Edward Carpenter

“ A faint odor is wafted from the reviving herbage. The flat earth—which255 was a mere horizon line in the midday light—now fades into nothingness; the immense and mystic sky, hanging over on every side like a veil, opens back into myriads and myriads of stars—and it requires but little imagination to think that this planet is only an atom in the vast dome of heaven. To the Hindu, Life is that blinding sun, that fever of desire and discomfort, and night is the blessed escape, the liberation of the spirit—its grateful passage into Nirwana and the universal. ”

“ How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen to twenty million soldiers already mobilized, and more than half that number in the fighting lines; with engines of appalling destruction by land and sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern France, Belgium, and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia, Servia, and Austria drenched in blood; the nations exhausting their human and material resources in savage conflict—this war, marking the climax, and (let us hope) the finale of our commercial civilization, is the most monstrous the old Earth has ever seen. ”

“ Now when Aphrodite heard she was very wroth, and hurrying over the beautiful ocean to the edges of the land, she called her son Eros, and “What is this I hear,” she said, “that my altars are deserted, and men, leaving me, are paying their sacrifices to a maid of mortal birth? Truly I am incensed beyond measure. But I will make this impudent hussy know her place, and who it is that even Zeus, the lord of Heaven, pays homage to. Go thou, my son, and sharpening thy keenest arrow cause her to fall in passionate burning love with some wretch, some renegade, the very lowest of mankind.” ”

“ For what lover would not choose rather to be seen of all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes, love of his own nature inspires into the lover. ”

“ The human soul which has wandered darkling for so many thousands of years, from its tiny spark-like germ In some low form of life to its full splendor and dignity in man, has yet to come to the knowledge of its wonderful heritage, has yet to become fully individualised and free, to know itself immortal, to resume and interpret all its past lives, and to enter in triumph into the kingdom which it has won.
It has in fact to face the frightful struggle of self-consciousness, or the disentanglement of the true self from the fleeting and perishable self. ”

“ Indeed when one comes to think of it, it seems difficult—if there is to be continuance at all—to imagine anything else. When one thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal life, the hopelessly antagonistic elements, the warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the stupor of monotony: the soul like a bird shut in a cage, or with bright wings draggled in the mire; the horrible sense of sin which torments some people, the mad impulses which tyrannize over others; the alternations of one’s own personality on different days, or at different depths and planes of consciousness ”

“ One might stand for hours thus catching the wind of one’s own speed—so soft, so mild, so warm—the delicate aroma of the sea, the faint far suggestion of the transparent air and water, wafting, encircling one round. And indeed all my journey has been like this—so smooth, so unruffled, as if one had not really been moving. I have several times thought, and am inclined to think even now, that perhaps one has not left home at all, but that it has been a fair panorama that has been gliding past one all these months. ”

“ It is in the inversion of this order that the uncleanness of the senses arises. Sex to-day throughout the domains of civilisation is thoroughly unclean.
Everywhere it is slimed over with the thought of pleasure. Not for joy, not for mere delight in and excess of life, not for pride in the generation of children, not for a symbol and expression of deepest soul-union, does it exist—but for pleasure. Hence we disown it in our thoughts, and cover it up with false shame and unbelief—knowing well that to seek a social act for a private pleasure is a falsehood. ”

“ To sacrifice the immortal freedom of the mind in order to become a prey to self-regarding cares and anxieties, self-estimating virtues and vices, self-chaining duties and indulgences, is a mistake. And I warn you, it is quite useless. For the destiny of Freedom is ultimately upon every one, and if refusing it for a time you heap your life persistently upon one object—however blameless in itself that object may be—Beware! For one day—and when you least expect it—the gods will send a thunderbolt upon you. ”

“ Willing or unwilling, overworked or dying, they have had to bear children to the caprice of their lords; and in this serf-life their very natures have been blunted; they have lost—what indeed should be the very glory and crown of woman's being—the perfect freedom and the purity of their love.
At this whole spectacle of woman's degradation the human male has looked on with stupid and open-mouthed indifference—as an ox might look on at a drowning oxherd—not even dimly divining that his own fate was somehow involved. ”

“ A young officer said to me one day — "Horrible as the whole thing is, yet it almost seems worth while, when you think of the splendid things done — and done too in such a simple matter-of-fact way: when you think of all the love and devotion poured out, and the lives our men have given one for the sake of another."
Great indeed is the spirit of such an army, great its magnanimity, its simplicity of mind, its unself-consciousness, its single concentration on its purpose. ”

“ As long as we foster these things in our private life, so long will they lead in our public life to the embitterment of nation against nation. What is the ruling principle of the interior and domestic conduct of each nation to-day—even within its own borders—but an indecent scramble of class against class, of individual against individual? To rise to noisy power and influence, and to ill-bred wealth and riches, by trampling others down and profiting by their poverty is—as Ruskin long ago told us—the real and prevailing motive of our peoples, whatever their professions of Christianity may be. ”

“ The animals and man, unfallen, are healthy and free from care, but unaware of what they are; to attain self-knowledge man must fall; he must become less than his true self; he must endure imperfection; division and strife must enter his nature. To realise the perfect Life, to know what, how wonderful it is—to understand that all blessedness and freedom consists in its possession—he must for the moment suffer divorce from it; the unity, the repose of his nature must be broken up; crime, disease and unrest must enter in, and by contrast he must attain to knowledge. ”

“ II Now when Psyche came to herself, after her aerial flight, she found herself in some kind of Enchanted Garden. Lovely groves and thickets, streams and fountains, were on all sides; and in the midst stood a palace of fairy beauty, all carven in cedar-wood and ivory and gold. Soft strains of music, she knew not whence, drew her feet onward, and voices, from forms she could not see, hovered round; till at length she stepped across the threshold; when the beauty and richness of the interior still more amazed her. ”

“ If marriage between men existed I believe I should not be afraid of a life-long union—a thing which with a woman seems to be something impossible.... Since, however, this kind of love is reckoned criminal, by its satisfaction I can be at harmony with myself but never with the world, and necessarily in consequence must ever be somewhat out of tune; and all the more so because my character is open, and I hate lies of all kinds. This torment, to have always to conceal everything, has forced me to confess my anomaly to a few friends, of whose understanding and reticence I am sure. ”

“ Self-consciousness is fatal to love, which is the true expression of the soul. And it is curious how (for some occult reason) the whole treatment of the subject in our modern world drives it along this painful mirror-lined ravine—how the child is brought up in ignorance and darkness, amid averted faces and frowns, and always the thought of self and its own wickedness is thrust upon it, and never the good and the beauty of the loved one; how the same attitude continues into years of maturity; how somehow self-forgetting heroisms for the sake of love are made difficult in modern life ”

“ That entire and unswerving refusal to 'cage' another person, or to accept an affection not perfectly free and spontaneous, which will, we are fain to think, be always more and more the mark of human love, must inevitably bring its own price of mortal suffering with it; yet the Love so gained, whether in the individual or in society, will be found in the end to be worth the pang—and as far beyond the other love, as is the wild bird of Paradise that comes to feed out of our hands unbidden more lovely than the prisoner we shut with draggled wings behind the bars. ”

“ And the disease of the modern nations is the disease of disunity—not, as I have already said, the mere existence of variety of occupation and habit, for that is perfectly natural and healthy, but the disease by which one class preys upon another and upon the nation—the disease of parasitism and selfish domination. The health of a people consists in that people's real unity, the organic life by which each section contributes freely and generously to the welfare of the whole, identifies itself with that welfare, and holds it a dishonour to snatch for itself the life which should belong to all. ”