[VITAL FORCE.]
Though we have not the slightest conception of what life is in itself, and consequently could not define it, we may, for the sake of convenience, think of it in this paper as some kind of force.
'In the wonderful story,' says Professor Huxley in his Lay Sermons, 'of the Peau de Chagrin, the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire, the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Protoplasm or the physical basis of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light—so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on for ever. But happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs in its capacity of being repaired and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present lecture is conceivably expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By-and-by I shall have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size.'
This explanation may be very philosophical, but it is only a roundabout way of saying that, within reasonable bounds, we can recover the effects of exhaustion by proper food and rest; which, as a fact, people are pretty well acquainted with. The error to be avoided is, in any shape to make such a pull on the constitution as to be beyond the reach of recovery. Life-force, or call it protoplasm, is an inherent quantity not to be heedlessly wasted; and this truth becomes more apparent the older we grow. Why is one man greater, in the sense of being more powerful than another? Because he knows how to get out of himself a greater amount of work with less waste of life-force.
We see from experience that the more men have to do the more they can do. And this paradox is only reasonable, for it is the necessity of great work that forces upon us systematic habits, and teaches us to economise the power that is in us. With the cares of an empire on their shoulders, prime-ministers can make time to write novels, Homeric studies, anti-papal pamphlets. It is the busy-idle man who never loses an opportunity of assuring you that 'he has not a moment in the day to himself, and that really he has no time to look round him.' Of course idle people have no time to spare, because they have never learned how to save the odd minutes of the day, and because their vital energy is expended in fuss rather than in work.
'He hath no leisure,' says George Herbert, 'who useth it not;' that is to say, he who does not save time for his work when he can, is always in a hurry. One of the most sublime conceptions of the Deity we can form is that He is never idle, and never in a hurry.
The following words from a newspaper description of the sublime calmness of power manifested by the huge hydraulic crane used to lift Fraser's celebrated eighty-one ton gun, we take as our type of the powerful man who knows how to economise his vital force instead of wasting it by fussing: 'Is there not something sublime in a hydraulic crane which lifts a Titanic engine of destruction weighing eighty-one tons to a considerable height above the pier, with as noiseless a calm and as much absence of apparent stress or strain as if it had been a boy-soldier's pop-gun? When we further read of the hydraulic monster holding up its terrible burden motionless in mid-air until it is photographed, and then lowering it gently and quietly on a sort of extemporised cradle without the least appearance of difficulty, one can readily understand that the mental impression produced on the bystanders must have been so solemn as to manifest itself in most eloquent silence.' With the same freedom from excitement and difficulty does the strong man who saves his force for worthy objects, raise up morally and physically depressed nations, take cities, or what is harder to do still, rule his own spirit. It is the fashion nowadays to say that people are killed or turned into lunatics by overwork, and no doubt there is much truth in the complaint. Nevertheless it would seem that vital force is wasted almost as much by the idle man as by him who overworks himself at high-pressure for the purpose of 'getting on.' It is indolence which exhausts, by allowing the entrance of fretful thoughts into the mind; not action, in which there is health and pleasure. We never knew a man without a profession who did not seem always to be busy. It may be he was occupied in worrying about the dinner or the place where he should spend his holiday—which he did not work for—in correcting his wife, in inventing pleasures, and abusing them when found, in turning the house upside down by doing little jobs foolishly supposed to be useful. And women too, when stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair, are they not forced to confess that there is as much vital force required to enable them to endure the 'pains and penalties of idleness,' as would, if rightly directed, render them useful, and therefore happy? The fact is there are far more who die of selfishness and idleness than of overwork, for where men break down by overwork it is generally from not taking care to order their lives and obey the physical laws of health.
Let us consider a few of the many ways in which we waste the stuff that life is made of. It has been well said that 'the habit of looking on the bright side of things is worth far more than a thousand pounds a year;' and certainly it is a habit that must add many years to the lives of those who acquire it. Really every fit of despondency and every rage take so much out of us, that any one who indulges in either without a great struggle to prevent himself doing so should be characterised as little less than—to use an American expression—'a fearful fool.' How silly it seems even to ourselves after cooling, to have acquired a nervous headache, and to have become generally done up, stamping round the room and shewing other signs of foolish anger, because the dinner was five minutes late, or because some one's respect for us did not quite rise to the high standard measured by our egotism! As if it were not far more important that we should save our vital energy, and not get into a rage, than that the dinner should be served exactly to the moment.
One day a friend of Lord Palmerston asked him when he considered a man to be in the prime of life; his immediate reply was 'Seventy-nine. But,' he added with a playful smile, 'as I have just entered my eightieth year, perhaps I am myself a little past it!' How is it that such men work on vigorously to the end? Because they treasure their ever-diminishing vital force. They studiedly refrain from making a pull on the constitution. Reaching the borders of seventy years of age, they as good as say to themselves: 'We must now take care what we are about.' Of course, they make sacrifices, avoid a number of treacherous gaieties, and living simply, they perhaps give some cause of offence, for the world does not approve of singularity. But let those laugh who win. They hold the censorious observations of critics in derision, and maintain the even tenor of their way. In other words, they conserve their vital force, and try to keep above ground as long as possible. Blustering natures forgetful of the great truth, that 'power itself hath not one-half the might of gentleness,' miss the ends for which they strive just because the force that is in them is not properly economised.