'Alas!' cried Paul, 'what can be done to convince one half of Humanity
that it is really devoted to the higher pleasures and does not care for
the lower--at least nothing to speak of?' The poor man was in a state of
dreadful perplexity, and felt wellnigh distracted. At last a light broke
in on him. He remembered that as one of his most revered masters,
Professor Tyndall, had admitted, a great part of Humanity would always
need a religion, and that Virginia now had none. He at once rushed back
to her. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'all is explained now. You cannot be in love
with me, for that would be unlawful passion. Unlawful passion is
unreasonable, and unreasonable passion would quite upset a system of
pure reason, which is what exact thought shows us is soon going to
govern the world. No! the emotions that you fancy are directed to me are
in reality cosmic emotion--in other words, are the reasonable religion
of the future. I must now initiate you in its solemn and unspeakably
significant worship.'
'Religion!' exclaimed Virginia, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
'It is not kind of you to be making fun of me. There is no God, no soul,
and no supernatural order, and above all there is no hell. How then can
you talk to me about religion?'
'You,' replied Paul, 'are associating religion with theology, as indeed
the world hitherto always has done. But those two things, as Professor
Huxley well observes, have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "It
may be," says that great teacher, "that the object of a man's religion
is an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or----"'
'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'that is my religion, Paul.'
'Nonsense!' replied Paul; 'that cannot be the religion of half Humanity,
else high, holy, solemn, awful morality would never be able to stand on
its own basis. See, the night has fallen, the glorious moon has arisen,
the stupendous stars are sparkling in the firmament. Come down with me
to the sea-shore, where we may be face to face with nature, and I will
show you then what true religion--what true worship is.'
The two went out together. They stood on the smooth sands, which
glittered white and silvery in the dazzling moonlight All was hushed.
The gentle murmur of the trees, and the soft splash of the sea, seemed
only to make the silence audible. The Professor paused close beside
Virginia, and took her hand. Virginia liked that, and thought that
religion without theology was not perhaps so bad after all. Meanwhile
Paul had fixed his eyes on the moon. Then, in a voice almost broken with
emotion, he whispered, 'The prayer of the man of science, it has been
said, must be for the most part of the silent sort. He who said that was
wrong. It need not be silent; it need only be inarticulate. I have
discovered an audible and a reasonable liturgy which will give utterance
to the full to the religion of exact thought. Let us both join our
voices, and let us croon at the moon.'
The Professor at once began a long, low howling. Virginia joined him,
until she was out of breath.
'Oh, Paul,' she said at last, 'is this more rational than the Lord's
Prayer?'
'Yes,' said the Professor, 'for we can analyse and comprehend that; but
true religious feeling, as Professor Tyndall tells us, we can neither
analyse nor comprehend. See how big nature is, and how little--ah, how
little!--we know about it. Is it not solemn, and sublime, and awful?
Come let us howl again.'
The Professor's devotional fervour grew every moment. At last he put his
hand to his mouth, and began hooting like an owl, till it seemed that
all the island echoed to him. The louder Paul hooted and howled, the
more near did he draw to Virginia.
'Ah!' he said, as he put his arm about her waist, 'it is in solemn
moments like this that the solidarity of mankind becomes apparent.'
Virginia, during the last few moments, had stuck her fingers in her
ears. She now took them out, and, throwing her arms round Paul's neck,
tried, with her cheek on his shoulder, to make another little hoot; but
the sound her lips formed was much more like a kiss. The power of
religion was at last too much for Paul.
'For the sake of cosmic emotion,' he exclaimed, 'O other half of
Humanity, and for the sake of rational religion, both of which are
showing themselves under quite a new light to me, I will kiss you.'
The Professor was bending down his face over her, when, as if by magic,
he started, stopped, and remained as one petrified. Amidst the sharp
silence, there rang a human shout from the rocks.
'Oh!' shrieked Virginia, falling on her knees, 'it is a miracle! it is a
miracle! And I know--merciful heavens--I know the meaning of it. God is
angry with us for pretending that we do not believe on Him.'
