[1]The heroine of Ibsen'sDoll's House.
[1]The heroine of Ibsen'sDoll's House.
The Secret of the Cross.—The teacher said: "The conflict between paganism and Christianity is now being fought out in the world. But just as surely as Christianity preceded paganism in time, so surely does the future belong to Christianity, although for the moment the apelings have the upper hand. Their edict of toleration allows them in the name of freedom to forbid the preaching of Christianity. They close the churches, declare Judas innocent, give mad women the vote, write heathenish schoolbooks for children, place forgers and pettifoggers in power, for their kingdom is of this world. But it is with Christianity as with the walnut-tree, whose fruit is knocked down with poles, and which is roughly treated in order that it may bear fruit and thrive. The night grows darker towards the dawn. Spinach-seed is trodden down that it may grow better;the ground must be harrowed, broken, and rolled in order to be able to yield a crop; gold must be refined in fire, and flax be steeped in water. The cross points upwards, downwards, sideways, to the four quarters of heaven at once; it is a completion of the compass. Suffering bums up the rubbish of the soul. I have seen a man who had suffered all the griefs endured by humanity; yet the more he suffered the more beautiful he became. That is the secret of the cross and of suffering. 'Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you. In the world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'"
Examination and Summer Holidays.—The teacher said: "When, on reaching maturity, one awakes to new consciousness and discovers that everything one has is borrowed, one begins to cut oneself down to the root, in order to let strike a new stem which is one's own. When we enter old age this stem withers down to the root (the process Swedenborg calls 'desolation'); the branches formerly cut down bloom again and put forth new foliage which is like, and yet not like the former. But when old and new flourish together, the whole result is confusing; but theroot remains the same and reveals the nature of the plant. The dissonances of life increase with the years, and the material of life becomes so immense that it is impossible to survey it properly. Therefore one lives more in remembrance than in the present, and along the whole line of one's experience. Sometimes I live in my childhood, sometimes in my mature age.
"But it is strange that one does not feel old age to be the beginning of an end but the introduction to something new,i.e.when one has recovered the belief or assurance that there is a life on the other side. One feels as though one were preparing for an examination by doing preliminary exercises and one becomes literally young again. There is a little touch of examination fever with it, but also great hopes mingled with dreams of the future. These remind us of Christmas joys, summer holidays, family gatherings with reconciliations and wishes fulfilled. But there is also a scent of broken-off birch-leaves and the seashore; there is a sound of Sunday bells and organs, the attraction of new clothes, white linen, and a bath in green sea-water. There is a feeling like that of evening prayer and a good conscience, wife, home, and child after a journey, the hearth-fire after a snow-storm, the first ball and the one weloved to dance with most, the opening of the savings-box, and first and last the examination and the summer holidays."
Veering and Tacking.—The teacher continued: "The Theosophists speak of the seven planes of the Kama-Loka, the condition after death. I will admit that, in certain circumstances, I have lived simultaneously on several planes. This was difficult for me, and still more difficult for my enemies to understand. I should like to have explained these contradictions in existence by a cleavage of the personality or a multiplication of the ego. I have also sought the solution of the riddle in the self-adaptation to one's surroundings, to which St. Paul refers in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'To the Jews I became a Jew.... To those who are under the law, I became as under the law.... To those who are without law, I became as one without law. To the weak I became as weak.' ... Kierkegaard speaks of Sympaschomenos who rejoices with the joyful, mourns with the sad, is coarse with the coarse, refined with the refined.
"Swedenborg makes another suggestion, 'When a man is to be born again, his desires and falsities cannot be stripped off at once, for that wouldbe equivalent to destroying the whole man, because as yet he only lives in them. Therefore for a long while evil spirits are left with him, to stir up his desires that they may be dissolved in many ways.'
"Formerly I believed, when I was young with the youthful, old and wise with the old, mad with the mad, that I was doing them a service. As a poet, I lived for the moment in their life and their moods, which I then depicted and forgot myself. Often by these relapses into stages I had left behind, I seemed to have worked myself higher, as the ship tacks in order to get a more favourable wind."
Attraction and Repulsion.—The teacher continued: "There is both an attraction and a repulsion between similar souls. Like loves like, but not always; often the unlike seeks the unlike. A good man lamented to me that it was his lot always to be in bad society, and never to meet good men who could elevate him. Since he was strong he was at any rate not drawn down, but he did not observe that he exercised a good influence on his bad surroundings. He had, it is true, occasion to see and to hear evil; but, on the other hand, he was able to react against it through the disgustwith which it inspired him. Without instituting a comparison we may say that Christ did not attract people of high position and good character, but poor devils and weak characters, the sick, the possessed, the wicked, thieves, publicans, and harlots. His disciples did not understand his doctrine, but interpreted it all in a material way. He answered their reproaches by saying, 'Only the sick need a physician.' I will suppress my former objection, for I bow myself experimentally before 'the folly of the cross,' since experience has taught me that wisdom can only be received by a humble mind, and that obedience is more than sacrifice. In recent times my constant prayer has been that I might come into good society which might elevate me, and avoid evil companionship which, to say the least, involves an injurious connection with the lower plane. It is in truth my fault that those who seek me seek my old ego, and, when they do not find it, believe that I am not to be found."
The Double.—The pupil said: "When a man begins to love a woman he throws himself into a trance, and becomes a poet and artist. Out of her plastic, unindividualised material he fashions an ideal form into which he puts all that is best inhimself. Thus he creates an homunculus which he adopts as his double, and with that she lets him do as he likes.
"But this astral image may be also the doll which she the huntress sets up as a decoy, while she with a loaded gun lies behind the bush and watches for her prey. The love of a man for his homunculus often survives every illusion; he may have conceived a deadly hatred against herself, while his love for his double continues. But this masquerade gives rise to the deepest dissonances and troubles. He becomes squint-eyed by contemplating two images which do not coincide. He wishes to embrace his cloud, but takes hold of a body; he wishes to hearhispoem, but it is someone else's; he wants to see his work of art, but it is only a model. He is happy during his trance, although the world cannot understand him. When he awakes from his somnambulism, his hatred to the woman increases in proportion as she fails to correspond to his image of her. And if he murders his double, then love is done with, and only boundless hate remains."
