If he saw them at
all, it was through the softening and illusive medium of generalised
phrases. Nor was he ever shocked and driven into himself by 'the immoral
thoughtlessness' of men. The courses of nature, and the prodigious
injustices of man in society, affect him with neither horror nor awe. He
will see no monster if he can help it. For the fatal Nemesis or terrible
Erinnyes, daughters of Erebus and Night, Emerson substitutes a
fair-weather abstraction named Compensation. One radical tragedy in
nature he admits--'the distinction of More and Less.' If I am poor in
faculty, dim in vision, shut out from opportunity, in every sense an
outcast from the inheritance of the earth, that seems indeed to be a
tragedy. 'But see the facts clearly and these mountainous inequalities
vanish. Love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The
heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine
ceases. His is mine.' Surely words, words, words! What can be more idle,
when one of the world's bitter puzzles is pressed on the teacher, than
that he should betake himself to an altitude whence it is not visible,
and then assure us that it is not only invisible, but non-existent? This
is not to see the facts clearly, but to pour the fumes of obscuration
round them. When he comforts us by saying 'Love, and you shall be
loved,' who does not recall cases which make the Jean Valjean of Victor
Hugo's noble romance not a figment of the theatre, but an all too actual
type? The believer who looks to another world to redress the wrongs and
horrors of this; the sage who warns us that the law of life is
resignation, renunciation, and doing-without (_entbehren sollst
du_)--each of these has a foothold in common language.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67