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BOOK VI
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‘Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or by a look his real sympathy. I am equally baulked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease for an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine is that the not mine is mine.’ – R. W. EMERSON’S ‘Friendship.’
‘But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.’
TENNYSON’S ‘In Memoriam.’
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THE ANTIPODES
To Charles Arnold
Sidney.
DEAR FRIEND,
I have delayed writing to you until my plans and ideas should have time to take some definite form.
You cannot think what a treat it is to be among one’s own countrymen again. Everything is so English. The colonists have reproduced the old home so exactly that I for I on first walking through Sydney as if I could have turned up any street and gone home in a few minutes. There were such fearful accounts in San Francisco of the anarchy and violence prevailing here, that it was matter of serious discussion before our arrival whether we should go ashore armed. The others were in favour of doing so, but I said, ‘No, no, we are going among our own countrymen, and I for one will not distrust them until forced to do so,’ and the pilot laughed them out of the notion before landing. As far as I can now judge, there is not a more peaceable population in the world.
Coming here a total stranger and without a single introduction, I was most fortunate in lighting upon some friends and even connections of my family, and so placed as to give me the opportunity of seeing the people and the country to the best advantage. The hospitality I
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meet with is doubly grateful after all my wanderings and privations. Just now I am staying in a house that stands on an eminence overlooking the harbour. The mornings I am at present devoting to reading or writing but half the time is l.ost in looking out of the window – yet not lost, the prospect is so lovely. It is worth a voyage round the world to see this Sydney bay. The deep blue of the water, fringed with the innumerable indentations of a shore rising abruptly from it and covered with vegetation, with here and there beautiful little islets, paradises for picnics, and, over all, the soft dreamy haze we used to admire so in Finden’s views of the American lakes, and white sails moving about in all directions, form altogether a scene of such enchanting beauty, as to move one even to tears when alone and gazing on it. Why such should he the effect of surpassing beauty in a landscape, I know not. But I have always found a feeling of profound melancholy come over me at such a time. The melancholy being always proportionate to the sense of beauty, when the beauty is soft and harmonious, not rugged and sublime.
Does the conviction that there is infinitely more beauty than one can appreciate produce mortification at our inability to grasp the whole – a ‘divine despair’ at our own incapacity? Or is it that the brain becomes so acutely impressed as to require the relief of tears, its tension producing a fever of which tears are the relieving perspiration? But this only accounts for the tears, not for the melancholy. That, I like it, arises from a sense of unsatisfied desire – unsatisfied although filled to overflowing, inasmuch as all beautiful is most beautiful when most suggestive of something more than, something
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beyond, beauty; as a human face is fairest when it indicates most lovable qualities.
I have seen faces of which I could not but admire the form of the features and the complexion, but though possessing all the external qualifications for beauty, they were not beautiful, for they were no index to beauty of soul lying beneath. It is no beauty that is only skin-deep; for true beauty is no external accident, but a revelation of that which is within. Yet if the eye can only see that which it has the power of seeing, the beauty of the object will vary with the perception of the beholder. Like taste and smell, it does not exist in the object, but is the’ result or sensation caused by combination or contact with one’s own faculty of perception: – an effect, not a quality. The feeling for beauty must be an indication of a certain amount of moral vigour. To be dead to that is to be dead to all things. They are not wholly dead to whom Persius applies that remarkable line: –
‘Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.’
But you will be retorting my Latin upon me, and saving, ‘Cœlum non animum mutat.’
The Sunday after my arrival, I, for the first time since leaving England, went to church. It was so curious: just like being metamorphosed backwards into a previous state of existence. Everything was exactly what I have been accustomed to at home. The women in their smartest silks rustling into their little rectangular boxes of pews: – the men in what a back-woodsman would call their ‘Sunday-go-to-meeting trowserloons,’ putting their faces into the hats out of which they had
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just taken their heads; the flutter of leaves, the murmur of responses, the glib routine assent to incomprehensible dogmas; the rapid transitions from the utterances of sorrow and contrition to those of joy and praise, and back again; the sitting, standing, and kneeling, everything was so absurdly identical that I felt myself expanding into an all-pervading smile at the ludicrous accuracy of the imitation. Much as one might be supposed to do if in after life one could witness one’s own juvenile self enacting the vagaries of one’s own childhood, but without the childish feeling to prompt them. Being one of the principal churches in Sydney, it was not unnatural to look for some degree of intelligence in the preaching department. It was thoughtless of me, I own, but until I heard that sermon I had failed to realise the vastness of the gulf that separates me from my former self, and from my kindred generally. That simple utterance of woe, ‘I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me,’ the preacher – a pleasant though delicate and sentimental-looking young fellow – told us incontrovertibly established the existence of a future life, and David’s belief in it. It proved also that our faculty of recognising those whom we have loved and lost on earth will be greatly increased there. ‘For David evidently looked forward with pleasure to seeing his child in heaven; but the changes that would be made in its appearance by its translation from the royal nursery to the society of glorified angels, would prevent his recognising it unless his faculties were greatly improved; especially as old men do not generally take notice of infants so as to know them apart.’ I assure you, upon my hou.qur, that this is, as nearly as I can remember it,
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word for word what the preacher said. And when on coming our of church I looked round among the congregation for expressions of indignation at his daring to talk such nonsense to grown-up men and women, I actually saw people turn up their eyes and exclaim, ‘What a lovely discourse!’ So that it seems to have been good enough for them. For myself I shall not trust myself to go again. It irritates me.
In the pew with me was a young lady who, when the service had been going on for some time, perceived my lack of a prayer-book, and lent me one; but after several vain attempts to find the places I laid it down. The air of mingled wonderment and amusement with which she regarded me showed that she took me for a sort of white savage. But seeing, I suppose, that I did not look dangerous, she very good-naturedly found all the places for me. Her veil prevented me from seeing her face very distinctly, but from the tall graceful figure, and the rich auburn hair lying on the back of the neck, and, above all, the voice when joining in the singing, a voice so rich and full of feeling, and, rarest of all qualities, so capable of making others feel, convince me that she must l)e both beautiful and good. Her manner, when finding the places for me, was almost motherly, indicating no self-consciousness, but only anxiety to do a service. But, whether beautiful or not, I must own that her presence diffused a sort of charm around, which you will doubtless ascribe to the fact that I am an uncivilised gold-digger, and she a woman (though by no means necessarily the woman).
During the sermon I detected myself indignantly uttering the word ‘stuff.’ I did. not know I had done
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so audibly until I saw her start and look towards me, as if roused from a reverie. She then seemed to listen for a few moments, when I am almost certain I heard her say to herself, ‘Why, so it is.’
I had no idea of the amazing power of early associations until I found myself so strangely affected at first by everything that reminded. me of the old home. People coming here direct from England note rather the difference than the likeness. But for me, habituated to Spanish, American, and South Sea characteristics, everything human is very English. I can understand now how the mind, in times of great weakness and depression, can find intense comfort in recurring to the convictions of childhood, especially after a life spent at variance with the feelings then instilled; and how, indeed, it cannot help flying back to them with a force proportioned to the barrenness and neglect of the intervening period, – just as the effect of atmospheric pressure outside a hollow sphere depends’ upon the completeness of the vacuum within. Not in those cases where early principles have been deliberately and with intellectual labour exchanged for, or developed into, higher and truer perceptions of the nature of things, do we find the notions of the nursery and school-room recurring with such overwhelming power as to destroy all that has been gained in after life; unless, indeed, disease has come to obliterate the later acquisitions of the intellect, sparing only the memory of the earliest and most deeply impressed.
But in cases where the early principles have been overlooked in the extravagance of a mere animal existence, the exhaustion of animal vigour leaves the field clear for the return to power of the old habits of feeling
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and thinking. Poor dying old Falstaff, e babbling of green fields,’ strikes me as one of the truest touches of nature in all Shakspeare. It is ignorance of this natural law that leads people to marvel at the rapid alternations of piety and recklessness to which men of strong, uncontrolled passions sometimes give way; and to exult over the death-bed return of the prodigal to the sentiments of his youth, as a confirmation of the dogmas he has been taught.
It is not at such a time, when in exhaustion, agony, or terror, that the judgment is fittest to decide what is truth; and I sometimes think that I shall leave a written memorandum to the effect that, if ever I am found to have returned to the old paths of my early religious sentiments, it will probably be found that my brain has given away, and become no longer able to retain any impressions but those of childhood: so that no physical weakness of mine may afford a triumph to the enemies of free thought.
You will be thinking that this is a far-fetched disquisition to be led into by so simple a matter as the resemblance of things in Sydney to things in England. But the whole tendency of my speculations for some time past has been to trace the connection between things apparently remote from each other, in the belief that all things are but links in the same chain or steps in the same process, only some are farther advanced than others; so that the most complicated phenomena may be referred back to causes at once simple and related to each other. The more I am able to see into the nature of the things with which we have to do, whether moral or physical, the more evident does it become to me that
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the advance of knowledge consists, not in the multiplication of agencies, but in their reduction to unity. I believe that the whole system of psychology and morality is truly deducible from the one governing law of our nature, Selfishness, – a word that may be used in a good, as well as in a bad sense. With his own consciousness for centre, and the indefinite for distance, it is for man to describe a circle of knowledge ever increasing with his own experiences.
In the great cause of Experience versus Authority, judgment, with costs, is given against the latter; and I find myself no longer harassed by the perplexities incidental to the theory of a revelation external to, and irrespective of, my own perceptions, inasmuch as it is self-evident that it requires a prior knowledge of the Absolute in order to be able to predicate of any information that it is thence immediately derived. When we have said that God is the moving force or life of things, we have said all that we can possibly know or imagine of Him; and this is only a definition or repetition of terms. All real knowledge is not of Him, but of His Method: so inevitably and utterly is the Absolute beyond the reach of all limited beings, that it may be said that for us there is no Absolute; for by the Absolute we can only mean that which is finished and perfect. Whereas the God of our comprehension never rested, never rests, from his work; nor will he do so until nature ceases, and annihilation prevails.
Our experience can be only of the Finite, which cannot in any way represent the infinite. If man was made in the image of God, surely he has returned the compliment, and made God in the image of himself, endowing
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Him with all the faculties he himself deems best and greatest. The God of all ages, peoples, and individuals, varies with the stage of their progress in knowledge, and will ever continue to do so; becoming more elevated and refined in the conception of men until they reach that point when they can bow in reverence to the inscrutable, and own that the theology of every age is but the product and measure of man’s knowledge of himself.
The interest you have ever taken in my mental pilgrimage has thus led me to tell you more about my thoughts than about the country or my plans in it. My next letter shall be after I have been into the interior, and, I hope, got to work at something; for my holiday has now lasted several months, and independently of money reasons, I really long to be at work again. Having escaped from the Samoan Capua, I must not make another one of this pleasant place.
One thing I want you to do for me, and that is to tell me the names of any good books on the subjects which occupy me; not volumes of hearsays, the shops here are abundantly supplied with them, but men’s own experience in the domains of life. Humboldt’s ‘Cosmos’ I am now reading. It is a grand collection of physical facts; but I want to see the facts classified, and the process of evolution of the moral from the physical life traced, – books which help one to comprehend the vast harmony and tendency of the universe. From what my little French friend said of Comte’s Philosophie Positive, it seems to be one of the books I should read.
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THE COLONY
To Charles Arnold
INNUMERABLE thanks, dear friend, for the letter and the books. It is a glorious selection, and exactly what I wanted. I had no idea that such books existed. Surely they betoken a vast revolution of opinion in England; – nothing less than the advent of an age of free thought, delivered from the tyranny of foregone conclusions, and unfettered by aught but love of truth. It is intensely pleasant to find other minds, starting from different points and travelling by different paths, approach the same conclusions that I myself, by simply thinking and feeling, have reached. I have as yet only glanced at most of the volumes, reserving the regular reading of the in until I can find time; and as I read I shall not fail to bear in mind your caution, and endeavour to ascertain what element there is in human nature which they omit from their account. At present I confess myself at a loss to discern it. I am unable to admit the existence of a spiritual element altogether external to, and independent of, the material, because I do not know the limits or functions of the latter. Once granted the faculty of thought or consciousness, and I do not see what more is wanted to account for all human phenomena, even including the existence of moral evil.
Your argument from the existence of the imagination is certainly one to be kept in mind. It is only the
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narrowest feeling that would prohibit the use, for fear or’ the abuse, of anything. To ignore the proper functions of the imagination lest it betray us into superstition, is only to fall into the same error as the religionist who through dread of scepticism ignores his reason. But if by the imagination you mean some transcendental faculty capable of acquiring knowledge independently of experience, it seems to me that you are at once assuming the whole question and deposing reason from the exercise of any office whatever. For whatever conclusions reason may come to, they must all be abandoned at the bidding of the imagination; whereas it seems to me that the latter should be the handmaid and coadjutor of the reason, not its supplanter. But surely all these complications are only the result of a vicious metaphysics. The reason and the imagination are, after all, but modes or’ thought, and it is a very detective capacity that can only think in one way.
l have come across one book in this country that seems to contain the root of all possible thought on these subjects. As it was by a somewhat singular chance, I shall give it to you in its proper place in the narrative of my colonial experiences. The months since my last letter, have seen me, first a gold-digger for some months; till I knocked up with the heat, having gained little beside getting thoroughly en rapport with the country: the hard work taking off all sense of strangeness, and completely naturalising me to Australia. The mines much resemble those of California, but are less convenient for working, owing to the irregularity of the water supply. Since that, I have become H government official, holding a post connected with the mines,
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and in that capacity I have to travel often between them and Sydney. I undertook the post in compliance with the urgent advice of my friends, who assured me I should lose all I have if I trusted to my own resources. I suspect, however, though I don’t tell them so, that certain old-country notions about manual labour being ‘un-respectable’ had a good deal to do with the advice.
