"Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is
dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter
weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in
the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people
are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is
born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with
effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works
are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of
the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or
beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world
exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe
me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected
contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates
forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he
sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out
of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the
appearance of reality. Nature, that sleeping Cybele, never lifts her
eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The
human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened
and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face
to face...."
The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and
now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure.
More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array
became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them--
"Julian, to what should one compare the universe of all those stars?
One might liken it to a fisherman's net thrown into the sea. God fills
the universe as the water fills the net, which moves, but which cannot
retain the waters; and the universe desires, but cannot keep God in
her meshes. The net is drawn, but God remains. If the universe made no
stir God would create nothing--would not issue from the calm that
surrounds Him. For whither should He sweep, and to what end? Yonder,
in the realm of the eternal Mothers, in the soul of Calm, dwell the
seeds, the Forms, the Ideas, of all that is, has been, and shall be.
The germ of hearth-cricket and of atom, together with the germ of the
Olympian god."
Then Julian cried aloud, and his voice rang in the silence of Nature
like a cry of mortal pain--
"But who then is He; why does He not answer when we call Him? What is
His name? I wish to know, I desire to know Him, to hear Him--to see
Him--why does He escape my thought? Where is He? Where does He dwell?"
"My poor boy! What matters thought to Him? What means it? He has no
name. He is such, that we can say that He must exist, but it is
impossible for us to say what He is. But do you think that you can
suffer love, or curse Him, without singing His praises? The
All-Creator is Himself, having no likeness to His creations. When you
say, '_He is not_,' you are exalting Him as much as if you said '_He
is_.' One can affirm nothing about Him, because He is above existence,
reality, and life. That is why I have said to you that He is the
negation of the universe and of your thought. Deny, renounce all that
exists for us here, and yonder, in the soundless profundity of
darkness, as in the light, you shall find Him still. Give Him friends,
family, country, heaven, earth, yourself, your reason, then you will
no longer see light, you shall yourself be it. You will not say, 'He
and I,' because you will feel that He and you are '_one_'; and your
soul will smile at your body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall
become silence, you shall no more find utterance. And if at that
moment the world should crumble away, you would be happy: for what
would the world signify to you, since you shall be with Him? Your soul
shall not desire, because He has no desires; it shall no longer live,
because He is above living; it shall no longer think, because He is
above thought. Thought is the search for light. He seeks not, because
He is Himself the light. He penetrates the whole soul--He laps it in
Himself. And then, impartial and solitary, it rests above reason
higher than goodness, higher than beauty, reposes in the infinite, on
the breast of God the Father of Light. The Soul becomes God, or, to
put it better, it remembers that in the night of ages it has been, is,
and shall be, God.... Such, my son, is the life of the Olympians; such
is the life of the wise and heroic among men; renunciation of the
universe, contempt of earthly passions, the flight of the Soul towards
God, whom at last it sees face to face."
Iamblicus ceased speaking. Julian fell at his feet without daring to
touch them, and kissed the earth where they rested. Then he raised his
head and gazed into those strange green eyes, in which dwelt the
wisdom of the serpent. They appeared calmer and deeper than the sky,
and as if exhaling a miraculous power.