The Progress And Relaxation Of My Subjection

: MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

I



The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series of

pictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that I

cannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, and

how far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, for

instance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down over

the wide panorama of rural England, through a driving
ist of fine rain.

This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the fact

that clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown to

enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world with

titanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that this

figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful of

dry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.



I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when the

sight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for the

littleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise every

written work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such times

to demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the rough

wooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down and

gesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a true

philosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledge

I needed for so stupendous a task was present with me in some

inexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was so

clogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom could

be expressed in clear thought. "I have never been taught to think," I

would complain, "I have never perfected the machinery of thought," and

then some dictum thrown out haphazard by the Wonder--his conception of

light conversation--would recur to me, and I would realise that however

well I had been trained, my limitations would remain, that I was an

undeveloped animal, only one stage higher than a totem-fearing savage, a

creature of small possibilities, incapable of dealing with great

problems.



Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of lucid condescension to

my feeble intellect, "You figure space as a void in three dimensions,

and time as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions you

relegate to that measure." He implied that this was a cumbrous machinery

which had no relation to reality, and could define nothing. He told me

that his idea of force, for example, was a pure abstraction, for which

there was no figure in my mental outfit.



Such pronouncements as these left me struggling like a drowning man in

deep water. I felt that it must be possible for me to come to the

surface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely with

limbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that my

very metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my own

mental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physical

analogy.



These fits of revolt against the limitations of human thought grew more

frequent as the summer progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency and

conceit were being crushed out of me. I was always in the society of a

boy of seven whom I was forced to regard as immeasurably my intellectual

superior. There was no department of useful knowledge in which I could

compete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of a

third-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledge

paper.



"Useful knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. I

might have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of men

in great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties of

cricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have been

typical--that such things as these were of no account.



Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able to

stimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were very

rare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. I

should have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use for

me, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlled

me at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, but

I did not hate him.



One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of my

experience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in one

way altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure of

self-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judge

no man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envy

him this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completely

and quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had no

meaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himself

with any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that any

honour they might have lavished upon him would have given him one

moment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable to

comprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions were

valueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air his

knowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieve

self-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.

From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery to

preconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might have

approved.



But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling of

admiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approval

for themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,

and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never again

attain in full measure.



I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is not

good for my happiness nor conducive to my development. Henceforward I

will espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecate

vanity in others.



But there were times in the early period of my association with Victor

Stott when I rebelled vigorously against his complacent assumption of my

ignorance.





II



May was a gloriously fine month, and we were much out of doors.

Unfortunately, except for one fortnight in August, that was all the

settled weather we had that summer.



I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the same pond that Ginger

Stott had stared at when he told me that the boy now beside me was a

"blarsted freak."



The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now he began to enunciate some

of his incomprehensible commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. I

wrote down what I could remember of his utterances when I went home, but

now I read them over again I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reported

him correctly. There is, however, one dictum which seems clearly

phrased, and when I recall the scene, I remember trying to push the

induction he had started. The pronouncement, as I have it written, is as

follows:



"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided by previous knowledge of

the functions of the terms used in the expansion of the argument, is an

act of creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of human

reasoning."



I believe he meant to say--but my notes are horribly confused--that

logic and philosophy were only relative, being dependent always in a

greater or less degree upon the test of a material experiment for

verification.



Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements very elusive. In one

sense I see that what I have quoted here is a self-evident proposition,

but I have the feeling that behind it there lies some gleam of wisdom

which throws a faint light on the profound problem of existence.



I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to analyse this statement,

and for a time I thought I had grasped one significant aspect of it. It

seemed to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy that was

not dependent for verification upon material experiment--that is to say,

upon evidence afforded by the five senses--indicates that there is

something which is not matter; but that since the development of such a

philosophy is not possible to our minds, we must argue that our

dependence upon matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible to

conceive that we are actuated by any impulse which does not arise out of

a material complex.



At the back of my mind there seemed to be a thought that I could not

focus, I trembled on the verge of some great revelation that never came.



Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence for the intelligence

that had started my speculations. If only he could speak in terms that

I could understand.



I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual, apparently lost in

abstraction, and quite unconscious of my regard.



The wind was strong on the Common, and he sniffed once or twice and then

wiped his nose. He did not use a handkerchief.



It came to me at the moment that he was no more than a vulgar little

village boy.





III



There were few incidents to mark the progress of that summer. I marked

the course of time by my own thoughts and feelings, especially by my

growing submission to the control of the Wonder.



It was curious to recall that I had once thought of correcting the

Wonder's manners, of administering, perhaps, a smacking. That was a

fault of ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in other

experiences of life, but I had not taken the lesson to heart. I remember

at school our "head" taking us--I was in the lower fifth then--in Latin

verse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I, very cocksure,

disputed the point and read my line. The head pointed out very gravely

that I had been misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation of the

word "maritus," and I grew very hot and ashamed and apologetic. I feel

much the same now when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.

But this time, I think, I have profited by my experience.



There is, however, one incident which in the light of subsequent events

it seems worth while to record.



One afternoon in early July, when the sky had lifted sufficiently for us

to attempt some sort of a walk, we made our way down through the sodden

woods in the direction of Deane Hill.



As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of the slope, I saw the

Harrison idiot lurking behind the trunk of a big beech. This was only

the third time I had seen him since I drove him away from the farm, and

on the two previous occasions he had not come close to us.



