"It is a lovely imagination responding to the deepest desires, instincts,
cravings of spiritual man, that spiritual rapture should find an echo in
the material world; that in mental communion with God we should find
sensible communion with nature; and that, when the faithful rejoice
together, bird and beast, hill and forest, should be not felt only, but
seen to rejoice along with them. It is not the truth; between us and our
environment, whatever links there are, this link is wanting. But the
yearning for it, the passion which made Wordsworth cry out for something,
even were it the imagination of a pagan which would make him 'less
forlorn,' is natural to man; and simplicity leaps at the lovely fiction
of a response. Just here is the opportunity for such alliances between
spiritualism and superstition as are the daily despair of seekers
after truth."
--Dr. VERRALL
And though he slept for hours the doctor never once left his side, but
sat there with pencil and notebook, striving to catch, yet in vain, some
accurate record of the strange fragmentary words that fell from his lips
at intervals. His own face was aflame with an interest that amounted to
excitement. The very hand that held the pencil trembled. One would have
said that thus somewhat a man might behave who found himself faced with
confirmation of some vast, speculative theory his mind had played with
hitherto from a distance only.
Toward noon the Irishman awoke. The steamer, still loading oranges and
sacks of sulfur in the Catania harbor, was dusty and noisy. Most of the
passengers were ashore, hurrying with guidebooks and field-glasses to see
the statue of the dead Bellini or watch the lava flow. A blazing,
suffocating heat lay over the oily sea, and the summit of the volcano,
with its tiny, ever-changing puff of smoke, soared through blue haze.
To Stahl's remark, "You've slept eight hours," he replied, "But I feel as
though I'd slept eight centuries away." He took the coffee and rolls
provided, and then smoked. The doctor lit a cigar. The red curtains over
the port-holes shut out the fierce sun, leaving the cabin cool and dim.
The shouting of the lightermen and officers mingled with the roar and
scuttle of the donkey-engine. And O'Malley knew perfectly well that while
the other moved about carelessly, playing with books and papers on his
desk, he was all the time keeping him under close observation.
"Yes," he continued, half to himself, "I feel as if I'd fallen asleep in
one world and awakened into another where life is trivial and
insignificant, where men work like devils for things of no value in order
to accumulate them in great ugly houses; always collecting and
collecting, like mad children, possessions that they never really
possess--things external to themselves, valueless and unreal--"
Dr. Stahl came up quietly and sat down beside him. He spoke gently,
his manner kind and grave rather. He put a hand upon his shoulder.
"But, my dear boy," he said, the critical mood all melted away, "do
not let yourself go too completely. That is vicious thinking, believe me.
All details are important--here and now--spiritually important, if you
prefer the term. The symbols change with the ages, that is all." Then, as
the other did not reply, he added: "Keep yourself well in hand. Your
experience is of extraordinary interest--may even be of value, to
yourself as well as to--er--others. And what happened to you last night
is worthy of record--if you can use it without surrendering your soul to
it altogether. Perhaps, later, you will feel able to speak of it--to tell
me in detail a little--?"
His keen desire to know more evidently fought with his desire to protect,
to heal, possibly even to prevent.
"If I felt sure that your control were sufficient, I could tell you in
return some results of my own study of--certain cases in the hospitals,
you see, that might throw light upon--upon your own curious experience."
O'Malley turned with such abruptness that the cigar ash fell down
over his clothes. The bait was strong, but the man's sympathy was not
sufficiently of a piece, he felt, to win his entire confidence.
"I cannot discuss beliefs," he said shortly, "in the speculative way you
do. They are too real. A man doesn't argue about his love, does he?" He
spoke passionately. "Today everybody argues, discusses, speculates: no
one believes. If you had your way, you'd take away my beliefs and put in
their place some wretched little formula of science that the next
generation will prove all wrong again. It's like the N rays one of you
discovered: they never really existed at all." He laughed. Then his
flushed face turned grave again. "Beliefs are deeper than discoveries.
They are eternal."
Stahl looked at him a moment with admiration. He moved across the cabin
toward his desk.
"I am more with you than perhaps you understand," he said quietly, yet
without too obviously humoring him. "I am more--divided, that's all."
"Modern!" exclaimed the other, noticing the ashes on his coat for
the first time and brushing them off impatiently. "Everything in you
expresses itself in terms of matter, forgetting that matter being in
continual state of flux is the least real of all things--"
"Our training has been different," observed Stahl simply, interrupting
him. "I use another phraseology. Fundamentally, we are not so far
apart as you think. Our conversation of yesterday proves it, if you have
not forgotten. It is people like yourself who supply the material that
teaches people like me--helps me to advance--to speculate, though
you dislike the term."
The Irishman was mollified, though for some time he continued in the same
strain. And the doctor let him talk, realizing that his emotion needed
the relief of this safety-valve. He used words loosely, but Stahl did not
check him; it was merely that the effort to express himself--this self
that could believe so much--found difficulty in doing so coherently in
modern language. He went very far. For the fact that while Stahl
criticized and denied, he yet understood, was a strong incentive
to talk. O'Malley plunged repeatedly over his depth, and each time the
doctor helped him in to shore.
"Perhaps," said Stahl at length in a pause, "the greatest difference
between us is merely that whereas you jump headlong, ignoring details
by the way, I climb slowly, counting the steps and making them secure.
