Part 2 (1/2)

One last instance, the most remarkable of all, and we may leave this book. It need hardly be said that a father of the kind depicted in this book would have a holy horror of the Catholic Church, and he had. He ”welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy.” He ”celebrated the announcement in the newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal dominions, by rejoicing at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot's domain, from her sin and her plagues,” and he even carried his hatred so far as to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him was nothing less than an act of idolatry.

On a certain Christmas Day, the servants, greatly daring, disobeyed the order of their master and actually had the audacity to make a small plum-pudding for themselves. Actuated by pity, no doubt, and by a feeling of kindness towards a small boy deprived of all the joys of the season, they pressed a slice of this pudding upon the son, who succ.u.mbed--very naturally--to the temptation. Shortly after, however, being afflicted by a stomach-ache, remorse came upon him and he rushed to his father, exclaiming: ”Oh! papa, papa, I have eaten of flesh offered to idols!” When the father learned what had happened, he sternly said, ”Where is the accursed thing?” Having heard that it was on the kitchen table, ”he took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran till we reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the ma.s.s. The suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression on my memory which nothing will ever efface.” Such is a plain unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were brought up in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. Can it be wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an absolute horror of the Person in Whose name such things--absurdities when not positive crimes--were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these wholly false ideas of G.o.d and of sin have had more to do with the spread of materialism than many will perhaps be disposed to admit. Educated people, especially those trained in scientific methods, demand a certain common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If they are brought up to believe that a grievous sin is committed when they invent an innocent story; when they go to a theatre or to a dance, or play a game of cards; if they have never known the demands of real Christianity as put forward by the Catholic Church, is it likely that they will cleave to a faith which apparently engenders such absurdities as the Christmas pudding episode? It is, indeed, as Father Wasmann says, a thousand pities that the reasonableness, the logic, the dignity of the Catholic religion should remain for ever hidden from the eyes and minds of many who so often are as they are, because they were brought up as they were.

In all these things we find the key to another problem. In another essay in this volume I have called attention to the glad intelligence, as it seems to a certain school of writers, that we are freed from the ”bugbear of sin,” as one of them puts it; able to enjoy ourselves without any thoughts of that kind.

Now I cannot but believe that such writers are thinking of the bugbear of artificial sins invented by the professors of a gloomy creed of religion. It is not to be supposed that any serious writer--and those to whom I allude are eminently such--would speak or write with pleasure and satisfaction of escaping from the bugbear of sins against morality or against one's neighbour; from the bugbear of dishonesty or theft; of taking away a person's character; of running away with his wife. I am convinced that it is the invented crimes of card-playing, theatre-going, and the like to which they are alluding: it could not surely be otherwise; and that makes it all the more unfortunate that before misusing a technical term like the word ”sin,” and thus perhaps misleading some young and ardent mind, such writers could not follow Father Wasmann's advice and study some simple manual of Catholic ethics, from which they would learn the real doctrine of Christianity and would discover how very different a thing it is and how very much more reasonable than the distorted caricature which we have been studying.

-- 2. THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS

Whether my view as to the cause, or one of the causes, is right or not, the fact remains that by the mid-Victorian period England had fallen to a very large extent a prey to materialism. Many people attribute the sudden onslaught of this to the publication of _The Origin of Species_ and the controversies of the foolish which followed thereon. Samuel Butler, that brilliant writer who has not even yet come into his own, sums up in his novel _The Way of All Flesh_ (and it may incidentally be remarked, in himself) most of the characteristics of the day. Many a parsonage home like that of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex existed in those days, and more than one Ernest Pontifex emerged from them. Now in this book Butler states that ”the year 1858 was the last of a term during which the peace of the Church of England was singularly unbroken,” and there no doubt he is right; ”The Evangelical Movement ... had become almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth-day's wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy.” Then he says the calm was broken by the publication of three books: _Essays and Reviews_, _The Origin of Species_, _Criticisms on the Pentateuch_ by Colenso. Few persons probably now remember the first and the last of these books; the fame of the second is likely to last long.