Paw or Hand.—The pupil said: "In Kipling's wonderfulJungle Book, the boy is intimate with all kinds of animals but not with apes, which arethe worst of all creatures and composed of wickedness and crime. When Goethe, in the second part ofFaust, wishes to represent phantoms and evil spirits, he uses the same masks and costumes as for the monkeys in the Witches' Kitchen in the first part. And it is among these degenerate brutes that man (?) now does his best to seek his ancestry. For my part I would rather trace my origin from a noble horse, or a sagacious and honest elephant, or from a courageous and thankful eagle.
"But it is probable that apes spring from degenerate men, escaped criminals, and ship-wrecked Robinson Crusoes. The hand of the chimpanzee is not a paw which is being evolved into a hand, but it is a human hand which is degenerating into a paw. A palmist could read the lines of it; a manicurist could improve it and make it capable of wearing a glove. If man really sprang from apes, according to the law of phylogeny, a child ought to be born with a hairy body. But now it comes into the world as smooth as an angel, often without hairs even on its head. It is a disgrace to me that I served the Ape-king, the seducer of my youth! And it was so stupid!"
The Thousand-Years' Night of the Apes.—When the sun of Christianity rose over the world,it naturally became night for the apelings. When they turned their backs to the light, everything became distorted for them. Right became left, east became west, good became evil, black became white, day became night. Therefore one reads still of their thousand-years' night, as they call the Middle Ages. When the savage tribes of Europe became tame, when the aged and sick became objects of pity, when governments ruled and laws protected, when faith, hope and love, self-sacrifice and chivalry flourished, then it was night for the pagans. When Europe received science, when Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Arnold, and Basilius founded chemistry, metallurgy, and physic, their darkness increased. When mediæval art culminated in the noblest work of art there is—the Gothic cathedral—then it grew dark before the eyes of the giants; their ears could not endure the chime of bells and organ-music. Finally the Middle Ages discovered gunpowder, the compass, and printing. A religious man, whose sails bore the sign of the cross, discovered America. But Pauli, the disciple of Clemens Romanus, already knew "the ocean which cannot be crossed by men, and the lands which lie behind it."[1]
In the midst of the darkness of the heathen there was the light of convent-schools and universities, in which spiritual as well as worldly wisdom was taught. Poems of chivalry, romances and dramas were composed. Charlemagne was a Christian King Solomon; he defeated the Philistines in Saxony, built temples out of the ruins of Rome, held learned conversations and listened to legends, cultivated the land and gave laws. That was the brightest phase of a Europe grown patriarchal and Christian. The gods certainly did not walk any more on earth, but God's messengers were in constant communication with men, and disclosed to them the secrets of God's kingdom, which were written down in Apocalypses and, best of all, in theLegenda Aurea. Thomas à Kempis'sImitation of Christwas printed and is still read even by Protestants. One can even read the Church Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom; Augustine was used in my youth as a confirmation-manual. Two hundred years before the Reformation—the schism in the Church as it should rather be called—Dante wrote the most Christian of all poems, which the heathen have tried to steal for themselves. Boccaccio expounded theInfernofrom a professor's chair, a fitting penalty for the trespasses of his youth.Botticelli, Lippi, Ghirlandajo were the great religious painters of the Middle Ages. Their pupils Michael Angelo and Raphael were devout Christians, although the heathen have wished to appropriate them under the false designation Renaissance, or new birth of heathenism. When at the beginning of modern times it began to grow dusk, the dawn rose for the heathen and for "the last Athenians." The last? There will certainly be more Athenians who will wish to carry owls to Athens.
[1]Clement, Epistle to the Romans, chap. xx.
[1]Clement, Epistle to the Romans, chap. xx.
The Favourite.—Julian was an Illyrian, from the predatory state composed of a mixed Phœnician race who worshipped Baal and Astarte. He had a small head, and no occiput; he had thick lips, a beard that swarmed with vermin, long nails and black hands with which he groped in the bleeding bodies of slain beasts in order to prognosticate the future from their hearts and livers. His cheerful religious services consisted in the sacrifice of animals, and were accompanied by the dances of immodest girls. In order to refute ancient prophecy, he wished to build again the Temple at Jerusalem. But fire broke out of the ground, so that the undertaking was frustrated at its commencement. This madman once came to Antioch,where there were a hundred thousand heathen whom he expected to receive him with public sacrifices and dances. Instead of which he was met by a solitary priest bearing a goose. That was all!
This unattractive person, who has become the darling ofThe Last Athenian[1]and the new heathen, was finally enticed into a desert. There he suffered hunger and thirst till a lance pierced his liver. But it is incredible that he exclaimed, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" He was far too stupid for that.
Scientific Villainies.—If anyone comes to you and says, "I don't understand the proof for the existence of God," you should answer, "You don't understand because your wickedness darkens your understanding." All atheists are rascals, and all rascals are atheists. Their intelligence is so beclogged with sin that they cannot understand the simplest teachings of Christianity, the Incarnation and, consequently, Immaculate Birth of God, His Resurrection and Ascension.
When the sectaries came to Luther and said that they could not understand him, because they had another Spirit, he answered, "I smite yourSpirit on the snout! God rebuke thee, Satan!" A godless man or a so-called free-thinker is a rascal who permits himself everything. His natural sympathy for scoundrels is so strong that he will swear a false oath in order to save the guilty from condemnation by a false alibi. He will accuse an innocent man, and persecute him from one court of appeal to another, in order to get him into prison, and will demand a large sum of money as a reward for his ill-doing.
When the guilty is acquitted they give him a banquet, his companions write odes in his honour, he is promoted and finally appointed to be an instructor of youth. When an atheist adopts the pursuit of science, one is sure only villainy will result. He says falsely that he has seen such and such things under the microscope, in order to be able to write a treatise on them. If he is an astronomer he will see as many canals in Mars as his professor wishes. If his professor does not believe in the canals in Mars, he will not see any.
[1]The Last Athenian, title of a work by Victor Rydberg.
[1]The Last Athenian, title of a work by Victor Rydberg.
