 | THE MENTAL PRISM. The book of my lady |  |
THE MENTAL PRISM.
FROM THE GERMAN.
What strange creatures of the element are we! How
sadly dependent upon the adverse influences of sunshine
and shadow; how curiously moulded to receive and obey
their impressions, and follow the tendencies they so imperatively
prescribe. In the one we luxuriate with a
champaigne exhilarance, that has something little short
of madness in it. The other, on the contrary, tramples
us down into a feverish morbidity and gloom, that renders
it a matter of little difficulty to establish the some
time propriety and utility of suicide. A zephyr from
the south woos us blandishingly into the arms and endearments
of summer; while a little after, a rugged
northeaster compels us to wrap up in a hundred weight
of “fearnought,” or shrink sullenly and savagely into a
dark chamber, over a coal fire, with a dense and unwholesome
vapour stifling and strangling all the choice
and generous spiritings of our more natural impulses.
The clouds gather about and overspread us, and we slink,
tiger-like, into our dens and deserts, from whence, with
the ready elasticity of the lizard, upon the first glimmer
and glance of the sunlight, we rush forth in thousands
to bask in his beams.
It is not so much a need of the body as a requirement
of the mind, which compels us to recognise and
obey these opposite influences. By their several and
is provoked and brought about, each influence acting
upon and modifying the other. Nevertheless, the thousand
love the sunshine, to the one who seeks the shade;
and in this they duly defer to the great principle which
regulates nature. The mind has, in all cases, a tendency
to light. The eye looks and longs for the daylight, as
devotedly as the lover for his mistress, or the imprisoned
bird for the freedom of the blue air and high dominion;
and yet how differently do men esteem it! No
two look upon the elements alike. Your sun is by no
means mine. Your shade is cold and repulsive to me.
The stream in which you bathe with delicious delight
has a freezing complexion; and the long rambles which
you take by moonlight are my utter aversion. Let us
illustrate the case by a dialogue, which came to my
ears a few days back, when you were declaiming poetry
to your looking-glass, in the back parlour, and I was
enjoying a lunch and bottle in the refectory. The
parties were our two friends, Walsten and Mordaunt;
the antipodes, as you well know, of each other. Walsten
begins, prefacing his remark with a pinch of snuff, the
sternutatory operation of which, for twenty minutes, appeared
to derange and disorganise his very system of
vitality.
Walsten. How beautiful, Mordaunt, is the nature
around us. How cheering is the sunshine. How enlivening
its gracious influence. The stir of the day, the
buzzing confusion and lively hum of life and employment,
are grateful indications of its presence. We go
abroad and bask in it, in all our colours of rejoicing;
and with its generous influence thousands of the light-hearted
are all dispersed, the rains are over, the atmosphere
of gloom and chillness has made way for a more benign
and invigorating freshness and warmth; and innocence
and beauty and youth acknowledge, by a hearty unanimity
of smiles, the pure and pleasant feeling of cheerfulness
and joy, which its presence not less indicates
than inspires. Nor does it come alone to the gay and
the light-hearted. To the sad and the sick, to the old and
infirm, it carries a welcoming and reviving grace. No
bars may shut it out. The prisoner feels it in his dungeon,
the slave glows with it in his chains. It descends
upon the bosom of the labourer, and his heart leaps
more lightly in his, than in the bosom of the monarch,
wielding the destinies of a thousand thrones. No earth
is denied its presence, and every water is gladdened
with its beams. In the deepest wilds of North America,
shooting up the mighty and far-stretching Mississippi,
in his overburdened pirogue, the bold hunter beholds
with rapture its coming splendours, darting through the
thick foliage above him, cheering his spirit and directing
his prow. The wanderer in the desert and upon
the ocean; the pilgrim, whose feet are wounded by sad
travail among the sharp rocks; the exile, with no eye
to mark his progress, and no heart to sympathise with
his fortunes, gathers from its beaming promise, the
countenance of an ever-watchful and presiding God.
