perpetuity of individual life, the thought of death sometimes becomes
less solemn, less sacred, than it is to those who have no supernatural
beliefs. The easy assurance of immortality to which friends who are
writing letters of condolence to a mourner too often have recourse, is
usually a sign less of sympathy than of the lack of it; for it is not
sympathetic to repeat ancient formulas in face of a present and very
real grief; indeed, it is in many cases an impertinence, when it is
done without any regard to the views of the person to whom such solace
is addressed. Among the professional ghouls who watch the death-notices
in the papers, none, perhaps, are more callous--not even the would-be
buyers of old clothes or artificial teeth--than the pious busybodies who
intrude on homes of sorrow with their vacant tracts and booklets. Nay,
worse: nowadays mourners are lucky if some spiritist acquaintance does
not have a beatific vision of the lost one; for the dead seem to be
regarded as a lawful prey by any one who sees visions and dreams dreams,
and who is determined to call them as witnesses that there is no reality
in the most stringent ordinances of nature:
Stern law of every mortal lot;
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
And builds himself I know not what
Of second life I know not where.
With much appropriateness did Matthew Arnold introduce his trenchant
rebuke of human arrogance into a poem on the grave of a dog; for mankind
has neither right nor reason to presume for itself an hereafter which it
denies to humbler fellow-beings who share at least the ability to suffer
and to love. Can any one, not a mere barbarian, who has watched the
death of an animal whom he loved, and by whom he was himself loved with
that faithful affection which is never withheld when it is merited, dare
to doubt that the conditions of life and death are essentially the same
for human and for non-human? Is an animal’s death one whit less poignant
in remembrance than that of one’s dearest human friend? Must it not
remain with us as ineffaceably?
That individual love should resent the thraldom of death may be
unreasonable; but it is useless to ignore the fact of such resentment,
or to proffer consolations which can neither convince nor console. From
the earliest times the poets, above all others, have borne witness to
love’s protest. Perhaps the most moving lyric in Roman literature is
that short elegy written by Catullus at his brother’s grave, full of a
deep passion which can hardly be conveyed in another tongue.
Borne far o’er many lands, o’er many seas,
On this sad service, brother, have I sped,
To proffer thee death’s last solemnities,
And greet, though words be vain, the silent dead:
For thou art lost, so cruel fate decrees;
Ah, brother, from my sight untimely fled!
Yet take these gifts, ordained in bygone years
For mournful dues when funeral rites befell;
Take them, all streaming with a brother’s tears:
And thus, for evermore--hail and farewell!
A similar cry is heard in that famous passage of Virgil, where the
bereaved Orpheus refuses to be comforted for the loss of his Eurydice.
And nearly two thousand years later we find Wordsworth, a Christian
poet, echoing the same lamentation:
... When I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Mark the reference to “years unborn.” Wordsworth was a believer in
immortality; but immortality itself cannot restore what is past and
gone. All the sages and seers and prophets, that have given mankind the
benefit of their wisdom since the world began, have so far failed to
provide the least crumb of comfort for the ravages of death, or to
explain why love should be for ever built up to be for ever overthrown,
and why union should always be followed by disseverance.
There may, of course, be a solution of this tragedy hereafter to be
discovered by mankind; all that we know is that, as yet, no human being
has found the clue to the mystery, or, if he has found it, has
vouchsafed the knowledge to his fellow-mortals. For we must dismiss as
idle the assertion that such things cannot be communicated in words.
Anything that is apprehended by the mind can be expressed by the
mouth--not adequately, perhaps, yet still, in some measure,
expressed--and the reason why this greatest of secrets has never been
conveyed is that, as yet, it has never been apprehended.
It is, doubtless, this lack of any real knowledge, of any genuine
consolation, that drives mankind to seek refuge in the more primitive
superstitions. Something more definite, more tangible, is not
unnaturally desired; and therefore men turn to the assurances of what is
called spiritualism--the refusal to believe that death, in the accepted
sense, has taken place at all. This creed is at least free from the
vagueness of the ordinary religious view of death. It is small comfort
to be told that a lost friend is sitting transfigured, harp in hand, in
some skiey mansion of the blest; but it might mitigate the bereavement
of some mourners (not all) to converse with their lost one, and to learn
that he exists in much the same manner, and with the same affections as
before. Some who “prefer him earthly” are less likely to be disappointed
in spiritualism than in any other philosophy; the danger is rather that
they should find him _too_ earthly--enjoying a cigarette, perhaps, as in
a case mentioned in recent revelations of the spirit-life. This is
literalness with a vengeance; but however ludicrous and incredible it
may be, it is not--from the comforter’s point of view--meaningless;
whereas it _is_ unmeaning to tell a mourner that the loved one is not
lost, to him, when the whole environment and fabric of their love are
shattered and destroyed.
