The Good Book

by A. C. Grayling

Lamentations

  Chapter 1

  1. When I was without comfort, and sorrowing; when the grief of life was present to me, and afflictions common to man were upon me, then I lamented, and said:

  2. We are born to suffer and die, and the days of our laughter are few in the land.

  3. Every joy we foresee has its cost in the loss that must follow, for nothing survives its hour, and the first to fade is the season of pleasantness.

  4. To love is to contract for sorrow, since one of two must depart first, and affections diminish and vanish.

  5. To love what is made of nature is to love what changes and passes; and yet we must love, and so we must suffer.

  6. Likewise to strive is to fail; even the taste of victory grows rank in the mouth, and success is fleeting;

  7. And yet we must strive, for what is man if he does not strive; and so we must suffer.

  8. To make and hold anything of value is to give hostages to the thieves of time, who owe us nothing in return but the promise to steal us too.

  9. At the road’s side lie possibilities of accident, disaster and disease;

  10. At the road’s end lie certainties of age and death; even from our first setting out we are beset.

  11. What is the life of man and woman, but labour and vexation, and an ever-uncertain future?

  12. What is the truth that accompanies life, other than that we must endure if we make no end before the end?

  13. By hope we live, and by reliefs: best in the conversation of a friend, worst in a pot of liquor; but only the ultimate relief of death relieves all.

  14. What is hope, but the illusion of possible good: for hope prolongs torments, yet offers itself as their only medicine.

  15. No one would be sick, or captive, bereft or bereaved, unloved or a failure, a victim or a scapegoat, lonely or afraid:

  16. Yet how rare is he who is not one or more of these at some time, passing as mankind must between the millstones of the months and years?

  17. It is vain to comfort the grieving, for grief must have its fill;

  18. Like the ashes of roses, or the roses’ shadows, that alone remain when their petals have blown, and litter the path behind.

  Chapter 2

  1. All that seems new is nothing but what the past has forgotten.

  2. All things have been tossed on the seas of time; some submerge, then are cast up again as novelty,

  3. Some drown and are lost for ever that were for mankind’s good, and some whose loss is for mankind’s benefit.

  4. So it is that envy and malice, and the cruelty and rapine of human to human, always seem of the times, but have been the coin of their exchange for ever.

  5. Sects and factions, divisions and quarrels, unforgiving separations of brother and brother, appear as today’s problems: but are older than amity.

  6. What is it that troubles our sleep, but the pangs of bitterness for what happened yesterday, and the fear that tomorrow will bring the same.

  7. It is the weight on the heart that presses out an acid lees, tainting all we drink for our burning thirst.

  8. Nothing begins or ends without this: that life starts in another’s pain, and ends in our own.

  9. Nothing is understood for its worth, until stolen away; making us poor, and the world a wilderness.

  10. The brief, effortful, confused span of existence between two nothings, burdened with care and trial, is a tale traced on water, a story written in dust.

  11. It is a wild theme, rife with sorrow, an empty theme, deformed with grief,

  12. A dark theme, full of falsehood, under a biting and bitter sky.

  13. Why live? Why live on? What is there that tomorrow promises so faithfully that yesterday has not hurt us with already?

  14. And they give answer who say: deceitful hope, that makes us continue into the narrowing corridor of the windowless future, as if it led to a garden.

  Chapter 3

  1. I have followed the bier to that opened oblong of earth, have heard the small rain fall on it, and felt my tears choking my throat and stinging my eyes,

  2. Even in the cold and grey of the funeral day I have felt the tears coursing on my cheeks.

  3. Why? Why? There are holes in the world, where she was, and where the unspoken words of kindness and love wait still to be said, but to the vacancy of the unretrievable past.

  4. Now the anger and silences, the misunderstandings and missed opportunities, grow so large that they overshadow the larger seasons of happiness, and blight them;

  5. At the last there was no time to undo the wrongs that were left, and with a final kiss to forgive, and establish the best parts of our love as its monument.

  6. The threnody of all loves devoured by ravenous time is ‘I wish, I wish’; yet this inevitability makes no difference to what we do beforehand:

  7. It is as if we say, in our folly and our ignorance or forgetfulness, ‘We have eternity, therefore I will be angry.’

  8. But there are no eternities other than grief while it lasts, no certainties other than that grief must come, no escape other than from life itself and what it asks us to endure.

  9. I have followed the bier to opened oblongs of earth more than once now, as the years accumulate and the tired travellers fall aside one by one.

  10. I see that rapacious death is a respecter neither of age nor of condition, though it best likes to choose those the good loved, to punish the goodness of the living.

  11. For they, living on, alone or deprived, with the thorn of memory, the abyss of mourning, the unfair demand to remake their world out of ruins of sorrow: they are death’s chief victims.

  12. At night, and in the still stretches of day, at waking, at lying down to wearying half-sleep, the black bat of grief closes its wings over us and stifles our breath;

  13. How unbearable, how inextinguishable by silence or utterance, is the weight of this stifling; how unlimited the horizon of suffering then, at its worst period.

  14. To live is to wait for grief, or to be the occasion for it, or to witness it, or cause it, or be changed by it, or die of it.

