The Crown of Wild Olive
me tell lies, quite out.
L. Only that it tells lies within you?
LUCILLA. Yes.
L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so; and I may
trust the outside of your heart; but within, it is all foul and false.
Is that the way?
LUCILLA. I suppose so: I don't understand it, quite.
L. There is no occasion for understanding it; but do you feel it? Are
you sure that your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked?
LUCILLA (_much relieved by finding herself among phrases with which she
is acquainted_). Yes, sir. I'm sure of that.
L. (_pensively_). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla.
LUCILLA. So am I, indeed.
L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla?
LUCILLA. Sorry with, sir?
L. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your feet?
LUCILLA (_laughing a little_). No, sir, of course.
L. In your shoulders, then?
LUCILLA. No, sir.
L. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, sorrow in the shoulders would
not be worth much.
LUCILLA. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am sorry.
L. If you really are! Do you mean to say that you are sure you are
utterly wicked, and yet do not care?
LUCILLA. No, indeed; I have cried about it often.
L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart?
LUCILLA. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything.
L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. It is not
the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, when you cry?
LUCILLA. No, sir, of course.
L. Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, and the other
grieved? or is one side of it sorry for the other side?
LUCILLA (_weary of cross-examination, and a little vexed_). Indeed, sir,
you know I can't understand it; but you know how it is written--'another
law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.'
L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; but I do not see that it will
help us to know that, if we neither understand what is written, nor feel
it. And you will not get nearer to the meaning of one verse, if, as soon
as you are puzzled by it, you escape to another, introducing three new
words--'law,' 'members,' and 'mind'; not one of which you at present
know the meaning of; and respecting which, you probably never will be
much wiser; since men like Montesquieu and Locke have spent great part
of their lives in endeavouring to explain two of them.
LUCILLA. Oh! please, sir, ask somebody else.
L. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, Lucilla, I
would; but suppose I try, instead, myself, to explain your feelings to
you?
LUCILLA. Oh, yes; please do.
L. Mind, I say your 'feelings,' not your 'belief.' For I cannot
undertake to explain anybody's beliefs. Still I must try a little,
first, to explain the belief also, because I want to draw it to some
issue. As far as I understand what you say, or any one else, taught as
you have been taught, says, on this matter,--you think that there is an
external goodness, a whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears
beautiful outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness: a deep secret
guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible; and which can only be
seen by the Maker of us all. (_Approving murmurs from audience._)
L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul?
(_Looked notes of interrogation._)
L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing?
(_Grave faces, signifying 'Certainly not,' and 'What
next?'_)
L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, whatever God
sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you would not like it?
(_Murmured 'No's.'_)
L. Nor would it be good for you?
(_Silence._)
L. The probability being that what God does not allow you to see, He
does not wish you to see; nor even to think of?
(_Silence prolonged._)
L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you were
washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of the shapes
of the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged
sutures of the scalp?
(_Resolutely whispered No's._)
L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of
nourishment and decay?
(_No._)
L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory conditions
of structure, as in the skeleton,--or inferior offices of structure, as
in operations of life and death,--there were actual disease in the body;
ghastly and dreadful. You would try to cure it; but having taken such
measures as were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be
promoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On the
contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness: as,
in daily health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled
whatever is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and
has made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in
yourself and in others:--not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe
in sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on it.
Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the same.
Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you know any
means of mending it, take those means, and have done: when you are
examining yourself, never call yourself merely a 'sinner,' that is very
cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be
proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton,
or an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any
wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault
you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you
are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over
an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to
uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of
your faults; still less of others' faults: in every person who comes
near you, look for what is good and strong: honour that; rejoice in it;
and, as you can, try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like
dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life
should seem rugged as a palm tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it
has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of
honied fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself
at last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what
you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and
rejoice in _their_ nobleness. An immense quantity of modern confession
of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather
gloat over its own evil, than lose the centralisation of its interest in
itself.
MARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old
Greek proverb 'Know thyself' come to be so highly esteemed?
L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and the
sun's;--but do you think you can know yourself by looking _into_
yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking _out_ of
yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own
interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to
them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in
all things, relatively and subordinately; not positively: starting
always with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is
nothing particular about you. For instance, some of you perhaps think
you can write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings:--and you
will soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feelings;
and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and
you will soon begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls--which is much
like the fact.
So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune;--you
meditate over its effects on you personally; and begin to think that it
is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of
profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their
business for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your
mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy; examine a
little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, every
second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your self-consciousness
will change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself, so far
as to understand that 'there hath nothing taken thee but what is common
to man.'
Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person of
sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the inner
evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they are often
supposed to be by careless readers. But the way in which common people
read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought
hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and
over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their
spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll
themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks
to their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. But you can
only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their juice, you
must press them in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human
heart, insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts,
but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. 'A
good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that
which is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth
forth that which is evil.' 'They on the rock are they which, in an
honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it.' 'Delight thyself
in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' 'The
wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that is
upright in heart.' And so on; they are countless, to the same effect.
And, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how much or
how little corruption there is in human nature; but to ascertain
whether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the
goat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot at, or
people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the
subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one
you have chiefly to hold in mind. 'Keep thy heart with all diligence,
for out of it are the issues of life.'
LUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!
L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look
consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window;--you
can just see it from where you sit. I'm glad that it is left open, as it
ought to be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a black spot it
looks, in the sunlighted wall?
LUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink.
L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of it;
quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little
lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if
you could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might
appear a very black hole indeed; nay, the sun may sometimes think good
to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make
it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters
up. And the one question for _you_, remember, is not 'dark or light?'
but 'tidy or untidy?' Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be
sure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones
at his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.
LECTURE VI.
_CRYSTAL QUARRELS._
_Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at