Complete Works of James Joyce (338 page)

Trust Not Appearance
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TRUST NOT APPEARANCES

There is nothing so deceptive and for all that so alluring as a good surface. The sea, when beheld in the warm sunlight of a summer’s day; the sky, blue in the faint and amber glimmer of an autumn sun, are pleasing to the eye: but, how different the scene, when the wild anger of the elements has waked again the discord of confusion, how different the ocean, choking with froth and foam, to the calm, placid sea, that glanced and rippled merrily in the sun. But the best examples of the fickleness of appearances are — Man and Fortune. The cringing, servile look; the high and haughty mien alike conceal the worthlessness of the character. Fortune that glittering bauble, whose brilliant shimmer has allured and trifled with both proud and poor, is as wavering as the wind. Still however, there is a ‘something’ that tells us the character of man. It is the eye. The only traitor that even the sternest will of a fiendish villian [sic] cannot overcome. It is the eye that reveals to man the guilt or innocence, the vices or the virtues of the soul. This is the only exception to the proverb ‘Trust not appearance’. In every other case the real worth has to be searched for. The garb of royalty or of democracy are but the shadow that a ‘man’ leaves behind him. ‘Oh! how unhappy is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favours.’ The fickle tide of ever-changing fortune brings with it — good and evil. How beautiful it seems as the harbinger of good and how cruel as the messenger of ill! The man who waits on the temper of a King is but a tiny craft in that great ocean. Thus we see the hollowness of appearances. The hypocrite is the worst kind of villain yet under the appearance of virtue he conceals the worst of vices. The friend, who is but the fane of fortune, fawns and grovels at the feet of wealth. But, the man, who has no ambition, no wealth no luxury save contentment cannot hide the joy of happiness that flows from a clear conscience and an easy mind.

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James A. Joyce

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1898

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both questions of moment and difficult to answer. And although it is, in the main, evident that the conquest gained in a righteous war, is itself righteous, yet it will not be necessary to digress into the regions of political economy, etc, but it will be as well to bear in mind, that all subjugation by force, if carried out and prosecuted by force is only so far successful in breaking men’s spirits and aspirations. Also that it is, in the extreme, productive of ill-will and rebellion, that it is, again, from its beginning in unholy war, stamped with the stamp of ultimate conflict. But indeed it seems barbaric to only consider subjugation, in the light of an oppressing force, since we shall see that more often is it an influence rather than a positive power, and find it better used than for the vain shedding of blood.

In the various grades of life there are many homely illustrations of its practice — none the truer, that they are without blaze or notoriety, and in the humblest places. The tiller who guides the plough through the ground, and breaks the ‘stubborn glebe’ is one. The gardener who prunes the wayward vine or compels the wild hedge into decent level, subjugating the savage element in ‘trim gardens’, is another. Both of these represent subjugation by force; but the sailors method is more diplomatic. He has no plough to furrow the resisting wind, nor no knife to check the rude violence of storm. He cannot, with his partial skill, get the better of its unruliness. When Aeolus has pronounced his fiat, there is no direct countermanding his order. That way the sailor cannot overcome him; but by veering, and patient trial, sometimes using the strength of the Wind, sometimes avoiding it, noiv advancing and now retreating, at last the shifting sails are set for a straight course, and amid the succeeding calm the vessel steers for port. The miller’s wheel which although it restrains the stream yet allows it to proceed on its own way, when it has performed the required service, is an useful example. The water rushing in swift stream, is on the higher mountains a fierce power both to excite emotion and to flood the fields. But the magic miller changes its humour, and it proceeds on its course, with all its tangled locks in orderly crease, and laps its waves, in placid resignation, on the banks that slope soberly down from suburban villas. And more, its strength has been utilised for commercial ends, and it helps to feed, with fine flour and bread, no longer the poetical but the hungry.

