10 Subjective interlude
‘The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ So says the poet. To which sentiment most people agree, although, too often, without much understanding. The cheerful agreement applies to far, faint, mythical individuals, to people beyond the common ken. For how often, on recalling something that deeply impressed me, I have been told, ‘You could not remember that. Of course you could not—you were such a child!’ As though there were a point, or divisional place fixed by years, where consciousness begins and a purely vegetable existence ends. As a matter of fact, the thoughts of early childhood are the longest thoughts of all. They persist through life, not, perhaps, as distinct images or ideas, but as sharp, unalterable reactions, such as sympathies and phobias. Vague, unrelated, often distorted and but dimly understood, these child thoughts are, none the less, full of exquisite wonder, wing-swift surprise, and indelible pain. They are indeed the stuff from which the world evolves, the mysterious matrix of which the emotional life is made.
In my own case scarcely any situation in human relationships has escaped a tempering shadow from some such long-gone experience. Not that I reasoned about it, weighed and measured, and drew conclusions. It was all quite unconscious as are all our so-called spontaneous reactions. That there is no such thing as an unconditioned response to the calls of life I sincerely believe. I think that, just as the tonal quality of a violin depends upon the delicate process of weathering, so the sensitivity of the human mind depends, to a remarkable degree, upon the stress and strain of childhood thoughts and emotions.
It follows that events, in themselves, are of no importance except as they incite and react upon consciousness. In its final analysis, life, for each of us, is nothing more than a series of sense impressions. And these impressions, depending as they do upon the normal or abnormal functioning of the physical organs of sense and the sympathetic nervous system, necessarily reveal unto each of us a world thus limited to our individual comprehension and mental reserves. Consequently, none of us can ever actually see ‘eye to eye,’ as the foolish saying goes, nor sense the same shade of beauty and blemish in any given experience. And yet, because we live for no better reason than to reveal our particular slant on the riddle of existence, we must proclaim truth as we see it. But not, I think, without a qualifying humility which readily admits that, so far as one’s individual conception goes, truth is a purely relative term. The same applies to all human judgements. To argue that anything in human experience is of itself, aside from its reactions upon the individual, either great or small, is a confession of insensitive stupidity.
For example, to the man of action physical hardships hold little terror, yet a contest of words with a narrow bigot may put him to rout—which proves nothing, except that each is adept in his own obsession. Furthermore, bound as we are within the individual consciousness, it is ridiculous to expect more than comparative understanding from even our dearest associates. For instance, a practical soul, however generous, would never instinctively understand why any one should weep over the simple act of tossing away a sheaf of withered flowers. Practical natures are not prone to vagrant dreams, nor even dimly aware of the bright immortality of illusive ideas. It is not in such a one to understand how the dreaming heart cries out against the swift eclipse of beauty, and mourns with a mist of tears the golden leaves of a thousand yesterdays. Such facile, foolish pain is very real to me—real as the purple shadows that veil in mystery the sailing horn of the young moon, and the little winds that run before the night on softly whispering feet. Real as are all the innermost senses which life has stirred to passion by its flaming sword.
