The World I Live in and Optimism: A Collection of Essays

  This was the signal for a rushing swarm of quotations. They surged to and fro, an inchoate throng of half-finished phrases, mutilated sentences, parodied sentiments, and brilliant metaphors. I could not distinguish any phrases or ideas of my own making. I saw a poor, ragged, shrunken sentence that might have been mine own catch the wings of a fair idea with the light of genius shining like a halo about its head.

  Ever and anon the dancers changed partners without invitation or permission. Thoughts fell in love at sight, married in a measure, and joined hands without previous courtship. An incongruity is the wedding of two thoughts which have had no reasonable courtship, and marriages without wooing are apt to lead to domestic discord, even to the breaking up of an ancient, time-honoured family. Among the wedded couples were certain similes hitherto inviolable in their bachelorhood and spinsterhood, and held in great respect. Their extraordinary proceedings nearly broke up the dance. But the fatuity of their union was evident to them, and they parted. Other similes seemed to have the habit of living in discord. They had been many times married and divorced. They belonged to the notorious society of Mixed Metaphors.

  A company of phantoms floated in and out wearing tantalizing garments of oblivion. They seemed about to dance, then vanished. They reappeared half a dozen times, but never unveiled their faces. The imp Curiosity pulled Memory by the sleeve and said, “Why do they run away? ’T is strange knavery!” Out ran Memory to capture them. After a great deal of racing and puffing and collision it apprehended some of the fugitives and brought them in. But when it tore off their masks, lo! some were disappointingly commonplace, and others were gipsy quotations trying to conceal the punctuation marks that belonged to them. Memory was much chagrined to have had such a hard chase only to catch this sorry lot of graceless rogues.

  Into the rabble strode four stately giants who called themselves History, Philosophy, Law, and Medicine. They seemed too solemn and imposing to join in a masque. But even as I gazed at these formidable guests, they all split into fragments which went whirling, dancing in divisions, subdivisions, re-subdivisions of scientific nonsense! History split into philology, ethnology, anthropology, and mythology, and these again split finer than the splitting of hairs. Each speciality hugged its bit of knowledge and waltzed it round and round. The rest of the company began to nod, and I felt drowsy myself. To put an end to the solemn gyrations, a troop of fairies mercifully waved poppies over us all, the masque faded, my head fell, and I started. Sleep had wakened me. At my elbow I found my old friend Bottom.

  “Bottom,” I said, “I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, his hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.”

  A Chant of Darkness

  “My wings are folded o’er mine ears,

  My wings are crossèd o’er mine eyes,

  Yet through their silver shade appears,

  And through their lulling plumes arise,

  A Shape, a throng of sounds.”

  Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.”

  I

  I dare not ask why we are reft of light,

  Banished to our solitary isles amid the unmeasured seas,

  Or how our sight was nurtured to glorious vision,

  To fade and vanish and leave us in the dark alone.

  The secret of God is upon our tabernacle;

  Into His mystery I dare not pry. Only this I know:

  With Him is strength, with Him is wisdom,

  And His wisdom hath set darkness in our paths.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  O Dark! thou awful, sweet, and holy Dark!

  In thy solemn spaces, beyond the human eye,

  God fashioned His universe; laid the foundations of the earth,

  Laid the measure thereof, and stretched the line upon it;

  Shut up the sea with doors, and made the glory

  Of the clouds a covering for it;

  Commanded His morning, and, behold! chaos fled

  Before the uplifted face of the sun;

  Divided a water-course for the overflowing of waters;

  Sent rain upon the earth—

  Upon the wilderness wherein there was no man,

  Upon the desert where grew no tender herb,

  And, lo! there was greenness upon the plains,

  And the hills were clothed with beauty!

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  O Dark! thou secret and inscrutable Dark!

  In thy silent depths, the springs whereof man hath not

  fathomed,

  God wrought the soul of man.

  O Dark! compassionate, all-knowing Dark!

  Tenderly, as shadows to the evening, comes thy message to man.

  Softly thou layest thy hand on his tired eyelids,

  And his soul, weary and homesick, returns

  Unto thy soothing embrace.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  O Dark! wise, vital, thought-quickening Dark!

  In thy mystery thou hidest the light

  That is the soul’s life.

  Upon thy solitary shores I walk unafraid;

  I dread no evil; though I walk in the valley of the shadow,

  I shall not know the ecstasy of fear

  When gentle Death leads me through life’s open door,

  When the bands of night are sundered,

  And the day outpours its light.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  The timid soul, fear-driven, shuns the dark;

  But upon the cheeks of him who must abide in shadow

  Breathes the wind of rushing angel-wings,

  And round him falls a light from unseen fires.

  Magical beams glow athwart the darkness;

  Paths of beauty wind through his black world

  To another world of light,

  Where no veil of sense shuts him out from Paradise.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  O Dark! thou blessèd, quiet Dark!

  To the lone exile who must dwell with thee

  Thou art benign and friendly;

  From the harsh world thou dost shut him in;

  To him thou whisperest the secrets of the wondrous night;

  Upon him thou bestowest regions wide and boundless as his

  spirit;

  Thou givest a glory to all humble things;

  With thy hovering pinions thou coverest all unlovely objects;

  Under thy brooding wings there is peace.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  II

  Once in regions void of light I wandered;

  In blank darkness I stumbled,

  And fear led me by the hand;

  My feet pressed earthward,

  Afraid of pitfalls.

  By many shapeless terrors of the night affrighted,

  To the wakeful day

  I held out beseeching arms.

