has "changed its object." Probably some of it remains, but in an
incomprehensible way, even if one were to suppose that the personality
is resolved into several "monads," of which one seeks a similar one,
and another another; and what is called love can here become friendship.
According to Plato's doctrine of reminiscence and the reincarnation
theory of the theosophists, one might believe that when two fall in
love it is only a meeting again. And all the beauty which they then
see round them is the reflection of the memories of some far beautiful
land where they have met before, but which they now remember for the
first time. The continual illusions of love would then be connected
with experiences on the other side, which now come up in memory from
the side where all is completion and beauty. Therefore we have such
a terrible awakening from our dreams of happiness when we find that
everything down here is distorted, everything a caricature, even love
itself.
=The Happiness of Love.=--Even though earthly love be a caricature
or bad copy of the heavenly it has some traits of resemblance to its
prototype. In the first spring-days of love there are elevated moments,
in which one compassionates other mortals who are not so happy. We
tremble for our blessedness, finding it not quite just; yet it is
possible even to wish for a misfortune to rectify the balance.
There was a dramatist who became engaged, and at the same time had just
celebrated his greatest triumph on the stage. The ground seemed to sway
under his feet, the air caressed his face, men paid him homage on the
streets; he felt hardly on earth, as he was beloved by the woman whom
he loved.
Then there came the crash of a failure! All his former merits were
forgotten; he was called a noodle and a charlatan. But he was so happy
in his love that he did not feel the blow. He felt, on the contrary,
an inner joy that misfortune had drawn him and his fiancée closer
together; he was so high that he did not grudge men the joy of pulling
him down a little. His fame had begun to bore them; now that he was
down, he found sympathy, while formerly he had been the object of envy.
That was the miracle of love! It made him so little self-seeking, that
on behalf of men he suffered under his oppressive fame and his great
happiness.
=Our Best Feelings.=--Life is not beautiful; on its animal,
domestic, and business sides it brings us into so many ugly situations.
Life is cynical since it ridicules our nobler feelings and flings scorn
on our faith. Therefore it is difficult to use fine words in the stress
of every-day; one hides one's better feelings in order not to expose
them to ridicule. One might therefore say that men are partly better
than they appear to be. One is forced to play the sceptic in order
not to perish, and one is made cynical by the cynicism of life. It is
therefore unjust to call men hypocrites in a bad sense, for most men,
on the contrary, make themselves out worse than they are.
When a man writes a letter to an intimate friend, or to the woman he
loves, he puts on his festive dress; that is befitting. And in the
quiet letter, on the white paper, he expresses his best feelings. The
tongue and the spoken word are so vulgarised by everyday use, that they
cannot say aloud the beautiful things which the pen says silently.
It is not posing or attitudinising, it is not falsity when one exhibits
in correspondence a better soul than in everyday life. The lover is not
untrue in his love-letters. He does not make himself out better than he
is; he becomes better, and _is_ so for the passing moment. He is true
at such moments, the greatest which life grants us!
=Blood-Fraternity.=--Blood-fraternity used to be sealed with a
sacred ceremonial--the mingling of blood. "The life of the soul is
in the blood," says the Old Testament; and it is probable that there
was something mysterious in it which we do not understand, as in all
sacraments, which we understand as little.
An old saga tells us that Torger and Tormod had mingled their blood and
had fought battles and won victories together. But one day, when Torger
was intoxicated by success, he carelessly remarked to his brother,
"Which of us, do you think, would prove the better man if we ventured
on a conflict?"
"I don't know," answered his brother, "but I know that your question
makes an end of our living together. I will not remain with you any
more."
"I did not seriously mean that we should try our strength on one
another."
"But it came into your mind, since you said it." He departed, and their
tie of brotherhood was at an end. The narrator adds, "The bond of their
friendship was so fragile, that it could not bear the touch of an
over-hasty thought."
Marriage is a blood-bond and more--it is a sacred transaction. It is so
tender and so fragile, that a hasty word--a joke, as one calls it--can
make an end of it for the whole of life. It is no use afterwards to
say, "It was only a jest." We have the answer of the mediæval Norse
poet Tormod, "It came into your mind." "Long years must pay for the
wrong of a second."
