Part 22

"Superstition and infidelity usually go together. Professed atheists have trafficked in augury, and men who do not believe in God will believe in ghosts." To-day I take up my parable concerning superstition, to which, time out of mind, the human spirit has betaken itself as soon as it parted company with faith.

I once asked a lady who, in her earlier life, had lived in the very heart of society, and who returned to it after a long absence, what was the change which struck her most forcibly. She promptly replied, "The growth of superstition. I hear people seriously discussing ghosts. In my day people who talked in that way would have been put in Bedlam; their relations would have required no other proof that they were mad."

My own experience entirely confirms this testimony as to the development of superstition, and I have had some peculiarly favourable opportunities of observing its moral effect upon its votaries. The only superstition tolerated in my youth was table-turning, and that was always treated as more than half a joke. To sit in a darkened room round a tea-table, secretly join hands under the mahogany, and "communicate a revolving motion" to it (as Mr. Pickwick to his fists) was not bad fun when the company was mainly young and larky, but contained one or two serious people who desired to probe the mystery to its depths. Or, perhaps, our psychic force would cause the respectable piece of furniture to rear itself upon one leg, and deal out with a ponderous foot mysterious raps, which the serious people interpreted with their own admirable solemnity. I well remember a massive gentleman with an appalling stammer who proclaimed that some lost document which we had asked the table to discover would be found in the Vatican Library, "wrapped in a ragged palimpsest of Tertullian;" and the quaintness of the utterance dissolved the tables, or at least the table-turners, in laughter. This particular form of superstition became discredited among respectable people when sharpers got hold of it and used it as an engine for robbing the weak-minded. It died, poor thing, of exposure, and its epitaph was written by Browning in "Mr. Sludge, the Medium."

It was the same with ghost-stories. People told them--partly to fill gaps when reasonable conversation failed, and partly for the fun of making credulous hearers stare and gasp. But no one, except ladies as weak-minded as Byng's Half-Aunt in "Happy Thoughts," ever thought of taking them seriously. Bishop Wilberforce invented a splendid story about a priest and a sliding panel and a concealed confession; and I believe that he habitually used it as a foolometer, to test the mental capacity of new acquaintances. But the Bishop belonged to that older generation which despised superstition, and during the last few years, twaddle of this kind has risen to the dignity of a pseudo-science.

Necromancy is a favourite substitute for religion. It supplies the element of mystery without which the human spirit cannot long subsist; and, as it does not require its adherents to practise self-denial, or get up early on Sunday, or subscribe to charities, or spend their leisure in evil-smelling slums, it is a cult particularly well adapted to a self-indulgent age. I vividly remember a scene which occurred just before the Coronation. A luxurious luncheon had been prolonged by the aid of coffee, kümmel, and cigarettes till four o'clock; and the necromancers--surfeited, flushed, and a little maudlin--were lolling round the drawing-room fire. A whispered colloquy in a corner was heard through the surrounding chatter, and the hostess saw her opportunity. "Dear Lady De Spook, do let us hear. I know you are such a wonderful medium."

_Lady De Spook._ Really, it was nothing at all out of the common. I had come home dead tired from the opera, and just as I was going to bed I heard that rap--you know what I mean?

_Mr. Sludge_ (enthusiastically). Oh yes, indeed I do! No one who has ever heard it can ever forget it.

_Lady De Spook_ (resuming). Well, and do you know it turned out to be poor dear Lord De Spook. It was wonderful how energetically he rapped, for you know he was quite paralysed years before he died; and the curious thing was that I couldn't make out what he said. It seemed to be, "Don't buy. Sarah. Search." I was too tired to go on talking to him, so I went to bed; but next day, do you know, my maid found the coronet which his first wife, whose name was Sarah, had worn at the last Coronation. I was just going to order a new one. Wasn't it a wonderful interposition!--Such a saving!

_Chorus_ (sentimentally). Ah, wonderful indeed! Our dear ones are never really lost to us.

Closely connected with necromancy is clairvoyance. A man whom I knew well was taken suddenly and seriously ill, and his relations, who were enthusiastic spookists, telegraphed for the celebrated clairvoyante Mrs. Endor. She duly arrived, threw herself into a trance, declared that the patient would die, came to, and declared that there was nothing much the matter, and that he would be about again in two or three days. Then, having pocketed her cheque, she returned to London. The patient grew rapidly worse, and died; and his relations, though I am sure they sincerely mourned him, were much sustained in the hour of bereavement by the thought that the opinion which Mrs. Endor had given in her trance had proved to be the right one, and that spiritual science was justified by the result.

But, after all, necromancy and clairvoyance are a little old-fashioned. Crystal-gazing is more modish. 'Tis as easy as lying. You gather open-mouthed round a glass ball, and the gifted gazer reports that which he or she can see, but which is invisible to grosser eyes. There are no bounds to the fascinating range of a crystal-gazer's fancy, nor to the awestruck credulity with which his revelations are received.

