There is no doubt some selfish satisfaction in yielding to melancholy, and fancying that we are victims of fate; in brooding over grievances, especially if more or less imaginary. To be bright and cheerful often requires an effort; there is a certain art in keeping ourselves happy; and in this respect, as in others, we require to watch over and manage ourselves, almost as if we were somebody else.
Sorrow and joy, indeed, are strangely interwoven. Too often
"We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." [2]
As a nation we are prone to melancholy. It has been said of our countrymen that they take even their pleasures sadly. But this, if it be true at all, will, I hope, prove a transitory characteristic. "Merry England" was the old saying, let us hope it may become true again. We must look to the East for real melancholy. What can be sadder than the lines with which Omar Khayyam opens his quatrains: [3]
"We sojourn here for one short day or two,
And all the gain we get is grief and woe;
And then, leaving life's problems all unsolved
And harassed by regrets, we have to go;"
or the Devas' song to Prince Siddârtha, in Edwin Arnold's beautiful version:
"We are the voices of the wandering wind,
Which moan for rest, and rest can never find.
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life—
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."
If indeed this be true, if mortal life be so sad and full of suffering, no wonder that Nirvâna—the cessation of sorrow—should be welcomed even at the sacrifice of consciousness.
But ought we not to place before ourselves a very different ideal—a healthier, manlier, and nobler hope?
Life is not to live merely, but to live well. There are some "who live without any design at all, and only pass in the world like straws on a river: they do not go; they are carried," [4]—but as Homer makes Ulysses say, "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rest unburnished; not to shine in use—as though to breathe were life!"