{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31608/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31608","id":"gutenberg_31608","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31608","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Religious","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Religions"],"text":"Produced by Adam Buchbinder, Chandra Friend and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This\nbook was produced from scanned images of public domain\nmaterial from the Google Print project.)\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note: Footnotes are placed at the end of the relevant\nparagraph. In Chapters I and II, the printed \"Mitra\" was changed to\n\"Mithra\" to match other occurrences in the text, which predominate.\nIn Chapter II, the notation [)a] represents the letter a with breve.\nAlso, an instance in the original text of the word \"JHVH\" in the\nHebrew alphabet has been changed to the Roman.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LORDS OF THE GHOSTLAND\n\n_A History of the Ideal_\n\nBy EDGAR SALTUS\n\n  \"Errons, les doigts unis, dans\n  l'Alhambra du songe.\"\n                    Renee Vivien\n\n  NEW YORK\n  MITCHELL KENNERLEY\n  MCMVII\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1907\n  BY EDGAR SALTUS\n\n_The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. USA._\n\n\n_By Mr. Saltus_\n\n  HISTORIA AMORIS\n  IMPERIAL PURPLE\n  MARY MAGDALEN\n  THE POMPS OF SATAN\n  THE PERFUME OF EROS\n  VANITY SQUARE\n\n\n\n\nTHE LORDS OF THE GHOSTLAND\n\n\n     I Brahma                    7\n\n    II Ormuzd                   39\n\n   III Amon-Ra                  60\n\n    IV Bel-Marduk               81\n\n     V Jehovah                 109\n\n    VI Zeus                    140\n\n   VII Jupiter                 166\n\n  VIII The Nec Plus Ultra      189\n\n\n\n\nTHE LORDS OF THE GHOSTLAND\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nBRAHMA\n\n\nThe ideal is the essence of poetry. In the virginal innocence of the\nworld, poetry was a term that meant discourse of the gods. A world\ngrown grey has learned to regard the gods as diseases of language.\nConceived, it may be, in fevers of fancy, perhaps, originally, they\nwere but deified words. Yet, it is as children of beauty and of dream\nthat they remain.\n\n\"Mortal has made the immortal,\" the _Rig-Veda_ explicitly declares.\nThe making was surely slow. In tracing the genealogy of the divine, it\nhas been found that its root was fear. The root, dispersed by light,\nultimately dissolved. But, meanwhile, it founded religion, which,\nrevealed in storm and panic, for prophets had ignorance and dread. The\ngods were not then. There were demons only, more exactly there were\ndiabolized expressions invented to denominate natural phenomena and\nwhatever else perturbed. It was in the evolution of the demoniac that\nthe divine appeared. Through one of time's unmeasurable gaps there\nfloated the idea that perhaps the phenomena that alarmed were but the\nunconscious agents of superior minds. At the suggestion, irresistibly\na dramatization of nature began in which the gods were born, swarms of\nthem, nebulous, wayward, uncertain, that, through further gaps, became\nconcrete, became occasionally reducible to two great divinities, earth\nand sky, whose union was imagined--a hymen which the rain\nsuggested--and from which broader conceptions proceeded and grander\ngods emerged.\n\nThe most poetic of these are perhaps the Hindu. At the heraldings of\nnewer gods, the lords of other ghostlands have, after battling\nviolently, swooned utterly away. But though many a fresher faith has\nbeen brandished at them, apathetically, in serene indifference, the\nprinces of the Aryan sky endure.\n\nIt is their poetry that has preserved them. To their creators poetry\nwas abundantly dispensed. To no other people have myths been as\nfrankly transparent. To none other, save only their cousins the\nPersians, have fancies more luminous occurred. The Persians so\npolished their dreams that they entranced the world that was. Poets\ncan do no more. The Hindus too were poets. They were children as well.\nTheir first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech,\nis audible still in the _Rig-Veda_, a bundle of hymns tied together,\nfour thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of\nthe latter led to that of the Sun and ignited the antique altars. It\nflamed in Persia, lit perhaps the shrine of Vesta, afterward dazzled\nthe Incas, igniting, meanwhile, not altars merely, but purgatory\nitself.\n\nIn Persia, where it illuminated the face of Ormuzd, its beneficence is\ntold in the _Avesta_, a work of such holiness that it was polluted if\nseen. In the _Rig-Veda_, there are verses which were subsequently\naccounted so sacred that if a soudra overheard them the ignominy of\nhis caste was effaced.\n\nThe verses, the work of shepherds who were singers, are invocations to\nthe dawn, to the first flushes of the morning, to the skies'\nheightening hues, and the vermillion moment when the devouring Asiatic\nsun appears. There are other themes, minor melodies, but the chief\ninspiration is light.\n\nTo primitive shepherds the approach of darkness was the coming of\ndeath. The dawn, which they were never wholly sure would reappear, was\nresurrection. They welcomed it with cries which the _Veda_ preserves,\nwhich the _Avesta_ retains and the _Eddas_ repeat. The potent forces\nthat produced night, the powers potenter still that routed it, they\nregarded as beings whose moods genuflexions could affect. In perhaps\nthe same spirit that Frenchmen assisted at a _lever du roi_, and\nEnglishmen attend a prince's levee, the Aryan breakfasted on song and\nsacrifice. It was an homage to the rising sun.\n\nThe sun was _deva_. The Sanskrit root _div_, from which the word is\nderived, produced deus, devi, divinities--numberless, accursed,\nadored, or forgot. The common term applied to all abstractions that\nare and have been worshipped, means _That which shines_ and the name\nwhich, in the early Orient, signified a star, designates the Deity in\nthe Occident to-day.\n\nApologetically, Tertullian, a Christian Father, remarked: \"Some think\nour God is the Sun.\" There were excuses perhaps for those that did.\nAdonai, a Hebrew term for the Almighty, is a plural. It means lords.\nBut the lords indicated were Baalim who were Lords of the Sun.\nMoreover, when the early Christians prayed, they turned to the East.\nTheir holy day was, as the holy day of Christendom still is, Sunday,\nday of the Sun, an expression that comes from the Norse, on whom also\nshone the light of the Aryan deva.\n\nTo shepherds who, in seeking pasture for their flocks, were seeking\nalso pasture for their souls, the deva became Indra. They had other\ngods. There was Agni, fire; Varuna, the sky; Maruts, the tempest.\nThere was Mithra, day, and Yama, death. There were still others,\ninfantile, undulant, fluid, not infrequently ridiculous also. But it\nwas Indra for whom the dew and honey of the morning hymns were spread.\nIt was Indra who, emerging from darkness, made the earth after his\nimage, decorated the sky with constellations and wrapped the universe\nin space. It was he who poured indifferently on just and unjust the\ntriple torrent of splendour, light, and life.\n\nIndra was triple. Triple Indra, the _Veda_ says. In that description\nis the preface to a theogony of which Hesiod wrote the final page. It\nwas the germ of sacred dynasties that ruled the Aryan and the\nOccidental skies. From it came the grandiose gods of Greece and Rome.\nFrom it also came the paler deities of the Norse. Meanwhile ages fled.\nLife nomad and patriarchal ceased. From forest and plain, temples\narose; from hymns, interpretations; from prayer, metaphysics; for\nalways man has tried to analyze the divine, always too, at some halt\nin life, he has looked back and found it absent.\n\nIn meditation it was discerned that Indra was an effect, not the\ncause. It was discerned also that that cause was not predicable of the\ngods who, in their undulance and fluidity, suggested ceaseless\ntransformations and consequently something that is transformed.\n\nThe idea, patiently elaborated, resulted in a drainage of the fluid\nmyths and the exteriorisation of a being entirely abstract. Designated\nfirst as Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer, afterward more simply as\nBrahma, he was assumed to have been asleep in the secret places of the\nsky, from which, on awakening, he created what is.\n\nThe conception, ideal itself, was not, however, ideal enough. The\nlabour of creating was construed as a blemish on the splendour of the\nSupreme. It was held that the Soul of Things could but loll, majestic\nand inert, on a lotos of azure. Then, above Brahma, was lifted Brahm,\na god neuter and indeclinable; neuter as having no part in life,\nindeclinable because unique.\n\nThere was the apex of the world's most poetic creed, one distinguished\nover all others in having no founder, unless a heavenly inspiration be\nso regarded. But the apex required a climax. Inspiration provided it.\n\nThe forms of matter and of man, the glittering apsaras of the\nvermillion dawns, Indra himself, these and all things else were\nconstrued into a bubble that Brahm had blown. The semblance of reality\nin which men occur and, with them, the days of their temporal breath,\nwas attributed not to the actual but to Maya--the magic of a high\ngod's longing for something other than himself, something that should\ncontrast with his eternal solitude and fill the voids of his infinite\nennui. From that longing came the bubble, a phantom universe, the\nmirage of a god's desire. Earth; sea and sky; all that in them is, all\nthat has been and shall be, are but the changing convolutions of a\ndream.\n\nIn that dream there descended a scale of beings, above whom were set\nthree great lords, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva\nthe Destroyer, collectively the Tri-murti, the Hindu trinity expressed\nin the mystically ineffable syllable Om. Between the trinity and man\ncame other gods, a whole host, powers of light and powers of darkness,\nthe divine and the demoniac fused in a hierarchy surprising but not\neverlasting. Eventually the dream shall cease, the bubble break, the\nuniverse collapse, the heavens be folded like a tent, the Tri-murti\ndissolved, and in space will rest but the Soul of Things, at whose\nwill atoms shall reassemble and forms unite, dis-unite and reappear,\ndepart and return, endlessly, in recurring cycles.\n\nThat conception, the basis perhaps of the theory of cosmological days,\nis perhaps also itself but a dream, yet one that, however defective,\nhas a beauty which must have been too fair. Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,\noriginally regarded as emanations of the ideal, became concrete.\nConsorts were found for them. From infinity they were lodged in idols.\nA worship sensuous when not grotesque ensued, from which the ideal\ntook flight.\n\nThat was the work of the clergy. Brahmanism is also. The archaic\nconflict between light and darkness, the triumph of the former over\nthe latter, diminished, at their hands, into the figurative. That is\nonly reasonable. It was only reasonable also that they should claim\nthe triumph as their own. Without them the gods could do nothing. They\nwould not even be. In the _Rig-Veda_ and the _Vedas_ generally they\nare transparent. The subsequent evolution of the Paramatma, the\nTri-murti and the hierarchy, had, for culmination, the apotheosis of a\npriesthood that had invented them and who, for the invention, deserved\nthe apotheosis which they claimed and got. They were priests that were\npoets, and poets that were seers. But they were not sorcerers. They\ncould not provide successors equal to themselves. It was the later\nclergy that pulled poetry from the infinite, stuffed it into idols and\nprostituted it to nameless shames.\n\nIn the _Bhagavad-Gita_ it is written: \"Nothing is greater than I. In\nscriptures I am prayer. I am perfume in flowers, brilliance in light.\nI am life and its source. I am the soul of creation. I am the\nbeginning and the end. I am the Divine.\"\n\nThat is Brahm. Ormuzd has faded. Zeus has passed. Jupiter has gone.\nWith them the divinities of Egypt and the lords of the Chaldean sky\nhave been reabsorbed and forgot. Brahm still is. The cohorts of Cyrus\nmight pray Ormuzd to peer where he glowed. There, the phalanxes of\nAlexander might raise altars to Zeus. Parthians and Tatars might\ndispute the land and the god. Muhammadans could bring their Allah and\nChristians their creed. Indifferently Brahm has dreamed, knowing that\nhe has all time as these all have their day.\n\nThe conception of that apathy, grandiose in itself and marvellous in\nits persistence, was due to unknown poets that had in them the true\n_souffle_ of the real ideal. But that also demanded a climax. They\nproduced it in the theory that the afflictions of this life are due to\ntransgressions in another.\n\nFrom afflictions death, they taught, is not a release, for the reason\nthat there is no death. There is but absorption in Brahm. Yet that\nconsummation cannot occur until all transgressions, past and present,\nhave been expiated and the soul, lifted from the eddies of migration,\nbecomes Brahm himself.\n\nTo be absorbed, to be Brahm, to be God, is an ambition, certainly\nvertiginous yet as surely divine. But to succeed, consciousness of\nsuccess must be lost. A mortal cannot attain divinity until\nannihilation is complete. To become God nothing must be left of man.\nTo loose, then, every bond, to be freed from every tie, to retire from\nfinite things, to mount to and sink in the immutable, to see Death\ndie, was and is the Hindu ideal.\n\nOf the elect, that is. Of the higher castes, of the priest, of the\nprince. But not of the people. The ideal was not for them, salvation\neither. It was idle even to think about it. Set in hell, they had to\nreturn here until in some one of the twenty-four lakhs of birth which\nthe chain of migrations comports, and which to saint and soudra were\nalike dispensed, they arrived here in the purple. Then only was the\nopportunity theirs to rescale a sky that was reserved for prelates and\nrajahs.\n\nSuddenly, to the pariah, to the hopeless, to those who outcast in hell\nwere outcast from heaven, an erect and facile ladder to that sky was\nbrought. The Buddha furnished it. If he did not, a college of\ndissidents assumed that he had, and in his name indicated a stairway\nwhich, set among the people, all might mount and at whose summit gods\nactually materialized.\n\nTo those who believe in the Dalai Lama--there are millions that have\nbelieved, there are millions that do--he is not a vicar of the divine,\nhe is himself divine, a god in a tenement of flesh who, as such,\nthough he die, immediately is reincarnated; a god therefore always\npresent among his people, whose history is a continuous gospel. In\ncontemporaneous Italy, a peasant may aspire to the papacy. In the\nuplands of Asia, men have loftier ambitions. There they may become\nBuddha, who perhaps never was, except in legend.\n\nIn the _Lalita Vistara_ the legend unfolds. In the strophes of the\npoem one may assist at the Buddha's birth, an event which is said to\nhave occurred at Kapilavastu. Oriental geography is unacquainted with\nthe place. With the thing even Occidental philosophy is familiar.\nKapilavastu means the substance of Kapila. The substance is atheism.\n\nHistory has its hesitancies. Often it stammers uncertainly. But its\nearliest pages agree in representing Kapila as the initial religious\nrebel. Kapila was the first to declare the divine a human and invalid\nconjecture. The announcement, with its prefaces and deductions, is\ncontained in the _Sankhya Karika_, a system of rationalism, still read\nin India, where it is known as the godless tract.\n\nIn the Orient, existence is usually a sordid nightmare when it does\nnot happen to be a golden dream. Kapila taught that it was a prison\nfrom which release could be had only through intellectual development.\nThat is Kapilavastu, the substance of Kapila, where the Buddha was\nborn. In the _Lalita Vistara_ it is fairyland.\n\nThere, Gotama the Buddha is the Prince Charming of a sovereign house.\nBut a prince who developed into a nihilist prior to re-becoming the\ngod that anteriorly he had been. It was while in heaven that he\nselected Maya, a ranee, to be his mother. It was surrounded by the\nheavenly that he appeared. The fields foamed with flowers. The skies\nflamed with faces. In the air apsaras floated, fanning themselves with\npeacocks' tails. The galleries of the palace festooned themselves with\npearls. On the terraces a rain of perfume fell. In the parterres Maya\nstrolled. A tree bent and bowed to her. Touching a branch with her\nhand she looked up and yawned. Painlessly from her immaculate breast\nGotama issued. An immense lotos sprouted to receive him. To cover him\na parasol dropped from above. He, however, already occupied, was\ncontemplating space, the myriad worlds, the myriad lives, and\nannounced himself their saviour. At once a deluge of roses descended.\nThe effulgence of a hundred thousand colours shone. A spasm of delight\npulsated. Sorrow and anger, envy and fear, fled and fainted. From the\nzenith came a murmur of voices, the sound of dancing, the kiss of\ntimbril and of lute.\n\nThat is Oriental poetry. Oriental philosophy is less ornate. From the\nformer the Buddha could not have come. From the latter he probably\ndid, if not in flesh at least in spirit. To that spirit antiquity was\nindebted, as modernity is equally, for the doctrines of a teacher\nknown variously as Gotama the Enlightened and Sakya the Sage. Whether\nor not the teacher himself existed is, therefore, unimportant. The\nexistence of the Christ has been doubted. But the doctrines of both\nsurvive. They do more, they enchant. Occasionally they seem to\ncombine. The Gospels have obviously nothing in common with the _Lalita\nVistara_, which is an apocryphal novel of uncertain date. The\nresemblance that is reflected comes from the _Tripitaka_, the Three\nBaskets that constitute the evangels of the Buddhist faith.\n\nIn an appendix to the _Mahavaggo_, it is stated that disciples of\nGotama, who knew his sermons and his parables by heart, determined the\ncanon \"after his death.\" The expression might mean anything. But a\nponderable antiquity is otherwise shown. Asoko, a Hindu emperor, sent\nan embassy to Ptolemy Philadelphos. The circumstance was set forth\nbilingually on various heights. In another inscription Asoko\nrecommended the study of the _Tripitaka_ and mentioned titles of the\nbooks. Ptolemy Philadelphos reigned at Alexandria in the early part of\nthe third century B.C. The _Tripitaka_ must therefore have existed\nthen. But the thirty-seventh year of Asoko's reign was, in a third\ninscription, counted as the two hundred and fifty-seventh from the\nBuddha's death, a reckoning which makes them much older. Their\nexistence, however, as a fourth inscription shows, was oral.\nTransmitted for hundreds of years by trained schools of reciters, it\nwas during a synod that occurred in the first quarter of the first\ncentury before Christ that, finally, they were written.\n\nIn them it is recited that Maya, the mother of Gotama, was immaculate.\nAccording to St. Matthew, Maria, the mother of Jesus, was also.\nPreviously, in each instance, the coming of a Messiah had been\nforetold. The infant Jesus was visited by magi. The infant Buddha was\nvisited by kings. Afterward, neither Jesus or Gotama wrote. But both\npreached charity, chastity, poverty, humility, and abnegation of self.\nBoth fasted in a wilderness. Both were tempted by a devil. Both\nannounced a second advent. Both were transfigured. Both died in the\nopen air. At the death of each there was an earthquake. Both healed\nthe sick. Both were the light of a world which both said would cease\nto be.\n\nAccording to _Luke_, a courtesan visited Jesus and had her sins\nremitted. According to the _Mahavaggo_, Gotama was visited by a harlot\nwhom he instructed in things divine.[1] In _Matthew_, Jesus is\ndepicted as a glutton and a wine-bibber. In the _Mahavaggo_, the\npicture of Gotama is the same.[2] In _Matthew_ it is written; \"Lay not\nup for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth consume\nand where thieves break through and steal.\" The _Khuddakapatho_ says:\n\"Righteousness is a treasure which no man can steal. It is a treasure\nthat abideth alway.\"[3] In _Luke_ it is written: \"As ye would that men\nshould do unto you, do ye also unto them.\" The _Dhammaphada_ say: \"Put\nyourself in the place of others, do as you would be done by.\"[4]\n\n[Footnote 1: Luke vii. 37-50. Sacred Books of the East, xi. 30.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Matthew xi, 19. S. B. E. xiii. 92.]\n\n[Footnote 3: Matthew vi. 19. S. B. E. x. 191.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Luke vi. 31. S. B. E. x. 36.]