The Henson Journals

[200]

Monday, September 10th, 1923.

It is more easy to read the acorn in terms of the oak than the oak in terms of the acorn: and the great man reveals & explains, rather than is revealed & explained by, the capacities that slumbered in his forefathers. While none can deny the heredity of the features of the soul, any more than those of the body, it is idle to pretend that the lineaments of a great man's spirit can be traced back with any degree of accuracy to his ancestors. Every man, even the most meagre in endowment, has so many ancestors! But the psychical structure & propensities of his immediate parents have a significance all their own: for these define & determine the environment within which the child's mind lives & moves & has its being. The home, during the years when, most of all, the soul is being made, stands to the child for solid earth & starry firmament, and the influences operative therein are the air and the food and the drink, and, therefore, the very substance embodied in his personality.

Sir Henry Jones in the Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. XIII. p 51

[201]

Fearne essayed the task of reducing to an intelligible cosmos the chaos of my study. If the experiment answer, I shall be greatly assisted, but the confusion is chronic, continuing, & complete! I washed my hands of my guests all the morning, and set myself to write the article for the 'Spectator', but I made no progress. After lunch, I took the Bishop to see Escombe church. We walked there by the path beside the river, & returned by the high road. The Vicarage was apparently empty, but a notice on the window directed me to a house in the village for the key of the church. I was distressed to observe the dirty & neglected appearance of the ancient fabrick.

Bishop Mann asked many questions about the income and tenure of the parish clergy. He said that the voluntary system, which exists in America, did undoubtedly subordinate the clergyman to the congregation, and that this condition often worked badly. The clergyman's virtues might be his undoing. But, of course, indolence & mere individualism are effectively checked. It is difficult to imagine that the voluntary system could maintain the ministry in the industrial districts. How could the handfulls of people, whose names are on the parochial rolls, find the money wherewith to provide for the incomes of the clergy?

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