Chapter VII (3)

The first book should be called “Modern Thought,” and in this, without praise or blame and without any wandering into metaphysics or religion, the young fellow should be plainly taught to distinguish the certain from the uncertain. I know of nothing in which academic training just now is more at fault. That training seems to consist in two branches. First, the setting down of a very great number of things each equally certain with the last and all forming together one huge amorphic body or lump of assertion; second, a whole sheaf of theories, the whole fun of which consists in the fact that no one of them can positively be proved but that all are guesswork. These theories change from year to year, and while they are defended with a passion astonishing to those who live in a larger world, there is no pretence that they are true. The whole business of them is quite obviously a game. Consider, for instance, history. A lad is taught that William the Conqueror won at Hastings in 1066; that the opinion of the English people was behind the little wealthy clique that put an end to the Stuarts; that London heartily sympathised with the seven Bishops; that all Parliamentary institutions grew up on the soil of this island in the thirteenth century from Saxon origins; and that four people called Hengist, and Horsa, and Aella, and Cerdic led a great number of Germans to various points of this Island, killed the people living there and put the Germans in their stead. Now of these assertions, all of which he is to receive with equal certitude, all dogmatically affirmed, all taught to him as brute bits of truth--some, as that about Hastings, are rigidly true; some, such as the attitude of London towards the seven Bishops, are morally certain (though hardly capable of definite proof); some, as the weight of public opinion behind the Whigs, debatable though probable; some, like the Hengist and Horsa business, almost certainly mere legends--and so forth. It is to be noted that, if you are to teach at all, you must always have in your teaching some admixture of this error. No one can exactly balance the degree of probability attaching to each separate statement; there is no time to array all the evidence, and if there were, the mind of the student could not carry it. Each teacher, moreover, will have a scheme of values somewhat different from his neighbour’s; but even if some admixture of the error I speak of be necessary, at least let the student be warned that it exists. For if he is not so warned one of two things will happen: either he will believe all he is told, with the most appalling results to himself, and, should he later become powerful, to the whole nation (we are seeing something of that in economics to-day), or he will (as the cleverer undergraduate usually does) become sceptical of all he hears; he will begin to wonder, having once found his teacher out in, let us say, the absurdity of pretending that Parliamentary institutions were peculiar to Britain, whether the Battle of Hastings were really fought in 1066 or no. When he has discovered, as any boy of education, travel, and common sense will discover, that the Normans were not Scandinavians, but Frenchmen, he will be led to reason that perhaps William the Conqueror never existed at all. This mood of universal scepticism is even more dangerous than that of bovine assurance, more dangerous to character, that is, and more dissolving of national strength.

As with the assertions so with the theories. There was a theory, for instance, that a tenure of land existed in ancient England by which this land was the common property of all, and was called the land of the “folk.” Then this theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the “folk land” meant the land held by customary right as distinguished from land held by charter. Again, there was a theory that an original Saxon tendency to breed large landowners had gradually prevailed over feudal tenure. This theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the large units of land grew up by an accidental interpretation of Roman law.

In the book I propose all these theories could be very simply dealt with. The student should be warned that they are theories, and theories only, that their whole point and value is that they are not susceptible to positive proof; that what makes them amusing and interesting is the certitude that one can go on having a good quarrel about them, and the inner faith that when one is tired of them one can drop them without regret. Older men know this, but young men often do not, and they will take a theory in the Academies and make a friend of it, and at last, as it were, another self, and clasp it close to their souls and intertwine themselves with it, only to find towards thirty that they have been hugging a shade.

So much, then, for this first book. It would not need to be more than a little pocket volume of fifty or sixty pages, and a young man should have it to refer to at any moment of his studies. One of its maxims would be to look up the original evidence upon which anything he was told was based. Another rule he would find in it would be to underline all such words as “seems,” “probably,” and so forth, and watch in his books the way in which they gradually turn, as the argument proceeds, into “is” and “certainly.” He would also be warned before reading the work of any authority to remember that that authority was a human being, to look up his biography, if possible to meet him personally, to find out what general knowledge he had and what impression he made upon the casual man that met him. How many men have written histories of a campaign and yet have been proved at a dinner-table ignorant of the range of artillery during their period! How many men have learnedly criticised the style of Rousseau upon a knowledge of French very much inferior to that of most governesses! I at Oxford knew a don who exposed and ridiculed the legend of the Girondins, but throughout his remarks pronounced their title with a hard _g_.

