When the New Year with its numerous holidays has passed, I find myself
one fine day alone. It is as though a hurricane had passed by; all are
scattered, blown away, shipwrecked. My friend the doctor has entered
the hospital as a patient. As a matter of fact, weakened by dipsomania,
hard-pressed by poverty, and worn out by want of sleep, he is suffering
from "neurasthenia." This is pitiful, and, instead of going to the
tavern, I turn my steps to the hospital for an hour's conversation and
society. In the café I am the only one who drinks anything alcoholic,
for my three companions have taken the pledge. The poet has gone away.
The young aesthete, the son of the Professor of Ethics, has been
sent abroad in order to be freed from the evil companionship of the
"seducer of youth," _i.e._ myself.
A doctor of philosophy is laid up through having broken his leg. At the
same time it happens that the young chemist, the standard-bearer of the
party of progress, falls ill and has to be treated for neurasthenia.
He suffers from sleeplessness, attacks of nightmare and giddiness. All
these sad events and others happen in the course of a month and a half.
And what makes my situation insupportable is, that they attribute the
blame more or less to me. I am the Evil One himself and have the evil
eye! It is a good thing that they know nothing about the power of an
evil will and the secret tricks of occultism and reject all ideas of
it, otherwise they kill.
A depressing stagnation has settled down on the intellectual life of
the University. There are no new productive ideas, no ferment and no
movement. The natural sciences have suffered to fall into disuse the
transformistic method which promised progress, and threaten to die of
their common weakness. There is no more discussion, for people are
agreed as to the futility of all efforts at reform. They have seen so
many illusions perish, and in this condition of things the once great
movement for liberty has dissolved or rather decomposed. The younger
generation are waiting for something new without being clear as to what
they want. Novelty at any price, whatever it be, with the exception
of apologies and retreats! Forward to the unknown, no matter what, so
long as it is not old! They want reconciliation with the gods, but they
must be re-created or, rather, developed gods, who are up-to-date,
have broad views, are free from petty prejudices, and intoxicated with
the joy of life. The invisible powers have become all the more morose,
envious of the freedom which mortals have won for themselves. Wine is
poisoned, and causes madness instead of calling up pleasant visions.
Love, regulated by social bonds, proves to be a life-and-death battle,
and free love brings in its train nameless and numberless diseases,
causes misery in homes, and its victims are execrated and outlawed.
The period for experiments has passed away, and the experiments have
produced only negative results. All the better for the men of the
future who can derive wholesome lessons from the defeat of the advance
guard, who have gone astray in the desert, and fallen in hopeless
strife against superior force.
* * * * *
Lonely as I am, a wreck on a reef in the ocean, there are moments
when I am seized with giddiness at the sight of the blue and vacant
immensity. Is it the sky which reflects the outspread sea, or the sea
which mirrors the sky? I have fled from men and men fly from me. In the
loneliness which I longed for I am persecuted by a crowd of demons, and
after all I begin to prefer the humblest mortal to the most interesting
phantom. But when I look for a man, during the long evenings through
the whole town, I find no one either at home or in the cafés.
But in the midst of my fated and inevitable need, Providence sends in
my way a man, whose father I had in former times despised, both on
account of his defective education as of his radical views, which had
shut him out from the best social circles. Now came the recompense; I
had rejected the father, although he was a rich man, and I was simply
compelled to put up with the son. It must be added that the young
man had as bad a name in the town as myself, and was doomed to equal
isolation as a "seducer of youth." Our common misfortune causes us to
form a real friendship. He invites me to share his house, he provides
me with means of living, he watches over me as over a patient, and, as
a matter of fact, the persecution to which I have been subjected has
made me cause a scandal in my hotel, where I tried to get into a room
near my own, convinced that I would find the disturbers of my peace
there. If I had stayed another day in that hotel the police would
certainly have interfered, and I should have spent the rest of my days
in a madhouse.
At the same time the appearance of another young man convinces me that
the gods do not cherish an irreconcilable grudge against me. He was a
real youthful prodigy, with a precocious insight into all branches of
human knowledge. His father, a learned man of high moral character,
had brought him up well, but two years ago the young man was seized
with a mysterious illness, the details of which he told me, with a view
of learning my opinion, or rather of confirming his own suspicions.
The young man, who had led a pure life and imbibed the strictest moral
principles, entered the world with favourable auspices, admired by his
contemporaries and popular wherever he came. But one day he committed
an act directly forbidden by his conscience. Since then nothing could
give him peace. After a long period of mental torture his body also
succumbed, while his spiritual crisis was intensified. Every day he
realised the fresh advance of an imaginary disease, and at last he
seemed to undergo death agonies. Then he thought he really was dead,
and heard in all corners of the house the hammering of coffins. When
he read the paper, for his mind remained clear, he expected to see
the report of his own burial. At the same time his body seemed to
suffer dissolution and exhaled a corpse-like odour, which frightened
the attendants away from his bed, and alarmed him himself. Moreover
a change seemed to take place even in his personality, for though he
was formerly religiously minded in his way he was now attacked by
doubts. One of his illusions, which he remembered afterwards, was that
his attendants had wax-like or blue faces. And even when he rose from
his bed to watch the people in the street all the passers-by seemed
to him to have blue faces. What still further alarmed him was that,
in the street below, there seemed to be passing an endless procession
of beggars, ragged vagabonds, decrepit, limping, legless cripples on
crutches, as though they had been summoned to pass in review before
him. During the whole time the sick man had the impression that what he
saw was, beyond all doubt, real, and yet he was obliged to attribute a
symbolical meaning to it. Every book which he opened seemed to contain
direct intimations for him. After he had ended his narrative he asked
what I thought of the matter.
"Something half real," I answered, "a series of visions conjured up by
someone with a special object. A living charade, from which it is for
you to draw the lesson. How were you cured?"
"It is comical, but I will confess it to you. Formerly I had stood in
opposition against my parents, who had surrounded me with unwearied
care for soul and body, but now at last I brought my neck under the
yoke, which had become pleasant and beneficial to me, since it had been
imposed in pure love, and so I was healed."
"And have you had no relapse?"
"Yes, once, but of a very mild kind. A period of insignificant
nervousness and sleeplessness, which yielded to the simplest medical
instructions. But this time I had nothing to reproach myself with."
"And what were your doctor's orders?"
"To live regularly, to sleep at night, and to keep free of excesses."
"Why, that is the way of the Cross."
* * * * *
Thus I feel no longer lonely and deserted. The young scholar seems to
have come to me as a messenger from the Powers; I can confide all to
him, and while we compare our experiences, we lend each other mutual I
support on the narrow path in the valley of suffering. He also has been
struck in his youth, and all men are violently roused from sleep! There
is a universal awakening proceeding, and what is to be its goal?