THE KING UNFOLDS THE GRANDEUR OF ATVATABAR.
"Your majesty," I said, "informs us that Atvatabar possesses science
and art, invention and poetry. These matters interest us quite as much
as your civil and military constitution. We will feel grateful if your
majesty will inform us more particularly regarding the condition of
those great forces for the development of the soul."
"You are right," said the king; "the government and the protection of
society, although matters of the utmost importance, are always much
inferior to the glory they defend. Mere police duties can never rank
with the sovereignty of mind over matter."
"In other words," said I, "the barricade is ever inferior to the
palace, and the treasure house to the heaps of gold within it. But,
your majesty, in what way does mind triumph over matter in your
realm?"
"Well," said the king, "we worship the human soul under a thousand
forms, arranged in three great circles of deities. The first circle
contains the gods of invention, that is, the practical forms by which
ideas rule the physical world, and also the composite forms of the
inventors themselves. The second circle contains the gods of art, and
the third circle the spiritual gods of sorcery, magic and love. What
gods do you people of the outer world worship?"
"In my own country," I replied, "a great many people worship one God,
the Creator of the universe. Many of these only nominally worship God,
but in reality worship gold, while a still greater number worship gold
without pretence of worshipping anything else."
"Then," said the king, "gold is your god. Our god is the aggregated
universal human soul worshipped under its various manifestations, both
real and ideal. This universal human soul forms the one supreme god
Harikar, whom we worship in the person of a living woman, the Supreme
Goddess Lyone. The great generic symbol of our faith is the golden
throne of the gods in the Bormidophia, whereon sits Lyone, the supreme
goddess, the representative of Harikar."
"Harikar is then your supreme deity?" I remarked.
"Greatest, for he embraces all other gods," said the king. "But the
greatest individual god is the Supreme Goddess, the symbol of the Holy
Soul."
I felt a strange desire to learn everything about so singular a
divinity as Lyone. It was a weird, awful, yet terribly entrancing
thought, that amid a thousand gods of dead and silent gold one only
should be alive, and that one a beautiful woman. Was it possible that
a live goddess could exist, and be both young and handsome? I was
anxious to ask a thousand questions concerning this mysterious being,
but it seemed a sacrilege to ask them. Was it possible for her to
continue worthy of worship, a human being, intoxicated, as she must
be, by the ceaseless adoration of millions? In other words, can a
woman be a veritable goddess and live? These ideas rushed through my
soul like quicksilver. My brain reeled with this discovery of the
secret of Atvatabar! What to me were its never-setting sun, its want
of gravity, its flying wayleals and bockhockids, its sculptured
cities, its sacred locomotive, its miracles of mechanism and art,
compared to a real live goddess with warm blood and a beating heart!
No wonder the discovery thrilled me! I felt like embracing his majesty
for the information, so simply given, that filled me with delight!
My companions were also greatly excited at the story of the king, and
it was with difficulty I could appear interested in the further
information he so graciously imparted to us. What were mines of gold
to this? But I strove outwardly to appear calm. I felt I must listen
further to the story of Atvatabar.
"Our other deities," continued the king, "are the ideal inventors and
their inventions. These give man empire over nature. All those who
have given man power of flight, who multiply his power to run, those
who multiply the power of the eye to see, the hand to labor or to
smite, the voice or pen to transmit ideas to great distances and to
great multitudes, stand in the pantheon in ideal grandeur. There are
the lords of labor, the deities of space and time. They are those gods
that breathe the breath of life into unborn ideas, and lo! from brain
and hand spring the creatures of their will."
The officers and sailors were listening to the discourse of the king
with rapt attention. We were anxious to learn as much as possible
about this strange religion of Atvatabar.
"We also worship art and ideal artists," continued the king, "the
soul-developers, who work for noble and humane ideas expressed in
their most beautiful garb; the builders of earthly palaces for the
soul in literature, music, manners, painting, dancing, sculpture,
decoration, tapestry and architecture which are represented by ideal
statues composed from groups of living artists. These in their ideal
or collective perfection are the gods who counteract the evils of an
arid and mechanical civilization by arousing feeling, imagination,
truth, beauty, tenderness, patriotism and faith in the souls of their
fellows.
"The spiritual forces are typified by a goddess, the incarnation of
spirit power, of romantic, ideal, hopeless love. Her ministers are the
priests of sorcery, necromancy, magic, theosophy, mesmerism,
spiritualism and other kindred spiritual powers. These perform
miracles, create matter, and impart life to dead bodies. The souls of
her priests and priestesses have the power to leave the body at will,
and to achieve a present Nirvana of one hundred years."