“Royal Institution of Great Britain,
“7th Nov., 1865.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“Our minds—that is yours and mine—sound the same note as regards the
economy of nature. With clearness and precision you have stated the
question. In fact, had I known that you had written upon the subject I
might have copied your words and put my name to them.
“I intend to _keep_ your book, but I have desired my publisher to send
you a book of mine in exchange—this is fair, is it not?
“Your book so far as I have read it is full of strength. Of course I
could not have written it all. Your images are too concrete and your
personification of the mystery of mysteries too intense for me. But as
long as you are tolerant of others—which you are—the shape into which
you mould the power of your soul must be determined by yourself alone.
“Believe me, yours most truly,
“JOHN TYNDALL.”
“Royal Institution of Great Britain,
“21st June.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I would do anything I could for _your_ sake and irrespectively of the
interest of your subject.
“Had I Faraday’s own letter, I could decipher at once what he meant,
for I was intimately acquainted with his course of thought during the
later years of his life. It would however be running a great risk to
attempt to supply this hiatus without seeing his letter.
“I should think it refers to the influence of _time_ on magnetic
action. About the date referred to he was speculating and trying to
prove experimentally whether magnetism required time to pass through
space.
“Always yours faithfully,
“JOHN TYNDALL.”
In a letter of mine to a friend written after meeting Prof. Tyndall at
dinner at Edgbaston during the Congress of the British Association in
Birmingham, after mentioning M. Vambéry and some others, I said; “The
one I liked best was Prof. Tyndall, with whom I had quite an ‘awful’
talk alone about the bearing of Science on Religion. He said in words
like a fine poem, that Knowledge seemed to him ‘like an instrument on
which we went up, note after note, and octave after octave; but at last
there came a note which our ears could not hear, and which was silent
for us. And at the other end of the scale there was another silent
note.’”
Many years after this, there appeared an article in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ which I felt sure was by Prof. Tyndall, in which it was calmly
stated that the scientific intellect had settled the controversy between
Pantheism and Theism, and that the said Scientific Intellect “permitted
us to believe in an order of Development,” and would “allow the
religious instincts and the language of Religion to gather round that
idea;” but that the notion of a “Great Director” can by no means be
suffered by the same Scientific Intellect.
I wrote a reply, begging to be informed _when_ and _where_ the
controversy between Pantheism and Theism had been settled, as the
statement, dropped so coolly in a single paragraph, was, to say the
least, startling; and I concluded by saying, “We may be _driven_ into
the howling wilderness of a Godless world by the fiery swords of these
new Cherubim of Knowledge; but at least we will not shrink away into it
before their innuendoes!”
I have also lost in quitting this circle, the privilege of often meeting
Mr. Herbert Spencer; though he has never (to his honour be it
remembered!) pronounced a word in favour of painful experiments on
animals.
With the great naturalist who has revolutionized modern science I had
rather frequent intercourse till the same sad barrier of a great
difference of moral opinion arose between us. Mr. Charles Darwin’s
brother-in-law, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, was, for a time tenant here at
Hengwrt; and afterwards took a house named Caer-Deon in this
neighbourhood, where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin and their boys also
spent part of the summer. As it chanced, we also took a cottage that
summer close by Caer-deon and naturally saw our neighbours daily. I had
known Mr. Darwin previously, in London, and had also met his most
amiable brother, Mr. Erasmus Darwin, at the house of my kind old friend
Mrs. Reid, the foundress of Bedford Square College. The first thing we
heard concerning the illustrious arrivals was the report, that one of
the sons had had “_a fall off a Philosopher_;” word substituted by the
ingenious Welsh mind for “velocipede” (as bicycles were then called)
under an easily understood confusion between the rider and the machine
he rode!
Next,—the Welsh parson of the little church close by, having fondly
calculated that Mr. Darwin would certainly hasten to attend his
services, prepared for him a sermon which should slay this scientific
Goliath and spread dismay through the ranks of the sceptical host. He
told his congregation that there were in these days persons, puffed up
by science, falsely so called, and deluded by the pride of reason, who
had actually been so audacious as to question the story of the six days
Creation as detailed in Sacred Scripture. But let them note how idle
were these sceptical questionings! Did they not see that the events
recorded happened before there was any man existing to record them, and
that, therefore, Moses _must_ have learned them from God himself, since
there was no one else to tell him?