After these subjugations of the elements, we come to the subjugation of animals. Long ago in Eden responsible Adam had a good time. The birds of the air and the beasts of the field, ministered to his comfort. At his feet slept the docile lion, and every animal was his willing servant. But when sin arose in Adam — before only a latent evil — and his great nature was corrupted and broken, there were stirred up also among beasts the unknown dregs of ferocity. A similar revolt took place among them against man, and they were no longer to be friendly servants but bitter foes to him. From that hour, in greater or less degree, more in one land than another, they have struggled against him and refused him service. Aided often by great strength they fought successfully. But at length by superior power, and because he was man and they were but brutes, they, at least to a great extent, were overcome. Some of them, as the dog, he made the guardians of his house; others, as the horses and oxen, the helpmates of his toils. Others again he could not conquer but merely guard against, but one race in particular threatened by its number and power, to conquer him; and here it may be as well to follow the fate of it and see how a superior power intervened to preserve for man his title, not in derision, of lord of the creation and to keep him safe from the fear of mammoth and of mastodon. The Zoo elephants are sorry descendants of those mighty monsters who once traversed the sites of smoky cities; who roamed in hordes, tameless and fearless, proud in their power, through fruitful regions and forests, where now are the signs of busy men and the monuments of their skill and toil; who spread themselves over whole continents and carried their terror to the north and south, bidding defiance to man that he could not subjugate them; and finally in the wane of their day, though they knew it not, trooped up to the higher regions of the Pole, to the doom that was decreed for them. There what man could not subdue, was subdued, for they could not withstand the awful changes that came upon the earth. Lands of bright bloom, by degrees, lost all beauty and promise. Luxuriance of trees and fullness of fruit gradually departed, and were not, and stunted growth of shrub and shrivelled berries that no suns would ripen, were found in their room. The tribes of the Mammoth were huddled together, in strange wonder, and this devastation huddled them still closer. From oases, yet left them, they peered at the advancing waves, that locked them in their barren homes. Amid the gradual ice and waters, they eked out the days of the life of their vanity and when nothing remained for them but death, the wretched animals died in the unkind cold of enduring winter, and to-day their colossal tusks and ivory bones, are piled in memorial mounds, on the New Siberian Islands. This is all of them that is left, that man may have good by their death, whom he was not able to make his slaves when they lived, to tempt his greed across the perilous, Polar seas, to those feasts of the wealth of bygone times, that are strewn and bleaching beneath the desolate sky, white and silent through the song of the changeless waves, and on the verge of the eternal fathoms. What a subjugation has this been — how awful and how complete! Scarce the remembrance of the mammoth remains and no more is there the fear of the great woolly elephant but contempt of his bulk and advantage of his unwieldiness.

It is generally by intercourse with man, that animals have been tamed and it is noticeable that the domestic tabby and the despised pig rage in distant lands, with all their inbred fierceness and strength. These with others are subjugated by constant war, or driven from familiar haunts, and then their race dies out as the bison of America is dying. Gradually all common animals are subdued to man’s rule, becoming once again his servants and regaining something of former willingness, in the patient horse and faithful dog. In some instances the vain-glory and conscious victory of the three spears is observed. Thus, in the swampy marshes of South America, the venomous snakes are lulled into deadness, and lie useless and harmless, at the crooning of the charmer and in shows and circuses before large crowds, broken- spirited lions and in the streets the ungraceful bears are witnesses to the power of man.

It may be that the desire to overcome and get the mastery of things, which is expressed in man’s history of progress, is in a great measure responsible for his supremacy. Had it been that he possessed no such desire, the trees and vegetation would have choked the sunlight from him, barring all passage; the hills and seas would have been the bounds of his dwellings; the unstemmed mountain-stream would always snatch away his rude huts and the ravaging hungry beasts stamp on the ashes of his fire. But his superior mind overcame all obstacles, not however universally, for in those places where seldom, the lower creation has usurped his Kingdom, and his labour must be anew expended in hunting the savage tiger through the jungles and forests of India, and in felling the tree in Canadian woods.

The next important subjugation is that of race over race. Among human families the white man is the predestined conqueror. The negro has given way before him, and the red men have been driven by him out of their lands and homes. In far New Zealand the sluggish Maoris in conceded sloth, permit him to portion out and possess the land of their fathers. Everywhere that region and sky allow, he has gone. Nor any longer does he or may he practise the abuse of subjugation — slavery, at least in its most degrading forms or at all so generally. Yet slavery only seems to have appealed to the conscience of men when most utterly base and inhuman and minor offences never troubled them. Happily this could not continue and now any encroachment on the liberties of others whether by troublesome Turk or not, is met with resolute opposition and just anger. Rights when violated, institutions set at nought, privileges disregarded, all these, not as shibboleths and war-cries, but as deep-seated thorough realities, will happily always call forth, not in foolish romantic madness nor for passionate destruction, but with unyielding firmness of resistance, the energies and sympathies of men to protect them and to defend them.

