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By Rev. A. Powell Davies D.D.
May 4, 1947
In one of the creation myths, it is related of Prometheus, who is
supposed to have brought life as well as fire to the earth, that in
the process of molding the animals out of clay he used up all the
available supply of water. Consequently, when he came to make man
there was nothing with which to bind the clay together and he found
it breaking apart and crumbling in his hands. Some of the gods
suggested that this was an omen that man had better be left
uncreated. Why not be satisfied with the multitude of living
creatures already in existence? But Prometheus refused to be
frustrated. He looked up into the sky for signs of rain: there was
not a cloud to be seen beneath the brazen vault of heaven. He
searched the Garden of Creation for undiscovered wells and springs:
the gods had dried them all up. Even the grass was beginning to be
parched. At last, Prometheus threw himself down on the ground and
wept, and then, while his grief was still unspent, he saw that his
tears had moistened the clay and that it held together. Swiftly, he
molded it afresh, and before the sun went down was ready to breathe
the breath of his own life into the image he had fashioned, and man,
the child of desire and sorrow, was created.
What the myth means, of course, is obvious. Yet, until very recently
it was a meaning that a large part of the modern world had
forgotten. Sadness was regarded as something alien to normal life, a
mood that was unavoidable, perhaps, in misfortune, and almost
inevitable in bereavement, but a sort of malady of the emotions to
be banished as quickly as possible. Brightness and optimism were
called for in all circumstances; more and more opportunities were
being afforded for gaiety; newer and newer ways were being invented
for getting cheered up. And, in fact, everything was so good, or
going to be so good, that there was really no excuse for gloom.
When such a brilliant publicist as William Ralph Inge, Dean of St.
Paul's in London, insisted upon taking a graver view of human
affairs, the newspapers dubbed him "the Gloomy Dean." His notoriety
was considerable, his popularity extremely low. No one wanted to
listen to what the Gloomy Dean was really saying, namely, that
optimism is too shallow a faith; that it does not fit the facts--not
all of them, not even the most important of them--and that if the
modern age is to save itself from the same fate that has overtaken
previous very confident ages, it must reckon with realities from
which, in shallowness and petulance, it turns aside and looks the
other way.
But the Gloomy Dean was only reinforcing what the Promethean myth
had tried to tell us long before. That in the composition of human
life, tears are just as natural as laughter. That the substance of
sorrow has been in us from the beginning. That you cannot have
desire without heartache, or feel the poignancy of yearning without
knowing the closeness of despair. What the myth tells us is that
this was always so. Or, as Swinburne re-tells it in his Atalanta in
Calydon,
"Before the beginning of years,
There came to the making of man,
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven;
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death."
If this, then, is the nature of man, or an inevitable part of it, of
what use is it to say of gloom, as some do, that the thing to do is
to avoid it? How can you avoid the inevitable? Or pretend to make no
room for what springs from the essential nature of your own life?
Such advice is too facile, too unperceiving; sometimes, it is
nothing but mockery.
It is true, of course, that cheerfulness comes more readily to some
people than to others. It may be true, as we are occasionally told,
that there are those who escape despondency almost altogether. But
whether this is entirely fortunate is quite a question! And one I do
not presume to answer. I merely mention in passing that very little
of importance in the world has been accomplished by people who are
consistently cheerful. I am not speaking of outward appearances,
which are often deceptive, but of inner realities. Indeed, it is
quite doubtful whether consistent cheerfulness is entirely
compatible with the full use of the mental faculties. I remember
that Pearl Buck, in one of her books, portrays a little Chinese girl
with an undeveloped mind, and the mother of the little girl,
whenever she needs to explain to a stranger that her daughter is not
normal, sensitively avoids direct reference to insanity and simply
says, "All her thoughts are happy ones." We have to recognize, I
think, that if acute melancholia can be diagnosed as psychopathic,
so can perpetual hilarity.
