FullReads

“But why not ignore it, if mother-wit does as well?”

“Because you cannot ignore it. You have learnt it more or less, and cannot forget it, try as you will, and must either follow it, or break it and talk nonsense. And moreover, you ought not to ignore it. For it seems to me, that you were sent to Cambridge by One greater than, your parents, in order that you might learn it, and bring it home hither for the use of the M. Jourdains round you here, who have no doubt been talking prose all their life, but may have been also talking it very badly.”

“You speak riddles.”

“My dear fellow, may not a man employ Reason, or any other common human faculty, all his life, and yet employ them very clumsily and defectively?”

“I should say so, from the gross amount of human unwisdom.”

“And that, in the case of uneducated persons, happens because they are not conscious of those faculties, or of their right laws, but use them blindly and capriciously, by fits and starts, talking sense on one point and nonsense on another?”

“Too true, Heaven knows.”

“But the educated man, if education mean anything, is the man who has become conscious of those common human faculties and their laws, and has learnt to use them continuously and accurately, on all matters alike.”

“True, O Socraticule!”

“Then is it not his especial business to teach the right use of them to the less educated?-unless you agree with the old Sophists, that the purpose of education is to enable us to deceive or coerce the uneducated for our own aggrandisement.”

“I am therefore, it seems, to get up Platonic Dialectics simply in order to teach my ploughmen to use their common sense?”

“Exactly so. Teach yourself first, and every one around you afterwards, not the doctrines, nor the formulas-though he had none- but the habit of mind which Socrates tried in vain to teach the Athenian youth. Teach them to face all questions patiently and fearlessly: to begin always by asking every word, great or small, from ‘Predestination’ to ‘Protection,’ what it really means. Teach them that ‘By your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned,’ is no barren pulpit-test, but a tremendous practical law for every day, and for every matter. Teach them to be sure that man can find out truth, because God his Father and Archetype will show it to those who hunger after it. Try to make them see clearly the Divine truths which are implied, not only in their creeds, but in their simplest household words; and-“

“And fail as Socrates failed, or rather worse; for he did teach himself: but I shall not even do that.”

“Do not despair in haste. In the first place, I deny that Socrates taught himself, for I believe that One taught him, who has promised to teach every man who desires wisdom; and in the next place, I have no fear but that the sound practical intellect which that same One has bestowed on the Englishman, will give you a far better auditory in any harvest field, than Socrates could find among the mercurial Athenians of a fallen age.”

“Well, that is, at all events, a comfort for poor me. I will really take to my Plato again, till the hunting begins.”

“And even then, you know, you don’t keep two packs; so you will have three days out of the six wherein to study him.”

“Four, you mean-for I have long given up reading Sunday books on Sunday.”

“Then you read your Bible and Prayer-book; or even borrow some of Lady Jane’s devotional treatises; and try, after you have translated the latter into plain English, to make out what they one and all really do mean, by the light which old Socrates has given you during the week. You will find them wiser than you fancy, and simpler also.”

“So be it, my dear Soul-doctor. Here come Lewis and the luncheon.”

And so ended our conversation.