H. Fielding

“ The lightning flashed across the peaks and the thunder echoed in long-drawn trumpet blasts. "The savage," he said, "saw there only gods warring with one another. Now with wiser eyes we see the reign of Law. We do not know all the laws; we cannot even yet tell how much rain will come, whether it will be famine or plenty. We cannot see the Law, but we never doubt the Law is there. With man it is the same. Births and deaths, suicides and murders, are they too not all under Law? Why should not man's soul be so too? Where is the need of God?" ”

“ There is crime, and misfortune, and unhappiness, more than need be. There are tears far more than enough. But there is sunshine too; and if there be hate there is love, if there is sorrow there is joy. Here there is life. But in these drab Utopias of the reason, what is there? That which is the worst of all to bear—monotony tending towards death.
No one, I think, can study philosophy, that grey web of the reason, without being oppressed by its utter pessimism. No matter what the philosophy be, whether it be professedly a pessimism as Schopenhauer's or not, there is no difference. ”

“ Still, there is an empire and it must never be forgotten. The healthy-minded—those who work, who live their lives, who love and hate, and fight, and win and lose, to whom the world is a great arena—will laugh at Mrs. Eddy. They need not this teaching which is half a truth and half a lie. They see the false half only because they need not the true half. And the others, the mental invalids, they see the true half and not the false. It is all true to them, and it must be all true to be of use, for power lies in the exaggeration, never in the mean. This is the secret of "Christian Science." ”

“ There are first of all those who are very low down in the scale of humanity, who are wanting in all the finer instincts of mankind. You will find them usually in cities, amongst the dregs of the people; for in the country it is difficult to find any who are quite without the finer emotions. The air and land and sky, the sunset and the sunrise, the myriad beauties of the world, do not leave them quite unmoved. And then solitude, which gives men time to think, not to reason but to think; which gives their hearts peace to hear the echoes of nature, is a great refiner. ”

“ You exalt reason into the whole of life, committing the mistake for which you rail on others. Unbridled emotion is, as you say, terrible. So is unbridled reason. Where has reason alone ever led anyone save into the dreariest, driest pessimism? Was a philosopher ever a happy man? Even your Utopias, from Plato's to Bellamy's, who would desire them? Hell would be a pleasant relaxation after any of them. The functions of the senses, of which sympathy is the greatest, are to give you facts, the function of reason is to arrange them. The emotions drive man forward, reason directs and controls them. ”

“ Have I gained anything to help me in life? I have gained this, perhaps, that if Law be not a full explanation, it is true, as far as it goes; if not a whole truth, yet it is a truth. Why go further? The scientist cares for nothing more when he has learned the laws of gravity. He is content to be ignorant of whence the force comes, because he can go no further. In the battle of life is not this enough? Can we not, too, be as the scientist, denying nothing, but searching only for that which we can know and which will be useful to us? ”

“ Raphael was an amiable rake, no better and no worse than the majority of those gifted pupils to whom he was at once a model of perfection and an example of free living; and those who maintain that art is always the expression of a people's religion have but an imperfect acquaintance with the age of Praxiteles, Apelles, and Zeuxis. Yet the idea itself has a foundation, lying in something which is as hard to define as it is impossible to ignore; for if art be not a growth out of faith, it is always the result of a faith that has been."—Marion Crawford. ”

“ Neither can he understand a Christian heaven of bodies risen from the earth. His heaven is immaterial. It is the Great Peace, where life has passed away. That he can understand. For neither can he conceive a life of the soul without some body. When perfection is reached and the last weary body done with, then life, too, is gone—life and all passion, all love, all happiness, all fear, all the emotions that are life. They are gone, and there is left only the Great Peace.
Our heaven grows out of our instincts as his does out of his instincts. ”

“ Religion, deep and true, and strong faith is possible only to strong natures; it is the outcome of strong feeling. It is a companion always to that virility that is optimism, that does not fear the future; it knows not what may come, but faces the future with confidence. It takes each day as it comes. Such are the nations that replenish the earth. The world is the heritage of the godly. The Old Testament is full of that truth, and it is no less true now than then. ”

“ To those who are really religious, life is beautiful. It is a triumphal march made to music [Pg 292] that fills their ears, that brightens their eyes, that lightens their steps, now quicker, now slower, now sad, now joyous, always beautiful. Who are the happy men and women in this world? Let no one ever doubt—no one who has observed the world will ever doubt; they are the people who have religion. ”

“ He lives in the heavens, for His voice comes from thence. The giant peaks that swathe themselves in clouds, the volcano and the earthquake, the great river flowing for ever to the sea, with its strange floods, its eddies, its deadly undertow, in these too must be gods. These are the first things that force themselves upon his dim observance. He wonders, and from his wonder is born a god. But as he grows in mental stature, in power of seeing, in power of feeling, he observes other forces. ”

