Chapter XVIII: A Woeful Walk 105 (4)

But is it not a selfish pleasure, this that is to be gained by rural peregrination, I shall be asked. Bluntly I answer, No. A country walk makes one blithesome; and than blithesomeness there is no greater foe to selfishness. Had Bacon not declared that gardening was the purest of human pleasures, I should be inclined to give the palm to walking.

We are too gregarious. We live too much in herds, and we consider too much what the herd will think of our petty individual ways. Civilisation is not an unmixed boon, and artificial combinations of men taint the natural simplicity of the race. In combining together for mutual protection against a common foe we forget that sometimes a man's foes are those of his own household. Each feels that the eyes of the world are upon him, and always he is subconsciously occupied in conforming himself to the world. A political community not only curtails the individual's freedom of action for the good of the whole, it curtails also his freedom of thought and manner. What is the result? The result is that "self-consciousness" has taken on a new and sinister meaning. Instead of denoting the especial and distinguishing characteristic of emancipated reason, self-consciousness has come to denote a painful cognisance of the fetters that our fellow-reasoners have put upon reason. We are the slaves of ourselves. Only the child and the savage are free to "live deliberately," to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Long before the child has developed into the grown, and the savage into the civilised, man, that silent and unseen but tireless architect, Convention, builds about him an invisible but infrangible wall of reserve: his spontaneous emotions, his natural affections, his aspirations and ambitions, must filter through crevices and peepholes instead of exhaling from him as a rich and original aura.

Already the taint is perceptible in our literature. The centripetal tendency is not a purely economic one. Commerce and industry draw the crowds to the cities, and immediately there arises a set of writers who write only of the city. How large a proportion of our fiction portrays only the wretched drawing-room intrigue, the wretched rivalries of wretched citizens. The Epic was buried three hundred years ago. The Ode is dead. The Lyric is dying. Now we have the Novel and the Problem Play, the sensational Newspaper and the Picture Magazine. In time, I suppose, we shall come to the Snapshot and the Paperette. Already we are almost there.--Was it for this that the mighty Areopagitical pleader for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing strove?

I wish that whole populations of crowded cities could be turned out hebdomadally to take long week-end walks in the country, there to mew its mighty youth and kindle its undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; there to slough off the skin of daily toil, cleanse itself from the dross of money-getting, and learn that there is something in life more worth living for than the weekly wage, and other joys than those of _panem et circenses_.--But this is a wild dream. As well try to rehabilitate the Bacchic dance and Chian wine in place of Football and beer or Baseball and peanuts.--Yet methinks I have heard of wilder. What did Jean-Jacques and his school really mean by "back to nature"?

To me, I confess, this polipetal or city-seeking tendency in modern life (if I may so call it) wears a most serious, a most sinister aspect. So, I am inclined to think, it did to Ruskin. "I had once purposed," wrote John Ruskin half-a-century ago, "to show what kind of evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me earnestly. The day will assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ a grave question."[59]

If we read history aright, always the bloated city succumbs to the pagan horde. It is in the crowded city that all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,[60] have most free play. And it is in the city, where division of labour is daily carried to greater extremes, that men's activities as a whole have least free play. The result is twofold: the nobler emotions are stunted; the baser passions are stimulated. Socialism (whatever the precise prescription so labelled may be) is no remedy for this. Perhaps Rousseau reasoned better than he knew.

In a sense, however--thanks to whatever gods may be!--as a matter of fact there is quietly going on a constant recurrence to Nature. The United States of America, Canada, Australia, South Africa--what but wholesale emigration from over-populous or over-pragmatical centres is the source and origin of these? Colonisation is the protest against the social, political, economical, or religious constrictions of the crowd.--It is precisely these constrictions, my practical quærist, that I am tempting thee now and again to flee. _De te fabula narratur._

