TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—Bold text has been rendered as =bold text=.
The Treasure of
the Humble
_By_ Maurice Maeterlinck
_Translated by_ Alfred Sutro
With _Introduction by_ A. B. Walkley
London: George Allen, _Ruskin House_
156 Charing Cross Road mcmv
_First Edition, March 1897. Reprinted October 1897; September 1901;
January 1903; May 1904; November 1905._
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press
=_TO_=
_MADAME GEORGETTE LEBLANC_
The Treasure of the Humble
[Illustration: LOGO]
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION _Page_ ix
SILENCE 1
THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL 23
THE PRE-DESTINED 43
MYSTIC MORALITY 59
ON WOMEN 75
THE TRAGICAL IN DAILY LIFE 95
THE STAR 121
THE INVISIBLE GOODNESS 147
THE DEEPER LIFE 169
THE INNER BEAUTY 197
INTRODUCTION
WITH M. Maeterlinck as a dramatist the world is pretty well acquainted.
This little volume presents him in the new character of a philosopher
and an æsthetician. And it is in some sort an ‘apology’ for his
theatre, the one being to the other as theory to practice. Reversing
the course prescribed by Mr. Squeers for his pupils, M. Maeterlinck,
having cleaned w-i-n-d-e-r, winder, now goes and spells it. He began
by visualising and synthetising his ideas of life; here you shall find
him trying to analyse these ideas and consumed with anxiety to tell
us the truth that is in him. It is not a truth for all markets; he is
at no pains to conceal that. He appeals, as every mystic must, to the
elect; M. Anatole France would say, to the _âmes bien nées_. If we are
not sealed of the tribe of Plotinus, he warns us to go elsewhere. ‘If,
plunging thine eyes into thyself—it is this same Plotinus that he is
quoting—‘thou dost not feel the charm of beauty, it is in vain that,
thy disposition being such, thou shouldst seek the charm of beauty; for
thou wouldst seek it only with that which is ugly and impure. Therefore
it is that the discourse we hold here is not addressed to all men.’ If
we are to follow him in his expedition to a philosophic Ultima Thule,
we must have the mind for that adventure. ‘We are here,’ as he tells
us elsewhere of the ‘stiff’ but, it seems, ‘admirable’ Ruysbroeck,
‘all of a sudden on the borderland of human thought and far across the
Arctic circle of the spirit. There is no ordinary cold, no ordinary
dark there, and yet you shall find there naught but flames and light.
But to those who arrive without having trained their minds to these new
perceptions, the light and the flames are as dark and as cold as though
they were painted.’ This means that the intelligence, the reason, will
not suffice of themselves; we must have faith. There are passages in
the book which may provoke a sniff from Mr. Worldly Wiseman; but we
must beware of the Voltairean spirit, or this will be a closed book
to us. ‘We live by admiration, hope, and love,’ said Wordsworth. And
we understand by them, M. Maeterlinck would add. I fear we are not
all of us found worthy of the mystical frame of mind. But it is a
psychological fact, like another; and if we can only examine it from
the outside, we can at least bring patience and placidity to the task.
The point is: has M. Maeterlinck anything to say? It will be found, I
think, that he has.
All men, the world has long been assured, are born Aristotelians or
Platonists. There cannot be a doubt about M. Maeterlinck’s philosophic
birthright. He may say, as Paul Verlaine sang:
Moi, j’allais rêvant du divin Platon,
Sous l’œil clignotant des bleus becs de gaz.
More strictly, he is a Neo-Platonist. His remark about the Admirable
Ruysbroeck’s idea is equally true of his own. ‘I fancy that all those
who have not lived in the intimacy of Plato and of the Neo-Platonists
of Alexandria, will not go far with this reading.’ He quotes Plotinus,
‘the great Plotinus, who, of all the intellects known to me, draws
the nearest to the divine.’ He cites Porphyry and the Gnostics and
Swedenborg. These are not exactly popular authors of the moment. But
M. Maeterlinck, it is plain, has devoured them; his is not what Pope
called ‘index-learning.’ Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) stood between two
worlds, the old and the new; and he made the best of both. He enlarged
the boundaries of art by discerning in the idea of beauty an inward
and spiritual grace not to be found in the ‘Platonic idea.’ That, too,
is what M. Maeterlinck is striving for: a larger idea of beauty, and a
better apprehension of its inward and spiritual grace.
His cardinal doctrine will, I conjecture, prove to be something like
this. What should be of most account for us all is not external fact,
but the supra-sensuous world. ‘What we know is not interesting’; the
really interesting things are those which we can only divine—the
veiled life of the soul, the crepuscular region of subconsciousness,
our ‘borderland’ feelings, all that lies in the strange ‘neutral
zone’ between the frontiers of consciousness and unconsciousness. The
mystery of life is what makes life worth living. ‘’Twas a little being
of mystery, like every one else,’ says the old King Arkel of the dead
Mélisande. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, might be the
‘refrain’ of all M. Maeterlinck’s plays, and of most of these essays.
