The Cunning Man Read online

  Never neglect the soft, persistent influence of the Middle Ages in the Modern world. How many wards, streets, and districts in Toronto—to say nothing of churches—were named after saints; look in the telephone directory and be ready for a surprise. Why was St. George Street, still one of the most fashionable in the city, so called? Who had cherished a little, half-understood cult for the warrior-saint when that Street was named? Surely it might better have commemorated, as did Bloor Street, some prosperous brewer or distiller? Why not Gooderham Street? But no, St. George it was and would be for the foreseeable future.

  A wag suggested that the garbage lane behind St. George Street might be called Dragon Alley, and Mr. Ramsay said that was good medieval thinking, and it could certainly be so. This interruption might have diverted the evening into a light-hearted discussion, if Evans had not intervened.

  Evans was acknowledged leader of the Great Minds among Colborne’s Sixth Form that year; he was a solemn, prematurely withered fellow who was expected to make a stir in the world, but precisely how was not yet apparent. Evans was intensely rational. I cannot call him scientific, because his curiosity was too heavily blinkered.

  What, Evans demanded, was a saint, and who defined the word in modern acceptation?

  The maker of saints, said Mr. Ramsay, was the Church of Rome, and it had an elaborate process of canonization, which gave the most careful consideration to the claims of anyone who was proposed for sainthood, requiring evidence that would support the claim, and usually taking a considerable number of years before a new saint was proclaimed. A saint had to be a person of heroic virtue, whose manner of life and death attested to uncommon holiness, and who could be proven to have brought about a number—not less than three—of miracles, meaning benevolent happenings contrary to the normal order of things, or what might be called natural law. Once proclaimed, the saint might be invoked through prayer for help by believers, and in an earlier day many saints were thought to be particularly helpful in specific cases, as, for instance, St. Vitus, who could be invoked in cases of dog bites, snakebite, and of course Sydenham’s chorea, long called St. Vitus’ Dance. Then there was St. Anthony of Padua, invaluable in finding lost articles. And of course there was St. Wilgefortis, to whom women might apply for help in getting rid of a disagreeable husband. There, said Ramsay, you have a good spread of saints: nobody knows just who St. Vitus was, but he appears to have been real enough, and St. Anthony was a well-attested historic figure, but Wilgefortis seems to have arisen simply because she filled a need, and there is no proof of her existence whatever. The Church has been anxious, in recent times, to show itself above such folk-saints as Wilgefortis, though shrines to her are still plentiful in Europe; Ramsay had himself visited several, and had photographs of the portraits of the saint, who rejoiced in the possession of a large beard.

  “Which just goes to show,” said Evans, “what an imposture religion has always been.”

  “Don’t you think that’s rather too embracing a condemnation?” said Mr. Ramsay.

  “Surely, sir, here in the Curfew Club we can be frank,” said Evans, very man to man.

  “Quite right; the lodge is tiled,” murmured Brocky, and was silenced by a frown from Evans, who continued.

  “Religion belongs to the childhood of the human race. You’ve made a reputation investigating some parts of it, but was it scientific curiosity—history’s a branch of science after all—or some real concern with religion that pushed you on?”

  “Real concern with religion, certainly.”

  “But a scientific concern? Not as a believer?”

  “You suggest that science rules out belief?”

  “In religion, surely.”

  “Why?”

  “Because belief posits adherence to a creed, and a creed posits belief in a God, a Prime Mover, a Creator, and an Imminent Presence. And that won’t wash.”

  “It won’t? Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s pretty widely accepted now among the advanced people—the molecular biologists, you know—that the recent investigations into basic organic stuff show clearly that all forms of life come into being by pure chance, through unpredictable mutation, and because of necessity probably rooted in Darwinian selection. And that makes it quite out of the question to posit any Master Plan, or Planner, or scheme of Creation. Simply won’t wash.”

  This provoked some murmurs, for the Curfew Club, though very advanced thinkers, liked to keep one foot on shore, so to speak, and at that time Evans’ kind of talk was strong medicine among the sons of the Toronto élite. But through the murmurs one voice was heard clearly, and though it was a voice I had never heard before it was issuing from Charlie. Heads turned, because as a guest he was not expected to speak. Not forbidden, but expected to preserve a certain humility, as not being a member.

  “And that won’t wash,” said he.

  “Eh? What do you mean it won’t wash?” Evans was taken off guard and not pleased.

  “It won’t wash because it posits—to use your fancy philosophical term—a God with human limitations and human values—a kind of Big Man, in fact. Your advanced thinkers suppose that if God does not think like them He can’t think at all, and therefore doesn’t exist. What makes you suppose that what your advanced people call ‘pure chance’ means the same thing as what God means by ‘pure chance’?”

  “Are you positing a world in which everything is laid down and unchangeable, because of what our grandmothers called ‘God’s Will’?”

  “Not at all, I’m not positing anything. But I’m suggesting that although God’s Will must eventually prevail, individual parts of the creation have great freedom under what used to be called natural law, and they are often presented with situations where they have to use that freedom. If they make a mess of things, probably God will try again.”

  “You seem to have done a lot of thinking about this, Iredale,” said Evans, in a voice which he meant to be a crusher, “so perhaps you’d favour us with a definition of God?”

  “Out of the question,” said Charlie. “That would be like a forty-watt electric bulb trying to define Niagara Falls. All the bulb knows, if it knows anything, is that without the Falls it would be a useless curiosity.”

  “No proof, then?”

  “Not of any kind that would convince you.”

  “So why?”

  “Faith. ‘Believing where we cannot prove,’ as the hymn says that we sing so often at morning prayers.”

  “Belief without proof can lead you up some pretty dark alleys.”

  “Belief where there is unquestionable proof would be possible only to someone who had final knowledge of all things. Someone with God’s view of history. We have to put up with the knowledge that’s open to us during our lifetimes. We can’t have knowledge of future things; we have only a scrappy knowledge of past things. You know what the sailor said when he was told that King Solomon was the wisest man the world had ever known, or would ever know?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “The sailor said, ‘If I had Solomon aboard my ship he wouldn’t know a jib-boom from a poop lantern.’ ”

  Evans alone of the Curfew Club did not think this funny.

  The chairman intervened here. He was the Head Boy of the school, a decent chap called Martland. “I think we ought to get back to Mr. Ramsay and The Golden Legend,” said he. “Let’s hear about an era when firm belief was common. I think you said, sir, that for centuries people turned to The Golden Legend for thrilling stories. What kind of stories? Would we think them thrilling now?”

  “Not in the same way, certainly,” said Mr. Ramsay. “They tend to be pretty terse; not a lot of detail. They tell of martyrdom and miracles and, unless you think martyrdom for the Christian Faith a great and heart-lifting form of death, the story is simply a bloody story about a tyrant and a victim. The same with miracles. They are temporary interruptions of natural law. If you share Evans’ point of view you may dismiss them as pious lies. But it might be hasty to sup
pose that there are no such interruptions. Things do happen, now and then, about which we hear in a newspaper account, probably written by a sensational journalist, or a cynic, and the truth is obscured in both cases. When we speak of a miracle nowadays we tend to think of it as happening in a hospital, or a scientific lab, where somebody does something that extends or contradicts what had been believed before.”

  “And which will stand examination for years after—examination and rigorous testing,” said Evans, whose flame was not quenched.

  “Will stand examination till the next scientific miracle shows that it was mistaken, or reaches beyond it,” said Charlie. I was embarrassed, because I had introduced him—a non-member—into the Club for this meeting, and he was taking on airs as if he were an old hand. Martland thought so too, and intervened again.

  “Let’s hear Mr. Ramsay,” he said; “that’s what we’re here for, after all.”

  “Please don’t worry about me,” said Ramsay. “I’m delighted to see some heat developing on a subject that I thought might only be of minor interest to you. Miracles are a fascinating study. When the Reformation came along they became an embarrassment to defenders of the Church, and a rare old scourge in the hands of the Lutherans. And so The Golden Legend came in for a lot of abuse from both sides. Even a man so finely balanced as Erasmus got hot about it and dismissed believers as fools if they believed tales of ghosts and devils and miracles.”

  “What did he make of the miracles of Christ?” It was Charlie, putting in his oar again.

  “Christ was above the argument,” said Ramsay.

  “I’ll bet he was,” said Evans; he seemed to be developing into a rancorous atheist before our eyes.

  “We must look at the situation from an historical point of view,” said Ramsay. “For a thousand years, following the Dark Ages in Europe, the Church was the only really effective civilizing element, and stories of miracles reached people who would not have understood theological argument. They believed, as Iredale says, and they needed support for their belief. Consider how far even a southern French village was from Rome in the twelfth century; most people had been no farther from their homes than they could walk in a day. A local miracle or a local saint was worth more to them than any amount of fancy argument or Papal letters.”

  “So you are admitting that the saints and the miracles were inventions to strengthen the Church’s hold on ignorant people?”

  “No, I’m not admitting anything of the kind, and you, Evans, are talking like an Ulster Orangeman. I am putting forward the idea that if civilization was to advance, it needed such aids, and the Church was the only civilizing element in a very rough time.”

  “But we can forget about saints and miracles today,” said Evans.

  “Unfortunately history doesn’t develop as neatly as that,” said Ramsay. “We still hear of miracles. Some impressive ones have been reported during the past century. I’ve visited places where they happened, or were said to have happened, and I have never met anyone who would admit to doubt. Just a year ago, in Portugal, I visited a great church at Milagres, which celebrated the miracle of Manoel Francisco Mayo. The church was a notable evidence of belief in something apparently incredible which was said to have happened, and attested to by people one would not think of as liars, not really so very long ago. I think we shall see miracles happening, and saints occurring, for quite a while yet, in this supposedly scientific age.”

  “But what is a miracle, exactly,” said Nolan, who always wanted to get into any argument, to show himself keen.

