and whether, when it did, I should feel, as we Friends say, 'free' to
answer the call. Now that it has come, I am, I think, free; but not,
if you will pardon me, for a long or eloquent speech. What I have to
say I shall say as simply and as briefly as I can; and you, I know,
will listen with your accustomed tolerance, though I shall differ even
more, if possible, from all the other speakers, than they have differed
from one another. For you have all spoken from the point of view of
the world. You have put forward proposals for changing society and
making it better. But you have relied, for the most part, on external
means to accomplish such changes. You have spoken of extending or
limiting the powers of government, of socialism, of anarchy, of
education, of selective breeding. But you have not spoken of the
Spirit and the Life, or not in the sense in which I would wish to speak
of them. MacCarthy, indeed, I remember, used the words 'the life of
the spirit.' But I could not well understand what he meant, except
that he hoped to attain it by violence; and in that way what I would
seek and value cannot be furthered. Coryat, again, and Harington spoke
of the good life. But Coryat seemed to think that any and all life is
good. The line of division which I see everywhere he did not see at
all, the line between the children of God and the children of this
world. I could not say with him that there is a natural goodness in
life as such; only that any honest occupation will be good if it be
practised by a good man. It is not wealth that is needed, nor talents,
nor intellect. These things are gifts that may be given or withheld.
But the one thing needful is the spirit of God, which is given freely
to the poor and the ignorant who seek it. Believing this, I cannot but
disagree, also, with Harington. For the life of which he spoke is the
life of this world. He praises power, and wisdom, and beauty, and the
excellence of the body and the mind. In these things, he says, the
good life consists. And since they are so rare and difficult to
attain, and need for their fostering, natural aptitudes, and leisure
and wealth and great position, he concludes that the good life is
possible only for the few; and that to them the many should be
ministers. And if the goods he speaks of be really such, he is right;
for in the things of the world, what one takes, another must resign.
If there are rulers there must be subjects; if there are rich, there
must be poor; if there are idle men there must be drudges. But the
real Good is not thus exclusive. It is open to all; and the more a man
has of it the more he gives to others. That Good is the love of God,
and through the love of God the love of man. These are old phrases,
but their sense is not old; rather it is always new, for it is eternal.
Now, as of old, in the midst of science, of business, of invention, of
the multifarious confusion and din and hurry of the world, God may be
directly perceived and known. But to know Him is to love Him, and to
love Him is to love His creatures, and most all of our fellow-men, to
whom we are nearest and most akin, and with and by whom we needs must
live. And if that love were really spread abroad among us, the
questions that have been discussed to-night would resolve themselves.
For there would be a rule of life generally observed and followed; and
under it the conditions that make the problems would disappear. Of
such a rule, all men, dimly and at moments, are aware. By it they were
warned that slavery was wrong. And had they but read it more truly,
and followed it more faithfully, they would never have made war to
abolish what they would never have wished to maintain. And the same
rule it is that is warning us now that it is wrong to fight, wrong to
heap up riches, wrong to live by the labour of others. As we come to
heed the warning we shall cease to do these things. But to change
institutions without changing hearts is idle. For it is but to change
the subjects into the rulers, the poor into the rich, the drudges into
the idle men. And, as a result, we should only have idle men more
frivolous, rich men more hard, rulers more incompetent. It is not by
violence or compulsion, open or disguised, that the kingdom of heaven
comes. It is by simple service on the part of those that know the law,
by their following the right in their own lives, and preaching rather
by their conduct than by their words.
"This would be a hard saying if we had to rely on ourselves. But we
have God to rely on, who gives His help not according to the measure of
our powers. A man cannot by taking thought add a cubit to his stature;
he cannot increase the scope of his mind or the range of his senses; he
cannot, by willing, make himself a philosopher, or a leader of men.
But drawing on the source that is open to the poorest and the weakest
he can become a good man; and then, whatever his powers, he will be
using them for God and man. If men do that, each man for himself, by
the help of God, all else will follow. So true is it that if ye seek
first the kingdom of heaven all these things shall be added unto you.
