Chesterton, Heretics, 7

Omar and the Sacred Vine

A new morality has burst upon us with some violence in connectionwith the problem of strong drink; and enthusiasts in the matterrange from the man who is violently thrown out at 12.30, to the ladywho smashes American bars with an axe. In these discussions itis almost always felt that one very wise and moderate position isto say that wine or such stuff should only be drunk as a medicine.With this I should venture to disagree with a peculiar ferocity.The one genuinely dangerous and immoral way of drinking wine is to drinkit as a medicine. And for this reason, If a man drinks wine in orderto obtain pleasure, he is trying to obtain something exceptional,something he does not expect every hour of the day, something which,unless he is a little insane, he will not try to get every hourof the day. But if a man drinks wine in order to obtain health,he is trying to get something natural; something, that is,that he ought not to be without; something that he may find itdifficult to reconcile himself to being without. The man may notbe seduced who has seen the ecstasy of being ecstatic; it is moredazzling to catch a glimpse of the ecstasy of being ordinary.If there were a magic ointment, and we took it to a strong man,and said, "This will enable you to jump off the Monument,"doubtless he would jump off the Monument, but he would not jumpoff the Monument all day long to the delight of the City.But if we took it to a blind man, saying, "This will enable you to see,"he would be under a heavier temptation. It would be hard for himnot to rub it on his eyes whenever he heard the hoof of a noblehorse or the birds singing at daybreak. It is easy to deny one'sself festivity; it is difficult to deny one's self normality.Hence comes the fact which every doctor knows, that it is oftenperilous to give alcohol to the sick even when they need it.I need hardly say that I do not mean that I think the givingof alcohol to the sick for stimulus is necessarily unjustifiable.But I do mean that giving it to the healthy for fun is the properuse of it, and a great deal more consistent with health.

The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many othersound rules--a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never becauseyou are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it,or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum;but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be likethe laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it,for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell.But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking,and the ancient health of the world.

For more than thirty years the shadow and glory of a greatEastern figure has lain upon our English literature.Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam concentrated into animmortal poignancy all the dark and drifting hedonism of our time.Of the literary splendour of that work it would be merely banal to speak;in few other of the books of men has there been anything so combiningthe gay pugnacity of an epigram with the vague sadness of a song.But of its philosophical, ethical, and religious influence which hasbeen almost as great as its brilliancy, I should like to say a word,and that word, I confess, one of uncompromising hostility.There are a great many things which might be said againstthe spirit of the Rubaiyat, and against its prodigious influence.But one matter of indictment towers ominously above the rest--a genuine disgrace to it, a genuine calamity to us. This is the terribleblow that this great poem has struck against sociability and the joyof life. Some one called Omar "the sad, glad old Persian."Sad he is; glad he is not, in any sense of the word whatever.He has been a worse foe to gladness than the Puritans.

A pensive and graceful Oriental lies under the rose-treewith his wine-pot and his scroll of poems. It may seem strangethat any one's thoughts should, at the moment of regarding him,fly back to the dark bedside where the doctor doles out brandy.It may seem stranger still that they should go backto the grey wastrel shaking with gin in Houndsditch.But a great philosophical unity links the three in an evil bond.Omar Khayyam's wine-bibbing is bad, not because it is wine-bibbing.It is bad, and very bad, because it is medical wine-bibbing. Itis the drinking of a man who drinks because he is not happy.His is the wine that shuts out the universe, not the wine that reveals it.It is not poetical drinking, which is joyous and instinctive;it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic as an investment,as unsavoury as a dose of camomile. Whole heavens above it,from the point of view of sentiment, though not of style,rises the splendour of some old English drinking-song--

"Then pass the bowl, my comrades all, And let the zider vlow."
For this song was caught up by happy men to express the worthof truly worthy things, of brotherhood and garrulity, and the briefand kindly leisure of the poor. Of course, the great part ofthe more stolid reproaches directed against the Omarite moralityare as false and babyish as such reproaches usually are. One critic,whose work I have read, had the incredible foolishness to call Omaran atheist and a materialist. It is almost impossible for an Orientalto be either; the East understands metaphysics too well for that.Of course, the real objection which a philosophical Christianwould bring against the religion of Omar, is not that he givesno place to God, it is that he gives too much place to God.His is that terrible theism which can imagine nothing else but deity,and which denies altogether the outlines of human personalityand human will.

"The ball no question makes of Ayes or Noes, But Here or There as strikes the Player goes; And He that tossed you down into the field, He knows about it all--he knows--he knows."
A Christian thinker such as Augustine or Dante would object to thisbecause it ignores free-will, which is the valour and dignity of the soul.The quarrel of the highest Christianity with this scepticism isnot in the least that the scepticism denies the existence of God;it is that it denies the existence of man.

In this cult of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker the Rubaiyatstands first in our time; but it does not stand alone.Many of the most brilliant intellects of our time have urgedus to the same self-conscious snatching at a rare delight.Walter Pater said that we were all under sentence of death,and the only course was to enjoy exquisite moments simplyfor those moments' sake. The same lesson was taught by thevery powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde.It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion isnot the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people.Great joy does, not gather the rosebuds while it may;its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendourof youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.In all great comic literature, in "Tristram Shandy"or "Pickwick", there is this sense of space and incorruptibility;we feel the characters are deathless people in an endless tale.

It is true enough, of course, that a pungent happiness comes chieflyin certain passing moments; but it is not true that we should thinkof them as passing, or enjoy them simply "for those moments' sake."To do this is to rationalize the happiness, and therefore to destroy it.Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.Suppose a man experiences a really splendid moment of pleasure.I do not mean something connected with a bit of enamel, I meansomething with a violent happiness in it--an almost painful happiness.A man may have, for instance, a moment of ecstasy in first love,or a moment of victory in battle. The lover enjoys the moment,but precisely not for the moment's sake. He enjoys it for thewoman's sake, or his own sake. The warrior enjoys the moment, but notfor the sake of the moment; he enjoys it for the sake of the flag.The cause which the flag stands for may be foolish and fleeting;the love may be calf-love, and last a week. But the patriot thinksof the flag as eternal; the lover thinks of his love as somethingthat cannot end. These moments are filled with eternity;these moments are joyful because they do not seem momentary.Once look at them as moments after Pater's manner, and they becomeas cold as Pater and his style. Man cannot love mortal things.He can only love immortal things for an instant.

Pater's mistake is revealed in his most famous phrase.He asks us to burn with a hard, gem-like flame. Flames are neverhard and never gem-like--they cannot be handled or arranged.So human emotions are never hard and never gem-like; they arealways dangerous, like flames, to touch or even to examine.There is only one way in which our passions can become hardand gem-like, and that is by becoming as cold as gems.No blow then has ever been struck at the natural loves and laughterof men so sterilizing as this carpe diem of the aesthetes.For any kind of pleasure a totally different spirit is required;a certain shyness, a certain indeterminate hope, a certainboyish expectation. Purity and simplicity are essential to passions--yes even to evil passions. Even vice demands a sort of virginity.

Omar's (or Fitzgerald's) effect upon the other world we may let go,his hand upon this world has been heavy and paralyzing.The Puritans, as I have said, are far jollier than he.The new ascetics who follow Thoreau or Tolstoy are much livelier company;for, though the surrender of strong drink and such luxuries maystrike us as an idle negation, it may leave a man with innumerablenatural pleasures, and, above all, with man's natural power of happiness.Thoreau could enjoy the sunrise without a cup of coffee. If Tolstoycannot admire marriage, at least he is healthy enough to admire mud.Nature can be enjoyed without even the most natural luxuries.A good bush needs no wine. But neither nature nor wine nor anythingelse can be enjoyed if we have the wrong attitude towards happiness,and Omar (or Fitzgerald) did have the wrong attitude towards happiness.He and those he has influenced do not see that if we are to be truly gay,we must believe that there is some eternal gaiety in the nature of things.We cannot enjoy thoroughly even a pas-de-quatre at a subscription danceunless we believe that the stars are dancing to the same tune. No one canbe really hilarious but the serious man. "Wine," says the Scripture,"maketh glad the heart of man," but only of the man who has a heart.The thing called high spirits is possible only to the spiritual.Ultimately a man cannot rejoice in anything except the nature of things.Ultimately a man can enjoy nothing except religion. Once in the world'shistory men did believe that the stars were dancing to the tuneof their temples, and they danced as men have never danced since.With this old pagan eudaemonism the sage of the Rubaiyat hasquite as little to do as he has with any Christian variety.He is no more a Bacchanal than he is a saint. Dionysus and his churchwas grounded on a serious joie-de-vivre like that of Walt Whitman.Dionysus made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament.Jesus Christ also made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament.But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feastsbecause life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad."Drink," he says, "for you know not whence you come nor why.Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because thestars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink,because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for.Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and anevil peace." So he stands offering us the cup in his hand.And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whosehand also is the cup of the vine. "Drink" he says "for the wholeworld is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrathof God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and thisis the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my blood of the new testamentthat is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why.Drink, for I know of when you go and where."