The Feast of St. Friend by Arnold Bennett
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Arnold Bennett >> The Feast of St. Friend
* * * * *
And on the day of festival itself one feels that one really has
something to celebrate. The occasion has a basis, if it had no basis
for one before; and if a basis previously existed, then it is widened
and strengthened. The festival becomes a public culmination to a private
enterprise. One is not reminded by Christmas of goodwill, because the
enterprise of imaginative sympathy has been a daily affair throughout
the year; but Christmas provides an excuse for taking satisfaction in
the success of the enterprise and new enthusiasm to correct its
failures. The symbolism of the situation of Christmas, at the turn of
the year, develops an added impressiveness, and all the Christmas
customs, apt to produce annoyance in the breasts of the unsentimental,
are accepted with indulgence, even with eagerness, because their
symbolism also is shown in a clearer light. Christmas becomes as
personal as a birthday. One eats and drinks to excess, not because it
is the custom to eat and drink to excess, but from sheer effervescent
faith in an idea. And as one sits with one's friends, possessing them in
the privacy of one's heart, permeated by a sense of the value of
sympathetic comprehension in this formidable adventure of existence on a
planet that rushes eternally through the night of space; assured indeed
that companionship and mutual understanding alone make the adventure
agreeable,--one sees in a flash that Christmas, whatever else it may be,
is and must be the Feast of St. Friend, and a day on that account
supreme among the days of the year.
* * * * *
The third and greatest consequence of the systematic cultivation of
goodwill now grows blindingly apparent. To state it earlier in all its
crudity would have been ill-advised; and I purposely refrained from
doing so. It is the augmentation of one's own happiness. The increase of
amity, the diminution of resentment and annoyance, the regular
maintenance of an attitude mildly benevolent towards mankind,--these
things are the surest way to happiness. And it is because they are the
surest way to happiness, that the most enlightened go after them. All
real motives are selfish motives; were it otherwise humanity would be
utterly different from what it is. A man may perform some act which will
benefit another while working some striking injury to himself. But his
reason for doing it is that he prefers the evil of the injury to the
deeper evil of the fundamental dissatisfaction which would torment him
if he did not perform the act. Nobody yet sought the good of another
save as a means to his own good. And it is in accordance with common
sense that this should be so. There is, however, a lower egotism and a
higher. It is the latter which we call unselfishness. And it is the
latter of which Christmas is the celebration. We shall legitimately bear
in mind, therefore, that Christmas, in addition to being the Feast of
St. Friend, is even more profoundly the feast of one's own welfare.
NINE
THE REACTION
A reaction sets in between Christmas and the New Year. It is inevitable;
and I should be writing basely if I did not devote to it a full chapter.
In those few dark days of inactivity, between a fete and the resumption
of the implacable daily round, when the weather is usually cynical, and
we are paying in our tissues the fair price of excess, we see life and
the world in a grey and sinister light, which we imagine to be the only
true light. Take the case of the average successful man of thirty-five.
What is he thinking as he lounges about on the day after Christmas?
His thoughts probably run thus: "Even if I live to a good old age,
which is improbable, as many years lie behind me as before me. I have
lived half my life, and perhaps more than half my life. I have realised
part of my worldly ambition. I have made many good resolutions, and kept
one or two of them in k more or less imperfect manner. I cannot, as a
commonsense person, hope to keep a larger proportion of good resolutions
in the future than I have kept in the past. I have tried to understand
and sympathise with my fellow creatures, and though I have not entirely
failed to do so, I have nearly failed. I am not happy and I am not
content. And if, after all these years, I am neither happy nor content,
what chance is there of my being happy and content in the second half
of my life? The realisation of part of my worldly ambition has not made
me any happier, and, therefore, it is unlikely that the realisation of
the whole of my ambition will make me any happier. My strength cannot
improve; it can only weaken; and my health likewise. I in my turn am
coming to believe--what as a youth I rejected with disdain--namely, that
happiness is what one is not, and content is what one has not. Why,
then, should I go on striving after the impossible? Why should I not let
things slide?"
Thus reflects the average successful man, and there is not one of us,
successful or unsuccessful, ambitious or unambitious, whose reflections
have not often led him to a conclusion equally dissatisfied. Why should
I or anybody pretend that this is not so?
* * * * *
And yet, in the very moment of his discouragement and of his blackest
vision of things, that man knows quite well that he will go on striving.
