“Il rit de ces prudents qui, par trop de sagesse,
S’en vont dans l’avenir chercher de la tristesse
Et des soucis cuisants.”
Once and again in his autobiography does the most influential, perhaps, of French philosophers avow his resolve á vivre désormais au jour la journée, to take short views of life, and regard distant objects as at once illusive and elusory. “Usons de chaque jour sans trop de prévoyance du lendemain,” says another. And it was an old French poet, fourscore and upwards, who in 1700 wrote the four verses which since then have been often cited:
“Chaque jour est un bien que du ciel je reçois,
Je jouis aujourd’hui de celui qu’il me donne;
Il n’appartient pas plus aux jeunes gens qu’a moi,
Et celui de demain n’appartient a personne.”
Dr. Boyd recognises as sound philosophy in Sydney Smith, the advising us, whether physically or morally, to “take short views.” One of his illustrations to the purpose is, that it would knock you up at once if, when the railway carriage moved out of the station at Edinburgh, you began to trace in your mind’s eye the whole route to London. Never do that, he says; think first of Dunbar, then of Newcastle, then of York, and, putting the thing thus, you will get over the distance without fatigue of mind. What little child, he asks, would have heart to begin the alphabet, if, before he did so, you put clearly before him all the school and college work of which it is the beginning? “The poor little thing would knock up at once, wearied out by your want of skill in putting things. And so it is that Providence, kindly and gradually putting things, whiles us onward, still keeping hope and heart, through the trials and cares of life.” Every dog has its day, quaintly observes A. H. K. B. on another occasion; but the day of the rational dog is overclouded in a fashion unknown to his inferior fellow-creatures; it is overclouded by the anticipation of the coming day which will not be his. And the essayist reminds us accordingly how “that great though morbid man, John Foster,” could not heartily enjoy the summer weather, for thinking how every sunny day that shone upon him was a downward step towards the winter gloom—each indication that the season was advancing, though only to greater beauty, filling him with a sort of forecast regret. “I have seen a fearful sight to-day,” he would say, “I have seen a buttercup.” And we know, of course, adds his critic, “that in his case there was nothing like affectation; it was only that, unhappily for himself, the bent of his mind was so onward-looking, that he saw only a premonition of December in the roses of June.” Waife, in Lord Lytton’s story, checks his grandchild’s query when, happy, and unaccustomed to happiness, and therefore distrusting its continuance, she wistfully exclaims, “It cannot last, can it?” “’Tis no use in this life, my dear,” Waife tells her, “no use at all disturbing present happiness by asking, ‘Can it last?’ To-day is man’s, to-morrow his Maker’s.” Life being a succession of stages, urges another practical philosopher, we should think of one stage at a time. Most people, he judiciously reminds us, can bear one day’s evil; what breaks men down is the trying to bear on one day the evil of two days, twenty days, a hundred days. “We can bear a day of pain, followed by a night of pain, and that again by a day of pain, and thus onward. But we can bear each day and night of pain, only by taking each by itself. We can break each rod, but not the bundle.” And the sufferer, in real great suffering, is well described as turning to the wall in blank despair, when he looks too far on. To cite another illustration of A. K. H. B.’s, we should, for certain purposes, look not at the entire chain, but at each successive link of it; we know, of course, that each link will be succeeded by the next; but we should think of them one at a time.
Do not say, wait the end, is a maxim of Paul Louis Courier’s, who declares that, saving the respect due to the ancients, nothing is more false than that rule. “The evil of to-morrow shall never deprive me of the good of to-day,” is one of the brilliant Frenchman’s resolves. Another brilliant but highly bilious Frenchman testifies from observation and experience to the necessity, in the long run, of living from day to day, without indulgence either in unavailing regrets or anxious forecast, “on s’aperçoit qu’il faut vivre au jour le jour, oublier beaucoup, enfin éponger la vie à mésure qu’elle s’écoule.” But it may too truly be said of this philosopher that he wrote, and lived, as one having no hope, and without God in the world.