the Water: and now we can imagine our readers asking what kind of
life Glasgow people lead there. Of course there must be a complete
breaking up of all city ways and habits, and a general return to
a simpler and more natural mode of living. Our few days at Dunoon,
and a few days more at two other places on the Frith, were enough
to give us some insight into the usual order of things. By seven
or half-past seven o'clock in the morning the steam is heard by
us, as we are snug in bed, fretting through the waste-pipe of the
early boat for Glasgow; and with great complacency we picture to
ourselves the unfortunate business-men, with whom we had a fishing
excursion last night, already up, and breakfasted, and hurrying
along the shore towards the vessel which is to bear them back to
the counting-house and the Exchange. Poor fellows! They sacrifice
a good deal to grow rich. At each village along the shore the
steamer gets an accession to the number of her passengers; for the
most part of trim, close-shaved, well-dressed gentlemen, of sober
aspect and not many words; though here and there comes some whiskered
and moustached personage, with a shirt displaying a pattern of
ballet-dancers, a shooting coat of countless pockets, and trousers
of that style which, in our college days, we used to call loud. A
shrewd bank-manager told us that he always made a mental memorandum
of such individuals, in case they should ever come to him to borrow
money. Don't they wish they may get it! The steamer parts with her
entire freight at Greenock, whence an express train rapidly conveys
our friends into the heat and smoke of Glasgow. Before ten o'clock
all of them are at their work. For us, who have the day at our
own disposal, we have a refreshing dip in the sea at rising, then
a short walk, and come in to breakfast with an appetite foreign
to Paper Buildings. It is quite a strong sensation when the post
appears about ten o'clock, bearing tidings from the toiling world
we have left behind. Those families who have their choice dine at
two o'clock--an excellent dinner hour when the day is not a working
one: the families whose male members are in town, sometimes postpone
the most important engagement of the day till their return at six
or half-past six o'clock. As for the occupations of the day, there
are boating and yachting, wandering along the beach, lying on the
heather looking at Arran through the sun-mist, lounging into the
reading-room, dipping into any portion of The Times except the
leading articles, turning over the magazines, and generally enjoying
the blessing of rest. Fishing is in high favour, especially among
the ladies. Hooks baited with muscles are sunk to the ground by
leaden weights (the fishers are in a boat), and abundance of whitings
are caught when the weather is favourable. We confess we don't
think the employment ladylike. Sticking the muscles upon the hooks
is no work for fair fingers; neither is the pulling the captured
fish off the hooks. And, even in the pleasantest company, we cannot
see anything very desirable in sitting in a boat, all the floor of
which is covered by unhappy whitings and codlings flapping about
in their last agony. Many young ladies row with great vigour and
adroitness. And as we walk along the shore in the fading twilight,
we often hear, from boats invisible in the gathering shadows, music
mellowed by the distance into something very soft and sweet. The
lords of the creation have come back by the late boats; and we
meet Pater-familias enjoying his evening walk, surrounded by his
children, shouting with delight at having their governor among them
once more. No wonder that, after a day amid the hard matter-of-fact
of business life, he should like to hasten away to the quiet fireside
and the loving hearts by the sea.
Few are the hard-wrought men who cannot snatch an entire day from
business sometimes: and then there is a pic-nic. Glasgow folk
have even more, we believe, than the average share of stiff dinner
parties when in town: we never saw people who seemed so completely
to enjoy the freshness and absence of formality which characterize
the well-assorted entertainment al fresco. We were at one
or two of these; and we cannot describe the universal gaiety and
light-heartedness, extending to grave Presbyterian divines and
learned Glasgow professors; the blue sea and the smiling sky; the
rocky promontory where our feast was spread; its abundance and
variety; the champagne which flowed like water; the joviality and
cleverness of many of the men; the frankness and pretty faces of
all of the women. [Footnote: We do not think, from what we hare
seen, that Glasgow is rich in beauties; though pretty faces are
very common. Times are improved, however, since the days of the lady
who said, on being asked if there were many beauties in Glasgow,
'Oh no; very few; there are only THREE OF US.'] We had a pleasant
yachting excursion one day; and the delight of a new sensation was
well exemplified in the intense enjoyment of dinner in the cramped
little cabin where one could hardly turn, And great was the sight
when our host, with irrepressible pride, produced his preserved
meats and vegetables, as for an Arctic voyage, although a messenger
sent in the boat which was towing behind could have procured them
fresh in ten minutes.
A Sunday at the sea-side, or as Scotch people prefer calling
it, a Sabbath, is an enjoyable thing. The steamers that come down
on Saturday evening are crammed to the last degree. Houses which
are already fuller than they can hold, receive half-a-dozen new
inmates,--how stowed away we cannot even imagine. We cannot but
reject as apocryphal the explanation of a Glasgow tout, that on
such occasions poles are projected from the upper windows, upon
which young men of business roost until the morning. Late walks,
and the spooniest of flirtations characterize the Saturday evening.
Every one, of course, goes to church on Sunday morning; no Glasgow
man who values his character durst stop away. We shall not soon
forget the beauty of the calm Sunday on that beautiful shore: the
shadows of the distant mountains; the smooth sea; the church-bells,
faintly heard from across the water; the universal turning-out of
the population to the house of prayer, or rather of preaching. It
was almost too much for us to find Dr. Gumming here before us, giving
all his old brilliancies to enraptured multitudes. We had hoped
he was four hundred and odd miles off; but we resigned ourselves,
like the Turk, to what appears an inevitable destiny. This gentleman,
we felt, is really one of the institutions of the country, and no
more to be escaped than the income-tax.
Morning service over, most people take a walk. This would have been
regarded in Scotland a few years since as a profanation of the day.
But there is a general air of quiet; people speak in lower tones;
there are no joking and laughing. And the Frith, so covered with
steamers on week-days, is to-day unruffled by a single paddle-wheel.
Still it is a mistake to fancy that a Scotch Sunday is necessarily
a gloomy thing. There are no excursion trains, no pleasure trips
in steamers, no tea-gardens open: but it is a day of quiet domestic
enjoyment, not saddened but hallowed by the recognized sacredness
of the day. The truth is, the feeling of the sanctity of the Sabbath
is so ingrained into the nature of most Scotchmen by their early
training, that they could not enjoy Sunday pleasuring. Their
religious sense, their superstition if you choose, would make them
miserable on a Sunday excursion.
The Sunday morning service is attended by a crowded congregation:
the church is not so full in the afternoon. In some places there
is evening service, which is well attended. We shall not forget
one pleasant walk, along a quiet road bounded by trees as rich and
green as though they grew in Surrey, though the waves were lapping
on the rocks twenty yards off, and the sun was going down behind
the mountains of Cowal, to a pretty little chapel where we attended
evening worship upon our last Sunday on the Clyde.
Every now and then, as we are taking our saunter by the shore after
breakfast, we perceive, well out in the Frith, a steamer, decked
with as many flags as can possibly be displayed about her rigging.
The strains of a band of music come by starts upon the breeze; a
big drum is heard beating away when we can hear nothing else; and a
sound of howling springs up at intervals. Do not fancy that these
yells imply that anything is wrong; t/tat is merely the way in
which working folk enjoy themselves in this country. That steamer
has been hired for the day by some wealthy manufacturer, who is
giving his 'hands' a day's pleasure-sailing. They left Glasgow at
seven or eight o'clock: they will be taken probably to Arran, and
there feasted to a moderate extent; and at dusk they will be landed
at the Broomielaw again. We lament to say that very many Scotch
people of the working class seem incapable of enjoying a holiday
without getting drunk and uproarious. We do not speak from hearsay,
but from what we have ourselves seen. Once or twice we found
ourselves on board a steamer crowded with a most disagreeable mob
of intoxicated persons, among whom, we grieve to say, we saw many
women. The authorities of the vessel appeared entirely to lack
both the power and the will to save respectable passengers from
the insolence of the 'roughs.' The Highland fling may be a very
picturesque and national dance, but when executed on a crowded
deck by a maniacal individual, with puffy face and blood-shot eyes,
swearing, yelling, dashing up against peaceable people, and mortally
drunk, we should think it should be matter less of assthetical than
of police consideration. Unless the owners of the Clyde steamers
wish to drive all decent persons from their boats, they must take
vigorous steps to repress such scandalous goings-on as we have
witnessed more than once or twice. And we also take the liberty
to suggest that the infusion of a little civility into the manner
and conversation of some of the steam-boat officials on the quay
at Greenock, would be very agreeable to passengers, and could not
seriously injure those individuals themselves.
What sort of men are the Glasgow merchants? Why, courteous reader,
there are great diversities among them. Almost all we have met
give us an impression of shrewdness and strong sense; some, of
extraordinary tact and cleverness--though these last are by no means
among the richest men. In some cases we found extremely unaffected
and pleasing address, great information upon general topics--in
short, all the characteristics of the cultivated gentleman. In
others there certainly was a good deal of boorishness; and in one
or two instances, a tendency to the use of oaths which in this
country have long been unknown in good society. The reputed wealth
of some Glasgow men is enormous, though we think it not unlikely
that there is a great deal of exaggeration as to that subject. We
did, however, hear it said that one firm of iron merchants realized
for some time profits to the extent of nearly four hundred thousand
a year. We were told of an individual who died worth a million, all
the produce of his own industry and skill; and one hears incidentally
of such things as five-hundred-pound bracelets, thousand-guinea
necklaces, and other appliances of extreme luxury, as not unknown
among the fair dames of Glasgow.
And so, in idle occupations, and in gleaning up particulars as to
Glasgow matters according to our taste wherever we go, our sojourn upon
the Frith of Clyde pleasantly passed away. We left our hospitable
friends, not without a promise that when the Christmas holidays
come we should visit them once more, and see what kind of thing is
the town life of the winter time in that warm-hearted city. And
meanwhile, as the days shorten to chill November,--as the clouds
of London smoke drift by our windows,--as the Thames runs muddy
through this mighty hum and bustle away to the solitudes of its
last level,--we recall that cheerful time with a most agreeable
recollection of the kindness of Glasgow friends,--and of all that
is implied in Glasgow Down the Water.
CHAPTER IX.
