I Have received a letter from a gentleman who is very indignant at what
he considers my flippancy in disregarding or degrading Spiritualism. I
thought I was defending Spiritualism; but I am rather used to being
accused of mocking the thing that I set out to justify. My fate in most
controversies is rather pathetic. It is an almost invariable rule that
the man with whom I don’t agree thinks I am making a fool of myself,
and the man with whom I do agree thinks I am making a fool of him.
There seems to be some sort of idea that you are not treating a subject
properly if you eulogise it with fantastic terms or defend it by
grotesque examples. Yet a truth is equally solemn whatever figure or
example its exponent adopts. It is an equally awful truth that four and
four make eight, whether you reckon the thing out in eight onions or
eight angels, or eight bricks or eight bishops, or eight minor poets or
eight pigs. Similarly, if it be true that God made all things, that
grave fact can be asserted by pointing at a star or by waving an
umbrella. But the case is stronger than this. There is a distinct
philosophical advantage in using grotesque terms in a serious
discussion.
I think seriously, on the whole, that the more serious is the
discussion the more grotesque should be the terms. For this, as I say,
there is an evident reason. For a subject is really solemn and
important in so far as it applies to the whole cosmos, or to some great
spheres and cycles of experience at least. So far as a thing is
universal it is serious. And so far as a thing is universal it is full
of comic things. If you take a small thing, it may be entirely serious:
Napoleon, for instance, was a small thing, and he was serious: the same
applies to microbes. If you isolate a thing, you may get the pure
essence of gravity. But if you take a large thing (such as the Solar
System) it _must_ be comic, at least in parts. The germs are serious,
because they kill you. But the stars are funny, because they give birth
to life, and life gives birth to fun. If you have, let us say, a theory
about man, and if you can only prove it by talking about Plato and
George Washington, your theory may be a quite frivolous thing. But if
you can prove it by talking about the butler or the postman, then it is
serious, because it is universal. So far from it being irreverent to
use silly metaphors on serious questions, it is one’s duty to use silly
metaphors on serious questions. It is the test of one’s seriousness. It
is the test of a responsible religion or theory whether it can take
examples from pots and pans and boots and butter-tubs. It is the test
of a good philosophy whether you can defend it grotesquely. It is the
test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
When I was a very young journalist I used to be irritated at a peculiar
habit of printers, a habit which most persons of a tendency similar to
mine have probably noticed also. It goes along with the fixed belief of
printers that to be a Rationalist is the same thing as to be a
Nationalist. I mean the printer’s tendency to turn the word “cosmic”
into the word “comic.” It annoyed me at the time. But since then I have
come to the conclusion that the printers were right. The democracy is
always right. Whatever is cosmic is comic.
Moreover, there is another reason that makes it almost inevitable that
we should defend grotesquely what we believe seriously. It is that all
grotesqueness is itself intimately related to seriousness. Unless a
thing is dignified, it cannot be undignified. Why is it funny that a
man should sit down suddenly in the street? There is only one possible
or intelligent reason: that man is the image of God. It is not funny
that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down.
No one sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a
delicate absurdity in a stone falling down. No man stops in the road
and roars with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down. The fall
of thunderbolts is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and
high buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a man tumbles down
that we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter:
it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be
dignified.
The above, which occupies the great part of my article, is a
parenthises. It is time that I returned to my choleric correspondent
who rebuked me for being too frivolous about the problem of
Spiritualism. My correspondent, who is evidently an intelligent man, is
very angry with me indeed. He uses the strongest language. He says I
remind him of a brother of his: which seems to open an abyss or vista
of infamy. The main substance of his attack resolves itself into two
propositions. First, he asks me what right I have to talk about
Spiritualism at all, as I admit I have never been to a _séance_. This
is all very well, but there are a good many things to which I have
never been, but I have not the smallest intention of leaving off
talking about them. I refuse (for instance) to leave off talking about
the Siege of Troy. I decline to be mute in the matter of the French
Revolution. I will not be silenced on the late indefensible
assassination of Julius Cæsar. If nobody has any right to judge of
Spiritualism except a man who has been to a _séance_, the results,
logically speaking, are rather serious: it would almost seem as if
nobody had any right to judge of Christianity who had not been to the
first meeting at Pentecost. Which would be dreadful. I conceive myself
capable of forming my opinion of Spiritualism without seeing spirits,
just as I form my opinion of the Japanese War without seeing the
Japanese, or my opinion of American millionaires without (thank God)
seeing an American millionaire. Blessed are they who have not seen and
yet have believed: a passage which some have considered as a prophecy
of modern journalism.
But my correspondent’s second objection is more important. He charges
me with actually ignoring the value of communication (if it exists)
between this world and the next. I do not ignore it. But I do say
this—That a different principle attaches to investigation in this
spiritual field from investigation in any other. If a man baits a line
for fish, the fish will come, even if he declares there are no such
things as fishes. If a man limes a twig for birds, the birds will be
caught, even if he thinks it superstitious to believe in birds at all.
But a man cannot bait a line for souls. A man cannot lime a twig to
catch gods. All wise schools have agreed that this latter capture
depends to some extent on the faith of the capturer. So it comes to
this: If you have no faith in the spirits your appeal is in vain; and
if you have—is it needed? If you do not believe, you cannot. If you
do—you will not.
That is the real distinction between investigation in this department
and investigation in any other. The priest calls to the goddess, for
the same reason that a man calls to his wife, because he knows she is
there. If a man kept on shouting out very loud the single word “Maria,”
merely with the object of discovering whether if he did it long enough
some woman of that name would come and marry him, he would be more or
less in the position of the modern spiritualist. The old religionist
cried out for his God. The new religionist cries out for some god to be
his. The whole point of religion as it has hitherto existed in the
world was that you knew all about your gods, even before you saw them,
if indeed you ever did. Spiritualism seems to me absolutely right on
all its mystical side. The supernatural part of it seems to me quite
natural. The incredible part of it seems to me obviously true. But I
think it so far dangerous or unsatisfactory that it is in some degree
scientific. It inquires whether its gods are worth inquiring into. A
man (of a certain age) may look into the eyes of his lady-love to see
that they are beautiful. But no normal lady will allow that young man
to look into her eyes to see whether they are beautiful. The same
vanity and idiosyncrasy has been generally observed in gods. Praise
them; or leave them alone; but do not look for them unless you know
they are there. Do not look for them unless you want them. It annoys
them very much.