Is there, then--pending such fuller knowledge as mankind may hereafter
gain--no present comfort for death’s tyranny? I have spoken of the poets
as the champions of love against death; and it is perhaps in poetry,
the poetry of love and death, that the best solace will be found--in
that open-eyed and quite rational view of the struggle, which does not
deny the reality of death, but asserts the reality of love. It is
amusing to hear those who do not accept the orthodox creed as regards an
after-life described as cold “materialists” and “sceptics.” For who have
written most loftily, most spiritually, about death and the great
emotions that are implied in the word--the religionists and
“spiritualists,” who pretend to a mystic knowledge, or the great
free-thinking poets, from the time of Lucretius to the time of Shelley
and James Thomson? Can any “spiritualist” poetry match the great sublime
passages of the _De Rerum Naturâ_, or, to come to our own age, of _The
City of Dreadful Night_?
It is to the poets, then, not to the dogmatists, that we must look for
solace; for, where knowledge is still unattainable, an aspiration is
wiser than an assertion, and the theme of death is one which can be far
better treated idealistically than as a matter of doctrine. In poetry,
as nowhere else, can be expressed those manifold moods, and half-moods,
in which the noblest human minds have sought relief when confronted by
this mighty problem; and far more soothing than any unsubstantial
promises of futurity is the charm that is felt in the magic of beautiful
verse. In Milton’s words:
... I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
At the present time, when a great war has brought bereavement into so
many homes, and when superstition is reaping its harvest among the sad
and broken lives that are everywhere around us, how can rational men do
better than recall as many minds as possible from the false teachers to
the true, from the priests, who claim a knowledge which they do not
possess, to the poets, in whom, as Shelley said, there is “the power of
communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions
respecting man and nature”? And the testimony of the poets cannot be
mistaken; their first word and their last word is Love. Whether it be
Cowper, gazing on his mother’s portrait; or Burns, lamenting his
Highland Mary; or Wordsworth, in his elegies for Lucy; or Shelley, in
the raptures of his “Adonais”; or pessimists, such as Edgar Poe and
James Thomson, to whom love was the “sole star of light in infinite
black despair”--the lesson that we learn from them is the same. For
death there is no solace but in love; it is to love’s name that the
human heart must cling.
Ah! let none other alien spell soe’er,
But only the one Hope’s one name be there,
Not less, nor more, but even that word alone!
XVII
THE TALISMAN
Comprendre c’est Pardonner.--MADAME DE STAËL.
Are we, then, a civilized people? Has the Man of to-day, still living by
bloodshed, still striving to grow rich at the expense of his neighbour,
still using torture in punishment, still seeking sport in destruction,
still waging fratricidal wars, and, while making a hell on earth,
claiming for himself an eternal heaven hereafter--has this selfish,
predatory being arrived at a state of “civilization”?
It may be said, perhaps, that as the ideal is always in advance of the
actual, and it is easy to show that any present stage of society falls
far short of what it might be and ought to be, the distinction between
savagery and civilization is a matter of names. This, in one sense, is
true; but it is also true that names are of great importance as reacting
upon conduct, and that to use flattering titles as a veil for cruel
practices gives permanence to evils that otherwise would not be
permitted. Our present self-satisfaction in what we are pleased to call
our civilization is a very serious obstacle to improvement.
In this manner euphemism plays a great part in language; for just as the
Greeks used gracious terms to denote malignant powers, and so, as they
thought, to disarm their hostility, the modern mind seeks, consciously
or unconsciously, to disguise iniquities by misnaming them. Thus a blind
tribal hatred can be masked as “patriotism”; living idly on the work of
others is termed “an independence”; vivisection cloaks itself as
“research”; and the massacre of wild animals for man’s wanton amusement
is dignified as “sport.” There is undoubtedly much virtue in names.
