Father Payne, Arthur Christopher Benson [reading tree .TXT] 📗

hold your tongue!' It's the people who can't hold their tongue, who go on roughly pointing things out, and commenting, and explaining, and thrusting themselves in front of the show, who do something. Of course force has to be kept in order, but there it is--it lives, it must have its say. What you have to learn is to insinuate yourself into life, like ivy, but without spoiling other people's pleasure. That's liberty! The old thistle has no respect for liberty, and that is why he is rooted up. But it's rather sad work doing it, because he does so very much want to be alive. But it isn't liberty simply to efface yourself, because you may interfere with other people. The thing is to fit in, without disorganising everything about you."

He mused for a little in silence; then he said, "It's like almost everything else--it's a weighing of claims! I don't want you fellows to be either tyrannical or slavish. It's tyrannical to bully, it's slavish to defer. The thing is to have a firm opinion, not to be ashamed of it or afraid of it; to say it reasonably and gently, and to stick to it amiably. Good does not attack, though if it is attacked it can slay. Good fights evil, but it knows what it is fighting, while evil fights good and evil alike. I think that is true. I don't want you people to be controversial or quarrelsome in what you write, and to go in for picking holes in others' work. If you want to help a man to do better, criticise him privately--don't slap him in public, to show how hard you can lay on. Make your own points, explain if you like, but don't apologise. The great writers, mind you, are the people who can go on. It's volume rather than delicacy that matters in the end. It must flow like honey--good solid stuff--not drip like rain, out of mere weakness. But the thing is to flow, and largeness of production is better than little bits of overhandled work. Mind that, my boy! It's force that tells: and that's why I don't want you to be over-interested in your work. You must go on filling up with experience; but it doesn't matter where or how you get it, as long as it is eagerly done. Be on the side of life! _Amor fati_, that's the motto for a man--to love his destiny passionately, and all that is before him; not to droop, or sentimentalise, or submit, but to plunge on, like a 'sea-shouldering whale'! You remember old Kit Smart--


'Strong against tide, the enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.'


"Mind you _emerge!_ Never heed the tide: there's plenty of room for it as well as for you!"


LVI


OF CONSCIENCE

Lestrange was being genially bantered by Rose one day at dinner on what Rose called "problems of life and being," or "springs of action," or even "higher ground." Lestrange was oppressively earnest, but he was always good-natured.

"Ultimately?" he had said, "why, ultimately, of course, you must obey your conscience."

"No, no!" said Father Payne, "that won't do, Lestrange! Who are _you_, after all? I mean that the 'you' you speak of has something to say about it, to decide whether to disobey or to obey. And then, too, the same 'you' seems to have decided that conscience is to be obeyed. The thing that you describe as 'yourself' is much more ultimate than conscience, because if it is not convinced that conscience is to be obeyed, it will not obey. I mean that there is something which criticises even the conscience. It can't be reason, because your conscience over-rides your reason, and it can't be instinct, generally speaking, because conscience often over-rides instinct."

"I am confused," said Lestrange. "I mean by conscience the thing which says 'You _ought!_' That is what seems to me to prove the existence of God, that there is a sense of a moral law which one does not invent, and which is sometimes very inconveniently aggressive."

"Yes, that is all right," said Father Payne, "but how is it when there are two 'oughts,' as there often are? A man ought to work--and he ought not to overwork--something else has to be called in to decide where one 'ought' begins and the other ends. There is a perpetual balancing of moral claims. Your conscience tells you to do two things which are mutually exclusive--both are right in the abstract. What are you to do then?"

"I suppose that reason comes in there," said Lestrange.

"Then reason is the ultimate guide?" said Father Payne.

"Oh, Father, you are darkening counsel," said Lestrange.

"No, no," said Father Payne, "I am just trying to face facts."

"Well, then," said Lestrange, "what is the ultimate thing?"

"The ultimate thing," said Father Payne, "is of course the thing you call yourself--but the ultimate instinct is probably a sense of proportion--a sense of beauty, if you like!"

"But how does that work out in practice?" said Vincent. "It seems to me to be a mere argument about names and titles. You are using conscience as the sense of right and wrong, and, as you say, they often seem to have conflicting claims. Lestrange used it in the further sense of the thing which ultimately decides your course. It is right to be philanthropic, it is right to be artistic--they may conflict; but something ultimately tells you what you _can_ do, which is really more important than what you _ought to_ do."

