Part 29

Myers says: “The question of the survival of man is a branch of experimental psychology. Is there, or is there not, evidence in the actual observed phenomena of automatism, apparitions and the like, for a transcendental energy in living men, or for an influence emanating from personalities which have overpassed the tomb? This is the definite question, which we can at least intelligibly discuss, and which either we or our descendants may some day hope to answer.”

* * * * *

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!

WORDSWORTH (_On the Death of James Hogg_).

* * * * *

Car, voyez-vous, la femme est, comme on dit, mon maître, Un certain animal difficile à connoitre, Et de qui la nature est fort encline au mal.

(A woman, look you, is a certain animal hard to understand and much inclined to mischief.)

MOLIÈRE (_Le Dépit Amoureux_).

* * * * *

Here, where sharp the sea-bird shrills his ditty, Flickering flame-wise through the clear live calm, Rose triumphal, crowning all a city, Roofs exalted once with prayer and psalm, Built of holy hands for holy pity, Frank and fruitful as a sheltering palm.

Church and hospice wrought in faultless fashion, Hall and chancel bounteous and sublime, Wide and sweet and glorious as compassion, Filled and thrilled with force of choral chime, Filled with spirit of prayer and thrilled with passion, Hailed a God more merciful than Time.

Ah, less mighty, less than Time prevailing, Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at his nod, Less than clouds across the sea-line sailing Lies he, stricken by his master’s rod. “Where is man?” the cloister murmurs wailing; Back the mute shrine thunders—“Where is God?”

Here is all the end of all his glory— Dust, and grass, and barren silent stones. Dead, like him, one hollow tower and hoary Naked in the sea-wind stands and moans, Filled and thrilled with its perpetual story; Here, where earth is dense with dead men’s bones.

Low and loud and long, a voice for ever, Sounds the wind’s clear story like a song. Tomb from tomb the waves devouring sever, Dust from dust as years relapse along; Graves where men made sure to rest and never Lie dismantled by the seasons’ wrong.

Now displaced, devoured and desecrated, Now by Time’s hands darkly disinterred, These poor dead that sleeping here awaited Long the archangel’s re-creating word, Closed about with roofs and walls high-gated Till the blast of judgment should be heard,

Naked, shamed, cast out of consecration, Corpse and coffin, yea the very graves, Scoffed at, scattered, shaken from their station, Spurned and scourged of wind and sea like slaves, Desolate beyond man’s desolation, Shrink and sink into the waste of waves.

Tombs, with bare white piteous bones protruded, Shroudless, down the loose collapsing banks, Crumble, from their constant place detruded, That the sea devours and gives not thanks. Graves where hope and prayer and sorrow brooded Gape and slide and perish, ranks on ranks.

Rows on rows and line by line they crumble, They that thought for all time through to be. Scarce a stone whereon a child might stumble Breaks the grim field paced alone of me. Earth, and man, and all their gods wax humble Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea.

...

But afar on the headland exalted, But beyond in the curl of the bay, From the depth of his dome deep-vaulted Our father is lord of the day. Our father and lord that we follow, For deathless and ageless is he; And his robe is the whole sky’s hollow, His sandal the sea.

Where the horn of the headland is sharper, And her green floor glitters with fire, The sea has the sun for a harper, The sun has the sea for a lyre. The waves are a pavement of amber, By the feet of the sea-winds trod To receive in a god’s presence-chamber Our father, the God.

Time, haggard and changeful and hoary, Is master and god of the land: But the air is fulfilled of the glory That is shed from our lord’s right hand. O father of all of us ever, All glory be only to thee From heaven, that is void of thee never, And earth, and the sea....

SWINBURNE (_By the North Sea_).

Swinburne introduced the new Hellenism or paganism, which was followed by Pater and J. A. Symonds and ended with Oscar Wilde (see p. 310 note.) Here Time is the supreme god who wrecks Christian Churches, etc.

Although Swinburne had no important message to deliver, yet by his wonderful mastery of metre and language he was of tremendous service in transforming English Poetry (see p. 219.) But in spite of the magical effect of his new melodies, he was wanting in the art (of which Milton is the supreme example) of varying his rhythm and accents. His extreme regularity, notwithstanding the fine language and the splendid swing of his verses, produces in his longer poems a certain effect of monotony. Swinburne spoke of the “spavined and spur-galled Pegasus” of George Eliot, but although she lacked his wonderful lyric melody, she was more artistic and effective than he in varying the rhythm of her verse. However, the immense influence of Swinburne on all subsequent poetry can never be forgotten. Even the dreary Iambic couplet in his hands was transformed into music.

