190 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



great part of nature is * distinctly anti-human.' ' The 

 miserably hideous things of the sea,' ' the shapeless shape ' 

 of the toad, the snake that takes away the breath, even 

 the animals we can love, are repellent ; ' there is nothing 

 human in any living animal,' and they are ' without 

 design, shape, or purpose.' More absurdly he says : 

 ' Animals think to a certain extent, but if their concep- 

 tions be ever so clever, not having hands, they cannot 

 execute them.' The human mind cannot ' be fitted to the 

 cosmos ' : it is ' distinct — separate.' Nature is the work of 

 ' a force without mind,' not of a deity ; ' for what we under- 

 stand by the Deity is the purest form of idea, of Mind, 

 and no mind is exhibited in these . ' J ulius Caesar, whose bust 

 he watched at the British Museum, came ' nearest to the 

 ideal of a design-power arranging the affairs of the world 

 for good in practical things ' ; but human folly is ' ever 

 destroying our greatest.' In human affairs ' everything 

 happens by chance ' ; ' rewards and punishments are 

 purely human institutions, and if government be relaxed 

 they entirely disappear. No intelligence whatever inter- 

 feres in human affairs.' He has been in hell, and dreamed 

 more terrible dreams than when De Quincey lay down 

 with crocodiles. We make our own happiness and order, or 

 not at all. These dreams only urge him yet more strongly 

 to search for a soul-life which shall be independent of 

 Nature and the idea of deity. He has really achieved 

 the most ancient discovery of the theologians — that 

 man stands apart from the rest of created things. But 

 instead of being humbled by this — of seeking for some 

 cause such as sin — he sees in the isolation a great hope. 

 It is man that is supreme in man's world. Let us give 

 way to our virtues and energies, and cease to look for help 

 apart from man. 



Whether these violent and intolerable dreams can be 

 traced to some early horror of seeing skulls turned up 

 by the plough, of reading of the sufferings of travellers and 

 prisoners, I do not know. They possibly owe something 

 to the ordinary countryman's attitude towards animals : 