And then, "Which of us two do you think would prove the master?" As
soon as a married pair conceive their relation as a struggle for
power, while it is just the contrary, hell comes into the house. The
woman has an inclination to rule. But if, in her defence, I say that
this inclination is her way of reacting against the suppressing, not
oppressive, man (for such a one I have never seen), I hope I shall not
have to repent it.
"If we ventured on a conflict!" Yes, then it is as if one drew a weapon
on oneself, or as if a kingdom were divided. Every blow which one
deals, strikes one's own heart.
Cicero says that friendship is only possible between friendly equals.
Swedenborg says that marriage is impossible between godless people.
I am convinced of it; for without contact with God, who is the
Fountain-head of love, no stream of illumination can flow from the
Eternal. I have described the marriage of godless people. I have
suffered for doing so, but I do not regret it, and do not recall a
word. It is as I said. The devout do not describe their marriages, and
they write neither dramas nor romances; literary history which mostly
deals with irreligious books, should take notice of that.
=The Power of Love.=--In France there lives a marquis who is an
occultist. Endowed by nature with a sensitive type of soul, refined by
education, protected by wealth against the brutality of life, purified
by suffering and renunciation, he entered into contact with the higher
forms of existence, which the theosophists call "the astral plane."
His sensitiveness was elaborated to such a pitch, that he became a
medium, and could enter into touch with friends at a distance.
Then he met a woman belonging to the same spiritual sphere, a
transparent airy figure, whose steps were inaudible, whose words were
rather to be apprehended than heard.
This married pair were so united, that each was, as it were, born in
the other. He carried her heart about in him literally. When, on a
journey to some relatives, she was frightened by a shying horse and had
a fit of palpitations, he felt it in his breast, and his heart stood
still for a moment when she fainted. Similarly, when he once pricked
himself with a needle, she felt it. They lived in each other, were each
other's children and each other's parents.
Then she died. He nearly died too, did die perhaps, and rose again. And
now he speaks with her, hears her voice in his heart, literally, not in
a figure.
I do not doubt it at all, for I have had a similar experience, and
much, much more.
=The Box on the Ear.=--I was thirty years old, and life was mine
for the first time after I had lain in the potato-cellar and shot out
white rootlets instead of growing. I had secured a home, wife, and
child, and was my own master. After I had done the day's task I used
to invite friends in; I call them "friends" because they got on well
with me and I with them. We did no harm; we played like children with
words and sounds; we disguised ourselves in order to look more fine; we
composed and delivered speeches. I think no one would grudge me these
hours.
But soon there was something of satiety in it; we had wounded the
dignity of sacred sleep; the wine turned sour in the glasses. One night
towards morning, in a cheerful circle, at a full table, my high spirits
broke bounds, since fortune had given me everything at once, and I
uttered a word which a married man should not utter. I immediately
received a box on the ear from a strong hand. I found it quite natural,
and continued what I was saying, but in another and better tone. No one
took notice of what had happened; all went on as before; and we all
parted as friends.
He who gave me the buffet was a bachelor of not superfine morals. If he
had disapproved my point of view, it must have been a very low one.
For several days I had a blue mark on my cheek. My wife said nothing,
only one of my friends let fall a remark, "How could you put up with
that?"
"I must have felt that I deserved it! Otherwise I cannot explain it."
Now, when I am sixty years old, I wish that I had received several such
boxes on the ear, for the first was no use. Recognising that, I feel
that it was a great piece of good-fortune that I was able to confess
it. And now I should like to live twenty years more, in order to forget
my slowness to learn, with its sad consequences.
