“Then they believe in a future life?”
“They did to some considerable extent up to the ’eighties of the last century, and their laws and customs were no doubt settled in accordance therewith, and have not yet had time to adapt themselves. We are a somewhatslow-moving people, always a generation or two behind our real beliefs.”
“They have lost their belief, then?”
“It is difficult to arrive at figures, sir, on such a question. But it has been estimated that perhaps one in ten adults now has some semblance of what may be called active belief in a future existence.”
“And the rest are prepared to let their lives be arranged in accordance with the belief of that tenth?” asked the Angel, surprised. “Tell me, do they think their matrimonial differences will be adjusted over there, or what?”
“As to that, all is cloudy; and certain matters would be difficult to adjust without bigamy; for general opinion and the law permit the remarriage of persons whose first has gone before.”
“How about children?” said the Angel; “for that is no inconsiderable item, I imagine.”
“Yes, sir, they are a difficulty. But here, again, my key will fit. So long as the marriageseemsreal, it does not matter that the children know it isn’t and suffer from the disharmony of their parents.”
“I think,” said the Angel acutely, “there must be some more earthly reason for the condition of your marriage laws than those you give me. It’s all a matter of property at bottom, I suspect.”
“Sir,” said his dragoman, seemingly much struck, “I should not be surprised if you were right. There is little interest in divorce where no money is involved, and our poor are considered able to do without it. But I will never admit that this is the reason for the state of our divorce laws. No, no; I am an Englishman.”
“Well,” said the Angel, “we are wandering. Does this judge believe what they are now saying to him?”
“It is impossible to inform you, for judges are very deep and know all that is to be known on these matters. But of this you may be certain: if anything is fishy to the average apprehension, he will not suffer it to pass his nose.”
“Where is the average apprehension?” asked the Angel.
“There, sir,” said his dragoman, pointing to the jury with his chin, “noted for their common sense.”
“And these others with grey heads who are calling each other friend, though they appear to be inimical?”
“Little can be hid from them,” returned his dragoman; “but this case, though defended as to certain matters of money, is not disputed in regard to the divorce itself. Moreover, they are bound by professional etiquette to serve their clients through thin and thick.”
“Cease!” said the Angel; “I wish to hear this evidence, and so does the lady on my left wing.”
His dragoman smiled in his beard, and made no answer.
“Tell me,” remarked the Angel, when he had listened, “does this woman get anything for saying she called them in the morning?”
“Fie, sir!” responded his dragoman; “only her expenses to the Court and back. Though indeed, it is possible that after she had called them, she got half a sovereign from the defendant to impress the matter on her mind, seeing that she calls many people every day.”
“The whole matter,” said the Angel, with a frown, “appears to be in the nature of a game; nor are the details as savoury as I expected.”
“It would be otherwise if the case were defended,sir,” returned his dragoman; “then, too, you would have had an opportunity of understanding the capacity of the human mind for seeing the same incident to be both black and white; but it would take much of your valuable time, and the Court would be so crowded that you would have a lady sitting on your right wing also, and possibly on your knee. For, as you observe, ladies are particularly attached to these dramas of real life.”
“If my wife were a wrong one,” said the Angel, “I suppose that, according to your law, I could not sew her up in a sack and place it in the water?”
“We are not now in the days of the Great Skirmish,” replied his dragoman somewhat coldly. “At that time any soldier who found his wife unfaithful, as we call it, could shoot her with impunity and receive the plaudits and possibly a presentation from the populace, though he himself may not have been impeccable while away—a masterly method of securing a divorce. But, as I told you, our procedure has changed since then; and even soldiers now have to go to work in this roundabout fashion.”
“Can he not shoot the paramour?” asked the Angel.
“Not even that,” answered his dragoman. “So soft and degenerate are the days. Though, if he can invent for the paramour a German name, he will still receive but a nominal sentence. Our law is renowned for never being swayed by sentimental reasons. I well recollect a case in the days of the Great Skirmish, when a jury found contrary to the plainest facts sooner than allow that reputation for impartiality to be tarnished.”
“Ah!” said the Angel absently; “what is happening now?”
“The jury are considering their verdict. The conclusionis, however, foregone, for they are not retiring. The plaintiff is now using her smelling salts.”
“She is a fine woman,” said the Angel emphatically.
“Hush, sir! The judge might hear you.”
“What if he does?” asked the Angel in surprise.
“He would then eject you for contempt of Court.”
“Does he not think her a fine woman, too?”
“For the love of justice, sir, be silent,” entreated his dragoman. “This concerns the happiness of three, if not of five, lives. Look! She is lifting her veil; she is going to use her handkerchief.”
“I cannot bear to see a woman cry,” said the Angel, trying to rise; “please take this lady off my left wing.”
