Chapter X: Part II: opened with a suite in F Major for orchestra (op. 39) by (4)

As I sit writing on the top of a wild-beast pen of the amphitheatre of Aosta I may note, for one thing, that the Romans were not squeamish, they had no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Again, their ladies did not write in the newspapers. Fancy Miss Cato reviewing Horace! They had no Frances Power Cobbes, no . . . s, no . . . s; yet they seem to have got along quite nicely without these powerful moral engines. The comeliest and most enjoyable races that we know of were the ancient Greeks, the Italians and the South Sea Islanders, and they have none of them been purists.

Italians and Englishmen

Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure

i

One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education. Indeed, if we could solve the difficulty of knowing what gives us pleasure, if we could find its springs, its inception and earliest _modus operandi_, we should have discovered the secret of life and development, for the same difficulty has attended the development of every sense from touch onwards, and no new sense was ever developed without pains. A man had better stick to known and proved pleasures, but, if he will venture in quest of new ones, he should not do so with a light heart.

One reason why we find it so hard to know our own likings is because we are so little accustomed to try; we have our likings found for us in respect of by far the greater number of the matters that concern us; thus we have grown all our limbs on the strength of the likings of our ancestors and adopt these without question.

Another reason is that, except in mere matters of eating and drinking, people do not realise the importance of finding out what it is that gives them pleasure if, that is to say, they would make themselves as comfortable here as they reasonably can. Very few, however, seem to care greatly whether they are comfortable or no. There are some men so ignorant and careless of what gives them pleasure that they cannot be said ever to have been really born as living beings at all. They present some of the phenomena of having been born—they reproduce, in fact, so many of the ideas which we associate with having been born that it is hard not to think of them as living beings—but in spite of all appearances the central idea is wanting. At least one half of the misery which meets us daily might be removed or, at any rate, greatly alleviated, if those who suffer by it would think it worth their while to be at any pains to get rid of it. That they do not so think is proof that they neither know, nor care to know, more than in a very languid way, what it is that will relieve them most effectually or, in other words, that the shoe does not really pinch them so hard as we think it does. For when it really pinches, as when a man is being flogged, he will seek relief by any means in his power. So my great namesake said, “Surely the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat”; and so, again, I remember to have seen a poem many years ago in _Punch_ according to which a certain young lady, being discontented at home, went out into the world in quest to “Some burden make or burden bear, But which she did not greatly care—Oh Miseree!” So long as there was discomfort somewhere it was all right.

To those, however, who are desirous of knowing what gives them pleasure but do not quite know how to set about it I have no better advice to give than that they must take the same pains about acquiring this difficult art as about any other, and must acquire it in the same way—that is by attending to one thing at a time and not being in too great a hurry. Proficiency is not to be attained here, any more than elsewhere, by short cuts or by getting other people to do work that no other than oneself can do. Above all things it is necessary here, as in all other branches of study, not to think we know a thing before we do know it—to make sure of our ground and be quite certain that we really do like a thing before we say we do. When you cannot decide whether you like a thing or not, nothing is easier than to say so and to hang it up among the uncertainties. Or when you know you do not know and are in such doubt as to see no chance of deciding, then you may take one side or the other provisionally and throw yourself into it. This will sometimes make you uncomfortable, and you will feel you have taken the wrong side and thus learn that the other was the right one. Sometimes you will feel you have done right. Any way ere long you will know more about it. But there must have been a secret treaty with yourself to the effect that the decision was provisional only. For, after all, the most important first principle in this matter is the not lightly thinking you know what you like till you have made sure of your ground. I was nearly forty before I felt how stupid it was to pretend to know things that I did not know and I still often catch myself doing so. Not one of my school-masters taught me this, but altogether otherwise.

ii

I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.

iii

To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not you must see whether you find yourself looking at the advertisements of Pear’s soap at the end of the programme.

De Minimis non Curat Lex

i

Yes, but what is a minimum? Sometimes a maximum is a minimum, and sometimes the other way about. If you know you know, and if you don’t you don’t.

ii

Yes, but what is a minimum? So increased material weight involves increased moral weight, but where does there begin to be any weight at all? There is a miracle somewhere. At the point where two very large nothings have united to form a very little something.

iii

There is no such complete assimilation as assimilation of rhythm. In fact it is in assimilation of rhythm that what we see as assimilation consists.