CONCERNING MAN AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE
When my friend Smith's drag comes round to his door, as he and I
are standing on the steps ready to go out for a drive, how cheerful
and frisky the horses look! I think I see them, as I saw them
yesterday, coming round from the stable-yard, with their glossy
coats and the silver of their harness glancing in the May sunshine,
the May sunshine mellowed somewhat by the green reflection of two
great leafy trees. They were going out for a journey of twenty
miles. They were, in fact, about to begin their day's work, and
they knew they were; yet how buoyant and willing they looked! There
was not the faintest appearance of any disposition to shrink from
their task, as if it were a hard and painful one. No; they were
eager to be at it: they were manifestly enjoying the anticipation
of the brisk exertion in the midst of which they would be in five
minutes longer. And by the time we have got into our places, and
have wrapped those great fur robes comfortably about our limbs,
the chafing animals have their heads given them; and instantly they
fling themselves at their collars, and can hardly be restrained
from breaking into a furious gallop. Happy creatures, you enjoy
your work; you wish nothing better than to get at it!
And when I have occasionally beheld a ploughman, bricklayer,
gardener, weaver, or blacksmith, begin his work in the morning, I
have envied him the readiness and willingness with which he took
to it. The plough-man, after he has got his horses harnessed to the
plough, does not delay a minute: into the turf the shining share
enters, and away go horses, plough and man. It costs the ploughman
no effort to make up his mind to begin. He does not stand irresolute,
as you and I in childish days have often done when taken down to
the sea for our morning dip, and when trying to get courage to take
the first plunge under water. And the bricklayer lifts and places
the first brick of his daily task just as easily as the last one.
The weaver, too, sits down without mental struggle at his loom,
and sets off at once. How different is the case with most men whose
work is mental; more particularly how different is the case with
most men whose work is to write--to spin out their thoughts into
compositions for other people to read or to listen to! How such
men, for the most part, shrink from their work--put it off as long
as may be; and even when the paper is spread out and the pen all
right, and the ink within easy reach, how they keep back from the
final plunge! And after they have begun to write, how they dally
with their subject; shrink back as long as possible from grappling
with its difficulties; twist about and about, talking of many
irrelevant matters, before they can summon up resolution to go at
the real point they have got to write about! How much unwillingness
there is fairly to put the neck to the collar!
Such are my natural reflections, suggested by my personal feelings
at this present time. I know perfectly well what I have got to do.
I have to write some account, and attempt some appreciation, of
a most original, acute, well-expressed, and altogether remarkable
book--the book, to wit, which bears the comprehensive title of Man
and his Dwelling-Place. It is a metaphysical book; it is a startling
book; it is a very clever book; and though it is published anonymously,
I have heard several acquaintances say, with looks expressive of
unheard-of stores of recondite knowledge, that they have reason to
believe that it is written by, this and that author, whose name is
already well known to fame. It may be so, but I did not credit it
a bit the more because thus assured of it. In most cases the people
who go about dropping hints of how much they know on such subjects,
know nothing earthly about the matter; but still the premises (as
lawyers would say) make it be felt that the book is a serious one to
meddle with. Not that in treating such a volume, plainly containing
the careful and deliberate views and reflections of an able and
well-informed man, I should venture to assume the dignified tone
of superiority peculiar to some reviewers in dissecting works which
they could not have written for their lives. There are not a score
of men in Britain who would be justified in reviewing such a book
as this de haut en has. I intend the humbler task of giving my
readers some description of the work, stating its great principle,
and arguing certain points with its eminently clever author; and
under the circumstances in which this article is written, it discards
the dignified and undefined We, and adopts the easier and less
authoritative first person singular. The work to be done, therefore,
is quite apparent: there is no doubt about that. But the writer is
most unwilling to begin it. Slowly was the pen taken up; oftentimes
was the window looked out of. I am well aware that I shall not settle
steadily to my task till I shall have had a preliminary canter, so
to speak. Thus have I seen school-hoys, on a warm July day, about
to jump from a sea-wall into the azure depths of ocean. But after
their garments were laid aside, and all was ready for the plunge,
long time sat they upon the tepid stones, and paddled with idle
feet in the water.
How shall I better have that preliminary and moderate exercitation
which serves to get up the steam, than by talking for a little
about the scene around me? Through diamond-shaped panes the sunshine
falls into this little chamber; and going to the window you look
down upon the tops of tall trees. And it is pleasant to look down
upon the tops of tall trees. The usual way of looking at trees,
it may be remarked, is from below. But this chamber is high up in
the tower of a parish church far in the country. Its furniture is
simple as that of the chamber of a certain prophet, who lived long
ago. There are some things here, indeed, which he had not; for
yesterday's Times lies upon the floor drying in the morning sunbeams,
and Fraser's Magazine for May is on a chair by the window. Why
does that incomparable monthly act blisteringly upon the writer's
mind? It never did so till May, 1859. Why does he put it for the
time out of sight? Why, but because, for once, he has read in that
Magazine an article--by a very eminent man, too--written in what
he thinks a thoroughly mistaken spirit, and setting out views which
he thinks to be utterly false and mischievous. Not such, the writer
knows well, are the views of his dear friend the Editor; not such
are the doctrines which Fraser teaches to a grateful world. In the
latter pages of his review of Mill on Liberty, Mr. Buckle spoke
golely for himself; he did not express the opinions which this
Magazine upholds, nor commit for one moment the staff of men who
write in it; and, as one insignificant individual who has penned a
good many pages of Fraser, I beg to express my keen disapprobation
of Mr. Buckle's views upon the subject of Christianity. They may
be right, but I firmly believe they are wrong; they may be true,
but I think them false. I repudiate any share in them: let their
author bear their responsibility for himself. Alas, say I, that
so able a man should sincerely think (I give him credit for entire
sincerity) that man's best refuge and most precious hope is vain
delusion! Very jarringly to my mind sound those eloquent periods,
so inexpressibly sad and dreary, amid pages penned in many quiet
parsonages, by many men who for the truth of Christianity would,
God helping them, lay down their lives. So, you May magazine, get
meanwhile out of sight: I don't want to think of you. Rather let
me stay this impatient throbbing of heart by looking down on the
green tops of those great silent trees.
Thick ivy frames this mullioned window, with its three lance-shaped
lights. Seventy feet below, the grassy graves of the churchyard swell
like green waves. The white headstones gleam in the sun. Ancient
oaks line the lichened wall of the churchyard: their leaves not
yet to thick as they will be a month hereafter. Beyond the wall,
I see a very verdant field, between two oaks; six or seven white
lambs are lying there, or frisking about. The silver gleam of
a river bounds the field; and beyond are thick hedges, white with
hawthorn blossoms. In the distance there is a great rocky hill,
which bounds the horizon. There is not a sound, save when a little
flaw of air brushes a twig against the wall some feet below me.
The smoke of two or three scattered cottages rises here and there.
The sky is very bright blue, with many fleecy clouds. Quiet, quiet!
And all this while the omnibuses, cabs, carriages, drays, horses,
men, are hurrying, sweltering, and fretting along Cheapside!
Man and his Dwetting-Place! Truly a comprehensive subject. For man's
dwelling-place is the universe; and remembering this, it is plain
that there is not much to be said which might not be said under
that title. But, of course, there are sweeping views and opinions
which include man and the universe, and which colour all beliefs
as to details. And the author of this remarkable book has arrived
at such a sweeping view. He holds, that where-as we fancy that we
are living creatures, and that inanimate nature is inert, or without
life, the truth is just the opposite of this fancy. He holds that
man wants life, and that his dwelling-place possesses life. We are
dead, and the world is living. No doubt it would be easy to laugh
at all this; but I can promise the thoughtful reader that, though
after reading the book he may still differ from its author, he will
not laugh at him. Very moderately informed folk are quite aware of
this--that the fact of any doctrine seeming startling at the first
mention of it, is no argument whatever against its truth. Some
centuries since you could hardly have startled men more than by
saying that the earth moves, and the sun stands still. Nay, it is not
yet forty years since practical engineers judged George Stephenson
mad, for saying that a steam-engine could draw a train of carriages
along a rail-way at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. It is
certainly a startling thing to be told that I am dead, and that the
distant hill out there is living. The burden of proof rests with
the man who propounds the theory; the prima facie case is against
him. Trees do not read newspapers; hills do not write articles.
We must try to fix the author's precise meaning when he speaks of
life; perhaps he may intend by it something quite different from
that which we understand. And then we must see what he has to say
in support of a doctrine which at the first glance seems nothing
short of monstrous and absurd.
No: I cannot get on. I cannot forget that May magazine that is lying
in the corner. I must be thoroughly done with it before I can fix
my thoughts upon the work which is to be considered. Mr. Buckle has
done a service to my mind, entirely analogous to that which would
be done to a locomotive engine by a man who should throw a handful
of sand into its polished machinery. I am prepared, from personal
experience, to meet with a flat contradiction his statement that
a man does you no harm by trying to cast doubt and discredit upon
the doctrines you hold most dear. Mr. Buckle, by his article, has
done me an injury. It is an injury, irritating but not dangerous.
For the large assertions, which if they stated truths, would show
that the religion of Christ is a miserable delusion, are unsupported
by a tittle of proof: and the general tone in regard to Christianity,
though sufficiently hostile, and very eloquently expressed, appears
to me uncommonly weak in logic. But as Mr. Buckle's views have
been given to the world, with whatever weight may be derived from
their publication in this magazine, it is no more than just and
necessary that through the same channel there should be conveyed
another contributor's strong disavowal of them, and keen protest
against them. I do not intend to argue against Mr. Buckle's
opinions. This is not the time or place for such an undertaking.
And Mr. Buckle, in his article, has not argued but dogmatically
asserted, and then called hard names at those who may conscientiously
differ from him. Let me suggest to Mr. Buckle that such names can
very easily be retorted. Any man who would use them, very easily
could. Mr. Buckle says that any man who would punish by legal means
the publication of blasphemous sentiments, should be regarded as
a noxious animal. It is quite easy for me to say, and possibly to
prove, that the man who advocates the free publication of blasphemous
sentiments, is a noxious animal. So there we are placed on an
equal footing; and what progress has been made in the argument of
the question in debate? Then Mr. Buckle very strongly disapproves
a certain judgment of, as I believe, one of the best judges who
ever sat on the English Bench: I mean Mr. Justice Coleridge. That
judge on one occasion sentenced to imprisonment a poor, ignorant
man, convicted of having written certain blasphemous words upon
a gate. I am prepared to justify every step that was taken in the
prosecution and punishment of that individual. That, however, is
not the point at issue. Even supposing that the magistrates who
committed, and the judge who sentenced, that miserable wretch,
had acted wrongly and unjustly, could not Mr. Buckle suppose that
they had acled conscientiously? What right had he to speak of Mr.
