On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (6 page)

"Then if the senses are so powerful in a decline of the State there
should come at the same time," said I, "a quick forgetfulness of the
human dead and an easy change of human friendship?"

"There does," he answered, and to that there was no more to be said.

"I know it by my own experience," he continued. "When, yesterday, at
sunset, I looked for my dog Argus and could not find him, I went out
into the wood and called him: the darkness came and I found no trace
of him. I did not hear him barking far off as I have heard him
before when he was younger and went hunting for a while, and three
times that night I came back out of the wild into the warmth of my
house, making sure he would have returned, but he was never there.
The third time I had gone a mile out to the gamekeeper's to give him
money if Argus should be found, and I asked him as many questions
and as foolish as a woman would ask. Then I sat up right into the
night, thinking that every movement of the wind outside or of the
drip of water was the little pad of his step coming up the
flagstones to the door. I was even in the mood when men see unreal
things, and twice I thought I saw him passing quickly between my
chair and the passage to the further room. But these things are
proper to the night and the strongest thing I suffered for him was
in the morning.

"It was, as you know, very bitterly cold for several days. They
found things dead in the hedgerows, and there was perhaps no running
water between here and the Downs. There was no shelter from the
snow. There was no cover for my friend at all. And when I was up at
dawn with the faint light about, a driving wind full of sleet filled
all the air. Then I made certain that the dog Argus was dead, and
what was worse that I should not find his body: that the old dog had
got caught in some snare or that his strength had failed him through
the cold, as it fails us human beings also upon such nights,
striking at the heart.

"Though I was certain that I would not see him again yet I went on
foolishly and aimlessly enough, plunging through the snow from one
spinney to another and hoping that I might hear a whine. I heard
none: and if the little trail he had made in his departure might
have been seen in the evening, long before that morning the drift
would have covered it.

"I had eaten nothing and yet it was near noon when I returned,
pushing forward to the cottage against the pressure of the storm,
when I found there, miserably crouched, trembling, half dead, in the
lee of a little thick yew beside my door, the dog Argus; and as I
came his tail just wagged and he just moved his ears, but he had not
the strength to come near me, his master."

[Greek: ourae men rh ho g esaene kai ouata kabbalen ampho, asson d
ouket epeita dunaesato oio anaktos elthemen.]

"I carried him in and put him here, feeding him by force, and I have
restored him."

All this the Recluse said to me with as deep and as restrained
emotion as though he had been speaking of the most sacred things, as
indeed, for him, these things were sacred.

It was therefore a mere inadvertence in me, and an untrained habit
of thinking aloud, which made me say:

"Good Heavens, what will you do when the dog Argus dies?"

At once I wished I had not said it, for I could see that the Recluse
could not bear the words. I looked therefore a little awkwardly
beyond him and was pleased to see the dog Argus lazily opening his
one eye and surveying me with torpor and with contempt. He was
certainly less moved than his master.

Then in my heart I prayed that of these two (unless The God would
make them both immortal and catch them up into whatever place is
better than the Weald, or unless he would grant them one death
together upon one day) that the dog Argus might survive my friend,
and that the Recluse might be the first to dissolve that long
companionship. For of this I am certain, that the dog would suffer
less; for men love their dependents much more than do their
dependents them; and this is especially true of brutes; for men are
nearer to the gods.

When I was a boy—

What a phrase! What memories! O! Noctes Coenasque Deûm! Why, then,
is there something in man that wholly perishes? It is against sound
religion to believe it, but the world would lead one to imagine it.
The Hills are there. I see them as I write. They are the cloud or
wall that dignified my sixteenth year. And the river is there, and
flows by that same meadow beyond my door; from above Coldwatham the
same vast horizon opens westward in waves of receding crests more
changeable and more immense than is even our sea. The same sunsets
at times bring it all in splendour, for whatever herds the western
clouds together in our stormy evenings is as stable and as vigorous
as the County itself. If, therefore, there is something gone, it is
I that have lost it.