He is penetrated by the feeling of the mystery in all human creatures,
whose every act is regulated by far-off influences and obscurely rooted
in things unexplained. Mystery is within us and around us. Of reality
we can only get now and then the merest glimpse. Our senses are too
gross. Between the invisible world and our own there is doubtless an
intimate concordance; but it escapes us. We grope among shadows towards
the unknown. Even the new conquests of what we vainly suppose to be
‘exact’ thought only deepen the mystery of life. There is, for example,
the Schopenhauerian theory of love. We had fancied we could at least
choose our loves in freedom: but ‘we are told that a thousand centuries
divide us from ourselves when we choose the woman we love, and that
the first kiss of the betrothed is but the seal which thousands of
hands, craving for birth, have impressed upon the lips of the mother
they desire.’ And so with the ‘heredity’ of the men of science. ‘We
know that the dead do not die. We know that it is not in our churches
they are to be found, but in the houses, the habits of us all.’ What
was there in the old notion of Destiny so mysterious as this double
thraldom of ours—thraldom to the dead and to the unborn? Conclusion:
mysticism is your only wear. In the mystics alone is certitude. ‘If
it be true, as has been said, that every man is a Shakespeare in his
dreams, we have to ask ourselves whether every man, in his waking life,
is not an inarticulate mystic, a thousandfold more transcendental
than those circumscribed by speech.’ In silence is our only chance of
knowing one another. And ‘mystic truths have over ordinary truths a
strange privilege; they can neither age nor die.’ From all this you
see M. Maeterlinck’s train of thought. He would fix our minds upon the
obscure, pre-conscious, what M. Faguet calls the _incunabulary_ life of
the soul. He finds no epithets too fine for this: the higher life, the
transcendental life, the divine life, the absolute life.
Whatever we may think of these ideas in themselves, there is no doubt
that the man who expresses them sounds a new and individual note. They
show a reaction against the whole effort of modern literature, which
has been nothing if not positive, quasi-scientific, ever on the prowl
for ‘documents.’ And if for no other reason than that, this book, I
submit, would have peculiar significance and value.
But there is at least one other reason. M. Maeterlinck puts forward
a plea, and a plea not lightly to be dismissed, for a new æsthetic
of the drama. The mystery which he finds everywhere around us and
within us he would bring into the theatre. If there is one position
which the whole world supposed itself to have definitively taken up,
it is the position that the theatre lives by action and to offer
us an exhibition of the will. Therein, for instance, M. Ferdinand
Brunetière finds the _differentia_ of drama; it is the struggle of a
will, conscious of itself, against obstacles. Traversing this position
M. Maeterlinck boldly asks whether a ‘static’ theatre is impossible,
a theatre of mood not of movement, a theatre where nothing material
happens and where everything immaterial is felt. Even as it is, the
real beauty and purport of a tragedy is not seldom to be found in
that part of its dialogue which is superficially ‘useless.’ ‘Certain
it is that in the ordinary drama the indispensable dialogue by no
means corresponds to reality.... One may even affirm that the poem
draws the nearer to beauty and loftier truth in the measure that it
eliminates words that merely explain the action and replaces them by
others that reveal not the so-called “soul-state,” but I know not
what intangible and unceasing striving of the soul towards its beauty
and its truth.’ The frivolous will be reminded here, perhaps, of the
old stage direction for the miser: ‘Leans against a wall and grows
generous.’ Others who remember their Xenophon will bethink them of a
certain discussion which Socrates had with Parrhasius on the question,
‘Can the unseen be imitated?’ (_Soc. Memorabilia_, iii. 10). It may be
that M. Maeterlinck’s ‘static’ theatre is an unrealisable dream; but it
is a seductive one, by contrast with the reality. Do not all of us who
are condemned to spend much of our time in the playhouse occasionally
share M. Maeterlinck’s feeling of repugnance? ‘When I go to the
theatre, I feel as though I were spending a few hours in the midst of
my ancestors, who looked upon life as something that was primitive,
arid, and brutal; but this conception of theirs scarcely even lingers
in my memory, and surely it is not one that I can any longer share....
I had hoped to be shown some act of life traced back to its source and
to its mystery by connecting links that my daily occupations afford
me neither power nor occasion to study. I had gone thither hoping that
the beauty, the grandeur, and the earnestness of my humble day-by-day
existence would for one instant be revealed to me ... whereas,
almost invariably, all that I beheld was but a man who would tell me
at wearisome length why he was jealous, why he poisoned, or why he
killed.’ And so he would have the drama make an effort to show us ‘how
truly wonderful is the mere fact of living’; he would have it tackle
‘presentiments, the strange impression produced by a chance meeting or
a look, a decision that the unknown side of human reason had governed,
an intervention or a force inexplicable and yet understood, the secret
laws of sympathy and antipathy, elective and instinctive affinities,
the overwhelming influence of things unsaid.’
