11 September: Boreham on Being Alive

The Alternatives of Life
A proverb so ancient that the earliest classical writers quote it as having been rescued from the dust of a still more hoary antiquity, declares that a living dog is better than a dead lion. In its original setting, the aphorism probably was intended to express our insatiable love of life. It is humanity's master passion. It animates us at every point. It is because of that infatuation that we see so much beauty in the dawning of a new day and find so wealthy a romance in the unfolding of the Spring.

Indeed, we only recognise the strength of the hold that life has upon us when there is some question of its extinction. Let a man stand on the seashore and, unable to help, watch an exhausted swimmer struggle desperately in the seething waters; let him look up and follow the movements of a steeplejack as he climbs a dizzy spire; let him visit a circus and see an artiste hazard his life in the course of some sensational performance; and, for the moment, he will find his heart in his mouth. The blood will forsake his face; he will be filled with trepidation and palpitation; he can scarcely breathe. And why? The people in peril are nothing to him; life for him would go on just the same whether they lived or died. The same thing often happens when we become engrossed in a novel. The hero is in deadly danger. We know that, in point of fact, the personage about whom we are so alarmed is merely the frolic of an author's fancy. Yet the fate of that imaginary wraith so affects us that, for the moment, the mind loses its hold upon realities in order to concentrate upon a fight among shadows. How are we to account for this apparent absurdity?

The Logic Of A False Antithesis
Whether we realise it or not, life is unutterably precious to us. That alone explains the fascination of all tales of romance and adventure. "With man, as with animals," says Dr. James Martineau, "death is the evil from which he himself most shrinks, and which he most deplores for those he loves; it is the utmost that he can inflict upon his enemy and the maximum which the penal justice of society can award to its criminals. It is the fear of death which gives their vivid interest to all hairbreadth escapes, in the shipwreck or amid the glaciers or in the fight; and it is man's fear of death that supplies the chief tragic element in all his art." Let any man analyse the emotions with which he studies history or poetry, fact or fiction, his newspaper or his novel, and he will find that this subtle element governs all his reactions.

Returning to the proverb, however, there are those who regard it as a morsel of prehistoric cynicism. The real contrast between the two animals is not the contrast arising from the circumstance that the dog is alive whilst the lion is dead. Life and death are common to both: it is merely a matter of tense. A dead lion has been a living lion, whilst a living dog will be a dead dog some day. The thing that distinguishes the one beast from the other is not the present or past possession of life, but the fact that the one is canine, whilst the other is leonine. Viewed in this light, the proverb is a cynic's way of averring that life is worth having at any price.

It is possible, under this interpretation of things, to pay too much for the privilege of being alive. Everything has its price; it is easy to buy our goods on too high a market. One man pays too much for popularity; he sells his conscience for it. Another pays too much for fame; it costs him his health. A third buys his money too dearly; in gaining the whole world he loses his own soul. In Oriental literature—to which the dog, as man's faithful and intimate companion, was unknown—the animal is employed as an emblem of the contemptible. The lion, on the other hand, is invariably the symbol of the courageous. The cynic, quoting the proverb, declares that it is better to be a living coward than a dead hero. The finest instincts of the race rise in protest against that contention.

Deathless Dead May Shame The Lifeless Living
In his "Silence of Dean Maitland," Maxwell Gray shows that life may be bought at too high a price. Cyril Maitland had committed a murder; yet all the circumstances pointed to the guilt of his innocent friend, Henry Everard. Maitland felt every day that it was his duty to confess; but the lure of life was too strong for him. Besides, he was a minister, and his confession would whelm his sacred office in shame. Through the years, Everard languished in gaol, whilst Mattland advanced in popularity and won swift preferment. But life was a torture to him. He felt that death—even the death of the gallows—would be infinitely preferable. And, after suffering agonies such as Everard in prison never knew, he at last made a clean breast of his guilt and, with infinite relief, laid down the life for which he had surrendered his honour.

The real alternative, therefore, is not between life and death, for life and death come in turn to dog and lion alike. The real question is between an existence that is canine in its servility and an existence that is leonine in its nobility. Seeing Artemus Ward looking about the polling-booth in evident perplexity, the returning officer proffered his assistance. "I want to vote for Henry Clay," explained Ward. The astounded official reminded him that Clay had been many years dead. "I know," retorted Ward, "but I'd rather vote for Henry Clay dead than for either of these men living!" In that whimsical outburst, the eminent humourist exploded the fallacy underlying the cynicism of the proverb. The question of life or death is not involved. The thing that matters is not the possession of life, which is, at some time or other, enjoyed by both dog and lion, but its quality and character. Shall life be contemptible or courageous? "I looked," says the last of the Biblical writers, "and behold a Lion— the Lion of the Tribe of Judah!" With the nobility of a lion He lived; with the courage of a lion He died; and in leonine splendour He leads His knightly hosts through the sublimities and infinities of the life everlasting.

F W Boreham

Image: Leonine splendour