第8章 Lay Morals(8)

It follows that man is twofold at least;that he is not a rounded and autonomous empire;but that in the same body with him there dwell other powers tributary but independent.If Inow behold one walking in a garden,curiously coloured and illuminated by the sun,digesting his food with elaborate chemistry,breathing,circulating blood,directing himself by the sight of his eyes,accommodating his body by a thousand delicate balancings to the wind and the uneven surface of the path,and all the time,perhaps,with his mind engaged about America,or the dog-star,or the attributes of God -what am I to say,or how am I to describe the thing I see?Is that truly a man,in the rigorous meaning of the word?or is it not a man and something else?What,then,are we to count the centre-bit and axle of a being so variously compounded?

It is a question much debated.Some read his history in a certain intricacy of nerve and the success of successive digestions;others find him an exiled piece of heaven blown upon and determined by the breath of God;and both schools of theorists will scream like scalded children at a word of doubt.Yet either of these views,however plausible,is beside the question;either may be right;and I care not;Iask a more particular answer,and to a more immediate point.

What is the man?There is Something that was before hunger and that remains behind after a meal.It may or may not be engaged in any given act or passion,but when it is,it changes,heightens,and sanctifies.Thus it is not engaged in lust,where satisfaction ends the chapter;and it is engaged in love,where no satisfaction can blunt the edge of the desire,and where age,sickness,or alienation may deface what was desirable without diminishing the sentiment.This something,which is the man,is a permanence which abides through the vicissitudes of passion,now overwhelmed and now triumphant,now unconscious of itself in the immediate distress of appetite or pain,now rising unclouded above all.

So,to the man,his own central self fades and grows clear again amid the tumult of the senses,like a revolving Pharos in the night.It is forgotten;it is hid,it seems,for ever;and yet in the next calm hour he shall behold himself once more,shining and unmoved among changes and storm.

Mankind,in the sense of the creeping mass that is born and eats,that generates and dies,is but the aggregate of the outer and lower sides of man.This inner consciousness,this lantern alternately obscured and shining,to and by which the individual exists and must order his conduct,is something special to himself and not common to the race.His joys delight,his sorrows wound him,according as THIS is interested or indifferent in the affair;according as they arise in an imperial war or in a broil conducted by the tributary chieftains of the mind.He may lose all,and THISnot suffer;he may lose what is materially a trifle,and THISleap in his bosom with a cruel pang.I do not speak of it to hardened theorists:the living man knows keenly what it is Imean.

'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the things which cause the various effects,and,as it were,pull thee by the strings.What is that now in thy mind?is it fear,or suspicion,or desire,or anything of that kind?'Thus far Marcus Aurelius,in one of the most notable passages in any book.Here is a question worthy to be answered.What is in thy mind?What is the utterance of your inmost self when,in a quiet hour,it can be heard intelligibly?It is something beyond the compass of your thinking,inasmuch as it is yourself;but is it not of a higher spirit than you had dreamed betweenwhiles,and erect above all base considerations?This soul seems hardly touched with our infirmities;we can find in it certainly no fear,suspicion,or desire;we are only conscious -and that as though we read it in the eyes of some one else -of a great and unqualified readiness.A readiness to what?to pass over and look beyond the objects of desire and fear,for something else.And this something else?this something which is apart from desire and fear,to which all the kingdoms of the world and the immediate death of the body are alike indifferent and beside the point,and which yet regards conduct -by what name are we to call it?It may be the love of God;or it may be an inherited (and certainly well concealed)instinct to preserve self and propagate the race;I am not,for the moment,averse to either theory;but it will save time to call it righteousness.By so doing Iintend no subterfuge to beg a question;I am indeed ready,and more than willing,to accept the rigid consequence,and lay aside,as far as the treachery of the reason will permit,all former meanings attached to the word righteousness.What is right is that for which a man's central self is ever ready to sacrifice immediate or distant interests;what is wrong is what the central self discards or rejects as incompatible with the fixed design of righteousness.

To make this admission is to lay aside all hope of definition.That which is right upon this theory is intimately dictated to each man by himself,but can never be rigorously set forth in language,and never,above all,imposed upon another.The conscience has,then,a vision like that of the eyes,which is incommunicable,and for the most part illuminates none but its possessor.When many people perceive the same or any cognate facts,they agree upon a word as symbol;and hence we have such words as TREE,STAR,LOVE,HONOUR,or DEATH;hence also we have this word RIGHT,which,like the others,we all understand,most of us understand differently,and none can express succinctly otherwise.Yet even on the straitest view,we can make some steps towards comprehension of our own superior thoughts.