"But when I recovered my reason (and men called me mad), I read the biography of Columbus again. There I found that, together with his merits, he had great faults. Like David, he sinned by pride, avarice, cruelty, and deceit. His pride was boundless. Before undertaking his doubtful voyage, he laid down as a condition that he was to be Viceroy (he, the weaver's son!) and receive a tithe of the revenues. Well, he never learnt that he had discovered a new quarter of the globe. He died and was forgotten.
"Vespucci, on the other hand, was not only acartographer, but sailed round South America, and discovered that the New World was not India. He seems to have been a good-natured, upright, and modest man. Toscanelli, his contemporary, is also said to have announced the existence of a new world, but that is not so certain."
A Circumnavigator of the Globe.—The pupil said: "Can you resolve my discords?"
"I will call you a circumnavigator of the globe. You have sailed round it, and returned to the point whence you set out. No one can go further than that. But you return with a freight of experience, knowledge, and wisdom. Therefore the journey was not in vain, or to speak more correctly, it has fulfilled its object. Max Muller, who at the time of the decadence was the scapegoat for all the atheists, concludes his history of religion thus: 'It is easy to say that the completest faith is a child's faith. Nothing can be truer. The older we grow, the more we learn to comprehend the wisdom of children's faith.' And in another place he says: 'To explain religion by referring it to a religious impulse, or a religious capacity, is merely to explain the known by the less known. The realreligious impulse or instinct is the apprehension of the infinite.' Thank your misfortunes that you have arrived at the infinite. 'The fortunate do not believe that miracles still happen, for only in misery we recognise God's hand and finger, which leads good men to good.'"
"Do you know who said that?"
"No; is it Luther?"
"No; it is Goethe inHermann and Dorothea.And the 'great pagan' wrote in 1779 to Lavater: 'My God, to whom I have been ever faithful, has in secret richly blessed me. For my destiny is quite hidden from men; they can neither hear nor see at all, how it is determined.' The Lice-King omits such expressions when he wishes to incorporate Goethe among his slimy larvæ."
The Poet's Children.—The teacher continued: "Moreover, as I have already told you, you are a poet, and must pass through your reincarnations here. You have a right to invent poetic personalities, and at every stage to speak the speech of the one you represent. Shakespeare has done so, whether he did it consciously, or whether life assigned him the various roles he played. At one time he is a cheerful optimist; at another, the misogynist Timon, or the world-despiser Hamlet;he is the jealous Othello, the amorous Romeo, so-and-so the panegyrist of women, and so-and-so the misogynist. I believe indeed that he has, by way of experiment, been the murderer Macbeth, and the monster Richard III. He utters the malignant speeches of the last with real relish. Every rascal may defend himself, and Shakespeare is his advocate.
"There the poet should have no grave; his ashes should be strewn to all the winds of heaven. He should only live in his works, if they possess vital power. Men should accustom themselves to look upon him as something different from an ordinary man; they ought not to judge him, but regard him as something which they cannot understand. You remember the dying Epaminondas. When they condoled with him because he left no children, he answered: 'Children? I have Leuktra and Mantinea.'"
Faithful in Little Things.—The pupil said: "I had a friend, who died lately at the age of sixty. According to my view, he has in his own way realised the type of a good citizen and a good man. He was a tradesman, and had passed through a youth of hardship, being from six in the morning till ten at night in the shop, the doorsof which were open even in winter. Under his first master he quickly discovered that dishonest tricks did not pay. Therefore he became rigidly honest, studied the details of his trade, made rapid progress, kept sober and wide-awake. Accordingly he soon became his own master, and wealth came of itself. He married and had children, who turned out excellently in consequence of their father's example. Now, this man lived his whole life according to the teaching he had received in school and church. He did his duty, honoured father and mother, obeyed law and authority, never criticised those who managed the government of the country, which he did not profess to understand. He took no notice of selfish agitations, did not worry himself about the riddle of the universe, and warned his children not to be eager after novelties. He also possessed positive virtues; he was merciful and helpful, faithful and modest.
"When his sons began to study, he did not attempt to vie with them in learning. But when they attacked his childlike faith, he defended it like a man. He never ventured to occupy a public post, for he knew his limits. He never sought for distinctions, nor did he obtain any. Well, what name do the larvæ of the snake-wormgive such a blameless, good, faithful man? They call him 'a servile rascal.' Is that just?"
The teacher answered: "No! it is flagrantly unjust! But there are other types of character, which are also laudable."
"Yes, indeed, but that does not lessen the value of his life; he was faithful in small things."
The Unpracticalness of Husk-eating.—The teacher said: "Young people say, 'What do we want with the wisdom of age? We want to learn for ourselves.' I generally answer, 'Yes, learn for yourselves—from us! What good-fortune to be able to inherit the rich experiences of others, and not to make these expensive, dirty experiments for oneself! If the young commenced where we left off, the world and humanity would progress with giant strides. Instead of this everyone begins afresh, that is, in the moral sphere. When it is a question of making a new incandescent lamp, we do not begin with a machine for generating electricity, but continue from the latest discovery of our predecessors.
"I have also asked myself whether it is necessary first to be burnt in order to dread the fire. I have never seen my children go to the ovenand lay hold of the red dampers to see whether they would be burnt. They let themselves be warned, and therefore escaped the painful experience. I have asked myself whether one must first feed with the swine before one can appreciate the food of the household, and whether the Prodigal Son is a necessary transitionary type. But to all these stupid and impertinent questions life has given a negative answer.
"Swedenborg says that all sin and wickedness leave traces behind them, but that these are not apparent in the human face till old age. Subsequently, in the disrobing-room on the other side, they look as if they had been thrown through a magnifying-glass on a white screen. I once looked into an attic-room; the curtain was drawn aside, and an old man put out his head in order to look at the sun. When he saw me he hid his face immediately.
