Books: The Philosophy of Despair
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David Starr Jordan >> The Philosophy of Despair
But that the pains more than balanced the joys, and that the indulgence
in unearned deceptions destroyed sooner or later all capacity for
enjoyment, man learned more slowly.
The joys of wine, of opium, of tobacco and of all kindred drugs are mere
tricks upon the nervous system. In greater or less degree they destroy
its power to tell the truth, and in proportion as they have seemed to
bring subjective happiness, so do they bring at last subjective horror
and disgust. And this utter soul-weariness of drugs has found its way
into literature as the expression of Pessimism.
"The City of the Dreadful Night," for example, does not find its
inspiration in the misery of selfish, rushing, crowded London. It is the
effect of brandy on the sensitive mind of an exquisitive poet. Not the
world, but the poet, lies in the "dreadful night" of self-inflicted
insomnia. Wherever these subjective nerve influences find expression in
literature it is either in an infinite sadness, or in hopeless gloom.
James Thompson says in the "City of the Dreadful Night":
"The city is of night but not of sleep;
There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain.
The pitiless hours like years and ages creep -
A night seems termless hell. This dreadful strain
Of thought and consciousness which never ceases,
Or which some moment's stupor but increases."
* * *
"This Time which crawleth like a monstrous snake,
Wounded and slow and very venomous."
* * *
'Lo, as thus prostrate in the dust I write
My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears -
But why evoke the spectres of black night
To blot the sunshine of exultant years!
"Because a cold rage seizes one at times
To show the bitter, old and wrinkled truth,
Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles
False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth."
All this, alas, is the inevitable physical outcome of the attempt to -
"Divorce old, barren Reason from my house
To take the daughter of the vine to spouse."
All subjective happiness due to nerve stimulation is of the nature of
mania. In proportion to its intensity is the certainty that it will be
followed by its subjective reaction, the "Nuit Blanche," the "dark brown
taste," by the experience of "the difference in the morning." The only
melancholy drugs can drive away is that which they themselves produce.
It is folly to use as a source of pleasure that which lessens activity
and vitiates life.
There are many other causes which induce depression of mind and disorder
of nerve. Where nerve decay is associated with genius and culture, we
shall find some phase of the philosophy of Pessimism. In fact,
cheerfulness is not primarily a result of right thinking, but rather the
expression of sound nerves and normal vegetative processes. Most of the
philosophy of despair, the longing to know the meaning of the
unattainable, vanishes with active out-of-door life and the consequent
flow of good health. Even a dose of quinine may convert to hopefulness
when both sermons and arguments fail.
For a degree of optimism is a necessary accompaniment of health. It is
as natural as animal heat, and is the mental reflex of it. Pessimism
arises from depression or irritation or failure of the nerves. It is a
symptom of lowered vitality expressed in terms of the mind.
There is a philosophical Pessimism, as I have already said, over and
above all merely physical conditions, and not dependent on them. But the
melancholy Jacques of our ordinary experience either uses some narcotic
or stimulant to excess, or else has trouble with his liver or kidneys.
"Liver complaint," says Zangwill, "is the Prometheus myth done into
modern English." Already historical criticism has shown that the Bloody
Assizes had its origin in disease of the bladder, and most forms of vice
and cruelty resolve themselves into decay of the nerves. It is natural
that degeneration should bring discouragement and disgust. But whatever
the causes of Pessimism, whether arising in speculative philosophy in
nervous disease or in personal failure, it can never be wrought into
sound and helpful life. To live effectively implies the belief that life
is worth living, and no one who leads a worthy life has ever for a
moment doubted this.
Such an expression as "worth living" has in fact no real meaning. To act
and to love are the twin functions of the human body and soul. To refuse
these functions is to make one's self incapable of them. It is in a
sense to die while the body is still alive. To refuse these functions is
to make misery out of existence, and a life of ennui is doubtless not
"worth living."
The philosophy of life is its working hypothesis of action. To hold that
all effort is futile, that all knowledge is illusion, and that no result
of the human will is worth the pain of calling it into action, is to cut
the nerve of effectiveness. In proportion as one really believes this,
he becomes a cumberer of the ground. It was said of Oscar McCulloch, an
earnest student of human life, that "in whatever part of God's universe
he finds himself, he will be a hopeful man, looking forward and not
backward, looking upward and not downward, always ready to lend a
helping hand, and not afraid to die."
Of like spirit was Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."
It is through men of this type that the work of civilization has been
accomplished, "men of present valor, stalwart, brave iconoclasts." They
were men who were content with the order of the universe as it is, and
seek only to place their own actions in harmony with this order. They
have no complaints to urge against "the goodness and severity of God,"
nor any futile wish "to remould it nearer to the heart's desire." The
"Fanaticism for Veracity" is satisfied with what is. Not the ultimate
truth which is God's alone, but the highest attainable truth, is the aim
of Science, and to translate Science into Virtue is the goal of
civilization.
