first affirmations of
+science when, quitting the bowels of the earth, the glaciers and
+grottoes, it ceased to call itself geology and palaeontology and became
+the history of man--humanity passed through a crisis not wholly unlike
+that which now lies ahead of it, or is actually menacing it at the
+moment; the difference being only that in those days the dilemma seemed
+vastly more tragic and more unsolvable.  It may truly be said that
+mankind never has known a more perilous or more decisive hour, or a
+period when it drew nearer its ruin; and the fact that we exist to-day
+would appear to be due to the unexpected expedient which saved the race
+at the moment when the scourge that fed on man's very reason, on all
+that was best and most irresistible in his instinct of justice and
+injustice, was actually on the point of destroying the heroic
+equilibrium between the desire to live and the possibility of living.
+
+I refer to the acts of violence, rapine, outrage, murder, which were of
+natural occurrence among the earliest human groups.  These crimes,
+which will probably have been of the most frightful description, must
+have very seriously endangered the existence of the race; for vengeance
+is the terrible, and, as it were, the epidemic form which the craving
+for justice at first assumes.  Now this spirit of vengeance, abandoned
+to itself and forever multiplying--revenge followed by the revenge of
+revenge--would finally have engulfed, if not the whole of mankind, at
+least all those of the earliest men who were possessed of energy or
+pride.  We find, however, that among these barbarous races, as among
+most of the existing savage tribes whose habits are known to us, there
+comes a time, usually at the period when their weapons are growing too
+deadly, when this vengeance suddenly halts before a singular custom,
+known as the "blood-tribute," or the "composition for murder;" which
+allows the homicide to escape the reprisals of the victim's friends and
+relations by payment to them of an indemnity, that, from being
+arbitrary at the start, soon becomes strictly graduated.
+
+In the whole history of these infant races, in whom impulse and heroism
+were the predominant factors, there is nothing stranger, nothing more
+astounding, than this almost universal custom, which for all its
+ingenuity would seem almost too long-suffering and mercantile.  May we
+attribute it to the foresight of the chiefs?  We find it in races among
+whom authority might almost be said to be entirely lacking.  Did it
+originate among the old men, the thinkers, the sages, of the primitive
+groups?  That is not more probable.  For underlying this custom there
+is a thought which is at the same time higher and lower than could be
+the thought of an isolated prophet or genius of those barbarous days.
+The sage, the prophet, the genius--above all, the untrained genius--is
+rather inclined to carry to extremes the generous and heroic tendencies
+of the clan or epoch to which he belongs.  He would have recoiled in
+disgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacred
+revenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love.
+Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attained
+sufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyond
+the noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, and to behold
+only the superior interest of the tribe or the race: that mysterious
+desire for life, which the wisest of the wise among us to-day are
+generally unable to perceive or to justify until they have wrought
+grave and painful conquest over their isolated reason and their heart.
+
+No, it was not the thought of man which found the solution.  On the
+contrary, it was the unconsciousness of the mass, compelled to act in
+self-defence against thoughts  too  intrinsically, individually human
+to satisfy the irreducible exigencies of life on this earth.  The
+species is extremely patient, extremely long-suffering.  It will bear
+as long as it can and carry as far as it can the burden which reason,
+the desire for improvement, the imagination, the passions, vices,
+virtues, and feelings natural to man, may combine to impose upon it.
+But the moment the burden becomes too overwhelming, and disaster
+threatens, the species will instantaneously, with the utmost
+indifference, fling it aside.  It is careless as to the means; it will
+adopt the one that is nearest, the simplest, most practical, being
+doubtless perfectly satisfied that its own idea is the justest and
+best.  And of ideas it has only one, which is that it wishes to live;
+and truly this idea surpasses all the heroism, all the generous dreams,
+that may have reposed in the burden which it has discarded.
+
+And indeed, in the history of human reason, the greatest and the
+justest thoughts are not always those which attain the loftiest
+heights.  It happens somewhat with the thoughts of men as with a
+fountain; for it is only because the water has been imprisoned and
+escapes through a narrow opening that it soars so proudly into the air.
+As it issues from this opening and hurls itself towards the sky, it
+would seem to despise the great, illimitable, motionless lake that
+stretches out far beneath it.  And yet, say what one will, it is the
+lake that is right.  For all its apparent motionlessness, for all its
+silence, it is tranquilly accomplishing the immense and normal task of
+the most important element of our globe; and the jet of water is merely
+a curious incident, which soon returns into the universal scheme.  To
+us the species is the great, unerring lake; and this even from the
+point of view of the superior human reason that it would seem at times
+to offend.  Its idea is the vastest of all, and contains every other;
+it embraces limitless time and space.  And does not each day that goes
+by reveal more and more clearly to us that the vastest idea, no matter
+where it reside, always ends by becoming the most just and most
+reasonable, the wisest and the most beautiful?
+
+
+33
+
+There are times when we ask ourselves whether it might not be well for
+humanity that its destinies should be governed by the superior men
+among us, the great sages, rather than by the instinct of the species,
+that is always so slow and often so cruel.
+
+It is doubtful whether this question could be answered to-day in quite
+the same fashion as formerly.  It would surely have been highly
+dangerous to confide the destinies of the species to Plato or
+Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, or Montesquieu.  At the very
+worst moments of the French Revolution the fate of the people was in
+the hands of philosophers of none too mean an order.  It cannot be
+denied, however, that in our time the habits of the thinker have
+undergone a great change.  He has ceased to be speculative or Utopian;
+he is no longer exclusively intuitive.  In politics as in literature,
+in philosophy as in all the sciences, he displays less imagination, but
+his powers as an observer have grown.  He inclines rather to
+concentrate his attention on the thing that is, to study it and strive
+at its organisation, than to precede it, or to endeavour to create what
+is not yet, or never shall be.  And therefore he may possibly have some
+claim to more authoritative utterance; nor would so much danger attend
+his more direct intervention.  It must be admitted, however, that there
+is no greater likelihood now than in former times of such intervention
+being permitted him.  Nay, there is less, perhaps; for having become
+more circumspect and less blinded by narrow convictions, he will be
+less audacious, less imperious, and less impatient.  And yet it is
+possible that, finding himself in natural sympathy with the species
+which he is content merely to observe, he will by slow degrees acquire
+more and more influence; so that here again, in ultimate analysis, it
+is the species that will be right, the species that will decide: for it
+will have guided him who observes it, and therefore, in following him
+whom it has guided, it will truly only be following its own
+unconscious, formless desires, which shall have been expressed by him,
+and by him brought into light.
+
+
+34
+
+Until such time as the species shall discover the new and needful
+experiment--and this it will quickly do when the danger becomes more
+acute; nay, for all we know, the expedient may have already been found,
+and, entirely unsuspected of us, be already transforming part of our
+destinies--until such time, while bound to act in external matters as
+though our brothers' salvation depended entirely on our exertions, it
+is open to us, no less than to the sages of old, to retire occasionally
+within ourselves.  We in our turn shall perhaps find there "one of
+those things" of which the contemplation shall suffice to bring us
+instantaneous enjoyment, if not of the perfect calm, at least of an
+indestructible hope.  Though nature appear unjust, though nothing
+authorise us to declare that a superior power, or the intellect of the
+universe, rewards or punishes, here below or elsewhere, in accordance
+with the laws of our consciousness or with other laws that we shall
+some day admit; and, finally, though between man and man, in other
+words, in our relations with our fellows, our admirable desire for
+equity translate itself into a justice that is always incomplete, at
+the mercy of every error of reason, of every ambush laid by personal
+interest, and of all the evil habits of a social condition that still
+is sub-human, it is none the less certain that an image of that
+invisible and incorruptible justice, which we have vainly sought in the
+sky or the universe, reposes in the depths of the moral life of every
+man.  And though its method of action be such as to cause it to pass
+unperceived of most of our fellows, often even of our own
+consciousness, though all that it does be hidden and intangible, it is
+none the less profoundly human and profoundly real.  It would seem to
+hear, to examine, all that we say and think and strive for in our
+exterior life; and if it find a little sincerity beneath, a little
+earnest desire for good, it will transform these into moral forces that
+shall extend and illumine our inner life, and help us to better
+thoughts, better speech, better endeavour in the time to come.  It will
+not add to, or take from, our wealth; it will bring no immunity from
+disease or from lightning; it will not prolong by one hour the life of
+the being we cherish; but if we have learned to reflect and to love,
+if, in other words, heart and brain have both done their duty, it will
+establish in heart and brain a contentment that, though perhaps
+stripped of illusion, shall still be inexhaustible and noble; it will
+confer a dignity of existence, and an intelligence, that shall suffice
+to sustain our life after the loss of our wealth, after the stroke of
+disease or of lightning has fallen, after the loved one has for ever
+quitted our arms.  A good thought or deed brings a reward to our heart
+that it cannot, in the absence of an universal judge of nature, extend
+to the things around.  It endeavours to create within us the happiness
+it is unable to produce in our material life.  Denied all external
+outlet, it fills our soul the more.  It prepares the space that soon
+shall be required by our developing intellect, our expanding peace and
+love.  Helpless against the laws of nature, it is all-powerful over
+those that govern the happy equilibrium of human consciousness.  And
+this is true of every stage of thought, of every class of action.  A
+vast distance might seem to divide the labourer who brings up his
+children honourably, lives his humble life and honourably does the work
+that falls to his lot, from the man who steadfastly perseveres in moral
+heroism; but each of these is acting and living on the same plane as
+the other, and the same loyal, consoling region receives them both.
+And though it be certain that what we say and do must largely influence
+our material happiness, yet, in ultimate analysis, it is only by means
+of the spiritual organs that even material happiness can be fully and
+permanently enjoyed.  Hence the preponderating importance of thought.
+But of supreme importance, from the point of view of the reception we
+shall offer to the joys and sorrows of life, is the character, the
+frame of mind, the moral condition, that the things we have said and
+done and thought will have created within us.  Here is evidence of
+admirable justice; and the intimate happiness that our moral being
+derives from the constant striving of the mind and heart for good,
+becomes the more comprehensible when we realise that this happiness is
+only the surface of the goodly thought or feeling that is shining
+within our heart.  Here may we indeed find that intelligent, moral bond
+between cause and effect that we have vainly sought in the external
+world; here, in moral matters, reigning over the good and evil that are
+warring in the depths of our consciousness, may we in truth discover a
+justice exactly similar to the one which we could desire to recognise
+in physical matters.  But whence do we derive this desire if not from
+the justice within us; and is it not because this justice is so mighty
+and active in our heart that we are reluctant to believe in its
+non-existence in the universe?
+
+
+35
+
+We have spoken at great length of justice; but is it not the great
+mystery of man, the one that tends to take the place of most of the
+spiritual mysteries that govern his destiny?  It has dethroned more
+than one god, more than one nameless power.  It is the star evolved
+from the nebulous mass of our instincts and our incomprehensible life.
+It is not the word of the enigma; and when, in the fulness of time, it
+shall become clearer to us, and shall truly reign all over the earth,
+there will come to us no greater knowledge of what we are, or why we
+are, whence we come or whither we go; but we shall at least have obeyed
+the first word of the enigma, and shall proceed, with a freer spirit
+and a more tranquil heart, to the search for its last secret.
+
+Finally, it comprises all the human virtues; and none but itself can
+offer the welcoming smile whereby these are ennobled and purified, none
+but itself can accord them the right to penetrate deep into our moral
+life.  For every virtue must be maleficent and steeped in artifice that
+cannot support the fixed and eager regard of justice.  And so do we
+find it too at the heart of our every ideal.  It is at the centre of
+our love of truth, at the centre of our love of beauty.  It is kindness
+and pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the acts
+of justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive that
+justice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies before
+him, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, but
+that they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighbouring destinies,
+beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond what
+he seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond his
+doubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of the
+men, his brothers.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF MYSTERY
+
+It is not unreasonable to believe that the paramount interest of life,
+all that is truly lofty and remarkable in the destiny of man, reposes
+almost entirely in the mystery that surrounds us; in the two mysteries,
+it may be, that are mightiest, most dreadful of all--fatality and
+death.  And indeed there are many whom the fatigue induced in their
+minds by the natural uncertainties of science has almost compelled to
+accept this belief.  I too believe, though in a somewhat different
+fashion, that the study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest to
+which the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been the
+occupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy and
+literature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portray
+the trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life.  And
+we find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth of
+their insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded with
+the respect in which they held all they did not know, with the dignity
+that their mind or imagination was able to confer on the sum of
+unknowable forces.  Our consciousness of the unknown wherein we have
+being gives life a meaning and grandeur which must of necessity be
+absent if we persist in considering only the things that are known to
+us; if we too readily incline to believe that these must greatly
+transcend in importance the things that we know not yet.
+
+
+2
+
+It behoves every man to frame for himself his own general conception of
+the world.  On this conception reposes his whole human and moral
+existence.  But this general conception of the world, when closely
+examined, is truly no more than a general conception of the unknown.
+And we must be careful; we have not the right, when ideas so vast
+confront us, ideas the results of which are so highly important, to
+select the one which seems most magnificent to us, most beautiful, or
+most attractive.  The duty lies on us to choose the idea which seems
+truest, or rather the only one which seems true; for I decline to
+believe that we can sincerely hesitate between the truth that is only
+apparent and the one that is real.  The moment must always come when we
+feel that one of these two is possessed of more truth than the other.
+And to this truth we should cling: in our actions, our words, and our
+thoughts; in our art, in our science, in the life of our feelings and
+intellect.  Its definition, perhaps, may elude us.  It may possibly
+bring not one grain of reassuring conviction.  Nay, essentially,
+perhaps, it may be but the merest impression, though profounder and
+more sincere than any previous impression.  These things do not matter.
+It is not imperative that the truth we have chosen should be
+unimpeachable or of absolute certainty.  There is already great gain in
+our having been brought to experience that the truths we had loved
+before did not accord with reality or with faithful experience of life;
+and we have every reason, therefore, to cherish our truth with
+heartiest gratitude until its own turn shall come to experience the
+fate it inflicted on its predecessor.  The great mischief, the one
+which destroys our moral existence and threatens the integrity of our
+mind and our character, is not that we should deceive ourselves and
+love an uncertain truth, but that we should remain constant to one in
+which we no longer wholly believe.
+
+
+3
+
+If we sought nothing more than to invest our conception of the unknown
+with the utmost possible grandeur and tragedy, magnificence and might,
+there would be no need of such restrictions.  From many points of view,
+doubtless, the most beautiful, most touching, most religious attitude
+in face of mystery is silence, and prayer, and fearful acceptance.
+When this immense, irresistible force confronts us--this inscrutable,
+ceaselessly vigilant power, humanly super-human, sovereignly
+intelligent, and, for all we know, even personal--must it not, at first
+sight, seem more reverent, worthier, to offer complete submission,
+trying only to master our terror, than tranquilly to set on foot a
+patient, laborious investigation?  But is the choice possible to us;
+have we still the right to choose?  The beauty or dignity of the
+attitude we shall assume no longer is matter of moment.  It is truth
+and sincerity that are called for to-day for the facing of all
+things--how much more when mystery confronts us!  In the past, the
+prostration of man, his bending the knee, seemed beautiful because of
+what, in the past, seemed to be true.  We have acquired no fresh
+certitude, perhaps; but for us, none the less, the truth of the past
+has ceased to be true.  We have not bridged the unknown; but still,
+though we know not what it is, we do partially know what it is not; and
+it is before this we should bow, were the attitude of our fathers to be
+once more assumed by us.  For although it has not, perhaps, been
+incontrovertibly proved that the unknown is neither vigilant nor
+personal, neither sovereignly intelligent nor sovereignly just, or that
+it possesses none of the passions, intentions, virtues and vices of
+man, it is still incomparably more probable that the unknown is
+entirely indifferent to all that appears of supreme importance in this
+life of ours.  It is incomparably more probable that if, in the vast
+and eternal scheme of the unknown, a minute and ephemeral place be
+reserved for man, his actions, be he the strongest or weakest, the best
+or the worst of men, will be as unimportant there as the movements of
+the obscurest geological cell in the history of ocean or continent.
+Though it may not have been irrefutably shown that the infinite and
+invisible are not for ever hovering round us, dealing out sorrow or joy
+in accordance with our good or evil intentions, guiding our destiny
+step by step, and preparing, with the help of innumerable forces, the
+incomprehensible but eternal law that governs the accidents of our
+birth, our future, our death, and our life beyond the tomb, it is still
+incomparably more probable that the invisible and infinite, intervene
+as they may at every moment in our life, enter therein only as
+stupendous, blind, indifferent elements; and that though they pass over
+us, in us, penetrate into our being, and inspire and mould our life,
+they are as careless of our individual existence as air, water, or
+light.  And the whole of our conscious life, the life that forms our
+one certitude, that is our one fixed point in time and space, rests
+upon "incomparable probabilities" of this nature; but rarely are they
+as "incomparable" as these.
+
+
+4
+
+The hour when a lofty conviction forsakes us should never be one of
+regret.  If a belief we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within
+us; if we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, this is
+proof of vitality, progress, of our marching steadily onwards, and
+making good use of all that lies to our hand.  We should rejoice at the
+knowledge that the thought which so long has sustained us is proved
+incapable now of even sustaining itself.  And though we have nothing to
+put in the place of the spring that lies broken, there need still be no
+cause for sadness.  Far better the place remain empty than that it be
+filled by a spring which the rust corrodes, or by a new truth in which
+we do not wholly believe.  And besides, the place is not really empty.
+Determinate truth may not yet have arrived, but still, in its own deep
+recess, there hides a truth without name, which waits and calls.  And
+if it wait and call too long in the void, and nothing arise in the
+place of the vanished spring, it still shall be found that, in moral no
+less than in physical life, necessity will be able to create the organ
+it needs, and that the negative truth will at last find sufficient
+force in itself to set the idle machinery going.  And the lives that
+possess no more than one force of this kind are not the least
+strenuous, the least ardent, or the least useful.
+
+And even though our belief forsake us entirely, it still will take with
+it nothing of what we have given, nor will there be lost one single
+sincere, religious, disinterested effort that we have put forth to
+ennoble this faith, to exalt or embellish it.  Every thought we have
+added, each worthy sacrifice we have had the courage to make in its
+name, will have left its indelible mark on our moral existence.  The
+body is gone, but the palace it built still stands, and the space it
+has conquered will remain for ever unenclosed.  It is our duty, and one
+we dare not renounce, to prepare homes for truths that shall come, to
+maintain in good order the forces destined to serve them, and to create
+open spaces within us; nor can the time thus employed be possibly
+wasted.
+
+
+5
+
+These thoughts have arisen within me through my having been compelled,
+a few days ago, to glance through two or three little dramas of mine,
+wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itself
+wholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, but
+not so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency.  The keynote of
+these little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us.  I, or
+rather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerest
+of poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feeling
+of their art and the thoughts of their real life), seemed to believe in
+a species of monstrous, invisible, fatal power that gave heed to our
+every action, and was hostile to our smile, to our life, to our peace
+and our love.  Its intentions could not be divined, but the spirit of
+the drama assumed them to be malevolent always.  In its essence,
+perhaps, this power was just, but only in anger; and it exercised
+justice in a manner so crooked, so secret, so sluggish and remote, that
+its punishments--for it never rewarded--took the semblance of
+inexplicable, arbitrary acts of fate.  We had there, in a word, more or
+less the idea of the God of the Christian blent with that of ancient
+fatality, lurking in nature's impenetrable twilight, whence it eagerly
+watched, contested, and saddened the projects, the feelings, the
+thoughts and the happiness of man.
+
+
+6
+
+This unknown would most frequently appear in the shape of death.  The
+presence of death--infinite, menacing, for ever treacherously
+active--filled every interstice of the poem.  The problem of existence
+was answered only by the enigma of annihilation.  And it was a callous,
+inexorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious way with only
+chance to guide it; laying its hands preferentially on the youngest and
+the least unhappy, since these held themselves less motionless than
+others, and that every too sudden movement in the night arrested its
+attention.  And around it were only poor little trembling, elementary
+creatures, who shivered for an instant and wept, on the brink of a
+gulf; and their words and their tears had importance only from the fact
+that each word they spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf,
+and were at times so strangely resonant there as to lead one to think
+that the gulf must be vast if tear or word, as it fell, could send
+forth so confused and muffled a sound.
