VÆ VICTIS!

What Brennus shouted on the banks of the Allia, and the Romans made into a proverb after him, history has re-echoed ever since in deeds as well as in words. ‘Woe to the conquered!’ is traced in letters of blood on the sable lining of the golden shield, of which the legend in front, written in lines of light, is ‘Hail to the victor!’ ‘Væ victis!’ is the discordant echo of ‘Io triumphe!’ Woe to the conquered has been the experience of all who have fought either for a principle or a cause; a strip of land to add to the imperial territory, or for the integrity and freedom of the country and for dear life itself. Strike and spare not; kill all, even to the babes and sucklings, the aged men and the young women; tread under foot those who are prostrate; leave to perish by the wayside those who have fallen out from the ranks—væ victis! woe to the conquered, and death to the weak; but hail to the victor, and increase of power to the strong! So goes the world; so has it ever gone in the moral life as well as in the physical; the struggle for existence being as true of thoughts as it is of races.

We must remember the heroic past, when haply times are a little hard to ourselves, and we are bound to suffer in the comparatively mild way of modern days. We have to fight our fight, whatever it may be, as the heroes of old fought theirs, till our cause conquers, or we are convinced that we are on the wrong—not the weaker—side. But till then, we have to endure private loss that humanity may have greater gain; and to remember that conscience is better than victory, and that truth has ever been buffeted before she has been crowned.

The world has this cruel cry for others beside the pioneers and martyrs of a cause. If nothing succeeds like success, so nothing is so fatal as failure; and væ victis! is in truth the sentence recorded against those whose fortunes fail, whose card-houses tumble to pieces, and whose flapping wings of ambition prove themselves to have waxen attachments, which melt in the using and land the poor highflyer in the mud. That fatal settling-day on ’Change: that bad debt made through the bank, and added to indefinitely, on the theory of possible redemption if enough time were allowed and enough rope paid out: that terrible spell of ill-health which prevented the completion of the book, the painting of the picture, the execution of the order: that failure, that fiasco—and væ victis as the commentary!

Væ victis! to the unhappy—to those vanquished by pain and cast down by sorrow. Only a very few compassionate souls care to give their time and strength to the miserable who sit in darkness ever unlifted, and with ashes never shaken off their bowed and melancholy heads. We naturally like the light better than the dark; and perfumed pomade, beneath rosebuds and fine feathered caps, is a more pleasant thing than ashes taken out of the grate and scattered over our hair. We get tired of enduring sorrow. At first, we are keenly sympathetic; but as time goes on, we wonder why the wound does not heal. Our own sympathetic pain has passed long ago; why cannot that of their real hurt? They are always so sad! They take no pleasure in the last fashion, the newest gossip, that good story which is going the round of society, or that smart saying of the ill-natured wit, whose epigram rips the skin from the flesh of his victim as neatly as if it were a rapier. They are always so dull, these poor creatures—it is really impossible to go and see them! Væ victis! They are conquered by grief, by loss, by pain; and they must suffer, as all those who are overcome have to learn how.

Væ victis! to the outspoken who cannot back their words by that kind of substantial evidence which passes by the name of legal proof. Thus they are in the power of those against whom they sought to warn the unwary and enlighten the blind. If they cannot so back their words with legal proof, they are conquered, and have to suffer the fate of the conquered—in the law-courts this time, as a change from the battlefield; and with such punishment as belongs to the law of libel to inflict. All the same it was maybe no libel, no falsehood, but the absolute truth that they said; but all the same, too, truth which is only a moral certainty and not a substantive fact to be demonstrated by undeniable evidence, is not to be said without danger, and væ victis! to those who cannot substantiate it. By which we are taught the lesson of that silence which is golden; and, in private things, the wisdom of not interfering in the affairs of others. As the Italian proverb has it: ‘A fool knows his own affairs better than a wise man knows those of others;’ and again another: ‘He knows much who, knowing nothing, knows how to keep silent.’ A great deal of trouble is made for ourselves by this interference in the affairs of others. But it is difficult not thus to interfere, when we see all awry, things which we think a few honest words would put straight. But we must look out for signal discomfiture, unless we can hold the reins we seek to clutch, and make those with whom we have intermeddled see according to our lights and act according to our judgment. If their will is stronger than ours, it is væ victis! to us in good sooth!—with the not over-pleasant reflection, that we have pulled that pot of boiling water over ourselves, and in not letting comparative well alone, have stirred it into active ill.