When two liquid bodies come together with nearly the same rhythms, as, say, two tumblers of water, differing but very slightly, the two assimilate rapidly—becoming homogeneous throughout. So with wine and water which assimilate, or at any rate form a new homogeneous substance, very rapidly. Not so with oil and water. Still, I should like to know whether it would not be possible to have so much water and so little oil that the water would in time absorb the oil.

I have not thought about it, but it seems as though the maxim _de minimis non curat lex_—the fact that a wrong, a contradiction in terms, a violation of all our ordinary canons does not matter and should be brushed aside—it seems as though this maxim went very low down in the scale of nature, as though it were the one principle rendering combination (integration) and, I suppose, dissolution (disintegration) also, possible. For combination of any kind involves contradiction in terms; it involves a self-stultification on the part of one or more things, more or less complete in both of them. For one or both cease to be, and to cease to be is to contradict all one’s fundamental axioms or terms.

And this is always going on in the mental world as much as in the material; everything is always changing and stultifying itself more or less completely. There is no permanence of identity so absolute, either in the physical world, or in our conception of the word “identity,” that it is not crossed with the notion of perpetual change which, _pro tanto_, destroys identity. Perfect, absolute identity is like perfect, absolute anything—as near an approach to nothing, or nonsense, as our minds can grasp. It is, then, in the essence of our conception of identity that nothing should maintain a perfect identity; there is an element of disintegration in the only conception of integration that we can form.

What is it, then, that makes this conflict not only possible and bearable but even pleasant? What is it that so oils the machinery of our thoughts that things which would otherwise cause intolerable friction and heat produce no jar?

Surely it is the principle that a very overwhelming majority rides rough-shod with impunity over a very small minority; that a drop of brandy in a gallon of water is practically no brandy; that a dozen maniacs among a hundred thousand people produce no unsettling effect upon our minds; that a well-written i will go as an i even though the dot be omitted—it seems to me that it is this principle, which is embodied in _de minimis non curat lex_, that makes it possible that there should be _majora_ and a _lex_ to care about them. This is saying in another form that association does not stick to the letter of its bond.

Saints

Saints are always grumbling because the world will not take them at their own estimate; so they cry out upon this place and upon that, saying it does not know the things belonging to its peace and that it will be too late soon and that people will be very sorry then that they did not make more of the grumbler, whoever he may be, inasmuch as he will make it hot for them and pay them out generally.

All this means: “Put me in a better social and financial position than I now occupy; give me more of the good things of this life, if not actual money yet authority (which is better loved by most men than even money itself), to reward me because I am to have such an extraordinary good fortune and high position in the world which is to come.”

When their contemporaries do not see this and tell them that they cannot expect to have it both ways, they lose their tempers, shake the dust from their feet and go sulking off into the wilderness.

This is as regards themselves; to their followers they say: “You must not expect to be able to make the best of both worlds. The thing is absurd; it cannot be done. You must choose which you prefer, go in for it and leave the other, for you cannot have both.”

When a saint complains that people do not know the things belonging to their peace, what he really means is that they do not sufficiently care about the things belonging to his own peace.

Prayer

i

Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live (Ps. xxxix. 5).

Of all prayers this is the insanest. That the one who uttered it should have made and retained a reputation is a strong argument in favour of his having been surrounded with courtiers. “Lord, let me not know mine end” would be better, only it would be praying for what God has already granted us. “Lord, let me know A.B.’s end” would be bad enough. Even though A.B. were Mr. Gladstone—we might hear he was not to die yet. “Lord, stop A.B. from knowing my end” would be reasonable, if there were any use in praying that A.B. might not be able to do what he never can do. Or can the prayer refer to the other end of life? “Lord, let me know my beginning.” This again would not be always prudent.

The prayer is a silly piece of petulance and it would have served the maker of it right to have had it granted. “A painful and lingering disease followed by death” or “Ninety, a burden to yourself and every one else”—there is not so much to pick and choose between them. Surely, “I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast hidden mine end from me” would be better. The sting of death is in foreknowledge of the when and the how.

