different cause, makes it impossible for you to remember, in the
presence of such spiritual horrors as heathenism presents, the immense
importance of many of the controversies so hotly waged at home, I
can conceive (as some of our zealots would say) that you are tempted
to a certain degree of insensibility and defection of heart; that
you no longer discern the momentous superiority of "sprinkling" over
"immersion," or of "immersion" over "sprinkling"; that the "wax
candles," "lighted" and "unlighted," appear to you alike insignificant;
that even the jus divinum of any system of ecclesiastical government
is sometimes not discerned with absolute precision; and, in short, that
you look with contemptuous wonder on half our "great controversies."
If I mistake not, things are coming to that pass amongst us, that we
shall soon think of them almost with contemptuous wonder too.
Vale,--et ora pro me,--as old Luther used to say at the end of his
letters. I will write again soon.
Your affectionate Brother,
F.B.
----
Grange, July 7, 1851.
My Dear Brother:--
I have been with Harrington a week: I am glad to say that I was
under some erroneous impressions when I wrote my letter. He is not
a universal sceptic,--he is only a sceptic in relation to
theological and ethical truth. "Alas!" you will say, "it is an
exception which embraces more than the general rule; it little
matters what else he believes."
True; and yet there is consolation in it; for otherwise it would
have been impossible to hold intercourse with him at all. If he had
reasoned in order to prove to me that human reason cannot be
trusted, or I to convince one who affirmed its universal falsity,
it were hard to say whether he or I had been the greater fool.
Your universal sceptic--if he choose to affect that character,--no
man is it--is impregnable; his true emblem is the hedgehog ensphered
in his prickles; that is, as long as you are observing him. For if
you do not thus irritate his amour propre, and put him on the
defensive, he will unroll himself. Speaking, reasoning, acting,
like the rest of the world, on the implied truthfulness of the
faculties whose falsity he affirms, he will save you the trouble of
confuting him, by confuting himself.
And I am glad, for another reason, that Harrington does not affect
this universal scepticism: for whereas, by the confession of its
greatest masters, it is at best but the play of a subtle intellect, so
it does not afford a very flattering picture of an intellect that
affects it. I should have been mortified, I confess, had Harrington
been chargeable with such a foible.
It is true that, in another aspect, all this makes the case more
desperate; for his scepticism, so far as it extends, is deep and
genuine; it is no play of an ingenious subtilty, nor the affectation
of singularity with him;--and my prognostications of the misery
which such a mind must feel from driving over the tempestuous ocean
of life under bare poles, without chart or compass, are, I can see,
verified. One fact, I confess, gives me hopes, and often affords me
pleasure in listening to him. He is an impartial doubter; he doubts
whether Christianity be true; but he also doubts whether it be false;
and, either from his impatience of the theories which infidelity
proposes in its place, as inspiring yet stronger doubts, or in revenge
for the peace of which he has been robbed, he never seems more at home
than in ridiculing the confidence and conceit of that internal oracle,
which professes to solve the problems which, it seems, Christianity
leaves in darkness; and in pushing the principles on which infidelity
rejects the New Testament to their legitimate conclusion.
I told you, in general, the origin and the progress of his scepticism.
I suspect there are causes (perhaps not distinctly felt by him) which
have contributed to the result These, it may be, I shall never know;
but it is hardly possible not to suppose that some bitter experience has
contributed to cloud, thus portentously, the brightness of his youth.
Something, I am confident, in connection with his long residence abroad,
has tended to warp his young intellect from its straight growth. The
heart, as usual, has had to do with the logic; and "has been whispering
reasons which the reason cannot comprehend." I suspect that passionate
hopes have been buried,--whether in the grave, I know not. I must add,
that an indirect and most potential cause, not indeed of the origination,
yet of the continuance, of his state of mind, must be sought in what
the world would call his good fortune. His maiden aunt by the father's
side left her favorite nephew her pleasant, old-fashioned, somewhat
gloomy, but picturesque and comfortable house in ---shire, about fifty
or sixty acres in land, and three or four hundred a year into the
bargain. Poor old lady! I heartily wish she had kept him out of
possession by living to a hundred; or, dying, had left every farthing
to "endow a college or a--cat." To Harrington she has left a very
equivocal heritage. For with this and his little patrimony he is
entirely placed above the necessity of professional life and fully
qualified to live (Heaven help him!) as a gentleman;--but, unhappily,
as a gentleman whose nature is deeply speculative,--whose life has been
one of study,--and who has no active tastes or habits to correct the
morbid portions of his character, and the dangers of his position.
With his views already unsettled, he retired a few months ago to this
comparative solitude; (for such it is, though the place is not many
miles from the learned city of-----;) and partly from the tendencies
of his own mind, partly from want of some powerful stimulus from
without, he soon acquired the pernicious habit of almost constant
seclusion in his library, where he revolves, as if fascinated, the
philosophy of doubt, or some equally distressing themes; all which
has now issued as you see. The contemplative and the active life are
both necessary to man, no doubt; but in how different proportions!
