Yet Again | Page 5

back towards the
heaven they came from. They typify for us the spirit of man, as apart
from aught that is gross in him. They are the symbol of purity, of
triumph over corruption. Water, air, earth, can all harbour corruption;
but where flames are, or have been, there is innocence. Our love of fire
comes partly, doubtless, from our natural love of destruction for
destruction's sake. Fire is savage, and so, even after all these centuries,
are we, at heart. Our civilisation is but as the aforesaid crust that
encloses the old planetary flames. To destroy is still the strongest
instinct of our nature. Nature is still `red in tooth and claw,' though she
has begun to make fine flourishes with tooth-brush and nail-scissors.
Even the mild dog on my hearth-rug has been known to behave like a
wolf to his own species. Scratch his master and you will find the
caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered.
Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason for our
delight in fire is that there is no humbug about flames: they are frankly,
primaevally savage. But this is not, I am glad to say, the sole reason.
We have a sense of good and evil. I do not pretend that it carries us
very far. It is but the tooth-brush and nail-scissors that we flourish. Our
innate instincts, not this acquired sense, are what the world really
hinges on. But this acquired sense is an integral part of our minds. And
we revere fire because we have come to regard it as especially the foe
of evil--as a means for destroying weeds, not flowers; a destroyer of
wicked cities, not of good ones.
The idea of hell, as inculcated in the books given to me when I was a
child, never really frightened me at all. I conceived the possibility of a
hell in which were eternal flames to destroy every one who had not
been good. But a hell whose flames were eternally impotent to destroy
these people, a hell where evil was to go on writhing yet thriving for
ever and ever, seemed to me, even at that age, too patently absurd to be
appalling. Nor indeed do I think that to the more credulous children in
England can the idea of eternal burning have ever been quite so

forbidding as their nurses meant it to be. Credulity is but a form of
incaution. I, as I have said, never had any wish to play with fire; but
most English children are strongly attracted, and are much less afraid of
fire than of the dark. Eternal darkness, with a biting east-wind, were to
the English fancy a far more fearful prospect than eternal flames. The
notion of these flames arose in Italy, where heat is no luxury, and
shadows are lurked in, and breezes prayed for. In England the sun, even
at its strongest, is a weak vessel. True, we grumble whenever its
radiance is a trifle less watery than usual. But that is precisely because
we are a people whose nature the sun has not mellowed--a dour people,
like all northerners, ever ready to make the worst of things. Inwardly,
we love the sun, and long for it to come nearer to us, and to come more
often. And it is partly because this craving is unsatisfied that we cower
so fondly over our open hearths. Our fires are makeshifts for sunshine.
Autumn after autumn, `we see the swallows gathering in the sky, and in
the osier-isle we hear their noise,' and our hearts sink. Happy, selfish
little birds, gathering so lightly to fly whither we cannot follow you,
will you not, this once, forgo the lands of your desire? `Shall not the
grief of the old time follow?' Do winter with us, this once! We will
strew all England, every morning, with bread-crumbs for you, will you
but stay and help us to play at summer! But the delicate cruel rogues
pay no heed to us, skimming sharplier than ever in pursuit of gnats, as
the hour draws near for their long flight over gnatless seas.
Only one swallow have I ever known to relent. It had built its nest
under the eaves of a cottage that belonged to a friend of mine, a man
who loved birds. He had a power of making birds trust him. They
would come at his call, circling round him, perching on his shoulders,
eating from his hand. One of the swallows would come too, from his
nest under the eaves. As the summer wore on, he grew quite tame. And
when summer waned, and the other swallows flew away, this one
lingered, day after day, fluttering dubiously over the threshold