THE STREET OF THE EYE
‘STORIES of the supernatural,’ said Saunders, ‘serve at least one useful purpose: they test a man’s intellectual capacity. Not a very sure test, you may say; but for purposes of rough classification it is sure enough. Incertitude, a sense of imminent surprise, is after all the very salt of life. Denounce the habit of classification as bitterly as you like—and I know well the intellectual perils that attend it—it is none the less true that we do, when we meet a man, like to be able to place him, roughly, in this category or that. And most men, by the way, submit to the process very meekly. You subtle folk’—here Saunders bowed to me in genial irony—‘in attributing to the mass of mankind your own mental complexity flatter them grossly. I have heard you yourself discourse on the folly of the old religious psychology which divided mankind, arbitrarily, into sheep and goats. As philosophy, of course, it is nonsense, and the fathers of the church must have known that as well as you and I do; but as a formula for rough-and-ready justice, it serves. If you are pulling your weight in the boat you are a good man; if you are not pulling your weight you are a bad man—that is a definite and verifiable verdict based on rational calculation. The fun begins when having made our calculation, and acted on it, new factors begin to appear which knock all our arithmetic silly. But in our dealings with men how rarely, on the whole, that happens! You do not agree? Well, you are permitted to disagree so long as you believe me to be sincere in my opinion. All modern thought, I know, is moving away from my idea as fast as, according to you, it is moving away from my church; but I fancy that, in practice, the world will continue to adhere to it. If I were to say that all men are types, that would be not so much a falsehood as a wanton exaggeration of a truth. I know all that can be urged, and justly urged, against pigeon-hole classification; but what impresses and startles me is how easily the greater number of one’s fellow-creatures fit into the pigeon-holes. Unique souls, no doubt; but the human soul is a mystery which I don’t profess to understand and which you profess not to believe in. It is the ordinary workaday mentality of a man that can be labelled with some approach to accuracy. And the supernatural story, as I say, is something of a test. Tell a group of new acquaintances some fairly well authenticated ghost-story, and they will fall apart and regroup in their special classes like a company of soldiers forming up into platoons. There will be the credulous fools on the one hand, ready to believe anything without question; there will be the materialist fools on the other hand, snorting in angry contempt. Between the two—truth is generally found midway between extremes—between the two, preserving a delicate balance between scepticism and credulity, doubting the story, perhaps, but admitting the possibility, will be the wise men. I need hardly add, my dear fellow, that it is among these wise philosophers that I myself am to be found. There you have three well-defined types, and it is noteworthy that I am a bright specimen of the exemplary type. If you wish to be saved you have only to look at me and do your best.’
There was a gleam of laughter in Saunders’s kindly and humorous eyes, a gleam that seemed to apologize for having read me something in the nature of a lecture. I had just told my clerical friend that queer story of Bailey’s about James Dearth and the white horse. It had interested him, and he was far more disposed to take it seriously than I was. It started him talking about the Unseen, a hypothesis in which he has a more than professional concern, and so led him to the bundle of generalities I have just recorded. They impressed me less than Saunders’s remarks usually do, but I knew better than to interrupt him. Whatever be the truth about his theory of types, he himself is certainly a distinguished exception to the theory. One never knows where his talk will lead, and I for my part always listen in the hope that it will lead to a story. Saunders, with his penetrating vision and his unique opportunities, has seen many a naked soul, many a human creature stripped bare, by triumph or catastrophe, of the coverings that hide it from the public eye—yes, and from the eyes of intimate friends no less. He is as full of good stories as of bad sermons. And so I waited now, like a timid angler afraid even to cast in his line lest the troubling of the waters should scare the fish away.
‘The surface mind is dull enough,’ continued Saunders presently, ‘dull enough to justify a label. It is the mysterious region below consciousness, the rich, dark, infinitely fertile subsoil, that passes the wit of man to understand. For the most part, one can only reach it by vague conjecture. But sometimes, here and there, some beautiful or terrible flower shoots up from that underworld into the light of our conscious existence. As for your friend’s experiences at the farm, I think, frankly, that there was sheer devilry in it, black magic. But it isn’t always so. You remember what I told you about poor Bellingham.’
In the pause that followed, my hopes flourished exceedingly. Then I hastened to assure Saunders that he had told me precisely nothing at all about poor Bellingham, whose name I heard for the first time. And so, with a little coaxing, I got the tale from him.