As for the politicians, their little guide-book through life should be of another sort. In this the first and most valuable part would deal with political judgment and prophecy. The utmost care would be taken by the author to show how valueless is any determination of the future, and how crass the mind which predicts with confidence. Since so very few men happen to have made lucky shots, it would be the peculiar care of the author in a loving manner to collect all the follies and misjudgments which these same men had made upon other grave matters. And, in general, the reader would be left very certain that every pompous prophecy he heard was a piece of folly. Next in the book would come examples of all that political men have said and done which they most particularly desired to have forgotten. This would serve a twofold purpose, for first it would amuse and instruct the politician as he read it, since the misfortunes of others are delightful to human kind, and, secondly, it would show him that he could not himself trust to the effect of time, and that his natural desire to turn his coat or to pretend to some policy he did not understand would at last be judged as it deserved. In the third and final portion of the book the politician would be given a list of interesting truths, with regard to the matter of his trade. It would be proved to him in a few sentences that his decisions depend upon various difficult branches of study, and by a few suggested questions he would be convinced of his ignorance therein. The shortness of human life would be insisted upon, with examples showing how a man having painfully reached power was stricken with paralysis or died in torment. The ludicrous miscarriage of great plans would be laid before him, and, better still, the proof that the most successful adventures had proceeded almost entirely from chance, and surprised no one more than their authors.

At the end of the book would be a certain number of coupons permitting the reader to travel to many places which politicians commonly ignore, and there would be a list of the sights that he should see. As, for instance, the troops of such and such a nation upon the march, the artillery of such another at firing practice, and the opinion expressed by the populace in taverns in such and such a town. Then at the end would come a number of common phrases such as _cui bono_, _persona grata_, _toujours perdrix_, _double entendre_, _sturm und drang_, etc., with their English equivalents, if any, and their approximate meaning, when they possess a meaning. Upon the last page would be a list of the duties of a Christian man and a short guide to general conduct in conversation with the rich.

Armed with these manuals, the youth and manhood of a nation would at once and vastly change. You would find young men recently proceeded from the University filled with laudable doubts arising from the vastness of God’s scheme, and yet modestly secure in certain essential truths such as their own existence and that of an objective universe, the voice of conscience, and the difference between right and wrong. While among those of more mature years, who were controlling the energies of the State, there would appear an exact observance of real things, an admitted inability to know what would happen fifty or even twenty years hence, and a habit of using plain language which they and their audience could easily understand; of using such language tersely, and occasionally with conviction.

But this revolution will not take place. The two books of which I speak will not be written. And if anyone doubts this, let him sit down and try to frame the scheme of one, and he will soon see that it is beyond any man’s power.

On Fantastic Books

There has fallen upon criticism since perhaps a century ago, and with increasing weight, a sort of gravity which is in great danger of becoming tomfoolery at last: as all gravity is in danger of becoming.

No one dares to discuss all that lighter thing which is the penumbra of letters, and, what is more, no man of letters dares to whisper that letters themselves are not often much more than a pastime to the reader, and are only very rarely upon a level with good and serious speculation: never upon a level with philosophy: still less upon a level with religion. It is perhaps even a mark of the eclipse of religion when any department of mere intellectual effort can raise itself as high as literature has raised itself in its own eyes; and since all expression now (or nearly all) is through the pen literature thus suffering from pride can impose its pride upon the world.

Two things alone correct this pride: first, that those who practise the trade of literature starve if they are austere or run into debt if they are not; secondly, that now and then one of the inner circle gives the thing away--for instance, Mr. Andrew Lang in his excellent and never-to-be-forgotten remarks delivered only last year at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund. This Member of our Union said (with how much truth!) that the writers of stories should remember they were writers of stories and not teachers and preachers. And the same might be said to others of the Craft. If a man has had granted to him by the Higher Powers a jolly little lyric, why, that is a jolly little lyric. He should bow and scrape to those who gave it to him and hand it on to his fellow-men for a dollar. But it does not make him a god, and if it gives him so much as a swelled head it makes him intolerably wearisome. More tolerable are the victors of campaigns discussing at table their successes in the field than poets who forget their Muse: for to their Muse alone, or to those who sent her, do they owe what they are, as may very clearly be seen in the case of those whose Muse has deserted them and flown again up to her native heaven; nor is any case more distressing than that of ----.

All of which leads me to the Fantastic Books. One, two, a dozen at the most, in all the history of the world have ranked with the greatest. Rabelais is upon the summit, and the _Sentimental Journey_ will live for some hundreds of years, but how many others are there which men remember? There is a sort of conspiracy against them led by the few intelligent vicious in league with the numerous and virtuous fools; and thus the salt of the Fantastic Books, which is as good as the salt of the sea, is lost to the most of mankind.

Men sit in front of the writers of Fantastic Books fair and squarely with their hands on their knees, their eyes set, their mouths glum, their souls determined, and say:

“Come now, Fantastic Book, are you serious or are you not serious?”

