The Conduct of Life

THE efficacy of “example” has also on occasion been called in question. Either—so the argument runs—either the moral potency exists in a person—in which case it does its work without requiring extraneous encouragement; or else it does not—in which case no amount of stimulus from without can bring it into being.

And the argument cannot be answered by adducing instances to any number in which example has been effective; for it indicts as contradictory the very notion of “example,” and any cases that might be cited would presuppose the validity of the concept denied. The concept therefore must be examined, the inner fibre of the argument itself tested, to find (as we shall find) that what seemed to be its strength is really its weakness.

It is a strength or a weakness which resides in the assumption that the mind, or, as I say, the Spirit, of the individual is one thing, and the example another thing independent of the mind; and that the moral potency is a property, or attribute, of the individual—that is to say, a fact, which either is or is not. In point of fact, the moral potency, like every potency of the Spirit, is not a property of the individual, since the individuality itself is a particular and transitory manifestation of that potency; and what is called “example” is (or has been) another particular manifestation of the same potency. The result is that the alleged extraneousness of one to the other does not obtain.

When, indeed, and how, do we feel the influence of example? Not in the stage of volition where action is already in progress, wholly intent on itself, concerned wholly with itself; but in the stage more especially thought of as the stage of preparation, where action is at war with the remissness which would cause it to falter; or else at intervals of interruption in action, when temptation presents itself in its most insinuating garb; or during moments of fatigue, when we offer least resistance to the adversary. And at such times the moral potency, chilled with the shadow of doubt which brings mistrust and discouragement, is revived by the power of examples (family or national traditions, lives of good men, and of heroes of every age and place), by the consciousness, that is, of what human fortitude has accomplished in different cases or in similar cases, and of what it may do again, and perhaps do better, in the case at hand. Example, in other words, is not something apart from the moral potency of the individual and independent of it: it is that very potency in its concrete reality, as it has manifested itself in times past and is still operating in the present. Example, to use a figure of speech, marks the degree of intensity or altitude that virtue has once attained; and we must assume that it has lost none of its power: for even if variations up to the heights or down to zero appear in individuals empirically conceived, the moral and spiritual potency, which is naught else than reality itself, never fails.

Support for this view of the nature and function of example may be detected in the fact that “example” is invariably an assertion of history. Unless this be so, the example seems to be smitten with a sort of impotence and loses all its effect on us—a truth even popularly recognised: “That’s the way people act on the stage and in story-books,” we say of certain fallacious proposals or theories of conduct. It is of no moment that at times certain episodes have been effective as examples and later on proved false or legendary by historical criticism. For the minds which felt their influence they were fact and not fancy. Furthermore, in view of the concept of example expounded above, it is evident that no generic recognition of morality and of the claims of morality is sufficient support for a faltering will; for the wavering bears not upon morality in general but upon the extent to which morality is practicable in a definite, specific case. The examples to which the mind reverts are chosen from spheres more or less kindred in quality to the problem in question—civic or military valour, let us say, resistance to carnal appetites, fortitude under persecution, and so on, according to times, locations, professions, and other circumstances. It is curious, but also understandable, why an individual never avails himself of examples from his past life. His memories of himself remind him of what he was once but may be no longer; they do not emphasise the omnipresent power of all humanity. Besides, no one knows better than he that the good things he may have done were mixed with all sorts of selfishness and weakness; and nothing from his past stands before his eyes with such purity and perfection as to compel his own admiration and approval.

