came into a wood under whose shadow many decaying funguses grew. On a
footpath he saw what he thought at first was a snake writhing about.
It was no snake, however, but a mass of grubs clotted together. The
teacher asked his guide: "What is the meaning of that?"
"Ask first what it is; then I will tell you the meaning of it."
"Well?"
"These are the larvæ of the snake-worm, which are obliged, like clay
and wadded straw, to hold together in order not to perish. They love
poisonous funguses, and cannot bear the light. They maintain their
existence by a mutual interchange of slime, without which they become
dead and dry. But they call darkness light, because the sun would kill
them. They feed on the poisonous funguses. They hate each other, but
must keep together. Do you understand now, or not?"
"What is the name of the creature?"
"It is called the snake-worm or lice-king, appears once in every
generation, and is a herald of evil times."
"What does it mean then?"
"It is a symbol of the men who talk with their faces turned backwards,
and therefore see everything distorted; who call evil good, and good
evil. Because they live in pride and self-love they cannot see God,
but elect one of the mass to be their king, and believe that they are,
collectively, God. By 'freedom,' they mean freedom to do evil. Often an
ox or cow comes by and treads upon the motely mass. Then, of course, it
is obliterated in slime, but another soon takes it place."
"It seems to be as eternal as evil."
=The Art of Life.=--The teacher said: "Life is hard to live, and
the destinies of men appear very different. Some have brighter days,
others darker ones. It is therefore difficult to know how one should
behave in life, what one should believe, what views one should adopt,
or to which party one should adhere. This destiny is not the inevitable
blind fate of the ancients, but the commission which each one has
received, the task he must perform. The theosophists call it Karma, and
believe it is connected with a past which we only dimly remember. He
who has early discovered his destiny, and keeps closely to it, without
comparing his with others, or envying others their easier lot, has
discovered himself, and will find life easier. But at periods when all
wish to have a similar lot, one often engages in a fruitless struggle
to make one's own harder destiny resemble the lot of those to whom an
easier one has been assigned. Thence result disharmony and friction.
Even up to old age, many men seek to conquer their destiny, and make it
resemble that of others."
The pupil asked: "If it is so, why is not one informed of one's Karma
from the beginning?"
The teacher answered: "That is pure pity for us. No man could endure
life, if he knew what lay before him. Moreover, man must have a certain
measure of freedom; without that, he would only be a puppet. Also
the wise think that the voyage of discovery we make to discover our
destiny is instructive for us. 'Let My Grace be sufficient for thee; My
strength is made perfect in weakness.'"
=The Mitigation of Destiny.=--The teacher continued: "Some appear
to be destined to honour and wealth, others only to honour, and others
only to wealth. Many seem to be born to humiliations, poverty, and
sickness--'struck like a coin in the mint,' as the saying is. Everyone
can mitigate his destiny by submitting and adapting himself to it--by
resignation, in a word. The inward happiness which one gains thereby,
excels all outward prosperity. All things work for good to him who
serves God. The man who does not strive after honour and wealth is
impregnable; in a certain sense, all-powerful.
"The hardest thing is to see the injustice in the world; but even that
can be overcome by taking it as a trial. If the wicked prospers, let
him; we have nothing to do with it. Besides, his happiness is not so
great when one looks closer at it.
"When you are persecuted by misfortune, and your conscience cannot
call it deserved, take it quietly. Regard the endurance of the ordeal
as an honour. There will come a day when everything will improve. Then
perhaps you will discover that the misfortunes were benefits, or, at
any rate, afforded opportunity for exercising endurance. Envy no man;
you know not what his envied lot might conceal, if it actually came to
changing places."
=The Good and the Evil.=--The pupil asked: "Is there really such a
great difference between men?"
The teacher answered: "Yes and No! But a sure mark of the evil man
is, he does evil for evil's sake. That is the bad man--the sarcastic
schoolmaster, the domestic tyrant. That is the child, which torments
its mother by finding out everything she dislikes. That is the bad
wife, the fury, who enjoys torturing and humiliating a man who only
wishes her good.