Justice Coleridge as a 'stony-hearted man?' What right had he to
say that the judge and the magistrates, in doing what they honestly
believed to be right, were 'criminals,' who had 'committed a great
crime?' What right had he to say that their motives were 'the pride
of their power and the wickedness of their hearts?' What right had
he to call one of the most admirable men in Britain 'this unjust
and unrighteous judge?' And where did Mr. Buckle ever see anything
to match the statement, that Mr. Justice Coleridge grasped at the
opportunity of persecuting a poor blasphemer in a remote county,
where his own wickedness was likely to be overlooked, while he durst
not have done as much in the face of the London press? Who will
believe that Mr. Justice Coleridge is distinguished for his 'cold
heart and shallow understanding?' But I feel much more comfortable
now, when I have written upon this page that I, as one humble
contributor to this Magazine, utterly repudiate Mr. Buckle's
sentiments with regard to Sir J. T. Coleridge, and heartily condemn
the manner in which he has expressed them.
If there be any question which ought to be debated with scrupulous
calmness and fairness, it is the question whether it is just that
human laws should prevent and punish the publication of views
commonly regarded as blasphemous. I deny Mr. Buckle's statement,
that all belief is involuntary. I say that in a country like this,
every man of education is responsible for his religious belief; but
of course responsible only to his Maker. Thus, on totally different
grounds from Mr. Buckle, I agree with him in thinking that no
human law should interfere with a man's belief. I am not prepared,
without much longer thought than I have yet given to the subject,
to agree with Mr. Buckle and Mr. Mill, that human law should never
interfere with the publication of opinions, no matter how blasphemous
they may be esteemed by the great majority of the nation to which
they are published. I might probably say that I should not interfere
with the publication of any book, however false and mischievous
I might regard the religious doctrines it taught, provided the
book were written in the interest of truth--provided its author
manifestly desired to set out doctrines which he regarded as true
and important. But if the book set out blasphemous doctrine in
such a tone and temper as made it evident that the writer's main
intention was to irritate and distress those who held the belief
regarded as orthodox, I should probably suppress or punish the
publication of such a book. Sincere infidelity is a sad thing, with
little of the propagandist spirit. Even if it should think that
those Christian doctrines which afford so much comfort and support
to men are fond delusions, I think its humane feeling would be,--Well,
I shall not seek to shatter hopes which I cannot replace. I know
that such was the feeling of the most amiable of unbelievers--David
Hume. I know how he regularly attended church, anxious that he might
not by his example dash in humble minds the belief which tended
to make them good and happy, though it was a belief which he could
not share. My present nolion is, that laws ought to punish coarse
and abusive blasphemy. They may let thoughtful and philosophic
scepticism alone. It will hardly reach, it will never distress,
the masses. But if a blackguard goes up to a parsonage door, and
bellows out blasphemous remarks about the Trinity; or if a man who
is a blockhead as well as a malicious wretch writes blasphemous
words upon a parsonage gate, I cannot for an instant recognize in
these men the champions of freedom of religious thought and speech.
Even Mr. Buckle cannot think that their purpose is to teach the
clergymen important truth. They don't intend to proselytize. Their
object is to insult and annoy and shock. And I think it is right to
punish them. They are not punished for setting out their peculiar
opinions. They are punished for designedly and maliciously injuring
their neighbours. Mr. Justice Coleridge punished the blasphemer in
Cornwall, not because he held wrong views, not because he expressed
wrong views. He might have expressed them in a decent way as long
as he liked, and no one would have interfered with him. He was
punished because, with malicious and insulting intention, he wrote
blasphemous words where he thought they would cause pain and horror.
He was punished for that: and rightly. Mr. Buckle seeks to excite
sympathy for the man, by mixing up with the question whether or
no his crime deserved punishment, the wholly distinct question,
whether or no the man was so far sane as to deserve punishment
for any crime whatever. These two questions have no connexion; and
it is unfair to mingle them. The question of the man's sanity or
insanity was for the jury to decide. The jury decided that he was
so sane as to be responsible. Mr. Buckle's real point is, that
however sane the man might have been, it was wicked to punish
him; and I do not hesitate to say, for myself, that looking to the
entire circumstances of the case, the magistrates who committed
that nuisanee of his neighbourhood, and the judge who sent him to
jail, did no more than their duty.
There are several statements made by Mr. Buckle which must not be
regarded as setting forth the teaching of the Magazine in which
they were made. Mr. Buckle says that no man can be sure that any
doctrine is divinely revealed: that whoever says so must be 'absurdly
and immodestly confident in his own powers.' I deny that. Mr. Buckle
says that it is part of Christian doctrine that rich men cannot be
saved. I deny that. Christ's statement as to the power of worldly
possessions to concentrate the affections upon this world, went
not an inch further than daily experience goes. What said Samuel
Johnson when Garrick showed him his grand house? 'Ah, David, these
are the things that make death terrible!' Mr. Buckle says that
Christianity gained ground in early ages because its doctrines were
combated. They were not combated. Its professors were persecuted,
which is quite another thing. Mr. Buckle says that the doctrine of
Immortality was known to the world before Christianity was heard
of, or any other revealed religion. I deny that. Greek and Roman
philosophers of the highest class regarded that doctrine as a delusion
of the vulgar. Did Mr. Buckle ever read the letter of condolence
which Sulpicius wrote to Cicero after the death of Cicero's daughter?
A beautiful letter, beautifully expressed; stating many flimsy and
wretched reasons for drying one's tears; but containing not a hint
of any hope of meeting in another world. And the same may be said
of Cicero's reply. As for Mr. Buckle's argument for Immortality,
I think it extremely weak and inconclusive. It certainly goes to
prove, if it proves anything, that my cousin Tom, who lately was
called to the bar, is quite sure to be Lord Chancellor; and that
Sam Lloyd, who went up from our village last week to a merchant's
counting-house in Liverpool, is safe to rival his eminent namesake
in wealth. Mr. Buckle's argument is just this: that if your heart
is very much set upon a thing, you are perfectly sure to get it.
Of course everybody has read the soliloquy in Addison's Cato, where
Mr. Buckle's argument is set forth. I deem it not worth a rush.
Does any man's experience of this life tend to assure him, that
because some people (and not all people) would like to see their
friends again after they die, therefore they shall? Do things
usually turn out just as we particularly wish that they should turn
out? Has not many a young girl felt, like Cato, a 'secret dread
and inward horror' lest the pic-nic day should be rainy? Did that
ensure its being fine? Was not I extremely anxious to catch the
express train yesterday, and did not I miss it? Does not every
child of ten years old know, that this is a world in which things
have a wonderful knack of falling out just in the way least wished
for? If I were an infidel, I should believe that some spiteful imp
of the perverse had the guidance of the affairs of humanity. I know
better than that: but for my knowledge I have to thank Revelation.
But is it philosophical, is it common sense, in a man who rejects
Revelation, and who must be guided in his opinions of a future
life by the analogy of the present, to argue that because here the
issue all but constantly defeats our wishes and hopes, therefore an
end on which (as he says) human hearts are very much set shallcertainly
be attained hereafter? 'If the separation were final,' says Mr.
Buckle, in a most eloquent and pathetic passage, 'how could we
stand up and live?' Fine feeling, indeed, but impotent logic. When
a man has worked hard and accumulated a little competence, and then
in age loses it all in some swindling bank, and sees his daughters,
tenderly reared, reduced to starvation, I doubt not he may think
'How can I live?' but will all this give him his fortune back again?
Has not many a youthful heart, crushed down by bitter disappointment,
taken up the fancy that surely life would now be impossible; but did
the fancy, by the weight of a feather, affect the fact? I remember,
indeed, seeing Mr. Buckle's question put with a wider reach of
meaning. Poor Uncle Tom, torn from his family, is sailing down the
Mississippi, and finding comfort as he reads his well-worn Bible.
How could that poor negro weigh the arguments on either side, and
be sure that the blessed Faith, which was then his only support,
was true? With better logic than Mr. Buckle's, he drew his best
evidence from his own consciousness. 'It fitted him so well: it was
so exactly what he needed. It must be true, or how could he live?'
Having written all this, I feel that I can now think without
distraction of Man and his Dwelling-Place, I have mildly vented
my indignation; and I now, in a moral sense, extend my hand to Mr.
Buckle. Had he come up that corkscrew stair an hour or two ago,
I am not entirely certain that I might not have taken him by the
collar and shaken him. And had I found him standing on a chair in
the green behind the church, and indoctrinating my simple parishioners
with his peculiar notions, I have an entire conviction that I should
have forgotten my theoretical assent to the doctrine of religious
toleration, and by a gentle hint to my sturdy friends, procured
him an invigorating bath in that gleaming river. I have got rid of
that feeling now. And although Mr. Buckle is the last man who would
find fault with any honest opposition, I yet desire to express my
regret if I have written any word that passes the limit of goodnatured
though sturdy conflict. I respect Mr. Buckle's earnestness and
moral courage: I heartily admire his eloquence: I give him credit
for entire sincerity in the opinions he holds, though I think them
sadly mistaken.
So now for Man and his Dwelling-Place. Twice already has the writer
put his mind at that book, but it has each time swerved, like a
middling hunter from a very stiff fence, and taken a circle round
the field. Now at last the thing matt really be done.
If you, my reader, are desirous of discovering a book which shall
entirely knock up your previous views upon all possible subjects,
read this Essay Towards the Interpretation of Nature. It does,
indeed, interpret Nature, and Man too, in a fashion which, to the
best of my knowledge, is thoroughly original. And the book is dis
tinguished not more by originality than by piety, earnestness, and
eloquence. Its author is an enthusiastic Christian; and indeed his
peculiar views in metaphysics and science are founded upon his
interpretation of certain passages in the New Testament. It is
from the sacred volume that he derives his theory that man is at
present dead. The work appears likely to appeal to a limited circle
of readers; it will be understood and appreciated by few. Though
its style is clear, the abstruseness of the subjects discussed and
the transcendental scope of its author, make the train of thought
often difficult to follow. Possibly the fault is not in the book,
but in the reader: possibly it may result from the book having been
read rapidly and while pressed by many other concerns; but there
seems to me a certain want of clearness and sharpness of presentment
about it. The great principle maintained is indeed set forth with
unmistakable force; but, it is hard to say how, there appears in
details a certain absence of method, and what in Scotland is called
a drumliness of style. There is a good deal of repetition too; but
for that one is rather thankful than otherwise; for the great idea
of the deadness of man and the life and spirituality of nature grows
much better defined, and is grasped more completely and intelligently,
as we come upon it over and over again, put in many different
ways and with great variety of illustration. It is a humiliating
confession for a reviewer to make, but, to say the truth, I do not
know what to make of this book. If its author should succeed in
indoctrinating the race with his views, he will produce an intellectual
revolution. Every man who thinks at all will be constrained for the
remainder of his days (I must not say of his life) to think upon
all subjects quite differently from what he has ever hitherto
thought. As for readers for amusement, and for all readers who do
not choose to read what cannot be read without some mental effort,
they will certainly find the first half-dozen pages of this work
quite sufficient for them. Without pretending to follow the author's
views into the vast number of details into which they reach, I
shall endeavour in a short compass to draw the great lines of them.