And when the Fantastic Book answers “I am both.”

Then the man gets up with a sigh and concludes that it is neither. Yet the Fantastic Book was right, and if people were only wise they would salt all their libraries with Fantastic Books.

Note that the Fantastic Books are not of necessity jocose books or ribald books, nor even extravagant books. If I had meant to write about extravagant books, _quâ_ extravagant, you may be certain I should have chosen that word. Rabelais is extravagant and so is Sterne, but not on account of their extravagance are they fantastic. The note of the Fantastic Book is an easy escape from the world. It is not imagination, though imagination is a necessary spring to it: it is that faculty by which the mind travels, as it reads, whether through space or through time or through _quality_. A book is a Fantastic Book, though time and space be commonplace enough, though the time be to-day and the place Camberwell, if only the mind perpetually travels, seeing one after another unexpected things in the consequence of human action or in the juxtaposition of emotions.

There is a category of Fantastic Books most delightful, and never to my thinking overdone, which deals with journeys to worlds beyond the earth. I confess that I care nothing whether they are well written or ill written; so long as they are written in any language that I can understand I will read them; and to day as I write I have before me a notable collection of such, every one of which I have read over and over again. I remember one called the _Anglo-Saxon Conquest of the Solar System_ or words to that effect; another of a noble kind, called _Thuka of the Moon_. I only mention the two together by way of contrast; and I remember one in which somebody or other went to Mars and went mad, but I forget the title. Be they as well written as the _First Men in the Moon_, which is or will be a classic, or as ill written as a book which I may not mention because there is a law forbidding any one to tell unpleasant truths, so long as they concern voyages to the Planets they are worth reading.

Then, also, there is the future. The _Time Machine_ is, perhaps, the chief of them; but writers who travel into the future, good or bad, are all delightful.

You may say that they are also always a little boring because they always try to teach a lesson or to prophesy. That is true, but when you have comforted yourself with the firm conviction that prophecies of this kind are invariably and wildly wrong the disturbance which they cause in your mind will disappear. I have among my most treasured books one of the early nineteenth century, called _Revelations of the Dead Alive_, in which the end of our age and its opinions upon _that_ age are presented, and it is all wrong! But it is very entertaining all the same. Most ridiculous but not least entertaining of such books are the Socialist books, the books showing humanity in the future all Socialist and going on like sticks. There is, indeed, another type of mournful Socialist book much more real and much more troubling, in which Socialism has failed, and the mass of men go on like slaves; but no matter. A prophecy (when it is scientific) is always and invariably absolutely and totally wrong:--and a great comfort it is to remember _that_!

Yet another sort of Fantastic Book is your Journey to Hell or to Heaven. There is one I have read and re-read. It is called _The Outer Darkness_. I shall never cease to read it. It is a journey to a sort of Hell, and these are as a rule more entertaining than the Heavenly journey, though why I cannot tell. Does the same hold true of Dante?

Lastly, and much the most rare and much the most valued of all are the books which are fantastic, though they cling to the present and to things known. In these I would include imaginary people in the Islands and in the Arctic, and even those which introduce half-rational beasts, for such books depend for their character not upon the matter of the fantasy, but upon the manner. There is a book called _Ninety North_, for instance, which is all about a race of people at the North Pole, but the power of the book resides not in the distance of the scene, but in the vision of the writer and in the little irony that trickles down every page.

Who collects them or preserves them--the Fantastic Books? No one, I think. They are not catalogued under a separate Heading. They puzzle the writers of Indices; they bewilder Librarians. They must be grouted out of the mass of rubbish as Pigs in the Perigord grout out truffles. There is no other way.

Also, in the Perigord, truffles are hunted with Hounds.

The Unfortunate Man

To all those who doubt the power of chance in human affairs; to all Stoics, Empiricists, Monists, Determinists, and all men whatsoever that terminate in this fashion, Greeting: Read what follows:

There was a man I used to know whose business it was to succeed in life, and who had made a profession of this from the age of nineteen. His father had left him a fortune of about £600 a year, which he still possesses, but, with that exception, he has been made by the gods a sort of puffball for their amusement, the sort of thing they throw about the room. It was before his father’s death that a determination was taken to make him the land agent at the house of a cousin, who would give him a good salary, and it was arranged, as is the custom in that trade, that he should do nothing in return but dine, smoke, and ride about. The next step was easy. He would be put into Parliament, and then, by quiet, effective speaking and continual voting, he would become a statesman, and so grow more and more famous, and succeed more and more, and marry into the fringes of one of the great families, and then die.

