THE SELF ECSTATIC
To graft the strenuosity of Europe and America upon the ease of the
Orient, the materialism of the West upon the spirituality of the
East,--this to us seems to be the principal aim of Khalid. But often
in his wanderings and divagations of thought does he give us fresh
proof of the truism that no two opposing elements meet and fuse
without both losing their original identity. You may place the bit of
contentment in the mouth of ambition, so to speak, and jog along in
your sterile course between the vast wheat fields groaning under
the thousand-toothed plough and the gardens of delight swooning
with devotion and sensuality. But cross ambition with contentment and
you get the hinny of indifference or the monster of fatalism. We do
not say that indifference at certain passes of life, and certain
stages, is not healthy, and fatalism not powerful; but both we
believe are factors as potent in commerce and trade as pertinacity and
calculation. "But is there not room in the garden of delight for a
wheat field?" asks Khalid. "Can we not apply the bow to the
telegraph wires of the world and make them the vehicle of music as of
stock quotations? Can we not simplify life as we are simplifying the
machinery of industry? Can we not consecrate its Temple to the
Trinity of Devotion, Art, and Work, or Religion, Romance, and Trade?"
This seems to be the gist of Khalid's gospel. This, through the
labyrinths of doubt and contradiction, is the pinnacle of faith he
would reach. And often in this labyrinthic gloom, where a gleam of
light from some recess of thought or fancy reveals here a Hermit in
his cloister, there an Artist in his studio, below a Nawab in his
orgies, above a Broker on the Stock Exchange, we have paused to ask a
question about these glaring contrarieties in his life and thought.
And always would he make this reply: "I have frequently moved and
removed between extremes; I have often worked and slept in opposing
camps. So, do not expect from me anything like the consistency with
which the majority of mankind solder and shape their life. Deep
thought seems often, if not always, inconsistent at the first blush.
The intensity and passiveness of the spirit are as natural in their
attraction and repulsion as the elements, whose harmony is only patent
on the surface. Consistency is superficial, narrow, one-sided. I am
both ambitious, therefore, and contented. My ambition is that of the
earth, the ever producing and resuscitating earth, doing the will of
God, combatting the rasure of time; and my contentment is that of the
majestic pines, faring alike in shade and sunshine, in calm and storm,
in winter as in spring. Ambition and Contentment are the night and day
of my life-journey. The day makes room for the fruits of solacement
which the night brings; and the night gives a cup of the cordial of
contentment to make good the promise of day to day.
"Ay, while sweating in the tortuous path, I never cease to cherish the
feeling in which I was nourished; the West for me means ambition, the
East, contentment: my heart is ever in the one, my soul, in the other.
And I care not for the freedom which does not free both; I seek not
the welfare of the one without the other. But unlike my Phoenician
ancestors, the spiritual with me shall not be limited by the natural;
it shall go far above it, beyond or below it, saturating, sustaining,
purifying what in external nature is but a symbol of the invisible.
Nor is my idea of the spiritual developed in opposition to nature, and
in a manner inimical to its laws and claims, as in Judaism and
Christianity.
"The spiritual and natural are so united, so inextricably entwined
around each other, that I can not conceive of them separately,
independently. And both in the abstract sense are purportless and
ineffectual without Consciousness. They are blind, dumb forces,
beautiful, barbaric pageants, careering without aim or design through
the immensities of No-where and No-time, if they are not impregnated
and nourished with Thought, that is to say, with Consciousness,
vitalised and purified. You may impregnate them with philosophy,
nourish them with art; they both emanate from them, and remain as
skidding clouds, as shining mirages, as wandering dust, until they
find their exponent in Man.
"I tell thee then that Man, that is to say Consciousness, vitalised
and purified, in other words Thought--that alone is real and eternal.
And Man is supreme, only when he is the proper exponent of Nature, and
spirit, and God: the three divine sources from which he issues, in
which he is sustained, and to which he must return. Nature and the
spiritual, without this embodied intelligence, this somatic being,
called man or angel or ape, are as ermine on a wax figure. The human
factor, the exponent intelligence, the intellective and sensuous
faculties, these, my Brothers, are whole, sublime, holy, only when, in
a state of continuous expansion, the harmony among themselves and the
affirmative ties between them and Nature, are perfect and pure. No,
the spiritual ought not and can not be free from the sensuous, even
the sensual. The true life, the full life, the life, pure, robust,
sublime, is that in which all the nobler and higher aspirations of the
soul AND THE BODY are given free and unlimited scope, with the view of
developing the divine strain in Man, and realising to some extent the
romantic as well as the material hopes of the race. God, Nature,
Spirit, Passion--Passion, Spirit, Nature, God--in some such panorama
would I paint the life of a highly developed being. Any of these
elements lacking, and the life is wanting, defective, impure.
"I have no faith in men who were conceived in a perfunctory manner,
on a pragmatical system, so to speak; the wife receiving her
husband in bed as she would a tedious guest at an afternoon tea.
Only two flames uniting produce a third; but a flame and a name,
or a flame and a spunge, produce a hiff and nothing. Oh, that the
children of the race are all born phoenix-like in the fire of noble
and sacred passion, in the purgatory, as it were, of Love. What a
race, what a race we should have. What men, what women! Yes, that is
how the children of the earth should be conceived, not on a
pragmatical system, in an I-don't-care-about-the-issue manner. I
believe in evoking the spirit, in dreaming a little about the gods
of Olympus, and a little, too, about the gods of the abysmal depths,
before the bodily communion. And in earnest, O my Brother, let us do
this, despite what old Socrates says about the propriety and
wisdom of approaching your wife with prudence and gravity...."
And thus, if we did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing
his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the
forest. If we did not prevent him at times, holding firmly to his
coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even
on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and
Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a feverish, clamorous,
obstreperous stripling of a Beduin, what chance has he in extricating
his barbaric instincts from such thorny hedges of philosophy? And had
he not quoted Socrates in that last paragraph, it would have been
expunged. No, we are not utterly lost to the fine sense of propriety
of this chaste and demure age. But no matter how etiolated and sickly
the thought, it regains its colour and health when it breathes the
literary air. Prudery can not but relish the tang of lubricity when
flavoured with the classical. Moreover, if Socrates and Montaigne
speak freely of these midnight matters, why not Khalid, if he has
anything new to say, any good advice to offer. But how good and how
new are his views let the Reader judge.
'Tis very well to speak "of evoking the spirit before the bodily
communion," but those who can boast of a deeper experience in such
matters will find in Socrates' dictum, quoted by Montaigne, the very
gist of reason and wisdom. Those wise ones were as far-sighted as they
were far gone. And moderation, as it was justly said once, is the
respiration of the philosopher. But Khalid, though always invoking the
distant luminary of transcendentalism for light, can not arrogate to
himself this high title. The expansion of all the faculties, and the
reduction of the demands of society and the individual to the lowest
term;--this, as we understand it, is the aim of transcendentalism. And
Khalid's distance from the orbit of this grand luminary seems to vary
with his moods; and these vary with the librations and revolutions of
the moon. Hallucinated, moonstruck Khalid, your harmonising and
affinitative efforts do not always succeed. That is our opinion of the
matter. And the Reader, who is no respecter of editors, might quarrel
with it, for all we know.
Only by standing firmly in the centre can one preserve the equilibrium
of one's thoughts. But Khalid seldom speaks of equilibrium: he cares
not how he fares in falling on either side of the fence, so he knows
what lies behind. Howbeit, we can not conceive of how the affinity of
the mind and soul with the senses, and the harmony between these and
nature, are possible, if not exteriorised in that very superman whom
Khalid so much dreads, and on whom he often casts a lingering glance
of admiration. So there you are. We must either rise to a higher
consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness,
rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and
suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one. Meanwhile,
Khalid's rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall heed and try
to echo.
