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diff --git a/4058-0.txt b/4058-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41567bf --- /dev/null +++ b/4058-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5365 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two, by Walter Pater + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Marius the Epicurean, + Volume Two + +Author: Walter Horatio Pater + +Release Date: October 25, 2001 [eBook #4058] +[Most recently updated: September 3, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME TWO *** + + + + +Marius the Epicurean + +HIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS + +by WALTER PATER + +VOLUME TWO + +London: 1910. +(The Library Edition.) + + +Contents + + PART THE THIRD + 15. Stoicism at Court + 16. Second Thoughts + 17. Beata Urbs + 18. “The Ceremony of the Dart” + 19. The Will as Vision + + PART THE FOURTH + 20. Two Curious Houses—1. Guests + 21. Two Curious Houses—2. The Church in Cecilia’s House + 22. “The Minor Peace of the Church” + 23. Divine Service + 24. A Conversation Not Imaginary + 25. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum + 26. The Martyrs + 27. The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius + 28. Anima Naturaliter Christiana + + + + +NOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR: + +Notes: I have placed an asterisk immediately after each of Pater’s +footnotes and a + sign after my own notes, and have listed each of my +notes at that chapter’s end. + +Greek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated +Pater’s Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, it +can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a Victorianist +archive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater and many other +nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. + +Χειμερινὸς ὄνειρος, ὅτε μήκισται αἱ νύκτες+ + + ++“A winter’s dream, when nights are longest.” +Lucian, The Dream, Vol. 3. + + + + +PART THE THIRD + + + + +CHAPTER XV. +STOICISM AT COURT + + +The very finest flower of the same company—Aurelius with the gilded +fasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the empress Faustina +herself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained, +people said, their private “sophists” to whisper philosophy into their +ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet—was assembled +again a few months later, in a different place and for a very different +purpose. The temple of Peace, a “modernising” foundation of Hadrian, +enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, had grown into an institution +like something between a college and a literary club; and here +Cornelius Fronto was to pronounce a discourse on the Nature of Morals. +There were some, indeed, who had desired the emperor Aurelius himself +to declare his whole mind on this matter. Rhetoric was become almost a +function of the state: philosophy was upon the throne; and had from +time to time, by request, delivered an official utterance with +well-nigh divine authority. And it was as the delegate of this +authority, under the full sanction of the philosophic emperor—emperor +and pontiff, that the aged Fronto purposed to-day to expound some parts +of the Stoic doctrine, with the view of recommending morals to that +refined but perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in effect, one mode +of comeliness in things—as it were music, or a kind of artistic order, +in life. And he did this earnestly, with an outlay of all his science +of mind, and that eloquence of which he was known to be a master. For +Stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing. Received at court, it +had largely decorated itself: it was grown persuasive and insinuating, +and sought not only to convince men’s intelligence but to allure their +souls. Associated with the beautiful old age of the great rhetorician, +and his winning voice, it was almost Epicurean. And the old man was at +his best on the occasion; the last on which he ever appeared in this +way. To-day was his own birthday. Early in the morning the imperial +letter of congratulation had reached him; and all the pleasant +animation it had caused was in his face, when assisted by his daughter +Gratia he took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the +Athenaeum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful grace the philosophic +pall,—in reality neither more nor less than the loose woollen cloak of +the common soldier, but fastened on his right shoulder with a +magnificent clasp, the emperor’s birthday gift. + +It was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoric +was but one result of a general susceptibility—an age not merely taking +pleasure in words, but experiencing a great moral power in them. +Fronto’s quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and also +assisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as sometimes +happened, the recommendation of an object of charity. As it was, +arranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, these +amateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open for careful +record of felicitous word or phrase, were ready to give themselves +wholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them, applauding, blowing +loud kisses through the air sometimes, at the speaker’s triumphant exit +from one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences; while the younger +of them meant to imitate everything about him, down to the inflections +of his voice and the very folds of his mantle. Certainly there was +rhetoric enough:—a wealth of imagery; illustrations from painting, +music, mythology, the experiences of love; a management, by which +subtle, unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms, like +flies from morsels of amber, to use Fronto’s own figure. But with all +its richness, the higher claim of his style was rightly understood to +lie in gravity and self-command, and an especial care for the purities +of a vocabulary which rejected every expression unsanctioned by the +authority of approved ancient models. + +And it happened with Marius, as it will sometimes happen, that this +general discourse to a general audience had the effect of an utterance +adroitly designed for him. His conscience still vibrating painfully +under the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of the +ethical charm of Cornelius, he was questioning himself with much +impatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his own +elaborately thought-out intellectual scheme and the “old morality.” In +that intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far been +allowed no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission of +certain first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his +efforts towards a complete, many-sided existence; or distort the +revelations of the experience of life; or curtail his natural liberty +of heart and mind. But now (his imagination being occupied for the +moment with the noble and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call it, +which composed the outward mien and presentment of his strange friend’s +inflexible ethics) he felt already some nascent suspicion of his +philosophic programme, in regard, precisely, to the question of good +taste. There was the taint of a graceless “antinomianism” perceptible +in it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the actual +impression of which on other men might rebound upon himself in some +loss of that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of life +to allow so much. And it was exactly a moral situation such as this +that Fronto appeared to be contemplating. He seemed to have before his +mind the case of one—Cyrenaic or Epicurean, as the courtier tends to +be, by habit and instinct, if not on principle—who yet experiences, +actually, a strong tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with as +little logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place for duty and +righteousness in his house of thought. + +And the Stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purely +æsthetic beauty of the old morality, as an element in things, +fascinating to the imagination, to good taste in its most highly +developed form, through association—a system or order, as a matter of +fact, in possession, not only of the larger world, but of the rare +minority of _élite_ intelligences; from which, therefore, least of all +would the sort of Epicurean he had in view endure to become, so to +speak, an outlaw. He supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, in +search after some principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemed +to Marius to be speaking straight to him) which might give unity of +motive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life, +determined partly by natural affection, partly by enlightened +self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the mere +fear of penalties; no element of which, however, was distinctively +moral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no +common ground with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like +the philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices; actually +satisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to +all their dues—one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless, +in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. How +tenderly—more tenderly than many stricter souls—he might yield himself +to kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in passing judgment on +others! what an exquisite conscience of other men’s susceptibilities! +He knows for how much the manner, because the heart itself, counts, in +doing a kindness. He goes beyond most people in his care for all weakly +creatures; judging, instinctively, that to be but sentient is to +possess rights. He conceives a hundred duties, though he may not call +them by that name, of the existence of which purely duteous souls may +have no suspicion. He has a kind of pride in doing more than they, in a +way of his own. Sometimes, he may think that those men of line and rule +do not really understand their own business. How narrow, inflexible, +unintelligent! what poor guardians (he may reason) of the inward spirit +of righteousness, are some supposed careful walkers according to its +letter and form. And yet all the while he admits, as such, no moral +world at all: no theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the +facts of life. + +But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by +natural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a +remnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains +from doing, not so much through his own free election, as from a +deference, an “assent,” entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom—to the +actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure to +break away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement with +them on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. Yes! there +were the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a failure +in good taste. An assent, such as this, to the preferences of others, +might seem to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could +determine the least considerable element in a moral life. Yet here, +according to Cornelius Fronto, was in truth the revealing example, +albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principle +required. There was one great idea associated with which that +determination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest, +the fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action; a principle +under which one might subsume men’s most strenuous efforts after +righteousness. And he proceeded to expound the idea of Humanity—of a +universal commonwealth of mind, which becomes explicit, and as if +incarnate, in a select communion of just men made perfect. + +Ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin+—the world is as it were a commonwealth, +a city: and there are observances, customs, usages, actually current in +it, things our friends and companions will expect of us, as the +condition of our living there with them at all, as really their peers +or fellow-citizens. Those observances were, indeed, the creation of a +visible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual manners, whose +preferences from of old, become now a weighty tradition as to the way +in which things should or should not be done, are like a music, to +which the intercourse of life proceeds—such a music as no one who had +once caught its harmonies would willingly jar. In this way, the +becoming, as in Greek—to prepon: or ta êthê+ mores, manners, as both +Greeks and Romans said, would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty. +Righteousness would be, in the words of “Caesar” himself, of the +philosophic Aurelius, but a “following of the reasonable will of the +oldest, the most venerable, of cities, of polities—of the royal, the +law-giving element, therein—forasmuch as we are citizens also in that +supreme city on high, of which all other cities beside are but as +single habitations.” But as the old man spoke with animation of this +supreme city, this invisible society, whose conscience was become +explicit in its inner circle of inspired souls, of whose common spirit, +the trusted leaders of human conscience had been but the mouthpiece, of +whose successive personal preferences in the conduct of life, the “old +morality” was the sum,—Marius felt that his own thoughts were passing +beyond the actual intention of the speaker; not in the direction of any +clearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, +but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place, +the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and +tell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. It would be the +fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond +the great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of +its visible and invisible influences at their grandest—as Augustus or +Trajan might have conceived of them—however well the visible Rome might +pass for a figure of that new, unseen, Rome on high. At moments, Marius +even asked himself with surprise, whether it might be some vast secret +society the speaker had in view:—that august community, to be an outlaw +from which, to be foreign to the manners of which, was a loss so much +greater than to be excluded, into the ends of the earth, from the +sovereign Roman commonwealth. Humanity, a universal order, the great +polity, its aristocracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their example +over their successors—these were the ideas, stimulating enough in their +way, by association with which the Stoic professor had attempted to +elevate, to unite under a single principle, men’s moral efforts, +himself lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm. But where might Marius +search for all this, as more than an intellectual abstraction? Where +were those elect souls in whom the claim of Humanity became so amiable, +winning, persuasive—whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful +in the actual order he saw—whose faces averted from him, would be more +than he could bear? Where was that comely order, to which as a great +fact of experience he must give its due; to which, as to all other +beautiful “phenomena” in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust +himself? + +Rome did well to be serious. The discourse ended somewhat abruptly, as +the noise of a great crowd in motion was heard below the walls; +whereupon, the audience, following the humour of the younger element in +it, poured into the colonnade, from the steps of which the famous +procession, or transvectio, of the military knights was to be seen +passing over the Forum, from their trysting-place at the temple of +Mars, to the temple of the Dioscuri. The ceremony took place this year, +not on the day accustomed—anniversary of the victory of Lake Regillus, +with its pair of celestial assistants—and amid the heat and roses of a +Roman July, but, by anticipation, some months earlier, the almond-trees +along the way being still in leafless flower. Through that light +trellis-work, Marius watched the riders, arrayed in all their gleaming +ornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive around their helmets, the faces +below which, what with battle and the plague, were almost all youthful. +It was a flowery scene enough, but had to-day its fulness of war-like +meaning; the return of the army to the North, where the enemy was again +upon the move, being now imminent. Cornelius had ridden along in his +place, and, on the dismissal of the company, passed below the steps +where Marius stood, with that new song he had heard once before +floating from his lips. + +NOTES + + +10. +Transliteration: Ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin. Translation: “The +world is like a city.” + + +10. +Transliteration: to prepon ... ta êthê. Translation: “That which +is seemly ... mores.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. +SECOND THOUGHTS + + +And Marius, for his part, was grave enough. The discourse of Cornelius +Fronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon, +had set him on a review—on a review of the isolating narrowness, in +particular, of his own theoretic scheme. Long after the very latest +roses were faded, when “the town” had departed to country villas, or +the baths, or the war, he remained behind in Rome; anxious to try the +lastingness of his own Epicurean rose-garden; setting to work over +again, and deliberately passing from point to point of his old argument +with himself, down to its practical conclusions. That age and our own +have much in common—many difficulties and hopes. Let the reader pardon +me if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to his modern +representatives—from Rome, to Paris or London. + +What really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathies +that determine practice? It had been a theory, avowedly, of loss and +gain (so to call it) of an economy. If, therefore, it missed something +in the commerce of life, which some other theory of practice was able +to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must be, in a +manner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness. Did +it make such a sacrifice? What did it lose, or cause one to lose? + +And we may note, as Marius could hardly have done, that Cyrenaicism is +ever the characteristic philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its +survey—sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is +one of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because +limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this +case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man’s life there) +which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to +express. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek +world, we see this philosophy where it is least blasé, as we say; in +its most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form, +youthfully bright in the youth of European thought. But it grows young +again for a while in almost every youthful soul. It is spoken of +sometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men; but in them it can +hardly be sincere, or, by the nature of the case, an enthusiasm. “Walk +in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes,” is, +indeed, most often, according to the supposition of the book from which +I quote it, the counsel of the young, who feel that the sunshine is +pleasant along their veins, and wintry weather, though in a general +sense foreseen, a long way off. The youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism, +the self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, which +occurs, quite naturally, at the outset of every really vigorous +intellectual career, finds its special opportunity in a theory such as +that so carefully put together by Marius, just because it seems to call +on one to make the sacrifice, accompanied by a vivid sensation of power +and will, of what others value—sacrifice of some conviction, or +doctrine, or supposed first principle—for the sake of that clear-eyed +intellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily cleanliness, or +scrupulous personal honour, and has itself for the mind of the youthful +student, when he first comes to appreciate it, the fascination of an +ideal. + +The Cyrenaic doctrine, then, realised as a motive of strenuousness or +enthusiasm, is not so properly the utterance of the “jaded Epicurean,” +as of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling, +fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daring +theory, while, in the first genial heat of existence, the beauty of the +physical world strikes potently upon his wide-open, unwearied senses. +He discovers a great new poem every spring, with a hundred delightful +things he too has felt, but which have never been expressed, or at +least never so truly, before. The workshops of the artists, who can +select and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible +life, are open to him. He thinks that the old Platonic, or the new +Baconian philosophy, has been better explained than by the authors +themselves, or with some striking original development, this very +month. In the quiet heat of early summer, on the dusty gold morning, +the music comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from some +neighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now, perhaps, +only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or the +mere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and +righteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels himself +to be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the +contemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious +service. Afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await +him! At that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choice +or exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm +something like this. Life in modern London even, in the heavy glow of +summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to +build its “palace of art” of; and the very sense and enjoyment of an +experience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of +summer itself, by the thought of its brevity, giving him something of a +gambler’s zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or diligently +appreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which are to pass +away so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his elaborately developed +self-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fierce grasp upon the +things he values at all, he has, beyond all others, an inward need of +something permanent in its character, to hold by: of which +circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the +brilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure, it is, in truth, but darkness +he is, “encountering, like a bride.” But the inevitable falling of the +curtain is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not +often that he really shudders at the thought of the grave—the weight +above, the narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of it +does occur to him, he may say to himself:—Well! and the rude monk, for +instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim world +beyond it, really acquiesces in that “fifth act,” amid all the +consoling ministries around him, as little as I should at this moment; +though I may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however well +acted, I may already have had quite enough of it, and find a true +well-being in eternal sleep. + +And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the +function of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or less +the special philosophy, or “prophecy,” of the young, when the ideal of +a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the receptive, if +not of the reflective, powers—precisely in this circumstance, if we +rightly consider it, lies the duly prescribed corrective of that +philosophy. For it is by its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than +positively, that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently; and what +they really need for their correction, is the complementary influence +of some greater system, in which they may find their due place. That +Sturm und Drang of the spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and +special apprehension of half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as it +were “prophetic” advocacy of which, devotion to truth, in the case of +the young—apprehending but one point at a time in the great +circumference—most usually embodies itself, is levelled down, safely +enough, afterwards, as in history so in the individual, by the weakness +and mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, of our nature. +And though truth indeed, resides, as has been said, “in the whole”—in +harmonisings and adjustments like this—yet those special apprehensions +may still owe their full value, in this sense of “the whole,” to that +earlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupation with them. + +Cynicism and Cyrenaicism:—they are the earlier Greek forms of Roman +Stoicism and Epicureanism, and in that world of old Greek thought, we +may notice with some surprise that, in a little while, the nobler form +of Cyrenaicism—Cyrenaicism cured of its faults—met the nobler form of +Cynicism half-way. Starting from opposed points, they merged, each in +its most refined form, in a single ideal of temperance or moderation. +Something of the same kind may be noticed regarding some later phases +of Cyrenaic theory. If it starts with considerations opposed to the +religious temper, which the religious temper holds it a duty to +repress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any lower +development of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious +application to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. The +saint, and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at +least understand each other better than either would understand the +mere man of the world. Carry their respective positions a point +further, shift the terms a little, and they might actually touch. + +Perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise to their best, as +understood by their worthiest representatives, to identification with +each other. For the variety of men’s possible reflections on their +experience, as of that experience itself, is not really so great as it +seems; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formulae, +filtering down into men’s everyday existence, reach the same poor level +of vulgar egotism, so, we may fairly suppose that all the highest +spirits, from whatever contrasted points they have started, would yet +be found to entertain, in the moral consciousness realised by +themselves, much the same kind of mental company; to hold, far more +than might be thought probable, at first sight, the same personal types +of character, and even the same artistic and literary types, in esteem +or aversion; to convey, all of them alike, the same savour of +unworldliness. And Cyrenaicism or Epicureanism too, new or old, may be +noticed, in proportion to the completeness of its development, to +approach, as to the nobler form of Cynicism, so also to the more nobly +developed phases of the old, or traditional morality. In the gravity of +its conception of life, in its pursuit after nothing less than a +perfection, in its apprehension of the value of time—the passion and +the seriousness which are like a consecration—la passion et le sérieux +qui consacrent—it may be conceived, as regards its main drift, to be +not so much opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of one +special motive in it. + +Some cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one part of his own +nature, and of the nature of things, to another, Marius seemed to have +detected in himself, meantime,—in himself, as also in those old masters +of the Cyrenaic philosophy. If they did realise the monochronos hêdonê+ +as it was called—the pleasure of the “Ideal Now”—if certain moments of +their lives were high-pitched, passionately coloured, intent with +sensation, and a kind of knowledge which, in its vivid clearness, was +like sensation—if, now and then, they apprehended the world in its +fulness, and had a vision, almost “beatific,” of ideal personalities in +life and art, yet these moments were a very costly matter: they paid a +great price for them, in the sacrifice of a thousand possible +sympathies, of things only to be enjoyed through sympathy, from which +they detached themselves, in intellectual pride, in loyalty to a mere +theory that would take nothing for granted, and assent to no +approximate or hypothetical truths. In their unfriendly, repellent +attitude towards the Greek religion, and the old Greek morality, +surely, they had been but faulty economists. The Greek religion was +then alive: then, still more than in its later day of dissolution, the +higher view of it was possible, even for the philosopher. Its story +made little or no demand for a reasoned or formal acceptance. A +religion, which had grown through and through man’s life, with so much +natural strength; had meant so much for so many generations; which +expressed so much of their hopes, in forms so familiar and so winning; +linked by associations so manifold to man as he had been and was—a +religion like this, one would think, might have had its uses, even for +a philosophic sceptic. Yet those beautiful gods, with the whole round +of their poetic worship, the school of Cyrene definitely renounced. + +The old Greek morality, again, with all its imperfections, was +certainly a comely thing.—Yes! a harmony, a music, in men’s ways, one +might well hesitate to jar. The merely æsthetic sense might have had a +legitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice +manners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so gracefully, +the whole of life, insuring some sweetness, some security at least +against offence, in the intercourse of the world. Beyond an obvious +utility, it could claim, indeed but custom—use-and-wont, as we say—for +its sanction. But then, one of the advantages of that liberty of spirit +among the Cyrenaics (in which, through theory, they had become dead to +theory, so that all theory, as such, was really indifferent to them, +and indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible ministration to life) +was precisely this, that it gave them free play in using as their +ministers or servants, things which, to the uninitiated, must be +masters or nothing. Yet, how little the followers of Aristippus made of +that whole comely system of manners or morals, then actually in +possession of life, is shown by the bold practical consequence, which +one of them maintained (with a hard, self-opinionated adherence to his +peculiar theory of values) in the not very amiable paradox that +friendship and patriotism were things one could do without; while +another—Death’s-advocate, as he was called—helped so many to +self-destruction, by his pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life, +that his lecture-room was closed. That this was in the range of their +consequences—that this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the +premisses of the discreet Aristippus—was surely an inconsistency in a +thinker who professed above all things an economy of the moments of +life. And yet those old Cyrenaics felt their way, as if in the dark, we +may be sure, like other men in the ordinary transactions of life, +beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and absolutely legitimate +knowledge, admitting what was not of immediate sensation, and drawing +upon that “fantastic” future which might never come. A little more of +such “walking by faith,” a little more of such not unreasonable +“assent,” and they might have profited by a hundred services to their +culture, from Greek religion and Greek morality, as they actually were. +The spectacle of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on their own +narrow apprehension, makes one think of a picture with no relief, no +soft shadows nor breadth of space, or of a drama without proportionate +repose. + +Yet it was of perfection that Marius (to return to him again from his +masters, his intellectual heirs) had been really thinking all the time: +a narrow perfection it might be objected, the perfection of but one +part of his nature—his capacities of feeling, of exquisite physical +impressions, of an imaginative sympathy—but still, a true perfection of +those capacities, wrought out to their utmost degree, admirable enough +in its way. He too is an economist: he hopes, by that “insight” of +which the old Cyrenaics made so much, by skilful apprehension of the +conditions of spiritual success as they really are, the special +circumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal, the special +felicities of his own nature, to make the most, in no mean or vulgar +sense, of the few years of life; few, indeed, for the attainment of +anything like general perfection! With the brevity of that sum of years +his mind is exceptionally impressed; and this purpose makes him no +frivolous dilettante, but graver than other men: his scheme is not that +of a trifler, but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a +very real one, to those old words—Let us work while it is day! He has a +strong apprehension, also, of the beauty of the visible things around +him; their fading, momentary, graces and attractions. His natural +susceptibility in this direction, enlarged by experience, seems to +demand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupation with the aspects of +things; with their æsthetic character, as it is called—their +revelations to the eye and the imagination: not so much because those +aspects of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as because +to be occupied, in this way, with the æsthetic or imaginative side of +things, is to be in real contact with those elements of his own nature, +and of theirs, which, for him at least, are matter of the most real +kind of apprehension. As other men are concentrated upon truths of +number, for instance, or on business, or it may be on the pleasures of +appetite, so he is wholly bent on living in that full stream of refined +sensation. And in the prosecution of this love of beauty, he claims an +entire personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above all, +from what may seem conventional answers to first questions. + +But, without him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea, +widely extended in time and place, in a kind of impregnable possession +of human life—a system, which, like some other great products of the +conjoint efforts of human mind through many generations, is rich in the +world’s experience; so that, in attaching oneself to it, one lets in a +great tide of that experience, and makes, as it were with a single +step, a great experience of one’s own, and with great consequent +increase to one’s sense of colour, variety, and relief, in the +spectacle of men and things. The mere sense that one belongs to a +system—an imperial system or organisation—has, in itself, the expanding +power of a great experience; as some have felt who have been admitted +from narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church; or as +the old Roman citizen felt. It is, we might fancy, what the coming into +possession of a very widely spoken language might be, with a great +literature, which is also the speech of the people we have to live +among. + +A wonderful order, actually in possession of human life!