AUGUST STRINDBERG (continued 4)

"Swedenborg makes another suggestion, 'When a man is to be born again, his desires and falsities cannot be stripped off at once, for that would be equivalent to destroying the whole man, because as yet he only lives in them. Therefore for a long while evil spirits are left with him, to stir up his desires that they may be dissolved in many ways.'

"Formerly I believed, when I was young with the youthful, old and wise with the old, mad with the mad, that I was doing them a service. As a poet, I lived for the moment in their life and their moods, which I then depicted and forgot myself. Often by these relapses into stages I had left behind, I seemed to have worked myself higher, as the ship tacks in order to get a more favourable wind."

Attraction and Repulsion.—The teacher continued: "There is both an attraction and a repulsion between similar souls. Like loves like, but not always; often the unlike seeks the unlike. A good man lamented to me that it was his lot always to be in bad society, and never to meet good men who could elevate him. Since he was strong he was at any rate not drawn down, but he did not observe that he exercised a good influence on his bad surroundings. He had, it is true, occasion to see and to hear evil; but, on the other hand, he was able to react against it through the disgust with which it inspired him. Without instituting a comparison we may say that Christ did not attract people of high position and good character, but poor devils and weak characters, the sick, the possessed, the wicked, thieves, publicans, and harlots. His disciples did not understand his doctrine, but interpreted it all in a material way. He answered their reproaches by saying, 'Only the sick need a physician.' I will suppress my former objection, for I bow myself experimentally before 'the folly of the cross,' since experience has taught me that wisdom can only be received by a humble mind, and that obedience is more than sacrifice. In recent times my constant prayer has been that I might come into good society which might elevate me, and avoid evil companionship which, to say the least, involves an injurious connection with the lower plane. It is in truth my fault that those who seek me seek my old ego, and, when they do not find it, believe that I am not to be found."

The Double.—The pupil said: "When a man begins to love a woman he throws himself into a trance, and becomes a poet and artist. Out of her plastic, unindividualised material he fashions an ideal form into which he puts all that is best in himself. Thus he creates an homunculus which he adopts as his double, and with that she lets him do as he likes.

"But this astral image may be also the doll which she the huntress sets up as a decoy, while she with a loaded gun lies behind the bush and watches for her prey. The love of a man for his homunculus often survives every illusion; he may have conceived a deadly hatred against herself, while his love for his double continues. But this masquerade gives rise to the deepest dissonances and troubles. He becomes squint-eyed by contemplating two images which do not coincide. He wishes to embrace his cloud, but takes hold of a body; he wishes to hear his poem, but it is someone else's; he wants to see his work of art, but it is only a model. He is happy during his trance, although the world cannot understand him. When he awakes from his somnambulism, his hatred to the woman increases in proportion as she fails to correspond to his image of her. And if he murders his double, then love is done with, and only boundless hate remains."

Paw or Hand.—The pupil said: "In Kipling's wonderful Jungle Book, the boy is intimate with all kinds of animals but not with apes, which are the worst of all creatures and composed of wickedness and crime. When Goethe, in the second part of Faust, wishes to represent phantoms and evil spirits, he uses the same masks and costumes as for the monkeys in the Witches' Kitchen in the first part. And it is among these degenerate brutes that man (?) now does his best to seek his ancestry. For my part I would rather trace my origin from a noble horse, or a sagacious and honest elephant, or from a courageous and thankful eagle.

"But it is probable that apes spring from degenerate men, escaped criminals, and ship-wrecked Robinson Crusoes. The hand of the chimpanzee is not a paw which is being evolved into a hand, but it is a human hand which is degenerating into a paw. A palmist could read the lines of it; a manicurist could improve it and make it capable of wearing a glove. If man really sprang from apes, according to the law of phylogeny, a child ought to be born with a hairy body. But now it comes into the world as smooth as an angel, often without hairs even on its head. It is a disgrace to me that I served the Ape-king, the seducer of my youth! And it was so stupid!"

The Thousand-Years' Night of the Apes.—When the sun of Christianity rose over the world, it naturally became night for the apelings. When they turned their backs to the light, everything became distorted for them. Right became left, east became west, good became evil, black became white, day became night. Therefore one reads still of their thousand-years' night, as they call the Middle Ages. When the savage tribes of Europe became tame, when the aged and sick became objects of pity, when governments ruled and laws protected, when faith, hope and love, self-sacrifice and chivalry flourished, then it was night for the pagans. When Europe received science, when Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Arnold, and Basilius founded chemistry, metallurgy, and physic, their darkness increased. When mediæval art culminated in the noblest work of art there is—the Gothic cathedral—then it grew dark before the eyes of the giants; their ears could not endure the chime of bells and organ-music. Finally the Middle Ages discovered gunpowder, the compass, and printing. A religious man, whose sails bore the sign of the cross, discovered America. But Pauli, the disciple of Clemens Romanus, already knew "the ocean which cannot be crossed by men, and the lands which lie behind it."[1]

In the midst of the darkness of the heathen there was the light of convent-schools and universities, in which spiritual as well as worldly wisdom was taught. Poems of chivalry, romances and dramas were composed. Charlemagne was a Christian King Solomon; he defeated the Philistines in Saxony, built temples out of the ruins of Rome, held learned conversations and listened to legends, cultivated the land and gave laws. That was the brightest phase of a Europe grown patriarchal and Christian. The gods certainly did not walk any more on earth, but God's messengers were in constant communication with men, and disclosed to them the secrets of God's kingdom, which were written down in Apocalypses and, best of all, in the Legenda Aurea. Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ was printed and is still read even by Protestants. One can even read the Church Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom; Augustine was used in my youth as a confirmation-manual. Two hundred years before the Reformation—the schism in the Church as it should rather be called—Dante wrote the most Christian of all poems, which the heathen have tried to steal for themselves. Boccaccio expounded the Inferno from a professor's chair, a fitting penalty for the trespasses of his youth. Botticelli, Lippi, Ghirlandajo were the great religious painters of the Middle Ages. Their pupils Michael Angelo and Raphael were devout Christians, although the heathen have wished to appropriate them under the false designation Renaissance, or new birth of heathenism. When at the beginning of modern times it began to grow dusk, the dawn rose for the heathen and for "the last Athenians." The last? There will certainly be more Athenians who will wish to carry owls to Athens.

