{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_6036/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_6036","id":"gutenberg_6036","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6036","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","English poetry -- 19th century"],"text":"This eBook was prepared by Robert Sinton from a source supplied by the\nSacred Texts Web site, http://www.sacred-texts.com, thanks to John B. Hare.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE KAS\u00ceDAH OF H\u00c2J\u00ce ABD\u00db EL-YEZD\u00ce\n\nTRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY HS FRIEND AND PUPIL, F.B.\n\n\n\nTO THE READER\n\n\nThe Translator has ventured to entitle a \u0093Lay of the Higher Law\u0094\nthe following composition, which aims at being in advance of its\ntime; and he has not feared the danger of collision with such\nunpleasant forms as the \u0093Higher Culture.\u0094 The principles which\njustify the name are as follows:\u0097\n\nThe Author asserts that Happiness and Misery are equally divided\nand distributed in the world.\n\nHe makes Self-cultivation, with due regard to others, the sole\nand sufficient object of human life.\n\nHe suggests that the affections, the sympathies, and the \u0093divine\ngift of Pity\u0094 are man\u0092s highest enjoyments.\n\nHe advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper suspicion of\n\u0093Facts, the idlest of superstitions.\u0094\n\nFinally, although destructive to appearance, he is essentially\nreconstructive.\n\nFor other details concerning the Poem and the Poet, the curious\nreader is referred to the end of the volume.\n\nF. B.\n\nVienna, Nov., 1880.\n\n\n\nTHE KAS\u00ceDAH\n\n\nI\n\n\nThe hour is nigh; the waning Queen\n   walks forth to rule the later night;\nCrown\u0092d with the sparkle of a Star,\n   and throned on orb of ashen light:\n\nThe Wolf-tail* sweeps the paling East\n   to leave a deeper gloom behind,\nAnd Dawn uprears her shining head,\n   sighing with semblance of a wind:\n\n   * The false dawn.\n\nThe highlands catch yon Orient gleam,\n   while purpling still the lowlands lie;\nAnd pearly mists, the morning-pride,\n   soar incense-like to greet the sky.\n\nThe horses neigh, the camels groan,\n   the torches gleam, the cressets flare;\nThe town of canvas falls, and man\n   with din and dint invadeth air:\n\nThe Golden Gates swing right and left;\n   up springs the Sun with flamy brow;\nThe dew-cloud melts in gush of light;\n   brown Earth is bathed in morning-glow.\n\nSlowly they wind athwart the wild,\n   and while young Day his anthem swells,\nSad falls upon my yearning ear\n   the tinkling of the Camel-bells:\n\nO\u0092er fiery wastes and frozen wold,\n   o\u0092er horrid hill and gloomy glen,\nThe home of grisly beast and Ghoul,*\n   the haunts of wilder, grislier men;\u0097\n\n   * The Demon of the Desert.\n\nWith the brief gladness of the Palms,\n   that tower and sway o\u0092er seething plain,\nFraught with the thoughts of rustling shade,\n   and welling spring, and rushing rain;\n\nWith the short solace of the ridge,\n   by gentle zephyrs played upon,\nWhose breezy head and bosky side\n   front seas of cooly celadon;\u0097\n\n\u0092Tis theirs to pass with joy and hope,\n   whose souls shall ever thrill and fill\nDreams of the Birthplace and the Tomb,\n   visions of Allah\u0092s Holy Hill.*\n\n   * Araf\u00e2t, near Mecca.\n\nBut we? Another shift of scene,\n   another pang to rack the heart;\nWhy meet we on the bridge of Time\n   to \u0092change one greeting and to part?\n\nWe meet to part; yet asks my sprite,\n   Part we to meet? Ah! is it so?\nMan\u0092s fancy-made Omniscience knows,\n   who made Omniscience nought can know.\n\nWhy must we meet, why must we part,\n   why must we bear this yoke of MUST,\nWithout our leave or askt or given,\n   by tyrant Fate on victim thrust?\n\nThat Eve so gay, so bright, so glad,\n   this Morn so dim, and sad, and grey;\nStrange that life\u0092s Registrar should write\n   this day a day, that day a day!\n\nMine eyes, my brain, my heart, are sad,\u0097\n   sad is the very core of me;\nAll wearies, changes, passes, ends;\n   alas! the Birthday\u0092s injury!\n\nFriends of my youth, a last adieu!\n   haply some day we meet again;\nYet ne\u0092er the self-same men shall meet;\n   the years shall make us other men:\n\nThe light of morn has grown to noon,\n   has paled with eve, and now farewell!\nGo, vanish from my Life as dies\n   the tinkling of the Camel\u0092s bell.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nIn these drear wastes of sea-born land,\n   these wilds where none may dwell but He,\nWhat visionary Pasts revive,\n   what process of the Years we see:\n\nGazing beyond the thin blue line\n   that rims the far horizon-ring,\nOur sadden\u0092d sight why haunt these ghosts,\n   whence do these spectral shadows spring?\n\nWhat endless questions vex the thought,\n   of Whence and Whither, When and How?\nWhat fond and foolish strife to read\n   the Scripture writ on human brow;\n\nAs stand we percht on point of Time,\n   betwixt the two Eternities,\nWhose awful secrets gathering round\n   with black profound oppress our eyes.\n\n\u0093This gloomy night, these grisly waves,\n   these winds and whirlpools loud and dread:\nWhat reck they of our wretched plight\n   who Safety\u0092s shore so lightly tread?\u0094\n\nThus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,*\n   whose dream of Heaven ne\u0092er could rise\nBeyond the brimming Kausar-cup\n   and Houris with the white-black eyes;\n\n   * H\u00e2fiz of Shir\u00e2z.\n\nAh me! my race of threescore years\n   is short, but long enough to pall\nMy sense with joyless joys as these,\n   with Love and Houris, Wine and all.\n\nAnother boasts he would divorce\n   old barren Reason from his bed,\nAnd wed the Vine-maid in her stead;\u0097\n   fools who believe a word he said!*\n\n   * Omar-i-Kayy\u00e2m, the tent-maker poet of Persia.\n\nAnd \u0093\u0091Dust thou art to dust returning.\u0092\n   ne\u0092er was spoke of human soul\u0094\nThe Soofi cries, \u0092tis well for him\n   that hath such gift to ask its goal.\n\n\u0093And this is all, for this we\u0092re born\n   to weep a little and to die!\u0094\nSo sings the shallow bard whose life\n   still labours at the letter \u0093I.\u0094\n\n\u0093Ear never heard, Eye never saw\n   the bliss of those who enter in\nMy heavenly kingdom,\u0094 Is\u00e2 said,\n   who wailed our sorrows and our sin:\n\nToo much of words or yet too few!\n   What to thy Godhead easier than\nOne little glimpse of Paradise\n   to ope the eyes and ears of man?\n\n\u0093I am the Truth! I am the Truth!\u0094\n   we hear the God-drunk gnostic cry\n\u0093The microcosm abides in ME;\n   Eternal Allah\u0092s nought but I!\u0094\n\nMans\u00fbr* was wise, but wiser they\n   who smote him with the hurl\u00e8d stones;\nAnd, though his blood a witness bore,\n   no wisdom-might could mend his bones.\n\n   * A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy.\n\n\u0093Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life\u0092s\n   not worth a fillip,\u0094 quoth the King;\nMethinks the saying saith too much:\n   the swine would say the selfsame thing!\n\nTwo-footed beasts that browse through life,\n   by Death to serve as soil design\u0092d,\nBow prone to Earth whereof they be,\n   and there the proper pleasures find:\n\nBut you of finer, nobler, stuff,\n   ye, whom to Higher leads the High,\nWhat binds your hearts in common bond\n   with creatures of the stall and sty?\n\n\u0093In certain hope of Life-to-come\n   I journey through this shifting scene\u0094\nThe Z\u00e2hid* snarls and saunters down\n   his Vale of Tears with confi\u0092dent mien.\n\n   * The \u0093Philister\u0094 of \u0093respectable\u0094 belief.\n\nWiser than Amr\u00e2n\u0092s Son* art thou,\n   who ken\u0092st so well the world-to-be,\nThe Future when the Past is not,\n   the Present merest dreamery;\n\n   * Moses in the Koran.\n\nWhat know\u0092st thou, man, of Life? and yet,\n   forever twixt the womb, the grave,\nThou pratest of the Coming Life,\n   of Heav\u0092n and Hell thou fain must rave.\n\nThe world is old and thou art young;\n   the world is large and thou art small;\nCease, atom of a moment\u0092s span,\n   To hold thyself an All-in-All!\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nFie, fie! you visionary things,\n   ye motes that dance in sunny glow,\nWho base and build Eternities\n   on briefest moment here below;\n\nWho pass through Life liked cag\u00e8d birds,\n   the captives of a despot will;\nStill wond\u0092ring How and When and Why,\n   and Whence and Whither, wond\u0092ring still;\n\nStill wond\u0092ring how the Marvel came\n   because two coupling mammals chose\nTo slake the thirst of fleshly love,\n   and thus the \u0093Immortal Being\u0094 rose;\n\nWond\u0092ring the Babe with staring eyes,\n   perforce compel\u0092d from night to day,\nGript in the giant grasp of Life\n   like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray;\n\nWho comes imbecile to the world\n   \u0092mid double danger, groans, and tears;\nThe toy, the sport, the waif and stray\n   of passions, error, wrath and fears;\n\nWho knows not Whence he came nor Why,\n   who kens not Whither bound and When,\nYet such is Allah\u0092s choicest gift,\n   the blessing dreamt by foolish men;\n\nWho step by step perforce returns\n   to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,\nLisping again his broken words\n   till all the tale be fully told:\n\nWond\u0092ring the Babe with quench\u00e8d orbs,\n   an oldster bow\u0092d by burthening years,\nHow \u0092scaped the skiff an hundred storms;\n   how \u0092scaped the thread a thousand shears;\n\nHow coming to the Feast unbid,\n   he found the gorgeous table spread\nWith the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,\n   with stones that bear the shape of bread:\n\nHow Life was nought but ray of sun\n   that clove the darkness thick and blind,\nThe ravings of the reckless storm,\n   the shrieking of the rav\u0092ening wind;\n\nHow lovely visions \u0092guiled his sleep,\n   aye fading with the break of morn,\nTill every sweet became a sour,\n   till every rose became a thorn;\n\nTill dust and ashes met his eyes\n   wherever turned their saddened gaze;\nThe wrecks of joys and hopes and loves,\n   the rubbish of his wasted days;\n\nHow every high heroic Thought\n   that longed to breathe empyrean air,\nFailed of its feathers, fell to earth,\n   and perisht of a sheer despair;\n\nHow, dower\u0092d with heritage of brain,\n   whose might has split the solar ray,\nHis rest is grossest coarsest earth,\n   a crown of gold on brow of clay;\n\nThis House whose frame be flesh and bone,\n   mortar\u0092d with blood and faced with skin,\nThe home of sickness, dolours, age;\n   unclean without, impure within:\n\nSans ray to cheer its inner gloom,\n   the chambers haunted by the Ghost,\nDarkness his name, a cold dumb Shade\n   stronger than all the heav\u0092nly host.\n\nThis tube, an enigmatic pipe,\n   whose end was laid before begun,\nThat lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks;\n   \u0097puzzle, machine, automaton;\n\nThe first of Pots the Potter made\n   by Chrysorrhoas\u0092 blue-green wave;*\nMethinks I see him smile to see\n   what guerdon to the world he gave!\n\n   * The Abana, River of Damascus.\n\nHow Life is dim, unreal, vain,\n   like scenes that round the drunkard reel;\nHow \u0093Being\u0094 meaneth not to be;\n   to see and hear, smell, taste and feel.\n\nA drop in Ocean\u0092s boundless tide,\n   unfathom\u0092d waste of agony;\nWhere millions live their horrid lives\n   by making other millions die.\n\nHow with a heart that would through love\n   to Universal Love aspire,\nMan woos infernal chance to smite,\n   as Min\u0092arets draw the Thunder-fire.\n\nHow Earth on Earth builds tow\u0092er and wall,\n   to crumble at a touch of Time;\nHow Earth on Earth from Sh\u00eenar-plain\n   the heights of Heaven fain would climb.\n\nHow short this Life, how long withal;\n   how false its weal, how true its woes,\nThis fever-fit with paroxysms\n   to mark its opening and its close.\n\nAh! gay the day with shine of sun,\n   and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng\nMet on the River-bank to play,\n   when I was young, when I was young:\n\nSuch general joy could never fade;\n   and yet the chilling whisper came\nOne face had paled, one form had failed;\n   had fled the bank, had swum the stream;\n\nStill revellers danced, and sang, and trod\n   the hither bank of Time\u0092s deep tide,\nStill one by one they left and fared\n   to the far misty thither side;\n\nAnd now the last hath slipt away\n   yon drear Death-desert to explore,\nAnd now one Pilgrim worn and lorn\n   still lingers on the lonely shore.\n\nYes, Life in youth-tide standeth still;\n   in manhood streameth soft and slow;\nSee, as it nears the \u0092abysmal goal\n   how fleet the waters flash and flow!\n\nAnd Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see\n   drop like the leaves in windy Fall;\nBut ours, our own, are ruined worlds,\n   a globe collapst, last end of all.\n\nWe live our lives with rogues and fools,\n   dead and alive, alive and dead,\nWe die \u0092twixt one who feels the pulse\n   and one who frets and clouds the head:\n\nAnd,\u0097oh, the Pity!\u0097hardly conned\n   the lesson comes its fatal term;\nFate bids us bundle up our books,\n   and bear them bod\u0092ily to the worm:\n\nHardly we learn to wield the blade\n   before the wrist grows stiff and old;\nHardly we learn to ply the pen\n   ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold.\n\nHardly we find the path of love,\n   to sink the self, forget the \u0093I,\u0094\nWhen sad suspicion grips the heart,\n   when Man, _the_ Man begins to die:\n\nHardly we scale the wisdom-heights,\n   and sight the Pisgah-scene around,\nAnd breathe the breath of heav\u0092enly air,\n   and hear the Spheres\u0092 harmonious sound;\n\nWhen swift the Camel-rider spans\n   the howling waste, by Kismet sped,\nAnd of his Magic Wand a wave\n   hurries the quick to join the dead.*\n\n   * Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.\n\nHow sore the burden, strange the strife;\n   how full of splendour, wonder, fear;\nLife, atom of that Infinite Space\n   that stretcheth \u0092twixt the Here and There.\n\nHow Thought is imp\u0092otent to divine\n   the secret which the gods defend,\nThe Why of birth and life and death,\n   that Isis-veil no hand may rend.\n\nEternal Morrows make our Day;\n   our _Is_ is aye _to be_ till when\nNight closes in; \u0092tis all a dream,\n   and yet we die,\u0097and then and THEN?