—grown +inextricably through and through it; penetrating into its laws, its +very language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-conscious +ways; yet still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal; and, as +such, awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one only +consistent aspiration of mankind! In the apprehension of that, just +then, Marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own old +self; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to Rome, +with absolute sincerity, on the search for perfection. It defined not +so much a change of practice, as of sympathy—a new departure, an +expansion, of sympathy. It involved, certainly, some curtailment of his +liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the +enactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected +so, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to +give one, so to term it, an “indulgence.” But then, under the +supposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth +plucking again. The authority they exercised was like that of classic +taste—an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty of +the scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every +observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found, +the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable significance +and a natural history. + +And Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistaken +in his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to the +well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to +Rome—that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground—if he +did not make that concession, if he did but remain just there. + +NOTES + + +21. +Transliteration: monochronos hêdonê. Pater’s definition “the +pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now.” The definition is +fitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, “single or +unitary time.” + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. +BEATA URBS + + +“Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see.” + + +The enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the mighty +invading hosts of the fifth century. Illusively repressed just now, +those confused movements along the northern boundary of the Empire were +destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which, +powerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress for a +time the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of Christ was +to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty of +the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken +tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at +times, for eventual reconciliation thereto. Meantime Italy had armed +itself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the +Alps. + +Whatever misgiving the Roman people may have felt as to the leadership +of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though with some temporary +regret for the loss of what had been, after all, a popular figure on +the world’s stage. Travelling fraternally in the same litter with +Aurelius, Lucius Verus was struck with sudden and mysterious disease, +and died as he hastened back to Rome. His death awoke a swarm of +sinister rumours, to settle on Lucilla, jealous, it was said, of Fabia +her sister, perhaps of Faustina—on Faustina herself, who had +accompanied the imperial progress, and was anxious now to hide a crime +of her own—even on the elder brother, who, beforehand with the +treasonable designs of his colleague, should have helped him at supper +to a favourite morsel, cut with a knife poisoned ingeniously on one +side only. Aurelius, certainly, with sincere distress, his long +irritations, so dutifully concealed or repressed, turning now into a +single feeling of regret for the human creature, carried the remains +back to Rome, and demanded of the Senate a public funeral, with a +decree for the apotheôsis, or canonisation, of the dead. + +For three days the body lay in state in the Forum, enclosed in an open +coffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of ivory and gold, in the centre of a +sort of temporary chapel, representing the temple of his patroness +Venus Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it, while choirs of +select voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or +monologues from the great tragedians. + +At the head of the couch were displayed the various personal +decorations which had belonged to Verus in life. Like all the rest of +Rome, Marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely +disguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, +at night-fall, along one of the streets below the palace, to some +amorous appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, he was +taken by surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by +the piteous change there; even the skill of Galen having been not +wholly successful in the process of embalming. It was as if a brother +of his own were lying low before him, with that meek and helpless +expression it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely. + +Meantime, in the centre of the Campus Martius, within the grove of +poplars which enclosed the space where the body of Augustus had been +burnt, the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of various +aromatic woods, was built up in many stages, separated from each other +by a light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carved +and tapestried images. Upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structure +lay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incense +brought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for the +wanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by a waxen +effigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. At last the +Centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to +ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild +excitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames the +decorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead +emperor’s command. + +It had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last +moment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle—not a +very noble or youthful specimen of its kind—was caused to take flight +amid the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing +remains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette, +subsequently making official declaration before the Senate, that the +imperial “genius” had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire. +And Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by +“acclamation,” muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low, +rhythmical chant, decreed Caelum—the privilege of divine rank to the +departed. + +The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed +Lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine; +and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the +central mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour of +its statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty; +after the due accomplishment of which Aurelius was at liberty to retire +for a time into the privacy of his beloved apartments of the Palatine. +And hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned a second time, to +receive from the imperial hands the great pile of Manuscripts it would +be his business to revise and arrange. + +One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he +climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the +sunless sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a long +subterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial +apartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as +smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floor +after the return of the emperor from the shows. It was here, on such an +occasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-nine, had +come by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few +moments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths at +their exercise in the courtyard below. As Marius waited, a second time, +in that little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious +to look once more upon its painted walls—the very place whither the +assassins were said to have turned for refuge after the murder—he could +all but see the figure, which in its surrounding light and darkness +seemed to him the most melancholy in the entire history of Rome. He +called to mind the greatness of that popularity and early promise—the +stupefying height of irresponsible power, from which, after all, only +men’s viler side had been clearly visible—the overthrow of reason—the +seemingly irredeemable memory; and still, above all, the beautiful head +in which the noble lines of the race of Augustus were united to, he +knew not what expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and +for the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular +hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be +found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful +perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have +seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman +art. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected +from his mirror, suggested his insane attempt upon the liberties, the +dignity of men?—“O humanity!” he seems to ask, “what hast thou done to +me that I should so despise thee?”—And might not this be indeed the +true meaning of kingship, if the world would have one man to reign over +it? The like of this: or, some incredible, surely never to be realised, +height of disinterestedness, in a king who should be the servant of +all, quite at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in +such a position. Not till some while after his death had the body been +decently interred by the piety of the sisters he had driven into exile. +Fraternity of feeling had been no invariable feature in the incidents +of Roman story. One long Vicus Sceleratus, from its first dim +foundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of a common deliverance +so touching—had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory of +unnatural violence? Romans did well to fancy the traitress Tarpeia +still “green in earth,” crowned, enthroned, at the roots of the +Capitoline rock. If in truth the religion of Rome was everywhere in it, +like that perfume of the funeral incense still upon the air, so also +was the memory of crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, down to the +erring, or not erring, Vesta calmly buried alive there, only eighty +years ago, under Domitian. + +It was with a sense of relief that Marius found himself in the presence +of Aurelius, whose gesture of friendly intelligence, as he entered, +raised a smile at the gloomy train of his own thoughts just then, +although since his first visit to the palace a great change had passed +over it. The clear daylight found its way now into empty rooms. To +raise funds for the war, Aurelius, his luxurious brother being no more, +had determined to sell by auction the accumulated treasures of the +imperial household. The works of art, the dainty furniture, had been +removed, and were now “on view” in the Forum, to be the delight or +dismay, for many weeks to come, of the large public of those who were +curious in these things. In such wise had Aurelius come to the +condition of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardly +persuaded to wear warm clothing, or to sleep in more luxurious manner +than on the bare floor. But, in his empty house, the man of mind, who +had always made so much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation, +felt freer in thought than ever. He had been reading, with less +self-reproach than usual, in the Republic of Plato, those passages +which describe the life of the philosopher-kings—like that of hired +servants in their own house—who, possessed of the “gold undefiled” of +intellectual vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. It was one +of his happy days: one of those rare days, when, almost with none of +the effort, otherwise so constant with him, his thoughts came rich and +full, and converged in a mental view, as exhilarating to him as the +prospect of some wide expanse of landscape to another man’s bodily eye. +He seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the imaginative influence +of the philosophic reason—to its suggestions of a possible open +country, commencing just where all actual experience leaves off, but +which experience, one’s own and not another’s, may one day occupy. In +fact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, before he +started for that ambiguous earthly warfare which was to occupy the +remainder of his life. “Ever remember this,” he writes, “that a happy +life depends, not on many things—en oligistois keitai.”+ And to-day, +committing himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence +of the great empty apartments, he might be said to have escaped, +according to Plato’s promise to those who live closely with philosophy, +from the evils of the world. + +In his “conversations with himself” Marcus Aurelius speaks often of +that City on high, of which all other cities are but single +habitations. From him in fact Cornelius Fronto, in his late discourse, +had borrowed the expression; and he certainly meant by it more than the +whole commonwealth of Rome, in any idealisation of it, however sublime. +Incorporate somehow with the actual city whose goodly stones were lying +beneath his gaze, it was also implicate in that reasonable constitution +of nature, by devout contemplation of which it is possible for man to +associate himself to the consciousness of God. In that New Rome he had +taken up his rest for awhile on this day, deliberately feeding his +thoughts on the better air of it, as another might have gone for mental +renewal to a favourite villa. + +“Men seek retirement in country-houses,” he writes, “on the sea-coast, +on the mountains; and you have yourself as much fondness for such +places as another. But there is little proof of culture therein; since +the privilege is yours of retiring into yourself whensoever you +please,—into that little farm of one’s own mind, where a silence so +profound may be enjoyed.” That it could make these retreats, was a +plain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominion +over circumstance, its inherent liberty.—“It is in thy power to think +as thou wilt: The essence of things is in thy thoughts about them: All +is opinion, conception: No man can be hindered by another: What is +outside thy circle of thought is nothing at all to it; hold to this, +and you are safe: One thing is needful—to live close to the divine +genius within thee, and minister thereto worthily.” And the first point +in this true ministry, this culture, was to maintain one’s soul in a +condition of indifference and calm. How continually had public claims, +the claims of other persons, with their rough angularities of +character, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the flock. But after all +he had at least this privilege he could not part with, of thinking as +he would; and it was well, now and then, by a conscious effort of will, +to indulge it for a while, under systematic direction. The duty of thus +making discreet, systematic use of the power of imaginative vision for +purposes of spiritual culture, “since the soul takes colour from its +fantasies,” is a point he has frequently insisted on. + +The influence of these seasonable meditations—a symbol, or sacrament, +because an intensified condition, of the soul’s own ordinary and +natural life—would remain upon it, perhaps for many days. There were +experiences he could not forget, intuitions beyond price, he had come +by in this way, which were almost like the breaking of a physical light +upon his mind; as the great Augustus was said to have seen a mysterious +physical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where the +altar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for inward +quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select +passages of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all +its forms, with itself—“Could there be Cosmos, that wonderful, +reasonable order, in him, and nothing but disorder in the world +without?” It was from this question he had passed on to the vision of a +reasonable, a divine, order, not in nature, but in the condition of +human affairs—that unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis, Urbs +Beata—in which, a consciousness of the divine will being everywhere +realised, there would be, among other felicitous differences from this +lower visible world, no more quite hopeless death, of men, or children, +or of their affections. He had tried to-day, as never before, to make +the most of this vision of a New Rome, to realise it as distinctly as +he could,—and, as it were, find his way along its streets, ere he went +down into a world so irksomely different, to make his practical effort +towards it, with a soul full of compassion for men as they were. +However distinct the mental image might have been to him, with the +descent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below, it must +have retreated again, as if at touch of some malign magic wand, beyond +the utmost verge of the horizon. But it had been actually, in his +clearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry, +a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whose +novel expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read. +Plato, indeed, had been able to articulate, to see, at least in +thought, his ideal city. But just because Aurelius had passed beyond +Plato, in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-supposed there, he +had been unable really to track his way about it. Ah! after all, +according to Plato himself, all vision was but reminiscence, and this, +his heart’s desire, no place his soul could ever have visited in any +region of the old world’s achievements. He had but divined, by a kind +of generosity of spirit, the void place, which another experience than +his must fill. + +Yet Marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, of quiet pleasure, +on the countenance of Aurelius, as he received from him the rolls of +fine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied at +the moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban hills, from those +lofty windows. + +NOTES + + +37. +Transliteration: en oligistois keitai. Definition “it lies in the +fewest [things].” + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. +“THE CEREMONY OF THE DART” + + +The ideas of Stoicism, so precious to Marcus Aurelius, ideas of large +generalisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whose intellects +they have had real power, a coldness of heart. It was the distinction +of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, one +might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the +popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions of the +later Greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of +austerely opinionative “natural theology,” and how often has that led +to religious dryness—a hard contempt of everything in religion, which +touches the senses, or charms the fancy, or really concerns the +affections. Aurelius had made his own the secret of passing, naturally, +and with no violence to his thought, to and fro, between the richly +coloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had still been +human beings, and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive, +universal soul—that circle whose centre is everywhere, the +circumference nowhere—of which a series of purely logical necessities +had evolved the formula. As in many another instance, those traditional +pieties of the place and the hour had been derived by him from his +mother:—para tês mêtros to theosebes.+ Purified, as all such religion +of concrete time and place needs to be, by frequent confronting with +the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate religious sense in the +possession of which Aurelius differed from the people around him, it +was the ground of many a sociability with their simpler souls, and for +himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of his own soul +flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision. A host +of companions, guides, helpers, about him from of old time, “the very +court and company of heaven,” objects for him of personal reverence and +affection—the supposed presence of the ancient popular gods determined +the character of much of his daily life, and might prove the last stay +of human nature at its weakest. “In every time and place,” he had said, +“it rests with thyself to use the event of the hour religiously: at all +seasons worship the gods.” And when he said “Worship the gods!” he did +it, as strenuously as everything else. + +Yet here again, how often must he have experienced disillusion, or even +some revolt of feeling, at that contact with coarser natures to which +his religious conclusions exposed him. At the beginning of the year one +hundred and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever; and as +before it brought people’s superstition into unreserved play. For seven +days the images of the old gods, and some of the graver new ones, lay +solemnly exposed in the open air, arrayed in all their ornaments, each +in his separate resting-place, amid lights and burning incense, while +the crowd, following the imperial example, daily visited them, with +offerings of flowers to this or that particular divinity, according to +the devotion of each. + +But supplementing these older official observances, the very wildest +gods had their share of worship,—strange creatures with strange secrets +startled abroad into open daylight. The delirious sort of religion of +which Marius was a spectator in the streets of Rome, during the seven +days of the Lectisternium, reminded him now and again of an observation +of Apuleius: it was “as if the presence of the gods did not do men +good, but disordered or weakened them.” Some jaded women of fashion, +especially, found in certain oriental devotions, at once relief for +their religiously tearful souls and an opportunity for personal +display; preferring this or that “mystery,” chiefly because the attire +required in it was suitable to their peculiar manner of beauty. And one +morning Marius encountered an extraordinary crimson object, borne in a +litter through an excited crowd—the famous courtesan Benedicta, still +fresh from the bath of blood, to which she had submitted herself, +sitting below the scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose +were slaughtered by the priests. Even on the last day of the solemnity, +when the emperor himself performed one of the oldest ceremonies of the +Roman religion, this fantastic piety had asserted itself. There were +victims enough certainly, brought from the choice pastures of the +Sabine mountains, and conducted around the city they were to die for, +in almost continuous procession, covered with flowers and well-nigh +worried to death before the time by the crowds of people +superstitiously pressing to touch them. But certain old-fashioned +Romans, in these exceptional circumstances, demanded something more +than this, in the way of a human sacrifice after the ancient pattern; +as when, not so long since, some Greeks or Gauls had been buried alive +in the Forum. At least, human blood should be shed; and it was through +a wild multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh with knives and whips +and licking up ardently the crimson stream, that the emperor repaired +to the temple of Bellona, and in solemn symbolic act cast the +bloodstained spear, or “dart,” carefully preserved there, towards the +enemy’s country— towards that unknown world of German homes, still +warm, as some believed under the faint northern twilight, with those +innocent affections of which Romans had lost the sense. And this at +least was clear, amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong on either +side, that the ruin of those homes was involved in what Aurelius was +then preparing for, with,—Yes! the gods be thanked for that achievement +of an invigorating philosophy!—almost with a light heart. + +For, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for which +Marcus Aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came to +test the power of a long-studied theory of practice; and it was the +development of this theory—a theôria, literally—a view, an intuition, +of the most important facts, and still more important possibilities, +concerning man in the world, that Marius now discovered, almost as if +by accident, below the dry surface of the manuscripts entrusted to him. +The great purple rolls contained, first of all, statistics, a general +historical account of the writer’s own time, and an exact diary; all +alike, though in three different degrees of nearness to the writer’s +own personal experience, laborious, formal, self-suppressing. This was +for the instruction of the public; and part of it has, perhaps, found +its way into the Augustan Histories. But it was for the especial +guidance of his son Commodus that he had permitted himself to break +out, here and there, into reflections upon what was passing, into +conversations with the reader. And then, as though he were put off his +guard in this way, there had escaped into the heavy matter-of-fact, of +which the main portion was composed, morsels of his conversation with +himself. It was the romance of a soul (to be traced only in hints, +wayside notes, quotations from older masters), as it were in lifelong, +and often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden fleece, +or Hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious light of doctrine, ever +retreating before him. A man, he had seemed to Marius from the first, +of two lives, as we say. Of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, on +the day, for instance, when he had interrupted the emperor’s musings in +the empty palace, might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant, who +from amid the pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked +out, as if surprised, at the things and faces around. Here, then, under +the tame surface of what was meant for a life of business, Marius +discovered, welcoming a brother, the spontaneous self-revelation of a +soul as delicate as his own,—a soul for which conversation with itself +was a necessity of existence. Marius, indeed, had always suspected that +the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his. But here, +certainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again he +seemed to detect the advent of some new or changed spirit into the +world, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external +and objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the old +classic soul. His purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by +this example of a book of self-portraiture. It was in fact the position +of the modern essayist,—creature of efforts rather than of +achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least +conscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, +acknowledge. What seemed to underlie that position was the desire to +make the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or from +within: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of +instinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer’s own +theory—that theory of the “perpetual flux” of all things—to Marius +himself, so plausible from of old. + +There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the +making of such conversation with one’s self at all. The Logos, the +reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods—koinos autô +pros tous theous+—cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of +a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original +and lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with +one’s self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware +of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one’s +disposition of one’s self. Cornelius Fronto too could enounce that +theory of the reasonable community between men and God, in many +different ways. But then, he was a cheerful man, and Aurelius a +singularly sad one; and what to Fronto was but a doctrine, or a motive +of mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. He walks and talks, +for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint by the way, +with what to the learned professor is but matter of philosophic +eloquence. + +In performing his public religious functions Marcus Aurelius had ever +seemed like one who took part in some great process, a great thing +really done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him. +Here, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or +language, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an +actual conversation, in quotations from other older masters of the +inward life, taking new significance from the chances of such +intercourse, was the record of his communion with that eternal reason, +which was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, whose +tabernacle was in the intelligence of men—the journal of his daily +commerce with that. + +Chance: or Providence! Chance: or Wisdom, one with nature and man, +reaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderly +disposing all things, according to fixed periods, as he describes it, +in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of +Wisdom:—those are the “fenced opposites” of the speculative dilemma, +the tragic embarras, of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himself +as the summary of man’s situation in the world. If there be, however, a +provident soul like this “behind the veil,” truly, even to him, even in +the most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with +any quite irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet one’s choice in +that speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter +of will.—“’Tis in thy power,” here too, again, “to think as thou wilt.” +For his part he has asserted his will, and has the courage of his +opinion. “To the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with +thy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee.” “Wisdom,” +says that other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, “hath mingled +Her wine, she hath also prepared Herself a table.” Tou aristou +apolaue:+ “Partake ever of Her best!” And what Marius, peeping now very +closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing +actually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer’s bearing +as in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous of +any palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one’s faith, never +allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only, he +would do his part, at least, in maintaining the constant fitness, the +sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to vary with the +intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of +experience, to a sheer fantasy, only “believed because it was +impossible,” that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men’s +common pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonest +vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It bred in him a +kind of magnificence of character, in the old Greek sense of the term; +a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his +convictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or +talk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in their +so visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever or +graceful. A soul thus disposed had “already entered into the better +life”:—was indeed in some sort “a priest, a minister of the gods.” +Hence his constant “recollection”; a close watching of his soul, of a +kind almost unique in the ancient world.—Before all things examine into +thyself: strive to be at home with thyself!—Marius, a sympathetic +witness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of +monasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion +he had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. +Here was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was +about to play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under the +sanction of the Christian church. + +Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on which +one must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushed +footsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying. +Such was the impression which occurred to Marius again and again as he +read, with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author. +By certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded, in +spite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor’s ideas, how he +had sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public shows. For, actually, +his contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him that +melancholy—Tristitia—which even the monastic moralists have held to be +of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of Desidia or Inactivity. +Resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the +burden of a sad heart:—Yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of +an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this case there seemed to be +too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. And there +could be no true Théodicé in that; no real accommodation of the world +as it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal reason, over +against it. It amounted to a tolerance of evil. + +The soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little +understand, yet prospereth on the journey: +If thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of +evil with thee therein. +If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are +communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with +thee—nothing to be afraid of: +Whatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man +according to his desert: +If reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require? +Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits? +That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole. +The profit of the whole,—that was sufficient!+ + + +—Links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, +the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere, +might lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness. It left in +truth a weight upon the spirits; and with that weight unlifted, there +could be no real justification of the ways of Heaven to man. “Let thine +air be cheerful,” he had said; and, with an effort, did himself at +times attain to that serenity of aspect, which surely ought to +accompany, as their outward flower and favour, hopeful assumptions like +those. Still, what in Aurelius was but a passing expression, was with +Cornelius (Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritable +physiognomy. With Cornelius, in fact, it was nothing less than the joy +which Dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect, the +outward semblance of which, like a reflex of physical light upon human +faces from “the land which is very far off,” we may trace from Giotto +onward to its consummation in the work of Raphael—the serenity, the +durable cheerfulness, of those who have been indeed delivered from +death, and of which the utmost degree of that famed “blitheness” of the +Greeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in careless and wholly +superficial youth. And yet, in Cornelius, it was certainly united with +the bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world; real as an aching +in the head or heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured; an +enemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, hatefully visible, in +a thousand forms—the apparent waste of men’s gifts in an early, or even +in a late grave; the death, as such, of men, and even of animals; the +disease and pain of the body. + +And there was another point of dissidence between Aurelius and his +reader.—The philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body. Since it is +“the peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself, and to be +proof against corporeal impressions, suffering neither sensation nor +passion to break in upon her,” it follows that the true interest of the +spirit must ever be to treat the body—Well! as a corpse attached +thereto, rather than as a living companion—nay, actually to promote its +dissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presenting +itself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature, +the very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that +reverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body of man. Such +delight indeed had been but a natural consequence of the sensuous or +materialistic character of the philosophy of his choice. Now to +Cornelius the body of man was unmistakeably, as a later seer terms it, +the one true temple in the world; or rather itself the proper object of +worship, of a sacred service, in which the very finest gold might have +its seemliness and due symbolic use:—Ah! and of what awe-stricken pity +also, in its dejection, in the perishing gray bones of a poor man’s +grave! + +Some flaw of vision, thought Marius, must be involved in the +philosopher’s contempt for it—some diseased point of thought, or moral +dulness, leading logically to what seemed to him the strangest of all +the emperor’s inhumanities, the temper of the suicide; for which there +was just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. “’Tis part of the +business of life,” he read, “to lose it handsomely.” On due occasion, +“one might give life the slip.” The moral or mental powers might fail +one; and then it were a fair question, precisely, whether the time for +taking leave was not come:—“Thou canst leave this prison when thou +wilt. Go forth boldly!” Just there, in the bare capacity to entertain +such question at all, there was what Marius, with a soul which must +always leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine, touching +him as it touched the flies in the air, could not away with. There, +surely, was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power of +apprehension. It was the attitude, the melancholy intellectual +attitude, of one who might be greatly mistaken in things—who might make +the greatest of mistakes. + +A heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in the +weakness of others:—of this Marius had certainly found the trace, as a +confidant of the emperor’s conversations with himself, in spite of +those jarring inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoical +indifference, and the many difficulties of his manner of writing. He +found it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence, in this +way. As he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls of +manuscript a sealed letter with the emperor’s superscription, which +might well be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in +person; Aurelius being then absent from Rome in one of his favourite +retreats, at Praeneste, taking a few days of quiet with his young +children, before his departure for the war. A whole day passed as +Marius crossed the Campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumn +lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, the shepherds +in their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and villa; and it +was after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-town +to the imperial residence. He was struck by an odd mixture of stillness +and excitement about the place. Lights burned at the windows. It seemed +that numerous visitors were within, for the courtyard was crowded with +litters and horses in waiting. For the moment, indeed, all larger +cares, even the cares of war, of late so heavy a pressure, had been +forgotten in what was passing with the little Annius Verus; who for his +part had forgotten his toys, lying all day across the knees of his +mother, as a mere child’s ear-ache grew rapidly to alarming sickness +with great and manifest agony, only suspended a little, from time to +time, when from very weariness he passed into a few moments of +unconsciousness. The country surgeon called in, had removed the +imposthume with the knife. There had been a great effort to bear this +operation, for the terrified child, hardly persuaded to submit himself, +when his pain was at its worst, and even more for the parents. At +length, amid a company of pupils pressing in with him, as the custom +was, to watch the proceedings in the sick-room, the eminent Galen had +arrived, only to pronounce the thing done visibly useless, the patient +falling now into longer intervals of delirium. And thus, thrust on one +side by the crowd of departing visitors, Marius was forced into the +privacy of a grief, the desolate face of which went deep into his +memory, as he saw the emperor carry the child away—quite conscious at +last, but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and +defeat—pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned just then for one +thing only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in its obscure +distress. + +NOTES + + +42. +Transliteration: para tês mêtros to theosebes. Translation: “rites +deriving from [his] mother.” + + +47. +Transliteration: koinos autô pros tous theous. Translation: +“common to him together with the gods.” + + +49. +Transliteration: Tou aristou apolaue. Translation: “[Always] take +the best.” + + +52. +Not indented in the original. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. +THE WILL AS VISION + + +Paratum cor meum deus! paratum cor meum! + + +The emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the erection of images in +memory of the dead prince; that a golden one should be carried, +together with the other images, in the great procession of the Circus, +and the addition of the child’s name to the Hymn of the Salian Priests: +and so, stifling private grief, without further delay set forth for the +war. + +True kingship, as Plato, the old master of Aurelius, had understood it, +was essentially of the nature of a service. If so be, you can discover +a mode of life more desirable than the being a king, for those who +shall be kings; then, the true Ideal of the State will become a +possibility; but not otherwise. And if the life of Beatific Vision be +indeed possible, if philosophy really “concludes in an ecstasy,” +affording full fruition to the entire nature of man; then, for certain +elect souls at least, a mode of life will have been discovered more +desirable than to be a king. By love or fear you might induce such +persons to forgo their privilege; to take upon them the distasteful +task of governing other men, or even of leading them to victory in +battle. But, by the very conditions of its tenure, their dominion would +be wholly a ministry to others: they would have taken upon them “the +form of a servant”: they would be reigning for the well-being of others +rather than their own. The true king, the righteous king, would be +Saint Lewis, exiling himself from the better land and its perfected +company—so real a thing to him, definite and real as the pictured +scenes of his psalter—to take part in or to arbitrate men’s quarrels, +about the transitory appearances of things. In a lower degree (lower, +in proportion as the highest Platonic dream is lower than any Christian +vision) the true king would be Marcus Aurelius, drawn from the +meditation of books, to be the ruler of the Roman people in peace, and +still more, in war. + +To Aurelius, certainly, the philosophic mood, the visions, however dim, +which this mood brought with it, were sufficiently pleasant to him, +together with the endearments of his home, to make public rule nothing +less than a sacrifice of himself according to Plato’s requirement, now +consummated in his setting forth for the campaign on the Danube. That +it was such a sacrifice was to Marius visible fact, as he saw him +ceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the pageantry of an +imperial departure, yet with the air less of a sanguine and +self-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated. +Through the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and repassing so +inexplicably from side to side, the rumour of which reached him amid +his own quiet studies, Marius seemed always to see that central figure, +with its habitually dejected hue grown now to an expression of positive +suffering, all the stranger from its contrast with the magnificent +armour worn by the emperor on this occasion, as it had been worn by his +predecessor Hadrian. + +Totus et argento contextus et auro: + + +clothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely constructed +armour of which Homer tells, but without its miraculous +lightsomeness—he looked out baffled, labouring, moribund; a mere +comfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of the +labours of Hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of the +civilised world. It was as if the familiar soul which had been so +friendly disposed towards him were actually departed to Hades; and when +he read the Conversations afterwards, though his judgment of them +underwent no material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance we +make for the dead. The memory of that suffering image, while it +certainly strengthened his adhesion to what he could accept at all in +the philosophy of Aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seem +the writer’s mistakes. What, after all, had been the meaning of that +incident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, when the prince, +then a little child much younger than was usual, had stood in ceremony +among the priests of Mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest +at the sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar? The other crowns lodged +themselves here or there; when, Lo! the crown thrown by Aurelius, the +youngest of them all, alighted upon the very brows of the god, as if +placed there by a careful hand! He was still young, also, when on the +day of his adoption by Antoninus Pius he saw himself in a dream, with +as it were shoulders of ivory, like the images of the gods, and found +them more capable than shoulders of flesh. Yet he was now well-nigh +fifty years of age, setting out with two-thirds of life behind him, +upon a labour which would fill the remainder of it with anxious cares—a +labour for which he had perhaps no capacity, and certainly no taste. + +That ancient suit of armour was almost the only object Aurelius now +possessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu collected by +the Caesars, making the imperial residence like a magnificent museum. +Not men alone were needed for the war, so that it became necessary, to +the great disgust alike of timid persons and of the lovers of sport, to +arm the gladiators, but money also was lacking. Accordingly, at the +sole motion of Aurelius himself, unwilling that the public burden +should be further increased, especially on the part of the poor, the +whole of the imperial ornaments and furniture, a sumptuous collection +of gems formed by Hadrian, with many works of the most famous painters +and sculptors, even the precious ornaments of the emperor’s chapel or +Lararium, and the wardrobe of the empress Faustina, who seems to have +borne the loss without a murmur, were exposed for public auction. +“These treasures,” said Aurelius, “like all else that I possess, belong +by right to the Senate and People.” Was it not a characteristic of the +true kings in Plato that they had in their houses nothing they could +call their own? Connoisseurs had a keen delight in the mere reading of +the Praetor’s list of the property for sale. For two months the learned +in these matters were daily occupied in the appraising of the +embroidered hangings, the choice articles of personal use selected for +preservation by each succeeding age, the great outlandish pearls from +Hadrian’s favourite cabinet, the marvellous plate lying safe behind the +pretty iron wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths’ quarter. +Meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the inspection of +objects which had been as daily companions to people so far above and +remote from them—things so fine also in workmanship and material as to +seem, with their antique and delicate air, a worthy survival of the +grand bygone eras, like select thoughts or utterances embodying the +very spirit of the vanished past. The town became more pensive than +ever over old fashions. + +The welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great war +being now over, all Rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet, +likely to last long, as though bent only on watching from afar the +languid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself. Marius took +advantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study than of old, +only now and then going out to one of his favourite spots on the Sabine +or Alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of Rome in the +country air. On one of these occasions, as if by favour of an invisible +power withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection from around him, he +enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession—the possession of his +own best and happiest self. After some gloomy thoughts over-night, he +awoke under the full tide of the rising sun, himself full, in his +entire refreshment, of that almost religious appreciation of sleep, the +graciousness of its influence on men’s spirits, which had made the old +Greeks conceive of it as a god. It was like one of those old joyful +wakings of childhood, now becoming rarer and rarer with him, and looked +back upon with much regret as a measure of advancing age. In fact, the +last bequest of this serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once +before, he overheard those he loved best pronouncing his name very +pleasantly, as they passed through the rich light and shadow of a +summer morning, along the pavement of a city—Ah! fairer far than Rome! +In a moment, as he arose, a certain oppression of late setting very +heavily upon him was lifted away, as though by some physical motion in +the air. + +That flawless serenity, better than the most pleasurable excitement, +yet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things and +persons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life, was to +be wholly his to-day, he thought, as he rode towards Tibur, under the +early sunshine; the marble of its villas glistening all the way before +him on the hillside. And why could he not hold such serenity of spirit +ever at command? he asked, expert as he was at last become in the art +of setting the house of his thoughts in order. “’Tis in thy power to +think as thou wilt:” he repeated to himself: it was the most +serviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by those imperial +conversations.—“’Tis in thy power to think as thou wilt.” And were the +cheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which he had there read so +much, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of an eternal +friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and material +order, but only just behind it, ready perhaps even now to break +through:—were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on +some deliberate act of volition on his part? Were they doctrines one +might take for granted, generously take for granted, and led on by +them, at first as but well-defined objects of hope, come at last into +the region of a corresponding certitude of the intellect? “It is the +truth I seek,” he had read, “the truth, by which no one,” gray and +depressing though it might seem, “was ever really injured.” And yet, on +the other hand, the imperial wayfarer, he had been able to go along +with so far on his intellectual pilgrimage, let fall many things +concerning the practicability of a methodical and self-forced assent to +certain principles or presuppositions “one could not do without.” Were +there, as the expression “one could not do without” seemed to hint, +beliefs, without which life itself must be almost impossible, +principles which had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very +fact? Experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible world +he could attend or not, almost at will, to this or that colour, this or +that train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and +sound, so it was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to +that hum of voices which besiege the inward no less than the outward +ear. Might it be not otherwise with those various and competing +hypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, in that open field for +hypothesis—one’s own actual ignorance of the origin and tendency of our +being—present themselves so importunately, some of them with so +emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes of successive +ages? Might the will itself be an organ of knowledge, of vision? + +On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand +from afar reached him; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its +first hour increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as he +conceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had something +to do. The air there, air supposed to possess the singular property of +restoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An even veil of +lawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its broad, +shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellow +old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal +Sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamental +rock. Some half-conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to have +determined their grouping; in part resisting, partly going along with +the natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and +precipices. An air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation +around—a world of evergreen trees—the olives especially, older than how +many generations of men’s lives! fretted and twisted by the combining +forces of life and death, into every conceivable caprice of form. In +the windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the +immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human +habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to +count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest. +Yet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was +silently quickening everything in the late February afternoon, and the +unseen violet refined itself through the air. It was as if the spirit +of life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate revelation +of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work. + +Through some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn where he +rested, Marius had an unexpected delay. He sat down in an olive-garden, +and, all around him and within still turning to reverie, the course of +his own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some other world, +disparted from this spectacular point where he was now placed to survey +it, like that distant road below, along which he had travelled this +morning across the Campagna. Through a dreamy land he could see himself +moving, as if in another life, and like another person, through all his +fortunes and misfortunes, passing from point to point, weeping, +delighted, escaping from various dangers. That prospect brought him, +first of all, an impulse of lively gratitude: it was as if he must look +round for some one else to share his joy with: for some one to whom he +might tell the thing, for his own relief. Companionship, indeed, +familiarity with others, gifted in this way or that, or at least +pleasant to him, had been, through one or another long span of it, the +chief delight of the journey. And was it only the resultant general +sense of such familiarity, diffused through his memory, that in a while +suggested the question whether there had not been—besides Flavian, +besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude he had which in spite of +ardent friendship perhaps loved best of all things—some other +companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side throughout; +doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of his +peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful +recognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was +there at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for him +altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it? In his +deepest apparent solitude there had been rich entertainment. It was as +if there were not one only, but two wayfarers, side by side, visible +there across the plain, as he indulged his fancy. A bird came and sang +among the wattled hedge-roses: an animal feeding crept nearer: the +child who kept it was gazing quietly: and the scene and the hours still +conspiring, he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself, +beside him in his coming and going, to those divinations of a living +and companionable spirit at work in all things, of which he had become +aware from time to time in his old philosophic readings—in Plato and +others, last but not least, in Aurelius. Through one reflection upon +another, he passed from such instinctive divinations, to the thoughts +which give them logical consistency, formulating at last, as the +necessary exponent of our own and the world’s life, that reasonable +Ideal to which the Old Testament gives the name of Creator, which for +the philosophers of Greece is the Eternal Reason, and in the New +Testament the Father of Men—even as one builds up from act and word and +expression of the friend actually visible at one’s side, an ideal of +the spirit within him. + +In this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, as he could +recognise, although just then, in the whole sum of its capacities, so +entirely possessed by him—Nay! actually his very self—was yet +determined by a far-reaching system of material forces external to it, +a thousand combining currents from earth and sky. Its seemingly active +powers of apprehension were, in fact, but susceptibilities to +influence. The perfection of its capacity might be said to depend on +its passive surrender, as of a leaf on the wind, to the motions of the +great stream of physical energy without it. And might not the +intellectual frame also, still more intimately himself as in truth it +was, after the analogy of the bodily life, be a moment only, an impulse +or series of impulses, a single process, in an intellectual or +spiritual system external to it, diffused through all time and +place—that great stream of spiritual energy, of which his own imperfect +thoughts, yesterday or to-day, would be but the remote, and therefore +imperfect pulsations? It was the hypothesis (boldest, though in reality +the most conceivable of all hypotheses) which had dawned on the +contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old Greek +thought, alike:—the “World of Ideas,” existent only because, and in so +far as, they are known, as Plato conceived; the “creative, +incorruptible, informing mind,” supposed by Aristotle, so sober-minded, +yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. Might +not this entire material world, the very scene around him, the +immemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the falling +water, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation of, that one +indefectible mind, wherein he too became conscious, for an hour, a day, +for so many years? Upon what other hypothesis could he so well +understand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittent +consciousness of them, for the intermittent consciousness of so many +generations, fleeting away one after another? It was easier to conceive +of the material fabric of things as but an element in a world of +thought—as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, or +accident, or passing condition in a world of matter, because mind was +really nearer to himself: it was an explanation of what was less known +by what was known better. The purely material world, that close, +impassable prison-wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to be +actually dissolving away all around him: and he felt a quiet hope, a +quiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as +a really credible opinion. It was like the break of day over some vast +prospect with the “new city,” as it were some celestial New Rome, in +the midst of it. That divine companion figured no longer as but an +occasional wayfarer beside him; but rather as the unfailing +“assistant,” without whose inspiration and concurrence he could not +breathe or see, instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting +his imperfect thoughts. How often had the thought of their brevity +spoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life, confusing even his +present sense of them by the suggestion of disease, of death, of a +coming end, in everything! How had he longed, sometimes, that there +were indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he could commit his +own most fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, Ay! the very +sorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense:—one strong +to retain them even though he forgot, in whose more vigorous +consciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere quickening +of capacity which was all that remained of them in himself! “Oh! that +they might live before Thee”—To-day at least, in the peculiar clearness +of one privileged hour, he seemed to have apprehended that in which the +experiences he valued most might find, one by one, an abiding-place. +And again, the resultant sense of companionship, of a person beside +him, evoked the faculty of conscience—of conscience, as of old and when +he had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, nor of self-reproach +even, but of a certain lively gratitude. + +Himself—his sensations and ideas—never fell again precisely into focus +as on that day, yet he was the richer by its experience. But for once +only to have come under the power of that peculiar mood, to have felt +the train of reflections which belong to it really forcible and +conclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, to have +apprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably that it defined personal +gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the +shadows of the world, left this one particular hour a marked point in +life never to be forgotten. It gave him a definitely ascertained +measure of his moral or intellectual need, of the demand his soul must +make upon the powers, whatsoever they might be, which had brought him, +as he was, into the world at all. And again, would he be faithful to +himself, to his own habits of mind, his leading suppositions, if he did +but remain just there? Must not all that remained of life be but a +search for the equivalent of that Ideal, among so-called actual +things—a gathering together of every trace or token of it, which his +actual experience might present? + + + + +PART THE FOURTH + + + + +CHAPTER XX. +TWO CURIOUS HOUSES + +I. GUESTS + +“Your old men shall dream dreams.”+ + + +A nature like that of Marius, composed, in about equal parts, of +instincts almost physical, and of slowly accumulated intellectual +judgments, was perhaps even less susceptible than other men’s +characters of essential change. And yet the experience of that +fortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision all +the deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not leave him +quite as he had been. For his mental view, at least, it changed +measurably the world about him, of which he was still indeed a curious +spectator, but which looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and, +in a sense, less real to him than ever. It was as if he viewed it +through a diminishing glass. And the permanency of this change he could +note, some years later, when it happened that he was a guest at a +feast, in which the various exciting elements of Roman life, its +physical and intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity and +far-fetched elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen, +were elaborately combined. The great Apuleius, the literary ideal of +his boyhood, had arrived in Rome,—was now visiting Tusculum, at the +house of their common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who loved +every sort of superiorities; and Marius was favoured with an invitation +to a supper given in his honour. + +It was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own early +boyish hero-worship, yet with some sense of superiority in himself, +seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on the +point of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster estimate of its +object, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, the +foot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gathered +round a single great house under shadow of the “haunted” ruins of +Cicero’s villa on the wooded heights. He found a touch of weirdness in +the circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet +the writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages in +his own fiction. As he turned now and then to gaze at the evening scene +through the tall narrow openings of the street, up which the cattle +were going home slowly from the pastures below, the Alban mountains, +stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses, seemed close +at hand—a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun—with +those waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate +volcanic formation. The coolness of the little brown market-place, for +profit of which even the working-people, in long file through the +olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for the night, was grateful, +after the heats of Rome. Those wild country figures, clad in every kind +of fantastic patchwork, stained by wind and weather fortunately enough +for the eye, under that significant light inclined him to poetry. And +it was a very delicate poetry of its kind that seemed to enfold him, as +passing into the poet’s house he paused for a moment to glance back +towards the heights above; whereupon, the numerous cascades of the +precipitous garden of the villa, framed in the doorway of the hall, +fell into a harmless picture, in its place among the pictures within, +and scarcely more real than they—a landscape-piece, in which the power +of water (plunging into what unseen depths!) done to the life, was +pleasant, and without its natural terrors. + +At the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rare +woods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from the +ready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of the +guests, as with odours from the altars of the gods, the supper-table +was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable +petit-maître, who entertained. He was already most carefully dressed, +but, like Martial’s Stella, perhaps consciously, meant to change his +attire once and again during the banquet; in the last instance, for an +ancient vesture (object of much rivalry among the young men of fashion, +at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a toga, of altogether +lost hue and texture. He wore it with a grace which became the leader +of a thrilling movement then on foot for the restoration of that +disused garment, in which, laying aside the customary evening dress, +all the visitors were requested to appear, setting off the delicate +sinuosities and well-disposed “golden ways” of its folds, with +harmoniously tinted flowers. The opulent sunset, blending pleasantly +with artificial light, fell across the quiet ancestral effigies of old +consular dignitaries, along the wide floor strewn with sawdust of +sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of cool coronals, lying ready +for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of old citron. The +crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of the early autumn +fruit—mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had long been hanging +under careful protection upon the vines, were almost as much a feast +for the eye, as the dusky fires of the rare twelve-petalled roses. A +favourite animal, white as snow, brought by one of the visitors, purred +its way gracefully among the wine-cups, coaxed onward from place to +place by those at table, as they reclined easily on their cushions of +German eider-down, spread over the long-legged, carved couches. + +A highly refined modification of the acroama—a musical performance +during supper for the diversion of the guests—was presently heard +hovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the +company could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it had +been designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole to think +it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wild neighbourhood, +turning, as it did now and then, to a solitary reed-note, like a +bird’s, while it wandered into the distance. It wandered quite away at +last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight came on, and made way for +another sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid, phantasmal glitter, +advancing from the garden by torchlight, defined itself, as it came +nearer, into a dance of young men in armour. Arrived at length in a +portico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived that their +mechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highly +expressive dramatic action; and with the utmost possible emphasis of +dumb motion, their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air, +they danced the Death of Paris. The young Commodus, already an adept in +these matters, who had condescended to welcome the eminent Apuleius at +the banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place to take his share +in the performance; and at its conclusion reappeared, still wearing the +dainty accoutrements of Paris, including a breastplate, composed +entirely of overlapping tigers’ claws, skilfully gilt. The youthful +prince had lately assumed the dress of manhood, on the return of the +emperor for a brief visit from the North; putting up his hair, in +imitation of Nero, in a golden box dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter. His +likeness to Aurelius, his father, was become, in consequence, more +striking than ever; and he had one source of genuine interest in the +great literary guest of the occasion, in that the latter was the +fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of wild beasts and +gladiatorial shows in the province of Carthage, where he resided. + +Still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes of +the emperor’s son, it was felt that with a guest like Apuleius whom +they had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, the +conversation should be learned and superior, and the host at last +deftly led his company round to literature, by the way of bindings. +Elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient Greek +books passed from hand to hand about the table. It was a sign for the +visitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiosities +from their bags, as their contribution to the banquet; and one of them, +a famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenor voice +the piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whether it +could indeed be the composition of Lucian of Samosata,+ understood to +be the great mocker of that day:— + +“What sound was that, Socrates?” asked Chaerephon. “It came from the +beach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way off.—And how +melodious it was! Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all sea-birds were +songless.” + +“Aye! a sea-bird,” answered Socrates, “a bird called the Halcyon, and +has a note full of plaining and tears. There is an old story people +tell of it. It was a mortal woman once, daughter of Aeolus, god of the +winds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her early +maidenhood. The son was not less fair than the father; and when it came +to pass that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented his sweet +usage, was, Just that! And some while after, as Heaven willed, she was +changed into a bird. Floating now on bird’s wings over the sea she +seeks her lost Ceyx there; since she was not able to find him after +long wandering over the land.” + +“That then is the Halcyon—the kingfisher,” said Chaerephon. “I never +heard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kind +of a bird is it, Socrates?” + +“Not a large bird, though she has received large honour from the gods +on account of her singular conjugal affection. For whensoever she makes +her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon’s +weather,—days distinguishable among all others for their serenity, +though they come sometimes amid the storms of winter—days like to-day! +See how transparent is the sky above us, and how motionless the +sea!—like a smooth mirror.” + +True! A Halcyon day, indeed! and yesterday was the same. But tell me, +Socrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been told +from the beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals into +birds? To me nothing seems more incredible.” + +“Dear Chaerephon,” said Socrates, “methinks we are but half-blind +judges of the impossible and the possible. We try the question by the +standard of our human faculty, which avails neither for true knowledge, +nor for faith, nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us impossible +which are really easy, many things unattainable which are within our +reach; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness of +our minds. For in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like a +little child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life in +comparison of eternity. Then, how can we, who comprehend not the +faculties of gods and of the heavenly host, tell whether aught of that +kind be possible or no?—What a tempest you saw three days ago! One +trembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, the violence +of the wind! You might have thought the whole world was going to ruin. +And then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity of weather, +which has continued till to-day. Which do you think the greater and +more difficult thing to do: to exchange the disorder of that +irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and becalm the whole +world again, or to refashion the form of a woman into that of a bird? +We can teach even little children to do something of that sort,—to take +wax or clay, and mould out of the same material many kinds of form, one +after another, without difficulty. And it may be that to the Deity, +whose power is too vast for comparison with ours, all processes of that +kind are manageable and easy. How much wider is the whole circle of +heaven than thyself?—Wider than thou canst express. + +“Among ourselves also, how vast the difference we may observe in men’s +degrees of power! To you and me, and many another like us, many things +are impossible which are quite easy to others. For those who are +unmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who have +not yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women of +birds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms of +winged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret +art in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb a little +memberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightens and +beautifies it with quaint variety of colour:—and Lo! the bee in her +wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods. + +“It follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little account, able +wholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little one, for +the most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves, may +hardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortal +gods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. Yet the glory of thy +mythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, O tearful songstress! that +will I too hand on to my children, and tell it often to my wives, +Xanthippe and Myrto:—the story of thy pious love to Ceyx, and of thy +melodious hymns; and, above all, of the honour thou hast with the +gods!” + +The reader’s well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almost +uncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of letters +then present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before the +recital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no means +designed, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beauty +of his teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made ready to +transcribe what he would say, the sort of things of which a collection +was then forming, the “Florida” or Flowers, so to call them, he was apt +to let fall by the way—no impromptu ventures at random; but rather +elaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at length, out of the rich +treasure-house of a memory stored with such, and as with a fine savour +of old musk about them. Certainly in this case, as Marius thought, it +was worth while to hear a charming writer speak. Discussing, quite in +our modern way, the peculiarities of those suburban views, especially +the sea-views, of which he was a professed lover, he was also every +inch a priest of Aesculapius, patronal god of Carthage. There was a +piquancy in his rococo, very African, and as it were perfumed +personality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years old, a mixture +there of that sort of Platonic spiritualism which can speak of the soul +of man as but a sojourner in the prison of the body—a blending of that +with such a relish for merely bodily graces as availed to set the +fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and the like, nay! +with something also which reminded Marius of the vein of coarseness he +had found in the “Golden Book.” All this made the total impression he +conveyed a very uncommon one. Marius did not wonder, as he watched him +speaking, that people freely attributed to him many of the marvellous +adventures he had recounted in that famous romance, over and above the +wildest version of his own actual story—his extraordinary marriage, his +religious initiations, his acts of mad generosity, his trial as a +sorcerer. + +But a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for the +company to separate. He was entertaining his immediate neighbours at +the table with a trick from the streets; tossing his olives in rapid +succession into the air, and catching them, as they fell, between his +lips. His dexterity in this performance made the mirth around him +noisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor: the learned party +broke up; and Marius withdrew, glad to escape into the open air. The +courtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were lurking for +the guests, with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration was +visible in the distance. Was it in Rome; or in one of the villages of +the country? Pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it, +Marius was for the first time able to converse intimately with +Apuleius; and in this moment of confidence the “illuminist,” himself +with locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full of +affectations, almost like one of those light women there, dropped a +veil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting the play of a +certain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets, to be +ready to explain and defend his position reasonably. For a moment his +fantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal vision seemed to +fall into some intelligible congruity with each other. In truth, it was +the Platonic Idealism, as he conceived it, which for him literally +animated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this world of the +purely outward aspects of men and things.