  “Bernard Shaw says a miracle is an event which creates faith,” said Mestayer, who liked to show himself up to the minute. At that time it was still rather daring, in the kind of society that provided boys for Colborne, to read Bernard Shaw.

  “Sorry! Shaw makes a character in Saint Joan say that,” said Brocky. “Not the same thing. It’s an Archbishop speaking. He defends miracles against the charge of being frauds, because frauds deceive, but an event which creates faith does not deceive, and therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle. A nifty argument, but you have to remember it is an Archbishop speaking. For him that was the party line.”

  Charlie simply would not keep quiet. He struck in again: “Shaw always gives everybody a fair deal. In that same scene he makes somebody say that the Church must nourish faith by poetry. One of the defects of the scientific viewpoint is that it leaves no room in life for poetry.”

  “Poetry, meaning precisely what?” said Evans, who was determined to smash Charlie or himself suffer a severe loss of face. But Charlie was ready for that question.

  “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.”

  “God!” said Evans.

  “Not quite. Wordsworth,” said Charlie.

  “Well done, Iredale; you’ve got ’em on the run,” said Mr. Ramsay, laughing; he was enjoying himself. This may not have been the happiest comment, because, although it seemed to cover Charlie with laurels, it widened the gap between him and the anointed members of the Curfew Club; toward them his talk came dangerously close to being cheek because at that time, in that school, there was an almost Japanese respect for seniority. But Evans would not admit to defeat or even a temporary setback.

  “You’ll never be a scientist, Iredale, if you lug in any authority who happens to suit your argument at the moment. What has Wordsworth got to do with anything? What about Erasmus? Didn’t Mr. Ramsay say he had been very rough on miracles? And wasn’t Erasmus one of the big guns of religious belief?”

  “Yes, but Erasmus had the scholar’s weakness,” said Mr. Ramsay, again intervening to help Charlie, which may not in the long run have been helpful. “Erasmus wanted everybody to be as intelligent as himself and if they couldn’t he thought they were simply being mulish.”

  “And Erasmuses are few,” said Charlie. “Simple folk are many, and simple folk are still the most numerous. Indeed it has been said that God must love simple people very much, He made so many of them.”

  “But not as many as he made of the Spirochaeta pallida,” said Evans, “so if we accept your argument, Iredale, God must love the Great Pox even more than the simple.”

  As argument went in the Curfew Club this was regarded as a knockout blow, and was greeted with laughter and applause. Charlie was silent, but everybody knew that though he may have lost the argument, he had scored some points.

  Martland called the meeting to order yet once more, and for the rest of our time Mr. Ramsay talked about The Golden Legend and the kind of society that throve on wonders and embraced belief. The word Legend, said he, did not imply as now it does something in the nature of myth or fable, but rather a “lesson” or a “reading.” Respect for the Legend did not mean a rejection of the Renaissance or subsequent adventures of the mind. Rather it meant a sympathetic understanding of a past age, which might still, under examination, have much to tell us that would enlarge our lives. It was at our peril that we dismissed such minds as those of St. Augustine, or St. Thomas Aquinas. The truly historical view, he insisted, was not a tale of man’s progress from barbarism or superstition to modern enlightenment, but a recognition that enlightenment had shown itself in the long story of man in a variety of guises, and that barbarism and superstition were undying elements in the human story. He had some sharp things to say about the rise of National Socialism in Germany, in support of his assertion that barbarism and superstition find new uniforms for old troll-folk. He called attention to the number of countries that still maintained slavery, in overt or slightly disguised forms. He talked of the subjection of women, and was perhaps a little tactless in attributing so much of that to the importation into European (and thus into New World) life of Oriental ideas of womanhood that hid under the Near Eastern skirts of Christianity; the chilly Romans, and even the hairy ruffians of Celtic Europe, treated their women better than Christianity did, and thus far Christianity, for all its great benefits to
our lives, had its shadow side. Much of what he said, of course, was dismissed by the keener minds of the Curfew Club as the eccentric talk which held Ramsay back in his profession. A good teacher, but a crackpot. What was wrong with the position of women? To the boys of the Curfew Club it looked as if women had an easy ride.

  (13)

  Charlie’s brief notoriety after the Curfew Club affair disappeared into disastrous disgrace after the Easter holidays. Disgrace, that is, as we measured it at Colborne. After Easter everybody in the upper forms was in a painful process of being wound up for examinations. Wound up, in a few cases, until they were like clocks that had been over-wound, and had to be released from their tension by medical intervention. The severest winding took place among those boys who were to face the Matriculation Examinations, the key to university entrance. In those days there were twelve such examinations; twelve papers in a variety of subjects and although some leeway was permitted—French was obligatory but German was permitted—two of the papers were in mathematics and two in science, as our tentative dabblings in physics and chemistry were called, dignifying them far above their desert. It was in these four subjects that Charlie was not simply weak, but virtually incapable, and they had for years made his school life a misery. As the dread month of June approached, Charlie became visibly unwell; many boys looked pale as the ordeal approached, but he had shadows under his eyes and lost weight which, as he was spare already, made him almost skeletonic.