START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FASHIONABLE PHILOSOPHY*** Transcribed from the 1887 William Blackwood and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk FASHIONABLE PHILOSOPHY AND OTHER SKETCHES [Title page: title.jpg] BY LAURENCE OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF 'PICCADILLY,' 'ALTIORA PETO,' 'MASOLLAM,' ETC. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXVII PRICE ONE SHILLING PREFACE. That railway travel is not, as a rule, conducive to serious thought, may fairly be inferred from the class of literature displayed on the bookstalls at the stations. I have therefore refrained from any attempt to excite the reflective faculties of the reader, excepting in the first and third of the accompanying sketches, and even in these have only ventured to suggest ideas, the full scope and pregnancy of which it must be left to his own idiosyncrasy to appreciate and develop, the more especially as they bear upon a certain current of investigation which has recently become popular. I have to express my thanks to the Editor of the 'Nineteenth Century Review' for the kind permission he has granted me to reproduce "The Sisters of Thibet"; and I avail myself of the opportunity thus afforded of removing the impression which, to my surprise, was conveyed to me by letters from numerous correspondents, that the article contained any record of my own personal experiences. The satire was suggested by the work of an author whose sincerity I do not doubt, and for whose motives I have the highest respect, in order to point out what appears to me the defective morality, from an altruistic and practical point of view, of a system of which he is the principal exponent in this country, and which, under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, still seems to possess some fascination for a certain class of minds. The other articles originally appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and I wish to express my acknowledgments to my publishers for their usual courtesy in allowing me to republish them in this form. ATHENAEUM CLUB, _January_ 1887. CONTENTS. Fashionable Philosophy The Brigand's Bride: a tale of Southern Italy The Sisters of Thibet Adolphus: a comedy of affinities FASHIONABLE PHILOSOPHY. SCENE--_A London Drawing-room_. TIME--5 _o'clock_ P.M. _The afternoon tea apparatus in one corner of the room_, _and_ Lady Fritterly _on a couch in another_. The Hon. Mrs Allmash _is announced_. _Lady Fritterly_. How too kind, dear, of you to come, and so early, too! I've got such a lot of interesting people coming, and we are going to discuss the religion of the future. _Mrs Allmash_. How quite delightful! I do so long for something more substantial than the theologies of the past! It is becoming quite puzzling to know what to teach one's children: mine are getting old enough now to understand about things, and one ought to teach them something. I was talking about it to that charming Professor Germsell last night. _Lady Fritterly_. Well, I hope he is coming presently, so you will be able to continue your conversation. Then there is Mr Coldwaite, the celebrated Comtist; and Mr Fussle, who writes those delightful articles on prehistoric aesthetic evolution; and Mr Drygull, the eminent theosophist, whose stories about esoteric Buddhism are quite too extraordinary, and who has promised to bring a Khoja--a most interesting moral specimen, my dear--who has just arrived from Bombay; and Lord Fondleton. _Mrs Allmash_. Lord Fondleton! I did not know that he was interested in such subjects. _Lady Fritterly_. He says he is, dear; between ourselves--but this, of course, is strictly _entre nous_--I rather think that it is I who interest him: but I encourage him, poor fellow; it may wean him from the unprofitable life he is leading, and turn his mind to higher things. Oh! I almost forgot,---then there is my new beauty! _Mrs Allmash_. Your new beauty! _Lady Fritterly_. Yes; if you could only have dined with me the other night, you would have met her. I had such a perfect little dinner. Just think! A poet, an actor, a journalist, a painter, a wit, and a new beauty. I'll tell you how I found her. She really belongs at present to Lady Islington and myself; but of course, now we have started her, all the other people will snap her up. We found that we both owed that vulgar upstart, Mrs Houndsley, a visit, and went there together--because I always think two people are less easily bored than one--when suddenly the most perfect apparition you ever beheld stood before us;--an old master dress, an immense pattern, a large hat rim encircling a face, some rich auburn hair inside, and the face a perfect one. Well, you know, it turned out that she was not born in the purple--her husband is just a clerk in Burley's Bank; but we both insisted on being introduced to her--for, you see, my dear, there is no doubt about it, she is a ready- made beauty. The same idea occurred to Lady Islington, so we agreed as we drove away that we would bring her out. The result is, that she went to Islington House on Tuesday, and came to me on Thursday, and created a perfect furor on both occasions; so now she is fairly started. _Mrs Allmash_. How wonderfully clever and fortunate you are, dear! What is her name? _Lady Fritterly_. Mrs Gloring. _Mrs Allmash_. Oh yes; everybody was talking about her at the Duchess's last night. I am dying to see her; but they say that she is rather a fool. _Lady Fritterly_. Pure spite and jealousy. Yet that is the way these Christian women of society obey the precept of their religion, and love their neighbours as themselves. [Lord Fondleton _is announced_, _accompanied by a stranger_. _Lord Fondleton_. How d'ye do, Lady Fritterly? I am sure you will excuse my taking the liberty of introducing Mr Rollestone, a very old friend of mine, to you; he