Happy Half-Hours

by A. A. Milne

  The truth is that Fate does not go out of its way to be dramatic. If you or I had the power of life and death in our hands, we should no doubt arrange some remarkably bright and telling effects. A man who spilt the salt callously would be drowned next week in the Dead Sea, and a couple who married in May would expire simultaneously in the May following. But Fate cannot worry to think out all the clever things that we should think out. It goes about its business solidly and unromantically, and by the ordinary laws of chance it achieves every now and then something startling and romantic. Superstition thrives on the fact that only the accidental dramas are reported.

  But there are charms to secure happiness as well as charms to avert evil. In these I am a firm believer. I do not mean that I believe that a horseshoe hung up in the house will bring me good luck; I mean that if anybody does believe this, then the hanging up of his horseshoe will probably bring him good luck. For if you believe that you are going to be lucky, you go about your business with a smile, you take disaster with a smile, you start afresh with a smile. And to do that is to be in the way of happiness.

  – Spiritualism and the Value of Evidence –

  It seems to be impossible nowadays to write about spiritualism without bringing in the names of its two principal champions: Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is appropriate that this should be so, for these two names can be taken as representative of Science and Faith, in between which Spiritualism stands uncertainly, waiting to declare itself. If it is a Science, does not the name of Sir Oliver Lodge carry weight? It does. If it is a Faith, does not the self-sacrifice of Sir Arthur compel belief? It does. But, on the other hand, if it is a Faith, then Sir Oliver Lodge’s adherence to it means no more than that of any other man, and less than that of some poor outcast in the slums; and if it is a Science, then the fanatic faith of Sir Arthur is entirely out of place. Who, then, is to be our antagonist? What are we discussing? A Science or a Faith? This is our first difficulty.

  Christianity is a Faith; we believe in it, or not. Vaccination is a Science; we believe in it, or not. But the two beliefs are different. In the one case we believe, or doubt, with our hearts; in the other case with our minds. The proofs of Christianity are subjective and spiritual, the proofs of vaccination are objective and material. An anti-vaccinationist, who has not made a faith of his belief, could be converted by overwhelming proof, if such were available, but the anti-Christian can only convert himself.

  Now, is Spiritualism offered to us as an extension of the physical laws of the universe, of which we seem to know some, yet of others remain in deepest ignorance; or is it offered to us as a religion, giving us in the greatest degree that hope and that comfort without which the universe itself becomes unthinkable? Faith, says Saint Paul, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. If Spiritualism is a faith, no words could more truly describe that faith. ‘The substance of things hoped for.’ It is enough for the believer to proclaim that this is what he hopes for; it is enough for the unbeliever to reply that he hopes for something other. Neither is required to justify himself. No argument is possible between them. But if Spiritualism is a manifestation of certain laws of nature for which authority is now claimed, then the unbeliever may sit in judgement on that claim. He may demand, and consider the evidence.

  Let us first regard Spiritualism as a Science, and consider the evidence for it.

  Now the value of evidence depends upon the credibility of the witness. Spiritualists make the mistake of thinking that it depends upon the honesty of the witness. Over and over again we are told that this and that distinguished man and woman attended a séance and witnessed remarkable things. How can we possibly doubt their word as to what took place? Well, the honesty of the Pope may be considered above suspicion. We could not doubt his word. But if the Pope told us that he had seen a woman having an epileptic fit on the steps of St Paul’s at eleven o’clock in the morning, we should not consider the fact therefore established. We should ask ourselves the following questions:

  1. How does he know that it was not a man dressed up as a woman?

  2. Does he know the difference between epilepsy and other kinds of fits?

  3. Is he acquainted with St Paul’s, or has he perhaps confused it with Westminster Abbey?

  4. Did he guess the time, or consult a watch or clock?

  5. Is that watch or clock accurate?

  We see, in short, that whether we accept or reject the evidence does not depend in the least on the honesty of the witness. We may trust a man’s honour but remain doubtful of his medical skill, his knowledge of London and the works of his watch.

  But should we, in fact, so dispute the Pope’s story? No. We should not dispute it, for the reason that the story is in itself credible, and not worth disputing. If the most irresponsible man of my acquaintance tells me that he has just seen Hobbs make a century at the Oval in two and a half hours, I am ready to believe him; but if my most accurate friend tells me that he has just seen G. K. Chesterton make a century at Lord’s in ten minutes, I shall assume that he is under an hallucination. The first statement is natural and credible; the second unnatural and incredible.

  So it comes to this. We believe the evidence we are ready to believe, and reject the evidence we are not ready to believe. But if this is true of us who receive the evidence of Spiritualism at second-hand, it is equally true of those Spiritualists who have received it at first hand. The man who urgently wants to receive a message from his dead son will believe that he is receiving a message from his dead son; it is so easy for him.

  The Spiritualist has been known to deny this; to say that he had no prepossessions either way when he began investigating. Often he claims that he was actually a sceptic – until he was convinced. It is worth while to consider just what a Spiritualist means in this case by scepticism.