He knows that his instinct to strive will be stronger than his genuine
conviction that the desired end cannot be achieved. Positive though he
may be that a worldly ambition realised will produce the same
dissatisfaction as Dead Sea fruit in the mouth, he will still continue
to struggle. * * * Now you cannot argue against facts, and this is a
fact. It must be accepted. Conduct must be adjusted to it. The struggle
being inevitable, it must be carried through as well as it can be
carried through. It will not end brilliantly, but precautions can be
taken against it ending disgracefully. These precautions consist in the
devising of a plan of campaign, and the plan of campaign is defined by a
series of resolutions: which resolutions are generally made at or
immediately before the beginning of a New Year. Without these the
struggle would be formless, confused, blind and even more futile than it
is with them. Organised effort is bound to be less ineffective than
unorganised effort.
* * * * *
A worldly ambition can be, frequently is, realised: but an ideal cannot
be attained--if it could, it would not be an ideal. The virtue of an
ideal is its unattainability. It seems, when it is first formed, just as
attainable as a worldly ambition which indeed is often schemed as a
means to it. After twenty-four hours, the ideal is all but attained.
After forty-eight, it is a little farther off. After a week, it has
receded still further. After a month it is far away; and towards the end
of a year even the keen eye of hope has almost lost sight of it; it is
definitely withdrawn from the practical sphere. And then, such is the
divine obstinacy of humanity, the turn of the year gives us an excuse
for starting afresh, and forming a new ideal, and forgetting our shame
in yet another organised effort. Such is the annual circle of the ideal,
the effort, the failure and the shame. A rather pitiful history it may
appear! And yet it is also rather a splendid history! For the failure
and the shame are due to the splendour of our ideal and to the audacity
of our faith in ourselves. It is only in comparison with our ideal that
we have fallen low. We are higher, in our failure and our shame, than we
should have been if we had not attempted to rise.
* * * * *
There are those who will say: "At any rate, we might moderate somewhat
the splendour of our ideal and the audacity of our self-conceit, so that
there should be a less grotesque disparity between the aim and the
achievement. Surely such moderation would be more in accord with common
sense! Surely it would lessen the spiritual fatigue and disappointment
caused by sterile endeavour!" It would. But just try to moderate the
ideal and the self-conceit! And you will find, in spite of all your sad
experiences, that you cannot. If there is the stuff of a man in you, you
simply cannot! The truth, is that, in the supreme things, a man does
not act under the rules of earthly common sense. He transcends them,
because there is a quality in him which compels him to do so. Common
sense may persuade him to attempt to keep down the ideal, and
self-conceit may pretend to agree. But all the time, self-conceit will
be whispering: "I can go one better than that." And lo! the ideal is
furtively raised again.
A man really has little scientific control over the height of his ideal
and the intensity of his belief in himself. He is born with them, as he
is born with a certain pulse and a certain reflex action. He can neglect
the ideal, so that it almost dissolves, but he cannot change its height.
He can maim his belief in himself by persistent abandonment to folly,
but he cannot lower its flame by an effort of the will, as he might
lower the flame of a gas by a calculated turn of the hand. In the secret
and inmost constitution of humanity it is ordained that the disparity
between the aim and the achievement shall seem grotesque; it is ordained
that there shall be an enormous fuss about pretty nearly nothing; it is
ordained that the mountain shall bring forth a mouse. But it is also
ordained that men shall go blithely on just the same, ignoring in
practice the ridiculousness which they admit in theory, and drawing
renewed hope and conceit from some magic, exhaustless source. And this
is the whole philosophy of the New Year's resolution.
TEN
ON THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR
There are few people who arrive at a true understanding of life, even in
the calm and disillusioned hours of reflection that come between the end
of one annual period and the beginning of another. Nearly everybody has
an idea at the back of his head that if only he could conquer certain
difficulties and embarrassments, he might really start to live properly,
in the full sense of living. And if he has pluck he says to himself: "I
_will_ smooth things out, and then I'll really live." In the same way,
nearly everybody, regarding the spectacle of the world, sees therein a
principle which he calls Evil; and he thinks: "If only we could get rid
of this Evil, if only we could set things right, how splendid the world
would be!" Now, in the meaning usually attached to it, there is no such
positive principle as Evil. Assuming that there is such a positive
principle in a given phenomenon--such as the character of a particular
man--you must then admit that there is the same positive principle
everywhere, for just as the character of no man is so imperfect that you
could not conceive a worse, so the character of no man is so perfect
that you could not conceive a better. Do away with Evil from the world,
and you would not merely abolish certain specially distressing matters,
you would change everything. You would in fact achieve perfection. And
when we say that one thing is evil and another good, all that we mean
is that one thing is less advanced than another in the way of
perfection. Evil cannot therefore be a positive principle; it signifies
only the falling short of perfection.