"That was a face!... God protect us!"
A Youthful Dream for Seven Shillings.—The teacher said: "There are people who carry about with them a measuring-rule for everything. They demand exactness and order; they love perfection in all things. They are called discontented, carping, pedantic. But it is unfairto blame them. If one is content with the mediocre, one will at last only get the worst. Men give only as little as they can, and the whole of life is defective. Conscientious men are not happy, for they cannot lower their demands; they appear to simpletons who have not learnt, that nothing is what it gives itself out to be, that nothing answers the expectations we formed of it. One is inclined to ask whether such men bring with them at birth recollections of a place or a condition where ideal perfection existed. When I was seven years old, I often remained standing fascinated before a music-dealer's shop window, and contemplated a hunter's horn which was hung up there. There was something charming in the proportions of these curved lines. This brass tube tapered off beautifully from the great width of its bell-mouth to its narrowed mouthpiece. In the gloomy street it made me hear nature's music in woods and fields; I loved the instrument. But when a boy told me that it cost thirty shillings, I wondered whether life would ever fulfil my desire, for in order to buy it I would have to go for two and a half years without breakfast. Finally I got to be thirty years old, and had some money to spare for the first time in my life. I bought the hunting-horn;it cost only seven shillings; the boy had told a lie. But the instrument had only three notes. When I got tired of my prize it was consigned to the attic.
"It was, at any rate, the fulfilment of a youthful dream!"
Envy Nobody!—The teacher said: "Envy nobody! As a child I was boarded out in the country in mean surroundings. I lived in a kind of shanty, ate from an earthenware plate, sat on a wooden stool. But there was a castle in the neighbourhood, a real castle, with portraits of kings in the entrance-hall, the ancestors of the young count who lived there. One Sunday we were allowed to go, first into the castle, then into the garden. That was paradise! We could bathe, and were allowed to pick the cherries, blood-black, gold-yellow, fire-red. The count looked on, but ate nothing; he had had enough. Then we left, and the gate of paradise was shut behind us.
"Fifty years later I saw the portrait of the young count, and heard his history. He looked unhappy and despairing, as though he were weary of everything. He had passed through the bitterest experiences of life, including poverty for a time. His affairs came into liquidation, andhe had to spend ten years abroad in an hotel, his expenses being defrayed by his creditors. He also had his wife with him, who, as she thought, had married into paradise, in order to be immediately driven out of it again. The man had been nothing and had done nothing; all he could do was to wait for his meals. He had possessed horses and a yacht; he had gambled and borrowed money; he had eaten truffles and drunk wine; but when he was forty had to give it up, for his nose grew red and he had gout in his great toe. I will not speak of his domestic miseries.
"Now he sits in his castle, rich as Crœsus, but lonely, and educates his housekeeper's children, which are his, but which cannot bear his name. His evening meal consists of gruel, and he goes to bed at half-past nine. He dares not use his wine-cellar, for then his great toe aches. His solitary comparative pleasure is to be able to walk, in order to eat his gruel and be able to sleep. Envy nobody!"
The Galley-slaves of Ambition.—The teacher said: "Balzac speaks in one place of the galley-slaves of ambition, and describes their condition very much as Swedenborg describes certain of his hells, or as Homer depicts Tantalus, Ixion,and the Danaides. They are ceaselessly haunted by their passion to be superior to others; to be seen and heard before all others. The malice and love of power which this involves are necessarily punished. When the ambitious man cannot be the first and only one he becomes ill. Voltaire had to go to bed when a prince travelled past his house without visiting him. If one of such people's letters remains unanswered they think it is a sign that their credit has sunk, and they worry about the reason of it till they grow how hypochondriacal. If they read in the paper such and such important people were present when the king landed, and their names are omitted, the world is darkened for them. That is to say, it is not enough for them that they should be praised and called the greatest; they suffer pains like death when others are eulogised. They feel perpetual fear lest they should be set aside and their juniors get ahead of them. In that they resemble a great criminal who expects to be detected. The portrait of an ambitious man has a great resemblance to that of a galley-slave. Imperiousness, hatred, fear—especially fear—are depicted in his face.
"Balzac, on the other hand, was impelled by the noble ambition to make discoveries, and todo good work in which he took pleasure. But his own life was hidden. Unknown and misunderstood in his own Paris, which he had discovered, he saw petty chroniclers obtain the first prizes without being made ill by it. And when, at the age of fifty-one, he had succeeded in making a home for himself, into which he was about to bring his first and only wife, he died on the day of the publication of the banns. A fine death after a life of renunciation!"
Hard to Disentangle.—The teacher said: "With age, as is well known, one arrives at a different view of life than one had formerly. Then, on account of its wealth and variety, life is almost immeasurable, and above all, very difficult to disentangle.
"At the age of forty I came home after an absence of many years. On my arrival I received a dunning letter from an antiquarian bookseller. Curiously enough, without my being able to explain why, this debt caused me no further uneasiness of conscience. But then a friend came and advised me to settle the matter, as the bookseller was spreading an evil report about me. I went and paid the trifling account, but the bookseller looked so uneasy and strange, wasso polite and grateful, that I began to reflect about him. When I came home I remembered this: twenty years previously I had entrusted him with an antique work of art to sell. After I had visited the man several times in his shop and the article had not been sold, I felt ashamed to go any more, began to think of something else, and forgot the matter. His present thankfulness showed that he had not forgotten it; we were then quits, if he did not still owe me something.
"Now I felt ashamed on his account, and determined not to mention the matter. But then it occurred to me that I owed his predecessor a sum of money for books. I went again, found him showing the same uneasy manner as before, and asked for his predecessor's address. He was in America. I asked whether he had relatives here in the town. He had none. I went home and thought to myself, 'Then we must drop that matter also.' In this way, in old age, one must alternate pay and let go; now as a debtor, now as creditor. But who strikes the balance of accounts? The goddess of justice, and she is neither deaf nor blind."
