The faith of Stevenson, like that of a great
number of very sane men, was founded on what is called a paradox—the paradox
that existence was splendid because it was, to all outward appearance,
desperate. Paradox, so far from being a modern and fanciful matter, is
inherent in all the great hypotheses of humanity. The Athanasian Creed, for
example, the supreme testimony of Catholic Christianity, sparkles with paradox
like a modern society comedy. Thus, in the same manner, scientific philosophy
tells us that finite space is unthinkable and infinite space is unthinkable.
Thus the most influential modern metaphysician, Hegel, declares without
hesitation, when the last rag of theology is abandoned, and the last point of
philosophy passed, that existence is the same as non-existence.
Thus the brilliant author of "Lady
Windermere's Fan," in the electric glare of modernity, finds that life is
much too important to be taken seriously. Thus Tertullian, in the first ages of
faith, said "Credo quia impossibile."
We must not, therefore, be immediately repelled
by this paradoxical character of Stevenson's optimism, or imagine for a moment
that it was merely a part of that artistic foppery or "fuddling
hedonism" with which he has been ridiculously credited. His optimism
was one which, so far from dwelling upon those flowers and sunbeams which form
the stock-in-trade of conventional optimism, took a peculiar pleasure in the
contemplation of skulls, and cudgels, and gallows.
It is one thing to be the kind of optimist who
can divert his mind from personal suffering by dreaming of the face of an
angel, and quite another thing to be the kind of optimist who can divert it by
dreaming of the foul fat face of Long John Silver. And this faith of his had a
very definite and a very original philosophical purport. Other men have
justified existence because it was a harmony.
He justified it because it was a battle, because
it was an inspiring and melodious discord. He appealed to a certain set of
facts which lie far deeper than any logic—the great paradoxes of the soul. For
the singular fact is that the spirit of man is in reality depressed by all the
things which, logically speaking, should encourage it, and encouraged by all
the things which, logically speaking, should depress it.
Nothing, for example, can be conceived more
really dispiriting than that rationalistic explanation of pain which conceives
it as a thing laid by Providence upon the worst people. Nothing, on the other
hand, can be conceived as more exalting and reassuring than that great mystical
doctrine which teaches that pain is a thing laid by Providence upon the best.
We can accept the agony of heroes, while we revolt against the agony of
culprits. We can all endure to regard pain when it is mysterious; our
deepest nature protests against it the moment that it is rational.
This doctrine that the best man suffers most is,
of course, the supreme doctrine of Christianity; millions have found not merely
an elevating but a soothing story in the undeserved sufferings of Christ; had
the sufferings been deserved we should all have been pessimists.
Stevenson's great ethical and philosophical value
lies in the fact that he realised this great paradox that life becomes more
fascinating the darker it grows, that life is worth living only so far as it is
difficult to live. The more steadfastly and gloomily men clung to their
sinister visions of duty, the more, in his eyes, they swelled the chorus of the
praise of things. He was an optimist because to him everything was heroic, and
nothing more heroic than the pessimist.
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