University of Virginia Library

The lecture hall was filled with youth—
Pencil and notebook ready—some
Still, as in thoughtful search of truth,
Some noisy as an empty drum;
Here one was bearded like a goat,
Another was some mother's pet,
With gay cravat and dandy coat,
And face smooth as a baby's yet.
A seed-plot this of fruitful thought,
A graveyard, too, of hopes and schemes,
Where some shall grow, and some shall rot,
And some shall prove but idle dreams.
I sat me down; and by and by
Came from behind the bema, brisk,
A little man with clear blue eye,
And giving his stiff gown a whisk,
Tripped up, and spread his lecture out
On the low desk; then all was hushed,
As he, complacent, looked about,
And we expectant were, and crushed.

A small, brisk man, with little head,
But yet compact, well-shaped, and round;
And in his face there was no shade,
And in his voice no tremulous sound;
Features well chiselled, not one blunt;
Thin-lipped, and with a fighting air;
As keen to bear the battle's brunt,
And nothing for his foeman care,
With scorn for all who might resist
His confident thoughts, and daring flights
Into the realm of cloud and mist,
To fill it with new patent lights:
An able little man, and yet
Not able quite for what he tried,
Who had no doubt, and no regret,
Nor haunting shadow at his side:
Unconscious of the Mystery—
The cross-light of a higher will—
His ableness was plain to see,
His littleness was plainer still.

So standing there, he said, “Our course
Of scientific search has been
To purge you first, without remorse,
Of cobwebs, and to sweep them clean,
And let the daylight in. But man
Must have some faith on which to live,
Some purpose in his thoughts and plan,
Which clearness to his world shall give.
I call it faith; but 'tis, indeed,
Only large reason bodying forth
What lies enfolded in the seed
We have been sowing. From the earth
We clear away the former wreck,
And cart the rubbish out of sight,
Then straightway to our tools we take,
To build anew, and build aright.
No soul can stay on vacancy,
Or on mere blank negations feed,
And though we cease to bow the knee,
We may not cease to have a Creed:
And this is how I shape to me
The new faith from the novel seed.

“We grow from less to more; we rise
From vital cells, by ordered schisms,
To intricate complexities
Of fine and subtle organisms—
A tadpole now with breathing gills,
Then lizard fit for land or lake,
And by and by an ape that skills
The husk of milky nut to break.
And just as if great Nature kept
Her moulds, that we might learn her ways,
And how she wrought, and never slept,
But grew through all the years and days,
These phases of the coming race,
These stages of the shaping Past,
We in the unborn babe may trace
That cheers some lonely home at last.
So doth she keep her records true,
Repeating in each life on earth
What man hath been, and how he grew
To fulness of his higher birth.

“Why should we be ashamed to own
Our humble kindred in the Past?
Why scorn the seedling that hath grown
Into so great a tree at last?
Shall we not love all creatures more
That they are of our flesh and blood,
And that our ancestors of yore
Squatted upon the oozy mud,
Or floated, pulsing, in the sea
Which brought forth every living thing,
Or chattered on the cocoa tree,
And nestled where the palm-leaves spring?
For life is one and manifold,
And all spring from the self-same roots,
And we are ripe and growing old,
And these are but the tender shoots.

“Our Eden—'twas some moor or fen,
Or rolling prairie at the best,
The savage haunt of savage men
Homeless and naked, like the rest
Of Nature's products; only they
Were creatures of a larger brain,
Fitter on earth to make their way,
And from the earth its wealth to gain.
So, scheming brain and cunning hand
Fashioned the flint-tool sharp and good,
And smote the wild beast on the land,
And hewed the oak tree in the wood.
They made them snares for fish and bird,
For hunger sharpened all their wits,
And imitating sounds they heard
For lures—the shrewdest of their hits—
They framed at length articulate speech
From owls and cats and wolves and rooks,
Or seamew shrilling on the beach,
Or song-bird by the murmuring brooks.
Then from the flint one stole the fire,
And blew the spark into a flame
Which gave him all his heart's desire,
And shaped his path to power and fame.

