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'That Very Mab', a fiction by Andrew Lang |
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CHAPTER III - THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION |
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_ CHAPTER III - THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION 'Rough draughts of Man's Beginning God!' When Queen Mab recovered consciousness she heard the sound of violent voices in the room before she opened her eyes, which she did half hoping to find herself the victim of some terrible delusion. But the sight of the professor, standing not a yard away, brought a fatal conviction to her heart. It was too true. Was there ever a more undesirable position for a fairy, accustomed to perfect freedom, and nourished by honey and nectar, than to be closely confined in a tall bottle, with smooth hard slippery walls that she could not pierce, and nothing to live upon but a glass-stopper! It was absurd; but it was also terrible. How fervently she wished, now, that the missionaries had never come to Polynesia. But the professor was not alone, two of his acquaintances were there--a divine veering towards the modern school, and a poet--the ordinary poet of satire and Mr. Besant's novels, with an eye-glass, who held that the whole duty of poets at least was to transfer the meanderings of the inner life, or as much of them as were in any degree capable of transmission, to immortal foolscap..Unfortunately, as he observed with a mixture of pride and regret, the workings of his soul were generally so ethereal as to baffle expression and comprehension; and, he was wont to say, mixing up metaphors at a great rate, that he could only stand, like the High Priest of the Delphic oracle, before the gates of his inner life, to note down such fragmentary utterances as 'foamed up from the depths of that divine chaos.' for the benefit of inquiring minds with a preference for the oracular. He added that cosmos was a condition of grovelling minds, and that while the thoughts, faculties, and emotions of an ordinary member of society might fitly be summed up in the epithet 'microcosm.' his own nature could be appropriately described only by that of 'microchaos.' In which opinion the professor always fully coincided. With the two had entered the professor's little boy, a motherless child of eight, who walked straight up to the bottle. No sooner did the child's eyes light on the vessel than a curious thing occurred. He fell down on his knees, bowed his head, and held up his hands. 'Great Heavens!' cried the professor, forgetting himself, 'what do I behold! My child is praying (a thing he never was taught to do), and praying to a green butterfly! Hush! hush!' the professor went on, turning to his friends. 'This is terrible, but most important. The child has never been allowed to hear anything about the supernatural--his poor mother died when he was in the cradle--and I have scrupulously shielded him from all dangerous conversation. There is not a prayer-book in the house, the maids are picked Agnostics, from advanced families, and I am quite certain that my boy has never even heard of the existence of a bogie.' The poet whistled: the divine took up his hat, and, with a pained look, was leaving the room. 'Stop, stop!' cried the professor, 'he is doing something odd.' The child had taken out of his pocket certain small black stones of a peculiar shape. So absorbed was he that he never noticed the presence of the men. He kissed the stones and arranged them in a curious pattern on the floor, still kneeling, and keeping his eye on Mab in her bottle. At last he placed one strangely shaped pebble in the centre, and then began to speak in a low, trembling voice, and in a kind of cadence: 'Oh! you that I have tried to see, 'As I live, it's a religious service, the worship of a green butterfly!' said the professor. At his voice the child turned round, and seeing the men, looked very much ashamed of himself. 'Come here, my dear old man.' said the professor to the child, who came on being called. 'What were you doing?--who taught you to say all those funny things?' The little fellow looked frightened. 'I didn't remember you were here.' he said; 'they are things I say when I play by myself.' 'And who is Dala?' The boy was blushing painfully. 'Oh, I didn't mean you to hear, it's just a game of mine. I play at there being somebody I can't see, who knows what I am doing; a friend.' 'And nobody taught you, not Jane or Harriet?' Now Harriet and Jane were the maids. 'You never saw anybody play at that kind of game before?' 'No,' said the child, 'nobody ever.' 'Then,' cried the professor, in a loud and blissful voice, 'we have at last discovered the origin of religion. It isn't Ghosts. It isn't the Infinite. It is worshipping butterflies, with a service of fetich stones. The boy has returned to it by an act of unconscious inherited memory, derived from Palaeolithic Man, who must, therefore, have been the native of a temperate climate, where there were green lepidoptera. Oh, my friends, what a thing is inherited memory! In each of us there slumber all the impressions of all our predecessors, up to the earliest Ascidian. See how the domesticated dog,' cried the professor, forgetting that he was not lecturing in Albemarle Street, 'see how the domesticated dog, by inherited memory, turns round on the hearthrug before he curls up to sleep! He is unconsciously remembering the long grasses in which his wild ancestors dwelt. Also observe this boy, who has retained an unconscious recollection of the earliest creed of prehistoric man. Behold him instinctively, and I may say automatically, cherishing fetich stones (instead of marbles, like other boys) and adoring that green insect in the glass bottle! Oh Science,' he added rapturously, 'what will Mr. Max Mueller say now? The Infinite! Bosh, it's a butterfly!' 'It is my own Dala, come to play with me,' said the boy. 'It is a fairy,' exclaimed the poet, examining Mab through his eyeglass. This he said, not that he believed in fairies any more than publishers believed in him, but partly because it was a pose he affected, partly to 'draw' the professor. The professor replied that fairies were unscientific, and even unthinkable, and the divine declared that they were too heterodox even for the advanced state of modern theology, and had been condemned by several councils, which is true. And the professor ran through all the animal kingdoms and sub-kingdoms very fast, and proved quite conclusively, in a perfect cataract of polysyllables, that fairies didn't belong to any of them. While the professor was recovering breath, the divine observed, in a somewhat aggrieved tone, that he for his part found men and women enough for him, and too much sometimes. He also wished to know whether, if his talented but misguided friend required something ethereal, angels were not sufficient, without his having recourse to Pagan mythology; and whether he considered Pagan mythology suitable to the pressing needs of modern society, with a large surplus female population, and to the adjustment of the claims of reason and religion. The poet replied, 'Oh, don't bother me with your theological conundrums. I give it up. See here, I am going to write a sonnet to this creature, whatever it is. Fair denizen--!' 'Of a glass bottle!' interrupted the professor somewhat rudely, and the divine laughed. 'No. Of deathless ether, doomed.' 'And that reminds me,' said the professor, turning hastily, 'I must examine it under the microscope carefully, while the light lasts.' 'Oh father!' cried the child, 'don't touch it, it is alive!' 'Nonsense!' said the professor, 'it is as dead as a door-nail. Just reach me that lens.' He raised the glass stopper unsuspiciously, then turned to adjust his instrument And even as he turned his captive fled. 'There!' cried the boy. Like a flash of sunshine, Queen Mab darted upwards and floated through the open window. They saw her hover outside a moment, then she was gone--back into her deathless ether. 'I told you so!' exclaimed the poet, startled by this incident into a momentary conviction of the truth of his own theory. _ |
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