The third question which Science may ask is the direct one. In what part
of the universe are you, and what are you doing? Thoreau says that
"there is no hope for you unless this bit of sod under your feet is the
sweetest to you in this world - in any world." Why not? Nowhere is the
sky so blue, the grass so green, the sunshine so bright, the shade so
welcome, as right here, now, today. No other blue sky, nor bright
sunshine, nor welcome shade exists for you. Other skies are bright to
other men. They have been bright in the past and so will they be again,
but yours are here and now. Today is your day and mine, the only day we
have, the day in which we play our part. What our part may signify in
the great whole we may not understand, but we are here to play it, and
now is the time. This we know, it is a part of action, not of whining.
It is a part of love, not cynicism. It is for us to express love in
terms of human helpfulness. This we know, for we have learned from sad
experience that any other course of life leads toward decay and waste.
What, then, are you doing under these blue skies? The thing you do
should be for you the most important thing in the world. If you could do
something better than you are doing now, everything considered, why are
you not doing it?
If every one did the very best he knew, most of the problems of human
life would be already settled. If each one did the best he knew, he
would be on the highway to greater knowledge, and therefore still better
action. The redemption of the world is waiting only for each man to
"lend a hand."
It does not matter if the greatest thing for you to do be not in itself
great. The best preparation for greatness comes in doing faithfully the
little things that lie nearest. The nearest is the greatest in most
human lives.
Even washing one's own face may be the greatest present duty. The
ascetics of the past, who scorned cleanliness in the search for
godliness, became, sometimes, neither clean nor holy. For want of a
clean face they lost their souls.
It was Agassiz's strength that he knew the value of today. Never were
such bright skies as arched above him; nowhere else were such charming
associates, such budding students, such secrets of nature fresh to his
hand. His was the buoyant strength of the man who can look the stars in
the face because he does his part in the Universe as well as they do
theirs. It is the fresh, unspoiled confidence of the natural man, who
finds the world a world of action and joy, and time all too short for
the fulness of life which it demands. When Agassiz died, "the best
friend that ever student had," the students of Harvard "laid a wreath of
laurel on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had
been a student all his life long, and when he died he was younger than
any of them."
Optimism in life is a good working hypothesis, if by optimism we mean
the open-eyed faith that force exerted is never lost. Much that calls
itself faith is only the blindness of self-satisfaction.
What if there are so many of us in the ranks of humanity? What if the
individual be lost in the mass as a pebble cast into the Seven Seas?
Would you choose a world so small as to leave room for only you and your
satellites? Would you ask for problems of life so tame that even you
could grasp them? Would you choose a fibreless Universe to be "remoulded
nearer to the heart's desire," in place of the wild, tough, virile,
man-making environment from which the Attraction of Gravitation lets
none of us escape?
It is not that "I come like water and like wind I go." I am here today,
and the moment and the place are real, and my will is itself one of the
fates that make and unmake all things. "Every meanest day is the
conflux of two eternities," and in this center of all time and space for
the moment it is I that stand. Great is Eternity, but it is made up of
time. Could we blot out one day in the midst of time, Eternity could be
no more. The feebleness of man has its place within the infinite
Omnipotence.
It is a question not of hope or despair, but of truth, not of optimism
nor of Pessimism, but of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what to do next;
virtue is doing it. Religion is the heart impulse that turns toward the
best and highest course of action. "It was my duty to have loved the
highest. What does that demand? What have I to do next? Not in infinity,
where we can do nothing, but here, today, the greatest day that ever
was, for it alone is mine!
What matter is it that time does not end with us? Neither with us does
history begin. An Emperor of China once decreed that nothing should be
before him, that all history should begin with him. But he could go no
farther than his own decree. Who are you that would be Emperor of China?
"The eternal Saki from that bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles like us and shall pour."
Why not? Should life stop with you? What have you done that you should
mark the end of time? If you have played your part in the procession of
bubbles, all is well, though the best you can do is to leave the world a
little better for the next that follows.
If you have not made life a little richer and its conditions a little
more just by your living you have not touched the world. You are indeed
a bubble. If some kind friend somewhere "turn down an empty glass," it
will be the best monument you deserve. But to have had a friend is to
leave the glass not wholly empty, for life is justified in love as well
as in action.
The words of Omar need to be read with the rising inflection, and they
become the expression of exultant hopefulness.
"The eternal Saki from that bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles and shall pour!"
Small though we are the story is not all told when we are dead. The huge
procession goes on and shall go on, till the secret of the grand
symphony of life is reached.
"A single note in the Eternal Song
A perfect Singer hath had need for me."
* * *
"I do rejoice that when of Thee and Me
Men speak no longer, yet not less but more
The Eternal Saki still that bowl shall fill
And ever fairer, clearer bubbles pour."
In the same way we must read with the rising inflection the lines of
Tennyson:
"I falter when I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares,
Upon the World's great altar-stairs
That slope through darkness, up to god!"
Read these words with courage, and with the upward turn of the voice at
the end. It is no longer in the darkness that we falter. The great
altar-stairs of which no man knows the beginning nor the end, do not
spring from the mire nor end in the mists. They "slope through darkness
up to God," and no one could ask a stronger expression of that robust
optimism which must be the mainspring of successful life.