Act 5 — GEORGE MEREDITH ON THE SOURCE OF DESTINY.

GEORGE MEREDITH ON THE SOURCE OF DESTINY.

If, as has so often been said, literature is an expression of life, surely we may study literature to discover the laws of life. Not all our writers, but all our masters, have given us records from which we may learn what has been discerned and accepted concerning life by the race.

The scientific study of our day has led men to consider genius from the modern point of view. Is genius a natural product? If so, whence comes it, and what are its laws? These are among the most interesting questions of the present time. Formerly, men contented themselves with calling the literary faculty a "gift," the result of "inspiration." Of late we have been told that it is a natural race impulse which finds expression in some individual. Personally, we believe genius to be the heated, pregnant condition of a great mind under the influence of a great enthusiasm. However our definitions of genius may differ, on one point we all agree. We are all sure that genius is true to life, that genius teaches us the truth.

In its formed philosophical theories it may err, but not in its perceptions of life. Shelley may teach atheistic views in 'Queen Mab,' and he may err, for intellectual belief is a matter of opinion. Nevertheless Shelley's inspired interpretation of life can but be accepted as real. George Meredith may teach in his 'Lord Ormond and his Aminta' doctrines of free love, resulting from an attempt to separate what can not be separated in our human lives,--the physical and the spiritual loves; and in doing this he may err. Nevertheless, in his inspired representations of life and character, coming not from thought alone but from his whole nature, Meredith cannot err.

Those of us who read thoughtlessly, without formed theory, accept literature as real. Have you never, when asked: "Did you ever know of a case of love at first sight?" answered carelessly: "Oh, yes! There's Romeo and Juliet, you know?" Or have you never instanced, as the most persuasive oration you ever heard, Mark Antony's speech in 'Julius Cæsar?'

Thinkers who claim a natural mental origin for the literary gift must believe in its reality as a matter of course. Those who speak reverently of its "inspiration" claim a spirit of truth, not of error, for its parent. Even those who enjoy comparisons of the states of genius and insanity, ranging from Shakespeare, with his words: "The fool, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact" to the masterly modern treatment of John Fiske, agree that the sharp division line of truth and error separates the two. They confess that while the insane mind may accept hallucinations, the mind of genius deals only with the truth. The results of both are imaginative; only those of insanity are imaginary.

All thinkers, then, accept the masterpieces of literature as among life's real phenomena. Whether Meredith's novels hold this high place is at present a matter of opinion. For men do not know Meredith very well. A knowledge of his position on this question of Destiny will help us to learn whether or not he ranks among the elect.

In our great literature there has always appeared a close sequence between wisdom and success, righteousness and happiness, and, on the other hand, between the choice of moral evil and suffering. This sequence has been not merely expressed in words, but built into the very structure of the plot through the workings of the imagination kindled by genius. The law of this succession, and its relationship with other laws, philosophers have always been seeking. It is this search that has led men into the mazy discussions of freedom and fatalism. For in this law lies the crucial point of the question of human destiny.

'Beowulf,' our first epic, tells us not only much of the manner of life of our rude Saxon ancestors, but also much of their thought. The note of fatalism in its chord of life is no weak one. "A man must bear his fate," the hero says when about to go into a dangerous combat. Yet even in 'Beowulf' we find the contrasting element, the character choice appearing.

As a child boldly states a problem as though it were a solution, Beowulf naïvely says: "Fate always aids the undoomed man, if his courage holds out." This expression side by side of the two elements of the question has never been surpassed, and is, in its way, matchless.

Have we learned much more to-day? We cannot fail to recognize the duality of the truth, but have we been able yet to join the two sides into one, to discover the unity that surely lies behind the seeming contrast?

Each side of the question has been largely developed. Some, in a narrow spirit, have echoed merely Beowulf's, "Fate always aids the undoomed man"; while others, often as narrowly, have answered, "A man succeeds, if his courage holds out." Ever in our greatest literature the two elements have appeared side by side. The mystery has always been recognized.

That even Shakespeare is reverent before fate, yet believes in the influence of character on a man's life can easily be seen from words like Helena's in 'All's Well that Ends Well':--

'Macbeth,' with its successive steps of unhappiness following one critical evil choice is sufficient proof of Shakespear's belief in the determining power of character. 'King Lear,' with its sad result of folly shows his belief in the influence of the critical foolish decision. In the uncrowned king's conversation with his fool, occur these words:

Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?

Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

In Robert Browning literature has brought even up to the present time the old mystery, the ever continuing struggle between fatalism and freedom. But to him, as to most thinkers of his day, fate has become the instrument of a God, a divine Providence rules the world, while man, too, has his little realm of choice.

At the present time this discussion is carried to a greater extent than ever before. The one side finds its expression in our modern idealistic philosophy, the other in our modern sceptical science. Idealistic philosophy, since Kant, has been trying to lay the responsibility for all life upon the free moral choice. It has been seeking to prove that the spiritual is the source of life.

Modern science, on the other hand, with its keen, wide-opened eyes, has tried to lay all the necessary sequence of law, forgetting at times that law is but the explanation of the phenomena. Science sometimes refuses to consider such phenomena as require a new point of view, beyond the physical and mental,--a moral point of view. By this refusal to recognize the spiritual part of man, science attempts to avoid a second mystery. The mystery of the union of the physical and mental realms it has been forced, long since, to accept. It would shun the moral realms because that, too, entails its mystery of connection.

Once accept physical life, and science is, in so far, free from impassable gulfs. Once accept mental life and that realm also becomes capable of study. Let the free moral nature once be accepted, and again we shall have reached firm footing. But to cross between these realms by law, by reason, is impossible; for life, any kind of life, is its own only explanation.

While the problem of freedom becomes simple for one who, like Meredith, will take this view, there are many who will not or cannot do so, and the very impossibility of the question from reason's point of view makes the path a very labyrinth for them. We all try to solve the question, and different personalities arrive at different answers; but all are partial. They vary from the logical, but dead outcome of Swinburne: "There is no bad nor good," to the struggling faith of Omar Khayyam:

At such a time as this of ours it is especially helpful to study a writer like George Meredith, who far from ignoring the many sides of the problem, yet clings firmly to his faith in character. With no doubtful accent, he tells us that Character is the Source of Destiny.

As any great writer of the day must do, Meredith accepts much in the arguments of the fatalists. He does not refuse to see that nature and circumstances are strong to mould life. He recognizes the great power of environment and the absolute power, within its realm, of heredity. Like Beowulf, like Shakespeare, like Browning, he is reverent before human destiny. Yet in spite of all this, he accepts the moral with its necessary result of freedom. He declares that, although the laws of necessity rule up to the crisis of the moral choice, that very choice sets all the laws of intellect and body working according to itself.

All the stronger for his acceptance of life's necessity becomes his belief in life's freedom. All the stronger for his concessions becomes his final dictum. The more intricate the machine, the greater its master's mind. The narrower the realm of choice, the greater power must that choice have, to move life as it does.

To show that the same peculiar mixture of belief in fatalism and in the determining power of character on life exists in Meredith's writings as in Beowulf and in Shakespeare, let me quote a few words from 'Evan Harrington':

"Most youths, like Pope's women, have no character at all, and indeed a character that does not wait for circumstances to shape it, is of small worth in the race that must be run."

Again he says:

"When we have cast off the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our claims on made chance: when the wild particles of this universe consent to march as they are directed, it is given them to see if they see at all that some plan is working out: that the heavens, icy as they are to the pangs of our blood, have been throughout speaking to our souls; and, according to the strength there existing, we learn to comprehend them."

That Meredith, although very reverent before human destiny, is not, on the other hand, one of those who lay the responsibility for their own lives on "the stars," or "fate," or "Providence," may be shown by a study of the characters into whose mouths he puts such sentiments.

In 'Rhoda Fleming' who is it but Algernon, "the fool," who says:

"I'm under some doom. I see it now. Nobody cares for me. I don't know what happiness is. I was born under a bad star. My fate's written."

It is of Algernon, likewise, that the author says:

"Behind the figures he calculated that, in all probability, Rhoda would visit her sister this night. 'I can't stop that,' he said: and hearing a clock strike, 'nor that.' The reflection inspired him with fatalistic views."

In 'The Tragic Comedians,' who is it but Clotilde, "the craven," who lays the successive steps which lead to the tragedy in her life, now to fate, now to other people's power or lack of insight, now to Providence? She reaps, as Meredith plainly shows us, simply what she sows.

In 'Sandra Belloni,' it is Mr. Barrett, that sentimentalist of the better order, of which class the author says: "We will discriminate more closely here than to call them fools," who lets his whole life be crushed with the melancholy thought that he is under the influence of some baneful star. His death, which he lets chance bring or keep away, is a fitting conclusion to his story. He shuts two pistols up together in the same case overnight, knowing that one of them is loaded, the other not. In the morning he takes out one, prepared to fire it upon himself, in case his beloved does not keep tryst. She does not come, he fires, the pistol happens to be loaded, and so comes death. It shows that the "star" of which he thought was not a real star burning clear in the high heavens. It was rather but a will-o'-the-wisp, born of the marshy exhalations of his own morbid brain. Meredith reverences the real star. He kindly ridicules the will-o'-the-wisp.

