This long, philosophical novel is considered by many Maugham’s masterpiece, including by one of my high school English teachers, who assigned it to me and my class in our senior year. I think I was too dim to appreciate its depth at that tender age. Like it must have been for its author,
Of Human Bondage can be a revelatory experience for those of middle age, and a cryptic puzzle for those without the required life experience.
Philip Carey is the protagonist of the story, which spans from his birth to his early middle age, and he is clearly a doppelganger for Maugham himself. The first several hundred pages are about his rise out of his obscure and blinkered upbringing (orphaned as a very small boy and sent to live with an older uncle, a vicar in the countryside outside of London), and his struggle to piece together his own understanding of the world and his own philosophy for making his way in it.
Here are two extended passages that will give you a flavor of this early part of the novel.
The Journey of the Atheist
As a young man, first emerging from his uncle’s shadow, Philip attends an international medical school in Germany, where he is exposed to many new ideas. Two early influencers on his thinking are classmates named Hayward and Weeks.
It occurred neither to Hayward nor to Weeks that the conversations which helped them pass an idle evening were being turned over afterwards in Philip’s active brain. It had never struck him before that religion was a matter upon which discussion was possible. To him it meant the Church of England, and not to believe in its tenets was a sign of wilfulness which could not fail of punishment here or hereafter.
Remember that Philip was raised in a religious and somewhat cold environment. He has had no outlet for whatever doubts it is normal for a growing intellect to feel.
There was some doubt in his mind about the chastisement of unbelievers. It was possible that a merciful judge, reserving the flames of hell for the heathen -- Mahommedans, Buddhists, and the rest -- would spare Dissenters and Roman Catholics (though at the cost of how much humiliation when they were made to realize their error!), and it was also possible that He would be pitiful to those who had had no chance of learning the truth -- this was reasonable enough, though such were the activities of the Missionary Society there could not be many in this condition -- but if the chance had been theirs and they had neglected it (in which category were obviously Roman Catholics and Dissenters), the punishment was sure and merited. It was clear that the miscreant was in a parlous state. Perhaps Philip had not been taught it in so many words, but certainly the impression had been given him that only members of the Church of England had any real hope of eternal happiness.
But now he is out in the world, meeting people of different faiths and upbringings, and he is experiencing some cognitive dissonance.
One of the things that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity. Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the American’s desire to help him: once when a cold kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and unbelieving.
This, frequently, is the first substantial crack in an inherited religious view of the world: that those who don’t follow your religion are also good people. The second can come quickly after that: the understanding that religion is an inherited framework, not a reasoned conclusion.
Also Philip had been given to understand that people adhered to other faiths only from obstinacy or self-interest: in their hearts they knew they were false; they deliberately sought to deceive others. Now, for the sake of his German he had been accustomed on Sunday mornings to attend the Lutheran service, but when Hayward arrived he began instead to go with him to Mass. He noticed that, whereas the protestant church was nearly empty and the congregation had a listless air, the Jesuit on the other hand was crowded and the worshippers seemed to pray with all their hearts. They had not the look of hypocrites. He was surprised at the contrast; for he knew of course that the Lutherans, whose faith was closer to that of the Church of England, on that account were nearer to the truth than the Roman Catholics. Most of the men -- it was largely a masculine congregation -- were South Germans; and he could not help saying to himself that if he had been born in South Germany he would certainly have been a Roman Catholic. He might just as well have been born in a Roman Catholic country as in England; and in England as well in a Wesleyan, Baptist, or Methodist family as in one that fortunately belonged to the church by law established. He was a little breathless at the danger he had run. Philip was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with him twice each day. His name was Sung. He was always smiling, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man’s faith was, there did not seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the Church of England.
Philip, more puzzled than he had ever been in his life, sounded Weeks. He had to be careful, for he was very sensitive to ridicule; and the acidulous humour with which the American treated the Church of England disconcerted him. Weeks only puzzled him more. He made Philip acknowledge that those South Germans whom he saw in the Jesuit church were every bit as firmly convinced of the truth of Roman Catholicism as he was of that of the Church of England, and from that he led him to admit that the Mahommedan and the Buddhist were convinced also of the truth of their respective religions. It looked as though knowing that you were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of undermining the boy’s faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had described his own views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting discussion in the newspapers.
‘But why should you be right and all those fellows like St Anselm and St Augustine be wrong?’
‘You mean that they were clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?’ asked Weeks.
‘Yes,’ answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question seemed impertinent.
‘St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned around it.’
‘I don’t know what that proves.’
‘Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible.’
‘Then how d’you know that we have the truth now?’
‘I don’t.’
Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said:
‘I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Then how can you believe anything at all?’
‘I don’t know.’