Necrobiosis,i.e.Death and Resurrection.—During the winter I found the chrysalis of a cockchafer and laid it on my writing-table. One evening in the lamplight it began to click and make small movements. Believing that thewarmth had developed my beetle I opened its black coffin, but found to my astonishment only a white slime without a sign of organisation; it smelt of sour gastric juice. This half-fluid mass, however, possessed the capacity of movement. Later on, when I had a microscope with a large field of view, I opened the chrysalis of a butterfly and examined it. On a clear yellow background of fluid matter there was sketched, as it were, the outline of the future butterfly in half-shadow, without, as yet, any bodily organisation. That is called "necrobiosis," or the dying-off of living tissue. And the deliquescence of the chrysalis in slime is termed "histolysis." Its reorganisation is said to take place by means ofcorpora adiposa, or particles of fat. More than this I do not know. I wrote to Germany (where they are accustomed to know everything) and asked for some works treating of the metamorphosis of the chrysalis, but there were none on this most important and interesting question. Father Darwin and his son Haeckel knew nothing and wished to know nothing about the resurrection; they only knew about birth and death. Finally I bought for five-and-twenty kroners a large work on butterflies composed by a professor. There was not a word in it regarding the necrobiosis of the chrysalis.But sometimes I see on a gravestone within a church wall this symbol: caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.
Secret Judgment.—When one sees a fact repeated regularly and under defined conditions, one believes one has discovered a law. I think I have discovered a law, and consequently a tribunal whose decisions we see, but whose inner working we can only guess at. I had a relative who had reached a certain age without "ever having time" to think of death. On the 18th January of the year 18— he had a stroke and fell. That was the first warning. Then he began to think about death and the life after this, and occupied himself thus for six years; then he died exactly on the same day, on the 18th of January. The fact of the interval being six years made me think of Bismarck's six years in Sachsenwald, when he sat alone and brooded on the transitory character of greatness, and curiously enough injured his reputation through being betrayed by vanity into making incautious revelations. Then it occurred to me that Napoleon was six years on St. Helena, and finally became so well "prepared" that he received the sacrament on his death-bed. Whether Heine lay on the ground for exactly sixyears, with his body wasted to the size of a child's and tormented by the fear of losing his wife, I cannot say definitely; but it was about six. It is well known that the pious Linnæus had to spend his last years seated in a chair, lamed by paralysis; nor did even he escape being worried by a quarrelsome wife, God alone knows why!
Our great and glorious Tegner received his first warning in 1840. It was accompanied by a condition like that described in myInferno,during which, among other things, he saw his whole poetical work in a depreciatory light, and even at last wished to cancel it all. After just six years' preparation he died on November 2, 1846, in a cheerful state of mind, the sky being lit up at the time by a splendid aurora. Goldschmidt mentions that and still more remarkable things in his excellentNemesis Divina. I read lately how Fersen was murdered in his carriage on June 20, 1810. I recalled to mind that it was the same Fersen who drove the carriage in which Marie Antoinette fled to Varennes. I referred to theHistory of the World, and found that the flight to Varennes took place on June 20, 1791. The question arises: "Was it a crime to wish to save the queen?" The author of the article in theBiographical Lexiconmentions thecrime by name; but it was something other than the attempt to further her escape.
Hammurabi's Inspired Laws Received from the Sun-God.—The laws of Hammurabi occupy fifteen quarto pages. That is the whole find! And these pages are to nullify the Bible, which is so unsearchably rich and possesses such mysterious depths that everyone in trouble, who with humility seeks for counsel and comfort there, finds it forthwith, although he may first receive some blows which strike the nail on the head!
Hammurabi's laws in fifteen pages resemble Deuteronomy to a certain degree, but are much more meagre; they often recall our old Swedish law with its trivialities. For instance: "If anyone strikes out a man's teeth, his teeth shall be struck out; but if he strikes out the teeth of an emancipated slave, he shall pay one-eighth of a mina of silver."
In any case God is one, and His laws are in principle the same. The Bible may have used the same source as Hammurabi. But when the heathen try to use the laws of the Assyrian clay tablets in order to prove that the Bible is not inspired, they miss the mark. "Inspired" means"received from God." See how the heathen has adorned his paltry pamphlet with a frontispiece, which asserts, against his will, that Hammurabi's laws were also inspired. For the frontispiece portrays Hammurabi receiving his laws from the Sun-god.
Strauss's Life of Christ.—Now that I am sixty years old, it occurred to me to see what sort of a book Strauss'sLeben Jesuis before I depart. In my youth, in the 'sixties, we read in school (of our own accord, however) "the last Athenian's doctrine of the Bible," but we never succeeded in seeing the originalLife of Jesus. And although I have been in libraries, collected books, visited second-hand book-stalls, I have not seen Strauss's book. It seemed as though it had been confiscated by the Invisible Powers. Now when I am sixty, it has arrived and I tried to read it. But I could not.
It was simply unreadable! All these many pages contained nothing, and what was printed seemed to me incomprehensible, soulless, dry.
A man who writes a book about what he does not understand; a student who has learnt the æsthetic systems by heart; a philosopher who tries to define the beautiful; a mathematicianwho wants to prove or disprove axioms; a drunken man who tries to play the flute; a feeble foolish attempt to explain God's great miracle in the Atonement. I threw the book away, else I should have gone to sleep over it.
Strauss died in 1874, and in spite of the last stage of his development, when he did not believe any more in the immortality of the soul, he spent his last hours in reading Plato'sPhædo, in which at the death-bed of Socrates the immortality of the soul is so clearly demonstrated.
His death was like that of Socrates, his pupils said. But they do not inform us whether the cup of poison was at hand.
Christianity and Radicalism.—Christianity is really more radical than Radicalism. Christ turns his back on the whole of society with its institutions, science, and art. He warns us against the scribes; the rich are not his friends, but rather Lazarus; the rich youth is told to sell all that he has and to give to the poor. To soldiers Christ says, "Those who take the sword shall perish with the sword." He says nothing about science, art, and industry because He is indifferent to them. He has no great illusions about men, for he calls them "a generation of vipers." And rightly; since theearth is a prison for those who have committed crimes in heaven, we are all rascals; but it is the prison chaplain's duty to preach pardon to those who behave properly. To open the prison would be unwise and unlawful; there Christianity differs from Anarchism. Give custom to whom custom is due, and to Cæsar what is Cæsar's. Authority is ordained of God, and beareth not the sword in vain.