  Then came Love, bearing in her hand

  The torch that is the light unto my feet,

  And softly spoke Love: “Hast thou

  Entered into the treasures of darkness?

  Hast thou entered into the treasures of the night?


  Search out thy blindness. It holdeth

  Riches past computing.”

  The words of Love set my spirit aflame.

  My eager fingers searched out the mysteries,

  The splendors, the inmost sacredness, of things,

  And in the vacancies discerned

  With spiritual sense the fullness of life;

  And the gates of Day stood wide.

  I am shaken with gladness;

  My limbs tremble with joy;

  My heart and the earth

  Tremble with happiness;

  The ecstasy of life

  Is abroad in the world.

  Knowledge hath uncurtained heaven;

  On the uttermost shores of darkness there is light;

  Midnight hath sent forth a beam!

  The blind that stumbled in darkness without light

  Behold a new day!

  In the obscurity gleams the star of Thought;

  Imagination hath a luminous eye,

  And the mind hath a glorious vision.

  III

  “The man is blind. What is life to him?

  A closed book held up against a sightless face.

  Would that he could see

  Yon beauteous star, and know

  For one transcendent moment

  The palpitating joy of sight!”

  All sight is of the soul.

  Behold it in the upward flight

  Of the unfettered spirit! Hast thou seen

  Thought bloom in the blind child’s face?

  Hast thou seen his mind grow,

  Like the running dawn, to grasp

  The vision of the Master?

  It was the miracle of inward sight.

  In the realms of wonderment where I dwell

  I explore life with my hands;

  I recognize, and am happy;

  My fingers are ever athirst for the earth,

  And drink up its wonders with delight,

  Draw out earth’s dear delights;

  My feet are charged with the murmur,

  The throb, of all things that grow.

  This is touch, this quivering,

  This flame, this ether,

  This glad rush of blood,

  This daylight in my heart,

  This glow of sympathy in my palms!

  Thou blind, loving, all-prying touch,

  Thou openest the book of life to me.

  The noiseless little noises of the earth

  Come with softest rustle;

  The shy, sweet feet of life;

  The silky mutter of moth-wings

  Against my restraining palm;

  The strident beat of insect-wings,

  The silvery trickle of water;

  Little breezes busy in the summer grass;

  The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves,

  The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves;

  The crystal splash of summer rain,

  Saturate with the odors of the sod.

  With alert fingers I listen

  To the showers of sound

  That the wind shakes from the forest.

  I bathe in the liquid shade

  Under the pines, where the air hangs cool

  After the shower is done.

  My saucy little friend the squirrel

  Flips my shoulder with his tail,

  Leaps from leafy billow to leafy billow,

  Returns to eat his breakfast from my hand.

  Between us there is glad sympathy;

  He gambols; my pulses dance;

  I am exultingly full of the joy of life!

  Have not my fingers split the sand

  On the sun-flooded beach?

  Hath not my naked body felt the water sing

  When the sea hath enveloped it

  With rippling music?

  Have I not felt

  The lilt of waves beneath my boat,

  The flap of sail,

  The strain of mast,

  The wild rush

  Of the lightning-charged winds?

  Have I not smelt the swift, keen flight

  Of winged odors before the tempest?

  Here is joy awake, aglow;

  Here is the tumult of the heart.

  My hands evoke sight and sound out of feeling,

  Intershifting the senses endlessly;

  Linking motion with sight, odor with sound

  They give color to the honeyed breeze,

  The measure and passion of a symphony

  To the beat and quiver of unseen wings.

  In the secrets of earth and sun and air

  My fingers are wise;

  They snatch light out of darkness,

  They thrill to harmonies breathed in silence.

  I walked in the stillness of the night,

  And my soul uttered her gladness.

  O Night, still, odorous Night, I love thee!

  O wide, spacious Night, I love thee!

  O steadfast, glorious Night!

  I touch thee with my hands;

  I lean against thy strength;

  I am comforted.

  O fathomless, soothing Night!

  Thou art a balm to my restless spirit,

  I nestle gratefully in thy bosom,

  Dark, gracious mother!

  Like a dove, I rest in thy bosom.

  Out of the uncharted, unthinkable dark we came,

  And in a little time we shall return again

  Into the vast, unanswering dark.

  OPTIMISM

  Helen Keller

  Part I. Optimism Within

  COULD we choose our environment, and were desire in human undertakings synonymous with endowment, all men would, I suppose, be optimists. Certainly most of us regard happiness as the proper end of all earthly enterprise. The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney-sweep. No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

  It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in the search for knowledge.

  Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life,—if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing. As sinners stand up in meeting and testify to the goodness of God, so one who is called afflicted may rise up in gladness of conviction and testify to the goodness of life.

  Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can any one who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?

  My early experience was thus a leap from bad to good. If I tried, I could not check the momentum of my first leap out of the dark; to move breast forward is a habit learned suddenly at that first moment of release and rush into the light. With the first word
I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope. Darkness cannot shut me in again. I have had a glimpse of the shore, and can now live by the hope of reaching it.

  So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. A poet once said I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present, but lived in a beautiful dream. I do live in a beautiful dream; but that dream is the actual, the present—not cold, but warm; not bare, but furnished with a thousand blessings. The very evil which the poet supposed would be a cruel disillusionment is necessary to the fullest knowledge of joy. Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.

  It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. It is not enough to say that the twentieth century is the best age in the history of mankind, and to take refuge from the evils of the world in skyey dreams of good. How many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, “Hurrah, we’re all right! This is the greatest nation on earth,” when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded on sand. A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.