"Remember these words well, Elsie, I will repeat them once more and
translate them for you."
And I did so, for Elsie's knowledge of English consisted only in what
she had learned from me. Then I continued: "These words issued from the
strongest and most magnificent original spirit the world has brought
forth since the poet of the Jesus-Drama, and every child ought to learn
them, more necessarily than the multiplication table or the Lord's
prayer. The world has called their maker an Atheist, just as did
Spinoza. But all modern natural science can be brought back to God,
that is to the truth, only by these words."
"Then is this glorious spectacle a living sign of the earth and the
sun?" Elsje asked.
"Of course!" said I; "but it shall yet be long before we comprehend
such an outward sign. All we understand of it is: splendor, beauty,
sublimity. These are also the characteristics of all that is divine.
But their nearer relations to our inner emotions of love and joy -
these we do not comprehend."
"And God?" asked my wife.
"All the outward signs I have seen point to the operation of limited,
imperfect beings or deities - as humanity, the plants and animals, the
celestial bodies. But these all seem to work in a power that is fixed
and unchangeable. The signs thereof are what the scholars call 'Laws of
Nature,' as the force of gravitation and all chemical and physical
laws. These alone can be signs of life of the Almighty. And still we
are not sure that they issue from the supreme Power.
"Our inner consciousness tells us that the supreme Life cannot be
finite, temporal. But the sensible signs of the supreme Life according
to our faulty perception are temporal and point to an end. The Universe
that we perceive is not a perpetuum mobile. The laws of motion that we
know all come to a standstill. As the scholars put it: there is
increasing entropy and there are irreversible processes. This does not
satisfy our inward consciousness of the supreme Life. It must be a
local, temporally restricted condition. We know irrefutably that the
highest Life is more, and we shall also discover the perceptible signs
of it."
Beside us stood the second-class passengers of a large emigrant
steamer, gazing across the bulwark toward the last land of Europe, and
vainly trying to catch something of our conversation carried on in low
tones and in a language strange to them. Small, dark, Slavonic women,
with gaily-colored scarfs around their heads and children in their
arms; Poles in shabby coats and astrakhan caps; tall blond
Scandinavians, square-jawed, cool-blooded and patient; short, sturdy
Italians with felt hats and gay cravats; a handful of pale-brown
Siamese jugglers or gymnasts with flat gold-embroidered caps on, and
tired, listless faces, melancholy and pallid from cold and seasickness.
And amid this dirty chattering human assemblage, devouring nuts and
oranges, sometimes making music and gaming, all half dulled and
frightened by the usual fierce and anxious battle of life they had gone
through and with the vague expectation of future wealth and pleasure in
their eyes - amid these I saw my sweet, delicate wife with her eyes,
now dark-rimmed but shining with joyous fervor, and her pale, delicate
features - and amid the singing, eating, chattering and gaming our
subtle quiet conversation grew like a strange exotic plant amid rubbish.
But Elsje put to shame my false pride and gladly and helpfully busied
herself with this little troop of humanity blown together from all the
quarters of the globe, making herself understood and loved in all sorts
of ways in the overflowing joy of her new life.
I myself was not very cheerful, but more often profoundly grave and
sad, though with that rich and gentle melancholy that leads to sublime
thought. Above all the memory of my children could make me deeply
dejected and silent for hours. When I imagined that they would fall
ill, or that they cried because of my absence, it was as though my
inmost heart was torn, or strange hands were wringing the entrails of
my soul. I had heard nothing of them before my departure with the
exception of one brief, comforting word from my second daughter, the
third in age of my children, a shrinking, gentle girl of sixteen. She
wrote in Italian:
"My dear father, I don't know why you have gone away, and I dare not
ask mother or the others about it, for they don't quite understand and
take it amiss and won't speak of you. But I will think that it had to
be and say that I am not angry. You had better not answer, for that
would annoy mother.
Your loving little daughter,