And now comes the idea of relative truth, the sense that what we know goes only as deep as our ability to perceive it. ‘I don’t know’ is the secure haven of the unbeliever; the frightening precipice of the faithful. Be careful, Philip. The footing here is loose.
Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward’s religion.
‘Men have always formed gods in their own image,’ said Weeks. ‘He believes in the picturesque.’
Philip paused for a little while, then he said:
‘I don’t see why one should believe in God at all.’
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized that he had ceased to do so. It took his breath away like a plunge into cold water. He looked at Weeks with startled eyes. Suddenly he felt afraid. He left Weeks as quickly as he could. He wanted to be alone. It was the most startling experience that he had ever had. He tried to think it all out; it was very exciting, since his whole life seemed concerned (he thought his decision on this matter must profoundly affect its course) and a mistake might lead to eternal damnation; but the more he reflected the more convinced he was; and though during the next few weeks he read books, aids to scepticism, with eager interest it was only to confirm him in what he felt instinctively.
It is often like this. The words themselves -- spoken aloud for the first time -- give the idea its power, its essential understanding swamping the indoctrinated fears and trepidations of the unbeliever.
The fact was that he had ceased to believe not for this reason or the other, but because he had not the religious temperament. Faith had been forced upon him from the outside. It was a matter of environment and example. A new environment and a new example gave him the opportunity to find himself. He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it seemed to make life a more thrilling adventure; and in a little while the stick had been thrown aside, the cloak which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable burden of which he had been eased. The religious exercises which for so many years had been forced upon him were part and parcel of religion to him. He thought of the collects and epistles which he had been made to learn by heart, and the long services in the Cathedral through which he had sat when every limb itched with desire for movement; and he remembered those walks at night through muddy roads to the parish church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that bleak building; he sat with his feet like ice, his fingers numb and heavy, and all around him the sickly smell of pomatum. Oh, he had been so bored! His heart leaped when he saw he was free from all that.
He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was unduly pleased with himself. With youth’s lack of sympathy for an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks and Hayward because they were content with the vague emotion which they called God and would not take the further step which to himself seemed so obvious. One day he went alone up a certain hill so that he might see a view which, he knew not why, filled him always with wild exhilaration. It was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and then the sky seemed to glow with a more splendid light: it was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller vehemence into the remaining days of fair weather. He looked down upon the plain, a-quiver with the sun, stretching vastly before him: in the distance were the roofs of Mannheim and ever so far away the dimness of Worms. Here and there a more piercing glitter was the Rhine. The tremendous spaciousness of it was glowing with rich gold. Philip, as he stood there, his heart beating with sheer joy, thought how the tempter had stood with Jesus on a high mountain and shown him the kingdoms of the earth. To Philip, intoxicated with the beauty of the scene, it seemed that it was the whole world which was spread before him, and he was eager to step down and enjoy it. He was free from degrading fears and free from prejudice. He could do his way without the intolerable dread of hell-fire. Suddenly he realized that he had lost also that burden of responsibility which made every action of his life a matter of urgent consequence. He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
Yes. It can be exhilarating. But after that first heady rush, life often goes back pretty much to what it was before.
Drunk with pride in his intelligence and in his fearlessness, Philip entered deliberately upon a new life. But his loss of faith made less difference in his behaviour than he expected. Though he had thrown on one side the Christian dogmas it never occurred to him to criticize the Christian ethics; he accepted the Chirstian virtues, and indeed thought it fine to practise them for their own sake, without a thought of reward or punishment. There was small occasion for heroism in the Frau Professor’s house, but he was a little more exactly truthful than he had been, and he forced himself to be more than commonly attentive to the dull, elderly ladies who sometimes engaged him in conversation. The gentle oath, the violent adjective, which are typical of our language and which he had cultivated before as a sign of manliness, he now elaborately eschewed.
And one is not always as free as one might think. Belief or non-belief, it seems; neither one absolves the agent from his dark and inscrutable fate.
Having settled the whole matter to his satisfaction he sought to put it out of his mind, but that was morely easily said than done; and he could not prevent the regrets nor stifle the misgivings which sometimes tormented him. He was so young and had so few friends that immortality had no particular attractions for him, and he was able without trouble to give up belief in it; but there was one thing which made him wretched; he told himself that he was unreasonable, he tried to laugh himself out of such pathos; but the tears really came to his eyes when he thought that he would never see again the beautiful mother whose love for him had grown more precious as the years since her death passed on. And sometimes, as though the influence of innumerable ancestors, God-fearing and devout, were working in him unconsciously, there seized him a panic fear that perhaps after all it was all true, and there was, up there behind the blue sky, a jealous God who would punish in everlasting flames the atheist. At these times his reason could offer him no help, he imagined the anguish of a physical torment which would last endlessly, he felt quite sick with fear and burst into a violent sweat. At last he would say to himself desperately:
‘After all, it’s not my fault. I can’t force myself to believe. If there is a God after all and He punishes me because I honestly don’t believe in Him I can’t help.’
