The Three Heron's Feathers Part 20

GEORGE MEREDITH ON THE SOURCE OF DESTINY.

If, as has so often been said, literature is an expression of life, surely we may study literature to discover the laws of life. Not all our writers, but all our masters, have given us records from which we may learn what has been discerned and accepted concerning life by the race.

The scientific study of our day has led men to consider genius from the modern point of view. Is genius a natural product? If so, whence comes it, and what are its laws? These are among the most interesting questions of the present time. Formerly, men contented themselves with calling the literary faculty a "gift," the result of "inspiration." Of late we have been told that it is a natural race impulse which finds expression in some individual. Personally, we believe genius to be the heated, pregnant condition of a great mind under the influence of a great enthusiasm. However our definitions of genius may differ, on one point we all agree. We are all sure that genius is true to life, that genius teaches us the truth.

In its formed philosophical theories it may err, but not in its perceptions of life. Sh.e.l.ley may teach atheistic views in 'Queen Mab,'

and he may err, for intellectual belief is a matter of opinion.

Nevertheless Sh.e.l.ley's inspired interpretation of life can but be accepted as real. George Meredith may teach in his 'Lord Ormond and his Aminta' doctrines of free love, resulting from an attempt to separate what can not be separated in our human lives,--the physical and the spiritual loves; and in doing this he may err. Nevertheless, in his inspired representations of life and character, coming not from thought alone but from his whole nature, Meredith cannot err.

Those of us who read thoughtlessly, without formed theory, accept literature as real. Have you never, when asked: "Did you ever know of a case of love at first sight?" answered carelessly: "Oh, yes! There's Romeo and Juliet, you know?" Or have you never instanced, as the most persuasive oration you ever heard, Mark Antony's speech in 'Julius Caesar?'

Thinkers who claim a natural mental origin for the literary gift must believe in its reality as a matter of course. Those who speak reverently of its "inspiration" claim a spirit of truth, not of error, for its parent. Even those who enjoy comparisons of the states of genius and insanity, ranging from Shakespeare, with his words: "The fool, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact" to the masterly modern treatment of John Fiske, agree that the sharp division line of truth and error separates the two. They confess that while the insane mind may accept hallucinations, the mind of genius deals only with the truth. The results of both are imaginative; only those of insanity are imaginary.

All thinkers, then, accept the masterpieces of literature as among life's real phenomena. Whether Meredith's novels hold this high place is at present a matter of opinion. For men do not know Meredith very well. A knowledge of his position on this question of Destiny will help us to learn whether or not he ranks among the elect.

In our great literature there has always appeared a close sequence between wisdom and success, righteousness and happiness, and, on the other hand, between the choice of moral evil and suffering. This sequence has been not merely expressed in words, but built into the very structure of the plot through the workings of the imagination kindled by genius. The law of this succession, and its relationship with other laws, philosophers have always been seeking. It is this search that has led men into the mazy discussions of freedom and fatalism. For in this law lies the crucial point of the question of human destiny.

'Beowulf,' our first epic, tells us not only much of the manner of life of our rude Saxon ancestors, but also much of their thought. The note of fatalism in its chord of life is no weak one. "A man must bear his fate," the hero says when about to go into a dangerous combat. Yet even in 'Beowulf' we find the contrasting element, the character choice appearing.

As a child boldly states a problem as though it were a solution, Beowulf navely says: "Fate always aids the undoomed man, if his courage holds out." This expression side by side of the two elements of the question has never been surpa.s.sed, and is, in its way, matchless.

Have we learned much more to-day? We cannot fail to recognize the duality of the truth, but have we been able yet to join the two sides into one, to discover the unity that surely lies behind the seeming contrast?

Each side of the question has been largely developed. Some, in a narrow spirit, have echoed merely Beowulf's, "Fate always aids the undoomed man"; while others, often as narrowly, have answered, "A man succeeds, if his courage holds out." Ever in our greatest literature the two elements have appeared side by side. The mystery has always been recognized.

