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Wisdom and Destiny, essay(s) by Maurice Maeterlinck |
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_ 44. But if it be not our reason that chooses what suffering shall bring us, whereby is the choice then made? By the life we have lived till then, the life that has moulded our soul. Wisdom matures but slowly; her fruits shall not quickly be gathered. If my life has not been as that of Paulus Aemilius, there shall be no comfort for me in the thoughts whereby he was consoled, not though every sage in the world were to come and repeat them to me. The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought--above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune. When Thomas Carlyle (a sage, although somewhat morbid) lost the wife he had tenderly loved, with whom he had lived forty years, then did his sorrow too, with marvellous exactness, become as had been the bygone life of his love. And therefore was this sorrow of his majestic and vast; consoling and torturing alike in the midst of his self-reproach, his regret, and his tenderness--as might be meditation or prayer on the shore of a gloomy sea. In the sorrow that floods our heart we have, as it were, a synthetic presentment of all the days that are gone; and as these were, so shall our sorrow be poignant, or tender and gentle. If there be in my life no noble or generous deeds that memory can bring back to me, then, at the inevitable moment when memory melts into tears, must these tears, too, be bereft of all that is generous or noble. For tears in themselves have no colour, that they may the better reflect the past life of our soul; and this reflection becomes our chastisement or our reward. There is but one thing that never can turn into suffering, and that is the good we have done. When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love--which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others--call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born. Sorrow is just, above all; and even as the cast stands ready awaiting the molten bronze, so is our whole life expectant of the hour of sorrow, for it is then we receive our wage. 45. Here, standing close to the mightiest pillar of destiny's throne, we may see once again how restricted her power becomes on such as surpass her in wisdom. For she is barbarian still, and many men tower above her. The commonplace life still supplies her with weapons, which today are old-fashioned and crude. Her mode of attack, in exterior life, is as it always has been, as it was in Oedipus' days. She shoots like a blear-eyed bow-man, aiming straight ahead of her; but if the target be raised somewhat higher than usual, her arrows fall harmless to earth. Suffering, sorrow, tears, regrets--these words, that vary so slightly in meaning, are names that we give to emotions which in no two men are alike. If we probe to the heart of these words, these emotions, we find they are only the track that is left by our faults; and there where these faults were noble (for there are noble faults as there are mean or trivial virtues) our sorrow will be nearer akin to veritable happiness than the happiness of those whose consciousness still is confined within narrowest limits. Would Carlyle have desired to exchange the magnificent sorrow that flooded his soul, and blossomed so tenderly there, for the conjugal joys, superficial and sunless, of his happiest neighbour in Chelsea? And was not Ernest Renan's grief, when Henriette, his sister, died, more grateful to the soul than the absence of grief in the thousands of others who have no love to give to a sister? Shall our pity go forth to him who, at times, will weep on the shore of an infinite sea, or to the other who smiles all his life, without cause, alone in his little room? "Happiness, sorrow"--could we only escape from ourselves for one instant and taste of the hero's sadness, would there be many content to return to their own superficial delights? Do happiness and sorrow, then, only exist in ourselves, and that even when they seem to come from without? All that surrounds us will turn to angel or devil, according as our heart may be. Joan of Arc held communion with saints, Macbeth with witches, and yet were the voices the same. The destiny whereat we murmur may be other, perhaps, than we think. She has only the weapons we give her; she is neither just nor unjust, nor does it lie in her province to deliver sentence on man. She whom we take to be goddess, is a disguised messenger only, come very simply to warn us on certain days of our life that the hour has sounded at last when we needs must judge ourselves. 