|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 51
"But," I said, "in the lives of some of the greatest moralists, one so
often sees, or at all events hears it said, that their morality is
useless because it is unpractical, too much out of the reach of the
ordinary man, too contemptuous of simple human faculties. What is one to
make of that?"
"It is a difficult matter," he replied; "one does indeed, in the lives
of great moralists, see sometimes that their work is vitiated by
perverse and fantastic preferences, which they exalt out of all
proportion to their real value. But for all that, it is better to be on
the side of the saints; for they are gifted with the sort of instinctive
appreciation of the beauty of high morality of which I spoke.
Unselfishness, purity, peacefulness seem to them so beautiful and
desirable that they are constrained to practise them. While controversy,
bitterness, cruelty, meanness, vice, seem so utterly ugly and repulsive
that they cannot for an instant entertain even so much as a thought of
them."
"But if a man sees that he is wanting in this kind of perception," I
said, "what can he do? How is he to learn to love what he does not
admire and to abhor what he does not hate? It all seems so fatalistic,
so irresistible."
"If he discerns his lack," said my teacher with a smile, "he is probably
not so very far from the truth. The germ of the sense of moral beauty is
there, and it only wants patience and endeavour to make it grow. But it
cannot be all done in any single life, of course; that is where the
human faith fails, in its limitations of a man's possibilities to a
single life."
"But what is the reason," I said, "why the morality, the high austerity
of some persons, who are indubitably high-minded and pure-hearted, is so
utterly discouraging and even repellent?"
"Ah," he said, "there you touch on a great truth. The reason of that is
that these have but a sterile sort of connoisseur-ship in virtue. Virtue
cannot be attained in solitude, nor can it be made a matter of private
enjoyment. The point is, of course, that it is not enough for a man to
be himself; he must also give himself; and if a man is moral because of
the delicate pleasure it brings him--and the artistic pleasure of
asceticism is a very high one--he is apt to find himself here in very
strange and distasteful company. In this, as in everything, the only
safe motive is the motive of love. The man who takes pleasure in using
influence, or setting a lofty example, is just as arid a dilettante as
the musician who plays, or the artist who paints, for the sake of the
applause and the admiration he wins; he is only regarding others as so
many instruments for registering his own level of complacency. Every
one, even the least complicated of mankind, must know the exquisite
pleasure that comes from doing the simplest and humblest service to one
whom he loves; how such love converts the most menial office into a
luxurious joy; and the higher that a man goes, the more does he discern
in every single human being with whom he is brought into contact a soul
whom he can love and serve. Of course it is but an elementary pleasure
to enjoy pleasing those whom we regard with some passion of affection,
wife or child or friend, because, after all, one gains something oneself
by that. But the purest morality of all discerns the infinitely lovable
quality which is in the depth of every human soul, and lavishes its
tenderness and its grace upon it, with a compassion that grows and
increases, the more unthankful and clumsy and brutish is the soul which
it sets out to serve."
"But," I said, "beautiful as that thought is--and I see and recognise
its beauty--it does limit the individual responsibility very greatly.
Surely a prudential morality, the morality which is just because it
fears reprisal, and is kind because it anticipates kindness, is better
than none at all? The morality of which you speak can only belong to the
noblest human creatures."
"Only to the noblest," he said; "and I must repeat what I said before,
that the prudential morality is useless, because it begins at the wrong
end, and is set upon self throughout. I must say deliberately that the
soul which loves unreasonably and unwisely, which even yields itself to
the passion of others for the pleasure it gives rather than for the
pleasure it receives--the thriftless, lavish, good-natured,
affectionate people, who are said to make such a mess of their
lives--are far higher in the scale of hope than the cautiously
respectable, the prudently kind, the selfishly pure. There must be no
mistake about this. One must somehow or other give one's heart away, and
it is better to do it in error and disaster than to treasure it for
oneself. Of course there are many lives on earth--and an increasing
number as the world develops--which are generous and noble and
unselfish, without any sacrifice of purity or self-respect. But the
essence of morality is giving, and not receiving, or even practising;
the point is free choice, and not compulsion; and if one cannot give
_because_ one loves, one must give _until_ one loves."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|