How is it all to come about? When we ask this question we find
ourselves in the position of the lady who had been discussing the
subject of a future state with Dr. Johnson. ‘She seemed desirous of
knowing more,’ says Boswell, ‘but he left the question in obscurity.’
It is there that M. Maeterlinck, like a true mystic, is content to
leave most of his questions. ‘The time has not yet come,’ he says with
an engaging candour, ‘when we can speak lucidly of these things.’ One
thinks of Sir Thomas Browne’s quaint fancy. ‘A dialogue between two
infants in the womb concerning the state of this world might handsomely
illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse
in Plato’s den, and are but embryon philosophers.’ Maybe M. Maeterlinck
is but an embryon philosopher, one who discourses in Plato’s den. But
I think we must all recognise the native distinction of his mind, the
fastidious delicacy of his taste, his abiding and insatiable love of
beauty. What he says, exquisitely enough but perhaps too liberally, of
every man—‘to every man there come noble thoughts that pass across his
heart like great white birds’—is certainly true of himself. Wherefore
one may venture to invite people to his book as Heraclitus welcomed
guests to his kitchen: ‘Enter boldly, for here also there are gods.’
A. B. W.
SILENCE
SILENCE
‘SILENCE and Secrecy!’ cries Carlyle. ‘Altars might still be raised to
them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence
is the element in which great things fashion themselves together,
that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the
daylight of Life, which they are henceforth to rule. Not William the
Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most
undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they
were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do
thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_; on the morrow how
much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have
these mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were
shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art
of concealing Thought, but of quite stifling and suspending Thought,
so that there is none to conceal. Speech, too, is great, but not
the greatest. As the Swiss inscription says: _Sprechen ist Silbern,
Schweigen ist goldern_ (Speech is silver, Silence is golden); or, as I
might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.
‘Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in
Silence; neither will Virtue work except in secrecy.’
* * * * *
IT is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication
can ever pass from one man to another. The lips or the tongue may
represent the soul, even as a cipher or a number may represent a
picture of Memling; but from the moment that we have _something to say
to each other_, we are _compelled_ to hold our peace: and if at such
times we do not listen to the urgent commands of silence, invisible
though they be, we shall have suffered an eternal loss that all the
treasures of human wisdom cannot make good; for we shall have let slip
the opportunity of listening to another soul, and of giving existence,
be it only for an instant, to our own; and many lives there are in
which such opportunities do not present themselves twice....
It is only when life is sluggish within us that we speak: only at
moments when reality lies far away, and we _do not wish_ to be
conscious of our brethren. And no sooner do we speak than something
warns us that the divine gates are closing. Thus it comes about that
we hug silence to us, and are very misers of it; and even the most
reckless will not squander it on the first comer. There is an instinct
of the superhuman truths within us which warns us that it is dangerous
to be silent with one whom we do not wish to know, or do not love: for
words may pass between men, but let silence have had its instant of
activity, and it will never efface itself; and indeed the true life,
the only life that leaves a trace behind, is made up of silence alone.
Bethink it well, in that silence to which you must again have recourse,
so that it may explain itself, by itself; and if it be granted to you
to descend for one moment into your soul, into the depths where the
angels dwell, it is not the words spoken by the creature you loved so
dearly that you will recall, or the gestures that he made, but it is,
above all, the silences that you have lived together that will come
back to you: for it is the _quality_ of those silences that alone
revealed the quality of your love and your souls.
So far I have considered _active_ silence only, for there is a
_passive_ silence, which is the shadow of sleep, of death or
non-existence. It is the silence of lethargy, and is even less to
be dreaded than speech, so long as it slumbers; but beware lest a
sudden incident awake it, for then would its brother, the great active
silence, at once rear himself upon his throne. Be on your guard. Two
souls would draw near each other: the barriers would fall asunder, the
gates fly open, and the life of every day be replaced by a life of
deepest earnest, wherein all are defenceless; a life in which laughter
dares not show itself, in which there is no obeying, in which nothing
can evermore be forgotten....
And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its
perilous manifestations, that we stand in so deep a dread of silence.
We can bear, when need must be, the silence of ourselves, that of
isolation: but the silence of many—silence multiplied—and above
all the silence of a crowd—these are supernatural burdens, whose
inexplicable weight brings dread to the mightiest soul. We spend a
goodly portion of our lives in seeking places where silence is not. No
sooner have two or three men met than their one thought is to drive
away the invisible enemy; and of how many ordinary friendships may it
not be said that their only foundation is the common hatred of silence!
And if, all efforts notwithstanding, it contrives to steal among a
number of men, disquiet will fall upon them, and their restless eyes
will wander in the mysterious direction of things unseen: and each man
will hurriedly go his way, flying before the intruder: and henceforth
they will avoid each other, dreading lest a similar disaster should
again befall them, and suspicious as to whether there be not one among
them who would treacherously throw open the gate to the enemy....
