was accompanied by a condition like that described in my _Inferno,_
during which, among other things, he saw his whole poetical work in a
depreciatory light, and even at last wished to cancel it all. After
just six years' preparation he died on November 2, 1846, in a cheerful
state of mind, the sky being lit up at the time by a splendid aurora.
Goldschmidt mentions that and still more remarkable things in his
excellent _Nemesis Divina_. I read lately how Fersen was murdered in
his carriage on June 20, 1810. I recalled to mind that it was the
same Fersen who drove the carriage in which Marie Antoinette fled to
Varennes. I referred to the _History of the World_, and found that the
flight to Varennes took place on June 20, 1791. The question arises:
"Was it a crime to wish to save the queen?" The author of the article
in the _Biographical Lexicon_ mentions the crime by name; but it was
something other than the attempt to further her escape.
=Hammurabi's Inspired Laws Received from the Sun-God.=--The laws
of Hammurabi occupy fifteen quarto pages. That is the whole find! And
these pages are to nullify the Bible, which is so unsearchably rich
and possesses such mysterious depths that everyone in trouble, who
with humility seeks for counsel and comfort there, finds it forthwith,
although he may first receive some blows which strike the nail on the
head!
Hammurabi's laws in fifteen pages resemble Deuteronomy to a certain
degree, but are much more meagre; they often recall our old Swedish law
with its trivialities. For instance: "If anyone strikes out a man's
teeth, his teeth shall be struck out; but if he strikes out the teeth
of an emancipated slave, he shall pay one-eighth of a mina of silver."
In any case God is one, and His laws are in principle the same.
The Bible may have used the same source as Hammurabi. But when the
heathen try to use the laws of the Assyrian clay tablets in order to
prove that the Bible is not inspired, they miss the mark. "Inspired"
means "received from God." See how the heathen has adorned his paltry
pamphlet with a frontispiece, which asserts, against his will, that
Hammurabi's laws were also inspired. For the frontispiece portrays
Hammurabi receiving his laws from the Sun-god.
=Strauss's Life of Christ.=--Now that I am sixty years old, it
occurred to me to see what sort of a book Strauss's _Leben Jesu_ is
before I depart. In my youth, in the 'sixties, we read in school (of
our own accord, however) "the last Athenian's doctrine of the Bible,"
but we never succeeded in seeing the original _Life of Jesus_. And
although I have been in libraries, collected books, visited second-hand
book-stalls, I have not seen Strauss's book. It seemed as though it had
been confiscated by the Invisible Powers. Now when I am sixty, it has
arrived and I tried to read it. But I could not.
It was simply unreadable! All these many pages contained nothing, and
what was printed seemed to me incomprehensible, soulless, dry.
A man who writes a book about what he does not understand; a student
who has learnt the æsthetic systems by heart; a philosopher who tries
to define the beautiful; a mathematician who wants to prove or
disprove axioms; a drunken man who tries to play the flute; a feeble
foolish attempt to explain God's great miracle in the Atonement. I
threw the book away, else I should have gone to sleep over it.
Strauss died in 1874, and in spite of the last stage of his
development, when he did not believe any more in the immortality of
the soul, he spent his last hours in reading Plato's _Phædo_, in which
at the death-bed of Socrates the immortality of the soul is so clearly
demonstrated.
His death was like that of Socrates, his pupils said. But they do not
inform us whether the cup of poison was at hand.
=Christianity and Radicalism.=--Christianity is really more
radical than Radicalism. Christ turns his back on the whole of society
with its institutions, science, and art. He warns us against the
scribes; the rich are not his friends, but rather Lazarus; the rich
youth is told to sell all that he has and to give to the poor. To
soldiers Christ says, "Those who take the sword shall perish with the
sword." He says nothing about science, art, and industry because He
is indifferent to them. He has no great illusions about men, for he
calls them "a generation of vipers." And rightly; since the earth is
a prison for those who have committed crimes in heaven, we are all
rascals; but it is the prison chaplain's duty to preach pardon to those
who behave properly. To open the prison would be unwise and unlawful;
there Christianity differs from Anarchism. Give custom to whom custom
is due, and to Cæsar what is Cæsar's. Authority is ordained of God, and
beareth not the sword in vain.
