new perceptions
i will confess that at first this communication was a great shock to me; i was for a time bewildered and plunged into a deep dejection. to say farewell to the bustle and activity of life—to be laid aside on a shelf, like a cracked vase, turning as far as possible my ornamental front to the world, spoilt for homely service. to be relegated to the failures; to be regarded and spoken of as an invalid—to live the shadowed life, a creature of rules and hours, fretting over drugs and beef tea—a degrading, a humiliating r?le. i admit that the first weeks of my enforced retirement were bitter indeed. the perpetual fret of small restrictions had at first the effect of making me feel physically and mentally incapable. only very gradually did the sad cloud lift. the first thing that came to my help was a totally unexpected feeling. when i had got used to the altered conditions of life, when i found that the regulated existence had become to a[91] large extent mechanical, when i had learnt to decide instinctively what i could attempt and what i must leave alone, i found my perceptions curiously heightened and intensified by the shadowy background which enveloped me. sounds and sights thrilled me in an unaccustomed way—the very thought, hardly defined, but existing like a quiet subconsciousness, that my tenure of life was certainly frail, and might be brief, seemed to bring out into sharp relief the simple and unnoticed sensations of ordinary life. the pure gush of morning air through the opened casement, the delicious coolness of water on the languid body, the liquid song of birds, the sprouting of green buds upon the hedge, the sharp and aromatic scent of rosy larch tassels, the monotonous babble of the stream beneath its high water plants, the pearly lamin? of the morning cloudland, the glowing wrack of sunset with the liquid bays of intenser green—all these stirred my spirit with an added value of beauty, an enjoyment at once passionate and tranquil, as though they held some whispered secret for the soul.
the same quickening effect passed, i noticed, over intellectual perceptions. pictures[92] in which there was some latent quality, some hidden brooding, some mystery lying beneath and beyond superficial effect, gave up their secrets to my eye. music came home to me with an intensity of pathos and passion which i had before never even suspected, and even here the same subtle power of appreciation seemed to have been granted me. it seemed that i was no longer taken in by technical art or mechanical perfection. the hard rippling cascades which had formerly attracted me, where a musician was merely working out, if i may use the word, some subject with a mathematical precision, seemed to me hollow and vain; all that was pompous and violent followed suit, and what i now seemed to be able to discern was all that endeavoured, however faultily, to express some ardour of the spirit, some indefinable delicacy of feeling.
something of the same power seemed to be mine in dealing with literature. all hard brilliance, all exaggerated display, all literary agility and diplomacy that might have once deceived me, appeared to ring cracked and thin; mere style, style that concealed rather than expressed thought, fell as it were in glassy tingling showers on my initiated spirit; while,[93] on the other hand, all that was truthfully felt, sincerely conceived or intensely desired, drew me as with a magical compulsion. it was then that i first perceived what the sympathy, the perception born of suffering might be, when that suffering was not so intrusive, so severe, as to throw the sick spirit back upon itself—then that i learnt what detachment, what spectatorial power might be conferred by a catastrophe not violent, but sure, by a presage of distant doom. i felt like a man who has long stumbled among intricate lanes, his view obscured by the deep-cut earth-walls of his prison, and by the sordid lower slopes with their paltry details, when the road leads out upon the open moor, and when at last he climbs freely and exultingly upon the broad grassy shoulders of the hill. the true perspective—the map of life opened out before me; i learnt that all art is only valuable when it is the sedulous flowering of the sweet and gracious spirit, and that beyond all power of human expression lies a province where the deepest thoughts, the highest mysteries of the spirit sleep—only guessed at, wrestled with, hankered after by the most skilled master of all the arts of mortal subtlety.
[94]
perhaps the very thing that made these fleeting impressions so perilously sweet, was the sense of their evanescence.
but oh, the very reason why
i love them, is because they die.
the shadow
in this exalted mood, with this sense of heightened perception all about me, i began for awhile to luxuriate. i imagined that i had learnt a permanent lesson, gained a higher level of philosophy, escaped from the grip of material things. alas! it was but transitory. i had not triumphed. what i did gain, what did stay with me, was a more deliberate intention of enjoying simple things, a greater expectation of beauty in homely life. this remained, but in a diminished degree. i suppose that the mood was one of intense nervous tension, for by degrees it was shadowed and blotted, until i fell into a profound depression. at best what could i hope for?—a shadowed life, an inglorious gloom? the dull waste years stretched before me—days, weeks, months of wearisome little duties; dreary tending of the lamp of life; and what a life! life without service, joy, brightness, or usefulness. i was to be stranded like a hulk[95] on an oozy shore, only thankful for every month that the sodden timbers still held together. i saw that something larger and deeper was required; i saw that religion and philosophy must unite to form some definite theory of life, to build a foundation on which i could securely rest.
