More Pages from a Journal Part 17

We ought to endeavour to give our dreams reality, but in Reality we should preserve the dream.

If her unhappiness does not destroy my happiness, and if her happiness does not make me happy, I do not love her.

There are problems which cannot be solved, for directly we have stated them, as we suppose, they elude the statement and are outside. Who can say what is the meaning of the question, 'Does G.o.d exist?'

There is always a mult.i.tude of reasons both in favour of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them.

How beautiful is a rapid rivulet trying to clear itself from stirred-up mud.

The most foolish things we say are said from another person's point of view and not from our own.

On a siding at one of the stations on the Great Western Railway were a number of old engines waiting to be broken up. There they stood, uncleaned, their bright parts rusted and indistinguishable from the others. Some were back to back and some front to front. There they stood and saw the expresses rush past them with their new engines.

Went out this afternoon to call on C. and his wife. They are certainly the most cultivated people I know. They travel a good deal, and each of them can speak two or three languages besides English. They read the best books, and do not read those which are bad. Some friends were there, and I was entertained with intelligent criticism of literature, music, and pictures, and learned much that was worth knowing. But I came away unsatisfied, and rather dazed. On my way back--it was a singularly warm, clear evening in February--I turned in to see an old lady who lives near me. She was sitting wrapped up at her wide-open window, looking at the light that was still left in the south-west. I said, of course, that I hoped she would not take cold. 'Oh no,' she replied, 'I often sit here, and so long as I keep myself warm I come to no harm.

I cannot read by candlelight, and I am thankful that this room faces the south. I know the stars much better than when I was young.' I took the chair beside her, and for ten minutes neither of us spoke, but I was not conscious for an instant of the disagreeable feeling that silence must be broken, and search be made for something with which to break it. If two persons are friends in the best sense of the word, they are not uncomfortable if they do not talk when they are together. Presently she told me that she had received news that morning of the birth of a granddaughter. She was much pleased. The mother already had two sons and desired a girl. I stayed for about half an hour, and went home in debt to her for peace.

Bacon observes that whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion. Naturally so, because it is nearly certain to be something merely personal to ourselves.

Excepting in one word, the betrayal of Jesus, the defection of Peter, the examination before Pilate and Herod, and the crucifixion, are recorded, as Spedding notices, without any vituperation. The excepted word, not named by Spedding, is 'blasphemously' (Luke xxii.

65). {250}

Coleridge says that great minds are never wrong but in consequence of being right, which is perfectly true; but it may be added that they are also right through being wrong.

'When he is moderate and regular in any of these things, out of a sense of Christian sobriety and self-denial, that he may offer unto G.o.d a more reasonable and holy life, then it is, that the smallest rule of this kind is naturally the beginning of great piety. For the smallest rule in these matters is of great benefit, as it teaches us some part of the government of ourselves, as it keeps up a tenderness of mind, as it presents G.o.d often to our thoughts, and brings a sense of religion into the ordinary actions of our common life.'--(Law's Serious Call.) Men are restrained by fear of consequences, but it is Law's rule which gives strength and dignity.

Living in a certain way because Perfection demands it produces a result different from that obtained by living in the same way through fear of injury to health.

Man is the revelation of the Infinite, and it does not become finite in him. It remains the Infinite.

Luther says somewhere, 'Do not anxiously search for the pillars which are to keep the sky from falling.' Many of us have been afraid all our lives that the sky would fall, and have anxiously searched for the pillars. There are none, and yet the sky will not fall.

Idolatry is the wors.h.i.+p of that which is non-significant. The wors.h.i.+p of one G.o.d, as Coleridge says, may be idolatry.

What a man is conscious of, is not himself, but that which is not himself. Without a belief in the existence of an external world, I could not believe in my own existence.

The dialectic of Socrates is positive in so far as it shows the futility of reasoning as a means of reaching the truth. If we wish to know whether courage is knowledge, we must face imminent danger.

The omnipotence of G.o.d--that is to say, absolute omnipotence, a power which knows no resistance--is an utterly inconceivable abstraction. Yet much speculation is based on it.

There is a great reserve of incomprehensibility in all the few friends for whom I really care. It is better that it should be so.