If again he had prayed that he might be able to make his psalms a little more lively, and be saved from becoming the bore which he has been to so many generations of sick persons and young children—or that he might find a publisher for them with greater facility—but there is no end to it. The prayer he did pray was about the worst he could have prayed and the psalmist, being the psalmist, naturally prayed it—unless I have misquoted him.

ii

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously. I dropped saying mine suddenly once for all without malice prepense, on the night of the 29th of September, 1859, when I went on board the _Roman Emperor_ to sail for New Zealand. I had said them the night before and doubted not that I was always going to say them as I always had done hitherto. That night, I suppose, the sense of change was so great that it shook them quietly off. I was not then a sceptic; I had got as far as disbelief in infant baptism but no further. I felt no compunction of conscience, however, about leaving off my morning and evening prayers—simply I could no longer say them.

iii

Lead us not into temptation (Matt. vi. 13).

For example; I am crossing from Calais to Dover and there is a well-known popular preacher on board, say Archdeacon Farrar.

I have my camera in my hand and though the sea is rough the sun is brilliant. I see the archdeacon come on board at Calais and seat himself upon the upper deck, looking as though he had just stepped out of a band-box. Can I be expected to resist the temptation of snapping him? Suppose that in the train for an hour before reaching Calais I had said any number of times, “Lead us not into temptation,” is it likely that the archdeacon would have been made to take some other boat or to stay in Calais, or that I myself, by being delayed on my homeward journey, should have been led into some other temptation, though perhaps smaller? Had I not better snap him and have done with it? Is there enough chance of good result to make it worth while to try the experiment? The general consensus of opinion is that there is not.

And as for praying for strength to resist temptation—granted that if, when I saw the archdeacon in the band-box stage, I had immediately prayed for strength I might have been enabled to put the evil thing from me for a time, how long would this have been likely to last when I saw his face grow saintlier and saintlier? I am an excellent sailor myself, but he is not, and when I see him there, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, like a sleeping St. Joseph in a shovel hat, with a basin beside him, can I expect to be saved from snapping him by such a formula as “Deliver us from evil”?

Is it in photographer’s nature to do so? When David found himself in the cave with Saul he cut off one of Saul’s coattails; if he had had a camera and there had been enough light he would have photographed him; but would it have been in flesh and blood for him neither to cut off his coat-tail nor to snap him?

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

iv

Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.

This is from the evening hymn which all respectable children are taught. It sounds well, but it is immoral.

Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us. For if the old ones had not in course of time gone there would have been no progress; all our civilisation is due to the arrangement whereby no man shall live for ever, and to this huge mass of advantage we must each contribute our mite; that is to say, when our turn comes we too must die. The hardship is that interested persons should be able to scare us into thinking the change we call death to be the desperate business which they make it out to be. There is no hardship in having to suffer that change.

Bishop Ken, however, goes too far. Undesirable, of course, death must always be to those who are fairly well off, but it is undesirable that any living being should live in habitual indifference to death. The indifference should be kept for worthy occasions, and even then, though death be gladly faced, it is not healthy that it should be faced as though it were a mere undressing and going to bed.

XIV Higgledy-Piggledy

Preface to Vol. II

ON indexing this volume, as with Vols. I and IV which are already indexed and as, no doubt, will be the case with any that I may live to index later, I am alarmed at the triviality of many of these notes, the ineptitude of many and the obvious untenableness of many that I should have done much better to destroy.

Elmsley, in one of his letters to Dr. Butler, says that an author is the worst person to put one of his own works through the press (_Life of Dr. Butler_, I, 88). It seems to me that he is the worst person also to make selections from his own notes or indeed even, in my case, to write them. I cannot help it. They grew as, with little disturbance, they now stand; they are not meant for publication; the bad ones serve as bread for the jam of the good ones; it was less trouble to let them go than to think whether they ought not to be destroyed. The retort, however, is obvious; no thinking should have been required in respect of many—a glance should have consigned them to the waste-paper basket. I know it and I know that many a one of those who look over these books—for that they will be looked over by not a few I doubt not—will think me to have been a greater fool than I probably was. I cannot help it. I have at any rate the consolation of also knowing that, however much I may have irritated, displeased or disappointed them, they will not be able to tell me so; and I think that, to some, such a record of passing moods and thoughts good, bad and indifferent will be more valuable as throwing light upon the period to which it relates than it would have been if it had been edited with greater judgment.