This is the journey of the atheist, from start to finish, in Maugham’s marvelous prose. It is one of the many treasures of introspective purity that exists in this remarkable novel.
The Inevitable Selfishness of Humanity
A second extended passage that helps illustrate the philosophical nature of the novel occurs after Philip moves to Paris in order to study art. In Paris he will meet many characters that represent philosophical archetypes for his consideration and possible use. One of these is a nihilistic poet named Cronshaw.
‘But pray tell me [,’ Cronshaw said, ‘] what is the meaning of life?’
‘I say [,’ Philip replied, ‘] that’s rather a difficult question. Won’t you give the answer yourself?’
‘No, because it’s worthless unless you yourself discover it. But what do you suppose you are in the world for?’
Philip had never asked himself, and he thought for a moment before replying:
‘Oh, I don’t know: I suppose to do one’s duty, and make the best possible use of one’s faculties, and avoid hurting other people.’
‘In short, to do unto others as you would they should do unto you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Christianity.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Philip indignantly. ‘It has nothing to do with Christianity. It’s just abstract morality.’
‘But there’s no such thing as abstract morality.’
‘In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you left your purse behind when you leave here and I picked it up, why do you imagine that I should return it to you? It’s not the fear of the police.’
‘It’s the dread of hell if you sin and the hope of Heaven if you are virtuous.’
‘But I believe in neither.’
‘That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out. If you keep His laws I don’t think He can care a packet of pins whether you believe in him or not.’
One of the things I enjoy about Maugham is the way he is able to weave together plot and theme in a way that avoids heavy-handedness. And here, in
Of Human Bondage, I realize that he is doing the very thing with philosophy. The plot, the progress of Philip Carey through the various stages of his life, is one that clearly lends itself to such a philosophical theme, but still Maugham is able to create something extraordinary out of this simple premise.
‘But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return it to me,’ said Philip.
‘Not from motives of abstract morality, but only from fear of the police.’
‘It’s a thousand to one that the police would never find out.’
‘My ancestors have lived in a civilized state so long that the fear of the police has eaten into my bones. The daughter of my concierge would not hesitate for a moment. You answer that she belongs to the criminal classes; not at all, she is merely devoid of vulgar prejudice.’
‘But then that does away with honour and virtue and goodness and decency and everything,’ said Philip.
‘Have you ever committed a sin?’
‘I don’t know, I suppose so,’ answered Philip.
‘You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have never committed a sin.’
Cronshaw in his shabby great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his hat well down on his head, with his red fat face and his little gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic; but Philip was too much in earnest to laugh.
‘Have you never done anything you regret.’
‘How can I regret when what I did was inevitable?” asked Cronshaw in return.
‘But that’s fatalism.’
‘The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure.’
‘My brain reels,’ said Philip.
Perhaps you feel similar to Philip. One’s brain often reels when it wrestles with challenging philosophical concepts. Like all good nihilists, Cronshaw has some well-traveled advice.
‘Have some whisky,’ returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. ‘There’s nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.’
Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded:
‘You’re not a bad fellow, but you won’t drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad…’ Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, “I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no significance for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.’
‘But there are one or two other people in the world,’ objected Philip.
‘I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion (that is Mrs Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice; I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment not shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-going. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.’
This is a real primer for Philip: the contention that might makes right, that what ‘is’ is what ‘ought’ to be. It will challenge him, as it does most of us. How he confronts it here will set the example for much of the rest of his story.
‘But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once.’
‘I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience.’
‘It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,’ said Philip.
‘But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.’
‘No, no, no!’ cried Philip.
Cronshaw chuckled.
‘You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know what they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whisky and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.’
This is a kind of out if Philip is able to see it this way. For what does it matter than a man does charity for his own pleasure if it means that the charity is done? Would Philip rather live in a world where good things were only done when man went against the things that give him pleasure? To whose benefit would such a universe inure? He’ll try to defend that view next.
‘But have you never known people do things they didn’t want to instead of things they did?’
‘No. You put your question foolishly. What you mean is that people accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure. The objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it. It is a law of creation. If it were possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race would have long since become extinct.’
‘But if all that is true,’ cried Philip, ‘what is the use of anything? If you take away duty and goodness and beauty, why are we brought into the world?’
Another childish question, no doubt, from Cronshaw’s point of view. And his way of responding to it will come to have substantial meaning for Philip later in the novel.
‘Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer,’ smiled Cronshaw.
He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered. They were Levantines, itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It was Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. They were clad in European, shabby clothes, their thin great-coats were threadbare, but each wore a tarboosh. Their faces were grey with cold. One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of eighteen, with a face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only. They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.
