A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 4

33.

Carlyle said to me: "I want to see some inst.i.tution to teach a man the truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present existence is capable; where's the use of sending him to study what the Greeks and Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the Greeks and Romans would have been what they were, if they had just only studied what the Phnicians did before them?" I should have answered, had I dared: "Yet perhaps the Greeks and Romans would not have been what they were if the Egyptians and Phnicians had not been before them."

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34.

Can there be _progress_ which is not _progression_-which does not leave a past from which to start-on which to rest our foot when we spring forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or obliterates the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or pulls down the memorials he has built by the way side. We cannot _get on_ without linking our present and our future with our past. All reaction is destructive-all progress conservative. When we have destroyed that which the past built up, what reward have we?-we are forced to fall back, and have to begin anew. "Novelty," as Lord Bacon says, "cannot be content to add, but it must deface." For this very reason novelty is not progress, as the French would try to persuade themselves and us. We gain nothing by defacing and trampling down the idols of the past to set up new ones in their places-let it be sufficient to leave them behind us, measuring our advance by keeping them in sight.

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35.

E-- was compa.s.sionating to-day the old and the invalided; those whose life is prolonged in spite of suffering; and she seemed, even out of the excess of her pity and sympathy, to wish them fairly out of the world; but it is a mistake in reasoning and feeling. She does not know how much of happiness may consist with suffering, with physical suffering, and even with mental suffering.

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36.

"Renoncez dans votre ame, et renoncez y fermement, une fois pour toutes, a vouloir vous connaitre au-dela de cette existence pa.s.sagere qui vous est imposee, et vous redeviendrez agreable a Dieu, utile aux autres hommes, tranquille avec vous-memes."

This does not mean "renounce hope or faith in the future." No! But renounce that perpetual craving after a selfish interest in the unrevealed future life which takes the true relish from the duties and the pleasures of this. We can conceive of no future life which is not a continuation of this: to antic.i.p.ate in that _future_ life, _another_ life, a _different_ life; what is it but to call in doubt our individual ident.i.ty?

If we pray, "O teach us where and what is peace!" would not the answer be, "In the grave ye shall have it-not before?" Yet is it not strange that those who believe most absolutely in an after-life, yet think of the grave as peace? Now, if we carry this life with us-and what other life can we carry with us, unless we cease to be ourselves-how shall there be peace?

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As to the future, my soul, like Cato's, "shrinks back upon herself and startles at destruction;" but I do not think of my own destruction, rather of that which I love. That I should cease to be is not very intolerable; but that what I love, and do now in my soul possess, should cease to be-there is the pang, the terror! I desire that which I love to be immortal, whether I be so myself or not.

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Is not the idea which most men entertain of another, of an eternal life, merely a continuation of this present existence under pleasanter conditions? We cannot conceive another state of existence,-we only fancy we do so.

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"I conceive that in all probability we have immortality already. Most men seem to divide life and immortality, making them two distinct things, when, in fact, they are one and the same. What is immortality but a continuation of life-life which is already our own? We have, then, begun our immortality even now."

For the same reason, or, rather, through the same want of reasoning by which we make _life_ and _immortality_ two (distinct things), do we make _time_ and _eternity_ two, which like the others are really one and the same. As immortality is but the continuation of life, so eternity is but the continuation of time; and what we call time is only that part of eternity in which we exist _now_.-_The New Philosophy._

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37.

Strength does not consist only in the _more_ or the _less_. There are different sorts of strength as well as different degrees:-The strength of marble to resist; the strength of steel to oppose; the strength of the fine gold, which you can twist round your finger, but which can bear the force of innumerable pounds without breaking.

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38.

Goethe used to say, that while intellectual attainment is progressive, it is difficult to be as good when we are old, as we were when young.

Dr. Johnson has expressed the same thing.

Then are we to a.s.sume, that to _do_ good effectively and wisely is the privilege of age and experience? To _be_ good, through faith in goodness, the privilege of the young.

To preserve our faith in goodness with an extended knowledge of evil, to preserve the tenderness of our pity after long contemplation of pain, and the warmth of our charity after long experience of falsehood, is to be at once good and wise-to understand and to love each other as the angels who look down upon us from heaven.

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We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

I observe, that in our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they _do_, which they _can_ help, than for what they _are_, which they _cannot_ help.

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39.

"Whence springs the greatest degree of moral suffering?" was a question debated this evening, but not settled. It was argued that it would depend on the texture of character, its more or less conscientiousness, susceptibility, or strength. I thought from two sentiments-from _jealousy_, that is, the sense of a wrong endured, in one cla.s.s of characters; from _remorse_, that is, from the sense of a wrong inflicted, in another.

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40.

The bread of life is love; the salt of life is work; the sweetness of life, poesy; the water of life, faith.

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41.

I have seen triflers attempting to draw out a deep intellect; and they reminded me of children throwing pebbles down the well at Carisbrook, that they might hear them sound.

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42.

A bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful that the bond does not become bondage.

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