CHAPTER XVI.

A REBUFF.

I asked not the question, for in fact it did not occur to me; but I asked another question, What shall I do with myself? A grave question this. Do what I would, turn the matter over as I might, there was, now the novelty of the idea had worn off, nothing inspiring in this idea of eternal progression;—this ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth—this everlasting chase after good, and never coming up with it. Why continue a pursuit which you know beforehand will bring you never any nearer the object than you are, for as you pursue, it flies. Is not this evil rather than good, hell rather than heaven? Is not this the punishment of Ixion?—That war of the Titans upon the gods, has it not a deep significance? The Titans, the Giants, the Earthborn, _Terræ filii_, would dethrone the gods, the heaven-born, the divine, and were defeated and doomed to punishment, to turn forever a wheel, to roll a huge stone up the steep hill, and just as it is about to reach the summit, have it slip from the hands and roll down with a thundering sound; to a task never completed, and always to be renewed, or to hunger, with food ever in sight, and always just beyond reach; to thirst, standing to the neck in water, and have it recede always as approached with the lips. Is not, after all, this the doom that they bring on themselves who reject the wisdom from above and follow what my friend Mr. Merton calls the wisdom from below?

I can very well understand progress towards an end, towards a goal that is fixed and permanent, but a progress towards nothing, or towards a movable goal, a goal that recedes as approached, is to me quite unintelligible, and, when I think of it, it seems as absurd as the supposition of an infinite series. Infinite progression is, in reality, an infinite absurdity. The origin and end of all things must be perfect, fixed, and immovable. Every mechanic knows that he cannot generate motion without a something which is at rest, which can cause or produce motion without moving itself. Without the immovable, there is and can be no movable. In like manner, no motion towards what is not immovable, for if the two bodies remain in the same position relative to each other, neither, in relation to the other, has moved.

Progress is morally motion towards an end, and if there is no approximation to the end, there is no progress. As progress is inconceivable without some end, so it is equally inconceivable without a shortening of the distance between the progressing agent and the end. If this distance can be shortened, however little, if not more than a line in a million of ages, it is not infinite, and the progress cannot be eternal. This infinite or eternal progression is, then, only a lying dream.

At the bottom of this idea of progress, which our modern reformers prate about, is the foolish notion that man is born an inchoate, an incipient God, and that his destiny is to grow into or become the infinite God; that he is to grow or develop into the Almighty; that, to be God, is his ultimate destiny; and, as God is infinite, he is to be eternally developing and realizing more and more of God, without ever realizing him in his infinity. The bubble does not burst and lose itself in the ocean, but by virtue of its bubbleosity it grows and absorbs more and more of the ocean into itself.

I cannot understand this eternal absorbing process, which, though always absorbing or assimilating, leaves always the same quantity, physical or moral, to be absorbed or assimilated. It is impossible to be satisfied with such a destiny. To be always seeking and never finding, to be always desiring, craving, and never filled, is not heaven, it is hell, and the severest hell, in comparison with which the pain of sense, or natural fire and brimstone were a solace. Man is not moved to act by desire. His desire to attain must become hope of attaining, before it can move him, and when you deprive him of that hope, you take from him all courage, all energy, and all motive to act. Desire to possess the beloved, may remain and torment the lover, but it can never suffice to make him continue his pursuit when all hope of success has been extinguished. I do not say love cannot survive hope, but I do say that love’s efforts cannot, and it is seldom that even love itself does.

The Christian is stimulated to constant activity, not by charity or love of God alone, but by hope; and the hope of possessing God, of being filled with his love, of reposing in the arms of all-sufficing charity, stimulates onward from grace to grace, and from one degree of perfection to another. Though he finds not yet perfect repose, though he is not yet filled, though he has not yet attained, yet he is upheld, buoyed up and onward by the sure promise, the steadfast hope of attaining, of at last finding repose, rest in the bosom of his love and his God. He may feel the clogs of flesh, he may feel that he is absent from his love, and sigh to reach his home and embrace the spouse of his soul, but he grows not weary, faints not, and knows nothing of the _ennui_, that listlessness of spirit, that disgust of life, and disrelish for every pursuit, which he feels who has no object, no hope, and sees not even in the most distant future any chance of finding that fulness and repose which his soul never ceases in this life to crave. In losing sight of God as final cause, in losing the hope of possessing God as the supreme good, in substituting endless progression for endless beatitude, full and complete, I had lost all stimulus to exertion, all motive to exert myself for any thing.

Why should I act? What had I to gain? Money I did not want; I had more than I could use. Fame I despised. It was a mere word, born and dying in the very sound that made it. Power, I had it. If I had more, it could procure me nothing more than I already possessed. Pleasures? The richest dishes and the most precious wines palled upon my taste. There remained another kind of pleasure; but we can even grow weary of women, and loathe what the morbid senses continue to crave. Still nothing else remained for me. Yet I had outlived love in any virtuous or innocent sense of the word, and early training, and some remains of self-respect, made any other love far more of a torment than a pleasure.

The simple truth was, that I could reconcile myself neither to the philosophy of the Portico nor the philosophy of the Garden, and was alike disgusted with the Cynics and the Academicians. I was a man, and could not live on air, or feed on garbage; I had a soul, and could not satisfy it by living for the body alone, and having no God, no heaven, no hope of beatitude, and no fear of hell, I saw nothing to seek, nothing to gain, and I could only exclaim, _Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas_. I could not say, with young and thoughtless sinners, in the heyday of their youth, and the full flow of their animal spirits,—“Come on, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, let us use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let not the flower of the spring pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with roses before they be withered, and let no meadow escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in voluptuousness, and let us leave tokens of our joy in every place, for this is our portion and our lot.” For of all vanities I had learned that this was the most empty. Even the devil himself is said to loathe the sensualist, and to find his stench intolerable. Still Priscilla—I had lost her perhaps. That touched my pride. We often grieve that lost, which possessed, was not valued.