That even Shakespeare is reverent before fate, yet believes in the influence of character on a man's life can easily be seen from words like Helena's in 'All's Well that Ends Well':--

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."

'Macbeth,' with its successive steps of unhappiness following one critical evil choice is sufficient proof of Shakespear's belief in the determining power of character. 'King Lear,' with its sad result of folly shows his belief in the influence of the critical foolish decision. In the uncrowned king's conversation with his fool, occur these words:

_Lear_. Dost thou call me fool, boy?

_Fool_. All thy other t.i.tles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

In Robert Browning literature has brought even up to the present time the old mystery, the ever continuing struggle between fatalism and freedom. But to him, as to most thinkers of his day, fate has become the instrument of a G.o.d, a divine Providence rules the world, while man, too, has his little realm of choice.

At the present time this discussion is carried to a greater extent than ever before. The one side finds its expression in our modern idealistic philosophy, the other in our modern sceptical science. Idealistic philosophy, since Kant, has been trying to lay the responsibility for all life upon the free moral choice. It has been seeking to prove that the spiritual is the source of life.

Modern science, on the other hand, with its keen, wide-opened eyes, has tried to lay all the necessary sequence of law, forgetting at times that law is but the explanation of the phenomena. Science sometimes refuses to consider such phenomena as require a new point of view, beyond the physical and mental,--a moral point of view. By this refusal to recognize the spiritual part of man, science attempts to avoid a second mystery. The mystery of the union of the physical and mental realms it has been forced, long since, to accept. It would shun the moral realms because that, too, entails its mystery of connection.

Once accept physical life, and science is, in so far, free from impa.s.sable gulfs. Once accept mental life and that realm also becomes capable of study. Let the free moral nature once be accepted, and again we shall have reached firm footing. But to cross between these realms by law, by reason, is impossible; for life, any kind of life, is its own only explanation.

While the problem of freedom becomes simple for one who, like Meredith, will take this view, there are many who will not or cannot do so, and the very impossibility of the question from reason's point of view makes the path a very labyrinth for them. We all try to solve the question, and different personalities arrive at different answers; but all are partial. They vary from the logical, but dead outcome of Swinburne: "There is no bad nor good," to the struggling faith of Omar Khayyam:

"The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, But here or there as strikes the Player goes; And he that toss'd you down into the Field, He knows about it all--He knows--He knows."

At such a time as this of ours it is especially helpful to study a writer like George Meredith, who far from ignoring the many sides of the problem, yet clings firmly to his faith in character. With no doubtful accent, he tells us that Character is the Source of Destiny.

As any great writer of the day must do, Meredith accepts much in the arguments of the fatalists. He does not refuse to see that nature and circ.u.mstances are strong to mould life. He recognizes the great power of environment and the absolute power, within its realm, of heredity.

Like Beowulf, like Shakespeare, like Browning, he is reverent before human destiny. Yet in spite of all this, he accepts the moral with its necessary result of freedom. He declares that, although the laws of necessity rule up to the crisis of the moral choice, that very choice sets all the laws of intellect and body working according to itself.

All the stronger for his acceptance of life's necessity becomes his belief in life's freedom. All the stronger for his concessions becomes his final dictum. The more intricate the machine, the greater its master's mind. The narrower the realm of choice, the greater power must that choice have, to move life as it does.

To show that the same peculiar mixture of belief in fatalism and in the determining power of character on life exists in Meredith's writings as in Beowulf and in Shakespeare, let me quote a few words from 'Evan Harrington':

"Most youths, like Pope's women, have no character at all, and indeed a character that does not wait for circ.u.mstances to shape it, is of small worth in the race that must be run."

Again he says:

"When we have cast off the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our claims on made chance: when the wild particles of this universe consent to march as they are directed, it is given them to see if they see at all that some plan is working out: that the heavens, icy as they are to the pangs of our blood, have been throughout speaking to our souls; and, according to the strength there existing, we learn to comprehend them."

That Meredith, although very reverent before human destiny, is not, on the other hand, one of those who lay the responsibility for their own lives on "the stars," or "fate," or "Providence," may be shown by a study of the characters into whose mouths he puts such sentiments.