46. Men of inferior degree, it is true, are not given to judging themselves, and therefore is it that fate passes judgment upon them. They are the slaves of a destiny of almost unvarying sternness, for it is only when man has been judged by himself that destiny can be transformed. Men such as these will not master, or alter within them, the event that they meet; nay, they themselves become morally transformed by the very first thing that draws near them. If misfortune befall them, they grovel before it and stoop down to its level; and misfortune, with them, would seem always to wear its poorest and commonest aspect. They see the finger of fate in every least thing that may happen--be it choice of profession, a friendship that greets them, a woman who passes, and smiles. To them chance and destiny always are one; but chance will be seldom propitious if accepted as destiny. Hostile forces at once take possession of all that is vacant within us, nor filled by the strength of our soul; and whatever is void in the heart or the mind becomes a fountain of fatal influence. The Margaret of Goethe and Ophelia of Shakespeare had perforce to yield meekly to fate, for they were so feeble that each gesture they witnessed seemed fate's own gesture to them. But yet, had they only possessed some fragment of Antigone's strength--the Antigone of Sophocles--would they not then have transformed the destinies of Hamlet and Faust as well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, can this ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that we think of it, the clearer does it become that there could be one destiny only that might truly be said to triumph over man, the one that might have the power loudly to cry unto all, "From this day onward there shall come no more strength to thy soul, neither strength nor ennoblement." But is there a destiny in the world empowered to hold such language? 47. And yet virtue often is chastised, and the advent of misfortune hastened, by the soul's very strength; for the greater our love may be, the greater the surface becomes we expose to majestic sorrow; wherefore none the less does the sage never cease his endeavours to enlarge this beautiful surface. Yes, it must be admitted, destiny is not always content to crouch in the darkness; her ice-cold hands will at times go prowling in the light, and seize on more beautiful victims. The tragic name of Antigone has already escaped me; and there will, doubtless, be many will say, "She surely fell victim to destiny, all her great force notwithstanding; and is she not the instance we long have been seeking in vain?" It cannot be gainsaid: Antigone fell into the hands of the ruthless goddess, for the reason that there lay in her soul three times the strength of any ordinary woman. She died; for fate had contrived it so that she had to choose between death and what seemed to her a sister's imperative duty. She suddenly found herself wedged between death and love--love of the purest and most disinterested kind, its object being a shade she would never behold on earth. And if destiny thus has enabled to lure her into the murderous angle that duty and death had formed, it was only because her soul, that was loftier far than the soul of the others, saw, stretching before it, the insurmountable barrier of duty--that her poor sister Ismene could not see, even when it was shown her. And, at that moment, as they both stood there on the threshold of the palace, the same voices spoke to them; Antigone listening only to the voice from above, wherefore she died; Ismene unconscious of any save that which came from below--and she lived. But instil into Antigone's soul something of the weakness that paralysed Ophelia and Margaret, would destiny then have thought it of service to beckon to death as the daughter of Oedipus issued from the doorway of Creon's palace? It was, therefore, solely because of the strength of her soul that destiny was able to triumph. And, indeed, it is this that consoles the wise and the just--the heroes; destiny can vanquish them only by the good she compels them to do. Other men are like cities with hundred gates, that she finds unguarded and open; but the upright man is a fortified city, with the one gate only--of light; and this gate remains closed till love be induced to knock, and to crave admission. Other men she compels to obey her; and destiny, doing her will, wills nothing but evil; but would she subdue the upright, she needs must desire noble acts. Darkness then will no longer enwrap her approach. The upright man is secure in the light that enfolds him; and only by a light more radiant still can she hope to prevail. Destiny then will become more beautiful still than her victim. Ordinary men she will place between personal sorrow and the misfortune of others; but to master the hero or saint, she must cause him to choose between the happiness of others and the grief that shall fall on himself. Ordinary men she lays siege to with the aid of all that is ugly; against the others she perforce must enlist whatever is noblest on earth. Against the first she has thousands of weapons, the very stones in the road becoming engines of mischief; but the others she can only attack with one irresistible sword, the gleaming