 Chapter 18 and 19 of The Privilege of Pain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Beth Thomas The Privilege of Pain by Carolyn Cain Mills Everett Chapter 18 Pain, The Great Teacher What does he know? said a sage who has not suffered That we may be benefited by physical suffering is no new idea. It is not even a forgotten idea. From the time when civilization first expressed itself in terms of Christianity until the Reformation, the spiritual value of pain has been an undisputed axiom. The Catholic Church has never ceased to preach the modification of the flesh and all religious communities, heathen as well as Christian, consider a certain degree of asceticism necessary for the perfect manifestation of a spiritual life. As to the merits of voluntary suffering inflicted for the purpose of subjugating the appetites of the body, Christendom differs fundamentally but until recently it has been united in regarding illness as one of the means by which providence purifies as well as punishes its children. The discovery of the germ, even more than the preaching of Mrs. Eddie dealt a terrific blow to this ancient belief with the result that the masses no longer regard physical suffering as a remedial agency but as something not only unprofitable but purely destructive. For more than 30 years the final abolition of pain has been the mecca towards which doctors and Christian scientists have passionately journeyed. Moreover, their ranks have been swelled by numerous sects, schools or religious bodies that have been called into existence by the rallying cry of this new hope. They pointed to the declining death rate as an irrefutable testimony of battles already won and as disease after disease disappeared before the advance of sanitation of serums or of right thought as surgery developed unheard of possibilities the most limitless expectations seemed not unjustified. The natural infirmities of age must eventually yield before the onslaught of knowledge bolder spirits even dreamed of conquest over death. Then the world war came. Their boasted death rate mounted to unheard of heights the maimed and blind overflowed from the hospitals under the furthest corners of the earth. Still the havoc was not complete infantile paralysis came from the north killing and crippling our children by thousands. Finally influenza mowed down old and young in such numbers that even here in America it was impossible to care for all the victims. One would have expected these facts to be a staggering blow to our theorists. Could they not have realized, if only dimly, that they were battling against some fundamental law? Evidently not, for according to them war is to be abolished. Not only that, but Dr. Voronoff now offers an infallible cure for old age. Now, as I said before, I neither believe that physical suffering will ever be abolished nor do I even hope it. For pain is one of the great human and humanizing experiences and since the beginning of time each generation has learned in its school the same fundamental lessons. When a man is laboring under the pain of any distemper it is then that he recollects there is a God and that he is but a man. No mortal is in the object of his envy, his admiration or his contempt and having no malice to gratify the tales of slander excite him not. This is the testimony of a heathen, Pliny, who was himself an invalid. Sixteenth centuries later an Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor voiced a similar conviction. In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. At first she unties the strings of vanity that have made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy. Even during the materialistic 19th century we find Dr. Samuel Smiles declaring suffering is doubtless as divinely appointed as joy while it is much more influential as a discipline of character. It chastens and sweetens the nature, teaches patience and resignation and promotes the deepest as well as the most exalted thoughts. Laterally there have been indications that this time-honoured conception is again becoming more universally recognized. For instance, during the darkest days of the war the Bishop of London writes that he had come to believe that a painless world is a world not regenerate but degenerate. Who shall say that the revival of religious feeling which is now taking place is not due to the physical and mental suffering entailed by the war? I should like to linger on the spiritual value of suffering yet I feel I am on very delicate ground for the spirit is so gloriously independent of the flesh that it can expand under any circumstances and in any habitation. St Hildegard believed God could not dwell in a healthy body and St Ignatius Loyola that a healthy mind in a healthy body is the best instrument with which to serve God yet he himself had a shattered body. The efficacy of suffering in promoting the growth of the spirit seems to me to lie chiefly in the fact that it does for us what we so seldom have the courage to do for ourselves. It sweeps away all the rubbish and dust of life. In the blessed emptiness induced by this mental house cleaning we are able often for the first time to separate clearly the essential from the unessential. In sickness soul and body demand instinctively only that which is for each its most imperative necessity. In the crucible of suffering the true essence of our character becomes manifest. All our pitiable pretenses are