prophet of the woman's cause, had formed an attachment for another
man's wife.[1] As a punishment he had to live in the hallucination
that he derived all his thoughts from her. She was indeed his medium,
and as such she repeated his thoughts as though they came from her,
and he believed she was his superior. When somebody asked if he had
received his 'Logic,' which he wrote before he knew her, also from
her, he answered, 'Yes.' This sober Positivist, who only believed in
tables of statistics, was obsessed by the powerful delusion that the
simple-minded woman was his Genius. He could not rise to a higher
idea of God. One thing I am sure of: as soon as a man deserts God, he
becomes the thrall of a female devil. All tyrants, above and below, are
caught in these chains, out of which only God in heaven can help a man.
But He can certainly. One sees it in those who have come alive out of
this hell. I know one...."
"I know two!" the pupil interrupted.
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Taylor.]
=Absurd Problems.=--The teacher continued: "There are
several reasons why woman is depicted as a sphinx by men. She is
incomprehensible because her soul is rudimentary, and she thinks with
her body. Her judgments are dictated by interests and passions, she
draws conclusions according to the state of the weather and the phases
of the moon. She will sell her best friend for a theatre-ticket, or
leave her sick child to see a balloon ascend. She murders her husband
in order to be able to go to a bathing-resort, and forswears her
religion for a diamond ring. At the same time she can appear to be
a charming woman, tender towards her children, amiable, and before
all things polite and affable. She may also appear a good household
manager, or at any rate enjoy the reputation of being one. She can
produce the illusion that she is quick at apprehension, although she
does not really understand a word. She can exhibit sacrifices which
are only ostentation, and give away only in order to receive back. Why
cannot one guess the riddle of this sphinx? Because there is no riddle
there! Why is woman incomprehensible? Because the problem is absurd.
She is an irrational function because she operates with variable
quantities under the radical signs.
"Nevertheless we take her as a charming actuality, a delightful child
who may pull three hairs out of our beard; but if it pulls the fourth,
there is an end to the enchantment."
=The Crooked Rib.=--The teacher said: "Goethe says in his
_Divan_,[1] 'Woman is fashioned out of a crooked rib; if one tries to
bend her, she breaks; if one lets her alone, she becomes still more
crooked.' Thus there is nothing to be done. The only tactics one can
adopt, as Napoleon did, are flight, or at any rate to break off contact
and intimacy. This never fails; if one deprives a woman of the victim
of her hatred, she pines away.
"Man loves and woman hates; man gives and woman takes; man sacrifices
and woman devours. When the woman wishes to show her superiority in
intellect, she commits a rascality. Her utmost endeavour is to deceive
her husband. If she can trick him into eating horse-flesh without
noticing it, she is happy. When woman gets her milk-teeth, she does
not learn to speak but to lie, for speech and falsehood are synonymous
for her. Every married man knows all that. But politeness and his own
vanity keep him silent. Often he is silent because of his children;
often because he is ashamed in the name of humanity. He thinks how
often one has drunk the toasts of mother, wife, sister, daughter--these
fictions in a world of deceit, where all is vanity of vanities.
But many men are silent because they are afraid of being called
'woman-haters.' They are afraid!"
[Footnote 1: The saying is originally Muhammed's.]
=White Slavery.=--The teacher said: "In the whole of the upper and
middle classes and a good way below them the following is the case with
regard to marriage: When a man marries, his work, which he can devolve
on no one else, increases. His wife, on the other hand, at once gets
a servant to do her work; if she has children, then she gets a nurse
besides. But she herself sits there without occupation, and tries to
kill time with useless trivialities. In this way she can neither get
an appetite for dinner, nor sleep at night. In the evening her husband
comes home, and wants to enjoy the domestic hearth; but his wife wants
to go to the theatre and restaurant. She is not tired, but bored by
want of occupation, and therefore wants amusement. Women, in fact, seem
not to be born for domestic life, but for the theatre, the restaurant,
and the street. Therefore women complain that they must sit at home.
Although they have slaves to serve them, they call themselves 'slaves'
and hold meetings to their own emancipation, but not that of their
servants. Their animalised husbands support them without observing that
they themselves are slaves; for he who works for the idle is a slave.
