Part 4

=Penitents.=--The teacher continued: "Muhammed early traversed the stage of desolation and became a pietist, when he believed himself persecuted by devils. Set free finally by suffering and prayer, he exclaims in the 93rd Sura: 'By the forenoon, and the night when it darkens, thy Lord has not forsaken thee or hated thee, and surely the future for thee will be better than the past. And thy Lord will give thee sufficient, and thou shalt be satisfied. Did He not find thee an orphan and give thee shelter? and find thee erring and guide thee? and find thee poor with a family and nourish thee? But as for the orphan, oppress him not; and as for the beggar, drive him not away; and as for the favour of thy Lord, discourse thereof!' When Buddha left his father's palace and saw the sufferings of men and the instability of life, he became a penitent, left wife and child, went into the wilderness, and chastened himself by fasting and renunciation. But after he had undergone the severest penances, he cautiously returned to ordinary life, and allowed himself moderate enjoyments in order not to devastate his soul. Some of his disciples deserted him and called him a recreant, but that did not trouble him.

"Goethe himself passed through religious crises, and was at one period intimate with the Hermhuters, the pietists of that time. In his old age, when he grew wise, he became a mystic, _i.e._ he discovered that there are things between heaven and earth of which the 'Beans' have never let themselves dream."

=Paying for Others.=--The pupil said: "I must confess that I do not understand the Atonement." "You mean, understand it with everyday intelligence. No one can. The highest questions cannot be solved by us, just as little as problems of the fourth dimension. But the solution is given to us, if we ask for it in a proper way.

"As regards the redemptive work of Christ, you can comprehend it by an analogy. You remember, when you owed so many debts, that there were knocks at your door all day long, that you had to go out early in the morning in order to borrow, or to escape your creditors. Finally you feared your room so, that you dared not go home to sleep. You sat on a seat in the park, and said to yourself, 'It is hell!' Then there came a man who knew you; he paid your debts; you called him your saviour. Do you not see that one can pay for another, and deliver him?"

"Yes, but one cannot make an evil deed undone."

"No, but the Almighty can obliterate it from our memory, and from the memory of others. But mark this well: every time that you rummage in the past of another, although it has been atoned for, the memory of your own evil deeds starts up. Just like a badly washed stain which goes through the stuff and appears on the other side. All miracles are conditional, just as vows are."

=The Lice-King.=--As the teacher roamed one day in Qualheim he came into a wood under whose shadow many decaying funguses grew. On a footpath he saw what he thought at first was a snake writhing about. It was no snake, however, but a mass of grubs clotted together. The teacher asked his guide: "What is the meaning of that?"

"Ask first what it is; then I will tell you the meaning of it."

"Well?"

"These are the larvæ of the snake-worm, which are obliged, like clay and wadded straw, to hold together in order not to perish. They love poisonous funguses, and cannot bear the light. They maintain their existence by a mutual interchange of slime, without which they become dead and dry. But they call darkness light, because the sun would kill them. They feed on the poisonous funguses. They hate each other, but must keep together. Do you understand now, or not?"

"What is the name of the creature?"

"It is called the snake-worm or lice-king, appears once in every generation, and is a herald of evil times."

"What does it mean then?"

"It is a symbol of the men who talk with their faces turned backwards, and therefore see everything distorted; who call evil good, and good evil. Because they live in pride and self-love they cannot see God, but elect one of the mass to be their king, and believe that they are, collectively, God. By 'freedom,' they mean freedom to do evil. Often an ox or cow comes by and treads upon the motely mass. Then, of course, it is obliterated in slime, but another soon takes it place."

"It seems to be as eternal as evil."