Christianity and Radicalism accordingly agree in their criticism of society, but not in the inferences they draw. The Christian endures the sufferings of the prison-house with religious resignation; he does not waste valuable time in making foolish proposals regarding the reform of prison-life and management. In order to obtain mitigation and pardon, and to escape the dark cell and scourging, he tries to behave well, but he does not believe that the prison can be a place of recreation.
All that Rousseau, Max Nordau, and Tolstoi have said against the faults of society is quite true, but their inferences are false. Socialism,i.e.pagan socialism, which preached development and progress, went its crab-like course backwards to the trade unions which had been dissolved, limited industrial freedom, introduced inquisitorialmethods, excommunicated heretics. In the great strike non-socialists were refused water and gas, bread and milk for children. They compelled the contented to be discontented, made men wild and despairing, and really made things worse, when they ought to have improved them.
But in their pagan Radicalism they did not attain to the height of Christianity. Unbelieving, they believed in everything that was false—scientific fallacies, politico-economical errors, philosophical stupidities. Into a pagan one may instil every possible falsehood and stupidity; but for the truth in its real relations he is deaf and blind.
To have a moderate quiet contempt of the world, to be already half out of it, one's staff in one's hand and one's knapsack on one's back, ever ready for departure, to have clean hands and a good conscience—that is the way not to be easily assailable. Then one is not envied, and suffers not from disappointments and humiliations, for one is prepared for all, and has anticipated all in advance.
"Vanity, Vanity," saith the Preacher. "Sow in the morning thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall succeed, or whether both alike are good."
Where Are We?—If men only knew where they are!
The description which the ancients gave of Tartarus exactly fits our condition in this life. The ambitious man rolls his stone up the hill like Sisyphus, and when he has got it to the top it rolls down again. A certain architect spent twenty-five years of his life in working and intriguing in order to build a temple for the state. The temple was built and consecrated, a torch-light procession was held in honour of the architect, and he was crowned with a laurel-wreath. The next day the newspapers informed us that the temple must be pulled down because it was a failure. The architect died half a year afterwards in an asylum; the temple was demolished and the architect's name forgotten and obliterated. Tantalus, the rich miser, stands in the midst of a spring of water, but cannot drink; branches laden with fruit hang over his head, but when he stretches out his hand to pluck a fruit a gust of wind comes and tears the branch away. The rich man has worked and swindled till old age begins. Then at last, when the grouse come flying towards him, he has no teeth left; his wine-cellar is full, but the doctor has forbidden him wine. That is Tantalus!
Ixion revolves on his wheel, at one moment up,at another down. The ancients assigned as the reason of his punishment that he had boasted of the favour of a woman who had never been his.
The Danaides, the coquettes, are perpetually drawing water, but their vessel is like a sieve; everything enters it, but nothing remains.
All day long and every day one hears the expression "That is hell!"—such is the universal view. When things look a little brighter, the table is covered, the bed made, and we feel well again. We cheat ourselves often with alcohol, and continue our somnambulism. Then we are awoken by a noise, start up, rush about, weep, and then go to sleep again. At last sleep is banished once for all, and we wake never to sleep any more. Once we are well awake no opiates are of avail.
Then we discover the whole cheat. We see where we are, and what our past, which seemed so real, was. The comparatively wise man then turns away from the phantoms and shadows of reality in order to seek the other, the true, the actual Real. Then the state is seen to be a prison; the defenders of the fatherland are body-snatchers; society is a madhouse, whose warders are the officials and police; family life is concubinage; capitalists are usurers; the fine arts are superfluities; literature is printed nonsense; industryfeeds unnecessary luxury; railways are instruments of torture; the electric light ruins the eyes; all the blessings of civilisation are either curses or superfluous.
When we have seen this, we turn our backs on all and seek the only thing that holds, that gives a real answer, that fulfils what it promises. But this super-real fools call a phantom.
Hegel's Christianity.—There are two Voltaires: one, the mocker at all definite religion, who is revered by the godless; the other, the fanatical champion of God who is ridiculed by the atheists because he believed in God as naïvely as a child. Voltaire recovered his reason before he died, as lunatics are wont to do; when he died he was definitely religious and took the sacrament. There are also two Hegels. But they are more complicated than Voltaire, who was as simple as a feuilletonist. Hegel discovered with his logic that what exists has a right to exist; he defends thestatus quo, society, state, religion with all their corollaries, because they have proceeded from God; everything is right since it exists. "It belongs," he says, "to the essence of religion that it should realise itself in several historical religious forms. Of these, however, Christianity is the only onewhich suitably expresses the essence of religion. In her doctrine of the Trinity the Christian Church contains the nucleus of all philosophical speculation. For this signifies nothing less than that the Eternal God, enthroned in His majesty over the sphere of the finite, condescends and reconciles Himself to the finite, becomes man, suffers, dies, and returns to Himself as the Holy Spirit." That is well put; but every schoolchild knew it already from Luther's "little catechism." For what object then is this extraordinary accumulation of several thousand pages of incomprehensible philosophy? To what purpose? Hegel died of cholera in 1831, after traversing many devious ways, as a simple, believing Christian, without any philosophy, repeating the penitential psalms.
"Men of God's Hand."—That is Kind David's expression (Ps. xvii., 14) which he uses of the godless, to whom the Lord gave power over His people Israel when they behaved badly. Thereby is the knotty problem solved, why God gives the godless power, honour, and wealth, while He often chastises His servants.
The Pharaohs were idolaters and wizards, but God's chosen people had to be their slaves. The Philistines worshipped Baal and Astarte, but theywere allowed to devastate Canaan and even to carry away the Ark of the Covenant. Nebuchadnezzar was no saint, quite the contrary, but he was permitted to carry the children of Israel into captivity. Good men are not adapted to be instruments of chastisement, and the office of executioner is not an enviable one. Everyone has his Egyptian armed with a rod, whether they are called superiors, employers, customers, the public, newspapers, or even public opinion.
All strive for an imaginary independence or so-called freedom, while there is no independence and no freedom. Therefore the effort is vain. Only one thing remains—to reconcile oneself to obedience to human authority for the Lord's sake, and to pay taxes where taxes are due. And where one earns one's bread, one must be polite. Vex, not thyself that thy trade and thy position are difficult; God has so appointed it.
