The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 39

In a previous chapter I have traced the development of Miss Nightingale's religious views during her earlier years, and have shown how they broadened out into a tolerance which took more account of deeds than of creeds. But, as was there said, she was interested in creeds also.[348] Her nature was profoundly religious, and she had a mind as apt for speculative as for practical thought. Her critical spirit had detected weak places, as she deemed them, in the creed alike of Protestants and of Catholics. The precise and practical bent of her mind could not be satisfied until she had found for the feelings of her heart some more logical basis. She was thus driven forward to that reconstruction of her religious creed, to which pa.s.sing reference has already been made. At the beginning of her diary for 1853, on a page placed opposite January for "Memoranda from 1852," there is this entry: "The last day of the old year. I am so glad this year is over.

Nevertheless it has not been wasted, I trust. I have remodelled my whole religious belief from beginning to end. I have learnt to know G.o.d. I have recast my social belief; have them both written for use, when my hour is come." This entry refers to the ma.n.u.scripts called respectively "Religion" and "Novel" in a letter of 1852, already cited.[349] The ma.n.u.scripts, after being read by one or two friends, remained for some years in Miss Nightingale's desk, though during that period of strenuous activity in the world of deeds the subject-matter, we may be sure, often occupied her thoughts. In 1858 and 1859 she took up the ma.n.u.scripts again. The companions.h.i.+p of Arthur Hugh Clough, who at this time was much with her, was doubtless one of the causes which led to an active resumption of her theological speculations. She was rereading Mill's _Logic_ and reading Edgar Quinet's _Histoire de mes idees_. Mr. Clough's notes of conversation with her show how much she was indebted in her speculations to Mill. "Quinet and J. S. Mill," wrote Mr. Clough (March 2, 1859), "seemed, she said, the two men who had the true belief about G.o.d's laws. She referred in particular to two chapters in Mill's _Logic_ about Free Will and Necessity, which seemed to her to be the beginning of the true religious belief. The excellence of G.o.d, she said, is that He is inexorable. If He were to be changed by people's praying, we should be at the mercy of who prayed to Him. It reminded her, she said, of what old James Martin said some years ago when she saw him--that he didn't like having dissenters praying--he liked to have the prayers all set down and arranged: he didn't know what people mightn't be praying, perhaps that the money might be taken out of _his_ pocket and put into _theirs_." She rewrote some of what had been written six or seven years before; and she added a great deal more. Towards the end of 1859 she began printing it. In the following year the whole was in type, and a very few copies were struck off. This book, ent.i.tled _Suggestions for Thought_, is in three volumes, comprising in all 829 large octavo pages.

It was never published by her. It has with conspicuous merits equally conspicuous defects. The merits are of the substance; the defects are of form and arrangement; but Miss Nightingale never found time or strength or inclination--I know not which or how many of the three were wanting--to remove the defects by recasting the book. Unpublished, therefore, it is likely, I suppose, to remain. But as it stands it is a remarkable work. No one, indeed, could read it without being impressed by the powerful mind, the spiritual force, and (with some qualifications) the literary ability of the writer. If she had not during her more active years been absorbed in practical affairs, or if at a later time her energy or inclination had not been impaired by ill-health, Miss Nightingale might have attained a place among the philosophical writers of the nineteenth century.

[348] Above, p. 57.

[349] Above, p. 119.

II

In 1860, at the time when Miss Nightingale put her _Suggestions for Thought_ into type, she was half-inclined to publish the work. She consulted some of her intimate friends on the point. She also submitted the ma.n.u.script to two famous men, than whom none were better qualified to give a just opinion--John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Jowett. With Mr.

Mill she was not personally acquainted, and she sought an introduction through her friend Mr. Chadwick. By way of breaking the ground, he sent to Mill a copy of _Notes on Nursing_. Mill promised to read the book immediately, though (he added) "I do not need it to enable me to share the admiration which is felt towards Miss Nightingale more universally I should imagine than towards any other living person." This expression must have pleased her, for she was a diligent reader and (with some differences of opinion) a warm admirer of Mill's books. Being thus a.s.sured of his good will, and being further informed through Mr.

