On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (9 page)

A Hack in Grub Street whom Painful Labour had driven to Despair and
Mysticism read the announcement with curiosity rather than
amazement, fully believing that the Great Dead, visiting as they do
the souls, may also come back rarely to the material cities of men.
One thing, however, troubled him, and that was how Rabelais, who had
slept so long in peace beneath the Fig Tree of the Cemetery of St.
Paul, could be risen now when his grave was weighed upon by No. 32
of the street of the same name. Howsoever, he would have guessed
that the alchemy of that immeasurable mind had in some way got rid
of the difficulty, and really the Hack must be forgiven for his
faith, since one learned enough to know so much about sites, history
and literature, is learned enough to doubt the senses and to accept
the Impossible; unfortunately the fact was vouched for in eight
newspapers of which he knew too much and was not accepted in the
only sheet he trusted. So he doubted too.

John Bowles, of Lombard Street, read the placards and wrought
himself up into a fury saying, "In what other country would these
cursed Boers be allowed to come and lecture openly like this? It is
enough to make one excuse the people who break up their meetings."
He was a little consoled, however, by the thought that his country
was so magnanimous, and in the calmer mood of self-satisfaction went
so far as to subscribe £5 to a French newspaper which was being
founded to propagate English opinions on the Continent. He may be
neglected.

Peter Grierson, attorney, was so hurried and overwrought with the
work he had been engaged on that morning (the lending of £1323 to a
widow at 5 1/4 per cent., [which heaven knows is reasonable!] on
security of a number of shares in the London and North-Western
Railway) that he misread the placard and thought it ran "Rabelais
lecture at the London School Economics"; disturbed for a moment at
the thought of so much paper wasted in time of war for so paltry an
announcement, he soon forgot about the whole business and went off
to "The Holborn," where he had his lunch comfortably standing up at
the buffet, and then went and worked at dominoes and cigars for two
hours.

Sir Judson Pennefather, Cabinet Minister and Secretary of State for
Public Worship, Literature and the Fine Arts—

But what have I to do with all these; absurd people upon whom the
news of Rabelais' return fell with such varied effect? What have you
and I to do with men and women who do not, cannot, could not, will
not, ought not, have not, did, and by all the thirsty Demons that
serve the lamps of the cavern of the Sibyl,
shall
not count
in the scheme of things as worth one little paring of Rabelais'
little finger nail? What are they that they should interfere with
the great mirific and most assuaging and comfortable feast of wit to
which I am now about to introduce you!—for know that I take you now
into the lecture-hall and put you at the feet of the past-master of
all arts and divinations (not to say crafts and homologisings and
integrativeness), the Teacher of wise men, the comfort of an
afflicted world, the uplifter of fools, the energiser of the
lethargic, the doctor of the gouty, the guide of youth, the
companion of middle age, the
vade mecum
of the old, the
pleasant introducer of inevitable death, yea, the general solace of
mankind. Oh! what are you not now about to hear! If anywhere there
are rivers in pleasant meadows, cool heights in summer, lovely
ladies discoursing upon smooth lawns, or music skilfully befingered
by dainty artists in the shade of orange groves, if there is any
left of that wine of Chinon from behind the
Grille
at four
francs a bottle (and so there is, I know, for I drank it at the last
Reveillon by St. Gervais)—I say if any of these comforters of the
living anywhere grace the earth, you shall find my master Rabelais
giving you the very innermost and animating spirit of all these good
things, their utter flavour and their saving power in the
quintessential words of his incontestably regalian lips. So here,
then, you may hear the old wisdom given to our wretched generation
for one happy hour of just living and we shall learn, surely in this
case at least, that the return of the Dead was admitted and the
Great Spirits were received and honoured.