Mounted, and on the road with a couple of hundred miles of mountain and forest, or, as it is called here, ‘Bush,’ before me, I could fancy myself back in America again. But the illusion is soon dispelled by the difference of the foliage. After the solemn magnificence of the pine-forest, these dingy untidy gum-trees with leaves so small and scanty as to produce no shade, have a very dismal aspect. But for all that, the country has a capacity which the colonists have not been slow to take advantage of. Now and then one comes to an open plain with fields and farms and cheerful habitations, looking all the more charming for their contrast with the surrounding wilderness of gum-trees. Thus, at the end of the first day’s ride from Sydney, the Nepean over breaks from a barrier of tremendous sandstone cliffs, and winds through the beautiful vale of Mulgoa, with its rich meadow-lands, vineyards, orangeries, and gardens of fruits and flowers endosing really handsome dwellings: – a very oasis lying at the foot of the Blue Mountains, and which I always contrive to make my stopping place, having been so fortunate as to meet some of the proprietors of this paradise in Sydney. And their hospitality is conferred with such kindliness, as to make |t appear that they are the favoured party.
On one of my journeys I thought I knew the country
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well enough to take a short cut through the bush, and got lost. After passing the night among the gum-trees, I and my horse were travelling on exceedingly famished and uncomfortable, knowing only that our general direction was eastwards. Meeting a shepherd, I learnt that I was very far from everywhere except the head station of his master, whose name I knew as that of one of the principal settlers in that district. Towards this I bent my way, and after some miles came to a fine, open, undulating country, with fields and cottages, and a handsome stone house standing apart. The whole having such an aspect of comfort and refinement, that, hungry as I was, I sought a hidden place on the river that skirted the plain, and took a bath before presenting myself at the house. On introducing myself, the proprietor, a pleasant elderly gentleman, at once asked me in to join him at breakfast, and called a man to take my horse to the stable. We chatted away and soon became good friends. He seemed as much pleased to have a visitor as I was with my own good fortune, and evidently enjoyed the glances that, in spite of my eager appetite, I could not help casting at the drawings on the walls, and the delicately worked ornaments of the room. The whole had an aspect so different from anything I had before seen in the far bush-land. Not merely a refined and feminine aspect, but indicating such supreme good taste and high breeding. Everything was good. I suppose I must have looked occasionally towards the door, as if expecting some one else, for my host remarked that although there was no one but himself to entertain me, he hoped I would not think of going before next day. So I stayed, and learnt that he had long
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been a widower with an only daughter, who had lived there until the gold discovery; that he had ceased to live there now, but came occasionally to visit the station.
He was evidently filled with a sense of his daughter’s perfections, for he delighted in showing her handiwork and in hearing my expressions of approbation, which were really warm and unfeigned, and quite won his heart, for he took me into his own room and showed me triumphantly a portrait of a fair young girl of exceeding loveliness, whom he called his sunbeam, until I fancied that even I felt a sweet influence pervading the whole dwelling. Nor was the fancy dispelled when we went out into her flower-garden, or when in passing near the cottages, (‘huts’ they are called here), the women came out and asked with evident affection after ‘Miss Mary,’ But this is a long story, with no other object than to introduce the book of which I spoke, and which I found in the library, and, being attracted by the title, looked over. It was D’Holbach’s ‘Système de in Nature,’ a book as old as the French Revolution, and yet laying the foundation for all future thought, as far as I can foresee its probable course. A curious book to light upon in the bush, where the chief cost of everything is its carriage. Seeing how I was attracted by it my host said in must return some day and finish it. He gave me his address near Sydney, where his daughter is living together with an invalid aunt. So that I may yet see the original of the portrait.
I was prepared to find Australian institutions much like those of England; but I was rather astonished on discovering that the colonists so dearly cherish the connection between Church and State, as to have no less
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than four State-paid religions, consisting of the most numerous sects, including the Roman Catholic. Of course there are many who are dissatisfied with this arrangement; but these are said generally to belong to some of the unrecognised sects, who get none of the money. ‘Endow all or none,’ is their demand. Yet, absurd as the present arrangement may appear, is it not less so than that assumption of infallibility by which a government considers itself justified in selecting some one set of rites and opinions, and taxing the whole community to support them? Here, indeed, the government does not pretend to pronounce which is the true faith; but accepting success as the most tangible test, it subsidises the clergy of the largest denominations as a sort of theological police, necessary to the preservation of social order; and they, so long as they get the money, are content to be in this position.
The more I see of the contrast between the American system and ours, the more I admire the simplicity of the former. Theirs, being founded upon first principles, is in fact a recognition of an universal truth and justice, existing independently of shifting policy. Ours, on the contrary, is a deification of the most miserable short-sighted expediency. We take possession of a wilderness, and forthwith transfer to it governors, and bishops, and all the weighty encumbrances of the Old World; and when the emigrant seeks a fresher air and soil, and simpler conditions of existence, he finds himself still confined and fettered by the tangled growth of by-gone ages.
I can anticipate your defence of the institutions I am finding fault with. You will say that men will be apt to leave perfect ones to work themselves; and so neglect
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the duties, and lose the virtues, of citizens: while the consciousness of imperfection in the system, and therefore of the necessity of care in its administration to prevent a dead-lock, induces moderation and forbearance among different classes: that experience is the only test, and that when a thing is found to work well in practice no amount of theory ought to weigh against it. We have talked of these matters in the olden time, and while now, as then, I partly agree, I see more clearly than ever that, in order to maintain the less perfect forms of society, it is necessary to mix with education a certain amount of prejudice to make the individual fit for the system. But however this maybe, it is no matter of wonder to me that the colonial government is involved in numerous perplexities through its usurpation of functions which do not properly belong to it. I was in the legislative council one day during the passing of the estimates. The annual grant for orphan asylums caused a good deal of discussion, as well it might, for the government is committed to the support of two, – one for Protestant and the other for Roman Catholic orphans! The next item was for the lunatic asylum, when I shocked my neighbour by inquiring if there were not two – one for the Protestant and the other for Roman Catholic lunatics. I am convinced by what I see here that the support of religion and charity by the State has a necessary tendency to destroy them among the people. Even if the contrary were the case, the government would not be justified in undertaking these offices, for it seems to me incontestable that the true purpose of a State is, not to promote directly the moral or physical good of society, but to secure the greatest possible liberty for every one to do as
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he pleases; – to follow religion, wealth, amusement, or anything else ; the sole limitation to his liberty being the equal liberty of everybody else. No doubt such freedom will conduce to the highest good of which society is capable; not to believe this is the most palpable Atheism: – but whether it does or not, is no business of the government. There are indications that the people here are beginning to have some perception of this; but vested interests have become strong under the present system, and the general absorption in money-making causes people to be only too glad to get their charities performed by machinery, without occupying their time or distressing their feelings.
I see a great opening for doing good here. The mass is not so enormous as to swamp the unit, and it is possible sensibly to influence for good the future destinies of this young empire. The prospect of some such career will do much to reconcile me to a prolonged stay in the colony; for prolonged my stay must to all appearance be, if I hold to my resolution of not returning to England until I have achieved a competency. And to what end should I return sooner?
A NEW WORLD INDEED
From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal
I MET my host of the bush in Sydney and promised to ride over and see him in what he calls his town house.
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He was quite right in saying I should have some difficulty in finding it. It is where the perpendicular cliffs subside into a little bay opening on the broad Pacific, and is concealed by thick bush from the traveller on the road. I got upon the sands without discovering any habitation. At the end of the curve the sea was breaking over some hollow rocks with great noise, and just out of its reach upon a sandstone ledge sat a lady in black, sketching. Tying my horse to a tree, I clambered over the rocks in order to inquire my way. Reaching the sketcher from behind, I had time to recognise in the drawing the same hand that so pleased me in the bush, ere she perceived me.
‘The noise of the sea,’ I said, apologetically, ‘prevented my giving you warning of my approach.’ But I rather thought that she was so absorbed in her work that she would have been equally unaware of it without the sea. As I spoke she looked up and «lightly started. I know not what possessed me, but without a word I sat down on a ledge of rock near her feet. I can see now that it was a somewhat extraordinary action, and would have frightened most women out of their senses. But it seemed at the moment to be a matter of course; and so she took it, for she did not appear the least surprised or disconcerted.
I said, ‘I came to ask the way to your father’s house. I little thought I should find an old friend here.’
‘Why, how long have you known me?
‘Ever since I lost my way in the bush, and was hospitably entertained at Yarradale. By the help of a portrait I tried to fancy the author of all the pretty things
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there. And now that I see you, it seems as if I had known you all my life.’
She seemed to be repressing some emotion, and then said quietly, almost meditatively,
‘l think I have known you longer than that; I mean before you were at Yarradale.’
‘Indeed!’ I exclaimed.
‘Have you learnt to find the places at church yet?’
With an indescribable archness, and yet with a manner indicating intense fear of causing pain, she said this.
‘
‘So it was you,’ I exclaimed; ‘you wore an impenetrable veil. But I feel that I should very soon have found it out if you had not mentioned it.’
She looked at me wonderingly and asked how.
‘Partly by the voice, and the glimpse of your auburn hair. But mostly by a certain feeling of being perfectly at case, so rare. to me with a s I range r, and which I then fell for the first time in my life, and now for the second. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘What n savage you must have thought me.’
‘You listened to the sermon.’
‘Is that so rare?’
‘Perhaps I ought not to say such a thing, but in ever observed any one, at least any of on r squatters, for such I took you to be, listening to one before.’
‘You know then that I am not a squatter?’
‘Oh yes, my father told me – at least I guessed from his account of his visitor at Yarradale, that – but I will show you the way to the house. He will be so glad to see you. He was delighted with your description of
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your travels. He has such a passion for adventure. You will cheer him, for he has felt much the loss of his only sister, who lived with us.’
How the stranger at church and her father’s guest in’ the bush came to form one idea in her mind, and why she should be so confused, formed a mystery I was puzzling myself to solve when we reached the garden. Nor was it at all lessened when, after a most cordial greeting from Mr. Travers whom we found there, he said to his daughter, ‘Well, Mary, what do you think of the likeness now?’ and she, muttering an inaudible reply, ran into the house and did not appear again until dinner-time.
There was the same perfect look of home about the place that had so much struck me at Yarradale. The same spirit and the same influence pervaded the’ house and its inmates, producing a feeling of intense and yet calm satisfaction and perfect contentment, which to me, who had been so long a stranger to the settled sensation of home and its certainties, was exquisitely delightful. And there was no mistaking its source; for as she sat at the table in the evening showing me her portfolio of drawings and paintings, it seemed to exhale from her very presence, shedding a dreamy blissfulness both upon her father, who sat apart watching her, and upon me; resembling, as nearly as I can describe it, a combination of the spirit that pervades Tennyson’s ‘Lotus-eaters,’ with the condition known to mesmerists as that of being en rapport.
The drawings indicated a mind tinged with the loftiest romance, mingled with a deep sentiment of
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religiousness. There were Madonnas and Magdalens, angels and demigods, which, as I gazed upon them, excited in me a feeling of awe at the wondrous purity and power of the artist’s soul. One face seemed to be a favourite of hers, for it recurred two or three times in the later drawings; the most striking instance being in an unfinished one of Don Quixote, and a painting after Guido, of the Archangel’s conquest of Satan. The Don was sitting on the root of an aged tree; his cloak, which had shielded him through the night, was cast aside, and his face was turned towards the east to watch for the rising sun, which already is darting one bright gleam into the forest depth, lighting up his wan countenance, and revealing a face half joyous in the anticipation of high achievements, and half saddened by the consciousness of isolation and the world’s scorn. It was a new revelation to me of the knight-errant; shorn entirely of the coarse and the ludicrous, and transfused into a high religious symbol.
I was wondering where I had seen the face of Michael before, so familiar to me, when all at once I discovered that it was a likeness of myself; so highly idealised indeed as to be most appropriate to the subject, but there was no mistaking the type, though filled up more as nature perhaps intended mine to be, than with the anxious weather-beaten aspect that I, alas, am too conscious of having acquired. The mystery was soon solved. The father after receiving me at Yarradale saw the picture, and mentioned its resemblance to his benighted guest, and was told that it was suggested by a face she had once seen at church. It was by thus
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comparing notes she had come to the conclusion that the stranger at church and the guest in the bush were one and the same person.
I inquired why Satan appeared in the picture without a face, and learnt that he had once possessed a most diabolical countenance, but it happened to be so like a well-known colonial character that the gentle artist spoilt her picture rather than be liable to the charge of unkindness. She promised to carry out my suggestion, and represent him with the face crushed into the dust.
In my highly-strung state of feeling that evening, every trifle seemed to assume grand dimensions, and to cluster in a halo of charms around this Australian maiden. if such was the intense yet subdued delight of the evening, what shall I say of the singing glories of the morning? There was rain and gloom without, but her entrance into the breakfast-room seemed to bring with it a full bright burst of summer morn.
In her presence there is no need of any effort to seem, to be, or to understand. One seems to know all things by sympathy. There is a largeness of nature about her that entirely transcends the notion of what’ is called cleverness. For cleverness or adroitness implies effort, and that involves limitation. But with her there is nothing to suggest the idea of limitation. Power without effort, suppressed energy, concealment of method, economy of strength, are phrases that suggested themselves to me as I rode back to Sydney, endeavouring to comprehend the secret of her undefinable grace. In nothing does her peculiar character show itself more than in her singing. It is intense without loudness, dramatic without any approach to ranting. Her music does not attempt to
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rival or outdo the words, but only interprets and enforces them. Her method is that of the magnifying-glass that enlarges the object without being itself obtrusive.
