Both partial success and failure in these efforts are instrumental to the achievement of the task of mankind. Both serve to make more explicit the character and extent of the ideal, while the ultimate inevitable failure painfully instructs man in the fact of the incongruity of the two orders. The only outcome of human history that we can view with satisfaction on a large scale, is the same as that which we should regard as the best outcome of an individual life, namely, the growing conviction and the clearer vision of the eternal spiritual universe as real. We might say that that man had lived best who on his deathbed could declare with perfect truth: “I have achieved the certainty, and in through the vicissitudes of my life, that there is a universe.” I here emphasize again the distinction between universe and world. To say that the universe is “good” is equivocal. The term “good,” as commonly used, describes the moral striving of a finite nature, and not the quality that belongs to the spiritual universe and its members, thinking of them as ideally we must, as freed from finite limitation. Of the spiritual universe, we might use the term “supra-good,” only we should then be careful to add that the “beyond good” is to be conceived as lying in the direction of the good, while transcending it. Thereby we avoid the pitfall of Nietzsche and of others who speak in a totally different sense of the “beyond good and evil.” We read of a man blessing his children on his deathbed. The highest type of man is the one who in articulo mortis can bless the universe.
The discrepancy of the finite and the infinite order appears on the physical and moral sides. On the physical side it thrusts itself upon our attention in the circumstance that juxtaposition and sequence are incapable of being unified, or totalized. Space and time and that which fills them, matter, are by nature incongruous with spirit. On the moral side the incongruity appears in the deflecting forces of appetite and passion which hinder us in the attainment of the spiritual end and in the fact that our so-called higher faculties are in irreconcilable conflict with one another. The harmonious union of all of them in any individual is a fiction. It is impossible to be fully developed on all sides. And in addition the social substrata in which the spiritual relation has to be worked out, are themselves too deeply beset with internal contrarieties to serve their purpose adequately. The sex relation, for instance, is to a certain extent favorable to the achievement of spirituality, that is, of living in the life of another; yet on the other hand there are elements in it that defeat this very object.
I write, therefore, at the head of such words of counsel as I can hope to give in respect to the conduct of life, the word Frustration. It is understood that this word is not used in the pathetic sense. First because there is partial achievement, moments in life at which the rainbow actually seems to touch the earth. Love and marriage, the completing of a beautiful work of art, the discovery of a new law of nature, the emancipation of an oppressed class, are examples. But these partial successes are presently seen to be partial; they are followed, or even in the moment of triumph, permeated, with the sense of incompleteness and the foreboding of new obscurities and perplexities advancing upon the mind. Yet essentially the doctrine is not a melancholy doctrine, because frustration, though a painful instrument, is yet a necessary instrument of spiritual development. We are not open to the reproach of dampening the zest and relish for life of those who are setting out to try the hazard of their fortunes. They shall put forth their best effort to succeed, but let them be so guided herein that they may meet in the right attitude of mind the disillusionment which is the condition of the revelation. The shadows will and must descend before they can be parted, disclosing the landscape of the spiritual universe.
CHAPTER II
THE THREE GREAT SHADOWS: SICKNESS, SORROW, SIN
Having concentrated attention upon the point that the end is not the development of any particular faculty or assemblage of faculties, but the awakening in man, in and through his development, of the consciousness of interrelation, of life in life, we shall now turn to the three great shadows: sickness, sorrow, sin. In the case of sickness the suffering, however acute, must be made to pass over into action. There is a certain work to be done, something to be accomplished on the sick bed. What is it? I shall briefly review a few of the answers that have been given.
First, the Stoic says: A man in pain is to resist the pain by an act of will, thereby demonstrating that his essential self is inaccessible to bodily suffering. “If there is a pain in thy limb, remember that the pain is in thy limb, and not in thyself.” Now the fortitude of the Stoic is admirable as far as it goes; his counsels are bracing and manly. But, because he is a materialistic pantheist, the reason he gives for his defiance of pain is not convincing. In effect his appeal is rather to the empirical than to the spiritual nature of man. The spiritual nature is characterized by humility; the appeal of the Stoic is to pride. Fate with all its sledgehammer blows shall not crush him. Yet the Stoic’s pride when put to the supreme test does not avail, and the proof of it is that at the last it breaks down in suicide.
We come to a second answer. There is business in hand for the sufferer on the sick bed. What is the business? To hide the expression of his suffering, so that the cloud which rests on him may not cast its shadow upon others, obscuring their sunshine. But, we are bound to ask, are others always worthy of such consideration? Is not our sympathetic regard for their pleasures, their sunshine, often misplaced? Are not their pleasures often selfish and frivolous? The Greeks believed that outcries in situations of great distress are perfectly legitimate, since they seem to afford a kind of relief. Is it not cruel to forbid such outcries? In our age the view prevails that it is a proof of moral grandeur to suppress the signs of suffering. But the cynical question obtrudes itself whether it may not be the collective selfishness of the multitude that imposes this rule. The common run of men desire to go on their way undisturbed by cries that emanate from the sick chamber, and perhaps it is on this account that they impose a rule of behavior based, not on the principle of human worth, but on its opposite. The individual forsooth is not to count; the unhappiness of one is not to interfere with the happiness of the greater number!
There is, however, another view of the matter possible. Everyone carries his own particular burden. When tortured by some painful malady, we are apt to think that others, because they wear a smiling exterior, are therefore free from pain. But often those who seem in sound health are in fact as great sufferers as we, or even greater. And physical pain is not the only kind of suffering. Why, then, should I, for one, add to the troubles of others by imposing my own upon them? Put in this way, it is plain that there is an ethical element in the kind of behavior that is expected of a manly person. But the reason assigned, sympathy with the pleasures of others, is unconvincing. Unless there be some good to which grievous suffering can be made instrumental, there is no warrant for enduring it. As for the Stoics, so for the philosopher of sympathy, the logical end would be suicide, at least when the pain is exceptionally intense.
There is a third answer. Something is to be worked out on the sick bed. What is it? To be purified in the furnace, to learn patience and humble submission to the inscrutable will of God. Patience is the supreme virtue. “Be patient, Oh, be patient,” I once heard a dying man repeat with touching accents. But patience for the sake of what? There must be some object to be gained by the patience to make it commendable. I can be patient in a storm at sea if I may entertain the hope of reaching port. I can be patient in conducting a difficult scientific experiment if I may hope that it will issue in an important discovery, or prepare the way for such discovery by others. I can be patient in sickness if I have any reason to expect a return to health. But patience for mere patience’s sake is absurd. Well, then, the third answer is,—patience for the sake of manifesting your faith and trust in a wise and beneficent Deity. Why he has sent this suffering, why he has so made the world that it is replete with the agony of sentient creatures we do not know. We cannot know. But he knows. Trust him, have faith in him: “Though he slay me yet will I trust him.”