Among those shadowy _Edda_ matters, amid all that fantastic congeries of a.s.sertions, and traditions, in their musical Mythologies, the main practical belief a man could have was probably not much more than this: of the _Valkyrs_ and the _Hall of Odin_; of an inflexible _Destiny_; and that the one thing needful for a man was _to be brave_.
The _Valkyrs_ are Choosers of the Slain: a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to bend or soften, has appointed who is to be slain; this was a fundamental point for the Norse believer;--as indeed it is for all earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the woof out of which his whole system of thought is woven. The _Valkyrs_; and then that these _Choosers_ lead the brave to a heavenly _Hall of Odin_; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the Death-G.o.ddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. _Valour_ is still _value_. The first duty of a man is still that of subduing _Fear_. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man"s acts are slavish, not true but specious: his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear under his feet. Odin"s creed, if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be valiant; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man--trusting imperturbably in the appointment and _choice_ of the upper Powers; and, on the whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of a man he is.
It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of the old Northmen.
Snorro tells us they thought it a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natural death seemed to be coming on, they would cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive them as warriors slain.
Old kings, about to die, had their body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails set and slow fire burning it; that, once out at sea, it might blaze-up in flame, and in such manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the ocean! Wild b.l.o.o.d.y valour; yet valour of its kind; better, I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an indomitable rugged energy! Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things;--progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings; but Agamemnon"s was a small audacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of them;--to Hrolf"s of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour.
Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was the _strongest_ kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the t.i.tle _Wood-cutter_; Forest-felling Kings. Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk mainly of the latter,--misleading certain critics not a little; for no nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough come out of that! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller,--the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in every kind; for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valour that; showing itself against the untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer Nature for us. In the same direction have not we their descendants since carried it far? May such valour last forever with us!
That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero"s voice and heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the infinite importance of Valour, how man thereby became a G.o.d; and that his People, feeling a response to it in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and thought it a message out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it them: this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, from which all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow.
Grow,--how strangely! I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was _alive_; consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! The living doctrine grows, grows;--like a Banyan-tree; the first _seed_ is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called "the enormous shadow of this man"s likeness"? Critics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of the Creation and suchlike, with those of the Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla, "licking the rime from the rocks," has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into frosty countries. Probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest times. Thought does not die, but only is changed. The first man that began to think in this Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And then the second man, and the third man:--nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men _his_ way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness over sections of the History of the World.
Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this Norse Mythology I have not room to speak; nor does it concern us much. Some wild Prophecies we have, as the _Voluspa_ in the _Elder Edda_; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline sort. But they were comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who as it were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds; and it is _their_ songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbolising, as our modern Painters paint, when it was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This is everywhere to be well kept in mind.
Gray"s fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give one no notion of it;--any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us: no; rough as the North Rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in the middle of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor "draws down his brows" in a veritable Norse rage; "grasps his hammer till the _knuckles grow white_."
Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity. Balder "the white G.o.d"
dies; the beautiful, benignant; he is the SunG.o.d. They try all Nature for a remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends Hermoder to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom; arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof: the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pa.s.s here; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far towards the North." Hermoder rides on; leaps h.e.l.l-gate, Hela"s gate: does see Balder, and speak with him: Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela will not, for Odin or any G.o.d, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They shall forever remain there. He sends his ring to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her _thimble_ to Frigga, as a remembrance--Ah me!--
For indeed Valour is the fountain of Pity too;--of Truth, and all that is great and good in man. The robust homely vigour of the Norse heart attaches one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of right honest strength, says Uhland, who has written a fine _Essay_ on Thor, that the Old Norse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-G.o.d? That it is not frightened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer-heat, the beautiful n.o.ble summer, must and will have thunder withal! The Norse heart _loves_ this Thor and his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is Summer-heat; the G.o.d of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant"s friend; his true henchman and attendant is Thialfi, _Manual Labour_. Thor himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the Jotuns, harrying those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at least straitening and damaging them.
There is a great broad humour in some of these things.
Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek Hymir"s Caldron, that the G.o.ds may brew beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his grey beard all full of h.o.a.r-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye; Thor, after much rough tumult, s.n.a.t.c.hes the Pot, claps it on his head; the "handles of it reach down to his heels." The Norse Skald has a kind of loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag genius,--needing only to be tamed-down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now, that old Norse work,--Thor the Thunder-G.o.d changed into Jack the Giant-killer: but the mind that made it is here yet. How strangely things grow, and die, and do not die!
There are twigs of that great world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously traceable. This poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. _Hynde Etin_, and still more decisively _Red Etin of Ireland_, in the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from Norseland; _Etin_ is evidently a _Jotun_. Nay, Shakspeare"s _Hamlet_ is a twig too of this same world-tree; there seems no doubt of that.
Hamlet, _Amleth_, I find, is really a mythic personage; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a Norse mythus! Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it a Danish history; Shakspeare, out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig of the world-tree that has _grown_, I think;--by nature or accident that one has grown!
In fact, these old Norse songs have a _truth_ in them, an inward perennial truth and greatness,--as, indeed, all must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,--a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,--the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,--the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be:
"We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!"
One of Thor"s expeditions, to Utgard (the _Outer_ Garden, central seat of Jotun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and Loke. After various adventures they entered upon Giant-land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them.
Thor grasped his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned-out that the noise had been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this that they took for a house was merely his _Glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the Glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a glove;--I remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!
Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the Giant"s face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before: but the Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand?
Thor"s third stroke was with both his hands (the "knuckles white" I suppose), and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir"s visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked, There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they have dropt?--At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to "strain your neck bending back to see the top of it," Skrymir went his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going on. To Thor, for his part, they handed a drinking-horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, they told him; could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole G.o.dlike strength could not; he bent-up the creature"s back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her.
And now, on their quitting Utgard, the Chief Jotun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to drink was the _Sea_: you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _Midgard-snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, Duration; with her what can wrestle? No man nor no G.o.d with her; G.o.ds or men, she prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,--look at these _three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" Thor looked at his attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its skyhigh gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the Giant"s voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!"--
This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimerst.i.thy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag grin of true humour is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is capable of that. It is the grim humour of our own Ben Jonson, rare old Ben; runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it, under a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods.
That is also a very striking conception, that of the _Ragnarok_, Consummation, or _Twilight of the G.o.ds_. It is in the _Voluspa_ Song; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The G.o.ds and Jotuns, the divine Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel; World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive; and ruin, "twilight" sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with its G.o.ds is sunk; but it is not final death: there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; a higher supreme G.o.d, and Justice to reign among men.
Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law written in man"s inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even G.o.ds die, yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; may still see into it.
And now, connected with this, let us glance at the _last_ mythus of the appearance of Thor; and end there. I fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of Christianity,--set forth reproachfully by some Conservative Pagan.
King Olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing Christianity; surely I should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his Pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral of the North has now stood for many centuries, dedicated gratefully to his memory as _Saint_ Olaf. The mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort along the sh.o.r.e of Norway, from haven to haven; dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. The courtiers address him; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth: at length he is brought to the King. The stranger"s conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful sh.o.r.e; but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus: "Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you, and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jotuns, before he could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care!" said the stranger, drawing-down his brows;--and when they looked again, he was nowhere to be found.--This is the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world!
Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, without unveracity on the part of any one? It is the way most G.o.ds have come to appear among men: thus, if in Pindar"s time "Neptune was seen once at the Nemean Games," what was this Neptune too but a "stranger of n.o.ble grave aspect," _fit_ to be "seen"! There is something pathetic, tragic for me in this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole Norse world has vanished; and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that pa.s.s away the highest things. All things that have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish, we have our sad farewell to give them.
That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive _Consecration of Valour_ (so we may define it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valour is not a _bad_ thing! We will take it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is there no use in _knowing_ something about this old Paganism of our Fathers.
Unconsciously, and combined with higher things, it is in _us_ yet, that old Faith withal! To know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the Past--with our own possessions in the Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something _true_, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other _side_ of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the _sum_ of all these; not any one of them by itself, const.i.tutes what of Human Nature is. .h.i.therto developed.
Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher.
"To all the Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three: for they by their union first const.i.tute the True Religion."