\n\nAnd still the Weaver plies his loom,\n   whose warp and woof is wretched Man\nWeaving th\u0092 unpattern\u0092d dark design,\n   so dark we doubt it owns a plan.\n\nDost not, O Maker, blush to hear,\n   amid the storm of tears and blood,\nMan say Thy mercy made what is,\n   and saw the made and said \u0092twas good?\n\nThe marvel is that man can smile\n   dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream;-\nBetter the heedless atomy\n   that buzzes in the morning beam!\n\nO the dread pathos of our lives!\n   how durst thou, Allah, thus to play\nWith Love, Affection, Friendship, all\n   that shows the god in mortal clay?\n\nBut ah! what \u0092vaileth man to mourn;\n   shall tears bring forth what smiles ne\u0092er brought;\nShall brooding breed a thought of joy?\n   Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!\n\nSilence thine immemorial quest,\n   contain thy nature\u0092s vain complaint\nNone heeds, none cares for thee or thine;\u0097\n   like thee how many came and went?\n\nCease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;\n   enjoy thy shining hour of sun;\nWe dance along Death\u0092s icy brink,\n   but is the dance less full of fun?\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nWhat Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed\n   by many a moon that waxt and waned?\nWhat Prophet-strain be his to sing?\n   What hath his old Experience gained?\n\nThere is no God, no man-made God;\n   a bigger, stronger, crueller man;\nBlack phantom of our baby-fears,\n   ere Thought, the life of Life, began.\n\nRight quoth the Hindu Prince of old,*\n   \u0093An Ishwara for one I nill,\nTh\u0092 almighty everlasting Good\n   who cannot \u0092bate th\u0092 Eternal Ill:\u0094\n\n   * Buddha.\n\n\u0093Your gods may be, what shows they are?\u0094\n   hear China\u0092s Perfect Sage declare;*\n\u0093And being, what to us be they\n   who dwell so darkly and so far?\u0094\n\n   * Confucius.\n\n\u0093All matter hath a birth and death;\n   \u0092tis made, unmade and made anew;\n\u0093We choose to call the Maker \u0091God\u0092:\u0097\n   such is the Z\u00e2hid\u0092s owly view.\n\n\u0093You changeful finite Creatures strain\u0094\n   (rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)*\n\u0093The dizzy depths of Inf\u0092inite Power\n   to fathom with your foot of twine\u0094;\n\n   * The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Z\u00e2hid.\n\n\u0093Poor idols of man\u0092s heart and head\n   with the Divine Idea to blend;\n\u0093To preach as \u0091Nature\u0092s Common Course\u0092\n   what any hour may shift or end.\u0094\n\n\u0093How shall the Shown pretend to ken\n   aught of the Showman or the Show?\n\u0093Why meanly bargain to believe,\n   which only means thou ne\u0092er canst know?\n\n\u0093How may the passing Now contain\n   the standing Now\u0097Eternity?\u0097\n\u0093An endless _is_ without a _was_,\n   the _be_ and never the _to-be?_\n\n\u0093Who made your Maker? If Self-made,\n   why fare so far to fare the worse\n\u0093Sufficeth not a world of worlds,\n   a self-made chain of universe?\n\n\u0093Grant an Idea, Primal Cause,\n   the Causing Cause, why crave for more?\n\u0093Why strive its depth and breadth to mete,\n   to trace its work, its aid to \u0092implore?\n\n\u0093Unknown, Incomprehensible,\n   whate\u0092er you choose to call it, call;\n\u0093But leave it vague as airy space,\n   dark in its darkness mystical.\n\n\u0093Your childish fears would seek a Sire,\n   by the non-human God defin\u0092d,\n\u0093What your five wits may wot ye weet;\n   what _is_ you please to dub \u0091design\u0092d;\u0092\n\n\u0093You bring down Heav\u0092en to vulgar Earth;\n   your maker like yourselves you make,\n\u0093You quake to own a reign of Law,\n   you pray the Law its laws to break;\n\n\u0093You pray, but hath your thought e\u0092er weighed\n   how empty vain the prayer must be,\n\u0093That begs a boon already giv\u0092en,\n   or craves a change of law to see?\n\n\u0093Say, Man, deep learn\u00e8d in the Scheme\n   that orders mysteries sublime,\n\u0093How came it this was Jesus, that\n   was Judas from the birth of Time?\n\n\u0093How I the tiger, thou the lamb;\n   again the Secret, prithee, show\n\u0093Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt\n   or Fate that drave the man, the bow?\n\n\u0093Man worships self: his God is Man;\n   the struggling of the mortal mind\n\u0093To form its model as \u0092twould be,\n   the perfect of itself to find.\n\n\u0093The God became sage, priest and scribe\n   where Nilus\u0092 serpent made the vale;\n\u0093A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind,\n   a neutral something cold and pale:\n\n\u0093Amid the high Chaldean hills\n   a moulder of the heavenly spheres;\n\u0093On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God\n   who governs by his dual peers:\n\n\u0093In Hebrew tents the Lord that led\n   His leprous slaves to fight and jar;\n\u0093Yahveh,* Adon or Eloh\u00eem,\n   the God that smites, the Man of War.\n\n   * Jehovah.\n\n\u0093The lovely Gods of lib\u0092ertine Greece,\n   those fair and frail humanities\n\u0093Whose homes o\u0092erlook\u0092d the Middle Sea,\n   where all Earth\u0092s beauty cradled lies,\n\n\u0093Ne\u0092er left its bless\u00e8d bounds, nor sought\n   the barb\u0092arous climes of barb\u0092arous gods\n\u0093Where Odin of the dreary North\n   o\u0092er hog and sickly mead-cup nods:\n\n\u0093And when, at length, \u0091Great Pan is dead\u0092\n   uprose the loud and dol\u0092orous cry\n\u0093A glamour wither\u0092d on the ground,\n   a splendour faded in the sky.\n\n\u0093Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar\u0092ene came\n   and seized his seat beneath the sun,\n\u0093The votary of the Riddle-god,\n   whose one is three and three is one;\n\n\u0093Whose sadd\u0092ening creed of herited Sin\n   spilt o\u0092er the world its cold grey spell;\n\u0093In every vista showed a grave,\n   and \u0092neath the grave the glare of Hell;\n\n\u0093Till all Life\u0092s Po\u0092esy sinks to prose;\n   romance to dull Real\u0092ity fades;\n\u0093Earth\u0092s flush of gladness pales in gloom\n   and God again to man degrades.\n\n\u0093Then the lank Arab foul with sweat,\n   the drainer of the camel\u0092s dug,\n\u0093Gorged with his leek-green lizard\u0092s meat,\n   clad in his filthy rag and rug,\n\n\u0093Bore his fierce Allah o\u0092er his sands\n   and broke, like lava-burst upon\n\u0093The realms where reigned pre-Adamite Kings,\n   where rose the Grand Kay\u00e2nian throne.*\n\n   * Kay\u00e2ni\u0097of the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes.\n\n\u0093Who now of ancient Kayomurs,\n   of Z\u00e2l or Rustam cares to sing,\n\u0093Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes\n   that called the Camel-driver King?\n\n\u0093Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw,\n   the sceptre of An\u00fbshirw\u00e2n,\n\u0093The holy grail of high Jamsh\u00eed,\n   Afr\u00e2siyab\u0092s hall?\u0097Canst tell me, man?\n\n\u0093Gone, gone, where I and thou must go,\n   borne by the winnowing wings of Death,\n\u0093The Horror brooding over life,\n   and nearer brought with every breath:\n\n\u0093Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes,\n   they rose and reigned, they fought and fell,\n\u0093As swells and swoons across the wold\n   the tinkling of the Camel\u0092s bell.\u0094\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nThere is no Good, there is no Bad;\n   these be the whims of mortal will:\nWhat works me weal that call I \u0091good,\u0092\n   what harms and hurts I hold as \u0091ill:\u0092\n\nThey change with place, they shift with race;\n   and, in the veriest span of Time,\nEach Vice has worn a Virtue\u0092s crown;\n   all Good was banned as Sin or Crime:\n\nLike ravelled skeins they cross and twine,\n   while this with that connects and blends;\nAnd only Khizr* his eye shall see\n   where one begins, where other ends:\n\n   * Supposed to be the Prophet Elijah.\n\nWhat mortal shall consort with Khizr,\n   when Mus\u00e2 turned in fear to flee?\nWhat man foresees the flow\u0092er or fruit\n   whom Fate compels to plant the tree?\n\nFor Man\u0092s Free-will immortal Law,\n   Anagk\u00ea, Kismet, Des\u0092tiny read\nThat was, that is, that aye shall be,\n   Star, Fortune, Fate, Urd, Norn or Need.\n\n\u0093Man\u0092s nat\u0092ural state is God\u0092s design;\u0094\n   such is the silly sage\u0092s theme;\n\u0093Man\u0092s primal Age was Age of Gold;\u0094\n   such is the Poet\u0092s waking dream:\n\nDelusion, Ign\u0092orance! Long ere Man\n   drew upon Earth his earliest breath\nThe world was one contin\u0092uous scene\n   of anguish, torture, prey and Death;\n\nWhere hideous Theria of the wild\n   rended their fellows limb by limb;\nWhere horrid Saurians of the sea\n   in waves of blood were wont to swim:\n\nThe \u0093fair young Earth\u0094 was only fit\n   to spawn her frightful monster-brood;\nNow fiery hot, now icy frore,\n   now reeking wet with steamy flood.\n\nYon glorious Sun, the greater light,\n   the \u0093Bridegroom\u0094 of the royal Lyre,\nA flaming, boiling, bursting mine;\n   a grim black orb of whirling fire:\n\nThat gentle Moon, the lesser light,\n   the Lover\u0092s lamp, the Swain\u0092s delight,\nA ruined world, a globe burnt out,\n   a corpse upon the road of night.\n\nWhat reckt he, say, of Good or Ill\n   who in the hill-hole made his lair,\nThe blood-fed rav\u0092ening Beast of prey,\n   wilder than wildest wolf or bear?\n\nHow long in Man\u0092s pre-Ad\u0092amite days\n   to feed and swill, to sleep and breed,\nWere the Brute-biped\u0092s only life,\n   a perfect life sans Code or Creed?\n\nHis choicest garb a shaggy fell,\n   his choicest tool a flake of stone;\nHis best of orn\u0092aments tattoo\u0092d skin\n   and holes to hang his bits of bone;\n\nWho fought for female as for food\n   when Mays awoke to warm desire;\nAnd such the Lust that grew to Love\n   when Fancy lent a purer fire.\n\nWhere then \u0093Th\u0092 Eternal nature-law\n   by God engraved on human heart?\u0094\nBehold his simiad sconce and own\n   the Thing could play no higher part.\n\nYet, as long ages rolled, he learnt\n   from Beaver, Ape and Ant to build\nShelter for sire and dam and brood,\n   from blast and blaze that hurt and killed;\n\nAnd last came Fire; when scrap of stone\n   cast on the flame that lit his den,\nGave out the shining ore, and made\n   the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.\n\nThe \u0093moral sense,\u0094 your Z\u00e2hid-phrase,\n   is but the gift of latest years;\nConscience was born when man had shed\n   his fur, his tail, his pointed ears.\n\nWhat conscience has the murd\u0092erous Moor,\n   who slays his guest with felon blow,\nSave sorrow he can slay no more,\n   what prick of pen\u0092itence can he know?\n\nYou cry the \u0093Cruelty of Things\u0094\n   is myst\u0092ery to your purblind eye,\nWhich fixed upon a point in space\n   the general project passes by:\n\nFor see! the Mammoth went his ways,\n   became a mem\u0092ory and a name;\nWhile the half-reasoner with the hand*\n   survives his rank and place to claim.\n\n   * The Elephant.\n\nEarthquake and plague, storm, fight and fray,\n   portents and curses man must deem\nSince he regards his self alone,\n   nor cares to trace the scope, the scheme;\n\nThe Quake that comes in eyelid\u0092s beat\n   to ruin, level, \u0092gulf and kill,\nBuilds up a world for better use,\n   to general Good bends special Ill:\n\nThe dreadest sound man\u0092s ear can hear,\n   the war and rush of stormy Wind\nDepures the stuff of human life,\n   breeds health and strength for humankind:\n\nWhat call ye them or Goods or Ills,\n   ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain,\nWhen realms arise and falls a roof;\n   a world is won, a man is slain?\n\nAnd thus the race of Being runs,\n   till haply in the time to be\nEarth shifts her pole and Mushtari*-men\n   another falling star shall see:\n\n   * The Planet Jupiter.\n\nShall see it fall and fade from sight,\n   whence come, where gone no Thought can tell,\u0097\nDrink of yon mirage-stream and chase\n   the tinkling of the camel-bell!\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nAll Faith is false, all Faith is true:\n   Truth is the shattered mirror strown\nIn myriad bits; while each believes\n   his little bit the whole to own.\n\nWhat is the Truth? was askt of yore.\n   Reply all object Truth is one\nAs twain of halves aye makes a whole;\n   the moral Truth for all is none.\n\nYe scantly-learned Z\u00e2hids learn\n   from Aflat\u00fbn and Arist\u00fb,*\nWhile Truth is real like your good:\n   th\u0092 Untrue, like ill, is real too;\n\n   * Plato and Aristotle.\n\nAs palace mirror\u0092d in the stream,\n   as vapour mingled with the skies,\nSo weaves the brain of mortal man\n   the tangled web of Truth and Lies.\n\nWhat see we here? Forms, nothing more!\n   Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye,\nWe know not substance; \u0092mid the shades\n   shadows ourselves we live and die.\n\n\u0093Faith mountains move\u0094 I hear: I see\n   the practice of the world unheed\nThe foolish vaunt, the blatant boast\n   that serves our vanity to feed.\n\n\u0093Faith stands unmoved\u0094; and why? Because\n   man\u0092s silly fancies still remain,\nAnd will remain till wiser man\n   the day-dreams of his youth disdain.\n\n\u0093\u0092Tis bless\u00e8d to believe\u0094; you say:\n   The saying may be true enow\nAnd it can add to Life a light:\u0097\n   only remains to show us how.\n\nE\u0092en if I could I nould believe\n   your tales and fables stale and trite,\nIrksome as twice-sung tune that tires\n   the dull\u00e8d ear of drowsy wight.\n\nWith God\u0092s foreknowledge man\u0092s free will!\n   what monster-growth of human brain,\nWhat powers of light shall ever pierce\n   this puzzle dense with words inane?\n\nVainly the heart on Providence calls,\n   such aid to seek were hardly wise\nFor man must own the pitiless Law\n   that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.\n\n\u0093Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav\u0092en,\n   come pay the priest that holds the key;\u0094\nSo spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak\n   the last to enter Heaven,\u0097he.\n\nAre these the words for men to hear?\n   yet such the Church\u0092s general tongue,\nThe horseleech-cry so strong so high\n   her heav\u0092enward Psalms and Hymns among.\n\nWhat? Faith a merit and a claim,\n   when with the brain \u0092tis born and bred?\nGo, fool, thy foolish way and dip\n   in holy water buri\u00e8d dead!\n\nYet follow not th\u0092 unwisdom-path,\n   cleave not to this and that disclaim;\nBelieve in all that man believes;\n   here all and naught are both the same.\n\nBut is it so? How may we know?