MY VIEWS ON A FUTURE LIFE FOR THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WORLDS
I mentioned in one of my former works that I believe many of the
figures we pass by in the streets are not men and women like ourselves,
but phantasms—phantasms of the living, that is to say, spirit
projections of people consciously or unconsciously thinking of being
where we see them—phantasms of the dead, and impersonating neutrarians.
Mingling with the crowds in the parks and gliding in and out the trees,
I have often seen people with the pallor of corpses; I have followed
them, and they have unaccountably vanished. I believe Hyde Park,
particularly the northern side, to be as full of ghosts as any spot
in London, and I have heard many strange tales from the outcasts, the
tattered and torn brigade, who have slept all night under its trees and
bushes. The police are, I believe, expected to clear the Park before
locking-up time, and I’ve no doubt they try to do so, but they cannot
possibly look into every nook and cranny in that vast expanse, and
there are many in which one could easily hide and defy detection. I
have tried the experiment once, and I am not anxious to try it again;
there is no place so terribly depressing, so strangely suggestive of
suicide, and hauntings by the most grotesque type of neutrarians, as
London’s premier park by night.
Some twelve or fifteen years ago, in my nightly rambles there, I
noticed that the seat beneath a certain tree, mid-way between the
Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate, was rarely occupied, whereas all the
other seats in that vicinity were invaded by couples. One evening,
the weather being warm and sultry, I went and sat there. I dozed off,
and eventually fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed that an old man and
a young girl stood under the tree, whispering, and that as I watched
them they raised their eyes, and looked in a horribly guilty manner,
not at me, but at the space next me, which I perceived, for the first
time, was occupied by a tiny child. Moving stealthily forward and
holding in their hands an outspread cloth, they crept up behind the
child, the cloth descended, and all three vanished. Then something made
me gaze up into the branches of the tree, and I saw a large, light,
colourless, heavily-lidded eye peering down at me with an expression
of the utmost malevolence. It was altogether so baneful, so symbolic
of cruelty, malice, and hate that I could only stare back at it in
mute astonishment. The whole shape of the tree then seemed to alter,
and to become like an enormous dark hand, which, swaying violently
to and fro, suddenly dived down and closed over me. I awoke at once,
but was so afraid of seeing the eye, that for some minutes I kept my
own eyes tightly shut. When I opened them, I saw, bending over me, a
very white face, and to my intense relief a voice, unmistakably human,
croaked, “No wonder you’re scared, sitting here at this time of night
by yourself.”
The speaker was merely one of the many hundreds of tramps for whom the
Park was reception and bedroom combined. His hat was little more than
a rim, and his trousers cried shame on the ladies I saw every day with
their skirts plastered all over with buttons. His cheeks were hollow,
his eyes preternaturally bright, and his breath full of hunger. Still,
he was alive, and anything alive just then was very welcome.
“I never sleep here,” he said; “none of us do.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s haunted,” he said. “You may laugh—so did I years ago,
afore I took to this sort of thing. But sleeping out-of-doors all night
has taught me more than any politicians, bishops, or schoolmasters
know; or any of those fine ladies that swell about in their carriages
know; I’ve seen sights that would make an hangel afraid; I’ve seen
ghosts of all sorts. They’re not all like us, neither. Some of them
ain’t human at all, they’re devils. You may laugh when you read about
them in them library books, but it’s no laughing matter when you see
them, as I’ve seen them, all alone and cold, in some wayside ditch.
This tree, I tell yer, is ’aunted—and it’s a devil that ’aunts it. Ask
my mates, any of them that you’ll find sleeping in the parks. There’s
many of them that ’ave experienced it. They’ve seen something hiding in
the branches, and when they’ve seen it, they’ve felt they must either
kill themselves or someone else. There’s a devil in the tree that
tempts one to do all kind of wicked things, and if you take my advice,
young man, you’ll sit somewhere else.”
“I think I will,” I said; “and here’s something for your warning.”
I gave him threepence, the only coins I had on me just then, and,
overwhelming me with thanks, he shuffled away.
Since that night I have often thought that the poor—the very
poor—know far more of the other world or worlds than do the rich,
and that they know more—far more—on other points than the rich.
The statesman talks of the people and the people’s needs, but what
does he know of the people and their needs? He rarely, if ever, goes
amongst them. Except in electioneering times, I doubt if any Member of
Parliament ever goes into the more squalid of our London districts. I
have seen one Member of the House of Lords eating whelks in a tavern
in the Limehouse Causeway, but he is an exception. Journalists go
there—but the leisured folk—never.