Christianity and Radicalism accordingly agree in their criticism of
society, but not in the inferences they draw. The Christian endures the
sufferings of the prison-house with religious resignation; he does not
waste valuable time in making foolish proposals regarding the reform of
prison-life and management. In order to obtain mitigation and pardon,
and to escape the dark cell and scourging, he tries to behave well, but
he does not believe that the prison can be a place of recreation.
All that Rousseau, Max Nordau, and Tolstoi have said against the faults
of society is quite true, but their inferences are false. Socialism,
_i.e._ pagan socialism, which preached development and progress, went
its crab-like course backwards to the trade unions which had been
dissolved, limited industrial freedom, introduced inquisitorial
methods, excommunicated heretics. In the great strike non-socialists
were refused water and gas, bread and milk for children. They compelled
the contented to be discontented, made men wild and despairing, and
really made things worse, when they ought to have improved them.
But in their pagan Radicalism they did not attain to the height of
Christianity. Unbelieving, they believed in everything that was
false--scientific fallacies, politico-economical errors, philosophical
stupidities. Into a pagan one may instil every possible falsehood and
stupidity; but for the truth in its real relations he is deaf and blind.
To have a moderate quiet contempt of the world, to be already half out
of it, one's staff in one's hand and one's knapsack on one's back, ever
ready for departure, to have clean hands and a good conscience--that
is the way not to be easily assailable. Then one is not envied, and
suffers not from disappointments and humiliations, for one is prepared
for all, and has anticipated all in advance.
"Vanity, Vanity," saith the Preacher. "Sow in the morning thy seed, and
in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall
succeed, or whether both alike are good."
=Where Are We?=--If men only knew where they are!
The description which the ancients gave of Tartarus exactly fits our
condition in this life. The ambitious man rolls his stone up the hill
like Sisyphus, and when he has got it to the top it rolls down again.
A certain architect spent twenty-five years of his life in working and
intriguing in order to build a temple for the state. The temple was
built and consecrated, a torch-light procession was held in honour of
the architect, and he was crowned with a laurel-wreath. The next day
the newspapers informed us that the temple must be pulled down because
it was a failure. The architect died half a year afterwards in an
asylum; the temple was demolished and the architect's name forgotten
and obliterated. Tantalus, the rich miser, stands in the midst of a
spring of water, but cannot drink; branches laden with fruit hang over
his head, but when he stretches out his hand to pluck a fruit a gust
of wind comes and tears the branch away. The rich man has worked and
swindled till old age begins. Then at last, when the grouse come flying
towards him, he has no teeth left; his wine-cellar is full, but the
doctor has forbidden him wine. That is Tantalus!
Ixion revolves on his wheel, at one moment up, at another down. The
ancients assigned as the reason of his punishment that he had boasted
of the favour of a woman who had never been his.
The Danaides, the coquettes, are perpetually drawing water, but their
vessel is like a sieve; everything enters it, but nothing remains.
All day long and every day one hears the expression "That is
hell!"--such is the universal view. When things look a little brighter,
the table is covered, the bed made, and we feel well again. We cheat
ourselves often with alcohol, and continue our somnambulism. Then we
are awoken by a noise, start up, rush about, weep, and then go to sleep
again. At last sleep is banished once for all, and we wake never to
sleep any more. Once we are well awake no opiates are of avail.
Then we discover the whole cheat. We see where we are, and what our
past, which seemed so real, was. The comparatively wise man then
turns away from the phantoms and shadows of reality in order to seek
the other, the true, the actual Real. Then the state is seen to be a
prison; the defenders of the fatherland are body-snatchers; society is
a madhouse, whose warders are the officials and police; family life is
concubinage; capitalists are usurers; the fine arts are superfluities;
literature is printed nonsense; industry feeds unnecessary luxury;
railways are instruments of torture; the electric light ruins the eyes;
all the blessings of civilisation are either curses or superfluous.
When we have seen this, we turn our backs on all and seek the only
thing that holds, that gives a real answer, that fulfils what it
promises. But this super-real fools call a phantom.
=Hegel's Christianity.=--There are two Voltaires: one, the mocker
at all definite religion, who is revered by the godless; the other,
the fanatical champion of God who is ridiculed by the atheists because
he believed in God as naïvely as a child. Voltaire recovered his
reason before he died, as lunatics are wont to do; when he died he was
definitely religious and took the sacrament. There are also two Hegels.
But they are more complicated than Voltaire, who was as simple as a
feuilletonist. Hegel discovered with his logic that what exists has a
right to exist; he defends the _status quo_, society, state, religion
with all their corollaries, because they have proceeded from God;
everything is right since it exists. "It belongs," he says, "to the
essence of religion that it should realise itself in several historical
religious forms. Of these, however, Christianity is the only one which
suitably expresses the essence of religion. In her doctrine of the
Trinity the Christian Church contains the nucleus of all philosophical
speculation. For this signifies nothing less than that the Eternal God,
enthroned in His majesty over the sphere of the finite, condescends
and reconciles Himself to the finite, becomes man, suffers, dies, and
returns to Himself as the Holy Spirit." That is well put; but every
schoolchild knew it already from Luther's "little catechism." For what
object then is this extraordinary accumulation of several thousand
pages of incomprehensible philosophy? To what purpose? Hegel died of
cholera in 1831, after traversing many devious ways, as a simple,
believing Christian, without any philosophy, repeating the penitential
psalms.
="Men of God's Hand."=--That is Kind David's expression (Ps.
xvii., 14) which he uses of the godless, to whom the Lord gave power
over His people Israel when they behaved badly. Thereby is the knotty
problem solved, why God gives the godless power, honour, and wealth,
while He often chastises His servants.
The Pharaohs were idolaters and wizards, but God's chosen people had
to be their slaves. The Philistines worshipped Baal and Astarte, but
they were allowed to devastate Canaan and even to carry away the Ark
of the Covenant. Nebuchadnezzar was no saint, quite the contrary, but
he was permitted to carry the children of Israel into captivity. Good
men are not adapted to be instruments of chastisement, and the office
of executioner is not an enviable one. Everyone has his Egyptian armed
with a rod, whether they are called superiors, employers, customers,
the public, newspapers, or even public opinion.
All strive for an imaginary independence or so-called freedom, while
there is no independence and no freedom. Therefore the effort is vain.
Only one thing remains--to reconcile oneself to obedience to human
authority for the Lord's sake, and to pay taxes where taxes are due.
And where one earns one's bread, one must be polite. Vex, not thyself
that thy trade and thy position are difficult; God has so appointed it.
=Night Owls.=--The maggot in the apple doubtless imagines that
the apple was grown for its sake, and that the world could not exist
without apples. So we also imagine that science and art are certainly
necessary. Swedenborg, in his description of another sphere, tells us
how happy men can be without such luxuries. "They know nothing of
sciences as we see them in our world, and wish to know nothing; they
call them 'shadows,' and compare them with clouds which come between
the sun and the spectator. This idea of the sciences they have derived
from certain spirits who came from our earth and introduced themselves
as those who had grown wise through science. These spirits from our
earth who made this claim belonged to those who see wisdom in such
things as are pure matters of memory, such as languages; in historical
matters, which belong to the literary world; in bare experiences and
terms, especially philosophical ones. Because these have not developed
their faculty of reasoning through science, they have in their second
life little power of perceiving the truth, for they see only in and by
means of technical terms, which like hills and thick clouds obstruct
the sight of reason. Those who have employed the sciences in order to
destroy matters of faith have their reason so thoroughly unsettled that
in pitch-darkness they take false for true, and evil for good, like
night-owls."
