OUR MASTERS.
Freedom is the boast of half the civilized world, and the envy of the other half. It is the embodiment of the desires of our age, the goal of the individual, as well as the collective life of nations. It is a treasure jealously guarded or a prize passionately longed for, the pretext for riot and disorder, the burden of diplomatic messages, the ostensible object of all civic government. England records in the words of a national song, "Britons never will be slaves," her proud determination to grasp it; America asserts elasticity of personal liberty as the chief attraction of her territory; everywhere the cry is, "We will do as we like, and accept no dictation from any man." It is a somewhat strange commentary on this fierce vindication of one man's rights that they invariably clash with the rights of all other men, provided the latter happen to differ in the interpretation of freedom. Again, it is a curious psychological phenomenon that this much-vaunted freedom generally ends in a frantic appeal to the state to force one particular set of principles upon a large majority to whom these principles are repulsive. In some countries "freedom" means expulsion from a quiet retreat deliberately chosen years ago by men and women in full possession of their senses: witness the depopulated monasteries and the poor religious thrust out to starve or beg. In others it means the minute supervision of state officials over the educational and religious interest of thousands—a sort of domestic inquisition in perpetual session on moral subjects, which the individual inquisitors do not pretend even to have studied. In conjunction with this species of freedom we have the ravenous appetite for unbelief of all shades, for laxity of morals, for the elasticity of the marriage-tie, for a pleasant and dignified way of losing our souls, for decorous but unrestrained indulgence of our passions—in short, for the manifold attractions of the "broad road." This is the serious side of the question—the one to be dwelt upon by preachers and philosophers, and that which the heedless actors in the world's drama are apt to pass by as a matter of course—a thing taken for granted long ago.
But there is another aspect, more personal and more intimate, in which this question appears to us. We boast of being free, and at every turn the commonest circumstances of our daily life belie us. Free! why, we are tied as fast as we can be to a perpetual pillory; like the prisoner of Chillon, we can just walk round and round our post at the length of our chain, and wear a groove into the hard stone of our surroundings. Free! with a hundred masters: the gout, dyspepsia, the doctor, the cook, society, the weather. Free! with the newspaper to dictate our ideas and opinions, to choose, recommend, and puff our candidates, to lay down the law in criminal cases, to patronize the jury and pass sentence on the prisoner!
It would be hard to find a condition in life which is not eminently a bondage, and a bondage the more galling because the bonds are so insignificant. It is almost equally hard to know where to begin the record of our abject submission to external trammels. You are tired, and want to sleep an extra hour in the morning. Of course, you think you have only to will this, and it is done. But you are not allowed to sleep; the noise in the street increases; the bells of the cars mingle in determined clangor with the whistle of the steamboat; an organ-grinder takes up his position under your window, and serenades you into madness; the "horn of the fish-man is heard on the hill" (Murray Hill); presently the fire-alarm sounds, and the clatter of engines follows close upon it; while all the time the flies are industriously reconnoitring your face, walking over your eyelids, losing themselves in your hair, and, despite your half-unconscious protest, you must own after all that you are awake.
Then the whole tenor of your mind for the day may depend upon the exact degree of tenderness in the customary beefsteak or on the extra turn given to the crisp buckwheat. So the wire-pulling is done in the kitchen, and your vaunted independence as a man and a citizen goes down ignominiously before the fiat of the cook. This kind of thing is interminable. You are at the mercy of your tradesmen, and, for the sake of peace, you pay the bills and submit to be cheated with inferior provisions while paying the price of superior ones. The newspaper is not always ready to your hand when you feel inclined to look at the news of the world, and straightway your mind becomes uneasy, your temper rises, and you have again surrendered your freedom. You order your horse, but find he is lame, and so you must forego your plans for the day; you make up your mind to start by the early train to-morrow, and enjoy a day in the country, and find, when you open your window in the morning, that the rain is pouring with dismal steadiness, and promises to do so for many hours to come. Sometimes your wife keeps you waiting fifteen minutes for dinner, and, on sitting down, you find the soup cold and the entrées spoiled; and it is well known that not even Job could have stood that! The wind and tide wait for no man; and so you are hurried out of bed against your will at unseasonable hours of the night or morning, and packed on board the steamer bound for Europe while yet half asleep and as sulky as a bear, your free-will practically gone as much as if you were a bale of goods being shipped and checked for Liverpool.
