The Plain Man and His Wife | Page 4

modern perception that fundamental questions are getting very hard to answer. In a former time a dogmatic answer was ready waiting for every fundamental question. You asked the question, but before you asked it you knew the answer, and so there was no argument and nearly no anxiety. In that former time a mere child could glance at your conduct and tell you with certainty exactly what you would be doing and how you would be feeling ten thousand years hence, if you persisted in the said conduct. But knowledge has advanced since then, and the inconvenience of increased knowledge is that it intensifies the sense of ignorance, with the result that, though we know immensely more than our grandfathers knew, we feel immensely more ignorant than they ever felt. They were, indeed, too ignorant to be aware of ignorance--which is perhaps a comfortable state. Thus the plain man nowadays shirks fundamental questions. And assuredly no member of the Society for the Suppression of Moral Indignation shall blame him.
All fundamental questions resolve themselves finally into the following assertion and inquiry about life: "I am now engaged in something rather tiresome. What do I stand to gain by it later on?" That is the basic query. It has forms of varying importance. In its supreme form the word "eternity" has to be employed. And the plain man is, to-day, so sensitive about this supreme form of the question that, far from asking and trying to answer it, he can scarcely bear to hear it even discussed--I mean discussed with candour. In practise a frank discussion of it usually tempts him to exhibitions of extraordinary heat and bitterness, and wisdom is thereby but obscured. Therefore he prefers the disadvantage of leaving it alone to the dissatisfaction of attempting to deal with it. The disadvantage of leaving it alone is obvious. Existence is, and must be, a compromise between the claims of the moment and the claims of the future--and how can that compromise be wisely established if one has not somehow made up one's mind about the future? It cannot. But--I repeat--I would not blame the plain man. I would only just hint to him, while respecting his sensitiveness, that the present hour is just as much a part of eternity as another hour ten thousand years off.
The second--the most important--form of the fundamental question embraces the problem of old age. All plain men will admit, when faithfully cross-examined, a sort of belief that they are on their way to some Timbuctoo situate in the region of old age. It may be the Timbuctoo of a special ambition realized, or the Timbuctoo of luxury, or the Timbuctoo of material security, or the Timbuctoo of hale health, or the Timbuctoo of knowledge, or the Timbuctoo of power, or even the Timbuctoo of a good conscience. It is anyhow a recognizable and definable Timbuctoo. And the path leading to it is a straight, wide thoroughfare, clearly visible for a long distance ahead.
The theory of the mortal journey is simple and seldom challenged. It is a twofold theory--first that the delight of achievement will compensate for the rigours and self-denials of the route, and second that the misery of non-achievement would outweigh the immediate pleasures of dallying. If this theory were not indestructible, for reasons connected with the secret nature of humanity, it would probably have been destroyed long ago by the mere cumulative battering of experience. For the earth's surface is everywhere thickly dotted with old men who have achieved ambition, old men drenched in luxury, old men as safe as Mont Blanc from overthrow, old men with the health of camels, old men who know more than anybody ever knew before, old men whose nod can ruin a thousand miles of railroad, and old men with consciences of pure snow; but who are not happy and cannot enjoy life.
The theory, however, does happen to be indestructible, partly because old age is such a terrible long way off, partly because the young honestly believe themselves to have a monopoly of wisdom, partly because every plain man is convinced that his case will be different from all the other cases, and chiefly because endeavour--not any particular endeavour, but rather any endeavour!--is a habit that corresponds to a very profound instinct in the plain man. So the reputation of Timbuctoo as a pleasure resort remains entirely unimpaired, and the pilgrimages continue with unabated earnestness.
And there is another and a paramount reason why the pilgrimages should continue. The two men in the parable both said that they just had to start--and they were right. We have to start, and, once started, we have to keep going. We must go somewhere. And at the moment of starting we have neither the sagacity nor the leisure to invent fresh