spirits in heaven, or scoundrels on earth, or fiends somewhere else, have brought us a new religion, let us look at the new religion on its own merits. Well, this is the sort of thing the spirits are supposed to write down, and very possibly do write down:
“You make death an impenetrable fog, while it is a mere golden mist, torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and revealing life as not only continuous but as not cut in two by a great change. I cannot express myself as I wish. … It is more like leaving prison for freedom and happiness. Not that your present life lacks joy; it is all joy, but you have to fight with imperfections. Here, we have to struggle only with lack of development. There is no evil—only different degrees of spirit.”
The interrogator, Mr. Basil King, who narrates his experiences in an interesting article in Nash’s Magazine, proceeds to ask whether the lack of development is due to the highly practical thing we call sin. To this the spirit replies: “They come over with the evil, as it were, cut out, and leaving blanks in their souls. These have by degrees to be filled with good.”
Now I will waive the point whether death is a mist or a fog or a front door or a fire-escape or any other physical metaphor; being satisfied with the fact that it is there, and not to be removed by metaphors. But what amuses me about the spirit is that for him it is both there and not there. Death is non-existent in one sentence, and of the most startling importance six sentences afterwards. The spirit is positive that our existence is not cut in two by a great change, at the moment of death. But the spirit is equally positive, a little lower down, that the whole of our human evil is instantly and utterly cut out of us, and all at the moment of death. If a man suddenly and supernaturally loses about three-quarters of his ordinary character, might it not be described as “a great change”? Why does so enormous a convulsion happen at the exact moment of death, if death is non-existent and not to be considered? The Spiritualist is here contradicting himself, not only by making death very decidedly a great change, but by actually making it a greater change than Dante or St. Francis thought it was. A Christian who thinks the soul carries its sins to Purgatory makes life much more “continuous” than this Spiritualist, who says that death, and death alone, alters a man as by a blast of magic. The article bears the modest title of “The Abolishing of Death”; and the spirit does say that this is possible, except when he forgets and says the opposite. He seldom contradicts himself more than twice in a paragraph. But since he says clearly that death abolishes sin, and equally clearly that he abolishes death, it becomes an interesting speculation what happens next, and especially what happens to sin: a subject of interest to many of us.
Mr. Basil King asked the spirit, who had told him that animals are human, whether it is wrong to destroy animal life. It may be remarked that the questions Mr. King asks are always much more acute than the answers he gets. The answer about the killing of animals is this: “You can never destroy life. Life is the absolute power which overrules all else. There can be no cessation. It is impossible.” And that is all; and for a man considering whether he shall or shall not kill a tom-cat, it does not seem very helpful. Logically, if it means anything, it would seem to mean that you may do anything to the cat, for its nine lives are really an infinite series. In short, you can kill it because you cannot kill it. But it is obvious that if a man relies on this reason for killing his cat, it is an equally good reason for killing his creditor. Creditors also are immortal (a solemn thought); creditors also pass through a golden mist torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and have all the evil of their souls (including, let us hope, their avarice) cut out of them with the axe of death, without noticing anything in particular. In short, Mr. Basil King, when he asks a reasonable question about a real moral question, the relations of man and the animals, gets no reply except a hotch-potch of words which might mean anarchy and may mean anything. From beginning to end the spirit never answers any real question on which the real religions of mankind have been obliged to legislate and to teach. The only practical deduction would be that it is no disadvantage to have sinned in this life; as in the other case that it is no disgrace to kill either a creditor or a cat. If it means anything, it means that; and if it is spirits and not spifflications, the spirits mean that: and I do not desire their further acquaintance.
Tennyson
I have been glancing over two or three of the appreciations of Tennyson appropriate to his centenary, and have been struck with a curious tone of coldness towards him in almost all quarters. Now this is really a very peculiar thing. For it is a case of coldness to quite brilliant and unquestionable literary merit. Whether Tennyson was a great poet I shall not discuss. I understand that one has to wait about eight hundred years before discussing that; and my only complaint against the printers of my articles is that they will not wait even for much shorter periods. But that Tennyson was a poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is a billiard-player. That Tennyson was an astonishingly good poet is as solid and certain as that Roberts is an astonishingly good billiard-player. Even in these matters of art there are some things analogous to matters of fact. It is no good disputing about tastes—partly because some tastes are beyond dispute. If anyone tells me that
There is fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate;
or that
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
is not fine poetry, I am quite prepared to treat him as I would one who said that grass was not green or that I was not corpulent. And by all common chances Tennyson ought to be preserved as a pleasure—a sensuous pleasure if you like, but certainly a genuine one. There is no more reason for dropping Tennyson than for dropping Virgil. We do not mind Virgil’s view of Augustus, nor need we mind Tennyson’s view of Queen Victoria. Beauty is unanswerable, in a poem as much as in a woman. There were Victorian writers whose art is not perfectly appreciable apart from their enthusiasm. Kingsley’s Yeast is a fine book, but not quite so fine a book as it seemed when one’s own social passions were still yeasty. Browning and Coventry Patmore are justly admired, but they are most admired where they are most agreed with. But “St. Agnes’ Eve” is an unimpeachably beautiful poem, whether one believes in St. Agnes or detests her. One would think that a man who had thus left indubitably good verse would receive natural and steady gratitude, like a man who left indubitably good wine to his nephew, or indubitably good pictures to the National Portrait Gallery. Nevertheless, as I have said, the tone of all the papers, modernist or old-fashioned, has been mainly frigid. What is the meaning of this?
I will ask permission to answer this question by abruptly and even brutally changing the subject. My remarks must, first of all, seem irrelevant even to effrontery; they shall prove their relevance later on. In turning the pages of one of the papers containing such a light and unsympathetic treatment of Tennyson, my eye catches the following sentence: “By the light of modern science and thought, we are in a position to see that each normal human being in some way repeats historically the life of the human race.” This is a very typical modern assertion; that is, it is an assertion for which there is not and never has been a single spot or speck of proof. We know precious little about what the life of the human race has been; and none of our scientific conjectures about it bear the remotest resemblance to the actual growth of a child. According to this theory, a baby begins by chipping flints and rubbing sticks together to find fire. One so often sees babies doing this. About the age of five the child, before the delighted eyes of his parents, founds a village community. By the time he is eleven it has become a small city state, the replica of ancient Athens. Encouraged by this, the boy proceeds, and before he is fourteen has founded the Roman Empire. But now his parents have a serious set-back. Having watched him so far, not only with pleasure, but with a very natural surprise, they must strengthen themselves to endure the spectacle of decay. They have now to watch their child going through the decline of the Western Empire and the Dark Ages. They see the invasion of the Huns and that of