Besides, Vols. I and IV being already bound, I should not have enough to form Vols. II and III if I cut out all those that ought to be cut out. [June, 1898.]

P.S.—If I had re-read my preface to Vol. IV, I need not have written the above.

Waste-Paper Baskets

Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it—torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

Flies in the Milk-Jug

Saving scraps is like picking flies out of the milk-jug. We do not mind doing this, I suppose, because we feel sure the flies will never want to borrow money off us. We do not feel so sure about anything much bigger than a fly. If it were a mouse that had got into the milk-jug, we should call the cat at once.

My Thoughts

They are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them.

Our Ideas

They are for the most part like bad sixpences and we spend our lives in trying to pass them on one another.

Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas

We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble—no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.

Incoherency of New Ideas

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

An Apology for the Devil

It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Hallelujah

When we exclaim so triumphantly “Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” we only mean that we think no small beer of ourselves, that our God is a much greater God than any one else’s God, that he was our father’s God before us, and that it is all right, respectable and as it should be.

Hating

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.

Hamlet, Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and others

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

Reputation

The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.

Science and Business

The best class of scientific mind is the same as the best class of business mind. The great desideratum in either case is to know how much evidence is enough to warrant action. It is as unbusiness-like to want too much evidence before buying or selling as to be content with too little. The same kind of qualities are wanted in either case. The difference is that if the business man makes a mistake, he commonly has to suffer for it, whereas it is rarely that scientific blundering, so long as it is confined to theory, entails loss on the blunderer. On the contrary it very often brings him fame, money and a pension. Hence the business man, if he is a good one, will take greater care not to overdo or underdo things than the scientific man can reasonably be expected to take.

Scientists

There are two classes, those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

Scientific Terminology

This is the Scylla’s cave which men of science are preparing for themselves to be able to pounce out upon us from it, and into which we cannot penetrate.

Scientists and Drapers

Why should the botanist, geologist or other-ist give himself such airs over the draper’s assistant? Is it because he names his plants or specimens with Latin names and divides them into genera and species, whereas the draper does not formulate his classifications, or at any rate only uses his mother tongue when he does? Yet how like the sub-divisions of textile life are to those of the animal and vegetable kingdoms! A few great families—cotton, linen, hempen, woollen, silk, mohair, alpaca—into what an infinite variety of genera and species do not these great families subdivide themselves? And does it take less labour, with less intelligence, to master all these and to acquire familiarity with their various habits, habitats and prices than it does to master the details of any other great branch of science? I do not know. But when I think of Shoolbred’s on the one hand and, say, the ornithological collections of the British Museum upon the other, I feel as though it would take me less trouble to master the second than the first.

Men of Science

If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God’s path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.

Sparks

Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.

Dumb-Bells

I regard them with suspicion as academic.

Purgatory

Time is the only true purgatory.

Greatness

He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.

The Vanity of Human Wishes

There is only one thing vainer and that is the having no wishes.

Jones’s Conscience

He said he had not much conscience, and what little he had was guilty.

Nihilism

The Nihilists do not believe in nothing; they only believe in nothing that does not commend itself to themselves; that is, they will not allow that anything may be beyond their comprehension. As their comprehension is not great their creed is, after all, very nearly nihil.

On Breaking Habits

To begin knocking off the habit in the evening, then the afternoon as well and, finally, the morning too is better than to begin cutting it off in the morning and then go on to the afternoon and evening. I speak from experience as regards smoking and can say that when one comes to within an hour or two of smoke-time one begins to be impatient for it, whereas there will be no impatience after the time for knocking off has been confirmed as a habit.

Dogs

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

Future and Past

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

Nature

As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature’s most interesting productions—the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.

Lucky and Unlucky

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Definitions

i

As, no matter what cunning system of checks we devise, we must in the end trust some one whom we do not check, but to whom we give unreserved confidence, so there is a point at which the understanding and mental processes must be taken as understood without further question or definition in words. And I should say that this point should be fixed pretty early in the discussion.

ii

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

iii

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

iv

Definitions are a kind of scratching and generally leave a sore place more sore than it was before.

v

As Love is too young to know what conscience is, so Truth and Genius are too old to know what definition is.