Yes, that is true. It is eternal truth. It does not change with the
doctrines of Churches nor depend upon them. I would say even it does
not depend on Christianity. For the words would be true, though there
had never been a Christ to speak them. And the proof that they are
true is simply the direct witness of consciousness. We perceive such
truths as we perceive the sun. They carry with them their own
certainty; and on that rests the certainty of God. Therein is the
essence of all religion. I say it because I know. And the rest of
you, so it seems to me, are guessing. Nor is it, as it might seem at
first, a truth irrelevant to your discussion. For it teaches that all
change must proceed from within outward. There is not, there never has
been, a just polity, for there has never been one based on the love of
God and man. All that you condemn--poverty, and wealth, idleness and
excessive labour, squalor, disease, barren marriages, aggression and
war, will continue in spite of all changes in form, until men will to
get rid of them. And that they will not do till they have learnt to
love God and man. Revolution will be vain, evolution will be vain, all
uneasy turnings from side to side will be vain, until that change of
heart be accomplished. And accomplished it will be in its own time.
Everywhere I see it at work, in many ways, in the guise of many
different opinions. I see it at work here to-night among those with
whom I most disagree. I see it in the hope of Allison and Wilson, in
the defiance of MacCarthy, in the doubt of Martin, and most of all in
the despair of Audubon. For he is right to despair of the only life he
knows, the life of the world whose fruits are dust and ashes. He
drifts on a midnight ocean, unlighted by stars, and tossed by the winds
of disappointment, sorrow, sickness, irreparable loss. Ah, but above
him, if he but knew, as now in our eyes and ears, rises into a crystal
sky the first lark of dawn. And the cuckoo sings, and the blackbird,
do you not hear them? And the fountain rises ever in showers of silver
sparks, up to the heaven it will not reach till fire has made it
vapour. And so the whole creation aspires, out of the night of
despair, into the cool freshness of dawn and on to the sun of noon.
Let us be patient and follow each his path, waiting on the word of God
till He be pleased to reveal it. For His way is not hard, it is joy
and peace unutterable. And those who wait in faith He will bless with
the knowledge of Himself."
As he finished it was light, though the sun had not yet risen. The
first birds were singing in the wood, and the fountain glistened and
sang, and the plain lay before us like a bride waiting for the
bridegroom. We were silent under the spell; and I scarcely know how
long had passed before I had heart to call upon Vivian to conclude.
I have heard Vivian called a philosopher, but the term is misleading.
Those who know his writings--and they are too few--know that he
concerned himself, directly or indirectly, with philosophic problems.
But he never wrote philosophy; his methods were not those of logic; and
his sympathies were with science and the arts. In the early age of
Greece he might have been Empedocles or Heraclitus; he could never have
been Spinoza or Kant. He sought to interpret life, but not merely in
terms of the intellect. He needed to see and feel in order to think.
And he expressed himself in a style too intellectual for lovers of
poetry, too metaphorical for lovers of philosophy. His Public,
therefore, though devoted, was limited; but we, in our society, always
listened to him with an interest that was rather enhanced than
diminished by an element of perplexity. I have found it hard to
reproduce his manner, in which it was clear that he took a conscious
and artistic pleasure. Still less can I give the impression of his
lean and fine-cut face, and the distinction of his whole personality.
He stood up straight and tall against the whitening sky, and delivered
himself as follows:
"Man is in the making; but henceforth he must make himself. To that
point Nature has led him, out of the primeval slime. She has given him
limbs, she has given him brain, she has given him the rudiment of a
soul. Now it is for him to make or mar that splendid torso. Let him
look no more to her for aid; for it is her will to create one who has
the power to create himself. If he fail, she fails; back goes the
metal to the pot; and the great process begins anew. If he succeeds,
he succeeds alone. His fate is in his own hands.
