HINDRANCE.
Much that is in itself undesirable occurs in obedience to a general law which is not only desirable, but of infinite necessity and benefit. It is not desirable that Topper and Macaulay should be read by tens of thousands, and Wilkinson only by tens. It is not desirable that a narrow, selfish, envious Cecil, who could never forgive his noblest contemporaries for failing to be hunchbacks like himself, should steer England all his life as it were with supreme hand, and himself sail on the topmost tide of fortune; while the royal head of Raleigh goes to the block, and while Bacon, with his broad and bountiful nature,—Bacon, one of the two or three greatest and humanest statesmen ever born to England, and one of the friendliest men toward mankind ever born into the world,—dies in privacy and poverty, bequeathing his memory "to foreign nations and the next ages." But it is wholly desirable that he who would consecrate himself to excellence in art or life should sometimes be compelled to make it very clear to himself whether it be indeed excellence that he covets, or only plaudits and pounds sterling. So when we find our purest wishes perpetually hindered, not only in the world around us, but even in our own bosoms, many of the particular facts may indeed merit reproach, but the general fact merits, on the contrary, gratitude and gratulation. For were our best wishes not, nor ever, hindered, sure it is that the still better wishes of destiny in our behalf would be hindered yet worse. Sure it is, I say, that Hindrance, both outward and inward, comes to us not through any improvidence or defect of benignity in Nature, but in answer to our need, and as part of the best bounty which enriches our days. And to make this indubitably clear, let us hasten to meditate that simple and central law which governs this matter and at the same time many others.
And the law is, that every definite action is conditioned upon a definite resistance, and is impossible without it. We walk in virtue of the earth's resistance to the foot, and are unable to tread the elements of air and water only because they are too complaisant, and deny the foot that opposition which it requires. Precisely that, accordingly, which makes the difficulty of an action may at the same time make its possibility. Why is flight difficult? Because the weight of every creature draws it toward the earth. But without this downward proclivity, the wing of the bird would have no power upon the air. Why is it difficult for a solid body to make rapid progress in water? Because the water presses powerfully upon it, and at every inch of progress must be overcome and displaced. Yet the ship is able to float only in virtue of this same hindering pressure, and without it would not sail, but sink. The bird and the steamer, moreover,—the one with its wings and the other with its paddles,—apply themselves to this hindrance to progression as their only means of making progress; so that, were not their motion obstructed, it would be impossible.
The law governs not actions only, but all definite effects whatsoever. If the luminiferous ether did not resist the sun's influence, it could not be wrought into those undulations wherein light consists; if the air did not resist the vibrations of a resonant object, and strive to preserve its own form, the sound-waves could not be created and propagated: if the tympanum did not resist these waves, it would not transmit their suggestion to the brain; if any given object does not resist the sun's rays,—in other words, reflect them,—it will not be visible; neither can the eye mediate between any object and the brain save by a like opposing of rays on the part of the retina.
These instances might be multiplied ad libitum, since there is literally no exception to the law. Observe, however, what the law is, namely, that some resistance is indispensable,—by no means that this alone is so, or that all modes and kinds of resistance are of equal service. Resistance and Affinity concur for all right effects; but it is the former that, in some of its aspects, is much accused as a calamity to man and a contumely to the universe; and of this, therefore, we consider here.
Not all kinds of resistance are alike serviceable; yet that which is required may not always consist with pleasure, nor even with safety. Our most customary actions are rendered possible by forces and conditions that inflict weariness at times upon all, and cost the lives of many. Gravitation, forcing all men against the earth's surface with an energy measured by their weight avoirdupois, makes locomotion feasible; but by the same attraction it may draw one into the pit, over the precipice, to the bottom of the sea. What multitudes of lives does it yearly destroy! Why has it never occurred to some ingenious victim of a sluggish liver to represent Gravitation as a murderous monster revelling in blood? Surely there are woful considerations here that might be used with the happiest effect to enhance the sense of man's misery, and have been too much neglected!
