“I hope not. I hope that I have sufficiently laid bare its gross ignorance of the subject of which it treats to bring it into that contempt whose fruit is oblivion.”
“In England—in London or in any country or capital where there is a large intellectual life—this might be so. But am I not right, Doctor, in believing that this Victorian Melbourne of yours is a place where pure intellectual life scarcely exists? You have the mass of intelligent money-makers who care, or who do not care, for things (I will not say religious but) sectarian. Then there are those who care for things political; but where will you find any number of men who aim at making their life the purely intellectual life? They are all partizans here. When, therefore, you attack a Rationalist like Judge Parker, all the Rationalists rally round him, just as the orthodox rally round you; and the result is, as the Argus says, a boxing match, wherein the great thing is to at all price shout down their man and shout up your own. Truth turns away in disgust from such an exhibition of blind deaf bawling partizanary. These men are not of the sort that are open to reason: you cannot lay bare to such as these the gross ignorance or perfect science of their champion; they will only hiss or applaud as you blame or praise him. I may be wrong: my observation of your so-called intelligent public, is, you know, necessarily but small.”
Maddock kept silence with rumpled brows. At last:
“I do not know,” he said, “that you are not, after all, to a large degree right. We are very narrow here. A thing done in the street is done in the city, and indeed in the whole country!”
“And am I not right in thinking that the only two native subjects, which are capable of arousing public interest and curiosity here, are those which appeal to the two portions of your mass of intelligent money-makers—things pertaining to business, and things sectarian?”
The Doctor suddenly regained his humour.
“Are,” he said, the deep humorous smile playing about his mouth, “are all the fashionable young men who come out here in yachts as acute observers as you, Sir Horace?—But I object to your word sectarian: you should say religious. I am quite ready to admit that (to put it as a Melbourne printer put it to me the other day) the only subject that will pay for book-printing here is Religion, and Religion, alas, in its polemical aspect. But I cannot look upon this, as you seem to do, as a great misfortune. I—I ... well, I may say candidly, that I rather like a bit of polemics now and then, and the shouts of the men round the ropes do not altogether disgust me, as of course” (his eyebrows went up) “they ought to do! No, I do not look upon that purely intellectual life of yours as by any means the ideal for us to aim at. It smacks too much of dilettantism for me!”
Gildea smiled.
“Dear Doctor,” he said, “we all know that you prefer a climate where the sky is not always a cloudless vault of blue insipidity. The sound and feel of a buffeting wind is pleasant to you. As I said just now, you prefer Strauss to Renan, and the good secular Saint Matthew Arnold finds small favour in your eyes. Now too that you are taking to science, I expect every day to hear you tell us Cuvier was a greater man than Darwin, and that Huxley is an impudent young amphioxus that has no place beside the dignity of our dear old behemoth, Owen.”
“Now I really won’t let you poke fun at me,” said the Doctor, “I really won’t! The next thing is, that you will be saying something rude about Professor Mosley and his “Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,” and scoffing at my idea of having some of his essays reproduced in our Daily Telegraph.”