Chapter X: Part 10

‘But to prove to our guest that art has not as yet quite left the world, and that we still retain some trace of old-fashioned entertainment, I propose that Master Oakford, who is an expert in hypnotising, give us all a pleasant drama, with magnificent scenery and dresses, so that we may all have something cheerful in our memories before we retire to rest.’

This proposal met with general approbation, and Master Oakford explained it to Flaxius as follows:

‘You must know that we now have spectacles, theatrical entertainments, operas, and exhibitions of the most varied description, for all the world, at no expense whatever. In every family there is some one who is the special hypnotiser, and in larger assemblies masters on a greater scale. These masters--of whom I am one--store their memories with all that can conduce to entertainment. Then we keep by us, or, indeed, generally find in every house, an infinite amount of music, songs, speeches, or dialogues, such as were once recorded on tinfoil, but which are now kept imperishable on a new and better material.

‘When the performance begins, I hypnotise all present; impressing it on their minds that they are about to see a certain _spectacle_, and that they are to vividly behold certain scenery or persons. By this method, and the aid of phonographs and monologue, I give them a very perfect entertainment. Pray note two things: one is, that I _will_ them to vividly remember all that they have seen, when they awake; secondly, that the art of understanding, and of enjoying such plays, is very much improved with practice.’

‘Much of this,’ remarked Flaxius, ‘was known to the Egyptian, Chaldæan and Etruscan priests of yore, and it perished with them, or lingered in broken fragments among witches and sorcerers. I know so much of it that you need not hypnotise me, who am, indeed, master of the art, but I will most gladly enter into sympathetic perception with both the actor and the audience.’

Those present sat in a semi-circle, and by unanimous request, Oakford was requested to give Shakespeare’s play of _Macbeth_. It was only necessary for Flaxius to take the hand of one of the auditors in his own--it chanced to be that of the pretty waiting-maid--to close his eyes, and bring his perception into mutual sympathy with hers, which is a peculiarly delicate, cerebral, voltaic, volitional, vital act, and the condition for enjoying the play was complete. Then the pretty waiting-maid--who, as has been already intimated, was also a distinguished chemico-physiolobiologiste--retired within her inner consciousness, but with one hand--so to speak--on the door of that department of her memory which was labelled Macbeth (Shakespeare, English), ready to let out the imprisoned images. That is, she went into hypnotic sleep, to see the things which eye could not behold.

All present were apparently insensible. Soon Flaxius heard the softest, strangest sound, which rose to a grand peal of exquisite music; and then, trembling, sunk and quivered into a strange, half-fearful, half-fantastic, witch melody, like a forest through which flitted at intervals--ever and anon inaudible or lost--a wild, yet exquisite waltz--a butterfly in a thunder-cloud. Meanwhile, there was perceptible all around a gradually developing, rising, and spreading scenery of barren moors, with encircling rocks and mountains, vast trees waving in the wailing wind--a torrent. And with it all there was an indescribable, mental, general impression, apart from what was seen or heard, as of another mighty wind, or spiritual opium, disposing the beholder unto _fascination_.

‘I have beheld many a magnificent _mise en scène_,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘but never anything like this. It would have been an art-wonder of the world a century ago, and it is only a mere family-charade and a game of puss-in-the-corner or proverb, for people now. They have mastered art beyond our wildest dreams--only to despise it!’

Then the play went on, improving at every pace, as Oakford became inspired, rising in grandeur and beauty, impressiveness, and the subtle sorcery of more than mere skill. The music became a marvellous opera of accompaniment in no excess, yet mighty in effect, while the scenery was that of nature in her grandest or most enchanting moods. Best of all was the acting, in which the auditor seemed unto himself to be the one who spoke--and so it rolled on to an end. With a final finely accentuated, biological-cardiac pressure of the hand--such as in earlier ages would have ignorantly described as a fond squeeze--the pretty waiting-maid awoke.

‘You are a great artist,’ said Flaxius to Oakford.

‘So, so. I am far from being first or even great. Nor is it considered any great accomplishment among educated people nowadays to give such games in such style. It is only our child’s play, O Master, just as the performances of Thespius sank in later ages to the level of the mob, though they had improved in quality. And you now understand, that while we understand and practise art a hundred times better than our ancestors did, we do not esteem it at one hundredth the part of its ancient value.’

‘I understand,’ said Flaxius.

