The dining-room was the corresponding room on the ground story to the
sitting-room up above. It was quite as well furnished, but in a different
style. A fine rather than an exquisite form of beauty had been sought
after. It was a saying of Gildea’s that a dining-room ought to give you
an impression somewhat similar to that of a beach-brake in spring: the
architecture and furniture should have clear outlines, the colours should
be clear, the lights should be clear. All massiveness and duskiness was
to be avoided. A meal ought to be a repast, not a feast: we should rise
pleasantly satisfied, not dully satiated. In a sitting-room, on the other
hand, the sworn abode of the sweet and delicate talk and music of women,
just as the dining-room was that of the serene discussions of men, there
should be something of the lush luxuriance in shape and colour of the
midsummer woods, knights and ladies and all the figures of romance and
fairy-tale passing together. But such an arrangement of rooms as this,
he would say with his bright half-mocking smile, was at present like a
damsel of the Middle Ages suddenly awakened in the dull derisive streets
of London or Manchester. This will only come to pass in that wonderful
Future, when we have all learned that Beauty and Truth are synonyms, and
Keats has statues and altars like Sophokles of old.
Considerable time, wealth and trouble had been spent on this house.
Sydney and Melbourne had been ransacked for beautiful things worthy
of Gildea’s ideas of “the nest,” as he called it to himself, that he
desired; for this was indeed one, and not the least remarkable, of his
freaks. It had been aroused in this fashion. One afternoon, sauntering
across a road in the Domain, he had almost been run over by someone
riding a splendid bay horse. Looking up, with a fine touch of anger, he
had perceived that it was a lady, who was looking down at him with a
look, he suddenly felt, so precisely his own that, the ludicrous aspect
of the thing coming upon him, he smiled. She too, at once following his
change of feeling, smiled, and then in a moment, with a slight courteous
movement of hand and body, had passed. It had all taken place in a few
seconds. Her face and form made up between them, he thought, the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had not seen few so-called
whether in Europe or elsewhere. Beauty in women was, according to Gildea,
a thing which was not _in reality_ to be seen in the present world,
implying, as it did, perfection of form and perfection of spirit, καλον
κἀγαθον. The Athens of Perikles had produced female beauty; in the
face and form of the Venus of Milo the highest physical and spiritual
perfection of the time is apparent. Florence too, in such a woman as
Vittoria Colonna, had produced female beauty, and the Renascence had
incarnated it in a Marie Stuart; but, so far, our Modernity was not ripe
for it. Lovely female faces it, as all times, had in abundance, but these
faces knew nothing of spiritual perfection: they knew nothing of life,
they were not beautiful. And the female faces that _did_ know of life,
the faces of women like George Sand, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot,
were quite wanting in physical perfection. They imply mental passion,
the struggle of pain: they have not reached to the serene pleasure of
spiritual sovereignty. No, Beauty, καλον κἀγαθον, is to be a produce of
the Future when Modernity has passed through the pangs of its travail
and, in the bright light of health and youthfulness, “grows in wisdom
and stature” to the perfect self.—But this face that he had seen for a
moment, was, he thought, really beautiful.
A few yards from him a man was standing looking back at the rider passing
along under the trees. Gildea came to him, and asked him courteously if
he happened to know who the lady was?
“No,” said the man, “I don’t know who she is, but I often see her.”