XXVIII

The Pæan of Being

§ 69

Have I too much belauded the country walk? I do not thereby decry the outdoor sport. The thorough sportsman is the noblest work of God (apologies to the shade of Alexander Pope!). Athletics, said that acute philosophical historian, Goldwin Smith, "wash the brain." Well, sometimes I think a really good country walk cleans the soul. You get away from rivalries and trivialities; from scandal, gossip, and paltriness; you get away from your compeers and your neighbours--perhaps you learn for the first time who your neighbour is--namely, your fellow-farer in distress, as the Good Samaritan long ago taught; you get away from barter and commerce, from manners and customs, from forms and ceremonies; from the thousand and one complications that arise when a multitude of hearts that do not beat as one try to live in a too close contiguity. It was only when the inevitable third party appeared upon the scene (as I think someone must have said) that Adam and Eve ceased to be good, put on clothes, and hid themselves from the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden. It is easy to be generous amongst trees and grass and running water; one feels good 'neath the blue firmament on the open earth; ghosts vanish that scent the morning air, and glow-worms pale their uneffectual fire. For to everyone--I care not whether theist, deist, or atheist--to everyone Nature instinctively, spontaneously, proclaims herself an infinitely adorable Mystery. If there is anything above and beyond the ephemeral and the fleeting; if there is somewhere some immensity of Being, some source of All, would it not be well sometimes to make haste and bow the head towards the earth and worship?[61]

Some immensity of Being. It is to this that in reality all Nature points. The clouds, the skies, the greenery of earth, the myriad forms of vegetation at our feet, stir as these may the soul to its depths, they are but single chords in the orchestra of Life. It is the great pæan of Being that Nature chants. By them it is that we perceive "the immense circulation of life which throbs in the ample bosom of Nature, a life which surges from an invisible source and swells the veins of this universe."[62] Through them it is that we detect the enormous but incomprehensible unity which underlies this incommensurable multiplicity. The wavelet's plash; the purl of the rill; the sough of the wind in the pines--these are but notes in the divine diapason of Life, of Life singing its cosmic song, unmindful who may hear.--Alas, that so few hear aught but a thin and scrannel sound!

INDEX

A

Abbott, Charles C., 13

Action, a struggle to overcome space and time, 131

Advertisements, hint as to taxing, 200

Alcohol, proper use of, 142 _et seq._

All, the, 129 _et seq._

Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, 128;
quoted, 201, 202

Aphrodites, the two, 165

Appearance, something behind, 87

Arve, the river, 167

Autumn in Canada, 107 _et seq._

Autumn reveries, 29

Avebury, Lord, quoted, 185, 186

B

Bannock, the, 156

Beans, how to cook, 157, 158

Beauty, 110;
the appeal of, 164 _et seq._;
subjective character of, 165;
various kinds of, _ibid._;
Goethe on, 194;
Shelley on, 195

Being, the pæan of, 223 _et seq._;
immensity of, 225

Belloc, Hilaire, quoted, 151

Beverages, 142 _et seq._

Blood corpuscles, an analogy from, 93 _et seq._

Boots, 135

Borrow, George, 14;
quoted, 160, 161

Browning, Robert, quoted, 163, 164

Buckinghamshire, a walk in, 31 _et seq._

Burma, 15

Burroughs, John, 12;
quoted, 75, 76

Byways, English, 21 _et seq._

C

Calm, Matthew Arnold on, 77

Campbell, Professor W. W., quoted, 177

Canada, spring in, 45 _et seq._;
autumn in, 107 _et seq._;
53 _et seq._;
winter in, 59 _et seq._

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 196, 197

Carpenter, Edward, 103;
quoted, 195, 196

Cattle, mountain, 172

Cave man, the, 138, 139

Cities, crowded populations of, 218 _et seq._

Civilisation a mixed boon, 216 _et seq._

Companion, an uncongenial, 113, 114

Conscience, 42 _et seq._

Cosmos, the, 93

Country, the, calming influence of, 127

D

Darwin, Charles, quoted, 170, 171

Death, a change, 95

De Quincey, Thomas, quoted, 199

Details, practical, 152 _et seq._

Dietary, the tramp's, 140 _et seq._

Downs, the Sussex, 25 _et seq._

Drama, a natural, 79 _et seq._

E

East, the fascination of the, 19

Emigration, 222

England, byways in, 22 _et seq._;
a spring morning in, 25 _et seq._

Enthusiasts, cautions for, 181 _et seq._

Euripides, quoted, 194

Evening walks, 78 _et seq._

Evil, origin of, 97 _et seq._

F

Fatigue, a fictitious, 148

Fire, the nomad, 137 _et seq._

Food, 140;
importance of, 149 _et seq._; 154 _et seq._;
details concerning, 153 _et seq._