‘Go to Rome or Greece,’ pursued Oakford, ‘and you will see the Colosseum, and Forum and Parthenon, and all the most celebrated buildings of antiquity restored in all their beauty, but even the school-children now regard them as mere curiosities, illustrations of a barbarous past--pretty enough in their small, naïve way--but mere savage trifles compared to the works of science; why, we could now do in a week all that Egypt built or unbuilt in six thousand years. And we have the fullest, deepest secret of their art, too--the very spirit of its spirit--and don’t think so very much of it either. Ah! you nineteenth century men wrote an awful lot of rubbish, which they called Criticism. After it died out, art began again--travelling a long way after science, it is true--but ages in advance of where it had gone before. All of the Ruskins and Taines of the last century look to us like ants toiling over lumps of sugar, which they believed were mountains. Very industrious ants they were, and good judges of white sugar, too; but not of real Alps or Himalayas of eternal snow.’

‘Truly,’ observed Flaxius, ‘there were a few even in their own time who began to suspect that human genius was not quite exhausted in the Renaissance, and also that there was better nutriment for man than the confectionery of pictures, or the iced-cake of a Milan Cathedral. All very fine, very fine indeed for weddings and Christmas-trees, _tempi passati_. Well, as nature is an artist, I suspect that art after all has only begun afresh, on a grander scale than ever.’

* * * * *

‘_Haec fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, as usual on the proof, ‘that all mankind are pretty generally mistaken in believing that certain habits, prejudices, customs, usages, modes, and ideas, in or according to which they and their fathers grew up, are eternal and innate laws of human nature never to be removed. For all things may be taken out of us, even conceit, by the cork-screw of time or the air-pump of science; and it is the most marvellous manifestation of the age that none foresee what a tremendous pop and what a stupendous out-flowing of the champagne of genius there will be when the stopple shall be drawn from the final end or mouth of this century bottle!

‘“It will not come in my time,” said a young _savant_ to me in the last generation when I told him that ere long cities would be lit by gas. “’Tis all very fine, and perhaps possible, but we shall not live to see it.” And within five years after, the city wherein he spake was illuminated as I had predicted. Friends, the child is born unto whom, ere death, naught which I have here written will seem strange, for he will have seen the better part, or enough to make a proof, with his own eyes. Ye may more safely say that a piece of wax can _never_ be moulded into a certain form than declare what man or society will never be; but what is most wondrous of all in that which I predict, is that the spirit of the change is coming _soon_--even as a French Revolution comes so suddenly upon those in power, and who are the most learned in the signs of the times, that they have not time to move their office furniture. For the salts are all in solution, the liquid will hold no more, and ere long a voice or a book will precipitate the vast and brilliant crystals by sound or shock.

‘For that is to be for which Jesus Christ most ardently longed, and which is the one great theme of the New Testament, that a time will come when patriotism, the tenderest ties of home, the form and letter of formalised religion, the great distinctions between poverty and wealth, yea, every harsher, oppressive, conventional law which is _per se_ useless shall disappear in a grand cosmopolitan altruism, at the very name of which time-serving, petty fools now jibe and titter, even as they sneered in ancient Rome at the new Christianity, which is now coming again in the dazzling, all-glorious, white cloud of science. Let them laugh that will, and exalt their old idols, crying that there is this and that which man will never do. “_Upharsin_ is writ on the wall.”

‘Woe unto the false prophets who give tips for races, be they on horses or politicians or religion--’tis all one--for both the horse and the demagogue are doomed to pass away.

‘Woe unto those who live in the trash and rot and folly of gossip and fashion, for their memory will stink in the ages to come.

‘Woe unto the Jew and the Yankee, the Greek and Parsee, the Englishman and Dutchman, the great former of trusts and syndicates, yea, the promoter and swindler, be he who he may, for in the great future history of iniquity his name will not be forgotten.

‘Woe unto you who shall struggle in the last hour to maintain your cracked and decayed old creeds and worn-out fads, screaming that “they all agree perfectly with science, which was sent to support and prove them.”

‘Yea, woe to the old Jerusalem which stoned the prophets, for there shall not be left one stone upon another of all her ancient temples, gambling-dens, policy-offices, stock-exchanges, lupanars or society-newspapers, in human form or literal.

