But he does not care to be launched again on the question of Time. He looks at me, indeed, with the scowl of a man who begins to feel I take up too much of his. Yet he once, not long ago, gave it freely enough. He was once not a little glad that, after some ten years his son-in-law, I opened up my thoughts to him and put him, in his words, “on his theological mettle.” We should not, he says, from the small vantage of our private grievances, call to task the universe and its governance. No, no, perhaps. But we regularly, it seems, do the opposite thing and suppose, from our private contentments and the smooth running of our local affairs, the compliant disposition of all things. Example: I am a surveyor; I go out with my yardstick to measure the field. I am told by Lyell here, whose Principles of Geology rests at my elbow and whom I do the credit of re-reading, this time with my eyes open, that the universe is a thing beyond all known calculation. No matter: in order to measure the field it is not necessary to measure the universe, and I will swear, for all Lyell can tell me, that the field I tread today, after diligently perusing his work, is the same field I trod yesterday and that three feet still make one yard.
25th October 1856:
If Lyell is right, and I cannot — without shutting my eyes — pronounce him wrong, then the Book of Genesis is not a history but an allegory — and an imperfect one — and my father’s frail chronometers are of little avail in estimating the immense periods of Geological Time. Suppose that aeons elapsed before the Creator made Man, before the world became such as we see it to be, and that the six days of Genesis are properly to be counted in millions of years; then the entire record of human history is as a wink in the world’s duration. And if the world existed so long without Man upon it, why should we suppose that futurity holds for us any guaranteed estate and that we occupy any special and permanent place in Creation?
29th October 1856:
Walked with the Rector before dinner over Jacob’s Hill. Fine autumn weather, the bracken turning. Ventured — with caution — to raise again above questions. Answers: Bah! Who but the Almighty could have raised mountains and levelled plains? I answer: Lyell could tell him. Offer to lend copy.
Question rather is: Why should the Almighty have been so slow? If He ordained for us a privileged position between the brutes and the angels, why did He place us there so late? Anticipate the Rector’s answer: God not to be reckoned by temporal gauges; all is one sub specie aeternitatis; “a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday,” etc., etc.
6th November 1856:
Dined in Tavistock with Neale, who will be chief venturer in Wheal Talbot, and Mr Benson, a visiting acquaintance of his, a Manchester man and something in cotton. Neale a sound enough fellow. Mean to invite him some day to Burlford. Benson harder to fathom. Proposes: (1) to acquire of Neale, and similarly of others, the exclusive right to refine the arsenopyrite waste from Wheal Talbot, which can hardly be objected to by Neale, who would otherwise have the task of its disposal; (2) to export said arsenic to the American plantations to curb the American boll weevil, thus benefiting—“a pretty chain of consequences”—not only the planters but the economies of Devonshire and Lancashire.
Asks (Neale having told him, doubtless, of my “bug-hunting”) whether I am acquainted with the boll weevil—“a prodigious devourer of cotton.” Answer: “No, I am not familiar with that species, but is there not a blight upon the cotton trade more detrimental than the boll weevil? I mean the blight of slavery.” Answers: “Indeed, sir, there is much sentiment aired nowadays on the subject of slavery, much of it, I observe, by those who do not object to wear cotton on their backs or who fondly suppose that slavery is an evil unmet with in our own happy land. You do not know our Lancashire factory hands. You would find them also an interesting species. I assure you that were you to view the conditions under which the mass of them exist, you would consider the miners here in Devon to be blessed in comparison. It would be an interesting experiment, would it not, to remove one of your negroes from his shackles in the Carolinas and set him down, a free man, in the din of one of our Manchester mills? Would he thank us, I wonder, for our Christian mercy?”
9th November 1856:
Estimation: from one mature oak tree, in a seed-bearing year, some 20,000, or, say, two bushels, of acorns. (This from calculations upon my own observation of the oaks in Loxley Wood.) Of which but some hundreds will root as seedlings (failure in germination; eaten by birds and animals). Of which again barely some ten per cent (nibbling by animals; want of light — your bracken is your enemy of your oakwood) will remain after the first three years.
Estimation: A hen salmon of ten pounds from our Tamar will deposit, say, 10,000 eggs, of which perhaps only a quarter are made fertile and of these the vast bulk will be destroyed as eggs, in the larval stage or as parr. For this (being itself one of the lucky survivors) it performs, unstintingly, its gruelling and eventually fatal yearly journeys from the sea.
Estimation: The pheasant (this from Wilson, the gamekeeper) will lay, say, twelve eggs in a year. Of which (assuming no vigilant and protective Wilson) some three or four will be lost as eggs to weasels and other nest-robbers — not counting the frequent destruction of whole clutches — and of the surviving nestlings some three or four again will fall to predators or, as young birds, to the trial of their first winter.
The same pattern, if the margin of waste narrows, among the higher animals. If we suppose the human species to be above the harsh husbandry of nature, then we need but look to our own systems of economy (N.B., Benson’s factory hands). Two minutes in the company of our copper miners will prove that they are Toms, Dicks and Harrys; but are they not perceived as so many man-units, quantifiable (and expendable) at cheap rate?
Conclusions. (a) Bad: That nature is a pitiless arithmetician and gross cozener, hiding behind her bountiful appearance the truth that the greater portion of Creation exists only as a tribute to Destruction.
(b) Good (but conditionally): That nature is indomitable in her promulgation of life. What expense will she not spare to maintain her own? But this the tenacity of the blind. If disposed by the Almighty and All-seeing, why not with more thrift?
10th November 1856:
“And herb for the service of man”? If the cotton plant were created so we might not lack for clothing, why the boll weevil? And all the nations of pests.
15th November 1856:
The Rector has returned my Lyell. Confesses he has progressed so far but found it bewildering ground. It is the ground under our feet! Concedes he will not judge what he cannot pretend to have studied. A humble way of wishing the subject closed. But I perceive a kind of challenge in this embargo on further parley. I have spoken; he has heard me. This is the gist of it. He has allowed me, for so long, to be the advocatus diaboli in his study; he has answered me with patience, with sympathy, even with pleasure in the envigoration of the exercise — but now, if I truly mean to persist in all this, would I consider very carefully the consequences?