sword of duty and truth. In Antigone's story is found the whole tale of destiny's empire on wisdom. Jesus who died for us, Curtius who leaped into the gulf, Socrates who refused to desist from his teaching, the sister of charity who yields up her life to tending the sick, the humble wayfarer who perishes seeking to rescue his fellows from death--all these have been forced to choose, all these bear the mark of Antigone's glorious wound on their breast. For truly those who live in the light have their magnificent perils also; and wisdom has danger for such as shrink from self-sacrifice, though it may be that they who shrink from self-sacrifice are perhaps not very wise. 48. Pronounce the word "destiny," and in the minds of all men an image arises of gloom and of terror--of death. In their thoughts they regard it, instinctively, as the lane that leads straight to the tomb. Most often, indeed, it is only the name that they give unto death, when its hand is not visible yet. It is death that looms in the future, the shadow of death upon life. "None can escape his destiny" we often exclaim when we hear of death lying in wait for the traveller at the bend of the road. But were the traveller to encounter happiness instead, we would never ascribe this to destiny; if we did, we should have in our mind a far different goddess. And yet, are not joys to be met with on the highways of life that are greater than any misfortune, more momentous even than death? May a happiness not be encountered that the eye cannot see? and is it not of the nature of happiness to be less manifest than misfortune, to become ever less apparent to the eye as it reaches loftier heights? But to this we refuse to pay heed. The whole village, the town, will flock to the spot where some wretched adventure takes place; but there are none will pause for an instant and let their eyes rest on a kiss, or a vision of beauty that gladdens the soul, a ray of love that illumines the heart. And yet may the kiss be productive of joy no less great than the pain that follows a wound. We are unjust; we never associate destiny with happiness; and if we do not regard it as being inseparable from death, it is only to connect it with disaster even greater than death itself. 49. Were I to refer to the destiny of OEdipus, Joan of Arc, Agamemnon, you would give not a thought to their lives, but only behold the last moments of all, the pathway of death. You would stoutly maintain that their destiny was of the saddest, for that their end was sad. You forget, however, that death can never be happy; but nevertheless it is thus we are given to judging of life. It is as though death swallowed all; and should accident suddenly end thirty years Lot unclouded joy, the thirty years would be hidden away from our eyes by the gloom of one sorrowful hour. 50. It is wrong to think of destiny only in connection with death and disaster. When shall we cease to believe that death, and not life, is important; that misfortune is greater than happiness? Why, when we try to sum up a man's destiny, keep our eyes fixed only on the tears that he shed, and never on the smiles of his joy? Where have we learned that death fixes the value of life, and not life that of death? We deplore the destiny of Socrates, Duncart, Antigone, and many others whose lives were noble; we deplore; their destiny because their end was sudden and cruel; and we are fain to admit that misfortune prevails over wisdom and virtue alike. But, first of all, you yourself are neither just nor wise if you seek in wisdom and justice aught else but wisdom and justice alone. And further, what right have we thus to sum up an entire existence in the one hour of death? Why conclude, from the fact that Socrates and Antigone met with unhappy ends, that it was their wisdom or virtue brought unhappiness to them? Does death occupy more space in life than birth? Yet do you not take the sage's birth into account as you ponder over his destiny. Happiness or unhappiness arises from all that we do from the day of our birth to the day of our death; and it is not in death, but indeed in the days and the years that precede it, that we can discover a man's true happiness or sorrow--in a word, his destiny. We seem to imagine that the sage, whose terrible death is written in history, spent all his life in sad anticipation of the end his wisdom prepared; whereas in reality, the thought of death troubles the wise far less than it troubles the wicked. Socrates had far less cause than Macbeth to dread an unhappy end. And unhappy as his death may have been, it at least had not darkened his life; he had not spent all his days in dying preliminary deaths, as did the Thane of Cawdor. But it is difficult for us not to believe that a wound, that bleeds a few hours, must crumble away into nothingness all the peace of a lifetime. 