These sentiments may sound a little out of place when coming from a grizzly-haired old fellow who has let half a century go by him without entering into the holy state, but then I have never been a bachelor by conviction. When the Cherub who conducts the matrimonial department in Heaven was arranging the matches of the future, he overlooked me, or muddled me up with someone of the same name, and that’s why I have no one sitting in the armchair over there. Perhaps it may have been my own fault too. You see, a very large part of my life has been spent in out of the way parts of the world where, though there were plenty of people of the other sex, there were no women – womanhood being, to my mind, a mental rather than a physical distinction. Then again, I was a very shy young fellow before I started off upon my wanderings, though like the hero of Goldsmith’s play I could be forward enough where shyness would have been a virtue.132 But a well-bred woman with her wonderful inexplicable garments, her quiet self-possession, and the calm critical eyes with which she surveyed every wriggle of the large-jointed youth before her, was always in those days a very awesome spectacle to me. How often I have wished, like Emerson’s shy friend, that I could slip off my corporeal jacket and steal away into the back stars there to enjoy a little assured solitude.133 And along with this unreasonable fear went an equally unreasonable dislike towards every man who appeared to be more at his ease with them than I did myself. Well, thank Heaven, I think I have realised by this time that there are too many real miseries in the world for us to make ourselves unhappy over imaginary and artificial ones. In my case, shyness led to Bohemianism, and Bohemianism to a wandering life, and a wandering life to Bachelordom, and hence to the fact that I am alone in my second-floor front, pouring out my own colchicum and rubbing in my own liniments.
Mrs Rundle knows all about the coming marriage. Women seem to have a sixth sense which sends a warning thrill through them if there is anything matrimonial in the wind. ‘Which the young man,’ she explained, ‘was a master at Dr Oliver’s old school, and was mad in love with her for years but didn’t like to speak, having no prospects, and she being reckoned an heiress. When the school broke down, though, and her father lost everything, it happened that this master came into money unexpectedly, and with this he has started another school in a different part of the country, and now he has come and told her how long he has loved her and that all is ready for her father as well as herself if she will but be his wife. Which he acted like a gentleman,’ continued Mrs Rundle energetically, ‘and did a good day’s work for himself as well, though it’s not a good time for a young couple to start keeping house, with prime cuts at never less than eleven pence and no butter fit to put on the table under one and two pence a pound. But the queerest thing is that it turns out that she has always in her own heart been very partial to this master, but of course was that proud that she would never let him see it, so now it has all come out beautiful, which it never would have done if her father hadn’t come to ruin. Which is an example of what good Mr Josiah Branter said from the pulpit the last Sunday that ever was, when he told us that we should be thankful for our troubles, for they were only sent by Providence to make the road clear for the blessings that are to come.’ So for Mrs Rundle, and a great deal more, for she is a garrulous soul and her thoughts are all so tangled that when she tries to produce one, a dozen or more are sure to come trailing out at the tail of it.
I have been reading part of Tourguenieff’s Fathers and Sons this morning – for about the fifth time, I think – and finding it as attractive as ever.134 What is there about the book which casts a glamour over me and many others who have read it? It cannot be the subject exactly, because that hinges upon Russian political life and other matters of which we have small knowledge. Neither is it the plot, for there is hardly any, nor the humour for the same reason. Perhaps it is that the characters all give one the impression of being thoroughly in earnest about something, and earnestness is always an attraction in this lackadaisical age. Certainly a Russian novelist has splendid material to work with. The dreamy Slavonic nature with its placid surface and its fierce undercurrent of savagery and passion is a better basis of romance than can be furnished by any breed of the old steady-going Teutonic stock. Men of the type of Suwarrow and Romanzow in history or of Bazarof in fiction can only be grown on a soil where a very thin top-dressing of civilisation overlies the barbarism of ages – and their effectiveness as character studies is shown up by the background of nihilism, autocracy and Siberianism against which they live and move.135 Such a condition of things, coupled with the ferment which has been going on for years back in the Russian mind, is sure to produce a striking national literature of which Tourguenieff is the latest, but probably by no means the final or the highest outcome.