=Saul, Afterwards Called Paul.=--Saul was standing by when
Stephen was stoned, or, at any rate, kept the clothes of those who
stoned him. He also persecuted Christ and the Christians. The question
is often, almost constantly asked, "Had he a right, later on, to be
severe against those who threw the stones?" One can only answer with an
unconditional "Yes," for he wished to make good the wrong he had done;
and it was his duty to speak with his new tongue. But he is honourable
and courageous enough to remind his hearers that he does not regard
himself as an exception. He calls himself "the chief of sinners," and
says, "I thank Him who has enabled me, who was formerly a blasphemer,
and persecutor, and evil doer; but mercy was shown to me because I did
it ignorantly in unbelief."
How entirely Paul felt himself to be quite a different person to
the dead Saul one sees from his tremendous severity against the two
blasphemers, Hymenæus and Alexander, whom he delivered over to Satan,
"that they might learn not to blaspheme."
What is to be understood by these terrible words, I have explained in
the _Inferno_. He who has not understood it there, can obtain a clearer
explanation in the asylums, where there is no rest, no peace, only
terror and despair. These cannot be cured by cold or by warm water
baths, for it is a sickness of the soul, often called Paranoia, because
the senses see what is not to be seen every day.
=A Scene from Hell.=--The man who had been separated from his
wife went one day to fetch his little six-year-old daughter from her
mother. They meant to go for a walk, look at the shop-windows, and buy
toys only for an hour. They were to meet before the mother's house. The
little one came, half-sad, half-joyful, with a slightly roguish look.
This street, this street, this house, these stairs which only a short
time ago he had hurried up with his hands full of presents in order
for an hour long to see his beautiful home, and the best which life
has to show--the young maidenly mother putting her child to bed! The
two together! One still more beautiful than the other! And made more
beautiful by love, or a friendship which has sprung up in painful
solitude.
He took the little girl's hand, and they went down the now darkened
street. Then the child turned round, and said aloud, "Mamma is coming
behind us."
Why did he not turn round, but went on still faster, drawing the child
with him?
Ask the pains of seven long years, which had robbed him of his
self-esteem so that he no longer believed he possessed the poor
solitary heart that followed him contritely and longed for
reconciliation.
The child turned round yet again, and several times, as though it were
a plot laid in all friendliness, and the man felt by the throbbing of
the little hand how its heart beat in hope and expectation.
But he went straight forward, for he did not believe any more in the
possibility of a return, and he did not dare to encounter a scornful
smile, or a proud, sharp word. He turned down side-streets, but he
felt that she followed. Who suffered most during this five minutes in
hell, in this interplay of feelings? The child with her beautiful hopes
which were disappointed; the mother with her injured self-esteem, as
she sought on the street what she had thrown away; or the man with
uncertainty and doubt in one half of his heart, and in the other
the immeasurable grief of being obliged to hurt the innocent little
child-heart? But while it was actually going on, he felt almost
nothing, for he was stunned by the shock. Not till the next day did he
feel the pain in his heart, and the longer the time that elapsed, the
more that pain increased.
=The Jewel-casket or his Better Half.=--When a man during the
first days of love has deposited the best and fairest part of his soul
with the woman he loves, he has laid up a treasure with her. If then he
sinks below the heavy burdens of everyday life and loses his ornaments,
he generally finds them again with her; she has kept and guarded them
(not always, however).
At such moments he calls her his better half, and such she is. She can,
at the right time, return to him a beautiful thought or word, which
he has given her once; then he is ashamed and laments over his fall.
And when he sees his earlier better self in her, he realises how low he
has sunk, while she still stands on the clear cliff. Then he looks up
to her, cries out for help, and when she reaches him her hand, he is
raised, and he thanks her for having saved him.
Paul explains this relation between man and wife, which is so often
misunderstood and really difficult to understand. "For in the Lord,
neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man;
for as the woman is from the man, so also is the man by the woman, but
all is of God."
Therefore in a true marriage neither the husband nor the wife appear
separate, but both regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as
one being. If one receives any good from the other, the recipient
should thank, and the giver also because he was able to give. They
thank each other because they are one being, and the interchange of
gifts is continuous and unceasing, so that they cannot distinguish
between giving and taking.
Therefore a true marriage is indissoluble; it cannot suffer severance,
for what it possesses is not alienable, it is common; it is a spiritual
property which cannot be sold or bought.