He feels, too, that the same beam that warms the wayfarer
in the wilderness, blesses the cottage of his boyhood;
his heart goes back with it to all his distant affections,
and the warmth of that imaginary association
gives him renewed courage to pursue his way.
Mordaunt. How tedious and untrue are all these
raptures. The sunshine is very good in its way, perhaps,
but I do not like it, and you give but one view of its influence.
You forget to speak of the miasma which it
calls up, fatal to human life and happiness, from fen
and forest. You say nothing of its burning heats, which
invariably give me headach, and frequently fever. You
overlook entirely the thousand plagues which it engenders
during its summer reign; its flies and its insects,
that buz in your eyes, and fill your throat, and dip their
filthy wings and legs in the very dainties you so much
delight in.
Walsten. You are an incorrigible monster: nothing
gives you pleasure. You quarrel with every thing and
every body. Does not the wine-cup sometimes offend
you?
Mordaunt. Yes, when it has a spider in it. If I look
upon things gloomily, Walsten, and distrust the semblance
of life more frequently than yourself, it is because
my experience is something more than your own.
You are for ever describing nature as a rosy-cheeked
girl, decked out in her bridal habiliments, and panting
with scarcely repressed anticipations at the altar. To
me she appears a stale and cunning old maid, bedizzened
with paint, concealing her yellow complexion—not to
speak of the thousand wrinkles that mark her face—and
with artificial roses in her no less artificial locks. She
is, doubtless, as highly delighted as yourself with a garb
and decorations so holiday-like, yet they have been
turned and trimmed ten thousand times already for as
many persons. The green garment she wore, just so
festooned and perfumed, coloured and worshipped, even
and liquors, her fruits and flowers, have been furnished
from the table of death; and the colours of which
her cheeks are made have been ground from the decay
of her own children, from whose dust comes her dazzle,
from whose bones emerge her beauties. How know
we in what company we are now walking? May not this
wide arena, spreading and circling us about, be the sepulchral
dwelling-place of your ancestors and mine? May
not the same winds which bear us the fragrance of yonder
lindens, be impregnated with the ashes of Arminius? Do
you not feel it even now in your nostrils? Yon rivulet,
from which you are perpetually quaffing, with a delight
to me unaccountable, may have concealed and rotting
at the bottom the bones of your great-grandmother or
mine. It matters not which, there is perhaps but little
choice now between them. The soul which spoke a philosophy
you hold so fine in the skull of Socrates, the
spirit that prompted the fine visions of Plato, may even
now give life to yon reeling follower of Sardanapalus.
The transition, be assured, is not great, from the high
and dreamy morality of the one to the voluptuous theory
which taught the abuse of the present hour in apprehension
of its loss. Is the picture a comic one, that
your laughter grows irrepressible? I see nothing to occasion
merriment.
Walsten. Pardon me, Mordaunt, but I do. Your
phiz and philosophy alike are irresistibly comic, and
suggest some farther speculations in a corresponding
humour. How, if our bodies, according to the notion
you entertain of the soul, should undertake, in a like manner,
to wander through an infinity of ages? What, if
functions, though perhaps in a different form and figure,
as when under the guidance and direction of a soul?
Mordaunt. What draw you from your proposition?
I am not quick-witted, you are aware; you must provide
me with steps to your problems.
Walsten. Do you hear the melody of the bird which
sings over us. It is not a melody, perhaps, in your
ears, but you hear it?
Mordaunt. I do; it has been croaking in concert with
yourself for the last half hour, and with as little method.
Walsten. May she not have arisen from the urn of
Tibullus, whose song was as loving as hers? Having
won his spirit, she deserts his tomb, and repeats the
tender melodies, which he taught in life to humanity.
