Escape and Other Essays | Page 7

side of a ship, and dipped up pails of water to
swab it, the water freezing as he flung it on the timbers. But with all
this variety of life he did not learn anything particular from it all; he
was much the same always, good-natured, talkative, childishly
absorbed, not looking backward or forward, and fondest of telling
stories with sailors in an inn. He learned to be content in most
companies and to fare roughly; but he gained neither wisdom nor
humour, and he was not either happy or independent, though he
despised with all his heart the stay-at- home, stick-in-the-mud life.
But we are not all made like this, and it is only possible for a few
people to live so by the fact that most people prefer to stay at home and
do the work of the world. My cousin was not a worker, and, indeed, did
no work except under compulsion and in order to live; but such people
seem to belong to an older order, and are more like children playing
about, and at leisure to play because others work to feed and clothe
them. The world would be a wretched and miserable place if all tried to
live life on those lines.
It would be impossible to me to live so, though I dare say I should be a
better man if I had had a little more hardship of that kind; but I have
worked hard in my own way, and though I have had few hairbreadth
escapes, yet I have had sharp troubles and slow anxieties. I have been
like the man in the story, between the lion and the lizard for many
months together; and I have had more to bear, by temperament and
fortune, than my roving cousin ever had to endure; so that because a
life seems both sheltered and prosperous, it need not therefore have
been without its adventures and escapes and its haunting fears.

The more one examines into life and the motives of it, the more does
one perceive that the imagination, concerning itself with hopes of
escape from any conditions which hamper and confine us, is the
dynamic force that is transmuting the world. The child is for ever
planning what it will do when it is older, and dreams of an irresponsible
choice of food and an unrestrained use of money; the girl schemes to
escape from the constraints of home by independence or marriage; the
professional man plans to make a fortune and retire; the mother dreams
ambitious dreams for her children; the politician craves for power; the
writer hopes to gain the ear of the world--these are only a few casual
instances of the desire that is always at work within us, projecting us
into a larger and freer future out of the limited and restricted present.
That is the real current of the world, and though there are sedate people
who are contented with life as they see it, yet in most minds there is a
fluttering of little tremulous hopes forecasting ease and freedom; and
there are also many tired and dispirited people who are not content with
life as they have it, but acquiesce in its dreariness; yet all who have any
part in the world's development are full of schemes for themselves and
others by which the clogging and detaining elements are somehow to
be improved away. Sensitive people want to find life more harmonious
and beautiful, healthy people desire a more continuous sort of holiday
than they can attain, religious people long for a secret ecstasy of peace;
there is, in fact, a constant desire at work to realise perfection.
And yet, despite it all, there is a vast preponderance of evidence which
shows us that the attainment of our little dreams is not a thing to be
desired, and that satisfied desire is the least contented of moods. If we
realise our programme, if we succeed, marry the woman we love, make
a fortune, win leisure, gain power, a whole host of further desires
instantly come in sight. I once congratulated a statesman on a
triumphant speech.
"Yes," he said, "I do not deny that it is a pleasure to have had for once
the exact effect that one intended to have; but the shadow of it is the
fear that having once reached that standard, one may not be able to
keep it up."

The awful penalty of success is the haunting dread of subsequent
failure, and even sadder still is the fact that in striving eagerly to attain
an end, we are apt to lose the sense of the purpose which inspired us.
This is more drearily true of the pursuit of money than of anything else.
I could name several friends of my own who