Alas! the philosopher, I fear, never went to be converted (as he surely
must have been) by this ingenious Welsh parson, and we were for a long
time merry over his logic. Mr. Darwin was never in good health, I
believe, after his Beagle experience of sea sickness, and he was glad to
use a peaceful and beautiful old pony of my friend’s, yclept Geraint,
which she placed at his disposal. His gentleness to this beast and
incessant efforts to keep off the flies from his head, and his fondness
for his dog Polly (concerning whose cleverness and breeding he indulged
in delusions which Matthew Arnold’s better dog-lore would have swiftly
dissipated), were very pleasing traits in his character.
In writing at this time to a friend I said:—
“I am glad you like Mill’s book. Mr. Charles Darwin, with whom I am
enchanted, is greatly excited about it, but says that Mill could learn
some things from physical science; and that it is in the struggle for
existence and (especially) for the possession of women that men
acquire their vigour and courage. Also he intensely agrees with what I
say in my review of Mill about _inherited_ qualities being more
important than _education_, on which alone Mill insists. All this the
philosopher told me yesterday, standing on a path 60 feet above me and
carrying on an animated dialogue from our respective standpoints!”
Mr. Darwin was walking on the footpath down from Caer-Deon among the
purple heather which clothes our mountains so royally; and impenetrable
brambles lay between him above and me on the road below; so we exchanged
our remarks at the top of our voices, being too eager to think of the
absurdity of the situation, till my friend coming along the road heard
with amazement words flying in the air which assuredly those “valleys
and rocks never heard” before, or since! When we drive past that spot,
as we often do now, we sigh as we look at the “Philosopher’s Path,” and
wish (O, _how_ one wishes!) that he could come back and tell us what he
has learned _since_!
At this time Mr. Darwin was writing his _Descent of Man_, and he told me
that he was going to introduce some new view of the nature of the Moral
Sense. I said: “Of course you have studied Kant’s _Grundlegung der
Sitten_?” No; he had not read Kant, and did not care to do so. I
ventured to urge him to study him, and observed that one could hardly
see one’s way in ethical speculation without some understanding of his
philosophy. My own knowledge of it was too imperfect to talk of it to
him, but I could lend him a very good translation. He declined my book,
but I nevertheless packed it up with the next parcel I sent him.
On returning the volume he wrote to me:—
“It was very good of you to send me _nolens volens_ Kant, together
with the other book. I have been extremely glad to look through the
former. It has interested me much to see how differently two men may
look at the same points. Though I fully feel how presumptuous it
sounds to put myself even for a moment in the same bracket with
Kant—the one man a great philosopher looking exclusively into his own
mind, the other a degraded wretch looking from the outside through
apes and savages at the moral sense of mankind.”
There was irony, and perhaps not a little pride in his reference to
himself as a “degraded wretch looking through apes and savages at the
moral sense of mankind”! Between the two great Schools of
thinkers,—those who study from the Inside (of human consciousness),
and those who study from the Outside,—there has always existed mutual
animosity and contempt. For my own part, while fully admitting that
the former needed to have their conclusions enlarged and tested by
outside experience, I must always hold that they were on a truer line
than the (exclusively) physico-scientific philosophers. Man’s
consciousness is not only _a_ fact in the world but the _greatest_ of
facts; and to overlook it and take our lessons from beasts and insects
is to repeat the old jest of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. A philosophy
founded solely on the consciousness of man, _may_; and, very likely,
will, be imperfect; and certainly it will be incomplete. But a
philosophy which begins with inorganic matter and the lower animals,
and only includes the outward facts of anthropology, regardless of
human consciousness,—_must_ be worse than imperfect and incomplete. It
resembles a treatise on the Solar System which should omit to notice
the Sun.