+
+
+7
+
+Such a conception of life is not healthy, whatever show of reason it
+may seem to possess; and I would not allude to it here were it not for
+the fact that we find this idea, or one closely akin to it, governing
+the hearts of most men, however tranquil, or thoughtful, or earnest
+they may be, at the approach of the slightest misfortune.  There is
+evidently a side to our nature which, notwithstanding all we may learn
+and master and the certitudes we may acquire, destines us never to be
+other than poor, weak, useless creatures, consecrated to death, and
+playthings of the vast and indifferent forces that surround us.  We
+appear for an instant in limitless space, our one appreciable mission
+the propagation of a species that itself has no appreciable mission in
+the scheme of a universe whose extent and duration baffle the most
+daring, most powerful brain.  This is a truth; it is one of those
+profound but sterile truths which the poet may salute as he passes on
+his way; but it is a truth in the neighbourhood of which the man with
+the thousand duties who lives in the poet will do well not to abide too
+long.  And of truths such as this many are lofty and deserving of all
+our respect, but in their domain it were unwise to lay ourselves down
+and sleep.  So many truths environ us that it may safely be said that
+few men can be found, of the wickedest even, who have not for counsel
+and guide a grave and respectable truth.  Yes, it is a truth--the
+vastest, most certain of truths, if one will--that our life is nothing,
+and our efforts the merest jest; our existence, that of our planet,
+only a miserable accident in the history of worlds; but it is no less a
+truth that, to us, our life and our planet are the most important, nay,
+the only important phenomena in the history of worlds.  And of these
+truths which is the truer?  Does the first of necessity destroy the
+second?  Without the second, should we have had the courage to
+formulate the first?  The one appeals to our imagination, and may be
+helpful to it in its own domain; but the other directly interests our
+actual life.  It is well that each have its share.  The truth that is
+undoubtedly truest from the human point of view must evidently appeal
+to us more than the truth which is truest from the universal point of
+view.  Ignorant as we are of the aim of the universe, how shall we tell
+whether or no it concern itself with the interests of our race?  The
+probable futility of our life and our species is a truth which regards
+us indirectly only, and may well, therefore, be left in suspense.  The
+other truth, that indicates clearly the importance of life, may perhaps
+be more restricted, but it has a direct, incontestable, actual bearing
+upon ourselves.  To sacrifice or even subordinate it to an alien truth
+must surely be wrong.  The first truth should never be lost sight of;
+it will strengthen and illumine the second, whose government will thus
+become more intelligent and benign: the first truth will teach us to
+profit by all that the second does not include.  And if we allow it to
+sadden our heart or arrest our action, we have not sufficiently
+realised that the vast but precarious space it fills in the region of
+important truths is governed by countless problems which as yet are
+unsolved; while the problems whereon the second truth rests are daily
+resolved by real life.  The first truth is still in the dangerous,
+feverish stage, through which all truths must pass before they can
+penetrate freely into our heart and our brain; a stage of jealousy,
+truculence, which renders the neighbourhood of another truth
+insupportable to them.  We must wait till the fever subsides; and if
+the home that we have prepared in our spirit be sufficiently spacious
+and lofty, we shall find very soon that the most contradictory truths
+will be conscious only of the mysterious bond that unites them, and
+will silently join with each other to place in the front rank of all,
+and there help and sustain, that truth from among them which calmly
+went on with its work while the others were fretfully jangling; that
+truth which can do the most good, and brings with it the uttermost hope.
+
+
+The strangest feature of the present time is the confusion which reigns
+in our instincts and feelings--in our ideas, too, save at our most
+lucid, most tranquil, most thoughtful moments--on the subject of the
+intervention of the unknown or mysterious in the truly grave events of
+life.  We find, amidst this confusion, feelings which no longer accord
+with any precise, living, accepted idea; such, for instance, as concern
+the existence of a determinate God, conceived as more or less
+anthropomorphic, providential, personal, and unceasingly vigilant.  We
+find feelings which, as yet, are only partially ideas; as those which
+deal with fatality, destiny, the justice of things.  We find ideas
+which will soon turn into feelings; those that treat of the law of the
+species, evolution, selection, the will-power of the race, &c.  And,
+finally, we discover ideas which still are purely ideas, too uncertain
+and scattered for us to be able to predict at what moment they will
+become feelings, and thus materially influence our actions, our
+acceptance of life, our joys, and our sorrows.
+
+
+9
+
+If in actual life this confusion is not so apparent, it is only because
+actual life will but rarely express itself, or condescend to make use
+of image or formula to relate its experience.  This state of mind,
+however, is clearly discernible in all those whose self-imposed mission
+it is to depict real life, to explain and interpret it, and throw light
+on the hidden causes of good and evil destiny.  It is of the poets I
+speak, of dramatic poets above all, who are occupied with external and
+active life; and it matters not whether they produce novels, tragedies,
+the drama properly so called, or historical studies, for I give to the
+words poets and dramatic poets their widest significance.
+
+It cannot be denied that the possession of a dominant idea, one that
+may be said to exclude all others, must confer considerable power on
+the poet, or "interpreter of life;" and in the degree that the idea is
+mysterious, and difficult of definition or control, will be the extent
+of this power and its conspicuousness in the poem.  And this is
+entirely legitimate, so long as the poet himself has not the least
+doubt as to the value of his idea; and there are many admirable poets
+who have never hesitated, paused, or doubted.  Thus it is that we find
+the idea of heroic duty filling so enormous a space in the tragedies of
+Corneille, that of absolute faith in the dramas of Calderon, that of
+the tyranny of destiny in the works of Sophocles.
+
+
+10
+
+Of these three ideas, that of heroic duty is the most human and the
+least mysterious; and although far more restricted to-day than at the
+time of Corneille--for there are few such duties which it would not now
+be reasonable, and even heroic, perhaps, to call into question, and it
+becomes ever more and more difficult to find one that is truly
+heroic--conditions may still be imagined under which recourse thereto
+may be legitimate in the poet.
+
+But will he discover in faith--to-day no more than a shadowy memory to
+the most fervent believer--that inspiration and strength, by whose aid
+Corneille was able to depict the God of the Christians as the august,
+omnipresent actor of his dramas, invisible but untiringly active, and
+sovereign always?  Or is it possible still for a reasonable being,
+whose eyes rest calmly on the life about him, to believe in the tyranny
+of fate; of that sluggish, unswerving, preordained, inscrutable force
+which urges a given man, or family, by given ways to a given disaster
+or death?  For though it be true that our life is subject to many an
+unknown force, we at least are aware that these forces would seem to be
+blind, indifferent, unconscious, and that their most insidious attacks
+may be in some measure averted by the wisest among us.  Can we still be
+allowed, then, to believe that the universe holds a power so idle, so
+wretched, as to concern itself solely in saddening, frustrating, and
+terrifying the projects and schemes of man?
+
+Immanent justice is another mysterious and sovereign force, whereof use
+has been made; but it is only the feeblest of writers who have ventured
+to accept this postulate in its entirety: only those to whom reality
+and probability were matters of smallest moment.  The affirmation that
+wickedness is necessarily and visibly punished in this life, and virtue
+as necessarily and visibly rewarded, is too manifestly opposed to the
+most elementary daily experience, too wildly inconsistent a dream, for
+the true poet ever to accept it as the basis of his drama.  And, on the
+other hand, if we refer to a future life the bestowal of reward and
+punishment, we are merely entering by another gate the region of divine
+justice.  For, indeed, unless immanent justice be infallible,
+permanent, unvarying, and inevitable, it becomes no more than a
+curious, well-meaning caprice of fate; and from that moment it no
+longer is justice, or even fate: it shrinks into merest chance--in
+other words, almost into nothingness.
+
+There is, it is true, a very real immanent justice; I refer to the
+force which enacts that the vicious, malevolent, cruel, disloyal man
+shall be morally less happy than he who is honest and good,
+affectionate, gentle, and just.  But here it is inward justice whose
+workings we see; a very human, natural, comprehensible force, the study
+of whose cause and effect must of necessity lead to psychological
+drama, where there no longer is need of the vast and mysterious
+background which lent its solemn and awful perspective to the events of
+history and legend.  But is it legitimate deliberately to misconceive
+the unknown that governs our life in order that we may reconstruct this
+mysterious background?
+
+
+11
+
+While on this subject of dominant and mysterious ideas, we shall do
+well to consider the forms that the idea of fatality has taken, and for
+ever is taking: for fatality even to-day still provides the supreme
+explanation for all that we cannot explain; and it is to fatality still
+that the thoughts of the "interpreter of life" unceasingly turn.
+
+The poets have endeavoured to transform it, to make it attractive, to
+restore its youth.  They have contrived, in their works, a hundred new
+and winding canals through which they may introduce the icy waters of
+the great and desolate river whose banks have been gradually shunned by
+the dwellings of men.  And of those most successful in making us share
+the illusion that they were conferring a solemn, definitive meaning on
+life, there are few who have not instinctively recognised the sovereign
+importance conferred on the actions of men by the irresponsible power
+of an ever august and unerring destiny.  Fatality would seem to be the
+pre-eminent tragical force; it no sooner appears in a drama than it
+does of itself three-fourths of all that needs doing.  It may safely be
+said that the poet who could find to-day, in material science, in the
+unknown that surrounds us, or in his own heart, the equivalent for
+ancient fatality--a force, that is, of equally irresistible
+predestination, a force as universally admitted--would infallibly
+produce a masterpiece.  It is true, however, that he would have, at the
+same time, to solve the mighty enigma for whose word we are all of us
+seeking, so that this supposition is not likely to be realised very
+soon.
+
+
+12
+
+This is the source, then, whence the lustral water is drawn with which
+the poets have purified the cruellest of tragedies.  There is an
+instinct in man that worships fatality, and he is apt to regard
+whatever pertains thereto as incontestable, solemn, and beautiful.  His
+cry is for freedom; but circumstances arise when he rather would tell
+himself that he is not free.  The unbending, malignant goddess is more
+acceptable often than the divinity who only asks for an effort that
+shall avert disaster.  All things notwithstanding, it pleases us still
+to be ruled by a power that nothing can turn from its purpose; and
+whatever our mental dignity may lose by such a belief is gained by a
+kind of sentimental vanity in us, which complacently dwells on the
+measureless force that for ever keeps watch on our plans, and confers
+on our simplest action a mysterious, eternal significance.  Fatality,
+briefly, explains and excuses all things, by relegating to a sufficient
+distance in the invisible or the unintelligible all that it would be
+hard to explain, and more difficult still to excuse.
+
+
+13
+
+Therefore it is that so many have turned to the dismembered statue of
+the terrible goddess who reigned in the dramas of Euripides, Sophocles,
+and Aeschylus, and that the scattered fragments of her limbs have
+provided more than one poet with the marble required for the fashioning
+of a newer divinity, who should be more human, less arbitrary, and less
+inconceivable than she of old.  The fatality of the passions, for
+instance, has thus been evolved.  But for a passion truly to be fatal
+in a soul aware of itself, for the mystery to reappear that shall make
+crime pardonable by investing it with loftiness and lifting it high
+above the will of man: for these we require the intervention of a God,
+or some other equally irresistible, infinite force.  Wagner, therefore,
+in "Tristram and Iseult," makes use of the philtre, as Shakespeare of
+the witches in "Macbeth," Racine of the oracle of Calchas in
+"Iphigenia" and of Venus' hatred in "Phedre."  We have travelled in a
+circle, and find ourselves back once more at the very heart of the
+craving of former days.  This expedient may be more or less legitimate
+in archaic or legendary drama, where there is room for all kinds of
+poetic fantasy; but in the drama which pretends to actual truth we
+demand another intervention, one that shall seem to us more genuinely
+irresistible, if crimes like Macbeth's, such a deed of horror as that
+to which Agamemnon consented: perhaps, too, the kind of love that
+burned in Phedre, shall achieve their mysterious excuse, and acquire a
+grandeur and sombre nobility that intrinsically they do not possess.
+Take away from Macbeth the fatal predestination, the intervention of
+hell, the heroic struggle with an occult justice that for ever is
+revealing itself through a thousand fissures of revolting nature, and
+Macbeth is merely a frantic, contemptible murderer.  Take away the
+oracle of Calchas, and Agamemnon becomes abominable.  Take away the
+hatred of Venus, and what is Phedre but a neurotic creature, whose
+"moral quality" and power of resistance to evil are too pronouncedly
+feeble for our intellect to take any genuine interest in the calamity
+that befalls her?
+
+
+
+14
+
+The truth is that these supernatural interventions to-day satisfy
+neither spectator nor reader.  Though he know it not, perhaps, and
+strive as he may, it is no longer possible for him to regard them
+seriously in the depths of his consciousness.  His conception of the
+universe is other.  He no longer detects the working of a narrow,
+determined, obstinate, violent will in the multitude of forces that
+strive in him and about him.  He knows that the criminal whom he may
+meet in actual life has been urged into crime by misfortune, education,
+atavism, or by movements of passion which he has himself experienced
+and subdued, while recognising that there might have been circumstances
+under which their repression would have been a matter of exceeding
+difficulty.  He will not, it is true, always be able to discover the
+cause of these misfortunes or movements of passion; and his endeavour
+to account for the injustice of education or heredity will probably be
+no less unsuccessful.  But, for all that, he will no longer incline to
+attribute a particular crime to the wrath of a God, the direct
+intervention of hell, or to a series of changeless decrees inscribed in
+the book of fate.  Why ask of him, then, to accept in a poem an
+explanation which he refuses in life?  Is the poet's duty not rather to
+furnish an explanation loftier, clearer, more widely and profoundly
+human than any his reader can find for himself?  For, indeed, this
+wrath of the gods, intervention of hell, and writing in letters of
+fire, are to him no more to-day than so many symbols that have long
+ceased to content him.  It is time that the poet should realise that
+the symbol is legitimate only when it stands for accepted truth, or for
+truth which as yet we cannot, or will not, accept; but the symbol is
+out of place at a time when it is truth itself that we seek.  And,
+besides, to merit admission into a really living poem, the symbol
+should be at least as great and beautiful as the truth for which it
+stands, and should, moreover, precede this truth, and not follow a long
+way behind.
+
+
+15
+
+We see, therefore, how surpassingly difficult it must have become to
+introduce great crimes, or cruel, unbridled, tragical passions, into a
+modern work, above all if that work be destined for stage presentation;
+for the poet will seek in vain for the mysterious excuse these crimes
+or passions demand.  And yet, for all that, so deeply is this craving
+for mysterious excuse implanted within us, so satisfied are we that man
+is, at bottom, never as guilty as he may appear to be, that we are
+still fully content, when considering passions or crimes of this
+nature, to admit some kind of fatal intervention that at least may not
+seem too manifestly unacceptable.
+
+This excuse, however, will be sought by us only when the persons guilty
+of crimes which are contrary to human nature, when the victims of
+misfortunes which they could not foresee, and which seem undeserved to
+us, inexplicable, wholly abnormal, are more or less superior beings,
+possessed of their fullest share of consciousness.  We are loath to
+admit that an extraordinary crime or disaster can have a purely human
+cause.  In spite of all, we persistently seek in some way to explain
+the inexplicable.  We should not be satisfied if the poet were simply
+to say to us: "You see here the wrong that was done by this strong,
+this conscious, intelligent man.  Behold the misfortune this hero
+encountered; this good man's ruin and sorrow.  See, too, how this sage
+is crushed by tragic, irremediable wickedness.  The human causes of
+these events are evident to you.  I have no other explanation to offer,
+unless it be perhaps the indifference of the universe towards the
+actions of man."  Our dissatisfaction would vanish if he could succeed
+in conveying to us the sensation of this indifference, if he could show
+it in action; but, as it is the property of indifference never to
+interfere or act, that would seem to be more or less unachievable.
+
+
+16
+
+But when we turn to the by no means inevitable jealousy of Othello, or
+to the misfortunes of Romeo and Juliet, which were surely not
+preordained, we discover no need of explanation, or of the purifying
+influence of fatality.  In another drama, Ford's masterpiece, "'Tis
+Pity She's a Whore," which revolves around the incestuous love of
+Giovanni for his sister Annabella, we are compelled either to turn away
+in horror, or to seek the mysterious excuse in its habitual haunt on
+the shore of the gulf.  But even here, the first painful shock over, we
+find it is not imperative.  For the love of brother for sister, viewed
+from a standpoint sufficiently lofty, is a crime against morality, but
+not against human nature; and there is at least some measure of
+palliation in the youth of the pair, and in the passion that blinds
+them.  Othello, too, the semi-barbarian who does Desdemona to death,
+has been goaded to madness by the machinations of Iago; and even this
+last can plead his by no means gratuitous hatred.  The disasters that
+weighed so heavily on the lovers of Verona were due to the inexperience
+of the victims, to the manifest disproportion between their strength
+and that of their enemies; and although we may pity the man who
+succumbs to superior human force, his downfall does not surprise us.
+We are not impelled to seek explanation elsewhere, to ask questions of
+fate; and unless he appear to fall victim to superhuman injustice, we
+are content to tell ourselves that what has happened was bound to
+happen.  It is only when disaster occurs after every precaution is
+taken that we could ourselves have devised, that we become conscious of
+the need for other explanation.
+
+
+17
+
+We find it difficult, therefore, to conceive or admit as naturally,
+humanly possible that a crime shall be committed by a person who
+apparently is endowed with fullest intelligence and consciousness; or
+that misfortune should befall him which seems in its essence to be
+inexplicable, undeserved, and unexpected.  It follows, therefore, that
+the poet can only place on the stage (this phrase I use merely as an
+abbreviation: it would be more correct to say, "cause us to assist at
+some adventure whereof we know personally neither the actors nor the
+totality of the circumstances") faults, crimes, and acts of injustice
+committed by persons of defective consciousness, as also disasters
+befalling feeble beings unable to control their desires--innocent
+creatures, it may be, but thick-sighted, imprudent, and reckless.
+Under these conditions there would seem to be no call for the
+intervention of anything beyond the limit of normal human psychology.
+But such a conception of the theatre would be at absolute variance with
+real life, where we find crimes committed by persons of fullest
+consciousness, and the most inexplicable, inconceivable, unmerited
+misfortunes befalling the wisest, the best, most virtuous and prudent
+of men.  Dramas which deal with unconscious creatures, whom their own
+feebleness oppresses and their own desires overcome, excite our
+interest and arouse our pity; but the veritable drama, the one which
+probes to the heart of things and grapples with important truths--our
+own personal drama, in a word, which for ever hangs over our life--is
+the one wherein the strong, intelligent, and conscious commit errors,
+faults, and crimes which are almost inevitable; wherein the wise and
+upright struggle with all-powerful calamity, with forces destructive to
+wisdom and virtue: for it is worthy of note that the spectator, however
+feeble, dishonest even, he may be in real life, still enrols himself
+always among the virtuous, just, and strong; and when he reflects on
+the misfortunes of the weak, or even witnesses them, he resolutely
+declines to imagine himself in the place of the victims.