What would a comprehensible friend be worth? The impenetrable background gives the beauty to that which is in front of it. The most unfathomable also of my friends are those who are most sincere and luminous.

Note on a picture.--The sea-sh.o.r.e; low cliffs topped with gra.s.s; a small cove; the open sea, calm, intensely blue; sky also deep blue, but towards the horizon there are soft, white clouds. On a little sandy ridge sit a brown fisher-boy and fisher-girl, immortal as the sea, cliffs, and clouds which are a setting or frame for them.

The strength of the argument in favour of a philosophy or religion is proportionate to the applicability of the philosophy or religion to life. If in all situations we find it ready, it is true.

Bacon observes that 'interpretations' of Nature, that is to say real generalisations elicited from facts by a just and methodical process, 'cannot suddenly strike the understanding' like 'antic.i.p.ations' collected from a few instances. I have often noticed that 'striking' is seldom a sign of truth, and that those things which are most true, the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables for example, do not 'strike.'

We foolishly exaggerate ingrat.i.tude to us. Ought we to require of those whom we have served, that they should be always confessing their obligations to us? Why should we care about neglect? 'Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His name,'

The wors.h.i.+p of the idol is often more pa.s.sionate than that of G.o.d.

People prostrate themselves in ecstasy before the idol, and remain unmoved in the presence of a starry night. A starry night does not provoke hysterics. The adoration of the veritably divine is calm.

'It is a sad thing,' said she, 'that so kind and good a man should be an infidel.' 'It is a sad thing to me,' said her terrible sister, 'that an infidel should be what you call kind and good.'

Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit. {254} Quoted by Montaigne (Of Presumption) from Lactantius.

Characteristic of Montaigne and true, so far that a man can know nothing thoroughly unless the knowledge be a necessity.

'Certainty of knowledge,' says Dr. Johnson in the Idler (No. 84), 'not only excludes mistake, but fortifies veracity. . . . That which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of conscience: of understanding, the lover of truth; of conscience, the sentinel of virtue.'

At the present day we are chiefly taken up with that which is beyond our grasp. Our literature is the newspapers, and nine-tenths of what we read in them morning and evening we do not understand.

Everybody is expected to take sides in politics, but not one person in a thousand can give an intelligible account of political questions. The difficulty of so doing is much increased by the absence of systematic information. We get leading articles and columns of telegrams, but seldom concise exposition or carefully edited and connected history.

An object is of importance to us in inverse proportion to the square of the distance, but men worry themselves about the news from China and will not give five minutes' thought in a week to their own souls or to those of wife or child. It is pathetic to see how excited they become about remote events which cannot affect their happiness one iota. Why should we not occupy ourselves with that which is definite when there is so much of it? Political problems confront us, but if they are too big for us, let us avoid them by every means in our power. If we are in doubt we ought not to vote. The question which we are incapable of settling will be settled better by Time than by the intermeddling of ignorance.

In religion, and science also, we dare not say I DO NOT KNOW. We must always be dabbling in matters on which we can come to no conclusion worth a rotten nut. We busy ourselves with essays on the dates and composition of the books of the Old Testament and cannot tell the story of Joshua or Saul; we listen to lectures on radium, or the probable exhaustion of the sun's energy, and have never learned the laws of motion. Few people estimate properly the evil of habitual intercourse with that which is vague and indeterminate.

The issues before us not being clearly cut and comprehensible, the highest faculties of our minds are not exercised. We lazily wander over the surface without coming to a definite conclusion. Perhaps we pick up by chance some irrational notion, which we defend with obstinacy, for we are more dogmatic concerning that which we cannot prove than we are concerning a truth which is incontrovertible. The former is our own personal property, the latter is common. One step further, and by constantly affirming and denying when we have no demonstration, lying becomes easy.

There is much which is called criticism that is poisonous, not because it is mistaken, but because it invites people to a.s.sert beyond their knowledge or capacity. A popular lecturer discusses the errors of Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Bronte, or George Eliot before an audience but superficially acquainted with the works of these great authors and not qualified to pa.s.s judgment upon them.

He is considered 'cheap' if he does not balance

'His wit all see-saw between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss.'