CHAPTER IV.
Now when the king saw the inhabitants becoming more like the human beings he had known, he felt that he was solitary, and he desired to have some intercourse with them. But when he appeared amongst them they recognized him at once as some one more powerful than themselves, and were afraid of him. In their alarm they tried to lay hands on him. When he, to prevent their attacks, withdrew his continued bearing the difference of pain in their actions, those who were attacking him sank into apathy and became as the children whom he had first found.
And a horrible report sprang up amongst the inhabitants of a terrible being who came amongst them, and who struck all who looked on him with torpor and death. So the king ceased to walk amongst them. Still it was long since he had heard the sound of a voice speaking to him, and he wished for a companion. He sought again the old man, and standing at the edge of the chasm he called upon him.
And the old man appeared. “Art thou weary, O king, of thy task?”
“Nay,” replied the king; “but I wish to make myself known to the inhabitants that I may speak with them and they with me.”
And the old man counselled him to give some of his rays to one amongst the beings, for then this being having these rays and the power of bearing pain for another other than himself, would be like the king, and being like him would understand him.
Now the king sought over the whole of the valley, and of all the inhabitants he found one most perfect in form and in mind. He was the son of a king, and destined to reign in his turn over a numerous people. And the king gave him some of his rays, straight rays going forth from the prince to others.
And immediately the prince awoke as it were from a dream. And he comprehended existence, and saw that in reality the pain and the pleasure were equal. And when he had seen this, and knew the power of the rays, and how by bearing pain he could make others pass through pleasure and pain, and call those sleeping into activity; when the prince knew this, he cried out:
“One thing succeeds another in the valley; pain follows pleasure, and pleasure follows pain. But the cause of all being is in bearing pain. Wherefore,” he cried, “let us seek an end to this show. Let us pray to be delivered, that at last, pain ceasing, we may pass into nothingness.”
Thus the prince, apprehending the cause of existence, felt that it was pain, and dimly comprehending how the king was bearing pain, and himself feeling the strenuousness of the effort of using the rays for which the frame of the inhabitants was unstrung, longed that existence itself might cease.
Yet all his life his deeds were noble, and he passed from tribe to tribe, bearing the burdens and calling forth the sleeping to activity.