=The Art of Life.=--The teacher said: "Life is hard to live, and the destinies of men appear very different. Some have brighter days, others darker ones. It is therefore difficult to know how one should behave in life, what one should believe, what views one should adopt, or to which party one should adhere. This destiny is not the inevitable blind fate of the ancients, but the commission which each one has received, the task he must perform. The theosophists call it Karma, and believe it is connected with a past which we only dimly remember. He who has early discovered his destiny, and keeps closely to it, without comparing his with others, or envying others their easier lot, has discovered himself, and will find life easier. But at periods when all wish to have a similar lot, one often engages in a fruitless struggle to make one's own harder destiny resemble the lot of those to whom an easier one has been assigned. Thence result disharmony and friction. Even up to old age, many men seek to conquer their destiny, and make it resemble that of others."

The pupil asked: "If it is so, why is not one informed of one's Karma from the beginning?"

The teacher answered: "That is pure pity for us. No man could endure life, if he knew what lay before him. Moreover, man must have a certain measure of freedom; without that, he would only be a puppet. Also the wise think that the voyage of discovery we make to discover our destiny is instructive for us. 'Let My Grace be sufficient for thee; My strength is made perfect in weakness.'"

=The Mitigation of Destiny.=--The teacher continued: "Some appear to be destined to honour and wealth, others only to honour, and others only to wealth. Many seem to be born to humiliations, poverty, and sickness--'struck like a coin in the mint,' as the saying is. Everyone can mitigate his destiny by submitting and adapting himself to it--by resignation, in a word. The inward happiness which one gains thereby, excels all outward prosperity. All things work for good to him who serves God. The man who does not strive after honour and wealth is impregnable; in a certain sense, all-powerful.

"The hardest thing is to see the injustice in the world; but even that can be overcome by taking it as a trial. If the wicked prospers, let him; we have nothing to do with it. Besides, his happiness is not so great when one looks closer at it.

"When you are persecuted by misfortune, and your conscience cannot call it deserved, take it quietly. Regard the endurance of the ordeal as an honour. There will come a day when everything will improve. Then perhaps you will discover that the misfortunes were benefits, or, at any rate, afforded opportunity for exercising endurance. Envy no man; you know not what his envied lot might conceal, if it actually came to changing places."

=The Good and the Evil.=--The pupil asked: "Is there really such a great difference between men?"

The teacher answered: "Yes and No! But a sure mark of the evil man is, he does evil for evil's sake. That is the bad man--the sarcastic schoolmaster, the domestic tyrant. That is the child, which torments its mother by finding out everything she dislikes. That is the bad wife, the fury, who enjoys torturing and humiliating a man who only wishes her good.

"In the battles of life it is quite human to rejoice when a foe is defeated. On all battlefields God has been thanked for the victory. That is something different.

"When one sees the insolent struck by misfortune, one rejoices that there is justice. When one sees the wicked punished, one feels satisfaction at seeing the balance of equity restored. That is something different.

"But he who rejoices over every evil deed which he himself has been under no necessity of committing; he who rejoices when the criminal escapes his punishment; he who gloats over the misfortune of a good man; he who suffers when goodness and merit are rewarded--that is the evil man. Such were those who clamoured for the murderer Barabbas's release and perhaps gave a feast in his honour."

=Modesty and the Sense of Justice.=--The teacher continued: "Properly speaking, the question you should have asked just now is, 'What men are good?' Socrates, according to Plato, said, 'Those who possess modesty and a sense of justice. Those are the religious men.'

"He, on the other hand, who has neither faith nor hope, can assume the outward aspect of an honourable man. But when his worldly interests or advantages are concerned, he lets honour drop. Similarly, when it is a question of saving one of his associates from punishment. Then he can bear false witness, and believe it is a good act. He does not stick at helping forward an unworthy friend or relative. He will swear falsely in order to attack a believer. He thinks everything lawful, _i.e._ on his side against others, and he never repents anything, saying to himself, 'He who lets himself be misled must pay for it.'

"When a religious man makes a slip, he is wont to feel ashamed, and to reproach himself. Often he is naïve enough to confess his fault or his mis-doing. Then the Lice-King shouts 'Hurrah!' For he would never be so simple. Still, though a believer fall seventy times and seven, he rises again and confesses his fault. That is the difference."