\n\nThe miracle of walking on the water, that of the money-bearing fish,\nthe story of the Woman at the Well, the proclamation of an\nunpardonable sin, even the mediaeval myth of the Wandering Jew, may\nhave originated in Buddhist legend.[5]\n\n[Footnote 5: _Cf._ Edmunds: Buddhist and Christian Gospels.]\n\nPious minds have been disturbed by these similitudes. The resemblance\nbetween Maya and Maria has perplexed. The perhaps uncertain likeness\nof Gotama to Jesus has occasioned irreverent doubts. But the\nparallelisms may be fortuitous. Probably they are. Even otherwise they\nbut enhance the sororal beauties of faiths which if cognate are quite\ndistinct. Then too the penetrating charm of the parables and sermons\nof the Buddha fades before the perfection of the sermons and parables\nof the Christ. The birth, ministry, transfiguration, and passing of\nGotama are marvels which, however exquisite, the wholly spiritual\napparitions of the Lord efface.\n\nOther similarities, such as they are, may without impropriety,\nperhaps, be attributed to the ideals progressus. Hindu and Chaldean\nbeliefs constitute the two primal inspirational faiths. From the one,\nBuddhism and Zoroasterism developed. From the other the creed of\nIsrael and possibly that of Egypt came. Religions that followed were\nafterthoughts of the divine. They were revelations sometimes more\nintelligible, in one instance inexpressibly more luminous, yet\ninvariably reminiscent of an anterior light.\n\nThe light of contemporaneous Buddhism is that of Catholicism--heaven\ndeducted, a heaven, that is, of ceaseless Magnificats. The latter\nconception is Christian. But it was Persian first. Otherwise, in\ncommon with the Church, Buddhism has saints, censers, litanies,\ntonsures, holy water, fasts, and confession. Barring confession, the\nextreme antiquity of which has been attested, the other rites and\nceremonies are, it may be, borrowed, but not the high morality, the\naltruism, the renunciation and effacement of self, which Buddhists no\nlonger very scrupulously observe, perhaps, but which their religion\nwas the first to instil.\n\nBuddhism originally had neither rites nor ritual. It was merely a\nmendicant order in which one tried to do what is right, with, for\nreward, the hope of Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all\nknowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is--or was--the\ncomplete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a\nstate of absolute non-existence which no whim of Brahm may disturb.\n\nBuddhism denied Brahm and every tenet of Brahmanism, save only that\nwhich concerned the immedicable misery of life. Of final deliverance\nthere was in Brahmanism no known mode. None at least that was\nexoteric. Brahmanism rolled man ceaselessly through all forms of\nexistence, from the elementary to the divine, and even from the\nlatter, even when he was absorbed in Brahm, flung him out and back\ninto a fresh circle of unavoidable births.\n\nThe theory is horrible. In the horrible occasionally is the sublime.\nTo Gotama it was merely absurd. He blew on it. Abruptly, the\ncategories of the infinite, the infant gods, shapes divine and\ndemoniac, the entire phantasmagoria of metempsychosis, seemed really\nabsorbed and Brahm himself ablated. For a moment the skies, sterilized\nby a breath, seemingly were vacant. Actually they were never more\npeopled. Behind the pall, tossed on an antique faith, new gods were\ncrouching and waiting. Buddhistic atheism had resulted but in the\nproduction of an earlier New Testament. From the depths of the ideal,\nswarms of bedecked and bejewelled divinities escorted Brahm back to a\nlotos of azure. Coincidentally Gotama, enthroned in the zenith,\ncontemplated clusters of gods that dangled through twenty-eight abodes\nof bliss which other poets created.\n\nIn demonstrable triumph the Buddha was then, as he has been since,\neven if previously his existence had been omitted. But though he never\nwere, there nevertheless occurred a social revolution of which he was\nthe nominal originator and which, had it not been diverted into other\nrealms, might have resulted in Brahm's entire extinction.\n\nWolves do not devour each other. Ideals should not either. The\nOriental heavens were wide enough to serve as fastnesses for two sets\nof hostile, germane, and ineffably poetic aberrations. There was room\neven for more. There always should be. Of the divine one can have\nnever enough.\n\nThe gospel according to Sakya the Eremite is divine. It is divine in\nits limitless compassion, and though compassion, when analyzed,\nbecomes but egotism in an etherialized form, yet the gospel had other\nattractions. In demonstrating that life is evil, that rebirth is evil\ntoo, that to be born even a god is evil still,--in demonstrating these\nthings, while insisting that all else, Buddhism included, is but\nvanity, it fractured the charm of error in which man had been\nconfined.\n\nSakya saw men born and reborn in hell. He saw them ignorant, as\nhumanity has always been, unaware of their abjection as men are\nto-day, and over the gulfs of existence, through the torrents of\nrebirth, he offered to ferry them. But in the ferrying they had to\naid. The aid consisted in the rigorous observance of every virtue that\nChristianity afterward professed. Therein is the beauty of Buddhism.\nIts profundity resided in a revelation that everything human perishes\nexcept actions and the consequences that ensue. To orthodox India its\ntenets were as heretical as those of Christianity were to the Jews.\nNonetheless the doctrine became popular. But doctrines once\npopularized lose their nobility. The degeneracy of Buddhism is due to\nCathay.\n\nTo the Hindu life was an incident between two eternities, an episode\nin the string of deaths and rebirths. To Mongolians it was a unique\nexperience. They had no knowledge of the supersensible, no suspicion\nof the ideal. Among them Buddhism operated a conversion. It stimulated\na thirst for the divine.\n\nThe thirst is unquenchable. Buddhism, in its simple severity, could\nnot even attempt to slake it. But on its simplicity a priesthood shook\nparures. Its severity was cloaked with mantles of gold. The founder,\nan atheist who had denied the gods, was transformed into one. About\nhim a host of divinities was strung. The most violently nihilistic of\ndoctrines was fanned into an idolatry puerile and meek. Nirvana became\nElysium, and a religion which began as a heresy culminated in a\nsuperstition. That is the history of creeds.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nORMUZD\n\n\n\"The purest of thoughts is that which concerns the beginning of\nthings.\"\n\nSo Ormuzd instructed Zarathrustra.\n\n\"And what was there at the beginning?\" the prophet asked.\n\n\"There was light and the living Word.\"[6] Long later the statement was\nrepeated in the Gospel attributed to John. Originally it occurred in\nthe course of a conversation that the _Avesta_ reports. In a similar\nmanner _Exodus_ provides a revelation which Moses received. There\nJehovah said: _'ehyeh '[)a]sher 'ehyeh_. In the _Avesta_ Ormuzd said:\n_ahmi yad ahmi_.[7] Word for word the declarations are identical. Each\nmeans _I am that I am_.[8]\n\n[Footnote 6: Avesta (Anquetil-Duperron), i. 393].\n\n[Footnote 7: Avesta, Hormazd Yasht.]\n\n[Footnote 8: Exodus iii. 14.]\n\nThe conformity of the pronouncements may be fortuitous. Their relative\npriority uncertain chronology obscures. The date that orthodoxy has\nassigned to Moses is about 1500 B.C. Plutarch said that Zarathrustra\nlived five thousand years before the fall of Troy. Both dates are\nperhaps questionable. But a possible hypothesis philology provides.\nThe term Jehovah is a seventeenth-century expansion of the Hebrew\nJhvh, now usually written Jahveh and commonly translated: _He who\ncauses to be._ The original rendering of Ormuzd is Ahura-mazda. Ahura\nmeans _living_ and mazdao _creator_. The period when _Exodus_ was\nwritten is probably post-exilic. The period when the _Avesta_ was\ncompleted is assumed to be pre-Cyrian. It was at the junction of the\ntwo epochs that Iran and Israel met.\n\nBut, however the pronouncements may conform, however also they may\nconfuse, the one reported in _Exodus_ is alone exact. In subsequent\nmetamorphoses the name might fade, the deity remained. Whereas, save\nto diminishing Parsis, Ormuzd, once omnipotent throughout the Persian\nsky, has gone. A time, though, there was, when from his throne in the\nideal he menaced the apathy of Brahm, the majesty of Zeus, when even\nfrom the death of deaths he might have ejected Buddha and, supreme in\nthe Orient, ruled also in the West. Salamis prevented that. But one\nmay wonder whether the conquest had not already been effected, whether\nfor that matter the results are not apparent still. Brahma, Ormuzd,\nZeus, Jupiter, are but different conceptions of a primal idea. They\nare four great gods diversely represented yet originally identical,\nand whose attributes Jahveh, in his ascensions, perhaps absorbed.\n\nOrmuzd represented purity and light. For his worship no temple was\nnecessary, barely a shrine, never an image. In his celestial court\nwere parikas, the glittering bayaderes of love that a later faith\ncalled peris, but his sole consorts were Prayers. About him and them\ngathered amshaspands and izeds, angels and seraphs, the winged host of\nloveliness that in Babylon enthralled the Jews who returned from\ncaptivity escorted by them. The allurement of their charm, enchanting\nthen, enchants the world to-day. There has been little that is more\npoetic, except perhaps Ormuzd himself, who symbolized whatever is\nblinding in beauty, particularly the sun's effulgence, the radiance of\nlight.\n\nThe light endures, though the god has gone. Yet at the time, aloof in\nclear ether and aloft, he resplended in a sovereignty that only\nAhriman disputed.\n\nAhriman has been more steadfast than Ormuzd. He too captivated the\ncaptive Hebrews. The latter adopted him and called him Satan, as they\nalso adopted one of his minor legates, Ashmodai--transformed by the\nVulgate into Asmodeus--a little jealous devil who, in the apocryphal\n_Tobit_, strangled husbands on their bridal nights. Ahriman, his\nmaster, represented everything that was the opposite of Ormuzd.\nAhriman dwelt in darkness, Ormuzd in light. Ormuzd was primate of\npurity; Ahriman, prince of whatever is base. One had angels and\narchangels for aids, the other fiends and demons. Between their forces\nwar was constant. Each strove for the soul of man. But after death,\nwhen, in the balance, the deeds of the defunct were weighed, there\nappeared a golden-eyed redeemer, Mithra, who so closely resembled the\nChrist that the world hesitated, for a moment, between them.\n\nIt was because of these conceptions that Persia dreamed of conquering\nthe West. At Marathon and at Salamis that illusion was looted. History\ntells of the cohorts that descended there. It relates further what\nthey did. But of what they thought there is no record. It was,\nperhaps, too obvious. Ormuzd, god of light and, in the Orient, god of\nthe day, was, in the darker and duller Occident, menaced there also by\nAhriman. Politically the expedition is not very explicable. Considered\nfrom a religious standpoint the motive is clear. But though the\nPersian forces could not uphold their light in Greece, higher forces\nprojected it far beyond, to the remote north, to a south that was\nstill remoter.\n\nOriginally the light was Vedic. It was identical with that of Agni, of\nIndra and of Varuna. But while these, without subsidence, passed,\nabsorbed by Brahm, the light of Iran, deflecting, persisted, and so\npotently that it lit the Teutonic sky, glows still in Christendom,\nafter refracting perhaps in Inca temples. Its revelation is due to\nZarathrustra.\n\nZarathrustra, commonly written Zoroaster, is a name translatable into\n\"star of gold\" and also into \"keeper of old camels.\" Probably it was\nfirst employed to designate an imaginary prophet, and then a series of\nspiritual though actual successors by whom, in the course of\ncenturies, the _Avesta_ was evolved. Otherwise Zarathrustra and Gotama\nare brothers in Brahmanaspati. Both had virgin mothers. In the lives\nof both miracles are common. The advent of Zarathrustra was accounted\nthe ruin of demons. When he was born he laughed aloud. As a child he\nslept in flames. As a man he walked on water. Before prodigies such as\nthese fiends fell like autumn leaves. Hence, on the part of the devil,\nan attempt to seduce him from the divine. Mairya, the demon of death,\noffered him, as Mara offered Gotama, as Satan offered Jesus, the\nempire of the earth. Zarathrustra rebuked the devil first with stones,\nthen with pious words. From him, as from the Buddha and the Christ,\nabashed the tempter retreated.[9]\n\n[Footnote 9: Darmestetter: Ormazd et Ahriman.]\n\nThat victory over evil, the Parsis to-day regard as the capital event\nin the history of the world. It was the immediate prelude to the\nrevelation of the Law which Ormuzd vouchsafed to his prophet.\n\nThe revelation occurred on a mountain, in the course of conversations,\nduring which Zarathrustra questioned and Ormuzd, in the voice of\nheaven, replied. So was the Law proclaimed in India. There Mithra and\nVaruna sang it through the sky.[10] The expression is notable, for the\nsong of the sky is thunder and the theophany that of Sinai. There is\nanother _rapprochement_ in Babylonian lore and a third in the _Eddas_,\nwhere it is related that to Sigurd the secret of the runes was sung.\n\n[Footnote 10: Rig-Veda, i. 151.]\n\nMeanwhile, the revelation completed and proclaimed, Zarathrustra died\nas miraculously as he was born, foretelling, as he went, the coming of\na messiah, his own son, Coshyos--the delayed fruit of an immaculate\nhymen that is not to be fecund until the end of time--but who, at the\nconsummation of the ages, will rejuvenate the world, affranchise it\nfrom death, vanquish Ahriman, terminate the struggle between good and\nevil, purify hell and fill it full with glory. Then the dead shall\nrise and immortality be universal.[11]\n\n[Footnote 11: Zamyad Yasht. xix. 89 _sq._]\n\nZoroaster is obviously mythical. The Buddha is also. But precisely as\nthe Buddhist scriptures exist, so also do the Zoroastrian. They do\nmore. Frequently they enlighten, occasionally they exalt. Written in\ngold on perfumed leather, the original edition, limited to two copies,\nwas so sacred that it was sullied if seen. Burned with the palace of\nPersepolis--which Alexander, the Great Sinner, in a drunken orgy,\ndestroyed--only fragments of the fargards remain. These tell of\ncreation, effected in six epochs, and of a _pairi-daeza_.\n\nDelitzsch voluminously asked: _Wo lag das Paradies?_ There it is.\nThere is the primal paradise. In it Ormuzd put Mashya, the first man,\nand Mashyana, the first woman, whom Ahriman, in the form of a serpent,\nseduced. Thereafter ensued the struggle in which all have or will\nparticipate, one that, extending beyond the limits of the visible\nworld, arrays seasons and spirits and the senses of man in a conflict\nof good and evil that can end only when, from the depths of the dawn,\nradiant in the vermillion sky, Coshyos, hero of the resurrection,\ntriumphantly appears.\n\nThe parallel between this romance and subsequent poetry is curious. In\nChaldea, before the fargards were, the story of Creation, of Eden, and\nof the fall had been told. In Egypt, before the _Avesta_ was written,\nthe resurrection and the life were known. Similar legends and\nprospects may or may not represent an autonomous development of\nIranian thought. The successors of the problematic Zarathrustra, the\nline of magi who wrote and taught in his name, may have gathered the\ntales and theories elsewhere. In the creed which they instituted there\nis a trinity. India had one, Egypt another, Babylonia a third.\nBabylonia had even three of them. But in Mithra, Iran had a redeemer\nthat no other creed possessed. In Coshyos was a saviour, virgin born,\nwho nowhere else was imagined. In Mara, Buddhism had a Satan. The\nPersian Ahriman is Satan himself. Babylon had angels and cherubs. In\nIran there were guardian angels, there were archangels with flaming\nswords, there were fairies, there were goblins, the celestial, the\npoetic, the demoniac combined. Zoroasterism may or may not have had a\npast, it is perhaps evident that it had a future.\n\nAn inscription chiselled in the red granite of Ekbatana describes\nOrmuzd as creator of heaven and earth. In the _Veda_ the description\nof Indra is identical.[12] It was applied equally to Jahveh in Judea.\nBut above Jahveh, Kabbalists discerned En Soph. Above Indra\nmetaphysicians discovered Brahma. Similarly the Persian magi found\nthat Ormuzd, however perfect, was not perfect enough and, from the\ndepths of the ideal, they disclosed Zervan Akerene, the Eternal, from\nwhom all things come and to whom all return.\n\n[Footnote 12: R. V. x. 3. \"Indra created heaven and earth.\"]\n\nThat conception is not reached in the _Avesta_. It is in the\n_Bundahish_, a work which, while much later, is based on earlier\ntraditions, memories it may be, of antediluvian legends brought from\nthe summits of upper Asia by Djemschid, the fabulous Abraham of the\nPersians of whom Zarathrustra was the Moses. But in default of the\nEternal, the Avesta contains pictures of enduring charm.\n\nAmong these is a highly poetic pastel that displays the soul of man\nsurprised in the first post-mortem ambuscades. There a figure,\nbeautiful or revolting, cries at him: \"I am thyself, the image of\nthine earthly life.\"\n\nIf that life has been beautiful, the soul of man, led by itself, is\nconducted to heaven. Otherwise, led still by itself, it descended to\nDrujo-demana, the House of Destruction, where, fed on insults and\noffal, it waited till its sins were destroyed. The waiting might be\nlong. It was not everlasting. There was Mithra to intercede. Besides,\nevil was regarded but as a shadow on the surface of things. In the\nseventh epoch of creation, a period yet to be, the age which Coshyos\nis to usher, the shadow will fade. The wicked, purified of their\nwickedness, will be received among the blessed. Even Ahriman is to be\nconverted. In that definite triumph of light over darkness is the\nresurrection and the life, life in Garo-demana, literally House of\nHymns, a pre-Christian heaven, yet strictly Christian, where, to the\ntrumpetings of angels, hosannahs are ceaselessly sung.[13]\n\n[Footnote 13: Yasht. xxviii. 10, xxxiv. 2.]\n\nJohn--or, more exactly, his homonym--was perhaps acquainted with that\nidea, as he may have been with other theories that the _Avesta_\ncontains. But the possibility is a detail. It is the idea that counts.\nBehind it is the unique character of this doctrine which, in\neliminating evil, converted even Satan.\n\nSatan seldom gets his due. He was the first artist and has remained\nthe greatest. In creating evil he fashioned what is a luxury and a\nnecessity combined. Evil is the counterpart of excellence. Both have\ntheir roots in nature. One could not be destroyed without the other.\nFor every form of evil there is a corresponding form of good. Virtue\nwould be meaningless were it not for vice. Honour would have no\nnobility were it not for shame. If ever evil be banished from the\nscheme of things, life could have no savour and joy no delight.\nHappiness and unhappiness would be synonymous terms.\n\nIt is for this reason that scoffers have mocked at heaven. Heaven may\nbe very different from what has been fancied. But the theory of it,\nhowever unphilosophic, which Zoroasterism supplied, carried with it a\ncreed not of tears but of smiles, a religion of lofty tolerance, one\nin which the demonology barely alarmed, for redemption was assured,\nand so fully that on earth melancholy was accounted a folly.\n\nThough tolerant, it could be austere. Meanness, thanklessness,\nloquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts,\nwhatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual\nor metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice\ncensured. \"There are many who do not like to give,\" Ormuzd, in the\n_Vendidad_, confided to Zarathrustra. The high god added: \"Ahriman\nawaits them.\"\n\nAhriman awaited also the harlot who, elsewhere, at that period, was\nholy. Yet in lapses, confession and repentance sufficed for remission,\nprovided that in praying for forgiveness the sinner forgave those that\nhad sinned against him. If he lacked the time, were he dying, a priest\nmight yet save him with words whispered in the ear. That was the\nextreme unction, hardly administrable, however, in case of wilful\nomission of the _darun_, which was communion.\n\nThis sacrament, the most mystic of the Church, was observed by the\nIncas, who also confessed, also atoned, who, like the Buddhists, were\nbaptized, but who, like the Persians, worshipped the sun and, with\nperhaps a finer instinct of what the beautiful truly is, worshipped\ntoo the rainbow.[14]\n\n[Footnote 14: Garcilasso: Commentarios reales.]