said: "Like all lower classes the apelings regard themselves as
supermen, who march at the head of all movements and can regulate
developments. Their god is the shaggy Pan, who had been a goat and
became a half-man, and later the Evil One, Satan, or God's opponent.
But they must be ashamed of their god, for they call themselves
atheists. Their religion is that of the Satanists. When they hear of
any good action they snort. They delight in persecuting and tormenting
anyone in whom there is any good visible, and call him a hypocrite.
Their children learn to lie as soon as they learn to talk. The greatest
poet of the apelings has written a lament over the 'Decay of lying'
and an heroic poem in six cantos in praise of unnatural vice. They
are all perverse, mostly in secret, but they betray themselves in
their writers, who write in the name of woman, and from the woman's
point of view, against man. For by confusion of sex they have lost all
distinction of sex; they have ceased to think and to feel as men. They
run like dogs with their noses on the track of the white man, in order
to bite him, that he may become like one of them.
"There are white men who have been seduced by the females of the
apelings. The children are bastards, and their lives are a perpetual
conflict against the Satanic inheritance they have received from their
mothers. Some fight in vain; others find the Helper. There is only
One--Jesus Christ, the Exorciser of demons. You know that I was such a
bastard and fought the battle, which is not yet concluded.
"The apelings preach toleration. By that they mean that whatever they
do must be overlooked, and that they should be left at liberty to
propagate their doctrines, while they more or less secretly persecute
the Christians. As soon as they begin to scent Christian blood they
shudder. Then they begin to excommunicate the 'heretic.' His name is
no more mentioned, and if it appears in print it is cut out. If he
formerly belonged to the body of the apelings he is now called an
apostate, and must die as a traitor.
"When an apeling dies he obtains an apotheosis in the absence of a
pantheon. At the burial the wreaths are counted, and the inscriptions
attached to them examined; if anyone's name is missing he is
excommunicated. The ceremonial is just like that of a witches' sabbath
when the 'faithful' gave their testimony. But it may happen, when
they invoke Pan, that he answers with the reed-pipe. Then if he shows
himself in the wood or in the bedchamber, they are seized with a panic
fear; they weep like children who are afraid of the dark, or fly to
sanatoriums to be cured of their neurasthenia, their sleeplessness, and
their heart-complaints."
=Their Gospel=.--The teacher continued: "But the apelings
have also constructed a dogmatic theology which is a parody of
the Christian faith. They have a doctrine of reconciliation which
proclaims reconciliation with life, but it is really a compromise
with all the dirt of life which one generally wipes off on the mat at
the house-door. They teach men to be tolerant towards turpitude and
wickedness; they describe men as good fellows, as careless creatures
who are thoroughly good at bottom--'there is no malice in them.' The
really good men, who cannot do anything wicked, seemed to the apelings
puritanical. 'Why should we torment ourselves in the only life we
have?' they ask, feeling quite sure that they will be annihilated at
death, like maggots.
"According to this distorted gospel, it is wrong to describe in a
literary work how the malicious, the liar, the deceiver, the pander
get their deserts. We should, they say, pardon the conscienceless and
obstinate. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that we should
pardon the repentant who improve. In the apelings' gospel all the
teaching of Christ is sophisticated. In their view all Magdalenes are
interesting innocent victims of social circumstances, while Christ only
received the Magdalene who had abandoned vice."
=The Disposition of the Apes.=--The teacher continued: "This is
the whole kernel of Darwinism, this madness which infected the mind
of a generation which was overstrained with the pursuit of power and
luxury. But this Beelzebub could only be driven out by another. That
was Nietzsche. He was a demon let loose, who killed the ape, restored
the man, and altered the old popular estimates. He was understood
because he spoke the language of the apelings. That was the only way
to compel them to listen, for they would never have heard a Christian
prophet. But after he had his say his tongue was spiked and his tale
was over.
"Joseph Peladan was a Christian prophet of the school of the Therapeutæ
and Essenes. The apelings feared him, and could not name his name, for
it stuck in their throats. Only the Christian upper class understood
him. His Christianity was luminous and esoteric, perhaps too luminous.