It bores them; and yet how much they might learn, how much not only
of urgent human needs, but of coming storms. They might learn that
the East End brews whilst the West End sleeps, and that as surely as
the long-talked-of German war cloud—that war cloud they affected to
ridicule—has at last burst, so undoubtedly will the war cloud of
revolution; revolution hatched by malcontents of all nationalities in
East End doss houses and crowded coffee taverns.
This is no empty prophecy. The cinders of the volcano have been hot for
some time—they are now burning hot—and the hour is fast approaching
when they will arise mightily in a red conflagration. Are we prepared
for it? It takes a very sound constitution to face a revolution with
perfect confidence. Are we sound? Can any constitution be sound when
the rich daily grow richer, and the poor, poorer. Where Art—all that
cries out for beauty, real beauty, beauty as it is seen and worshipped
by souls uninspired by lucre—is starved to death and crushed, limp and
lifeless, by the thumbscrews of a vain, shallow, mercenary mushroom
aristocracy on the one hand, and an equally selfish, crude, ignorant,
money-grabbing working class on the other. But let me say again it is
the East End, the ever watchful, never slumbering East End, that is
the thermometer of future events. And why? Because it is here that the
lean, hungry men of letters, who seldom, if ever, get their thoughts
transferred to print, are even now threshing out the nation’s destiny.
Threshing it out, consolidating it, whilst the monied men and women,
the present all-powerful nouveau riche—the beer, whiskey and tobacco,
peers and peeresses—the lords of the Stock Exchange, Banks and Divorce
Courts—those who have made their money out of the sins and follies
of the world, or by sweating and usury, are lolling in their soft,
upholstered chairs, smoking luxurious cigars and quaffing liqueurs.
The war has done much: it has aroused patriotism, it has given rise to
self-sacrifice, but it has not touched the root of the gangrene, it
has not lessened our worship of the dollar. Individualism, as we know
it to-day, must collapse, and some better and purer system—a system
that does not encourage selfishness—must prevail. The people are dying
for change—for some great change that will give them fair play. This
is the people’s need—the need that you may hear voiced throughout
the length and breadth of the squalid East End. “We want a Government
that remembers its primary duties,” they cry. “A Government that is
father to its children, that loves, fosters and protects them. We have
never had one yet, but the hour may not be far distant when we shall
demand one.” This is what the people of leisure might learn, if they
visited the haunts I visit; and they might learn more beside. They
might learn of another world, a spirit world, such as is never alluded
to in the pulpits, with which people in the poorest parts—people who
are too poor to pay for beds—are forced to live in contact. Nights
in the parks and commons have taught these vagrants more, a thousand
times more, than they ever learned in Sunday or County Council Schools.
They have seen sights—spirits in the form of man and of beast, of
both and of neither—that have revealed to them how closely the other
world borders on this, and to what close supervision the inhabitants
of the other world subject some of us. They have learned, I say, what
no priest or preacher would, or could, teach them, namely, that the
hell of spirit-land lies on this earth, and that the worst of all
punishments is that of the poor phantasms of the dead, that glides in
and out the trees nocturnally, never meeting those it knew and loved,
but ever encountering the most terrifying of the spirits that are
hostile to man.
[Illustration: “What gives me the worst fright is a tree....”]
Our vagrants know, too, the power of these neutrarians, they know they
can adopt any shape, and tempt and goad man on to the committal of
any crime, however heinous. They have, moreover, acquired a further
knowledge—a knowledge denied and scoffed at by the ministry of all
Christian denominations—namely that all forms of animal and vegetable
life, all forms of flora and fauna, pass into the superphysical, and
live again.
I myself first learned of a tree ghost from an old tramp, who came and
sat by my side on a seat on Clapham Common.
“Do I ever see anything strange here at night?” he repeated in answer
to my question. “Yes, I do, at times, but what gives me the worst
fright is a tree that I sometimes see close to the spot where that man
was murdered some ten or twelve years ago. I never saw it before the
murder, but a few nights afterwards, as I was passing the spot, I saw
a peculiar glimmer of white, and, on getting a bit closer, I found, to
my astonishment, that it was a tall, slender white thing with branches
just like a tree, only it was not behaving like a tree. Although there
was not a breath of wind, it kept lurching with a strange, creaking
noise, and I felt it was watching me, watching me furtively, just as if
it had eyes, and was bent on doing me all the harm it possibly could.
I was so scared, I turned tail, and never ceased running till I had
reached home.”
“Home!” I said.