=Derelicts.=--The pupil asked: "How is one to judge of the men who are overthrown in the battle of life without being armed for the conflict? You remember such characters at school; they could not learn, could not attend; they were not ashamed, however, but regarded themselves as a kind of victims. They left school, went out into life, and collapsed. It was not the fault of their domestic surroundings, for they came of good families, who supported them. They were not bad, possessed talents, were clever, but had no knowledge and no interests in life. 'What is the object of it?' they were in the habit of saying. They could not bring themselves to work, but dozed at their desks. They seemed to be born to do nothing, which is a punishment for the active. Explain to me their destiny!"

"That I cannot."

"Some have died young in poverty; others begged their way through to their sixtieth year, while they saw former school-fellows who had been worse than they, prosper and flourish."

"I have seen and lamented them, but I cannot explain their destiny."

"Then they are not to blame, and yet live such lives of shame and poverty; that is cruel."

"Hush! Criticise not Providence! What is now inexplicable may some day be explained! And remember that life is not paradise. Two shall be grinding at one mill; one shall be taken, and the other left!"

=Human Fate.=--The teacher said: "The destinies of men are obscure; therefore one should be extremely careful in judging. The Tower of Siloam was ready to fall, and fell on good and evil alike. The disciples asked Christ what sin the man born blind had committed. Christ answered that neither he nor his parents had committed any special sin. When we see how some are born crippled, blind, deaf, and dumb, we had best be silent. To lament their lot may annoy them, for they seem to be protected in a mysterious way. They are objects of pity, and seldom fall into abject poverty. They are good-humoured through life, and hardly seem to suffer under their ailments. But woe to the man who ridicules anyone marked out by such a fate! If he is persistently pursued by calamity, or struck himself by a greater misfortune, one can hardly ignore it by using the formula 'chance.' A person who had scoffed at a blind man was struck in the eye by a stone which was thrown into a tramcar. At first he was alarmed, and thought of Nemesis. But when he heard that the stone had been so hurled as the result of some blasting operations he became cheerful, _i.e._ more ignorant, and said it was a chance. He saw the phenomenon, but nothing behind it; the effect, but not the cause.

"The 'Beans' cannot see beyond their noses. Sometimes, when they have long noses, they see somewhat further. The supernatural in nature is incomprehensible to their intelligence. Indeed, all which passes their limited understanding is for them supernatural. That is logical, but these rustics regard it as illogical."

=Dark Rays.=--As the teacher wandered through his Inferno, he came to a temple of black granite, which was quite dark inside. Within it something was going on, but he could not distinguish what.

"What is it?" he asked a white-robed figure, which wore a laurel-wreath, but had a green face spotted blue like a corpse. "That is a temple of light," it answered; "but the initiated cannot see our black rays until he receives the white arsenic-kiss from the ultra-violet priestess."

"Give me the kiss," answered the teacher, but he turned his back to her at the same time. However, she did not notice this, as she could not distinguish back from front. Now his eyes were opened, and he saw how within the temple they were offering incense to their "gods of light," as they called them. There stood the murderer Barabbas, a halo round his head, and a plate on his breast with the inscription: "Acquitted because of insufficient evidence." There sat Judas Iscariot under his fig-tree, with the thirty pieces of silver, in the bosom of his family, promoted to be general-director of customs. There were the Emperor Nero, fresh from the bath, with a white dove on his hand, and Julian the Apostate near an altar, with geese sacrificed upon it.

The priests and priestesses sang a chant of New Birth and Resurrection, burned incense compounded of rose-leaves and arsenic-acid, and danced a snake-dance, which they called "the joy of life." Then they began to quarrel about a laurel-wreath, and fought one another. As the teacher went, they all sat there in the darkness and wept. But when a fresh north wind blew through the temple, they trembled like dry leaves.