Social customs are no less a hidden tyranny. If you would not appear eccentric, you must do as others do—wear a dress-coat when you would fain be in your shirt-sleeves, and a smile when you are dying for an opportunity to yawn. If you are a silent man, you must nevertheless join in the gossip of your fellow-guests, and laugh at unmeaning jokes, for fear people should call you a misanthrope, and avoid you as a "wet blanket" to conversation. If you have any decided opinion, you must keep it to yourself, and avoid the vacant stare of astonished good-breeding which is the penalty of any energetic statement. It is vulgar to be too demonstrative or to have any settled opinions; enthusiasm is out of fashion, and indifference has at least the advantage of never committing you to anything. If a little deviation in manner from the recognized standard is not reprehensible, then it is voted amusing, and the self-asserting individual is considered a good butt; but no one dreams of asking his advice or even crediting him with common sense. All his real qualities are lost sight of, and he is judged by the mere accident of "originality." No one takes the trouble further to investigate his character; he is "odd," and people either drop him as a bore, or run after him as a lion.
If a man has a hundred invisible masters, a woman has five hundred. From the cook to the dressmaker, from the nurse to the baby, she is surrounded by tyrants. She is at the mercy of the coiffeur, who comes in an hour behind time, and tumbles her hair into shape in a violent hurry, so that she is late at the ball; she lives with the sword of Damocles above her head in the shape of the dressmaker, who will send in a ball-dress so loosely sewn together that it splits in many places before the evening is over; if she is poor, she is the slave of desire, perpetually tantalized by the splendors she cannot reach, eating her heart out because Mrs. Jones has got a new bonnet so far finer than her own, or Mrs. Smith's rich uncle gave her a cashmere shawl impossible to outrival; if she is married, the regulating of the domestic atmosphere will cost her many an anxious thought, a curtailed hour of leisure, an uneasiness regarding a possible storm when Harry comes home and finds his new hat mangled by the pet puppy; if she is single, she will be always scheming for an escort, and fretting lest she should be overlooked, and so on through every variety of possible female situations. To this picture there is a companion. See the unhappy bachelor of moderate means, in a forlorn boarding-house, pining for the simplest luxuries or the innocent liberty of stretching at full length on a lounge without taking off his working-clothes; sighing for a variety in the round of his monotonous meals, and for the possibility—without hazard of starvation—of an occasional morning snooze when the inexorable breakfast-bell calls him to the renewed treadmill of existence. But woe to the man who rashly turns to matrimony, and surrenders, without mature deliberation and cogent reasons, the liberty—such as it is—which still remains to him. His change may be from the "frying-pan into the fire," and the nightly fate of the wretched Caudle, of curtain-lecture memory, may claim him for life. Is the rash Benedict "free," when the irreproachable wife begins to make her hand felt, and, together with the immaculate table-linen, the punctual and succulent meals, the orderly household, the never-failing newspaper always at hand at the right moment, yet silently conveys to him the awful impression that she is heaping coals of fire on his head? A man may be in prison, and, if he can pay for them, may yet enjoy every luxury and attention; still, it would be rather stretching the point to say that he was therefore free. So both sexes know how to tighten invisible bonds around each other's claims, and "freedom" is practically as meaningless as the apparent life of a still green tree woven round by the graceful and fatal vine.
