Part 11

The rest filed in, mere adjuncts, modest foils. Hooker and Lubbock and Huxley took their chairs On Henslow’s left. The beautiful gaitered legs, By their divine prerogative, on his right, So carelessly crossed, more eloquently than words Assured the world that everything was well, And their translation into forms of speech A mere formality. Next to the Bishop sat A Transatlantic visitor with a twang, One Doctor Draper, his hard wrinkled skin Tinged by the infinite coffee he absorbed, A gaunt bone-coloured desert, unassuaged. He was a grim diplomatist, as befits A pilgrim of the cosmos; ready at Rome To tickle the Romans; and, if bishops ruled, And found themselves at odds with freeborn souls Outside the Land of Freedom, he’d befriend Bishops, bring in the New World, stars and all, To rectify that balance, and take home For souvenir, with a chip of the pyramids, The last odd homages of the obsequious Old. The president called him for his opening speech. He stood and beamed, enjoying to the full The sense that, with his mighty manuscript, He could delay the antagonists for an hour. He cleared his throat. He took from a little box A small black lozenge, popped it into his mouth, Leisurely rolled it under a ruminant tongue, Then placidly drawled his most momentous words: _“Proh-fessur Henslow, Bishop Wilbur-force,_ _Members, AND friends, in this historic hall,_ _I assk first, AIR we a fortooitous_ _Con-course of atoms?”_ Half unconsciously, He struck at once to the single central heart Of all the questions asked by every age; As though he saw what only Shadow-of-a-Leaf Had watched last night, as in a crystal globe, That scene preparing, the interweaving clues Whose inconceivable intricacy at length, By “chance,” as blind men call it, through the maze Of life and time, at the one right juncture brought Two shadows, face to face, in an Oxford Street, Chambers and Huxley. “You’ll be there to-morrow.”— “No, I leave Oxford now.”— “The enemy means To annihilate Darwin. You will not desert us?”— “If you say that, I stay.” Each to his place Had moved in his own orbit, like a star, Or like an atom, free-will at one with law, In the unplanned plan of the Master-Dramatist, Where Doctor Draper blindly played his part And asked his pregnant question. He droned on, For one enormous hour, starkly maintained That Europe, in its intellectual life, By mere “fortooity,” never could have flowered To such results as blushed before him there In that historic hall of halls to-night. If Darwin thought so, he took leave to stand Beside them, and to smile the vast calm smile Of Arizona’s desert distances, Till all such dragon thoughts had coiled away. He took his chair. The great debate began. For prelude came a menacing growl of storm. A furious figure rose, like a sperm-whale, Out of the seething audience. A huge man, With small, hot, wicked eyes and cavernous mouth, Bellowed his own ferocious claim to speak On economic grounds. He had subscribed His guineas, ringing guineas of red gold, Ungrudgingly for years; but prophesied Withdrawal of all such guineas, on all sides, From this Association, if it failed To brand these most abominable views As blasphemous, bearing on their devilish brows, Between their horns, the birth-mark of the Beast. This last word hissed, he sank again. At once, Ere Henslow found his feet or spoke a word, Up leapt a raw-boned parson from the North, To seize his moment’s fame. With sawing arm The Reverend Dingle, like a windmill, vowed He’d prove upon the blackboard, in white chalk, By diagram—and the chalk was in his hand— “That mawnkey and mahn had separate pedigrees. Let A here be the mawnkey, and B the mahn.” Loud laughter; shouts of “mawnkey!” and “sit down” Extinguished him. He sat; and Henslow quelled The hubbub with one clarion-clear demand, Dictated, surely, by the ironic powers Who had primed the Bishop and prepared his fall: _“Gentlemen, this discussion now must rest_ _On scientific grounds.”_ At once there came Calls for the Bishop, who, rising from his chair, Urged by the same invisible ironies, Remarked that his old friend, Professor Beale, Had something to say _first_. That weighty first Conveyed the weight of his own words to come. Urged still by those invisible ones, his friend Dug the pit deeper; modestly declared, Despite his keen worn face and shoulders bowed In histologic vigils, that he felt His knowledge quite inadequate; and the way Was made straight—for the Bishop. The Bishop rose, mellifluous, bland, adroit.

