And I take comfort, also, in the thought that, after all, Reason has had very little to do with the moral progress of mankind. "C'est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non raison."[21] Answer me this one question: Which have exercised the greater influence for good: reasoned-out systems of philosophy; or religious evangels whose tenets no one could prove? How many pious followers has Spinoza or Leibnitz or Nietzsche? And how many Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed or—with all reverence be added his name—Jesus of Nazareth?
But the critic will say: If the religious tenet is incapable of proof, by what criterion can we judge of the authenticity of any evangel?—Well, if it teaches to alleviate suffering and to do the Right, that is criterion enough for me.
Return we to the humble topic of walking.
XVII
The Instinct for Walking
§ 30
For many reasons, walking seems to be an ingrained instinct of mankind. I cling to the perhaps fanciful theory that no primitive instinct of man is altogether lost. It is modified, amplified, refined; that is all. With all our culture, we are barbarians still. Man is a clothed savage. And now and again he delights in doffing the clothing and returning heartily to savagery. How delightful the feel of the briny breeze and the boisterous wave on the bare pelt! Mr Edward Carpenter rails at the (I think) eleven layers of clothing that intervene between our skins and the airs of heaven. Walt Whitman revelled nude in his sun bath. What a treat too, sometimes, to get away from the multi-coursed dinner and to bite downright audibly into simple food in the fresh air, and to lap water noisily from the brook! Well, walking, perhaps, is the primal instinct, ancient as Eden, where the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. And, if my theory is correct, walking will persist till in recovered Paradise man walks with his Maker again. No mechanical contrivance for locomotion will extirpate the tribe of tramps, of those who walk from love of walking.
XVIII
A Woeful Walk
§ 31
But not all walks are occasions of unmitigated pleasure. By no means. A certain trudge, which particularly lives in my memory, was one of almost unmitigated pain.—No; I will not say that, for wert not thou, L——, cheeriest of companions, with me? What a walk that was! It rained the long day through, and as we strode westward, a cold, wet wind from the east blew hard. The roads were impassable for mud; the trees were leafless; the fields bare. Inns there were none, and at the thirteenth mile I broke a nice big flask of port wine or e'er a blessed sip of the liquid (I mean a sip of the blessed liquid) had passed our lips. A woeful walk was that, and woeful pedestrians were we.—Yet, somehow, it is with the extremest pleasure that now I recall that trudge. To beguile the time, and to try to forget the rain, we improvised a play, and shouted dialogues as we strode. We covered forty miles at a stretch; and whether it was the play, or the fresh air, or the exercise, or L——'s indomitable Mark Tapleyism, we limped (no, we lamely ran the last few yards) into our destination, in spirits, at least, buoyant, jubilant, and secure.—How mad and bad and sad it was! And oh, how we were stiff!