“Kindly sit tight!” murmured his dragoman to the lady, leaning across behind the Angel’s back. “Listen, sir!” he added to the Angel: “The jury are satisfied that what is necessary has taken place. All is well; she will get her decree.”
“Hurrah!” said the Angel in a loud voice.
“If that noise is repeated, I will have the Court cleared.”
“I am going to repeat it,” said the Angel firmly; “she is beautiful!”
His dragoman placed a hand respectfully over the Angel’s mouth. “Oh, sir!” he said soothingly, “do not spoil this charming moment. Hark! He is giving her a decreenisi, with costs. To-morrow it will be in all the papers, for it helps to sell them. See! She is withdrawing; we can now go.” And he disengaged the Angel’s wing.
The Angel rose quickly and made his way towards the door. “I am going to walk out with her,” he announced joyously.
“I beseech you,” said his dragoman, hurrying beside him, “remember the King’s Proctor! Where is your chivalry? Forhehas none, sir—not a little bit!”
“Bring him to me; I will give it him!” said the Angel, kissing the tips of his fingers to the plaintiff, who was vanishing in the gloom of the fresh air.
In the Strangers’ room of the Strangers’ Club the usual solitude was reigning when the Angel Æthereal entered.
“You will be quiet here,” said his dragoman, drawing up two leather chairs to the hearth, “and comfortable,” he added, as the Angel crossed his legs. “After our recent experience, I thought it better to bring you where your mind would be composed, since we have to consider so important a subject as morality. There is no place, indeed, where we could be so completely sheltered from life, or so free to evolve from our inner consciousness the momentous conclusions of the armchair moralist. When you have had your sneeze,” he added, glancing at the Angel, who was taking snuff, “I shall make known to you the conclusions I have formed in the course of a chequered career.”
“Before you do that,” said the Angel, “it would perhaps be as well to limit the sphere of our inquiry.”
“As to that,” remarked his dragoman, “I shall confine my information to the morals of the English since the opening of the Great Skirmish, in 1914, just a short generation of three and thirty years ago; and you will find my theme readily falls, sir, into the two maincompartments of public and private morality. When I have finished you can ask me any questions.”
“Proceed!” said the Angel, letting his eyelids droop.
“Public morality,” his dragoman began, “is either superlative, comparative, positive, or negative. And superlative morality is found, of course, only in the newspapers. It is the special prerogative of leader writers. Its note, remote and unchallengeable, was well struck by almost every organ at the commencement of the Great Skirmish, and may be summed up in a single solemn phrase: ‘We will sacrifice on the altar of duty the last life and the last dollar—except the last life and dollar of the last leader-writer.’ For, as all must see, that one had to be preserved, to ensure and comment on the consummation of the sacrifice. What loftier morality can be conceived? And it has ever been a grief to the multitude that the lives of those patriots and benefactors of their species should, through modesty, have been unrevealed to such as pant to copy them. Here and there the lineaments of a tip-topper were discernible beneath the disguise of custom; but what fair existences were screened! I may tell you at once, sir, that the State was so much struck at the time of the Great Skirmish by this doctrine of the utter sacrifice of others that it almost immediately adopted the idea, and has struggled to retain it ever since. Indeed, only the unaccountable reluctance of ‘others’ to be utterly sacrificed has ensured their perpetuity.”
“In 1910,” said the Angel, “I happened to notice that the Prussians had already perfected that system. Yet it was against the Prussians that this country fought?”
“That is so,” returned his dragoman; “there weremany who drew attention to the fact. And at the conclusion of the Great Skirmish the reaction was such that for a long moment even the leader-writers wavered in their selfless doctrines; nor could continuity be secured till the Laborious Party came solidly to the saddle in 1930. Since then the principle has been firm but the practice has been firmer, and public morality has never been altogether superlative. Let us pass to comparative public morality. In the days of the Great Skirmish this was practised by those with names, who told others what to do. This large and capable body included all the preachers, publicists, and politicians of the day, and in many cases there is even evidence that they would have been willing to practise what they preached if their age had not been so venerable or their directive power so invaluable.”
“In-valuable,” murmured the Angel; “has that word a negative signification?”
“Not in all cases,” said his dragoman with a smile; “there were men whom it would have been difficult to replace, though not many, and those perhaps the least comparatively moral. In this category, too, were undoubtedly the persons known as conchies.”
“From conch, a shell?” asked the Angel.
“Not precisely,” returned his dragoman; “and yet you have hit it, sir, for into their shells they certainly withdrew, refusing to have anything to do with this wicked world. Sufficient unto them was the voice within. They were not well treated by an unfeeling populace.”
“This is interesting to me,” said the Angel. “To what did they object?”
