The New Paul and Virginia Part 6

A yell of delight here broke from the Professor. The eyes of the others were turned on him, and he was seen embracing wildly a monkey which the bishop led by a chain. 'The missing link! he exclaimed, 'the missing link!'

'Nonsense!' cried the sharp tones of a lady with a green gown and grey corkscrew curls. 'It is nothing but a monkey that the good bishop has been trying to tame for his wife. Don't you see her name engraved on the collar?'

The shrill accents acted like a charm upon Paul. He sprang away from the creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes.

Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls.

Sorrow and superst.i.tion, he felt, were again invading Humanity. 'Alas!'

he exclaimed at last, 'I do now indeed believe in h.e.l.l.'

'And I,' cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the arms of her bishop, 'once more believe in heaven.'

NOTES.

'We now find it (_the earth_) not only swathed by an atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is, how were they introduced?... The conclusion of science would undoubtedly be, that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception arise _solely_ from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in the human mind.... Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way, and no other.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Is this egg (_from which the human being springs_) matter? I hold it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so, undoubtedly. If there be anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it?' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Matter I define as the mysterious thing by which all this is accomplished.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I do not think that the materialist is ent.i.tled to say that his molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they _explain_ nothing. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Who shall exaggerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those theologies which have represented the Deity ... as a sort of pedantic drill-sergeant of mankind, to whom no valour, no long-tried loyalty, could atone for the misplacement of a b.u.t.ton of the uniform, or the misunderstanding of a paragraph of the "regulations and instructions"?'

PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'(_To the Jesuit imagination_) G.o.d is obviously a large individual, who holds the leading-strings of the universe, and orders its steps from a position outside it all.... According to it (_this notion_) the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Ga.s.sendi and Clark Maxwell present to us under the guise of a manufacturer of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population are "mostly fools," but little profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the divine operations.... In the presence of this mystery (_the mystery of life_) the notion of an atomic manufacturer and artificer of souls, raises the doubt whether those who entertain it were ever really penetrated by the solemnity of the problem for which they offer such a solution.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I look forward, however, to a time when the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments of clearness and vigour, shall be the stable and permanent possession of purer and mightier minds than ours--purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter, and their more faithful conformity to its laws.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The world, as it is, is growing daily dimmer before my eyes. The world, as it is to be, is ever growing brighter.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'... When you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'We, too, turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless, and even, it may be, more patient in searching for realities behind the gloom. That which shall come _after_ is no less solemn to us than to you.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Theological hypotheses of a new and heterogeneous existence have deadened our interest in the realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity of an earthly life.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we read, the calm and humane words of Condorcet, on the very edge of his yawning grave, we learn, from the conviction of posthumous activity (not posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a living incorporation with the glorious future of his race, can give a patience and happiness equal to that of any martyr of theology.... Once make it (_i.e._ "this sense of posthumous partic.i.p.ation in the life of our fellows") the basis of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a religion, and this (_the conversion of the ma.s.ses_) will prove, perhaps, an easier task than that of teaching Greeks and Romans, Syrians and Moors, to look forward to a life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial heaven.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We make the future life, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our future is simply an active existence prolonged by society; and our future life rests not in any vague yearning, of which we have as little evidence as we have definite conception: it rests on a perfectly certain truth ... that the actions, feelings, thoughts, of each one of us, do marvellously influence and mould each other.... Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rect.i.tude, to daily and hourly striving after a true life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that we have an immortal something within us--but that in very truth we ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?'

MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we _live for others_ in life, so we _live in others_ after death....

How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot die. We cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our faculties.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We cannot even say that we shall continue to love; but we know that we shall be loved.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy earthly life, that we can see the majesty, as well as the glory, of the world beyond the grave; and then only will it fulfil its moral and religious purpose as the great guide of human conduct.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future generations.'

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'The humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a wave--no, more than a wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony of human society.' MR.

FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Not a single nature, in its entirety, but leaves its influence for good or for evil. _As a fact, the good prevail_.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'To our friends and loved ones we shall give the most worthy honour and tribute if we never say nor remember that they are dead, but, contrariwise, that they have lived; that hereby the brotherly force and flow of their action and work may be carried over the gulf of death, and made immortal in the true and healthy life which they worthily had and used.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'It cannot be doubted that the "spiritual body" of this book (_The Unseen Universe_) will be used to support a belief that the dead are subject either to the _shame and suffering of a Christian Heaven_ and h.e.l.l, or to the degrading service of a modern witch. From _each_ of these _unspeakable profanities_ let us hope and endeavour that the memories of great and worthy men may be finally relieved.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'I choose the n.o.ble part of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, "I covet truth." The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this.'

PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The highest, as it is the only, content is to be attained, not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually striving towards those high peaks, when, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good--"a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night."' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'If it can be shown by observation and experiment, that theft, murder, and adultery, do not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in the absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social immoralities.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not strong enough to hold its own.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'I object to the very general use of the terms religion and theology, as if they were synonymous, or _indeed had anything whatever to do with one another_.... Religion is an affair of the affections. It may be that the object of a man's religion--the ideal which he worships--is an ideal of sensual enjoyment.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'In his hour of health ... when the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed with the same awe. It a.s.sociates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither a.n.a.lyse nor comprehend.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'He will see what drivellers even men of strenuous intellects may become,' though exclusively dwelling and dealing with theological chimeras. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The two kinds of cosmic emotion run together and become one. The microcosm is viewed only in relation to human action, nature is presented to the emotions as the guide and teacher of humanity. And the microcosm is viewed only as tending to complete correspondence with the external; human conduct is subject for reverence only in so far as it is consonant to the demiurgic law, in harmony with the teaching of divine Nature.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual wh.o.r.edom of "spiritualism."' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral and spiritual life.... I do not confine my language to the philosophy or religion of Comte; for the same conception of man is common to many philosophies and many religions.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.