To this happy prospect was his future turned when he set out, not upon the old mare but upon the new Arab which his father had foolishly bought as an experiment, to visit his cousin’s home and to make the last arrangements. And note in what follows that every step in the success-business came off, and yet somehow the sum total was disappointing, and at the present moment one can very definitely say that he has not succeeded.

He set out, I say, upon the new Arab, going gently along the sunken road that leads to the Downs, when a man carrying a faggot at the end of a pitchfork seemed to that stupid beast a preternatural apparition, and it shied forward and sideways like a knight’s move, so that the Unfortunate Man fell off heavily and hurt himself dreadfully. When the Arab had done this it stood with its beautiful tail arched out, and its beautiful neck arched also, looking most pitifully at its fallen rider, and with a sadness in its eye like that of the horse in the Heliodorus. The Unfortunate Man got on again, feeling but a slight pain in the right shoulder. But what I would particularly have you know is this: that the pain has never wholly disappeared, and is perhaps a little worse now after twenty years than it has been at any previous time. Moreover, he has spent quite £350 in trying to have it cured, and he has gone to foreign watering-places, and has learnt all manner of names, how that according to one man it is rheumatism, and according to another it is suppressed gout, and according to another a lesion. But the point to him is the pain, and this endures.

Well, then, he rode over the Down and came out through the Combe to his cousin’s house. The gate out of the field into the park was shut, and as he leaned over to open it he dropped his crop. I am ashamed to say that--it was the only act of the kind in his career, but men who desire to succeed ought not to act in this fashion--he did not get down to pick it up because he was afraid that if he did he might not be able to get on to the horse again. With infinite trouble, leaning right down over the horse’s neck, he managed to open the gate with his hands, but in doing so he burst his collar, and he had to keep it more or less in place by putting down his chin in a ridiculous and affected attitude. His hopes of making a fine entry at a pretty ambling trot, that perhaps his cousin would be watching from the window, were already sufficiently spoilt by the necessity he was under of keeping his collar thus, when the accursed animal bolted, and with the speed of lightning passed directly in front of a little lawn where his cousin, his cousin’s wife, and their little child were seated admiring the summer’s day. It was not until the horse had taken him nearly half a mile away that he got him right again, and so returned hot, dishevelled, and very miserable.

But they received him kindly, and his cousin’s wife, who was a most motherly woman, put him as best she could at his ease. She even got him another collar, knowing how terrible is the state of the soul when the collar is burst in company. And he sat down with them to make friends and discuss the future. He had always heard that among the chief avenues to success is to play with and be kind to the children of the Great, so he smiled in a winning manner at his cousin’s little boy, and stretching out his arms took the child playfully by the hand. A piercing scream and a sharp kick upon the shin simultaneously informed him that he had fallen into yet another misfortune, and the boy’s mother, though she was kindness itself, was startled into speaking to him very sharply, and telling him that the poor lad suffered from a deeply cut finger which was then but slowly healing. He made his apologies in a nervous but sincere manner, and in doing so was awkward enough to upset the little table which they had carried out upon the lawn, and upon which had been set the cups and saucers for tea. The whole thing was exceedingly annoying.

In this way did the Unfortunate Man enter the great arena of modern political life.

You must not imagine that he failed to obtain the sinecure which his father had sent him to secure. As I have already said, the failure of the Unfortunate Man was not a failure in major plans but in details. There may have been some to whom his career appeared enviable or even glorious, but Fate always watched him in a merry mood, and he was destined to suffer an interior misery which never failed to be sharpened and enlivened by the innumerable accidents of life.

He obtained for his cousin from the North of Scotland a man of sterling capacity, whose methods of agriculture had more than doubled the income of a previous employer; but as luck would have it this fellow, whose knowledge of farming was quite amazing, was not honest, and after some few months he had absconded with a considerable sum of money. A well which he had advised to be dug failed to find water for some two hundred feet, and then after all that expense fell in. He lamed one of his cousin’s best horses by no fault of his own; the animal trod upon a hidden spike of wood and had to be shot; and in doing his duty by upbraiding a very frousty old man who was plunging about recklessly just where a lot of she (or hen) pheasants were sitting on their eggs he mortally offended the chief landowner of the neighbourhood, who was none other than the frousty old man himself, and who was tramping across the brushwood to see his cousin upon most important matters. It was therefore in a condition of despair that his cousin finally financed him for Parliament. The constituency which he bought after some negotiations was a corrupt seaport upon the coast of Rutlandshire (here is no libel!). He was at first assured that there would be no opposition, and acting upon this assurance took the one brief holiday which he had allowed himself for five years. The doctor, who was anxious about his nerves, recommended a sea voyage of a week upon a ship without wireless apparatus. He landed in Jamaica to receive a telegram which informed him that a local gentleman of vast influence, eccentric, and the chief landowner in the constituency, had determined to run against him, and which implored him to cable a considerable sum of money, though no such sum was at his disposal.

