A Writer's Notebook (29 page)

That pleasure is transitory is no proof that it is evil, for what can man find that endures to all eternity?

It is salutary to realise the fundamental isolation of the individual mind. We have no certain knowledge of any consciousness but our own. We can only know the world through our own personality. Because the behaviour of others is similar to our own, we surmise that they are like us; it is a shock to discover that they are not. As I grow older I am more and more amazed to discover how great are the differences between one man and another. I am not far from believing that everyone is unique.

I think it can be proved very fairly that pleasure is the end which men set to their endeavours. The word, in puritanical ears, has an unpleasant sound, and many have preferred to talk of happiness; but happiness can only be defined as a continued state of pleasure, and if one deserves blame so does the other: you cannot reasonably call a straight line good if the points that compose it are evil. Of course pleasure need not consist exclusively of sensual gratifications, though it is significant
of human feeling that it is those especially to which the mind, in using the word, seems to refer. To the average man the æsthetic pleasures, the pleasures of effort, the pleasures of the imagination are so pale in comparison with the vivid delights of sense that they do not enter his mind when he hears the word.

Some, like Goethe, have taken harmony as that which gives life its justification; and some, like Walter Pater, have taken beauty. But when Goethe tells men to cultivate all their capacities, bidding them to see life whole, he is preaching unabashed hedonism; for surely men gain greater happiness the more completely they develop themselves. To make beauty the aim and end of life is, I think, a little foolish: it is a fair-weather doctrine which can be of small use in any unusual stress; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted; yet the sun that day set no less spendidly than usual.

Conscience. The power of it is well indicated by that statement of John Henry Newman, in a note to the
Apologia
, that men “would rather be in error with the sanction of their conscience, than be right with the mere judgment of their reason.”

Theologians say that science is met somewhere by a barrier at which it can only confess its helplessness. But is religion in a better case? Tertullian acknowledged that it wasn't when he made the statement:
credo quia absurdum est
.

If the use of religion is to make men moral, and so long as it does this dogma is unimportant, it seems to follow that men can't do better than to accept the religion of the country they happen to have been born in. Why then should missionaries go to India and China to convert people who have already a
religion that performs very adequately the chief function of religion? Probably few Hindus in India, few Buddhists in China are as moral as Hinduism and Buddhism would have them be, but that is no reason why they should not be left alone: we all know that few Christians act up to the principles of Christianity.

Or is it that the missionaries think that God will condemn to endless torment all who do not share their particular beliefs? No wonder they think you're cursing and swearing when you say, Good God!

It would be interesting if it could be shown that the fear of death is a European malady: observe the stolid composure with which the Oriental and African races look forward to it.

Perfection seems to be nothing more than a complete adaptation to the environment; but the environment is constantly changing, so perfection can never be more than transitory.

A deep-rooted feeling in man is that innovation is wicked: this is very noticeable in children and in savages. The interests of savages are few, their dress is costly, intended to bear long usage; their arts are scanty; and so conservatism is forced upon them. But there is in man also a love of change for its own sake, and in a civilised state it overpowers the old fear. Civilised man has many facilities for procuring it; in dress, for instance, from the cheapness and variety of manufacture; in scene, from the convenience of locomotion.

The same sentence can never produce exactly the same effect on two persons, and the first quick impressions that any given word in it may convey will in two minds widely differ.