But after a pilgrimage to Christ's grave he discovered the deceit,
turned his back on the 'reconciliation with life,' and forswore the
worship of beauty which was merely the dressing up of the apes with
white sheets and ivy leaves. He ceased to be interested in the bestial
and the nude, saw through the 'joy of life' and Nora,[1] unmasked the
humbug of tolerance, and took the cross in real earnest, as it is, on
himself. Peladan was a living protest against apishness. He represented
the undercurrent, not the surface-stream. Still the undercurrent is
always ready to mount and overflow and cleanse the banks, which at the
ebb-tide have served as a place for dumping down rubbish."
[Footnote 1: The heroine of Ibsen's _Doll's House_.]
=The Secret of the Cross.=--The teacher said: "The conflict
between paganism and Christianity is now being fought out in the world.
But just as surely as Christianity preceded paganism in time, so surely
does the future belong to Christianity, although for the moment the
apelings have the upper hand. Their edict of toleration allows them in
the name of freedom to forbid the preaching of Christianity. They close
the churches, declare Judas innocent, give mad women the vote, write
heathenish schoolbooks for children, place forgers and pettifoggers in
power, for their kingdom is of this world. But it is with Christianity
as with the walnut-tree, whose fruit is knocked down with poles, and
which is roughly treated in order that it may bear fruit and thrive.
The night grows darker towards the dawn. Spinach-seed is trodden
down that it may grow better; the ground must be harrowed, broken,
and rolled in order to be able to yield a crop; gold must be refined
in fire, and flax be steeped in water. The cross points upwards,
downwards, sideways, to the four quarters of heaven at once; it is a
completion of the compass. Suffering bums up the rubbish of the soul.
I have seen a man who had suffered all the griefs endured by humanity;
yet the more he suffered the more beautiful he became. That is the
secret of the cross and of suffering. 'Because ye are not of the world,
therefore the world hateth you. In the world ye have tribulation, but
be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'"
=Examination and Summer Holidays.=--The teacher said: "When,
on reaching maturity, one awakes to new consciousness and discovers
that everything one has is borrowed, one begins to cut oneself down
to the root, in order to let strike a new stem which is one's own.
When we enter old age this stem withers down to the root (the process
Swedenborg calls 'desolation'); the branches formerly cut down bloom
again and put forth new foliage which is like, and yet not like the
former. But when old and new flourish together, the whole result is
confusing; but the root remains the same and reveals the nature of
the plant. The dissonances of life increase with the years, and the
material of life becomes so immense that it is impossible to survey it
properly. Therefore one lives more in remembrance than in the present,
and along the whole line of one's experience. Sometimes I live in my
childhood, sometimes in my mature age.
"But it is strange that one does not feel old age to be the beginning
of an end but the introduction to something new, _i.e._ when one has
recovered the belief or assurance that there is a life on the other
side. One feels as though one were preparing for an examination by
doing preliminary exercises and one becomes literally young again.
There is a little touch of examination fever with it, but also great
hopes mingled with dreams of the future. These remind us of Christmas
joys, summer holidays, family gatherings with reconciliations and
wishes fulfilled. But there is also a scent of broken-off birch-leaves
and the seashore; there is a sound of Sunday bells and organs, the
attraction of new clothes, white linen, and a bath in green sea-water.
There is a feeling like that of evening prayer and a good conscience,
wife, home, and child after a journey, the hearth-fire after a
snow-storm, the first ball and the one we loved to dance with most,
the opening of the savings-box, and first and last the examination and
the summer holidays."
=Veering and Tacking.=--The teacher continued: "The Theosophists
speak of the seven planes of the Kama-Loka, the condition after
death. I will admit that, in certain circumstances, I have lived
simultaneously on several planes. This was difficult for me, and
still more difficult for my enemies to understand. I should like to
have explained these contradictions in existence by a cleavage of the
personality or a multiplication of the ego. I have also sought the
solution of the riddle in the self-adaptation to one's surroundings,
to which St. Paul refers in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'To
the Jews I became a Jew.... To those who are under the law, I became
as under the law.... To those who are without law, I became as one
without law. To the weak I became as weak.' ... Kierkegaard speaks of
Sympaschomenos who rejoices with the joyful, mourns with the sad, is
coarse with the coarse, refined with the refined.