Money

It has such an inherent power to run itself clear of taint that human ingenuity cannot devise the means of making it work permanent mischief, any more than means can be found of torturing people beyond what they can bear. Even if a man founds a College of Technical Instruction, the chances are ten to one that no one will be taught anything and that it will have been practically left to a number of excellent professors who will know very well what to do with it.

Wit

There is no Professor of Wit at either University. Surely they might as reasonably have a professor of wit as of poetry.

Oxford and Cambridge

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

Cooking

There is a higher average of good cooking at Oxford and Cambridge than elsewhere. The cooking is better than the curriculum. But there is no Chair of Cookery, it is taught by apprenticeship in the kitchens.

Perseus and St. George

These dragon-slayers did not take lessons in dragon-slaying, nor do leaders of forlorn hopes generally rehearse their parts beforehand. Small things may be rehearsed, but the greatest are always do-or-die, neck-or-nothing matters.

Specialism and Generalism

Woe to the specialist who is not a pretty fair generalist, and woe to the generalist who is not also a bit of a specialist.

Silence and Tact

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Truth-tellers

Professional truth-tellers may be trusted to profess that they are telling the truth.

Street Preachers

These are the costermongers and barrow men of the religious world.

Providence and Othello

Providence, in making the rain fall also upon the sea, was like the man who, when he was to play Othello, must needs black himself all over.

Providence and Improvidence

i

We should no longer say: Put your trust in Providence, but in Improvidence, for this is what we mean.

ii

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

iii

There is nothing so imprudent or so improvident as over-prudence or over-providence.

Epiphany

If Providence could be seen at all, he would probably turn out to be a very disappointing person—a little wizened old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a comforter round his neck, whistling o’er the furrow’d land or crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets, poking his way about and loitering continually at shop-windows and second-hand book-stalls.

Fortune

Like Wisdom, Fortune crieth in the streets, and no man regardeth. There is not an advertisement supplement to the _Times_—nay, hardly a half sheet of newspaper that comes into a house wrapping up this or that, but it gives information which would make a man’s fortune, if he could only spot it and detect the one paragraph that would do this among the 99 which would wreck him if he had anything to do with them.

Gold-Mines

Gold is not found in quartz alone; its richest lodes are in the eyes and ears of the public, but these are harder to work and to prospect than any quartz vein.

Things and Purses

Everything is like a purse—there may be money in it, and we can generally say by the feel of it whether there is or is not. Sometimes, however, we must turn it inside out before we can be quite sure whether there is anything in it or no. When I have turned a proposition inside out, put it to stand on its head, and shaken it, I have often been surprised to find how much came out of it.

Solomon in all his Glory

But, in the first place, the lilies do toil and spin after their own fashion, and, in the next, it was not desirable that Solomon should be dressed like a lily of the valley.

David’s Teachers

David said he had more understanding than his teachers. If his teachers were anything like mine this need not imply much understanding on David’s part. And if his teachers did not know more than the Psalms—it is absurd. It is merely swagger, like the German Emperor. [1897.]

S. Michael

He contended with the devil about the body of Moses. Now, I do not believe that any reasonable person would contend about the body of Moses with the devil or with any one else.

One Form of Failure

From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Andromeda

The dragon was never in better health and spirits than on the morning when Perseus came down upon him. It is said that Andromeda told Perseus she had been thinking how remarkably well he was looking. He had got up quite in his usual health—and so on.

When I said this to Ballard [a fellow art-student at Heatherley’s] and that other thing which I said about Andromeda in _Life and Habit_, {225} he remarked that he wished it had been so in the poets.

I looked at him. “Ballard,” I said, “I also am ‘the poets.’”

Self-Confidence

Nothing is ever any good unless it is thwarted with self-distrust though in the main self-confident.

Wandering

When the inclination is not obvious, the mind meanders, or maunders, as a stream in a flat meadow.

Poverty

I shun it because I have found it so apt to become contagious; but I fancy my constitution is more seasoned against it now than formerly. I hope that what I have gone through may have made me immune.

Pedals or Drones

The discords of every age are rendered possible by being taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and conventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and suet of a plum pudding.

Evasive Nature

She is one long This-way-and-it-isness and, at the same time, That-way-and-it-isn’tness. She flies so like a snipe that she is hard to hit.

Fashion

Fashion is like God, man cannot see it in its holy of holies and live. And it is, like God, increate, springing out of nothing, yet the maker of all things—ever changing yet the same yesterday, to-day and for ever.