  I go out to dinner and am entertained afterwards by a conjuror. He performs a remarkable trick. He gives me two cards out of an authenticated pack, and lets me hide them. Then he shuffles the cards and invites me to turn up the top two. They are the two which I have just hidden. Marvellous! I go home and tell Smith about it. Smith is a complete sceptic. He does not doubt my honesty, but says that I have been deceived in some way; it was a trick pack; or the conjuror had extra cards up his sleeve; or he got to my hiding place when my back was turned. Something. The more I assure him that none of these things happened, the more sceptical he remains. He is certain that the conjuror could not bring the trick off in his presence. So I arrange that he shall try. The trick begins, with Smith taking every precaution which suggests itself to him. The two cards, let us say, are the eight of hearts and the nine of diamonds. When all the preliminaries are over, the conjuror with a confident smile invites Smith to turn up the top two cards …

  And what does this confirmed sceptic suppose he is going to see when he turns up the cards? The four of clubs and the King of spades? A couple of Queens? Of course not. Yet if he is a confirmed sceptic, this is what he should expect. But he doesn’t expect it, because at the moment of turning he is no longer sceptical. He is at that moment absolutely certain that in some miraculous way the hidden cards will be there; the eight of hearts and the nine of diamonds. ‘And, by Heaven,’ he cries, ‘so they are.’

  But they are not. That, in fact, is the trick. The cards now turned up are the nine of hearts and the eight of diamonds; but so habitually inaccurate are we all, and so easily blinded by a preconceived belief, that in every case the eight of diamonds and the nine of hearts will be mistaken for the nine of diamonds and the eight of hearts. To the good conjuror there is no such thing as a sceptic. Scepticism always gives way at the critical moment.

  Or rather, it appears to give way then, but it has really given way before. Try to imagine for yourself the dialogue between an anguished and adoring mother and the alleged spirit of her dead son, a dialogue in which the mother remains coldly on the defensive, answering ‘Sir’ to the voice’s ‘Mummy darling’, until it
has identified the hiding place of the dead rabbit, or told her to look in the left hand cupboard in the boxroom for his old tennis-shoes; whereupon she apologizes and calls him ‘Dearest’. It is inconceivable.

  Evidence, then, of manifestations which in themselves seem barely credible, and which come to us through witnesses themselves not entirely credible, is not evidence which carries conviction. Is there no evidence which would be more likely to convince us? For myself, I should prefer spiritual evidence; evidence, that is, of the spiritual presence of the dead, rather than material evidence (table-rappings and what not) of the material presence of the dead. I mentioned this preference of mine once in an article written for the Daily News, and was promptly provided with the evidence which I wanted. It was a poem by Dryden which had just come through from the next world; a poem by one who was a great poet in his lifetime, and who now had two hundred years’ knowledge of unearthly beauty to add to his earthly knowledge. All he could do with this equipment was a verse such as one might find in a schoolgirl’s magazine, in which ‘earth’ rhymed to ‘turf’. When I commented on this, I was told scornfully that, even in such worldly matters as telephonings, the operators were not always accurate; not inhumanly accurate; and that a medium was merely a very human transmitter. True, I was a very human transmitter myself once; a signaller in the Army. I admit with shame that, taking down a preface of Bernard Shaw’s on the buzzer at twenty words a minute, I might have done him some injustice … but I doubt if the result would have looked like a short story by Miss Ethel M. Dell. Nor was a communication from Longfellow, sent to me through the same medium, more convincing. Seventy years after his death Longfellow was apparently still writing in the Hiawatha metre. I am sorry, but, speaking as an expert, I say that the one certain fact in this uncertain universe is that Longfellow isn’t. There may be a million people in Heaven writing in the Hiawatha, metre but Longfellow is not one of them. That is absolutely certain. I may know nothing about Spiritualism, but I know something about writing. One doesn’t. One simply doesn’t.

  This, it may be said, is trivial. It is. But it is also symptomatic. Perhaps my chief objection to the Spiritualists’ creed is that acceptance of it seems to mean the dethronement of reason. A medium is caught cheating. Does the spiritualist reject him? No. He assures us that the medium was a perfectly honest medium – until he was caught cheating; that the strain of being a medium is very great; that many of the best mediums have to take to drink – and cheating. Indeed, the fact that he was caught cheating is almost proof that until that moment he was the most honest of mediums … The doubter goes to a séance hoping for proof. He is not satisfied with the proof which he gets. That is because he doubted and created an atmosphere of distrust, in which, as is well known, it is impossible for spirits to manifest themselves; so that even his dissatisfaction is in itself a proof … and so on.

  As a Science, then, Spiritualism seems to me just a little unscientific. Do I like it any better as a Faith? I do not believe in Spiritualism as a Faith, for the simple and sound reason that I do not want to. It does not offer me the evidence of things hoped for.

  It is a little difficult to know exactly what it does offer, for the Spiritualist’s picture of Heaven is varied. It is also a little difficult not to be ribald about some of the pictures which are drawn. It is, of course, easy, and not always helpful, to be ribald about somebody else’s religion. The old Christian idea of Heaven as a place wherein one perpetually played the harp in one’s nightgown offered similar opportunities. Yet ribaldry sometimes has its value. Christianity has not suffered by discarding whatever offered a target for the mockers.

