DOI Kapitel:
Chapter V: Our Friendship
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0303
OUR FRIENDSHIP 151
eventually to independence of thought and action in all trans-
actions to the very end of his long life, resisted the control
of any distinct creed in very early days.1 No formalities of
any Church appealed personally to Watts’ feelings, but he
often expressed his conviction of the absolute necessity of
some form of religion for the masses.2 Walter Bagehot used
to say that it was one thing for a nature to throw off the
forms of religion when the mind and nature of men were
developed and matured, quite another for men never to have
had the teaching and control of religion in childhood. We
had yet to see the results of a people being brought up from
infancy without any religion. Doubtless Watts’ independ-
ence of thought might have run in very different grooves
had he not had early religious training. During the four
years he was in Italy he was not only in a Roman Catholic
country, but the guest of Lady Holland, who was a Roman
Catholic. Watts had very little sympathy with the Roman
Church. Its definiteness alone, I think, would have alienated
1 I say “ eventually,” because, though Watts so often would fall easily under
the influence of others in whom he found sympathy, such influence was at times
only skin deep. As soon as he felt that it touched, or tried to divert the current
of his own individual views and actions, it would cease to have any effect on him,
and he would show his resistance to it by a very decided course of independent
action. In reading Lady Burne-Jones’ life of her husband, the following sentence
struck me as one which would have equally truly described, I think, Watts’
attitude towards those who unduly tried to use their influence over him. “ Up to
a certain point it was always easy to take advantage of him (Burne-Jones). Press
that advantage too far, however, and he was gone like a bird from the snare.”
2 In a long letter, which Watts wrote in 1886, comparing the work of a well-
known writer to some little poems by Mrs. Edward Liddell, he says, “Though I
have no critical faculty, for I am ignorant among the ignorant, I yet feel there
is a waft of sweet air in them (the poems), perhaps blowing through the church
doorj but the feeling is very real,” which the accomplished work of the cele-
brated writer he thought lacked. He was not against the Church, though
personally he would not be bound to her decrees. He would say : “ Let the
Agnostics find something better than the Church before they attempt to demolish
her. The indefinite teaching of the Agnostics will never keep the morals of the
masses in order. They require a positive creed.”
eventually to independence of thought and action in all trans-
actions to the very end of his long life, resisted the control
of any distinct creed in very early days.1 No formalities of
any Church appealed personally to Watts’ feelings, but he
often expressed his conviction of the absolute necessity of
some form of religion for the masses.2 Walter Bagehot used
to say that it was one thing for a nature to throw off the
forms of religion when the mind and nature of men were
developed and matured, quite another for men never to have
had the teaching and control of religion in childhood. We
had yet to see the results of a people being brought up from
infancy without any religion. Doubtless Watts’ independ-
ence of thought might have run in very different grooves
had he not had early religious training. During the four
years he was in Italy he was not only in a Roman Catholic
country, but the guest of Lady Holland, who was a Roman
Catholic. Watts had very little sympathy with the Roman
Church. Its definiteness alone, I think, would have alienated
1 I say “ eventually,” because, though Watts so often would fall easily under
the influence of others in whom he found sympathy, such influence was at times
only skin deep. As soon as he felt that it touched, or tried to divert the current
of his own individual views and actions, it would cease to have any effect on him,
and he would show his resistance to it by a very decided course of independent
action. In reading Lady Burne-Jones’ life of her husband, the following sentence
struck me as one which would have equally truly described, I think, Watts’
attitude towards those who unduly tried to use their influence over him. “ Up to
a certain point it was always easy to take advantage of him (Burne-Jones). Press
that advantage too far, however, and he was gone like a bird from the snare.”
2 In a long letter, which Watts wrote in 1886, comparing the work of a well-
known writer to some little poems by Mrs. Edward Liddell, he says, “Though I
have no critical faculty, for I am ignorant among the ignorant, I yet feel there
is a waft of sweet air in them (the poems), perhaps blowing through the church
doorj but the feeling is very real,” which the accomplished work of the cele-
brated writer he thought lacked. He was not against the Church, though
personally he would not be bound to her decrees. He would say : “ Let the
Agnostics find something better than the Church before they attempt to demolish
her. The indefinite teaching of the Agnostics will never keep the morals of the
masses in order. They require a positive creed.”