And now twenty centuries have gone by. And a new teacher has come to whom also the soul is all-consuming. What ideas has _he_? And what task does he face?
I speak not to children. I speak to men seeking truth.
In twenty centuries we have learned that G.o.d is not a Father who answers prayers and works miracles and holds out his arms at the goal. We have come shuddering to the awful mystery of being; strange and terrible words have been spoken--words never to be forgotten--"phenomenon," and "thing-in-itself"; not knowing what these words mean, you are ignorant and recreant to the truth; _knowing_ what they mean, you tug no more at the veil. Also we have learned that time and change are our portion, "the plastic dance of circ.u.mstance"; we talk no more of immortality. We have turned our hopes to the new birth of time, to the new goal of our labor, the new parent of our love, that we name Society.
And likewise Evolution has come, which is the whole of knowledge. And we have learned of starry systems, of the building of worlds, of the pageant of history and the march of mind. Out of all these things has come a new duty, which is not peace, but battle--which is not patience, but will--which is not death, but life.
There is no room in the world of Evolution for the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. Non-resistance to evil is the negation of life, and the negation of life is the negation of faith. How shall you resist not evil when life is action and not pa.s.sion? When not a morsel of food can you touch except by the right that you are more fitted to survive than that morsel? How when you know that you rose from the beast by resistance? And that you stay above the beast by resistance? Will you give up the farm land to be jungle again? Or will you teach the beasts your non-resistance? And the trees of the forest to crowd no more your land!
It is no longer possible to build a heaven and reject the earth. Such as life is you have to take it.
And you have to live it. The huge machinery of Society is on your hands, with all its infinite complications, its infinite possibilities of beauty and joy. Your life is, as ever, a sacrifice; all life is, as ever, a sacrifice; but it is a sacrifice to man--a sacrifice to the best. Once your task was self-abnegation, and that was easy; now it is self-a.s.sertion, and that is hard. Knowing what you are, you will dare to live, not for your own sake, but that strength and beauty may be in the world. Knowing what you might be, you choose infinite toil for your portion, and in the humility of toil you find your holiest peace. Your enemy you resist with all your soul, not for hatred of your enemy, but for love of the right. If he were not evil he could not be your enemy; and being evil, he has no right to be.
Your conscience to you is no longer a shame, but a joy; you think no more of infinite sin, but of infinite virtue.--And for the rest, you do not attain perfection, and you are not worshiped as a G.o.d; you are much troubled by trivialities, and the battle tries your soul. But you make no truce with lies, and you never lay down your sword; you keep your eyes upon a far goal, and you leave the world better than you found it. When you come to die you have no fear, but a song; for you are master of yourself, and you have learned to know that which you are.
--And there is only to add--that whether you believe these things or not, they are what you actually _do_. It seems to me not desirable that one"s belief should be less than one"s practise.
January 6th.
Has any one, at this end of the nineteenth century, a clear idea of what the poets of the ages called _Inspiration_? If no one have, I will describe it. With the least remainder of superst.i.tion in him a man would scarcely be able to put aside the idea that he was merely the Incarnation, the mouthpiece, the medium of overwhelming powers. The idea of Revelation in the mind describes exactly the state of affairs--that suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and fineness, something became visible and audible, something that shakes and pervades one to the depths. One hears--he does not seek; he takes--he does not ask who gives; like lightning gleams out a thought, of necessity, formed without hesitation--I have never had a choice. An ecstasy, whose colossal strain breaks in the middle with a stream of tears, in the course of which the step becomes, involuntary, now raging, now slow; a state in which one is completely beside himself, with the distinctest consciousness of countless shudderings and quiverings, even to the toes of his feet; a depth of joy in which all that is painful and somber serves, not as a contrast, but as conditioned, as demanded, as a necessary color in such an overflow of light; an instinct of rhythmic relations which overleaps vast s.p.a.ces of forms; all happening in the highest degree involuntarily, but as if in a storm of sensations of freedom, of infinity, of power, of divinity.--This is my experience of Inspiration; I doubt not but that one must needs go back thousands of years to find one who might say, "It is also mine."
Do you think that _I_ wrote that--I, Arthur Stirling? No, I did not write that. The man who wrote that is known to you as an atheist.
January 7th.
When Zarathustra came into the next city, which lay beside the forest, he found in that place much people gathered together in the market; for they had been called that they should see a rope-dancer. And Zarathustra spoke thus unto the people:
_"I teach ye the Over-man._ The man is something who shall be overcome. What have ye done to overcome him?
"All being before this made something beyond itself: and you will be the ebb of this great flood, and rather go back to the beast than overcome the man?
"What is the ape to the man? A mockery or a painful shame. And even so shall man be to the Over-man: a mockery or a painful shame.
"Man is a cord, tied between Beast and Over-man--a cord above an abyss.
"A perilous arriving, a perilous traveling, a perilous looking backward, a perilous trembling and standing still.
"What is great in man is that he is a bridge, and no goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-over and a going-under.
"I love them that know not how to live, be it even as those going under, for such are those going across.
"I love them that are great in scorn, because these are they that are great in reverence, and _arrows of longing toward the other sh.o.r.e!"_
And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra.
"The air thin and clear, the danger nigh, and the spirit filled with a joyful mischief; these things go well together.
"I will have gnomes about me, for I am merry....
"I feel no more with you; these clouds which I see under me, these clouds black and heavy over which I laugh--just these are your storm-clouds.
"You gaze upward if you long for exaltation. I gaze downward because I am exalted.
"Who among you can both laugh and be exalted?
"Who climbs upon the highest mountains, he laughs at all sorrow-play and sorrow-reality.
"Bold, untroubled, mocking, full of power--so will wisdom have us; she is a woman and loves always but the warrior.
"You say to me: "Life is hard to bear." But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your submission?...
"I would believe only in a G.o.d who knew how to dance.
"And when I saw my devil, I found him earnest, profound, deep, solemn; he was the Spirit of Heaviness--through him fail all things.
"Not by anger, but by laughing, one kills. Up, let us kill the Spirit of Heaviness!..."
"Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.
"Art thou such a one that _can_ escape a yoke?
"Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me: free _to_ what?
"Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and avenger of thy law?
"Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty s.p.a.ce and into the icy breath of isolation.--
"Dost thou know truly, my brother, the word scorn? And the pain of thy righteousness, to be just that which thou dost scorn?..."