11
One glowing afternoon in October, as these two young men came over Magdalen Bridge after a long disputatious and rather tiring walk to Drayton--they had been talking of Eugenics and the "family"--Benham was almost knocked down by an American trotter driven by Lord Breeze. "Whup there!" said Lord Breeze in a voice deliberately1 brutal2, and Benham, roused from that abstraction which is partly fatigue3, had to jump aside and stumbled against the parapet as the gaunt pacer went pounding by.
Lord Breeze grinned the sort of grin a man remembers. And passed.
"Damnation!" said Benham with a face that had become suddenly very white.
Then presently. "Any fool can do that who cares to go to the trouble."
"That," said Prothero, taking up their unquenchable issue, "that is the feeling of democracy."
"I walk because I choose to," said Benham.
"This equestrianism," he began, "is a matter of time and money--time even more than money. I want to read. I want to deal with ideas....
"Any fool can drive...."
"Exactly," said Prothero.
"As for riding, it means no more than the elaborate study and cultivation6 of your horse. You have to know him. All horses are individuals. A made horse perhaps goes its round like an omnibus, but for the rest...."
Prothero made a noise of sympathetic assent7.
"In a country where equestrianism is assertion I suppose one must be equestrian5...."
That night some malignant8 spirit kept Benham awake, and great American trotters with vast wide-striding feet and long yellow teeth, uncontrollable, hard-mouthed American trotters, pounded over his angry soul.
"Prothero," he said in hall next day, "we are going to drive to-morrow."
Next day, so soon as they had lunched, he led the way towards Maltby's, in Crosshampton Lane. Something in his bearing put a question into Prothero's mind. "Benham," he asked, "have you ever driven before?"
"NEVER," said Benham.
"Well?"
"I'm going to now."
Something between pleasure and alarm came into Prothero's eyes. He quickened his pace so as to get alongside his friend and scrutinize9 his pale determination. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.
"I want to do it."
"Benham, is it--EQUESTRIAN?"
Benham made no audible reply. They proceeded resolutely10 in silence.
An air of expectation prevailed in Maltby's yard. In the shafts11 of a high, bleak-looking vehicle with vast side wheels, a throne-like vehicle that impressed Billy Prothero as being a gig, a very large angular black horse was being harnessed.
"This is mine," said Benham compactly.
"This is yours, sir," said an ostler.
"He looks--QUIET."
"You'll find him fresh enough, sir."
Benham made a complicated ascent12 to the driver's seat and was handed the reins13. "Come on," he said, and Prothero followed to a less exalted14 seat at Benham's side. They seemed to be at a very great height indeed. The horse was then led out into Crosshampton Lane, faced towards Trinity Street and discharged. "Check," said Benham, and touched the steed with his whip. They started quite well, and the ostlers went back into the yard, visibly unanxious. It struck Prothero that perhaps driving was less difficult than he had supposed.
They went along Crosshampton Lane, that high-walled gulley, with dignity, with only a slight suggestion of the inaccuracy that was presently to become apparent, until they met a little old bearded don on a bicycle. Then some misunderstanding arose between Benham and the horse, and the little bearded don was driven into the narrow pavement and had to get off hastily. He made no comment, but his face became like a gargoyle15. "Sorry," said Benham, and gave his mind to the corner. There was some difficulty about whether they were to turn to the right or the left, but at last Benham, it seemed, carried his point, and they went along the narrow street, past the grey splendours of King's, and rather in the middle of the way.
Prothero considered the beast in front of him, and how proud and disrespectful a horse in a dogcart can seem to those behind it! Moreover, unaccustomed as he was to horses, he was struck by the strong resemblance a bird's-eye view of a horse bears to a fiddle16, a fiddle with devil's ears.
"Of course," said Prothero, "this isn't a trotter."
"I couldn't get a trotter," said Benham.
"I thought I would try this sort of thing before I tried a trotter," he added.
And then suddenly came disaster.
