XXV
I returned, as I said, with a sense of serene pleasure and security tomy work; but that serenity did not last long. What I had seen withAmroth, on that day of wandering, filled me with a strange restlessness,and a yearning for I knew not what. I plunged into my studies withdetermination rather than ardour, and I set myself to study what is themost difficult problem of all--the exact limits of individualresponsibility. I had many conversations on the point with one of myteachers, a young man of very wide experience, who combined in anunusual way a close scientific knowledge of the subject with a peculiaremotional sympathy. He told me once that it was the best outfit for thescientific study of these problems, when the heart anticipated theslower judgment of the mind, and set the mind a goal, so to speak, towork up to; though he warned me that the danger was that the mind wasoften reluctant to abandon the more indulgent claims of the heart; andhe advised me to mistrust alike scientific conclusions and emotionalinferences.
I had a very memorable conversation with him on the particular questionof responsibility, which I will here give.
"The mistake," I said to him, "of human moralists seems to me to be,that they treat all men as more or less equal in the matter of moralresponsibility. How often," I added, "have I heard a school preachertell boys that they could not all be athletic or clever or popular, butthat high principle and moral courage were things within the reach ofall. Whereas the more that I studied human nature, the more did thepower of surveying and judging one's own moral progress, and the powerof enforcing and executing the dictates of the conscience, seem to mefaculties, like other faculties. Indeed, it appears to me," I said,"that on the one hand there are people who have a power of moraldiscrimination, when dealing with the retrospect of their actions, butno power of obeying the claims of principle, when confronted with asituation involving moral strain; while on the other hand there seem tome to be some few men with a great and resolute power of will, capableof swift decision and firm action, but without any instinct for moralityat all."
"Yes," he said, "you are quite right. The moral sense is in reality ahigh artistic sense. It is a power of discerning and being attracted bythe beauty of moral action, just as the artist is attracted by form andcolour, and the musician by delicate combinations of harmonies and theexquisite balance of sound. You know," he said, "what a suspension is inmusic--it is a chord which in itself is a discord, but which depends forits beauty on some impending resolution. It is just so with moralchoice. The imagination plays a great part in it. The man whosemorality is high and profound sees instinctively the approachingcontingency, and his act of self-denial or self-forgetfulness dependsfor its force upon the way in which it will ultimately combine withother issues involved, even though at the moment that act may seem to beunnecessary and even perverse."
"But," I said, "there are a good many people who attain to a sensible,well-balanced kind of temperance, after perhaps a few failures, from apurely prudential motive. What is the worth of that?"
"Very small indeed," said my teacher. "In fact, the prudential morality,based on motives of health and reputation and success, is a thing thathas often to be deliberately unlearnt at a later stage. The strangecatastrophes which one sees so often in human life, where a man by oneact of rashness, or moral folly, upsets the tranquil tenor of hislife--a desperate love-affair, a passion of unreasonable anger, a pieceof quixotic generosity--are often a symptom of a great effort of thesoul to free itself from prudential considerations. A good thing donefor a low motive has often a singularly degrading and deforminginfluence on the soul. One has to remember how terribly the heavenlyvalues are obscured upon earth by the body, its needs and its desires;and current morality of a cautious and sensible kind is often worse thanworthless, because it produces a kind of self-satisfaction, which is thehardest thing to overcome."
"But," I said, "in the lives of some of the greatest moralists, one sooften sees, or at all events hears it said, that their morality isuseless because it is unpractical, too much out of the reach of theordinary man, too contemptuous of simple human faculties. What is one tomake of that?"
"It is a difficult matter," he replied; "one does indeed, in the livesof great moralists, see sometimes that their work is vitiated byperverse and fantastic preferences, which they exalt out of allproportion to their real value. But for all that, it is better to be onthe side of the saints; for they are gifted with the sort of instinctiveappreciation of the beauty of high morality of which I spoke.Unselfishness, purity, peacefulness seem to them so beautiful anddesirable that they are constrained to practise them. While controversy,bitterness, cruelty, meanness, vice, seem so utterly ugly and repulsivethat they cannot for an instant entertain even so much as a thought ofthem."
"But if a man sees that he is wanting in this kind of perception," Isaid, "what can he do? How is he to learn to love what he does notadmire and to abhor what he does not hate? It all seems so fatalistic,so irresistible."
"If he discerns his lack," said my teacher with a smile, "he is probablynot so very far from the truth. The germ of the sense of moral beauty isthere, and it only wants patience and endeavour to make it grow. But itcannot be all done in any single life, of course; that is where thehuman faith fails, in its limitations of a man's possibilities to asingle life."
"But what is the reason," I said, "why the morality, the high austerityof some persons, who are indubitably high-minded and pure-hearted, is soutterly discouraging and even repellent?"
"Ah," he said, "there you touch on a great truth. The reason of that isthat these have but a sterile sort of connoisseur-ship in virtue. Virtuecannot be attained in solitude, nor can it be made a matter of privateenjoyment. The point is, of course, that it is not enough for a man tobe himself; he must also give himself; and if a man is moral because ofthe delicate pleasure it brings him--and the artistic pleasure ofasceticism is a very high one--he is apt to find himself here in verystrange and distasteful company. In this, as in everything, the onlysafe motive is the motive of love. The man who takes pleasure in usinginfluence, or setting a lofty example, is just as arid a dilettante asthe musician who plays, or the artist who paints, for the sake of theapplause and the admiration he wins; he is only regarding others as somany instruments for registering his own level of complacency. Everyone, even the least complicated of mankind, must know the exquisitepleasure that comes from doing the simplest and humblest service to onewhom he loves; how such love converts the most menial office into aluxurious joy; and the higher that a man goes, the more does he discernin every single human being with whom he is brought into contact a soulwhom he can love and serve. Of course it is but an elementary pleasureto enjoy pleasing those whom we regard with some passion of affection,wife or child or friend, because, after all, one gains something oneselfby that. But the purest morality of all discerns the infinitely lovablequality which is in the depth of every human soul, and lavishes itstenderness and its grace upon it, with a compassion that grows andincreases, the more unthankful and clumsy and brutish is the soul whichit sets out to serve."
"But," I said, "beautiful as that thought is--and I see and recogniseits beauty--it does limit the individual responsibility very greatly.Surely a prudential morality, the morality which is just because itfears reprisal, and is kind because it anticipates kindness, is betterthan none at all? The morality of which you speak can only belong to thenoblest human creatures."
"Only to the noblest," he said; "and I must repeat what I said before,that the prudential morality is useless, because it begins at the wrongend, and is set upon self throughout. I must say deliberately that thesoul which loves unreasonably and unwisely, which even yields itself tothe passion of others for the pleasure it gives rather than for thepleasure it receives--the thriftless, lavish, good-natured,affectionate people, who are said to make such a mess of theirlives--are far higher in the scale of hope than the cautiouslyrespectable, the prudently kind, the selfishly pure. There must be nomistake about this. One must somehow or other give one's heart aw
ay, andit is better to do it in error and disaster than to treasure it foroneself. Of course there are many lives on earth--and an increasingnumber as the world develops--which are generous and noble andunselfish, without any sacrifice of purity or self-respect. But theessence of morality is giving, and not receiving, or even practising;the point is free choice, and not compulsion; and if one cannot give_because_ one loves, one must give _until_ one loves."
The Child of the Dawn Page 27