Chadwick that no formal introduction was necessary if Miss Nightingale conceived that Mr. Mill could be of any service to her, she sent him a copy of the _Suggestions_, or rather, of a portion of them. He read it, and was greatly interested; so much so that, in addition to sending her a letter of general criticism, he was at the pains to annotate it in the margin. He hoped that he might be allowed to see the remainder. A perusal of this increased his high opinion. "I have seldom felt less inclined to criticize," he said, "than in reading this book." But one or two criticisms he did offer--"for your consideration," he said, "and not as pretending to lay down the law on the subject to any one, much less to you";[350] and he invited further correspondence. Miss Nightingale's essays remained in his mind, for in a famous book, published nine years later, he introduced an allusion to them.[351]

To Mr. Jowett, Miss Nightingale was introduced by Mr. Clough, who had asked him to read some of the _Suggestions_. "It seemed to me," he said to Mr. Clough, after reading it, "as if I had received the impress of a new mind."[352] His interest in such philanthropic efforts as those connected with the name of Florence Nightingale is reflected in a pa.s.sage in the famous "Essay on Interpretation,"[353] and he must have been the more interested in the _Suggestions_ when Mr. Clough told him that she was the author, and asked him to write to her about them. Her name for the book in familiar letters was the "Stuff," by which name also it is spoken of in her Will. "I write to thank you," said Mr.

Jowett in one of the earlier letters of a long series (April 6, 1861), "for the 'Stuff,' to which I shall venture to add the epithet 'precious.'" He thought as highly of the book as did Mr. Mill, though in a different way. And he, too, in addition to long letters of general discussion suggested by the book, annotated it in detail. His annotations are most voluminous and careful. They are admirable in criticism, and from them alone a reader, not otherwise acquainted with Mr. Jowett's work, might form a tolerably accurate idea of his character and modes of thought. The proof copy of "The Stuff," with Mr. Jowett's annotations, was one of Miss Nightingale's most cherished possessions. I shall refer to some of the detailed criticisms later. "I have ventured,"

he said, "to put down the criticisms which occur to me quite baldly; they must not be supposed to be inconsistent with the greatest respect for the mind and genius of the writer." The criticisms were many, and often far-reaching; but no less frequent are expressions such as "Very good," "Very fine and n.o.ble."

[350] Mill's two letters on _Suggestions for Thought_ are those printed, as "To a Correspondent," at vol. i. pp. 238-242 of the _Letters of John Stuart Mill_ (1910).

[351] _The Subjection of Women_, chap. iii. p. 144: "A celebrated woman, in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly that everything a woman does is done at odd times." A good deal of Mill's treatment of this branch of his subject recalls Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions_.

[352] _Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, by Abbott and Campbell, vol. i. p. 270.

[353] "And there may be some tender and delicate woman among us, who feels that she has a Divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive offices towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier peris.h.i.+ng in a foreign land" (_Essays and Reviews_, 1860).

On the immediate question, To publish or not to publish? Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett gave what might at first sight appear to be very different advice. Mr. Mill, after reading the first instalment of the book, said: "If any part of your object in sending it was to know my opinion as to the desirableness of its being published, I have no difficulty in giving it strongly in the affirmative"; and in his next letter he said: "If when I had only read the first volume I was very desirous that it should be published, I am much more so after reading the second." Mr. Jowett, on the other hand, was against publication. It is presumptuous, I fear, to pose as a Court of Appeal between two such judges, but I will hazard the opinion that Mr. Jowett's was the better advice. And this is not quite so presumptuous as it may seem, for the fact is that, though Mr.

Mill wanted to see the book published, he would also have been glad to see it recast. And, similarly, Mr. Jowett, though he urged that the book must be recast, was very anxious that it should ultimately be published.

