“They have no name,” said my brother, “they have no words. They have
passed the need of language—they communicate with each other by
immediate spiritual union. Their life is upon a higher plane than ours;
they do not deal in ideas, but in imaginative intuitions.”
“And then, Daniel, when you—when you pass into that trance—it is that!”
“It is that,” said he. “By an effort of my will I lift myself into their
consciousness; but because my physical and mental faculties have not
been prepared by long ages of development, my time with them is limited,
and I fall back to recruit my strength.”
“And this has been going on for years?”
“For ten or twelve years,” was his reply.
It will, perhaps, be best for me to give the substance of what he told
me in the long conversation which ensued. “I do not know where these
people are,” he told me. “I only know that throughout universal space
they are the race which is nearest in its development to our own. I do
not know what they look like. I have never seen nor heard them. I only
live their lives. I do not ask them any questions; our relation is
nothing of that sort. It is as if they were playing music which I heard;
but also as if their music was their whole life, so that I know all they
have and do. Their presence comes to me as the inwelling of universal
joy; of love and worship and rapture, unending and unthinkable. Their
life is infinite variety—immediate and perpetual expansion—spiritual
insight developing in a ratio determined by the will of the individuals.
It is as if a man were to witness the springtime arising of Nature, but
taking place in an hour instead of three months; and he comprehending
it, not from the outside, but living it, as a bursting forth of song.”
“And to this song there is no limit?” I asked him.
“When you speak of the soul as being infinite,” said Daniel, “you do not
mean that it extends merely beyond your thoughts, but you mean that you
may heap quantity upon quantity, and multiply quantity by quantity, in
any ratio and at any speed you please, and still have infinity before
you.”
“You mean that these beings understand what is going on in each other’s
mind?”
“They understand all minds as you understand your own. It is of the
nature of spiritual passion to mingle at a certain stage of intensity,
like electricity in the lightning flash. This race has developed a new
sense, just as man has developed senses which are not possessed by lower
animals.”
“And these people were once men?”
“Presumably.”
“And then they have escaped altogether from the sorrows of life?”
“Say, rather,” he answered, “that they have escaped to the sorrows of
life. The essence of life is sorrow.”
“It does not seem so, from your picture,” I said.
“That is simple because my picture is not understood. Every one of these
beings of whom I speak bears in his bosom a pain for which there are no
words; every one of them—there are countless numbers of them, living
each in my consciousness as the voice of one instrument lives in a
symphony—each one is a Titan spirit, wrestling day and night without
end, without possibility of respite, and bearing on his shoulders a
universal load of woe. In no way could you imagine one better than as a
soldier in the crisis of the battle, panting, and blind with pain, dying
amid the glory of his achievement.”
“And such a life!” I cried “Why do they live it?”
“They lived it because it demands with the voice of all their being to
be lived; because the presence of it is rapture and unutterable
holiness; because it will allow no questions, because it is instant,
imperative, and final—_it will be lived!_”
I sat in silence. “Do I gather from your words,” I asked, “that
immortality is not one of the privileges of this race?”
He smiled again. “The spiritual life,” he said, “does not begin until
the thought of immortality is flung away. A man’s duty looms up before
him—and in his weakness he will not do it, but puts the fruition of his
life into another world, where the terms are not so hard!”
“This people,” I asked—“what do they know about God?”
“They know no more than men do,” was the answer, “except that they know
they know nothing. They know that the veil is not lifted. It is not that
for which they seek—life is their task, and life only; to behold its
endless fruition; to dwell in the beauty of it, to wield power of it; to
toil at its whirling loom, to build up palaces of music from it. Ah, my
brother, why have you never lived a symphony?”
“These people have no physical life?” I asked.
“Assuredly, they have,” was his answer, “it is a life which does not
enter their consciousness—any more than, for instance, the beating of
your heart and the renewing of your tissues. They have attained to
mastery over the world of matter. They temper the seasons to their wish;
disease and ill-health they have banished entirely; and understanding
the ways of Nature, they create their food at will.”
“And their society knows no rich and no poor? Their government?”
“They have no government,” he said, “their law is their inspiration.”
Until far into the night we sat talking; and then, early in the morning,
as I went out upon the beach—I saw a ship standing in towards the shore!
I recall, as if it were yesterday, how my heart leaped up, and with what
an agony of uncertainty I stood waving a signal.
And then I rushed to see my brother, shouting the news aloud. Startled
with his own thoughts, he gazed at me in perplexity.
“A ship has come!” I cried. “A ship!”
“A ship!” he echoed; and then with a sudden light: “Oh, I see!”
“Come!” I cried. “They will take us aboard!”
But my brother shook his head. “No Edward,” he replied, “I cannot do
that.”
I started. “No,” he said again, “do not ask me. You go—but let me stay
here until the end!”
“What can you mean?” I cried. “Can you really suppose that I would leave
you?”
“I am not fitted to travel,” he said—“I do not wish to change. And I
could not face the thing which you call civilisation. It has no interest
for me.”
“But we can live in the country,” I cried. “I have money—nothing need
trouble you!” But all my arguments made no impression upon him; he would
only repeat that he desired to be left alone. I tried to move him by
saying that I would not leave him. I might stay if I chose, he said—he
could not help that; but if I were wise, I would leave him to his own
life; and I would not subject him to the pain of meeting the strangers
upon the ship. They would not understand, and they would only cause him
vexation. And even while I was protesting with him, we heard the shouts
of men upon the shore. He rose up and laid his hand upon my shoulder,
and kissed me upon the forehead, saying: “Be wise—or let me be wise for
you. Respect my judgment and let me go.”
And so he turned and started away toward the centre of the island. At
the edge of the thicket he turned and waved his hand to me. I never saw
him again.
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