\n\nHuraken, the winged and feathered serpent-god of the Toltecs, was\nadored in temples that upheld a cross. The Incas lacked that symbol.\nBut they had a Satan. They had also the expectation of a saviour,\nbelief in whom could alone have consoled for the advent of Pizarro.\nOver what highways of sea or sky, the living Word, which Ormuzd spoke,\nreached them, there has been no somnambulist of history to divine. But\nin the splendour that Cuzco was, in the golden temples of the town of\ngold, along the scarlet lanes where sacred peacocks strolled and girls\nmore sacred still--vestals whom Pizarro's soldiers raped--in that City\nof the Sun, the Word re-echoed. The mystery of it, reported back to\nthe Holy Office, was declared an artifice of the devil.\n\nLess mysteriously, through the obvious vehicle of cognate speech, it\nreached the Norse, stirred the scalds, who repeated it in the Eddie\nsagas. Loki and his inferior fiends are, as there represented, quite\nas black as Ahriman and his cohorts. The conflict of good and evil is\nalmost as fully dire. But Odin is a colourless reflection of Ormuzd.\nThe aesir, the angels of the Scandinavian sky, are paler than the\nizeds. The figure of Baldr, the redeemer, faints beside that of\nMithra. Valhalla, though perhaps less fatiguing than Garo-demana, was\nmore trite in its wassails than the latter in its hymns.\n\nWhat these abstractions lacked was not the Logos but the light.\nHowever brilliantly the Iranian sun might glow, in the sullen north\nits rays were lost. The mists, obscuring it, made Valhalla dim and set\nthe gods in twilight. It stirred the scalds to runes but not to\ninspiration. There is none in the _Eddas_. Nor was there any in the\n_Nibelungen_, until the light, almost extinct, burst suddenly in the\nflaming scores of Wagner.\n\nTransformed by ages and by man, yet lifted at last from their secular\nslumber, the Persian myths achieved there their Occidental apotheosis,\nand, it may be, on steps of song, mounted to the ideal where Zervan\nAkerene muses.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nAMON-RA\n\n\n\"I am all that is, has been and shall be. No mortal has lifted my veil.\"\n\nThat pronouncement, graven on the statue of Isis, confounded Egypt,\ncondemning her mysteriously for some sin, anterior and unknown, to\nignorance of the divine, leaving her, in default of revelation, to\nworship what she would, jackals, hyenas, cats, hawks, the ibis; beasts\nand birds. Yet to the people, whose minds were as naked as their\nbodies, and who, in addition, were slaves, there must have been\nsomething very superior in the lords of the desert and the air.\nObviously they were wise. Among them were some that knew in advance\nthe change of the seasons. Others, indifferent to man and independent\nof him, migrated over highways known but to them. The senses of all\nwere keyed to vibrations. They heard the inaudible, saw the invisible,\nand, though they had a language of their own, when questioned never\nreplied. To slaves, clearly they were gods.\n\nNot to the priests, however. They knew better. They but affected\nbelief in divinities that had perhaps emigrated from the enigmas of\ngeography and who were polychrome as the skies they had crossed.\nFashioned in stone, these gods were dog-headed or longly beaked. Some,\nthough, were alive. In temples were saurians on purple carpets, bulls\ndraped with spangled shawls, hawks on shimmering perches, that little\ngold chains detained. Among gods of this character, the Sphinx, in its\nrole of eternal spectre, must have seemed the ideal. Others were\nnearly sublime. Particularly there was Ausar.\n\nAusar, called commonly Osiris, died for man. In an attempt to preserve\nharmony, in a struggle with the real spirit of actual evil which\ndiscord is, Osiris was slain. Being a god he arose from the dead. The\nlatter thereafter he judged.\n\nThe people knew little, if anything, concerning him. They knew little\nif anything at all. They had a menagerie and a full consciousness of\ntheir own insignificance. That sufficed. In all of carnal Africa, the\npriest alone possessed what then was truth and of which a part is\ntheology now.\n\nEgypt, in which the evangels began, millennia before they were\nwritten, knew no genesis. Her history, sculptured in hieroglyphics,\nwas cut on pages of stone. It awoke in the falling of cataracts. It\nended with simoons in sand. The books that tell of it are pyramids,\nobelisks, necropoles; constructions colossal and enigmatic; the\ngranite epitaphs of finite things. To-day, in the shattered temples,\nfrom which all other gods are gone, one divinity still lingers. It is\nSilence.\n\nIn Iran sorrow was a folly. In Egypt speech was a sin. Apis could\nbellow, Anubis bark; man might not even stutter. It was in the\nsubmission of dumb obedience that the palpable eternities of the\npyramids were piled. Yet in that darkness was light, in silence was\nthe Word. But to behold and to hear was possible only in sanctuaries\nreserved to the elect. The gods too had their castes. The lowest only\nwere fellahin fit to worship. On the lips of the others the priests\nheld always a finger. Crocodiles were less distant, hyenas more\napproachable, and the Egyptian, barred from the divine, found it on\nearth. He prayed to scorpions, sang hymns to scarabs, coaxed the\njackal with psalms; with dances he placated the ibis. It was\nridiculous but human. He too would have a part, however insensate, in\nthe dreams of all mankind.\n\nYet, had he looked not down but up, he would have lifted at least a\nfringe of the Isian veil. The sun, taken as a symbol only, the symbol\nof life, death, and resurrection--phases which its rising, setting,\nand return suggest--was the deity, the one really existing god.\nNominally, figuratively, even concretely, there were others; a whole\nhost, a hierarchy vaster than the Aryans knew; a great crowd of\ndivinities less grandiose than gaudy, that swarmed in space, strolled\nthrough the dawns and dusk, thronged the temples, eyed the quick,\nconfronted the dead. They were but appearances, mere masks,\nexpressions, hypostases, eidolons of Ra.\n\nRa was the celestial pharaoh. But not originally. Originally he was\npart of a triad which itself was part of a triple trinity. Ra then was\nbut one divinity among many gods. These ultimately lost themselves in\nhim so indistinguishably that there are litanies in which the names of\nseventy-five of them are used in addressing him. Regarded as the\nunbegotten begetter of the first beginning, he succeeded in achieving\nthe incomprehensible. He became triune and remained unique. He was\nOsiris, he was Isis, he was Horus. At once father, mother, and son, he\nfecundated, conceived, produced, and was.\n\nFrom him gods and goddesses emanated in sidereal fireworks that\nilluminated the heavens, dazzled the earth, then melted into each\nother, faded away or, occasionally, flared afresh in a glare\ndispelling and persistent. Among these latter was Amon. Glimmering\nprimarily in provincial obscurity at Thebes, the thin fire of his\nshrine mounted spirally to Ra, fused its flames with his, expanding\nand uniting so inseparably with them, that the two became one. Amon\nmeans _hidden_; Amon-Ra, _the hidden light_.\n\nIn the infinite, time is not. In heaven there is no chronology. The\ndate of any god's accession to supremacy there is, consequently, apart\nfrom mortal ken. None the less that of Amon-Ra is known. At the\nbeginning of the earthly reign of Amonhoteph III., an edict,\nscrupulously executed throughout Egypt, determined, on monument and\nwall, the substitution of Amon-Ra's name for that of previously\nsuperior gods.\n\nThe pharaohnate of Amonhoteph began about 1500 B.C. It is from that\nperiod, therefore, that dates the divinity's accession to the\npharaohnate of the skies. There is, or should be, a reason for all\nthings. There is one for that. Amonhoteph regarded himself as Amon's\nson. It was one of the traits of the pharaohs, as it was also of the\nIncas, to believe, or at least to assert, that their fathers,\ntherefore themselves, were divine. As a consequence of the idea they\nprayed to their own images and likened their palaces to inns.\n\nOriginally foreigners, invaders from Akkad or Sumer, the pharaohs\nfirst conquered, then surprised. It was they that embanked the Nile,\nturned morasses into meadows and piled the pyramids. More exactly, it\nwas by their commands that these miracles were contrived. To the\nneolithic people whom they subjugated their divinity was clear. So\nelsewhere was that of the kings of Akkad. Like them, like the Incas,\nthe pharaohs were of the solar race and so remained from the first\ndynasty to the Greek conquest, when Alexander, to legitimatize his\nsovereignty, had himself acknowledged as Amon's son.\n\nThe ceremony had its precedents. An inscription in eulogy of the great\nRameses states that Amon, when possessing the pharaohs august mother,\nengendered him as a god. On a wall of the Temple of Luxor an earlier\ninscription sets forth that the god of Thebes, incarnating himself in\nthe person of Thotmes IV., appeared in his divine form to the\npharaoh's queen, who, at sight of his beauty, conceived.\n\nIt was therefore not in the beast alone, but in man, that divinity\nrevealed itself in Egypt. That in Judea a similar revelation should\nhave been withheld until after the Roman occupation is hardly\nexplicable on the theory, general among scholars, that Moses is not a\nhistorical character, for an identical revelation had been received in\nBabylonia where Israel twice loitered. Moreover, a curious parallelism\nexists between post-Mosaic prophecy and Egyptian clairvoyance. In a\npapyrus of the Thotmes III. epoch--about 1600 B.C.--it is written:\n\"The people of the age of the son of man shall rejoice and establish\nhis name forever. They shall be removed from evil and the wicked shall\nhumble their mouths.\" In commenting the passage an Egyptologist noted\nthat the words _son of man_ are a literal translation of the original\n_si-n-sa_.[15] But already in Akkad a similar prophecy had been\nuttered.[16] It may be, therefore, that it was in Babylon that Israel\nfirst heard it.\n\n[Footnote 15: Sayce: Guifford Lectures.]\n\n[Footnote 16: Jastrow: The Dibbara Epic.]\n\nThe doctrine of a trinity, common to almost all antique beliefs, was a\nblasphemy to the Jews. The belief in immortality, also prevalent,\nthough less general, was to them an abomination. The miracle of divine\ndescent they were perhaps too practical to accept. There was no room\nin their creed for the dogma of future rewards and punishments, and\nthat, together with other articles of the Christian faith, Egypt's\nelect professed.\n\nThe slaves and mongrels that constituted the bulk of the population\nwere not instructed in these things and would not have understood them\nif they had been. In Babylonia education was compulsory. In Egypt it\nwas an art, a gift, mysterious in itself, reserved to the few. To the\nEgyptian, religion consisted in paraded symbols, in avenues of\nsphinxes, in forests of obelisks, in pharaohs seated colossally before\nthe temple doors, in inscriptions that told indistinguishably of\ntheomorphic men and anthropomorphic gods, and in a belief in the\ndivinity of bulls and hawks.\n\nThese latter had their uses. In transformations elsewhere effected,\nthe sacred bull may have become a golden calf, the golden hawk a\nsacred dove. In Egypt they were otherwise serviceable. The worship of\nthem, of other birds and beasts, of insects and vipers as well,\necclesiastically indorsed, hid the myth of metempsychosis.\n\nOf that the people knew nothing. When they died they ceased to be.\nEven mummification, usually supposed to have been general, was not for\nthem. Down to an epoch relatively late it was a privilege reserved to\npriests and princes. When the commonalty were embalmed it was with the\nopulent design that, in a future existence, they should serve their\nmasters as they had in this. Embalming was a preparation for the\nJudgment Day. Of that the people knew nothing either. It was even\nunlawful that concerning it they should be apprised.\n\nIn the Louvre is a statue of Ptah-meh, high priest of Memphis. On it\nare the significant words: \"Nothing was hidden from him.\" A passage of\nZosimus states that what was hidden it was illicit to reveal, except,\nJamblicus explained, to those whose discretion a long novitiate had\nassured. To such only was disclosed the secret that life is death in a\nland of darkness, and death is life in a land of light.\n\nIt was because of this that the pharaohs seated themselves colossally\nbefore the temple doors. It was because of it that their palaces were\ninns and their tombs were homes. It was because of it that their\nsepulchres were built for eternity and the tenements of their souls\nplaced there embalmed. It was because of this that the triumphs of men\nwere inscribed in the halls of the gods. Instead of seeking to be\nabsorbed, it was their own inextinguishable individuality that they\nendeavoured to assert. Tombs, tenements, triumphs, these all were\npreparations for the Land of Light.\n\nThe land was Alu, the asphodel meadows of the celestial Nile that\nwound through the Milky Way. To reach it a passport, vise'd by Osiris,\nsufficed. The first draft of that passport was held to have been\nwritten on tablets of alabaster, in letters of lapis lazuli, by an\neidolon of Ra, who, known in Egypt as Thoth, elsewhere was Hermes\nThrice the Greatest.\n\nAt Memphis, Hermes was regarded as representing the personification of\ndivine wisdom, or, more exactly perhaps, the inventive power of the\nhuman mind. A little library of forty-two books--which a patricist\nsaw, but not being initiate could not read--was attributed to him.[17]\nThe books contained the entire hieratic belief. Fragments that are\nheld to have survived in an extant Greek novel are obviously Egyptian,\nbut as obviously Alexandrine and neo-platonic. In the _editio\nprinceps_ Pheidias is mentioned. Mention of Michel Angelo would have\nbeen less anachronistic. The original books are gone, all of them,\nforever, perhaps, save one, chapters of which are as old as the fourth\ndynasty and, it may be, are still older. Pyramid texts of the fifth\ndynasty show that there then existed what to-day is termed _The Book\nof the Dead_, a copy of which, put in a mummy's arms, was a talisman\nfor the soul in the Court of Amenti, a passport thence to the Land of\nLight.\n\n[Footnote 17: Clemens Alexandrinos: Stromata vi.]\n\n\"There is no book like it, man hath not spoken it, earth hath not\nheard it\"--very truthfully it recites of itself. One copy, known as\nthe Louvre Papyrus, presents the _Divine Comedy_, as primarily\nconceived and illustrated by an archaic Dore. Text and vignettes\ndisplay the tribunal where the souls of the dead are judged.\n\nIn the foreground is an altar. Adjacent is a figure, half griffon,\nhalf chimera, the Beast of Amenti, perhaps too of the Apocalypse.\nBeyond, an ape poises a pair of scales. For balance is an ostrich\nfeather. Above are the spirits of fate. At the left Osiris is\nenthroned. From a balcony his assessors lean. At the right is the\nentrance. There the disembodied, ushered by Truth, appears and, in\nhomages and genuflections, affirms negatively the decalogue;\nprotesting before the Master of Eternity that there is no evil in him;\npraying the dwellers in Amenti that he may cross the dark way;\ndeclaring to each that he has not committed the particular sin over\nwhich they preside.\n\n\"O Eater of Spirits gone out of the windows of Alu! O Master of the\nFaces!\" he variously calls. \"O the One who associates the Splendours!\nO the Glowing Feet gone out of the Night! I did not lie. I did not\nkill. I have not been anxious. I did not talk abundantly. I made no\none weep. No heart have I harmed.\"\n\nThe assessors listen. \"I have not been anxious. I made no one weep. No\nheart have I harmed.\" These abstentions, graces now, were virtues\nthen, and so efficacious that they perhaps sufficed, as rightly they\nshould, for absolution.\n\nBut while the assessors listen and Osiris looks gravely on, no one\naccuses. It is conscience in its nakedness, conscience exposed there\nwhere all may see it, where for the first time perhaps it truly sees\nitself, and seeing realizes what there is in it of evil and what of\ngood, it is that which protests.\n\nStill the assessors listen. Orthodoxy on the part of the respondent is\nto them a minor thing. What they require is that he shall have been\nmerciful to his fellow creatures, true to himself. Only when it is\nproven that he has done his duty to man, is he permitted to show that\nhe has done his duty to gods.\n\nThe appeal continues: \"I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, I gave\nwater to them that thirsted. O ye that dwell in Amenti! I am\nunpolluted, I am pure.\"\n\nBut is it true? The scales decide. The heart of the respondent is\nweighed. If heavy, out it is cast to pass with him again through\nlife's infernal circles. But, if light as the feather in the balance\nand therefore equal with truth, it is restored to the body, which then\nresurrects and, in the bark of the Sun, sails the celestial Nile to Ra\nand the Land of Light.\n\nThat singer gone out of Amenti, actually, like Osiris, rose from the\ndead. The picture which a papyrus forty centuries old presents, is the\ndream of a vision that Michel Angelo displayed, a sketch for a papal\nfresco. Such indeed was the conformity between the underlying\nconceptions, that, at almost the first monition, Isis, whose veil no\nmortal had raised, lifted it from her black breast and suckled there\nthe infant Jesus. Then, presently, in temples that had teemed, the\nsilence of the desert brooded. The tide of life retreated, an entire\ntheogony vanished, exorcised, both of them, by the sign of the cross.\n\nAt sight of the unimagined emblem, a priesthood who in secret\nsanctuaries had evolved nearly all but that, flung themselves into\ncrypts beneath, pulled the walls down after them, burying unembalmed\nthe arcana of a creed whose spirit still is immortal.\n\nIn Egypt, then, only tombs and necropoles survived. But it is\nlegendary that, in the solitudes of the Thebaid, dispossessed eidolons\nof Ra, appearing in the shape of chimeras, terrified anchorites, to\nwhom, with vengeful eyes, they indicated their ruined altars.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nBEL-MARDUK\n\n\nThe inscriptions of Assyrian kings have, many of them, the monotony of\nhell. Made of boasts and shrieks, they recite the capture and sack of\ncities; the torrents of blood with which, like wool, the streets were\ndyed; the flaming pyramids of prisoners; the groans of men impaled;\nthe cries of ravished women.\n\nThe inscriptions are not all infernal. Those that relate to\nAssurbanipal--vulgarly, Sandanapallos,--are even ornate. But\nAssurbanipal, while probably fiendish and certainly crapulous, was\nclearly literary besides. From the spoil of sacked cities this\nbibliofilou took libraries, the myths and epics of creation, sacred\ntexts from Eridu and Ur, volumes in the extinct tongues of Akkad and\nSumer, first editions of the Book of God.\n\nThese, re-edited in cuneiform and kept conveniently on the second\nfloor of his palace, fell with Nineveh, where, until recently\nrecovered, for millennia they lay. Additionally, from shelves set up\nin the days of Khammurabi--the Amraphel of Genesis--Nippur has yielded\nghostly tablets and Borsippa treasuries of Babylonian ken.\n\nThese, the eldest revelations of the divine, are the last that man has\ndeciphered. The altars and people that heard them first, the marble\ntemples, the ivory palaces, the murderous throngs, are dust. The\nentire civilization from which they came has vanished. Yet, traced\nwith a wooden reed on squares of clay, are flights of little arrows,\nfrom which, magically, it all returns. Miraculously with these books a\nworld revives. Fashioned, some of them, at an epoch that in biblical\nchronology is anterior to man, they tell of creation, of the serpent,\nthe fall and the deluge. At the gates of paradise you see man dying,\npoisoned by the tree of life. Before Genesis was, already it had been\nwritten.\n\nIn the Chaldean Book of the Beginnings creation was effected in\nsuccessive acts. According to the epic of it, humanity's primal home\nwas a paradise where ten impressive persons--the models, it may be, of\nantediluvian patriarchs--reigned interminably, agreeably also, finally\nsinfully as well. In punishment a deluge swept them away. From the\nflood there escaped one man who separated a mythical from an heroic\nage. In the latter epoch, beings descended from demons built Nineveh\nand Babylon; organized human existence; invented arithmetic, geometry,\nastronomy and the calendar; counted the planets; numbered the days of\nthe year, divided them into months and weeks; established the Sabbath;\ndecorated the skies with the signs of the zodiac, instituting, in the\ninterim, colleges of savants and priests. These speculated on the\norigin of things, attributed it to spontaneous generation, the descent\nof man to evolution, entertaining the vulgar meanwhile with tales of\ngods and ghosts.