=Blind and Deaf.=--The teacher said: "There are, as you know, people with whom one cannot be angry. Perhaps it is because of their natural good-nature, which shines even through a cutting jest. And there are people whose malice comes to light long after one has met them. Such an after-effect I have experienced myself.

"Five-and-twenty years after a conversation with a man, I felt angry with him. Naturally, during a sleepless night, when memory threw a new light on the scene which had taken place between us. Not till then did the insulting word he spoke receive its proper signification, which I now understood. There are words which can murder. Such a word this one was. What a good thing that I did not understand it at the time! It would have resulted in calamity to four people.

"By developing a peculiar instinct I have succeeded in fabricating a kind of diving-costume, with which I protect myself in society. When the insulting word or the biting allusion is uttered, the sound certainly reaches my ear, but the receptive apparatus refuses to let it go further. In the same way I can make myself literally blind. I obliterate the face of the person I dislike. How it is done, I do not know, but it seems to be a psychological process. The face becomes a dirty whitish-grey spot and disappears. It is necessary to make oneself deaf and blind, or it is impossible to live.

"One must cancel and go on! That is generally called 'forgiving,' but it may be a device of the revengeful for sparing himself trouble, or a scheme of the sensitive for not letting insults reach him. One cannot undertake more than one can bear!"

=The Disrobing Chamber.=--The teacher continued: "Swedenborg says in his _Inferno_...."

"Say 'Hell,'" the pupil interrupted him. "I know that there is a hell, for I have been in it."

"Well, Swedenborg has in his _Hell_ a disrobing chamber into which the deceased are conducted immediately after their death. There they lay aside the dress they have had to wear in society and in the family. Then the angels see at once whom they have before them."

"Does Swedenborg then mean that we are all hypocrites?"

"Yes, in a certain way. An inborn modesty compels us to conceal what has to do with the animal; politeness obliges us to be silent on many points. Consideration, friendship, kinship, love, oblige us to overlook our neighbour's weaknesses, although we disapprove them even in ourselves. A man who is ashamed of his faults is also silent about them. To boast of one's faults is shamelessness."

"Can one really call such consideration hypocrisy?"

"Hardly; especially as things go wrong, however one behaves."

"Yes, life is not easy; it is hard to be a man; almost impossible."

=The Character Mask.=--The teacher said: "I knew in my youth a man who was imperious, quick to anger, revengeful, emotional. Accidentally his gifts as a speaker were discovered. He could thrill the minds of his hearers, bring them into touch with himself, lift them up--yes, and nearly carry them away. But on one occasion when he was at the height of his oratory he halted, became grotesque and ridiculous, and people laughed. The first time that this happened, he was depressed. But they thought he wished to produce a comical effect, and he obtained the reputation of a humorous speaker.

"Out of his misfortune he made a virtue, accepted the rôle which had been assigned to him, and finally enjoyed a great popularity as a humourist. He often felt annoyed at having to play the part of a buffoon, but the desire to hear his own voice and to be greeted with applause unceasingly spurred him on to win new triumphs.

"Society had made of him a sort of 'homunculus,' which it cultivated. But in his family and in his office it was not to be found."

=Youth and Folly.=--The teacher said: "What do you think of the proverb, 'The young _imagine_ that the old are fools, and the old _know_ that the young are fools?'"

"It is quite true. When I was young, I imagined that I understood everything better than the old, but I really understood nothing. I was young and stupid, confused my own knowledge with that of others', believed that what I had learnt was my own. When I had read a book, I went into society and proclaimed what I had read, as though it were my own discovery, I was therefore a thief.

"But I was the victim of another delusion, _i.e._ I believed that I understood all that I remembered, or that I knew what I happened at the moment to remember. For instance, when I was fourteen I did not understand logarithms, but I learnt the way of proceeding with them by heart, and used logarithms as a short-cut.