“ It is the same heaven always, the same conception full of childish things. Did you ever hear a sermon on the heaven, did you ever read a book, did you ever listen to a discourse that did not take you back again in memory to that far-off fire-lightened room of childhood? Surely there is nothing in all the world so babyish as the general idea of the Christian heaven. Can you imagine a man there, a man with great deep voice and passion-laden eyes, a man with the storms of life still beating on his soul amid these baby faces and white wings? ”

“ And do you think that there are not some natures who revolt from this? To be watched—always watched. Cannot you imagine the intense oppression, the irritation and revulsion, such a doctrine may occasion? "Cannot I be left alone?" And when he learns that there is another belief—that he is not being watched, that he is not a child in a nursery, but a man acting under laws he can learn—cannot you imagine the endless relief, the joy as of emancipation from a prison? That it is so to many people I know, the feeling that law means freedom, but I also know that to others it is not. ”

“ In the East every peasant lives surrounded by his relatives, very many of them; he is friends with all his village, he has always his work, his interests in life. He is hardly ever alone among strangers, with no work to occupy him. But in the West, how many there are who live alone, their relations elsewhere, with few friends, with no necessity for work, with no interests in life? It is terrible to see how many there are living lives empty of all emotion. These are they who seek the miraculous as a relief from their daily monotony of stupidity. ”

“ Not all the creeds nor theologians in the world shall prevent my making the best of myself. The garden of the soul is no close preserve of theirs.
"Religion is the satisfaction of some of the wants of the souls of men. It is a cult of some of the emotions, never of all. For the emotions are so varied, so contradictory, that all cannot live together. I do not quite know why one people includes one emotion in religion and another rejects it out of religion, while still maintaining its beauty and truth. But no religion includes more than one side of life. ”

“ In the science of nature we need not go beyond, we cannot. In the science of man, who is but part of nature, why should we do so? Is it not better, truer, more beautiful to believe in everlasting laws of righteousness that rule the world than to believe that a Personality has to be always arranging and interfering? Would we not in a state prefer perfect laws to a perfect king, who, however, was imperfect in this that his laws were imperfect and had to be checked in their working? Which is the more perfect conception? Surely that of law. ”

“ The creeds and faiths are the words that men have set to that melody; they are the interpretations of that wordless song. Each is true to him whom it suits. Every nation has translated it into his own tongue. But never forget that those are only your own interpretations. Whatever your faith may be, you have no monopoly of religion. I confess that to me there is nothing so repellent as the hate of faith for faith. To hear their professors malign and abuse each other, as if each had the monopoly of truth, is terrible. ”

“ It is strange that if indeed religion be the truth of truths it should be regarded with such impatience, with such suspicion, if brought into ordinary life. For so it is. Every class has its own rules, its own conventions; every profession, every teacher, every form of society has its own rules, which are not founded at all upon religion. In every walk of life it is assumed that, subject to the special etiquette of that trade or profession and to the observance of what is considered honourable conduct therein, every man's actions are governed by self-interest alone. ”

“ The history of instincts is never the explanation of them. If we could unravel clearly all the history of the instincts of all peoples as regards the after death, we should be no nearer an explanation of why the instinct exists at all, why it grows or decays, why it takes one form or another. But we might, as so many do, blind ourselves to the fact that instincts exist now quite apart from reason, either now or previously. No reasoning can explain the absolute clinging of the European peoples to the resurrection of the body. ”

“ What has secular art to show to compare with these? Are not the Venus de Milo, the statue of Athena, and all the famous Greek sculptures those of gods? What is the most famous painting in the world? It is the Sistine Madonna of Raphael. Even in literature, is there anything secular to compare with the sacred books of the world? The oratorios and masses are the finest music. What can be more certain than that only religion gives the necessary stimulus to art and furnishes the most inspiring subjects? Great art is born of great faiths, great faiths produce great art. ”

“ Throughout Italy, throughout all Catholic countries, there are only two representations of Christ—as a babe with the Virgin Mary and crucified upon the cross. It was in Italy that Western Christianity arose and grew, it was in Italy that it became a living power, it was in Italy that it acquired consistency, that it was bound together by dogmas and crystallised in creeds. And still, after nineteen hundred years, it is Italy that remains the centre of the Christian world. There is no Christian church so great, so venerable, so imposing as the Church of Rome. ”

