Curiously enough, Mr. Grant Allen too has come to much the same conclusions as myself, after having attacked me, though not so fiercely, as Mr. Romanes has done. In 1879 he said in theExaminer(May 17) that the teleological view put forward in Evolution, Old and New, was “just the sort of mystical nonsense from which” he “had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us.” And so in theAcademyon the same day he said that no “one-sided argument” (referring to Evolution, Old and New) could ever deprive Mr. Darwin of the “place which he had eternally won in the history of human thought by his magnificent achievement.”
A few years, and Mr. Allen entertains a very different opinion of Mr. Darwin’s magnificent achievement.
“There are only two conceivable ways,” he writes, “in which any increment of brain power can ever have arisen in any individual. The one is the Darwinian way, by ‘spontaneous variation,’ that is to say by variation due to minute physical circumstances affecting the individual in the germ. The other is the Spencerian way, by functional increment, that is to say by the effect of increased use and constant exposure to varying circumstances during conscious life.”[250]
Mr. Allen must know very well, or if he does not he has no excuse at any rate for not knowing, that the theory according to which increase of brain power or any other bodily or mental power is due to use, is no more Mr. Spencer’s than the theory of gravitation is, except in so far as that Mr. Spencer has adopted it. It is the theory which every one except Mr. Allenassociates with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, but more especially (and on the whole I suppose justly) with Lamarck.
“I venture to think,” continues Mr. Allen, “that the first way [Mr. Darwin’s], if we look it clearly in the face, will be seen to bepractically unthinkable; and that we have therefore no alternative but to accept the second.”
These writers go round so quickly and so completely that there is no keeping pace with them. “As to Materialism,” he writes presently, “surely it is more profoundly materialistic to suppose that mere physical causes operating on the germ can determine minute physical and material changes in the brain, which will in turn make the individuality what it is to be, than to supposethat all brains are what they are in virtue of antecedent function. The one creed makes the man depend mainly upon the accidents of molecular physics in a colliding germ cell and sperm cell;the other makes him depend mainly upon the doings and gains of his ancestors as modified and altered by himself.”
Here is a sentence taken almost at random from the body of the article:—
“We are always seeing something which adds to our total stock of memories; we are always learning and doing something new. The vast majority of these experiences are similar in kind to those already passed through by our ancestors: they add nothing to the inheritance of the race. . . . Though they leave physical traces on the individual, they do not so far affect the underlying organisation of the brain as to make the development of after-brains somewhat different from previous ones. But there are certain functional activities which do tend so to alter the development ofafter-brains; certain novel or sustained activities which apparently result in the production of new correlated brain elements or brain connections hereditarily transmissible as increased potentialities of similar activity in the offspring.”
“We are always seeing something which adds to our total stock of memories; we are always learning and doing something new. The vast majority of these experiences are similar in kind to those already passed through by our ancestors: they add nothing to the inheritance of the race. . . . Though they leave physical traces on the individual, they do not so far affect the underlying organisation of the brain as to make the development of after-brains somewhat different from previous ones. But there are certain functional activities which do tend so to alter the development ofafter-brains; certain novel or sustained activities which apparently result in the production of new correlated brain elements or brain connections hereditarily transmissible as increased potentialities of similar activity in the offspring.”
Of Natural Selection Mr. Allen writes much, as Professor Mivart and others have been writing for many years past.
“It seems to me,” he says, “easy to understand how survival of the fittest may result in progress starting from such functionally produced gains, but impossible to understand how it could result in progress if it had to start in mere accidental structural increments due to spontaneous variation alone.”[252a]
Mr. Allen may say this now, but until lately he has been among the first to scold any one else who said so.
And this is how the article concludes:—
“The first hypothesis (Mr Darwin’s) is one that throws no light upon any of the facts. The second hypothesis (which Mr. Allen is pleased to call Mr. Herbert Spencer’s) is one that explains them all with transparent lucidity.”[252b]
So that Mr. Darwin, according to Mr. Allen, is clean out of it. Truly when Mr. Allen makes stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumps upon them to some tune. But then Mr. Darwin is dead now. I have not heard of his having given Mr. Allen any manuscripts as he gave Mr. Romanes. I hope Mr. Herbert Spencer will not give him any. If I was Mr. Spencer and found my admirers crowning me with Lamarck’s laurels, I think I should have something to say to them.
What are we to think of a writer who declares that the theory that specific and generic changes are due to use and disuse “explainsall the factswith transparent lucidity”?
Lamarck’s hypothesis is no doubt a great help and a great step toward Professor Hering’s; it makes a known cause underlie variations, and thus is free from those fatal objections which Professor Mivart and others have brought against the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace; but how does the theory that use develops an organism explain why offspring repeat the organism at all? How does the Lamarckian hypothesis explain the sterility of hybrids, for example? The sterility of hybrids has been always considered one of the greatcrucesin connection with any theory of Evolution. How again does it explain reversion to long-lost characters and the resumption of feral characteristics? the phenomena of old age? the principle that underlies longevity? the reason why the reproductive system is generally the last to arrive at maturity, and why few further developments take place in any organism after this has been fully developed? the sterility of many animals under captivity? the development in both males and females, under certain circumstances, of the characteristics of the opposite sex? the latency of memory? the unconsciousness with which we develop, and with which instinctive actions are performed? How does any theory advanced either by Lamarck, Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Darwin explain, or indeed throw light upon these facts until supplemented with the explanation given of them in Life and Habit—for which I must refer the reader to that work itself?