has only just returned to England, after an absence of so many years that he is quite a stranger in London. [Lady Fritterly _is_ "_delighted_." _The rest of the party arrive in rapid succession_. _Mrs Allmash_. Dear Mr Germsell, I was just telling Lady Fritterly what an interesting conversation we were having last night when it was unfortunately interrupted. I shall be so glad if you would explain more fully now what you were telling me. I am sure everybody would be interested. _Lady Fritterly_. Oh do, Mr Germsell; it would be quite too nice of you. And, Mr Drygull, will you ask the Khoja to-- _Mr Drygull_. My friend's name is Ali Seyyid, Lady Fritterly. _Lady Fritterly_. Pray excuse my stupidity, Mr Allyside, and come and sit near me. Lord Fondleton, find Mrs Gloring a chair. _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. Who's our black friend? _Mrs Gloring_. I am sure I don't know. I think Lady Fritterly called him a codger. _Lord Fondleton_. Ah, he looks like it,--and a rum one at that, as our American cousins say. _Mrs Gloring_. Hush! Mr Germsell is going to begin. _Mr Germsell_. Mrs Allmash asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency of the past. _Mr Fussle_. Pardon me, but the religion of the future must be the result of an evolutionary process, and I don't see how generalisations of past expediency are to help the evolution of humanity. _Germsell_. They throw light upon it; and the study of the evolutionary process so far teaches us how we may evolve in the future. For instance, you have only got to think of evolution as divided into moral, astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, aesthetic, and so forth, and you will find that there is always an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself, and that therefore there is but one evolution going on everywhere after the same manner. The work of science has been not to extend our experience, for that is impossible, but to systematise it; and in that systematisation of it will be found the religion of which we are in search. _Drygull_. May I ask why you deem it impossible that our experience can be extended? _Germsell_. Because it has itself defined its limits. The combined experience of humanity, so far as its earliest records go, has been limited by laws, the nature of which have been ascertained: it is impossible that it should be transcended without violation of the conclusions arrived at by positive science. _Drygull_. I can more easily understand that the conclusions arrived at by men of science should be limited, than that the experience of humanity should be confined by those conclusions; but I fail to perceive why those philosophers should deny the existence of certain human faculties, because they don't happen to possess them themselves. I think I know a Rishi who can produce experiences which would scatter all their conclusions to the winds, when the whole system which is built upon them would collapse. _Mrs Gloring_ [_aside to_ Lord Fondleton]. Pray, Lord Fondleton, can you tell me what a Rishi is? _Lord Fondleton_. A man who has got into higher states, you know--what I heard Mr Drygull call a transcendentalist the other day, whatever that may be. I don't understand much about these matters myself, but I take it he is a sort of evolved codger. _Mrs Allmash_. Oh, how awfully interesting! Dear Mr Drygull, do tell us some of the extraordinary things the Rishi can do. _Drygull_. If you will only all of you listen attentively, and if Mr Germsell will have the goodness to modify to some degree the prejudiced attitude of mind common to all men of science, you will hear him as plainly as I can at this moment beating a tom-tom in his cottage in the Himalayas. [Mr Germsell _gets up impatiently_, _and walks to the other end of the back drawing-room_. _Drygull_ [_casting a compassionate glance after him_]. Perhaps it is better so. Now please, Lady Fritterly, I must request a few moments of the most profound silence on the part of all. You will not hear the sound as though coming from a distance, but it will seem rather like a muffled drumming taking place inside your head, scarcely perceptible at first, when its volume will gradually increase. _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. Some bad champagne produced the same phenomenon in my head last night. _Lady Fritterly_ [_severely_]. Hush! Lord Fondleton. [_There is a dead silence for some minutes_. _Mrs Gloring_ [_excitedly_]. Oh, I hear it! It is something like a woodpecker inside of one. _Drygull_. Not a word, my dear madam, if you please. _Lady Fritterly_ [_after a long pause_]. I imagine I hear a very faint something; there it goes--boom, boom, boom--at the back of my tympanum. _Lord Fondleton_. That's not like a woodpecker. _Mrs Gloring_. No; it seems to me more like tic-tic-tic. _Mrs Allmash_. How too tiresome! I can't hear anything. I suppose it is on account of the rumble of the carriages. _Lord Fondleton_ [_whispers to_ Mrs Gloring]. I hear something inside of me; do you know what? _Mrs Gloring_. No; what? _Lord Fondleton_. The beating of my own heart. Can't you guess for whom? _Mrs Gloring_. No. Perhaps the Rishi makes it beat. _Lord Fondleton_. Dear Mrs Gloring, you are the Rishi for whom-- _Mrs Gloring_. Hush! _Lady Fritterly_. There, it is getting louder, like distant artillery, and yet so near. Oh, Mr Drygull, what a wonderful man the Rishi must be! _Drygull_. Yes; he knew that at this hour to-day I should need an illustration of his power, and he is kindly furnishing us with one. This is an experience which I think our friend over there [_looking towards_ Mr Germsell] would find it difficult to classify. _Germsell_. Fussle, have the goodness to step here for a moment--[_points to a woman beating a carpet in the back-yard of an adjoining house_]. That is the tom-tom in the Himalayas