of the 'Illumination' had proved that philosophy can prove nothing,
he set up the theory of the categorical imperative and postulate,
_i.e._ the demands of religion and morality. Put in plain language,
that is equivalent to faith. This declaration of the bankruptcy of
philosophy saved men from useless brain-cudgelling. Christianity
revived, now supported by the philosophers with Hegel at their head.
But the old stream flowed parallel with it once more. In spite of the
bankruptcy of philosophy, notes of exchange were issued and cashed by
the dunder-headed free-thinkers Feuerbach and Strauss. They wanted
to approach God with the everyday intelligence which one uses in
kitchens and grocers' shops. The last fool was Renan, whose cheques
still circulate mostly among college-students and the like. At the
beginning of the last century E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote thus: 'In ancient
times we had a simple generous faith; we recognised that there was a
Higher, but knew also that our senses were insufficient to reach it.
Then came the "Illumination," which made everything so clear, that for
sheer clearness not a trace could be seen. And now we are told that the
supernatural is to be grasped by a firm arm of flesh and bone.' To-day
it is called the Science of Religion. That is a science which starts
from the false presupposition that religion is a mental disease because
it cannot be mathematically proved."
=A Whole Life in an Hour.=--The teacher said: "I had a strange
experience, which I have not understood, but which I must remember.
I woke up one morning feeling cheerful without any special reason.
Obeying an impulse, I went into the town. As I wandered about at
random, I came into the quarter where I had been born and brought up.
I saw the kindergarten and school I used to attend, and my parents'
house. I went through narrow streets and passed by the national school
in which I was worried as a student-teacher. I saw two different houses
in which I had suffered as a private tutor. I went northwards and came
to another school in which I had been tortured. In a market-place
I passed another house in which, during my childhood, our only
acquaintance lived, and twenty years later in the same dwelling there
lived my worst enemy. I passed by a house in which my sister had been
married thirty years before, and another house in which my brother had
had a hard struggle. Then I came to a third school in which I was a
student; in the same house lives still my first and last publisher. I
passed by a house where, forty years ago, I was accepted as an aspirant
for the stage, and where I offered my first drama; also by the house
where I was married for the first time. Then the meaning of it began
to grow clearer. I saw the furniture warehouse whence I ordered my
furniture the last time. I passed by the house where my wife and child
lived three years ago.
"In the space of one hour I had seen the panorama of my whole life in
living pictures. Only three years were wanting to the present time. It
was like an agony or a death-hour when the whole of life rushes past
one.
"Then I felt drawn northward where my last child and her mother live.
An instinct told me to bring perfume for the mother and school-fees
for the child, as that day it was going to the kindergarten for the
first time. Then I began to hunt for the perfume; it ought to have been
lilac, but I had to take lily-of-the-valley. I also wanted flowers, but
could not find any.
"So I continued northwards and came to their house; the sun shone
in, the table was spread for coffee; there was an air of comfort,
homeliness, and kindness over all. I was received in a friendly way,
felt in a moment that the whole of my black life lay behind me, and
realised the happiness of merely being alive."
=The After-Odour.=--The teacher continued: "As I went thence,
I felt the happiness of the present. All the past was only the dark
background. I was thankful in my heart, when I remembered all I had
come through without perishing. When I came home, I learnt through the
telephone that my worst enemy had died on the morning of this very day.
His death-struggle was taking place at the very time that I made the
pilgrimage through my past life. I reflected: Why should I pass through
my agony just when he died? He was a 'black man'[1] with an obsolete
materialistic view of things which he thought was modern; a literary
huckster who wrote reviews of marchionesses' rubbishy books, in order
to be invited to their castles, and praised his associates as long as
they consorted with him; the partisan of a coterie and a log-roller.
"I had never come into personal contact with him, but once, a long
time ago, he had called himself my pupil. He could not however grow,
nor follow me upwards. It was now as though my old self had died in
him. Perhaps therefore I suffered his death and felt it just now. But
why the perfume? That I know not. But when I learnt that the deceased
decomposed so rapidly that he had to be buried at once, I could not
help connecting the perfume with his dissolution. When, eight days
afterwards, I read a posthumous review by the deceased of my last
work, and saw that he regretted that I was not a pagan and lamented
my defection from the Lord of Dung, it was as though I sniffed an
after-odour from the dunghole, and I seized the perfume-flask in good
earnest."
