“You push me back, Sir Eliphaz, from the discussion of our school

affairs to more fundamental questions. You have raised the problem of

the moral government of the world, a problem that has been distressing

my mind since I first came here to Sundering, whether indeed failure is

condemnation and success the sunshine of God’s approval. You believe

that the great God of the stars and seas and mountains is attentive to

our conduct and responds to it. His sense of right is the same sense of

right as ours; he endorses a common aim. Your prosperity is the mark of

your harmony with that supreme God....”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” Mr. Dad interjected. “No. No arrogance.”

“And my misfortunes express his disapproval. Well, I have believed that;

I have believed that the rightness of a schoolmaster’s conscience must

needs be the same thing as the rightness of destiny, I too had fallen

into that comforting persuasion of prosperity; but this series of

smashing experiences I have had, culminating in your proposal to wipe

out the whole effect and significance of my life, brings me face to face

with the fundamental question whether the order of the great universe,

the God of the stars, has any regard or relationship whatever to the

problems of our consciences and the efforts of man to do right. That is

a question that echoes to me down the ages. So far I have always

professed myself a Christian....”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Mr. Dad, “considering the terms of the

school’s foundation.”

“For, I take it, the creeds declare in a beautiful symbol that the God

who is present in our hearts is one with the universal father and at the

same time his beloved Son, continually and eternally begotten from the

universal fatherhood, and crucified only to conquer. He has come into

our poor lives to raise them up at last to Himself. But to believe that

is to believe in the significance and continuity of the whole effort of

mankind. The life of man must be like the perpetual spreading of a fire.

If right and wrong are to perish together indifferently, if there is

aimless and fruitless suffering, if there opens no hope for an eternal

survival in consequences of all good things, then there is no meaning in

such a belief as Christianity. It is a mere superstition of priests and

sacrifices, and I have read things into it that were never truly there.

The rushlight of our faith burns in a windy darkness that will see no

dawn.”

“Nay,” said Sir Eliphaz, “nay. If there is God in your work we cannot

destroy it.”

“You are doing your best,” said Mr. Huss, “and now I am not sure that

you will fail.... At one time I should have defied you, but now I am not

sure.... I have sat here through some dreary and dreadful days, and lain

awake through some interminable nights; I have thought of many things

that men in their days of prosperity are apt to dismiss from their

minds; and I am no longer sure of the goodness of the world without us

or in the plan of Fate. Perhaps it is only in us within our hearts that

the light of God flickers—and flickers insecurely. Where we had thought

a God, somehow akin to ourselves, ruled in the universe, it may be there

is nothing but black emptiness and a coldness worse than cruelty.”

Mr. Dad was about to interrupt, and restrained himself by a great

effort.

“It is a commonplace of pietistic works that natural things are perfect

things, and that the whole world of life, if it were not for the

sinfulness of man, would be perfect. Paley, you will remember, Sir

Eliphaz, in his ‘Evidences of Christianity,’ from which we have both

suffered, declares that this earth is manifestly made for the happiness

of the sentient beings living thereon. But I ask you to consider for a

little and dispassionately, whether life through all its stages, up to

and including man, is not rather a scheme of uneasiness, imperfect

satisfaction, and positive miseries....”

§ 8

“Aren’t we getting a bit out of our depth in all this?” Mr. Dad burst

out. “Put it at that—out of our depth.... What does this sort of carping

and questioning amount to, Mr. Huss? Does it do us any good? Does it

help us in the slightest degree? Why should we go into all this? Why

can’t we be humble and leave these deep questions to those who make a

specialty of dealing with them? We don’t know the ropes. We can’t. Here

are you and Mr. Farr, for instance, both of you whole-time schoolmasters

so to speak; here’s Sir Eliphaz toiling night and day to make simple

cheap suitable homes for the masses, who probably won’t say thank you to

him when they see them; here’s me an overworked engineer and

understaffed most cruelly, not to speak of the most unfair and

impossible labour demands, so that you never know where you are and what

they won’t ask you next. And in the midst of it all we are to start an

argey-bargey about the goodness of God!

“We’re busy men, Mr. Huss. What do _we_ know of the world being a scheme

of imperfect satisfaction and what all? Where does it come in? What’s

its practical value? Words it is, all words, and getting away from the

plain and definite question we came to talk over and settle and have

done with. Such talk, I will confess, makes me uncomfortable. Give me

the Bible and the simple religion I learnt at my mother’s knee. That’s

good enough for me. Can’t we just have faith and leave all these

questions alone? What are men in reality? After all their arguments.

Worms. Just worms. Well then, let’s have the decency to behave as such

and stick to business, and do our best in that state of life unto which

it has pleased God to call us. That’s what _I_ say,” said Mr. Dad.

He jerked his head back, coughed shortly, adjusted his tie, and nodded

to Mr. Farr in a resolute manner.

“A simple, straightforward, commercial and technical education,” he

added by way of an explanatory colophon. “That’s what we’re after.”

§ 9

Mr. Huss stared absently at Mr. Dad for some moments, and then resumed:

“Let us look squarely at this world about us. What is the true lot of

life? Is there the slightest justification for assuming that our

conceptions of right and happiness are reflected anywhere in the outward

universe? Is there, for instance, much animal happiness? Do health and

well-being constitute the normal state of animals?”

He paused. Mr. Dad got up, and stood looking out of the window with his

back to Mr. Huss. “Pulling nature to pieces,” he said over his shoulder.

He turned and urged further, with a snarl of bitterness in his voice:

“Suppose things are so, what is the good of _our_ calling attention to

it? Where’s the benefit?”

But the attitude of Sir Eliphaz conveyed a readiness to listen.

“Before I became too ill to go out here,” said Mr. Huss, “I went for a

walk in the country behind this place. I was weary before I started, but

I was impelled to go by that almost irresistible desire that will seize

upon one at times to get out of one’s immediate surroundings. I wanted

to escape from this wretched room, and I wanted to be alone, secure from

interruptions, and free to think in peace. There was a treacherous

promise in the day outside, much sunshine and a breeze. I had heard of

woods a mile or so inland, and that conjured up a vision of cool green

shade and kindly streams beneath the trees and of the fellowship of shy

and gentle creatures. So I went out into the heat and into the dried and

salted east wind, through glare and inky shadows, across many more

fields than I had expected, until I came to some woods and then to a

neglected park, and there for a time I sat down to rest....

“But I could get no rest. The turf was unclean through the presence of

many sheep, and in it there was a number of close-growing but very

sharply barbed thistles; and after a little time I realized that

harvesters, those minute red beasts that creep upon one in the chalk

lands and burrow into the skin and produce an almost intolerable

itching, abounded. I got up again and went on, hoping in vain to find

some fence or gate on which I might rest more comfortably. There were

many flies and gnats, many more than there are here and of different

sorts, and they persecuted me more and more. They surrounded me in a

humming cloud, and I had to wave my walking-stick about my head all the

time to keep them off me. I felt too exhausted to walk back, but there

was, I knew, a village a mile or so ahead where I hoped to find some

conveyance in which I might return by road....

“And as I struggled along in this fashion I came upon first one thing

and then another, so apt to my mood that they might have been put there

by some adversary. First it was a very young rabbit indeed, it was

scarcely as long as my hand, which some cruel thing had dragged from its

burrow. The back of its head had been bitten open and was torn and

bloody, and the flies rose from its oozing wounds to my face like a

cloud of witnesses. Then as I went on, trying to distract my mind from

the memory of this pitiful dead thing by looking about me for something

more agreeable, I discovered a row of little brown objects in a hawthorn

bush, and going closer found they were some half-dozen victims of a

butcherbird—beetles, fledgelings, and a mouse or so—spiked on the

thorns. They were all twisted into painful attitudes, as if each had

suffered horribly and challenged me by the last gesture of its limbs to

judge between it and its creator.... And a little further on a gaunt,

villainous-looking cat with rusty black fur that had bare patches

suddenly ran upon me out of a side path; it had something in its mouth

which it abandoned at the sight of me and left writhing at my feet, a

pretty crested bird, very mangled, that flapped in flat circles upon the

turf, unable to rise. A fit of weak and reasonless rage came upon me at

this, and seeing the cat halt some yards away and turn to regard me and

move as if to recover its victim, I rushed at it and pursued it,

shouting. Then it occurred to me that it would be kinder if, instead of

a futile pursuit of the wretched cat, I went back and put an end to the

bird’s sufferings. For a time I could not find it, and I searched for it

in the bushes in a fever to get it killed, groaning and cursing as I did

so. When I found it, it fought at me with its poor bleeding wings and

snapped its beak at me, and made me feel less like a deliverer than a

murderer. I hit it with my stick, and as it still moved I stamped it to

death with my feet. I fled from its body in an agony. ‘And this,’ I

cried, ‘this hell revealed, is God’s creation!’”

“_Tcha!_” exclaimed Mr. Dad.

