Knowledge of the intellect has in it no creative power, no vitalizing essence—cannot give life. The meaning of life must be lived. Nay, knowledge of the intellect is not even the incentive to life—not so much as instigator of our most paltry acts. The instincts and the emotions and intuition are the more vigorous masters and compellers of our living—are outside knowledge—independent of it—often opposed to it, overwhelming it, setting it aside at slightest desire carelessly, contemptuously, passionately.
And then——
The brutes of the field have not reason; yet are they moved by this same mystery of life; their flame goes out in the same strange mystery of death! That which is the secret of life in man must also be the secret of life in all else....
The youth had been overwhelmed in the darkness that had shown beyond the impotence of the intellect. He was aroused by the literature of Romanticism. He opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer; it led to the page of life to which he had now turned. The German pointed a guiding finger.
Even if the brain’s ken were not limited, it is impotent. But, fortunately, there is a secret stair to the mystery of life. Not by way of the intellect, but by way of the emotions may we pierce to the secret of existence. Life expresses itself through the senses. The emotions hold more of the ultimate mystery than all the vapour-filled brains of philosophers, be they priest or schoolmaster——
The youth thought he had discovered the answer to the riddle of life.
Searching deep down into his own being, frankly, with the unembarrassed gaze of himself for sole company, fearlessly, candidly, and in the decent silence, peering for the innermost essence of existence, he perceived throughout all seeming incongruities and inconsistencies and warnings, a strange all-compelling energy which this snarling Schopenhauer called the Will to Live—a blind, never-resting, never-satisfied want—a fierce desire for life.
He saw that the body is but the earthly habitation for the use of this mystic breath of life whereby alone may life achieve its compelling urging for the fulness of experience. The intellect was wonderful, as were all the body’s functions; heart and belly and the rest; but it and they were only the instruments by which the inspiration of life protected itself from destruction, guiding itself through the dangers that beset it in the substantial world or threatened its continuance—through pain shrinking from the dangers of destruction; through pleasure moving forward eagerly towards a fuller experience; through hope which encourages, and fear which makes to hesitate; through love which draws it to its fellows and its mate, and hate which warns it of its enemies—for in marriage is continuance and evolving, in hate is denying. Thus fares the sensate vehicle of the body, enabling life to destroy its foes, above all to realize manifold emotions, and to hand itself on with an added heritage of experience to a higher wayfaring.
Everywhere was absolute confirmation. Science, all that was known of the solid world, confirmed it. Experience confirmed it. History confirmed it. The senses confirmed it. Instinct confirmed it. Everywhere, in all, common to man and brute, was this overwhelming, fierce, all-compelling urging to live the fulness of experience.
The key unlocked the secret of the very mountains and the waters. Out of the vasty space this mighty urging of life creating itself into the vehicles of worlds, creating itself from worlds into more emotional creatures upon the world, gathers into forms, attracts, repels, coheres into shapes, reaches to the mystery of crystals. Baffled by the rigidity of the rocks, dissipated in the elusiveness of the waters, the mystic life gropes its way towards subtler channels of embodiment. On through the flowers of the field this urging to fuller life gropes towards emotion—and, freed from its root’s anchorage to the rigid soil, behold, out of the yeasty ooze it realizes itself through fish and reptile and bird into beast. On, through the brute, increasing by rebirth, at first blindly seeking to fulness in the humblest sensations, working up from stage to stage, struggling and striving always to feel the fullest emotions, developing for itself bodily organs which shall nourish it and do it service, that it may most fully achieve itself—it essays to fullest experience through brute force and reaches by struggle of the physically fittest to the body of the lion and the tiger and monster—retires baffled from mere bodily force, and, essaying through the cunning of the brain its fuller fulfilment, forms for its embodiment the nimble ape. For its protection and aggrandisement the brain’s cunning gives craft to the hands and sets them to the making of tools, and lo! at a stroke the rushlight of early reason thrusts the savage above the brute. It steps down from the trees, and Man, finding his hands’ use, and straddling on two legs, stands upright and a-wonder. The miracle has happened. Life has become conscious of itself.