The Plain Man and His Wife | Page 4

to start for somewhere, so I started for Timbuctoo."
Said the traveller:
"Well, I'm of a forgiving disposition. Shake hands."

III
The two individuals in the foregoing parable were worrying each other
with fundamental questions. And what makes the parable unrealistic is
the improbability of real individuals ever doing any such thing. If the
plain man, for instance, has almost ceased to deal in fundamental
questions in these days, the reason is not difficult to find. The reason
lies in the 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