But in the rough tumult of life the man loses his ideal part sooner
than the woman, who sits sheltered by the warm hearth of the
well-protected home. There she can guard his jewel-casket for him, and
if she does it faithfully, he will always look up to her, as to his
better self.
=The Mummy-Coffin.=--Seven years of marriage had passed; they
had not tended their lamp, but it smoked so that everything in the
beautiful home was blackened. Now each sits in their own comer of the
dwelling, because they cannot look each other in the eyes. They lament
each other as dead, and miss each other like lost children.
Then he opens a drawer and takes out a little box. A scent of fresh
roses streams into the room, although it comes from dry rose-leaves
pressed between sheets of paper.
Those are her letters which she wrote during her engagement seven years
ago. How beautiful it all is: the paper with its fine, still unbleached
lavender tint and gold borders, just like the wedding-breakfast
glasses; the envelopes carefully folded like the embroidered
cushion-cover of the cradle; the letters themselves in beautiful rows
of gentle words from beautiful lips which smile gracefully.
Beauty and love in thoughts and feelings--there he had found her again
in the little box embalmed with rose-leaves and violets.
But now she is dead, and he weeps!
And at the other end of the house she sits over her little mummy-coffin
and speaks with her beloved dead, and weeps.
Lost for ever! For ever!
=In the Attic.=--Only three years had passed since his marriage,
and now the storm had carried away all--his wife and child. He had
occasion to go up to the attic to fetch something which had been put
away there. So he came up to this room, where it always rustled and
creaked, and cats slunk about, and the viscera of the house, so to
speak, were visible in beams and chimney, where there were rust and
soot and hanging cobwebs. He unfastened the padlock. There lay all the
flotsam and jetsam after the wreck. It was too late to turn back, and
he remained. There was the canopy of their marriage-bed, with green
silk and gilt-brass ornaments. There was the cradle of the little one,
and the six milk-bottles which the mother always used to wash with her
small hands in the ice-cold water; all the flower-vases and glasses
which came into the house on the wedding evening, when the table was
laid in the hall.
There stood the basket once filled with roses, which she had received
on her engagement, which had afterwards become a work-basket. There
were withered bouquets, laurel-wreaths, and even books, presents from
him at Christmas and on birthdays, with beautiful inscriptions....
But there were also prehistoric articles: pieces of furniture belonging
to her girlhood which she had brought into the new home--a Japanese
umbrella adorned with chrysanthemums and golden pheasants, a small
carpet, a flower-stand....
But why did all these relics lie here in the dust and soot, and not
downstairs with him who cherished those memories? Was it that he did
not dare to see them every day, or did not wish to?
Then his eyes fell on a little toy cupboard, which lay in a
paper-basket. There occurred to his mind the faint recollection of a
moment like a Christmas evening, a child's eyes, little white milk
teeth, the first musical-box which the little one played to the
Christmas-tree, the rocking-horse, and her dolls Rosa and Brita.
He opened the toy cupboard; it contained no musical-box, but a
phonograph, very small and simple, a toy which could only utter a
single word! He did not remember which. The key lay close by; he wound
it up and set it going. At first it hummed like a bee; it did not
sting, however, but whispered the only word it could, "Darling!"
And in her voice! Yes, she had spoken it into the phonograph, though he
had forgotten it.
"Darling!"
Then he cried to God, then he raged against fate, and then he fell to
the ground! And as he lay there he could only lament, "If they were at
least only dead! If...."
For they were not dead. They lived.
That was the thing which could not be altered nor atoned for, and all
these things were not relics; they were the flotsam and jetsam of a
wreck.
=The Sculptor.=--Even when a man has found a masterpiece of
creation in his wife, he still tries to improve away little faults in
design and colour, in order to make his work of art as free from faults
as possible. His little wife does not always understand that, and often
becomes irritable.
"You only see faults in me."
"On the contrary, you are for me the most beautiful that exists, but I
want to have you perfect. You should, for example, never be angry, for
then your beautiful eyes grow ugly, and I suffer. You must not dress in
verdigris-colour, for that does not suit you, and you look poisonous,
so that I turn my looks away." And so on.
