I am indebted for education to a bachelor uncle, who, after our great
bereavement, received at his house an infant sister and myself. I was at
that time about twelve years old. My relative enjoyed a handsome
annuity, which he spent with the utmost liberality. As I was rather a
thoughtful, though not very studious boy, it was determined that I
should go to college. I entered with some difficulty soon after my
seventeenth birthday,--an age somewhat later than the average at that
time.
Two years before me in college was the class of 18--. Upon the roll of
its fifty-two members stood the name of Herbert Vannelle. Rich, an
orphan, inclined to thought and study beyond the limited academic range
of those days, endowed with personal fascinations of a very rare and
peculiar kind,--there seemed only one possible shadow to darken his
career. In his family there had been said to exist a tendency to
eccentric independence of action, which vulgarly, perhaps justly, passed
for insanity. His father, who died soon after Herbert entered college,
had given much uneasiness to the wealthy and respectable city-circle
with which he was socially connected. Upon the death of his wife he had
retired to the Vannelle homestead in the northwestern part of
Connecticut, and there lived in studious seclusion. There he insisted
upon bringing up his only son, deprived of such recreations and
companionships as are suitable to youth. He had, indeed, superintended
his studies with patience and thoroughness, and had not failed to
accomplish him in the grace of physical power, at that time little
recognized as a part of education.
So much was known of Vannelle when he appeared at college among the
young men of the Junior Class. And little more was known of him when he
left America on the day his class graduated. His connections with the
other students had been very slight. He had never cared to acquire that
fluency in retailing the thoughts of others upon which college-rank
depends. An access to the library was all that he seemed to value in his
connection with the institution. And here he busied himself, not with
the openings to the solid and rational sciences, but with the
bewildering sophistries of the school-philosophies, and their aimless
wrangling over verbal conceits.
At that time I happened to be taking a young man's first enchanting
rounds upon the tread-mill of metaphysics. At the library I often
encountered Vannelle in search of some volume of which I had just
possessed myself. This led to an acquaintance. I was soon fascinated by
a power which streamed from his large, expressive eyes, and persuaded by
a voice modulated in a pathos and sweetness that I have heard in no
other person. His influence upon me at this time was not unlike that
which the mesmerists had just begun to exercise. Yet, while he showed an
interest in directing my inquiries along the paths to which they
naturally tended, he never communicated the results of his own studies,
or offered me the slightest assistance in generalizing my random
observations. What he thought himself, or by what writers he was
influenced, it was not easy to fathom. He was deeply acquainted with the
writings of the New-England Transcendentalists, then at their greatest
notoriety, yet never for an instant seemed giddy upon the hazy heights
where those earnest spirits soared.
Vannelle spent two years in Germany, and returned to America about the
time that my college-course was finished. The little I knew of him
during his absence was from the scattered notices of
newspaper-correspondents, who intimated that Herbert possessed the
privilege of friendly intercourse with men most distinguished for
knowledge in the Old World. Just before Class-Day, I received a letter
dated from X----, in Connecticut, inviting me, in terms which seemed
almost a command, to spend the summer at the Vannelle homestead. Herbert
had returned, and thus abruptly summoned me. Intending to postpone until
the autumn the study of a profession, I promised to come to him for a
few weeks,--a visit which might be extended, were it mutually agreeable.
There was, at that time, a day of weary staging after leaving the cars,
before arriving in the village of X----; there were also six rough miles
of carriage-conveyance before the traveller could attain the old house
by the damp river-marsh whereto I was destined. When I arrived there,
Vannelle stood at the door to greet me.
"We have six months' concern together," he said, as if delivering
himself of some studied speech,--"we have six months' concern together;
then we may stand at the parting of the ways,--we may cleave to one
another, or separate forever."