In the earthquake the next day he luckily escaped from bodily injury, but his nerves were terribly shaken. Thenceforward he suffered from little tricks of grimace which were to him infinitely painful, but to others always a source of secret, sometimes of open, merriment. He returned and fought the election. He was elected by a majority of 231, but not until he had been twice blackmailed, and had upon at least three occasions given money to men who afterwards turned out to have no vote. I may say, to put the matter briefly, that he retained the seat uninterruptedly until the last election, but always by tiny majorities at the expense of infinite energy, sweating blood, as it were, with anxiety at every poll, and this although he was opposed by the most various people. It was Fate!

He spoke frequently in the House of Commons, and always unsuccessfully, until one day a quite unexpected accident of war in a foreign country gave him his opportunity. It so happened that the Unfortunate Man knew all about this country; he had read every book published upon it; it was the one thing upon which he was an authority. And ridiculous as had been his numerous efforts to engage the attention of the august assembly, upon this matter at least his judgment was eagerly expected. The greatest courtesy was shown him, the Government arranged that he should speak at the most telling time of the debate, and when he rose it was before a full House, strained to an eager attention.

He struck an attitude at once impressive and refined, stretched forth his hand in a manner that gave promise of much to come, and was suddenly seized with an immoderate fit of coughing. An aged gentleman, a wool merchant by profession, who sat immediately behind him, thought to do a kindly thing by slapping him upon the back, being ignorant of that Shoulder Trouble with which the jolly reader is acquainted. And the Unfortunate Man, in the midst of his paroxysm of coughing, could not restrain a loud cry of anguish. Confused interruptions, rising to a roar of protest, prevented him from going further, and he was so imprudent, or rather so wretchedly unlucky, as to be stung into a violent expression of opinion directed towards another member sitting upon his immediate left, a moneylender by trade and very sensitive. This fellow alone had heard the highly objectionable word which the Unfortunate Man had let drop. It is a word very commonly used by gentlemen in privacy, but rare, indeed, or rather wholly unused on the public occasions of our dignified political life. In vain did those about the moneylender pull at his skirts and implore him not to rise. He was white with passion. He rose and appealed to the Chair. He reiterated the offensive expression in the clearest and most articulate fashion, apologising to the horrified assembly for having to sully the air it breathed by the necessary repetition of so abominable an epithet, and he demanded the correction of the monster in human form who had descended to use it. The reprimand which the Unfortunate Man received from the Chair was lengthy and severe, and from that day forward he determined that the many omens of ill-fortune which had marked his life had reached their turn. He was too proud to resign, but his caucus, in spite of further considerable gifts of money, indignantly repudiated their Member, and when the election came he had not the courage to face it.

He is now living, broken and prematurely aged, in a brick house which he has built for himself in a charming part of the County of Surrey. He has recently discovered that the title to his freehold is insecure: an action is pending. Meanwhile, a spring of water has broken out under the foundations of the building, and some quarter of a mile before its windows, obscuring the view of the Weald in which he particularly delighted, a very large factory with four tall chimneys is in process of erection. These things have depressed him almost to the verge of despair, and he can only forget his miseries in motoring. He is continually fined for excessive speed, though by nature the most cautious of men, and terrified by high speeds, and I learn only to-day that as he was getting ready to go into Guildford to dispute a further fine before the Bench a backfire has put his wrist out of joint, and he suffers intolerable pain. _Militia est Vita Hominis!_

The Contented Man

Lucifer, for some time a bishop in Southern Italy (you did not know that, but it is true nevertheless, and you will find his name in the writings of Duchesne, and he took part in councils; nay, there was a time when I knew the very See of which he was bishop, but the passage of years effaces all these things)--Lucifer, I say, laid it down in his System of Morals that contentment was a virtue, and said that it could be aimed at and acquired positively, just as any other virtue can. Then there are others who have said that it was but a frame of mind and the result of several virtues; but these are the thinkers. The great mass of people are willing to say that contentment is strictly in proportion to the amount of money one may have, and they are wrong. I remember now there was a Sultan, or some such dignitary, in Spain, who counted the days of his life which had been filled with content, and found that they were seventeen. He was lucky; there are not many of us who can say the same. Then once a man told me this story about contentment, which seemed to me full of a profound meaning. It seems there was once an old gentleman who was possessed of something over half a million pounds, a banker, and this old gentleman every night of his life would go through certain little private books of his, compare them with the current list of prices, and estimate to a penny what he was worth before he slept. It was always a great pleasure to him to note the figures growing larger, and a great pain to him to note the rare occasions when they had shrunk a little in twenty-four hours. It so happened that this old gentleman lost a considerable sum of money which he had imprudently lent to a distant and foreign country too much praised in the newspapers, and he worried so much over the loss that he became ill and could not go to his office. His sons kept on the business for him, and every succeeding week they lost more and more of the money. But such was their filial piety that every night they gave the old gentleman false information, and that in some detail, so that he could put down his little rows of figures and see them growing larger night after night. You see, it was not the wealth that he desired, it was the increase in the little rows of figures; the wealth he consumed was the same; he wore the same clothes, he ate the same food, he lived in the same house as before, and he had for a companion eternally one or another of the two nurses provided by the doctor. The figures increasing regularly as they did filled him with a greater and a greater joy. After two years of this business he came to die, but his passing was a very happy one: he blessed his sons fervently and told them that nothing had more comforted his old age than their sober business sense; they had nearly doubled the family fortune during their short administration of it; he congratulated them and was now ready to go to his God in peace. Which he did, and two weeks after the petition in bankruptcy was presented by the young people themselves, always the more decent way of doing it: but the old man had died content.

Which parable leads up to the point at which I should have begun all this, which is, that once in my life, in the year 1901, during a heavy fog in the early morning of the month of November, in London, I met a perfectly contented man. He was the conductor of an omnibus. These vehicles depended in those days entirely on the traction of horses. They were therefore slow, and as the night, or rather the early morning, was foggy (it was a little after one) people going Westward--journalists for instance, who are compelled to be up at such hours--did not choose to travel in this way. There was no one in the ’bus but myself. I sat next the door as it rumbled along; there was one of those little faint oil lamps above it which are unique in Christendom for the small amount of light they give. It was impossible to read, but by the slight glimmer of it I saw suddenly revealed like a vision the face of that really happy man. It was a round face, framed in a somewhat slovenly hat and coat collar, but not slovenly in feature, though not severe. And as its owner clung to the rail and swung with the movements of the ’bus he whistled softly to himself a genial little air. It was not I but he that began the conversation. He told me that few things were a greater blessing in life than gas fires, especially if one could regulate the amount of gas by a penny in the slot. He pointed out to me that in this way there were never any disputes as to the amount of gas used, and he also said that it kept a man from the curse of credit, which was the ruin of so many. I told him that in my house there was no gas, but that his description almost made me wish there was. And so it did, for he went on to tell me how you could cook any mortal thing with any degree of heat and at any speed by the simple regulation of a tap.

It may be imagined how anxious I was on meeting so rare a being to go more deeply into the matter and to find out on what such happiness reposed; but I did not know where to begin, because there are always some questions which men do not like asked, and unless one knows all about a man’s life one does not know what those questions are. Luckily for me, he volunteered. He told me that he was married and had eight children. He told me his wages, which were astonishingly low, his hours of labour, which were incredibly long, and he further told me that on reaching the yard that night he would have to walk a mile to his home. He said he liked this, because it made him sleep, and he added that in his profession the great difficulty was to get enough exercise. He told me how often a day off was allowed him and how greatly he enjoyed it. He told me the rent which he paid for his two rooms, which appeared to be one-third of his income, and congratulated himself upon the cheapness and commodity of the place; and so he went on talking as we rumbled down the King’s Road, going farther and farther and farther West. My day would end in a few hundred yards; his not for a mile or two more. Yet his content was far the greater, and it affected me, I am sorry to say, with wonder rather than with a similar emotion of repose and pleasure.

The next part of his conversation discovered what you will often find in the conversation of contented men (or, rather, of partially contented men, for no other absolutely contented man have I ever met except this one), that is, a certain good-humoured contempt for those who grumble. He told me that the drivers of ’buses were never happy; they had all that life can give: high wages, fresh open-air work, the dignity of controlling horses, and, what is perhaps more important, ceaseless companionship, for not only had they the companionship of chance people who would come and sit on the front seats of the ’bus outside, but they could and did make appointments with friends who would come and ride some part of the way and talk to them. Then, again, as their work was more skilled, their tenure of it was more secure, nor were they constrained to shout “Liverpool Street” at the top of their voices for hours on end, nor to say “Benk, Benk, Benk” in imitation of the pom-pom. Nevertheless they grumbled. He was careful to tell me that they were not really unhappy. What he condemned in them was rather the habit and, as it were, the fashion of grumbling. It seemed as though no weather pleased them; it was always either too hot or too cold; they took no pleasure in the healthy English rain beating upon their faces, and warm spring days seemed to put them in a worse humour than ever. He condemned all this in drivers.

