'I Believe' and other essays Part 5

In accordance with the American practice of hyphenating family names, she became Mrs. William Johnson-Wakeman. It was a happy marriage for three days, and then her family interfered, and the marriage was annulled.

"Two years later, while in a New York elevated train, she made the acquaintance of Mr. Harry Saunders, a rich contractor's son and a commercial traveller. After two days' courtship she became Mrs. Henry Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders, and lived in perfect happiness, accompanying her husband on his travels for three years, until he died.

"Shortly afterwards the lady married a railroad man, and was happy as Mrs. Joseph Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers, until he was killed in an accident. She next married a Jersey grocer, but the bonds being severed in the Divorce Court, she married a hotel-keeper, becoming Mrs. John Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley.

"Being once more disappointed, she was again freed by the Divorce Court, and continued her search for the ideal husband, whom she thought she had found when she became Mrs. Thomas Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley-G.o.dfrey.

But John G.o.dfrey compared unfavourably with his predecessors, and the Divorce Court restored her freedom. On the following day she became Mrs. Wilbury-Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-G.o.dfrey-Gay- (she says that the name too well described his character, as she shortly proved to the satisfaction of the Divorce Court) Crowther.

This husband soon revealed his true character, and she had no difficulty in regaining her maiden liberty.

"Mrs. Benjamin (many hyphens) Le Page believes that her husband, who is English born, and has made considerable money in this country, is the long-sought ideal, but if he does not prove so--she is only thirty-nine, and there is still plenty of time to continue the search. She says that she had long wished to marry an Englishman, having been favourably impressed by what she had heard of their high qualities as husbands. She intends giving the experiment a thorough trial. So far, it has proved satisfactory, but she says that it is impossible to form a correct judgment of any man until she has been married for two or three weeks.

"Marriage, she says, is such a lottery, but it is the blessed state which it is ordained every woman shall occupy. Her life's mission is to find a pre-ordained mate, and she would not be deterred as many women, by a first failure, but should try and try again until successful.

"'My experience,' she says, 'is that women make a mistake in waiting for a man to do all the wooing. When I was young and inexperienced I fell into that error, and consequently I had several disappointments. But when I was thirty I realized that a woman's duty--well, right--was to do the wooing.'"

Again I ask what is to be done to influence public opinion, to rouse Christians in the same way that the National Conscience has been roused upon the Drink question?

An enormous amount of good can be done by the personal efforts and example of those in a position to influence others--pastors, doctors, Christian layworkers. Yet is it an impossible hope that some day a league or confraternity to fight the battle may be started? Are there no people of sufficient weight and importance in the world's eye to come forward and do this, no folk whose place will secure them a hearing, whose convictions will interest and convert others?

Eighteen months ago I published, in my book _First it was Ordained_, the sketch of an organized society on definite lines. In the course of the tale the founder of this league writes to an official in the Census Office who is alarmed at the decline of the birth-rate, and outlines the lines on which the society is to be started.

With some necessary elisions this is the letter:--

"You will see, therefore, that though there has been, and doubtless will continue to be, a great deal of windy talk on these matters, there is no organized body of men and women, no league, no union, either religious or political or both, which is devoted to dealing with the question, to rousing the national conscience and fighting the Neo-Malthusians tooth and nail.

"Wifehood--which generally means motherhood--is the predominant profession of women all over the world. The future of the world, and of course of any state in it, rests upon the quality and the quant.i.ty of its children. A prominent sociologist has just written, 'If the conditions under which the profession of motherhood is exercised are silly and rotten, our fleets, our armies, do no more than guard a thing that dies. In Great Britain, now, I think they are more or less silly and rotten.'

Let us admit that this writer is correct. He does no more than voice conclusions at which even the most superficial student of the census returns must have arrived.

"What is to be done, then? How are we who are Christians and love our Lord, citizens who love our country, to fight the present conditions?

"That is what a band of people, including those I have mentioned, are discussing. They have arrived at a definite conclusion.

"A great league is to be formed of English men and women. Great names will be at the head of it, it is to be national. I have already pointed out to you that even the revelations of the census have not stirred the ordinary person. His patriotism has not been roused, and, you may be certain--as I am certain--that no question of national expediency on this point _will_ stir the ordinary person, who is either indifferent or actually engaged in helping England's decadence by the restriction of his own family. A league started on the grounds of expediency and the common good alone would be an egregious failure.