But it is written, 'Ye are bought with a price; be slaves to no man.'"
=Noodles.=--The pupil asked: "What is a woman-hater?"
The teacher answered: "I do not know. But the expression is used as a
term of reproach by noodles, for those who say what all think. Noodles
are those men who cannot come near a woman without losing their heads
and becoming faithless. They purchase the woman's favour by delivering
up the heads of their friends on silver chargers; and they absorb
so much femininity, that they see with feminine eyes and feel with
feminine feelings. There are things which one does not say every day,
and one does not tell one's wife what her sex is composed of. But one
has the right to put it on paper sometimes. Schopenhauer has done it
the best, Nietzsche not badly, Peladan is the master. Thackeray wrote
_Men's Wives_ but the book was ignored. Balzac has unmasked Caroline in
the _Petites Misères de la vie Conjugale_. Otto Weininger discovered
the deceit at the age of twenty; he did not wait for the consequent
vengeance, but went his own way, _i.e._ died. I have said that the
child is a little criminal, incapable of self-guidance, but I love
children all the same. I have said that a woman is--what she is, but
I have always loved some woman, and been a father. Whoever therefore
calls me a woman-hater is a blockhead, a liar, or a noodle. Or all
three together."
=Inextricable Confusion.=--The teacher continued: "If on the other
side of the grave there were a Judge Rhadamanthus appointed to arrange
the disputes of men, he would never come to an end. Life is such a
tissue of lies, errors, misunderstandings, of debts and demands, that
a balancing of the books is impossible. I know men who have been lied
about their whole lives through. I know of one who was branded through
his whole life with the stigma of a seducer, although he has never
seduced, but was seduced himself. I know of an uncommonly truthful man
who had the reputation of being a liar. I know an honourable man who
passed for a thief. I know a man who was three times married, and had
children in all three marriages, but was said to be no man, because
he, as a man, would not be the slave of his wife. I know many who
are sincerely religious and yet are called hypocrites, although the
chief point in religion is sincerity. But, on the other hand, I know
heathen who professed to be atheists, although in their bedchambers
they sang penitential psalms when they were nervous in the dark and
feared the consequences of their misdeeds. They were so cowardly
that they dared not fall under the suspicion of being religious, but
bragged of their courage and strength of character. They would not
abandon the Black Flag; they would not be untrue to the ideal of their
youth--godlessness. Rascally right and good-hearted stupidity form a
problem too complicated for Rhadamanthus himself to solve. Only the
Crucified could do it with the single saying which He addressed to the
penitent thief, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.'"
=Phantoms.=--The teacher said: "When intelligence and the power
of reflection are matured, and one thinks about men, their outlines
begin to dissolve, and they turn into phantoms. Indeed, one never
really knows a man; one knows only his own, or others' ideas of him,
but when these ideas change, the image of him becomes indistinct and
is obscured with a veil. We form our conception of a person whom we
have never seen according to others' ideas of him. Thus, for example,
the personality of a famous painter was described to me by an author.
After two years the author had formed another idea of him, and imparted
that to me, and I had to alter my view of him. Then there came another
describer, and gave me quite a different idea of the painter. He was
followed by a third and a fourth. After this I saw the painter's
pictures, and could not understand how he could paint in the way he
did. But the painter himself I never saw. He has become for me a
phantom without clear outlines, composed of different-coloured pieces
of glass, which do not harmonise, and alter according to my moods. I
expect that when I meet him he will not resemble my idea of him at all,
but have the effect of quite another independent phantom."
=Mirage Pictures.=--The teacher said: "When I have lived for some
time in solitude my acquaintances begin to appear like mirage-pictures
before me. Some gain by distance, occasion only friendly feelings,
and are surrounded by an atmosphere of light and peace. Others whom I
really like very well when they are near, lose by absence, and appear
to be hostile. Thus I may hate a friend in his absence, look upon
him as unpleasant and inimical, but as soon as he comes, enter into
friendly contact with him. There is a woman whose proximity I cannot
bear, but whom I love at a distance. We write letters to each full
of regard and friendliness. When we have longed for each other for a
time and must meet, we immediately begin to quarrel, become vulgar
and unsympathetic, and part in anger. We love each other on a higher
plane, but cannot live in the same room. We dream of meeting again,
spiritualised, on some green island, where only we two can live, or,
at any rate, only our child with us. I remember a half-hour which we
three actually spent hand in hand on a green island by the sea-coast.
It seemed to me like heaven. Then the clocks struck the hour of noon,
and we were back again on earth, and soon after that, in hell."
=Trifle not with Love.=--The pupil said: "When a man and a woman
are united in love, a single being is the result, whose existence
is a positive pleasure, as long as harmony reigns. But this being
is an extremely sensitive receptive instrument, and is exposed to
disturbances from outer currents which act from all distances, an
inconvenience which it shares with wireless telegraphy. Therefore
a disturbance of the relationship between a married pair is the
greatest pain which exists. Unfaithfulness is a cosmic crime which
brings the one or the other member of the married pair into perverse
relations with their own sex. If the husband loves another woman, his
wife is exposed to terrible alternate currents; by turns she loves and
hates the woman who is her rival. Often she can be the friend of her
husband's paramour, but more often her enemy. Whoever comes between a
pair who love, does not so with impunity. The hate which he arouses is
so terrible, that he can be lamed by the discharge, lose all energy and
pleasure in life. Therefore it is rightly said, 'Trifle not with love.'"
=A "Taking" Religion.=--The pupil said: "When Buddhism, mixed
with Vedantism, became fashionable in 1890, all the renegades from
Christianity flocked to it and tried to fill the vacuum in their
religious lives. Six thousand new gods were received with applause
forthwith; the new trinity--Brahma, Vishnu, Siva--encountered no
objections; spirits, ghosts, genies, fairies were thought quite
natural; Gautama's heaven and hell were thrown into the bargain,
accompanied by a slight flavour of asceticism. Those who denied the
Resurrection found reincarnation quite a simple affair. But the
favourite was Krishna. He was the incarnation of the god Vishnu, who
descended to earth in order to be born of earthly parents and to save
fallen humanity. His coming was prophesied, and so dreaded that a
massacre of new-born infants like that at Bethlehem was plotted, but
unsuccessfully. Krishna fulfilled his mission, conquered the evil
powers, and finally endured a voluntary death. That 'took'! The trinity
Brahma, Vishnu, Siva 'took,' but Father, Son, Holy Spirit did not
'take.' Krishna 'took,' but not Christ. It was strange!"
=The Sixth Sense.=--The pupil continued: "The outer eye can
reflect images, the inner eye can conceive them. There are therefore
two kinds of sight, an outer and an inner. Of the senses, that of
smell is the most immediate when it has to do with the conveyance
of impressions. But there seem also to be two kinds of faculties of
smell. Swedenborg says that a false man smells of sour gastric juice,
but only for the person to whom he has been false. In this case the
smell-perception is only subjective, but it is of great objective value
in judging men. In this case the organ of smell seems to operate with
æther-waves. According to Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences,
good men exhale sweet perfume, and bad men a stench like that of
corpses. He says that misers smell like rats, and so on. Legends of
the saints relate that the corpses of those who have kept their souls
and bodies pure, when they dissolve, exhale a flower-like perfume.
In short, every soul has its scent, which varies according to its
characteristics.
"This sixth sense the clothes-hygienist Jäger believed he had
discovered after he had begun to observe and train his outer and
inner man. I will speak now of my own experiences in the matter. They
did not begin till I had passed through the great purgatorial fire
which burnt up the rubbish of my soul, and after I had scrambled out
of the worst of the mire by self-discipline and asceticism. They are
accustomed to boil off the gum from raw silk before it is spun, and
so my nerve-fibres seemed to have been 'scoured' by the sufferings of
life, and gone through a process like the 'fining' of silk."