they are listening to. _Fussle_. Well, now, do you know, I don't feel quite sure of that. I was certainly conscious of a sort of internal hearing of something when you called me, which was not that; it was as though I had fiddlestrings in my head and somebody was beginning to strum upon them. _Germsell_. Fiddlestrings indeed--say rather fiddlesticks. I am surprised at a sensible man like yourself listening to such nonsense. _Fussle_ [_testily_]. It is much greater nonsense for you to tell me I don't hear something I do hear, than for me to hear something you can't hear. You may be deaf, while my sense of hearing may be evolving. Can you hear what Lord Fondleton is saying to Mrs Gloring at this moment? _Germsell_. No, and I don't want to. _Fussle_. Ah, there it is. You won't hear anything you don't want to. Now I can, and he ought not to say it;--look how she is blushing. Oh, I forgot you are short-sighted. Well, you see, I can hear further than you, and see further than you. Why should you set a limit on the evolution of the senses, and say that no man in the future can ever hear or see further than men have in the past? How dare you, sir, with your imperfect faculties and your perfunctory method of research, which can only cover an infinitesimal period in the existence of this planet, venture to limit the potentialities of those laws which have already converted us from ascidians into men, and which may as easily evolve in us the faculty of hearing tom-toms in the Himalayas while we are sitting here, as of that articulate speech or intelligent reasoning which, owing to their operation, we now possess? _Germsell_. Pardon me, you do not possess them, Mr Fussle. _Lady Fritterly_. Mr Fussle, might I ask you to take this cup of tea to Mrs Allmash? Mr Germsell, it would be too kind of you to hand Mrs Gloring the cake. _Fussle_ [_savagely_]. We will continue this conversation at the Minerva. _Mrs Allmash_ [_apart to the_ Khoja]. Oh, Mr Allyside, I am so glad to hear that you speak English so perfectly! I want you to tell me all about your religion; perhaps it may help us, you know, to find the religion of the future, which we are all longing for. And I am so interested in oriental religions! there is something so charmingly picturesque about them. I quite dote on those dear old Shastras, and Vedas, and Puranas; they contain such a lot of beautiful things, you know. _Ali Seyyid_. I know as little, madam, of the Indian books you mention as I do of the Bible, which I have always heard was a very good book, and contained also a great many beautiful things. I am neither a Hindoo nor a Buddhist,--in fact, it is forbidden to me by my religion to tell you exactly what I am. _Mrs Allmash_. But indeed I won't tell anybody if you will only confide in me. Oh, this mystery is too exquisitely delicious! Who knows, perhaps you might make a convert of me? _Ali Seyyid_ [_with an admiring gaze_]. Madam, you would be a prize so well worth winning, that you almost tempt me. The first of our secrets is that we are all things to all men, until we are quite sure of the sympathy of the listener; then we venture a step further. _Mrs Allmash_. How wise that is! and how unlike the system adopted by Christians! You may be sure of my most entire sympathy. _Ali Seyyid_. The next principle is--but this is a profound secret, which you must promise not to repeat--the rejection of all fixed rules of religion or morality. It really does not matter in the least what you do: the internal disposition is the only thing of any value. Now, as far as I understand, you have already got rid of the religion, or you would not be looking for a new one; all you have to do is to get rid of the morality, and there you are. _Mrs Allmash_ [_with an expression of horror and alarm_]. Yes, there I should be indeed. Oh, Mr Allyside, what a dreadful man you are! Who started such an extraordinary doctrine? _Ali Seyyid_. Well, his name was Hassan-bin-Saba--commonly known among Westerns as the "Old Man of the Mountain." His followers, owing to the value they attached to murder as a remedial agent, have been known by the name of the "Assassins." _Mrs Allmash_. Oh, good gracious! _Lady Fritterly_. My dear Louisa, what is the matter? You look quite frightened. _Ali Seyyid_. Mrs Allmash is a little alarmed because I proposed a new morality for the future, as well as a new religion. _Mr Coldwaite_. Excuse me; but in discussions of this sort, I think it is most important that we should clearly understand the meanings of the terms we employ. Now I deny that any difference subsists between religion and morality. That any such distinction should exist in men's minds is due to the fact that dogma is inseparably connected with religion. If you eliminate dogma, what does religion consist of but morality? Substitute the love of Humanity for the love of the Unknowable--which is the subject of worship of Mr Germsell; or of the Deity, who is the object of worship of the majority of mankind--and you obtain a stimulus to morality which will suffice for all human need. It is in this great emotion, as it seems to me, that you will find at once the religion and the morality of the future. _Germsell_. From what source do you get the force which enables you to love humanity with a devotion so intense that it shall elevate your present moral standard? _Coldwaite_. From humanity itself. I am not going to be entrapped into getting it from any unknowable source; the love of humanity, whether it be humanity as existing, or when absorbed by death into the general mass, is perpetually generating itself. _Mrs Allmash_. Then it must produce itself from what was there before; therefore it must be the same love, which keeps on going round and round. _Lord Fondleton_. A sort of circular love, in fact. I've often felt it: but I didn't think it right to encourage it. _Lady Fritterly_. Lord Fondleton, how can you be so silly? Don't pay attention to him, Mr Coldwaite. I confess I still don't see how you can get a higher love out of humanity than humanity has already got in it, unless you are to look to some other source for it. _Coldwaite_. Why, mayn't it evolve from itself? _Germsell_. How can it evolve without a propulsive force behind it? The thing is too palpable an absurdity to need argument. You can no more fix limits to the origin of force than you can destroy its persistency. _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside_]. That seems to me one of those sort of things no fellow can understand. _Germsell_. All you can say of it is that it is a conditioned effect of an unconditioned cause. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a commonplace of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence will see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favour of a preconceived theory can explain its non-acceptance. I think my friend Mr Herbert Spencer has demonstrated this conclusively. _Coldwaite_. Pardon me; do I understand you to say that the mental process which enabled Mr Spencer to elaborate his system of philosophy, or that the profound emotion which finds its expression in a love for humanity, are the result of physical force alone? _Germsell_. He says so himself, and he ought to know. His whole system of philosophy is nothing more nor less than the result of the liberation of certain forces produced by chemical action in the brain. _Drygull_. Then, if I understand you rightly, if the chemical changes which have been taking place for some years past in his brain had liberated a different set of forces, we should have had altogether a different philosophy. _Germsell_. The chemical changes would in that case have been different. _Drygull_. But the changes must be produced by forces acting on them. _Germsell_. Exactly: a force which has its source in the Unknowable produces a certain chemical action in the brain by which it becomes converted into thought or emotion, into love or philosophy, into art or religion, as the case may be: what the nature of that love or philosophy, or art or religion, may be, must depend entirely on the nature of the chemical change. _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. I feel the most delightful chemical changes taking place now in my brain, dear Mrs Gloring. May I explain to you the exquisite nature of the forces that are being liberated, and which produce emotions of the most tender character. _Lady Fritterly_ [_sharply_]. What are you saying, Lord Fondleton? _Lord Fondleton_. Ahem--I was saying--ahem--I was saying that we shall be having some Yankee inventing steam thinking-mills and galvanic loving- batteries soon. What a lot of wear and tear it would save! I should go about covered with a number of electric love-wires for the force to play upon. _Fussle_. I think this matter wants clearing up, Mr Germsell. Why don't you write a book on mental and emotional physics? _Mr Rollestone_. I would venture with great diffidence to remark that the confusion seems to me to arise from the limit we attach to the meaning of the word employed. It may be quite true that no idea or emotion can exist except as the result of physical force; but it is also true that its effect must be conditioned on the quality of the force. There is as wide a difference between the physical forces operant in the brain, and which give rise to ideas, and those which move a steam-engine, as there is between mind and matter as popularly defined. Both, as Mr Germsell will admit, are conditioned manifestations of force; but the one contains a vital element in its dynamism which the other does not. You may apply as much physical force by means of a galvanic battery to a dead brain as you please, but you can't strike an idea out of it; and this vital force, while it is "conditioned force," like light and heat, differs in its mode of manifestation from every other manifestation of force, even more than they do from each other, in that it possesses a potency inherent to it, which they have not, and this potency it is which creates emotion and generates ideas. The fallacy which underlies the whole of this system of philosophy is contained in the assumption that there is only one description of physical force in nature. _Germsell_. No more there is. Why, Mr Spencer says that the law of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces; but mark you, what is the grand conclusion at which he arrives? I happen to remember the passage: "How this metamorphosis takes place; how a force existing, as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness; how it is possible for aerial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound; or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion,--these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom." _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. What a jolly easy way of getting out of a difficulty! _Drygull_. Of course, if you admit such gross ignorance as to how it is possible for aerial vibrations "to generate the sensation we call sound," I don't wonder at your not hearing the tom-tom in the Himalayas we were listening to just now. If you knew a little more about the astral law under which aerial vibrations may be generated, you would not call things impossible which you admit to be unfathomable mysteries. If it is an unfathomable mystery how a sound is projected a mile, why do you refuse to admit the possibility of its being projected two, or two hundred, or two thousand? Under the laws which govern mysteries, which you say are unfathomable, if the mystery is unfathomable, so is the law, and you have no right to limit its action. _Rollestone_. To come back to the question of a possible distinction in the essential or