To live as Harrington has lived of late, is to breathe little but
azote. I believe that all these ill effects would have been, though
not obviated, at least early cured, had he been compelled to mingle
in active life,--to make his livelihood by a profession. The bracing
air of the world would have dissipated these vapors which have
gathered over his soul. In very truth, I half wish that he could
now be stripped of his all, and compelled to become hedger and ditcher.
It would almost be a kindness to ruin him by engaging him in some
of the worst railway speculations!
I found him all that I had promised to find him; unchanged towards
myself; sometimes cheerful, though oftener melancholy, or, at least,
to all appearances ennuye; with more causticity and sarcasm in his humor,
but without misanthropy; and I must add, with the same logical fairness,
the same abhorrence of sophistry, which, were his early characteristics.
But the journal of my visit, which I am most diligently keeping, will
more fully inform you of his state of mind.
F.B.
JOURNAL OF A VISIT, ETC.
July 1, 1851.
I arrived at ----Grange this day. In the evening, as Harrington and
myself were conversing in the library, I availed myself of a pause
in the conversation to break the ice in relation to the topic which
lay nearest my heart, by saying:--
"And so you have become, they tell me, a universal sceptic?"
"Not quite," he replied, throwing one of his feet over the edge of
the sofa on which he was reclining and speaking rather dogmatically
(I thought) for a sceptic. "Not quite: but in relation to religion I
certainly become convinced that certainty, like pride, was not made for
man, and that it is in vain for man to seek it."
I was amused at the contradiction of a certainty of universal
uncertainty, as well as at the discovery there was nothing to be
discovered.
He noticed my smile, and divined its cause.
"Forgive me," he said, "that, like you Christians and believers
of all sorts, I sometimes find theory discordant with practice. The
generality of people are, you know, a little inconsistent with their
creed; suffer me to be so with mine."
"I have no objection, Harrington, in the world; the more inconsistent
you are, the better I shall like you; you have my free leave to be, in
relation to scepticism, just what the Antinomian is in relation to
Christianity or as true a sceptic as he was a true Churchman who showed
his good principles, according to Dr. Johnston, by never passing a
church without taking off his hat, though he never went into it; or
even as Falstaff, who had forgotten 'what the inside of a church was
made of.' I shall be contented indeed to see you as little attached
to your no-truth, as the generality of Christians are to their truth."
"I thank you," said he, a little sarcastically, "I doubt if I shall
ever be able to reach so perfect a pitch of inconsistency. But are
you wise, my dear uncle, in this taunt? What an argument have you
suggested to me, if I thought it worth while to make use of it!
How have you surrendered, without once thinking of the consequences,
the practical power of Christianity!"
I began to fear that there would be a good deal of sharp-shooting
between us.
"I have surrendered nothing," I replied. "If every thing is to be
abandoned, which, though professedly the subject of man's conviction,
he fails to reduce to practice, his creed will be short enough.
Christianity, however, will be in no worse condition than morals,
the theory of which has ever been in lamentable advance of the
practice. And least of all can scepticism stand such it test, of
which you have just given a passing illustration. Of this system,
or rather no-system, there has never been a consistent votary, if we
except Pyrrho himself; and whether he were not an insincere sceptic,
the world will always be most sincerely sceptical. But forgive me my
passing gibe. In wishing you to be as inconsistent as nine tenths
of Christians are, I did not mean to prejudice your arguments, such
as they are. I know it is not in your power to be otherwise than
inconsistent; and I shall always have that argument against you, so
far as it is one."
"And so far as it is one," he replied, "I shall always have the same
argument against you."
"Be it so," I replied, "for the present: I am unwilling to engage in
polemical strife with you, the very first evening on which I have
seen you for so long a time. I would much rather hear a chapter of
your past travels and adventures, which you know your few and brief
letters--but I will not reproach you--left me in such ignorance of."
He complied with my request; and in the course of conversation
informed me of many circumstances which had formed steps in that slow
gradation by which he had reached his present state of mind; a state
which he did not affect to conceal. But still I felt sure there were
other causes which he did not mention.
At length I said, "You must give me the title of an old friend,
--a father, Harrington, I might almost say,"--and the tears came
into my eyes,--"to talk hereafter fully with you of your so certain
uncertainty about the only topics which supremely affect the
happiness of man."