But there is still another class of fatalists in Meredith's novels. He recognizes also the fatalism of youth. Such is that of the young Wilfrid in 'Sandra Belloni,' concerning whom the author informs us that we "shall see him grow." Meredith is too great a thinker not to see that this tendency toward fatalism does not belong merely to the "fool," the "craven," and the "sentimentalist," but that it is a tendency of our youth. We are all weak when we are growing, he assures us. Is not ours preëminently a growing age?

But we must not linger too long on the negative side of Meredith's belief. We have seen that he is willing to recognize that there is a wonderful, mysterious power governing human destiny. We have seen, also, that he does not side in the least with those who lay the responsibility for their own lives on fate. Let us seek for his positive message.

In the 'Adventures of Harry Richmond' he says:

"If a man's fate were as a forbidden fruit, detached from him, and in front of him, he might hesitate fortunately before plucking it; but, as most of us are aware, the vital half of it lies in the seed paths he has traversed."

This is certainly a very definite statement of a strong belief in a man's choice of his own destiny. Again, in 'Modern Love' we find the following:

The main issue between freedom and fatalism lies in just this question: Is a man's life determined by what he is or by what he does? Does his nature, received through inheritance, moulded by circumstance, determine his acts and so his life? Or does his moral choice determine these?

Extreme fatalists declare that the former is true. Moralists, idealists, believers in freedom, support the latter view.

Now Meredith leaves us no doubt as to his position on the point. Again and again we see his characters choosing their lives. And their choices rest on no inherited nature, but on character. Thus our author declares, by his plots, as in plain words, that "Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."

As we have said, a writer's thought of life can be best understood from his plots. He builds life, consciously or unconsciously, as he believes that nature builds it. Does he let the righteous perish and the evil man prosper in the end? Then he either does not believe in this law of ours, or in its present successful working. Perhaps, like Victor Hugo, he teaches a higher law, that of self-sacrifice. Perhaps, like some little modern writers, he teaches a lower law of the temporary success, at times, of hypocrisy and deceit. Whatever he believes in and likes to think of, his structure will disclose.

Now one very marked thing about Meredith's structure is the agreement of the two crises, that of character and that of circumstances. When any one of his characters chooses for good or evil, for wisdom or folly, at that very time, and by that very choice, he decides his future happiness and success, or unhappiness and failure. Therein lies the decision of the question whether that particular novel shall be a tragedy or a comedy.

When Dahlia Fleming chooses evil, she chooses unhappiness. No kind Providence intervenes to save her from her harvest. How many of our little writers of to-day would have caused her marriage with Edward to take place in the end! Is not Meredith's conclusion far more true to life?

When Diana of the Cross-Ways resists Percy's temptings and is led by her hatred of his evil to betray his secret, she chooses for her own happiness in the end. The storms through which she goes to reach it are the natural result of her impulsive, unbalanced mind.

Stronger still is the teaching in 'The Tragic Comedians.' When Clotilde chooses the craven's part to play, she chooses also the craven's reward.

It is in his scientific insight into moral life that Meredith's growth beyond Beowulf, Shakespeare, and even Browning appears. We of the nineteenth century would be sorry to think that we had not one master who goes even deeper into our modern life than these. We believe that, as men of the later twentieth century look back upon our day, they will call George Meredith our greatest literary exponent.

Beowulf asserts the general truth that Circumstance and Character determine Destiny.

Shakespeare has not gone very much farther in the philosophy of life. He teaches that character determines character, and that circumstance determines circumstance; and that, in some way, circumstance obeys character.

Browning would advance a step and teach us, as his age taught the world, that the dependence of the external upon the spiritual comes about through the agency of a personal God.

But Meredith takes up the cry of our scientific age, and says: "The god of this world is in the machine, not out of it."

This is no irreverent teaching, for Meredith is not irreverent. It is simply the search for primary causes. It is the result of the same tendency that leads us to be dissatisfied with calling typhoid fever a "dispensation of Providence," and to lay it to bad drains. Like evolution in the physical world, this theory does not tend to remove God, but to explain more fully his agency and methods. It is no new theory. But the manner of its teaching is as new as this latter nineteenth century of ours.