+
+
+18
+
+Here we attain the limit of the human will, the gloomy boundary-line of
+the influence that the most just and enlightened of men is able to
+exert on events that decide his future happiness or sorrow.  No great
+drama exists, or poem of lofty aim, but one of its heroes shall stray
+to this frontier where his destiny waits for the seal.  Why has this
+wise, this virtuous man committed this fault or this crime?  Why has
+that woman, who knows so well the meaning of all that she does,
+hazarded the gesture which must so inevitably summon everlasting
+sorrow?  By whom have the links been forged of the chain of disaster
+whose fetters have crushed this innocent family?  Why do all things
+crumble around one, and fall into ruins, while the other, his
+neighbour, less active and strong, less skilful and wise, finds ever
+material by him to build up his life anew?  Why do tenderness, beauty,
+and love flock to the path of some, where others meet hatred only, and
+malice, and treachery?  Why persistent happiness here, and yonder,
+though merits be equal, nought but unceasing disaster?  Why is this
+house for ever beset with the storm, while over that other there shines
+the peace of unvarying stars?  Why genius, and riches, and health on
+this side, and yonder disease, imbecility, poverty?  Whence has the
+passion been sent that has wrought such terrible grief, and whence the
+passion that proved the source of such wonderful joy?  Why does the
+youth whom yesterday I met go on his tranquil road to profoundest
+happiness, while his friend, with the same methodical, peaceful,
+ignorant step, proceeds on his way to death?
+
+
+19
+
+Life will often place such problems before us; but how rarely are we
+compelled to refer their solution to the supernatural, mysterious,
+superhuman, or preordained!  It is only the fervent believer who will
+still be content to see there the finger of divine intervention.  Such
+of us, however, as have entered the house where the storm has raged, as
+well as the house of peace, have rarely departed without most clearly
+detecting the essentially human reasons of both peace and storm.  We
+who have known the wise and upright man who has been guilty of error or
+crime, are acquainted also with the circumstances which induced his
+action, and these circumstances seem to us in no way supernatural.  As
+we draw near to the woman whose gesture brought misery to her, we learn
+very soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in her
+place, we should have refrained.  The friends of the man around whom
+all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up
+his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will
+fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil.  And though poverty,
+sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of
+human existence, they no longer awake in us the superstitious fears of
+bygone days  We regard them to-day as essentially indifferent,
+unconscious, blind.  We know that they recognise none of the ideal laws
+which we once believed that they sanctioned; and it only too often has
+happened that at the very moment we were whispering to ourselves of
+"purification, trial, reward, punishment," their undiscerning caprice
+gave the lie to the too lofty, too moral title which we were about to
+bestow.
+
+
+20
+
+Our imagination, it is true, is inclined to admit, perhaps to desire,
+the intervention of the superhuman; but, for all that, there are few,
+even among the most mystic, who are not convinced that our moral
+misfortunes are, in their essence, determined by our mind and our
+character; and, similarly, that our physical misfortunes are due in
+part to the workings of certain forces which often are misunderstood,
+and in part to the generally ill-defined relation of cause to effect:
+nor is it unreasonable to hope that light may be thrown on these
+problems as we penetrate further into the secrets of nature.  We have
+here a certitude upon which our whole life depends; a certitude which
+is shaken only when we consider our own misfortunes, for then we shrink
+from analysing or admitting the faults we ourselves have committed.
+There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant that
+the cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wave
+which dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insect
+whose little wings gleam for an instant in the light of the sun till
+the passing bird absorbs its existence.
+
+
+21
+
+Let me suppose that a neighbour of mine, whom I know very intimately,
+whose regular habits and inoffensive manners have won my esteem, should
+successively lose his wife in a railway accident, one son at sea,
+another in a fire, the third and last by disease.  I should, of course,
+be painfully shocked and grieved; but still it would not occur to me to
+attribute this series of disasters to a divine vengeance or an
+invisible justice, to a strange, ill-starred predestination, or an
+active, persistent, inevitable fatality.  My thoughts would fly to the
+myriad unfortunate hazards of life; I should be appalled at the
+frightful coincidence of calamity; but in me there would be no
+suggestion of a superhuman will that had hurled the train over the
+precipice, steered the ship on to rocks, or kindled the flames; I
+should hold it incredible that such monstrous efforts could have been
+put forth with the sole object of inflicting punishment and despair
+upon a poor wretch, because of some error he might have committed--one
+of those grave human errors which yet are so petty in face of the
+universe; an error which perhaps had not issued from either his heart
+or his brain, and had stirred not one blade of grass on the earth's
+whole surface.
+
+
+22
+
+But he, this neighbour of mine, on whom these terrible blows have
+successively fallen, like so many lightning-flashes on a black night of
+storm--will he think as I do; will these catastrophes seem natural to
+him, and ordinary, and susceptible of explanation?  Will not the words
+destiny, fortune, hazard, ill-luck, fatality, star--the word
+Providence, perhaps--assume in his mind a significance they never have
+assumed before?  Will not the light beneath which he questions his
+consciousness be a different light from my own, will he not feel round
+his life an influence, a power, a kind of evil intention, that are
+imperceptible to me?  And who is right, he or I?  Which of us two sees
+more clearly, and further?  Do truths that in calmer times lie hidden
+float to the surface in hours of trouble; and which is the moment we
+should choose to establish the meaning of life?
+
+The "interpreter of life," as a rule, selects the troubled hours.  He
+places himself, and us, in the soul-state of his victims.  He shows
+their misfortunes to us in perspective; and so sharply, concretely,
+that we have for the moment the illusion of a personal disaster.  And,
+indeed, it is more or less impossible for him to depict them as they
+would occur in real life.  If we had spent long years with the hero of
+the drama which has stirred us so painfully, had he been our brother,
+our father, our friend, we should have probably noted, recognised,
+counted one by one as they passed, all the causes of his misfortune,
+which then would not only appear less extraordinary to us, but
+perfectly natural even, and humanly almost inevitable.  But to the
+"interpreter of life" is given neither power nor occasion to acquaint
+us with each veritable cause.  For these causes, as a rule, are
+infinitely slow in their movement, and countless in number, and slight,
+and of small apparent significance.  He is therefore led to adopt a
+general cause, one sufficiently vast to embrace the whole drama, in
+place of the real and human causes which he is unable to show us,
+unable, too, himself to examine and study.  And where shall a general
+cause of sufficient vastness be found, if not in the two or three words
+we breathe to ourselves when silence oppresses us: words like fatality,
+divinity, Providence, or obscure and nameless justice?
+
+
+23
+
+The question we have to consider is how far this procedure can be
+beneficial, or even legitimate; as also whether it be the mission of
+the poet to present, and insist on, the distress and confusion of our
+least lucid hours, or to add to the clear-sightedness of the moments
+when we conceive ourselves to enjoy the fullest possession of our force
+and our reason.  In our own misfortunes there is something of good, and
+something of good must therefore be found in the illusion of personal
+misfortune.  We are made to look into ourselves; our errors, our
+weaknesses, are more clearly revealed; it is shown to us where we have
+strayed.  There falls a light on our consciousness a thousand times
+more searching, more active, than could spring from many arduous years
+of meditation and study.  We are forced to emerge from ourselves, and
+to let our eyes rest on those round about us; we are rendered more
+keenly alive to the sorrows of others.  There are some who will tell us
+that misfortune does even more--that it urges our glance on high, and
+compels us to bow to a power superior to our own, to an unseen justice,
+to an impenetrable, infinite mystery.  Can this indeed be the best of
+all possible issues?  Ah, yes, it was well, from the standpoint of
+religious morality, that misfortune should teach us to lift up our eyes
+and look on an eternal, unchanging, undeniable God, sovereignly
+beautiful, sovereignly just, and sovereignly good.  It was well that
+the poet who found in his God an unquestionable ideal should
+incessantly hold before us this unique, this definitive ideal.  But
+to-day, if we look away from the truth, from the ordinary experience of
+life, on what shall our eager glance rest?  If we discard the more or
+less compensatory laws of conscience and inward happiness, what shall
+we say when triumphant injustice confronts us, or successful,
+unpunished crime?  How shall we account for the death of a child, the
+miserable end of an innocent man, or the disaster hurled by cruel fate
+on some unfortunate creature, if we seek explanations loftier, more
+definite, more comprehensive and decisive than those that are found
+satisfactory in everyday life for the reason that they are the only
+ones that accord with a certain number of realities?  Is it right that
+the poet, in his eager desire to contrive a solemn atmosphere for his
+drama, should arouse from their slumber sentiments, errors, prejudices
+and fears, which we would attack and rebuke were we to discover them in
+the hearts of our friends or our children?  Man has at last, through
+his study of the habits of spirit and brain, of the laws of existence,
+the caprices of fate and the maternal indifference of nature--man has
+at last, and laboriously, acquired some few certitudes, that are worthy
+of all respect; and is the poet entitled to seize on the moment of
+anguish in order to oust all these certitudes, and set up in their
+place a fatality to which every action of ours gives the lie; or powers
+before which we would refuse to kneel did the blow fall on us that has
+prostrated his hero; or a mystic justice that, for all it may sweep
+away the need for many an embarrassing explanation, bears yet not the
+slightest kinship to the active and personal justice we all of us
+recognise in our own personal life?
+
+
+24
+
+And yet this is what the "interpreter of life" will more or less
+deliberately do from the moment he seeks to invest his work with a
+lofty spirit, with a deep and religious beauty, with the sense of the
+infinite.  Even though this work of his may be of the sincerest, though
+it express as nearly as may be his own most intimate truth, he believes
+that this truth is enhanced, and established more firmly, by being
+surrounded with phantoms of a forgotten past.  Might not the symbols he
+needs, the hypotheses, images, the touchstone for all that cannot be
+explained, be less frequently sought in that which he knows is not
+true, and more often in that which will one day be a truth?  Does the
+unearthing of bygone terrors, or the borrowing of light from a Hell
+that has ceased to be, make death more sublime?  Does dependence on a
+supreme but imaginary will ennoble our destiny?  Does justice--that
+vast network woven by human action and reaction over the unchanging
+wisdom of nature's moral and physical forces--does justice become more
+majestic through being lodged in the hands of a unique judge, whom the
+very spirit of the drama dethrones and destroys?
+
+
+25
+
+Let us ask ourselves whether the hour may not have come for the earnest
+revision of the symbols, the images, sentiments, beauty, wherewith we
+still seek to glorify in us the spectacle of the world.
+
+This beauty, these feelings and sentiments, to-day unquestionably bear
+only the most distant relation to the phenomena, thoughts, nay even the
+dreams, of our actual existence; and if they are suffered still to
+abide with us, it is rather as tender and innocent memories of a past
+that was more credulous, and nearer to the childhood of man.  Were it
+not well, then, that those whose mission it is to make more evident to
+us the beauty and harmony of the world we live in, should march ever
+onwards, and let their steps tend to the actual truth of this world?
+Their conception of the universe need not be stripped of a single one
+of the ornaments wherewith they embellish it; but why seek these
+ornaments so often among mere recollections, however smiling or
+terrible, and so seldom from among the essential thoughts which have
+helped these men to build, and effectively organise, their spiritual
+and sentient life?
+
+It can never be right to dwell in the midst of false images, even
+though these are known to be false.  The time will come when the
+illusory image will usurp the place of the just idea it has seemed to
+represent.  We shall not reduce the part of the infinite and the
+mysterious by employing other images, by framing other and juster
+conceptions.  Do what we may, this part can never be lessened.  It will
+always be found deep down in the heart of men, at the root of each
+problem, pervading the universe.  And for all that the substance, the
+place of these mysteries, may seem to have changed, their extent and
+power remain for ever the same.  Has not--to take but one instance--has
+not the phenomenon of the existence, everywhere among us, of a kind of
+supreme and wholly spiritual justice, unarmed, unadorned, unequipped,
+moving slowly but never swerving, stable and changeless in a world
+where injustice would seem to reign--has this phenomenon not cause and
+effect as deep, as exhaustless--is it not as astounding, as
+admirable--as the wisdom of an eternal and omnipresent Judge?  Should
+this Judge be held more convincing for that He is less conceivable?
+Are fewer sources of beauty, or occasions for genius to exercise
+insight and power, to be found in what can be explained than in what
+is, _a priori_, inexplicable?  Does not, for instance, a victorious but
+unjust war (such as those of the Romans, of England to-day, the
+conquests of Spain in America, and so many others) in the end always
+demoralise the victor and thrust upon him errors, habits, and faults
+whereby he is made to pay dearly for his triumph; and is not the
+minute, the relentless labour of this psychological justice as
+absorbing, as vast, as the intervention of a superhuman justice?  And
+may not the same be said of the justice that lives in each one of us,
+that causes the space left for peace, inner happiness, love, to expand
+or contract in our mind and our heart in the degree of our striving
+towards that which is just or is unjust?
+
+
+26
+
+And to turn to one mystery more, the most awful of all, that of
+death--would any one pretend that our perception of justice, of
+goodness and beauty, or our intellectual, sentient power, our eagerness
+for all that draws near to the infinite, all-powerful, eternal, has
+dwindled since death ceased to be held the immense and exclusive
+anguish of life?  Does not each new generation find the burden lighter
+to bear as the forms of death grow less violent and its posthumous
+terrors fade?  It is the illness that goes before, the physical pain,
+of which we are to-day most afraid.  But death is no longer the hour of
+the wrathful, inscrutable judge; no longer the one and the terrible
+goal, the gulf of misery and eternal punishment.  It is slowly
+becoming--indeed, in some cases, it has already become--the wished-for
+repose of a life that draws to its end.  Its weight no longer oppresses
+each one of our actions; and, above all--for this is the most striking
+change--it has ceased to intrude itself into our morality.  And is this
+morality of ours less lofty, less pure, less profound, because of the
+disinterestedness it has thus acquired?  Has the loss of an
+overwhelming dread robbed mankind of a single precious, indispensable
+feeling?  And must not life itself find gain in the importance wrested
+from death?  Surely: for the neutral forces we hold in reserve within
+us are waiting and ready; and every discouragement, sorrow, or fear
+that departs has its place quickly filled by a certitude, admiration,
+or hope.
+
+
+27
+
+The poet is inclined to personify fatality and justice, and give
+outward form to forces really within us, for the reason that to show
+them at work in ourselves is a matter of exceeding difficulty; and
+further, that the unknown and the infinite, to the extent that they
+_are_ unknown and infinite--_i.e._ lacking personality, intelligence,
+and morality--are powerless to move us.  And here it is curious to note
+that we are in no degree affected by material mystery, however
+dangerous or obscure, or by psychological justice, however involved its
+results.  It is not the incomprehensible in nature that masters and
+crushes us, but the thought that nature may possibly be governed by a
+conscious, superior, reasoning will; one that, although superhuman, has
+yet some kinship with the will of man.  What we dread, in a word, is
+the presence of a God; and speak as we may of fatality, justice, or
+mystery, it is always God whom we fear: a being, that is, like
+ourselves, though almighty, eternal, invisible, and infinite.  A moral
+force that was not conceived in the image of man would most likely
+inspire no fear.  It is not the unknown in nature that fills us with
+dread; it is not the mystery of the world we live in.  It is the
+mystery of another world from which we recoil; it is the moral and not
+the material enigma.  There is nothing, for instance, more obscure than
+the combination of causes which produce the earthquake, that most
+terrible of all catastrophes.  But the earthquake, though it alarm our
+body, will bring no fear to our mind unless we regard it as an act of
+justice, of mysterious vengeance, of supernatural punishment.  And so
+it is, too, with the thunderstorm, with illness, with death, with the
+myriad phenomena and accidents of life.  It would seem as though the
+true alarm of our soul, the great fear which stirs other instincts
+within us than that of mere self-preservation, is only called forth by
+the thought of a more or less determinate God, of a mysterious
+consciousness, a permanent, invisible justice, or a vigilant, eternal
+Providence.  But does the "interpreter of life," who succeeds in
+arousing this fear, bring us nearer to truth; and is it his mission to
+convey to us sorrow, and trouble, and painful emotion, or peace,
+satisfaction, tranquillity, and light?
+
+
+28
+
+It is not easy, I know, to free oneself wholly from traditional
+interpretation, for it often succeeds in reasserting its sway upon us
+at the very moment we strain every nerve to escape from our bondage.
+So has it happened with Ibsen, who, in his search for a new and almost
+scientific form of fatality, erected the veiled, majestic, tyrannical
+figure of heredity in the centre of the very best of his dramas.  But
+it is not the scientific mystery of heredity which awakens within us
+those human fears that lie so much deeper than the mere animal fear;
+for heredity alone could no more achieve this result than could the
+scientific mystery of a dreaded disease, a stellar or marine
+phenomenon.  No, the fear that differs so essentially from the one
+called forth by an imminent natural danger, is aroused within us by the
+obscure idea of justice which heredity assumes in the drama; by the
+daring pronouncement that the sins of the fathers are almost invariably
+visited on the children; by the suggestion that a sovereign Judge, a
+goddess of the species, is for ever watching our actions, inscribing
+them on her tablets of bronze, and balancing in her eternal hands
+rewards long deferred and never-ending punishment.  In a word, even
+while we deny it, it is the face of God that reappears; and from
+beneath the flagstone one had believed to be sealed for ever comes once
+again the murmur of the very ancient flame of Hell.
+
+
+29
+
+This new form of fatality, or fatal justice, is less defensible, and
+less acceptable too, than the ancient and elementary power, which,
+being general and undefined, and offering no too strict explanation of
+its actions, lent itself to a far greater number of situations.  In the
+special case selected by Ibsen, it is not impossible that some kind of
+accidental justice may be found, as it is not impossible that the arrow
+a blind man shoots into a crowd may chance to strike a parricide.  But
+to found a law upon this accidental justice is a fresh perversion of
+mystery, for elements are thereby introduced into human morality which
+have no right to be there; elements which we would welcome, which would
+be of value, if they stood for definite truths; but seeing that they
+are as alien to truth as to actual life, they should be ruthlessly
+swept aside.  I have shown elsewhere that our experience fails to
+detect the most minute trace of justice in the phenomena of heredity;
+or, in other words, that it fails to discover the slightest moral
+connection between the cause: the fault of the father, and the effect:
+the punishment or reward of the child.
+
+The poet has the right to fashion hypotheses, and to forge his way
+ahead of reality.  But it will often happen that when he imagines
+himself to be far in advance, he will truly have done no more than turn
+in a circle; that where he believes that he has discovered new truth,
+he has merely strayed on to the track of a buried illusion.  In the
+case I have named, for the poet to have taught us more than experience
+teaches, he should have ventured still further, perhaps, in the
+negation of justice.  But whatever our opinion may be on this point, it
+at least is clear that the poet who desires his hypotheses to be
+legitimate, and of service, must take heed that they be not too
+manifestly contrary to the experience of everyday life; for in that
+case they become useless and dangerous--scarcely honourable even, if
+the error be deliberately made.
+
+
+30
+
+And now, what are we to conclude from all this?  Many things, if one
+will, but this above all: that it behoves the "interpreter of life," no
+less than those who are living that life, to exercise greatest care in
+their manner of handling and admitting mystery, and to discard the
+belief that whatever is noblest and best in life or in drama must of
+necessity rest in the part that admits of no explanation.  There are
+many most beautiful, most human, most admirable works which are almost
+entirely free from this "disquiet of universal mystery."  We derive no
+greatness, sublimity, or depth from unceasingly fixing our thoughts on
+the infinite and the unknown.  Such meditation becomes truly helpful
+only when it is the unexpected reward of the mind that has loyally,
+unreservedly, given itself to the study of the finite and the knowable;
+and to such a mind it will soon be revealed how strangely different is
+the mystery which precedes what one does not know from the mystery that
+follows closely on what one has learned.  The first would seem to
+contain many sorrows, but that is only because the sorrows are grouped
+there too closely, and have their home upon two of three peaks that
+stand too nearly together.  In the second is far less sadness, for its
+area is vast; and when the horizon is wide, there exists no sorrow so
+great but it takes the form of a hope.
+
+
+31
+
+Yes, human life, viewed as a whole, may appear somewhat sorrowful; and
+it is easier, in a manner pleasanter even, to speak of its sorrows and
+let the mind dwell on them, than to go in search of, and bring into
+prominence, the consolations life has to offer.  Sorrows
+abound--infallible, evident sorrows; consolations, or rather the
+reasons wherefore we accept with some gladness the duty of life, are
+rare and uncertain, and hard of detection.  Sorrows seem noble, and
+lofty, and fraught with deep mystery; with mystery that almost is
+personal, that we feel to be near to us.  Consolations appear
+egotistical, squalid, at times almost base.  But for all that, and
+whatever their ephemeral likeness may be, we have only to draw closer
+to them to find that they too have their mystery; and if this seem less
+visible and less comprehensible, it is only because it lies deeper and
+is far more mysterious.  The desire to live, the acceptance of life as
+it is, may perhaps be mere vulgar expressions; but yet they are
+probably in unconscious harmony with laws that are vaster, more
+conformable with the spirit of the universe, and therefore more sacred,
+than is the desire to escape the sorrows of life, or the lofty but
+disenchanted wisdom that for ever dwells on those sorrows.