[18]\n\n[Footnote 18: Lenormant: Les Origines. Schrader: Die Keilenschriften.\nSmith: Chaldean Genesis.]\n\nThe cosmological texts now available were not written then. They are\ndrawn from others that were. But there is a vignette that probably is\nof that age. It represents a man and a woman stretching their hands to\na tree. Behind the woman writhes a snake. The tree, known as the holy\ncedar of Eridu, the fruit of which stimulated desire, is described in\nan epic that recites the adventures of Gilgames.\n\nGilgames was the national hero of Chaldea. The story of his loves with\nIshtar is repeated in the Samson and Delilah myth. Ishtar, described\nin an Assyrian inscription as Our Lady of Girdles, was the original\nVenus, as Gilgames was perhaps the prototype of Hercules. The legend\nof his labours is represented on a seal of Sargon of Akkad, a king who\nruled fifty-seven hundred years ago.\n\nIn the epic, Gilgames, betrayed by Ishtar, tried to find out how not\nto die. In trying he reached a garden, guarded by cherubim, where the\nholy cedar was. There he learned that one being only could teach him\nto be immortal, and that being, Adra-Khasis, had been translated to\nthe Land of the Silver Sky. Adra-Khasis, was the Chaldean Noah.\nGilgames sought him and the story of the deluge follows. But with a\ndifference. On the seventh day, Adra-Khasis released from his ark a\ndove that returned, finally a raven that did not. Then he looked out,\nand looking, shrieked. Every one had perished.\n\nNoah was less emotional, or, if equally compassionate, the fact is not\nrecited. Apart from that detail and one other, the story of the flood\nis common to all folklore. Even the Aztecs knew of it. Probably it\noriginated in the matrix of nations which the table-land of Asia was.\nBut only in Chaldean myth, and subsequently in Hebrew legend, was the\nflood ascribed to sin.\n\nGilgames' quest, meanwhile, could not have been wholly vain. In an\narchaic inscription it is stated that the city of Erech was built in\nolden times by the deified Gilgames.[19]\n\n[Footnote 19: Proc. S. B. A. xvi. 13-15.]\n\nHow old the olden times may have been is conjectural. Modern science\nhas put the advent of man sixty million years ago. Chaldean chronology\nis less spacious. But its traditions stretched back a hundred thousand\nyears. The traditions were probably imaginary. Even so, in the morning\nof the world, already there were ancient cities. There was Nippur, one\nof whose gods, El Lil, was lord of ghosts. There was Eridu, where Ea\nwas lord of man. There was Ur, where Sin was lord of the moon. There\nwere other divinities. There was Enmesara, lord of the land whence\nnone return, and Makhir, god of dreams.\n\nThere were many more like the latter, so many that their sanctuaries\nmade the realm a holy land, but one which, administratively, was an\naggregate of principalities that Sargon, nearly six thousand years\nago, combined. Ultimately, from sheer age, the empire tottered. It\nwould have fallen had not Khammurabi surged. What Sargon made,\nKhammurabi solidified. Between their colossal figures two millennia\nstretch. These giants are distinct. None the less, across the ages\nthey seem to fuse, suggestively, not together, but into another\nperson.\n\nSargon has descended through time clothed in a little of the poetry\nwhich garments nation builders. But the poetry is not a mantle for the\nimaginary. In the British Museum is a marble ball that he dedicated to\na god. Paris has the seal of his librarian.[20] Copies of his annals\nare extant.[21] In these it is related that, when a child, his mother\nput him in a basket of rushes and set him adrift on the Euphrates.\nPresently he was rescued. Afterward he became a leader of men.\n\n[Footnote 20: Collection de Clerq. pl. 5, no. 46.]\n\n[Footnote 21: Cuneiform Insc. W. A. iv. 34.]\n\nKhammurabi was also a leader. He was a legislator as well. Sargon\nunited principalities, Khammurabi their shrines. From one came the\nnation, from the other the god. It is in this way that they fuse. To\nthe composite, if it be one, history added a heightening touch.\n\nThe Khammurabi legislation came from Bel, who, originally, was a local\nsun-god of Nippur. There he was regarded as the possessor of the\nChaldean Urim and Thummin, the tablets of destiny with which he cast\nthe fates of men. In the mythology of Babylonia these tablets were\nstolen by the god of storms, who kept them in his thunder fastness.\nAmong the forked flames of the lightning there they were recovered by\nBel, who revealed the law to Khammurabi.\n\nThe theophany is perhaps similar to that of Sinai. But perhaps, too,\nit is better attested. A diorite block, found at Susa in 1902, has the\nlaw engraved on it. On the summit, a bas-relief displays the god\ndisclosing the statutes to the king.\n\nThere are other analogies. Sinai was named after Sin, who, though but\na moon-god, was previously held supreme for the reason that, in\nprimitive Babylonia, the lunar year preceded the solar. The sanctuary\nof the moon-god was Ur, of which Abraham was emir. He was more,\nperhaps. Sarratu, from which Sarai comes, was the title of the\nmoon-goddess. In _Genesis_, Sarai is Abraham's wife. Abraham is a\nderivative of Aburamu, which was one of the moon's many names.[22]\n\n[Footnote 22: Sayce: Guifford Lectures.]\n\nAmong these, one in particular has since been identified with Jahveh.\nIn addition, a clay tablet of the age of Khammurabi, now in the\nBritish Museum, has on it:\n\n[Illustration]\n\nThat flight of arrows, being interpreted, means: _Jave ilu_, Jahveh is\ngod.[23]\n\n[Footnote 23: Delitzch: Babel und Bibel.]\n\nOther texts show that a title of Bel was Masu, a word that letter for\nletter is the same as the Hebrew Mosheh or Moses.[24]\n\n[Footnote 24: Records of the Past, i. 91.]\n\nIt is in this way that Sargon and Khammurabi fuse. Meanwhile the title\nMasu, or hero, was not confined to Bel. It was given also to Marduk,\nthe tutelary god of Babylon, from whom local monotheism proceeded.\n\nThat monotheism, in appearance relatively modern, actually was\narchaic. The Chaldean savants knew of but one really existing god. To\nthem, all others were his emanations. The deus exsuperantissimus was\nrepresented by a single stroke of the reed, a sign that in its\nvagueness left him formless and incommunicable, therefore\nunworshipable, hence without a temple, unless Bab-ili, Babylon, the\nGate of God, may be so construed.\n\nThe name of the deity, fastidiously concealed from the vulgar, was, in\nEnglish, One. Not after, or beneath, or above, but before him, a\ntrinity swung like a screen. From it, for pendant, another trinity\ndangled. From the latter fell a third. Below these glories were the\ncoruscations of an entire nation of inferior gods. The latter, as well\nas the former, all of them, were but the fireworks of One. He alone\nwas. The rest, like Makhir, were gods of dream. To the savants, that\nis; to the magi and seers. To the people the sidereal triads and\nplanetary divinities throned in the Silver Sky augustly real, equally\naugust, and in that celestial equality remained, until Khammurabi gave\nprecedence to Bel, who as Marduk, Bel or Baal Marduk, Lord Marduk,\nbecame supreme.\n\nBefore Bel, then, the other gods faded as the Elohim did before\nJahveh, with the possible difference that there were more to\nfade--sixty-five thousand, Assurnatsipal, in an inscription, declared.\nOver that army Bel-Marduk acquired the title, perhaps significant, of\nBel-Kissat, Lord of Hosts. Yet it was less as a usurper than as an\nabsorber that the ascension was achieved. Bel but mounted above his\nformer peers and from the superior height drew their attributes to\nhimself. It was sacrilege none the less. As such it alienated the\nclergy and enraged the plebs. Begun under Khammurabi and completed\nunder Nabonidos, it was the reason why, during the latter's reign,\northodox Babylon received Cyrus not as a foe but a friend.\n\nFrom the spoliation, meanwhile, no nebulousness resulted. Bel was\ndistinctly anthropomorphic. His earthly plaisance was the Home of the\nHeight, a seven-floored mountain of masonry, a rainbow pyramid of\nenamelled brick. At the top was a dome. There, in a glittering\nchamber, on a dazzling couch, he appeared. Elsewhere, in the\nvermillion recesses of a neighbouring chapel, that winged bulls\nguarded and frescoed monsters adorned, once a year he also appeared,\nand, above the mercy seat, on an alabaster throne, sat, or was\nsupposed to sit, contemplating the tablets of destiny, determining\nwhen men should die.\n\nTo the Greeks, the future lay in the lap of the gods. To the\nBabylonians the gods alone possessed it, as alone also they possessed\nthe present and the past. They had all time as all men have their day.\nThat day was here and it was brief. Death was a descent to Aralu, the\nland whence none return, a region of the underworld, called also\nShualu, where the departed were nourished on dust. Dust they were and\nto dust they returned.\n\nExtinction was not a punishment or even a reward, it was a law.\nPunishment was visited on the transgressor here, as here also the\npiety of the righteous was rewarded. When death came, just and unjust\nfared alike. The Aryan and Egyptian belief in immortality had no place\nin this creed, and consequently it had none either in Israel, where\nSheol was a replica of Shualu. To the Semites of Babylonia and Kanaan,\nthe gods alone were immortal, and immortal beings would be gods. Man\ncould not become divine while his deities were still human.\n\nExceptionally, exceptional beings such as Gilgames and Adra-Khasis\nmight be translated to the land of the Silver Sky, as Elijah was\ntranslated to heaven, but otherwise the only mortals that could reach\nit were kings, for a king, in becoming sovereign, became, _ipso\nfacto_, celestial. As such, ages later, Alexander had himself\nworshipped, and it was in imitation of his apotheosis that the\nsubsequent Caesars declared themselves gods. Yet precisely as the\nlatter were man-made deities, so the Babylonian Baalim were very\nsimilar to human kings.\n\nFor their hunger was cream, oil, dates, the flesh of ewe lambs. For\ntheir nostrils was the perfume of prayers and of psalms; for their\npassions the virginity of girls. Originally the first born of men were\nalso given them, but while, with higher culture, that sacrifice was\nabolished, the sacred harlotry, over which Ishtar presided, remained.\nJudaism omitted to incorporate that, but in Kanaan, which Babylonia\nprofoundly influenced, it was general and, though reviled by Israel,\nwas tempting even, and perhaps particularly, to Solomon.[25]\n\n[Footnote 25: 1 Kings xi. 5. \"Solomon went after Ashtoreth.\"]\n\nThe latter's temple was similar to Bel's, from which the Hebraic\nritual, terms of the Law, the Torah itself, may have proceeded, as, it\nmay be, the Sabbath did also. On a tablet recovered from the library\nof Assurbanipal it is written: \"The seventh day is a fast day, a lucky\nday, a sabbatuv\"--literally, a day of rest for the heart.[26]\n\n[Footnote 26: Cuneiform Insc. W. A. ii. 32.]\n\nIn Aralu that day never ceased; the dead there, buried, Herodotos\nsaid, in honey, were unresurrectably dead, dead to the earth, dead to\nthe Silver Sky. Yet though that was an article of faith, through a\nparadox profoundly poetic, there was a belief equally general, in\nghosts, in hobgoblins, in men with the faces of ravens, in others with\nthe bodies of scorpions, and in the post-mortem persistence of girls\nthat died pure.\n\nThese latter, in searching for someone whom they might seduce, must\nhave afterward wandered into the presence of St. Anthony. Perhaps,\ntoo, it was they who, as succubi, emotionalized the dreams of monks.\nYet, in view of Ishtar, they could not have been very numerous in\nBabylon where, however, they had a queen, Lilit, the Lilith of the\n_Talmud_, Adam's vampire wife, who conceived with him shapes of sin.\nIn these also the Babylonians believed, and naively they represented\nthem in forms so revolting that the sight of their own image alarmed\nthem away.\n\nFrom these shapes or, more exactly, from sin itself, it was very\nproperly held that all diseases came. Medicine consequently was a\nbranch of religion. The physician was a priest. He asked the patient:\nHave you shed your neighbour's blood? Have you approached your\nneighbour's wife? Have you stolen your neighbour's garment? Or is it\nthat you have failed to clothe the naked? According to the responses\nhe prescribed.[27]\n\n[Footnote 27: IV. R. 50-53. _Cf._ Delitzch: _op. cit._]\n\nBut the priest who was a physician was also a wizard. He peeped and\nmuttered, or, more subtly, provided enchanted philters in which\nsimples had been dissolved. These devices failing, there was a series\nof incantations, the _Ritual of the Whispered Charm_, in which the\nmost potent conjuration was the incommunicable name. To that all\nthings yielded, even the gods.[28] But like the Shem of the Jews, it\nwas probably never wholly uttered, because, save to the magi, not\nwholly known. In the formulae of the necromancers it is omitted, though\nin practice it may have been pronounced.\n\n[Footnote 28: Lenormant: La Magie chez les Chaldeens.]\n\nEven that is doubtful. A knowledge of it conferred powers similar to\nthose that have been attributed to the Christ, and which the Sadducees\nascribed to his knowledge of the tetragrammation. A knowledge of the\nBabylonian Shem was as potent. It served not only men but gods.\nIshtar, for purposes of her own, wanted to get into Aralu. In the\nrecovered epic of her descent, imperiously she demanded entrance:\n\n  Porter, open thy door.\n  Open thy door that I may enter.\n  If thou dost not open thy door,\n  I will attack it, I will break down the bars,\n  I will cause the dead to rise and devour the living.[29]\n\n[Footnote 29: Records of the Past.]\n\nIshtar was admitted. But Aralu was the land whence none return. Once\nin, she could not get out until, ultimately, the incommunicable name\nwas uttered. The epic says that, in the interim, there was on earth\nneither love nor loving. In possible connection with which\nincantations have been found, deprecating \"the consecrated harlots\nwith rebellious hearts that have abandoned the holy places.\"[30]\n\n[Footnote 30: Lenormant: _op. cit._]\n\nIn addition to the _Ritual of the Whispered Charm_, there was the\n_Illumination of Bel_, an encyclopaedia of astrology in seventy-two\nvolumes which the suburban library of Borsippa contained. During the\ncaptivity many Jews must have gone there. In the large light halls\nthey were free to read whatever they liked, religion, history,\nscience, the romance of all three. The books, catalogued and numbered,\nwere ranged on shelves. One had but to ask. The service was gratis.\n\nBabylon, then, prismatic and learned, was the most respectable place\non earth. For ten thousand years man had there consulted the stars.\nBut though respectable, it was also equivocal. During a period equally\nlong--or brief--the girls of the city had loosed their girdles for\nIshtar and yielded themselves to anyone, stranger or neighbour, that\nasked. In the service of the goddess their brothers occasionally\nfeigned that they too were girls. Meanwhile, from the summit of a\nseven-floored pyramid, mortals contemplated the divine.\n\nBeneath was cosmopolis, the golden cup that, in the words of Jeremiah,\nmade the whole world drunk. Seated immensely on the twin banks of the\nEuphrates--banks that bridges above and tunnels beneath\ninterjoined--Babylon more nearly resembled a walled nation than a\nfortified town. Within the gates, in an enclosure ample and noble, a\nspace that exceeded a hundred square miles, an area sufficient for\nParis quintupled, observatories and palaces rose above the roar of\nhuman tides that swept in waves through the wide boulevards, surged\nover the quays, flooded the gardens, eddied through the open-air\nlupanar, circled among statues of gods and bulls, poured out of the\nhundred gates, or broke against the polychrome walls and seethed back\nin the avenues, along which, to the high flourishes of military bands,\npassed armed hoplites, merchants in long robes, cloaked bedouins,\nKelts in bearskins, priests in spangled dresses, tiara'd princes,\nburdened slaves, kings discrowned, furtive forms--prostitutes,\npederasts, human wolves, vermin, sheep--the flux and reflux of the\ngigantic city.\n\nIn that ocean, the captive Jews, if captive they were, rolled, lost as\na handful of salt spilt in the sea. Yet, from the depths, a few had\nswum up and, filtering adroitly, had reached the dignity of high\nplace. One was pontiff. Others were viceroys. In addition to being\npontiff, Daniel was chancellor of the realm. Ezra was rector of the\nuniversity. As pontiff of a college of wizards, Daniel may have known\nthe future. As Minister of Wisdom, Ezra may have known, what is quite\nas difficult, the past. For the moment there was but the present. Over\nit ruled Belshazzar.\n\nYet, ruler though he was, there were powers potenter than his own:\nBaalim, outraged at the elevation of a parvenu god; a priesthood\nconsequently disaffected; and, without, at the gates, the foe.\n\nIt would have been interesting to have assisted at the final festival\nwhen, beneath cyclopean arches, in the sunlight of clustered\ncandelabra, amid the glitter of gold and white teeth, among the fair\nsultanas that were strewn like flowers through the throne-room of the\nimperial court, Belshazzar lay, smiling, amused rather than annoyed at\nthe impudent menace of Cyrus.\n\nBabylon was impregnable. He knew it. But the subtle Jews, the\nindignant gods, the alienated priests to whom the Persian was a\nredeemer, of these he did not think. Daniel had indeed warned him and,\nvaguely, he had promised something which he had since forgot.\n\nBeyond, an orchestra was playing. Further yet, columns upheld a\nceiling so lofty that it was lost. On the adjacent wall was a frieze\nof curious and chimerical beasts. Belshazzar was looking at them. In\ntheir dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion\namused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach\nhis lips, it fell with a clatter on the lapis lazuli of the floor\nbeneath. Before him, on that wall, beneath those beasts, the\nnecromancy of the priesthood had projected an armless, fluidic hand\nthat mounted, descended, tracing with a forefinger the three luminous\nhierograms of his doom.\n\nThe story, a little drama, was, with the tale concerning\nNebuchadnezzar, that of Daniel, and other novels quite as strange,\nevolved long later in the wide leisures of Jerusalem. The fluidic hand\ndid not appear. Even had it zigzagged there was no Belshazzar to\nfrighten.\n\nOnly the doom was real. Cyrus was clothed with it. To the trumpetings\nof heralds and the sheen of angels' wings, triumphantly he came. Then,\npresently, by royal decree, the Jews, manumitted and released,\nretraced their steps, burdened with spoil; with the lore of two\ndistinct civilizations, which, fusing in the great square letters of\nthe Pentateuch, was to become the poetry of all mankind.\n\nBabylon, ultimately, with her goblin gods and harlot goddess, sank\ninto her own Aralu. Nourished there on dust, Lilit, with the sister\nvampires of eternal night, fed on her.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nJEHOVAH\n\n\nA camel's-hair tent set in the desert was the first cathedral, the\nearliest cloister of latest ideals. Set not in one desert merely but\nin two, in the infinite of time as well as in that of space, there was\nabout it a limitlessness in which the past could sleep, the future\nawake, and into which all things, the human, the divine, gods and\nromance, could enter.\n\nThe human came first. Then the gods. Then romance. The divine was\ntheir triple expansion. It was an after growth, in other lands, that\ntears had watered. In the desert it was unimagined. Only the gods had\nbeen conceived.\n\nThe gods were many and yet but one. Though plural they were singular.\nThe subjects of impersonal verbs, they represented the pronoun in such\nexpressions as: it rains; it thunders. \"It\" was Elohim. Already among\nnomad Semites monotheism had begun. Yet with this distinction. Each\ntribe had separate sets of Its that guided, guarded, and scourged.