G

Georgian Bay, the, 53

Glacial epoch, the, 138, 139

Goethe, quoted, 194

Golf and walking, 1 _et seq._;
indictments against, _ibid._;
vindication of, 2;
misapprehension concerning, 2, 3

Guérin, Eugénie de, quoted, 211

Guérin, Maurice de, quoted, 186, 187; 225, 226

H

Haig, Dr Alexander, 145

Harte, Bret, quoted, 159, 160

Hassocks, 25

Hearth, the, 137, 139

Hurstpierpoint, 25

I

Ideal, unrealisability of, 132

Impedimenta, 151

India, 17 _et seq._

Infinite, the, 128;
how that all things point to the, 188 _et seq._

Instincts, primitive, 162 _et seq._

J

Jefferies, Richard, 12;
quoted, 184, 185

K

Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 170

Kingston Road, the, 119, 120

Knapsack, contents of, 152 _et seq._

L

Landscape, the beauty of, 159 _et seq._

Life, a process, 37 _et seq._;
omnipresent, 42; 95;
an absolute, 96

Literature, modern, 218, 219

M

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 12, 13

MacLane, Mary, quoted, 160

Meditations, evening, 78 _et seq._

Memories, cosmic, 162

Memory, idea of time dependent on, 92, 93

Milk, value of, 147

Milky Way, the, 56

Morning air, a steriliser, 210

Morning walk, an early, 205; 208

Morning walks, 72 _et seq._

Mountains, peacefulness of, 173, 174

Müller, Max, 112

Multiplicity, subjective character of, 95

Mystery, the, of nature, 39; 85;
Carlyle on, 196, 197

N

Nature, spirituality of, 34 _et seq._;
a universe of subsistences, 51;
unity of, 91; 93;
beauty of, 164 _et seq._;
man's primæval habitat, 171;
the language of, 193, 194;
companionship of, 213

Neo-Platonists, 90

Nilgiris, the, 17

O

"Oberland Chalet, An," quoted, 143

Ontario, lake, 118, 119

Otonabee, river, 48

P

Pantry, the antiquity of the, 155

Pascal, quoted, 101

Plato, quoted, 165

Plotinus, 89, 90

Poynings, village, 25

R

Reason, inadequacy of, 97;
and moral progress, 101, 102

Religious tenets, criterion of, 102

Responsibility, 96, 97

Rhône, the, 167

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, quoted, 202-204

Ruskin, John, quoted, 161; 220, 221

S

Salève, the Grand, 167 _et seq._

Savoie, Haute, 172

Science, 191

Seclusion, benefits of, 117

Self-consciousness, 217, 218

Sénancour, quoted, 161

Sense, a seventh, 186

Solar system, motion of, 176, 177

"Son of the Marshes, A," 13

Soul, the, 113

Space, subjective character of, 91; 95

Spirit of eternal things, the, 39, 85

Stayner, 53

Stephen, Sir Leslie, 14

Strife, universality of, 176

Sunday in a country town, 121 _et seq._

Sunshine, Canadian, 70, 71

T

Tea, as a stimulant, 145 _et seq._

Tennyson, quoted, 190

Thatcher, T., quoted, 75

Thoreau, Henry D., 12;
quoted, 200, 201

Thought, a struggle to conceive the infinite, 131

Time, subjective character of, 91, 92, 95

Toronto, 119

Tragedies, 124 _et seq._

Transcendentalism, practical, 40 _et seq._

Troglodytic families, 138

U

Unity, a spiritual, 112, 113

Universe, the, imagined as a sphere, 91

Uxbridge, 23

V

Van Dyke, Henry, 13

W

Walk, the essence of a, 5 _et seq._;
a woeful, 105 _et seq._

Walkers, notable, 9 _et seq._

Walking tour, preparations for a, 133 _et seq._

Walking tours, 133 _et seq._

Walks and walking, effects of golf upon, 2 _et seq._;
essence of, 5 _et seq._;
proper frame of mind for, _ibid._;
the mood for, 72 _et seq._;
the rivals of angling, 75;
instinct for, 103, 104;
the pleasures of, 198 _et seq._