Night Owls.—The maggot in the apple doubtless imagines that the apple was grown for its sake, and that the world could not exist without apples. So we also imagine that science and art are certainly necessary. Swedenborg, in his description of another sphere, tells us how happy men can be without such luxuries. "They know nothingof sciences as we see them in our world, and wish to know nothing; they call them 'shadows,' and compare them with clouds which come between the sun and the spectator. This idea of the sciences they have derived from certain spirits who came from our earth and introduced themselves as those who had grown wise through science. These spirits from our earth who made this claim belonged to those who see wisdom in such things as are pure matters of memory, such as languages; in historical matters, which belong to the literary world; in bare experiences and terms, especially philosophical ones. Because these have not developed their faculty of reasoning through science, they have in their second life little power of perceiving the truth, for they see only in and by means of technical terms, which like hills and thick clouds obstruct the sight of reason. Those who have employed the sciences in order to destroy matters of faith have their reason so thoroughly unsettled that in pitch-darkness they take false for true, and evil for good, like night-owls."
The flag of the university also carries the sign of an owl, but they do not know what it means.
Apotheosis.—When a man who has been near to us dies, he begins to loom magnified through a kindof haze. All his less-pleasing characteristics are obliterated, as if they were part of that dust which is now dissolved. His better self, on the other hand, becomes larger and clearer. It is indeed possible that the liberated spirit becomes ennobled by death, and that therefore the survivor is right in forming a new conception of the personality of the deceased. He with whom the survivor now holds spiritual intercourse is perhaps what the survivor feels him to be, and has ceased to be what he was in life. It is almost invariably the case that the survivor torments himself with reproaches that he has been guilty of some neglect towards the dead, has done him slight injustices and spoken hard words. Even the coldest-hearted begs the dead secretly for forgiveness—forgiveness for all even when it was hardly ill-meant. All this seems to signify that the dead one is alive, and has need of kindly thoughts as a compensation for the reproaches he makes himself regarding those he has left behind.
Painting Things Black.—There are men who anticipate their troubles, hoping thereby to neutralise or to bribe destiny. But that is a mistaken calculation. I know of an author who saw a great calamity approaching and tried towriteit away.He composed a drama on that theme, and hoped thereby to have escaped it. Soon afterwards, however, it arrived and the effect was as strong as though it had never been written about, perhaps even more.
Theosophists say that we can create thought-forms which assume life and reality. They mean that men can send from a distance evil suggestions which others carry out. Thus criminal romances have never deterred anyone from crime; they have on the contrary given scoundrels bright ideas for new pieces of rascality. I actually know of a society novel which criticised bank and joint-stock company frauds, with the result that such frauds increased. It is as though one let loose demons.
Therefore it is dangerous merely to think evil of men; one may do them harm thereby. But what a supernatural effort is necessary always to see good where so little is to be found! And when we try our best we find that we have played the hypocrite. It is almost hopeless to hold the balance level when it is a matter of judging men justly, for human nature is evil and cannot be altered.
The Thorn in the Flesh.—Whence come evil and ugly thoughts which start up in our most beautiful moments, in the hour of devotion, andeven in prayer? We wish to ignore them; we have the impression that they come from without. But it is possible that they are born of the habit of letting evil thoughts have free course in silence and solitude. Still it is mysterious that the greater the height to which we have attained by striving, the deeper we fall. And I can testify from my own experience that it is at the very time of renunciation and self-discipline that one is most liable to unclean thoughts and imaginations. St. Anthony and other saints are examples of this.
A great sorrow, for instance, the longing for a lost child, is the quickest and best means of burning away the rubbish. But often, alas! on the sorrow there follows a boisterous joy which is not of the noblest kind. Immediately after our noblest moods, when we have been inspired by the most beautiful thoughts and purposes, it is possible in the next moment to feel like a coxcomb.
It is not strange that the ancients believed in demons who whisper into one's ear and suggest impure imaginations. Possibly this was St. Paul's thorn in the flesh, which pricked him so that he should not be too much uplifted.
Despair and Grace.—When in youth one sought to conquer evil desires, and even harmless ones,with the severest scourge provided by religion, and then saw that one could not change one's vices, one let go of the reins and life went as it went. Work was the chief occupation of middle life, and there was no time to think of one's soul. Life itself moulded one's character, and one threw a bone to the dog—the flesh in order to be able to work in peace.
Then when in old age we come to reflect, and at sixty find that we have remained very much the same, we wish to begin our spiritual education, but with indifferent success. We had hoped that certain desires would disappear and certain virtues take their place by a kind of natural necessity, as we had believed when young. But, alas! that is not the case. When now we again resume the struggles of our youth the case is thus. We have raised our standard higher, and wish to root out all the weeds. What formerly seemed quite natural—envy of a fellow-worker, revenge on an enemy, pride in success, exultation at a foe's downfall, a small white lie—we now find hateful. And so we begin to struggle against the outward manifestations of these things. But when we find the inner evil just as strong as before, we finally regard ourselves as great hypocrites and are ready to despair.
Where is comfort to be found then? Religion only asserts that we are hypocrites, and our fellow-men regard it as a fact. Absolute despair seizes us. What follows then? Grace! It becomes clear to us that everything is grace, and from grace. And that we have been living on the bread of charity which we believed we had earned.
The Last Act (From the life of a leader of the "Renaissance").—The final act is the most important one in a drama, and a dramatist generally begins his work at the end. We sit out a long evening at the theatre in order to see the last act or "how it will go." But in the significant lives of certain men people like to ignore the last act, because it is uncomfortable and might show how the godless fare at last. He who wrote the operettaBoccacciohad to append the last act to it; the jovial Florentine became a priest and delivered lectures on Dante'sHell, though he only reached the seventeenth canto. Voltaire's last hours, when he took the sacrament, might furnish a subject for a tragedy like the second part ofFaust. Heine announced his conversion, which took place in 1851, in the preface to theRomancero: "I have returned to God like the prodigal son, after I had fed swine with the Hegelians for along time." This preface should be printed before every collection of Heine's poems. Hegel singing penitential psalms on his death-bed might form the subject of a fresco painting for the entrance-hall of Berlin University. But the most affecting final act is Oscar Wilde's description of his prison life inDe Profundis. He was the so-called renaissance leader, who disinterred heathenism with its false worship of beauty, which contains the foulest of all. Kierkegaard[1]would have called him the æsthete, the Sybarite cold as cast iron, the egoist round whose petty "I" the whole world was to revolve in order to understand him alone. Many, led astray like him by the seducing spirits of his youth, remained fairly free from public punishment. Wilde seems to have been picked out to furnish a startling example, for his position, at any rate in his own country, was almost that of an idol.