* * * * *

But alas! No. (which is not a
nominativus pendens
, still less
an anacoluthon but a mere interjection). Contrariwise, in the place
of such a sunrise of the mind, what do you think we were given? The
sight of an old man in a fine red gown and with a University cap on
his head hurried along by two policemen in the Strand and followed
by a mob of boys and ruffians, some of whom took him for Mr. Kruger,
while others thought he was but a harmless mummer. And the
magistrate (who had obtained his position by a job) said these
simple words: "I do not know who you are in reality nor what foreign
name mask under your buffoonery, but I do know on the evidence of
these intelligent officers, evidence upon which I fully rely and
which you have made no attempt to contradict, you have disgraced
yourself and the hall of your kind hosts and employers by the use of
language which I shall not characterise save by telling you that it
would be comprehensible only in a citizen of the nation to which you
have the misfortune to belong. Luckily you were not allowed to
proceed for more than a moment with your vile harangue which (if I
understand rightly) was in praise of wine. You will go to prison for
twelve months. I shall not give you the option of a fine: but I can
promise you that if you prefer to serve with the gallant K. O.
Fighting Scouts your request will be favourably entertained by the
proper authorities."

Long before this little speech was over Rabelais had disappeared,
and was once more with the immortals cursing and swearing that he
would not do it again for 6,375,409,702 sequins, or thereabouts, no,
nor for another half-dozen thrown in as a makeweight.

There is the whole story.

I do not say that Rabelais was not over-hasty both in his appearance
and his departure, but I do say that if the Physicists (and notably
Mrs. Whirtle) had shown more imagination, the governing class a
wider reading, and the magistracy a trifle more sympathy with the
difference of tone between the sixteenth century and our own time,
the deplorable misunderstanding now separating the dead and the
living would never have arisen; for I am convinced that the Failure
of Rabelais' attempt has been the chief cause of it.

My dear little Anglo-Saxons, Celt-Iberians and Teutonico-Latin
oddities—-The time has come to convey, impart and make known to you
the dreadful conclusions and horrible prognostications that flow,
happen, deduce, derive and are drawn from the truly abominable
conditions of the social medium in which you and I and all poor
devils are most fatally and surely bound to draw out our miserable
existence.

Note, I say "existence" and not "existences." Why do I say
"existence", and not "existences"? Why, with a fine handsome plural
ready to hand, do I wind you up and turn you off, so to speak, with
a piffling little singular not fit for a half-starved newspaper
fellow, let alone a fine, full-fledged, intellectual and well-read
vegetarian and teetotaller who writes in the reviews? Eh? Why do I
say "existence"?—speaking of many, several and various persons as
though they had but one mystic, combined and corporate personality
such as Rousseau (a fig for the Genevese!) portrayed in his
Contrat Social
(which you have never read), and such as
Hobbes, in his
Leviathan
(which some of you have heard of),
ought to have premised but did not, having the mind of a lame,
halting and ill-furnished clockmaker, and a blight on him!

Why now "existence" and not "existences"? You may wonder; you may
ask yourselves one to another mutually round the tea-table putting
it as a problem or riddle. You may make a game of it, or use it for
gambling, or say it suddenly as a catch for your acquaintances when
they come up from the suburbs. It is a very pretty question and
would have been excellently debated by Thomas Aquinas in the
Jacobins of St. Jacques, near the Parloir aux Bourgeois, by the gate
of the University; by Albertus Magnus in the Cordeliers, hard by the
College of Bourgoyne; by Pic de la Mirandole, who lived I care not a
rap where and debated I know not from Adam how or when; by Lord
Bacon, who took more bribes in a day than you and I could compass in
a dozen years; by Spinoza, a good worker of glass lenses, but a
philosopher whom I have never read nor will; by Coleridge when he
was not talking about himself nor taking some filthy drug; by John
Pilkington Smith, of Norwood, Drysalter, who has, I hear, been
lately horribly bitten by the metaphysic; and by a crowd of others.

But that's all by the way. Let them debate that will, for it leads
nowhere unless indeed there be sharp revelation, positive
declaration and very certain affirmation to go upon by way of Basis
or First Principle whence to deduce some sure conclusion and
irrefragable truth; for thus the intellect walks, as it were, along
a high road, whereas by all other ways it is lurching and stumbling
and boggling and tumbling in I know not what mists and brambles of
the great bare, murky twilight and marshy hillside of philosophy,
where I also wandered when I was a fool and unoccupied and lacking
exercise for the mind, but from whence, by the grace of St. Anthony
of Miranella and other patrons of mine, I have very happily
extricated myself. And here I am in the parlour of the "Bugle" at
Yarmouth, by a Christian fire, having but lately come off the sea
and writing this for the edification and confirmation of honest
souls.