There was a butcher's cart on the right, and Benham, mistrusting the intelligence of his steed, insisted upon an excessive amplitude17 of clearance18. He did not reckon with the hand-barrow on his left, piled up with dirty plates from the lunch of Trinity Hall. It had been left there; its custodian19 was away upon some mysterious errand. Heaven knows why Trinity Hall exhibited the treasures of its crockery thus stained and deified in the Cambridge streets. But it did--for Benham's and Prothero's undoing20. Prothero saw the great wheel over which he was poised21 entangle22 itself with the little wheel of the barrow. "God!" he whispered, and craned, fascinated. The little wheel was manifestly intrigued23 beyond all self-control by the great wheel; it clung to it, it went before it, heedless of the barrow, of which it was an inseparable part. The barrow came about with an appearance of unwillingness24, it locked against the great wheel; it reared itself towards Prothero and began, smash, smash, smash, to shed its higher plates. It was clear that Benham was grappling with a crisis upon a basis of inadequate25 experience. A number of people shouted haphazard26 things. Then, too late, the barrow had persuaded the little wheel to give up its fancy for the great wheel, and there was an enormous crash.
"Whoa!" cried Benham. "Whoa!" but also, unfortunately, he sawed hard at the horse's mouth.
The animal, being in some perplexity, danced a little in the narrow street, and then it had come about and it was backing, backing, on the narrow pavement and towards the plate-glass window of a book and newspaper shop. Benham tugged27 at its mouth much harder than ever. Prothero saw the window bending under the pressure of the wheel. A sense of the profound seriousness of life and of the folly28 of this expedition came upon him. With extreme nimbleness he got down just as the window burst. It went with an explosion like a pistol shot, and then a clatter29 of falling glass. People sprang, it seemed, from nowhere, and jostled about Prothero, so that he became a peripheral30 figure in the discussion. He perceived that a man in a green apron31 was holding the horse, and that various people were engaged in simultaneous conversation with Benham, who with a pale serenity32 of face and an awful calm of manner, dealt with each of them in turn.
"I'm sorry," he was saying. "Somebody ought to have been in charge of the barrow. Here are my cards. I am ready to pay for any damage....
"The barrow ought not to have been there....
"Yes, I am going on. Of course I'm going on. Thank you."
He beckoned33 to the man who had held the horse and handed him half-a-crown. He glanced at Prothero as one might glance at a stranger. "Check!" he said. The horse went on gravely. Benham lifted out his whip. He appeared to have clean forgotten Prothero. Perhaps presently he would miss him. He went on past Trinity, past the ruddy brick of St. John's. The curve of the street hid him from Prothero's eyes.
Prothero started in pursuit. He glimpsed the dog-cart turning into Bridge Street. He had an impression that Benham used the whip at the corner, and that the dog-cart went forward out of sight with a startled jerk. Prothero quickened his pace.
But when he got to the fork between the Huntingdon Road and the Cottenham Road, both roads were clear.
He spent some time in hesitation34. Then he went along the Huntingdon Road until he came upon a road-mender, and learnt that Benham had passed that way. "Going pretty fast 'e was," said the road-mender, "and whipping 'is 'orse. Else you might 'a thought 'e was a boltin' with 'im." Prothero decided35 that if Benham came back at all he would return by way of Cottenham, and it was on the Cottenham Road that at last he encountered his friend again.
Benham was coming along at that good pace which all experienced horses when they are fairly turned back towards Cambridge display. And there was something odd about Benham, as though he had a large circular halo with a thick rim36. This, it seemed, had replaced his hat. He was certainly hatless. The warm light of the sinking sun shone upon the horse and upon Benham's erect37 figure and upon his face, and gleams of fire kept flashing from his head to this rim, like the gleam of drawn38 swords seen from afar. As he drew nearer this halo detached itself from him and became a wheel sticking up behind him. A large, clumsy-looking bicycle was attached to the dog-cart behind. The expression of Benham's golden face was still a stony39 expression; he regarded his friend with hard eyes.
"You all right, Benham?" cried Prothero, advancing into the road.
His eye examined the horse. It looked all right, if anything it was a trifle subdued40; there was a little foam41 about its mouth, but not very much.
"Whoa!" said Benham, and the horse stopped. "Are you coming up, Prothero?"
Prothero clambered up beside him. "I was anxious," he said.
"There was no need to be."
"You've broken your whip."
"Yes. It broke.... GET up!"
They proceeded on their way to Cambridge.
"Something has happened to the wheel," said Prothero, trying to be at his ease.
"Merely a splinter or so. And a spoke43 perhaps."
"And what is this behind?"
Benham made a half-turn of the head. "It's a motor-bicycle."
Prothero took in details.
"Some of it is missing."
"No, the front wheel is under the seat."
"Oh!"
"Did you find it?" Prothero asked, after an interval44.
"You mean?"
"He ran into a motor-car--as I was passing. I was perhaps a little to blame. He asked me to bring his machine to Cambridge. He went on in the car.... It is all perfectly45 simple."