[Footnote 1: Strindberg's expression for a free-thinker.]
=Peaches and Turnips.=--The teacher continued: "At the same time
a similar death happened. Another of the 'Black Flags' departed under
peculiar circumstances two days after the first. I had known this man
during the period in which the ape-king ruled. We did not like each
other, but like condemned criminals were compelled to keep together.
Our friendship was only the reverse-side of a hatred; his hideous
appearance frightened me; his profession was equally repulsive, but
brought in much money. He wrote according to the taste of the time, and
lived in the false idea that he was 'illuminated' and liberal-minded.
When his father died, the son expressed his regret that 'his father
had recovered the faith of his childhood.' What happened then? The son
who lived in faith in wickedness and ugliness, began to develop this
faith in a peculiar way. He had in his writings shown a predilection
for turnips; in his latter days he inoculated peaches with turnip-juice
in order to make the southern fruit partake of the beautiful flavour
of the latter. The same perverse taste was evident in his last book;
there his sympathy is decidedly on the side of the 'blacks.' He ended
in an asylum. He could not be saved, for he did not know how to seek
the Saviour. So he died. I had just regretted not having sent some
flowers to his grave, when I saw in an obituary notice that the dead
man had vented a noisome lie against me, which a bosom friend of his
now repeats in print. In the same notice the world is threatened with
his posthumous writings. When they come out, I will buy a flower and
hold it under my nose, while I breathe a sigh of gratitude to him,
who restored to me the faith of my childhood and saved me from the
mad-house."
=The Web of Lies.=--The pupil said: "I am eight-and-fifty years
old; have lied less than others; and have therefore always believed
what others said. When, in my old age, I sit together with friends
of my youth and make comparisons, I find that my whole life is a web
of lies. Last night I sat with such a friend, and had a protracted
talk of the following intelligent kind. I said, 'When the Prince of
X. married....' 'Married! He isn't married.' 'Isn't he? Is that a lie
too?' 'He has never been married.' 'Now during twenty years I have
spread it abroad that he was married, and a whole story has been built
on this lie, which I was about to relate, but now I must drop it.'
"Here is another lie! During thirty years I have told people that Dr.
H. was present when the Malunger murderer was executed. He had falsely
informed me that, as a medical student, he had received a commission to
examine the head after it had been cut off. He gave me such interesting
details on the subject that I was accustomed to describe them in
company. What a liar he was!
"'But he _was_ there.' 'Was he there?' 'Certainly; I saw him standing
behind the priest when I took a photograph of the scaffold.' 'You?
Have you ... Are you lying or is he?' 'I am not.' 'No; now I don't
know where I am. Everything is topsy-turvy. For the last ten years I
have retracted the lie which I had spread. I have made Dr. H. a liar!
One ought never to speak or write, but only draw the things which one
absolutely needs. He was then really there! How can I restore to him
his honour, of which I have robbed him?'"
=Lethe.=--The teacher answered: "This whole web of lies, errors,
misunderstandings, which forms the basis of our lives, transforms life
itself into something dreamlike and unreal, and must be dissolved when
we pass into the other life. I read to-day of a dying man. Instead of
seeing his life pass by him, as is usually the case, his whole life
dissolved into a cloud; his memory failed; all bitterness and all
trouble disappeared; and on the other hand, all his disappointed hopes
assumed an aspect of reality. He thought he was loved by his wife, who
had been cold to him; he thanked her for all the tenderness which she
had never shown him. The children who had deserted him he saw again in
the bright light of youth; he seemed to hear the sound of little feet
upon the floor, the characteristic of a happy home, and his face wore
a happy smile. The dark autumn weather outside changed into spring;
little girls handed him roses to kiss in order to enchance their value.
