CHAPTER 11.

 

            SO anxious was Noel to keep Maynard from having any suspicion of his relations with Margaret, that he proposed to accompany the next convoy of treasure sent to Tampico for shipment, saying that he wished to see as much as possible of the country and its ways, and that it would probably be his only opportunity of seeing that part, as whenever he returned to England his route would be by Mexico and Vera Cruz.

 

            And by the time you come back, the new house will be ready for us,’ said Margaret, affecting a gaiety which she did not feel, in obedience to his exhortations on the necessity of concealing their attachment from James.

 

            ‘If you like to go you can,’ said Maynard; ‘but I warn you that you will have a rough time. I shall not send the train until the beginning of the year, so that you will have an opportunity of seeing my Christmas festival. You have no notion how kindly my Mexicans, Cornishmen, and Indians, all alike take to my revival of sun-worship.’

 

            ‘They understanding it as such?’ asked Noel.

 

            ‘Well, not quite; but I have got them to see that in celebrating the day of its return they have at least one basis of agreement, and this has prevented their quarrelling so much. I tell the padre that if his Spanish ancestors had only gone on the principle of dwelling on their points of resemblance instead of on their points of difference, with the Aztec populations

(p. 256)

whom they found in possession, the conquest of Mexico might have had a very different aspect in history.’

 

            ‘Did you make him understand how?’

 

            ‘I represented to him generally that the prestige with which the whites were regarded, in consequence of the prophecies which had long led the natives to expect a superior race from the East, would have enabled them to convert the religion which they found here into a fair imitation of their own. They found the cross adored as the emblem of fertility, and they found human sacrifices practised. What more easy than to have spiritualised the cross, and convinced the people that they came to proclaim the good tidings that all possible sacrifice was already long ago accomplished and consummated, so that any further sacrifice was superfluous and worthless? But, as is not unfrequently the case, the Christians did not understand their own religion; and their ignorance and avarice deluged with blood the world they had discovered.’

 

            Maynard was particularly anxious about this festival. The time of the Intervention was very near, and he hoped by the exhibition of a comprehensive hospitality and charity to avert, at least from his own mine and his projected convoy, any risk arising from the popular indignation against foreigners. Already in presence of the growing embarrassment of the Government, were the wandering bands of robbers reported to be more numerous and more frequent; and Margaret was in her heart alarmed at the thought of Edmund being exposed to the dangers of the attacks which the convoy was likely to encounter; although, of course, in her imagination, she invested him she loved with all the attributes of a hero of romance, and could by no means imagine sickness, danger, or death laying a finger upon him without being worsted by him in the encounter. He dwelt for her in the regions of the Ideal, and she could not imagine aught as derogating from his supremacy. For her he was prescient and omnipotent, for the intensity of their sympathies made her feel herself to be transparent to his vision, and his boundless care over her, manifested in the minutest details of their life as by preternatural foresight and without effort, made danger or disaster seem impossible when he was at hand.

 

            There was nothing in which Noel’s character and manner failed to present him in startling contrast with Maynard. From the smallest details of daily life to their very relations with the

(p. 257)

Infinite, they were as two beings of different rate and nature. Whatever Noel had of self-consciousness he owed to Sophia Bevan, and he always in his inner mind felt something of a grudge against her for the enlightenment which her vivacious friendship had forced upon him. Yet he felt that he was thereby enabled to comprehend the character of Maynard, and to see how morally impossible was any real approach between natures so essentially antagonistic as those of James and Margaret. For in Margaret he saw the feminine of himself; while James was the masculine counterpart of Sophia, the world being left out.

 

            As the hopelessness of his friend’s happiness grew upon Noel, and the conviction that the love between Margaret and himself, however delicious to them, could not but have an unhappy result, became stronger and stronger, the thought occurred to him that he might contrive to suggest to Maynard the advisability of his trying, by a course of self-discipline, to mould himself more into conformity with Margaret’s nature. It was clear that he had failed to convert her to his own side, notwithstanding her own earnest strivings in the same direction. If now she were to see him endeavouring to come over to her at the cost of a suppression of himself, he would at least earn her gratitude, whether successful in the attempt or not.