‘Woe unto Jerusalem; and, finally, woe unto myself! For I, too, with all my small writing will be whirled away with the rest, down the back entry of Time into the gutter of semi-forgetfulness, to be carried away into the River of Oblivion. And rightly too; for how would any of us of the present day seem among the glorious ones who are to come? Verily, as a great divine once said of sinners or dissenters in heaven, we should “look like pigs in a parlour.” Therefore let us all go in peace--and be thankful that there will be far better than we are to succeed us!

‘But, “if not impossible it is only possible, at least it will not come in our time,” cries all the world, when science foretells these reforms of the future. Here I am reminded of what was once written by Paul Féval, a muddled romanticist, who, however, in his dunghill of rubbish had at times a pearl, and he said, when speaking of steam as applied to boats and railway trains:

‘“It took many years before that learned and illustrious body, the Admiralty--_la marine de l’état_--took into consideration that force which repelled the wind, and laughed at the strength of currents. It is true that at the same time the Academy professed the opinion that a velocity of ten leagues an hour on a railroad would stifle respiration in a man and kill all who would risk it. Yet it would be foolish to blame our marine or our academics for this--for _le monde est ainsi fait_--such is the world. Every progress afflicts some interest or irritates some vanity.

‘“Ancient wisdom said, ‘If you doubt, consider carefully.’ Modern wisdom cries, ‘If you do not understand, then _hinder_!’ Can we ever enumerate the men and ideas put to death in the name of the idiotic phantom whom sages call IMPROBABILITY?

‘“Horace said that the man must have had a heart triply clad with bronze who first on a frail plank dared all the terrors of a raging stream. It is admirably true. Add to it that the sages of his time would have abused that man with all their might.

‘“And yet in every age those men so wise still cast themselves in vain before the path on which humanity was bound to pass, for spite their spite humanity marched on. Improbability, grotesque scarecrow as it was, recoiled with its fogs before the light. Miracles, once declared impossible, are now seen undisturbed in every street. It was only forty years ago, and now you may find men living on their ‘shares’ whose hands once tried to stop the march of steam.... And if another marvel should arise they would laugh at and abuse it, crying, _Cela ne se peut pas_, it is impossible.... To say now that anything is impossible, a man should have not only a heart shielded by triple bronze, but the tenfold skin of a jackass.”

‘And we should consider all this when any one now dreams of the future, for the true age of ease has only just begun. Certain chemical discoveries made of late years have drawn from all intelligent men of science the opinion that we are advancing very rapidly indeed to a cheap, wholesale production of all scents and flavours in perfection. This means very cheap food of every taste to suit, or the enjoyment of all delicacies--mere imagination or association being set aside. Herein--all consequences being considered--is something stupendous, since enjoyment of taste in food is one of the greatest factors in life, and a great stimulant to industry. When this shall be somewhat relieved, industry will be more at leisure and liberty to devote itself to higher things. “It may be that the Chinaman of the future will run the machines which the Aryan will invent.”’

[16] Since this chapter was written I have observed that a great prophet, W. W. Astor, the author of _Looking Backwards_, noticed this same want of chimneys in the future.

THE EVANISHMENT OF FLAXIUS

‘She came in her beauty bright as day,
To where in his sleep her true knight lay.
She held in her small and light-bright hand
A plaything, a brilliant moon-gold band;
She wound it about his hair and her own,
Still singing the while, “We two are one.”
All round them the world lay poor and dim,
Aloft in her glory she rose with him.
They stood in a garden fair and bright,
The angels do call it “Land of Light.”’

_Aslauga’s Knight_, by _La Motte Fouqué_.

WHEN time had worn away long centuries, and a sweet spirit, more subdued and soft, had breathed a deeper love and gentleness into the heart of man, as culture grew, and ruder errors had been cast aside among traditions of the suffering ages, Flaxius sat alone before the rocky palace, far away in the remotest recesses of the Northern Apennines. It was a blest and fairy-hallowed spot, where, in the stillness of the golden eve, amid the rustling leaves and dewy grass, he heard the solo or the chorus sweet of airy voices locked in unison, faint, far-off, near, deep, solemn, gay or sweet, as if serenading the rising stars, as they came one by one to the windows of heaven.

