Part 40 (1/2)
”I did not know Italians read the Bible. Where did you become acquainted with it?”
”In New York. I often amused myself strolling about the Jewish quarter there and studying the inhabitants. Wonderful types, wonderful poses!
But hard to decipher, for a person of my race. One day I said to myself: I will read their literature; it may be of a.s.sistance. I went through the Talmud and the Bible. They helped me to understand those people and their point of view.”
”What is their point of view?”
”That G.o.d is an overseer. This, I think, is the keynote of the Bible.
And it explains why the Bible has always been regarded as an exotic among Greco-Latin races, who are all pagans at heart. Our G.o.d is not an overseer; he is a partaker. For the rest, we find the whole trend of the Bible, its doctrinal tone, antagonistic to those ideals of equanimity and moderation which, however disregarded in practice, have always been held up hereabouts as theoretically desirable. In short, we Southerners lack what you possess: an elective affinity with that book.
One may wonder how the morality of those tawny Semites was enabled to graft itself upon your alien white-skinned race with such tenacity as to influence your whole national development. Well, I think I have at last puzzled it out,” he added, ”to my own satisfaction at least.”
The bishop interposed with a laugh:
”I may tell you, Count, that I am not in the Episcopal mood to-day. Not at all. Never felt less Episcopal in my life. For that matter, it is our English ecclesiastics who have dealt some of the most serious blows at Biblical authority of late, with their modern exegesis. Pray go on!”
”I imagine it is nothing but a matter of racial temperament.”
”Goth and Latin?”
”One does not always like to employ such terms; they are so apt to cover deficiency of ideas, or to obscure the issue. But certainly the sun which colours our complexion and orders our daily habits, influences at the same time our character and outlook. The almost hysterical changes of light and darkness, summer and winter, which have impressed themselves on the literature of the North, are unknown here.
Northern people, whether from climatic or other causes, are p.r.o.ne to extremes, like their own myths and sagas. The Bible is essentially a book of extremes. It is a violent doc.u.ment. The Goth or Anglo-Saxon has taken kindly to this book because it has always suited his purposes. It has suited his purposes because, according to his abruptly varying moods, he has never been at a loss to discover therein exactly what he wanted--authority for every grade of emotional conduct, from savage vindictiveness to the most abject self-abas.e.m.e.nt. One thing he would never have found, had he cared to look for it--an incitement to live the life of reason, to strive after intellectual honesty and self-respect, and to keep his mind open to the logic of his five senses. That is why, during the troubled Middle Ages when the oscillations of national and individual life were yet abrupter--when, therefore, that cla.s.sical quality of temperance was more than ever at a discount--the Bible took so firm a hold upon you. Its unquiet teachings responded to the unquiet yearnings of men. Your conservatism, your reverence for established inst.i.tutions, has done the rest. No! I do not call to mind any pa.s.sages in the Bible commending the temperate philosophic life; though it would be strange if so large a miscellany did not contain a few sound reflections. Temperance,” he concluded, as though speaking to himself--”temperance! All the rest is embroidery.”
Mr. Heard was thoughtful. The American observed:
”That side of the case never struck me before. How about Solomon's proverbs?”
”Maxims of exhaustion, my dear friend. It is easy to preach to me. I am an old man. I can read Solomon with a certain patience. We want something for our children--something which does not blight or deny, but vivifies and guides aright; something which makes them hold up their heads. A friend, an older brother; not a pedagogue. I would never recommend a boy to study these writings. They would lower his spirits and his self-respect. Solomon, like all reformed debauchees, has a depressing influence on the young.”
”Do you know England well?” asked Mr. Heard.
”Very little. I have spent a few days in Liverpool and London, here and there, on my periodical journeyings to the States. Kind friends supply me with English books and papers; the excellent Sir Herbert Street sends me more than I can possibly digest! I confess that much of what I read was an enigma to me till I had studied the Bible. Its teachings seem to have filtered, warm and fluid, through the veins of your national and private life. Then, slowly, they froze hard, congealing the whole body into a kind of crystal. Your ethics are stereotyped in black-letter characters. A gargoyle morality.”
”It is certainly difficult,” said Mr. van Koppen, ”for an Anglo-Saxon to appraise this book objectively. His mind has been saturated with it in childhood to such an extent as to take on a definite bias.”
”Like the ancients with their ILIAD. Where is a truer poet than Homer?
Yet the wors.h.i.+p of him became a positive bane to independent creative thought. What good things could be written about the withering influence of Homer upon the intellectual life of Rome!”
The bishop asked:
”You think the Bible has done the same for us?”
”I think it accounts for some Byzantine traits in your national character and for the formlessness and hesitancy which I, at least, seem to detect in the demeanour of many individual Anglo-Saxons. They realize that their traditional upbringing is opposed to truth. It gives them a sense of insecurity. It makes them shy and awkward. Poise! That is what they need, and what this unbalanced Eastern stuff will never give them.”
”The withering influences of Homer: surely that is a bad sign?” asked the American.
”And that of the Bible?” added Mr. Heard.