In the lives of most of us, it will not happen more than twice or
thrice that silence is really understood and freely admitted. It
is only on the most solemn occasions that the inscrutable guest is
welcomed; but, when such come about, there are few who do not make the
welcome worthy, for even in the lives of the most wretched there are
moments when they know how to act, even as though they knew already
that which is known to the gods. Remember the day on which, without
fear in your heart, you met your first silence. The dread hour had
sounded; silence went before your soul. You saw it rising from the
unspeakable abysses of life, from the depths of the inner sea of
horror or beauty, and you did not fly.... It was at a home-coming,
on the threshold of a departure, in the midst of a great joy, at the
pillow of a death-bed, on the approach of a dire misfortune. Bethink
you of those moments when all the secret jewels shone forth on you,
and the slumbering truths sprung to life, and tell me whether silence,
then, was not good and necessary, whether the caresses of the enemy
you had so persistently shunned were not truly divine? The kisses of
the silence of misfortune—and it is above all at times of misfortune
that silence caresses us—can never be forgotten; and therefore it
is that those to whom they have come more often than to others are
worthier than those others. They alone know, perhaps, how voiceless
and unfathomable are the waters on which the fragile shell of daily
life reposes: they have approached nearer to God, and the steps they
have taken towards the light are steps that can never be lost, for the
soul may not rise, perhaps, but it can never sink.... ‘Silence, the
great Empire of Silence,’ says Carlyle again—he who understood so well
the empire of the life which holds us—‘higher than the stars, deeper
than the Kingdom of Death!... Silence, and the great silent men!...
Scattered here and there, each in his department; silently thinking,
silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of! They are
the salt of the earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a
bad way. Like a forest which had no _roots_; which had all turned to
leaves and boughs; which must soon wither and be no forest.’
But the real silence, which is greater still and more difficult of
approach than the material silence of which Carlyle speaks—the real
silence is not one of those gods that can desert mankind. It surrounds
us on every side; it is the source of the undercurrents of our life;
and let one of us but knock, with trembling fingers, at the door of the
abyss, it is always by the same attentive silence that this door will
be opened.
It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal;
and the silence of king or slave, in presence of death, or grief, or
love, reveals the same features, hides beneath its impenetrable mantle
the self-same treasure. For this is the essential silence of our soul,
our most inviolable sanctuary, and its secret can never be lost; and,
were the first born of men to meet the last inhabitant of the earth, a
kindred impulse would sway them, and they would be voiceless in their
caresses, in their terror and their tears; a kindred impulse would
sway them, and all that could be said without falsehood would call for
no spoken word: and, the centuries notwithstanding, there would come
to them, at the same moment, as though one cradle had held them both,
comprehension of that which the tongue shall not learn to tell before
the world ceases....
No sooner are the lips still than the soul awakes, and sets forth on
its labours; for silence is an element that is full of surprise, danger
and happiness, and in these the soul possesses itself in freedom. If
it be indeed your desire to give yourself over to another, be silent;
and if you fear being silent with him—unless this fear be the proud
uncertainty, or hunger, of the love that yearns for prodigies—fly
from him, for your soul knows well how far it may go. There are men in
whose presence the greatest of heroes would not dare to be silent; and
even the soul that has nothing to conceal trembles lest another should
discover its secret. Some there are that have no silence, and that kill
the silence around them, and these are the only creatures that pass
through life unperceived. To them it is not given to cross the zone of
revelation, the great zone of the firm and faithful light. We cannot
conceive what sort of man is he who has never been silent. It is to us
as though his soul were featureless. ‘We do not know each other yet,’
wrote to me one whom I hold dear above all others, ‘we have not yet
dared to be silent together.’ And it was true: already did we love each
other so deeply that we shrank from the superhuman ordeal. And each
time that silence fell upon us—the angel of the supreme truth, the
messenger that brings to the heart the tidings of the unknown—each
time did we feel that our souls were craving mercy on their knees,
were begging for a few hours more of innocent falsehood, a few hours
of ignorance, a few hours of childhood.... And none the less must its
hour come. It is the sun of love, and it ripens the fruit of the soul,
as the sun of heaven ripens the fruits of the earth. But it is not
without cause that men fear it; for none can ever tell what will be the
_quality_ of the silence which is about to fall upon them. Though all
words may be akin, every silence differs from its fellow; and, with
rare exceptions, it is an entire destiny that will be governed by the
_quality_ of this first silence which is descending upon two souls.
They blend: we know not where, for the reservoirs of silence lie far
above the reservoirs of thought, and the strange resultant brew is
either sinisterly bitter or profoundly sweet. Two souls, admirable both
and of equal power, may yet give birth to a hostile silence, and wage
pitiless war against each other in the darkness; while it may be that
the soul of a convict shall go forth and commune in divine silence with
the soul of a virgin. The result can never be foretold; all this comes
to pass in a heaven that never warns; and therefore it is that the
tenderest of lovers will often defer to the last hour of all the solemn
entry of the great revealer of the depths of our being....