The Professor was as white as a sheet; but he struggled with his
perturbation manfully.
'It is not a miracle,' he cried, 'but an hallucination. It is an axiom
with exact thinkers that all proofs of the miraculous are
hallucinations.'
'See,' shrieked Virginia again, 'they are coming, they are coming. Do
not you see them?'
Paul looked, and there sure enough, were two figures, a male and a
female, advancing slowly towards them, across the moonlit sand.
'It is nothing,' cried Paul; 'it cannot possibly be anything. I protest,
in the name of science, that it is an optical delusion.'
Suddenly the female figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is he!'
In another moment the male figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is she!'
'My husband!' gasped Virginia.
'My wife!' replied the bishop, for it was none other than he. 'Welcome
to Chasuble Island. By the blessing of God it is on your own home you
have been wrecked, and you have been living in the very house that I had
intended to prepare for you. Providentially, too, Professor Darnley's
wife has called here, in her search for her husband, who has overstayed
his time. See, my love, my dove, my beauty, here is the monkey I
promised you as a pet, which broke loose a few days ago, and which I was
in the act of looking for when your joint cries attracted us, and we
found you.'
A yell of delight here broke from the Professor. The eyes of the others
were turned on him, and he was seen embracing wildly a monkey which the
bishop led by a chain. 'The missing link! he exclaimed, 'the missing
link!'
'Nonsense!' cried the sharp tones of a lady with a green gown and grey
corkscrew curls. 'It is nothing but a monkey that the good bishop has
been trying to tame for his wife. Don't you see her name engraved on
the collar?'
The shrill accents acted like a charm upon Paul. He sprang away from the
creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on
Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes.
Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls.
Sorrow and superstition, he felt, were again invading Humanity. 'Alas!'
he exclaimed at last, 'I do now indeed believe in hell.'
'And I,' cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the
arms of her bishop, 'once more believe in heaven.'
NOTES.
'We now find it (_the earth_) not only swathed by an atmosphere, and
covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is,
how were they introduced?... The conclusion of science would undoubtedly
be, that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which
grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The
difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception arise _solely_
from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in
the human mind.... Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept
without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what
we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this
way, and no other.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Is this egg (_from which the human being springs_) matter? I hold it to
be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to
the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period
of gestation drawn from matter? I think so, undoubtedly. If there be
anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently
slumbering in the womb, what is it?' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Matter I define as the mysterious thing by which all this is
accomplished.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'I do not think that the materialist is entitled to say that his
molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they
_explain_ nothing. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Who shall exaggerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those
theologies which have represented the Deity ... as a sort of pedantic
drill-sergeant of mankind, to whom no valour, no long-tried loyalty,
could atone for the misplacement of a button of the uniform, or the
misunderstanding of a paragraph of the "regulations and instructions"?'
PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'(_To the Jesuit imagination_) God is obviously a large individual, who
holds the leading-strings of the universe, and orders its steps from a
position outside it all.... According to it (_this notion_) the Power
whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clark Maxwell
present to us under the guise of a manufacturer of atoms, turns out
annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new
souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this
annual increment to our population are "mostly fools," but little profit
to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the
divine operations.... In the presence of this mystery (_the mystery of
life_) the notion of an atomic manufacturer and artificer of souls,
raises the doubt whether those who entertain it were ever really
penetrated by the solemnity of the problem for which they offer such a
solution.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'I look forward, however, to a time when the strength, insight, and
elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments
of clearness and vigour, shall be the stable and permanent possession
of purer and mightier minds than ours--purer and mightier, partly
because of their deeper knowledge of matter, and their more faithful
conformity to its laws.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'The world, as it is, is growing daily dimmer before my eyes. The world,
as it is to be, is ever growing brighter.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.
