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Cornugaya Directory 03
Page 08
Higher up in the scale of life we get many instances which show
various stages in the same progressive development towards greater
care for the safety and education of the young. Among the larger
lizards, for example, a distinct advance may be traced between the
comparatively uncivilized American alligator and his near ally, the
much more cultivated African crocodile. On the banks of the
Mississippi, the alligator lays a hundred eggs or thereabouts, which
she deposits in a nest near the water's edge, and then covers them up
with leaves and other decaying vegetable matter. The fermentation of
these leaves produces heat and so does for the alligator's eggs what
sitting does for those of hens and other birds: the mother deputes her
maternal functions, so to speak, to a festering heap of decomposing
plant-refuse. Nevertheless, she loiters about all the time, like
Miriam round the ark which contained Moses, to see what happens; and
when the eggs hatch out, she leads her little ones down to the river,
and there makes alligators of them. This is a simple and relatively
low stage in the nursery arrangements of the big lizards.
If I do not take these works so seriously as the reader may expect,
let me beg him, before he blames me, to go to Oropa and see the
originals for himself. Have the good people of Oropa themselves
taken them very seriously? Are we in an atmosphere where we need be
at much pains to speak with bated breath? We, as is well known,
love to take even our pleasures sadly; the Italians take even their
sadness allegramente, and combine devotion with amusement in a
manner that we shall do well to study if not imitate. For this best
agrees with what we gather to have been the custom of Christ
himself, who, indeed, never speaks of austerity but to condemn it.
If Christianity is to be a living faith, it must penetrate a man's
whole life, so that he can no more rid himself of it than he can of
his flesh and bones or of his breathing. The Christianity that can
be taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book is
Christianity in name only. The true Christian can no more part from
Christ in mirth than in sorrow. And, after all, what is the essence
of Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely common
sense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to the
charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence of
Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life,
but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking
the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in
oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these
behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism do
against such Christianity as this? I should be shocked if anything
I had ever written or shall ever write should seem to make light of
these things. I should be shocked also if I did not know how to be
amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to be
amusing.
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