The Thibaults (119 page)

“Steady there, my young friend!” the Abbé cried. “Where’s that theory going to lead us?”

“Oh, I know, the Church doesn’t worry over trifles like that. But all the ingenious devices the Church has been applying, for a hundred years and more, to reconcile faith with modern science and philosophy are—if you’ll forgive me the expression—more or less faked. Obviously so, since what keeps faith alive and is its object—the quality which appeals so strongly to the religious mind—is precisely that supernatural element which is denied by science and philosophy.”

The Abbé was beginning to fidget in his seat; it was dawning on him that this was a serious argument. A note of petulance crept into his voice.

“You seem to overlook the fact that it’s by dint of using their brains, by philosophical reasoning, that most of the younger generation nowadays come by faith.”

“I wonder!”

“Your reasons, please!”

“Well, I must admit that I can’t picture faith as anything other than a blind, intuitive acceptance. And when it claims to be founded on logic …!”

“Have you the old-fashioned notion that science and philosophy deny the supernatural? That’s k mistake, my dear fellow—a glaring mistake. Science leaves it out, and that’s a very different thing. As for philosophy, every philosophy worthy of the name …”

’ ”Worthy of the name’! Excellent! That way all dangerous opponents are put out of court.”

Ignoring Antoine’s irony, the priest went on: “Every philosophy worthy of the name leads us inevitably to the supernatural. But let’s go further; let’s suppose your modern scientists contrive to show that there’s a fundamental opposition between the ‘laws’ they have discovered and the teachings of the Church—an absurd, not to say Machiavellian hypothesis in the present state of our Christian apologetics—what would that prove, I ask you?”

“Ask me another!” Antoine smiled.

“Nothing at all!” the priest exclaimed with gusto. “It would merely show that the human intellect is incapable of co-ordinating its data, and that its progress is a blundering one at best; a fact,” he added with a friendly chuckle, “which is no news to a good many of us.

“Come, Antoine, we’re not living in Voltaire’s time. Need I remind you that the victories which the so-called reason vaunted by your atheist philosophers scored over religion were but short-lived, illusive victories? Is there a single article of faith regarding which the Church has ever been convicted of defective logic?”

“Not one, I grant you willingly,” Antoine broke in with a laugh. “The Church has always had the knack of holding its own in a tight corner. Your theologians are past masters in the art of inventing subtle, seemingly logical arguments that save them from being badgered very long by rationalist appeals to reason. Especially of recent years, I’ve noticed, they have been displaying a skill at the logic-chopping game that’s positively staggering! Still, all that takes in only those who start off by wanting to be taken in.”

“No, my friend. You may be sure that if the logic of the Church has always the last word that is because it’s …”

“Shrewder, more persistent… .”

“No. More profound than yours. Perhaps you’ll agree with me that the human intellect, left to its own devices, can achieve nothing better than elaborate structures of mere words, which leave the heart, the emotions, unsatisfied. Why should that be? It isn’t only that there’s a whole order of verities which seems to lie outside the field of normal argument, nor yet because the idea of God seems to transcend the possibilities of normal understanding. Above all—please mark well my words—it’s because our reasoning faculty left to itself fails us here, can get no grip on these subtle problems. In other words, a real, lively faith has every right to insist on such explanations as may wholly satisfy the intellect; but our intellect itself must first submit to be schooled by Grace—for Grace enlightens the faculty of reason. The true believer does not merely set out, using his intellect to the utmost, in quest of God; he must also humbly offer himself to God, who is in quest of him. And when by dint of reasoning he has made his upward way into God’s presence, he should divest himself of thought, and—how shall I put it?—lay himself open to receive within him the recompense of his quest, the God that he has sought.”

After a pregnant silence Antoine rejoined: “Which is tantamount to saying that reasoned thought is not enough to guide us to the truth; we also need what you call Grace. That, I must say, is a very damaging admission.”

His tone was such that the priest could not help exclaiming:

“Ah, I’m sorry for you indeed, Antoine! You’re one of the victims of our times—a rationalist!”

“I’m … well, it’s always hard to say just what one is. Still I admit I stand by the satisfactions of the intellect.”

The priest’s hands fluttered. “And by the blandishments of doubt, as well. It’s a survival of the romantic era; that sense of glorious audacity—and Byronic anguish—tickles the vanity, of course.”

“No,” Antoine cried, “you’re absolutely wrong there! I haven’t the least sense of audacity or anguish, and I’ve no use for those muzzy states of mind you’re thinking of. Nobody could be less romantic than I. And I don’t suffer from ‘soul-searchings,’ as they call them.” No sooner had he made the statement than he realized it was no longer strictly true. Doubtless he had no soul-searchings such as the Abbé Vécard had in mind—on the score of religion. But during the past three or four years he too had been apt to ponder, not without anguish, on the problem of man’s place and function in the universe. After a while he added: “What’s more, it would be wrong to say I’ve lost my faith; I rather think I never had it.”

“Oh, come now!” the Abbé exclaimed. “Have you forgotten, Antoine, what a religious little boy you used to be?”

“Religious? No. Docile; serious and obedient, nothing more. I was naturally amenable to discipline, and I performed my religious duties like the good little boy I was! That’s all.”

“No, no! You’re deliberately understating your faith in early years.”

“It wasn’t faith, but a religious upbringing, which is a very different thing.”

Antoine was trying less to startle the Abbé than to be sincere. His weariness had given place, to a mild exhilaration, which urged him to hold his own in the argument. And now he launched out into a sort of stock-taking, such as he had rarely made before, of his early life.

“Yes, it’s a question of upbringing. And, Abbé, just consider how neatly it all links up together. From when he’s four, his mother, his nurse, all the grown-ups on whom a child relies, keep dinning into his ears, on every pretext: ‘God is in heaven; God made you, and He watches you; God loves you, sees you, judges you; God will punish you if you’re naughty, reward you if you’re good.’ What next? When he’s eight he’s taken to mass and sees all the grown-up people round him bowing and kneeling; a beautiful gold monstrance is pointed out to him, gleaming amongst flowers and lights, across a haze of incense and music—and it’s the same God who’s present there, in the white Host. Right! What next? When he’s eleven he is told about the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption, Resurrection, Immaculate Conception, and all the rest of it—in a tone that carries conviction, from the august eminence of a pulpit. He listens, and believes all he is told. How should he not believe? How could he feel the least doubt about beliefs publicly avowed by his parents, school-fellows, masters, and by all the congregation in the church? How could a little boy like him question these holy mysteries? From the day he was born he’s been coming up against equally bewildering phenomena; he is a small, lost waif in a mysterious universe. That, sir, in my opinion is a point of vital importance; in fact, it’s the key to the whole problem. For a child everything is equally incomprehensible. The earth, which looks so flat, is round; it doesn’t seem to move, yet it’s spinning like a top. The sun makes seeds germinate; a live chick comes out of an egg. The Son of God came down from heaven, and died on the cross to redeem us from our sins. Why not? God was the Word, and the Word was made flesh. … It may mean something, or it may not. No matter! The trick has worked.”

The train had just stopped. A voice in the darkness bawled the name of a station. Supposing the car empty, somebody opened the door hastily and slammed it to again, with a curse. A blast of icy wind buffeted their faces.

Antoine turned again towards the Abbé, but the light had grown still feebler and he could make little of his expression.

As the priest made no remark, Antoine continued, in a calmer tone: “Well, can that childish credulity be described as ‘faith’? Certainly not. Faith is something that comes later. It springs from different roots. And, personally, I can assure you I have never had it.”

“It would be truer to say that, though the soil was well prepared for it, you never gave it a chance of springing up in your soul.” The Abbé’s voice was vibrant with indignation. “Faith is a gift from God— like the faculty of memory; and like memory, like all God’s gifts, it requires cultivation. But you—you, like so many others, yielded to pride, to the spirit of contradiction, to the lures of ‘free thinking,’ to the temptation of rebelling against established order.”

No sooner made, than the priest regretted his outburst, justified though it was. He was firmly resolved not to be drawn into a prolonged discussion of religion.

Moreover, the Abbé misinterpreted Antoine’s tone. Struck by its incisiveness, its ardour, and the gay truculence which gave the young man’s words an air of rather forced bravado, he preferred to question the speaker’s absolute sincerity!. He still entertained the utmost respect for Antoine, and behind it lurked a hope—more than a hope, a firm conviction—that M. Thibault’s elder son would not long persist in such lamentable, indefensible opinions.