Doctors and Clergymen

A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

God is Love

I dare say. But what a mischievous devil Love is!

Common Chords

If Man is the tonic and God the dominant, the Devil is certainly the sub-dominant and Woman is the relative minor.

God and the Devil

God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.

Sex

The sexes are the first—or are among the first great experiments in the social subdivision of labour.

Women

If you choose to insist on the analogies and points of resemblance between men and women, they are so great that the differences seem indeed small. If, on the other hand, you are in a mood for emphasising the points of difference, you can show that men and women have hardly anything in common. And so with anything: if a man wants to make a case he can generally find a way of doing so.

Offers of Marriage

Women sometimes say that they have had no offers, and only wish that some one had ever proposed to them. This is not the right way to put it. What they should say is that though, like all women, they have been proposing to men all their lives, yet they grieve to remember that they have been invariably refused.

Marriage

i

The question of marriage or non-marriage is only the question of whether it is better to be spoiled one way or another.

ii

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

iii

Inoculation, or a hair of the dog that is going to bite you—this principle should be introduced in respect of marriage and speculation.

Life and Love

To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

The Basis of Life

We may say what we will, but Life is, _au fond_, sensual.

Woman Suffrage

I will vote for it when women have left off making a noise in the reading-room of the British Museum, when they leave off wearing high head-dresses in the pit of a theatre and when I have seen as many as twelve women in all catch hold of the strap or bar on getting into an omnibus.

Manners Makyth Man

Yes, but they make woman still more.

Women and Religion

It has been said that all sensible men are of the same religion and that no sensible man ever says what that religion is. So all sensible men are of the same opinion about women and no sensible man ever says what that opinion is.

Happiness

Behold and see if there be any happiness like unto the happiness of the devils when they found themselves cast out of Mary Magdalene.

Sorrow within Sorrow

He was in reality damned glad; he told people he was sorry he was not more sorry, and here began the first genuine sorrow, for he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

Going Away

I can generally bear the separation, but I don’t like the leave-taking.

XV Titles and Subjects

Titles

A GOOD title should aim at making what follows as far as possible superfluous to those who know anything of the subject.

“The Ancient Mariner”

This poem would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor,” so that Wardour Street has its uses.

For Unwritten Articles, Essays, Stories

The Art of Quarrelling.

Christian Death-beds.

The Book of Babes and Sucklings.

Literary Struldbrugs.

The Life of the World to Come.

The Limits of Good Faith.

Art, Money and Religion.

The Third Class Excursion Train, or Steam-boat, as the Church of the Future.

The Utter Speculation involved in much of the good advice that is commonly given—as never to sell a reversion, etc.

Tracts for Children, warning them against the virtues of their elders.

Making Ready for Death as a Means of Prolonging Life. An Essay concerning Human Misunderstanding. So McCulloch [a fellow art-student at Heatherley’s, a very fine draughtsman] used to say that he drew a great many lines and saved the best of them. Illusion, mistake, action taken in the dark—these are among the main sources of our progress.

The Elements of Immorality for the Use of Earnest Schoolmasters.

Family Prayers: A series of perfectly plain and sensible ones asking for what people really do want without any kind of humbug.

A Penitential Psalm as David would have written it if he had been reading Herbert Spencer.

A Few Little Crows which I have to pick with various people.

The Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity.

The Battle of the Prigs and Blackguards.

That Good may Come.

The Marriage of Inconvenience.

The Judicious Separation.

Fooling Around.

Higgledy-Piggledy.

The Diseases and Ordinary Causes of Mortality among Friendships.

The finding a lot of old photographs at Herculaneum or Thebes; and they should turn out to be of no interest.

On the points of resemblance and difference between the dropping off of leaves from a tree and the dropping off of guests from a dinner or a concert.

The Sense of Touch: An essay showing that all the senses resolve themselves ultimately into a sense of touch, and that eating is touch carried to the bitter end. So there is but one sense—touch—and the amœba has it. When I look upon the foraminifera I look upon myself.

The China Shepherdess with Lamb on public-house chimney-pieces in England as against the Virgin with Child in Italy.

For a Medical pamphlet: Cant as a means of Prolonging Life.

