126 Via Felice, Rome:
Tuesday, [about January 1861].
You really astonish me, dearest Fanny, so much by your letter, that I must reply to it at once. I ask myself under what new influence (strictly clerical) is she now, that she should write so? And has she forgotten me, never read 'Aurora Leigh,' never heard of me or from me that, before 'Spiritualism' came up in America, I have been called orthodox by infidels, and heterodox by church-people; and gone on predicting to such persons as came near enough to me in speculative liberty of opinion to justify my speaking, that the present churches were in course of dissolution, and would have to be followed by a reconstruction of Christian essential verity into other than these middle-age scholastic forms. Believing in Christ's divinity, which is the life of Christianity, I believed this. Otherwise, if the end were here—if we were to be covered over and tucked in with the Thirty-nine Articles or the like, and good-night to us for a sound sleep in 'sound doctrine'—I should fear for a revealed religion incapable of expansion according to the needs of man. What comes from God has life in it, and certainly from all the growth of living things, spiritual growth cannot be excepted. But I shun religious controversy—it is useless. I never 'disturb anybody's mind,' as it is called—let those sleep who can. If I had not known that your mind was broken up rather broadly by truths out of Swedenborg, I should not have mooted the subject, be sure. (Have you given up Swedenborg? this by the way.) Having done so, I am anxious to set you right about Mrs. Stowe. As the author of the most successful book printed by man or woman, perhaps I a little under-rated her. The book has genius, but did not strike me as it did some other readers. Her 'Sunny Memories,' I liked very little. When she came to us in Florence some years ago, I did not think I should like her, nor did Robert, but we were both of us surprised and charmed with her simplicity and earnestness. At Rome last year she brought her inner nature more in contact with mine, and I, who had looked for what one usually finds in women, was startled into much admiration and sympathy by finding in her a largeness and fearlessness of thought which, coming out of a clerical and puritan cul-de-sac, and combined with the most devout and reverent emotions, really is fine. So you think that since 'Uncle Tom' she has turned infidel, because of her interest in Spiritualism. Her last words to me when we parted, were, 'Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ never see one another for the last time.' That's the attitude of the mind which you stigmatise as corrupting.
With regard to 'Spiritualism,' so called, you might as well say 'books' are dangerous, without specifying the books. Surely you know that every sort of doctrine is enjoined by these means, from Church of Englandism to Free Love. A lady was with me this very morning, who was converted from infidelity to Christianity solely by these means, and I am told that thousands declare the same. As far as I am concerned, I never heard or read a single communication which impressed me in the least: what does impress me is the probability of there being communications at all. I look at the movement. What are these intelligences, separated yet relating and communicating? What is their state? what their aspiration? have we had part or shall we have part with them? is this the corollary of man's life on the earth? or are they unconscious echoes of his embodied soul? That anyone should admit a fact (such as a man being lifted into the air, for instance), and not be interested in it, is so foreign to the habits of my mind (which can't insulate a fact from an inference, and rest there) that I have not a word to say. Only I see that if this class of facts, however grotesque, be recognised among thinkers, our reigning philosophy will modify itself; scientific men will conceive differently from Humboldt (for instance) of the mystery of life; the materialism which stifles the higher instincts of men will be dislodged, and the rationalism which divides Oxford with Romanism (nothing between, we hear!) will receive a blow.
No truth can be dangerous. What if Jesus Christ be taken for a medium, do you say? Well, what then? As perfect man, He possessed, I conclude, the full complement of a man's faculties. But if He walked on the sea as a medium, if the virtue went out of Him as a mesmeriser, He also spoke the words which never man spoke, was born for us, and died for us, and rose from the dead as the Lord God our Saviour. But the whole theory of spiritualism, all the phenomena, are strikingly confirmatory of revelation; nothing strikes me more than that. Hume's argument against miracles (a strong argument) disappears before it, and Strauss's conclusions from a priori assertion of impossibility fall in pieces at once.
Now I have done with this subject. Upon the whole, it seems to me better really that you should not mix yourself up with it any more. Also I wish you joy of the dismissal of M. Pierart. There was no harm that he took away your headache, if he did not presume on that. You tell me not to bid you to beware of counting on us in Paris. And yet, dearest Fanny, I must. The future in this shifting world, what is it? As for me, whom you recognise as 'so much myself,' dear, I have a stout pen, and till its last blot, it will write, perhaps, with its 'usual insolence' (as a friend once said), but if you laid your hand on this heart, you would feel how it stops, and staggers, and fails. I have not been out yet, and am languid in spirits, I gather myself up by fits and starts, and then fall back. Do you know, I think with positive terror sometimes, less of the journey than of having to speak and look at people. If it were possible to persuade Robert, I should send him with Pen; but he wouldn't go alone, and he must go this year. Oh, I daresay I shall feel more up to the friction of things when once I have been out; it's stupid to give way. Also my sister Arabel talks of meeting me in France, though I might have managed that difficulty, but that Robert should see his father is absolutely necessary. Meanwhile we don't talk of it, and by May or June I shall be feeling another woman probably....
So you are going to work hard in Germany: that is well. Only beware of the English periodicals. There's a rage for new periodicals, and because the 'Cornhill' answers, other speculations crowd the market, overcrowd it: there will be failures presently.
I have written a long letter when I meant to write a short one. May God keep you, and love you, and make you happy! Your ever affectionate
Ba.