So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.
–Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Yesterday evening I learned of the passing of a man whom I met by chance, whom I saw only a few times – perhaps ten in all – but whom I mourn nonetheless.
He was the brother of my Mother’s caregiver during the last two years of her life, and because her caretaker had no car, he served both as her driver and my Mother’s, shuttling her to the ever-more-frequent doctors’ appointments which came to constitute her sole escape from the confines of home, where she lived as a shut-in during her final years.
It is both easy and simultaneously difficult to articulate the qualities possessed by such a human being, and equally difficult to distinguish among “decent,” “good,” and “pure” when it comes to character. We can say, for example, that someone was a “decent” human being and mean no more than that they were born, grew to adulthood, and eventually passed without overtly harming others– they went to school and made friends; they went to church regularly; they attended their children’s softball and basketball games and cheered (or booed); they were adequate colleagues/friends in the sense that they never caused (serious) problems for others (or for themselves – a corollary).
When someone we know well, but perhaps not intimately – a friend, a former classmate, a fellow churchgoer – has passed and we say, not altogether unconventionally, that they were a “good” human being, we may be recalling their kindness to us and ours, or their generosity in giving of their time and/or money to charitable (“good”) causes, or their generally upbeat personality. Not only did they not cause problems, they endeavored to lighten the burdens of the afflicted.
What I have in mind is of an entirely different order of being than the decent or the good, though doubtless we mourn their passing as well. The pure soul – goodness incarnate, if you will – somehow touches the soul (or subconscious) of all those with whom they come in contact, even if fleetingly, in such a way that the other is uplifted spiritually (without any overt reference to religiosity) – in other words, by coming into contact with such an individual, we ourselves become better people, receiving the momentary gift of some small share of the other’s all-embracing compassion and empathy, their profound humanity.
Perhaps it is easier to characterize this (innate?) quality in the negative: such individuals are the living embodiment of the Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm” and carry it to the next logical level: “Do only good.” Such individuals embrace the life they are given with grace, even if that life, when viewed by an outsider, seems very cruel and unjust.
In the case of the man whom I mourn, he had to contend with crushing poverty from birth, a poverty which despite his intelligence – an intelligence which shone through in the knowing twinkle of his eyes, in his gentle sense of irony (a difficult rhetorical mode to recognize, let alone master), in his ability to chide without ever causing pain – precluded the college degree he might easily have earned; with ill health from an early age, which relegated him to Social Security Disability Insurance twenty or more years before normal retirement age; with tragedy in love. Such misfortunes grind down many of our fellows, who effectively give up and give in to bitterness, envy, depression and despair – a (justified) conviction that fate and the world have wronged them grievously. The man whom I mourn could easily be excused for having succumbed to such feelings and that at an early age, but he didn’t. I never once heard him complain of ill fortune (Bernard Williams’ [bad] “moral luck”; what a strange phrase for “accident of birth”). Rather, he smiled and made light of his problems, without ever pretending that they hadn’t determined the course of his life – this would have been hypocritical and dishonest, and he was neither.
He never said anything unkind about another human being, though he was not unaware that unkindness – meanness, pettiness, jealousy – was present in some, perhaps many, of those he encountered throughout life. How could it have been otherwise? But he had the preternatural gift of seeing beyond all these human frailties to the essence, the core humanity of his fellow human beings however wounded, suffering, angry or bitter.
During the final year of his life, he underwent numerous surgical interventions to lengthen his life long enough for him to become eligible for a heart transplant. I had spoken with him just a week before he and his sister – who called him “my brother and my best friend” – had an appointment scheduled to begin the process officially. Our call came on his birthday, and we had a lovely chat in which I promised to call him regularly once he received his new heart and had entered rehab.
But his other organs began failing just at that moment, making him ineligible for a transplant even had he somehow managed to survive multiple organ failure.
His siblings’ FB pages announced his passing, and there were comments about his having joined the angels, that heavenly choir privileged to sing the praises of God. Within an hour of the announcement, there were dozens of expressions of condolence – all for a man who hadn’t been active in the working world in fifteen years, who for the last two years of his life was scarcely able to leave his home at all, whose circle had essentially shrunk to his extended family during that period. But none of the commenters were family members – like myself, they were people who’d known him through church, or in some cases through his siblings, or who’d met him purely by chance as I had.