“Yes, a clump of bushes near the ditch, where I always turn in of
nights. It ain’t much of a home, to be sure, but it’s the only one I’ve
got, and I can generally count on lying there undisturbed till the
morning.”
I gave him a few coppers, and he blessed me as if I had given him a
fortune.
On Tooting Common I met a Northumberland miner, who had come to London
for the first time on a holiday, and, having had his pocket picked,
was obliged to spend the night out-of-doors. “Ghosts,” he said, when
I asked him if he had any experiences with the supernatural whilst
engaged in his underground work. “Ghosts! Yes, but of a nature you
don’t read about in books. Me and my mates, when working in a drift
at night, have heard the blowing of the wind and a mighty rustling of
leaves, and have found ourselves surrounded on all sides by numerous
trees and ferns that have suddenly risen from the ground and formed a
regular forest. They have not resembled any trees you see now-a-days,
but what you might fancy existed many thousands of years ago. There
has been no colour in them, only a uniform whiteness, and they have
shone like phosphorous. We have heard, too, all the noises, such as go
on daily in forests above-ground—the humming and buzzing of insects,
and the chirping of birds; and shafts and galleries have echoed and
re-echoed with the sounds, till you would have thought that those away
above us must have heard them, too.”
I do not think the miner romanced, for what he said was only a
corroboration of what other miners have often told me.
Of course, it is not every mine that is haunted in this way, or
every miner that sees such sights, for the Unknown confines its
manifestations to the few, but I firmly believe such phenomena do
happen, because as I state in my “Byways of Ghostland” (W. Rider &
Sons), I have seen several tree ghosts myself. If one form of life
possesses a spirit, why should we not assume that other forms of
life possess a spirit, too? Why should man have the monopoly of an
immaterial self, and alone of all creation continue his identity
after physical dissolution? On moral grounds? No! For man, generally
speaking, is in no sense superior morally to the so-called beasts
around him. He is often the reverse. Oddly enough, we have so long
accustomed ourselves to using the term immorality exclusively in
reference to our illegal relations with the other sex, that we have
come to regard these illegal relations as the only immorality existing.
It is a curious error. Immorality comprises theft, and theft not only
comprehends depriving people of their material goods, it comprehends
slander and gossip—_i.e._, depriving people of their character;
sweating—_i.e._, depriving people of the just rewards of their mental
and manual labour; and bread-snatching,—_i.e._, depriving people of
their only means of existence; beside many other acts of an equally
odious nature. The average drawing-room is invariably the rendezvous
of immoral people; nine out of every ten of the ladies one meets there
are robbers—they steal, almost at very breath, someone’s good name and
reputation, a far worse crime than the purloining of a loaf, for which
act of desperation a poor man would be sent to prison, and a hungry dog
beaten. In the drawing-room, too, one meets the girl with a few hundred
a year, who announces her intention of taking some post—maybe on the
stage, or on the staff of some paper, or in a business house, “just to
make a little money.” A little money at the expense of someone else’s
life! For that is what the want of occupation to the person with no
private income literally means. We see none of this mean immorality in
the animal world. Dogs steal bones from one another, it is true, but
they do not lie, and cheat, and intrigue; nor do they, when they have a
sufficiency themselves, snatch away the little that constitutes another
person’s all.
Animals are accused of being cruel—of barbarously murdering one
another, as in the cases of the cat and mouse, the lion and deer,
etc. But they rarely kill, saving when they are hungry, and for
food man kills, too, in a fashion and with a method which is truly
disgusting. By studiously looking after the daily wants of certain
animals, such as cows and sheep, and by caring for them when they are
ill, man leads them to suppose he is their friend, and they learn to
trust him. Vain faith. He is kind to them only to suit his own ends.
He out-Judas’s Judas, and after nonchalantly accepting their most
lavish tributes of affection, he takes them unawares and kills them,
either with a poleaxe, or some other weapon entailing an equally
painful and lingering death. Do any animals behave quite so basely?
Besides, there is no cruelty in the animal world—not even the most
excruciating suction of the octopus, nor the sharp, agonising bite of
the flesh-eating parrot of New Zealand—that can for one moment compare
with the coolly planned and leisurely executed horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition; and the tiger, at its worst, is but a tyro in savagery
compared with the creature God is said to have made in His own image.