Antoine was pondering.

“No,” he said composedly. “You’re wrong there. It came about quite naturally; neither pride nor a rebellious spirit played any part. Why, I didn’t even have to give it a thought. As far as I remember, I began, at the time of my first communion, to have a vague feeling that there was—how shall I put it?—that there was a catch somewhere in what we were taught about ‘religion; a sort of murkiness, not only for us but for everyone, for the grown-ups as well. Even for our priests!”

The Abbé could not withhold a flutter of his hands.

“Don’t imagine,” Antoine explained, “that I doubted then, or have the least doubt now, as to the sincerity of the priests I’ve known, or their zeal—perhaps I should say, their need for zeal. But they certainly gave me the impression of men uneasily groping in the dark, uncertain of their bearings, and turning round and round those abstruse doctrines I’ve mentioned with an unconscious diffidence. They made assertions, yes. But what did they assert? What had been asserted to them. Of course, they had no actual doubts about those doctrines of which they were the mouthpiece. But deep down in their hearts did they feel quite so sure as their dogmatic tone implied? Well, somehow I couldn’t convince myself they were so sure as all that. Do I shock you? We had, you see, another set of men to match them with—our masters. Those laymen, I confess, seemed to me much more at ease in their special field of learning, much more sure of their ground. Whether they expounded history, grammar, or geometry, they always gave us the impression that they knew their subjects from A to Z!”

The Abbé pursed his lips. “Before making a comparison, one must be sure the things compared are comparable.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking of the subject-matter of their teaching; I have in mind only the angle from which those specialists approached their subjects. There was never anything evasive about their attitude, even when their knowledge happened to fall short; they made no secret of their doubts, or even of the blind spots in their learning. And that, believe me, inspired confidence; it ruled out the least suspicion of … of humbug. No, humbug isn’t what I meant. Still I must admit that, in the next phase of my education, the more I came in contact with the priests at the Ecole, the less they inspired in me the feeling of security I had got from my lay teachers.”

“If the priests under whom you studied had been true theologians, you’d have got an impression of perfect security from your intercourse with them.” The Abbé was thinking of the professors of his seminary, of his studious youth unruffled by the faintest doubt.

Antoine did not seem to hear him. “Just think,” he exclaimed, “what it means to a youngster, when he’s turned loose, by gradual stages, on mathematics, physics, chemistry! Suddenly he discovers that he has all space, the universe, for his playground. And after that, religion strikes him as not only cramped, but false, illogical. Untrustworthy.”

This time the Abbé drew back and stretched forth his arm. “Illogical? Can you seriously apply that term to it: illogical?”

“Yes!” Antoine retorted vehemently. “And I’ve just hit on something I hadn’t realized before. You upholders of religion start out with a firm belief, and to shore up that belief you call in logic; whereas people like myself begin with doubt, indifference, and we take reason for our guide, not knowing where it will lead us.

“Of course,” he went on at once with a smile, before the priest had time to put in a retort, “if you set to arguing it out with me, it will be child’s play for you to prove I don’t know the first word on the subject. I admit that right away. I’ve given very little thought to such matters; perhaps never so much as tonight. So you see I’m not trying to set up as a thoroughgoing rationalist. I’m only trying to explain why a Catholic upbringing has not prevented me from coming to my present state—a state of total unbelief.”

“My dear fellow,” the Abbé put in, with a slightly forced geniality, “your plain speaking doesn’t shock me in the least. For I’m sure you’re very far from being so black ^s you paint yourself! But go on; I’m listening.”

“Well, I continued—like so many others—observing my religious duties all the same. With an indifference which I wouldn’t acknowledge even to myself; a polite indifference. Even in later years I never settled down to a serious stock-taking of my beliefs. Most likely because at bottom I didn’t attach enough importance to them. Yes, I was very far from the state of mind of one of my fellow-students who was taking the Applied Arts course; he said to me one day, after he’d been through a phase of soul-searching: ‘I’ve given the whole bag of tricks a thorough look-over; take my word for it, boy, there’s far too many loose ends, it doesn’t hang together.’ At that time I was just starting my medical course, and the break—or, rather, estrangement—had already come about. I hadn’t waited for the semi-scientific studies of my first year to discover that one can’t believe without evidence …”