But crystal is not the only medium through which a purged eye can discern the mysterious future. Coffee-grounds, though less romantic, are very serviceable. Our hostess is an expert in this form of science, and, being a thoroughly amiable woman, she makes the coffee say pretty much what we should like to hear. "Dear Mr. Taper, this is delightful. You will be Prime Minister before you die. It is true that your party will not be in office again just yet; but 'hope on, hope ever,' and trust your star."

"Oh! Mr. Garbage, I have such good news for you. Your next book will be an immense success, and, after that, Messrs. Skin & Flint will be more liberal, and, what with the American copyright and the acting rights, you will make quite a fortune."

Closely akin to the science of coffee-grounds is that of palmistry. A wretched gipsy who "tells fortunes" at a race-meeting is sent to prison; but, when St. Berengaria's gets up a bazaar for its new vestry, a bejewelled lady sits in a secret chamber (for admission to which an extra half-crown is charged), and, after scrutinizing your line of life, tells you that you have had the influenza; and, projecting her soul into futurity, predicts that the next time you have it you will get pneumonia unless you are very careful.

Of course, these minor superstitions are mainly ridiculous, and to get up moral indignation over them would be a waste of force. But one cannot speak so lightly of the degrading cults which are grouped together under the name of Spiritualism. I have known a "Spiritual Wife" who was highly commended in spookish circles because she left her husband, family, and home in one continent and crossed the world to find her "affinity" in another. I have known a most promising boy whose health was destroyed and his career ruined by a hypnotic experiment performed on him without his parents' knowledge. I have known a mesmeric clergyman who cozened the women of his congregation out of money, character, and in some cases reason. Where occultism is pursued, all veracity and self-respect disappear; pruriency finds a congenial lodgment, and the issue is--well--what we sometimes see exhibited in all its uncomeliness at the Central Criminal Court.

The wisest lawgiver who ever lived said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And a great judge acted on the rule. But that was a long time ago. We have improved upon the jurisprudence of Moses and the methods of Sir Matthew Hale. Stoning and hanging are a little out of date, but boycotting is a remedy still within our reach. Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and will give occultists, male and female, an uncommonly wide berth.

LIII

THE REMNANT

Some recent observations of mine on the deterioration of society have drawn this interesting response from an eminent clergyman in the north of London:--

"Is it possible that in 'Society' itself there is a point of resistance which may be touched by an effective appeal coming from the wholesomer elements in English life? Belonging as I do to that section of English life which is a stranger to Society in the technical sense, I am deeply impressed with the taint which comes to all circles of society from the contamination of the circle at the top. To elicit a strong opinion and a resolute determination from what I may call the Puritan side of English life, may be perhaps the first step towards the correction of the evil which Mr. Russell describes. Are there not in Society itself some men and women who retain the high ideals and the strenuous purposes of their ancestry? Can they be induced to raise their protest, to assert their principles, and open the way to a better--because a purer--future? I venture to make this appeal because it is my fixed conviction that even in the worst and most degraded society there are men who sigh for better things, just as in the worst and most degraded men there remains a desire, however overlaid, for regeneration."

Well, frankly I think that an amiable insanity deludes my reverend friend if he expects a moral reformation in the sort of society which I have been describing. It would tax the combined energies of St. John the Baptist, Savonarola, the two Wesleys, and George Whitefield, all rolled into one, to convince the people whom I have in my mind of their ethical shortcomings. They have made their own beds, in every sense of that expressive phrase, and must lie on them till the cataclysm comes which will bring us all to our senses.

But I am reminded that I promised to write not exclusively about deteriorations in society, but about changes of all kinds. That there has been some change for the better I readily admit, as well as an enormous number of changes for the worse. "All things are double," says the Son of Sirach, "one against the other," and in this closing chapter I will try to balance our gains and our losses.

That there has always been a mixture of good and bad in society is only another way of saying that society is part of mankind; but, if I am right in my survey, the bad just now is flagrant and ostentatious to a degree which we have not known in England since 1837. There was once a moralist who spoke of the narrow path which lay between right and wrong, and similarly there used to be a Debatable Land which lay between the good and evil districts of society. It was inhabited by the people who, having no ethical convictions of their own, go very much as they are led. It was written of them long ago that--

"They eat, they drink, they sleep, they plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy."

As long as Mrs. Grundy was a real, though comical, guardian of social propriety--as long as the highest influences in the social system tended towards virtue and decorum--the inhabitants of the Debatable Land were even painfully respectable. But now that the "trend" (as Pennialinus calls it) is all the other way, and Mrs. Grundy has been deposed as a bore and an anachronism, they willingly follow the "smart" multitude to do evil; and so the area covered by social wickedness is much larger than in former times. In other words, the evil of society is both worse in quality and larger in quantity than it was fifty--or even twenty--years ago.