"Of that fate, did he but know it, brain is the lord, to fashion a
palace fit for the soul to inhabit. Yet still, after centuries of
stumbling, reason is no more than the furtive accomplice of habit and
force. Force creates, habit perpetuates, reason the sycophant
sanctions. And so he drifts, not up but down, and Nature watches in
anguish, self-forbidden to intervene, unless it be to annihilate. If
he is to drive, and drive straight, reason must seize the reins; and
the art of her driving is the art of Politics. Of that art, the aim is
perfection, the method selection. Science is its minister, ethics its
lord. It spares no prejudice, respects no habit, honours no tradition.
Institutions are stubble in the fire it kindles. The present and the
past it throws without remorse into the jaws of the future. It is the
angel with the flaming sword swift to dispossess the crone that sits on
her money-bags at Westminster.
"Or, shall I say, it is Hercules with the Augean stable to cleanse, of
which every city is a stall, heaped with the dung of a century; with
the Hydra to slay, whose hundred writhing heads of false belief, from
old truth rotted into lies, spring inexhaustibly fecund in creeds,
interests, institutions. Of which the chief is Property, most cruel
and blind of all, who devours us, ere we know it, in the guise of
Security and Peace, killing the bodies of some, the souls of most, and
growing ever fresh from the root, in forms that but seem to be new,
until the root itself be cut away by the sword of the spirit. What
that sword shall be called, socialism, anarchy, what you will, is small
matter, so but the hand that wields it be strong, the brain clear, the
soul illumined, passionate and profound. But where shall the champion
be found fit to wield that weapon?
"He will not be found; he must be made. By Man Man must be sown. Once
he might trust to Nature, while he was laid at her breast. But she has
weaned him; and the promptings she no longer guides, he may not blindly
trust for their issue. While she weeded, it was hers to plant; but she
weeds no more. He of his own will uproots or spares; and of his own
will he must sow, if he would not have his garden a wilderness. Even
now precious plants perish before his eyes, even now weeds grow rank,
while he watches in idle awe, and prates of his own impotence. He has
given the reins to Desire, and she drives him back to the abyss. But
harness her to the car, with reason for charioteer, and she will grow
wings to waft him to his goal. That in him that he calls Love is but
the dragon of the slime. Let him bury it in the grave of Self, and it
will rise a Psyche, with wings too wide to shelter only the home. The
Man that is to be comes at the call of the Man that is. Let him call
then, soberly, not from the fumes of lust. For as is the call, so will
be the answer.
"But for what should he call? For Pagan? For Christian? For neither,
and for both. Paganism speaks for the men in Man, Christianity for the
Man in men. The fruit that was eaten in Paradise, sown in the soul of
man, bore in Hellas its first and fairest harvest. There rose upon the
world of mind the triple sun of the Ideal. Aphrodite, born of the
foam, flowered on the azure main, Tritons in her train and Nereids,
under the flush of dawn. Apollo, radiant in hoary dew, leapt from the
eastern wave, flamed through the heaven, and cooled his hissing wheels
in the vaporous west. Athene, sprung from the brain of God, armed with
the spear of truth, moved grey-eyed over the earth probing the minds of
men. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, behold the Pagan Trinity! Through whose
grace only men are men, and fit to become Man. Therefore, the gods are
eternal; not they die, but we, when we think them dead. And no man who
does not know them, and knowing, worship and love, is able to be a
member of the body of Man. Thus it is that the sign of a step forward
is a look backward; and Greece stands eternally at the threshold of the
new life. Forget her, and you sink back, if not to the brute, to the
insect. Consider the ant, and beware of her! She is there for a
warning. In universal Anthood there are no ants. From that fate may
men save Man!
"But the Pagan gods were pitiless; they preyed upon the weak. Their
wisdom was rooted in folly, their beauty in squalor, their love in
oppression. So fostered, those flowers decayed. And out of the
rotting soil rose the strange new blossoms we call Faith, and Hope, and
Charity. For Folly cried, 'I know not, but I believe'; Squalor, 'I am
vile, but I hope'; and the oppressed, 'I am despised, but I love.'
