CHAPTER V.

IS MERE MATERIAL PROGRESS A REAL BENEFIT, OR A PROGRESS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

I have already stated that Eugene Godfrey was well introduced on his entrance at Cambridge. Scientific professors found pleasure in bringing forward the son of so eminent a patron of literature and science. But they were disappointed at finding little response in Eugene's mind to the boastful glory of scientific improvement. "Cui Bono?" was ever in his heart, and sometimes on his lips, when any new inventions were proposed to him.

"Supposing we should be able to light our streets and our houses with this wonderful combination of gases," he would say, "will the light within be the greater? Supposing we travel without horses at the speed of thirty miles an hour, can we travel nearer to truth? Improvement! Is it an improvement to multiply bodily wants, or (beyond supplying means of actual existence) is it rational to spend so much time in rendering the body comfortable? Is multiplying luxury a good?"

"It employs hands," would be the reply, "and thus diffuses wealth."

"If that is the only object, riches could be easily scattered without compelling those who own them to become effeminate triflers."

"But simply to give away wealth without exacting an equivalent, would encourage idleness," argued the professor.

"And so to benefit our neighbor's morals we yield our own," said Eugene. "Well, that is new philanthropy, and I am less inclined to assent to it than ever I was. To keep untrammelled, we must, methinks, reduce the number of our physical wants instead of increasing them. Surely there are other modes of benefiting mankind than those which enervate. The education of the hero is frugal, hardy, temperate almost to scantiness. Fancy Sesostris or Cyrus lolling at ease in a spring-patented carriage, propped up luxuriously with velvet cushions! or think of a hero dressed out in gewgaws! Our minds lose the heroic element altogether in the picture."

"A good loss," replied the professor! "methinks these warriors make a great show, but what good do they effect: They destroy the arts of peace and live on the excitement of vain glory. That excitement over, they are as weak as other mortals. Hercules playing the distaff at Queen Omphale's court is a fitting type of a so-called hero's rest."

"Not of all," replied Eugene; "conquerors have been lawgivers, and good ones too. The passion of glory may not be a good in itself, but it is better than sensuality. You would not compare Cyrus with Heliogabalus."

"Not for himself, perhaps, not for his own private dignity; but for the good he did in the world at large. I think the preference questionable. Even allowing that the cruelty of Heliogabalus destroyed whole multitudes, it had not the devastating effect on whole districts which war ever produces; conquest lays waste large fields, destroys produce, and brings famine and played in its wake."

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"I am not arguing in favor of war for its own sake, I am only saying that constant attention to mere bodily comfort must cause the race to degenerate. He who would rise individually in the scale of existence must repress bodily appetites, not encourage them; and this, if true of the individual, must be true of society also: consequently the introduction of luxury on a system, most eventually prove itself to be an evil.

"Pshaw!" said the professor, "these theories are well enough in the closet, but in action they are good for nothing. Why, you destroy incentive to mental activity, when you debar man from applying it to useful purposes."

"Useful, meaning increase of luxury?" asked Eugene.

"Well," somewhat petulantly rejoined the professor, "is not the definition of luxury a good? The rich may please themselves, but the poor need more comfort than they enjoy; among them diffusion of luxury must be a good."

"Does that diffusion take place among the poor, as a matter of fact-- at least among the masses? Is not the contrary rather the case? Are they not rather the ones to _suffer_ from the first fruits of improvement. Look at the Manchester riots for the good you do;--awhile ago there was in that town a contented population, sufficiently provided with food, clothing, shelter, fire, and other real necessaries; suddenly one of your clever men invents a machine which makes the rich people's dresses at half the cost, and throws one-third of the hands out of employ. What good have you done? There is in that community as much food as before, as much clothing, as much of every necessary of life! Yet two or three thousand families are suddenly deprived of the means of subsistence, and driven by despair to break the peace and disturb the public security, while you are boasting of the good of physical science. Methinks moral science wants studying too."

"Oh, these things will right themselves, will find their own level; other employment will soon absorb the now displaced hands, and all will be peace again."