I told him, and I spoke it in no idle compliment, that I was
convinced he was far enough from being one of those shallow fools
who are inclined to scepticism because they shrink from the trouble
of investigating the evidence; who find so much to be said for this,
and much for that, that they conclude that there is no truth,
simply because they are too indolent to seek it. "This," said I,
"is the plea of intellectual Sybarites with whom you have nothing
in common. And as little do you sympathize with those dishonest,
though not always shallow thinkers, who take refuge in alleged
uncertainty of evidence, because they are afraid of pursuing it
to unwelcome conclusions; who are sceptics on the most singular and
inconsistent of all grounds, presumption. I know you are none
of these."
"I am, I think, none of these," said he quietly.
"You are not: and your manner and countenance proclaim it yet more
strongly than your words. The only genuine effect of a sincere
scepticism is and must be, not the complacent and frivolous humor
which too often attaches to it, but a mournful confession of the
melancholy condition to which, if true, the theory reduces the
sceptic himself and all mankind."
Of all the paradoxes humanity exhibits, surely there are none more
wonderful than the complacency with which scepticism often utters
its doubts, and the tranquillity which it boasts as the perfection
of its system! Such a state of mind is utterly inconsistent with
the genuine realization and true-hearted reception of the theory.
On such subjects such a creature as man cannot be in doubt, and
really feel his doubts, without being anxious and miserable. When I
hear some youth telling me, with a simpering face, that he does
not know, or pretend to say, whether there be a God, or not, or
whether, if there be, He takes any interest in human affairs; or
whether, if He does, it much imports us to know; or whether, if He
has revealed that knowledge, it is possible or impossible for us
to ascertain it; when I hear him further saying, that meantime he
is disposed to make himself very easy in the midst of these
uncertainties, and to await the great revelation of the future
with philosophical, that is, being interpreted, with idiotic
tranquillity, I see that, in point of fact, he has never entered
into the question at all; that he has failed to realize the terrible
moment of the questions (however they may be decided) of which he
speaks with such amazing flippancy.
It is too often the result of thoughtlessness; of a wish to get
rid of truths unwelcome to the heart; of a vain love of paradox,
or perhaps, in many cases, (as a friend of mine said,) of an
amiable wish to frighten "mammas and maiden aunts." But let us be
assured that a frivolous sceptic,--a sceptic indeed,--after duly
pondering and feeling the doubts he professes to embrace, is an
impossibility. What may be expected in the genuine sceptic is a
modest hope that he may be mistaken, a desire to be confuted; a
retention of his convictions as if they were a guilty secret; or
the promulgation of them only as the utterance of an agonized heart,
unable to suppress the language of its misery; a dread of making
proselytes,--even as men refrain from exposing their sores or
plague-infected garments in the eyes of the world. The least we can
expect from him is that mood of mind which Pascal so sublimely says
becomes the Atheist ... "Is this, then, a thing to be said with
gayety? Is it not rather a thing to be said with tears as the saddest
thing in the world?"
The current of conversation after a while, somehow swept us round
again to the point I had resolved to quit for this evening. "But
since we are there," said I, "I wish you would in brief tell me why,
when you doubted of Christianity, you did not stop at any of those
harbours of refuge which, in our time especially, have been so
plentifully provided for those who reject the New Testament?
You are not ignorant, I know, of the writings of Mr. Theodore
Parker, and other modern Deists. How is it that none of them
even transiently satisfied you? An ingenious eclecticism founded
on them has satisfied, you see, your old college friend, George
Fellowes, of whom I hear rare things. He is far enough from
being a sceptic,"
"Why," said he, laughing, "it is quite true that George is not a
sceptic, He has believed more and disbelieved more, and both one
and the other for less reason, than any other man I know. He
used to send me the strangest letters when I was abroad, and almost
every one presented him under some new phase. No, he is no sceptic.
If he has rejected almost every thing, he has also embraced almost
every thing; at each point in his career, his versatile faith has
found him some system to replace that he had abandoned; and he is
now a dogmatist par excellence, for he has adopted a theory of
religion which formally abjures intellect and logic, and is as
sincerely abjured by them. If the difficulties he has successively
encountered had been seen all at once, I fancy he would have been
much where I am. Poor George! 'Sufficient unto the day,' with him,
is the theology 'thereof'! I picture him to myself going out of a
morning, with his new theological dress upon him, and, chancing to
meet with some friend, who protests there is some thing or other
not quite 'comme il faut,' he proceeds with infinite complacency
to alter that portion of his attire; the new costume is found
equally obnoxious to the criticism of somebody else, and off it
goes like the rest."
This was a ludicrous, but not untrue, representation of George
Fellows's mind; only the "friend" in the image must be supposed to
mean his own wayward fancy; for he is not particularly amenable
(though very amiable) to external influences. So dominant, however,
is present feeling and impulse, or so deficient is he in
comprehensiveness, that he often takes up with the most trumpery
arguments; that is, for a few days at a time. Yet he does not want
acuteness. I have known him shine strongly (as has been said of
some one else) upon an angle of a subject; but he never sheds over
its whole surface equable illumination. Where evidence is complicated
and various, and consists of many opposing or modifying elements,
he never troubles himself to compute the sum total, and strike a fair
balance. He stands aghast in the presence of an objection which he
cannot solve, and loses all presence of mind in its contemplation.