"In the battles of life it is quite human to rejoice when a foe is
defeated. On all battlefields God has been thanked for the victory.
That is something different.
"When one sees the insolent struck by misfortune, one rejoices that
there is justice. When one sees the wicked punished, one feels
satisfaction at seeing the balance of equity restored. That is
something different.
"But he who rejoices over every evil deed which he himself has been
under no necessity of committing; he who rejoices when the criminal
escapes his punishment; he who gloats over the misfortune of a good
man; he who suffers when goodness and merit are rewarded--that is the
evil man. Such were those who clamoured for the murderer Barabbas's
release and perhaps gave a feast in his honour."
=Modesty and the Sense of Justice.=--The teacher continued:
"Properly speaking, the question you should have asked just now is,
'What men are good?' Socrates, according to Plato, said, 'Those who
possess modesty and a sense of justice. Those are the religious men.'
"He, on the other hand, who has neither faith nor hope, can assume the
outward aspect of an honourable man. But when his worldly interests or
advantages are concerned, he lets honour drop. Similarly, when it is a
question of saving one of his associates from punishment. Then he can
bear false witness, and believe it is a good act. He does not stick at
helping forward an unworthy friend or relative. He will swear falsely
in order to attack a believer. He thinks everything lawful, _i.e._
on his side against others, and he never repents anything, saying to
himself, 'He who lets himself be misled must pay for it.'
"When a religious man makes a slip, he is wont to feel ashamed, and to
reproach himself. Often he is naïve enough to confess his fault or his
mis-doing. Then the Lice-King shouts 'Hurrah!' For he would never be so
simple. Still, though a believer fall seventy times and seven, he rises
again and confesses his fault. That is the difference."
=Derelicts.=--The pupil asked: "How is one to judge of the men
who are overthrown in the battle of life without being armed for the
conflict? You remember such characters at school; they could not
learn, could not attend; they were not ashamed, however, but regarded
themselves as a kind of victims. They left school, went out into life,
and collapsed. It was not the fault of their domestic surroundings,
for they came of good families, who supported them. They were not bad,
possessed talents, were clever, but had no knowledge and no interests
in life. 'What is the object of it?' they were in the habit of saying.
They could not bring themselves to work, but dozed at their desks. They
seemed to be born to do nothing, which is a punishment for the active.
Explain to me their destiny!"
"That I cannot."
"Some have died young in poverty; others begged their way through to
their sixtieth year, while they saw former school-fellows who had been
worse than they, prosper and flourish."
"I have seen and lamented them, but I cannot explain their destiny."
"Then they are not to blame, and yet live such lives of shame and
poverty; that is cruel."
"Hush! Criticise not Providence! What is now inexplicable may some
day be explained! And remember that life is not paradise. Two shall be
grinding at one mill; one shall be taken, and the other left!"
=Human Fate.=--The teacher said: "The destinies of men are
obscure; therefore one should be extremely careful in judging. The
Tower of Siloam was ready to fall, and fell on good and evil alike.
The disciples asked Christ what sin the man born blind had committed.
Christ answered that neither he nor his parents had committed any
special sin. When we see how some are born crippled, blind, deaf,
and dumb, we had best be silent. To lament their lot may annoy them,
for they seem to be protected in a mysterious way. They are objects
of pity, and seldom fall into abject poverty. They are good-humoured
through life, and hardly seem to suffer under their ailments. But
woe to the man who ridicules anyone marked out by such a fate! If he
is persistently pursued by calamity, or struck himself by a greater
misfortune, one can hardly ignore it by using the formula 'chance.' A
person who had scoffed at a blind man was struck in the eye by a stone
which was thrown into a tramcar. At first he was alarmed, and thought
of Nemesis. But when he heard that the stone had been so hurled as the
result of some blasting operations he became cheerful, _i.e._ more
ignorant, and said it was a chance. He saw the phenomenon, but nothing
behind it; the effect, but not the cause.
"The 'Beans' cannot see beyond their noses. Sometimes, when they have
long noses, they see somewhat further. The supernatural in nature is
incomprehensible to their intelligence. Indeed, all which passes their
limited understanding is for them supernatural. That is logical, but
these rustics regard it as illogical."