“Suddenly it seemed to me that scales had fallen from my eyes and that I

saw the whole world plain. It was as if the universe had put aside a

mask it had hitherto worn, and shown me its face, and it was a face of

boundless evil.... It was as if a power of darkness sat over me and

watched me with a mocking gaze, and for the rest of that day I could

think of nothing but the feeble miseries of living things. I was

tortured, and all life was tortured with me. I failed to find the

village I sought; I strayed far, I got back here at last long after

dark, stopping sometimes by the wayside to be sick, sometimes kneeling

or lying down for a time to rest, shivering and burning with an

increasing fever.

“I had, as you know, been the first to find poor Williamson lying

helpless among the acids; that ghastly figure and the burnt bodies of

the two boys who died in School House haunt my mind constantly; but what

was most in my thoughts on that day when the world of nature showed its

teeth to me was the wretchedness of animal life. I do not know why that

should have seemed more pitiful to me, and more fundamental, but it did.

Human suffering, perhaps, is complicated by moral issues; man can look

before and after and find remote justifications and stern consolations

outside his present experiences; but the poor birds and beasts, they

have only their present experiences and their individual lives cut off

and shut in. How can there be righteousness in any scheme that afflicts

them? I thought of one creature after another, and I could imagine none

that had more than an occasional gleam of false and futile satisfaction

between suffering and suffering. And to-day, gentlemen, as I sit here

with you, the same dark stream of conviction pours through my mind. I

feel that life is a weak and inconsequent stirring amidst the dust of

space and time, incapable of overcoming even its internal dissensions,

doomed to phases of delusion, to irrational and undeserved punishments,

to vain complainings and at last to extinction.

“Is there so much as one healthy living being in the world? I question

it. As I wandered that day, I noted the trees as I had never noted them

before. There was not one that did not show a stricken or rotten branch,

or that was not studded with the stumps of lost branches decaying

backwards towards the main stem; from every fork came dark stains of

corruption, the bark was twisted and contorted and fungoid protrusions

proclaimed the hidden mycelium of disease. The leaves were spotted with

warts and blemishes, and gnawed and bitten by a myriad enemies. I noted

too that the turf under my feet was worn and scorched and weary;

gossamer threads and spiders of a hundred sorts trapped the

multitudinous insects in the wilted autumnal undergrowth; the hedges

were a slow conflict of thrusting and strangulating plants in which

every individual was more or less crippled or stunted. Most of these

plants were armed like assassins; they had great thorns or stinging

hairs; some ripened poisonous berries. And this was the reality of life;

this was no exceptional mood of things, but a revelation of things

established. I had been blind and now I saw. Even as these woods and

thickets were, so was all the world....

“I had been reading in a book I had chanced to pick up in this lodging,

about the jungles of India, which many people think of as a vast wealth

of splendid and luxuriant vegetation. For the greater part of the year

they are hot and thorny wastes of brown, dead and mouldering matter.

Comes the steaming downpour of the rains; and then for a little while

there is a tangled rush of fighting greenery, jostling, choking, torn

and devoured by a multitude of beasts and by a horrible variety of

insects that the hot moisture has called to activity. Then under the dry

breath of the destroyer the exuberance stales and withers, everything

ripens and falls, and the jungle relapses again into sullen heat and

gloomy fermentation. And in truth everywhere the growth season is a wild

scramble into existence, the rest of the year a complicated massacre.

Even in our British climate is it not plain to you how the summer

outlasts the lavish promise of the spring? In our spring there is no

doubt an air of hope, of budding and blossoming; there is the nesting

and singing of birds, a certain cleanness of the air, an emergence of

primary and comparatively innocent things; but hard upon that freshness

follow the pests and parasites, the creatures that corrupt and sting,

the minions of waste and pain and lassitude and fever....

“You may say that I am dwelling too much upon the defects in the lives

of plants which do not feel, and of insects and small creatures which

may feel in a different manner from ourselves; but indeed their decay

and imperfection make up the common texture of life. Even the things

that live are only half alive. You may argue that at least the rarer,

larger beasts bring with them a certain delight and dignity into the

world. But consider the lives of the herbivora; they are all hunted

creatures; fear is their habit of mind; even the great Indian buffalo is

given to panic flights. They are incessantly worried by swarms of

insects. When they are not apathetic they appear to be angry,

exasperated with life; their seasonal outbreaks of sex are evidently a

violent torment to them, an occasion for fierce bellowings, mutual

persecution and desperate combats. Such beasts as the rhinoceros or the

buffalo are habitually in a rage; they will run amuck for no conceivable

reason, and so too will many elephants, betraying a sort of organic

spite against all other living things....

“And if we turn to the great carnivores, who should surely be the lords

of the jungle world, their lot seems to be not one whit more happy. The

tiger leads a life of fear; a dirty scrap of rag will turn him from his

path. Much of his waking life is prowling hunger; when he kills he eats

ravenously, he eats to the pitch of discomfort; he lies up afterwards in

reeds or bushes, savage, disinclined to move. The hunter must beat him

out, and he comes out sluggishly and reluctantly to die. His paws, too,

are strangely tender; a few miles of rock will make them bleed, they

gather thorns.... His mouth is so foul that his bite is a poisoned

bite....

“All that day I struggled against this persuasion that the utmost

happiness of any animal is at best like a transitory smile on a grim and

inhuman countenance. I tried to recall some humorous and

contented-looking creatures....

“That only recalled a fresh horror....

“You will have seen pictures and photographs of penguins. They will have

conveyed to you the sort of effect I tried to recover. They express a

quaint and jolly gravity, an aldermanic contentment. But to me now the

mere thought of a penguin raises a vision of distress. I will tell

you.... One of my old boys came to me a year or so ago on his return

from a South Polar expedition; he told me the true story of these birds.

Their lives, he said—he was speaking more particularly of the king

penguin—are tormented by a monstrously exaggerated maternal instinct, an

instinct shared by both sexes, which is a necessary condition of

survival in the crowded rookeries of that frozen environment. And that

instinct makes life one long torment for them. There is always a great

smashing of eggs there through various causes; there is an excessive

mortality among the chicks; they slip down crevasses, they freeze to

death and so forth, three-quarters of each year’s brood perish, and

without this extravagant passion the species would become extinct. So

that every bird is afflicted with a desire and anxiety to brood upon and

protect a chick. But each couple produces no more than one egg a year;

eggs get broken, they roll away into the water, there is always a

shortage, and every penguin that has an egg has to guard it jealously,

and each one that has not an egg is impelled to steal or capture one.

Some in their distress will mother pebbles or scraps of ice, some

fortunate in possession will sit for days without leaving the nest in

spite of the gnawings of the intense Antarctic hunger. To leave a nest

for a moment is to tempt a robber, and the intensity of the emotions

aroused is shown by the fact that they will fight to the death over a

stolen egg. You see that these pictures of rookeries of apparently

comical birds are really pictures of poor dim-minded creatures worried

and strained to the very limit of their powers. That is what their lives

have always been....

“But the king penguin draws near the end of its history. Let me tell you

how its history is closing. Let me tell you of what is happening in the

peaceful Southern Seas—now. This old boy of mine was in great distress

because of a vile traffic that has arisen.... Unless it is stopped, it

will destroy these rookeries altogether. These birds are being murdered

wholesale for their oil. Parties of men land and club them upon their

nests, from which the poor, silly things refuse to stir. The dead and

stunned, the living and the dead together, are dragged away and thrust

into iron crates to be boiled down for their oil. The broken living with

the dead.... Each bird yields about a farthing’s profit, but it pays to

kill them at that, and so the thing is done. The people who run these

operations, you see, have had a sound commercial training. They believe

that when God gives us power He means us to use it, and that what is

profitable is just.”

“Well, really,” protested Mr. Dad. “Really!”

Mr. Farr also betrayed a disposition to speak. He cleared his throat,

his uneasy hands worried the edge of the table, his face shone. “Sir

Eliphaz,” he said....

“Let me finish,” said Mr. Huss, “for I have still to remind you of the

most stubborn facts of all in such an argument as this. Have you ever

thought of the significance of such creatures as the entozoa, and the

vast multitudes of other sorts of specialized parasites whose very

existence is cruelty? There are thousands of orders and genera of

insects, crustacea, arachnids, worms, and lowlier things, which are

adapted in the most complicated way to prey upon the living and

suffering tissues of their fellow creatures, and which can live in no

other way. Have you ever thought what that means? If forethought framed

these horrors what sort of benevolence was there in that forethought? I

will not distress you by describing the life cycles of any of these

creatures too exactly. You must know of many of them. I will not dwell

upon those wasps, for example, which lay their eggs in the living bodies

of victims which the young will gnaw to death slowly day by day as they

develop, nor will I discuss this unmeaning growth of cells which has

made my body its soil.... Nor any one of our thousand infectious fevers

that fall upon us—without reason, without justice....