Finally he saw himself and his family in an arbour drinking coffee out
of Dresden china cups, into which they dipped yellow saffron-cakes....
Then he fell into his last sleep. It was a beautiful and enviable
death; it was paradise. From the ancient Lethe he drank forgetfulness
of the troubles he had undergone before he trod the Elysian fields.
If it only were so! To drag all one's bygone filth with one in memory
cannot be favourable to a new life in purity. There are illnesses in
which one loses memory. May death prove to be such an illness!"
=A Suffering God.=--The teacher said: "The idea of a suffering
God was foolishness to the Greeks, who considered a God as a tyrant
gloating over the sufferings of men. But the seeming contradiction
is solved if one supposes that a Holy Being deposits itself, so to
speak, in humanity, and that humanity then becomes defiled. That is
a boundless grief like his who has deposited the best part of his
soul and his emotions with a woman. If she then goes and defiles
herself, she defiles her husband. Or a father's nature has passed over
to his children, and he wishes to see his best impulses continued
and multiplied by them, and his likeness ennobled. If the children
dishonour themselves, the father suffers; the stem withers when the
roots are injured.
"Such I imagine to be the feelings of God the Father when the
sinfulness of humanity grows noisome and dishonours Him, and
perhaps threatens to affect His own holiness. He will be wroth and
lament--perhaps even feel Himself defiled--rather than cut off the
cancerous limb of humanity. Christ is no more represented as beautiful,
but with features distorted by the sins of others; these he has
taken on himself or drawn to himself, for he who approaches pitch is
defiled. In order to be free from the impure element he must die by the
destruction of the body. Incarnation involved the greatest suffering of
all.
"But the death of Christ may also signify that the Father freed himself
from the sins of humanity, and broke off connection with the evil race
who dishonoured Him. He who will now seek Him must rise to His heights,
and gain admission by a pure life. He Himself will descend no more into
this valley of filth; the air is too thick, the company too mixed. And
that is why things are as they are."
=The Atonement.=--The teacher said: "The work of the Atonement
has been very difficult for me to understand. Often I have tried to
explain in a way satisfactory to myself, but without success. If
God had offered up His Son as an atonement for mankind, there would
necessarily have been peace and paradisal quietness on earth, but
such is not the case. The period of the Roman emperors before Christ
was indeed terrible, but the next thousand years were no better; they
rather resembled a deluge in which the old nations were exterminated
by barbarians. The second millennium was better, very much better.
The third will perhaps close with a complete reconciliation between
humanity and God. Everything points to that, though the heathen may
reign for a while as instruments of chastisement, and executioners and
possessors of wealth. The Egyptian has an important part to play, and
slavery is not bad as a school of discipline. In the desert one learns
the difficult art of loneliness, and in the strange land of Assyria one
feels a wholesome home-sickness. Still, when the Egyptian raises his
stick to strike, comfort yourself with Christ's words to Pilate, 'Thou
wouldest have no power over Me, if it were not given thee from above.'
And when you eat the bread of the heathen, think like the Maccabees, 'I
eat thy bread, but I do not sacrifice upon thy altar.' Everything is
tolerable so long as we do not let ourselves be beguiled into believing
that those who are in power are God's friends and favourites. Our fine
gentlemen who imagine that they are forwarding development and are the
sole trustees of right, progress, and illumination, are only children
of this world. Let that be granted them, and much good may it do them!"
=When Nations Go Mad.=--The teacher said: "Nations are sometimes
seized by madness as by other diseases. The Javanese are said to suffer
from chronic madness; the men run amuck with a knife in order to slay;
the women suffer from a mania for mimicry; if they see anyone throw
something into the air, they imitate the gesture; they can even under
such circumstances throw their children away. The Japanese again are
attacked by megalomania; someone begins to shout, 'We will conquer
China!' and his cry is taken up by the whole town and the whole land.
The French were raving when, in 1870, they sang 'A Berlin,' and did
not even reach the Rhine. Paris was captured. But the French declared
it was not captured, but had surrendered. When the enemy had marched
in peaceably and spared the town, and after peace was concluded the
French set their own town on fire. That was madness. Then they shot
down thirty thousand of their own countrymen, while in the war itself
only eighty thousand French had fallen."