And supposing that the desires of mankind were suddenly fulfilled, and
the world was rendered perfect! There would be no motive for effort, no
altercation of conflicting motives in the human heart; nothing to do, no
one to befriend, no anxiety, no want unsatisfied. Equilibrium would be
established. A cheerful world! You can see instantly how amusing it
would be. It would have only one drawback--that of being dead. Its
reason for being alive would have ceased to operate. Life means change
through constant development. But you cannot develop the perfect. The
perfect can merely expire.
That average successful man whom I have previously cited feels all this
by instinct, though he does not comprehend it by reason. He reaches his
ambition, and retires from the fight in order to enjoy life,--and what
does he then do? He immediately creates for himself a new series of
difficulties and embarrassments, either by undertaking the management of
a large estate, or by some other device. If he does not maintain for
himself conditions which necessitate some kind of struggle, he quickly
dies--spiritually or physically, often both. The proportion of men who,
having established an equilibrium, proceed to die on the spot, is
enormous. Continual effort, which means, of course, continual
disappointment, is the _sine qua non_--without it there is literally
nothing vital. Its abolition is the abolition of life. Hence, people,
who, failing to savour the struggle itself, anticipate the end of the
struggle as the beginning of joy and happiness--these people are simply
missing life; they are longing to exchange life for death. The hemlock
would save them a lot of weary waiting.
* * * * *
We shall now perceive, I think, what is wrong with the assumptions of
the average successful man as set forth in the previous chapter. In
postulating that happiness is what one is not, he has got hold of a
mischievous conception of happiness. Let him examine his conception of
happiness, and he will find that it consists in the enjoyment of love
and luxury, and in the freedom from enforced effort. He generally wants
all three ingredients. Now passionate love does not mean happiness; it
means excitement, apprehension and continually renewed desire. And
affectionate love, from which the passion has faded, means something
less than happiness, for, mingled with its gentle tranquility is a
disturbing regret for the more fiery past. Luxury, according to the
universal experience of those who have had it, has no connection
whatever with happiness. And as for freedom from enforced effort, it
means simply death.
Happiness as it is dreamed of cannot possibly exist save for brief
periods of self-deception which are followed by terrible periods of
reaction. Real, practicable happiness is due primarily not to any kind
of environment, but to an inward state of mind. Real happiness consists
first in acceptance of the fact that discontent is a condition of life,
and, second, in an honest endeavour to adjust conduct to an ideal. Real
happiness is not an affair of the future; it is an affair of the
present. Such as it is, if it cannot be obtained now, it can never be
obtained. Real happiness lives in patience, having comprehended that if
very little is accomplished towards perfection, so a man's existence is
a very little moment in the vast expanse of the universal life, and
having also comprehended that it is the struggle which is vital, and
that the end of the struggle is only another name for death.
* * * * *
"Well," I hear you exclaiming, "if this is all we can look forward to,
if this is all that real, practicable happiness amounts to, is life
worth living?" That is a question which each person has to answer for
himself. If he answers it in the negative, no argument, no persuasion,
no sentimentalisation of the facts of life, will make him alter his
opinion. Most people, however, answer it in the affirmative. Despite all
the drawbacks, despite all the endless disappointments, they decide that
life is worth living. There are two species of phenomena which bring
them to this view. The first may be called the golden moments of life,
which seem somehow in their transient brevity to atone for the dull
exasperation of interminable mediocre hours: moments of triumph in the
struggle, moments of fierce exultant resolve; moments of joy in
nature--moments which defy oblivion in the memory, and which, being
priceless, cannot be too dearly bought.
The second species of compensatory phenomena are all the agreeable
experiences connected with human friendship; the general feeling, under
diverse forms, that one is not alone in the world. It is for the
multiplication and intensification of these phenomena that Christmas,
the Feast of St. Friend, exists. And, on the last day of the year, on
the eve of a renewed effort, our thoughts may profitably be centered
upon a plan of campaign whose execution shall result in a less imperfect
intercourse.