People may say what they like about “the experienceof the race,”[254a]“the registration of experiences continued for numberless generations,”[254b]“infinity of experiences,”[254c]“lapsed intelligence,” &c., but until they make Memory, in the most uncompromising sense of the word, the key to all the phenomena of Heredity, they will get little help to the better understanding of the difficulties above adverted to. Add this to the theory of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, and the points which I have above alluded to receive a good deal of “lucidity.”
But to return to Mr. Romanes: however much he and Mr. Allen may differ about the merits of Mr. Darwin, they were at any rate not long since cordially agreed in vilipending my unhappy self, and are now saying very much what I have been saying for some years past. I do not deny that they are capable witnesses. They will generally see a thing when a certain number of other people have come to do so. I submit that, no matter how grudgingly they give their evidence, the tendency of that evidence is sufficiently clear to show that the opinions put forward in Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory, deserve the attention of the reader.
I may perhaps deal with Mr. Romanes’ recent work more fully in the sequel to Life and Habit on which I am now engaged. For the present it is enough to say that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and,longo intervallo, myself do, he should not talk about habit or experience as between successive generations, and that if he does mean what we do—which I suppose he does—he should have said so much more clearly and consistently than he has.
This afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this book being ready for issue, I see Mr. Romanes’ letter to theAthenæumof this day, and get this postscript pasted into the book after binding.
Mr. Romanes corrects his reference to the passage in which he says that Canon Kingsley first advanced the theory that instinct is inherited memory (“M. E. in Animals,” p. 296). Canon Kingsley’s words are to be found inFraser, June, 1867, and are as follows:—
“Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany, flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds, and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that ‘that was water he must cross,’ he knew not why; but something told him that his mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it comes). A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was bred, and now it is done, and he is weary and sad and lonely, &c. &c.
“Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany, flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds, and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that ‘that was water he must cross,’ he knew not why; but something told him that his mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it comes). A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was bred, and now it is done, and he is weary and sad and lonely, &c. &c.
This is a very interesting passage, and I am glad to quote it; but it hardly amounts to advancing the theorythat instinct is inherited memory. Observing Mr. Romanes’ words closely, I see he only says that Canon Kingsley was the first to advance the theory “that many hundred miles of landscape scenery” can “constitute an object of inherited memory;” but as he proceeds to say that “this” has since “been independently suggested by several writers,” it is plain he intends to convey the idea that Canon Kingsley advanced the theory that instinct generally is inherited memory, which indeed his words do; but it is hardly credible that he should have left them where he did if he had realized their importance.
Mr. Romanes proceeds to inform me personally that the reference to “Nature” in his proof “originally indicated another writer who had independently advanced the same theory as that of Canon Kingsley.” After this I have a right to ask him to tell me who the writer is, and where I shall find what he said. I ask this, and at my earliest opportunity will do my best to give this writer, too, the credit he doubtless deserves.
I have never professed to be the originator of the theory connecting heredity with memory. I knew I knew so little that I was in great trepidation when I wrote all the earlier chapters of “Life and Habit.” I put them paradoxically, because I did not dare to put them otherwise. As the book went on, I saw I was on firm ground, and the paradox was dropped. When I found what Professor Hering had done, I put him forward as best I could at once. I then learned German, and translated him, giving his words in full in “Unconscious Memory;” since then I have always spoken of the theory as Professor Hering’s.
Mr. Romanes says that “the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous literatureon instinct by the above-named writers (not to mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words.” Few except Mr. Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to have formed the backbone “of all previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers,” but when I wrote “Life and Habit” it was not understood to form it. If it had been, I should not have found it necessary to come before the public this fourth time during the last seven years to insist upon it. Of course the theory is not new—it was in the air and bound to come; but when it came, it came through Professor Hering of Prague, and not through those who, great as are the services they have rendered, still did not render this particular one of making memory the keystone of their system. Mr. Romanes now says: “Why, of course, that’s what they were meaning all the time.” Perhaps they were, but they did not say so, and others—conspicuously Mr. Romanes himself—did not understand them to be meaning what he now discovers that they meant. When Mr. Romanes attacked me inNature, January 27, 1881, he said I had “been anticipated by Professor Hering,” but he evidently did not understand that any one else had anticipated me; and far from holding, as he now does, that “the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous” writers on instinct, and “is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words,” he said (in a passage already quoted) that it was “interesting, if advanced merely as an illustration, but to imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is absurd.” Considering how recently Mr.Romanes wrote the words just quoted, he has soon forgotten them.
I do not, as I have said already, and never did, claim to have originated the theory I put forward in “Life and Habit.” I thought it out independently, but I knew it must have occurred to many, and had probably been worked out by many, before myself. My claim is to have brought it perhaps into fuller light, and to have dwelt on its importance, bearings, and developments with some persistence, and to have done so without much recognition or encouragement, till lately. Of men of science, Mr. A. R. Wallace and Professor Mivart gave me encouragement, but no one else has done so. I sometimes saw, as in the Duke of Argyll’s case, and in Mr. Romanes’ own, that men were writing at me, or borrowing from me, but with the two exceptions already made, and that also of the Bishop of Carlisle, not one of the literary and scientific notables of the day so much as mentioned my name while making use of my work.
A few words more, and I will bring these remarks to a close, Mr. Romanes says I represent “the phenomena of memory as occurring throughout the inorganic world.” This implies that I attribute all the phenomena of memory as we see them in animals to such things as stones and gases. Mr. Romanes knows very well that I have never said anything which could warrant his attempting to put the absurdity into my mouth which he here tries to do. The reader who wishes to see what I do maintain upon this subject will find it on pp. 216-218 of the present volume.