"Swedenborg makes another suggestion, 'When a man is to be born again,
his desires and falsities cannot be stripped off at once, for that
would be equivalent to destroying the whole man, because as yet he
only lives in them. Therefore for a long while evil spirits are left
with him, to stir up his desires that they may be dissolved in many
ways.'
"Formerly I believed, when I was young with the youthful, old and wise
with the old, mad with the mad, that I was doing them a service. As a
poet, I lived for the moment in their life and their moods, which I
then depicted and forgot myself. Often by these relapses into stages
I had left behind, I seemed to have worked myself higher, as the ship
tacks in order to get a more favourable wind."
=Attraction and Repulsion.=--The teacher continued: "There is both
an attraction and a repulsion between similar souls. Like loves like,
but not always; often the unlike seeks the unlike. A good man lamented
to me that it was his lot always to be in bad society, and never to
meet good men who could elevate him. Since he was strong he was at any
rate not drawn down, but he did not observe that he exercised a good
influence on his bad surroundings. He had, it is true, occasion to see
and to hear evil; but, on the other hand, he was able to react against
it through the disgust with which it inspired him. Without instituting
a comparison we may say that Christ did not attract people of high
position and good character, but poor devils and weak characters, the
sick, the possessed, the wicked, thieves, publicans, and harlots. His
disciples did not understand his doctrine, but interpreted it all in a
material way. He answered their reproaches by saying, 'Only the sick
need a physician.' I will suppress my former objection, for I bow
myself experimentally before 'the folly of the cross,' since experience
has taught me that wisdom can only be received by a humble mind, and
that obedience is more than sacrifice. In recent times my constant
prayer has been that I might come into good society which might elevate
me, and avoid evil companionship which, to say the least, involves an
injurious connection with the lower plane. It is in truth my fault
that those who seek me seek my old ego, and, when they do not find it,
believe that I am not to be found."
=The Double.=--The pupil said: "When a man begins to love a woman
he throws himself into a trance, and becomes a poet and artist. Out
of her plastic, unindividualised material he fashions an ideal form
into which he puts all that is best in himself. Thus he creates an
homunculus which he adopts as his double, and with that she lets him do
as he likes.
"But this astral image may be also the doll which she the huntress
sets up as a decoy, while she with a loaded gun lies behind the
bush and watches for her prey. The love of a man for his homunculus
often survives every illusion; he may have conceived a deadly hatred
against herself, while his love for his double continues. But this
masquerade gives rise to the deepest dissonances and troubles. He
becomes squint-eyed by contemplating two images which do not coincide.
He wishes to embrace his cloud, but takes hold of a body; he wishes to
hear _his_ poem, but it is someone else's; he wants to see his work of
art, but it is only a model. He is happy during his trance, although
the world cannot understand him. When he awakes from his somnambulism,
his hatred to the woman increases in proportion as she fails to
correspond to his image of her. And if he murders his double, then love
is done with, and only boundless hate remains."
=Paw or Hand.=--The pupil said: "In Kipling's wonderful _Jungle
Book_, the boy is intimate with all kinds of animals but not with apes,
which are the worst of all creatures and composed of wickedness and
crime. When Goethe, in the second part of _Faust_, wishes to represent
phantoms and evil spirits, he uses the same masks and costumes as
for the monkeys in the Witches' Kitchen in the first part. And it is
among these degenerate brutes that man (?) now does his best to seek
his ancestry. For my part I would rather trace my origin from a noble
horse, or a sagacious and honest elephant, or from a courageous and
thankful eagle.
"But it is probable that apes spring from degenerate men, escaped
criminals, and ship-wrecked Robinson Crusoes. The hand of the
chimpanzee is not a paw which is being evolved into a hand, but it is
a human hand which is degenerating into a paw. A palmist could read
the lines of it; a manicurist could improve it and make it capable of
wearing a glove. If man really sprang from apes, according to the law
of phylogeny, a child ought to be born with a hairy body. But now it
comes into the world as smooth as an angel, often without hairs even
on its head. It is a disgrace to me that I served the Ape-king, the
seducer of my youth! And it was so stupid!"
=The Thousand-Years' Night of the Apes.=--When the sun of
Christianity rose over the world, it naturally became night for the
apelings. When they turned their backs to the light, everything became
distorted for them. Right became left, east became west, good became
evil, black became white, day became night. Therefore one reads still
of their thousand-years' night, as they call the Middle Ages. When the
savage tribes of Europe became tame, when the aged and sick became
objects of pity, when governments ruled and laws protected, when
faith, hope and love, self-sacrifice and chivalry flourished, then it
was night for the pagans. When Europe received science, when Albertus
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Arnold, and Basilius founded
chemistry, metallurgy, and physic, their darkness increased. When
mediæval art culminated in the noblest work of art there is--the Gothic
cathedral--then it grew dark before the eyes of the giants; their ears
could not endure the chime of bells and organ-music. Finally the Middle
Ages discovered gunpowder, the compass, and printing. A religious man,
whose sails bore the sign of the cross, discovered America. But Pauli,
the disciple of Clemens Romanus, already knew "the ocean which cannot
be crossed by men, and the lands which lie behind it."[1]
In the midst of the darkness of the heathen there was the light
of convent-schools and universities, in which spiritual as well as
worldly wisdom was taught. Poems of chivalry, romances and dramas
were composed. Charlemagne was a Christian King Solomon; he defeated
the Philistines in Saxony, built temples out of the ruins of Rome,
held learned conversations and listened to legends, cultivated the
land and gave laws. That was the brightest phase of a Europe grown
patriarchal and Christian. The gods certainly did not walk any more on
earth, but God's messengers were in constant communication with men,
and disclosed to them the secrets of God's kingdom, which were written
down in Apocalypses and, best of all, in the _Legenda Aurea_. Thomas à
Kempis's _Imitation of Christ_ was printed and is still read even by
Protestants. One can even read the Church Fathers, Augustine, Jerome,
Chrysostom; Augustine was used in my youth as a confirmation-manual.
Two hundred years before the Reformation--the schism in the Church
as it should rather be called--Dante wrote the most Christian of all
poems, which the heathen have tried to steal for themselves. Boccaccio
expounded the _Inferno_ from a professor's chair, a fitting penalty
for the trespasses of his youth. Botticelli, Lippi, Ghirlandajo were
the great religious painters of the Middle Ages. Their pupils Michael
Angelo and Raphael were devout Christians, although the heathen have
wished to appropriate them under the false designation Renaissance,
or new birth of heathenism. When at the beginning of modern times it
began to grow dusk, the dawn rose for the heathen and for "the last
Athenians." The last? There will certainly be more Athenians who will
wish to carry owls to Athens.
[Footnote 1: Clement, Epistle to the Romans, chap. xx.]
=The Favourite.=--Julian was an Illyrian, from the predatory state
composed of a mixed Phœnician race who worshipped Baal and Astarte.
He had a small head, and no occiput; he had thick lips, a beard that
swarmed with vermin, long nails and black hands with which he groped
in the bleeding bodies of slain beasts in order to prognosticate the
future from their hearts and livers. His cheerful religious services
consisted in the sacrifice of animals, and were accompanied by the
dances of immodest girls. In order to refute ancient prophecy, he
wished to build again the Temple at Jerusalem. But fire broke out of
the ground, so that the undertaking was frustrated at its commencement.
This madman once came to Antioch, where there were a hundred thousand
heathen whom he expected to receive him with public sacrifices and
dances. Instead of which he was met by a solitary priest bearing a
goose. That was all!
This unattractive person, who has become the darling of _The Last
Athenian_[1] and the new heathen, was finally enticed into a desert.
There he suffered hunger and thirst till a lance pierced his liver. But
it is incredible that he exclaimed, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!"
