Philosophies

These verses were written in India between the years 1881 and 1899, mostly during my researches on malaria. Friends who have read that part of them which is called In Exile complained that they could not easily follow the movement of it; and as I am now publishing the poems together with a text-book on malaria—and also because I desire very strongly to rid my mind of this subject which has occupied it for twenty years—I take the opportunity to give such explanation of the work as I can find expression for.

In 1881 I joined the military medical service of India, and was called upon to serve during the next seven years in Madras, Bangalore, Burma, and the Andaman Islands. Having abundant leisure, I occupied most of it in the study of various sciences and arts, in all of which I attempted some works to the best of my ability. For this I make no excuse to my conscience, since to my mind art and science are the same, and efforts in both, however poor the result may be, are to be commended more than idleness. Near the end of the seven years, however, I began to be drawn toward certain thoughts which from the first had occurred to me in my profession, especially as to the cause of the widespread sickness and of the great misery and decadence of the people of India. Racked by poverty, swept by epidemics, housed in hovels, ruled by superstitions, they presented the spectacle of an ancient civilisation fallen for centuries into decay. One saw there both physical and mental degeneration. Since the time of the early mathematicians science had died; and since that of the great temples art had become ornament, and religion dogma. Here was the living picture of the fate which destroyed Greece, Rome, and Spain; and I saw in it the work of nescience—the opposite of science. . . . Returning to Britain in 1888, I qualified myself for pathological researches, and about 1890 or 1891 entered upon a careful study of malarial fever, in the hope of finding out accurately how it is caused and may be prevented. On August 20, 1897, I was fortunate enough to find the clue to the problem—which, I believe, would not have been discovered but for such good fortune; and the next year I ascertained the principal facts which I had been in search of.

These poems are the notes of the wayside. As for In Exile, I do not remember the date—but it was early in the course of the labour—when my thoughts began to shape themselves into a kind of sonnet of three short stanzas. It was a pleasure and relief after the day’s work to mould them thus, for each set of stanzas required a different balance and structure within its narrow limits, and was, so to speak, inscribed on small squares of stone, to be put away and arranged thereafter. Later, when my researches had attained to success, a sudden disastrous interruption of them compelled me to set aside the verses also, and it was not until nine years afterwards that I found time to arrange them for rough printing. They were then put nearly in the order of writing, some fragments being finished but most omitted. I have blamed myself for this, because the omissions give to the whole a more sombre cast than is natural to me, or than I had intended; but now I judge I was right in it. The poem, such as it is, is not a diary in verse, but rather the figure of a work and of a philosophy. . . . I find I cannot rise with those who would soar above reason in the chase of something supernal. Infinities and absolutes are still beyond us; though we may hope to come nearer to them some day by the patient study of little things. Our first duty is the opposite of that which many prophets enjoin upon us—or so I think. We must not accept any speculations merely because they now appear pleasant, flattering, or ennobling to us. We must be content to creep upwards step by step; planting each foot on the firmest finding of the moment; using the compass and such other instruments as we have; observing without either despair or contempt the clouds and precipices above and beneath us. Especially our duty at present is to better our present foothold; to investigate; to comprehend the forces of nature; to set our state rationally in order; to stamp down disease in body, mind, and government; to lighten the monstrous misery of our fellows, not by windy dogmas, but by calm science. The sufferings of the world are due to this, that we despise those plain earthly teachers, reason, work, and discipline. Lost in many speculations, we leave our house disordered, unkept, and dirty. We indulge too much in dreams; in politics which organise not prosperity but contention; in philosophies which expressly teach irrationalism, fakirism, and nescience. The poor fakir seated begging by the roadside; with his visions—and his sores! Such is man. . . . An old philosophy this—like the opposite one. The poem gathers itself under it and attempts to use the great symbols of that wonderful Land, the drought, the doubt, the pains of self, the arid labour, the horrors of whole nations diseased, the crime of Nescience, parodying God’s words, and the victory of His thunder and rain.