The majority of mankind are quite debarred from any tangible freedom by the lack of means with which to procure it. A poor man cannot, physically speaking, be a free agent; but, in compensation, the richer and higher placed a man is, the more social and moral trammels will he encounter. Excess of want and excess of possession often end by producing the same result. The poor man cannot move from his post, because he has not the money to do so; the rich man cannot move from it, because he has too much money to watch over. Wealth, too, brings its responsibilities; and a conscientious man, in whose hands lie the life and comfort of hundreds of his fellow-creatures, cannot leave his post because his tenants or operatives would suffer through his absence. In fact, no one, in a certain sense, can be "free," except an unprincipled man and an unbeliever. Selfishness is the only road to such animal freedom as would content a sensualist. A Christian, be he poor or rich, cannot aspire to this worldly freedom, because his religion tells him that he is not free to desert those with whom God has linked his fortunes. Family circumstances fetter one to an incredible degree; conscience is a perpetual trammel; and even the exigencies of position are sometimes a legitimate restraint on our actions. Many persons of narrow minds, not particularly influenced by moral forces, fall a prey to Mrs. Grundy, and dare not face the opinion and comments of their neighbors. In the most trivial things we are slaves to the verdict of society. Who would not rather have danger than ridicule? How many things, whether lawful or unlawful, are we not ashamed to do, because of what "people would say," quite irrespective of the intrinsic right or wrong, expediency or uselessness, of the thing itself? It may well be said that it is less a sin in the eyes of the world to break every one of the Ten Commandments than to enter a room with your hat on, or ask a girl to marry you on nothing a year. It would require more pluck to stand up for an unfashionable religion, or defend an unpopular person in a cultivated assemblage arrayed on the opposite side of the question, than it would to storm a citadel or rescue a sinking ship. To contravene one-quarter of an article of the impalpable code of society entails downright ostracism; and the lynch-law administered to social delinquents effectually keeps people in this imaginary groove, where the invisible penalties of religious codes are unavailing to enforce good morals. How hollow the system is which thus intrenches itself behind such paltry defences we need not say; but how infinitely more galling and more belittling is this servitude than the yoke of God which men fly from! Absolute hardships, real privations, men will cheerfully undergo, provided it is with a worldly object; nobody minds being a slave when the devil is master and the livery is cloth-of-gold.
One of the axioms of the day is that marriage should be a profitable speculation. To what lengths do not men and women proceed in order to fulfil this inculcation to the letter? The writer once heard the hunt after wealthy marriages likened to the vicissitudes of S. Paul on his journeys. The likeness was forcible, though hardly elegant; but, at any rate, it was earnestly and not irreverently meant. The best of it was that it was so startlingly true, and that no part of the world, no system of society, could escape the allusion. Perils by sea and land, perils by robbers, perils by false brethren, watchings and hunger, cold and nakedness—there was not one detail which did not find its counterpart in the modern race after matrimonial advantages. People undergo for the world more hard penances than would suffice to bridge over purgatory, did they suffer them for God. Wolsey, in his disgrace, cried out that if he had served his God but half so well as he had served his king, he would not now be reaping a meed of contempt and ingratitude. So with the world; it despises those who toil for it, and no one is less respected by it than the very man who has sacrificed principle to win its life-homage. As to the marriage lottery, there is very little that is not staked for a lucky throw of the dice. Health is ruthlessly sacrificed; delicate girls brave the night air, the draughts in the corridor, the sudden change from a fetid heat to intense cold, the unwholesome meal at abnormal hours, the loss of actual rest, all for the questionable pleasure of attending a ball every night in the week, and being seen "everywhere." Economy is disregarded, and reckless outlay on flimsy, temporary dress indulged in without a murmur; delicacy and modesty are tacitly put by as unfit considerations in the present, however useful they may prove in the future; underhand inquiries as to a young man's habits and associates, his fortune and his prospects, are unblushingly made, quite as a matter of business; snares and pitfalls are judiciously contrived for the coroneted or gilded victim; pride of birth, of which, at any other time, the practised diplomatists of the salons are so tenacious, is pocketed at the approach of some plebeian prize, and the son or daughter of a self-made man is welcomed with admirably simulated rapture when duly weighted with the parent's hardly-earned money. Stranger than all, this mania of gambling in marriage—for it is nothing less—seizes even persons whom you would naturally suppose would, by instinct or principle, be averse to any such transactions; but though you will find them proof against every other meanness, the very shadow of this one will unsettle their minds. Good people seem impelled to join this race as by an irresistible fatality, and will actually blind themselves to the repulsiveness of such a course by glossing it over as an outgrowth of a sacred instinct, parental love, and solicitude. Needy and idle men, seeking a fortune by marriage with an heiress, are not a whit better—nay, a shade more despicable—than mercenary women on the same lookout.
