The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy Part 2

I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation from him. "What do you think {31} of yourself? What do you think of the world?... These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them.... In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark.... If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on G.o.d and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that _he_ is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pa.s.s in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."[5]

[1] An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities. Published in the New World, June, 1896.

[2] Compare the admirable page 310 in S. H. Hodgson's "Time and s.p.a.ce,"

London, 1865.

[3] Compare Wilfrid Ward's Essay, "The Wish to Believe," in his _Witnesses to the Unseen_, Macmillan & Co., 1893.

[4] Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.

[5] Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 353, 2d edition. London, 1874.

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IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?[1]

When Mr. Mallock's book with this t.i.tle appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the _liver_" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,--

"I come no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"--

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not what such an a.s.sociation as yours intends, nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness.

Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder ba.s.s-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find.

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I.

With many men the question of life's worth is answered by a temperamental optimism which makes them incapable of believing that anything seriously evil can exist. Our dear old Walt Whitman's works are the standing text-book of this kind of optimism. The mere joy of living is so immense in Walt Whitman's veins that it abolishes the possibility of any other kind of feeling:--

"To breathe the air, how delicious!

To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand!...

To be this incredible G.o.d I am!...

O amazement of things, even the least particle!

O spirituality of things!

I too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting; I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth....

I sing to the last the equalities, modern or old, I sing the endless finales of things, I say Nature continues--glory continues.

I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last."

So Rousseau, writing of the nine years he spent at Annecy, with nothing but his happiness to tell:--

"How tell what was neither said nor done nor even thought, but tasted only and felt, with no object of my felicity but the emotion of felicity itself! I rose with the sun, and I was happy; I went to walk, and I was happy; I saw 'Maman,' and I was happy; I left her, and I was happy. I rambled through the woods and over the vine-slopes, I wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I {34} worked in the garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at the indoor work, and happiness followed me everywhere. It was in no one a.s.signable thing; it was all within myself; it could not leave me for a single instant."

If moods like this could be made permanent, and const.i.tutions like these universal, there would never be any occasion for such discourses as the present one. No philosopher would seek to prove articulately that life is worth living, for the fact that it absolutely is so would vouch for itself, and the problem disappear in the vanishing of the question rather than in the coming of anything like a reply. But we are not magicians to make the optimistic temperament universal; and alongside of the deliverances of temperamental optimism concerning life, those of temperamental pessimism always exist, and oppose to them a standing refutation. In what is called 'circular insanity,' phases of melancholy succeed phases of mania, with no outward cause that we can discover; and often enough to one and the same well person life will present incarnate radiance to-day and incarnate dreariness to-morrow, according to the fluctuations of what the older medical books used to call "the concoction of the humors." In the words of the newspaper joke, "it depends on the liver." Rousseau's ill-balanced const.i.tution undergoes a change, and behold him in his latter evil days a prey to melancholy and black delusions of suspicion and fear. Some men seem launched upon the world even from their birth with souls as incapable of happiness as Walt Whitman's was of gloom, and they have left us their messages in even more lasting verse than his,--the exquisite Leopardi, for example; or our own contemporary, {35} James Thomson, in that pathetic book, The City of Dreadful Night, which I think is less well-known than it should be for its literary beauty, simply because men are afraid to quote its words,--they are so gloomy, and at the same time so sincere. In one place the poet describes a congregation gathered to listen to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral at night. The sermon is too long to quote, but it ends thus:--

"'O Brothers of sad lives! they are so brief; A few short years must bring us all relief: Can we not bear these years of laboring breath.

But if you would not this poor life fulfil, Lo, you are free to end it when you will, Without the fear of waking after death.'--

"The organ-like vibrations of his voice Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away; The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice Was sad and tender as a requiem lay: Our shadowy congregation rested still, As brooding on that 'End it when you will.'

"Our shadowy congregation rested still, As musing on that message we had heard, And brooding on that 'End it when you will,'

Perchance awaiting yet some other word; When keen as lightning through a m.u.f.fled sky Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry;--

"'The man speaks sooth, alas! the man speaks sooth: We have no personal life beyond the grave; There is no G.o.d; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth: Can I find here the comfort which I crave?

"'In all eternity I had one chance, One few years' term of gracious human life,-- The splendors of the intellect's advance, The sweetness of the home with babes and wife;

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"'The social pleasures with their genial wit; The fascination of the worlds of art; The glories of the worlds of Nature lit By large imagination's glowing heart;

"'The rapture of mere being, full of health; The careless childhood and the ardent youth; The strenuous manhood winning various wealth, The reverend age serene with life's long truth;

"'All the sublime prerogatives of Man; The storied memories of the times of old, The patient tracking of the world's great plan Through sequences and changes myriadfold.

"'This chance was never offered me before; For me the infinite past is blank and dumb; This chance recurreth never, nevermore; Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come.

"'And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth, A mockery, a delusion; and my breath Of n.o.ble human life upon this earth So racks me that I sigh for senseless death.

"'My wine of life is poison mixed with gall, My noonday pa.s.ses in a nightmare dream, I worse than lose the years which are my all: What can console me for the loss supreme?

"'Speak not of comfort where no comfort is, Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair!

Our life 's a cheat, our death a black abyss: Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair.'

"This vehement voice came from the northern aisle, Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close; And none gave answer for a certain while, For words must shrink from these most wordless woes; At last the pulpit speaker simply said, With humid eyes and thoughtful, drooping head,--

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"'My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus: This life holds nothing good for us, But it ends soon and nevermore can be; And we knew nothing of it ere our birth, And shall know nothing when consigned to earth; I ponder these thoughts, and they comfort me.'"

"It ends soon, and never more can be," "Lo, you are free to end it when you will,"--these verses flow truthfully from the melancholy Thomson's pen, and are in truth a consolation for all to whom, as to him, the world is far more like a steady den of fear than a continual fountain of delight. That life is not worth living the whole army of suicides declare,--an army whose roll-call, like the famous evening gun of the British army, follows the sun round the world and never terminates.

We, too, as we sit here in our comfort, must 'ponder these things'

also, for we are of one substance with these suicides, and their life is the life we share. The plainest intellectual integrity,--nay, more, the simplest manliness and honor, forbid us to forget their case.

"If suddenly," says Mr. Ruskin, "in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through their gap the nearest human beings who were famishing and in misery were borne into the midst of the company feasting and fancy free; if, pale from death, horrible in dest.i.tution, broken by despair, body by body they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest,--would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them; would only a pa.s.sing glance, a pa.s.sing thought, be vouchsafed to them? Yet the actual facts, the real relation of each Dives and Lazarus, are not altered by the {38} intervention of the house-wall between the table and the sick-bed,--by the few feet of ground (how few!) which are, indeed, all that separate the merriment from the misery."

II.