“To war,” replied his dragoman. “‘What is itto us,’ they said, ‘that there should be barbarians like these Prussians, who override the laws of justice and humanity?’—words, sir, very much in vogue in those days. ‘How can it effect our principles if these rude foreigners have not our views, and are prepared, by cutting off the food supplies of this island, to starve us into submission to their rule? Rather than turn a deaf ear to the voice within we are prepared for general starvation; whether we are prepared for the starvation of our individual selves we cannot, of course, say until we experience it. But we hope for the best, and believe that we shall go through with it to death, in the undesired company of all who do not agree with us.’ And it is certain, sir, that some of them were capable of this; for there is, as you know, a type of man who will die rather than admit that his views are too extreme to keep himself and his fellow-men alive.”
“How entertaining!” said the Angel. “Do such persons still exist?”
“Oh! yes,” replied the dragoman; “and always will. Nor is it, in my opinion, altogether to the disadvantage of mankind, for they afford a salutary warning to the human species not to isolate itself in fancy from the realities of existence and extinguish human life before its time has come. We shall now consider the positively moral. At the time of the Great Skirmish these were such as took no sugar in their tea and invested all they had in War Stock at five per cent. without waiting for what were called Premium Bonds to be issued. They were a large and healthy group, more immediately concerned with commerce than the war. But the largest body of all were the negatively moral. These were they who did what they crudely called ‘their bit,’ which I may tellyou, sir, was often very bitter. I myself was a ship’s steward at the time, and frequently swallowed much salt water, owing to the submarines. But I was not to be deterred, and would sign on again when it had been pumped out of me. Our morality was purely negative, if not actually low. We acted, as it were, from instinct, and often wondered at the sublime sacrifices which were being made by our betters. Most of us were killed or injured in one way or another; but a blind and obstinate mania for not giving in possessed us. We were a simple lot.” The dragoman paused and fixed his eyes on the empty hearth. “I will not disguise from you,” he added “that we were fed-up nearly all the time; and yet—we couldn’t stop. Odd, was it not?”
“I wish I had been with you,” said the Angel, “for—to use that word without which you English seem unable to express anything—you were heroes.”
“Sir,” said his dragoman, “you flatter us by such encomium. We were, I fear, dismally lacking in commercial spirit, just men and women in the street having neither time nor inclination to examine our conduct and motives, nor to question or direct the conduct of others. Purely negative beings, with perhaps a touch of human courage and human kindliness in us. All this, however, is a tale of long ago. You can now ask me any questions, sir, before I pass to private morality.”
“You allude to courage and kindliness,” said the Angel: “How do these qualities now stand?”
“The quality of courage,” responded his dragoman, “received a set-back in men’s estimation at the time of the Great Skirmish, from which it has never properly recovered. For physical courage was then, for the first time, perceived to be most excessively common; it is,indeed, probably a mere attribute of the bony chin, especially prevalent in the English-speaking races. As to moral courage, it was so hunted down that it is still somewhat in hiding. Of kindliness there are, as you know, two sorts: that which people manifest towards their own belongings; and that which they do not as a rule manifest towards every one else.”
“Since we attended the Divorce Court,” remarked the Angel with deliberation, “I have been thinking. And I fancy no one can be really kind unless they have had matrimonial trouble, preferably in conflict with the law.”
“A new thought to me,” observed his dragoman attentively; “and yet you may be right, for there is nothing like being morally outcast to make you feel the intolerance of others. But that brings us to private morality.”
“Quite!” said the Angel, with relief. “I forgot to ask you this morning how the ancient custom of marriage was now regarded in the large?”
“Not indeed as a sacrament,” replied his dragoman; “such a view was becoming rare already at the time of the Great Skirmish. Yet the notion might have been preserved but for the opposition of the Pontifical of those days to the reform of the Divorce Laws. When principle opposes common sense too long, a landslide follows.”
“Of what nature, then, is marriage now?”
“Purely a civil, or uncivil, contract, as the case may be. The holy state of judicial separation, too, has long been unknown.”
“Ah!” said the Angel, “that was the custom by which the man became a monk and the lady a nun, was it not?”
“In theory, sir,” replied his dragoman, “but in practice not a little bit, as you may well suppose. The Pontifical, however, and the women, old and otherwise, who supported them, had but small experience of life to go on, and honestly believed that they were punishing those still-married but erring persons who were thus separated. These, on the contrary, almost invariably assumed that they were justified in free companionships, nor were they particular to avoid promiscuity! So it ever is, sir, when the great laws of Nature are violated in deference to the Higher Doctrine.”
“Are children still-born out of wedlock?” asked the Angel.
“Yes,” said his dragoman, “but no longer considered responsible for the past conduct of their parents.”
“Society, then, is more humane?”
“Well, sir, we shall not see the Millennium in that respect for some years to come. Zoos are still permitted, and I read only yesterday a letter from a Scottish gentleman pouring scorn on the humane proposal that prisoners should be allowed to see their wives once a month without bars or the presence of a third party; precisely as if we still lived in the days of the Great Skirmish. Can you tell me why it is that such letters are always written by Scotsmen?”