But it nowise disturbed his reverie, for he was reviewing, as he had seldom done, all his life. He had a stupendous memory, and an all-embracing perception, with an immense power of concentration of mental force, such as will some day be taught in schools, when men shall be wise enough to examine and seek into truths set before them, instead of manifesting their petty vanity by ridicule. As with the spirit of a recent dream, while all its forms still freshly haunt the soul, the great life-pageant swept before his eyes: dark forms, forgotten for long centuries to man, nor seen in art nor sketched in song, a living stream of shadows strange and fair, and images of great world-ruling men, and sages who had made deep laws of life, and sent their power like an endless thrill, beyond them--far--into eternity!

‘It was to be, yet it is wonderful,’ thought the Sage, ‘and, perhaps, to me the more in wonder sweet, since these fair forms that in long order glide, still growing fairer as the world goes on, were dimly and yet long ago foreseen. True, inductive prophecy began with science; evolution first taught man how to evolve by a deeper logic than had e’er been known to schoolmen, or the mere psychologist, what _was_ to come. None the less wonderful to one who sees how a blind force with time has worked itself into a wondrous thinking Deity!’

‘And the Deity, Flaxius?’ said a sweet voice, in which there was the echo of a smile.

The Fairy Albinia was beside him.

‘And the Deity? How dost thou behold it?’

‘What it will be is far beyond my view. I know it was--not even what it is. God grows with all that God may greater be, and awful is the mighty law of growth. I _know not_ why it is that all _must_ grow, because it is a law unto itself, and slow, indeed, our growth is unto it.’

‘But in what form dost thou behold it now?’

‘I see it now in man and in what science shows--how man will see it in the time to come is now full surely all unknown to man.’

‘And how didst thou discover God in man?’

‘Even as Plato saw it in the ideal, which is the very soul and counterpart of the most real science. May I speak?’

‘Yes, speak; I feel my soul now speaks in thine.’

‘All nature types,’ said Flaxius, ‘in ideals. None ever yet beheld a perfect rose, yet seeing many roses, we infer what a true rose may be. So in all things, for nature never took a single form, be it beautiful or base, which had not an ideal never won. And of all things, there never was a form which in itself united the ideals as we behold them in the higher Man.

‘For, indeed, in the rose or in all flowers, or in aught else, there is no colour so beautiful as the living hue of a fair human being. Apart from sentiment of love, the artist knows that that is the hardest of all hues to win. And again, as regards form, no animal or plant, or aught that lives, combines such perfect outline, strength and grace, converging ever into an ideal. No wonder that many have committed the error of looking to art more than to nature, when we reflect how the artist feels this marvellous truth.’

‘And, therefore, it was well in its time, Flaxius, that men worshipped art, since it made them work unconsciously to a great end.’

‘Yes, it was well and glorious _in its time_,’ replied Flaxius. ‘Now it is rising to a higher aim. But to resume. There is no sound so sweet, no power of modulation in all conceivable variety as is found in the human voice, for it can breathe all passions, fears, and every phase of thought. I say even thought, though men class music with emotion only. But to a higher sense all utterance is music given in a million forms. Yes, man is the ideal of all ideals combined, and ever tends to unite them in himself, even by the common law which forms them all.’

‘This, then, my Flaxius,’ the Fairy said, ‘forms a new law, that man shall gradually draw towards man as he perceives this truth. What is religion?’

‘Religion,’ replied Flaxius, ‘is the sense of a higher Power on which we must rely, even as the child looks to the parent, who is its ideal of all protection and authority. To this is added _wont_ or habit fixed, which runs to second nature; therefore man forms his tradition, and adheres to it long after he has learned that other men are greater than the parents; and this is the history of every creed on earth.’

‘And so the form still takes the place of truth, yet still a form is indispensable.’

‘Yes, it must be, because in forms we live,’ said Flaxius slowly. ‘A wondrous truth which leads to constant war. Strange is the history of the ancient forms which one by one the world has cast aside. Therefore the Egyptians typified the Holy Ghost, or the all-pervading Spirit of Life, as a serpent which annually casts its skin, and is renewed in brighter hues.’

‘And man must have a form to worship or incarnate the Power which he adores.’

‘Ay, and it is to that which I would come. The Hebrews worshipped God in a fixed law, sternly expressed, a law immutable, and this they had incarnate in a Book. This was their form from which they jealously excluded every trace of human shape. Because ’twas written that no living man could ever see the real form of God, they worshipped God’s great voice; that is to say, the echo of it as expressed in law. Therefore when prophets spoke no more on earth they still retained a kind of fairy faith that the _Bath Kol_ or echo of the Voice was heard at times in a consecrated arch--I think ’twas in the Temple. Now ’tis still. It was all the conception of Hebrew nature incarnate in an ideal man whom they called Jehovah.

