In Praise Of Life

( Originally Published 1922 )

I HAVE to thank the many loyal friends who gave me their sympathy and support during an illness that cut nearly three months out of my working calendar and suspended two issues of The Papyrus.* To have learned that there is such a stock of pure kindness in the world, is worth even the price I paid for it.

The desire of life prolongs it, say the doctors. 'Tis true, and when the wish for life gets its force from the strong motive of doing one's chosen work in the only world we surely know, then is Death drivel' back and to Life goes the victory.

Oh! Life, Life, how much better art thou than the shadowy hope of an existence beyond the grave ! I can hold thee, taste thee, drink thee, wrap myself in thee—thou art a most dear reality and not a shadow. I kneel before thee and proclaim myself more than ever thy true lover, believer and worshipper. Let me still be a joyous living pagan and I will not change with all the saints that have spurned thee and gone their pale way to Nothingness. I breathe thy warm, perfumed air as one newly escaped from the ante-chamber of Death. It is the last week of May—sweet May, I had thought never to see thee again!—and the whole world is fragrant with lilac. It is an efflorescence of life and hope and joy, Nature's largess after the dearth and desolation of winter. My soul is inundated with the golden waves of light and warmth and melody. Some-thing of the sweetness and vague longing of adolescence revives in my breast. My heart trembles with a sudden memory of old loves, a memory called up by the sunshine and lilac scents and bird music with which the glad world is running over. Youth smiles a sly challenge at me, and Love holds forth his ineffable promise. I am drunk with the rapture of May—for I live . . . I live . . . I live !

Henley the brave, who not long ago captained his soul out into the Infinite, was moved by his experiences in hospital to write some of his most striking poems. No doubt there is matter enough for a poignant sort of poetry in the House of Sickness. But literary inspiration fails a man when both his mind and body are disintegrating. I have brought nothing from my white nights in the hospital, but I left there a good deal of myself corporeally, and something, as I am admonished by a present difficulty in writing—of my admirable literary style. I think with pain and shame of the utter weakness to which I was then reduced, and I wince at the recollection of some con-cessions wrung from dismantled nature. I do not care to reflect upon the long blank hours or days, or weeks, during which I kept my bed in passive endurance, or upon one terrible night when I waited for what seemed to be the End with such courage as I could command. Ac-cording to the Christian precept, I should have seen in all this the hand of chastening and meekly accepted the portion dealt out to me. But had I yielded to this comfortable sort of spiritual cowardice, I should probably not be alive to tell the story. Many good Christians are thus soothed out of this weary life into a better world, for a mental attitude of pious resignation is the hardest condition with which the doctor has to contend and an unrivalled fattener of graveyards.

In the next room to mine was a fine young man who had undergone an operation for appendicitis. The nurses told me there was no hope for him, as he had been brought in too late—the nurses never contradict the doctors. Poor fellow, I could hear his every sigh and groan in the 'vain but heroic struggle he was making for life. Presently a stout clean-shaven man in clerical garb passed my door: it was the minister. He remained about ten minutes with the young man, who was a member of his church. When he left I watched from my window and saw him mount his bicycle and ride away. He did not return. The young man died next day. I made up my mind more decidedly that I would get better.

As a boy I used to read in my prayer book the 'supplication against the "evil of sudden death". In this is contained the very essence of the Christian idea, since death being synonymous with judgment, must needs appear terrible to the soul unprepared. Indeed, a sudden death' in the case of an irreligious person is always hailed as a judgment by people of strict piety. On the other hand, the favor of heaven is shown by the grace of a long sickness with its leisure for repentance and spiritual amendment. No picture is so edifying in a religious sense as that of the repentant sinner, over whom we are told there is more rejoicing in heaven than is called forth by the triumph of the just. Especially if the sinner have repented barely in time to be saved—that is the crucial point. If he should make his peace too soon, or if his repentance should come tardy off, it is not difficult to fancy the angels cheated of their due excitement. Such a blunderer would, I imagine, get more celestial kicks than compliments. God help us !—I fear me these death-bed repentances are the sorriest farce acted in the sight of heaven.

Yet farcical as they are, religion owes to them a great part of its dominion over the conscience of men. The Catholic faith, in particular, has invested the final repentance and absolution with a potency of appeal which few indeed are able to withstand. That is the meaning of the phrase, "Once a Catholic, al-ways a Catholic". And there is doubtless a grandeur subduing the imagination in the proud position of the Church, that no soul need be lost which has ever known her sacraments. Whatever the cold reason may make of this assumption, we may not forget how much it has contributed to the peace and consolation of humanity.

As for myself, having had two long and desperate sicknesses in the course of a half-dozen years,—having been so near the Veil which hides the Unknown that I could have touched it,—my prayer now and forever shall be: Lord, deny us not the blessing of sudden death. Even as quickly as Thou pleasest, call us hence, O Lord!

To be at home once more in mine own place, to sit under the cheerful lamp with pipe and book, to taste the small honors of domestic sovereignty, to look forward with a quiet hope to the morrow's task, to watch the happy faces of the children in whom my youth renews it-self, and to share the peace of her who has so long partnered my poor account of joy and sorrow—all this is a blessedness which I feel none the less that I do not weary a benign Providence with fulsome praise.

Many pious works have been written on the incomparable advantage of being dead,—that is, on the superior felicity of the life to come. The most eloquent and convincing of these macabre essays were composed by a set of men who had resigned nearly all that makes life dear to humanity. It is enough to say that they knew not love, the most powerful tie that attaches us to life. On this account their valuable works no longer enjoy the great popularity which they had in a simpler time. In-deed, the decline of this religious Cult of Death is one of the marks of an advancing civilization. No doubt it served a humane purpose in those dark centuries which we call the Ages of Faith, when life was far more cruel than it now is for the mass of mankind. Amid constant wars, bloodshed, oppression, famine, and their attendant evils, from which only a privileged few were exempt, what wonder that men turned eagerly to a gospel which to us seems charged with despair? So the ages of history during which Hell was most completely and perfectly realized on this earth, were also those in which faith in Heaven and the Church was universal. But with the slow growth of liberty and the partial emancipation of the human conscience during the past three centuries, there has gradually been formed a truer and better appreciation of life. The Cult of Death has lost its hold upon the masses, with the dissolution of the old terrible dogma of eternal punishment. Men are more in love with life at this day than ever in the past—with life, and love, and happiness, and freedom, all of which were more or less limited and tabooed in the blessed Ages of Faith. As Heine said, "Men will no longer be put off with promissory notes upon Heaven—they demand their share of this earth, God's beautiful garden".