Aaron's Rod, D. H. Lawrence [book recommendations for young adults .TXT] 📗

only develop it. You can only stick to your own very self, and NEVER betray it. And by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery.

“Remember this, my boy: you’ve never got to deny the Holy Ghost which is inside you, your own soul’s self. Never. Or you’ll catch it. And you’ve never got to think you’ll dodge the responsibility of your own soul’s self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning—or even anarchising and throwing bombs. You never will. . . .”

Aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words. Then he said smiling:

“So I’d better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had I?”

“Oh, yes. If your soul’s urge urges you to love, then love. But always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own soul’s impulse. It’s no good trying to act by prescription: not a bit. And it’s no use getting into frenzies. If you’ve got to go in for love and passion, go in for them. But they aren’t the goal. They’re a mere means: a life-means, if you will. The only goal is the fulfilling of your own soul’s active desire and suggestion. Be passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and deeply sensual as far as you can be. Small souls have a small sensuality, deep souls a deep one. But remember, all the time, the responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action.”

“I never said it didn’t,” said Aaron.

“You never said it did. You never accepted. You thought there was something outside, to justify you: God, or a creed, or a prescription. But remember, your soul inside you is your only Godhead. It develops your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells. And the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers. And these are your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your developing consciousness. You don’t know beforehand, and you can’t. You can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin.

“You are your own Tree of Life, roots and limbs and trunk. Somewhere within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its own innate Holy Ghost. And this Holy Ghost puts forth new buds, and pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves. And the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to fall. But they must, if the tree-soul says so. . . .”

They had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall. Aaron listened more to the voice than the words. It was more the sound value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech-music which sank into him. The sense he hardly heeded. And yet he understood, he knew. He understood, oh so much more deeply than if be had listened with his head. And he answered an objection from the bottom of his soul.

“But you talk,” he said, “as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves in the world. We aren’t. If we love, it needs another person than ourselves. And if we hate, and even if we talk.”

“Quite,” said Lilly. “And that’s just the point. We’ve got to love and hate moreover—and even talk. But we haven’t got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that’s the only mode. It is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. It is so obviously not the case. Yet we try and make it so.”

“I feel that,” said Aaron. “It’s all a lie.”

“It’s worse. It’s a half lie. But listen. I told you there were two urges—two great life-urges, didn’t I? There may be more. But it comes on me so strongly, now, that there are two: love, and power. And we’ve been trying to work ourselves, at least as individuals, from the love-urge exclusively, hating the power-urge, and repressing it. And now I find we’ve got to accept the very thing we’ve hated.

“We’ve exhausted our love-urge, for the moment. And yet we try to force it to continue working. So we get inevitably anarchy and murder. It’s no good. We’ve got to accept the power motive, accept it in deep responsibility, do you understand me? It is a great life motive. It was that great dark power-urge which kept Egypt so intensely living for so many centuries. It is a vast dark source of life and strength in us now, waiting either to issue into true action, or to burst into cataclysm. Power—the power-urge. The will-to-power—but not in Nietzsche’s sense. Not intellectual power. Not mental power. Not conscious will-power. Not even wisdom. But dark, living, fructifying power. Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Aaron.

“Take what you call love, for example. In the real way of love, the positive aim is to make the other person—or persons—happy. It devotes itself to the other or to others. But change the mode. Let the urge be the urge of power. Then the great desire is not happiness, neither of the beloved nor of oneself. Happiness is only one of many states, and it is horrible to think of fixing us down to one state. The urge of power does not seek for happiness any more than for any other state. It urges from within, darkly, for the displacing of the old leaves, the inception of the new. It is powerful and self- central, not seeking its centre outside, in some God or some beloved, but acting indomitably from within itself.

“And of course there must be one who urges, and one who is impelled. Just as in love there is a beloved and a lover: The man is supposed to be the lover, the woman the beloved. Now, in the urge of power, it is the reverse. The woman must submit, but deeply, deeply submit. Not to any foolish fixed authority, not to any foolish and arbitrary will. But to something deep, deeper. To the soul in its dark motion of power and pride. We must reverse the poles. The woman must now submit— but deeply, deeply, and richly! No subservience. None of that. No slavery. A deep, unfathomable free submission.”

“You’ll never get it,” said Aaron.

“You will, if you abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will. That’s where Nietzsche was wrong. His was the conscious and benevolent will, in fact, the love-will. But the deep power-urge is not conscious of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously benevolent or love- directed.—Whatever else happens, somewhere, sometime, the deep power- urge in man will have to issue forth again, and woman will submit, livingly, not subjectedly.”

“She never will,” persisted Aaron. “Anything else will happen, but not that.”

“She will,” said Lilly, “once man disengages himself from the love- mode, and stands clear. Once he stands clear, and the other great urge begins to flow in him, then the woman won’t be able to resist. Her own soul will wish to yield itself.”

“Woman yield—?” Aaron re-echoed.

“Woman—and man too. Yield to the deep power-soul in the individual man, and obey implicitly. I don’t go back on what I said before. I do believe that every man must fulfil his own soul, every woman must be herself, herself only, not some man’s instrument, or some embodied theory. But the mode of our being is such that we can only live and have our being whilst we are implicit in one of the great dynamic modes. We MUST either love, or rule. And once the love-mode changes, as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its persistence, then the other mode will take place in us. And there will be profound, profound obedience in place of this love-crying, obedience to the incalculable power-urge. And men must submit to the greater soul in a man, for their guidance: and women must submit to the positive power-soul in man, for their being.”

“You’ll never get it,” said Aaron.

“You will, when all men want it. All men say, they want a leader. Then let them in their souls submit to some greater soul than theirs. At present, when they say they want a leader, they mean they want an instrument, like Lloyd George. A mere instrument for their use. But it’s more than that. It’s the reverse. It’s the deep, fathomless submission to the heroic soul in a greater man. You, Aaron, you too have the need to submit. You, too, have the need livingly to yield to a more heroic soul, to give yourself. You know you have. And you know it isn’t love. It is life-submission. And you know it. But you kick against the pricks. And perhaps you’d rather die than yield. And so, die you must. It is your affair.”

There was a long pause. Then Aaron looked up into Lilly’s face. It was dark and remote-seeming. It was like a Byzantine eikon at the moment.

“And whom shall I submit to?” he said.

“Your soul will tell you,” replied the other.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Aaron’s Rod, by D. H. Lawrence