"I should be very sorry," he wrote at the end, "if the greater part of this book did not in some form see the light. I have been greatly struck by reading it, and I am sure it would similarly affect others. Many sparks will blaze up in people's minds from it." "In point of arrangement, indeed," wrote Mr. Mill, "of condensation, and of giving, as it were, a keen edge to the argument, it would have much benefited by the recasting which you have been prevented from giving it by a cause on all other accounts so much to be lamented. This, however, applies more to the general mode of laying out the argument than to the details." Mr.

Mill put admirably in these two sentences points which Mr. Jowett over and over again explained and ill.u.s.trated, with the utmost care, in his detailed annotations, and they are points which must strike every reader of Miss Nightingale's book. The repet.i.tions are tiresome, nay almost intolerable, to any one who reads a considerable portion of it consecutively, and Miss Nightingale, in a later letter to Madame Mohl, says that she could not read the book herself. The argument in isolated pa.s.sages, and sometimes in particular chapters, is closely knit, but in the book taken as a whole it often loses itself in digressions, and there is a lack of any consistent _ordo concatenatioque rerum_. The book is as remarkable for literary felicities in detail as it is deficient in the art of literary arrangement.

Some consideration of this point will serve to ill.u.s.trate an aspect of Miss Nightingale's character. The defect which Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett saw in her _Suggestions for Thought_ might seem to be among the last to be expected in her. Her mind was singularly methodical and orderly; this was one of the essential characteristics of her work as an administrator and a reformer. In this very book the characteristic appears, though in a somewhat superficial form. Each volume is prefaced by an elaborate "Digest," with many divisions and subdivisions. Yet the fact remains that the appearance of close method does not correspond with any similarly close arrangement of the material. It may be said that the subject-matter is less tractable by methodic heads and sub-heads than the organization of a department or the arrangement of a hospital. And that is true; but it is worth noting that something of the same criticism that was made by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett upon Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_ was made by another able man upon her _Notes on the Army_. "I consider them deficient," wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 18, 1858), "in a certain form of artistical skill or art, and chargeable with frequent repet.i.tions, but I confess that these deficiencies const.i.tute to my mind some of their greatest charms. They give to the whole the most unmistakable stamp of earnestness and truth--such as no reader of ordinary perception can doubt. They must, I think, in every cla.s.s of mind produce the conviction that you were exclusively occupied with the good you might do, and not at all with your reputation as an artist." This apology is perfectly valid in relation to the particular work in question, and Sir John might have added another. The _Notes on the Army_ were a series of reports, of which indeed the whole should have been read consecutively by the Secretary of State, but each of which referred to a different branch of the War Department. But the case is different when we pa.s.s to a philosophic treatise which is addressed to thinkers. Some of the lack of sustained coherence in Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_, and many of its repet.i.tions, may be referred to the method of composition.

Different chapters were written at different times. But when she thought of publis.h.i.+ng it, she did not care to correct those defects. Why was this? The explanation is to be found, I think, partly in a view which she had come to hold of the literary art, and partly in a certain impetuosity of temper. She had put literary pursuits away from her as a vain temptation. She cared for writing only as a means to action, and she could not see that literary form is of the essence of the matter if writing is to influence current thought on difficult subjects.

Infinitely laborious, again, when action was in sight, and capable of infinite patience when she saw the need, she was content to throw out her thoughts careless of the form. There is a complete and consistent scheme underlying her _Suggestions_; it was ever present in her own mind; and she could not be troubled to pare and prune, to revise and recast, in the interests of what she despised as mere artistry. _Non omnia possumus_. Those who are capable of completion in one field are often impatient of it in another. Ruskin, so careful of finish in his literary craftsmans.h.i.+p, was asked why he so seldom finished his drawings "to the edges." "Oh," he replied, "I can't be bothered to do the tailoring." Mr. Jowett urged Miss Nightingale in one of his letters (Nov. 17, 1861) to devote time and trouble to improving the form of her _Suggestions_: "No one can get the form in which it is necessary to put forth new ideas without great labour and thought and tact. It takes years after ideas are clear in your own mind to mould them into a shape intelligible to others." Miss Nightingale's answer to Mr. Jowett is not in existence; but I imagine that it was to the effect that she had no time for the tailoring.

III

The difference in the advice given by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett respectively went deeper, however, than to the question of form. And here again a consideration of the point will throw light on Miss Nightingale's character. The book was ostensibly one of Reconstruction; it was in fact very largely one of Revolt. The First and the Third Volumes are a philosophical exposition of her creed--"Law, as the basis of a New Theology." The Second, devoted to "Practical Deductions," is a criticism of the religion and social life of her day. The criticism, under both heads, is scathing and full of touches of her characteristically caustic humour. This second volume includes a full discussion of the position of women, and a plea for their emanc.i.p.ation from many of the restrictions of the time. It is easy to see how much of this appealed strongly to Mr. Mill, and why he deemed its publication desirable. And it is equally easy to understand that much of it offended Mr. Jowett, and why he deemed revision essential. I shall not presume on this point to decide between her counsellors. As her biographer, I content myself with recording that the plea for moderation, for conciliation, for suavity which Mr. Jowett urged in scores of marginalia and in dozens of letters seems to have prevailed. The essence of the plea was that the new should as far as possible be grafted upon the old; it was a plea for accommodation. Miss Nightingale had ideas which were of real value, but they would not avail to modify and purify religious thought if they were presented in too combative and revolutionary a form. One pa.s.sage, though not among those to which Mr. Jowett more particularly objected, will serve to ill.u.s.trate his point of view. I select it because it is characteristic of the writer's humour. It is from a section ent.i.tled "John Bull and his Church":--"John Bull will have plenty for his money. He will have his services long, till he is quite tired, that he may have his money's worth; like his concerts, plenty in them; no cheating; till he goes home yawning. So he has his confession, lumping all his sins together, and then his absolution, and then his praise, and then his Litany, asking for every imaginable thing, and ending with asking G.o.d for 'mercy on _all_ men,' lest he should have left out anything, till there does not remain to G.o.d the smallest choice or judgment; and then his sermon--a long one--three services in one,--that he may not have put on his best clothes nor paid all his t.i.thes for nothing." No person blessed with any sense of humour is likely to find this pa.s.sage offensive; but Mr. Jowett objected to it because it is not historically true. "J. B. had a Church and Liturgy made for him by Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, and human nature in Churches is conservative." And generally Mr. Jowett asked Miss Nightingale "not to find fault with the times or with anybody, but to endeavour out of the elements that exist to reconstruct religion."

Theology is a progressive science. Each age adds something to the idea of G.o.d. Let Miss Nightingale seek to win converts by leading them gently by the hand, not, as it were, by knocking them upon the head. She had peculiar advantages for doing this. Let her be very careful not to throw them away. So did Mr. Jowett reason with her. The point is put in innumerable forms; but this paragraph from a letter already mentioned (Nov. 17, 1861) will serve as a type: "I should not much care if only a comparatively small part of your work is finished. Its greatest value will be that it comes from you who worked in the Crimea. Shall I say one odd and perhaps rather impertinent thing? You have a great advantage in writing on these subjects as a Woman. Do not throw it away, but use the advantage to the utmost. In writing against the World ('Athanasia contra mundum'), every feeling, every sympathy should be made an ally, so that with the clearest statement of the meaning there is the least friction and drawback possible." Whether it was Mr. Jowett's criticism that alone or mainly caused Miss Nightingale to abandon the idea of publis.h.i.+ng her _Suggestions for Thought_, I do not know.[354] But two things may be said. Only once, so far as I have traced, did she take the world at all into her confidence on the subject of her religious beliefs. It was twelve years later, in some articles in _Fraser's Magazine_, to which we shall come in due course. In those articles the fundamental doctrines of the _Suggestions for Thought_ are contained, but they are stated in a manner and a temper which show that she had given heed to the "mild wisdom" of Mr. Jowett. The other thing that may be said is that for Mr. Jowett personally Miss Nightingale felt from the first a high regard. At the time with which we are now concerned, they knew each other by correspondence only, though, of course, Mr. Clough would have had much to tell her of his friend. "I do so like Mr.

Jowett," she wrote at this time to a friend. And at the same time Mr.

Jowett wrote to her: "I reckon you (if I may do so) among unseen friends." Presently they met; the friends.h.i.+p ripened, and remained firm to the end.

IV

Miss Nightingale, then, in addition to her other activities, is to be reckoned among the strenuous Seekers after Truth in religion and philosophy. The _Suggestions_ had their immediate origin, as I have explained already,[355] in a desire to meet by some positive reconstruction the negative "free-thinking" among the working-cla.s.ses, and the first volume was addressed, on the t.i.tle-page and by a dedication, to "The Artizans of England." Mr. Jowett criticized this restricted appeal. "A book cannot be written," he said, "for the Artizans separated from the Educated cla.s.ses; it must embrace them both.

There is one intellectual world with common ideas, and the more permanent part of that is the world of the higher cla.s.ses. Therefore I would urge you not to write for the Artizans, but to write for everybody." And Mr. Mill had written: "There is much in the work which is calculated to do great good to many persons besides the artizans to whom it is more especially addressed." There was some force too (especially in regard to the more abstract argument of the first and third volumes) in what M. Mohl said, "that she had set out to give the working cla.s.ses a religion, and that she gave them a philosophy instead." The address of the book to Artizans became palpably untenable when Miss Nightingale pa.s.sed in the second, and longest, volume to "Practical Deductions," and to a criticism of life as lived among "the upper ten." Her sense of humour perceived the incongruity, and the second and third volumes were addressed generally "To Searchers after Religious Truth." The address "to Artizans" is only significant as ill.u.s.trating a phase of Miss Nightingale's interests. The essential significance of the book in the story of her life is the revelation which it gives of her own mind in its search after truth, and of the conclusions in which she ultimately found support.

[354] In some testamentary instructions, made early in 1862, she expressed a desire that the "stuff" should be "revised and arranged according to the hints of Mr. Jowett and Mr. Mill, but without altering the spirit according to their principles with which I entirely disagree.

But he who would have done this is gone"--doubtless a reference to Mr.

Clough. In 1865 she asked Mr. Jowett himself if he would edit the "stuff" for her. But he remained of his former opinion that it required to be recast entirely: it was, he said (April 24), "rather the preparation or materials of a book than a book itself."

[355] Above, p. 119.

I have been much struck in reading the book by the number of ill.u.s.trations which Miss Nightingale draws from nursing, medicine, and administration. It may be said, I think, that the line of speculation followed in her _Suggestions for Thought_ was the result of reflection upon those data by a mind which was at once intensely spiritual and severely logical. We come very near to the root of the thing in her mind in this pa.s.sage of tender and yet humorous autobiography:--

When I was young, I could not understand what people meant by "their thoughts wandering in prayer." I asked for what I really wished, and really wished for what I asked. And my thoughts wandered no more than those of a mother would wander, who was supplicating her Sovereign for her son's reprieve from execution.... I liked the morning service much better than the afternoon, because we asked for more things.... I was always miserable if I was not at church when the Litany was said. How ill-natured it is, if you believe in prayer, not to ask for everybody what they want.... I well remember when an uncle died, the care I took, on behalf of my aunt and cousins, to be always present in spirit at the pet.i.tion for "the fatherless children and widows"; and when Gonfalonieri was in the Austrian prison of Spielberg, at that for "prisoners and captives." My conscience p.r.i.c.ked me a little whether this should extend to those who were in prison for murder and debt, but I supposed that I might pray for them spiritually. I could not pray for George IV. I thought the people very good who prayed for him, and wondered whether he could have been much worse if he had not been prayed for. William IV. I prayed for a little. But when Victoria came to the throne, I prayed for her in a rapture of feeling and my thoughts never wandered.

To this simple faith of youth, experience succeeded. A patient might pray for sleep, but laudanum was more efficacious. What was the use of praying to be delivered from "plague and pestilence" so long as the common sewers were still allowed to run into the Thames? If G.o.d sent a visitation of cholera, which was the more probable reading of His mind--that He sent it in order that men might pray to Him for relief from it, or in order that they should themselves set about removing the predisposing causes? Miss Nightingale's conclusion was that if there be a Plan in the universe, the Plan must be other than what the popular religion of the day, logically interpreted, implies. "G.o.d's scheme for us," she inferred, "was not that He should give us what we asked for, but that mankind should obtain it for mankind."

This was the germ from which Miss Nightingale's philosophy of religion was developed. She had read much in metaphysics and in theology; she had reasoned long with herself

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.

She reasoned long, but did not feel herself "in wandering mazes lost."

She began with considering the nature of Belief, and showed that any true explanation of the term throws us back on the nature of the object of belief. The supreme object of belief we call G.o.d. But in different ages men have meant very different things by G.o.d. There is the Savage idea of G.o.d, the Hindoo, the Greek, the Israelite, and so forth; and there is the Christian idea, which again is widely different according to the patristic or theological notions, and according to the popular one. This last required to be exalted and purified. The true idea of G.o.d, which is alone reconcilable with the deepest morality and with the widest contemplation of nature and history and the world is the idea, not of an individual swayed by likings and personalities, but of an Universal Being who is Law.

The laws of G.o.d were, she held, discoverable by experience, research, and a.n.a.lysis; or, as she sometimes put it, the _character_ of G.o.d was ascertainable, though His _essence_ might remain a mystery. The laws of G.o.d were the laws of life, and these were ascertainable by careful, and especially by statistical, inquiry. This is what I meant by saying in an earlier chapter that Miss Nightingale regarded the study of statistics with something of religious reverence. Statistics compiled by meteorologists have shown, she says in the _Suggestions_, that storms can be foreseen. When a s.h.i.+p goes down in an "unforeseen" gale, "Do we say, 'How could G.o.d permit such a dreadful calamity as the loss of all hands on board? The devil must have done it.' No. We say, 'Study the signs of approaching gales, and you will _not_ be lost.' Is it not the same with moral evil, the laws of which are just as _calculable_?" A copy of Quetelet's book, already mentioned, had been presented to her "with the author's homage, respect, and affection." She often spoke of the Belgian statistician in similar terms. His book was in her eyes a religious work--a revelation of the Will of G.o.d. In her annotated copy she enlarged the t.i.tle. The book was not merely an _Essai de physique sociale_. It exhibited "The sense of Infinite power, The a.s.surances of solid Certainty, and The endless vista of Improvement from the Principles of _Physique sociale_, if only found possible to apply on occasions when it is so much wanted." A very large "if," many will say; as in effect her father constantly said in written discussions with her on these subjects. But her reply was always the same. The greater the difficulty, the more the need for serious study. With the concentrated study of mankind upon the problem, the answer would be found. "Truth is _so_," said her friend. "Truth is not what one troweth," said she, and there was no phrase oftener on her lips in serious conversation.

She went on to develop this idea of G.o.d as Law in relation to human fate, and to those problems of "free will and necessity," which Milton thought to be inscrutable mysteries, and around which metaphysicians and logicians have for ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a hypothesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried but abandoned--the hypothesis of "a Being who, willing only good, leaves evil in the world solely in order to stimulate human faculties by an unremitting struggle against every form of it"; a Perfect Being who created a Perfectible one, and so ordered the world that its course should be a constant struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did not blink the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained. The finite cannot apprehend the Infinite. "We cannot," she wrote, "understand the existence of G.o.d willing laws. We cannot understand the Perfect Being. All this appears to me exactly what we ought to allow to be a mystery."[356] But she held with Bossuet that _il ne faut pas confondre la question de la nature de Dieu avec celle des rapports de Dieu et du monde_. "We ought," she continued, "with all our mights to learn the perfections, not to understand the Perfect--to study His character and His laws, not His essence, or how He lives willing His laws. It is evident that creation is a mystery, but G.o.d's end and object (in creating) need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the existence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much more difficult--it is impossible--to conceive the existence of G.o.d (or even of a good man) _without_ evil." Good and evil are relative terms, and neither is intelligible without the other.

[356] From a letter to her father.

Without supposing, then, that she had solved the ultimate riddle of the universe, Miss Nightingale had hold of an hypothesis which solved for her many of the mediate riddles. It seemed to her to contain a lofty conception of G.o.d; to justify His ways to men; to explain the supposed war between Free Will and Necessity. Her views on some of these high matters will perhaps be made clearer by the letter of explanation which she wrote to her father in sending him a copy of some of her "Stuff":--

OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _July_ 6 [1859]. DEAR PAPA--I shall be so pleased to send you some of my "works," as you are so good as to wish to read them. I have asked Aunt Mai to send you the shortest [a portion of vol. i.]. I think the subject is this: Granted that we see signs of _universal_ law all over this world, _i.e._ law or plan or constant sequences in the moral and intellectual as well as physical phenomena of the world--granted this, we must, in this universal law, find the traces of _a_ Being who made it, and what is more of the _character_ of the Being who made it. If we stop at the superficial signs, the Being is something so bad as no human character can be found to equal in badness, and certainly all the beings He has made are better than Himself. But go deeper and see wider, and it appears as if this plan of _universal_ law were the only one by which a good Being could teach His creatures to teach themselves and one another what the road is to universal perfection. And this we shall acknowledge is the only way for any educator, whether human or divine, to act--viz. to teach men to teach themselves and each other. If we could not _depend_ upon G.o.d, _i.e._ if this sequence were not _always_ to be calculated upon in moral as well as in physical things--if He were to have caprices (by some called _grace_, by others _answers to prayer_, etc.), there would be no order in creation to depend upon. There would be chaos. And the only way by which man can have Free Will, _i.e._ can learn to govern his own will, to have what will he thinks _right_ (which is having his will free), is to have universal Order or Law (by some miscalled Necessity). I put this thus brusquely because philosophers have generally said that Necessity and Free Will are incompatible. It seems to have appeared to G.o.d that Law is the only way, on the contrary, to _give_ man his free will. And this I have attempted to prove. And further that this is the only plan a perfectly good omnipotent Being could pursue.... Ever, dear Papa, your loving child, F. N.

I need not enter into the fundamental difficulty which Mr. Mill found in this last a.s.sumption, nor into the difficulties which Mr. Jowett pointed out, in a series of letters, in Miss Nightingale's reconciliation of Free Will and Necessity. Our concern here is with what she thought, and the hypothesis satisfied her judgment.

It had the further result of giving her a rational basis for belief in a Future Life. The chapter in which she discussed this subject seemed to Mr. Jowett "the most responsible and serious in the whole book." He made some critical objections to details in the argument, but her general line was in accordance with what we know to have been his own conviction on the subject, namely, that the evidence for a future life must be found in moral ideas.[357] And in a letter to Miss Nightingale he says: "I shall never give up the faith in immortality, though I cannot determine or conceive the manner of another state of being. That Christ became a ma.s.s of clay again seems to me of all incredible things the most incredible." To Miss Nightingale the belief followed logically from her general hypothesis. The theory of Perfectibility required a future state of infinite progress for each and all; the theory of a good G.o.d required it. The purpose of G.o.d, as she conceived it, is that in the end "each and all shall in accordance with law desire and obtain to will right, all sin and sorrow being but one of the processes through which mankind is learning and teaching. Hence it is that belief in a future in connexion with human existence is essential to the belief that we are under righteous government." "How plain," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his daughter, after reading the chapter, "are the steps of your argument!