Talking of legs, as I went through the main street of Dalpe an old lady of about sixty-five stopped me, and told me that while gathering her winter store of firewood she had had the misfortune to hurt her leg. I was very sorry, but I failed to satisfy her; the more I sympathised in general terms, the more I felt that something further was expected of me. I went on trying to do the civil thing, when the old lady cut me short by saying it would be much better if I were to see the leg at once; so she showed it me in the street, and there, sure enough, close to the groin there was a swelling. Again I said how sorry I was, and added that perhaps she ought to show it to a medical man. “But aren’tyoua medical man?” said she in an alarmed manner. “Certainly not, ma’am,” replied I. “Then why did you let me show you my leg?” said she indignantly, and pulling her clothes down, the poor old woman began to hobble off; presently two others joined her, and I heard hearty peals of laughter as sherecounted her story. A stranger visiting these out-of-the-way villages is almost certain to be mistaken for a doctor. What business, they say to themselves, can any one else have there, and who in his senses would dream of visiting them for pleasure? This old lady had rushed to the usual conclusion, and had been trying to get a little advice gratis.
* * * * *
The little objects looking like sentry-boxes that go all round Prato Church contain rough modern frescoes representing, if I remember rightly, the events attendant upon the crucifixion. These are on a small scale what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo are on a large one. Small single oratories are scattered about all over the Canton Ticino, and indeed everywhere in North Italy, by the road-side, at all halting-places, and especially at the crest of any more marked ascent, where the tired wayfarer, probably heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty word or two if not checked. The people like them, and miss them when they come to England. They sometimes do what the lower animals do in confinement when precluded from habits they are accustomed to, and put up with strange makeshifts by way of substitute. I once saw a poor Ticinese woman kneeling in prayer before a dentist’s show-case in the Hampstead Road; she doubtless mistook the teeth for the relics of some saint. I am afraid she was a little like a hen sitting upon a chalk egg, but she seemed quite contented.
Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough upon chalk eggs at times? And what would life be but for the power to do so? We do not sufficiently realise the part which illusion has played in ourdevelopment. One of the prime requisites for evolution is a certain power for adaptation to varying circumstances, that is to say, of plasticity, bodily and mental. But the power of adaptation is mainly dependent on the power of thinking certain new things sufficiently like certain others to which we have been accustomed for us not to be too much incommoded by the change—upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the new for the old. The power of fusing ideas (and through ideas, structures) depends upon the power ofconfusing them; the power to confuse ideas that are not very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which the mind has upon it. It is this which bars association from sticking to the letter of its bond; for we are in a hurry to jump to a conclusion on the first show of plausible pretext, and cut association’s statement of claim short by taking it as read before we have got through half of it. We “get it into our notes, in fact,” as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did in Pickwick, and having got it once in, we are not going to get it out again. This breeds fusion and confusion, and from this there come new developments.
So powerful is the impetus which the mind has continually upon it that we always, I believe, make an effort to see every new object as a repetition of the object last before us. Objects are so varied and present themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule we renounce this effort too promptly to notice it, but it is always there, and as I have just said, it is because of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve new mental and bodily developments. Where the effort is successful, there is illusion; where nearly successful but not quite, there is a shock and a senseof being puzzled—more or less, as the case may be; where it so obviously impossible as not to be pursued, there is no perception of the effort at all.
Mr. Locke has been greatly praised for his essay upon human understanding. An essay on human misunderstanding should be no less interesting and important. Illusion to a small extent is one of the main causes, if indeed it is not the main cause, of progress, but it must be upon a small scale. All abortive speculation, whether commercial or philosophical, is based upon it, and much as we may abuse such speculation, we are, all of us, its debtors.
* * * * *
I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura Church: it is dated early in the last century, and is absolutely without ornament; the flight of steps inside it lead up to the level of the floor of the church. One lovely summer Sunday morning passing the church betimes, I saw the people kneeling upon these steps, the church within being crammed. In the darker light of the porch, they told out against the sky that showed through the open arch beyond them; far away the eye rested on the mountains—deep blue, save where the snow still lingered. I never saw anything more beautiful—and these forsooth are the people whom so many of us think to better by distributing tracts about Protestantism among them!
I liked the porch almost best under an aspect which it no longer presents. One summer an opening was made in the west wall, which was afterwards closed because the wind blew through it too much and made the church too cold. While it was open, one could sit on the church steps and look down through it on to the bottom of the Ticino valley; and through thewindows one could see the slopes about Dalpe and Cornone. Between the two windows there is a picture of austere old S. Carlo Borromeo with his hands joined in prayer.
It was at Rossura that I made the acquaintance of a word which I have since found very largely used throughout North Italy. It is pronounced “chow” pure and simple, but is written, if written at all, “ciau” or “ciao,” the “a” being kept very broad. I believe the word is derived from “schiavo,” a slave, which became corrupted into “schiao,” and “ciao.” It is used with two meanings, both of which, however, are deducible from the word slave. In its first and more common use it is simply a salute, either on greeting or taking leave, and means, “I am your very obedient servant.” Thus, if one has been talking to a small child, its mother will tell it to say “chow” before it goes away, and will then nod her head and say “chow” herself. The other use is a kind of pious expletive, intending “I must endure it,” “I am the slave of a higher power.” It was in this sense I first heard it at Rossura. A woman was washing at a fountain while I was eating my lunch. She said she had lost her daughter in Paris a few weeks earlier. “She was a beautiful woman,” said the bereaved mother, “but—chow. She had great talents—chow. I had her educated by the nuns of Bellinzona—chow. Her knowledge of geography was consummate—chow, chow,” &c. Here “chow” means “pazienza,” “I have done and said all that I can, and must now bear it as best I may.”