51. I do not pretend that destiny is just, that it rewards the good and punishes the wicked. What soul that were sure of reward could ever claim to be good? But we are less just than destiny even, when it is destiny that we judge. Our eyes see only the sage's misfortune, for misfortune is known to us all; but we see not his happiness, for to understand the happiness of the wise and the just whose destinies we endeavour to gauge, we must needs be possessed of wisdom and justice that shall be fully equal to theirs. When a man of inferior soul endeavours to estimate a great sage's happiness, this happiness flows through his fingers like water; yet is it heavy as gold, and as brilliant as gold, in the hand of a brother sage. For to each is the happiness given that he can best understand. The sage's misfortune may often resemble the one that befalls other men; but his happiness has nothing in common with that which he who is not wise terms happiness. In happiness there are far more regions unknown than there are in misfortune. The voice of misfortune is ever the same; happiness becomes the more silent as it penetrates deeper. When we put our misfortunes into one scale of the balance, each of us lays, in the other, all that he deems to be happiness. The savage flings feathers, and powder, and alcohol into the scale; civilised men some gold, a few days of delirium; but the sage will deposit therein countless things our eyes cannot see--all his soul, it may be, and even the misfortune that he will have purified. 52. There is nothing in all the world more just than happiness, nothing that will more faithfully adopt the form of our soul, or so carefully fill the space that our wisdom clings open. Yet is it most silent of all that there is in the world. The Angel of Sorrow can speak every language--there is not a word but she knows; but the lips of the Angel of Happiness are sealed, save when she tells of the savage's joys. It is hundreds of centuries past that misfortune was cradled, but happiness seems even now to have scarcely emerged from its infancy. There are some men have learned to be happy; why are there none whose great gladness has urged them to lift up their voice in the name of the silent Archangel who has flooded their soul with light? Are we not almost teaching happiness if we do only speak of it; invoking it, if we let no day pass without pronouncing its name? And is it not the first duty of those who are happy to tell of their gladness to others? All men can learn to be happy; and the teaching of it is easy. If you live among those who daily call blessing on life, it shall not be long ere you will call blessing on yours. Smiles are as catching as tears; and periods men have termed happy, were periods when there existed some who knew of their happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight whereof we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest happiness that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who think that what they have cannot be happiness; and therefore is it the duty of such as are happy, to prove to the others that they only possess what each man possesses deep down in the depths of his heart. To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of happiness. It were well if, from time to time, there should come to us one to whom fortune had granted a dazzling, superhuman felicity, that all men regarded with envy; and if he were very simply to say to us, "All is mine that you pray for each day: I have riches, and youth, and health; I have glory, and power, and love; and if to-day I am truly able to call myself happy, it is not on account of the gifts that fortune has deigned to accord me, but because I have learned from these gifts to fix my eyes far above happiness. If my marvellous travels and victories, my strength and my love, have brought me the peace and the gladness I sought, it is only because they have taught me that it is not in them that the veritable gladness and peace can be found. It was in myself they existed, before all these triumphs; and still in myself are they now, after all my achievement; and I know full well that had but a little more wisdom been mine, I might have enjoyed all I now enjoy without the aid of so much good fortune. I know that today I am happier still than I was yesterday, because I have learned at last that I stand in no need of good fortune in order to free my soul, to bring peace to my thoughts, to enlighten my heart." 