I mentioned to him in a letter, that we had found some seeds of
Tropæolum, very carefully gathered from brilliant and multicoloured
varieties, all revert in a single year to plain scarlet. He
replied:—“You and Miss Lloyd need not have your faith in inheritance
shaken with respect to Tropæolum until you have prevented for six or
seven generations any crossing between the varieties in the same garden.
I have lately found the very shade of colour is transmitted of a most
fluctuating garden variety if the flowers are carefully self-fertilized
during six or seven generations.”
The _Descent of Man_ of which Mr. Darwin was kind enough to give me a
copy before publication, inspired me with the deadliest alarm. His new
theory therein set forth, respecting the nature and origin of
conscience, seemed to me then, and still seems to me, of absolutely
fatal import. I wrote the strongest answer to it in my power at once,
and published in the _Theological Review_, April, 1871 (reprinted in my
_Darwinism in Morals_, 1872). Of course I sent my review to Down House.
Here is a generous message which I received in reply:—
“Mr. Darwin is reading the _Review_ with the greatest interest and
attention and feels so much the kind way you speak of him and the
praise you give him, that it will make him bear your severity, when he
reaches that part of the review.”
Referring to an article of mine in the _Quarterly Review_ (Oct., 1872)
on the _Consciousness of Dogs_, Mr. Darwin wrote to me, Nov. 28th,
1872:—
“I have been greatly interested by your article in the _Quarterly_. It
seems to me the best analysis of the mind of an animal which I have
ever read, and I agree with you on most points. I have been
particularly glad to read what you say about the reasoning power of
dogs, and about that rather vague matter, their self-consciousness. I
dare say however that you would prefer criticism to admiration.
“I regret that you quote J. so often: I made enquiries about one case
(which quite broke down) from a man who certainly ought to know Mr. J.
well; and I was cautioned that he had not written in a scientific
spirit. I regret also that you quote old writers. It may be very
illiberal, but their statements go for nothing with me and I suspect
with many others. It passes my powers of belief that dogs ever commit
suicide. Assuming the statements to be true, I should think it more
probable that they were distraught, and did not know what they were
doing; nor am I able to credit about fetishes.
“One of the most interesting subjects in your article seems to me to
be about the moral sense. Since publishing the _Descent of Man_ I have
got to believe rather more than I did in dogs having what may be
called a conscience. When an honourable dog has committed an
undiscovered offence he certainly seems _ashamed_ (and this is the
term naturally and often used) rather than _afraid_ to meet his
master. My dog, the beloved and beautiful Polly, is at such times
extremely affectionate towards me; and this leads me to mention a
little anecdote. When I was a very little boy, I had committed some
offence, so that my conscience troubled me, and when I met my father,
I lavished so much affection on him, that he at once asked me what I
had done, and told me to confess. I was so utterly confounded at his
suspecting anything, that I remember the scene clearly to the present
day, and it seems to me that Polly’s frame of mind on such occasions
is much the same as was mine, for I was not then at all afraid of my
father.”
In a letter to a friend (Nov., 1869) I say:—
“We lunched with Mr. Charles Darwin at Mr. Erasmus D——’s house on
Sunday. He told us that a German man of science, (I think Carl Vogt),
the other day gave a lecture, in which he treated the Mass as the last
relic of that _Cannibalism_ which gradually took to eating only the
heart, or eyes of a man to acquire his courage. Whereupon the whole
audience rose and cheered the lecturer enthusiastically! Mr. Darwin
remarked how much more _decency_ there was in speaking on such
subjects in England.”
This pleasant intercourse with an illustrious man was, like many other
pleasant things, brought to a close for me in 1875 by the beginning of
the Anti-vivisection crusade. Mr. Darwin eventually became the centre of
an adoring _clique_ of vivisectors who (as his Biography shows) plied
him incessantly with encouragement to uphold their practice, till the
deplorable spectacle was exhibited of a man who would not allow a fly to
bite a pony’s neck, standing forth before all Europe (in his celebrated
letter to Prof. Holmgren of Sweden) as the advocate of Vivisection.
We had many interesting foreign visitors in Hereford Square. I have
mentioned the two Parsee gentlemen who came to thank me for having made
(as they considered) a just estimate of their religion in my article
“_The Sacred Books of the Zoroastrians_.” The elder of them, Mr.