Perhaps a Pindar soars triumphantly, in the form of
yon towering eagle, to the communion of the blue
heavens. Some atom of the rose-lipped Anacreon may
prompt the wanton zephyr, which so audaciously stirs
the ringlets of yon bright-eyed damsel; and to be more
minute, for your satisfaction, who knows that the bodies
of extravagant lovers are not now flying in subtle
flakes of hair-powder, through the locks of their surviving
mistresses? Will you pretend to say, having your
theory seriously at heart, that the doubly-dried bones of
the dead usurer are not now chained down in the rust
of a hundred years over the money-chests he so loved
in life, and yet left, unenjoyed, behind him? Nor should
this species of retributive justice be withheld from all
other kinds of offenders. Would it indicate an inappropriateness
of justice, were the bodies of those in life afflicted
with that worst madness of all, the cacoethes scribendi,
reams of foolscap, groaning for ever under the printing-press,
which they so often made to groan in eternalising,
along with their own, the nonsense of their successors?
To deal further in these analogies, my dear Mordaunt,
would be to find you, some hundred years hence, wailing
with the melancholy whippoorwill, in the seclusion
of an American forest.
Mordaunt. Will you never be serious, Walsten; not
even in your examination of the mysteries of truth and
nature? How do you propose to make your discoveries,
with your intellect perpetually convulsed with laughter?
Walsten. True; in such a situation and mood, I
should do little towards the attainment of knowledge;
but, with as much reason, may I ask what shall be the
extent of your progress in the same labour, if your eyes
are perpetually obscured with tears?
Mordaunt. Your philosophy is a strange one, indeed,
if the nature of things, and the existence of truth, which
should be immutable, is susceptible to such influences
as spring from the sad or merry heart or countenance?
Shall wisdom become a pawnbroker, and accommodate
her stores to the necessities or the humours
of her neighbours? At this rate, a jaded stomach will
destroy a people, a pampered appetite overturn a dynasty;
a glass of wine give immortality and adoration to
a gang of highwaymen. If, in our pursuit of philosophy,
so much depends upon our humours, I shall be
glad to know in what humour do you propose to set out
in your search after truth? For my part, I am at a loss
to see in what respects the gloom of my habit unfits me
search.
Walsten. Not less, perhaps: the extremes touch, but
at points equally foreign from the proposed object. They
are both, perhaps, equally unfit, inasmuch as they give
their complexion to, and necessarily alter that of the
objects they survey. We see through a false medium,
and see nothing rightly. The glass is dark with you and
dazzling with me, and both of us are blind in consequence.
If, however, yours be the preferable mood for
the search after truth and the acquirement of wisdom, I
should prefer to be perpetually at fault. I would not
willingly be wise, or even happy, on such conditions.
Mordaunt. Happy! that is another of the slang
words which, without any definite signification, the
herd of public teachers and common hearers so commonly
employ. Pray, what do you mean by happiness,
and by what process do you propose to attain it? Labour,
you say, is the condition of life; wisdom its purpose
or mean, and happiness its reward. Miserable
delusion; superstition worse than Egyptian; calf worship,
bull worship, snake worship! You see momentarily,
thousands and thousands of men and women
spreading their gala sails on the summer day and sea
in the silly pursuit. Happiness dwells, say they, a
queenly beauty, on that bright and blessed island.
There they go, fleet after fleet, whirling in the unavoidable
and necessary circle; coming back for ever to the
point from which they departed, or battered to pieces
on rocks and quicksands. Of the survivors of the gang,
in reference to their destination, and its attainment,
you may well exclaim, apparent rari nantes in gurgite
swimming to the shore with difficulty, or carried down
the stream to the unreturning floods of eternity. This
is the pursuit of happiness, and these are they, poor
adventurers, that worship and seek for the coy divinity,
whose existence is in their diseased and morbidly foolish
fancies alone.
Walsten. You describe truly the pursuits of the
erring, and I am not ready to deny that such are the
majority of mankind, since the sole aim of life is to
learn how to live.
Mordaunt. To die, rather.
