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_ This much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having lived to
be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich he must have been in
very fair harmony with his surroundings. I have heard it said
sometimes that such and such a person's life was a lie: but no
man's life can be a very bad lie; as long as it continues at all it
is at worst nine-tenths of it true.
Mr Pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but was
prosperous right up to the end. Is not this enough? Being in this
world is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it--to
observe what things do bona fide tend to long life and comfort, and
to act accordingly? All animals, except man, know that the
principal business of life is to enjoy it--and they do enjoy it as
much as man and other circumstances will allow. He has spent his
life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not
enjoy it any more than is good for us. If Mr Pontifex is to be
blamed it is for not having eaten and drunk less and thus suffered
less from his liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer.
Goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and sufficiency
of means. I speak broadly and exceptis excipiendis. So the
psalmist says, "The righteous shall not lack anything that is good."
Either this is mere poetical license, or it follows that he who
lacks anything that is good is not righteous; there is a presumption
also that he who has passed a long life without lacking anything
that is good has himself also been good enough for practical
purposes.
Mr Pontifex never lacked anything he much cared about. True, he
might have been happier than he was if he had cared about things
which he did not care for, but the gist of this lies in the "if he
had cared." We have all sinned and come short of the glory of
making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done, but in
this particular case Mr Pontifex did not care, and would not have
gained much by getting what he did not want.
There is no casting of swine's meat before men worse than that which
would flatter virtue as though her true origin were not good enough
for her, but she must have a lineage, deduced as it were by
spiritual heralds, from some stock with which she has nothing to do.
Virtue's true lineage is older and more respectable than any that
can be invented for her. She springs from man's experience
concerning his own well-being--and this, though not infallible, is
still the least fallible thing we have. A system which cannot stand
without a better foundation than this must have something so
unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal
we place it.
The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are what
bring men peace at the last. "Be virtuous," says the copy-book,
"and you will be happy." Surely if a reputed virtue fails often in
this respect it is only an insidious form of vice, and if a reputed
vice brings no very serious mischief on a man's later years it is
not so bad a vice as it is said to be. Unfortunately though we are
all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is what tends to
happiness, and vice what ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous
about details--that is to say as to whether any given course, such,
we will say, as smoking, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse.
I submit it as the result of my own poor observation, that a good
deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards
children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the
parents themselves. They may cast a gloom over their children's
lives for many years without having to suffer anything that will
hurt them. I should say, then, that it shows no great moral
obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make
their children's lives a burden to them.
Granted that Mr Pontifex's was not a very exalted character,
ordinary men are not required to have very exalted characters. It
is enough if we are of the same moral and mental stature as the
"main" or "mean" part of men--that is to say as the average.
It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die
old shall have been mean. The greatest and wisest of mankind will
be almost always found to be the meanest--the ones who have kept the
"mean" best between excess either of virtue or vice. They hardly
ever have been prosperous if they have not done this, and,
considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small feather in
a man's cap if he has been no worse than his neighbours. Homer
tells us about some one who made it his business [Greek text]--
always to excel and to stand higher than other people. What an
uncompanionable disagreeable person he must have been! Homer's
heroes generally came to a bad end, and I doubt not that this
gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later.
A very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare
virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things
that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to
be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but
more durable metal.
People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things,
neither of which had with it anything of the other. This is not so.
There is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice, and
hardly any vice, if any, which carries not with it a little dash of
virtue; virtue and vice are like life and death, or mind and matter-
-things which cannot exist without being qualified by their
opposite. The most absolute life contains death, and the corpse is
still in many respects living; so also it has been said, "If thou,
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss," which shows that
even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet admit so much
compromise with vice as shall countenance the poor abuses of the
time, if they are not too outrageous. That vice pays homage to
virtue is notorious; we call this hypocrisy; there should be a word
found for the homage which virtue not unfrequently pays, or at any
rate would be wise in paying, to vice.
I grant that some men will find happiness in having what we all feel
to be a higher moral standard than others. If they go in for this,
however, they must be content with virtue as her own reward, and not
grumble if they find lofty Quixotism an expensive luxury, whose
rewards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. They must
not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of
both worlds. Disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts which
record the growth of the Christian religion, yet a great part of
Christian teaching will remain as true as though we accepted the
details. We cannot serve God and Mammon; strait is the way and
narrow is the gate which leads to what those who live by faith hold
to be best worth having, and there is no way of saying this better
than the Bible has done. It is well there should be some who think
thus, as it is well there should be speculators in commerce, who
will often burn their fingers--but it is not well that the majority
should leave the "mean" and beaten path.
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure--tangible material
prosperity in this world--is the safest test of virtue. Progress
has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme
sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather
than to asceticism. To use a commercial metaphor, competition is so
keen, and the margin of profits has been cut down so closely that
virtue cannot afford to throw any bona fide chance away, and must
base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than on
a flattering prospectus. She will not therefore neglect--as some do
who are prudent and economical enough in other matters--the
important factor of our chance of escaping detection, or at any rate
of our dying first. A reasonable virtue will give this chance its
due value, neither more nor less.
Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty.
For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are
often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them,
will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion
concerning pleasure. When men burn their fingers through following
after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they
have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through
following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right
virtue. The devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in angel's
clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill, and
so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be
seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow
after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on the
whole much more trustworthy guide.
Returning to Mr Pontifex, over and above his having lived long and
prosperously, he left numerous offspring, to all of whom he
communicated not only his physical and mental characteristics, with
no more than the usual amount of modification, but also no small
share of characteristics which are less easily transmitted--I mean
his pecuniary characteristics. It may be said that he acquired
these by sitting still and letting money run, as it were, right up
against him, but against how many does not money run who do not take
it when it does, or who, even if they hold it for a little while,
cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it shall descend
through them to their offspring? Mr Pontifex did this. He kept
what he may be said to have made, and money is like a reputation for
ability--more easily made than kept.
Take him, then, for all in all, I am not inclined to be so severe
upon him as my father was. Judge him according to any very lofty
standard, and he is nowhere. Judge him according to a fair average
standard, and there is not much fault to be found with him. I have
said what I have said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and
shall not break my thread to repeat it. It should go without saying
in modification of the verdict which the reader may be inclined to
pass too hastily, not only upon Mr George Pontifex, but also upon
Theobald and Christina. And now I will continue my story. _
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