In what order will the nations of the world stand five hundred years hence? The question furnishes a wide field for the speculative thinker and weigher of chances. In this progressive age, when there is a stirring of dry bones in every part of the globe, the changes which may be looked for in the future are far greater and more sweeping than those which have taken place in the past. And yet, look at a map of the world of five hundred years ago, and mark the alterations which have occurred. Balance 1380 against 1880. France and England were then as now independent and powerful states. America was as yet unheard of. Spain was beginning to comb out her Moorish vermin, before entering upon that course of Empire which appears now to have vanished forever, and to have left her weaker than before she embarked upon it. In Germany poor Wenzel, ‘a thin violent creature,’ according to Carlyle, ‘over-fond of white Prague beer and of pretty girls of all complexions,’136 was ruling the Holy Roman Empire composed of all manner of turbulent and semi-independent states. One of the smallest and most insignificant of these was that Kurfurstship of Brandenburg which has in our own day, under the name of Prussia, reunited the greater part of the German-speaking states in a more homogeneous and more powerful Empire. Italy, which has now developed into a stately nation, worthy of her grand traditions, was then a congeries of petty principalities – some prosperous and some the reverse – but one and all absorbed in their own parochial concerns. In Russia, the Dukes of Moscow exercised some sort of precarious sovereignty over barbarous Muscovite chieftains and their skinclad retainers. In Greece and along the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, successive invasions of warlike and fanatical Musselmans were arousing the attention of Europe to the great Ottoman power, which after consolidating itself in Asia Minor was destined to take Constantinople and to found the great and aggressive state which has now sunk into such a condition of weakness and corruption. No English foot – unless it be that of the profound and accomplished liar, Sir John Maundeville,137 had ever yet set foot upon India, and that unhappy country, just recovering from the effects of the invasion of Genghis Khan, was on the eve of the far more terrible and disastrous expedition of Timur the Tartar. The great Empire of China, sunk in a profound lethargy, was then what it has been to within the memory of our fathers, an ancient self-contained state desiring nothing and fearing nothing from the rest of the world, and absorbed in the contemplation of its own proportions and past grandeur. Switzerland had already entered upon her sturdy career of independence, and Poland was a flourishing country, but Holland had not yet shown any signs of her future greatness, and the continent of Africa, save its Mediterranean coast-line, was wrapped in impenetrable gloom. In the whole world, then, England, France, Switzerland and China appear to be the only nations which preserve more or less the same boundaries and the same relative power and position which they did five hundred years ago.
And how about the next five hundred? In what direction is expansion most likely to occur? There are four existing powers which promise to assume enormous proportions in the future, but in each case there is an ominous ‘if’ which may mar their development. The first, and to my mind the most certain, of these dominant empires of the 24th century is that of China. With her 300,000,000 of patient industrious inhabitants, persevering, frugal, an
d quick to learn, bound together by an intense patriotism and sustained by the recollection of her great history extending back like a streak of light through the twilight of the human race, she is bound to regain her proper position at the head of the nations of the earth. Already there are signs that the great sleeper is tossing uneasily, preparatory to a waking which will startle the world. Since her energetic little northern neighbour is up and doing, she cannot afford to tarry longer. Railways, education, ironclads, improved methods of agriculture and of commerce, machinery, breechloaders – they are one and all assisting the Celestials in opening out and in defending their great resources. The day is at hand when China will go in heart and soul for Western civilisation – and from that day she will be a steadily increasing and most important factor in the world’s affairs.
The United States must take the second place, I think, in a speculation as to the comparative power of the countries of the future. If she can preserve her unity amid the fierce conflicts between capital and labour, and the stormy phases of Socialism, she should by that time rival China in population and exceed her in wealth and resources. As she increases in population, however, and as her soil becomes more thickly occupied, there will be a sharper contrast and a keener antagonism between the poor and the rich, which may conceivably lead to a war of classes. After emerging scatheless, however, from such a war as that of 1862, it is not probable that our great offspring will ever come to hurt. That she may thrive and prosper should be the heartfelt wish of every Englishman who has bowels for his own kindred.138
Our own British Empire should certainly be included among the first three of the claimants for greatness in the future. We cover a larger and more populous area of the globe than any of our rivals, but we lack homogeneousness. Strong and tough as our heart is, the giant limbs of our empire are not firmly connected with each other or with the central trunk. If statesmen can overcome this defect, and can knit all our scattered dependencies into one complete unit, then our prospects are the highest and most glorious of any. Come what may with our insular position, our mineral advantages, and our 35,000,000 of home population, we shall always play a high part in the world’s history.
Russia may take the fourth place in the coming order of things. She has 80,000,000 souls under her flag and there is plenty of room for expansion in the vast central Asian steppes. It is possible, however, that when the grand crash comes, and the present despotism goes down before the irresistible demand for reform, the convulsion may have the effect of rending the empire apart. The trans-Ural provinces, for example, being less advanced and less well informed than the European, might possibly refuse to acquiesce in the new order of things, and might proclaim their independence and elect some exiled Romanoff or some ambitious general as their ruler. There are so many possibilities in the future for every state that it would be rash indeed to make too confident a prediction. One can hardly, however, be wrong in setting down China, the States, Britain and Russia as the four countries which have the widest prospects before them. Germany, especially when she has absorbed the German-speaking provinces of Austria, and France will always remain great and independent nations, but it is geographically impossible for them to attain to the colossal dimensions to which the others may aspire.