What he wrote lacks originality; it is whipped-up foam; glazing which, when washed off, leaves no texture; it is as restless as cross-lights, or like a mirror in a public restaurant, in a labyrinthine hall with deceptive lines and false perspectives; it runs out of the hand like albumen or frog-spawn; it is perverse as inDorian Gray, the hero of whichshould have lost his youth by nightly excesses, while on the contrary it is only his portrait which changes.
The last act was played, and that outdid all horror, was so horrible that Wilde himself could not describe its details, which, however, oral tradition has preserved in a Swedenborgian legend.
De Profundisarouses pity and fear, and one would gladly acquit the man who was perhaps the victim of his delusion; a worldly tribunal would not have judged him if he had not himself appealed to it, and that indeed for a wrong done him. It was what our renaissance-critic called a "piece of stupidity" when he made Wilde out to be a martyr of "hypocrisy," as he called justice. Wilde however seems to have taken another view of the matter to his impartial defender: "A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy. Once I had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said: 'Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full.' A man's very highest moment, I have no doubt at all, is when he kneelsin the dust and beats his breast and tells us all the sins of his life."
The "joy of life" whose perfume he had inhaled at Oxford through Pater'sRenaissancenow began to grow sour.
"Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament coarse, hard, and callous. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. The secret of life is suffering."
Let us add that Wilde derived his most dangerous doctrine from Baudelaire and Shakespeare's sonnets. And let us close with the new view of the Renaissance which he attained to in prison: "To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ's own renaissance which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante'sDivine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance."
[1]Danish theologian.
[1]Danish theologian.
Consequences of Learning.—As soon as a manburies himself in books he gets black nails and dirty cuffs, forgets to wash, to comb his hair, and to shave. He neglects his duties towards life, society, and men; loses spiritual capacities, becomes absent-minded, short-sighted, wears glasses, and takes snuff in order to keep himself awake. He cannot follow a conversation with attention, cannot interest himself in other people's affairs, does not see the face of the earth by day nor the stars by night. Behind his desire to investigate lies the insidious ambition to master his material, to become an authority, to tyrannise, to make a career for himself, and to receive distinctions.
If men only reflected what tyrants they obey—these black magicians who are called professors; who settle what we are to think and believe; who test and examine, reject and choose; who form committees, write handbooks, deliver lectures, and bestow prizes on those who accepttheirhypotheses.
And has it ever occurred to a student to criticise his teacher? No; he swallows everything uncritically. But if he goes into a church where he hears God's own word revealed by way of intuition to the prophets, then he begins to exercise his critical faculty; then he finds it very difficult to comprehend the simplest things; then he wantsmathematical certainty, which he considers the highest while it is really the lowest.
Swedenborg says in one place: "Though goodness and truth are sent down through the heavens, when they reach the hells they are changed into evil and falsity; the brilliant light of the sun changes into ugly colours and its warmth becomes an evil odour."
Rousseau.—In my youth I read of an Englishman who shot himself because life was so wearisome. He had counted the buttons which he had to unbutton and button up every day—in his under-clothing half a dozen, in his day-shirt half a dozen, in his collar and cuffs half a dozen, in his waistcoat, trousers, and coat a dozen, in his boots, gaiters, and gloves two dozen. When he wanted to ride out he had to change, as he had also to do for dinner and the evening.
This story, though absurd, reveals the naked truth. Life has become so burdensome, and half the day is spent in useless occupations: unnecessary visits, telephoning, writing letters about nothing, reading the papers; especially in making one's toilette which formerly consisted of a becoming mantle fastened with a single cord, but has now developed into a whole set of things with buttons,hooks, eyes, strings, ribbons, needles, buckles. Our toilettes are a miniature picture of our civilisation with all its time-wasting fussiness, most of which is useless nonsense. The man who lives in the country and cultivates the ground needs neither art, science, nor literature. He who has nature needs no art, and religion is more than science and literature. There are churches everywhere, but museums, theatres, book-shops, and clubs only in the towns. Whether they are necessary is another question.
That is Rousseau!
Rousseau Again.—In Southern France I once saw some half-wild Arab horses running loose in a meadow. They still had their long tails to hide what is not beautiful and to protect them against the stings of insects. They seemed well adapted to their purpose, but they were more than useful: they were beautiful. And when I contemplated the lines in these beautiful creatures' bodies—the curve of the withers such as is not found in geometry, its continuation along the back and loins; the noble construction and movements of the hind-legs; the proportions of the shank below the knee tapering down to the hoof, which leaves on the sand graceful prints like Moorish arches—and when the proud creatures sped over the meadow in full gallop with movements like that of a sailing-boat on the waves, then the curves played into new harmonies and changed their form, tail, mane, and forelock floated like draperies about the body, and I thought "All that is certainly adapted for running, but it is much more, it is beautiful; it has not come to be of itself, but it is created by a Contriver, a wise and great Artist." It is, however, more than a work of art, for it has life and individuality, and no two horses are exactly alike. Then I thought of the attempts of men to "improve" this masterpiece, of the English race-horses—those machines! In this process of selection they have chosen the ugliest, docked their tails, robbed them of their fairest ornament, placed an apelike jockey on their backs in order to make money by racing. To this caricature men have degraded the beautiful gift of God.
Anyone who has learnt at school to draw a horse knows how difficult it is to make these lines harmonise, and fall and rise in the right places; to draw the head not too large and not too small, but exactly proportioned; to bring the forepart and the loins into symmetrical relations with each other; to make the neck slope gently into the fine curve of the back. It wasthe work of many days merely to copy the outline correctly. Raphael could not draw a horse; his Attila rides on a rocking-horse. One is often inclined to agree with Rousseau when he says everything which comes from the hand of the Creator is perfect, but when it falls into the hands of man it is spoiled.