A gesture, lacking only the lawn sleeves To make it perfect, delicately conveyed His comfortable thought—that what amazed The sheepfold must be folly. Half the throng, His own experience told him, had not grasped The world-inweaving argument, could not think In æons. Æons, then, would be dismissed As vague and airy fantasies. He might choose His facts at will, unchallenged. He stood there Secure that his traditions could not fail, Basing his faith on schemes of thought designed By authorised “thinkers” in pure artistry, As free from Nature’s law as coloured blocks That children play with on the nursery hearth, And puzzle about and shift and twist and turn Until the beautiful picture, as ordained, Comes out, exact to the pattern, and reveals The artificer’s plan, the pattern, as arranged, By bishops, politic statesmen, teachers, guides, Who hold it in reserve, their final test Of truth, for times like this. He had been so sure Of something deeper than all schemes of thought That he had all too lightly primed himself With “facts” to match their fables; hastily crammed Into his mind’s convenient travelling bag (Sound leather, British) all that he required,— Not truth, but “a good argument.” He had asked Owen, who hated Huxley, to provide it; And he had brought it with him,—not the truth, Not even facts, those unrelated crumbs Of truth, the abiding consecrated whole. He had brought his borrowed “facts,” misunderstood, To meet, for the first time in all his life, Stark earnest thought, wrestling for truth alone, As men on earth discerned it. He had prayed, With something deeper than blind make-believe, _Thy will be done on earth_; and yet, and yet, The law wherein that will might be discerned, The law wherein that unity of heaven And earth might yet be found (could he but trust The truth, could he believe that his own God Lived in the living truth), he waved aside. These others had not found it, but they kept One faith that he had lost. Though it should slay them, They trusted in the truth. They could not see Where it might lead them. Only at times they felt As they deciphered the dark Book of Earth That, following its majestic rhythm of law, They followed the true path, the eternal way Of That which reigns. Prophetic flashes came. Words that the priest mechanically intoned Burned upon Huxley’s keen ironical page Like sudden sapphires, drawing their deeper light From that celestial City which endures Because it hath foundations: _Shall I come_ _Before the Eternal with burnt offerings?_ _Hath not the Eternal showed thee what is good,_ _That thou do justly and mercifully, and walk_ _Humbly with the Eternal?_

O, irony of the Master-dramatist, Who set once more those lists; and sent His truth Unrecognised, as of old, to fight for life And prove itself in struggle and raise once more A nobler world above the world out-worn, Crushing all easy sophistry, though it stood Garbed as the priest of God. The Bishop seized His diplomatic vantage. The blunt truth Of Huxley’s warning offered itself to him As a rash gambit in their game of—tact. He seized it; gracefully smoothed the ruffled pride Of that great audience, trained in a sound school To judge by common-sense. His mobile face Revealed much that his politic words concealed. His strength was in that sound old British way— Derision of all things that transcend its codes In life, thought, art; the moon-calf’s happy creed That, if a moon-calf only sees the moon In thoughts that range the cosmos, his broad grin Sums the whole question; there’s no more to see. In all these aids, an innocent infidel, The Bishop put his trust; and, more than all, In vanity, the vacant self-conceit That, when it meets the masters of the mind And finds them bowed before the Inscrutable Power, Accepts their reverence and humility As tribute, due acknowledgment of fool’s right To give the final judgment, and annul The labour of a life-time in an hour. Dulcetly, first, he scoffed at Darwin’s facts. “Rock-pigeons now were what they had always been. Species had never changed. What were the proofs Even of the variation they required To make this theory possible? We had heard Mysterious rumours of a long-legged sheep Somewhere in Yorkshire (laughter). Let me ask Professor Huxley, here upon the left (All eyes on Huxley), who believes himself Descended from an ape (chuckles of glee), How recently this happened.” The Bishop turned, All smiling insolence, “May I beg to know If this descent is on your father’s side, Or on your mother’s?” He paused, to let the crowd Bellow its laughter. The unseen ironies Had trapped him and his flock; and neither knew. But Huxley knew. He turned, with a grim smile, And while the opposing triumph rocked and pealed, Struck one decisive palm upon his knee, And muttered low—“_The Lord hath delivered him_ _Into my hands._” His neighbour stared and thought His wits were wandering. Yet that undertone Sounded more deadly, had more victory in it, Than all the loud-mouthed minute’s dying roar.

It died to a tense hush. The Bishop closed In solemn diapason. Darwin’s views Degraded woman. They debased mankind, And contradicted God’s most Holy Word. Applause! Applause! The hall a quivering mist Of clapping hands. From every windowseat A flutter of ladies’ handkerchiefs and shrill cries As of white swarming sea-gulls. The black rows Of clerics all exchanging red-faced nods, And drumming with their feet, as though to fill A hundred-pedalled organ with fresh wind. The Bishop, like a _Gloire de Dijon_ rose With many-petalled smiles, his plump right hand Clasped in a firm congratulatory grip Of hickory-bones by Draper of New York; Who had small faith in what the Bishop said But heard the cheers, and gripped him as a man Who never means to let this good thing go. Motionless, on the left, the observant few, The silent delegates of a sterner power, With grave set faces, quietly looking on. At last the tumult, as all tumult must, Sank back to that deep silence. Henslow turned To Huxley without speaking. Once again The clock ticked audibly, but its old “Not Yet” Had somehow, in that uproar, in the face Of that tumultuous mockery, changed to _Now!_

