“Well, you must make the attempt at all events,” said Carriston, with a genial laugh; “it is the only cure for your disease.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because it is your egotism makes you miserable. You care for no one but yourself, and are therefore bound to suffer from such selfishness. True happiness lies in self-abnegation, a virtue which all men preach, but few men practise. ‘Every man,’ says Goethe, ‘thinks himself the centre of the universe.’ This is true—particularly true in your case. You have been so much taken up with your own woes and troubles that you have had no time to see those of your fellow-creatures, and such exclusive analysis of one’s inner life leads naturally to self-sickness. You are torturing yourself by yourself; you have destroyed the sense of pleasure, and can therefore see nothing good on God’s earth. You would like to cut the Gordian knot by death, but have neither the courage nor resolution to make away with yourself. Oh, I know the reason of such hesitation.
‘’Tis better to endure the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.’
I have no doubt that is your feeling about the hereafter. Well, with all this you feel you are in prison and cannot escape, because a last remnant of manliness forbids you opening the only door by which you can go hence. Therefore you are forced to remain on earth, and condemned yourself to supply the tortures from which you suffer. Have I not described your condition accurately?”
“You have,” replied Maurice, rather astonished at the rector’s penetration. “I do torture myself, I know, but that is because I cannot escape from my own thoughts. Pin-pricks hurt more than cannon balls, and incessant worries are far more painful than great calamities. But all you have said touches on the disease only, it does not say how the cure you propose will benefit me.”
He had come back to his seat, and was now leaning forward with folded arms, looking at the benevolent face of his friend. The discussion, having roused his interest, made him forget himself for the moment, and with such forgetfulness the moody look passed away from his face. The rector saw this, and immediately made use of it as a point in his favor.
“Ah, if you could but behold yourself in the glass at this moment,” he said approvingly, “you would see the point I am aiming at without need of further discussion. I have interested you, and consequently you have forgotten for the moment your self-torture. That is what love will do. If you love a woman, she will fill your whole soul, your whole being, and give you an interest in life. What she admires you will admire, what she takes an interest in you will take an interest in; and thus, being busy with other things, you will forget to worry your brains about your own perfections or imperfections. And if you are happy enough to become a father, children will give you a great interest in life, and you will find that God has appointed you work to do which is ready to your hand. When you discover the work, aided by wife and children, you will do it, and thus be happy. Remember those fine words of Burns,—
‘To make a happy fireside clime