The Pleasures of Life by Sir John Lubbock

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It is, moreover, always changing. We went for our holiday this year to
Lyme Regis. Let me attempt to describe the changes in the view from our
windows during a single day. Our sitting-room opened on to a little lawn,
beyond which the ground drops suddenly to the sea, while over about two
miles of water were the hills of the Dorsetshire coast--Golden Cap, with
its bright crest of yellow sand, and the dark blue Lias Cliff of Black
Ven. When I came early down in the morning the sun was rising opposite,
shining into the room over a calm sea, along an avenue of light; by
degrees, as it rose, the whole sea was gilt with light, and the hills
bathed in a violet mist. By breakfast-time all color had faded from the
sea--it was like silver passing on each side into gray; the sky was blue,
flecked with fleecy clouds; while, on the gentler slopes of the coast
opposite, fields and woods, and quarries and lines of stratification begin
to show themselves, though the cliffs are still in shadow, and the more
distant headlands still a mere succession of ghosts, each one fainter than
the one before it. As the morning advances the sea becomes blue, the dark
woods, green meadows, and golden cornfields of the opposite coast more
distinct, and the details of the cliffs come gradually into view, and
fishing-boats with dark sails begin to appear.

Gradually the sun rises higher, a yellow line of shore appears under the
opposite cliffs, and the sea changes its color, mapping itself out as it
were, the shallower parts turquoise blue, almost green; the deeper ones
deep violet.

This does not last long--a thunderstorm comes up. The wind mutters
overhead, the rain patters on the leaves, the coast opposite seems to
shrink into itself, as if it would fly from the storm. The sea grows dark
and rough, and white horses appear here and there.

But the storm is soon over. The clouds break, the rain stops, the sun
shines once more, the hills opposite come out again. They are divided now
not only into fields and woods, but into sunshine and shadow. The sky
clears, and as the sun begins to descend westwards the sea becomes one
beautiful clear uniform azure, changing again soon to pale blue in front
and dark violet beyond: and once more as clouds begin to gather again,
into an archipelago of bright blue sea and deep islands of ultramarine. As
the sun travels westward, the opposite hills change again. They scarcely
seem like the same country. What was in sun is now in shade, and what was
in shade now lies bright in the sunshine. The sea once more becomes a
uniform solid blue, only flecked in places by scuds of wind, and becoming
paler towards evening as the sun sinks, the cliffs which catch his setting
rays losing their deep color and in some places looking almost as white as
chalk, while at sunset they light up again for a moment with a golden
glow, the sea at the same time sinking to a cold gray. But soon the hills
grow cold too, Golden Cap holding out bravely to the last, and the shades
of evening settle over cliff and wood, cornfield and meadow.

These are but a part, and a very small part, of the changes of a single
day. And scarce any two days are alike. At times a sea-fog covers
everything. Again the sea which sleeps to-day so peacefully sometimes
rages, and the very existence of the bay itself bears witness to its
force.

The night, again, varies like the day. Sometimes shrouded by a canopy of
darkness, sometimes lit up by millions of brilliant worlds, sometimes
bathed in the light of a moon, which never retains the same form for two
nights together.

If Lakes are less grand than the sea, they are in some respects even more
lovely. The seashore is comparatively bare. The banks of Lakes are often
richly clothed with vegetation which comes close down to the water's edge,
sometimes hanging even into the water itself. They are often studded with
well-wooded islands. They are sometimes fringed with green meadows,
sometimes bounded by rocky promontories rising directly from comparatively
deep water, while the calm bright surface is often fretted by a delicate
pattern of interlacing ripples, or reflects a second, softened, and
inverted landscape.

To water again we owe the marvellous spectacle of the rainbow--"God's bow
in the clouds." It is indeed truly a heavenly messenger, and so unlike
anything else that it scarcely seems to belong to this world.

Many things are colored, but the rainbow seems to be color itself.

"First the flaming red
Sprang vivid forth; the tawny orange next,
And next delicious yellow; by whose side
Fell the kind beams of all-refreshing green.
Then the pure blue that swells autumnal skies,
Ethereal play'd; and then, of sadder hue
Emerged the deeper indigo (as when
The heavy-skirted evening droops with frost),
While the last gleamings of refracted light
Died in the fainting violet away." [8]

We do not, I think, sufficiently realize how wonderful is the blessing of
color. It would have been possible, it would even seem more probable, that
though light might have enabled us to perceive objects, this could only
have been by shade and form. How we perceive color it is very difficult to
comprehend, and yet when we speak of beauty, among the ideas which come to
us most naturally are those of birds and butterflies, flowers and shells,
precious stones, skies, and rainbows.