Materialised Apparitions.—I have never seen it, but it is said to be a fact that in hypnotic seances those who are present produce from the half-etherialised substance of the medium a kind of being which is visible and leads an apparitional life, so long as the circle keeps together. Such among others was Professor Crookes' "Katie King."
But what causes me to believe this is a matter of everyday experience. Men create their idols out of nothing, and by means of their imagination fashion their fellow-men, both living and dead, into something quite different to what they really are. These creations naturally partake of their own substance and are after their own likeness. Sometimes they create something really great, sometimes a monster, a demigod, or a devil.
We often see that hatred against one person is, so to speak, polarised and converted into lovetowards his antagonist. A great unpopularity is, in the person of another, changed into a great popularity. The reward which should have been given to the worthiest is given to the unworthy, in order to crush the deserving.
At the award of a famous prize one who was uninitiated lately asked: "Why did not X get the prize?"
"Because Y was to have it," was the answer.
Fifteen years ago a very remarkable book of 650 pages was published. It obtained no notice in the press. But at the same time a wretched pamphlet received all the praise which the large book ought to have had. When I read the reviews of the paltry pamphlet I thought I was reading those of the book, for the subject-matter was the same.
Recently an important post was filled up, connected, let us say, with road-making and hydraulic structures. The person who received it was a very remarkable man. Public opinion (though not private) regarded him as the most deserving and suitable candidate. He passed for a distinguished engineer, thoroughly up in his profession, was said to be well off, an able organiser, diligent and considerate towards his subordinates.
Now it is to be remarked that the man was nothing of all that; he had never made roads orconstructed hydraulic works, but left that to his skilful assistants; he did not know his profession; he neglected what he had in hand; he was not to be found in his office, for he played cards and spent the nights in carousing. He was hard towards his employees, managed so badly that he never knew the state of his affairs, and was careless in money matters.
How then had he come to be elected? Some said he had been chosen in order to punish and humble the conceited engineers who had become unpopular. Others thought that the intention was that he should come to grief and be ruined because he was feared and hated.
However that may be, he was a materialised apparition created by the hate, envy, and malignity of the crowd; he had become an idea, a lucky rascal, a ruthless man whose elevation was necessary in order to still the tumult. He was like a crude mass of ore which stood for four hundred years in the market-place and was supposed to represent Justice, but was really the counterfeit presentment of a thievish alderman foisted in by the burgomaster.
The Art of Dying.—The wish for power is said to be a fundamental condition of the existence ofthe ego, without which a man would perish, as he could not resist the pressure of others. So we were taught by the seducing spirits of our youth. But Swedenborg says the thirst for power comes from hell, and Balzac speaks of the galley-slaves of ambition who can never rest. Dante has a fine verse regarding the fate of the great painters: one must retire in order to make place for another; he passes into the shadow and is forgotten.
Even when it is unjust, as it often is, one must acquiesce in being relegated to the back-ground, for men get tired even of the best and desire change. A great name becomes oppressive, is felt as a tyranny, and hinders others from also making great names for themselves. Napoleon and Bismarck saw this clearly, for both said beforehand that the world would give a sigh of relief when they were gone. But, in order to depart content, we require religious resignation, complete irrevocable withdrawal from the world. Such as Charles the Fifth's retirement into a monastery. To receive a "benefit" on one's retirement and then to reappear on the stage is not becoming. If one considers oneself dead to the world and takes no notice of it, then a new life begins, but on the other side; it is a much more peaceful one, for it is the resurrection from the dead already here! Beethovenwas vexed that the Viennese were ungrateful and forgetful when Rossini appeared and brought again in fashion the Italian opera, which Beethoven, had devoted his life to extirpate. Beethoven however, was a hard, selfish, and very proud man, who was accordingly literally tormented out of life, in great matters and in small. Increasing deafness, a disagreeable lawsuit, a mad young relative, domestic scandal, illnesses troubled his last years; he had even to be exposed to the undeserved ridicule of underlings. Thus, well prepared, he turned his back on life, and departed from all without missing anything.
So it should be, in order that nothing should bind one either with longing or with hope, in order that on the other side of the river one may not look back but go straight forward.
The object of the trials of old age is to adjust accounts, to finish up unsettled affairs, to see through the cheat of life, and to become weary of the incomplete, so that no backward longings may disturb the repose of the grave.
Can Philosophy Bring any Blessing to Mankind?—Such was the title of a pamphlet written in the 'sixties by a teacher of philosophy, Pontus Wikner. The question was justified; how it was answeredI do not remember, but the answer must have been evasive, for the writer of the pamphlet was a professor. If he had said that all philosophy, especially systematic philosophy, was rubbish, his career would have been at an end.
When, in 1870 at the university, I wished to study æsthetics, the professor of the subject sent me to the lecturer in order to take lessons. As he sat there and talked for hours by the light of a composite candle, I tried to decipher the furrowed brow of the pale man and to ascertain whether he really understood what he taught, or whether he only taught by rote. But I could not see through him and I despaired, for I understood nothing, and I cannot learn by heart what I do not understand. That would be humbug.
About forty years later I met the professor who was now pensioned, and consequently no longer a member of the college of augurs. Then I asked him whether he had ever mastered æsthetics?
"Good gracious, no! That is why I sent you to the lecturer."
"Did he understand them then?"
"I don't think so. But he had a good memory."
Then after all it was not my fault, and I was not more stupid than the rest.
Anyone who reads a short history of philosophy, and observes how one system replaces and refutes another, must be inclined to say, "Surely it is time to make an end of this drivel!" For the whole history of philosophy proves that thought cannot solve these problems, or that they cannot be solved by constructing a system of philosophy. The few philosophers, on the other hand, who have limited themselves to reflections on the variegated medley of life as seen in man, politics, and nature, have been of some use, but they are hardly counted philosophers. One can read fragments of Plato with interest, and also the unappreciated Schopenhauer, especially in his least-valued workParerga and Paralipomena, but not in his systematic treatiseThe World as Will and Idea. Kierkegaard is not regarded as a philosopher, nor are Feuerbach and his pupil Nietzsche, but they are extraordinarily instructive. All who construct an empty system with facts are fools. Such is Boström, who tries to subtilise conceptions, analyse ideas, and classify and arrange God, man, and human life under heads.
