The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. William James

the possibility of any other kind of feeling:—

      "To breathe the air, how delicious!

       To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand! …

       To be this incredible God I am! …

       O amazement of things, even the least particle!

       O spirituality of things!

       I too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting;

       I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the

       growths of the earth. …

      I sing to the last the equalities, modern or old,

       I sing the endless finales of things,

       I say Nature continues—glory continues.

       I praise with electric voice,

       For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,

       And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last."

      So Rousseau, writing of the nine years he spent at Annecy, with nothing but his happiness to tell:—

      "How tell what was neither said nor done nor even thought, but tasted only and felt, with no object of my felicity but the emotion of felicity itself! I rose with the sun, and I was happy; I went to walk, and I was happy; I saw 'Maman,' and I was happy; I left her, and I was happy. I rambled through the woods and over the vine-slopes, I wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I worked in the garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at the indoor work, and happiness followed me everywhere. It was in no one assignable thing; it was all within myself; it could not leave me for a single instant."

      If moods like this could be made permanent, and constitutions like these universal, there would never be any occasion for such discourses as the present one. No philosopher would seek to prove articulately that life is worth living, for the fact that it absolutely is so would vouch for itself, and the problem disappear in the vanishing of the question rather than in the coming of anything like a reply. But we are not magicians to make the optimistic temperament universal; and alongside of the deliverances of temperamental optimism concerning life, those of temperamental pessimism always exist, and oppose to them a standing refutation. In what is called 'circular insanity,' phases of melancholy succeed phases of mania, with no outward cause that we can discover; and often enough to one and the same well person life will present incarnate radiance to-day and incarnate dreariness to-morrow, according to the fluctuations of what the older medical books used to call "the concoction of the humors." In the words of the newspaper joke, "it depends on the liver." Rousseau's ill-balanced constitution undergoes a change, and behold him in his latter evil days a prey to melancholy and black delusions of suspicion and fear. Some men seem launched upon the world even from their birth with souls as incapable of happiness as Walt Whitman's was of gloom, and they have left us their messages in even more lasting verse than his—the exquisite Leopardi, for example; or our own contemporary, James Thomson, in that pathetic book, The City of Dreadful Night, which I think is less well-known than it should be for its literary beauty, simply because men are afraid to quote its words—they are so gloomy, and at the same time so sincere. In one place the poet describes a congregation gathered to listen to a preacher in a great unillumined cathedral at night. The sermon is too long to quote, but it ends thus:—

      "'O Brothers of sad lives! they are so brief;

       A few short years must bring us all relief:

       Can we not bear these years of laboring breath.

       But if you would not this poor life fulfil,

       Lo, you are free to end it when you will,

       Without the fear of waking after death.'—

      "The organ-like vibrations of his voice

       Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away;

       The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice

       Was sad and tender as a requiem lay:

       Our shadowy congregation rested still,

       As brooding on that 'End it when you will.'

      *****

      "Our shadowy congregation rested still,

       As musing on that message we had heard,

       And brooding on that 'End it when you will,'

       Perchance awaiting yet some other word;

       When keen as lightning through a muffled sky

       Sprang forth a shrill and lamentable cry;—

      "'The man speaks sooth, alas! the man speaks sooth:

       We have no personal life beyond the grave;

       There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:

       Can I find here the comfort which I crave?

      "'In all eternity I had one chance,

       One few years' term of gracious human life—

       The splendors of the intellect's advance,

       The sweetness of the home with babes and wife;

      "'The social pleasures with their genial wit;

       The fascination of the worlds of art;

       The glories of the worlds of Nature lit

       By large imagination's glowing heart;

      "'The rapture of mere being, full of health;

       The careless childhood and the ardent youth;

       The strenuous manhood winning various wealth,

       The reverend age serene with life's long truth;

      "'All the sublime prerogatives of Man;

       The storied memories of the times of old,

       The patient tracking of the world's great plan

       Through sequences and changes myriadfold.

      "'This chance was never offered me before;

       For me the infinite past is blank and dumb;

       This chance recurreth never, nevermore;

       Blank, blank for me the infinite To-come.

      "'And this sole chance was frustrate from my birth,

       A mockery, a delusion; and my breath

       Of noble human life upon this earth

       So racks me that I sigh for senseless death.

      "'My wine of life is poison mixed with gall,

       My noonday passes in a nightmare dream,

       I worse than lose the years which are my all:

       What can console me for the loss supreme?

      "'Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,

       Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair!

       Our life 's a cheat, our death a black abyss:

       Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair.'

      "This vehement voice came from the northern aisle,

       Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close;

       And none gave answer for a certain while,

       For words must shrink from these most wordless woes;

       At last the pulpit speaker simply said,

       With humid eyes and thoughtful, drooping head—

      

      "'My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus:

       This life holds nothing good for us,

       But it ends soon and nevermore can be;

       And we knew nothing of it ere our birth,

       And shall know nothing when consigned to earth;

       I ponder