inherent qualities of dynamic or physical forces. There is nothing in the hypothesis which may not be reasonably assumed and tested by experiment; and before any man has a right to affirm that there is only one quality of physical force in nature, which, by undergoing transformation and metamorphosis, shall account for all its phenomena, I have a right to ask whether the hypothesis, that there may be another, has been experimentally tested. It would then be time for me to accept the conclusion that there is only one, and that it is an unfathomable mystery how this one force should be able to perform all the functions attributed to it. _Germsell_. I admit that the forces called vital are correlates of the forces called physical, if you choose to call that a distinction; but their character is conditioned by the state of the brain, and it comes to the same thing in the end. The seat of emotion as well as of thought is the brain, and it entirely depends on its chemical constitution, on its circulation, and on other causes affecting that organ, what you think, and feel, and say, and do. People's characters differ because their brains do, not because there is any difference in the vital force which animates them. _Rollestone_. You might as well say that sounds differ because their aerial vibrations differ, but those vibrations only differ because the force makes them differ which is acting upon them. They don't generate tunes, but convey them. And the result, so far as our hearing is concerned, depends upon what are called the acoustic conditions under which the vibrations take place. Just so the brain possesses no generating function of its own; it deals with and transmits the ideas and emotions projected upon it according to the organic conditions by which it may be affected at the time, whether those ideas and emotions are produced by external stimuli, or apparently, but only apparently, as I believe, owe their origin to genesis in the brain itself. In the one case the brain is vibrating to the touch of an external force, in the other to one that is internal and unseen, just as the air does when it transmits sound, whether you see the cause which produces it or not; and the mystery which remains to be fathomed, but which I do not admit to be unfathomable until somebody tries to fathom it, is the nature of those unseen forces. _Germsell_. How would you propose to try and fathom it? _Rollestone_. By experiment: I know of no other way. The forces which generate emotions and ideas must possess a moral quality: the experiments must therefore be moral experiments. _Germsell_. How do you set to work to experimentalise morally? _Rollestone_. As the process must of necessity be a purely personal one, carried on, if I may use the expression, in one's own moral organism, I have a certain delicacy in attempting to describe it. In fact, Lady Fritterly, if you will allow me to say so, as the whole subject which has been under discussion this afternoon is the most profoundly solemn which can engage the attention of a human being, I shrink from entering upon it as fully as I would do under other circumstances. I people begin to want a new religion because it is the fashion to want one, I venture to predict that they will never find it. If they want a new religion because they can't come up to the moral standard of the one they have got, then I would advise them to look rather to that unseen force within them, which I have been attempting to describe to Mr Germsell, for the potency which may enable them to reach it. _Lady Fritterly_. Indeed, Mr Rollestone, we are all exceedingly in earnest. I never felt so serious in my life. Of course this London life must all seem very frivolous to you; but that we can't help, you know. We can't all go away and make moral experiments like you. What we feel is, that we ought all to endeavour as much as possible to introduce a more serious tone into society. We want to get rid of the selfishness, and the littlenesses, and the petty ambitions and envyings, and the scandals that go on. Don't we, Louisa, dear? And you can't think how grateful I am to Lord Fondleton for having given me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I hope I may often see you; I am sure you would do us all so much good. You will always find me at home on Sunday afternoons at this hour. _Mrs Allmash_. It is so refreshing to meet any one so full of information and earnestness as you are, in this wicked, jaded London. Please go on, Mr Rollestone; what you were saying was so interesting. Have you really been experimentalising on your own moral organism? How quite too extraordinary! _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. By Jove! I had no idea old Rollestone could come out in this line. He is a regular dark horse. I should never have suspected it. He will be first favourite in London this season, and win in a canter. _Coldwaite_. You will excuse me, Mr Rollestone, but I really am interested, and I really am serious. It was with no idle curiosity that I was waiting to hear your answer to Mr Germsell's inquiry, as to the nature of the moral experiment necessary to test the character of this unseen force. _Rollestone_. I can only say that any experiment which deals with the affectional and emotional part of one's nature must be painful in the extreme. There is, indeed, only one motive which would induce one to undergo the trials, sufferings, sacrifices, and ordeals which it involves--and that is one in which you will sympathise: it is the hope that humanity may benefit by the result of one's efforts. Indeed, any lower motive than this would vitiate them. I will venture to assert to Mr Germsell, who is so sceptical as to the existence of any other quality in that force, which he can only fathom so far as to know that it is physical, that I will put him through a