LECTURE II
THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM
[_Friday, 8th May 1840_]
From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men!
The Hero is not now regarded as a G.o.d among his fellowmen; but as one G.o.d-inspired, as a prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship; the first or oldest, we may say, has pa.s.sed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, whom his fellowmen will take for a G.o.d. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there standing beside them a G.o.d, the maker of this world? Perhaps not: it was usually some man they remembered, or _had_ seen. But neither can this any more be. The Great Man is not recognised henceforth as a G.o.d any more.
It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a G.o.d. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how to account of him and receive him! The most significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man.
Ever, to the true instincts of men, there is something G.o.dlike in him.
Whether they shall take him to be a G.o.d, to be a prophet, or what they shall take him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these men"s spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he comes from the hand of nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff; that only by the world"s reception of them, and the shapes they a.s.sume, are they so immeasurably diverse. The worship of Odin astonishes us--to fall prostrate before the Great Man, into _deliquium_ of love and wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that he was a denizen of the skies, a G.o.d! This was imperfect enough: but to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did, was that what we can call perfect? The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth; a man of "genius" as we call it: the Soul of a Man actually sent down from the skies with a G.o.d"s-message to us--this we waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: _such_ reception of a Great Man I do not call very perfect either! Looking into the heart of the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind"s ways, than the Scandinavian method itself!
To fall into mere unreasoning _deliquium_ of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!--It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age.
Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet, but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what _he_ meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypotheses about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere ma.s.s of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Poc.o.c.ke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet"s ear, and pa.s.s for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred-and-eighty millions of men these twelve-hundred years. These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by G.o.d as well as we. A greater number of G.o.d"s creatures believe in Mahomet"s word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here.
Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in G.o.d"s true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism; they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more G.o.dless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow _truly_ the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred-and-eighty millions; it will fall straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature"s laws, _be_ verily in communion with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious--ah, me!--a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged bank-note; they get it pa.s.sed out of _their_ worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for it.
Nature bursts-up in fire-flame, French Revolutions and suchlike, proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged notes are forged.
But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to a.s.sert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say _sincerity_, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah, no, that is a very poor matter indeed;--a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man"s sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of _in_sincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality.
His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as death, is this Universe to him.
Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares-in upon him; undeniable, there, there!--I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that G.o.d has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.
Such a man is what we call an _original_ man: he comes to us at first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, G.o.d;--in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man"s words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things;--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following hearsays; _it_ glares-in upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a kind of "revelation;"--what we must call such for want of some other name? It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. G.o.d has made many revelations: but this man too, has not G.o.d made him, the latest and newest of all? The "inspiration of the Almighty giveth _him_ understanding:" we must listen before all to him.
This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive him so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man"s words were not false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery ma.s.s of Life cast-up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ the world; the world"s Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him.
On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according to G.o.d"s own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to G.o.d"s own heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is "pure" as dead dry sand is pure. David"s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man"s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man"s walking, in truth, always that: "a succession of falls"? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle _be_ a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put-up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate Mahomet"s faults even as faults: but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling there. We will leave all this behind us; and a.s.suring ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be.
These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people.
Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race.
Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are called the French of the East, we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted n.o.ble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of n.o.blemindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his way;--and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. In words too, as in action. They are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had "Poetic contests" among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes:--the wild people gathered to hear that.
One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities; what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous workers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,--recognised them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong. All G.o.d"s works are still in a sense symbols of G.o.d. Do we not, as I urged, still account it a merit to recognise a certain inexhaustible significance, "poetic beauty" as we name it, in all natural objects whatsoever? A man is a poet, and honoured, for doing that, and speaking or singing it,--a kind of diluted worship. They had many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the n.o.blest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and n.o.blemindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed that our own _Book of Job_ was written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a n.o.ble universality, different from n.o.ble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A n.o.ble Book; all men"s Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem,--man"s destiny, and G.o.d"s ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ everywhere; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than spiritual; the Horse,--"hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he "_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!"
Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation: oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.--
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some one might _see_ it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;--still more so in these hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object, that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; "twenty-seven cubits high;" with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_ night,--to glitter again under the stars.