Chapter XVIII

'Alas!' cried Paul, 'what can be done to convince one half of Humanity that it is really devoted to the higher pleasures and does not care for the lower--at least nothing to speak of?' The poor man was in a state of dreadful perplexity, and felt wellnigh distracted. At last a light broke in on him. He remembered that as one of his most revered masters, Professor Tyndall, had admitted, a great part of Humanity would always need a religion, and that Virginia now had none. He at once rushed back to her. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'all is explained now. You cannot be in love with me, for that would be unlawful passion. Unlawful passion is unreasonable, and unreasonable passion would quite upset a system of pure reason, which is what exact thought shows us is soon going to govern the world. No! the emotions that you fancy are directed to me are in reality cosmic emotion--in other words, are the reasonable religion of the future. I must now initiate you in its solemn and unspeakably significant worship.'

'Religion!' exclaimed Virginia, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. 'It is not kind of you to be making fun of me. There is no God, no soul, and no supernatural order, and above all there is no hell. How then can you talk to me about religion?'

'You,' replied Paul, 'are associating religion with theology, as indeed the world hitherto always has done. But those two things, as Professor Huxley well observes, have absolutely nothing to do with each other. "It may be," says that great teacher, "that the object of a man's religion is an ideal of sensual enjoyment, or----"'

'Ah!' cried Virginia, 'that is my religion, Paul.'

'Nonsense!' replied Paul; 'that cannot be the religion of half Humanity, else high, holy, solemn, awful morality would never be able to stand on its own basis. See, the night has fallen, the glorious moon has arisen, the stupendous stars are sparkling in the firmament. Come down with me to the sea-shore, where we may be face to face with nature, and I will show you then what true religion--what true worship is.'

The two went out together. They stood on the smooth sands, which glittered white and silvery in the dazzling moonlight All was hushed. The gentle murmur of the trees, and the soft splash of the sea, seemed only to make the silence audible. The Professor paused close beside Virginia, and took her hand. Virginia liked that, and thought that religion without theology was not perhaps so bad after all. Meanwhile Paul had fixed his eyes on the moon. Then, in a voice almost broken with emotion, he whispered, 'The prayer of the man of science, it has been said, must be for the most part of the silent sort. He who said that was wrong. It need not be silent; it need only be inarticulate. I have discovered an audible and a reasonable liturgy which will give utterance to the full to the religion of exact thought. Let us both join our voices, and let us croon at the moon.'

The Professor at once began a long, low howling. Virginia joined him, until she was out of breath.

'Oh, Paul,' she said at last, 'is this more rational than the Lord's Prayer?'

'Yes,' said the Professor, 'for we can analyse and comprehend that; but true religious feeling, as Professor Tyndall tells us, we can neither analyse nor comprehend. See how big nature is, and how little--ah, how little!--we know about it. Is it not solemn, and sublime, and awful? Come let us howl again.'

The Professor's devotional fervour grew every moment. At last he put his hand to his mouth, and began hooting like an owl, till it seemed that all the island echoed to him. The louder Paul hooted and howled, the more near did he draw to Virginia.

'Ah!' he said, as he put his arm about her waist, 'it is in solemn moments like this that the solidarity of mankind becomes apparent.'

Virginia, during the last few moments, had stuck her fingers in her ears. She now took them out, and, throwing her arms round Paul's neck, tried, with her cheek on his shoulder, to make another little hoot; but the sound her lips formed was much more like a kiss. The power of religion was at last too much for Paul.

'For the sake of cosmic emotion,' he exclaimed, 'O other half of Humanity, and for the sake of rational religion, both of which are showing themselves under quite a new light to me, I will kiss you.'

The Professor was bending down his face over her, when, as if by magic, he started, stopped, and remained as one petrified. Amidst the sharp silence, there rang a human shout from the rocks.

'Oh!' shrieked Virginia, falling on her knees, 'it is a miracle! it is a miracle! And I know--merciful heavens--I know the meaning of it. God is angry with us for pretending that we do not believe on Him.'

The Professor was as white as a sheet; but he struggled with his perturbation manfully.

'It is not a miracle,' he cried, 'but an hallucination. It is an axiom with exact thinkers that all proofs of the miraculous are hallucinations.'

'See,' shrieked Virginia again, 'they are coming, they are coming. Do not you see them?'

Paul looked, and there sure enough, were two figures, a male and a female, advancing slowly towards them, across the moonlit sand.

'It is nothing,' cried Paul; 'it cannot possibly be anything. I protest, in the name of science, that it is an optical delusion.'

Suddenly the female figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is he!'

In another moment the male figure exclaimed, 'Thank God, it is she!'

'My husband!' gasped Virginia.

'My wife!' replied the bishop, for it was none other than he. 'Welcome to Chasuble Island. By the blessing of God it is on your own home you have been wrecked, and you have been living in the very house that I had intended to prepare for you. Providentially, too, Professor Darnley's wife has called here, in her search for her husband, who has overstayed his time. See, my love, my dove, my beauty, here is the monkey I promised you as a pet, which broke loose a few days ago, and which I was in the act of looking for when your joint cries attracted us, and we found you.'

A yell of delight here broke from the Professor. The eyes of the others were turned on him, and he was seen embracing wildly a monkey which the bishop led by a chain. 'The missing link! he exclaimed, 'the missing link!'

'Nonsense!' cried the sharp tones of a lady with a green gown and grey corkscrew curls. 'It is nothing but a monkey that the good bishop has been trying to tame for his wife. Don't you see her name engraved on the collar?'

