A REPORT OF PROGRESS.
In the meantime George Bascombe came and went; every visit he showed
clearer notions as to what he was for, and what he was against;
every visit he found Helen more worthy and desirable than
theretofore, and flattered himself he made progress in the
conveyance of his opinions and judgments over into her mind. His
various accomplishments went far in aid of his design. There was
hardly anything Helen could do that George could not do as well, and
some he could do better, while there were many things George was at
home in which were sealed to her. The satisfaction of teaching such
a pupil he found great. When at length he began to make love to her,
Helen found it rather agreeable than otherwise; and, if there was a
little more MAKING in it than some women would have liked, Helen was
not sufficiently in love with him to detect its presence. Still the
pleasure of his preference was such that it opened her mind with a
favourable prejudice towards whatever in the shape of theory or
doctrine he would have her receive; and much that a more experienced
mind would have rejected because of its evident results in practice,
was by her accepted in the ignorance which confined her regard of
his propositions to their intellectual relations, and prevented her
from following them into their influences upon life, which would
have reflected light upon their character. For life in its real
sense was to her as yet little more definite and present than a
dream that waits for the coming night. Hence, when her cousin at
length ventured to attack even those doctrines which all women who
have received a Christian education would naturally be expected to
revere the most, she was able to listen to him unshocked. But she
little thought, or he either, that it was only in virtue of what
Christian teaching she had had that she was capable of appreciating
what was grand in his doctrine of living for posterity without a
hope of good result to self beyond the consciousness that future
generations of perishing men and women would be a little more
comfortable, and perhaps a little less faulty therefrom. She did not
reflect, either, that no one's theory concerning death is of much
weight in his youth while life FEELS interminable, or that the gift
of comfort during a life of so little value that the giver can part
with it without regret, is scarcely one to be looked upon as a
mighty benefaction.
"But truth is truth," George would have replied.
What you profess to teach them might be a fact, but could never be a
truth, I answer. And the veiy value which you falsely put upon facts
you have learned to attribute to them from the supposed existence of
something at the root of all facts--namely, TRUTHS, or eternal laws
of being. Still, if you believe that men will be happier from
learning your discovery that there is no God, preach it, and prosper
in proportion to its truth. No; that from my pen would be a
curse--no, preach it not, I say, until you have searched all spaces
of space, up and down, in greatness and smallness--where I grant
indeed, but you cannot know, that you will not find him--and all
regions of thought and feeling, all the unknown mental universe of
possible discovery--preach it not until you have searched that also,
I say, lest what you count a truth should prove to be no fact, and
there should after all be somewhere, somehow, a very, living God, a
Truth indeed, in whom is the universe. If you say, "But I am
convinced there is none," I answer--You may be convinced that there
is no God such as this or that in whom men imagine they believe, but
you cannot be convinced there is no God.
Meantime George did not forget the present of this life in its
future, continued particular about his cigars and his wine, ate his
dinners with what some would call a good conscience and I would call
a dull one, were I sure it was not a good digestion they really
meant, and kept reading hard and to purpose.
Matters as between the two made no rapid advance. George went on
loving Helen more than any other woman, and Helen went on liking
George next best to her brother Leopold. Whether it came of
prudence, of which George possessed not a little, of coldness of
temperament, or a pride that would first be sure of acceptance, I do
not know, but he made no formal offer yet of handing himself over to
Helen, and certainly Helen was in no haste to hear, more than he to
utter, the irrevocable.