Beauty Culture (Browning)/Chapter 9

"Joy is one of the greatest panaceas in life . . . a more positive means of prolonging life than all the vital elixirs in the world . . . Laughter is the most salutary of all the bodily movements; for it agitates both the soul and the body at the same time, promotes digestion, circulation, and perspiration, and enlivens the vital power in every organ."—Hufeland.

The Science of Happiness an absurd notion? Not at all, I assure you. There are undoubtedly certain fixed principles by following which we may escape from what I will call chronic unhappiness. On the other hand, these same principles tend to produce that disposition known as "happy-hearted"; consequently, the study of these principles ought to be sufficient to constitute a science, ​especially when we consider the enormous importance of the subject, and the immense influence that it has upon the welfare of nations and individuals. What are these principles? They are so obvious that even he who runs may read, for they are simply the laws of health; mental, moral, and physical. A sound mind in a sound body is the great secret of personal happiness. It enables even those who are constitutionally fragile to fight the battle of life triumphantly. The keynote to the whole theme lies not in trying to do away with all the troubles and trials incidental to our progress through this world, but in knowing how to surmount them, how to defy them, how to be happy in spite of them. Let us begin by examining some of the causes that produce unhappiness:

We need only glance round us to see how few are really happy. One is steeped in misery for this; another is careworn for that; and others are languishing for yet other causes, but on looking more closely, how often do we find that supreme selfishness is at the bottom of all this unhappiness. How few ever realise that we were intended for happiness, that "To enjoy is to obey," and that it is therefore part of our duty to God, to man, and to ourselves, to be happy-hearted! One great difficulty lies in this fact; another is to be found in the fact that it is almost impossible to make people believe that in the great majority of cases happiness lies in our own hand if we will only grasp it. The art of smiling is an art that some people seem quite unable to acquire, because they will not try to do so. They shake their heads and murmur dolefully: "No, no; you do not understand my troubles and worries; it is the wearer alone who knows exactly how and where his shoe pinches him."

True; but if there were no troubles to be sur​mounted, there would be no need for a science of happiness. Some folk fancy that there is a certain sort of æsthetic merit in permitting themselves to be made the martyrs of circumstance; but whilst contemplating their own martyrdom complacently, it seems never to occur to them that they are themselves martyrising all those around them.

Others, again, fancy that if they could only gratify every desire that arises they would be enabled to live in a lasting condition of supreme bliss.

But, how woefully they are mistaken only the spoilt child of fortune can attest! As a matter of fact, "the mere accessories of life" have very little to do with happiness, so long as we are not called upon to endure privations that are physically injurious.

It is the Mark Tapley spirit of cheeriness, the capacity to make the best of things, which is the corner-stone of the whole edifice, and we may all possess this if we take the trouble to cultivate it. Some few lucky mortals are born with it, but their number is limited. Most of us have to acquire it. ​But how? Let us analyse it and find out its chief elements. Apparently, it consists largely in nerve-force.

If I were asked to write out a common-sense prescription for happiness, it would read something like the following, I fancy:

Any woman (or man) following out this prescription may cast physic to the dogs, and defy any number of worlds, or the people in them, to render her more than transiently unhappy, her recuperative powers rendering this an impossibility.

Permit me to put you through a little catechism.

What is the physiology of "worry"? ​Nerves in a state of semi-starvation.

How do you account for the increase of pessimism?

By the increase of liver troubles.

What is the origin of drunkenness and sexual excesses?

They usually have their origin in diseases or derangements of the reproductive system; but sometimes are a result of brain troubles, either hereditary or acquired.

What is the anatomy of laziness?

A deficiency of vital force and muscular activity. How do you account for lying, thieving, cheating, suicide, murder?

These are all the outcome of abnormal and perverted brain power.

What is the moral effect of dyspepsia?

Bad temper, irritability, discontent, restlessness.

Name some of the symptoms of a debilitated nervous system.

Fear, cowardice, hysteria, and vices of various descriptions.

Can you account for the spitefulness and small-mindedness of many women?

​Yes; because the majority suffer from an impaired circulation and some form of dyspepsia; often, too, from constipation.

We might devote pages to this kind of thing, proving that every moral and mental act of our lives is greatly influenced by the physical state, whilst the physical condition is, in its turn, equally dependent upon the mental and moral attitude. The lesson this should teach us is a very obvious one. It ought to prove to us, conclusively, that the science of happiness is very closely related to the science of healthfulness and the science of beauty, so that if we wish to be really happy we must first endeavour to be really healthy in mind and body.