"But some nations are seized by a mania for suicide. I know a land
from which people emigrate at the rate of a hundred a day; in which
the only important industry--iron-mining--is hampered by an export
duty; that is suicide. In the same land, where the taxes are generally
collected by levying distraints, they voted forty million pounds for
the army; but when the muster-rolls came to be made up, the men were
not to be found. In the same country the State maintains a railway of a
hundred miles in length; recently the train came in with one passenger,
whose journey had cost the State more than a thousand kronas. That is
suicide."
=The Poison of Lies.=--The teacher said: "Let us return to life,
and to men whom we think we know better than anything else, although
self-knowledge is the hardest of all. A perpetual accusation which
people bring against each other is that of lying. All lie more or
less--by omitting principal points and emphasising secondary ones,
or by colouring matters of fact. Often they do it with an excusable
purpose; for instance, when a friend is being spoken about.
"But there are men who seem to be composed of falsehood and deceit.
Such are the liars from necessity, who lie in order to obtain
something; such, too, are the liars from ostentation, who lie in order
to be superior to others, and to keep them down. One may be poisoned in
the atmosphere which they spread around them.
"There is a pair of liars whom I have never seen, but often heard
spoken about. When I merely hear about them and their falsehoods, I
feel my brain affected, and their poison works telepathically on my
nerves. The pair are dogged by misfortune, and live alone. They tell
each other lies also, and pretend to themselves that they are martyrs,
although their misfortunes are solely due to their deceits. They
believe that they are persecuted by men, while, on the contrary, men
fly from them. Such they have been since childhood, and seem unable to
change. Perhaps their mendacity is a form of punishment, for 'they that
hate the righteous shall be guilty.'"
=Murderous Lies.=--The teacher continued: "When one lives on
intimate terms with liars, one runs a risk of becoming a liar oneself.
One believes what they say, bases his views on their falsehoods,
spreads their false reports in good faith, defends their sophistries,
and is entangled in their deceits. Moreover, one's whole view of life
is distorted, one loses contact with reality, lives in a fictitious
world of feeling, regards friends as foes and foes as friends, thinks
one is loved while one is hated, and vice versa.
"On one occasion a liar with whom I lived on intimate terms made me
think that my last book had been a failure. For five years I believed
it, suffered under the belief, and lost my courage. On my return to
Sweden I found that the book had had a great success. Five years had
been struck out of my life; I was nearly losing self-respect and the
courage to support existence. That is equivalent to murder. And this
behaviour on the part of my only friend, for whom I had worked and made
sacrifices, gave me such a shock that all my ideas were confused. It
took me years to rearrange them and bring them into proper order. True
and false were mingled together: lies became reality, and my whole life
seemed as unsubstantial as smoke. I was not far from ruin and the loss
of reason."
=Innocent Guilt.=--The teacher continued: "During the five years
in which I believed myself unjustly treated, I also incurred guilt.
I had cursed those who had been just towards me, wished evil to my
benefactors, repelled my admirers, avoided my adherents. And when I
should now have felt remorse for it, I could not do so sincerely. On
the one hand I felt myself innocent, and almost the victim of another's
falsehood. But the evil which I had done was there, and must be atoned
for. Such tangles are not easy to undo. Yet it is not good in life
to show mistrust towards men; one must take things easily, without
criticism and too careful reckoning. The deceiver says, to be sure,
'He who does not keep a sharp look-out, has himself to blame if he
is cheated.' But if one does look out, and will not let oneself be
cheated, one is credited with a morbid mistrustfulness. It is not
easy to live, and among lawless men it is better to be cheated than
to cheat. The Talmud says: 'Be rather among those who are cursed than
those who curse; rather among the persecuted than the persecutors: read
in the Scripture, No bird is more persecuted than the dove; yet God has
chosen it for a sacrifice on His altar.'"
