Thank God,” he said emphatically, “they’re not. They have it in their power to climb out and up, on to the level of eternity. No human society can become conspicuously better than it is now, unless it contains a fair proportion of individuals who know that their humanity isn’t the last word and who consciously attempt to transcend it. That’s why one should be profoundly pessimistic about the things most people are optimistic about—such as applied science, and social reform, and human nature as it is in the average man or woman. And that’s also why one should be profoundly optimistic about the thing they’re so pessimistic about that they don’t even know it exists—I mean, the possibility of transforming and transcending human nature. Not by evolutionary growth, not in some remote future, but at any time—here and now, if you like—by the use of properly directed intelligence and good will.”
Tentatively he started the lathe, then stopped it again for further adjustments.
“It’s the kind of pessimism and the kind of optimism you find in all the great religions,” he added. “Pessimism about the world at large and human nature as it displays itself in the majority of men and women. Optimism about the things that can be achieved by any one who wants to and knows how.” He started the lathe again and, this time, kept it going.
“You know the pessimism of the New Testament,” he went on through the noise of the machine. “Pessimism about the mass of mankind: many are called, few chosen. Pessimism about weakness and ignorance: from those that have not shall be taken away even that which they have. Pessimism about life as lived on the ordinary human level: for that life must be lost if the other eternal life is to be gained. Pessimism about even the highest forms of worldly morality: there’s no access to the kingdom of heaven for any one whose righteousness fails to exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees.
But who are the Scribes and Pharisees? Simply the best citizens; the pillars of society; all right-thinking men. In spite of which, or rather because of which, Jesus calls them a generation of vipers. Poor dear Dr. Mulge,” he added parenthetically, “how pained he’d be if he ever had the misfortune to meet his Saviour!” Mr. Propter smiled to himself over his work. “Well, that’s the pessimistic side of the Gospel teaching,” he went on. “And, more systematically and philosophically, you’ll find the same things set forth in the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. The world as it is and people on the strictly human level—they’re beyond hope: that’s the universal verdict. Hope begins only when human beings start to realize that the kingdom of heaven, or whatever other name you care to give it, is within and can be experienced by anybody who’s prepared to take the necessary trouble. That’s the optimistic side of Christianity and the other world religions.”
Mr. Propter stopped the lathe, took out the chair leg he had been turning and put another in its place.
“It isn’t the sort of optimism they teach you in the liberal churches,” said Pete, thinking of his transition period between Reverend Schlitz and militant Anti-Fascism.
“No, it isn’t,” Mr. Propter agreed. “What they teach you in liberal churches hasn’t got anything to do with Christianity or any other realistic religion. It’s mainly drivel.”
“Drivel?”
“Drivel,” Mr. Propter repeated. “Early twentieth century humanism seasoned with nineteenth-century evangelicalism. What a combination! Humanism affirms that good can be achieved on a level where it doesn’t exist and denies the fact of eternity. Evangelicalism denies the relationship between causes and effects by affirming the existence of a personal deity who forgives offences. They’re like Jack Spratt and his wife: between the two of them, they lick the platter clean of all sense whatsoever. No, I’m wrong,” Mr. Propter added, through the buzz of the machine, “not all sense. The humanists don’t talk of more than one race, and the evangelicals only worship one God. It’s left to the patriots to polish off that last shred of sense. The patriots and the political sectarians. A hundred mutually exclusive idolatries. ‘There are many gods and the local bosses are their respective prophets.’ The amiable silliness of the liberal churches is good enough for quiet times; but note that it’s always supplemented by the ferocious lunacies of nationalism, for use in times of crisis.
And those are the philosophies young people are brought up on. The philosophies your optimistic elders expect you to reform the world with.” Mr. Propter paused for a moment, then added, “As a man sows, so shall he reap. God is not mocked. Not mocked,” he repeated. “But people simply refuse to believe it. They go on thinking they can cock a snook at the nature of things and get away with it. I’ve sometimes thought of writing a little treatise, like a cook-book. ‘One Hundred Ways of Mocking God,’ I’d call it. And I’d take a hundred examples from history and contemporary life, illustrating what happens when people undertake to do things without paying regard to the nature of reality. And the book would be divided into sections, such as ‘Mocking God in Agriculture,’ ‘Mocking God in Politics,’ ‘Mocking God in Education,’ ‘Mocking God in Philosophy,’ ‘Mocking God in Economics.’ It would be an instructive little book. But a bit depressing,” Mr. Propter added.
Chapter VIII
THE news that the Fifth Earl had had three illegitimate children at the age of eighty-one was announced in the note-book with a truly aristocratic understatement. No boasting, no self-congratulation. Just a brief, quiet statement, sandwiched between the record of a conversation with the Duke of Wellington and a note on the music of Mozart. One hundred twenty years after the event, Dr. Obispo, who was not an English gentleman, exulted noisily, as though the achievement had been his own.
“Three of them,” he shouted in his proletarian enthusiasm. “Three! What do you think of that?”
Brought up in the same tradition as the Fifth Earl, Jeremy thought that it wasn’t bad, and went on reading.
In 1820 the Earl had been ill again; but not severely; and a three months’ course of raw carp’s entrails had restored him to his normal health, “the health,” as he put it, “of a man in the flower of his age.”
A year later, for the first time in a quarter of a century, he visited his nephew and niece, and was delighted to find that Caroline had become a shrew, that John was already bald and asthmatic, and that their eldest daughter was so monstrously fat that nobody would marry her.
On the news of the death of Bonaparte he had written philosophically that a man must be a great fool if he could not satisfy his desire for glory, power and excitement except by undergoing the hardships of war and the tedium of civil government. “The language of polite conversation,” he concluded, “reveals with a sufficient clarity that such exploits as those of Alexander and Bonaparte have their peaceful and domestic equivalents. We speak of amorous Adventures, of the Conquest of a desired Female and the Possession of her Person. For the Man of sense, such tropes are eloquent indeed. Considering their significance he perceives that War and the pursuit of Empire are wrong because foolish, foolish because unnecessary and unnecessary because the satisfactions derivable from Victory and Dominion may be obtained with vastly less trouble, pain and ennui behind the silken curtains of the Duchess’s Alcove or on the straw Pallet of the Dairy Maid.
And if at any time such simple Pleasures should prove insipid, if, like the antique Hero, he should find himself crying for new Worlds to conquer, then by the offer of a supplementary guinea, or in very many instances, as I have found, gratuitously, by the mere elicitation of a latent Desire for Humiliation and even Pain, a man may enjoy the privilege of using the Birch, the Manacles, the Cage and any such other Emblems of absolute Power as the Fancy of the Conqueror may suggest and the hired Patience of the Conquered will tolerate or her consenting Taste approve. I recall a remark by Dr. Johnson to the effect that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making Money.
Making Love is an even more innocent employment than making Money. If Bonaparte had had the Wisdom to vent his Desire for Domination in the Saloons, and Bed Chambers of his native Corsica, he would have expired in Freedom among his own people, and many hundreds of thousands of men now dead or maimed or blind would be alive and enjoying the use of their faculties. True, they would doubtless be employing their Eyes, Limbs and Lives as foolishly and malignantly as those whom Bonaparte did not murder are employing them today. But though a Superior Being might applaud the one-time Emperor for having removed so great a quantity of Vermin from the Earth, the Vermin themselves will always be of another Opinion. As a mere Man of Sense, and not