The postman (or rather the postwoman) brought me among other things this
morning a little paper called _The Superman_, which I find is devoted to
the stars, the lines of the hands, and similar mysteries. I gather from it
that "Althea," a normal clairvoyant, and other seers, have visited the
planets--in their astral bodies, of course--to make inquiries on various
aspects of the war. Althea and "the other seers" seem to have had quite a
busy time running about among the stars and talking to the inhabitants
about the trouble in our particular orb. They seem really to have got to
the bottom of things. It appears that there is a row going on between
Lucifer and Arniel. "Lucifer is a fallen planetary god, whose lust for
power has driven him from his seat of authority as ruler of Jupiter. He is
the evil genius overshadowing the Kaiser and is striving to possess this
world so that he may pass it on to Jupiter and eventually blot out the
Solar Logos," etc., etc.
I do not know who sent me this paper or for what purpose; but let me say
that it is sheer waste of postage stamps and material. I hope I am not
intolerant of the opinions of others, but I confess that when people talk
to me about reading the stars and the lines of the hand and things of that
sort I shut up like an oyster. I do not speak of the humbugs who
deliberately exploit the credulity of fools. I speak of the sincere
believers--people like my dear old friend W.T. Stead, who was the most
extraordinary combination of wisdom and moonshine I have ever known. He
would startle you at one moment by his penetrating handling of the facts of
a great situation, and the next moment would make you speechless with some
staggering story of spirit visitors or starry conspiracies that seemed to
him just as actual as the pavement on which he walked.
I am not at home in this atmosphere of mysteries. It is not that I do not
share the feeling out of which it is born. I do. Thoreau said he would give
all he possessed for "one true vision," and so long as we are spiritually
alive we must all have some sense of expectancy that the curtain will lift,
and that we shall look out with eyes of wonder on the hidden meaning of
this strange adventure upon which we are embarked. For thousands of years
we have been wandering in this wilderness of the world and speculating
about why we are here, where we are going, and what it is all about. It can
never have been a greater puzzle than now, when we are all busily engaged
in killing each other. And at every stage there have been those who have
cried, "Lo, here!" and "Lo, there!" and have called men to witness that
they have read the riddle and have torn the secret from the heart of the
great mystery.
And so long as men can feel and think, the quest will go on. We could not
cease that quest if we would, and we would not if we could, for without it
all the meaning would have gone out of life and we should be no more than
the cattle in the fields. Nor is the quest in vain. We follow this trail
and that, catch at this hint of a meaning and that gleam of vision, and
though we find this path ends in a cul-de-sac, and that brings us back to
the place from whence we started, we are learning all the time about the
mysteries of our wilderness. And one day, perhaps--suddenly, it may be, as
that vision of the great white mountains of the Oberland breaks upon the
sight of the traveller--we shall see whither the long adventure leads. "Say
not the struggle naught availeth," said a poet who was not given to
cultivating illusions. And he went on:--
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking.
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making.
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
But though I want to see a vision as much as anybody, I am out of touch
with the company of the credulous. I am with Doubting Thomas. I have no
capacity for believing the impossible, and have an entire distrust of dark
rooms and magic. People with bees in their bonnets leave me wondering, but
cold. I know a man--a most excellent man--whose life is a perfect debauch
of visions and revelations. He seems to discover the philosopher's stone
every other day. Sometimes it is brown bread that is the way to salvation.
If you eat brown bread you will never die, or at any rate you will live
until everybody is tired of you. Sometimes it is a new tax or a new sort of
bath that is the secret key to the whole contraption. For one period he
could talk of nothing but dried milk; for another, acetic acid was the
thing. Rub yourself with acetic acid and you would be as invulnerable to
the ills of the body as Achilles was after he had been dipped by Thetis in
the waters of Styx. The stars tell him anything he wishes to believe, and
he can conjure up spirits as easily as another man can order a cab. It is
not that he is a fool. In practical affairs he is astonishingly astute. It
is that he has an illimitable capacity for belief. He is always on the road
to Damascus.
For my part I am content to wait. I am for Wordsworth's creed of "wise
passiveness." I should as soon think of reading my destiny on the sole of
my boot as in the palm of my hand. The one would be just as illuminating as
the other. It would tell me what I chose to make it tell me. That and no
more. And so with the stars. People who pretend to read the riddle of our
affairs in the pageant of the stars are deceiving themselves or are trying
to deceive others. They are giving their own little fancies the sanction of
the universe. The butterfly that I see flitting about in the sunshine
outside might as well read the European war as a comment on its aimless
little life. The stars do not chatter about us, but they have a balm for us
if we will be silent. The "huge and thoughtful night" speaks a language
simple, august, universal.
It is one of the smaller consolations of the war that it has given us in
London a chance of hearing that language. The lamps of the street are
blotted out, and the lamps above are visible. Five nights of the week all
the year round I take the last bus that goes northward from the City, and
from the back seat on the top I watch the great procession of the stars. It
is the most astonishing spectacle offered to men. Emerson said that if we
only saw it once in a hundred years we should spend years in preparing for
the vision. It is hung out for us every night, and we hardly give it a
glance. And yet it is well worth glancing at. It is the best corrective for
this agitated little mad-house in which we dwell and quarrel and fight and
die. It gives us a new scale of measurement and a new order of ideas. Even
the war seems only a local affair of some ill-governed asylum in the
presence of this ordered march of illimitable worlds. I do not worry about
the vision; I do not badger the stars to give me their views about the war.
It is enough to see and feel and be silent.
And now I hope Althea will waste no more postage stamps in sending me her
desecrating gibberish.