The lean tall figure of Huxley quietly rose. He looked for a moment thoughtfully at the crowd; Saw rows of hostile faces; caught the grin Of ignorant curiosity; here and there, A hopeful gleam of friendship; and, far back, The young, swift-footed, waiting for the fire. He fixed his eyes on these—then, in low tones, Clear, cool, incisive, “_I have come here_,” he said, “_In the cause of Science only_.” He paused again. Then, striking the mockery out of the mocker’s face, His voice rang out like steel— “I have heard nothing To prejudice the case of my august Client, who, as I told you, is not here.” At once a threefold picture flashed upon me, A glimpse, far off, through eyes of Shadow-of-a-Leaf, First, of a human seeker, there at Down, Gathering his endless cloud of witnesses From rocks, from stones, from trees; and from the signs In man’s own body of life’s æonian way; But, far above him, clothed with purer light, The stern, majestic Spirit of living Truth; And, more august than even his prophets knew, Through that eternal Spirit, the primal Power Returning into a world of faiths out-worn.

Once more, as he spoke on, a thousand years Were but as yesterday. If these truths were true, This theory flooded the whole world with light. Could we believe that the Creator set In mockery all these birth-signs in the world, Or once in a million years had wrecked His work And shaped, in a flash, a myriad lives anew, Bearing in their own bodies all the signs Of their descent from those that He destroyed? Who left that ancient leaf within the flower? Who hid within the reptile those lost fins, And under the skin of the sea-floundering whale The bones of the lost thigh? Who dusked the foal With shadowy stripes, and under its hoof concealed Those ancient birdlike feet of its lost kin? Who matched that hoof with a rosy fingernail, Or furled that point within the human ear? Who had imprinted in the body of man, And in his embryo, all those intricate signs Of his forgotten lineage, even those gills Through which he drew his breath once in the sea?

The speaker glanced at his antagonist. “You think all this too marvellous to be true; Yet you believe in miracles. You think The unfolding of this complicated life Around us, out of a simple primal form, Impossible; yet you know that every man Before his birth, a few brief years ago, Was once no more than a single living cell. You think it ends your theory of creation. You say that God made _you_; and yet you know —And reconcile your creed with what you know— That you yourself originally”—he held up A gleaming pencil-case—“were a little piece Of matter, not so large as the end of this. But if you ask, in fine, Whether I’d be ashamed to claim descent From that poor animal with the stooping gait And low intelligence, who can only grin And chatter as we pass by, or from a _man_ Who could use high position and great gifts To crush one humble seeker after truth— I hesitate, but”—an outburst of applause From all who understood him drowned the words. He paused. The clock ticked audibly again. Then, quietly measuring every word, he drove The sentence home. “I asserted and repeat A man would have no cause to feel ashamed Of being descended through vast tracts of time From that poor ape. Were there an ancestor Whom I could not recall without a sense Of shame, it were a _man_, so placed, so gifted, Who sought to sway his hearers from the truth By aimless eloquence and by skilled appeals To their religious prejudice.” Was it the truth That conquered, or the blind sense of the blow Justly considered, delivered, and driven home, That brought a crash of applause from half the house? And more (for even the outright enemy Joined in that hubbub), though indignant cries, Protested vainly, “Abominable to treat The Bishop so!” The Bishop sat there dumb. Eliza Pym, adding her own quaint touch Of comedy, saw that pencil shine again In Huxley’s hand; compared it, at a glance Of fawn-like eyes, with the portentous form In gaiters; felt the whole world growing strange; Drew one hysterical breath, and swooned away.