+
+
+32
+
+Our impulse is always to depict life as more sorrowful than truly it
+is; and this is a serious error, to be excused only by the doubts that
+at present hang over us.  No satisfying explanation has so far been
+found.  The destiny of man is as subject to unknown forces to-day as it
+was in the days of old; and though it be true that some of these forces
+have vanished, others have arisen in their stead.  The number of those
+that are really all-powerful has in no way diminished.  Many attempts
+have been made, and in countless fashions, to explain the action of
+these forces and account for their intervention; and one might almost
+believe that the poets, aware of the futility of these explanations in
+face of a reality which, all things notwithstanding, is ever revealing
+more and more of itself, have fallen back on fatality as in some
+measure representing the inexplicable, or at least the sadness of the
+inexplicable.  This is all that we find in Ibsen, the Russian novels,
+the highest class of modern fiction, Flaubert, &c. (see "War and
+Peace," for instance, _L'Education Sentimentale_, and many others).
+
+It is true that the fatality shown is no longer the goddess of old, or
+rather (at least to the bulk of mankind) the clearly determinate God,
+inflexible, implacable, arbitrary, blind, although constantly watchful;
+the fatality of to-day is vaster, more formless, more vague, less human
+or actively personal, more indifferent and more universal.  In a word,
+it is now no more than a provisional appellation bestowed, until better
+be found, on the general and inexplicable misery of man.  In this sense
+we may accept it, perhaps, though we do no more than give a new name to
+the unchanging enigma, and throw no light on the darkness.  But we have
+no right to exaggerate its importance or the part that it plays; no
+right to believe that we are truly surveying mankind and events from a
+point of some loftiness, beneath a definitive light, or that there is
+nothing to seek beyond, because at times we become deeply conscious of
+the obscure and invincible force that lies at the end of every
+existence.  Doubtless, from one point of view, unhappiness must always
+remain the portion of man, and the fatal abyss be ever open before him,
+vowed as he is to death, to the fickleness of matter, to old age and
+disease.  If we fix our eyes only upon the end of a life, the happiest
+and most triumphant existence must of necessity contain its elements of
+misery and fatality.  But let us not make a wrong use of these words;
+above all, let us not, through listlessness or undue inclination to
+mystic sorrow, be induced to lessen the part of what could be explained
+if we would only give more eager attention to the ideas, the passions
+and feelings of the life of man and the nature of things.  Let us
+always remember that we are steeped in the unknown; for this thought is
+the most fruitful of all, the most sustaining and salutary.  But the
+neutrality of the unknown does not warrant our attributing to it a
+force, or designs, or hostility, which it cannot be proved to possess.
+At Erfurt, in his famous interview with Goethe, Napoleon is said to
+have spoken disparagingly of the dramas in which fatality plays a great
+part--the plays that we, in our "passion for calamity," are apt to
+consider the finest.  "They belong," he remarked, "to an epoch of
+darkness; but how can fatality touch us to-day?  Policy--_that_ is
+fatality!"  Napoleon's dictum is not very profound: policy is only the
+merest fragment of fatality; and his destiny very soon made it manifest
+to him that the desire to contain fatality within the narrow bounds of
+policy was no more than a vain endeavour to imprison in a fragile vase
+the mightiest of the spiritual rivers that bathe our globe.  And yet,
+incomplete as this thought of Napoleon's may have been, it still throws
+some light on a tributary of the great river.  It was a little thing,
+perhaps, but on these uncertain shores it is the difference between a
+little thing and nothing that kindles the energy of man and confirms
+his destiny.  By this ray of light, such as it was, he long was enabled
+to dominate all that portion of the unknown which he declined to term
+fatality.  To us who come after him, the portion of the unknown that he
+controlled may well seem insufficient, if surveyed from an eminence,
+and yet it was truly one of the vastest that the eye of man has ever
+embraced.  Through its means every action of his was accomplished, for
+evil or good.  This is not the place to judge him, or even to wonder
+whether the happiness of a century might not have been better served
+had he allowed events to guide him; what we are considering here is the
+docility of the unknown.  For us, with our humbler destinies, the
+problem still is the same, and the principle too; the principle being
+that of Goethe: "to stand on the outermost limit of the conceivable;
+but never to overstep this line, for beyond it begins at once the land
+of chimeras, the phantoms and mists of which are fraught with danger to
+the mind."  It is only when the intervention of the mysterious,
+invisible, or irresistible becomes strikingly real, actually
+perceptible, intelligent, and moral, that we are entitled to yield or
+lay down our arms, meekly accepting the inactive silence they bring;
+but their intervention, within these limits, is rarer than one
+imagines.  Let us recognise that mystery of this kind exists; but,
+until it reveal itself, we have not the right to halt, or relax our
+efforts; not the right to cast down our eyes in submission, or resign
+ourselves to silence.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE KINGDOM OF MATTER
+
+1
+
+In a preceding essay we were compelled to admit that, eager as man
+might be to discover in the universe a sanction for his virtues,
+neither heaven nor earth displayed the least interest in human
+morality; and that all things would combine to persuade the upright
+among us that they merely are dupes, were it not for the fact that they
+have in themselves an approval words cannot describe, and a reward so
+intangible that we should in vain endeavour to portray its least
+evanescent delights.  Is that all, some may ask, is that all we may
+hope in return for this mighty effort of ours, for our constant denial
+and pain, for our sacrifice of instincts, of pleasures, that seemed so
+legitimate, necessary even, and would certainly have added to our
+happiness had there not been within us the desire for Justice--a desire
+arising we know not whence, belonging, perhaps, to our nature, and yet
+in apparent conflict with the vaster nature whereof we all form part?
+Yes, it is open to you, if you choose, to regard as a very poor thing
+this unsubstantial justice: since its only reward is a vague
+satisfaction, and that this satisfaction even grows hateful, and
+destroys itself, the moment its presence becomes too perceptibly felt.
+Bear in mind, however, that all things that happen in our moral being
+must be equally lightly held, if regarded from the point of view whence
+you deliver this judgment.  Love is a paltry affair, the moment of
+possession once over that alone is real and ensures the perpetuity of
+the race; and yet we find that as man grows more civilised, the act of
+possession assumes ever less value in his eyes if there go not with it,
+if there do not precede, accompany, and follow it, the insignificant
+emotion built up of our thoughts and our feelings, of our sweetest and
+tenderest hours and years.  Beauty, too, is a trivial matter: a
+beautiful spectacle, a beautiful face, or body, or gesture: a melodious
+voice, or noble statue--sunrise at sea, flowers in a garden, stars
+shining over the forest, the river by moonlight--or a lofty thought, an
+exquisite poem, an heroic sacrifice hidden in a profound and pitiful
+soul.  We may admire these things for an instant; they may bring us a
+sense of completeness no other joy can convey; but at the same time
+there will steal over us a tinge of strange sorrow, unrest; nor will
+they give happiness to us, as men use the word, should other events
+have contrived to make us unhappy.  They produce nothing the eye can
+measure, or weigh; nothing that others can see, or will envy; and yet,
+were a magician suddenly to appear, capable of depriving one of us of
+this sense of beauty that may chance to be in him, possessed of the
+power of extinguishing it for ever, with no trace remaining, no hope
+that it ever will spring into being again--would we not rather lose
+riches, tranquillity, health even, and many years of our life, than
+this strange faculty which none can espy, and we ourselves can scarcely
+define?  Not less intangible, not less elusive, is the sweetness of
+tender friendship, of a dear recollection we cling to and reverence;
+and countless other thoughts and feelings, that traverse no mountain,
+dispel no cloud, that do not even dislodge a grain of sand by the
+roadside.  But these are the things that build up what is best and
+happiest in us; they are we, ourselves; they are precisely what those
+who have them not should envy in those who have.  The more we emerge
+from the animal, and approach what seems the surest ideal of our race,
+the more evident does it become that these things, trifling as they
+well may appear by the side of nature's stupendous laws, do yet
+constitute our sole inheritance; and that, happen what may to the end
+of time, they are the hearth, the centre of light, to which mankind
+will draw ever more and more closely.
+
+
+2
+
+We live in a century that loves the material, but, while loving it,
+conquers it, masters it, and with more passion than any preceding
+period has shown; in a century that would seem consumed with desire to
+comprehend matter, to penetrate, enslave it, possess it once and for
+all to repletion, satiety--with the wish, it may be, to ransack its
+every resource, lay bare its last secret, thereby freeing the future
+from the restless search for a happiness there seemed reason once to
+believe that matter contained.  So, in like manner, is it necessary
+first to have known the love of the flesh before the veritable love can
+reveal its deep and unchanging purity.  A serious reaction will
+probably arise, some day, against this passion for material enjoyment;
+but man will never be able to cast himself wholly free.  Nor would the
+attempt be wise.  We are, after all, only fragments of animate matter,
+and it could not be well to lose sight of the starting-point of our
+race.  And yet, is it right that this starting-point should enclose in
+its narrow circumference all our wishes, all our happiness, the
+totality of our desires?  In our passage through life we meet scarcely
+any who do not persist, with a kind of unreasoning obstinacy, in
+throning the material within them, and there maintaining it supreme.
+Gather together a number of men and women, all of them free from life's
+more depressing cares--an assembly of the elect, if you will--and
+pronounce before them the words "beatitude, happiness, joy, felicity,
+ideal."  Imagine that an angel, at that very instant, were to seize and
+retain, in a magic mirror or miraculous basket, the images these words
+would evoke in the souls that should hear them.  What would you see in
+the basket or mirror?  The embrace of beautiful bodies; gold, precious
+stones, a palace, an ample park; the philtre of youth, strange jewels
+and gauds representing vanity's dreams; and, let us admit it, prominent
+far above all would be sumptuous repasts, noble wines, glittering
+tables, splendid apartments.  Is humanity still too near its beginning
+to conceive other things?  Has the hour not arrived when we might have
+reasonably hoped the mirror to reflect a powerful, disinterested
+intellect, a conscience at rest: a just and loving heart, a perception,
+a vision capable of detecting, absorbing beauty wherever it be--the
+beauty of evening, of cities, of forests and seas, no less than of
+face, of a word or a smile, of an action or movement of soul?  The
+foreground of the magical mirror at present reflects beautiful women,
+undraped; when shall we see, in their stead, the deep, great love of
+two beings to whom the knowledge has come that it is only when their
+thoughts and their feelings, and all that is more mysterious still than
+thoughts and feelings, have blended, and day by day become more
+essentially one, that the joys of the flesh are freed from the after
+disquiet, and leave no bitterness behind?  When shall we find, instead
+of the morbid, unnatural excitement produced by too copious, oppressive
+repasts, by stimulants that are the insidious agents of the very enemy
+we seek to destroy--when shall we find, in their place, the contained
+and deliberate gladness of a spirit that is for ever exalted because it
+for ever is seeking to understand, and to love? . . .  These things
+have long been known, and their repetition may well seem of little
+avail.  And yet, we need but to have been twice or thrice in the
+company of those who stand for what is best in mankind, most
+intellectually, sentiently human, to realise how uncertain and groping
+their search is still for the happier hours of life; to marvel at the
+resemblance the unconscious happiness they look for bears to the
+happiness craved by the man who has no spiritual existence; to note how
+opaque, to their eyes, is the cloud which separates all that pertains
+to the being who rises from all that is his who descends.  Some will
+say that the hour is not yet when man can thus make clear division
+between the part of the spirit and that of the flesh.  But when shall
+that hour be looked for if those for whom it should long since have
+sounded still suffer the obscurest prejudice of the mass to guide them
+when they set forth in search of their happiness?  When they achieve
+glory and riches, when love comes to meet them, they will be free, it
+may be, from a few of the coarser satisfactions of vanity, a few of the
+grosser excesses; but beyond this they strive not at all to secure a
+happiness that shall be more spiritual, more purely human.  The
+advantage they have does not teach them to widen the circle of material
+exaction, to discard what is less justifiable.  In their attitude
+towards the pleasures of life they submit to the same spiritual
+deprivation as, let us say, some cultured man who may have wandered
+into a theatre where the play being performed is not one of the five or
+six masterpieces of universal literature.  He is fully aware that his
+neighbours' applause and delight are called forth, in the main, by more
+or less obnoxious prejudices on the subject of honour, glory, religion,
+patriotism, sacrifice, liberty, or love--or perhaps by some feeble,
+dreary poetical effusion.  None the less, he will find himself affected
+by the general enthusiasm; and it will be necessary for him, almost at
+every instant, to pull himself violently together, to make startled
+appeal to every conviction within him, in order to convince himself
+that these partisans of hoary errors are wrong, notwithstanding their
+number, and that he, with his isolated reason, alone is right.
+
+
+3
+
+Indeed, when we consider the relation of man to matter, it is
+surprising to find how little light has yet been thrown upon it, how
+little has been definitely fixed.  Elementary, imperious, as this
+relation undoubtedly is, humanity has always been wavering, uncertain,
+passing from the most dangerous confidence to the most systematic
+distrust, from adoration to horror, from asceticism and complete
+renouncement to their corresponding extremes.  The days are past when
+an irrational, useless abstinence was preached, and put into
+practice--an abstinence often fully as harmful as habitual excess.  We
+are entitled to all that helps to maintain, or advance, the development
+of the body; this is our right, but it has its limits; and these limits
+it would be well to define with the utmost exactness, for whatever may
+trespass beyond must infallibly weaken the growth of that other side of
+ourselves, the flower that the leaves round about it will either stifle
+or nourish.  And humanity, that so long has been watching this flower,
+studying it so intently, noting its subtlest, most fleeting perfumes
+and shades, is most often content to abandon to the caprice of the
+temperament, be this evil or good, to the passing moment, or to chance,
+the government of the unconscious forces that will, like the leaves, be
+discreetly active, sustaining, life-giving, or profoundly selfish,
+destructive, and fatal.  Hitherto, perhaps, this may have been done
+with impunity; for the ideal of mankind (which at the start was
+concerned with the body alone) wavered long between matter and spirit.
+To-day, however, it clings, with ever profounder conviction, to the
+human intelligence.  We no longer strive to compete with the lion, the
+panther, the great anthropoid ape, in force or agility; in beauty with
+the flower or the shine of the stars on the sea.  The utilisation by
+our intellect of every unconscious force, the gradual subjugation of
+matter and the search for its secret--these at present appear the most
+evident aim of our race, and its most probable mission.  In the days of
+doubt there was no satisfaction, or even excess, but was excusable, and
+moral, so long as it wrought no irreparable loss of strength or actual
+organic harm.  But now that the mission of the race is becoming more
+clearly defined, the duty is on us to leave on one side whatever is not
+directly helpful to the spiritual part of our being.  Sterile pleasures
+of the body must be gradually sacrificed; indeed, in a word, all that
+is not in absolute harmony with a larger, more durable energy of
+thought; all the little "harmless" delights which, however inoffensive
+comparatively, keep alive by example and habit the prejudice in favour
+of inferior enjoyment, and usurp the place that belongs to the
+satisfactions of the intellect.  These last differ from those of the
+body, whose development some may assist and others retard.  Into the
+elysian fields of thought enters no satisfaction but brings with it
+youth, and strength, and ardour; nor is there a thing in this world on
+which the mind thrives more readily than the ecstasy, nay, the debauch,
+of eagerness, comprehension, and wonder.
+
+
+4
+
+The time must come, sooner or later, when our morality will have to
+conform to the probable mission of the race; when the arbitrary, often
+ridiculous restrictions whereof it is at present composed will be
+compelled to make way for the inevitable logical restrictions this
+mission exacts.  For the individual, as for the race, there can be but
+one code of morals--the subordination of the ways of life to the
+demands of the general mission that appears entrusted to man.  The axis
+will shift, therefore, of many sins, many great offences; until at last
+for all the crimes against the body there shall be substituted the
+veritable crimes against human destiny; in other words, whatever may
+tend to impair the authority, integrity, leisure, liberty, or power of
+the intellect.
+
+But by this we are far from suggesting that the body should be regarded
+as the irreconcilable enemy which the Christian theory holds it.  Far
+from that, we should strive, first of all, to endow it with all
+possible vigour and beauty.  But it is like a capricious child:
+exacting, improvident, selfish; and the stronger it grows the more
+dangerous does it become.  It knows no cult but that of the passing
+moment.  In imagination, desires, it halts at the trivial thought, the
+primitive, fleeting, foolish delight of the little dog or the negro.
+The satisfactions procured by the intellect--the comfort, security,
+leisure, the gladness--it regards as no more than its due, and enjoys
+in fullest complacency.  Left to itself, it would enjoy these so
+stupidly, savagely, that it would very soon stifle the intellect from
+which it derived these favours.  Hence there is need for certain
+restrictions, renouncements, which all men must observe; not only those
+who have reason to hope, and believe, that they are effectively
+striving to solve the enigma, to bring about the fulfilment of human
+destiny and the triumph of mind over insensible matter, but also the
+crowds in the ranks of the massive, unconscious rearguard, who placidly
+watch the phosphorescent evolutions of mind as its light gleams on the
+world's elementary darkness.  For humanity is a unique and unanimous
+entity.  When the thought of the mass--that thought which scarcely is
+thought--travels downwards, its influence is felt by philosopher and
+poet, astronomer and chemist; it has its pronounced effect on their
+character, morals, ideals, their sense of duty, habits of labour,
+intellectual vigour.  If the myriad, uniform, petty ideas in the valley
+fall short of a certain elevation, no great idea shall spring to life
+on the mountain-peak.  Down there the thought may have little strength,
+but there are countless numbers who think it; and the influence this
+thought acquires may be almost termed atmospheric.  And they up above
+on the mountain, the precipice, the edge of the glacier, will be helped
+by this influence, or harmed, in the degree of its brightness or gloom,
+of its reaching them, buoyed up with generous feeling, or heavily
+charged with brutal habit and coarse desire.  The heroic action of a
+people (as, for instance, the French Revolution, the Reformation, all
+wars of independence and liberation) will fertilise and purify this
+people for more centuries than one.  But far less will satisfy those
+who toil at the fulfilment of destiny.  Let but the habits of the men
+round about them become a little more noble, their desires a little
+more disinterested; let but their passions and eagerness, their
+pleasures and love, be illumined by one ray of brightness, of grace, of
+spiritual fervour; and those up above will feel the support, and draw
+their breath freely, no longer compelled to struggle with the
+instinctive part of themselves; and the power that is in them will obey
+the more readily, and mould itself to their hand.  The peasant who,
+instead of carousing at the beershop, spends a peaceful Sunday at home,
+with a book, beneath the trees of his orchard; the humble citizen whom
+the emotions or din of the racecourse cannot tempt from some worthy
+enjoyment, from the pleasure of a reposeful afternoon; the workman who
+no longer makes the streets hideous with obscene or ridiculous song,
+but wanders forth into the country, or, from the ramparts, watches the
+sunset--all these bring their meed of help: their great assistance,
+unconscious though it be, and anonymous, to the triumph of the vast
+human flame.
