overmastered by reason. God has not made man in His own image; man
has made God in his. As Grant Allen used to say: “The Englishman’s
idea of God is an Englishman twelve feet high”; and the old Jews, who
were a very savage and ruthless people, created Jehovah in their own
image. To such a God eternal punishment for a point of belief was quite
the natural thing, and nineteen centuries of belief in the teaching
of a loving and forgiving Christ have not abolished that frightful
idea. It is one of the disservices of the Mediæval Church to mankind
that it popularized and enforced the idea of hell, and that idea has
been diligently perpetuated by some narrow-minded sects to this very
day. But to a modern man, who, with all his faults, is a kindly and
forgiving creature, hell is unthinkable, and he cannot bring himself
to believe that it was actually part of the teaching of Christ. If the
New Testament says so, then, thinks the average modern man, it must be
in an interpolation by some mediæval ecclesiastic whose zeal outran his
mercy; and an average modern man is not seriously swayed by any idea
of everlasting flames. He may even quaintly wonder, if he has studied
the known facts of the universe, where either hell or heaven is to
be found, considering that they are supposed to have lasted for ever
and to be fated to last as long. In time to come the souls, saved and
lost, must be of infinite number, if they are not so already; and an
infinite number would fill all available space and spill over for an
infinite distance, leaving no room for flames, or brimstone, or harps,
or golden cities. Perhaps it may not be beyond Almighty Power to solve
this difficulty, but it is a very real one to the average thoughtful
man. When we begin to realize infinity, to realize that every one
of the millions of known suns must each last for millions of years,
after which the whole process must begin again, endure as long, and so
on _ad infinitum_, the thing becomes simply inconceivable; the mind
staggers, and takes refuge in agnosticism, which is not cured by the
scoffing of clergymen whom one suspects of not viewing things from a
modern standpoint. Jowett once answered a young man whom he evidently
looked upon as a “puppy” by thundering at him: “Young man, you call
yourself an agnostic; let me tell you that _agnostic_ is a Greek word
the Latin of which is _ignoramus_!” Jowett evidently did not in the
least understand that young man’s difficulties, nor the difficulties of
any man whose training has been scientific--that is, directed towards
the ascertaining what is demonstrably true. Scoffing and insolence like
that only react upon the scoffer’s head, and rather breed contempt than
comfort. Nor is the problem of God Himself any more easy of solution,
unless we are prepared to see Him everywhere, in every minute cell
and tiny bacterium. If we confess to such a belief we are immediately
crushed with the cry of “mere Pantheism,” or even “Spinozism,” as
though these epithets, meant to be contemptuous, led us any further
on our way. You cannot solve these dreadful problems by a sneer, and
Voltaire, the prince of scoffers, would have had even more influence on
thought than he had if he had contented himself with a less aggressive
and polemic attitude towards the Church.
Hell is a concrete attempt at Divine punishment. Punishment for what?
For disobeying the commandments of God? How are we to know what God
really commanded? And how are we to weigh the relative effects of
temptation and powers of resistance upon any given man? How are we to
say that an action which in one man may be desperately wicked may not
be positively virtuous in another? It is a commonplace that virtue
changes with latitude, and that we find “the crimes of Clapham chaste
in Martaban.” Why should we condemn some poor maiden of Clapham to burn
for ever for a crime which she may not recognize as a crime, whereas we
applaud a damsel of Martaban for doing precisely the same thing? And
what is sin? Is there any real evidence as to what the commandments
of God really are? Modern psychology seems to hold that virtue and
vice are simply phases of the herd-complex of normal man, and have
been evolved by the herd during countless generations as the best
method of perpetuating the human species. No individual man made his
own herd-complex, by which he is so enormously swayed; no individual
man made his own sex-complex, or his ego-complex, or anything that is
his. How can he be held responsible for his actions by a God Who made
him the subject of such frightful temptations and gave him such feeble
powers of resistance? Edward Fitzgerald--who, be it remembered, knew
no more about these things than you or I--summed up the whole matter
in “Man’s forgiveness give--and take,” and probably this simple line
has given more comfort to thoughtful men than all Jowett’s bluster.