But it must be confessed that there is a healthier and nobler side to human nature which is too often obscured by the supposed requirements of our worst tyrant—society. There are women who, being rich and high-minded, view this pursuit of themselves with disgust; and there are men, equally high-minded, but poor, who love these women, but, for fear of being classed with interested suitors, and sometimes for fear of a contemptuous refusal, never come forward and acknowledge their love. The woman who sees this may love such a man, but maidenly dignity forbids her making it too plain; and "society" thus manages to make two honest hearts wretched for years, sometimes for life, and perhaps in the end to efface in them even the belief in true and disinterested affection. And we dare to call ourselves "free"!
Business and our material interests are so many burdens and trammels to our liberty. Say that we are easy-going and indolent, fond of sedentary pleasures; but a long and uncomfortable journey becomes necessary, and, under the penalty of material losses, we are obliged to choose the lesser of the two evils. Or reverses swoop down so suddenly upon us that, having been used to elegant leisure and comparative security, we are incontinently thrown on our own resources, and obliged to work, if we would not starve. Even the choice of work is not always open to us, or we may happen to choose some unremunerative work, which fate and our hard-hearted neighbor will persist in making useless to us. Even with prosperity work itself becomes a tyrant; and when the lucky worker thinks of enjoying his earnings in peace and retirement, the restless demon of habit steps in to make his very retirement wretched. He is allowed no peace, but sighs for the counting-house or the workshop; and one has heard of such haunted men going about disconsolately beneath the weight of fortune, until solaced by a miniature feint of the old work—a place where, far from the satin, gilding, and ormolu of the fashionable mansion, they can plane and turn common chairs and tables, or sit in a leathern apron, cobbling their own boots. Poor millionaire! are you "free"?
Other men are slaves not so much to their passions as their tastes. Such an one undergoes tortures if another's collection of china is better than his own, or if a rival bids higher than he can afford to do for an old Italian or Flemish picture. This man would give himself more trouble to secure an old carved secrétaire of English oak or Indian ebony than he would to promote some work of charity; another has a hobby about sumptuous bindings, or rare lace, or any bric-a-brac of the kind; inartistic furniture is an eyesore to him, inharmonious colors upset his equanimity, and everywhere, even in church, any defect of form irritates and repulses him. He is hardly master of his own thoughts, and is apt to form hidden prejudices; he lives in the clouds, and often makes himself disagreeable to those who do not.
The tyrannous custom of making funerals and weddings an occasion of useless pomp is perhaps one of the most reprehensible of all. The fashion has insensibly grown till one's perverted sense of what is "fitting" has almost acknowledged it to be a necessity. So the mourners are disturbed, their privacy broken in upon, delicacy outraged in every possible way, the curiosity of strangers gratified, an unseemly hubbub substituted for the solemn stillness natural to the presence of death—all in order that the world's fiat may be duly obeyed. People pretend that all this fuss is to honor the memory of the dead. No such thing; it is to feed the vanity of the living. It must not be said that Mr. S—- did not provide as good a table, as handsome any array of carriages, as great a profusion of flowers, as richly ornamented a coffin, for his wife's funeral, as did Mr. R—— last year on a similar "melancholy occasion," any more than in the lifetime of the two ladies could it have been suffered to have gone abroad that Mrs. S——'s rooms were not as uncomfortably crowded for a reception as Mrs. R——'s, or her carriage not of the same irreproachable build.
The world has undertaken to decide for us, in the privacy of home as well as beyond its walls, exactly the degree of outward respect to be shown to the dead. Such and such a particular texture, and crape of such and such a particular width, is the measure of the widow's, the daughter's, or the sister's grief; less would be indecorous, more would be eccentric! The milliner tells us in a subdued voice how much jet is allowable, and how soon the world expects the appearance of a white collar in place of a black one, just as the world dictates the exact length of a court-train, and mentions the appropriate number of feathers to be worn in the hair. In England, a widow's cap is de rigueur, and not to wear it would be to brand one's self with the mark of a flirt and a questionable character. In other countries in Europe, it is not in use, and the character of French and Italian widows is not dependent on an extra frill of white crape. How a poor and proud woman, unwilling to be behind her neighbors in respect of decorous mourning-robes, can manage the enormous expense of a thing so perishable and so dear as crape, in such quantities as to entirely cover a dress, is a mystery which the peremptory laws of society do not care to enter into and do not pretend to solve.