Walks, my earliest, 15 _et seq._;
in Burma, _ibid._;
in India, 17 _et seq._;
in England, 21 _et seq._;
on the Sussex Downs, 25 _et seq._;
in Buckinghamshire, 31 _et seq._;
in Canada, 45 _et seq._;
on the banks of the Otonabee, 47 _et seq._;
by the Georgian Bay, 53 _et seq._;
on the outskirts of an Ontarian country town, 59 _et seq._;
a woeful walk, 105, 106;
from Toronto, along the Kingston Road, 107 _et seq._;
over one of the Passes of the Jura, 149, 150;
on the Grand Salève, 167 _et seq._;
early on Monday mornings, 205, 206;
of a Sunday before breakfast, 208 _et seq._

Walton, Izaak, quoted, 72, 73, 74

Warnings, 180

Whiting, Charles Goodrich, 13

Will, 96, 97;
freedom of the, 99 _et seq._

Winter in Canada, 62 _et seq._

Wood, Edith Elmer, quoted, 143 _et seq._

Woods, Canadian, 63 _et seq._

Wordsworth, William, quoted, 7, 111, 112

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

[1] See Henry D. Thoreau's "Walden"; "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"; "Winter"; etc.

[2] See John Burroughs, his "Birds and Poets"; "Locusts and Wild Honey"; "Pepacton"; "Signs and Seasons"; "Wake Robin"; "Winter Sunshine"; etc.

[3] See Richard Jefferies, his "Amateur Poaching"; "Field and Hedgerow"; "Wild Life in a Southern County"; "Nature near London"; "Round about a Great Estate"; "Wood Magic"; "The Story of my Heart."

[4] See Hamilton Wright Mabie's "In the Forest of Arden"; "Under the Trees and Elsewhere"; etc.

[5] See Henry Van Dyke's "Fisherman's Luck, and some other Uncertain Things"; "Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness"; "Days Off, and other Digressions"; etc.

[6] See "In the Green Leaf and the Sere," by "A Son of the Marshes." Edited by J. A. Owen. Illustrated by G. C. Haïté and D. C. Nicholl. Also "Drift from Longshore," by the same author and editor.

[7] See Charles C. Abbott's "Upland and Meadow"; "Wasteland Wanderings"; "The Birds About Us"; "A Naturalist's Rambles about Home"; "Outings at Odd Times"; "Recent Rambles, or, In Touch with Nature"; "Travels in a Tree Top"; "Birdland Echoes"; "Notes of the Night, and other Outdoor Sketches"; etc.

[8] See Charles Goodrich Whiting's "Walks in New England"; etc.

[9] See George Borrow's "Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery."

[10] "Obermann," lettre ii.

[11] See his "In Praise of Walking," in _The Monthly Review_ (London: Murray) of August, 1901.

[12] Mr Robert F. Stupart, in the "Handbook of Canada," published by the Publication Committee of the Local Executive [of the British Association for the Advancement of Science], Toronto: 1897, p. 78.

[13] See "The Compleat Angler," chapter i.

[14] _Ibid._

[15] See a delightful letter to _The Publishers' Circular_ of September the 27th, 1902; vol. lxxvii., p. 325, on "A Plea for a Long Walk," by T. Thatcher, of 44 College Green, Bristol, England. Also another letter by the same writer on "42 Miles on 2d. at the Age of 64," in the same periodical in its issue of April the 25th, 1903; vol. lxxviii., p. 457. The "2d." means that his food consisted of dry brown-bread crusts only, the cost of which he computes at twopence.

[16] "Pepacton," Foot Paths, p. 205.

[17] _Confer._--"The primal One, from which all things are, is everywhere and nowhere. As being the cause of all things, it is everywhere. As being other than all things, it is nowhere.... No predicate of Being can be properly applied to it.... It is greatest of all, not by magnitude, but by potency.... It is to be regarded as infinite, not because of the impossibility of measuring or counting it, but because of the impossibility of comprehending its power. It is perfectly all-sufficing."--"The Neo-Platonists: A Study in the History of Hellenism." By Thomas Whittaker. Cambridge, 1901. Chapter v., pp. 58, 59.

[18] See his General Introduction to Ward's "English Poets," vol. i., p. xvii. London and New York: Macmillan, 1880.

[19] "The Mystery of Golf." By Arnold Haultain. Second Edition. Pp. 153, 154. London and New York: Macmillan, 1910.

[20] Pascal, "Pensees," XVI. iv.

[21] _Ibid._ iii.

[22] Tennyson, "The Ancient Sage."

