"Margaret, do you love me?"
"I love you," she whispered and she nestled more closely into my
shoulder.
"And I love you," I replied, and kissed her brow. "It may be all a
mistake, darling, but you and I are going to be man and wife."
"Anyway," I added, "we have no illusions about it. We've looked at the
thing frankly and openly. We are blind, but we are going into it with
our eyes open."
"You are getting silly again," laughed Margaret, and we forgot all our
doubts and fears, and became two children playing with the toy we call
love.
* * *
Margaret came to me to-night.
"Mr. Macdonald's evening school opens to-night. Do you think I should
join it?"
"Why should you?" I asked.
"Oh, I have no education, and I want to learn things."
"Well," I said consideringly, "you'll learn things all right down there.
You'll learn how to measure a field, and how to analyse a sentence;
you'll learn a few things about the Stuart kings, and a few things about
the British colonies. But, my dear, do you specially want to learn
things like that?"
"I don't know what things I want to learn," she said sadly. "I think I
want to know about the things you used to speak about at your evening
school. Things that I don't agree with when you say them."
She laughed shortly.
"You know," she continued, "you used to make me angry sometimes. When
you said that you didn't object to girls smoking I was wild with you.
And I remember how shocked I was when you said that swearing navvies
were no worse than we were. When you said that the text 'Children, obey
your parents' gave bad advice I nearly got up and left the room."
"I expect that I _was_ a sort of bombshell," I laughed.
"You made me think about things that I had never thought about before."
"That was what I was paid for, Margaret; I was educating you."
"What is education?" she asked.
"Education is thinking, Margaret. Most people take things for granted;
they won't face truth. You don't like your sister Edith; she is catty
and jealous. But you won't confess to yourself that you dislike Edith.
All your training tells you that brotherly love is the accepted thing,
and if you confessed to yourself that you are fonder of Jean Mackay than
you are of Edith, you would think yourself a sinner of the worst type.
If you want to be educated you must be ready to question everything; you
must doubt everything. You must be very chary of making up your mind. Do
you believe in ghosts?" I asked suddenly.
"Of course not!" she said with a smile. "Do you?"
"I don't know," I answered. "Lots of people claim to have seen them, and
for that reason I leave the question open. There may not be ghosts, but
I don't know enough about the subject to deny that they exist. I am
quite ready to believe you if you tell me that you saw a ghost in the
granary. I asked the question just to use it as an illustration. Popular
opinion laughs at the idea of a ghost, but the thinking person won't
accept the conventional view. Keep an open mind, Margaret, and believe
when you are convinced.
"Education never stops; we are being educated every day of our lives.
Why, only yesterday, I was up in the top field, and I heard a great
squealing. I hurried to the place and was just in time to rescue a tiny
rabbit from a weasel. I had seen a weasel kill a rabbit many a time
before that, and I had never thought anything about it. But yesterday a
sudden thought came to me. I remembered the words 'God is good,' and I
began to think about them. Then I suddenly said to myself that the words
were not true. The world is full of pain and terror; the great law of
nature is: Eat or be eaten. I realised for the first time that every
hedgerow is a horrid den of suffering and fear. Cruelty is Nature's
name, Margaret."
"But," she cried in perplexity, "isn't there much good in the world
too?"
"Yes, dear, there is much good in the world, but cruelty is much more
powerful. You and I are cruel unthinkingly. We kill wasps before they
sting us; we aren't good enough to give the poor brutes the benefit of
the doubt. Your father is a very kind-hearted man, yet he never once
thinks of the cruelty he perpetrates when he rears sheep and cattle and
lambs for the butcher's knife. You and I dined on roast lamb often this
summer, and we never thought of the poor wee creature's agony when the
butcher cut its throat. Your mother is kind, yet she will kill a mouse
without a thought, and the mouse is to me the bonniest creature that
lives. Its great big glorious eyes fascinate me. Think of the kindly
people who chase a poor half-starved fox with hounds and horses; sport
is the cruellest thing in the world. Shooting, fishing, hunting ... men
are as cruel and as devilish as the tiger or the hawk, Margaret."
"Animals maybe don't feel the same as we do," she said.
"Don't you lay that flattering unction to your soul," I cried. "I used
to believe that comforting tale of the scientist that the lower animals
do not feel. I ceased to believe it when I tried to put a worm on a
fish-hook. When I saw it wriggle about I said to myself: 'This is pain,
or rather it is agony.' Think of the pain that your mares and cows
suffer when they are having their young. You and I heard the screams of
Polly when that dead foal was born this year.
"When you think of it, Margaret, man's chief end is not to glorify God
as the Catechism says; his chief end is to eliminate pain ... human
pain. You have heard of vivisection? Performing operations on animals,
often without chloroform. What's it all for? Not cruelty, as Bernard
Shaw suggests; it's all done with the kindly purpose of finding out new
ways to abolish human pain. Rabbits and guinea-pigs are dosed with all
sorts of microbes so that scientists might discover how to protect human
beings from the pain of disease. The doctors sometimes do manage to
discover a new way to abolish a certain pain, and the pathetic thing is
that while they torture animals to find a way to abolish pain a thousand
scientists are busily engaged inventing weapons that will bring more
pain into the world. It is an alarming thought that our doctors and
nurses spend their lives trying to keep the unfit alive, while our
armament makers spend their lives planning means to send the fit to
their death. Lots of people have said that this war shows the failure of
Christianity; what it really shows is the failure of Medicine.
