Our inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They are like living
beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others--some good
and some ne'er-do-weels; but they differ from animals and vegetables
inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical ratio, but the period
of their gestation decreases in geometrical ratio also. Take this matter
of Alpine roads for example. For how many millions of years was there no
approach to a road over the St. Gothard, save the untutored watercourses
of the Ticino and the Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the
chamois? For how many more ages after this was there not a mere
shepherd's or huntsman's path by the river-side--without so much as a log
thrown over so as to form a rude bridge? No one would probably have ever
thought of making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than
any monkey that we know of has done so. But an avalanche or a flood once
swept a pine into position and left it there; on this a genius, who was
doubtless thought to be doing something very infamous, ventured to make
use of it. Another time a pine was found nearly across the stream, but
not quite; and not quite, again, in the place where it was wanted. A
second genius, to the horror of his fellow-tribesmen--who declared that
this time the world really would come to an end--shifted the pine a few
feet so as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was
wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges--his family repudiated him,
and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting down the pine and
bringing it from some distance is an easy step. To avoid detail, let us
come to the old Roman horse-road over the Alps. The time between the
shepherd's path and the Roman road is probably short in comparison with
that between the mere chamois track and the first thing that can be
called a path of men. From the Roman we go on to the mediaeval road with
more frequent stone bridges, and from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic
carriage-road.
The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present one
was the great era for the making of carriage-roads. Fifty years have
hardly passed, and here we are already in the age of tunnelling and
railroads. The first period, from the chamois track to the foot road,
was one of millions of years; the second, from the first foot road to the
Roman military way, was one of many thousands; the third, from the Roman
to the mediaeval, was perhaps a thousand; from the mediaeval to the
Napoleonic, five hundred; from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty.
What will come next we know not, but it should come within twenty years,
and will probably have something to do with electricity.
It follows by an easy process of reasoning that after another couple of
hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be made several times
in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they
pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the embryonic stages, or
are felt simply as vibrations. This would undoubtedly be the case but
for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and
practice. This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested
interests which every invention involves, and which will be found
intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a
fortnight--living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and
having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and
refurnish, &c.--so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be
adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in
geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the
backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any
rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time
for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The
past was too slow, and the future will be much too fast.
The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything about
it) that science is rapidly reducing time and space to a very
undifferentiated condition. Take lamb: we can get lamb all the year
round. This is perpetual spring; but perpetual spring is no spring at
all; it is not a season; there are no more seasons, and being no seasons,
there is no time. Take rhubarb, again. Rhubarb to the philosopher is
the beginning of autumn, if indeed the philosopher can see anything as
the beginning of anything. If any one asks why, I suppose the
philosopher would say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season,
which is clearly autumnal, according to our present classification. From
rhubarb to the green gooseberry the step is so small as to require no
bridging--with one's eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, they are
almost indistinguishable--but the gooseberry is quite an autumnal fruit,
and only a little earlier than apples and plums, which last are almost
winter; clearly, therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal.
As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient number of uniting
links between two things, they become united or made one thing, and any
classification of them must be illusory. Classification is only possible
where there is a shock given to the senses by reason of a perceived
difference, which, if it is considerable, can be expressed in words. When
the world was younger and less experienced, people were shocked at what
appeared great differences between living forms; but species, whether of
animals or plants, are now seen to be so united, either inferentially or
by actual finding of the links, that all classification is felt to be
arbitrary. The seasons are like species--they were at one time thought
to be clearly marked, and capable of being classified with some approach
to satisfaction. It is now seen that they blend either in the present or
the past insensibly into one another, much as Mr. Herbert Spencer shows
us that geology and astronomy blend into one another, {265} and cannot be
classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain
sensible people can tolerate. Strictly speaking, there is only one
place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing
or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, but it is
philosophy; and modern philosophy, like modern music, is nothing if it is
not perplexing.
A simple verification of the autumnal character of rhubarb may, at first
sight, appear to be found in Covent Garden Market, where we can actually
see the rhubarb towards the end of October. But this way of looking at
the matter argues a fatal ineptitude for the pursuit of true philosophy.