\n   Haply this Fate, this Law may be\nA word, a sound, a breath; at most\n   the Z\u00e2hid\u0092s moonstruck theory.\n\nYes Truth may be, but \u0092tis not Here;\n   mankind must seek and find it There,\nBut Where nor I nor you can tell,\n   nor aught earth-mother ever bare.\n\nEnough to think that Truth can be:\n   come sit we where the roses glow,\nIndeed he knows not how to know\n   who knows not also how to \u0092unknow.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nMan hath no Soul, a state of things,\n   a no-thing still, a sound, a word\nWhich so begets substantial thing\n   that eye shall see what ear hath heard.\n\nWhere was his Soul the savage beast\n   which in primeval forests strayed,\nWhat shape had it, what dwelling-place,\n   what part in nature\u0092s plan it played?\n\nThis Soul to ree a riddle made;\n   who wants the vain duality?\nIs not myself enough for me?\n   what need of \u0093I\u0094 within an \u0093I\u0094?\n\nWords, words that gender things! The soul\n   is a new-comer on the scene;\nSufficeth not the breath of Life\n   to work the matter-born machine?\n\nWe know the Gen\u0092esis of the Soul;\n   we trace the Soul to hour of birth;\nWe mark its growth as grew mankind\n   to boast himself sole Lord of Earth:\n\nThe race of Be\u0092ing from dawn of Life\n   in an unbroken course was run;\nWhat men are pleased to call their Souls\n   was in the hog and dog begun:\n\nLife is a ladder infinite-stepped,\n   that hides its rungs from human eyes;\nPlanted its foot in chaos-gloom,\n   its head soars high above the skies:\n\nNo break the chain of Being bears;\n   all things began in unity;\nAnd lie the links in regular line\n   though haply none the sequence see.\n\nThe Ghost, embodied natural Dread\n   of dreary death and foul decay,\nBegat the Spirit, Soul and Shade\n   with Hades\u0092 pale and wan array.\n\nThe Soul required a greater Soul,\n   a Soul of Souls, to rule the host;\nHence spirit-powers and hierarchies,\n   all gendered by the savage Ghost.\n\nNot yours, ye Peoples of the Book,\n   these fairy visions fair and fond,\nGot by the gods of Khemi-land*\n   and faring far the seas beyond!\n\n   * Egypt; Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl.), in the Demotic Khemi.\n\n\u0093Th\u0092 immortal mind of mortal man!\u0094\n   we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;\nWhose mind but means his sum of thought,\n   an essence of atomic \u0093I.\u0094\n\nThought is the work of brain and nerve,\n   in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;\nIn sickness sick, in sleep asleep,\n   and dead when Death lets drop the scene.\n\n\u0093Tush!\u0094 quoth the Z\u00e2hid, \u0093well we ken\n   the teaching of the school abhorr\u0092d\n\u0093That maketh man automaton,\n   mind a secretion, soul a word.\u0094\n\n\u0093Of molecules and protoplasm\n   you matter-mongers prompt to prate;\n\u0093Of jelly-speck development\n   and apes that grew to man\u0092s estate.\u0094\n\nVain cavil! all that is hath come\n   either by Mir\u0092acle or by Law;\u0097\nWhy waste on this your hate and fear,\n   why waste on that your love and awe?\n\nWhy heap such hatred on a word,\n   why \u0093Prototype\u0094 to type assign,\nWhy upon matter spirit mass?\n   wants an appendix your design?\n\nIs not the highest honour his\n   who from the worst hath drawn the best;\nMay not your Maker make the world\n   from matter, an it suit His hest?\n\nNay more, the sordider the stuff\n   the cunninger the workman\u0092s hand:\nCease, then, your own Almighty Power\n   to bind, to bound, to understand.\n\n\u0093Reason and Instinct!\u0094 How we love\n   to play with words that please our pride;\nOur noble race\u0092s mean descent\n   by false forged titles seek to hide!\n\nFor \u0093gift divine\u0094 I bid you read\n   the better work of higher brain,\nFrom Instinct diff\u0092ering in degree\n   as golden mine from leaden vein.\n\nReason is Life\u0092s sole arbiter,\n   the magic Laby\u0092rinth\u0092s single clue:\nWorlds lie above, beyond its ken;\n   what crosses it can ne\u0092er be true.\n\n\u0093Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!\u0094\n   Angels and Fools have equal claim\nTo do what Nature bids them do,\n   sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThere is no Heav\u0092en, there is no Hell;\n   these be the dreams of baby minds;\nTools of the wily Fetisheer,\n   to \u0092fright the fools his cunning blinds.\n\nLearn from the mighty Spi\u0092rits of old\n   to set thy foot on Heav\u0092en and Hell;\nIn Life to find thy hell and heav\u0092en\n   as thou abuse or use it well.\n\nSo deemed the doughty Jew who dared\n   by studied silence low to lay\nOrcus and Hades, lands of shades,\n   the gloomy night of human day.\n\nHard to the heart is final death:\n   fain would an Ens not end in Nil;\nLove made the senti\u0092ment kindly good:\n   the Priest perverted all to ill.\n\nWhile Reason sternly bids us die,\n   Love longs for life beyond the grave:\nOur hearts, affections, hopes and fears\n   for Life-to-be shall ever crave.\n\nHence came the despot\u0092s darling dream,\n   a Church to rule and sway the State;\nHence sprang the train of countless griefs\n   in priestly sway and rule innate.\n\nFor future Life who dares reply?\n   No witness at the bar have we;\nSave what the brother Potsherd tells,\u0097\n   old tales and novel jugglery.\n\nWho e\u0092er return\u0092d to teach the Truth,\n   the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?\nAnd all we hear is only fit\n   for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.\n\n\u0093Have mercy, man!\u0094 the Z\u00e2hid cries,\n   \u0093of our best visions rob us not!\n\u0093Mankind a future life must have\n   to balance life\u0092s unequal lot.\u0094\n\n\u0093Nay,\u0094 quoth the Magian, \u0093\u0092tis not so;\n   I draw my wine for one and all,\n\u0093A cup for this, a score for that,\n   e\u0092en as his measure\u0092s great or small:\n\n\u0093Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;\n   to poorest passion he was born;\n\u0093Who drains the score must e\u0092er expect\n   to rue the headache of the morn.\u0094\n\nSafely he jogs along the way\n   which \u0091Golden Mean\u0092 the sages call;\nWho scales the brow of frowning Alp\n   must face full many a slip and fall.\n\nHere \u00e8xtremes meet, anointed Kings\n   whose crown\u00e8d heads uneasy lie,\nWhose cup of joy contains no more\n   than tramps that on the dunghill die.\n\nTo fate-doomed Sinner born and bred\n   for dangling from the gallows-tree;\nTo Saint who spends his holy days\n   in rapt\u0092urous hope his God to see;\n\nTo all that breathe our upper air\n   the hands of Dest\u0092iny ever deal,\nIn fixed and equal parts, their shares\n   of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.\n\n\u0093How comes it, then, our span of days\n   in hunting wealth and fame we spend\n\u0093Why strive we (and all humans strive)\n   for vain and visionary end?\u0094\n\nReply: mankind obeys a law\n   that bids him labour, struggle, strain;\nThe Sage well knowing its unworth,\n   the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.\n\nAnd who, \u0092mid e\u0092en the Fools, but feels\n   that half the joy is in the race\nFor wealth and fame and place, nor sighs\n   when comes success to crown the chase?\n\nAgain: in Hind, Ch\u00een, Franguest\u00e2n\n   that accident of birth befell,\nWithout our choice, our will, our voice:\n   Faith is an accident as well.\n\nWhat to the Hindu saith the Frank:\n   \u0093Denier of the Laws divine!\n\u0093However godly-good thy Life,\n   Hell is the home for thee and thine.\u0094\n\n\u0093Go strain the draught before \u0092tis drunk,\n   and learn that breathing every breath,\n\u0093With every step, with every gest,\n   something of life thou do\u0092est to death.\u0094\n\nReplies the Hindu: \u0093Wend thy way\n   for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit;\n\u0093Your Pariah-par\u0092adise woo and win;\n   at such dog-Heav\u0092en I laugh and spit.\u0094\n\n\u0093Cannibals of the Holy Cow!\n   who make your rav\u0092ening maws the grave\n\u0093Of Things with self-same right to live;\u0097\n   what Fiend the filthy license gave?\u0094\n\nWhat to the Moslem cries the Frank?\n   \u0093A polygamic Theist thou!\n\u0093From an imposter-Prophet turn;\n   Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.\u0094\n\nRejoins the Moslem: \u0093Allah\u0092s one\n   tho\u0092 with four Moslemahs I wive,\n\u0093One-wife-men ye and (damn\u00e8d race!)\n   you split your God to Three and Five.\u0094\n\nThe Buddhist to Confucians thus:\n   \u0093Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die;\n\u0093Content ye rest with wretched earth;\n   God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy.\u0094\n\nRetorts the Tartar: \u0093Shall I lend\n   mine only ready-money \u0091now,\u0092\n\u0093For vain usurious \u0091Then\u0092 like thine,\n   avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!\u0094\n\n\u0093With this poor life, with this mean world\n   I fain complete what in me lies;\n\u0093I strive to perfect this my me;\n   my sole ambition\u0092s to be wise.\u0094\n\nWhen doctors differ who decides\n   amid the milliard-headed throng?\nWho save the madman dares to cry:\n   \u0093\u0092Tis I am right, you all are wrong?\u0094\n\n\u0093You all are right, you all are wrong,\u0094\n   we hear the careless Soofi say,\n\u0093For each believes his glimm\u0092ering lamp\n   to be the gorgeous light of day.\u0094\n\n\u0093Thy faith why false, my faith why true?\n   \u0092tis all the work of Thine and Mine,\n\u0093The fond and foolish love of self\n   that makes the Mine excel the Thine.\u0094\n\nCease then to mumble rotten bones;\n   and strive to clothe with flesh and blood\nThe skel\u0092eton; and to shape a Form\n   that all shall hail as fair and good.\n\n\u0093For gen\u0092erous youth,\u0094 an Arab saith,\n   \u0093Jahim\u0092s* the only genial state;\n\u0093Give us the fire but not the shame\n   with the sad, sorry blest to mate.\u0094\n\n   * Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.\n\nAnd if your Heav\u0092en and Hell be true,\n   and Fate that forced me to be born\nForce me to Heav\u0092en or Hell\u0097I go,\n   and hold Fate\u0092s insolence in scorn.\n\nI want not this, I want not that,\n   already sick of Me and Thee;\nAnd if we\u0092re both transform\u0092d and changed,\n   what then becomes of Thee and Me?\n\nEnough to think such things may be:\n   to say they are not or they are\nWere folly: leave them all to Fate,\n   nor wage on shadows useless war.\n\nDo what thy manhood bids thee do,\n   from none but self expect applause;\nHe noblest lives and noblest dies\n   who makes and keeps his self-made laws.\n\nAll other Life is living Death,\n   a world where none but Phantoms dwell,\nA breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,\n   a tinkling of the camel-bell.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nHow then shall man so order life\n   that when his tale of years is told,\nLike sated guest he wend his way;\n   how shall his even tenour hold?\n\nDespite the Writ that stores the skull;\n   despite the Table and the Pen;*\nMaugre the Fate that plays us down,\n   her board the world, her pieces men?\n\n   * Emblems of Kismet, or Destiny.\n\nHow when the light and glow of life\n   wax dim in thickly gath\u0092ering gloom,\nShall mortal scoff at sting of Death,\n   shall scorn the victory of the Tomb?\n\nOne way, two paths, one end the grave.\n   This runs athwart the flow\u0092ery plain,\nThat breasts the bush, the steep, the crag,\n   in sun and wind and snow and rain:\n\nWho treads the first must look adown,\n   must deem his life an all in all;\nMust see no heights where man may rise,\n   must sight no depths where man may fall.\n\nAllah in Adam form must view;\n   adore the Maker in the made.\nContent to bask in M\u00e2y\u00e2\u0092s smile,*\n   in joys of pain, in lights of shade.\n\n   * Illusion.\n\nHe breaks the Law, he burns the Book,\n   he sends the Moolah back to school;\nLaughs at the beards of Saintly men;\n   and dubs the Prophet dolt and fool,\n\nEmbraces Cypress\u0092 taper-waist;\n   cools feet on wavy breast of rill;\nSmiles in the Nargis\u0092 love-lorn eyes,\n   and \u0092joys the dance of Daffodil;\n\nMelts in the saffron light of Dawn\n   to hear the moaning of the Dove;\nDelights in Sundown\u0092s purpling hues\n   when Bulbul woos the Rose\u0092s love.\n\nFinds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl;\n   toys with the Daughter of the vine;\nAnd bids the beauteous cup-boy say,\n   \u0093Master I bring thee ruby wine!\u0094*\n\n   * That all the senses, even the ear, may enjoy.\n\nSips from the maiden\u0092s lips the dew;\n   brushes the bloom from virgin brow:\u0097\nSuch is his fleshly bliss that strives\n   the Maker through the Made to know.\n\nI\u0092ve tried them all, I find them all\n   so same and tame, so drear, so dry;\nMy gorge ariseth at the thought;\n   I commune with myself and cry:\u0097\n\nBetter the myriad toils and pains\n   that make the man to manhood true,\nThis be the rule that guideth life;\n   these be the laws for me and you:\n\nWith Ignor\u0092ance wage eternal war,\n   to know thy self forever strain,\nThine ignorance of thine ignorance is\n   thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane;\n\nThat blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste;\n   that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes;\nCreates the thing that never was,\n   the Thing that ever is defies.\n\nThe finite Atom infinite\n   that forms thy circle\u0092s centre-dot,\nSo full-sufficient for itself,\n   for other selves existing not,\n\nFinds the world mighty as \u0092tis small;\n   yet must be fought the unequal fray;\nA myriad giants here; and there\n   a pinch of dust, a clod of clay.\n\nYes! maugre all thy dreams of peace\n   still must the fight unfair be fought;\nWhere thou mayst learn the noblest lore,\n   to know that all we know is nought.\n\nTrue to thy Nature, to Thy self,\n   Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear:\nEnough to thee the small still voice\n   aye thund\u0092ering in thine inner ear.\n\nFrom self-approval seek applause:\n   What ken not men thou kennest, thou!\nSpurn ev\u0092ry idol others raise:\n   Before thine own Ideal bow:\n\nBe thine own Deus: Make self free,\n   liberal as the circling air:\nThy Thought to thee an Empire be;\n   break every prison\u0092ing lock and bar:\n\nDo thou the Ought to self aye owed;\n   here all the duties meet and blend,\nIn widest sense, withouten care\n   of what began, for what shall end.\n\nThus, as thou view the Phantom-forms\n   which in the misty Past were thine,\nTo be again the thing thou wast\n   with honest pride thou may\u0092st decline;\n\nAnd, glancing down the range of years,\n   fear not thy future self to see;\nResign\u0092d to life, to death resign\u0092d,\n   as though the choice were nought to thee.\n\nOn Thought itself feed not thy thought;\n   nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze,\nAt darkling cloisters paved with tombs,\n   where rot the bones of bygone days:\n\n\u0093Eat not thy heart,\u0094 the Sages said;\n   \u0093nor mourn the Past, the buried Past;\u0094\nDo what thou dost, be strong, be brave;\n   and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste.\n\nPluck the old woman from thy breast:\n   Be stout in woe, be stark in weal;\nDo good for Good is good to do:\n   Spurn bribe of Heav\u0092en and threat of Hell.\n\nTo seek the True, to glad the heart,\n   such is of life the HIGHER LAW,\nWhose differ\u0092ence is the Man\u0092s degree,\n   the Man of gold, the Man of straw.\n\nSee not that something in Mankind\n   that rouses hate or scorn or strife,\nBetter the worm of Izr\u00e2il*\n   than Death that walks in form of life.\n\n   * The Angel of Death.\n\nSurvey thy kind as One whose wants\n   in the great Human Whole unite;*\nThe Homo rising high from earth\n   to seek the Heav\u0092ens of Life-in-Light;\n\n   * The \u0093Great Man\u0094 of the Enochites and the Mormons.\n\nAnd hold Humanity one man,\n   whose universal agony\nStill strains and strives to gain the goal,\n   where agonies shall cease to be.\n\nBelieve in all things; none believe;\n   judge not nor warp by \u0093Facts\u0094 the thought;\nSee clear, hear clear, tho\u0092 life may seem\n   M\u00e2y\u00e2 and Mirage, Dream and Naught.\n\nAbjure the Why and seek the How:\n   the God and gods enthroned on high,\nAre silent all, are silent still;\n   nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.\n\nThe Now, that indivis\u0092ible point\n   which studs the length of inf\u0092inite line\nWhose ends are nowhere, is thine all,\n   the puny all thou callest thine.\n\nPerchance the law some Giver hath:\n   Let be! let be! what canst thou know?\nA myriad races came and went;\n   this Sphinx hath seen them come and go.\n\nHaply the Law that rules the world\n   allows to man the widest range;\nAnd haply Fate\u0092s a Theist-word,\n   subject to human chance and change.\n\nThis \u0093I\u0094 may find a future Life,\n   a nobler copy of our own,\nWhere every riddle shall be ree\u0092d,\n   where every knowledge shall be known;\n\nWhere \u0092twill be man\u0092s to see the whole\n   of what on Earth he sees in part;\nWhere change shall ne\u0092er surcharge the thought;\n   nor hope defer\u0092d shall hurt the heart.\n\nBut!\u0097faded flow\u0092er and fallen leaf\n   no more shall deck the parent tree;\nAnd man once dropt by Tree of Life\n   what hope of other life has he?\n\nThe shatter\u0092d bowl shall know repair;\n   the riven lute shall sound once more;\nBut who shall mend the clay of man,\n   the stolen breath to man restore?\n\nThe shiver\u0092d clock again shall strike;\n   the broken reed shall pipe again:\nBut we, we die, and Death is one,\n   the doom of brutes, the doom of men.\n\nThen, if Nirw\u00e2n\u00e2* round our life\n   with nothingness, \u0092tis haply best;\nThy toils and troubles, want and woe\n   at length have won their guerdon\u0097Rest.\n\n   * Comparative annihilation.\n\nCease, Abd\u00fb, cease! Thy song is sung,\n   nor think the gain the singer\u0092s prize;\nTill men hold Ignor\u0092ance deadly sin,\n   till man deserves his title \u0093Wise:\u0094*\n\n   * \u0093Homo sapiens.\u0094\n\nIn Days to come, Days slow to dawn,\n   when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men,\nThese echoes of a voice long stilled\n   haply shall wake responsive strain:\n\nWend now thy way with brow serene,\n   fear not thy humble tale to tell:\u0097\nThe whispers of the Desert-wind;\n   the tinkling of the camel\u0092s bell.\n\n{Hebrew: ShLM}\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n\nNOTE I\n\n\nH\u00c2J\u00ce ABD\u00db, THE MAN\n\nH\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb has been known to me for more years than I care to\nrecord. A native, it is believed, of Dar\u00e2bghird in the Yezd\nProvince, he always preferred to style himself El-Hichmak\u00e2ni, a\nfacetious \u0093lackab\u0094 or surname, meaning \u0093Of No-hall, Nowhere.\u0094 He\nhad travelled far and wide with his eyes open; as appears by his\n\u0093couplets.\u0094 To a natural facility, a knack of language learning,\nhe added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese\nand old Egyptian; of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit;\nof Slav, especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, including\nRomaic; of Berber, the Nubian dialect, and of Zend and Akkadian,\nbesides Persian, his mother-tongue, and Arabic, the classic of\nthe schools. Nor was he ignorant of \u0093the -ologies\u0094 and the\ntriumphs of modern scientific discovery. Briefly, his memory was\nwell-stored; and he had every talent save that of using his\ntalents.\n\nBut no one thought that he \u0093woo\u0092d the Muse,\u0094 to speak in the\nstyle of the last century. Even his intimates were ignorant of\nthe fact that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, his Kas\u00eedah or\ndistichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in\nWestern India\u0097I am purposely vague in specifying the place. When\nso doing he held in hand the long and hoary honours of his chin\nwith the points toward me, as if to say with the Island-King:\n\n   There is a touch of Winter in my beard,\n   A sign the Gods will guard me from imprudence.\n\nAnd yet the piercing eye, clear as an onyx, seemed to protest\nagainst the plea of age. The MS. was in the vilest \u0093Shikastah\u0094 or\nrunning-hand; and, as I carried it off, the writer declined to\ntake the trouble of copying out his cacograph.\n\nWe, his old friends, had long addressed H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb by the\nsobriquet of _Nabbian\u00e2_ (\u0093our Prophet\u0094); and the reader will see\nthat the Pilgrim has, or believes he has, a message to deliver.\nHe evidently aspires to preach a faith of his own; an Eastern\nVersion of Humanitarianism blended with the sceptical or, as we\nnow say, the scientific habit of mind. The religion, of which\nFetishism, Hinduism and Heathendom; Jud\u00e6ism, Christianity and\nIslamism are mere fractions, may, methinks, be accepted by the\nPhilosopher: it worships with single-minded devotion the Holy\nCause of Truth, of Truth for its own sake, not for the goods it\nmay bring; and this belief is equally acceptable to honest\nignorance, and to the highest attainments in nature-study.\n\nWith Confucius, the H\u00e2j\u00ee cultivates what Strauss has called the\n\u0093stern common-sense of mankind\u0094; while the reign of order is a\nparagraph of his \u0093Higher Law.\u0094 He traces from its rudest\nbeginnings the all but absolute universality of some perception\nby man, called \u0093Faith\u0094; that _sensus Numinis_ which, by\ninheritance or communication, is now universal except in those\nwho force themselves to oppose it. And he evidently holds this\ngeneral consent of mankind to be so far divine that it primarily\ndiscovered for itself, if it did not create, a divinity. He does\nnot cry with the Christ of Novalis, \u0093Children, you have no\nfather\u0094; and perhaps he would join Renan in exclaiming, _Un monde\nsans Dieu est horrible!_\n\nBut he recognises the incompatibility of the Infinite with the\nDefinite; of a Being who loves, who thinks, who hates; of an\n_Actus purus_ who is called jealous, wrathful and revengeful,\nwith an \u0093Eternal that makes for righteousness.\u0094 In the presence\nof the endless contradictions, which spring from the idea of a\nPersonal Deity, with the Synthesis, the _Begriff_ of Providence,\nour Agnostic takes refuge in the sentiment of an unknown and an\nunknowable. He objects to the countless variety of forms assumed\nby the perception of a _Causa Causans_ (a misnomer), and to that\nintellectual adoption of general propositions, capable of\ndistinct statement but incapable of proofs, which we term Belief.\n\nHe looks with impartial eye upon the endless variety of systems,\nmaintained with equal confidence and self-sufficiency, by men of\nequal ability and honesty. He is weary of wandering over the\nworld, and of finding every petty race wedded to its own\nopinions; claiming the monopoly of Truth; holding all others to\nbe in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and\nvirulence are in inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed\nmatter. A peculiarly active and acute observation taught him that\nmany of these jarring families, especially those of the same\nblood, are par in the intellectual processes of perception and\nreflection; that in the business of the visible working world\nthey are confessedly by no means superior to one another; whereas\nin abstruse matters of mere Faith, not admitting direct and\nsensual evidence, one in a hundred will claim to be right, and\nimmodestly charge the other ninety-nine with being wrong.\n\nThus he seeks to discover a system which will prove them all\nright, and all wrong; which will reconcile their differences;\nwill unite past creeds; will account for the present, and will\nanticipate the future with a continuous and uninterrupted\ndevelopment; this, too, by a process, not negative and\ndistinctive, but, on the contrary, intensely positive and\nconstructive. I am not called upon to sit in the seat of\njudgment; but I may say that it would be singular if the attempt\nsucceeded. Such a system would be all-comprehensive, because not\nlimited by space, time, or race; its principle would be extensive\nas Matter itself, and, consequently, eternal. Meanwhile he\nsatisfies himself,\u0097the main point.\n\nStudents of metaphysics have of late years defined the abuse of\ntheir science as \u0093the morphology of common opinion.\u0094 Contemporary\ninvestigators, they say, have been too much occupied with\nintrospection; their labors have become merely\nphysiologico-biographical, and they have greatly neglected the\nstudy of averages. For, says La Rochefoucauld, _Il est plus ais\u00e9\nde conno\u00eetre l\u0092homme en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral que de conno\u00eetre un homme en\nparticulier_; and on so wide a subject all views must be\none-sided.\n\nBut this is not the fashion of Easterns. They have still to treat\ngreat questions _ex analogi\u00e2 universi_, instead of _ex analogi\u00e2\nhominis_. They must learn the basis of sociology, the philosophic\nconviction that mankind should be studied, not as a congeries of\nindividuals, but as an organic whole. Hence the _Zeitgeist_, or\nhistorical evolution of the collective consciousness of the age,\ndespises the obsolete opinion that Society, the State, is bound\nby the same moral duties as the simple citizen. Hence, too, it\nholds that the \u0093spirit of man, being of equal and uniform\nsubstance, doth usually suppose and feign in nature a greater\nequality and uniformity than is in Truth.\u0094\n\nChristianity and Islamism have been on their trial for the last\neighteen and twelve centuries. They have been ardent in\nproselytizing, yet they embrace only one-tenth and one-twentieth\nof the human race. H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb would account for the tardy and\nunsatisfactory progress of what their votaries call \u0093pure\ntruths,\u0094 by the innate imperfections of the same. Both propose a\nreward for mere belief, and a penalty for simple unbelief;\nrewards and punishments being, by the way, very disproportionate.\nThus they reduce everything to the scale of a somewhat unrefined\negotism; and their demoralizing effects become clearer to every\nprogressive age.\n\nH\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb seeks Truth only, truth as far as man, in the present\nphase of his development, is able to comprehend it. He disdains\nto associate utility, like Bacon (Nov. Org. I. Aph. 124), the\nHigh Priest of the English Creed, _le gros bon sens_, with the\n_lumen siccum ac purum notionum verarum_. He seems to see the\ninjury inflicted upon the sum of thought by the _\u00e2 posteriori_\nsuperstition, the worship of \u0093facts,\u0094 and the deification of\nsynthesis. Lastly, came the reckless way in which Locke \u0093freed\nphilosophy from the incubus of innate ideas.\u0094 Like Luther and the\nleaders of the great French Revolution, he broke with the Past;\nand he threw overboard the whole cargo of human tradition. The\nresult has been an immense movement of the mind which we love to\ncall Progress, when it has often been retrograde; together with a\nmighty development of egotism resulting from the pampered\nsentiment of personality.\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee regrets the excessive importance attached to a possible\nfuture state: he looks upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day\ndream, whose revulsion and reaction disorder waking life. The\ncondition may appear humble and prosaic to those exalted by the\nfumes of Fancy, by a spiritual dram-drinking, which, like the\nphysical, is the pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too\nwise to affirm or to deny the existence of another world. For\nlife beyond the grave there is no consensus of mankind, no\nCatholic opinion held _semper, et ubique, et ab omnibus_. The\nintellectual faculties (perception and reflection) are mute upon\nthe subject: they bear no testimony to facts; they show no proof.\nEven the instinctive sense of our kind is here dumb. We may\nbelieve what we are taught: we can know nothing. He would,\ntherefore, cultivate that receptive mood which, marching under\nthe shadow of mighty events, leads to the highest of goals,\u0097the\ndevelopment of Humanity. With him suspension of judgment is a\nsystem.\n\nMan has done much during the sixty-eight centuries which\nrepresent his history. This assumes the first Egyptian Empire,\nfollowing the pre-historic, to begin with B. C. 5000, and to end\nwith B. C. 3249. It was the Old, as opposed to the Middle, the\nNew, and the Low: it contained the Dynasties from I. to X., and\nit was the age of the Pyramids, at once simple, solid, and grand.\nWhen the praiser of the Past contends that modern civilization\nhas improved in nothing upon Homer and Herodotus, he is apt to\nforget that every schoolboy is a miracle of learning compared\nwith the Cave-man and the pal\u00e6olithic race. And, as the Past has\nbeen, so shall the Future be.\n\nThe Pilgrim\u0092s view of life is that of the Soofi, with the usual\ndash of Buddhistic pessimism. The profound sorrow of existence,\nso often sung by the dreamy Eastern poet, has now passed into the\npractical European mind. Even the light Frenchman murmurs,\u0097\n\n   Moi, moi, chaque jour courbant plus bas ma t\u00eate\n     Je passe\u0097et refroidi sous ce soleil joyeux,\n   Je m\u0092en irai bient\u00f4t, au milieu de la f\u00eate,\n     Sans que rien manque au monde immense et radieux.\n\nBut our H\u00e2j\u00ee is not Nihilistic in the \u0093no-nothing\u0094 sense of\nHood\u0092s poem, or, as the American phrases it, \u0093There is nothing\nnew, nothing true, and it don\u0092t signify.\u0094 His is a healthy wail\nover the shortness, and the miseries of life, because he finds\nall created things\u0097\n\n   Measure the world, with \u0093Me\u0094 immense.\n\nHe reminds us of St. Augustine (Med. c. 21). \u0093Vita h\u00e6c, vita\nmisera, vita caduca, vita incerta, vita laboriosa, vita immunda,\nvita domina malorum, regina superborum, plena miseriis et\nerroribus . . . Quam humores tumidant, esc\u00e6 inflant, jejunia\nmacerant, joci dissolvunt, tristiti\u00e6 consumunt; sollicitudo\ncoarctat, securitas hebetat, diviti\u00e6 inflant et jactant.\nPaupertas dejicit, juventus extollit, senectus incurvat,\nimportunitas frangit, m\u00e6ror deprimit. Et his malis omnibus mors\nfuribunda succedit.\u0094 But for _furibunda_ the Pilgrim would\nperhaps read _benedicta_.\n\nWith Cardinal Newman, one of the glories of our age, H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb\nfinds \u0093the Light of the world nothing else than the Prophet\u0092s\nscroll, full of lamentations and mourning and woe.\u0094 I cannot\nrefrain from quoting all this fine passage, if it be only for the\nsake of its lame and shallow deduction. \u0093To consider the world in\nits length and breadth, its various history and the many races of\nmen, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their\nconflicts, and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of\nworship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random\nachievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of\nlong-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a\nsuperintending design, the blind evolution (!) of what turn out\nto be great powers or truths, the progress of things as if from\nunreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and\nlittleness of man, his far-reaching aims and short duration. the\ncurtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the\ndefeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental\nanguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading\nidolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that\ncondition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in\nthe Apostle\u0092s words, \u0091having no hope and without God in the\nworld\u0092\u0097_all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts\nupon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely\nwithout human solution_.\u0094 Hence that admirable writer postulates\nsome \u0093terrible original calamity\u0094; and thus the hateful doctrine,\ntheologically called \u0093original sin,\u0094 becomes to him almost as\ncertain as that \u0093the world exists, and as the existence of God.\u0094\nSimilarly the \u0093Schedule of Doctrines\u0094 of the most liberal\nChristian Church insists upon the human depravity, and the\n\u0093absolute need of the Holy Spirit\u0092s agency in man\u0092s regeneration\nand sanctification.\u0094\n\nBut what have we here? The \u0093original calamity\u0094 was either caused\nby God or arose without leave of God, in either case degrading\nGod to man. It is the old dilemma whose horns are the\nirreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the\nsupposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be\npredicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject.\nFar better and wiser is the essayist\u0092s poetical explanation now\napparently despised because it was the fashionable doctrine of\nthe sage bard\u0092s day:\u0097\n\n   All nature is but art . . .\n   All discord harmony not understood;\n   All partial evil universal good.\u0097(Essay 289\u0096292.)\n\nThe Pilgrim holds with St. Augustine Absolute Evil is impossible\nbecause it is always rising up into good. He considers the theory\nof a beneficent or maleficent deity a purely sentimental fancy,\ncontradicted by human reason and the aspect of the world. Evil is\noften the active form of good; as F. W. Newman says, \u0093so likewise\nis Evil the revelation of Good.\u0094 With him all existences are\nequal: so long as they possess the Hindu Agasa, Life-fluid or\nvital force, it matters not they be,\u0097\n\n   Fungus or oak or worm or man.\n\nWar, he says, brings about countless individual miseries, but it\nforwards general progress by raising the stronger upon the ruins\nof the weaker races. Earthquakes and cyclones ravage small areas;\nbut the former builds up earth for man\u0092s habitation, and the\nlatter renders the atmosphere fit for him to breathe. Hence he\nechoes:\n\n                  \u0097The universal Cause\n   Acts not by partial but by general laws.\n\nAncillary to the churchman\u0092s immoral view of \u0093original sin\u0094 is\nthe unscientific theory that evil came into the world with Adam\nand his seed. Let us ask what was the state of our globe in the\npre-Adamite days, when the tyrants of the Earth, the huge\nSaurians and other monsters, lived in perpetual strife, in a\ndestructiveness of which we have now only the feeblest examples?\nWhat is the actual state of the world of waters, where the only\nobject of life is death, where the Law of murder is the Law of\nDevelopment?\n\nSome will charge the H\u00e2j\u00ee with irreverence, and hold him a\n\u0093lieutenant of Satan who sits in the chair of pestilence.\u0094 But he\nis not intentionally irreverent. Like men of far higher strain,\nwho deny divinely the divine, he speaks the things that others\nthink and hide. With the author of \u0093Supernatural Religion,\u0094 he\nholds that we \u0093gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning\nbelief in the reality of revelation\u0094; and he looks forward to the\nday when \u0093the old tyranny shall have been broken, and when the\nanarchy of transition shall have passed away.\u0094 But he is an\nEastern. When he repeats the Greek\u0092s \u0093Remember not to believe,\u0094\nhe means Strive to learn, to know, for right ideas lead to right\nactions. Among the couplets not translated for this eclogue is:\u0097\n\n   Of all the safest ways of Life\n      the safest way is still to doubt,\n   Men win the future world with Faith,\n      the present world they win without.\n\nThis is the Spaniard\u0092s:\u0097\n\n   De las cosas mas seguras, mas seguro es duvidar;\n\na typically modern sentiment of the Brazen Age of Science\nfollowing the Golden Age of Sentiment. But the Pilgrim\ncontinues:\u0097\n\n   The sages say: I tell thee no!\n      with equal faith all Faiths receive;\n   None more, none less, for Doubt is Death:\n      they live the most who most believe.\n\nHere, again, is an oriental subtlety; a man who believes in\neverything equally and generally may be said to believe in\nnothing. It is not a simple European view which makes honest\nDoubt worth a dozen of the Creeds. And it is in direct opposition\nto the noted writer who holds that the man of simple faith is\nworth ninety-nine of those who hold only to the egotistic\ninterests of their own individuality. This dark saying means (if\nit mean anything), that the so-called moral faculties of man,\nfancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and\nreflective powers,\u0097a simple absurdity! It produced a\nTurricremata, alias Torquemada, who, shedding floods of honest\ntears, caused his victims to be burnt alive; and an Anchieta, the\nThaumaturgist of Brazil, who beheaded a converted heretic lest\nthe latter by lapse from grace lose his immortal soul.\n\nBut this vein of speculation, which bigots brand as \u0093Doubt,\nDenial, and Destruction;\u0094 this earnest religious scepticism; this\ncurious inquiry, \u0093Has the universal tradition any base of fact?\u0094;\nthis craving after the secrets and mysteries of the future, the\nunseen, the unknown, is common to all races and to every age.\nEven amongst the Romans, whose model man in Augustus\u0092 day was\nHorace, the philosophic, the epicurean, we find Propertius\nasking:\u0097\n\n   An ficta in miseras descendit fabula gentes\n      Et timor haud ultra quam rogus esse potest?\n\nTo return: the Pilgrim\u0092s doctrines upon the subject of conscience\nand repentance will startle those who do not follow his train of\nthought:\u0097\n\n   Never repent because thy will\n      with will of Fate be not at one:\n   Think, an thou please, before thou dost,\n      but never rue the deed when done.\n\nThis again is his modified fatalism. He would not accept the\nboisterous mode of cutting the Gordian-knot proposed by the noble\nBritish Philister\u0097\u0093we know we\u0092re free and there\u0092s an end on it!\u0094\nHe prefers Lamarck\u0092s, \u0093The will is, in truth, never free.\u0094 He\nbelieves man to be a co-ordinate term of Nature\u0092s great\nprogression; a result of the interaction of organism and\nenvironment, working through cosmic sections of time. He views\nthe human machine, the pipe of flesh, as depending upon the\nphysical theory of life. Every corporeal fact and phenomenon\nwhich, like the tree, grows from within or without, is a mere\nproduct of organization; living bodies being subject to the\nnatural law governing the lifeless and the inorganic. Whilst the\nreligionist assures us that man is not a mere toy of fate, but a\nfree agent responsible to himself, with work to do and duties to\nperform, the H\u00e2j\u00ee, with many modern schools, holds Mind to be a\nword describing a special operation of matter; the faculties\ngenerally to be manifestations of movements in the central\nnervous system; and every idea, even of the Deity, to be a\ncertain little pulsation of a certain little mass of animal\npap,\u0097the brain. Thus he would not object to relationship with a\ntailless catarrhine anthropoid ape, descended from a monad or a\nprimal ascidian.\n\nHence he virtually says, \u0093I came into the world without having\napplied for or having obtained permission; nay, more, without my\nleave being asked or given. Here I find myself hand-tied by\nconditions, and fettered by laws and circumstances, in making\nwhich my voice had no part. While in the womb I was an automaton;\nand death will find me a mere machine. Therefore not I, but the\nLaw, or if, you please, the Lawgiver, is answerable for all my\nactions.\u0094 Let me here observe that to the Western mind \u0093Law\u0094\npostulates a Lawgiver; not so to the Eastern, and especially to\nthe Soofi, who holds these ideas to be human, unjustifiably\nextended to interpreting the non-human, which men call the\nDivine.\n\nFurther he would say, \u0093I am an individual (_qui nil habet\ndividui_), a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at\ncertain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending.\nPhysically I am not identical in all points with other men.\nMorally I differ from them: in nothing do the approaches of\nknowledge, my five organs of sense (with their Shelleyan\n\u0093interpretation\u0094), exactly resemble those of any other being.\n_Ergo_, the effect of the world, of life, of natural objects,\nwill not in my case be the same as with the beings most\nresembling me. Thus I claim the right of creating or modifying\nfor my own and private use the system which most imports me; and\nif the reasonable leave be refused to me, I take it without\nleave.\n\n\u0093But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an\ninfinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of\nStorms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate _is_. But I cannot\nknow what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the\npursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and\nindeed my only duty, the \u0091I\u0092 being duly blended with the \u0091We.\u0092 I\nobject to be a \u0091selfless man,\u0092 which to me denotes an inverted\nmoral sense. I am bound to take careful thought concerning the\nconsequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future\nhas become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to\ngrieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal\nLaw.\u0094\n\nThe usual objection is that of man\u0092s practice. It says, \u0093This is\nwell in theory; but how carry it out? For instance, why would you\nkill, or give over to be killed, the man compelled by Fate to\nkill your father?\u0094 H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb replies, \u0093I do as others do, not\nbecause the murder was done by him, but because the murderer\nshould not be allowed another chance of murdering. He is a tiger\nwho has tasted blood and who should be shot. I am convinced that\nhe was a tool in the hands of Fate, but that will not prevent my\ntaking measures, whether predestined or not, in order to prevent\nhis being similarly used again.\u0094\n\nAs with repentance so with conscience. Conscience may be a \u0093fear\nwhich is the shadow of justice\u0094; even as pity is the shadow of\nlove. Though simply a geographical and chronological accident,\nwhich changes with every age of the world, it may deter men from\nseeking and securing the prize of successful villainy. But this\nincentive to beneficence must be applied to actions that will be\ndone, not to deeds that have been done.\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee, moreover, carefully distinguishes between the working\nof fate under a personal God, and under the Reign of Law. In the\nformer case the contradiction between the foreknowledge of a\nCreator, and the free-will of a Creature, is direct, palpable,\nabsolute. We might as well talk of black-whiteness and of\nwhite-blackness. A hundred generations of divines have never been\nable to ree the riddle; a million will fail. The difficulty is\ninsurmountable to the Theist whose Almighty is perforce\nOmniscient, and as Omniscient, Prescient. But it disappears when\nwe convert the Person into Law, or a settled order of events;\nsubject, moreover, to certain exceptions fixed and immutable, but\nat present unknown to man. The difference is essential as that\nbetween the penal code with its narrow forbiddal, and the broad\ncommandment which is a guide rather than a task-master.\n\nThus, too, the belief in fixed Law, versus arbitrary will,\nmodifies the H\u00e2j\u00ee\u0092s opinions concerning the pursuit of happiness.\nMankind, _das rastlose Ursachenthier_, is born to be on the whole\nequally happy and miserable. The highest organisms, the fine\nporcelain of our family, enjoy the most and suffer the most: they\nhave a capacity for rising to the empyrean of pleasure and for\nplunging deep into the swift-flowing river of woe and pain. Thus\nDante (Inf. vi. 106):\u0097\n\n                        \u0097tua scienza\n   Che vuol, quanto la cosa \u00e8 pi\u00f9 perfetta\n   Pi\u00f9 senta \u0092l bene, e cosi la doglienza.\n\nSo Buddhism declares that existence in itself implies effort,\npain and sorrow; and, the higher the creature, the more it\nsuffers. The common clay enjoys little and suffers little. Sum up\nthe whole and distribute the mass: the result will be an average;\nand the beggar is, on the whole, happy as the prince. Why, then,\nasks the objector, does man ever strive and struggle to change,\nto rise; a struggle which involves the idea of improving his\ncondition? The H\u00e2j\u00ee answers, \u0093Because such is the Law under which\nman is born: it may be fierce as famine, cruel as the grave, but\nman must obey it with blind obedience.\u0094 He does not enter into\nthe question whether life is worth living, whether man should\nelect to be born. Yet his Eastern pessimism, which contrasts so\nsharply with the optimism of the West, re-echoes the lines:\n\n                           \u0097a life,\n   With large results so little rife,\n   Though bearable seems hardly worth\n   This pomp of words, this pain of birth.\n\nLife, whatever may be its consequence, is built upon a basis of\nsorrow. Literature, the voice of humanity, and the verdict of\nmankind proclaim that all existence is a state of sadness. The\n\u0093physicians of the Soul\u0094 would save her melancholy from\ndegenerating into despair by doses of steadfast belief in the\npresence of God, in the assurance of Immortality, and in visions\nof the final victory of good. Were H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb a mere Theologist,\nhe would add that Sin, not the possibility of revolt, but the\nrevolt itself against conscience, is the primary form of evil,\nbecause it produces error, moral and intellectual. This man, who\nomits to read the Conscience-law, however it may differ from the\nSociety-law, is guilty of negligence. That man, who obscures the\nlight of Nature with sophistries, becomes incapable of discerning\nhis own truths. In both cases error, deliberately adopted, is\nsucceeded by suffering which, we are told, comes in justice and\nbenevolence as a warning, a remedy, and a chastisement.\n\nBut the Pilgrim is dissatisfied with the idea that evil\noriginates in the individual actions of free agents, ourselves\nand others. This doctrine fails to account for its\ncharacteristics,\u0097essentiality and universality. That creatures\nendowed with the mere possibility of liberty should not always\nchoose the Good appears natural. But that of the milliards of\nhuman beings who have inhabited the Earth, not one should have\nbeen found invariably to choose Good, proves how insufficient is\nthe solution. Hence no one believes in the existence of the\ncomplete man under the present state of things. The H\u00e2j\u00ee rejects\nall popular and mythical explanation by the Fall of \u0093Adam,\u0094 the\ninnate depravity of human nature, and the absolute perfection of\ncertain Incarnations, which argues their divinity. He can only\nwail over the prevalence of evil, assume its foundation to be\nerror, and purpose to abate it by unrooting that Ignorance which\nbears and feeds it.\n\nHis \u0093eschatology,\u0094 like that of the Soofis generally, is vague\nand shadowy. He may lean towards the doctrine of Marc Aurelius,\n\u0093The unripe grape, the ripe and the dried: all things are changes\nnot into nothing, but into that which is not at present.\u0094 This is\none of the _monstruosa opinionum portenta_ mentioned by the XIXth\nGeneral Council, alias the First Council of the Vatican. But he\nonly accepts it with a limitation. He cleaves to the ethical, not\nto the intellectual, worship of \u0093Nature,\u0094 which moderns define to\nbe an \u0093unscientific and imaginary synonym for the sum total of\nobserved phenomena.\u0094 Consequently he holds to the \u0093dark and\ndegrading doctrines of the Materialist,\u0094 the \u0093Hylotheist\u0094; in\nopposition to the spiritualist, a distinction far more marked in\nthe West than in the East. Europe draws a hard, dry line between\nSpirit and Matter: Asia does not.\n\nAmong us the Idealist objects to the Materialists that the latter\ncannot agree upon fundamental points; that they cannot define\nwhat is an atom; that they cannot account for the transformation\nof physical action and molecular motion into consciousness; and\n_vice vers\u00e2_, that they cannot say what matter is; and, lastly,\nthat Berkeley and his school have proved the existence of spirit\nwhile denying that of matter.\n\nThe Materialists reply that the want of agreement shows only a\nstudy insufficiently advanced; that man cannot describe an atom,\nbecause he is still an infant in science, yet there is no reason\nwhy his mature manhood should not pass through error and\nincapacity to truth and knowledge; that consciousness becomes a\nproperty of matter when certain conditions are present; that Hyle\n({Greek: hylae}) or Matter may be provisionally defined as\n\u0093phenomena with a substructure of their own, transcendental and\neternal, subject to the action, direct or indirect, of the five\nsenses, whilst its properties present themselves in three states,\nthe solid, the liquid, and the gaseous.\u0094 To casuistical Berkeley\nthey prefer the common sense of mankind. They ask the idealist\nand the spiritualist why they cannot find names for themselves\nwithout borrowing from a \u0093dark and degraded\u0094 school; why the\nformer must call himself after his eye (_idein_); the latter\nafter his breath (_spiritus_)? Thus the H\u00e2j\u00ee twits them with\naffixing their own limitations to their own Almighty Power, and,\nas Socrates said, with bringing down Heaven to the market-place.\n\nModern thought tends more and more to reject crude idealism and\nto support the monistic theory, the double aspect, the\ntransfigured realism. It discusses the Nature of Things in\nThemselves. To the question, is there anything outside of us\nwhich corresponds with our sensations? that is to say, is the\nwhole world simply \u0093I,\u0094 they reply that obviously there is a\nsomething else; and that this something else produces the\nbrain-disturbance which is called sensation. Instinct orders us\nto do something; Reason (the balance of faculties) directs; and\nthe strongest motive controls. Modern Science, by the discovery\nof Radiant Matter, a fourth condition, seems to conciliate the\ntwo schools. \u0093La d\u00e9couverte d\u0092un quatri\u00e8me \u00e9tat de la mati\u00e8re,\u0094\nsays a Reviewer, \u0093c\u0092est la porte ouverte \u00e0 l\u0092infini de ses\ntransformations; c\u0092est l\u0092homme invisible et impalpable de m\u00eame\npossible sans cesser d\u0092\u00eatre substantiel; c\u0092est le monde des\nesprits entrant sans absurdit\u00e9 dans la domaine des hypoth\u00e8ses\nscientifiques; c\u0092est la possibilit\u00e9 pour le mat\u00e9rialiste de\ncroire \u00e0 la vie d\u0092outre tombe, sans renoncer au substratum\nmat\u00e9riel qu\u0092il croit n\u00e9cessaire au maintien de l\u0092individualit\u00e9.\u0094\n\nWith H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb the soul is not material, for that would be a\ncontradiction of terms. He regards it, with many moderns, as a\nstate of things, not a thing; a convenient word denoting the\nsense of personality, of individual identity. In its ghostly\nsignification he discovers an artificial dogma which could hardly\nbelong to the brutal savages of the Stone Age. He finds it in the\nfunereal books of ancient Egypt, whence probably it passed to the\nZendavesta and the Vedas. In the Hebrew Pentateuch, of which part\nis still attributed to Moses, it is unknown, or, rather, it is\ndeliberately ignored by the author or authors. The early\nChristians could not agree upon the subject; Origen advocated the\npre-existence of men\u0092s souls, supposing them to have been all\ncreated at one time and successively embodied. Others make Spirit\nborn with the hour of birth: and so forth.\n\nBut the brain-action or, if you so phrase it, the mind, is not\nconfined to the reasoning faculties; nor can we afford to ignore\nthe sentiments, the affections which are, perhaps, the most\npotent realities of life. Their loud affirmative voice contrasts\nstrongly with the titubant accents of the intellect. They seem to\ndemand a future life, even, a state of rewards and punishments\nfrom the Maker of the world, the _Ortolano Eterno_,[1] the Potter\nof the East, the Watchmaker of the West. They protest against the\nidea of annihilation. They revolt at the notion of eternal\nparting from parents, kinsmen and friends. Yet the dogma of a\nfuture life is by no means catholic and universal. The\nAnglo-European race apparently cannot exist without it, and we\nhave lately heard of the \u0093Aryan Soul-land.\u0094 On the other hand\nmany of the Buddhist and even the Brahman Schools preach Nirw\u00e2na\n(comparative non-existence) and Parinirw\u00e2na (absolute\nnothingness). Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually\noccupying all Eastern Asia, has ever ignored it; and the\n200,000,000 of Chinese Confucians, the mass of the nation,\nprotest emphatically against the mainstay of the western creeds,\nbecause it \u0093unfits men for the business and duty of life by\nfixing their speculations on an unknown world.\u0094 And even its\nvotaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot deny that the\nnext world is a copy, more or less idealized, of the present; and\nthat it lacks a single particular savouring of originality. It is\nin fact a mere continuation; and the continuation is \u0093not\nproven.\u0094\n\n   It is most hard to be a man;\n\nand the Pilgrim\u0092s sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in\nthe pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect\nself-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so\ntransferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It\nrequires a different name: to call benevolence \u0093self-love\u0094 is to\nmake the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for\ndevelopment (which is true), but the very root itself (which is\nfalse). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is\nreserved for:\n\n                          \u0097Lives\n   Lived in obedience to the inner law\n   Which cannot alter.\n\n\n\n[1] The Eternal Gardener: so the old inscription saying:\u0097\n\n         locatus est in\nHomo     damnatus est in     horto\n         humatus est in\n         renatus est in\n\n\n\nNOTE II\n\n\nA few words concerning the Kas\u00eedah itself. Our H\u00e2j\u00ee begins with a\n_mise-en-sc\u00e8ne_; and takes leave of the Caravan setting out for\nMecca. He sees the \u0093Wolf\u0092s tail\u0094 (_Dum-i-gurg_), the {Greek:\nlykaug\u00e9s}, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the Zodiacal dawn-light,\nthe first faint brushes of white radiating from below the Eastern\nhorizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (_Dam-i-Subh_),\nthe current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase\nof cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early\nprayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biy\u00e2b\u00e2n\n(Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of man\u0092s fears\nand of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The\n\u0093wold-where-none-save-He (Allah)-can-dwell\u0094 is a great and\nterrible wilderness (_Dasht-i-l\u00e2-siw\u00e2 Hu_); and Allah\u0092s Holy Hill\nis Araf\u00e2t, near Mecca, which the Caravan reaches after passing\nthrough Medina. The first section ends with a sore lament that\nthe \u0093meetings of this world take place upon the highway of\nSeparation\u0094; and the original also has:\u0097\n\n   The chill of sorrow numbs my thought:\n      methinks I hear the passing knell;\n   As dies across yon thin blue line\n      the tinkling of the Camel-bell.\n\nThe next section quotes the various aspects under which Life\nappeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First\ncomes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with\nShab-i-t\u00e2r\u00eek o b\u00eem-i-mauj, etc. H\u00fbr is the plural of Ahwar, in\nfull Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where\nthey should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly\n\u0093Houries.\u0094 Follows Umar-i-Khayy\u00e2m, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or\nSooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem\nPuritanism. The verses alluded to are:\u0097\n\n   You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse\n   I made a second marriage in my house,\n      Divorced old barren Reason from my bed\n   And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.\n            (St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald\u0092s translation.)\n\nHere \u0093Wine\u0094 is used in its mystic sense of entranced Love for the\nSoul of Souls. Umar was hated and feared because he spoke boldly\nwhen his brethren the Soofis dealt in innuendoes. A third\nquotation has been trained into a likeness of the \u0093Hymn of Life,\u0094\ndespite the commonplace and the _navrante vulgarit\u00e9_ which\ncharacterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same\nhas been done to the words of Is\u00e2 (Jesus); for the author, who is\nwell-read in the Ing\u00eel (Evangel), evidently intended the\nallusion. Mansur el-Hall\u00e2j (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for\ncrudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma _Ana \u0092l Hakk_ (I am the\nTruth, _i.e._, God), _wa laysa fi-jubbat\u00ee il\u0092 Allah_ (and within\nmy coat is nought but God). His blood traced on the ground the\nfirst-quoted sentence. Lastly, there is a quotation from\n\u0093Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes,\u0094 etc.: here {Greek: pa\u00eeze}\nmay mean sport; but the context determines the kind of sport\nintended. The Z\u00e2hid is the literal believer in the letter of the\nLaw, opposed to the Soofi, who believes in its spirit: hence the\nformer is called a Z\u00e2hiri (outsider), and the latter a B\u00e2tini, an\ninsider. Moses is quoted because he ignored future rewards and\npunishments. As regards the \u0093two Eternities,\u0094 Persian and Arab\nmetaphysicians split Eternity, _i.e._, the negation of Time, into\ntwo halves, _Azal_ (beginninglessness) and _Abad_ (endlessness);\nboth being mere words, gatherings of letters with a subjective\nsignificance. In English we use \u0093Eternal\u0094 (_\u00c6viternus_, age-long,\nlife-long) as loosely, by applying it to three distinct ideas;\n(1) the habitual, in popular parlance; (2) the exempt from\nduration; and (3) the everlasting, which embraces all duration.