‘Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet,’ said Cronshaw impressively.
The elder advanced with a cringing smile, like a mongrel used to blows. WIth a sidelong glance at the door and a quick surreptitious movement he showed a pornographic picture.
‘Are you Masr-ed-Deen, the merchant of Alexandria, or is it from far Bagdad that you bring your goods, O, my uncle; and yonder one-eyed youth, do I see in him one of the three kings of whom Scheherazade told stories to her lord?’
The pedlar’s smile grew more ingratiating, though he understood no word of what Cronshaw said, and like a conjurer he produced a sandal-wood box.
‘Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms,’ quoth Cronshaw. ‘For I would point a moral and adorn a tale.’
The Levantine unfolded a tablecloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous and grotesque.
‘Thirty-five francs,’ he said.
‘O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those colours were never made in the vasts of Bokhara.’
‘Twenty-five francs,’ smiled the pedlar obsequiously.
‘Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham, the place of my birth.’
‘Fifteen francs,’ cringed the bearded man.
‘Get thee gone, fellow,’ said Cronshaw. ‘May wild asses defile the grave of thy maternal grandmother.’
Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.
‘Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you.’
‘You are cryptic,’ said Philip.
‘I am drunk,’ answered Cronshaw.
This is fun -- at least it is for me. Like Philip, I have spent many a youthful hour with figures like Cronshaw, teasing apart the reality that exists from the one I dimly perceive. And, as mentioned above, Cronshaw’s riddle of the Persian carpet will nag at Philip through much of the novel that is to come.
Art Above All
Philip is in Paris in order to become a painter. And in that environment he is thrown together with yet another group of people. Not philosophers -- at least not consciously so -- but artists. And they will teach him many things that the philosophers couldn’t.
Philip, puzzled, looked at the picture he was painting: the mind behind that broad brow was trivial; and the flashing, passionate eyes saw nothing in life but the obvious. Philip was not satisfied with his portrait, and at the end of a sitting he nearly always scraped out what he had done. It was all very well to aim at the intention of the soul: who could tell what that was when people seemed a mass of contradictions? He liked Miguel, and it distressed him to realize that his magnificent struggle was futile: he had everything to make a good writer but talent. Philip looked at his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were wasting your time? It was clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meant nothing. Philip thought of Fanny Price; she had a vehement belief in her talent; her strength of will was extraordinary.
Miguel and Fanny Price -- an author and a fellow painter -- both with an almost delusional blindness to their own lack of talent; and each, like Philip, trying to make their way in a world of fashion and extremity. In the wake of their journeys, Philip questions not just his own talent, but his own commitment that the path he believed was his to walk.
And then he hears, from a fellow art student named Clutton, of yet another artist.
‘D’you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw him the other day here. He’s just off to Tahiti. He was broke to the world. He was a brasseur d’affaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call it in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn’t got any money and did the next best thing to starving.’
This is, of course, Charles Strickland, the protagonist of Maughan’s other masterpiece,
The Moon and Sixpence, and Philip has the same question about him as everyone else.
‘And what about his wife and family?’ asked Philip.
‘Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account.’
‘It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do.’
It is. Clearly. But Clutton understands why it can be necessary.
‘Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother -- well, it shows they’re excellent sons, but it’s no excuse for bad work. They’re only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There’s a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn’t it?’
‘But is your friend a good painter?’ asked Philip.
‘No, not yet, he paints just like Pissaro. He hasn’t found himself, but he’s got a sense of colour and a sense of decoration. But that isn’t the question. It’s the feeling, and that he’s got. He’s behaved like a perfect cad to his wife and children, he’s always behaving like a perfect cad; the way he treats the people who’ve helped him -- and sometimes he’s been saved from starvation merely by the kindness of his friends -- is simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist.’
Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice everything, comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for the sake of getting on to canvas with paint the emotion which the world gave him. It was magnificent, and yet his courage failed him.
And this, ultimately, is the difference between Charles Strickland and Philip Carey. Art requires all. Anything less means, no matter how accomplished, that one is a tradesman, not an artist. Because Art is not the paint on the canvas. Art is in the putting of the paint on the canvas.
The Failure of Philosophy
So early on Philip talks about philosophy -- with Hayward, with Weeks, with Cronshaw. But later he begins to live philosophy. Or at least he tries to, aggressively searching for a philosophy with a practical application and utility to life as it is lived. In this quest he is bitterly disappointed.
He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before. He tried to think when it had first come to him. He did not know. He only remembered that each time he had gone into the shop, after the first two or three times, it had been with a little feeling in the heart that was pain; and he remembered that when she spoke to him he felt curiously breathless. When she left him it was wretchedness, and when she came to him again it was despair.