THE FRIENDS
IT soon became a rare thing for Herbert to go to Sydney without paying a visit to Bondi, for so the little bay was named. Mr. Travers was always warm in his welcome. It had long been a subject of regret with him that his daughter manifested so much reserve and indifference for what is called society; unless, indeed, any one required her assistance, and then nothing could surpass her self-denying benevolence, or her gentle tact and wisdom.
Her intercourse with Herbert was free and unconstrained, as that of persons who are thrown together for a short time, and who care only to derive as much pleasure and profit as possible from each other before they are separated. It is in such circumstances probably that people best learn each other. Where neither side has any ulterior end in view, there is no motive for concealment or pretence, and the nature of each is allowed to appear without any disturbance of its true proportions.
Though this household was the one oasis in Herbert’s colonial life, his heart was still in England. It had never occurred to him as possible that he could make a home or a permanent resting-place elsewhere.
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Conversing with her, and together studying their favourite books, they soon discovered a perfect identity of taste and sentiment. But in what consisted the real charm for both seems to have been little suspected by either of them. Miss Travers acknowledged some peculiarity about Herbert, for so far from ever paying her the slightest compliment, as all other men to her intense annoyance persisted in doing, he seemed scarcely to know that she was a woman. There was the same self-contained quiet deference in his manner to her as to everybody else, but an utter unconsciousness of any difference of sex; and so she on her part forgot that he was a man, or, if a man, that he was not her brother, and both were thrown o ff their guard, as not knowing there was anything to be guarded against. There is probably nothing more delightful to a perfectly true and pure-hearted woman than to be thus treated by an intelligent man as a friend and equal. Such conduct is in itself the most delicate compliment to her mind and disposition, which such a woman ever regards as the best parts of her nature, whatever men in general may think to the contrary.
One entry in Miss Travers’ diary shows how narrowly her pleasure in Herbert’s society escaped disturbance.
‘I wish Mrs. M. would not take the trouble to come to see me. She always contrives to say something that annoys me. Such a strange notion too. She said that she considered in Mr. Ainslie a most dangerous man. She qualified it afterwards by adding “at least he would be so if he knew his power.” She saw how surprised I was, and graciously explained, “Yes, my dear, you are too young yet to have discovered that a woman is never so liable to be impressed by a man as when he makes
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her forget that she is a woman. He pays no compliment, bestows upon her no small talk; in short, does nothing to show he is aware of any difference. So that one is undermined and taken before one has found out that an enemy is near.”
‘Poor Herbert, how amused he would have been at this description of himself. But I would not for the world destroy the charm of unconsciousness in him. I see now that we have been as comrades, or as brother and sister to each other. I have often longed for a brother, and am well content with him. Yet why should he choose me for his sister? I hardly talk before him; not much to him. I think of a hundred thins, but he always says them before they reach my lips. It must be that he feels an affinity of mind, and enjoys it without requiring utterance from me. I can speak more easily, more brilliantly, as novels say, to anybody, than to him or in his presence. He produces in me a feeling of content or repose. Action, exertion, seem as superfluous as if all desirable results had been already achieved, or were at his bidding.’
Herbert saw in Miss Travers a soul open to all the universe, and capable of the largest sympathies, but these had as yet found but few opportunities of exercise, save among the families of the labourers on her father’ s station, and by them she was regarded as an angel of kindness. To Herbert her character seemed that of a universal sister, a personification of all beauty, goodness, and truth, the resting-place of divinest charity and compassion, extending to the erring as well as to the suffering. He was tempted one day by some flagrant folly on the part of some public man to pen a bitter satire on
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its perpetrator. It duly appeared in print, and he showed it to his friend. She was greatly distressed by it, but added, ‘Men are so different from us. I suppose I am not able to judge.’ Such was Mary Travers; un-able to do any wrong herself, when any whom she believed in seemed to her to err, she would say ‘There must be something I do not understand,’ and still trust on.
The young are always patriotic, and nowhere more than in a new country, where the absence of historical associations permits the mind to dwell more on the future. Miss Travers’ attachment to her native land was very strong. She loved to form an ideal of its future, and to think of the glorious harmony that might be evolved even out of such a chaos as that from which Australia was emerging. How that with a history unsullied by national crime, and a soil unstained by cruel wars. The new southern world might grow to become the exemplar of the world and the hope of all the earth. Ever seeking some means of aiding her country’s development, she perceives in Herbert powers capable of being used for much good, a will so to apply them, clear insight, and high feeling. In their many conversations at home, wandering by the sea-side, or in long country rides, he has revealed to her his system of thought and his personal history, without reserve, for she was one who compelled the entire confidence of all who approached her. None fell any fear of stumbling against the boundaries of her nature, or transcending either her comprehension or her charity. In her the intellectual and the moral natures rivalled each other in their development. And Herbert feels that in his relations to
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her there must be no halfness; no tabooed subjects on which they are agreed to differ and be silent. Ever in search of the true, he cannot now enact a lie, and obtain her friendship by suffering her to remain in ignorance of his real opinions. If she is one whom they would shock, or to whom they would be unintelligible, she cannot be the friend for whom he has longed. He will seek farther. Better spend life in dreaming of a true ideal than embitter it by descending’ to a false real.
CONVERSE
IT was early in their acquaintance, when talking about their first meeting, that Mary learnt that Herbert had never been to church since. She fell that the mere fact of his having been long in a country where there was no church to go to, would, rather than destroy a habit acquired in early life, create an eagerness to resume it, unless there were other reasons for abstinence.
‘You a musician,’ he exclaimed, in answer to her queries, ‘and wonder at my never going to church! Think how you would like to go to a concert where every one seemed to you to play out of time and tune. Exactly so does it jar upon me to hear men asserting doctrines that I perceive to be false, and inconsistent, not only with my own views, but with each other; and to listen to them vilifying human nature and exalting
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the monstrous product of their own imaginations I the place of God, and denouncing all who do not fall down and worship the image they so brazenly set up.’
Miss Travers supposes it is for man to worship intelligently, and woman emotionally; he with the head, she with the heart, suffering her feelings to be drawn upwards without criticising, or indeed being conscious of the agency which moves her. She does not remember listening to a sermon critically before she saw Herbert do so. She has always done it since, and has got less benefit from them than previously. No doubt to one fresh from his communings with God and nature face to face in the prairie and the forest, on mountain and by river, listening to most sermons must seem like going into the nursery again.
‘A happy alchemy yours,’ he says, ‘that turns everything into gold. But your mood in church seems to me to be rather one of reverie, than of actual worship; – such a state as really good music excites in me, while a sermon, whether good or bad, is able to produce it in you. But you are not the first who believes most when listening least. Away from sermon-makers and dogmatists, I have ever fell far more religious faith and feeling than when listening to their elaborate expositions. All is human while I hear them. All is divine when they are not by. I tear that it can rarely be said now-a-days that “Faith cometh by hearing.” ’
Miss Travers thinks she listens to music in a very different way to that in which she hears a sermon.
‘We are probably close,’ he resumes, ‘upon the secret of the vitality shown by all religions, no matter how intrinsically absurd they may be. Caught young and
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trained rigidly, it does not occur to people to question anything that tallies with their first impressions. Fortunately, men are better than their creeds, and their religious aspirations are excited by the early associations connected with the place and the rite, quite independently of the truth or propriety of the details. The good you get at church is not from what you hear there, but from your own thoughts.’
‘But are they not suggested by what is said?’
Is it Emerson who says that many an excellent discourse is heard in church of which the preacher has little notion?’
‘Oh yes, and it is so true. The text, or something, often sets me off in a train of thought which I do not get out of until the sermon is over, and I come away without having heard a word of it. But even in things evil there is a soul of goodness; and if you refuse to acknowledge in their faith and worship the highest and best of which people are capable, are you not liable to recognise the existence of only the inferior side of their nature? What I mean is, that the intention may deserve respect, though the performance falls short. And they surely intend their worship to express all their best feelings of piety and reverence, though it may do so imperfectly; – though they are, as Tennyson’s most profound poem says:
‘But children crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry.’
‘l recognise good in everything,’ said Herbert, ‘except in Phariseeism. But you have truly named the grounds on which -one looks with a degree of satisfaction
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on the various modes by which all nations and tribes endeavour to express their sense of dependence on a Supreme Being. In so far as their religion is what it was defined to be by the most anathematised writer of the revolutionary period, “Man bringing to his Maker of the fruits of his heart,” – no one honours it more than I do. But who will say that the harsh dogmas of the Churches are the fruits of aught but the metaphysical and illogical heads, not the hearts, of men?’
‘I think,’ said Miss Travers, ‘I know where you found that beautiful definition of’ religion.’
‘Is it possible that you have read Paines “Rights of Man!” ’
‘My life has been a peculiar one. My mother died when I was a child; and, left very much to myself, I devoured every book that came in my way. There was no one to guide my choice, except my invalid aunt, and my father always said that I might do as I liked, for nothing would harm me. He had a few strange books, the remains of a relative’s library. I read them all. And enjoyed that one especially, its logic seemed so splendid. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to own it.’
‘The people who would be most shocked at the avowal are not those who have read the book,’ replied Herbert. ‘It is in his other writings, I believe, that Paine’s coarseness appears; and I doubt whether they would be considered too coarse, if applied to the rival mythologies instead of to our own. No one dreams of disputing in our days, though few admit, that to his dauntless courage and keen perceptions we owe the suggestion of every modern reform in Church and State.’
‘And how beautifully,’ said Miss Travers, ‘he follows
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up his definition by the illustration of a parent receiving tokens of affection from his children, each bringing what his heart prompts, – a fruit, a flower, or any other gift, and all meeting with acceptance as the offering of affection.’
‘A most unecclesiastical sentiment,’ exclaimed Herbert. ‘But how often it has happened that the martyr or blasphemer of one age is the prophet of the next.’
‘We bestow much pity,’ she observed, ‘upon martyrs; hut I can understand how that the vision of truth and the anticipation of the gratitude of posterity, to say nothing of their assurance of the divine approbation, must be rewards really greater than those of compliance and conformity. But is it so to one who values sympathy as you do?’
‘All who love truth must value sympathy,’ returned Herbert; ‘though, no doubt, many have to be content with that of their own ideal, which is to them the approbation of God.’
‘Can one do better? Next to my father, my principal friends have been my books and my pencil. Occasionally some one has come whom I at first liked, and put upon a pedestal in my imagination; but on a closer acquaintance they always tumbled down, to my disappointment; and I was left, like Leila in that beautiful story in Southey’s “Thalaba.” The companions made of snow by the magician for his daughter soon melted away, and left her doubly lonely.’
‘The illustration is probably apter than you are aware of,’ answered Herbert. ‘Your own imagination is a magician that transforms all who approach you into something that they are not in themselves. Like clouds
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at sunset, their splendour vanishes when your rays are withdrawn.’
‘And I unkindly blame the poor, dull, grey clouds for not having brighter hues of their own,’ she said,
‘Or, perhaps,’ he added, ‘wishing to earn your approbation, they, tradesman-like, put their best in the window; and you have been disappointed at the inferiority of the stock within.’
‘Well, I must not complain, if done from a desire to please me.’
CONVERSE
From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal
I OFTEN find myself gliding into subjects that in ever expected to talk about to any young lady. Her thoughtful disposition and peculiar line of reading, especially in German, have accustomed her to ideas that l, in my lonely wanderings, had fancied belonged to myself alone. She renewed the question of church-going, and I asked if she had ever heard a beautiful air sung to indifferent words.
‘Oh yes; and always wished that the words had been in some unknown tongue, that the music night be left to express its own real meaning: and this,’ she thought, ‘must be one of the charms of the foreign
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opera. The music is always better than the words, and people either do not understand the language, or do not think of the words, and so are left to the sole influence of the music; but when we meet with a happy marriage of “perfect music unto noble words,” each interpreting and fulfilling the other, making the words mean more when sung than said;’ – there was nothing she delighted in so much as a good English ballad.
‘You have given me,’ I said, ‘a solution of a problem that has always puzzled me, namely, why the wise Roman Church insists on its people praying in an unknown tongue. The music of their hearts might be destroyed by plain words at which their understanding could cavil; a knowledge of the words would destroy the illusion. I, too, can pray, but not in words. Let my prayer be limited to a general aspiration towards a higher and better, – an aspiration that may show itself in the acts of my life; but do not insist on my ransacking- my brain for details of wants to be supplied, or require me to analyse the Divine nature, – to define the infinite, – in order to comprehend the process by which God justifies himself to himself for listening to me. It is the old contest between the spirit and the letter. You get good by not listening. You worship with the heart, while I criticise with the head. It is my misfortune that I cannot help listening; and when I see people bowing, and responding “I believe” in so-and-so I cannot help stiffening myself and responding “I don’t.” In music alone I get devotion without dogma, religion without opinion. The purpose of all worship is to foster the divine ideal in the soul; to do, not God service, for we cannot benefit Him, but man service, by bringing vividly
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before the mind the idea of perfection, and exciting us to strive towards it. In such worship as this, Christian and Atheist alike can join; for the perfect standard can exist in our minds whether we believe that the Ideal has an objective personal existence or not. One main function of prayer is to concentrate and intensify the faculties, and bring them into a favourable condition for appreciating those spiritual phenomena which transcend ordinary observation, Thus, the only prayer I know is intense wishing.’
‘It is much the same with me,’ she said, and added in a low tone, ‘only I always wish kneeling.’
