But I will go a great deal further than this. I contend that a fair percentage of the population have attained such a point that they are within measurable distance of perfection. Among educated men, and far more among educated women, perfection or something very closely resembling it, is the normal condition.54 Nay, never turn up your aquiline nose, my dear young cleric, or shake a dissentient head. I have seen more of this world of ours than you have, and perhaps with less prejudiced eyes. When Nature gave me a maternal pat on the head upon my fiftieth birthday, and knocked some of the pigment out of my hair, she gave me the right to be a little dogmatic about matters of experience. Perhaps now I might convince you in spite of yourself that I am right in this matter of perfection. Here, sir, is a clear sheet of foolscap and a pencil. Kindly take a seat in front of it. Now cast your mind back to your dear old mother, who strove so long and worked so hard to find the means for your education. Recall every incident which you can recollect of her life. Since human nature is so frail, and you have known her so intimately, you are best able to speak as to her frailties. Kindly write down a list upon that slip of paper of the principal faults which you have observed in her. What, at fault already! Nay, then, let us try another. Those two excellent and charitable young ladies, your sisters – perhaps you can jot down the main points which you would like to see reformed in their characters. You seem puzzled again. Then there is that other young lady whom you know pretty well – well, well – it would be flat blasphemy to set about reforming her.55
‘It is true,’ says our young theologian, ‘that my mother and my sisters—’
‘And somebody else’s sister,’ I interpolate.
‘That they are all such favourable specimens of their sex that it would be difficult to suggest how their conduct or way of living could be improved, but that does not justify us in formulating such a proposition as the one you have put forward.’
‘You must remember,’ I answer, ‘that I only made my claim for a percentage of the human race. Since your own relations are close to perfection, may not those of other people be so likewise.’
‘They may seem perfect in the eyes of man,’ said he, ‘but it will be far otherwise in the sight of God.’
‘If critical, carping man can find no fault in them,’ I replied, ‘they have not much to fear from an all-merciful Creator.’
The human race is improving – and improving rapidly. There is not one criminal conviction now for ten in the days of our grandfathers. The uneducated classes have, for the most part, supplied our malefactors and when there cease to be any uneducated classes we may expect a great drop in our charge-lists. Here are some duly-attested figures which should warm your blood like cordial:
Criminal convictions Attendance at school
1868 17,394 1,150,000
1884 12,564 3,700,000
Those numbers should be printed up in letters of gold in every room in the kingdom, that a man may cheer his heart, when he is down, by glancing at them. I assure you that often when I see some brutal-looking fellow in the streets, with evil and ignorance – the devil’s hallmarks – stamped upon his countenance, I stand and gaze at him with the utmost interest and curiosity. ‘That fellow and his type,’ I think to myself, ‘will soon be as extinct as the Great Auk or the Dodo. Our children’s children will never see anything approaching him.’ I am not sure that we should not, in the interest of anthropology and phrenology and all the other’ ologies, pickle a few choice specimens of Bill Sikes to give our descendants an idea of what sort of individual he was.56
The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest in the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years intervened between Palaeolithic and Neolithic man, yet during that vast interval he only learned to grind his flintstones instead of clipping them. Yet in my own lifetime what improvement have I not witnessed! The railway train and the telegraph wire, chloroform and the telephone, with endless modifications and advances in every art and science. It is not too much to say that in ten years now we make as much progress as in a thousand years then, not on account of our finer intellects but because the light we have already gained helps us on to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes and slow uncertain footsteps – now we walk briskly down a broad and well-lit track which will lead us to some brilliant, though unknown, goal.
There is a sort of jackal-pessimist who goes about yelping that civilisations have been built up before, and that this one of ours may be no more permanent than that of Nineveh or of the Aztecs. I deny that there was ever any old civilisation. Culture depends on great sentiments, not on great buildings. An infinitude of bricks and mortar, arches and frescoes, are no indication of moral progress. Be they ever so wealthy and ever so industrious in piling stones on stones, a nation which can rejoice in war, slay its prisoners in cold blood, count it a holiday to see two poor wretches slashing each other to pieces, believe devoutly in omens, and allow every vice to flourish unchecked and unreproved, cannot make any claim to civilisation. We have heard too much of these vanished barbarians. The more we look back the less likely we are to get on.
Again these scattered centres of pseudo-culture in olden days only affected a small portion of the earth’s area, and were hedged in on every side by the fierce primitive peoples who eventually overwhelmed them. We have no such danger to contend against. Where is our enemy to come from, unless indeed John Chinaman took it into his pigtailed head to run amuck against modern progress? Far from doing so, he shows a strong tendency to snip the pigtail off and to fall into line with the European nations.57 Look where we will, we cannot see any danger which can threaten the growth of knowledge and of virtue. The two beautiful twin sisters will increase and flourish to the end of time.