Eating is not beautiful, and to watch one's darling stowing away food
in her beautiful mouth, which ought to speak beautiful words, smile
bewitchingly, and purse up her tender lips to a kind of flower-bud
which one inhales in a kiss--that may be downright repugnant!
Therefore one is accustomed to hide this unseemly function under light
conversation, and forgets what the beautiful mouth is occupied with.
"You are always finding fault! Say something nice for once."
"Can you not read in my eyes that I admire you; I do not generally say
it first with my lips. But I want you to be perfect. That is the whole
matter!"
=On the Threshold at Five Years of Age.=--A certain Dr. Ogle
states in his statistics that in six-and-twenty years four cases of
suicide have taken place among children between five and ten years old.
When I read that, "between five and ten years old," I thought, "No!
between five and ten! Is that possible? And the reason of it?" I could
not think more, but I saw one scene, two scenes, three scenes....
The little girl was five years old; she was playing in the room near
her mother; children must have something to do, but the mother was
nervous, because she had been going into gaiety and flirting beyond
measure.
"Don't rock the horse; it makes mamma's head ache."
The little one took the cat, and pinched it, so that it mewed.
"Don't do that, child; mamma is ill."
The child was good, and did not wish to be troublesome. She sat down at
the table, and was silent in order not to irritate mamma.
But a child's little body cannot be still; nor ought it indeed; it
moves of itself. Probably the child must have been singing a song to
itself, for the little unruly feet beat time against the legs of the
chair.
The mother started up, "Go to Ellen in the kitchen, disobedient child!"
The child was not disobedient; doubly wounded in her little heart, she
went into the kitchen, good and obedient. But immediately afterwards
she reappeared in the doorway, "Ellen was washing up."
There stood the child on the threshold, turned out and repulsed from
both sides, and could not go anywhere. She looked like a despairing
child, tearless, but with all the terror of the lonely in her face.
Dumb, turned to stone, as though in the whole world there were no place
for her, as though no one would have her, and she knew not why. At this
moment she really stood on the threshold of life, for she suddenly
brightened up, and approached the open window, which was high above the
ground.
To the honour of the mother, I must confess that she has described this
scene to me with the greatest remorse; it ended by her springing up,
taking the child in her arms, and playing with her till the sun went
down.
"If anything had happened to the child, I should have lived in a hell
of self-reproach! And now I think; for every moment which I had not
devoted to my child, for every little joy which I had denied her, I
would, if it had departed, weep my soul out of my body; I would plunge
into space and seek the child under the stars in order to beg her
forgiveness, if I could be forgiven...."
To think of it! At five years old, on the threshold of life!
=Goethe on Christianity and Science.=--As I waded in Professor
Delitzsch's dung-heap,[1] I reached at last his third lecture. In the
last lines of the last page I found a pearl, which I will set, in order
to show it to those who misuse poor Goethe's name for their heathenish
propaganda. In a conversation with Eckermann, on March 11, 1832, that
is, eleven days before his death, Goethe spoke these ever memorable
words: "Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go
on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may,
it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity
as it shines in the Gospel."
That was the fruit of a life of eighty years spent in seeking God and
His Son. After long useless detours, Goethe found it again at the end
of his life, as is apparent from the conclusion of the second part of
_Faust_. I will only add some words of Goethe's on superstition, as it
is not comprehended by the apelings: "Superstition is an inheritance
of powerful, earnest, progressive natures; unbelief is peculiarly
characteristic of weak, petty, retrogressive men." Such is unbelief as
Goethe said in 1808.
[Footnote 1: The work entitled _Babel und Bibel_.]
=Summa Summarum.=--Since destructive science has proved itself
so hollow, consisting as it does of guesses, false inferences,
self-deceit, hair-splittings, why does the State support these armies
of conjecturers and soothsayers?
Rousseau's first prize-essay regarding the curse of culture and
learning should be repondered.
A Descartes ought to return and teach men to doubt the untruths of the
sciences.