+
+
+5
+
+But how much there is to be done, and learned, before this great flame
+can arise in serene, secure brightness!  We have said that man, in his
+relation to matter, is still in the experimental, groping stage of his
+earliest days.  He lacks even definite knowledge as to the kind of food
+best adapted for him, or the quantity of nourishment he requires; he is
+still uncertain as to whether he be carnivorous or frugivorous.  His
+intellect misleads his instinct.  It was only yesterday that he learned
+that he had probably erred hitherto in the choice of his nourishment;
+that he must reduce by two-thirds the quantity of nitrogen he absorbs,
+and largely increase the volume of hydrocarbons; that a little fruit,
+or milk, a few vegetables, farinaceous substances--now the mere
+accessory of the too plentiful repasts which he works so hard to
+provide, which are his chief object in life, the goal of his efforts,
+of his strenuous, incessant labour--are amply sufficient to maintain
+the ardour of the finest and mightiest life.  It is not my purpose here
+to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections
+that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these
+objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry.  I,
+for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit
+themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or
+restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by
+the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow
+the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.  But we
+must not conclude these pages with an essay on alimentation, reasonable
+as such a proceeding might be.  For in truth all our justice, morality,
+all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial
+necessities, whereof the principal one is food.  The least modification
+of one of these necessities would entail a marked change in our moral
+existence.  Were the belief one day to become general that man could
+dispense with animal food, there would ensue not only a great economic
+revolution--for a bullock, to produce one pound of meat, consumes more
+than a hundred of provender--but a moral improvement as well, not less
+important and certainly more sincere and more lasting than might follow
+a second appearance on the earth of the Envoy of the Father, come to
+remedy the errors and omissions of his former pilgrimage.  For we find
+that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also;
+and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded
+pleasures of life.  And it is in the passionate craving for these
+pleasures, in their glamour, and the prejudice they create, that the
+most formidable obstacle is found to the harmonious development of the
+race.  Detachment therefrom creates noble leisure, a new order of
+desires, a wish for enjoyment that must of necessity be loftier than
+the gross satisfactions which have their origin in alcohol.  But are
+days such as these in store for us--these happier, purer hours?  The
+crime of alcohol is not alone that it destroys its faithful and poisons
+one half of the race, but also that it exercises a profound, though
+indirect, influence upon those who recoil from it in dread.  The idea
+of pleasure which it maintains in the crowd forces its way, by means of
+the crowd's irresistible action, into the life even of the elect, and
+lessens, perverts, all that concerns man's peace and repose, his
+expansiveness, gladness and joy; retarding, too, it may safely be said,
+the birth of the truer, profounder ideal of happiness: one that shall
+be simpler, more peaceful and grave, more spiritual and human.  This
+ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little
+importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases,
+before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far
+has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this
+statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused
+masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort.  But may this not be
+the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle
+for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for
+life that to-day means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double
+source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double
+symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?
+
+
+6
+
+Whither is humanity tending?  This anxiety of man to know the aim and
+the end is essentially human; it is a kind of infirmity or
+provincialism of the mind, and has nothing in common with universal
+reality.  Have things an aim?  Why should they have; and what aim or
+end can there be, in an infinite organism?
+
+But even though our mission be only to fill for an instant a diminutive
+space that could as well be filled by the violet or grasshopper,
+without loss to the universe of economy or grandeur, without the
+destinies of this world being shortened or lengthened thereby by one
+hour; even though this march of ours count for nothing, though we move
+but for the sake of motion, tending no-whither, this futile progress
+may nevertheless still claim to absorb all our attention and interest;
+and this is entirely reasonable, it is the loftiest course we can
+pursue.  If it lay in the power of an ant to study the laws of the
+stars; and if, intent on this study, though fully aware that these laws
+are immutable, never to be modified, it declined to concern itself
+further with the affairs or the future of the anthill--should we, who
+stand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand to
+ourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to be
+dominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all its
+universality, regard it as either good or moral?
+
+Reason, at its apogee, becomes sterile; and inertia would be its sole
+teaching did it not, after recognising the pettiness, the nothingness,
+of our passions and hopes, of our being, and lastly, of reason itself,
+retrace its footsteps back to the point whence it shall be able once
+more to take eager interest in all these poor trivialities, in this
+same nothingness, as holding them the only things in the world for
+which its assistance has value.
+
+We know not whither we go, but may still rejoice in the journey; and
+this will become the lighter, the happier, for our endeavour to picture
+to ourselves the next place of halt.  Where will this be?  The
+mountain-pass lies ahead, and threatens; but the roads already are
+widening and becoming less rugged; the trees spread their branches,
+crowned with fresh blossom; silent waters are flowing before us,
+reposeful and peaceful.  Tokens all these, it may be, of our nearing
+the vastest valley mankind yet has seen from the height of the tortuous
+paths it has ever been climbing!  Shall we call it the "First Valley of
+Leisure"?  Distrust as we may the surprises the future may have in
+store, be the troubles and cares that await us never so burdensome,
+there still seems some ground for believing that the bulk of mankind
+will know days when, thanks, it may be, to machinery, agricultural
+chemistry, medicine perhaps, or I know not what dawning science, labour
+will become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical,
+pitiless.  What use will humanity make of this leisure?  On its
+employment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man.  Were it not
+well that his counsellors now should begin to teach him to use such
+leisure he has in a nobler and worthier fashion?  It is the way in
+which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as
+labour, the moral worth of a nation.  It raises or lowers, it
+replenishes or exhausts.  At present we find, in these great cities of
+ours, that three days' idleness will fill the hospitals with victims
+whom weeks or months of toil had left unscathed.
+
+
+7
+
+Thus we return to the happiness which should be, and perhaps in course
+of time will be, the real human happiness.  Had we taken part in the
+creation of the world, we should probably have bestowed more special,
+distinctive force on all that is best in man, most immaterial, most
+essentially human.  If a thought of love, or a gleam of the intellect;
+a word of justice, an act of pity, a desire for pardon or sacrifice; if
+a gesture of sympathy, a craving of one's whole being for beauty,
+goodness, or truth--if emotions like these could affect the universe as
+they affect the man who has known them, they would call forth
+miraculous flowery, supernatural radiance, inconceivable melody; they
+would scatter the night, recall spring and the sunshine, stay the hand
+of sickness, grief, disaster and misery; gladness would spring from
+them, and youth be restored; while the mind would gain freedom, thought
+immortality, and life be eternal.  No resistance could check them;
+their reward would follow as visibly as it follows the labourer's toll,
+the nightingale's song, or the work of the bee.  But we have learned at
+last that the moral world is a world wherein man is alone; a world
+contained in ourselves that bears no relation to matter, upon which its
+influence is only of the most exceptional and hazardous kind.  But none
+the less real, therefore, is this world, or less infinite: and if words
+break down when they try to tell of it, the reason is only that words,
+after all, are mere fragments of matter, that seek to enter a sphere
+where matter holds no dominion.  The images that words evoke are for
+ever betraying the thoughts for which they stand.  When we try to
+express perfect joy, a noble, spiritual ecstasy, a profound,
+everlasting love, our words can only compare them with animal passion,
+with drunkenness, brutal and coarse desire.  And not only do they thus
+degrade the noblest triumphs of the soul of man by likening them to
+primitive instincts, but they incite us to believe, in spite of
+ourselves, that the object or feeling compared is less real, less true
+or substantial, than the type to which it is referred.  Herein lies the
+injustice and weakness of every attempt that is made to give voice to
+the secrets of men.  And yet, be words never so faulty, let us still
+pay careful heed to the events of this inner world.  For of all the
+events it has lain in our power to meet hitherto, they alone truly are
+human.
+
+
+8
+
+Nor should they be regarded as useless, even though the immense torrent
+of material forces absorb them, as it absorbs the dew that falls from
+the pale morning flower.  Boundless as the world may be wherein we
+live, it is yet as hermetically enclosed as a sphere of steel.  Nothing
+can fall outside it, for it has no outside; nor can any atom possibly
+be lost.  Even though our species should perish entirely, the stage
+through which it has caused certain fragments of matter to pass would
+remain, notwithstanding all ulterior transformations, an indelible
+principle and an immortal cause.  The formidable, provisional
+vegetations of the primary epoch, the chaotic and immature monsters of
+the secondary grounds--Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl--these
+might also regard themselves as vain and ephemeral attempts, ridiculous
+experiments of a still puerile nature, and conceive that they would
+leave no mark upon a more harmonious globe.  And yet not an effort of
+theirs has been lost in space.  They purified the air, they softened
+the unbreathable flame of oxygen, they paved the way for the more
+symmetrical life of those who should follow.  If our lungs find in the
+atmosphere the aliment they need, it is thanks to the inconceivably
+incoherent forests of arborescent fern.  We owe our brains and nerves
+of to-day to fearful hordes of swimming or flying reptiles.  These
+obeyed the order of their life.  They did what they had to do.  They
+modified matter in the fashion prescribed to them.  And we, by carrying
+particles of this same matter to the degree of extraordinary
+incandescence proper to the thought of man, shall surely establish in
+the future something that never shall perish.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PAST
+
+1
+
+Our past stretches behind us in long perspective.  It slumbers on the
+horizon like a deserted city shrouded in mist.  A few peaks mark its
+boundary, and soar predominant into the air; a few important acts stand
+out, like towers, some with the light still upon them, others half
+ruined and slowly decaying beneath the weight of oblivion.  The trees
+are bare, the walls crumble, and shadow slowly steals over all.
+Everything seems to be dead there, and rigid, save only when memory,
+slowly decomposing, lights it for an instant with an illusory gleam.
+But apart from this animation, derived only from our expiring
+recollections, all would appear to be definitively motionless,
+immutable for ever, divided from present and future by a river that
+shall not again be crossed.
+
+In reality it is alive; and, for many of us, endowed with a profounder,
+more ardent life than either present or future.  In reality this dead
+city is often the hot-bed of our existence; and, in accordance with the
+spirit in which men return to it, shall some find all their wealth
+there, and others lose what they have.
+
+
+2
+
+Our conception of the past has much in common with our conception of
+love and happiness, destiny, justice, and most of the vague but
+therefore not less potent spiritual organisms that stand for the mighty
+forces we obey.  Our ideas have been handed down to us ready-made by
+our predecessors; and even when our second consciousness wakes, and,
+proud in its conviction that henceforth nothing shall be accepted
+blindly, proceeds most carefully to investigate these ideas, it will
+squander its time questioning those that loudly protest their right to
+be heard, and pay no heed to the others close by, that as yet, perhaps,
+have said nothing.  Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover these
+others.  They are in us and of us; they wait for us to address them.
+They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence.  Amid the noise and
+babble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real
+life; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfied
+sisters, they will often be far more simple, and far more beautiful too.
+
+
+3
+
+Among the most stubborn of these ready-made ideas are those that
+preside over our conception of the past, and render it a force as
+imposing and rigid as destiny; a force that indeed becomes destiny
+working backwards, with its hand outstretched to the destiny that
+burrows ahead, to which it transmits the last link of our chains.  The
+one thrusts us back, the other urges us forward, with a like
+irresistible violence.  But the violence of the past is perhaps more
+terrible and more alarming.  One may disbelieve in destiny.  It is a
+god whose onslaught many have never experienced.  But no one would
+dream of denying the oppressiveness of the past.  Sooner or later its
+effect must inevitably be felt.  Those even who refuse to admit the
+intangible will credit the past, which their finger can touch, with all
+the mystery, the influence, the sovereign intervention whereof they
+have stripped the powers that they have dethroned; thus rendering it
+the almost unique and therefore more dreadful god of their depopulated
+Olympus.
+
+
+4
+
+The force of the past is indeed one of the heaviest that weigh upon men
+and incline them to sadness.  And yet there is none more docile, more
+eager to follow the direction we could so readily give, did we but know
+how best to avail ourselves of this docility.  In reality, if we think
+of it, the past belongs to us quite as much as the present, and is far
+more malleable than the future.  Like the present, and to a much
+greater extent than the future, its existence is all in our thoughts,
+and our hand controls it; nor is this only true of our material past,
+wherein there are ruins that we perhaps can restore; it is true also of
+the regions that are closed to our tardy desire for atonement; it is
+true above all of our moral past, and of what we consider to be most
+irreparable there.
+
+
+5
+
+"The past is past," we say, and it is false; the past is always
+present.  "We have to bear the burden of our past," we sigh, and it is
+false; the past bears our burden.  "Nothing can wipe out the past," and
+it is false; the least effort of will sends present and future
+travelling over the past to efface whatever we bid them efface.  "The
+indestructible, irreparable, immutable past!"  And that is no truer
+than the rest.  In those who speak thus it is the present that is
+immutable, and knows not how to repair.  "My past is wicked, it is
+sorrowful, empty," we say again; "as I look back I can see no moment of
+beauty, of happiness or love; I see nothing but wretched ruins . . ."
+And that is false; for you see precisely what you yourself place there
+at the moment your eyes upon it.
+
+
+6
+
+Our past depends entirely upon our present, and is constantly changing
+with it.  Our past is contained in our memory; and this memory of ours,
+that feeds on our heart and brain, and is incessantly swayed by them,
+is the most variable thing in the world, the least independent, the
+most impressionable.  Our chief concern with the past, that which truly
+remains and forms part of us, is not what we have done, or the
+adventures that we have met with, but the moral reactions bygone events
+are producing within us at this very moment, the inward being they have
+helped to form; and these reactions, that give birth to our sovereign,
+intimate being, are wholly governed by the manner in which we regard
+past events, and vary as the moral substance varies that they encounter
+within us.  But with every step in advance that our feelings or
+intellect take, a change will come in this moral substance; and then,
+on the instant, the most immutable facts, that seemed to be graven for
+ever on the stone and bronze of the past, will assume an entirely
+different aspect, will return to life and leap into movement, bringing
+us vaster and more courageous counsels, dragging memory aloft with them
+in their ascent; and what was once a mass of ruin, mouldering in the
+darkness, becomes a populous city whereon the sun shines again.
+
+
+7
+
+We have an arbitrary fashion of establishing a certain number of events
+behind us.  We relegate them to the horizon of our memory; and having
+set them there, we tell ourselves that they form part of a world in
+which the united efforts of all mankind could not wipe away a tear, or
+cause a flower to lift its head.  And yet, while admitting that these
+events have passed beyond our control, we still, with the most curious
+inconsistency, believe that they have full control over us; whereas the
+truth is that they can only act upon us to the extent in which we have
+renounced our right to act upon them.  The past asserts itself only in
+those whose moral growth has ceased; then, and not till then, does it
+become redoubtable.  From that moment we have indeed the irreparable
+behind us, and the weight of what we have done lies heavy upon our
+shoulders.  But so long as the life of our mind and character flows
+uninterruptedly on, so long will the past remain in suspense above us;
+and, as the glance may be that we send towards it, will it, complaisant
+as the clouds Hamlet showed to Polonius, adopt the shape of the hope or
+fear, the peace or disquiet, that we are perfecting within us.
+
+
+8
+
+No sooner has our moral activity weakened than accomplished events rush
+forward and assail us; and woe to him who opens the door, and permits
+them to take possession of his hearth!  Each one will vie with the
+other in overwhelming him with the gifts best calculated to shatter his
+courage.  It matters not whether our past has been happy and noble, or
+lugubrious and criminal, there shall still be great danger in allowing
+it to enter, not as an invited guest, but like a parasite settling upon
+us.  The result will be either sterile regret or impotent remorse; and
+remorse and regrets of this kind are equally disastrous.  In order to
+draw from the past what is precious within it--and most of our wealth
+is there--we must go to it at the hour when we are strongest, most
+conscious of mastery; enter its domain, and there make choice of what
+we require, discarding the rest, and laying our command upon it never
+to cross our threshold without our order.  Like all things that only
+can live at the cost of our spiritual strength, it will soon learn to
+obey.  At first, perhaps, it will endeavour to resist.  It will have
+recourse to artifice and prayer.  It will try to tempt us, to cajole.
+It will drag forward frustrated hopes and joys that are gone for ever,
+broken affections, well-merited reproaches, expiring hatred and love
+that is dead, squandered faith and perished beauty; it will thrust
+before us all that once had been the marvellous essence of our ardour
+for life; it will point to the beckoning sorrows, decaying happiness,
+that now haunt the ruin.  But we shall pass by, without turning our
+head; our hand shall scatter the crowd of memories, even as the sage
+Ulysses, in the Cimmerian night, with his sword prevented the
+shades--even that of his mother, whom it was not his mission to
+question--from approaching the black blood that would for an instant
+have given them life and speech.  We shall go straight to the joy, the
+regret or remorse, whose counsel we need; or to the act of injustice we
+wish scrupulously to examine, in order either to make reparation, if
+such still be possible, or that the sight of the wrong we did, whose
+victims have ceased to be, is required to give us the indispensable
+force that shall lift us above the injustice it still lies in us to
+commit.
+
+
+9
+
+Yes, even though our past contain crimes that now are beyond the reach
+of our best endeavours, even then, if we consider the circumstances of
+time and place, and the vast plane of each human existence, these
+crimes fade out of our life the moment we feel that no temptation, no
+power on earth, could ever induce us to commit the like again.  The
+world has not forgiven--there is but little that the external sphere
+will forget or forgive--and their material effects will continue, for
+the laws of cause and effect differ from those which govern our
+consciousness.  At the tribunal of our personal justice, however--the
+only tribunal which has decisive action on our inaccessible life, as it
+is the only one whose decrees we cannot evade, whose concrete judgments
+stir us to our very marrow--the evil action that we regard from a
+loftier plane than that at which it was committed, becomes an action
+that no longer exists for us save in so far as it may serve in the
+future to render our fall more difficult; nor has it the right to lift
+its head again except at the moment when we incline once more towards
+the abyss it guards.
+
+Bitter, surely, must be the grief of him in whose past there are acts
+of injustice whereof every avenue now is closed, who is no longer able
+to seek out his victims, and raise them and comfort them.  To have
+abused one's strength in order to despoil some feeble creature who has
+definitely succumbed beneath the blow; to have callously thrust
+suffering upon a loving heart, or merely misunderstood and passed by a
+touching affection that offered itself--these things must of necessity
+weigh heavily upon our life, and induce a sorrow within us that shall
+not readily be forgotten.  But it depends on the actual point our
+consciousness has attained whether our entire moral destiny shall be
+depressed or lifted beneath this burden.  Our actions rarely die: and
+many unjust deeds of ours will therefore inevitably return to life some
+day to claim their due and start legitimate reprisals.  They will find
+our external life without defence; but before they can reach the inward
+being at the centre of that life, they must first listen to the
+judgment we have already passed on ourselves; and in accordance with
+the nature of that judgment will the attitude be of these mysterious
+envoys, who have come from the depths where cause and effect are poised
+in eternal equilibrium.  If it has indeed been from the heights of our
+newly acquired consciousness that we have questioned ourselves, and
+condemned, they will not be menacing justiciaries whom we shall
+suddenly see surging in from all sides, but benevolent visitors,
+friends we have almost expected, and they will draw near us in silence.
+They know in advance that the man before them is no longer the guilty
+creature they sought; and instead of bringing hatred, revolt, and
+despair, or punishments that degrade and kill, they will come charged
+with ennobling, consoling and purifying thought and penance.
+
+
+10
+
+The things which differentiate the happy and strong from those who weep
+and will not be consoled, all derive from the one same principle of
+confidence and ardour; and thus it is that the manner in which we are
+able to recall what we have done or suffered is far more important than
+our actual sufferings or deeds.  No past, viewed by itself, can seem
+happy; and the privileged of fate, who reflect on what remains of the
+happy years that have flown, have perhaps more reason for sorrow than
+the unfortunate ones who brood over the dregs of a life of
+wretchedness.  Whatever was one day and has now ceased to be, makes for
+sadness; above all, whatever was very happy and very beautiful.  The
+object of our regrets--whether these revolve around what has been or
+might have been--is therefore more or less the same for all men, and
+their sorrow should be the same.  It is not, however; in one case it
+will reign uninterruptedly, whereas in another it will only appear at
+very long intervals.  It must therefore depend on things other than
+accomplished facts.  It depends on the manner in which men will deal
+with these facts.  The conquerors in this world--those who waste no
+time setting up an imaginary irreparable and immutable athwart their
+horizon, those who seem to be born afresh every morning in a world that
+for ever awakes anew to the future--these know instinctively that what
+appears to exist no longer is still existing intact, that what appeared
+to be ended is only completing itself.  They know that the years time
+has taken from them are still in travail; still, under their new
+master, obeying the old.  They know that their past is for ever in
+movement; that the yesterday which was despondent, decrepit and
+criminal, will return full of joyousness, innocence, youth, in the
+track of to-morrow.  They know that their image is not yet stamped on
+the days that are gone; that a decisive deed, or thought, will suffice
+to break down the whole edifice; that however remote or vast the shadow
+may be that stretches behind them, they have only to put forth a
+gesture of gladness or hope for the shadow at once to copy this
+gesture, and, flashing it back to the remotest, tiniest ruins of early
+childhood even, to extract unexpected treasure from all this wreckage.