The history of philosophy is the history of errors, the history of lying, for nearly all philosophers are disguised rebels against God and opponents of religion. Philosophy is a historyof falsehood, and since it has demonstrated its own absurdity, all professorships of philosophy should be abolished. For a Christian state frustrates its own aims and is foolish if it supports a teacher of error and falsehood.
If for once in a way a philosopher is religious, people give him the contemptuous name of "mystic," although very few know what mysticism is.
In one professorial chair sits an Hegelian and preaches Hegel's pantheism as the truth, and in another sits a Boströmian and pulls Hegel to pieces. But the student must be examined by both, and give his adherence to both systems together. That is the higher education, academic culture, and learning in its glory!
The mass of people believe that all which is difficult to understand is deep, but it is not so. What is difficult to understand is immature, vague, and often false. The highest wisdom is simple, clear, and goes through the brain straight into the heart. Set a philosopher on the grave where his earthly hopes lie buried, and let him discourse of Herbert Spencer and the blastoderm! Place a philosopher in the Privy Council, and let him have a share in the conduct of the state! Ask a philosopher to write a drama, to paint a picture,or even to teach school-children, and he is useless. "Philosopher" is synonymous with superannuated donkey! Away with him!
Goethe on the Bible.—Eckermann had bought an English Bible, and when he complained that the Apocryphal books were missing, Goethe said among other things: "It is superfluous to raise the question of authentic or unauthentic in matters of the Bible. I regard the four gospels as completely genuine, for in them shines the reflected splendour of the lofty personality of Christ, as divine as anything which has appeared on earth. If any one asks me whether I find it possible to pay him worship and reverence, I answer, 'Certainly!'"
Then there follows some Voltairian talk about the sun and religious relics, about priestcraft and bishops' incomes, which belonged to the bad tone of the time. These stupid free-thinkers could not imagine how three could be equivalent to one, and therefore they stumbled at the doctrine of the Trinity. Did they not know that three thirds are equivalent to one, and that one is equivalent to three thirds? Or was their reason so darkened by pride? Or did they not know that spiritual things must be spiritually judged;that the Highest cannot be reached by the highest mathematics? For neither Laplace nor Poincaré, who busied themselves with the "Mécanique céleste," reached heaven, much less God.
"Now we Can Fly too! Hurrah!"—A friend of my youth, who two weeks ago died in a distant place, wrote on his last postcard to me these words, "Now we can fly too! Hurrah!" He was a pagan,i.e.an atheist, and this last word "Hurrah!" was an expression of scorn and a threat against heaven.
Every gift of God is regarded by the pagans as a victory over God. They always think thattheyhave made the discovery, and they still build at the Tower of Babel, the truth of whose story they deny, for they are lying spirits.
When the pious Franklin drew down lightning with his damp twine, he trembled and thanked God that He had not killed him. But when the godless physicists imitated Franklin, and wished to store the lightning in laboratory bottles, they were slain. People do indeed make lightning-conductors nowadays, but they are not always efficacious even when the conduction is right. Only imagine!—a man receives a gift, and as a mark of gratitude puts out his tongue!Every time that God gives something, irreligious science celebrates a triumph—that is, puts out its tongue!
That is the nature of science! And it seems as though it were still at present forbidden to touch the tree of knowledge, for the transgression of the prohibition is always accompanied by ingratitude and a curse.
The Fall and Original Sin.—In these times when the ape-morality rules, it is considered up-to-date to change the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction for that of heredity. The blame for our faults is put on our parents, especially, as might be expected, on the father. But when the father was alive, he put the blame on his father, and so on till we come to our first parents. That is indeed just like what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin, and ought to confirm the teaching of religion, but of course that cannot be!
That is the doctrine of heredity. But whence comes it? Where is the starting-point? Since everyone nowadays feels burdened with evil impulses and disease germs which he has inherited, and all our predecessors have felt the same, the only thing left is to lay the blame on our first parents.
How then is one to get rid of guilt—the consciousness of guilt and the evil impulses?
Christ answers more simply than the theologians who represent the work of grace as an examination course. "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," He said to the thief who confessed that he suffered for his evil deeds; but He did not say so to the other who reviled Him.
Generally speaking, one should take one's doctrine straight from the Gospels, which are simpler, greater, diviner than other writings. Devotional books are like the higher mathematics, mixed, complicated, and affected with human weaknesses.
The Gospel.—All boast of the "Gospel," but they mean this joyful message—the abrogation of civic laws and the opening of the jails; in a word, immunity from punishment for themselves and more stringent regulations for others. That was the Renaissance morality preached at the conclusion of the Middle Ages as at the end of our century. They wished to enlighten mankind by proclaiming that everything is lawful (against others), and that if one only "understood" men, one would forgive them. "He does not understand," was the formula in common use. Were I now toenumerate all the victims of this gospel, which we had to learn, people would cry "Scandal!" Then they would proceed to explain the tragedies on natural grounds, such as neurasthenia, infection, heredity (but not from our first parents); the unfortunate Englishman,[1]they say, was wrongfully imprisoned, because society consists of hypocrites; not because of his own sin, for it was not his own sin: there is no sin.
Every suggestion that there are misdemeanours which draw down the unpleasant consequences, which are called punishments, is taken ill.
Five years ago I heard one of these evangelists exclaim, "Morality! that is a word which I cannot take in my mouth." This saying was often quoted.
But shortly afterwards the same gentleman set heaven and hell in motion because a pupil had used a statement in one of his lectures to base a treatise on. This innocent proceeding the "evangelist" stigmatised as theft, and he wished to annihilate the thief.
The young man answered quite rightly that in that case people ought to be punished for "stealing" their knowledge out of manuals without acknowledgment, or that if they gave chapterand verse for every statement, a treatise would look like this: "Sum, 'I am' (Rabe's Grammar, 6th edition, Stockholm, 1858), called an auxiliary verb (Sundelin Schwedische Sprachlehre, Örebro, 1901), which indicates the passive voice (Sjoberg,Logic, Upsala, 1895)," and so on.
This gentleman was a very severe moralist, although he could not take the word morality in his mouth.