Nowrozjee Furdoonjee, was President of the Parsee Society of Bombay; but
resided much in England, and had an astonishing knowledge of English and
American theological and philosophic literature. He asked me one day to
recommend him the best modern books on ethics. My small library
contained a good many, but he not only knew every one I possessed, but
almost all others which I named as worthy of his attention. We talked
very freely on religious matters and with a good deal of sympathy. I
pressed him one day with the question, “Do you really believe in
Ahriman?” “Of course I do!” “What! In a real personal Evil Being, who is
as much a _person_ as Ormusd?” “O no! I did not mean that! I believe in
Evil existing in the world;”—and obviously in nothing more!
My chief Eastern visitors, however (and they were so numerous that my
artist-minded friend was wont to call them my “Bronzes”), were the
Brahmos of Bengal, and one or two of the same faith from Bombay. There
were very remarkable young men at that date, members of the “Church of
the One God;” nearly all of them having risen from the gross idolatry in
which they had been educated into a purer Theistic faith, not without
encountering considerable family and social persecution. Their leader,
Keshub Chunder Sen at any other age of the world, would have taken his
place with such prophets as Nanuk (the founder of the Sikh religion) and
Gautama; or with the mediæval Saints like St. Augustine and St. Patrick,
who converted nations. He was, I think, the most _devout_ man with whose
mind I ever came in contact. When he left my drawing-room after long
conversations on the highest themes,—sometimes held alone together,
sometimes with the company of my dear friend William Henry Channing—the
impression left on me was one never-to-be-forgotten. I wrote of one such
interview at the time to my friend as follows (April 28, 1870):
“Keshub came and sat with me the other evening, and I was profoundly
impressed, not by his intellect but by his goodness. He seems really
to _live in God_, and the single-mindedness of the man seemed to me
utterly un-English; much more like Christ! He said some very profound
things, and seemed to feel that the joy of prayer was quite the
greatest thing in life. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about the
future, but I only know that when I pray I feel that my union with God
is eternal. In our faith the belief in God and in Immortality are not
two doctrines but one.’ He also said that we must believe in
intercessory prayer, else _the more we lived in Prayer the more
selfish we should grow_. He told me much of the _beginning_ of his own
religious life, and, wonderful to say, his words would have described
that of my own! He said, indeed, that he had often laid down my books
when reading them in India, and said to himself: ‘How can this English
woman have felt all this just as I?’”
In his outward man Keshub Chunder Sen was the ideal of a great teacher.
He had a tall, manly figure, always clothed in a long black robe of some
light cloth like a French _soutane_, a very handsome square face with
powerful jaw; the complexion and eyes of a southern Italian; and all the
Eastern gentle dignity of manner. He and his friend Mozoomdar and
several others of his party spoke English quite perfectly; making long
addresses and delivering extempore sermons in our language without error
of any kind, or a single betrayal of foreign accent. Keshub in
particular, was decidedly eloquent in English. I gathered many
influential men to meet him and they were impressed by him as much as I
was.
The career of this very remarkable man was cut short a few years after
his return from England by an early death. I believe he had taken to
ascetic practices, fasting and watching; against which I had most
urgently warned him, seeing his tendency towards them. I had argued with
him that, not only were they totally foreign to the spirit of simple
Theism, but dangerous to a man who, living habitually in the highest
realms of human emotion, needed _all the more for that reason_ that the
physical basis of his life should be absolutely sound and strong, and
not subject to the variabilities and possible hallucinations attendant
on abstinence. My friendly counsels were of no avail. Keshub became, I
believe, somewhat too near a “Yogi” (if I rightly understand that word)
and was almost worshipped by his congregation of Brahmos. The marriage
of his daughter—who has since visited England—to the Maharajah of Coosh
Behar, involved very painful discussions about the legal age of the
bride and the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage, which were insisted on by
the bridegroom’s mother; and the last year or two of Keshub’s life were,
I fear, darkened by the secessions from his church which followed an
event otherwise gratifying.