What, then, of the question,
Quid de quuerendo? Quantum?
Qualiter? Ubi? Cur? Quid? Quando? Quomodo? Quum? Sive an non?

Ah! There you have it. For note you, all these interrogative
categories must be met, faced, resolved and answered exactly—or you
have no more knowledge of the matter than the
Times
has of
economics or the King of the Belgians of thorough-Bass. Yea, if you
miss, overlook, neglect, or shirk by reason of fatigue or indolence,
so much as one tittle of these several aspects of a question you
might as well leave it altogether alone and give up analysis for
selling stock, as did the Professor of Verbalism in the University
of Adelaide to the vast solace and enrichment of his family.

For by the neglect of but one of these final and fundamental
approaches to the full knowledge of a question the world has been
irreparably, irretrievably and permanently robbed of the certain
reply to, and left ever in the most disastrous doubt upon, this most
important and necessary matter—namely,
whether real existence
can be predicated of matter.

For Anaxagoras of Syracuse, that was tutor to the Tyrant Machion,
being in search upon this question for a matter of seventy-two
years, four months, three days and a few odd hours and minutes, did,
in extreme old age, as he was walking by the shore of the sea, hit,
as it were in a flash, upon six of the seven answers, and was able
in one moment, after so much delay and vexatious argument for and
against with himself, to resolve the problem upon the points of
how, why, when, where, how much
, and
in what
, matter might or might
not be real, and was upon the very nick of settling the last little
point—namely,
sive an non
(that is, whether it
were
real or no)—when,
as luck would have it, or rather, as his own beastly appetite and senile
greed would have it, he broke off sharp at hearing the dinner-gong or
bell, or horn, or whatever it was—for upon these matters the King was
indifferent (
de minimis non curat rex
), and so am I—and was poisoned
even as he sat at table by the agents of Pyrrhus.

By this accident, by this mere failure upon
one
of the Seven
Answers, it has been since that day never properly decided whether
or no this true existence was or was not predicable of matter; and
some believing matter to be there have treated it pompously and
given it reverence and adored it in a thousand merry ways, but
others being confident it was not there have starved and fallen off
edges and banged their heads against corners and come plump against
high walls; nor can either party convince the other, nor can the
doubts of either be laid to rest, nor shall it from now to the Day
of Doom be established whether there is a Matter or is none; though
many learned men have given up their lives to it, including
Professor Britton, who so despaired of an issue that he drowned
himself in the Cam only last Wednesday. But what care I for him or
any other Don?

So there we are and an answer must be found, but upon my soul I
forget to what it hangs, though I know well there was some question
propounded at the beginning of this for which I cared a trifle at
the time of asking it and you I hope not at all. Let it go the way
of all questions, I beg of you, for I am very little inclined to
seek and hunt through all the heap that I have been tearing through
this last hour with Pegasus curvetting and prancing and flapping his
wings to the danger of my seat and of the cities and fields below
me.

Come, come, there's enough for one bout, and too much for some. No
good ever came of argument and dialectic, for these breed only angry
gestures and gusty disputes (
de gustibus non disputandum
) and
the ruin of friendships and the very fruitful pullulation of
Dictionaries, textbooks and wicked men, not to speak of
Intellectuals, Newspapers, Libraries, Debating-clubs, bankruptcies,
madness,
Petitiones elenchi
and ills innumerable.

I say live and let live; and now I think of it there was something
at the beginning and title of this that dealt with a warning to ward
you off a danger of some kind that terrified me not a little when I
sat down to write, and that was, if I remember right, that a friend
had told me how he had read in a book that the damnable Brute
CAPITAL was about to swallow us all up and make slaves of us and
that there was no way out of it, seeing that it was fixed, settled
and grounded in economics, not to speak of the procession of the
Equinox, the Horoscope of Trimegistus, and
Old Moore's
Almanack
. Oh! Run, Run! The Rich are upon us! Help! Their hot
breath is on our necks! What jaws! What jaws!