\n\u0093Omniscience-Maker\u0094 is the old Roman sceptic\u0092s _Homo fecit Deos_.\n\nThe next section is one long wail over the contradictions, the\nmysteries, the dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all\nexistence, and the arcanum of grief which, Luther said, underlies\nall life. As with Euripides \u0093to live is to die, to die is to\nlive.\u0094 H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb borrows the Hindu idea of the human body. \u0093It is\na mansion,\u0094 says Menu, \u0093with bones for its beams and rafters;\nwith nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for\ncement; with skin for its outer covering; filled with no sweet\nperfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion infested by age\nand sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted with\nthe quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing.\u0094\nThe Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. \u0093Sitting as\na potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Phil\u00e6) moulds clay, and gives\nthe spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris.\u0094 Hence the\nGenesitic \u0093breath.\u0094 Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being \u0093by\nwhom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is\nfabricated.\u0094 We find him next in Jeremiah\u0092s \u0093Arise and go down\nunto the Potter\u0092s house,\u0094 etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans\n(ix. 20), \u0093Hath not the potter power over the clay?\u0094 No wonder\nthat the first Hand who moulded the man-mud is a _lieu commun_ in\nEastern thought. The \u0093waste of agony\u0094 is Buddhism, or\nSchopenhauerism pure and simple, I have moulded \u0093Earth on Earth\u0094\nupon \u0093Seint Ysidre\u0094\u0092s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440):\u0097\n\n   Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouzt,\n   Erthe out of Erthe hath gete a dignity of nouzt,\n   Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt\n   How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc.\n\nThe \u0093Camel-rider,\u0094 suggests Ossian, \u0093yet a few years and the\nblast of the desert comes.\u0094 The dromedary was chosen as Death\u0092s\nvehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouin\u0092s\ncorpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will lie among his\nkith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of:\u0097\n\n   How poor, how rich; how abject, how august,\n   How complicate, how wonderful is Man!\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee now passes to the results of his long and anxious\nthoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of\nMilton:\u0097\n\n   Till old experience doth attain\n   To something of prophetic strain.\n\nHe boldly declares that there is no God as man has created his\nCreator. Here he is at one with modern thought:\u0097\u0093En g\u00e9n\u00e9ral les\ncroyants font le Dieu comme ils sont eux-m\u00eames,\u0094 (says J. J.\nRousseau, \u0093Confessions,\u0094 I. 6): \u0093les bons le font bon: les\nm\u00e9chants le font m\u00e9chant: les d\u00e9vots haineux et bilieux, ne\nvoient que l\u0092enfer, parce qu\u0092ils voudraient damner tout le monde;\nles \u00e2mes aimantes et douces n\u0092y croient gu\u00e8re; et l\u0092un des\n\u00e9tonnements dont je ne reviens pas est de voir le bon F\u00e9n\u00e9lon en\nparler dans son T\u00e9l\u00e9maque comme s\u0092il y croyoit tout de bon: mais\nj\u0092esp\u00e8re qu\u0092il mentoit alors; car enfin quelque v\u00e9ridique qu\u0092on\nsoit, il faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est \u00e9v\u00eaque.\u0094 \u0093Man\ndepicts himself in his gods,\u0094 says Schiller. Hence the\n_Naturgott_, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which\nevery system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly\nimmoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the\nconscience of the community, and with it of the individual items,\nbegan aspiring to its golden age,\u0097Perfection. \u0093Dieu est le\nsuperlatif, dont le positif est l\u0092homme,\u0094 says Carl Vogt;\nmeaning, that the popular idea of a _numen_ is that of a\nmagnified and non-natural man.\n\nHe then quotes his authorities. Buddha, whom the Catholic Church\nconverted to Saint Josaphat, refused to recognize Ishwara (the\ndeity), on account of the mystery of the \u0093cruelty of things.\u0094\nSchopenhauer, Miss Cobbe\u0092s model pessimist, who at the humblest\ndistance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found\nthe vision of man\u0092s unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so\noverpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent,\n\u0093heartless, cowardly, and arrogant.\u0094 Confucius, the \u0093Throneless\nking, more powerful than all kings,\u0094 denied a personal deity. The\nEpicurean idea rules the China of the present day. \u0093God is great,\nbut he lives too far off,\u0094 say the Turanian Sant\u00e2ls in Aryan\nIndia; and this is the general language of man in the Turanian\nEast.\n\nH\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb evidently holds that idolatry begins with a personal\ndeity. And let us note that the latter is deliberately denied by\nthe \u0093Thirty-nine Articles.\u0094 With them God is \u0093a Being without\nParts (personality) or Passions.\u0094 He professes a vague\nAgnosticism, and attributes popular faith to the fact that Timor\nfecit Deos; \u0093every religion being, without exception, the child\nof fear and ignorance\u0094 (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the \u0093Drawer\nof the Wine,\u0094 the \u0093Ancient Taverner,\u0094 the \u0093Old Magus,\u0094 the\n\u0093Patron of the Mugh\u00e2n or Magians\u0094; all titles applied to the\nSoofi as opposed to the Z\u00e2hid. His \u0093idols\u0094 are the eidola\n(illusions) of Bacon, \u0093having their foundations in the very\nconstitution of man,\u0094 and therefore appropriately called\n_fabul\u00e6_. That \u0093Nature\u0092s Common Course\u0094 is subject to various\ninterpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a\nsubverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of\nthe Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth\ncentury, became the \u0093twice execrable\u0094 of Martin Luther; and was\nfinally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two\nstanzas. The first is:\u0097\n\n   Theories for truths, fable for fact;\n      system for science vex the thought\n   Life\u0092s one great lesson you despise\u0097\n      to know that all we know is nought.\n\nThis is in fact:\u0097\n\n   Well didst thou say, Athena\u0092s noblest son,\n   The most we know is nothing can be known.\n\nThe next is:\u0097\n\n   Essence and substance, sequence, cause,\n      beginning, ending, space and time,\n   These be the toys of manhood\u0092s mind,\n      at once ridiculous and sublime.\n\nHe is not the only one who so regards \u0093bothering Time and Space.\u0094\nA late definition of the \u0093infinitely great,\u0094 viz., that the idea\narises from denying form to any figure; of the \u0093infinitely\nsmall,\u0094 from refusing magnitude to any figure, is a fair specimen\nof the \u0093dismal science\u0094\u0097metaphysics.\n\nAnother omitted stanza reads:\u0097\n\n   How canst thou, Phenomen! pretend\n      the Noumenon to mete and span?\n   Say which were easier probed and proved,\n      Absolute Being or mortal man?\n\nOne would think that he had read Kant on the \u0093Knowable and the\nUnknowable,\u0094 or had heard of the Yankee lady, who could\n\u0093differentiate between the Finite and the Infinite.\u0094 It is a\ncommon-place of the age, in the West as well as the East, that\nScience is confined to phenomena, and cannot reach the Noumena,\nthe things themselves. This is the scholastic realism, the\n\u0093residuum of a bad metaphysic,\u0094 which deforms the system of\nComte. With all its pretensions, it simply means that there are,\nor can be conceived, things in themselves (_i.e._, unrelated to\nthought); that we know them to exist; and, at the same time, that\nwe cannot know what they are. But who dares say \u0093cannot\u0094? Who can\nmeasure man\u0092s work when he shall be as superior to our present\nselves as we are to the Cave-man of past time?\n\nThe \u0093Chain of Universe\u0094 alludes to the Jain idea that the whole,\nconsisting of intellectual as well as of natural principles,\nexisted from all eternity; and that it has been subject to\nendless revolutions, whose causes are the inherent powers of\nnature, intellectual as well as physical, without the\nintervention of a deity. But the Poet ridicules the \u0093non-human,\u0094\n_i.e._, the not-ourselves, the negation of ourselves and\nconsequently a non-existence. Most Easterns confuse the\ncontradictories, in which one term stands for something, and the\nother for nothing (_e.g._, ourselves and not-ourselves), with the\ncontraries (_e.g._, rich and not-rich = poor), in which both\nterms express a something. So the positive-negative \u0093infinite\u0094 is\nnot the complement of \u0093finite,\u0094 but its negation. The Western man\nderides the process by making \u0093not-horse\u0094 the complementary\nentity of \u0093horse.\u0094 The Pilgrim ends with the favourite Soofi\ntenet that the five (six?) senses are the doors of all human\nknowledge, and that no form of man, incarnation of the deity,\nprophet, apostle or sage, has ever produced an idea not conceived\nwithin his brain by the sole operation of these vulgar material\nagents. Evidently he is neither spiritualist nor idealist.\n\nHe then proceeds to show that man depicts himself in his God, and\nthat \u0093God is the racial expression\u0094; a pedagogue on the Nile, an\nabstraction in India, and an astrologer in Chald\u00e6a; where\nAbraham, says Berosus (Josephus, Ant. I. 7, \u00a7 2, and II. 9, \u00a7 2)\nwas \u0093skilful in the celestial science.\u0094 He notices the\nAk\u00e2rana-Zam\u00e2n (endless Time) of the Guebres, and the working\ndual, Hormuzd and Ahriman. He brands the God of the Hebrews with\npugnacity and cruelty. He has heard of the beautiful creations of\nGreek fancy which, not attributing a moral nature to the deity,\nincluded Theology in Physics; and which, like Professor Tyndall,\nseemed to consider all matter everywhere alive. We have adopted a\nvery different Unitarianism; Theology, with its one Creator;\nPantheism with its \u0093one Spirit\u0092s plastic stress\u0094; and Science\nwith its one Energy. He is hard upon Christianity and its \u0093trinal\nGod\u0094: I have not softened his expression ({Arabic} = a riddle),\nalthough it may offend readers. There is nothing more enigmatical\nto the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all other\nobjections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of\nIslamism, which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and\nits Hellenic hedonism; with the world of thought moving between\nthese two extremes. The former, defined as predominant or\nexclusive care for the practice of right, is represented by\nSemitic and Arab influence, Kor\u00e2nic and Had\u00eesic. The latter, the\nreligion of humanity, a passion for life and light, for culture\nand intelligence; for art, poetry and science, is represented in\nIslamism by the fondly and impiously-cherished memory of the old\nGuebre kings and heroes, beauties, bards and sages. Hence the\nmention of Z\u00e2l and his son Rostam; of Cyrus and of the\nJ\u00e2m-i-Jamsh\u00eed, which may be translated either grail (cup) or\nmirror: it showed the whole world within its rim; and hence it\nwas called J\u00e2m-i-Jeh\u00e2n-num\u00e2 (universe-exposing). The contemptuous\nexpressions about the diet of camel\u0092s milk and the meat of the\nSusm\u00e2r, or green lizard, are evidently quoted from Firdausi\u0092s\nfamous lines beginning:\u0097\n\n   Arab-r\u00e2 be-j\u00e2\u00ee ras\u00eed\u0092est k\u00e2r.\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee is severe upon those who make of the Deity a\nKhw\u00e2n-i-yaghm\u00e2 (or tray of plunder) as the Persians phrase it. He\nlooks upon the shepherds as men,\n\n   \u0097Who rob the sheep themselves to clothe.\n\nSo Schopenhauer (Leben, etc., by Wilhelm Gewinner) furiously\nshows how the \u0093English nation ought to treat that set of\nhypocrites, imposters and money-graspers, the clergy, that\nannually devours \u00a33,500,000.\u0094\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee broadly asserts that there is no Good and no Evil in the\nabsolute sense as man has made them. Here he is one with Pope:\u0097\n\n   And spite of pride, in erring nature\u0092s spite\n   One truth is clear\u0097whatever is, is right.\n\nUnfortunately the converse is just as true:\u0097whatever is, is\nwrong. Khizr is the Elijah who puzzled Milman. He represents the\nSoofi, the B\u00e2tini, while Mus\u00e2 (Moses) is the Z\u00e2hid, the Z\u00e2hiri;\nand the strange adventures of the twain, invented by the Jews,\nhave been appropriated by the Moslems. He derides the Freewill of\nman; and, like Diderot, he detects \u0093pantaloon in a prelate, a\nsatyr in a president, a pig in a priest, an ostrich in a\nminister, and a goose in a chief clerk.\u0094 He holds to Fortune, the\n{Greek: T\u00faxae} of Alcman, which is, {Greek: Eunom\u00edas te ka\u00ec\nPeitho\u00fbs adelph\u00e0 ka\u00ec Promathe\u00edas thug\u00e1taer},\u0097Chance, the sister\nof Order and Trust, and the daughter of Forethought. The\nScandinavian Spinners of Fate were Urd (the Was, the Past),\nVerdandi (the Becoming, or Present), and Skuld (the To-be, or\nFuture). He alludes to Plato, who made the Demiourgos create the\nworlds by the Logos (the Hebrew Dabar) or Creative Word, through\nthe \u00c6ons. These {Greek: A\u00ecwnes} of the Mystics were spiritual\nemanations from {Greek: A\u00ecwn}, lit. a wave of influx, an age,\nperiod, or day; hence the Latin _\u00e6vum_, and the Welsh Awen, the\nstream of inspiration falling upon a bard. Basilides, the\nEgypto-Christian, made the Creator evolve seven \u00c6ons or Pteromata\n(fulnesses); from two of whom, Wisdom and Power, proceeded the\n365 degrees of Angels. All were subject to a Prince of Heaven,\ncalled Abraxas, who was himself under guidance of the chief \u00c6on,\nWisdom. Others represent the first Cause to have produced an \u00c6on\nor Pure Intelligence; the first a second, and so forth till the\ntenth. This was material enough to affect Hyle, which thereby\nassumed a spiritual form. Thus the two incompatibles combined in\nthe Scheme of Creation.