For they too are well aware—the love that is truly love brings the
most frivolous back to life’s centre—they too are well aware that all
that had gone before was but as children playing outside the gates, and
that it is now that the walls are falling and existence lying bare.
Their silence will be even as are the gods within them; and if in this
first silence, there be not harmony, there can be no love in their
souls, for the silence will never change. It may rise or it may fall
between two souls, but _its nature_ can never alter; and even until the
death of the lovers will it retain the form, the attitude and the power
that were its own when, for the first time, it came into the room.
As we advance through life, it is more and more brought home to us
that nothing takes place that is not in accord with some curious,
preconceived design: and of this we never breathe a word, we scarcely
dare to let our minds dwell upon it, but of its existence, somewhere
above our heads, we are absolutely convinced. The most fatuous of men
smiles, at the first encounters, as though he were the accomplice
of the destiny of his brethren. And in this domain, even those who
can speak the most profoundly realise—they, perhaps, more than
others—that words can never express the real, special relationship
that exists between two beings. Were I to speak to you at this
moment of the gravest things of all—of love, death or destiny—it
is not love, death or destiny that I should touch; and, my efforts
notwithstanding, there would always remain between us a truth which
had not been spoken, which we had not even thought of speaking; and
yet it is this truth only, voiceless though it has been, which will
have lived with us for an instant, and by which we shall have been
wholly absorbed. For that truth was _our truth_ as regards death,
destiny or love, and it was in silence only that we could perceive it.
And nothing save only the silence will have had any importance. ‘My
sisters,’ says a child in the fairy-story, ‘you have each of you a
secret thought—I wish to know it.’ We, too, have something that people
wish to know, but it is hidden far above the secret thought—it is
our secret silence. But all questions are useless. When our spirit is
alarmed, its own agitation becomes a barrier to the second life that
lives in this secret; and, would we know what it is that lies hidden
there, we must cultivate silence among ourselves, for it is then only
that for one instant the eternal flowers unfold their petals, the
mysterious flowers whose form and colour are ever changing in harmony
with the soul that is by their side. As gold and silver are weighed in
pure water, so does the soul test its weight in silence, and the words
that we let fall have no meaning apart from the silence that wraps them
round. If I tell some one that I love him—as I may have told a hundred
others—my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will
ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the
roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that
shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence
and this conviction will never again be the same....
Is it not silence that determines and fixes the savour of love?
Deprived of it, love would lose its eternal essence and perfume. Who
has not known those silent moments which separated the lips to reunite
the souls? It is these that we must ever seek. There is no silence more
docile than the silence of love, and it is indeed the only one that
we may claim for ourselves alone. The other great silences, those of
death, grief, or destiny, do not belong to us. They come towards us at
their own hour, following in the track of events, and those whom they
do not meet need not reproach themselves. But we can all go forth to
meet the silences of love. They lie in wait for us, night and day, at
our threshold, and are no less beautiful than their brothers. And it
is thanks to them that those who have seldom wept may know the life of
the soul almost as intimately as those to whom much grief has come:
and therefore it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt
many secrets that are unknown to others: for thousands and thousands of
things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that
are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship
and love are unknown....
THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL
THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL
A TIME will come, perhaps—and many things there are that herald its
approach—a time will come perhaps when our souls will know of each
other without the intermediary of the senses. Certain it is that there
passes not a day but the soul adds to its ever-widening domain. It is
very much nearer to our visible self, and takes a far greater part
in all our actions, than was the case two or three centuries ago. A
spiritual epoch is perhaps upon us; an epoch to which a certain number
of analogies are found in history. For there are periods recorded, when
the soul, in obedience to unknown laws, seemed to rise to the very
surface of humanity, whence it gave clearest evidence of its existence
and of its power. And this existence and this power reveal themselves
in countless ways, diverse and unforeseen. It would seem, at moments
such as these, as though humanity were on the point of struggling from
beneath the crushing burden of matter that weighs it down. A spiritual
influence is abroad that soothes and comforts; and the sternest, direst
laws of Nature yield here and there. Men are nearer to themselves,
nearer to their brothers; in the look of their eyes, in the love of
their hearts, there is deeper earnestness and tenderer fellowship.
Their understanding of women, children, animals, plants—nay, of
all things—becomes more pitiful and more profound. The statues,
paintings and writings that these men have left us may perhaps not be
perfect, but, none the less does there dwell therein a secret power,
an indescribable grace, held captive and imperishable for ever. A
mysterious brotherhood and love must have shone forth from the eyes of
these men; and signs of a life that we cannot explain are everywhere,
vibrating by the side of the life of every day.
Such knowledge as we possess of ancient Egypt induces us to believe
that she passed through one of these spiritual epochs. At a very remote
period in the history of India, the soul must have drawn very near
to the surface of life, to a point, indeed, that it has never since
touched; and unto this day strange phenomena owe their being to the
recollection, or lingering remnants, of its almost immediate presence.