Our minds might have been constituted exactly as they are, we might have
been capable of comprehending the highest and sublimest truths, and yet,
but for a small organ in the head, the world of sound would have been shut
out from us; we should have lost the sounds of nature, the charms of
music, the conversation of friends, and have been condemned to perpetual
silence: and yet a slight alteration in the retina, which is not thicker
than a sheet of paper, not larger than a finger nail,--and the glorious
spectacle of this beautiful world, the exquisite variety of form, the
glory and play of color, the variety of scenery, of woods and fields, and
lakes and hills, seas and mountains, the glory of the sky alike by day and
night, would all have been lost to us.

Mountains, again, "seem to have been built for the human race, as at once
their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript
for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale
cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. And of
these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements
of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple
traversed by the continual stars." [9]

All these beauties are comprised in Tennyson's exquisite description of
Oenone's vale--the city, flowers, trees, river, and mountains.

"There is a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning; but in front
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel,
The crown of Troas."

And when we raise our eyes from earth, who has not sometimes felt "the
witchery of the soft blue sky;" who has not watched a cloud floating
upward as if on its way to heaven, or when

"Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof
The mountain its columns be." [10]

And yet "if, in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to
the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One
says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has
been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms
and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the
horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the
south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away
in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the
sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like
withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy
be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or
what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce
manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail,
nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime
are developed." [11]

But exquisitely lovely as is the blue arch of the midday sky, with its
inexhaustible variety of clouds, "there is yet a light which the eye
invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the
declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like
watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon." [12] The evening colors
indeed soon fade away, but as night comes on,

"How glorious the firmament
With living sapphires! Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." [13]

We generally speak of a beautiful night when it is calm and clear, and the
stars shine brightly overhead; but how grand also are the wild ways of
Nature, how magnificent when the lightning flashes, "between gloom and
glory;" when

"From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder." [14]

In the words of Ossian--

"Ghosts ride in the tempest to-night;
Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind,
Their songs are of other worlds."

Nor are the wonders and beauties of the heavens limited by the clouds and
the blue sky, lovely as they are. In the heavenly bodies we have before us
"the perpetual presence of the sublime." They are so immense and so far
away, and yet on soft summer nights "they seem leaning down to whisper in
the ear of our souls." [15]

"A man can hardly lift up his eyes toward the heavens," says Seneca,
"without wonder and veneration, to see so many millions of radiant lights,
and to observe their courses and revolutions, even without any respect to
the common good of the Universe."

Who does not sympathize with the feelings of Dante as he rose from his
visit to the lower regions, until, he says,

"On our view the beautiful lights of heaven
Dawned through a circular opening in the cave,
Thence issuing, we again beheld the stars."

As we watch the stars at night they seem so still and motionless that we
can hardly realize that all the time they are rushing on with a velocity
far far exceeding any that man has ever accomplished.

Like the sands of the sea, the stars of heaven have ever been used as an
appropriate symbol of number, and we know that there are some 75,000,000,
many, no doubt, with planets of their own. But this is by no means all.
The floor of heaven is not only "thick inlaid with patines of bright
gold," but is studded also with extinct stars, once probably as brilliant
as our own sun, but now dead and cold, as Helmholtz tells us our sun
itself will be some seventeen millions of years hence. Then, again, there
are the comets, which, though but few are visible to us at once, are even
more numerous than the stars; there are the nebulae, and the countless
minor bodies circulating in space, and occasionally visible as meteors.

Nor is it only the number of the heavenly bodies which is so overwhelming;
their magnitude and distances are almost more impressive. The ocean is so
deep and broad as to be almost infinite, and indeed in so far as our
imagination is the limit, so it may be. Yet what is the ocean compared to
the sky? Our globe is little compared to the giant orbs of Jupiter and
Saturn, which again sink into insignificance by the side of the sun. The
sun itself is almost as nothing compared with the dimensions of the solar
system. Sirius is calculated to be a thousand times as great as the Sun,
and a million times as far away. The solar system itself travels in one
region of space, sailing between worlds and worlds, and is surrounded by
many other systems as great and complex as itself; and we know that even
then we have not reached the limits of the Universe itself.