When we had come to the corner of my street in Chelsea as I got out I offered him a cigar which I had upon me. He told me he did not smoke. He was going on to tell me that he did not drink, and would, I had no doubt, if he had had further leisure, have told me his religion, his politics, and much more about himself; but though the ’buses in those days would wait very long at street corners they would not wait for ever, and that particular ’bus rumbled and bumped away. I looked after it a little wistfully, for fear that I might never see a happy man again. And I walked down my street towards my home more slowly than usual, thinking upon the thing that I had just experienced.

I confess I found it a very difficult matter. That experience not only challenged all that I had heard of happiness, but also re-awoke the insistent and imperative question which men put to their gods and which never receives an answer. Ecstasy is independent of all material conditions whatsoever. That great sense of rectitude which so often embitters men but permits them to support pain is independent of material conditions also. But these are not contented moods: oblivion is ready to every man’s hand, and even the most unfortunate secure a little sleep, and even the most tortured slaves know that at last, for all the rules and fines and regulations of the workshop, they cannot be forbidden to die; but such a prospect is not equivalent to content. Further, there is a philosophy, rarely achieved but conspicuous in every rank of fortune, which so steadily regards all external accident as to remain indifferent to the strain of living and even to be, to some extent, master of physical pain. But that philosophy, that mournful philosophy which I have heard called “the permanent religion of mankind,” is not content: on the contrary, it is very close indeed to despair. It is the philosophy of which the Roman Empire perished. It is the philosophy which, just because it utterly failed to satisfy the heart of man, powerfully accelerated the triumph of the Church, as the weight and pressure of water powerfully accelerate the rise of a man’s body through it, to the sunlight and the air above, which are native and necessary to him. No, it was not the philosophy of the Stoics which had laid a foundation for the ’bus-conductor’s soul.

I could not explain that content of his in any way save upon the hypothesis that he was mad.

The Missioner

In one of those great halls which the winter darkens and which are proper to the North, there sat a group of men, kindly and full of the winter night and of their food and drink, upon which for many hours they had regaled together, and not only full of song, but satiated with it, so long and so loudly had they sung. They all claimed descent from the Gods, but in varying degrees, and their Chief was descended from the father of the Gods, by no doubtful lineage, for it was his granfer’s mother to whom a witch in the woods had told the story of her birth.

In the midst of them as they so sat, a large fire smouldered, but having been long lit, sent up so strong a shaft of rising air as drew all smoke with it, towering to a sort of open cage upon the high roof tree of that hall whence it could escape to heaven.

I say they were tired of song and filled with many good things, but chiefly with companionship. They had landed but recently from the sea; the noise of the sea was in their ears as they so sat round the fire, still talking low, and a Priest who was among them refused to interpret the sound; but he said in a manner that some mocked doubtfully, others heard with awe, that the sea never sounded save upon nights when the Gods were abroad. He was the Priest of a lesser God, but he was known throughout the fleet of those pirate fishermen for his great skill in the interpretation of dreams, and he could tell by the surface of the water in the nightless midsummer where the shoals were to be found.

He said that on that night the Gods were abroad, and, indeed, the quality of the wind as it came down the gulf of the fjord provoked such a fancy, for it rose and fell as though by a volition, and sometimes one would have said that it was a quiet night, and, again, a moment after, one heard a noise like a voice round the corners of the great beams, and the wind pitied or appealed or called. Then a man who was a serf, but very skilled in woodwork, lying among the serfs in the outer ring beyond the fire in the straw, called up and said: “Lords, he is right; the Gods have come down from the Dovrefield; they are abroad. Let us bless our doors.”

It was when he had so spoken that upon the main gate of that Hall (a large double engine of foot-thick pine swung upon hinges wrought many generations ago by the sons of the Gods) came a little knocking. It was a little tapping like the tapping of a bird. It rang musically of metal and of hollow metal; it moved them curiously, and a very young man who was of the blood said to his father: “Perhaps a God would warn us.”

The keeper of the door was a huge and kindly man, foolish but good for lifting, with whom by daylight children played, and who upon such evenings lay silent and contented enough to hear his wittier fellows. This serf rose from the straw and went to unbar. But the Chief put his hand forward, and bade him stay that they might still hear that little tapping. Then he lowered his hand and the gate was swung open.

Cold came with it for a moment, and the night air; light, and as though blown before that draught, drifted into the hall a tall man, very young, who bowed to them with a gesture they did not know, and first asked in a tongue they could not tell, whether any man might interpret for him.