=Exteriorisation of Sensibility.=--The pupil continued: "I
happened once, when watching a spider in a web, to see her 'exteriorise
her sensibility,' or in other words reel out a nerve-substance for
herself with which she remains in touch, and by means of which she
becomes aware when flies come and when the weather changes. Raspail,
who in his masterly works has cast many a far-reaching glance
behind the curtains of nature, has in one place philosophised over
the spider's web. In other works dealing with transcendent natural
sciences, one finds the doubt expressed whether the object of the
spider's web is only to be a fly-trap. I myself have counted four and
twenty radii in the web of the garden-spider resembling an hour-circle,
and have asked myself whether, besides being a barometer and trap, the
web is also a kind of clock.
"Now it seems as though I had myself in a similar manner exteriorised
my sensibility. I feel at a distance when anyone interferes with my
destiny, when enemies threaten my personal existence, and also when
people speak well of me or wish me well. I feel in the street whether
those I meet are friends or foes; I have felt the pain of an operation
undergone by a man to whom I was fairly indifferent; twice I have
shared the death-agonies of others with the accompanying corporeal and
psychical sufferings. The last time I went through three illnesses
in six hours, and when the absent person with whom I suffered was
liberated by death, I rose up well. This makes life painful, but rich
and interesting."
=Telepathic Perception.=--The pupil said: "While I lived in the
most intimate relations with a woman, I arrived, like Gustav Jäger, at
'the discovery of the soul.' I was always in communication with her,
often through obscure sensations, but very often through the sense of
smell; these were subjective however, as other people were not aware
of them. When she was travelling I knew whether she was in a steamer
or on a train; I could distinguish the revolutions of the screw from
the vibration of the railway carriage and the puffing of the engine.
She used to make her presence felt by me at a certain hour of the
day, _i.e._ five o'clock in the morning. Once, when she was in Paris,
this time changed to four o'clock. When I consulted the table of time
variations, I found that it was four o'clock in Paris when it was five
o'clock with me. Another time she was in St. Petersburg, then our
meeting took place an hour later; that also agreed with the time-table.
When she hated me, I was conscious of a smell and taste like that of
mortalin; this happened one night so distinctly that I had to rise and
open the window. When she thought kindly of me, I perceived a smell
of incense and often of jasmine, but these scents sometimes changed
into sensations of taste. When she was in society without me I felt
that she was away, and when the conversation turned on me I was aware
whether they were speaking good or ill about me."
=Morse Telepathy.=--The pupil continued: "I was spending one
evening at home alone; I did not know where she was, but had the
feeling that she was lost to me. At 10.40 p.m. I was aware of a passing
breath of perfume. Then I said to myself, 'She has been in the theatre!
But in which?' I took the daily paper, read the theatre advertisements,
and found that one theatre closed at 10.40. Further inquiry proved that
my surmise was right.
"On another occasion when in company I broke off a lively conversation
with a smile. 'What are you smiling at?' 'Just now the train from the
south entered the terminus.' Another time under similar circumstances
I said: 'Now the curtain falls on the last act in _Helsingfors_!' and
I heard the applause which greeted the prima donna who had played in
my piece. The conversation of the people in the restaurant after the
conclusion of the piece sounded like ringing in my ears. I can hear
that as far as from Germany when a prima donna is acting in one of my
pieces there, although I do not know beforehand that it is going to
be played. One evening I had gone to bed about half-past nine, and
was awoken about half-past eleven by a smell of punch and tobacco and
in the impression that two of my acquaintances in a café were talking
about me. I had every reason to believe that I had been present there
in some way or another, but I was so accustomed to this phenomenon that
this time I did not test it. Flammarion gives a hundred such cases in
his book _The Unknown_."
=Nisus Formativus, or Unconscious Sculpture.=--The pupil
continued: "Once I signed a contract with a merchant. After sleeping
the night over it, I noticed that he had cheated me. With angry
thoughts I went out for my morning stroll. When I came back I wished
to change my clothes, and threw my handkerchief on the table. After I
had undressed myself I noticed that the handkerchief had been crumpled
together by my nervous clutch, and now, where it lay, formed a cast
of the merchant's head, like a plaster-of-Paris bust. The question
arises: Had my hand unconsciously formed an image of my thoughts? Linen
is a very plastic material, and one often finds excellent pieces of
'sculpture' in handkerchiefs, sheets, and cushions. When a married
man comes home with his wife from a ball, he should look at the
handkerchief chief which she has held the whole evening in her hand,
and then perhaps he might see with whom she preferred most to dance.