53. Of this the sage is fully aware, though no superhuman happiness may have descended upon him. The upright man knows it too, though he be less wise than the sage, and his consciousness less fully developed; for an act of goodness or justice brings with it a kind of inarticulate consciousness that often becomes more effective, more faithful, more loving, than the consciousness that springs into being from the very deepest thought. Acts of this nature bring, above all, a special knowledge of happiness. Strive as we may, our loftiest thoughts are always uncertain, unstable; but the light of a goodly deed shines steadily on, and is lasting. There are times when deep thought is no more than merely fictitious consciousness; but an act of charity, the heroic duty fulfilled--these are true consciousness; in other words, happiness in action. The happiness of Marcus Aurelius, who condones a mortal affront; of Washington, giving up power when he feared that his glory was leading his people astray--the happiness of these will differ by far from that of some mean-souled, venomous creature who might (if such a thing may be assumed) by mere chance have discovered some extraordinary natural law. Long is the road that leads from the satisfied brain to the heart at rest, and only such joys will nourish there as are proof against winter's storms. Happiness is a plant that thrives far more readily in moral than in intellectual life. Consciousness--the consciousness of happiness, above all--will not choose the intellect as a hiding-place for the treasure it holds most dear. At times it would almost seem as if all that is loftiest in intellect, fraught with most comfort, is transformed into consciousness only when passed through an act of virtue. It suffices not to discover new truths in the world of thought or of fact. For ourselves, a truth only lives from the moment it modifies, purifies, sweetens something we have in our soul. To be conscious of moral improvement is of the essence of consciousness. Some beings there are, of vigorous intellect, whose intellect never is used to discover a fault, or foster a feeling of charity. And this happens often with women. In cases where a man and a woman have equal intellectual power, the woman will always devote far less of this power to acquiring moral self-knowledge. And truly the intellect that aims not at consciousness is but beating its wings in the void. Loss and corruption needs must ensue if the force of our brain be not at once gathered up in the purest vase of our heart. Nor can such an intellect ever know happiness; nay, it seems to invite misfortune. For intellect may be of the loftiest, mightiest, and yet perhaps never draw near unto joy; but in the soul that is gentle, and pure, and good, sorrow cannot for ever abide. And even though the boundary line between intellect and consciousness be not always as clearly defined as here we seem to assume, even though a beautiful thought in itself may be often a goodly action--yet, none the less will a beautiful thought, that springs not from noble deed, or wherefrom noble deed shall not spring, add but little unto our felicity; whereas a good deed, though it father no thought, will ever fall like soft bountiful rain on our knowledge of happiness. 54. "How final must his farewell to happiness have been," exclaims Renan, speaking of the renouncement of Marcus Aurelius--"how final must his farewell to happiness have been, for him to be capable of such excess! None will ever know how great was the suffering of that poor, stricken heart, or the bitterness the waxen brow concealed, calm always, and even smiling. It is true that the farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdom, and the surest road to happiness. There is nothing sweeter than the return of joy that follows the renouncement of joy, as there is nothing more exquisite, of keener, deeper delight, than the enchantment of the disenchanted." In these terms does a sage describe a sage's happiness; but is it true that the happiness of Marcus Aurelius, as of Renan himself, arose only from the return of joy that followed the renouncement of joy, and from the enchantment of the disenchanted? For then were it better that wisdom be less, that we be the less disenchanted. But what can the wisdom desire that declares itself thus disenchanted? Was it not truth that it sought? and is there a truth that can stifle the love of truth in the depths of a loyal heart? The truth that has taught you that man is wicked and nature unjust; that justice is futile, and love without power, has indeed taught you nothing if it have not at the same time revealed a truth that is greater still, one that throws on these disillusions a light more brilliant, more ample, than the myriad flickering beams it has quenched all around you, For there lurks unspeakable pride, and pride of the poorest kind, in thus declaring ourselves satisfied because we can find satisfaction in nothing that is. Such satisfaction, in truth, is discontent only, too sluggish to lift its head; and they only are discontented who no longer would understand. Does not the man who conceives it his duty to forswear all happiness renounce something as well that, as yet, has not turned into happiness? And besides, what are the joys to which we bid this somewhat affected farewell? It must surely be right to discard all happiness injurious to others; but happiness that injures others will not long wear the semblance of happiness in the eyes of the sage. And when his wisdom at length has revealed the profounder joys, will it not be in