He seldom considers whether there are not still greater objections
on the other side, nor how much farther, if a principle be just,
it ought to carry him. The mode in which he looks at a subject often
reminds me of the way in which the eye, according to metaphysicians,
surveys an extensive landscape. It sees, they say, only a point at
a time, punctum visibile, which is perpetually shifting; and the
impression of the whole is in fact a rapid combination, by means
of memory, of perceptions all but coexistent; if the attention be
strongly fixed upon some one object, the rest of the landscape
comparatively fades from the view. Now George Fellowes seemed to me,
in a survey of a large subject, to have an incomparable faculty of
seeing the minimum visibile, and that so ardently, that all the
rest of the landscape vanished at the moment from his perceptions.
"Well," said I, smiling, "you must not blame him for his not
reaching at once and per saltum your position. He has been more
deliberate in stripping himself. Yet he has come on pretty well.
You ought not to despair of him. I wonder at what point he is now."
"You may ask him to-morrow," said he, "for I am expecting him here
to spend a few weeks with me. At whatever point he may be in these
days of 'progress,' as they are called, he does not know that I am
already arrived at the ne plus ultra; for my letters to him were
yet briefer and rarer than to you: and I never touched on these
topics. Where would have been the use of asking counsel of such an
oracle?"
I said I should be glad to see him. "But I shall be still better
pleased to hear from you, why you are dissatisfied with any such
system as his; and especially why you say he ought in consistency to
go much farther."
"I am far from saying that my reasons will be satisfactory, but I
will endeavor, if you wish it, to justify my opinion."
"I shall certainly expect no less," replied I. "You are strangely
altered, if you are willing to assert without attempting to prove;
and if you were altered, I am not. When will you let me hear you?"
"O, in a day or two, when I have had time to put my thoughts on
paper; but, if I mistake not, some of the most important points will
be discussed before that, for Fellowes, I hear, is a very
knight-errant of 'spiritualism,' and it is a thousand to one but he
attempts to convert me. I intend to let him have full opportunity."
"I hardly know," said I. "Harrington, whether I wish him success or
not. But one thing, surely, all must admire in him: I mean his
candor. What less than this can prompt him, after abandoning with
such extraordinary facility so many creeds and fragments of creeds,
after travelling round the whole circle of theology, to confess with
such charming simplicity the whole history of his mental revolutions,
and expose himself to the charge of unimaginable caprice,--of
theological coquetry? I protest to you that, a priori, I should have
thought it impossible that any man could have made so many and such
violent turns in so short a time without a dislocation of all the
joints of his soul.--without incurring the danger of a 'universal
anchylosis.'"
"One would imagine," said Harrington, with a laugh, "that, in your
estimate, his mind resembles that ingenious toy by which the union
of the various colored rays of light is illustrated: the red, the
yellow, the blue, the green, and so forth, are distinctly painted on
the compartments of a card: but no sooner are they put into a state
of rapid revolution than the whole appears white. Such, it seems,
is the appearance of George Fellowes in that rapid gyration to
which he been subjected: the part-colored rays of his various creeds
are lost sight of and the pure white of his 'candor' is alone
visible!"
"For myself," said I, "I feel in some measure incompetent to
pronounce on his present system. When I saw him for a short time a
few months ago, he told that, though his versatility of faith had
certainly been great, he must remind me (as Mr. Newman had said) that
he had seen both sides; that persons like myself, for example, have
had but one experience; whereas he has had two."
"If he were to urge me with such an argument," replied Harrington, "I
should say we are even then. But I think even you could reply: 'You
yourself injustice, Mr. Fellowes, in saying you have had two
experiences. You have had two dozen, at least; but whether that can
qualify you for speaking with any authority on these subjects I much
doubt; to give any weight to the opinions of any man some stability
at least is necessary.'"
This I could not gainsay. Slow revolutions on momentous subjects,
when there has been much sobriety as well as diligence of investigation,
are, perhaps, not despised as authority. Some superior weight may even
be attached to the later and maturer views. But man changes them
every other day; if they rise and fall with the barometer; if his
whole life has been one rapid pirouette, it is impossible with gravity
to discuss the question, whether at some point he may not have been
right. Whoever be in the right, he cannot well be who has never long
been any thing; and to take such a man for a guide would be almost as
absurd as to mistake a weathercock for a signpost.
"In seeking religious counsel of George Fellows," said Harrington.
"I should feel much as Jeannie Deans, when she went to the
Interpreter's House.' as Madge Wildfire calls it, in company with
that fantastical personage. But he is a kind-hearted, amiable fellow,
and, in short, I cannot help liking him."
____