What an enormous difference it might produce in the world if we were all imbued with an ardent desire to make the best of life, not only of our own lives, but of other people's also. To lay aside petty ambitions and petty rivalries; to eschew "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; to go on our way with sunshine in our hearts and sunshine in our eyes; and to keep our ears, our hearts, and our eyes always open, ready to receive ​every impression of beauty that the universe around us may offer to them; for there is so much beauty that we can imbibe almost unconsciously if our souls possess the least affinity for the beautiful.

People who are lacking in vitality lose half the pleasures that the healthy enjoy. They simply vegetate until they wither away. They are never tempted to dance along from pure exhilaration of spirits; they never know the true meaning of the adjective delightful, because they have never felt the blood coursing like champagne through their veins; they have never exulted in the mere joy of being alive. These experiences are all well worth tasting. They thrill through every fibre of one's being; they give us the power to enjoy so intensely. We are filled with a half-delirious delight by the gorgeous glory of a sunset sky, and hushed into calm content by the star-girt silence of a wintry night. Our hearts tremble with awesome wonder at the wild surging of the stormy sea 'gainst a rock-bound shore, and sing a pæan of praise at the splendid spectacle of snow-capped peaks and foaming cataracts. The dazzling dewiness of a sun-steeped solitude, brilliant in blinding ​light, holds for us as many attractions as the transient loveliness of a cloud-swept landscape and the magic mystery of a twittering twilight. There is such abundance of beauty everywhere, in country and city, in Nature and Humanity; but we must educate our senses to see it and feel it spontaneously.

Poetry requires healthy nerves to prevent it from degenerating into feeble sentimentalism; and the prose of every-day life requires the seeing eye, and the hearing ear, and the understanding heart, to elevate it towards the realms of idealism.

No existence—not even under the most commonplace circumstances—need be all prose. There is plenty of poetry at hand, though we are living at the end of this much-abused nineteenth century. The sun is such an inimitable artist, and he still shines—sometimes. And wherever the shadows are deepest, the high lights gleam most brightly. There is no painter like the sun, and there are no pictures like those in the great book of Nature. When we have learnt the art of thoroughly appreciating each one of these in its turn, we have also learnt the true principles of the science of ​happiness. The blackest cloud has generally a silver lining, but unless we have the physical strength to wait until it reveals itself, we shall never enjoy the soul-satisfaction of its vision, nor will our minds reap the healing ray of its divine hopefulness if our worn-out bodies lie senseless and storm-tossed on the weary wayside.

Just after having written this, I came accidentally upon an old copy of the Fortnightly Review containing an article by Vernon Lee on "Beauty and Sanity," which interested me so much that I am tempted to quote from it for your benefit too:

"How delicate an organism, how alive with all life's dangers, is the human character; and how persistently do we consider it as the thing of all things most easily forced into any sort of position, most safely handled in ignorance! Surely some of the misery, some of the haste and dead-lock of the world is due to our all being made of such obscure, unguessed-at material. When shall we recognise that the bulk of our psychic life is unconscious or semi-conscious, the life of long-organised and automatic functions? and that while ​it is absurd to oppose to these the more new, unaccustomed, and fluctuating activity called reason, this same reason, this conscious portion of ourselves may be usefully employed in understanding those powers of Nature (powers of chaos sometimes) within us, and in providing that these should turn the wheel of life in the right direction, even like those other powers of Nature outside us, which reason cannot repress or diminish, but can understand and put to profit. But instead of this, we are ushered into life thinking ourselves thoroughly conscious throughout—conscious beings of a definite and stereotyped pattern; and we are set to do things we do not understand, with mechanisms we have never even been shown. Told to be virtuous, not knowing why, and still less guessing how!

"Some folk will answer that life itself settles all that, with its jostle and bustle! Doubtless; but in how wasteful, destructive, unintelligent, and cruel a fashion! Should we be satisfied with this kind of surgery which cures an ache by random chopping off a limb; this elementary teaching, which saves our body from burning by destroying ​our fingers in the fire? Surely not. We are worth more care on our own parts. The recognition of this, and more especially of the way in which we may be damaged by dangers we have never thought of as dangers, our souls undermined and made boggy by emotions not yet classified, brings home to me again the general wholesomeness of art. . . Art, in so far as it moves our fancies and emotions, as it builds up our preferences and repulsions, as it disintegrates or restores our vitality, is merely another of the great forces of Nature, and we require to select among its activities, as we select among the activities of other natural forces. When, I wonder, will the forces within us be recognised as natural, in the same sense as those without; and our souls as part of the universe, prospering or suffering, according to which of its rhythms they vibrate to—the larger rhythm, which is for ever increasing, and which means happiness; or the smaller, for ever slackening, which means misery!