Prothero glanced at the splinters in the wheel with a renewed interest.
"Did your wheel get into it?" he asked. Benham affected46 not to hear. He was evidently in no mood for story-telling.
"Why did you get down, Prothero?" he asked abruptly47, with the note of suppressed anger thickening his voice.
Prothero became vividly48 red. "I don't know," he said, after an interval.
"I DO," said Benham, and they went on in a rich and active silence to Cambridge, and the bicycle repair shop in Bridge Street, and Trinity College. At the gate of Trinity Benham stopped, and conveyed rather by acts than words that Prothero was to descend49. He got down meekly50 enough, although he felt that the return to Maltby's yard might have many points of interest. But the spirit had gone out of him.
12
For three days the two friends avoided each other, and then Prothero went to Benham's room. Benham was smoking cigarettes--Lady Marayne, in the first warmth of his filial devotion, had prohibited his pipe--and reading Webb's INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY. "Hello!" he said coldly, scarcely looking up, and continued to read that absorbing work.
"I keep on thinking how I jumped down from that damned dog-cart," said Prothero, without any preface.
"It didn't matter in the least," said Benham distantly.
"Oh! ROT," said Prothero. "I behaved like a coward."
Benham shut his book.
"Benham," said Prothero. "You are right about aristocracy, and I am wrong. I've been thinking about it night and day."
Benham betrayed no emotion. But his tone changed. "Billy," he said, "there are cigarettes and whiskey in the corner. Don't make a fuss about a trifle."
"No whiskey," said Billy, and lit a cigarette. "And it isn't a trifle."
He came to Benham's hearthrug. "That business," he said, "has changed all my views. No--don't say something polite! I see that if one hasn't the habit of pride one is bound to get off a dogcart when it seems likely to smash. You have the habit of pride, and I haven't. So far as the habit of pride goes, I come over to the theory of aristocracy."
Benham said nothing, but he put down Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and reached out for and got and lit a cigarette.
"I give up 'Go as you please.' I give up the natural man. I admit training. I perceive I am lax and flabby, unguarded, I funk too much, I eat too much, and I drink too much. And, yet, what I have always liked in you, Benham, is just this--that you don't."
"I do," said Benham.
"Do what?"
"Funk."
"Benham, I believe that naturally you funk as much as I do. You're more a thing of nerves than I am, far more. But you keep yourself up to the mark, and I have let myself get flabby. You're so right. You're so utterly51 right. These last nights I've confessed it--aloud. I had an inkling of it--after that rag. But now it's as clear as daylight. I don't know if you mean to go on with me, after what's happened, but anyhow I want you to know, whether you end our friendship or not--"
"Billy, don't be an old ass," said Benham.
Both young men paused for a moment. They made no demonstrations52. But the strain was at an end between them.
"I've thought it all out," Billy went on with a sudden buoyancy. "We two are both of the same kind of men. Only you see, Benham, you have a natural pride and I haven't. You have pride. But we are both intellectuals. We both belong to what the Russians call the Intelligentsia. We have ideas, we have imagination, that is our strength. And that is our weakness. That makes us moral light-weights. We are flimsy and uncertain people. All intellectuals are flimsy and uncertain people. It's not only that they are critical and fastidious; they are weak-handed. They look about them; their attention wanders. Unless they have got a habit of controlling themselves and forcing themselves and holding themselves together."
"The habit of pride."
"Yes. And then--then we are lords of the world."
"All this, Billy," said Benham, "I steadfastly53 believe."
"I've seen it all now," said Prothero. "Lord! how clearly I see it! The intellectual is either a prince or he is a Greek slave in a Roman household. He's got to hold his chin up or else he becomes--even as these dons we see about us--a thing that talks appointments, a toady54, a port-wine bibber, a mass of detail, a conscious maker55 of neat sayings, a growing belly56 under a dwindling57 brain. Their gladness is drink or gratified vanity or gratified malice58, their sorrow is indigestion or--old maid's melancholy59. They are the lords of the world who will not take the sceptre.... And what I want to say to you, Benham, more than anything else is, YOU go on--YOU make yourself equestrian. You drive your horse against Breeze's, and go through the fire and swim in the ice-cold water and climb the precipice60 and drink little and sleep hard. And--I wish I could do so too."
"But why not?"
"Because I can't. Now I admit I've got shame in my heart and pride in my head, and I'm strung up. I might do something--this afternoon. But it won't last. YOU--you have pride in your bones. My pride will vanish at a laugh. My honour will go at a laugh. I'm just exalted by a crisis. That's all. I'm an animal of intelligence. Soul and pride are weak in me. My mouth waters, my cheek brightens, at the sight of good things. And I've got a lickerish tail, Benham. You don't know. You don't begin to imagine. I'm secretive. But I quiver with hot and stirring desires. And I'm indolent--dirty indolent. Benham, there are days when I splash my bath about without getting into it. There are days when I turn back from a walk because there's a cow in the field.... But, I spare you the viler61 details.... And it's that makes me hate fine people and try so earnestly to persuade myself that any man is as good as any man, if not a trifle better. Because I know it isn't so...."
"Billy," said Benham, "you've the boldest mind that ever I met."
Prothero's face lit with satisfaction. Then his countenance62 fell again. "I know I'm better there," he said, "and yet, see how I let in a whole system of lies to cover my secret humiliations. There, at least, I will cling to pride. I will at least THINK free and clean and high. But you can climb higher than I can. You've got the grit63 to try and LIVE high. There you are, Benham."
Benham stuck one leg over the arm of his chair. "Billy," he said, "come and be--equestrian and stop this nonsense."
"No."
"Damn it--you DIVE!"
"You'd go in before me if a woman was drowning."
"Nonsense. I'm going to ride. Come and ride too. You've a cleverer way with animals than I have. Why! that horse I was driving the other day would have gone better alone. I didn't drive it. I just fussed it. I interfered64. If I ride for ever, I shall never have decent hands, I shall always hang on my horse's mouth at a gallop65, I shall never be sure at a jump. But at any rate I shall get hard. Come and get hard too."
"You can," said Billy, "you can. But not I! Heavens, the TROUBLE of it! The riding-school! The getting up early! No!--for me the Trumpington Road on foot in the afternoon. Four miles an hour and panting. And my fellowship and the combination-room port. And, besides, Benham, there's the expense. I can't afford the equestrian order."
"It's not so great."
"Not so great! I don't mean the essential expense. But--the incidentals. I don't know whether any one can realize how a poor man is hampered66 by the dread67 of minor68 catastrophes69. It isn't so much that he is afraid of breaking his neck, Benham, as that he is afraid of breaking something he will have to pay for. For instance--. Benham! how much did your little expedition the other day--?"
He stopped short and regarded his friend with round eyes and raised eyebrows70.
A reluctant grin overspread Benham's face. He was beginning to see the humour of the affair.
"The claim for the motor-bicycle isn't sent in yet. The repair of the mudguards of the car is in dispute. Trinity Hall's crockery, the plate-glass window, the whip-lash and wheel and so forth71, the hire of the horse and trap, sundry72 gratuities73.... I doubt if the total will come very much under fifty pounds. And I seem to have lost a hat somewhere."
Billy regarded his toes and cleared his throat.
"Depending as I do on a widowed mother in Brixton for all the expenditure74 that isn't covered by my pot-hunting--"
"Of course," said Benham, "it wasn't a fair sample afternoon."
"Still--"
"There's footer," said Benham, "we might both play footer."
"Or boxing."
"And, anyhow, you must come with me when I drive again. I'm going to start a trotter."
"If I miss another drive may I be--lost for ever," said Billy, with the utmost sincerity75. "Never more will I get down, Benham, wherever you may take me. Short of muffing my fellowship I'm with you always.... Will it be an American trotter?"
"It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute76 that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road. It will have the legs and stride of an ostrich77. It will throw its feet out like dealing78 cards. It will lift its head and look the sun in the eye like a vulture. It will have teeth like the English spinster in a French comic paper.... And we will fly...."
"I shall enjoy it very much," said Prothero in a small voice after an interval for reflection. "I wonder where we shall fly. It will do us both a lot of good. And I shall insure my life for a small amount in my mother's interest.... Benham, I think I will, after all, take a whiskey.... Life is short...."
He did so and Benham strolled to the window and stood looking out upon the great court.
"We might do something this afternoon," said Benham.
"Splendid idea," reflected Billy over his whiskey. "Living hard and thinking hard. A sort of Intelligentsia that is BLOODED.... I shall, of course, come as far as I can with you."
13
In one of the bureau drawers that White in this capacity of literary executor was examining, there were two documents that carried back right to these early days. They were both products of this long wide undergraduate argumentation that had played so large a part in the making of Benham. One recorded the phase of maximum opposition79, and one was the outcome of the concluding approach of the antagonists80. They were debating club essays. One had been read to a club in Pembroke, a club called the ENQUIRERS, of which White also had been a member, and as he turned it over he found the circumstances of its reading coming back to his memory. He had been present, and Carnac's share in the discussion with his shrill81 voice and stumpy gestures would alone have sufficed to have made it a memorable82 occasion. The later one had been read to the daughter club of the ENQUIRERS, the SOCIAL ENQUIRERS, in the year after White had gone down, and it was new to him.
Both these papers were folded flat and neatly83 docketed; they were rather yellow and a little dog-eared, and with the outer sheet pencilled over with puzzling or illegible84 scribblings, Benham's memoranda85 for his reply. White took the earlier essay in his hand. At the head of the first page was written in large letters, "Go slowly, speak to the man at the back." It brought up memories of his own experiences, of rows of gaslit faces, and of a friendly helpful voice that said, "Speak up?"
Of course this was what happened to every intelligent contemporary, this encounter with ideas, this restatement and ventilation of the old truths and the old heresies86. Only in this way does a man make a view his own, only so does he incorporate it. These are our real turning points. The significant, the essential moments in the life of any one worth consideration are surely these moments when for the first time he faces towards certain broad ideas and certain broad facts. Life nowadays consists of adventures among generalizations87. In class-rooms after the lecture, in studies in the small hours, among books or during solitary88 walks, the drama of the modern career begins. Suddenly a man sees his line, his intention. Yet though we are all of us writing long novels--White's world was the literary world, and that is how it looked to him--which profess89 to set out the lives of men, this part of the journey, this crucial passage among the Sphinxes, is still done--when it is done at all--slightly, evasively. Why?
White fell back on his professionalism. "It does not make a book. It makes a novel into a treatise90, it turns it into a dissertation91."
But even as White said this to himself he knew it was wrong, and it slid out of his thoughts again. Was not this objection to the play of ideas merely the expression of that conservative instinct which fights for every old convention? The traditional novel is a love story and takes ideas for granted, it professes92 a hero but presents a heroine. And to begin with at least, novels were written for the reading of heroines. Miss Lydia Languish93 sets no great store upon the contents of a man's head. That is just the stuffing of the doll. Eyes and heart are her game. And so there is never any more sphinx in the story than a lady may impersonate. And as inevitably94 the heroine meets a man. In his own first success, White reflected, the hero, before he had gone a dozen pages, met a very pleasant young woman very pleasantly in a sunlit thicket95; the second opened at once with a bicycle accident that brought two young people together so that they were never afterwards disentangled; the third, failing to produce its heroine in thirty pages, had to be rearranged. The next--
White returned from an unprofitable digression to the matter before him.
14
The first of Benham's early essays was written in an almost boyish hand, it was youthfully amateurish97 in its nervous disposition98 to definitions and distinctions, and in the elaborate linking of part to part. It was called TRUE DEMOCRACY. Manifestly it was written before the incident of the Trinity Hall plates, and most of it had been done after Prothero's visit to Chexington. White could feel that now inaudible interlocutor. And there were even traces of Sir Godfrey Marayne's assertion that democracy was contrary to biology. From the outset it was clear that whatever else it meant, True Democracy, following the analogy of True Politeness, True Courage, True Honesty and True Marriage, did not mean democracy at all. Benham was, in fact, taking Prothero's word, and trying to impose upon it his own solidifying99 and crystallizing opinion of life.
They were not as yet very large or well-formed crystals. The proposition he struggled to develop was this, that True Democracy did not mean an equal share in the government, it meant an equal opportunity to share in the government. Men were by nature and in the most various ways unequal. True Democracy aimed only at the removal of artificial inequalities....
It was on the truth of this statement, that men were by nature unequal, that the debate had turned. Prothero was passionately100 against the idea at that time. It was, he felt, separating himself from Benham more and more. He spoke with a personal bitterness. And he found his chief ally in a rigorous and voluble Frenchman named Carnac, an aggressive Roman Catholic, who opened his speech by saying that the first aristocrat101 was the devil, and shocked Prothero by claiming him as probably the only other sound Christian102 in the room. Several biologists were present, and one tall, fair youth with a wearisome forefinger104 tried to pin Carnac with questions.
"But you must admit some men are taller than others?"
"Then the others are broader."
"Some are smaller altogether."
"Nimbler--it's notorious."
"Some of the smaller are less nimble than the others."
"Then they have better nightmares. How can you tell?"
The biologist was temporarily incapacitated, and the talk went on over his prostrate105 attempts to rally and protest.
A second biologist seemed to Benham to come nearer the gist103 of the dispute when he said that they were not discussing the importance of men, but their relative inequalities. Nobody was denying the equal importance of everybody. But there was a virtue106 of this man and a virtue of that. Nobody could dispute the equal importance of every wheel in a machine, of every atom in the universe. Prothero and Carnac were angry because they thought the denial of absolute equality was a denial of equal importance. That was not so. Every man mattered in his place. But politically, or economically, or intellectually that might be a lowly place....
At this point Carnac interrupted with a whooping107 and great violence, and a volley of obscure French colloquialisms108.
He was understood to convey that the speaker was a Jew, and did not in the least mean what he was saying....
15
The second paper was an altogether maturer and more characteristic production. It was no longer necessary to answer Prothero. Prothero had been incorporated. And Benham had fairly got away with his great idea. It was evident to White that this paper had been worked over on several occasions since its first composition and that Benham had intended to make it a part of his book. There were corrections in pencil and corrections in a different shade of ink, and there was an unfinished new peroration109, that was clearly the latest addition of all. Yet its substance had been there always. It gave the youth just grown to manhood, but anyhow fully96 grown. It presented the far-dreaming intellectualist shaped.
Benham had called it ARISTOCRACY. But he was far away by now from political aristocracy.
This time he had not begun with definitions and generalizations, but with a curiously110 subjective111 appeal. He had not pretended to be theorizing at large any longer, he was manifestly thinking of his own life and as manifestly he was thinking of life as a matter of difficulty and unexpected thwartings.
"We see life," he wrote, "not only life in the world outside us, but life in our own selves, as an immense choice of possibilities; indeed, for us in particular who have come up here, who are not under any urgent necessity to take this line or that, life is apparently112 pure choice. It is quite easy to think we are all going to choose the pattern of life we like best and work it out in our own way.... And, meanwhile, there is no great hurry....
"I want to begin by saying that choice isn't so easy and so necessary as it seems. We think we are going to choose presently, and in the end we may never choose at all. Choice needs perhaps more energy than we think. The great multitude of older people we can observe in the world outside there, haven't chosen either in the matter of the world outside, where they shall go, what they shall do, what part they shall play, or in the matter of the world within, what they will be and what they are determined113 they will never be. They are still in much the same state of suspended choice as we seem to be in, but in the meanwhile THINGS HAPPEN TO THEM. And things are happening to us, things will happen to us, while we still suppose ourselves in the wings waiting to be consulted about the casting of the piece....
"Nevertheless this immense appearance of choice which we get in the undergraduate community here, is not altogether illusion; it is more reality than illusion even if it has not the stable and complete reality it appears to have. And it is more a reality for us than it was for our fathers, and much more a reality now than it was a few centuries ago. The world is more confused and multitudinous than ever it was, the practicable world far wider, and ourselves far less under the pressure of inflexible114 moulding forces and inevitable115 necessities than any preceding generations. I want to put very clearly how I see the new world, the present world, the world of novel choice to which our youth and inexperience faces, and I want to define to you a certain selection of choices which I am going to call aristocratic, and to which it is our manifest duty and destiny as the elect and favoured sons of our race to direct ourselves.
"It isn't any choice of Hercules I mean, any mere42 alternative whether we will be, how shall I put it?--the bridegrooms of pleasure or the bridegrooms of duty. It is infinitely116 vaster and more subtly moral than that. There are a thousand good lives possible, of which we may have one, lives which are soundly good, or a thousand bad lives, if you like, lives which are thoroughly117 bad--that's the old and perpetual choice, that has always been--but what is more evident to me and more remarkable118 and disconcerting is that there are nowadays ten thousand muddled119 lives lacking even so much moral definition, even so much consistency121 as is necessary for us to call them either good or bad, there are planless indeterminate lives, more and more of them, opening out as the possible lives before us, a perfect wilderness122 between salvation123 and damnation, a wilderness so vast and crowded that at last it seems as though the way to either hell or heaven would be lost in its interminable futility124. Such planless indeterminate lives, plebeian125 lives, mere lives, fill the world, and the spectacle of whole nations, our whole civilization, seems to me to re-echo this planlessness, this indeterminate confusion of purpose. Plain issues are harder and harder to find, it is as if they had disappeared. Simple living is the countryman come to town. We are deafened126 and jostled and perplexed127. There are so many things afoot that we get nothing....