And what does it all lead up to? What is to be the end of it all? Since first a man scratched hieroglyphics on an ostracon, or scribbled with sepia upon a fragment of papyrus, the human race has been puzzling itself over that question. We know a little more – and only a little more – than did those original investigators. We have an arc of three thousand years given us from which to calculate the course to be described by our descendants, but that arc is so tiny compared to the vast ages which Providence uses in working out its designs, that our deductions from it must be uncertain and imperfect. We may safely suppose, however, that man will win fresh victories over mechanical and natural difficulties. That he will navigate the air with the same ease and certainty with which he now does the water, and that his ships will travel under the waves as well as over them. That life will be rendered more refined and more pleasant by countless inventions, and that preventative medicine and sanitary science will work such wonders that accident and old age will be the only causes of death. That the common sense of nations will abolish war, and the education and improved social condition of communities will effect a marvellous diminution in crime. That the forms of religion will be abandoned but the essence maintained, so that one universal creed will embrace the whole earth, which shall preach reverence to the great Creator and the pursuit of virtue, not from any hope of reward or fear of punishment, but from a high and noble love of the right and hatred of the wrong.
These are some of the changes which may be looked for. And then? Why, by that time, perhaps the solar system will be ripe for picking. We are all piling up bricks under the direction of Providence, though we are too blind to know what sort of a temple we are helping to build. ‘Ants see not the Pleiades’ says the Persian poet Ferideddin Attar,58 but the Pleiades are there all the same. At present we must do our duty as tools without hoping to share in the plans of the architect.
I wonder what has made me so very dogmatic and prophetic this morning! Perhaps it is the effect of the colchicum, or can it be the alkalis? It is really an excellent thing to take to writing when you are laid up. You see, if you chance to write well you can say that yo
u did so in spite of your sickness, while if, as is more likely, you fail, then of course it was on account of your sickness. I am sure if ever I should chance to print these rambling notes the most stony-hearted critic would never venture to be severe on a man who was eight inches round the ankle. You may put all that is good down to me and all that is bad to the lithic acid.
If I were inclined (which, thank Heaven, I never was) to take a desponding view of human nature, I should have to change my lodgings before I could do it. It would be impossible for me to lie on this sofa with my face towards the window without recognising that there are some of my fellow mortals who are treading so close upon the heels of the angels that they won’t have much to learn when they take over their new duties. If there is a higher order of being than a graceful, refined, self-sacrificing womanly woman, it must be a very noble type indeed.
She lives opposite, in the corresponding room on the other side of the road – she and her old father. I can see all their movements through the broad front window as plainly as though they were a pair of Sir John Lubbock’s ants,59 enclosed in a glass prison for my particular information and behoof. They have seen better days, I should judge. He is quite the old-fashioned diplomatist, high-collared, white-whiskered, eagle-faced – with many little courtly airs and graces which sit well upon him in his own rooms. These charms of manner are too often simply for export and not for home consumption. The sitting room is poorly furnished, but when the sun shines into it I can see little knick-knacks and ornaments, which are relics no doubt of some larger and more luxurious household. Very trim and neat she keeps them all, but with her utmost care she can hardly make the dingy furniture and horsehair sofa look anything but hideous. White-cuffed, black-dressed, quietly cheerful and uncomplaining, I see her from morning to night planning and striving with the one idea of smoothing the downward path along which her old companion is journeying. Such women have no separate existence of their own. They are Heaven’s parasites, and thrice lucky the man to whom they attach themselves!
No, I don’t think you could call her handsome. Trouble and work and thought don’t tend to produce regularity of feature. The best souls, like the finest diamonds, are in the plainest settings. If a woman reaches the age of thirty with perfectly symmetrical features there must be a flaw either in her head or in her heart. My vis-à-vis has a lithe graceful figure and a pale sweet long-suffering face, which lights up into a loving smile when she addresses the old man. Her hair is rich and brown with a coppery shimmer when the sunshine strikes it. Did you ever observe the relation between a woman’s hair and her character – the quantity of her hair, not the colour of it? I believe that there is a very direct ratio between the two. A large-souled woman capable of great sacrifice and intense emotion may be long or short, pretty or plain, but in nine cases out of ten she has a wealth of hair. Thin and scraggy locks are a sign of a fickle and superficial soul. I have no doubt Dr Turner would pronounce it to be entirely a matter of circulation, but the fact is there all the same.
They are having a hard struggle to make both ends meet, those two, but the brunt of it falls upon her. He has usually an egg for breakfast, but a piece of bread and butter, or even I fear a piece of bread without the butter, is all her allowance. At their frugal dinner too I can see that she takes little herself that there may be more to support his failing strength. I declare that the sight makes me loathe my own well-cooked and savoury dishes – to think that I should have the means of pampering this old weather-beaten carcass of mine while that frail delicate creature is denying herself the necessaries of life! I must endeavour to find out something about them, but how? They have no visitors or friends of any sort. Perhaps Mrs Rundle may have gathered something from their landlady. There is a freemasonry among lodging-house keepers.60 I shall call her up and enquire.