It would be "the most serious error" to regard the rhubarb that will
appear in Covent Garden Market next October as belonging to the autumn
then supposed to be current. Practically, no doubt, it does so, but
theoretically it must be considered as the first-fruits of the autumn (if
any) of the following year, which begins before the preceding summer (or,
perhaps, more strictly, the preceding summer but one--and hence, but any
number), has well ended. Whether this, however, is so or no, the rhubarb
can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to
the philosophically minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution,
and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in Bishop Berkeley's
tar-water.
To return, however, to Calonico. The _curato_ was very kind to me. We
had long talks together. I could see it pained him that I was not a
Catholic. He could never quite get over this, but he was very good and
tolerant. He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those
English who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people.
This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do; and when I
told him so, he viewed me with sorrow but henceforth without alarm.
All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a
Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant ones.
Surely there are some things which like politics are too serious to be
taken quite seriously. _Surtout point de zele_ is not the saying of a
cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and the more deep our
feeling is about any matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard
against _zele_ in this particular respect. There is but one step from
the "earnest" to the "intense." When St. Paul told us to be all things
to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say
how far it was to be driven.
I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I
flirt just a trifle too much with "_il partito nero_," when I am in
Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do. "These
people," they say, "make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you
their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know their rough one.
Knuckle under to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patronise you;
have any individuality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor
remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way. '_Il prete_' they
say, with a significant look, '_e sempre prete_.' For the future let us
have professors and men of science instead of priests."
I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come
among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal
discords. I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their
national character--a side which, in some respects, is no less
interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more
sympathetic. If I were an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side;
as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of
that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper.
In old times people gave their spiritual and intellectual sop to Nemesis.
Even when most positive, they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr.
Tennyson has said well, "There lives more doubt"--I quote from memory--"in
honest faith, believe me, than in half the" systems of philosophy, or
words to that effect. The victor had a slave at his ear during his
triumph; the slaves during the Roman Saturnalia, dressed in their
masters' clothes, sat at meat with them, told them of their faults, and
blacked their faces for them. They made their masters wait upon them. In
the ages of faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely
conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, and mass was said
before him, and hymns chanted discordantly. The elder D'Israeli, from
whom I am quoting, writes: "On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes
to fume in the censors: ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing,
and playing at dice upon the altar, while a _boy bishop_ or _pope of
fools_ burlesqued the divine service;" and later on he says: "So late as
1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself
witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Innocents, says--'I have seen in some
monasteries in this province extravagances solemnised which pagans would
not have practised. Neither the clergy nor the guardians indeed go to
the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the
cabbage-cutters, errand boys, cooks, scullions, and gardeners; in a word,
all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they
perform the offices proper for the day. They dress themselves with all
the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out: they
hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to
read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the
rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers
they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their
heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither
sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as
shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The
nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:--
"'Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum.'" {269}
Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia
were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is
now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own
convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life
occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do
with their pictures that they may judge the better concerning them. I
would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn
high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every
year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr.
Bradlaugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the
evening, two or three times every winter. I should perhaps tell them
that the Grecian pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays. They
little know how much more keenly they would relish their normal opinions
during the rest of the year for the little spiritual outing which I would
prescribe for them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise
saying--"_Surtout point de zele_." St. Paul attempted an obviously
hopeless task (as the Church of Rome very well understands) when he tried
to put down seasonarianism. People must and will go to church to be a
little better, to the theatre to be a little naughtier, to the Royal
Institution to be a little more scientific, than they are in actual life.
It is only by pulsations of goodness, naughtiness, and whatever else we
affect that we can get on at all. I grant that when in his office, a man
should be exact and precise, but our holidays are our garden, and too
much precision here is a mistake.