"That is what is in my mind when I tell you that we have to gather ourselves together much more than we think. We have to clench128 ourselves upon a chosen end. We have to gather ourselves together out of the swill129 of this brimming world.
"Or--we are lost...."
("Swill of this brimming world," said White. "Some of this sounds uncommonly130 like Prothero." He mused131 for a moment and then resumed his reading.)
"That is what I was getting at when, three years ago, I made an attack upon Democracy to the mother society of this society, an attack that I expressed ill and failed to drive home. That is what I have come down now to do my best to make plainer. This age of confusion is Democracy; it is all that Democracy can ever give us. Democracy, if it means anything, means the rule of the planless man, the rule of the unkempt mind. It means as a necessary consequence this vast boiling up of collectively meaningless things.
"What is the quality of the common man, I mean of the man that is common to all of us, the man who is the Standard for such men as Carnac, the man who seems to be the ideal of the Catholic Democrat132? He is the creature of a few fundamental impulses. He begins in blind imitation of the life about him. He lusts133 and takes a wife, he hungers and tills a field or toils134 in some other way to earn a living, a mere aimless living, he fears and so he does not wander, he is jealous and stays by his wife and his job, is fiercely yet often stupidly and injuriously defensive135 of his children and his possessions, and so until he wearies. Then he dies and needs a cemetery136. He needs a cemetery because he is so afraid of dissolution that even when he has ceased to be, he still wants a place and a grave to hold him together and prevent his returning to the All that made him. Our chief impression of long ages of mankind comes from its cemeteries137. And this is the life of man, as the common man conceives and lives it. Beyond that he does not go, he never comprehends himself collectively at all, the state happens about him; his passion for security, his gregarious138 self-defensiveness, makes him accumulate upon himself until he congests in cities that have no sense of citizenship139 and states that have no structure; the clumsy, inconsecutive lying and chatter140 of his newspapers, his hoardings and music-halls gives the measure of his congested intelligences, the confusion of ugly, half empty churches and chapels141 and meeting-halls gauge142 the intensity143 of his congested souls, the tricks and slow blundering dishonesties of Diet and Congress and Parliament are his statecraft and his wisdom....
"I do not care if this instant I am stricken dead for pride. I say here now to you and to High Heaven that THIS LIFE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. I know there is a better life than this muddle120 about us, a better life possible now. I know it. A better individual life and a better public life. If I had no other assurances, if I were blind to the glorious intimations of art, to the perpetually widening promise of science, to the mysterious beckonings of beauty in form and colour and the inaccessible144 mockery of the stars, I should still know this from the insurgent145 spirit within me....
"Now this better life is what I mean when I talk of Aristocracy. This idea of a life breaking away from the common life to something better, is the consuming idea in my mind.
"Constantly, recurrently, struggling out of the life of the farm and the shop, the inn and the market, the street and the crowd, is something that is not of the common life. Its way of thinking is Science, its dreaming is Art, its will is the purpose of mankind. It is not the common thing. But also it is not an unnatural146 thing. It is not as common as a rat, but it is no less natural than a panther.
"For it is as natural to be an explorer as it is to be a potato grower, it is rarer but it is as natural; it is as natural to seek explanations and arrange facts as it is to make love, or adorn147 a hut, or show kindness to a child. It is a folly I will not even dispute about, that man's only natural implement148 is the spade. Imagination, pride, exalted desire are just as much Man, as are hunger and thirst and sexual curiosities and the panic dread of unknown things....
"Now you see better what I mean about choice. Now you see what I am driving at. We have to choose each one for himself and also each one for the race, whether we will accept the muddle of the common life, whether we ourselves will be muddled, weakly nothings, children of luck, steering149 our artful courses for mean success and tawdry honours, or whether we will be aristocrats150, for that is what it amounts to, each one in the measure of his personal quality an aristocrat, refusing to be restrained by fear, refusing to be restrained by pain, resolved to know and understand up to the hilt of his understanding, resolved to sacrifice all the common stuff of his life to the perfection of his peculiar151 gift, a purged152 man, a trained, selected, artificial man, not simply free, but lordly free, filled and sustained by pride. Whether you or I make that choice and whether you or I succeed in realizing ourselves, though a great matter to ourselves, is, I admit, a small matter to the world. But the great matter is this, that THE CHOICE IS BEING MADE, that it will continue to be made, and that all around us, so that it can never be arrested and darkened again, is the dawn of human possibility...."