But here another objection may be raised, to wit, that in view of the
vast advance that has been made by mankind from primeval savagery to the
present complex social state, it is impossible to apply to the higher
man the same name as to the lower man; for if _we_ are savages, what are
the Bushmen or the Esquimaux?
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
It may be doubted whether of late years Europe has been pleasanter as a
residential district than Cathay; but, letting that pass, must we not
admit that a real culture implies something more than material and
mental opulence? “Civilization,” as a French writer has lately said, “is
not in this terrible trumpery: if it is not in the heart of man, then it
exists nowhere.”[46] It is easy to frame “ethnical periods,” as is done
in Morgan’s _Ancient Society_, in which are postulated the three
phases--Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization--the last-named commencing
with the invention of a Phonetic Alphabet; but such a definition, when
put to practical test, seems a somewhat fanciful one. The brute who
tortures or butchers a sentient fellow-being remains a brute, whether a
Phonetic Alphabet has been invented or not. He has not learnt the ABC of
civilization. What is needed, for the measurement of human progress, is
a standard of ethical, not ethnical refinement.
That mankind has already advanced so far is a sign, not that it has now
reached its zenith, but that it has yet further to advance; and this
advance will be delayed, not promoted, by the refusal to recognize that
the physical and mental sciences have far outrun the moral--that,
despite our multifarious discoveries and accomplishments, we are still
barbarians at heart.
In this sense, then, we are savages; and the knowledge of that fact is
the first step toward civilization. There is a line which pious
zoophilists are fond of quoting to sportsmen or other thoughtless
persons who ill-use their humbler fellow-creatures:
Remember, He who made thee made the brute.
The reminder is wholesome, for kinship is too apt to be forgotten; but I
would venture to interpret that significant verse in a much more literal
sense; for it must be confessed that many a human being, if judged by
his actions, is not only _related_ to the brute, but is _himself_ the
brute. The old Greek maxim, “Know thyself,” is the starting-point of all
reformation.
Through this knowledge, and only through it, can come the patience which
forgives because it fully understands: “Comprendre c’est pardonner” is
assuredly one of the world’s greatest sayings.
He pardons all, who all can understand.
There is no need to search for extenuating circumstances, because, as
Ernest Crosby has remarked: “Is not the fact of being born a man or a
woman an all-sufficient extenuating circumstance?” All is explained,
when once we are content to look upon our fellow-beings, and upon
ourselves, as what we verily are--a race of rough but not unkindly
barbarians, emerging with infinite slowness to a more humanized
condition, and to recognize that if mankind, even as it is, has been
evolved from a still more savage ancestry, that fact is in itself a
proof that progress is not wholly chimerical.
Considered from the point of view of personal happiness and peace of
mind, the question is the same. To what sort of comfort can a person of
sensibility hope to attain, in sight of the immense sum of wretchedness
and suffering that is everywhere visible, and audible, around us? I know
not a few humanitarians whose lives are permanently saddened by the
thought of the awful destitution that afflicts large masses of mankind,
and of the not less awful cruelties inflicted on the lower animals in
the name of sport and science and fashion. How can sensitive and
sympathetic minds forget the loss of other persons’ happiness in the
culture of their own, especially if they have realized that not a little
of their well-being is derived from the toil of their fellows?
Here, again, some measure of consolation may be found, if we look at the
problem in a less sanguine and therefore less exacting spirit. People
often indignantly ask, with reference to some cruel action or custom,
whether we are living “in an age of civilization or of savagery,” the
implication being that in an era of the highest and noblest
civilization, such as ours is assumed to be, some unaccountably
barbarous persons are stooping to an unworthy practice. Is it not wiser,
and more conducive to one’s personal peace of mind, to reverse this
assumption, and to start with the frank avowal that the present age, in
spite of its vast mechanical cleverness, is, from an ethical point of
view, one of positive barbarism, not so savage, of course, as some that
have preceded it, but still undeniably savage as compared with what we
foresee of a civilized future?
Viewed in this more modest light, many usages which, if prevalent in a
civilized country, might well make one despair of humankind, are seen to
be, like the crimes of children, symptoms of the thoughtless infancy of
our race. We are not civilized folk who have degenerated into monsters,
but untamed savages who, on the whole, make a rather creditable display,
and may in future centuries become civilized.
