We have seen that as mankind rises in the scale of civilization the body becomes increasingly less important. Nevertheless, I wish it to be clearly understood, that I do not maintain that it is preferable to be ill than well, but only that each state has its own peculiar privileges, which are rarely interchangeable. Health and sickness are merely different roads to achievement. The earth requires rain as well as sunshine; we need both tears and laughter; navvies are necessary and so are philosophers. The book details how people from many professions who had some or other physical disability or pain reached their goals.
By : Caroline Kane Mills Everett (1867 - 1921)
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A very suggestive and intriguing title is “The Privilege of Pain.” Those who know a good deal about the subject will doubtless raise the eyebrow of incredulity, while those who have lived in blissful ignorance will be curious if not wholly sympathetic. When I first heard the essay (since developed into this book) read before an audience of very thoughtful and discriminating women, I fancied, although it awakened the liveliest interest in all present, that there was not entire unanimity as to the essayist’s point of view. Several invalids and semi-invalids wore an expression of modest pride in the eloquent plea that physical limitations had not succeeded in stemming the tide of mental and spiritual achievement in the long history of the world’s progress. Robust ladies, equal to eight hours’ work, and if advisable, eight hours’ play, out of the twenty-four, looked a trifle aggrieved, as if the gift of perfect health had been underrated, and the laurels that had always surmounted their shining hair and glowing faces might be wrested from them and placed on paler brows. They had no wish to shorten the list of the essayist’s heroes, (Heaven forbid!) but they evidently wished to retire to their private libraries and compile a roll of honor from the merely healthy.
However there was no acrimony in the discussion that followed the reading of the paper nor any desire to withhold honor where honor was so gloriously due.
Those who disbelieved in the validity of pain; those who were convinced that mind is not only superior to, but able to win complete triumph over matter; those who felt that laying hold of the Great Source of Healing and Power would enable them not only to deny but to defy pain, these naturally were not completely in accord with the writer.
Myself, I have always thought that the happy waking after dreamless sleep; the exultation in the new day and its appointed task; the sense of vigor and ability to do whatever opportunity offered; the feeling that one could “run and not be weary, could walk and not faint”—that these were the most precious things that the gods could vouchsafe to mankind,—and yet!—What of the latent powers that wake into life when we look into “the bright face of danger”? Our bodies are not commonly the temples that God intended them to be, and yet often an unquenchable fire burns within; an inner flame that incites to effort and achievement, turns the timid slave into the happy warrior. What if the strength born of overcoming should rescue dormant powers equal to those that exist where there is no effort save that engendered by abounding vitality? After all life is an obstacle race to most of us. Who knows whether the horse could make a spectacular jump had he not often been confronted by bar, gate, hurdle and hedge? I wonder how many great things have been carved, painted, written, conceived, invented, where the creative human being has never suffered, but has been sheltered, lapped in ease, the burden lifted from his shoulders? I wonder if the eye that is seldom wet with tears is ever truly capable of the highest vision?
I think that my own unregenerate watchword would be: “All for health and the world well lost!” so I am by no means a special pleader, even yet, for the “privilege of pain”; but Mrs. Everett’s enthusiasm and the ardor of her conviction compels a new and more sympathetic understanding of her thesis.
I have more often seen spiritual than intellectual exaltation follow pain, but both were present in one woman, half-poet, half-saint, whose verses were written in intense suffering, as indeed were most of W. E. Henley’s.
With closed eyes and pale lips she once quoted to me:
“Angel of Pain! I think thy face
Will be in all the Heavenly Place
The earliest face that I shall see
And swiftest face to smile on me!”
“How is it possible for you to say it?” I asked brokenly.
“Because,” she answered, “all dreams and all visions have come to me, as well as all that I know of earth and heaven, through pain. It opens windows in what would otherwise be blank walls!”
The blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, crippled (if so be it the soul is strong) seem to develop a splendid fighting spirit unknown to those who, apparently, have complete command of all their powers. Take one sense away and the others spring, full-armored, into more active service. Rob them of a right hand and the underrated left becomes doubly skilful. These are soldiers in the “army with banners,” and should be led and followed by acclaiming hosts.
I have known hundreds of invalids more or less saintly, but I have had personal friendship with only two completely joyous, triumphant ones,—Robert Louis Stevenson and Helen Keller. If “one with God is a majority,” then two such conquering human creatures as these furnish inspiration for our generation, and Mrs. Everett in her eager search has found hundreds of similar examples. For that reason I call this a unique, gallant, courageous, helpful little book, likely to give pluck and spirit to many readers handicapped by various ills! There is nothing patient, meek, or resigned in its pages; no air of being crushed-but-still-smiling; it simply radiates a plucky, chin-in-the-air atmosphere calculated to make an aching hand pick up its pen, brush, lump of clay or shovel and go to work; not grimly and doggedly, with lips set, but glowing in triumph over the secret adversary.
The magnificent company marshalled by Mrs. Everett has an exhilarating effect upon the hearer or reader. As I listened to instance after instance of weakness gloriously transmuted into strength; of personal grief and sorrow turned into joy for the whole world; of vast knowledge, spiritual and intellectual, amassed bit by bit in the very grip of physical suffering, I remembered the poetic pronouncement in Revelation.
“He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
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