* * * * *

There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed—and scarcely one woman—love the truth for the truth’s sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of the persecution of the truth—the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Table Talk_).

* * * * *

The old creeds grew out of human nature as genuinely as weeds and flowers out of the earth. It is well enough that the gardener, whose business it is to pull them up, should despise them as pigweed, wormwood, chickweed, shadblossom: so they are, out of their place; but the botanist picks up the same and recognizes them as Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchier, Amaranth. _Natura nihil agit frustra._ Let us coax each to yield its last bud.

MONCURE D. CONWAY.

I have not Conway’s book _An Earthward Pilgrimage_ to refer to. The latter part of the above is apparently a quotation from Thoreau, as I remember it is so quoted by Emerson.

* * * * *

God is my witness, what hours of wretchedness I have spent at times, while reading the Bible devoutly from day to day, and reverencing every word of it as the Word of God, when petty contradictions met me which seemed to my reason to conflict with the notion of the absolute historical veracity of every part of Scripture, and which, as I felt, _in the study of any other book_ we should honestly treat as errors or mis-statements, without in the least detracting from the real value of the book! But in those days, I was taught that it was my duty to fling the suggestion from me at once, “as if it were a loaded shell shot into the fortress of my soul,” or to stamp out desperately, as with an iron heel, each spark of honest doubt, which God’s own gift, the love of truth, had kindled in my bosom.... I thank God that I was not able long to throw dust in the eyes of my own mind, and do violence to the love of truth in this way.

BISHOP COLENSO (1814-1883) (_Pentateuch_).

(See G. W. Cox’s _Life of Colenso_, I, 493.) Colenso’s quotation, “as if it were a loaded shell,” etc., is from Bishop Wilberforce. Cox mentions elsewhere that in one of Wilberforce’s published sermons he speaks of a young man of great promise dying in darkness and despair, because he had indulged in doubt as to whether the sun and moon stood still at Joshua’s bidding! Who, that went through the experiences of those days, can ever forget them? We had been taught that we “must believe” every word of the Bible to be divinely inspired or else be eternally damned. And yet we realized that such belief was absolutely impossible!

The horror with which Bishop Colenso’s revelations were received in orthodox circles would to-day be scarcely credible, and not until after the eighties were the results of the Higher Criticism generally accepted.

* * * * *

Let a man be once fully persuaded that there is no difference between the two positions, “The Bible contains the religion revealed by God,” and “Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God”; and that whatever can be said of the Bible, collectively taken, may and must be said of each and every sentence of the Bible, taken for and by itself,—and I no longer wonder at these paradoxes. I only object to the inconsistency of those who profess the same belief, and yet affect to look down with a contemptuous or compassionate smile on John Wesley for rejecting the Copernican system as incompatible therewith; or who exclaim, “Wonderful!” when they hear that Sir Matthew Hale sent a crazy old woman to the gallows in honour of the Witch of Endor.... I challenge these divines and their adherents to establish the compatibility of a belief in the modern astronomy and natural philosophy with their and Wesley’s doctrine respecting the inspired Scriptures.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

* * * * *

For the Parsons are dumb dogs, turning round, And scratching their hole in the warmest ground, And laying them down in the sun to wink, Drowsing, and dreaming, and thinking they think. As they mumble the marrowless bones of morals, Like toothless children gnawing their corals, Gnawing their corals to soothe their gums With a kind of watery thought that comes.

W. C. SMITH (_Borland Hall_).

* * * * *

Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others? The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can put beans in poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. Corn—which, in my garden, grows alongside the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of superiority—is, however, the child of song. It “waves” in all literature.

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (_My Summer in a Garden_).

Mr. Yeats has, however, rescued the bean from its invidious position (_The Lake Isle of Innisfree_):—

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Lady Middleton, a friend of old days in Adelaide and now in England, reminded me of these lines.