For example, when one meets a number of “sportsmen” going forth, with
horses and with hounds, to do to death with every circumstance of
barbarity some wretched little animal whom they have actually bred, or
“preserved,” or imported for the purpose, such a sight--if one regards
them as rational and civilized beings--might well spoil one’s happiness
for a fortnight. But if we take a lower stand, and see in them nothing
more than fine strapping barbarians, engaged in one of the national
recreations of those “dark ages” in which we live, the outlook becomes
immediately a more cheerful one; and instead of being surprised that
ladies and gentlemen in the twentieth century should desire to “break
up” a fox, we are able to recognize the moderation and civility with
which in other respects they conduct themselves.
One advantage, at least, can be drawn by humanitarians from the present
state of affairs--a more accurate apprehension of the obstacles by which
their hopes are beset. Much has been said and written about the causes
of the war; and it is inevitable that the _immediate_ causes (for they
alone are discussed) should be thoroughly investigated. But the deeper
underlying causes of the recent war, and of every war, are not those
upon which diplomatists and politicians and journalists and historians
are intent: they must be sought in that callous and selfish habit of
mind--common to all races, and as such accepted without thought, and
transmitted from one generation to another--which exhibits itself not in
war only, but in numerous other forms of barbarity observed in so-called
civilized life.
No League of Nations, or of individuals, can avail, without a change of
heart. Reformers of all classes must recognize that it is useless to
preach peace by itself, or socialism by itself, or anti-vivisection by
itself, or vegetarianism by itself, or kindness to animals by itself.
The cause of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the
same--the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all
sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow-being is in fact
doing injury to himself. The prospects of a happier society are wrapped
up in this despised and neglected truth, the very statement of which, at
the present time, must (I well know) appear ridiculous to the accepted
instructors of the people.
The one and only talisman is Love. Active work has to be done, but if it
is to attain its end, it is in the spirit of love that it must be
undertaken. Perhaps the most significant symptom of the brutishness
aroused by the war-fever was the blank inability which many Christians
showed not only to practise such injunctions as “Love your enemies,” but
even to understand them.[47] Had it not been that humour, like
humaneness, was sunk fathoms deep in an ocean of stupidity, one would
have been tempted to quote Ernest Crosby’s delightful lines on “Love the
Oppressors”:
Love the oppressors and tyrants:
It is the only way to get rid of them!
In these days, when the voice of hatred and malevolence is so dominant,
it is a joy to turn to the pages of writers who proclaim a wiser faith.
“This is a gray world,” says Howard Moore. “There is enough sorrow in
it, even though we cease to scourge each other--the sorrow of floods,
famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should
trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each
other, and be patient and forgiving.” Nor is it only the human that
claims our sympathy; for does not Pierre Loti, in his _Book of Pity and
Death_, imagine even his stray Chinese cat, whom he had befriended on
shipboard, addressing him in similar words: “In this autumn day, so sad
to the heart of cats, since we are here together, both isolated beings
... suppose we give, one to the other, a little of that kindness which
softens trouble, which resembles the immaterial and defies death, which
is called affection, and which expresses itself from time to time by a
caress.”
Has not this distracted world had enough, and more than enough, of
jealousies and denunciations? Is it not time that we tried, in their
stead, the effect, say, of a bombardment of blessings? If there are
light-waves, heat-waves, sound-waves, may there not also be love-waves?
How if we sent out a daily succession of these to earth’s uttermost
parts? A benediction is as easily uttered as a curse; and it needs no
priest to pronounce it. At least it is pleasant to think (and men put
faith in creeds that are much less believable) that gentle thoughts, the
“wireless” of the heart, may penetrate and be picked up in regions that
are beyond our ken, and so create a more favourable atmosphere for
gentle deeds. “Why did none of them tell me,” asks Crosby, “that my soul
was a loving-machine?” It is strange, certainly, that we take so much
more pains to kindle the fires of hate than the fires of love.
“Boundless compassion for all living beings,” says Schopenhauer, “is the
surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no
casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do
harm to no one, encroach on no man’s rights; he will rather have regard
for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and
all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.”[48]
Incidentally it may be observed that, as Schopenhauer points out, the
difficulties of what is called the sex question would in large measure
be solved, if this rule of “injure no one” were more fully believed and
acted on.