There is an interesting introduction, which gradually prepares us
for the announcement of the startling fact, that all men hitherto
have been entirely mistaken in their belief both as to themselves
and the universe which surrounds them. It is first impressed upon
us that things may be in themselves very different indeed from
that which they appear to us: that phenomenon may be something far
apart from actual being. Yet though our conceptions, whether given
by sense or intellect, do not correspond with the truth of things,
still they are the elements from which truth is to be gathered.
The following passage, which occurs near the beginning of the
introduction, is the sharp end of the wedge:--
All advance in knowledge is a deliverance of man from himself.
Slowly and painfully we learn that he is not the measure of truth,
that the fact may be very different from the appearance to him.
The lesson is hard, but the reward is great. So he escapes from
illusion and error, from ignorance and failure. Directing his
thoughts and energies no longer according to his own impressions,
but according to the truth of things, he finds himself in possession
of an unimaginable power alike of understanding and of acting. To
a truly marvellous extent he is the lord of nature.
But the conditions of this lordship are inexorable. They are the
surrender of prepossessions, the abandonment of assumption, the
confession of ignorance: the open eye and the humble heart. Hence
in all passing from error to truth we learn something respecting
ourselves, as well as something respecting the object of our study.
Simultaneously with our better knowledge we recognize the reason
of our ignorance, and perceive what defect on our part has caused
us to think wrongly.
Either the world is such as it appears to us, or it is not. If
it be not, there must be some condition affecting ourselves which
modifies the impression we receive ffom it. And this condition must
be operative upon all mankind: it must relate to man as a whole
rather than to individual men.
Thus does the author lay down the simple, general principle from
which he is speedily to draw conclusions so startling. Nothing can
be more innocuous than all this. Every one must agree in it. Now
come the further steps.
The study of nature leads to the conclusion that there is a
defectiveness in man which modifies his perception of all external
things; and that thus in so far as the actual fact of the universe
differs from our impression of it, the actual fact is better, higher,
more complete, than our impression of it. There are qualities,
there is a glory about the universe, which our defective condition
prevents our seeing or discerning. The universe, or nature, is not
in itself such as it is to man's feeling; and man's feeling of it
differs from the fact liy defect. All that we discern in the universe
is there: and a great deal besides.
Now, we think of nature as existing in a certain way which we
call physical. We call the world the physical world. This mode of
existence involves inertness. That which is physical does not act,
except passively, as it is acted upon. Inertness is inaction. That
which is inert, therefore, differs from that which is not inert by
defect. The inert wants something of being active.
Next, we have a conception of another mode of being besides
the inert. We conceive of being which possesses a spontaneous and
primary activity. This kind of being is called spiritual. This
kind of being has shaken off the reproach of inertness. It can act,
and originate action. The physical thus differs from the spiritual
(as regards inertness) by defect. The physical wants something of
being spiritual.
So far, my reader, we do not of necessity start back from anything
our author teaches us. Quite true, we think of matter, a kind
of being which can do nothing of itself. Quite true, we think of
spirit, a kind of being which can do. And no doubt that which is
able to do is (quoad hoc) a higher and more noble kind of being
than that which cannot do, but only be done to. But remember here,
I do not admit that in this point lies the differentia between
matter and spirit. I do not grant that by taking from matter the
reproach of inertness, you would make it spirit. The essential
difference seems to me not to lie there. We could conceive of
matter as capable of originating action, and yet as material. This
is by the bye--but now be on your guard. Here is our author's great
discovery--
It is man's defectiveness which makes him feel the world as thus
defective. Nature is really not inert, though it appears so to man.
We have been wont to think that nature, the universe, is inert or
physical; that man is not-inert, or spiritual. Now, there is no
doubt at all that there is inertness somewhere. Here are the two
things, Man and Nature; with which thing does the inertness lie?
Our author maintains that it lies with man, not with nature. Science
has proved to us that nature is not-inert. As there is inertness
somewhere, and as it is not in nature, of course the conclusion
is that it is in man. Inertness is in the phenomenon; that is,
in nature as it. appears to us. There cannot be any question that
nature seems to us to be inert. But the author of this book declares
that this inertness, though in the phenomenon, is not in the fact.
Nature LOOKS inert; it is not-inert. How does the notion of inertness
come at all, then? Now comes the very essence of the new theory;
I give it in its author's words:--
The inertness is introduced by man. He perceives defect without
him, only because there is defect within him.
To be inert has the same meaning as to be dead. So we speak of
nature, thinking it to be inert, as 'dead matter.' To say that man
introduces inertness into nature implies a deadness in him: it is
to say that he wants life. This is the proposition which is affirmed.
This condition which we call our life, is not the true life of man.
The Book that has had greater influence upon the world than all
others, differs from all others, in affirming that man wants life,
and in making that statement the basis of all that it contains
respecting the past and present and future of mankind.
Science thus pays homage to the Bible. What that book has declared
as if with authority, so long ago, she has at last decyphered on
the page of nature. This is not man's true life.
And who is there who can doubt, looking at man as lie is now, and
then thinking of what he is to be in another world, that there is
about him, now, great defect? There is truly much wanting which it
is hoped will one day be supplied. What shall we call this lacking
thing--this one thing lacking whose absence is felt in every fibre
of our being? Our author chooses to call it life; I am doubtful with
how much felicity or naturalness of expression. Of course we all
know that in the New Testament life does not mean merely existence
continued; eternal life does not mean merely existence continued for
ever: it means the highest and purest form of our being continued
for ever;--happiness and holiness continued for ever. We know, too,
that holy Scripture describes the step taken by any man in becoming
an earnest believer in Christ, as 'passing from death to life;' we
remember such a text as 'This is life eternal, that they may know
Thee, the only true God, and-Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.'
We know that a general name for the Gospel, which grasps its grand
characteristics, is 'The Word of Life;' and that, in religious phrase,
Christianity is concerned with the revealing, the implanting, the
sustaining, the crowning, of a certain better life. Nor is it
difficult to trace out such analogies between natural and spiritual
death, between natural and spiritual life, as tend to prove that
spiritual life and death are not spoken of in Scripture merely
as the strongest words which could be employed, but that there is
a further and deeper meaning in their constant use. But I do not
see any gain in forcing figurative language into a literal use.
Everybody knows what life and death, in ordinary language, imply.
Life means sensibility, consciousness, capacity of acting, union with
the living. Death means senselessness, helplessness, separation.
No doubt we may trace analogies, very close and real, between
the natural and the spiritual life and death. But still they are
no more than analogies. You do not identify the physical with the
spiritual. And it is felt by all that the use of the words in a
spiritual sense is a figurative use. To the common understanding,
a man is living, when he breathes and feels and moves. He is dead
when he ceases to do all that. And it is a mere twisting of words
from their understood sense to say that in reality, and without a
figure, a breathing, feeling, moving man is dead, because he lacks
some spiritual quality, however great its value may be. It may be
a very valuable quality; it may be worth more than life; but it
is not life, as men understand it; and as words have no meaning at
all except that which men agree to give these arbitrary sounds, it
matters not at all that this higher quality is what you may call
true life, better life, real life. If you enlarge the meaning of the
word life to include, in addition to what is generally understood
by it, a higher power of spiritual action and discernment, why, all
that can be said is, that you understand by life something quite
different from men in general. If I choose to enlarge the meaning
of the word black to include white, of course I might say with
truth (relatively to myself) that white forms the usual clothing
of clergymen. If I extend the meaning of the word fast to include
slow, I might boldly declare that the Great Northern express is
a slow train. And the entire result of such use of language would
be, that no mortal would understand what I meant.
Thus it is that I demur to any author's right to tell me that such
and such a thing is, or is not, 'the true life of man.' And when
he says 'that man wants life, means that the true life of man is
of another kind from this,' I reply to him, Tell me what is the
blessing man needs; Tell me, above all, where and how he is to get
it: but as to its name, I really do not care what you call it, so
you call it by some name that people will understand. Call it so
that people will know what you mean--Salvation, Glory, Happiness,
Holiness, Redemption, or what else you please. Do not mystify
us by saying we want life, and then, when we are startled by the
perfectly intelligible assertion, edge off by explaining that by
life you mean something quite different from what we do. There is
no good in that. If I were to declare that this evening, before
I sleep, I shall cross the Atlantic and go to America, my readers
would think the statement a sufficiently extraordinary one; but if,
after thus surprising them, I went on to explain that by the Atlantic
I did not mean the ocean, nor by America the western continent, but
that the Atlantic meant the village green, and America the squire's
house on the other side of it, I should justly gain credit for a
very silly mystification. As Nicholas Nickleby very justly remarked,
If Dotheboy's Hall is not a hall, why call it one? Mr. Squeers, in
his reply, no doubt stated the law of the case: If a man chooses
to call his house an island, what is to hinder him? If the author
of Man and his Dwelling-Place means to tell us only that we want
some spiritual capacity, which it pleases him to call life, but
which not one man in a million understands by that word, is he
not amusing himself at our expense by telling us we want life? We
know what we mean by being dead: our author means something quite
different. Let him speak for himself:
That man wants life means that the true life of man is of another
kind from this. It corresponds to that true, absolute Being which
he as he now is cannot know.
He cannot know it because he is out of relation with it. THIS IS
HIS DEADNESS. To know it is to have life.
Yes, reader--this is his deadness! Something, that is, which no
plain mortal would ever understand by the word. When I told you,
a long time ago, that this book taught that man is dead and nature
living, was this what the words conveyed to you?