The tendency to underrate the influence of example and to overlook the weakness of the argument analysed above is furthered by the fact that many so-called “examples” are put forward, which lack the conditions we must regard as essential to true examples. Naturally we stand unmoved before a paradigm of virtue displayed in front of our eyes with many frills of imagination but little warmth of heart. If anything we are inclined to poke fun at it; because we are not convinced that things were really as represented; and the thicker the virtue is laid on, the more we suspect its historical verity. Then again we may shed tears of burning pathos over some narrative of heroism and experience no moral effects from it at all, since we at once feel emotions and do things just the contrary to the “example” we have had before us. In such cases, the contemplative or aesthetic interest has been overstressed to the disadvantage of the moral. For a similar reason we need not be surprised that the most delicate power of discrimination between good and evil, the most infallible surety of judgment on the moral quality of certain acts, may nevertheless allow an individual to “follow the worse”; for here the intellectual interest is aroused, as was the aesthetic in the case preceding, out of all proportion to the moral. One of the commonest disappointments we meet in life is to have credited goodness of heart and nobility of disposition to people who show exquisite sensibility and keen intelligence, but prove to be hard and harsh and fundamentally vicious when put to the test. What we should have noticed was not their readiness of sympathy for pitiable cases related to them, nor the accuracy of their judgment on situations passing under their scrutiny; but their behaviour in circumstances where some sacrifice, little or big, was called for on their part.

Conversely, a muddled moral vision, a tendency to think badly on moral issues and call evil good and good evil, throw no light whatever on the moral fibre of a man; for in practice he may belie all his false views, or at the most, reconcile his good conduct with his bad principles by a series of sentimental quibbles: “bad head, heart of gold,” runs an Italian phrase. In the same way, a man’s fancy may affect all sorts of lubricous imagery and he may enjoy obscenity in art and still confine his lewdness strictly to the aesthetic field: lasciva pagina, vita proba. Fortunately rhetoric is quite powerless whether for good or for evil; or, if you wish, it is harmful in both cases only as rhetoric, as a futile thing that wastes time. And likewise, if one’s past actions are inefficacious for good example, so they are for bad, since at the moment of decision it is a question not of what the individual has been but of what he is going to be. The generic recognition of evil as a necessary aspect of the universe is without influence because that recognition is no guarantee of the amount of resistance that evil may offer in a specific case: at the most it avers that if evil exists, the good is forever present also, forever confronting evil, and forever victorious over it.

But all evil acts have a pernicious force as bad examples; they all offend, they all “scandalise,” in the sense of the Gospel, giving rise not to repugnance (in which case they would be, as they actually are, useful) but to temptations, weakening our confidence as we manfully labour and struggle, inclining us to low compromises and ignoble apathy. Parents and teachers, therefore, bear a grave responsibility. The children in their keeping are all prone to measure moral values by the ideals exemplified in those who to their eyes represent authority; and they will probably improve on those examples not in the direction of the virtues, which require effort and severe discipline, but toward the anti-ideals that offer ease and pleasure. Rightly do we fear the “influence of environment,” which more commonly means the bad example set by citizens but especially by those appointed to lead. It is a subtly corruptive force that gradually but inevitably undermines the integrity of every individual.

The man of moral discernment will therefore not only reprove the evil he has done but he will also lament the consequences which his act will have as it is disjoined from him and continues to operate as a bad example; and its action will be all the more widespread and influential in proportion as he has been respected and as his fame is likely to endure. In view of this, one might amplify the precept of charity which exhorts us to hate sin but not the sinner: we should be lavish in our praise of good deeds, but sparing in our praise of those who do them, glorifying heroic accomplishments but not making idols or gods of their authors. The greatest men have their weak points which serve as bad examples. The Father of the Gods himself inspired one of the characters of Terence to ease his conscience in every case of delinquency by remarking: “If Jupiter did that, ego homuncio hoc non facerem?”

XXX. The House Divided Against Itself

IN many of the varied pictures which have come on to us from nineteenth-century poetry, we find a state of mind described by the word “doubling” (division into two); and this word was so frequently used in popular books of days gone by that it has entered our common language in Italy, where we all, on occasion, speak of the “doubling of consciousness.” But to grasp this notion clearly, we must not confuse it, as it is often confused, with what might be called “normal division,” or “consciousness of consciousness.” It need not be said that a person is continually representing his impulses and actions to his own mind, visualising, analysing, criticising them: he is continually dividing his consciousness into two parts, one of which is actor, the other spectator. But the “doubling” here is only apparent: what is seemingly a division is nothing but unity itself. Unity of consciousness cannot be a static thing. It embraces the whole process of unification; and this process necessarily involves the synthesising of antitheses: that is to say—the division in consciousness is affirmed only in so far as it is negated and transcended in the unity of consciousness. The analysis and criticism of action is the very process of new action—a process that has three stages: image—intuition; thought—concept; decision—action, will. The psychological type in which this process is most conspicuous is the careful, cautious, scrupulous, conscientious man.