“Is it a riddle?” asked the Angel.
“It is indeed, sir.”
“Then it bores me. Speaking generally, are you satisfied with current virtue now that it is a State matter, as you informed me yesterday?”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I do not judge my neighbours; sufficient unto myself is the vice thereof. But one thing I observe, the less virtuous people assumethemselves to be, the more virtuous they commonly are. Where the lime-light is not, the flower blooms. Have you not frequently noticed that they who day by day cheerfully endure most unpleasant things, while helping their neighbours at the expense of their own time and goods, are often rendered lyrical by receiving a sovereign from some one who would never miss it, and are ready to enthrone him in their hearts as a king of men? The truest virtue, sir, must be sought among the lowly. Sugar and snow may be seen on the top, but for the salt of the earth one must look to the bottom.”
“I believe you,” said the Angel. “It is probably harder for a man in the lime-light to enter virtue than for the virtuous to enter the lime-light. Ha, ha! Is the good old custom of buying honour still preserved?”
“No, sir; honour is now only given to such as make themselves too noisy to be endured, and saddles the recipient with an obligation to preserve public silence for a period not exceeding three years. That maximum sentence is given for a dukedom. It is reckoned that few can survive so fearful a term.”
“Concerning the morality of this new custom,” said the Angel, “I feel doubtful. It savours of surrender to the bully and the braggart, does it not?”
“Rather to the bore, sir; not necessarily the same thing. But whether men be decorated for making themselves useful, or troublesome, the result in either case is to secure a comparative inertia, which has ever been the desideratum; for you must surely be aware, sir, how a man’s dignity weighs him down.”
“Are women also rewarded in this way?”
“Yes, and very often; for although their dignity is already ample, their tongues are long, and they havelittle shame and no nerves in the matter of public speaking.”
“And what price their virtue?” asked the Angel.
“There is some change since the days of the Great Skirmish,” responded his dragoman. “They do not now so readily sell it, except for a wedding-ring; and many marry for love. Women, indeed, are often deplorably lacking in commercial spirit; and though they now mix in commerce, have not yet been able to adapt themselves. Some men even go so far as to think that their participation in active life is not good for trade and keeps the country back.”
“They are a curious sex,” said the Angel; “I like them, but they make too much fuss about babies.”
“Ah! sir; there is the great flaw. The mother instinct—so heedless and uncommercial! They seem to love the things just for their own sakes.”
“Yes,” said the Angel, “there’s no future in it. Give me a cigar.”
“What, then, is the present position of ‘the good’?” asked the Angel Æthereal, taking wing from Watchester Cathedrome towards the City Tabernacle.
“There are a number of discordant views, sir,” his dragoman whiffled through his nose in the rushing air; “which is no more novel in this year of Peace 1947 than it was when you were here in 1910. On the far right are certain extremists, who believe it to be what it was—omnipotent, but suffering the presence of ‘the bad’ for no reason which has yet been ascertained; omnipresent, though presumably absent where ‘the bad’ ispresent; mysterious, though perfectly revealed; terrible, though loving; eternal, though limited by a beginning and an end. They are not numerous, but all stall-holders, and chiefly characterised by an almost perfect intolerance of those whose views do not coincide with their own; nor will they suffer for a moment any examination into the nature of ‘the good,’ which they hold to be established for all time, in the form I have stated, by persons who have long been dead. They are, as you may imagine, somewhat out of touch with science, such as it is, and are regarded by the community at large rather with curiosity than anything else.”
“The type is well known in the sky,” said the Angel. “Tell me: Do they torture those who do not agree with them?”
“Not materially,” responded his dragoman. “Such a custom was extinct even before the days of the Great Skirmish, though what would have happened if the Patriotic or Prussian Party had been able to keep power for any length of time we cannot tell. As it is, the torture they apply is purely spiritual, and consists in looking down their noses at all who have not their belief and calling them erratics. But it would be a mistake to underrate their power, for human nature loves the Pontifical, and there are those who will follow to the death any one who looks down his nose, and says: ‘I know!’ Moreover, sir, consider how unsettling a question ‘the good’ is, when you come to think about it and how unfatiguing the faith which precludes all such speculation.”
“That is so,” said the Angel thoughtfully.
“The right centre,” continued his dragoman, “is occupied by the small yet noisy Fifth Party. These are they who play the cornet and tambourine, big drumand concertina, descendants of the Old Prophet, and survivors of those who, following a younger prophet, joined them at the time of the Great Skirmish. In a form ever modifying with scientific discovery they hold that ‘the good’ is a superman, bodiless yet bodily, with a beginning but without an end. It is an attractive faith, enabling them to say to Nature: ‘Je m’en fiche de tout cela. My big brother will look after me. Pom!’ One may call it anthropomorphia, for it seems especially soothing to strong personalities. Every man to his creed, as they say; and I would never wish to throw cold water on such as seek to find ‘the good’ by closing one eye instead of two, as is done by the extremists on the right.”