Walsten. Well, to die, if you prefer it. But it does
not follow because men take the wrong road to the
temple, that it does not therefore exist. To this the
lawyers would unhesitatingly say, non sequitur. But,
before giving you my idea of the what and whereabouts
of happiness, permit me to ask, even if these mariners
fail in reaching their port, has the voyage itself no
beneficial results, no advantages?
Mordaunt. None that I see—unless, perhaps, you
refer to the pleasures of viewing what small poets and
painters call a fine landscape, in the teeth of storms,
and seas, and shipwrecks, and death. If such a prospect
sufficiently compensates to your mind, the privations,
perils, and perplexities that come with it, I am
free to say your notion of human happiness and mine—
if I have any—most essentially differ.
Walsten. They certainly do. The pursuit has something
in it, as it relieves that monotony of existence
which necessarily comes with a life, such as yours,
passed without risk or excitement; and, if the adventurers
occasionally make out to acquire something which, in
part, rewards them. All the views of men are generally
extravagant; and they perhaps do well, in the
way of trade—putting it on the most business footing
we can—if their returns for their adventures reach to
one half the amount of their proposed profits. Shall
I, my friend, failing to find the rose of my search, reject
the violet which offers itself to my hand? Shall I
quarrel with the choicest airs of May, because a thunder-cloud
sometimes conflicts with them? The day is
beautiful now, but to-morrow it may be stormy. Shall
I brood over the contingency in gloomy anticipations,
while I utterly disregard the pleasure in my grasp?
Mordaunt. Pleasure again. Can you never speak
without the employment of words having no definite
idea? But you promised me a definition of what people
mean by the phrase happiness. I would see what
is the stuff out of which you propose to make it.
Walsten. I promised you my notion, and not that of
any body else. That I am willing to bestow upon you,
in the hope of its doing something to make you more
contented with your neighbour and yourself.
Mordaunt. You are charitable, at least, and I cannot
do less than pay all attention. Proceed.
Walsten. The leading error, then, in my mind, under
which the great human mass appear to labour, in the
search after and desire for happiness, is the proposing
to themselves the pursuit of some one single object.
At the commencement of life most men set out with
this distinct proposition in view. They choose some
prominent and select road—aim at some individual
attainment of which only proves the real object of desire,
as far off and utterly unapproachable as ever.
Mordaunt. This is what I have always said. In
what do you propose to amend the error of the herd?
—where lies the difficulty—the mistake—with them?
Walsten. The mistake lies in the proposition itself,
since no single pursuit in life can be carried on, unmet
by controlling and counteracting circumstances, which
invariably thwart and divert from the course; and in
the end compel us to leave it. Of course, you know,
that human happiness, under such influences, must be
of a nature subject to many qualifications—since hope,
one of the prime incentives to human impulse, presupposes
a certain discontent with the present condition,
and a desire for its change, in one or many respects—a
feeling directly adverse to that Arcadian felicity and undisturbed
content, which forms, in the beau ideal of the
poets, the state and quality of genuine happiness. It
is not of this condition that I would speak. The happiness
of man, such as he should seek in this life, is a
state of hopes and cravings, as free from contigencies
as they can be made consistently with his own and the
nature of things around him. Such a state, it appears
to me, is rather the consequence of a successful and
harmonious combination of circumstances, than the
overcoming of any one difficulty, or the successful
search after and attainment of any given end or object.
The attainment of such a temper of content, as without
rejecting the presence of an active and unsleeping hope,
at least takes from it all unreasonable and exaggerated
elevation of aim; and, if not of easy attainment, is, at
mind in a state of morbid and diseased prostration.
Such a mood can only arise in the mind by a careful
economy of the affections and the emotions: a close
consideration of what is worthy of, and available in, pursuit.
