LIFE'S GREATEST POSSIBILITY.*
Tins is a dashing essay by a disciple of Emerson who has caught a good deal of the sanguine and lofty idealism of his- master. He calls his little essay, indeed, "An Essay in Spiritual Realism," but he does not use the word " realism " in the sense which it has lately acquired (in which sense, indeed, the use of the adjective " spiritual " would be con- tradictory of its very meaning), but rather in the sense of embodying in real life convictions which, while they remain in the abstract, have no right to be called convictions at all. The anonymous writer is full of vigour and buoyancy, and his startling Emersonian apophthegms have considerable literary effectiveness. The author is a great believer in individualism and in the doctrine that all evil is negative. He says, for example :—" Most men's crimes will be found to be not deeds, but forbearances." " Let there be no more sickly gazings and gawmish gapings at your neighbours, great or small, but settle down to yourself at once." " More people die of want of soul, than of want of breath."' " We must not be too reverent. There is no crime more awful and yet more common than this yielding up our place to others whom we have obsequiously dubbed great, while we refuse to see our own possible greatness, which is ours, not in ourselves, but in that we are God's." " People talk about ghosts. If ghosts are dead people walking about, the world is full of ghosts." It will be seen by these specimens of his convictions that thr essayist is a great preacher of the creed which some forty or fifty years ago used to be repulsively styled "the indi-
viduality of the individual." He depreciates very much any- thing of the nature of discipleship. The only use of great men, he thinks, is to draw attention to what we might make of ourselves : " Great men are the auctioneers of the universe. They ring bells, and tell us of all the good things that are going so cheaply."
The difficulty of this gospel that every one is bound to be himself and shake himself free of the influence of others, is that men are never sure what they themselves are, and in shaking themselves free of what they suppose to be alien influence, often play the most mournful tricks of caprice and egotism, displaying not their true self, but a spurious and pinchback self which is the product of conceit and affectation. The essayist assumes throughout that a man knows himself. There is nothing more difficult to know, and there are not many who ever gain the knowledge accurately even at the end. of long years of life. The essayist himself admits this :—" Life is an ordeal," he says, " and but few of us survive it." " When a friend asks me how I am, I am fortunate if I can say :- Thank you, I am pretty well, managing to survive life.' " "Truly life is the thing to survive, and not death." But that is an admission that it is very easy to lose yourself in life and not very easy to find yourself. As a matter of facts it takes the greatest simplicity of nature, the greatest earnestness, the greatest lucidity, to distinguish between egotism of the most fatal kind, and true and discriminating self-assertion. A swollen and inflated egotism is much too likely to be the- natural consequence of the sort of doctrine which these preachers of individuality press upon us, especially when they preach such doctrines as the present essayist's, that " All goodness is wild and even violent." (p. 71.) " No. really good man can possibly be quiet, for there is no such thing as tame goodness. All goodness is wild. and savage." (p. 110.) If any one is injudicious enough to take that literally, what harlequins we should have, per- suading themselves, or trying to persuade themselves, that unless they could invent some quite new moral gymnastic of their own, they would be simply imitating others, and not be truly themselves. We venture to say that though neither • Life's Greatest Possibility, An Essay in Spiritual Realism. London: Regan. Paul., Trench, Tritbner, and Co. (Limited). 1892.
extreme would be true, it would be less mistaken to say, No goodness is wild or violent," than "All goodness is wild and even violent ; " loss mistaken to say. " Every really good man is quietly so,—all goodness is subdued and reticent," than " All goodness is wild and savage." For our own part, we believe that true earnestness is very rarely either wild or violent or savage. The quarrel with " the world," the quarrel with conventionality, the quarrel with mere usage and popular opinion, is deepest where it is least ostentatious and immodest. This new Emersonian, nevertheless, is very much in earnest, and a good deal of what he says is very well adapted to awaken genuine thought and vivify true personality ; but he goes quite astray when he challenges men to show their individuality by crying aloud and making themselves the observed of all observers. The essayist tells us truly enough :- "Inspiration also is far easier than knowledge, since a man is inspired solely because he is near God ; and this any man can be. But knowledge is the result of special intellectual qualities, and no one who has not got them can be learned. But every man can be inspired, because every man can be good. In the inspired man the soul speaks, and through it the soul of the universe. In the learned man only the mind and book memory. A learned man has his knowledge in common with other men, and even in common with books. But no man has his soul in common with any other man or thing, but only in virtue of his own individual manhood and kinship to God. A man of talents does the world's work. An inspired man does the universe's work. The inspired man has an eternal message—the talented man, a momentary use."
But suppose the inspiration, when truly possessed, is an in- spiration to modesty and self-renunciation,—as it is more often than not,—what becomes of the creed that " all good-
ness is wild and even violent"? We should say that, in great social crises, goodness may be wild and even violent, but that great social crises are comparatively rare, and that the subdued manner is far oftener the note of intensity and earnestness than the wild and violent manner with which this probably youthful writer is so much in love. However, we have no wish to carp. Our Emersonian is full of buoyancy and vivacity, and his little essay is well calculated to waken up the moral somnambulists on whom he casts so much not un- deserved ridicule.
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