[23] See his "Farthest North," ii. 73 _et seq._; 76 _et seq._; _et passim_.

[24] "An Oberland Chalet." By Edith Elmer Wood. London: T. Werner Laurie. No date, but probably _circa_ 1912. Pp. 256-260.

[25] And I thank you, C.B.L.

[26] "The Path to Rome," p. 16.

[27] _Ibid._, p. 341.

[28] For these I am entirely indebted to my younger brother, Professor Herbert E. T. Haultain, A.M.Inst.C.E., etc.

[29] Quoted in _The Academy and Literature_ (London) of October the 4th, 1902, p. 340.

[30] "The Story of Mary MacLane," by Herself. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone & Company, 1902.

[31] In _The New York World_ of September the 14th, 1902, p. 7.

[32] "Wild Wales," Introduction.

[33] "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," chapter vi., The Lamp of Memory, §i.

[34] Obermann, Lettre XXXVI.

[35] And his bride complained of the damp! (βαλλεις εις ἁμαραν με, και ειματα καλα μιαινεις.--Theocritus, Idyll XXVII. 52).

[36] Browning, "Two in the Campagna."

[37] _Confer_ Edward Carpenter: "The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration," page 51. London: George Allen, 1912. Also Mr Havelock Ellis, his "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," vol. vi., p. 558.

[38] See Plato, Symposium, 180:--"παντες γαρ ἱσμεν, ὁτι ουκ ἑστιν ἁνευ Ἑρωτος Ἁφροδιτη, κ. τ. λ."

[39] "Sussex," first stanza.--"The Five Nations," p. 69. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903.

[40] "The Voyage of the _Beagle_," chapter xx.

[41] Professor W. W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, California, computes the velocity of the Solar System through space at approximately nineteen kilomètres per second (see Lick Observatory Bulletin, No. 195, vol. vi. (1910-1911), p. 123. See also Bulletin No. 196, vol. vi., pp. 125 _et seq._). What, in interstellar space, the precise curve described by my finger nail was, especially if to rotation, revolution, and the approach to Hercules, we add nutation, tidal drag, and the precession of the equinoxes, to say nothing of earth tremours, I should much like to know.

[42] All my figures are, of course, rough in the extreme; and I give Professor Campbell the benefit of about fifty miles a minute because he says "approximately."

[43] "The Pageant of Summer."

[44] "The Pleasures of Life," Part II., chapter viii.

[45] "Journal, Lettres, et Poemes," p. 17. Paris, 1880.

[46] "Das Schöne ist ein Urphänomen, das zwar nie selber zur Erscheinung kommt."--"Dichtung und Wahrheit."

[47] "Hippolytus."

[48] "Prometheus Unbound."

[49] "Towards Democracy." Third Edition, pp. 149, 151. London: Fisher Unwin, 1892.

[50] Essay on Characteristics. Works (Shilling Edition), ix. 15.

[51] Essay on Diderot. Works, x. 26. The italics are Carlyle's.

[52] Additions to the "Confessions of an Opium-Eater," p. 381. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1876.

[53] "Walden," pp. 98, 99, in David Douglas's Edinburgh Edition, 1884.

[54] "Journal Intime," p. 45. London: The Macmillan Co., 1890.--I avail myself of Mrs Humphry Ward's admirable translation.

[55] "Confessions," Partie I. Livre IV. Paris: Lefevre's Edition; 1819, vol. i., pp. 259, 260.

[56] Thirty-four years separated the tour of which he speaks from the date when he penned these words.

[57] The fine phrase of Mrs Humphry Ward. See her preface to her translation of Amiel's "Journal," last paragraph.

[58] Eugénie de Guérin, "Journal et Fragments," p. 181. Twenty-fourth Edition. Paris: Didier et Cie, 1879.

[59] "Modern Painters," Part VI., chapter i., paragraph 7.--Vol. v., pp. 5 and 6 of Messrs George Allen & Sons' edition.

[60] 1 John ii. 16.

[61] Exodus xxxiv. 8.

[62] "Cette immense circulation de vie qui s'opère dans l'ample sein de la nature; ... cette vie qui sourd d'une fontaine invisible et gonfle les veines de cet univers."--Maurice de Guérin, "Journal," p. 22. Paris, 1880.

End of Project Gutenberg's Of Walks and Walking Tours, by Arnold Haultain