Whether again Butler is right in his idea as to the causes or not, as to the fact there can be no doubt. We have arrived at a period when the prevalent opinion amongst the intellectual cla.s.ses was that religion--belief in anything which could not be fully understood--was impossible once one began to think seriously about it. Those who did not really look into such questions might go on considering themselves to believe in revelation, but the moment that a man seriously tackled the subject, his religion was bound to go, just as that of Ernest Pontifex did at the end of five minutes' conversation with an atheistic shoemaker.[21] Agnosticism and materialism were in the air, and remained the dominant features for quite a number of years. There were those who deplored the loss of their faith such as it had been. Huxley obviously did; and Romanes, who afterwards returned to the Church of England, confessedly did. Such persons, and there were many of them, honestly were unable to believe, and said so. A great deal of this was due to the att.i.tude of popular science at that time. It was in a hot fit, and was going to explain everything, if not to-day, at least to-morrow. Now, as Sir Oliver Lodge told us before the war, in his book _Continuity_, we are in a cold fit and we seem only to know that nothing can be known.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the creator of _Sherlock Holmes_, tells us in a recent book from which I shall have further to quote (_The New Revelation_, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918): ”When I had finished my medical education in 1882, I found myself, like many young medical men, a convinced materialist as regards our personal destiny.” With the facts contained in this statement I fully agree. The date in question is almost exactly that at which I also became a qualified medical man, and I, and I fancy most of my generation, believed ourselves to be agnostics if not atheists. It was the atmosphere of the time, and so strong as with difficulty to be resisted by those who resorted to the Universities. The point which I want to make is that during the latter part of the Victorian period we had come to a generation of intellectuals practically devoid of religion and followed in that respect by that always larger portion of any generation which, not having brains to think for itself, yet desiring to follow the intellectual _motif_ of the day, adopts whatever is the fas.h.i.+onable att.i.tude for the moment towards unseen things. Yesterday it was blank negation; to-day it tends, as we shall see, to be spiritualism; to-morrow it might be earnest faith: let us hope so. And as to Calvinism, all this was _post hoc_ of course; _propter hoc_ also as I think.

What followed? That is what we now have to consider. The first thing which happened was the very natural discovery that science cannot explain everything; has in fact a strictly limited range of country to deal with. This discovery began to sap the foundations of materialism.

Then there came the further discovery that all was not well, as so many supposed that it would be, under a scheme of life divorced from all connection with religion. Mr. Lucas, who has given the world many pleasant books, none of them with any obvious bias in favour of religion, in _Over Bemertons_ (one of the most pleasant) makes one of his characters, _Mr. Dabney_, deplore the loss of the seriousness of the Victorian era: ”We believe only in pleasure and success; our one ideal is getting wealth.” Parenthetically, is not that just what might be expected? If there is really nothing but this world, what better can we seek than as much pleasure as we can get out of it? _Over Bemertons_ was first published in 1908, and the remedy which _Mr. Dabney_ then suggested, with a really curious prophetical insight, has just been vigorously applied. That remedy was ”War, nothing more or less. A b.l.o.o.d.y war--not a punitive expedition or 'a sort of a war'” (he quoted these words with white fury) ”'that might get us right again.' 'At great cost,' I said. 'A surgical operation,' he replied, 'if the only means of saving life, cannot be called expensive.'”

Finally the discovery was made that mankind will not for long be content to do altogether without religion; a need for something more than bread alone being ingrained in his nature. Thus even the professedly materialistic societies try to afford something in the way of religious exercises. I have recently seen a notice of one of the so-called Ethical Societies in which the members (at their meetings, I take it) are ”requested to silently meditate for five minutes on the good life.”[22]

It would seem to be quite as beneficial and more practical to meditate on split infinitives. A subst.i.tute for religion has to be found; what is it to be? In the years before the war Mr. Masefield published a very interesting book called _Mult.i.tude and Solitude_, which narrates the trials and troubles of two young Englishmen who make a perilous journey to Africa in search of the secret of the sleeping-sickness. In all their trials they never seem to have thought of prayer, in which it may be a.s.sumed they did not believe, but when they returned to England it occurred to one of them that there was something wanting in their life, and he propounded to his friend the view that ”the world is just coming to see that science is not a subst.i.tute for religion,” which is one of the things urged in this paper. He then proceeded to the rather startling conclusion that science _is_ ”religion of a very deep and austere kind.” One is reminded of a well-known pa.s.sage in the Bible: ”_Inveni et aram in qua scriptum erat_ IGNOTO DEO.” To set up science as an ”unknown G.o.d” seems a curious choice, even more curious than the choice of humanity, which--pitiable object as it is--was at least made in the image of G.o.d. Not to pile up instance upon instance, let us content ourselves with remembering that Mr. Wells, who in his earlier novels had certainly not displayed any marked affection for religion, in the last published before the war (_Marriage_) brings his hero face to face with the great realities, and makes him exclaim to his wife that he may ”die a Christian yet,” and urge upon her the need for prayer, if only out into the darkness. Of course, as all the reading world knows, since the war commenced, Mr. Wells has set up his own altar ”IGNOTO DEO,” not with much more satisfactory results than those attained by Mr.