Many other similar moments there have been, when the spiritual element
seemed to be struggling far down in the depths of humanity, like a
drowning man battling for life beneath the waters of a great river.
Bethink you of Persia, for instance, of Alexandria, and the two mystic
centuries of the Middle Ages.
On the other hand, there have been centuries in which purest intellect
and beauty reigned supreme, though the soul lay unrevealed. Thus it
was far from Greece and Rome, and from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in France. (As regards this last, however, we may perhaps
be speaking only of the surface; for in its depths many mysteries lie
concealed—we must remember Claude de Saint-Martin, Cagliostro—who is
passed over too lightly—Pascalis, and many others besides.) Something
is lacking, we know not what; barriers are stretched across the secret
passages; the eyes of beauty are sealed. Well-nigh hopeless, indeed, is
the attempt to convey this in words, or to explain why the atmosphere
of divinity and fatality that enwraps the Greek dramas does not seem
to us to be the true atmosphere of the soul. Majestic and all-abiding
as is the mystery that lingers on the horizon of these matchless
tragedies, it is yet not the pitiful, brotherly mystery, quickened into
profound activity, that we find in other works less great and less
beautiful. And to come nearer to our own time—though Racine may indeed
be the unerring poet of the woman’s heart, who would dare to claim for
him that he has ever taken one step towards her soul? What can you
tell me of the soul of Andromache, of Britannicus? Racine’s characters
have no knowledge of themselves beyond the words by which they express
themselves, and not one of these words can pierce the dykes that keep
back the sea. His men and women are alone, fearfully alone, on the
surface of a planet that no longer revolves in the heavens. If they
were to be silent, they would cease to be. They have no _invisible
principle_, and one might almost believe that some isolating substance
had crept between their spirit and themselves, between the life which
has its roots in every created thing and that which, for one fleeting
moment, brushes against a passion, a grief or a hope. Truly there are
centuries in which the soul lies dormant and slumbers undisturbed.
But to-day it is clearly making a mighty effort. Its manifestations
are everywhere, and they are strangely urgent, pressing, imperious
even, as though the order had been given, and no time must be lost.
It must be preparing for a decisive struggle; and none can foretell
the issues that may be dependent on the result, be this victory or
flight. Perhaps never to this day has it enlisted in its service such
diverse, irresistible forces. It is as though an invisible wall hemmed
it in, and one knows not whether it be quivering in its death-throb
or quickened by a new life. I will say nothing of the occult powers,
of which signs are everywhere—of magnetism, telepathy, levitation,
the unsuspected properties of radiating matter, and countless other
phenomena that are battering down the door of orthodox science. These
things are known of all men, and can easily be verified. And truly they
may well be the merest bagatelle by the side of the vast upheaval that
is actually in progress, for the soul is like a dreamer, enthralled
by sleep, who struggles with all his might to move an arm or raise an
eyelid.
Other regions there are where its action is even more effective,
though the crowd there is less regardful, and none but trained eyes
can see. Does it not seem as though the supreme cry of the soul were
at last about to pierce the dense clouds of error that still envelop
it in music? Do not certain pictures by foreign painters reveal the
sacred majesty of an invisible presence, as it never has been revealed
before? Are there not masterpieces in literature that are illumined
by a flame which differs in its very essence from the strangest
beacon-fires that lit up the writings of bygone days? A transformation
of silence—strange and inexplicable—is upon us, and the reign of
the _positive sublime_, absolute to this day, seems destined to be
overthrown. I will not linger on this subject, for the time has not
yet come for lucid discussion of these things; but I feel that a more
pressing offer of spiritual freedom has rarely been made to mankind.
Nay, there are moments when it bears the semblance of an ultimatum; and
therefore does it behove us to neglect nothing, but indeed with all
eagerness to accept this imperious invitation, that is like unto the
dream that is lost for ever, unless instantaneously seized. We must be
heedful; it is not without fit reason that our soul bestirs itself.
Though it be perhaps from the table-lands of speculative thought that
this agitation is the most clearly to be noted, yet may there well be
signs of it in the most ordinary paths of life, unsuspected of any;
for not a flower opens on the hill-top but at length it falls into
the valley. Has it fallen already? I know not. But this much at least
is abundantly proved to us, that in the work-a-day lives of the very
humblest of men, spiritual phenomena manifest themselves—mysterious,
direct workings, that bring soul nearer to soul; and of all this we
can find no record in former times. And the reason must surely be
that these things were not so clearly evident then: for at every
period there have been men who penetrated to the innermost recesses
of life, to its most secret affinities: and all that they learned of
the heart, the soul and the spirit of their epoch has been handed
down to us. It may well be that similar influences were at work
even in those times; but they could not have been as universal, as
active and vigorous as they are to-day, nor could they have sunk so
deep into the very life-springs of the race; for in that case, they
had surely not escaped the notice of those sages, and been passed by
in silence. And I do not refer now to ‘scientific spiritism,’ or its
telepathic phenomena, to ‘materialisation,’ or other manifestations
that I have enumerated above: but to the incidents, the interventions,
that occur unceasingly in the dreariest lives of all, those of the
men who are the most forgetful of their eternal rights. Also must it
be borne in mind that we are not considering the ordinary text-book
psychology—which concerns itself only with such spiritual phenomena
as are the most closely interwoven with the material, having indeed
usurped the beautiful name of Psyche—the psychology of which I speak
is transcendental, and throws light on the direct relationship that
exists between soul and soul, and on the _sensibility_ as well as the
_extraordinary presence_ of the soul. It is a science that is in its
infancy; but by it shall men be taken a full step higher, and very
speedily shall it dismiss for ever the elementary psychology that has
been dominant to this day.