"But, since life has got two rhythms, why should art have only one? We cannot get rid of the fact that, however much certain sorts of art are the ​natural expression of certain recurring and common states of being; however much certain preferences correspond to certain temperaments or conditions, we must nevertheless put them aside, and give our attention here to opposite sorts of art and opposite sorts of preference, for the simple reason that the first make us less fit for life and less happy in the long run, while the second make us more fit and happier."

It is for us a question not so much of what we are at the present moment, but what we wish to make of ourselves in the future, since we are all so constituted by Nature that the sense of increasing psychic health and power, wherever it is developed, increases almost incredibly the pleasure to be derived from impressions of beauty. We have, in fact, to educate ourselves, up to a real appreciation of the beautiful in general. We hear so much, nowadays, of a mental condition of poetic misery entitled Weltschmerz. The expression is as difficult to translate into every-day English as the condition itself is to analyse from a physiological point of view. Perhaps it is best described as that passion for the impossible which ​the ancient Greeks called "the disease of the soul." Now, this disease of the soul is a very fashionable ailment at this end-of-a-century. With some people it is merely a pose; with others, unfortunately, it is often a reality, the result of inherited constitutional morbidness, of nervous exhaustion, of self-indulgence in unwholesome ideas, of neglect of hygienic measures, of the influence of dim, pastille-scented rooms and enervating atmospheres where the health, and breadth, and fulness of an open-air life never penetrate. Let me speak to all you who are suffering under this disease in the words of the absentee gods of Lucretius:

"Believe me, you would do much better to be quite healthy and quite happy."

But how? you ask. It is so easy to say, "be healthy, be happy," but what if life and circumstances will not let you? Defy life and circumstances. Feed your body, not starve it; feed your soul, not poison it. Get away from the turmoil. of life, even if you are set down in the midst of it. Go to Nature for help, and give yourself a chance of happiness, anyhow. There is a wonderful recuperative power in isolation and repose. A ​solitary walk when the air is filled with cool briskness, and greyness of sky seems restfulness embodied; in brilliant sunshine and balmy breezes ; in songs of birds and the musical rhythm of stone-tossed streamlets; in the rustle of faintly-fanned foliage and the swaying of wind-vexed woods; in the dewy glories of sunrise and sunset; in storm-rent skies and moonlit mountains—there lies health for the soul.

Nature is often accused of want of sympathy with humanity. Her seeming callousness is, however, not cruelty, for she is a marvellous soul-healer. If we will only lay our wounded spirits in her hands, she will soothe them. She will show us how rich and rare and beautiful and many-sided life may be; she will teach us how to revel in its variety and how to realise the incalculable value of these healing powers of natural beauty to the physical and moral, as well as the æsthetic sides of our being.

The old Greek philosopher, Epictetus, maintained that the door of happiness always opens at least once in a lifetime for everybody, though it is not everybody who observes, just the moment ​when it stands ajar, and so, passing on heedlessly or apathetically, some miss their chance for ever. I think there is a good deal of truth underlying this idea. Would it not be far more reasonable if we would all write on our hearts a fragment from the psalm of life:

It is no use expending our nerve-force in dreams of future bliss that may prove fruitless. It is no use wasting it in vain regrets for what is past. Let us breathe deep draughts of life in the present; let us take the good the gods provide; let us wring from circumstances a certain amount of beauty; and, to do all this, let us begin by making ourselves as physically perfect as possible, since health always makes for happiness, and happiness for beauty.

Is it not Lewis Morris who tells us:

The art of forgetting is difficult to acquire sometimes, but it is eminently worth the trouble of acquiring, since it is an art that largely increases our happiness; there are so many things in life. that are far better forgotten. When we have once learnt the art, we find it comparatively easy to practise it. By degrees we get into the habit of forgetting the faults of our neighbours as easily almost as we forget our own. We forget, too, all the slanders poured into our ears, all the faultfinding (directly it is over), all the back-biting, all the personal quarrels and feminine "confidences" (that often make so much mischief), all the unkind speeches, all the wrongs, all the temptations of yesterday; and, if we remember the shattered hopes and the broken day-dreams of the past occasionally, it is only for a fast-fleeting moment. If we would make the best of life we must all learn the art of forgetting, because this is the only art that will enable us to blot out the disagreeables incident to "this mortal coil." Troubles, little and ​big, will come to each of us so long as we are human, and though brooding over our sins or our sorrows may appear penitent and poetical, it is not practical. Penitence is only praiseworthy when it "brings forth fruit meet for repentance"; and poetry is only valuable when its rhythmic tones reveal to us some glory or some depth beyond the powers of prose.