Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (639 page)

To gentle rush of waters. Your belief —

In essence, what is it but simple Taste?

I urge with you exemption from all claims

That come from other than my proper will,

An Ultimate within to balance yours,

A solid meeting you, excluding you,

Till you show fuller force by entering

My spiritual space and crushing Me

To a subordinate complement of You:

Such ultimate must stand alike for all.

Preach your crusade, then: all will join who like

The hurly-burly of aggressive creeds;

Still your unpleasant Ought, your itch to choose

What grates upon the sense, is simply Taste,

Differs, I think, from mine (permit the word.

Discussion forces it) in being bad. “

The tone was too polite to breed offence.

Showing a tolerance of what was “ bad”

Becoming courtiers. Louder Rosencranz

Took up the ball with rougher movement, wont

To show contempt for doting reasoners

Who hugged some reasons with a preference,

As warm Laertes did: he gave five puffs

Intolerantly sceptical, then said:

‘‘Your human good, which you would make supreme,

How do you know it? Has it shown its face

In adamantine type, with features clear,

As this republic, or that monarchy?

As federal grouping or municipal?

Equality, or finely shaded lines

Of social difference? ecstatic whirl

And draught intense of passionate joy and pain,

Or sober self-control that starves its youth

And lives to wonder what the world calls joy?

Is it in sympathy that shares men’s pangs,

Or in cool brains that can explain them well?

Is it in labour or in laziness?

In training for the tug of rivalry

To be admired, or in the admiring soul?

In risk or certitude? In battling rage

And hardy challenges of Protean luck.

Or in a sleek and rural apathy

Full fed with sameness? Pray define your Good

Beyond rejection by majority;

Next, how it may subsist without the Ill

Which seems its only outline. Show a world

Of pleasure not resisted; or a world

Of pressure equalized, yet various

In action formative; for that will serve

As illustration of your human good —

Which at its perfecting (your goal of hope)

Will not be straight extinct, or fall to sleep

In the deep bosom of the Unchangeable.

What will you work for, then, and call it good

With full and certain vision — good for aught

Save partial ends which happen to be yours?

How will you get your stringency to bind

Thought or desire in demonstrated tracks

Which are but waves within a balanced whole?

Is ‘ relative ‘ the magic word that turns

Your flux mercurial of good to gold?

Why, that analysis at which you rage

As anti-social force that sweeps you down

The world in one cascade of molecules,

Is brother ‘ relative ‘ — and grins at you

Like any convict whom you thought to send

Outside society, till this enlarged

And meant New England and Australia too.

The Absolute is your shadow, and the space

Which you say might be real, were you milled

To curves pellicular, the thinnest thin,

Equation of no thickness, is still you. “

“ Abstracting all that makes him clubbable,

Horatio interposed. But Rosencranz,

Deaf as the angry turkey-cock whose ears

Are plugged by swollen tissue when he scolds

At men’s pretensions: “Pooh, your ‘Relative’

Shuts you in, hopeless, with your progeny

As in a Hunger-tower; your social good,

Like other deities by turn supreme,

Is transient reflex of a prejudice,

Anthology of causes and effects

To suit the mood of fanatics who lead

The mood of tribes or nations. I admit

If you could show a sword, nay, chance of sword

Hanging conspicuous to their inward eyes

With edge so constant threatening as to sway

All greed and lust by terror; and a law

Clear-writ and proven as the law supreme

Which that dread sword enforces — then your Right,

Duty, or social Good, were it once brought

To common measure with the potent law,

Would dip the scale, would put unchanging marks

Of wisdom or of folly on each deed,

And warrant exhortation. Until then,

Where is your standard or criterion?

‘ What always, everywhere, by all men’ — why,

That were but Custom, and your system needs

Ideals never yet incorporate,

The imminent doom of Custom. Can you find

Appeal beyond the sentience in each man?

Frighten the blind with scarecrows? raise an awe

Of things unseen where appetite commands

Chambers of imagery in the soul

At all its avenues? — You chant your hymns

To Evolution, on your altar lay

A sacred egg called Progress: have you proved

A Best unique where all is relative,

And where each change is loss as well as gain?

The age of healthy Saurians, well supplied

With heat and prey, will balance well enough

A human age where maladies are strong

And pleasures feeble; wealth a monster gorged

‘Mid hungry populations; intellect

Aproned in laboratories, bent on proof

That this is that and both are good for naught

Save feeding error through a weary life;

While Art and Poesy struggle like poor ghosts

To hinder cock-crow and the dreadful light,

Lurking in darkness and the charnel-house,

Or like two stalwart graybeards, imbecile

With limbs still active, playing at belief,

That hunt the slipper, foot-ball, hide-and-seek,

Are sweetly merry, donning pinafores

And lisping emulously in their speech.

O human race! Is this then all thy gain? —

Working at disproof, playing at belief,

Debate on causes, distaste of effects,

Power to transmute all elements, and lack

Of any power to sway the fatal skill

And make thy lot aught else than rigid doom?

The Saurians were better, — Guildenstern,

Pass me the taper. Still the human curse

Has mitigation in the best cigars.”

Then swift Laertes, not without a glare

Of leonine wrath, “I thank thee for that word:

That one confession, were I Socrates,

Should force you onward till you ran your head

At your own image — flatly gave the lie

To all your blasphemy of that human good

Which bred and nourished you to sit at ease

And learnedly deny it. Say the world

Groans ever with the pangs of doubtful births:

Say, life’s a poor donation at the best —

Wisdom a yearning after nothingness —

Nature’s great vision and the thrill supreme

Of thought-fed passion but a weary play —

I argue not against yon. Who can prove

Wit to be witty when the deeper ground

Dullness intuitive declares wit dull?

If life is worthless to you — why, it is.

You only know how little love you feel

To give you fellowship, how little force

Responsive to the quality of things.

Then end your life, throw off the unsought yoke.

If not — if you remain to taste cigars,

Choose racy diction, perorate at large

With tacit scorn of meaner men who win

No wreath or tripos — then admit at least

A possible Better in the seeds of earth;

Acknowledge debt to that laborious life

Which, sifting evermore the mingled seeds,

Testing the Possible with patient skill,

And daring ill in presence of a good

For futures to inherit, made your lot

One you would choose rather than end it, nay.