That was the Christian Trinity, the echo of man's frustration, as the
other was the echo of his accomplishment. Yet both he needs. For
because he grows, he is dogged by imperfection. His weakness is mocked
by those shining forms on the mountain-top. But Faith, and Hope, and
Charity walk beside him in the mire, to kindle, to comfort and to help.
And of them justice is born, the plea of the Many against the Few, of
the nation against the class, of mankind against the nation, of the
future against the present. In Christianity men were born into Man.
Yet in Him let not men die! For what profits justice unless it be the
step to the throne of Olympus? What profit Faith and Hope without a
goal? Charity without an object? Vain is the love of emmets, or of
bees and coral-insects. For the worth of love is as the worth of the
lover. It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come
to maturity. And Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves
till they fall into the womb of Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies
before us, the snow-capped mountain. Let us climb it, together, if you
will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb at least, not
fester and swarm on rich meadows of equality. We are not for the
valley, nor for the forests or the pastures. If we be brothers, yet we
are brothers in a quest, needing our foremost to lead. Aphrodite,
Apollo, Athene, are before us, not behind. Majestic forms, they gleam
among the snows. March, then, men in Man!
"But is it men who attain? Or Man? Or not even he, but God? We do
not know. We know only the impulse and the call. The gleam on the
snow, the upward path, the urgent stress within, that is our certainty,
the rest is doubt. But doubt is a horizon, and on it hangs the star of
hope. By that we live; and the science blinds, the renunciation maims,
that would shut us off from those silver rays. Our eyes must open, as
we march, to every signal from the height. And since the soul has
indeed 'immortal longings in her' we may believe them prophetic of
their fruition. For her claims are august as those of man, and appeal
to the same witness. The witness of either is a dream; but such dreams
come from the gate of horn. They are principles of life, and about
them crystallizes the universe. For will is more than knowledge, since
will creates what knowledge records. Science hangs in a void of
nescience, a planet turning in the dark. But across that void Faith
builds the road that leads to Olympus and the eternal gods."
By the time he had finished speaking the sun had risen, and the glamour
of dawn was passing into the light of common day. The birds sang loud,
the fountain sparkled, and the trees rustled softly in the early
breeze. Our party broke up quietly. Some went away to bed; others
strolled down the gardens; and Audubon went off by appointment to bathe
with my young nephew, as gay and happy, it would seem, as man could be.
I was left to pace the terrace alone, watching the day grow brighter,
and wondering at the divers fates of men. An early bell rang in the
little church at the park-gate; a motor-car hooted along the highway.
And I thought of Cantilupe and Harington, of Allison and Wilson, and
beyond them of the vision of the dawn and the daybreak, of Woodman, the
soul, and Vivian, the spirit. I paused for a last look down the line
of bright statues that bordered the long walk below me. I fancied them
stretching away to the foot of Olympus; and without elation or
excitement, but with the calm of an assured hope, I prepared to begin
the new day.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
AFTER TWO THOUSAND YEARS
PLATO AND HIS DIALOGUES
THE MEANING OF GOOD
JUSTICE AND LIBERTY
A POLITICAL DIALOGUE
RELIGION AND IMMORTALITY
RELIGION: A CRITICISM AND A FORECAST
THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE
LETTERS FROM JOHN CHINAMAN
APPEARANCES: BEING NOTES ON TRAVEL
AN ESSAY ON THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN
CONTRIBUTION OF ANCIENT GREECE TO MODERN LIFE
THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY, 1904-1914
EVOLUTION IN RE-ACTION IN MODERN FRANCE 1789-1871
THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY
WAR: ITS NATURE, CAUSE AND CUBE
CAUSES OF INTERNATIONAL WAR
THE CHOICE BEFORE US
DOCUMENTS AND STATEMENTS RELATING TO PEACE
PROPOSALS AND WAR AIMS, DECEMBER 1916-1918
ETC.
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End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Symposium, by G. Lowes Dickinson