VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; andalmost as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby woodon to the empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subjecthad been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it.Their long and changing argument had taken them through districts andlandscapes equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills sohigh and steep that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed asif the stars might burn them. They had explained and re-explainedthe Massacre of St. Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in withstanding corn as with walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensitin dim and twinkling pine woods, amid the bewildering monotony ofthe pines. And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan,passionately defending the practical achievements and the solidprosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the openland.
MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of thecloudy hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures undercircumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he hadabsorbed the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chancephrases of Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from thepresence and the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had atlast begun thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which themass of the modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threwhimself into replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
"I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull," he hadsaid emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. "And everyone that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You holdthat your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handedon a lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real historythan that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his ownwhich the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactlywhat Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we knowfor certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taughtsomething quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who camebefore him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the hereticwho comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the pastand find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to readGodwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of thenature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discoveringthat you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. Youare a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me thatI ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-centurysceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness andbenevolence of nature. You are an atheist, and you praise the deists ofthe eighteenth century. Read them instead of praising them, and you willfind that their whole universe stands or falls with the deity. You are amaterialist, and you think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said andyou will think him an insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker,with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in practice destroyChristianity. What he does destroy is the Free-thinker who went before.Free-thought may be suggestive, it may be inspiriting, it may have asmuch as you please of the merits that come from vivacity andvariety. But there is one thing Free-thought can never be by anypossibility--Free-thought can never be progressive. It can never beprogressive because it will accept nothing from the past; it beginsevery time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in adifferent direction. All the rational philosophers have gone alongdifferent roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Whocan discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer waspessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill issteep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they bothaccept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill anddown; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but theyhave steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadilyadvanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,it seems, that ever _can_ progress. The first is strictly physicalscience. The second is the Catholic Church."
"Physical science and the Catholic Church!" said Turnbull sarcastically;"and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second."
"If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,"answered MacIan calmly. "I often fancy that your historicalgeneralizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not besurprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor ofscience was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at allsurprised if, when you counted the scientific investigations anddiscoveries since the fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of themhad been made by monks. But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. Isay that if you want an example of anything which has progressed inthe moral world by the same method as science in the material world, bycontinually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then Isay that there _is_ only one example of it. And that is Us."
"With this enormous difference," said Turnbull, "that however elaboratebe the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of menI never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see theelectric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the resultof all your theologies and sacraments."
"Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal," answeredMacIan. "Christianity is always out of fashion because it is alwayssane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on artthe Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism theChurch seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class uswith kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first itwas because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. TheChurch always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond thetimes; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.It keeps the key of a permanent virtue."
"Oh, I have heard all that!" said Turnbull with genial contempt. "I haveheard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you readTom Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbishthat I am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the propof morals; but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and couldpoison you with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian?You ask whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.--anything butthat. When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, doyou ask whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whetherhe is Oxford or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creedessential to morals why do you not make it a test for these things?"
"We once did make it a test for these things," said MacIan smiling, "andthen you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupportedby argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that ourcreed must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told thatit must be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christianarguments are in the same inconsistent style."
"That is all very well as a debating-club answer," replied Turnbullgood-humouredly, "but the question still remains: Why don't you confineyourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?"
"Who talked of such folly?" asked MacIan disdainfully. "Do you supposethat the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only goodmen? Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about thevirtues of all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of thesubject. No, if you really want to know what we mean when we say thatChristianity has a special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Churchis the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and makeit something more than a fashion. The thing is so plain and historicalthat I hardly think you will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it isperfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, theremight appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the same wayas St. Francis of Assisi.
Very well, now take the other types of humanvirtue; many of them splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth waschivalrous and idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadowand _be_ an English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican ofthe eighteenth century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life,was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen anaustere republican? Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano ofrevolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon.And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are buzzing downFleet Street at this instant as I speak. What phrase would inspirethe London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of theBritish Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop ofhis Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other;perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Thosenames and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last?Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not lastfor ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint willremain."
"And suppose I don't like him?" said Turnbull.
"On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: ormore probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant thereasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as theordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary manyou do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not becauseyou are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me)a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funnypart of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues,however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admiredmost those of them that the modern world most sharply disputes. Youcomplain of Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it didnothing of the kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity;the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal ofvirginity. What then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Yourquarrel can only be, your quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has_achieved_ an ideal of virginity; that it is no longer a mere pieceof floating poetry. But if you, and a few feverish men, in top hats,running about in a street in London, choose to differ as to the idealitself, not only from the Church, but from the Parthenon whose namemeans virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from thevirgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from thelion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, andwho make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from themost living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the_Virgin Martyr_, from Shakespeare, who wrote _Measure for Measure_--ifyou in Fleet Street differ from all this human experience, does it neverstrike you that it may be Fleet Street that is wrong?"
"No," answered Turnbull; "I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded tocanvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think FleetStreet is right, yes--even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that asthe world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and inthese atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinationswhich in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.Every man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhapsthey can only typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if Isuggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in whicha man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as SirGalahad. But, after all, we have in the modern world erected many suchatmospheres. We have, for instance, a new and imaginative appreciationof children."
"Quite so," replied MacIan with a singular smile. "It has been very wellput by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unlessyou become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom ofheaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in thename of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity?Why should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small orimmature? No; you have tried to escape from this thing, and the verything you point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.Am I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?"
And it was with these words that they came in sight of the greatplains. They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull saidsuddenly, "But I _cannot_ believe in the thing." MacIan answered nothingto the speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcelyspoke another word to each other all that day.
The Ball and the Cross Page 8
