From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper column the
narration of incidents that have really occurred. I do not mean to
insinuate that in this respect it stands alone among newspaper columns.
I mean only that I have found that my meaning was better expressed
by some practical parable out of daily life than by any other method;
therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the extraordinary cabman,
which occurred to me only three days ago, and which, slight as it
apparently is, aroused in me a moment of genuine emotion bordering upon
despair.
On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been lunching in a little
restaurant in Soho in company with three or four of my best friends. My
best friends are all either bottomless sceptics or quite uncontrollable
believers, so our discussion at luncheon turned upon the most ultimate
and terrible ideas. And the whole argument worked out ultimately to
this: that the question is whether a man can be certain of anything
at all. I think he can be certain, for if (as I said to my friend,
furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible intellectually
to entertain certainty, what is this certainty which it is impossible
to entertain? If I have never experienced such a thing as certainty I
cannot even say that a thing is not certain. Similarly, if I have never
experienced such a thing as green I cannot even say that my nose is not
green. It may be as green as possible for all I know, if I have really
no experience of greenness. So we shouted at each other and shook the
room; because metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing. And
the difference between us was very deep, because it was a difference as
to the object of the whole thing called broad-mindedness or the opening
of the intellect. For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the
sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening’s sake, opening
infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened
my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing
it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly
silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.
.....
Now when this argument was over, or at least when it was cut short (for
it will never be over), I went away with one of my companions, who in
the confusion and comparative insanity of a General Election had somehow
become a member of Parliament, and I drove with him in a cab from the
corner of Leicester-square to the members’ entrance of the House of
Commons, where the police received me with a quite unusual tolerance.
Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that I was his keeper is a
discussion between us which still continues.
It is necessary in this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude of
detail. After leaving my friend at the House I took the cab on a few
hundred yards to an office in Victoria-street which I had to visit. I
then got out and offered him more than his fare. He looked at it, but
not with the surly doubt and general disposition to try it on which is
not unknown among normal cabmen. But this was no normal, perhaps, no
human, cabman. He looked at it with a dull and infantile astonishment,
clearly quite genuine. “Do you know, sir,” he said, “you’ve only given
me 1s.8d?” I remarked, with some surprise, that I did know it. “Now you
know, sir,” said he in a kindly, appealing, reasonable way, “you know
that ain’t the fare from Euston.” “Euston,” I repeated vaguely, for the
phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia. “What on
earth has Euston got to do with it?” “You hailed me just outside Euston
Station,” began the man with astonishing precision, “and then you
said----” “What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?” I said
with Christian forbearance; “I took you at the south-west corner of
Leicester-square.” “Leicester-square,” he exclaimed, loosening a kind of
cataract of scorn, “why we ain’t been near Leicester-square to-day. You
hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said----” “Are you mad, or am
I?” I asked with scientific calm.
I looked at the man. No ordinary dishonest cabman would think of
creating so solid and colossal and creative a lie. And this man was
not a dishonest cabman. If ever a human face was heavy and simple and
humble, and with great big blue eyes protruding like a frog’s, if ever
(in short) a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the
face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and down the
street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one
second the old nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What
was certainty? Was anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the
dull rut of the sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future
life. The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we possess a
past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically considered, except
a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew deeper from the road. The
cabman calmly gave me the most elaborate details of the gesture, the
words, the complex but consistent course of action which I had adopted
since that remarkable occasion when I had hailed him outside Euston
Station. How did I know (my sceptical friends would say) that I had not
hailed him outside Euston. I was firm about my assertion; he was quite
equally firm about his. He was obviously quite as honest a man as I,
and a member of a much more respectable profession. In that moment the
universe and the stars swung just a hair’s breadth from their balance,
and the foundations of the earth were moved. But for the same reason
that I believe in Democracy, for the same reason that I believe in free
will, for the same reason that I believe in fixed character of virtue,
the reason that could only be expressed by saying that I do not choose
to be a lunatic, I continued to believe that this honest cabman was
wrong, and I repeated to him that I had really taken him at the corner
of Leicester-square. He began with the same evident and ponderous
sincerity, “You hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said----”
And at this moment there came over his features a kind of frightful
transfiguration of living astonishment, as if he had been lit up like
a lamp from the inside. “Why, I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “I beg
your pardon. I beg your pardon. You took me from Leicester-square. I
remember now. I beg your pardon.” And with that this astonishing man let
out his whip with a sharp crack at his horse and went trundling away.
The whole of which interview, before the banner of St. George I swear,
is strictly true.
.....
I looked at the strange cabman as he lessened in the distance and the
mists. I do not know whether I was right in fancying that although his
face had seemed so honest there was something unearthly and demoniac
about him when seen from behind. Perhaps he had been sent to tempt me
from my adherence to those sanities and certainties which I had defended
earlier in the day. In any case it gave me pleasure to remember that
my sense of reality, though it had rocked for an instant, had remained
erect.