Morals, nay, of the whole of human civilization. For the primary dogmas cannot possibly be mere hypotheses; for the simple reason that men have to suffer for them. Either there is patriotism or there is not patriotism; for a man is shot if there is, and not shot if there isn't. Either there is property or there is not; for a man starves to respect it. The whole strain of life is upon its abstractions. It is exactly for the arbitrary lines (for instance for national frontiers) that a man is called upon to be killed.

It would be very easy to represent this growth of really doubtful and unconvinced people as a despicable corruption. Every day one meets a man who will utter the frantic and blasphemous assertion that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one; whereas, of course, his view must be the right one, or it would not be his view. Every day one may meet a charming modern who says that he does not think one opinion any better than another. It would be easy, I repeat, to let loose against this kind of thing the mere hearty loathing of a healthy man, and describe it as a corpse crawling with worms. But this would not altogether be just. Among the singular elements in the affair this must be noted: that some of those who are in this blank and homeless incertitude are among the simplest and kindest of men. I think the real explanation is different and decidedly curious. When chaos overcomes any moral or religious scheme, it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are let loose and wander and do terrible damage. But the virtues are let loose even more; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. Every part of the modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad; or, for the matter of that, of the old pagan vir

And,

tues gone mad. The instances are innumerable. Mr. Blatchford, to take a passing example, is simply a Christian who has become too exclusively enthusiastic for the sentimental part of Christianity. He takes the virtue of charity and allows it to eat up everything else will, judgment, responsibility, citizenship, justice, and human dignity. Really the modern world is far too good; it is full of wild and wasted and anarchic virtues. Thus, for instance, Tolstoy probably employs, in restraining himself from fighting, sufficient energy to upset the Tsar. of all these mis-directed moral qualities, none, I think, is so striking as the case of the modern mis-direction of humility. Humility was originally meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. The tendency of man was to ask for so much, that he could hardly enjoy even what he got; he was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly-invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident, that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass, are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star, are the creation of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up to them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is perhaps the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humiliation to enjoy anything-even pride.

But all this humility, which originally rested upon our appetites and our individual desires, has changed its posi

tion. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction. By the old rule, a man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about his doctrine. This has been entirely reversed. The part of a man that he does assert nowadays, is exactly the part that he ought not to assert: himself. The part he doubts, is exactly the part he ought not to doubt: the divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility that is content to learn from Nature. But the new scepticism preaches a humility which is so humble, that it doubts whether it can ever learn. And the practical difference between the two doctrines is vast and terrible. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts; which might make him work harder. The new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims; which may make him stop working altogether.

I can simply illustrate my meaning from the history of modern politics. The whole success of the French Revolution, and of the European Liberal movement that flowed out of it, arose from the fact that it preached certain dogmatic certainties: certainties for which a man could be called upon to be tortured, to be destroyed. The chief of these was the doctrine of the Rights of Man, the doctrine that there were certain eternal indispensable elements in the human lot, which men could demand from their rulers or their civilization. And this demand is exactly the demand that has been disputed and denied in our time. Matthew Arnold, a typical leader in many ways of the reaction against Liberalism, said, in one of his books: "Which of us, on looking The Independent Review.

into his own consciousness, feels he has any rights at all?" No one perhaps; for looking into one's own consciousness is a disgusting Eastern habit. And if you look into your own consciousness, you will find exactly what the Buddhists find and worship there-Nothing. You will find you have no rights, and no duties, and, incidentally, no self. But it is the essence of our Western religion to believe that the problem of life is solved in living it. Live outwards, live in the living universe, and you will soon find that you have duties. You will also find that you have rights; unless indeed you are in the singular position in which the typical English moderns find themselves. For, as I have said, the Nemesis or our present English position is this: that the one claim which we doubt is this universal claim, the claim that is compatible with personal disinterestedness and personal self-effacement. We dispute the Rights of Man. We do not dispute the rights of judges, or the rights of policemen, or the rights of landlords, or the rights of legislators. We do not dispute any of the rights that might and do make individuals proud. We only dispute the right that is so huge that it makes even the claimant of it humble. And there is no class in which doubt is more deep than in the rich class; there is no class in which doubt is more fixed, I might almost say in which doubt is more undoubting. No class has so much of the new modesty as the class that has most of the old pride. And if a man says to you: "I have no rights," you will commonly be safe in answering "No: you have privileges."

G. K. Chesterton.

Paudeen, who was the son of Paddy Fox, was of a type in which the Almighty has been pleased to make many little boys. His hair was red and very rough, his eyes were light blue, his upper lip was long and his nose short. He only differed from other little boys in that he made less noise.

He was neither very lazy nor very naughty, but he spent a great portion of his school hours in looking out of the window towards Slieveross. The time he spent in learning his lessons seemed to him profitless, but when he looked across the acres of little fields and waste land towards the wooded slopes of Slieveross he felt his heart burn within him.

Paudeen had never been to the woods of Slieveross. When he suggested that he should go there his mother said "no," and his father, rubbing his chin with his hard, dirty hand, told strange legends of the woods, of girls who had been stolen away by the faeries, of little boys who had followed the intricacies of some woodland path never to return home. Then Paudeen, listening with apparent terror, felt his pulses throb and fancied that some elfin bugle called him towards the woods.

Why Paudeen loved trees with a passion almost unknown to his companions is not explicable. The reason of it is stored away in some dim rune of circumstance or chance. He never mentioned it to others, although his fame as a mighty climber was envied even in the remote village of Letterbrack where his aunt resided. He never openly admired a tree; he even affected indifference about them; but from winter to winter he followed the pageant of the woodlands with a delight that surged silently in his soul and finding no words grew stronger within him.

Fate, who has some regard for the extravagant endeavors of childhood, showed sudden favor to Paudeen in such a way that he found himself bewildered by her munificence.

On this occasion Fate masqueraded as his mother.

"Will I send you to your aunt, avic?” said Mrs. Fox, in her strident, kindly voice, "there's Davy M'Gill, the decent boy, goin' to Letterbrack on the old car, says he'll be givin' you a lift. The father an' I are goin' to the fair beyant there at Knockdoon, so mind yourself, Paudeen, an' you might be takin' a parcel of sugarstick to your cousin Kate, an' a screw of tay to your aunt."

Paudeen, with his eyes and mouth open, nodded assent. He expressed neither pleasure nor regret; but consented meekly to the washing of his face and the reclothing of his person. Then he went to Davy M'Gill's and silently mounted the car.

Paudeen was no conversationalist, and he answered Davy's questions so briefly that soon silence came upon them, the silence of a wild land with magic in its air.

The long road to Letterbrack passed by desolate moors where the peewit called, by fields where the daisies nodded like the armies of faeryland, by mottled granite walls where the yellow-hammer perched and sang, and by woods haunted of squirrels and rabbits.

As they jogged along, Davy's errant fancy dogged the footsteps of Molly Boyne through imagination's mazes, and he smiled stupidly every now and then, and cracked his whip. But Paudeen had forgotten that there were such people as Davy M'Gill and Paudeen Fox, he had forgotten any limits of personality, so absorbed was his little

mind with the great world about him, the wide sky, the earth decked out in such varying shades of gray, green, red, brown and gold. For a while Paudeen's mind was Nature's mind; if the earth had clasped him to her heart he would not have been nearer to her than then.

When they came in sight of Letterbrack Davy spoke again.

"How will you go back, Paudeen?" said he, "for I'm goin' on to Mr. Malone to see if I can sell him the car."

"An' why wouldn't I walk?" said Paudeen carelessly, "wid the legs on me rustin' for want of work.”

Davy looked down at him.

"God save you, Paddy, you're no bigger than a sugar stick; 'tis a great walk back."

"Oh! I'll be doin' it aisy now."

"To go by Slieveross would be shorter, but if you'd lose your way t'would be bad, and there's quare stories told of the woods."

**Och! Davy, I'll be gettin' back on my head or my heels before night time, never fear, and thank you kindly."

Paudeen scrambled hastily off the car and made off towards his aunt's cabin. He had no mind for questions. This explained a certain brilliance in his conversation during the visit; he feared any suggestions as to his return.

He staved them off until the moment of his departure.

"Well, I'm like to be takin' off wid myself now, Aunt Biddy," said the cunning one, "good-bye, Katie, an' don't ate up the sugar sticks too quick; 'tis a gran' night, such weather for the hay, God be praised, I'll be tellin' them of the fine chickens you have here."

All this time he was getting farther and farther away from the door, so that at last he felt he might with propriety turn his back and scuttle down the road.

Herein he displayed the subtlety of the serpent, for after having gone a lit

tle way down the road he turned across a field and made his way towards Slieveross. He soon found himself on the mountain side among boulders and foxgloves and bracken, and among startled sheep. Paudeen's heart was

fire in his breast. He climbed steadily, until he reached a rough track that led him up the shoulder of the mountain. At last he stood on a rock and overlooked the woods that stretched into the valley. The wind blew in his red hair, and the wind played over the wide field of the tree tops, that were swaying and changing, and silvering and darkening below him.

He sat down on a boulder and took off his shoes and stockings, for they bespoke a state of civilization which divorced his spirit from the elemental heart of things. He had forgotten that he was wearing his Sunday clothes, and with them that artificiality in which we deck our minds when we most array our bodies. He had forgotten that Paudeen existed. One fact was paramount. He was looking down on the woods of Slieveross.

Have you ever trodden hard on the footsteps of magic? Have you stood, breath-held, on the threshold of wonder? Have you strained every sense for the remembrance of the fulfilment of some phantasmal desire that eluded your imagination through twilit labyrinthine ways? If so you have known what Paudeen knew in that pleasant evening hour, looking down upon the woods.

Paudeen began his descent cautiously but swiftly. His bare feet, as they trod the heather and fraughan beneath them, sent a thrill of primitive ecstacy to his expectant mind. He passed the first sentries of the wood, a group of larches; he trod the leaves of last year, and the brown sheaths of the Springtime's buds.

He pattered over moss and heath until the woods were about him; paths

leading north, south, and west, winding and twisting into green gloom lured his fancy onwards.

Chequered light and shade danced on the moss as the wind ruffled the leaves. The low sun sent gold gleams upon the smooth trunks of birch and beech. A sense of enchantment silenced the whistle on Paudeen's lips. He ran stealthily into the green dusk. He touched the trunks as he passed with loving, dirty fingers. He noted each of the great company, chestnut, larch, and pine, beech, oak and birch, here and there an ash, here and there a sycamore.

At last he was entangled among the many paths of the wood and he flung himself panting upon the moss. He lay on his back, his face turned up towards the branches overhead. There was a strange sense upon him that he was a player in some fantastic masque. The intricacies of twigs and swaying leaves held him spellbound. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them the sense of fantasy held him more strongly than before. He was in a little glade and all about him was a strange and phantasmal company. Paudeen stared, as only children stare. It seemed to him that a measured and curious dance was being performed before him. The figures were interwoven slowly and in order, and as the dancers advanced and retreated Paudeen became dimly aware of the identity of each. Their gigantic stature, their curious motley garments of the color of leaves in light and shadow made it plain to him that these were the trees in human semblance. There was one slighter and more graceful than the rest whom he recognized as the birch, and another, who held a squirrel in his arms, Paudeen knew as the beech. He recognized them all, hazel, willow and pine, sycamore, hawthorn and elder.

It was as he sat watching them that

Davy M'Gill, whistling gaily, came down the path. Paudeen waited in blithe expectation for Davy's cry of surprise, but it never came. He passed among the dancers as one who did not see them. Paudeen called to him; Davy looked at him without any sign of recognition and flung a fir cone at him. Soon he had disappeared into the shadows.

Then some instinct stirred in Paudeen, and rising, he went towards the dancer he took for the beech tree, and slipping a hand into his followed him through the dance. At the close of it, the gigantic curious company crowded about Paudeen laughing and whispering. Then one of them put a crown of leaves and berries on his rough red hair.

""Tis you that are king of the woods, Paudeen," said the sycamore.

"Lift him up," said the ash, and the beech swung him up on to his shoulder, so that he was on a level with the heads of those that thronged about him.

"There's been no one to be king of the woods since your grandfather died, Paudeen," said the hazel. "And now I whisper to him where he lies asleep below the church, but 'tis no answer I get."

"Would you not have Davy M'Gill, who's the fine boy?" Paudeen asked in his small treble voice.

"Davy is nothing to us, nor we to him," said the birch, "but we know you. Sure there's not a day I don't put the comether on you, when you're working down there at those pisthogues of letters and figures."

"And don't I tap on the chapel window, Paudeen?" said the beech, "so that you're nigh mad to be out of doors and climbin' in my branches."

"And I," said the elder, "looked in at the window when you were born, an' saw you no bigger than a pinkeen. 'Twas I put the comether on you then, Paudeen Fox."