Confessions of a Young Man | Page 3

as much as I, and his hatred was for the same reason as
mine; we both learnt that any religion which robs a man of the right of
free-will and private judgment degrades the soul, renders it lethargic
and timid, takes the edge off the intellect. Zola lived to write "that the
Catholic countries are dead, and the clergy are the worms in the
corpses." The observation is "quelconque"; I should prefer the more
interesting allegation that since the Reformation no born Catholic has
written a book of literary value! He would have had to concede that
some converts have written well; the convert still retains a little of his
ancient freedom, some of the intellectual virility he acquired elsewhere,
but the born Catholic is still-born. But however we may disapprove of
Catholicism, we can still admire the convert. Cardinal Manning was
aware of the advantages of a Protestant bringing up, and he often said
that he was glad he had been born a Protestant. His Eminence was,
therefore, of opinion that the Catholic faith should be reserved, and
exclusively, for converts, and in this he showed his practical sense, for
it is easy to imagine a country prosperous in which all the inhabitants
should be brought up Protestants or agnostics, and in which
conversions to Rome are only permitted after a certain age or in clearly
defined circumstances. There would be something beyond mere
practical wisdom in such law-giving, an exquisite sense of the pathos of
human life and its requirements; scapulars, indulgences and sacraments
are needed by the weak and the ageing, sacraments especially. "They
make you believe but they stupefy you;" these words are Pascal's, the
great light of the Catholic Church.

III

My Protestant sympathies go back very far, further back than these
Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in
versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a
sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things
especially dear to me, my love of France and Protestantism.
Je t'apporte mon drame, o poète sublime, Ainsi qu'un écolier au
maître sa leçon: Ce livre avec fierté porte comme écusson Le
sceau qu'en nos esprits ta jeune gloire imprime.
Accepte, tu verras la foi mêlée au crime, Se souiller dans le sang
sacré de la raison, Quand surgit, rédempteur du vieux peuple
saxon, Luther à Wittemberg comme Christ à Solime.
Jamais de la cité le mal entier ne fuit, Hélas! et son autel y fume
dans la nuit; Mais notre âge a ceci de pareil à l'aurore.
Que c'est un divin cri du chanteur éternal, Le tien, qui pour forcer le
jour tardif d'éclore Déchire avec splendeur le voile épars du
ciel.
I find not only my Protestant sympathies in the "Confessions" but a
proud agnosticism, and an exalted individualism which in certain
passages leads the reader to the sundered rocks about the cave of
Zarathoustra. My book was written before I heard that splendid name,
before Zarathoustra was written; and the doctrine, though hardly
formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye
shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions,"
"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France--the
country as Pater would say of my instinctive election--and all my
prophecies. Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have
come into their inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are
they? Stevenson, so well described as the best-dressed young man that
ever walked in the Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness
despite the journalists and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor
Colvin, he made a mistake, he should have hopped on to Pater.
Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no

more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I
might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw.
Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to
withdraw them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may
re-write his confessions.
A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase
about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has
succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and
if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more
unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface.
GEORGE MOORE.

Confessions of a Young Man

I
My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and
form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an
impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may
say that