  The essence of the Spiritualist’s creed is that there are no dead. I am afraid that I get no comfort from this assurance. To call death a passing does not make it any less bitter. It is to me merely stupid to offer that contact with the dead which the Spiritualists profess to give us as a tolerable substitute for that contact with the living which we enjoy in this world. Even that spiritual contact which Sir Arthur offers us in the next world gives me no firm foundation for faith. He tells us that time moves on in the next world contemporaneously with this; that a mother who loses her baby, a girl of three years old, and dies herself fifteen years later, will find a daughter of eighteen waiting to welcome her. The only possible question I can ask is: Why on earth or in Heaven should she want a strange daughter of eighteen?

  Sir Arthur also tells us – much, if I may say so respectfully, as a showman trying to do the best for his public – that if we die old and decrepit, we find ourselves in the next world in our prime. Speaking for myself, I should like a little further assurance as to who is to decide what is my prime. Authors, in particular, are often told by their critics that they are no longer what they were. We do not always agree with our critics. Moreover, our intellectual prime, whenever it may be, rarely coincides with our physical prime. The next world is apparently physical as well as spiritual. The physical side seems to stop short at digestion and procreation, being rather more of a silhouette than anything; but, according to the Spiritualists, it is there, and we should want to make the best of it. But shall I really have survived, if I survive in a combination of body and mind which is not myself at all: which has never been in this world, and could never be recognized in the next?

  If I find this new world hard to realize and unattractive to consider, it is because all my hopes of another world are of a world more beautiful than anything I can imagine in this one. To think of the infinite in terms of the finite is beyond me. I feel myself as little competent to imagine the next world as to explain this. Nor do I demand of my Faith an infinity of existence in either. All I can ask is that some day, if only in one blinding moment, I may understand; all I can hope is that, when that moment comes, I may leave behind me in this world something which will not wholly be forgotten.

  – Age –

  As I was saying a little while ago, I am on the verge of seventy, and don’t feel it. Somebody (it may have been myself) put out the ingenious theory that the reason why actors and actresses continue to look so young is because the hours when they are being Julius Caesar or Little Lord Fauntleroy are no part of their own lives, and so do not age them. Thus an actor who had played Hamlet for eight performances a week throughout the year would himself have lived only forty-five weeks, assuming that he kept his mind on his part during the dressing-room intervals. Continuous employment would give him back one year in eight. Now that I have worked it out, I can see that the theory is not very sound; for an actor is far from being in continuous employment, and even if he were, he would only look forty-two when he was forty-eight, which anybody can do.

  But it might apply to a novelist, who does live continuously the lives of others, and perhaps only grows old in the night. It is more likely, however, that the reason why a writer does not easily acquire the dignity and authority of old age is that he is never in a position of dignity or authority. Indeed, he never gets beyond the apprentice stage. When judges, clergymen and schoolmasters open their lips, no dog can bark. Not that any dog wants to; it is assumed (a little too readily, perhaps,) that a Judge knows all about the law, a clergyman all about God, and a schoolmaster all about the subject he is teaching. But however long a writer has been in the business, he is still without authority for anybody but himself. All he knows is how to write in his own way. He will never be Sir Oracle, and any dog can bark at him.

  When I wrote an autobiography twelve years ago, I called it It’s Too Late Now, meaning that it was too late then to be any other sort of writer; no doubt at 106 it will still be too late. The American editor who published it in monthly instalments altered the title. This is a habit of American editors.

  I fancy that the Oath of Installation – taken (as I see it) in shirt sleeves, elastically banded, with blue pencil upheld in right hand – ends, ‘And I do solemnly swear that, whatever the author shall have called any story, article or poem submitted to me, and however suitable his title shall be, I will immedi
ately alter it to one of my own choosing, thus asserting by a single stroke the dignity of my office and my own independence.’ However this may be, the autobiography was retitled What Luck!

  I was annoyed with the Editor at the time; but looking back on my life from what I suppose I must call early middle age, I am inclined now to agree with him.

  PEACEFUL LIFE

  – Men at Arms –

  This morning I came across a letter which I had written on October 13th, 1916, from what was left of a French village called Bully-Grenay. My C.O. was a man for whom I had the greatest admiration, and when he died between the wars, I paid a farewell tribute to him in The Times. He had a delightfully ironic humour, of which I gave one or two examples, reminding myself of them by referring to letters which I had written home. This one, however, had escaped me, until today.

  There was a certain newly-joined subaltern, a hard-working but extremely unattractive youth, whom I described as ‘dry-dirty’, whatever that meant. The Colonel and the Adjutant were talking about him in the H.Q. Mess, to which as Signalling Officer I belonged; and the Adjutant said in his kindly way that he was ‘a very well-meaning boy, but not exactly a leader.’

  ‘No,’ said the Colonel, ‘the men would never follow him – except out of curiosity.’

  – The Honour of Your Country –