Now if this be true--and I hold it to be unquestionable--what have we to set against it? I reply, the greatly increased activity of those who are really good. In old days the good were good in a quiescent and lethargic way. They were punctual in religious observances, public and private; exemplary in the home and the family, and generous to the poor. But their religion could scarcely be called active, except in so far as pottering about among the cottages, or teaching a class of well-washed children in the Sunday School, can be reckoned as active employments; and even such activities as these were as a rule confined to women.

Sir Walter Scott believed that "there were few young men, and those very sturdy moralists, who would not rather be taxed with some moral peccadillo than with want of horsemanship." And, in days much more recent than the beloved Sir Walter's, men, if they were religious, studiously kept their light under a bushel, and took the utmost pains to avoid being detected in acts of charity or devotion.

Nowadays all this is changed, and changed, in my opinion, much for the better. Religious people are ready to let the world know what they believe, and are active in the pursuit of the things which are pure and lovely and of good report. Well-dressed young men combine dancing with slumming. Untidiness and dulness are no longer the necessary concomitants of virtue. Officers of the Guards sing in the choir and serve the altar. Men whose names are written in the book of the peerage as well as the Book of Life conduct Bible-classes and hand round the hymn-books at mission-services. The group of young M.P.'s who were nicknamed "Hughligans" showed the astonished House of Commons that Religion is as practical a thing as Politics, and (as one of them lately said) they cheerfully encountered that hot water which is the modern substitute for boiling oil. The Universities send their best athletes and social favourites to curacies in the slums or martyrdom in the mission-field. The example set by Mr. James Adderley, when he left Christ Church and founded the Oxford House at Bethnal Green, has been followed in every direction. Both the Universities, and most of the colleges, run "Settlements," where laymen, in the intervals of professional work and social enjoyment, spread religion, culture, and physical education amid the "dim, common populations" of Camberwell and Stratford and Poplar.

The Public Schools, formerly denounced as "the seats and nurseries of vice," make their full contribution to active religion. Eton and Winchester and Harrow have their Missions in crowded quarters of great towns. At one school, the boys have a guild of devotion; at another, a voluntary Bible-class with which no master inter-meddles. And so the young citizens of the privileged order gain their first lessons in religious and social service, and carry the idea with them to the Army or the Bar or the Stock Exchange or the House of Commons. All this is, in my eyes, a social change which is also a clear and enormous gain.

But, if what I say is true of men, it is even more conspicuously true of women. They are no longer content with the moderate church-going at comfortable hours, and the periodical visits to particularly clean cottages, which at one time were the sum-total of their activities. Every well-organized parish has its staff of woman-workers, who combine method with enthusiasm and piety with common sense. Belgravia and Mayfair send armies of district-visitors to Hoxton and Poplar. Girls from fashionable homes, pretty and well dressed, sacrifice their evenings to clubs and social gatherings for factory-hands and maids-of-all-work. Beneath the glittering surface of social life, there is a deep current of wise and devoted effort for those unhappy beings who are least able to help themselves. And all this philanthropic energy is distinctively and avowedly Christian. It is the work of men and women, young and old, widely differentiated from one another in outward circumstances of wealth and accomplishments and social influence, but all agreed about "the one thing needful," and all keen to confess their faith before a hostile world.

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? Society, during the years in which I have known it, has changed enormously, alike in its exterior characteristics and, as far as I can judge, in its inner spirit. While some of the changes have been simply innocuous, and a few even beneficial, the great majority have been gross and palpable deteriorations. An onlooker who knew society well thus described its present condition: "We are living in an age of decadence, and we pretend not to know it. There is not a feature wanting, though we cannot mention the worst of them. We are Romans of the worst period, given up to luxury and effeminacy, and caring for nothing but money. We care no more for beauty in art, but only for a brutal realism. Sport has lost its manliness, and is a matter of pigeons from a trap, or a mountain of crushed pheasants to sell to your own tradesmen. Religion is coming down to jugglers and table-turnings and philanderings with cults brought, like the rites of Isis, from the East; and as for patriotism, it is turned on like beer at election times, or worked like a mechanical doll by wire-pullers. We belong to one of the most corrupt generations of the human race. To find its equal one must go back to the worst times of the Roman Empire, and look devilish close then. But it's uncommonly amusing to live in an age of decadence; you see the funniest sights and you get every conceivable luxury, and you die before the irruption of the barbarians."

This is, I believe, a true indictment against the age in which our lot is cast, although the utterance has just that touch of exaggeration which secures a hearing for unpalatable truth. But the man who wrote it left out of account that redeeming element in our national life which I have discussed in this closing chapter. After all, there is a world-wide difference between the "Majority" and the "Remnant,"--and the ten righteous men may yet save the guilty city.

POSTSCRIPT

_The bulk of this book appeared in the "Manchester Guardian," and my thanks are due to Mr. C. P. Scott for permission to reproduce it. The last twelve chapters were originally published under the title, "For Better? For Worse?" and they reappear by the kind consent of Mr. Fisher Unwin._

_G. W. E. R._

_Twelfth Night, 1907._

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

--Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's Seeing and Hearing, by George W. E. Russell