* * * * *

Yet in my hid soul must a voice reply Which knows not which may seem the viler gain, To sleep for ever or be born again. The blank repose or drear eternity. A solitary thing it were to die So late begotten and so early slain, With sweet life withered to a passing pain Till nothing anywhere should still be I. Yet if for evermore I must convey These weary senses thro’ an endless day And gaze on God with these exhausted eyes, I fear that howsoe’er the seraphs play My life shall not be theirs nor I as they, But homeless in the heart of Paradise.

F. W. H. MYERS (1843-1901) (_Immortality_).

This is from Myers’ _Poems_, 1870, and is one of a pair of sonnets. I do not quote the first in full because its meaning seems obscure, but the last six lines on the shortness of life as compared with eternity are as follow:

Lo, all that age is as a speck of sand Lost on the long beach where the tides are free, And no man metes it in his hollow hand Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be; At ebb it lies forgotten on the land And at full tide forgotten in the sea.

In the second sonnet quoted above, Myers is not merely referring to the Biblical account of the future life in heaven as consisting in endless worship—which, if taken literally instead of symbolically, would certainly mean a “drear eternity.” The suggestion is that there must be some equivalent to work, thought, activity, progress, and definite aims to make eternal life preferable to annihilation. (I am reminded here of a curious statement made by the great Adam Smith, “What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience!”) Myers ultimately came to the definite conclusion that the future life will be one of continued progress.

His name, Myers, is purely English, not Jewish. This gifted man was not only a fine poet, but also an important essayist and a remarkable classical scholar. He, Hodgson, and others formed the small band of able men who threw everything else aside and devoted their lives to Psychical Research. Myers’ best poems appeared in _The Renewal of Youth and other Poems_, 1882, and it was no doubt a loss to poetry that during the remaining eighteen years of his life he added little, if anything, more. However, he and Hodgson considered that the work to which they had devoted themselves was of the very highest importance. _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death_, the important work in which Myers embodied his conclusions, was left incomplete at his death, but Hodgson, with Miss Alice Johnson’s assistance, completed and edited it.

Myers was quite satisfied before his death, in 1901, that the evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research had already established in itself the fact of survival after death. But the interesting fact is that during the nineteen years since he “passed over to the other side” he has apparently been the principal agent in adding greatly to that evidence. There is every reason to believe that Myers has personally been communicating and arranging and directing much of the evidence that has since been given.

* * * * *

It is not the essayist’s duty to inform, to build pathways through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incidentally he may do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his duty, and should not be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily created to sing, although a whole choir of them may be baked in pies and brought to table; they were born to make music, although they may incidentally stay the pangs of vulgar hunger.... The essay should be pure literature as the poem is pure literature.

ALEXANDER SMITH (_On the Writing of Essays_).

* * * * *

Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous, To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death; But the flower of their souls he shall not take away to shame us, Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath; For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and we farewell.

SWINBURNE (_In Memory of Barry Cornwall_).

* * * * *

MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH

You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still; Your chilly stars I can forego, This warm kind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here, One great reality above: Back from that void I shrink in fear, And child-like hide myself in love: Show me what angels feel. Till then, I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains: My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear dead friend’s remembered tones.

Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away; All beauteous things for which we live By laws of time and space decay. But oh, the very reason why I clasp them, is because they die.

WILLIAM (JOHNSON) CORY (1823-1892).

Mimnermus was a fine Greek elegiac poet—about 630-600 B.C.

* * * * *

MORS ET VITA

We know not yet what life shall be, What shore beyond earth’s shore be set; What grief awaits us, or what glee, We know not yet.

Still, somewhere in sweet converse met, Old friends, we say, beyond death’s sea Shall meet and greet us, nor forget

Those days of yore, those years when we Were loved and true—but will death let Our eyes the longed-for vision see? We know not yet.

SAMUEL WADDINGTON.

The evidence collected by the Society for Psychical Research indicates that friends do certainly meet. See the remarkably convincing _Ear of Dionysius_, lately published, where Dr. Verrall and Professor Butcher are clearly having a great time together on the other side.

* * * * *

Art—which I may style the love of loving, rage Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things For truth’s sake, whole and sole,—nor any good, truth brings The knower, seer, feeler beside.

R. BROWNING (_Fifine at the Fair_).

* * * * *

De par le Roy dèfense à Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu.

(By order of the King, God is forbidden To work miracles in this place.)

ANON.

The teaching of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) led to an important evangelical movement in the Roman Catholic Church. When, however, the Jansenists became subjected to persecution, the usual result followed that numbers of them became fanatics. The more corrupt the French Court and Society became, the more frenzied became this fanaticism. In 1727 the Jansenist deacon, Pâris, a man of very holy life, was buried in the St. Médard churchyard, and shortly afterwards miracles were said to take place at his tomb. In consequence large crowds of _convulsionnaires_ assembled there and very shocking scenes were enacted, men and women in hysterical and epileptic fits and ecstatic delirium, eating the earth of the grave and inflicting frightful tortures on themselves and each other. When in 1732 the Court interposed and closed the churchyard some wit wrote the above couplet on the gate.

Mr. King in his _Classical and Foreign Quotations_ has “De faire _des miracles_,” but the above version seems correct (See _Larousse_.)

* * * * *

And Christians love in the turf to lie, Not in watery graves to be— Nay, the very fishes would _sooner_ die On the land than in the sea.

THOMAS HOOD.

* * * * *

There are two things that fill my soul with a holy reverence and an ever-growing wonder: the spectacle of the starry sky, that virtually annihilates us as physical beings; and the moral law which raises us to infinite dignity as intelligent agents.

* * * * *

The _ought_ expresses a kind of necessity, a kind of connection of actions with their grounds or reasons, such as is to be found nowhere else in the whole natural world. For of the natural world our understanding can know nothing except what is, what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that anything in it ought to be other than it actually was, is, or will be. In fact, so long as we are considering the course of nature, the _ought_ has no meaning whatever. We can as little inquire what ought to happen in nature as we can inquire what properties a circle ought to have.

IMMANUEL KANT.

The first quotation (from the _Kritik of Practical Reason_) appears to be the same passage that is often rendered in such words as these: “Two things fill my soul with awe—the starry heavens in the still night, and the sense of duty in man.”

* * * * *

The whole earth The beauty wore of promise—that which sets The budding rose above the rose full-blown.

W. WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude, Bk. XI_).

* * * * *

(——) is one of those men who go far to shake my faith in a future state of existence; I mean, on account of the difficulty of knowing where to place him. I could not bear to roast him; he is not so bad as that comes to: but then, on the other hand, to have to sit down with such a fellow in the very lowest pothouse of heaven is utterly inconsistent with the belief of that place being a place of happiness for me.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Table Talk_).

* * * * *

It isn’t raining rain to me, It’s raining daffodils. In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills. The clouds of grey engulf the day And overwhelm the town: It isn’t raining rain to me, It’s raining roses down.

ROBERT LOVEMAN.

* * * * *

Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those, who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high again.

N. HAWTHORNE (_Transformation_).

* * * * *

One summer evening sitting by my window I watched for the first star to appear, knowing the position of the brightest in the southern sky. The dusk came on, grew deeper, but the star did not shine. By and by, other stars less bright appeared, so that it could not be the sunset which obscured the expected one. Finally, I considered that I must have mistaken its position, when suddenly a puff of air blew through the branch of a pear tree which overhung the window, a leaf moved, and there was the star behind the leaf.

At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing at the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful star shines clearly; here a constellation is hidden by a branch; a universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organon is required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which may be removed and a real void; when to cease to look in one direction, and to work in another.... There are infinities to be known, but they are hidden by a leaf.

RICHARD JEFFERIES (_The Story of My Heart_).

* * * * *

Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snowdrift The warm rosebuds below.

R. W. EMERSON (_The World-Soul_).

Emerson is always an optimist.

* * * * *

Place thyself, oh, lovely fair! Where a thousand mirrors are; Though a thousand faces shine, ’Tis but one—and that is thine. Then the Painter’s skill allow, Who could frame so fair a brow. What are lustrous eyes of flame, What are cheeks, the rose that shame, What are glances wild and free, Speech, and shape, and voice—but He?

MOASI (_L. S. Costello’s translation_).

* * * * *

And here the Singer for his Art Not all in vain may plead ‘The song that nerves a nation’s heart Is in itself a deed.’

TENNYSON (_Charge of the Heavy Brigade_).

* * * * *

I knew a very wise man that believed that, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

FLETCHER of Saltoun (_Letter to Montrose and others_).

What would the wise man have said of “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary”?

* * * * *

FIRST LOVE