There are stars so distant that their light, though traveling 180,000
miles in a second, yet takes years to reach us; and beyond all these are
other systems of stars which are so far away that they cannot be perceived
singly, but even in our most powerful telescopes appear only as minute
clouds or nebulae. It is, indeed, but a feeble expression of the truth to
say that the infinities revealed to us by Science,--the infinitely great
in the one direction, and the infinitely small in the other,--go far
beyond anything which had occurred to the unaided imagination of Man, and
are not only a never-failing source of pleasure and interest, but seem to
lift us out of the petty troubles and sorrows of life.

[1] Beattie.

[2] Tennyson.

[3] Thomas a Kempis.

[4] Gray.

[5] Shakespeare.

[6] Tennyson.

[7] Trench.

[8] Thomson.

[9] Ruskin.

[10] Shelley.

[11] Ruskin.

[12] _Ibid_.

[13] Wordsworth.

[14] Swinburne.

[15] Symonds.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBLES OF LIFE.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBLES OF LIFE.

We have in life many troubles, and troubles are of many kinds. Some
sorrows, alas, are real enough, especially those we bring on ourselves,
but others, and by no means the least numerous, are mere ghosts of
troubles: if we face them boldly, we find that they have no substance or
reality, but are mere creations of our own morbid imagination, and that it
is as true now as in the time of David that "Man disquieteth himself in a
vain shadow."

Some, indeed, of our troubles are evils, but not real; while others are
real, but not evils.

"And yet, into how unfathomable a gulf the mind rushes when the troubles
of this world agitate it. If it then forget its own light, which is
eternal joy, and rush into the outer darkness, which are the cares of this
world, as the mind now does, it knows nothing else but lamentations." [1]

"Athens," said Epictetus, "is a good place,--but happiness is much better;
to be free from passions, free from disturbance."

We should endeavor to maintain ourselves in

"That blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight,
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened." [2]

So shall we fear "neither the exile of Aristides, nor the prison of
Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion,
but think virtue worthy our love even under such trials." [3] We should
then be, to a great extent, independent of external circumstances, for

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.

"If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty." [4]

Happiness indeed depends much more on what is within than without us. When
Hamlet says the world is "a goodly prison; in which there are many
confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst," and
Rosencrantz differs from him, he rejoins wisely, "Why then, 'tis none to
you: for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to
me it is a prison." "All is opinion," said Marcus Aurelius. "That which
does not make a man worse, how can it make his life worse? But death
certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these
things happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us
neither better nor worse."

"The greatest evils," says Jeremy Taylor, "are from within us; and from
ourselves also we must look for our greatest good."

"The mind," says Milton,

"is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

Milton indeed in his blindness saw more beautiful visions, and Beethoven
in his deafness heard more heavenly music, than most of us can ever hope
to enjoy.

We are all apt, when we know not what may happen, to fear the worst. When
we know the full extent of any danger, it is half over. Hence, we dread
ghosts more than robbers, not only without reason, but against reason; for
even if ghosts existed, how could they hurt us? and in ghost stories, few,
even those who say that they have seen a ghost, ever profess or pretend to
have felt one.

Milton, in his description of death, dwells on this characteristic of
obscurity:

"The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on."

The effect of darkness and night in enhancing terrors is dwelt on in one
of the sublimest passages in Job--

"In thoughts from the visions of the night,
When deep sleep falleth on men,
Fear came upon me, and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face;
The hair of my flesh stood up.
It stood still, an image was before mine eyes.
There was silence; and I heard a voice saying
Shall mortal man be more just than God?"

Thus was the terror turned into a lesson of comfort and of mercy.

We often magnify troubles and difficulties, and look at them till they
seem much greater than they really are.

"Dangers are no more light, if they once seem light; and more dangers have
deceived men than forced them: nay, it were better to meet some dangers
half way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch
upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will
fall asleep." [5]

Foresight is very wise, but foresorrow is very foolish; and castles are at
any rate better than dungeons, in the air.

Some of our troubles, no doubt, are real enough, but yet are not evils.

It happens, unfortunately too often, that by some false step, intentional
or unintentional, we have missed the right road, and gone wrong. Can we
then retrace our steps? can we recover what is lost? This may be done. It
is too gloomy a view to affirm that

"A word too much, or a kiss too long,
And the world is never the same again."

There are two noble sayings of Socrates, that to do evil is more to be
avoided than to suffer it; and that when a man has done evil, it is better
for him to be punished than to be unpunished.

We generally speak of selfishness as a fault, and as if it interfered with
the general happiness. But this is not altogether correct.

The pity is that so many people are foolishly selfish: that they pursue a
course of action which neither makes themselves nor any one else happy.