After a pause, she said, ‘I have thought a good deal over what you said one day, that the imagination cannot Create. If that be so, is not the fact of our believing in God proof of His existence?’
I asked if she had ever analysed the phrase, ‘believing in God,’ so as to get a definite conception of what people mean by it?
She said, No, but that she thought all understood the same thing by it.
‘Even including those who are called Atheists,’ I said.
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘Because by God they all mean simply the cause of that which is, though they differ widely about the nature of that cause. There is, therefore, no such thing as an Atheist, unless there be any who do not believe in cause and effect. We ever reason from what we know to what we do not know. From the small we imagine the great, from the near the remote, from the seen the unseen, from the part the whole, from the effect the cause.
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Finding cause necessary to effect, we reason back till we refer all things to one cause. There we are stopped by the lack of knowledge, and our inability to go farther. We frame a title – First Cause – for the Unimaginable, and gladly overlook the contradiction of its terms; – overlook that a cause itself is but an effect of a prior cause. Summing up the whole infinite series of causes or effects, – for they are the same thing – we-call them God; meaning that which is: the great I AM.’
‘How curious,’ she exclaimed, ‘to find oneself thus unexpectedly confronted with the ancient Mosaic name of God! But what, then, is it that we pray to?’ asked she anxiously.
‘So far as I can see,’ I said, ‘l believe that most verbal prayers are, in reality, requests to the general order of things to arrange themselves in a manner favourable to our wishes. Of course to this end the only rational prayer is work to effect what we desire. The exaltation of begging above working, is worthy only of a Church that sends forth mendicant friars.’
‘But how do you reconcile that with the injunction “always to pray”?’
‘I don’t feel bound to reconcile anything I say with anything said by others; but the addition of “and not to faint” converts the sentence into an exhortation against despairing so long as we can make an effort. The illustration that follows, shows that such is its meaning. For the widow is represented as going to work in the only way in which she can hope to move the unjust judge (to whom the Almighty is, with very questionable taste, compared), by giving him no peace of his life until he yields to her importunity. But we
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can find many uses for prayer without having recourse to the supernatural. By means of prayer, unwelcome events are brought so vividly before the mind that we at length become accustomed to the contemplation of them and a conviction of their inevitableness gradually induces a feeling of acquiescence or resignation. In weakness and helplessness we esteem this a desirable frame of mind. When stronger, we feel that misery and calamity are the legitimate offspring of ignorance and mismanagement, and we are roused to do our best to prevent their recurrence, and so to put ourselves and mankind in a better position than before. Prayer, again, is often an irresistible utterance of the soul in agony. After a paroxysm comes relief; but the cry that escapes in the paroxysm does not bring it. Far be it from me to deny the Divine personality. I only assert that while the terms “Infinite” and “Personal” are to us utterly incongruous, we are still by the necessities of our nature compelled to imagine God even such an one altogether as we are; differing not in kind but only in degree. Our theologies are all the victims of an inevitable anthropomorphism. For we can only comprehend anything in so far as we can compare the conditions of its being with those of our own; and by the Absolute we mean that which exists independently of all conditions.’
‘I think you will understand,’ said Miss Travers, ‘a feeling that came over me once. On a bright summer’s day I lay on the grass looking up into the blue cloudless sky. It seemed, as I looked, as if my sight kept penetrating farther and farther until I fell as if detached from my bodily self and at large in space. For one instant I’ seemed to realise what it was to be without limit or
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position. All around was a pure void, and, go far as I would, I could discover nothing but space so empty as to contain not even God. I seemed to have got so far from myself as to have lost Him. I was in an agony of desolation. The sensation, brief as it was, was over-whelming, and I felt irresistibly that God himself as a Person can never have existed alone. It was such a relief to come back and find myself surrounded by things that I could see and feel. The very trees had new charms for me, for they were companions to me.’
‘Two or three times in my life,’ I said, ‘I have with like intensity seemed to realise the immensity of time and space, and felt so over whelmed and lost that it was impossible to endure the sensation for more than an instant. It was like a sense of despair that must drive one mad. But did no after-inference suggest itself to you, affecting your ideas generally?’
‘The re was one,’ she replied, ‘that seemed so bold that I dared not entertain it until I in e I with something like it in my reading. I felt that there must be as it were a substratum of God in man, or there could be no God out of man. I don’t think it was a Pantheistic idea, for I did not think everything was God, but that in. some way God was in everything.’
‘Is it Emerson’s essay on the over soul that you refer to, where he says, “I the imperfect adore my own Perfect,” and speaks of the individual mingling with the universal soul?’
‘It was rather the idea that occurs in another part of the same essay: “Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.” But the passage I meant was one in which he says, “The Gods only can recognise the Gods.’’ ’
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A NEW WORLD INDEED
From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal
I DESPAIR of writing down Miss Travers’ conversation. One might as well attempt to describe the fragrance of a rose. In her manner, and the tones of her voice, there is a grace and harmony that suggests so much more than written words can convey. For her large heart and brain the Universe has never been pared down to a narrow circle of hearsays, b u I she seems to have centred in her mind the ends of the clues of all truths, which she is not afraid of following wherever they may lead. With the loftiest and tenderest poetic sentiment she combines a strictly logical faculty. Her father said one day that had she lived under a regime where ‘women’s rights’ were recognised, he should have been puzzled whether to make her a lawyer, a poet, or a nurse. And his estimate of her character is right. She would have been perfect in either capacity. What Emerson quotes of the fair Persian, that such was the redundancy of her nature that all the books of the poets seemed to be written upon her, is true of Mary’ Travers, with the addition that she seems also capable of having written the poems herself. It is very beautiful to witness her father’s faith and trust in her.
Her influence seems to have diffused itself for me over the whole country. I cannot imagine Australia without her. It is scarcely a pun to say it has become
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one universal ‘Mary-land,’ The last time I was on my way up the country, I had been round by Bondi to say good-bye, and had got some distance on my journey when I was joined by some ill-looking fellows, also on their way to the gold-fields, who insisted on keeping me company, and were anything but harmonious to my own thoughts. At most times I should have shown my annoyance, and harshly desired them to leave me to my-self. But all evils seem small to one who is blessed with such a friendship as Mary’s. The tone and manner of her last greetings were so fresh in my memory, and her influence seemed to have so thoroughly penetrated my whole nature, that I could find no place for an angry feeling. And I found myself talking to them just as she herself might have done. And I believe they were as conscious of the spell as I myself was, so quickly and completely were they won. I could not help being amused by the contrast between their manners when they joined me and the subdued tone of respect with which they presently apologised, and begged me to ‘drink something at their expense’ on parting at the first public-house. I am sure that any one who knew her would have ‘taken knowledge of me that I had been with’ Mary.
Sunday Evening. I promised to go to the church at St Leonard’s this morning with Mr. and Miss Travers. We were to lunch with the incumbent, a man of large heart and acquirements, and Miss Travers promised that the sermon should not shock me.
Last evening was one of immense delight. One of the sweetest songstresses of the day; a woman of high character and feeling, has come to Sydney, and we went
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to the theatre to hear her. Mary enjoyed the treat as much as I did. The solemn grandeur of the Psalm-like music of Norma did me more good than a thousand homilies, suffusing one’s whole nature with a sense of the sublime and the holy. Then followed some of our own old ballads, expressing all sweet and innocent feeling, and rendered with a simplicity and archness that left nothing to be desired. The intervals were occupied by some admirable instrumental music. This morning Mr. Travers was unwell and desired us to go to St Leonard’s without him. We drove to Sydney, and crossed the beautiful harbour in a boat, and walked up the hill towards the church. The morning and the scene were surpassingly fair. All the peculiar foliage of Australia being in its fall beauty, with its profusion of wild flowers of most brilliant colours, with here and there the strange-looking grass trees. Half-way up the hill we sat down on the milk-white sandstone ledge and gazed around. The deep blue water of the harbour lay below sleeping in a dreamy haze, dotted over with lazy white sails. And over all the landscape seemed to float the delicious strains of last night’s music, suffusing all nature with harmony, and making for our souls an universe of light and beauty and tenderness. No need of words when souls are as one, and see all things from the same aspect. Truly, indeed, may it be said of us then that we were ‘in the spirit on the Lord’s day.’ Lingeringly we ascended to the church. No wonder the service was far advanced. To Mary’s great disappointment a stranger went into the pulpit. He took advantage of the general interest in the new singer to inveigh against theatres and all public performances; denounced the frivolous world
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for giving more money for a seat at a concert than for one in a church; enlarged on the special iniquity of spending Saturday night in such a manner; and drew an elaborate picture of the blessedness of those righteous persons who abstain from all worldly amusement here, in full and certain assurance of having much better music hereafter, when weeping and gnashing of teeth will be the never-ending lot of – But why detail the hideous nonsense? It was over at last. We left the church, and slowly wended our way in silence down the hill. At length Miss Travers drew a long breath and said, ‘God forgive him. I see now how people are made infidels.’
The sermon was prefaced by the collect for Advent Sunday. It is years since I have heard that collect before, and coming upon me with all the freshness of novelty, I was greatly struck by the amount of subjective truth I found in it. I mentioned this to Miss Travers, and she said that she had long felt that a religion must depend for its credibility and efficacy upon its appeals to the conscience rather than upon any outward signs and wonders; but the idea had never come so clearly before her mind as to make her feel that the supernatural occurrences were any difficulty in the way of belief.
I said that I believed there must be an element of truth in every popular opinion, and that until I have discovered this point of agreement between us, I feel that I have no comprehension of the question at issue. That I believed there are some, even ministers in the Church of England, who agree with me in rejecting all the miraculous portions of the Christian narratives, as mythical, legendary, or emblematical, and account for
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them by the fact that the primitive records of every people and religion are full of similar wonders. That I can do this with the whole objective portion of the collect we had just heard, and yet find in it a deep significance and a sublime truth. That what for others are historical facts clustering around the life of some particular individual, are for me facts occurring in the psychological history of all humanity.
‘Yet this collect,’ she said, ‘speaks very distinctly of Christ coming at some future time to judge the quick and dead!’
‘Can you recall,’ I asked, ‘your first conception of perfection in life and conduct; how meagre and imperfect it was; how weak and incompetent to raise and guide your conduct; and how it was strongest in your humility, and weakest when you fell best pleased with yourself?’
‘Oh yes, and the very contemplation of what I ought to be made me feel mortified by the contrast.’
‘Accepting Christ, then, as our ideal, the collect describes him truly as “coming in humility,’’ both in outward condition and in real power. But the Standard is never fixed. It grows with our growth, and takes en-tire possession of our minds, ever drawing us up higher towards itself, and still ever increasing the distance between us and it; until when life is well nigh spent, and we look back upon the little we have been able to achieve, we are utterly shocked and self-condemned on beholding the vast interval between our performance and our Standard. “And so he cometh to judge the world.” The law of consciousness abides for ever, and by that we must be judged.’
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‘A truth,’ she observed, ‘that exists independently of any historical record or circumstance. But how difficult it is to understand how people should require for inward truth the authority of outward signs.’
‘Especially when it seems self-evident that no power of working wonders can possibly prove more than that the worker possessed such power; not that he speaks the truth.’
‘We read too,’ she said, ‘of “lying wonders,” and Jesus cautioned his disciples not to be led away by them.’
‘Wherefore we may believe,’ I added, ‘that He never worked any miracles in proof of his doctrine, but trusted to its appeal to the hearts and minds of men.’
We had crossed the harbour and were driving home, when she asked if I found any one in the bush who cared to talk on such subjects.
I said, no, I reserved all my metaphysics for her, and feared sometimes that I must be tiresome; but she could little imagine the relief it was to me to allow my thoughts to overflow to one who could understand them so well.
Her answer was, like herself, all that was most kind and sisterly, and I thought I perceived a degree of emotion, and almost tearfulness, while she spoke.
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MISS TRAVERS’ JOURNAL
‘IN every little action of Herbert’s life he unconsciously carries out his “greatest happiness” theory. This, and his ardent love of inquiry, seem to be his chief characteristics. He reminds me of Emerson’s Experimenter, to whom no facts are sacred, none profane; an endless seeker with no past at his back. Or of the patriarch of old obeying the divine call, “Get thee out from thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, to a land that I will show thee,” a land of free thought and new ideas. What a painful dilemma it must have been to one of his disposition to be placed between the necessity of paining his parents, or belying his own convictions. It was very hard to avoid betraying how deeply I was touched by the simple narrative of his unconscious heroism in abandoning all the bright prospects of his life, leaving the Egypt where comfort and honour abounded, and going forth to die if need be in the wilderness. Yet what was this but following the injunction of Christ, to leave all and follow him, the ideal perfection? Not to be rich, not to be happy, but to bear witness to the truth.
‘How singularly clear he makes many parts of the Bible to me, and so human. As he told my dear father and myself all his story that evening, sitting on the little bench under the acacias, I could hardly help throwing my arms round his neck and kissing him, and telling
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him I would be his sister and try to make him feet that he was not utterly alone in the world. How unfeeling he must have thought me when I got up so abruptly and went away. Yet I don’t think he thought so; for sometimes it seems to me as if he read my very thoughts. How startled I was last night at the theatre when listening to that delicious music, forgetful of the place, and thinking only of the old violinist and the scone at the opera in Bulwer’s wonderful “Zanoni.” He was sitting behind me and leant forward and whispered “Do you remember old Pisani?” It was like an echo from my own thought. The magician himself could not have read my mind more clearly.
