DISCOVERY 



287 



where the Greek word " dyoi'i'a " ^ (literally, " a 

 struggle ") is used to describe the spiritual conflict of 

 Christ in the garden of Gethsemane ; it came to be 

 emplo\-ed (as it is now almost exclusively in French) 

 to describe the act of death, possibly because the 

 spasmodic twitchings that are sometimes observed to 

 occur at the point of death, though long after the loss 

 of consciousness, were imagined to be the physical 

 result of the soul struggling to leave its habitation. 

 It is but comparativelj- lately that the word acquired 

 its present commonest meaning of great pain, thus 

 colouring our conception of dying — and not only in 

 old wives' tales — with an idea of pain and distress 

 that, as has alreadj' been remarked, reality does not 

 substantiate. 



We have said that in the life of the average man the 

 conception of death, of his own death that is. plays 

 little part ; but there are many who seem to be 

 oppressed by the sense of their own mortality, and as 

 they are commonly reflective and thoughtful people, 

 and were at one time numerous among the preachers 

 and moralists, there is a tendency to give them credit 

 for penetrating beneath the surface of life and reaching 

 some sort of fundamental truth, unfruitful and obvious 

 though it be. The attitude of such an individual 

 towards life tends to be that of a critic or spectator ; 

 it is an attitude of self-consciousness, for he sees 

 himself in relation to life and as it were standing 

 apart from it. 



This attitude is well pictured in the following 

 dream: " I was standing on an incline beside a kind 

 of great moving staircase on which were all sorts of 

 people, many of whom I knew. They were all walking 

 and being carried upwards. I was the only one who 

 was not on the moving stairway. I felt very insecure. 

 and at times I seemed to be slipping downwards." 

 The dreamer went on to say, " This is rather like what 

 I feel when I am awake. Other people seem to be 

 going ahead and moving with the stream, but I am 

 standing still." 



The same individual occasionally had a nightmare in 

 which he felt that he was slipping down a smooth 

 incline towards some sort of abyss — a dream that 

 proved to be a dramatic representation of the fear of 

 death from which he suffered in waking life. 



If we are able to investigate a personality of this 

 type where a fear of death, or its slighter degree of a 

 sense of mortality and impermanence, is coupled with 

 the attitude of standing outside life, we often find 

 that at the bottom it is a fear of life itself that enforces 

 an attitude of aloofness and detachment. On further 

 investigation we find in many cases that the fear of 

 life is directed against one special aspect of it, against 

 the sexual side of life, and in dreams we find love 

 1 Xew Oxford Engliih Dictionar>'. 



and death linked together as objects of fear. This 

 becomes more understandable when we realise that 

 the reproduction of life is, on the biological level, 

 antagonistic to the life of the individual ; when repro ■ 

 duction is accomplished the biological goal is reached, 

 and m many of the lower animals death follows im- 

 mediately. Some hint of this may persist in the sense 

 of finality and the dying down of an impulse that 

 accompanies the achievement of any end, especially 

 one so ardently pursued as that of love. There is 

 a Spanish proverb, " When the house is finished. 

 Death enters in," and Sir Thomas Browne, speakmg 

 'of marriage (in anticipation, it may be noted), says: 

 " Thus I perceive that a man may be buried alive and 

 behold his grave in his own issue." - 



The psychological equivalent of this biological 

 antagonism is a deep unconscious conflict between the 

 egoistic impulses and the sexual instinct ; a conflict 

 understandable enough since a great passion may 

 overwhelm an individual, transcend all his old values, 

 and commit him to acts of self-forgetfulness of which 

 he had believed himself incapable. In a slighter and 

 more subtle way the conflict may appear as reluctance 

 to admit another within the circle of the personality : 



Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate. 

 Where that comes in that shall not go again ; 

 Love sells that proud heart's citadel to fate." ^ 



This reluctance seems to arise partly because there 

 is a feeling of safety in keeping something at least of 

 the personality secret and inviolate, and partly because 

 for one individual to admit another entails transferring 

 to him or her some of the love previously attached to 

 the self. This aspect of the conflict is admirably 

 expressed, from the man's point of view, in D. H. 

 Lawrence's last novel. Aaron's Rod, and in it is also ex- 

 pressed what appears to be our solution of the conflict. 

 For man seems to endeavour to reach beyond the 

 biological goal of love, (thus robbing it of the aspect 

 of finality), towards some enduring intimacy that 

 shall abolish the deep feeling of loneliness and isolation 

 that his highly developed consciousness has inflicted 

 upon him as the price that he must pay for its advan- 

 tages. 



It is interesting to notice how common in poetry 

 is this theme of mortality and the transience of all 

 things beautiful and desirable : 



" Beauty vanishes, beauty passes ; 

 However rare — rare it be. " * 



And there is perhaps a tendency to assume that such 

 a view of life is the inevitable result of any steady 



- Religio Medici, part 2, sect. 14. 



' Rupert Brooke. (lgi4 t^«d Other Poems.) 



' Walter de la Mare. (T/ie Listeners, etc.) 



