Una. “Born again?”
Monos. Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were the
words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the
explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved for me the
secret.
Una. Death!
Monos. How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I observe, too, a
vacillation in your step—a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are
confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes,
it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word which
of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts—throwing a mildew upon
all pleasures!
Una. Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos,
did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously
did it act as a check to human bliss—saying unto it “thus far, and no
farther!” That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within
our bosoms—how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its
first upspringing, that our happiness would strengthen with its
strength! Alas! as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil
hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus, in time, it became
painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.
Monos. Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una—mine, mine forever now!
Una. But the memory of past sorrow—is it not present joy? I have much
to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to know the
incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.
Monos. And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in vain? I
will be minute in relating all—but at what point shall the weird
narrative begin?
Una. At what point?
Monos. You have said.
Una. Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then,
commence with the moment of life’s cessation—but commence with that
sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a
breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids
with the passionate fingers of love.
Monos. One word first, my Una, in regard to man’s general condition at
this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among our
forefathers—wise in fact, although not in the world’s esteem—had
ventured to doubt the propriety of the term “improvement,” as applied to
the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the five
or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose some
vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth
appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly
obvious—principles which should have taught our race to submit to the
guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. At long
intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each advance in
practical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally
the poetic intellect—that intellect which we now feel to have been the
most exalted of all—since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that _analogy_ which speaks
in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to the unaided reason bears
no weight—occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther
in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the
mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden
fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not
meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men—the
poets—living and perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”—of
rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been
properly applied only to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were
not more simple than our enjoyments were keen—days when _mirth_ was a
word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness—holy, august and
blissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into
far forest solitudes, primæval, odorous, and unexplored.
Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to
strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of
all our evil days. The great “movement”—that was the cant term—went
on:—a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the Arts—arose
supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had
elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the
majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and
still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a god
in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be
supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system,
and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other
odd ideas, those of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of
_gradation_ so visibly pervading all things in Earth and Heaven—wild
attempts at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both know
and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green
leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature
was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And
methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the
far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had
worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our _taste_, or
rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in
truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone—that faculty which,
holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral
sense, could never safely have been disregarded—it was now that taste
alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life.
But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of
Plato! Alas for the μουσικη which he justly regarded as an
all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since
both were most desperately needed when both were most entirely forgotten
or despised.[1]
Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!—“_que
tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment_;” and it is not
impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it,
would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh mathematical
reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced
by intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew on. This the
mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected
not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look
for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a
prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring,
with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more
crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In history[2] of
these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual
artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth,
and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration
save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw
that he must be “_born again_.”
And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we busied our souls, daily, in
dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come,
when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that
purification[3] which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities,
should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:—for man the Death-purged—for man to whose now
exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the
_material_, man.
Una. Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch
of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as
the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men
lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the
grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus
together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of
duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.
Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it
was in the Earth’s dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties
which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to
the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy
delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook
for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you—after some
days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
torpor; and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me. Words
are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It
appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him
who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and fully
prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into
consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without
being awakened by external disturbances. I breathed no longer. The
pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not
departed but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although
eccentrically so—assuming often each other’s functions at random. The
taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one
sentiment, abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your
tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet
fancies of flowers—fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the
old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. The
eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete impediment to
vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls could not roll in their
sockets—but all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere were
seen with more or less distinctness; the rays which fell upon the
external retina, or into the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid
effect than those which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in
the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated
it only as _sound_—sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting
themselves at my side were light or dark in shade—curved or angular in
outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree, was
not irregular in action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance of
precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a
modification more peculiar. Its impressions were tardily received, but
pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical
pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at
first only recognised through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I
say with a sensual delight. _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual.
The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the
least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain
there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or
pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all
their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation
of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they
conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave
them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face,
telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of
my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the _Death_ of which
these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una,
gaspingly, with loud cries.
They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark figures which flitted
busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they
affected me as _forms_; but upon passing to my side their images
impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal
expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited in a
white robe, passed in all directions musically about me.
The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by a
vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real
sounds fall continuously within his ear—low distant bell-tones, solemn,
at long but equal intervals, and commingling with melancholy dreams.
Night arrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my
limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There
was also a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf,
but more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown
in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the
room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequent
unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The
ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing from
the flame of each lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly
into my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una,
approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my
side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my
brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with the
merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, a
something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that, half appreciating,
half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this feeling took no
root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than a
reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then
into a purely sensual pleasure as before.
And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there
appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise
I found a wild delight—yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the
understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully
ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But
there seemed to have sprung up in the brain, _that_ of which no words
could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct
definition. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the
moral embodiment of man’s abstract idea of _Time_. By the absolute
equalization of this movement—or of such as this—had the cycles of the
firmamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I measured the
irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the
attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest
deviations from the true proportion—and these deviations were
omni-prævalent—affected me just as violations of abstract truth were
wont, on earth, to affect the moral sense. Although no two of the
time-pieces in the chamber struck the individual seconds accurately
together, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones,
and the respective momentary errors of each. And this—this keen,
perfect, self-existing sentiment of _duration_—this sentiment existing
(as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of
any succession of events—this idea—this sixth sense, upspringing from
the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the
intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.
It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departed
from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. The
lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness of the
monotonous strains. But, suddenly these strains diminished in
distinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in my
nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression
of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of
electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the
idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole
consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration.
The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly
_Decay_.
Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the
sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic
intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the
flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of
one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat
by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not
unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which
confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse,
which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped
heavily the mould upon me, and thus left me in blackness and corruption
to my sad slumbers with the worm.
And here, in the prison-house, which has few secrets to disclose, there
rolled away days and weeks and solemn months, and the soul watched
narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its
flight—without effort and without object. Meantime the worm, with its
convulsive motion, writhed untorturing and unheeded about me.
A year passed. The consciousness of _being_ had grown hourly more
indistinct, and that of mere _locality_ had, in great measure, usurped
its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of _place_.
The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body, was now
growing to be the body itself. At length, as often happens to the
sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is _Death_ imaged)—at length, as
sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flitting
light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped in
dreams—so to me, in the strict embrace of the _Shadow_, came _that_
light which alone might have had power to startle—the light of enduring
_Love_. Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew
the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of
Una.
And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been extinguished.
That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into quiescence. Many lustra had
supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had food no more. The
sense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its
stead—instead of all things—dominant and perpetual—the autocrats
_Place_ and _Time_. For _that_ which _was not_—for that which had no
form—for that which had no thought—for that which had no
sentience—for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no
portion—for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the
grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.
-----
[1] “It will be hard to discover a better [method of education] than
that which the experience of so many ages has already discovered; and
this may be summed up as consisting in gymnastics for the body, and
_music_ for the soul.”—Repub. lib. 2. “For this reason is a musical
education most essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to
penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon
it, filling it with _beauty_ and making the man
_beautiful-minded_. . . . . . He will praise and admire _the beautiful_;
will receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and
_assimilate his own condition with it_.”—Ibid, lib. 3. Music (μουσικη)
had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive
signification than with us. It included not only the harmonies of time
and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation, each in its
widest sense. The study of _music_ was with them, in fact, the general
cultivation of the taste—of that which recognizes the beautiful—in
contra-distinction from reason, which deals only with the true.
[2] “History” from ιστορειν, to contemplate.
[3] The word “_purification_” seems here to be used with reference to
its root in the Greek πυρ, fire.
* * * * *
“I KNOW THAT THOU WILT SORROW!”