Masefield. It is an historical fact that times of war have also been times of religious awakening, and it is natural that they should be so, for even the most careless must be brought to contemplate something more than the day's enjoyment. It is not then wonderful that the terrible war which has raged with Europe as the c.o.c.kpit, and practically all the nations of the world as partic.i.p.ants, should turn the minds of those who are in the righting line towards thoughts which in times of peace may never have found entrance there. From all sides one hears that this is so, yet here again it is too often the case that an ”unknown G.o.d” is sought, and from want of proper direction not always found. In a recently published memoir of one of the many splendid young fellows by whose death the world has been made poorer during this calamitous war, there is this moving pa.s.sage: ”I know that many hearts are turning towards _something_, but cannot find satisfaction in what the Christian sects offer. And many, failing to find what they need, fall back sadly into vague uncertainties and disbelief, as I often do myself.” We badly need a St. Paul who will say to these and other anxious hearts, ”_Quod ergo ignorantes colitis, hoc ego annuntio vobis_.”

However, it is much more with those who only ”stand and wait” than with those who were actually in the trenches that we are concerned; what about the lamentable army of wives and mothers, widows and orphans, people bereft of those they loved or rising every morning in dread of the news which the day might bring forth; what about these and their att.i.tude towards the things unseen? That many such have turned to some genuine form of religion is happily beyond dispute, but it is also unquestionably true that thousands have turned aside to the attractions of spiritualism. A recent article in the Literary Supplement of the _Times_ commenced with the statement that ”Among the strange, dismaying things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within general knowledge.” The writer of the article in question thinks that as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation, we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the direction of those primitive instincts to which he calls attention. This process had, however, begun long before the war.

The late Dr. Ryder, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, was a very shrewd observer of public affairs and a very close and dear friend of the present writer. It must be more than twenty years ago since he remarked to me that he thought that materialism had shot its bolt and that the coming danger to religion was spiritualism, a subject on which, if I remember right, he had written more than one paper. I asked him what led him to that conclusion, and his reply was to ask me whether I had not noticed the great increase in number of the items in second-hand book catalogues--a form of literature to which we were both much addicted--under the heading ”OCCULT.” Since the war, however, there can be no doubt about the fact that spiritualism has made great strides. A thousand pieces of evidence prove it. Look, for example, at the enormous vogue of _Raymond_, a book of which I say nothing, out of personal regard for its author and genuine respect for his honesty and fearlessness. But I return to Sir Arthur Doyle's book, and we find him a.s.suring us that he is personally ”in touch with thirteen mothers who are in correspondence with their dead sons,” and adds that in only one of these cases was the individual concerned with psychic matters before the war. Further, he explains that it was the war which induced him to take an active interest in a subject which had been before no more than one of pa.s.sing curiosity. ”In the presence of an agonised world,” he writes, ”hearing every day of the deaths of the flower of our race in the first promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing around one the wives and mothers who had no clear conception whither their loved one had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see that this subject with which I had so long dallied was not merely a study of a force outside the rules of science, but that it really was something tremendous, a breaking down of the walls between the two worlds, a direct undeniable message from beyond, a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of its deepest affliction.” Perhaps it is not wonderful that spiritualism should have won the success which it has, for it offers a good deal to those who can believe in it. It offers definite intercourse with the departed; positive knowledge as to the existence of a future state, and even as to its nature--the last-named intelligence not always very attractive. Further, it requires no particular creed and, it would appear, no special code of morals; for one of its teachings, I gather, is that it does not greatly matter what a man thinks or even does, so far as his future welfare is concerned.

Sir A. Doyle's book is the least convincing exposition of spiritualism I have yet read--and I have studied many of them--but it may be taken to include the latest views on the subject. Amongst the revelations which he gives, there is one purporting to come from a spirit who ”had been a Catholic and was still a Catholic, but had not fared better than the Protestants; there were Buddhists and Mahommedans in her sphere, but all fared alike.” Another spirit informed Sir A. Doyle that he had been a freethinker, but ”had not suffered in the next life for that reason.”

This is not the occasion, and in no way am I the man, to tackle the subject of spiritualism, but this at least I think may be said, that the person who argues that the whole thing is a fraud and deception does not know what he is talking about. Look at the history of the world--_Quod semper_, _quod ubique_, almost _quod ab omnibus_. The records of early missionaries--Jesuits especially--teem with accounts of the same kind of phenomena as we read of in connection with seances to-day, occurring in all sorts of places and amongst widely separated races of mankind. We have it in the _Odyssey_; we have it in Cicero and in Pliny; we have it in the Bible. All this is not a mere matter of imposition.