This is shortly after Philip meets Mildred Rogers, the woman who will hold him in the bondage aptly described in this short passage. It is, essentially, desire -- desire for something unattainable and, in the case of Mildred, desire grafted onto a thing cold and inscrutable.
The fact remained that he was helpless. He felt just as he had felt sometimes in the hands of a bigger boy at school. He had struggled against the superior strength till his own strength was gone, and he was rendered quite powerless -- he remembered the peculiar languor he had felt in his limbs, almost as though he were paralyzed -- so that he could not help himself at all. He might have been dead. He felt just that same weakness now. He loved the woman so that he knew he had never loved before. He did not mind her faults of person or of character, he thought he loved them too: at all events they meant nothing to him. It did not seem himself that was concerned; he felt that he had been seized by some strange force that moved him against his will, contrary to his interests; and because he had a passion for freedom he hated the chains which bound him. He laughed at himself when he thought how often he had longed to experience the overwhelming passion. He cursed himself because he had given way to it.
And worse, none of his previous philosophy served him any purpose in this predicament.
One thing that struck him was how little under those circumstances it mattered what one thought; the system of personal philosophy, which had given him great satisfaction to devise, had not served him. He was puzzled by this.
Philosophy wilts in the face of desire. As Philip will come to learn, against the raging need, personal philosophy doesn’t stand a chance.
The Delightful Habit of Reading
‘When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there.’
Before starting this blog, I spent a lot of my mental energy on another blog which I named after a particularly compelling phrase from
Moby-Dick. My motivation in doing so is remarkably similar to Philip’s concept here of a flower opening, petal by petal, as the bits and pieces of meaning found in books comes into a reader’s consciousness.
It is one of the things that makes Philip endearing, one of the things that makes his plight ours.
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
Maugham will reinforce this theme and dynamic throughout the novel -- how Philip’s seduction by books is the cause of both his joy and his despair. First there is joy:
One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme. … Philip began to read Murger’s fascinating, ill-written, absurd masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced with joy at that picture of starvation which is so good-humoured, of squalor which is so picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos which is so moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They wander through the grey streets of the Latin Quarter, finding refuge now in one attic, now in another, in their quaint costumes of Louis Philippe, with their tears and their smiles, happy-go-lucky and reckless. Who can resist them? It is only when you return to the book with a sounder judgement that you find how gross their pleasures were, how vulgar their minds; and you feel the utter worthlessness, as artists and as human beings, of that gay procession. Philip was enraptured.
And then there is despair:
He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.
But in this regard, Philip is somewhat unique. His friend Hayward, for example, has an entirely different reaction to and use for books.
But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant interest in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant nothing to him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he treated them as he might have pieces of china in an auction-room, handling them with pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing them in his mind; and then, putting them back into their case, thought of no more.
In this comparison, we perhaps see the essential difference that makes Philip susceptible to the kind of bondage that gives the novel its title. As Philip searches for a philosophy that will provide the explanations he needs, he will use -- with failure after the failure -- the measure of efficacy to determine its worth.
He had long come to the conclusion that nothing amused him more than metaphysics, but he was not so sure of their efficacy in the affairs of life. The neat little system which he had formed as the result of his meditations at Blackstable had not been of conspicuous use during his infatuation for Mildred. He could not be positive that reason was much help in the conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself. He remembered very vividly the violence of the emotion which has possessed him and his inability, as if were tied down to the ground with ropes, to react against it. He read many wise things in books, but he could only judge from his own experience (he did not know whether he was different from other people); he did not calculate the pros and cons of an action, the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm which might result from the omission; but his whole being was urged on irresistibly. He did not act with a part of himself but altogether. The power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all that reason did was to point out the methods of obtaining what his whole soul was striving for.
Hayward is not so troubled. For him, the different books of philosophy were only shiny baubles to hang on the tree of his own experience. They may mean something, and one of them may be right, but none of that meant as much as the mental thrill of contemplating them.
The Angry Determinist
What this is all driving towards -- of course -- is determinism; the philosophical position that we are not agents acting freely, but machines acting according to our programs. The character Philip Carey will come to embrace this philosophy, but interestingly, so will the author Somerset Maugham who, in staging the drama that consumes much of the novel, will set it on such a deterministic course that the reader would have to be obtuse to miss it.
There is a revolving passel of characters who feel love for each other, but only in a one-way chain, and never for the person who feels it for them. Nora Nesbitt loves Philip Carey. Philip Carey loves Mildred Rogers. Mildred Rogers loves Harry Griffiths. Such a tangle means certain things will happen and certain things won’t -- and as each character careens towards their fate they seem the only one oblivious to their fate.
Here’s one scene in which that painful collision seems more apparent than in others.
‘Philip, [Mildred said, ‘]I’m afraid I shan’t be able to go away on Saturday. The doctor says I oughtn’t to.’