Now I think I foreswore prophecy at the very beginning of my notes, and here I am at it again as bad as ever. It shows a want of judgement when a man begins to lay down the law as to what is going to happen this year or the next, for the chances are that his pretensions to foresight are snuffed out by some sudden and unlooked-for turn of events. Lord Jeffrey remarking that Byron’s poems ‘would not do,’139 Wordsworth asserting that Shelley’s name would not live, or the anonymous critic counselling Anthony Trollope to give up writing novels, for which he had no natural bent, are all examples of gentlemen who have made forecasts as to the future which have not added to their reputation for acumen. Now if they had only adopted my method, and projected their speculations out for a few hundred years, they might have gained some little credit, and certainly avoided any chance of ever knowing that the facts had been ill-advised enough to arrange differently to their speculation. There is nothing absolutely certain except the uncertainty of all things, and nothing that we thoroughly know except our own complete want of knowledge. I have a great regard and esteem for science, but of all the contemptible and exasperating insects who crawl upon this sphere, I think the unimaginative complacent type of scientist is the most unbearable – the man who knows very exactly all that he does know, but has not sense enough to understand what a speck his little accumulation of doubtful erudition is when compared with the immensity of our ignorance. ‘There is no mystery in the matter,’ says this prodigy, with his eyebrows in the air. ‘The world is ruled by certain definite laws, and what applies to us applies equally no doubt to every other heavenly body. There is gravity which determines our relation to the firmament in general, and there is evolution which explains why we are as we are, and there are the laws of geology to explain to us what manner of earth we are inhabiting. It is all settled by laws which have been investigated and laid down by science.’ That is the way in which our sapient friend settles the matter offhand, and yet he will howl about bigotry and narrow-mindedness. What could be more bigoted and paltry than this scientific shibboleth of his, this wretched word-juggling, this polysyllabic hypocrisy which fills a man with wind when he has most need of solid nourishment? It has been said that the fanaticism of some of the early reformers is to be excused because, if they had not been zealots, they would have had no chance of holding their own against the enthusiasts who were opposed to them. Perhaps something of the same sort may be said for the more hidebound of our scientists, and their attitude of absolute negation may be a set-off against those gentlemen who believe that the world was created on the 23rd of October of the year 4004 bc – if any such remain. In medio tutissimus ibis.140
The world is governed according to laws, but that is a very different thing from being governed by laws. The more we pry into the methods by which results are brought about, the more stupendous and wonderful becomes the great unseen power which lies behind them. Now, what is that power? What is the intelligence which has planned out this marvellous piece of work? Now, my scientific friend, here is a 300-diameter Hartknack’s microscope,141 and here is a telescope with a six-foot speculum. You may pry and peep through one or other for the remainder of your natural existence, and if you can tell us at the end of it a word about the motive power which has set the universe going, you shall have a mausoleum which shall out-do that of King Cheops. You are in the position of a man who is forever examining and praising a great picture, and who, having satisfied himself that the account given him of the painting of the picture is incorrect, at once concludes that no one ever painted it, or at least asserts that he has no possible means of knowing whether an artist had produced it or not. ‘Is not the existence of the picture a proof that an artist – and a very skilful artist – has been engaged upon it?’ one might ask. ‘Why, no,’ says the learned man. ‘It is possible that the picture produced itself by the aid of certain rules. Besides, when this picture was first shown to me, I was assured that it had been all produced within a week, but by examining it I am able to say with certainty that it has taken a very long time to put together. I am therefore of the opinion that it is doubtful whether anyone ever painted it at all.’ ‘But we see that it is painted, and there must therefore have been a painter,’ cries the bewildered enquirer. ‘I cannot allow that,’ answers the wise one. ‘I really cannot give you an opinion on the matter. I am a know-not, an agnostic.’ That is the high-water mark which human wisdom has reached – to date.
Now this, as in the case of Knox and his crew, is simply a reaction against the intolerable pedantry of the Christian churches, with their hysterical doctrines and their insufferable pretensions to special bolstering-up from Providence.142 When a man realises that he does not know everything, he is too apt to fly to the conclusion that he kn
ows nothing. There is a strange distorted satisfaction in the exaggeration of his own ignorance, just as a sufferer from some deforming complaint comes occasionally to take a pride in his own malady, and to exhibit it with complacency. But if you probe into this profession of agnosticism, you will find that it is quite as far from the truth, and has even less to commend it than the dogmatism of the churchmen. All the philosophic definitions and chemical formulae that have ever been evolved cannot get over the fact that the world exists, and that whatever exists must have had a conceiver and originator. Call that first cause, or what you will, but recognise in it infinite power and infinite solicitude for the wants of all created beings. We need no inspired volume, nor anything but our own eyes and brains to come to that conclusion, but having reached it, what becomes of agnosticism? Why say you know nothing when you do know something – and that something the very basis and core of religion? One would think that the reasoning was plain enough, but you cannot corner your pseudo-scientist in that way. He is off, like a cuttlefish, in a cloud of ink, and you are lucky if he leaves behind him an admission that there may exist an ‘unanthropomorphic transparency’ or some other madness of the kind. Il n’y a point de sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit.143
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