If one were to compare Meredith with Shakespeare on this subject, one would naturally coordinate Macbeth and Rhoda Fleming, Diana of the Cross-Ways and King Lear.

'Rhoda Fleming' is, like 'Macbeth,' a tale with a moral purpose. The dependence of fate on the moral choice is its chief thought. The book gains force, as all these novels do, from its striking characterizations. We see Dahlia, the fair-haired one, whose great failing is weakness,--the fault of a negative character. And we see plainly the long process of pain to which she thereby subjects herself in the course of her purification.

Rhoda, her sister has, on the other hand, the defects of the positive character. She is head-strong, over-proud. It is from these characteristics that she suffers or leads others to suffer. "The Fates that mould us, always work from the main-spring."

In her relations with Anthony Hope, Rhoda takes the part of the tempter. The interview between the two shows such wonderful insight into character that from this passage alone Meredith might be ranked as great. Rhoda discovers that she has sold her sister in marriage to a brute. In her head-strong desire to buy her off from him, she goes to her uncle to beg for a large sum of money. Anthony, although a poor man in reality, has always delighted in deceiving his brother and his nieces on that point. Rhoda finds him struggling with the greatest temptation of his life. He has carried home money belonging to the bank of which he is a trusted employee. His love of money, his former deceit, make him very weak before Rhoda. So he falls. She is allowed to take with her the money she wants. As the reader looks back over the story, he sees that the money will prove useless for her ends, and that his fall will ruin her uncle's life. Meredith here shows himself a master of tragedy.

The life of the strong, impulsive, young Robert is not so dependent upon the crises of temptation. For he knows himself and lives with a constant purpose to conquer himself. His purpose is stronger than his passions. In respect to his obedience to Socrates's favorite maxim, he is a man rare even in our self-conscious age. What shall we say of Edward, "villain and hero in one"? Like Dahlia he loses his life's happiness through his besetting sin. Several times a courageous word said that ought to be said, or a brave deed done that should have been done might have saved him. And each time he proves himself a coward, until it is too late. Like the children of Israel he would not enter the promised land for fear of the inhabitants thereof. Like them too, he atoned by spending his forty years in the wilderness, and there laying down his life.

We must not neglect the "fascinating Peggy Lovell,"--a coquette whose charm even a woman can feel. Avarice and love of pleasure are her besetting sins. And avarice leads her to her fate. She has chosen to sow her wild oats and to accrue her debts. These she pays, as we all must in one way or another, with herself. Her way is to marry the man who can pay them rather than the man she loves.

One and all, major and minor characters, they come to the crises of their destinies. One after another chooses according to his character his life. This is Meredith's teaching.

But our author is not always sounding the very depths of life. He is no preacher, but a painter of human nature. The power of mind has a large place in his books. "Drink of faith in the brains a full draught," he tells us; and again:--"To read with a soul in the mirror of mind Is man's chief lesson."

'Diana of the Cross-Ways' teaches the partial failure, the temporary unhappiness, that result from lack of mental balance. It is the story of a charming, brilliant, but impulsive woman who makes many mistakes and who suffers from them. Diana is capable of loving one unworthy of her, and for such lack of wisdom she pays dearly. Yet she holds firmly and purely to the right and so wins happiness in the end. She is foolish sometimes, but she is not a fool. Hence her story is not a tragedy.

This novelist-philosopher has taught us, then, that folly tends to bring failure, but that righteousness is stronger than folly. He is not content to stop in his teachings even here. In 'The Tragic Comedians' he goes still further, and deals with the interrelations of the moral and intellectual. For character rules intellect, as intellect reacts upon character.

'The Tragic Comedians' begins with the birth of a love. With Clotilde, daughter of a highly respectable, but very conventional citizen, Alvan, a Jew and demagogue, a man of widespread and somewhat notorious reputation, falls in love. Clotilde is a beautiful, bright woman; interesting, but cowardly. Like all Meredith's heroes and heroines, she has her besetting sin.

