OF LOOKING BACKWARD
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: It is a constant source of surprise to me that men continue, at all ages but the earliest, to look back upon the past with a wistful eye, recalling, with many expressions of regret, the days that are no more. Thus, while still in the twenties, the youth begins to feel the burden of worldly cares already pressing heavily upon his shoulders and sighs when he thinks of the irresponsible school-days of his teens. At thirty, he is convinced that he has missed the best part of his youth and would fain be a youngster of twenty once more, his greatest care the sprouting down upon his upper lip. Come to forty, he is sure that he should have been most happy when thirty, over the first rawness of youth, but not yet sensible of any physical deterioration and quite unmarked by the passage of time. At fifty, he envies thelustihood of forty, and at sixty he longs for the activity and the muscular ease which he enjoyed at fifty. And so it goes on, so that we can readily imagine a patriarch of ancient days exclaiming, “Oh, if I were but two-hundred-and-twenty once more! How I should enjoy life!”
Now, to me, Mr.Idler, things do not appear in this light at all. I can not conceive that had I been Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, I should have longed to be an obscure youth in Corsica. It is easier, of course, to understand why he might, at St. Helena, regret the departed glories of St. Cloud; but for myself, I do not believe I should ever, whatever my former station might have been, wish to lay down the present for the past. I have, it is true, some hope for the future (I am now but fifty), but even if this were denied me, and I were assured that my condition ten years hence would be no more enviable than it is at present, yet I think I should not care to reassume my youthful aspect, or to take up my life where I left it long ago.
There is, in truth, no period of my past life upon which I can look back with complete complacency. I was, at all times, very well satisfied with myself, barring occasional and inevitable spasms of self-reproach. I am, to say the truth, well enough satisfied with myself as I am to-day. But experience has taught me that the time will come when I shall look back upon to-day and will not be pleased with my present self at all. At thirty I remembered the Me of twenty as a callow and conceited boy. At forty I beheld in the Me of ten years gone a lazy careless idler. At fifty I recollected the man of forty as a pompous and affected ass. Now, while the most careful scrutiny of my person and character fails to reveal to me, at this time, any serious flaw or defect, yet I doubt not that the future Me, the Me of Sixty, will have grave fault to find with the individual who is inhabiting my skin at the present moment.
“We live and learn,” says the proverb, and since we do, it is unnatural if we do not feel a sort of shame in the ignorance of our formerselves. I feel no shame for my present ignorance because I do not know wherein that ignorance consists, but be assured I shall, as soon as I have found myself out.
It is, I like to think, one of the wisest provisions of a merciful God that no man is ever permitted to see what a consummate simpleton he is, but only what a simpletonhe has been. A complete and certain revelation of a man’s folly to himself would, without a doubt, result in an immediate and lasting loss of self-respect. And to lose one’s self-respect is to lose one’s identity and become a stranger to one’s self. The inmost mind, however the outward actions of the body may seem to contradict it, still clings to the noblest principles, so that no man can be truly said to beunprincipled. He may be debauched and depraved, but he is not without principle so long as his subconscious personality has the power to arise and accuse his conscious person. Where there is no such accusation there can be no loss of self-respect, for surely a man must possess a thing before he can lose it. As some say of another, “He is hisown worst enemy,” so it may be said that every man should be his own best friend. None other is empowered so to befriend him. His life and his character must be, to a very great extent, of his own making, for every man truly lives to himself. He is the central character of the drama in which he is both actor and spectator. Others may come and go, but he alone remains throughout the play.
For all our intimacy with ourselves, we never come to know ourselves completely. We discover, day by day, ideas and opinions which we never suspected ourselves of possessing. We are wrung by emotions which take us completely by surprise. We are angered by slights which our reason tells us are beneath our notice. We are moved to compassion when we are most determined to remain firm and unmoved. We take a liking for this person whom we have decided to dislike, and we develop an inexplicable aversion for another whom we have deliberately chosen for a friend. Whence come these impulses, these orders which we can not disobey? These commands which override ourconscious desires and break down our natural wills? Where, indeed, but from that Inner Man, that Unknown Self whose power we feel but can not comprehend? Where else but from that second and stronger, if submerged, personality—the human soul? Is it not, indeed, this unanswerable argument, this inexplicable conviction of another and better Self within, joined with and yet distinct from, the ordinary self, which persuades men that mankind is immortal, no matter how ably the Brain may play the Infidel, nor how aptly the Tongue may second him?
For our outward selves, our “every-day selves,” as we might say, we know whence they are derived. We know that we are born of woman and fathered of man. We can trace to the one or the other this feature or that, this trait or the other, but there are yet to be accounted for those strange whims and fancies, those impulses and ideals which come neither from the father nor the mother, and which, in very truth,makeus ourselves, make us to be different from our sisters and our brothers,and without which all the offspring of the same parents would be as like as so many peas in a pod. And it is these things which convince us that we have within us another Ego, another Self which comes to us from some unknown place, to guard and to guide us upon the perilous path of life. We may sometimes close our ears to his counsel, but he never suffers us to go wrong unadvised. Is it to be wondered at, then, that we grow to feel for ourselves an affection which is not wholly selfish, and to take in ourselves a pride which is not wholly egotistic? I do not feel under any obligation to the man who wears my face and bears my name; he has made me ridiculous too often for that. But I do feel a duty to that otherMe, theMethat is not wholly of my own choosing. And so, I am convinced, do most men.
As I was saying, or about to say, the keenest shame we ever feel is the shame we feel for ourselves. Shame for others may be tempered with forgiveness, but it is very difficult to forgive one’s self. There is no question there of giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.There is no doubt. I feel a certain shame for the young man that I once was because I naturally feel a tenderness for him. I can forgive him much more readily than I could forgive myself as I am to-day. Yet I would not, if I could, change places with him. My taste in Selves, as in other things, has changed as I have grown older. I blush for the weak-mindedness of that youth who was the Me of twenty years ago; yet I feel, in a way, relieved from the sense of direct responsibility, for am I not, in fact, another and a different person from the man I was?
As the delightful Holmes once expressed it, that youthful self is like a son to me. A bit of a cub, but on the whole, not at all a bad fellow. He is related to me, but he is not me. And henever wasthe man that I now am. He wore my body for a time, that was all. We were never the same, for I was not born until he had ceased to be. I am no more that young man of twenty years ago than I am that other young man who interrupts me now—(No, I haven’t. Can’t you see I’m busy?)—to borrow a match to set hisugly bulldog pipe alight. A vile habit—pipe-smoking! Unsanitary and beastly annoying to those who have better sense. That young man we were speaking of—not the one who asked for the match, you know, but the one who had the impudence to pass himself off for me twenty years ago—heused to smoke a bulldog pipe. I stopped it some time ago myself. Bad for the heart, the doctor said, and—well, I’m getting on and I can see for myself the folly of it. Decidedly, I should not like to exchange my own calm judgment for his youthful carelessness and addiction to tobacco. Unless—well, say, unless for twenty minutes after dinner!
I am, Sir,Oliver Oldfellow.