Fitzgerald has at least voiced the instinctive rebellion which every
man must feel when he considers the facts of human nature, even if he
has given us otherwise no more guidance than a call to a poor kind of
Epicureanism which lays stress on a book of verse underneath a bough,
and thou beside me singing in a wilderness. If our musings lead us to
Epicureanism, at least let it be the Epicureanism of Epicurus, and not
the sensual pleasure-seeking of Omar. True, Epicureanism laid stress
on the superiority of mental over physical happiness; it were better to
worship at the shrine of Beethoven than of Venus, and better to take
your pleasure in the library than in the wine-shop. But nobler than
Epicurus was Zeno, the Stoic, whose influence on both the ancient and
the modern worlds has been so profound. If we are to take philosophy
as our guide, Stoicism, which inculcates duty and self-restraint,
and is supported by the great names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius, is probably our best leading light. Theoretically it should
produce noble characters; practically it has produced the noblest, if
the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius were really written by him and not
by some monk in the Middle Ages. If we follow the teaching of Stoicism
we shall, when we come to die, at least have the consolation that we
have done our duty; and if we realize the full meaning of “duty” in
the modern world to include duty done kindly and generously as well
as faithfully, we shall be living as nearly to the ideals laid down
by Christ as is possible to human nature, and we shall assuredly have
nothing to fear.
Anæsthesia gives some faint hint as to the possibility of a future
life. It is believed that chloroform and ether abolish consciousness
by causing a slight change in the molecular constitution of nervous
matter, as for instance dissolving the fatty substances or lipoids.
If so minute a change in the chemistry of nervous matter has the
power of totally abolishing consciousness, how can the mind possibly
survive the much greater change which occurs in nervous matter after
corruption has set in? Nor has there ever been any proof that there
can be consciousness without living nervous matter. One turns to the
spiritualistic evidence offered by Myers, Conan Doyle, Oliver Lodge,
and other observers, but after carefully studying their reports one
feels inclined to agree with Huxley that spiritualism has merely added
a new terror to death, for, according to the spiritualists, death
appears to transform men into idiots who on earth were known to be able
and clever, and the marvel is not the miracles which they report, but
that clever men should be found to believe them.
An even more remarkable marvel than the marvel of Lodge and Conan Doyle
was the marvel of John Henry Newman, who, a supremely able man, living
at the time of Darwin, Huxley, and the vast biological advancement
of the Victorian era, was yet able in middle life to embrace the far
from rationalistic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. That he
was tempted to do so by the opportunity which his action gave him
of becoming a prince of the Church is too ridiculous an assumption
to stand for a moment. The man _believed_ these things, and believed
them with greatness, nobility, and earnestness; when he ’verted he
was forty-four years of age, and it was not for about thirty years
that he was created a cardinal. The only explanation that can be given
is that we have not yet fathomed the depths of the human mind; there
is a certain type of mind which appears to see things by what it
calls intuition and is not open to reason on the basis of evidence or
probability.
Probably what most men fear is not death but the pain and illness which
generally precede death; and apart from that very natural dread there
is the dread of leaving things which are dear to every one. After
all, life is sweet to most of us; it is pleasant to feel the warm sun
and see the blue sky and watch the shadows race over far hills; an
occasional concert, a week-end spent at golf, or at working diligently
in the garden; congenial employment, or a worthy book to read, all help
to make life worth living, and the mind becomes sad at the thought of
leaving these things and the home which they epitomize. I remember once
in a troopship, a few days out from an Australian port, when the men
had all got over their sea-sickness and were beginning to realize that
they really were started on their Great Adventure, that I went down
into their quarters at night, and found a big young countryman who had
enlisted in the Artillery, sobbing bitterly. It was a long time before
kindly consolation and a dose of bromide sent him off to sleep. In the
morning he came to see me and tried to apologize for his unmanliness.
