Triumphant Failure

It becomes apparent that in this floundering "spasmodic" anti-romantic period, great workers of literature finally began to question the concept of "paradise" that all humanity always found itself working towards reclaiming. Buckley, in The Pattern of Conversion points out that to writers such as Browning, "the fulfillment of desire meant spiritual death, for it removed the high remote ideal that had given motive power to the soul" (Buckley 593), and Mill argues that it is "better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" (Buckley 593). The endless search for personal gratification and joy that the romantic period so passionately endeavored in was now coming under attack, as intellectuals began to realize that earthly satisfaction was in fact a sickening and inhumane achievement in the extreme. The insanity of such a search becomes apparent in the words of the artist Ruskin, when he states that imperfection is "in some sort essential to all we know of life" (Buckley 594). The creators of the world were beginning to accept the inevitability of human failure, and to take joy in it!

The thinkers of the time were finally carefully examining a painfully self-evident truth, that achieving all of your many secular goals completely and spectacularly left you utterly...bored. They were realizing that there simply wasn't enough depth to material success to provide lasting pleasure to the human psyche, and so they turned to the only eternally challenging outlet they knew, the salvation and gratification of the human soul. This then was the conversion process, the realization and acceptance of imperfect and unhappiness in life, and the acceptance of these concepts as wholly neccessary as part of the human condition, culminating in the use of this condition as an impetus for spiritual journeys of insight.

On the heels of this conversion comes Mills, a man who, while raised in Banthamism, denies its tenets and comes to the personal realization that "those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness" (Mills, 694). Here then is a further extension of the idiocy of seeking personal comfort and material aggrandizement in life, but changed to reach the common man more directly. It is indeed anti-human to not seek happiness, but it is all too human to fail for want of the right goal. Mills realized that seeking happiness for its own end would never prosper, and like Hobbes comes to the conclusion that to achieve happiness one must learn to find happiness in other goals and objects. He goes on to state that in his philosophy it is "among the prime necessities of human well-being...the internal culture of the indivdual" (Mill, 694). He himself had undergone that conversion which opened men up to the realization that insight, true self-searching, could and would provide the path to satisfaction and joy in life that material culture simply could not match.

And finally comes Carlyle, providing a taste of the emotion and passion humans so need in order to connect to higher ideals. With such terrifying imagery as "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief" (Carlyle, 606) Carlyle sets the strength of emotion and faith needed in such trying times, as he further clarifies by stating "for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful" (Carlyle 606). And in conjunction with Buckley's insistence on persevering in human endeavors in the face of their imperfection, and Ruskin's delight in the imperfections of humanity's accomplishments, comes Carlyle's argument that "A certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively discernible" (Carlyle 606). He further reinforces Buckley's belief in man's imperfections being a part of his accomplishments by stating "our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments." (Carlyle 606).

This then, is the crux of all three writers' theses, the basis of Buckley's acceptance of imperfection, Mills's search for happiness, and Carlyle's "grim fire-eyed defiance" (Carlyle 606) of the 'Das Ewige Nein' or 'Everlasting No', that humans must persevere in their endeavors even in the face of imperfection, unhappiness, and the great crushing weight of the universe, because only in their works, their search, their defiance, could they hope to better understand the greatest work of their lives, themselves.