His keen intellect, to take an example, recognised every one of the difficulties of our faith and flashed hither and thither in the darkness, seeking explanation, seeking light, trying to reconcile, to explain.He was not great enough to put all this aside and go straight to the informing Soul beneath that strives to express itself everywhere, even through those husks which are called the World, the Flesh and the Devil, and as yet does not always quite succeed.
It is this boggling over exteriors, this peering into pitfalls, this desire to prove that what such senses as we have tell us is impossible, is in fact possible, which causes the overthrow of many an earnest, seeking heart and renders its work, conducted on false lines, quite nugatory.These will trust to themselves and their own intelligence and not be content to spring from the cliffs of human experience into the everlasting arms of that Infinite which are stretched out to receive them and to give them rest and the keys of knowledge.When will man learn what was taught to him of old, that faith is the only plank wherewith he can float upon this sea and that his miserable works avail him nothing; also that it is a plank made of many sorts of wood, perhaps to suit our different weights?
So to be honest, in a sense I believe myself to be my father's superior, and I know that he agreed with me.Perhaps this is owing to the blood of my Scotch mother which mixed well with his own; perhaps because the essential spirit given to me, though cast in his mould, was in fact quite different--or of another alloy.Do we, I wonder, really understand that there are millions and billions of these alloys, so many indeed that Nature, or whatever is behind Nature, never uses the same twice over? That is why no two human beings are or ever will be quite identical.
Their flesh, the body of their humiliation, is identical in all, any chemist will prove it to you, but that which animates the flesh is distinct and different because it comes from the home of that infinite variety which is necessary to the ultimate evolution of the good and bad that we symbolise as heaven and hell.
Further, I had and to a certain extent still have another advantage over my father, which certainly came to me from my mother, who was, as I judge from all descriptions and such likenesses as remain of her, an extremely handsome woman.I was born much better looking.He was small and dark, a little man with deep-set eyes and beetling brows.I am also dark, but tall above the average, and well made.I do not know that I need say more about my personal appearance, to me not a very attractive subject, but the fact remains that they called me "handsome Humphrey" at the University, and I was the captain of my college boat and won many prizes at athletic sports when I had time to train for them.
Until I went up to Oxford my father educated me, partly because he knew that he could do it better than anyone else, and partly to save school expenses.The experiment was very successful, as my love of all outdoor sports and of any small hazardous adventure that came to my hand, also of associating with fisherfolk whom the dangers of the deep make men among men, saved me from becoming a milksop.For the rest I learned more from my father, whom I always desired to please because I loved him, than Ishould have done at the best and most costly of schools.This was shown when at last I went to college with a scholarship, for there I did very well indeed, as search would still reveal.
Here I had better set out some of my shortcomings, which in their sum have made a failure of me.Yes, a failure in the highest sense, though I trust what Stevenson calls "a faithful failure." These have their root in fastidiousness and that lack of perseverance, which really means a lack of faith, again using the word in its higher and wider sense.For if one had real faith one would always persevere, knowing that in every work undertaken with high aim, there is an element of nobility, however humble and unrecognised that work may seem to be.God after all is the God of Work, it is written large upon the face of the Universe.Iwill not expand upon the thought; it would lead me too far afield, but those who have understanding will know what I mean.
As regards what I interpret as fastidiousness, this is not very easy to express.Perhaps a definition will help.I am like a man with an over-developed sense of smell, who when walking through a foreign city, however clean and well kept, can always catch the evil savours that are inseparable from such cities.More, his keen perception of them interferes with all other perceptions and spoils his walks.The result is that in after years, whenever he thinks of that beautiful city, he remembers, not its historic buildings or its wide boulevards, or whatever it has to boast, but rather its ancient, fish-like smell.At least he remembers that first owing to this defect in his temperament.
So it is with everything.A lovely woman is spoiled for such a one because she eats too much or has too high a voice; he does not care for his shooting because the scenery is flat, or for his fishing because the gnats bite as well as the trout.In short he is out of tune with the world as it is.Moreover, this is a quality which, where it exists, cannot be overcome; it affects day-labourers as well as gentlemen at large.It is bred in the bone.
Probably the second failure-breeding fault, lack of perseverance, has its roots in the first, at any rate in my case.