“You are tolerant,” said the Angel.
“Sir,” said his dragoman, “as one gets older, one perceives more and more how impossible it is for man not to regard himself as the cause of the universe, and for certain individual men not to believe themselves the centre of the cause. For such to start a new belief is a biological necessity, and should by no means be discouraged. It is a safety-valve—the form of passion which the fires of youth take in men after the age of fifty, as one may judge by the case of the prophet Tolstoy and other great ones. But to resume: In the centre, of course, are situated the enormous majority of the community, whose view is that they have no view of what ‘the good’ is.”
“None?” repeated the Angel Æthereal, somewhat struck.
“Not the faintest,” answered his dragoman. “These are the only true mystics; for what is a mystic if not one with an impenetrable belief in the mystery of his own existence? This group embraces the great bulkof the Laborious. It is true that many of them will repeat what is told them of ‘the good’ as if it were their own view, without compunction, but this is no more than the majority of persons have done from the beginning of time.”
“Quite,” admitted the Angel; “I have observed that phenomenon in the course of my travels. We will not waste words on them.”
“Ah, sir!” retorted his dragoman, “there is more wisdom in these persons than you imagine. For, consider what would be the fate of their brains if they attempted to think for themselves. Moreover, as you know, all definite views about ‘the good’ are very wearing, and it is better, so this great majority thinks, to let sleeping dogs lie than to have them barking in its head. But I will tell you something,” the dragoman added: “These innumerable persons have a secret belief of their own, old as the Greeks, that good fellowship is all that matters. And, in my opinion, taking ‘the good’ in its limited sense, it is an admirable creed.”
“Oh! cut on!” said the Angel.
“My mistake, sir!” said his dragoman. “On the left centre are grouped that increasing section whose view is that since everything is very bad, ‘the good’ is ultimate extinction—‘Peace, perfect peace,’ as the poet says. You will recollect the old tag: ‘To be or not to be.’ These are they who have answered that question in the negative; pessimists masquerading to an unsuspecting public as optimists. They are no doubt descendants of such as used to be called ‘Theosophians,’ a sect which presupposed everything and then desired to be annihilated; or, again, of the Christian Scientites, who simply could not bear things as they were, so set themselves to think theywere not, with some limited amount of success, if I remember rightly. I recall to mind the case of a lady who lost her virtue, and recovered it by dint of remembering that she had no body.”
“Curious!” said the Angel. “I should like to question her; let me have her address after the lecture. Does the theory of reincarnation still obtain?”
“I do not wonder, sir, that you are interested in the point, for believers in that doctrine are compelled, by the old and awkward rule that ‘Two and two make four,’ to draw on other spheres for the reincarnation of their spirits.”
“I do not follow,” said the Angel.
“It is simple, however,” answered his dragoman, “for at one time on earth, as is admitted, there was no life. The first incarnation, therefore—an amœba, we used to be told—enclosed a spirit, possibly from above. It may, indeed, have been yours, sir. Again, at some time on this earth, as is admitted, there will again be no life; the last spirit will therefore flit to an incarnation, possibly below; and again, sir, who knows, it may be yours.”
“I cannot jest on such a subject,” said the Angel, with a sneeze.
“No offence,” murmured his dragoman. “The last group, on the far left, to which indeed I myself am not altogether unaffiliated, is composed of a small number of extremists, who hold that ‘the good’ is things as they are—pardon the inevitable flaw in grammar. They consider that what is now has always been, and will always be; that things do but swell and contract and swell again, and so on for ever and ever; and that, since they could not swell if they did not contract, since without the black there could not be the white, nor pleasurewithout pain, nor virtue without vice, nor criminals without judges; even contraction, or the black, or pain, or vice, or judges, are not ‘the bad,’ but only negatives; and that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. They are Voltairean optimists masquerading to an unsuspecting population as pessimists. ‘Eternal Variation’ is their motto.”
“I gather,” said the Angel, “that these think there is no purpose in existence?”
“Rather, sir, that existenceisthe purpose. For, if you consider, any other conception of purpose implies fulfilment, or anend, which they do not admit, just as they do not admit a beginning.”
“How logical!” said the Angel. “It makes me dizzy! You have renounced the idea of climbing, then?”
“Not so,” responded his dragoman. “We climb to the top of the pole, slide imperceptibly down, and begin over again; but since we never really know whether we are climbing or sliding, this does not depress us.”
“To believe that this goes on for ever is futile,” said the Angel.
“So we are told,” replied his dragoman, without emotion. “Wethink, however, that the truth is with us, in spite of jesting Pilate.”