The Favourite.—Julian was an Illyrian, from the predatory state composed of a mixed Phœnician race who worshipped Baal and Astarte. He had a small head, and no occiput; he had thick lips, a beard that swarmed with vermin, long nails and black hands with which he groped in the bleeding bodies of slain beasts in order to prognosticate the future from their hearts and livers. His cheerful religious services consisted in the sacrifice of animals, and were accompanied by the dances of immodest girls. In order to refute ancient prophecy, he wished to build again the Temple at Jerusalem. But fire broke out of the ground, so that the undertaking was frustrated at its commencement. This madman once came to Antioch, where there were a hundred thousand heathen whom he expected to receive him with public sacrifices and dances. Instead of which he was met by a solitary priest bearing a goose. That was all!

This unattractive person, who has become the darling of The Last Athenian[1] and the new heathen, was finally enticed into a desert. There he suffered hunger and thirst till a lance pierced his liver. But it is incredible that he exclaimed, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" He was far too stupid for that.

Scientific Villainies.—If anyone comes to you and says, "I don't understand the proof for the existence of God," you should answer, "You don't understand because your wickedness darkens your understanding." All atheists are rascals, and all rascals are atheists. Their intelligence is so beclogged with sin that they cannot understand the simplest teachings of Christianity, the Incarnation and, consequently, Immaculate Birth of God, His Resurrection and Ascension.

When the sectaries came to Luther and said that they could not understand him, because they had another Spirit, he answered, "I smite your Spirit on the snout! God rebuke thee, Satan!" A godless man or a so-called free-thinker is a rascal who permits himself everything. His natural sympathy for scoundrels is so strong that he will swear a false oath in order to save the guilty from condemnation by a false alibi. He will accuse an innocent man, and persecute him from one court of appeal to another, in order to get him into prison, and will demand a large sum of money as a reward for his ill-doing.

When the guilty is acquitted they give him a banquet, his companions write odes in his honour, he is promoted and finally appointed to be an instructor of youth. When an atheist adopts the pursuit of science, one is sure only villainy will result. He says falsely that he has seen such and such things under the microscope, in order to be able to write a treatise on them. If he is an astronomer he will see as many canals in Mars as his professor wishes. If his professor does not believe in the canals in Mars, he will not see any.

Necrobiosis, i.e. Death and Resurrection.—During the winter I found the chrysalis of a cockchafer and laid it on my writing-table. One evening in the lamplight it began to click and make small movements. Believing that the warmth had developed my beetle I opened its black coffin, but found to my astonishment only a white slime without a sign of organisation; it smelt of sour gastric juice. This half-fluid mass, however, possessed the capacity of movement. Later on, when I had a microscope with a large field of view, I opened the chrysalis of a butterfly and examined it. On a clear yellow background of fluid matter there was sketched, as it were, the outline of the future butterfly in half-shadow, without, as yet, any bodily organisation. That is called "necrobiosis," or the dying-off of living tissue. And the deliquescence of the chrysalis in slime is termed "histolysis." Its reorganisation is said to take place by means of corpora adiposa, or particles of fat. More than this I do not know. I wrote to Germany (where they are accustomed to know everything) and asked for some works treating of the metamorphosis of the chrysalis, but there were none on this most important and interesting question. Father Darwin and his son Haeckel knew nothing and wished to know nothing about the resurrection; they only knew about birth and death. Finally I bought for five-and-twenty kroners a large work on butterflies composed by a professor. There was not a word in it regarding the necrobiosis of the chrysalis. But sometimes I see on a gravestone within a church wall this symbol: caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.

Secret Judgment.—When one sees a fact repeated regularly and under defined conditions, one believes one has discovered a law. I think I have discovered a law, and consequently a tribunal whose decisions we see, but whose inner working we can only guess at. I had a relative who had reached a certain age without "ever having time" to think of death. On the 18th January of the year 18— he had a stroke and fell. That was the first warning. Then he began to think about death and the life after this, and occupied himself thus for six years; then he died exactly on the same day, on the 18th of January. The fact of the interval being six years made me think of Bismarck's six years in Sachsenwald, when he sat alone and brooded on the transitory character of greatness, and curiously enough injured his reputation through being betrayed by vanity into making incautious revelations. Then it occurred to me that Napoleon was six years on St. Helena, and finally became so well "prepared" that he received the sacrament on his death-bed. Whether Heine lay on the ground for exactly six years, with his body wasted to the size of a child's and tormented by the fear of losing his wife, I cannot say definitely; but it was about six. It is well known that the pious Linnæus had to spend his last years seated in a chair, lamed by paralysis; nor did even he escape being worried by a quarrelsome wife, God alone knows why!

Our great and glorious Tegner received his first warning in 1840. It was accompanied by a condition like that described in my Inferno, during which, among other things, he saw his whole poetical work in a depreciatory light, and even at last wished to cancel it all. After just six years' preparation he died on November 2, 1846, in a cheerful state of mind, the sky being lit up at the time by a splendid aurora. Goldschmidt mentions that and still more remarkable things in his excellent Nemesis Divina. I read lately how Fersen was murdered in his carriage on June 20, 1810. I recalled to mind that it was the same Fersen who drove the carriage in which Marie Antoinette fled to Varennes. I referred to the History of the World, and found that the flight to Varennes took place on June 20, 1791. The question arises: "Was it a crime to wish to save the queen?" The author of the article in the Biographical Lexicon mentions the crime by name; but it was something other than the attempt to further her escape.

Hammurabi's Inspired Laws Received from the Sun-God.—The laws of Hammurabi occupy fifteen quarto pages. That is the whole find! And these pages are to nullify the Bible, which is so unsearchably rich and possesses such mysterious depths that everyone in trouble, who with humility seeks for counsel and comfort there, finds it forthwith, although he may first receive some blows which strike the nail on the head!

Hammurabi's laws in fifteen pages resemble Deuteronomy to a certain degree, but are much more meagre; they often recall our old Swedish law with its trivialities. For instance: "If anyone strikes out a man's teeth, his teeth shall be struck out; but if he strikes out the teeth of an emancipated slave, he shall pay one-eighth of a mina of silver."

In any case God is one, and His laws are in principle the same. The Bible may have used the same source as Hammurabi. But when the heathen try to use the laws of the Assyrian clay tablets in order to prove that the Bible is not inspired, they miss the mark. "Inspired" means "received from God." See how the heathen has adorned his paltry pamphlet with a frontispiece, which asserts, against his will, that Hammurabi's laws were also inspired. For the frontispiece portrays Hammurabi receiving his laws from the Sun-god.

Strauss's Life of Christ.—Now that I am sixty years old, it occurred to me to see what sort of a book Strauss's Leben Jesu is before I depart. In my youth, in the 'sixties, we read in school (of our own accord, however) "the last Athenian's doctrine of the Bible," but we never succeeded in seeing the original Life of Jesus. And although I have been in libraries, collected books, visited second-hand book-stalls, I have not seen Strauss's book. It seemed as though it had been confiscated by the Invisible Powers. Now when I am sixty, it has arrived and I tried to read it. But I could not.

It was simply unreadable! All these many pages contained nothing, and what was printed seemed to me incomprehensible, soulless, dry.

A man who writes a book about what he does not understand; a student who has learnt the æsthetic systems by heart; a philosopher who tries to define the beautiful; a mathematician who wants to prove or disprove axioms; a drunken man who tries to play the flute; a feeble foolish attempt to explain God's great miracle in the Atonement. I threw the book away, else I should have gone to sleep over it.

Strauss died in 1874, and in spite of the last stage of his development, when he did not believe any more in the immortality of the soul, he spent his last hours in reading Plato's Phædo, in which at the death-bed of Socrates the immortality of the soul is so clearly demonstrated.

His death was like that of Socrates, his pupils said. But they do not inform us whether the cup of poison was at hand.

Christianity and Radicalism.—Christianity is really more radical than Radicalism. Christ turns his back on the whole of society with its institutions, science, and art. He warns us against the scribes; the rich are not his friends, but rather Lazarus; the rich youth is told to sell all that he has and to give to the poor. To soldiers Christ says, "Those who take the sword shall perish with the sword." He says nothing about science, art, and industry because He is indifferent to them. He has no great illusions about men, for he calls them "a generation of vipers." And rightly; since the earth is a prison for those who have committed crimes in heaven, we are all rascals; but it is the prison chaplain's duty to preach pardon to those who behave properly. To open the prison would be unwise and unlawful; there Christianity differs from Anarchism. Give custom to whom custom is due, and to Cæsar what is Cæsar's. Authority is ordained of God, and beareth not the sword in vain.

Christianity and Radicalism accordingly agree in their criticism of society, but not in the inferences they draw. The Christian endures the sufferings of the prison-house with religious resignation; he does not waste valuable time in making foolish proposals regarding the reform of prison-life and management. In order to obtain mitigation and pardon, and to escape the dark cell and scourging, he tries to behave well, but he does not believe that the prison can be a place of recreation.

All that Rousseau, Max Nordau, and Tolstoi have said against the faults of society is quite true, but their inferences are false. Socialism, i.e. pagan socialism, which preached development and progress, went its crab-like course backwards to the trade unions which had been dissolved, limited industrial freedom, introduced inquisitorial methods, excommunicated heretics. In the great strike non-socialists were refused water and gas, bread and milk for children. They compelled the contented to be discontented, made men wild and despairing, and really made things worse, when they ought to have improved them.

But in their pagan Radicalism they did not attain to the height of Christianity. Unbelieving, they believed in everything that was false—scientific fallacies, politico-economical errors, philosophical stupidities. Into a pagan one may instil every possible falsehood and stupidity; but for the truth in its real relations he is deaf and blind.

To have a moderate quiet contempt of the world, to be already half out of it, one's staff in one's hand and one's knapsack on one's back, ever ready for departure, to have clean hands and a good conscience—that is the way not to be easily assailable. Then one is not envied, and suffers not from disappointments and humiliations, for one is prepared for all, and has anticipated all in advance.

"Vanity, Vanity," saith the Preacher. "Sow in the morning thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall succeed, or whether both alike are good."

Where Are We?—If men only knew where they are!

The description which the ancients gave of Tartarus exactly fits our condition in this life. The ambitious man rolls his stone up the hill like Sisyphus, and when he has got it to the top it rolls down again. A certain architect spent twenty-five years of his life in working and intriguing in order to build a temple for the state. The temple was built and consecrated, a torch-light procession was held in honour of the architect, and he was crowned with a laurel-wreath. The next day the newspapers informed us that the temple must be pulled down because it was a failure. The architect died half a year afterwards in an asylum; the temple was demolished and the architect's name forgotten and obliterated. Tantalus, the rich miser, stands in the midst of a spring of water, but cannot drink; branches laden with fruit hang over his head, but when he stretches out his hand to pluck a fruit a gust of wind comes and tears the branch away. The rich man has worked and swindled till old age begins. Then at last, when the grouse come flying towards him, he has no teeth left; his wine-cellar is full, but the doctor has forbidden him wine. That is Tantalus!

Ixion revolves on his wheel, at one moment up, at another down. The ancients assigned as the reason of his punishment that he had boasted of the favour of a woman who had never been his.

The Danaides, the coquettes, are perpetually drawing water, but their vessel is like a sieve; everything enters it, but nothing remains.

All day long and every day one hears the expression "That is hell!"—such is the universal view. When things look a little brighter, the table is covered, the bed made, and we feel well again. We cheat ourselves often with alcohol, and continue our somnambulism. Then we are awoken by a noise, start up, rush about, weep, and then go to sleep again. At last sleep is banished once for all, and we wake never to sleep any more. Once we are well awake no opiates are of avail.

Then we discover the whole cheat. We see where we are, and what our past, which seemed so real, was. The comparatively wise man then turns away from the phantoms and shadows of reality in order to seek the other, the true, the actual Real. Then the state is seen to be a prison; the defenders of the fatherland are body-snatchers; society is a madhouse, whose warders are the officials and police; family life is concubinage; capitalists are usurers; the fine arts are superfluities; literature is printed nonsense; industry feeds unnecessary luxury; railways are instruments of torture; the electric light ruins the eyes; all the blessings of civilisation are either curses or superfluous.

When we have seen this, we turn our backs on all and seek the only thing that holds, that gives a real answer, that fulfils what it promises. But this super-real fools call a phantom.

Hegel's Christianity.—There are two Voltaires: one, the mocker at all definite religion, who is revered by the godless; the other, the fanatical champion of God who is ridiculed by the atheists because he believed in God as naïvely as a child. Voltaire recovered his reason before he died, as lunatics are wont to do; when he died he was definitely religious and took the sacrament. There are also two Hegels. But they are more complicated than Voltaire, who was as simple as a feuilletonist. Hegel discovered with his logic that what exists has a right to exist; he defends the status quo, society, state, religion with all their corollaries, because they have proceeded from God; everything is right since it exists. "It belongs," he says, "to the essence of religion that it should realise itself in several historical religious forms. Of these, however, Christianity is the only one which suitably expresses the essence of religion. In her doctrine of the Trinity the Christian Church contains the nucleus of all philosophical speculation. For this signifies nothing less than that the Eternal God, enthroned in His majesty over the sphere of the finite, condescends and reconciles Himself to the finite, becomes man, suffers, dies, and returns to Himself as the Holy Spirit." That is well put; but every schoolchild knew it already from Luther's "little catechism." For what object then is this extraordinary accumulation of several thousand pages of incomprehensible philosophy? To what purpose? Hegel died of cholera in 1831, after traversing many devious ways, as a simple, believing Christian, without any philosophy, repeating the penitential psalms.

"Men of God's Hand."—That is Kind David's expression (Ps. xvii., 14) which he uses of the godless, to whom the Lord gave power over His people Israel when they behaved badly. Thereby is the knotty problem solved, why God gives the godless power, honour, and wealth, while He often chastises His servants.

The Pharaohs were idolaters and wizards, but God's chosen people had to be their slaves. The Philistines worshipped Baal and Astarte, but they were allowed to devastate Canaan and even to carry away the Ark of the Covenant. Nebuchadnezzar was no saint, quite the contrary, but he was permitted to carry the children of Israel into captivity. Good men are not adapted to be instruments of chastisement, and the office of executioner is not an enviable one. Everyone has his Egyptian armed with a rod, whether they are called superiors, employers, customers, the public, newspapers, or even public opinion.

All strive for an imaginary independence or so-called freedom, while there is no independence and no freedom. Therefore the effort is vain. Only one thing remains—to reconcile oneself to obedience to human authority for the Lord's sake, and to pay taxes where taxes are due. And where one earns one's bread, one must be polite. Vex, not thyself that thy trade and thy position are difficult; God has so appointed it.

Night Owls.—The maggot in the apple doubtless imagines that the apple was grown for its sake, and that the world could not exist without apples. So we also imagine that science and art are certainly necessary. Swedenborg, in his description of another sphere, tells us how happy men can be without such luxuries. "They know nothing of sciences as we see them in our world, and wish to know nothing; they call them 'shadows,' and compare them with clouds which come between the sun and the spectator. This idea of the sciences they have derived from certain spirits who came from our earth and introduced themselves as those who had grown wise through science. These spirits from our earth who made this claim belonged to those who see wisdom in such things as are pure matters of memory, such as languages; in historical matters, which belong to the literary world; in bare experiences and terms, especially philosophical ones. Because these have not developed their faculty of reasoning through science, they have in their second life little power of perceiving the truth, for they see only in and by means of technical terms, which like hills and thick clouds obstruct the sight of reason. Those who have employed the sciences in order to destroy matters of faith have their reason so thoroughly unsettled that in pitch-darkness they take false for true, and evil for good, like night-owls."

The flag of the university also carries the sign of an owl, but they do not know what it means.

Apotheosis.—When a man who has been near to us dies, he begins to loom magnified through a kind of haze. All his less-pleasing characteristics are obliterated, as if they were part of that dust which is now dissolved. His better self, on the other hand, becomes larger and clearer. It is indeed possible that the liberated spirit becomes ennobled by death, and that therefore the survivor is right in forming a new conception of the personality of the deceased. He with whom the survivor now holds spiritual intercourse is perhaps what the survivor feels him to be, and has ceased to be what he was in life. It is almost invariably the case that the survivor torments himself with reproaches that he has been guilty of some neglect towards the dead, has done him slight injustices and spoken hard words. Even the coldest-hearted begs the dead secretly for forgiveness—forgiveness for all even when it was hardly ill-meant. All this seems to signify that the dead one is alive, and has need of kindly thoughts as a compensation for the reproaches he makes himself regarding those he has left behind.

Painting Things Black.—There are men who anticipate their troubles, hoping thereby to neutralise or to bribe destiny. But that is a mistaken calculation. I know of an author who saw a great calamity approaching and tried to write it away. He composed a drama on that theme, and hoped thereby to have escaped it. Soon afterwards, however, it arrived and the effect was as strong as though it had never been written about, perhaps even more.

Theosophists say that we can create thought-forms which assume life and reality. They mean that men can send from a distance evil suggestions which others carry out. Thus criminal romances have never deterred anyone from crime; they have on the contrary given scoundrels bright ideas for new pieces of rascality. I actually know of a society novel which criticised bank and joint-stock company frauds, with the result that such frauds increased. It is as though one let loose demons.

Therefore it is dangerous merely to think evil of men; one may do them harm thereby. But what a supernatural effort is necessary always to see good where so little is to be found! And when we try our best we find that we have played the hypocrite. It is almost hopeless to hold the balance level when it is a matter of judging men justly, for human nature is evil and cannot be altered.

The Thorn in the Flesh.—Whence come evil and ugly thoughts which start up in our most beautiful moments, in the hour of devotion, and even in prayer? We wish to ignore them; we have the impression that they come from without. But it is possible that they are born of the habit of letting evil thoughts have free course in silence and solitude. Still it is mysterious that the greater the height to which we have attained by striving, the deeper we fall. And I can testify from my own experience that it is at the very time of renunciation and self-discipline that one is most liable to unclean thoughts and imaginations. St. Anthony and other saints are examples of this.

