Ellesmere. Do not imagine that I am behind either of you in a wish to hold up truth. My only doubt was as to the mode. For my own part, I have such faith in truth that I take it mere concealment is in most cases a mischief. And I should say, for instance, that a wise man would be sorry that his fellows should think better of him than he deserves. By the way, that is a reason why I should not like to be a writer of moral essays, Milverton—one should be supposed to be so very good.
Milverton. Only by thoughtless people then. There is a saying given to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was a misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, “Chaque homme qui pense est méchant.” Now, without going the length of this aphorism, we may say that what has been well written has been well suffered.
“He best can paint them who has felt them most.”
And so, though we should not exactly declare that writers who have had much moral influence have been wicked men, yet we may admit that they have been amongst the most struggling, which implies anything but serene self-possession and perfect spotlessness. If you take the great ones, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, you see this at once.
Dunsford. David, St. Paul.
Milverton. Such men are like great rocks on the seashore. By their resistance, terraces of level land are formed; but the rocks themselves bear many scars and ugly indents, while the sea of human difficulty presents the same unwrinkled appearance in all ages. Yet it has been driven back.
Ellesmere. But has it lost any of its bulk, or only gone elsewhere? One part of the resemblance certainly is that these same rocks, which were bulwarks, become, in their turn, dangers.
Milverton. Yes, there is always loss in that way. It is seldom given to man to do unmixed good. But it was not this aspect of the simile that I was thinking of: it was the scarred appearance.
Dunsford. Scars not always of defeat or flight; scars in the front.
Milverton. Ah, it hardly does for us to talk of victory or defeat, in these cases; but we may look at the contest itself as something not bad, terminate how it may. We lament over a man’s sorrows, struggles, disasters, and shortcomings; yet they were possessions too. We talk of the origin of evil and the permission of evil. But what is evil? We mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good, perhaps, in their result; but we hardly admit that they may be good in themselves. Yet they are knowledge—how else to be acquired, unless by making men as gods, enabling them to understand without experience. All that men go through may be absolutely the best for them—no such thing as evil, at least in our customary meaning of the word. But, you will say, they might have been created different and higher. See where this leads to. Any sentient being may set up the same claim: a fly that it had not been made a man; and so the end would be that each would complain of not being all.