A low, dark house. The south-side planted out from the sun by pines and
cedars. The parlors covered with well-worn Turkey carpets, chafed into
dusty ridges. The wretched window-glass breaking and distorting the
pine-trees without. Little oval mirrors distorting the human countenance
within. In the living-room (so called by those able to live in it)
loomed a rusty air-tight stove of cathedral proportion,--a ghastly altar
which the bitterest enemy of the family might feel fully justified in
protecting. A square, cellarless room, about twenty feet from the house,
had been the study of the elder Vannelle. Tables covered with a confused
mass of writing-materials. A jumble of retorts and other chemical
apparatus about the floor. Cabinets of the ugliest pattern reached to
the ceiling;--at first I supposed them to be made of painted wood;
afterwards I discovered they were of iron, and filled with rare books
and manuscripts.
"My father built this study," said Vannelle, as we passed into it. "He
wished to get rid of those periodical clearings-up from which there is
no escape in a New-England household. Mrs. Brett, the wife of our
farmer, could never resist the feminine itch to put things to rights.
She was always contriving to arrange papers and books in symmetrical
piles where nothing could be found. My father could never turn his back
but she was sure to annihilate important scraps of writing that were
lying about the floor, and, under pretence of sweeping, invoke a simoom
of dust that hours were insufficient to allay. But when he built this
room, and kept the key of it, there was no more trouble."
I shudder as I hurry through these descriptions, for a confession which
I hardly dare to put into words must accompany them. All these
surroundings, seen by me for the first time, had a fearful familiarity.
In some occult state of spiritual existence I seemed to have known them
all. I have learned that the soul may enter into communion with other
minds otherwise than through the senses,--nay, more, it may thus take an
inexplicable cognizance of material things. Of this I have had such
proof as it would be infatuation to doubt. I was compelled to test this
startling suspicion for the first time.
"You need not take me up-stairs, Herbert," I said, as we returned to the
house. "The picture of your father, which hangs in the large chamber
projecting over the porch, was doubtless a good likeness of the mask he
wore at city club-houses and family-dinners,--but the man as you knew
him _here_, how little does it resemble! As for the Chinese cabinet
which stands between the windows, it has associations, no doubt, but it
is sadly out of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be
interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as
corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious
subjects and execrable drawing always put me."
The lightness of speech was painfully forced. Vannelle turned to me and
said, slowly,--
"Have you been here before?"
"No."
"Has any one described to you this house or its contents?"
"No."
"Then thought has been conveyed from mind to mind in unconditioned
purity. It is as I had supposed. We are brothers forever."
The next day, after an early breakfast, Vannelle summoned me to the
study. I glanced distrustfully at the confusion of the room, which
seemed in strange contrast with the exquisitely neat and even
fashionable attire of its proprietor. A smile of proud pity touched the
lips of Vannelle, as he seemed to divine my thought. Then, as if I had
read them in letters of light, these words seemed to answer me:--
"Shall we, the stewards and guardians of the highest interests of
mankind, fret our souls at trifles,--we, who are to be instruments in
marshalling the race from slavery and folly to wisdom and freedom?
Behold, in one bound, the hovels and palaces of earth shall be alike,
and, floating free in spiritual space, we will win such dominion as the
highest graduates in saintship dimly perceived, but were never able to
declare!"
These thoughts, energizing the brain of my companion, seemed thrown into
my consciousness with far more distinctness than if they had been
uttered. It was with awe that this mystic correspondence between mind
and mind was made plain to me. One man out of this myriad-bodied
humanity had sought me out, and in his presence I was never more to be
alone. The gigantic shadow of self passed from me; I was as clay in the
potter's hands!
At length Herbert spoke.
"Our work in this world is determined for us; mine is allotted to
me,--not by my own choice. I return to this house never to leave it till
I go to join my father, with his great work more nearly completed than
when it came to my hands. At that table he died, with some glimpses of
the promised land whither he tended,--where he prayed that I might
enter."
There escaped from me a feeble remonstrance,--no utterance of the heart,
but rather a dry rattling of such conventional proprieties as lingered
in the memory.
"And you intend to leave this wholesome world,--you, whose career might
be such as few have it in their power to choose? You know, you must
know, the wonderful gifts which you possess; you cannot alone be
ignorant of the fascination you might exercise over man and woman."
"I know all these temptations, and others that you cannot surmise,"
exclaimed Vannelle, "and I will conquer them,--if not through spiritual
grace, then by some bodily penance of lasting effect. I discern in you
certain qualities of mind that may serve to regulate the equipoise of
mine. I have the means to provide for us both during the high
speculations in which we shall engage. Let us be comrades in this
undertaking. I seek to bridge the great gulf that separates the natural
from the spiritual. My father firmly believed in the possibility of
obtaining an absolute ground for the philosophy which should include all
things human and divine. He passed onward before the inestimable gift he
seemed to have won could be set forth in the symbols of the world. To
see is not difficult, but only to contrive a popular adaptation through
which others may discern the thought. I seek the means to express the
truth which he saw, and of which I can catch some glimpses through such
colored mythologies as represent the higher religions of the world. Man
has found out the knowledge by which a universe was evoked from chaos:
shall he not perfect that knowledge in the Law which includes the divine
element by which the universe is informed? How can we love with our
whole heart what we do not know with our whole mind? Clifton, I declare
to you that knowledge of the Law by which the Creator is and acts is
possible to man!"
I shall seem to you weak and unstable in no common degree to have been
moved by utterance like this. Remember that I can reproduce only the
words, not the wild power of that persuasive voice, not the aspiring
courage that struck me from his eye. Almost against my will there was
produced in me a plasticity of mind that seemed to demand the impress of
some foreign mould. The tree of knowledge was set in the midst of the
garden, and again were audible the seductive serpent-tones: "Your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
I found Vannelle so far my superior in the knowledge of all earthly
lores, that I at length came to think it possible he might be the
appointed instrument of communicating the singular intelligence that he
sought. He proposed to review the different systems built by human
thought before applying himself to the problem of finding a system of
philosophy which should include them all. His idea was, that from the
extreme negation of the so-called transcendental position--when that
position had been legitimately attained by a thoroughly conscientious
thinker--some new light must break upon the mind. His was no shrinking
from the conflict with real things to indulge in vague yearnings after
the inaccessible, but a definite effort so to place the soul and
discipline the understanding that wisdom could be realized without
process or media. Unlike most inquirers of that time, he had no love for
the abstract and the controversial, but entertained them freely as
finally discovering some path to the concrete and the unquestioned. He
declared that only to superficial persons was skepticism the terminus of
speculative deism. Let me also say this for my friend,--that his
directing stimulus to action was neither ambition nor curiosity, but
what, had it been directed to any recognized end, the world would have
called a religious principle. He was never guilty of the shallow
wickedness of seeking self-culture as an end; he sought the highest
self-culture only as a state of more passionate yearning for
regeneration.
What need to tell how I was fascinated, mesmerized, into a humble
companionship? how I became inspired with his own mighty belief in the
feasibility of the object he strove to attain? We read together certain
manuscripts of the elder Vannelle, in which, wrapt in a gorgeous
symbolism, seemed dimly to approach a great truth, which, at times,
could be faintly perceived, but never mastered. There were hints,
apparently of the deepest significance, which, when the mind endeavored
to grasp them, vanished like a vision.