Such human beings do walk among us; we may sense something in their nature that sets them apart, but by and large they pass unseen, unheeded. They are not the captains of industry or the masters of the universe. Yet it is they who call out to the better angels of our natures, should we choose to attend.
When teaching English literature, I had occasion to teach Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd. Eventually, the experience of rereading and conveying what I understood as the meaning of the novella became so painful that I removed it from the class syllabus.
Briefly, Billy Budd portrays the prototypical struggle of Good against Evil in the context of Melville’s favored background, that of seafaring men. The humble sailor Billy Budd symbolizes pure, unalloyed Good; the Bellipotent’s master-at-arms John Claggert symbolizes Evil, with mediation both actual and symbolic provided by the ship’s captain Edward Fairfax “Starry” Vere. The captain, who convokes a court-martial after Billy accidentally kills Claggert after the latter falsely accuses him of mutinous intentions, admits that Billy was morally innocent but legally guilty and condemns him to death. Not long afterward, the Bellipotent becomes engaged in another battle during which Vere is fatally wounded. He dies shortly after being brought ashore, and the last words he utters are “Billy Budd, Billy Budd.”
Melville had a hard time writing the novella, and died before he finished it. Apart from the fact that he had difficulty finding the right words to convey the meanings he sought, he appears to have been undecided about how to complete the novella with respect to Billy’s character in particular. One ending is the one we know; another contained no suggestion of Billy’s moral purity but rather characterized him as a traitor in law and fact.
Leaving aside the topical issues Melville treated in the novella – the problem of mutiny on late 18th-century British ships, the problem of the death penalty (which was being debated around the time the novella was being drafted [1886-1891]), the enigmatic significance of Billy’s extraordinary physical beauty and its grip on Claggert, which has engendered a popular line of criticism focusing on the story’s homoeroticism, our own sense of the story is that, as noted above, Billy and Claggert are recognizable symbols of Good and Evil (modern critics have called Claggert a “psychopath”), while Captain Vere symbolizes the fine line that must be walked between the two by those in positions of authority and power. Vere is the man who is neither all good nor all evil – in this sense, he represents most men – but he possesses the experience, background and abilities to recognize both good and evil in his fellow-man. Those in positions of authority who wield considerable power over others – and the ship captain was a perfect example of such power in the late 18th and early 19th centuries – had to be be able to recognize and judge all types of men under their command; to be an astute judge of character was as important as expertise in seamanship.
Those like Billy of pure soul cannot deal with the psychically corrupt (the novella refers to Claggert’s “depravity”) because they literally cannot conceive of evil in others. This inability – it is a sort of moral blindness, perhaps – precludes them from wielding worldly power or authority.
On the other hand, the corrupt of soul should never wield power or authority; their narcissism prevents them from seeing the good in others as they project their own envy (Claggert’s form of moral depravity), lust, avarice – whatever of the seven deadly sins to which they are most inclined – onto those they lead. Only chaos and destruction will ensue when the psychically and morally bankrupt find themselves in positions of power.
We might wish that all human beings could be like the man I mourn, rather like humankind might have been before the Fall. We may wonder why there are human beings who have fallen as far from grace as Claggert – or the many others we encounter in stronger or weaker form throughout our lives. But our salvation – a bitter one, indeed – can only be found in those who hold both good and evil within themselves, i.e. those who are “fully human,” and who by dint of knowledge, ability and experience can harness the latent good that lies within their fellows in service of overcoming the equally-latent evil for the betterment of all.
(Note: This was the sense of the hope expressed in the closing paragraph of Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural Address in 1861: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Lincoln did not invent the phrase, but his use of it has made it famous.)
Why were Vere’s dying words “Billy Budd, Billy Budd”? We suggest that Vere, in obeying the law of man, recognized that he had transgressed the higher moral law in sacrificing a man depicted both as innocent of the actual crime of attempted mutiny and as spiritually innocent, an “innocent of God,” symbolized outwardly by his beauty and spiritually by the spontaneous love Billy’s fellow-sailors felt in his presence.
Mourning is mixed with profound gratitude today, gratitude at having been granted the privilege of having known such a man.
The lyrics to this famous hymn seem especially apt:
When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul
It is well (it is well)
With my soul (with my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come
Let this blest assurance control
That Christ (yes, He has) has regarded my helpless estate
And has shed His own blood for my soul
It is well (it is well)
With my soul (with my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul
