inflicted on men in requital for sins of the more heinous class.
Thus those who are greedy of power are condemned to the hell of the
Sodomites. Supposing this theory to be true, we must endure the
burden of our wickedness and rejoice at the pangs of conscience
which accompany it, as at the payment of fees at a toll-gate. To seek
virtue, accordingly, resembles an attempt to escape from prison and its
punishments. That is what Luther asserts in article xxix. against the
Romish bull, when he declares that "souls in purgatory sin continually,
because they seek for peace, and try to avoid torments." Similarly,
in article xxxiv., he says, "To fight with the Turks is equivalent to
rebellion against God, whose instrument the Turks are, in order to
punish our sins." It is therefore obvious "that all our good works are
deadly sins," and that "the world must become guilty before God, and
learn that no one is justified except through grace."
Let us therefore suffer without hoping for any real joy in life, for,
my brothers, we are in hell. And do not let us accuse the Lord, when we
see our little innocent children suffer. No one knows why, but divine
justice gives us a ground for surmising that it is on account of sins
committed by them before their birth. Let us rejoice in our torments,
as though they were the paying off of so many debts, and let us count
it a mercy that we do not know the real reason why we are punished.
XV
WHITHER?
Six months have passed, and I still go daily walking on the city wall
and survey the lunatic asylum, and catch glimpses of the blue sea in
the distance. Thence will the new epoch, the new religion, come of
which the world is dreaming.
Gloomy winter is buried, the meadows are green, the trees are in
blossom, the nightingale sings in the garden of the observatory, but
a wintry sadness still weighs upon our spirits, for so many weird and
inexplicable things have happened, that even the most incredulous
waver. The general sleeplessness increases, nervous breakdowns are
common, apparitions are matters of every day, and real miracles happen.
People are expecting something.
* * * * *
A young man pays me a visit, and asks, "What must one do in order to
sleep quietly at night?"
"Why?"
"Upon my word, I cannot say, but my bed-room has become a terror to me,
and I give it up to-morrow."
"Young man, atheist, naturalist, why?"
"The Devil must be in it! When I open the door of my room at night and
enter, someone seizes me by the arms and shakes me."
"Then there is someone in your room?"
"No, when I light a candle there is no one to be seen."
"Young man, there is someone who cannot be seen by candle-light!"
"Who is that?"
"The invisible, young man! Have you taken sulphonal, bromkali,
morphium, chloral?"
"I have tried all."
"And the invisible does not quit the field. Very well! You want to
sleep at night, and wish me to tell you how. Listen, young man, I
am neither a physician nor a prophet, I am an old sinner, who does
penance. Demand therefore neither preaching nor prophecy from an old
gallows-bird, who wants all his leisure time to preach to himself. I
have also suffered from sleeplessness and paralysis of the arms; I have
wrestled eye to eye with the invisible, and finally recovered sleep and
health. Do you know how? Guess!"
The young man guesses my meaning, and casts his eyes down. "You guess
it! Go in peace, and sleep well!"
Yes! I must be silent and let my meaning be guessed, for if I began to
play the preaching monk, they would turn their backs on me at once.
* * * * *
A friend asks me, "Whither are we going?"
"I cannot say, but as regards myself personally, it seems that the way
of the Cross leads me back to the faith of my fathers."
"To Catholicism?"
It appears so. Occultism has played its part, by giving a scientific
explanation of miracles and demonology. Theosophy, the forerunner
of religion, has fulfilled its function, when it has revived belief
in a world-order which punishes and rewards, Karma will be replaced
by God, and the Mahatmas will be revealed as the new-born powers,
the chastising and instructing spirits. Buddhism in Young France has
preached renunciation of the world and the worship of sorrow, which
leads direct to Golgotha.
As regards the homesick longing I feel for the bosom of the Mother
Church, that is a long story, which I may summarise as follows:
When Swedenborg taught me that it is unlawful to quit the religion of
one's ancestors, he said that with reference to Protestantism, which is
treason against the Mother Church. Or, to put it better, Protestantism
is a punishment inflicted on the barbarians of the North. Protestantism
is the Exile, the Babylonish Captivity, but the Return seems near, the
Return to the promised land. The immense progress which Catholicism
makes in America, England, and Scandinavia seems to point towards a
great reconciliation, in which the Greek Church, which has already
stretched out her hand towards the West, is not to be forgotten.
That is the dream of the socialists regarding the restoration of the
United States of the West, but taken in a spiritual sense. But I beg
you not to think that it is a political theory which takes me back
to the Roman Church. I have not sought Catholicism; it has found a
place in me, after following me for years. My child, who became a
Catholic against my will, has shown me the beauty of a cult which has
maintained itself unaltered from the first, and I have always preferred
the original to the copy. The considerable time I spent in my child's
native country gave me opportunity to observe and admire the sincerity
of the religious life there. I have been also influenced by my stay
in the St. Louis Hospital, and finally by the occurrences of the last
few weeks. After contemplating my life, which has whirled me round
like some of the damned in Dante's hell, and after discovering that my
existence in general had no other object but to humble and to defile
me, I determined to anticipate my executioner, and take in hand my
own torture. I determined to live in the midst of sufferings, dirt,
and death-agonies, and with this object I prepared to seek a post as
attendant on the sick in the Hôpital des Frères St. Jean de Dieu in
Paris. This idea occurred to me on the morning of April 29th, after
I had met an old woman with a head resembling a skull. When I return
home, I find _Séraphita_ lying open on my table, and on the right page
a splinter of wood, which points to the following sentence: "Do for God
what you would do for your own ambitious plans, what you do when you
devote yourself to your art, what you have done when you love someone
more than Him, or when you have investigated a secret of science! Is
God not Science Itself?..."
In the afternoon the newspaper _L'Éclair_ arrived, and, strange to say,
the Hôpital des Frères St. Jean de Dieu is twice mentioned in it.
On May 1st I read for the first time in my life Sar Peladan's _Comment
on devient un Mage_.
Sar Peladan, hitherto unknown to me, overcomes me like a storm, a
revelation of the higher man, Nietzsche's Superman, and with him
Catholicism makes its solemn and victorious entry into my life.
Has "He who should come" come already in the person of Sar Peladan. The
Poet-Thinker-Prophet--is it _he_, or do we wait for another?
I know not, but after I have passed through these antechambers of a new
life, I begin on May 3rd to write this book.
_May_ 5_th_.--A Catholic priest, a convert, visited me.
_May_ 9_th_.--I saw the figure of Gustavus Adolphus in the ashes of the
stove.
On May 14th I read in Sar Peladan: "About the year 1000 A.D. it was
possible to believe in witchcraft; to-day, as the year 2000 A.D.
approaches, it is an established fact that such and such an individual
has the fatal peculiarity of bringing trouble to those who come into
collision with him. You deny him a request, and your dearest friend
deceives you; you strike him, and illness makes you keep your bed;
all the harm you do to him recoils on you in twofold measure. But, say
people, that signifies nothing; 'chance' can explain these inexplicable
coincidences. Modern determinism sums itself up in the expression
'chance.'"
On May 17th I read what the Dane, Jorgensen, a convert to Catholicism,
says about the Beuron convent.
On May 18th a friend whom I have not seen for six years comes to Lund,
and takes a room in the house where I am staying. Who can picture
my emotion when I learn that he also has just been converted to
Catholicism? He lends me his breviary (I had lost mine a year ago), and
as I read again the Latin hymns and chants, I feel myself once more at
home.
_May_ 21_th_.--After a series of conversations regarding the Mother
Church, my friend has written a letter to the Belgian convent, where he
was baptised, requesting them to find a place of refuge for the author
of this book.
_May_ 28_th_.--There is a vague rumour in circulation that Mrs. Annie
Besant has become a Catholic.
* * * * *
I am waiting the answer from the Belgian convent. By the time this
book is printed, the answer will have arrived. And then? After that? A
new joke for the gods, who laugh heartily when we shed bitter tears.
Lund, _May_ 3_rd_-_June_ 25_th_, 1897.
[_Translator's Note_.--Strindberg never actually entered the Roman
Church.]
EPILOGUE
I had finished this book with the exclamation, "What humbug! What
wretched humbug life is!" But after some reflection I found the
sentiment unworthy, and struck it out. My mind swayed irresolute, and
at last I took refuge in the Bible, to find the explanation I needed.
And thus the Holy Book, more inspired with prophetic qualities than any
other, answered me: "And I will set my face against that man, and will
make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of
my people, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. And if that prophet
be deceived, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch
out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people
Israel."--Ezek. xiv., 8, 9.
Such then is my life; a sign, an example to serve for the betterment
of others; a proverb to set forth the nothingness of fame and of
celebrity; a proverb to show the younger generation how they should not
live; yes! I am a proverb, I who regarded myself as a prophet, and am
revealed as a braggart. Now the Eternal has led this false prophet to
speak empty words, and the false prophet feels irresponsible since he
has only played the rôle assigned to him.
Here you have, my brothers, the picture of a human destiny, one among
so many, and now confess that a man's life may seem--a bad joke!
* * * * *
Who is the Prince of this world, who condemns mortals to their
wickedness, and rewards virtue with the cross, the stake,
sleeplessness, and dreadful dreams? The Punisher of our unknown sins
committed somewhere else or forgotten? And who are Swedenborg's
reforming spirits, the guardian angels who protect us from the evil
ones?
What a Babel-like confusion!
St. Augustine pronounced it effrontery to doubt the existence of
demons. St. Thomas Aquinas declared that demons produce storms and
thunderbolts, and can delegate their power to human hands. Pope John
XXII. complained of the unlawful devices of his enemies, who pierced
portraits of him with needles. Luther believed that all accidents,
such as breaking bones, falls, conflagrations, and most illnesses were
traceable to the machinations of devils. He also asserted that some
individuals have already had their hell upon earth.
Have I not, then, rightly named my book _Inferno_? If any reader holds
it for mere invention, he is invited to inspect my journal, which I
have kept daily since 1895, of which this book is only an elaborated
and expanded extract.
THE END