I deny at first because if the steps survive such denial, I know that
they are permanent. I build scaffolding. You fly."
"Flight is quicker," put in the Irishman.
"It is for the few," was the reply; "scaffolding is for all."
"You spoke a few days ago of strange things," O'Malley said presently
with abruptness, "and spoke seriously too. Tell me more about that, if
you will." He sought to lead the talk away from himself, since he did
not intend to be fully drawn. "You said something about the theory that
the Earth is alive, a living being, and that the early legendary forms of
life may have been emanations--projections of herself--detached portions
of her consciousness--or something of the sort. Tell me about that
theory. Can there be really men who are thus children of the earth,
fruit of pure passion--Cosmic Beings as you hinted? It interests me
deeply."
Dr. Stahl appeared to hesitate.
"It is not new to me, of course," pursued the other, "but I should like
to know more."
Stahl still seemed irresolute. "It is true," he replied at length slowly,
"that in an unguarded moment I let drop certain observations. It is
better you should consider them unsaid perhaps: forget them."
"And why, pray?"
The answer was well calculated to whet his appetite.
"Because," answered the doctor, bending over to him as he crossed over to
his side, "they are dangerous thoughts to play with, dangerous to the
interests of humanity in its present state today, unsettling to the soul,
shaking the foundations of sane consciousness." He looked hard at him.
"Your own mind," he added softly, "appears to me to be already on their
track. Whether you are aware of it or not, you have in you that kind of
very passionate desire--of yearning--which might reconstruct them and
make them come true--for yourself--if you get out."
O'Malley, his eyes shining, looked up into his face.
"'Reconstruct--make them come true--if I get out'!" he repeated
stammeringly, fearful that if he appeared too eager the other would stop.
"You mean, of course, that this Double in me would escape and build
its own heaven?"
Stahl nodded darkly. "Driven forth by your intense desire." After a
pause he added, "The process already begun in you would complete
itself."
Ah! So obviously what the doctor wanted was a description of his
sensations in that haunted cabin.
"Temporarily?" asked the Irishman under his breath.
The other did not answer for a moment. O'Malley repeated the question.
"Temporarily," said Stahl, turning away again toward his desk,
"unless--the yearning were too strong."
"In which case--?"
"Permanently. For it would draw the entire personality with it...."
"The soul?"
Stahl was bending over his books and papers. The answer was barely
audible.
"Death," was the whispered word that floated across the heavy air of
that little sun-baked cabin.
The word if spoken at all was so softly spoken that the Irishman
scarcely knew whether he actually heard it, or whether it was uttered by
his own thought. He only realized--catching some vivid current from
the other man's mind--that this separation of a vital portion of himself
that Stahl hinted at might involve a kind of nameless inner catastrophe
which should mean the loss of his personality as it existed today--an
idea, however, that held no terror for him if it meant at the same time
the recovery of what he so passionately sought.
And another intuition flashed upon its heels--namely, that this
extraordinary doctor spoke of something he knew as a certainty; that
his amazing belief, though paraded as theory, was to him more than
theory. Had he himself undergone some experience that he dared not
speak of, and were his words based upon a personal experience instead
of, as he pretended, merely upon the observation of others? Was this a
result of his study of the big man two years ago? Was this the true
explanation of his being no longer an assistant at the H--hospital,
but only a ship's doctor? Had this "modern" man, after all, a flaming
volcano of ancient and splendid belief in him, akin to what was in
himself, yet ever fighting it?
Thoughts raced and thundered through his mind as he watched him across
the cigar smoke. The rattling of that donkey-engine, the shouts of the
lightermen, the thuds of the sulfur-sacks--how ridiculous they all
sounded, the clatter of a futile, meaningless existence where men
gathered--rubbish, for mere bodies that lived amid dust a few years,
then returned to dust forever.
He sprang from his sofa and crossed over to the doctor's side. Stahl
was still bending over a littered desk.
"You, too," he cried, and though trying to say it loud, his voice could
only whisper, "you, too, must have the _Urmensch_ in your heart and
blood, for how else, by my soul, could you _know_ it all? Tell me,
doctor, tell me!" And he was on the very verge of adding, "Join us! Come
and join us!" when the little German turned his bald head slowly round
and fixed upon the excited Irishman such a cool and quenching stare that
instantly he felt himself convicted of foolishness, almost of
impertinence.
He dropped backwards into an armchair, and the doctor at the same moment
let himself down upon the revolving stool that was nailed to the floor in
front of the desk. His hands smoothed out papers. Then he leaned forward,
still holding his companion's eyes with that steady stare which forbade
familiarity.
"My friend," he said quietly in German, "you asked me just now to tell
you of the theory--Fechner's theory--that the Earth is a living,
conscious Being. If you care to listen, I will do so. We have time." He
glanced round at the shady cabin, took down a book from the shelf
before him, puffed his black cigar and began to read.
"It is from one of your own people--William James; what you call a
'Hibbert Lecture' at Manchester College. It gives you an idea, at least,
of what Fechner saw. It is better than my own words."
So Stahl, in his turn, refused to be "drawn." O'Malley, as soon as he
recovered from the abruptness of the change from that other conversation,
gave all his attention. The uneasy feeling that he was being played
with, coaxed as a specimen to the best possible point for the microscope,
passed away as the splendor of the vast and beautiful conception dawned
upon him, and shaped those nameless yearnings of his life in glowing
language.