The senses, the reason, the feelings appreciate the laws of goodness, benevolence, and righteousness in the Thought of G.o.d; but Circ.u.mstances indicate a want of benevolence unless there is reason to believe in a future development. Therefore a continued existence is according to law." Mr. Jowett in his marginalia suggested that she might have made more of the opposite alternative: "If there is no future state, then what of G.o.d, what of human nature? Not only would there be an awful deception, but a deception of all the best feelings and of those in which we most trust. Work out the supposition, and look it full in the face, and (whether right or wrong) it is hardly possible to suppress the temper of a demon towards the Supreme being." So Miss Nightingale intensely thought; and, therefore, the idea of G.o.d as Universal Law, willing human perfection, gave her even greater security than is put forward in the lines from Clough which I have placed at the head of this chapter. She quoted them herself, but added, "Yes; but Truth is so that 'I' shall _not_ perish."

[357] _Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, 1899, p. 245.

Her speculations gave her a basis, further, for understanding what is meant by a philosophy of history:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Oct._ 24 [1861].

(Seven years this very day since I began "the fight" for the Army.) I think Dicey's Cavour and Monckton Milnes's Tocqueville in the _Quarterly_, the two most masterly sketches of a true Statesman I have read for some time.[358] Cavour's death was heroic--in the prime of his glory and success--working to the last. But I am not sure that there is not something more heroic and more pathetic in Tocqueville's, broken-hearted, but not in despair, faithful to the end of the "good fight"--_lost_, although fought so well. People call him narrow--_i.e._ people who are so wide that they can do nothing themselves. The unheroic tone of the teachers of the present day is bad; as when excellent Jowett says that in these days, only "exceptional" cases can fight the good fight. Is not this the reason why these cases _are_ exceptional? And was there ever an age in so much need of heroism?

Most just is the praise to Tocqueville of imitating G.o.d in his statesmans.h.i.+p--in reconciling Man's Free Will and G.o.d's Law--the only mode in which G.o.d or statesman can govern. But he is unfair to himself when he says he will not "play the part of Providence." He _did_, as far as he could. He is untrue to himself in saying how little we can ever find out of the Laws of History. Undoubtedly we have as yet found out hardly anything. (I suppose Buckle has some of the crudest generalizations extant.) But, did we study history as much as physical science, would this be so? Is it not like the children who say, I'm too little (when told to do a difficult sum), to attribute this to the "inability of our reason." Surely G.o.d says just the contrary. Tocqueville tells us not to call events "mysterious." He calls upon governments to comprehend the mysterious influences--"mysterious" only to our ignorance. And I would drop the word altogether. Perhaps Tocqueville was the first statesman who united an acknowledgment of the fact that, according to the laws of G.o.d, all human history could not have been other than it has been, with the conviction that this, instead of stimulating us to do nothing, stimulates us to do everything.

[358] The article on Cavour was in July; that on Tocqueville, in October.

Above all, her religious belief satisfied her as giving high motive to human conduct. It linked, in logical connection, the service of man to the service of G.o.d. It inspired with religious enthusiasm her conviction that each individual--woman as well as man--should be given the freedom to make the best of himself. The doing of G.o.d's will--that is, according to her philosophy, the discovery of causes and effects, the rectification of errors, the education of men to profit by their mistakes--was the way to communion with G.o.d. The reader may remember from previous chapters that Florence Nightingale was conscious of "a call from G.o.d to be a saviour," and that the tribute which she paid to her "dear Master," Sidney Herbert, was to call him "a saver." There are pa.s.sages in the _Suggestions for Thought_ which show with what significance she used those terms. "G.o.d's plan is that we should make mistakes, that the consequences should be definite and invariable; then comes some Saviour, Christ or another, not one Saviour, but many an one, who learns for all the world _by_ the consequences of those errors, and 'saves' us from them.... There must be saviours from social, from moral, error. Most people have not learnt any lesson from life at all--suffer as they may, they learn nothing, they would alter nothing.... We sometimes hear of men 'having given a colour to their age.' Now, if the colour is a right colour, those men are saviours." Miss Nightingale's own work in the world--at Scutari, for the health of the British soldier at home, for Hospitals, for Nursing, and presently for India--received from her philosophy a religious sanction.[359]

[359] For an application of her religious views to the care of India, see the pa.s.sage quoted in vol. ii. p. 1.