—Did material things, such +things as they had had around them all that evening, really need +apology for being there, to interest one, at all? Were not all visible +objects—the whole material world indeed, according to the consistent +testimony of philosophy in many forms—“full of souls”? embarrassed +perhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls? Certainly, the +contemplative philosophy of Plato, with its figurative imagery and +apologue, its manifold æsthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, its +music for the outward ear, had been, like Plato’s old master himself, a +two-sided or two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a Platonist: only, for +him, the Ideas of Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, but +in very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensible +things. Those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding through the +tables and along the walls:—were they only startings in the old +rafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or rather +importunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of the +persons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break through +their frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding +essentials beyond them, which might have their say, their judgment to +give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life’s +table would be over? And was not this the true significance of the +Platonic doctrine?—a hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves +with particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating between +God and man—man, who does but need due attention on his part to become +aware of his celestial company, filling the air about him, thick as +motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he +casts through it. + +“Two kinds there are, of animated beings,” he exclaimed: “Gods, +entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode, +since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision—those +mysterious stars!—in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection +of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men, +dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm +and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; taken +altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally, +quitting the scene in irresistible succession. + +“What then? Has nature connected itself together by no bond, allowed +itself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and human +elements? And you will say to me: If so it be, that man is thus +entirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication is +denied him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as a shepherd +his sheep—to whom shall I address my prayers? Whom, shall I invoke as +the helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good? + +“Well! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whom +our aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us. Passing +between the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to the +other prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kind +of interpreters. This interval of the air is full of them! Through +them, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. For, +specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces, +with a ministry according to the disposition of each. They go to and +fro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men’s houses”— + +Just then a companion’s hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder of +the speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly. Its +singular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on this +strange evening, in all its detail—the dance, the readings, the distant +fire—a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character of one of +those famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then been in fact +under discussion. When Marius recalled its circumstances he seemed to +hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst +a scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldly mystical a view of +man and his position in the world. For a moment, but only for a moment, +as he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing “close +against the sky.” Yes! the reception of theory, of hypothesis, of +beliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament. They were, so to +speak, mere equivalents of temperament. A celestial ladder, a ladder +from heaven to earth: that was the assumption which the experience of +Apuleius had suggested to him: it was what, in different forms, certain +persons in every age had instinctively supposed: they would be glad to +find their supposition accredited by the authority of a grave +philosophy. Marius, however, yearning not less than they, in that hard +world of Rome, and below its unpeopled sky, for the trace of some +celestial wing across it, must still object that they assumed the thing +with too much facility, too much of self-complacency. And his second +thought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies, fantastic +visions of that sort, only left the actual world more lonely than ever. +For him certainly, and for his solace, the little godship for whom the +rude countryman, an unconscious Platonist, trimmed his twinkling lamp, +would never slip from the bark of these immemorial olive-trees.—No! not +even in the wildest moonlight. For himself, it was clear, he must still +hold by what his eyes really saw. Only, he had to concede also, that +the very boldness of such theory bore witness, at least, to a variety +of human disposition and a consequent variety of mental view, which +might—who can tell?—be correspondent to, be defined by and define, +varieties of facts, of truths, just “behind the veil,” regarding the +world all alike had actually before them as their original premiss or +starting-point; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities than all +possible fancies concerning it. + +NOTES + + +75. Joel 2.28. + + +81. +Halcyone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. +TWO CURIOUS HOUSES + +II. THE CHURCH IN CECILIA’S HOUSE + +“Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see +visions.” + + +Cornelius had certain friends in or near Rome, whose household, to +Marius, as he pondered now and again what might be the determining +influences of that peculiar character, presented itself as possibly its +main secret—the hidden source from which the beauty and strength of a +nature, so persistently fresh in the midst of a somewhat jaded world, +might be derived. But Marius had never yet seen these friends; and it +was almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last lifted, +and, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet’s villa at +Tusculum, he entered another curious house. + +“The house in which she lives,” says that mystical German writer quoted +once before, “is for the orderly soul, which does not live on blindly +before her, but is ever, out of her passing experiences, building and +adorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself, only an +expansion of the body; as the body, according to the philosophy of +Swedenborg,+ is but a process, an expansion, of the soul. For such an +orderly soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinities +establish themselves, between herself and the doors and passage-ways, +the lights and shadows, of her outward dwelling-place, until she may +seem incorporate with it—until at last, in the entire expressiveness of +what is outward, there is for her, to speak properly, between outward +and inward, no longer any distinction at all; and the light which +creeps at a particular hour on a particular picture or space upon the +wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to +her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of +apprehension and door-ways to things beyond—the germ or rudiment of +certain new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a +matter lying beyond her actually attained capacities of spirit and +sense.” + +So it must needs be in a world which is itself, we may think, together +with that bodily “tent” or “tabernacle,” only one of many vestures for +the clothing of the pilgrim soul, to be left by her, surely, as if on +the wayside, worn-out one by one, as it was from her, indeed, they +borrowed what momentary value or significance they had. + +The two friends were returning to Rome from a visit to a country-house, +where again a mixed company of guests had been assembled; Marius, for +his part, a little weary of gossip, and those sparks of ill-tempered +rivalry, which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire the +intercourse of people in general society can strike out of them. A mere +reaction upon this, as they started in the clear morning, made their +companionship, at least for one of them, hardly less tranquillising +than the solitude he so much valued. Something in the south-west wind, +combining with their own intention, favoured increasingly, as the hours +wore on, a serenity like that Marius had felt once before in journeying +over the great plain towards Tibur—a serenity that was to-day brotherly +amity also, and seemed to draw into its own charmed circle whatever was +then present to eye or ear, while they talked or were silent together, +and all petty irritations, and the like, shrank out of existence, or +kept certainly beyond its limits. The natural fatigue of the long +journey overcame them quite suddenly at last, when they were still +about two miles distant from Rome. The seemingly endless line of tombs +and cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the +west; and it was just where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into +the Appian, that Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall—the +outer wall of some villa courtyard, it might be supposed— as if at +liberty to enter, and rest there awhile. He held the door open for his +companion to enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted +the latch, which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrinking from a +possible intrusion: “Would you like to see it?” Was he willing to look +upon that, the seeing of which might define—yes! define the critical +turning-point in his days? + +The little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into +the court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt natural +hollows, which give its character to the country in this place; the +house itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of +which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed from +passengers along the road. All around, in those well-ordered precincts, +were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste—a taste, indeed, +chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it +had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older +art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour +and form, so delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer +intelligence in these matters than lay within the resources of the +ancient world. It was the old way of true Renaissance—being indeed the +way of nature with her roses, the divine way with the body of man, +perhaps with his soul—conceiving the new organism by no sudden and +abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon +elements, all of which had in truth already lived and died many times. +The fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, +the precious corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such +juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave +thought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, æsthetically, very +seductive. Lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading their +seed-bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air, above +the ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset. And from +the first they could hear singing, the singing of children mainly, it +would seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its effect, as to +bring suddenly to the recollection of Marius, Flavian’s early essays +towards a new world of poetic sound. It was the expression not +altogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happiness—the blithe +self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom some all-subduing +experience had wrought heroically, and who still remembered, on this +bland afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance. + +His old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special sympathies, of +places,—above all, to any hieratic or religious significance they might +have,—was at its liveliest, as Marius, still encompassed by that +peculiar singing, and still amid the evidences of a grave discretion +all around him, passed into the house. That intelligent seriousness +about life, the absence of which had ever seemed to remove those who +lacked it into some strange species wholly alien from himself, +accumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first days +at White-nights, was as it were translated here, as if in designed +congruity with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision, +into an actual picture. If the true value of souls is in proportion to +what they can admire, Marius was just then an acceptable soul. As he +passed through the various chambers, great and small, one dominant +thought increased upon him, the thought of chaste women and their +children—of all the various affections of family life under its most +natural conditions, yet developed, as if in devout imitation of some +sublime new type of it, into large controlling passions. There reigned +throughout, an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by way +of making ready for some gracious spousals. The place itself was like a +bride adorned for her husband; and its singular cheerfulness, the +abundant light everywhere, the sense of peaceful industry, of which he +received a deep impression though without precisely reckoning wherein +it resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in forcible contrast just at +first to the place to which he was next conducted by Cornelius still +with a sort of eager, hurried, half-troubled reluctance, and as if he +forbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his +companion. + +An old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here and there with +a venerable olive-tree—a picture in pensive shade and fiery blossom, as +transparent, under that afternoon light, as the old miniature-painters’ +work on the walls of the chambers within—was bounded towards the west +by a low, grass-grown hill. A narrow opening cut in its steep side, +like a solid blackness there, admitted Marius and his gleaming leader +into a hollow cavern or crypt, neither more nor less in fact than the +family burial-place of the Cecilii, to whom this residence belonged, +brought thus, after an arrangement then becoming not unusual, into +immediate connexion with the abode of the living, in bold assertion of +that instinct of family life, which the sanction of the Holy Family +was, hereafter, more and more to reinforce. Here, in truth, was the +centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of the sanctity, of +the entire scene. That “any person may, at his own election, constitute +the place which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of +his dead into it”:—had been a maxim of old Roman law, which it was +reserved for the early Christian societies, like that established here +by the piety of a wealthy Roman matron, to realise in all its +consequences. Yet this was certainly unlike any cemetery Marius had +ever before seen; most obviously in this, that these people had +returned to the older fashion of disposing of their dead by burial +instead of burning. Originally a family sepulchre, it was growing to a +vast necropolis, a whole township of the deceased, by means of some +free expansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural +limits. That air of venerable beauty which characterised the house and +its precincts above, was maintained also here. It was certainly with a +great outlay of labour that these long, apparently endless, yet +elaborately designed galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their +layers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the +path-way, in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters +downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were +carefully closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some +with simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by +fair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan +tombs—the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, the new epitaph being +woven into the faded letters of an earlier one. + +As in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for the +worship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around—incense, +lights, flowers, their flame or their freshness being relieved to the +utmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, a +volcanic sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires. Would they ever kindle +again?—possess, transform, the place?—Turning to an ashen pallor where, +at regular intervals, an air-hole or luminare let in a hard beam of +clear but sunless light, with the heavy sleepers, row upon row within, +leaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time could move +along, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls seemed to shut one in +into the great company of the dead. Only the long straight pathway lay +before him; opening, however, here and there, into a small chamber, +around a broad, table-like coffin or “altar-tomb,” adorned even more +profusely than the rest as if for some anniversary observance. Clearly, +these people, concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius +himself, had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling +of hope they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no +irreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. The complete and +irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing +to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since induced in +him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep, +as having something about it more home-like and hopeful, at least in +outward seeming. But whence the strange confidence that these “handfuls +of white dust” would hereafter recompose themselves once more into +exulting human creatures? By what heavenly alchemy, what reviving dew +from above, such as was certainly never again to reach the dead +violets?— Januarius, Agapetus, Felicitas; Martyrs! refresh, I pray you, +the soul of Cecil, of Cornelius! said an inscription, one of many, +scratched, like a passing sigh, when it was still fresh in the mortar +that had closed up the prison-door. All critical estimate of this bold +hope, as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim, being set +aside, here at least, carried further than ever before, was that pious, +systematic commemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal +to forget or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius +as the central exponent or symbol of all natural duty. + +The stern soul of the excellent Jonathan Edwards, applying the faulty +theology of John Calvin, afforded him, we know, the vision of infants +not a span long, on the floor of hell. Every visitor to the Catacombs +must have observed, in a very different theological connexion, the +numerous children’s graves there—beds of infants, but a span long +indeed, lowly “prisoners of hope,” on these sacred floors. It was with +great curiosity, certainly, that Marius considered them, decked in some +instances with the favourite toys of their tiny occupants—toy-soldiers, +little chariot-wheels, the entire paraphernalia of a baby-house; and +when he saw afterwards the living children, who sang and were busy +above—sang their psalm Laudate Pueri Dominum!—their very faces caught +for him a sort of quaint unreality from the memory of those others, the +children of the Catacombs, but a little way below them. + +Here and there, mingling with the record of merely natural decease, and +sometimes even at these children’s graves, were the signs of violent +death or “martyrdom,”—proofs that some “had loved not their lives unto +the death”—in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red +flowers for their heavenly “birthday.” About one sepulchre in +particular, distinguished in this way, and devoutly arrayed for what, +by a bold paradox, was thus treated as, natalitia—a birthday, the +peculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly centered. And it was +with a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning of a fresh order +of experiences upon him, that, standing beside those mournful relics, +snatched in haste from the common place of execution not many years +before, Marius became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of the +whole force of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, defining in +its turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so +tragic for the “Christian superstition.” Something of them he had heard +indeed already. They had seemed to him but one savagery the more, +savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. + +And yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw him onwards +to-day, as if towards an image of some still more pathetic suffering, +in the remote background. Yes! the interest, the expression, of the +entire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the savour of some +priceless incense. Penetrating the whole atmosphere, touching +everything around with its peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make all +this visible mortality, death’s very self—Ah! lovelier than any fable +of old mythology had ever thought to render it, in the utmost limits of +fantasy; and this, in simple candour of feeling about a supposed fact. +Peace! Pax tecum!—the word, the thought—was put forth everywhere, with +images of hope, snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan world which +had really afforded men so little of it from first to last; the various +consoling images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of +escape from the grave—Hercules wrestling with Death for possession of +Alcestis, Orpheus taming the wild beasts, the Shepherd with his sheep, +the Shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. Yet these +imageries after all, it must be confessed, formed but a slight +contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hope there—a kind of +heroic cheerfulness and grateful expansion of heart, as with the sense, +again, of some real deliverance, which seemed to deepen the longer one +lingered through these strange and awful passages. A figure, partly +pagan in character, yet most frequently repeated of all these visible +parables—the figure of one just escaped from the sea, still clinging as +for life to the shore in surprised joy, together with the inscription +beneath it, seemed best to express the prevailing sentiment of the +place. And it was just as he had puzzled out this inscription— + +I went down to the bottom of the mountains. +The earth with her bars was about me for ever: +Yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption! + + +—that with no feeling of suddenness or change Marius found himself +emerging again, like a later mystic traveller through similar dark +places “quieted by hope,” into the daylight. + +They were still within the precincts of the house, still in possession +of that wonderful singing, although almost in the open country, with a +great view of the Campagna before them, and the hills beyond. The +orchard or meadow, through which their path lay, was already gray with +twilight, though the western sky, where the greater stars were visible, +was still afloat in crimson splendour. The colour of all earthly things +seemed repressed by the contrast, yet with a sense of great richness +lingering in their shadows. At that moment the voice of the singers, a +“voice of joy and health,” concentrated itself with solemn antistrophic +movement, into an evening, or “candle” hymn. + +“Hail! Heavenly Light, from his pure glory poured, +Who is the Almighty Father, heavenly, blest:— +Worthiest art Thou, at all times to be sung +With undefiled tongue.”— + + +It was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes and fears, with +the stars shining in the midst of it. Half above, half below the level +white mist, dividing the light from the darkness, came now the mistress +of this place, the wealthy Roman matron, left early a widow a few years +before, by Cecilius “Confessor and Saint.” With a certain antique +severity in the gathering of the long mantle, and with coif or veil +folded decorously below the chin, “gray within gray,” to the mind of +Marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious and +virile character of the best female statuary of Greece. Quite foreign, +however, to any Greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care, +with which she carried a little child at rest in her arms. Another, a +year or two older, walked beside, the fingers of one hand within her +girdle. She paused for a moment with a greeting for Cornelius. + +That visionary scene was the close, the fitting close, of the +afternoon’s strange experiences. A few minutes later, passing forward +on his way along the public road, he could have fancied it a dream. The +house of Cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house he had +lately visited at Tusculum. And what a contrast was presented by the +former, in its suggestions of hopeful industry, of immaculate +cleanness, of responsive affection!—all alike determined by that +transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in which the +old puzzle of life had found its solution. In truth, one of his most +characteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longing for +escape—for some sudden, relieving interchange, across the very spaces +of life, it might be, along which he had lingered most pleasantly—for a +lifting, from time to time, of the actual horizon. It was like the +necessity under which the painter finds himself, to set a window or +open doorway in the background of his picture; or like a sick man’s +longing for northern coolness, and the whispering willow-trees, amid +the breathless evergreen forests of the south. To some such effect had +this visit occurred to him, and through so slight an accident. Rome and +Roman life, just then, were come to seem like some stifling forest of +bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the +generations of living trees, yet with roots in a deep, down-trodden +soil of poignant human susceptibilities. In the midst of its +suffocation, that old longing for escape had been satisfied by this +vision of the church in Cecilia’s house, as never before. It was still, +indeed, according to the unchangeable law of his temperament, to the +eye, to the visual faculty of mind, that those experiences appealed—the +peaceful light and shade, the boys whose very faces seemed to sing, the +virginal beauty of the mother and her children. But, in his case, what +was thus visible constituted a moral or spiritual influence, of a +somewhat exigent and controlling character, added anew to life, a new +element therein, with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he +must make terms. + +The thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged by a philosophy +which taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small, good or +evil, had ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement, in +which the boy-priest survived, prompting always the selection of what +was perfect of its kind, with subsequent loyal adherence of his soul +thereto. This had carried him along in a continuous communion with +ideals, certainly realised in part, either in the conditions of his own +being, or in the actual company about him, above all, in Cornelius. +Surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the first +time to-day—in this strange family, like “a garden enclosed”—was the +fulfilment of all the preferences, the judgments, of that +half-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection so +often amid the perplexities of life. Here, it might be, was, if not the +cure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows—of that +constitutional sorrowfulness, not peculiar to himself perhaps, but +which had made his life certainly like one long “disease of the +spirit.” Merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in the +mere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching flesh. On the +other hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might be +awakened—new and untried responsibilities—a demand for something from +him in return. Might this new vision, like the malignant beauty of +pagan Medusa, be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything but +itself? At least he suspected that, after the beholding of it, he could +never again be altogether as he had been before. + +NOTES + + +93. +Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish mystic writer, 1688-1772. Return. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. +“THE MINOR PEACE OF THE CHURCH” + + +Faithful to the spirit of his early Epicurean philosophy and the +impulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal inquiry about it, to +anything that, as a matter of fact, attracted or impressed him +strongly, Marius informed himself with much pains concerning the church +in Cecilia’s house; inclining at first to explain the peculiarities of +that place by the establishment there of the schola or common hall of +one of those burial-guilds, which then covered so much of the +unofficial, and, as it might be called, subterranean enterprise of +Roman society. + +And what he found, thus looking, literally, for the dead among the +living, was the vision of a natural, a scrupulously natural, love, +transforming, by some new gift of insight into the truth of human +relationships, and under the urgency of some new motive by him so far +unfathomable, all the conditions of life. He saw, in all its primitive +freshness and amid the lively facts of its actual coming into the +world, as a reality of experience, that regenerate type of humanity, +which, centuries later, Giotto and his successors, down to the best and +purest days of the young Raphael, working under conditions very +friendly to the imagination, were to conceive as an artistic ideal. He +felt there, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within +himself, the genius, the unique power of Christianity; in exercise +then, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite of many hindrances, +and under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity,—as he seemed to +understand—the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions, and +with the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing +in the world and the truest conservation of that creative energy by +which men and women were first brought into it. The nature of the +family, for which the better genius of old Rome itself had sincerely +cared, of the family and its appropriate affections—all that love of +one’s kindred by which obviously one does triumph in some degree over +death—had never been so felt before. Here, surely! in its genial +warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to it, to its own +immaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing on +every side, this development of the family did but carry forward, and +give effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly +to man. As if by way of a due recognition of some immeasurable divine +condescension manifest in a certain historic fact, its influence was +felt more especially at those points which demanded some sacrifice of +one’s self, for the weak, for the aged, for little children, and even +for the dead. And then, for its constant outward token, its significant +manner or index, it issued in a certain debonair grace, and a certain +mystic attractiveness, a courtesy, which made Marius doubt whether that +famed Greek “blitheness,” or gaiety, or grace, in the handling of life, +had been, after all, an unrivalled success. Contrasting with the +incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher +Roman life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness +amid its evil, the new creation he now looked on—as it were a picture +beyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty—had indeed all the +appropriate freshness of a “bride adorned for her husband.” Things new +and old seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house, +the brain full of science, the heart rich with various sentiment, +possessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart. + +“You would hardly believe,” writes Pliny,—to his own wife!—“what a +longing for you possesses me. Habit—that we have not been used to be +apart—adds herein to the primary force of affection. It is this keeps +me awake at night fancying I see you beside me. That is why my feet +take me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when I was +wont to visit you there. That is why I turn from the door of the empty +chamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover.”