=Dark Rays.=--As the teacher wandered through his Inferno, he came
to a temple of black granite, which was quite dark inside. Within it
something was going on, but he could not distinguish what.
"What is it?" he asked a white-robed figure, which wore a
laurel-wreath, but had a green face spotted blue like a corpse. "That
is a temple of light," it answered; "but the initiated cannot see
our black rays until he receives the white arsenic-kiss from the
ultra-violet priestess."
"Give me the kiss," answered the teacher, but he turned his back to her
at the same time. However, she did not notice this, as she could not
distinguish back from front. Now his eyes were opened, and he saw how
within the temple they were offering incense to their "gods of light,"
as they called them. There stood the murderer Barabbas, a halo round
his head, and a plate on his breast with the inscription: "Acquitted
because of insufficient evidence." There sat Judas Iscariot under his
fig-tree, with the thirty pieces of silver, in the bosom of his family,
promoted to be general-director of customs. There were the Emperor
Nero, fresh from the bath, with a white dove on his hand, and Julian
the Apostate near an altar, with geese sacrificed upon it.
The priests and priestesses sang a chant of New Birth and Resurrection,
burned incense compounded of rose-leaves and arsenic-acid, and danced
a snake-dance, which they called "the joy of life." Then they began to
quarrel about a laurel-wreath, and fought one another. As the teacher
went, they all sat there in the darkness and wept. But when a fresh
north wind blew through the temple, they trembled like dry leaves.
=Blind and Deaf.=--The teacher said: "There are, as you know,
people with whom one cannot be angry. Perhaps it is because of their
natural good-nature, which shines even through a cutting jest. And
there are people whose malice comes to light long after one has met
them. Such an after-effect I have experienced myself.
"Five-and-twenty years after a conversation with a man, I felt angry
with him. Naturally, during a sleepless night, when memory threw a new
light on the scene which had taken place between us. Not till then did
the insulting word he spoke receive its proper signification, which I
now understood. There are words which can murder. Such a word this one
was. What a good thing that I did not understand it at the time! It
would have resulted in calamity to four people.
"By developing a peculiar instinct I have succeeded in fabricating
a kind of diving-costume, with which I protect myself in society.
When the insulting word or the biting allusion is uttered, the sound
certainly reaches my ear, but the receptive apparatus refuses to let
it go further. In the same way I can make myself literally blind. I
obliterate the face of the person I dislike. How it is done, I do not
know, but it seems to be a psychological process. The face becomes
a dirty whitish-grey spot and disappears. It is necessary to make
oneself deaf and blind, or it is impossible to live.
"One must cancel and go on! That is generally called 'forgiving,' but
it may be a device of the revengeful for sparing himself trouble, or a
scheme of the sensitive for not letting insults reach him. One cannot
undertake more than one can bear!"
=The Disrobing Chamber.=--The teacher continued: "Swedenborg says
in his _Inferno_...."
"Say 'Hell,'" the pupil interrupted him. "I know that there is a hell,
for I have been in it."
"Well, Swedenborg has in his _Hell_ a disrobing chamber into which the
deceased are conducted immediately after their death. There they lay
aside the dress they have had to wear in society and in the family.
Then the angels see at once whom they have before them."
"Does Swedenborg then mean that we are all hypocrites?"
"Yes, in a certain way. An inborn modesty compels us to conceal what
has to do with the animal; politeness obliges us to be silent on
many points. Consideration, friendship, kinship, love, oblige us to
overlook our neighbour's weaknesses, although we disapprove them even
in ourselves. A man who is ashamed of his faults is also silent about
them. To boast of one's faults is shamelessness."
"Can one really call such consideration hypocrisy?"
"Hardly; especially as things go wrong, however one behaves."
"Yes, life is not easy; it is hard to be a man; almost impossible."