Even when it is some distance from needing institutional treatment,
perpetual hilarity can be disturbing; it can also be extremely
irritating. The person who finds everything just wonderful and
"smiles and whistles under all circumstances" may be quite
exhilarating for half an hour or so, but if it lasts much longer,
his victims clench their hands behind their backs and wonder whether
they can get away before they surrender to an overwhelming impulse
to choke him.
Even when such cheerfulness excites no wrath, it can be repugnant to
a normal person. The reason is, of course, that something common-sensical
within us demands a proper reckoning with realities. We are repelled
by the superficiality of this sort of cheerfulness. We want to go
away somewhere and feel as gloomy as possible--just to recover our
mental balance.
And in the present world, where there is so much of misery spread
out over the face of the earth, and so much of foreboding as we face
the future, even if gloom were not already a natural mood of human
life, coming and going as all moods come and go, it would seem
necessary to invite it, at any rate for long enough to let us feel
the full force of the circumstances by which we are surrounded. For
surely we should be lacking in emotional depth and force if we could
really understand our situation and never feel depressed.
Let us admit, then, and freely, that the notion of getting rid of
gloom by reciting to ourselves a few well chosen pollyannaisms is
both futile and absurd. Let us go on to admit that if it could
succeed, which it cannot under present conditions, such a shallow
success would be unwholesome and unworthy. Let us even go a little
deeper and acknowledge that sadness is a part of human life: that a
mature man or woman accepts it. It is not only that personal
disappointment or bereavement can cause it: the contemplation of the
world itself--the world man makes and breaks--should cause it. So
should spiritual insight into the very nature of life: its hopes and
dreams, its precariousness and fragility, its frustrations and
failures, its love and longing, its perplexities and bafflements. In
all that life is, even in its joys, there is at least the hint of
sadness. Always we hear what Wordsworth called "the still, sad music
of humanity."
"I have learned," [he says]
"To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity..."
But he does not find it merely painful. He has discovered, he goes
on to say, that what at first was dejection and despondency can
deepen into something that carries within it the pulse and power of
life itself, something that brings to the soul its own revelation of
the meaning hidden within the mystery. For,
"I have felt," [he continues, in a well-known passage]
"A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."
And since Wordsworth is by no means alone in this discovery, we can
be sure that despondency and gloom, and indeed sadness in any of its
intensities, can make us far more sensitive to ultimate meaning, can
deepen us spiritually, can bring us closer to the greatness which is
always trying to lay its touch upon us --or, in shorter, more
familiar words, can help us grow a soul.
That, it seems to me, is the first thing to know about gloom: that
it is not necessarily a misfortune or a deprivation. If you can
learn how to treat it, how to live with it when it visits you, it
can be a means of spiritual development. This will never be so if
you try to treat it superficially, or if you take fright at tragic
realities. it will never be so if you attempt to bolster up your
life with artificial gaieties. You have to accept sadness--yet, you
must never surrender to it.
That is the second thing. You must never surrender to sadness. There
are people who turn it into a permanent melancholy, so that it
becomes an emotional indulgence--something quite demoralizing.
Because they find themselves sometimes pessimistic, they insist upon
being always pessimistic. Thus they are able to sever themselves
from what needs to be done in the world. "It is all hopeless," they
say, "quite hopeless!" And because they can say it is hopeless, they
feel excused from trying to do anything about it. This is surrender.
Just as "pollyannaism" can be one form of escape--a shallow one--so
pessimism can be another--also shallow. Let us analyze it.
The pessimist convinces himself that because he has succumbed to
melancholy, he is somehow a superior sort of person. He has faced
the worst, he says, and is not deceived like other people. But he is
deceived. He deceives himself. He has not faced the worst. He has
only glanced at it--and run away in complete retreat. He has given
up. If he had faced the worst and kept on facing it, he would have
found it necessary to do something. Even in his thinking he would
have gone on with the struggle until he found convictions--the
conviction, for instance, that whatever happens, life is full of its
own great purpose--a purpose that must be served; and that this is a
reality woven into the texture of all other realities. Gloom can
never be a real excuse for moral cowardice.
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