"I doubt it: the selfish principle engenders the selfish practice. Teach the laboring class by example to cater only for their private gratification, whether that gratification be in vanity, self-aggrandizement, or luxury; teach them to place all their happiness in physical good, and then show yourself reckless of their requirements by an indiscreet introduction of machinery, and an English edition of the Reign of Terror may ensue."

"But what can be done? You would not stop these new inventions, nor set a limit to improvement?"

"I would seek a higher principle of action altogether; and before setting up new insentient machinery, would provide that the highest _sentient_ machinery, _Man_, should receive due consideration. It is a manifest injustice, when the interests of the producers of wealth are rashly sacrificed to increase the luxury of the consumers."

"And what is this new principle, most compassionate sir?'* asked the professor.

"I do not know, it is precisely that which troubles me. Men are not the mere money-machines you would turn them to--of that I am well assured; but what they are and what their destiny is, I have yet to learn."

The professor laughed, rose and took his leave.

Eugene remained plunged in a profound reverie, from which he was aroused by the visit of a stranger, who announced himself as the M. Bertolot introduced to our readers in a previous chapter.

He said that although personally a stranger, yet hearing of Eugene's residence at Cambridge, he had taken the liberty of calling to inquire after the welfare of his former friends.

Eugene welcomed him, and assured him that the countess was in good health and spirits.

"And her amiable daughter?" inquired the old man.

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"Is also well, I hope and believe," said Eugene; "but she leads so secluded a life, even in our large family, that it is difficult for those about her to speak with any degree of certainty concerning her."

"Indeed! She is probably scarcely recovered from the shock of her father's terrible death."

"Perhaps not; but I do not think _that_ is the sole cause of her seclusion: she is essentially contemplative, and the things of this world interest her but little. What her ideas are, I do not know, for she seldom speaks of them, but I think they would be worth the knowing."

"Probably so," replied M. Bertolot "She is a pure soul, beautiful and good; of whom we may almost affirm that she scarcely knows what sin is."'

Eugene looked at the speaker in surprise. "What sin is! What is sin!" thought he. "Is it aught beside the consequence of error? and how can we escape error if we cannot light on truth?" His puzzled look was perhaps his best reply.

"You do not credit me," said M. Bertolot; "you think, and justly, that all men are sinners; yes, indeed, all, all are so, I spoke but by comparison: it is rare to find so pure, so simple a soul as is that of Mademosielle de Meglior; though not sinless, as none can be, she is a consistent aspirant alter heavenly lore, ever keeping her heart fixed on the only true source of light and life: at least she was so when I knew her."'

"She is tranquil and contemplative," said Eugene, "and when she does speak, often startles us with the originality of her sentiments; but when you spoke of her as not knowing sin, it was the expression that astonished me. People in polite life do not often speak of themselves, or of their friends, as sinners."

"No!" said M. Bertolot; "excuse me then, the expression came as naturally to my lips as to my thoughts. I intended no offense."

"Nor did you give any: on the contrary, I should be glad to know from you the principle of Euphrasie's mode of action, if without violating confidence, you can tell me what it is. She is actuated by motives not comprehended by those with whom she lives."

"I can give you no other explanation than that I suppose her actuated by the purest principles of religion. As a child she gave promise of this: all her thoughts and ideas tended upward. Does she continue so?"

"I never heard her speak of religion," replied Eugene; "she sometimes speaks very sublimely, though very laconically, of truth being the one thing to be cared for."

"Ah!" said M. Bertolot, "is it thus she veils herself? But with her truth, and the worship of the author of truth, must go together. I know Euphrasie from childhood. I know how she struggled with her naturally vehement spirit, until, even as a child, she obtained the mastery. I remember, too, the explanations she sought for most earnestly, of why our evil tendencies remain to molest us when we become members of Christ. All that the child learned _once_ she pondered over, and oftentimes surprised her teachers with her comments."

"I doubt it not: her remarks are ever original. I have often felt quite anxious to know the basis of her actions."

