Part 15

(Mr. T. R. Glover in _The Jesus of History_ points out that when Christ said “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations” (Luke xxii, 26), He meant that the disciples had _helped Him_ by their fidelity.)

The following is from Professor Hobhouse’s _Questions of War and Peace_, repeating what he had set out at length in his _Development and Purpose_ (I take the quotation from _The Spectator_ review, as the book is not yet procurable in Australia):

“I think, therefore, that we must go back into ourselves for faith, and away from ourselves into the world for reason. The deeper we go into ourselves the more we throw off forms and find the assurance not only that the great things exist, but that they are the heart of our lives, and, since after all we are of one stock, they must be at the heart of your lives as well as mine. You say there are bad men and wars and cruelties and wrong, I say all these are the collision of undeveloped forms. What is the German suffering from but a great illusion that the State is something more than man, and that power is more than justice! Strip him of this and he is a man like yourself, pouring out his blood for the cause that he loves, and that you and I detest. Probe inwards, then, and you find the same spring of life everywhere and it is good. Look outwards, and you find, as you yourself admit the slow movement towards a harmony which just means that these impulses of primeval energy come, so to say, to understand one another. Every form they take as they grow will provoke conflict, perish, and be cast aside until the whole unites, and there you have the secret of your successive efforts and failures which yet leave something behind them. God is not the creator who made the world in six days, rested on the seventh and saw that it was good. He is growing in the actual evolution of the world.”

* * * * *

And since (man) cannot spend and use aright The little time here given him in trust. But wasteth it in weary undelight Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust. He naturally claimeth to inherit The everlasting Future, that his merit May have full scope; as surely is most just.

JAMES THOMSON (_The City of Dreadful Night_).

* * * * *

The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

JOHN KEATS (_His Last Sonnet_, 1820).

* * * * *

With sweet May dews my wings were wet, And Phoebus fired my vocal rage; Love caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage.

He loves to sit and hear me sing. Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty.

W. BLAKE (_Song_).

This poem was written before Blake was _fourteen_ years of age.

* * * * *

When the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed, Fresh as a bridegroom.... He was perfumèd like a milliner; And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box. And still he smiled and talked; And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by, He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

SHAKESPEARE (_1 Henry IV._, i. 3).

* * * * *

... High-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them, Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them Matching their lily-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the wash-tub! ... ... In a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey, Barefoot, barelegged he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows, Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes!

A. H. CLOUGH (_The Bothie of Tober-na Vuolich_).

* * * * *

As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire; The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death; Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold: But I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear.

JAMES THOMSON (_The City of Dreadful Night_).

The five quotations above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 85).

* * * * *

SHE COMES AS COMES THE SUMMER NIGHT

She comes as comes the summer night, Violet, perfumed, clad with stars, To heal the eyes hurt by the light Flung by Day’s brandish’d scimitars. The parted crimson of her lips Like sunset clouds that slowly die When twilight with cool finger-tips Unbraids her tresses in the sky.

The melody of waterfalls Is in the music of her tongue, Low chanted in dim forest halls Ere Dawn’s loud bugle-call has rung. And as a bird with hovering wings Halts o’er her young one in the nest, Then droops to still his flutterings, She takes me to her fragrant breast.

O star and bird at once thou art, And Night, with purple-petall’d charm, Shining and singing to my heart, And soothing with a dewy calm. Let Death assume this lovely guise, So darkly beautiful and sweet, And, gazing with those starry eyes, Lead far away my weary feet.

And that strange sense of valleys fair With birds and rivers making song To lull the blossoms gleaming there, Be with me as I pass along. Ah! lovely sisters, Night and Death, And lovelier Woman—wondrous three, “Givers of Life,” my spirit saith, Unfolders of the mystery.

Ah! only Love could teach me this, In memoried springtime long since flown; Red lips that trembled to my kiss, That sighed farewell, and left me lone. O Joy and Sorrow intertwined,— A kiss, a sigh, and blinding tears,— Yet ever after in the wind, The bird-like music of the spheres!

FRANK S. WILLIAMSON.

This is from the author’s “Purple and Gold,” a book of poems published in Melbourne (Thomas C. Lothian, publisher).

* * * * *

No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.

G. MACDONALD (_Robert Falconer_).

* * * * *

WHEN LOVE MEETS LOVE

When love meets love, breast urged to breast, God interposes, An unacknowledged guest, And leaves a little child among our roses.

O, gentle hap! O, sacred lap! O, brooding dove! But when he grows Himself to be a rose, God takes him—Where is then our love? O, where is all our love?

* * * * *

BETWEEN OUR FOLDING LIPS

Between our folding lips God slips An embryon life, and goes; And this becomes your rose. We love, God makes: in our sweet mirth God spies occasion for a birth. _Then is it His, or is it ours?_ I know not—He is fond of flowers.

T. E. BROWN.

Compare the well-known lines by George MacDonald:

Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here....

How did they all[23] just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew.

The suggestion that we are the result of God’s thought appears elsewhere in MacDonald, as in _Robert Falconer_:

If God were _thinking_ me—ah! But if He be only _dreaming_ me, I shall go mad.

And in _The Marquis of Lossie_:

I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.

* * * * *

Some things are of that Nature as to make One’s fancy checkle, while his Heart doth ake.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Checkle = chuckle.

* * * * *

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

LORD BYRON (_On my Thirty-sixth Year_).

* * * * *

’Tis a very good world to live in, To spend, and to lend, and to give in; But to beg, or to borrow, or ask for our own ’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.

J. BROMFIELD.

Often ascribed to the Earl of Rochester. See _Notes and Queries_ July 18, 1896.

* * * * *

Dead years have yet the fire of life In Memory’s holy urn; Her altars, heaped with frankincense Of bygone summers, burn; And, when in everlasting night We see yon sun decline, Deep in the soul his purple flames Eternally will shine.

ALBERT JOSEPH EDMUNDS (b. 1857) (_The Living Past_).

Mr. Edmunds, when this was written in 1880, was a young English poet and spiritualist, but has since settled in Philadelphia. He has written a number of works, the principal being _Buddhist and Christian Gospels now First Compared from the Originals_.

In 1883 he was cataloguing a library at Sunderland, and came across books on the Alps, etc., by a Rev. Leslie Stephen. He wrote to the publishers to find out if they were by the same writer as the Leslie Stephen who had written on Ethics. Sir (then Mr.) Leslie Stephen had just been appointed Clark Lecturer at Cambridge. He replied to Edmunds, “I am one person,” adding that he had given up holy orders. Edmunds replied:

To Mr. Leslie Stephen, Sir, Confound your personality; I did, and now must here, aver Belief was not reality.

I hope my slip may be excused, And doom this time decided not, For, though the _persons_ I confused, Your _substance_ I divided not.

Now thanks to you, my mind’s relieved From mystified plurality, For, in your courteous note received, You’ve unified _duality_.

Your Alpine thoughts will elevate Old Cantab’s flat vicinity, And give her church another _state_ By unifying _Trinity_!

You’ve left, you say, the fold of strife, Where desperate _charges_ never end; Not handsome _living_, handsome _life_ Henceforth will make you _reverend_.

I’m Edmunds, Millfield, Sutherland, Where souls in sulphur barter, sir; But, please excuse an ending grand— My name to rhyme’s a Tartar, sir.

* * * * *

SPIRITUALISM

Only a rising billow, Only a deep sigh drawn By the great sea of chaos Before Creation’s dawn.

Only a little princess Spelling the words of kings; Only the Godhead’s prattle In Sinai mutterings!

The crowd mistakes and fears it, And Aaron has ignored, But Moses, far above them, Is talking with the Lord!

ALBERT JOSEPH EDMUNDS.

See note to previous quotation. This poem was written in 1883.

Although I preserved these verses, I may add that I had no interest whatever in spiritualism, permeated as it was with childishness and fraud. But, nevertheless, it (together with the so-called “Theosophy”) led to the happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882. Although spiritualism did good in this way, its unhappy associations do harm to the Society and hamper it in the important work it has carried on during the last thirty-eight years. Popular prejudice continues to associate it with the old spiritualism, and in consequence no proper attention is paid to its _intensely interesting_ and most valuable investigations. For example, there are, apart from Public Libraries and Universities, only six members or associates in the whole of Australia! And yet, besides important work in other directions, it must be admitted by any open-minded person that the evidence collected by the Society that the dead (by telepathy or otherwise) communicate with the living is unanswerable.

* * * * *

He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed.

THOMAS FULLER.

This refers to the French proverb, “_Il ne faut pas vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué_,” or, as we say, “Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.”

* * * * *

Habit dulls the senses and puts the critical faculty to sleep. The fierceness and hardness of ancient manners is apparent to us, but the ancients themselves were not shocked by sights which were familiar to them. To us it is sickening to think of the gladiatorial show, of the massacres common in Roman warfare, of the infanticide practised by grave and respectable citizens, who did not merely condemn their children to death, but often in practice, as they well knew, to what was still worse—a life of prostitution and beggary. The Roman regarded a gladiatorial show as we regard a hunt; the news of the slaughter of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Cæsar or half a million Jews by Titus excited in his mind a thrill of triumph; infanticide committed by a friend appeared to him a prudent measure of household economy.

SIR J. R. SEELEY (_Ecce Homo_).

It is still more important to realize that the exposure of children was a recognized practice also among the Greeks, and that no one, not even Plato, their noblest philosopher, saw anything wrong in it. It is only by letting the mind dwell on such facts as these, until their significance is fully appreciated, that we can realize the width and depth of the great gulf that separates the Pagan and the Christian, the ancient and the modern world. Take this one fact only: imagine the Greek father looking at his helpless babe and coldly deciding that to rear it will be inconvenient,[24] or that there are already enough children to divide the inheritance, or that the child is sickly or deformed, or that its person offends his idea of beauty—and then consigning his own offspring to slavery, prostitution, or death! (The child would either die or be picked up to be reared for some such purpose.) Even in the very imperfect state of our own civilization, we at least have children’s hospitals and crèches, and are inflamed with righteous rage when even an _unknown_ baby is ill-treated. (We, indeed, go further, and have laws and societies for prevention of cruelty to _animals_.)

The consideration of such a fact leads us also to inquire as to the relations of husband and wife, seeing that the woman would have at least the affection for her offspring that is common among the lower animals. We then find that the modern chivalrous idea of womanhood was unknown to the Greeks; the wife was not educated, and was considered an inferior being; she was married mainly in order to provide sons to carry out certain ritual observances necessary for the father’s welfare after death; she was kept in an almost Eastern seclusion (and therefore had to improve her pallid complexion by paint); she would associate mainly with the children and slaves. We also find that fidelity of the husband to the wife was neither required nor _esteemed_; and that there was little marital love or family life. (Plato in his model Republic would abolish both the latter, for there was to be promiscuity of women, and all children were to be brought up by the State.)

Considering further this practice of exposing children, we realize that it indicates _the want of pity for the helpless and suffering_, which is seen among the lower animals (but with exceptions even among them). From this we may reasonably infer that the Greeks would show little humanity in treating other helpless or suffering people, the sick or distressed, dependents or slaves, conquered enemies or others in their power. (In this respect, however, they, as an intellectual people, would subject themselves to and be controlled by necessary _social_ laws and _practical_ considerations; and also, as a fact, they at times showed generosity to a valiant foe.) Again we can infer that, where even the spirit of mercy was so wanting, the gospel of _love_ could not possibly exist, and that the Greeks lived on a far lower _moral_ plane than ours. These questions are far too large to discuss in this book, and I must leave them to be dealt with elsewhere.

But, even from this very small portion of the available evidence, we can arrive at three resulting facts: _First_, that when in translations from the Greek we find such words as “kindness,” “love,” “morality,” “purity,” “virtue,” “religion,” etc., they have for us a far larger and higher content than the Greek words in the original; _secondly_, that therefore, the reader must get incorrect impressions of Greek literature and thought; and, _thirdly_, that truly marvellous as the Greeks were in art and literature, the current conception of them as a noble-minded and refined people is erroneous.

In referring to the Greeks, one needs to limit the people and period, and I am referring to the great age of the Attic or Athenian Greeks, say the Fifth Century, B.C. There would, of course, be gradations of character among them, and, no doubt, some would be kind-hearted, others would have affection for their wives, and so on. But this can only be assumption, for there is little in their literature to support it. This will be seen if the evidence adduced by Mr. Livingstone (“The Greek Genius,” pp. 117-122) is carefully and critically examined. (His references to Homer, who lived in a far distant age must be omitted.) Also the fact that Herodotus, in the course of his narrative, tells us that some men of another state had a moment of compassion for a baby whom they were about to slay, does not prove in the slightest degree that he was himself humane. The wording of Mr. Livingstone’s translation, p. 118, “It happened _by a divine chance_ that the baby smiled, etc.,” would appear to confirm this view of his; but the Greek words simply mean that a god by chance intervened. Knowing what we do of the Greek gods, that intervention would certainly not be actuated by any kindly feeling towards the infant—the object presumably was that the child should live to fulfil the destiny prophesied by the Delphic Oracle. (Herodotus was a typical Greek to whom the world was peopled with gods, and he sees them constantly interposing in human affairs.) As regards the exposure of children, the point is that _it was a recognized and common practice, duly sanctioned by law, and never condemned by any writer_. Indeed Plato and Aristotle definitely approve of it, and in Plato’s Ideal Republic the weakly and deformed children were to be killed by the State.

As regards the current conception of the Greeks, Shelley in his “Preface to Hellas” describes them as “those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind.” Similar statements could be gathered from innumerable English and European writers.

* * * * *

THE PACE THAT KILLS

The gallop of life was once exciting, Madly we dashed over pleasant plains, And the joy, like the joy of a brave man fighting, Poured in a flood through our eager veins, Hot youth is the time for the splendid ardour, That stamps and startles, that throbs and thrills And ever we pressed our horses harder, Galloping on at the pace that kills!

So rapid the pace, so keen the pleasure, Scarcely we paused to glance aside, As we mocked the dullards, who watched at leisure The frantic race that we chose to ride. Yes, youth is the time when a master-passion, Or love or ambition, our nature fills; And each of us rode in a different fashion— All of us rode at the pace that kills!

And vainly, O friends, ye strive to bind us; Flippantly, gaily, we answer you:— “Should _atra cura_[25] jump up behind us, Strong are our steeds and can carry two!” But we find the road, so smooth at morning, Rugged at night ’mid the lonely hills; And all too late we recall the warning Weary at last of the pace that kills....

The gallop of life was just beginning; Strength we wasted in efforts vain; And now, when the prizes are worth the winning, We’ve scarcely the spirit to ride again! The spirit, forsooth! ’Tis our strength has failed us, And sadly we ask, as we count our ills, “What pitiful, pestilent folly ailed us? _Why_ did we ride at the pace that kills?”

W. J. PROWSE.

* * * * *

Cato said ‘he had rather people should inquire why he had not a statue erected to his memory, than why he had.’

PLUTARCH (_Political Precepts_).

* * * * *

CHAMOUNI AND RYDAL.

I stood one shining morning, where The last pines stand on Montanvert, Gazing on giant spires that grow From the great frozen gulfs below.

How sheer they soared, how piercing rose Above the mists, beyond the snows! No thinnest veil of vapour hid Each sharp and airy pyramid.

No breeze moaned there, nor cooing bird, Deep down the torrent raved, unheard, Only the cow-bells’ clang, subdued, Shook in the fields below the wood.

The vision vast, the lone large sky, The kingly charm of mountains high, The boundless silence, woke in me Abstraction, reverence, reverie.

Days dawned that felt as wide away As the far peaks of silvery grey, Life’s lost ideal, love’s last pain In those full moments throbbed again.

And a much differing scene was born In my mind’s eye on that blue morn; No splintered snowy summits there Shot arrowy heights in crystal air:

But a calm sunset slanted still O’er hoary crag and heath-flushed hill, And at their foot, by birchen brake Dimpled and smiled an English lake.

I roamed where I had roamed before With heart elate in years of yore, Through the green glens by Rotha side, Which Arnold loved, where Wordsworth died.

That flower of heaven, eve’s tender star, Trembled with light above Nab Scar; And from his towering throne aloft Fairfield poured purple shadows soft.

The tapers twinkled through the trees From Rydal’s bower-bound cottages, And gentle was the river’s flow, Like love’s own quivering whisper low.

One held my arm will walk no more On Loughrigg steeps by Rydall shore, And a sweet voice was speaking clear— Earth had no other sound so dear.

Her words were, as we passed along, Of noble sons of truth and song— Of Arnold brave, and Wordsworth pure. And how their influences endure.

“They have not left us—are not dead” (The earnest voice beside me said,) “For teacher strong and poet sage Are deeply working in the age.

“For aught we know they now may brood O’er this enchanted solitude, With thought and feeling more intense Than we in the blind life of sense.”...

Those tones are hushed, that light is cold, And we (but not the world) grow old; The joy, “the bloom of young desire,” The zest, the force, the strenuous fire,

Enthusiasms bright, sublime, That heaven-like made that early time:— These all are gone: must faith go too? Is truth too lovely to be true?

In nature dwells no kindling soul? Moves no vast life throughout the whole? Are not thought, knowledge, love’s sweet might, Shadows of substance infinite?

Shall rippling river, bow of rain, Blue mountains, and the bluer main. Red dawn, gold sundown, pearly star Be fair, _nor something fairer far_?

That awful hope, so deep, that swells At the keen clash of Easter bells Is _it_ a waning moon, that dies As morn-like lights of science rise?