course of experiment which will cause him more acute moral suffering than his brain could bear, unless it was sustained by a force which, by that experimental process, will reveal attributes contained in it not dreamt of in his philosophy. _Germsell_. I have no doubt you could strain my mind until it was weak enough to believe anything, even your fantastic theories. Thank you, I would rather continue to experiment with my own microscope and forceps than let you experiment either upon my affections or my brains. _Fussle_ [_aside to_ Mr Rollestone]. You could not make anything of them even if he consented--the former don't exist, and the latter are mere putty--but I can quite understand your desire to begin _in corpore vili_. _Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. Allow me freely to offer you my affections as peculiarly adapted to experiments of this nature. _Rollestone_. It has always struck me as strange that men of science, who don't shrink from testing, for instance, the value of poisons, or the nature of disease, by heroically subjecting their own external organisms to their action, should shrink from experimenting on that essential if remote vitalising force, which can only be reached by moral experiment, and disorder in which produces not only moral obliquity and mental alienation, but physical disease as well. _Fussle_. Thus a man may die of apoplexy brought on by a fit of passion. Cure his temper, and you lessen the danger of apoplexy; that, I take it, is an illustration of what you mean. _Rollestone_. In its most external application it is; the question is where his bad temper comes from, and whether, as Mr Germsell would maintain, it is entirely due to his cerebral condition, and not to the moral qualities inherent in the force, which, acting on peculiar cerebral conditions, causes one man's temper to differ from another's. It is not the liberated force which generates the temper. For that you have to go farther back; and the reason why research is limited in this direction is not because it is impossible to go farther back, but because it must inevitably entail, as I have already said, acute personal suffering. Nor, as these experiments must be purely personal, and involve experiences of an entirely novel kind, is it possible to discuss them except with those who have participated in them. One might as well attempt to describe the emotion of love to a man whose affections had never been called forth. If I have alluded to them so fully now, it is because they justify me in making the assertion, for which I can offer no other proof than they have afforded to me personally, that a force does exist in nature possessing an inherent spiritual potency--I use the word spiritual for lack of a better--which is capable of lifting humanity to a higher moral plane of daily living and acting than that which it has hitherto attained. But I fear I am trespassing on your patience in having said thus much. _Lady Fritterly_. Oh no, Mr Rollestone; please go on. There is something so delightfully fresh and original in all you are saying, I can't tell you how much you interest me. _Germsell_ [_aside_]. I know a milkmaid quite as fresh and rather more original. [_Aloud_, _looking at his watch_.] Bless me! it is past six, and I have an appointment at the club at six. So sorry to tear myself away, dear Lady Fritterly. I can't tell you how I have enjoyed the intellectual treat you have provided for me. _Lady Fritterly_. I thank you so much for coming. I hope you will often look in on our Sundays. I think, you know, that these little conversations are so very improving. _Germsell_. You may rely upon me; it is impossible to imagine anything more interesting. [_Mutters as he leaves the room_.] No, Lady Fritterly, this is the last time I enter this house, except perhaps to dinner. You don't catch me again making one of your Sunday afternoon collection of bores and idiots. What an insufferable prig that Rollestone is! _Fussle_ [_aside to_ Drygull]. Thank heaven, that pompous nuisance has taken himself off! _Drygull_ [_aside to_ Fussle]. I don't know which I dislike most--the Pharisee of science or the Pharisee of religion. _Rollestone_. If, then, you admit that the human organism not only cannot generate force, but that the emotions which control the body are in their turn generated by a force which is behind it, and that this force is dependent for its manifestation on its own special conditions, as well as on those of its transmitting organic medium, I venture to assert that experiment in the direction I have suggested will prove to our consciousness that the moral or spiritual quality of the original invading force is a pure one, and that the degree of its pollution in the human frame is the effect of inherited and other organic conditions; and the question which presents itself to the experimentalist is, whether by an effort of the will this same force may not be evoked to change and purify those conditions. Indeed the very effort is in itself an invocation, and if made unflinchingly, will not fail to meet with a response. Much that has heretofore been to earnest seekers unknowable will become knowable, and a love, Mr Coldwaite, higher, if that be possible, than the love of humanity, yet correlative with and inseparable from it, will be found pressing with an irresistible potency into those vacant spaces of the human heart, which have from all time yearned for a closer contact with the Great Source of all love and of all force. It is in this attempt to sever the love of humanity from its Author, that the Positivist philosophy has failed: it is the worship of a husk without the kernel, of a body without the soul; and hence it will never satisfy the human aspiration. That aspiration is ever the same; it needs, if you will allow me to say so, Lady Fritterly, no new religion to