The New Word: 20. Ethics: The Book of Etiquette

Translation.—1. The Energy of Longing. 2. Diagram of Life.—3. The Art of Living.—4. Groundless Fear.—5. Ethical Sing-song.—6. The New Church.—7. The Unknown God.

BY this time the Testator's word has so far unfolded that we are able to see somewhat of his meaning.

The Swedish word for ideal seems to be höpp, the English hope, and a work of an idealist tendency to be neither more nor less than a hopeful work.

I

A hope differs from a thought, and an ideal from an idea, in that it has a tendency. It has going strength. It is not the builder's plan, but rather the householder's desire, of which the house is in some measure the fulfilment. It is indefinite because strength is indefinite, and if it were definite it would be dead.

Hope is a term of strength, like energy; it may be called the energy of longing. The children call it looking forward, which is the very etymology of idealist. It is by metaphor that we speak of a hope, or an ideal. That is an abstract word used as the name for an imaginary point towards which the

In its full meaning the word hope may be made to cover all man's work. It is hope that leads the veriest Materialist to learn from sense, and hope that turns the lesson to use for mankind's benefit. Nothing is so practical as hope. History itself is only busy idleness unless it can turn into prophecy.

But though hope spreads out fan-wise, instead of narrowing to a point, the Testator has clearly outlined the department of hope which he meant to endow. The Idealist is placed by him between the scientific discoverer on the one hand, and the practical pioneer of kindness on the other, both working for the benefit of mankind. Between these two the Idealist stands like an interpreter, whose business it should be to turn the lessons of science into rules of behaviour.

The Art of life is that high art which children name Behaviour, and as art is the end of science, so beautiful behaviour is the end of hope. If it were not so, Nobel would not have wasted his money on Idealism, nor I my labour. Here is the highest and most difficult art in the world, and yet the one in which each is called to be an artist; the art which any man, in any walk of life, may excel in, but in which no man may achieve perfection. Not even Kung the Master achieved perfection, if he is now worshipped alongside of Heaven. Not even the Buddha achieved perfection, if the Gods in Heaven now worship him.

When I look around me, and see so many men and women, of such differing creeds, of such varying degrees of knowledge, and under such manifold temptations, all trying to behave as well as their infirmities will let them, and behaving so much better than myself, I feel it is almost unkind to quarrel with them because their words are so much uglier than their deeds.

And yet nowhere, perhaps, are Andronican words much worse than in Talk about Behaviour, and nowhere are they more heedlessly flung out. The

Why is it that, while I see everywhere around me men whose manners are better than their words, yet they are all anxious to persuade me that it is the words that bring about the good manners? The astrologers seem to have persuaded them that a reform of the kalendar will be followed by bloodshed in the streets.

Much of this seems to be the backwash of the great French Revolution. The educated European mind has been marking time for a hundred years,

There is a slang word in use among us, cant, which seems to be in English sing-song. It is our old enemy the magic spell, but in its dotage, and grown too feeble to withstand any searching test. It is more beloved in England than in any other country in the world, and for that very reason. The English are a practical people, and the spell that gives way most readily before a sum of money is the one that suits them best. It is not easy for foreigners to understand the English character. You think that they are fighting to the death over whether their children shall be taught the gospel according to Queen Elizabeth, or the gospel according to the London County Council; but when you go among them, you find that they do not mind what their children are taught, so long as they do not have to pay for it; that the whole quarrel is over that; and that quite a number of them are cheerfully sending their children to schools opened by the cast-out monks and nuns of other countries, to be taught the gospel according to Ignatius Loyola.

Let us see if we can talk about behaviour without dropping into sing-song.

It seems to be true that there is hardly anything, from mother-slaying down to Sabbath-breaking, which one man at one time thinks to be right, which

There have been times when I have been tempted to join those good men who are trying to reform the Church. And then again I have looked at that lightning conductor, and seen that it was reforming the church faster than any words of theirs or mine could do. In the end I have looked round me and found growing up unawares the New Church.

The Club is to the Book of Etiquette what the Church was to theology. It is the real thing instead

Now I have done putting together these sticks and straws of verihood and falsehood; and I have woven a nest, but how unlike that dome which only hope can build! I have woven it, as though round my own mind, and yet it does not altogether follow the shape of my own mind. So does the bee, working in the midst of other bees, to fashion its round cell, find at the last that it has wrought a hexagon, for so has overwrought the bee outside.

The man outside me all this time has been my Testator, with whom I have wrought as a faithful. wordsmith, striking blow for blow, to forge upon the anvil of sense a definition of hope that should ring true in the ear of the Materialist as well as of the Idealist.

I read this great Bequest as a bequest to Hope, but not to every hope. I read it as a bequest to the highest hope, and to the Interpretation of that Hope. I read it as a prayer for Light. I read it as the prayer of one who walked in darkness, but hoped for light; and as an appeal from the darkness to the Light.

I have seen an altar to the Unknown God.