" WEARENESS OF LIFE."
THE murderer Wakefield, who was executed at Derby on Monday, told the prison chaplain that he had committed the crime for which he was hanged,—the unprovoked murder of a child of nine, whom he got into his house only apparently in order that he might cut her throat, after which he immediately gave himself up to the police,—" because he was tired of his life." What he probably meant to say was not that he was tired of his life, but tired of his want of life. These crimes of cruelty have again and again proceeded from the state of mind which is very mistakenly called satiety, generally a misnomer for insatiability. Real fatigue may drop ;—real exhaustion may cause death ;—but real fatigue is not an un- healthy state; real exhaustion is not a morbid, or cruel, or insanely prurient condition of mind. On the other hand, the weariness which springs, not from having lived too much, but from the voracity for more life, the profound disappoint- ment at not having lived enough, the just weariness with self which has been in all ages of the world the source of so much cruelty, and which is much oftener due to want of real work than to overwork, is a state of genuine disease, whether it be due to moral trangression, or moral dis- ease, or cerebral disease. It is not a desire for rest, but a peevish craving for more life which apes the sense of weariness ; and it has frequently taken the form of borrowing, or trying to borrow, at the cost of others, that additional stimulus to life which the unsatisfied soul supposes that it has missed. Of course, if the poor wretch at Derby had simply been weary of life, he would not have taken so strange a circuit to get rid of it as to commit a murder as a mode of inviting the State to put a stop to his existence. No doubt, he was really in that insane state of craving to know what life was, and moody disgust with the apathy of his own condition, that his mind ran on the physical mystery of life, till he confused, as moral insanity so often con- fuses, the desire to kill with the desire to live. With tyrants, this horrible impression that the true stimulus for a growing apathy is the sacrifice of human victims, has been common enough ; and though it has been very rare among those trained in the wholesome school of physical labour, we suppose that there must be defects of brain or mental constitution which might bring on a man the same morbid condition as a long course of selfish pleasure-seeking. It is the inability to work hard which induces the inability to sleep well. And so it is often the inability to live heartily which induces the in- ability to resign life, when it appears to be ebbing away, with thankfulness and peace. What is miscalled " satiety " is not the complete satisfaction of a healthy appetite, but the dissatisfaction of an appetite which is at once craving and weak. And so, too, what people often call "weariness of life," is not usually the profound but almost happy sense of exhaus- tion with which the strong man lays down the burden of a too eager existence, but rather the hysterical longing after a fuller capacity for both effort and enjoyment with which the man who has never known either adequately, re- pudiates the half-life he is ashamed to live.
Of course, when this feeling reaches the insane point, there is no treating it. It is then beyond the power of the-will, and,
perhaps, beyond the control of punishment or disgrace. But within very different limits—within the limits of self-control—
this so-called weariness of life is a marked feature of the-present age,—partly because so many of the stronger and nobler motives of past days have lost much of their vividness, solemnity, and dignity,—partly because, amidst the rush of the growing competition, so many people of inadequate vitality are discouraged and disheartened before they enter the lists, and while, on the one hand, they do not feel up to the struggle, have not, on the other, learned the art of so drawing out of the struggle as to possess their souls in patience, even though they run no stimulating race. Wordsworth complained that the old are much too unapt to learn this lesson
So fares it still in our decay ; And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away, Than what it leaves behind."
The blackbird and the lark, he says, have a happy youth, "and their old age is beautiful and free "—
" But we are vexed by heavy laws, And often, glad no more, We wear a face of joy because
We have been glad of yore."
In other words, we cannot content ourselves with ceasing to enjoy what we once enjoyed ; we must affect to others and our- selves that we do enjoy it still, when we do not, because we can- not break easily with the past, and live the truest life of the present. And no doubt this is a good part of the secret of what the healthier part of the community—the old who have lived stoutly and well, but can no longer live as they 'once did— call "weariness of life." It is not that they are weary of the life they now have their grasp on, but that they are weary of trying to live, after the time for it is past, the life they once did live, and live thoroughly ; that they do not know how to glide naturally into the resignation of pleasures which they have out- lived, and tasks for which they are no longer fit. What they need is to be able to enter into and really enjoy the new oppor- tunities in which they find themselves,—the opportunity of struggling less and sympathising more, of achieving less and understanding more, of arrogating less to themselves and re- signing more to others, of fretting less and submitting more, of expecting less and meditating more, of taking less Tide in what they do and more pride in what others do, of battling less and help. lug more, of prayingless for themselves and more for those who are in the midst of the eddies, in one word, of living less in effort and more in trust. It is the defect of almost all Protestant religion that it does not prepare us when young for this side of life ; that it throws almost all its stress on strenuousness in moments of con. filet, or temptation, or endeavour, and ignores too much that im- portant element in primitive Christianity which taught those who were unfitted to exercise much influence in the fierce and inso- lent Roman world, to stand aside without indifference, to watch without listlessness, to hope without eagerness, and to wait without impatience.
Bat there is a so-called weariness of life 'which is almost as common with the young as it is with the old, and in some cases ought to be easier to cure, since it has not the whole stiffness of long and rigidhabits to fight against, as the weariness of life which comes of a habit of eager acting, when eager acting is no longer possible, certainly has. We do not mean, of course, the Byronic weariness of life which comes of living chiefly in the passions, and finding th at the passions afford,on the whole, less life, and that more miserable, than any other career open to men. Of course, weari- ness of life of that kind, is not curable except by trying a new kind of life altogether,—a life which controls the passions, and is itself controlled by a distinct conception of duty. But there is
such a thing, we think, as weariness of life in the young which means nothing in the world but inadequacy to the severe struggle of modern life, and is consistent with a very pure and reasonable kind, of life, so long as that severe struggle is not forced upon them. Should there not be much more general recog- nition than our Western world admits, that neither all women nor all men are fitted for a pushing life, and yet that a good number of both sexes are quite competent for a certain fulness of life in quiet forms, which they simply spoil_ by forcing them-
selves into the heat and turmoil of our Western world's busiest scenes ? Of course, if it is fairly recognised that this must be so with a great many men, as well as a
great many women, children should be taught to put this alternative fairly before their minds, as one which, as they grow up, they will have to weigh. And they should be taught that if they are of the less eager and active kind,—if their aim ought to be a modest and retiring one as regards the world,—then they must begin early to check desires inconsistent with that kind of life, desires which could never be gratified. We see ambition frequently encouraged in children whose ambition is quite capable of rapid growth though their capacities promise no sort of active satisfaction for it. One of the necessary things in education is to teach children to some extent to appreciate whether their own powers tend to active life, or to tranquil life outside the busiest stir of the world ; and if the latter, then steadily -to repress those desires which would be inconsistent with it. There is hardly a man, however moderate his abilities and energies, who might not look forward to a fair share of human happiness, if he were early taught to conform carefully his conception of life to his powers, and to seek nothing beyond what those powers entitle him to look for. And the same is true of women. Weariness of life in the young arises,—in so far as it arises from causes that are not purely moral,—chiefly from a great dis- proportion between the kind of career the young have been taught to expect, and the kind of career for which they find themselves fit. There is too much of the idea that it is good for all lads to be spurred into a sort of ambition for which they are by no means suited. A life of carefully-limited desires,—a life more or less approximating in its reticence and moderateness of aim to that which the old most usually live, if they are to live happily at all,—need be by no means an unhappy life for a very large number of the young people of our generation, if only they were not so early taught to look upon such a life with contempt, as if it were no life at all. In reality, it might be a much more dignified and noble life than the life of fretful competition, and of unsuccessful or half-successful ambition.
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