torn from us leaving our inherent self face to face with reality. It is a tremendous experience it must either break us or make us. It is for us to choose which it shall be. Suffering is the ultimate test of character. Yet as I write these words I find myself wondering if there is any one ultimate test. As no two crystals react to the same solvent so it may be that no two hearts respond to the same probe. Of one thing nevertheless I am certain. To each of us is applied at some time in our lives that which constitutes for the individual soul the supreme trial of its metal. I am frequently reminded however that there are countless people instead of being purified and sensitized by physical pain have been destroyed or at least rendered sterile by it. This is undoubtedly true. Whether we are to profit by suffering or not depends entirely on ourselves. How then are we to transmute pain into privilege? Certainly not through resignation for there is no virtue without action. It may only be the interior travail of the spirit but to attain even the initial step to spiritual, intellectual or material advancement necessitates labour. So it is with the benefits of suffering. They are there within the reach of all but can only be obtained as the wage of persistent endeavour. Resignation is not merely inactive. It is positively harmful in as much as it is a tacit acknowledgement that pain is in itself an evil. And to believe that is to stultify its possibilities. For what we believe to be evil no matter how innocent in itself becomes so by the corrosive power of that belief. It is a dogma of Christianity that disease is one of the punitive consequences of original sin. Now punishment implies correction. Therefore if disease represents a fall from perfection it also holds within it the germs of a future perfection. Although theology teaches sin as the inception of disease yet if we consider only the immediate cause of our physical disabilities we will find that although they are frequently the result of breaking a moral law they are quite as frequently to be attributed to no fault of our own and may even be the emblem of sacrifice. If so many fail to benefit through suffering we must remember that only a few of us are able to sustain the daily test of life. Every experience, especially any great and unusual experience is a fire through which few pass unscathed. Beauty, charm, riches, personality even intellect have each their separate temptation their different limitations. It is so easy for the spirit to sleep contented within the soft prison of a perfect body. Super abundant health and vitality unless guided by infinite wisdom are as likely to cast us into the abyss of life as to raise us to the summit. Power fosters pride and charm is the twin sister of vanity. Life is a continuous trial of our strength but disease is not necessarily the supreme trial. It was George Elliot who said there is nothing the body suffers the soul may not profit by. Chapter 19 Conclusion We have seen that as mankind rises in the scale of civilization the body becomes increasingly less important. Nevertheless I wish it to be clearly understood that I do not maintain that it is preferable to be ill than well but only that each state has its own peculiar privileges which are rarely interchangeable. Health and sickness are merely different roads to achievement. The earth requires rain as well as sunshine. We need both tears and laughter. Navies are necessary and so are philosophers. You may therefore reasonably ask why if suffering is indispensable to humanity doctors and sociologists should spend themselves and their lives in attempting to banish it from the world. Because if pain is the gate through which we must pass to attain certain experiences and realisations to battle against it is undoubtedly the road to others. To endure pain and to relieve pain are both instrumental in freeing us from the prison of ourselves and freedom from self is the only real freedom. Moreover whatever ameliorates human conditions whether serums or sanitation free concerts or fireless cookers results in losing us from the thralldom of the body. The race reaches towards an ideal of ultimate perfection just as a plant stretches upward towards the sun. Both are unattainable yet all activity would cease if we demanded nothing less than absolute and indestructible achievement. The tide flows only to Ebb. The field must be sown anew year after year. We build cities knowing that time will eventually destroy them. We bear children doomed to death. But after the Ebb comes the tide bringing ever new treasures to our shores. The germ of spring lies hidden in the barren breast of autumn. Out of the ashes of vast cities still greater cities will arise and death is but the portal of life. No physical disablement is a barrier to achievement. This is the glorious fact which the illustrious men and women I have enumerated have proved beyond the possibility of dispute. To cripple and hunchback to blind, deaf and dumb to those chained to a mattress grave and to those who have been mentally unbalanced they have bequeathed this precious legacy of hope. On the other hand we can no longer plead our infirmities as an excuse for our weakness our sterility or failure. For whatever may be our disablement we can find in history a parallel debility triumphantly transmuted into strength. The End End of The Privilege of Pain by Carolyn Cain Mills Everett