— + +There, is a real idyll from that family life, the protection of which +had been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the Romans, +still surviving among them; as it survived also in Aurelius, his +disposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attained +sweetness of his interior life. What Marius had been permitted to see +was a realisation of such life higher still: and with—Yes! with a more +effective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before, in +that fact, or series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would. + +The central glory of the reign of the Antonines was that society had +attained in it, though very imperfectly, and for the most part by +cumbrous effort of law, many of those ends to which Christianity went +straight, with the sufficiency, the success, of a direct and +appropriate instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touching charity-sermons +on occasions of great public distress; its charity-children in long +file, in memory of the elder empress Faustina; its prototype, under +patronage of Aesculapius, of the modern hospital for the sick on the +island of Saint Bartholomew. But what pagan charity was doing tardily, +and as if with the painful calculation of old age, the church was +doing, almost without thinking about it, with all the liberal +enterprise of youth, because it was her very being thus to do. “You +fail to realise your own good intentions,” she seems to say, to pagan +virtue, pagan kindness. She identified herself with those intentions +and advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and largeness. The +gentle Seneca would have reverent burial provided even for the dead +body of a criminal. Yet when a certain woman collected for interment +the insulted remains of Nero, the pagan world surmised that she must be +a Christian: only a Christian would have been likely to conceive so +chivalrous a devotion towards mere wretchedness. “We refuse to be +witnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law,” boasts the dainty +conscience of a Christian apologist, “we take no part in your cruel +sports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and we hold that to +witness a murder is the same thing as to commit one.” And there was +another duty almost forgotten, the sense of which Rousseau brought back +to the degenerate society of a later age. In an impassioned discourse +the sophist Favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants; and +there are Roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which gratefully record +this proof of natural affection as a thing then unusual. In this matter +too, what a sanction, what a provocative to natural duty, lay in that +image discovered to Augustus by the Tiburtine Sibyl, amid the aurora of +a new age, the image of the Divine Mother and the Child, just then +rising upon the world like the dawn! + +Christian belief, again, had presented itself as a great inspirer of +chastity. Chastity, in turn, realised in the whole scope of its +conditions, fortified that rehabilitation of peaceful labour, after the +mind, the pattern, of the workman of Galilee, which was another of the +natural instincts of the catholic church, as being indeed the +long-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true lover +of the industry—so to term it—the labour, the creation, of God. + +And this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman, of the +family, of industry, of man’s work in life, so close to the truth of +nature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor “Peace of the +church,” realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornment +of life and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye plucked +out, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those images +express, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side +only of the nature of the divine missionary of the New Testament. +Opposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is the +function of the Good Shepherd, serene, blithe and debonair, beyond the +gentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; of a king under whom the beatific +vision is realised of a reign of peace—peace of heart—among men. Such +aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood, is indeed +the final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in man’s +nature, which had sustained him so far through his immense labours, his +immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life, is +but a minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, of those +two contrasted aspects of its Founder, have, in different ages and +under the urgency of different human needs, been at work also in the +Christian Church. Certainly, in that brief “Peace of the church” under +the Antonines, the spirit of a pastoral security and happiness seems to +have been largely expanded. There, in the early church of Rome, was to +be seen, and on sufficiently reasonable grounds, that satisfaction and +serenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts of life, which all +hearts had desired, though for the most part in vain, contrasting +itself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, with the imperial +philosopher’s so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy. It was +Christianity in its humanity, or even its humanism, in its generous +hopes for man, its common sense and alacrity of cheerful service, its +sympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beauty and daylight. + +“The angel of righteousness,” says the Shepherd of Hermas, the most +characteristic religious book of that age, its Pilgrim’s Progress—“the +angel of righteousness is modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Take +from thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) ’tis the +sister of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil than any other +spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of God, and beyond +all spirits destroyeth man. For, as when good news is come to one in +grief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer +attendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so do +ye, also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding +of these good things. Put on therefore gladness that hath always favour +before God, and is acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself in it; for +every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and thinketh +good thoughts, despising grief.”—Such were the commonplaces of this new +people, among whom so much of what Marius had valued most in the old +world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion. Some +transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts, to deepen +expression—a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of ancient +life, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion, +juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave +yet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward +world was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of +a certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, among the +prerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom. + +The reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who, Epicurean as he was, +had his visionary aptitudes, by an inversion of one of Plato’s +peculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must have +descended, by foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated +Christian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of +Saint Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed on one of those nights of +the beautiful house of Cecilia, its lights and flowers, of Cecilia +herself moving among the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens +sometimes in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. He +had lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of his +life, upon a period when, even more than in the days of austere ascêsis +which had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true for a +moment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of +profound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected the +eternal goodwill of God to man, “in whom,” according to the oldest +version of the angelic message, “He is well-pleased.” + +For what Christianity did many centuries afterwards in the way of +informing an art, a poetry, of graver and higher beauty, we may think, +than that of Greek art and poetry at their best, was in truth +conformable to the original tendency of its genius. The genuine +capacity of the catholic church in this direction, discoverable from +the first in the New Testament, was also really at work, in that +earlier “Peace,” under the Antonines—the minor “Peace of the church,” +as we might call it, in distinction from the final “Peace of the +church,” commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis, with his +following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts—the voice of Dante, +the hand of Giotto—giving visible feature and colour, and a palpable +place among men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establish a +continuity, only suspended in part by those troublous intervening +centuries—the “dark ages,” properly thus named—with the gracious spirit +of the primitive church, as manifested in that first early springtide +of her success. The greater “Peace” of Constantine, on the other hand, +in many ways, does but establish the exclusiveness, the puritanism, the +ascetic gloom which, in the period between Aurelius and the first +Christian emperor, characterised a church under misunderstanding or +oppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless controversy, inwards +upon herself. + +Already, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, the time was gone by when men +became Christians under some sudden and overpowering impression, and +with all the disturbing results of such a crisis. At this period the +larger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had been ever with +peaceful hearts in their “Father’s house.” That earlier belief in the +speedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with the +consequences it so naturally involved in the temper of men’s minds, was +dying out. Every day the contrast between the church and the world was +becoming less pronounced. And now also, as the church rested awhile +from opposition, that rapid self-development outward from within, +proper to times of peace, was in progress. Antoninus Pius, it might +seem, more truly even than Marcus Aurelius himself, was of that group +of pagan saints for whom Dante, like Augustine, has provided in his +scheme of the house with many mansions. A sincere old Roman piety had +urged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes, no offences +against humanity. And of his entire freedom from guile one reward had +been this singular happiness, that under his rule there was no shedding +of Christian blood. To him belonged that half-humorous placidity of +soul, of a kind illustrated later very effectively by Montaigne, which, +starting with an instinct of mere fairness towards human nature and the +world, seems at last actually to qualify its possessor to be almost the +friend of the people of Christ. Amiable, in its own nature, and full of +a reasonable gaiety, Christianity has often had its advantage of +characters such as that. The geniality of Antoninus Pius, like the +geniality of the earth itself, had permitted the church, as being in +truth no alien from that old mother earth, to expand and thrive for a +season as by natural process. And that charmed period under the +Antonines, extending to the later years of the reign of Aurelius +(beautiful, brief, chapter of ecclesiastical history!), contains, as +one of its motives of interest, the earliest development of Christian +ritual under the presidence of the church of Rome. + +Again as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of the Shepherd of +Hermas, “the aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful. +And in the third vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty: +only her hair was that of an aged woman. And at the last she was +joyous, and seated upon a throne—seated upon a throne, because her +position is a strong one.” The subterranean worship of the church +belonged properly to those years of her early history in which it was +illegal for her to worship at all. But, hiding herself for awhile as +conflict grew violent, she resumed, when there was felt to be no more +than ordinary risk, her natural freedom. And the kind of outward +prosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first “Peace,” her +modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced by +the decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history. + +In the history of the church, as throughout the moral history of +mankind, there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible +to maintain—two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may +represent to ourselves men’s efforts towards a better +life—corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as +discernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament itself of the +character of Christ. The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as +essentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to +another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it; +while the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious development of +all the parts of human nature, in just proportion to each other. It was +to the latter order of ideas that the church, and especially the church +of Rome in the age of the Antonines, freely lent herself. In that +earlier “Peace” she had set up for herself the ideal of spiritual +development, under the guidance of an instinct by which, in those +serene moments, she was absolutely true to the peaceful soul of her +Founder. “Goodwill to men,” she said, “in whom God Himself is +well-pleased!” For a little while, at least, there was no forced +opposition between the soul and the body, the world and the spirit, and +the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people of +Christ. Tact, good sense, ever the note of a true orthodoxy, the +merciful compromises of the church, indicative of her imperial vocation +in regard to all the varieties of human kind, with a universality of +which the old Roman pastorship she was superseding is but a prototype, +was already become conspicuous, in spite of a discredited, irritating, +vindictive society, all around her. + +Against that divine urbanity and moderation the old error of Montanus +we read of dimly, was a fanatical revolt—sour, falsely anti-mundane, +ever with an air of ascetic affectation, and a bigoted distaste in +particular for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. By it the desire +to please was understood to come of the author of evil. In this +interval of quietness, it was perhaps inevitable, by the law of +reaction, that some such extravagances of the religious temper should +arise. But again the church of Rome, now becoming every day more and +more completely the capital of the Christian world, checked the nascent +Montanism, or puritanism of the moment, vindicating for all Christian +people a cheerful liberty of heart, against many a narrow group of +sectaries, all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genial +creation of God. With her full, fresh faith in the Evangele—in a +veritable regeneration of the earth and the body, in the dignity of +man’s entire personal being—for a season, at least, at that critical +period in the development of Christianity, she was for reason, for +common sense, for fairness to human nature, and generally for what may +be called the naturalness of Christianity.—As also for its comely +order: she would be “brought to her king in raiment of needlework.” It +was by the bishops of Rome, diligently transforming themselves, in the +true catholic sense, into universal pastors, that the path of what we +must call humanism was thus defined. + +And then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at last the catholic +church might venture to show her outward lineaments as they really +were, worship—“the beauty of holiness,” nay! the elegance of +sanctity—was developed, with a bold and confident gladness, the like of +which has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. The tables +in fact were turned: the prize of a cheerful temper on a candid survey +of life was no longer with the pagan world. The æsthetic charm of the +catholic church, her evocative power over all that is eloquent and +expressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeliness, her +dignifying convictions about human nature:—all this, as abundantly +realised centuries later by Dante and Giotto, by the great medieval +church-builders, by the great ritualists like Saint Gregory, and the +masters of sacred music in the middle age—we may see already, in dim +anticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the second +century. Dissipated or turned aside, partly through the fatal mistake +of Marcus Aurelius himself, for a brief space of time we may discern +that influence clearly predominant there. What might seem harsh as +dogma was already justifying itself as worship; according to the sound +rule: Lex orandi, lex credendi—Our Creeds are but the brief abstract of +our prayer and song. + +The wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her wholly unparalleled +genius for worship, being thus awake, she was rapidly re-organising +both pagan and Jewish elements of ritual, for the expanding therein of +her own new heart of devotion. Like the institutions of monasticism, +like the Gothic style of architecture, the ritual system of the church, +as we see it in historic retrospect, ranks as one of the great, +conjoint, and (so to term them) necessary, products of human mind. +Destined for ages to come, to direct with so deep a fascination men’s +religious instincts, it was then already recognisable as a new and +precious fact in the sum of things. What has been on the whole the +method of the church, as “a power of sweetness and patience,” in +dealing with matters like pagan art, pagan literature was even then +manifest; and has the character of the moderation, the divine +moderation of Christ himself. It was only among the ignorant, indeed, +only in the “villages,” that Christianity, even in conscious triumph +over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In the final +“Peace” of the Church under Constantine, while there was plenty of +destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was accomplished +in the larger towns, in a manner more orderly and discreet—in the Roman +manner. The faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan +temples than on their conversion to a new and higher use; and, with +much beautiful furniture ready to hand, they became Christian +sanctuaries. + +Already, in accordance with such maturer wisdom, the church of the +“Minor Peace” had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan +custom; as being indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming, +accommodating still more closely to the human heart what of right +belonged to it. In this way an obscure synagogue was expanded into the +catholic church. Gathering, from a richer and more varied field of +sound than had remained for him, those old Roman harmonies, some notes +of which Gregory the Great, centuries later, and after generations of +interrupted development, formed into the Gregorian music, she was +already, as we have heard, the house of song—of a wonderful new music +and poesy. As if in anticipation of the sixteenth century, the church +was becoming “humanistic,” in an earlier, and unimpeachable +Renaissance. Singing there had been in abundance from the first; though +often it dared only be “of the heart.” And it burst forth, when it +might, into the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music; the Jewish +psalter, inherited from the synagogue, turning now, gradually, from +Greek into Latin—broken Latin, into Italian, as the ritual use of the +rich, fresh, expressive vernacular superseded the earlier authorised +language of the Church. Through certain surviving remnants of Greek in +the later Latin liturgies, we may still discern a highly interesting +intermediate phase of ritual development, when the Greek and the Latin +were in combination; the poor, surely!—the poor and the children of +that liberal Roman church—responding already in their own “vulgar +tongue,” to an office said in the original, liturgical Greek. That hymn +sung in the early morning, of which Pliny had heard, was kindling into +the service of the Mass. + +The Mass, indeed, would appear to have been said continuously from the +Apostolic age. Its details, as one by one they become visible in later +history, have already the character of what is ancient and venerable. +“We are very old, and ye are young!” they seem to protest, to those who +fail to understand them. Ritual, in fact, like all other elements of +religion, must grow and cannot be made—grow by the same law of +development which prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in the +physical world. As regards this special phase of the religious life, +however, such development seems to have been unusually rapid in the +subterranean age which preceded Constantine; and in the very first days +of the final triumph of the church the Mass emerges to general view +already substantially complete. “Wisdom” was dealing, as with the dust +of creeds and philosophies, so also with the dust of outworn religious +usage, like the very spirit of life itself, organising soul and body +out of the lime and clay of the earth. In a generous eclecticism, +within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power +within her, she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so +in ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources—Gnostic, +Jewish, Pagan—to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the +world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church came to be—full +of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, +under the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take +exclusive possession of the religious consciousness. + +TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM VENEREMUR CERNUI: +ET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUM +NOVO CEDAT RITUI. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. +DIVINE SERVICE. + + +“Wisdom hath builded herself a house: she hath mingled her wine: she +hath also prepared for herself a table.” + + +The more highly favoured ages of imaginative art present instances of +the summing up of an entire world of complex associations under some +single form, like the Zeus of Olympia, or the series of frescoes which +commemorate The Acts of Saint Francis, at Assisi, or like the play of +Hamlet or Faust. It was not in an image, or series of images, yet still +in a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of a single appeal to +eye and ear, that Marius about this time found all his new impressions +set forth, regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, as +for him at least the most beautiful thing in the world. + +To understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must +remember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of +vacuity in life. The fairest products of the earth seemed to be +dropping to pieces, as if in men’s very hands, around him. How real was +their sorrow, and his! “His observation of life” had come to be like +the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till, as if +taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the +very senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happened as with the +actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing. +The long winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness. At last, on +this day he awoke with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest +twilight: in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air: the +clear light was abroad; and, as though the spring had set in with a +sudden leap in the heart of things, the whole scene around him lay like +some untarnished picture beneath a sky of delicate blue. Under the +spell of his late depression, Marius had suddenly determined to leave +Rome for a while. But desiring first to advertise Cornelius of his +movements, and failing to find him in his lodgings, he had ventured, +still early in the day, to seek him in the Cecilian villa. Passing +through its silent and empty court-yard he loitered for a moment, to +admire. Under the clear but immature light of winter morning after a +storm, all the details of form and colour in the old marbles were +distinctly visible, and with a kind of severity or sadness—so it struck +him—amid their beauty: in them, and in all other details of the +scene—the cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass, the +curves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of virgin snow +still lying in their hollows. + +The little open door, through which he passed from the court-yard, +admitted him into what was plainly the vast Lararium, or domestic +sanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, but +still richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture in +metal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to +be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and here, +though at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people +was assembled. In that brief period of peace, during which the church +emerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, the +rigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. And so it came +to pass that, on this morning Marius saw for the first time the +wonderful spectacle—wonderful, especially, in its evidential power over +himself, over his own thoughts—of those who believe. + +There were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of +age, of personal type. The Roman ingenuus, with the white toga and gold +ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole +company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming +thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a +silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a +moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet +that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have +figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the +very face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the +variety of human type there present, was the various expression of +every form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of +desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of +aged men and women of humble condition? Those young men, bent down so +discreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life and +were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to which +there had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was some +credible message from beyond “the flaming rampart of the world”—a +message of hope, regarding the place of men’s souls and their interest +in the sum of things—already moulding anew their very bodies, and +looks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and +kindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything else +Marius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean. There were +the children, above all—troops of children—reminding him of those +pathetic children’s graves, like cradles or garden- beds, he had +noticed in his first visit to these places; and they more than +satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering +in what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the +daylight, if awakened from sleep. Children of the Catacombs, some but +“a span long,” with features not so much beautiful as heroic (that +world of new, refining sentiment having set its seal even on +childhood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of anything +subterranean this morning, in the alacrity of their worship—as ready as +if they had been at play—stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting +in a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned faces, Christe Eleison! + +For the silence—silence, amid those lights of early morning to which +Marius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in them +a certain reproachful austerity—was broken suddenly by resounding cries +of Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! repeated alternately, again and +again, until the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that this +prayer should cease. But the voices burst out once more presently, in +richer and more varied melody, though still of an antiphonal character; +the men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, answering one +another, somewhat after the manner of a Greek chorus. But again with +what a novelty of poetic accent; what a genuine expansion of heart; +what profound intimations for the intellect, as the meaning of the +words grew upon him! Cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur—says an +ancient eucharistic order; and certainly, the mystic tone of this +praying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of +grateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those assembled. As +if some searching correction, a regeneration of the body by the spirit, +had begun, and was already gone a great way, the countenances of men, +women, and children alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy +reflected upon himself—an amenity, a mystic amiability and unction, +which found its way most readily of all to the hearts of children +themselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrew psalms—Benedixisti +Domine terram tuam: Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sede a dextris meis—was +certainly in marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own +character. Those august hymns, he thought, must thereafter ever remain +by him as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify +the soul. One could never grow tired of them! + +In the old pagan worship there had been little to call the +understanding into play. Here, on the other hand, the utterance, the +eloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as Marius readily understood, +a fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. That became +evident, more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which, +like the singing, in broken vernacular Latin, occurred at certain +intervals, amid the silence of the assembly. There were readings, again +with bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a +difficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy, +haunting men’s minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than had +ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention, +into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at +length complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a +thousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart, +displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful +figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently +turned—a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture +in his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the +experiences of the past. + +It was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated +to-day. Astiterunt reges terrae: so the Gradual, the “Song of Degrees,” +proceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar responding in deep, +clear, antiphon or chorus— + +Astiterunt reges terrae— +Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum: +Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum— +Et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu. + + +And the proper action of the rite itself, like a half-opened book to be +read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, and carried +them forward into the present, as having reference to a power still +efficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in action among the +people there assembled. The entire office, indeed, with its interchange +of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like a single piece of +highly composite, dramatic music; a “song of degrees,” rising steadily +to a climax. Notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible +to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like the place in which it +was enacted, was weighty with symbolic significance, seemed to express +a single leading motive. The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered +indeed in the actions of one visible person, distinguished among the +assistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him, by the extreme +fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden +ornaments upon his head. + +Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceived +it—sicut unguentum in capite, descendens in oram vestimenti—so fully +realised, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of this novel +pontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by the +young men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved his +hands—hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious +power—at the Lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or to bless +certain objects on the table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave +sweetness the leading parts of the rite. What profound unction and +mysticity! The solemn character of the singing was at its height when +he opened his lips. Like some new sort of rhapsôdos, it was for the +moment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and they +flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him. The +table or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiral +columns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful “witness,” of the family of +the Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whose +relics were still in this place. It was for his sake the bishop put his +lips so often to the surface before him; the regretful memory of that +death entwining itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, as +a matter of special inward significance, throughout a service, which +was, before all else, from first to last, a commemoration of the dead. + +A sacrifice also,—a sacrifice, it might seem, like the most primitive, +the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices, of +the simplest fruits of the earth. And in connexion with this +circumstance again, as in the actual stones of the building so in the +rite itself, what Marius observed was not so much new matter as a new +spirit, moulding, informing, with a new intention, many observances not +witnessed for the first time to-day. Men and women came to the altar +successively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice-work of +pierced white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil +for the sanctuary lamps; bread and wine especially—pure wheaten bread, +the pure white wine of the Tusculan vineyards. There was here a +veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth’s gifts, of +old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of +all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had +lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise +emperor’s renunciant and impassive attitude towards them. Certain +portions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop’s hands; and +thereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite +proceeded. Still in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal +singing developed, from this point, into a kind of dialogue between the +chief minister and the whole assisting company— + +SURSUM CORDA! +HABEMUS AD DOMINUM. +GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO!— + + +It might have been thought the business, the duty or service of young +men more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severe +and simple vesture of the purest white—a service in which they would +seem to be flying for refuge, as with their precious, their treacherous +and critical youth in their hands, to one—Yes! one like themselves, who +yet claimed their worship, a worship, above all, in the way of +Aurelius, in the way of imitation. Adoramus te Christe, quia per crucem +tuam redemisti mundum!—they cry together. So deep is the emotion that +at moments it seems to Marius as if some there present apprehend that +prayer prevails, that the very object of this pathetic crying himself +draws near. From the first there had been the sense, an increasing +assurance, of one coming:—actually with them now, according to the +oft-repeated affirmation or petition, Dominus vobiscum! Some at least +were quite sure of it; and the confidence of this remnant fired the +hearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all the rest +about them. + +Prompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old Jewish +psalmody, so new to him—lesson and hymn—and catching therewith a +portion of the enthusiasm of those beside him, Marius could discern +dimly, behind the solemn recitation which now followed, at once a +narrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly that had ever +come within the scope of his mental or physical gaze. It was the image +of a young man giving up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest of +ends, the greatest gifts; actually parting with himself, above all, +with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his own soul; yet from the +midst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of his success, +as if foreseeing this very worship.* As centre of the supposed facts +which for these people were become so constraining a motive of +hopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display itself with an +overwhelming claim on human gratitude. What Saint Lewis of France +discerned, and found so irresistibly touching, across the dimness of +many centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him by one he had +never seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday; and their +hearts were whole with it. It had the force, among their interests, of +an almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers’ fathers +might have known. From memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had +the narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered; though +again the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it. And it +seemed as if the very dead were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs +of the sepulchres which lay so near, that they might associate +themselves to this enthusiasm—to this exalted worship of Jesus. + +* Psalm xxii. 22-31. + + +One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chief +minister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into +his hands—Perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, as +they depart again, after discreet embraces. The Eucharist of those +early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time, +an act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast are borne +away for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite +reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn like the +spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contending +accordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness, +provoking one another’s worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry. + +Ite! Missa est!—cried the young deacons: and Marius departed from that +strange scene along with the rest. What was it?