“I’m not afraid of dyin’, sir,” he explained. “I want to stoush some of
them Germans first, though. It’s leaving all me life in Australia if I
’appen to stop a lump of lead, sir--that’s what’s worryin’ me.” Life in
Australia meant riding on horseback when he was not following at the
plough’s tail. It was the only life he knew, and he loved it. But I
was fully convinced that he no more feared actual death than he feared
a mosquito, and when he left the ship at Suez, and joined lustily in
the singing of “Australia will be there”--who so jovial as he? He got
through the fighting on Gallipoli, only to be destroyed on the Somme;
his horse, if it had not already been sent to Palestine, had to submit
to another rider; his acres to produce for another ploughman.
The last illness is, of course, sometimes very unpleasant, especially
if cancer or angina pectoris enter into the picture, but I have often
marvelled at the endurance of men who should, according to all one’s
preconceived ideas, be broken up with distress. Not uncommonly a man
refuses to believe that he is really so seriously ill as other people
think, and there is always the hope eternal in every breast that he
will get better. Quite commonly he looks hopefully in the glass every
morning as he shaves for signs of coming improvement; there are few men
who really believe that sentence of early death has been passed upon
them.
The illness which causes the most misery is an illness complicated
with neurasthenia, and probably the neurasthenic tastes the bitterest
misery of which mankind is capable, unless we admit melancholia into
the grisly competition. But I often think that the long sleepless early
morning hours of neurasthenia, when the patient lies listening for the
chimes, worrying over his physical condition and harassed with dread
of the future, are the most terrible possible to man. Nor are they in
any way improved by the knowledge that sometimes neurasthenia does not
indicate any real physical disease.
But it is difficult to find any really rational cause for the desire
to live longer, unless Sir Thomas Browne is right in thinking that the
long habit of living indisposeth us for dying. After all, what does
it really matter whether we die to-morrow or live twenty more years?
In another century it will be all the same; at most we but postpone
dissolution. Death has to come sooner or later; and whatever we believe
of our life beyond the grave is not likely to make any difference. We
were not consulted as to whether we were to be born, nor as to the
parts and capabilities which were to be allotted to us, and it is
exceedingly unlikely that our wishes will be taken into consideration
as regards our eternal disposition. We can do no more when we come
to die than take our involuntary leap into the dark like innumerable
living creatures before us, and, conscious of having done our duty to
the best that lay in us, hope for the best.
Twentieth-century biological science appears to result in a kind of
vague pantheism, coupled with a generous hedonism. Scientific men
appear to find their pleasure, not like the old Greeks, sought by
each man for himself, but rather in “the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.” It is difficult for a modern man to feel entirely
happy while he knows of the vast amount of incurable misery that exists
in the world. The idea of Heaven is simply an idea that the atrocious
injustice and unhappiness of life in this world must be balanced by
equally great happiness in the life to come; but is there any evidence
to favour such a belief? Is there any evidence throughout Nature that
the spirit of justice is anything but a dream of man himself which is
never to be fulfilled? We do not like to speak of “death,” but prefer
rather to avoid the hated term by some journalistic periphrasis, such
as “solved the great enigma.” But is there any enigma? Or are we going
to solve it? Is it not more likely that our protoplasm is destined to
become dissolved into its primordial electrons, and ultimately to be
lost in the general ocean of ether, and that when we die we shall solve
no enigma, because there is no enigma to solve?
To sum up, death probably does not hurt nearly so much as the ordinary
sufferings which are the lot of everybody in living; the act of death
is probably no more terrible than our nightly falling asleep; and
probably the condition of everlasting rest is what Fate has in store
for us, and we can face it bravely without flinching when our time
comes. But whether we flinch or not will not matter; we have to die
all the same, and we shall be less likely to flinch if we can feel
that we have tried to do our duty. And what are we to say of a man who
has seen his duty, and urgently longed to perform it, but has failed
because God has not given him sufficient strength? “Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor,” as old Cicero said of himself. If there
is any enigma at all, it lies in the frustrated longings and bitter
disappointment of that man.