This time he had screwed up his courage to follow us. As we climbed the

lane I saw him slouching up the hedge-side behind us.



The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our way in silence.



When we reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the ground

falls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties,

we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of those

Hampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in the South-African war.



That view always has a soothing effect upon me, and I gave myself up to

an ecstasy of contemplation and forgot, for a few moments, the presence

of the Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.



I was recalled to existence by the sound of a foolish, conciliatory

mumbling, and looked round to see the leering face of the Harrison idiot

ogling the Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder was between

me and the idiot, but he was apparently oblivious of either of us.



I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but the Wonder, still

staring out at some distant horizon, said quietly, "Let him be."



I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited events.



The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very young and nervous puppy

behave.



He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his

hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the

Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he

wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too

much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,

goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to

squirm along the ground towards us, a few inches at a time, stopping

every now and again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooning

note which he appeared to think would pacificate the object of his

overtures.



I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint that the presence

of this horrible creature was distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave no

sign.



The idiot had come within five or six feet of us, wriggling himself

along the wet grass, before the Wonder looked at him. The look when it

came was one of those deliberate, intentional stares which made one feel

so contemptible and insignificant.



The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of encouragement. He

knelt up, began to flap his hands and changed his crooning note to a

pleased, emphatic bleat.



"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth gestures, by which I think he

meant to signify that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with him.



Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never wavered, and though

the idiot was plainly not intimidated, he never met that gaze for more

than a second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking now on his knees,

and at last stretched out a hand to touch the boy he so curiously

desired for a playmate.



That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back quickly--he never allowed one

to touch him--got up and climbed two or three steps higher up the base

of the monument. "Send him away," he said to me.



"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot, and at the sound of my

voice and the gesture of my hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over away

from me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for several yards

before stopping to regard us once more with his pacificatory, disgusting

ogle.



"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I hesitated, and I rose to my

feet and pretended to pick up a stone.



That was enough. The idiot yelped again and made off. This time he did

not stop, though he looked over his shoulder several times as he

lolloped away among the low gorse, to which look I replied always with

the threat of an imaginary stone.



The Wonder made no comment on the incident as we walked home. He had

shown no sign of fear. It occurred to me that my guardianship of him was

merely a convenience, not a protection from any danger.





IV



As time went on it became increasingly clear to me that my chance of

obtaining the Wonder's confidence was becoming more and more remote.



At first he had replied to my questions; usually, it is true, by no more

than an inclination of his head, but he soon ceased to make even this

acknowledgment of my presence.



So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of silence, admitted my

submission by obtruding neither remark nor question upon my constant

companion, and gave up my intention of using the Wonder as a means to

gratify my curiosity concerning the problem of existence.



Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He undoubtedly recognised the

Wonder, and I think he would have liked to come up and rebuke

him--perhaps me, also; but probably he lacked the courage. He would

hover within sight of us for a few minutes, scowling, and then stalk

away. He gave me the impression of being a dangerous man, a thwarted

fanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I had been Mrs. Stott, I should

have feared the intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures of

the Harrison idiot. But there was, of course, the Wonder's compelling

power to be reckoned with, in the case of Crashaw.





V



Challis came back in early September, and it was he who first coaxed,

and then goaded me into rebellion.



Challis did not come too soon.



At the end of August I was seeing visions, not pleasant, inspiriting

visions, but the indefinite, perplexing shapes of delirium.



I think it must have been in August that I stood on Deane Hill, through

an afternoon of fine, driving rain, and had a vision of myself playing

tricks with the sands of life.



I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, a

long-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, were

combining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain was

not of the calibre to endure the strain.



Challis saw at once what ailed me.



He came up to the farm one morning at twelve o'clock. The date was, I

believe, the twelfth of September. It was a brooding, heavy morning,

with half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but it had not

rained, and I was out with the Wonder when Challis arrived.



He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstrated

kindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentally

gave him a rebate on the rent.



When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him at

Challis Court.



I consented, but stipulated that I must be back at Pym by three o'clock

to accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.



Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.



We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill--the habit of silence had

grown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.



On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farm

again after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I was

strangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I should

give up my walks with the Wonder, go away ... I smiled and said

"Impossible," as though that ended the matter.



Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone to

listen to him. I remember his saying: "That problem is not for you or me

or any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to add

knowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence."



The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said "There are no

data," when in the early days I had asked him whether he could say

definitely if there was any future existence possible for us?



Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that every

little item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man has

accumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greatest

step any man could possibly make.



"But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, from

Victor Stott?"



Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands of years ahead of us,"

he said. "We can only bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.

If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand it."



So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession of me and roused me

to self-assertion.



One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and read a novel--no other

reading could hold my attention--philosophy had become nauseating.



I expected to see the strange little figure of the Wonder come across

the Common, but he never came, nor did I receive any reproach from Ellen

Mary. I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison idiot.



Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship all at once. Three times

after that morning I took the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion to



my defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished me as he had

taken me up, without comment or any expression of feeling.





VI



On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to Challis Court and stayed

there for a week. Then I returned for a few days to Wood Farm in order

to put my things together and pack my books. I had decided to go to

Cairo for the winter with Challis.



At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth of October, I was in

the sitting-room, when I saw the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across the

Common. She came with a little stumbling run. I could see that she was

agitated even before she reached the farmyard gate.



More

;