"Every man," says Goethe, "ought to begin with himself, and make his own
happiness first, from which the happiness of the whole world would at last
unquestionably follow." It is easy to say that this is too broadly stated,
and of course exceptions might be pointed out: but if every one would
avoid excess, and take care of his own health; would keep himself strong
and cheerful; would make his home happy, and give no cause for the petty
vexations which embitter domestic life; would attend to his own affairs
and keep himself sober and solvent; would, in the words of the Chinese
proverb, "sweep away the snow from before his own door, and never mind the
frost upon his neighbor's tiles;" though it might not be the noblest
course of conduct; still, how well it would be for their family,
relations, and friends. But, unfortunately,

"Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue." [6]

It would be a great thing if people could be brought to realize that they
can never add to the sum of their happiness by doing wrong. In the case of
children, indeed, we recognize this; we perceive that a spoilt child is
not a happy one; that it would have been far better for him to have been
punished at first and thus saved from greater suffering in after life.

It is a beautiful idea that every man has with him a Guardian Angel; and
it is true too: for Conscience is ever on the watch, ever ready to warn us
of danger.

We often feel disposed to complain, and yet it is most ungrateful:

"For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through Eternity;
To perish rather, swallowed up, and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated thought." [7]

But perhaps it will be said that we are sent here in preparation for
another and a better world. Well, then, why should we complain of what is
but a preparation for future happiness?

We ought to

"Count each affliction, whether light or grave,
God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou
With courtesy receive him; rise and bow;
And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;
Then lay before him all thou hast; allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave
Of mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief shall be
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate;
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;
Strong to consume small troubles; to commend
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." [8]

Some persons are like the waters of Siloam, and require to be troubled
before they can exercise their virtue.

"We shall get more contentedness," says Plutarch, "from the presence of
all these blessings if we fancy them as absent, and remember from time to
time how people when ill yearn for health, and people in war for peace,
and strangers and unknown in a great city for reputation and friends, and
how painful it is to be deprived of all these when one has once had them.
For then each of these blessings will not appear to us only great and
valuable when it is lost, and of no value when we have it.... And yet it
makes much for contentedness of mind to look for the most part at home and
to our own condition; or if not, to look at the case of people worse off
than ourselves, and not, as people do, to compare ourselves with those who
are better off.... But you will find others, Chians, or Galatians, or
Bithynians, not content with the share of glory or power they have among
their fellow-citizens, but weeping because they do not wear senators'
shoes; or, if they have them, that they cannot be praetors of Rome; or if
they get that office, that they are not consuls; or if they are consuls,
that they are only proclaimed second and not first.... Whenever, then, you
admire any one carried by in his litter as a greater man than yourself,
lower your eyes and look at those that bear the litter." And again, "I am
very taken with Diogenes' remark to a stranger at Lacedaemon, who was
dressing with much display for a feast, 'Does not a good man consider
every day a feast?' ... Seeing then that life is the most complete
initiation into all these things, it ought to be full of ease of mind and
joy; and if properly understood, would enable us to acquiesce in the
present without repining, to remember the past with thankfulness, and to
meet the future hopefully and cheerfully without fear of suspicion."

[1] King Alfred's translations of the _Consolations of Boethius_.

[2] Wordsworth.

[3] Plutarch.

[4] Lovelace.

[5] Bacon.

[6] Dryden.

[7] Milton.

[8] Aubrey de Vere.

CHAPTER X.

LABOR AND REST.

"Through labor to rest, through combat to victory."

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

CHAPTER X.

LABOR AND REST.

Among the troubles of life I do not, of course, reckon the necessity of
labor.

Work indeed, and hard work, if only it is in moderation, is in itself a
rich source of happiness. We all know how quickly time passes when we are
well employed, while the moments hang heavily on the hands of the idle.
Occupation drives away care and all the small troubles of life. The busy
man has no time to brood or to fret.

"From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night;
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In Heaven's best treasures, peace and health." [1]

This applies especially to the labor of the field and the workshop. Humble
it may be, but if it does not dazzle with the promise of fame, it gives
the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, and the inestimable blessing of
health. As Emerson reminds those entering life, "The angels that live with
them, and are weaving laurels of life for their youthful brows, are toil
and truth and mutual faith."

Labor was truly said by the ancients to be the price which the gods set
upon everything worth having. We all admit, though we often forget, the
marvellous power of perseverance, and yet all Nature, down to Bruce's
spider, is continually impressing this lesson on us.

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