Væ victis! to the unsuccessful aspirant, whether it be for honours, a pass, a post, or for love. No one really pities him. He who droops on the way and falls short in his stride is passed by, and the triumphant reach the goal amid the plaudits of the crowd. Who cares to console a failure? to reconstruct a ruined cloud-tower? to follow after a fading rainbow? Væ victis! and let the pale illusions of a dead hope lie where they have fallen! The poor fellow was rejected, was he? Well, he really ought to have been more sure of success before he made the effort! Perhaps he was led on, as you say; but even so, this does not excuse him, nor in any way affect the principle of quasi-certainty before the attempt. When you hazard a great stake, you ought at least to know how to throw the dice, and to be sure that you have counted your cards. It is no use rushing darkly into enterprises for which one has not the material; and to offer one’s self for a place, whether of love or honour, without having taken pains to measure one’s strength against those forces which oppose, is to be more rash than brave, and more foolish than energetic. To be sure, no one can have who does not try. That is true for itself. But it none the more softens the verdict of the world for him who has failed, nor deadens the echo of the cry raised against him. If we do not try, we cannot get; but woe to those who try—and fail!

Væ victis! also to the stupid, to the poor, to all born conquered by fate even before they have begun to strive with fortune—who are thrust into the battle unlearned and heavily weighted or ever the lists are set. Who pities the dunce? Who cares to realise all the days and hours of hopeless endeavour to get those facts, that task, rooted in the sluggish brain? Is it his fault, poor dunce, that the atoms are slow to move? the nervous fluid insufficient to stir? the blood too thick to run or too poor to animate? He does his best; but as a schoolboy he gets flogged, as well as over-tasked; as a man he gets distanced, and perhaps ruined, unless he has the luck of hereditary bread with butter superadded. But what is not his fault, is nevertheless accounted to him for blame; and because he is a dunce, he has recorded against him the sentence of disfavour.

What else, too, have the poor?—not the very poor, whose want of bread of their own baking forces the oven-doors of the rich—but the comparatively poor—those who have enough whereby to live, but nothing left for enjoyment—who have the necessaries, but not the comforts, nor the graces, nor the pleasures of life? No one pities them, though they suffer in their own way quite as much as those ragged brethren who go cold and hungry for want of clothing and food. These others have to offer a brave front to the world, and to make a little seem a mickle, and not enough a full measure. It is done only at the cost of the night’s sleep and the day’s peace—at the cost of this thing pinched and that pared, and the deft interlacing of two gaping ends. No one pities all this, because no one realises it; and it may be, as has been known too sorrowfully before now, that those who have almost more than they can do to live decently are blamed for parsimony because they do not live luxuriously.

Perhaps no people deserve more sympathy than those poor gentry whose means fall below the standard of their original condition, and thus fail the present needs and degrade the future position of the family. Gentlefolks born and bred, with the niceness of feeling and delicacy of taste included in that term, they are forced to abandon all the embroideries of class refinement, and to see their children grow up with manners below their own mark, and with an education of less beauty if of as substantial value. They cannot give them the ‘advantages’ which count for so much. The girls do not learn music from the best masters, and their painting lessons leave much to be desired. The boys have to associate with lads of lower breeding, who teach them rude ways and vulgar expressions, so that all the influence of home goes to undo what that of the school has done. Neither boys nor girls can learn to ride, to hunt, to shoot, like their cousins—the rich branch of this unequally developed family tree; they cannot be taken to the seaside if they fail in health; and, when they are ill, they cannot be nursed so sedulously as if mamma had nothing else to do, and a nurse with brains and experience could undertake the rest. They are heavily handicapped all through, and set to play blindfold with Fortune, who holds loaded dice and marked cards. From the first, væ victis! has been recorded against them; and unless they have exceptional power, on which we cannot always count, they are foredoomed to comparative failure, and to that painful process of winnowing whereby the conquered fall through the meshes into the abyss, and only the victors remain safe on the surface.

So it is: Væ victis all through! Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing is so fatal as failure. The law is inexorable, and tears cannot dissolve the links of brass and iron which Fate has forged. The survival of the fittest is only a form of væ victis!—the destruction of the weak, and woe to the conquered! But—and herein lies the balm to the sore—it depends greatly on ourselves whether we will be the conqueror or the conquered; whether we will make ourselves strong by endeavour, resolution, self-control, and the cultivation of our reason and common-sense, or let ourselves go to ruin by self-indulgence, weakness of will, unreasonable desires, and the gratification of tastes which we cannot rightfully indulge, and of impulses which, even if good, are unworkable and disastrous. If we resolutely determine that it shall be Io triumphe! with us, for the most part we come to our goal; and at the worst we can always mitigate our failure.