* * * * *
"On the high road of the universal spirit," he sings, "the world, the
whole world before me, thrilling and radiating, chanting of freedom,
faith, hope, health and power, and joy. Back to the City, O
Khalid,--the City where Truth, and Faith, and Honesty, and Wisdom, are
ever suffering, ever struggling, ever triumphing. No, it matters not
with me if the spirit of intelligence and power, of freedom and
culture, which must go the rounds of the earth, is always dominated by
the instinct of self-interest. That must be; that is inevitable. But
the instinct of self-interest, O my Brother, goes with the flesh; the
body-politic dies; nations rise and fall; and the eternal Spirit, the
progenitor of all ideals, passes to better or worse hands, still
chastening and strengthening itself in the process.
"The Orient and Occident, the male and female of the Spirit, the two
great streams in which the body and soul of man are refreshed,
invigorated, purified--of both I sing, in both I glory, to both I
consecrate my life, for both I shall work and suffer and die. My
Brothers, the most highly developed being is neither European nor
Oriental; but rather he who partakes of the finer qualities of both
the European genius and the Asiatic prophet.
"Give me, ye mighty nations of the West, the material comforts of
life; and thou, my East, let me partake of thy spiritual heritage.
Give me, America, thy hand; and thou, too, Asia. Thou land of
origination, where Light and Spirit first arose, disdain not the
gifts which the nations of the West bring thee; and thou land of
organisation and power, where Science and Freedom reign supreme,
disdain not the bounties of the sunrise.
"If the discoveries and attainments of Science will make the body of
man cleaner, healthier, stronger, happier, the inexhaustible Oriental
source of romantic and spiritual beauty will never cease to give the
soul of man the restfulness and solacement it is ever craving. And
remember, Europa, remember, Asia, that foreign culture is as necessary
to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries.
Elsewise, thy materialism, Europa, or thy spiritualism, Asia, no
matter how trenchant and impregnable, no matter how deep the
foundation, how broad the superstructure thereof, is vulgar, narrow,
mean--is nothing, in a word, but parochialism.
"I swear that neither religious nor industrial slavery shall forever
hold the world in political servitude. No; the world shall be free of
the authority, absolute, blind, tyrannical, of both the Captains of
Industry and the High Priests of the Temple. And who shall help to
free it? Science alone can not do it; Science and Faith must do it.
"I say with thee, O Goethe, 'Light, more light!' I say with thee, O
Tolstoi, 'Love, more love!' I say with thee, O Ibsen, 'Will, more
will!' Light, Love, and Will--the one is as necessary as the other;
the one is dangerous without the others. Light, Love, and Will, are
the three eternal, vital sources of the higher, truer, purer cosmic
life.
"Light, Love, and Will--with corals and pearls from their seas would I
crown thee, O my City. In these streams would I baptise thy children,
O my City. The mind, and the heart, and the soul of man I would
baptise in this mountain lake, this high Jordan of Truth, on the
flourishing and odoriferous banks of Science and Religion, under the
sacred _sidr_ of Reason and Faith.
"Ay, in the Lakes of Light, Love, and Will, I would baptise all
mankind. For in this alone is power and glory, O my European Brothers;
in this alone is faith and joy, O my Brothers of Asia.
"The Hudson, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Thames, the Seine, the
Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Ganges--every one of these great
streams shall be such a Jordan in the future. In every one of them
shall flow the confluent Rivers of Light, Love, and Will. In every
one of them shall sail the barks of the higher aspirations and hopes
of mankind.
"I come now to be baptised, O my City. I come to slake my thirst in
thy Jordan. I come to launch my little skiff, to do my little work, to
pay my little debt.
"In thy public-squares, O my City, I would raise monuments to Nature;
in thy theatres to Poesy and Thought; in thy bazaars to Art; in thy
homes, to Health; in thy temples of worship, to universal Goodwill; in
thy courts, to Power and Mercy; in thy schools, to Simplicity; in thy
hospitals, to Faith; and in thy public-halls to Freedom and Culture.
And all these, without Light, Love, and Will, are but hollow affairs,
high-sounding inanities. Without Light, Love, and Will, even thy
Nabobs in the end shall curse thee; and with these, thy hammals under
their burdens shall thank the heavens under which thy domes and
turrets and minarets arise."