Still, though there may be something not natural in the word, the
author's meaning is a broad and explicit one. For the want of that
which he calls our true life (he maintains) utterly distorts and
deforms this world to our view. Here is his statement as to the
things which surround us:
There is not a physical world and a spiritual world besides; but
the spiritual world which alone is is physical to man, the physical
being the mode in which man, by his defectiveness, perceives the
spiritual. We feel a physical world to be: that which is is the
spiritual world.
The phenomenon, that is, is physical: the fact is spiritual. A
tree looks to us material, because we want life: if we had life,
we should see that it is spiritual. Really, there is no such thing
as matter. Our own defectiveness makes us fancy that to be material
which in truth is spirilual. So I was misinterpreting the author,
when I said that all that we see in nature is there, and a great
deal more. The defect in us, it appears, not only subtracts from
nature, it transforms it. Not merely do we fail to discern that
which is in nature, we do actually discern that which is not in
nature.
And to be delivered from all this deadness and delusion, what we
have to do is to betake ourselves to the Saviour. Christianity is
a system which starts from the fundamental principle that man is
dead, and proposes to make him alive. Under its working man gains
true life, otherwise called eternal life; and in gaining that life
he finds himself ipso facto conveyed into a spiritual world. This
world ceases to be physical to him, and becomes spiritual.
Such are the great lines of the new theory as to Man and his
Dwelling-Place. Thus does our author interpret Nature. I trust and
believe that I have not in any way misrepresented or caricatured
his opinions. His Introduction sets out in outline the purport of
the entire book. The remainder of the volume is given to carrying
out these opinions into detail, as they are suggested by or as they
affect the entire system of things. It is divided into four Hooks.
Book I. treats Of Science; Book II. Of Philosophy; Book III.
Of Religion; Book IV. Of Ethics; and the volume is closed by four
dialogues between the Writer and Reader, in which, in a desultory
manner, the principles already set forth are further explained and
enforced.
Early in the first chapter of the Book Of Science, the author
anticipates the obvious objection to his use of the terms Life
and Death. I do not think he succeeds in justifying the fashion in
which he employs them. But let him speak for himself:
It may seem unnatural to speak of a conscious existence as a state
of death. But what is affirmed is, that a sensational existence such
as ours is not the life of MAN; that a consciousness of physical
life does itself imply a deadness. The affirmations that we are
living men, and that man has not true and absolute life, are not
opposed. Life is a relative term. Our possession of a conscious
life in relation to the things that we feel around us, is itself
the evidence of man's defect of life in a higher and truer sense.
Let a similitude make the thought more clear. Are not we, as
individuals, at rest, steadfast in space; evidently so to our own
consciousness, demonstrably so in relation to the objects around
us? But is man at rest in space? By no means. We are all partakers
of a motion. Nay, if we were truly at rest, we could not have
this relative steadfastness, we should not beat rest to the things
around us: they would fleet and slip away. Our relative rest, and
consciousness of steadfastness, depend upon our being not at rest.
There are moving things, to which he only can be steadfast who is
moving too. Even Buch is the life of which we have consciousness.
We have a life in relation to these physical things, because man
wants life. True life in man would alter his relation to them. They
could not be the realities any more: he could not have a life in
them. As rest to moving things is not truly rest, but motion; so
life to inert things is not truly life, but deadness.
Very ingeniously thought out: very skilfully put, with probably the
only illustration which would go on all fours. But to me all this
is extremely unsatisfactory: and unsatisfactory in a much farther
sense than merely that it is using terms in a non-natural sense.
I know, of course, that to look at Nature through blue spectacles
will make Nature blue: but I cannot see that to look at Nature through
dead eyes should make Nature dead. I see no proof that Nature, in
fact, is living and active, though it admittedly looks inert and
dead. And I can discover nothing more than a daring assertion,
in the statement that we are dead, and that we project our own
deadness upon living nature. I cannot see how to the purest and most
elevated of beings, a tree should look less solid than it does to
me. I cannot discover how greater purity of heart, and more entire
faith in Christ, should turn this material world into a world
of spirit. I doubt the doctrine that spirit in itself, as usually
understood (apart from its power of originating action) is a higher
and holier existence than matter. It seems to me that very much
from a wrong idea that it is, come those vague, unreal, intangible
notions as to the Christian Heaven, which do so much to make it a
chilly, unattractive thing, to human wishes and hopes. It is hard
enough for us to feel the reality of the things beyond the grave,
without having the additional stumbling-block cast in our way, of
being told that truly there is nothing real there for us to feel.
As for the following eloquent passage, in which our author subsequently
returns to the justification of his great doctrine, no more need
be said than that it is rhetoric, not logic:--
That man has not his true life, must have taken him long to learn.
All our prepossessions, all our natural convictions, are opposed
to that belief. If these activities, these powers, these capacities
of enjoyment and suffering, this consciousness of free will, this
command of the material world, be not life, what is life? What more
do we want to make us truly man? This is the feeling that has held
men captive, and biased all their thoughts so that they could not
perceive what they themselves were saying.
Yet the sad undercurrent has belied the boast. From all ages and
all lands the cry of anguish, the prayer for life unconscious of
itself, has gone up to heaven. In groans and curses, in despair
and cruel rage, man pours out his secret to the universe; writing
it in blood, and lust, and savage wrong, upon the fair bosom of
the earth; he alone not knowing what he does. If this be the life
of man, what is his death?
No doubt this would form a very eloquent and effective paragraph
in a popular sermon. But in a philosophic treatise, where an author
is tied to the severely precise use of terms, and where it will
not do to call a thing death merely because it is very bad, nor
to call a thing life merely because it is vry good, the argument
appears to have but little weight.
You must see, intelligent reader, that one thing which we are
entitled to require our author to satisfactorily prove, is the fact
that Nature is not inert, as it appears to man. If you can make
it certain that Nature is living and active, then, no doubt, some
explanation will be needful as to how it comes to look so different
to us; though, even then, I do not see that it necessarily follows
that the inertness is to be supposed to exist in ourselves. But
unless the author can prove that Nature is not inert, he has no
foundation to build on. He states three arguments, from which he
derives the grand principle:--
1. Inertness necessarily belongs to all phenomena. That which is
only felt to be, and does not truly or absolutely exist, must have
the character of inaction. It must be felt as passive A phenomenon
must be inert because it is a phenomenon. We cannot argue from
inertness in that which appears to us, to inertness in that which
is. Of whatsoever kind the essence of nature may be, if it be
unknown, the phenomenon must be equally inert. We have no ground,
therefore, in the inertness which we feel, for affirming of nature
that it is inert. We must feel it so, by virtue of our known relation
to it, as not perceiving its essence.
2. The question, therefore, rests entirely upon its own evidence.
Since we have no reason, from the inertness of the phenomenal, for
inferring the inertness of the essential, can we know whether that
essential be inert or not? We can know. Inertness, as being absolute
inaction, cannot belong to that which truly is. Being and absolute
inaction are contraries. Inertness, therefore, must be a property
by which the phenomenal differs from the essential or absolute.
3. Again, nature does act: it acts upon us, or we could not perceive
it at all. The true being of nature is active therefore. That we
feel it otherwise shows that we do not feel it as it is. We must
look for the source of nature's apparent or felt inertness in
man's condition. Never should man have thought to judge of nature
without remembering his own defectiveness.
Such are the grounds upon which rests the belief, that nature is
not inert. It appears to me that there is little force in them.
To a great extent they are mere assumptions and assertions; and
anything they contain in the nature of argument is easily answered.
First: Why must every phenomenon be felt as inert? Why must a
'phenomenon be inert because it is a phenomenon?' I cannot see why.
We know nothing but phenomena; that is, things as they appear to
us. Where did we get the ideas of life and activity, if not from
phenomena? Many things appear to us to have life and activity. That
is, there are phenomena which are not inert.
Secondly: Wherefore should we conclude that the phenomenon differs
essentially from the fact? The phenomenon is the fact-as-discerned-by-us.
And granting that our defectiveness forbids our having a full and
complete discernment of the fact, why should we doubt that our
discernment is right so far as it goes? It is incomparably more
likely that things (not individual things, but the entire system,
I mean) are what they seem, than that they are not. Why believe
that we are gratuitously and needlessly deluded? God made the
universe; he placed us in it; he gave us powers whereby to discern
it. Is it reasonable to think that he did so in a fashion so
blundering or so deceitful that we can only discern it wrong? And
if nature seems inert, is not the rational conclusion that it is
so?
Thirdly: Why cannot 'inertness, as being absolute inaction, belong
to that which truly is?' Why cannot a thing exist without doing
anything? Is not that just what millions of things actually do? Or
if you intend to twist the meaning of the substantive verb, and to
say that merely to be is to do something,--that simply to exist is
a certain form of exertion and action,--I shall grant, of course,
that nothing whatever that exists is in that sense inert; but I shall
affirm that you use the word inert in quite a different sense from
the usual one. And in that extreme and non-natural sense of the
word, the phenomenon is no more inert than is the essence. Certainly
things seem to us to be: and if just to be is to be active, then
no phenomenon is inert; no single thing discerned by us appears to
be inert.
Fourthly: I grant that 'nature does act upon us, or we could not
perceive it at all.' But then I maintain that this kind of action
is not action as men understand the word. This kind of action is
quite consistent with the general notion of inertness. A thing may
be inert, as mankind understand the word; and also active, as the
author of this book understands the word. To discern this sort of
activity and life in nature we have no need to 'pass from death to
life' ourselves. We simply need to have the thing pointed out to
us, and it is seen at once. It is playing with words to say that
nature acts upon us, or we could not perceive it. No doubt, when
you stand before a tree, and look at it, it does act in so far as
that it depicts itself upon your retina; but that action is quite
consistent with what we understand by inertness. It does not
matter whether you say that your eye takes hold of the tree, or
that the tree takes hold of your eye. When you hook a trout, you
may say either that you catch the fish, or that the fish catches
you. Is the alternative worth fighting about? Which is the natural
way of speaking: to say that the man sees the tree, or that the tree
shows itself to the man? All the activity which our author claims
for nature goes no farther than that. Our reply is that that is
not activity at all. If that is all he contends for, we grant it at
once; and we say that it is not in the faintest degree inconsistent
with the fact of nature's being inert, as that word is understood.
