Chapter 10

X - NOTHING IN LIFE IS HUMDRUM

Art is a great thing. But it is not the greatest. The mostimportant of all perceptions is the continual perception of causeand effect--in other words, the perception of the continuousdevelopment of the universe--in still other words, the perception ofthe course of evolution. When one has thoroughly got imbued intoone's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause,one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.It is hard to have one's watch stolen, but one reflects that thethief of the watch became a thief from causes of heredity andenvironment which are as interesting as they are scientificallycomprehensible; and one buys another watch, if not with joy, at anyrate with a philosophy that makes bitterness impossible. One loses,in the study of cause and effect, that absurd air which so manypeople have of being always shocked and pained by the curiousness oflife.

Such people live amid human nature as if human nature were aforeign country full of awful foreign customs. But, having reachedmaturity, one ought surely to be ashamed of being a stranger in astrange land!The study of cause and effect, while it lessens the painfulness oflife, adds to life's picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution isbut a name looks at the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle,which he can witness in August for three shillings third-classreturn. The man who is imbued with the idea of development, ofcontinuous cause and effect, perceives in the sea an element whichin the day-before-yesterday of geology was vapour, which yesterdaywas boiling, and which to-morrow will inevitably be ice.

He perceives that a liquid is merely something on its way to besolid, and he is penetrated by a sense of the tremendous, changefulpicturesqueness of life. Nothing will afford a more durablesatisfaction than the constantly cultivated appreciation of this.It is the end of all science.Cause and effect are to be found everywhere. Rents went up inShepherd's Bush. It was painful and shocking that rents should goup in Shepherd's Bush. But to a certain point we are all scientificstudents of cause and effect, and there was not a clerk lunching ata Lyons Restaurant who did not scientifically put two and twotogether and see in the (once) Two-penny Tube the cause of anexcessive demand for wigwams in Shepherd's Bush, and in theexcessive demand for wigwams the cause of the increase in the priceof wigwams."Simple!" you say, disdainfully. Everything--the whole complexmovement of the universe--is as simple as that--when you cansufficiently put two and two together.

And, my dear sir, perhapsyou happen to be an estate agent's clerk, and you hate the arts, andyou want to foster your immortal soul, and you can't be interestedin your business because it's so humdrum.Nothing is humdrum.The tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life is marvellouslyshown in an estate agent's office. What! There was a block oftraffic in Oxford Street; to avoid the block people actually beganto travel under the cellars and drains, and the result was a rise ofrents in Shepherd's Bush! And you say that isn't picturesque!Suppose you were to study, in this spirit, the property question inLondon for an hour and a half every other evening. Would it not givezest to your business, and transform your whole life?You would arrive at more difficult problems.

And you would be ableto tell us why, as the natural result of cause and effect, thelongest straight street in London is about a yard and a half inlength, while the longest absolutely straight street in Parisextends for miles. I think you will admit that in an estate agent'sclerk I have not chosen an example that specially favours mytheories.You are a bank clerk, and you have not read that breathless romance(disguised as a scientific study), Walter Bagehot's "LombardStreet"? Ah, my dear sir, if you had begun with that, and followedit up for ninety minutes every other evening, how enthralling yourbusiness would be to you, and how much more clearly you wouldunderstand human nature.

You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country andthe observation of wild life--certainly a heart-enlarging diversion.Why don't you walk out of your house door, in your slippers, to thenearest gas lamp of a night with a butterfly net, and observe thewild life of common and rare moths that is beating about it, andco-ordinate the knowledge thus obtained and build a superstructureon it, and at last get to know something about something?You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order tolive fully.The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy thatcuriosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means anunderstanding heart.I promised to deal with your case, O man who hates art andliterature, and I have dealt with it. I now come to the case of theperson, happily very common, who does "like reading."