“Man is of all creatures the least subjected to internal parasites. In

the brief space of a few hundred thousand years he has changed his food,

his habitat and every attitude and habit of his life, and comparatively

few species, thirty or forty at most, I am told, have been able to

follow his changes and specialize themselves to him under these fresh

conditions; yet even man can entertain some fearful guests. Every time

you drink open water near a sheep pasture you may drink the larval liver

fluke, which will make your liver a little township of vile creatures

until they eat it up, until they swarm from its oozing ruins into your

body cavity and destroy you. In Europe this is a rare fate for a man,

but in China there are wide regions where the fluke abounds and rots the

life out of thousands of people.... The fluke is but one sample of such

feats of the Creator. An unwashed leaf of lettuce may be the means of

planting a parasitic cyst in your brain to dethrone your reason; a feast

of underdone pork may transfer to you from the swine the creeping death

torture of trichinosis.... But all that men suffer in these matters is

nothing to the suffering of the beasts. The torments of the beasts are

finished and complete. My biological master tells me that he rarely

opens a cod or dogfish without finding bunches of some sort of worm or

such like pallid lodger in possession. He has rows of little tubes with

the things he has found in the bodies of rabbits....

“But I will not disgust you further....

“Is this a world made for the happiness of sentient things?

“I ask you, how is it possible for man to be other than a rebel in the

face of such facts? How can he trust the Maker who has designed and

elaborated and finished these parasites in their endless multitude and

variety? For these things are not in the nature of sudden creations and

special judgments; they have been produced fearfully and wonderfully by

a process of evolution as slow and deliberate as our own. How can Man

trust such a Maker to treat him fairly? Why should we shut our eyes to

things that stare us in the face? Either the world of life is the

creation of a being inspired by a malignancy at once filthy, petty and

enormous, or it displays a carelessness, an indifference, a disregard

for justice....”

The voice of Mr. Huss faded out.

§ 10

For some time Mr. Farr had been manifesting signs of impatience. The

pause gave him his opportunity. He spoke with a sort of restrained

volubility.

“Sir Eliphaz, Mr. Dad, after what has passed in relation to myself, I

would have preferred to have said nothing in this discussion. Nothing.

So far as I myself am concerned, I will still say nothing. But upon some

issues it is impossible to keep silence. Mr. Huss has said some terrible

things, things that must surely never be said at Woldingstanton....

“Think of what such teaching as this may mean among young and

susceptible boys! Think of such stuff in the school pulpit! Chary as I

am of all wrangling, and I would not set myself up for a moment to

wrangle against Mr. Huss, yet I feel that this cavilling against God’s

universe, this multitude of evil words, must be answered. It is

imperative to answer it, plainly and sternly. It is our duty to God, who

has made us what we are....

“Mr. Huss, in your present diseased state you seem incapable of

realizing the enormous _egotism_ of all this depreciation of God’s

marvels. But indeed you have suffered from that sort of incapacity

always. It is no new thing. Have I not chafed under your arrogant

assurance for twelve long years? Your right, now as ever, is the only

right; your doctrine alone is pure. Would that God could speak and open

his lips against you! How his voice would shatter you and us and

everything about us! How you would shrivel amidst your blasphemies!

“Excuse me, gentlemen, if I am too forcible,” said Mr. Farr, moistening

his white lips, but Mr. Dad nodded fierce approval.

Thus encouraged, Mr. Farr proceeded. “When first I came into this room,

Mr. Huss, I was full of pity for your affliction—I think we all were—we

were pitiful; but now it is clear to me that God exacts from you less

than your iniquity deserves. Surely the supreme sin is pride. You

criticize and belittle God’s universe, but what sort of a universe would

you give us, Mr. Huss, if you were the Creator? Pardon me if I startle

you, gentlemen, but that is a fair question to ask. For it is clear to

me now, Mr. Huss, that no less than that will satisfy you.

Woldingstanton, for all the wonders you have wrought there, in spite of

the fact that never before and never again can there be such a head, in

spite of the fact that you have lit such a candle there as may one day

set the world ablaze, is clearly too small a field for you. Headmaster

of the universe is your position. Then, and then alone, could you

display your gifts to the full. Then cats would cease to eat birds, and

trees grow on in perfect symmetry until they cumbered the sky. I can

dimly imagine the sort of world that it would be; the very fleas

reformed and trained under your hand, would be flushed with health and

happiness and doing the work of boy scouts; every blade of grass would

be at least six feet long. As for the liver fluke—but I cannot solve the

problem of the liver fluke. I suppose you will provide euthanasia for

all the parasites....”

Abruptly Mr. Farr passed from this vein of terrible humour to an earnest

and pleading manner. “Mr. Huss, with mortal danger so close to you, I

entreat you to reconsider all this wild and wicked talk of yours. You

take a few superficial aspects of the world and frame a judgment on

them; you try with the poor foot-rule of your mind to measure the plans

of God, plans which are longer than the earth, wider than the sea. I ask

you, how can such insolence help you in this supreme emergency? There

can be little time left....”

Providence was manifestly resolved to give Mr. Farr the maximum of

dramatic effect. “But what is this?” said Mr. Farr. He stood up and

looked out of the window.

Somebody had rung the bell, and now, with an effect of impatience, was

rapping at the knocker of Sea View.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

DO WE TRULY DIE?

§ 1

Mrs. Croome was heard in the passage, someone was admitted, there were

voices, and the handle of the parlour door was turned. “’Asn’t E come,

then?” they heard the voice of Mrs. Croome through the opening. Dr.

Elihu Barrack appeared in the doorway.

He was a round-headed young man with a clean-shaven face, a mouth that

was determinedly determined and slightly oblique, a short nose, and a

general expression of resolution; the fact that he had an artificial leg

was scarcely perceptible in his bearing. He considered the four men

before him for a moment, and then addressed himself to Mr. Huss in a

tone of brisk authority. “You ought to be in bed,” he said.

“I had this rather important discussion,” said Mr. Huss, with a gesture

portending introductions.

“But sitting up will fatigue you,” the doctor insisted, sticking to his

patient.

“It won’t distress me so much as leaving these things unsaid would have

done.”

“Opinions may differ upon that,” said Mr. Farr darkly.

“We are still far from any settlement of our difficulties,” said Sir

Eliphaz to the universe.

“I have indicated my view at any rate,” said Mr. Huss. “I suppose now

Sir Alpheus is here—”

“He isn’t here,” said Dr. Barrack neatly. “He telegraphs to say that he

is held up, and will come by the next train. So you get a reprieve, Mr.

Huss.”

“In that case I shall go on talking.”

“You had better go to bed.”

“No. I couldn’t lie quiet.” And Mr. Huss proceeded to name his guests to

Dr. Barrack, who nodded shortly to each of them in turn, and said:

“Pleased-t-meet you.” His face betrayed no excess of pleasure. His eye

was hard. He remained standing, as if waiting for them to display

symptoms.

“Our discussion has wandered far,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Our original

business here was to determine the future development of Woldingstanton

School, which we think should be made more practical and technical than

hitherto, and less concerned with history and philosophy than it has

been under Mr. Huss. (Won’t you sit down, Doctor?)”

The doctor sat down, still watching Sir Eliphaz with hard intelligence.

“Well, we have drifted from that,” Sir Eliphaz continued.

“Not so far as you may think,” said Mr. Huss.

“At any rate Mr. Huss has been regaling us with a discourse upon the

miseries of life, how we are all eaten up by parasites and utterly

wretched, and how everything is wretched and this an accursed world

ruled either by a cruel God or a God so careless as to be practically no

God at all.”

“Nice stuff for nineteen eighteen _A.D._,” said Mr. Dad, putting much

meaning into the “A.D.”

“Since I left Woldingstanton and came here,” said Mr. Huss, “I have done

little else but think. I have not slept during the night, I have had

nothing to occupy me during the day, and I have been thinking about

fundamental things. I have been forced to revise my faith, and to look

more closely than I have ever done before into the meaning of my beliefs

and into my springs of action. I have been wrenched away from that

habitual confidence in the order of things which seemed the more natural

state for a mind to be in. But that has only widened a difference that

already existed between me and these three gentlemen, and that was

showing very plainly in the days when success still justified my grip

upon Woldingstanton. Suddenly, swiftly, I have had misfortune following

upon misfortune—without cause or justification. I am thrown now into the

darkest doubt and dismay; the universe seems harsh and black to me;

whereas formerly I believed that at the core of it and universally

pervading it was the Will of a God of Light.... I have always denied,

even when my faith was undimmed, that the God of Righteousness ruled

this world in detail and entirely, giving us day by day our daily

rewards and punishments. These gentlemen on the contrary do believe

that. They say that God does rule the world traceably and directly, and

that success is the measure of his approval and pain and suffering the

fulfilment of unrighteousness. And as for what has this to do with

education—it has all to do with education. You can settle no practical

questions until you have settled such disputes as this. Before you can

prepare boys to play their part in the world you must ask what is this

world for which you prepare them; is it a tragedy or comedy? What is the

nature of this drama in which they are to play?”

Dr. Barrack indicated that this statement was noted and approved.

