Chapter 4

Thus everything might have come out right, but things do not run so smoothly in this world. I was seventeen and Emmy twenty. There still followed weeks, long months - melancholy moods returned again, discouragements - there were also walks through the dusky parks. And the hungry dogs continued to whine and to howl and the thought-flies continued to buzz and to defile themselves. Man may be reasonable and patient; he has natures to control, apparently for his own good, that are neither reasonable nor patient; that themselves never rest and demand guidance from a spirit, that does need rest; that always want to have their own way, and yet sink fatally downward if the government of the mind leaves them unguarded. And these are given us by nature, as we are told, the same nature which according to my father is always good if man does not spoil her.

So as not to disturb you by exciting your imagination, dear reader, which might make the driving of your own team more troublesome to you, I shall mention no particulars of my struggle and my defeat. This precaution of an old man need not hurt you.

I fell under the joint influence of the following things: the fatally arisen rupture between corporal and spiritual desires, - the sharp contrast between English purity and English lewdness that, with its incomprehensible contradiction, has as exciting an effect as the dog in the duck-yard, who decoys the inquisitive ducks into the mouth of the strangler, - and finally the accursed self-contempt that makes one say: "There's nothing lost with me anyway."

With his attention so steadily fixed upon me, my father could not remain without suspicion. He came to my room one morning, installed himself there, and said:

"I hope, Vico mio, that you have remained and will remain a nobleman in all things."

When we Italians perceive that someone would enter upon a friendly conversation with us, we look upon it as an invitation to set up together and complete a small work of art, and we gladly give it an attentive hearing and zealously assist with careful application, so that something good and fine be brought forth. When I hear two Hollanders carrying on a conversation, it sounds more like children of a village school repeating their penal task, careless, slipshod, unwilling and embarrassed - if only they get it over with.

"My father," I answered, "I believe I know quite well how you wish a nobleman to be, but perhaps I do not know how he should comport himself in everything. Do you refer to any particular circumstance, or are you speaking generally?"

"If you recognize generally that a nobleman must avoid all intimate intercourse with ignoble persons, Vico, - the particular instances that I have in mind are therein included."

"That is plain, father. But yet I have something more to ask. First this: do you call it intimate intercourse where the spirit on either side remains at an infinite distance? And then this: can a nobleman have ignoble desires?"

I saw my father start painfully. Slowly and eyeing me sharply, he said:

"I fear, Vico, that I must speak plainly here, too. To the first I make this reply: It is certain that we have a body, but of a spirit that can separate itself from this body we know nothing and have no single proof. And as concerns the second question: natural desires are never ignoble as long as they remain in the natural channels."

"Without agreeing to the first," I replied, "I shall let it rest, because our natures are too different, and we do not understand each other anyway. But your answer to the second gives me much to ask. If a desire in me is natural and thus not ignoble, how then can it drive me to ignoble things? Are all natural desires good in all men? And how do I distinguish between natural and noble desires and unnatural and ignoble desires?"

"Have you no power of discrimination for that, Vico?" my father asked.

"If I use my discrimination, father, I call ignoble what my father calls natural."

My father arrested the conversation a moment to reflect. Then he realized that in order not to lose more ground, he must turn from the general to the particular.

"Let us beware, son, lest we become entangled in words. I have happily established that we both have an aversion from the vile and low. Take care then, that is all I wished to say, that you do not come into contact with it."

"But the vile and low in me desires contact with the vile and low in others," said I, bitterly.

My father grew impatient and said:

"I don't believe in this baseness and vileness in you. The popes surely talked you into that when you were a child. I understand that you have to deal with desires and passions that are absolutely not unnatural or bad, but very common at your age. But do not seek relief from them with unworthy, licentious persons. Of the great danger I have already warned you, have I not? Do not forget that in a few moments you can, through defilement, devastate your entire life."

"I do not forget that, father."

"Very well, but you should also be too proud to trouble yourself about such low-graded creatures."

"I would gladly have reason to be proud. But what is passing on in me is well suited to keep me humble. Can you deliver me from all this lowness and ugliness? You yourself have aroused it in me."

"I?" my father called, frowning angrily.

"By your scientific explanations. Before that time I had comparative peace. Now I am desperate, like a captive and tormented cat. It will end badly with me, father, that is certain. I foresee it, and can do nothing to prevent it. I can put out my eyes and chop off my hands, but I cannot control my thoughts and drive away these visions. That is beyond human power. I shall go to the bad, that is certain, and then the sooner the better. There's not so much lost with me."

With an anxious, painful eagerness my father listened to these first outspoken words. Then he said with a little laugh, half pitying, half scornful:

"One thing is plain to me now, my boy, that you must get married soon. Well, happily you need not seek long or fear a refusal. You can get of the very finest that wears a petticoat. Don't be bashful, Vico! You have a noble name, pure blood, a handsome face, and a fine, strong, healthy body. I shall supply the money. Be calm, my boy, you can have what you want for the asking."