In 'Rhoda Fleming' who is it but Algernon, "the fool," who says:

"I'm under some doom. I see it now. n.o.body cares for me. I don't know what happiness is. I was born under a bad star. My fate's written."

It is of Algernon, likewise, that the author says:

"Behind the figures he calculated that, in all probability, Rhoda would visit her sister this night. 'I can't stop that,' he said: and hearing a clock strike, 'nor that.' The reflection inspired him with fatalistic views."

In 'The Tragic Comedians,' who is it but Clotilde, "the craven," who lays the successive steps which lead to the tragedy in her life, now to fate, now to other people's power or lack of insight, now to Providence? She reaps, as Meredith plainly shows us, simply what she sows.

In 'Sandra Belloni,' it is Mr. Barrett, that sentimentalist of the better order, of which cla.s.s the author says: "We will discriminate more closely here than to call them fools," who lets his whole life be crushed with the melancholy thought that he is under the influence of some baneful star. His death, which he lets chance bring or keep away, is a fitting conclusion to his story. He shuts two pistols up together in the same case overnight, knowing that one of them is loaded, the other not. In the morning he takes out one, prepared to fire it upon himself, in case his beloved does not keep tryst. She does not come, he fires, the pistol happens to be loaded, and so comes death. It shows that the "star" of which he thought was not a real star burning clear in the high heavens. It was rather but a will-o'-the-wisp, born of the marshy exhalations of his own morbid brain. Meredith reverences the real star. He kindly ridicules the will-o'-the-wisp.

But there is still another cla.s.s of fatalists in Meredith's novels. He recognizes also the fatalism of youth. Such is that of the young Wilfrid in 'Sandra Belloni,' concerning whom the author informs us that we "shall see him grow." Meredith is too great a thinker not to see that this tendency toward fatalism does not belong merely to the "fool," the "craven," and the "sentimentalist," but that it is a tendency of our youth. We are all weak when we are growing, he a.s.sures us. Is not ours preeminently a growing age?

But we must not linger too long on the negative side of Meredith's belief. We have seen that he is willing to recognize that there is a wonderful, mysterious power governing human destiny. We have seen, also, that he does not side in the least with those who lay the responsibility for their own lives on fate. Let us seek for his positive message.

In the 'Adventures of Harry Richmond' he says:

"If a man's fate were as a forbidden fruit, detached from him, and in front of him, he might hesitate fortunately before plucking it; but, as most of us are aware, the vital half of it lies in the seed paths he has traversed."

This is certainly a very definite statement of a strong belief in a man's choice of his own destiny. Again, in 'Modern Love' we find the following:

"In tragic life, G.o.d wot, No villain need be! Pa.s.sions spin the plot; We are betrayed by what is false within."

"I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear; I lay it not on him, or fate.

Besides, he's d.a.m.ned. That man I do suspect A coward, who would burden the poor deuce With what ensues from his own slipperiness."

The main issue between freedom and fatalism lies in just this question: Is a man's life determined by what he is or by what he does? Does his nature, received through inheritance, moulded by circ.u.mstance, determine his acts and so his life? Or does his moral choice determine these?

Extreme fatalists declare that the former is true. Moralists, idealists, believers in freedom, support the latter view.

Now Meredith leaves us no doubt as to his position on the point. Again and again we see his characters choosing their lives. And their choices rest on no inherited nature, but on character. Thus our author declares, by his plots, as in plain words, that "Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."

As we have said, a writer's thought of life can be best understood from his plots. He builds life, consciously or unconsciously, as he believes that nature builds it. Does he let the righteous perish and the evil man prosper in the end? Then he either does not believe in this law of ours, or in its present successful working. Perhaps, like Victor Hugo, he teaches a higher law, that of self-sacrifice. Perhaps, like some little modern writers, he teaches a lower law of the temporary success, at times, of hypocrisy and deceit. Whatever he believes in and likes to think of, his structure will disclose.