"Nay, have you not said already, that it was the love of truth? Her every thought tends that way, and she early discovered how liable the practical recognition of metaphysical truth is to be impeded by human passion. Hence, from childhood upwards, she has been accustomed to watch over herself, and to check the indulgence of any emotion that would form a 'blind' between herself, and the object of her adoration. She is young yet, but I venture to say she will pass by the age of passion unscathed.*

"Do you mean that she will love?" asked Eugene.

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"Nay, that I cannot exactly affirm," replied M. Bertolot; "but I think she will never be governed by any passion--be it love, pride, fame, or ambition. I think she has laid the true foundation in obtaining the mastery over her feelings; and though she is naturally affectionate, I am not sure that she would be happy now, if bound by human ties. She has accustomed herself to live an abstracted life; she would scarcely be at home in domestic duties."

"Nay, I hope such is not the case!" exclaimed Eugene, more warmly than he intended, for his latent feelings toward Euphrasie ever and anon betrayed themselves; and while he scarcely confessed it to himself, interest in her style of thought colored the course of his own ideas.

M. Bertolot dexterously turned the conversation by reverting to a former subject. "It were well for mankind," said he, "did they consider how much passion and prejudice warp the mind, even in the consideration of abstract truths. Few, very few, keep their own intellects open for the reception of any such foreign ideas as would contravene their previous conceptions. Fewer still, give their neighbors credit for such power to look at facts impartially. This is an attestation that passion reigns rather than justice. Methinks the old system of Pythagoras, subjecting youth to moral training as a necessary preliminary for bringing the intellectual faculties into harmonious play, were not a bad precedent for this unruly age."

"It would scarcely go down now," urged Eugene.

"Indeed no!"' said M. Bertolot. "The master says it would seem but a ridiculous phrase in this all-disputing age. All faculties, whether of mind or body or soul, seem now confounded. Positiveness usurps the place of reason, and the mere child is allowed to question, instead of being compelled at once to obey. If the world goes on with this principle in action twenty years longer, we shall have little men and women in plenty, but no children left, and then woe to the generation that succeeds: a generation untrained and undisciplined by wholesome restraint, with intellects prematurely developed without the adjunct of self-government, which only moral training can impart. What a world it will make! Methinks its inevitable tendency is to undue animal preponderance. It is frightful to think of!"

"I was just making the same remark to Professor K----," said Eugene; "but though I see the evil, I cannot discern the remedy."

"It is indeed difficult to compass the remedy," said M. Bertolot, "the departure has been so wide. Men have ceased to distinguish between the result of mere human intelligence and that of a loftier lore, and they now use the intellect as the slave of the only good recognizable in their system, _i. e._ of bodily ease or pleasure. Practically men ignore the soul and its high destiny. Hence the disorder of the times. Animalism is essentially selfish, and animalism is the tendency of modern times--refined, veiled, adorned, with much of intellectual allurement I admit, but nevertheless animalism thorough and entire."

"I have thought of this before," said Eugene, "but my ideas are as yet vague and undefined. I want data to go upon some firm ground on which to plant my feet. The guesses of philosophers content me not."

"Nor should they, my young friend, since, as you say, they are but guesses, without a sure foundation. But have you heard of nothing beyond philosophy? Has it never occurred to you that the creative intelligence has revealed himself to the creature of his formation, and that through that revelation we are informed of that which it interests us to know--of our own soul, of the object of our creation, and of the final destiny of man?"

"I have heard of religion certainly," said Eugene, "but I cannot say I ever studied it or practised it."

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"No? Then no wonder you are dissatisfied. Your mind is evidently seeking for truth. Nothing but the great truth can satisfy it. Study dispassionately the evidences of the truth of the great Mosaic history. Contemplate the grand position of our first father, Adam, receiving instruction from God himself concerning the mighty mysteries of creation, not only of matter and of material forms, but of bright intelligences created to glorify and adorn the court of heaven, and who fell from their sublime position. Study man first, fresh in perfection from the hand of God, living as the _friend of God_, communing with his Maker in the garden of Eden. Appointed by him to rule o'er all inferior nature, the entitled Lord of the Creation, the master of animal existences, and superior in his own person to much of material influence. Think what it must have been to walk with God, and have divine knowledge infused into his soul, as also all such material science as would befit the founder of a mighty race to transmit to his offspring, over whom he was to reign as prince, father, priest, and teacher; and then consider what it must have been to find suddenly that source of knowledge dried up, the door of communication closed, power weakened, intuitions dimmed, and labor imposed as the price alike of happiness, knowledge, and of that supernatural communication which had been man's best and highest privilege: the solution of these problems will give you the key to many difficulties which perplex you."