satisfy its demands. If the world is of late beginning to feel dissatisfied with Christianity, it is not because the moral standard which that religion proposes is not sufficiently lofty for its requirements, but because, after eighteen hundred years of effort, its professors have altogether failed to reach that standard. Christianity seems a failure because Christians have failed--have failed to understand its application to everyday life, have failed to embody it in practice, and have sought an escape from the apparent impossibility of doing so, by smothering it with dogmas, and diverting its scope from this world to the next. It will be time to look for a new religion, when we have succeeded in the literal application of the ethics of the one we have got to the social and economic problems of daily life. It is not by any intellectual effort or scientific process that the discovery will be made of how this is to be done, but by the introduction into the organism of new and unsuspected potencies of moral force which have hitherto lain dormant in nature, waiting for the great invocation of wearied and distressed humanity. There can be no stronger evidence of the approach of this new force, destined to make the ethics of Christianity a practical social standard, than the growing demand of society for a new religion. It is the inarticulate utterance of the quickened human aspiration, in itself a proof that these new potencies are already stirring the dry bones of Christendom, and a sure earnest that their coming in answer to that aspiration will not be long delayed. _Drygull_. Of course, I entirely disagree with you as to any such necessity in regard to the moral requirements of the world, existing. You must have met, in the course of your travels, that more enlightened and initiated class of Buddhists, with whom I sympathise, who are quite indifferent to considerations of this nature. _Rollestone_. And who were too much occupied with their subjective prospects in Nirvana, to be affected by the needs of terrestrial humanity. _Drygull_. Quite so. _Mrs Allmash_. And, Mr Allyside, I am afraid you are equally indifferent. _Ali Seyyid_. I am certainly not indifferent to the discovery of any force latent in Christendom which may check the force of its cupidity, and put a stop to the _exploitation_ and subjugation of Eastern countries for the sake of advancing its own material interests, under the specious pretext of introducing the blessings of civilisation. _Coldwaite_. You have certainly presented the matter in a light which is altogether new to me, Mr Rollestone, and upon which, therefore, I am not now prepared to express an opinion. I should like to discuss the subject with you further privately. _Rollestone_. It is a subject which should never be discussed except privately. _Mrs Allmash_. Now, I should say, Mr Rollestone, on the contrary, that it was just a subject you ought to write a book about. You would have so much to tell,--all your personal experiments, you know; now do. _Fussle_. Take my advice, Mr Rollestone, and don't. You would have very few readers, and those who read you would only sneer at what they would call your crude ideas; and indeed, you will excuse me for saying so, but I am not sure that they would not be right. _Lord Fondleton_. I quite disagree with you, Mr Fussle. If Rollestone would write a book which would put a stop to this "religion of the future" business, he would earn the gratitude of society. Do you know, I am getting rather bored with it. _Fussle_. Not if he introduced instead a latent force, which should overturn all existing institutions, and revolutionise society--which it would inevitably have to do if we were all coerced by it into adopting literally the ethics of Christianity, instead of merely professing them. Why, the "Sermon on the Mount" alone, practised to the letter, would produce a general destruction. Church and State, and the whole economic system upon which society is based, would melt away before it like an iceberg under a tropical sun. I don't mind discussing the religion of the future as a subject of interesting speculation; but, depend upon it, we had better let well alone. It seems to me that we--at least those of us who are well off--have nothing to complain of. Let us trust to the silent forces of evolution. See how much they have lately done for us in the matter of art. What can be pleasanter than this gentle process of aesthetic development which our higher faculties are undergoing? With due deference to Mr Rollestone, I think we shall be far better employed in cultivating our taste, than in probing our own organisms in the hope of discovering forces which may enable us to apply a perfectly unpractical system of morality, to a society which has every reason to be satisfied with the normal progress it is making. _Mrs Gloring_. Indeed, Mr Rollestone, I agree with you a great deal more than with Mr Fussle. I should like to call out a higher moral force in myself--but I should never have the courage to undergo all the ordeals you say it would involve; I am too weak to try. _Lord Fondleton_. Of course you are,--don't! You are much nicer as you are. Why, Rollestone, you would make all the women detestable if you could have your way. _Rollestone_. I don't think there is any immediate cause for alarm on that score. _Mrs Allmash_ [_rising_]. Dearest Augusta, I am afraid I must run away: thank you _so_ much, for _such_ a treat. [_All rise_] Mrs Gloring, we have all been so deeply interested, that we have scarcely been able to exchange a word, but I hope we shall see a great deal of each other this year. I have a few people coming to me to-morrow evening; do you think you can spare a moment from your numerous engagements? Lady Fritterly and Lord Fondleton are coming; and perhaps, Mr Drygull, you will come, and bring Mr Allyside. Mr