Day after day, almost night after night, for five months, I passed with
Vannelle in the room I have described. And during that vivid period I
knew an intellectual intoxication which seemed the pure ecstasy of
spirit wholly delivered from the burden of the flesh. Vannelle talked
like one inspired upon the higher problems of metaphysical research,
showing, or appearing to show, in what sense the speculations of the
philosophers were true, and in what sense absolutely false. We seemed to
have cut ourselves adrift from the human race, and to look down upon it
from a position whence its basest moral corruptions and most detestable
oppressions marked the rhythm in a majestic poem. The infinite vagaries
of crime, the unspeakable ecstasies of blessedness, were equally
wholesome as equally full of Law. At times it seemed impossible that any
words could so mould themselves as to give distinctness to the thought
which flashed through our minds. At times a representation corresponding
to what Vannelle so eloquently uttered seemed embodied in every phase of
opinion man had known. But, alas, there were also periods of doubt and
despair analogous to those which succeed physical intoxication. The
grosser systems of antiquity were not only considered, but actually
personated in our experience. Here it was necessary for us to penetrate
into some of the darkest recesses of the human soul, and to test how
nearly allied is that which exalts man to that which degrades him, how
the noblest virtues plunge headlong into the maddest passions. Yet we
learned to welcome these convulsions of Chaos and Old Night, as blindly
bearing us onward towards our destined goal.
--But enough of this. I would only faintly express how terribly real was
the delusion (the world would so call it, and who am I to gainsay it?)
which has overhung my earthly life.
Let me tell in briefest words how the spell was broken,--partially
broken. During those months of passionate exaltation, letters from
friends once dear to me had been thrown aside half-read, and wholly
valueless. On the eleventh of November I started,--as a black seal was
to be broken. My uncle had suddenly died. The last instalment of his
annuity had been paid, and my little sister, an orphan and penniless,
was thrown upon me for education and support. Shame to me that I then
hesitated! Yet it was some hours before I could persuade myself to put
the letter into Vannelle's hand, and say that I must abandon him
forever. Let me forget the bitter temptation. Of course my friend begged
to provide for my sister from his own ample means, and even offered her
an asylum at his house. I still retained sufficient sanity to perceive
the wrong of bringing a young child to that dismal place to wither
removed from all human companionship and sympathy. A spirit not in a
condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would
be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and
questioning deadened all sense of duty? Was this the end of my Absolute
Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience
and the moral law? Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such
questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have
bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream
of Dante,--two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been
applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the
sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and
shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the
victory have ached through my life.
There was but one calling wherein it seemed possible for me to earn my
bread; for how could I descend to chaffer in the market, to trim and
huckster through the world,--_I_, who had thought to condition the
Spirit of the Universe? But there were metaphors faintly shadowing
divine things, symbols adapted to the limitations of the popular mind,
and with these I might do an honest work for the souls of men. _Honest?_
Yes,--unless Augustine was a hypocrite, when he declared that he spoke
of the Unseen as unity in three persons, less to say something than not
to remain altogether silent. To a certain order of minds among the
clergy this is the daily cross,--the necessity of maintaining a fixed
position, and ever looking down from it to teach, instead of ever
yearning upward to be taught.
It is enough to say, that, supporting myself and my sister by
school-teaching, I achieved such courses of reading as are supposed to
qualify for enrolment among the liberal clergy of New England. Until the
time when my sister left me by marriage I was settled at N----, on the
Connecticut. Soon after this event, died old Dr. P---- of Foxden, and I
received a call to his vacant parish. I knew that the sort of society to
be found in that place would minister to my most urgent need. I craved
some intellectual clanship which should never seek to rise to an equal
spiritual companionship. For there was only one man to whom I might
speak freely, and from him my path ever diverged. How far apart the
years had led us! Sometimes there came a whisper that I had been
snatched from the hand of Satan, killer of souls; sometimes my only
opportunities of salvation seemed left in that sad, damp homestead. I
could never return to him; I could never be wholly free from him. Ever
was I controlled by a shadowy force which reached me from his abundant
power. No occupation was so absorbing as to protect me from the invading
presence of Herbert Vannelle.
* * * * *
The first Sunday of the present month brought the twentieth anniversary
of the day that I parted from Vannelle. In the morning I had preached a
written sermon on those solemn words of the Apostle, "Whatsoever is not
of faith is sin." For the first time I shrank from the consciousness
that the words uttered were true to me in a very different sense from
that in which the congregation received them. I found it difficult to
poise in tremulous balance between Truth and its available
representation to common men. It is my custom to preach extemporaneously
in the afternoon. Upon rising, after the introductory services, I could
perceive that my pulse and breathing were accelerated. A certain
numbness of the brain seemed pierced with convulsive, fugitive shocks.