For an Art book: The Complete Pot-boiler; or what to paint and how to paint it, with illustrations reproduced from contemporary exhibitions and explanatory notes.

For a Picture: St. Francis preaching to Silenus. Fra Angelico and Rubens might collaborate to produce this picture.

The Happy Mistress. Fifteen mistresses apply for three cooks and the mistress who thought herself nobody is chosen by the beautiful and accomplished cook.

The Complete Drunkard. He would not give money to sober people, he said they would only eat it and send their children to school with it.

The Contented Porpoise. It knew it was to be stuffed and set up in a glass case after death, and looked forward to this as to a life of endless happiness.

The Flying Balance. The ghost of an old cashier haunts a ledger, so that the books always refuse to balance by the sum of, say, £1.15.11. No matter how many accountants are called in, year after year the same error always turns up; sometimes they think they have it right and it turns out there was a mistake, so the old error reappears. At last a son and heir is born, and at some festivities the old cashier’s name is mentioned with honour. This lays his ghost. Next morning the books are found correct and remain so.

A Dialogue between Isaac and Ishmael on the night that Isaac came down from the mountain with his father. The rebellious Ishmael tries to stir up Isaac, and that good young man explains the righteousness of the transaction—without much effect.

Bad Habits: on the dropping them gradually, as one leaves off requiring them, on the evolution principle.

A Story about a Freethinking Father who has an illegitimate son which he considers the proper thing; he finds this son taking to immoral ways, e.g. he turns Christian, becomes a clergyman and insists on marrying.

For a Ballad: Two sets of rooms in some alms-houses at Cobham near Gravesend have an inscription stating that they belong to “the Hundred of Hoo in the Isle of Grain.” These words would make a lovely refrain for a ballad.

A story about a man who suffered from atrophy of the purse, or atrophy of the opinions; but whatever the disease some plausible Latin, or imitation-Latin name must be found for it and also some cure.

A Fairy Story modelled on the Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen about a bumptious boy whom all the nice boys hated. He finds out that he was really at last caressed by the Huxleys and Tyndalls as one of themselves.

A Collection of the letters of people who have committed suicide; and also of people who only threaten to do so. The first may be got abundantly from reports of coroners’ inquests, the second would be harder to come by.

The Structure and Comparative Anatomy of Fads, Fancies and Theories; showing, moreover, that men and women exist only as the organs and tools of the ideas that dominate them; it is the fad that is alone living.

An Astronomical Speculation: Each fixed star has a separate god whose body is his own particular solar system, and these gods know each other, move about among each other as we do, laugh at each other and criticise one another’s work. Write some of their discourses with and about one another.

Imaginary Worlds

A world exactly, to the minutest detail, a duplicate of our own, but as we shall be five hundred, or from that to twenty thousand, years hence. Let there be also another world, a duplicate of what we were five hundred to twenty thousand years ago. There should be many worlds of each kind at different dates behind us and ahead of us.

I send a visitor from a world ahead of us to a world behind us, after which he comes to us, and so we learn what happened in the Homeric age. My visitor will not tell me what has happened in his own world since the time corresponding to the present moment in our world, because the knowledge of the future would be not only fatal to ourselves but would upset the similarity between the two worlds, so they would be no longer able to refer to us for information on any point of history from the moment of the introduction of the disturbing element.

When they are in doubt about a point in their past history that we have not yet reached they make preparation and forecast its occurrence in our world as we foretell eclipses and transits of Venus, and all their most accomplished historians investigate it; but if the conditions for observation have been unfavourable, or if they postpone consideration of the point till the time of its happening here has gone by, then they must wait for many years till the same combination occurs in some other world. Thus they say, “The next beheading of King Charles I will be in Ald. b. x. 231c/d”—or whatever the name of the star may be—“on such and such a day of such and such a year, and there will not be another in the lifetime of any man now living,” or there will, in such and such a star, as the case may be.

Communication with a world twenty thousand years ahead of us might ruin the human race as effectually as if we had fallen into the sun. It would be too wide a cross. The people in my supposed world know this and if, for any reason, they want to kill a civilisation, stuff it and put it into a museum, they tell it something that is too much ahead of its other ideas, something that travels faster than thought, thus setting an avalanche of new ideas tumbling in upon it and utterly destroying everything. Sometimes they merely introduce a little poisonous microbe of thought which the cells in the world where it is introduced do not know how to deal with—some such trifle as that two and two make seven, or that you can weigh time in scales by the pound; a single such microbe of knowledge placed in the brain of a fitting subject would breed like wild fire and kill all that came in contact with it.