'... When you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted
into the infinite azure of the past.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'We, too, turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive
to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless, and
even, it may be, more patient in searching for realities behind the
gloom. That which shall come _after_ is no less solemn to us than to
you.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'Theological hypotheses of a new and heterogeneous existence have
deadened our interest in the realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity
of an earthly life.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'As we read, the calm and humane words of Condorcet, on the very edge of
his yawning grave, we learn, from the conviction of posthumous activity
(not posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a living incorporation
with the glorious future of his race, can give a patience and happiness
equal to that of any martyr of theology.... Once make it (_i.e._ "this
sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows") the basis
of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a
religion, and this (_the conversion of the masses_) will prove, perhaps,
an easier task than that of teaching Greeks and Romans, Syrians and
Moors, to look forward to a life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial
heaven.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'We make the future life, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our
future is simply an active existence prolonged by society; and our
future life rests not in any vague yearning, of which we have as little
evidence as we have definite conception: it rests on a perfectly certain
truth ... that the actions, feelings, thoughts, of each one of us, do
marvellously influence and mould each other.... Can we conceive a more
potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after a true
life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that
we have an immortal something within us--but that in very truth we
ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?'
MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'As we _live for others_ in life, so we _live in others_ after death....
How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life
the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot
die. We cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our
faculties.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'We cannot even say that we shall continue to love; but we know that we
shall be loved.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy earthly
life, that we can see the majesty, as well as the glory, of the world
beyond the grave; and then only will it fulfil its moral and religious
purpose as the great guide of human conduct.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future generations.'
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
'The humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a wave--no, more than a
wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony of human society.' MR.
FREDERIC HARRISON.
'Not a single nature, in its entirety, but leaves its influence for good
or for evil. _As a fact, the good prevail_.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'To our friends and loved ones we shall give the most worthy honour and
tribute if we never say nor remember that they are dead, but,
contrariwise, that they have lived; that hereby the brotherly force and
flow of their action and work may be carried over the gulf of death, and
made immortal in the true and healthy life which they worthily had and
used.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.
'It cannot be doubted that the "spiritual body" of this book (_The
Unseen Universe_) will be used to support a belief that the dead are
subject either to the _shame and suffering of a Christian Heaven_ and
Hell, or to the degrading service of a modern witch. From _each_ of
these _unspeakable profanities_ let us hope and endeavour that the
memories of great and worthy men may be finally relieved.' PROFESSOR
CLIFFORD.
'I choose the noble part of Emerson, when, after various
disenchantments, he exclaimed, "I covet truth." The gladness of true
heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this.'
PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'The highest, as it is the only, content is to be attained, not by
grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually
striving towards those high peaks, when, resting in eternal calm, reason
discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good--"a cloud by
day, a pillar of fire by night."' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'If it can be shown by observation and experiment, that theft, murder,
and adultery, do not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in
the absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social
immoralities.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not
strong enough to hold its own.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'I object to the very general use of the terms religion and theology, as
if they were synonymous, or _indeed had anything whatever to do with one
another_.... Religion is an affair of the affections. It may be that the
object of a man's religion--the ideal which he worships--is an ideal of
sensual enjoyment.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'In his hour of health ... when the pause of reflection has set in, the
scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed with the same awe. It
associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his
existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.' PROFESSOR
TYNDALL.
'He will see what drivellers even men of strenuous intellects may
become,' though exclusively dwelling and dealing with theological
chimeras. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'The two kinds of cosmic emotion run together and become one. The
microcosm is viewed only in relation to human action, nature is
presented to the emotions as the guide and teacher of humanity. And the
microcosm is viewed only as tending to complete correspondence with the
external; human conduct is subject for reverence only in so far as it is
consonant to the demiurgic law, in harmony with the teaching of divine
Nature.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.
'The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly
for it to the intellectual whoredom of "spiritualism."' PROFESSOR
TYNDALL.
'All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to
the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral
and spiritual life.... I do not confine my language to the philosophy or
religion of Comte; for the same conception of man is common to many
philosophies and many religions.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
End of Project Gutenberg's The New Paul and Virginia, by W. H. Mallock