which it takes not part. It cares not to reveal itself even in look
or tear. Nay, it seeks concealment, for reasons one cannot divine. It
is as though it were afraid to make use of its power. It knows that
its most involuntary movement will cause immortal things to spring to
life about it; and we are miserly with immortal things. Why are we so
fearful lest we exhaust the heaven within us? We dare not act upon the
whisper of the God who inspires us. We are afraid of everything that
cannot be explained by word or gesture: and we shut our eyes to all
that we do, ourselves notwithstanding, in the empire where explanations
are vain! Whence comes the timidity of the divine in man? For truly
might it be said that the nearer a movement of our soul approaches the
divine, so much the more scrupulously do we conceal it from the eyes of
our brethren. Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god? Or
has the command been laid upon us that the superior powers must not be
betrayed? Upon all that does not form part of this too visible world
there rests the tender meekness of the little ailing girl, for whom her
mother will not send when strangers come to the house. And therefore
it is that this secret goodness of ours has never yet passed through
the silent portals of our soul. It lives within us like a prisoner
forbidden to approach the barred window of her cell. But indeed, what
matter though it do not approach? Enough that it be there. Hide as it
may, let it but raise its head, move a link of its chain or open its
hand, and the prison is illumined, the pressure of radiance from within
bursts open the iron barrier, and then, suddenly, there yawns a gulf
between words and beings, a gulf peopled with agitated angels: silence
falls over all: the eyes turn away for a moment and two souls embrace
tearfully on the threshold....
It is not a thing that comes from this earth of ours, and all
descriptions can be of no avail. They who would understand must have,
in themselves too, _the same point of sensibility_. If you have
never in your life felt the power of _your invisible goodness_, go
no further; it would be useless. But are there really any who have
not felt this power, and have the worst of us never been invisibly
good? I know not: of so many in this world does the aim seem to be the
discouragement of the divine in their soul. And yet there needs but one
instant of respite for the divine to spring up again, and even the
wickedest are not incessantly on their guard; and hence doubtless has
it arisen that so many of the wicked are good, unseen of all, whereas
divers saints and sages are not invisibly good....
More than once have I been the cause of suffering, he went on, even
as each being is the cause of suffering about him. I have caused
suffering because we are in a world where all is held together by
invisible threads, in a world where none are alone, and where the
gentlest gesture of love or kindliness may so often wound the innocence
by our side!—I have caused suffering, too, because there are times
when the best and tenderest are impelled to seek I know not what part
of themselves in the grief of others. For, indeed, there are seeds
that only spring up in our soul beneath the rain of tears shed because
of us, and none the less do these seeds produce good flowers and
salutary fruit. What would you? It is no law of our making, and I know
not whether I would dare to love the man who had made no one weep.
Frequently, indeed, will the greatest suffering be caused by those
whose love is greatest, for a strange timid, tender cruelty is most
often the anxious sister of love. On all sides does love search for the
proofs of love, and the first proofs—who is not prone to discover them
in the tears of the beloved?
Even death could not suffice to reassure the lover who dared to give
ear to the unreasoning claims of love; for to the intimate cruelty of
love, the instant of death seems too brief; over beyond death there
is yet room for a sea of doubts, and even in those who die together
may disquiet still linger as they die. Long, slowly falling tears
are needed here. Grief is love’s first food, and every love that has
not been fed on a little pure suffering must die like the babe that
one had tried to nourish on the nourishment of a man. Will the love
inspired by the woman who always brought the smile to your lips be
quite the same as the love you feel for her who at times called forth
your tears? Alas! needs must love weep, and often indeed is it at the
very moment when the sobs burst forth that love’s chains are forged and
tempered for life....
Thus, he continued, I have caused suffering because I loved, and also
have I caused suffering because I did not love—but how great was the
difference in the two cases! In the one the slowly dropping tears of
well-tried love seemed already to know, at the depths of them, that
they were bedewing all that was ineffable in our united souls; in the
other the poor tears knew that they were falling in solitude on a
desert. But it is at those very moments when the soul is all ear—or,
haply, all soul—that I have recognised the might of an invisible
goodness that could offer to the wretched tears of an expiring love the
divine illusions of a love on the eve of birth. Has there never come
to you one of those sorrowful evenings when dejection lay heavy upon
your unsmiling kisses, and it at length dawned upon your soul that it
had been mistaken? With direst difficulty did your words ring forth in
the cold air of the separation that was to be final; you were about to
part for ever, and your almost lifeless hands were outstretched for
the farewell of a departure that should know no return, when suddenly
your soul made an imperceptible movement within itself. On that instant
did the soul by the side of you awake on the summits of its being;
something sprang to life in regions loftier far than the love of jaded
lovers; and for all that the bodies might shrink asunder, henceforth
would the souls never forget that for an instant they had beheld each
other high above mountains they had never seen, and that for a second’s
space they had been good with a goodness they had never known until
that day....
What can this be, this mysterious movement that I speak of here in
connection with love only, but which may well take place in the
smallest events of life? Is it I know not what sacrifice or inner
embrace, is it the profoundest desire to be soul for a soul, or the
consciousness, ever quickening within us, of the presence of a life
that is invisible, but equal to our own? Is it all that is admirable
and sorrowful in the mere act of living that, at such moments, floods
our being—is it the aspect of life, one and indivisible? I know not;
but in truth it is then that we feel that there lurks, somewhere, an
unknown force; it is then that we feel that we are the treasures of an
unknown God who loves all, that not a gesture of this God may pass
unperceived, and that we are at length in the region of things that do
not betray themselves....
Certain it is that, from the day of our birth to the day of our death,
we never emerge from this clearly defined region, but wander in God
like helpless sleepwalkers, or like the blind who despairingly seek the
very temple in which they do indeed befind themselves. We are there in
life, man against man, soul against soul, and day and night are spent
under arms. We never see each other, we never touch each other. We see
nothing but bucklers and helmets, we touch nothing but iron and brass.
But let a tiny circumstance, come from the simpleness of the sky, for
one instant only cause the weapons to fall, are there not always tears
beneath the helmet, childlike smiles behind the buckler, and is not
another verity revealed?
He thought for a moment, then went on, more sadly: A woman—as I
believe I told you just now—a woman to whom I had caused suffering
against my will—for the most careful of us scatter suffering around
them without their knowledge—a woman to whom I had caused suffering
against my will, revealed to me one evening the sovereign power of this
invisible good. To be good we must needs have suffered; but perhaps it
is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better. This
was brought home to me that evening. I felt that I had arrived, alone,
at that sad zone of kisses when it seems to us that we are visiting
the hovels of the poor, while she, who had lingered on the road, was
still smiling in the palace of the first days. Love, as men understand
it, was dying between us like a child stricken with a disease come one
knows not whence, a disease that has no pity. We said nothing. It would
be impossible for me to recall what my thoughts were at that earnest
moment. They were doubtless of no significance. I was probably thinking
of the last face I had seen, of the quivering gleam of a lantern at
a deserted street corner; and, nevertheless, _everything took place_
in a light a thousand times purer, a thousand times higher, than had
there intervened all the forces of pity and love which I command in my
thoughts and my heart. We parted, and not a word was spoken, but at one
and the same moment had we understood our inexpressible thought. We
know now that another love had sprung to life, a love that demands not
the words, the little attentions and smiles of ordinary love. We have
never met again. Perhaps centuries will elapse before we ever do meet
again.
‘Much is to learn, much to forget,
Through worlds I shall traverse not a few’
before we shall again find ourselves _in the same movement of the
soul_ as on that evening: but we can well afford to wait....
And thus, ever since that day, have I greeted, in all places, even
in the very bitterest of moments, the beneficent presence of this
marvellous power. He who has but once clearly seen it, shall never
again find it possible to turn away from its face. You will often
behold it smiling in the last retreat of hatred, in the depths of the
cruellest tears. And yet does it not reveal itself to the eyes of the
body. Its nature changes from the moment that it manifests itself by
means of an exterior act; and we are no longer in the truth according
to the soul, but in a kind of falsehood as conceived by man. Goodness
and love that are self-conscious have no influence on the soul, for
they have departed from the kingdoms where they have their dwelling;
but, do they only remain blind, they can soften Destiny itself. I have
known more than one man who performed every act of kindness and mercy
without touching a single soul; and I have known others, who seemed to
live in falsehood and injustice, yet were no souls driven from them
nor did any for an instant even believe that these men were not good.
Nay, more, even those who do not know you, who are merely told of your
acts of goodness and deeds of love—if you be not good according to the
invisible goodness, these, even, will feel that something is lacking,
and they will never be touched in the depths of their being. One might
almost believe that there exists, somewhere, a place where all is
weighed in the presence of the spirits, or perhaps, out yonder, the
other side of the night, a reservoir of certitudes whither the silent
herd of souls flock every morning to slake their thirst.
Perhaps we do not yet know what the word ‘to love’ means. There are
within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means
more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to
help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms
deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach
it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but
excessively keen, of the great primitive unity. There is in this love
a force that nothing can resist. Which of us—an’ he question himself
the side of the light, from which our gaze is habitually averted—which
of us but will find in himself the recollection of certain strange
workings of this force? Which of us, when by the side of the most
ordinary person perhaps, but has suddenly become conscious of the
advent of something that none had summoned? Was it the soul, or perhaps
life, that had turned within itself like a sleeper on the point of
awakening? I know not; nor did you know, and no one spoke of it; but
you did not separate from each other as though nothing had happened.
To love thus is to love according to the soul; and there is no soul
that does not respond to this love. For the soul of man is a guest that
has gone hungry these centuries back, and never has it to be summoned
twice to the nuptial feast.
The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a
caress, and only waiting for the signal. But how many beings there are
who all their life long have not dared make such a signal! It is the
disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul,
and stand in such dread of its slightest movement. Did we but allow it
to smile frankly in its silence and its radiance, we should be already
living an eternal life. We have only to think for an instant how much
it succeeds in accomplishing during those rare moments when we knock
off its chains—for it is our custom to enchain it as though it were
distraught—what it does in love, for instance, for there we do permit
it at times to approach the lattices of external life. And would it not
be in accordance with the primal truth if all men were to feel that
they were face to face with each other, even as the woman feels with
the man she loves?
This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because
of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing
activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in
decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched. Let him who
has a grievance against his fellow, descend into himself and seek out
whether he never has been good in the presence of that fellow. For
myself, I have never met any one by whose side I have felt my invisible
goodness bestir itself, without he has become, at that very instant,
better than myself. Be good at the depths of you, and you will discover
that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths.
Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the
secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the
invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that
they could not do by the side of any other man. Therein lies a force
that has no name; a spiritual rivalry that knows no resistance. It is
as though this were the actual place where is the sensitive spot of our
soul; for there are souls that seem to have forgotten their existence
and to have renounced everything that enables the being to rise; but,
once touched here, they all draw themselves erect; and in the divine
plains of the secret goodness, the most humble of souls cannot endure
defeat.
And yet it is possible that nothing is changing in the life one sees;
but is it only that which matters, and is our existence indeed confined
to actions we can take in our hand like stones on the high road? If
you ask yourself, as we are told we should ask every evening, ‘What
of immortal have I done to-day?’ Is it always on the material side
that we can count, weigh and measure unerringly; is it there that you
must begin your search? It is possible for you to cause extraordinary
tears to flow; it is possible that you may fill a heart with unheard
of certitudes, and give eternal life unto a soul, and no one shall
know of it, nor shall you even know yourself. It may be that nothing
is changing; it may be that were it put to the test all would crumble,
and that this goodness we speak of would yield to the smallest fear.
It matters not. Something divine has happened; and somewhere must our
God have smiled. May it not be the supreme aim of life thus to bring
to birth the inexplicable within ourselves; and do we know how much we
add to ourselves when we awake something of the incomprehensible that
slumbers in every corner? Here you have awakened love which will not
fall asleep again. The soul that your soul has regarded, that has wept
with you the holy tears of the solemn joy that none may behold, will
bear you no resentment, not even in the midst of torture. It will not
even feel the need of forgiving. So convinced is it of one knows not
what, that nothing can henceforth dim or efface the smile that it wears
within; for nothing can ever separate two souls which, for an instant,
‘have been good together.’
THE DEEPER LIFE
THE DEEPER LIFE
IT is well that men should be reminded that the very humblest of them
has the power to ‘fashion, after a divine model that he chooses not,
a great moral personality, composed in equal parts of himself and the
ideal; and that if anything lives in fullest reality, of a surety it is
that.’
Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher
life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily
existence. Than this there can be no nobler aim in life. It is only
by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be
distinguished from each other. If the hero is greater than the
wretch who marches by his side, it is because at a certain moment of
his existence there has come to him a fuller consciousness of one of
these communications. If it is true that creation does not stop at
man and that we are surrounded by invisible beings who are superior
to us, their superiority can only consist in that they have, with the
infinite, communications whose nature we cannot even imagine.
It lies within our power to increase these communications. In the life
of every man has there been a day when the heavens opened of their own
accord, and it is almost always from that very instant that dates his
true spiritual personality. It is doubtless at that instant that are
formed the invisible, eternal features that we reveal, though we know
it not, to angels and to souls. But with most men it is chance alone
that has caused the heavens to open; and they have not chosen the face
whereby the angels know them in the infinite, nor have they understood
how to ennoble and purify its features—which do indeed but owe their
being to an accidental joy or sadness, an accidental thought or fear.
Our veritable birth dates from the day when, for the first time, we
feel at the deepest of us that there is something grave and unexpected
in life. Some there are who realise suddenly that they are not alone
under the sky. To others will it be brusquely revealed, while shedding
a tear or giving a kiss, that ‘the source of all that is good and holy
from the universe up to God is hidden behind a night, full of too
distant stars’; a third will see a divine hand stretched forth between
his joy and his misfortune; and yet another will have understood that
it is the dead who are in the right. One will have had pity, another
will have admired or been afraid. Often does it need almost nothing,
a word, a gesture, a little thing that is not even a thought. ‘Before,
I loved thee as a brother, John,’ says one of Shakespeare’s heroes,
admiring the other’s action, ‘but now I do respect thee as my soul.’ On
that day it is probable that a being will have come into the world.
We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little
nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event,
charged with almost irresistible radiance, intrudes itself violently
upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our despite. We await I know
not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of
our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary
takes place. But in everything that happens is there light; and the
greatness of the greatest of men has but consisted in that they had
trained their eyes to be open to every ray of this light. Is it indeed
essential that your mother should breathe her last in your arms, that
your children should perish in a shipwreck, and that you yourself
should pass by the side of death, for you at length to understand that
you have your being in an incomprehensible world where you shall be
for ever, where an unseen God, who is eternally alone, dwells with His
creatures? Must your betrothed die in a fire, or disappear before your
eyes in the green depths of the ocean, for it to be revealed to you
for an instant that the last limits of the kingdom of love transcend
perhaps the scarcely visible flames of Mira, Altair or Berenice’s
tresses? Had your eyes been open, might you not have beheld in a
kiss that which to-day you perceive in a catastrophe? Are the divine
recollections that slumber in our souls to be awakened only by the
lance-thrusts of grief? The sage needs no such violent arousing. He
sees a tear, a maiden’s gesture, a drop of water that falls; he listens
to a passing thought, presses a brother’s hand, approaches a lip, with
open eyes and open soul. He never ceases to behold that of which you
have caught but a passing glimpse; and a smile will readily tell him
all that it needed a tempest, or even the hand of death, to reveal to
you.
For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’
‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the
moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have
been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the
eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless
thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; or
that if they do indeed thus drop, the fall itself is so immense that
it suffices to give an august character to our life? Why wait till
the firmament shall open amid the roar of the thunderbolt? We must
watch for the happy moments when it opens in silence; and it is ever
thus opening. You seek God in your life, and you say God appears not.
But in what life are there not thousands of hours akin to the hour in
that drama where all are waiting for the divine intervention, and none
perceive it, till an invisible thought that has flitted across the
consciousness of a dying man suddenly reveals itself, and an old man
cries out, sobbing for joy and terror, ‘But God, there is God!’....
Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some
one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved
profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a
thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the
waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold
of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the
very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much
purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded.
You have beheld that which in life cannot be seen without ecstasy. But
cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints
and heroes did; this and nothing more. Ah! truly too much of our life
is spent in waiting, like the blind men in the legend who had travelled
far so that they might hear their God. They were seated on the steps,
and when asked what they were doing in the courtyard of the sanctuary,
‘We are waiting,’ they replied, shaking their heads, ‘and God has not
yet said a single word.’ But they had not seen that the brass doors
of the temple were closed, and they knew not that the edifice was
resounding with the voice of their God. Never for an instant does God
cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with
a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God
must speak concerning our every act.