\nOmnipresent but not omnipotent, any humiliation to the family that\nthey had in charge humiliated them. It made them angry, therefore\nvindictive, consequently unjust. It may be that they were not very\nethical. Perhaps the bedouins were not either. Man fashions his god in\nproportion to his intelligence. That of the nomad was slender. He\nlacked, what the Aryan shepherd possessed, the ability for\nmythological invention. The defect was due to his speech, which did\nnot lend itself to the deification of epithets. Even had it done so,\nit is probable that his mode of life would have rendered the\nparaphernalia of polytheism impossible. People constantly moving from\nplace to place could not be cumbered with idols. The Elohim were,\ntherefore, a convenience for travellers and an unidolatrous monotheism\na necessity which the absence of vehicles imposed. On the other hand,\ngiven every facility, it is presumable that the result would have been\nthe same. Mythology is the mother of poetry. Idolatry is the father of\nart. Neither could appeal to a people to whom delicacy was an unknown\ngod. Had it been known and a fetish, they could not have become the\npractical people that they are. Even then they were shrewd. Their\nElohim might alarm but never delude. Israel was uncheatable even in\ndream.\n\nOriginally emigrants from Arabia, the nomads reached Syria, some\ndirectly, others circuitously, by way of Padan-Aram and across the\nEuphrates, whence perhaps their name of _Ibrim_ or Hebrews--_Those\nfrom beyond_. In the journey Babel and Ur must have detained. These\ncities, with their culture relatively deep and their observatories\nequally high, became, in after days, a source of legend, of wonder, of\nhatred, perhaps of revelation as well.\n\nAt the time the nomads had no cosmogony or theories. The Chaldeans had\nboth. There was a story of creation, another of antediluvian kings and\nof the punishment that overtook them. There was also a story of an\nemir of Ur, an old man who had benevolently killed an animal instead\nof his son. The story, like the others, must have impressed. In after\nyears the old man became Abraham, a great person, who had conversed\nwith the Elohim and whose descendants they were.\n\nThe story of creation also impressed. It was enlightening and\ncomprehensible. The parallel theory of spontaneous generation and the\nprogressive evolution of the species which the magi entertained, they\nprobably never heard. Even otherwise it was too complex for minds as\nyet untutored. The fables alone appealed. Mentally compressed into\nportable shape, carried along, handed down, their origin afterward\nforgotten, they became the traditions of a nation, which, eminently\nconservative, preserved what it found, among other things the name,\nperhaps inharmonious, of Jhvh.[31]\n\n[Footnote 31: Renan: Histoire du peuple d'Israel. Kuenen: De Godsdienst\nvan Israel.]\n\nThat name, since found on an inscription of Sargon, appears to have\nbeen the title of a local god of Sinai, whom the nomads may have\nidentified with Elohim, particularly, perhaps, since he presided over\nthunder, the phenomenon that alarmed them most and which, in\nconsequence, inspired the greatest awe. That awe they put into the\nname, the pronunciation of which, like the origin of their traditions,\nthey afterward forgot. In subsequent rabbinical writings it became\nShem, the Name; Shemhammephoresh, the Revealed Name, uttered but once\na year, on the day of Atonement, by the high priest in the Holy of\nHolies. Mention of it by anyone else was deemed a capital offence,\nthough, permissibly, it might be rendered El Shaddai, the Almighty.\nThat term the Septuagint translated into [Greek: ho Kyrios], a Greek\nform, in the singular, of the Aramaic plural Adonai, which means\nBaalim, or sun lords.\n\nThat form the Vulgate gave as Dominus and posterior theology as God.\nThe latter term, common to all Teutonic tongues, has no known meaning.\nIt designates that which, to the limited intelligence of man, has\nbeen, and must be, incomprehensible. But the original term Jhvh,\nwhich, in the seventeenth century, was developed into Jehovah, yet\nwhich, the vowels being wholly conjectural, might have been developed\ninto anything else, clearly appealed to wayfarers to whom Chaldean\nscience was a book that remained closed until Nebuchadnezzar blew\ntheir descendants back into the miraculous Babel of their youth.\n\nMeanwhile, apart from the name--now generally written Jahveh--apart\ntoo from the fables and the enduring detestation which the colossal\ncity inspired, probably but one other thing impressed, and that was\nthe observance of the Sabbath. To a people whose public works were\nexecuted by forced labour, such a day was a necessity. To vagrants it\nwas not, and, though the custom interested, it was not adopted by them\nuntil their existence from nomad had become fixed.\n\nAt this latter period they were in Kanaan. Whether in the interval a\ntribe, the Beni-Israel, went down into Egypt, is a subject on which\nContinental scholarship has its doubts. The early life of the tribe's\nleader and legislator is usually associated with Rameses II., a\npharaoh of the XIX. dynasty. But it has been found that incidents\nconnected with Moses must apparently have occurred, if they occurred\nat all, at a period not earlier than the XXVI. dynasty, which\nconstitutes a minimum difference of seven hundred years. Yet, in view\nof the decalogue, with its curious analogy to the negative confession\nin the _Book of the Dead_; in view also of a practice surgical and\npossibly hygienic which, customary among the Egyptians, was adopted by\nthe Jews; in view, further, of ceremonies and symbols peculiarly\nEgyptian that were also absorbed, a sojourn in Goshen there may have\nbeen.\n\nThe spoiling of the Egyptians, a roguery on which Israel afterward\nprided herself, is a trait perhaps too typical to be lightly\ndismissed. On the other hand, if Moses were, which is at least\nproblematic, and if, in addition to being, he was both the nephew of a\npharaoh and the son-in-law of a priest, as such one to whom, in either\nquality, the arcana of the creed would be revealed, it becomes curious\nthat nowhere in the Pentateuch is there any doctrine of a future life.\nOf the entire story, it may be that only the journey into the\nSinaiatic peninsula is true, and of that there probably remained but\ntradition, on which history was based much later, by writers who had\nonly surmises concerning the time and circumstances in which it\noccurred.\n\nYet equally with the roguery, Moses may have been. Seen through modern\ncriticism his figure fades though his name persists. To that name the\nSeptuagint tried to give an Egyptian flavour. In their version it is\nalways [Greek: Mouses], a compound derived from the Egyptian _mo_,\nwater, and _uses_, saved from, or Saved-from-the-water.[32] Per contra,\nthe Hebrew form Mosheh is, as already indicated, the same as the\nBabylonian Masu, a term which means at once leader and litterateur, in\naddition to being the cognomen of a god.[33]\n\n[Footnote 32: Josephus: Antiq. ii. 9.]\n\n[Footnote 33: Sayce: The Religion of the Babylonians.]\n\nMoses is said to have led his people out of bondage. He was the writer\nto whom the Pentateuch has been ascribed. But he was also a prophet.\nIn Babylon, the god of prophecy was Nebo. It was on Mount Nebo that\nJahveh commanded the prophet of Israel to die. Moreover, the divinity\nthat had Masu for cognomen was, as is shown by a Babylonian text, the\nprimitive god of the sun at Nippur, but the sun at noon, at the period\nof its greatest effulgence, at the hour when it wars with whatever\nopposes, when it wars as Jahveh did, or as the latter may be assumed\nto have warred, since Isaiah represented him as a mighty man, roaring\nat his enemies, exciting the fury of the fight, marching personally to\nthe conflict, and, in the Fourth Roll of the Law (Numbers), there is\nmention of a book entitled: _The Wars of Jahveh_.\n\nWhether, then, Moses is but a composite of things Babylonian fused in\nan effort to show a link between a god and a people, is conjectural.\nBut it is also immaterial. The one instructive fact is that, in a\nretrospect, the god, immediately after the exodus, became dictator.\n\nYet even in the later age, when the retrospect was effected,\nconceptions were evidently immature. On one occasion the god met\nMoses, tried to kill him, but finally let him go. The picture is that\nof a personal struggle.[34] Again, the spectacle of his back which he\nvouchsafed to Moses is construable only as an _arriere-pensee_, unless\nit be profound philosophy, unless it be taken that the face of God\nrepresents Providence, to see which would be to behold the future,\nwhereas the back disclosed the past.\n\n[Footnote 34: Exodus iv. 24-26.]\n\nIt is, however, hardly probable that that construction occurred to the\neditors of the Pentateuch, who, elsewhere, represented Jahveh as a\nbutcher, insatiable, jealous, vindictive, treacherous, and vain, one\nthat consigned all nations other than Israel to ruin and whom a poet\nrepresented trampling people in anger, making them drunk with his\nfury, and defiling his raiment with blood.[35]\n\n[Footnote 35: Isaiah lxiii. 1-6.]\n\nBut in the period related in _Exodus_, Jahveh was but the tutelary god\nof an itinerant tribe that, in its gipsy lack of territorial\npossessions, was not even a nation. Like his people he too was a\nvagrant. Like them he had no home. Other gods had temples and altars.\nHe lacked so much as a shrine. In prefigurement of the Wandering Jew,\neach day he moved on. The threats of a land that never smiled were\nreflected in his face. The sight of him was death. Certainly he was\nterrible.\n\nThis conception, corrected by later writers, was otherwise revised. In\nthe interim Jahveh himself was transformed. He became El, the god;\npresently El Shaddai, God Almighty. In the ascension former traits\ndisappeared. He developed into the deity of emphatic right. Morality,\nhitherto absent from religion, entered into it. Israel, who perhaps\nhad been careless, who, like Solomon, had followed Ishtar, became\naustere. Thereafter, Judaism, of which Christianity and Muhammadanism\nwere the after thoughts, was destined to represent almost the sum\ntotal of the human conscience.\n\nBut in Kanaan, during the rude beginnings, though Jahveh was jealous,\nIshtar, known locally as Ashtoreth, allured. Conjointly with Baal, the\nindigenous term for Bel, circumadjacently she ruled. The propitiatory\nrites of these fair gods were debauchery and infanticide, the\nloosening of the girdles of girls, the thrusting of children into\nfires. It may be that these ceremonies at first amazed the Hebrews.\nBut conscientiously they adopted them, less perhaps through zeal than\npoliteness; because, in this curious epoch, on entering a country it\nwas thought only civil to serve the divinities that were there, in\naccordance with the ritual that pleased them.\n\nWith the mere mortal inhabitants, Israel was less ceremonious.\nCommanded by Jahveh to kill, extermination was but an act of piety. It\nwas then, perhaps, that the _Wars of Jahveh_ were sung, a paean that\nmust have been resonant with cries, with the death-rattle of kingdoms,\nwith the shouts of the invading host. From the breast-plates of the\nchosen, the terror of Sinai gleamed. Men could not see their faces and\nlive. The moon was their servant. To aid them the sun stood still.\nThey encroached, they slaughtered, they quelled. In the conquest a\nnation was born. From that bloody cradle the God of Humanity came. But\naround and about it was vacancy. In emerging from one solitude the\nJews created another. They have never left it. The desert which they\nmade destined them to be alone on this earth, as their god was to be\nsolitary in heaven.\n\nMeanwhile there had been no kings in Israel. With the nation royalty\ncame. David followed Saul. After him was Solomon. It is presumably at\nthis period that traditions, orally transmitted from a past relatively\nremote, were first put in writing. Previously it is conjectural if the\nJews could write. If they could, it is uncertain whether they made any\nuse of the ability other than in the possible compilation of toledoth,\nsuch as the _Book of the Generations of Adam_ and the _Wars of\nJahveh_, works that, later, may have served as data for the\nPentateuch. Even then, the compositions must have been crude, and such\nrolls as existed may have been lost when Nebuchadnezzar overturned\nJerusalem.\n\nPresumably, it was not until the post-exilic period that, under the\neditorship perhaps of Ezra, the definitive edition of the Torah was\nproduced. This supposition existing texts support. In Genesis (xxxvii.\n31) it is written: \"These are the kings of Edom before there reigned\nany king over the children of Israel.\" The passage shows, if it shows\nanything, that there were, or had been, kings in Israel at the time\nwhen the passage itself was written. It is, therefore, at least\npost-Davidic. In Genesis another passage (xlix. 10) says: \"The sceptre\nshall not pass from Judah until Shiloh come.\" Judah was the tribe that\nbecame pre-eminent in Israel after the captivity. The passage is\ntherefore post-exilic, consequently so is Genesis, and obviously the\nrest of the Pentateuch as well. Or, if not obviously, perhaps\ndemonstrably. In II Esdras xiv. 22-48 it is stated that the writer, a\ncandle of understanding in his heart, and aided by five swift scribes,\nrecomposed the Law, which, previously burned, was known to none.\n\nThe burning referred to is what may, perhaps, be termed religious\nfiction. Barring toledoth and related data that may have been lost,\nthe Law had almost certainly not existed before, and this post-exilic\nromance concerning it was evolved in a laudable effort to show its\nMosaic source. What is true of the Law is, in a measure, true of the\nProphets. None of them anterior to Cyrus, all are later than\nAlexander. Spiritually very near to Christianity, chronologically they\nare neighbourly too. If not divinely inspired, they at least disclosed\nthe ideal.\n\nPreviously the ideal had not perhaps been very apparent. Apart from\nsecessions, rebellions, concussions, convulsions that deified Hatred\nuntil Jahveh, in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, talked Assyrian, and\nthen, in the person of Cyrus, talked Zend, the god of Israel, even in\nIsrael, was not unique. He had a home, his first, the Temple, built\ngorgeously by Solomon, where invisibly, mysteriously, perhaps\nterribly, beneath the wings of cherubim that rose from the depths of\nthe Holy of Holies, he dwelled. But the shrine, however ornate, was\nnot the only one. There were other altars, other gods; the plentiful\nsanctuaries of Ashera, of Moloch and of Baal. On the adjacent hilltops\nthe phallus stood. In the neighbouring groves the kisses of Ishtar\nconsumed.\n\nThe Lady of Girdles was worshipped there not by men and women only,\nbut by girls with girls; by others too, not in couples, but singly,\ngirls who in their solitary devotions had instruments for aid.[36]\nReligion, as yet, had but the slightest connection with morality, a\ncircumstance explicable perhaps by the fact that it resumed the\nethnical conscience of a race. Between the altar of El Shaddai and the\nshrines of other gods there were many differences, of which geography\nwas the least. Jahveh, from a tutelary god, had indeed become the\nnational divinity of a chosen people. But the Moabites were the chosen\npeople of Chemos; the Ammonites were the chosen people of Rimmon; the\nBabylonians were the chosen people of Bel. The title conferred no\ndistinction. As a consequence, to differentiate Jahveh from all other\ngods, and Israel from all other people, to make the one unique and the\nother pontiff and shepherd of the nations of the world, became the\ndream of anonymous poets, one that prophets, sometimes equally\nanonymous, proclaimed. It was the prophets that reviled the false\ngods, denounced the abominations of Ishtar, and purified the Israelite\nheart. While nothing discernible, or even imaginable, menaced, however\nslightly, the great empires of that day, the prophets were the first\nto realize that the Orient was dead. When the Christ announced that\nthe end of the world was at hand, he but reiterated anterior\npredictions that presently were fulfilled. A world did end. That of\nantiquity ceased to be.\n\n[Footnote 36: _Cf._ Deut. xxiii. 17, where _'alamoth_ (puellae) is\nrendered in the Sapphist sense. Ezekiel xvi. 17. _Fecisti tibi\nimagines masculinas._]\n\nIt was the prophets that foretold it. Gloomy, fanatic, implacable and,\nit may be, mad, yet inspired at least by genius which itself, while\nmadness, is a madness wholly divine, they heralded the future, they\nestablished the past. Abraham they drew from allegory, Moses from\nmyth. They made them live, and so immortally that one survives in\nIslam, the other in words that are a law of grace for all.\n\nIf, in visions possibly ecstatic, they beheld heights that lost\nthemselves in immensity, and saw there an ineffable name seared by\nforked flames on a tablet of stone; if that spectacle and the\ntheophany of it were but poetry, the decalogue is a fact, one so solid\nthat though ages have gone, though empires have crumbled, though the\ncustoms of man have altered, though the sky itself have changed, still\nis obeyed the commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.\n\nFrom Chemos in Moab, from Rimmon among the Ammonites, no such edict\nhad come. It felled them. Amon-Ra it tore from the celestial Nile, and\nBel-Marduk from the Silver Sky. The Refaim hid them in shadows as\nsurely as they buried there the high and potent lords of Greece and\nRome. These interments, completed by others, the prophets began. For\nit was they who, in addition to the command, revealed the commandant,\ncreator of whatever is: the Being Absolute that abhorred evil, loved\nrighteousness, punished the transgressor and rewarded the just; El\nShaddai, then really Lord of Hosts.\n\nIt may be that already in Israel there had been some prescience of\nthis. But it lacked the authority of inspired text. The omission was\none that only seers could remedy. It was presumably in these\ncircumstances that an agreement was imagined which, construed as a\ncondition of a covenant, assumed to have been made with Abraham, was\nfurther assumed to have been renewed to Moses. The resulting poetry\nwas enveloped in a romance of which Continental scholarship has\ndiscovered two versions, woven together, perhaps by Ezra, into a\nsingle tale.\n\n\"In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and earth.\" That abrupt\ndeclaration, presented originally in but one of the versions, had\nalready been pronounced of Indra and also of Ormuzd. The Hebraic\nannouncement alone prevailed. It emptied the firmament of its\nmonsters, dislodged the gods from the skies, and enthroned there a\ndeity at first multiple but subsequently unique. Afterward seraphs and\nsaints might replace the evaporated imaginings of other creeds; Satan\nmight create a world of his own and people it with the damned;\ntheology might evolve from elder faiths a newer trinity and set it\nlike a diadem in space; angels and archangels might refill the\ndevastated heavens of the past; none the less, in the light of that\naustere pronouncement, for a moment Israel dwelled in contemplation of\nthe Ideal.\n\nAt the time it is probable that the story of the love of the sons of\nJahveh for the daughters of men, together with the pastel of Eden as\nit stands to-day, were not contained in existing accounts of that\nideal. These legends, which regarded as legends are obviously false,\nbut which, construed as allegories, may be profoundly true, were\nprobably not diffused until after the captivity, when Israel was not\nmore subtle, that is not possible, but, by reason of her contact with\nPersia, more wise.\n\nThe origin of evil these myths related but did not explain. Since\nthen, from no church has there come an adequate explanation of the\nmalediction under which man is supposed to labour because of the\nnatural propensities of beings that never were. That explanation these\nmyths, which orthodoxy has gravely, though sometimes reluctantly,\naccepted, both provide and conceal. They date possibly from the\nOrmuzdian revelation: \"In the beginning was the living Word.\"\n\nJohn, or more exactly his homonym, repeated the pronouncement, adding:\n\"The word was made flesh.\" But, save for a mention of the glory which\nhe had before the world was, he omitted to further follow the thought\nof Ormuzd, who, in describing paradise to Zarathrustra, likened it, in\nevery way, to heaven. There the first beings were, exempt from\nphysical necessities, pure intelligences, naked as the compilers of\nGenesis translated, naked and unashamed, but naked and unashamed\nbecause incorporeal, unincarnate and clothed in light, a vestment\nwhich they exchanged for a garment of flesh, coats of skin as it is in\nGenesis, when, descended on earth, their intelligence, previously\nluminous, swooned in the senses of man.\n\nIn Egypt, the harper going out from Amenti sang: \"Life is death in a\nland of darkness, death is life in a land of light.\" There perhaps is\nthe origin of evil. There too perhaps is its cure. But the view\naccepted there too is pre-existence and persistence, a doctrine\nblasphemous to the Jew as it was to the Assyrian, to whom the gods\nalone were immortal, and to whom, in consequence, immortal beings\nwould be gods. In the creed of both, man was essentially evanescent.