Phaethon: Loose Thoughts For Loose Thinkers Part 7

P. "n.o.ble would the news be, Socrates, were it true; yet it seems to me beyond belief."

S. "Did we not prove just now concerning Zeus, that all mistakes concerning him were certain to be mistakes of defect?"

P. "We did, indeed."

S. "How do you know, then, that you have not fallen into some such error, and have suspected Zeus to be less condescending towards you than he really is?"

P. "Would that it were so! But I fear it is too fair a hope."

S. "Do I seem to thee now, dear boy, more insolent and unfeeling than Protagoras, when he tried to turn thee away from the search after absolute truth, by saying sophistically that it was an attempt of the t.i.tans to scale heaven, and bade thee be content with a.s.serting shamelessly and brutishly thine own subjective opinions?

For I do not bid thee scale the throne of Zeus, into whose presence none could arrive, as it seems to me, unless he himself willed it; but to believe that he has given thee from thy childhood a glimpse of his own excellence, that so thy heart, conjecturing, as in the case of a veiled statue, from one part the beauty of the rest, might become enamoured thereof, and long for that sight of him which is the highest and only good, that so his splendour may give thee light to see facts as they are."

P. "Oh Socrates! and how is this blessedness to be attained?"

S. "Even as the myths relate, the nymphs obtained the embraces of the G.o.ds; by pleasing him and obeying him in all things, lifting up daily pure hands and a thankful heart, if by any means he may condescend to purge thine eyes, that thou mayest see clearly, and without those motes, and specks, and distortions of thine own organs of vision, which flit before the eyeb.a.l.l.s of those who have been drunk over-night, and which are called by sophists subjective truth; watching everywhere anxiously and reverently for those glimpses of his beauty, which he will vouchsafe to thee more and more as thou provest thyself worthy of them, and will reward thy love by making thee more and more partaker of his own spirit of truth; whereby, seeing facts as they are, thou wilt see him who has made them according to his own ideas, that they may be a mirror of his unspeakable splendour. Is not this a fairer hope for thee, oh Phaethon, than that which Protagoras held out to thee-that neither seeing Zeus, nor seeing facts as they are, nor affirming any truth whatsoever, nor depending for thy knowledge on any one but thine own ignorant self, thou mightest nevertheless be so fortunate as to escape punishment: not knowing, as it seems to me, that such a state of ignorance and blindfold rashness, even if Tartarus were a dream of the poets or the priests, is in itself the most fearful of punishments?"

P. "It is, indeed, my dear Socrates. Yet what are we to say of those who, sincerely loving and longing after knowledge, yet arrive at false conclusions, which are proved to be false by contradicting each other?"

S. "We are to say, Phaethon, that they have not loved knowledge enough to desire utterly to see facts as they are, but only to see them as they would wish them to be; and loving themselves rather than Zeus, have wished to remodel in some things or other his universe, according to their own subjective opinions. By this, or by some other act of self-will, or self-conceit, or self-dependence, they have compelled Zeus, not, as I think, without pity and kindness to them, to withdraw from them in some degree the sight of his own beauty. We must, therefore, I fear, liken them to Acharis, the painter of Lemnos, who, intending to represent Phoebus, painted from a mirror a copy of his own defects and deformities; or perhaps to that Nymph, who finding herself beloved by Phoebus, instead of reverently and silently returning the affection, boasted of it to all her neighbours, as a token of her own beauty, and despised the G.o.d; so that he, being angry, changed her into a chattering magpie; or again to Arachne, who having been taught the art of weaving by Athene, pretended to compete with her own instructress, and being metamorphosed by her into a spider, was condemned, like the sophists, to spin out of her own entrails endless ugly webs, which are destroyed, as soon as finished, by every slave-girl's broom."

P. "But shall we despise and hate such, Oh Socrates?"

S. "No, dearest boy, we will rather pity and instruct them lovingly; remembering always that we shall become such as they the moment we begin to fancy that truth is our own possession, and not the very beauty of Zeus himself, which he shows to those whom he will, and in such measure as he finds them worthy to behold. But to me, considering how great must be the condescension of Zeus in unveiling to any man, even the worthiest, the least portion of his own loveliness, there has come at times a sort of dream, that the divine splendour will at last pierce through and illumine all dark souls, even in the house of Hades, showing them, as by a great sunrise, both what they themselves, and what all other things are, really and in the sight of Zeus; which if it happened, even to Ixion, I believe that his wheel would stop, and his fetters drop off of themselves, and that he would return freely to the upper air, for as long as he himself might choose."

Just then the people began to throng into the Pnyx; and we took our places with the rest to hear the business of the day, after Socrates had privately uttered this prayer:

"Oh Zeus, give to me and to all who shall counsel here this day, that spirit of truth by which we may behold that whereof we deliberate, as it is in thy sight!"

