Part 40 (1/2)

'How in His name? What have I seen?'

'Ask yourself. Have you not seen, in your fancy, at least, an ideal of man, for which you spurned (for Mellot has told me all) the merely negative angelic--the merely receptive and indulgent feminine-ideals of humanity, and longed to be a man, like that ideal and perfect man?'

'I have.'

'And what was your misery all along? Was it not that you felt you ought to be a person with a one inner unity, a one practical will, purpose, and business given to you--not invented by yourself--in the great order and harmony of the universe,--and that you were not one?--That your self-willed fancies, and self-pleasing pa.s.sions, had torn you in pieces, and left you inconsistent, dismembered, helpless, purposeless? That, in short, you were below your ideal, just in proportion as you were not a person?'

'G.o.d knows you speak truth!'

'Then must not that ideal of humanity be a person himself?--Else how can he be the ideal man? Where is your logic? An impersonal ideal of a personal species! . . . And what is the most special peculiarity of man? Is it not that he alone of creation is a son, with a Father to love and to obey? Then must not the ideal man be a son also? And last, but not least, is it not the very property of man that he is a spirit invested with flesh and blood? Then must not the ideal man have, once at least, taken on himself flesh and blood also? Else, how could he fulfil his own idea?'

'Yes . . . Yes . . . That thought, too, has glanced through my mind at moments, like a lightning-flash; till I have envied the old Greeks their faith in a human Zeus, son of Kronos--a human Phoibos, son of Zeus. But I could not rest in them. They are n.o.ble. But are they--are any--perfect ideals? The one thing I did, and do, and will believe, is the one which they do not fulfil--that man is meant to be the conqueror of the earth, matter, nature, decay, death itself, and to conquer them, as Bacon says, by obeying them.'

'Hold it fast;--but follow it out, and say boldly, the ideal of humanity must be one who has conquered nature--one who rules the universe--one who has vanquished death itself; and conquered them, as Bacon says, not by violating, but by submitting to them. Have you never heard of one who is said to have done this? How do you know that in this ideal which you have seen, you have not seen the Son--the perfect Man, who died and rose again, and sits for ever Healer, and Lord, and Ruler of the universe? . . . Stay--do not answer me. Have you not, besides, had dreams of an all-Father--from whom, in some mysterious way, all things and beings must derive their source, and that Son--if my theory be true--among the rest, and above all the rest?'

'Who has not? But what more dim or distant--more drearily, hopelessly notional, than that thought?'

'Only the thought that there is none. But the dreariness was only in your own inconsistency. If He be the Father of all, He must be the Father of persons--He Himself therefore a Person. He must be the Father of all in whom dwell personal qualities, power, wisdom, creative energy, love, justice, pity. Can He be their Father, unless all these very qualities are infinitely His? Does He now look so terrible to you?'

'I have had this dream, too; but I turned away from it in dread.'

'Doubtless you did. Some day you will know why. Does that former dream of a human Son relieve this dream of none of its awfulness?

May not the type be beloved for the sake of its Ant.i.type, even if the very name of All-Father is no guarantee for His paternal pity! .

. . But you have had this dream. How know you, that in it you were not allowed a glimpse, however dim and distant, of Him whom the Catholics call the Father?'

'It may be; but--'

'Stay again. Had you never the sense of a Spirit in you--a will, an energy, an inspiration, deeper than the region of consciousness and reflection, which, like the wind, blew where it listed, and you heard the sound of it ringing through your whole consciousness, and yet knew not whence it came, or whither it went, or why it drove you on to dare and suffer, to love and hate; to be a fighter, a sportsman, an artist--'

'And a drunkard!' added Lancelot, sadly.

'And a drunkard. But did it never seem to you that this strange wayward spirit, if anything, was the very root and core of your own personality? And had you never a craving for the help of some higher, mightier spirit, to guide and strengthen yours; to regulate and civilise its savage and spasmodic self-will; to teach you your rightful place in the great order of the universe around; to fill you with a continuous purpose and with a continuous will to do it?

Have you never had a dream of an Inspirer?--a spirit of all spirits?'

Lancelot turned away with a shudder.

'Talk of anything but that! Little you know--and yet you seem to know everything--the agony of craving with which I have longed for guidance; the rage and disgust which possessed me when I tried one pretended teacher after another, and found in myself depths which their spirits could not, or rather would not, touch. I have been irreverent to the false, from very longing to wors.h.i.+p the true; I have been a rebel to sham leaders, for very desire to be loyal to a real one; I have envied my poor cousin his Jesuits; I have envied my own pointers their slavery to my whip and whistle; I have fled, as a last resource, to brandy and opium, for the inspiration which neither man nor demon would bestow. . . . Then I found . . . you know my story. . . . And when I looked to her to guide and inspire me, behold! I found myself, by the very laws of humanity, compelled to guide and inspire her;--blind, to lead the blind!--Thank G.o.d, for her sake, that she was taken from me!'

'Did you ever mistake these subst.i.tutes, even the n.o.blest of them, for the reality? Did not your very dissatisfaction with them show you that the true inspirer ought to be, if he were to satisfy your cravings, a person, truly--else how could he inspire and teach you, a person yourself!--but an utterly infinite, omniscient, eternal person? How know you that in that dream He was not unveiling Himself to you--He, The Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of Life; The Spirit, who teaches men their duty and relation to those above, around, beneath them; the Spirit of order, obedience, loyalty, brotherhood, mercy, condescension?'

'But I never could distinguish these dreams from each other; the moment that I essayed to separate them, I seemed to break up the thought of an absolute one ground of all things, without which the universe would have seemed a piecemeal chaos; and they receded to infinite distance, and became transparent, barren, notional shadows of my own brain, even as your words are now.'

'How know you that you were meant to distinguish them? How know you that that very impossibility was not the testimony of fact and experience to that old Catholic dogma, for the sake of which you just now shrank from my teaching? I say that this is so. How do you know that it is not?'

'But how do I know that it is? I want proof.'

'And you are the man who was, five minutes ago, crying out for practical facts, and disdaining cold abstract necessities of logic!

Can you prove that your body exists?'

'No.'