1.11h, RISE OF PRICES IN 1.11h, SPIRITUAL WORLD.
pRICES are gone up in the spiritual as well as in the natural world. Even a good conscience is far dearer than it used to be, and peace of mind is hardly procurable. If we are not overworking ourselves, we know we ought to be. If we take any amusement, we feel we must excuse ourselves. We ought, we know, to have something better to do than play, though all but the most buoyant spirits require some artificial keeping up, and good humour is apt to go out at the door when economy comes in at the window. If we are not in direct anxiety, we are almost ashamed of our tranquillity ; and if we want to converse with our friends, and so procure the most harmless of all recreation, they are either out at work, or preoccupied, or so argumentative and censorious that we go home wishing we had not forced the meeting. To set against all this there is an unintermittent drama of thrilling interest being enacted before our eyes. We cannot help actively enjoying its development, and for doing so most of us condemn ourselves. Even this distraction we must pay for in the coin of self-abasement.
Every one who takes up unaccustomed work is liable to fits of depression. Fatigue accounts partly for this ; also, no one does the details of new work either well or easily. The most diligent must ask themselves sometimes whether they are not wasting their strength to no purpose. Conscience, however, will not be silenced, and appears to prefer that we should work a treadmill rather than that we should sit at ease. Conscience is an unreasonable master at times ; however, we must admit that it does defend us against other tormentors. Nothing else offers us a shelter from the reasoning of the critics. When they assure us how badly we are doing our self-imposed jobs, and how much better it would be to give them up and explain that we shall never win the war by breaking our insignificant backs, the inward monitor soothes us with illogical praise. We have appeased conscience with the sweat of our brows, but we should not be human if we did not regret the day when not so much appeasing was necessary—when a good conscience could be had for a negative price, if such an expression may be used.
Just now the temper of the ordinary person is short. We are not speaking of those in bitter personal trouble. They, alas ! know only too well that a man may sell all he has and yet not obtain the hidden pearl of a serene faith ; but their state of mind is beyond the scope of such reflections as we are indulging. The tendency of great troubles is to swamp small ones ; but it is not the great ones only which destroy peace of mind. Very small worries will serve to keep a bad sleeper awake, and very small irritations ruffle the spirit in time of stress. The spiritual and material worlds converge upon the question of money. This sounds very cynical, but surely it is true. If we have to give two thoughts instead of one to what we must eat and drink and how we are to be clothed, peace of mind, which is as often as not simply leisure of mind recedes as we count our pennies. We cannot get this mental leisure while we are distracted by the forming of new habits which have not yet become second nature. This second nature is very expensive in a spiritual sense. It means an outlay of energy, and it means that we continue to pay out from our moral fortune in patience and perseverance. In the end we may perhaps buy our leisure back, and find we have gained something into the bargain. Again, there are people who require a good deal more recreation than others, just as there are those who require an exceptional amount of food. For instance, a good deal of light reading may have become a necessity to them. They trust to it to enable them to get through their work, and they think with daily gratitude of the second-rate writers who have so often offered them rest and refreshment without mental effort of any sort. But it takes some effort nowadays to lose oneself in the lightest and least exacting of fiction. A domestic novel is now about as hard to read as a piece of stiff biography used to be in those delightful times before the craving for newspapers came to interfere with every train of quiet thought. They must pay heavily for their mental outing. But perhaps they will give up the book cure, and determine to go away for a while to a far part of the country, somewhere where "you would not think that there was any war." As a matter of fact, such places only exist in the minds of journalists ; but it may be a little easier to pretend there is none in the folds of the Quantocks than in Cheapside. It is only by a subconscious effort, even under the open sky, that they can keep their minds in peace, and even il they succeed they are a prey to an unreasonable sort of remorse. "How many people are suffering while we are taking our ease ? " they say to themselves. They have earned a rest, they know ; but somehow a real rest, a real mental change, is not to be had at any price.
Probably none of us know till lately how much we depended for our equanimity upon tiny distractions, little talks and plans and purchases, pleasant lookings-forward and pleasanter lookings-back. The dislocation of social life has very much done away with these. We got something out of them which it is difficult to describe, but something which is a sort of class privilege—possessed, though it is, by an enormously largo class. It is a sort of surface happiness —the badge of prosperity. It shows most in youth. Tho joy of well-off youth is a thing so lovely to look upon that if by its sacrifice we could mitigate by a quarter all the hardships of ill-off youth, there would still be some tears to be shed over the loss to the world. In later life it still shows in tho faces of women. Let any one wander all day about any town and look at the women. Serenity is confined almost to what we still in our minds call "ladies." They had leisure for constant little pleasures. These are too dear now to be had. They cost too much time, too much thought, and too much courage. We have all a sense that if we seek to make ourselves and others happy in tho little ways of the past, we shall be blamed, shall be east out among the careless. We take a pride now in belonging to those who dwell with care. If we insist that our harmless pleasures are still ours by right, we must be prepared to pay for them, to lose consideration, and even perhaps self-esteem. But it may be said : "Who wants amusement or pleasure now when the interest of life has increased tenfold ? " It is true ; yet how painful is all this enhancing of interest. Still, when the poets spoke of sweet pain they spoke with truth. There are some wonderful spiritual goods in the market, though there is nothing for nothing. Look at the crowds of young people who three years ago would have married with little romance and no anxiety. Now the alternations of anxiety and delight aro almost more than they can boar. Love is indeed a romantic thing just now. Poetry lives. In a sense the world has grown young again. The gallants and maidens are courting in the near presence of death. Truly they have recaptured a bliss which seemed fading into the past. But what a price they have paid for it I What tears and sleepless nights, what a terrible embitterment of the worst of all fears ! There is no doubt a lighter side to this new interest in life. We are all politicians nowadays. We have all had a rise in life. We live in that exhilarating atmosphere where men gossip Imperially. We aro as keenly interested in the Govern- ment of this country and of Ireland, and in the conduct of the war, as though we had a chance of a seat in the Cabinet. We no longer say modestly that we know little about the affairs of State. We are convinced that we know all alsout them, and we apportion praise and blame with zest and pleasure untold. True, we change our views every month or two, adore the men we cursed and curse those whom we adored ; but, like children intent on a game, we have not a moment's time to give to the consideration of that inconsequent conduct which our instructors would bring to our notice. We never awake without a sense of interest, or go to sleep without a sense of expectation. To the Englishman, who is by nature an optimist, though by habit a grumbler, expectation seldom takes the form of apprehension. Dulness is dead—but what has it cost to kill it ?
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