Phaethon: Loose Thoughts For Loose Thinkers Part 8

"No reason? Surely she gave you reasons."

"There-you have touched the ailing nerve now. The reasons were what you would call paralogisms. They had no more to do with me than with those trout."

"You mistake, friend, you mistake, indeed," said I.

"I don't mistake at all about this; that whether or not the reasons in themselves had to do with me, the way in which she put them made them practically so much Hebrew. She demanded of me, as the only grounds on which I was to consider myself safe from h.e.l.l, certain fears and hopes which I did not feel, and experiences which I did not experience; and it was my fault, and a sign of my being in a wrong state-to use no harder term-that I did not feel them; and yet it was only G.o.d's grace which could make me feel them: and so I grew up with a dark secret notion that I was a very bad boy; but that it was G.o.d's fault and not mine that I was so."

"You were ripe indeed then," said I sadly, "like hundreds more, for Professor Windrush's teaching."

"I will come to that presently. But in the meantime-was it my fault? I was never what you call a devout person. My 'organ of veneration,' as the phrenologists would say, was never very large.

I was a shrewd dashing boy, enjoying life to the finger-tips, and enjoying above all, I will say, pleasing my mother in every way, except in the understanding what she told me-and what I felt I could not understand. But as I grew older, and watched her, and the men round her, I began to suspect that religion and effeminacy had a good deal to do with each other. For the women, whatsoever their temperaments, or even their tastes might be, took to this to me incomprehensible religion naturally and instinctively; while the very few men who were in their clique were-I don't deny some of them were good men enough-if they had been men at all: if they had been well-read, or well-bred, or gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal- minded, or, in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued hunt- the-slippers nine out of ten of them were. I recollect well asking my mother once, whether there would not be five times more women than men in heaven-and her answering me sadly and seriously, that she feared there would be. And in the meantime she brought me up to pray and hope that I might some day be converted, and become a child of G.o.d-And one could not help wishing to enjoy oneself as much as possible before that event happened."

"Before that event happened, my dear fellow? Pardon me, but your tone is somewhat irreverent."

"Very likely. I had no reason put before me for regarding such a change as anything but an unpleasant doom, which would cut me off, or ought to do so, from field sports, from poetry, from art, from science, from politics-for Christians, I was told, had nothing to do with the politics of this world-from man and all man's civilisation, in short; and leave to me, as the only two lawful indulgences, those of living in a good house, and begetting a family of children."

"And did you throw off the old Creeds for the sake of the civilisation which you fancied that they forbid?"

"No. I am a Churchman, you know; princ.i.p.ally on political grounds, or from custom, or from-the devil knows what, perhaps-I do not."

"Probably it is G.o.d, and not the devil, who knows why, Templeton."

"Be it so-Frightful as it is to have to say it-I do not so much care-I suppose it is all right: if it is not, it will all come right at last. And in the meantime, I compromise, like the rest of the world; and hear Jane making the children every week-day pray that they may become G.o.d's children, and then teaching them every Sunday evening the Catechism, which says that they are so already.

I don't understand it-I suppose if it was important, one would understand it. One knows right from wrong, you know, and other fundamentals. If that were necessary, one would know that too."

"But can you submit quietly to such a barefaced contradiction?"

"I? I am only a plain country squire. Of course I should call such dealing with an Act of Parliament a lie and a sham-But about these things, I fancy, the women know best. Jane is ten thousand times as good as I am-you don't know half her worth-And I haven't the heart to contradict her-nor the right either; for I have no reasons to give her; no faith to subst.i.tute for hers."

"Our friend, the High-Church curate, could have given you a few plain reasons, I should think."

"Of course he could. And I believe in my heart the man is in the right in calling Jane wrong. He has honesty and common sense on his side, just as he has when he calls the present state of Convocation, in the face of that prayer for G.o.d's Spirit on its deliberations, a blasphemous lie and sham. Of course it is. Any ensign in a marching regiment could tell us that from his mere sense of soldier's honour. But then-if she is wrong, is he right? How do I know? I want reasons: he gives me historic authorities."