To this sudden, overpowering new love Clotilde yields her heart, but will not yield her actions. She is afraid. While Alvan would go at once to her parents to ask for her hand, Clotilde, seeing only too plainly how little hope there is of obtaining their consent, prefers to dally with matters, and insists on his postponing the interview. Alvan's straightforward nature cannot understand such half-way measures. He leaves her unsought for a time, and begins to fade out of Clotilde's mind. Suddenly, when in the mountains with a friend, she hears that Alvan is near. She wants him then, and goes to seek him. Again he misunderstands her. This time he asks her to run away with him, but she refuses, seeming not so much shocked as afraid. She answers, not in a womanly, straightforward way, but with an evasion. Then she consents to let him speak to her father and mother. She addresses them first on the subject, but is met with a torrent of angry words. The poor thing cannot stand that. In her weakness she makes her next great mistake, and runs away to Alvan, beseeching him to marry her secretly. The woman who would not listen to his request for this very thing but a day or two before now begs for it. She finds that it is too late. Her lover, in his pride, has determined to meet her parents on their own ground. He will win her, he now declares, by conventional methods. So he takes her to a friend's home. It is there that the chief crisis of the book takes place, a crisis which is one of the most interesting I know in literature. It is a moral crisis.

Clotilde has come to it through various steps of weakness. Alvan has reached it through pride and its reaction from his former shady life to a desire for conventionalism. A strong man who had before obeyed conventional rules might there have thrown them aside. To Alvan, on account of their long disuse, they seemed more precious than they need.

So Alvan meets the crisis overconfident in his strength. Clotilde meets it afraid, cowering in her weakness. Of her state Meredith says:

"Men and women alike, who renounce their own individuality by cowering thus abjectly under some other before the storm, are in reality abjuring their idea of that other, and offering themselves up to the genius of Power in whatsoever direction it may chance to be manifested, in whatsoever person. We no sooner shut our eyes than we consent to be prey, we lose the soul of election."

Alvan handed Clotilde back to her parents. She meekly did what he said. She was hurt. She could not understand his action. Had she but stood up against this mistake, he might have had pity on her even yet. Or, had he not changed his own rigid determination, the action might have prevented that worst result, the weakening of her belief in him. There is nothing like cowardice to destroy one's faith in others. There is nothing like courageous action to clear away those mists of doubt. Clotilde's "craven" will began to demoralize her mind.

But her chance is not over yet. She may still cling to Alvan. Doubtless he will seek her, he has not given her up. Ah, but circumstances were too strong. For the craven they are always too strong. By a short imprisonment, by family storms and prayers, Clotilde is reduced to external subjection. The disorder of her mind increases.

While submitting to her father's command, while writing words of dismissal to Alvan, and even accepting the attentions of a former suitor, she still says in her heart of hearts that she will always be loyal to him. How peculiar seems the twisting, "serpentine" nature! She still waits for Alvan to save her from the chains she daily forges for herself. Meanwhile Alvan does his best. He uses all means,-- conventional and otherwise. He finally forces permission from Clotilde's father to hold a free interview with Clotilde. She is to tell him openly and freely whether she will marry him or not. So he hopes to free her of coercion.

So far as circumstances are concerned, there is now nothing to prevent a happy ending; but from moral causes it is impossible.

The chains she has forged for herself are too strong. Her fancies have become diseased by long straining to a cowardly deceit. She think's Alvan's messengers deceitful too.

So she refuses. She throws away thereby her last chance. And yet--can we believe it?--she still hopes. Alvan has done his best and has failed. His friends have tried to help him. Circumstance has given away before them. And she has thrown away their help--yet she still hopes. Alvan sends a challenge to her father. Prince Marko accepts it, and now her shuddering trust is in Providence. Marko will be killed. Now Alvan shall have her hand. But "Providence" does not save her. Alvan is killed, and Prince Marko returns Clotilde cannot understand it. She is stunned, but recovers sufficiently to marry Prince Marko.

"Not she, it was the situation they had created which was guilty," she had thought.

"The craven with desires expecting to be blest is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of events to the outer world."

Of Alvan's death, Meredith says some very characteristic words. Let me quote once again:

"He perished of his weakness, but it was a strong man that fell."

"He was 'a tragic comedian,' one of the lividly ludicious, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs."

This, then, is George Meredith's message. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the power to choose between the two has entered into our souls. We are under the rule of a great overhanging law. Destiny's wheels we cannot stop, but through our capacity for moral choice, our hands lie on the button that moves the whole machine in its relation to our own individual lives.

This is a great lesson. How strong in its likeness to the teachings of our great masters of the past! How needful in its new scientific form to-day! How suggestive as to the universe! Does it not follow that as our lives are planned so is this universe planned in which we live! Does it not follow that the spiritual is the central life upon which all else depends? It is the teaching of the childhood of the race, broadened through knowledge of life's passion, humbled and heightened through sight of God's hand, strengthened and widened through the opening of our eyes in modern science to a fuller and clearer knowledge, not only of the machinery of the universe, but also of its motive power.

Emily G. Hooker.