I tried to comfort her, but could do nothing, till at last it occurred to me to say “chow” too. I did so, and was astonished at the soothing effect it had upon her. How subtle are the laws that govern consolation!I suppose they must ultimately be connected with reproduction—the consoling idea being a kind of small cross whichre-generatesorre-createsthe sufferer. It is important, therefore, that the new ideas with which the old are to be crossed should differ from these last sufficiently to divert the attention, and yet not so much as to cause a painful shock.
There should be a little shock, or there will be no variation in the new ideas that are generated, but they will resemble those that preceded them, and grief will be continued; there must not be too great a shock or there will be no illusion—no confusion and fusion between the new set of ideas and the old, and in consequence there will be no result at all, or, if any, an increase in mental discord. We know very little, however, upon this subject, and are continually shown to be at fault by finding an unexpectedly small cross produce a wide diversion of the mental images, while in other cases a wide one will produce hardly any result. Sometimes again, a cross which we should have said was much too wide will have an excellent effect. I did not anticipate, for example, that my saying “chow” would have done much for the poor woman who had lost her daughter: the cross did not seem wide enough: she was already, as I thought, saturated with “chow.” I can only account for the effect my application of it produced by supposing the word to have derived some element of strangeness and novelty as coming from a foreigner—just as land which will give a poor crop, if planted with sets from potatoes that have been grown for three or four years on this same soil, will yet yield excellently if similar sets be brought from twenty miles off. For the potato, so far as I have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant,easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, which if bored, yawns horribly.
I may say in passing that the tempers of plants have not been sufficiently studied; and what little opinion we have formed about their dispositions is for the most part ill formed. The sulkiest tree that I know is the silver beech. It never forgives a scratch.—There is a tree in Kensington gardens a little off the west side of the Serpentine with names cut upon it as long ago as 1717 and 1736, which the tree is as little able to forgive and forget as though the injury had been done not ten years since. And the tree is not an aged tree either.
Our inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They are like living beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others—some good and some ne’er-do-weels; but they differ from animals and vegetables inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical ratio, but the period of their gestation decreases in geometrical ratio also. Take this matter of Alpine roads for example. For how many millions of years was there no approach to a road over the St. Gothard, save the untutored watercourses of the Ticino and the Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the chamois? For how many more ages after this was there not a mere shepherd’s or huntsman’s path by the river-side—without so much as a log thrown over so as to form a rude bridge? No one would probably have ever thought of making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than any monkey that we know of has done so. But an avalanche or a flood once swept a pine into position and left it there; on this a genius, who was doubtless thought to be doing something very infamous, ventured to make use of it. Another time a pine was found nearly across the stream, but not quite; and not quite, again, in the place where it was wanted. A second genius, to the horror of his fellow-tribesmen—who declared that thistime the world really would come to an end—shifted the pine a few feet so as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges—his family repudiated him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting down the pine and bringing it from some distance is an easy step. To avoid detail, let us come to the old Roman horse-road over the Alps. The time between the shepherd’s path and the Roman road is probably short in comparison with that between the mere chamois track and the first thing that can be called a path of men. From the Roman we go on to the mediæval road with more frequent stone bridges, and from the mediæval to the Napoleonic carriage-road.
The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present one was the great era for the making of carriage-roads. Fifty years have hardly passed, and here we are already in the age of tunnelling and railroads. The first period, from the chamois track to the foot road, was one of millions of years; the second, from the first foot road to the Roman military way, was one of many thousands; the third, from the Roman to the mediæval, was perhaps a thousand; from the mediæval to the Napoleonic, five hundred; from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will come next we know not, but it should come within twenty years, and will probably have something to do with electricity.
It follows by an easy process of reasoning that after another couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be made several times in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations.This would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and practice. This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight—living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and refurnish, &c.—so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future will be much too fast.
The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything about it) that science is rapidly reducing time and space to a very undifferentiated condition. Take lamb: we can get lamb all the year round. This is perpetual spring; but perpetual spring is no spring at all; it is not a season; there are no more seasons, and being no seasons, there is no time. Take rhubarb, again. Rhubarb to the philosopher is the beginning of autumn, if indeed the philosopher can see anything as the beginning of anything. If any one asks why, I suppose the philosopher would say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season, which is clearly autumnal, according to our present classification. From rhubarb to the green gooseberry the step is so small as to require no bridging—with one’s eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, theyare almost indistinguishable—but the gooseberry is quite an autumnal fruit, and only a little earlier than apples and plums, which last are almost winter; clearly, therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal.
As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient number of uniting links between two things, they become united or made one thing, and any classification of them must be illusory. Classification is only possible where there is a shock given to the senses by reason of a perceived difference, which, if it is considerable, can be expressed in words. When the world was younger and less experienced, people were shocked at what appeared great differences between living forms; but species, whether of animals or plants, are now seen to be so united, either inferentially or by actual finding of the links, that all classification is felt to be arbitrary. The seasons are like species—they were at one time thought to be clearly marked, and capable of being classified with some approach to satisfaction. It is now seen that they blend either in the present or the past insensibly into one another, much as Mr. Herbert Spencer shows us that geology and astronomy blend into one another,[265]and cannot be classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain sensible people can tolerate. Strictly speaking, there is only one place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, but it is philosophy; and modern philosophy, like modern music, is nothing if it is not perplexing.