=The Character Mask.=--The teacher said: "I knew in my youth a man
who was imperious, quick to anger, revengeful, emotional. Accidentally
his gifts as a speaker were discovered. He could thrill the minds of
his hearers, bring them into touch with himself, lift them up--yes, and
nearly carry them away. But on one occasion when he was at the height
of his oratory he halted, became grotesque and ridiculous, and people
laughed. The first time that this happened, he was depressed. But they
thought he wished to produce a comical effect, and he obtained the
reputation of a humorous speaker.
"Out of his misfortune he made a virtue, accepted the rôle which had
been assigned to him, and finally enjoyed a great popularity as a
humourist. He often felt annoyed at having to play the part of a
buffoon, but the desire to hear his own voice and to be greeted with
applause unceasingly spurred him on to win new triumphs.
"Society had made of him a sort of 'homunculus,' which it cultivated.
But in his family and in his office it was not to be found."
=Youth and Folly.=--The teacher said: "What do you think of the
proverb, 'The young _imagine_ that the old are fools, and the old
_know_ that the young are fools?'"
"It is quite true. When I was young, I imagined that I understood
everything better than the old, but I really understood nothing. I
was young and stupid, confused my own knowledge with that of others',
believed that what I had learnt was my own. When I had read a book, I
went into society and proclaimed what I had read, as though it were my
own discovery, I was therefore a thief.
"But I was the victim of another delusion, _i.e._ I believed that I
understood all that I remembered, or that I knew what I happened at
the moment to remember. For instance, when I was fourteen I did not
understand logarithms, but I learnt the way of proceeding with them by
heart, and used logarithms as a short-cut.
"When one studies a science in detail, one begins to collect material,
else the result is nil. But the young man attacks the difficult science
of life without experience, _i.e._ without material. And the result is
what we see.
"I can see myself now as a young student. How proud I was of borrowed
knowledge and borrowed plumes! How I despised the old! And yet all that
I had stolen from books was stolen from the old, who had written the
text-books. The young write no text-books. O Youth! O Foolishness!
=When I was Young and Stupid.=--"When I was young and stupid,
I always had a band of hearers who saw a light in me. When I grew
older, and wisdom came, I was left alone with my lecture and regarded
as an old ass. But the passage from youth to age was bitter, when I
discovered that the old could not be deceived. They read my secret
thoughts behind my lofty words; they anticipated my evil purposes; they
unmasked my crude desires; they prophesied the results of my actions;
and found in my past the true cause of my present condition. They
seemed to me to be wizards and prophets, although they were simple
characters.
"When I asked myself how they could know this and that, I found the
answer later--because they had collected material; because they had
passed through all the stages which were new to me; because they had
also tried to deceive the old in the same way, but had not succeeded.
Youth, however, is always believing that it can deceive old age, were
it only by stealing a thought from him. I know, moreover, why the
young obstinately imagine they are superior because they can deceive.
There are old wise men who have come to terms with life, and therefore
think it a duty to let themselves be deceived now and then; they let
themselves be deceived tastefully.
"Youth is only an idea, an abstraction, a boast, a theme for an essay,
a song, a toast!"
=Constant Illusions.=--The pupil continued: "When I was young I
was never really happy, because my seniors oppressed me, because the
future disquieted me, because I lived on my parents' money almost as
though I were a pensionary. When the first symptoms of love showed
themselves, life became a hell. I was never very well, for the
most serious illnesses--measles, scarlet fever, agues, croup, and
others--affect only the young. I could never satisfy an innocent
fancy, for I had no money; every desire was nipped in the bud. I was a
slave, for my time was not at my own disposal, and I could not leave
my place in order to visit foreign countries. Such is the huge humbug
which is called 'youth.' No one has dared to unmask it, for fear lest
the young might pelt him with stones, or draw caricatures of him on
the walls. The teachers in the schools crouch before them, flatter
them, pretend to envy them. If anyone comes who does not flatter these
shameless and conscienceless little bandits, these lewd apes who live
in the age of innocence, these parent-murderers--there is always some
old woman there who exclaims, 'Ah! he does not understand the young!'
He understands them very well, for he has been young himself. But the
young do not understand the old, for they have never been old.