The Art of Settling Accounts.—The teacher continued: "It really looks as though we couldnot go hence till everything is settled, great and small alike. Recently there died an early friend of mine, who, at an important juncture, had helped me with a hundred kronas.[1]I had at first regarded it as a loan. But he never dunned me, and during the forty years which have since elapsed he was gradually transformed in my memory into a benefactor, and all was well. When at last he died a millionaire, I did not wish to trouble his executors with the trifle, but sent a wreath to the funeral with a sigh of gratitude and many kindly thoughts. Was that the end? No! Shortly afterwards I felt a kind of inward admonition to resume relations with a bookbinder whom I had ceased to employ on account of his carelessness. He came and was glad to get work again; he was greatly pleased, and declared that I had appeared just in time to deliver him. When I understood his difficulties, for he had a family, I was willing to give him fifty kronas in advance, but as I had no change I gave him a hundred, though reluctantly. I saw how his back straightened itself, and his confidence in life reawoke. He went—and never returned. I was angry at first, because he had treated me like a fool, and I dunned him with letters. Butthen the memory of my departed friend recurred; various thoughts wove themselves together in my mind—the pleasure of calling him a scamp, the fifty-krona note which had turned into a hundred-krona note, the scamp's need, and the part I had played as deliverer. In my own mind I gave him a discharge, and became quite quiet."
[1]A krona = 1s. 3d.
[1]A krona = 1s. 3d.
Growing Old Gracefully.—The teacher continued: "When one becomes old, one wonders at first how men have, as it were, permission to do one an injustice. If one complains, one finds no sympathy. Even our friends take the part of those who injure us. But when we have discovered the secret of it, we take it all quietly. One is cheated in ordinary business, and says to oneself, 'This is in requital for that.' Our children prove ungrateful and difficult to manage, exactly like we were. Young people are insolent and pert towards us, and we see our former selves reflected in them. Servants do their work badly, and perpetrate petty thefts; we must put up with it, when we think of our own work scamped on various occasions. Friends are faithless, just as we have been ourselves. By practice one comes at last so far, that one asks for no more,demands no more, and is no longer angry. I then always think of David when Shimei cast stones at him and cursed him, and Abishai wanted to strike off the calumniator's head. David declined to take vengeance, saying, 'Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him.' When the same king, because of his sins, had to choose between famine, pestilence, or raids of the enemy, he prayed 'to fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of man.'
"He understood how to grow old gracefully, and to make up his accounts. So he departed praising God, 'Who proveth the heart and loveth uprightness.'"
The Eight Wild Beasts.—The teacher said: "You know yourself that when one awakes from somnambulism, one finds the world quite mad. Then one loses all hope and all confidence, and believes we are delivered into the power of the Devil. Once during such a moment of awakening, I read the works of the Adventists, and the idea struck me that they were right. They ground their belief on the Revelation of St. John, and say as follows: 'We live in the last era during which the eight wild beasts rule the earth. Of Christianity no trace is to be found: power,wealth, industry, art, science, literature, are in the hands of the pagans. The state-craft of the wild beasts is lying and force, alternating with the most insidious hypocrisy. They preach peace, distribute peace-prizes, build peace-palaces, but are always seeking war in order to be able to rob and tyrannise. If their subordinates believe them, and preach peace themselves, they are thrown into prison. But, says St. John, nations will come from the East and destroy the godless who have rejected Christ. The last battle is to be at Megiddo in Syria. But since all this takes place under God's control, the wild beasts are protected in order to carry out their work of execution. The number of the last wild beast, 666, is not yet interpreted, for it is not yet come. The eight wild beasts you can find in a book, which is calledA de G;[1]of the people of the East you read every morning in your paper. It looks almost as though it were true. The pietists believe it, and keep their lamps burning.'"
Deaf and Blind.—The teacher continued: "Under the rule of the wild beast men have become demoralised. They reject every idea of a retributive justice. If anyone points to aninstance of it, he is suppressed. If a blasphemer loses his tongue, they call it 'Actinomyces,' nothing more. And the obstinacy of the unrepentant revolts against heaven itself: 'It is so far to heaven; what do we know about it? We are ants; no God troubles himself about us.' If something good happens to a man, he attributes it to his own power; if something evil, he calls it 'bad-luck.' Science explains earthquakes by algebra, and if it wants to be very learned, by seismology. The quantity of crime and wickedness whichmustexist is fixed by statistics. And yet heaven is so near. God's invisible servants are around us, in the streets and in our rooms. We do not see them, but those who have eyes, and only they, behold their operations. The world is like a vast institute for the deaf and blind, in which the unfortunates are told by their teachers that they are the only ones who can see and hear. The theosophists say that we are already living two lives—a conscious one on the earth, and an unconscious one above. But most men seem to have broken off communication with the higher plane, and therefore they cannot comprehend what is from above, but have discovered that there is no higher and no lower in the universe."
[1]Not explained in original footnote.
[1]Not explained in original footnote.
Recollections.—The pupil said: "Often has my experience confirmed this saying of the theosophists, that, as well as here, we live also on a higher plane from whence we receive our inspirations, ideas, and intuitions. After such visitations (do they take place by night?) I do not flourish down here, but find everything perverse, defective, absurd. I once conceived the strange idea that I have my true home somewhere else, and that a vague recollection has made me give my present home an arrangement similar to that of my real one.
"In my present abode there was a room which, after certain storms that lasted for two years, was so devastated that it looked as if devils had haunted it. Then a sum of money came into my hands unexpectedly. The next morning I awoke with the distinct determination to repair and furnish the room. I went at once to the upholsterer, and knew so exactly what furniture and curtains I wanted, that when I saw the material it looked to me familiar and welcome. A workman came, proved honest, worked quietly like a spirit, and in a few days the room was ready. When I entered it, I was seized with a sort of ecstatic shiver as though I had already seen this room once before under happy circumstances.And now when I enter the room alone, I see it resembles something which I do not remember, but which waits for me. I seem to know thatthereI am waited for by my only true wife, by my children, friends and relations, and that this incompleteness I see is only a poor copy drawn from a dim recollection. Think, if it only were so!"
Children Are Wonder-Children.—The teacher answered: "What you say accords with Plato's theory of recollection. He believes that all which a child learns is recovered from some previous knowledge. During my long experience it has often happened to me to meet people who, the first time I saw them, seemed like old acquaintances. It seems, too, that the woman we love appears congenial to us, made for us, sent in our way. But most of all is this the case with our children. All children are, in spite of idle talk, wonder-children—till they have learnt to talk. Little children often say things which astound one. They understand all that we say even when we hide it from them. They seem to be thought-readers, divine our most secret purposes, and rebuke us beforehand. 'Don't do that,' said my two-year-old child before my plan was halfformed. 'What?' I asked. The child did not answer, but smiled roguishly and half embarrassed, as though it wished to say, 'You know yourself already.' When the child had learnt to be silent, it pushed with its foot against the chair when the parents' talk bordered on impropriety. Often it spoke like an elder person who understands things better than others. At three years old it pronounced this opinion on the nurse, 'Hannah is very nice, but she does not understand how to treat children.' When her mother was sad, it said, 'Sit down here and don't be sad; I will tell you a story.' I will only add—there was no mimicry about it, as the ape-king would be inclined to believe. What was it then?"
Men-resembling Men.—The teacher said: "It seems as though some errors were necessary and unavoidable. They appear as a kind of infectious virus. A generation is inoculated with it, carries the germ till it has sprouted, and then there is an end of it. Views of the world and man come up, are disseminated, evaporated, and disappear. But those who have been inoculated with them believe they are their own views, because they have assimilated them with their personality. Often the error ends in a compromisewith a new view. Thus Darwinism made it seem probable that men derived their origin from animals. Then came the theosophists with the opinion that our souls are in process of transmigration from one human body to another. Thence comes this excessive feeling of discomfort, this longing for deliverance, this sensation of constraint, the pain of existence, the sighing of the creature. Those who do not feel this uneasiness, but flourish here, are probably at home here. Their inexplicable sympathy for animals and their disbelief in the immortality of the soul points to a connection with the lower forms of existence of which they are conscious, and which we cannot deny. The doctrine that we are created after God's image involves no contradiction, for the spirit is from God; but there is no word which frightens these anthropomorphists so much as the word 'spirit.' Yes, there is one, and that is the word 'spirits,' which makes the fleshy part of them shudder."
Christ Is Risen.—The teacher said: "After we have had Christianity as a civilising agency for nineteen hundred years, people begin to discuss it. Is this the opportune time to ask whether Christ has existed and whether the documentsof Christianity are genuine? It reminds one of the author who wrote a book to prove that Napoleon never existed. It is as if we were now to discover that Cæsar'sCommentariesare false, and that he never conquered Gaul, or as if we discussed whether the discovery of America had been useful. Ibsen's partisans have denied that Columbus discovered America; they say it was Leif Erikssen (perhaps we shall soon hear it was his wife).
"However, Christ returned again at the end of the last century, and was received by all. The pagans depicted him as the poor school-teacher; the anarchists celebrated him as the type of suffering humanity; the symbolists did homage to him as Christus Consolator; the socialists preached his gospel to the obscure, the weary, and heavy-laden. He was to be seen every-where—in the quarters of the French general staff and in the espionage office; in Lourdes and in Rome; on Mont Martre and in Moscow. His churches and convents were purified; his miracles explained by occultists, spiritists, hypnotists; science progressed and confirmed the prophecies. Finally we saw at the congress of religions in Chicago in 1897 that all peoples and religions of the world bent their knees whenChrist's especial prayer, the Lord's Prayer, was recited. Then the believers gave each other the brotherly kiss and greeting, 'Christ is risen!'"
Revolution-Sheep.—The teacher continued: "In the year 1889 we celebrated the French Revolution, but there was little life or order in the celebration. Everything which was uprooted in 1789 still existed—Church and State, kings and courts, priests and officials. The French republic was the worst of all, with its Panama Canal jobbers at the head: Wilson, Herz, Clemenceau, Arton. The constitution was kept alive by bribes, bills of exchange more or less false, and pensions. Offices were created in order to find places for voters, husbands of mistresses, and the discontented. At that time the French republic was governed by criminals, and the Church by pagans. Military and civil orders were sold, works of art bought, votes canvassed for. One could not become a deputy for less than two hundred thousand francs. Then executioners and revolutions were necessary, for the principles of the Great Revolution, if one can talk of principles in connection with a volcano in eruption, were forgotten. Now in the perspective of a hundred years the 'Great' Revolutionappeared only like an execution, a decimation on a large scale; an experiment with negative results, but as such certainly very interesting. One of the recollections of my youth is that when we 'who were born with the ideas of the French Revolution' (ideas revived in 1848) began to talk of the 'Great' Revolution, we were called 'Revolution-sheep.' I did not understand this at the time, for I did not yet think for myself but merely drivelled. But now I understand it. Now we know that the constitution of a country is almost a matter of indifference for the common weal; thus one constitution is not much better or worse than another."
"Life Woven of the Same Stuff as our Dreams"—The teacher said: "Life itself can often appear like a bad dream. One morning I went for a walk in the country, and was absorbed in my thoughts, when a great Danish dog rushed towards me. A young rascal stood near, laughing. I drew my revolver, and exclaimed, 'Call off the dog, or I shoot it.' The young fellow only laughed, the dog retreated, and I went on. On my way back, a man armed with a musket met me, and asked how I dared threaten to shoot his son. I answered, that the threat had onlyreferred to the dog. On the evening of the same day I was told that the dog had been found dead, and that I was suspected of having poisoned it. Although I was innocent, I was regarded as an assassin. That was a nice business!
"Again: one evening I went to see my four-year-old daughter, who waited for me below in the park. From the distance I saw her in the company of two unpleasant-looking children, but she did not see me. As I quickened my steps, I saw that she went off farther with the children. I called her, but she did not hear. I ran and saw her at the entrance of a cellar, into which the children wanted to pull her down. She resisted them, but they took hold of her clothes. Now she screamed, and consequently did not hear my call. I wished to hasten to her, but between us there was a grass lawn, with an iron railing round it, on which I did not venture to tread for fear of the police. So I stood there and called. At last my child pulled herself free, but did not see me. So weirdly things may happen sometimes!"
The Gospel of the Pagans.—The teacher continued: "The gospel of the pagans is immunity from punishment; if one mentions a case where it has gone ill with a scoundrel, the pagans snortand say one is too severe. But it is life which is severe. The gospel of the pagans consists in showing that virtue is simplicity and is seduced; that religion is a disease; that scoundrelism is a form of strength, and ought to conquer by the right of the stronger. Sometimes, by way of a change, they demand that a weak rascal should be pardoned; that everything should be forgiven and tolerated. By 'toleration' they mean that one should let oneself be suppressed and persecuted by them. If one resists, they cry, 'He revenges himself. He is a bad man.' But revenge presupposes some offence as the cause, and when the cause disappears the effect disappears. Certainly there are some men who avenge their own stupidity on the innocent. I have an enemy, who still revenges himself on me because he could not steal my money. The gospel for him would be the law reversed, 'You may steal, but others may not.'"
Punished by the Imagination.—The teacher continued: "Swedenborg speaks of being punished by the imagination. That is what doctors generally call 'hallucination.' He who suffers from persecution-mania is persecuted. The Philistines think he is only persecuted by hisimaginations, but if the wise man asks why he is persecuted by his imaginations, conscience answers by ceaselessly endeavouring to discover the persecutor. The patient goes through the whole list of the persons whom he has offended. If they are many in number, and their hatred is justified, one may well suppose that the sick man is persecuted by their hatred, for which his awakened conscience is now receptive.
"In my inner life punishment by hallucinations has played the chief part; but after I had discovered the rationale of it, I regarded the hallucination itself as a punishment. The severest form of punishment is suspicion, when I am obliged to suspect the innocent. That is irresistible. My thoughts sway between trust and mistrust. I struggle and conquer myself gradually, either by acknowledging myself wrong, or by accepting the breach of faith resignedly. But if I give vent to suspicion I must ask for pardon; then I take this humiliation as a discharge. Most of my misfortunes have been imaginary; but they have had the same effect as real ones, because I came to the consciousness of my own wrong-doing. The incurable man is the obstinate one who believes himself wrongfully persecuted by other men.
Bankruptcy of Philosophy.—"When Kant during the dark period of the 'Illumination' had proved that philosophy can prove nothing, he set up the theory of the categorical imperative and postulate,i.e.the demands of religion and morality. Put in plain language, that is equivalent to faith. This declaration of the bankruptcy of philosophy saved men from useless brain-cudgelling. Christianity revived, now supported by the philosophers with Hegel at their head. But the old stream flowed parallel with it once more. In spite of the bankruptcy of philosophy, notes of exchange were issued and cashed by the dunder-headed free-thinkers Feuerbach and Strauss. They wanted to approach God with the everyday intelligence which one uses in kitchens and grocers' shops. The last fool was Renan, whose cheques still circulate mostly among college-students and the like. At the beginning of the last century E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote thus: 'In ancient times we had a simple generous faith; we recognised that there was a Higher, but knew also that our senses were insufficient to reach it. Then came the "Illumination," which made everything so clear, that for sheer clearness not a trace could be seen. And now we are told that the supernatural is to be grasped by a firm arm offlesh and bone.' To-day it is called the Science of Religion. That is a science which starts from the false presupposition that religion is a mental disease because it cannot be mathematically proved."
A Whole Life in an Hour.—The teacher said: "I had a strange experience, which I have not understood, but which I must remember. I woke up one morning feeling cheerful without any special reason. Obeying an impulse, I went into the town. As I wandered about at random, I came into the quarter where I had been born and brought up. I saw the kindergarten and school I used to attend, and my parents' house. I went through narrow streets and passed by the national school in which I was worried as a student-teacher. I saw two different houses in which I had suffered as a private tutor. I went northwards and came to another school in which I had been tortured. In a market-place I passed another house in which, during my childhood, our only acquaintance lived, and twenty years later in the same dwelling there lived my worst enemy. I passed by a house in which my sister had been married thirty years before, and another house in which my brother had had a hardstruggle. Then I came to a third school in which I was a student; in the same house lives still my first and last publisher. I passed by a house where, forty years ago, I was accepted as an aspirant for the stage, and where I offered my first drama; also by the house where I was married for the first time. Then the meaning of it began to grow clearer. I saw the furniture warehouse whence I ordered my furniture the last time. I passed by the house where my wife and child lived three years ago.
"In the space of one hour I had seen the panorama of my whole life in living pictures. Only three years were wanting to the present time. It was like an agony or a death-hour when the whole of life rushes past one.
"Then I felt drawn northward where my last child and her mother live. An instinct told me to bring perfume for the mother and school-fees for the child, as that day it was going to the kindergarten for the first time. Then I began to hunt for the perfume; it ought to have been lilac, but I had to take lily-of-the-valley. I also wanted flowers, but could not find any.
"So I continued northwards and came to their house; the sun shone in, the table was spread for coffee; there was an air of comfort, homeliness,and kindness over all. I was received in a friendly way, felt in a moment that the whole of my black life lay behind me, and realised the happiness of merely being alive."
The After-Odour.—The teacher continued: "As I went thence, I felt the happiness of the present. All the past was only the dark background. I was thankful in my heart, when I remembered all I had come through without perishing. When I came home, I learnt through the telephone that my worst enemy had died on the morning of this very day. His death-struggle was taking place at the very time that I made the pilgrimage through my past life. I reflected: Why should I pass through my agony just when he died? He was a 'black man'[1]with an obsolete materialistic view of things which he thought was modern; a literary huckster who wrote reviews of marchionesses' rubbishy books, in order to be invited to their castles, and praised his associates as long as they consorted with him; the partisan of a coterie and a log-roller.
"I had never come into personal contact with him, but once, a long time ago, he had called himself my pupil. He could not however grow,nor follow me upwards. It was now as though my old self had died in him. Perhaps therefore I suffered his death and felt it just now. But why the perfume? That I know not. But when I learnt that the deceased decomposed so rapidly that he had to be buried at once, I could not help connecting the perfume with his dissolution. When, eight days afterwards, I read a posthumous review by the deceased of my last work, and saw that he regretted that I was not a pagan and lamented my defection from the Lord of Dung, it was as though I sniffed an after-odour from the dunghole, and I seized the perfume-flask in good earnest."
[1]Strindberg's expression for a free-thinker.
[1]Strindberg's expression for a free-thinker.
Peaches and Turnips.—The teacher continued: "At the same time a similar death happened. Another of the 'Black Flags' departed under peculiar circumstances two days after the first. I had known this man during the period in which the ape-king ruled. We did not like each other, but like condemned criminals were compelled to keep together. Our friendship was only the reverse-side of a hatred; his hideous appearance frightened me; his profession was equally repulsive, but brought in much money. He wrote according to the taste of the time, and lived in the false idea that he was 'illuminated' andliberal-minded. When his father died, the son expressed his regret that 'his father had recovered the faith of his childhood.' What happened then? The son who lived in faith in wickedness and ugliness, began to develop this faith in a peculiar way. He had in his writings shown a predilection for turnips; in his latter days he inoculated peaches with turnip-juice in order to make the southern fruit partake of the beautiful flavour of the latter. The same perverse taste was evident in his last book; there his sympathy is decidedly on the side of the 'blacks.' He ended in an asylum. He could not be saved, for he did not know how to seek the Saviour. So he died. I had just regretted not having sent some flowers to his grave, when I saw in an obituary notice that the dead man had vented a noisome lie against me, which a bosom friend of his now repeats in print. In the same notice the world is threatened with his posthumous writings. When they come out, I will buy a flower and hold it under my nose, while I breathe a sigh of gratitude to him, who restored to me the faith of my childhood and saved me from the mad-house."
The Web of Lies.—The pupil said: "I am eight-and-fifty years old; have lied less thanothers; and have therefore always believed what others said. When, in my old age, I sit together with friends of my youth and make comparisons, I find that my whole life is a web of lies. Last night I sat with such a friend, and had a protracted talk of the following intelligent kind. I said, 'When the Prince of X. married....' 'Married! He isn't married.' 'Isn't he? Is that a lie too?' 'He has never been married.' 'Now during twenty years I have spread it abroad that he was married, and a whole story has been built on this lie, which I was about to relate, but now I must drop it.'
"Here is another lie! During thirty years I have told people that Dr. H. was present when the Malunger murderer was executed. He had falsely informed me that, as a medical student, he had received a commission to examine the head after it had been cut off. He gave me such interesting details on the subject that I was accustomed to describe them in company. What a liar he was!
"'But hewasthere.' 'Was he there?' 'Certainly; I saw him standing behind the priest when I took a photograph of the scaffold.' 'You? Have you ... Are you lying or is he?' 'I am not.' 'No; now I don't know where I am. Everythingis topsy-turvy. For the last ten years I have retracted the lie which I had spread. I have made Dr. H. a liar! One ought never to speak or write, but only draw the things which one absolutely needs. He was then really there! How can I restore to him his honour, of which I have robbed him?'"
Lethe.—The teacher answered: "This whole web of lies, errors, misunderstandings, which forms the basis of our lives, transforms life itself into something dreamlike and unreal, and must be dissolved when we pass into the other life. I read to-day of a dying man. Instead of seeing his life pass by him, as is usually the case, his whole life dissolved into a cloud; his memory failed; all bitterness and all trouble disappeared; and on the other hand, all his disappointed hopes assumed an aspect of reality. He thought he was loved by his wife, who had been cold to him; he thanked her for all the tenderness which she had never shown him. The children who had deserted him he saw again in the bright light of youth; he seemed to hear the sound of little feet upon the floor, the characteristic of a happy home, and his face wore a happy smile. The dark autumn weather outside changed into spring;little girls handed him roses to kiss in order to enchance their value. Finally he saw himself and his family in an arbour drinking coffee out of Dresden china cups, into which they dipped yellow saffron-cakes.... Then he fell into his last sleep. It was a beautiful and enviable death; it was paradise. From the ancient Lethe he drank forgetfulness of the troubles he had undergone before he trod the Elysian fields. If it only were so! To drag all one's bygone filth with one in memory cannot be favourable to a new life in purity. There are illnesses in which one loses memory. May death prove to be such an illness!"
A Suffering God.—The teacher said: "The idea of a suffering God was foolishness to the Greeks, who considered a God as a tyrant gloating over the sufferings of men. But the seeming contradiction is solved if one supposes that a Holy Being deposits itself, so to speak, in humanity, and that humanity then becomes defiled. That is a boundless grief like his who has deposited the best part of his soul and his emotions with a woman. If she then goes and defiles herself, she defiles her husband. Or a father's nature has passed over to his children, and he wishes to see his best impulses continued and multiplied bythem, and his likeness ennobled. If the children dishonour themselves, the father suffers; the stem withers when the roots are injured.