"Utilitarianism never fired a great moral movement yet. It never will; because, before a man becomes a national utilitarian, he must get over _personal_ utilitarianism. And in this case of the restriction of family, the degradation of marriage, _personal_ utilitarianism is directly opposed to national welfare, and the personal wins.

"We must come back to the one Power and Force over the hearts and minds of men and women. We must come back to religion.

"Here is the Church's great opportunity. There has never, perhaps, in the whole history of the Church in England been such a chance given to her. Our crusade must be a crusade made in the light of the Incarnation, under the auspices of G.o.d the Holy Ghost--_the Lord and Giver of Life_.

"Do you begin to see what I mean, what we hope for? The part of the Holy Spirit's work, which we recite in the Creed, has been largely forgotten. Lord and Giver of Life! We are about to revive the recognition and memory of the fact. We are going to use this cardinal point of Christian belief as our watchword and battle-cry.

"The gradual decline of literal belief in the Incarnation, the growth of a Protestantism which is on its way towards Unitarianism, the spread of Unitarian doctrines under other names, among the varied sects of dissent, have meant that an appalling disregard of life as the gift of G.o.d, its Author, has come among us. It is because you and I believe that Jesus was G.o.d as well as man that we insist upon the sacredness of human life.

"To-day, the loss of thousands of lives in a battle is printed as a piece of casual news. There is no particular sense of horror in the minds of any one. Murders are committed every day in momentary bursts of pa.s.sion over trifles. Suicides increase, not only when some long-continued misery may seem to give a shadow of excuse, but when there has been some trivial disappointment. And so, leaving out a hundred other instances, one comes down to the truth of which every priest, every doctor, and every nurse is aware, the frustration of G.o.d's intention of childbirth--the reason for the terrible disclosures which you and your colleagues have given to the world in your census returns.

"Our league will be, therefore, a great _Church_ League. We shall invite every English man and woman to join it, who believes that Christ was G.o.d. This is the only way in which we can make such a society do its work and accomplish its end.

Directly we begin to allow the political altruist who has no definite belief in Christianity to join us, so surely our influence and opportunity will begin to decline. Compromise is no use whatever. We shall be bitterly a.s.sailed, and for a time we shall not seem to make much headway. I say _seem_, and for this reason: people who belong to us will not advertise their membership. The press, which is not interested, as a whole, in religious affairs, will not understand our aims, nor will it be--so I imagine--in sympathy with them. And any movement that has for its object, as this will have, the improvement of s.e.xual morality, will be fought by the methods of ridicule and contempt. But this will be but surface, and in time the influence of our work will not only be felt, but seen. The wizards of figures will be at work once more."

Is this a dream and impracticable? It is for the great middle cla.s.ses of England to answer during the coming years. The middle cla.s.ses really rule. They do not command public opinion, but they do what is more than that--they persuade it. They represent more than the remaining cla.s.ses the austerity and also the Christianity of the United Kingdom and the Dominions beyond the seas.

The question rests with them, and there are many who still hope and believe they will be faithful to their trust who are convinced--"DABIT DEUS HIS QUOQUE FINEM."

THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD

III

THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD

"_Et quidquid Graecia mendax, Audet in historia._"

JUVENAL.

Sir Robert Walpole, who sometimes spoke with an eloquent crash that echoes in our ears to-day, once said, "Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false." Walpole may have read the _Scienza Nuova_ of Vico probably in the French translation, and could hardly have failed to know something of Bossuet and Montesquieu. The result of his deliberations on the labours of contemporary historians is expressed thus, in a short, sudden bark of contempt.

Sir Robert made history, and did not dare to attempt the far more arduous task of writing it. When he gave it, his judgment had not so much value as it has to-day. Some of us read the limpid prose of Bossuet still, nor is the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_ forgotten. Yet if at this moment a statesman were to repeat the opinion in reference to most of the history taught and written in Oxford, he would only be speaking the literal truth. The youth of a nation are Trustees for posterity, and it is to them in the first place, and to those who are responsible for their education in the second, that this paper is addressed.

I am aware that I am going to say some astonishing things, nor am I, under the sense of a strong conviction, confounding antipathy with duty. My words may fail to penetrate into the gloom of that temple where the fanatic priests of the inarticulate, inaccurate, and dull still sacrifice victims to the idols Freeman and Stubbs. But I have a reasonable expectation of a wider audience, and it lies in the hands of that audience, the undergraduate members of the University and their parents, to say if the present state of things shall continue.