A simple verification of the autumnal character of rhubarb may, at first sight, appear to be found in Covent Garden Market, where we can actually seethe rhubarb towards the end of October. But this way of looking at the matter argues a fatal ineptitude for the pursuit of true philosophy. It would be “the most serious error” to regard the rhubarb that will appear in Covent Garden Market next October as belonging to the autumn then supposed to be current. Practically, no doubt, it does so, but theoretically it must be considered as the first-fruits of the autumn (if any) of the following year, which begins before the preceding summer (or, perhaps, more strictly, the preceding summer but one—and hence, but any number), has well ended. Whether this, however, is so or no, the rhubarb can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to the philosophically minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution, and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water.
To return, however, to Calonico. Thecuratowas very kind to me. We had long talks together. I could see it pained him that I was not a Catholic. He could never quite get over this, but he was very good and tolerant. He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those English who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people. This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do; and when I told him so, he viewed me with sorrow but henceforth without alarm.
All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant ones. Surely there are some things which like politics are too serious to be taken quite seriously.Surtout point de zèleis not the saying of a cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and the more deep our feeling is about anymatter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard againstzèlein this particular respect. There is but one step from the “earnest” to the “intense.” When St. Paul told us to be all things to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say how far it was to be driven.
I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I flirt just a trifle too much with “il partito nero,” when I am in Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do. “These people,” they say, “make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know their rough one. Knuckle under to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patronise you; have any individuality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way. ‘Il prete’ they say, with a significant look, ‘è sempre prete.’ For the future let us have professors and men of science instead of priests.”
I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal discords. I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their national character—a side which, in some respects, is no less interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more sympathetic. If I were an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side; as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper.
In old times people gave their spiritual and intellectual sop to Nemesis. Even when most positive, they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr. Tennysonhas said well, “There lives more doubt”—I quote from memory—“in honest faith, believe me, than in half the” systems of philosophy, or words to that effect. The victor had a slave at his ear during his triumph; the slaves during the Roman Saturnalia, dressed in their masters’ clothes, sat at meat with them, told them of their faults, and blacked their faces for them. They made their masters wait upon them. In the ages of faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, and mass was said before him, and hymns chanted discordantly. The elder D’Israeli, from whom I am quoting, writes: “On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes to fume in the censors: ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing, and playing at dice upon the altar, while aboy bishoporpope of foolsburlesqued the divine service;” and later on he says: “So late as 1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Innocents, says—‘I have seen in some monasteries in this province extravagances solemnised which pagans would not have practised. Neither the clergy nor the guardians indeed go to the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the cabbage-cutters, errand boys, cooks, scullions, and gardeners; in a word, all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they perform the offices proper for the day. They dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out: they hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers they keep shaking them in derision, and letting theashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:—
“‘Hæc est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,Hæc est festa dies festarum festa dierum.’”[269]
“‘Hæc est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,Hæc est festa dies festarum festa dierum.’”[269]
Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man’s peace in his own convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do with their pictures that they may judge the better concerning them. I would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr. Bradlaugh’s lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the evening, two or three times every winter. I should perhaps tell them that the Grecian pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays. They little know how much more keenly they would relish their normal opinions during the rest of the year for the little spiritual outing which I would prescribe for them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise saying—“Surtout point de zèle.” St. Paul attempted an obviously hopeless task (as the Church of Rome very well understands) when he tried to put down seasonarianism. People must and will go to church tobe a little better, to the theatre to be a little naughtier, to the Royal Institution to be a little more scientific, than they are in actual life. It is only by pulsations of goodness, naughtiness, and whatever else we affect that we can get on at all. I grant that when in his office, a man should be exact and precise, but our holidays are our garden, and too much precision here is a mistake.
Surely truces, without even anarrière penséeof difference of opinion, between those who are compelled to take widely different sides during the greater part of their lives, must be of infinite service to those who can enter on them. There are few merely spiritual pleasures comparable to that derived from the temporary laying down of a quarrel, even though we may know that it must be renewed shortly. It is a great grief to me that there is no place where I can go among Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley, Tyndal, and Ray Lankester, Miss Buckley, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen and others whom I cannot call to mind at this moment, as I can go among the Italian priests. I remember in one monastery (but this was not in the Canton Ticino) the novice taught me how to make sacramental wafers, and I played him Handel on the organ as well as I could. I told him that Handel was a Catholic; he said he could tell that by his music at once. There is no chance of getting among our scientists in this way.
Some friends say I was telling a lie when I told the novice Handel was a Catholic, and ought not to have done so. I make it a rule to swallow a few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. Whatis“lying”? Turning for moral guidance tomy cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy? or was it not He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood—to tell it with a circumstance, without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to make a practice of it so as to be a plausible, habitual, and professional liar for some six weeks or so in the year? I imagine so. When I was young I used to read in good books that it was God who taught the bird to make her nest, and if so He probably taught each species the other domestic arrangements best suited to it. Or did the nest-building information come from God, and was there an evil one among the birds also who taught them at any rate to steer clear of priggishness?
Think of the spider again—an ugly creature, but I suppose God likes it. What a mean and odious lie is that web which naturalists extol as such a marvel of ingenuity!
Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met one of those orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. “My children,” she exclaimed, “I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your passagethrough life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose sight of it and you are lost!” Over and over again she sang this burden in a small still voice, and so I left her. Then straightway I came upon some butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to believe in all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice they rejected; thus, asserting themselves to be certain other and hateful butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land and see good days. No: lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have it always with us. We must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we die.
All depends upon who it is that is lying. One man may steal a horse when another may not look over a hedge. The good man who tells no lies wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people, and he will not be false to any man: his lies become truths as they pass into the hearers’ ear. If a man deceives himself and is unkind, the truth is not in him; it turns to falsehood while yet in his mouth, like the quails in the Wilderness of Sinai. How this is so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth. My Italian friends are doubtless in the main right about the priests, but there are many exceptions, as they themselves gladly admit. For my own part I have found thecuratoin the small subalpine villages of North Italy to be more often than not a kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by sympathies deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinioncan counteract. With monks, however, as a general rule, I am less able to get on: nevertheless I have received much courtesy at the hands of some.