 

            It was during one of the notable conversations which they were in the habit of holding either in the shade of the forest or in the verandah of their dewlling, that the idea of thus utilising his theory occurred to Noel. The occasion had made itself, so that there was no need to broach the subject abruptly or specially. They were discussing the meaning of Individuality, and the origin of Character, Margaret, as usual, sitting by and working. Maynard regarded it as the effort of the universal indwelling Consciousness to differentiate itself into distinct personalities – a theory which, he held, made it the duty of everybody to develop his own distinctive character to the utmost.

 

            Noel thought it unscientific to postulate such universal consciousness, except as potential. There must be something to be conscious; and that something may have a capacity of existing in a state of unconsciousness. Consciousness may thus be only the result of a certain condition of things which are capable of existing without it; – acquiring it under certain circumstances, and losing it under others. Thus, what is vulgarly called Matter may be the universal and eternal; and

(p. 258)

consciousness, or mind, only an occasional result of its arrangement.’

 

            ‘Of course,’ said Maynard, ‘the whole problem of the Universe consists in a question of priority; the question whether intelligence is the result of mechanics, or mechanics of intelligence. But it will save you a deal of trouble to adopt the phraseology I have used. We cannot, of course, imagine a capacity for thinking, independently of something which possesses that capacity and thinks. People use the word Matter only to express that which cannot think. But we have no proof that anything exists which cannot think. Apparent motionlessness does not disprove the presence of thought, or of consciousness. And we know that something exists which does think. Whether anything appears to us to be alive and conscious, or not, we still allow it to be a Force, inasmuch as it, somehow, makes us conscious of its existence. And wherever there is Force we find it operating, or not operating, towards certain ends. Add intelligence to Force, and you arrive at conscious Force. What else is this but Will? What right have you to deny that wherever you find Force, there also is intelligence? The accident of that Force deeming it right to be passive under certain conditions, or to practise the regularity of sequence which we call Law, does not justify you in denying it the possession of intelligence.’

 

            ‘Certainly not; but as we can imagine nothing analogous to what we understand by Will apart from animal life, I doubt if we gain anything by applying the same term to two such different things. I am inclined to prefer the old-fashioned term, God.’

 

            ‘If you can detach your mind from popular errors in respect to it, you cannot do better. But the anthropomorphism of theology is almost invincible, even with the most scientific habit of mind.’

 

            ‘Well, then, God, the Universal, separates Himself, as it were, into a number of limited individuals. Of course the parts cannot rival the whole in their comprehension of things. Now, where you say that Individuality, or distinctiveness of character, is a thing to be maintained and developed, I should say it is quite as much a thing to be amended and regulated. Being placed here in certain conditions, it is for our happiness that we bring ourselves into conformity with those conditions.’

 

            ‘Happiness!’ said Maynard, somewhat bitterly; ‘what has

(p. 259)

happiness to do with it? I take life to be a process, rather than an indulgence. It is a form of Force, or Will. If we have characters at all, it is for us to develop and act them out; and rather to force circumstances to conform to them.’

 

            ‘Hence the multiplicity of troubles and contests in the world,’ said Noel; ‘people won’t respect accomplished facts.’

 

            ‘No fact is irreversible,’ returned Maynard, blocking further discussion in that direction with paradox.

 

            ‘Can you, as a married man, maintain that?’ asked Noel, laughing, while Margaret trembled on seeing the direction he was taking.