“It is not for me,” said the Angel with dignity, “to argue with my dragoman.”
“No, sir, for it is always necessary to beware of the open mind. I myself find it very difficult to believe the same thing every day. And the fact that is whatever you believe will probably not alter the truth, which may be said to have a certain mysterious immutability, considering the number of efforts men have made to change itfrom time to time. We are now, however, just above the City Tabernacle, and if you will close your wings we shall penetrate it through the claptrap-door which enables its preachers now and then to ascend to higher spheres.”
“Stay!” said the Angel; “let me float a minute while I suck a peppermint, for the audiences in these places often have colds.” And with that delicious aroma clinging to them they made their entry through a strait gate in the roof and took their seats in the front row, below a tall prophet in eyeglasses, who was discoursing on the stars. The Angel slept heavily.
“You have lost a good thing, sir,” said his dragoman reproachfully, when they left the Tabernacle.
“In my opinion,” the Angel playfully responded, “I won a better, for I went nap. What can a mortal know about the stars?”
“Believe me,” answered his dragoman, “the subject is not more abstruse than is generally chosen.”
“If he had taken religion I should have listened with pleasure,” said the Angel.
“Oh! sir, but in these days such a subject is unknown in a place of worship. Religion is now exclusively a State affair. The change began with discipline and the Education Bill in 1918, and has gradually crystallised ever since. It is true that individual extremists on the right make continual endeavours to encroach on the functions of the State, but they preach to empty houses.”
“And the Deity?” said the Angel: “You have not once mentioned Him. It has struck me as curious.”
“Belief in the Deity,” responded his dragoman, “perished shortly after the Great Skirmish, during which there was too active and varied an effort to revive it. Action, as you know, sir, always brings reaction,and it must be said that the spiritual propaganda of those days was so grossly tinged with the commercial spirit that it came under the head of profiteering and earned for itself a certain abhorrence. For no sooner had the fears and griefs brought by the Great Skirmish faded from men’s spirits than they perceived that their new impetus towards the Deity had been directed purely by the longing for protection, solace, comfort, and reward, and not by any real desire for ‘the good’ in itself. It was this truth, together with the appropriation of the word by Emperors, and the expansion of our towns, a process ever destructive of traditions, which brought about extinction of belief in His existence.”
“It was a large order,” said the Angel.
“It was more a change of nomenclature,” replied his dragoman. “The ruling motive for belief in ‘the good’ is still the hope of getting something out of it—the commercial spirit is innate.”
“Ah!” said the Angel, absently. “Can we have another lunch now? I could do with a slice of beef.”
“An admirable idea, sir,” replied his dragoman, “we will have it in the White City.”
“What in your opinion is the nature of happiness?” asked the Angel Æthereal, as he finished his second bottle of Bass, in the grounds of the White City. The dragoman regarded his angel with one eye.
“The question is not simple, sir, though often made the subject of symposiums in the more intellectual journals. Even now, in the middle of the twentieth century, some still hold that it is a by-product of fresh air and liquor. The Old and Merrie England indubitablyprocured it from those elements. Some, again, imagine it to follow from high thinking and low living, while no mean number believe that it depends on women.”
“Their absence or their presence?” asked the Angel, with interest.
“Some this and others that. But for my part, it is not altogether the outcome of these causes.”
“Is this now a happy land?”
“Sir,” returned his dragoman, “all things earthly are comparative.”
“Get on with it,” said the Angel.
“I will comply,” responded his dragoman reproachfully, “if you will permit me first to draw your third cork. And let me say in passing that even your present happiness is comparative, or possibly superlative, as you will know when you have finished this last bottle. It may or may not be greater; we shall see.”
“We shall,” said the Angel, resolutely.
“You ask me whether this land is happy; but must we not first decide what happiness is? And how difficult this will be you shall soon discover. For example, in the early days of the Great Skirmish, happiness was reputed non-existent; every family was plunged into anxiety or mourning; and, though this to my own knowledge was not the case, such as were not pretended to be. Yet, strange as it may appear, the shrewd observer of those days was unable to remark any indication of added gloom. Certain creature comforts, no doubt, were scarce, but there was no lack of spiritual comfort, which high minds have ever associated with happiness; nor do I here allude to liquor. What, then, was the nature of this spiritual comfort, you will certainly be asking. I will tell you, and in seven words: People forgot themselves and rememberedother people. Until those days it had never been realised what a lot of medical men could be spared from the civil population; what a number of clergymen, lawyers, stockbrokers, artists, writers, politicians, and other persons, whose work in life is to cause people to think about themselves, never would be missed. Invalids knitted socks and forgot to be unwell; old gentlemen read the papers and forgot to talk about their food; people travelled in trains and forgot not to fall into conversation with each other; merchants became special constables and forgot to differ about property; the House of Lords remembered its dignity and forgot its impudence; the House of Commons almost forgot to chatter. The case of the working-man was the most striking of all—he forgot he was the working man. The very dogs forgot themselves, though that, to be sure, was no novelty, as the Irish writer demonstrated in his terrific outburst: ‘On my doorstep.’ But time went on, and hens in their turn forgot to lay, ships to return to port, cows to give enough milk, and Governments to look ahead, till the first flush of self-forgetfulness which had dyed peoples’ cheeks——”
“Died on them,” put in the Angel, with a quiet smile.
