Morrison's Pill
What is to be done, what would you have us do? asks many a one,
with a tone of impatience, almost of reproach; and then, if you
mention some one thing, some two things, twenty things that might
be done, turns round with a satirical tehee, and, "These are your
remedies!" The state of mind indicated by such question, and
such rejoinder, is worth reflecting on.
It seems to be taken for granted, by these interrogative
philosophers, that there is some 'thing,' or handful of 'things,'
which could be done; some Act of Parliament, 'remedial measure
or the like, which could be passed, whereby the social malady
were fairly fronted, conquered, put an end to; so that, with
your remedial measure in your pocket, you could then go on
triumphant, and be troubled no farther. "You tell us the evil,"
cry such persons, as if justly aggrieved, "and do not tell us how
it is to be cured!"
How it is to be cured? Brothers, I am sorry I have got
no Morrison's Pill for curing the maladies of Society. It
were infinitely handier if we had a Morrison's Pill, Act of
Parliament, or remedial measure, which men could swallow, one
good time, and then go on in their old courses, cleared from all
miseries and mischiefs! Unluckily we have none such; unluckily
the Heavens themselves, in their rich pharmacopoeia, contain none
such. There will no 'thing' be done that will cure you. There
will a radical universal alteration of your regimen and way of
life take place; there will a most agonising divorce between you
and your chimeras, luxuries and falsities, take place; a most
toilsome, all but 'impossible' return to Nature, and her
veracities, and her integrities, take place: that so the inner
fountains of life may again begin, like eternal Light-fountains,
to irradiate and purify your bloated, swollen, foul existence,
drawing nigh, as at present, to nameless death! Either death or
else all this will take place. Judge if, with such diagnosis,
any Morrison's Pill is like to be discoverable!
But the Life-fountain within you once again set flowing,
what innumerable 'things,' whole sets and classes and continents
of 'things,' year after year, and decade after decade, and
century after century, will then be doable and done! Not
Emigration, Education, Corn-Law Abrogation, Sanitary Regulation,
Land Property-Tax; not these alone, nor a thousand times as much
as these. Good Heavens, there will then be light in the inner
heart of here and there a man, to discern what is just, what is
commanded by the Most High God, what _must_ be done, were it
never so 'impossible.' Vain jargon in favour of the palpably
unjust will then abridge itself within limits. Vain jargon, on
Hustings, in Parliaments or wherever else, when here and there a
man has vision for the essential God's-Truth of the things
jargoned of, will become very vain indeed. The silence of here
and there such a man, how eloquent in answer to such jargon!
Such jargon, frightened at its own gaunt echo, will unspeakably
abate; nay, for a while, may almost in a manner disappear,--the
wise answering it in silence, and even the simple taking cue from
them to hoot it down wherever heard. It will be a blessed time;
and many 'things' will become doable,--and when the brains are
out, an absurdity will die! Not easily again shall a Corn-Law
argue ten years for itself; and still talk and argue, when
impartial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so long back,
they have heard no 'argument' advanced for it but such as might
make the angels and almost the very jackasses weep!--
Wholly a blessed time: when jargon might abate, and here and
there some genuine speech begin. When to the noble opened heart,
as to such heart they alone do, all noble things began to grow
visible; and the difference between just and unjust, between
true and false, between work and sham-work, between speech and
jargon, was once more, what to our happier Fathers it used to be,
_infinite,_--as between a Heavenly thing and an Infernal: the
one a thing which you were _not_ to do, which you were wise not
to attempt doing; which it were better for you to have a
millstone tied round your neck, and be cast into the sea, than
concern yourself with doing!--Brothers, it will not be a
Morrison's Pill, or remedial measure, that will bring all this
about for us.
And yet, very literally, till, in some shape or other, it be
brought about, we remain cureless; till it begin to be brought
about, the cure does not begin. For Nature and Fact, not Redtape
and Semblance, are to this hour the basis of man's life; and on
those, through never such strata of these, man and his life and
all his interests do, sooner or later, infallibly come to rest,--
and to be supported or be swallowed according as they agree with
those. The question is asked of them, not, How do you agree with
Downing-streets and accredited Semblance? but, How do you agree
with God's Universe and the actual Reality of things? This
Universe _has_ its Laws. If we walk according to the Law, the
Law-Maker will befriend us; if not, not. Alas, by no Reform
Bill, Ballot-box, Five-point Charter, by no boxes or bills or
charters, can you perform this alchemy: 'Given a world of Knaves
to produce an Honesty from their united action!' It is a
distillation, once for all, not possible. You pass it through
alembic after alembic, it comes out still a Dishonesty, with a
new dress on it, a new colour to it. 'While we ourselves
continue valets, how can any hero come to govern us?' We are
governed, very infallibly, by the 'sham-hero,'--whose name is
Quack, whose work and governance is Plausibility, and also is
Falsity and Fatuity; to which Nature says, and must say when it
comes to _her_ to speak, eternally No! Nations cease to be
befriended of the Law-Maker, when they walk _not_ according to
the Law. The Sphinx-question remains unsolved by them, becomes
ever more insoluble.
If thou ask again, therefore, on the Morrison's-Pill hypothesis,
What is to be done? allow me to reply: By thee, for the present,
almost nothing. Thou there, the thing for thee to do is, if
possible, to cease to be a hollow sounding-shell of hearsays,
egoisms, purblind dilettantisms; and become, were it on the
infinitely small scale, a faithful discerning soul. Thou shalt
descend into thy inner man, and see if there be any traces of a
_soul_ there; till then there can be nothing done! O brother,
we must if possible resuscitate some soul and conscience in us,
exchange our dilettantisms for sincerities, our dead hearts of
stone for living hearts of flesh. Then shall we discern, not one
thing, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a whole endless host
of things that can be done. _Do_ the first of these; do it;
the second will already have become clearer, doabler; the
second, third and three-thousandth will then have begun to be
possible for us. Not any universal Morrison's Pill shall we
then, either as swallowers or as venders, ask after at all; but
a far different sort of remedies: Quacks shall no more have
dominion over us, but true Heroes and Healers!
Will not that be a thing worthy of 'doing;' to deliver ourselves
from quacks, sham-heroes; to deliver the whole world more and
more from such? They are the one bane of the world. Once clear
the world of them, it ceases to be a Devil's-world, in all fibres
of it wretched, accursed; and begins to be a God's-world,
blessed, and working hourly towards blessedness. Thou for one
wilt not again vote for any quack, do honour to any edge-gilt
vacuity in man's shape: cant shall be known to thee by the sound
of it;--thou wilt fly from cant with a shudder never felt before;
as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil-
worship of this age, more horrible than any other blasphemy,
profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among men.
It is alarming to witness,--in its present completed state! And
Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and
under of the selfsame substance; convertible personages: turn
up your dupe into the proper fostering element, and he
himself can become a quack; there is in him the due prurient
insincerity, open voracity for profit, and closed sense for
truth, whereof quacks too, in all their kinds, are made.
Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero that, of
right and necessity, the valet-world belongs. 'What is to be
done?' The reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking and
swallowing of some 'remedial measure!'