My young friend the novice was delightful—only it was so sad to think of the future that is before him. He wanted to know all about England, and when I told him it was an island, clasped his hands and said, “Oh che Providenza!” He told me how the other young men of his own age plagued him as he trudged his rounds high up among the most distant hamlets begging alms for the poor. “Be a good fellow,” they would say to him, “drop all this nonsense and come back to us, and we will never plague you again.” Then he would turn upon them and put their words from him. Of course my sympathies were with the other young men rather than with him, but it was impossible not to be sorry for the manner in which he had been humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now incapable of seeing things from any other standpoint than that of authority.
What he said to me about knowing that Handel was a Catholic by his music, put me in mind of what another good Catholic once said to me about a picture. He was a Frenchman and very nice, but adévot, and anxious to convert me. He paid a few days’ visit to London, so I showed him the National Gallery. While there I pointed out to him Sebastian del Piombo’s picture of the raising of Lazarus as one of the supposed masterpieces of our collection. He had the proper orthodox fit of admiration over it, and then we went through the other rooms. After a while we found ourselves before West’s picture of “Christ healing the Sick.” My French friend did not, I suppose, examine it very carefully, at any rate he believed he was againbefore the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo; he paused before it, and had his fit of admiration over again: then turning to me he said, “Ah! you would understand this picture better if you were a Catholic.” I did not tell him of his mistake.
An excursion which may be very well made from Faido is to the Val Piora, which I have already more than once mentioned. There is a large hotel here which has been opened some years, but has not hitherto proved the success which it was hoped it would be. I have stayed there two or three times and found it very comfortable; doubtless, now that Signer Lombardi of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become a more popular place of resort.
I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto; here the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached. There is a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had. The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look she cast upon the expanse below made a very fineensemble. “She would have afforded,”as Sir Walter Scott says, “a study for a Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period,”[276]but she must have been a smart-looking, handsome girl once.
She brightened up in conversation. I talked about Piora, which I already knew, and theLago Tom, the highest of the three lakes. She said she knew theLago Tom. I said laughingly, “Oh, I have no doubt you do. We’ve had many a good day at theLago Tom, I know.” She looked down at once.
In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active as a woman of forty, and altogether she was a very grand old lady. Her house is scrupulously clean. While I watched her spinning, I thought of what must so often occur to summer visitors. I mean what sort of a look-out the old woman must have in winter, when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow drives down the valley with a fury of which we in England can have little conception. What a place to see a snowstorm from! and what a place from which to survey the landscape next morning after the storm is over and the air is calm and brilliant. There are such mornings: I saw one once, but I was at the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco. Ronco would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep shadow below, though the upper hill-sides may be seen to have the sun upon them. I walked once on a frosty winter’s morning from Airolo to Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more beautiful: everything was locked in frost—there was not a watershed but was sheeted and coated with ice: the road was hard as granite—all was quiet, and seen as through a dark but incredibly transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole village dragging a large tree; there were many men and women dragging at it, but they had to pull hard, and they were silent; as I passed them I thought what comely, well-begotten people they were. Then, looking up, there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue, against which the snow-clad mountains stood out splendidly. No one will regret a walk in these valleys during the depth of winter. But I should have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness, as the old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at her window; or again, I should like to see how things would look from this same window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow has fallen heavily and the sky is murky and much darker than the earth. When the storm is at its height, the snow must search and search and search even through the double windows with which the houses are protected. It must rest upon the frames of the pictures of saints, and of the sisters “grab,” and of the last hours of Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of the parlour. No wonder there is aS. Maria della Neve,—a “St. Mary of the Snow;” but I do wonder that she has not been painted.
I said this to an Italian once, and he said the reason was probably this—that St. Mary of the Snow was not developed till long after Italian art had begun to decline. I suppose in another hundred years or so we shall have aSt. Maria delle Ferrovie—a St. Mary of the Railways.
From Ronco the path keeps level and then descends a little so as to cross the stream that comes down from Piora. This is near the village of Altanca, the church of which looks remarkably well from here. Then thereis an hour and a half’s rapid ascent, and at last all on a sudden one finds oneself on theLago Ritom, close to the hotel.
The lake is about a mile, or a mile and a half, long, and half a mile broad. It is 6000 feet above the sea, very deep at the lower end, and does not freeze where the stream issues from it, so that the magnificent trout with which it abounds can get air and live through the winter. In many other lakes, as, for example, theLago di Tremorgio, they cannot do this, and hence perish, though the lakes have been repeatedly stocked. The trout in theLago Ritomare said to be the finest in the world, and certainly I know none so fine myself. They grow to be as large as moderate-sized salmon, and have a deep-red flesh, very firm and full of flavour. I had two cutlets off one for breakfast, and should have said they were salmon unless I had known otherwise. In winter, when the lake is frozen over, the people bring their hay from the farther Lake of Cadagna in sledges across the Lake Ritom. Here, again, winter must be worth seeing, but on a rough snowy day Piora must be an awful place. There are a few stunted pines near the hotel, but the hillsides are for the most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it; it is rich in rhododendrons and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine itself.
The first night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear as fire-flies come and go before the eyes; for all through a fine summer’s nightthe cattle will feed as though it were day. A little above the lake I came upon a man in a cave before a furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire with his back to the moonlight. He was a quiet moody man, and I am afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly anything out of him but “Oh altro”—polite but not communicative. So after a while I left him with his face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with the moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the lake and the mountains and the distant ringing of the cowbells.
Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo; and in a few minutes found myself on theLugo di Cadagna. Here I heard that there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o’clock in the evening. For now was the time when they had moved up from Ronco, Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon theLago di Cadagna. As I have said, there is a chapel, but I doubt whether it is attended during this season with the regularity with which the parish churches of Ronco, Altanca, &c., are attended during the rest of the year. The young people, I am sure, like these annual visits to the high places, and will be hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will be always there, and will have to be cut by some one, and the old people will send the young ones.
As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a doze, and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and sat beside me, and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the green slopes that rise all round the lake were much higherthan I had thought; they went up thousands of feet, and there were pine forests upon them, while two large glaciers came down in streams that ended in a precipice of ice, falling sheer into the lake. The edges of the mountains against the sky were rugged and full of clefts, through which I saw thick clouds of dust being blown by the wind as though from the other side of the mountains.
And as I looked, I saw that this was not dust, but people coming in crowds from the other side, but so small as to be visible at first only as dust. And the people became musicians, and the mountainous amphitheatre a huge orchestra, and the glaciers were two noble armies of women-singers in white robes, ranged tier above tier behind each other, and the pines became orchestral players, while the thick dust-like cloud of chorus-singers kept pouring in through the clefts in the precipices in inconceivable numbers. When I turned my telescope upon them I saw they were crowded up to the extreme edge of the mountains, so that I could see underneath the soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, as the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus “Venus Laughing from the Skies;” but ere the sound had well died away, I awoke, and all was changed; a light fleecy cloud had filled the whole basin, but I still thought Iheard a sound of music, and a scampering-off of great crowds from the part where the precipices should be. After that I heard no more but a little singing from the chalets, and turned homewards. When I got to the chapel of S. Carlo, I was in the moonlight again, and when near the hotel, I passed the man at the mouth of the furnace with the moon still gleaming upon his back, and the fire upon his face, and he was very grave and quiet.
The history of the sanctuary of S. Michele is briefly as follows:—
At the close of the tenth century, when Otho III. was Emperor of Germany, a certain Hugh de Montboissier, a noble of Auvergne, commonly called “Hugh the Unsewn” (lo sdruscito), was commanded by the Pope to found a monastery in expiation of some grave offence. He chose for his site the summit of the Monte Pirchiriano in the valley of Susa, being attracted partly by the fame of a church already built there by a recluse of Ravenna, Giovanni Vincenzo by name, and partly by the striking nature of the situation. Hugh de Montboissier, when returning from Rome to France with Isengarde his wife, would, as a matter of course, pass through the valley of Susa. The two—perhaps when stopping to dine at S. Ambrogio—would look up and observe the church founded by Giovannia Vincenzo: they had got to build a monastery somewhere; it would very likely, therefore, occur to them that they could not perpetuate their names better than by choosing this site, which was on a much-travelled road, and on which a fine building would show to advantage. If my view is correct, we have here anillustration of a fact which is continually observable—namely, that all things which come to much, whether they be books, buildings, pictures, music, or living beings, are begotten of others of their own kind. It is always the most successful, like Handel and Shakespeare, who owe most to their forerunners, in spite of the modifications with which their works descend.
Giovanni Vincenzo had built his church about the year 987. It is maintained by some that he had been bishop of Ravenna, but Clareta gives sufficient reason for thinking otherwise. In the “Cronaca Clusina” it is said that he had for some years previously lived as a recluse on the Monte Caprasio, to the north of the present Monte Pirchiriano; but that one night he had a vision, in which he saw the summit of Monte Pirchiriano enveloped in heaven-descended flames, and on this founded a church there, and dedicated it to S. Michael. This is the origin of the name Pirchiriano, which means πυρ κυριανος, or the Lord’s fire.
Avogadro is among those who make Giovanni Bishop, or rather Archbishop, of Ravenna, and gives the following account of the circumstances which led to his resigning his diocese and going to live at the top of the inhospitable Monte Caprasio. It seems there had been a confirmation at Ravenna, during which he had accidentally forgotten to confirm the child of a certain widow. The child, being in weakly health, died before Giovanni could repair his oversight, and this preyed upon his mind. In answer, however, to his earnest prayers, it pleased the Almighty to give him power to raise the dead child to life again; this he did, and having immediately performed the rite of confirmation, restored the boy to his overjoyed mother. He now became so much revered that he began to bealarmed lest pride should obtain dominion over him; he felt, therefore, that his only course was to resign his diocese, and go and live the life of a recluse on the top of some high mountain. It is said that he suffered agonies of doubt as to whether it was not selfish of him to take such care of his own eternal welfare, at the expense of that of his flock, whom no successor could so well guide and guard from evil; but in the end he took a reasonable view of the matter, and concluded that his first duty was to secure his own spiritual position. Nothing short of the top of a very uncomfortable mountain could do this, so he at once resigned his bishopric and chose Monte Caprasio as on the whole the most comfortable uncomfortable mountain he could find.
The latter part of the story will seem strange to Englishmen. We can hardly fancy the Archbishop of Canterbury or York resigning his diocese and settling down quietly on the top of Scafell or Cader Idris to secure his eternal welfare. They would hardly do so even on the top of Primrose Hill. But nine hundred years ago human nature was not the same as now-a-days.