Oddly enough this Indian _Saint_ was the only Eastern it has ever been
my chance to meet who could enjoy a joke thoroughly, like one of
ourselves. He came to me in Hereford Square one day bursting with
uncontrollable laughter at his own adventures. Lord Lawrence, when
Governor-General of India, had been particularly friendly to him and had
bidden him come and see him when he should arrive in England. Keshub’s
friends had found a lodging for him in Regent’s Park, and having
resolved to go and pay his respects to Lord Lawrence at once, he sent
for a four-wheeled cab, and simply told the cabman to drive to that
nobleman’s house; fondly imagining that all London must know it, as
Calcutta knew Government House. The cabman set off without the remotest
idea where to go; and after driving hither and thither about town for
three hours, set his fare down again at the door of his lodgings; told
him he could not find Lord Lawrence; and charged him fourteen shillings!
Poor Keshub paid the scandalous charge, and then referred to an old
letter to find Lord Lawrence’s address, “_Queen’s Gate_.” Oh, that was
quite right! No doubt the late Governor-General naturally lived close to
the Queen! “Drive to Queen’s Gate.” The new cabman drove straight enough
to “Queen’s Gate”; but about 185 houses appeared in a row, and there was
nothing to indicate which of them belonged to Lord Lawrence; not even a
solitary sentinel walking before the door! After knocking at many doors
in vain, the cabman had an inspiration! “We will try if the nearest
butcher knows which house it is;” and so they turned into Gloucester
Road, and the excellent butcher there did know which number in Queen’s
Gate belonged to Lord Lawrence, and Keshub was received and warmly
welcomed. But that he should have to seek out a _butcher’s shop_ (in his
Eastern eyes the most degraded of shops) to learn where he could find a
man whom he had last seen as Viceroy of India, was, to his thinking,
exquisitely ridiculous.
Ex-Governors-General and their wives must certainly find some difficulty
in descending all at once so many steps from the altitude of the
viceregal thrones of our great dependencies to the level of private
citizens, scarcely to be noticed more than others in society, and
dwelling in ordinary London houses unmarked by the “guard of honour” of
even a single policeman!
At a later date I had other Oriental visitors, one a gentleman who had
made a translation of the Bhagvat-Gita, and who brought his wife and
children to England, and to my tea-table. The wife wore a lovely,
delicate lilac robe wrapped about her in the most graceful folds, but
the effect was somewhat marred by the vulgar English side-spring boots,
(very short in the leg), which the poor soul had found needful for use
in London! The children sat opposite me at the tea-table, silently
devouring my cakes and bon-bons; staring at me with their large black
eyes, veritable _wells_ of mistrust and hatred, such as only Eastern
eyes can speak! I like dark _men_ and _women_ very well, but when the
little ones are in question, I must confess that a child is scarcely a
child to me unless it be a little Saxon, with golden hair and those
innocent blue eyes which make one think of forget-me-nots in a brook.
Where is the heart which can help growing soft at sight of one of these
little creatures toddling in the spring grass picking daisies and
cowslips, or laughing with sheer ecstacy in the joy of existence? A dark
child may be ten times as handsome, but it has no pretension, to my
mind, to pull one’s heart-strings in the same way as a blonde babykins.
A Hindoo lady, Ramabai, for whom I have deep respect, came to me before
I left London and impressed me most favourably. She, and a few other
Hindoo women who are striving to secure education and freedom for their
sisters, will be honoured hereafter more than John Howard, for he strove
only to mitigate the too severe punishment of _criminals_ and
delinquents; _they_ are labouring to relieve the quite equally dreadful
lot of millions of _innocent_ women. An American Missionary, Mr. Dall,
long resident in India, told me that thousands of these unhappy beings
_never put their feet to the earth_ or go a step from the house of their
husbands (to which they are carried from their father’s Zenana at 9 or
10 years old) till they were borne away as corpses! All life for them
has been one long imprisonment; its sole interest and concern the
passions of the baser sort of love and jealousy! While writing these
pages I have come across the following frightful testimony by the great
traveller Mrs. Bishop (_née_ Isabella Bird) to the truth of the above
observation concerning the dreadful condition of the women of India:—