“ In those not instinct with one emotion the first impression awakened is disgust at the parade of death and blood; the second, horror at the God who could demand such a sacrifice, who could not be pacified but by the execution in circumstances of shame of His own Son. They shrink from it. It is no matter of reason. Do you think one who felt so could be argued out of his horror or a Christian out of his devotion? They are instinctive feelings which nothing will change. And yet in a very small way even the Buddhist has the instinct of sacrifice. ”

“ To a tender woman her God is but the extreme of the tenderness, the beauty, the compassion which she feels, and the narrowness which she has but does not realise. And cannot you see in your mind's eye the German Emperor's God clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a German pickelhaube and swearing German oaths? Man's God is but what he admires most in himself. He can be propitiated, he can be bribed. The savage does it with a bowl of milk or a honey cake, the mediæval man did it with a chapel or a painted window. ”

“ Nor can I believe in the heavens they tell us of. If all be true that they tell us, it has no attraction this Christian heaven. To be for ever singing praises is not life but monotony. Did any man in health, and strength, and sanity ever yearn to die in order to reach this Heaven they tell us of? Did not Aucassin say long ago that if he were to believe the monks Heaven was a place for the poor and maimed, the foolish, the childish and silly, the stupid, the cowards, the ugly, the undesirable, the failures of earth, and that he cared not for it? ”

“ There are worse things than some lies. There are some lies that are not a disgrace, but an honour. He learnt that learning was not a snare, but a very necessary and very admirable thing also, and of all learning that knowledge of the world, the wicked world, the flesh and the devil, was the most necessary. Such in broad lines were what he learnt from his schoolfellows, the code filtered down from above, the code of a public school. A very admirable code, but how different from what he had first learnt. There were worlds between them, the immensity that lies between fact and ideal. ”

“ And yet perfect happiness, sleep without waking, light without shadow, joy without sorrow, gaiety without eclipse. Can this ever be heaven? Let us look back on our lives, we who have lived, and let us think. Let us close our eyes that the past may come before us and we may remember. What are the most beautiful memories that come before us, that make our hearts beat again with the greatest music they have known, that bring again to our eyes the tears that are the water of the well of God? ”

“ Are not almost all the great heroisms outcomes of religion? Yes, that is true, too. If religion has much to be ashamed of it has very much to be proud of. In its name has been done much of which we are proud. No one will deny that. More than enough to set off the evil? Well, that is hardly what I am seeking. I am trying to find out what is the effect of religion—or, rather, of an excess of religion—when imported into life. Is the influence all for good? I think in face of history we cannot say that. Has it been all for evil? That answer is also impossible. ”

“ And you say that neither heaven nor Nirvana appeal to men, that men shrink from them. If philosophy be pessimism, what then is religion? Do you consider the Christian theory of the fall of man, the sacrifice of God to God, the declaration that the vast majority of men are doomed to everlasting fire, a cheerful theory?
Do you consider the Buddhist theory that life is itself an evil to be done with, that no consciousness survives death, but only the effects of a man's actions, an optimism? ”

“ There is no bond anywhere stronger than the family bond of the Latin peoples. In mediæval Rome, even often in Rome of to-day, all the sons live with their father and mother even if married. It is the custom, and, like all customs that live, it lives because it is in accord with the feelings of those who obey it.
A man belongs to his family, he clings to it; he is not an individual, but part of an organism.
And although in law it is the father who is the head, it is the father who is the lawgiver, the ruler, is it really he who is that centre, that lode-star, that holds the family together? ”

“ There was evidence enough, the offender could have been arrested and convicted at any time. But that would not do. Punishment alone will not always, will indeed but seldom, benefit the criminal. Punishment is for the protection of society. It is for the future, not the past. For the criminal to redeem himself he must confess. In that lies the only medicine for a diseased soul. It is a marvellous story, and it holds the truth of truths. ”

“ Then the citizen of a great nation must in many matters resign his liberty for better things. Liberty is good, in moderation, and so are Equality and Fraternity, but they are not absolute truths. To cry them aloud, as did the Revolutionists of France, to insist upon them in season and out of season, is to fall into an error almost as great as their opponents'. We have little doubt now that in every well-ordered state there must be inequality, submission to masters as well as freedom, and that there are many people it is quite undesirable to fraternise with. Truth lies in the mean. ”

“ In the centre is an open space and they stop, the procession breaks, for the priest goes to the centre still dancing, and the people form a great ring about him. He dances more and more wildly as the tom-toms quicken their beat, his eyes are bloodshot, his hands are clenched, there is foam upon his lips. "He has the Spirit," the people murmur with wonder. Then into the centre of this ring come two men dragging a goat. It is a black goat with a white star on his forehead. His horns are painted and there are flowers about his neck. When the priest sees the goat he rushes forward. ”