And on this incident Gildea had founded a freak which had for some time
amused him. He intended to see this woman again, and, if he was correct
in his supposition (which he used amusedly to doubt to himself) that
she was some phenomenal anticipation of the Future, to possess her. He
set about choosing and furnishing a house, therefore, which should, as
far as possible, be worthy of such an individual, and much amusement
it occasionally afforded him. A private enquiry-office was meantime
seeking her out; and, about a month ago, Gildea to his surprise had
been informed that she was, beyond doubt, a Miss Medwin, niece of the
well-known squatter, english, eccentric even to the extent of riding
about and shooting in man’s clothes on one of Mr. Medwin’s stations in
New South Wales, and, moreover, strongly suspected of having had, and
of still having, an intrigue with a Mr. Frank Hawkesbury, a writer and
man of uncertain means, in Melbourne. Gildea laughed much on receiving
this unasked-for report, (He had just by accident made the acquaintance
of Hawkesbury), and his interest in his freak somewhat revived; but his
all but conviction that he was incorrect in his view of Miss Medwin (if
it were indeed she), prevented him from having any great interest in the
matter or any great anticipations of success. As usual, however, he was
satisfied to find that he had any interest or anticipations at all. He
learned from Mrs. Medwin that she was in a short time coming to Sydney
for a week or so on her road up to one of Mr. Medwin’s New South Wales
stations to which she had not been for years, and would be pleased to
see him. A few days ago, then, she and Miss Medwin had arrived, and were
waiting for Mr. Medwin who was detained by business in Melbourne. Hence
Gildea’s invitation to Mrs. Medwin and her niece, to come and make tea
for him and go for a sail in the “Petrel.”
The party arranged itself round the table, Maddock at one end, Gildea at
the other, an empty place on Gildea’s right hand for Alcock, Hawkesbury
on his left with Fitzgerald next to him. Maddock, as before, could not
help observing with admiration the beautiful room in which they were
sitting. Hawkesbury, however, following out a train of thought suggested
by his own last words, sat serious, looking at the table-cloth.
The lunch began. Gildea and Fitzgerald could both, when they pleased,
excel in that graceful sweetness of manner which is supposed to be the
peculiar gift of women. They pleased now. The talk flowed lightly and
pleasantly, and soon returned to, what seemed to be to them all, the most
interesting topic—the People. Fitzgerald spoke of the far greater ease
and leisure of the People here than in England, and that led on to a
consideration of the question of Labour here.
“Carlyle declared long ago,” said Hawkesbury suddenly, “that the great
question of the time was no other than the organization of Labour. Well,
Labour is at last organizing. The consequence is that, as Mr. Fitzgerald
remarked, there is greater ease and leisure among the People, not only
here in Australia where Labour is comparatively scarce, but even in
England where it is plentiful.—The question here, however,” he added,
“shows signs of complication. The employers are to form—nay, have already
formed—a union: ‘The Victorian Employers’ Union.’ The only wonder is
that it is in Victoria and not in England that this idea has first been
adopted. In Trades-Unionism in England, let me say it at once, there have
been many abuses; but, let me hasten to add, not nearly so many abuses as
there were under the old despotism of Capital. Trades-Unionism, which so
few people seem to understand, originally meant the combination of many
oppressed small units against a great oppressing unit. _Now_ it means
more: it means the determined effort of the People after happiness.”
“That is very true, I think,” said Gildea, “The People, ever since the
deception practised upon them by the compromise Reform Bill of ’32, have
been slowly learning to organize themselves and to rely on themselves
alone. Such a fact soon makes itself apparent. There is not a single
considerable political measure since ’32 which has not a socialistic
tendency.”
Hawkesbury acknowledged Gildea’s remark, and proceeded:
“The People, and by the People I mean of course the masses, is everywhere
realizing that there is something better worth living for than frantic
competition and the scramble for wealth. Trades-Unionism, then, is
the sworn foe of all this. I am not speaking either for or against
Trades-Unionism: I am simply stating what it _wants_, what it _is_! The
Trades-hall delegates, in the late conference anent the Bootmakers’
strike in Melbourne, refused to let a bootmaker work for more than eight
hours a day, although, by so doing, he might better himself, and by not
so doing might keep himself for ever a mere journeyman. ‘Further argument
with men of such a way of thinking,’ says Mr. Bruce Smith, the chief
mover of the ‘Victorian Employers’ Union,’ ‘further argument seemed
useless.’ And it was indeed as it seemed; for these men were of opinion
that if, in the frantic competition and scramble for wealth, one or two
journeymen _did_ rise and become rich, hundreds and thousands would have
to lead lives which would not stand too favourable a comparison with
those of dogs. ‘Therefore,’ the delegates would say, ‘we will check this
frantic competition and scramble for wealth, and we will even be so
wicked as to sacrifice the one or two possible journeymen who might rise
and become rich, for the sake of the actual hundreds and thousands whose
lives otherwise would not stand too favourable a comparison with those
of dogs.’ Well, and what will be the end of this new phase of the great
battle of Capital _versus_ Labour on which we seem to be now entering
here? Let me not be thought a terrorist, if I remark, what is indeed
patent to all, that, in a country with a franchise like ours, Labour, if
driven into a corner and confronted by Capital triumphantly brandishing
its sword of ‘Frantic-competition-and-the-scramble-for-wealth—Labour,
I say, might make things excessively uncomfortable for the community
in general and Capital in particular. I am not hinting at mobs and
sticks and stones. I am merely stating a fact that is patent to all.
