THE EVERLASTING YEA.
"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all
to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by
birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is
the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force:
thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.
For the God-given mandate, _Work thou in Well-doing_, lies mysteriously
written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us
no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn
forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the
clay-given mandate, _Eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively
proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a
contest, before the better Influence can become the upper?
"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such
God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must
now be vanquished or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim
Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him;
defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we
choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of
rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and
baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not!
Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never
blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously
amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly
vapors!--Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our
Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these
also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the
consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or
faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests,
demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest
wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that
Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"
He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for
all, natural to him: "Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient men
(_tuchtigen Manner_) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush of
foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many
weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts of
practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and act,
often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial!
If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit
under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be
the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even exemplars."
So that, for Teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "glorious revolution:"
these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some
purifying "Temptation in the Wilderness," before his apostolic work (such
as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil
once more worsted! Was "that high moment in the _Rue de l'Enfer_," then,
properly the turning-point of the battle; when the Fiend said, _Worship me,
or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _Apage
Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story
in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags,
for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow,
fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How
paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies
of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even
afar-off of the unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times,
profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by
commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and
involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_.
Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must
endeavor to combine for their own behoof.
He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went
silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in
my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if
the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly,
and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I
will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not
for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here: for I am
way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or
to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."--And again: "Here, then, as
I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper
Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away,
and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral
Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-todtung_), had been happily
accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved."
Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his
Locality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff lies
cast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is
already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, in
some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have
expected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism:
light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while
by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We
transcribe the piece entire.
"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating;
on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the
azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely,
of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding.
And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain
hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels,
lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood
many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and
protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as
if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and
Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were
wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in
almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds;
whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For
it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday,
eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose
up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine,
saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting
ready here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all
its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in
miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide
Way-farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in its
details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general
propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.
"Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the
Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying
vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's
hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your
Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor had held snow. How
thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory
of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I
not name thee GOD? Art not thou the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heavens, is
it, in very deed, HE, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and
loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?
"Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that Truth, and
Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to
her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like
soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that
Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with
spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!
"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellowman: with an
infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou
not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear
the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so
heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother,
why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy
eyes!--Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with
the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a
melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature,
which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor
joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad
Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the dearer to me; and even for his
sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I
standing in the porch of that '_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;' by strange, steep
ways had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would
open, and the '_Divine Depth of Sorrow_' lie disclosed to me."
The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been
strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "A vain
interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present called
Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the
beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle
Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to. The most,
in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough
Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is
indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different
terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is
found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from
century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic
_Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands:
meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to elucidate the matter so.
Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because
there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite
bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers
and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to
make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two:
for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would
require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation,
simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe
altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as
fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus:
speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No
sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of
better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he
sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares
himself the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in our
sunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_.
"But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain
valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of
average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of
indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts;
requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be
do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is Misery. Now consider that
we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of
Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should
so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a
payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--I tell thee, Blockhead, it all
comes of thy Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to
be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt
feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged
in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.
"So true is it, what I then said, that _the Fraction of Life can be
increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening
your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, _Unity_ itself
divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim of wages a zero,
then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time
write: 'It is only with Renunciation (_Entsagen_) that Life, properly
speaking, can be said to begin.'
"I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast
been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of?
Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU
(sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and
lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that
_thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_
at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be
Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through
the Universe seeking after somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully
because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy
_Goethe_."
"_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!" cries he elsewhere: "there
is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness,
and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same
HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have
spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of
the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and
Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thou also honored to be taught;
O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou
become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully
bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to
be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the
deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring
billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of
Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA,
wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is
well with him."
And again: "Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its
injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst love
the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this
a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that
'_Worship of Sorrow_'? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries
ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful
creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of
falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp
perennially burning."
Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will
only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable
character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself
does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without
bursts of splendor; on the "perennial continuance of Inspiration;" on
Prophecy; that there are "true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own
day:" with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of
finish to this farrago.
"Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," thus apostrophizes the
Professor: "shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems
finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition,
considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks
not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy
six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and
folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same
subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou
help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a
new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may
live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning,
no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and--thyself away.
"Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present, felt
in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or
dispute into me? To the '_Worship of Sorrow_' ascribe what origin and
genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated, and been
generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it
is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for which latter whoso
will, let him worry and be worried."
"Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear out one another's eyes,
struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration,' and such like: try rather to get a
little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBLE I
know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay
with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles
are but Leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty."
Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take
the following perhaps more intelligible passage:--
"To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine
warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou
in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what
the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this:
'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the
world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay
I will fight thee rather.'--Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a
beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been
spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human
species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all such cases, rather say:
'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional
fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take
it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!'--If Fichte's
_Wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certain extent, Applied Christianity,'
surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole
Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it,
as we can demonstrate it!
"But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it
convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till
then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex
amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it
find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system.
Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any sort cannot
be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let him who gropes
painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the
dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me
was of invaluable service: '_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_,' which
thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become
clearer.
"May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is
even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly
struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and
thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in
_Wilhelm Meister_, that your 'America is here or nowhere'? The Situation
that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here,
in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now
standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and
working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the
impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to
shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this
sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that
pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods
for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing
thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only
see!
"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of
Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in
bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the
wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the
greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and
God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least.
The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely jumbled conflicting elements
bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are
built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above:
instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile,
heaven-encompassed World.
"I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even
Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal
fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou
hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the
Night cometh, wherein no man can work."