Consequently, he took some pains and practised a certain amount of self-denial to get and prepare these rations. He may have wished to go forth on some utterly useless diversion, such as hacking down a tree or piling up stones, but whatever his object was, he intended to undertake it without the advice, interference, or even the privity of his Tribe. He might appreciate the dear creatures much better on his return; he might hatch out wonderful schemes for their advantage during his absence. But that would be a side-issue. The power that possessed him was the desire to own himself for a while, even as his ancestors, whose spirits had, he believed, laid this upon him, had owned themselves, before the Tribal idea had been evolved.
Morally his action was unassailable; his personal God had dictated it. Materially, his justification for his departure from the normal was the greasy, inconspicuous packet of iron rations on his shoulder, the trouble he had taken to get them, and the extent to which he was prepared not to break into them except as a last resort. For, without that material, backed by those purposes, his visions of his Totem, Spirit, or God would have melted back into the ruck of unstable, unfulfilled dreams; and his own weariness of his Tribe would have returned upon himself in barrenness of mind and bitterness of soul.
Because if a man has not his rations in advance, for any excursion of any kind that he proposes to himself, he must stay with his Tribe. He may swear at it aloud or under his breath. He may tell himself and his friends what splendid things he would do were he his own master, but as his Tribe goes so must he go—for his belly’s sake. When and as it lies, so must he lie. Its people must be his people, and its God must be his God. Some men may accept this dispensation; some may question it. It is to the latter that I would speak.
Remember always that, except for the appliances we make, the rates at which we move ourselves and our possessions through space, and the words which we use, nothing in life changes. The utmost any generation can do is to rebaptize each spiritual or emotional rebirth in its own tongue. Then it goes to its grave hot and bothered, because no new birth has been vouchsafed for its salvation, or even its relief.
And your generation succeeds to an unpromising and dishevelled heritage. In addition to your own sins, which will be numerous but quite normal, you have to carry the extra handicap of the sins of your fathers. This, it is possible that many of you have already made clear to your immediate circle. But the point you probably omitted (as our generation did, when we used to deliver our magnificent, unpublished orations De Juventute) is that no shortcomings on the part of others can save us from the consequences of our own shortcomings.
It is also true that you were brought into this world without being consulted. But even this disability, from which, by the way, Adam suffered, though it may justify our adopting a critical attitude towards First Causes, will not in the long run nourish our physical or mental needs. There seems, moreover, to be an unscientific objection on the part of First Causes against being enquired of.
For you who follow on the heels of the Great War are affected, as you are bound to be, by a demoralization not unlike that which overtakes a household where there has been long and severe illness, followed by a relaxation of domestic ritual, and accompanied by loud self-pity and large recriminations. Nor is this all your load. The past few years have so immensely quickened and emphasized all means of communication, visible and invisible, in every direction that our world—which is only another name for the Tribe—is not merely “too much with us,” but moves, shouts, and moralizes about our path and our bed, through every hour of our days and nights. Even a normal world might become confusing on these terms; and ours is far from being normal. One-sixth of its area has passed bodily out of civilization; and much of the remainder appears to be divided, with no consciousness of sin, between an earnest intention to make Earth Hell as soon as possible, and an equally earnest intention, with no consciousness of presumption, to make it Heaven on or before the same date. But you have ample opportunities of observing this for yourselves.
The broad and immediate result is, partly through a recent necessity for thinking and acting in large masses, partly through the instinct of mankind to draw together and cry out when calamity hits them, and very largely through the quickening of communications, the power of the Tribe over the individual has become more extended, particular, pontifical, and, using the word in both senses, impertinent, than it has been for many generations. Some men accept this omnipresence of crowds; some may resent it. It is to the latter that I am speaking.
The independence which was a “glorious privilege” in Robert Burns’s day, is now more difficult to achieve than when one had merely to overcome a few material obstacles, and the rest followed almost automatically. Nowadays, to own oneself in any decent measure, one has to run counter to a gospel, and to fight against its atmosphere; and an atmosphere, as long as it can be kept up, is rather cloying.
Even so, there is no need for the individual who intends to own himself to be too pessimistic. Let us, as our forefathers used, count our blessings.