Our good friends the Landed-proprietors, videlicet the squatters, have
experienced in Victoria and elsewhere—are indeed now experiencing even in
Queensland[13]—the undoubted benefits of a little judicious legislation.
Might not someone suggest to the ‘Victorian Employers’ Union’ and Mr.
Bruce Smith, who seem to have such quaint notions of what Trades-Unionism
really wants and is, that the same fate may possibly be in store for our
other good friends, the Capitalists?”
“It is a pity,” said Gildea smiling, “that we have not a Capitalist here
to answer you. But, I think, I know what one of them, Mr. Alcock, would
say. He would say that the great law of Nature is this very frantic
struggle which you deprecate, and that, if you attempt to put a check
on it, you will only end by first arresting and then destroying all
progress. He would oppose the interference of organized Labour quite as
much as of organized public opinion, that is to say the State. He would
of course recognize all the evils of the frantic struggle, but he would
say that it yet contained the great ascending and progressive power of
Nature, it was yet capable of Evolution; whereas the artificial state of
popular leisure and ease contains the great de-scending and retrogressive
power of Nature, Dissolution.—But here,” he said, “at the very nick of
time, he comes himself.”
Edgar, who had just left them, returned ushering in Alcock, who came
forward with somewhat off-hand apologies to shake hands with Gildea. He
was then introduced to Maddock and shook hands with him, compromising
the matter, as he thought, with the others by a bow and an expression
of his pleasure at making their acquaintance. He sat down in his place
and, having told Edgar what he chose to eat, was ready for a few moments’
talk before setting somewhat vigorously to work on the victuals. Gildea
explained to him the conversational context, and what he himself had
ventured to say in the person of the typical scientific capitalist.
“Well,” Alcock said, with a half-pleased half-amused look on his face,
when Gildea had finished, “I will observe that, on the whole, you didn’t
put my sentiments so badly, Sir Horace.—I am opposed to all state
interference,” he declared, turning to Maddock, “It doesn’t pay in the
long run; it enervates people! Look at this New South Wales here. They
can’t put a bridge across a creek now, without petitioning government for
assistance! In England a half-dozen men or so would have got together and
settled the matter themselves. And they want more state interference in
Victoria! Why, it’ll drain out all their independence, and energy; and,
in twenty years, they’ll be as lazy and lackadaisical as they are here in
New South Wales! Competition’s the law of Nature.” By this time Alcock’s
mouth was full, and he was beginning to enjoy the delicate food and
wines, for he was hungry and thirsty. There was a pause.
“True,” said Fitzgerald, gently breaking it, “but does not Mr. Alcock
too think, that it is just where the law of Nature ends that the law of
Humanity begins? Surely this is the essential position of Christianity,
that it says to the brutality of Nature: ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no
further.’”
“You can’t,” answered Alcock with his mouth full, too intent on the
victuals to be more explicit, “You can’t interfere—impunity—great
law—nature—struggle—existence—survival—fittest.”
“Here, then,” said Fitzgerald who ate little and drank less, turning
to Hawkesbury, “_we_ are at one, I think, as opposed to the pure
Scientists?”
“I do not believe,” Hawkesbury said, “and I do not think any Socialist
believes, in carrying the initiative of the individual to the extent
that Herbert Spencer would like. But we are not in favour of state
interference. We want to nationalize things, the land, the unearned
increment, the great public enterprises, but we include in this term the
State also. The State at present means the tool of the Middle-class,
worked by Capital and the Land Interest. This arrangement partakes
too much of the nature of a political joint-stock company to please
Socialists.”