* * * * *
Comparing our own clergy with the best North Italian and Ticinese priests, I should say there was little to choose between them. The latter are in a logically stronger position, and this gives them greater courage in their opinions; the former have the advantage in respect of money, and the more varied knowledge of the world which money will command. When I say Catholics have logically the advantage over Protestants, I mean that starting from premises which both sides admit, a merely logical Protestantwill find himself driven to the Church of Rome. Most men as they grow older will, I think, feel this, and they will see in it the explanation of the comparatively narrow area over which the Reformation extended, and of the gain which Catholicism has made of late years here in England. On the other hand, reasonable people will look with distrust upon too much reason. The foundations of action lie deeper than reason can reach. They rest on faith—for there is no absolutely certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid by man, any more than there is any investment for money or security in the daily affairs of life which is absolutely unimpeachable. The Funds are not absolutely safe; a volcano might break out under the Bank of England. A railway journey is not absolutely safe; one person at least in several millions gets killed. We invest our money upon faith, mainly. We choose our doctor upon faith, for how little independent judgment can we form concerning his capacity? We choose schools for our children chiefly upon faith. The most important things a man has are his body, his soul, and his money. It is generally better for him to commit these interests to the care of others of whom he can know little, rather than be his own medical man, or invest his money on his own judgment; and this is nothing else than making a faith which lies deeper than reason can reach, the basis of our action in those respects which touch us most nearly.
On the other hand, as good a case could be made out for placing reason as the foundation, inasmuch as it would be easy to show that a faith, to be worth anything, must be a reasonable one—one, that is to say, which is based upon reason. The fact is that faith and reason are like function and organ, desire and power, ordemand and supply; it is impossible to say which comes first: they come up hand in hand, and are so small when we can first descry them, that it is impossible to say which we first caught sight of. All we can now see is that each has a tendency continually to outstrip the other by a little, but by a very little only. Strictly they are not two things, but two aspects of one thing; for convenience’ sake, however, we classify them separately.
It follows, therefore—but whether it follows or no, it is certainly true—that neither faith alone nor reason alone is a sufficient guide: a man’s safety lies neither in faith nor reason, but in temper—in the power of fusing faith and reason, even when they appear most mutually destructive.
That we all feel temper to be the first thing is plain from the fact that when we see two men quarrelling we seldom even try to weigh their arguments—we look instinctively at the tone or spirit or temper which the two display and give our verdict accordingly.
A man of temper will be certain in spite of uncertainty, and at the same time uncertain in spite of certainty; reasonable in spite of his resting mainly upon faith rather than reason, and full of faith even when appealing most strongly to reason. If it is asked, In what should a man have faith? To what faith should he turn when reason has led him to a conclusion which he distrusts? the answer is, To the current feeling among those whom he most looks up to—looking upon himself with suspicion if he is either among the foremost or the laggers. In the rough, homely common sense of the community to which we belong we have as firm ground as can be got. This, though not absolutely infallible, is secure enough for practical purposes.
As I have said, Catholic priests have rather a fascinationfor me—when they are not Englishmen. I should say that the best North Italian priests are more openly tolerant than our English clergy generally are. I remember picking up one who was walking along a road, and giving him a lift in my trap. Of course we fell to talking, and it came out that I was a member of the Church of England. “Ebbene, Caro Signore,” said he when we shook hands at parting; “mi rincresce che lei non crede come io, ma in questi tempi non possiamo avere tutti i medesimi principii.”[287]
* * * * *
The one thing, he said, which shocked him with the English, was the manner in which they went about distributing tracts upon the Continent. I said no one could deplore the practice more profoundly than myself, but that there were stupid and conceited people in every country, who would insist upon thrusting their opinions upon people who did not want them. He replied that the Italians travelled not a little in England, but that he was sure not one of them would dream of offering Catholic tracts to people, for example, in the streets of London. Certainly I have never seen an Italian to be guilty of such rudeness. It seems to me that it is not only toleration that is a duty; we ought to go beyond this now; we should conform, when we are among a sufficient number of those who would not understand our refusal to do so; any other course is to attach too much importance at once to our own opinions and to those of our opponents. By all means let a man stand by his convictions when the occasion requires, but let him reserve his strength, unless it is imperatively called for. Do not let himexaggerate trifles, and let him remember that everything is a trifle in comparison with the not giving offence to a large number of kindly, simple-minded people. Evolution, as we all know, is the great doctrine of modern times; the very essence of evolution consists in the not shocking anything too violently, but enabling it to mistake a new action for an old one, without “making believe” too much.
One day when I was eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, and then threw more, getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each time; at last she actually took a piece from my hand. She did not quite like it, but she did it. “A very little at a time,” this is the evolution principle; and if we wish those who differ from us to understand us, it is the only method to proceed upon. I have sometimes thought that some of my friends among the priests have been treating me as I treated the meditative hen. But what of that? They will not kill and eat me, nor take my eggs. Whatever, therefore, promotes a more friendly feeling between us must be pure gain.
* * * * *
Sometimes priests say things, as a matter of course, which would make any English clergyman’s hair stand on end. At one town there is a remarkable fourteenth-century bridge, commonly known as “The Devil’s Bridge.” I was sketching near this when a jolly old priest with a red nose came up and began a conversation with me. He was evidently a popular character, for every one who passed greeted him. He told me that the devil did not really build the bridge. I saidI presumed not, for he was not in the habit of spending his time so well.
“I wish he had built it,” said my friend; “for then perhaps he would build us some more.”
“Or we might even get a church out of him,” said I, a little slyly.
“Ha, ha, ha! we will convert him, and make a good Christian of him in the end.”
When will our Protestantism, or Rationalism, or whatever it may be, sit as lightly upon ourselves?
Another time I had the following dialogue with an old Piedmontese priest who lived in a castle which I asked permission to go over:—
“Vous êtes Anglais, monsieur?” said he in French.
“Oui, monsieur.”