—Was it this made the +way of Cornelius so pleasant through the world? As for Marius +himself,—the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied +as never before. He felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter +experience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over +again. And it seemed moreover to define what he must require of the +powers, whatsoever they might be, that had brought him into the world +at all, to make him not unhappy in it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. +A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY + + +In cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny—studia +hilaritate proveniunt. It was still the habit of Marius, encouraged by +his experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of +stimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when +he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night. +“The morning for creation,” he would say; “the afternoon for the +perfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception—the reception +of matter from without one, of other men’s words and thoughts—matter +for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain, +brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers.” To leave home early +in the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do +on the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer Lucian, whom he +had been bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with the +learned guest, having offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a +well-known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic philosophy, a +teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of Rome. On +reaching the place, however, they found the doors closed, with a slip +of writing attached, which proclaimed “a holiday”; and the morning +being a fine one, they walked further, along the Appian Way. Mortality, +with which the Queen of Ways—in reality the favourite cemetery of +Rome—was so closely crowded, in every imaginable form of sepulchre, +from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument out of which the +Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem, on a morning like +this, to be “smiling through tears.” The flower-stalls just beyond the +city gates presented to view an array of posies and garlands, fresh +enough for a wedding. At one and another of them groups of persons, +gravely clad, were making their bargains before starting for some +perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies rosationis, this +being the time of roses, at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and +there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to +the gaiety of the hour. + +The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolled +along. In one, reminding them of the poet’s—Si lacrimae prosunt, visis +te ostende videri!—a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her +dreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an imploring cry, still +to be sought after by the living. “While I live,” such was the promise +of a lover to his dead mistress, “you will receive this homage: after +my death,—who can tell?”—post mortem nescio. “If ghosts, my sons, do +feel anything after death, my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent +coming to me here!” “This is a privileged tomb; to my family and +descendants has been conceded the right of visiting this place as often +as they please.” “This is an eternal habitation; here lie I; here I +shall lie for ever.” “Reader! if you doubt that the soul survives, make +your oblation and a prayer for me; and you shall understand!” + +The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by those +pathetic suggestions. It was long ago that after visiting the banks of +the Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of +Phaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for all +arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to +what might lie beyond its “flaming barriers.” And at the age of sixty +he had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far from +unamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed +him. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine +aristocratic manners, with “a rampart,” through which he himself never +broke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay, +animated, content with his old age as it was, the aged student still +took a lively interest in studious youth.—Could Marius inform him of +any such, now known to him in Rome? What did the young men learn, just +then? and how? + +In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young +student, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucian +himself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming +along briskly—a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the +sane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn of +feature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for +fine glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused suddenly, +and with a modest blush on recognising his companion, who straightway +took with the youth, so prettily enthusiastic, the freedom of an old +friend. + +In a few moments the three were seated together, immediately above the +fragrant borders of a rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of the +exhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside, from which +they could overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Campagna, and +enjoy the air. Fancying that the lad’s plainly written enthusiasm had +induced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual with +him, Marius listened to the conversation which follows.— + +“Ah! Hermotimus! Hurrying to lecture! —if I may judge by your pace, and +that volume in your hand. You were thinking hard as you came along, +moving your lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech you were +pondering, some knotty question, some viewy doctrine—not to be idle for +a moment, to be making progress in philosophy, even on your way to the +schools. To-day, however, you need go no further. We read a notice at +the schools that there would be no lecture. Stay therefore, and talk +awhile with us. + +—With pleasure, Lucian.—Yes! I was ruminating yesterday’s conference. +One must not lose a moment. Life is short and art is long! And it was +of the art of medicine, that was first said—a thing so much easier than +divine philosophy, to which one can hardly attain in a lifetime, unless +one be ever wakeful, ever on the watch. And here the hazard is no +little one:—By the attainment of a true philosophy to attain happiness; +or, having missed both, to perish, as one of the vulgar herd. + +—The prize is a great one, Hermotimus! and you must needs be near it, +after these months of toil, and with that scholarly pallor of yours. +Unless, indeed, you have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in the +dark. + +—How could that be, Lucian? Happiness, as Hesiod says, abides very far +hence; and the way to it is long and steep and rough. I see myself +still at the beginning of my journey; still but at the mountain’s foot. +I am trying with all my might to get forward. What I need is a hand, +stretched out to help me. + +—And is not the master sufficient for that? Could he not, like Zeus in +Homer, let down to you, from that high place, a golden cord, to draw +you up thither, to himself and to that Happiness, to which he ascended +so long ago? + +—The very point, Lucian! Had it depended on him I should long ago have +been caught up. ’Tis I, am wanting. + +—Well! keep your eye fixed on the journey’s end, and that happiness +there above, with confidence in his goodwill. + +—Ah! there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed a +certain distance, but lose heart when they light on the obstacles of +the way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the mountain’s +top, and thereafter live in Happiness:—live a wonderful manner of life, +seeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny +ants. + +—What little fellows you make of us—less than the pygmies—down in the +dust here. Well! we, ‘the vulgar herd,’ as we creep along, will not +forget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above the +clouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me, +Hermotimus!—when do you expect to arrive there? + +—Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, I shall be really on +the summit.—A great while! you think. But then, again, the prize I +contend for is a great one. + +—Perhaps! But as to those twenty years—that you will live so long. Has +the master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as a +philosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere +chance—toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere the +last step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, with +your hope still unfulfilled. + +—Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive but for +a day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom. + +—How?—Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours? + +—Yes! one blessed moment were enough! + +—But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is to +be had up there, at all—the happiness that is to make all this worth +while? + +—I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty he knows, being now +far above all others. + +—And what was it he told you about it? Is it riches, or glory, or some +indescribable pleasure? + +—Hush! my friend! All those are nothing in comparison of the life +there. + +—What, then, shall those who come to the end of this discipline—what +excellent thing shall they receive, if not these? + +—Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sure +and certain knowledge of all things—how they are. Riches and glory and +pleasure—whatsoever belongs to the body—they have cast from them: +stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as Hercules, consumed in +the fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he had of his +earthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure and +undefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even so +do they, detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of a +true philosophy, ascend to the highest degree of happiness. + +—Strange! And do they never come down again from the heights to help +those whom they left below? Must they, when they be once come thither, +there remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize? + +—More than that! They whose initiation is entire are subject no longer +to anger, fear, desire, regret. Nay! They scarcely feel at all. + +—Well! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an old friend in what +way you first started on your philosophic journey? For, if I might, I +should like to join company with you from this very day. + +—If you be really willing, Lucian! you will learn in no long time your +advantage over all other people. They will seem but as children, so far +above them will be your thoughts. + +—Well! Be you my guide! It is but fair. But tell me—Do you allow +learners to contradict, if anything is said which they don’t think +right? + +—No, indeed! Still, if you wish, oppose your questions. In that way you +will learn more easily. + +—Let me know, then—Is there one only way which leads to a true +philosophy—your own way—the way of the Stoics: or is it true, as I have +heard, that there are many ways of approaching it? + +—Yes! Many ways! There are the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, and those +who call themselves after Plato: there are the enthusiasts for +Diogenes, and Antisthenes, and the followers of Pythagoras, besides +others. + +—It was true, then. But again, is what they say the same or different? + +—Very different. + +—Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the same, from all of +them. Answer me then—In what, or in whom, did you confide when you +first betook yourself to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open to +you, passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there alone +lay the way of truth? What token had you? Forget, please, all you are +to-day—half-way, or more, on the philosophic journey: answer me as you +would have done then, a mere outsider as I am now. + +—Willingly! It was there the great majority went! ’Twas by that I +judged it to be the better way. + +—A majority how much greater than the Epicureans, the Platonists, the +Peripatetics? You, doubtless, counted them respectively, as with the +votes in a scrutiny. + +—No! But this was not my only motive. I heard it said by every one that +the Epicureans were soft and voluptuous, the Peripatetics avaricious +and quarrelsome, and Plato’s followers puffed up with pride. But of the +Stoics, not a few pronounced that they were true men, that they knew +everything, that theirs was the royal road, the one road, to wealth, to +wisdom, to all that can be desired. + +—Of course those who said this were not themselves Stoics: you would +not have believed them—still less their opponents. They were the +vulgar, therefore. + +—True! But you must know that I did not trust to others exclusively. I +trusted also to myself—to what I saw. I saw the Stoics going through +the world after a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess, always +collected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce ‘golden.’ + +—You are trying an experiment on me. You would fain see how far you can +mislead me as to your real ground. The kind of probation you describe +is applicable, indeed, to works of art, which are rightly judged by +their appearance to the eye. There is something in the comely form, the +graceful drapery, which tells surely of the hand of Pheidias or +Alcamenes. But if philosophy is to be judged by outward appearances, +what would become of the blind man, for instance, unable to observe the +attire and gait of your friends the Stoics? + +—It was not of the blind I was thinking. + +—Yet there must needs be some common criterion in a matter so important +to all. Put the blind, if you will, beyond the privileges of +philosophy; though they perhaps need that inward vision more than all +others. But can those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted as you +will, collect a single fact of mind from a man’s attire, from anything +outward?—Understand me! You attached yourself to these men—did you +not?—because of a certain love you had for the mind in them, the +thoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to be improved +thereby? + +—Assuredly! + +—How, then, did you find it possible, by the sort of signs you just now +spoke of, to distinguish the true philosopher from the false? Matters +of that kind are not wont so to reveal themselves. They are but hidden +mysteries, hardly to be guessed at through the words and acts which may +in some sort be conformable to them. You, however, it would seem, can +look straight into the heart in men’s bosoms, and acquaint yourself +with what really passes there. + +—You are making sport of me, Lucian! In truth, it was with God’s help I +made my choice, and I don’t repent it. + +—And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from perishing in that +‘vulgar herd.’ + +—Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you. + +—You are mistaken, my friend! But since you deliberately conceal the +thing, grudging me, as I suppose, that true philosophy which would make +me equal to you, I will try, if it may be, to find out for myself the +exact criterion in these matters—how to make a perfectly safe choice. +And, do you listen. + +—I will; there may be something worth knowing in what you will say. + +—Well!—only don’t laugh if I seem a little fumbling in my efforts. The +fault is yours, in refusing to share your lights with me. Let +Philosophy, then, be like a city—a city whose citizens within it are a +happy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come thence, +as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little less +than gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be +seen in their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly; the +things which beyond everything else cause men to contend against each +other, having no place upon them. Gold and silver, pleasure, vainglory, +they have long since banished, as being unprofitable to the +commonwealth; and their life is an unbroken calm, in liberty, equality, +an equal happiness. + +—And is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a city +such as that, and take no account of the length and difficulty of the +way thither, so only they may one day become its freemen? + +—It might well be the business of life:—leaving all else, forgetting +one’s native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands, +of parents or children, if one had them—only bidding them follow the +same road; and if they would not or could not, shaking them off, +leaving one’s very garment in their hands if they took hold on us, to +start off straightway for that happy place! For there is no fear, I +suppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I remember, +indeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there, +offering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in the +number of the citizens. I was but fifteen—certainly very foolish: and +it may be that I was then actually within the suburbs, or at the very +gates, of the city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things, +that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among them were +barbarians and slaves, poor men—aye! and cripples—all indeed who truly +desired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions of enrolment +were—not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble ancestry—things not named +among them—but intelligence, and the desire for moral beauty, and +earnest labour. The last comer, thus qualified, was made equal to the +rest: master and slave, patrician, plebeian, were words they had not—in +that blissful place. And believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful +place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago +have journeyed thither. But, as you say, it is far off: and one must +needs find out for oneself the road to it, and the best possible guide. +And I find a multitude of guides, who press on me their services, and +protest, all alike, that they have themselves come thence. Only, the +roads they propose are many, and towards adverse quarters. And one of +them is steep and stony, and through the beating sun; and the other is +through green meadows, and under grateful shade, and by many a fountain +of water. But howsoever the road may be, at each one of them stands a +credible guide; he puts out his hand and would have you come his way. +All other ways are wrong, all other guides false. Hence my +difficulty!—The number and variety of the ways! For you know, There is +but one road that leads to Corinth. + +—Well! If you go the whole round, you will find no better guides than +those. If you wish to get to Corinth, you will follow the traces of +Zeno and Chrysippus. It is impossible otherwise. + +—Yes! The old, familiar language! Were one of Plato’s fellow-pilgrims +here, or a follower of Epicurus—or fifty others—each would tell me that +I should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore +credit all alike, which would be absurd; or, what is far safer, +distrust all alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now, +that, being as I am, ignorant which of all philosophers is really in +possession of truth, I choose your sect, relying on yourself—my friend, +indeed, yet still acquainted only with the way of the Stoics; and that +then some divine power brought Plato, and Aristotle, and Pythagoras, +and the others, back to life again. Well! They would come round about +me, and put me on my trial for my presumption, and say:—‘In whom was it +you confided when you preferred Zeno and Chrysippus to me?—and +me?—masters of far more venerable age than those, who are but of +yesterday; and though you have never held any discussion with us, nor +made trial of our doctrine? It is not thus that the law would have +judges do—listen to one party and refuse to let the other speak for +himself. If judges act thus, there may be an appeal to another +tribunal.’ What should I answer? Would it be enough to say:—‘I trusted +my friend Hermotimus?’—‘We know not Hermotimus, nor he us,’ they would +tell me; adding, with a smile, ‘your friend thinks he may believe all +our adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in malice. Yet if he +were umpire in the games, and if he happened to see one of our +wrestlers, by way of a preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an +antagonist of mere empty air, he would not thereupon pronounce him a +victor. Well! don’t let your friend Hermotimus suppose, in like manner, +that his teachers have really prevailed over us in those battles of +theirs, fought with our mere shadows. That, again, were to be like +children, lightly overthrowing their own card-castles; or like +boy-archers, who cry out when they hit the target of straw. The Persian +and Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, can pierce a bird on the +wing.’ + +—Let us leave Plato and the others at rest. It is not for me to contend +against them. Let us rather search out together if the truth of +Philosophy be as I say. Why summon the athletes, and archers from +Persia? + +—Yes! let them go, if you think them in the way. And now do you speak! +You really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver. + +—Well then, Lucian! to me it seems quite possible for one who has +learned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those a +knowledge of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into all the +various tenets of the others. Look at the question in this way. If one +told you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for you to go +the whole round of the arithmeticians, to see whether any one of them +will say that twice two make five, or seven? Would you not see at once +that the man tells the truth? + +—At once. + +—Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the +Stoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere to +them, and seek after no others; assured that four could never be five, +even if fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so? + +—You are beside the point, Hermotimus! You are likening open questions +to principles universally received. Have you ever met any one who said +that twice two make five, or seven? + +—No! only a madman would say that. + +—And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an Epicurean who +were agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and the final +cause, of things? Never! Then your parallel is false. We are inquiring +to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you seize on it by +anticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, alleging, what is by no +means clear, that it is they for whom twice two make four. But the +Epicureans, or the Platonists, might say that it is they, in truth, who +make two and two equal four, while you make them five or seven. Is it +not so, when you think virtue the only good, and the Epicureans +pleasure; when you hold all things to be material, while the Platonists +admit something immaterial? As I said, you resolve offhand, in favour +of the Stoics, the very point which needs a critical decision. If it is +clear beforehand that the Stoics alone make two and two equal four, +then the others must hold their peace. But so long as that is the very +point of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, or be well-assured +that we shall seem but partial in our judgment. + +—I think, Lucian! that you do not altogether understand my meaning. To +make it clear, then, let us suppose that two men had entered a temple, +of Aesculapius,—say! or Bacchus: and that afterwards one of the sacred +vessels is found to be missing. And the two men must be searched to see +which of them has hidden it under his garment. For it is certainly in +the possession of one or the other of them. Well! if it be found on the +first there will be no need to search the second; if it is not found on +the first, then the other must have it; and again, there will be no +need to search him. + +—Yes! So let it be. + +—And we too, Lucian! if we have found the holy vessel in possession of +the Stoics, shall no longer have need to search other philosophers, +having attained that we were seeking. Why trouble ourselves further? + +—No need, if something had indeed been found, and you knew it to be +that lost thing: if, at the least, you could recognise the sacred +object when you saw it. But truly, as the matter now stands, not two +persons only have entered the temple, one or the other of whom must +needs have taken the golden cup, but a whole crowd of persons. And +then, it is not clear what the lost object really is—cup, or flagon, or +diadem; for one of the priests avers this, another that; they are not +even in agreement as to its material: some will have it to be of brass, +others of silver, or gold. It thus becomes necessary to search the +garments of all persons who have entered the temple, if the lost vessel +is to be recovered. And if you find a golden cup on the first of them, +it will still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments of the +others; for it is not certain that this cup really belonged to the +temple. Might there not be many such golden vessels?—No! we must go on +to every one of them, placing all that we find in the midst together, +and then make our guess which of all those things may fairly be +supposed to be the property of the god. For, again, this circumstance +adds greatly to our difficulty, that without exception every one +searched is found to have something upon him—cup, or flagon, or diadem, +of brass, of silver, of gold: and still, all the while, it is not +ascertained which of all these is the sacred thing. And you must still +hesitate to pronounce any one of them guilty of the sacrilege—those +objects may be their own lawful property: one cause of all this +obscurity being, as I think, that there was no inscription on the lost +cup, if cup it was. Had the name of the god, or even that of the donor, +been upon it, at least we should have had less trouble, and having +detected the inscription, should have ceased to trouble any one else by +our search. + +—I have nothing to reply to that. + +—Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to find who it is has +the sacred vessel, or who will be our best guide to Corinth, we must +needs proceed to every one and examine him with the utmost care, +stripping off his garment and considering him closely. Scarcely, even +so, shall we come at the truth. And if we are to have a credible +adviser regarding this question of philosophy—which of all philosophies +one ought to follow—he alone who is acquainted with the dicta of every +one of them can be such a guide: all others must be inadequate. I would +give no credence to them if they lacked information as to one only. If +somebody introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest of all +men, we should not believe that, unless we knew that he had seen all +the people in the world. Fair he might be; but, fairest of all—none +could know, unless he had seen all. And we too desire, not a fair one, +but the fairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think we have +failed. It is no casual beauty that will content us; what we are +seeking after is that supreme beauty which must of necessity be unique. + +—What then is one to do, if the matter be really thus? Perhaps you know +better than I. All I see is that very few of us would have time to +examine all the various sects of philosophy in turn, even if we began +in early life. I know not how it is; but though you seem to me to speak +reasonably, yet (I must confess it) you have distressed me not a little +by this exact exposition of yours. I was unlucky in coming out to-day, +and in my falling in with you, who have thrown me into utter perplexity +by your proof that the discovery of truth is impossible, just as I +seemed to be on the point of attaining my hope. + +—Blame your parents, my child, not me! Or rather, blame mother Nature +herself, for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of making us +as long-lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you from premise +to conclusion. + +—Nay! you are a mocker! I know not wherefore, but you have a grudge +against philosophy; and it is your entertainment to make a jest of her +lovers. + +—Ah! Hermotimus! what the Truth may be, you philosophers may be able to +tell better than I. But so much at least I know of her, that she is one +by no means pleasant to those who hear her speak: in the matter of +pleasantness, she is far surpassed by Falsehood: and Falsehood has the +pleasanter countenance. She, nevertheless, being conscious of no alloy +within, discourses with boldness to all men, who therefore have little +love for her. See how angry you are now because I have stated the truth +about certain things of which we are both alike enamoured—that they are +hard to come by. It is as if you had fallen in love with a statue and +hoped to win its favour, thinking it a human creature; and I, +understanding it to be but an image of brass or stone, had shown you, +as a friend, that your love was impossible, and thereupon you had +conceived that I bore you some ill-will. + +—But still, does it not follow from what you said, that we must +renounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness? + +—When did you hear me say that? I did but assert that if we are to seek +after philosophy, whereas there are many ways professing to lead +thereto, we must with much exactness distinguish them. + +—Well, Lucian! that we must go to all the schools in turn, and test +what they say, if we are to choose the right one, is perhaps +reasonable; but surely ridiculous, unless we are to live as many years +as the Phoenix, to be so lengthy in the trial of each; as if it were +not possible to learn the whole by the part! They say that Pheidias, +when he was shown one of the talons of a lion, computed the stature and +age of the animal it belonged to, modelling a complete lion upon the +standard of a single part of it. You too would recognise a human hand +were the rest of the body concealed. Even so with the schools of +philosophy:—the leading doctrines of each might be learned in an +afternoon. That over-exactness of yours, which required so long a time, +is by no means necessary for making the better choice. + +—You are forcible, Hermotimus! with this theory of The Whole by the +Part. Yet, methinks, I heard you but now propound the contrary. But +tell me; would Pheidias when he saw the lion’s talon have known that it +was a lion’s, if he had never seen the animal? Surely, the cause of his +recognising the part was his knowledge of the whole. There is a way of +choosing one’s philosophy even less troublesome than yours. Put the +names of all the philosophers into an urn. Then call a little child, +and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall follow all the +rest of your days. + +—Nay! be serious with me. Tell me; did you ever buy wine? + +—Surely. + +—And did you first go the whole round of the wine-merchants, tasting +and comparing their wines? + +—By no means. + +—No! You were contented to order the first good wine you found at your +price. By tasting a little you were ascertained of the quality of the +whole cask. How if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn, and +said, ‘I wish to buy a cotylé of wine. Let me drink out the whole cask. +Then I shall be able to tell which is best, and where I ought to buy.’ +Yet this is what you would do with the philosophies. Why drain the cask +when you might taste, and see? + +—How slippery you are; how you escape from one’s fingers! Still, you +have given me an advantage, and are in your own trap. + +—How so? + +—Thus! You take a common object known to every one, and make wine the +figure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself, and +about which all men are at variance, because it is an unseen and +difficult thing. I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike +unless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware for +money, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water or +worse, or giving short measure. However, let us consider your parallel. +The wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind throughout. But have the +philosophers—has your own master even—but one and the same thing only +to tell you, every day and all days, on a subject so manifold? +Otherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting of one part? The +whole is not the same—Ah! and it may be that God has hidden the good +wine of philosophy at the bottom of the cask. You must drain it to the +end if you are to find those drops of divine sweetness you seem so much +to thirst for! Yourself, after drinking so deeply, are still but at the +beginning, as you said. But is not philosophy rather like this? Keep +the figure of the merchant and the cask: but let it be filled, not with +wine, but with every sort of grain. You come to buy. The merchant hands +you a little of the wheat which lies at the top. Could you tell by +looking at that, whether the chick-peas were clean, the lentils tender, +the beans full? And then, whereas in selecting our wine we risk only +our money; in selecting our philosophy we risk ourselves, as you told +me—might ourselves sink into the dregs of ‘the vulgar herd.’ Moreover, +while you may not drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting, +Wisdom grows no less by the depth of your drinking. Nay! if you take of +her, she is increased thereby. + +And then I have another similitude to propose, as regards this tasting +of philosophy. Don’t think I blaspheme her if I say that it may be with +her as with some deadly poison, hemlock or aconite. These too, though +they cause death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minute portion. You +would suppose that the tiniest particle must be sufficient. + +—Be it as you will, Lucian! One must live a hundred years: one must +sustain all this labour; otherwise philosophy is unattainable. + +—Not so! Though there were nothing strange in that, if it be true, as +you said at first, that Life is short and art is long. But now you take +it hard that we are not to see you this very day, before the sun goes +down, a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, a Plato. + +—You overtake me, Lucian! and drive me into a corner; in jealousy of +heart, I believe, because I have made some progress in doctrine whereas +you have neglected yourself. + +—Well! Don’t attend to me! Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic: and do +you go forward on this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordance +with the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be +assured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged. Reason still +says, that without criticism, without a clear, exact, unbiassed +intelligence to try them, all those theories—all things—will have been +seen but in vain. ‘To that end,’ she tells us, ‘much time is necessary, +many delays of judgment, a cautious gait; repeated inspection.’ And we +are not to regard the outward appearance, or the reputation of wisdom, +in any of the speakers; but like the judges of Areopagus, who try their +causes in the darkness of the night, look only to what they say. + +—Philosophy, then, is impossible, or possible only in another life! + +—Hermotimus! I grieve to tell you that all this even, may be in truth +insufficient. After all, we may deceive ourselves in the belief that we +have found something:—like the fishermen! Again and again they let down +the net. At last they feel something heavy, and with vast labour draw +up, not a load of fish, but only a pot full of sand, or a great stone. + +—I don’t understand what you mean by the net. It is plain that you have +caught me in it. + +—Try to get out! You can swim as well as another. We may go to all +philosophers in turn and make trial of them. Still, I, for my part, +hold it by no means certain that any one of them really possesses what +we seek. The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found. +You have twenty beans in your hand, and you bid ten persons guess how +many: one says five, another fifteen; it is possible that one of them +may tell the true number; but it is not impossible that all may be +wrong. So it is with the philosophers. All alike are in search of +Happiness—what kind of thing it is. One says one thing, one another: it +is pleasure; it is virtue;—what not? And Happiness may indeed be one of +those things. But it is possible also that it may be still something +else, different and distinct from them all. + +—What is this?—There is something, I know not how, very sad and +disheartening in what you say. We seem to have come round in a circle +to the spot whence we started, and to our first incertitude. Ah! +Lucian, what have you done to me? You have proved my priceless pearl to +be but ashes, and all my past labour to have been in vain. + +—Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person who has thus +failed of the good thing he hoped for. All philosophers, so to speak, +are but fighting about the ‘ass’s shadow.’ To me you seem like one who +should weep, and reproach fortune because he is not able to climb up +into heaven, or go down into the sea by Sicily and come up at Cyprus, +or sail on wings in one day from Greece to India. And the true cause of +his trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a +dream, or his own fancy has put together; without previous thought +whether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compass +of human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As you +dreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and woke +you up from sleep, a little roughly: and then you are angry with +Reason, your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shake +off sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, don’t be +angry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer you to pass +your life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but still only a dream—because +I wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the proper +business of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. What +your soul was full of just now is not very different from those Gorgons +and Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and the painters construct +for us, fancy-free:—things which never were, and never will be, though +many believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them, just +because they are so strange and odd. + +And you too, methinks, having heard from some such maker of marvels of +a certain woman of a fairness beyond nature—beyond the Graces, beyond +Venus Urania herself—asked not if he spoke truth, and whether this +woman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love with +her; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what +more than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that +passion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you about +that fair woman, from the very moment when you first believed that what +he said was true, brought forward all the rest in consequent order. +Upon her alone your eyes were fixed; by her he led you along, when once +you had given him a hold upon you—led you along the straight road, as +he said, to the beloved one. All was easy after that. None of you asked +again whether it was the true way; following one after another, like +sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd. He moved you +hither and thither with his finger, as easily as water spilt on a +table! + +My friend! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die of +hunger! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it with +all his might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful and +necessary; but it remained water only, none the less.” + +Just there the conversation broke off suddenly, and the disputants +parted. The horses were come for Lucian. The boy went on his way, and +Marius onward, to visit a friend whose abode lay further. As he +returned to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural to a +city of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of the +early day. He could almost have fancied Canidia there, picking her way +among the rickety lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb; for +these tombs were not all equally well cared for (Post mortem nescio!) +and it had been one of the pieties of Aurelius to frame a severe law to +prevent the defacing of such monuments. To Marius there seemed to be +some new meaning in that terror of isolation, of being left alone in +these places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so full. A +blood-red sunset was dying angrily, and its wild glare upon the shadowy +objects around helped to combine the associations of this famous way, +its deeply graven marks of immemorial travel, together with the earnest +questions of the morning as to the true way of that other sort of +travelling, around an image, almost ghastly in the traces of its great +sorrows—bearing along for ever, on bleeding feet, the instrument of its +punishment—which was all Marius could recall distinctly of a certain +Christian legend he had heard. The legend told of an encounter at this +very spot, of two wayfarers on the Appian Way, as also upon some very +dimly discerned mental journey, altogether different from himself and +his late companions—an encounter between Love, literally fainting by +the road, and Love “travelling in the greatness of his strength,” Love +itself, suddenly appearing to sustain that other. A strange contrast to +anything actually presented in that morning’s conversation, it seemed +nevertheless to echo its very words—“Do they never come down again,” he +heard once more the well-modulated voice: “Do they never come down +again from the heights, to help those whom they left here below?”—“And +we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we find +him, we shall think we have failed.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. +SUNT LACRIMAE RERUM+ + + +It was become a habit with Marius—one of his modernisms—developed by +his assistance at the Emperor’s “conversations with himself,” to keep a +register of the movements of his own private thoughts and humours; not +continuously indeed, yet sometimes for lengthy intervals, during which +it was no idle self-indulgence, but a necessity of his intellectual +life, to “confess himself,” with an intimacy, seemingly rare among the +ancients; ancient writers, at all events, having been jealous, for the +most part, of affording us so much as a glimpse of that interior self, +which in many cases would have actually doubled the interest of their +objective informations. + +“If a particular tutelary or genius,” writes Marius,—“according to old +belief, walks through life beside each one of us, mine is very +certainly a capricious creature. He fills one with wayward, +unaccountable, yet quite irresistible humours, and seems always to be +in collusion with some outward circumstance, often trivial enough in +itself—the condition of the weather, forsooth!—the people one meets by +chance—the things one happens to overhear them say, veritable enodioi +symboloi,+ or omens by the wayside, as the old Greeks fancied—to push +on the unreasonable prepossessions of the moment into weighty motives. +It was doubtless a quite explicable, physical fatigue that presented me +to myself, on awaking this morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I +must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning +hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the +very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not +impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into +effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through +the routine-work which is so large a part of life. “Then, how if +appetite, be it for real or ideal, should itself fail one after awhile? +Ah, yes! is it of cold always that men die; and on some of us it creeps +very gradually. In truth, I can remember just such a lack-lustre +condition of feeling once or twice before. But I note, that it was +accompanied then by an odd indifference, as the thought of them +occurred to me, in regard to the sufferings of others—a kind of +callousness, so unusual with me, as at once to mark the humour it +accompanied as a palpably morbid one that could not last. Were those +sufferings, great or little, I asked myself then, of more real +consequence to them than mine to me, as I remind myself that ‘nothing +that will end is really long’—long enough to be thought of importance? +But to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the pity I conceive for myself, +disposed me strongly to a tenderness for others. For a moment the whole +world seemed to present itself as a hospital of sick persons; many of +them sick in mind; all of whom it would be a brutality not to humour, +not to indulge. + +“Why, when I went out to walk off my wayward fancies, did I confront +the very sort of incident (my unfortunate genius had surely beckoned it +from afar to vex me) likely to irritate them further? A party of men +were coming down the street. They were leading a fine race-horse; a +handsome beast, but badly hurt somewhere, in the circus, and useless. +They were taking him to slaughter; and I think the animal knew it: he +cast such looks, as if of mad appeal, to those who passed him, as he +went among the strangers to whom his former owner had committed him, to +die, in his beauty and pride, for just that one mischance or fault; +although the morning air was still so animating, and pleasant to snuff. +I could have fancied a human soul in the creature, swelling against its +luck. And I had come across the incident just when it would figure to +me as the very symbol of our poor humanity, in its capacities for pain, +its wretched accidents, and those imperfect sympathies, which can never +quite identify us with one another; the very power of utterance and +appeal to others seeming to fail us, in proportion as our sorrows come +home to ourselves, are really our own. We are constructed for +suffering! What proofs of it does but one day afford, if we care to +note them, as we go—a whole long chaplet of sorrowful mysteries! Sunt +lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.+ + +“Men’s fortunes touch us! The little children of one of those +institutions for the support of orphans, now become fashionable among +us by way of memorial of eminent persons deceased, are going, in long +file, along the street, on their way to a holiday in the country. They +halt, and count themselves with an air of triumph, to show that they +are all there. Their gay chatter has disturbed a little group of +peasants; a young woman and her husband, who have brought the old +mother, now past work and witless, to place her in a house provided for +such afflicted people. They are fairly affectionate, but anxious how +the thing they have to do may go—hope only she may permit them to leave +her there behind quietly. And the poor old soul is excited by the noise +made by the children, and partly aware of what is going to happen with +her. She too begins to count—one, two, three, five—on her trembling +fingers, misshapen by a life of toil. + +‘Yes! yes! and twice five make ten’—they say, to pacify her. It is her +last appeal to be taken home again; her proof that all is not yet up +with her; that she is, at all events, still as capable as those joyous +children. + +“At the baths, a party of labourers are at work upon one of the great +brick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust. A frail young child has +brought food for one of them, and sits apart, waiting till his father +comes—watching the labour, but with a sorrowful distaste for the din +and dirt. He is regarding wistfully his own place in the world, there +before him. His mind, as he watches, is grown up for a moment; and he +foresees, as it were, in that moment, all the long tale of days, of +early awakings, of his own coming life of drudgery at work like this. + +“A man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has already +begun—the only child—whose presence beside him sweetened the father’s +toil a little. The boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work, +yet, with an effort, he rides boldly on his father’s shoulders. It will +be the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long as possible, +though with that miserably shattered body.—‘Ah! with us still, and +feeling our care beside him!’—and yet surely not without a +heartbreaking sigh of relief, alike from him and them, when the end +comes. + +“On the alert for incidents like these, yet of necessity passing them +by on the other side, I find it hard to get rid of a sense that I, for +one, have failed in love. I could yield to the humour till I seemed to +have had my share in those great public cruelties, the shocking legal +crimes which are on record, like that cold-blooded slaughter, according +to law, of the four hundred slaves in the reign of Nero, because one of +their number was thought to have murdered his master. The reproach of +that, together with the kind of facile apologies those who had no share +in the deed may have made for it, as they went about quietly on their +own affairs that day, seems to come very close to me, as I think upon +it. And to how many of those now actually around me, whose life is a +sore one, must I be indifferent, if I ever become aware of their +soreness at all? To some, perhaps, the necessary conditions of my own +life may cause me to be opposed, in a kind of natural conflict, +regarding those interests which actually determine the happiness of +theirs. I would that a stronger love might arise in my heart! + +“Yet there is plenty of charity in the world. My patron, the Stoic +emperor, has made it even fashionable. To celebrate one of his brief +returns to Rome lately from the war, over and above a largess of gold +pieces to all who would, the public debts were forgiven. He made a nice +show of it: for once, the Romans entertained themselves with a +good-natured spectacle, and the whole town came to see the great +bonfire in the Forum, into which all bonds and evidence of debt were +thrown on delivery, by the emperor himself; many private creditors +following his example. That was done well enough! But still the feeling +returns to me, that no charity of ours can get at a certain natural +unkindness which I find in things themselves. + +“When I first came to Rome, eager to observe its religion, especially +its antiquities of religious usage, I assisted at the most curious, +perhaps, of them all, the most distinctly marked with that immobility +which is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony took place +at a singular spot some miles distant from the city, among the low +hills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond the Aurelian Gate. There, in a +little wood of venerable trees, piously allowed their own way, age +after age—ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, one over +the other, and all caught, in that early May-time, under a riotous +tangle of wild clematis—was to be found a magnificent sanctuary, in +which the members of the Arval College assembled themselves on certain +days. The axe never touched those trees—Nay! it was forbidden to +introduce any iron thing whatsoever within the precincts; not only +because the deities of these quiet places hate to be disturbed by the +harsh noise of metal, but also in memory of that better age—the lost +Golden Age—the homely age of the potters, of which the central act of +the festival was a commemoration. + +“The preliminary ceremonies were long and complicated, but of a +character familiar enough. Peculiar to the time and place was the +solemn exposition, after lavation of hands, processions backwards and +forwards, and certain changes of vestments, of the identical earthen +vessels—veritable relics of the old religion of Numa!—the vessels from +which the holy Numa himself had eaten and drunk, set forth above a kind +of altar, amid a cloud of flowers and incense, and many lights, for the +veneration of the credulous or the faithful. + +“They were, in fact, cups or vases of burnt clay, rude in form: and the +religious veneration thus offered to them expressed men’s desire to +give honour to a simpler age, before iron had found place in human +life: the persuasion that that age was worth remembering: a hope that +it might come again. + +“That a Numa, and his age of gold, would return, has been the hope or +the dream of some, in every period. Yet if he did come back, or any +equivalent of his presence, he could but weaken, and by no means smite +through, that root of evil, certainly of sorrow, of outraged human +sense, in things, which one must carefully distinguish from all +preventible accidents. Death, and the little perpetual daily dyings, +which have something of its sting, he must necessarily leave untouched. +And, methinks, that were all the rest of man’s life framed entirely to +his liking, he would straightway begin to sadden himself, over the +fate—say, of the flowers! For there is, there has come to be since Numa +lived perhaps, a capacity for sorrow in his heart, which grows with all +the growth, alike of the individual and of the race, in intellectual +delicacy and power, and which will find its aliment. + +“Of that sort of golden age, indeed, one discerns even now a trace, +here and there. Often have I maintained that, in this generous southern +country at least, Epicureanism is the special philosophy of the poor. +How little I myself really need, when people leave me alone, with the +intellectual powers at work serenely. The drops of falling water, a few +wild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tufts even of +half-dead leaves, changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but +light and shadow in it; these, for a susceptible mind, might well do +duty for all the glory of Augustus. I notice sometimes what I conceive +to be the precise character of the fondness of the roughest +working-people for their young children, a fine appreciation, not only +of their serviceable affection, but of their visible graces: and +indeed, in this country, the children are almost always worth looking +at. I see daily, in fine weather, a child like a delicate nosegay, +running to meet the rudest of brick- makers as he comes from work. She +is not at all afraid to hang upon his rough hand: and through her, he +reaches out to, he makes his own, something from that strange region, +so distant from him yet so real, of the world’s refinement. What is of +finer soul, of finer stuff in things, and demands delicate touching—to +him the delicacy of the little child represents that: it initiates him +into that. There, surely, is a touch of the secular gold, of a +perpetual age of gold. But then again, think for a moment, with what a +hard humour at the nature of things, his struggle for bare life will go +on, if the child should happen to die. I observed to-day, under one of +the archways of the baths, two children at play, a little seriously—a +fair girl and her crippled younger brother. Two toy chairs and a little +table, and sprigs of fir set upright in the sand for a garden! They +played at housekeeping. Well! the girl thinks her life a perfectly good +thing in the service of this crippled brother. But she will have a +jealous lover in time: and the boy, though his face is not altogether +unpleasant, is after all a hopeless cripple. + +“For there is a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he has +come to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs of +circumstance which are in a measure removable—some inexplicable +shortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself—death, and +old age as it must needs be, and that watching for their approach, +which makes every stage of life like a dying over and over again. +Almost all death is painful, and in every thing that comes to an end a +touch of death, and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one, +of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given +faultless men and women, given a perfect state of society which should +have no need to practise on men’s susceptibilities for its own selfish +ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own +interest or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, of +a certain necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just in proportion to +the moral, or nervous perfection men have attained to. And what we need +in the world, over against that, is a certain permanent and general +power of compassion—humanity’s standing force of self-pity—as an +elementary ingredient of our social atmosphere, if we are to live in it +at all. I wonder, sometimes, in what way man has cajoled himself into +the bearing of his burden thus far, seeing how every step in the +capacity of apprehension his labour has won for him, from age to age, +must needs increase his dejection. It is as if the increase of +knowledge were but an increasing revelation of the radical hopelessness +of his position: and I would that there were one even as I, behind this +vain show of things! + +“At all events, the actual conditions of our life being as they are, +and the capacity for suffering so large a principle in things—since the +only principle, perhaps, to which we may always safely trust is a ready +sympathy with the pain one actually sees—it follows that the practical +and effective difference between men will lie in their power of insight +into those conditions, their power of sympathy. The future will be with +those who have most of it; while for the present, as I persuade myself, +those who have much of it, have something to hold by, even in the +dissolution of a world, or in that dissolution of self, which is, for +every one, no less than the dissolution of the world it represents for +him. Nearly all of us, I suppose, have had our moments, in which any +effective sympathy for us on the part of others has seemed impossible; +in which our pain has seemed a stupid outrage upon us, like some +overwhelming physical violence, from which we could take refuge, at +best, only in some mere general sense of goodwill—somewhere in the +world perhaps. And then, to one’s surprise, the discovery of that +goodwill, if it were only in a not unfriendly animal, may seem to have +explained, to have actually justified to us, the fact of our pain. +There have been occasions, certainly, when I have felt that if others +cared for me as I cared for them, it would be, not so much a +consolation, as an equivalent, for what one has lost or suffered: a +realised profit on the summing up of one’s accounts: a touching of that +absolute ground amid all the changes of phenomena, such as our +philosophers have of late confessed themselves quite unable to +discover. In the mere clinging of human creatures to each other, nay! +in one’s own solitary self-pity, amid the effects even of what might +appear irredeemable loss, I seem to touch the eternal. Something in +that pitiful contact, something new and true, fact or apprehension of +fact, is educed, which, on a review of all the perplexities of life, +satisfies our moral sense, and removes that appearance of unkindness in +the soul of things themselves, and assures us that not everything has +been in vain. + +“And I know not how, but in the thought thus suggested, I seem to take +up, and re-knit myself to, a well-remembered hour, when by some +gracious accident—it was on a journey—all things about me fell into a +more perfect harmony than is their wont. Everything seemed to be, for a +moment, after all, almost for the best. Through the train of my +thoughts, one against another, it was as if I became aware of the +dominant power of another person in controversy, wrestling with me. I +seem to be come round to the point at which I left off then. The +antagonist has closed with me again. A protest comes, out of the very +depths of man’s radically hopeless condition in the world, with the +energy of one of those suffering yet prevailing deities, of which old +poetry tells. Dared one hope that there is a heart, even as ours, in +that divine ‘Assistant’ of one’s thoughts—a heart even as mine, behind +this vain show of things!” + +NOTES + + +172. Virgil, Aeneid Book 1, line 462. “There are the tears of +things...” See also page 175 of this chapter, where the same text is +quoted in full. + + +173. +Transliteration: enodioi symboloi. Pater’s Definition: “omens by +the wayside.” + + +175. +Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. Virgil, Aeneid +Book 1, line 462. Translation: “Here also there be tears for what men +bear, and mortal creatures feel each other’s sorrow,” from Vergil, +Aeneid, Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. +THE MARTYRS + + +“Ah! voilà les âmes qu’il falloit à la mienne!” +Rousseau. + + +The charm of its poetry, a poetry of the affections, wonderfully fresh +in the midst of a threadbare world, would have led Marius, if nothing +else had done so, again and again, to Cecilia’s house. He found a range +of intellectual pleasures, altogether new to him, in the sympathy of +that pure and elevated soul. Elevation of soul, generosity, +humanity—little by little it came to seem to him as if these existed +nowhere else. The sentiment of maternity, above all, as it might be +understood there,—its claims, with the claims of all natural feeling +everywhere, down to the sheep bleating on the hills, nay! even to the +mother-wolf, in her hungry cave—seemed to have been vindicated, to have +been enforced anew, by the sanction of some divine pattern thereof. He +saw its legitimate place in the world given at last to the bare +capacity for suffering in any creature, however feeble or apparently +useless. In this chivalry, seeming to leave the world’s heroism a mere +property of the stage, in this so scrupulous fidelity to what could not +help itself, could scarcely claim not to be forgotten, what a contrast +to the hard contempt of one’s own or other’s pain, of death, of glory +even, in those discourses of Aurelius! + +But if Marius thought at times that some long-cherished desires were +now about to blossom for him, in the sort of home he had sometimes +pictured to himself, the very charm of which would lie in its contrast +to any random affections: that in this woman, to whom children +instinctively clung, he might find such a sister, at least, as he had +always longed for; there were also circumstances which reminded him +that a certain rule forbidding second marriages, was among these people +still in force; ominous incidents, moreover, warning a susceptible +conscience not to mix together the spirit and the flesh, nor make the +matter of a heavenly banquet serve for earthly meat and drink. + +One day he found Cecilia occupied with the burial of one of the +children of her household. It was from the tiny brow of such a child, +as he now heard, that the new light had first shone forth upon +them—through the light of mere physical life, glowing there again, when +the child was dead, or supposed to be dead. The aged servant of Christ +had arrived in the midst of their noisy grief; and mounting to the +little chamber where it lay, had returned, not long afterwards, with +the child stirring in his arms as he descended the stair rapidly; +bursting open the closely-wound folds of the shroud and scattering the +funeral flowers from them, as the soul kindled once more through its +limbs. + +Old Roman common-sense had taught people to occupy their thoughts as +little as might be with children who died young. Here, to-day, however, +in this curious house, all thoughts were tenderly bent on the little +waxen figure, yet with a kind of exultation and joy, notwithstanding +the loud weeping of the mother. The other children, its late +companions, broke with it, suddenly, into the place where the deep +black bed lay open to receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores, the +grave-diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, and chanted +that old psalm of theirs—Laudate pueri dominum! Dead children, +children’s graves—Marius had been always half aware of an old +superstitious fancy in his mind concerning them; as if in coming near +them he came near the failure of some lately-born hope or purpose of +his own. And now, perusing intently the expression with which Cecilia +assisted, directed, returned afterwards to her house, he felt that he +too had had to-day his funeral of a little child. But it had always +been his policy, through all his pursuit of “experience,” to take +flight in time from any too disturbing passion, from any sort of +affection likely to quicken his pulses beyond the point at which the +quiet work of life was practicable. Had he, after all, been taken +unawares, so that it was no longer possible for him to fly? At least, +during the journey he took, by way of testing the existence of any +chain about him, he found a certain disappointment at his heart, +greater than he could have anticipated; and as he passed over the crisp +leaves, nipped off in multitudes by the first sudden cold of winter, he +felt that the mental atmosphere within himself was perceptibly colder. + +Yet it was, finally, a quite successful resignation which he achieved, +on a review, after his manner, during that absence, of loss or gain. +The image of Cecilia, it would seem, was already become for him like +some matter of poetry, or of another man’s story, or a picture on the +wall. And on his return to Rome there had been a rumour in that +singular company, of things which spoke certainly not of any merely +tranquil loving: hinted rather that he had come across a world, the +lightest contact with which might make appropriate to himself also the +precept that “They which have wives be as they that have none.” + +This was brought home to him, when, in early spring, he ventured once +more to listen to the sweet singing of the Eucharist. It breathed more +than ever the spirit of a wonderful hope—of hopes more daring than +poor, labouring humanity had ever seriously entertained before, though +it was plain that a great calamity was befallen. Amid stifled sobbing, +even as the pathetic words of the psalter relieved the tension of their +hearts, the people around him still wore upon their faces their +habitual gleam of joy, of placid satisfaction. They were still under +the influence of an immense gratitude in thinking, even amid their +present distress, of the hour of a great deliverance. As he followed +again that mystical dialogue, he felt also again, like a mighty spirit +about him, the potency, the half-realised presence, of a great +multitude, as if thronging along those awful passages, to hear the +sentence of its release from prison; a company which represented +nothing less than—orbis terrarum—the whole company of mankind. And the +special note of the day expressed that relief—a sound new to him, drawn +deep from some old Hebrew source, as he conjectured, Alleluia! repeated +over and over again, Alleluia! Alleluia! at every pause and movement of +the long Easter ceremonies. + +And then, in its place, by way of sacred lection, although in shocking +contrast with the peaceful dignity of all around, came the Epistle of +the churches of Lyons and Vienne, to “their sister,” the church of +Rome. For the “Peace” of the church had been broken—broken, as Marius +could not but acknowledge, on the responsibility of the emperor +Aurelius himself, following tamely, and as a matter of course, the +traces of his predecessors, gratuitously enlisting, against the good as +well as the evil of that great pagan world, the strange new heroism of +which this singular message was full. The greatness of it certainly +lifted away all merely private regret, inclining one, at last, actually +to draw sword for the oppressed, as if in some new order of knighthood— + +“The pains which our brethren have endured we have no power fully to +tell, for the enemy came upon us with his whole strength. But the grace +of God fought for us, set free the weak, and made ready those who, like +pillars, were able to bear the weight. These, coming now into close +strife with the foe, bore every kind of pang and shame. At the time of +the fair which is held here with a great crowd, the governor led forth +the Martyrs as a show. Holding what was thought great but little, and +that the pains of to-day are not deserving to be measured against the +glory that shall be made known, these worthy wrestlers went joyfully on +their way; their delight and the sweet favour of God mingling in their +faces, so that their bonds seemed but a goodly array, or like the +golden bracelets of a bride. Filled with the fragrance of Christ, to +some they seemed to have been touched with earthly perfumes. + +“Vettius Epagathus, though he was very young, because he would not +endure to see unjust judgment given against us, vented his anger, and +sought to be heard for the brethren, for he was a youth of high place. +Whereupon the governor asked him whether he also were a Christian. He +confessed in a clear voice, and was added to the number of the Martyrs. +But he had the Paraclete within him; as, in truth, he showed by the +fulness of his love; glorying in the defence of his brethren, and to +give his life for theirs. + +“Then was fulfilled the saying of the Lord that the day should come, +When he that slayeth you will think that he doeth God service. Most +madly did the mob, the governor and the soldiers, rage against the +handmaiden Blandina, in whom Christ showed that what seems mean among +men is of price with Him. For whilst we all, and her earthly mistress, +who was herself one of the contending Martyrs, were fearful lest +through the weakness of the flesh she should be unable to profess the +faith, Blandina was filled with such power that her tormentors, +following upon each other from morning until night, owned that they +were overcome, and had no more that they could do to her; admiring that +she still breathed after her whole body was torn asunder. + +“But this blessed one, in the very midst of her ‘witness,’ renewed her +strength; and to repeat, I am Christ’s! was to her rest, refreshment, +and relief from pain. As for Alexander, he neither uttered a groan nor +any sound at all, but in his heart talked with God. Sanctus, the +deacon, also, having borne beyond all measure pains devised by them, +hoping that they would get something from him, did not so much as tell +his name; but to all questions answered only, I am Christ’s! For this +he confessed instead of his name, his race, and everything beside. +Whence also a strife in torturing him arose between the governor and +those tormentors, so that when they had nothing else they could do they +set red-hot plates of brass to the most tender parts of his body. But +he stood firm in his profession, cooled and fortified by that stream of +living water which flows from Christ. His corpse, a single wound, +having wholly lost the form of man, was the measure of his pain. But +Christ, paining in him, set forth an ensample to the rest—that there is +nothing fearful, nothing painful, where the love of the Father +overcomes. And as all those cruelties were made null through the +patience of the Martyrs, they bethought them of other things; among +which was their imprisonment in a dark and most sorrowful place, where +many were privily strangled. But destitute of man’s aid, they were +filled with power from the Lord, both in body and mind, and +strengthened their brethren. Also, much joy was in our virgin mother, +the Church; for, by means of these, such as were fallen away retraced +their steps—were again conceived, were filled again with lively heat, +and hastened to make the profession of their faith. + +“The holy bishop Pothinus, who was now past ninety years old and weak +in body, yet in his heat of soul and longing for martyrdom, roused what +strength he had, and was also cruelly dragged to judgment, and gave +witness. Thereupon he suffered many stripes, all thinking it would be a +wickedness if they fell short in cruelty towards him, for that thus +their own gods would be avenged. Hardly drawing breath, he was thrown +into prison, and after two days there died. + +“After these things their martyrdom was parted into divers manners. +Plaiting as it were one crown of many colours and every sort of +flowers, they offered it to God. Maturus, therefore, Sanctus and +Blandina, were led to the wild beasts. And Maturus and Sanctus passed +through all the pains of the amphitheatre, as if they had suffered +nothing before: or rather, as having in many trials overcome, and now +contending for the prize itself, were at last dismissed. + +“But Blandina was bound and hung upon a stake, and set forth as food +for the assault of the wild beasts. And as she thus seemed to be hung +upon the Cross, by her fiery prayers she imparted much alacrity to +those contending Witnesses. For as they looked upon her with the eye of +flesh, through her, they saw Him that was crucified. But as none of the +beasts would then touch her, she was taken down from the Cross, and +sent back to prison for another day: that, though weak and mean, yet +clothed with the mighty wrestler, Christ Jesus, she might by many +conquests give heart to her brethren. + +“On the last day, therefore, of the shows, she was brought forth again, +together with Ponticus, a lad of about fifteen years old. They were +brought in day by day to behold the pains of the rest. And when they +wavered not, the mob was full of rage; pitying neither the youth of the +lad, nor the sex of the maiden. Hence, they drave them through the +whole round of pain. And Ponticus, taking heart from Blandina, having +borne well the whole of those torments, gave up his life. Last of all, +the blessed Blandina herself, as a mother that had given life to her +children, and sent them like conquerors to the great King, hastened to +them, with joy at the end, as to a marriage-feast; the enemy himself +confessing that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and great as +hers. + +“Nor even so was their anger appeased; some among them seeking for us +pains, if it might be, yet greater; that the saying might be fulfilled, +He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. And their rage against the +Martyrs took a new form, insomuch that we were in great sorrow for lack +of freedom to entrust their bodies to the earth. + +“Neither did the night-time, nor the offer of money, avail us for this +matter; but they set watch with much carefulness, as though it were a +great gain to hinder their burial. Therefore, after the bodies had been +displayed to view for many days, they were at last burned to ashes, and +cast into the river Rhone, which flows by this place, that not a +vestige of them might be left upon the earth. For they said, Now shall +we see whether they will rise again, and whether their God can save +them out of our hands.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. +THE TRIUMPH OF MARCUS AURELIUS + + +Not many months after the date of that epistle, Marius, then expecting +to leave Rome for a long time, and in fact about to leave it for ever, +stood to witness the triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius, almost at the +exact spot from which he had watched the emperor’s solemn return to the +capital on his own first coming thither. His triumph was now a “full” +one—Justus Triumphus justified, by far more than the due amount of +bloodshed in those Northern wars, at length, it might seem, happily at +an end. Among the captives, amid the laughter of the crowds at his +blowsy upper garment, his trousered legs and conical wolf-skin cap, +walked our own ancestor, representative of subject Germany, under a +figure very familiar in later Roman sculpture; and, though certainly +with none of the grace of the Dying Gaul, yet with plenty of uncouth +pathos in his misshapen features, and the pale, servile, yet angry +eyes. His children, white-skinned and golden-haired “as angels,” +trudged beside him. His brothers, of the animal world, the ibex, the +wild-cat, and the reindeer, stalking and trumpeting grandly, found +their due place in the procession; and among the spoil, set forth on a +portable frame that it might be distinctly seen (no mere model, but the +very house he had lived in), a wattled cottage, in all the simplicity +of its snug contrivances against the cold, and well-calculated to give +a moment’s delight to his new, sophisticated masters. + +Andrea Mantegna, working at the end of the fifteenth century, for a +society full of antiquarian fervour at the sight of the earthy relics +of the old Roman people, day by day returning to light out of the +clay—childish still, moreover, and with no more suspicion of pasteboard +than the old Romans themselves, in its unabashed love of open-air +pageantries, has invested this, the greatest, and alas! the most +characteristic, of the splendours of imperial Rome, with a reality +livelier than any description. The homely sentiments for which he has +found place in his learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than the +great public incidents of the show, there depicted. And then, with all +that vivid realism, how refined, how dignified, how select in type, is +this reflection of the old Roman world!