THE REACTION
A reaction sets in between Christmas and the New Year. It is inevitable; and I should be writing basely if I did not devote to it a full chapter. In those few dark days of inactivity, between a fete and the resumption of the implacable daily round, when the weather is usually cynical, and we are paying in our tissues the fair price of excess, we see life and the world in a grey and sinister light, which we imagine to be the only true light. Take the case of the average successful man of thirty-five. What is he thinking as he lounges about on the day after Christmas?
His thoughts probably run thus: "Even if I live to a good old age, which is improbable, as many years lie behind me as before me. I have lived half my life, and perhaps more than half my life. I have realised part of my worldly ambition. I have made many good resolutions, and kept one or two of them in k more or less imperfect manner. I cannot, as a commonsense person, hope to keep a larger proportion of good resolutions in the future than I have kept in the past. I have tried to understand and sympathise with my fellow creatures, and though I have not entirely failed to do so, I have nearly failed. I am not happy and I am not content. And if, after all these years, I am neither happy nor content, what chance is there of my being happy and content in the second half of my life? The realisation of part of my worldly ambition has not made me any happier, and, therefore, it is unlikely that the realisation of the whole of my ambition will make me any happier. My strength cannot improve; it can only weaken; and my health likewise. I in my turn am coming to believe—what as a youth I rejected with disdain—namely, that happiness is what one is not, and content is what one has not. Why, then, should I go on striving after the impossible? Why should I not let things slide?"
Thus reflects the average successful man, and there is not one of us, successful or unsuccessful, ambitious or unambitious, whose reflections have not often led him to a conclusion equally dis satisfied. Why should I or anybody pretend that this is not so?
And yet, in the very moment of his discouragement and of his blackest vision of things, that man knows quite well that he will go on striving. He knows that his instinct to strive will be stronger than his genuine conviction that the desired end cannot be achieved. Positive though he may be that a worldly ambition realised will produce the same dissatisfaction as Dead Sea fruit in the mouth, he will still continue to struggle. * * * Now you cannot argue against facts, and this is a fact. It must be accepted. Conduct must be adjusted to it. The struggle being inevitable, it must be carried through as well as it can be carried through. It will not end brilliantly, but precautions can be taken against it ending disgracefully. These precautions consist in the devising of a plan of campaign, and the plan of campaign is defined by a series of resolutions: which resolutions are generally made at or immediately before the beginning of a New Year. Without these the struggle would be formless, confused, blind and even more futile than it is with them. Organised effort is bound to be less ineffective than unorganised effort.
A worldly ambition can be, frequently is, realised: but an ideal cannot be attained—if it could, it would not be an ideal. The virtue of an ideal is its unattainability. It seems, when it is first formed, just as attainable as a worldly ambition which indeed is often schemed as a means to it. After twen ty-four hours, the ideal is all but attained. After forty-eight, it is a little farther off. After a week, it has receded still further. After a month it is far away; and towards the end of a year even the keen eye of hope has almost lost sight of it; it is definitely withdrawn from the practical sphere. And then, such is the divine obstinacy of humanity, the turn of the year gives us an excuse for starting afresh, and forming a new ideal, and forgetting our shame in yet another organised effort. Such is the annual circle of the ideal, the effort, the failure and the shame. A rather pitiful history it may appear! And yet it is also rather a splendid history! For the failure and the shame are due to the splendour of our ideal and to the audacity of our faith in ourselves. It is only in com parison with our ideal that we have fallen low. We are higher, in our failure and our shame, than we should have been if we had not attempted to rise.
There are those who will say: "At any rate, we might moderate somewhat the splendour of our ideal and the audacity of our self-conceit, so that there should be a less grotesque disparity between the aim and the achievement. Surely such moderation would be more in accord with common sense! Surely it would lessen the spiritual fatigue and disappointment caused by sterile endeavour!" It would. But just try to moderate the ideal and the self-conceit! And you will find, in spite of all your sad experiences, that you cannot. If there is the stuff of a man in you, you simply cannot! The truth, is that, in the supreme things, a man does not act under the rules of earthly common sense. He transcends them, because there is a quality in him which compels him to do so. Common sense may persuade him to attempt to keep down the ideal, and self-conceit may pretend to agree. But all the time, self-conceit will be whispering: "I can go one better than that." And lo! the ideal is furtively raised again.
A man really has little scientific control over the height of his ideal and the intensity of his belief in himself. He is born with them, as he is born with a certain pulse and a certain reflex action. He can neglect the ideal, so that it almost dissolves, but he cannot change its height. He can maim his belief in himself by persistent abandon ment to folly, but he cannot lower its flame by an effort of the will, as he might lower the flame of a gas by a calculated turn of the hand. In the secret and inmost constitution of humanity it is ordained that the disparity between the aim and the achievement shall seem grotesque; it is ordained that there shall be an enormous fuss about pretty nearly nothing; it is ordained that the mountain shall bring forth a mouse. But it is also ordained that men shall go blithely on just the same, ignoring in practice the ridiculousness which they admit in theory, and drawing renewed hope and conceit from some magic, exhaustless source. And this is the whole philosophy of the New Year's resolution.