He knew this was not true, but he answered:
‘When will you be able to come away?’
She glanced at him, saw that his face was white and rigid, and looked nervously away. She was at that moment a little afraid of him.
She should be. At this point Philip has stayed with her and helped her support herself and another man’s baby, and she is about to secretly steal away with Philip’s friend Griffiths -- and Philip knows it. He is, in the subtext of the novel, the angry determinist while Mildred remains the deluded free agent.
‘I may as well tell you and have done with it, I can’t come away with you at all.’
‘I thought you were driving at that. It’s too late to change your mind now. I’ve got the tickets and everything.’
‘You said you didn’t wish me to go unless I wanted it too, and I don’t.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to have any more tricks played with me. You must come.’
‘I like you very much, Philip, as a friend. But I can’t bear to think of anything else. I don’t like you that way. I couldn’t, Philip.’
‘You were quite willing to a week ago.’
“It was different then.’
‘You hadn’t met Griffiths?’
‘You said yourself I couldn’t help it if I’m in love with him.’
This is a remarkable scene. Read on and see how Maugham slowly makes his characters aware -- perhaps for the first time -- that they are not free agents, but slaves in bondage.
Her face was set into a sulky look, and she kept her eyes fixed on her plate. Philip was white with rage. He would have liked to hit her in the face with his clenched fist, and in fancy he saw how she would look with a black eye. There were two lads of eighteen dining at a table near them, and now and then they looked at Mildred; he wondered if they envied him dining with a pretty girl; perhaps they were wishing they stood in his shoes. It was Mildred who broke the silence.
‘What’s the good of our going away together? I’d be thinking of him all the time. It wouldn’t be much fun for you.’
‘That’s my business,’ he answered.
She thought over all his reply indicated, and she reddened.
‘But that’s just beastly.’
‘What of it?’
‘I thought you were a gentleman in every sense of the word.’
‘You were mistaken.’
His reply entertained him, and he laughed as he said it.
‘For God’s sake don’t laugh,’ she cried. ‘I can’t come away with you, Philip. I’m awfully sorry. I know I haven’t behaved well to you, but one can’t force themselves.’
‘Have you forgotten that when you were in trouble I did everything for you? I planked out the money to keep you till your baby was born, I paid for your doctor and everything, I paid for you to go to Brighton, and I’m paying for the keep of your baby, I’m paying for your clothes, I’m paying for every stitch you’ve got on now.’
‘If you was a gentleman you wouldn’t throw what you’ve done for me in my face.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, shut up. What d’you suppose I care if I’m a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn’t waste my time with a vulgar slut like you. I don’t care a damn if you like me or not. I’m sick of being made a blasted fool of. You’re jolly well coming to Paris with me on Saturday or you can take the consequences.’
Her cheeks were red with anger, and when she answered her voice had the hard commonness which she concealed generally by a genteel enunciation.
‘I never liked you, not from the beginning, but you forced yourself on me. I always hated it when you kissed me. I wouldn’t let you touch me now not if I was starving.’
Philip tried to swallow the food on his plate, but the muscles of his throat refused to act. He gulped down something to drink and lit a cigarette. He was trembling in every part. He did not speak. He waited for her to move, but she sat in silence, staring at the white tablecloth. If they had been alone he would have flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately; he fancied the throwing back of her long white throat as he pressed upon her mouth with his lips. They passed an hour without speaking, and at last Philip thought the waiter began to stare at them curiously. He called for the bill.
‘Shall we go?’ he said then, in an even tone.
She did not reply, but gathered together her bag and her gloves. She put on her coat.
‘When are you seeing Griffiths again?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she answered indifferently.
‘You’d better talk it over with him.’
She opened her bag mechanically and saw a piece of paper in it. She took it out.
‘Here’s the bill for this dress,’ she said hesitatingly.
‘What of it?’
‘I promised I’d give her the money tomorrow.’
‘Did you?’
‘Does that mean you won’t pay for it after having told me I could get it?’
‘It does.’
‘I’ll ask Harry,’ she said, flushing quickly.
‘He’ll be glad to help you. He owes me seven pounds at the moment, and he pawned his microscope last week, because he was so broke.’
‘You needn’t think you can frighten me by that. I’m quite capable of earning my own living.’
‘It’s the best thing you can do. I don’t propose to give you a farthing more.’
She thought of her rent due on Saturday and the baby’s keep, but did not say anything. They left the restaurant, and in the street Philip asked her:
‘Shall I call a cab for you? I’m going to take a little stroll.’
‘I haven’t got any money. I had to pay a bill this afternoon.’
‘It won’t hurt you to walk. If you want to see me tomorrow I shall be in about tea-time.’