In a very curious book recently published (_Some Revelations as to ”Raymond_,” by a Plain Citizen; London, Kegan Paul), to which some attention may now be devoted, the writer, himself a firm believer in spiritualism and one obviously in a position to write about it, points out that the old term ”magic” has been relegated to the performances of conjurers, and the terminology so altered as to make spiritualism appear to be a new gospel, whereas the contrary is the case. ”The impression prevailed that civilised people were in presence of a new order of phenomena, and were acquiring a new outlook into the regions of the Unknown; whereas the truth was that they were merely repeating, under new social conditions and in a new environment, the same experiences that had happened to their ancestors during some thousands of years.”

Here I may interject the remark that as far as my reading and knowledge go, no spirit has ever had a good word to say for the Catholic religion.

What that Church thinks about spiritualism has been made quite clear, and that is enough for Catholics. Before leaving the Plain Citizen, we must not omit to notice one strange hypothesis of his, all the stranger as coming from a professed spiritualist. He maintains--perhaps it would be fairer to say that he lays down as a working hypothesis--the following thesis: Spiritualism involves the existence of mediums, and mediums for the most part have to make their living by their operations.

They will not be averse to making their incomes as large as possible.

For the purpose of acquiring information as to the affairs of possible clients, they have, so he a.s.serts, an almost Freemasonic a.s.sociation by which all sorts of pieces of intelligence concerning persons of importance are collected and disseminated amongst the brotherhood. It did not require much imagination to suppose that the war would add to the number of their clients, whether their claims had real foundation or not; what they wanted above all things was some one of undoubted position who would ”boom the movement,” in the slang of the day. They laid all their plans to get their man in the author of _Raymond_, and they got him. Such is his thesis for what it is worth.

However, it is time to conclude. What I wanted to show was that Theophobia was the Nemesis of a dreadful type of Protestantism, and that spiritualism was the Nemesis of the materialism a.s.sociated with that Theophobia. There is no need to point out to Catholic readers where the remedy lies, and where the real Communion of the saints is to be found.

They are not likely to be drawn aside by the ”Lo here!” of the ”false Christs” whom we were promised and whom we are getting. It is for those who have themselves experienced the consolations of the Catholic religion to do their best, each in his own way, to make known to others outside our body what things may be found within.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: An excellent example may be found in Butler's own career. Destined for the ministry of the Church of England (with his own full consent), he was set to teach a cla.s.s in a Sunday school. Finding that some of his pupils were unbaptized, yet no worse-behaved than the others, and obviously quite ignorant of what baptism meant, he abandoned all belief. His biographer, equally ignorant, in narrating, with approval, this change of opinion, says, ”Paley had produced evidence of Christianity, but none so unmistakable as this to the contrary.”]

[Footnote 22: Dr. Johnson once remarked that ”to find a subst.i.tution for violated morality was the leading feature in all perversions of religion.”]

III. WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE SYSTEM

Exclusive and long-continued devotion to any special line of study is liable to lead to forgetfulness of other, even kindred, lines--almost, in extreme cases, to a kind of atrophy of other parts of the mind. There is the example of Darwin and his self-confessed loss of the aesthetic tastes he once possessed. Nor are scientific studies the only ones to produce such an effect. The amusing satire in _The New Republic_ has, perhaps, lost some of its tang now that the prototype of its Professor of History is almost forgotten, but it has not lost its point. Lady Ambrose tells the tale: ”He said to me in a very solemn voice, 'What a terrible defeat that was which we had at Bouvines!' I answered timidly--not thinking we were at war with anyone--that I had seen nothing about it in the papers. 'H'm!' he said, giving a sort of grunt that made me feel dreadfully ignorant, 'why, I had an excursus on it myself in the _Archaeological Gazette_ only last week.' And, do you know, it turned out that the Battle of Bouvines was fought in the Thirteenth Century, and had, as far as I could make out, something to do with Magna Charta.”

It is, however, among writers on biological subjects that we find the most salient instances of this contraction. With extraordinary self-abnegation they seem, in the contemplation of the problem with which they are concerned, to forget that they themselves are living things, and, more than that, the living things of whom they ought to know and could know most, however little that most may be. When the biologist begins to philosophise as, after the manner of his kind, he often does, he should leave his microscope and look around him; whereas he often forgets even to change the high for the low power. Thus he limits his field of vision and forgets, when attempting his explanation, that it is only _within a system_ that he is working. Professor Ward, in _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, says: