CHAPTER IX.
When he had seen the wanderer safely housed he determined to go and visit a friend who had lived in a town not very far from the metropolis. This friend had been his most intimate companion when he first became a student, but being older had finished his studies sooner, and had left the metropolis before the student’s misfortune. In leaving his place of exile the student rendered himself liable to punishment, and he gave up the means of subsistence which had been provided for him there. He was obliged to go as a wanderer, and trust to the liberality of the people on the way.
He was hospitably received as a rule. The region was remote from the metropolis, the inhabitants were glad to talk with a stranger—and the wanderers were, in general, held to have a stock of exchangeable talk and news. But he did not speak with any one of what lay present to his mind, till one occasion.
As he was walking along early in the day, he was hailed by an inhabitant who looked like a well-to-do farmer. Something in the student’s appearance attracted him, for, learning that he was on his way to a distant town, he asked him to stay and take the first meal of the day with him. This inhabitant had been a clerk employed in the council of pleasure and pain. But the sedentary life had been too trying for him; he had come to live in the country on a small possession of his till he had overcome the strain.
“Did you not find it very dull in the part you come from?”
“No; I found that the people had much of interest to tell me.”
“They have singular traditions. I remember when a deliberation was held in our council as to whether they were pernicious or harmless; it was decided that they were harmless and little likely to spread.”
“I have talked a good deal with them since I have lived amongst them, and have come to the conclusion that in what they believe a great deal is true.”
“Indeed! you cannot surely believe that our pleasure is distasteful to any being outside us.”
“No; but I go back to the old notion of which you have heard, that there is a being who calls us into being, and who is over us; and I believe that this being takes pain, and so makes life pleasurable to us. You know that some sensation is passing away, and you know that there must be more pain that passes away than pleasure.”
“How can I know that?”
“We know that there is not such a very great excess of pleasure over pain. Now if in all the course of time that has been, the sensation that has been passing away was pleasure, there would by this time have been left an excess of pain, and before now we should all have sunk into apathy. So it is either pleasure and pain mixed which passes away, or pain alone. I conceive that it is pain alone. These strange doctrines are true, only curiously expressed. The being over us is continually bearing pain and so making existence pleasant to us, thus causing us to move and live. So the pain of our life is that remaining pain which he does not take.”
“This seems to me a very dismal doctrine. I can imagine some poetry in the idea of a being of infinite power, strong and glorious, but none in the idea of a suffering being.”
“When you were a child you thought your father could do everything; but as you grew up and found that he too had his difficulties, was your regard for him lessened, or your thankfulness for that which he did for you?”
“No. And you mean that if we do not regard this being in the same way, granting his existence, still we should feel gratitude towards him.”
“Certainly we should feel gratitude to him; and, considering the attitude we have taken towards him, this feeling of gratitude comes over us with a kind of revulsion. But besides gratitude I do not see why we must lose any other feeling such as you seem to miss. Do you not remember how, in the course of the studies we have all been through, we were told that there were two parts in knowledge—one corresponding to reality, one introduced by the action of our own minds—so that certain characteristics which we at first think to be due to the nature of things in themselves we find out on reflection are only our apprehension of our own mental action?”
“Yes; we do not perceive the reality absolutely, we apprehend it subject to the mind’s mode of perceiving.”
“And of course the mode of the mind’s action makes it perceive certain qualities as parts of the real existence, which do not belong to real existence at all. These qualities spring from our mind’s own action. In old times these qualities were considered to be qualities of the reality instead of introduced there. And much of the impressiveness of the idea formed of the being of whom we speak was due to a mere magnification and extension of these qualities—qualities which do not correspond to anything in reality. So the impressiveness of the idea of this being was due to the magnification of qualities which originate solely in our minds.”
“This accounts for the idea having faded away. But tell me definitely in an instance. Explain by taking some particular quality what you mean.”
“I cannot do that, the thought but floats in my mind; still it is always good to embody. Something of this sort. When we observe any object we always attribute to it a certain power. Everything has its own powers of resistence, of moving, of affecting us in certain ways. Thus whatever we apprehend, we apprehend as powerful. Now since this quality of powerful comes in with regard to everything, it is probably introduced by the mind, and is rather a part of the mental action in giving an idea of reality than a quality of reality. If so, when we suppose a being to have the quality of ‘all powerful,’ we are not supposing anything at all about the being, but are only extending a quality quite barren of any correspondence with the absolute nature of things. We have left off talking about the being, and are extending a conception which springs solely from the only way in which we can perceive.”
“Surely you would say that this being was powerful.”
“Of course, if we think of him at all, we must conceive of him as powerful; the nature of our mental action demands this. But to dwell on the notion of his powerfulness is quite barren, the only subject of thought which has content is to inquire what kind of power he has. There has been a tendency on the part of those who have thought about this being to represent his greatness in every respect. But they have not always been judicious in so doing, because being unable to separate his real qualities from those which they attribute to him in virtue of their own mode of perception, they have come to lay stress on descriptions which on the one hand correspond to nothing in reality, and on the other hand fail to move those whom they are intended to impress. A cloak has been woven. The nature of this being is hidden. His nature has been connected with introspective questions about the origin—of, of all things, the way in which we perceive. All this must be dashed aside. This being is the cause of all our life, and yet he needs your help as you understand help.”
“I should like to accompany you to your friend and hear what he has to say.”
“Come, certainly.”
So they went together to the town. On the way the clerk felt a brightness of existence such as he had not enjoyed for a long time. They talked together, and confided in one another. At length they came near the town where the student’s friend lived. They separated, the clerk going into the town, the student to the house of his friend. On his way there the path led through a small wood of very thick growth. Passing along, he found that he had left the path. Pausing to reflect in which direction he ought to go, he thought he heard a sound. It was repeated. Penetrating deep into the obscurest part of the wood, he searched till at length he found—carefully concealed—a child, a mere infant.