I got up, deeply indignant. I believe that I laughed a theatrical laugh.

"Most decidedly your meaning is that I should make use of a pure and holy being, whose name I am not worthy to pronounce, as a safety valve, a preservative, a drain for my own foul and low passions. I assure you that, had it not been my father who had spoken such words to me, I would have challenged the man."

My father attempted a pitying smile, but it was artificial and painful:

"Good heavens, Vico! what exaggerated, impossible, fanatical nonsense! Then were all mothers who bore children drains for their husbands? Do be calm and reasonable, lad! You are not unworthy, your passions are not foul and low, whoever got that into your head? Your mother, surely, and her black friends. It's terrible how a mother can early poison the thoughts of her child."

"If one of my parents poisoned my thoughts, then it was not my mother. I realize my unworthiness through my own consciousness, not through outside persuasion. But my father cannot understand that, because he is a stranger to my deepest and most sacred feelings. Even though your advice had been good, father, your manner of expressing it would already have repelled me. But, moreover, your advice is idle. An English girl of twenty does not marry a young man of seventeen, and in three years from now I'll be lost anyway, hopelessly lost. I foresee that positively. And oh! what does it matter? It's only I, after all!" Scornfully shrugging my shoulders, I ran about the room. My father lifted both hands to his forehead and stared into vacancy with a look full of gloom, long-nurtured wrath and desperation. I still remember that look and wonder that I was not more painfully struck by it at the time. After a while he got up, sighed, and with the words, "We shall see!" he walked out of the room.

Again the poor man had brought about the contrary of what he wished to attain. One impression, above all, I retained from the conversation - it was that my mother would surely understand me and perhaps save me. I knew that she still lived and I also knew the name of our country seat. For the first time since our departure from home the thought of writing to her entered my mind. Amid many tears I composed a long, passionate letter to her that night, in which I told of all my tortures, my raptures, my struggles, my wondrous love and my deep self-degradation and self-contempt. I gave no facts, for young, sensitive, passionate letter writers seldom do, but prefer keeping to general terms. Nor did I employ a single religious expression, because I had really completely forgotten the brief maternal education, and simply translated elemental feeling of the heart into language most current to me.

"Help me, dearest mother," I wrote. "Help me. I know that you alone can do it. I have never forgotten you, and every day and night have thought of you. I still see you as distinctly as though I had left you only yesterday. I am a strange and terrible riddle to myself, and father, alas! cannot understand me. He speaks of nature that is always good, and says that my desires are natural and therefore good. But to me these desires seem ugly and despicable and the nature that drives me to them not at all good. He cannot understand this. Nature torments and tortures me. And no matter how I battle I see no deliverance. And at the same time, I adore a wondrous being, an angel of purity. And my father says that I must transfer the desires which I consider despicable to this sacred beloved. And that is a terrible thought to me. I love her with a passionate, boundless love, but I tremble to touch her with my impure lips. I harbor thoughts that would make me die of shame in her presence. And with my sordid depravities I am fit only for the low creatures, just as unhappy as I, whom I see running about here and who address me occasionally. Tell me, dearest mother, is there still help for me, is there still redemption? What is that nature of which my father speaks? Is it a thing or a thinking being, and how can it be good, always good, and bring me into such terrible straits and make me so unhappy?"

In this strain I wrote many pages and sent them off at a venture without much hope. And for two weeks I vainly went to the post-office every day, toward the last without the least hope.

But the answer came after all and I hid myself with it in my room, securely bolted, and with trembling hands I tore the envelope and kissed the paper and for a long time could not read for the tears that streamed from my eyes.

And when the contents, like a warm flood of tender benediction, seemed to pour itself out over my benumbed and tormented heart, of course I cried and kissed all the more and with greater fervor. We Italians are always a little, what here in my small town would be called, theatrical and affected, even though we be wholly without witnesses.

VI

I am proud of it that so many years ago I already addressed to my mother the question which, as far as I know, the best philosophers have never put to themselves with sufficient stress. Even those who by preference call themselves natural philosophers, thus those who have offered their lives to the service of Nature, who have sacrificed everything to understand her, who never speak of her without reverence and admiration and never cease praising her beauty, her bounty and the peace she bestows upon her scholars and admirers - even they, with amazing carelessness, forget to apprise us whether they consider her dead or living, a being or a thing, a thinking, feeling, clearly conscious and responsible Deity, or a blind, senseless force; and finally to teach us how we can persist in our praise and homage in the face of so much torture, so many monstrous faults, so much relentless cruelty.

Nature worship is the religion which unobserved makes the most proselytes nowadays. Even the druggist of my little town, who is a clever botanist, has gradually renounced his slack Protestantism for an ardent and devout nature worship. When he accompanies me to my nursery occasionally, on his search for plants, he can be stirred to truly southern enthusiasm at the sight of insects, birds, plants, trees, meadows, - all the wonders of his adored "Nature." His Bible had to make place for a periodical entitled "Living Nature," but dead nature - the clouds, the sea and the stars - inspires in him no slighter enthusiasm. This is all very lovable, but I often find it quite difficult not to cause the good man embarrassment by asking him where he considers that his beloved Nature ends and something else begins. Whether he counts man and their products also as a part of nature, and if so, why his admiration should make a sudden turn before the slums of Amsterdam; and if not, or only partly, what peculiar something it then is that has created so curious a product as man, and yet should be the opponent and enemy of, and debarred from, the great good and beautiful unity of all other things.

Yes, yes, dear reader, I know that men do a great deal of thoughtless babbling, and in a vague and careless way prate of Mother Nature, and beautiful Nature and human nature, and so on and so forth, without even knowing or distinguishing with the slightest degree of exactness what they really say or mean. But yet there have also been those among my fellows and good friends, like my amiable comrade Spinoza, and my greatly beloved friend Goethe, who did not care in the least for hollow phrases and also well-nigh constantly thought about these things, and who yet never proved with sufficient force men's right to praise Nature as much as they do, to bring all that is knowable into her domain and yet to judge of some of her products, as let us say: baboons, tyrants, grand inquisitors, drunkards, philistines, modern buildings and bad verses, in an ethically and aesthetically disapproving sense and, moreover, to call this opinion natural.

See then, the answer I received from my mother was quite as plausible to a young mind. She really seemed to have a nail for every hole and a hole for every nail.

"Nature, my dear son," she wrote, "is blind and subject to sin. Through a Divine decree which we cannot penetrate she has been delivered over to Satan. But to offset nature there is the miracle. That is the wonder of Divine grace, through which we can find redemption from sin. The blood of Christ is the medium of redemption, and nothing more is required of us than to believe in Christ and in the redeeming power of his blood. Then the Miracle of Grace shall be performed in us and none can fall so deeply into sin, but faith in Christ can bring him salvation, and powerfully as nature works toward corruption, the miracle has wrought things

'a che natura

non scaldo ferro mai, ne batta incude.'"

The letter whereof this is a fragment made a profound impression on me. In the first place it came as a tangible, living token of the mother, so greatly venerated and adored - well-nigh as a departed saint; then, too, it awakened old, tender, childish feelings by the familiar tones of piety, which now struck my more experienced ears as something entirely new. And with the eager enthusiasm natural to me I thankfully and reverently accepted each of these proffered thoughts, fitting and arranging them until they seemed exactly to fill the gap which I had discovered in my spiritual life.

Exactly! Nature's trend is downward through the influence of Satan who draws us. This was just what I had felt. On the other side is God, who also draws us - but upward. That, too, I had felt. Thus at times nature is left to its own desires and Satan free to allure. Why? You must not ask. Divine decree. To a certain extent this is perhaps transferring the difficulty, but once thus firmly pronounced, - the door shuts unhesitatingly - the spirit becomes reconciled to it. Of course, something impenetrable may remain!

And now the salvation: Christ.

It was the first time this word was brought into the field of my vision, like a new plant that I saw sprouting in the garden of my life. Now, after fifty years, it is not yet full grown, but gives promise of blossom and fruit. Marvellous are the transformations it has undergone.

First I seemed to hear a word devoid of sense, and knew not what to do with it. A man, a God, a human-God, a Divine Man - all well and good, but what was that to me? Words, words. Satan who drew me downward I had felt, God who drew me upward I had felt. Of Christ I felt nothing. The assurance that he had lived, died and was risen again, did not affect me as long as he remained imperceptible to me.

Now I had gained the impression that Emmy knew more of him. It was customary in her family to offer morning prayers, and when I heard her pronounce the words: "Jesus Christ, our Lord," she did it with such expressive fervor that I could not doubt but that she positively knew whereof she spoke. At the time I had not yet learned the creative power of the suggested word.

So, in the course of a merry morning gallop, I, queer suitor that I was, began to theologize with the dear girl and asked her squarely: "Emmy, who is Christ?"

Now in my artlessness I had thought that anyone questioned by an earnest and not indifferent person, about a good acquaintance and dear friend, would manifest pleasure and gladly and heartily give the desired information. But Emmy seemed exceedingly surprised and even alarmed, as though the question did not at all please her, but more evidently distressed her.

"Don't you know that?" she said in a somewhat sullen and reserved tone of voice. "I thought you were religious."

"I surely am, Emmy, but that is why I want to know more of him."

"But aren't you Catholics taught that?" Emmy asked.

"To be sure, Emmy, but that does not satisfy me. It tells me nothing. I also want to feel that Christ is and what he is."

"Do you wish to turn Protestant?

"That makes no difference to me. I only do not want to use words without knowing what they mean. When you say, 'Jesus Christ, our Lord,' it seems as though you really knew what you meant with it."

"Of course I know!" said Emmy, the least bit crossly.

"Can't you make it clear to me, then?"

To my continued astonishment Emmy seemed to think this an unpleasant topic of conversation. It seemed as though she wanted to get it over with. She began, as though unwillingly, about God who had been born a man, had died for our sins, had risen again.

"No, Emmy, all that means nothing to me. It may all be very true, but what good is that to me now? If he died, well then, he is dead -"

"He is risen again," Emmy said quickly and almost angrily.

"Then he never died either; then it's folly to speak of dying. Is death still death when you know you will rise again directly? I'm willing to be killed three times a day then; no one is so much afraid of the bit of pain. Thus Christ still lives, - very well! then I ask: How do I become aware of that? By what am I apprised of it? What is he really then, and whereby should I know him if I saw him?"

"You must believe in him," Emmy said, still more or less crossly.

The verb "to believe" that Emmy used has an auxiliary with less favorable meaning. In English "to make believe" is in other words to impose on a person's credulity. It was as though this thought had made me suspicious and I began to surmise that Emmy's anxiety and anger were akin to that of the schoolgirl who is praised for a composition which she has copied from another. But surely it was in perfect good faith that the dear girl thought to believe what people had made her believe. As with everyone under suggestive influence, her deceived personality, without being clearly conscious of it, repelled any critical pressure that might bring to light the unreality of the imprinted image. How sorely I tormented the artless maiden at the time with my naive and inexorably insistent questioning! And how glad she was when at last I abandoned the Christ question and began to talk of tennis and croquet!

Although unformulated, yet this conversation positively revealed to me that Emmy in truth knew nothing of Christ, but used the word on her parents' and society's authority, and as a corresponding reality possessed nothing but a vague, fleeting phantom of a good and beautiful man with long hair and pointed beard, who was dead and yet living, - a man and yet God, existing everywhere and nowhere, and who on account of all these contradictory qualities is probably most easily known and addressed in pictures and images, which cannot and need not resemble him, with words that are pleasantly ingratiating through the familiar tones of precious associations.

But I had readily adopted from my father his scorn for this kind of faith in imprinted unrealities and suggested images, and I still retain it as the greatest treasure he left to me, covering all his sin toward me.

Surely there is no illusion - there are only grades of reality; and what we call phantasmagorias are merely very fleeting realities, created by man, in comparison to the eternal and immutable realities which we apprehend with our soul and our senses, and which must be of higher origin. But we will not give to human creations honors alone due to the Divine, and will not pronounce hollow words nor adore suggested phantoms.

Thus the Christ idea of the maternal gift had as yet no value for me - but even so I was rich with the ideas of God and Satan as the causes of this sad discord and confusion in my soul. Now all that was necessary was to fight Satan and to call on God for aid. Mother's advice had been: "Pray and chastise and subdue the flesh." I tried it immediately with trusting ardor, and behold! 't was true - it really helped. I hardly dared believe it myself, it seemed almost too good.

I prayed night and morning in my own, original, upright way, to the power which I felt as an uplifting influence, calling it God.

I imposed penalties upon myself, denying myself wine and delicate food, bathing a great deal in ice-cold water, clothing myself insufficiently, making forced marches on foot, and when Satan again seemed to be getting the upper hand, even sleeping beside my bed on the hard floor. For that I would rather go up with God than down with Satan - well I of that I was most positively convinced. It is strange with what blind arrogance man can consider himself an exception in this regard, as though anyone on earth would enjoy and prefer descending into the deep with Satan than ascending with God on high. And it may be called even stranger that I went to all this trouble, the while the maternal wisdom deemed salvation possible only through a miracle, which I, certainly, could not compel, and by faith in Christ which, though I honestly desired to, I could not awaken in myself.

The little fish did not see that by these evolutions it had even now entered the encircling meshes of the net which would land it into the same suggested faith from which it had once before turned away in alarm.

For the evolutions helped, there was no doubt about that. I soon felt more cheerful, braver, and above all, purer and stronger. Satan, if not absolutely routed, yet seemed to be considerably intimidated. I rowed, played cricket and croquet, studied, rode horseback, went walking in the country, not in the dangerous parks. I did not consider the infamy of my fall wiped out and maintained a respectful aloofness from my beloved, as one unworthy of her. But I saw her often and worshipped and adored her to my heart's content, without thinking far ahead.