=The Charm of Old Age.=--The teacher said: "The charms of old
age are many. The greatest is the consciousness that it is not long
till evening when one can undress and lie down, without the necessity
of rising up and dressing again. The diminution of the body's strength
lessens its resistance to the free motions of the soul. One's
interest in merely temporal matters decreases, and one begins to take
a bird's-eye view of things. Seemingly important trifles shrink to
insignificance. Old estimates of the values of things are changed. All
that one has experienced lies like a litter of straw under one's feet;
one stands in it and grows in the midst of one's past. We have found
a constant amid all variables, that is, the instability of life, the
transitoriness and mutability of all things. Everything is repeated;
there are scarcely any surprises. We know everything beforehand, expect
no improvement, are no more deceived by false hopes, demand nothing
more of men, neither gratitude, nor faithfulness, nor love, only some
companionship in solitude. If we are deceived, we think it is part
of the play, and even find a sort of consolation in it, because it
confirms our views, which we do not like to see refuted. We become,
finally, cheerful pessimists. When, on the discovery of a new cheat, we
can say, 'What did I tell you?' we feel almost a sense of pleasure."
=The Ring-System.=--The teacher said: "In our old schools, the
pupils were arranged not in classes, but in rings, and the forms
were not placed in rows, but in circles. When I read of the circles
of Dante's hell, I thought of my old school. But outside in life, I
found this ring-system also. Men seemed linked together in concentric
circles, each of which formed a little system of views. Each circle
spoke its own language, expressed its meaning in old formulas, revered
its gods, created its great men, often out of nothing. In each circle
they had found the truth, and worked for development, but in a
different way to the others. The first circle was really the lowest,
but it considered itself the most important, because it was the first.
When I read a paper or a book which comes from other circles than
mine, I only see so much--that they are mad or stand on their heads.
It stifles me, and has a hostile effect. I surmise that the five great
races of the earth feel that, when they meet one another. In their
minds they are as foreign to each other as though they came from the
five great planets, although they have many human characteristics in
common."
=Lust, Hate, and Fear, or the Religion of the Heathen.=--The
teacher said: "You know one of my tasks in life has been to unmask
gyneolatry, the worship of women in history and life. I have called
it 'the superstition of the heathen,' because there is something
exclusively heathenish about it. Woman-worship is the religion of the
heathen, but it is a religion of fear, which has nothing to do with
love. Lust, hate, and fear--those are the component parts of it. As
soon as a heathen comes in the proximity of a woman, he becomes tame
and cowardly; faithless towards his friends, his convictions, and
himself. He immediately desires that others should venerate his idol
whom he hates and fears. That is a side of his animal self-love.
"Gyneolatry is not Christian in its origin, but heathenish. All animals
and savage races fear their women. When heathenism in the Græco-Roman
and Moorish colonies of southern France and Italy got the upper hand,
then began gyneolatry, the worship of mistresses. This worship was
dishonestly confounded with chivalrous reverence for the Madonna, which
was quite another thing. This religion of the heathen is the religion
of fear and concealed hatred. Therefore all tyrants have been punished
by having a woman oppress and torment them. Swedenborg explains the
reason."
="Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy."=--The teacher continued: "A
man's goodwill and generosity towards his wife stands in direct
relation to her behaviour. When therefore a woman is ill-treated by
her husband, we know of what sort she is. The apparently subordinate
position which the woman occupies is the direct result of the position
which nature has assigned to this immature transition-form between
child and man. The child has also a subordinate position; that is
quite natural, and no reasonable man has objected to it. Woman is the
earth-spirit who effectuates a certain harmony with the earth-life. To
this earth-life we must bring our sacrifice; therefore it is that a man
feels at home in his house, and therefore wife and child comfort and
protect us against the cold abstraction, life.
"Marriage is the hardest school in which renunciation and self-conquest
is learned; it is also a forcing-house for wickedness of all kinds,
especially the hellish sin of imperiousness. How low the sons of the
Lord of Dung stand on the ladder of development may be seen from their
conviction that they are only equal to the woman or subordinate to
her. Blinded by this penal hallucination, they work for their own
destruction when they battle for the emancipation of women, for the
gods wish to destroy them.