\nTo the Hebrew, he lived a few, brief days and then went down into\nsilence, where no remembrance is. There, gathered among the Refaim to\nhis fathers, he remained forever, unheeded by God.\n\nThe conception, passably rationalistic and not impossibly correct,\nveiled the beautiful allegory that was latent in the Eden myth. It had\nthe further defect, or the additional advantage, of eliminating any\ntheory of future punishment and reward. In lieu of anything of the\nkind, there was a doctrine that evil, in producing evil, automatically\npunished itself. The doctrine is incontrovertible. But, for corollary,\nwent the fallacy that virtue is its own reward. Against that idea Job\nprotested so energetically that mediaeval monks were afraid to read\nwhat he wrote. Yet it was perhaps in demonstration of the real\nsignificance of the allegory that a spiritualistic doctrine--always an\nimpiety to the orthodox--was insinuated by the Pharisees and instilled\nby the Christ.\n\nThe basis of it rested perhaps partially in the idealism of the\nprophets. The clamour of their voices awoke the dead. It transformed\nthe skies. It transfigured Jahveh. It divested him of attributes that\nwere human. It outlined others that were divine. It awoke not merely\nthe dead, but the consciousness that a god that had a proper name\ncould not be the true one. Thereafter mention of it was avoided. The\nvowels were dropped. It became unpronounceable, therefore\nincommunicable. For it was substituted the term vaguer, and therefore\nmore exact, of Lord, one in whose service were fulfilled the words of\nIsaiah: \"I am the first and I am the last, and beside me there is no\nGod.\"\n\nIn the marvel of that miraculous realization were altitudes hitherto\nundreamed, peaks from whose summits there was discernible but the\nvalleys beneath, and another height on which stood the Son of man. Yet\nmarvellous though the realization was, instead of diminishing, it\nincreased. It did not pass. It was not forgot. Ceaselessly it\naugmented.\n\nIn the Scriptures there are many marvels. That perhaps is the\ngreatest. Amon, originally an obscure provincial god of Thebes, became\nthe supreme divinity of Egypt. Bel, originally a local god of Nippur,\nbecame in Babylon Lord of Hosts. But Jahveh, originally the tutelary\ngod of squalid nomads, became the Deity of Christendom. The fact is\none that any scholarship must admit. It is the indisputable miracle of\nthe Bible.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nZEUS\n\n\nIn Judea, when Jahveh was addressed, he answered, if at all, with a\nthunderclap. Since then he has ceased to reply. Zeus was more\ncomplaisant. One might enter with him into the intimacy of the\ninfinite. The father of the Graces, the Muses, the Hours, it was\nnatural that he should be debonair. But he had other children. Among\nthem were Litai, the Prayers. In the _Vedas_, where Zeus was born, the\nPrayers upheld the skies. Lame and less lofty in Greece, they could\nbut listen and intercede.\n\nThe detail is taken from Homer. In his Ionian Pentateuch is the\nstatement that beggars are sent by Zeus, that whoever stretches a hand\nis respectable in his eyes, that the mendicant who is repulsed may\nperhaps be a god[37]--suggestions which, afterward, were superiorly\nresumed in the dictum: \"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of\nthese my brethren, ye have done it unto me.\"\n\n[Footnote 37: Odyssey, xviii. 485, v. 447, xiv. 56.]\n\nThe Litai were not alone in their offices. There were the oracles of\nDelphi, of Trophonios and of Mopsos, where one might converse with any\ndivinity, even with Pan, who was a very great god. But Olympos was\nneighbourly. It was charming too. There was unending spring there,\neternal youth, immortal beauty, the harmonies of divine honey-moons,\nthe ideal in a golden dream; a stretch of crystal parapets, from\nwhich, leaning and laughing, radiant goddesses and resplendent gods\nlooked down, and to whom a people, adolescent still, looked up.\n\nIn that morning of delight fear was absent, mystery was replaced by\njoy. The pageantry of the hours may have been too near to nature to\nknow of shame, it was yet too close to the divine to know of hate.\nMan, then, for the first time, loved what he worshipped and worshipped\nwhat he loved. His brilliant and musical Bible moved his heart without\ntormenting it. It conducted but did not constrain. It taught him that\nin death all are equal and that in life the noble-minded are serene.\n\nIn the Genesis of this Bible there is an account of a golden age and\nof a paradise into which evil was introduced by woman. The account is\nHesiod's, to whom the Orient had furnished the details. It may be that\nboth erred. If ever there were a golden age it must have been in those\ndays when heaven was on earth and, mingling familiarly with men, were\nprocessions of gods, gods of love, of light, of liberty, thousands of\nthem, not one of whom had ever heard an atheist's voice. Related to\nhumanity, of the same blood, sons of the same Aryan mother, they\ndiffered from men only in that the latter died because they were real,\nwhile they were deathless because ideal.\n\nThe ideal was too fair. Presently Pallas became the soul of Athens.\nBut meanwhile from the East there strayed swarms of enigmatic faces;\nthe harlot handmaids of her Celestial Highness Ishtar, Princess of\nHeaven; the mutilated priests of Tammuz her lover; dual conceptions\nthat resulted in Aphrodite Pandemos, the postures of Priapos, the leer\nof the Lampsacene, and, with them, forms of worship comparable, in the\ncircumadjacent beauty, to latrinae in a garden, ignoble shapes that\nviolated the candour of maidens' eyes, but with which Greece became so\naccustomed that on them moral aphorisms were engraved. \"In the mind of\nHellas, these things,\" Renan, with his usual unctuousness, declared,\n\"awoke but pious thoughts.\"\n\nPious at heart Hellas was. Even art, which now is wholly profane, with\nher was wholly sacred. The sanctity was due to its perfection. The\nperfection was such that imbeciles who fancy that it has been or could\nbe surpassed show merely that they know nothing about it. At Athens,\nwhere Pheidias created a palpable Olympos, Pallas stood colossally, a\ntorch in her hand, a lance at her shoulder, a shield at her side, a\nplastron of gold on her immaculate breast, a golden robe about her\nivory form, and on her immortal brow a crown of gold, beneath which,\nsapphire eyes, that saw and foresaw, glittered. To-day the place where\nthe marvellous creation stood is vacant. With the gorgeous host Pallas\nhas departed. But the torch she held still burns. From the emptiness\nof her virginal arms, that never were filled, proceeds all\ncivilization.\n\nAdjacently at Eleusis was Demeter. Pallas was the soul of Greece.\nEleusis was the Jerusalem, Demeter the Madonna.\n\nDemeter--the earth, the universal mother--had, in a mystic hymen with\nher brother Zeus, conceived Persephone. The latter, when young and a\nmaiden, beckoned perhaps by Eros, wandered from Olympos and was\ngathering flowers when Pluto, borne by black horses, erupted, raped\nher, and tore her away. The cries of the indignant Demeter sterilized\nthe earth. To assuage her, Zeus undertook to have Persephone\nrecovered, provided that in Hades, of which Pluto was lord, she had\neaten nothing. But the girl had--a pomegranate grain. It was the\nirrevocable. Demeter yielded, as the high gods had to yield, to what\nwas higher than they, to Destiny. Meanwhile, in the shadows below,\nPersephone was transfigured.\n\n  Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh and\n      that weep;\n  For these give joy and sorrow: but thou, Proserpina, sleep....\n  O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,\n  I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.\n  In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night\n      where thou art,\n  Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from\n      the heart, ...\n  And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of gods from afar\n  Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star.\n  In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,\n  Let my soul with their souls find place and forget what was done or\n      undone.\n  Thou art more than the gods that number the days of our temporal breath\n  For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.\n\nLike Hesiod, Swinburne erred, though perhaps intentionally, as poets\nshould, for the greater glory of the Muses. Persephone brought not\ndeath but life. The aisles of despair she filled with hope.\nTransfigured herself, Pluto she transformed. She changed what had been\nhell into what was to be purgatory. It was not yet Elysium, but it was\nno longer Hades. Plato said that those who were in her world had no\nwish at all for this.\n\nIt is for that reason that Demeter is the Madonna of Greece, as her\nethereal daughter was the saviour. The myth of it all, brought by\nPythagoras from Egypt is very old. Known in Memphis, it was known too\nin Babylon, perhaps before Memphis was. But the legend of Isis and\nthat of Ishtar--both of whom descended into hell--lack the transparent\ncharm which this idyl unfolds and of which the significance was\nrevealed only to initiate in epiphanies at Eleusis.\n\nBefore these sacraments Greece stood, a finger to her lips. Yet the\nwhispers from them that have reached us, while furtive perhaps, are\nclear. They furnished the poets with notes that are resonant still.\nThey lifted the drama to heights that astound. Even in the fancy balls\nof Aristophanes, where men were ribald and the gods were mocked,\nsuddenly, in the midst of the orgy, laughter ceased, obscenities were\nhushed. Afar a hymn resounded. It was the chorus of the Initiate going\nmeasuredly by.\n\nThe original mysteries were Hermetic. Enterable only after a prolonged\nnovitiate, the adept then beheld an unfolding of the theosophy of the\nsoul. In visions, possibly ecstatic, he saw the series of its\nincarnations, the seven cycles through which it passed, the Ship of a\nMillion Years on which the migrations are effected and on which, at\nlast, from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, it sails to its primal\nhome.\n\nThat home was colour, its sustenance light. There, in ethereal\nevolutions, its incarnations began. At first unsubstantial and wholly\nineffable, these turned for it every object into beauty, every sound\ninto joy. Without needs, from beatitude to beatitude blissfully it\nfloated. But, subjected to the double attraction of matter and of sin,\nthe initiate saw the memories and attributes of its spirituality fade.\nHe saw it flutter, and fluttering sink. He saw that in sinking it\nenveloped itself in garments that grew heavier at each descent.\nThrough the denser clothing he saw the desires of the flesh pulsate.\nHe saw them force it lower, still lower, until, fallen into its\nearthly tenement, it swooned in the senses of man. From the chains of\nthat prison he learned that the soul's one escape was in a recovery of\nthe memory of what it had been when it was other than what it had\nbecome.\n\nThat memory the mysteries provided. Those of Eleusis differed from the\nEgyptian only in detail. At Eleusis, in lieu of visions, there were\ntableaux. Persephone, beckoned by desire, straying then from Olympos,\nafterward fainting in the arms of Pluto, but subsequently, while\npreparing her own reascension, saving and embellishing all that\napproach, was the symbol, in an Hellenic setting, of the fall and\nredemption of man.\n\nThe human tragedy thus portrayed was the luminous counterpart of the\ndark dramas that Athens beheld. There, in the theatre--which itself\nwas a church with the stage for pulpit--man, blinded by passions, the\nFates pursued and Destiny felled.\n\nThe sombre spectacle was inexplicable. At Eleusis was enlightenment.\n\"Eskato Bebeloi\"--_Out from here, the profane_--the heralds shouted as\nthe mysteries began. \"Konx ompax\"--_Go in peace_--they called when the\nepiphanies were completed.\n\nIn peace the initiate went, serenely, it is said, ever after. From\nthem the load of ignorance was lifted. But what their impressions were\nis unrecorded. They were bound to secrecy. No one could learn what\noccurred without being initiated, or without dying. For death too is\ninitiation.\n\nThe mysteries were schools of immortality. They plentifully taught\nmany a lesson that Christianity afterward instilled. But their drapery\nwas perhaps over ornate. Truth does not need any. Truth always should\nbe charming. Yet always it should be naked as well. About it the\nmysteries hung a raiment that was beautiful, but of which the rich\nembroideries obscured. The mysteries could not have been more\nfascinating, that is not possible, but, the myths removed, in simple\nnudity they would have been more clear. Doubtless it was for that very\nreason, in order that they might not be transparent, that the myths\nwere employed. It is for that very reason, perhaps, that Christianity\nalso adopted a few. Yet at least from cant they were free. Among the\nmultiple divinities of Greece, hypocrisy was the unknown god.\nConsideration of the others is, to-day, usually effected through the\npages of Ovid. One might as well study Christianity in the works of\nVoltaire. Christianity's brightest days were in the dark ages. The\nsplendid glamour of them that persists is due to many causes, among\nwhich, in minor degree, may be the compelling glare of Greek genius.\nThat glare, veiled in the mysteries, philosophy reflects.\n\nPhilosophy is but the love of wisdom. It began with Socrates. He had\nno belief in the gods. The man who has none may be very religious. But\nthough Socrates did not believe in the gods he did not deny them. He\ndid what perhaps was worse. He ignored their perfectly poetic\nexistence. He was put to death for it, though only at the conclusion\nof a long promenade during which he delivered Athenian youths of their\nintelligence. Facility in the operation may have been inherited.\nSocrates was the son of a midwife. His own progeny consisted in a\ncomplete transfiguration of Athenian thought. He told of an\nIntelligence, supreme, ethical, just, seeing all, hearing all,\ngoverning all; a creator made not after the image of man but of the\nsoul, and visible only in the conscience. It was for that he died.\nThere was no such god on Olympos.\n\nThere was an additional indictment. Socrates was accused of perverting\nthe _jeunesse doree_. At a period when, everywhere, save only in\nIsrael, the abnormal was usual, Socrates was almost insultingly\nchaste. The perversion of which he was accused was not of that order.\nIt was that of inciting lads to disobey their parents when the latter\nopposed what he taught.\n\n\"I am come to set a man against his father,\" it is written in\n_Matthew_. The mission of Socrates was the same. Because of it he\ndied. He was the first martyr. But his death was overwhelming in its\nsimplicity. Even in fairyland there has been nothing more calm. By way\nof preparation he said to his judges: \"Were you to offer to acquit me\non condition that I no longer profess what I believe, I would answer;\n'Athenians, I honour and I love you, but a god has commanded me and\nthat god I will obey, rather than you.'\"\n\nIn the speech was irony, with which Athens was familiar. But it also\ndisplayed a conception, wholly new, that of maintaining at any cost\nthe truth. The novelty must have charmed. When Peter and the apostles\nwere arraigned before the Sanhedrin, their defence consisted in the\nvery words that Socrates had used: \"We should obey God rather than\nman.\"[38]\n\n[Footnote 38: Acts v. 29.]\n\nSocrates wrote nothing. The Buddha did not either. Neither did the\nChrist. These had their evangelists. Socrates had also disciples who,\nas vehicle for his ideas, employed the nightingale tongue of beauty\ninto which the Law and the Prophets were translated by the Septuagint\nand into which the Gospels were put.\n\nIt would be irreverent to suggest that the latter are in any way\nindebted to Socratic inspiration. It would be irrelevant as well. For,\nwhile the Intelligence that Socrates preached differed as much from\nthe volage and voluptuous Zeus as the God of Christendom differs from\nthe Jahveh of Job, yet, in a divergence so wide, an idealist, very\npoor except in ideas; a teacher killed by those who knew not what they\ndid; a philosopher that drained the cup without even asking that it\npass from him; a mere reformer, though dangerous perhaps as every\nreformer worth the name must be; but, otherwise, a mere man like any\nother, only a little better, could obviously have had no share. For\nreasons not minor but major, Plato could have had none either.\n\nIt is related that a Roman invader sank back, stricken with\n_deisidaimonia_--the awe that the gods inspired--at the sight of the\nPheidian Zeus. It is with a wonder not cognate certainly, yet in a\nmeasure relative, that one considers what Socrates must have been if\nmillennia have gone without producing one mind approaching that of his\nspiritual heir. It was uranian; but not disassociated from human\nthings.\n\nPlato, like his master, was but a man in whom the ideal was intuitive,\nperhaps the infernal also. In the gardens of the Academe and along the\nbanks of the Ilissus, he announced a Last Judgment. The announcement,\ncontained in the _Phaedo_, had for supplement a picture that may have\nbeen Persian, of the righteous ascending to heaven and the wicked\ndescending to hell. In the _Laws_, the picture was annotated with a\nstatement to the effect that whatever a man may do, there is an eye\nthat sees him, a memory that registers and retains. In the _Republic_\nhe declared that afflictions are blessings in disguise. But his\n\"Republic,\" a utopian commonwealth, was not, he said, of this world,\nadding in the _Phaedo_, that few are chosen though many are called.\n\nThe mystery of the catholicism of the Incas, reported back to the Holy\nOffice, was there defined as an artifice of the devil. With finer\ncircumspection, Christian Fathers attributed the denser mystery of\nGreek philosophy to the inspiration of God.\n\nCertainly it is ample. As exemplified by Plato it has, though, its\nlimitations. There is no charity in it. Plato preached humility, but\nthere is none in his sermons. His thought is a winged thing, as the\nthought of a poet ever should be. But in the expression of it he seems\nsmiling, disdainful, indifferent as a statue to the poverties of the\nheart. That too, perhaps, is as it should be. The high muse wears a\nradiant peplum. Anxiety is banished from the minds that she haunts.\nThen, also, if, in the nectar of Plato's speech, compassion is not an\ningredient, it may be because, in his violet-crowned city, it was\nstrewn open-handed through the beautiful streets. There, public\nmalediction was visited on anyone that omitted to guide a stranger on\nhis way.\n\nIsrael was too strictly monotheistic to raise an altar to Pity, the\nrest of antiquity too cruel. In Athens there was one. In addition\nthere were missions for the needy, asylums for the infirm. If\nanywhere, at that period, human sympathy existed, it was in Greece.\nThe aristocratic silence of Plato may have been due to that fact. He\nwould not talk of the obvious, though he did of the vile. In one of\nhis books the then common and abnormal conception of sexuality was, if\nnot authorized, at least condoned. It is conjectural, however, whether\nthe conception was more monstrous than that which subsequent mysticity\nevolved.\n\nSaid Ruysbroeck: \"The mystic carries her soul in her hand and gives it\nto whomsoever she wishes.\" Said St. Francis of Sales: \"The soul draws\nto itself motives of love and delectates in them.\" What the gift and\nwhat the delectation were, other saints have described.\n\nMarie de la Croix asserted that in the arms of the celestial Spouse\nshe swam in an ocean of delight. Concerning that Spouse, Marie\nAlacoque added: \"Like the most passionate of lovers he made me\nunderstand that I should taste what is sweetest in the suavity of\ncaresses, and indeed, so poignant were they, that I swooned.\" The\nravishments which St. Theresa experienced she expressed in terms of\nabandoned precision. Mme. Guyon wrote so carnally of the divine that\nBossuet exclaimed; \"Seigneur, if I dared, I would pray that a seraph\nwith a flaming sword might come and purify my lips sullied by this\nrecital.\"[39]\n\n[Footnote 39: Relation sur le Quietisme.]\n\nAugustin pleasantly remarked that we are all born for hell. One need\nnot agree with him. In the presence of the possibly monstrous and the\nimpossibly blasphemous, there is always a recourse. It is to turn\naway, though it be to Zeus, a belief in whom, however stupid, is\nennobling beside the turpitudes that Christian mysticism produced.