"That is right," said Father Payne, "I think the test is simply this--that whenever you feel yourself paralysed, and your natural growth arrested by your obedience to any one claim--instinct, reason, conscience, whatever it is--the ultimate power cuts the knot, and tells you unfailingly where your real life lies. That is the real failure, when owing to some habit, some dread, some shrinking, you do not follow your real life. That, it seems to me, is where the old unflinching doctrines of sin and repentance have done harm. The old self-mortifying saints, who thought so badly of human nature, and who tore themselves to pieces, resisting wholesome impulses--celibate saints who ought to have been married, morbidly introspective saints who needed hard secular work, those were the people who did not dare to trust the sense of proportion, and were suspicious of the call of life. Look at St. Augustine in the wonderful passage about light, 'sliding by me in unnumbered guises'--he can only end by praying to be delivered from the temptation to enjoy the sight of dawn and sunset, as setting his affections too much upon the things of earth. I mistrust the fear of life--I mistrust all fear--at least I think it will take care of itself, and must not be cultivated. I think the call of God is the call of joy--and I believe that the superstitious dread of joy is one of the most potent agencies of the devil."

"But there are many joys which one has to mistrust," said Lestrange; "mere sensual delights, for instance."

"Yes," said Father Payne, "but most healthy and normal people, after a very little meddling with such delights, learn certainly enough that they only obscure the real, wholesome, temperate joys. You have to compromise wisely with your instincts, I think. You mustn't spend too much time in frontal attacks upon them. You have a quick temper, let us say. Well, it is better to lose it occasionally and apologise, than to hold your tongue about matters in which you are interested for fear of losing it. You are avaricious--well, hoard your money, and then yield on occasions to a generous impulse. That's a better way to defeat evil, than by dribbling money away in giving little presents which no one wants. I don't believe in petty warfare against faults. You know the proverb that if you knock too long at a closed door, the Devil opens it to you? Just give your sins a knock-down blow every now and then. I believe in the fire of life more than I believe in the cold water you use to quench it. Everything can be forgiven to passion; nothing can be forgiven to chilly calculation. The beautiful impulse is the thing that one must not disobey; and when I see people do big, wrong-headed, unguarded, unwise things, get into rows, sacrifice a reputation or a career without counting the cost, I am inclined to feel that they have probably done better for themselves than if they had been prudent and cautious. I don't say that they are always right, because people yield sometimes to a mere whim, and sometimes to a childishly overwhelming desire; but if there is a real touch of unselfishness about a sacrifice--that's the test, that some one else's joy should be involved--then I feel that it isn't my business to approve or disapprove. I feel in the presence of a force--an 'ought' as Lestrange says, which makes me shy of intervening. It's the wind of the Spirit--it blows where it will--and I know this, that I'm thankful beyond everything when I feel it in my own sails."

"Tell me when you feel it next, Father," said Vincent.

"I feel it now," said Father Payne, "now and here." And there was something in his face which made us disinclined to ask him any further questions.


LVII


OF RANK

Someone had been telling a curious story about a contested peerage. It was a sensational affair, involving the alteration of registers, the burning down of a vestry, and the flight of a clergyman.

"I like that story," said Father Payne, "and I like heraldry and rank and all that. It's decidedly picturesque. I enjoy the zigzagging of a title through generations. But the worst of it is that the most picturesque of all distinctions, like being the twentieth baron, let us say, in direct descent, is really of the nature of a stigma; a man whose twentieth ancestor was a baron has no excuse for not being a duke."

"But what I don't like," said Rose, "is the awful sense of sanctity which some people have about it. I read a book the other day where the hero sacrificed everything in turn, a career, a fortune, an engagement to a charming girl, a reputation, and last of all an undoubted claim to an ancient barony. I don't remember exactly why he did all these things--it was noble, undoubtedly it was noble! But there was something which made me vaguely uncomfortable about the order in which he spun his various advantages."

"It's only a sense of beauty slightly awry," said Father Payne; "names are curiously sacred things--they often seem to be part of the innermost essence of a man. I confess I would rather change most things than change my name. I would rather shave my head, for instance."

"But my hero would have had to change his name if he had claimed the peerage," said Rose.

"Yes, but you see the title was his _right_ name," said Father Payne; "he was only masquerading as a commoner, you must remember. Why I should value an ancient peerage is because I think it might improve my manners."

"Impossible!" said Vincent.

"Thank you," said Father Payne. "Yes, my manners are very good for a commoner--but I should like to be a little more in the grand style. I should like to be able to look long at a person, who said something of which I disapproved, and then change the subject. That would be fine! But I daren't do that now. Now I have to argue. Do you remember in _Daniel Deronda_,