‘And this morning, when I was provoked with myself for having made him go and hear that dreadful sermon, instead of saying a word to increase my vexation, he led me to talk of something else so kindly and delicately, without in the least showing that he was aware what a service he was doing me. I thanked him tonight before he left us, and asked why the wickedness of that sermon should be so painfully conspicuous, when I had heard others very much like it without noticing it in them. He said, “If you remain in the same room where you have been dining, you do not perceive the smell of the dinner. But if you go out into fresher air, and then return, the odour is exceedingly unpleasant. We have been roaming together over the hills of thought. Inhaling the pure atmosphere of truth and enjoying the fresh breezes of free inquiry. It is only on coming back to the old haunt of all narrowness and uncharitableness that we learn how close and disagreeable it is.”
‘I must make a note of that beautiful illustration
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which he drew from last night’s concert, during our delicious walk up to St Leonard’s. We were rather early in arriving, and had to undergo listening to the process of tuning the instruments, a thing carefully avoided by most people, but Herbert said he rather liked it. For that amid all the strange creakings and groanings, and harsh incongruous sounds that seem so utterly and hopelessly at variance with each other, there is a connection and a meaning discoverable by a careful listener. And he takes special delight in marking the gradual change, as sweetest music comes to be evolved out of the chaos of discord, until the whole combines in perfect and fullest harmony; suggesting to him the progress of humanity; the groaning and travailing of creation towards a higher and happier destiny.’
Under a later date she writes, –
‘I have been reading the marvellous poem of “Festus” again. I do not wonder at Herbert’s liking it so much, but I think I can find a reason for it independently of its great breadth and boldness. He has sympathy with a character uncousciously resembling his own. Under similar circumstances lie would have enacted much the same part. Indeed when I think of his stories of the islands and the beautiful girl – But no: his is one of those natures that never spoil. Like the traveller of whom it was said he had gone round the world without ever going into it, Herbert has passed through scenes which would have destroyed or soiled a weaker or coarser nature, and has come out not merely uninjured, but actually refined and purified by them. It is not in avoiding temptation, but in safely passing through it, that virtue is attained. This must be what Herbert
(p. 333)
meant when he said that temptation was only another name for experience.
‘With all other men I have known, success in the world has been the aim of their lives. Herbert makes this subordinate to his love of truth. So firmly is he fixed in this direction that I believe he would give up his greatest friend if he found him artificial and unreal; but is he not, therefore, incapable of that friendship which would be firm under all trials, all disappointments, in character as well as in deed? Does friendship require” this?
‘One chooses a friend from sympathy with his noble qualities. If he be ignoble, one has formed a friendship for a phantom; and phantoms fly before the day’s revealing light. My friend may do wrongly, even wickedly; but so long as his fault does not indicate a lower coarse nature, so long as it proceeds from weakness rather than from meanness, he is still my friend, and shall have my sympathy and affection the more he suffers under the consciousness of his error. Herbert’s character helps me to comprehend better the force of that beautiful sentiment of Lovelace –
“I could not love thee, dear, so well,
Loved I not honour more.”
True love, true friendship, can only exist in a true nature.
‘I wish I could help Herbert to find a sphere worthy of him, both for his own sake and my country’s. It is not his particular opinions so much as his character that I wish to see transfused into every class. There is an universality about him that is the great charm of Shakspeare. Not for an age, or nations; but for all times and
(p. 334)
places. Unlocal. This, perhaps, is the meaning of the phrase, “Son of Man.” Son of humanity. Our favourite, Emerson, says that “Common souls pay with what they do; nobler ones, with what they are.” He convinces me of his power without doing. Yet I am sure he would be happier in doing also; and more would benefit thereby. I am glad to find lie regards his present appointment as only a stepping-stone. I love the ambition of a noble soul.’
DE OMNIBUS REBUS
UNDER nearly the same date Herbert writes: – Miss Travers is anxious about her country. She rejoices in the prospect of its obtaining a responsible government, but fears that personal motives actuate too many of those who are engaged in framing the new Constitution which is expected to do so much. Certainly the attempts that are being made to establish hereditary dignities, a non-elective Legislature, a State Church, an exclusive University, and even a national debt as a good thing in itself, betray the conviction that by clothing Australia in all the encumbrances of the mother country they will secure for it as great a career. As precedent, not justice, is the principle of the law courts, so ‘imitation, not fitness,’ is the motto of the colonial statesmen.
The loftiest building requires the best-laid foundation.
(p. 335)
While the weight is light and the altitude low, inequalities and weaknesses do not appear. It is when the edifice begins to tower aloft in massiveness and grandeur that the defects of the foundation become apparent, and threaten the stability of the whole structure. If only a low state of civilisation be aimed at, low motives of action may form a sufficient basis for society. Motives founded on selfish prudence and temporary expediency, have been found tolerably adequate to the attainment of such civilisation as the world has yet seen. If man is ever to advance so far beyond his primitive savageness as to become perfectly fitted for a state of association; if ever ‘the kingdom of heaven ‘is indeed to be realised on earth, it is plain that none but the highest motives and the truc.st principles must be employed in laying the foundation and building up the edifice of such a civilisation. Without these, Australia will but go the way of all nations, and in her turn vanish and give place to others.
I was saying something of this kind to Mr. Travers and his daughter, when he replied that it might be all very good in abstract theory; but that he thought experience showed that certain restrictions and limitations are necessary in a young community, which may be dispensed with afterwards. He used to read a good deal when he was a younger man, and remembered reading in a book of which he had forgotten the name, that the Bible taught the same thing. Low and earthly motives of action were given to the early world, and the character of the Creator, and his mode of working, were told in ways adapted to the undeveloped comprehensions of primitive nations; and it had considerably modified his
(p. 336)
free-thinking tendencies to find that the Bible was intended to teach, not all truth, but only such as could be appreciated; varying the nature of its statements so as to adapt them to the growth of the human mind. I said I should very much like to read that book; but on such an hypothesis it would be difficult to show that such gradual development of truth in the Bible-history was not merely the result of man’s own mental growth.
True, he said; he had not thought of that: but the question was whether society could be constituted without any other basis than man’s own common sense and experience. I observed that the popular belief is that it has been so with all nations except the Jews; but to make any exception is to admit that it can be done. At any rate the Jews are hardly an instance of success under the advantages claimed for them. One thing alone seems very certain, namely, that no matter how perfect in theory any system may be, it cannot work itself. The Americans, for instance, seem to me so well satisfied with their theoretically faultless constitution that they think it will govern them without any effort on their own part; whereas we are so conscious of the locks and jars between its different parts, to which our constitution is liable, that all parties are constantly careful to exercise a degree of self-control sufficient to prevent their occurring. Thus, an indifferent system, well administered, works better than the most perfect one badly administered j and, indeed, the consciousness of the necessity for caution is a discipline in itself.
Mr. Travers said that, without any of the old English prejudices against France, he thought there must be some reason, independently of knowledge, which both
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possessed about equally, to account for the stability of the one and the fickleness of the other nation.
I remarked that ardent Protestants are ready enough to attribute any superiority the English may have to the free circulation of the Scriptures; omitting to reckon that native independence of character which led our ancestors to insist on enjoying freedom of thought. Regarding the Bible with a superstitious reverence, as a sort of talisman, they do not see that it is rather to the Bible as a Representative Book, free and open to all, that is, to free thought and knowledge, the credit is due.
Mr. Travers observed that when experience has shown that a country reaches the highest civilisation under certain forms of society and government, it might be the best thing for a new community to copy those forms. For instance, if it is sufficiently proved that the best system for an agricultural country is one under which society is divided into a sort of trinity composed of labourers, tenant farmers, and large proprietors, Legislation ought to aim at creating such a system.
I said that, on the contrary, I believed if such a condition was best suited to any country, the inhabitants would soon find it out and follow it without compulsion. That experience is first necessary to ascertain whether the institutions of one country are adapted to another. And that it would be as reasonable to maintain that as in all highly-civilised communities the land is distributed into open country, villages, and cities, therefore there should be laws compelling and arranging the details of such a division. The bane of all governments, I thought, was over-legislation. It grows out of the old mistrust of nature and of the harmony of the Divine method.
(p. 338)
The idea of revelation, or knowledge independent of experience, has the same basis. And the very practice of supplementing human instincts by artificial laws is a like confession of atheism, or infidelity in the natural order of things. Our law of primogeniture may be quoted as a curious instance of this. It is maintained on two opposite and mutually destructive grounds. One, that it is the common wish of mankind to found and perpetuate families. And the other, that men must be in a measure compelled by law to do so, because they do not wish it sufficiently to take steps as individuals towards that end.
In answer to a question of Miss Travers about the causes of national characteristics, I observed that they were sometimes attributed to diversity of origin, in opposition to the unity of the species; but that there seemed to be quite enough in difference of climate and position, food and customs, acting through many ages, to produce very wide differences among men. I had found it most interesting to try and track the cause of their various religious temperaments. Tropical religions, for instance, recognise deities ardent as their own sun, furious and hasty as their hurricanes, governed by the most extravagant caprice, and entirely devoid of rational sequence. The sharp skies and scanty soil of Scotland, on the other hand, produce a deity governing on principles of cold relentless logic, whose devotees must have all truth crystallised into dogmas, sharp, clearly defined, and harsh as the tones of their national bagpipes. Calvinism and cocoa-nuts cannot flourish in the same latitudes. Infallibility, however, is claimed everywhere, and intolerance is the law of all priesthoods; they at least have a community of sentiment on this point, if
(p. 339)
not of origin and practice. In speculating on the consequences of a number of persons arriving simultaneously and congregating upon an unoccupied soil, it is evident that mutual forbearance and toleration must be their prime condition of association. Each party wishes to retain, of course, as much as possible of its peculiarities, so that the first thing they do, provided they have sufficient intelligence to avoid quarrelling and fighting, must be to enact rules for their mutual protection. I had seen in California a state founded under very nearly such circumstances. But I should like to see the sort of principles which, reasoning abstractedly, we should lay down in such a case. The first thing, of course, would be to determine who should have a voice in the arrangement of the terms on which they are to dwell together.
‘Why, everybody,’ said Mr. Travers, ‘for all are equally interested; and if any be omitted he is no party to the contract, and is not bound by the agreement.’
‘The suffrage must therefore be universal.’
‘Of course the children and women can’t vote,’ he said.
‘Nor the paupers?’ I asked.
‘Why, in the case you have put, only the people have as yet landed; their goods are still afloat, so that it does not appear who is and who is not a pauper.’
‘But ought not the families to have been left on board for the present too?’ asked Mary.
‘We may suppose,’ I said, ‘that the parties had all agreed to keep the peace. But, being landed, it seems that they must, in virtue of their being persons, and
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not property, take an equal share in what is going on.’
‘If there are any Turks among them they will have left their women shut up until they have houses to hide them in,’ suggested Mary.
‘I don’t like the women voting,’ said Mr. Travers. ‘They had better let their husbands settle it for them.’
‘Supposing they all have husbands,’ I said. But to use compulsion would be to make the strongest the ruler, and if might is to make right the sooner our new community begins to fight it out the sooner things will be settled.’
‘None but a few strong-minded spinsters would want votes,’ observed Mr. Travers. ‘What say you, Mary?’
‘Oh, I would give them all votes, and the women having trusted their husbands so far as to marry and emigrate with them, would intrust their votes also to them. Every married man would thus count for twice as much as the bachelor. I am only doubtful about the children. perhaps the parents ought to have votes in proportion to the number of their children. The larger the family the greater the interest in the welfare of the State, and it seems as if everybody ought to be represented.’
‘So you would give coachman John, and his nine squallers, five times as much influence as to me with my one golden Mary? No, no, give the preponderance to property rather than to mere breeding power, or you rate the rat above the elephant, the herring above the whale. Unless, indeed, you go by weight instead of numbers.’
‘But you would talk John over, dear father, and add his votes to yours.’
(p. 341)
‘So that after all,’ I said, ‘we come to the reign of intelligence. Not of the rich; not of the strong but of those who are most successful in talking the others over; that is, those who best can put before their fellow-citizens the principles of truth and justice so clearly as to compel their assent.’
‘Men are selfish, my good sir.’
‘And therefore desirous of improvement. We are so happily constituted, that when we once sec clearly that anything better than what we have is within our reach, we never rest until we get it. Selfishness is no bad thing in itself. Capable of unlimited abuse, it is nevertheless Nature’s one great agent for the improvement of humanity.’
‘A novel doctrine this of yours, is it not?’ asked Mr. Travers. ‘I should like to hear you work it out more fully.’
‘Another time I will try to do so, but let us stick for the present to our colony. We have seen that the suffrage is likely to be a fruitful source of contention, for even we cannot arrive at any clear principle respecting it. I think generally, however, the married women would be too much occupied in domestic matters to be able to take part in public ones. The remaining principles of their association seem more easily fixed. All parties would have an equal claim to the maintenance of their previous customs in all respects that did not infringe on the equal rights of the others. So that protection for person and property would be the principal aim of the government.’
‘Good,’ ejaculated Mr. Travers. ‘Then its work is simple enough.’
(p. 342)
‘And it would seem no easy matter to find a cause for division and bitter party-spirit? I asked. ‘Let us see. Of course each would practise his own religious rites. The Romanist would be entitled to his cloister the Chinaman to his idols, the Jew to his synagogue the Scotchman to his Sabbath and his whisky, and the Mormon and the Turk to their harems, and soon, provided, of course, they considered all these as matters private to themselves; for it would be monstrous to make the Romanist contribute towards the support of the polygamist’s religion, or the Jew pay for the rites of the idolater.’
‘This is supposing no party to have an overwhelming preponderance in the State,’ said Mr. Travers; ‘but I strongly suspect that if any one were in a great majority, it would swamp the others and make them pay for its own purposes. I agree with you, however, that this would be injustice, and the oppression of the few by the many. Supposing all to be of one party the difficulty would vanish, and the government might aid religion or not as it pleased. In the other case, if it aids one it must in strict justice aid all.’