(White could also see his dead friend's face with its enthusiastic paleness, its disordered hair and the glowing darknesses in the eyes. On such occasions Benham always had an expression of ESCAPE. Temporary escape. And thus would his hand have clutched the reading-desk; thus would his long fingers have rustled153 these dry papers.)
"Man has reached a point when a new life opens before him....
"The old habitual154 life of man is breaking up all about us, and for the new life our minds, our imaginations, our habits and customs are all unprepared....
"It is only now, after some years of study and living, that I begin to realize what this tremendous beginning we call Science means to mankind. Every condition that once justified155 the rules and imperatives156, the manners and customs, the sentiments, the morality, the laws and limitations which make up the common life, has been or is being destroyed.... Two or three hundred years more and all that life will be as much a thing past and done with as the life that was lived in the age of unpolished stone....
"Man is leaving his ancestral shelters and going out upon the greatest adventure that ever was in space or time, he is doing it now, he is doing it in us as I stand here and read to you."
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1
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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rankled
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| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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equestrian
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| adj.骑马的；n.马术 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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scrutinize
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| n.详细检查，细读 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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gargoyle
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| n.笕嘴 | |
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fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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amplitude
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| n.广大；充足；振幅 | |
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clearance
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| n.净空；许可(证)；清算；清除，清理 | |
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custodian
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| n.保管人，监护人；公共建筑看守 | |
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undoing
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| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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entangle
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| vt.缠住，套住；卷入，连累 | |
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intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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peripheral
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| adj.周边的，外围的 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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38
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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40
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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41
foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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43
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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44
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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45
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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47
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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48
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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49
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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50
meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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51
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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52
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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53
steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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54
toady
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| v.奉承；n.谄媚者，马屁精 | |
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55
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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56
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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57
dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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58
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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59
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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60
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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61
viler
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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62
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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63
grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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64
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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65
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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66
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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68
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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gratuities
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| n.报酬( gratuity的名词复数 )；小账；小费；养老金 | |
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expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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ostrich
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| n.鸵鸟 | |
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78
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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antagonists
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| 对立[对抗] 者，对手，敌手( antagonist的名词复数 )； 对抗肌； 对抗药 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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illegible
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| adj.难以辨认的，字迹模糊的 | |
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memoranda
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| n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
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heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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generalizations
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| 一般化( generalization的名词复数 )； 普通化； 归纳； 概论 | |
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88
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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dissertation
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| n.（博士学位）论文，学术演讲，专题论文 | |
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professes
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| 声称( profess的第三人称单数 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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languish
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| vi.变得衰弱无力，失去活力，（植物等）凋萎 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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amateurish
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| n.业余爱好的，不熟练的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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solidifying
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| （使）成为固体，（使）变硬，（使）变得坚固( solidify的现在分词 )； 使团结一致； 充实，巩固； 具体化 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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101
aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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103
gist
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| n.要旨；梗概 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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106
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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107
whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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108
colloquialisms
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| n.俗话，白话，口语( colloquialism的名词复数 ) | |
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109
peroration
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| n.（演说等之）结论 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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111
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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112
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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113
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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114
inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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115
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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116
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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117
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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118
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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119
muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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120
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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121
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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122
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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futility
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| n.无用 | |
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125
plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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126
deafened
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| 使聋( deafen的过去式和过去分词 )； 使隔音 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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128
clench
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| vt.捏紧（拳头等），咬紧（牙齿等），紧紧握住 | |
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129
swill
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| v.冲洗；痛饮；n.泔脚饲料；猪食；（谈话或写作中的）无意义的话 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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131
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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132
democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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133
lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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134
toils
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| 网 | |
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135
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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136
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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137
cemeteries
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| n.（非教堂的）墓地，公墓( cemetery的名词复数 ) | |
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138
gregarious
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| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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139
citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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140
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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chapels
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| n.小教堂， （医院、监狱等的）附属礼拜堂( chapel的名词复数 )；（在小教堂和附属礼拜堂举行的）礼拜仪式 | |
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gauge
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| v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器 | |
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143
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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145
insurgent
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| adj.叛乱的，起事的；n.叛乱分子 | |
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146
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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148
implement
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| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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149
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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150
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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151
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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152
purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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153
rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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154
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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155
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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156
imperatives
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| n.必要的事( imperative的名词复数 )；祈使语气；必须履行的责任 | |
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