Hitherto we have only treated of man’s subjugation

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often when a person gets embarked on a topic which in its vastness almost completely swallows up his efforts, the subject dwarfs the writer; or when a logician has to treat of great subjects, with a view to deriving a fixed theory, he abandons the primal idea and digresses into elaborate disquisitions, on the more inviting portions of his argument. Again in works of fancy, a too prolific imagination literally flys away with the author, and lands him in regions of loveliness unutterable, which his faculties scarcely grasp, which dazzles his senses, and defies speech, and thus his compositions are beautiful indeed, but beautiful with the cloudiness and dream- beauty of a visionary. Such a thing as this often affects poets of high, fanciful temper, as Shelley, rendering their poetry vague and misty. When however the gift — great and wonderful — of a poetic sense, in sight and speech and feeling, has been subdued by vigilance and care and has been prevented from running to extremes, the true and superior spirit, penetrates more watchfully into sublime and noble places, treading them with greater fear and greater wonder and greater reverence, and in humbleness looks up into the dim regions, now full of light, and interprets, without mysticism, for men the great things that are hidden from their eyes, in the leaves of the trees and in the flowers, to console them, to add to their worship, and to elevate their awe. This result proceeds from the subjugation of a great gift, and indeed it is so in all our possessions. We improve in strength when we husband it, in health when we are careful of it, in power of mental endurance when we do not over-tax it. Otherwise in the arts, in sculpture and painting, the great incidents that engross the artist’s attention would find their expression, in huge shapelessness or wild daubs; and in the ear of the rapt musician, the loveliest melodies outpour themselves, madly, without time or movement, in chaotic mazes, ‘like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.’

It has been pointed out what an influence this desire of man to overcome has exerted over the kingdom of animals and vegetation, and how it not merely destroys and conquers the worse features but betters and improves what is good. There are spots on this earth, where licence of growth holds absolute sway, where leaves choke the light and rankness holds the soil, where there are dangerous reptiles and fierce beasts, all untamed, amid surroundings of great beauty, in colour and fertility, but overshadowed by the horror of savage unrule. But the coming of man in his onward way, shall alter the face of things, good himself rendering good his own dominions. As has been written—’when true servants of Heaven shall enter these Edens and the Spirit of God enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into the physical air; and the stinging insect and venomous snake and poisonous tree, pass away before the power of the regenerate human soul’ — This is the wished subjugation that must come in good time. And meanwhile we have considered the power of overcoming man, against the lower races of the world, and his influence in the subjugation of his own mental faculties, and there remains for us to consider the manifold influence of his desire to conquer, over his human instincts, over his work and business and over his reason.

In the sagas of Norway, in ancient epics in the tales of ‘knights and barons bold’ and to-day in the stories of Hall Caine, we have abundant examples of the havoc that men’s passions make, when they are allowed to spend their force in Bersirk freedom. Of course in conventional life there are fewer instances of such characters as Thor, Ospakar, Jason, and Mylrea as in those savage places which were once their homes. Modern civilization will not permit such wholesale licence, as the then state of affairs gave occasion to. The brood of men now, in towns and cities, is not of fierce passion, at least not to such an extent as to make men subserve their rages. The ordinary man has not so often to guard against fits of demon’s anger, though the Vendetta is is still common in Southern Europe but mankind has quite as many opportunities of subjugating himself or herself as before. The fretful temper, the base interpretation, the fool’s conceitedness, the
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sneer, the gossiping, the refusal of aid, the hurting word and worthless taunt, together with ingratitude and the forgetting of friends — all these are daily waiting for us to subjugate. Above all, the much- maligned, greatest charity, so distinct from animal profusion and reckless liberality, that charitable deeds do not wholly constitute; but which springs from inner wells of gentleness and goodness; which is shy of attributing motives; ‘which interprets everything for the best’; which dictates, from emotions of Heaven’s giving, the sacrifice of all that is dear, in urgent need, which has its being and beauty from above; which lives and thrives in the atmosphere of thoughts, so upraised and so serene that they will not suffer themselves to be let down on earth among men, but in their own delicate air ‘intimate their presence and commune with themselves’ — this utter unselfishness in all things, how does it on the contrary, call for constant practice and worthy fulfilling!

Again in the case of man’s mission, marked out for him from the gate of Eden, labour and toil, has not subjugation a direct influence, with advantage both to the world and to the man himself. ‘Foul jungles’ says Carlyle ‘are cleared away, fair seedfields rise instead and stately cities, and withal the man