And so on.

An Idyll

I knew a South Italian of the old Greek blood whose sister told him when he was a boy that he had eyes like a cow.

Raging with despair and grief he haunted the fountains and looked into the mirror of their waters. “Are my eyes,” he asked himself with horror, “are they really like the eyes of a cow?” “Alas!” he was compelled to answer, “they are only too sadly, sadly like them.”

And he asked those of his playmates whom he best knew and trusted whether it was indeed true that his eyes were like the eyes of a cow, but he got no comfort from any of them, for they one and all laughed at him and said that they were not only like, but very like. Then grief consumed his soul, and he could eat no food, till one day the loveliest girl in the place said to him:

“Gaetano, my grandmother is ill and cannot get her firewood; come with me to the bosco this evening and help me to bring her a load or two, will you?”

And he said he would go.

So when the sun was well down and the cool night air was sauntering under the chestnuts, the pair sat together cheek to cheek and with their arms round each other’s waists.

“O Gaetano,” she exclaimed, “I do love you so very dearly. When you look at me your eyes are like—they are like the eyes”—here she faltered a little—“the eyes of a cow.”

Thenceforward he cared not . . .

And so on.

A Divorce Novelette

The hero and heroine are engaged against their wishes. They like one another very well but each is in love with some one else; nevertheless, under an uncle’s will, they forfeit large property unless they marry one another, so they get married, making no secret to one another that they dislike it very much.

On the evening of their wedding day they broach the subject that has long been nearest to their hearts—the possibility of being divorced. They discuss it tearfully, but the obstacles seem insuperable. Nevertheless they agree that faint heart never yet got rid of fair lady, “None but the brave,” exclaims the husband, “deserve to lose the fair,” and they plight their most solemn vows that they will henceforth live but for the object of getting divorced from one another.

But the course of true divorce never did run smooth, and the plot turns upon the difficulties that meet them and how they try to overcome them. At one time they seem almost certain of success, but the cup is dashed from their lips and is farther off than ever.

At last an opportunity occurs in an unlooked-for manner. They are divorced and live happily apart ever afterwards.

The Moral Painter—A Tale of Double Personality

Once upon a time there was a painter who divided his life into two halves; in the one half he painted pot-boilers for the market, setting every consideration aside except that of doing for his master, the public, something for which he could get paid the money on which he lived. He was great at floods and never looked at nature except in order to see what would make most show with least expense. On the whole he found nothing so cheap to make and easy to sell as veiled heads.

The other half of his time he studied and painted with the sincerity of Giovanni Bellini, Rembrandt, Holbein or De Hooghe. He was then his own master and thought only of doing his work as well as he could, regardless of whether it would bring him anything but debt and abuse or not. He gave his best without receiving so much as thanks.

He avoided the temptation of telling either half about the other.

Two Writers

One left little or nothing about himself and the world complained that it was puzzled. Another, mindful of this, left copious details about himself, whereon the world said that it was even more puzzled about him than about the man who had left nothing, till presently it found out that it was also bored, and troubled itself no more about either.

The Archbishop of Heligoland

The Archbishop of Heligoland believes his faith, and it makes him so unhappy that he finds it impossible to advise any one to accept it. He summons the Devil, makes a compact with him and is relieved by being made to see that there was nothing in it—whereon he is very good and happy and leads a most beneficent life, but is haunted by the thought that on his death the Devil will claim his bond. This terror grows greater and greater, and he determines to see the Devil again.

The upshot of it all is that the Devil turns out to have been Christ who has a dual life and appears sometimes as Christ and sometimes as the Devil. {235}

XVI Written Sketches

Literary Sketch-Books

THE true writer will stop everywhere and anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will stop everywhere and anywhere to sketch.

I do not see why an author should not have a sale of literary sketches, each one short, slight and capable of being framed and glazed in small compass. They would make excellent library decorations and ought to fetch as much as an artist’s sketches. They might be cut up in suitable lots, if the fashion were once set, and many a man might be making provision for his family at odd times with his notes as an artist does with his sketches.

London