“He found the wild spark in the flint,
And tinder in the dry rush-pith,
He found that thorns would burn by dint
Of blowing, and he was—a smith,
And wrenched the iron from the stone,
And fused it with his subtle spark,
Or lit the lamp, when day was done,
And made a new day in the dark.
With fire he offered sacrifice,
When he his gods would please or thank,
And baked the flesh, and boiled the rice,
And with the gods he ate and drank.
He worshipped it, yet made it work,
And be his slave, and serve him well;
He did not shut it in a kirk,
And call men to it with a bell;
But made it sail upon the sea,
And snort along the iron road,
And weave and knit for him; and be
The lifter of his heavy load,
Until he learned, at length, that he
Himself was Lord of all, and God.

“A long and troubled way he had
Ere thus he came to clearest light;
At times, his fancies drove him mad,
And he was in an evil plight:
At times through swamps of pious slush
The ague-stricken soul must wade;
Or hew a path through briar and bush
By tangling metaphysics made;
At times his leaders led him wrong,
Or only right a mile or twain;
But still the instinct, deep and strong,
Unconscious brought him back again—
Back to the bellows and the fire,
Back to the anvil and the tool,
Back to his inner heart's desire,
And to the force that gave him rule.
They fabled he was chained to rocks,
And tortured by the frost and ice,
And beaten by the tempest shocks
On the sharp-pointed precipice,
And torn by hungry birds of prey,
And bleached and blanched by sun and rain,
As he in proud defiance lay
Through days and nights of racking pain.
Yet is he lord of earth and air,
And that high power to him was given
To reign as Master everywhere,
By stealing of the fire from heaven.
So true the fable which averred
Fire made him rival of the gods,
For where the bickering flame is heard,
Man rules, and Jove supinely nods.
The Greek saw deeper than the Jew,
In myth of high far-reaching kind
He shadowed forth the grand and true
Discoveries of the modern mind.

“Materialist? why not? Who knows
What subtle powers of life and thought
Lie in an atom, hidden close
To-day, but ere long to be brought,
Like music, from it by the touch
Of the night-wind upon a string?
Words frighten fools, like ghosts, but such
No terrors to the wise can bring.
Lo! matter is a crystal here,
A self-made rhomb, or octagon,
And there a dewdrop, like a tear
Wept, silent, when the day is done,
A flower, an odour in the air,
A gleam of light, blue-vaulted skies,
A rainbow arching high and fair—
Why not a thought, too, good and wise?
Why should not brain deposit thought?
They're not more alien and unlike
Than what from many a gland is got,
Or fire that from the flint we strike,
Or currents of electric force,
That acids make with metals twain.
No need to seek another source
Of thought beyond the thinking brain.
We deal with facts; there's no such thing
As spirit; that is out of date;
Molecular tremors clearly bring
The light which metaphysics hate.
Who ever saw a soul? or who
Can tell its strength or shape or size
Or weight or taste or smell or hue?
And who its parts can analyse?
Enough that we have larger brain,
And that we are no longer dumb,
And that the furnace burns amain,
And that we have a proper thumb.
And for the rest, all men must die:
Yet man shall live for evermore,
His growing purpose soaring high,
The only God he can adore—
Humanity!—the noblest growth
Of nature, and its lord and king,
Its servant and its master both,
The sum and crown of everything.”
Musing, I rose, as he once more
Tripped from the bema, looking brisk,
And as he vanished through the door
Giving his gown another whisk,
Self-satisfied that he had shed
A light that left no shadows, no
Unanswered questions in the head,
No aching in the heart to know,
Whence all the longing of the mind
For more than hard material gain,
And clinging of the nobler kind
To mysteries even of grief and pain,
That fruit in spiritual riches, far
Transcending wealth of wine and oil,
Ingot of gold, and silver bar,
And corn and all results of toil.
Did Shakespeare's pregnant utterance bring
Its wealth of words from owls and cats?
Did Dante's musical pathos spring
From squeaking of the mice and rats?
And whence the life that from the cell
Grows up in forms so manifold?
And what, if earth whereon we dwell
Shall be burnt up, as sages hold?
Where then the man that shall be God,
The God that must be man alone,
When he and all whereon he trod,
And all his homes and graves are gone?
I heed not of a creed like this;
It is too shallow even to hold
The great facts of the life that is,
And fit them in its little mould;
And how much less its glimmering light
Can pierce the unfathomed depths within,
Or search for us the Infinite,
Or mysteries of death and sin!
It leaves more questions on the mind
Than all it seems to answer clear;
And darker is the cloud behind
From the sharp light that shineth near.
I know the life which now we live
Is still becoming something more,
Yet must I evermore believe
In One to love and to adore,
Who unto all did Being give,
And Law they were created for.