Certainly something is diminished (the Priests and the tradition of
the West forbid me to say that the soul can perish), certainly
something is diminished—what? Well, I do not know its name, nor has
anyone known it face to face or apprehended it in this life, but the
sense and influence—alas! especially the memory of It, lies in the
words "When I was a boy," and if I write those words again in any
document whatsoever, even in a lawyer's letter, without admitting at
once a full-blooded and galloping parenthesis, may the Seven Devils
of Sense take away the last remnant of the joy they lend me.

When I was a boy there was nothing all about the village or the
woods that had not its living god, and all these gods were good. Oh!
How the County and its Air shone from within; what meaning lay in
unexpected glimpses of far horizons; what a friend one was with the
clouds!

Well, all I can say to the Theologians is this:

"I will grant you that the Soul does not decay: you know more of
such flimsy things than I do. But you, on your side, must grant me
that there is Something which does not enter into your systems. That
has perished, and I mean to mourn it all the days of my life. Pray
do not interfere with that peculiar ritual."

When I was a boy I knew Nature as a child knows its nurse, and Tea I
denounced for a drug. I found to support this fine instinct many
arguments, all of which are still sound, though not one of them
would prevent me now from drinking my twentieth cup. It was
introduced late and during a corrupt period. It was an exotic. It
was a sham exhilarant to which fatal reactions could not but attach.
It was no part of the Diet of the Natural Man. The two nations that
alone consume it—the English and the Chinese—are become, by its
baneful influence on the imagination, the most easily deceived in
the world. Their politics are a mass of bombastic illusions. Also it
dries their skins. It tans the liver, hardens the coats of the
stomach, makes the brain feverishly active, rots the nerve-springs;
all that is still true. Nevertheless I now drink it, and shall drink
it; for of all the effects of Age none is more profound than this:
that it leads men to the worship of some one spirit less erect than
the Angels. A care, an egotism, an irritability with regard to
details, an anxious craving, a consummate satisfaction in the
performance of the due rites, an ecstasy of habit, all proclaim the
senile heresy, the material Religion. I confess to Tea.

All is arranged in this Cult with the precision of an ancient creed.
The matter of the Sacrifice must come from China. He that would
drink Indian Tea would smoke hay. The Pot must be of metal, and the
metal must be a white metal, not gold or iron. Who has not known the
acidity and paucity of Tea from a silver-gilt or golden spout? The
Pot must first be warmed by pouring in a little
boiling
water
(the word
boiling
should always be underlined); then the
water is poured away and a few words are said. Then the Tea is put
in and unrolls and spreads in the steam. Then, in due order, on
these expanding leaves
Boiling
Water is largely poured and
the god arises, worthy of continual but evil praise and of the
thanks of the vicious, a Deity for the moment deceitfully kindly to
men. Under his influence the whole mind receives a sharp vision of
power. It is a phantasm and a cheat. Men can do wonders through
wine; through Tea they only think themselves great and clear—but
that is enough if one has bound oneself to that strange idol and
learnt the magic phrase on His Pedestal, [Greek: ARISTON MEN TI],
for of all the illusions and dreams men cherish none is so grandiose
as the illusion of conscious power within.

* * * * *

Well, then, it fades…. I begin to see that this cannot continue
… of Tea it came, inconsecutive and empty; with the influence of
Tea dissolving, let these words also dissolve…. I could wish it
had been Opium, or Haschisch, or even Gin; you would have had
something more soaring for your money….
In vino Veritas. In
Aqua satietas. In
… What is the Latin for Tea? What! Is there
no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would
have let the vulgar stuff alone.

I do not like Them. It is no good asking me why, though I have
plenty of reasons. I do not like Them. There would be no particular
point in saying I do not like Them if it were not that so many
people doted on Them, and when one hears Them praised, it goads one
to expressing one's hatred and fear of Them.

I know very well that They can do one harm, and that They have
occult powers. All the world has known that for a hundred thousand
years, more or less, and every attempt has been made to propitiate
Them. James I. would drown Their mistress or burn her, but
They
were spared. Men would mummify Them in Egypt, and
worship the mummies; men would carve Them in stone in Cyprus, and
Crete and Asia Minor, or (more remarkable still) artists, especially
in the Western Empire, would leave Them out altogether; so much was
Their influence dreaded. Well, I yield so far as not to print Their
name, and only to call Them "They", but I hate Them, and I'm not
afraid to say so.

If you will take a little list of the chief crimes that living
beings can commit you will find that They commit them all. And They
are cruel; cruelty is even in Their tread and expression. They are
hatefully cruel. I saw one of Them catch a mouse the other day (the
cat is now out of the bag), and it was a very much more sickening
sight, I fancy, than ordinary murder. You may imagine that They
catch mice to eat them. It is not so. They catch mice to torture them.
And what is worse, They will teach this to Their children—Their
children who are naturally innocent and fat, and full of goodness,
are deliberately and systematically corrupted by Them; there is
diabolism in it.

Other beings (I include mankind) will be gluttonous, but gluttonous
spasmodically, or with a method, or shamefacedly, or, in some way or
another that qualifies the vice; not so They. They are gluttonous
always and upon all occasions, and in every place and for ever. It
was only last Vigil of All Fools' Day when, myself fasting, I filled
up the saucer seven times with milk and seven times it was emptied,
and there went up the most peevish, querulous, vicious complaint and
demand for an eighth. They will eat some part of the food of all
that are in the house. Now even a child, the most gluttonous one
would think of all living creatures, would not do that. It makes a
selection,
They
do not.
They
will drink beer. This is not a theory;
I know it; I have seen it with my own eyes. They will eat special foods;
They will even eat dry bread. Here again I have personal evidence of
the fact; They will eat the dog's biscuits, but never upon any occasion
will They eat anything that has been poisoned, so utterly lacking are
They in simplicity and humility, and so abominably well filled with
cunning by whatever demon first brought their race into existence.

They also, alone of all creation, love hateful noises. Some beings
indeed (and I count Man among them) cannot help the voice with which
they have been endowed, but they know that it is offensive, and are
at pains to make it better; others (such as the peacock or the
elephant) also know that their cry is unpleasant. They therefore use
it sparingly. Others again, the dove, the nightingale, the thrush,
know that their voices are very pleasant, and entertain us with them
all day and all night long; but They know that Their voices are the
most hideous of all the sounds in the world, and, knowing this, They
perpetually insist upon thrusting those voices upon us, saying, as
it were, "I am giving myself pain, but I am giving you more pain,
and therefore I shall go on." And They choose for the place where
this pain shall be given, exact and elevated situations, very close
to our ears. Is there any need for me to point out that in every
city they will begin their wicked jar just at the time when its
inhabitants must sleep? In London you will not hear it till after
midnight; in the county towns it begins at ten; in remote villages
as early as nine.

Their Master also protects them. They have a charmed life. I have
seen one thrown from a great height into a London street, which when
It reached it It walked quietly away with the dignity of the Lost
World to which It belonged.

If one had the time one could watch Them day after day, and never
see Them do a single kind or good thing, or be moved by a single
virtuous impulse. They have no gesture for the expression of
admiration, love, reverence or ecstasy. They have but one method of
expressing content, and They reserve that for moments of physical
repletion. The tail, which is in all other animals the signal for
joy or for defence, or for mere usefulness, or for a noble anger, is
with Them agitated only to express a sullen discontent.

All that They do is venomous, and all that They think is evil, and
when I take mine away (as I mean to do next week—in a basket), I
shall first read in a book of statistics what is the wickedest part
of London, and I shall leave It there, for I know of no one even
among my neighbours quite so vile as to deserve such a gift.