\n\nAt Athens, meanwhile, the religion of State persisted. So also did\nphilosophy. When, occasionally, the two met, the latter bowed. That\nwas sufficient. Religion exacted respect, not belief. It was not a\nfaith, it was a law, one that for its majesty was admired and for its\npoetry was beloved. In the deification of whatever is exquisite it was\nbut an artistic cult. The real Olympos was the Pantheon. The other was\nfading away. Deeper and deeper it was sinking back into the golden\ndream from which it had sprung. Further and further the crystal\nparapets were retreating. Dimmer and more dim the gorgeous host\nbecame. In words of perfect piety Epicurus pictured them in the\nfelicity of the ideal. There, they had no heed of man, no desire for\nworship, no wish for prayer. It was unnecessary even to think of them.\nDecorously, with every homage, they were being deposed.\n\nBut if Epicurus was decorous, Evemerus was devout. It was his\nendeavour, he said, not to undermine but to fortify. The gods he\ndescribed as philanthropists whom a grateful world had deified. Zeus\nhad waged a sacrilegious war against his father. Aphrodite was a\nharlot and a procuress. The others were equally commendable. Once they\nhad all lived. Since then all had died. Evemerus had seen their tombs.\n\nOne should not believe him. Their parapets are dimmer, perhaps, but\nfrom them still they lean and laugh. They are immortal as the\nhexameters in which their loves unfold. Yet, oddly enough, presently\nthe oracle of Delphi strangled. In his cavern Trophonios was gagged.\nThe voice of Mopsos withered.\n\nThat is nothing. On the Ionian, the captain of a ship heard some one\ncalling loudly at him from the sea. The passengers, who were at table,\nlooked out astounded. Again the loud voice called: \"Captain, when you\nreach shore announce that the great god Pan is dead.\"[40]\n\n[Footnote 40: Plutarch: de Oracul. defect. 14.]\n\nIt may be that it was true. It may be that after Pan the others\ndeparted. When Paul reached Athens he found a denuded Pantheon, a\nvacant Olympos, skies more empty still.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nJUPITER\n\n\nThe name of the national deity of Israel is unpronounceable. The name\nof the national divinity of Rome is unknown. To all but the\nhierophants it was a secret. For uttering it a senator was put to\ndeath. But Tullius Hostilius erected temples to Fear and to Pallor. It\nmay have been Fright. The conjecture is supported by the fact that, as\nwas usual, Rome had any number of deified epithets, as she had also a\nquantity of little bits of gods. These latter greatly amused the\nChristian Fathers. Among them was Alemona, who, in homely English, was\nWet-nurse.\n\nTertullian, perhaps naively, remarked: \"Superstition has invented\nthese deities for whom we have substituted angels.\" In addition to the\ndiva mater Alemona was the divus pater Vaticanus, the holy father\nVatican, who assisted at a child's first cry. There was the equally\nholy father Fabulin, who attended him in his earliest efforts at\nspeech. Neither of them had anything else to do.\n\nPavor had. At thunder, at lightning, at a meteor, at moisture on a\nwall, at no matter what, at silence even, the descendants of a\nshe-wolf's nursling quailed. They lived in a panic. In panic the gods\nwere born. It is but natural, perhaps, that Fright should have been\nheld supreme. The other gods, mainly divinities of prey and of havoc,\nwere lustreless as the imaginations that conceived them. Prosaic,\nunimaged, without poetry or myth, they dully persisted until pedlars\nappeared with Hellenic legends and wares. To their tales Rome\nlistened. Then eidolons of the Olympians became naturalized there.\nZeus was transformed into Jupiter, Aphrodite into Venus, Pallas into\nMinerva, Demeter into Ceres, and all of them--and with them all the\nothers--into an irritable police. The Greek gods enchanted, those of\nRome alarmed. Plutarch said that they were indignant if one presumed\nto so much as sneeze.\n\nWorship, consequently, was a necessary precaution, an insurance\nagainst divine risks, a matter of business in which the devout\nbargained with the divine. Ovid represented Numa trying to elude the\nexigencies of Jove. The latter had demanded the sacrifice of a head.\n\"You shall have a cabbage,\" said the king. \"I mean something human.\"\n\"Some hairs then.\" \"No, I want something alive.\" \"We will give you a\npretty little fish.\" Jupiter laughed and yielded. That was much later,\nafter Lucretius, in putting Epicurus into verse, had declared religion\nto be the mother of sin. By that time Fear and Pallor had struck\nterror into the very marrow of barbarian bones. Fright was a god more\nserviceable than Zeus. With him Rome conquered the world. Yet in the\nconquest Fright became Might and the latter an effulgence of Jove's.\n\nJove was magnificent. In the Capitol he throned so augustly that we\nswear by him still. Like Rome he is immortal. But Pavor, that had\nfaded into him, was never invoked. The reason was not sacerdotal, it\nwas political. Rome never imposed her gods on the quelled. With\nsuperior tact she lured their gods from them. At any siege, that was\nher first device. To it she believed her victories were due. It was to\navoid possible reprisals and to remain invincible, that her own\nnational divinity she so carefully concealed that the name still is a\nsecret. With the gods, Rome gathered the creeds of the world, set them\nlike fountains among her hills, and drank of their sacred waters. Her\nearly deity is unknown. But the secret of her eternity is in the\nreligions that she absorbed. It was these that made her immortal.\n\nTo that immortality the obscure god of an obscure people contributed\nlargely, perhaps, but perhaps, too, not uniquely. Jahveh might have\nremained unperceived behind the veil of the sanctuary had not his\naltar been illuminated by lights from other shrines. In the early days\nof the empire, Rome was fully aware of the glamour of Amon, of the\nstar of Ormuzd, Brahm's cerulean lotos and the rainbow heights of\nBel-Marduk. But in the splendour of Jove all these were opaque.\n\nJupiter, always imposing, was grandiose then. His thoughts were vast\nas the sky. In a direct revelation to Vergil he said of his chosen\npeople: \"I have set no limits to their conquest or its duration. The\nempire I have given them shall be without end.\"[41] Hebrew prophets had\nspoken similarly. Vergil must have been more truly inspired. The Roman\nempire, nominally holy, figuratively still exists. Yet fulfilment of\nthe prophecy is due perhaps less to the God of the Gentiles than to\nthe God of the Jews. Though perhaps also it may be permissible to\ndiscern in the latter a transfiguration of Jove, who originally Zeus,\nand primarily not Hellenic but Hindu, ultimately became supreme. After\nthe terrific struggle which resulted in that final metamorphosis,\nJerusalem, disinherited, saw Rome the spiritual capital of the globe.\n\n[Footnote 41: AEneid i. 278.]\n\nJerusalem was not a home of logic. Rome was the city of law. That law,\ncold, inflexible, passionless as a sword and quite as effective, Rome\nbrandished at philosophy. It is said that the intellectual gymnastics\nof Greece were displeasing to her traditions. It is more probable that\naugurs had foreseen or oracles had foretold that philosophy would\ndivest her of the sword, and with it of her sceptre and her might.\nIdeas cannot be decapitated. Only ridicule can demolish them.\nPhilosophy, mistress of irony, resisted while nations fell. It was\nphilosophy that first undermined established creeds and then led to\nthe pursuit of new ones. Yet it may be that a contributing cause was a\ncurious theory that the world was to end. Foretold in the _Brahmanas_,\nin the _Avesta_ and in the _Eddas_, probably it was in the _Sibylline\nBooks_. If not, the subsequent Church may have so assumed.\n\n  Dies irae, dies illa,\n  Solvet saeclum in favilla,\n  Teste David cum Sibylla.\n\nNot alone David and the Sibyl but Etruscan seers had seen in the skies\nthat the tenth and last astronomical cycle had begun.[42] Plutarch, in\nhis life of Sylla, testified to the general belief in an approaching\ncataclysm. Lucretius announced that at any moment it might occur.[43]\nThat was in the latter days of the republic. In the early days of the\nempire the theory persisting may have induced the hope of a saviour.\nSuetonius said that nature in her parturitions was elaborating a\nking.[44] Afterward he added that such was Asia's archaic belief.[45]\nRecent discoveries have verified the assertion. In the Akkadian Epic\nof Dibbara a messiah was foretold.[46] That epic, anterior to a cognate\nEgyptian prophecy,[47] anterior also to the _Sibylline Books_, was\nanterior too to the Hebrew prophets and necessarily to those of Rome.\n\n[Footnote 42: Censorinus: De die nat. 17.]\n\n[Footnote 43: De rerum nat., v. 105.]\n\n[Footnote 44: In Augusto, 74.]\n\n[Footnote 45: In Vesp. 4.]\n\n[Footnote 46: Jastrow: _op. cit._]\n\n[Footnote 47: See back, Chapter III.]\n\nAmong these was Vergil. In the fourth Eclogue he beheld an age of\ngold, preceded by the advent on earth of a son of Jove, under whose\nauspices the last traces of sin and sorrow were to disappear and a new\nrace descend from heaven. \"The serpent shall die,\" he declared,\nadding: \"The time is at hand.\"\n\nThe Eclogue was written 40 B.C., during the consulate of Pallio, whom\nthe poet wished perhaps to flatter. Then presently Ovid sang the\ndeathless soul and Tibullus gave rendezvous hereafter. The atmosphere\ndripped with wonders. The air became charged with the miraculous. At\nstated intervals the doors of temples opened of themselves. Statues\nperspired visibly. There was a book that explained the mechanism of\nthese marvels. It interested nobody. Prodigies were matters of course.\n\nThe people had a heaven, also a hell, both of them Greek, a purgatory\nthat may have been Asiatic, and, pending the advent of the son of\nJove, in Mithra they could have had a redeemer. Had it been desired,\nBuddhism could have supplied gospels, India the trinity, Persia the\nresurrection, Egypt the life. From Iran could have been obtained an\nIntelligence, sovereign, unimaged, and just. That was unnecessary.\nLong since Socrates had displayed it. In addition, Epicurus had told\nof an ascension of heavens, skies beyond the sky, worlds without\nnumber, the many mansions of a later faith.\n\nMeanwhile, austerity was an appanage of the stoics, in whose faultless\ncode the dominant note was contempt for whatever is base, respect for\nall that is noble. A doctrine of great beauty, purely Greek, as was\neverything else in Rome that was beautiful, its heights were too lofty\nfor the vulgar. It appealed only to the lettered, that is to the few,\nto the infrequent disciples of Zeno and of Cicero, his prophet, who,\nErasmus said, was inspired by God.\n\nIt may be that Cicero inspired a few of God's preachers. The latter\nwere not yet in Rome. Christ had not come. At that period, unique in\nhistory, man alone existed. The temples were thronged, but the skies\nwere bare. Cicero knew that. Elysium and Hades were as chimerical to\nhim as the Epicurean heavens. \"People,\" he said, \"talk of these places\nas though they had been there.\" But that which was superstition to him\nhe regarded as beneficial for others, who had to have something and\nwho got it, in temples where a sin was a prayer.\n\nThere was once a play of which there has survived but the title: _The\nLast Will and Testament of Defunct Jupiter._ It appeared in the days\nof Diocletian, but it might have appealed when Cicero taught. Faith\nthen had fainted. Fright had ceased to build. Worship remained, but\nreligion had gone. The gods themselves were departing. The epoch\nitself was apoplectic. The tramp of legions was continuous. Not alone\nthe skies but the world was in a ferment. It was not until a diadem,\nfalling from Cleopatra's golden bed, rolled to the feet of Augustus,\nthat the gods were stayed and faith revived.\n\nIn the interim, prisoners had been deported from Judea. At first they\nwere slaves. Subsequently manumitted, they formed a colony that in the\nhigh-viced city resembled Esther in the seraglio of Ahasuerus. Rome,\namateur of cults, always curious of foreign faiths, might have been\ninterested in Judaism. It had many analogies with local beliefs. Its\nadherents awaited, as Rome did, a messiah. They awaited too a golden\nage. For those who were weary of philosophy, they had a religion in\nwhich there was none. For those to whom the marvellous appealed, they\nhad a history in which miracles were a string of pearls. For those who\nwere sceptic concerning the post-mortem, they offered blankness. In\naddition, their god, the enemy of all others, was adapted to an empire\nthat recognized no sovereignty but its own. Readily might Rome have\nbecome Hebrew. But then, with equal ease, she might have become\nEgyptian.\n\nFor those who were perhaps afraid of going to hell and yet may have\nbeen equally afraid of not going anywhere, Egypt held passports to a\nland of light. Then too, the gods of Egypt were friendly and\naccessible. They mingled familiarly with those of Rome, complaisantly\nwith the deified Caesars, as already they had with the pharaohs, a\ncondescension, parenthetically, that did not protect them from\nTiberius, who, for reasons with which religion had nothing whatever to\ndo, persecuted the Egyptians, as he persecuted also the Jews. None the\nless, Rome, weary of local fictions, might have become converted to\nforeign ideas. In default of Syrian or Copt, she might have become\nPersian as already she was Greek.\n\nAugustus had other views. Divinities, made not merely after the image\nof man but in symbols of sin, he saluted. With a hand usually small,\nbut in this instance tolerably large, he re-established them on their\npedestals. A relapse to spiritual infancy resulted. It was what he\nsought. He wanted to be a god himself and he became one. His power\nand, after him, that of his successors, had no earthly limit, no\nrestraint human or divine. It was the same omnipotence here that\nelsewhere Jupiter wielded.\n\nJupiter had flamens who told him the time of day. He had others that\nread to him. For his amusement there were mimes. For his delectation,\nmatrons established themselves in the Capitol and affected to be his\nloves. But then he was superb. Made of ivory, painted vermillion,\nseated colossally on a colossal throne, a sceptre in one hand, a\nthunderbolt in the other, a radiating gold crown on his august head,\nand, about his limbs, a shawl of Tyrian purple, he looked every inch\nthe god.\n\nThe Caesars, if less imposing, were more potent. Their hands, in which\nthere was nothing symbolic, held life and death, absolute dominion\nover everything, over every one. Jupiter was but a statue. They alone\nwere real, alone divine. To them incense ascended. At their feet\nlibations poured. The nectar fumes confused. Rome, mad as they, built\nthem temples, raised them shrines, creating for them a worship that\nthey accepted, as only their due perhaps, but in which their reason\nfled. In accounts of the epoch there is much mention of citizens,\nsenators, patricians. Nominally there were such people. Actually there\nwere but slaves. The slaves had a succession of masters. Among them\nwas a lunatic, Caligula, and an imbecile, Claud. There were others.\nThere was Terror, there was Hatred, there was Crime. These last,\nthough several, were yet but one. Collectively, they were Nero.\n\nIf philosophy ever were needed it was in his monstrous day. To anyone,\nat any moment, there might be brought the laconic message: Die. In\nrepublican Rome, philosophy separated man from sin. At that period it\nwas perhaps a luxury. In the imperial epoch it was a necessity. It\nseparated man from life. The philosophy of the republic Cicero\nexpounded. That of the empire Seneca produced.\n\nThe neo-stoicism of the latter sustained the weak, consoled the just.\nIt was a support and a guide. It preached poverty. It condemned\nwealth. It deprecated honours and pleasure. It inculcated chastity,\nhumility, and resignation. It detached man from earth. It inspired, or\nattempted to inspire, a desire for the ideal which it represented as\nthe goal of the sage, who, true child of God,[48] prepared for any\ntorture, even for the cross,[49] yet, essentially meek,[50] sorrowed for\nmankind,[51] happy if he might die for it.[52]\n\n[Footnote 48: De Provid. i.]\n\n[Footnote 49: _Cf._ Lactantius vi. 17.]\n\n[Footnote 50: Epit. cxx. 13.]\n\n[Footnote 51: Lucanus ii. 378.]\n\n[Footnote 52: Ibidem.]\n\nIn iambics that caressed the ear like flutes, poets had told of\nJupiter clothed in purple and glory. They had told of his celestial\namours, of his human and of his inhuman vices. Seneca believed in\nJupiter. But not in the Jove of the poets. That god dwelled in ivory\nand anapests. Seneca's deity, nowhere visible, was everywhere\npresent.[53] Creator of heaven and earth,[54] without whom there is\nnothing,[55] from whom nothing is hidden,[56] and to whom all\nbelongs,[57] our Father,[58] whose will shall be done.[59]\n\n[Footnote 53: Nemo novit Deum. Epit. xxxi. Ubique Deus. Epit. xli.]\n\n[Footnote 54: Mundum hujus operis dominum et artificem. Quaest. nat. i.]\n\n[Footnote 55: Sine quo nihil est. Quaest. nat. vii. 31.]\n\n[Footnote 56: Nil Deo Clausam. Ep. lxxxx.]\n\n[Footnote 57: Omnia habentem. Ep. xcv.]\n\n[Footnote 58: Parens noster. Ep. cx.]\n\n[Footnote 59: Placeat homini quidquid Deo placuit. Ep. lxxv.]\n\n\"Life,\" said Seneca, \"is a tribulation, death a release. In order not\nto fear death,\" he added, \"think of it always. The day on which it\ncomes judges all others.\"[60] Meanwhile comfort those that sorrow.[61]\nShare your bread with them that hunger.[62] Wherever there is a human\nbeing there is place for a good deed.[63] Sin is an ulcer. Deliverance\nfrom it is the beginning of health--salvation, _salutem_.\"[64]\n\n[Footnote 60: Ep. xxvi. 4.]\n\n[Footnote 61: De Clem. ii. 6.]\n\n[Footnote 62: Ep. xcv. 51.]\n\n[Footnote 63: De Vita Beata, 14.]\n\n[Footnote 64: Ep. xxviii. 9.]\n\nWords such as these suggest others. They are anterior to those which\nthey recall. The latter are more beautiful, they are more ample, there\nis in them a poetry and a profundity that has rarely been excelled.\nYet, it may be, that a germ of them is in Seneca, or, more exactly, in\ntheories which, beginning in India, prophets, seers, and stoics\nvariously interpreted and recalled.\n\nHowever since they have charmed the world, their effect on Nero was\ncurious. Seneca was his preceptor. But so too was Art. The lessons of\nthese teachers, fusing in the demented mind of the monster, produced\ntranscendental depravity, the apogee of the abnormal and the\nepileptically obscene. What is more important, they produced\nChristianity.\n\nChristianity already existed in Rome, but obscurely, subterraneanly,\namong a class of poor people generally detested, particularly by the\nJews. Christianity was not as yet a religion, it was but the belief of\na sect that announced that the world was to be consumed. Presently\nRome was. The conflagration, which was due to Nero, swept everything\nsacred away.\n\nEven for a prince that, perhaps, was excessive. Nero may have felt\nthat he had gone too far. An emperor was omnipotent, he was not\ninviolable. Tiberius was suffocated, Caligula was stabbed, Claud was\npoisoned. Nero, it may be, in feeling that he had gone too far, felt\nalso that he needed a scapegoat. Christian pyromania suggested itself.\nBut probably it suggested itself first to the Jews, who, Renan has\nintimated, denounced the Christians accordingly. Such may have been\nthe case. In any event, then it was that Christianity received its\nbaptism of blood.\n\nAll antiquity was cruel, but, barring perhaps the immense Asiatic\nbutcheries, Nero contrived then to surpass anything that had been\ndone. Bloated and hideous, his hair done up in a chignon, a concave\nemerald for monocle, in the crowded arena he assisted at the rape of\nChristian girls. Their lovers, their brothers and fathers were either\neaten alive by beasts or, that night, dressed in tunics that had been\nsoaked in oil, were fastened to posts and set on fire, in order that,\nas human torches, they might illuminate palace gardens, through which,\ncostumed as a jockey, Nero raced.\n\nThe spectacle in the amphitheatre, which fifty thousand people beheld;\nthe succeeding festival at which all Rome assembled, were two acts in\nthe birthday of a faith.\n\nThen, to the cradle, presently, Wise Men came with gifts--the gold,\nthe frankincense, the myrrh, of creeds anterior though less divine.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE NEC PLUS ULTRA\n\n\nIt was after fastidious rites, the heart entirely devout and on his\nknees, that Angelico di Fiesole drew a picture of the Christ. The\nattitude is emulative. It is with brushes dipped in holy water that\nJesus should be displayed, though more reverent still is the absence\nof any delineation.