The shrill accents acted like a charm upon Paul. He sprang away from the creature that he had been just caressing. He gazed for a moment on Virginia's lovely form, her exquisite toilette, and her melting eyes. Then he turned wildly to the green gown and the grey corkscrew curls. Sorrow and superstition, he felt, were again invading Humanity. 'Alas!' he exclaimed at last, 'I do now indeed believe in hell.'

'And I,' cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the arms of her bishop, 'once more believe in heaven.'

NOTES.

'We now find it (_the earth_) not only swathed by an atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is, how were they introduced?... The conclusion of science would undoubtedly be, that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception arise _solely_ from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in the human mind.... Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way, and no other.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Is this egg (_from which the human being springs_) matter? I hold it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so, undoubtedly. If there be anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it?' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Matter I define as the mysterious thing by which all this is accomplished.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I do not think that the materialist is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they _explain_ nothing. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'Who shall exaggerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those theologies which have represented the Deity ... as a sort of pedantic drill-sergeant of mankind, to whom no valour, no long-tried loyalty, could atone for the misplacement of a button of the uniform, or the misunderstanding of a paragraph of the "regulations and instructions"?' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'(_To the Jesuit imagination_) God is obviously a large individual, who holds the leading-strings of the universe, and orders its steps from a position outside it all.... According to it (_this notion_) the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clark Maxwell present to us under the guise of a manufacturer of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population are "mostly fools," but little profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the divine operations.... In the presence of this mystery (_the mystery of life_) the notion of an atomic manufacturer and artificer of souls, raises the doubt whether those who entertain it were ever really penetrated by the solemnity of the problem for which they offer such a solution.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'I look forward, however, to a time when the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments of clearness and vigour, shall be the stable and permanent possession of purer and mightier minds than ours--purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter, and their more faithful conformity to its laws.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The world, as it is, is growing daily dimmer before my eyes. The world, as it is to be, is ever growing brighter.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'... When you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'We, too, turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless, and even, it may be, more patient in searching for realities behind the gloom. That which shall come _after_ is no less solemn to us than to you.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Theological hypotheses of a new and heterogeneous existence have deadened our interest in the realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity of an earthly life.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we read, the calm and humane words of Condorcet, on the very edge of his yawning grave, we learn, from the conviction of posthumous activity (not posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a living incorporation with the glorious future of his race, can give a patience and happiness equal to that of any martyr of theology.... Once make it (_i.e._ "this sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows") the basis of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a religion, and this (_the conversion of the masses_) will prove, perhaps, an easier task than that of teaching Greeks and Romans, Syrians and Moors, to look forward to a life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial heaven.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We make the future life, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our future is simply an active existence prolonged by society; and our future life rests not in any vague yearning, of which we have as little evidence as we have definite conception: it rests on a perfectly certain truth ... that the actions, feelings, thoughts, of each one of us, do marvellously influence and mould each other.... Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after a true life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that we have an immortal something within us--but that in very truth we ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'As we _live for others_ in life, so we _live in others_ after death.... How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot die. We cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our faculties.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'We cannot even say that we shall continue to love; but we know that we shall be loved.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy earthly life, that we can see the majesty, as well as the glory, of the world beyond the grave; and then only will it fulfil its moral and religious purpose as the great guide of human conduct.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future generations.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.

'The humblest life that ever turned a sod sends a wave--no, more than a wave, a life--through the evergrowing harmony of human society.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'Not a single nature, in its entirety, but leaves its influence for good or for evil. _As a fact, the good prevail_.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

'To our friends and loved ones we shall give the most worthy honour and tribute if we never say nor remember that they are dead, but, contrariwise, that they have lived; that hereby the brotherly force and flow of their action and work may be carried over the gulf of death, and made immortal in the true and healthy life which they worthily had and used.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'It cannot be doubted that the "spiritual body" of this book (_The Unseen Universe_) will be used to support a belief that the dead are subject either to the _shame and suffering of a Christian Heaven_ and Hell, or to the degrading service of a modern witch. From _each_ of these _unspeakable profanities_ let us hope and endeavour that the memories of great and worthy men may be finally relieved.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'I choose the noble part of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, "I covet truth." The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The highest, as it is the only, content is to be attained, not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually striving towards those high peaks, when, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good--"a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night."' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'If it can be shown by observation and experiment, that theft, murder, and adultery, do not tend to diminish the happiness of society, then, in the absence of any but natural knowledge, they are not social immoralities.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not strong enough to hold its own.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'I object to the very general use of the terms religion and theology, as if they were synonymous, or _indeed had anything whatever to do with one another_.... Religion is an affair of the affections. It may be that the object of a man's religion--the ideal which he worships--is an ideal of sensual enjoyment.' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

'In his hour of health ... when the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed with the same awe. It associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'He will see what drivellers even men of strenuous intellects may become,' though exclusively dwelling and dealing with theological chimeras. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'The two kinds of cosmic emotion run together and become one. The microcosm is viewed only in relation to human action, nature is presented to the emotions as the guide and teacher of humanity. And the microcosm is viewed only as tending to complete correspondence with the external; human conduct is subject for reverence only in so far as it is consonant to the demiurgic law, in harmony with the teaching of divine Nature.' PROFESSOR CLIFFORD.

'The world will have religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom of "spiritualism."' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

'All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral and spiritual life.... I do not confine my language to the philosophy or religion of Comte; for the same conception of man is common to many philosophies and many religions.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.

End of Project Gutenberg's The New Paul and Virginia, by W. H. Mallock

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