"The young assert that the future is in their hands, and that therefore
they are feared by the cowardly. Let us wait and see! If thirty per
cent, reach the future at all, they will work just as their elders
have done, and with the thoughts which they have borrowed from them.
Exceptions prove the rule."
=The Merits of the Multiplication-Table.=--The teacher said: "All
wish to haul at the rope called 'Development.' The word generally
signifies 'alteration,' and men usually love any novelty which does
not injure them. But there are some excellent things which are very
old, and therefore they remain unaltered. The multiplication-table, for
instance, is splendid, though it is said to be as old as Pythagoras.
The Rule of Three holds good, though it was the ancient Hindus who
discovered this law of causes and effects. The geometry of Euclid and
the logic of Aristotle is still read in the schools. Our architecture
imitates Greek and Roman models, and the sculpture of the ancients is
not despicable. We regulate our calendar very much as the Egyptians
and Chaldæans did. Goethe and Schiller can be read, and Shakespeare is
still performed.
"We see, therefore, that not all which has been done in the past is to
be despised. He who prophesies that Christianity will disappear because
it is old, makes a miscalculation. Homer is a thousand years older. And
the Old Testament would first have to be cancelled. But Christianity
lives and flourishes, although it may be in secret and not published in
the newspapers. Still they sing in schools and barracks every morning,
'Trust in God and in His word and strength in order to do good.'
"But it must go hard with the Christians. 'In this world ye have
tribulation.' Through periodical seasons of bondage under Egyptian
Pharaohs, they learn patience till they begin their wanderings in the
wilderness."
=Under the Prince of this World.=--The teacher wandered in
Qualheim and came to a town. In the midst of the chief market-place
there stood a bronze image of the destroyer of his country. The youth
of the place came out in holiday attire in order to celebrate the
hero's memory. The teacher asked his guide: "Why do they celebrate the
destroyer of the fatherland?"
"I do not know," answered the guide.
"Are they mad?"
"Probably. Here below everything is topsy-turvy. This hero[1] was
considered mad, and certainly he was so. He carried on mad wars, fled
when defeated, and cast the blame on others. When misfortune came
he collapsed like a weakling, took to his bed, and pretended to be
ill. In his leisure hours he plotted, but always ill. At last he made
false coins, but managed to procure a scapegoat, who was broken on
the wheel. The country was ruined and could never recover its former
prestige."
"And this is the man they celebrate?"
"Yes! but they have other statues besides. There back in the park
stands one, crowned with a laurel-wreath. He was the wickedest man of
his time. And there by the harbour is a third statue--of a perjurer..."
"That is just as it is with us," said the teacher.
"Yes, it is about the same."
"Where are we then?"
"Under the Prince of this World, the Lord of Dung. 'But be of good
courage! I have overcome the world!'"
[Footnote 1; He probably refers to Charles XII of Sweden.]
=The Idea of Hell.=--The pupil asked: "When I read Swedenborg's
_Hell_, I often believed he was describing our life on earth. Is it
possible that we are already there? As a Christian, I have learnt
that there was a Fall followed by a curse. Certainly life seems to me
rather an Inferno than a school and a prison, for nothing keeps what it
promises. The most beautiful things seem only made in order to become
ugly, the good in order to become bad."
"Have you never seen anything permanently beautiful here below?"
"Yes, Nature at all seasons is so beautiful, that I exclaim with
a feeling of pain, 'How super-naturally beautiful! And we are so
hideous!' Life may also seem beautiful in a well-ordered family where
there is peace and happiness and festival. I have seen it so, but only
for two minutes at a time, and perhaps it was my way of looking at it."
"Yet there are people who can thrive down here."
"He who can thrive here is a pig. I know fellows who think they are in
Paradise when they are on a summer holiday, have a well-spread table
lit up by Chinese lanterns, and let off rockets. But 'Woe to the man
who is born sensitive!' says Rousseau. Either he goes under, or he must
arm himself with brutality. In the last case it may happen that he
cannot divest himself of the armour, which has become a second nature.
There are some extremely sensitive natures who cannot come to terms
with life nor touch reality. These unfortunates finally lose the power
of looking after themselves, and end in asylums."