Medicine's primary aim is to keep people alive as long as possible;
War's primary aim is to kill as many people as possible. War is really a
battle between two branches of science, between shells and senna. The
shell scientist won ... and the medicine man buckled on a Sam Browne
belt and went out to help his rival's victims. If the doctors of the
world had realised that war was a defeat of their principles they would
have gone on strike, and would no doubt have stopped the war by doing
so. Every doctor should be a pacifist, but as a matter of fact very few
doctors are pacifists."
"What is a pacifist?" asked Margaret.
"A pacifist is a man who loves peace so much that people look up
almanacs to see whether his name was Schmidt a generation back,
Margaret. He is usually a nervous man with the physical courage of a
hen, but he has more moral courage than three army corps. He is usually
a Conscientious Objector, and it takes the moral courage of a god to be
that."
"They are just a lot of cowards!" cried Margaret with indignation.
"No," I said, "I can't agree with you. No coward will face the scorn of
women and the contempt of men as these men do. Think of the life that
lies in front of a Conscientious Objector. Nobody will ever understand
him; he will be an outcast for ever. Dear, it takes stupendous courage
to put yourself in that position, and I can't think that any man could
do it unless he were following principles that were dearer to him than
the judgment of his fellow men. You see, Margaret, ordinary courage and
moral courage are totally different things. I know a man who won the
V.C. for a very brave deed, and that chap wouldn't wear a made-up tie
for all the decorations in the world; he wouldn't have the moral courage
to be seen walking down the street with a Bengali. The more imagination
you have the higher is your moral courage, but imagination is fatal to
physical courage. Moral courage belongs to the thinker; physical courage
to the doer. And I can't help thinking that moral courage goes with
unhealthiness. I am quite sure that physical courage is primarily
dependent on physical health. If my liver is out of order I tremble to
open a letter; I can't walk ten yards in the dark; and the arrival of a
telegram would give me a fainting fit. Nerves are always unhealthy, and
as thinkers are always highly strung people I conclude that thinking is
unhealthy. Thinkers are mad, Margaret, mad as hatters."
"Mad!"
"Yes. The lunatic is merely the man whose brain is different from the
brain of the average man. The average man does not imagine himself to be
Jesus Christ, and when a man does imagine himself to be Christ we say
that he is mad, and we shut him up. He may be a Christ for all we know.
I don't know why the community didn't shut up Shaw when he first
preached that obedience was one of the Seven Deadly Virtues. The average
man didn't agree with him, and we can say that Shaw is therefore mad.
You see, dear, man is firstly an animal; Joe Smith the butcher down in
the village is an animal, a fine healthy animal. He is primitive man,
and thinking is the last thing he could attempt. Thinking is an acquired
characteristic; it isn't a natural thing, and anything unnatural is
diseased. A thinker is as much a freak as a man born with two heads. And
that's why I say that thinkers are unhealthy. Blake the great poet was
mad; Ibsen the great Norwegian dramatist died in the mad-house; Shelley
was diseased; Milton was blind, Keats a consumptive; nearly every great
composer of music who ever lived was mad."
"But," laughed Margaret, "you said that education was thinking, and now
you say that thinkers are all mad."
"Yes, but madness is what the world needs. All these villagers down
there are absolutely sane, but the world won't be a scrap the better for
their existence. I prefer a world of Shelleys and Ibsens to a world of
Jack Johnsons and Sandows ... and Joe Smiths. A great German philosopher
called Nietzsche preached the gospel of Superman. He wanted a fine race
of powerful men who would rule the world. Some people say that Napoleon
and Cæsar and Cromwell were Supermen, but the real Supermen were men
like Christ and Ibsen and Darwin and Shelley; a fighter is a nobody, but
a man with a message is a Superman."
"I don't understand," said Margaret dully; "what do you mean by having a
message?"
"A messenger is a man who forces people to consider things that they
wouldn't consider without being prompted. Christ's message was love; He
encouraged men to act according to the good that was in them; the
kindliness, the charity, the love. And the fact that shooting and
hunting and lamb eating still persist shows that we pay but little
attention to Christ's message. Shelley's message was freedom, freedom to
think and to live one's own life. You'll find that there are only the
two kinds of message ... love and freedom."
"The evangelists who were holding meetings in the school last winter
used to speak about their 'message,'" said Margaret. "Would you say that
they were Supermen?"
"They were Superwomen," I said hastily. "They depended on emotionalism.
They said nothing new, and they would refuse to consider anything new if
you asked them to. They had no power to think; they quoted all the time.
Consequently their message evaporated; when the magnetism of their
appeal went away the converts lapsed into their old sinful ways. They
didn't understand the message they tried to deliver; they had never
really thought out Christ's philosophy. They had got hold of a catch
phrase or two, and they kept shouting: 'Though your sins be as scarlet
they shall be made whiter than snow.' But I am quite sure that they did
not know what they meant by sin. Christ's chief message was: 'Love one
another,' but they made it out to be: 'Love yourself so well that you
may cry for salvation from the wrath to come.'"
Margaret looked at the clock on my mantelpiece.
"O!" she cried, "it's eight o'clock ... and the class began at seven! I
can't go now."
At the door she paused for a moment; then she came back slowly.
"I won't attend his class," she said thoughtfully; "I think I'll just
come over to see you every night, and you'll talk to me and educate
me."
"Well," I smiled, "I will give you a wider education than Macdonald can
give you. For example ... this!"
"I could get any amount of teaching in kissing," she tittered.
"Possibly, darling ... but there is no teacher hereabouts with my
knowledge and experience of the art."
"You horrid pig!" she laughed, and she pulled my hair.