Weddings are hardly, under the iron hand of custom, what one might reasonably expect them to be—i.e., family festivities. They are not occasions of personal rejoicing over the happiness of your nearest and dearest—oh! no, that is humdrum and "slow"; so the wedding-day is turned into a gorgeous manifestation of your worldly wealth—a day of hollow ostentation and often of hidden sadness. The extravagance of your floral decorations, and the judicious display of the bride's presents, cost you more thought than the solemn covenant about to be made; the adjustment of the pearl necklace, the graceful folds of the bridal veil, the perfect fit of the white kid glove, are of far more importance than the vow pronounced so lightly at the altar. It is the reception, not the sacrament, that predominates in most minds. Instead of a family gathering, reverently waiting in prayer for the happy consummation of a very solemn and awful contract, you have a mob of slight and careless acquaintances, down to the very scourings of your visiting-list, assembled to stare and gape at the show, to talk slang and make unseemly jokes, to criticise your hospitality, and make bets as to how soon the marriage may be followed by a separation. Everybody asks how much money has the bride, what is the standing of the bridegroom, what are the settlements, etc. When they go away, they do not even thank you for the lavish expense, whose fruits they, and they alone, have enjoyed; but, instead of that, they abuse your champagne and rebuke your extravagance. Privacy—a necessary condition of domestic happiness—is impossible on this great day; prayer is almost out of the question; reflection is scared away. It might be hoped that the young couple would now be allowed to retire into private life, after this free exhibition of themselves as the central figures of a puppet-show. But, no; fashion pronounces otherwise. A wedding-trip, though not deemed quite indispensable by the code of society, is still favorably looked upon, and, if possible, is a still worse thing than the wedding itself. Dissipation is the order of the day; the change of toilets becomes the all-absorbing topic of the bride's thoughts and conversation; the tour must include the showiest watering-places; perpetual motion and a full meed of frivolity are ensured, a kaleidoscope of discreet admirers provided, little mild triumphs of flirtation enjoyed, with the added zest of perfect security from embarrassing proposals, and equal immunity from the new-made husband's wrath, since he could not thus early begin to lay down the law; and a most miserable foundation is laid for the after-comfort of home. Besides, what does a wedding-trip imply? That life is a drudgery, and a respite is necessary before taking up the burden. The home is thus made a vision of imprisonment—scarcely a wise preparation. Then the foolish and utterly useless expenditure probably cripples the young couple, in ordinary cases, for some time to come. The month's trip has swallowed what would have covered half the year's expenses, and "going home," instead of holding out a bright prospect, is connected with dulness, retrenchment, and monotony. This is what society and its tyranny have succeeded in making of marriage. Are such couples "free" agents?
Who is free on this earth? Who is not the slave of petty caprices, even if he escapes the worse servitude of degrading vices? The drunkard, the sensualist, the gambler, are victims of low passions that destroy health and sap vitality, while they surely lead to a lonely or a violent end; but with such aberrations we do not propose to deal. But even those who pride themselves on their freedom from any vice or bad habit, what are they, often, but puppets swayed by absurd influences radiating from such sources as the loss of a night's rest, the delay of a meal, the failure to reach a certain train?
Children and pets are well-known tyrants, not only to the mother or the maiden aunt, but to the male creation in general and the old generation in particular. The grandfather is ready at all times to be made a hobby-horse, the grandmother to drudge for king baby. The children's dinner is the event of the day; Harry's destructiveness of his first pair and all following pairs of trousers is the burden of the household lament; little Cissy's first tooth is a matter of deep interest; baby Maggie is allowed to pull mother's hair down just before dinner, unrebuked—nay, even encouraged. Pet poodles and favorite parrots, and, indeed, all tame companions of mankind, absorb a wonderful amount of human interest and attention, and often demand it at unseasonable hours; compelling idleness, or at least encouraging loss of time. In fact, our time and mind are ever occupied with supplementary things, forced upon us by custom or caprice; and we secretly but helplessly rebel, incapable, we think, of either resistance to our own follies, or courage to laugh in the face of Mrs. Grundy.