"There are modern theories which agree not with these premises," said Eugene. "These trace man from the savage upward."

"Yes,' said M. Bertolot, "_the mutum et turpe pecus_ [Footnote 36] of Horace has found, if not admirers, yet professed believers in this age.

[Footnote 36: Dumb and filthy herd.]

A theory contrary to analogy, to evidence alike of history and tradition, has been assumed, and wondrously has found asserters too. All mere animals are observed to be born complete--their instincts, their organization serve but the individual; and though accident may train an individual to feats beyond his fellows, yet there is no appearance of new organs being formed to be transmitted to its race. Now, these modern progressionists, who go back to the time

'When wild in woods the Noble Savage ran,'

deprive man of his soul, assimilate him to the brutes to make him perform what brute nature never did perform, namely, _create_ faculty. Men have lives to laugh at the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but methinks the doctrine of the progression to bodily beauty from monkeys without tails; of barbarians to civilized man without aid, is to the full as absurd; to say nothing of that comprehensive power of contemplation which enabled Newton to demonstrate the order of the universe, it would be very difficult to understand how abstract ideas could be latent in the soul of a monkey waiting development. Besides, by the theory of progression, during the time of which we have record, say six thousand years, men should be steadily on the _improve_--both as to arts, science, moral government, legal government, _self_-government, and bodily development; but we do not find it so. The ruins of Babylon, of Thebes, and of other great cities built soon after the flood, attest architectural skill among the ancients such as is hardly aimed at no. Callisthenes found astronomical tables reaching as far back as within a few years of the deluge, in the Temple of Belus, when he accompanied Alexander the Great on his expedition to the East. And many arts have been lost altogether that were well known to the ancients. The half-barbarian Copt erecting his hut amid the fallen pillars and statuary of ancient Thebes, the Mameluke riding recklessly and savagely amid the pyramids, that still remain to puzzle the assertor of progression even with the mere mechanical difficulties of the machinery used for {179} raising such immense stones to such a height and in such a plain, so distant from any known quarries. These are hut poor indications of the race advancing, though individual nations, worked on by a regenerative influence, may appear to make, nay do make, great improvements in all respects."

"Do you, then, think that man's tendency is to degenerate?" asked Eugene.

"Not necessarily, by any means," replied M. Bertolot; "but in proportion as he departs from the centre of unity, from the truths once imprinted on the soul of Adam, thence to be transmitted for human guidance, it will, I think, be found so."

"But," said Eugene, "is Adam's religion yours? Surely he was not a Christian."

"If not in name and with the same outward rites, yet in reality he must have been," replied the mentor. "There is but one truth, and the difference between his creed and ours was that he looked for a Redeemer to come. We believe in him as having come."

"But was Adam's religion that of the Jews, then?" asked Eugene.

"In creed and in spirit, yes. In form and observance it differed, because the Jews had typical forms specially given to them, alike to commemorate their deliverance from Egypt, and to typify their delivery through Christ from sin. They were living amid idolatrous nations, and the safeguard of a special ceremonial was needful to them."

"And save in the fulfilment of their expectation, is the Jewish creed Christian?" asked Eugene.

