41. CHAPTER XLI.
The manly heart must sometimes cease to languish,
Ruled by the manly brain.
— Bayard Taylor.
One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was,
by birth, a German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but,
his calling considered, he might have been worse, and, in the
lack of better company, Morton had diligently cultivated his
acquaintance. On this occasion he was more than commonly
dogged and impenetrable; and, on being taken to task for
some neglect or malperformance of his functions, he made no
manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture. Being again
upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a
face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then
sullenly continued his work as before. Morton laughed,
partly in vexation, and resumed his walk, of just three paces,
to and fro, the length of his cell. He followed the jailer
with his eye, as the latter closed the door.
“`God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.'
Measure the distance from Shakespeare down to that fellow,
and then from him again down to a baboon, and which measurement
would be the longer? It would be a knotty problem
to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after all, a soul
to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of expansion
and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon.
He has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes
to make up the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of
the universe, the centre of interest, the centre of wonder.
When I was a boy, I pleased myself with planning that I
would study out the springs of human action, and trace human
emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea, — to fathom
the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and
the ever-moving winds. De Staël speaks the truth — `Man
may learn to rule man, but only God can comprehend him.'
View him under one aspect only. Seek to analyze that pervading
passion, that mighty mystic influence which, consciously
or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails in human
action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain
attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human
faculty can follow the workings of a principle which at once
exalts man to the stars, and fetters him to the earth; which
can fire him with triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate
repose; kindle strange aspirations and eager longings
after knowledge; spur the intellect to range time and space,
or cramp it within narrow confines, among mean fancies and
base associations? In its mysterious contradictions, its boundless
possibilities of good and ill, it is a type of human nature
itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when he figured
the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two armies,
ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man
but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades,
stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long
sieges; its shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to
throat? And whoever would be wise, or safe, must sentinel
his thoughts, and rule his mind by martial law, like a city
beleaguered.
“How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has
followed hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my
prison. It will find no end but in that decay and torpor, that
callousness of faculty, which long imprisonment is said to
bring, but which, as yet, I do not feel. Perhaps I may never
feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for the worst, by inuring
my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope which never,
it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive in mine.
And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now,
with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of
some succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will
still cling to the possibility of a better time. Whatever new
disaster meets me, I will confront it with some new audacity
of hope. I will nail my flag to the mast, and there it shall
fly till all go down, or till flag, mast, and hulk rot together.”
