Cobwebs of Thought | Page 2

only one outlet possible, and that was to leave self-analysis of this sort alone for ever, and to throw himself into its direct contrary, the unconscious life of the emotions. John Stuart Mill did this, and it saved him. In Wordsworth's poetry he found sanity and healing. Happily for him that was not the age of Browning's "Fifine at the Fair." Had he fallen in with dialectical analysis in the garb of poetry, it must have killed him!
And yet "Know thyself" has always been considered supremely excellent advice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly is disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the Greeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort of self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which can be, at the same time, of vital use? Is all self-analysis when practised for its own sake necessarily harmful, and unprofitable? It is time to ask these questions if we are ever to know how to analyse ourselves with profit, if we are ever to know ourselves. And we none of us do. As students, we are content with every other knowledge but this. After all the self probing of the religious and philosophical, during long centuries, what have we learned? Truly to ourselves, we are enigmas. To know everything else except the self that knows, what a strange position! But it is our condition. The one thing that we do not know--that we feel as if we never could know is the Self in us. Our characters, our powers, our natures, our being--what are they? Our faculties--what can we do? And what can we not do? What is the reason of this faculty, or that want of faculty? We have never reached an understanding of ourselves, which makes us not only know, but perceive what we are capable of knowing; which makes us aware, not only that we can do something, but why we can do it. We are an unknown quantity to ourselves. We can calculate on a given action in a machine, but we cannot calculate on our own, much less on our moods. If we would but take half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a science or art--if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own thoughts as an engineer can on the sequence of movements in his steam engine--if we could dig, and penetrate into the depths of our own being, as a miner penetrates into a seam of coal--we might then cultivate with some profit our own special lines of thought, our own gifts, that portion of individuality, which we each possess. But it is so difficult to get to know it--we are always on the surface of ourselves. What power will unearth our self and make us really know what we are and what we can do? It is because we do not know ourselves, that we fail so hopelessly to give the things which are of incalculably real worth to the world, such as fresh individuality, and reality of character. Among millions of beings how few exist who possess strong original minds! We are not individual for the most part, and we are not real. Our lives are buried lives; we are unconscious absorbers, and reproducers, under other words of that which we have imbibed elsewhere. We need not only fresh expressions of old statements, but actually new ideas, and new conceptions. (The fresh subjects people talk about, are really fresh conceptions of subjects.) We shall never get this bloom of freshness, and this sense of reality and individuality of view unless we cultivate their soil--to have fresh ideas, we must encourage the right atmosphere in which alone they can live. We must not let our own personality, however slight, be suppressed, or be discouraged, or interfered with by a more powerful, or a more excellent personality.
Individuality is so weak and pliable a thing in most of us that it is very easily checked--it requires watchfulness and care, and not to be overborne, for the smallest individual thought of a mind of any originality, is more worth to the world than any re-expression of the thought of some other mind, however great.
Even the "best hundred books" may have a disastrous effect upon us. They may kill some aspirations, if they kindle others. Persons of mature age may surely at some time have made the discovery that much has been lost through the dominating influence of a superior mind. Many persons, for instance, have felt the great influence of Carlyle, and Ruskin, in their youth. Carlyle could do incalculable good to some minds by his ethics of work, but irremediable harm to others; minds