"As far as it goes it is; the Christian revelation is a fuller development of the old tradition, a clearer exposition of God; it destroys nothing of the past revelation, it fulfils and expands. The Jews were the preservers of the great tradition, transmitted through the patriarchs to Noah, and by him, through his sons, to the race it large. The tradition became corrupted by the majority; yet it is found in some form or other mixed up in all mythologies; and what deserves remark is, that the further back we trace mythology the purer it becomes. The early records of all nations tell us of purity, discipline, and sacrifice to secure purity of morals, and teach of justice after death, of good and evil spirits, and of the interference of the deity to check man in his career of evil. Men seem at first not so much to have denied the true God, as to have associated other gods with him, and to have changed their worship from seeking such spiritual union as would render them 'sons of God,' to adoration of the creator and upholder of physical power, physical grandeur, and physical beauty. Atheism, and the lowering of man's nature to that of a mere mortal animal, is an invention of modern times, and has for the most part only been held by men satiated, as it were, by a spurious civilization."

"I am but little versed in the Bible," said Eugene, "but I have heard learned men assert that all the education, so to speak, of the Jewish nation was of a worldly character; and that though there are passages of Scripture containing allusions to the immortality of the soul, yet that doctrine was nowhere definitely asserted, but that, on the contrary, all the rewards and punishments promised, or threatened, were of a temporal nature."

"And yet no one disputes that the Jews did, and do believe the soul to be immortal, as also that they believed, and still believe, in the traditions concerning the fallen angels, the fall of man, the promised redemption, and many others. These doctrines, promulgated to all the world, were kept intact by Abraham and his descendants; and it is a very general belief that they were renewed in their purity in the soul of Moses, during that long communion vouchsafed him on Mount Sinai. The material law for exterior conduct he wrote down; but the spiritual themes which formed the staple of the expositions given by the rulers and doctors of the synagogue {180} and which were only figured by the material types, were probably deemed by the holy lawgiver too sacred to dilate upon in writing. If, after that forty days' sublimation, his spirit was so triumphant that he was fain to veil the glory of his face, we must needs suppose that not the mere written law, or setting forth the ritual of their worship, occupied his whole attention, but that his spirit expanded beneath the graces vouchsafed to him, and that he was, in a sense, made partaker of those spiritual truths which lie concealed from more materialized minds."

"These facts deserve attention, at any rate," said Eugene; "can you refer me to authorities within my reach?"

"Indeed, I know not what your resources are, and my own books I have lost. My memory, too, serves me but treacherously on controversial subjects; but I think if you will turn to Grotius de Verit. Christ, you will find him quoting Philo Judaeus in proof of the similarity of the Christian doctrine with the Jewish."

Eugene handed the book to his friend, who read the passage, of which the following is the translation:

"We have still to answer two accusations with which the doctrines and worship of Christians are attacked by the Jews. The first is, that they say we worship many gods. But this is nothing more than a declaration thrown in hatred at a foreign faith. For what more is asserted by the Christians, than by Philo Judaeus, who frequently represents three in God, and who calls the reason, or word of God, the name of God, the framer of the world, neither uncreate, as is the Father of all, nor so born as are men (whom both Philo and Moses, the son of Nehemanni, calls the angel, the deputy for ruling this world); or what more than the cabalists assert, who distinguished in God three lights, and indeed by somewhat the same names as the Christians do, namely, of the Father, of the Son or Word, and of the Holy Spirit. And I may also assume that which is confessed by all the Jews, that that spirit which moved the prophets, is not created, and yet is distinct from him who sent," etc., etc.

"But," said the old man, starting up and closing the book, "I am forgetting myself; I came not here to deliver a lecture on theology, but to inquire after my former friends. Excuse an old man's garrulity. Adieu!"

"Not yet," said Eugene; "your conversation interests me much; do not go yet."

"Yes, for to-night I leave you; if you permit me, however, I will return on another day. Meantime, I would suggest to you one important reflection. When Almighty God had created all things, and pronounced them good; when he had formed man from the slime of the Earth, and rendered him the most perfect of animals, man was not yet quite complete; and the completion, what was it? No angel had command to fulfil that wondrous office, nor was it by word that that mysterious power was called into being: but God breathed, and man became a living soul. The soul of man is, then, the in-breathing of the divinity --immortal in its essence, God-like in its affinities. Quench not its trembling impulses, when it bids you look upward in love and confidence; but pray--ever pray--fervently, confidently, perseveringly." This he added with a half-smile, which revealed to Eugene who had been his former monitor. He then abruptly quitted the room.