"In India a Buddhist priest is said to represent the 208 incarnations
of Vishnu by putting his hand in a linen bag, and moulding rapidly from
within the linen of the bag into the shapes of an elephant, tortoise,
etc. When St. Veronica's napkin retained the impress of Christ's face,
that is not more improbable than that my pillow in the morning should
show the impress of faces which are not like mine. I have read of
Indian vases which are so modelled that at first one only sees a chaos
resembling clouds, twisted entrails, or the convolutions of the brain.
After the eye has become accustomed to this the confusion begins to be
disentangled; all kinds of objects such as plants and animals emerge
in clear outline. Whether all observers see the same I know not. But
I believe that the moulder of the vase has worked unintentionally and
unconsciously."
=Projections.=--The pupil continued: "But there are also
projections which I cannot explain. It is possible that only poets and
artists possess the power so to project their inward images in every
life that they become half real. It is quite a usual occurrence that
the dying show themselves to their absent friends. Living persons can
also appear at a distance, but only to those who keep them in their
thoughts. I used to show my initiated friends the following phenomenon:
I observed a stranger who resembled an absent acquaintance. As soon
as my eye completed the image, whatever unlikeness remained was
erased. 'See, there goes X.,' I said. My friends saw the resemblance,
understood that it was not X., comprehended my meaning, and agreed
with me without further thought. If we shortly afterwards met X. we
were astonished, and attempted to find no explanation in face of the
inexplicable latter part of the phenomenon.
"But one day I went down a street and 'saw' my friend Dr. Y. who lived
fifty miles away. It was he, and yet it was not he. It was the same
little figure although somewhat wavering and uncertain. The grey-yellow
face was also the same although almost ghost-like, with deep furrows
which followed the oval lines of the face, and with the forced laugh of
suffering. When I came home I read in the paper that the man was dead."
=Apparitions.=--The pupil continued: "One evening I passed a
well-known theatre while a performance was going on inside. There was
no one outside. Suddenly on the pavement I saw an actor who had died
thirty years previously, after he had first gone crazy with vexation
because he had failed as an actor in this very theatre. His face, like
that of my deceased friend the doctor's, was lined with those parallel
furrows which run from the forehead to the jaw. 'Was it he, or not?'
I asked myself, and left the question open. On another occasion I
was travelling by rail in a foreign country. The train halted at a
station for three minutes. On the platform in broad daylight a man was
going up and down with a paint-box in his hand. He looked nervous and
suffering and was badly dressed. 'That is he!' I thought. 'How has he
got here? Why has he come down in the world?' During this three minutes
I suffered all the tortures of uncertainty and of a bad conscience, for
I was partly to blame for his misfortune and his poverty. The train
went on, and I have never discovered whether it were really he. It was
certainly improbable.
"Yet another time I was travelling by rail. At a remote station a man
came into my compartment and sat opposite me. I thought he was an
acquaintance, but he looked at me unrecognisingly. Then I let my eyes
fall. Immediately he regarded me with an ironical smile which I again
recognised. 'It is he,' I thought, 'but he will not greet me.' So I
suffered for some hours. My conscience endured all that I owed him.
Whether it really was he I know not, but the effect was the same."
=The Reactionary Type.=--The teacher said: "Men seem to react
against themselves and their own bad qualities when they demand from
others what they cannot themselves do. A man who is full of hate
demands to be loved. A faithless deceiver came lately to me and
finished his wily talk by saying, 'All I ask is that you trust me!'
He only asked that in order that he might be able to deceive me. But
perhaps he trusted me more than himself; he did not know himself, but
had an inkling of what he was. Perhaps he felt that my belief in him
would strengthen and elevate him, and might possibly neutralise his
untrustworthiness. It sounded at any rate very naïve, and I felt myself
honoured by the compliment.