V

THE _VERA CAUSA_

And yet, and yet, the victor knew too well His victory had a relish of the dust. Even while the plaudits echoed in his ears, It troubled him. When he pondered it that night, A finer shame had touched him. He had used The weapons of his enemy at the last; And, if he had struck his enemy down for truth, He had struck him down with weapons he despised. He had used them with a swifter hand and eye, A subtler cunning; and he had set his heel On those who took too simply to their hearts A tale, whose ancient imagery enshrined A mystery that endured. He had proclaimed A fragment of a truth which, he knew well, Left the true Cause in darkness. Did he know More of that Cause than _Genesis_? Could he see Farther into that darkness than the child Folding its hands in prayer? More clearly far Than Darwin, whom he had warned of it, he knew The bounds of this new law; bade him beware Of his repeated dogma—_Nature makes_ _No leap._ He pointed always to the Abyss Of darkness round the flickering spark of light Upheld by Science. Had Wilberforce been armed With knowledge and the spiritual steel Of Saint Augustine, who had also seen, Even in his age, a ladder of life to heaven, There had been a victory of another kind To lighten through the world. And Darwin knew it; But, while he marshalled his unnumbered truths, He lost the Truth; as one who takes command Of multitudinous armies in the night, And strives to envisage, in one sweep of the mind, Each squadron and each regiment of the whole, Ever the host that swept through his mind’s eye, Though all in ordered ranks and files, obscured Army on army the infinite truth beyond. The gates of Beauty closed against his mind, And barred him out from that eternal realm, Whose lucid harmonies on our night bestow Glimpses of absolute knowledge from above; Unravelling and ennobling, making clear Much that had baffled us, much that else was dark; So that the laws of Nature shine like roads, Firm roads that lead through a significant world Not downward, from the greater to the less, But up to the consummate soul of all. He could not follow them now. Back, back and back, He groped along the dark diminishing road. The ecstasy of music died away. The poet’s vision melted into a dream. He knew his loss, and mourned it; but it marred Not only his own happiness, as he thought. It blurred his vision, even of his own truths.

He looked long at the butterfly’s radiant wings, Pondered their blaze of colour, and believed That butterfly wooers choosing their bright mates Through centuries of attraction and desire Evolved this loveliness. For he only saw The blaze of colour, the flash that lured the eye. He did not see the exquisite pattern there, The diamonded fans of the under-wing, Inlaid with intricate harmonies of design; The delicate little octagons of pearl, The moons like infinitesimal fairy flowers, The lozenges of gold, and grey, and blue All ordered in an intellectual scheme, Where form to form responded and faint lights Echoed faint lights, and shadowy fringes ran Like Elfin curtains on a silvery thread, Shadow replying to shadow through the whole.

Did eyes of the butterfly wooer mark all this,— A subtlety too fine for half mankind? He tossed a shred of paper on to his lawn; He saw the white wings blindly fluttering round it. He did not hear the whisper of Shadow-of-a-Leaf, _Was this their exquisite artistry of choice?_ _Had wooers like these evolved this loveliness?_

He groped into the orchestral universe As one who strives to trace a symphony Back to its cause, and with laborious care Feels with his hand the wood of the violins, And bids you mark—O good, bleak, honest soul, So fearful of false hopes!—that all is hollow. He tells you on what tree the wood was grown. He plucks the catgut, tells you whence it came, Gives you the name and pedigree of the cat; Nay, even affirms a mystery, and will talk Of sundry dark vibrations that affect The fleshly instrument of the human ear; And so, with a world-excluding accuracy— O, never doubt that every step was true!— Melts the great music into less than air And misses everything. Everything! On one side The music soaring endlessly through heavens Within the human soul; on the other side, The unseen Composed of whose transcendent life The music speaks in souls made still to hear. He clung to his _vera causa_. In that law He saw the way of the Power, but not the Power Determining the way. Did men reject The laws of Newton, binding all the worlds, Because they still knew nothing of the Power That bound them? The stone fell. He knew not why. The sun controlled the planets, and the law Was constant; but the mystery of it was masked Under a name; and no man knew the Power That gripped the worlds in that unchanging bond, Or whether, in the twinkling of an eye, The Power might not release them from that bond, As a hand opens, and the wide universe Change in a flash, and vanish like a shadow, As prophets had foretold. He could not think That chance decreed the boundless march of law He saw in the starry heavens. Yet he could think Of “chance” on earth; and, while he thought, declare “Chance” was not “chance” but law unrecognised; Then, even while he said it, he would use The ambiguous word, base his own law on “chance”; And, even while he used it, there would move Before his eyes in every flake of colour, Inlaid upon the butterfly’s patterned wing, Legions of atoms wheeling each to its place In ever constant law; and he knew well That, even in the living eye that saw them, The self-same Power that bound the starry worlds Controlled a myriad atoms, every one An ordered system; and in every cloud Of wind-blown dust and every breaking wave Upon the storm-tossed sea, an infinite host Of infinitesimal systems moved by law Each to its place; and, in each growing flower, Myriads of atoms like concentred suns And planets, these to the leaf and those to the crown, Moved in unerring order, and by a law That bound all heights and depths of the universe, In an unbroken unity. By what Power? There was one Power, one only known to man, That could determine action. Herschel knew it; The power whereby the mind uplifts the hand And lets it fall, the living personal Will.