In due time [after leading the purely animal life] let him critically learn
How he lives.
And what shall be the result of the new gift? To him who, inexperienced in its uses, lives “in the morning of philosophy,” it must be indicative of an increase of happiness. With the greater fulness of life, resultant from extended knowledge, must surely follow also an extension of enjoyment. But such a belief, says Cleon, living in the eve of philosophy, could have existed only in its morning “ere aught had been recorded.” Experience, that prosaic but infallible instructor, has taught man otherwise. The simplicity of mere animal life, though involving not the conscious happiness of a reasoning being (if indeed happiness there be for such) served to impart “the wild joy of living, mere living.” A joy from which Caliban was to be found awakening to a realization of his own individuality, and also to a realization that joy and grief are relative terms: that joy, equally with grief, was impossible to the Quiet, the possessor of supreme power, as it was impossible to
Yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea.[27]
To Cleon, oppressed by a profound sense of discouragement in life, the cynical suggestion presents itself that the semi-conscious vegetating existence of the animal may be more desirable than the yearnings and aspirations inevitably attendant on human life, with its joys keen and intensified, but, alas! all too brief.
Thou king, hadst more reasonably said:
“Let progress end at once,—man make no step
Beyond the natural man, the better beast,
Using his senses, not the sense of sense.” (ll. 221-224.)
It is a purely pagan view of life.
In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life. (ll. 225-226.)
So man grew, and his widening intelligence opened out vast and ever-increasing possibilities of joy. But with the realization of possibilities came also the consciousness of his limitations. So long as the flesh had remained absolutely paramount, the restrictions it was capable of imposing upon the workings of the soul had been unfelt. Now, when the soul has climbed its watch-tower and perceives
A world of capability
For joy, spread round about us, meant for us,
Inviting us.
When at this moment the soul in its yearning “craves all,” then is the time of the flesh to reply,