  Chapter 4

  1. My prime of youth is a frost of cares, my feast of joy but a dish of pain,

  2. My crop of corn is a field of tares, my wealth no more than dreams of gain;

  3. My day is fled, yet I saw no sun; and though I live, my life is done.

  4. My spring is past, but not yet sprung; the fruit is dead, with leaves still green;

  5. My youth is past, though I still young; I saw the world, myself unseen.

  6. My thread is cut, though not yet spun; and though I live, my life is done.

  7. I sought for death, it was the womb; I looked for life, it was a shade;

  8. I tread the ground, which is my tomb; and now I die, though just new made.

  9. The glass is full, yet my glass is run; and though I live, my life is done.

  Chapter 5

  1. Is nature spiteful, that we live such a brief span? Life hastens by, and ends just as we learn how to live it.

  2. Maybe the wise can make one lifetime into many, but the many make one lifetime into less;

  3. For so much of it is wasted, and wasted moreover on the trivial and passing, the momentary and empty.

  4. One person is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless;

  5. One person is besotted with wine, another is paralysed by sloth;

  6. One person is exhausted by ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others,

  7. Another, driven by the greed of the trader, hastens wearily over lands and seas in hope of gain;

  8. Some are tormented by passion for war and are bent either on inflicting danger or preserving their own safety;

  9. Some are worn out by servitude in thankless attendance upon the great;

  10. Many are kept busy in pursuit of other men’s fortunes or in complaining of their own;

  11. Many again, following no fix
ed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new;

  12. Some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but events take them unawares while they laze and yawn.

  13. So surely does all this happen that we cannot doubt the poet who says, ‘The part of life we really live is small.’

  14. For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time, wasted time.

  15. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth;

  16. Rather, they keep us low when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust for gain, reputation, position and indulgence.

  17. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release,

  18. Like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and there is no rest from the tumult.

  Chapter 6

  1. Do you think I speak only of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings.

  2. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers merely amount to suffering!

  3. And likewise, how many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of admirers and supplicants that crowd about them leave no freedom!

  4. In short, run through the list of citizens from lowest to highest – this one desires an advocate, this one answers the call,

  5. That one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence;

  6. No one asserts his claim to himself; everyone is wasted for the sake of another.

  7. Ask about famous people whose names are known everywhere, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them:

  8. One cultivates another, and this other cultivates yet another; no one is his own master.

  9. And then certain people show the most senseless indignation – they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience!

  10. But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of another’s pride when he has no time to attend to himself?

  11. Folly, and folly again, all is folly; the ceaseless, restless pursuit of nothing or little, until night engulfs them, and their place knows them no more.

  Chapter 7

  1. Though all the sages of history were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at human folly.

  2. We do not suffer anyone to seize our estates, and we rush to law or arms if there is the slightest dispute about the boundary of our property,

  3. Yet we allow others to trespass upon our lives; indeed, we ourselves lead in those who will eventually possess it.

  4. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each of us distribute his life!

  5. In guarding their fortunes people are often close-fisted, yet, when it comes to wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

  6. I should like to question anyone from the company of older men and women and say: ‘I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard towards the term of your years;

  7. ‘Come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much time you gave to moneylenders, visitors, lovers, patrons, clients;

  8. ‘How much time you gave to wrangling with your spouse, how much in hastening about on social duties.

  9. ‘Add the diseases caused by your own acts; add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused;

  10. ‘You will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.

  11. ‘Look back in memory and consider when you had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you intended,

  12. ‘How few when you were at your own disposal, how few when your face wore its natural expression, how few when your mind was unperturbed.

  13. ‘Consider what little you have really achieved in so long a life,

  14. ‘Consider how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing,

  15. ‘How much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire,

  16. ‘In the allurements of society; see how little of yourself was left to you;

  17. ‘And then you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

  18. ‘What is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live for ever; no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed.

  19. ‘You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply,

  20. ‘Though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.

  21. ‘You have all the fears of mortals and all the desire as if you were not mortal.

  22. ‘You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.”

  23. ‘And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it?

  24. ‘Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to business?

  25. ‘How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!

  26. ‘What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point which many do not even attain!’

  Chapter 8

  1. Alas! it is vain to exist: all existence is vain.

  2. This vanity finds expression in the whole way in which things exist;

  3. In the infinite nature of time and space, contrasted to the finite nature of individuals;

  4. In the ever-passing present moment; in the dependence and relativity of all things;

  5. In continual becoming without ever being; in constant wishing and never being satisfied;

  6. In the long battle which forms the history of life, where every effort is checked by difficulties.

  7. Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely the form in which we discover that effort is vain;

  8. It is the agent by which everything in our hands every moment becomes as nothing.

  9. That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as that which has never been.

  10. Hence a thing of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, because the latter alone seems real.

  11. A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after millions of years of non-existence:

  12. He lives for a while, and then again comes an equally long period when he exists no more.

  13. The heart rebels against this, and suffers at the thought.

  14. Of every event in life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was.

  15. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It makes us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away;

  16. This might lead us to believe that the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life,

  17. Because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought.

  18. Yet such a course might as well be called the greatest folly:

  19. For that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth serious consideration.

  20. The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the ever-fleeting present.

  21. It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion,

  22. And to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving.

  23. We are like
people running downhill, who cannot keep on their legs unless they run on, and will inevitably fall if they stop;

  24. Or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one’s finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to hurry on its way.

  25. Unrest is the mark of existence.

  26. In a world where all is unstable, and nothing can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change,

  27. Where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope;

  28. In such a world, happiness is inconceivable.

  Chapter 9

  1. The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic: looked at closely, they produce no effect.

  2. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance away.

  3. So, to gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is;

  4. And even though we are always living in expectation of better things,

  5. At the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.

  6. We look upon the present as something to be endured while it lasts.

  7. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have not been living, but merely waiting to live;

  8. They will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and allowed to pass them by unenjoyed, was the life they were expecting.

  9. Of how many people may it not be said that hope made fools of them until they danced into the arms of death!

  10. Then again, how insatiable a creature is a human being! Every satisfaction attained sows the seeds of some new desire,

  11. So that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.

  12. And why? Because no single thing can ever give satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless.

  13. Life presents itself as a task – the task of surviving, of maintaining life and a precarious equilibrium.

  14. Thus life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of fending off despair,

  15. Which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need.