The Hebdomadal Council, Congregation and Convocation represent an insignificant minority. It is to the Pupil not the Tutor, to the Parent not the Fellow, to the Majority not to the Minority that I propose to speak.

It is axiomatic that no sum which the well-to-do undergraduate is prepared to pay could be too high for a perfect education and a learned environment. It is the fact that neither the one nor the other is provided, which deserves the attention, and should excite the alarm, of those who expect the former, the latter, or a combination of them both.

The poor man, to whom a good degree means a knife with which he will open the world's oyster, suffers more greatly than the wealthier man.

But both suffer, and both have a right to expect that in paying money for a genuine article they shall certainly obtain it.

The object of this essay, therefore, is to awaken the majority upon the whole matter, more especially that portion of the majority that designs to read history. The power lies in your hands. It is only by your acquiescence that the scandal continues, and it is the money of you and your parents which runs the machine. Once supplies are stopped, the present state of things will also stop with automatic suddenness. The art of history--for it is an art and not a science--will then revive in its full splendour, as the frescoes glow out upon the walls of an ancient church when the disfiguring whitewash is removed. The art of history will take its proper place and exercise its right function in the University, and the Historicides will remove their activities to a sphere in which they will be more appreciated. I believe that a University exists in Hayti....

I purpose a comprehensive summary of this question, and have spared no trouble to make the indictment as fair and accurate as I can. For a considerable period I have been steadily gathering data and forming opinions. Doc.u.ments of importance and value have been furnished to me, and if something actual and conclusive does not result, then the fault is that of the writer, who has failed to deal adequately with the material which he has himself collected and with which he has been lavishly and generously supplied.

"Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked of the Hebrew prophet, who thereupon "went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city." And finally came the answer of Jonah, "I do well to be angry, even unto death." My friends and I have built our modest place of espial, and we have our idea of what would become of the city were it left in the hands of certain rulers. That we do well to be angry I hope to show.

In the first place, it is really necessary to define history, and the duties of the historian. Until we have done this we have no standpoint. The axiom must always precede the syllogism just as the epithet concludes it. No one can build a basis in a vacuum.

Innumerable minds have been at pains to define history.

From the remote time when Lucian published his treatise _How History ought to be Written_ until the depressing moment when Bishop Stubbs first attempted to write it, there has been an enormous divergence of thought on this point. Kant believed that Dynasty and Nation, Emperor and Clown were alike incidents and puppets ill.u.s.trating the theory that an irresistible, all-pervading Force works through history towards one end--the development of a perfect const.i.tution. If Kant had written history and applied his method instead of indicating it, he would have had us believe that history is a science to be studied under the limiting influence of a rigid formula.

Ranke thought, and thought rightly, that the a.n.a.lysis of original doc.u.ments alone made possible the synthesis of the past, while the trained historian in his endeavour to get at the truth should be chary of accepting contemporary authors, unless eye-witnesses of the events they chronicled. Yet Ranke definitely placed himself with those who were beginning to believe that history was a science and nothing more.

Guizot, who edited Gibbon, freshly defined the labours of the historian. Guizot's view was that faithful research, _with its results duly applied, ought to enable the historian to supply such a picture of the past that it should be both to his readers and himself a veritable present_. I know of no more illuminating conception. But how can an historian supply the picture unless he has a competent knowledge of psychology? To write about human beings in the past without a knowledge of psychology is exactly like writing a history of locomotives without understanding anything whatever about the nature and properties of steam.

It is only quite lately that the scientists have allowed psychology to be a science, with, for example, as fixed a place and purpose as biology. If any one asked me for a list of authors from whom he would learn something of psychology I should probably commend to him Maher (1900), Spencer (1890), Stout (1899), James (1892), M'Cosh (1886), and so on.

You see the dates, do you not? You realize what every one who lives in the realm of thought, as also many who work in the sphere of action, must realize? Briefly it is this. The old historians were concerned only with the simple results of investigation; the best modern historian adds to his equipment a knowledge of the processes of thought. The older sciences are joining hands with the new science of psychology. It is discerned that the individual temperament must clothe the bones of fact with the colour and movement that psychological knowledge alone can give.