your loving
son Jack.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[Gastons]
(The 12th. Oct., I think) [1916]
My dear Arthur,
It was unfortunate that I should choose a word like ‘exaltation’ which is so often used in connection with religion and so give you a wrong impression of my meaning. I will try to explain again: have you ever sat over the fire late, late at night when you are very drowzy & muddle headed, and it is no use trying to go on with your book? Everything seems like a dream, you are absolutely contented, and ‘out of the world’. Anything seems possible, and all sorts of queer ideas float through your mind & sort of vaguely thrill you but only mildly & calmly. It is in this sort of mood that the quaint, old mystical parts of Malory are exactly suitable: you can read a chapter or two in a sort of dream & find the forests of ‘Logres & of Lyonesse’ very agreeable at such a time–at least I do.
As to the other question about religion, I was sad to read your letter. You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I beleive in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man’s own invention–Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn’t understand–thunder, pestilence, snakes etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.
Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up. Often, too, great men were regarded as gods after their death–such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahwehworship, and so Christianity came into being–one mythology among many, but the one that we happen to have been brought up in.
Now all this you must have heard before: it is the recognised scientific account of the growth of religions. Superstition of course in every age has held the common people, but in every age the educated and thinking ones have stood outside it, though usually outwardly conceding to it for convenience. I had thought that you were gradually being emancipated from the old beliefs, but if this is not so, I hope we are too sensible to quarrel about abstract ideas. I must only add that ones views on religious subjects don’t make any difference in morals, of course. A good member of society must of course try to be honest, chaste, truthful, kindly etc: these are things we owe to our own manhood & dignity and not to any imagined god or gods.
Of course, mind you, I am not laying down as a certainty that there is nothing outside the material world: considering the discoveries that are always being made, this would be foolish. Anything MAY exist: but until we know that it does, we can’t make any assumptions. The universe is an absolute mystery: man has made many guesses at it, but the answer is yet to seek. Whenever any new light can be got as to such matters, I will be glad to welcome it. In the meantime I am not going to go back to the bondage of believing in any old (& already decaying) superstition.
See! I have wasted ¾ of my letter on all these dry bones. However, old man, you started the subject and I had to have my turn. Yes, I wish you had really been with me on the walk to Friday-Street: how you and I, alone, would have gloried in those woods and vallies! But some day we will go and spend a week there at the inn, get up at 5 every morning & go to bed at 8, spending the interval sitting by the lake and talking to the Jackdaw. He can only say ‘Caw’ so that will be a nice change after my torrents of conversation!
I have written up for ‘Letters from Hell’ and it ought to be here by the end of the week. I am looking forward to it immensely and will enjoy being able to talk it over with you. You ask me what ‘special’ book I am reading at present: you must remember that I read seriously only on week-ends. When I last wrote my week-end books were ‘Comus’ and the Morte Darthur; last week-end, ‘Comus’ being finished, its place was taken by Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound’158 which I got half through. It is an amazing work. I don’t know how to describe it to you; it is more wild & out of the world than any poem I ever read, and contains some wonderful descriptions. Shelley had a great genius, but his carelessness about rhymes, metre, choice of words etc, just prevents him being as good as he might be. To me, when you’re in the middle of a fine passage and come to a ‘cockney’ rhyme like ‘ruin & ‘pursuing’, it spoils the whole thing–makes it vulgar and grotesque. However some parts are so splendid that I could forgive him anything. I am now, through the week, reading Scott’s ‘Antiquary’.159 I suppose you have read it long ago: I am very pleased with it, especially the character of the Antiquary himself, the description of his room, and the old beggar. Tell me your views when you write–it is nice gradually to get more & more into each other’s style of reading, is it not–you with poetry and I with classical novels?
As to Bleheris, he is dead and I shan’t trouble his grave.160 I will try and write something new soon–a short tale, I expect–but am rather taken up with verse at present, in my spare-time; which gets less and less as the exam. draws nearer. However I look eagerly for the first chapter of your novel, or failing that, the next leaf of Dennis.
It is an amazing thing to call the ‘Kalevala’ tame: whatever else it is, it is not tame. If a poem all about floods & primeval spirits and magic and talking beasts & monsters is not wild enough, I really don’t know what to say! However, chacun à son gout! As to the Milton I daren’t advise you–both volumes are so good, if you care for him. You don’t give any criticism on ‘Evelina’;161 do so, when you write.
It is a lovely moonlight night (a brau’ brich’ minlich’ nicht, do you remember). I wish you were here. Goodnight
J.
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 132):
[Gastons]
12th October 1916
My dear Papy,
We have all been plunged in misery here for the last week because no one can remember the context or the author of a quotation that we all know as well as our own names. It started by Mrs. K. seeing it in the ‘In Memoriam’ part of the paper and asking casually what it was from: since then we have ransacked our memories and books of reference in vain. You will laugh us to scorn when I tell you that it is the familiar,
‘E’en as he trod that day to God So walked he from his birth, In simpleness and gentleness And honour and clean mirth.’162
but I am dashed if I can remember where it comes from. Some time I am sure it is Kipling, and again in other moods it seems impossible. Try and enlighten us.
You are rather too severe on the ‘Diplomacy’ essay: it is not–in my poor conceit–that the subject is not bounded enough, but that it is too bounded. It hems the candidate down to a field of historical and even technical knowledge that they have no right to expect of him. Now an essay on ‘air’ in a scientific exam would be very proper, and even an essay on virtue would have no vice about it. You may produce that ‘mot’ as one of your own when you next meet Bill Patterson ‘that sprightly caliph’ on the top of his tramcar. Before leaving the subject of exams, I must remark that the Oxford papers do not include one on ‘accidents’ which is a relief: