[1]Mrs. Taylor.
[1]Mrs. Taylor.
Absurd Problems.—The teacher continued: "There are several reasons why woman is depicted as a sphinx by men. She is incomprehensible because her soul is rudimentary, and she thinks with her body. Her judgments are dictated by interests and passions, she draws conclusions according to the state of the weather and the phases of the moon. She will sell her best friend for a theatre-ticket, or leave her sick child to see a balloon ascend. She murders her husband in order to be able to go to a bathing-resort, and forswears her religion for a diamond ring. At the same time she can appear to be a charming woman, tender towards her children, amiable, and before all things polite and affable. She may also appear a good household manager, or at any rate enjoy the reputation of being one. She can produce the illusion that she is quick at apprehension, although she does not really understand a word. She can exhibit sacrifices which are only ostentation, and give away only in order to receive back. Why cannot one guess the riddle of this sphinx? Because there is no riddle there! Why is woman incomprehensible? Because the problem is absurd. She is an irrational function because she operates with variable quantities under the radical signs.
"Nevertheless we take her as a charmingactuality, a delightful child who may pull three hairs out of our beard; but if it pulls the fourth, there is an end to the enchantment."
The Crooked Rib.—The teacher said: "Goethe says in hisDivan,[1]'Woman is fashioned out of a crooked rib; if one tries to bend her, she breaks; if one lets her alone, she becomes still more crooked.' Thus there is nothing to be done. The only tactics one can adopt, as Napoleon did, are flight, or at any rate to break off contact and intimacy. This never fails; if one deprives a woman of the victim of her hatred, she pines away.
"Man loves and woman hates; man gives and woman takes; man sacrifices and woman devours. When the woman wishes to show her superiority in intellect, she commits a rascality. Her utmost endeavour is to deceive her husband. If she can trick him into eating horse-flesh without noticing it, she is happy. When woman gets her milk-teeth, she does not learn to speak but to lie, for speech and falsehood are synonymous for her. Every married man knows all that. But politeness and his own vanity keep him silent. Often he is silent because of his children; often because he is ashamed in the name of humanity. Hethinks how often one has drunk the toasts of mother, wife, sister, daughter—these fictions in a world of deceit, where all is vanity of vanities. But many men are silent because they are afraid of being called 'woman-haters.' They are afraid!"
[1]The saying is originally Muhammed's.
[1]The saying is originally Muhammed's.
White Slavery.—The teacher said: "In the whole of the upper and middle classes and a good way below them the following is the case with regard to marriage: When a man marries, his work, which he can devolve on no one else, increases. His wife, on the other hand, at once gets a servant to do her work; if she has children, then she gets a nurse besides. But she herself sits there without occupation, and tries to kill time with useless trivialities. In this way she can neither get an appetite for dinner, nor sleep at night. In the evening her husband comes home, and wants to enjoy the domestic hearth; but his wife wants to go to the theatre and restaurant. She is not tired, but bored by want of occupation, and therefore wants amusement. Women, in fact, seem not to be born for domestic life, but for the theatre, the restaurant, and the street. Therefore women complain that they must sit at home. Although they have slaves to serve them, they call themselves 'slaves' and hold meetings totheir own emancipation, but not that of their servants. Their animalised husbands support them without observing that they themselves are slaves; for he who works for the idle is a slave. But it is written, 'Ye are bought with a price; be slaves to no man.'"
Noodles.—The pupil asked: "What is a woman-hater?"
The teacher answered: "I do not know. But the expression is used as a term of reproach by noodles, for those who say what all think. Noodles are those men who cannot come near a woman without losing their heads and becoming faithless. They purchase the woman's favour by delivering up the heads of their friends on silver chargers; and they absorb so much femininity, that they see with feminine eyes and feel with feminine feelings. There are things which one does not say every day, and one does not tell one's wife what her sex is composed of. But one has the right to put it on paper sometimes. Schopenhauer has done it the best, Nietzsche not badly, Peladan is the master. Thackeray wroteMen's Wivesbut the book was ignored. Balzac has unmasked Caroline in thePetites Misères de la vie Conjugale. Otto Weininger discovered the deceit at the age of twenty;he did not wait for the consequent vengeance, but went his own way,i.e.died. I have said that the child is a little criminal, incapable of self-guidance, but I love children all the same. I have said that a woman is—what she is, but I have always loved some woman, and been a father. Whoever therefore calls me a woman-hater is a blockhead, a liar, or a noodle. Or all three together."
Inextricable Confusion.—The teacher continued: "If on the other side of the grave there were a Judge Rhadamanthus appointed to arrange the disputes of men, he would never come to an end. Life is such a tissue of lies, errors, misunderstandings, of debts and demands, that a balancing of the books is impossible. I know men who have been lied about their whole lives through. I know of one who was branded through his whole life with the stigma of a seducer, although he has never seduced, but was seduced himself. I know of an uncommonly truthful man who had the reputation of being a liar. I know an honourable man who passed for a thief. I know a man who was three times married, and had children in all three marriages, but was said to be no man, because he, as a man, would not be the slave of his wife. I know many who are sincerely religious and yetare called hypocrites, although the chief point in religion is sincerity. But, on the other hand, I know heathen who professed to be atheists, although in their bedchambers they sang penitential psalms when they were nervous in the dark and feared the consequences of their misdeeds. They were so cowardly that they dared not fall under the suspicion of being religious, but bragged of their courage and strength of character. They would not abandon the Black Flag; they would not be untrue to the ideal of their youth—godlessness. Rascally right and good-hearted stupidity form a problem too complicated for Rhadamanthus himself to solve. Only the Crucified could do it with the single saying which He addressed to the penitent thief, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.'"
Phantoms.—The teacher said: "When intelligence and the power of reflection are matured, and one thinks about men, their outlines begin to dissolve, and they turn into phantoms. Indeed, one never really knows a man; one knows only his own, or others' ideas of him, but when these ideas change, the image of him becomes indistinct and is obscured with a veil. We form our conception of a person whom we have never seenaccording to others' ideas of him. Thus, for example, the personality of a famous painter was described to me by an author. After two years the author had formed another idea of him, and imparted that to me, and I had to alter my view of him. Then there came another describer, and gave me quite a different idea of the painter. He was followed by a third and a fourth. After this I saw the painter's pictures, and could not understand how he could paint in the way he did. But the painter himself I never saw. He has become for me a phantom without clear outlines, composed of different-coloured pieces of glass, which do not harmonise, and alter according to my moods. I expect that when I meet him he will not resemble my idea of him at all, but have the effect of quite another independent phantom."
Mirage Pictures.—The teacher said: "When I have lived for some time in solitude my acquaintances begin to appear like mirage-pictures before me. Some gain by distance, occasion only friendly feelings, and are surrounded by an atmosphere of light and peace. Others whom I really like very well when they are near, lose by absence, and appear to be hostile. Thus I may hate a friend in his absence, look upon him as unpleasant andinimical, but as soon as he comes, enter into friendly contact with him. There is a woman whose proximity I cannot bear, but whom I love at a distance. We write letters to each full of regard and friendliness. When we have longed for each other for a time and must meet, we immediately begin to quarrel, become vulgar and unsympathetic, and part in anger. We love each other on a higher plane, but cannot live in the same room. We dream of meeting again, spiritualised, on some green island, where only we two can live, or, at any rate, only our child with us. I remember a half-hour which we three actually spent hand in hand on a green island by the sea-coast. It seemed to me like heaven. Then the clocks struck the hour of noon, and we were back again on earth, and soon after that, in hell."
Trifle not with Love.—The pupil said: "When a man and a woman are united in love, a single being is the result, whose existence is a positive pleasure, as long as harmony reigns. But this being is an extremely sensitive receptive instrument, and is exposed to disturbances from outer currents which act from all distances, an inconvenience which it shares with wireless telegraphy. Therefore a disturbance of the relationship betweena married pair is the greatest pain which exists. Unfaithfulness is a cosmic crime which brings the one or the other member of the married pair into perverse relations with their own sex. If the husband loves another woman, his wife is exposed to terrible alternate currents; by turns she loves and hates the woman who is her rival. Often she can be the friend of her husband's paramour, but more often her enemy. Whoever comes between a pair who love, does not so with impunity. The hate which he arouses is so terrible, that he can be lamed by the discharge, lose all energy and pleasure in life. Therefore it is rightly said, 'Trifle not with love.'"
A "Taking" Religion.—The pupil said: "When Buddhism, mixed with Vedantism, became fashionable in 1890, all the renegades from Christianity flocked to it and tried to fill the vacuum in their religious lives. Six thousand new gods were received with applause forthwith; the new trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva—encountered no objections; spirits, ghosts, genies, fairies were thought quite natural; Gautama's heaven and hell were thrown into the bargain, accompanied by a slight flavour of asceticism. Those who denied the Resurrection found reincarnation quite a simpleaffair. But the favourite was Krishna. He was the incarnation of the god Vishnu, who descended to earth in order to be born of earthly parents and to save fallen humanity. His coming was prophesied, and so dreaded that a massacre of new-born infants like that at Bethlehem was plotted, but unsuccessfully. Krishna fulfilled his mission, conquered the evil powers, and finally endured a voluntary death. That 'took'! The trinity Brahma, Vishnu, Siva 'took,' but Father, Son, Holy Spirit did not 'take.' Krishna 'took,' but not Christ. It was strange!"
The Sixth Sense.—The pupil continued: "The outer eye can reflect images, the inner eye can conceive them. There are therefore two kinds of sight, an outer and an inner. Of the senses, that of smell is the most immediate when it has to do with the conveyance of impressions. But there seem also to be two kinds of faculties of smell. Swedenborg says that a false man smells of sour gastric juice, but only for the person to whom he has been false. In this case the smell-perception is only subjective, but it is of great objective value in judging men. In this case the organ of smell seems to operate with æther-waves. According to Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences, goodmen exhale sweet perfume, and bad men a stench like that of corpses. He says that misers smell like rats, and so on. Legends of the saints relate that the corpses of those who have kept their souls and bodies pure, when they dissolve, exhale a flower-like perfume. In short, every soul has its scent, which varies according to its characteristics.
"This sixth sense the clothes-hygienist Jäger believed he had discovered after he had begun to observe and train his outer and inner man. I will speak now of my own experiences in the matter. They did not begin till I had passed through the great purgatorial fire which burnt up the rubbish of my soul, and after I had scrambled out of the worst of the mire by self-discipline and asceticism. They are accustomed to boil off the gum from raw silk before it is spun, and so my nerve-fibres seemed to have been 'scoured' by the sufferings of life, and gone through a process like the 'fining' of silk."
Exteriorisation of Sensibility.—The pupil continued: "I happened once, when watching a spider in a web, to see her 'exteriorise her sensibility,' or in other words reel out a nerve-substance for herself with which she remains in touch, and by means of which she becomes aware when flies come andwhen the weather changes. Raspail, who in his masterly works has cast many a far-reaching glance behind the curtains of nature, has in one place philosophised over the spider's web. In other works dealing with transcendent natural sciences, one finds the doubt expressed whether the object of the spider's web is only to be a fly-trap. I myself have counted four and twenty radii in the web of the garden-spider resembling an hour-circle, and have asked myself whether, besides being a barometer and trap, the web is also a kind of clock.
"Now it seems as though I had myself in a similar manner exteriorised my sensibility. I feel at a distance when anyone interferes with my destiny, when enemies threaten my personal existence, and also when people speak well of me or wish me well. I feel in the street whether those I meet are friends or foes; I have felt the pain of an operation undergone by a man to whom I was fairly indifferent; twice I have shared the death-agonies of others with the accompanying corporeal and psychical sufferings. The last time I went through three illnesses in six hours, and when the absent person with whom I suffered was liberated by death, I rose up well. This makes life painful, but rich and interesting."
Telepathic Perception.—The pupil said: "While I lived in the most intimate relations with a woman, I arrived, like Gustav Jäger, at 'the discovery of the soul.' I was always in communication with her, often through obscure sensations, but very often through the sense of smell; these were subjective however, as other people were not aware of them. When she was travelling I knew whether she was in a steamer or on a train; I could distinguish the revolutions of the screw from the vibration of the railway carriage and the puffing of the engine. She used to make her presence felt by me at a certain hour of the day,i.e.five o'clock in the morning. Once, when she was in Paris, this time changed to four o'clock. When I consulted the table of time variations, I found that it was four o'clock in Paris when it was five o'clock with me. Another time she was in St. Petersburg, then our meeting took place an hour later; that also agreed with the time-table. When she hated me, I was conscious of a smell and taste like that of mortalin; this happened one night so distinctly that I had to rise and open the window. When she thought kindly of me, I perceived a smell of incense and often of jasmine, but these scents sometimes changed into sensations of taste. When she was in society without me I felt that shewas away, and when the conversation turned on me I was aware whether they were speaking good or ill about me."
Morse Telepathy.—The pupil continued: "I was spending one evening at home alone; I did not know where she was, but had the feeling that she was lost to me. At 10.40P.M.I was aware of a passing breath of perfume. Then I said to myself, 'She has been in the theatre! But in which?' I took the daily paper, read the theatre advertisements, and found that one theatre closed at 10.40. Further inquiry proved that my surmise was right.
"On another occasion when in company I broke off a lively conversation with a smile. 'What are you smiling at?' 'Just now the train from the south entered the terminus.' Another time under similar circumstances I said: 'Now the curtain falls on the last act inHelsingfors!' and I heard the applause which greeted the prima donna who had played in my piece. The conversation of the people in the restaurant after the conclusion of the piece sounded like ringing in my ears. I can hear that as far as from Germany when a prima donna is acting in one of my pieces there, although I do not know beforehand that it is going to be played. One evening I had gone tobed about half-past nine, and was awoken about half-past eleven by a smell of punch and tobacco and in the impression that two of my acquaintances in a café were talking about me. I had every reason to believe that I had been present there in some way or another, but I was so accustomed to this phenomenon that this time I did not test it. Flammarion gives a hundred such cases in his bookThe Unknown."
Nisus Formativus, or Unconscious Sculpture.—The pupil continued: "Once I signed a contract with a merchant. After sleeping the night over it, I noticed that he had cheated me. With angry thoughts I went out for my morning stroll. When I came back I wished to change my clothes, and threw my handkerchief on the table. After I had undressed myself I noticed that the handkerchief had been crumpled together by my nervous clutch, and now, where it lay, formed a cast of the merchant's head, like a plaster-of-Paris bust. The question arises: Had my hand unconsciously formed an image of my thoughts? Linen is a very plastic material, and one often finds excellent pieces of 'sculpture' in handkerchiefs, sheets, and cushions. When a married man comes home with his wife from a ball, he should look at the handkerchiefchief which she has held the whole evening in her hand, and then perhaps he might see with whom she preferred most to dance.
"In India a Buddhist priest is said to represent the 208 incarnations of Vishnu by putting his hand in a linen bag, and moulding rapidly from within the linen of the bag into the shapes of an elephant, tortoise, etc. When St. Veronica's napkin retained the impress of Christ's face, that is not more improbable than that my pillow in the morning should show the impress of faces which are not like mine. I have read of Indian vases which are so modelled that at first one only sees a chaos resembling clouds, twisted entrails, or the convolutions of the brain. After the eye has become accustomed to this the confusion begins to be disentangled; all kinds of objects such as plants and animals emerge in clear outline. Whether all observers see the same I know not. But I believe that the moulder of the vase has worked unintentionally and unconsciously."
Projections.—The pupil continued: "But there are also projections which I cannot explain. It is possible that only poets and artists possess the power so to project their inward images in every life that they become half real. It is quite a usualoccurrence that the dying show themselves to their absent friends. Living persons can also appear at a distance, but only to those who keep them in their thoughts. I used to show my initiated friends the following phenomenon: I observed a stranger who resembled an absent acquaintance. As soon as my eye completed the image, whatever unlikeness remained was erased. 'See, there goes X.,' I said. My friends saw the resemblance, understood that it was not X., comprehended my meaning, and agreed with me without further thought. If we shortly afterwards met X. we were astonished, and attempted to find no explanation in face of the inexplicable latter part of the phenomenon.
"But one day I went down a street and 'saw' my friend Dr. Y. who lived fifty miles away. It was he, and yet it was not he. It was the same little figure although somewhat wavering and uncertain. The grey-yellow face was also the same although almost ghost-like, with deep furrows which followed the oval lines of the face, and with the forced laugh of suffering. When I came home I read in the paper that the man was dead."
Apparitions.—The pupil continued: "One evening I passed a well-known theatre while a performancewas going on inside. There was no one outside. Suddenly on the pavement I saw an actor who had died thirty years previously, after he had first gone crazy with vexation because he had failed as an actor in this very theatre. His face, like that of my deceased friend the doctor's, was lined with those parallel furrows which run from the forehead to the jaw. 'Was it he, or not?' I asked myself, and left the question open. On another occasion I was travelling by rail in a foreign country. The train halted at a station for three minutes. On the platform in broad daylight a man was going up and down with a paint-box in his hand. He looked nervous and suffering and was badly dressed. 'That is he!' I thought. 'How has he got here? Why has he come down in the world?' During this three minutes I suffered all the tortures of uncertainty and of a bad conscience, for I was partly to blame for his misfortune and his poverty. The train went on, and I have never discovered whether it were really he. It was certainly improbable.
"Yet another time I was travelling by rail. At a remote station a man came into my compartment and sat opposite me. I thought he was an acquaintance, but he looked at me unrecognisingly. Then I let my eyes fall. Immediately he regardedme with an ironical smile which I again recognised. 'It is he,' I thought, 'but he will not greet me.' So I suffered for some hours. My conscience endured all that I owed him. Whether it really was he I know not, but the effect was the same."
The Reactionary Type.—The teacher said: "Men seem to react against themselves and their own bad qualities when they demand from others what they cannot themselves do. A man who is full of hate demands to be loved. A faithless deceiver came lately to me and finished his wily talk by saying, 'All I ask is that you trust me!' He only asked that in order that he might be able to deceive me. But perhaps he trusted me more than himself; he did not know himself, but had an inkling of what he was. Perhaps he felt that my belief in him would strengthen and elevate him, and might possibly neutralise his untrustworthiness. It sounded at any rate very naïve, and I felt myself honoured by the compliment.
"Again, a spendthrift who had no means of his own always cautioned me to be frugal. He gave brilliant parties, but when he came to me he only got potatoes and herrings, and yet he thought that was beyond my means. On one occasion I had bought 200 grammes of nickel-sulphate for mychemical experiments. They cost fifty-two pence. The spendthrift came to visit me, looked at the sulphate, and exclaimed, 'Can you afford it? Nickel-sulphate which is so dear.' Fifty-two pence! Then he invited me to a drive in a carriage, and a meal which cost fifty-two kronas for an altogether unproductive purpose. When he had to pay the reckoning he suffered torments. Perhaps he was by nature a skinflint, who had yielded to a mania for extravagance and reacted against it. I tried to explain this once to him, as on principle I wished to think well of the man."
The Hate of Parasites.—The teacher continued: "There are men who are spiritually so empty that they only live on others. I have an acquaintance (when one is over fifty one does not ask for friends any more) who constantly visits me but never says anything. Our social intercourse consists in my speaking alone. When he leaves me after several hours, I feel as if I had been undergoing blood-letting. It is certainly good to be able to talk oneself out often, but one would often like to have an answer to one's questions; but I never get an answer, not even to a question in his own special line. I can only remember one expression which this man used, and that wasextraordinarily stupid. Somebody had slandered me, and my 'acquaintance' had believed every word and painted my figure in false colours. Finally one evening I defended myself, and proved that my slanderer was not in his right senses. He rejected my explanation, exclaiming 'Fie! how cynical you are!'
"What did this answer mean? First, that I must not wash myself clean, for he wanted to have me dirty; secondly, that he gave me the lie; thirdly, that his sympathies were on the side of the slanderer. I draw the inference that this man hated me, and therefore visited me. If he could not have intercourse with me, he could not abuse my confidence and gratify his hate. His tactics were—to live my life, to devour my soul, to gnaw my bones. The attraction he felt to me he called sympathy, though it was antipathy. There are many kinds of hate, and a wife's 'love' to her husband is a variety of hate. She desires his virile power in order to become a husband and make him into a passive-wife."
A Letter from the Dead.—The teacher said: "It seems as though one could live the life of another parallel with one's own, or as though onemight be in touch with a stranger on another continent. One morning I received a letter of twenty-quarto pages from America. Long letters make me nervous; they always begin with flattery and end with scolding. I read, as I usually do, the signature first, which was unknown to me. Then I dipped into the letter here and there, and saw that the writer wished to influence me. One word pricked me like a needle, and I tore the letter into small pieces which I threw in the paper-basket. In the night I dreamt that the remarkable man,[1]who seemed still to guide my steps after his death, showed me an old manuscript which I had not found worth reading. The old servant held the manuscript against the light, and then I saw like a water-mark another writing between the lines. Immediately afterwards I saw in my dream a broken-off leaden wire, but closer inspection showed its surface to be gold. When I awoke in the morning I understood the dream in its perfectly clear symbolism. I went to the paper-basket, collected the fragments of the stranger's letter, and spent six hours in piecing them together. Then I began to read. I should premise that the handwriting was so like that of my deceasedand honoured teacher, that I believed I was reading a letter from the dead."
[1]He refers probably to the Chief Librarian in the Royal Stockholm Library, where he had been an assistant in his youth.
[1]He refers probably to the Chief Librarian in the Royal Stockholm Library, where he had been an assistant in his youth.
A Letter from Hell.—"The letter pricked me like a packet of needles. But it was so interesting that I was continually lured onward to read to the end. The writer began by saying that he had received his first intellectual awakening through my books. Since then his course for twenty years had been very irregular; led astray by the prevailing ape-morality, he had gone in evil ways. In the midst of his wandering, it happened to him as to Dante and others—he came into hell, but found a Virgil who led him out and saved him. Then his own real life began. He passed all the sciences from philosophy to chemistry under critical review, and found them consisting of mere conventional lies. He drifted about helplessly till he found an anchorage-ground in faith in Christ, the Exorciser of demons, the highest Wisdom, the Redeemer who saves from doubt, despair, and madness.
"During the perusal I felt sometimes as though I were reading my own life or a satire on it. Annoyed by what seemed a tactless encroachment, I often wished to throw the letter away but could not; the dream always recurred tome, and the letter contained new and bold ideas sparkling in a chaos of contradictions and paradoxes. In short, it proved a turning-point in my life. It exposed my faults, but showed me at the same time that I had held the right course, in spite of the deflections and cross-currents to which I had been exposed."
An Unconscious Medium.—"Now let me say a few words about my deceased mentor, who already in his lifetime exercised a great influence on my development, though without knowing or wishing it. I was young, precocious, dull, and untrustworthy, mostly because I wished to preserve my personal independence, but also because I was godless, and consequently immoral without any other principle except that of getting on. He, my chief, attracted me, in spite of the fact that I was antipathetic to him in most things. My position required that I should serve him devotedly, but I wished also to serve my own interests. He was a spiritist and Swedenborgian, but I was a materialist. This he was aware of, because I was brutally truthful. But struggle as I might, I came under his influence and became his medium. There were days on which he was so blind that he could not read the old manuscripts which hewas editing. One day he gave me a mediæval codex in a difficult character, and half in joke told me to read it. I read it at once, without having learnt the character. Then he had discovered me. But I worked alone, although unconsciously. One day I stumbled on a pile of old documents, and found a date which he had been hunting for for twenty years. Another time I found an historic detail of great importance which altered our ideas of our early history. One day our paths diverged.
The Revenant.—"Years passed. I lived abroad, but my thoughts often reverted to the savant who had had a great influence on my life. Often, without any special reason, I spoke of him for hours at a time—not always with the respect which I owed him. I was, it must be remembered, a pioneer, to whom nothing was sacred, neither parents nor teacher. One day I heard that the old man was dead. Eight days later there appeared in the paper this mysterious announcement. An intimate friend of the deceased received, eight days after his death, through the post, a letter from him. The paper considered it a jocose mystification on the part of the deceased, who loved jokes. I guessed who might have been entrusted with theletter, but felt astonished that a dying man could take such pleasure in jesting, especially about things which he had taken so seriously. When, two years later, began the experiences described in my bookInferno, I felt that I was in touch with my departed teacher. There were certain roguish traits in the phenomena which reminded me of him. I remember one night addressing the question to the darkness, 'Is it you?' The whole affair was in his style, teasing in form, but well-meaning in purpose. I received no answer, but the impression remained—a mixture of terrible grim earnest and behind it a friendly smile, comforting, pardoning, protecting, just as in his lifetime, when he practised patience with my ill manners."
The Meeting in the Convent.—The teacher continued: "During my wanderings I happened once to visit a convent with a travelling companion in a corner of Europe. What interested me specially was the library, for I had long been trying to trace Anschar's[1]journal. After I had slept the night in a cell which bore the inscription 'B. Victor III. P.P.,' in memory of Pope Victor III 'who punished the heretics who denied thedivinity of Christ,' I was taken into the library. The first thing shown me was a collection of Latin hymns of the Middle Ages which had been edited by my deceased teacher. The inner side of the title-page contained some handwriting by the editor, which was so peculiar that it could hardly be imitated. I asked the Benedictine monk who accompanied me, whose signature it was. He answered, 'The convent librarian's.' 'Are you certain?' I asked. 'Yes, quite certain.' This discovery of his handwriting, which I had never seen elsewhere, after so many years made a deep impression on me. I asked myself whether the monk, acting as a medium, could have imitated the handwriting of the deceased editor. After an afternoon's search I found the valuable explanation that Anschar's journal had been taken by Abbot Thymo from Corvey to Rome in A.D. 1261. It was known that it had since disappeared, but now I had found a trace of it. I felt as though my deceased friend had brought me here into the convent in order to discuss Anschar's journal, concerning the fate of which we had often made guesses and searches."
[1]A famous French missionary in Sweden, a.d. 801-865.
[1]A famous French missionary in Sweden, a.d. 801-865.
Correspondences.—The teacher said: "It seems to me as though Swedenborg's correspondencesor correlatives were to be found again in all departments, as though natural laws on a higher plane can be applied to the spiritual life of man. If an object comes too close to the magnifying glass, it becomes indistinct. Similarly one cannot see the object of one's affections if she comes too close. She becomes small and indistinct, loses outline and colour; but remove her to the proper focus, and she becomes magnified and clear. Thus it is with princes and their valets de chambre.
"But there are also exceptions to the rule. Many friends gain by proximity; one must see them often, otherwise they change their shape and become ghostly and alarming. Others again seem better at a distance; whenever we meet them we lose an illusion. The attraction between lovers can increase in proportion to the square of the distance between them, and also in reverse proportion; the greater the distance, the greater the pain of separation. It seems also possible to apply the facts of electricity in the psychical sphere. Pellets of elder-pith attract one another so long as they are of opposite polarity, but when they are saturated or over-saturated they repel one another. But the mutual repulsion also takes place when a foreign body is interposed betweenthem, for then an influence is produced which operates laterally."
Portents.—The teacher continued: "As soon as I believe in an Almighty God, who can suspend the few natural laws which we know, and bring into operation the countless host of laws which we do not know, I must believe in miracles. Swedenborg does not deal so hardly with anyone (at the same time that he commiserates them) as the asses who revere the creation and the laws of nature, without believing in the Creator and Law-giver. They go with their noses on the ground, and if anything unusual happens 'in the air,' as they say, they call it 'a meteorological phenomenon,' and attribute it to such and such natural causes. They register the phenomenon in their records without dreaming of anything behind it, and forthwith forget the matter.
"We, on the other hand, will mention some events of recent years and connect them with certain natural phenomena which may possibly denote the presence of warning and chastising powers.
"On the 7th June, 1905, Sweden and Norway separated. A year previous an earthquake took place which had its centre in the Kattegat. Oneshock reached Christiania and caused a terrible panic in the churches; people trampled one another to death or lost their reason. Another shock affected Stockholm and caused alarm, but in a minor degree; among those affected by it was a prince of high military rank. In January, 1905, a hurricane burst over Christiania, tore the roof from the royal castle, and injured the fortress of Akershus. The same hurricane travelled east-ward to Stockholm, tore the roof from the guards' barracks and threw it on the drilling-ground. These statements can be verified by reference to the newspapers. The question is: 'Are these portents or not?' Are symbolic natural phenomena portents?"
The Difficult Art of Lying.—The teacher said: "When people lie deliberately, usually with the object of gaining something, I often do not hear what they say. One day a carpenter came to me with a complaint. I listened to him and helped him. The next day he came again in order to do a piece of work. Then, among other things he let this remark fall: 'To-day, thank God, she is better.' 'Who?' I asked. 'I mentioned yesterday that my child had fallen down the staircase.' Then I felt ashamed of having taken so littleinterest in his troubles, and murmured some sympathetic words. But when he had gone I thought over the matter. Since I generally hear very well and attend to what people say, I was astonished that I had not noticed his account of his trouble. I could not explain it to myself.
"Some time later, after some months, I conceived a strong feeling of distrust towards this man. I remembered the German proverb, 'A liar should have a good memory,' and determined to test him. Therefore I said to him abruptly, 'Did you have a good summer?' 'Splendid,' he answered. 'Is your wife quite well?' 'Perfectly.' 'Your child too?' 'She has never passed through the summer so well.' Accordingly he had lied when he said the little girl had had an accident, and had subsequently forgotten it. What was unreal could leave no impression behind—an interesting fact, as it seemed to me. In connection with this I remembered that an actor, a pessimist and hopeless despairer, had to play the part of a believing and positive character on a certain occasion. That evening the audience could hardly hear a word of what he said. I was astonished at the time, but now I understand that he was lying."
Religious and Scientific Intuition.—The pupil said: "The everlasting strife between Faith and Knowledge would have been stifled at the outset if some sharp wit had discovered in time that the problem is wrongly stated, for the two ideas form no real antithesis. What I know, that I believe; consequently faith presupposes knowledge, consequently knowledge is subsumed under faith. But the word 'belief' has received other significations. In religion it means reception or absorption. Science recognises the fact of intuition or rapid inference,i.e.the faculty of reaching certainty without sufficient reason and without a complete chain of proof. That is scientific belief, and is in complete analogy with religious belief. When a man arrives at the knowledge of God and of His laws by way of intuition, when he then tests this knowledge by observing his experiences and finds it confirmed, then the final outcome of his investigation is Belief. Belief is complete objective certainty, but on a higher plane, so that all scientific chatter that Knowledge is higher than Belief is mere nonsense. By 'knowledge' in this case one understands for the most part information about stones, plants, and animals, and historical facts such as the year in which a certain book was published, when Goethe was in Strasburg, whetherRebecca Ost's real name was Popoffsky or Johanna Hagelstrom, or whether an Apostle-mug is genuine or imitation. The antithesis 'FaithorKnowledge' is the stupidest dispute about words which ever took place, and a disgrace to humanity."
The Freed Thinker.—The teacher said: "In order to think rightly and in accordance with law, I must free my reason from fetters of rustic intelligence, from interests, passions, conventional considerations. One must go into deep solitude, and not be afraid of remaining alone, deserted by all. Above all, one must not belong to any party which regulates, inspects, and degrades. In order to be able to dare to give up the weak and hampering support of men, one must be able thoroughly to rely upon God. In order to do that one must keep one's conscience as clean as possible, must hate evil, strive after righteousness and goodness, bear everything except humiliation, exercise mercifulness, and take trials as such and not as persecutions.
"The electric clock has contact and connection with a correctly-timed chronometer. And so my reason cannot think logically till I have opened connection with the Logos, and no longer discharge contrary currents of sterile denial anddoubt. Only in life with God is there freedom of thought, freedom from impure impulses, selfish and ambitious interests, freedom from the wish to stand well with the crowd. That is thefreedthinker in contrast to the 'free-thinker,' who has left the rails and lost connection with the overhead wire; he will come to grief at the next street-corner, and is of no more use as a vehicle of traffic."
Primus inter pares.—The pupil continued: "Religions seemed to be determined by regions like nationalities. Swedenborg hints at something of the sort, saying that people have the religion which they ought to have. Those who have no religion are tramps and vagabonds, pariahs and gipsies, scoundrels and swindlers. They think they are at home everywhere, but are so only on the high-roads, in the market-places, behind the circus-stable, in the alehouse. When Lessing asserts inNathan der Weisethat all religions are equally good, he shows that he has not understood Christianity, which is the beginning and end of the world's history. The Muhammedans are certainly religious, more religious than the Christians, and among the adherents of Islam are many sects, but no atheistic ones. All observe the hoursof prayer, fasts, and daily washings. Muhammed was no Christ-hater. But they are alien to our climate. Still we have something to learn from them; they are not ashamed to show their religion, while we shuffle with it. They are not only religious on Sundays but every day and all day.
"But, if we heard that a Christian had gone over to Islam we should regard it as a fall from the higher to the lower, while the conversion of a Muhammedan to Christianity would be hailed as an ascent. Saladin was certainly noble and Nathan wise, but the nobleness of the former had somewhat of a pose about it, and the wisdom of the latter was of the same homely kind as Voltaire's. On the other hand, Godfrey de Bouillon accepted the crown of thorns instead of the king's crown, and St. Louis gave his life for the wisdom which surpasses all understanding."
Heathen Imaginations.—The teacher said: "Religions are represented by regions, defined territories, circles, of which each considers himself the centre. The modern heathen sit in their little bag, which is big enough to be seen, and when they only see heathen they imagine that Christianity is decaying or altogether done with. And yet it is flourishing as it never did before; everythingserves the Gospel with or against its will. The heathen find new weapons in heaps of ruins and in temple-libraries; they close churches and thereby bring Christianity into life and into the domestic circle. When they make life bitter for the Christians, the latter turn from the sour and seek the fresh. The missionaries who were only lately regarded with a contemptuous smile are now discovered by great explorers in deserts and wildernesses, where they have established oases of humanity and mercy. There the plundered wanderer can rest his weary head, secure of having found one trustworthy man. He who wishes to know the effect of Christianity on an idolater should read Kanso Utschimura'sMemoirs of a Japanese; or, How I Became a Christian. Those who preach 'cheerful paganism' can see in this work how a polytheist is tom and tortured by doubt, and tossed to-and-fro between the contradictory commands of eighty million gods."
Thought Bound by Law.—The teacher said: "When a young man comes and says he is a free-thinker, say to him: 'You lie. You think with your stomach, your throat, your sexuality, with your passions and your interests, your hate and your sympathies. But in your youthful immaturityyou do not really think at all, but merely drivel. What is instilled into you, you give out, and dub your wishes by the name of thoughts.' Moreover 'free-thought' is a contradiction in terms, for thought obeys laws, just as sound, light, and chemical combinations do. Thought is bound, bound by laws. If you say 'There is no God,' you speak without thinking. 'Non-existence' and 'God' are two incommensurate ideas which cannot be brought into juxtaposition. If they are, there results an absurdity which is the secretion or excretion of an illogical and confused mind.
"If on the other hand you say 'There is no Godfor me,' there is something probable in that. But you should be ashamed to speak of it. It only means that you are a godless dog, a perverse ape, a conscienceless deceiver and thief whom men must avoid and detectives must watch. Fortunately godlessness is an hallucination imposed on haughty blockheads as a punishment. When the 'free-thinker' discovers some day how stupid he is, then he is freed, and that is a mercy for him."
Credo quia (et-si) absurdum.—The teacher said: "If I call myself a Christian it is because I recognise Christ as a power, a source of strength, from whom I obtain strength by prayer in orderto support tolerably the burdens of life. But at the same time I confess that I cannot understand nor explain the doctrine of Atonement through sacrificial death. That is not, however, the fault of the doctrine but a defect in me. I have also no right to deny a matter of fact because I do not understand it. Here is an illustration. If I multiply 2 by 2 I obtain an increase—4. But if I multiply ½ by ½ I obtain as a result a decrease by half,i.e.¼. Here is an incomprehensible contradiction. Multiplication cannot produce a decrease. Yet it is mathematically true that 2 multiplied by 2 is doubled,i.e.4, but ½ multiplied by ½ is halved,i.e.¼. My intelligence would fain deny it, but I must believe it, and in doing so I do well, otherwise the whole science of mathematics would be unusable, which would be a great loss.Credo quia absurdum.That means, I must believe a fact just because it is incomprehensible and absurd (for me, but not for others). If I could understand it, the emergency short-cut of 'faith' would not be necessary. That is the sacrifice, not of my reason, but of my rustic understanding and of my pride."
The Fear of Heaven.—The pupil said: "The astronomy or uranology of the astronomers hasceased to make any progress since it has become godless. They have given up observing the sky. They sit there and calculate, with the express purpose of calculating God's existence away. Seven years ago I met a teacher of astronomy. He did not know that the equator of the sky passes through the belt of Orion, and could not point out the ecliptic. He boasted of not knowing the constellations, saying it was no science to know them. Our nearest neighbour the moon has been ignored for a long time. And yet in 1866 it was noticed that changes had taken place there, and that the crater of Linnæus was on the point of disappearing. On the other hand, they are trying to signal to Mars. If man, who lately in his folly thinks he has solved the riddle of the universe without God, only knew how the 'gods' are to us, and if he understood the signals which they send to us daily and hourly, he would go out like Peter and weep that he had denied his Lord or behaved as though he knew Him not."
The Goat-god Pan and the Fear of the Pan-pipe.—The teacher said: "Like all lower classes the apelings regard themselves as supermen, who march at the head of all movements and can regulate developments. Their god is the shaggyPan, who had been a goat and became a half-man, and later the Evil One, Satan, or God's opponent. But they must be ashamed of their god, for they call themselves atheists. Their religion is that of the Satanists. When they hear of any good action they snort. They delight in persecuting and tormenting anyone in whom there is any good visible, and call him a hypocrite. Their children learn to lie as soon as they learn to talk. The greatest poet of the apelings has written a lament over the 'Decay of lying' and an heroic poem in six cantos in praise of unnatural vice. They are all perverse, mostly in secret, but they betray themselves in their writers, who write in the name of woman, and from the woman's point of view, against man. For by confusion of sex they have lost all distinction of sex; they have ceased to think and to feel as men. They run like dogs with their noses on the track of the white man, in order to bite him, that he may become like one of them.
"There are white men who have been seduced by the females of the apelings. The children are bastards, and their lives are a perpetual conflict against the Satanic inheritance they have received from their mothers. Some fight in vain; others find the Helper. There is only One—Jesus Christ, the Exorciser of demons. You knowthat I was such a bastard and fought the battle, which is not yet concluded.
"The apelings preach toleration. By that they mean that whatever they do must be overlooked, and that they should be left at liberty to propagate their doctrines, while they more or less secretly persecute the Christians. As soon as they begin to scent Christian blood they shudder. Then they begin to excommunicate the 'heretic.' His name is no more mentioned, and if it appears in print it is cut out. If he formerly belonged to the body of the apelings he is now called an apostate, and must die as a traitor.
"When an apeling dies he obtains an apotheosis in the absence of a pantheon. At the burial the wreaths are counted, and the inscriptions attached to them examined; if anyone's name is missing he is excommunicated. The ceremonial is just like that of a witches' sabbath when the 'faithful' gave their testimony. But it may happen, when they invoke Pan, that he answers with the reed-pipe. Then if he shows himself in the wood or in the bedchamber, they are seized with a panic fear; they weep like children who are afraid of the dark, or fly to sanatoriums to be cured of their neurasthenia, their sleeplessness, and their heart-complaints."
Their Gospel.—The teacher continued: "But the apelings have also constructed a dogmatic theology which is a parody of the Christian faith. They have a doctrine of reconciliation which proclaims reconciliation with life, but it is really a compromise with all the dirt of life which one generally wipes off on the mat at the house-door. They teach men to be tolerant towards turpitude and wickedness; they describe men as good fellows, as careless creatures who are thoroughly good at bottom—'there is no malice in them.' The really good men, who cannot do anything wicked, seemed to the apelings puritanical. 'Why should we torment ourselves in the only life we have?' they ask, feeling quite sure that they will be annihilated at death, like maggots.
"According to this distorted gospel, it is wrong to describe in a literary work how the malicious, the liar, the deceiver, the pander get their deserts. We should, they say, pardon the conscienceless and obstinate. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that we should pardon the repentant who improve. In the apelings' gospel all the teaching of Christ is sophisticated. In their view all Magdalenes are interesting innocent victims of social circumstances, while Christ only received the Magdalene who had abandoned vice."
The Disposition of the Apes.—The teacher continued: "This is the whole kernel of Darwinism, this madness which infected the mind of a generation which was overstrained with the pursuit of power and luxury. But this Beelzebub could only be driven out by another. That was Nietzsche. He was a demon let loose, who killed the ape, restored the man, and altered the old popular estimates. He was understood because he spoke the language of the apelings. That was the only way to compel them to listen, for they would never have heard a Christian prophet. But after he had his say his tongue was spiked and his tale was over.
"Joseph Peladan was a Christian prophet of the school of the Therapeutæ and Essenes. The apelings feared him, and could not name his name, for it stuck in their throats. Only the Christian upper class understood him. His Christianity was luminous and esoteric, perhaps too luminous. But after a pilgrimage to Christ's grave he discovered the deceit, turned his back on the 'reconciliation with life,' and forswore the worship of beauty which was merely the dressing up of the apes with white sheets and ivy leaves. He ceased to be interested in the bestial and the nude, saw through the 'joy of life' and Nora,[1]unmaskedthe humbug of tolerance, and took the cross in real earnest, as it is, on himself. Peladan was a living protest against apishness. He represented the undercurrent, not the surface-stream. Still the undercurrent is always ready to mount and overflow and cleanse the banks, which at the ebb-tide have served as a place for dumping down rubbish."