Surely truces, without even an _arriere pensee_ of difference of opinion,
between those who are compelled to take widely different sides during the
greater part of their lives, must be of infinite service to those who can
enter on them. There are few merely spiritual pleasures comparable to
that derived from the temporary laying down of a quarrel, even though we
may know that it must be renewed shortly. It is a great grief to me that
there is no place where I can go among Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley,
Tyndal, and Ray Lankester, Miss Buckley, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen and
others whom I cannot call to mind at this moment, as I can go among the
Italian priests. I remember in one monastery (but this was not in the
Canton Ticino) the novice taught me how to make sacramental wafers, and I
played him Handel on the organ as well as I could. I told him that
Handel was a Catholic; he said he could tell that by his music at once.
There is no chance of getting among our scientists in this way.
Some friends say I was telling a lie when I told the novice Handel was a
Catholic, and ought not to have done so. I make it a rule to swallow a
few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt
camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult. What _is_ "lying"?
Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose
unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a
directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures
us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry,
think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy?
or was it not He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood--to tell it
with a circumstance, without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to
make a practice of it so as to be a plausible, habitual, and professional
liar for some six weeks or so in the year? I imagine so. When I was
young I used to read in good books that it was God who taught the bird to
make her nest, and if so He probably taught each species the other
domestic arrangements best suited to it. Or did the nest-building
information come from God, and was there an evil one among the birds also
who taught them at any rate to steer clear of priggishness?
Think of the spider again--an ugly creature, but I suppose God likes it.
What a mean and odious lie is that web which naturalists extol as such a
marvel of ingenuity!
Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met one of those orchids
who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie
they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being
already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently
and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the
offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. "My
children," she exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my
loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your
passage through life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose sight of
it and you are lost!" Over and over again she sang this burden in a
small still voice, and so I left her. Then straightway I came upon some
butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to believe in all manner
of vital truths which in their inner practice they rejected; thus,
asserting themselves to be certain other and hateful butterflies which no
bird will eat by reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones
conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land and see good days.
No: lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork,
and yet it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have
it always with us. We must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we die.
All depends upon who it is that is lying. One man may steal a horse when
another may not look over a hedge. The good man who tells no lies
wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and lie and lie
whenever he chooses to other people, and he will not be false to any man:
his lies become truths as they pass into the hearers' ear. If a man
deceives himself and is unkind, the truth is not in him; it turns to
falsehood while yet in his mouth, like the quails in the Wilderness of
Sinai. How this is so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy
on whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth. My Italian
friends are doubtless in the main right about the priests, but there are
many exceptions, as they themselves gladly admit. For my own part I have
found the _curato_ in the small subalpine villages of North Italy to be
more often than not a kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by
sympathies deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinion can
counteract. With monks, however, as a general rule, I am less able to
get on: nevertheless I have received much courtesy at the hands of some.
My young friend the novice was delightful--only it was so sad to think of
the future that is before him. He wanted to know all about England, and
when I told him it was an island, clasped his hands and said, "Oh che
Providenza!" He told me how the other young men of his own age plagued
him as he trudged his rounds high up among the most distant hamlets
begging alms for the poor. "Be a good fellow," they would say to him,
"drop all this nonsense and come back to us, and we will never plague you
again." Then he would turn upon them and put their words from him. Of
course my sympathies were with the other young men rather than with him,
but it was impossible not to be sorry for the manner in which he had been
humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now incapable of seeing
things from any other standpoint than that of authority.
What he said to me about knowing that Handel was a Catholic by his music,
put me in mind of what another good Catholic once said to me about a
picture. He was a Frenchman and very nice, but a _devot_, and anxious to
convert me. He paid a few days' visit to London, so I showed him the
National Gallery. While there I pointed out to him Sebastian del
Piombo's picture of the raising of Lazarus as one of the supposed
masterpieces of our collection. He had the proper orthodox fit of
admiration over it, and then we went through the other rooms. After a
while we found ourselves before West's picture of "Christ healing the
Sick." My French friend did not, I suppose, examine it very carefully,
at any rate he believed he was again before the raising of Lazarus by
Sebastian del Piombo; he paused before it, and had his fit of admiration
over again: then turning to me he said, "Ah! you would understand this
picture better if you were a Catholic." I did not tell him of his
mistake.