You come and tell me that Mr. Smith has just passed your window
flying. I say no; I saw him; he was not flying, but walking. Ah, you
reply, I hold that walking is an indicate flying; it is a rudimentary
flying, the lowest form of flying; and therefore I maintain that he
flew past the window. My friend, I answer, if it be any satisfaction
to you to use words in that way, do so and rejoice; only do not
expect any human being to understand what you mean; and beware of
the lunatic asylum.
Why, I ask again, are we to cry down man for the sake of crying up
nature? Why are we to depreciate the dweller that we may magnify the
dwelling-place? Is not, man (to say the least) one of the works of
God? Did not God make, both man and nature? And does not Revelation
(which our author holds in so deep reverence) teach that man was
the last and noblest of the handiworks of the Creator? And thus it
is that I do not hesitate to answer such a question as that which
follows, and to answer it contrariwise to what the author expects.
It is from the human soul that glory and meaning are projected
upon inanimate nature. To Newton, and to Newton's dog, the outward
creation was physically the same; to the apprehension of Newton
and of Newton's dog, how different! Hear the author:--
To this clear issue the case is brought: Man does introduce into
nature something from himself: either the inertness, the negative
qualily, the defect, or the beauty, the meaning, the glory. Either
that whereby the world is noble comes from ourselves, or that
whereby it is mean; that which it has, or that which it wants. Can
it be doubtful which it is?
Not in the least! Give me the rational and immortal man, made in
God's image, rather than the grandest oak which the June sunbeams
will be warming when you read this, my friend--rather than the most
majestic mountain which by and bye will be purple with the heather.
Reason, immortality, love, and faith, are things liker God than ever
so many cubic feet of granite, than ever so many loads of timber.
'Behold,' says Archer Butler, 'we stand alone in the universe!
Earth, air, and ocean can show us nothing so awful as we!'
You fancy, says our author, that Nature is inert, because it goes
on in so constant and unvarying a course. You know, says he, what
conscious exertion it costs you to produce physical changes; you can
trace no such exertion in Nature. You would believe, says he, that
Nature is active, but for the fact that her doings are all conformed
to laws that you can trace. But invariableness, he maintains, is
no proof of inaction. RIGHT ACTION is invariable; RIGHT ACTION is
absolutely conformed to law. Why, therefore, should not the secret
of nature's invariableness be, not passiveness, but rightness?' The
unchanging uniformity of Nature's course proves her holiness--her
willing, unvarying obedience to the Divine law. 'The invariableness
of Nature bespeaks Holiness as its cause.'
May we not think upon all this (not dogmatically) in some such
fashion as this?
Which is likelier:
1. That Nature has it in her power to vary from the well-known laws
of Nature; that she could disobey God if she pleased; but that she
is so holy that she could not think of such a thing, and so through
all ages has never swerved once. Or,
2. That Nature is bound by laws which she has not the power to
disobey; that she is what she looks, an inanimate, passive, inert
thing, actuated, as her soul and will, by the will of the Creator?
And to aid in considering which alternative is the likelier, let it
be remembered that Revelation teaches that this is a fallen world;
that experience proves that this world is not managed upon any
system of optimism; that in this creation things are constantly
going wrong; and especially, that all history gives no account of
any mere creature whose will was free to do either good or ill; and
yet who did not do ill frequently. Is it likely that to all this
there is one entire exception; one thing, and that so large a
thing as all inanimate nature, perfectly obedient, perfectly holy,
perfectly right-and all by its own free will? I grant there is
something touching in the author's eloquent words:--
Because she is right, Nature is ours: more truly ours than we
ourselves. We turn from the inward ruin to the outward glory, and
marvel at the contrast. But we need not marvel: it is the difference
of life and death: piercing the dimness even of man's darkened
sense, jarring upon his fond illusion like waking realities upon
a dream. Without is living holiness, within is deathly wrong.
Let the reader, ever remembering that in such cases analogy is not
argument but illustration--that it makes a doctrine clearer, but
does not in any degree confirm it--read the chapter entitled 'Of
the illustration from Astronomy.' It will tend to make the great
doctrine of Man and his Dwelling-Place comprehensible; you will
see exactly what it is, although you may not think it true. As
astronomy has transferred the apparent movements of the planets
from them to ourselves, so, says our author, has science transferred
the seeming inertness of Nature from it to us. The phenomenon of
Nature is physical and inert: the being is spiritual and active
and holy. And if we now seem to have an insuperable conviction that
Man is not inert and that Nature is inert, it is not stronger than
our apparent consciousness that the earth is unmoving. Man lives
under illusion as to himself and as to the universe. Reason, indeed,
furnishes him with the means of correcting that illusion; but in
that illusion is his want of life.
Strong in his conviction of the grand principle which he has
established, as he conceives, in his first book, the author, in
his second book, goes crashing through all systems of philosophy.
His great doctrine makes havock of them all. All are wrong; though
each may have some grain of truth in it. The Idealists are right
in so far as that there is no such thing as Matter. Matter is the
vain imagination of man through his wrong idea of Nature's inertness.
But the Idealists are wrong if they fancy that because there is
no Matter, there is nothing but Mind, and ideas in Mind. Nature,
though spiritual, has a most real and separate existence. Then the
sceptics are right in so far as they doubt what our author thinks
wrong; but they are wrong in so far as they doubt what our author
thinks right. Positivism is right in so far as it teaches that we
see all things relatively to ourselves, and so wrongly; but it is
wrong in teaching that what things are in themselves is no concern
of ours, and that we should live on as though things were what they
seem.
If it were not that the reader of Man and his Dwelling-Place is
likely, after the shock of the first grand theory, that Man is dead
and the Universe living, to receive with comparative coolness any
further views set out in the book, however strange, I should say
that probably, the third Book, 'Of Religion,' would startle him more
than anything else in the work. Although this Book stands third in
the volume, it is first both in importance and in chronology. For
the author tells us that his views Of Religion are not deduced from
the theoretical conceptions already stated, but have been drawn
immediately from the study of Scripture, and that from them the
philosophical ideas are mainly derived. And indeed it is perfectly
marvellous what doctrines men will find in Scripture, or deduce
from Scripture. Is there not something curious in the capacity of
the human mind, while glancing along the sacred volume, to find
upon its pages both what suits its prevailing mood and its firm
conviction at the time? You feel buoyant and cheerful: you open
your Bible and read it; what a cheerful, hopeful book it is! You are
depressed and anxious: you open your Bible; surely it was written
for people in your present frame of mind! It is wonderful to what
a degree the Psalms especially suit the mood and temper of all
kinds of readers in every conceivable position. I can imagine the
poor suicide, stealing towards the peaceful river, and musing on a
verse of a psalm. I can imagine the joyful man, on the morning of
a marriage day which no malignant relatives have embittered, finding
a verse which will seem like the echo of his cheerful temper. And
passing from feeling to understanding, it is remarkable how, when
a man is possessed with any strong belief, he will find, as he
reads the Bible, not only many things which appear to him expressly
to confirm his view, but something in the entire tenor of what he
reads that appears to harmonize with it. I doubt not the author
of Man and his Dwelling-Place can hardly open the Bible at random
without chancing upon some passage which he regards as confirmatory
of his opinions. I am quite sure that to ordinary men his opinions
will appear flally to conflict with the Bible's fundamental
teaching. It has already been indicated in this essay in what sense
the statements of the New Testament to the following effect are to
be understood:--
The writers of the New Testament declare man to be dead. They speak
of men as not having life, and tell of a life to be given them. If,
therefore, our thoughts were truly conformed to the New Testament,
how could it seem a strange thing to us that this state of man should
be found a state of death; how should its very words, reaffirmed
by science, excite our surprise? Would it not have appeared to us
a natural result of the study of nature to prove man dead? Might
we not, if we had truly accepted the words of Scripture, have
anticipated that it should be so? For, if man be rightly called
dead, should not that condition have affected his experience, and
ought not a discovery of that fact to be the issue of his labours
to ascertain his true relation to the universe? Why does it seem
a thing incredible to us that man should be really, actually dead:
dead in such a sense as truly to affect his being, and determine
his whole state? Why have we been using words which affirm him dead
in our religious speech, and feel startled at finding them proved
true in another sphere of inquiry?
It is indeed true--it is a thing to be taken as a fundamental truth
in reading the Bible--that in a certain sense man is dead, and is
to be made alive; and the analogy which obtains between natural
death and what in theological language is called spiritual death,
is in several respects so close and accurate that we feel that it
is something more than a strong figure when the New Testament says
such things as 'You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses
and sins.' But it tends only to confusion to seek to identify
things so thoroughly different as natural and spiritual death. It
is trifling with a man to say to him 'You are dead!' and having
thus startled him, to go on to explain that you mean spiritually
dead. 'Oh,' he will reply, 'I grant you that I may be dead in that
sense, and possibly that is the more important sense, but it is
not the sense in which words are commonly understood.' I can see,
of course, various points of analogy between ordinary death and
spiritual death. Does ordinary death render a man insensible to
the presence of material things? Then spiritual death renders him
heedless of spiritual realities, of the presence of God, of the
value of salvation, of the closeness of eternity. Does natural death
appear in utter helplessness and powerlessness? So does spiritual
death render a man incapable of spiritual action and exertion. Has
natural death its essence in the entire separation it makes between
dead and living? So has spiritual death its essence in the separation
of the soul from God. But, after all, these things do but show an
analogy between natural death and spiritual: they do not show that
the things are one; they do not show that in the strict unfigurative
use of terms man's spiritual condition is one of death. They show
that man's spiritual condition is very like death; that is all. It
is so like as quite to justify the assertion in Scripture: it is not
so identical as to justify the introduction of a new philosophical
phrase. It is perfectly true that Christianity is described in
Scripture as a means for bringing men from death to life; but it
is also described, with equal meaning, as a means for bringing men
from darkness to light. And it is easy to trace the analogy between
man's spiritual condition and the condition of one in darkness--between
man's redeemed condition and the condition of one in light; but surely
it would be childish to announce, as a philosophical discovery,
that all men are blind, because they cannot see their true interests
and the things that most concern them. They are not blind in the
ordinary sense, though they may be blind in a higher; neither are
they dead in the ordinary sense, though they may be in a higher.
And only confusion, and a sense of being misled and trifled with,
can follow from the pushing figure into fact and trying to identify
the two.