"When one studies a science in detail, one begins to collect material, else the result is nil. But the young man attacks the difficult science of life without experience, _i.e._ without material. And the result is what we see.

"I can see myself now as a young student. How proud I was of borrowed knowledge and borrowed plumes! How I despised the old! And yet all that I had stolen from books was stolen from the old, who had written the text-books. The young write no text-books. O Youth! O Foolishness!

=When I was Young and Stupid.=--"When I was young and stupid, I always had a band of hearers who saw a light in me. When I grew older, and wisdom came, I was left alone with my lecture and regarded as an old ass. But the passage from youth to age was bitter, when I discovered that the old could not be deceived. They read my secret thoughts behind my lofty words; they anticipated my evil purposes; they unmasked my crude desires; they prophesied the results of my actions; and found in my past the true cause of my present condition. They seemed to me to be wizards and prophets, although they were simple characters.

"When I asked myself how they could know this and that, I found the answer later--because they had collected material; because they had passed through all the stages which were new to me; because they had also tried to deceive the old in the same way, but had not succeeded. Youth, however, is always believing that it can deceive old age, were it only by stealing a thought from him. I know, moreover, why the young obstinately imagine they are superior because they can deceive. There are old wise men who have come to terms with life, and therefore think it a duty to let themselves be deceived now and then; they let themselves be deceived tastefully.

"Youth is only an idea, an abstraction, a boast, a theme for an essay, a song, a toast!"

=Constant Illusions.=--The pupil continued: "When I was young I was never really happy, because my seniors oppressed me, because the future disquieted me, because I lived on my parents' money almost as though I were a pensionary. When the first symptoms of love showed themselves, life became a hell. I was never very well, for the most serious illnesses--measles, scarlet fever, agues, croup, and others--affect only the young. I could never satisfy an innocent fancy, for I had no money; every desire was nipped in the bud. I was a slave, for my time was not at my own disposal, and I could not leave my place in order to visit foreign countries. Such is the huge humbug which is called 'youth.' No one has dared to unmask it, for fear lest the young might pelt him with stones, or draw caricatures of him on the walls. The teachers in the schools crouch before them, flatter them, pretend to envy them. If anyone comes who does not flatter these shameless and conscienceless little bandits, these lewd apes who live in the age of innocence, these parent-murderers--there is always some old woman there who exclaims, 'Ah! he does not understand the young!' He understands them very well, for he has been young himself. But the young do not understand the old, for they have never been old.

"The young assert that the future is in their hands, and that therefore they are feared by the cowardly. Let us wait and see! If thirty per cent, reach the future at all, they will work just as their elders have done, and with the thoughts which they have borrowed from them. Exceptions prove the rule."

=The Merits of the Multiplication-Table.=--The teacher said: "All wish to haul at the rope called 'Development.' The word generally signifies 'alteration,' and men usually love any novelty which does not injure them. But there are some excellent things which are very old, and therefore they remain unaltered. The multiplication-table, for instance, is splendid, though it is said to be as old as Pythagoras. The Rule of Three holds good, though it was the ancient Hindus who discovered this law of causes and effects. The geometry of Euclid and the logic of Aristotle is still read in the schools. Our architecture imitates Greek and Roman models, and the sculpture of the ancients is not despicable. We regulate our calendar very much as the Egyptians and Chaldæans did. Goethe and Schiller can be read, and Shakespeare is still performed.

"We see, therefore, that not all which has been done in the past is to be despised. He who prophesies that Christianity will disappear because it is old, makes a miscalculation. Homer is a thousand years older. And the Old Testament would first have to be cancelled. But Christianity lives and flourishes, although it may be in secret and not published in the newspapers. Still they sing in schools and barracks every morning, 'Trust in God and in His word and strength in order to do good.'

"But it must go hard with the Christians. 'In this world ye have tribulation.' Through periodical seasons of bondage under Egyptian Pharaohs, they learn patience till they begin their wanderings in the wilderness."