+They know that they have retrospective action on all bygone deeds; and
+that the dead themselves will annul their verdicts in order to judge
+afresh a past that to-day has transfigured and endowed with new life.
+
+They are fortunate who find this instinct in the folds of their cradle.
+But may the others not imitate it who have it not; and is not human
+wisdom charged to teach us how we may acquire the salutary instincts
+that nature has withheld?
+
+
+11
+
+Let us not lull ourselves to sleep in our past; and if we find that it
+tends to spread like a vault over our life, instead of incessantly
+changing beneath our eye; if the present grow into the habit of
+visiting it, not like a good workman repairing thither to execute the
+labours imposed upon him by the commands of to-day, but as a too
+passive, too credulous pilgrim, content idly to contemplate beautiful,
+motionless ruins--then, the more glorious, the happier that our past
+may have been, with all the more suspicion should it be regarded by us.
+
+Nor should we yield to the instinct that bids us accord it profound
+respect, if this respect induce the fear in us that we may disturb its
+nice equilibrium.  Better the ordinary past, content with its befitting
+place in the shadow, than the sumptuous past which claims to govern
+what has travelled beyond its reach.  Better a mediocre but living
+present, which acts as though it were alone in the world, than a
+present which proudly expires in the chains of a marvellous long ago.
+A single step that we take at this hour towards an uncertain goal, is
+far more important to us than the thousand leagues we covered in our
+march towards a dazzling triumph in the days that were.  Our past had
+no other mission than to lift us to the moment at which we are, and
+there equip us with the needful experience and weapons, the needful
+thought and gladness.  If, at this precise moment, it take from us and
+divert to itself one particle of our energy, then, however glorious it
+may have been, it still was useless, and had better never have been.
+If we allow it to arrest a gesture that we were about to make, then is
+our death beginning; and the edifices of the future will suddenly take
+the semblance of tombs.
+
+More dangerous still than the past of happiness and glory is the one
+inhabited by overpowering and too dearly cherished phantoms.  Many an
+existence perishes in the coils of a fond recollection.  And yet, were
+the dead to return to this earth, they would say, I fancy, with the
+wisdom that must be theirs who have seen what the ephemeral light still
+hides from us: "Dry your eyes.  There comes to us no comfort from your
+tears: exhausting you, they exhaust us also.  Detach yourself from us,
+banish us from your thoughts, until such time as you can think of us
+without strewing tears on the life we still live in you.  We endure
+only in your recollection; but you err in believing that your regrets
+alone can touch us.  It is the things you do that prove to us we are
+not forgotten, and rejoice our manes; and this without your knowing it,
+without any necessity that you should turn towards us.  Each time that
+our pale image saddens your ardour, we feel ourselves die anew, and it
+is a more perceptible, irrevocable death than was our other; bending
+too often over our tombs, you rob us of the life, the courage and love
+that you imagine you restore.
+
+"It is in you that we are, it is in all your life that our life
+resides; and as you become greater, even while forgetting us, so do we
+become greater too, and our shades draw the deep breath of prisoners
+whose prison door is flung open.
+
+"If there be anything new we have learned in the world where we are
+now, it is, first of all, that the good we did to you when we were,
+like yourselves, on the earth, does not balance the evil wrought by a
+memory which saps the force and the confidence of life."
+
+
+12
+
+Above all, let us envy the past of no man.  Our own past was created by
+ourselves, and for ourselves alone.  No other could have suited us, no
+other could have taught us the truth that it alone can teach, or given
+the strength that it alone can give.  And whether it be good or bad,
+sombre or radiant, it still remains a collection of unique masterpieces
+the value of which is known to none but ourselves; and no foreign
+masterpiece could equal the action we have accomplished, the kiss we
+received, the thing of beauty that moved us so deeply, the suffering we
+underwent, the anguish that held us enchained, the love that wreathed
+us in smiles or in tears.  Our past is ourselves, what we are and shall
+be; and upon this unknown sphere there moves no creature, from the
+happiest down to the most unfortunate, who could foretell how great a
+loss would be his could he substitute the trace of another for the
+trace which he himself must leave in life.  Our past is our secret,
+promulgated by the voice of years; it is the most mysterious image of
+our being, over which Time keeps watch.  This image is not dead; a mere
+nothing degrades or adorns it; it can still grow bright or sombre, can
+still smile or weep, express love or hatred; and yet it remains
+recognisable for ever in the midst of the myriad images that surround
+it.  It stands for what we once were, as our aspirations and hopes
+stand for what we shall be; and the two faces blend, that they may
+teach us what we are.
+
+Let us not envy the facts of the past, but rather the spiritual garment
+that the recollection of days long gone will weave around the sage.
+And though this garment be woven of joy or of sorrow, though it be
+drawn from the dearth of events or from their abundance, it shall still
+be equally precious; and those who may see it shining over a life shall
+not be able to tell whether its quickening jewels and stars were found
+amid the grudging cinders of a cabin or upon the steps of a palace.
+
+No past can be empty or squalid, no events can be wretched: the
+wretchedness lies in our manner of welcoming them.  And if it were true
+that nothing had happened to you, that would be the most remarkable
+adventure that any man ever had met with; and no less remarkable would
+be the light it would shed upon you.  In reality the facts, the
+opportunities and possibilities, the passions, that await and invite
+the majority of men, are all more or less the same.  Some may be more
+dazzling than others; their attendant circumstances may differ, but
+they differ far less than the inward reactions that follow; and the
+insignificant, incomplete event that falls on a fertile heart and brain
+will readily attain the moral proportions and grandeur of an analogous
+incident which, on another plane, will convulse a people.
+
+He who should see, spread out before him, the past lives of a multitude
+of men, could not easily decide which past he himself would wish to
+have lived were he not able at the same time to witness the moral
+results of these dissimilar and unsymmetrical facts.  He might not
+impossibly make a fatal blunder; he might choose an existence
+overflowing with incomparable happiness and victory, that sparkle like
+wonderful jewels; while his glance might travel indifferently over a
+life that appeared to be empty whereas it was truly steeped to the brim
+in serene emotions and lofty, redeeming thoughts whereby, though the
+eye saw nothing, that life was yet rendered happy among all.  For we
+are well aware that what destiny has given, and what destiny holds in
+reserve, can be revolutionised as utterly by thought as by great
+victory or great defeat.  Thought is silent; it disturbs not a pebble
+on the illusory road we see; but at the crossway of the more actual
+road that our secret life follows will it tranquilly erect an
+indestructible pyramid; and thereupon, suddenly, every event, to the
+very phenomena of earth and heaven, will assume a new direction.
+
+In Siegfried's life, it is not the moment when he forges the prodigious
+sword that is most important, or when he kills the dragon and compels
+the gods from his path, or even the dazzling second when he encounters
+love on the flaming mountain, but indeed the brief instant wrested from
+eternal decrees, the little childish gesture, when one of his hands,
+red with the blood of his mysterious victim, having chanced to draw
+near his lips, his eyes and ears are suddenly opened; he understands
+the hidden language of all that surrounds him, detects the treachery of
+the dwarf who represents the powers of evil, and learns in a flash to
+do that which had to be done.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LUCK
+
+1
+
+Once upon a time, an old Servian legend tells us, there were two
+brothers of whom one was industrious, but unfortunate, and the other
+lazy, but overwhelmingly prosperous.  One day the unfortunate brother
+meets a beautiful girl who is tending sheep and weaving a golden
+thread.  "To whom do these sheep belong?" he asks.  "They belong to
+whom I belong."  "And to whom do you belong?"  "To your brother: I am
+his luck."  "And where is my luck then?"  "Very far from here."  "Can I
+find it?"  "Yes, if you look for it."
+
+So he wanders away in search of his luck.  And one evening, in a great
+forest, he comes across a poor old woman asleep under a tree.  He wakes
+her and asks who she is.  "Don't you know me?" she answers.  "It is
+true you never have seen me: I am your luck."  "And who can have given
+me so wretched a luck?"  "Destiny."  "Can I find destiny?"  "Yes, if
+you look long enough."
+
+So he goes off in search of destiny.  He travels a very long time, and
+at last she is pointed out to him.  She lives in an enormous and
+luxurious palace; but her wealth is dwindling day by day, and the doors
+and windows of her abode are shrinking.  She explains to him that she
+passes thus, alternately, from misery to opulence; and that her
+situation at a given moment determines the future of all the children
+who may come into the world at that moment.  "You were born," she says,
+"when my prosperity was on the wane; and that is the cause of your
+ill-luck."  The only way, she tells him, to hoodwink or get the better
+of fortune would be to substitute the luck of Militza, his niece, for
+his own, seeing that she was born at a propitious period.  All he need
+do, she says, is to take this niece into his house, and to declare to
+any one who may ask him that all he has belongs to Militza.
+
+He does as she bids him, and his affairs at once take a new turn.  His
+herds multiply and grow fat, his trees are bent beneath the masses of
+fruit, unexpected inheritances come in, his land bears prodigious
+crops.  But one morning, as he stands there, his heart filled with
+happiness, eyeing a magnificent cornfield, a stranger asks him who the
+owner may be of these wonderful ears of wheat that, as they sway to and
+fro beneath the dew, seem twice as heavy and twice as high as the ears
+in the adjoining field.  He forgets himself, and answers, "They are
+mine."  At that very instant fire breaks out in the opposite end of the
+field, and commences its ravages.  Then he remembers the advice that he
+has neglected to follow: he runs after the stranger shouting, "Stop,
+come back: I made a mistake: what I told you was not true!  This field
+is not mine: it belongs to my niece Militza!"  And the flames have no
+sooner heard than they suddenly fall away, and the corn shoots up
+afresh.
+
+
+2
+
+This naive and very ancient image, which might almost serve to-day as
+an illustration of our actual ignorance, proves that the mysterious
+problem of chance has not changed, from the time of man's first
+questioning glance.  We have our thoughts, which build up our intimate
+happiness or sorrow; and upon this events from without have more or
+less influence.  In some men these thoughts will have acquired such
+strength, such vigilance, that without their consent nothing can enter
+the structure of crystal and brass, they have been able to raise on the
+hill that commands the wonted road of adventures.  And we have our
+will, which our thoughts feed and sustain; and many useless or harmful
+events can be held in check by our will.  But around these islets,
+within which is a certain degree of safety, of immunity from attack,
+extends a region as vast and uncontrollable as the ocean, a region
+swayed by chance as the waves are swayed by the wind.  Neither will nor
+thought can keep one of these waves from suddenly breaking upon us; and
+we shall be caught unawares, and perhaps be wounded and stunned.  Only
+when the wave has retreated can thought and will begin their beneficent
+action.  Then they will raise us, and bind up our wounds; restore
+animation, and take careful heed that the mischief the shock has
+wrought shall not reach the profound sources of life.  Their mission
+extends no further, and may, on the surface, appear very humble.  In
+reality, however, unless chance assume the irresistible form of cruel
+disease or death, the workings of will and thought are sufficient to
+neutralise all its efforts, and to preserve what is best and most
+essential to man in human happiness.
+
+
+3
+
+Redoubtable, multitudinous chance is for ever threading its watchful
+way through the midst of the events we have foreseen, and round and
+about our most deliberate actions, wherewith we are slowly tracing the
+broad lines of our existence.  The air we breathe, the time we
+traverse, the space through which we move, are all peopled by lurking
+circumstances, which pick us out from among the crowd.  The least study
+of their habits will quickly convince us that these strange daughters
+of hazard, who should be blind and deaf as their father, by no means
+act in his irresponsible fashion.  They are well aware of what they are
+doing, and rarely make a mistake.  With inexplicable certainty do they
+move to the passer-by whom they have been sent to confront, and lightly
+touch his shoulder.  Two men may be travelling upon the same road, and
+at the same hour; but there will be no hesitation or doubt in the ranks
+of the double, invisible troop whom fortune has ambushed there.
+Towards one a band of white virgins will hasten, bearing palms and
+amphorae, presenting the thousand unexpected delights of the journey;
+as the other approaches, the "Evil Women," whom Aeschylus tells of,
+will hurl themselves from the hedges, as though they were charged to
+avenge, upon this unwitting victim, some inexpiable crime committed by
+him before he was born.
+
+
+4
+
+There is scarcely one of us who has not been able, in some measure, to
+follow the workings of destiny in life.  We have all known men who met
+with a prosperity or disaster entirely out of relation to any of their
+actions; men upon whom good or bad luck seemed suddenly, at a turn of
+the road, to spring from the ground or descend from the stars,
+undeserved, unprovoked, but complete and inevitable.  One, we will say,
+who scarcely has given a thought to some appointment for which he knows
+his rival to be better equipped, will see this rival vanish at the
+decisive moment, another, who has counted upon the protection of a most
+influential friend, will see this friend die on the very day when his
+assistance could be of value.  A third, who has neither talent nor
+beauty, will arrive each morning at the Palace of Fortune, Glory or
+Love at the brief instant when every door lies open; while another, a
+man of great merit, who long has pondered the legitimate step he is
+taking, presents himself at the hour when ill-luck shall have closed
+the gate for the next half-century.  One man will risk his health
+twenty times in imbecile feats, and never experience the least
+ill-effect; another will deliberately venture it in an honourable
+cause, and lose it without hope of return.  To help the first,
+thousands of unknown people, who never have seen him, will be obscurely
+working; to hinder the second, thousands of unknown people labour, who
+are ignorant of his existence.  And all, on the one side as well as the
+other, are totally unaware of what they are doing; they obey the same
+minute, widely-distributed order; and at the prescribed moment the
+detached pieces of the mysterious machine join, dovetail, unite; and we
+have two complete and dissimilar destinies set into motion by Time.
+
+In a curious book on "Chance and Destiny," Dr. Foissac gives various
+strange examples of the persistent, inexplicable, fundamental,
+pre-ordained, irreducible iniquity in which many existences are
+steeped.  As we go through page after page, we feel almost as though we
+were being conducted through the disconcerting laboratories of another
+world where, in the absence of every instrument that human justice and
+reason might hold indispensable, happiness and sorrow are being
+parcelled out and allotted.  Take, for instance, the life of
+Vauvenargues, one of the most admirable of men, and certainly, of all
+the great sages, the most unfortunate.  Whenever his fortune hangs in
+the balance, he is attacked and prostrated by cruel disease; and
+notwithstanding the efforts of his genius, his bravery, his moral
+beauty, day after day he is wantonly betrayed or falls victim to
+gratuitous injustice; and at the age of thirty-two he dies, at the very
+moment when recognition is at last awaiting his work.  So too there is
+the terrible story of Lesurques,[1] in which we see a thousand
+coincidences that might have been contrived in hell, blending and
+joining together to work the ruin of an innocent man; while truth,
+chained down by fate, dumbly shrieking, as we do when wrestling with
+nightmare, is unable to put forth a single gesture that shall rend the
+veil of night.  There is Aimar de Ransonnet, President of the
+Parliament of Paris, one of the most upright of men, who first of all
+is suddenly dismissed from his office, sees his daughter die on a
+dunghill before his eyes, his son perish at the hands of the
+executioner, and his wife struck by lightning; while he himself is
+accused of heresy and sent to the Bastille, where he dies of grief
+before he is brought to trial.
+
+The calamities that befell Oedipus and the Atrides are regarded by us
+as improbable and fabulous; and yet we find in contemporary history
+that fatality clings with no less persistence to families such as the
+Stuarts, the Colignys,[2] &c., and hounds to their death, with what
+almost seems personal vindictiveness, pitiable and innocent victims
+like Henrietta of England, daughter of Henry IV., Louise de Bourbon,
+Joseph II., and Marie-Antoinette.
+
+And again in another category, what shall we say of the
+injustice--unintelligent but apparently almost conscious, almost
+systematic and premeditated--of games of chance, duels, battles,
+storms, shipwrecks, and fires?  Or of the inconceivable luck of a
+Chastenet de Puysegur who, after forty years' service, in the course of
+which he took part in thirty battles and a hundred and twenty sieges,
+always in the front rank and displaying the most romantic courage, was
+never once touched by shot or steel, while Marshal Oudinot was wounded
+thirty-five times, and General Trezel was struck by a bullet in every
+encounter?  What shall we say of the extraordinary fortune of Lauzun,
+Chamillart, Casanova, Chesterfield, &c., or of the inconceivable,
+unvarying prosperity that attended the crimes of Sylla, Marius, or
+Dionysius the Elder, who, in his extreme old age, after an odious but
+fantastically successful life, died of joy on learning that the
+Athenians had just crowned one of his tragedies?  Or, finally, of
+Herod, surnamed the Great or the Ascalonite, who swam in blood,
+murdered one of his wives and five of his children, put to death every
+upright man who might chance to offend him, and yet was fortunate in
+all his undertakings?
+
+
+6
+
+These famous examples, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are in
+truth no more than the abnormal and historic presentments of what is
+shown to us every day, in a humbler but not less emphatic fashion, by
+the thousand and one caprices of propitious or contrary fortune at work
+on the small and ill-lit stage of ordinary life.
+
+Doubtless, we must, first of all, when closely examining such insolent
+prosperity or unvarying disaster, attribute a royal share to the
+physical or moral causes which are capable of explaining them.  Had we
+ourselves known Vauvenargues, we should probably have detected a
+certain timidity, irresolution or misplaced pride in his character
+whereby he was disabled from allowing the opportunity to mature or from
+seizing it with sufficient vigour.  And Lesurques, it may be, was
+deficient in ability, in one knows not what, in that prodigious
+personal force that one expects to find in falsely-accused innocence.
+Nor can it be denied that the Stuarts, no less than Joseph II. and
+Marie-Antoinette, were guilty of enormous blunders that invited
+disaster; or that Lauzun, Casanova, and Lord Chesterfield had flung to
+the winds those essential scruples that hinder the honest man.  So too
+is it certain that although the existence of Sylla, Marius, Dionysius
+the Elder, and Herod the Ascalonite may have been externally almost
+incomparably fortunate, few men, I fancy, would care to have lurking
+within them the strange, restless, blood-stained phantom, possessed
+neither of thought nor of feeling, on which the happiness must depend
+(if the word happiness be indeed applicable here) that is founded upon
+unceasing crime.  But, this deduction being made, and on the most
+reasonable, most liberal scale (which will become the more generous as
+we see more of life and understand it better, and penetrate further
+into the secrets of little causes and great effects), we shall still be
+forced to admit that there remains, in these obstinately recurring
+coincidences, in these indissoluble series of good or evil fortune,
+these persistent runs of good or bad luck, a considerable, often
+essential, and sometimes exclusive share that can be ascribed only to
+the impenetrable, incontrovertible will of a real but unknown power;
+which is known as Chance, Fatality, Destiny, Luck, Fortune, good or
+evil Star, Angel with the White Wings, Angel with the Black Wings, and
+by many other names, that vary in accordance with the more or less
+imaginative, more or less poetic genius of centuries and peoples.  And
+here we have one of the most serious, most perplexing problems of all
+those that have to be solved by man before he may legitimately regard
+himself as the principal, independent and irrevocable inhabitant of
+this earth.
+
+
+7
+
+Let us reduce the problem to its simplest terms, and submit it to our
+reason.  First, however, let us consider whether it affects man alone.