He took off his hat and sauntered away. He looked round in a moment and saw that she was standing helplessly where he had left her, looking at the traffic. He went back and with a laugh pressed a coin into her hand.
‘Here’s two bob for you to get home with.’
Before she could speak he hurried away.
It starts full of emotion, but it slowly drains away. Eventually, Philip and Mildred are left only with their awareness of how their uncontrollable actions have them in bondage -- both to those actions and to each other, a self-devouring cycle with no other way forward.
Ungovernable Desire
This, I think, is the most common theme of Maugham’s novel -- the determinism that rules us and one agent’s desperate and struggle to come to some kind of terms with it.
He did not know what it was that passed from a man to a woman, from a woman to a man, and made one of them a slave: it was convenient to call it the sexual instinct; but if it was no more than that, he did not understand why it should occasion so vehement an attraction to one person rather than another. It was irresistible: the mind could not battle with it; friendship, gratitude, interest, had no power beside it. Because he had not attracted Mildred sexually, nothing that he did had any effect upon her. The idea revolted him; it made human nature beastly; and he felt suddenly that the hearts of men were full of dark places. Because Mildred was indifferent to him he had thought her sexless; her anaemic appearance and thin lips, the body with its narrow hips and flat chest, the languor of her manner, carried out his supposition; and yet she was capable of sudden passions which made her willing to risk everything to gratify them. He had never understood her adventure with Emil Miller: it had seemed so unlike her, and she had never been able to explain it; but now that he had seen her with Griffiths he knew that just the same thing had happened then: she had been carried off her feet by an ungovernable desire. He tried to think out what those two men had which so strangely attracted her. They both had a vulgar facetiousness which tickled her simple sense of humour, and a certain coarseness of nature; but what took her perhaps was the blatant sexuality which was their most marked characteristic. She had a genteel refinement which shuddered at the facts of life, she looked upon the bodily functions as indecent, she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she always chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the brutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white shoulders, and she shuddered with voluptuous pain.
He did not know. He did not understand.
It was irresistible. The mind could not battle with it. [He] had no power beside it. An ungovernable desire.
Slaves. Whips. Shuddered with voluptuous pain.
These are words and phrases not chosen at random. They build and support Maugham’s overall theme: the uselessness of the mind’s tender philosophy in the face of the universe’s brutal determinism.
He considered with some irony the philosophy which he had developed for himself, for it had not been of much use to him in the conjecture he had passed through; and he wondered whether thought really helped a man in any of the critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he was swayed by some power alien to and yet within himself, which urged him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and Francesca ceaselessly on. He thought of what he was going to do and, when the time came to act, he was powerless in the grasp of instincts, emotions, he knew not what. He acted as though he were a machine driven by two forces of his environment and his personality; his reason was someone looking on, observing the facts but powerless to interfere: it was like those gods of Epicurus who saw the doings of men from their empyrean heights, and had no might to alter one smallest particle of what occurred.
In this state, Philip will initially come to hate the human creatures that surround him -- and, of course, hating himself more in the projection.
It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolflike; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate. Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity. But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as though everlasting darkness were beneath their feet. Their silence was vaguely alarming. It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died in their throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all, the anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic. Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity which filled him.
But he will come around, seeing the journey that every abandoned soul needs to make in the weary world to be both out of their control and strangely noble.
Neither Tragedy Nor Comedy
And as so often occurs to those who seriously examine the world, a penetrating atheism comes quickly on the heels of the mind’s surrender to determinism. For Philip Carey, it coincides with his return to medicine late in the novel. After seeing hundreds of patients in one of London’s busy clinics, he makes these observations.
But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy. There was no describing it. It was manifold and curious; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children, and of men for women; lust trailed itself through the rooms with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent, helpless wives and wretched children; drink seized men and women and cost its inevitable price; death sighed in these rooms; and the beginning of life, filling some poor girl with terror and shame, was diagnosed there. There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.
And if that is life, what is death? Philip cogitates on that subject in the wake of his friend Cronshaw’s demise -- while he sits vigil in the house with Cronshaw’s body.
That thing in the adjoining room, which had been a man and now was nothing, frightened him. The silence seemed alive, as if some mysterious movement were taking place within it; the presence of death weighed upon these rooms, unearthly and terrifying: Philip felt a sudden horror for what had once been his friend. He tried to force himself to read, but presently pushed away his book in despair. What troubled him was the absolute futility of the life which had just ended. It did not matter if Cronshaw was alive or dead. It would have been just as well if he had never lived. Philip thought of Cronshaw young; and it needed an effort of the imagination to picture him slender, with a springing step, and with hair on his head, buoyant and hopeful. Philip’s rule of life, to follow one’s instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying’s sake.
Simply an end. Death, simply an end to a meaningless and unfocused life. That, it seems, is the fate none of us can escape.