I gave as a reason against aiding religion many case, that it must have the effect of binding opinion and prohibiting progress, for that there can be no greater obstacle to Truth than religious endowments.
Mr. Travers thought that if the parties attempted to settle all points about their future government before embarking, they would probably never emigrate at all. He added, that he took more interest in questions of this kind since under the forthcoming new Constitution they promised to become practical ones, and he should
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like to know how the American system of secret voting had struck me.
I said that I had only seen it in operation in California before there had been any registration of voters, and that the result of the elections there showed that there were very many more votes than voters; for any man could go and deposit his paper in the ballot-box over and over again. In fact, men went riding in bands all over the country voting at every polling-place they came to. No one dreamt of making a secret of his politics, for no one was afraid of anybody out there. How it might be in the old and more settled States I did not know, but from what I could gather from the expressions and demeanour of the people, it seemed to me as if the Ballot had destroyed the necessity for the Ballot. It had made it of no use to try coercion or intimidation, because no one could be quite certain how any one had voted, and the consequence was that the very idea of compulsion had so died out that Americans made no secret of how they voted.
Mr. Travers said he quite hated the idea of performing a public duty in stealth and secrecy, as if men were ashamed of what they were doing.
I said that to me the Ballot was like correcting one fault by another; and that however much one should detest secret voting in public matters, one should still more detest the state of things which made the voter desire such protection. It was not the Ballot, but the need of the Ballot, that was to me such an odious proof o I the low state of the public ideas of right and justice. It is a monstrous grievance that tradesmen and workmen should be intimidated by their customers and employers
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into voting, or abstaining from voting, contrary to their opinions; and if the law gave votes to persons who could not afford to exercise them independently, the least the law could do was to give them protection in the exercise of their right.
Mr. Travers thought the cure might be worse than the disease, and that people who were such cowards as to be intimidated out of a right did not deserve consideration.
I said that if I was right in supposing that in America the Ballot had destroyed the necessity for the Ballot, it had acted like a wholesome tonic and given the constitution strength to do without it.
Miss Travers, who had been listening in silence all the while, asked why people should not have their choice of voting openly or secretly as they pleased. And we all agreed that it would be a proud day for a constituency when it could throw off the Ballot and say there was no longer any necessity for it in that district. It would be like throwing away a crutch or a swimming-belt as no longer needed because one could now go without it.
Whereupon Mr. Travers exclaimed, ‘Then make it penal, and inflict secret voting upon every constituency in which there has been bribery, intimidation, or rioting. Let these, if you will, be disgraced by losing the privilege of registering their opinions openly before the world.’
I added that it would be a curious experiment to have half the members elected by secret and half by open voting, in order to see what difference it made in the kind of men returned; and then the conversation turned to the subject of persecution for opinion’s sake
(p. 345)
in general, in which I somewhat surprised Mr. Travers by the strong description I gave of the misery that pervades most English families through religious dissensions.
The following is an attempt of Herbert’s to note down a dialogue about the ‘Selfish Theory’ which some one started.
‘I said that I thought that if we consulted our own inmost motives of action we should find the Selfish Theory of Morals a true one. It needs no proof that the greatest amount of happiness must be the aim of the universe and of every living being in it, for by happiness we only mean the attainment of that which we desire to have. It is a low, and in the long run a self-defeating, form of selfishness that would secure happiness at the expense of others. The highest and best selfishness will find most intense satisfaction in the happiness of others, even though it involve self-denial. Self-consciousness is the first condition of intelligence, and from that all motives for action necessarily spring. Even theologians teach this when they describe the Deity as acting for his own glory. And they show that they partake of the growing civilisation of humanity when they make God’s glory to consist in the salvation, rather than the destruction, of the sinner. And so strong is the conviction becoming that the Divine happiness cannot be complete while any are hopelessly suffering, that the dogma of eternal punishment is fast losing ground even in churches having it as part of their fixed creed. Real Christianity I understand to be but the apotheosis of self-sacrifice for the welfare of others; that is, Love.’
‘And so you make out that Love and Selfishness
(p. 346)
are really one and the same thing,’ exclaimed Mr. Travers.
‘I see now,’ said Mary, I exactly the meaning of the word you used one day, anthropomorphism. Men compound a Being of what they consider their own best qualities, and call it God, and this Being, or the idea of it, changes and advances with man’s own development.’
‘And then,’ I said, ‘they ascribe their possession of those qualities not to the. Intention of the Creator to fit them for certain conditions of being, but to his intention to make man like himself.’
‘So that the Divine Being, as imagined by man, instead of having made man in his own image, may be said to be indebted to man both for his attributes and for his very existence,’ said Mary.
‘And necessarily so, inasmuch as we have no faculty whereby we can transcend our faculties. We can comprehend nothing that lies entirely outside of our experience. Wherefore all our attempts to imagine the infinite and the Absolute can only result in indefinite extensions of that which we ourselves are.’
‘No matter then how far we may get, we can never really know God or truth. Well, there is scripture for that, and there is scripture against it,’ observed Mt Travers, meditatively.’
‘I like so much,’ said Mary, ‘that line in “Festus,” describing the soul’s progress:
‘Forever nearer, never near, to God.’
Ever hoping, and striving, and attaining. Always a higher and a better in view, however lofty the point already attained.’
(p. 347)
‘The upshot of your meaning,’ said Mr. Travers, ‘I take to be that men are to look within and not to something beyond themselves for their principles and guidance, both in public and private concerns. I am inclined to think that had you seen as much as I have of the old times in this country, you would be less hopeful of men coming to good when left to their own evil passions. Soon after I came here with my regiment I was sent up the country with a detachment to guard the prisoners who were making the great western road. Sir, it seemed to me as if I had got into hell where all were devils together. I dare not describe the condition either of the convicts or their overseers. No sight or sound was there of aught but murderous hatred, obscenity, and the rattling of chains. The very bullocks working in the teams would obey no word of command but the vilest oaths. I shall never forget one occasion when a waggon stuck fast, and all the efforts of men and oxen were insufficient to move it. The leader of the gang at last came to me and said,
‘ “Beg pardon, sir, but the fact is we can’t make the cattle pull while you are by.”
‘ “What on earth do you mean?” I asked.
‘ “Why, sir, they have been used to particular words which we shall be punished for using if they are over-heard. If you will just ride on a bit, I’ll engage we’ll get the waggon out in a twinkling.” He added with a grin that they would draw it as mild as they could. I rode on, but had not got out of hearing when the bush resounded with such awful volleys of blasphemy and filth, mingled with screechings of men, and crackling of their stock whips, as if the doors of hell’s torture
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chamber had been suddenly thrown open. I was fain to put spurs to my horse and my fingers in my ears. They got the waggon out though. In never go along that road without thinking what fearful tales every rock and tree could tell of injustice, oppression, and reckless brutal cruelty. If the secret history of England’s penal settlements was written, the world would shudder at the story of a worse reign of terror and irresponsibility than it has ever imagined or heard of. Thanks to Heaven for this gold discovery, and the thousands of strangers it brings here, who will soon swamp the old state of things, and make it as a forgotten nightmare.’
‘You said “injustice.” Do you mean that the prisoners were innocent men, and did not, deserve their punishment?’
‘I defy any man to be so guilty as to deserve the punishment he got here. It was one life-long torture, until they lost every human quality, and became no better than furious maniacs.’
‘But some, I understand, were assigned as servants to settlers in the country. Surely they and their lot were not so bad?’
‘It all depended on the master they got. When I sold out and got a grant of land, I had several prisoners assigned to me. I take no credit for it; I merely acted to them as any one with the ordinary feelings of a gentleman would, and never was man better served. One day I was stopped by bush-rangers, and they were in the act of emptying my pockets, when one of them saw my name on a letter. “What, are you Captain Travers of Yarradale?” he said. “Yes, I am,” I replied. “Jim,” said he to his companion, “put them
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things back. Beg your honour’s pardon; but you are a good master, and we don’t rob you.” That the masters did not all get off so well you may easily understand when you know that they were nearly all magistrates, and that, though prohibited from flogging their own servants, they had full liberty to flog each other’ s. The usual plan was to send the offender to the nearest neighbour, with a note requesting that so many lashes might be administered to the bearer. Injustice! Why the very first man who found gold in this country – it was years ago – was flogged on the mere suspicion of having stolen a watch and melted it down and told a lie to account for the possession of the metal. Thank Heaven, I say, for the gold discovery, if for no other reason than that it will entirely swamp the old state of things. I dare say you have often heard the Sydney folk complain that society is broken up. As if the clique of government officials and military gaolers which formed our colonial society was worth a special effort to preserve it.’
‘A state of rapid transition,’ I observed, ‘is no doubt always unpleasant, but the feeling that it is a transition to something better ought to do much to reconcile them to the inconvenience.’
‘No doubt, but society here was not quite free from some of that lower kind of selfishness which we were talking of just now. A transition to anything worse was impossible so far as the colony was concerned; while it might not be so for themselves.’
‘I don’t quite see,’ said Mary, ‘how you make out your theory that men possess in themselves a sufficient basis of society, especially after the sort of men my father has shown us there are in the world.’
(p. 350)
‘It is no part of nature’s method to conduct every germ to perfection,’ I replied. ‘One might almost as well make a selection of dead seeds, and expect to plant a flourishing garden with them, as look for the elements of self-preservation among such people as he has described. Unmitigated evil must destroy itself. Only that which ought not to live, which has not in itself the power of continuance and reproduction, dies out, and gives place to something better. In all life, vegetable or animal, physical or mental, the same law holds good. It is the law of the individual and also of society. Nature’s solicitude is not for the individual. She reserves it all for the race. Yet after all there must have been some good left in men who would not rob a good master. And even the worst villains generally show that they have some appreciation of the bonds which hold men together. They act well towards each other, else even a gang of pirates could not exist. But they are in a state of warfare with the rest of mankind. Their own organisation is complete as far as they themselves are concerned. They realise their own ideal of society.’
CONCLUSIONS
From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal
IN the evening Mr. Travers led to a renewal of the conversation by observing that it was a pity we had no person present to fight for the doctrine of special providences.
(p. 351)
I said that I when they could bring one instance of disconnection between cause and effect it would be time enough to listen to them. The old practice of asserting that every event is miraculously caused, of which the real cause is unknown to us, is too illogical to be worth serious refutation. To be able to predicate of anything that it is supernatural implies that we know the limits of nature. To predicate of anything that it proceeds directly from a Supreme Being involves a claim to an a priori knowledge of God, that is, to knowledge independent of experience. People doubt whether men’s impulses are a sufficient bond of society, and bind traditions upon us, which traditions they deny to be mere results of previous experience. Our impulses, they say, may come from below. So may the traditions. how are we to know whether they are good or bad, save by their agreement with our own ideas of right?’
‘Do you remember,’ asked Mary, ‘that sentence of Emerson, “If I am the devil’s child, I will live as from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” I was shocked by it when I first read it; but it seems plain that nothing can act contrary to its nature, or complain that its nature is bad, without bringing a charge against the author of it.’
‘See what an enormous field of thought you have opened! To denounce anything as bad in the sight of God is clearly to pretend to know its final cause and the design of the Creator. It was only the other day I fell into conversation with a clergyman who has devoted himself to the task of regenerating the blacks. He said that they are proof to him of the fall; for that nothing but a curse could have sunk them so low.’
(p. 352)
‘And pray how did you account for it?’ asked Mr. Travers.
‘I did not attempt to account for it. I only remarked that I always felt, in reference to savage tribes. a difficulty in blaming them, because I had not yet quite succeeded in discovering the exact end they were intended to fulfil in the divine economy; ‘but that it might be possible that wild men really had no other purpose than to occupy the earth in company with wild vegetation and wild animals., enjoying life in their own wild way, until the soil was wanted for races of greater capacity.’
‘Well, and what said he to that?’
‘Why, he seemed rather startled, and plunged into some hobble about “souls,” out of which I made no attempt to extricate him. But it certainly is a snare we are all very liable to fall into, that of abusing things for not answering to God’s idea, when it is only our idea of God’s idea that they do not come up to.’
‘Evil itself may be good, then,’ said Mary; ‘only we call it evil because we do not like it.’
‘True, we exist under certain conditions of being. Whatever goes counter to those conditions gives us pain, and we call it evil; but to a being who is not subject to conditions it may have no existence.’
‘Nor good either?’
‘And therefore our own nature is our only law.’
‘There,’ said Mr. Travers, ‘I think among us we have pretty well dissected the map of the universe today. If Mr. Ainslie wishes to make an early start tomorrow it is about time to think of bed. Can you reckon on your fingers, Mary, how many different subjects you have talked about?’
(p. 353)
I said that everything seemed so connected that one insensibly led to another. Once get hold of the right end of the clue, and we are conducted easily through the most intricate labyrinths.
‘And that end is –’
‘The nearest. Sound knowledge is like the hard-wood trees in your bush, exogenous – growing from within outwards. Each season’s experience adds a ring, so long as the heart remains firm and sound. All their nourishment, however, comes from without. I understand that a new school of philosophy has appeared in Europe, claiming the title of “Positive,’’ It is in direct opposition to the old speculative method of investigation, which passes by the near and plunges into the farthest remote; and thence returns, if it ever does return, to the near. The Positive method starts from the first universal fact of which we have cognisance, – our own consciousness; and gradually arranges in harmonious order the facts accumulated by experience, without theorising upon them, and asserting that they ought to be otherwise.
