Children and pets are well-known tyrants, not only to the mother or the maiden aunt, but to the male creation in general and the old generation in particular. The grandfather is ready at all times to be made a hobby-horse, the grandmother to drudge for king baby. The children's dinner is the event of the day; Harry's destructiveness of his first pair and all following pairs of trousers is the burden of the household lament; little Cissy's first tooth is a matter of deep interest; baby Maggie is allowed to pull mother's hair down just before dinner, unrebuked—nay, even encouraged. Pet poodles and favorite parrots, and, indeed, all tame companions of mankind, absorb a wonderful amount of human interest and attention, and often demand it at unseasonable hours; compelling idleness, or at least encouraging loss of time. In fact, our time and mind are ever occupied with supplementary things, forced upon us by custom or caprice; and we secretly but helplessly rebel, incapable, we think, of either resistance to our own follies, or courage to laugh in the face of Mrs. Grundy.
It is impossible to stand absolutely free in the world, but there is freedom and freedom. Of all freedoms, that of the free-thinker is the narrowest. Uncertainty is a grievous spirit, doubt a bad master; and the poor free-thinker finds that his mental companion and philosophic guide offers him but slight comfort under misfortune. Moral restraints are to him but chaff in the wind, religious forms mere dust shaken off his shoes; but what remains? He deems himself king of the world of thought, but he finds his kingdom turned into a desert; he acknowledges no ties or duties, undertakes no responsibility, works (if he works) for himself alone, and then finds that what he earns he cannot enjoy unshared. Temporary human companionship on earth has no charms for him; for he reflects that annihilation follows death, and it is therefore useless to make bosom friends of men who will so soon be less than nothing, and whose only memento will be in the richness of the crops grown over their graves. The mental solitude of the free-thinker is not an agreeable or a soothing one; much less is it fruitful in high thoughts or heroic actions.
If any ask in an earnest spirit, where are the fewest masters, and where freest men?—we would answer, in the cloister.
A startling answer to the worldling; a suggestive one to the thinker. Let us examine it, and see whether it can be substantiated. Religious are the men supposed to be the most subjected to authority in the world—those whose duty it is to have not only no will of their own, but even no individual thought, no opinion of any kind. Even so, in a sense; and on that account, not despite it, but because of it, are they the freest men on earth. The secular clergy are comparatively free, because they have one object only; that is, one Master. Priests are not burdened with family and household cares, scarcely with social necessities; but none the less are they sometimes vexed by circumstances which they cannot control, and are made to pay the tithe of that slavery which any contact with the world, even for the world's good, and by men who are not of the world, necessarily entails. Religious even of active orders are still freer, because they are less of the world; but the man who stands before God in silent contemplation, as the eagle pauses before the sun and looks into its depths, is the freest of all. A purely contemplative order, whose mission, higher yet than that of the captains of Israel, is that of Moses praying with uplifted arms for the triumph of the people of God—such is the home of the highest and truest freedom.
The ascetic has found the secret that philosophers seek for in vain, that attitude of godlike calm in the midst of all transient storms of life. The supremest exercise of freedom is to surrender that freedom itself, with full confidence that the person into whose hands it is surrendered is the representative of a higher power. A king would not be free were he prevented from abdicating his kingship; the religious vow is the abdication of a kingdom greater than is constituted by so many thousands of square miles. This renunciation once made, no earthly event can be of the slightest interest to the disenthralled man. No care for his body, no solicitude for his reputation, remains; he has disrobed himself of his earthly belongings, and let slip every vestige of the garments of worldliness. A spirit—practically almost disembodied—he looks above for inspiration, comfort, guidance, knowledge. The miseries of earth, if poured into his ear by some despairing fellow-mortal, gain from him the divine pity of an angel rather than the passionate sympathy of a man; he is raised above the wants of nature, the wrangles of society, even the perplexities of the intellect. Taught no longer by men or by books, he speaks face to face with God in his long prayers and meditations, and no human interest ever distracts his mind from this exalted colloquy. Insensible to the influences of time, place, and circumstance, he is still as free as air when hunted from his retreat by men to whom his whole life is an enigma; the oracle speaks to him in the midst of a crowd, and he no more hears the murmur of those around him than if he were at sea, a thousand miles from land; a palace, a prison, or a scaffold are all reproductions of his cell, for the same all-filling Presence surrounds him, blinding him to all else. His indifference is so galling to his enemies, his freedom so mysterious and so provoking, that they would rather put him to death than witness the unutterable calm they can neither disturb nor emulate; but that death is only the one more step needed for his perfect bliss—the one veil to be yet lifted between the ascetic philosopher and the freedom that taught him his philosophy.
Serene land of passionless perfection, which men call the monastic life! How many, even among religious, scale thy furthermost heights? Yet it is a consolation to mankind to know that there is, even on earth, a sanctuary where human nature, be it only represented by ever so few, can reach to that ideal state of perfect communion with God and perfect contempt of all trammels which alone should be dignified with the name of philosophy.
A LOOKER-BACK.
"For as he forward mov'd his footing old
So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face."—Faerie Queene.