The flag of the university also carries the sign of an owl, but they do
not know what it means.
=Apotheosis.=--When a man who has been near to us dies, he begins
to loom magnified through a kind of haze. All his less-pleasing
characteristics are obliterated, as if they were part of that dust
which is now dissolved. His better self, on the other hand, becomes
larger and clearer. It is indeed possible that the liberated spirit
becomes ennobled by death, and that therefore the survivor is right in
forming a new conception of the personality of the deceased. He with
whom the survivor now holds spiritual intercourse is perhaps what the
survivor feels him to be, and has ceased to be what he was in life.
It is almost invariably the case that the survivor torments himself
with reproaches that he has been guilty of some neglect towards the
dead, has done him slight injustices and spoken hard words. Even the
coldest-hearted begs the dead secretly for forgiveness--forgiveness
for all even when it was hardly ill-meant. All this seems to signify
that the dead one is alive, and has need of kindly thoughts as a
compensation for the reproaches he makes himself regarding those he has
left behind.
=Painting Things Black.=--There are men who anticipate their
troubles, hoping thereby to neutralise or to bribe destiny. But that is
a mistaken calculation. I know of an author who saw a great calamity
approaching and tried to _write_ it away. He composed a drama on that
theme, and hoped thereby to have escaped it. Soon afterwards, however,
it arrived and the effect was as strong as though it had never been
written about, perhaps even more.
Theosophists say that we can create thought-forms which assume life and
reality. They mean that men can send from a distance evil suggestions
which others carry out. Thus criminal romances have never deterred
anyone from crime; they have on the contrary given scoundrels bright
ideas for new pieces of rascality. I actually know of a society novel
which criticised bank and joint-stock company frauds, with the result
that such frauds increased. It is as though one let loose demons.
Therefore it is dangerous merely to think evil of men; one may do them
harm thereby. But what a supernatural effort is necessary always to
see good where so little is to be found! And when we try our best we
find that we have played the hypocrite. It is almost hopeless to hold
the balance level when it is a matter of judging men justly, for human
nature is evil and cannot be altered.
=The Thorn in the Flesh.=--Whence come evil and ugly thoughts
which start up in our most beautiful moments, in the hour of devotion,
and even in prayer? We wish to ignore them; we have the impression
that they come from without. But it is possible that they are born of
the habit of letting evil thoughts have free course in silence and
solitude. Still it is mysterious that the greater the height to which
we have attained by striving, the deeper we fall. And I can testify
from my own experience that it is at the very time of renunciation
and self-discipline that one is most liable to unclean thoughts and
imaginations. St. Anthony and other saints are examples of this.
A great sorrow, for instance, the longing for a lost child, is the
quickest and best means of burning away the rubbish. But often, alas!
on the sorrow there follows a boisterous joy which is not of the
noblest kind. Immediately after our noblest moods, when we have been
inspired by the most beautiful thoughts and purposes, it is possible in
the next moment to feel like a coxcomb.
It is not strange that the ancients believed in demons who whisper into
one's ear and suggest impure imaginations. Possibly this was St. Paul's
thorn in the flesh, which pricked him so that he should not be too much
uplifted.
=Despair and Grace.=--When in youth one sought to conquer evil
desires, and even harmless ones, with the severest scourge provided by
religion, and then saw that one could not change one's vices, one let
go of the reins and life went as it went. Work was the chief occupation
of middle life, and there was no time to think of one's soul. Life
itself moulded one's character, and one threw a bone to the dog--the
flesh in order to be able to work in peace.
Then when in old age we come to reflect, and at sixty find that we have
remained very much the same, we wish to begin our spiritual education,
but with indifferent success. We had hoped that certain desires would
disappear and certain virtues take their place by a kind of natural
necessity, as we had believed when young. But, alas! that is not the
case. When now we again resume the struggles of our youth the case is
thus. We have raised our standard higher, and wish to root out all the
weeds. What formerly seemed quite natural--envy of a fellow-worker,
revenge on an enemy, pride in success, exultation at a foe's downfall,
a small white lie--we now find hateful. And so we begin to struggle
against the outward manifestations of these things. But when we find
the inner evil just as strong as before, we finally regard ourselves as
great hypocrites and are ready to despair.