‘The speculative method, on the other band, commences by scaling heaven, and asserting that, God being so-and-so, everything else must be so-and-so, to correspond. The Positive philosopher, as I comprehend him, seeks to reach the Creator through the mediation of his works, presuming neither to guess at nor to judge cither. The speculative, on the contrary, frames a certain ideal of what he deems perfection, and straightway condemns the whole work as detective, because it does not agree with what he thinks must be the Divine intention.’
‘But is not that very much the difference between what is called induction and deduction?’ asked Mary.
(p. 354)
‘Yes, the Positivist does hot claim to have invented a new method of reasoning, but only to be the first to apply to all subjects, mental, social, and theological, the method which has hitherto been confined to physical science.’
‘I sometimes think that we women are most given to the deductive mode of reasoning.’
‘Or, perhaps,’ I said, laughing, ‘of not reasoning, but rather of jumping from a little knowledge to remote conclusions, which, to be sure, is the very meaning of deduction. The keener your sympathies, or sense of harmony, the fewer mistakes you make.’
‘But even the greatest speculators,’ said Mr. Travers, ‘must have some knowledge to go upon, or how could they guess at all?’
‘But instead of stopping to examine carefully that little, they use it only as a stand from which to take flight into the infinite. Thus all theology is but a hasty generalisation from the one fact of the existence of evil.’
‘How so?’
‘A man of a theological turn of mind feels a pain. Instead of investigating his own constitution, and the conditions of health of the violation of which the pain is a symptom, and recognising the appointed order of things, and the ignorance he has shown in disobeying it, he argues thus: Pain is an evil thing. The best condition I can imagine is one that is free from the evil of pain. God, being the best of beings, cannot be the cause of evil; therefore evil must have some origin independent of God.’
‘But do not the Positive gentlemen limit the power
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of the Almighty in denying that He can impart knowledge to us directly?’ asked Mr. Travers.
‘By no means. They only hold that we are so constructed as to be incapable of obtaining any knowledge except by means of experience, or impressions made upon our minds.’
‘But impressions may be made upon our minds by God Himself, as well as by the things he has made?’
‘True. But how are we to know which of our impressions come directly from God, unless we have some previous knowledge of Him; that is, knowledge prior to experience; that is, impressions prior to impressions?’
‘Are there no such things then as innate ideas?’ said Mary.
‘Even if there were, they would only be impressions received previous to birth, in some former state of existence. And the mere fact of our having them would not prove their divinity. They might still be impulses from below.
‘I see,’ said Mr. Travers, ‘we must still fall back upon our experience of good and bad in order to judge even revelation itself. We won’t talk any more now. It is getting so late, and I like to keep an idea when I have got it. You have made some things plainer to me than all the hearsay teachers could do. If this is the result of thinking in the forest, I shall recommend students to burn their books, and go into the backwoods instead of the University we are to have.’
‘Oh, you must not do that,’ said Mary, ‘Herbert was at Cambridge before he went into the forest. Had
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his mind been vacant he would have had nothing to think about.’
‘True,’ said her father, ‘a man must.eat his dinner before he can digest it. Young men get pretty well crammed with knowledge at the University, but I fear they don’t often digest it afterwards.’
Here Herbert adds this note: ‘I am indebted to Mary for this report of our long interlocution. Her diary contained a far better account of it than I had been able to produce.’
ON DUTY
SOON after his return to the gold-fields Herbert writes thus to Arnold: –
I find but little to say about the principal portion of my time, which is passed in the mines. My duty brings me much into contact with the diggers, and I am often amused at their expressions of astonishment at my knowing more of their business than themselves; for I have not thought it necessary to acquaint them with the sources of my knowledge. One man, the foreman of a large party, came to deposit their gold with me. There happened to be some colonial wine on the table, so I gave him a glass. Whereupon, his tongue being loosened, he said with much embarrassment of manner, ‘Please, sir, may I make bold to ask if you be a
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chum or an old hand in the colony? for I and my mates had a regular argument about it, after you had set our sluice different, and showed us how to save the fine gold. Says one, “He’ll get spoilt like the rest, when he’s been long enough in the country.” I dare say you know, sir, that the government gentlemen are a bit high-handed with us poor working men. “Well,” says I, “if he’s but just come to the colony, how does he know enough to teach us?” “P’raps he’s been in the South Americay or Californy diggins.” “He in Californy!” cries big Bob. (Your honour knows big Bob, who went over and was nigh getting hung by the lynch lawyers for letting out he was a Sydney duck.) “No, no,” he says, “none of his sort could live. There. Why none of you ever seed him the worse for grog. He’s not been in Californy, I’ll warrant.” ’
‘Well, and how did you settle it among you?’ I asked.
‘Why, your honour, we didn’t settle it at all; and I thought your honour wouldn’t eat me if I made bold to ax.’
‘Did you ever hear of such a thing as common sense?’
‘Surelie, your honour!’
‘Well, common sense taught me that as I should like people to behave to me, so I should behave to them; and common sense taught me that by putting the last box of the sluice nearly level, and covering the bottom of it with large stones, just as the bed of the river is, the finest gold would sink into the crevices, and be kept from being washed away.’
He looked somewhat incredulous, and went away,
(p. 358)
saying, ‘Well, if that be common sense, a lost of people I knows of has a precious deal of uncommon sense.’
It is a new sensation to me, this being in receipt of a regular income for regular work. Could I resign myself to giving up all hope of going home again, and to being a government officer all my life, this absence of all anxiety about the means of living would be a positive enjoyment; but the pay only enables one to live, not to save. Sickness, for any length of time, would mean starvation; and even with health, it involves a degree of slavery; for what else is it, to be compelled to remain always at work, without the power of visiting any part of the world one pleases? That is my idea of the Millennium, which a witty friend of mine supposes to mean a thousand a year for everybody. Fortunately, most people do not feel their chains, or are content to do their travelling in books. I do not think that, as far as money-making is concerned, my time here has been wasted; for in my visits to different stations I have gained knowledge that may be turned to good account as soon as an opportunity oilers for investing what money I have. I decidedly lean towards sheep. Properly managed, and on a good run, they pay prodigiously – sometimes as much as forty per cent.; but there are several risks to be encountered, especially if one cannot superintend in person. My present idea is to buy sheep and entrust them to some Squatter whose run is not fully stocked; sharing the profits with him, and retaining my appointment. The plan is not an uncommon one; but it is necessary to be careful in selecting an honest and competent partner, and a healthy district. For so g real is the difference in soil and grasses
(p. 359)
that a man is ruined in one place while another makes his fortune a few miles off.
My visits to Sydney are a most delightful change from the mines. Many friendly houses there are always open to me; but I fear I rather neglect all for my friends in the little bay. I have before mentioned Mr. and Miss Travers to you. They are greatly respected, but have lived almost in seclusion for several years, since the mother’s death; yet they are anything but unsociable. I observe a considerable chance of late in the father. He seems to be throwing off a sort of moody love of solitude, and joins in our talks with considerable shrewdness and clearness of thought. There is something in his character that strikes me as very fine. Under favourable circumstances he could be a hero. What he most of all impresses me with is an unlimited confidence in his judgment. I long to ask his advice about purchasing sheep; but beyond acquainting him generally with my history, my circumstances have never been touched on between us, and I fear to dissipate the fine, delicate flavour of our mutual regard by introducing the least element of money.
To form an idea of Miss Travers, you must do as I have done lately, read Shakspeare again. As I renewed my acquaintance with Miranda, Viola, Beatrice, and Cordelia, each character assumed her form, as if she had been in each case the bard’s original. Gaze upon her from whatever aspect one may, the combination of innocence, truth, nobleness, intellect, and devotion, appears so perfect and harmonious that every other woman seems to be of an altogether smaller and poorer nature. I can fancy her in turn Madonna and Magdalen, in infinite
(p. 360)
purity capable of sacrificing all to love. A Martha, too, as well as a Mary; only serving much without seeming to be troubled about it. In short, the more I see of this remarkable girl – and yet the word ‘remarkable’ conveys a false idea, for it generally implies some distinguishable peculiarity which is really a violation of proportion. She is rather to be compared to my old favourite chapel at King*s, whose whole wondrous beauty, in the absence of any too prominent feature which can be taken I u at once, dawns only gradually upon the mind. Epithets cannot describe her. She is the quality itself. Not beautiful, but Beauty; not religious, but Religion.
Most things seem intended by nature to be seen at certain focal distances. A too close view discovers coarseness and disproportion. At a too distant one they dwindle to insignificance. Only from one distance and aspect do they appear at their best. Mary Travers is an exception to all such limitations. At all distances she is in perfect focus. From all points of view she looks her best. Like her namesake I u the beautiful old song –
‘She’s like the keystone to an arch,
That consummates all beauty.
She’s like the music to a march,
That sheds a joy on duty.’
But I must not prolong this letter. If these friends of mine carry out their design of visiting Europe next year, I shall feel more lonely in Australia than I have felt since I left England; not excepting the dismal time that followed the poor Major’s death in California. It is not unlikely that I may vary my occupations shortly by
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writing in the newspapers on behalf of the University about to be founded in Sydney. Miss Travers is a warm patriot, and has communicated her interest in the matter to me.
INFLUENCE
From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal
MY first article on the proposed University appeared in the – newspaper today. I rode over to Bondi to show it to Miss Travers. How amply she repays the slightest thing esteemed a service, and done for her. It contains little more than a simple enunciation of the first principles of human association. After reading it she said,
‘How strange! Those few sentences make me wonder how I could ever have had a moment’s perplexity. They take me out of the noise and confusion of the contest, and put me in the position of a by-stander, able to overlook everything, and to form a dispassionate judgment.’
I said I thought it one of the greatest mistakes of public men that they do not live enough alone, and apart from the affairs and the people with which they are engaged, so as to be able to look at their own career from a distance. A man ought to try to be his own by-stander and posterity, and see himself as they will see him.
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She said, ‘It must be very difficult to avoid being so entirely engrossed by party-feelings and interests as to lose the very capacity for taking a comprehensive survey of things. But that she thought it was not so much a view of himself and of his part in the work that a man needed, as of the ideal or Standard which originally prompted him to action. That, indeed, might become lowered or obscured, and require renovating by a process. of earnest contemplation. Whereas to be thinking about himself and what other people might think of him, could only lead a man either to vanity or to disgust.’
I told her she had expressed my meaning far better than I had done, and she added,
‘You do not disapprove of anonymous writing, I see. I fancied it would have had your name to it.’
I told her that ‘if it had been anything of a personal nature imposing any responsibility, or requiring to be verified by authority, or in any way depending for its value on the writer’s character, the name would of course be indispensable. But where the statement appeals for evidence of its truth to the inmost conscience and reason of every man, what matters it where the appeal comes from? I should as soon have thought of the solution of a problem in geometry requiring authentication by a signature, as that paper. No, if a statement be indeed a gleam of light Divine from the fountain-head of eternal right, let it come home to every man as a voice from God himself, with no weakening admixture of human authority. Truth is only true when fin-personal. Add a name and it becomes only somebody’s opinion.’
(p. 363)
She said she ‘fancied a woman’s opinions were always more or less personal. She often skipped things because they were only so and so’ s, or read them because they were by some one else.’
‘Yes, and if I were well enough known in the colony, and wrote in my own name, heaps of people would skip the article as being; only mine.’
‘Perhaps more would pay attention to it for that very reason.’
‘Even thus an evil would arise. Conclusions, which ought to be the result of conviction, would be accepted upon the authority of an individual.’
‘If all showed the same self-abnegation, there would be no great names in literature. I like my friend, too, to have the credit of his work.’
‘Well, when I am no longer in a subordinate position and have written enough, I may republish them with my name.’
‘Do you consider the circumstance of your being under government one reason for withholding your name now?’
‘Yes: I am expected to devote all my energies to carrying out their instructions, without trying to instruct my superiors.’
But I will try and recall the conversation which led to my taking tip the cause of the Sydney University. It was in answer to Miss Travers saying that my only objects in life seemed to be independence and self-culture, that I told her ‘that I hope to get into a position which will enable me to return to England and be useful there. That at present my heart is set upon doing something towards freeing my countrymen from the grievous
(p. 364)
superstitions which embittered my own early life. No doubt many would call the grievance to which I refer, a merely sentimental one, and affecting only weak, credulous minds. However that may be, it is one which brings acute misery into three-fourths of British families of the better class, whose youth are subjected to having their religious sensibilities excited till they become morbid almost to madness. For them everything that God has made is tainted with a miserable spirit of detraction. The world, its pleasures and beauties, they are taught to regard as foul and degraded, and temptations only of the evil one. From earliest childhood they are impressed with the agonising belief that they are ever suspended as by a thread over the abyss of hell, whence nought that they can do serves one jot to rescue them, and that God himself is powerless to do so, seeing that their destiny has been ordained from everlasting. Never can I forget or forgive the misery of my own childhood, vividly impressed as I was by the ever-present terror, of which we were even taught to sing in church by way of praising God, –
“A point of time, a moment’s space,
Removes us to the heavenly place,
Or shuts us up in hell.”
I believe, too, that the most serious obstacles to any radical improvement in the terrible condition of the poorest of our classes is to be found in these doctrines.’
She said she ‘should have thought such evils must be owing to some prior cause, such as the generally low level of the popular mind; and that the best way to do any good is not so much by attacking’ any particular manifestation of the evil, as by improving the general
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tone of feeling, of the low state of which these evils are only symptoms.’
‘No doubt,’ I said; ‘but it seems to me hopeless to excite to activity those who are so heavily fettered a; to be actually unable to stir. My plan is to first remove some of the heaviest chains, and so put the captives in a position to help themselves.’
She said that she was no lover of the popular theology, but yet was at a loss to see how it operated so perniciously.