It is impossible to stand absolutely free in the world, but there is freedom and freedom. Of all freedoms, that of the free-thinker is the narrowest. Uncertainty is a grievous spirit, doubt a bad master; and the poor free-thinker finds that his mental companion and philosophic guide offers him but slight comfort under misfortune. Moral restraints are to him but chaff in the wind, religious forms mere dust shaken off his shoes; but what remains? He deems himself king of the world of thought, but he finds his kingdom turned into a desert; he acknowledges no ties or duties, undertakes no responsibility, works (if he works) for himself alone, and then finds that what he earns he cannot enjoy unshared. Temporary human companionship on earth has no charms for him; for he reflects that annihilation follows death, and it is therefore useless to make bosom friends of men who will so soon be less than nothing, and whose only memento will be in the richness of the crops grown over their graves. The mental solitude of the free-thinker is not an agreeable or a soothing one; much less is it fruitful in high thoughts or heroic actions.
If any ask in an earnest spirit, where are the fewest masters, and where freest men?—we would answer, in the cloister.
A startling answer to the worldling; a suggestive one to the thinker. Let us examine it, and see whether it can be substantiated. Religious are the men supposed to be the most subjected to authority in the world—those whose duty it is to have not only no will of their own, but even no individual thought, no opinion of any kind. Even so, in a sense; and on that account, not despite it, but because of it, are they the freest men on earth. The secular clergy are comparatively free, because they have one object only; that is, one Master. Priests are not burdened with family and household cares, scarcely with social necessities; but none the less are they sometimes vexed by circumstances which they cannot control, and are made to pay the tithe of that slavery which any contact with the world, even for the world's good, and by men who are not of the world, necessarily entails. Religious even of active orders are still freer, because they are less of the world; but the man who stands before God in silent contemplation, as the eagle pauses before the sun and looks into its depths, is the freest of all. A purely contemplative order, whose mission, higher yet than that of the captains of Israel, is that of Moses praying with uplifted arms for the triumph of the people of God—such is the home of the highest and truest freedom.
The ascetic has found the secret that philosophers seek for in vain, that attitude of godlike calm in the midst of all transient storms of life. The supremest exercise of freedom is to surrender that freedom itself, with full confidence that the person into whose hands it is surrendered is the representative of a higher power. A king would not be free were he prevented from abdicating his kingship; the religious vow is the abdication of a kingdom greater than is constituted by so many thousands of square miles. This renunciation once made, no earthly event can be of the slightest interest to the disenthralled man. No care for his body, no solicitude for his reputation, remains; he has disrobed himself of his earthly belongings, and let slip every vestige of the garments of worldliness. A spirit—practically almost disembodied—he looks above for inspiration, comfort, guidance, knowledge. The miseries of earth, if poured into his ear by some despairing fellow-mortal, gain from him the divine pity of an angel rather than the passionate sympathy of a man; he is raised above the wants of nature, the wrangles of society, even the perplexities of the intellect. Taught no longer by men or by books, he speaks face to face with God in his long prayers and meditations, and no human interest ever distracts his mind from this exalted colloquy. Insensible to the influences of time, place, and circumstance, he is still as free as air when hunted from his retreat by men to whom his whole life is an enigma; the oracle speaks to him in the midst of a crowd, and he no more hears the murmur of those around him than if he were at sea, a thousand miles from land; a palace, a prison, or a scaffold are all reproductions of his cell, for the same all-filling Presence surrounds him, blinding him to all else. His indifference is so galling to his enemies, his freedom so mysterious and so provoking, that they would rather put him to death than witness the unutterable calm they can neither disturb nor emulate; but that death is only the one more step needed for his perfect bliss—the one veil to be yet lifted between the ascetic philosopher and the freedom that taught him his philosophy.
Serene land of passionless perfection, which men call the monastic life! How many, even among religious, scale thy furthermost heights? Yet it is a consolation to mankind to know that there is, even on earth, a sanctuary where human nature, be it only represented by ever so few, can reach to that ideal state of perfect communion with God and perfect contempt of all trammels which alone should be dignified with the name of philosophy.