“For clearly,” said Mr. Huss, “if success is the justification of life

you must train for success. There is no need for men to understand life,

then, so long as they do their job in it. That is the opinion of these

governors of mine. It has been the opinion of most men of the

world—always. Obey the Thing that Is! that is the lesson they would have

taught to my boys. Acquiesce. Life for them is not an adventure, not a

struggle, but simply obedience and the enjoyment of rewards.... That,

Dr. Barrack, is what such a technical education as they want set up at

Woldingstanton really means....

“But I have believed always and taught always that what God demands from

man is his utmost effort to co-operate and understand. I have taught the

imagination, first and most; I have made knowledge, knowledge of what

man is and what man’s world is and what man may be, which is the

adventure of mankind, the substance of all my teaching. At

Woldingstanton I have taught philosophy; I have taught the whole history

of mankind. If I could not have done that without leaving chemistry and

physics, mathematics and languages out of the curriculum altogether I

would have left them out. And you see why, Dr. Barrack.”

“I see your position certainly,” said Dr. Barrack.

“And now that my heavens are darkened, now that my eyes have been opened

to the wretchedness, futility and horror in the texture of life, I still

cling, I cling more than ever, to the spirit of righteousness within me.

If there is no God, no mercy, no human kindliness in the great frame of

space and time, if life is a writhing torment, an itch upon one little

planet, and the stars away there in the void no more than huge empty

flares, signifying nothing, then all the brighter shines the flame of

God in my heart. If the God in my heart is no son of any heavenly father

then is he Prometheus the rebel; it does not shake my faith that he is

the Master for whom I will live and die. And all the more do I cling to

this fire of human tradition we have lit upon this little planet, if it

is the one gleam of spirit in all the windy vastness of a dead and empty

universe.”

Dr. Barrack seemed about to interrupt with some comment, and then, it

was manifest, deferred his interpolation.

“Loneliness and littleness,” said Mr. Huss, “harshness in the skies

above and in the texture of all things. If so it is that things are, so

we must see them. Every baby in its mother’s arms feels safe in a safe

creation; every child in its home. Many men and women have lived and

died happy in that illusion of security. But this war has torn away the

veil of illusion from millions of men.... Mankind is coming of age. We

can see life at last for what it is and what it is not. Here we spin

upon a ball of rock and nickel-steel, upon which a film of water, a few

score miles of air, lie like the bloom upon a plum. All about that ball

is space unfathomable; all the suns and stars are mere grains of matter

scattered through a vastness that is otherwise utterly void. To that

thin bloom upon a particle we are confined; if we tunnel down into the

earth, presently it is too hot for us to live; if we soar five miles

into the air we freeze, the blood runs out of our vessels into our

lungs, we die suffocated and choked with blood....

“Out of the litter of muds and gravels that make the soil of the world

we have picked some traces of the past of our race and the past of life.

In our observatories and laboratories we have gleaned some hints of its

future. We have a vision of the opening of the story, but the first

pages we cannot read. We discover life, a mere stir amidst the mud,

creeping along the littoral of warm and shallow seas in the brief nights

and days of a swiftly rotating earth. We follow through vast ages the

story of life’s extension into the waters, and its invasion of the air

and land. Plants creep upon the land and raise themselves by stems

towards the sun; a few worms and crustaceans follow, insects appear; and

at length come our amphibious ancestors, breathing air by means of a

swimming bladder used as a lung. From the first the land animals are

patched-up creatures. They eke out the fish ear they inherit by means of

an ear drum made out of a gill slit. You can trace scale and fin in bone

and limb. At last this green scum of vegetable life with the beasts

entangled in its meshes creeps in the form of forests over the hills;

grass spreads across the plains, and great animals follow it out into

the open. What does it all signify? No more than green moss spreading

over an old tile. Steadily the earth cools and the day lengthens.

Through long ages of warmth and moisture the wealth of unmeaning life

increases; come ages of chill and retrocession, glacial periods, and

periods when whole genera and orders die out. Comes man at last, the

destroyer, the war-maker, setting fire to the world, burning the

forests, exhausting the earth. What hope has he in the end? Always the

day drags longer and longer and always the sun radiates its energy away.

A time will come when the sun will glow dull red in the heavens, shorn

of all its beams, and neither rising nor setting. A day will come when

the earth will be as dead and frozen as the moon.... A spirit in our

hearts, the God of mankind, cries ‘No!’ but is there any voice outside

us in all the cold and empty universe that echoes that ‘No’?”

§ 2

“Ah, Mr. Huss, Mr. Huss!” said Sir Eliphaz.

His eye seemed seeking some point of attachment, and found it at last in

the steel engraving of Queen Victoria giving a Bible to a dusky

potentate, which adorned the little parlour.

“Your sickness colours your vision,” said Sir Eliphaz. “What you say is

so profoundly true and so utterly false. Mysteriously evolved, living as

you say in a mere bloom of air and moisture upon this tiny planet, how

could we exist, how could we continue, were we not sustained in every

moment by the Mercy and Wisdom of God? The flimsier life is, the greater

the wonder of his Providence. Not a sparrow,” said Sir Eliphaz, and then

enlarging the metaphor with a boom in his voice, “not a hair of my head,

falls to the ground without His knowledge and consent.... I am a man

much occupied. I cannot do the reading I would. But while you have been

reviling the works of God I have been thinking of some wonders....”

Sir Eliphaz lifted up a hand with thumb and finger opposed, as though he

held some exquisite thing therein.

“The human eye,” said Sir Eliphaz, with an intensity of appreciation

that brought tears to his own....

“The cross-fertilization of plants....

“The marvellous transformations of the higher insects....

“The highly elaborate wing scales of the Lepidoptera.

“The mercy that tempers the wind to the shorn lamb....

“The dark warm marvels of embryology; the order and rhythm and obedience

with which the cells of the fertilized ovum divide to build up the

perfect body of a living thing, yea, even of a human being—in God’s

image. First there is one cell, then two; the process of division is

extremely beautiful and is called, I believe, _karyokinesis_; then after

the two come four, each knows his part, each divides certainly and

marvellously; eight, sixteen, thirty-two.... Each of those thirty-two

cells is a complete thirty-second part of a man. Presently this cell

says, ‘I become a hair’; this, ‘a blood corpuscle,’ this ‘a cell in the

brain of a man, to mirror the universe.’ Each goes to his own appointed

place....

“Would that we could do the like!” said Sir Eliphaz.

“Then consider water,” said Sir Eliphaz. “I am not deeply versed in

physical science, but there are certain things about water that fill me

with wonder and amaze. All other liquids contract when they solidify.

With one or two exceptions—useful in the arts. Water expands. Now water

is a non-conductor of heat, and if water contracted and became heavier

when it became ice, it would sink to the bottom of the polar seas and

remain there unmelted. More ice would sink down to it, until all the

ocean was ice and life ceased. But water does not do so. No!... Were it

not for the vapour of water, which catches and entangles the sun’s heat,

this world would scorch by day and freeze by night. Mercy upon mercy, I

myself,” said Sir Eliphaz in tones of happy confession, “am ninety per

cent. water.... We all are....

“And think how mercifully winter is tempered to us by the snow! When

water freezes in the air in winter-time, it does not come pelting down

as lumps of ice. Conceivably it might, and then where should we be? But

it belongs to the hexagonal system—a system prone to graceful

frameworks. It crystallizes into the most delicate and beautiful lace of

six-rayed crystals—wonderful under the microscope. They flake

delicately. They lie loosely one upon another. Out of ice is woven a

warm garment like wool, white like wool because like wool it is full of

air—a warm garment for bud and shoot....

“Then again—you revile God for the parasites he sends. But are they not

sent to teach us a great moral lesson? Each one for himself and God for

us all. Not so the parasites. They choose a life of base dependence.

With that comes physical degeneration, swift and sure. They are the

Socialists of nature. They lose their limbs. They lose colour, become

blenched, unappetising beings, vile creatures of sloth—often

microscopic. Do they not urge us by their shameful lives to self help

and exertion? Yet even parasites have a use! I am told that were it not

for parasitic bacteria man could not digest his food. A lichen again is

made up of an alga and a fungus, mutually parasitic. That is called

symbiosis—living together for a mutual benefit. Maybe every one of those

thousands of parasites you deem so horrible is working its way upward

towards an arrangement—”

Sir Eliphaz weighed his words: “Some mutually advantageous arrangement

with its host. A paying guest.

“And finally,” said Sir Eliphaz, with the roll of distant thunder in his

voice, “think of the stately procession of life upon the earth, through

a myriad of forms the glorious crescendo of evolution, up to its climax,

man. What a work is man! The paragon of creation, the microcosm of the

cosmos, the ultimate birth of time.... And you would have us doubt the

guiding hand!”

He ceased with a gesture.

Mr. Dad made a noise like responses in church.

§ 3

“A certain beauty in the world is no mark of God’s favour,” said Mr.

Huss. “There is no beauty one may not balance by an equal ugliness. The

wart-hog and the hyæna, the tapeworm and the stinkhorn, are equally

God’s creations. Nothing you have said points to anything but a cold

indifference towards us of this order in which we live. Beauty happens;

it is not given. Pain, suffering, happiness; there is no heed. Only in

the heart of man burns the fire of righteousness.”

