But this revolt against the monastic asceticism of the middle ages stands far removed from any implication of sensual indulgence.
“My mind to me a kingdom is,” wrote one of our poets. “The kingdom of Heaven is within you” gives in more scriptural phrase precisely the same truth; and for its application to the conduct of life we have this further scripture: “Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal.”
And if it be a true boast that man’s mind is his real and legitimate kingdom, then he must make that kingdom his Heaven, and within that kingdom his treasure must be stored. It is there, by the power of his mind more than by the power of his hands, that he must gather and hold together his great possessions. We are accustomed to speak in one single connection (with book-knowledge, namely, and with the use of words)—of “learning things by heart.” It is only “by heart” that we can ever really learn anything; only when our heart is in it do we know and value a thing so as to understand it. The man whose heart is not in his work is not a complete craftsman; he has not yet learned the “mystery” of his trade. When men’s hearts were in their work they called their trades “mysteries,” and did, as a consequence, more excellently than we do now, when we make rather for the price of a thing than for the joy of it.
Until we have joy in our labour, all labour is a form of waste—for it wastes the bodies and souls which are put to it, and is destructive of the most wonderful and valuable commodity which this planet has yet produced—human nature. Labour without joy causes it to deteriorate; and if a man is put to work wherein it is impossible to find joy, then it were better for the wealth of the nation, as well as for the wealth of his own individual soul, that he should be free from it.
And if that is impossible then let us not boast ourselves about our “national wealth” or our great possessions. Nations whose wealth and industries are built up out of the hard and grinding mechanical labour of millions are not capable in any true sense of holding great possessions, for at their very root is an enormous mass of poverty—impoverished blood, impoverished brain, and impoverished spirit.
If you would examine into the wealth of this or any other nation, look not first at its temples or its arts, but into the bodies and minds and characters—and the faculty for joy—of its men and women. And if these, in the majority of cases, are below par, then the nation’s wealth is below par also; its great possessions are overshadowed by the greater dispossession which stands imposed upon the lives of its people.
The word possession itself has, in our use of it, a double significance. When we speak of a man “having a possession,” we may mean two things—either that he possesses, or else that he is possessed. A man with a possession of jealousy, or hatred, lust or covetousness, has no real possession or control of those things, but is himself possessed or controlled by them, and so is rendered not stronger but weaker—subject to a master other than himself.
Yet the man who is thus possessed is not conscious of any diminution of his individuality, any reduction of personal power or prowess: he does not discern from it any closing in of that round horizon to which first his spirit was heir. For that by which he is possessed fills him with such a pressure of emotion—its dynamic forces within him are so strong, that he may actually imagine his personality to be thereby not diminished but enlarged, and may (by reason of the violence with which this distemper discharges itself on others) be cheated into the belief that thus he secures for himself a broader base, raising his life to a higher level of consciousness, instead of what actually is the truth, turning it to consumption and waste—not opening his senses to new joys but shutting them in; sharpening them indeed like teeth, but closing them together with springs made not for expansion but for contraction, so that they act like a trap destructive of the very life they would control. And as with individual men, so with nations.
“Would you know a man,” said the Greek oracle, “give him power.” But that, though sure as a test of others, is no sure means for enabling a man to know himself. Power all down the ages has been the arch-deceiver of mankind. Power which has set itself on great possessions has brought disinheritance to the human race. We do not know what humanity might be—how fair, how lovely, and of what good report—that great beatific vision is still hidden from our eyes—mainly because we have interpreted power in terms of possession; and, forcing others to go without, in order that we ourselves may possess, we stand to-day immeasurably poorer and weaker than we should have been had we interpreted our power and our possessions differently.
For centuries of time (so long, indeed, as history records anything) the leading nations of the world have gone out to conquer other nations and to possess them. And how have they done so?—mainly by depriving them of their liberty, by reducing their power of initiative, by undermining and warping their racial characteristics. How much has not that impoverished the history of the world and the real wealth of nations? For people living in subservience or subjection, accepting and not rebelling against it, breed less nobly as a consequence—they fail, then, to produce great minds or to express themselves greatly in the arts. Their life-potency is diminished; and we, holding them upon those terms, are owners of a property which we squander by our very mode of possessing it.