The Riddle of the Persian Rug
In the end, Philip will find some measure of acceptance of this painful reality -- learning the lesson few do: that if one wants meaning in his life, it is up to him to make it.
The following scene takes place in an art museum.
And it came to him that the gaping sightseers and the fat strangers with their guide-books, and all those mean, common people who thronged the shop, with their trivial desires and vulgar cares, were mortal and must die. They too loved and must part from those they loved, the son from his mother, the wife from her husband; and perhaps it was more tragic because their lives were ugly and sordid, and they knew nothing that gave beauty to the world. There was one stone which was very beautiful, a bas-relief of two young men holding each other’s hand; and the reticence of line, the simplicity, made one like to think that the sculptor here had been touched with a genuine emotion. It was an exquisite memorial to that than which the world offers but one thing more precious, to a friendship; and as Philip looked at it, he felt the tears come to his eyes. He thought of Hayward and his eager admiration for him when first they met, and how disillusion had come and then indifference, till nothing held them together but habit and old memories. It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intinmate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary. Your life proceeded and you did not even miss him. Philip thought of those early days in Heidelberg when Hayward, capable of great things, had been full of enthusiasm for the future, and how, little by little, achieving nothing, he had resigned himself to failure. Now he was dead. His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything. It was just the same now as if he had never lived.
Philip asked himself desperately what was the use of living at all. It all seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and forgotten, his book of poems sold in remainder by second-hand booksellers; his life seemed to have served nothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to write an article in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:
‘What is the use of it?’
The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment. Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What did it all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he had entered upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, his friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he had come! Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.
This is ground we have already tread. But wait, what was that thing that Cronshaw had once said?
Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had given him, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon the meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled: now that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever have escaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet’s history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and grey, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had not time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderable creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip’s eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.
‘Oh life,’ he cried in his heart, ‘oh life, where is thy sting?’
And the rug? Cronshaw’s riddle of the Persian rug?
For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with all the force of mathematical demonstration that life had no meaning, brought with it another idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the Persian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely something he did for his own pleasure. Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and though it might be no more than an illusion that he had the power of selection, though it might be no more than a fantastic legerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so to him it was. In the vast warp of life (a river arising from no spring and flowing endlessly to no sea), with the background to his fancies that there was no meaning and that nothing was important, a man might get a personal satisfaction in selecting the various strands that worked out the pattern. There was one pattern, the most obvious, perfect, and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew to manhood, married, produced children, toiled for his bread, and died; but there were others, intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did not enter and in which success was not attempted; and in them might be discovered a more troubling grace. Some lives, and Hayward’s was among them, the blind indifference of chance cut off while the design was still imperfect; and then the solace was comfortable that it did not matter; other lives, such as Cronshaw’s, offered a pattern which was difficult to follow: the point of view had to be shifted and old standards had to be altered before one could understand that such a life was its own justification. Philip thought that in throwing over the desire for happiness he was casting aside the last of his illusions. His life had seemed horrible when it was measured by its happiness, but now he seemed to gather strength as he realized that it might be measured by something else. Happiness mattered as little as pain. They came in, both of them, as all the other details of his life came in, to the elaboration of the design. He seemed for an instant to stand above the accidents of his existence, and he felt that they could not affect him again as they had done before. Whatever happened to him now would be more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern, and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
Philip was happy.
And that, I think, is the philosophical lesson of this very philosophical novel. The purpose of life is to live it. That and nothing more.
The Helpless Instruments of Blind Chance
Philip was at his uncle’s bedside as the elderly man died.
Philip gave him his hand and he clung to it as to life, for comfort in his extremity. Perhaps he had never really loved anyone in all his days, but now he turned instinctively to a human being. His hand was wet and cold. It grasped Philip’s with feeble, despairing energy. The old man was fighting with the fear of death. And Philip thought that all must go through that. Oh, how monstrous it was, and they could believe in a God that allowed His creatures to suffer such a cruel torture! He had never cared for his uncle, and for two years he had longed every day for his death; but now he could not overcome the compassion that filled his heart. What a price it was to pay for being other than the beasts!
What a price, indeed.
Philip has come a long way in the novel -- from the lost and abandoned orphan, raised to believe that bondage to desire, when directed as a moral society dictated, is the highest ideal, to the philosophical atheist with compassion for every creature trudging their way through they own dim and misunderstood journey. In a closing moment of reflection, Philip himself comes to understand that his revelation may never have come to him had it not been for the adversities of his youth. In his opening line here, he is thinking about his club-foot, and with these thoughts, I will close my treatment of the novel.
He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. The ridicule and the contempt which had so often been heaped upon him had turned his mind inward and called forth those flowers which he felt would never lose their fragrance. Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a holy compassion for them all. They were the helpless instruments of blind chance.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