The child was nearly perished with exposure. He took it up and warmed it. When the child was a little better the cause of its having been hidden away was apparent. Its breathing was distressed and laboured. It suffered under some affection of the lungs, which made it gasp at every breath. Still in other respects the child was well developed and seemed strongly made. It seemed to have been left too long without care to recover. The pain of exhaustion from the neglect, and added to this the pain of its breathing, was too much for it, it was sinking.
“If I could bear the pain of its breathing,” thought the student, “it might not sink till I could get some nourishment for it.”
He looked up, for it seemed to him as if some one struck him in the chest. There was no one there. The pain continued. He did not drop the child but continued on his way to the house of his friend. When he got there he noticed a stillness unusual in the houses of the inhabitants. He entered, and was met by his friend’s sister. He saw at once that something must have happened. She took him into a dimly lighted room, where he saw his friend lying motionless and his face quite white.
“He has been suffering great pain for long,” she said; “it was hoped that if he could bear up the pain would have run its course and he would not sink. But all we could do was no use.” The room was full of all things accounted pleasurable, and she looked round as she spoke. “It was no good.” Taking the child from his arms she left him with the form of her brother.
Sitting down by his side the student felt the strange oppression on his chest continue. He went out and found that the child had completely revived. It had still the appearance of being agonized in its breathing, but its eyes were bright, and it laughed.
“It will be all right soon,” said his friend’s sister.
“Tell me what was the matter with your brother.”
When he had heard about his malady he returned to the room. After he had sat there for some time he felt more and more the sorrow for the loss of his friend, and the need of his counsel. This aimless, inert form, this lifeless mass, was that which he had come to seek—was the being with whom he had longed to confer.
He bent over him. “Could I but snatch him back into life; could I but have one hour’s intercourse with him. If I had been with him I might have borne some of the pain of his complaint before he was overpowered with it.” He touched the lifeless hands, they were cold and damp. He gazed into the expressionless face. He seemed to feel the pain of the inner struggle his friend had waged against the disease. The quiet of that still chamber was gone for him; in his own person he felt the pangs of the struggle for life. A mist came over his eyes, and he sank down holding his friend’s hands. Suddenly he heard a voice. He rose and looked about him. The sound came faintly from the lips of his friend.
“I have been very ill,” were the words he caught. “I am so glad you have come; I was thinking of you in my worst moments. You have come just as I am getting better.”
Indeed the features were regaining expression, the hands were warm. It was his living friend again.
After a few hours he was sufficiently recovered to hear about all that had happened. They talked together long and earnestly. His friend was convinced.
“Let us go to your companion,” he said.
They went into the town together. They found that the clerk had gone to the magistrates’ hall where a trial was being held. They did not see the clerk at first, so they listened to the proceedings. A woman was brought in who had been kept in prison for some days, accused of concealing her child. The case was clearly proved. The woman received her sentence with an appearance of apathy.
“She will not come out of prison alive,” said the student’s friend, noting her expression.
But he called out to her from where they stood in the body of the court, “Do not fear, your child is safe.”
The woman’s face brightened, and she went with her jailers buoyantly.
The magistrate had remarked who it was that had spoken, and was about to give orders for the disturber of order to be brought up for punishment. But the clerk, who was sitting near to the magistrate with whom he was acquainted, said:
“This is the one I have told you about; pray do not punish him.”
The magistrate accordingly contented himself with warning the audience in general terms.
But he said to the clerk, “Something about him is very repulsive to me, do not tell me anything more about him.”
The three returned together, and together they deliberated as to how the new idea about the king could be made known. It seemed best to go to the metropolis and talk with the wisest and most learned there.
The student asked about the child. His friend’s sister came and told him that its breathing was not any better, but that the child itself was strong and playful.
“It belongs to the woman who was tried to day,” said the student, “and must be kept safely till she is out of prison.”
His friend after some deliberation gave it in charge to a faithful servant to take to the metropolis. A suffering child there would be much more likely to be overlooked, “and you,” he said, “will be able to look after it.”
As the student and the clerk were about to set out on their way to the metropolis his friend took him apart.
“My sister tells me that I had sunk into apathy when you came.”
“Yes.”
“And that you called me back?”
“Yes.”
“How can I thank you! had it not been for you I should never have enjoyed life again. I am grateful to you.”
“Do not say grateful to me, but rather to that power which does for you all your life that which I do for you momentarily now. And even now it is not to me that you should be grateful, but to him, for it is only because he has enabled me to do so that I have taken of your pain.”
With this he took farewell of his friend, and with the clerk proceeded on their way.
They had not got very far when a train of servants came up behind them. They stood by on one side, but from the midst of his attendants a youth stepped forward.
“I have learned what you have done, and I have overtaken you with great haste.”
“What is your wish?”
“I want to come with you. I know that you have restored your friend from apathy to life. No power is so great as that. I have riches in abundance. All that I have is at your service; teach me your power.”
Now in the valley riches meant abundance of pleasant things. At the time the student was bearing the constant pain which he took of the child’s breathing, and the pain also of his friend’s illness. He felt that before beginning to take pleasure—which was the meaning of having pleasant things—it would be necessary to give up the power which he was exercising, so he said to the youth somewhat harshly:
“You cannot compare riches and that which I do, nor can you exchange the one for the other. First give up all your riches, then you can begin to learn what I do.”
The youth turned back, but once again spoke, saying:
“I will give up a great part of my riches if you will teach me.”
“If you want to keep any, however small a portion, you cannot do what I do.”
Then the youth with all his attendants passed away.