Tracks of a Rolling Stone [24]
The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: 'Or vous voyez bien . . . qu'un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit etre brule dans ce monde ci, et dans l'autre.' To which 'L'Empereur' replies: 'Ca c'est clair comme le jour.'
Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit, as he met with here?
Then followed Rousseau; 'Emile' became my favourite. Froude's 'Nemesis of Faith' I read, and many other books of a like tendency. Passive obedience, blind submission to authority, was never one of my virtues, and once my faith was shattered, I knew not where to stop - what to doubt, what to believe. If the injunction to 'prove all things' was anything more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St. Paul's eyes at any rate, could not be sacrilege.
It was not happiness I sought, - not peace of mind at least; for assuredly my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me anything but peace. I never was more restless, or, at times, more unhappy. Shallow, indeed, must be the soul that can lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at the roots of our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used to wander about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered spots, longing for some friend, some confidant to take counsel with. I knew no such friend. I did not dare to speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my earnest desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of childhood's influences was impossible to shake off. I could not rid my conscience of the sin of doubt.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child's first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum!'
CHAPTER IX
TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts. The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr. Robert Collyer, rector of Warham, a living close to Holkham in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between my Ely tutor and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such aberrant proclivities as mine. Without my knowledge, he wrote to Mr. Ellice lamenting my secret recusancy, and its moral dangers. Mr. Ellice came expressly from London, and stayed a night at Ely. He dined with us in the cloisters, and had a long private conversation with my tutor, and, before he left, with me. I indignantly resented the clandestine representations of Mr. S., and, without a word to Mr. Ellice or to anyone else, wrote next day to Mr. Collyer to beg him to take me in at Warham, and make what he could of me, before I went to Cambridge. It may here be said that Mr. Collyer had been my father's chaplain, and had lived at Holkham for several years as family tutor to my brothers and myself, as we in turn left the nursery. Mr. Collyer, upon receipt of my letter, referred the matter to Mr. Ellice; with his approval I was duly installed at Warham. Before describing my time there, I must tell of an incident which came near to affecting me in a rather important way.
My mother lived at Longford in Derbyshire, an old place, now my home, which had come into the Coke family in James I.'s reign, through the marriage of a son of Chief Justice Coke's with the heiress of the De Langfords,
Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit, as he met with here?
Then followed Rousseau; 'Emile' became my favourite. Froude's 'Nemesis of Faith' I read, and many other books of a like tendency. Passive obedience, blind submission to authority, was never one of my virtues, and once my faith was shattered, I knew not where to stop - what to doubt, what to believe. If the injunction to 'prove all things' was anything more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St. Paul's eyes at any rate, could not be sacrilege.
It was not happiness I sought, - not peace of mind at least; for assuredly my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me anything but peace. I never was more restless, or, at times, more unhappy. Shallow, indeed, must be the soul that can lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at the roots of our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used to wander about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered spots, longing for some friend, some confidant to take counsel with. I knew no such friend. I did not dare to speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my earnest desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of childhood's influences was impossible to shake off. I could not rid my conscience of the sin of doubt.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child's first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum!'
CHAPTER IX
TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts. The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr. Robert Collyer, rector of Warham, a living close to Holkham in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between my Ely tutor and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such aberrant proclivities as mine. Without my knowledge, he wrote to Mr. Ellice lamenting my secret recusancy, and its moral dangers. Mr. Ellice came expressly from London, and stayed a night at Ely. He dined with us in the cloisters, and had a long private conversation with my tutor, and, before he left, with me. I indignantly resented the clandestine representations of Mr. S., and, without a word to Mr. Ellice or to anyone else, wrote next day to Mr. Collyer to beg him to take me in at Warham, and make what he could of me, before I went to Cambridge. It may here be said that Mr. Collyer had been my father's chaplain, and had lived at Holkham for several years as family tutor to my brothers and myself, as we in turn left the nursery. Mr. Collyer, upon receipt of my letter, referred the matter to Mr. Ellice; with his approval I was duly installed at Warham. Before describing my time there, I must tell of an incident which came near to affecting me in a rather important way.
My mother lived at Longford in Derbyshire, an old place, now my home, which had come into the Coke family in James I.'s reign, through the marriage of a son of Chief Justice Coke's with the heiress of the De Langfords,