"As I expected," said Templeton, with a smile, as I folded up my ma.n.u.script. "My friend the parson could not demolish the poor Professor's bad logic without a little professional touch by way of finish."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh-never mind. Only I owe you little thanks for sweeping away any one of my lingering sympathies with Mr. Windrush, if all you can offer me instead is the confounded old nostrum of religion over again."

"Heydey, friend! What next?"

"Really, my dear fellow, I beg your pardon, I forgot that I was speaking to a clergyman."

"Pray don't beg my pardon on that ground. If what you say be right, a clergyman above all others ought to hear it; and if it be wrong, and a symptom of spiritual disease, he ought to hear it all the more. But I cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, till I know what you mean by religion; for there is a great deal of very truly confounded and confounding religion abroad in the world just now, as there has been in all ages; and perhaps you may be alluding to that."

Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, playing with the tackle in his fly-book, and then murmured to himself the well-known lines of Lucretius:

"Humana ante oculos foede c.u.m vita jaceret In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat, Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.

There!-blasphemous reprobate fellow, am I not?"

"On the contrary," I said, "I think that in the sense in which Lucretius intended that the lines should be taken, they contain a great deal of truth. He had seen the basest and foullest crimes spring from that which he calls Relligio, and he had a full right to state that fact. I am not aware that one blasphemes the Catholic and Apostolic Faith by saying that the devilries of the Spanish Inquisition were the direct offspring of that 'religious sentiment'

which Mr. Windrush's school-though they are at all events right in saying that its source is in man himself, and not in the 'regionibus Coeli'-are now glorifying, as something which enables man to save his own soul without the interference of 'The Deity'-indeed, whether 'The Deity' chooses or not."

"Do leave these poor Emersonians alone for a few minutes, and tell me how you can reconcile what you have just said with your own dialogue."

"Why not?"

"Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the G.o.ds do not trouble themselves with mortals, while you have been a.s.serting that 'The Deity' troubles Himself even with the souls of heathens?"

"Certainly. But that is quite a distinct matter from his dislike of what he calls Relligio. In that dislike I can sympathise fully: but on his method of escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with more complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name of Atheism."

"Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you knew all. So we had better say no more about it."

"A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul- curer by profession!"

"Why, what on earth have you to do but to abhor and flee me?" asked he, with a laugh, though by no means a merry one.

"Would your having a headache be a reason for the medical man's running away from you, or coming to visit you?"

"Ah, but this, you know, is my 'fault,' and my 'crime,' and my 'sin.' Eh?" and he laughed again.

"Would the doctor visit you the less, because it was your own fault that your head ached?"

"Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in his powers of curing, and had a great hankering after unaccredited h.o.m.oeopathies, like Mr. Windrush's; would not that be a fair cause for interdiction from fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial?"

"Come, come, Templeton," I said; "you shall not thus jest away serious thoughts with an old friend. I know you are ill at ease.

Why not talk over the matter with me fairly and soberly? How do you know till you have tried, whether I can help you or not?"

"Because I know that your arguments will have no force with me; they will demand of me or a.s.sume in me, certain faculties, sentiments, notions, experiences-call them what you like; I am beginning to suspect sometimes with Cabanis that they are 'a product of the small intestines'-which I never have had, and never could make myself have, and now don't care whether I have them or not."

"On my honour, I will address you only as what you are, and know yourself to be. But what are these faculties, so strangely beyond my friend Templeton's reach? He used to be distinguished at college for a very clear head, and a very kind heart, and the nicest sense of honour which I ever saw in living man; and I have not heard that they have failed him since he became Templeton of Templeton. And as for his Churchmans.h.i.+p, were not the county papers ringing last month with the accounts of the beautiful new church which he had built, and the stained gla.s.s which he brought from Belgium, and the marble font which he brought from Italy; and how he had even given for an altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Templeton House?"

"Effeminate picture!" he said. "It was part and parcel of the idea- "

Before I could ask him what he meant, he looked up suddenly at me, with deep sadness on his usually nonchalant face.

"Well, my dear fellow, I suppose I must tell you all, as I have told you so much without your shaking the dust off your feet against me, and consulting Bradshaw for the earliest train to Shrewsbury. You knew my dear mother?"

"I did. The best of women."

"The best of women, and the best of mothers. But, if you recollect, she was a great Low-Church saint."

"Why 'but'? How does that derogate in any wise from her excellence?"

"Not from her excellence; G.o.d forbid! or from the excellence of the people of her own party, whom she used to have round her, and who were, some of them, I do believe, as really earnest, and pious, and charitable, and all that, as human beings could be. But it did take away very much indeed from her influence on me."

"Surely she did not neglect to teach you."

"It is a strange thing to say, but she rather taught me too much. I don't deny that it may have been my own fault. I don't blame her, or any one. But you know what I was at college-no worse than other men, I dare say; but no better. I had no reason for being better."