Part 7

BEARDSLEY AND ARTHUR SYMONS.—“Unbounded” admiration is precisely what I cannot feel for Aubrey Beardsley’s work, even “within its own sphere.” I ought to say, perhaps, “because of its sphere.” Pure æsthetic is a matter for contemplation only, and we should be prepared upon occasion to suspend every other kind of judgment. Or, would it not be true to say that the purely æsthetic does itself suspend in the beholder every other form of judgment or reaction—such as the moral, the intellectual, and the practical? A great tragedy, for instance, is a kind of focus of the whole nature of man; every faculty is engaged in it, and all are lifted up and transfigured into the pure æsthetic of contemplation. But one is not aware, in that case, of moral or other reservations; one has not to apologise for the experience by pretending that the “essentially repulsive and diabolic decadence” contained in the tragedy is merely an expression of the age. Beardsley is only “something of a genius” precisely because he failed to transfigure the moral and other reactions of the spectator of his work. He did not occupy the _whole_ of one’s mind. All the while that one’s æsthetic sense was being led captive by his art, several other of one’s senses were in rebellion. His command (his genius, in short) was not “absolute,” but only a quite limited monarchy. This is not to deny that he was an artist; it is to deny only that he was one of the greatest of artists. Other artists owe him a greater debt than the world at large. He was a great art-master, but not a master of art. The doctrine of Mr. Arthur Symons is dangerous. Juggling with the terms good and evil is always dangerous, since in a prestidigital exhibition of them, one can so easily be made to look like the other. _Demon est Deus inversus._ The paradoxical truth about the matter, however, is that evil is good only so long as it is regarded as evil. The moment it is thought of as good it is nothing but evil. Mr. Arthur Symons has confused in his mind the problem of good and evil with the quite alien problem of quantity of energy.

“Æ’S” “CANDLE OF VISION.”—“Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ is not a book for everybody, yet I wish that everybody might read it. Rarely and more rarely does any artist or poet interest himself in the processes of his mental and spiritual life, with the consequence, so often deplored by Mr. Penty, that books on æsthetics, philosophy, and, above all, psychology, are left to be written by men who have no immediate experience of what they are writing of. “Æ’s” narrative, and criticism of his personal experiences may be said to take the form of intimate confessions made _pour encourager les autres_. For, happily for us, he is an artist who is also a philosopher, a visionary who is also an “intellectual”; and, being interested in both phases of his personality, he has had the impulse and the courage to express both. What the ordinary mind—the mind corrupted by false education—would say to “Æ’s” affirmations concerning his psychological experiences, it would not be difficult to forecast. What is not invention, it would be said, is moonshine, and what is neither is a pose to be explained on some alienist hypothesis. Only readers who can recall some experiences similar to those described by “Æ” will find themselves able to accept the work for what it is—a statement of uncommon fact; and only those who have developed their intuition to some degree will be able to appreciate the spirit of truth in which the _Candle of Vision_ is written. A review of such work is not to be undertaken by me, but I have made a few notes on some passages.

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Page 2. “_I could not so desire what was not my own, and what is our own we cannot lose.... Desire is hidden identity._” This is a characteristic doctrine of mysticism, and recurs invariably in all the confessions. Such unanimity is an evidence of the truth of the doctrine, since it is scarcely to be supposed that the mystics borrow from one another. But the doctrine, nevertheless, is difficult for the mere mind to accept, for it involves the belief that nothing happens to us that is not ourselves. Character in that event is destiny—to quote a variant of “Æ’s” sentence; and our lives are thus merely the dramatisation of our given psychology. Without presuming to question the doctrine, I feel a reserve concerning its absoluteness. Fate appears to me to be above destiny in the same sense that the old lady conceived that there was One above that would see that Providence did not go too far. To the extent that character is destiny or, as “Æ” says, desire is hidden identity, a correct psychological forecast would be at the same time a correct temporal forecast. And while this may be true, in the abstract and under, so to say, ideal conditions, I cannot yet agree that everything that happens to the individual is within his character. The unforeseeable, the margin of what we call Chance, allows for events that belong to Fate rather than to Destiny.

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Page 3. “Æ” says he “_was not conscious in boyhood (up to the age of sixteen or seventeen) of any heaven lying about me._” “Childhood,” he thinks, is no nearer the “eternally young” than age may be. Certainly it appears to be so in the case of “Æ” himself, for the intimations of immortality which Wordsworth (and the world in general) attributed to children were only begun to be experienced by “Æ” after his sixteenth or seventeenth year. From that time onwards, as this book testifies, he has been growing younger in precisely those characteristics. There is a good deal to be thought, if not said, on this subject. Children are, I conceive, rather symbols of youth than youth itself; they are unconsciously young. Age, on the other hand, has the power of converting the symbol into the reality, and of being young and knowing it. Unless ye become, _not_ little children, but _as_ little children, ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At the same time it is comparatively rare for the ordinary child, that “Æ” says he was, to develop childlikeness in later life. Usually a return occurs to a state unconsciously experienced in early youth. But there appear to be strata of characteristics in every mind, and life is their successive revelation. Without knowing anything of the facts, I surmise that “Æ’s” heredity was mixed, and that the first layer or stratum to appear was that of some possibly Lowland Scot ancestry. When that was worked through, by the age of sixteen, another layer came to the surface, whereupon “Æ” entered on another phase of “desire.”

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Page 7. “_We may have a personal wisdom, but spiritual wisdom is not to speak of as ours._” This illustrates another characteristic of the mystic that while his experiences are personal, the wisdom revealed in them is always attributed to “Him that taught me”—in other words, to something not ourselves. An egoist mysticism is a contradiction in terms. Not only no man is entitled to claim originality for a spiritual truth, but no man can. The truth is no longer true when it has a name to it. “Truth bears no man’s name” is an axiom of mysticism. The reason, I presume, is that the very condition of the appreciation of a spiritual truth is the absence of the sense of egoism. Such truths are simply not revealed to the egoistic consciousness, and therefore cannot appear as the product of human wisdom. Their character is that of a revelation from without rather than that of a discovery from within, and the report of the matter is thus objective rather than subjective.

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Page 16. “_I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods in myself that without search I should soon meet people of a certain character, and so I met them.... I accepted what befell with resignation.... What we are alone has power.... No destiny other than we make for ourselves._” I have already expressed my doubts whether this is the whole truth. It is, of course, the familiar doctrine of Karma; but I do not think it can be interpreted quite literally. There is what is called the Love of God, as well as the Justice of God, and I would venture to add, with Blake, the Wrath of God. Judgment is something more than simple justice; it implies the consent of the whole of the judging nature, and not of its sense of justice only. Love enters into it, and so, perhaps, do many other qualities not usually attributed to the Supreme Judge. In interpreting such doctrines we must allow for the personal equation even of the highest personality we can conceive.

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Page 19. “_None needs special gifts of genius._” “Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ is confessedly propagandist. It aims deliberately at encouraging age to discover eternal youth, and to lay hold of everlasting life. It is to this end that “Æ” describes his own experiences, and offers to his readers the means of their verification. He is quite explicit that no “special gifts” or “genius” are necessary. “This do and ye shall find even as I have found.” The special gift of genius does not, I agree, lie in the nature of fact of the experience (though here, again, favour seems sometimes to be shown), but it does, I think, lie in the bent towards the effort involved. Anybody, it is true, may by the appropriate means experience the same results, but not everybody has the “desire” to employ them. Desire, moreover, is susceptible of many degrees of strength. Like other psychological characteristics, it appears to peel off like the skins of Peer Gynt’s onion. What is it that I really desire? Ask me to-day, and I shall answer one thing. Ask me next year, and it may be another. Years hence it may have changed again. But desire, in the mystical sense, is the desire that is left when all the transient wishes or fancies have either vanished or been satisfied. Only such a desire leads the student to make the effort required by “Æ,” and the possession of such a desire is something like a “special gift” or “genius.”

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Page 20. “_Our religions make promises to be fulfilled beyond the grave, because they have no knowledge now to be put to the test.... Mistrust the religion that does not cry out: ‘Test me that we can become as gods.’_” This is an excellent observation, and accounts, to my mind, for all the so-called scepticism of modern times. It is usual to attribute to our predecessors, the most remote as well as the more recent, a quality of “faith” superior to our own. They are said to have been more religious than we are. I do not believe it; or, rather, I believe that they were religious because they had very good reason to be; in other words, they were not only told the mysteries, but they were shown them. Either they or their priests had the “open vision.” Is it conceivable that the primitive peoples had the confidence-trick played on them? Or, again, is it the fact that credulity is less to-day than before? I feel sure that if our ancestors were brought to belief, it was by means which would equally carry conviction to the present generation. To repeat myself: They believed because they were shown. “Æ” suggests that the after-life promises of modern religion are a substitute for or an invasion of present demonstration. Religions, that is to say, concentrate upon the invisible because their power over the visible is gone. It is not the fact, however, that the earlier religions ignored the after-death adventures of the soul; they were quite as much concerned with the life beyond the grave as our own religions. What they did, and what our religions fail to do, was to give present guarantees for their future promises. Their priests could procure belief in the after-life on the strength of their demonstrated power over this life. It is probable, indeed, that many of the elect experienced “death” before it occurred physically. The Egyptian mysteries were a kind of experimental death.

Page 21. Here and on the neighbouring pages “Æ” expounds his method of meditation—the means by which any “ordinary” person may acquire spiritual experience. “Æ’s” method follows the familiar line of the mystic schools, namely, unwavering concentration on some mental object. “Five minutes of this effort,” “Æ” says, “will at first leave us trembling as at the end of a laborious day.” I can testify that this is no exaggeration, for, like “Æ,” I have practised meditation after the methods prescribed. It is no easy job, and after months of regular practice I was still an amateur at the simplest exercises. There is no doubt, however, about the benefit of it. Much is learned in meditation that cannot be realised by any other mental exercise. The _mind_ becomes a real organ, as distinct from the personality as a physical limb. And gradually one learns to acquire sufficient control over it, if not to use it like a master, at any rate, to realise that it _can_ be so used. I have not the smallest doubt that one day men will be able to “use” their minds, and thus to cease to be “used” by them; for it is obvious that at present we are victims rather than masters of our mind. Meditation, as a means of mind-control, is the appointed method, and “Æ’s” personal experience should encourage his readers to take up the discipline.

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Page 41. In regard to “visions,” they are usually dismissed by the commonalty as products of imagination, “as if,” says “Æ,” “imagination were as easily explained as a problem in Euclid.” This habit of referring one mystery to another, as if this latter were no mystery, is very common; and it arises, no doubt, from intellectual apathy. We cannot be bothered to reduce mysteries to knowledge, and, moreover, the realisation that literally everything is a mystery, that we simply live in mystery, is a little disconcerting. Hence our preference for assuming some things, at any rate, to be below the need of explanation. Imagination, however, provides us with no escape from the mysteries of vision, any more than matter provides us with an escape from the problems of spirit. “Æ” raises some difficult, and, probably, insoluble problems concerning imagination itself. _What_ is it in us that imagines? _How_ does it cast thoughts into form? Even allowing (which we cannot) that imagination is only “the re-fashioning of memory,” what re-fashions and transforms out of their original resemblance the memories of things seen? “Æ” has had many visions, some of which, no doubt, he could trace to recollected impressions; but, leaving aside once more the difficulty involved in this reconstruction, what of the visions that had, or appeared to have, no earthly progenitors? “Æ’s” conclusion appears to be indisputable, that “we swim in an æther of deity”—for “in Him we live and move and have our being.”

Passim. Is it possible that telepathy occurs between people having the same mental “wavelength”? Coincidences (another Mesopotamian word, by the way) are too frequent to be accountable on any other supposition than that of an established communication. Like many another, I could give some remarkable instances of telepathy, but they would be tedious to relate. Mental training, however, is certainly a means to this end; for in proportion as the mind is brought under control, its susceptibility to thoughts from outside palpably increases. The experience of the Old Testament prophet who knew the plans of the enemy before they were uttered is not unique, even in these days. It will be far less uncommon in the days to come.

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Page 54. “_Is there a centre within us through which all the threads of the universe are drawn?_” An ingenious image for a recurrent doctrine of mysticism, the doctrine, namely, that everything is everywhere. One of the earliest discoveries made in meditation is the magnitude of the infinitesimal. The tiniest point of space appears to have room enough for a world of images; and the mediæval discussion concerning the number of angels that could dance on the point of a needle was by no means ridiculous. If I am not mistaken, “Æ’s” problem is identical with it.

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Page 89. The Architecture of Dreams. In this chapter “Æ” sets himself to casting some doubts (shall we say?) on the sufficiency of the Freudian theory of dreams. Dreams, according to Freud, are the dramatisation of suppressed desires; but what, asks “Æ,” is the means by which desires, suppressed or otherwise, dramatise themselves? “A mood or desire may _attract_ its affinities”; in other words, there may be a congruity between the desire and the dream which serves the Freudian purpose of interpretation; but desire can hardly be said “to _create_ what it attracts.” Between anger, for instance, and a definite vision of conflict, such as the dream may represent, there is a gulf which the theory of Freud does not enable us to cross. What, in fact, _are_ dreams? _Who_ or _what_ carries out the dramatisation? Assuming, with Freud, that their impulse is a desire, what power shapes this desire into the dream-cartoon? “Æ” throws no light on the mystery, but, at any rate, he does not dismiss it as no mystery at all. Its philosophical discussion is to be found in the Indian philosophy known as the Sankhya.

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Page 89. “_The process must be conscious on some plane_”—the dramatisation, that is to say, must be the conscious work of some intelligent agent or quality. I am a little doubtful of this, for reasons to be discovered in the Sankhya philosophy just referred to. Is the pattern taken by sand on a shaken plate a “conscious” design? Are frost-flowers the work of intelligence? Forms, according to the Sankhya, are the reflection in matter (Prakriti) of the activities of the spirit (Purusha); they are consciousness visible. But it would not follow that they are themselves conscious or that their creation is a “conscious” process.

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Page 90. “Have imaginations body?” In other words, are the figures seen in dream and vision three-dimensional? “Æ” describes several incidents within his experience that certainly seem to suggest an objective reality in dream-figures, and the occasional projection of dream-figures into phantasms is a further evidence of it. But, once again, I would refer “Æ” to the Sankhya aphorisms, and to Kapila’s commentary on them. The question is really of the general order of the relation of form to thought.

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Page 114. Here, and in the succeeding essay, “Æ” develops his intuitional thesis that sound and thought have definite affinities. For every thought there is a sound, and every sound is at the same time a thought. The idea is, of course, familiar, and, like many more in the _Candle of Vision_, is found recurring like a decimal throughout mystical and occult literature in all ages. The most ancient occult literature—dispute whether that of India or Egypt—is most precise on the subject, the general proposition being therein reduced to a series of equivalents in which form, sound, colour, thought, emotion, and number, all seem to be interchangeable. Each of these, in fact, is said to be a language—a complete language; and to the initiate it is a matter of indifference whether the text before him is “written” in form, in colour, in number, or sound. Unfortunately, neither “Æ” nor anybody within our knowledge, is able to procure even the skeleton key to the mystery. The records are so perversely confused that I cannot believe that their authors were not deliberately playing a game with us. It would be rather like the old initiates to “dis” their type before leaving it to be examined by the barbarian invaders; and certainly nobody of ordinary faculty can begin to make head or tail of the “correspondences” recorded in the Indian scriptures. It is the same, strangely enough, with Plato, whose _Cratylus_ deals with the relation of verbal language to mental conception. A master of simple exposition, he becomes in the _Cratylus_, whether from design or feebleness of understanding, as cryptic as the Indians themselves. I have read the _Cratylus_ all ways, with no better result than to feel that I have wasted my time. “Æ” has approached the problem, however, experimentally, with the aid of his intuition. If, he said to himself, there is really a definite correspondence between sound and idea, meditation on one or the other should be able to discover it. In other words, he has attempted to re-discover the lost language, and to find for himself the key whose fragments bestrew the ancient occult works. This again, however, is no novelty, but another of the recurrent ideas of mystics and would-be occultists. All of them have tried it, but, unfortunately, most of them come to different conclusions. “Æ’s” guesses must, therefore, be taken as guesses only, to be compared with the guesses of other students.

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Page 132. One of the features of the _Candle of Vision_ is the occasional ray cast by “Æ” upon the obscure texts of the Bible. The Bible, of course, is for the most part unmistakably “occult”; and not only its stories are myths (“which things are an allegory”), but many of its texts are echoes of a gnosis infinitely older than the Christian era. Greece, it has now been established, was an infant when Egypt was old; and Egypt, in its turn, was an infant when some civilisation anterior to it was in its dotage. The Bible is a kind of ark, in which were stored (without much order, I imagine) some of the traditions of the world that was about to be submerged. They can be brought to life again, however, and here and there, in the course of the _Candle of Vision_, “Æ” undoubtedly rejuvenates a Biblical text, and restores to it its ancient meaning. “He made every flower before it was in the field, and every herb before it grew.” This points, says “Æ,” to the probability that the Garden of Eden was the “Garden of the Divine Mind,” in which flowers and herbs and all the rest of creation lived before they were made—visible! Such a conception is very illuminating. Moreover, it brings the story of Genesis into line with the genesis stories of both ancient India and the most recent psychology. For modern psycho-analysis, in the researches of Jung in particular, is undoubtedly trembling on the brink of the discovery of the divine mind which precedes visible creation. The process is indissolubly linked up with the psychology of imagination, phantasm, and vision.

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