For a time Mr. Huss was silent. Then he went on answering Sir Eliphaz.

“You spoke of the wonder of the cross-fertilization of plants. But do

you not know that half these curious and elaborate adaptations no longer

work? Scarcely was their evolution completed before the special need

that produced them ceased. Half the intricate flowers you see are as

futile as the ruins of Palmyra. They are self-fertilized or

wind-fertilized. The transformation of the higher insects which give us

our gnats and wasps, our malaria and apple-maggots in due season, are a

matter for human astonishment rather than human gratitude. If there is

any design in these strange and intricate happenings, surely it is the

design of a misplaced and inhuman ingenuity. The scales of the

lepidoptera, again, have wasted their glittering splendours for millions

of years. If they were meant for man, why do the most beautiful species

fly by night in the tropical forests? As for the human eye, oculists and

opticians are scarcely of your opinion. You hymn the peculiar properties

of water that make life possible. They make it possible. Do they make it

other than it is?

“You have talked of the marvels of embryonic growth in the egg. I admit

the wonderful precision of the process; but how does it touch my doubts?

Rather it confuses them, as though the God who rules the world ruled not

so much in love as in irony. Wonderfully indeed do the cells divide and

the chromoplasts of the division slide along their spindle lines. They

divide not as if a divine hand guided them but with remorseless logic,

with the pitiless consistency of a mathematical process. They divide and

marshal themselves and turn this way and that, to make an idiot, to make

a congenital cripple. Millions of such miracles pile up—and produce the

swaying drunkard at the pot-house door.

“You talk of the crescendo of evolution, of the first beginnings of

life, and how the scheme unfolds until it culminates in us—_us_, here,

under these circumstances, you and Mr. Dad and Farr and me—waiting for

the knife. Would that I could see any such crescendo! I see change

indeed and change and change, without plan and without heart. Consider

for example the migrations of birds across the Mediterranean, and the

tragic absurdity of its incidents. Ages ago, and for long ages, there

stretched continuous land connexions from Africa to Europe. Then the

instinct was formed; the birds flew over land from the heated south to

the northern summer to build and breed. Slowly age by age the seas crept

over those necks of land. Those linking tracts have been broken now for

a hundred thousand years, and yet over a constantly widening sea, in

which myriads perish exhausted, instinct, blind and pitiless, still

drives those birds. And again think of those vain urgencies for some

purpose long since forgotten, that drive the swarming lemmings to their

fate. And look at man, your evolution’s crown; consider his want of

balance, the invalidism of his women, the extravagant disproportion of

his desires. Consider the Record of the Rocks honestly and frankly, and

where can you trace this crescendo you suggest? There have been great

ages of marvellous tree-ferns and wonderful forest swamps, and all those

glorious growths have died. They did not go on; they reached a climax

and died; another sort of plant succeeded them. Then think of all that

wonderful fauna of the Mesozoic times, the age of Leviathan; the

theriodonts, reptilian beasts, the leaping dinosaurs, the mososaurs and

suchlike monsters of the deep, the bat-winged pterodactyls, the

plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Think of the marvels of the Mesozoic seas;

the thousands of various ammonites, the wealth of fish life. Across all

that world of life swept death, as the wet fingers of a child wipe a

drawing from a slate. They left no descendants, they clambered to a vast

variety and complexity and ceased. The dawn of the Eocene was the bleak

dawn of a denuded world. Crescendo if you will, but thereafter

diminuendo, pianissimo. And then once again from fresh obscure starting

points far down the stem life swelled, and swelled again, only to

dwindle. The world we live in to-day is a meagre spectacle beside the

abundance of the earlier Tertiary time, when Behemoth in a thousand

forms, Deinotherium, Titanotherium, Helladotherium, sabre-toothed tiger,

a hundred sorts of elephant, and the like, pushed through the jungles

that are now this mild world of to-day. Where is _that_ crescendo now?

Crescendo! Through those long ages our ancestors were hiding under

leaves and climbing into trees to be out of the way of the crescendo. As

the _motif_ of a crescendo they sang exceedingly small. And now for a

little while the world is ours, and we wax in our turn. To what good? To

what end? Tell me, you who say the world is good, tell me the end. How

can we escape at last the common fate under the darkling sky of a frozen

world?”

He paused for some moments, weary with speaking.

“There is no comfort,” he said, “in the flowers or the stars; no

assurance in the past and no sure hope in the future. There is nothing

but the God of faith and courage in the hearts of men.... And He gives

no sign of power, no earnest of victory.... He gives no sign....”

Whereupon Sir Eliphaz breathed the word: “_Immortality!_”

“Let me say a word or two upon Immortality,” said Sir Eliphaz, breaking

suddenly into eagerness, “for that, I presume, is the thing we have

forgotten. That, I see, is the difference between us and you, Mr. Huss;

that is why we can sit here, content to play our partial rôles, knowing

full surely that some day the broken lines and inconsecutivenesses that

perplex us in this life will all be revealed and resolved into their

perfect circles, while you to whom this earthly life is all and final,

you must needs be a rebel, you must needs preach a doctrine between

defiance and despair.... If indeed death ended all! _Ah!_ Then indeed

you might claim that reason was on your side. The afflictions of man are

very many. Why should I deny it?”

The patentee and chief proprietor of the Temanite blocks paused for a

moment.

“Yes,” he said, peering up through his eyebrows at the sky, “that is the

real issue. Blind to that, you are blind to everything.”

“I don’t know whether I am with you on this question of immortality, Sir

Eliphaz,” warned Dr. Barrack, coughing shortly.

“For my part I’m altogether with him,” said Mr. Dad. “If there is no

immortal life—well, what’s the good of being temperate and decent and

careful for five and fifty years?”

Sir Eliphaz had decided now to drop all apologetics for the scheme of

Nature.

“A place of trial, a place of stimulus and training,” he said, “_Respice

finem._ The clues are all—beyond.”

“But if you really consider this world as a place for soul making,” said

Mr. Huss, “what do you think you are doing when you propose to turn

Woldingstanton over to Farr?”

“At any rate,” said Farr tartly, “we do not want soul-blackening and

counsels of despair at Woldingstanton. We want the boys taught to serve

and help first in this lowly economic sphere, cheerfully and

enterprisingly, and then in higher things, before they pass on—”

“If death ends all, then what is the good of trying?” Mr. Dad said,

still brooding over the question. “If I thought that—!”

He added with deep conviction, “I should let myself go.... Anyone

would.”

He blew heavily, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sat more deeply in

his chair, an indignant man, a business man asked to give up something

for nothing.

For a moment the little gathering hung, only too manifestly

contemplating the spectacle of Mr. Dad amidst wine, women, and

waistcoats without restraint, letting himself go, eating, drinking, and

rejoicing, being a perfect devil, because on the morrow he had to

die....

“Immortal,” said Mr. Huss. “I did not expect immortality to come into

this discussion....

“Are _you_ immortal, Farr?” he asked abruptly.

“I hope so,” said Mr. Farr. “Unworthy though I be.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Huss. “And so that is the way out for us. You and I,

Mr. Dad from his factory, and Sir Eliphaz from his building office, are

to soar. It is all arranged for us, and that is why the tragic greatness

of life is to be hidden from my boys....

“Yet even so,” continued Mr. Huss, “I do not see why you should be so

anxious for technical science and so hostile to the history of mankind.”

“Because it is not a true history,” said Sir Eliphaz, his hair waving

about like the hair of a man electrified by fresh ideas. “Because it is

a bunch of loose ends that are really not ends at all, but only

beginnings that pass suddenly into the unseen. I admit that in this

world nothing is rationalized, nothing is clearly just. I admit

everything you say. But the reason? The reason? Because this life is

only the first page of the great book we have to read. We sit here, Mr.

Huss, like men in a waiting-room.... All this life is like waiting

outside, in a place of some disorder, before being admitted to the wider

reality, the larger sphere, where all the cruelties, all these

confusions, everything—will be explained, justified—and set right.”

He paused, and then perceiving that Mr. Huss was about to speak he

resumed, raising his voice slightly.

“And I do not speak without my book in these matters,” he said. “I have

been greatly impressed—and, what is more, Lady Burrows has been greatly

impressed, by the writings of two thoroughly scientific men, two

thoroughly scientific men, Dr. Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Ever

since she lost her younger sister early in life Lady Burrows has

followed up this interest. It has been a great consolation to her. And

the point is, as Sir Oliver insists in that wonderful book ‘Raymond,’

that continued existence in another world is as proven now as the atomic

theory in chemistry. It is not a matter of faith, but knowledge. The

partition is breached at last. We are in communication. News is coming

through.... Scientific certainty....”

Sir Eliphaz cleared his throat. “We have already evidences and

descriptions of the life into which we shall pass. Remember this is no

idle talk, no deception by Sludges and the like; it is a great English

scientific man who publishes these records; it is a great French

philosopher, no less a man than that wonderful thinker—and _how_ he

thinks!—Professor Bergson, who counselled their publication. A glory of

science and a glory of philosophy combine to reassure us. We walk at

last upon a path of fact into that further world. We know already much.

