the delicate and
intricate one of living _together: a propos_ of which your body
corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile _you_ and _I_ are handicapped.
The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the
alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present--_a
horrid strain_! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
gravity, gravity--chiefest curse of Eden's sin!--is hostile. When
indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
Icarian "organa" in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
not Goethe who assures us that "further reacheth no man, make he what
stretching he will"? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
Paris is _far_ from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not _quite_ right--as,
indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I _know_
whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know--as clearly, as
precisely, as a man can kno