greater part of her population have become flat-inhabiting nomads.
In some ideal
commonwealth, one can imagine the Odyssean bed a
normal
institution, every head of a household, cottager or lord (for
the
commonwealth must have its lords, go to!), lying down to rest,
as did his fathers, in the Chamber of the Tree. This, one fancies,
were a somewhat more
fittingnuptialchamber than the chance bedroom
of a hotel. Odysseus building his home is man performing a supreme
act of piety; through all the ages that picture must
retain its
profound
significance. Note the tree he chose, the olive,
sacred to
Athena,
emblem of peace. When he and the wise
goddess meet together
to
schemedestruction of the princes, they sit [Greek text]. Their
talk is of
bloodshed, true; but in
punishment of those who have
outraged the
sanctity of the
hearth, and to re-establish, after
purification,
domestic calm and
security. It is one of the dreary
aspects of modern life that natural
symbolism has all but
perished.
We have no consecrated tree. The oak once held a place in English
hearts, but who now reveres it?--our trust is in gods of iron.
Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save
the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?
One
symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of
metal. And one may
safely say that, of all the ages since a coin
first became the
symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to
the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's
contentment.
XVI
I have been dull to-day,
haunted by the thought of how much there is
that I would fain know, and how little I can hope to learn. The
scope of knowledge has become so vast. I put aside nearly all
physical
investigation; to me it is
naught, or only, at moments, a
matter of idle
curiosity. This would seem to be a considerable
clearing of the field; but it leaves what is practically the
infinite. To run over a list of only my favourite subjects, those
to which, all my life long, I have more or less
applied myself,
studies which hold in my mind the place of hobbies, is to open
vistas of
intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">
intellectualdespair. In an old note-book I jotted down
such a list--"things I hope to know, and to know well." I was then
four and twenty. Reading it with the eyes of fifty-four, I must
needs laugh. There appear such
modest items as "The history of the
Christian Church up to the Reformation"--"all Greek poetry"--"The
field of Mediaeval Romance"--"German
literature from Lessing to
Heine"--"Dante!" Not one of these shall I ever "know, and know
well"; not any one of them. Yet here I am buying books which lead
me into endless paths of new
temptation. What have I to do with
Egypt? Yet I have been beguiled by Flinders Petrie and by Maspero.
How can I
pretend to
meddle with the ancient
geography of Asia
Minor? Yet here have I bought Prof. Ramsay's
astonishing book, and
have even read with a sort of troubled
enjoyment a good many pages
of it; troubled, because I have but to
reflect a moment, and I see
that all this kind of thing is mere
futile effort of the
intellectwhen the time for serious
intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">
intellectual effort is over.
It all means, of course, that, owing to
defective" target="_blank" title="a.有缺陷的;有瑕疵的">
defective opportunity,
owing, still more perhaps, to lack of method and persistence, a
possibility that was in me has been wasted, lost. My life has been
merely tentative, a broken
series of false starts and
hopeless new
beginnings. If I allowed myself to
indulge that mood, I could
revolt against the
ordinance which allows me no second chance. O
mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos! If I could but start
again, with only the experience there gained! I mean, make a new
beginning of my
intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">
intellectual life; nothing else, O heaven! nothing
else. Even amid
poverty, I could do so much better; keeping before
my eyes some
definite, some not unattainable, good; sternly
dismissing the
impracticable, the wasteful.
And, in doing so, become perhaps an owl-eyed pedant, to whom would
be for ever dead the
possibility of such
enjoyment as I know in
these final years. Who can say? Perhaps the sole condition of my
progress to this state of mind and heart which make my happiness was
that very stumbling and erring which I so regret.
XVII
Why do I give so much of my time to the
reading of history? Is it
in any sense
profitable to me? What new light can I hope for on the
nature of man? What new
guidance for the direction of my own life
through the few years that may remain to me? But it is with no such
purpose that I read these voluminous books; they gratify--or seem to
gratify--a mere
curiosity; and scarcely have I closed a
volume, when
the greater part of what I have read in it is forgotten.
Heaven
forbid that I should remember all! Many a time I have said
to myself that I would close the
dreadful record of human life, lay
it for ever aside, and try to forget it. Somebody declares that
history is a
manifestation of the
triumph of good over evil. The
good prevails now and then, no doubt, but how local and transitory
is such
triumph. If
historic tomes had a voice, it would sound as
one long moan of
anguish. Think steadfastly of the past, and one
sees that only by
defect of
imaginative power can any man
endure to
dwell with it. History is a
nightmare of horrors; we
relish it,
because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is
to man rich in interest. But make real to yourself the
vision of
every blood-stained page--stand in the presence of the ravening
conqueror, the
savagetyrant--tread the stones of the
dungeon and of
the torture-room--feel the fire of the stake--hear the cries of that
multitude which no man can number, the victims of
calamity, of
oppression, of
fierceinjustice in its
myriad forms, in every land,
in every age--and what joy have you of your
historicreading? One
would need to be a devil to understand it thus, and yet to delight
in it.
Injustice--there is the loathed crime which curses the memory of the
world. The slave doomed by his lord's caprice to
perish under
tortures--one feels it a
dreadful and
intolerable thing; but it is
merely the crude presentment of what has been done and
endured a
million times in every stage of
civilization. Oh, the last thoughts
of those who have agonized unto death amid wrongs to which no man
would give ear! That
appeal of
innocence in
anguish to the hard,
mute heavens! Were there only one such
instance in all the
chronicles of time, it should doom the past to abhorred oblivion.
Yet
injustice, the basest, the most
ferocious, is inextricable from
warp and woof in the
tissue of things gone by. And if anyone
soothes himself with the
reflection that such outrages can happen no
more, that mankind has passed beyond such
hideouspossibility, he is
better acquainted with books than with human nature.
It were wiser to spend my hours with the books which bring no
aftertaste of bitterness--with the great poets whom I love, with the
thinkers, with the gentle writers of pages that
soothe and
tranquillize. Many a
volume regards me from the shelf as though
reproachfully; shall I never again take it in my hands? Yet the
words are golden, and I would fain treasure them all in my heart's
memory. Perhaps the last fault of which I shall cure myself is that
habit of mind which urges me to seek knowledge. Was I not yesterday
on the point of ordering a huge work of erudition, which I should
certainly never have read through, and which would only have served
to waste precious days? It is the Puritan in my blood, I suppose,
which
forbids me to recognise
frankly that all I have now to do is
to ENJOY. This is
wisdom. The time for
acquisition has gone by. I
am not foolish enough to set myself
learning a new language; why
should I try to store my memory with
useless knowledge of the past?
Come, once more before I die I will read Don Quixote.
XVIII
Somebody has been making a speech, reported at a couple of columns'
length in the paper. As I glance down the waste of print, one word
catches my eye again and again. It's all about "science"--and
therefore doesn't concern me.
I wonder whether there are many men who have the same feeling with
regard to "science" as I have? It is something more than a
prejudice; often it takes the form of a dread, almost a terror.
Even those branches of science which are
concerned with things that
interest me--which deal with plants and animals and the heaven of
stars--even these I cannot
contemplate without
uneasiness, a
spiritual disaffection; new discoveries, new theories, however they
engage my
intelligence, soon weary me, and in some way depress.
When it comes to other kinds of science--the sciences blatant and
ubiquitous--the science by which men become millionaires--I am
possessed with an angry
hostility, a resentful
apprehension. This
was born in me, no doubt; I cannot trace it to circumstances of my
life, or to any particular moment of my
mental growth. My boyish