We know, for example, that those who have passed over to that higher

plane have bodies still. That I found—comforting. Without that—one would

feel _bleak_. But, the messages say, the internal organs are constituted

differently. Naturally. As one would have expected. The dietary is, I

gather, practically non-existent. Needless. As the outline is the same

the space is, I presume, used for other purposes. Some sort of astral

storage.... They do not bleed. An interesting fact. Lady Burrows’ sister

is now practically bloodless. And her teeth—she had lost several, she

suffered greatly with her teeth—her teeth have all been replaced—a

beautiful set. Used now only for articulate speech.”

“‘Raymond’ all over again,” said the doctor.

“You have read the book!” said Sir Eliphaz.

The doctor grunted in a manner that mingled assent and disapproval. His

expression betrayed the scientific bigot.

“We know now _details_ of the passage,” said Sir Eliphaz. “We have some

particulars. We know, for instance, that people blown to pieces take

some little time to reconstitute. There is a correlation between this

corruptible body and the spirit body that replaces it. There is a sort

of spirit doctor over there, very helpful in such cases. And burnt

bodies, too, are a trouble.... The sexes are still distinct, but all the

coarseness of sex is gone. The passions fade in that better world. Every

passion. Even the habit of smoking and the craving for alcohol fade. Not

at first. The newly dead will sometimes ask for a cigar. They are given

cigars, higher-plane cigars, and they do not ask for more. There are no

children born there. Nothing of that sort. That, it is very important to

understand. _Here_ is the place of birth; this is where lives begin.

This coarse little planet is the seed-bed of life. When it has served

its purpose and populated those higher planes, then indeed it may

freeze, as you say. A mere empty hull. A seed-case that has served its

purpose, mattering nothing. These are the thoughts, the comforting and

beautiful thoughts, that receive the endorsement of our highest

scientific and philosophical intelligences.... One thinks of that life

there, no doubt in some other dimension of space, that world arranged in

_planes_—metaphorical planes, of course, in which people go to and fro,

living in a sort of houses, surrounded by a sort of beautiful things,

made, so we are told, from the smells of the things we have here. That

is curious, but not irrational. Our favorite doggies will be there.

Sublimated also. That thought has been a great comfort to Lady

Burrows.... We had a dog called Fido, a leetle, teeny fellow—practically

human....

“These blessed ones engage very largely in conversation. Other

occupations I found difficult to trace. Raymond attended a sort of

reception on the very highest plane. It was a special privilege. Perhaps

a compliment to Sir Oliver. He met the truth of revealed religion, so to

speak, personally. It was a wonderful moment. Sir Oliver suppresses the

more solemn details. Lady Burrows intends to write to him. She is

anxious for particulars. But I will not dilate,” said Sir Eliphaz. “I

will not dilate.”

“And you believe this _stuff_?” said the doctor in tones of the deepest

disgust.

Sir Eliphaz waved himself upon the questioner.

“So far as poor earthly expressions can body forth spiritual things,” he

hedged.

He regarded his colleagues with an eye of florid defiance. Both Mr. Farr

and Mr. Dad had slightly shamefaced expressions, and Mr. Dad’s ears were

red.

Mr. Dad cleared his throat. “I’m sure there’s something in it—anyhow,”

said Mr. Dad hoarsely, doing his best in support.

“If I was born with a hare lip,” said the doctor, “would _that_ be put

right? Do congenital idiots get sublimated? What becomes of a dog one

has shot for hydrophobia?”

“To all of such questions,” said Sir Eliphaz serenely, “the answer

is—_we don’t know_. Why should we?”

§ 4

Mr. Huss seemed lost in meditation. His pale and sunken face and

crumpled pose contrasted strongly with the bristling intellectual

rectitude and mounting choler of Dr. Elihu Barrack.

“No, Sir Eliphaz,” said Mr. Huss, and sighed.

“No,” he repeated.

“What a poor phantom of a world these people conjure up! What a mockery

of loss and love! The very mothers and lovers who mourn their dead will

not believe their foolish stories. Restoration! It is a crowning

indignity. It makes me think of nothing in the world but my dear boy’s

body, broken and crumpled, and some creature, half fool and half

impostor, sitting upon it, getting between it and me, and talking cheap

rubbish over it about planes of being and astral bodies....

“After all, you teach me, Sir Eliphaz, that life, for all its grossness

and pain and horror, is not so bad as it might be—if such things as this

were true. But it needs no sifting of the evidence to know they are

untrue. No sane man believes this stuff for ten minutes together. It is

impossible to believe it....”

Dr. Elihu Barrack applauded. Sir Eliphaz acted a fine self-restraint.

“They are contrary to the texture of everything we know,” said Mr. Huss.

“They are less convincing than the wildest dreams. By pain, by desire,

by muscular effort, by the feeling of sunshine or of rain in the face,

by their sense of justice and suchlike essential things do men test the

reality of appearances before them. This certainly is no reality. It has

none of the _feel_ of reality. I will not even argue about it. It is

thrust now upon a suffering world as comfort, and even as comfort for

people stunned and uncritical with grief it fails. You and Lady Burrows

may be pleased to think that somehow you two, with your teeth restored

and your complexions rejuvenated, will meet again the sublimation of

your faithful Fido. At any rate, thank God for that, I know clearly that

so I shall never meet my son. Never! He has gone from me....”

For some moments mental and physical suffering gripped him, and he could

not speak; but his purpose to continue was so manifested by sweating

face and gripping hand that no one spoke until he spoke again.

“Now let me speak plainly about Immortality. For surely I stand nearest

to that possibility of all of us here. Immortality, then, is no such

dodging away as you imagine, from this strange world which is so

desolating, so dreadful, so inexplicable—and at times so utterly lonely.

There may be a God in the universe or there may not be.... God, if he

exists, can be terribly silent.... But if there is a God, he is a

coherent God. If there is a God above and in the scheme of things, then

not only you and I and my dead son, but the crushed frog and the

trampled anthill _signify_. On that the God in my heart insists. There

has to be an answer, not only to the death of my son but to the dying

penguin roasted alive for a farthing’s worth of oil. There must be an

answer to the men who go in ships to do such things. There has to be a

justification for all the filth and wretchedness of louse and fluke. I

will not have you slipping by on the other side, chattering of planes of

living and sublimated atoms, while there is a drunken mother or a man

dying of cholera in this world. I will not hear of a God who is just a

means for getting away. Whatever foulness and beastliness there is, you

must square God with that. Or there is no universal God, but only a

coldness, a vast cruel difference....

“I would not make my peace with such a God if I could....

“I tell you of these black and sinister realities, and what do you

reply? That it is all right, because after death we shall get away from

them. Why! if presently I go down under the surgeon’s knife, down out of

this hot and weary world, and then find myself being put together by a

spirit doctor in this _beyond_ of yours, waking up to a new world of

amiable conversations and artificial flowers, having my hair restored

and the gaps among my teeth filled up, I shall feel like someone who has

deserted his kind, who has sneaked from a sickroom into a party....

Well—my infection will go with me. I shall talk of nothing but the

tragedy out of which I have come—which still remains—which

continues—tragedy.

“And yet I believe in Immortality!”

Dr. Barrack, who had hitherto been following Mr. Huss with evident

approval, started, sounded a note of surprise and protest, and fixed

accusing eyes upon him. For the moment he did not interrupt.

“But it is not I that am immortal, but the God within me. All this

personal immortality of which you talk is a mockery of our

personalities. What is there personal in us that can live? What makes us

our very selves? It is all a matter of little mean things, small

differences, slight defects. Where does personal love grip?—on just

these petty things.... Oh! dearly and bitterly did I love my son, and

what is it that my heart most craves for now? His virtues? No! His

ambitions? His achievements?... No! none of these things.... But for a

certain queer flush among his freckles, for a kind of high crack in his

voice ... a certain absurd hopefulness in his talk ... the sound of his

footsteps, a little halt there was in the rhythm of them. These are the

things we long for. These are the things that wring the heart.... But

all these things are just the mortal things, just the defects that would

be touched out upon this higher plane you talk about. You would give him

back to me smoothed and polished and regularized. So, I grant, it must

be if there is to be this higher plane. But what does it leave of

personal distinction? What does it leave of personal love?

“When my son has had his defects smoothed away, then he will be like all

sons. When the older men have been ironed out, they will be like the

younger men. There is no personality in hope and honour and

righteousness and truth.... My son has gone. He has gone for evermore.

The pain may some day go.... The immortal thing in us is the least

personal thing. It is not you nor I who go on living; it is Man that

lives on, Man the Universal, and he goes on living, a tragic rebel in

this same world and in no other....”

Mr. Huss leant back in his chair.

“There burns an undying fire in the hearts of men. By that fire I live.

By that I know the God of my Salvation. His will is Truth; His will is

Service. He urges me to conflict, without consolations, without rewards.

