It was a pleasant, fresh autumn day, and the philosopher was in a good
temper. He was my walking companion for that afternoon. He is always in
a good temper, for the matter of that, but his temper has different
kinds of goodness. He is always courteous and amiable; but sometimes he
has a gentle irony about him and evades all attempts to be
serious--to-day, however, he was both benevolent and expansive; and I
plunged into his vast mind like a diver leaping headlong from a
splash-board.
Let me describe my philosopher first. He is not what is called a social
philosopher, a pretentious hedonist, who talks continuously and
floridly about himself. I know one such, of whom an enthusiastic maiden
said, in a confidential moment, that he seemed to her exactly like
Goethe without any of his horrid immorality. Neither is he a technical
philosopher, a dreary, hurrying man, travel-stained by faring through
the ultimate, spectacled, cadaverous, uncertain of movement,
inarticulate of speech. No, my philosopher is a trim, well-brushed man
of the world, rather scrupulous about social conventions, as vigorous
as Mr. Greatheart, and with a tenderness for the feebler sort of
pilgrims. To-day he was blithe and yet serious; he allowed me to ask
him questions, and he explained to me technical terms. I felt like a
child dandled in the arms of a sage, allowed to blow upon his watch
till it opened, and to pull his beard. "No," he said, "I don't advise
you, at your age, to try and study philosophy. It requires rather a
peculiar kind of mind. You will have to divest words of poetical
associations and half-meanings, and arrive at a kind of mathematical
appreciation of their value. You had much better talk to me, if you
care to, and I will tell you all I can. Besides," he added, "much
modern philosophy is a criticism of methods; it has become so special a
business that we have most of us drifted quite beyond the horizon, like
the higher mathematicians, into questions that have no direct meaning
for the ordinary mind. We want a philosopher with a power of literary
expression, who can make some attempt to translate our results into
ordinary language." "Why could you not do it?" I said, "Ah," said he,
"that is not my line! It needs a certain missionary spirit. The thing
amuses and interests me; but I don't feel sure that it can be made
intelligible--and moreover, I do not think it would be wholly
profitable either. We have not determined enough; besides, ordinary
people had better act by intuition rather than by reason. There are,
too, many data missing, and perhaps the men of science will some day be
in a position to give us some, but they have not got far enough yet."
And then we plunged into the subject; but I will not attempt to
reproduce what was said, because I cannot remember it, and I should no
doubt grossly misrepresent my master. But he led me a fine dance.
It was like a walk I took the other day when I was staying in a
mountain country. A companion of mine, tired like myself of inaction,
went off with me, and we climbed a high mountain. For some hours we
walked in the clouds, in a close-shifting circle of mist, seeing
nothing but the little cairns that marked the way, and the bleak
grasses at our feet. Now and then we crossed a cold stream that came
bubbling into our dim circle, and raved hoarsely away in fretted
cataracts. Once we passed a black and silent tarn, with leaden waves
lapping among the stones. Once or twice, as we descended, the skirts of
the cloud drew up suddenly, and revealed black crags and rocky
bastions, and down below a great valley, with sheep grazing, pastures
within stone enclosures, little farms, and mountain bases red with
fern.
That was like my mental excursion to-day. It was very cold and misty on
the heights of my friend's mind. I recognised sometimes familiar
things, but all strangely enlarged and transfigured. Once or twice,
too, the whole veil flew up, and disclosed a familiar scene, which I
felt had some dim connection with the chill and vaporous height, but I
could not discern what it was; and when we came down again, the heights
were still impenetrably shrouded.
Once indeed my friend emitted a flash of scorn, which was when I
mentioned the religious commonplace that the desire of men's hearts to
be assured of the continuity of identity was a proof that such a
craving must find its fulfilment. "A pleasant dream!" he said. "One
might as well affirm that the universal desire for wealth and health
was a proof that all would be ultimately healthy and wealthy."
But though I understood little, and remembered less, I felt somehow
that it did me good to be brought face to face with these austere
problems. It had a bracing effect to have my comfortable intuitions
plucked from me, and to be bidden to walk alone. It was vaguely
inspiring to look into the misty world that lies behind history and
religion and science, the world where one can perhaps be sure of
nothing except of one's own consciousness, and not too sure of that.
Bracing I say, because of its bareness and precariousness, its sense of
ultimate insecurity. I came back to earth not discouraged or dismayed,
but more conscious than ever of the urgency of practical problems and
the actuality of life. And so, as I say, out of my breathless ramble
among ultimate causes and conceptions, I came back to the world with a
great sense of zest and relief, as the diver of whom I spoke sees the
water grow paler and greener before his swimming eyes, and next moment
feels the sunlight about him and sees the willows and the river-bank. I
came back filled with a sense of far-off possibilities, and yet more
sure than ever that we must neither idle nor despair, but walk swiftly
and patiently and help each other along. Not only did I feel my duty to
my fellows to be more clear and sure; but my own need of help, my own
insignificance, to be more pleasantly insistent. Out of the world where
I was only sure of my own consciousness I came down into the world
where I am no less practically sure of the presence of millions of
similar souls, very blind and weak, perhaps, but very real and dear. On
those cloudy hills I had gone astray as a sheep that is lost; and then
suddenly there was the sense of the shepherd walking near me--the
shepherd himself!--for the philosopher was only a lesser kind of angel
bearing a vial in his hands; the blessed sense of being searched for
and guided and tenderly chidden and included in the welcome fold. I
hope that my philosopher may yet walk on the hills with me, if only for
the sake of the love I bear the green valleys; and when I see the great
stream passing silently from translucent pool to pool, overhung by
rowans and sun-warmed rocks, I shall be glad to think that I have
walked on the heights where it was gathered and drawn, and that I have
heard it talk hoarsely to itself, cold and uncomforted, among the bleak
and dripping stones.