Indeed, it is in happiness as in money making—
you must take care of the sixpences if you want to have
control over and to make use of the pounds. Proposing
a moderate aim, and we are neither so liable to
overthrow, nor apt to feel it so sensibly. The life of
the child is made up of the momentary and occasional
pursuit of trifles; and his enjoyments—I may say his
happiness—for the time, depend entirely upon his success
in their pursuit. Then, if we analyse them closely,
we are but children of a larger growth, and more advanced
period, and call for toys, simply increased in
proportion to ourselves; and, I take it, that a close
and economical attention to the little things of being,
would be far more likely to result in the due attainment
of the object of desire, than any single plan which the
mind may propose,—and for a very obvious reason—the
man who has spent twenty years of his life in the pursuit
of one road to happiness, is very apt, when he discovers
himself in a desert, and the delusive oasis
retreating from his eyes as remotely far as ever, to lie
down despondingly and die. He despairs of success—
he dreads to retrace his steps—indeed he cannot—and,
if he diverges into other paths, he only involves himself
in intricacies which baffle him at last, and do not alter
the destiny, so liable to overthrow, which he himself
had chosen. There is a way to avoid all this. The
path is a safer one by far; and, though it may lead to
would subtract all the charms from heaven itself, at
least it can result in no dreadful and soul-mastering
disappointments and defects. We should be careful to
make every thing—the humblest in nature—minister to
the felicity of the moment. If the beauty and scent of
this flower gratifies, for a moment, a solitary sense,
why should I trample it unenjoyed under my foot? If
yon purple-coated cloud wins my eye and kindles my
fancy, let me survey it. Does the breeze come about
me with a sense of freshness, I throw open my vest to
its embraces. I reject nothing that soothes the excited
pulse—that cheers the wandering hope—that invigorates
the saddened spirit. So, with an eye to the employment,
in the negative of a corresponding doctrine,
I avoid all contact and communion with those things
which are like to become offensive to me. I avoid
the thorn which wounds—the storm which terrifies—
the gloom which palls. Nor, do I rest here. I would
gather up carefully, and regulate, my own emotions.
I would set a high value upon them, far beyond
the market standard of the mass. I would lock
them up as I would a treasure, which, in the long winter
nights, with the bright fire blazing before me, and a
glad circle gathered round, I would count over and
contemplate. My heart should be a capacious granary,
in which I would garner up all the impulses—the humblest
and wildest wanderings of all my senses. The
great mass of men neglect all these, and regard them
as the merest trifles. They aim at the attainment of
the mountain, overlooking entirely the atoms of which
it may be made. They set forth, unfortunately, with
some very brilliant and inviting illusion before them;
to the conclusion, as you have done, that all is vanity
and vexation of spirit, and that the object is no where
to be found; when, as is most generally the case, their
ill success is entirely attributable to their own idle, extravagant
conceptions and misdirected exertions.
Mordaunt. This is speculation and conjecture, not
philosophy. The experience of the world itself, not
less than my own, is decidedly against you. For the
single grain of enjoyment that falls among rocks and in
barren places, there spring up, luxuriantly, a thousand
bitter plants of grief and vexation. For the smile of
joy, the human eye articulates a thousand sorrows.
Do groups of the living gather around us—myriads of
the once living are crowded beneath us. The dancer
whirls along in gladness, while the worm perishes under
his feet. “Past—past,” is written upon all
things which meet my eye, and mingle in with my
spirit. A requiem and a wail of death comes to me in
every breeze,
Walsten. Incorrigible Mordaunt! will nothing bring
you to reason? Would you not smile and rejoice,
when I say to you, that beneath the sheltering branches
of this linden I embraced for the first time my beloved
Constance?
Mordaunt. Walsten, Walsten, under this very tree,
the wife of my heart lies buried!
So much, we may add, for human philosophy. Is
not the very name of it, gentle reader, a grievous yet
laughable absurdity? The very ne plus ultra of human
knowledge is found in the text; all that we know is,
nothing do we know!
| THE MENTAL PRISM. The book of my lady | |