Part 2 (2/2)
_Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. Allow me freely to offer you my affections as peculiarly adapted to experiments of this nature.
_Rollestone_. It has always struck me as strange that men of science, who don't shrink from testing, for instance, the value of poisons, or the nature of disease, by heroically subjecting their own external organisms to their action, should shrink from experimenting on that essential if remote vitalising force, which can only be reached by moral experiment, and disorder in which produces not only moral obliquity and mental alienation, but physical disease as well.
_Fussle_. Thus a man may die of apoplexy brought on by a fit of pa.s.sion.
Cure his temper, and you lessen the danger of apoplexy; that, I take it, is an ill.u.s.tration of what you mean.
_Rollestone_. In its most external application it is; the question is where his bad temper comes from, and whether, as Mr Germsell would maintain, it is entirely due to his cerebral condition, and not to the moral qualities inherent in the force, which, acting on peculiar cerebral conditions, causes one man's temper to differ from another's. It is not the liberated force which generates the temper. For that you have to go farther back; and the reason why research is limited in this direction is not because it is impossible to go farther back, but because it must inevitably entail, as I have already said, acute personal suffering. Nor, as these experiments must be purely personal, and involve experiences of an entirely novel kind, is it possible to discuss them except with those who have partic.i.p.ated in them. One might as well attempt to describe the emotion of love to a man whose affections had never been called forth. If I have alluded to them so fully now, it is because they justify me in making the a.s.sertion, for which I can offer no other proof than they have afforded to me personally, that a force does exist in nature possessing an inherent spiritual potency--I use the word spiritual for lack of a better--which is capable of lifting humanity to a higher moral plane of daily living and acting than that which it has. .h.i.therto attained. But I fear I am trespa.s.sing on your patience in having said thus much.
_Lady Fritterly_. Oh no, Mr Rollestone; please go on. There is something so delightfully fresh and original in all you are saying, I can't tell you how much you interest me.
_Germsell_ [_aside_]. I know a milkmaid quite as fresh and rather more original. [_Aloud_, _looking at his watch_.] Bless me! it is past six, and I have an appointment at the club at six. So sorry to tear myself away, dear Lady Fritterly. I can't tell you how I have enjoyed the intellectual treat you have provided for me.
_Lady Fritterly_. I thank you so much for coming. I hope you will often look in on our Sundays. I think, you know, that these little conversations are so very improving.
_Germsell_. You may rely upon me; it is impossible to imagine anything more interesting. [_Mutters as he leaves the room_.] No, Lady Fritterly, this is the last time I enter this house, except perhaps to dinner. You don't catch me again making one of your Sunday afternoon collection of bores and idiots. What an insufferable prig that Rollestone is!
_Fussle_ [_aside to_ Drygull]. Thank heaven, that pompous nuisance has taken himself off!
_Drygull_ [_aside to_ Fussle]. I don't know which I dislike most--the Pharisee of science or the Pharisee of religion.
_Rollestone_. If, then, you admit that the human organism not only cannot generate force, but that the emotions which control the body are in their turn generated by a force which is behind it, and that this force is dependent for its manifestation on its own special conditions, as well as on those of its transmitting organic medium, I venture to a.s.sert that experiment in the direction I have suggested will prove to our consciousness that the moral or spiritual quality of the original invading force is a pure one, and that the degree of its pollution in the human frame is the effect of inherited and other organic conditions; and the question which presents itself to the experimentalist is, whether by an effort of the will this same force may not be evoked to change and purify those conditions. Indeed the very effort is in itself an invocation, and if made unflinchingly, will not fail to meet with a response. Much that has heretofore been to earnest seekers unknowable will become knowable, and a love, Mr Coldwaite, higher, if that be possible, than the love of humanity, yet correlative with and inseparable from it, will be found pressing with an irresistible potency into those vacant s.p.a.ces of the human heart, which have from all time yearned for a closer contact with the Great Source of all love and of all force. It is in this attempt to sever the love of humanity from its Author, that the Positivist philosophy has failed: it is the wors.h.i.+p of a husk without the kernel, of a body without the soul; and hence it will never satisfy the human aspiration. That aspiration is ever the same; it needs, if you will allow me to say so, Lady Fritterly, no new religion to satisfy its demands. If the world is of late beginning to feel dissatisfied with Christianity, it is not because the moral standard which that religion proposes is not sufficiently lofty for its requirements, but because, after eighteen hundred years of effort, its professors have altogether failed to reach that standard. Christianity seems a failure because Christians have failed--have failed to understand its application to everyday life, have failed to embody it in practice, and have sought an escape from the apparent impossibility of doing so, by smothering it with dogmas, and diverting its scope from this world to the next. It will be time to look for a new religion, when we have succeeded in the literal application of the ethics of the one we have got to the social and economic problems of daily life. It is not by any intellectual effort or scientific process that the discovery will be made of how this is to be done, but by the introduction into the organism of new and unsuspected potencies of moral force which have hitherto lain dormant in nature, waiting for the great invocation of wearied and distressed humanity.