Where is comfort to be found then? Religion only asserts that we are
hypocrites, and our fellow-men regard it as a fact. Absolute despair
seizes us. What follows then? Grace! It becomes clear to us that
everything is grace, and from grace. And that we have been living on
the bread of charity which we believed we had earned.
=The Last Act (From the life of a leader of the
"Renaissance").=--The final act is the most important one in a
drama, and a dramatist generally begins his work at the end. We sit
out a long evening at the theatre in order to see the last act or "how
it will go." But in the significant lives of certain men people like
to ignore the last act, because it is uncomfortable and might show
how the godless fare at last. He who wrote the operetta _Boccaccio_
had to append the last act to it; the jovial Florentine became a
priest and delivered lectures on Dante's _Hell_, though he only
reached the seventeenth canto. Voltaire's last hours, when he took
the sacrament, might furnish a subject for a tragedy like the second
part of _Faust_. Heine announced his conversion, which took place
in 1851, in the preface to the _Romancero_: "I have returned to God
like the prodigal son, after I had fed swine with the Hegelians for
a long time." This preface should be printed before every collection
of Heine's poems. Hegel singing penitential psalms on his death-bed
might form the subject of a fresco painting for the entrance-hall of
Berlin University. But the most affecting final act is Oscar Wilde's
description of his prison life in _De Profundis_. He was the so-called
renaissance leader, who disinterred heathenism with its false worship
of beauty, which contains the foulest of all. Kierkegaard[1] would have
called him the æsthete, the Sybarite cold as cast iron, the egoist
round whose petty "I" the whole world was to revolve in order to
understand him alone. Many, led astray like him by the seducing spirits
of his youth, remained fairly free from public punishment. Wilde
seems to have been picked out to furnish a startling example, for his
position, at any rate in his own country, was almost that of an idol.
What he wrote lacks originality; it is whipped-up foam; glazing which,
when washed off, leaves no texture; it is as restless as cross-lights,
or like a mirror in a public restaurant, in a labyrinthine hall with
deceptive lines and false perspectives; it runs out of the hand like
albumen or frog-spawn; it is perverse as in _Dorian Gray_, the hero of
which should have lost his youth by nightly excesses, while on the
contrary it is only his portrait which changes.
The last act was played, and that outdid all horror, was so horrible
that Wilde himself could not describe its details, which, however, oral
tradition has preserved in a Swedenborgian legend.
_De Profundis_ arouses pity and fear, and one would gladly acquit the
man who was perhaps the victim of his delusion; a worldly tribunal
would not have judged him if he had not himself appealed to it, and
that indeed for a wrong done him. It was what our renaissance-critic
called a "piece of stupidity" when he made Wilde out to be a martyr of
"hypocrisy," as he called justice. Wilde however seems to have taken
another view of the matter to his impartial defender: "A day in prison
on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not
a day on which one's heart is happy. Once I had put into motion the
forces of society, society turned on me and said: 'Have you been living
all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those
laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full.'
A man's very highest moment, I have no doubt at all, is when he kneels
in the dust and beats his breast and tells us all the sins of his life."
The "joy of life" whose perfume he had inhaled at Oxford through
Pater's _Renaissance_ now began to grow sour.
"Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of
suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament coarse, hard,
and callous. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. There are times
when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. The secret of life is
suffering."
Let us add that Wilde derived his most dangerous doctrine from
Baudelaire and Shakespeare's sonnets. And let us close with the new
view of the Renaissance which he attained to in prison: "To me one of
the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ's
own renaissance which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the
Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art
of Giotto, and Dante's _Divine Comedy_, was not allowed to develop on
its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical
Renaissance."
[Footnote 1: Danish theologian.]