\n\nReverence of that high character history formerly observed. There is\nno mention of the Saviour in the chronicles of those who were blessed\nin being his contemporaries. One indiscreet remark of Josephus has\nbeen recognized as the interpolation of a later hand, well-intentioned\nperhaps, but misguided. Jesus glows in the Gospels. Yet they that\nawaited the day when, in a great aurora borealis, the Son of man\nshould appear, had passed from earth before one of the evangels was\nwritten.\n\nIt was a hundred years later before the texts that comprise the New\nTestament were complete. It was nearly two hundred before they were\ndefinitive. In the interim many gospels appeared. Attributed\nindifferently to each of the Twelve, one was ascribed to Judas. There\nwas a Gospel to the Hebrews, a Gospel to the Egyptians. There were\nevangels of Childhood, of Perfection and of Mary.\n\nThese primitive memoirs were based on oral accounts of occurrences\nlong anterior. Into them entered extraneous beauties, felicities of\nphrase and detail, which, with naif effrontery, were put into the\nmouth of one apostle or another, even into that of Jesus. The\nascription was regarded as highly commendable. It was but a way of\nglorifying the Lord. Besides, the scenarii of these pious evocations\nthe prophets had traced in advance.\n\n\"Rejoice, daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Jerusalem, behold thy\nKing cometh unto thee; he is just and having salvation, lowly and\nriding upon an ass.\"\n\nThat king of the poor whom Zachariah had foreseen, the stumbling block\nof Israel that Isaiah had foretold, the Son, mentioned by Hosea, whom\nJahveh had called out of Egypt, was the Saviour, ascending in glory as\nElijah had done. A passage incorrectly rendered by the Septuagint\nindicated a virginal birth. That also was suggestive.\n\nThe little biographies in which these developments appeared were\nintended for circulation only among an author's narrow circle of\nimmediate friends, at most to be read aloud in devout reunions. If,\nultimately, of the entire collection, four only were retained, it is\nprobably because these best expressed existing convictions. Though,\nirrespective of their beauties, Irenaeus said that there had to be four\nand could be but four, for the reason that there are four seasons,\nfour winds, four corners of the earth, and the four revelations of\nAdam, Noah, Moses, and Jesus.\n\nIt is not on that perhaps arbitrary deduction that their validity\nresides, but rather because the parables and miracles which they\nrecite became the spiritual nourishment of a world. To their title of\neternal verities they have other and stronger claims. They have\nconsoled and they have ennobled. Elder creeds may have done likewise,\nbut these lacked that of which Christianity was the unique possessor,\nthe marvel of a crucified god.\n\nSaviours there had been. Mithra was a redeemer. Zoroaster was born of\na virgin. Persephone descended into hell. Osiris rose from the dead.\nGotama was tempted by the devil. Moses was transfigured. Elijah\nascended into heaven. But in no belief is there a parallel for the\ncrucifixion, although in Hindu legend, Krishna, a divinity whose\nmythical infancy a mythical prototype of Herod troubled, died, nailed\nby arrows to a tree.\n\nIn Oriental lore Krishna is held to have been the eighth avatar of\nVishnu, of whom Gotama was the ninth. Krishna was therefore anterior\nto the Buddha, at least in myth. But it would be a grave impropriety\nto infer that with the legend concerning him the narrative of the\ncrucifixion has any other connection than the possible one of having\nsuggested it. The _Bhagavad-Purana_, in which the legend occurs, is\nrelatively modern, though the legend itself may, like the _Tripitaka_,\nhave existed orally, for centuries, before it was finally committed to\nwriting.\n\nThere can, however, be no impropriety in recalling analogies that\nexist between the Saviour and one whom the Orient holds also divine.\nThese analogies, set forth in the first chapter of the present volume,\nare, it may be, wholly fortuitous, though Pliny stated that, centuries\nbefore his day, disciples of Gotama were established on the Dead Sea\nand, from a passage in Josephus, it seems probable that the Essenes\nwere Buddhists, in the same degree perhaps that the Pharisees were\nParsis. But the point is also obscure. It is immaterial as well. The\nGospels were not written in Jerusalem but mainly in Rome, where\ncrucifixions were common, as they were, for that matter, throughout\nthe East, but where, too, all religions were acclimated and the\nsupernatural was at home.\n\nRome had witnessed the _tours de force_ of Apollonios of Tyana. Those\nof Simon the Magician had also been beheld. Rome had seen, or, it may\nbe, thought she believed she had seen, Vespasian cure the halt and the\nblind with a touch. The atmosphere then was charged with the\nmarvellous. The temples were filled with prodigies, with strange gods,\nbeckoning chimeras, credulous crowds.\n\nThere was something superior. Rome was the depository of the legends\nand lore of the world. A haunt of the Muses, the sensual city was a\nhermitage of philosophy as well. These things collectively represented\na great literary feast, of which not all the courses have descended to\nus, though, as is not impossible, a lost dish or two, transmuted, by\nthe alchemy of faith, from dross into gold, the Gospels may perhaps\ncontain.\n\nIn that case there is cause for great thankfulness. Moreover, assuming\nthe transmutation, no impiety can be implied. It was as usual and as\nindicated as were papyrus and the stylus. It is common to-day for a\npoet, before spreading his own wings, to contemplate those of another.\nInspiration is infectious.\n\nA page of verse, whether Hindu, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, or Latin,\nwas as useful then. Dante fed on the troubadours. They are lost and\nforgot. He divinely stands greater than the tallest of them all. In a\nmeasure the same may be true of those from whom the Gospels came. Yet\nwith a very notable difference. The _Divina Commedia_ was written for\nall time. So too were the Gospels. But not intentionally. They were\nwritten to prepare man for the immediate termination of the world.\nWith the most perfect propriety, therefore, anything serviceable could\nhave been utilized and probably was. The devout had but to lift their\neyes. In the words of Isaiah, there, before them, were the treasures\nof nations; there were the camels and dromedaries bearing from every\nside incense and gold; there were the sons of strangers to build up\ntheir walls.\n\nThe sons were many, the treasures as great. Even otherwise there was\nthe Law, there too were the Prophets. Moses fasted for forty days.\nElisha performed a miracle of the loaves, if he did not that of the\nfishes. Job saw the Lord walking upon the sea. Jeremiah said: \"Seek\nand ye shall find.\" Isaiah bid those that sorrowed come and be\nconsoled. In the poem of that poet the servant of the Lord had vinegar\nwhen he thirsted, he was spat upon and for his garments lots were\ncast.\n\nIn an effort to fill in a picture of which the central figure had\npassed from the real to the ideal, these things may have been\nsuggestive. So also, perhaps, was the _Talmud_. The redaction of that\nchaos began in the second century. But the Vedas, the Homeric poems,\nthe Tripitaka as well, existed in memory long before they were\ncommitted to writing. The same is true of the _Talmud_. Orally it\nexisted prior to the Christ. Considered as literature, if it may be so\nconsidered, it is the reverse of endearing. But of the many maxims\nthat it contains there are some of singular charm. Among others is the\nLay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.[65] The origin of that,\nas already indicated, is traceable to the _Tripitaka_, which,\nparenthetically, were so well known in Babylon that Gotama was there\nregarded as a Chaldean seer. That abridgement of the Law which is\ncalled the Golden Rule is also in the _Talmud_,[66] as also, before the\n_Talmud_ was, it was in the _Tripitaka_. The injunction to love one's\nenemies is equally in both. So is the very excellent suggestion that\none should consider one's own faults before admonishing a brother\nconcerning his defects. But the perhaps subtle intimation that the\ndesire to commit adultery is as reprehensible as the act, and the\nrather extravagant statement that it is easier for a camel to pass\nthrough the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom\nof heaven, these, originally, were perhaps uniquely Talmudic.\nCurrently cited with multiple others they were all so many common\nsayings, which, strung together in the Gospels, became a rosary of\nmost perfect pearls.\n\n[Footnote 65: Talmud Babli: Baba bathra, 11 _a_.]\n\n[Footnote 66: Schabbath, 37 _a_.]\n\nIn a passage of Irenaeus it is stated that the _Gospel according to St.\nMatthew_ was arranged by the Church for the benefit of the Jews who\nawaited a Messiah descended from David. A Syro-Chaldaic evangel, known\nas the _Gospel to the Hebrews_, had then appeared. So also had the\n_Gospel according to St. Mark_. But these offered no evidence that\nJesus was the one they sought. Another was then prepared. Written in\nGreek and bearing the authoritative name of Matthew, it traced from\nDavid, Joseph's descent.\n\nThe narrative continued: \"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this\nwise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came\ntogether, she was found with child by the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her\nhusband being a just man and not willing to make her a publick\nexample, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on\nthese things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a\ndream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee\nMary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy\nGhost.\"\n\nThe genealogy completed, though perhaps inadequately, since Jesus, not\nbeing a son of Joseph, could not have descended from David, the Church\ncontinued: \"Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was\nspoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Behold a virgin shall be\nwith child and shall bring forth a son and call his name Emmanuel.\"\n\nThe prophecy mentioned occurs in Isaiah vii, 14. In the King James\nversion it is as follows: \"Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a\nson and shall call his name Immanuel.\" But the Aramaic reading is:\n\"Behold an _'alma_ shall conceive.\" _'Alma_ means young woman. The\nSeptuagint, in translating it, employed the term [Greek: parthenos],\nor maiden. In _Matthew_ the term was retained.\n\nMatthew, at the time, had long been dead. Even had he been living it\nis improbable that he could write in Greek. Unfortunately there were\nothers who could not only write Greek but read Hebrew. In particular,\nthere was a rabbi Aquila who retranslated Isaiah with no other purpose\nthan the malign object of definitely re-establishing the exact\nexpression which the old poet had used.[67]\n\n[Footnote 67: Renan: Les Evangiles.]\n\nIt was presumably in these circumstances that the _Evangel of Mary_\nwas advanced. Among other elucidations, the work contained\nprofessional testimony of the immaculacy that was claimed.\nAdditionally, in reparation of the earlier oversight, the Virgin was\ngenealogically descended from the royal line.\n\nThat, however, is apocryphal, and if, regarding the other genealogy,\nexegesis has since obscured the luminousness of the method adapted by\nthe Church, the latter's intention was none the less irreproachable,\nand that alone imports. Before it, before the miracle of the nativity\nand the divine episodes of the transfiguration, crucifixion,\nresurrection, and ascension, reverently the Occident has knelt. They\nare indeed divine. If they did not occur in Judea, they have occurred\never since. Continuously, in the hearts of the devout, they are\nrepeated.\n\nUnhappily there were heretics then as now. To the Gnostics, Jesus was\nan aeon that had never been. To the Docetists, he was a phantasm. There\nare always brutes that can believe but in the reality of things. There\nare others to whom the symbolic is dumb. In the Gospels there is much\nthat is figurative, there is more that is ineffable, there are\nsuggestions sheerly ideal.\n\n\"In my Father's house are many mansions,\" the Saviour declared. In his\nown ministry there are as many lights. He was a vagrant and he created\npure sentiment. He was a nihilist and he inspired a new conception of\nlife. He said he had not come to destroy and he changed the face of\nthe earth. He remitted the sins of a harlot and condemned both\nmarriage and love. There are other antitheses, deeper contradictions.\nThese perhaps are more apparent than real. Behind them there may have\nbeen the co-ordination of a central thought. Of many gospels but few\nremain. Among the lost evangels was one that Valentinian said was\nimparted only to the more spiritual of the disciples. It may be that\nin it a main idea was elucidated and, perhaps, as a consequence, the\nmeaning of the esoteric proclamation: \"Before Abraham was I am.\"\n\nYet though now the authoritative explanation be lacking, its\nsignificance seems to run beneath the texts. At the first apparition\nof Jesus, the chief preoccupation of those that stood about was what\nprophet of the old days had returned in the new. Some thought him\nElijah. Others Jeremiah. Antipas feared that he was the Baptist\nrevived. Jesus himself asked the disciples whom he was said to be.\nLater he assured them that the awaited return of Elijah had been\naccomplished in John. That assurance, together with the perplexities\nregarding him and the esoteric announcement which he made concerning\nhimself, can hardly indicate anything else than a belief in\nreincarnation.\n\nThe belief, common to all antiquity, though not necessarily valid on\nthat account, is not discernible in Hebrew thought, perhaps for the\nreason that it is not perceptible in Babylonian. Yet the myth of Eden\nbarely conceals it. It is almost obvious in the allegory of Beth-el.\nSolomon said: \"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or\never earth was.\" If the idea contained in that statement was not a\npart of the philosophy attributed to the Christ, it might have been.\nThe amount of beauty stored in it is more enormous than in any other.\n\nTo the materialist the beauty is meaningless. To the mathematician it\nhas the value of a zero from which the periphery has gone. But at the\nPillars of Hercules early geographers put on their maps: _Hic deficit\norbis_--Here ends the world. They had no suspicion that beyond that\nworld there stretched another twice as great. Materialists may be\nequally naif. On the other hand, they may not be. The theory of\nreincarnation is one that transcends the limits of experience.\n\nOf the many tenets of the belief there are but two with which the\nmatter-of-fact agrees. One of them concerns the conservation of\nenergy, the other the negation of death. Theory and practice unite in\nadmitting that the supply of energy is invariable. Constantly it is\ntransformed and as constantly transposed, but whether it enter into\nfungus or star, into worm or man, the loss of a particle never occurs.\nDeath consequently is but the constituent of a change. When it comes,\nthat which was living assumes a state that has in it the potentiality\nof another form. A tenement has crumbled and a tenant gone forth.\nThough just where is the riddle.\n\nIn the thousand and one nights that were less astronomic than our own,\nit was thought that the riddle was answered. Poets had erected an\nedifice of verse and called it Creation. In the strophes of the epic\nthe earth was a flat and stationary parallelogram. About the earth,\nand uniquely for its benefit, sun, moon and stars paraded. Above was a\ndeity one or multiple. Below were places of vivid discomfort. To the\nlatter, or to the former, the soul of man proceeded. There were no\nother resorts. Creation had its limits.\n\nPoets younger yet more gray have presented a different conception. In\nthe glare of a million million of suns they have sent the earth\nspinning like a midge. Beyond the uttermost horizon they have strewn\nother systems, other worlds; beyond the latter, more. Wherever\nimagination in its weariness would set a limit, there is space begun.\n\nThere too is energy. Throughout the stretch of universes the same\nforce pulsates that is recognizable here. A deduction is obvious.\nThroughout infinity are sentient beings, perhaps our brothers, perhaps\nourselves.\n\nThe obvious, very frequently, is misleading. But the dream of\nprecipitation into that wonderful tornado of worlds has the merit of\nmore colourful idealism than that which was formerly displayed. Taken\nbut as an hypothesis, it holds suggestions ampler than any other\nconveys. It intimates that just as the butterfly rises from the\nchrysalis, so does the spiritual rise from the flesh. It indicates\nthat just as the sun cannot set, so is it impossible for death to be.\n\nThere are topics about which words hover like enchanted bees. Death is\none of them. Mediaevally it was represented by a skeleton to which\nprose had given a rictus, poetry a scythe, and philosophy wings. From\nits eyries it swooped spectral and sinister. Previously it was more\ngracious. In Greece it resembled Eros. Among its attributes was\nbeauty. It did not alarm. It beckoned and consoled. The child of\nNight, the brother of Sleep, it was less funereal than narcotic. The\ntheory of it generally was beneficent. But not enduring. In the change\nof things death lost its charm. It became a sexless nightmare-frame of\nbones topped by a grinning skull. That perhaps was excessive. In\nepicurean Rome it was a marionette that invited you to wreathe\nyourself with roses before they could fade. In the Muslim East it was\nrepresented by Azrael, who was an angel. In Vedic India it was\nrepresented by Yama, who was a god. But mediaevally in Europe the\nskeleton was preferred. Since then it has changed again. It is no\nlonger a spectral vampire. It has acquired the serenity of a natural\nlaw. Regarding the operation of that law there are perhaps but three\nvalid conjectures. Rome entertained all of them. There, there was a\ntomb on which was written _Umbra_. Before it was another on which was\nengraved _Nihil_. Between the two was a portal behind which the _Nec\nplus ultra_ stood revealed.\n\nThe portal, fashioned by the philosophy of ages, still is open, wider\nthan before, on vaster horizons and unsuspected skies. Through it one\nmay see the explication of things; the reason why men are not born\nequal, why some are rich and some are poor, why some are weak and some\nare strong, why some are wise and many are not. One may see there too\nthe reason of joys and sorrows, the cause of tears and smiles. One may\nsee also how the soul changes its raiment and how it happens to have a\nraiment to change. One may see all these things, and others besides,\nin the revelation that this life, being the refuse of many deaths, has\nacquired merits and demerits in accordance with which are present\npunishments and rewards.\n\nIn proportion as these are utilized or disregarded, so perhaps is\nretrogression induced or progress achieved. But not in Hades or yet in\nElysium. These were the inventions of man for his brother. So also was\nthe very neighbourly heaven which the early Church devised. But\nbecause that has gone from the sidereal chart, it does not follow that\nthere is no such place. Because there is nothing alarming under the\nearth, it does not follow that hell has ceased to be. On the contrary.\nBoth are constant, though it be but in the heart.\n\nIn the light of reincarnation it is probable that neither can occur\nthere without anterior cause. But probably too it is the preponderance\nof either that creates the mystery of life, as it may also foreshadow\nthe portent of death.\n\nDeath, it may be, is not merely a law but a place, perhaps a garage\nwhich the traveller reaches on a demolished motor, but whence none can\nproceed until all old scores are paid. Pending payment, there, perhaps\nthe soul must wait. But the bill of its past acquitted, it may be that\nthen it shall be free to pursue on trillions of spheres the\ndiversified course of endless life--free to pass from world to world,\nfrom beatitude to bliss, from transformation to transfiguration, from\nthe transitory to the eternal; weaving, meanwhile, a garland of\nmigrations that stretch from sky to sky, marrying its memoirs with\nthose of the universe, and, finally, from some ultimate zenith,\nreviewing, as it casts them aside, the masks of concluded\nincarnations.\n\nThe prospect, overwhelming in beauty, is really divine. The divine is\nalways utopian. But there is the supreme Alhambra of dream. It exceeds\nany other, however excessive another may be. It is the _Nec plus\nultra_. Into it all may wander and never weary of the wonders that are\nthere. It may be unrealizable, but for that very reason it must be\nalso ideal.\n\n\nFINIS HISTORIAE DEORUM","title":"The Lords of the Ghostland: A History of the Ideal","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":27761}