 

            ‘It is altogether premature,’ returned James, ‘for man, who is, immediately, a product of the earth and of forces residing in it, to expect to exist in mutual harmony with his surroundings, when the earth itself is at perpetual war with itself. Sea and land are always encroaching upon each other. Fire and water are constantly contending together, and producing the terretremos which so often rock us to sleep at night. The fact is, man has come into existence before the whole of the earth is quite ready for his reception; and it would indicate that worst of faults in children, precocity, were he to pretend to an advance beyond his great progenitor. I hold it to be as much the business of characters to clash, as it is of the elements. It is only by the contention working itself out to the bitter end that equilibrium can be attained.’

 

            ‘It is clear,’ answered Noel, ‘that you don’t hold even to the old plan of meeting things half-way. Yet to reject all compromise looks very much like an assertion of infallibility. Moreover, your premises seem to me inconsistent with your inference, for you started by postulating an universal Intelligence substanding all phenomena, and expressing itself through them. Of course such a Being must be in agreement with itself?’

 

            ‘Well?’

 

            ‘And therefore we are most like it when we succeed in attaining a similar harmony in respect of the other components of our great whole. So that we have a duty, and a reward in the happiness that follows its performance.’

 

            ‘You omit,’ answered James, ‘the most important half of my thesis. I said that if Deity differentiates himself into man, it is for man, not to resist the decree, but rather to assist it, by encouraging divergencies of individual character. Equilibrium, whether in physics or in morals, means rest: and rest

(p. 260)

means cessation from progress. For man to seek toward that, is to court a return to the infinite bosom from which he has sprung, and so to counteract the decree which gave him birth. You would anticipate the Nirvana of the Buddhists, which is identical with absorption into Deity, and practical annihilation. ‘Whence it appears,’ returned Noel, ‘that man’s whole duty towards God is to hate his neighbour.’

 

            ‘Certainly. Why else is he man? So much for the Socratic method of reaching a conclusion.’

 

            ‘The method may be Socratic, but the result is Calvinistic,’ said Noel, ‘for it exalts the individual will above individual right.’

 

            ‘You cannot,’ returned Maynard, ‘separate individuality from force. I am disposed to believe that those only who have sufficient strength of character can survive this life and continue hereafter. To be great and achieve much, a man must have such force; and the minor eccentricities of his career ought not to be closely scrutinised. The idiosyncracies of genius are necessarily beyond general comprehension. No, I can conceive the strong man enduring for ever, carried on by the power of his individuality to other spheres of existence, while the feeble and the timid droop and fail by the way. Thus the very villains of history may reach their climax long hereafter, when the timid votaries of the moralities have shrunk and vanished!’

 

            ‘Your hypothesis exalts force of action, and ignores force of resistance,’ said Noel. ‘I hope, however, that practically you accord to others the same right that you claim for yourself, of development in a direction opposite to your own.’

 

            ‘It is the greatest mistake to descend from generals to particulars,’ returned Maynard. ‘The beauty of discussing things in the abstract is, that it does not tend to promote self-consciousness, which I take to be one of the most objectionable of all frames of mind.’

 

            ‘Yet I can imagine,’ said Edmund, laughing, ‘cases in which self-examination may become a duty in spite of its requiring self-denial. And, seriously, I really do not see how it is possible to apply the golden rule successfully without a little of it, especially in those cases in which the happiness of those with whom we are connected, may depend upon the manner in which we assert or suppress our individuality.’

 

            Noel had approached as close to the delicate ground as he could venture to go without betraying that he had a design in

(p. 261)

what he said. He felt every tremor of Margaret’s thrilling through him, and knew that she was dreading the issue of the conversation, for she was well aware that nothing would irritate James so much as a suspicion that he was being covertly talked at. Maynard himself, too, seemed disinclined to let it go any farther, for he wound it up by remarking –

 

            ‘Even the golden rule is not without its exceptions, unless you are prepared to allow that a man is justified in kissing any woman he likes, on the plea that he wants her to kiss him in return!’

 

Sections: General Index   Present Section: Index   Present Work: Index   Previous: Chapter 10    Next: Chapter 12