12 December: Boreham on Alexander Selkirk

The Glory of an Island
It was on December 12 that Alexander Selkirk, the man whose experiences as a castaway suggested "Robinson Crusoe," passed for ever from an adventurous world. Islands have drawbacks and difficulties peculiar to themselves; but, for all that, there is something to be said for insularity. How, otherwise, are we to explain the fascination that islands—and especially small islands—hold for us all?

To a schoolboy there is nothing more tantalising, more challenging, more alluring, than a tiny islet in midstream. The creek near his home broadens out, it may be, and divides itself into twin channels, encircling a little speck of land some 30 or 40 feet in diameter. He will never be happy until, by fair means or by foul, he has landed on that lonely spot. His favourite classics have to do with romantic experiences on islands only a few sizes larger. "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure Island," "The Blue Lagoon," "Enoch Arden," "The Swiss Family Robinson"—such works have an extraordinary hold upon his affections. And, as long as he lives, his emotions are stirred to a remarkable degree whenever he happens to find himself standing on some solitary rock or jagged reef with a waste of water surging all around him.

It is largely the instinct of lordship, the instinct that leads a boy to revel in the companionship of his dog. The boy, exulting in the sense of authority, loves to command; the dog delights no less in being commanded; the partnership is perfect. On a desert island, whatever its size, one is master of all and subject to none. He declaims with heartfelt fervour Cowper's lines concerning Alexander Selkirk:

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none, to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

One man, all alone, on one acre of isolated soil, feels himself to be a monarch; a thousand men on a thousand acres are mediocrities; a million men on a million acres are little better than so many mice.

The Insulating Force of Individuality
We all live island lives. The essential splendour of humanity lies in the intensity of the personal equation. The stars, Paul says, differ from one another in glory; but not as men do. The difference between this star and that star is as nothing compared with the difference between this dog and that dog; whilst the difference between this dog and that dog is a negligible quantity compared with the difference between this man and that man.

And, just because man's individuality is the hallmark of his superiority, it follows that, by that very individuality, he is doomed to an isolation such as stars and dogs never know. Every man has been made to feel at some time or other that the idiosyncrasies incidental to his personality place an unbridgeable chasm between himself and his most intimate friends. Each separate ego is dreadfully alone in the universe. Each separate "I" is without conterpart in all the ages. In the deepest sense we are each fatherless and childless; we have no kith or kin.

Life is strangely contradictory. In a way, we are gregarious creatures; we are extraordinarily sensitive to the magnetism of the crowd; like the animals, we go in herds, and packs, and flocks; we club together; we form our cliques and groups and parties; we marry and surround ourselves with offspring and kinsfolk. All this tends to the continental rather than the insular; it destroys all sense of solitude by incorporating us in the general community. The individual thread is woven into the common fabric.

Yet experience shows that, the more successful a man is and the more ties he forms, the more he becomes conscious of a certain intellectual and spiritual isolation. By a law that is as final as the law of gravitation, we pay a price for all the progress that we make; and those who attain the loftiest eminence pay the heaviest penalties of all. Men achieve the splendour of their destinies by constant processes of elimination and segregation.

Elevation The Complement Of Isolation
It is a commonplace of human speech that there is always room at the top. That being so, it follows that the crowd is always at the bottom, and that, the higher we ascend, the more solitary we become. Rove among the foothills and you will find them dotted with busy little towns and villages; but clamber to the snowclad height above and you will have the dizzy pinnacle all to yourself.

In a dainty poem, Wordsworth compares the skylark with the nightingale. The nightingale is content to remain amidst the shades of the leafy wood and has no lack of company. All the tits and the finches and the robins and the wrens are twittering and whistling and singing in the branches around her. The lark, on the contrary, soars skyward, and the blue is all her own.
If, however, it is true that exaltations have their isolations, it is also true that isolations have their compensations. Solitude leads to vision and contemplation and self-realisation. The snowclad peak may be solitary, but look at the spread panorama unrolled at the climber's feet!

Isolations are designed as illuminations. The Bible closes with the story of an exile on an island, but his incarceration gave us an apocalyptic revelation. The most radiant Figure earth has known had hosts of friends; then seventy; then twelve; then three; then none. But it was when all His disciples forsook Him and fled that He achieved His divine ambition and became the Saviour of the world.

F W Boreham

Image: Statue of Alexander Selkirk