§ 10

Dreams are queer things, very illogical, and not restrained by formulæ. In dreams, Q.E.D. does not come in at all. The charm of a dream is that it is suggestive, not conclusive. It is like a kind of Inspiration: gaps have to be filled up; sequences are indefinite. All manner of odd situations jostle one another. An instant of time is as a thousand years. The ancients, in their wisdom, in their contemplative abstraction, may not have been far off the mark when they regarded dreams as omens, having the nucleus of some abstract truth. Swifter than any train or aeroplane can travel, as swiftly as a ray of light reaches the earth from the sun, the spirit, free of the body, moves in a dream. It can inhabit Mars awhile and be back in Piccadilly in less than a fraction of a minute divided into sixty pulsations. The spirit has to take no ticket to travel, to pay no price for a long journey. It has no aims, it only obeys impulse. There being no method in a dream removes it from actualities, which it only pictures. These being the chief characteristics of Dreamland, in the relation of a dream, which is automatic impression, a certain irregularity in the position of subjects to which it relates is not only permissible, but necessary to the picture it may be destined to paint. Having so far preserved a kind of sequence of ideas suggested as the teller of my dream, I obey the volatile journeys into all manner of crannies. No brain is so closely locked up that it can prevent the great inquisitor from entering. While they are free, dreams are tyrants over reason, to which they bear no relationship. The interpretation of a dream must be left to the listener of the tale it tells who can form whatever conclusion he pleases. The rationalist will probably only see folly; the mathematician, chaos; the unimaginative, nonsense. Probably the dreamer dreams in close relationship to his habit of mind. He may be an optimist at one moment a pessimist at another. He accentuates his likes and dislikes, hence through the relation of his dream he exposes himself, and gives himself over to every kind of criticism. To some he appears the reverse of veracious, to others a lunatic, but to a few he may appear in the nature of a prophet.

Having apologised to my readers, I propose now to allow my dream to lead me, as it most certainly will do, how and where it likes, to obey its impulses even though they are disconnected. To do otherwise would tend to muddle up dreams with realities, or such realities we see in waking hours. And now, feeling free, I can continue with the story in all its oddities of arrangement, because this is not a philosophical treatise, although it might be construed into one. It is not my business as a dream teller to reason, but to leave that to my readers.

In the pursuit of largeness of Vision, breadth of Faith, development of Charity, and strengthening of Hope, the new world formed in my dream recognises all religions, or rather their creeds, with their differences of approach towards a great mystery, and places them upon an equality of ministration. Church and State are separated. The Hebrew, Roman, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches are, if not numerically equal, equally respected. The grand mystical tenets of the Hebrews, the loneliness of the Divine Spirit worshipped, its nearness as well as its aloofness from what it has created, its complete unchangeable supremacy associated with its antiquity, are respected and admired as sincere emotions of one prominent part in the mind of man. The grave simplicity of the Hebrew ritual is accepted as an expression of mysterious faith. Having travelled so far into man’s mind, it was arrested before any explanation of mysteries arrived to drag the incomprehensible into the region of logic. No longer despised, the Hebrew faith is as the Father of many children. Differing from it in detail, the Moslem faith is the elder child of pure Deism. Mahommed is to his followers what Moses is to the Hebrews and Jesus Christ to Christians. We, who have to govern so large a portion of the Moslem world, belong to a nation which of necessity must come into constant contact with a Faith which (having its defects, according to Western thought) is to the people who follow it the fountain of Wisdom and the well of Truth; a Faith, indeed, from which the most ardent Christian can learn many lessons of sobriety and reverence. God the all powerful is the unapproachable Spirit; only by prayer, praise and entire trust are we brought spiritually near to Him.

The Roman Catholic community of thought is, in a sense, nearer to Western life and ideals than the Hebrew or Moslem, but the element from which it sprang is the same. The One Supreme God, the Father of His creation, and the mystical spirit which contains all. Differences are only matters of words, they are additions which in no wise touch the root of the matter. God Almighty is still the root from which springs the Tree of Life and all its branches. Deus and Zeus are the same word. All the pagan gods emanate from the Divine centre, be it Olympus, Rome, or Jerusalem. The Roman Church saw fit to construe pagan mythology in a new vernacular. Its saints and holy men became the lesser gods, but no less or more were they, or are they, absolutely dependent upon the all powerful Deity, the final author of all, the dispenser of all, the father of all.

The Anglican Church is the child of the Roman and grandchild of pagan mythology, the great grandchild of the Hebrew Faith. The metal of which the chain is formed is gold forged by the Divine Spirit. Probably the break between the Anglican and Roman Church was a political, more than a religious, evolution. The English never liked submission to Rome. England has always been a friend to liberty, an enemy to tyranny, and long may it so remain, be it either religious or political.

Nonconformity, especially that branch we call “Presbyterian,” came from an attempt to simplify ritual, as far as possible, to reconstruct allegiance with primitive worshippers. The root of belief the reformers did not touch. The Deity remained pre-eminent. The new world, that of my dream, while admitting differences, recognises essential similarities. Hence all denominations are held equal—equal as regards the respect due to them, and equal in the intention which dominates differences of detail. Was it not Augustine who said: “There is no religion which has not something of the Spirit of God in it”? Sectarianism takes no part in the new world. I saw in my dream that the cathedrals and churches of England are open to all religions. To the Hebrews the altars there are as the ark presided over by the shining cherubims. To the Moslem as a symbol of the nearness of the Divine Being; to the Catholics as the symbol of self sacrifice; to the Presbyters as symbols of Divine Hope and assistance. In them the ancient Psalms of David are sung by Hebrews, whose incense carries prayers of the faithful up to their roofs and far above them again. Jesus Christ worshipped in the Synagogue—why should not the Hebrews worship in His Temples? I saw in my dream that the Roman Mass, in all its splendour of detail, its imagery, its exuberance of symbolism, is celebrated in the cathedrals and churches once reserved as Temples of Protestantism. The simpler ritual of the Anglicans is also reverently administered, and the almost entirely bald ritual of Presbyters finds its place within the historic walls of the churches of Liberal England.

The breadth of sympathy thus shown to all religious denominations my spirit saw had nothing but a good result. It is a form of departure which is catching; it engenders peace; it breaks up animosity; it extends mental outlook from small to great things. Without temporising differences it permits them, it places them as small matters by the side of big essentials, hence the charity to which a broad view of religion has given rise is spreading and seems to enter into the spirit of a new and larger life. Hence religion appears to me to coalesce with a spirit of fraternity which, obviously, is growing, not sentimentally, but as a social and indispensable fact.

The cathedrals and churches are adorned with pictures, not necessarily sectarian or of what are called religious subjects. Prominent features of the History of the World are presented, but I do not remember to have seen any pictures in which war is figured. The new world abominates war, and while it is in a measure prepared for such a foolish experiment as war is, it is not considered worthy of handing down by the Arts of Peace, which are and must be constructive.

It is recognised that while mankind is selfish, grasping and cruel, wars will occur. The ideal is, of course, general disarmament, but that is unlikely. Still, it is thought that the more widely and constantly the Arts of Peace are sown, and the greater interest taken in life, not as a dissipation, but as concentration of energy used on things that matter, the less likely war will intervene and shatter, for perhaps a century, all peaceful intellectual progress.

War may bring out fine qualities, but experience has told us, in a minority. War is brutalising to those engaged in it, even to the atmosphere near and far from its centre. War, when the lust for it has entered, degrades a people. Bloodshedding is a form of madness. When the spark is kindled, a flame soon grows, which is fanned by lunatics, and one fears, sometimes by adroit commercial schemers who see in devastation a chance to enrich their pockets. When once greed takes the place of contented energy, avarice, dishonesty and self-seeking enter and shatter national progress. Indeed, there is no end to the mischief war may encourage. The seeds of avarice are sown early in life. Victims to it become unconscious of the rapidity of its growth, its poison spreads indefinitely, and what is in reality vice is excused by the plausible word “business,” which, if laid bare to its root, means tripping up the neighbour, and, if possible, without being found out. It is because tradesmen behaved so ill during the period of their country’s danger that, the eyes of the people are now opened, they are watched, hedged in by honest men, that they shall have no opportunity in the new Commune to rob their fellow citizens of food again. In my dream, by listening and observing, I saw that all classes were bent upon the same conclusion, to attain much for all! This has led to a great reform in the education of the young in their tender and malleable years.