To state the situation in a word: variance between thought and will (where, that is, we think one thing and do another) does not constitute a real case of “doubling.” (It may do so, perhaps, in one set of circumstances: where thought is mere frivolity, a chaotic mixture of thoughts and impressions, a jumble of words—non-thought). Where there is such variance we seem to think well but to do badly. And the reason is, that along with our apparent thought we are thinking a real thought which bridges the gap between itself and action, whereas the former remains cut off from action. Whenever we really think one of our own states of mind (or even a historical situation), when we really think it through, we are—so far, at least, as the thought is vivid and really present before our minds—led on to a volition and to an action corresponding exactly to the thought. There can be no variance; and if there seems to be, it is a sign that the thought we had has been replaced by another thought, or by non-thought. The psychological type illustrating this case is not the man of so-called “doubled” or “divided” consciousness, but the ordinary muddled-head, who fails to think straight and to see clearly and acts more or less at random.

True “doubling,” the phenomenon of such great interest to the poets above referred to, appears, rather, in the sphere of volition; and it may assume different forms, some of which are easily mistaken for one or another of the preceding. There is the case, for instance, where we do wrong, feeling intermittently or all the while that we are doing wrong; but, despite this chiding of conscience, we continue—staggering, it may be, but persistent—along the wrong path. The “doubling” here is really weakness of will. It is analysis and not synthesis. The forces that are clashing one against the other seem to be mighty ones. But they are actually weaklings. No one of them is strong enough to get the better of the others and to create that unity of will which alone is power. A moral impulse finds itself confronted by one or more selfish impulses. It does not vanquish them, nor yet is it driven from the field itself.

There is also the inverse case, which requires the same comment. Here we are doing what is right; but we feel that what is right is not worth doing. Acquiescence in the law of reality, obedience to the mandates of our best selves, seem to us cowardice, laziness, convenience, habit, stupidity, folly. Our nobler tendencies, derived from training or tradition, impel us, successfully impel us, in the right direction. But we take no joy in our virtue—it does not satisfy all our cravings; it is not harmonious with all the aspects of our volition.

That this is the nature of true “doubling” and as such a state of feeble volition, becomes strikingly evident from a third case belonging to the sphere of purely selfish will. The character most fondly pictured in the literature I have mentioned is a passionate individual who at the same time seems to be untouched by desire. Enthusiastic, he is also indifferent. Sanguine, he is also cold. A libertine, he is bored, blasé—he never enjoys.

In some respects, though only in some respects, this figure is foreshadowed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet; but on the whole it is a creation of modern life and reflects the laboured formation of a new religious consciousness which has given to recent and contemporary civilisation many moments such as Jesus lived in the Garden of Gethsemane. Reproduced in numberless and often mannerised imitations, its authentic originals are to be found in Chateaubriand and in Benjamin Constant. The latter experienced and described sentiments like this: “I rage! I am blind with fury! But after all, I don’t care a hang!” Leopardi called this state of mind “ennui,” “tedium,” noia; and not only did he sing it as a great poet but he analysed it with the keenness of a trained psychologist and the understanding of a profound historian.

And who of us has not felt the presence of this enemy within himself? Any merit we may claim resides not in our never having harboured such a visitor but in having triumphed over him; in having refused to accept the guest as proof of our aristocratic sophistication; in having had the courage to shout in his very face his very name—which is “impotence”: impotence in living and impotence in manhood.