Pilate first hears what the people have to say-then asks the opinion of the priests-then comes back to Jesus-goes again to the priests and people-lends his ear-listens to the ferocity on the one hand, and feels the beauty on the other, balancing between them; and then he becomes bewildered, as a man of the world is apt to do who has had no groundwork of religious education, and hears superficial discussions on religious matters, and superficial charges, and superficial slanders, till he knows not what to think. What could come out of such procedure? Nothing but that cheerlessness of soul to which certainty respecting anything and everything here on earth seems unattainable. This is the exact mental state which we call scepticism.
Out of that mood, when he heard the enthusiast before him speak of a Kingdom of the Truth, there broke a sad, bitter, sarcastic sigh, “What is truth?” Who knows anything about it? Another discoverer of the undiscoverable! “Jesting Pilate!” says Bacon; with Pilate the matter was beyond a jest. It was not a question put for the sake of information. It was not put for the sake of ridicule, for he went out to say, “I find no fault in him.” Sarcasm there was perhaps, but it was that mournful bitter sarcasm which hides inward unrest in sneering words, that sad irony whose very laugh rings of inward wretchedness.
Long ago he had shared in the speculation of the time; no educated man could escape it. Sect after sect had claimed to tell the truth, and men had found nothing to satisfy them, no ground on which to rest, till at last, in weary carelessness, Pilate, like hundreds, had hushed the cry of his heart for truth and turned to worldly life, hearing only, with a smile of scorn, of the efforts still made by enthusiasts to find the undiscoverable. When, behold, storming in upon his soul from the lips of a wretched Jew over whom he had the power of life and death, in a common room, came the old haunting question of his youth-truth, truth, what is it? For a moment the outward world faded into its real unreality; for a moment the sleeping thirst was stirred; for a moment he looked back and recalled the vain efforts of years, the hopes worn out by length of time, the surrender of the wearisome pursuit-and “What is truth?” broke from his lips. It came on him with a shock of strange surprise. “What is this,” he might have said, “that wakes within me the long-forgotten thrill, this breath of youthful aspiration-truth, truth, and its deceiving beauty-why eat my heart again over a vain quest; why go back to kindle an exhausted flame?” And, as Bacon says, and this time truly, he did not wait for a reply.
So unchanged is human nature that we seem to be reading the history of many lives in our own day. Our youth has been rife with speculation; the great spiritual questions of Immortality, Necessity, Free Will, Evil and its origin, our relation to a God, or a Fate, or a Chance, have tossed us to and fro for years. At school, at home, at college, on entering manhood and womanhood, the great questioning has moved our soul. And at first we took our pleasure therein. We loved the lonely hours in the mist in which we saw strange shapes of good, mysterious folding and unfolding of light and gloom which seemed to tell truths as wonderful as beautiful. But as each question seemed to receive its answer another question started up, and what seemed to answer it threw doubt upon the previous answer; till at last the mist sank down, and our weary eyes saw no more changes, no more visions there. It was hard to breathe in that atmosphere, and we were chilled to the bone with disappointment. So we passed out of it into what we called practical life, saying to all these questions with the poet, “I know not; let me do my duty. The past has been failure; let me use the present.” We turned to professional, literary, or mercantile life, shut up that misty chamber, drowned the key, deeper than ever plummet sounded, and said to ourselves, “There may be an answer to these matters, but I can never find it. I will agree to postpone them; let others take them and judge them according to their law, I whistle them down the wind.”
Jesting Pilate had not the smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth. He could not have known it, had a god shown it to him. Thick serene opacity, thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling eyes of his to Truth; the inner retina of them was gone paralytic, dead. He looked at Truth; and discerned her not, there where she stood.1 [Note: Carlyle, Past and Present, bk. i. chap. ii.]
