No More Learning

There is not a single
degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a
spiritualising of the soul.

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite simply, and
without affectation that the two great turning-points in my life were
when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. I
will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to
me: for that phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself.
I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child
of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I
turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life
to good.

What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. The
important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I have to
do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred, and
incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to
make it part of me, to accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance.
The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realised is right.

When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget
who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am
that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try
on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know
that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be
haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that
are meant for me as much as for anybody else--the beauty of the sun and
moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence
of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping
over the grass and making it silver--would all be tainted for me, and
lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To
regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development.
To deny
one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It
is no less than a denial of the soul.

For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and
unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and
converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful
muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of
the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive
functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and
passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay,
more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often
reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or
destroy.

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I must
frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things I shall
have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a
punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just
as well never have been punished at all. Of course there are many things
of which I was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many
things of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater
number of things in my life for which I was never indicted at all. And
as the gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us
as much as for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one
is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have
no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, or should
help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about either. And
if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall
be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the
air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length,
like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched
that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of
society that it should force them to do so. Society takes upon itself
the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also
has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has
done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that
is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty
towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns
those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they
cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an
irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have
suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that
there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.