+We have with us, upon this curiously incomprehensible globe, silent and
+faithful companions of our existence; and we shall often find it
+helpful to let our eyes rest upon these when, having reached certain
+altitudes that perhaps are illusory, giddiness seizes our brain and
+inclines us too readily to the idea that the stars, the gods or the
+veiled representatives of the sublime laws of the universe, are
+concerned solely with us.  These poor brothers of our animal life, that
+are so calmly, so confidently resigned, would appear to know many
+things that we have forgotten; they are the tranquil custodians of the
+secret that we seek so anxiously.  It is evident that animals, and
+notably domestic animals, have also a kind of destiny.  They too know
+what prolonged and gratuitous happiness means; they also have
+encountered the persistent misfortune for which no cause can be found.
+They have the same right as we to speak of their star, their good or
+bad luck, their prosperity or disaster.  Compare the fate of the
+cab-horse, that ends its days at the knacker's, after having passed
+through the hands of a hundred brutal and nameless masters, with that
+of the thorough-bred which dies of old age in the stable of a
+kind-hearted master; and from the point of view of justice (unless we
+accept the Buddhist theory, that life in this world is the reward or
+punishment of an anterior existence) explanation is as completely
+lacking as in the case of the man whom chance has reduced to poverty or
+raised to wealth.  There is, in Flanders, a breed of draught-dogs upon
+which destiny alternately lavishes her favour and her spite.  Some will
+be bought by a butcher, and lead a magnificent life.  The work is
+trifling: in the morning, harnessed four abreast, they draw a light
+cart to the slaughter-house, and at night, galloping joyously,
+triumphantly, home through the narrow streets of the ancient towns with
+their tiny, lit-up gables, bring it back, overflowing with meat.
+Between-times there is leisure, and marvellous leisure, among the rats
+and the waste of the slaughter-house.  They are copiously fed, they are
+fat, they shine like seals, and taste in its fulness the only happiness
+dreamed of by the simple and ferreting instinct of the honest dog.  But
+their unfortunate brethren of the same litter, that the lame
+sand-pedlar buys, or the old collector of household refuse, or the
+needy peasant with his great, cruel clogs--these are chained to heavy
+carts or shapeless barrows; they are filthy, mangy, hairless,
+emaciated, starving; and follow till they die the circles of a hell
+into which they were thrust by a few coppers dropped into some horny
+palm.  And, in a world less directly subject to man, there must
+evidently be partridges, pheasants, deer, hares, which have no luck,
+which never escape the gun; while others, one knows not how or why,
+emerge unscathed from every battue.
+
+They, therefore, are exposed, like ourselves, to incontestable
+injustice.  But it does not occur to us, when considering their
+hardships, to set all the gods in motion or seek explanation from the
+mysterious powers; and yet what happens to them may well be no more
+than the image, naively simplified, of what happens to us.  It is true
+that we play the precise part, in their case, of those mysterious
+powers whom we seek in our own.  But what right have we to expect from
+these last more consciousness, more intelligent justice, than we
+ourselves show in our dealings with animals?  And in any event, if this
+instance shall only have deprived chance of a little of its useless
+prestige and have proportionately augmented our spirit of initiative
+and struggle, there will be a gain the importance of which is by no
+means to be despised.
+
+
+8
+
+Still further allowance must therefore be made; but yet there
+undoubtedly remains--at least as far as the more complex life of man is
+concerned--a cause of good or evil fortune as yet untouched by our
+explanations, in the often visible will of chance, which one might
+almost call the "small change" of fatality.  We know--and this is one
+of those formless but fundamental ideas on the laws of life that the
+experience of thousands of years has turned into a kind of instinct--we
+know that men exist who, other things being equal, are "lucky" or
+"unlucky."  Circumstances permitted me to follow very closely the
+career of a friend of mine who was dogged by persistent ill-fortune.  I
+do not mean to imply by this that his life was unhappy.  It is even
+remarkable that the malign influences always respected the broad lines
+of his veritable happiness; probably because these were well guarded.
+For he had in him a strong moral existence, profound thoughts and
+hopes, feelings and convictions.  He was well aware that these were
+possessions that fortune could not touch: which indeed could not be
+destroyed without his consent.  Destiny is not invincible; through
+life's very centre runs a great inward canal, which we have the power
+to turn towards happiness or sorrow; although its ramifications, that
+extend over our days, and the thousand tributaries that flow in from
+external hazards, are all independent of our will.
+
+It is thus that a beautiful river, streaming down from the heights and
+ashine with magnificent glaciers, passes at length through plains and
+through cities, whence it receives only poisonous water.  For an
+instant the river is troubled; and we fear lest it lose, and never
+recover again, the image of the pure blue sky that the crystal
+fountains had lent: the image that seemed its soul, and the deep and
+the limpid expression of its great strength.  But if we rejoin it, down
+yonder, beneath those great trees, we shall find that it has already
+forgotten the foulness of the gutters.  It has caught the azure again
+in its transparent waves; and flows on to the sea, as clear as it was
+on the days when it first smilingly leapt from its source on the
+mountains.
+
+And so, as regards this friend of mine, although forced more than once
+to shed tears, they were at least not of the kind that memory never
+forgets, not of those that fall from our eyes as we mourn our own
+death.  Every failure, the inevitable disappointment once over, served
+only in effect to knit him the closer to his secret happiness, to
+affirm this within him, and draw a more sombre outline around it, that
+it might thereby appear the more precious, and ardent, and certain.
+But no sooner had he quitted this charmed enclosure than hostile
+incidents vied with each other in their attacks upon him.  As for
+instance--he was a very good fencer: he had three duels, and was
+wounded each time by a less skilful adversary.  If he went on board
+ship, the voyage would rarely be prosperous.  Whatever undertaking he
+put money into was sure to turn out badly.  A judicial error, into
+which a whole series of curiously malevolent circumstances dragged him,
+was productive of long and serious trouble.  Further, although his face
+was agreeable, and the expression of his eyes loyal and frank, he was
+not what one calls "sympathetic": he did not arouse at first sight that
+spontaneous affection which we often give, without knowing why, to the
+unknown who passes, to an enemy even.  Nor was he more fortunate in his
+affections.  Of a loving disposition, and infinitely worthier of being
+loved than most of those to whom he was sacrificed by the
+chance-governed heart of women--here again he met with nothing but
+treachery, deceit and sorrow.  He went his way, extricating himself as
+best he could from the paltry snares that malicious fortune prepared at
+every step; nor was he discouraged or deeply saddened, only somewhat
+surprised at so strange a persistence; until at last there came the
+great and solitary good fortune of his life: a love that was the
+complement of the one that was eager within him, a love that was
+complete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable.  And from that moment it
+was as though he had come under the influence of another star, the
+beneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious events
+grew slowly remoter, fewer, warier of attacking him, tardier in their
+approach.  They seemed reluctantly to abandon their habit of selecting
+him as their victim.  He actually saw his _luck turn_.  And now that he
+has gone back, as it were, into the indifferent and neutral atmosphere
+of chance common to most men, he smiles when he remembers the time when
+every gesture of his was watched by the invisible enemy, and aroused a
+danger.
+
+
+9
+
+Let us not look to the gods for an explanation of these phenomena.
+Until these gods shall have clearly explained themselves, there is
+nothing that they can explain for us.  And destiny, which is merely the
+god of which we know least, has less right than any of the others to
+intervene and cry to us, as it does from the depths of its inscrutable
+night: "It is I who so willed it!"  Nor let us invoke the illimitable
+laws of the universe, the intentions of history, the will of the
+worlds, the justice of the stars.  These powers exist: we submit to
+them, as we submit to the might of the sun.  But they act without
+knowing us; and within the wide circle of their influence a liberty
+remains to us still that is probably immense.  They have better work on
+hand than to be for ever bending over us to lift a blade of grass or
+drop a leaf in the little paths of our anthill.  Since we ourselves are
+here the parties concerned, it is, I imagine, within ourselves that the
+key of the mystery shall be found; for it is probable that every
+creature carries within him the best solution of the problem that he
+presents.  Within us, underlying the conscious existence that our
+reason and will control, is a profounder existence, one side of which
+connects with a past beyond the record of history, the other with a
+future that thousands of years cannot exhaust.  We may safely conceive
+that all the gods lie hidden within it; that those wherewith we have
+peopled the earth and the planets will emerge one by one, in order to
+give it a name and a form that our imagination may understand.  And as
+man's vision grows clearer, as he shows less desire for image and
+symbol, so will the number of these names, the number of these forms,
+tend to diminish.  He will slowly arrive at the stage when there shall
+be one only that he will proclaim, or reserve; when it shall be
+revealed to him that this last form, this last name, is truly no more
+than the last image of a power whose throne was always within him.
+Then will the gods that had gone forth from us be found again in
+ourselves; and it is there that we will question them to-day.
+
+
+10
+
+I hold therefore that it is in this unconscious life of ours, in this
+existence that is so vast, so divine, so inexhaustible and
+unfathomable, that we must seek for the explanation of fortunate or
+contrary chances.  Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, our
+first-born: immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal.
+Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays on
+this inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it.  But our
+intellect is gradually learning that every secret of the human
+phenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and there
+alone.  This unconscious being lives on another plane than our
+intellect, in another world.  It knows nothing of Time and Space, the
+two formidable but illusory walls between which our reason must flow if
+it would not be hopelessly lost.  It knows no proximity, it knows no
+distance; past and future concern it not, or the resistance of matter.
+It is familiar with all things; there is nothing it cannot do.  To this
+power, this knowledge, we have indeed at all times accorded a certain
+varying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we have
+called them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflex
+action, presentiment, intuition, &c.  We credit it more especially with
+the indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of our
+nerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason: a
+force that would appear to be the very fluid of life.  Its nature is
+probably more or less the same in all men; but it has very different
+methods of communicating with the intellect.  In some men this unknown
+principle is enshrined at so great a depth that it concerns itself
+solely with physical functions and the permanence of the species;
+whereas in others it would seem to be for ever on the alert, rising
+again and again to the surface of external and conscious life, which
+its fairy-like presence quickens; intervening at every instant,
+warning, deciding, counselling; blending with most of the essential
+facts of a career.  Whence comes this faculty?  There are no fixed or
+certain laws.  We do not detect, for instance, any constant relation
+between the activity of the unconsciousness and the development of the
+intellect.  This activity obeys rules of which we know nothing.  So far
+as we at present can tell, it would seem to be purely accidental.  We
+discover it in one man, and not in another; nor have we any clue that
+shall help us to guess at the reason of this difference.
+
+
+11
+
+The probable course pursued by fortunate or contrary chances may well
+be as follows.  A happy or untoward event, that has sprung from the
+profound recesses of great and eternal laws, arises before us and
+completely blocks the way.  It stands motionless there: immovable,
+inevitable, disproportionate.  It pays no heed to us; it has not come
+on our account, but for itself, because of itself.  It ignores us
+completely.  It is we who approach the event; we who, having arrived
+within the sphere of its influence, will either fly from it or face it,
+try a circuitous route or fare boldly onwards.  Let us assume that the
+event is disastrous: fire, death, disease, or a somewhat abnormal form
+of accident or calamity.  It waits there, invisible, indifferent,
+blind, but perfect and unalterable; but as yet it is merely potential.
+It exists entire, but only in the future; and for us, whose intellect
+and consciousness are served by senses unable to perceive things
+otherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it were
+not.  Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of a
+shipwreck.  The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; the
+rock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath the
+waves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month is
+slumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies.  Normally,
+were nothing written, had the catastrophe[3] not already taken place in
+the future, fifty passengers would have arrived from five or six
+different countries, and have duly gone on board.  But destiny has
+clearly marked the vessel for its own.  She must most certainly perish.
+And for months past, perhaps for years, a mysterious selection has been
+at work amongst the passengers who were to have departed upon the same
+day.  It is possible that out of fifty who had originally intended to
+sail, only twenty will cross the gangway at the moment of lifting the
+anchor.  It is even possible that not a single one of the fifty will
+listen to the insistent claims of the circumstance that, but for the
+disaster ahead, would have rendered their departure imperative, and
+that their place will be taken by twenty or thirty others in whom the
+voice of Chance does not speak with a similar power.  Here we touch the
+profoundest depths of the profoundest of human enigmas; and the
+hypothesis necessarily falters.  But is it not more reasonable, in the
+fictitious case before us--wherein we merely thrust into prominence
+what is of constant occurrence in the more obscure conjunctures of
+daily life--to regard both decision and action as emanating from our
+unconsciousness, rather than from doubtful, and distant, gods?  Our
+unconsciousness is aware of the catastrophe: it must be: our
+unconsciousness sees it; for it knows neither time nor space, and the
+disaster is therefore happening as actually before its eyes as before
+the eyes of the eternal powers.  The mode of prescience matters but
+little.  Out of the fifty travellers who have been warned, two or three
+will have had a real presentiment of the danger; these will be the ones
+in whom unconsciousness is free and untrammelled, and therefore more
+readily able to attain the first, and still obscure, layers of
+intellect.  The others suspect nothing: they inveigh against the
+inexplicable obstacles and delays: they strain every nerve to arrive in
+time, but their departure becomes impossible.  They fall ill, take a
+wrong road, change their plans, meet with some insignificant adventure,
+have a quarrel, a love affair, a moment of idleness or forgetfulness,
+which detains them in spite of themselves.  To the first it will never
+have even occurred to sail on the ill-starred boat, although this be
+the one that they should logically, inevitably, have been compelled to
+choose.  But the efforts that their unconsciousness has put forth to
+save them have their workings so deep down that most of these men will
+have no idea that they owe their life to a fortunate chance; and they
+will honestly believe that they never intended to sail by the ship that
+the powers of the sea had claimed.
+
+
+12
+
+As for those who punctually make their appearance at the fatal tryst,
+they belong to the tribe of the unlucky.  They are the unfortunate race
+of our race.  When the rest all fly, they alone remain in their places.
+When others retreat, they advance boldly.  They infallibly travel by
+the train that shall leave the rails, they pass underneath the tower at
+the exact moment of its collapse, they enter the house in which the
+fire is smouldering, cross the forest on which lightning shall fall,
+entrust all they have to the banker who means to abscond.  They love
+the one woman on earth whom they should have avoided, they make the
+gesture they should not have made, they do the thing they should not
+have done.  But when fortune beckons and the others are hastening,
+urged by the deep voice of benevolent powers, these pass by, not
+hearing; and, vouchsafed no advice or warning but that of their
+intellect, the very wise old guide whose purblind eyes see only the
+tiny paths at the foot of the mountain, they go astray in a world that
+human reason has not yet understood.  These men have surely the right
+to exclaim against destiny; and yet not on the grounds that they would
+prefer.  They have the right to ask why it has withheld from them the
+watchful guard who warns their brethren.  But, this reproach once
+made--and it is the cardinal reproach against irreducible
+injustice--they have no further cause of complaint.  The universe is
+not hostile to them.  Calamities do not pursue them; it is they who go
+towards calamity  Things from without wish them no ill; the mischief
+comes from themselves.  The misfortune they meet has not been lying in
+wait for them; they selected it for their own.  With them, as with all
+men, events are posted along the course of their years, like goods in a
+bazaar that stand ready for the customer who shall buy them.  No one
+deceives them; they merely deceive themselves.  They are in no wise
+persecuted; but their unconscious soul fails to perform its duty.  Is
+it less adroit than the others: is it less eager?  Does it slumber
+hopelessly in the depths of its secular prison: and can no amount of
+will-power arouse it from its fatal lethargy, and force the redoubtable
+doors that lead from the life that unconsciously is aware of all things
+to the intelligent life that knows nothing?
+
+
+13
+
+A friend in whose presence I was discussing these matters said to me
+yesterday: "Life, whose questions are more searching than those of the
+philosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curious
+problem to those you have stated.  I am wondering what the result will
+be when two 'lucks'--in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of which
+one is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling--meet and in
+some measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking?  Which
+will triumph over the other?  I soon shall know.  This afternoon I
+propose to take a step that will be of supreme importance to the person
+I value above all others in this world.  Her entire future may almost
+be said to depend upon it, her exterior happiness, the possibility of
+her living in accordance with her nature and her rights.  Now to me
+chance has always been a faithful and far-seeing friend; and as I
+glance over my past, and review the five or six decisive moments which,
+as with all men, were the golden pivots on which fortune turned, I am
+induced to believe in my star, and am morally certain that if I alone
+were concerned in the step I am taking to-day, it would be bound to
+succeed, because I am 'lucky.'  But the person on whose behalf I am
+acting has never been fortunate.  Her intellect is remarkably subtle
+and profound, her will is a thousand times stronger and better balanced
+than my own; but, with all this, one can only believe that she
+possesses a foolish or malignant unconsciousness, which has
+persistently, ruthlessly, exposed her to act after act of injustice,
+dishonesty, and treachery, has robbed her again and again of her due,
+and compelled her to travel the path of disastrous coincidence.  Be
+sure that it would have forced her to embark on the ship that you speak
+of.  I ask myself, therefore, what attitude will my vigilant,
+thoughtful unconsciousness adopt towards this indolent and sinning
+brother, in whose name it will have to act, whose place, as it were, it
+will take?
+
+"How, and where, is the momentous decision being at this moment arrived
+at, in search of which I shall so soon set forth?  What power is it
+that now, at this very moment, while I am speaking, is balancing the
+pros and cons, and decreeing the happiness or sorrow of the woman I
+represent?  From which sphere, or perhaps immemorial virtue, from what
+hidden spirit or invisible star, will the weight fall that shall
+incline the scale to light or to darkness?  To judge by outward
+appearance, decision must rest with the will, the reason, the interest
+of the parties engaged; in reality it often is otherwise.  When one
+finds oneself thus face to face with the problem which directly affects
+a person we love, this problem no longer appears quite so simple; our
+eyes open wider, and we throw a startled, anxious, in a sense almost a
+virgin glance, upon all this unknown that leads us and that we are
+compelled to obey.
+
+"I take this step therefore with more emotion, I put forth more zeal
+and vigour, than if it were my own life, my own happiness, that stood
+in peril.  She for whom I am acting is indeed 'more I than I am
+myself,' and for a long time past her happiness has been the source of
+mine.  Of this both my heart and my reason are fully aware; but does my
+unconsciousness know?  My reason and heart, that form my consciousness,
+are barely thirty years old; my unconscious soul, still reminiscent of
+primitive secrets, may well date centuries back.  Its evolution is very
+deliberate.  It is as slow as a world that turns in time without end.
+It will probably therefore not yet have learned that a second existence
+has linked itself to mine, and completely absorbs it.  How many years
+must elapse before the great news shall penetrate to its retreat?  Here
+again we note its diversity, its inequality.  In one man, perhaps,
+unconsciousness will immediately recognise what is taking place in his
+heart; in another, it will very tardily lend itself to the phenomena of
+reason.  There is a love, again, such as that of the mother for her
+child, in which it moves in advance of both heart and reason.  Only
+after a very long time does the unconscious soul of a mother separate
+itself from that of her children; it watches over these at first with
+far more zeal and solicitude than over the mother.  But, in a love like
+mine, who shall say whether my unconsciousness has gathered that this
+love is more essential to me than my life?  I myself believe that it is
+satisfied that the step I propose to take in no way concerns me.  It
+will not appear; it will not intervene.  At the very moment when I
+shall be feverishly displaying all the energy I possess, when I shall
+be striving for victory more keenly than were my salvation at stake, it
+will be tending its own mysterious affairs deep down in its shadowy
+dwelling.  Were I seeking justice for myself, it would already be on
+the alert.  It would know, perhaps, that I had better do nothing
+to-day.  I should probably have not the slightest idea of intervention;
+but it would raise some unforeseen obstacle.  I should fall ill; catch
+a bad cold, be prevented by some secondary event from arriving at the
+unpropitious hour.  Then, when I was actually in the presence of the
+man who held my destiny in his hands, my vigilant friend would spread
+its wings over me, its breath would inspire me, its light would dispel
+my darkness.  It would dictate to me the words that I must say: they
+would be the only words that could meet the secret objections of the
+master of my Fate.  It would regulate my attitude, my silence, my
+gestures; it would endow me with the confidence, the nameless
+influence, which often will govern the decisions of men far more than
+the reasons of reason or the eloquence of interest.  But here I am
+sorely afraid that my unconsciousness will do none of these things.  It
+will remain perfectly passive.  It will not appear on the familiar
+threshold.  In its obtuseness, impervious to the fact that my life has
+ceased to be self-contained, it will act in accordance with its ancient
+traditions, those that have ruled it these hundreds of years; it will
+persist in regarding this matter as one that does not concern me, and
+will believe that in helping my failure it will be doing me service;
+whereas in truth it will afflict me more grievously, cause me more
+sorrow, than if it were to betray me at the approach of death.  I shall
+be importing, therefore, into this affair, only the palest reflection,
+a kind of phantom, of my own luck; and I ask myself with dread whether
+this will suffice to counterbalance the contrary fortune which I have,
+as it were, assumed, and which I represent."
+
+
+14
+
+Some days later my friend informed me that his action had been
+unsuccessful.  It may be that this reverse was only due to chance or to
+his own want of confidence.  For the confidence that sees success ahead
+pursues it with a pertinacity and resource of which hesitation and
+doubt are incapable; nor is it troubled by any of those involuntary
+weaknesses which give so great an advantage to the adversary's
+instinct.  And there may probably be much truth also in his manner of
+depicting unconsciousness.  For truly, there are depths in us at which
+unconsciousness and confidence would seem to blend, and it becomes
+difficult to say where the first begins, or the second leaves off.
+
+We will not pursue this too subtle inquiry, but rather consider the
+other and more direct questions that life is ever putting to us
+concerning one of its greatest problems--chance.  This possesses what
+may be called a daily interest.  It asks us, for instance, what
+attitude we should adopt towards men who are incontestably unlucky; men
+whose evil star has such pernicious power that it infallibly brings
+disaster to whatever comes within the range--often a very wide one--of
+its baleful influence.  Ought we unhesitatingly to fly from such men,
+as Dr. Foissac advises?  Yes, doubtless, if their misfortunes arise
+from an imprudent and unduly hazardous spirit, a heedless, quarrelsome,
+mischief-making, Utopian or clouded mind.  Ill-luck is a contagious
+disease; and one unconsciousness will often infect another.  But if the
+misfortunes be wholly unmerited, or fall upon those who are dear to us,
+flight were unjust and shameful.  In such a case the conscious side of
+our being--which, though it know but little, is yet able to fashion
+truths of a different order, truths that might almost be the first
+flowers of a dawning world--is bound to resist the universal wisdom of
+unconsciousness, bound to brave its warnings and involve it in its own
+ruin, which may well be a victory upon an ideal plane that one day
+perhaps shall appeal to the unconsciousness also.
+
+
+15
+
+We ask ourselves, therefore, whether unconsciousness, which we regard
+as the source of our luck, is really incapable of change or
+improvement.  Have we not all of us noticed how strange are the ways of
+chance?  When we behold it active in a small town, or among a certain
+number of men within the range of our own observation, the goddess
+would seem to become as persistent as a gadfly, and no less fantastic.
+Her very marked personality and character will vary in accordance with
+the event or being whereon she may fasten.  She has all kinds of
+eccentricities, but pursues each one logically to the finish.  Her
+first gesture will tell us nothing; from her second we can predict all
+that she means to do.  Protean divinity that no image could completely
+describe, here she leaps suddenly forth, like a fountain in the midst
+of a desert, to disappear after having given birth to an ephemeral
+oasis; there she returns at regular intervals, collecting and
+scattering, like migratory birds that obey the rhythm of the seasons.
+On our right she fells a man and concerns herself with him no further;
+on our left she bears down another, and furiously worries her victim.
+But, though she bring favour or ruin, she will almost always remain
+astoundingly faithful to the character she has once and for all assumed
+in a particular case.  This man, for instance, who has been
+unsuccessful in war, will continue to be unsuccessful; that other will
+invariably win or lose at cards; a third will infallibly be deceived; a
+fourth will find water, fire, or the dangers of the street especially
+hostile; a fifth will be constantly fortunate or unfortunate in love,
+money matters, &c., and so to the end.  All this may prove nothing, but
+we may regard it at least as some indication that her realm is truly
+within us and not without; and that a hidden force that emanates only
+from us provides her with form and with vestment.
+
+Her habits at times will suddenly alter, one eccentricity producing
+another; some brusque change of front will give the lie to her
+character, to confirm it the instant after in a new atmosphere.  We say
+then that "luck turns."  May it not rather be our unconsciousness that
+is gradually developing, at last displaying some prudence, attention,
+and slowly becoming aware that important events are stirring in the
+world to which it is attached?  Has it gained some experience?  Has a
+ray of intelligence, a spark of will-power, filtered through to its
+lair and hinted at danger?  Does it learn, after years have flown, and
+trial after trial has had to be borne, the wisdom of casting aside its
+confident apathy?  Can external disaster arouse it from perilous
+slumber?  Or, if it always has known what was happening over the roof
+of its prison, is it able, after long and painful effort, at last, at
+the critical moment, to contrive some sort of crevice in the great
+wall, built by the indifference of centuries, that separates it from
+its unknown sisters; and does it thus succeed in entering the ephemeral
+life on which a part of its own life depends?
+
+
+16
+
+And yet we must admit that this hypothesis of unconsciousness will not
+suffice to account for all the injustice of chance.  Its three most
+iniquitous acts are the three disasters--the most terrible of all to
+which man is exposed--that habitually strike him before birth: I refer
+to absolute poverty, disease (especially in the shocking forms of
+physiological degradation and incurable infirmities, of repulsive
+ugliness and deformity), and intellectual weakness.  These are the
+three great priestesses of unrighteousness that lie in wait for
+innocence and brand it, on the threshold of life.  And yet, mysterious
+as their method of choice may appear, the triple source whence they
+derive these three irremediable scourges is less mysterious than one is
+inclined to believe.  We need not look for it in a pre-established
+will, in fatal, hostile, eternal, impenetrable laws.  Poverty has its
+origin in man's own province; and though we may marvel why one should
+be rich and the other poor, we are well aware that the existence, side
+by side, of excessive wealth and excessive misery, is due to human
+injustice alone.  In this wickedness neither gods nor stars have part.
+And as for disease and mental weakness, when we shall have eliminated
+from them what now is due to poverty, mother of most of our moral and
+physical sorrows, as well as to the anterior, and by no means
+inevitable, faults of the parents, then, though some measure of
+persistent and unaccountable injustice may still remain, this relic of
+mystery will very nigh go into the hollow of the philosopher's hand,
+and there he shall, later, examine it at his leisure.  But we of today
+shall be wise in refusing to allow our life to be unnecessarily
+darkened, or hedged round with imaginary maledictions and foes.
+
+As far as ordinary luck is concerned, we shall do well to believe, for
+the moment, that the history of our fortune (which is not necessarily
+the history of our real happiness, since this may be wholly independent
+of luck) is the history of our unconscious being.  There are more
+elements of probability in such a creed than in the assumption that the
+stars, eternity, or the spirit of the universe are taking part in our
+petty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage.  And this
+idea--even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter the
+character of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or of
+Venus--still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; and
+when we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperative
+duty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes.
+Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I know
+not what proud consolation in being able to tell ourselves that it
+issues solely from us, and that we are not the victims of a malign will
+or the playthings of useless chance that in suffering more than our
+brothers we are perhaps only recording, in time and space, the
+necessary form of our own personality.  And so long as calamity do not
+attack the intimate pride of man, he retains the force to continue the
+struggle and accomplish his essential mission: which is, to live with
+all the ardour whereof he is capable, and as though his life were of
+greater consequence than any other to the destinies of mankind.
+
+This idea is also more conformable to the vast law which restores to
+us, one by one, the gods wherewith we had filled the world.  Of these
+gods the greater number were merely the effects of causes that reposed
+in ourselves.  As we progress we shall discover that many a force that
+mastered us and aroused our wonder was only an ill-understood fragment
+of our own power; and this will probably become more apparent every day.
+
+And though we shall not have conquered the unknown force by bringing it
+nearer or enclosing it within us, there yet shall be gain in knowing
+where it abides and where we may question it.  Obscure forces surround
+us; but the one that concerns us most nearly lies at the very centre of
+our being.  All the others pass through it: it is their trysting-place:
+they re-enter and congregate there; and only in the degree of their
+relation to it have they interest for us.
+
+To distinguish this force from the host of others we have called it
+unconsciousness.  And when we shall have succeeded in studying this
+unconsciousness more closely, when its mysterious adroitness, its
+antipathies and preference, its helplessness, shall be better known to
+us, we shall have most strangely blunted the teeth and nails of the
+monster who persecutes us under the name of Fortune, Destiny or Chance.
+At the present hour we are feeding it still as a blind man might feed
+the lion that at last shall devour him.  Soon perhaps the lion will be
+seen by us in its true light, and we shall then learn how to subdue him.
+
+Let us therefore unweariedly follow each path that leads from our
+consciousness to our unconsciousness.  We shall thus succeed in hewing
+some kind of track through the great and as yet impassable roads that
+lead from the seen to the unseen, from man to God, from the individual
+to the universe.  At the end of these roads lies hidden the general
+secret of life.  In the meanwhile let us adopt the hypothesis that
+offers the most encouragement to our existence in this life; in this
+life which has need of us for the solution of its own enigmas, seeing
+that in us its secrets crystallise the most limpidly and most rapidly.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+[1] His history is concisely summed up by Dr. Foissac as follows:--"On
+the eighth Floreal of the year IV. the courier and postillion who were
+taking the mail from Paris to Lyons were attacked and murdered, at nine
+in the evening, in the forest of Senart.  The assassins were Couriol,
+who had taken a seat in the cabriolet by the side of the courier;
+Durochal, Rossi, Vidal, and Dubosq, who had come to meet him on hired
+horses; and lastly Bernard, who had procured the horses, and took part
+in the subsequent distribution of plunder.  For this crime, in which
+five assassins and one accomplice shared, _seven_ individuals, within
+the space of four years, mounted the steps of the guillotine.  Justice,
+therefore, killed one man too many: her sword fell upon one who was
+innocent; nor could he have been one of these six individuals, all of
+whom confessed their crime.  The innocent man was Lesurques, who had
+never ceased to declare that he was not guilty; and all his alleged
+accomplices disavowed any knowledge of him.  How then came this
+unfortunate creature to be implicated in an affair that was to confer
+so sad an immortality upon his name?  Fatality so contrived that, four
+days before the crime, Lesurques, who had left Douai with an income of
+eighteen thousand livres, and had come to Paris that he might give a
+better education to his children, happened to be lunching with a
+fellow-townsman named Guesno when Couriol came in and was invited to
+join them.  Suspicion having at once fallen upon Couriol, the fact of
+this lunch was sufficient to cause Guesno to be put under arrest for a
+moment; but as he was able to prove an alibi, the judge, Daubenton,
+immediately set him at liberty.  Only, as it was late, Daubenton told
+him to come the following day to fetch his papers.
+
+"In the morning of the eleventh Floreal, Guesno, on his way for this
+purpose to the Prefecture of Police, met Lesurques, whom he invited to
+accompany him; an invitation which Lesurques, who had nothing special
+to do, accepted.  While they were waiting in the antechamber for the
+magistrate to arrive, two women were shown in who had been asked to
+attend in connection with the affair; and they, deceived by Lesurques'
+resemblance to Dubosq, who had fled, unhesitatingly denounced him as
+one of the assassins, and unfortunately persisted in this statement to
+the end.  The antecedents of Lesurques pleaded in his favour; and among
+other facts that he cited to prove that he had not left Paris during
+the day of the eighth Floreal, he declared that he had been present at
+certain dealings that had taken place at a jeweller's named Legrand,
+between this last and another jeweller named Aldenoff.  These
+transactions had actually taken place on the eighth; but Legrand, on
+being requisitioned to produce his books, found that he had by a
+clerical blunder inscribed them under the date of the ninth.  He
+thought the best thing he could do would be to scratch out the nine and
+convert it into an eight.  He did this with the idea that he would
+thereby save his fellow-townsman Lesurques, whom he knew to be
+innocent, whereas he actually succeeded in ruining him.  The alteration
+and substitution were easily detected; from that moment the prosecution
+and the jury declined to place the least confidence in the eighty
+witnesses for the defence called by the accused; he was convicted and
+his property confiscated.  Eighty-seven days elapsed between his
+condemnation and execution, a delay that was altogether unusual at that
+period; but grave doubts had arisen as to his guilt.
+
+"The Directorate did not possess the right of reprieve; they felt it
+their duty to refer the case to the Council of Five Hundred, asking
+'whether Lesurques was to die because of his resemblance to a
+criminal?'  The Council passed to the Order of the Day on the report of
+Simeon; and Lesurques was executed, forgiving his judges.  And not only
+had he constantly protested his innocence, but at the moment the
+verdict was given Couriol had cried out, in firm tones, 'Lesurques is
+innocent!'  He repeated this statement both on the fatal hurdle and on
+the scaffold.  All the other prisoners, while admitting their own
+guilt, also declared the innocence of Lesurques.  It was only in the
+year IX. that Dubosq, his double, was arrested and sentenced.
+
+"The fatality that had attacked the head of the family spared none of
+its members.  Lesurques' mother died of grief; his wife went mad; his
+three children languished in insignificance and poverty.  The
+government, however, moved by their great misfortune, restored to the
+family of Lesurques, in two instalments, the five or six hundred
+thousand francs which had been so iniquitously confiscated; but a
+swindler robbed them of the greater part of the money.  Sixty years
+elapsed; of Lesurques' three children two were dead: one alone
+survived, Virginia Lesurques.  Public opinion had for a long time
+already proclaimed the innocence and the rehabilitation of her
+unfortunate father.  She wanted more; and when the law of the 29th June
+1867 was passed, authorising the revision of criminal judgments, she
+hoped that the day had at last come when she might proclaim this
+rehabilitation in the sanctuary of justice; but, by a final fatality,
+the Court of Appeal, arguing on legal subtleties, declared by its
+decree of 17th December 1868 that no cause had been shown for
+re-opening the case, and that Virginia Lesurques had not made good her
+claim to revision."
+
+It is as though one were enthralled by a horrible dream, in which some
+poor wretch was being delivered into the hands of the Furies.  Ever
+since the fatal meal, no less tragic than that of Thyestes, which
+Lesurques took at Guesno's house, events have been dragging him nearer
+and nearer the gulf that yawns at his feet; while his destiny, hovering
+above him like an enormous vulture, hides the light from those who
+approach him.  And the circles from above press magically forward to
+meet those from below: they advance, they contract, and then, uniting
+at last, their eddies blend and fasten upon what is now a corpse.
+
+Here, truly, the combination of murderous fatalities may well seem
+supernatural; and the case is typical, it is formidable, it is as
+symbolic as a myth.  But there can be no doubt that analogous chains of
+circumstances reproduce themselves daily in the countless petty or
+ridiculous mortifications of merely ordinary lives which are beneath
+the influence of an evil or malicious star.
+
+[2] The misfortunes of the Stuarts are well known; those of the
+Colignys are less familiar.  Of these last the author we have already
+cited gives the following lucid account:--"Gaspard de Coligny, Marshal
+of France under Francis I., was married to the sister of the Constable
+Anne de Montmorency.  He was reproached with having delayed by half a
+day his attack on Charles V., at a time when such might have been most
+advantageously offered, and with having thereby let slip an almost
+certain opportunity of victory.  One of his sons, who had been made
+Archbishop and Cardinal, embraced Protestantism, and was married in his
+red cassock.  He fought against the King at the battle of St. Denis,
+and fled to England, where, in the year 1571, a servant of his
+attempted to poison him.  He escaped, however, and, seeking
+subsequently to return to France, was captured at Rochelle, condemned
+to death, and executed.  The Admiral de Coligny, brother of the
+Cardinal, was reputed one of the greatest captains of his time: he did
+marvels at the defence of Saint-Quentin.  The place, however, was taken
+by storm, and he was made a prisoner of war.  Having become the real
+leader of the Calvinists, under the Prince de Conde, he displayed the
+most undaunted courage and extraordinary fertility of resource; neither
+his merit nor his military skill was ever called in question; and yet
+he was uniformly unsuccessful in every one of his enterprises.  In 1562
+he lost the battle of Dreux to the Duc de Guise; that of St. Denis to
+the Constable de Montmorency; and, finally, that of Jarnac, which was
+no less fatal to his party.  He endured yet another reverse at
+Montcontour, in Poitou, but his courage remained unshaken; his skill
+was able to parry the attacks of fortune, and he appeared more
+redoubtable after his defeats than his enemies in the midst of their
+victories.  Often wounded, but always impervious to fear, he remarked
+one day quietly to his friends, who wept as they saw his blood flow:
+'Should not the profession we follow cause us to regard death with the
+same indifference as life?'  A few days before the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew, Maurevert shot him with a carbine from a house in the
+cloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and wounded him dangerously in the
+right hand and left arm.  On the eve of that sanguinary day, Besme, at
+the head of a party of cutthroats, contrived to enter the admiral's
+house, and ran him several times through the body, then flinging him
+out of the window into the courtyard, where he expired, it is said, at
+the feet of the Duc de Guise.  His body was exposed for three days to
+the insults of the mob, and finally hung by the feet to the gibbet of
+Montfaucon.
+
+"Thus, though the Admiral de Coligny passed for the greatest general of
+his time, he was always unfortunate and always defeated; while the Duc
+de Guise, his rival, who had less wisdom but more audacity, and above
+all more confidence in his destiny, was able to take his enemies by
+surprise and render himself master of events.  'Coligny was an honest
+man,' said the Abbe de Mably; 'Guise wore the mask of a greater number
+of virtues.  Coligny was detested by the people; Guise was their idol.'
+It is stated that the Admiral left a diary, which Charles IX. read with
+interest, but the Marshal de Retz had it flung into the fire.  Finally,
+a fatal destiny clinging to all who bore the name of Coligny, the last
+descendant of the family was killed in a duel by the Chevalier de
+Guise."
+
+[3] It is a remarkable and constant fact that great catastrophes claim
+infinitely fewer victims than the most reasonable probabilities might
+have led one to suppose.  At the last moment a fortuitous or
+exceptional circumstance is almost always found to have kept away half,
+and sometimes two-thirds, of the persons who were threatened by the
+still invisible danger.  A steamer that goes to the bottom has
+generally fewer passengers on board than would have been the case had
+she not been destined to go down.  Two trains that collide, an express
+that falls over a precipice, &c., carry less travellers than they would
+on a day when nothing is going to happen.  Should a bridge collapse,
+the accident will generally be found to occur, in defiance of all
+probability, at the moment the crowd has just left it.  In the case of
+fires in theatres and other public places, things unfortunately happen
+otherwise.  But there, as we know, the principal danger does not lie in
+the fire, but in the panic of the terror-stricken crowd.  Again, a
+fire-damp explosion will usually occur at a time when the number of
+miners inside the mine is appreciably inferior to the number that would
+habitually be there.  Similarly, when a powder factory is blown up, the
+majority of the workmen, who would otherwise all have perished, will be
+found to have left the mill for some trifling, but providential,
+reason.  So true is this, that the almost unvarying remark, that we
+read every day in the papers, has become familiar and hackneyed, as: "A
+catastrophe which might have assumed terrible proportions was
+fortunately confined, thanks to such and such a circumstance," &c.,
+&c.; or, "One shudders to think what might have happened had the
+accident occurred a moment sooner, when all the workmen, all the
+passengers," &c.  Is this the clemency of Chance?  We are becoming ever
+less inclined to credit it with a personality, with design or
+intelligence.  There is more reason in the supposition that something
+in man has defined the disaster; that an obscure but unfailing instinct
+has preserved a great number of people from a danger that was on the
+point of taking shape, of assuming the imminent and imperious form of
+the inevitable; and that their unconsciousness, taking alarm, is seized
+with hidden panic, which manifests itself outwardly in a caprice, a
+whim, some puerile and inconsistent incident, that is yet irresistible
+and becomes the means of salvation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Buried Temple, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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