Where No Fear Was | Page 6

in the minds of the philosophers or teachers who would
fain relieve the unhappiness of the world, has been always to suggest
ways in which this vulnerability may be lessened; and thus their object
has been to disengage as far as possible the hopes and affections of men
from things which must always be fleeting. That is the principle which
lies behind all asceticism, that, if one can be indifferent to wealth and
comfort and popularity, one has a better chance of serenity. The
essence of that teaching is not that pleasant things are not desirable, but
that one is more miserable if one loses them than if one never cares for
them at all. The ascetic trains himself to be indifferent about food and
drink and the apparatus of life; he aims at celibacy partly because love
itself is an overmastering passion, and partly because he cannot bear to
engage himself with human affections, the loss of which may give him
pain. There is, of course, a deeper strain in asceticism than this, which
is a suspicious mistrust of all physical joys and a sense of their
baseness; but that is in itself an artistic preference of mental and
spiritual joys, and a defiance to everything which may impair or invade
them.
The Stoic imperturbability is an attempt to take a further step; not to fly
from life, but to mingle with it, and yet to grow to be not dependent on
it. The Stoic ideal was a high one, to cultivate a firmness of mind that
was on the one hand not to be dismayed by pain or suffering, and on

the other to use life so temperately and judiciously as not to form habits
of indulgence which it would be painful to discontinue. The weakness
of Stoicism was that it despised human relations; and the strength of
primitive Christianity was that, while it recommended a Stoical
simplicity of life, it taught men not to be afraid of love, but to use and
lavish love freely, as being the one thing which would survive death
and not be cut short by it. The Christian teaching came to this, that the
world was meant to be a school of love, and that love was to be an
outward-rippling ring of affection extending from the family outwards
to the tribe, the nation, the world, and on to God Himself. It laid all its
emphasis on the truth that love is the one immortal thing, that all the
joys and triumphs of the world pass away with the decay of its material
framework, but that love passes boldly on, with linked hands, into the
darkness of the unknown.
The one loss that Christianity recognised was the loss of love; the one
punishment it dreaded was the withholding of love.
As Christianity soaked into the world, it became vitiated, and drew into
itself many elements of human weakness. It became a social force, it
learned to depend on property, it fulminated a code of criminality, and
accepted human standards of prosperity and wealth. It lost its simplicity
and became sophisticated. It is hard to say that men of the world should
not, if they wish, claim to be Christians, but the whole essence of
Christianity is obscured if it is forgotten that its vital attributes are its
indifference to material conveniences, and its emphatic acceptance of
sympathy as the one supreme virtue.
This is but another way of expressing that our troubles and our terrors
alike are based on selfishness, and that if we are really concerned with
the welfare of others we shall not be much concerned with our own.
The difficulty in adopting the Christian theory is that God does not
apparently intend to cure the world by creating all men unselfish.
People are born selfish, and the laws of nature and heredity seem to
ordain that it shall be so. Indeed a certain selfishness seems to be
inseparable from any desire to live. The force of asceticism and of
Stoicism is that they both appeal to selfishness as a motive. They
frankly say, "Happiness is your aim, personal happiness; but instead of
grasping at pleasure whenever it offers, you will find it more prudent in
the end not to care too much about such things." It is true that popular

Christianity makes the same sort of appeal. It says, or seems to say, "If
you grasp at happiness in this world, you may secure a great deal of it
successfully; but it will be worse for you eventually."
The theory of life as taught and enforced, for instance, in such a work
as Dante's great poem is based upon this crudity of thought. Dante, by
his Hell and his Purgatory, expressed plainly that the chief motive of
man to practise morality