Fussle, I know it is useless to expect you; and I cannot venture to ask Mr Rollestone to anything so frivolous. But perhaps you will dine with me on Thursday--you will meet some congenial spirits. _Rollestone_. Thank you, but I fear it will be impossible, as I leave London to-morrow. Good-bye, Lady Fritterly. Forgive me, an utter stranger, for having so far obtruded my experiences upon you, and for venturing finally to suggest that it is in our own hearts that we should search for the religion that we need; for is it not written, "The kingdom of heaven is within you"? THE BRIGAND'S BRIDE: A TALE OF SOUTHERN ITALY. The Italian peninsula during the years 1859-60-61 offered a particularly tempting field for adventure to ardent spirits in search of excitement; and, attracted partly by my sympathy with the popular movement, and partly by that simple desire, which gives so much zest to the life of youth, of risking it on all possible occasions, I had taken an active part, chiefly as an officious spectator, in all the principal events of those stirring years. It was in the spring of 1862 that I found matters beginning to settle down to a degree that threatened monotony; and with the termination of the winter gaieties at Naples and the close of the San Carlo, I seriously bethought me of accepting the offer of a naval friend who was about to engage in blockade-running, and offered to land me in the Confederate States, when a recrudescence of activity on the part of the brigand bands in Calabria induced me to turn my attention in that direction. The first question I had to consider was, whether I should enjoy myself most by joining the brigands, or the troops which were engaged in suppressing them. As the former aspired to a political character, and called themselves patriotic bands fighting for their Church, their country, and their King--the refugee monarch of Naples--one could espouse their cause without exactly laying one's self open to the charge of being a bandit; but it was notorious in point of fact that the bands cared for neither the Pope nor the exiled King nor their annexed country, but committed the most abominable atrocities in the names of all the three, for the simple purpose of filling their pockets. I foresaw not only extreme difficulty in being accepted as a member of the fraternity, more especially as I had hitherto been identified with the Garibaldians; but also the probability of finding myself compromised by acts from which my conscience would revolt, and for which my life would in all likelihood pay the forfeit. On the other hand, I could think of no friend among the officers of the Bersaglieri and cavalry regiments, then engaged in brigand-hunting in the Capitanata and Basilicata, to whom I could apply for an invitation to join them. Under these circumstances, I determined to trust to the chapter of accidents; and armed with a knapsack, a sketch-book, and an air-gun, took my seat one morning in the Foggia diligence, with the vague idea of getting as near the scene of operations as possible, and seeing what would turn up. The air-gun was not so much a weapon of offence or defence as a means of introduction to the inhabitants. It had the innocent appearance of rather a thick walking-cane, with a little brass trigger projecting; and in the afternoon I would join the group sitting in front of the chemist's, which, for some reason or other, is generally a sort of open-air club in a small Neapolitan town, or stroll into the single modest _cafe_ of which it might possibly boast, and toy abstractedly with the trigger. This, together with my personal appearance--for do what I would, I could never make myself look like a Neapolitan--would be certain to attract attention, and some one bolder than the rest would make himself the spokesman, and politely ask me whether the cane in my hand was an umbrella or a fishing-rod; on which I would amiably reply that it was a gun, and that I should have much pleasure in exhibiting my skill and the method of its operation to the assembled company. Then the whole party would follow me to an open space, and I would call for a pack of cards, and possibly--for I was a good shot in those days--pink the ace of hearts at fifteen paces. At any rate my performances usually called forth plaudits, and this involved a further interchange of compliments and explanations, and the production of my sketch-book, which soon procured me the acquaintance of some ladies and an invitation as an English artist, to the house of some respectable citizen. So it happened that, getting out of the diligence before it reached Foggia, I struck south, and wandered for some days from one little town to another, being always hospitably entertained, whether there happened to be an _albergo_ or not, at private houses, seeing in this way more of the manners and customs of the inhabitants than would have been otherwise possible, gaining much information as to the haunts of the brigands, the whereabouts of the troops, and hearing much local gossip generally. The ignorance of the most respectable classes at this period was astounding; it has doubtless all changed since. I have been at a town of 2000 inhabitants, not one of whom took in a newspaper: the whole population, therefore, was in as profound ignorance of what was transpiring in the rest of the world as if they had been in Novaia Zemlia. I have stayed with a mayor who did not know that England was an island; I have been the guest of a citizen who had never heard of Scotland, and to whom, therefore, my nationality was an enigma: but I never met any one--I mean of this same class--who had not heard of Palmerston. He was a mysterious personage, execrated by the "blacks" and adored by
{'title': 'Fashionable Philosophy, and Other Sketches by Laurence Oliphant', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}