"Such I imagine to be the feelings of God the Father when the sinfulness of humanity grows noisome and dishonours Him, and perhaps threatens to affect His own holiness. He will be wroth and lament—perhaps even feel Himself defiled—rather than cut off the cancerous limb of humanity. Christ is no more represented as beautiful, but with features distorted by the sins of others; these he has taken on himself or drawn to himself, for he who approaches pitch is defiled. In order to be free from the impure element he must die by the destruction of the body. Incarnation involved the greatest suffering of all.
"But the death of Christ may also signify that the Father freed himself from the sins of humanity, and broke off connection with the evil race who dishonoured Him. He who will now seek Him must rise to His heights, and gain admission by a pure life. He Himself will descend no more into this valley of filth; the air is too thick, the company too mixed. And that is why things are as they are."
The Atonement.—The teacher said: "Thework of the Atonement has been very difficult for me to understand. Often I have tried to explain in a way satisfactory to myself, but without success. If God had offered up His Son as an atonement for mankind, there would necessarily have been peace and paradisal quietness on earth, but such is not the case. The period of the Roman emperors before Christ was indeed terrible, but the next thousand years were no better; they rather resembled a deluge in which the old nations were exterminated by barbarians. The second millennium was better, very much better. The third will perhaps close with a complete reconciliation between humanity and God. Everything points to that, though the heathen may reign for a while as instruments of chastisement, and executioners and possessors of wealth. The Egyptian has an important part to play, and slavery is not bad as a school of discipline. In the desert one learns the difficult art of loneliness, and in the strange land of Assyria one feels a wholesome home-sickness. Still, when the Egyptian raises his stick to strike, comfort yourself with Christ's words to Pilate, 'Thou wouldest have no power over Me, if it were not given thee from above.' And when you eat the bread of the heathen, think like the Maccabees, 'I eat thy bread, but I donot sacrifice upon thy altar.' Everything is tolerable so long as we do not let ourselves be beguiled into believing that those who are in power are God's friends and favourites. Our fine gentlemen who imagine that they are forwarding development and are the sole trustees of right, progress, and illumination, are only children of this world. Let that be granted them, and much good may it do them!"
When Nations Go Mad.—The teacher said: "Nations are sometimes seized by madness as by other diseases. The Javanese are said to suffer from chronic madness; the men run amuck with a knife in order to slay; the women suffer from a mania for mimicry; if they see anyone throw something into the air, they imitate the gesture; they can even under such circumstances throw their children away. The Japanese again are attacked by megalomania; someone begins to shout, 'We will conquer China!' and his cry is taken up by the whole town and the whole land. The French were raving when, in 1870, they sang 'A Berlin,' and did not even reach the Rhine. Paris was captured. But the French declared it was not captured, but had surrendered. When the enemy had marched in peaceably and sparedthe town, and after peace was concluded the French set their own town on fire. That was madness. Then they shot down thirty thousand of their own countrymen, while in the war itself only eighty thousand French had fallen."
"But some nations are seized by a mania for suicide. I know a land from which people emigrate at the rate of a hundred a day; in which the only important industry—iron-mining—is hampered by an export duty; that is suicide. In the same land, where the taxes are generally collected by levying distraints, they voted forty million pounds for the army; but when the muster-rolls came to be made up, the men were not to be found. In the same country the State maintains a railway of a hundred miles in length; recently the train came in with one passenger, whose journey had cost the State more than a thousand kronas. That is suicide."
The Poison of Lies.—The teacher said: "Let us return to life, and to men whom we think we know better than anything else, although self-knowledge is the hardest of all. A perpetual accusation which people bring against each other is that of lying. All lie more or less—by omitting principal points and emphasising secondary ones,or by colouring matters of fact. Often they do it with an excusable purpose; for instance, when a friend is being spoken about.
"But there are men who seem to be composed of falsehood and deceit. Such are the liars from necessity, who lie in order to obtain something; such, too, are the liars from ostentation, who lie in order to be superior to others, and to keep them down. One may be poisoned in the atmosphere which they spread around them.
"There is a pair of liars whom I have never seen, but often heard spoken about. When I merely hear about them and their falsehoods, I feel my brain affected, and their poison works telepathically on my nerves. The pair are dogged by misfortune, and live alone. They tell each other lies also, and pretend to themselves that they are martyrs, although their misfortunes are solely due to their deceits. They believe that they are persecuted by men, while, on the contrary, men fly from them. Such they have been since childhood, and seem unable to change. Perhaps their mendacity is a form of punishment, for 'they that hate the righteous shall be guilty.'"
Murderous Lies.—The teacher continued: "When one lives on intimate terms with liars, oneruns a risk of becoming a liar oneself. One believes what they say, bases his views on their falsehoods, spreads their false reports in good faith, defends their sophistries, and is entangled in their deceits. Moreover, one's whole view of life is distorted, one loses contact with reality, lives in a fictitious world of feeling, regards friends as foes and foes as friends, thinks one is loved while one is hated, and vice versa.
"On one occasion a liar with whom I lived on intimate terms made me think that my last book had been a failure. For five years I believed it, suffered under the belief, and lost my courage. On my return to Sweden I found that the book had had a great success. Five years had been struck out of my life; I was nearly losing self-respect and the courage to support existence. That is equivalent to murder. And this behaviour on the part of my only friend, for whom I had worked and made sacrifices, gave me such a shock that all my ideas were confused. It took me years to rearrange them and bring them into proper order. True and false were mingled together: lies became reality, and my whole life seemed as unsubstantial as smoke. I was not far from ruin and the loss of reason."
Innocent Guilt.—The teacher continued: "During the five years in which I believed myself unjustly treated, I also incurred guilt. I had cursed those who had been just towards me, wished evil to my benefactors, repelled my admirers, avoided my adherents. And when I should now have felt remorse for it, I could not do so sincerely. On the one hand I felt myself innocent, and almost the victim of another's falsehood. But the evil which I had done was there, and must be atoned for. Such tangles are not easy to undo. Yet it is not good in life to show mistrust towards men; one must take things easily, without criticism and too careful reckoning. The deceiver says, to be sure, 'He who does not keep a sharp look-out, has himself to blame if he is cheated.' But if one does look out, and will not let oneself be cheated, one is credited with a morbid mistrustfulness. It is not easy to live, and among lawless men it is better to be cheated than to cheat. The Talmud says: 'Be rather among those who are cursed than those who curse; rather among the persecuted than the persecutors: read in the Scripture, No bird is more persecuted than the dove; yet God has chosen it for a sacrifice on His altar.'"
The Charm of Old Age.—The teacher said:"The charms of old age are many. The greatest is the consciousness that it is not long till evening when one can undress and lie down, without the necessity of rising up and dressing again. The diminution of the body's strength lessens its resistance to the free motions of the soul. One's interest in merely temporal matters decreases, and one begins to take a bird's-eye view of things. Seemingly important trifles shrink to insignificance. Old estimates of the values of things are changed. All that one has experienced lies like a litter of straw under one's feet; one stands in it and grows in the midst of one's past. We have found a constant amid all variables, that is, the instability of life, the transitoriness and mutability of all things. Everything is repeated; there are scarcely any surprises. We know everything beforehand, expect no improvement, are no more deceived by false hopes, demand nothing more of men, neither gratitude, nor faithfulness, nor love, only some companionship in solitude. If we are deceived, we think it is part of the play, and even find a sort of consolation in it, because it confirms our views, which we do not like to see refuted. We become, finally, cheerful pessimists. When, on the discovery of a new cheat, we can say, 'What did I tell you?' we feel almost a sense of pleasure."
The Ring-System.—The teacher said: "In our old schools, the pupils were arranged not in classes, but in rings, and the forms were not placed in rows, but in circles. When I read of the circles of Dante's hell, I thought of my old school. But outside in life, I found this ring-system also. Men seemed linked together in concentric circles, each of which formed a little system of views. Each circle spoke its own language, expressed its meaning in old formulas, revered its gods, created its great men, often out of nothing. In each circle they had found the truth, and worked for development, but in a different way to the others. The first circle was really the lowest, but it considered itself the most important, because it was the first. When I read a paper or a book which comes from other circles than mine, I only see so much—that they are mad or stand on their heads. It stifles me, and has a hostile effect. I surmise that the five great races of the earth feel that, when they meet one another. In their minds they are as foreign to each other as though they came from the five great planets, although they have many human characteristics in common."
Lust, Hate, and Fear, or the Religion of the Heathen.—The teacher said: "You know one ofmy tasks in life has been to unmask gyneolatry, the worship of women in history and life. I have called it 'the superstition of the heathen,' because there is something exclusively heathenish about it. Woman-worship is the religion of the heathen, but it is a religion of fear, which has nothing to do with love. Lust, hate, and fear—those are the component parts of it. As soon as a heathen comes in the proximity of a woman, he becomes tame and cowardly; faithless towards his friends, his convictions, and himself. He immediately desires that others should venerate his idol whom he hates and fears. That is a side of his animal self-love.
"Gyneolatry is not Christian in its origin, but heathenish. All animals and savage races fear their women. When heathenism in the Græco-Roman and Moorish colonies of southern France and Italy got the upper hand, then began gyneolatry, the worship of mistresses. This worship was dishonestly confounded with chivalrous reverence for the Madonna, which was quite another thing. This religion of the heathen is the religion of fear and concealed hatred. Therefore all tyrants have been punished by having a woman oppress and torment them. Swedenborg explains the reason."
"Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy."—The teacher continued: "A man's goodwill and generosity towards his wife stands in direct relation to her behaviour. When therefore a woman is ill-treated by her husband, we know of what sort she is. The apparently subordinate position which the woman occupies is the direct result of the position which nature has assigned to this immature transition-form between child and man. The child has also a subordinate position; that is quite natural, and no reasonable man has objected to it. Woman is the earth-spirit who effectuates a certain harmony with the earth-life. To this earth-life we must bring our sacrifice; therefore it is that a man feels at home in his house, and therefore wife and child comfort and protect us against the cold abstraction, life.
"Marriage is the hardest school in which renunciation and self-conquest is learned; it is also a forcing-house for wickedness of all kinds, especially the hellish sin of imperiousness. How low the sons of the Lord of Dung stand on the ladder of development may be seen from their conviction that they are only equal to the woman or subordinate to her. Blinded by this penal hallucination, they work for theirown destruction when they battle for the emancipation of women, for the gods wish to destroy them.
The Slavery of the Prophet.—"Stuart Mill, who became the prophet of the woman's cause, had formed an attachment for another man's wife.[1]As a punishment he had to live in the hallucination that he derived all his thoughts from her. She was indeed his medium, and as such she repeated his thoughts as though they came from her, and he believed she was his superior. When somebody asked if he had received his 'Logic,' which he wrote before he knew her, also from her, he answered, 'Yes.' This sober Positivist, who only believed in tables of statistics, was obsessed by the powerful delusion that the simple-minded woman was his Genius. He could not rise to a higher idea of God. One thing I am sure of: as soon as a man deserts God, he becomes the thrall of a female devil. All tyrants, above and below, are caught in these chains, out of which only God in heaven can help a man. But He can certainly. One sees it in those who have come alive out of this hell. I know one...."
"I know two!" the pupil interrupted.