This ‘immediate’ psychology is descending from the mountain tops,
and laying siege to the humblest of valleys; and even in the most
mediocre of writings is its presence to be felt. And indeed, than this,
nothing could prove more clearly that the pressure of the soul has
increased among mankind, and that its mysterious influence is diffusing
itself among the people. But we are now drawing near to things that
are well-nigh unspeakable, and such examples as one can give are
necessarily ordinary and incomplete. The following are elementary
and readily appreciable. In former days, if there was question, for
a moment, of a presentiment, of the strange impression produced by a
chance meeting or a look, of a decision that the unknown side of human
reason had governed, of an intervention, or a force, inexplicable
and yet understood, of the secret laws of sympathy and antipathy, of
elective and instinctive affinities, of the overwhelming influence of
the thing that had not been spoken—in former days, these problems
would have been carelessly passed by, and, besides, it was but seldom
that they intruded themselves upon the serenity of the thinker. They
seemed to come about by the merest chance. That they are ever pressing
upon life, unceasingly and with prodigious force—this was unsuspected
of all—and the philosopher hastened back to familiar studies of
passion, and of incident that floated on the surface.
These spiritual phenomena, to which, in bygone days, even the greatest
and wisest of our brothers scarcely gave a thought, are to-day being
earnestly studied by the very smallest; and herein are we shown
once again that the human soul is a plant of matchless unity, whose
branches, when the hour is come, all burst into blossom together. The
peasant, to whom the power of expressing that which lies in his soul
should suddenly be given, would at this moment pour forth ideas that
were not yet in the soul of Racine. And thus it is that men of a genius
much inferior to that of Shakespeare or Racine have yet had revealed to
them glimpses of a secretly luminous life, whose outer crust, alone,
had come within the ken of those masters. For, however great the soul,
it avails not that it should wander in isolation through space or time.
Unaided, it can do but little. It is the flower of the multitude. When
the spiritual sea is storm-tossed, and its whole surface restless and
troubled, then is the moment ripe for the mighty soul to appear; but if
it come at time of slumber, its utterance will be but of the dreams of
sleep. Hamlet—to take the most illustrious of all examples—Hamlet,
at Elsinore—at every moment does he advance to the very brink of
awakening; and yet, though his haggard face be damp with icy sweat,
there are words that he cannot utter, words that to-day would doubtless
flow readily from his lips, because the soul of the passer-by, be he
tramp or thief, would be there to help him. For, in truth, it would
seem that already there are fewer veils that enwrap the soul; and were
Hamlet now to look into the eyes of his mother, or of Claudius, there
would be revealed to him the things that, then, he did not know. Is it
thoroughly clear to you—this is one of the strangest, most disquieting
of truths—is it thoroughly clear to you that, if there be evil in
your heart, your mere presence will probably proclaim it to-day a
hundred times more clearly than would have been the case two or three
centuries ago? Is it fully borne home to you that if you have perchance
this morning done anything that shall have brought sadness to a single
human being, the peasant, with whom you are about to talk of the rain
or the storm, will know of it—his soul will have been warned even
before his hand has thrown open the door? Though you assume the face
of a saint, a hero or a martyr, the eye of the passing child will not
greet you with the same unapproachable smile if there lurk within you
an evil thought, an injustice, or a brother’s tears. A hundred years
ago the soul of that child would perhaps have passed, unheeding, by the
side of yours....
Truly it is becoming difficult to cherish hatred, envy, or treachery
in one’s heart, secure from observation; for the souls even of the most
indifferent are incessantly keeping vigil around us. Our ancestors have
not spoken of these things, and we realise that the life in which we
bestir ourselves is quite other than that which they have depicted.
Have they deceived us, or did they not know? Signs and words no longer
count for anything, and in mystic circles it is the mere presence that
decides almost all.
Even the ancient ‘will-power’—the logical will-power that men have
professed to understand so well—even this is being transformed in
its turn, and moulded beneath the pressure of mighty, deep searching,
inexplicable laws. The last refuges are disappearing, and men are
drawing closer to each other. Far above words and acts do they judge
their fellows—nay, far above thought—for that which they see, though
they understand it not, lies well beyond the domain of thought. And
this is one of the great signs by which the spiritual periods I spoke
of before shall be known. It is felt on all sides that the conditions
of work-a-day life are changing, and the youngest of us already differ
entirely in speech and action from the men of the preceding generation.
