I start on the ground of your own wish (for which indeed I am with all my heart thankful) that your boy's character should be fashioned after the Christian type and under the influence of Christ. And I am as anxious as ever that, even if your own estimate of the evidences of Christianity should for a long while remain as it is, your children may never, in their later years, feel that you ever taught them anything which you did not believe: on every ground I long to avoid all danger of such a thought crossing their minds. But at the same time I do long that they may be spared to the very last possible moment the knowledge that in the judgment of the mind which they, I hope, will most reverence and love, the bases of their religious trust and hope are uncertain. It is only far on in life, I think, that a man comes to realise either the vast importance of things which are not held with absolute certainty, or the mysterious and complex nature of the act of faith, and the discipline of obscurity, and the way in which real spiritual progress may be going on where the mind seems only to be holding on, as it were, with fear and trembling.
To a boy of sixteen the mere knowledge of uncertainty in his father's mind may drain all the moral cogency out of the whole conception of religion:—the very suspicion of the uncertainty may unnerve him more than the full realisation of the doubt would change his father's aim and hope in doing his duty.
And so, at the risk of paining you—believe me, I would rather have the pain than give it you—and presuming very thankfully on the wish of which you spoke, I would plead that your children might remain as long as possible in ignorance of your uncertainty and anxiety; that they should only know in a general way that the religious influences, the principles of their Godward life which they receive, are given to them by your wish—that you would have them grow up after that type, with that hope and aspiration; and I would plead that for their sakes you should suffer the pain, great as it may be, of being reticent where you long to be ever communicative, ever unreserved. You may be unspeakably thankful some day that you did so suffer:—and, whatever comes, you will be sure of your children's deepest love and gratitude, if ever they should know that this was one of your acts of self-sacrifice for them.
Please forgive me, dear Romanes, where I have written blunderingly, or given you unnecessary pain. I pray God to guide and teach and gladden both you and yours, and I am
Your affectionate friend,
Francis Paget.
Geanies, Ross-shire, N.B.: June 24, 1886.
My dear Paget,—I should indeed require to be made of unduly sensitive material, if either the extreme kindness of your thought or the most considerate delicacy of your expression could give me pain. Pain I have, but it is of a kind that is beyond the power of friends either to mitigate or to increase.
The advice which you give accords precisely with my own view of the matter, and it is needless to say that in such an agreement I find no small degree of satisfaction. Moreover, the principles which it thus appears to be my duty to adopt are made easy for me.... So that on the whole it does not now appear to me that in its practical aspects the problem is likely to prove difficult of solution; although theoretically, or as a matter of ethics, I do think it is a complex question whether (or how far) parents should teach dogmas as facts, or matters of faith as matters of knowledge. Happily, however, ethics are to morals very much what shadow is to sunshine; and in seeking to follow the right or the good, instinct is often a better guide than syllogism.
And now, in conclusion, let me endeavour—inadequately as it must be—to express my deep sense of gratitude to you for having so earnestly taken my troubles into your consideration. I assure you that your letter has touched me truly, and that on its account I am more than ever happy to subscribe myself