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Iv.] “FIRST UNDERSTAND, THEN ARGUE.” 129

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to lay to heart the dictate of Hebrew wisdom, "First understand, then argue." And to this precept of the Talmud they might well add the reflection of the Hindu sacred writer, "A fact is not altered by a hundred texts." I would urge them to weigh the responsibility attaching to those who seek to link living spiritual faith to dead physical theories, as though He whom they adore as Deus Scientiarum could be served by opposition to any science. I would even ask a certain school of Christian apologists to reconsider some of their favourite positions; for example, the conception of creation formulated, with unconscious irreverence, by a popular American divine, that Almighty God once took some nothing, and in a week produced the universe as it stands, and one man." Greswell, I remember, in his Fasti Catholici, is at the pains to fix the precise date of this event; it occurred, he tells, in the autumn of B.C. 4004. Is it in vain to set before such minds the majestic belief to which Mr. Darwin guides us, of uniform law, working through all time and all space, for the development of order and beauty from the formless void, of life and intelligence from primordial nebulosity; and even now working on to vaster issues? Again, why should good people cry, "he blasphemeth!" when the naturalist displays the derivation of our race from inferior types of animal life, and yet acquiesce unmurmuringly, or even joyously, in the process of human generation which

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-classic passages of Jeremy Taylor, of Sterne, of Schiller, point it out all too plainly-exhibits a still more ignominious starting-point for ourselves? Surely Mr. Darwin is well warranted when he contends, "It is not more irreligious to explain the origin of man, as a distinct species, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of an individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth of the species and of the individual," he adds, in wise and pious words, "are equally part of the grand sequence of events which the mind refuses to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion." Yes. But it revolts, too, at the ineptitudes of defenders of the faith who know not how to employ the language of science and of reason: that is of truth. Admirable is the saying of St. Augustine, written, indeed, in a different connection, but universally applicable: "Bonum est homini ut eum veritas vincat volentem, quia malum est homini ut eum veritas vincat invitum. Nam ipsa vincat necesse est, sive negantem sive confitentem."

CHAPTER.V.

THE REVOLUTION AND ART.

WE saw in a previous chapter that very excellent things are spoken of Naturalism by the distinguished man of letters whose exposition of the Revolutionary Gospel we followed at some length. Its special merits Mr. Morley accounts to be these: that it humbles the "futile vanity" of men in regarding themselves as "the end and object of creation;" and that it "supplies them with the most powerful of motives for the energetic use of the most powerful of their endowments." Acquiescence in it he commends as "wise and not inglorious;" and he predicts a great future for it in the sphere of æsthetics. "Naturalism in art," indeed, he appears to consider one of the "notes" of the Revolution.

Some time ago, finding myself in the city of Paris, I called these utterances to remembrance, and turned my feet unto the Ambigu Theatre, where, as the newspapers unanimously testified, the greatest triumph as yet achieved by Naturalism in art

was to be witnessed. The piece represented was M. Zola's Nana, adapted for the stage by M. Busnach. The aim of the playwright had been to put the story of the courtesan's life and death before the audience with complete "reality." For this purpose, the resources of the stage decorator had been taxed to the utmost, the result being nine tableaux, beyond which, it was proudly contended, the force of scenic illusion could no further go. The first exhibited a cabinet de toilette, where the heroine was revealed to us "au saut du lit, décoiffée, en peignoir de damas foncé sur une jupe de satin rose." The second introduced us to the salon of a great lady, much commended by Parisian journalists as a marvellous reproduction. Not less marvellous was the third tableau, which took us behind the scenes of the Théâtre des Variétés; while the fourth, which presented the ruins of Chaumont, with the paths winding through the vines, the rustic bridge over a stream of real water into which a real man fell-happily he was clad in mackintosh underneath-to say nothing of artificial sunlight and an artificial nightingale, excited the spectators to almost lyrical enthusiasm, and was with one voice glorified as of a quite adorable poetry. Next came a drawing-room furnished à la japonaise, a species of upholstery just then in the height of fashion; after that a racecourse with real horses, and then a boudoir hung with real blue satin. In the eighth tableau a noble town house was

v.]

A TRIUMPH OF NATURALISM.

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burnt to the ground before our eyes. The ninth and last was a perfect copy of a room at the Grand Hótel, in which Nana lay dying of confluent small-pox. Yes, there she lay, "un tas d'humeur et de sang, une pelletée de chair corrompue;" and the thrill of horror which ran through the house bore witness to the fidelity with which the "marchands de maquillage," aided by the doctors of the theatre, had imitated the ravages of the dire disease. Such was the realistic representation of the harlot's progress wherewith our eyes were feasted. The dialogue, judiciously adapted from the pages of M. Zola's fiction, was a fitting accompaniment to it. Of course nothing savouring of imagination was uttered by any of the dramatis persona. Reality" was the great law which the playwright proposed to follow, and it is not exactly imagination that seasons the talk of the lupanar." On s'ennuyait à crever," observes M. Zola, in his account of a famous supper given by his heroine. M. Busnach, in this respect, as in others, had kept faithfully to his original. It seemed to me, indeed, that both the master and the disciple had here somewhat overshot their mark. I thought of Dr. Johnson's account of Thomas Sheridan: "Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull. But it must have taken him a great deal of pains to have become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature." The utter inanity of the piece was

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