That Very Mab. May Kendall

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СКАЧАТЬ 'what will Mr. Max Müller 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.

      CHAPTER IV. – THE POET AND THE PALÆONTO-THEOLOGIST

      'Puis nous fut dit que chose estrange ne leur sembloit estre deux contradictoires Vrayes en mode, en figure, et en temps.' Pantagruel, v. xxii.

      Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, they all three rushed out into the garden; and far beyond them, in the sunlight, they did indeed catch one parting gleam of gauzy wings, as the fairy vanished. When the professor led the way into the room again, and, rather crestfallen, looked at the tall empty bottle and the stopper, which in his hurry he had thrown down upon the floor.

      'She is gone!' sobbed the child. 'My beautiful Dala. I shall never see her again.'

      He was right; the professor and the theologian, between them, had scared Queen Mab away pretty successfully. She would certainly never revisit that part of the city if she could help it. The divine looked uncomfortable. In spite of himself he had recognised something strange and unusual in the appearance of this last capture of his friend's butterfly-net, and almost unconsciously he began to ponder on the old theory that the Evil One might occasionally disguise himself as an angel of light. The poet, meanwhile, was more voluble.

      'Your soul is sordid!' he said indignantly to the professor. 'You have no eyes for the Immaterial, the intangibly Ideal, that lies behind the shadowy and deceptive veil that we call Matter.'

      'My soul,' said the professor with equal indignation, 'that is, if I have got one, is as good as yours.'

      'No, it isn't,' said the poet; 'I am all soul, or nearly all. You are nothing but a mass of Higher Protoplasm.'

      'No one need wish to be anything better. I should like to know,' cried the professor angrily, 'where we should all be without Protoplasm.'

      'My friends,' said the theologian, still rather confused, 'this heat is both irreverent and irrational. Protoplasm is invaluable, but is it not also transient? The flight of that butterfly may well remind us – '

      'Stop!' interrupted the philosopher. 'Was it a butterfly? Now I come to think of it, I hardly know whether to refer it to the lepidoptera or not. At all events, it is a striking example of the manner in which natural and sexual selection, continued through a series of epochs, can evolve the most brilliant and graceful combinations of tint and plumage, by simple survival of the favourable variations.'

      'It is indeed,' suggested the theologian, 'a remarkable proof of the intelligent construction of the universe, and of the argument from design, that this insect should have been framed with such exquisite perfection of form and colour to delight the eyes of the theologian.'

      'Not at all,' said the professor irritably. 'It was to delight the eyes of butterflies of the opposite sex. It is no more an argument from design than I am!'

      'Do stop that!' said the poet. 'How can a fellow write a sonnet with you two for ever sparring away at your musty scholasticisms? Haven't we heard enough about Paley and Darwin? You have frightened away the fairy between you, and that is plenty of mischief for one day.

      'Fair denizen of deathless ether, doomed For one brief hour to languish and repine.

      Entombed? That will do, but I'm afraid there are not many more rhymes to "doomed." "Loomed," "boomed," "exhumed," "well-groomed." My thoughts won't flow, hang it all!'

      'You are an argument for design,' said the theologian, taking no notice of the poet, 'though you won't admit it. Why won't you take up with my scientific religion? – a religion, you know, that can be expressed with equal facility by emotional or by mathematical terms. It is as easy, when you once understand it, as the first proposition in Euclid. You have two points, Faith and Reason, and you draw a straight line between them. Then you must describe an equilateral triangle – I mean a scientific religion, on the straight line, F R – between Faith and Reason.'

      'Oh!' said the professor. 'How do you do it?'

      'First,' said the theologian hopefully, 'taking F as your centre, F R as your radius, describe the circle of Theology. Then, taking R as your centre, F R as your radius, describe the circle of Logic. These two circles will intersect at Science, indicated in the proposition by the point S. Join together S F, and then join S R, and you will have the equilateral triangle of a scientific religion on the line F R S.'

      'Prove it,' said the professor grimly.

      'Science and Faith,' replied the theologian readily, 'equal Faith and Reason, because they are both radii of the same circle, Man being the Radius of the Infinite. Theology – '

      'Stop!' ejaculated the professor in the utmost indignation. 'What do you mean by it? I never in my life listened to such unmitigated nonsense. Who gave you leave to talk of a scientific religion as an equilateral triangle? If it is a triangle at all, which there is not the remotest reason to suppose – but I cannot argue with you? You might as well call it a dodecahedron, or the cube root of minus nothing.'

      'Oh, very well,' said the theologian with exasperating coolness. 'I thought it possible that even your blind prejudice might not refuse to listen СКАЧАТЬ