\n\nHe denies the three ages of the Buddhists: the wholly happy; the\nhappy mixed with misery, and the miserable tinged with\nhappiness,\u0097the present. The Zoroastrians had four, each of 3,000\nyears. In the first, Hormuzd, the good-god, ruled alone; then\nAhriman, the bad-god, began to rule subserviently: in the third\nboth ruled equally; and in the last, now current, Ahriman has\ngained the day.\n\nAgainst the popular idea that man has caused the misery of this\nworld, he cites the ages, when the Old Red Sandstone bred\ngigantic cannibal fishes; when the Oolites produced the mighty\nreptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when the monsters of\nthe Eocene and Miocene periods shook the ground with their\nponderous tread. And the world of waters is still a hideous scene\nof cruelty, carnage, and destruction.\n\nHe declares Conscience to be a geographical and chronological\naccident. Thus he answers the modern philosopher whose soul was\noverwhelmed by the marvel and the awe of two things, \u0093the starry\nheaven above and the moral law within.\u0094 He makes the latter sense\na development of the gregarious and social instincts; and so\ntravellers have observed that the moral is the last step in\nmental progress. His Moors are the savage Dankali and other\nnegroid tribes, who offer a cup of milk with one hand and stab\nwith the other. He translates literally the Indian word H\u00e2th\u00ee (an\nelephant), the animal with the H\u00e2th (hand, or trunk). Finally he\nalludes to the age of active volcanoes, the present, which is\nmerely temporary, the shifting of the Pole, and the spectacle to\nbe seen from Mushtari, or the planet Jupiter.\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee again asks the old, old question, What is Truth? And he\nanswers himself, after the fashion of the wise Emperor of China,\n\u0093Truth hath not an unchanging name.\u0094 A modern English writer\nsays: \u0093I have long been convinced by the experience of my life,\nas a pioneer of various heterodoxies, which are rapidly becoming\northodoxies, that nearly all truth is temperamental to us, or\ngiven in the affections and intuitions; and that discussion and\ninquiry do little more than feed temperament.\u0094 Our poet seems to\nmean that the Perceptions, when they perceive truly, convey\nobjective truth, which is universal; whereas the Reflectives and\nthe Sentiments, the working of the moral region, or the middle\nlobe of the phrenologists, supplies only subjective truth,\npersonal and individual. Thus to one man the axiom, _Opes\nirritamenta malorum_, represents a distinct fact; while another\nholds wealth to be an incentive for good. Evidently both are\nright, according to their lights.\n\nH\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb cites Plato and Aristotle, as usual with Eastern\nsongsters, who delight in Mantik (logic). Here he appears to mean\nthat a false proposition is as real a proposition as one that is\ntrue. \u0093Faith moves mountains\u0094 and \u0093Manet immota fides\u0094 are\nevidently quotations. He derides the teaching of the \u0093First\nCouncil of the Vatican\u0094 (cap. v.), \u0093all the faithful are little\nchildren listening to the voice of Saint Peter,\u0094 who is the\n\u0093Prince of the Apostles.\u0094 He glances at the fancy of certain\nmodern physicists, \u0093devotion is a definite molecular change in\nthe convolution of grey pulp.\u0094 He notices with contumely the\nriddle of which Milton speaks so glibly, where the Dialoguists,\n\n                              \u0097reasoned high\n   Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,\n   Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.\n\nIn opposition to the orthodox Mohammedan tenets which make Man\u0092s\nsoul his percipient Ego, an entity, a unity, the Soofi considers\nit a fancy, opposed to body, which is a fact; at most a state of\nthings, not a thing; a consensus of faculties whereof our frames\nare but the phenomena. This is not contrary to Genesitic legend.\nThe Hebrew Ruach and Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or\nspirit, simply signify wind or breath, the outward and visible\nsign of life. Their later schools are even more explicit. \u0093For\nthat which befalls man befalls beasts; as the one dies, so does\nthe other; they have all one death; all go unto one place\u0094\n(Eccles. iii. 19). But the modern soul, a nothing, a string of\nnegations, a negative in chief, is thus described in the\nMah\u00e2bh\u00e2rat: \u0093It is indivisible, inconceivable, inconceptible: it\nis eternal, universal, permanent, immovable: it is invisible and\nunalterable.\u0094 Hence the modern spiritualism which, rejecting\nmaterialism, can use only material language.\n\nThese, says the H\u00e2j\u00ee, are mere sounds. He would not assert \u0093Verba\ngignunt verba,\u0094 but \u0093Verba gignunt res,\u0094 a step further. The idea\nis Bacon\u0092s \u0093idola fori, omnium molestissima,\u0094 the twofold\nillusions of language; either the names of things that have no\nexistence in fact, or the names of things whose idea is confused\nand ill-defined.\n\nHe derives the Soul-idea from the \u0093savage ghost\u0094 which Dr.\nJohnson defined to be a \u0093kind of shadowy being.\u0094 He justly\nremarks that it arose (perhaps) in Egypt; and was not invented by\nthe \u0093People of the Book.\u0094 By this term Moslems denote Jews and\nChristians who have a recognized revelation, while their\nignorance refuses it to Guebres, Hindus, and Confucians.\n\nHe evidently holds to the doctrine of progress. With him\nprotoplasm is the Yliastron, the Prima Materies. Our word matter\nis derived from the Sanskrit {Sanskrit} (m\u00e2tr\u00e2), which, however,\nsignifies properly the invisible type of visible matter; in\nmodern language, the substance distinct from the sum of its\nphysical and chemical properties. Thus, M\u00e2tr\u00e2 exists only in\nthought, and is not recognizable by the action of the five\nsenses. His \u0093Chain of Being\u0094 reminds us of Prof. Huxley\u0092s\nPedigree of the Horse, Orohippus, Mesohippus, Meiohippus,\nProtohippus, Pleiohippus, and Equus. He has evidently heard of\nmodern biology, or Hylozoism, which holds its quarter-million\nspecies of living beings, animal and vegetable, to be progressive\nmodifications of one great fundamental unity, an unity of\nso-called \u0093mental faculties\u0094 as well as of bodily structure. And\nthis is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the popular idea that man\nis the great central figure round which all things gyrate like\nmarionettes; in fact, the anthropocentric era of Draper, which,\nstrange to say, lives by the side of the telescope and the\nmicroscope. As man is of recent origin, and may end at an early\nepoch of the macrocosm, so before his birth all things revolved\nround nothing, and may continue to do so after his death.\n\nThe H\u00e2j\u00ee, who elsewhere denounces \u0093compound ignorance,\u0094 holds\nthat all evil comes from error; and that all knowledge has been\ndeveloped by overthrowing error, the ordinary channel of human\nthought. He ends this section with a great truth. There are\nthings which human Reason or Instinct matured, in its undeveloped\nstate, cannot master; but Reason is a Law to itself. Therefore we\nare not bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, any thing\nwhich is contrary or contradictory to Reason. Here he is\ndiametrically opposed to Rome, who says, \u0093Do not appeal to\nHistory; that is private judgment. Do not appeal to Holy Writ;\nthat is heresy. Do not appeal to Reason; that is Rationalism.\u0094\n\nHe holds with the Patriarchs of Hebrew Holy Writ, that the\npresent life is all-sufficient for an intellectual (not a\nsentimental) being; and, therefore, that there is no want of a\nHeaven or a Hell. With far more contradiction the Western poet\nsings:\u0097\n\n   Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed\n   In one self-place; but when we are in hell,\n   And where hell is there must we ever be,\n   And, to be short, when all this world dissolves,\n   And every creature shall be purified,\n   All places shall be hell which are not heaven.\n\nFor what want is there of a Hell when all are pure? He enlarges\nupon the ancient Buddhist theory, that Happiness and Misery are\nequally distributed among men and beasts; some enjoy much and\nsuffer much; others the reverse. Hence Diderot declares, \u0093Sober\npassions produce only the commonplace . . . the man of moderate\npassion lives and dies like a brute.\u0094 And again we have the half\ntruth:\u0097\n\n   That the mark of rank in nature\n      Is capacity for pain.\n\nThe latter implies an equal capacity for pleasure, and thus the\nbalance is kept.\n\nH\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb then proceeds to show that Faith is an accident of\nbirth. One of his omitted distichs says:\u0097\n\n   Race makes religion; true! but aye\n      upon the Maker acts the made,\n   A finite God, and infinite sin,\n      in lieu of raising man, degrade.\n\nIn a manner of dialogue he introduces the various races each\nfighting to establish its own belief. The Frank (Christian)\nabuses the Hindu, who retorts that he is of Mlenchha, mixed or\nimpure, blood, a term applied to all non-Hindus. The same is done\nby Nazarene and Mohammedan; by the Confucian, who believes in\nnothing, and by the Soofi, who naturally has the last word. The\nassociation of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph with the Trinity,\nin the Roman and Greek Churches, makes many Moslems conclude that\nChristians believe not in three but in five Persons. So an\nEnglishman writes of the early Fathers, \u0093They not only said that\n3 = 1, and that 1 = 3: they professed to explain how that curious\narithmetical combination had been brought about. The Indivisible\nhad been divided, and yet was not divided: it was divisible, and\nyet it was indivisible; black was white and white was black; and\nyet there were not two colours but one colour; and whoever did\nnot believe it would be damned.\u0094 The Arab quotation runs in the\noriginal:\u0097\n\n   _Ahsanu \u0092l-Mak\u00e2ni l\u0092 il-Fat\u00e2 \u0092l-Jehannamu_\n   The best of places for (the generous) youth is Gehenna.\n\nGehenna, alias Jahim, being the fiery place of eternal\npunishment. And the second saying, _Al- n\u00e2r wa l\u00e2 \u0092l-\u0092Ar_\u0097\u0093Fire\n(of Hell) rather than Shame,\u0094\u0097is equally condemned by the\nKoranist. The Gust\u00e2khi (insolence) of Fate is the expression of\nUmar-i-Khayyam (St. xxx):\u0097\n\n   What, without asking hither hurried _whence?_\n   And, without asking _whither_ hurried hence!\n      Oh many a cup of this forbidden wine\n   Must drown the memory of that insolence.\n\nSoofistically, the word means \u0093the coquetry of the beloved one,\u0094\nthe divin\u00e6 particula aur\u00e6. And the section ends with Pope\u0092s:\u0097\n\n   He can\u0092t be wrong whose life is in the right.\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nHere the H\u00e2j\u00ee ends his practical study of mankind. The image of\nDestiny playing with men as pieces is a view common amongst\nEasterns. His idea of wisdom is once more Pope\u0092s:\u0097\n\n   And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.\n                                 (Essay IV. 398.)\n\nRegret, _i.e._, repentance, was one of the forty-two deadly sins\nof the Ancient Egyptians. \u0093Thou shalt not consume thy heart,\u0094\nsays the Ritual of the Dead, the negative justification of the\nsoul or ghost (Lepsius \u0093Alteste Texte des Todtenbuchs\u0094). We have\nborrowed competitive examination from the Chinese; and, in these\nmorbid days of weak introspection and retrospection, we might\nlearn wisdom from the sturdy old Khemites. When he sings \u0093Abjure\nthe Why and seek the How,\u0094 he refers to the old Scholastic\ndifference of the _Demonstratio propter quid_ (why is a thing?),\nas opposed to _Demonstratio quia_ (_i.e._ that a thing is). The\n\u0093great Man\u0094 shall end with becoming deathless, as Shakespeare\nsays in his noble sonnet:\u0097\n\n   And Death once dead, there\u0092s no more dying then!\n\nLike the great Pagans, the H\u00e2j\u00ee holds that man was born good,\nwhile the Christian, \u0093tormented by the things divine,\u0094 cleaves to\nthe comforting doctrine of innate sinfulness. Hence the universal\ntenet, that man should do good in order to gain by it here or\nhereafter; the \u0093enlightened selfishness,\u0094 that says, Act well and\nget compound interest in a future state. The allusion to the\n\u0093Theist-word\u0094 apparently means that the votaries of a personal\nDeity must believe in the absolute foreknowledge of the\nOmniscient in particulars as in generals. The Rule of Law\nemancipates man; and its exceptions are the gaps left by his\nignorance. The wail over the fallen flower, etc., reminds us of\nthe Pulambal (Lamentations) of the Anti-Brahminical writer,\n\u0093Pathira-Giriy\u00e2r.\u0094 The allusion to M\u00e2y\u00e2 is from D\u00e2s Kab\u00eer:\u0097\n\n      M\u00e2y\u00e2 mare, na man mare, mar mar gay\u00e2, sar\u00eer.\n   Illusion dies, the mind dies not though dead and gone\n      the flesh.\n\nNirw\u00e2na, I have said, is partial extinction by being merged in\nthe Supreme, not to be confounded with Pari-nirw\u00e2na or absolute\nannihilation. In the former also, dying gives birth to a new\nbeing, the embodiment of _karma_ (deeds), good and evil, done in\nthe countless ages of transmigration.\n\nHere ends my share of the work. On the whole it has been\nconsiderable. I have omitted, as has been seen, sundry stanzas,\nand I have changed the order of others. The text has nowhere been\ntranslated verbatim; in fact, a familiar European turn has been\ngiven to many sentiments which were judged too Oriental. As the\nmetre adopted by H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb was the Bahr Taw\u00eel (long verse), I\nthought it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to fringe\nit with the rough, unobtrusive rhyme of the original.\n\nVive, valeque!","title":"The Kas\u00eedah of H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb El-Yezd\u00ee","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":17845}