Probably there are few children to whom the fancy has not occurred, How convenient, how fine were it to weigh nothing! We smile at the little wiseacres; we know better. How much better do we know? That ancient lament, that ever iterated accusation of the world because it opposes a certain hindrance to freedom, love, reason, and every excellence which the imagination of man can portray and his heart pursue,—what is it, in the final analysis, but a complaint that we cannot walk without weight, and that therefore climbing is climbing?
Instead, however, of turning aside to applications, let us push forward the central statement in the interest of applications to be made by every reader for himself,—since he says too much who does not leave much more unsaid. Observe, then, that objects which so utterly submit themselves to man as to become testimonies and publications of his inward conceptions serve even these most exacting and monarchical purposes only by opposition to them, and, to a certain extent, in the very measure of that opposition. The stone which the sculptor carves becomes a fit vehicle for his thought through its resistance to his chisel; it sustains the impress of his imagination solely through its unwillingness to receive the same. Not chalk, not any loose and friable material, does Phidias or Michel Angelo choose, but ivory, bronze, basalt, marble. It is quite the same whether we seek expression or uses. The stream must be dammed before it will drive wheels; the steam compressed ere it will compel the piston. In fine, Potentiality combines with Hindrance to constitute active Power. Man, in order to obtain instrumentalities and uses, blends his will and intelligence with a force that vigorously seeks to pursue its own separate free course; and while this resists him, it becomes his servant.
But why not look at this fact in its largest light? For do we not here touch upon the probable reason why God must, as it were, be offset by World, Spirit by Matter, Soul by Body? The Maker must needs, if it be lawful so to speak, heap up in the balance against His own pure, eternal freedom these numberless globes of cold, inert matter. Matter is, indeed, movable by no fine persuasions: brutely faithful to its own law, it cares no more for AEschylus than for the tortoise that breaks his crown; the purpose of a cross for the sweetest saint it serves no less willingly than any other purpose,—stiffly holding out its arms there, about its own wooden business, neither more nor less, centred utterly upon itself. But is it not this stolid self-centration which makes it needful to Divinity? An infinite energy required a resisting or doggedly indifferent material, itself quasi infinite, to take the impression of its life, and render potentiality into power. So by the encountering of body with soul is the product, man, evolved. Philosophers and saints have perceived that the spiritual element of man is hampered and hindered by his physical part: have they also perceived that it is the very collision between these which strikes out the spark of thought and kindles the sense of law? As the tables of stone to the finger of Jehovah on Sinai, so is the firm marble of man's material nature to the recording soul. But even Plato, when he arrives at these provinces of thought, begins to limp a little, and to go upon Egyptian crutches. In the incomparable apologues of the "Phaedrus" he represents our inward charioteer as driving toward the empyrean two steeds, of which the one is virtuously attracted toward heaven, while the other is viciously drawn to the earth; but he countenances the inference that the earthward proclivity of the latter is to be accounted pure misfortune. But to the universe there is neither fortune nor misfortune; there is only the reaper, Destiny, and his perpetual harvest. All that occurs on a universal scale lies in the line of a pure success. Nor can the universe attain any success by pushing past man and leaving him aside. That were like the prosperity of a father who should enrich himself by disinheriting his only son.
Principles necessary to all action must of course appear in moral action. The moral imagination, which pioneers and produces inward advancement, works under the same conditions with the imagination of the artist, and must needs have somewhat to work upon. Man is both sculptor and quarry,—and a great noise and dust of chiselling is there sometimes in his bosom. If, therefore, we find in him somewhat which does not immediately and actively sympathize with his moral nature, let us not fancy this element equally out of sympathy with his pure destiny. The impulsion and the resistance are alike included in the design of our being. Hunger—to illustrate—respects food, food only. It asks leave to be hunger neither of your conscience, your sense of personal dignity, nor indeed of your humanity in any form; but exists by its own permission, and pushes with brute directness toward its own ends. True, the soul may at last so far prevail as to make itself felt even in the stomach; and the true gentleman could as soon relish a lunch of porcupines' quills as a dinner basely obtained, though it were of nightingales' tongues. But this is sheer conquest on the part of the soul, not any properly gastric inspiration at all; and it is in furnishing opportunity for precisely such conquest that the lower nature becomes a stairway of ascent for the soul.