He takes and does not restore. He uses up and does not atone. He

suffers—perhaps to triumph, and we must suffer and find our hope of

triumph in Him. He will not let me shut my eyes to sorrow, failure, or

perplexity. Though the universe torment and slay me, yet will I trust in

Him. And if He also must die—Nevertheless I can do no more; I must serve

Him....”

He ceased. For some moments no one spoke, silenced by his intensity.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

ELIHU REPROVES JOB

§ 1

“I don’t know how all this strikes you,” said Mr. Farr, turning suddenly

upon Dr. Barrack.

“Well—it’s interestin’,” said Dr. Barrack, leaning forward upon his

folded arms upon the table, and considering his words carefully.

“It’s interestin’,” he repeated. “I don’t know how far you want to hear

what I think about it. I’m rather a downright person.”

Sir Eliphaz with great urbanity motioned him to speak on.

“There’s been, if you’ll forgive me, nonsense upon both sides.”

He turned to Sir Eliphaz. “This Spook stuff,” he said, and paused and

compressed his lips and shook his head.

“It won’t do.

“I have given some little attention to the evidences in that matter. I’m

something of a psychologist—a doctor has to be. Of course, Sir Eliphaz,

you’re not responsible for all the nonsense you have been talking about

sublimated bricks and spook dogs made of concentrated smell.”

Sir Eliphaz was convulsed. “Tut, tut!” he said. “But indeed—!”

“No offence, Sir Eliphaz! If you don’t want me to talk I won’t; but if

you do, then I must say what I have in my mind. And as I say, I don’t

hold you responsible for the things you have been saying. All this cheap

medium stuff has been shot upon the world by Sir Oliver J. Lodge, handed

out by him to people distraught with grief, in a great fat

impressive-looking volume.... No end of them have tried their utmost to

take it seriously.... It’s been a pitiful business.... I’ve no doubt the

man is honest after his lights, but what lights they are! Obstinate

credulity posing as liberalism. He takes every pretence and dodge of

these mediums, he accepts their explanations, he edits their babble and

rearranges it to make it seem striking. Look at his critical ability!

Because many of the mediums are fairly respectable people who either

make no money by their—revelations, or at most a very ordinary

living—it’s a guinea a go, I believe, usually—he insists upon their

honesty. That’s his key blunder. Any doctor could tell him, as I could

have told him after my first year’s practice, that telling the truth is

the very last triumph of the human mind. Hardly any of my patients tell

the truth—ever. It isn’t only that they haven’t a tithe of the critical

ability and detachment necessary, they haven’t any real desire to tell

the truth. They want to produce effects. Human beings are artistic

still; they aren’t beginning to be scientific. Either they minimize or

they exaggerate. We all do. If I saw a cat run over outside and I came

in here to tell you about it, I should certainly touch up the story,

make it more dramatic, hurt the cat more, make the dray bigger and so

on. I should want to justify my telling the story. Put a woman in that

chair there, tell her to close her eyes and feel odd, and she’ll feel

odd right enough; tell her to produce words and sentences that she finds

in her head and she’ll produce them; give her half a hint that it comes

from eastern Asia and the stuff will begin to correspond to her ideas of

pigeon English. It isn’t that she is cunningly and elaborately deceiving

you. It is that she wants to come up to your expectation. You are

focussing your interest on her, and all human beings like to have

interest focussed on them, so long as it isn’t too hostile. She’ll cling

to that interest all she knows how. She’ll cling instinctively. Most of

these mediums never held the attention of a roomful of people in their

lives until they found out this way of doing it.... What can you

expect?”

Dr. Barrack cleared his throat. “But all that’s beside the question,” he

said. “Don’t think that because I reject all this spook stuff, I’m

setting up any finality for the science we have to-day. It’s just a

little weak squirt of knowledge—all the science in the world. I grant

you there may be forces, I would almost say there must be forces in the

world, forces universally present, of which we still know nothing. Take

the case of electricity. What did men know of electricity in the days of

Gilbert? Practically nothing. In the early Neolithic age I doubt if any

men had ever noticed there was such a thing as air. I grant you that

most things are still unknown. Things perhaps right under our noses. But

that doesn’t help the case of Sir Eliphaz one little bit. These unknown

things, as they become known, will join on to the things we do know.

They’ll complicate or perhaps simplify our ideas, but they won’t

contradict our general ideas. They’ll be things in the system. They

won’t get you out of the grip of the arguments Mr. Huss has brought

forward. So far, so far as concerns _your_ Immortality, Sir Eliphaz, I

am, you see, entirely with Mr. Huss. It’s a fancy; it’s a dream. As a

fancy it’s about as pretty as creaking boards at bedtime; as a dream—.

It’s unattractive. As Mr. Huss has said.

“But when it comes to Mr. Huss and _his_ Immortality then I find myself

with you, gentlemen. That too is a dream. Less than a dream. Less even

than a fancy; it’s a play on words. Here is this Undying Flame, this

Spirit of God in man; it’s in him, he says, it’s in you, Sir Eliphaz,

it’s in you, Mr.—Dad, wasn’t it? it’s in this other gentleman whose name

I didn’t quite catch; and it’s in me. Well, it’s extraordinary that none

of us know of it except Mr. Huss. How you feel about it I don’t know,

but personally I object to being made part of God and one with Mr. Huss

without my consent in this way. I prefer to remain myself. That may be

egotism, but I am by nature an egotistical creature. And Agnostic....

“You’ve got me talking now, and I may as well go through with it. What

is an Agnostic really? A man who accepts fully the limitations of the

human intelligence, who takes the world as he finds it, and who takes

himself as he finds himself and declines to go further. There may be

other universes and dimensions galore. There may be a fourth dimension,

for example, and, if you like, a fifth dimension and a sixth dimension

and any number of other dimensions. They don’t concern me. I live in

this universe and in three dimensions, and I have no more interest in

all these other universes and dimensions than a bug under the wallpaper

has in the deep, deep sea. Possibly there are bugs under the wallpaper

with a kind of reasoned consciousness of the existence of the deep, deep

sea, and a half belief that when at last the Keating’s powder gets them,

thither they will go. I—if I may have one more go at the image—just live

under the wallpaper....

“I am an Agnostic, I say. I have had my eyes pretty well open at the

universe since I came into it six and thirty years ago. And not only

have I never seen nor heard of nor smelt nor touched a ghost or spirit,

Sir Eliphaz, but I have never seen a gleam or sign of this Providence,

the Great God of the World of yours, or of this other minor and modern

God that Mr. Huss has taken up. In the hearts of men I have found

malformations, ossifications, clots, and fatty degeneration; but never a

God.

“You will excuse me if I speak plainly to you, gentlemen, but this

gentleman, whose name I haven’t somehow got—”

“Farr.”

“Mr. Farr, has brought it down on himself and you. He called me in, and

I am interested in these questions. It’s clear to me that since we exist

there’s something in all this. But what it is I’m convinced I haven’t

the ganglia even to begin to understand. I decline either the wild

guesses of the Spookist and Providentialist—I must put you there, I’m

afraid, Sir Eliphaz—or the metaphors of Mr. Huss. Fact....”

Dr. Barrack paused. “I put my faith in Fact.”

“There’s a lot in Fact,” said Mr. Dad, who found much that was congenial

in the doctor’s downright style.

“What do I see about me?” asked Dr. Barrack. “A struggle for existence.

About that I ask a very plain and simple question: why try to get behind

it? That is It. It made me. I study it and watch it. It put me up like a

cockshy, and it keeps on trying to destroy me. I do my best to dodge its

blows. It got my leg. My head is bloody but unbowed. I reproduce my

kind—as abundantly as circumstances permit—I stamp myself upon the

universe as much as possible. If I am right, if I do the right things

and have decently good luck, I shall hold out until my waning instincts

dispose me to rest. My breed and influence are the marks of my

rightness. What else is there? You may call this struggle what you like.

God, if you like. But God for me is an anthropomorphic idea. Call it The

Process.”

“Why not Evolution?” said Mr. Huss.

“I prefer The Process. The word Evolution rather begs the moral

question. It’s a cheap word. ‘Shon!’ Evolution seems to suggest just a

simple and automatic unfolding. The Process is complex; it has its ups

and downs—as Mr. Huss understands. It is more like a Will than an

Automaton. A Will feeling about. It isn’t indifferent to us as Mr. Huss

suggests; it uses us. It isn’t subordinate to us as Sir Eliphaz would

have us believe; playing the part of a Providence just for our comfort

and happiness. Some of us are hammer and some of us are anvil, some of

us are sparks and some of us are the beaten stuff which survives. The

Process doesn’t confide in us; why should it? We learn what we can about

it, and make what is called a practical use of it, for that is what the

will in the Process requires.”

Mr. Dad, stirred by the word ‘practical,’ made a noise of assent. But

not a very confident noise: a loan rather than a gift.