A mass of useless conventions, habits, pretences, and intermediaries
are being swept into the gulf; and it is by the invisible alone
that, though we know it not, nearly all of us judge each other. If I
enter your room for the first time you will not pronounce the secret
sentence that, according to the laws of practical psychology, each
man pronounces in the presence of his fellow. In vain shall you try
to tell me whither you have been to learn who I am, but you shall
come back to me, bearing the weight of unspeakable certitudes. Your
father, perhaps, would have judged me otherwise, and would have been
mistaken. We can but believe that man will soon touch man, and that the
atmosphere will change. ‘Have we,’ asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the
great ‘unknown philosopher,’ ‘have we advanced one step further on the
radiant path of enlightenment, that leads to the simplicity of men?’
Let us wait in silence: perhaps ere long we shall be conscious of ‘the
murmur of the gods.’
THE PRE-DESTINED
THE PRE-DESTINED
THEY are known to most men, and there are few mothers who have not seen
them. Perhaps they are as inevitable as life’s sorrows; and the men
among whom they dwell become the better for the knowledge of them, and
the sadder, and the more gentle.
They are strange. As children, life seems nearer to them than to other
children; they appear to suspect nothing, and yet is there in their
eyes so profound a certainty that we feel they must know all, that
there must have been evenings when they found time to tell themselves
their secret. At the moment when their brothers are still groping
their way blindly in the mysterious land between birth and life, they
have already understood; they are erect, ready with hand and soul. In
all haste, but wisely and with minute care, do they prepare themselves
to live; and this very haste is a sign upon which mothers, the
discreet, unsuspected confidants of all that cannot be told, can scarce
bring themselves to look.
Their stay among us is often so short that we are unconscious of their
presence; they go away without saying a word, and are for ever unknown
to us. But others there are who linger for a moment, who look at us
with an eager smile, and seem to be on the point of confessing that
they know all; and then, towards their twentieth year, they leave us,
hurriedly, muffling their footsteps, as though they had just discovered
that they had chosen the wrong dwelling-place, and had been about to
pass their lives among men whom they did not know.
They themselves say but little, and there is a cloud that falls around
them at the moment when men seem on the point of touching them, or
when hurt has been done them. Some days there are when they seem to
be of us, and among us, but a sudden evening comes and they are so
far away that we dare not look at them, or ask a question. It is as
though they were on life’s further shore, and the feeling rushes in
upon us that now, at last, the hour has come for affirming that which
is graver, deeper, more human, more real than friendship, pity or love;
for saying the thing that is piteously flapping its wings at the back
of our throat, and craving for utterance—the thing that our ignorance
crushes, that we never have said, that we never shall say, for so many
lives are spent in silence! And time rushes on; and who is there of us
but has lingered and waited till it was too late, and there was no one
to listen to his words?
Why have they come to us—why do they go so soon? Is it only that we
may be convinced of the utter aimlessness of life? It is a mystery that
ever eludes us, and all our searchings are vain. I have often seen
these things happen; one day they were so near to me that I scarcely
knew was it myself or another whom they concerned....
For it was thus that my brother died. And though he alone had heard the
warning whisper, be it ever so unconsciously—for from his earliest
days he had concealed the message of disease within him—yet surely
had the knowledge of what was to come been borne in upon us also. What
are the signs that set apart the creatures for whom dire events lie in
wait? Nothing is visible, and yet all is revealed. They are afraid of
us, for that we are ever crying out to them of our knowledge, struggle
against it as we may; and when we are with them, they can see that,
in our hearts, we are oppressed by their destiny. Something there is
that we hide from most men, and we ourselves are ignorant of what
this thing may be. Strange secrets of life and death pass between two
creatures who meet for the first time; and many other secrets besides,
nameless to this day, but which at once thrust their impress upon our
bearing, our features, the look of our eyes; and even while we press
the hand of our friend, our soul will have soared perhaps beyond the
confines of this life. It may be that when two men are together, they
are unconscious of any hidden thoughts, but there are things that lie
deeper, and are far more imperious, than thought. We are not the lords
of these unfathomable gifts; and we are ever betraying the presence of
the prophet to whom speech is not given. We are never the same with
others as when we are alone; we are different, even, when we are in
the dark with them, and the look in our eyes changes as the past or
future flashes before us; and therefore it is that, though we know it
not, we are ever watchful and on our guard. When we meet those who are
not to live long, we are only conscious of the fate that is hanging
over them; we see nothing else. If they could they would deceive us,
so that they might the more readily deceive themselves. They do all in
their power to mislead us; they imagine that their eager smile, their
burning interest in life, will conceal the truth; but none the less
does the event already loom large before us, and seem indeed to be the
mainstay, nay, the very reason of their existence. Death has again
betrayed them, and they realise, in bitter sadness, that nothing is
hidden from us, that there are certain voices that cannot be still.