INTERVALS.
LIVERY man has his own method of computing time. We have
all in our own breasts a sort of secondary conscience which ticks instead of pricking. Our outward life is lived under the tyranny of the solar system, and we are all constrained for con- venience' sake to " go by the clock," or rather by the sun. We have allowed reason to over-persuade us that one hour is the same length as another, but inwardly do we not all know better ? We sometimes say : " It is later than that by me," and the words might bear a wider interpretation than is usually put upon them. The secret of the irreducible minimum of character which we call temperament is intimately connected with the inward clock. With some unfortunate people the dial registers that pain is long and joy short ; with others it is the reverse. If we go by the sun, a good case for the optimist can almost always be made out. It can be proved that life is for practically every one worth living. Let us take an extreme instance at random. Suppose a man were born illegitimate in the poorest slum of the ugliest manufacturing city, pursued through life by ill-fortune, and finally hanged though innocent; it is still arguable that he passed between birth and death more hours of happiness than of misery. It is also arguable, if we refuse to be dictated to by the sun, that (setting aside religious considerations) it would have been better for that man if he had never come into the world at all. The truth cannot be surely ascertained unless we could know after what manner the minutes were registered in his own consciousness. It is a common experi- ence that pain is forgotten. From the time of Scripture onwards the pains of childbirth have been supposed to be quickly forgotten. A large minority of women deny the truth of the assertion, but literature is against them, and the fact that in most cases physical pain passes from the memory, at any rate when its results are joyful, would seem to be established. Is it not possible that for those individuals in whose consciousness pain hurries the clock, for whom suffering is quickly past, memory has not time to make an indelible record ? To consider another instance. Some men and women who show great powers of endurance cannot make up their minds to have a tooth out without some form of anaesthetic. Not Infrequently they will tell some story of a terrible wrench remem- bered in their schooldays, and declare that they have vowed no more to submit to such agony. The ordinary reply of those who are "not afraid of the dentist" is: "But it is over in a second. I feel I could stand anything for such a moment." Of course it is always possible to say that the one is a coward and the other brave. As a rule such a criticism is beside the point. One man's " moment " is as another man's minute, and therein lies the answer to the puzzle.
The same principle applies to every acute form of joy and delight. Where we get what we call a happy disposition the commonest pleasures drag the clock. The short " treats " of childhood loom large in memory, and old people refer to them with a sort of shame- faced delight. " So-and-so took me to my first play," they say ; or, " Sometimes [such a one] took me fishing." Almost every minute of these red-letter days is remembered, because they were not really minutes, as the inward timepiece counts time. But the greater part of life is not made up of acute pleasure or pain ; ':lag tracts of moderate serenity divide the landmarks. Here also the hands of the mental dock move differently in different men. Life is not short to every one even in retrospect. A small bit of holiday is enough for some men. " I feel as if I had been idle for a month," they say when only a week separates them from their work. Other equally industrious people will tell you that they have never yet " had their holiday out," so to speak. No sooner do their daily activities and anxieties cease than the clock flies ahead, and they have to be back at work " before they can turn round."
Needless to say, no theory offers more than a very partial explanation of the secret of happiness. Even if we accept these suggestions with regard to the various effects of time upon the individual consciousness, we cannot say that those men are happiest whose memory, like the sundial, only records the sunny hours. Quality as well as quantity tells in the value of recollections. Human life is not simple. Sympathy and affection come to those who can give them, and they are not given as a rule in full measure by those whose hours of anguish have been short. To be without these is to experience but a low degree of felicity, even if it were possible to conceive of complete immunity from suffering. The present writer once knew a woman of foreign origin, indeed of dark blood, who declared that she did not know what was meant by either pain or fear. She had had several children, and though her physique was extraordinarily fine, and she had no illnesses, she must of course have occasionally hurt herself, pinched her finger, knocked her head, or experienced some momentary pang or dread. What she must have meant was that she had no memory for such things. She did not appear to be exceptionally happy, and it is not too much to say that she was widely and acutely disliked.
We have it upon the authority of one of the world's greatest thinkers that even the most vivid memory of delight serves at moments to enhance pain. Such memories, we are told, are " sorrow's crown of sorrow." At this moment, alas ! -thousands of men and women are in a position to say if this be true. Sons who never gave them a moment's pain, who died while yet the glamour of the relation of parent and child was undimmed, have been torn from them. Is the suffering less where the relation was less perfect ? If their recollection was less happy, would it be more bearable ? We have everything at the price of risk. To be safe from heartbreak is to have nothing. But there are still many who have lost nothing, who suffer only from anxiety. The whole world is anxious now in varying degrees, from mortal anxiety which can only refer to personal risk, to that general anxiety which if pointed by responsibility is a terribly heavy thing, but which may be no more than a sort of universal disease. Are we helped or further distressed by these lulls in the struggle, by these days and nights and weeks which intervene in which we feel moder- ately—comparatively—secure from all our fears ? A great deal, we think, depends upon how long they seem to us. Suspense cannot in the nature of things go on very long ; it passes into a sense of security—given time. For some the lull is never long enough for this. It does but increase their apprehension. They get no ease from the interval. But to most men, we think, whether their anxiety be public or private, the hours of inaction lengthen out into relief.
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