‘In this way,’ I answered. ‘It is the apotheosis of selfishness and caprice. It indeed admits that God has sacrificed Himself to save sinners, but it represents Him as first making those sinners and then limiting the benefit of the sacrifice to a small number of them. Its arguments in favour of moral excellence are all of a low prudential character. As it represents God as doing everything, even to damning almost the whole human race, with a view to “His own glory;” so it urges man not to do what is right in itself without regard to consequences, but to act solely with a view to saving his own soul. Calvinism is also fatalism, and that of an appalling, a crushing kind. The constant contemplation of hell makes the evils of this life small by comparison, and the very belief in heaven is turned into a curse by making people careless about the removal of misery on earth. In short, the whole theory of life is perverted by the notion of the fall of man. For the belief that disease and misfortune are inherent and inevitable induces the belief that to seek to remove them altogether is to disobey the Divine command. A verse in Genesis is a sufficient argument against the mitigation of suffering;
(p. 366)
and the observation that the poor shall never cease out of the land, justifies their indolent acquiescence in a state of society that perpetuates the horrors of pauperism.
‘I cannot help thinking that if people were less certain of a happy hereafter for themselves they would be more careful to pass happier lives here; and if they were less certain of future misery for the vast majority they would not excuse themselves from improving their condition on the plea that misery is the penalty of sin, and that they deserve all they get of it. But without having lived in what is called the religious world in England or Scotland, it is impossible for you to imagine the extent and intensity of the evil I would aid in removing.
‘Starting with the assumption of total depravity, Calvinism repudiates nature and seeks to suppress individuality. Its perfection consists in absorption into the Deity by means of spiritual contemplation; a state that is so utterly unadapted to this world, that a person is unfitted for the duties of life exactly in proportion to his success in attaining it. Whatever breaks the chain of his mental abstraction destroys the communion between him and his God. Hence every detail of life that requires attention or confers pleasure, is accounted “a snare.” Holiness is a trance, and sun is the awakening. The entrance of knowledge, or consciousness, is the introduction of evil. I will give you an illustration. In my youth I was warned against my love of music. It was a snare that my saintly adviser was thankful that he was spared, for he could rejoice that he did not know one tune from another. I, of course, replied that if our senses were so many senses, the deaf, dumb, and
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blind had much to be thankful for. They were saved many temptations, and would doubtless become still more perfect were their consciousness altogether annihilated.’
‘Such a person,’ observed Mary, ‘has not only one sense and one means of enjoyment and instruction the less; but he surely loses one field of exercise for his virtue, and a means of probation in his proper use of the faculty. He has consequently a smaller reward for his right use of it.’
To her question as to how I would go to work, I said ‘that it is my ambition to write a book which shall strike away the foundation of all these superstitions. That my own experience may be useful if I can recall and describe its various steps, for that I myself had been, Achilles-like, plunged into the Stygian pool, and also had one small spot left vulnerable to truth. Some such title as “The Way Out” would indicate the method and purpose of the book.’
She asked for whom such a book would be designed; whether for the young or the old, for scholars or for ordinary folks: because it was a serious responsibility to attack the faith of a nation, and undermine the principles of domestic religion and morality. She knew I was not one who, under the guise of mere harmless amusement, would seek to influence the young contrary to the wishes of their natural guides. And yet if the book carried its purpose on the face of it, it would be so effectually banned as to fail entirely of its end.
I thanked her for the suggestion of these considerations, as it would prevent me from doing blindly what I might afterwards regret; and added that ‘at present
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it seems to me that, like any other kind of artist, all I have to do is to create the truest, highest, and most needed work I can imagine, and leave it to find its own audience, and speak its own message, without troubling myself about possible results. Such is the course dictated by the highest faith. My father once sent me, when a boy, with a sermon to somebody’s house, and was so particular in charging me not to leave it at the wrong door that I was tempted to ask if he was afraid of its converting the wrong person and saving the wrong soul.
‘If asked for whom did Shakespeare write, or for whom was the Bible written, what could objectors reply when both contain so much that is unsuited for universal reading?
‘It is probably with human creations, with ideas, books, pictures, and statues, as well as all instruments of mechanical use, as with the productions of nature. Not flowers and trees only, but the most deadly poisons, all have their purpose, and at length find their place in the general economy. Parents will not allow their children to have access to what they deem noxious books more than to other noxious things. A book, if not stillborn, will soon speak for itself, and it is not for the author to say who shall, or who shall not, read what he has written. As for attacking people’s faith, that is only what every missionary does, and it can scarcely be objected to on that score by those who support missions. So mine shall be a missionary book. For I doubt if it be a greater responsibility to deny than to affirm the truth of any belief. And, after all, “shaking a person’s faith” is only the ecclesiastical synonyme for affording such additional information upon religious subjects as
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will induce a change of opinion. I don’t know if I shall be able to do it, but I am anxious to describe not results merely but processes of thought; to lay down steps by which others may follow.’
‘Steps, whence and whither?’ she asked musingly.
‘The first,’ I said, ‘is easily stated. It shall be the autobiography of a soul’s progress from Calvinism to – towards Christianity I might say if people were agreed in identifying it with the highest development of which our nature is capable. It is in the spirit of Christ, as I imagine the perfectest man, that I would attack the religion of the Evangelical.’
‘His spirit being love,’ said Mary, ‘what is the essence of the party you would denounce?’
‘Selfishness of the basest kind, and abject fear.’
‘Then let “perfect love casteth out fear” be your text, and, “from Fear to Love” your title. Yet,’ she added hesitatingly, ‘I cannot help likening an attack upon people’s religion to an attack upon their friends, for most people do look upon their religion as an old friend, and resent any slight accordingly.’
I answered, ‘that if people only dealt by their religion as they do by their friends, they would find no antagonist in me. No one dreams of vaunting his friends over all the rest of the world’s, and calling on mankind to abandon theirs for his. We love our friends too well to expose them to criticism in that way. And so if they only said of their religion “it suits us and we love it,” it would be wanton cruelty to meddle with it. But it is only accepting a boasting challenge to scrutinise claims to infallibility and superiority over all others, ac-companied as it is by furious denunciations against all
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who refuse to acknowledge its incomparable merits. But it is no feeling of that kind that so strongly prompts me. Knowing, as I have too good reason to know, the fearful amount of mental suffering, especially among the young, that is caused by their religion, it is only common humanity to show them a way of escape, even as I my-self have escaped. And I should like to take for my motto that sentence of St Paul’s, “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed!” in short, my aim should be to elevate men by raising before them an ideal that should draw all unto it.’
To her inquiry whether there are any parties in the Church operating to counteract the evil influence of the Evangelical, I replied that of the two other schools, one indeed might be accepted as a promise of better things, but that at present popular prejudice has branded it with the term Neologian on account of its sympathy with the broad German school of thought; and the other, commonly called the Oxford School, bids fair to do more harm than good by its plan of riveting upon mere Mythologic sentimentalities and Church formulas those regards which with the Evangelicals are devoted to spiritual abstractions.
She thought for a while, and then said,
‘But whatever the task you have set yourself on returning home, surely you would gain more power for its achievement by a more systematic mode of exercising your mind than you at present have. You cannot think us so perfect here that there is no opportunity for you to begin to turn your talents as a reformer to account. You appear to me to be making a foray over the globe, gathering here and there your harvest of the Useful and
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the True, to carry it all away to your own home at the ends of the earth, leaving us poor colonists doubly poor: dropping no single gram of all your garnered wealth of thought to take root and fructify among us. Besides, is it not a mistake in reference to yourself and your work? A student and a dreamer here, you will hardly become a successful doer there.’
I wish I could paint her as she looked when speaking these words; the nobleness of her whole aspect, and the moisture gathering in her eyes for very earnestness, showed how deeply she felt what she said. I begged her to tell me all her thought.
‘I, as an Australia,’ she said, ‘am as deeply interested in the welfare of my country as you are in that of England. Few questions seem to me more important to us than that of the new University, which is still being so fiercely agitated.’
‘And which side do you take?’ I inquired.
‘I am in perplexity between the two parties. I feel that there ought to be an University, but I cannot determine the principle of its formation. I suppose what you call my native religiousness induces me to side with the clerical party; while my sense of justice to all compels me to lean towards a purely secular institution.’
‘Government is neither a schoolmaster nor a parent. What, then, has it to do with establishing an University, which is only a higher sort of school?’
‘But Mr. Macaulay says that the right to punish confers the right to teach.’
‘If the right to punish offences,’ I said, ‘implies the right to prevent them, it implies the right to devise and enforce all possible restrictions, m every detail and
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situation in life, until the citizen is deprived of all freedom and independence of thought and action. For the principle once infringed, who is to say where the line is to be drawn? Besides, Universities are not generally intended for the criminal classes.’
‘In’ this country,’ she said, ‘we always expect the government to meet us half way. However willing the people may be to found any public institution, unless the government comes forward nothing is done. It is settled that we are to have the University, so the question only remains as I have told you.’
‘You are deeply interested in it?’
‘O yes. I think of the glorious old foundations of the fatherland, with their rolls of great names and high examples; and I long for some such elevating influences here, to raise men from their mad absorbing race after wealth; to teach them that there is something in the world better than money. So may be created a soul under the ribs of the golden death that is coming upon us.’
I remarked, that the government being no pope, claiming infallibility, it was difficult to see how it could rightly take cognisance of theological opinions; and promised to think over the subject, and do what seemed practicable.
The following note seems to have been suggested by a recent conversation.
A good deal of confusion in metaphysics is caused by the double, or rather treble, use of the word ‘selfishness.’ inasmuch as all our emotions have their root in ourselves, selfishness prompts every feeling and action. It is the source alike of all good and of all evil, in the moral as
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well as in the physical world. But for the good side of selfishness we have the term sympathy, while for the bad only the term selfishness.
Miss Travers wonders at my seeking to analyse feeling. Perhaps it is because my anti-theological prejudices make me anxious to disprove the existence of any such thing as merit. I suspect that the charm of the Calvinistic theory consists, for most men, in its exaltation of will over right and reason. It is specially adapted to those dispositions in which the desire to do as they like prevails over their regard to the wishes of others. The more highly developed the sympathetic portion of our nature, that portion which enables one to put himself in the place of another, the less Calvinistic do we become. That creed flourishes best in northerly, bracing climates; as if the will became too relaxed in the tropics. As man is, so he fancies deity to be. Probably I am myself constitutionally anti-Calvinistic. I like the golden rule of acting by others as I wish them to act by me, and cannot imagine any equitable being human or divine ignoring it.
EFFECTS
HERBERT soon became deeply interested in the University question. The struggle between the sectarian partisans and the advocates of unbiased thought was already long and bitter. The former outnumbered their
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opponents, but were weakened by their own divisions. The latter were few but compact. The absurdity of an University directly teaching several different sets of theological opinions was felt even by those who could not, or would not, acknowledge that it was equally absurd for the same government to subsidise them all. While, therefore, the religious parties would not suffer any one of themselves to be selected for exclusive patronage, they loudly protested against the establishment of a creedless University. So far as they were concerned the dilemma was invincible, and an University impossible. Happily for the project there were some who saw the evil of all State interference with religious opinions, and who were resolved to do their utmost to prevent its perpetuation in a new guise. These demanded that the University should be one in reality and not in name only, giving a right of studentship founded on no sectarian profession, but open to all, without question as to faith or dogma. No need to tell Englishmen of the stir that arose among the vested interests; of the bitter hostility and denunciations of ‘godless,’ ‘infidel,’ and the like; or how chief priests and Pharisees banded themselves together, as of old, against the True and the Holy, again to rend the seamless garment of God; or rather, for it has long been in tatters, to perpetuate in that new world the impossibility of repairing it.
Herbert did not long deliberate. He has wandered long in the wilderness of thought, and now he has reached the longed-for land of action. The contest he perceived to be, not of persons and names, but of principles. He believes in the rectitude of the popular instinct, when unbiased by immediate personal considerations. Let
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once the standard of Truth and Justice be lifted up before the people, and all whose allegiance is not vowed to other masters will flock to it.
And now is heard a new voice from the desert, rising high above the dm of the fray. The gauntlet of defiance flung anew to that modern form of bigotry called ‘Tolerance’ none dare pick up.
‘Two souls meet in God’s universe, and one says to the other, “I tolerate you. I permit you to exist. I also permit the Almighty to receive the homage of your heart.” This is Tolerance.’ And none, there at least, show themselves bold enough to deny the right of all men to worship God as they think best, or the right of the universal Father to accept the homage of H is children, be it offered in whatever form their affection may prompt.
The charge of atheism he retorts upon those who bring it. ‘You, without knowing it, are the real atheists. Your finality banishes God from the future, as your creeds banish Him from the present. For what is a creed but man’s view of truth at the time it is drawn up, – a mark to denote the height of the flood of the Di-vine presence? To enforce any creed is to arrest progress, to forbid the revelation of more truth, or the further development of that which we have. If truth be the revelation of God to the human soul, to fix belief is to prohibit God from all further revelation of Himself.’
Again, ‘A true Church has no creed. Endow thought, if ye will. Truth is infinite as the universe, and eternal as God; but oh, endow not opinions, which are only those of men. Let your posterity, at least, not have this burden thrust upon them, of contending with
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men who have a vested interest in maintaining not what is right, not what is true, but only what exists.’
Enforced by such appeals in newspaper and m pamphlet the cause of freedom at length won the day and the Sydney University was established on a bass broad as Truth itself, and capable of enduring to all time And the sectarians consoled themselves with the prospect of being permitted to have their own exclusive colleges, which being affiliated to the University, might perchance in time come to overshadow and stifle it with their noxious growth.