There can be no stronger evidence of the approach of this new force, destined to make the ethics of Christianity a practical social standard, than the growing demand of society for a new religion. It is the inarticulate utterance of the quickened human aspiration, in itself a proof that these new potencies are already stirring the dry bones of Christendom, and a sure earnest that their coming in answer to that aspiration will not be long delayed.
_Drygull_. Of course, I entirely disagree with you as to any such necessity in regard to the moral requirements of the world, existing. You must have met, in the course of your travels, that more enlightened and initiated cla.s.s of Buddhists, with whom I sympathise, who are quite indifferent to considerations of this nature.
_Rollestone_. And who were too much occupied with their subjective prospects in Nirvana, to be affected by the needs of terrestrial humanity.
_Drygull_. Quite so.
_Mrs Allmash_. And, Mr Allyside, I am afraid you are equally indifferent.
_Ali Seyyid_. I am certainly not indifferent to the discovery of any force latent in Christendom which may check the force of its cupidity, and put a stop to the _exploitation_ and subjugation of Eastern countries for the sake of advancing its own material interests, under the specious pretext of introducing the blessings of civilisation.
_Coldwaite_. You have certainly presented the matter in a light which is altogether new to me, Mr Rollestone, and upon which, therefore, I am not now prepared to express an opinion. I should like to discuss the subject with you further privately.
_Rollestone_. It is a subject which should never be discussed except privately.
_Mrs Allmash_. Now, I should say, Mr Rollestone, on the contrary, that it was just a subject you ought to write a book about. You would have so much to tell,--all your personal experiments, you know; now do.
_Fussle_. Take my advice, Mr Rollestone, and don't. You would have very few readers, and those who read you would only sneer at what they would call your crude ideas; and indeed, you will excuse me for saying so, but I am not sure that they would not be right.
_Lord Fondleton_. I quite disagree with you, Mr Fussle. If Rollestone would write a book which would put a stop to this ”religion of the future” business, he would earn the grat.i.tude of society. Do you know, I am getting rather bored with it.
_Fussle_. Not if he introduced instead a latent force, which should overturn all existing inst.i.tutions, and revolutionise society--which it would inevitably have to do if we were all coerced by it into adopting literally the ethics of Christianity, instead of merely professing them.
Why, the ”Sermon on the Mount” alone, practised to the letter, would produce a general destruction. Church and State, and the whole economic system upon which society is based, would melt away before it like an iceberg under a tropical sun. I don't mind discussing the religion of the future as a subject of interesting speculation; but, depend upon it, we had better let well alone. It seems to me that we--at least those of us who are well off--have nothing to complain of. Let us trust to the silent forces of evolution. See how much they have lately done for us in the matter of art. What can be pleasanter than this gentle process of aesthetic development which our higher faculties are undergoing? With due deference to Mr Rollestone, I think we shall be far better employed in cultivating our taste, than in probing our own organisms in the hope of discovering forces which may enable us to apply a perfectly unpractical system of morality, to a society which has every reason to be satisfied with the normal progress it is making.
_Mrs Gloring_. Indeed, Mr Rollestone, I agree with you a great deal more than with Mr Fussle. I should like to call out a higher moral force in myself--but I should never have the courage to undergo all the ordeals you say it would involve; I am too weak to try.
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