"And very good things too; for they are fair phenomena for induction."

"But how will proving to me that certain people once thought a thing right prove to me that it is right? Good people think differently every day. Good people have thought differently about those very matters in every age. I want some proof which will coincide with the little which I do know about science and philosophy. They must fight out their own battle, if they choose to fight it on mere authority. If one could but have the implicit faith of a child, it would be all very well: but one can't. If one has once been fool enough to think about these things, one must have reasons, or something better than mere ipse dixits, or one can't believe them.

I should be glad enough to believe; do you suppose that I don't envy poor dear Jane from morning to night?-but I can't. And so-"

"And so what?" asked I.

"And so, I believe, I am growing to have no religion at all, and no subst.i.tute for it either; for I feel I have no ground or reason for admiring or working out any subject. I have tired of philosophy.

Perhaps it's all wrong-at least I can't see what it has to do with G.o.d, and Christianity, and all which, if it is true, must be more important than anything else. I have tired of art for the same reason. How can I be anything but a wretched dilettante, when I have no principles to ground my criticism on, beyond bosh about 'The Beautiful'? I did pluck up heart and read Mr. Ruskin's books greedily when they came out, because I heard he was a good Christian. But I fell upon a little tract of his, 'Notes on Sheepfolds,' and gave him up again, when I found that he had a leaning to that 'Clapham sect.' I have dropped politics: for I have no reason, no ground, no principle in them, but expediency.

When they asked me this summer to represent the interests of the county in Parliament, I asked them how they came to make such a mistake as to fancy that I knew what was their interest, or anyone else's? I am becoming more and more of an animal; fragmentary, inconsistent, seeing to the root of nothing, unable to unite things in my own mind. I just do the duty which lies nearest, and looks simplest. I try to make the boys grow up plucky and knowing-though what's the use of it? They will go to college with even less principles than I had, and will get into proportionably worse sc.r.a.pes, I expect to be ruined by their debts before I die. And for the rest, I read nothing but "The Edinburgh" and "The Agricultural Gazette." My talk is of bullocks. I just know right from wrong enough to see that the farms are in good order, pay my labourers living wages, keep the old people out of the workhouse, and see that my cottages and schools are all right; for I suppose I was put here for some purpose of that kind-though what it is I can't very clearly define-And there's an end of my long story."

"Not quite an animal yet, it seems?" said I with a smile, half to hide my own sadness at a set of experiences which are, alas! already far too common, and will soon be more common still.

"Nearer it than you fancy. I am getting fonder and fonder of a good dinner and a second bottle of claret-about their meaning there is no mistake. And my princ.i.p.al reason for taking the hounds two years ago was, I do believe, to have something to do in the winter which required no thought, and to have an excuse for falling asleep after dinner, instead of arguing with Jane about her scurrilous religious newspapers-There is a great gulf opening, I see, between me and her- And as I can't bridge it over I may as well forget it. Pah! I am boring you, and over-talking myself. Have a cigar, and let us say no more about it. There is more here, old fellow, than you will cure by doses of Socratic Dialectics."

"I am not so sure of that," I replied. "On the contrary, I should recommend you in your present state of mind to look out your old Plato as quickly as possible, and see if he and his master Socrates cannot give you, if not altogether a solution for your puzzle, at least a method whereby you may solve it yourself. But tell me first-What has all this to do with your evident sympathy for a man so unlike yourself as Professor Windrush?"

"Perhaps I feel for him princ.i.p.ally because he has broken loose from it all in desperation, just as I have. But, to tell you the truth, I have been reading more than one book of his school lately; and, as I said, I owe you no thanks for demolishing the little comfort which I seemed to find in them."

"And what was that then?"

"Why-in the first place, you can't deny that however incoherent they may be they do say a great many clever things, and n.o.ble things too, about man, and society, and art, and nature."

"No doubt of it."