Stripping our author's views of the unusual phraseology in which
they are disguised, they do, so far as regards the essential fact
of man's loss and redemption, coincide exactly with the orthodox
teaching of the Church of England. Man is by nature and sinfulness
in a spiritual sense dead; dead now, and doomed to a worse death
hereafter. By believing in Christ he at once obtains some share of
a better spiritual life, and the hope of a future life which shall
be perfectly holy and happy. Surely this is no new discovery. It
is the type of Christianity implied in the Liturgy of the Church,
and weekly set out from her thousands of pulpits. The startling
novelties of Man and his Dwelling-Place are in matters of detail.
He holds that fearful thing, Damnation, which orthodox views push
off into a future world, to be a present thing. It is now men are
damned. It is now men are in hell. Wicked men are now in a state
of damnation: they are now in hell. The common error arises from
our thinking damnation a state of suffering. It is not. It is a
state of something worse than suffering, viz., of sin:--
We find it hard to believe that damnation can he a thing men
like. But does not--what every being likes depend on what it is?
Is corruption less corruption, in man's view, because worms like
it? Is damnation less damnation, in God's view, because men like
it? And God's view is simply the truth. Surely one object of a
revelation must be to show us things from God's view of them, that
is. as they truly are. Sin truly is damnation, though to us it is
pleasure. That sin is pleasure to us, surely is the evil part of
our condition.
And indeed it is to be admitted that there is a great and
much-forgotten truth implied here. It is a very poor, and low, and
inadequate idea of Christianity, to think of it merely as something
which saves from suffering--as something which saves us from hell,
regarded merely as a place of misery. The Christian salvation is
mainly a deliverance from sin. The deliverance is primarily from
moral evil; and only secondarily from physical or moral pain. 'Thou
shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins.' No doubt this is very commonly forgotten. No doubt the vulgar
idea of salvation and perdition founds on the vulgar belief that
pain is the worst of all things, and happiness the best of all
things. It is well that the coarse and selfish type of religion
which founds on the mere desire to escape from burning and to lay
hold of bliss, should be corrected by the diligent instilling of
the belief, that sin is worse than sorrow. The Saviour's compassion,
though ever ready to well out at the sight of suffering, went forth
most warmly at the sight of sin.
Here I close the book, not because there is not much more in it
that well deserves notice, but because I hope that what has here
been said of it will induce the thoughtful reader to study it for
himself, and because I have space to write no more. It is a May
afternoon; not that on which the earliest pages of my article were
written, but a week after it. I have gone at the ox-fence at last,
and got over it with several contusions. Pardon me, unknown author,
much admired for your ingenuity, your earnestness, your originality,
your eloquence, if I have written with some show of lightness
concerning your grave book. Very far, if you could know it, was
any reality of lightness from your reviewer's feeling. He is non
ignarus mali: he has had his full allotment of anxiety and care;
and he hails with you the prospect of a day when human nature shall
cast off its load of death, and when sinful and sorrowful man shall
be brought into a beautiful conformity to external nature. Would
that Man were worthy of his Dwelling-place as it looks upon this
summer-like day! Open, you latticed window: let the cool breeze
come into this somewhat feverish room. Again, the tree-tops; again
the white stones and green graves; again the lambs, somewhat larger;
again the distant hill. Again I think of Cheapside, far away. Yet
there is trouble here. Not a yard of any of those hedges but has
worried its owner in watching that it be kept tight, that sheep or
cattle may not break through. Not a gate I see but screwed a few
shillings out of the anxious farmer's pocket, and is always going
wrong. Not a field but either the landlord squeezed the tenant in
the matter of rent, or the tenant cheated the landlord. Not the
smoke of a cottage but marks where pass lives weighted down with
constant care, and with little end save the sore struggle to keep
the wolf from the door. Not one of these graves, save perhaps the
poor friendless tramp's in the corner, but was opened and closed to
the saddening of certain hearts. Here are lives of error, sleepless
nights, over-driven brains; wayward children, unnatural parents,
though of these last, God be thanked, very few. Yes, says Adam
Bede, 'there's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for.' No
doubt we are dead: when shall we be quickened to a better life?
Surely, as it is, the world is too good for man. And I agree, most
cordially and entirely, with the author of this book, that there
is but one agency in the universe that can repress evil here, and
extinguish it hereafter.
CHAPTER X.
LIFE AT THE WATER CURE
[Footnote: A Month at Malvern, under the Water Cure. By R. J. Lane,
A. E. R. A. Third Edition. Reconsidered--Rewritten, London: John
Mitchell. 1855.
Spirits and Water. By R. J. L. London: John Mitchell. 1855.
Confessions of a Water-Patient. By Sir E. B. Lytton, Bart.
Hints to the Side, the Lame, and the Lazy: or, Passages in the Life
of a Hydropathist. By a Veteran. London: John Ollivier. 1848.]
All our readers, of course, have heard of the Water Cure; and many
of them, we doubt not, have in their own minds ranked it among
those eccentric medical systems which now and then spring up. are
much talked of for a while, and finally sink into oblivion. The
mention of the Water Cure is suggestive of galvanism, homoepathy,
mesmerism, the grape cure, the bread cure, the mud-bath cure, and
of the views of that gentleman who maintained that almost all the
evils, physical and moral, which assail the constitution of man,
are the result of the use of salt as an article of food, and may be
avoided by ceasing to employ that poisonous and immoral ingredient.
Perhaps there is a still more unlucky association with life pills,
universal vegetable medicines, and the other appliances of that
coarser quackery which yearly brings hundreds of gullible Britons
to their graves, and contributes thousands of pounds in the form
of stamp-duty to the revenue of this great and enlightened country.
It is a curious phase of life that is presented at a Water
Cure establishment. The Water Cure system cannot be carried out
satisfactorily except at an establishment prepared for the purpose.
An expensive array of baths is necessary; so are well-trained bath
servants, and an experienced medical man to watch the process of
cure: the mode of life does not suit the arrangements of a family,
and the listlessness of mind attendant on the water-system quite
unfits a man for any active employment. There must be pure country
air to breathe, a plentiful supply of the best water, abundant means
of taking exercise--Sir E. B. Lytton goes the length of maintaining
that mountains to climb are indispensable;--and to enjoy all these
advantages one must go to a hydropathic establishment. It may
be supposed that many odd people are to be met at such a place;
strong-minded women who have broken through the trammels of the
Faculty, and gone to the Water Cure in spite of the warnings of
their medical men, and their friends' kind predictions that they
would never live to come back; and hypochondriac men, who have tried
all quack remedies in vain, and who have come despairingly to try
one which, before trying it, they probably looked to as the most
violent and perilous of all. And the change of life is total. You
may have finished your bottle of port daily for twenty years, but
at the Water Cure you must perforce practise total abstinence. For
years you may never have tasted fair water, but here you will get
nothing else to drink, and you will have to dispose of your seven
or eight tumblers a day. You may have been accustomed to loll in
bed of a morning till nine or ten o'clock; but here you must imitate
those who would thrive, and 'rise at five:' while the exertion is
compensated by your having to bundle off to your chamber at 9.30 p.
M. You may long at breakfast for your hot tea, and if a Scotchman,
for your grouse pie or devilled kidneys; but you will be obliged
to make up with the simpler refreshment of bread and milk, with the
accompaniment of stewed Normandy pippins. You may have been wont
to spend your days in a fever of business, in a breathless hurry
and worry of engagements to be met and matters to be seen to; but
after a week under the Water Cure, you will find yourself stretched
listlessly upon grassy banks in the summer noon, or sauntering
all day beneath the horse-chestnuts of Sudbrook, with a mind as
free from business cares as if you were numbered among Tennyson's
lotos-eaters, or the denizens of Thomson's Castle of Indolence. And
with God's blessing upon the pure element He has given us in such
abundance, you will shortly (testibus Mr. Lane and Sir E. B. Lytton)
experience other changes as complete, and more agreeable. You will
find that the appetite which no dainty could tempt, now discovers
in the simplest fare a relish unknown since childhood. You will
find the broken rest and the troubled dreams which for years have
made the midnight watches terrible, exchanged for the long refreshful
sleep that makes one mouthful of the night. You will find the
gloom and depression and anxiety which were growing your habitual
temper, succeeded by a lightness of heart and buoyancy of spirit
which you cannot account for, but which you thankfully enjoy. We
doubt not that some of our readers, filled with terrible ideas as
to the violent and perilous nature of the Water Cure, will give
us credit for some strength of mind when we tell them that we have
proved for ourselves the entire mode of life; we can assure them
that there is nothing so very dreadful about it; and we trust they
may not smile at us as harmlessly monomaniacal when we say that,
without going the lengths its out-and-out advocates do, we believe
that in certain states of health much benefit may really be
derived from the system, Sir E. B. Lytton's eloquent Confessions
of a Water-Patient have been before the public for some years. The
Hints to the Sick, the Lame, and the Lazy, give us an account of
the ailments and recovery of an old military officer, who, after
suffering severety from gout, was quite set up by a few weeks at a
hydropathic establishment at Marienberg on the Rhine; and who, by
occasional recurrence to the same remedy, is kept in such a state
of preservation that, though advanced in years, he 'is able to go
eight miles within two hours, and can go up hill with most young
fellows.' The old gentleman's book, with its odd woodcuts, and a
certain freshness and incorrectness of style--we speak grammatically--in
keeping with the character of an old soldier, is readable enough.
Mr. Lane's books are far from being well written; the Spirits and
Water, especially, is extremely poor stuff. The Month at Malvern
is disfigured by similar faults of style; but Mr. Lane has really
something to tell us in that work: and there is a good deal
of interest at once in knowing how a man who had been reduced to
the last degree of debility of body and mind, was so effectually
restored, that now for years he has, on occasion, proved himself
equal to a forty-miles' walk among the Welsh mountains on a warm
summer day; and also in remarking the boyish exhilaration of spirits
in which Mr. Lane writes, which he tells us is quite a characteristic
result of 'initiation into the excitements of the Water Cure.'
Mr. Lane seems to have been in a very bad way. He gives an appalling
account of the medical treatment under which he had suffered for
nearly thirty years. In spite of it all he found, at the age of
forty-five, that his entire system was showing signs of breaking up.
