clearly that the only real moral life of humanity is breathed up out of that seething and tempestuous struggle.
The passions are sure to be ever with us. Do what we will,
"They pitch their tents before us as we move,
Our hourly neighbours;"
Therefore, the only question comes to be—are we to yield to them, or are we to give them battle and resist them? And Stoicism is of opinion that we should give them battle. Her voice is all for war; because, in yielding to them, our consciousness, or the act which constitutes our peculiar attribute, and brings along with it our proper and personal existence, is obliterated or curtailed.
The Epicureans sailed upon another tack. The Stoics sought to reproduce good, by first overthrowing evil; the only method, certainly, by which such a reproduction is practicable. They sought to build the Virtues upon the suppression of the Vices, the only foundation which experience tells us is not liable to be swept away. But their opponents in philosophy went more directly to work. They aimed at the same end, the reproduction of good, without, however, adopting the same means of securing it: that is to say, without ever troubling themselves about evil at all. They sought to give birth to Love without having first laid strong bonds upon Hatred. They strove to establish Justice on her throne, without having first deposed and overthrown Injustice. They sought to call forth Charity and Generosity, without having, first of all, beaten down the hydra-heads of Selfishness. In short, they endeavoured to bring forward, in a direct manner, all the amiable qualities (as they were supposed to be) of the human heart, without having gone through the intermediate process of displacing and vanquishing their opposites through the act of consciousness. And the consequence was just what might have been expected. These amiable children of nature, so long as all things went as they wished, were angels; but, in the hour of trial, they became the worst of fiends. Long as the sun shone, their love basked beautiful beneath it, and wore smiles of eternal constancy; but when the storm arose, then Hatred, which had been overlooked by Consciousness, arose also, and the place of Love knew it no more. Justice worked well so long as every one got what he himself wanted. But no sooner were the desires of any man thwarted, than Injustice, which Consciousness had laid no restraint upon, stretched out her hand and snatched the gratification of them; while Justice (to employ Lord Bacon's[1] metaphor) went back into the wilderness, and put forth nothing but the blood-red blossoms of Revenge. Generosity and Charity, so long as they were uncrossed and put to no real sacrifice, played their parts to perfection; but so soon as any unpleasant occasion for their exercise arose, then the selfish passions, of which Consciousness had taken no note, broke loose, and Charity and Generosity were swept away by an avalanche of demons.
Such has invariably been the fate of all those Epicurean attempts to bring forward and cultivate Good as a natural growth of the human heart, instead of first of all endeavouring to realize it as the mere extirpation of evil; and hence we see the necessity of adopting the latter method of procedure. Every attempt to establish or lay hold of good by leaving evil out of our account, by avoiding it, by remaining unconscious of it, by not bringing it home to ourselves, must necessarily be a failure; and, sooner or later, a day of fearful retribution is sure to come—for the passions are real madmen, and consciousness is their only keeper; but man's born amiabilities are but painted masks, which (if consciousness has never occupied its post) are liable to be torn away from the face of his natural corruption, in any dark hour in which the passions may choose to break up from the dungeons of the heart.
The true philosopher is well aware, that the gates of paradise are closed against him for ever upon earth. He does not, therefore, expend himself in a vain endeavour to force them, or to cultivate into a false Eden the fictitious flowers of his own deceitful heart; but he seeks to compensate for this loss, and to restore to himself in
- ↑ Lord Bacon calls revenge a species of wild justice.
