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Page 65
"The more," writes Tolsto� in the work 'My Confession,' "the more I
examined the life of these laboring folks, the more persuaded I became
that they veritably have faith, and get from it alone the sense and the
possibility of life.... Contrariwise to those of our own class, who
protest against destiny and grow indignant at its rigor, these people
receive maladies and misfortunes without revolt, without opposition, and
with a firm and tranquil confidence that all had to be like that, could
not be otherwise, and that it is all right so.... The more we live by
our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. We see only a
cruel jest in suffering and death, whereas these people live, suffer,
and draw near to death with tranquillity, and oftener than not with
joy.... There are enormous multitudes of them happy with the most
perfect happiness, although deprived of what for us is the sole good of
life. Those who understand life's meaning, and know how to live and die
thus, are to be counted not by twos, threes, tens, but by hundreds,
thousands, millions. They labor quietly, endure privations and pains,
live and die, and throughout everything see the good without seeing the
vanity. I had to love these people. The more I entered into their life,
the more I loved them; and the more it became possible for me to live,
too. It came about not only that the life of our society, of the learned
and of the rich, disgusted me--more than that, it lost all semblance of
meaning in my eyes. All our actions, our deliberations, our sciences,
our arts, all appeared to me with a new significance. I understood that
these things might be charming pastimes, but that one need seek in them
no depth, whereas the life of the hard-working populace, of that
multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence, appeared
to me in its true light. I understood that there veritably is life, that
the meaning which life there receives is the truth; and I accepted
it."[Q]
[Q] My Confession, X. (condensed).
In a similar way does Stevenson appeal to our piety toward the elemental
virtue of mankind.
"What a wonderful thing," he writes,[R] "is this Man! How surprising are
his attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many
hardships, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably
condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives,--who should have blamed him,
had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous?
... [Yet] it matters not where we look, under what climate we observe
him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burdened with
what erroneous morality; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and
vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern, and a bedizened
trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that, simple,
innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to
drown, for others;... in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent
millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the
future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his
virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps
in vain by the bright gin-palace,... often repaying the world's scorn
with service, often standing firm upon a scruple;... everywhere some
virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and
courage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness,--ah! if I
could show you this! If I could show you these men and women all the
world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under
every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without
thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still
clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls."
[R] Across the Plains: "Pulvis et Umbra" (abridged).
All this is as true as it is splendid, and terribly do we need our
Tolsto�s and Stevensons to keep our sense for it alive. Yet you remember
the Irishman who, when asked, "Is not one man as good as another?"
replied, "Yes; and a great deal better, too!" Similarly (it seems to me)
does Tolsto� overcorrect our social prejudices, when he makes his love
of the peasant so exclusive, and hardens his heart toward the educated
man as absolutely as he does. Grant that at Chautauqua there was little
moral effort, little sweat or muscular strain in view. Still, deep down
in the souls of the participants we may be sure that something of the
sort was hid, some inner stress, some vital virtue not found wanting
when required. And, after all, the question recurs, and forces itself
upon us, Is it so certain that the surroundings and circumstances of the
virtue do make so little difference in the importance of the result? Is
the functional utility, the worth to the universe of a certain definite
amount of courage, kindliness, and patience, no greater if the
possessor of these virtues is in an educated situation, working out
far-reaching tasks, than if he be an illiterate nobody, hewing wood and
drawing water, just to keep himself alive? Tolsto�'s philosophy, deeply
enlightening though it certainly is, remains a false abstraction. It
savors too much of that Oriental pessimism and nihilism of his, which
declares the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions
to be a cunning fraud.
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