Then one old man who was their pilot and who had often run down into the vineyard lands, sometimes for barter, sometimes for war, always for a wage, said two words or three in that new tongue, hesitatingly. His face was wrinkled and hard; he had very bright but very pale grey eyes that were full of humility. He said three words of greeting which he had painfully learned twenty years before, from a priest, upon the rocks of Brittany, who had also given him smooth stones wherewith to pray; and with these smooth stones the old Pilot continually prayed sometimes to the greater and sometimes to the lesser Gods. His wife had died during the first war between Hrolf and the Twin Brothers; he had come home to find her dead and sanctified, and, being Northern, he had since been also a silent man. This Pilot, I say, quoted the words of greeting in the strange tongue. Then the tall young stranger man advanced into the circle of the firelight and made a sign upon his head and his breast and his shoulders, which was like the sign of the Hammer of Thor, and yet which was not the sign of the Hammer of Thor. When he had done this, the Pilot attempted that same sign, but he failed at it, for it was many years since he had been taught it upon the Breton coast. He knew it to be magical and beneficent, and he was ashamed to fail.

The Chief of those who were descended from the Gods and were seated round the fire, turned to the Priest and said: “Is this a guest, a stranger sent, or is he a man come as an enemy who should be led out again into the night? Have you any divination?”

“I have no divination,” said the Priest. “I cannot tell one thing or the other, nor each from the other in the case of this young man. But perhaps he is one of the Gods seeking shelter among men, or perhaps he is a fancy thing, warlock, but not doing evil. Or perhaps he is from the demons; or perhaps he is a man like ourselves, and seeking shelter during some long wandering.”

When the Chief heard this he asked the Pilot, not as a man possessing divine knowledge, but as one who had travelled and knew the sea, whether he knew this Stranger and whence he came. To which the Pilot answered:

“Captain, I do not know this young man nor whence he comes, nor any of his tribe, nor have I seen any like him save once three slaves who stood in a market-place of the Romans in a town that was subject to a great lord who was a Frank and not a Breton, and who was hated by the people of his town so that later they slew him. Then these three slaves were loosened, and they came to the house of the Priest of the Gods of that country, and they told me the name of the people whence they sprang. But I have forgotten it. Only I know that it is among the vineyard lands. There the day and the night are equally divided all the year long, and if the snow falls it falls gently and for a very little while, and there are all manner of birds, and those people are very rich, and they have great houses of stone. Now I believe this Stranger to be a man like ourselves, born of a woman, and coming northward upon some purpose which we do not know. It may be for merchandise, or it may be for the love of singing and of telling stories to men.”

When he had said this they all looked at the Stranger and they saw that he had with him a little instrument that was not known to them, for it was a flute of metal. It was of silver, as they could see, long drawn and very delicately made, and with this had he summoned at the gate.

The Chief then brought out with his own hands a carven chair, on which he seated the Stranger, and he put into his right hand a gold cup taken from the Romans in a city of the Franks, upon which was faintly carved a cross, and round the rim of which were four precious stones, an emerald, a ruby, an amethyst, and a diamond; and going to a skin which he had taken in a Gascon raid, he poured out wine into that chalice and went down upon one knee as is proper to strangers when they are to be entertained, and put a cloth over his arms and bade him drink. But when the young man saw the cross faintly carved upon the cup and the four precious stones at the corners of it, he shuddered a little and put it aside as though it were a sacred thing, at which they all marvelled. Yet he longed for the wine. And they, understanding that in some way this ornament was sacred to his Gods, gently took it from him and through courtesy put it aside upon a separate place which was reserved for honourable vessels, and poured him other wine into a wooden stoop; and this he drank, holding it out now to one and now to another, but last and chiefly to their Captain; and as he drank it he drank it with signs of amity.

Then by way of payment for so much kindness he took his silver flute and blew upon it shrill notes, all very sweet, and the sweeter for their choice and distance one from another, until they listened, listening every man with those beside him like one man, for they had never heard such a sound; and as he played one man saw one thing in his mind and one another thing; for one man saw the long and easy summer seas that roll after a prosperous boat filled with spoil, whether of fishes or of booty, when the square sail is taken aft by a warm wind in the summer season, and the high mountains of home first show beyond the line of the sea. And another man saw a little valley, narrow, with deep pasture, wherein he had been bred and had learned to plow the land with horses before ever he had come to the handling of a tiller or the bursting of water upon the bows. And another saw no distinct and certain thing, but vague and pleasurable hopes fulfilled, and the advent of great peace. And another saw those heights of the hills to which he ever desired to return.

But the old Pilot, straining with wonder in his eyes as the music rose, thought confusedly of all that he had seen and known; of the twirling tides upon the Breton coast and of the great stone towns, of the bright vestments of the ordered armies in the market-places and of the vineyard land.