A Writer's Notebook (6 page)

It is doubtless true that we owe many of our virtues to Christianity, but it is equally true that we owe to it some of our vices. The love of self is the mainspring of every man's action, it is the essence of his character; and it is fair to suppose
that it is necessary for his preservation. But Christianity has made a vice of it. It has decided that man should have neither love, nor care, nor thought for himself, but only for his soul, and by demanding of him that he should behave otherwise than as his nature prompts, has forced him into hypocrisy. It has aroused a sense of guilt in him when he follows his natural instincts, and a feeling of resentment when others, even though not at his expense, follow theirs. If selfishness were not regarded as a vice no one would be more inconvenienced by it than he is by the Law of Gravity; no one would expect his fellow-men to act otherwise than according to their own interests; and it would seem reasonable to him that they should behave as selfishly as in point of fact they do.

It is a good maxim to ask of no one more than he can give without inconvenience to himself.

The belief in God is not a matter of common sense, or logic, or argument, but of feeling. It is as impossible to prove the existence of God as to disprove it. I do not believe in God. I see no need of such an idea. It is incredible to me that there should be an after-life. I find the notion of future punishment outrageous and of future reward extravagant. I am convinced that when I die, I shall cease entirely to live; I shall return to the earth I came from. Yet I can imagine that at some future date I may believe in God; but it will be as now, when I don't believe in Him, not a matter of reasoning or of observation, but only of feeling.

If you once grant the existence of God, I do not see why you should hesitate to believe in the Resurrection, and if you once grant the supernatural I do not see why you should put limits to it. The miracles of Catholicism are as well authenticated as those of the New Testament.

The evidence adduced to prove the truth of one religion is
of very much the same sort as that adduced to prove the truth of another. I wonder that it does not make the Christian uneasy to reflect that if he had been born in Morocco he would have been a Mahometan, if in Ceylon a Buddhist; and in that case Christianity would have seemed to him as absurd and obviously untrue as those religions seem to the Christian.

The Professor of Gynæcology. He began his course of lectures as follows: Gentlemen, woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month, parturates once a year and copulates whenever she has the opportunity.

I thought it a prettily-balanced sentence.

I don't suppose anyone's life is ruled by his philosophy; his philosophy is an expression of his desires, instincts and weaknesses. The other night, talking to B., I got him to tell me the system of ideas he had devised to give sense to his life.

The highest object in life, he said, is to bring out one's own personality and that one does by following one's instincts, by letting oneself be carried on the waves of human things and by submitting oneself to all the accidents of fate and fortune. Then finally one is purified by these accidents as by fire and thus made fit for a future life. The power of loving that he has in him persuades him that there is a God and an immortality. He believes that Love, taken on its sensual as well as on its spiritual side, purifies. There is no happiness in this world, nothing but moments of contentment, and the lack of happiness and the immense desire of it afford another proof of immortality. He denies the need of self-sacrifice, asserting that the beginning, middle and end of all endeavour is the development
of oneself; but he is not unwilling to allow that self-sacrifice may at times conduce to this.

I asked him to explain the promiscuity of his amours. It vexed him a little, but he answered that his sexual instincts were very strong, and that he was really only in love with an ideal. He found traits and characteristics to love in many different persons, and by the number of these built up his ideal just as a sculptor, taking a feature here, a feature there, a fine form, a fine line, might finally create a figure of perfect beauty.

But it is obvious that in the development of oneself and the following of one's instincts, one is certain to come in contact with other people. So I asked B. what he would say to a man whose instinct it was to rob or murder. He answered that society found the instinct harmful and therefore punished the man for it.

“But then,” I said, “what if he follows his instinct, so as not to infringe any of the laws of society, but yet so as to do harm to others? Thus he may fall in love with a married woman, persuade her to leave her home, husband and family, and come to live with him; and then getting tired of her or falling in love with someone else, leave her.”

To this his reply was: “Well, then I should say that he may follow his instincts only so far as to do no harm to other people.”

In which case obviously the theory falls to the ground. These, it is plain, are the ideas of a weak man, who has not the strength to combat his desires, but yields like a feather to every wind that blows. And indeed B. has no will, no self-restraint, no courage against any of the accidents of fortune. If he cannot smoke he is wretched; if his food or his wine is bad he is upset; a wet day shatters him. If he doesn't feel well, he is silent, cast-down and melancholy. The slightest cross, even a difference of opinion will make him angry and sullen. He is a selfish creature, indifferent to other people's feelings, and the only thing that makes him behave with a semblance of decency is his conventional view of the
conduct proper to an English gentleman. He would not cross the road to help a friend, but he would never fail to rise to his feet when a woman entered the room.

People are never so ready to believe you as when you say things in dispraise of yourself; and you are never so much annoyed as when they take you at your word.

You worry me as if I was a proverb you were trying to turn into an epigram.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

In the nineties, however, we all tried to
.

“Do you know French?”

“Oh, well, you know, I can read a French novel when it's indecent.”