‘Then came the Greeks who personified nature in all her forms, and represented every passion or feeling as a deity. They saw God in statues, and felt religion in art ideals. Something they lost in vigorous, early strength, but gained a thousandfold in thought and grace. They made a progress toward ideal man.’

‘And out of all a new religion grew,’ replied the Fairy in her sweetest voice, ‘which was as far beyond the Greek ideal as that had been beyond the Hebrew law.’

‘Yes,’ answered Flaxius in earnest tone, ‘and could the real spirit of Christianity, as Christ meant it, have been combined with Greek art and perception of natural beauty--as the poor young Emperor Julian desired--have been realised, the world might have seen a wonderful religion. But ’twas all for the best, as now I truly see. As fast as islands raised their sunny peaks above the blue sea, and grew green and beautiful, there came the barbarians in multitudes to settle on them--in early times the Hun and Visigoth, in later days the negro and Chinese--struggling on, struggling ever, sweeping on; and yet true culture gained upon it all.’

‘And thou see’st also, Flaxius,’ said the Fairy, ‘that had the Julian religion triumphed, man might have lived so long in sweet content of art and love and pure humility, and all the softness of his gentleness, that vigour might have died and strength been gone. Progress needs strife.’

‘Ay, and more than that,’ added Flaxius. ‘Those barbarian struggles gave the strength to man which was needed to create science, which in due time raised up a higher art, and then revived the Christian dream of love in altruism fed with greater force. It all led to nobler ideals.’

‘And religion?’

‘Religion from awe and fear became love mingled with reverence--reverence before the mighty Mystery of Power hidden in Man himself. After the Greek worship of statues came the picture-worship of the Renaissance, and then another age of confusion, and the warring of new elements and the death of the old art.

‘Now the ideal is in Man himself; and the world, instead of books or statues or pictures, cultivates humanity, and sees Divinity in itself in a new ideal. This is the most advanced exponent of the Mystery of Power. Even of old, when any man loved, he began by making the utmost of the loved one, or the pair did so mutually; it is touching to read in every fond romance, and every poem of the ancient times, in myriads of novels and letters, how they all began with the _elements_ of true worship. Each hoped to find in the other something which would ennoble, transfigure them to another or a higher life; and they were in the right, and in all cases it _might_ have been, had they known how to persevere in it; but outer influences were too strong, while their perception of the truth was weak.

‘What is the power of the vast Unknown which circles through all space and gives us life, or how it lives in us or what it is--a spirit or a force which gives itself unto itself, a consciousness in us--is a great mystery beyond our ken. But this we have learned after long centuries, that he who _wills_ can win so much of it by ever striving unto pure ideals, and pressing steadfastly unto the great, that he can win himself tremendous power, aided therein by love and mutual will.’

‘Now art thou coming to the highest truth.’

‘Ay, such a truth as hath no counterpart: for if two people love in very truth, seeing in one another the highest ideal of the will or the possible power of becoming what they will, and each strives in all things to be perfect to the other--then will they worship God in very truth. For if thou canst maintain in me high self-respect and I in thee, we make a wondrous power in ourselves, which well maintained may rise to miracle. For this I do believe in very truth, that love alone can make our souls divine, and when we do believe in very truth, that we are the ideal form of God or holy pictures of the highest power, or living laws or Bibles, and if we do carry out the laws therein expressed, it is in us to win such wondrous might as magic claimed in ages long gone by. For this we need no other higher aid than mutual love and _will_, which well maintained will raise us ever to a nobler life.

All men who _love_ live in a fairyland, and all who _will_ may aye remain in it, if they will make their love the law of life, believing truly that they are divine, or growing in divinity and hope.

‘And they who believe in very truth and faith, that each is holy--that the Almighty Power, though but a spark, dwells in them, and that it may grow into a flame, and hold to this as they perhaps have held to some old creed or tattered form which never held a truth--will know what ’tis to be divine.

‘Yet now and then we all have transient views when standing by the rushing flood of life, that there is in it _force_ and light unknown; “those eddying balls of foam, those arrowy gleams, that o’er the pavement of the surging streams welter and flash” are glimpses of the truth which, understood, might give new life to thee.

‘I do not say that this can only be between a man and a woman when they love, because if we believe that all mankind do form the arch-ideals of the world--that is by more or less as they are formed--then I can see how step by step all men will become links in this true golden chain--the _aurea catena_ of which of yore Pythagoras once dreamed, the chain which binds the highest with the lowest all in one.

‘So have I loved thee, O my golden one, since the old days of the Etruscan age, so shall I love thee through eternity; while different, we were yet ever one in truth, and ever nearing as the time went on.

‘And now my heart is filled with earth, and I have seen it to its glorious heritage and know ’twill soon be heaven; therefore I, my mission ended and my task complete, will join thee in thy life and never part. I know that heaven is in love and thee.’

And as he said this word the Fairy smiled and wound her arms about him, and a light as of a rainbow of the brightest hues, blended with music, quaint and wildly sweet--the spirit of the dream of olden time--came over them and hid them from my sight; but when it vanished both of them were gone, and Flaxius was seen on earth no more.

* * * * *

‘But what of God?’ asked the Fairy as they sat in Elf Elysium amid shadows of perfumed foliage, by dancing rivulets, where all was like the best and most beautiful on earth, rising to higher and more glorious form. For thou hast shown how by love and finding ideals in one another, we can refine and exalt our nature; yet that is not religion.’

‘I will tell thee what I believed on earth,’ answered the Sage, ‘and I think I shall not change my faith, though I rise far beyond this life of beauty.

‘When men believed in spirit and matter, as separate, all was confusion and void; and the wisest went unwittingly wandering about from error to error like lost souls, seeking in eternal darkness one mocking _ignis fatuus_ after the other. Then after years of study I perceived that all must be matter alone, visible to my senses it is true, but also refined in infinite forms beyond all human, sensual or sensitive perception. For all that poets and supernaturalists have ever imagined spirit to be, is outdone in fineness by what science is boldly suggesting and proving.

‘As there are in nature extraordinary or extravagant exaggerations of the powers of the senses, as is seen in vultures, which can perceive a small object a hundred miles away, so there are as likely other senses not known to man, other dimensions which he cannot understand, and forms of matter which he cannot perceive by “sense.” This is no idle conjecture. Every new experiment in a laboratory, every discovery, makes it more probable. A few years ago, or within sixty years, man seemed to be in blind ignorance, comparing what he then knew with what he has learned. This is even more evident from the revelations of hitherto unknown forces, the fact that light is not _per se_, but the impression made on us. Therefore there may be worlds unseen in infinite number and series, and existences or intelligences of incalculable or infinite power. There may be a God, whose existence has a reason for being, according to Materialism, but none whatever in a spiritual _a priori_ faith, founded on and supported only by mere tradition.

‘But what does man know in full or in truth? If we take the simplest problem in nature--the sprouting of a bean. All the wisdom of all time cannot explain why it is that it grows up a bean-vine through the ages, ever renewing itself. To suppose that there are _infinite_ millions of concentrated vines or germs in every bean is absurd, or, if true, it only increases the marvel. Therefore, an idea or subject once formed must be the coalescence of certain forms of matter with certain laws, according to which certain material is attracted or thrown off for ever, like being drawn to like. But oh, how infinitely beyond human knowledge or perception is the fulness of this least of natural problems!

‘And there are millions of creations, deeper and deeper, all calling forth in every phase admiration for the infinite ingenuity and adaptation which are revealed in every creation. Observe the ant, which by instinct alone, as we call it, can execute tasks and problems in architecture a thousand times more difficult than any which man has ever achieved. What it all means is this: that beyond and out of _our_ small mental system, with its distinctions between understanding and reason and self-consciousness and “I am”--which is all much more mechanical and akin to atavism and mere instinct than we imagine--there is a stupendous power of creation, with an infinite amount of what _we_ gladly call thought or mind, when _we_ develop a similar ingenuity. And, in fact, it is amusing, that men who consider that a very little discovery of the laws of nature is the greatest proof of their having intellect, should doubt that intellect, of a kind unknown to us, is the creator of it all.

‘Now what exists in the realms unknown to sense no one can say, but that there are intelligences who exert ingenuity and power in creation is palpable enough, as the bean proves; therefore a series of beings and gods, or a God, is an inevitable deduction.

‘It is also proved by science, that the human _will_ can be so _incredibly_ developed by a certain training and discipline, within the reach of all, and very easy, that we may control our tempers, our desires, or increase our determination, to a miraculous extent.[16] This, too, is all a result of modern physical science, or “mere materialism,” and it has done more to establish pure morality and a well-based belief in God than all that psychology ever imagined. For like the rational faith in God, it is a direct result of evolution.

‘The result of the two deductions is, that directing the developed will towards God with all our heart, or towards love, in sincerity and zeal, we arrive at all true religion and possible happiness. For the pure will, independent and free, and marvellous in power, must co-exist with _Altruism_, which is the kernel of Christianity. Love God and man. For to be _free_, we must co-ordinate with moral law, and what this is, we learn by the experience of life, every man according to his measure and allowance. We should all do well enough, if we all did as well as we could, never minding the quibbles of would-be law-givers.

‘All magic, and what man regards as spiritual or transcendental learning and theosophy and soul-wisdom, is embraced in perfect belief in and reliance on God, and action of our developed will. All that mystics and theosophists have written amounts to no more than this: _Believe in God and in thine own will, aided by God_.

‘“God helps those who help themselves” is a great truth to be ever borne in mind; nay, so true, that nearly all prayer is mere idle ceremony, and of small avail, however fervent it may be, if there be no _will_ exerted, no energetic effort to be and do good by those who are capable of effort. For the Creator Himself is ever working by Evolution. Who shall say that even Omnipotence, like Thor, does not do battle with, ere it conquer, the stupendous Jötuns or barbarous giants of brute forces in nature, or the “downward-borne elements of God,” as Hermes Trismegistus called them.

‘As Creation is the will of God realised in action, so the will of man vigorously exerted is responded to by the divine Demiurgus. Therefore prayer should be will, and will, prayer, which may be fully apparent in time, though, perhaps, not at first.

‘What is most to be considered, above all earthly interests and desires, or human wants or ideas, is the illimitable, stupendous, and glorious power and nature of God. Here Evolution has lifted man far above all that the most inspired prophets or bards of Judæa or Egypt or India ever conceived. For they were limited to what was apparent to the senses, and, indeed, to this world, as the only one. But to him who actually understands that there are twenty million suns with solar systems, and so on for ever, and that it is probable, as Paracelsus so strangely guessed, that there are races and worlds to us invisible and intangible, living as it were through, and in, this life, the Creator must be more than He ever was, even to Moses.

‘Now the more the stupendous, original, creative power of God is felt, the more capable do we become of realising--that is, rising to and drawing near unto Him. By so doing shall we understand that all was made in and by and for Him, as the only one, and not for us. Before this awful and glorious truth all other considerations should vanish, for His Will should be all--He is the Master and the Lord for ever.

‘All who believe this, will desire to do good work for its own sake, and create that which shall in the future be developed into greater good, rather than seek for pay or reward, which latter may be left to God or unseen divine agents, who know better than we do what we need, and who _do_ aid the true servitors of God.

‘The true servitor is the one who _lives_ in the infinite power, goodness, and glory of God, who exerts his own will and strength or effort to the utmost to do, and to be, good, and whose devotion consists not so much in mere praying or begging for alms, instead of trying to earn wages, as of recognition of His Omnipotence.

‘Yes, if it be God’s will that I should pass away into nothingness, then would I prefer it to the most blissful immortality without His desire, for what am I before Him, save His creation from nothing, born to obey? And so far from thinking that such want of a future releases man from moral obligations, I hold that such a faith is the highest stimulus to do our best while we live, and avoid all sin.

‘Therefore, O man, trouble not thyself, as to a future, so that thou lovest and obeyest God, and treatest man as another self, and livest thy utmost mental life in will and prayer. For unto him whose prayer is will and will is prayer, all may be granted.

‘And remember that there is nothing taught more explicitly in the New Testament, than that man should commune _directly_ with God without aid or intervention, chiefly by worship, and by using his will in every way to that end.

‘In very truth--_Vicisti, Galilæe!_ Thou hast conquered, O Christ!’

[17] Vide _Have you a Strong Will, etc._, by Charles Godfrey Leland. London: Philip Wellby.