Probably the best shield throughout life against the atrocious evils
and injustices which every man has to suffer is a kind of humorous
fatalism which holds that other people have suffered as much as
ourselves; that such suffering is a necessary concomitant of life
upon this world; and that nothing much matters so long as we do our
duty in the sphere to which Fate has called us. A kindly irony which
enables us to laugh at the world and sympathize with its troubles is
a very powerful aid in the battle; and if a doctor does his part in
alleviating pain and postponing death--if he does his best for rich
and poor, and always listens to the cry of the afflicted,--and if he
endeavours to leave his wife and children in a position better than he
himself began, I do not see what more can be expected of him either
in this world or the next. And probably Huxley was not far wrong when
he said: “I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as
I can afford.” It is amazing that there are some people in the world
to-day who look upon a man who professes these merciful sentiments as
a miscreant doomed to eternal flames because he will not profess to
believe in their own particular form of religion. They think they have
answered him when they proclaim that his creed is sterile.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have read or heard that one of the charges against Cardinal
Wolsey was that he had given the King syphilis by whispering in his
ear. The nature of the story so whispered is not disclosed, but may
be imagined. But the proud prelate had several perfectly healthy
illegitimate children, and on the whole it is probable that Henry
caught the disease in the usual way.
[2] They really seem to have taken some little pains to make the death
of the King’s old flame as little terrible as possible. They might
have burnt her or subjected her to the usual grim preliminaries of the
scaffold. Probably they did this not because the King had ever loved
her, but because she was a queen, and therefore not to be subjected to
needless infamy; one of the Lord’s anointed, in short.
[3] To pause for a moment, probably the element of human sacrifice may
have entered into the hair-cutting episode, as it did in the action of
the women of Carthage during the last siege; and possibly there may
have been some shamefaced reserve in the attributing of the fashion
to the example of an egregious “Buster Brown” of New York. To my own
memory the fashion was first called either the “Joan of Arc” cut or
the “Munitioner” cut. The “Buster Brown” cut came later, and seems to
have been seized upon by the English as an excuse against showing deep
feelings. It is pleasanter to think that Joan of Arc was really at that
time in the hearts of English women; the cult of semi-worship that
so strengthened the Allies was really worship of the qualities which
mankind has read into the memory of the little maid of Domremy. As she
raised the siege of Orleans, so her memory encouraged the Allies to
persevere through years of agony nearly as great as her own.
[4] We can see from the statues of Jeanne d’Arc how near akin are the
sex-complex and the art-complex. I do not refer to the innumerable
pretty statues scattered throughout the French churches, which are
merely ideal portraits of sainted women. The magnificent equestrian
statue by Fremiet in the Place des Pyramides, Paris, is a portrait of a
plump little French peasant-girl trying to look fierce, and succeeding
about as well as Audrey might if she tried to play Lady Macbeth. But it
is essentially female, and, in my idea of Jeanne d’Arc, is therefore
wrong, for we really know nothing about her beyond what we read in
the trials. Even more female is the statue of her by Romaneill in the
Melbourne Art Gallery, in which the artist has actually depicted the
corslet as curved to accommodate moderate-sized breasts, a thing which
would probably have shocked Jeanne herself, for she wished to make
herself sexually unattractive. The face, though common, is probably
accurate in that it depicts her expression as saintly. No doubt when
she was listening to her Voices she did look dreamy and ethereal. But
we have no authority for believing that she was in the slightest degree
beautiful--if anything, she was probably rather the reverse.
[5] I hate to suggest that these specks before the eyes may have been
the result of toxæmia from the intestine induced by confinement and
terror.
[6] Grotius was the Dutchman who could write Latin verse at the age of
nine, and had to leave Holland because of fierce theological strife. He
began the study for his great work on the laws of war in prison, from
which he escaped by the remarkable loyalty of his wife. Like so many
romantic episodes, fiction is here anticipated by fact.
[7] Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell, _The Cloister Life of Charles V_.
[8] It has been thought that she suffered from
“phantom-tumour”--“pseudo-cyesis” in medical language.
[9] Dr. Gordon Davidson, a well-known ophthalmic surgeon of Sydney,
thinks that Pepys probably suffered from iridocyclitis, the result of
some toxæmia, possibly caused by his extreme imprudence in eating and
drinking.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.