An inexplicable influence, a command for cerebral sympathy, seemed
beating at my forehead. I turned the sacred pages before me, but could
find nothing upon which to base my remarks. But to my lips would come
incessantly a passage from Sir Thomas Browne. At last I gave it voice:--
"There are, as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts and
boisterous objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too
nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than myself;
which I confess I conquered, not in martial attitude, but on my knees."
An extraordinary impetus seemed imparted to my mental powers. Men have
said that I spoke with a fluency and eloquence unknown to them before.
Indeed, I was conscious of a capacity to receive and convey such
portions of divine wisdom as corresponded to their needs. To speak in
figure, my heavenly race was as if the Lord of Evil pursued my soul.
Thoroughly exhausted by the effort, I returned to my study and threw
myself upon a sofa. More fully than ever before, I entered that state
where one far distant may make himself perceived and known. The occult
power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden
things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain. I became
conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I
knew that it would stop at my door. I waited, waited long into the
night. One by one went out the scattered village-lights. Another
consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant,
bitter hours. My lamp flickered. I rose with effort and supplied oil; it
would now burn till morning. The carriage came nearer. I knew that
Vannelle was in it. At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door.
A figure stood before me. The old fascination in the eyes; a soul
burning with lofty enthusiasm looked through and kindled them. But the
face,--it was ghastly, livid as the face of a leper: it was
spectral,--blanched and dried with the white flames of his exalted
vigils. Ah, black eyes, well may you shine in terrible triumph! The old
idolatry this man demanded of me would not be repelled. I gazed upon my
visitor as upon a phantom from another sphere, and knew no reckoning of
time. His magnetism was upon me; I could only crouch into myself--and
wait. At length the silence was broken.
"Charles Clifton, teacher of the people, listen that you may be taught!
For the last time I have come down into your world of passion and sense.
The impulses with which you vainly strive and wrestle are behind me.
Alone, alone, I have risen from the abysmal depths of personality. I
have struggled fiercely. I have also conquered."
The livid face showed no change. It suddenly came to me, that, by some
voluntary disfigurement of his exquisite beauty of feature, this man had
cut away the lusts for pleasure, fame, and influence. What woman would
kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that
chilly presence? The injunctions concerning the offending eye and hand
Vannelle had interpreted literally.
"I hold," he continued, "the noble prize of intellectual satisfaction
seized by effort. Multiply the self-satisfactions of earth by infinity,
and you may guess a little of the sublime contentment which wraps me
round! Does the best stage-trick of your liberal clergy help them to
anything but a plasticity of mind to be moulded into artistic forms of
skepticism? How can you feel the delight of a definite, positive
affirmation which accounts for and includes all creeds and lives of men?
How can you come out from your partial dogmas to enter Truth and find it
alone dogmatic and compulsive? Clifton, I pity you. I would rescue you
from this haze of thought and feeling,--I, who have even now discarded
Intelligence and enthroned Wisdom."
"I hope to be pardoned," I said,--"the current of this life sets so in
favor of Utility and the Practical; men long to be fed with
sentiment,--why try to give them ideas?"
"Fulfil, then, forever your little round of decencies and proprieties,"
exclaimed Vannelle; "I judge you not. Perchance your weakness is the
pardonable weakness of one who has done his best. You may be guiltless
in failing to attain the strength, the glory, of a true conviction."
"Is it too late?" I asked, faintly.
"It is the question I must put to you," replied Herbert. "I bring you in
this manuscript the result of my life,--the result of two lives. Here is
written, as clearly as can be written in gross symbols of human
language, that which may suggest the Absolute, the Alpha and Omega, the
System, not humanly built upon hypothesis, but divinely founded upon
Law."