The lesson of the past six years is this. It is useless to hope that
warfare, which is but one of many savage survivals, can be abolished,
until the mind of man is humanized in other respects also--until _all_
savage survivals are at least seen in their true light. As long as man
kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his
own race for enmity. It is not _this_ bloodshed, or _that_ bloodshed,
that must cease, but _all_ needless bloodshed--all wanton infliction of
pain or death upon our fellow-beings. Only when the great sense of the
universal kinship has been realized among us, will love cast out hatred,
and will it become impossible for the world to witness anew the
senseless horrors that disgrace Europe to-day.
Humanitarians, then, must expect little, but claim much; must know that
they will see no present fruits of their labours, but that their labours
are nevertheless of far-reaching importance. Let those who have been
horrified by the spectacle of an atrocious war resolve to support the
peace movement more strongly than ever; but let them also support the
still wider and deeper humanitarian movement of which pacifism is but a
part, inasmuch as all humane causes, though seemingly separate, are
ultimately and essentially one.
POSTSCRIPT
In the preparation of this book I have used the substance of several
articles that first appeared in the _Humane Review_, _Humanitarian_,
_Literary Guide_, _Rationalist Press Association’s Annual_, _Vegetarian
Messenger_, or elsewhere. Acknowledgment of certain other obligations is
made in the footnotes.
INDEX
Adams, Francis, 83-85
Adams, George, 87
Adams, Maurice, 76, 77
_Adventurer_, the, 28, 29
Anderson, Martin (“Cynicus”), 204
Anderson, Sir Robert, 143, 144
Animals, kinship with man, 13, 14, 128, 130, 131;
deaths of, 130, 234;
“dumb,” 129;
rights of, 125-128, 132
Anthropocentric superstition, 13, 127, 128, 131
Arnold, Matthew, 45, 52, 234
Aveling, Edward, 80, 81, 95
Barlas, John, 85-87;
quoted, 233
_Beagler Boy_, the, 175, 176
Bell, Ernest, 124, 125, 211
Besant, Sir Walter, 115, 116
Big Game Hunting, 155, 156
“Blooding,” 13, 155
Blood-Sport, 12, 13, 151, 162, 171, 243
Bourchier, J. D., 57, 58
Bradshaw, Henry, 37-39
Browning, Oscar, 58, 59
Browning, Robert, 94
_Brutalitarian_, The, 174
Buchanan, Robert, 113, 202, 203
Buckland, James, 167
“Canonization of the Ogre,” 70, 71
Carpenter, Captain Alfred, R.N., 165, 210
Carpenter, Edward, 45, 61, 73, 75, 76, 87-89, 109, 110, 205, 206, 210
Carpenter, Dr. P. H., 62, 68
Catullus, quoted, 235
Champion, H. H., 61, 79, 86
Chesterton, G. K., 127, 128, 174, 178;
quoted, 135
Ching Ping, Chinese Mission to Eton, 176
Christmas cruelties, 215
Coit, Dr. Stanton, 70, 71
Colam, John, 149, 161, 162
_Comprendre c’est pardonner_, 241
Conda, Anna, her appeal to the Zoological Society, 165
Cornish, F. Warre, 19, 36
Cory, William, _see_ Johnson
Coulson, Colonel W. L. B., 124, 158, 159
Crane, Walter, 204, 216
Crosby, Ernest, 205, 206, 241, 244, 245
Darrow, Clarence, 206, 207
Day, Rev. Russell, 23, 24
de Quincey, Miss E., 118, 119
De Quincey, Thomas, 118-120;
quoted, 136
Deuchar, N. Douglas, 211;
quoted, 100
Dixie, Lady Florence, 159, 160
Dobell, Bertram, 102, 110, 111
Durnford, Rev. F. E., 23
Edwards, J. Passmore, 142, 209
Eton College, 16-35, 50-66
Eton Hare-hunt, 27, 56, 154, 155, 160, 175
Fabian Society, 81, 82
Feather and Fur Trades, 12, 148, 167, 168, 172
Fighting, fallacies about, 223-225, 228, 229
Flagellomania, 145, 146, 166
Flesh-eating, 9, 67-69, 148
Flogging, at Eton, 22, 23;
in Royal Navy, 138;
judicial, 135-137, 144-146
Foote, G. W., 94, 95, 98, 102, 208