“And that is where it seems to me Mr. Huss goes wrong altogether. He

does not submit himself to those Realities. He sets up something called

the Spirit in Man, or the God in his Heart, to judge them. He wants to

judge the universe by the standards of the human intelligence at its

present stage of development. That’s where I fall out with him. These

are not fixed standards. Man goes on developing and evolving. Some

things offend the sense of justice in Mr. Huss, but that is no enduring

criterion of justice; the human sense of justice has developed out of

something different, and it will develop again into something different.

Like everything else in us, it has been produced by the Process and it

will be modified by the Process. Some things, again, he says are not

beautiful. There also he would condemn. But nothing changes like the

sense of beauty. A band of art students can start a new movement,

cubist, vorticist, or what not, and change your sense of beauty. If

seeing things as beautiful conduces to survival, we shall see them as

beautiful sooner or later, rest assured. I daresay the hyenas admire

each other—in the rutting season anyhow.... So it is with mercy and with

everything. Each creature has its own standards. After man is the

Beyond-Man, who may find mercy folly, who may delight in things that

pain our feeble spirits. We have to obey the Process in our own place

and our own time. That is how I see things. That is the stark truth of

the universe looked at plainly and hard.”

The lips of Mr. Dad repeated noiselessly: “plainly and hard.” But he

felt very uncertain.

For some moments the doctor sat with his forearms resting on the table

as if he had done. Then he resumed.

“I gather that this talk here to-day arose out of a discussion about

education.”

“You’d hardly believe it,” said Mr. Dad.

But Dr. Barrack’s next remark checked Mr. Dad’s growing approval. “That

seems perfectly logical to me. It’s one of the things I can never

understand about schoolmasters and politicians and suchlike, the way

they seem to take it for granted you can educate and not bring in

religion and socialism and all your beliefs. What _is_ education?

Teaching young people to talk and read and write and calculate in order

that they may be told how they stand in the world and what we think we

and the world generally are up to, and the part we expect them to play

in the game. Well, how can we do that and at the same time leave it all

out? What _is_ the game? That is what every youngster wants to know.

Answering him, is education. Either we are going to say what we think

the game is plainly and straightforwardly, or else we are going to make

motions as though we were educating when we are really doing nothing of

the kind. In which case the stupid ones will grow up with their heads

all in a muddle and be led by any old catchword anywhere according to

luck, and the clever ones will grow up with the idea that life is a sort

of empty swindle. Most educated people in this country believe it is a

sham and a swindle. They flounder about and never get up against a

reality.... It’s amazing how people can lose their grip on reality—how

most people have. The way my patients come along to me and tell me

lies—even about their stomach-aches. The idea of anything being direct

and reasonable has gone clean out of their heads. They think they can

fool me about the facts, and that when I’m properly fooled, I shall then

humbug their stomachs into not aching—somehow....

“Now my gospel is this:—face facts. Take the world as it is and take

yourself as you are. And the fundamental fact we all have to face is

this, that this Process takes no account of our desires or fears or

moral ideas or anything of the sort. It puts us up, it tries us over,

and if we don’t stand the tests it knocks us down and ends us. That may

not be right as you test it by your little human standards, but it is

right by the atoms and the stars. Then what must a proper Education be?”

Dr. Barrack paused. “Tell them what the world is, tell them every rule

and trick of the game mankind has learnt, and tell them ‘_Be

yourselves._’ Be yourselves up to the hilt. It is no good being anything

but your essential self because—”

Dr. Barrack spoke like one who quotes a sacred formula. “_There is no

inheritance of acquired characteristics._ Your essential self, your

essential heredity, are on trial. Put everything of yourself into the

Process. If the Process wants you it will accept you; if it doesn’t you

will go under. You can’t help it—either way. You may be the bit of

marble that is left in the statue, or you may be the bit of marble that

is thrown away. You can’t help it. _Be yourself!_”

Dr. Barrack had sat back; he raised his voice at the last words and

lifted his hand as if to smite the table. But, so good a thing is

professional training, he let his hand fall slowly, as he remembered

that Mr. Huss was his patient.

§ 2

Mr. Huss did not speak for some moments. He was thinking so deeply that

he seemed to be unobservant of the cessation of the doctor’s discourse.

Then he awoke to the silence with a start.

“You do not differ among yourselves so much as you may think,” he said

at last.

“You all argue to one end, however wide apart your starting points may

be. You argue that men may lead fragmentary lives....

“And,” he reflected further, “submissive lives.”

“_Not_ submissive,” said Dr. Barrack in a kind of footnote.

“You say, Sir Eliphaz, that this Universe is in the charge of

Providence, all-wise and amiable. That He guides this world to ends we

cannot understand; desirable ends, did we but know them, but

incomprehensible; that this life, this whole Universe, is but the

starting point for a developing series of immortal lives. And from this

you conclude that the part a human being has to play in this scheme is

the part of a trustful child, which need only not pester the Higher

Powers, which need only do its few simple congenial duties, to be surely

preserved and rewarded and carried on.”

“There is much in simple faith,” said Sir Eliphaz; “sneer though you

may.”

“But your view is a grimmer one, Dr. Barrack; you say that this Process

is utterly beyond knowledge and control. We cannot alter it or appease

it. It makes of some of us vessels of honour and of others vessels of

dishonour. It has scrawled our race across the black emptiness of space,

and it may wipe us out again. Such is the quality of Fate. We can but

follow our lights and instincts.... In the end, in practical matters,

your teaching marches with the teaching of Sir Eliphaz. You bow to the

thing that is; he gladly and trustfully—with a certain old-world

courtesy, you grimly—in the modern style....”

For some moments Mr. Huss sat with compressed lips, as though he

listened to the pain within him. Then he said: “I don’t.

“I don’t submit. I rebel—not in my own strength nor by my own impulse. I

rebel by the spirit of God in me. I rebel not merely to make weak

gestures of defiance against the black disorder and cruelties of space

and time, but for mastery. I am a rebel of pride—I am full of the pride

of God in my heart. I am the servant of a rebellious and adventurous God

who may yet bring order into this cruel and frightful chaos in which we

seem to be driven hither and thither like leaves before the wind, a God

who, in spite of all appearances, may yet rule over it at last and mould

it to his will.”

“_What_ a world it will be!” whispered Mr. Farr, unable to restrain

himself and yet half-ashamed of his sneer.

“What a world it is, Farr! What a cunning and watchful world! Does it

serve even _you_? So insecure has it become that opportunity may yet

turn a frightful face upon you—in the very moment as you snatch....

“But you see how I differ from you all. You see that the spirit of my

life and of my teaching—of my teaching—for all its weaknesses and slips

and failures, is a fight against that Dark Being of the universe who

seeks to crush us all. Who broods over me now even as I talk to you....

It is a fight against disorder, a refusal of that very submission you

have made, a repudiation altogether of that same voluntary death in

life....”

He moistened his lips and resumed.

“The end and substance of all real education is to teach men and women

of the Battle of God, to teach them of the beginnings of life upon this

lonely little planet amidst the endless stars, and how those beginnings

have unfolded; to show them how man has arisen through the long ages

from amidst the beasts, and the nature of the struggle God wages through

him, and to draw all men together out of themselves into one common life

and effort with God. The nature of God’s struggle is the essence of our

dispute. It is a struggle, with a hope of victory but with no assurance.

You have argued, Sir Eliphaz, that it is an unreal struggle, a sham

fight, that indeed all things are perfectly adjusted and for our final

happiness, and when I have reminded you a little of the unmasked horrors

about us, you have shifted your ground of compensation into another—into

an incredible—world.”

Sir Eliphaz sounded dissent musically. Then he waved his long hand as

Mr. Huss paused and regarded him. “But go on!” he said. “Go on!”

“And now I come to you, Dr. Barrack, and your modern fatalism. You hold

this universe is uncontrollable—anyhow. And incomprehensible. For good

or ill—we can be no more than our strenuous selves. You must, you say,

_be yourself_. I answer, you must lose yourself in something altogether

greater—in God.... There is a curious likeness, Doctor, and a curious

difference in your views and mine. I think you see the world very much

as I see it, but you see it coldly like a man before sunrise, and I—”

He paused. “There is a light upon it,” he asserted with a noticeable

flatness in his voice. “There is a light ... light....”

He became silent. For a while it seemed as if the light he spoke of had

gone from him and as if the shadow had engulfed him. When he spoke again

it was with an evident effort.

He turned to Dr. Barrack. “You think,” he said, “that there is a will in

this Process of yours which will take things somewhere, somewhere

definitely greater or better or onward. I hold that there is no will at

all except in and through ourselves. If there be any will at all ... I

hold that even your maxim ‘be ourselves’ is a paradox, for we cannot be

ourselves until we have lost ourselves in God. I have talked to Sir

Eliphaz and to you since you came in, of the boundless disorder and evil

of nature. Let me talk to you now of the boundless miseries that arise

from the disorderliness of men and that must continue age after age

until either men are united in spirit and in truth or destroyed through

their own incoherence. Whether men will be lost or saved I do not know.

There have been times when I was sure that God would triumph in us....

But dark shadows have fallen upon my spirit....