She knows a little but not much. The old gentleman’s name is Oliver and he was the principal of a large private school in the provinces, but the local grammar school being heavily endowed and well-managed was able to undersell him until he could hold on no longer. His affairs were wound up and his creditors mercifully allowed him enough to sustain existence for the few short years which were left to him. ‘And his daughter’s a good young lady by all accounts,’ continued Mrs Rundle. ‘She ain’t used to a life like that but she’s that brave and sperrited that no one would never know as she’d been brought up anything better. She paints little pictures and sells ’em when she can at five shillings a piece – and well worth it too.’
‘Does she though?’ said I, seeing light at last. ‘Here’s a sovereign, Mrs Rundle. Just you run across and bespeak four of those pictures – for yourself, mind! Don’t let my name be mentioned in the matter.’
‘I’ll go this very moment, sir,’ said Mrs Rundle with sparkling eyes, and in five minutes I saw her cross the street and reappear in the little sitting room opposite, where I could see her bobbing about with excessive politeness and smiling all over her broad motherly face until the father and daughter laughed from sympathy. The message was soon delivered and as Mrs Rundle emerged from the hall door, I could see from my observatory that the girl bent over the old man and gave him a convulsive embrace and a passionate kiss. It was but the action of a moment and yet no words could have expressed more eloquently the vivifying effect of this one tiny streak of sunshine breaking through the clouds of her existence. It is extraordinary what an amount of pleasure may be had out of a sovereign if you know how to lay it out to advantage.
I wiled away an hour or so pleasantly this morning turning over the leaves of Samuel Carter Hall’s reminiscences. If you have not read it, read it – if you have, read it again. It is a tonic in print, a glorious account of how ninety years may be strung upon the line of time like a row of pearls, each more lustrous and more valuable than its neighbour.61 When I read it I would like to rub my fifty out and start again, as a man who has half finished his villa is tempted to pull it down and recommence when he sees the plans of a nobler and more commanding one. Who would speak with bated breath or wear the cursed black at the death of such a one? Let us mourn over a wasted life and weep over a worthless one, but with a man like this who has done his task bravely, his bed of death should be heaped with blossoms, friends with smiles and congratulations should press his wasted hands, and a blare of triumphant music should greet the young soul as it struggles out of the old husk which has clogged and obscured it so long. There is mirth at christenings and laughter at weddings, but no festival should be so merry as the death of a virtuous man. It is the one event in this world of ours which is entirely, undeniably and symmetrically auspicious.
Talking of Carter Hall’s reminiscences, who can forget his anecdote of the absent-minded poetical clergyman who, when presenting a copy of the Bible to one of his parishioners, wrote ‘With the author’s compliments’ upon the fly-leaf. He was so accustomed to giving away his little volumes of doggerel that the action was mechanical. There are a good many of his fellow clerics, however, who with all their wits about them assume an analogous attitude in the pulpit. Each would like to put his own petty hallmark upon the golden truth. ‘This is so, and that is so – so far God’s mercy extends and then it is superseded by his justice.’ Steady, steady, my Christian friends! What private means of information have you upon that point? Preach a code of morality but for pity’s sake leave dogma alone! Every one of you would like to write ‘all rights reserved’ across the covers of your own particular Bibles. Why pretend to be infallible exponents when you know that the meaning is obscure and that every man may fairly put his own interpretation upon it?
Oh for the inconsistencies of Anglican Protestant faith! Let it stand on its morality and on its results, but in the name of all that is true do not attempt to place it on the rigid foundation of biblical teaching! ‘On the contrary, sir,’ cries Dr Pontiphobus,62 ‘we take our stand entirely upon that ground.’
‘And pray, my worthy Doctor, do you reckon transubstantiation to be an error?’
; ‘Gross, sir, gross!’
‘And yet if I mistake not Christ said, when he broke bread: “This is my body and this is my blood. This do in remembrance of me.” You obey the latter half of the text but disbelieve the former.’
‘Our blessed Saviour, sir,’ says Dr Pontiphobus sternly, ‘was speaking metaphorically upon that occasion. He never meant us to believe such a repulsive doctrine.’
‘Oh indeed, Doctor, why do you practise baptism?’
‘Why, sir, because our Saviour has most expressly said: “Unless ye be born again of water and the spirit, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”’
‘He meant that, then?’
‘We have no reason to think that he did not.’
‘In fact, Doctor, whatever favours your creed he said literally, and whatever your creed rejects he said metaphorically – eh?’
‘Sir,’ says the Doctor, with odium theologicum in every feature, ‘Augustine, Chrysostom and Tertullian have adduced one hundred and forty-nine reasons—’ Let us fly, my friends, let us fly!
The Narrative of John Smith Page 5