CHAPTER CXXXI.

THE DOCTOR ABSTAINS FROM SPECULATING ON PERILOUS SUBJECTS. A STORY OF ST. ANSELM.

This field is so spacious, that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it; and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end than my way.

BISHOP HALL.             

The Doctor, though he played with many of his theories as if they were rather mushrooms of the fancy than fruits of the understanding, never expressed himself sportively upon this. He thought that it rested upon something more solid than the inductions of a speculative imagination, because there is a feeling in human nature which answers to it, acknowledges, and confirms it. Often and often, in the course of his painful practice, he had seen bereaved parents seek for consolation in the same conclusion, to which faith and instinctive reason led them, though no such hypothesis as his had prepared them for it. They believed it simply and sincerely; and it is a belief, according to his philosophy, which nature has implanted in the heart for consolation, under one of the griefs that affect it most.

He had not the same confidence in another view of the same branch of his hypothesis, relating to the early death of less hopeful subjects. Their term, he supposed, might be cut short in mercy, if the predisposing qualities which they had contracted on their ascent were such as would have rendered their tendency toward evil fatally predominant. But this, as he clearly saw, led to the brink of a bottomless question; and when he was asked after what manner he could explain why so many in whom this tendency predominates, are, to their own destruction, permitted to live out their term, he confessed himself at fault. It was among the things, he said, which are inexplicable by our limited powers of mind. When we attain a higher sphere of existence, all things will be made clear. Meantime, believing in the infinite goodness of God, it is enough for us to confide in His infinite mercy, and in that confidence to rest.

When St. Anselm, at the age of seventy-six, lay down in his last illness, and one of the Priests who stood around his bed said to him, it being then Palm Sunday, “Lord Father, it appears to us, that, leaving this world, you are about to keep the Passover in the Palace of your Lord!” the ambitious old theologue made answer,—“et quidem, si voluntas ejus in hoc est, voluntati ejus non contradico. Verum si mallet me adhuc inter vos saltem tamdiu manere, donec quæstionem quam de animæ origine mente revolvo, absolvere possem, gratiosus acciperem, eo quod nescio, utrum aliquis eam, me defuncto, sit absoluturus. If indeed this be his will, I gainsay it not. But if He should chuse rather that I should yet remain among you at least long enough to settle the question which I am revolving in my mind concerning the origin of the Soul, I should take it gratefully; because I do not know whether any one will be able to determine it, after I am dead.” He added, “ego quippe, si comedere possem, spero convalescere; nam nihil doloris in aliqua parte sentio, nisi quod lassescente stomacho, ob cibum quem capere nequit, totus deficio. 1—If I could but eat, I might hope to recover, for I feel no pain in any part, except that as my stomach sinks for lack of food, which it is unable to take, I am failing all over.”

1 EADMER.

The Saint must have been in a most satisfactory state of self-sufficiency when he thus reckoned upon his own ability for disposing of a question which he thought it doubtful whether any one who came after him would be able to solve. All other appetite had forsaken him; but that for unprofitable speculation and impossible knowledge clung to him to the last; so strong a relish had he retained of the forbidden fruit;

Letting down buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up2

So had the Saint lived beyond the allotted term of three-score years and ten, and his hand was still upon the windlass when the hand of death was upon him. One of our old Dramatists3 represented a seven years apprenticeship to such a craft as sufficient for bringing a man to a just estimate of it:—

    I was a scholar; seven useful springs
Did I deflower in quotations
Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man;
The more I learnt, the more I learnt to doubt.
DELIGHT, my spaniel, slept, whilst I baused leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words; and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins: and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of antick Donate; still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I; first, an sit anima?
Then an it were mortal? O hold, hold; at that
They're at brain-buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together: still my spaniel slept.
Then whether 'twere corporeal, local, fixt,
Ex traduce, but whether't had free will
Or no, hot Philosophers
Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt,
I staggered, knew not which was firmer part,
But thought, quoted, read, observed and pryed,
Stufft noting-books; and still my spaniel slept.
At length he waked and yawn'd; and by yon sky,
For aught I know he knew as much as I.

In a more serious mood than that of this scholar, and in a humbler and holier state of mind than belonged to the Saint, our philosopher used to say, “little indeed does it concern us, in this our mortal stage, to enquire whence the spirit hath come,—but of what infinite concern is the consideration whither is it going!”

2 COWPER.

2 MARSTON.