From vices turn to virtues, and pause for a moment in reflection on
the many lovable qualities of the dog. Where in man do we find such
affection, forgiveness, general amiability, constancy and patience;
and in the case of the horse, such a willingness to labour without
any thought of recompense. It makes me positively ill, when I hear
hopelessly immoral men and women—gossips, slanderers, breadsnatchers,
usurers, sweaters—speak condescendingly of animals—of dogs and horses
that are on an infinitely higher moral plane than ever they have been,
or ever will be. But moral superiority is not the only superiority that
man fallaciously assumes. He lays claim to an intellectual superiority,
which is equally fallacious, equally a myth. No one who has ever
studied animal and insect life can but have been impressed with the
marvels of ingenuity and skill displayed therein. The web of the common
garden spider and the nest of the wren, for example, are every whit as
wonderful in their way as the architectural works of Inigo Jones or
Christopher Wren. On the grounds of a moral and mental inferiority,
therefore, the argument of a future life for the human species only,
fails. Another argument, an argument advanced by the most bigotted of
the religious denominationalists, is “that man only has a conscience,
and that conscience which he alone possesses is the only passport to
another world. Without conscience there can be no soul, and without
soul there can be no hope of a continuation of life after death.”
This, of course, is merely assumption, as is nearly all the teaching of
the Churches. Conscience, like religion, depends to a very large extent
on climate. A man born in the centre of Africa might not think it wrong
to do things that would appear appalling to a Plymouth Brother, and
vice versa. There is at present no fixed and universal standard of
right and wrong, any more than there is a fixed and universal standard
of beauty—for as each eye forms its own idea of feminine loveliness,
so each heart forms its own conception of honour and dishonour, virtue
and vice. We know that this is the case as far as mankind is concerned,
and we have nothing beyond assumption to assure us that it is not
so throughout the animal and insect world. If the animals have no
conception of a moral standard, how is it that they do not destroy one
another? That the instinct to injure people is innate in us is readily
proved by the joy nearly all of us take in saying disparaging things
of our neighbours. We go so far, and we would undoubtedly go the whole
hog and kill those we hate, if something more, perhaps, than the mere
fear of hanging did not hold us back. That restraining something is
unquestionably the fear of the Future, and it is that fear which I
am inclined to think is the origin of what we term our consciences.
Were we sure there was no future existence, there would be no moral
restraint (it would only be the prospect of legal punishment that would
deter us from injuring other people to our heart’s content), we should
have no consciences; and if this is applicable to mankind, why is it
not applicable to other forms of animal life?
Is it not feasible to suppose that it is this same fear of the
future that acts as a preventive to animals killing one another
indiscriminately? That they do at times rob and kill for other
motives than to satisfy their hunger is indisputable, but these
exceptional cases prove what I am trying to maintain—that there is
some restraining influence that keeps the vast majority highly moral;
and I see no feasible arguments for not supposing this influence to
be a conscience begat by a deep-rooted fear of what may await them on
physical dissolution.
And if this applies to the mammals, why not to the whole animal,
insect, and vegetable worlds—to everything that has life, for
Science has yet to prove that where there is life, there is not also
intelligence.
The superior morality of animals to man, then, may be considered as
due to their more powerful consciences, and to their stronger fear
of the possibility of the superphysical. And why should they have a
much stronger fear? Because, unquestionably, they have a more intimate
knowledge of the Unknown than has man. No one who has had much to
do with dogs and horses can doubt this. Who that has ridden through
woods and jungles, or lonely country roads at night, has not seen
their horse suddenly stop and evince every evidence of fear. Though
the human eye has seen nothing to account for it, the horse obviously
has seen something, and it has only been by dint of the utmost coaxing
and petting that the sagacious animal has been persuaded to continue
its course. It is the same with dogs. Over and over again I have had
dogs with me in houses alleged to be haunted, and they have suddenly
manifested symptoms of the greatest, the most uncontrollable fear. I
have endeavoured to pacify them, to urge them to follow me, but it
has been in vain; though obedient and fearless as a rule, they have
suddenly become the most disobedient and incorrigible of cowards. Why?
Because I am certain they have seen and heard things which, for some
unaccountable reason, have been held back from me.
If knowledge, then, of another life is any plea for the bestowal of an
unperishable spirit, animals should live again even more surely than
man. And so also should the vegetable world, for I have myself seen
trees violently agitated, as if with paroxysms of the most sublime
terror, before the advent of superphysical phenomena.
And stronger than any of these arguments is that of the ghosts
themselves. There are innumerable and well-authenticated cases of
hauntings by the phantasms of dogs, horses, birds, insects, and trees,
and it is, perhaps, chiefly through these hauntings that we can
disprove the theory that man possesses a monopoly of the immaterial
planes; a theory which, were it not for his insufferable egotism and
conceit, he would never have advanced.