And now, if in the relations between every manly spirit and the world around him we discover the same fact, are we not by this time prepared to contemplate it altogether with dry eyes? What if it be true, that in trade, in politics, in society, all tends to low levels? What if disadvantages are to be suffered by the grocer who will not sell adulterated food, by the politician who will not palter, by the diplomatist who is ashamed to lie? For this means only that no one can be honest otherwise than by a productive energy of honesty in his own bosom. In other words,—a man reaches the true welfare of a human soul only when his bosom is a generative centre and source of noble principles; and therefore, in pure, wise kindness to man, the world is so arranged that there shall be perpetual need of this access and reinforcement of principle. Society, the State, and every institution, grow lean the moment there is a falling off in this divine fruitfulness of man's heart, because only in virtue of bearing such fruit is man worthy of his name. Honor and honesty are constantly consumed between men, that they may be forever newly demanded in them.
We cannot too often remind ourselves that the aim of the universe is a personality. As the terrestrial globe through so many patient aeons climbed toward the production of a human body, that by this all-comprehending, perfect symbol it might enter into final union with Spirit, so do the uses of the world still forever ascend toward man, and seek a continual realization of that ancient wish. When, therefore, Time shall come to his great audit with Eternity, persons alone will be passed to his credit. "So many wise and wealthy souls,"—that is what the sun and his household will have come to. The use of the world is not found in societies faultlessly mechanized; for societies are themselves but uses and means. They are the soil in which persons grow; and I no more undervalue them than the husbandman despises his fertile acres because it is not earth, but the wheat that grows from it, which comes to his table. Society is the culmination of all uses and delights; persons, of all results. And societies answer their ends when they afford two things: first, a need for energy of eye and heart, of noble human vigor; and secondly, a generous appreciation of high qualities, when these may appear. The latter is, indeed, indispensable; and whenever noble manhood ceases to be recognized in a nation, the days of that nation are numbered. But the need is also necessary. Society must be a consumer of virtue, if individual souls are to be producers of it. The law of demand and supply has its applications here also. New waters must forever flow from the fountain-heads of our true life, if the millwheel of the world is to continue turning; and this not because the supernal powers so greatly cared to get corn ground, but because the Highest would have rivers of His influence forever flowing, and would call them men. Therefore it is that satirists who paint in high colors the resistances, but have no perception of the law of conversion into opposites, which is the grand trick of Nature,—these pleasant gentlemen are themselves a part of the folly at which they mock.
As a man among men, so is a nation among nations. Very freely I acknowledge that any nation, by proposing to itself large and liberal aims, plucks itself innumerable envies and hatreds from without, and confers new power for mischief upon all blindness and savagery that exist within it. But what does this signify? Simply that no nation can be free longer than it nobly loves freedom; that none can be great in its national purposes when it has ceased to be so in the hearts of its citizens. Freedom must be perpetually won, or it must be lost; and this because the sagacious Manager of the world will not let us off from the disciplines that should make us men. The material of the artist is passive, and may be either awakened from its ancient rest or suffered to sleep on; but that marble from which the perfections of manhood and womanhood are wrought quits the quarry to meet us, and converts us to stone, if we do not rather transform that to life and beauty. Hostile, predatory, it rushes upon us; and we, cutting at it in brave self-defence, hew it above our hope into shapes of celestial and immortal comeliness. So that angels are born, as it were, from the noble fears of man,—from an heroic fear in man's heart that he shall fall away from the privilege of humanity, and falsify the divine vaticination of his soul.
Hence follows the fine result, that in life to hold your own is to make advance. Destiny comes to us, like the children in their play, saying, "Hold fast all I give you"; and while we nobly detain it, the penny changes between our palms to the wealth of cities and kingdoms. The barge of blessing, freighted for us by unspeakable hands, comes floating down from the head-waters of that stream whereon we also are afloat; and to meet it we have only to wait for it, not ourselves ebbing away, but loyally stemming the tide. It may be, as Mr. Carlyle alleges, that the Constitution of the United States is no supreme effort of genius; but events now passing are teaching us that every day of fidelity to the spirit of it lends it new preciousness; and that an adherence to it, not petty and literal, but at once large and indomitable, might almost make it a charter of new sanctities both of law and liberty for the human race.