He was far too stupid for that.
=Scientific Villainies.=--If anyone comes to you and says, "I
don't understand the proof for the existence of God," you should
answer, "You don't understand because your wickedness darkens your
understanding." All atheists are rascals, and all rascals are
atheists. Their intelligence is so beclogged with sin that they cannot
understand the simplest teachings of Christianity, the Incarnation and,
consequently, Immaculate Birth of God, His Resurrection and Ascension.
When the sectaries came to Luther and said that they could not
understand him, because they had another Spirit, he answered, "I smite
your Spirit on the snout! God rebuke thee, Satan!" A godless man or a
so-called free-thinker is a rascal who permits himself everything. His
natural sympathy for scoundrels is so strong that he will swear a false
oath in order to save the guilty from condemnation by a false alibi. He
will accuse an innocent man, and persecute him from one court of appeal
to another, in order to get him into prison, and will demand a large
sum of money as a reward for his ill-doing.
When the guilty is acquitted they give him a banquet, his companions
write odes in his honour, he is promoted and finally appointed to be
an instructor of youth. When an atheist adopts the pursuit of science,
one is sure only villainy will result. He says falsely that he has seen
such and such things under the microscope, in order to be able to write
a treatise on them. If he is an astronomer he will see as many canals
in Mars as his professor wishes. If his professor does not believe in
the canals in Mars, he will not see any.
[Footnote 1: _The Last Athenian_, title of a work by Victor Rydberg.]
=Necrobiosis, _i.e._ Death and Resurrection.=--During the
winter I found the chrysalis of a cockchafer and laid it on my
writing-table. One evening in the lamplight it began to click and
make small movements. Believing that the warmth had developed my
beetle I opened its black coffin, but found to my astonishment only
a white slime without a sign of organisation; it smelt of sour
gastric juice. This half-fluid mass, however, possessed the capacity
of movement. Later on, when I had a microscope with a large field
of view, I opened the chrysalis of a butterfly and examined it. On
a clear yellow background of fluid matter there was sketched, as it
were, the outline of the future butterfly in half-shadow, without, as
yet, any bodily organisation. That is called "necrobiosis," or the
dying-off of living tissue. And the deliquescence of the chrysalis in
slime is termed "histolysis." Its reorganisation is said to take place
by means of _corpora adiposa_, or particles of fat. More than this I
do not know. I wrote to Germany (where they are accustomed to know
everything) and asked for some works treating of the metamorphosis
of the chrysalis, but there were none on this most important and
interesting question. Father Darwin and his son Haeckel knew nothing
and wished to know nothing about the resurrection; they only knew about
birth and death. Finally I bought for five-and-twenty kroners a large
work on butterflies composed by a professor. There was not a word in
it regarding the necrobiosis of the chrysalis. But sometimes I see on
a gravestone within a church wall this symbol: caterpillar, chrysalis,
and butterfly.
=Secret Judgment.=--When one sees a fact repeated regularly and
under defined conditions, one believes one has discovered a law. I
think I have discovered a law, and consequently a tribunal whose
decisions we see, but whose inner working we can only guess at. I had
a relative who had reached a certain age without "ever having time" to
think of death. On the 18th January of the year 18-- he had a stroke
and fell. That was the first warning. Then he began to think about
death and the life after this, and occupied himself thus for six years;
then he died exactly on the same day, on the 18th of January. The
fact of the interval being six years made me think of Bismarck's six
years in Sachsenwald, when he sat alone and brooded on the transitory
character of greatness, and curiously enough injured his reputation
through being betrayed by vanity into making incautious revelations.
Then it occurred to me that Napoleon was six years on St. Helena, and
finally became so well "prepared" that he received the sacrament on his
death-bed. Whether Heine lay on the ground for exactly six years, with
his body wasted to the size of a child's and tormented by the fear of
losing his wife, I cannot say definitely; but it was about six. It is
well known that the pious Linnæus had to spend his last years seated in
a chair, lamed by paralysis; nor did even he escape being worried by a
quarrelsome wife, God alone knows why!