BREITMANN’S LAST BALLAD

THERE was once an American hodge-podge, comic melodrama of a kind now passed away--in which there was heard from time to time ‘one warning trumpet blown’ behind the scenes, for no assignable reason ‘save to heighten the effect.’ This it invariably did, and especially after the curtain had fallen, when the clarion notes were heard as an Encore. Even so has it been with Breitmann in this book, and so at the end doth he sound Farewell as follows speaking from his very heart as to the war:

BREITMANN ON THE BOERS

Dot I war born a Deutscher is fery blain to see,
Yet dere are dings in vitch I tont fall in mit Germany,
Bein’ rader too cosmopolite--and hafe peen all along--
To dink a man should always go pro patria--right or wrong.

Usque ad aras an honest man may tramp,
But if folk would take him furder he hat petter shoot de camp;
Und I shtops right off my warblin’--of dot you may pe sure,
If asked to sing in chorus mit any kind of Boer.

Somedimes, when in queer circles, dis ding is fery true,
I hafe found mineself compulsioned to heurler avec les loups;
Dot is to howlen mid de wolfs, but nefer yet, py jigs!
Did I get to such abasement as to grüntsel mid de pigs!

You may read in der Zoölogie, or Natur Historie,
Dot pigs are de most tyronical of all de peasts dot pe,
For dey drives or stinks all oders away from where dey feed,
Und dis is vot de Boers tried in Africa, indeed!

Und ash dey are most tyronical whene’er dey get a chance,
So Fate is most ironical in endin’ deir romance,
For dey’ve gone from pad to worser, and are endin’ de debates
Mit all de world, in sympathie--excep’ de ’Nited States.

Und, exceptin’ yet again in dot, all dose who had been booted,
Or sent away from Europe--id est, been ‘persecuted,’
Und who, as is but natural, did von and all agree,
To persecute de nigger, wherefer he might pe!

Ash dere were books were printed two hundred years a-back,
Of de horrors and de torments inflicted on der Black,
By de Boers in far Sout’ Africa, among de slaves dey got,
De Bushmen und de Kaffirs, likevise der Hottentot.

Now he who will beat a nigger, as I often heard dem say,
Will torment a white man, if he dare, when von comed in his way;
So de Boers in Sout’ Africa in monner most forbidst,
Ottempted to compose oopon de English in deir midst.

Und dere dey all slopp’t ofer, forgettin’ dey might catch
A chap mit bigger boots and soles, when in a kickin’ match.
Yet dey kept der game agoin’ like der fery teufels at play,
Und efen in a gorner some are kickin’ yet to-day.

So de Boern getten from Germans uncommon sympathie,
Likevise from efery Frencher and de whole of Italy;
Pecause dey are ‘few in numper,’ and likevise ‘fery prave,’
Which mit dem excuses eferything, howefer a man behave!

Now if your house vas burgled, I’ll bet upon my life,
If der burgular should shoot your son, likevise pesides your wife,
Dough he fought like der fery teufel, you hardly would fergive
Der feller for all his pravery, and hope dot he might live!

But de cent in de molasses barrel, or de secret hid away
Is dis--dot de Germans wantet for demselfs Sout’ Africa;
Dey hat hopes dot a dime was comin’ when ofer all de land
Dere wouldt rise a schmell of sauer kraut to der Medit’ranean.

Yoost as Fra Benevento, in his elegie sublime,
Did hope der schmell of incense wouldt rise in efery clime,
From blesset Roman Churches, so de Deutschers von and all
Did dink dis blesset nonsense wouldt cerdainly pefal!

As for de liddle Fräntshmen, it is as plain as sin,
Dey wanted Jean Boule out of Egypt, likewise demselfs darein’;
Dough vot dey’d do if dey got dere is not fery blain to see:
Dot is to judge by deir sookcess in any colonie.

Keep up dy heart, O England; maintain dy glorious pluck!
Der von who bears most poundin’ is der von who gets de luck!
For it is of ancient story und splendid as de stars:
It is efer de freest people who endure de bitterest wars!

Keep up dy heart, O Britain, despite de envious jeers
Of German, French or Dago, of suffering and tears;
Whatefer fools have said to thee of errors in the past,
Thou art Gott’s best civiliser, and wilt conquer at the last!

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- An em-dash was added to the epigraph in “Flaxius in India.”

- In “Flaxius and the Bookseller,” there is blockquote with long
s (ſ). These have been retained since they seem to be an intended
artistic decision.

- Some clear misspellings and wrong capitalizations were changed.
Other inconsistent spelling and usage of diacritical marks in the
original text have been preserved.

- Text between _underscores_ represents italics. Text between ~tilde
symbols~ represent Blackletter.

- Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of their
sections.