Part 2 (1/2)

29. The subject which I want to bring before you is now branched, and worse than branched, reticulated, in so many directions, that I hardly know which shoot of it to trace, or which knot to lay hold of first.

I had intended to return to those j.a.panese jugglers, after a visit to a theater in Paris; but I had better, perhaps, at once tell you the piece of the performance which, in connection with the scene in the English pantomime, bears most on matters in hand.

It was also a dance by a little girl--though one older than Ali Baba's daughter, (I suppose a girl of twelve or fourteen). A dance, so called, which consisted only in a series of short, sharp contractions and jerks of the body and limbs, resulting in att.i.tudes of distorted and quaint ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp twitching of strings at its joints: these movements being made to the sound of two instruments, which between them accomplished only a quick vibratory beating and strumming, in nearly the time of a hearth-cricket's song, but much harsher, and of course louder, and without any sweetness; only in the monotony and unintended aimless construction of it, reminding one of various other insect and reptile cries or warnings: partly of the cicala's hiss; partly of the little melancholy German frog which says ”Mu, mu, mu,” all summer-day long, with its nose out of the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of the deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the alarm of the rattlesnake.

While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeating itself over and over again in my head, whether I would or no:--”And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.” To which text and some others, I shall ask your attention presently; but I must go to Paris first.

30. Not at once, however, to the theater, but to a bookseller's shop, No. 4, Rue Voltaire, where, in the year 1858, was published the fifth edition of Balzac's 'Contes Drolatiques,' ill.u.s.trated by 425 designs by Gustave Dore.

Both text and ill.u.s.trations are as powerful as it is ever in the nature of evil things to be (there is no _final_ strength but in rightness). Nothing more witty, nor more inventively horrible, has yet been produced in the evil literature, or by the evil art, of man: nor can I conceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities of corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, tremendous, hideous in shamelessness, some put into the mouths of priests; the ill.u.s.trations are, in a word, one continuous revelry in the most loathsome and monstrous aspects of death and sin, enlarged into fantastic ghastliness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion and trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of h.e.l.l. Take this following for a general type of what they seek in death: one of the most labored designs is of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword--one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half is elaborately drawn in its section--giving the profile of the divided nose and lips; cleft jaw--breast--and entrails; and this is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the circ.u.mstances, which I do not choose to describe--still less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of death. But of all the 425, there is not one, which does not violate every instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, written in the human soul.

31. Now, my friend, among the many ”Signs of the Times” the production of a book like this is a significant one: but it becomes more significant still when connected with the farther fact, that M.

Gustave Dore, the designer of this series of plates, has just been received with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as the fittest and most able person whom they could at present find to ill.u.s.trate, to their minds, and recommend with grace of sacred art, their hitherto unadorned Bible for them.

Of which Bible, and of the use we at present make of it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse which haunted me through the j.a.panese juggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the public esteem of it to consider at your leisure.

LETTER VIII.

THE FOUR POSSIBLE THEORIES RESPECTING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

_March 7, 1867._

32. I have your yesterday's letter, but must not allow myself to be diverted from the business in hand for this once, for it is the most important of which I have to write to you.

You must have seen long ago that the essential difference between the political economy I am trying to teach, and the popular science, is, that mine is based on _presumably attainable honesty_ in men, and conceivable respect in them for the interests of others, while the popular science founds itself wholly on their supposed constant regard for their own, and on their honesty only so far as thereby likely to be secured.

It becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe anything I say, a great primal question on what this presumably attainable honesty is to be based.

33. ”Is it to be based on religion?” you may ask. ”Are we to be honest for fear of losing heaven if we are dishonest, or (to put it as generously as we may) for fear of displeasing G.o.d? Or, are we to be honest on speculation, because honesty is the best policy; and to invest in virtue as in an undepreciable stock?”

And my answer is--not in any hesitating or diffident way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people may say of me, I often do speak diffidently; though, when I am diffident of things, I like to avoid speaking of them, if it may be; but here I say with no shadow of doubt)--your honesty is _not_ to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on _it_. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be honest--you are, in the question itself, dishonored. ”Because you are a man,” is the only answer; and therefore I said in a former letter that to make your children _capable of honesty_ is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him.

34. It is not, therefore, because I am endeavoring to lay down a foundation of religious concrete, on which to build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting Bible texts in defense of this or that principle or a.s.sertion. But the fact that such references are an offense, as I know them to be, to many of the readers of these political essays, is one among many others, which I would desire you to reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended or not), as expressive of the singular position which the mind of the British public has at present taken with respect to its wors.h.i.+ped Book. The positions, honestly tenable, before I use any more of its texts, I must try to define for you.

35. All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only.

(1.) The first is that of the illiterate modern religious world, that every word of the book known to them as ”The Bible” was dictated by the Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His ”Word.”

This theory is of course tenable by no ordinarily well-educated person.

(2.) The second theory is, that, although admitting verbal error, the substance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is absolutely true, and furnished to man by Divine inspiration of the speakers and writers of it; and that every one who honestly and prayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for his salvation, will infallibly find it there.

This theory is that held by most of our good and upright clergymen, and the better cla.s.s of the professedly religious laity.

(3.) The third theory is that the group of books which we call the Bible were neither written nor collected under any Divine guidance, securing them from substantial error; and that they contain, like all other human writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they nevertheless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the one G.o.d with the first races of man, and His dealings with them in aftertime through Christ: that they record true miracles, and bear true witness to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modern thought.