“And you think,” asked Gildea, his hand on his wine glass, looking
at Hawkesbury, “you think that when the People wins, as it of course
ultimately will win, the control of things, that it will not work the
State in its own interest, just as the Aristocracy did and as the
Middle-class does?”
“You know,” Hawkesbury said, “I _believe_ in the People! The People is
the only unselfish part of society. Their one desire is for justice and
mercy; and, when they could not get it themselves, they have always died
readily for those who, they believed, wished to give it them. Herein lies
the secret of all great popular devotions—from that of Christ to that of
Napoleon.”
“I,” said Alcock, “do _not_ believe in the People, as you call them,
and their unselfishness has not yet come under my notice. The People,
like everyone else, are led by what they believe to be their interests,
their immediate interests, and our great effort should be, by giving them
a good sound practical education, to get them to see that their true
interest lies in e-volution and not in re-volution. Let us have a fair
chance for everybody, and let the best men win.”
“Yes,” said Hawkesbury, with suppressed eagerness, “but the trouble is
that, in this so-called free competition of yours, the best _don’t_
win! In Nature the best win, I agree; but Civilization has complicating
clauses that modify and all but change, what you rightly call, her great
law—the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.”
“I do not see that,” said Alcock, returning to his victuals which he had
left for a few moments.
“I will give you an instance,” said Hawkesbury, “A, B, and C are three
men who start as beggars in the market of free competition. A has the
best wits, and A accordingly wins, and makes a fortune. Good: we applaud!
Then A, B, and C all die, leaving sons D, E, and F, the best-witted
of whom does not happen to be D, A’s son, but E, the son of B. Does E
therefore win and make a fortune, and D sink down to his proper level
with F? Not a bit of it! D has not only his own second-rate powers to
help him: he has also the wealth which he inherits from his father.
E, then, has no chance against him: the second-rate man with wealth
overwhelms the first-rate man with beggary. What are the consequences,
generally speaking? Why, that, instead of the best surviving, the second
or third or fourth or fifth-best survive, and the market is drugged with
successful mediocrity. Here, I think, is the delusion under which Herbert
Spencer’s social philosophy labours: he does not see that Civilization,
as we know it at present, is not a natural but an artificial state, and
that therefore the laws which hold good in Nature by no means necessarily
hold good in Civilization. Look at the bees or ants, whose Civilization
is a natural and not, as ours is, an artificial one: do _they_ encourage
free competition with its inevitable concomitants of wealth and power
accumulated in the hands of a few to the prejudice of the community? Not
so. To each is assigned an equal, if varying, share in the economy of
the community. With them work has its duty, and, as for idleness, it is
not possible. But what duty has the successful business man, except to
his own success? what duty has the wealthy aristocrat, except to his own
pleasure?” There was a slight pause.
“It won’t _work_,” said Alcock, his eyes a little opened, sitting
considering this young man with sudden interest. (Alcock had so far
thought that, in the present company, nothing would be acceptable save,
what he called, a popular exposition of his own views)—“Believe me,”
he added with gravity to Hawkesbury, “I have gone through all this at
length, repeatedly, and with care, and I am convinced that, with many
drawbacks, free competition within and without is the only thing which
will give us a civilization of progress. The real tendency of everything
else, I say, is towards stagnation or retrogression. Free competition
universal, the great problem of which is to be the dominant race will
proceed to settle itself quickly and thoroughly. Until that problem is
settled, we cannot hope for a Civilization worthy of the name. All the
inferior races must be stamped out, all the stagnatory or retrogressive
ideas eliminated, and the best men with the best knowledge left masters
of the situation. It is impossible to foresee what such men may achieve.
We may yet, perhaps, open communications with the planets and even modify
the courses of the stars.”
“Well,” said Fitzgerald smiling, “we have had the Vision of the Future
from the Christian, the Cultured, the Socialistic point of view, and now
we see that Science too has her dreams. I have no objection myself to any
of these Visions which, as I take it, all contain a not inconsiderable
amount of truth. I would only observe that I believe them to be all
impossible solely and individually. The Socialistic Future that would
banish Christ, the Scientific that would also banish God, can no more
exist as, in Mr. Alcock’s phrase, masters of the situation, than the
Future of Christianity that would ignore the glory of our discoveries in
Natural Law, or the Future of Culture that would deny to the People our
highest joy.”
“No,” said Alcock drily, “we don’t want Superstition mixed up with
Religion, _that_ is clear enough.”
“Nor yet,” added Fitzgerald sweetly, “do we want Superstition mixed
up _without_ Religion.” (Alcock, with the look of a man who does not
understand a thing and does not much care to, took a drink at his
champagne, which, it was evident from the new expression on his face,
was to his taste. Fitzgerald proceeded suavely to the table at large and
more particularly to Maddock.) “For, as perhaps Mr. Alcock,” (with a
slight bend of the head to Alcock), “will permit me to say, the purely
scientific view of things, which sees, in the unrestrained application
to civilized life of the brutality of Nature, the undoubted parent of a
Civilization worthy of the name, may be after all, and I believe is, a
great superstition. Is not a superstition a belief in a thing not worthy
of that belief? And is it not, then, a superstition, in calculating the
progress of Humanity, to leave out of all account, as the pure Scientists
seem to me to do, the most distinctive thing in Humanity—Religion.”
“_I_ should say,” observed Alcock, “that _Reason_ is the most distinctive
thing in Humanity.”
“Indeed?” asked Fitzgerald, “You surprise me! Is it not generally
admitted now that the rudiments of Reason, and considerably more than
the rudiments, are to be found in the animals? But I am not aware that
anyone, not even Ernst Haeckel, has discovered in them the rudiments of
Religion. Can we not, then, agree with Max Müller that it is ‘certain
that what makes man man, is that he alone can turn his face to heaven;
certain that he alone yearns for something that neither sense nor reason
can supply?’”
Alcock had the look of a man who feels the prompting of flippancy
and, restraining it, is amused at what his flippancy would have said.
Fitzgerald, perceiving this, answered it:
“Müller,” he proceeded, “in criticising Kant, who is of course the Father
of all the worshippers of Reason, again says finely that ‘he closed the
ancient gates through which man had gazed into Infinity; but, in spite of
himself, he was driven, in his “Criticism of Practical Reason,” to open a
side-door through which to admit the sense of duty, and with it the sense
of the Divine.—This is the vulnerable point in Kant’s philosophy,’ he
goes on, ‘and if philosophy has to explain what is, not what ought to be,
there will be and can be no rest till we admit, which cannot be denied,
that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty
of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion but in all things,
a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense
contradicted by sense and reason, but yet a very real power, which has
held its own from the beginning of the world, neither sense nor reason
being able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason
and sense.’”
“That it has held its own from the beginning of the world,” said Alcock,
“is no proof that it will do so to the end.”
Fitzgerald smiled.
“What you say,” he answered, “makes clear to me, then, that you do not
accept this ‘faculty of apprehending the Infinite,’ and philosophically
make the best of it, but you wish to call it mere childishness or, as you
say, superstition and—‘eliminate’ it! And yet you talk of Religion! What,
may I ask, does a pure Scientist, as you seem to be, Mr. Alcock, _mean_
by Religion?”
“Well,” said Alcock frankly, “I confess that, to me, it means little
more than credulity. I am not, of course, hostile to Religion; on the
contrary, I support it. It helps to keep society together.”
“It will do,” said Hawkesbury, “for the People! Pending the arrival of
that education, which is to teach them the high satisfaction of social
evolution, the masses may amuse themselves with such used-out mummeries
as the Devil, Christ, and God. The People is grateful. It has, it knows,
as much to expect from Science as from Culture.”
Fitzgerald was quite amused.
“Mr. Alcock,” he said, “since you pure Scientists are generally reckoned
as the foes of us Christians, we can ask you to do us no kinder service
than to nail these colours of yours to the mast in the sight of all men.
I do not alone mean your belief that Religion is all but a synonyme for
credulity; but this general conception of things of yours which includes
no further consideration for Religion than elimination. We can have no
doubt of the results. The world will doubtless find in _our_ conception
of things a certain amount of, what Mr. Hawkesbury has called, used-out
mummery (for man’s free-will has ever turned use into abuse), but it will
find also things which savour of the kindly earth and the genial sun;
whereas, if you will let me say so, in _yours_ all that it will find
will be the steel-cold atmosphere of some heatless planet, filled with
the dreary whirr of abstract machinery. Superstition _with_ Religion,
they will say, is better than Superstition _without_. And then, after
they have given you a trial—and a trial they will give you, and such a
great and long trial that we shall be eliminated almost as much as even
you, Mr. Alcock, could wish us to be—then they will come back to us,
and, having been driven by sore anguish of soul to re-discover, as their
Father did, the sense of duty and of the Divine, they will find that this
first step leads inevitably to another, and that to yet another. And,
in the end, all high souls, and after them of course all other souls
(for the wisdom of to-day is the common sense of to-morrow), will see
that their best and truest Father was a man who, passing through all
this before them, has these years stood with clear and radiant faith,
his longing hands held out to all that would take their strong help and
guidance to that place of joy and of peace!”
Alcock, supposing this man to be Jesus and having made it a rule never
in mixed company to speak of that to him, under such circumstances,
embarrassing personage, kept silence, looking at the table-cloth.
Hawkesbury too did not understand the allusion, which even Maddock,
unless he had been warned by Gildea of Fitzgerald’s connection with
Cardinal Newman, might have missed. As it was, Gildea, perceiving and
amused at Alcock’s misunderstanding, was ready to at once dissipate it.
“Newman,” he said, “is indeed the great modern example of a man of high
intellect and all spiritual powers giving, not only, as Heine did,
‘his tribute of admiration,’ but everything he had, ‘to the splendid
consistency of the Roman Catholic doctrine.’ I remember once hearing a
rather able High-churchman say that he could not see, any more after
than before reading the celebrated _Apologia_, why Newman had joined the
Church of Rome: which is to say, that he could not see that, to a certain
type of mind, the only two logical positions for a man of thought to-day
are those of Scientific Atheism or of Catholic Faith.”
“He leaves no place, then,” said Hawkesbury, “for the Theists or the
Pantheists?”
“The Theists,” answered Gildea, “leave no place for themselves—except
in the spiritual out-houses and the Unitarian chapels. There is not, I
think, in modern times, one man of first, or second, or even third-class
intellectual power that has believed in a personal God and not believed
in a divine Christ. All men of thought are really now divided into two
classes, Christians and Atheists: the first believing in a personal
Christ and a personal God, the second in Law. All other differences
are, as it seems to me, at heart mere divergences of symbolism. We are
accustomed, for instance, to call those who hold that matter produces
spirit Materialists, and those who hold that spirit produces matter
Idealists, and those who hold that matter and spirit are identic and
divine, Pantheists; but really they are all Atheists. There is no
Atheism, no disbelief in a personal God, more intense than that of our
Idealists, Renan, Arnold, Emerson, who never cease, however, to talk of
God and bid us find in Him our only comfort and guide: they are the true
children of Goethe whose conception of God was Humanity in Nature, and of
Religion Humanity in Art.”
“So we Catholics feel,” said Fitzgerald, “and this is, as I have implied,
the great truth which we owe to the life and work of Newman. He has saved
us from any temptation to compromise with Atheism. We are to stand to our
guns, and, if we must perish, perish there!”
“The only thing is,” Gildea answered ruefully, “that no great spiritual
movement, religious or otherwise, was ever yet produced, retained, or
destroyed by the action of logic, and they have all partaken largely of
the nature of compromise. Voltaire and the philosophes sent such a douche
of logic onto Christianity in France that they literally beat it out of
the country, but it came back again. And why? Because it contained the
satisfaction of the demands of one side of Humanity which Logic had not,
and could not have. Well, they compromised the matter, and the result
is, (Dare I declare it, Fitzgerald?), none other than men like the fine
and intellectual ecclesiastics who presided over the education of that
lay priest, as he calls himself, Ernest Renan. History repeats itself.
What Logic tried to do yesterday, Science is trying to do to-day. And,
as you,” (he turned his eyes to Fitzgerald), “foresee, Christianity,
and Religion generally will suffer a defeat and even decapitation, only
to return with processions, ringing of bells and the glad shouts of the
populace. Then the Parliament will shut up all the sunday theatres, and
the skeletons of Professor Huxley and Herbert Spencer will be removed
from the Pantheon at Westminster and lodged in Madame Tussaud’s, and the
land have rest—for the space of forty years!”
“Well,” said Alcock, “you young gentlemen are getting too far head
for steady-going seniors like Dr. Maddock and myself. We will ask
for matches, and smoke a cigar, while you tell us all about our
great-great-grandchildren.”
Cigars, cigarettes, and lights were brought and, with some pleasant small
talk, the party loosened and eased its position at table and physical and
mental state generally.
“Talking of compromise,” said Hawkesbury, taking his cigarette from
his lips and leaning the elbow of the hand that held it on the table,
“between Religion and Logic, or Reason, is not, what is called,
Positivism an attempt to organise such a compromise?”
Gildea began to laugh.
“Ah,” he said, “is not Arnold’s ‘grotesque old french pedant,’ a late
foolish Monsieur Comte, as Carlyle would say, to leave me alone even
beyond ‘the long wash of Australian seas?’ Am I to be persecuted even
here by his tiresome adaptations and school-boy notions, all bundled up
in superlatively bad French?—You do not know,” he added, “what I chance
to have suffered at the hands of my positivist friends at home, or I am
sure you would not ask me to discuss them here where I am come for a
holiday. They and Mr. Mallock are the most tiresome people in existence.
You have heard of Mr. Mallock out here? and of his tilts with the junior
Positivists?”
Hawkesbury acquiesced.
“We have heard of everything out here,” he said smiling.
“Mr. Mallock,” said Gildea, “was a young man who wrote a charming book
called ‘The New Republic,’ one of the most charming books that had been
written for several years, and then took to polemics, and has been
logically agonizing there ever since. For this too we all ought to owe
this religio-intellectual pedantry called Positivism a grudge. And, when
we remember what Positivism did for George Eliot,—reduced a good quarter
of herself and her characters into edificatory machines—I think that all
of us, to whom Nature and Art are precious, should look upon Positivism
as the contemporary accursèd thing.” Gildea spoke with a certain
exaggerativeness of tone and manner that to Maddock, observing and
listening to everything with humour, was somewhat puzzling. Maddock with
average profundity suspected that here was a case of some personal memory
of a more or less disagreeable character; but average profundity, when it
has to deal with that which is out of the range of the average, nearly
always makes mistakes. Gildea was subject to sudden losses of interest
in what he was saying or doing, spiritual twinges of that terrible wound
from which he suffered: to those to whom “the endless emptiness of all
things” is a reality, moments of acute weariness and disgust are ever
lying in wait, and then the harness of life and living is often resumed
with impatience or even pettishness. It had been so just now with Gildea.
He had looked forward to his meeting with Miss Medwin, and heard those
beautiful lips open and sounds come forth that showed that, however
fine the harp, its strings were unattuned. The sense of his intense and
perpetual loneliness had rushed upon him, and he had gone back again into
his surroundings with an irritation that in a few moments amused him at
himself.
The talk passed onwards, Maddock for the first time taking his share
in it. And yet again it came round to the People. It was clear that
the strongest impression that had been given to the party was that of
Hawkesbury’s Socialism.
“If I had been speaking of it some five or six years ago,” said
Fitzgerald, “I should have certainly said that I thought the Secularists
had made most impression on the People of late years. But, in the face of
the American Revivalist meetings and the Salvation Army, I have had to
modify my views.”
“These movements or rather this movement,” said Gildea, “strikes me as
reactionary. British Middle-class Liberalism and Secularism have been
at work, with much cry, and the egregious littleness of the wool has
disgusted the People who have rushed off into the opposite extreme. The
workmen, the skilled workmen, are I think secular. I remember hearing a
lecturer on art who had been on a tour in America say, that the American
workmen all asked him if he knew Darwin or Huxley or Tyndall, and
expressed little or no care about anyone else, which seemed to surprise
him.”
“Cardinal Manning,” Fitzgerald remarked, “said well, then, that ‘the
spiritual desolation of London alone would make the Salvation Army
possible’—‘this zealous but defiant movement.’ Are we right in our
supposition, do you think, Mr. Hawkesbury?”
Hawkesbury assented.
“There are three movements,” he said, “at present going on among the
People—the Socialistic, the Religious, and the Secular. They are all
strong. In Ireland I have seen the two first clash, and the first was
almost invariably victorious. If the priests will not go with the People
in their socialistic views, (For of course the Irish Question is really a
socialistic one, although it is not spoken of as such), then the priests
are given up. Usually, however, the priests, being themselves of the
People, are in full sympathy with them. The Socialists are by no means
necessarily Atheists, but they are not Christians. ‘The sooner,’ I heard
one of them say once, when pressed on the point, ‘the sooner Christ is
made a thing of the past and Jesus a thing of the present, the better it
will be for all of us.’ That expresses them excellently. The same idea
lies at bottom in the popular Religious movement.—We Socialists,” he
added with a touch of bright humour, “like the Booths better than we like
the Bradlaughs, but we recognise that both are in earnest and working for
the People.”
“And what, religiously speaking,” asked Fitzgerald, “do you believe is to
be the future state of the People, and of us all?”
Hawkesbury had another touch of bright humour.
“Socialism,” he said, “nothing but Socialism! We are all Socialists,
whether we know it or not. Just, then, as in the first and second
centuries the platonistic Time-spirit radically influenced before it
was absorbed into the christianic: so in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries has the christianic Time-spirit radically influenced, before
it shall be finally absorbed in, the socialistic. Socialism has, after
all, its universal modern expounder in Goethe. Goethe was the first to
look upon Civilization as a great organic whole, every part of which has
fixed pleasures and duties. He was the first, we believe, to conceive
a natural as opposed to an artificial Civilization. Carlyle, too, felt
something of the sort, although he could not express it, any more than he
could not express what he took God to be. But we know Carlyle loved us,
and therefore we love Carlyle. As for your Idealists, Sir Horace,—Renan,
Emerson, and Arnold—we have no care for them, nor they for us. I remember
once hearing Holden call Arnold ‘the man who slew so many Philistines
with the jawbone of an ass.’ Well, the remark is expressive of his
attitude towards Culture.” Gildea and Fitzgerald were laughing, Maddock
smiling.
“The end of it all,” said Maddock, “seems to be, then, Mr. Hawkesbury,
that ‘the People,’ as we say, is the great unknown quantity of the social
equation. We all more or less feel its power, and we all more or less
wish that power to be arrayed on our side, but no one quite knows what it
is and everyone is a little afraid of it.”
“You say truly,” said Hawkesbury, “The People is the great unknown power,
and it puzzles us. Pharaoh has dreamed a dream, and there is none of all
the magicians of Egypt and all the wise men thereof that can interpret
it unto him. What to make of the People’s noisy Tichborne or Salvation
Army devotions but political and religious infatuations? Be it so! But I
will say this, that the People has a shrewd humorous instinct for both
politics and religion that is a whole heaven above the purblind prudence
of the Middle-class.” He sighed, the sigh of a man who has somewhat
outspoken himself. “‘—And all these things,’ he added as if to conclude
the matter, ‘are only known to the Deity.’”
Gildea smiled.
“Well,” he said, “Are there not those among us who look forward to what
is to come with the brightest faith or with the darkest despair? And
there are those who dream and those who doubt,—and those too who possess
their souls with patience, nourishing a modest hope. For
“what was before we know not,
and we know not what shall succeed.
“Haply the river of Time—
as it grows, as the towns on its marge
fling their wavering lights
on a wider, statelier stream—
may acquire, if not the calm
of its early mountainous shore,
yet a solemn peace of its own.”
Little more was said after this of the chief subjects of their talk, and
presently both Fitzgerald and Hawkesbury took their leave, Maddock and
Fitzgerald, and Alcock and Hawkesbury, expressing mutual hopes of seeing
one another again.