Escape, and Other Essays Part 12

or when he says,

Some silent laws our hearts may make Which they shall long obey--

then he seems to uncover the very secrets of the world, and to speak as when in the prophet's vision the seven thunders uttered their voices. Only to-day I was working with a pupil; in his essay he had quoted Wordsworth, and we looked up the place. While I was speaking, my eye fell upon "The Poet's Epitaph," and I saw,

Come hither in thy hour of strength, Come, weak as is a breaking wave!

Those two lines of unutterable magic; he could not understand why I stopped and faltered, nor could I have explained it to him. But it was as Coleridge says,

Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes in holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of paradise.

It is just a mystery of beauty that has been seen, not to be explained or understood.

Of course there are people, there will be people, who will read what I have just written in an agony of rationality, and say that it is all rubbish. But I am describing an experience of ecstasy which is not very common perhaps; but just as real an experience as eating or drinking. I have had the experience before. I shall have it again; I recognise it at once, and it is quite distinct from other experiences. One cannot sit down to it as regularly as one sits down to a meal, of course. It is not a thing to be proud of, because I have had it as far back as I can remember. Nor am I at all sure what the effect of it is. It does not transfigure life except for the moment; and if I were in a dull frame of mind, it might not visit me at all, though it is very apt to come if I am in a sad or anxious frame of mind.

Then how do I interpret it? Very simply indeed; that there is a region which I will call the region of beauty, to which the view of life that I have called art does sometimes undoubtedly admit one; though as I have also said the view of which I speak is concerned with many perceptions which are not beautiful, and even sometimes quite the opposite.

If I were frankly asked whether it is worth while trying to think or imagine or thrust oneself into this particular kind of rapture, I should say, "Certainly not!" It is very doubtful if it could be genuinely attained unless it has been already experienced; and I do not believe in the wholesomeness of self-suggested emotions.

But I do believe most firmly that it is worth while for anyone who is interested in such effects at all to try experiments, by looking at things critically, hearing things, observing, listening to other people, reading books, trying in fact to practise observation and judgment.

I was visiting some printing works the other day. The great cylinders were revolving, the wheels buzzing, the levers clicking.

A boy perched on a platform by the huge machine lightly disengaged a sheet of paper; it was drawn in, and a moment after a thing like a gridiron flew up, made a sort of bow, and deposited a printed sheet in a box, the sides of which kept moving, so as to pat the papers into one solid pad.

I came away with the master-printer, and asked him idly whether the boy knew what book he was printing. He laughed. "No," he said, "and the less he is interested the better--his business is just to feed the machine, and it becomes entirely mechanical." I felt a kind of shame at the thought of a human being becoming so entirely and completely a machine; but the boy looked cheerful, well, and intelligent, and as if he had a very decisive little life of his own quite apart from the whizzing engine, for ever bowing over and putting a new sheet in the box.

But it is just that dull and mechanical handling of life which I believe we ought to avoid. It is harder to avoid it for some people than for others, and it is more difficult to escape from under certain conditions. But all art and all artistic perception is just a sign of the irresponsible and irrepressible joy of life, and an attempt, as I said at first, to perceive and distinguish and compare the quality of things. What I am here maintaining is that art is not necessarily the production of something artistic; that is the same impulse only when it rises in the heart of an inventive, accomplished, deft-fingered, eager-minded craftsman. If a man or a woman has a special gift of words, or a mastery of form and colour, or musical phrases, the pa.s.sion for beauty is bound to show itself in the making of beautiful things--and such lives are among the happiest that a man can live, though there is always the shadow of realising the beauty that is out of reach, that cannot be captured or expressed. And if it could be captured and expressed, the quest would vanis.h.!.+

But there are innumerable hearts and minds which have the perception of quality, though not the power of expressing it; and these are the people whom I wish to persuade of the fact that they hold in their hands a thread, which, like the clue in the old story, can conduct a searcher safely through the dark recesses of the great labyrinth. He tied it, the dauntless youth in the tale, to the ancient thorn-tree that grew by the cavern's mouth; and then he stepped boldly in, and let it unwind within his hand.

For many people, indeed for all people who have any part in the future of the world, the clue of life must be found in beauty of some kind or another; not necessarily in the outward beauties of colours, sounds, and words, but in the beauty of conduct, in the kind, sweet-tempered, pure, unselfish life. Those who choose such qualities do so simply because they seem more beautiful than the spiteful, angry, greedy, selfish life. There is a horror of ugliness about that; and thus beauty of every kind is of the nature of a signal to us from some mighty power behind and in the world.

Evil, ugly, hateful, base things are strong indeed; but no peace, no happiness, lies in that direction. It is just that power of distinguis.h.i.+ng, of choosing, of wors.h.i.+pping the beautiful quality which has done for the world all that has ever been done to improve it; and to follow it is to take the side of the power, whatever it may be, that is trying to help and guide the world out of confusion and darkness and strife into light and peace. It may be gratefully admitted, of course, that religion is one of the foremost influences in this great movement; but it also needs to be said that religion, by connecting itself so definitely as it does with ecclesiastical life, and ceremony, and theological doctrine, has become a specialised thing, and does not meet all the desires of the heart. It is not everyone who finds full satisfaction for all the visions of the mind and soul in a church organisation. Some people, and those neither wicked nor heartless nor unsympathetic, find a real dreariness in systematised religion, with its conventional beliefs, its narrow instruction, its catechisings, missionary meetings, gatherings, devotions, services. It may be all true enough in a sense, but it often leaves the sense of beauty and interest and emotion and poetry unfed; it does not represent the fulness of life. The people who are dissatisfied with it all are often dumbly ashamed of their dissatisfaction, but yet it does not feed the heart; the kind of heaven that they are taught awaits them is not a place that they recognise as beautiful or desirable. They do not want to do wrong, or to rebel against morality at all, but they have impulses which do not seem to be recognised by technical religion: adventure, friends.h.i.+p, pa.s.sion, beauty, the strange and wonderful emotions of life. The work of great poets and artists and musicians, the lovely scenes of earth, these seem to have no place inside systematic religion, to be things rather timorously permitted, excused, and apologised for. Men need something richer, freer, and larger. They do not want to s.h.i.+rk their duty or to follow evil; but many things seem to be insisted upon by religion as important which seem unimportant, many beliefs spoken of as true which seem at best uncertain. It is not that such people are disloyal to G.o.d and to virtue, but they feel stifled and confined in an atmosphere which dares not attribute to G.o.d many of the finest and sweetest things in the world.

Such a feeling is not so much a rebellion against old ideas, as a new wine which is too strong for the old bottles; it is a desire to extend the range of ideals, to find more things divine.

I do not believe that this instinct is going to be crushed or overcome; I believe it will grow and spread, and play an immense part in the civilisation of the future. I hope indeed that religion will open its arms to meet it, because the spirit of which I speak is in the truest sense religious; since it is concerned with purifying and enriching life, and in living life, not on base or mean lines, but with constant reference to the message of a Power which is for ever reminding us that life is full of fire and music, great, free, and wonderful. That is the meaning of it all, an increased sense of the largeness and richness of life, which refuses to be bound inside a gloomy, sad, suspicious outlook. It is all an attempt to trust G.o.d more rather than less, and to recognise the worth of life in wider and wider circles.

"Behold, this dreamer cometh," said Joseph's envious brethren, when they saw him afar off; "we shall see what will become of his dreams!" They conspired to slay him; they sold him into slavery.

Yet the day was to come when they stood trembling before him, and when he freely forgave them and royally entertained them. We can never afford to despise or deride dreams, because they are what men live by; they come true; they bring a great deliverance with them.

THE END