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A bracketed +numeral such as [22] indicates that the material immediately +following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page. I +have preserved paragraph structure except for first-line indentation. + +Hyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an +e-text does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation. + +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. + + + + + + +MARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME TWO +WALTER PATER + + + Cheimerinos oneiros, hote mekistai hai vyktes.+ + + +"A winter's dream, when nights are longest." + Lucian, The Dream, Vol. 3. + + + CONTENTS + + + PART THE THIRD + + 15. Stoicism at Court: 3-13 + 16. Second Thoughts: 14-28 + 17. Beata Urbs: 29-40 + 18. "The Ceremony of the Dart": 41-56 + 19. The Will as Vision: 57-72 + + PART THE FOURTH + + 20. Two Curious Houses--1. Guests: 75-91 + 21. Two Curious Houses--2. The Church in Cecilia's House: 92-108 + 22. "The Minor Peace of the Church": 109-127 + 23. Divine Service: 128-140 + 24. A Conversation Not Imaginary: 141-171 + 25. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum: 172-185 + 26. The Martyrs: 186-196 + 27. The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius: 197-207 + 28. Anima Naturaliter Christiana: 208-224 + + + +PART THE THIRD + +CHAPTER XV: STOICISM AT COURT + +[3] 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 [4] 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 [5] 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 [6] 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 [7] 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 +aesthetic 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 elite 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, [8] 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 [9] +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 [10] becomes +explicit, and as if incarnate, in a select communion of just men made +perfect. + +Ho kosmos hosanei 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 ethe+ 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 [11] +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, [12] 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 [13] 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 hosanei polis estin. Translation: +"The world is like a city." + +10. +Transliteration: to prepon . . . ta ethe. Translation: "That +which is seemly . . . mores." + + + +CHAPTER XVI: SECOND THOUGHTS + +[14] 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 [15] 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 blase, 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, [16] +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 [16] +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 [18] 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 [19] +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 [20] +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 [21] 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 serieux 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 hedone+ as it was called--the pleasure of the "Ideal Now"-- +if certain moments of their lives were high-pitched, passionately +coloured, intent with sensation, [22] 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. + +[23] 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 aesthetic 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 [24] +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 [25] 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 +aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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 [26] least, are matter of the most real kind of +appre-hension. 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 [27] 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, [28] 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 hedone. 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." + +[29] 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 [30] 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 apotheosis, 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. + +[31] 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. [32] 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 [33] liberty to retire for a time into the privacy o 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 [34] 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 [35] 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 [36] 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 [37] 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 [38] 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 [39] 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 [40] 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" + +[41] 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, [42] 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 tes metros 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 [43] 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 [44] 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-- [45] 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 theoria, 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 +[46] 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 [47] 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 auto +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 [48] 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 [49] 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 [50] 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 +[51] 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 Theodice 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: + + [52] 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 [53] 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 [54] 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 +[55] 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 [56] 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 tes metros to theosebes. Translation: +"rites deriving from [his] mother." + +47. +Transliteration: koinos auto 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! + +[57] 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 [58] +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 [59] 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 [60] 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 [61] +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 [62] 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, [63] 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, [64] 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, [65] 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 [66] 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 [67] 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 [68] 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 [69] 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 [70] 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 [71] 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 [72] 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."+ + +[75] 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 [76] 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 [77] 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 [78] altars of the gods, the supper- +table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the +agreeable petit-maitre, 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 [79] 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 +[80] 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 [81] 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 [82] 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 [83] +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 [84] 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 [85] 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 m +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, [86] 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 [87] 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 aesthetic 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, +[88] 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 [89] 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 [90] 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 [91] 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." + +[92] 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 +[93] 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. + +[94] 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-- [95] +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 [96] 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, aesthetically, 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 [97] 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. + +[98] 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 [99] 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 [100] 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?-- [101] 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 [102] 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, +[103] 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 [104] 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."-- + +[105] 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 [106] 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 [107] 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 [108] 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" + +[109] 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 [110] 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 [111] 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 [112] 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 [113] 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 [114] +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, [115] 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 [116] 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 [117] 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 ascesis 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 [118] 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 [119] 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 [120] 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 +[121] 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 [122] 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. + +[123] 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 +aesthetic 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, [124] 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. + +[125] 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 [126] 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, [127] 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." + +[128] 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 [129] 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: [130] 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 [131] 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- [132] 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 [133] 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 [134] 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 [135] 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 +[136] 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 +rhapsodos, 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 [137] 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 [138] 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 [139] 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. + +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 [140] 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. + +NOTES + +139. *Psalm xxii.22-31. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV: A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY + +[141] 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 [142] 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 [143] 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 [144] 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! [145] --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 [146] 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, [147] 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 [148] 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 [149] 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: [150] +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 [151] 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 [152] 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 [153] 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 [154] 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 [155] 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 [156] 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 [157] 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, [158] 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, [159] 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, [160] 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 [161] 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 [162] 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 [163] +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 [164] 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 cotyle 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 [165] 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, [166] 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 [167] 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 mean 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 [168] 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, [169] 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. [170] 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 +[171] 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+ + +[172] 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, [173] 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 +[174] 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 [175] 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. + +[176] '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 [177] 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 [178] 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 +[179] 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 [180] 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- [181] 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 [182] 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 [183] 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 [184] 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 [185] 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! voila les ames qu'il falloit a la mienne!" + Rousseau. + +[186] 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 [187] 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 [188] 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 [189] 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 +[190] 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 [191] 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. + +[192] "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 [193] 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 [194] 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 [195] 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. + +[196] "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 + +[197] 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, [198] +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. + +[199] 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 [200] 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, [201] +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, +[202] 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 [203] 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 [204] 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 [205] 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 [206] --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! + +[207] 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 + +[208] 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 [209] 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 +denouement. 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, +[210] 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 [211] 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 [212] +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 [213] 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 [214] 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, [215] 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, [216] 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 +[217] 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 [218] 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. + +[219] 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 [220] 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 [221] 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 [222] 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 [223] 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 [224] 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 Project Gutenberg Etext of Marius the Epicurean Vol. II by Walter Pater + |