The Pleasures of Life Part 31

[6] Tennyson.

[7] Swinburne.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DESTINY OF MAN.

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."--ROMANS viii. 18.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DESTINY OF MAN.

But though we have thus a sure and certain hope of progress for the race, still, as far as man is individually concerned, with advancing years we gradually care less and less, for many things which gave us the greatest pleasure in youth. On the other hand, if our time has been well used, if we have warmed both hands wisely "before the fire of life," we may gain even more than we lose. If our strength becomes less, we feel also the less necessity for exertion. Hope is gradually replaced by memory: and whether this adds to our happiness or not depends on what our life has been.

There are of course some lives which diminish in value as old age advances, in which one pleasure fades after another, and even those which remain gradually lose their zest; but there are others which gain in richness and peace all, and more, than that of which time robs them.

The pleasures of youth may excel in keenness and in zest, but they have at the best a tinge of anxiety and unrest; they cannot have the fulness and depth which may accompany the consolations of age, and are amongst the richest rewards of an unselfish life.

For as with the close of the day, so with that of life; there may be clouds, and yet if the horizon is clear, the evening may be beautiful.

Old age has a rich store of memories. Life is full of

"Joys too exquisite to last, And yet more exquisite when past." [1]

Swedenborg imagines that in heaven the angels are advancing continually to the spring-time of their youth, so that those who have lived longest are really the youngest; and have we not all had friends who seem to fulfil this idea? who are in reality--that is in mind--as fresh as a child: of whom it may be said with more truth than of Cleopatra that

"Age cannot wither nor custom stale Their infinite variety."

"When I consider old age," says Cicero, "I find four causes why it is thought miserable: one, that it calls us away from the transaction of affairs; the second, that it renders the body more feeble; the third, that it deprives us of almost all pleasures; the fourth, that it is not very far from death. Of these causes let us see, if you please, how great and how reasonable each of them is."

To be released from the absorbing affairs of life, to feel that one has earned a claim to leisure and repose, is surely in itself no evil.

To the second complaint against old age, I have already referred in speaking of Health.

The third is that it has no pa.s.sions. "O n.o.ble privilege of age! if indeed it takes from us that which is in youth our greatest defect." But the higher feelings of our nature are not necessarily weakened; or rather, they may become all the brighter, being purified from the grosser elements of our lower nature.

Then, indeed, it might be said that "Man is the sun of the world; more than the real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth gauge or measure." [2]

"Single," says Manu, "is each man born into the world; single he dies; single he receives the rewards of his good deeds; and single the punishment of his sins. When he dies his body lies like a fallen tree upon the earth, but his virtue accompanies his soul. Wherefore let Man harvest and garner virtue, that so he may have an inseparable companion in that gloom which all must pa.s.s through, and which it is so hard to traverse."

Is it not extraordinary that many men will deliberately take a road which they know is, to say the least, not that of happiness? That they prefer to make others miserable, rather than themselves happy?

Plato, in the Phaedrus, explains this by describing Man as a Composite Being, having three natures, and compares him to a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. "Of the two horses one is n.o.ble and of n.o.ble origin, the other ign.o.ble and of ign.o.ble origin; and the driving, as might be expected, is no easy matter." The n.o.ble steed endeavors to raise the chariot, but the ign.o.ble one struggles to drag it down.

"Man," says Sh.e.l.ly, "is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody."

Cicero mentions the approach of death as the fourth drawback of old age.

To many minds the shadow of the end is ever present, like the coffin in the Egyptian feast, and overclouds all the suns.h.i.+ne of life. But ought we so to regard death?

Sh.e.l.ly's beautiful lines,

"Life, like a Dome of many-colored gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments,"

contain, as it seems to me at least, a double error. Life need not stain the white radiance of eternity; nor does death necessarily trample it to fragments.

Man has, says Coleridge,

"Three treasures,--love and light And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death."

Death is "the end of all, the remedy of many, the wish of divers men, deserving better of no men than of those to whom she came before she was called." [3]

It is often a.s.sumed that the journey to

"The undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveler returns"

must be one of pain and suffering. But this is not so. Death is often peaceful and almost painless.

Bede during his late illness was translating St. John's Gospel into Anglo-Saxon, and the morning of his death his secretary, observing his weakness, said, "There remains now only one chapter, and it seems difficult to you to speak." "It is easy," said Bede; "take your pen and write as fast as you can," At the close of the chapter the scribe said, "It is finished," to which he replied, "Thou hast said the truth, _consummatum est_." He then divided his little property among the brethren, having done which he asked to be placed opposite to the place where he usually prayed, said "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," and as he p.r.o.nounced the last words he expired.

Goethe died without any apparent suffering, having just prepared himself to write, and expressed his delight at the return of spring.

We are told of Mozart's death that "the unfinished requiem lay upon the bed, and his last efforts were to imitate some peculiar instrumental effects, as he breathed out his life in the arms of his wife and their friend Sussmaier."

Plato died in the act of writing; Lucan while reciting part of his book on the war of Pharsalus; Blake died singing; Wagner in sleep with his head on his wife's shoulder. Many have pa.s.sed away in their sleep. Various high medical authorities have expressed their surprise that the dying seldom feel either dismay or regret. And even those who perish by violence, as for instance in battle, feel, it is probable, but little suffering.

But what of the future? There may be said to be now two princ.i.p.al views.

There are some who believe indeed in the immortality of the soul, but not of the individual soul: that our life is continued in that of our children would seem indeed to be the natural deduction from the simile of St. Paul, as that of the grain of wheat is carried on in the plant of the following year.

So long indeed as happiness exists it is selfish to dwell too much on our own share in it. Admit that the soul is immortal, but that in the future state of existence there is a break in the continuity of memory, that one does not remember the present life, and from this point of view is not the importance of ident.i.ty involved in that of continuous memory? But however this may be according to the general view, the soul, though detached from the body, will retain its conscious ident.i.ty, and will awake from death, as it does from sleep; so that if we cannot affirm that

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth, Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep," [4]

at any rate they exist somewhere else in s.p.a.ce, and we are indeed looking at them when we gaze at the stars, though to our eyes they are as yet invisible.

In neither case, however, can death be regarded as an evil. To wish that youth and strength were unaffected by time might be a different matter.

"But if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the consummation of life, just as of a play: from the fatigue of which we ought to escape, especially when satiety is super-added." [5]

From this point of view, then, we need