“That does seem to be frequently the case,” replied Mr. Santley, smiling.
“Invariably, my dear sir, as the ancients were well aware when they formulated that comprehensive, but little comprehended, proverb of the sound mind in the sound body. It is curious how frequently modern science finds herself demonstrating the truth of the guesses of the old philosophers!”
“I perceive you are devoted to science,” said Mr. Santley, waving his hand towards the evidences of his host’s taste.
“Oh yes, he is perpetually experimenting in some direction or other,” said Mrs. Haldane, with a laugh. “I believe he and Baptisto would pass the night here, boiling germs or mounting all manner of invisible little monsters for the microscope, if I allowed them. You must know, Mr. Santley, that Mr. Haldane is writing a magnum opus—‘The History of Morals,’ I believe, is to be the title—and what with his experiments and his chapters, he can scarcely find time to dine.”
“You have been happy in your subject,” said the vicar, turning to the master of the Manor. “The history of morals must be an enthralling book. I can scarcely imagine any subject affording larger scope for literary genius than this of the development of that divine law written on the heart of Adam. Why do you smile, may I ask?”
“Pardon me; I was not conscious that I did smile, except mentally. You will excuse me, however, if I frankly say that I was smiling at your conception of the genesis of morality. What you term the divine law written on the heart of Adam represents to me a very advanced stage in the development of the moral sense. We must begin far beyond Adam, my dear sir, if we would arrive at a philosophic appreciation of the subject. We must explore as far as possible into that misty and enigmatic period which precedes historical record; approach as nearly as may be to the time when in the savage, possibly semi-simian, brain of the earliest of our predecessors experience had begun to reiterate her proofs that what was good was to his personal advantage, and that what was bad entailed loss and suffering. It has hitherto been the habit to believe that the Decalogue was revealed from Sinai in thunder and lightning and clouds of darkness. As a dramatic image or allegory only should that be accepted. Clouds of darkness do indeed surround the genesis of the moral in man, and the law has been revealed by the deadly lightnings of disease and war and famine and misery, through unknown and innumerable generations. No divine law was written on the heart of the first man, or society would not be where it is to-day. No; unhappily, one might say, morality has been like everything else human—like everything else, human or not,—like the coloured flower to the plant, the gay plumage to the bird, a dearly bought conquest, a painfully laboured evolution.”
Once or twice during Mr. Haldane’s remarks, the vicar had raised his hand in disclaimer, but waited till he had finished before speaking.
“I was about to protest,” he now said, “against several of your expressions, but I fear controversy is of little good when the disputants argue from different premises. I perceive that you have accepted a theory of life which completely shuts out God from His creation.”
“Pardon me; like the old Greek, I can still raise an altar to the unknown God.”
“To a cold, remote, indifferent abstraction, then,” replied Mr. Santley, impulsively; “to a God unknowing as unknown—a vague, unrealizable, impersonal Power.”