“You take my meaning, sir,” said his dragoman, “though I should not have worded it so happily. But certainly the return to self began, and people used to think: ‘The war is not so bloody as I thought, for I am getting better money than I ever did; and the longer it lasts the more I shall get, and for the sake of this I am prepared to endure much.’ The saying ‘Beef and beer, for soon you must put up the shutters,’ became the motto of all classes. ‘If I am to be shot, drowned, bombed, ruined, or starved to-morrow,’ they said, ‘I had bettereat, drink, marry, and buy jewellery to-day.’ And so they did, in spite of the dreadful efforts of one bishop and two gentlemen who presided over the important question of food. They did not, it is true, relax their manual efforts to accomplish the defeat of their enemies or ‘win the war,’ as it was somewhat loosely called; but they no longer worked with their spirits, which, with a few exceptions, went to sleep. For, sir, the spirit, like the body, demands regular repose, and in my opinion is usually the first of the two to snore. Before the Great Skirmish came at last to its appointed end the snoring from spirits in this country might have been heard in the moon. People thought of little but money, revenge, and what they could get to eat, though the word ‘sacrifice’ was so accustomed to their lips that they could no more get it off them than the other forms of lip-salve, increasingly in vogue. They became very merry. And the question I would raise is this: By which of these two standards shall we assess the word ‘happiness’? Were these people happy when they mourned and thought not of self; or when they married and thought of self all the time?”
“By the first standard,” replied the Angel, with kindling eyes. “Happiness is undoubtedly nobility.”
“Not so fast, sir,” replied his dragoman; “for I have frequently met with nobility in distress; and, indeed, the more exalted and refined the mind, the unhappier is frequently the owner thereof, for to him are visible a thousand cruelties and mean injustices which lower natures do not perceive.”
“Hold!” exclaimed the Angel: “This is blasphemy against Olympus, ‘The Spectator,’ and other High-Brows.”
“Sir,” replied his dragoman gravely, “I am not oneof those who accept gilded doctrines without examination; I read in the Book of Life rather than in the million tomes written by men to get away from their own unhappiness.”
“I perceive,” said the Angel, with a shrewd glance, “that you have something up your sleeve. Shake it out!”
“My conclusion is this, sir,” returned his dragoman, well pleased: “Man is only happy when he is living at a certain pressure of life to the square inch; in other words, when he is so absorbed in what he is doing, making, saying, thinking, or dreaming, that he has lost self-consciousness. If there be upon him any ill—such as toothache or moody meditation—so poignant as to prevent him losing himself in the interest of the moment, then he is not happy. Nor must he merely think himself absorbed, but actually be so, as are two lovers sitting under one umbrella, or he who is just making a couplet rhyme.”
“Would you say then,” insinuated the Angel, “that a man is happy when he meets a mad bull in a narrow lane? For there will surely be much pressure of life to the square inch.”
“It does not follow,” responded his dragoman; “for at such moments one is prone to stand apart, pitying himself and reflecting on the unevenness of fortune. But if he collects himself and meets the occasion with spirit he will enjoy it until, while sailing over the hedge, he has leisure to reflect once more. It is clear to me,” he proceeded, “that the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the old fable was not, as has hitherto been supposed by a puritanical people, the mere knowledge of sex, but symbolised rather general self-consciousness; for I have little doubt that Adam and Eve sat together under one umbrella long before they discovered they had no clotheson. Not until they became self-conscious about things at large did they become unhappy.”
“Love is commonly reputed by some, and power by others, to be the keys of happiness,” said the Angel, regardless of his grammar.
“Duds,” broke in his dragoman. “For love and power are only two of the various paths to absorption, or unconsciousness of self; mere methods by which men of differing natures succeed in losing their self-consciousness, for he who, like Saint Francis, loves all creation, has no time to be conscious of loving himself, and he who rattles the sword and rules like Bill Kaser, has no time to be conscious that he is not ruling himself. I do not deny that such men may be happy, but not because of the love or the power. No, it is because they are loving or ruling with such intensity that they forget themselves in doing it.”
“There is much in what you say,” said the Angel thoughtfully. “How do you apply it to the times and land in which you live?”
“Sir,” his dragoman responded, “the Englishman never has been, and is not now, by any means so unhappy as he looks, for, where you see a furrow in the brow, or a mouth a little open, it portends absorption rather than thoughtfulness—unless, indeed, it means adenoids—and is the mark of a naturally self-forgetful nature; nor should you suppose that poverty and dirt which abound, as you see, even under the sway of the Laborious, is necessarily deterrent to the power of living in the moment; it may even be a symptom of that habit. The unhappy are more frequently the clean and leisured, especially in times of peace, when they have little to do save sit under mulberry trees, invest money, pay their taxes, wash, fly, andthink about themselves. Nevertheless, many of the Laborious also live at half-cock, and cannot be said to have lost consciousness of self.”
“Then democracy is not synonymous with happiness?” asked the Angel.
“Dear sir,” replied his dragoman, “I know they said so at the time of the Great Skirmish. But they said so much that one little one like that hardly counted. I will let you into a secret. We have not yet achieved democracy, either here or anywhere else. The old American saying about it is all very well, but since not one man in ten has any real opinion of his own on any subject on which he votes, he cannot, with the best will in the world, put it on record. Not until he learns to have and record his own real opinion will he truly govern himself for himself, which is, as you know, the test of true democracy?”
“I am getting fuddled,” said the Angel. “What is it you want to make you happy?”
His dragoman sat up: “If I am right,” he purred, “in my view that happiness is absorption, our problem is to direct men’s minds to absorption in right and pleasant things. An American making a corner in wheat is absorbed and no doubt happy, yet he is an enemy of mankind, for his activity is destructive. We should seek to give our minds to creation, to activities good for others as well as for ourselves, to simplicity, pride in work, and forgetfulness of self in every walk of life. We should do things for the sheer pleasure of doing them, and not for what they may or may not be going to bring us in, and be taught always to give our whole minds to it; in this way only will the edge of our appetite for existence remain as keen as a razor which is stropped every morning by one who knows how. On the negative side we should bebrought up to be kind, to be clean, to be moderate, and to love good music, exercise, and fresh air.”
“That sounds a bit of all right,” said the Angel. “What measures are being taken in these directions?”
“It has been my habit, sir, to study the Education Acts of my country ever since that which was passed at the time of the Great Skirmish; but, with the exception of exercise, I have not as yet been able to find any direct allusion to these matters. Nor is this surprising when you consider that education is popularly supposed to be, not for the acquisition of happiness, but for the good of trade or the promotion of acute self-consciousness through what we know as culture. If by any chance there should arise a President of Education so enlightened as to share my views, it would be impossible for him to mention the fact for fear of being sent to Colney Hatch.”
“In that case,” asked the Angel, “you do not believe in the progress of your country?”
“Sir,” his dragoman replied earnestly, “you have seen this land for yourself and have heard from me some account of its growth from the days when you were last on earth, shortly before the Great Skirmish; it will not have escaped your eagle eye that this considerable event has had some influence in accelerating the course of its progression; and you will have noticed how, notwithstanding the most strenuous intentions at the close of that tragedy, we have yielded to circumstance and in every direction followed the line of least resistance.”
“I have a certain sympathy with that,” said the Angel, with a yawn; “it is so much easier.”
“So we have found; and our country has got along, perhaps, as well as one could have expected, considering what it has had to contend with: pressure of debt;primrose paths; pelf; party; patrio-Prussianism; the people; pundits; Puritans; proctors; property; philosophers; the Pontifical; and progress. I will not disguise from you, however, that we are far from perfection; and it may be that on your next visit, thirty-seven years hence, we shall be further. For, however it may be with angels, sir, with men things do not stand still; and, as I have tried to make clear to you, in order to advance in body and spirit, it is necessary to be masters of your environment and discoveries instead of letting them be masters of you. Wealthy again we may be, healthy and happy we are not, as yet.”
“I have finished my beer,” said the Angel Æthereal with finality, “and am ready to rise. You have nothing to drink! Let me give you a testimonial instead!” Pulling a quill from his wing, he dipped it in the mustard and wrote: “A Dry Dog—No Good For Trade” on his dragoman’s white hat. “I shall now leave the earth,” he added.
“I am pleased to hear it,” said his dragoman, “for I fancy that the longer you stay the more vulgar you will become. I have noticed it growing on you, sir, just as it does on us.”
The Angel smiled. “Meet me by sunlight alone,” he said, “under the left-hand lion in Trafalgar Square at this hour of this day, in 1984. Remember me to the waiter, will you? So long!” And, without pausing for a reply, he spread his wings, and soared away.
“L’homme moyen sensuel! Sic itur ad astra!” murmured his dragoman enigmatically, and, lifting his eyes, he followed the Angel’s flight into the empyrean.
Made and Printed in Great Britain. Richard Clay&Sons, Ltd.,Printers, Bungay, Suffolk.