"And moreover, they seem to connect all they say with-with-I suppose you will laugh at me-with G.o.d, and spiritual truths, and eternal Divine laws; in short, to consecrate common matters in that very way, which I could not find in my poor mother's teaching."

"No doubt of that either. And therein is one real value of them, as protests in behalf of something n.o.bler and more unselfish than the mere dollar-getting spirit of their country."

"Well, then, can you not see how pleasant it was to me to find someone who would give me a peep into the unseen world, without requiring as an entrance-fee any religious emotions and experiences?

Here I had been for years, shut out; told that I had no business with anything eternal, and pure, and n.o.ble, and good; that to all intents and purposes I was nothing better than a very cunning animal who could be d.a.m.ned; because I was still 'carnal,' and had not been through all Jane's mysterious sorrows and joys. And it was really good news to me to hear that they were not required after all, and that all I need do was to be a good man, and leave devotion to those who were inclined to it by temperament."

"Not to be a good man," said I, "but only a good specimen of some sort of man. That, I think, would be the outcome of Emerson's 'Representative Men,' or of those most tragic 'Memoirs of Margaret Puller Ossoli.'"

"How then, hair-splitter? What is the mighty difference?"

"Would you call d.i.c.k Turpin a good man, because he was a good highwayman?"

"What now?"

"That he would be an excellent representative man of his cla.s.s; and therefore, on Mr. Emerson's grounds, a fit subject for a laudatory lecture."

"I hate reductiones ad absurdum. Let Turpin take care of himself.

I suppose I do not belong to such a very bad sort of men, but that it may be worth my while to become a good specimen of it?"

"Certainly not; only I think, contrary to Mr. Emerson's opinion, that you will not become even that, unless you first become something better still, namely, a good man."

"There you are too refined for me. But can you not understand, now, the causes of my sympathy even with Windrush and his 'spirit of truth'?"

"I can, and those of many more. It seems that you thought you found in that school a wider creed than the one to which you had been accustomed?"

"There was a more comprehensive view of humanity about them, and that pleased me."

"Doubtless, one can be easily comprehensive if one comprehends good and bad, true and false, under one category, by denying the absolute existence of either goodness or badness, truth or falsehood. But let the view be as comprehensive as it will, I am afraid that the creed founded thereon will not be very comprehensive."

"Why then?"

"Because it will comprehend so few people; fewer even than the sect of those who will believe, with Mr. Emerson, that Harvey and Newton made their discoveries by the 'Aristotelian method.' The sect of those who believe that there is no absolute right and wrong, no absolute truth external to himself, discoverable by man, will, it seems to me, be a very narrow one to the end of time; owing to a certain primeval superst.i.tion of our race, who, even in barbarous countries, have always been Platonists enough to have some sort of instinct and hope that there was a right and a wrong, and truths independent of their own sentiments and faculties. So that, though this school may enable you to fancy that you understand Lady Jane somewhat more, by the simple expedient of putting on her religious experiences an arbitrary interpretation of your own, which she would indignantly and justly deny, it will enable her to understand you all the less, and widen the gulf between you immeasurably."

"You are severe."

"I only wish you to face one result of a theory, which, while it pretends to offer the most comprehensive liberality, will be found to lead in practice to the most narrow and sectarian Epicurism for a cultivated few. But for the many, struggling with the innate consciousness of evil, in them and around them-an instinctive consciousness which no argumentation about 'evil being a lower form of good' will ever explain away to those who 'grind among the iron facts of life, and have no time for self-deception'-what good news for them is there in Mr. Emerson's cosy and tolerant Epicurism?

They cry for deliverance from their natures; they know that they are not that which they were intended to be, because they follow their natures; and he answers them with: 'Follow your natures, and be that which you were intended to be.' You began this argument by stipulating that I should argue with you simply as a man. Does Mr.

Emerson's argument look like doing that, or only arguing as with an individual of that kind of man, or rather animal, to which some iron Fate has compelled you to belong?"