all unconsciousness that he renounces those of lesser worth? Let us never put faith in the wisdom or gladness that is based on contempt of a single existing thing; for contempt and renouncement, its sickly offspring, offer asylum to none but the weak and the aged. We have only the right to scorn a joy when such scorn is wholly unconscious. But so long as we listen to the voice of contempt or renouncement, so long as we suffer these to flood our heart with bitterness, so long must the joy we discard be a joy that we still desire. We must beware lest there enter our soul certain parasitic virtues. And renouncement, often, is only a parasite. Even if it do not enfeeble our inward life, it must inevitably bring disquiet. Just as bees cease from work at the approach of an intruder into their hive, so will the virtues and strength of the soul into which contempt or renouncement has entered, forsake all their tasks, and eagerly flock round the curious guest that has come in the wake of pride; for so long as renouncement be conscious, so long will the happiness found therein have its origin truly in pride. And he who is bent on renouncement had best, first of all, forswear the delights of pride, for these are wholly vain and wholly deceptive. 55. Within reach of all, demanding neither boldness nor energy, is this "enchantment of the disenchanted!" But what name shall we give to the man who renounces that which brought happiness to him, and rather would surely lose it to-day than live in fear lest fortune haply deprive him thereof on the morrow? Is the mission of wisdom only to peer into the uncertain future, with ear on the stretch for the footfall of sorrow that never may come--but deaf to the whirr of the wings of the happiness that fills all space? Let us not look to renouncement for happiness till we have sought it elsewhere in vain. It is easy to be wise if we be content to regard as happiness the void that is left by the absence of happiness. But it was not for unhappiness the sage was created; and it is more glorious, as well as more human, to be happy and still to be wise. The supreme endeavour of wisdom is only to seek in life for the fixed point of happiness; but to seek this fixed point in renouncement and farewell to joy, is only to seek it in death. He who moves not a limb is persuaded, perhaps, he is wise; but was this the purpose wherefor mankind was created? Ours is the choice--whether wisdom shall be the honoured wife of our passions and feelings, our thoughts and desires, or the melancholy bride of death. Let the tomb have its stagnant wisdom, but let there be wisdom also for the hearth where the fire still burns. 56. It is not by renouncing the joys that are near us that we shall grow wise; but as we grow wise we unconsciously abandon the joys that now are beneath us. Even so does the child, as years come to him, give up one by one without thinking the games that have ceased to amuse. And just as the child learns far more from his play than from work that is given him, so does wisdom progress far more quickly in happiness than in misfortune. It is only one side of morality that unhappiness throws into light; and the man whom sorrow has taught to be wise, is like one who has loved and never been loved in return. There must always be something unknown to the love whereto no other love has made answer; and this, too, will remain unknown to him whose wisdom is born of sorrow. "Is happiness truly as happy as people imagine?" was asked of two happy ones once by a philosopher whom protracted injustice had saddened. No; it is a thing more desirable far, but also much less to be envied, than people suppose; for it is in itself quite other than they can conceive who have never been perfectly happy. To be gay is not to be happy, nor will he who is happy always be gay. It is only the little ephemeral pleasures that forever are smiling; and they die away as they smile. But some loftiness once obtained, lasting happiness becomes no less grave than majestic sorrow. Wise men have said it were best for us not to be happy, so that happiness thus might be always the one thing desired. But how shall the sage, to whom happiness never has come, be aware that wisdom is the one thing alone that happiness neither can sadden nor weary? Those thinkers have learned to love wisdom with a far more intimate love whose lives have been happy, than those whose lives have been sad. The wisdom forced into growth by misfortune is different far from the wisdom that ripens beneath happiness. The first, where it seeks to console, must whisper of happiness; the other tells of itself. He who is sad is taught by his wisdom that happiness yet may be his; he who is happy is taught by his wisdom that he may become wiser still. The discovery of happiness may well be the great aim of wisdom; and we needs must be happy ourselves before we can know that wisdom itself contains all. _ |
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