He was suffering from neuralgia, which we believe means something
like tic-douloureux extending over the whole body; he was threatened
with paralysis, which had advanced so far as to have benumbed his
right side; his memory was going; his mind was weakened; he was,
in his own words, 'no use to anybody:' there were deep cracks
round the edge of his tongue; his throat was ulcerated; in short,
he was in a shocking state, and never likely to be better. Like many
people in such sad circumstances, lie had tried all other remedies
before thinking of the Water Cure; he had resorted to galvanism,
and so forth, but always got worse. At length, on the 13th of May,
1845, Mr. Lane betook himself to Malvern, where Dr. Wilson presides
over one of the largest cold-water establishments in the kingdom.
In those days there were some seventy patients in residence, but
the new-comer was pleased to find that there was nothing repulsive
in the appearance of any of his confreres,--a consideration
of material importance, inasmuch as the patients breakfast, dine,
and sup together. Nothing could have a more depressing effect upon
any invalid, than to be constantly surrounded by a crowd of people
manifestly dying, or afflicted with visible and disagreeable disease.
The fact is, judging from our own experience, that the people who
go to the Water Cure are for the most part not suffering from real
and tangible ailments, but from maladies of a comparatively fanciful
kind,--such as low spirits, shattered nerves, and lassitude, the
result of overwork. And our readers may be disposed to think, with
ourselves, that the change of air and scene, the return to a simple
and natural mode of life, and the breaking off from the cares
and engagements of business, have quite as much to do with their
restoration as the water-system, properly so called.
The situation of Malvern is well adapted to the successful use of
the water system. Sir E. B. Lytton tells us that 'the air of Malvern
is in itself hygeian: the water is immemorially celebrated for its
purity: the landscape is a perpetual pleasure to the eye.' The
neighbouring hills offer the exercise most suited to the cure:
Priessnitz said 'One must have mountains:' and Dr. Wilson told Mr.
Lane, in answer to a remark that the Water Cure had failed at Bath
and Cheltenham, that 'no good and difficult cures can be made in low
or damp situations, by swampy grounds, or near the beds of rivers.'
The morning after his arrival, Mr. Lane fairly entered upon the
Water System: and his diary for the following month shows us that
his time was fully occupied by baths of one sort or another, and
by the needful exercise before and after these. The patient is
gradually brought under the full force of hydropathy: some of the
severer appliances--such as the plunge-bath after packing, and the
douche--not being employed till he has been in some degree seasoned
and strung up for them. A very short time sufficed to dissipate
the notion that there is anything violent or alarming about the
Water Cure; and to convince the patient that every part of it is
positively enjoyable. There was no shock to the system: there was
nothing painful: no nauseous medicines to swallow; no vile bleeding
and blistering. Sitz-baths, foot-baths, plunge-baths, douches, and
wet-sheet packings, speedily began to do their work upon Mr. Lane;
and what with bathing, walking, hill-climbing, eating and drinking,
and making up fast friendships with some of his brethren of the
Water Cure, he appears to have had a very pleasant time of it. He
tells us that he found that--
The palliative and soothing effects of the water treatment are
established immediately; and the absence of all irritation begets
a lull, as instantaneous in its effects upon the frame as that
experienced in shelter from the storm.
A sense of present happiness, of joyous spirits, of confidence in
my proceedings, possesses me on this, the third day of my stay. I
do nut say that it is reasonable to experience this sudden accession,
or that everybody is expected to attribute it to the course of
treatment so recently commenced. I only say, so it is; and I look
for a confirmation of this happy frame of mind, when supported by
renewed strength of body.
To the same effect Sir E. B. Lytton:
Cares and griefs are forgotten: the sense of the present absorbs
the past and future: there is a certain freshness and youth which
pervade the spirits, and live upon the enjoyment of the actual
hour.
And the author of the Hints to the Sick, &c.:
Should my readers find me prosy, I hope that they will pardon an
old fellow, who looks back to his Water Cure course as one of the
most delightful portions of a tolerably prosperous life.
When shall we find the subjects of the established system of medical
treatment growing eloquent on the sudden accession of spirits
consequent on a blister applied to the chest; the buoyancy of heart
which attends the operation of six dozen leeches; the youthful
gaiety which results from the 'exhibition' of a dose of castor oil?
It is no small recommendation of the water system, that it makes
people so jolly while under it.
But it was not merely present cheerfulness that Mr. Lane experienced:
day by day his ailments were melting away. When he reached Malvern
he limped painfully, and found it impossible to straighten his
right leg, from a strain in the knee. In a week he 'did not know
that he had a knee.' We are not going to follow the detail of his
symptoms: suffice it to say that the distressing circumstances
already mentioned gradually disappeared; every day he felt stronger
and better; the half-paralysed side got all right again; mind and
body alike recovered their tone: the 'month at Malvern' was followed
up by a course of hydropathic treatment at home, such as the
exigencies of home-life will permit; and the upshot of the whole
was, lhat from being a wretched invalid, incapable of the least
exertion, mental or physical, Mr. Lane was permanently brought to
a state of health and strength, activity and cheerfulness. All this
improvement he has not the least hesitation in ascribing to the
virtue of the Water Cure; and after eight or ten years' experience
of the system and its results, his faith in it is stronger than
ever.
In quitting Malvern, the following is his review of the sensations
of the past month:--
I look back with astonishment at the temper of mind which has
prevailed over the great anxieties that, heavier than my illness,
had been bearing their weight upon me. Weakness of body had been
chiefly oppressive, because by it I was deprived of the power of
alleviating those anxieties; and now, with all that accumulation
of mental pressure, with my burden in full cry, and even gaining
upon me during the space thus occupied, I have to reflect upon time
passed in merriment, and attended by never-failing joyous spirits.
To the distress of mind occasioned by gathering ailments, was added
the pain of banishment from home; and yet I have been translated
to a life of careless ease. Any one whose knowledge of the solid
weight that I carried to this place would qualify him to estimate
the state of mind in which I left my home, might well be at a
loss to appreciate the influences which had suddenly soothed and
exhilarated my whole nature, until alacrity of mind and healthful
gaiety became expansive, and the buoyant spirit on the surface was
stretched to unbecoming mirth and lightness of heart.
So much for Mr. Lane's experience of the Water Cure. As to its
power in acute disease we shall speak hereafter; but its great
recommendations in all cases where the system has been broken down
by overwork, are (if we are to credit its advocates) two: first, it
braces up body and mind, and restores their healthy tone, in a way
that nothing else can; and next, the entire operation by which all
this is accomplished, is a course of physical and mental enjoyment.
But by this time we can imagine our readers asking with some
impatience, what is the Water Cure? What is the precise nature of
all those oddly-named appliances by which it produces its results?
Now this is just what we are going to explain; but we have artfully
and deeply sought to set out the benefits ascribed to the system
before doing so, in the hope that that large portion of the human
race which reads Fraser may feel the greater interest in the
details which follow, when each of the individuals who compose it
remembers, that these sitzes and douches are not merely the things
which set up Sir E. B. Lytton, Mr. Lane, and our old military
friend, but are the things which may some day be called on to revive
his own sinking strength and his own drooping spirits. And as the
treatment to which all water patients are subjected appears to
be much the same, we shall best explain the nature of the various
baths by describing them as we ourselves found them.
Our story is a very simple one. Some years since, after many terms
of hard College work, we found our strength completely break down.
We were languid and dispirited; everything was an effort: we felt
that whether study in our case had 'made the mind' or not, it had
certainly accomplished the other result which Festus ascribes to
it, and 'unmade the body.' We tried sea-bathing, cod-liver oil,
and everything else that medical men prescribe to people done up
by over study; but nothing did much good. Finally, we determined
to throw physic to the dogs, and to try a couple of months at
the Water Cure. It does cost an effort to make up one's mind to
go there, not only because the inexperienced in the matter fancy
the water system a very perilous one, but also because one's
steady-going friends, on hearing of our purpose, are apt to shake
their heads,--perhaps even to tap their foreheads,--to speak
doubtfully of our common sense, and express a kind hope--behind
our backs, especially--that we are not growing fanciful and
hypochondriac, and that we may not end in writing testimonials in
favour of Professor Holloway. We have already said that to have
the full benefit of the Water Cure, one must go to a hydropathic
establishment. There are numbers of these in Germany, and all along
the Rhine; and there are several in England, which are conducted in
a way more accordant with our English ideas. At Malvern we believe
there are two; there is a large one at Ben Rhydding, in Yorkshire;
one at Sudbrook Park, between Richmond and Ham; and another at Moor
Park, near Farnham. Its vicinity to London led us to prefer the
one at Sudbrook; and on a beautiful evening in the middle of May
we found our way down through that garden-like country, so green
and rich to our eyes, long accustomed to the colder landscapes of
the north. Sudbrook Park is a noble place. The grounds stretch for
a mile or more along Richmond Park, from which they are separated
only by a wire fence; the trees are magnificent, the growth of centuries,
and among them are enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees;
while horse-chestnuts without number make a very blaze of floral
illumination through the leafy month of June. Richmond-hill, with
its unrivalled views, rises from Sudbrook Park; and that eerie-looking
Ham House, the very ideal of the old English manor-house, with
its noble avenues which make twilight walks all the summer day, is
within a quarter of a mile. As for the house itself, it is situated
at the foot of the slope on whose summit Lord John Russell's house
stands; it is of great extent, and can accommodate a host of
patients, though when we were there, the number of inmates was less
than twenty. It is very imposing externally; but the only striking
feature of its interior is the dining-room, a noble hall of forty
feet in length, breadth, and height. It is wainscoted with black
oak, which some vile wretch of a water doctor painted white, on
the ground that it darkened the room. As for the remainder of the
house, it is divided into commonplace bed-rooms and sitting-rooms,
and provided with bathing appliances of every conceivable kind.
On arriving at a water establishment, the patient is carefully
examined, chiefly to discover if anything be wrong about the heart,
as certain baths would have a most injurious effect should that
be so. The doctor gives his directions to the bath attendant as
to the treatment to be followed, which, however, is much the same
with almost all patients. The newcomer finds a long table in the
dining-hall, covered with bread and milk, between six and seven
in the evening; and here he makes his evening meal with some wry
faces. At half-past nine p. m. he is conducted to his chamber, a
bare little apartment, very plainly furnished. The bed is a narrow
little thing, with no curtains of any kind. One sleeps on a mattress,
which feels pretty hard at first. The jolly and contented looks
of the patients had tended somewhat to reassure us; still, we had
a nervous feeling that we were fairly in for it, and could not
divest ourselves of some alarm as to the ordeal before us; so we
heard the nightingale sing for many hours before we closed our eyes
on that first night at Sudbrook Park.