A great sorrow, for instance, the longing for a lost child, is the quickest and best means of burning away the rubbish. But often, alas! on the sorrow there follows a boisterous joy which is not of the noblest kind. Immediately after our noblest moods, when we have been inspired by the most beautiful thoughts and purposes, it is possible in the next moment to feel like a coxcomb.

It is not strange that the ancients believed in demons who whisper into one's ear and suggest impure imaginations. Possibly this was St. Paul's thorn in the flesh, which pricked him so that he should not be too much uplifted.

Despair and Grace.—When in youth one sought to conquer evil desires, and even harmless ones, with the severest scourge provided by religion, and then saw that one could not change one's vices, one let go of the reins and life went as it went. Work was the chief occupation of middle life, and there was no time to think of one's soul. Life itself moulded one's character, and one threw a bone to the dog—the flesh in order to be able to work in peace.

Then when in old age we come to reflect, and at sixty find that we have remained very much the same, we wish to begin our spiritual education, but with indifferent success. We had hoped that certain desires would disappear and certain virtues take their place by a kind of natural necessity, as we had believed when young. But, alas! that is not the case. When now we again resume the struggles of our youth the case is thus. We have raised our standard higher, and wish to root out all the weeds. What formerly seemed quite natural—envy of a fellow-worker, revenge on an enemy, pride in success, exultation at a foe's downfall, a small white lie—we now find hateful. And so we begin to struggle against the outward manifestations of these things. But when we find the inner evil just as strong as before, we finally regard ourselves as great hypocrites and are ready to despair.

Where is comfort to be found then? Religion only asserts that we are hypocrites, and our fellow-men regard it as a fact. Absolute despair seizes us. What follows then? Grace! It becomes clear to us that everything is grace, and from grace. And that we have been living on the bread of charity which we believed we had earned.

The Last Act (From the life of a leader of the "Renaissance").—The final act is the most important one in a drama, and a dramatist generally begins his work at the end. We sit out a long evening at the theatre in order to see the last act or "how it will go." But in the significant lives of certain men people like to ignore the last act, because it is uncomfortable and might show how the godless fare at last. He who wrote the operetta Boccaccio had to append the last act to it; the jovial Florentine became a priest and delivered lectures on Dante's Hell, though he only reached the seventeenth canto. Voltaire's last hours, when he took the sacrament, might furnish a subject for a tragedy like the second part of Faust. Heine announced his conversion, which took place in 1851, in the preface to the Romancero: "I have returned to God like the prodigal son, after I had fed swine with the Hegelians for a long time." This preface should be printed before every collection of Heine's poems. Hegel singing penitential psalms on his death-bed might form the subject of a fresco painting for the entrance-hall of Berlin University. But the most affecting final act is Oscar Wilde's description of his prison life in De Profundis. He was the so-called renaissance leader, who disinterred heathenism with its false worship of beauty, which contains the foulest of all. Kierkegaard[1] would have called him the æsthete, the Sybarite cold as cast iron, the egoist round whose petty "I" the whole world was to revolve in order to understand him alone. Many, led astray like him by the seducing spirits of his youth, remained fairly free from public punishment. Wilde seems to have been picked out to furnish a startling example, for his position, at any rate in his own country, was almost that of an idol.

What he wrote lacks originality; it is whipped-up foam; glazing which, when washed off, leaves no texture; it is as restless as cross-lights, or like a mirror in a public restaurant, in a labyrinthine hall with deceptive lines and false perspectives; it runs out of the hand like albumen or frog-spawn; it is perverse as in Dorian Gray, the hero of which should have lost his youth by nightly excesses, while on the contrary it is only his portrait which changes.

The last act was played, and that outdid all horror, was so horrible that Wilde himself could not describe its details, which, however, oral tradition has preserved in a Swedenborgian legend.

De Profundis arouses pity and fear, and one would gladly acquit the man who was perhaps the victim of his delusion; a worldly tribunal would not have judged him if he had not himself appealed to it, and that indeed for a wrong done him. It was what our renaissance-critic called a "piece of stupidity" when he made Wilde out to be a martyr of "hypocrisy," as he called justice. Wilde however seems to have taken another view of the matter to his impartial defender: "A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy. Once I had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said: 'Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full.' A man's very highest moment, I have no doubt at all, is when he kneels in the dust and beats his breast and tells us all the sins of his life."

The "joy of life" whose perfume he had inhaled at Oxford through Pater's Renaissance now began to grow sour.

"Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.

"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament coarse, hard, and callous. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. The secret of life is suffering."

Let us add that Wilde derived his most dangerous doctrine from Baudelaire and Shakespeare's sonnets. And let us close with the new view of the Renaissance which he attained to in prison: "To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ's own renaissance which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance."

Consequences of Learning.—As soon as a man buries himself in books he gets black nails and dirty cuffs, forgets to wash, to comb his hair, and to shave. He neglects his duties towards life, society, and men; loses spiritual capacities, becomes absent-minded, short-sighted, wears glasses, and takes snuff in order to keep himself awake. He cannot follow a conversation with attention, cannot interest himself in other people's affairs, does not see the face of the earth by day nor the stars by night. Behind his desire to investigate lies the insidious ambition to master his material, to become an authority, to tyrannise, to make a career for himself, and to receive distinctions.

If men only reflected what tyrants they obey—these black magicians who are called professors; who settle what we are to think and believe; who test and examine, reject and choose; who form committees, write handbooks, deliver lectures, and bestow prizes on those who accept their hypotheses.

And has it ever occurred to a student to criticise his teacher? No; he swallows everything uncritically. But if he goes into a church where he hears God's own word revealed by way of intuition to the prophets, then he begins to exercise his critical faculty; then he finds it very difficult to comprehend the simplest things; then he wants mathematical certainty, which he considers the highest while it is really the lowest.

Swedenborg says in one place: "Though goodness and truth are sent down through the heavens, when they reach the hells they are changed into evil and falsity; the brilliant light of the sun changes into ugly colours and its warmth becomes an evil odour."

Rousseau.—In my youth I read of an Englishman who shot himself because life was so wearisome. He had counted the buttons which he had to unbutton and button up every day—in his under-clothing half a dozen, in his day-shirt half a dozen, in his collar and cuffs half a dozen, in his waistcoat, trousers, and coat a dozen, in his boots, gaiters, and gloves two dozen. When he wanted to ride out he had to change, as he had also to do for dinner and the evening.

This story, though absurd, reveals the naked truth. Life has become so burdensome, and half the day is spent in useless occupations: unnecessary visits, telephoning, writing letters about nothing, reading the papers; especially in making one's toilette which formerly consisted of a becoming mantle fastened with a single cord, but has now developed into a whole set of things with buttons, hooks, eyes, strings, ribbons, needles, buckles. Our toilettes are a miniature picture of our civilisation with all its time-wasting fussiness, most of which is useless nonsense. The man who lives in the country and cultivates the ground needs neither art, science, nor literature. He who has nature needs no art, and religion is more than science and literature. There are churches everywhere, but museums, theatres, book-shops, and clubs only in the towns. Whether they are necessary is another question.

That is Rousseau!

Rousseau Again.—In Southern France I once saw some half-wild Arab horses running loose in a meadow. They still had their long tails to hide what is not beautiful and to protect them against the stings of insects. They seemed well adapted to their purpose, but they were more than useful: they were beautiful. And when I contemplated the lines in these beautiful creatures' bodies—the curve of the withers such as is not found in geometry, its continuation along the back and loins; the noble construction and movements of the hind-legs; the proportions of the shank below the knee tapering down to the hoof, which leaves on the sand graceful prints like Moorish arches—and when the proud creatures sped over the meadow in full gallop with movements like that of a sailing-boat on the waves, then the curves played into new harmonies and changed their form, tail, mane, and forelock floated like draperies about the body, and I thought "All that is certainly adapted for running, but it is much more, it is beautiful; it has not come to be of itself, but it is created by a Contriver, a wise and great Artist." It is, however, more than a work of art, for it has life and individuality, and no two horses are exactly alike. Then I thought of the attempts of men to "improve" this masterpiece, of the English race-horses—those machines! In this process of selection they have chosen the ugliest, docked their tails, robbed them of their fairest ornament, placed an apelike jockey on their backs in order to make money by racing. To this caricature men have degraded the beautiful gift of God.

Anyone who has learnt at school to draw a horse knows how difficult it is to make these lines harmonise, and fall and rise in the right places; to draw the head not too large and not too small, but exactly proportioned; to bring the forepart and the loins into symmetrical relations with each other; to make the neck slope gently into the fine curve of the back. It was the work of many days merely to copy the outline correctly. Raphael could not draw a horse; his Attila rides on a rocking-horse. One is often inclined to agree with Rousseau when he says everything which comes from the hand of the Creator is perfect, but when it falls into the hands of man it is spoiled.

Materialised Apparitions.—I have never seen it, but it is said to be a fact that in hypnotic seances those who are present produce from the half-etherialised substance of the medium a kind of being which is visible and leads an apparitional life, so long as the circle keeps together. Such among others was Professor Crookes' "Katie King."

But what causes me to believe this is a matter of everyday experience. Men create their idols out of nothing, and by means of their imagination fashion their fellow-men, both living and dead, into something quite different to what they really are. These creations naturally partake of their own substance and are after their own likeness. Sometimes they create something really great, sometimes a monster, a demigod, or a devil.

We often see that hatred against one person is, so to speak, polarised and converted into love towards his antagonist. A great unpopularity is, in the person of another, changed into a great popularity. The reward which should have been given to the worthiest is given to the unworthy, in order to crush the deserving.

At the award of a famous prize one who was uninitiated lately asked: "Why did not X get the prize?"

"Because Y was to have it," was the answer.

Fifteen years ago a very remarkable book of 650 pages was published. It obtained no notice in the press. But at the same time a wretched pamphlet received all the praise which the large book ought to have had. When I read the reviews of the paltry pamphlet I thought I was reading those of the book, for the subject-matter was the same.

Recently an important post was filled up, connected, let us say, with road-making and hydraulic structures. The person who received it was a very remarkable man. Public opinion (though not private) regarded him as the most deserving and suitable candidate. He passed for a distinguished engineer, thoroughly up in his profession, was said to be well off, an able organiser, diligent and considerate towards his subordinates.

Now it is to be remarked that the man was nothing of all that; he had never made roads or constructed hydraulic works, but left that to his skilful assistants; he did not know his profession; he neglected what he had in hand; he was not to be found in his office, for he played cards and spent the nights in carousing. He was hard towards his employees, managed so badly that he never knew the state of his affairs, and was careless in money matters.

How then had he come to be elected? Some said he had been chosen in order to punish and humble the conceited engineers who had become unpopular. Others thought that the intention was that he should come to grief and be ruined because he was feared and hated.

However that may be, he was a materialised apparition created by the hate, envy, and malignity of the crowd; he had become an idea, a lucky rascal, a ruthless man whose elevation was necessary in order to still the tumult. He was like a crude mass of ore which stood for four hundred years in the market-place and was supposed to represent Justice, but was really the counterfeit presentment of a thievish alderman foisted in by the burgomaster.

The Art of Dying.—The wish for power is said to be a fundamental condition of the existence of the ego, without which a man would perish, as he could not resist the pressure of others. So we were taught by the seducing spirits of our youth. But Swedenborg says the thirst for power comes from hell, and Balzac speaks of the galley-slaves of ambition who can never rest. Dante has a fine verse regarding the fate of the great painters: one must retire in order to make place for another; he passes into the shadow and is forgotten.

Even when it is unjust, as it often is, one must acquiesce in being relegated to the back-ground, for men get tired even of the best and desire change. A great name becomes oppressive, is felt as a tyranny, and hinders others from also making great names for themselves. Napoleon and Bismarck saw this clearly, for both said beforehand that the world would give a sigh of relief when they were gone. But, in order to depart content, we require religious resignation, complete irrevocable withdrawal from the world. Such as Charles the Fifth's retirement into a monastery. To receive a "benefit" on one's retirement and then to reappear on the stage is not becoming. If one considers oneself dead to the world and takes no notice of it, then a new life begins, but on the other side; it is a much more peaceful one, for it is the resurrection from the dead already here! Beethoven was vexed that the Viennese were ungrateful and forgetful when Rossini appeared and brought again in fashion the Italian opera, which Beethoven, had devoted his life to extirpate. Beethoven however, was a hard, selfish, and very proud man, who was accordingly literally tormented out of life, in great matters and in small. Increasing deafness, a disagreeable lawsuit, a mad young relative, domestic scandal, illnesses troubled his last years; he had even to be exposed to the undeserved ridicule of underlings. Thus, well prepared, he turned his back on life, and departed from all without missing anything.

So it should be, in order that nothing should bind one either with longing or with hope, in order that on the other side of the river one may not look back but go straight forward.

The object of the trials of old age is to adjust accounts, to finish up unsettled affairs, to see through the cheat of life, and to become weary of the incomplete, so that no backward longings may disturb the repose of the grave.

Can Philosophy Bring any Blessing to Mankind?—Such was the title of a pamphlet written in the 'sixties by a teacher of philosophy, Pontus Wikner. The question was justified; how it was answered I do not remember, but the answer must have been evasive, for the writer of the pamphlet was a professor. If he had said that all philosophy, especially systematic philosophy, was rubbish, his career would have been at an end.

When, in 1870 at the university, I wished to study æsthetics, the professor of the subject sent me to the lecturer in order to take lessons. As he sat there and talked for hours by the light of a composite candle, I tried to decipher the furrowed brow of the pale man and to ascertain whether he really understood what he taught, or whether he only taught by rote. But I could not see through him and I despaired, for I understood nothing, and I cannot learn by heart what I do not understand. That would be humbug.

About forty years later I met the professor who was now pensioned, and consequently no longer a member of the college of augurs. Then I asked him whether he had ever mastered æsthetics?

"Good gracious, no! That is why I sent you to the lecturer."

"Did he understand them then?"

"I don't think so. But he had a good memory."

Then after all it was not my fault, and I was not more stupid than the rest.

Anyone who reads a short history of philosophy, and observes how one system replaces and refutes another, must be inclined to say, "Surely it is time to make an end of this drivel!" For the whole history of philosophy proves that thought cannot solve these problems, or that they cannot be solved by constructing a system of philosophy. The few philosophers, on the other hand, who have limited themselves to reflections on the variegated medley of life as seen in man, politics, and nature, have been of some use, but they are hardly counted philosophers. One can read fragments of Plato with interest, and also the unappreciated Schopenhauer, especially in his least-valued work Parerga and Paralipomena, but not in his systematic treatise The World as Will and Idea. Kierkegaard is not regarded as a philosopher, nor are Feuerbach and his pupil Nietzsche, but they are extraordinarily instructive. All who construct an empty system with facts are fools. Such is Boström, who tries to subtilise conceptions, analyse ideas, and classify and arrange God, man, and human life under heads.

The history of philosophy is the history of errors, the history of lying, for nearly all philosophers are disguised rebels against God and opponents of religion. Philosophy is a history of falsehood, and since it has demonstrated its own absurdity, all professorships of philosophy should be abolished. For a Christian state frustrates its own aims and is foolish if it supports a teacher of error and falsehood.

If for once in a way a philosopher is religious, people give him the contemptuous name of "mystic," although very few know what mysticism is.

In one professorial chair sits an Hegelian and preaches Hegel's pantheism as the truth, and in another sits a Boströmian and pulls Hegel to pieces. But the student must be examined by both, and give his adherence to both systems together. That is the higher education, academic culture, and learning in its glory!

The mass of people believe that all which is difficult to understand is deep, but it is not so. What is difficult to understand is immature, vague, and often false. The highest wisdom is simple, clear, and goes through the brain straight into the heart. Set a philosopher on the grave where his earthly hopes lie buried, and let him discourse of Herbert Spencer and the blastoderm! Place a philosopher in the Privy Council, and let him have a share in the conduct of the state! Ask a philosopher to write a drama, to paint a picture, or even to teach school-children, and he is useless. "Philosopher" is synonymous with superannuated donkey! Away with him!

Goethe on the Bible.—Eckermann had bought an English Bible, and when he complained that the Apocryphal books were missing, Goethe said among other things: "It is superfluous to raise the question of authentic or unauthentic in matters of the Bible. I regard the four gospels as completely genuine, for in them shines the reflected splendour of the lofty personality of Christ, as divine as anything which has appeared on earth. If any one asks me whether I find it possible to pay him worship and reverence, I answer, 'Certainly!'"

Then there follows some Voltairian talk about the sun and religious relics, about priestcraft and bishops' incomes, which belonged to the bad tone of the time. These stupid free-thinkers could not imagine how three could be equivalent to one, and therefore they stumbled at the doctrine of the Trinity. Did they not know that three thirds are equivalent to one, and that one is equivalent to three thirds? Or was their reason so darkened by pride? Or did they not know that spiritual things must be spiritually judged; that the Highest cannot be reached by the highest mathematics? For neither Laplace nor Poincaré, who busied themselves with the "Mécanique céleste," reached heaven, much less God.

"Now we Can Fly too! Hurrah!"—A friend of my youth, who two weeks ago died in a distant place, wrote on his last postcard to me these words, "Now we can fly too! Hurrah!" He was a pagan, i.e. an atheist, and this last word "Hurrah!" was an expression of scorn and a threat against heaven.

Every gift of God is regarded by the pagans as a victory over God. They always think that they have made the discovery, and they still build at the Tower of Babel, the truth of whose story they deny, for they are lying spirits.

When the pious Franklin drew down lightning with his damp twine, he trembled and thanked God that He had not killed him. But when the godless physicists imitated Franklin, and wished to store the lightning in laboratory bottles, they were slain. People do indeed make lightning-conductors nowadays, but they are not always efficacious even when the conduction is right. Only imagine!—a man receives a gift, and as a mark of gratitude puts out his tongue! Every time that God gives something, irreligious science celebrates a triumph—that is, puts out its tongue!

That is the nature of science! And it seems as though it were still at present forbidden to touch the tree of knowledge, for the transgression of the prohibition is always accompanied by ingratitude and a curse.

The Fall and Original Sin.—In these times when the ape-morality rules, it is considered up-to-date to change the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction for that of heredity. The blame for our faults is put on our parents, especially, as might be expected, on the father. But when the father was alive, he put the blame on his father, and so on till we come to our first parents. That is indeed just like what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin, and ought to confirm the teaching of religion, but of course that cannot be!

That is the doctrine of heredity. But whence comes it? Where is the starting-point? Since everyone nowadays feels burdened with evil impulses and disease germs which he has inherited, and all our predecessors have felt the same, the only thing left is to lay the blame on our first parents.

How then is one to get rid of guilt—the consciousness of guilt and the evil impulses?

Christ answers more simply than the theologians who represent the work of grace as an examination course. "To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," He said to the thief who confessed that he suffered for his evil deeds; but He did not say so to the other who reviled Him.

Generally speaking, one should take one's doctrine straight from the Gospels, which are simpler, greater, diviner than other writings. Devotional books are like the higher mathematics, mixed, complicated, and affected with human weaknesses.

The Gospel.—All boast of the "Gospel," but they mean this joyful message—the abrogation of civic laws and the opening of the jails; in a word, immunity from punishment for themselves and more stringent regulations for others. That was the Renaissance morality preached at the conclusion of the Middle Ages as at the end of our century. They wished to enlighten mankind by proclaiming that everything is lawful (against others), and that if one only "understood" men, one would forgive them. "He does not understand," was the formula in common use. Were I now to enumerate all the victims of this gospel, which we had to learn, people would cry "Scandal!" Then they would proceed to explain the tragedies on natural grounds, such as neurasthenia, infection, heredity (but not from our first parents); the unfortunate Englishman,[1] they say, was wrongfully imprisoned, because society consists of hypocrites; not because of his own sin, for it was not his own sin: there is no sin.

Every suggestion that there are misdemeanours which draw down the unpleasant consequences, which are called punishments, is taken ill.

Five years ago I heard one of these evangelists exclaim, "Morality! that is a word which I cannot take in my mouth." This saying was often quoted.

But shortly afterwards the same gentleman set heaven and hell in motion because a pupil had used a statement in one of his lectures to base a treatise on. This innocent proceeding the "evangelist" stigmatised as theft, and he wished to annihilate the thief.

The young man answered quite rightly that in that case people ought to be punished for "stealing" their knowledge out of manuals without acknowledgment, or that if they gave chapter and verse for every statement, a treatise would look like this: "Sum, 'I am' (Rabe's Grammar, 6th edition, Stockholm, 1858), called an auxiliary verb (Sundelin Schwedische Sprachlehre, Örebro, 1901), which indicates the passive voice (Sjoberg, Logic, Upsala, 1895)," and so on.

This gentleman was a very severe moralist, although he could not take the word morality in his mouth.

Religious Heathen.—Hardly anywhere are there such religious men as the Orientals. Five times a day the muezzin calls from each minaret in eastern lands: "God is great! I bear witness that there is no God but God! I bear witness that Muhammed is the Apostle of God! Come to prayer! Come to salvation! God is great! There is no God but God!" Early in the morning they cry in addition, "Prayer is better than sleep." On the streets and market-places, in the shops and inns, everywhere one is summoned to prayer.

Is it not impressive to see a whole people, of whom not one is ashamed of his God—not one! A people among whom, five times a day, this joyful message comes from the Lord, the All-Merciful, who "has not forsaken and has not repulsed thee!" And is it not uplifting in the midst of the severe and squalid tasks of every day to hear a voice from above witnessing, without attempting to convince, that God is God? Anything so perverse and stupid as free-thinking and atheism does not exist in the Orient. If anyone attempted to assert such an abominable tenet as the non-existence of God, he would be imprisoned or put to death. And if anyone came and tried to close the mosques ... but no one comes, for the mosques are never empty:

"By the splendour of the day, By the darkness of the night, Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, Neither hath He repelled thee."—Koran.

That is the implicit and childlike faith which Christian heathen called "intolerance," "fanaticism," and so on.

The Pleasure-Garden.—If the inexperienced man knew how much suffering a separation between a married pair involves, he would reflect before taking such a step. The two souls have so grown into each other, that the dissolution of the duplex personality which they form is the most painful operation possible. It is a kind of death.

When one uproots the weeds round a flower, the flower fades away—partly because its roots are injured, partly because it has been deprived of shade, moisture, and support, or perhaps merely companionship.

The sorrow in this case resembles that which follows on a death, but is not so uplifting and ennobling. The image of the separated wife is always present to one's eyes, and becomes idealised in memory; ugly traits are obliterated, one begins to reproach oneself, there is a painful emptiness and longing; one's soul is tom in pieces by her departure; she has carried off its finest-fibred roots, and one feels as though bleeding to death. One can no more exchange common recollections. The loss of the illusions of the first springtide of love shatters one's faith in everything. A cry of mourning rings through the universe as though an irreparable crime had been committed, such as the sin against the Holy Ghost. Love, God's creative power, the sun's warmth that fills the heavens, the origin of life has ceased to exist. Chaos and darkness resume their reign. It is a spiritual death, without comfort and without hope.

Nevertheless something remains, if there ever was something there. And though both may marry again, there is a recollection of the former tie. It cannot be as though it had not been, nor be forgotten. However unpleasant the relationship may have been, still in its best hours it resembled something which is not to be found on earth. In its glorious beginning it was a Garden of Eden, such a heightening of existence that one felt nearer God. That was no optical delusion, but a higher reality. Then came the Fall and the expulsion. But the memory of the first joy remains, and it is true that a real love never ends.

People ask whether it continues on the other side even when inclination 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.

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.

Another Kant might write a new Critique of Pure Reason and re-establish the doctrine of the Categorical Imperative and Postulate, which, however, is already to be found in the Ten Commandments and the Gospels.

And a prophet must be born to teach men the simple meaning of life in a few words, though it has been already so well summed up: "Fear God, and keep His commandments," or "Pray and work."

All the errors and mistakes which we have made should serve to instil into us a lively hatred of evil, and to impart to us fresh impulses to good; these we can take with us to the other side, where they can first bloom and bear fruit.

That is the true meaning of life, at which the obstinate and impenitent cavil in order to escape trouble.

Pray, but work; suffer, but hope; keeping both the earth and the stars in view. Do not try and settle permanently, for it is a place of pilgrimage; not a home, but a halting-place. Seek truth, for it is to be found, but only in one place, with Him who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

THE END