At Nicomedia, at Pergamos, and at Smyrna Julian, now nineteen years old and an enthusiast for Hellenic wisdom, had heard much of the famous mage and sophist, Iamblicus of Chaldea, a pupil of the Neo-Platonist, Porphyrius. Men used commonly to call him "the Divine" Iamblicus. In order to see this master, Julian made a journey to Ephesus.
Iamblicus was a little thin and wrinkled old man. He liked complaining of his ailments—gout, rheumatism, nervous headache; he abused physicians, but was zealous in carrying out their advice, and used to speak with deep interest of drugs and infusions of herbs. He always wore, even in summer, a double tunic; never seemed warm enough, and would sit basking in the sun like a lizard.
From his youth up Iamblicus had broken himself of the habit of meat-eating, and spoke of it with disgust as a practice beyond his comprehension. His servant used to prepare for him a special broth, made of barley-water, warm wine, and honey, he being toothless and unable to masticate bread.
He was always surrounded by numberless admiring students who had travelled from Rome, Antioch, Carthagena; from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia, to become his pupils.
All stoutly believed Iamblicus could work miracles. Iamblicus treated them like a father irritated at seeing round him so many weaklings. When they began todiscuss and to wrangle, the master would make a sweeping gesture, followed by a grimace expressive of physical pain. He spoke gently, and in a low-toned, agreeable voice; the louder other folk shouted the more subdued his own tone became. He hated all noise, and quarrelsome voices as much as creaking sandals.
Julian gazed in disappointed perplexity at this chilly, sickly, and whimsical old man. What power drew towards him the world of philosophy? He remembered the story of pupils—that one night the divine master during prayer was upraised by some invisible force to a height of twelve cubits from earth, wrapped in a golden glory. Another tale was about a miracle, by which the master had smitten from a rock two warm springs, Eros and Anteros, the two Dæmons of love—the one dull-souled, the other joyous. Iamblicus, it was said, had caressed both, like children, and at a word caused them to disappear.
But in listening to the master Julian never succeeded in discovering the potency of his words. The meta-physic of the school of Porphyrius seemed to him dull, dead, and painfully complicated. Iamblicus would, it is true, emerge a playful victor from the most difficult dialectical discussions. His teaching about God, about the World, about the Ideas, was full of profound learning; but in it lay no vital stimulus. Julian had hoped otherwise, and nevertheless he hung about, and did not set off again homewards. The eyes of Iamblicus were strange, green, and deeply-sunk in his bronzed face. Julian was persuaded that these weird and by no means holy eyes betokened some hidden wisdom, the occult wisdom of the serpent, concerning which Iamblicus never spoke to his pupils. But when "theDivine," in his cracked voice, used to ask why his barley broth was not ready, or complained of gout, the spell was broken.
On one occasion Iamblicus was sauntering with Julian on the seashore, outside the town. It was a soft and melancholy evening. Behind the castle of Panormos in the distance glittered, with their array of statues, the terraces of the celebrated temple of the Ephesian Artemis.
The dark reeds along the sandy shore made no rustle. It was the spot where Latona gave birth to Artemis and Apollo. Smoke of numberless altars in the sacred Orthegian wood was rising in columns into the sky. To the south the Samian mountains shone blue on the horizon. Wavelets fell calmly as the breathings of a child, and pellucid waves swelled over the rocks. The setting sun, hidden behind vapour, gilded the edge of enormous cloud-masses.
Iamblicus seated himself upon a boulder, and Julian threw himself on the ground at his feet. The master caressed the thick black locks of the pupil.
"Are you sad?"
"Yes."
"I know you are sad. You seek and you do not find. You have not the strength to say 'He is,' and you are afraid to say 'He is not.'"
"How have you guessed this, Master?"
"My poor boy! for fifty years have I not suffered from the same pain? And I shall suffer from it till I die. Do you imagine that I know Him better than you—that I have discovered what you have missed?Thatis the birth-pain that never ceases. Beside it other tortures are as nothing. People think that they suffer from hunger, from poverty, from thirst; in reality theysuffer only from the thought that perhaps He has no existence. Who shall dare to say 'He exists not?' and yet what superhuman strength one must have to say, 'He is'!"
"Do you mean to say that you, even you, have never come near Him?"
"Thrice in my life have I borne the ecstacy of feeling myself wholly at one with Him. Plotinus felt it four times, Porphyrius five times. But as for me, the moments in my existence in which life was worth living were precisely three."
"I have questioned your pupils on this subject; they knew nothing."
"Have they the courage to know? The shell of wisdom is enough for them; the kernel, for almost everybody, is deadly."
"Well, let me die, Master! Give the core to me!"
"Have you courage?"
"Yes; but speak—speak!"
"And what can I tell you? I do not know, ... and need I tell you? Listen to the calmness of the evening, and the secret will be yours without words of mine...."
He kept stroking Julian's head; the boy was dreaming, "This, this is what I waited for," and clasping the knees of Iamblicus he falteringly entreated—
"Master, have pity!... Reveal it all!... Do not desert me!"
With green and strangely motionless eyes kept steadily on the clouds, Iamblicus murmured, as if speaking to himself:
"Yes, we have all forgotten the voice of God. Like children estranged from the cradle from the face of their father, we hear Him, and we do not recogniseHim. To hear His voice, every earthly cry in our souls must cease. Just so long as reason shines and illumines our souls, we remain imprisoned in ourselves and see not God. But when reason is put by, ecstacy falls upon us like the dew of night—that ecstacy which the evil cannot know. The wise, the good alone can become, of their own will, lyres vibrating under the hand of God. Whence comes that beam which falls into the soul? I do not know. It comes unawares, and when one least expects it. To search for it is useless. God is not remote from us. One must make ready, with a soul becalmed; and simply wait, as the eyes await (according to the saying of the poet)the rush of the sun from dark ocean. God does not come, God does not go away; He is revealed. He is, what the universe is not, the negation of everything that exists. He is nothing, and He is All."
Iamblicus rose and slowly extended his wasted arms:
"Be still, be still, I tell you! Let all things listen for Him! He is here! Let the earth and the sea, let even the sky be dumb! Listen!... It is He who fills the universe, the very atoms sing with His breath; He who illumines matter and chaos—at which the gods tremble—just as the setting sun illumines that dark cloud."
Julian listened. It seemed to him that the master's calm weak voice was filling the world, was reaching the heights of the heaven, and the last confines of the sea. But the boy's sadness was so deep that it escaped from his bosom in an involuntary sigh.
"Father, forgive me if the question is a folly; but if it is thus with the world why go on living? Why this eternal interchange of life and death? Why pain?Why evil? Why the burden of the body? Why doubt? Why this dark thirst for the impossible?"
Iamblicus looked at him with gentleness, and anew passed his hand over Julian's head. He answered:
"Ah, my son, that is the very seat of the mystery! there is no evil, there is no body, there is no universe, if He exists! Think! it is He,orthe universe! The body, evil, the universe, all are a mirage, a deception of the living senses. All we have once rested together upon the breast of God in the bosom of invisible light. But there came a time when we beheld from on high matter in its darkness and deadness, and each of us saw in matter its own image, as in a mirror. And the soul mused to itself, 'I can, and I will to, be free! I am like Him! Why not dare to quit Him and contain all in myself?' So the soul, like Narcissus gazing into the brook, fell under the spell of its own image, reflected in its body; and then she fell farther, and desired to fall for ever, to rend herself from God for ever. She cannot do so. The feet of mortal man touch earth, but his stature lifts him through the heavens.
"Upon the Eternal Ladder of births and of death, all souls, all things existing, are ascending and descending, sometimes towards Him, sometimes away from Him, seeking to leave the Father, and never fulfilling their endeavour. Each soul desires to be God. It weeps for the breast of God, has no rest upon earth, and aspires only to return to the Absolute. We must return to Him, and then all things will become God, and God will be in All. Do you imagine that you are alone in regretting Him! Are you not aware that the whole sum of things is yearning for Him? Listen!"
The sun had set. The edges of the flaming clouds had sunk into ashes. The sea had become pale, light,flocculent as the sky; the sky deep and diaphanous as the sea. Upon the road a cart was passing by; a young man and woman were in it—two lovers, perhaps. The woman was singing a melancholy love song. When they had passed all things were plunged into silence again, and became sadder still. With hastened strides, the oriental night swept over the earth. Julian murmured:
"How many times have I asked myself why Nature was so sad, and why, when she is proudest then saddest of all...."
Iamblicus answered by a smile—
"Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the appearance of reality. Nature, that sleepingCybele, never lifts her eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face to face...."
The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure. More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them—
"Julian, to what should one compare the universe of all those stars? One might liken it to a fisherman's net thrown into the sea. God fills the universe as the water fills the net, which moves, but which cannot retain the waters; and the universe desires, but cannot keep God in her meshes. The net is drawn, but God remains. If the universe made no stir God would create nothing—would not issue from the calm that surrounds Him. For whither should He sweep, and to what end? Yonder, in the realm of the eternal Mothers, in the soul of Calm, dwell the seeds, the Forms, the Ideas, of all that is, has been, and shall be. The germ of hearth-cricket and of atom, together with the germ of the Olympian god."
Then Julian cried aloud, and his voice rang in the silence of Nature like a cry of mortal pain—
"But who then is He; why does He not answer when we call Him? What is His name? I wish to know, I desire to know Him, to hear Him—to see Him—why does He escape my thought? Where is He? Where does He dwell?"
"My poor boy! What matters thought to Him? What means it? He has no name. He is such, thatwe can say that He must exist, but it is impossible for us to say what He is. But do you think that you can suffer love, or curse Him, without singing His praises? The All-Creator is Himself, having no likeness to His creations. When you say, 'He is not,' you are exalting Him as much as if you said 'He is.' One can affirm nothing about Him, because He is above existence, reality, and life. That is why I have said to you that He is the negation of the universe and of your thought. Deny, renounce all that exists for us here, and yonder, in the soundless profundity of darkness, as in the light, you shall find Him still. Give Him friends, family, country, heaven, earth, yourself, your reason, then you will no longer see light, you shall yourself be it. You will not say, 'He and I,' because you will feel that He and you are 'one'; and your soul will smile at your body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall become silence, you shall no more find utterance. And if at that moment the world should crumble away, you would be happy: for what would the world signify to you, since you shall be with Him? Your soul shall not desire, because He has no desires; it shall no longer live, because He is above living; it shall no longer think, because He is above thought. Thought is the search for light. He seeks not, because He is Himself the light. He penetrates the whole soul—He laps it in Himself. And then, impartial and solitary, it rests above reason higher than goodness, higher than beauty, reposes in the infinite, on the breast of God the Father of Light. The Soul becomes God, or, to put it better, it remembers that in the night of ages it has been, is, and shall be, God.... Such, my son, is the life of the Olympians; such is the life of the wise and heroic among men;renunciation of the universe, contempt of earthly passions, the flight of the Soul towards God, whom at last it sees face to face."
Iamblicus ceased speaking. Julian fell at his feet without daring to touch them, and kissed the earth where they rested. Then he raised his head and gazed into those strange green eyes, in which dwelt the wisdom of the serpent. They appeared calmer and deeper than the sky, and as if exhaling a miraculous power.
Julian murmured—
"Master! thou canst do all things. I believe! Command the mountains, and they shall approach each other! Be like God. Work a miracle, create the impossible. Grant my prayer! I believe!"
"My poor boy, what are you asking for? Is not the miracle which may be accomplished in your soul more beautiful than any wonders whichIcan work? Son, is it not a terrible and a happy miracle, this power in the name of which you can dare to say: 'He is,' and if 'He is not' it matters nothing, 'He will be,' and you say 'Let God exist! Amen, so be it!'"