—now especially, in its +time-mellowed red and gold, for the modern visitor to the old English +palace. + +It was under no such selected types that the great procession presented +itself to Marius; though, in effect, he found something there +prophetic, so to speak, and evocative of ghosts, as susceptible minds +will do, upon a repetition after long interval of some notable +incident, which may yet perhaps have no direct concern for themselves. +In truth, he had been so closely bent of late on certain very personal +interests that the broad current of the world’s doings seemed to have +withdrawn into the distance, but now, as he witnessed this procession, +to return once more into evidence for him. The world, certainly, had +been holding on its old way, and was all its old self, as it thus +passed by dramatically, accentuating, in this favourite spectacle, its +mode of viewing things. And even apart from the contrast of a very +different scene, he would have found it, just now, a somewhat vulgar +spectacle. The temples, wide open, with their ropes of roses flapping +in the wind against the rich, reflecting marble, their startling +draperies and heavy cloud of incense, were but the centres of a great +banquet spread through all the gaudily coloured streets of Rome, for +which the carnivorous appetite of those who thronged them in the glare +of the mid-day sun was frankly enough asserted. At best, they were but +calling their gods to share with them the cooked, sacrificial, and +other meats, reeking to the sky. The child, who was concerned for the +sorrows of one of those Northern captives as he passed by, and +explained to his comrade—“There’s feeling in that hand, you know!” +benumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain, seemed, in a moment, +to transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel. Yes! these +Romans were a coarse, a vulgar people; and their vulgarities of soul in +full evidence here. And Aurelius himself seemed to have undergone the +world’s coinage, and fallen to the level of his reward, in a mediocrity +no longer golden. + +Yet if, as he passed by, almost filling the quaint old circular chariot +with his magnificent golden-flowered attire, he presented himself to +Marius, chiefly as one who had made the great mistake; to the multitude +he came as a more than magnanimous conqueror. That he had “forgiven” +the innocent wife and children of the dashing and almost successful +rebel Avidius Cassius, now no more, was a recent circumstance still in +memory. As the children went past—not among those who, ere the emperor +ascended the steps of the Capitol, would be detached from the great +progress for execution, happy rather, and radiant, as adopted members +of the imperial family—the crowd actually enjoyed an exhibition of the +moral order, such as might become perhaps the fashion. And it was in +consideration of some possible touch of a heroism herein that might +really have cost him something, that Marius resolved to seek the +emperor once more, with an appeal for common-sense, for reason and +justice. + +He had set out at last to revisit his old home; and knowing that +Aurelius was then in retreat at a favourite villa, which lay almost on +his way thither, determined there to present himself. Although the +great plain was dying steadily, a new race of wild birds establishing +itself there, as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and the +idle contadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay and death, +replacing the lusty Roman labourer, never had that poetic region +between Rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunless +day of early autumn, under which all that fell within the immense +horizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear, penitential blue. +Stimulating to the fancy as was that range of low hills to the +northwards, already troubled with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yet +a want of quiet in their outline, the record of wild fracture there, of +sudden upheaval and depression, marked them as but the ruins of nature; +while at every little descent and ascent of the road might be noted +traces of the abandoned work of man. From time to time, the way was +still redolent of the floral relics of summer, daphne and +myrtle-blossom, sheltered in the little hollows and ravines. At last, +amid rocks here and there piercing the soil, as those descents became +steeper, and the main line of the Apennines, now visible, gave a higher +accent to the scene, he espied over the plateau, almost like one of +those broken hills, cutting the horizon towards the sea, the old brown +villa itself, rich in memories of one after another of the family of +the Antonines. As he approached it, such reminiscences crowded upon +him, above all of the life there of the aged Antoninus Pius, in its +wonderful mansuetude and calm. Death had overtaken him here at the +precise moment when the tribune of the watch had received from his lips +the word Aequanimitas! as the watchword of the night. To see their +emperor living there like one of his simplest subjects, his hands red +at vintage-time with the juice of the grapes, hunting, teaching his +children, starting betimes, with all who cared to join him, for long +days of antiquarian research in the country around:—this, and the like +of this, had seemed to mean the peace of mankind. + +Upon that had come—like a stain! it seemed to Marius just then—the more +intimate life of Faustina, the life of Faustina at home. Surely, that +marvellous but malign beauty must still haunt those rooms, like an +unquiet, dead goddess, who might have perhaps, after all, something +reassuring to tell surviving mortals about her ambiguous self. When, +two years since, the news had reached Rome that those eyes, always so +persistently turned to vanity, had suddenly closed for ever, a strong +desire to pray had come over Marius, as he followed in fancy on its +wild way the soul of one he had spoken with now and again, and whose +presence in it for a time the world of art could so ill have spared. +Certainly, the honours freely accorded to embalm her memory were poetic +enough—the rich temple left among those wild villagers at the spot, now +it was hoped sacred for ever, where she had breathed her last; the +golden image, in her old place at the amphitheatre; the altar at which +the newly married might make their sacrifice; above all, the great +foundation for orphan girls, to be called after her name. + +The latter, precisely, was the cause why Marius failed in fact to see +Aurelius again, and make the chivalrous effort at enlightenment he had +proposed to himself. Entering the villa, he learned from an usher, at +the door of the long gallery, famous still for its grand prospect in +the memory of many a visitor, and then leading to the imperial +apartments, that the emperor was already in audience: Marius must wait +his turn—he knew not how long it might be. An odd audience it seemed; +for at that moment, through the closed door, came shouts of laughter, +the laughter of a great crowd of children—the “Faustinian Children” +themselves, as he afterwards learned—happy and at their ease, in the +imperial presence. Uncertain, then, of the time for which so pleasant a +reception might last, so pleasant that he would hardly have wished to +shorten it, Marius finally determined to proceed, as it was necessary +that he should accomplish the first stage of his journey on this day. +The thing was not to be—Vale! anima infelicissima!—He might at least +carry away that sound of the laughing orphan children, as a not +unamiable last impression of kings and their houses. + +The place he was now about to visit, especially as the resting-place of +his dead, had never been forgotten. Only, the first eager period of his +life in Rome had slipped on rapidly; and, almost on a sudden, that old +time had come to seem very long ago. An almost burdensome solemnity had +grown about his memory of the place, so that to revisit it seemed a +thing that needed preparation: it was what he could not have done +hastily. He half feared to lessen, or disturb, its value for himself. +And then, as he travelled leisurely towards it, and so far with quite +tranquil mind, interested also in many another place by the way, he +discovered a shorter road to the end of his journey, and found himself +indeed approaching the spot that was to him like no other. Dreaming now +only of the dead before him, he journeyed on rapidly through the night; +the thought of them increasing on him, in the darkness. It was as if +they had been waiting for him there through all those years, and felt +his footsteps approaching now, and understood his devotion, quite +gratefully, in that lowliness of theirs, in spite of its tardy +fulfilment. As morning came, his late tranquillity of mind had given +way to a grief which surprised him by its freshness. He was moved more +than he could have thought possible by so distant a sorrow. +“To-day!”—they seemed to be saying as the hard dawn broke,—“To-day, he +will come!” At last, amid all his distractions, they were become the +main purpose of what he was then doing. The world around it, when he +actually reached the place later in the day, was in a mood very +different from his:—so work-a-day, it seemed, on that fine afternoon, +and the villages he passed through so silent; the inhabitants being, +for the most part, at their labour in the country. Then, at length, +above the tiled outbuildings, were the walls of the old villa itself, +with the tower for the pigeons; and, not among cypresses, but +half-hidden by aged poplar-trees, their leaves like golden fruit, the +birds floating around it, the conical roof of the tomb itself. In the +presence of an old servant who remembered him, the great seals were +broken, the rusty key turned at last in the lock, the door was forced +out among the weeds grown thickly about it, and Marius was actually in +the place which had been so often in his thoughts. + +He was struck, not however without a touch of remorse thereupon, +chiefly by an odd air of neglect, the neglect of a place allowed to +remain as when it was last used, and left in a hurry, till long years +had covered all alike with thick dust —the faded flowers, the burnt-out +lamps, the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who had had +something to do there. A heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen and +chipped open one of the oldest of the mortuary urns, many hundreds in +number ranged around the walls. It was not properly an urn, but a +minute coffin of stone, and the fracture had revealed a piteous +spectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within; the bones of a +child, as he understood, which might have died, in ripe age, three +times over, since it slipped away from among his great-grandfathers, so +far up in the line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up in +him feelings vivid enough, bringing him intimately within the scope of +dead people’s grievances. He noticed, side by side with the urn of his +mother, that of a boy of about his own age—one of the serving-boys of +the household—who had descended hither, from the lightsome world of +childhood, almost at the same time with her. It seemed as if this boy +of his own age had taken filial place beside her there, in his stead. +That hard feeling, again, which had always lingered in his mind with +the thought of the father he had scarcely known, melted wholly away, as +he read the precise number of his years, and reflected suddenly—He was +of my own present age; no hard old man, but with interests, as he +looked round him on the world for the last time, even as mine to-day! + +And with that came a blinding rush of kindness, as if two alienated +friends had come to understand each other at last. There was weakness +in all this; as there is in all care for dead persons, to which +nevertheless people will always yield in proportion as they really care +for one another. With a vain yearning, as he stood there, still to be +able to do something for them, he reflected that such doing must be, +after all, in the nature of things, mainly for himself. His own epitaph +might be that old one eskhatos tou idiou genous+ —He was the last of +his race! Of those who might come hither after himself probably no one +would ever again come quite as he had done to-day; and it was under the +influence of this thought that he determined to bury all that, deep +below the surface, to be remembered only by him, and in a way which +would claim no sentiment from the indifferent. That took many days—was +like a renewal of lengthy old burial rites—as he himself watched the +work, early and late; coming on the last day very early, and +anticipating, by stealth, the last touches, while the workmen were +absent; one young lad only, finally smoothing down the earthy bed, +greatly surprised at the seriousness with which Marius flung in his +flowers, one by one, to mingle with the dark mould. + +NOTES + + +207. +Transliteration: eskhatos tou idiou genous. Translation: “[he +was] the last of his race.” + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. +ANIMA NATURALITER CHRISTIANA + + +Those eight days at his old home, so mournfully occupied, had been for +Marius in some sort a forcible disruption from the world and the roots +of his life in it. He had been carried out of himself as never before; +and when the time was over, it was as if the claim over him of the +earth below had been vindicated, over against the interests of that +living world around. Dead, yet sentient and caressing hands seemed to +reach out of the ground and to be clinging about him. Looking back +sometimes now, from about the midway of life—the age, as he conceived, +at which one begins to redescend one’s life—though antedating it a +little, in his sad humour, he would note, almost with surprise, the +unbroken placidity of the contemplation in which it had been passed. +His own temper, his early theoretic scheme of things, would have pushed +him on to movement and adventure. Actually, as circumstances had +determined, all its movement had been inward; movement of observation +only, or even of pure meditation; in part, perhaps, because throughout +it had been something of a meditatio mortis, ever facing towards the +act of final detachment. Death, however, as he reflected, must be for +every one nothing less than the fifth or last act of a drama, and, as +such, was likely to have something of the stirring character of a +dénouement. And, in fact, it was in form tragic enough that his end not +long afterwards came to him. + +In the midst of the extreme weariness and depression which had followed +those last days, Cornelius, then, as it happened, on a journey and +travelling near the place, finding traces of him, had become his guest +at White-nights. It was just then that Marius felt, as he had never +done before, the value to himself, the overpowering charm, of his +friendship. “More than brother!”—he felt—like a son also!” contrasting +the fatigue of soul which made himself in effect an older man, with the +irrepressible youth of his companion. For it was still the marvellous +hopefulness of Cornelius, his seeming prerogative over the future, that +determined, and kept alive, all other sentiment concerning him. A new +hope had sprung up in the world of which he, Cornelius, was a +depositary, which he was to bear onward in it. Identifying himself with +Cornelius in so dear a friendship, through him, Marius seemed to touch, +to ally himself to, actually to become a possessor of the coming world; +even as happy parents reach out, and take possession of it, in and +through the survival of their children. For in these days their +intimacy had grown very close, as they moved hither and thither, +leisurely, among the country-places thereabout, Cornelius being on his +way back to Rome, till they came one evening to a little town (Marius +remembered that he had been there on his first journey to Rome) which +had even then its church and legend—the legend and holy relics of the +martyr Hyacinthus, a young Roman soldier, whose blood had stained the +soil of this place in the reign of the emperor Trajan. + +The thought of that so recent death, haunted Marius through the night, +as if with audible crying and sighs above the restless wind, which came +and went around their lodging. But towards dawn he slept heavily; and +awaking in broad daylight, and finding Cornelius absent, set forth to +seek him. The plague was still in the place—had indeed just broken out +afresh; with an outbreak also of cruel superstition among its wild and +miserable inhabitants. Surely, the old gods were wroth at the presence +of this new enemy among them! And it was no ordinary morning into which +Marius stepped forth. There was a menace in the dark masses of hill, +and motionless wood, against the gray, although apparently unclouded +sky. Under this sunless heaven the earth itself seemed to fret and fume +with a heat of its own, in spite of the strong night-wind. And now the +wind had fallen. + +Marius felt that he breathed some strange heavy fluid, denser than any +common air. He could have fancied that the world had sunken in the +night, far below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of its +own atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly less terrified +and overwrought by the haunting sickness about them than their pagan +neighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr; and even as +Marius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, on a sudden the +hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, around the whole compass of +the horizon. For a moment Marius supposed himself attacked with some +sudden sickness of brain, till the fall of a great mass of building +convinced him that not himself but the earth under his feet was giddy. +A few moments later the little marketplace was alive with the rush of +the distracted inhabitants from their tottering houses; and as they +waited anxiously for the second shock of earthquake, a long-smouldering +suspicion leapt precipitately into well-defined purpose, and the whole +body of people was carried forward towards the band of worshippers +below. An hour later, in the wild tumult which followed, the earth had +been stained afresh with the blood of the martyrs Felix and +Faustinus—Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra!—and their brethren, +together with Cornelius and Marius, thus, as it had happened, taken +among them, were prisoners, reserved for the action of the law. Marius +and his friend, with certain others, exercising the privilege of their +rank, made claim to be tried in Rome, or at least in the chief town of +the district; where, indeed, in the troublous days that had now begun, +a legal process had been already instituted. Under the care of a +military guard the captives were removed on the same day, one stage of +their journey; sleeping, for security, during the night, side by side +with their keepers, in the rooms of a shepherd’s deserted house by the +wayside. + +It was surmised that one of the prisoners was not a Christian: the +guards were forward to make the utmost pecuniary profit of this +circumstance, and in the night, Marius, taking advantage of the loose +charge kept over them, and by means partly of a large bribe, had +contrived that Cornelius, as the really innocent person, should be +dismissed in safety on his way, to procure, as Marius explained, the +proper means of defence for himself, when the time of trial came. + +And in the morning Cornelius in fact set forth alone, from their +miserable place of detention. Marius believed that Cornelius was to be +the husband of Cecilia; and that, perhaps strangely, had but added to +the desire to get him away safely.—We wait for the great crisis which +is to try what is in us: we can hardly bear the pressure of our hearts, +as we think of it: the lonely wrestler, or victim, which imagination +foreshadows to us, can hardly be one’s self; it seems an outrage of our +destiny that we should be led along so gently and imperceptibly, to so +terrible a leaping-place in the dark, for more perhaps than life or +death. At last, the great act, the critical moment itself comes, +easily, almost unconsciously. Another motion of the clock, and our +fatal line—the “great climacteric point”—has been passed, which changes +ourselves or our lives. In one quarter of an hour, under a sudden, +uncontrollable impulse, hardly weighing what he did, almost as a matter +of course and as lightly as one hires a bed for one’s night’s rest on a +journey, Marius had taken upon himself all the heavy risk of the +position in which Cornelius had then been—the long and wearisome delays +of judgment, which were possible; the danger and wretchedness of a long +journey in this manner; possibly the danger of death. He had delivered +his brother, after the manner he had sometimes vaguely anticipated as a +kind of distinction in his destiny; though indeed always with wistful +calculation as to what it might cost him: and in the first moment after +the thing was actually done, he felt only satisfaction at his courage, +at the discovery of his possession of “nerve.” + +Yet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic martyr—had indeed no right +to be; and when he had seen Cornelius depart, on his blithe and hopeful +way, as he believed, to become the husband of Cecilia; actually, as it +had happened, without a word of farewell, supposing Marius was almost +immediately afterwards to follow (Marius indeed having avoided the +moment of leave-taking with its possible call for an explanation of the +circumstances), the reaction came. He could only guess, of course, at +what might really happen. So far, he had but taken upon himself, in the +stead of Cornelius, a certain amount of personal risk; though he hardly +supposed himself to be facing the danger of death. Still, especially +for one such as he, with all the sensibilities of which his whole +manner of life had been but a promotion, the situation of a person +under trial on a criminal charge was actually full of distress. To him, +in truth, a death such as the recent death of those saintly brothers, +seemed no glorious end. In his case, at least, the Martyrdom, as it was +called—the overpowering act of testimony that Heaven had come down +among men—would be but a common execution: from the drops of his blood +there would spring no miraculous, poetic flowers; no eternal aroma +would indicate the place of his burial; no plenary grace, overflowing +for ever upon those who might stand around it. Had there been one to +listen just then, there would have come, from the very depth of his +desolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men’s fates, +on the singular accidents of life and death. + +The guards, now safely in possession of whatever money and other +valuables the prisoners had had on them, pressed them forward, over the +rough mountain paths, altogether careless of their sufferings. The +great autumn rains were falling. At night the soldiers lighted a fire; +but it was impossible to keep warm. From time to time they stopped to +roast portions of the meat they carried with them, making their +captives sit round the fire, and pressing it upon them. But weariness +and depression of spirits had deprived Marius of appetite, even if the +food had been more attractive, and for some days he partook of nothing +but bad bread and water. All through the dark mornings they dragged +over boggy plains, up and down hills, wet through sometimes with the +heavy rain. Even in those deplorable circumstances, he could but notice +the wild, dark beauty of those regions—the stormy sunrise, and placid +spaces of evening. One of the keepers, a very young soldier, won him at +times, by his simple kindness, to talk a little, with wonder at the +lad’s half-conscious, poetic delight in the adventures of the journey. +At times, the whole company would lie down for rest at the roadside, +hardly sheltered from the storm; and in the deep fatigue of his spirit, +his old longing for inopportune sleep overpowered him.—Sleep anywhere, +and under any conditions, seemed just then a thing one might well +exchange the remnants of one’s life for. + +It must have been about the fifth night, as he afterwards conjectured, +that the soldiers, believing him likely to die, had finally left him +unable to proceed further, under the care of some country people, who +to the extent of their power certainly treated him kindly in his +sickness. He awoke to consciousness after a severe attack of fever, +lying alone on a rough bed, in a kind of hut. It seemed a remote, +mysterious place, as he looked around in the silence; but so +fresh—lying, in fact, in a high pasture-land among the mountains—that +he felt he should recover, if he might but just lie there in quiet long +enough. Even during those nights of delirium he had felt the scent of +the new-mown hay pleasantly, with a dim sense for a moment that he was +lying safe in his old home. The sunlight lay clear beyond the open +door; and the sounds of the cattle reached him softly from the green +places around. Recalling confusedly the torturing hurry of his late +journeys, he dreaded, as his consciousness of the whole situation +returned, the coming of the guards. But the place remained in absolute +stillness. He was, in fact, at liberty, but for his own disabled +condition. And it was certainly a genuine clinging to life that he felt +just then, at the very bottom of his mind. So it had been, obscurely, +even through all the wild fancies of his delirium, from the moment +which followed his decision against himself, in favour of Cornelius. + +The occupants of the place were to be heard presently, coming and going +about him on their business: and it was as if the approach of death +brought out in all their force the merely human sentiments. There is +that in death which certainly makes indifferent persons anxious to +forget the dead: to put them—those aliens—away out of their thoughts +altogether, as soon as may be. Conversely, in the deep isolation of +spirit which was now creeping upon Marius, the faces of these people, +casually visible, took a strange hold on his affections; the link of +general brotherhood, the feeling of human kinship, asserting itself +most strongly when it was about to be severed for ever. At nights he +would find this face or that impressed deeply on his fancy; and, in a +troubled sort of manner, his mind would follow them onwards, on the +ways of their simple, humdrum, everyday life, with a peculiar yearning +to share it with them, envying the calm, earthy cheerfulness of all +their days to be, still under the sun, though so indifferent, of +course, to him!—as if these rude people had been suddenly lifted into +some height of earthly good-fortune, which must needs isolate them from +himself. + +Tristem neminen fecit+—he repeated to himself; his old prayer shaping +itself now almost as his epitaph. Yes! so much the very hardest judge +must concede to him. And the sense of satisfaction which that thought +left with him disposed him to a conscious effort of recollection, while +he lay there, unable now even to raise his head, as he discovered on +attempting to reach a pitcher of water which stood near. Revelation, +vision, the discovery of a vision, the seeing of a perfect humanity, in +a perfect world—through all his alternations of mind, by some dominant +instinct, determined by the original necessities of his own nature and +character, he had always set that above the having, or even the doing, +of anything. For, such vision, if received with due attitude on his +part, was, in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a +pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might be, +observant of him. And how goodly had the vision been!—one long +unfolding of beauty and energy in things, upon the closing of which he +might gratefully utter his “Vixi!”+ Even then, just ere his eyes were +to be shut for ever, the things they had seen seemed a veritable +possession in hand; the persons, the places, above all, the touching +image of Jesus, apprehended dimly through the expressive faces, the +crying of the children, in that mysterious drama, with a sudden sense +of peace and satisfaction now, which he could not explain to himself. +Surely, he had prospered in life! And again, as of old, the sense of +gratitude seemed to bring with it the sense also of a living person at +his side. + +For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a +sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use +life, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far as might +be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself—a kind of music, +all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air. +Yet now, aware still in that suffering body of such vivid powers of +mind and sense, as he anticipated from time to time how his sickness, +practically without aid as he must be in this rude place, was likely to +end, and that the moment of taking final account was drawing very near, +a consciousness of waste would come, with half-angry tears of +self-pity, in his great weakness—a blind, outraged, angry feeling of +wasted power, such as he might have experienced himself standing by the +deathbed of another, in condition like his own. + +And yet it was the fact, again, that the vision of men and things, +actually revealed to him on his way through the world, had developed, +with a wonderful largeness, the faculties to which it addressed itself, +his general capacity of vision; and in that too was a success, in the +view of certain, very definite, well-considered, undeniable +possibilities. Throughout that elaborate and lifelong education of his +receptive powers, he had ever kept in view the purpose of preparing +himself towards possible further revelation some day—towards some +ampler vision, which should take up into itself and explain this +world’s delightful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, till +then but half-understood, might be taken up into the text of a lost +epic, recovered at last. At this moment, his unclouded receptivity of +soul, grown so steadily through all those years, from experience to +experience, was at its height; the house ready for the possible guest; +the tablet of the mind white and smooth, for whatsoever divine fingers +might choose to write there. And was not this precisely the condition, +the attitude of mind, to which something higher than he, yet akin to +him, would be likely to reveal itself; to which that influence he had +felt now and again like a friendly hand upon his shoulder, amid the +actual obscurities of the world, would be likely to make a further +explanation? Surely, the aim of a true philosophy must lie, not in +futile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to the +circumstances in which he chances to find himself, but in the +maintenance of a kind of candid discontent, in the face of the very +highest achievement; the unclouded and receptive soul quitting the +world finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered the +world still unimpaired, and going on its blind way at last with the +consciousness of some profound enigma in things, as but a pledge of +something further to come. Marius seemed to understand how one might +look back upon life here, and its excellent visions, as but the portion +of a race-course left behind him by a runner still swift of foot: for a +moment he experienced a singular curiosity, almost an ardent desire to +enter upon a future, the possibilities of which seemed so large. + +And just then, again amid the memory of certain touching actual words +and images, came the thought of the great hope, that hope against hope, +which, as he conceived, had arisen—Lux sedentibus in tenebris+—upon the +aged world; the hope Cornelius had seemed to bear away upon him in his +strength, with a buoyancy which had caused Marius to feel, not so much +that by a caprice of destiny, he had been left to die in his place, as +that Cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him also from death. +There had been a permanent protest established in the world, a plea, a +perpetual after-thought, which humanity henceforth would ever possess +in reserve, against any wholly mechanical and disheartening theory of +itself and its conditions. That was a thought which relieved for him +the iron outline of the horizon about him, touching it as if with soft +light from beyond; filling the shadowy, hollow places to which he was +on his way with the warmth of definite affections; confirming also +certain considerations by which he seemed to link himself to the +generations to come in the world he was leaving. Yes! through the +survival of their children, happy parents are able to think calmly, and +with a very practical affection, of a world in which they are to have +no direct share; planting with a cheerful good-humour, the acorns they +carry about with them, that their grand-children may be shaded from the +sun by the broad oak-trees of the future. That is nature’s way of +easing death to us. It was thus too, surprised, delighted, that Marius, +under the power of that new hope among men, could think of the +generations to come after him. Without it, dim in truth as it was, he +could hardly have dared to ponder the world which limited all he really +knew, as it would be when he should have departed from it. A strange +lonesomeness, like physical darkness, seemed to settle upon the thought +of it; as if its business hereafter must be, as far as he was +concerned, carried on in some inhabited, but distant and alien, star. +Contrariwise, with the sense of that hope warm about him, he seemed to +anticipate some kindly care for himself; never to fail even on earth, a +care for his very body—that dear sister and companion of his soul, +outworn, suffering, and in the very article of death, as it was now. + +For the weariness came back tenfold; and he had finally to abstain from +thoughts like these, as from what caused physical pain. And then, as +before in the wretched, sleepless nights of those forced marches, he +would try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like a child +thinking over the toys it loves, one after another, that it may fall +asleep thus, and forget all about them the sooner, on all the persons +he had loved in life—on his love for them, dead or living, grateful for +his love or not, rather than on theirs for him—letting their images +pass away again, or rest with him, as they would. In the bare sense of +having loved he seemed to find, even amid this foundering of the ship, +that on which his soul might “assuredly rest and depend.” One after +another, he suffered those faces and voices to come and go, as in some +mechanical exercise, as he might have repeated all the verses he knew +by heart, or like the telling of beads one by one, with many a sleepy +nod between-whiles. + +For there remained also, for the old earthy creature still within him, +that great blessedness of physical slumber. To sleep, to lose one’s +self in sleep—that, as he had always recognised, was a good thing. And +it was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuring +voices of the people who had kept and tended him so carefully through +his sickness, now kneeling around his bed: and what he heard confirmed, +in the then perfect clearness of his soul, the inevitable suggestion of +his own bodily feelings. He had often dreamt he was condemned to die, +that the hour, with wild thoughts of escape, was arrived; and waking, +with the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had been full +of gratitude for his place there, alive still, in the land of the +living. He read surely, now, in the manner, the doings, of these +people, some of whom were passing out through the doorway, where the +heavy sunlight in very deed lay, that his last morning was come, and +turned to think once more of the beloved. Often had he fancied of old +that not to die on a dark or rainy day might itself have a little +alleviating grace or favour about it. The people around his bed were +praying fervently—Abi! Abi! Anima Christiana!+ In the moments of his +extreme helplessness their mystic bread had been placed, had descended +like a snow-flake from the sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers had +applied to hands and feet, to all those old passage-ways of the senses, +through which the world had come and gone for him, now so dim and +obstructed, a medicinable oil. It was the same people who, in the gray, +austere evening of that day, took up his remains, and buried them +secretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, holding his +death, according to their generous view in this matter, to have been of +the nature of martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the church had always said, +a kind of sacrament with plenary grace. + +1881-1884. + +THE END + + + + +NOTES + +217. +“He made no one unhappy.” + +218. +“I have lived!” + +221. +From the Latin Vulgate Bible, Matthew 4:16: “populus qui sedebat +in tenebris lucem vidit magnam et sedentibus in regione et umbra mortis +lux orta est eis.” King James Bible translation: “The people which sat +in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and +shadow of death light is sprung up.” + +224. “Depart! Depart! Christian Soul!” The thought is from the Catholic +prayer for the departing. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME TWO *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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