White Slavery.—The teacher said: "In the whole of the upper and middle classes and a good way below them the following is the case with regard to marriage: When a man marries, his work, which he can devolve on no one else, increases. His wife, on the other hand, at once gets a servant to do her work; if she has children, then she gets a nurse besides. But she herself sits there without occupation, and tries to kill time with useless trivialities. In this way she can neither get an appetite for dinner, nor sleep at night. In the evening her husband comes home, and wants to enjoy the domestic hearth; but his wife wants to go to the theatre and restaurant. She is not tired, but bored by want of occupation, and therefore wants amusement. Women, in fact, seem not to be born for domestic life, but for the theatre, the restaurant, and the street. Therefore women complain that they must sit at home. Although they have slaves to serve them, they call themselves 'slaves' and hold meetings to their own emancipation, but not that of their servants. Their animalised husbands support them without observing that they themselves are slaves; for he who works for the idle is a slave. But it is written, 'Ye are bought with a price; be slaves to no man.'"
Noodles.—The pupil asked: "What is a woman-hater?"
The teacher answered: "I do not know. But the expression is used as a term of reproach by noodles, for those who say what all think. Noodles are those men who cannot come near a woman without losing their heads and becoming faithless. They purchase the woman's favour by delivering up the heads of their friends on silver chargers; and they absorb so much femininity, that they see with feminine eyes and feel with feminine feelings. There are things which one does not say every day, and one does not tell one's wife what her sex is composed of. But one has the right to put it on paper sometimes. Schopenhauer has done it the best, Nietzsche not badly, Peladan is the master. Thackeray wrote Men's Wives but the book was ignored. Balzac has unmasked Caroline in the Petites Misères de la vie Conjugale. Otto Weininger discovered the deceit at the age of twenty; he did not wait for the consequent vengeance, but went his own way, i.e. died. I have said that the child is a little criminal, incapable of self-guidance, but I love children all the same. I have said that a woman is—what she is, but I have always loved some woman, and been a father. Whoever therefore calls me a woman-hater is a blockhead, a liar, or a noodle. Or all three together."
Inextricable Confusion.—The teacher continued: "If on the other side of the grave there were a Judge Rhadamanthus appointed to arrange the disputes of men, he would never come to an end. Life is such a tissue of lies, errors, misunderstandings, of debts and demands, that a balancing of the books is impossible. I know men who have been lied about their whole lives through. I know of one who was branded through his whole life with the stigma of a seducer, although he has never seduced, but was seduced himself. I know of an uncommonly truthful man who had the reputation of being a liar. I know an honourable man who passed for a thief. I know a man who was three times married, and had children in all three marriages, but was said to be no man, because he, as a man, would not be the slave of his wife. I know many who are sincerely religious and yet are called hypocrites, although the chief point in religion is sincerity. But, on the other hand, I know heathen who professed to be atheists, although in their bedchambers they sang penitential psalms when they were nervous in the dark and feared the consequences of their misdeeds. They were so cowardly that they dared not fall under the suspicion of being religious, but bragged of their courage and strength of character. They would not abandon the Black Flag; they would not be untrue to the ideal of their youth—godlessness. Rascally right and good-hearted stupidity form a problem too complicated for Rhadamanthus himself to solve. Only the Crucified could do it with the single saying which He addressed to the penitent thief, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.'"
Phantoms.—The teacher said: "When intelligence and the power of reflection are matured, and one thinks about men, their outlines begin to dissolve, and they turn into phantoms. Indeed, one never really knows a man; one knows only his own, or others' ideas of him, but when these ideas change, the image of him becomes indistinct and is obscured with a veil. We form our conception of a person whom we have never seen according to others' ideas of him. Thus, for example, the personality of a famous painter was described to me by an author. After two years the author had formed another idea of him, and imparted that to me, and I had to alter my view of him. Then there came another describer, and gave me quite a different idea of the painter. He was followed by a third and a fourth. After this I saw the painter's pictures, and could not understand how he could paint in the way he did. But the painter himself I never saw. He has become for me a phantom without clear outlines, composed of different-coloured pieces of glass, which do not harmonise, and alter according to my moods. I expect that when I meet him he will not resemble my idea of him at all, but have the effect of quite another independent phantom."
Mirage Pictures.—The teacher said: "When I have lived for some time in solitude my acquaintances begin to appear like mirage-pictures before me. Some gain by distance, occasion only friendly feelings, and are surrounded by an atmosphere of light and peace. Others whom I really like very well when they are near, lose by absence, and appear to be hostile. Thus I may hate a friend in his absence, look upon him as unpleasant and inimical, but as soon as he comes, enter into friendly contact with him. There is a woman whose proximity I cannot bear, but whom I love at a distance. We write letters to each full of regard and friendliness. When we have longed for each other for a time and must meet, we immediately begin to quarrel, become vulgar and unsympathetic, and part in anger. We love each other on a higher plane, but cannot live in the same room. We dream of meeting again, spiritualised, on some green island, where only we two can live, or, at any rate, only our child with us. I remember a half-hour which we three actually spent hand in hand on a green island by the sea-coast. It seemed to me like heaven. Then the clocks struck the hour of noon, and we were back again on earth, and soon after that, in hell."
Trifle not with Love.—The pupil said: "When a man and a woman are united in love, a single being is the result, whose existence is a positive pleasure, as long as harmony reigns. But this being is an extremely sensitive receptive instrument, and is exposed to disturbances from outer currents which act from all distances, an inconvenience which it shares with wireless telegraphy. Therefore a disturbance of the relationship between a married pair is the greatest pain which exists. Unfaithfulness is a cosmic crime which brings the one or the other member of the married pair into perverse relations with their own sex. If the husband loves another woman, his wife is exposed to terrible alternate currents; by turns she loves and hates the woman who is her rival. Often she can be the friend of her husband's paramour, but more often her enemy. Whoever comes between a pair who love, does not so with impunity. The hate which he arouses is so terrible, that he can be lamed by the discharge, lose all energy and pleasure in life. Therefore it is rightly said, 'Trifle not with love.'"
A "Taking" Religion.—The pupil said: "When Buddhism, mixed with Vedantism, became fashionable in 1890, all the renegades from Christianity flocked to it and tried to fill the vacuum in their religious lives. Six thousand new gods were received with applause forthwith; the new trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva—encountered no objections; spirits, ghosts, genies, fairies were thought quite natural; Gautama's heaven and hell were thrown into the bargain, accompanied by a slight flavour of asceticism. Those who denied the Resurrection found reincarnation quite a simple affair. But the favourite was Krishna. He was the incarnation of the god Vishnu, who descended to earth in order to be born of earthly parents and to save fallen humanity. His coming was prophesied, and so dreaded that a massacre of new-born infants like that at Bethlehem was plotted, but unsuccessfully. Krishna fulfilled his mission, conquered the evil powers, and finally endured a voluntary death. That 'took'! The trinity Brahma, Vishnu, Siva 'took,' but Father, Son, Holy Spirit did not 'take.' Krishna 'took,' but not Christ. It was strange!"
The Sixth Sense.—The pupil continued: "The outer eye can reflect images, the inner eye can conceive them. There are therefore two kinds of sight, an outer and an inner. Of the senses, that of smell is the most immediate when it has to do with the conveyance of impressions. But there seem also to be two kinds of faculties of smell. Swedenborg says that a false man smells of sour gastric juice, but only for the person to whom he has been false. In this case the smell-perception is only subjective, but it is of great objective value in judging men. In this case the organ of smell seems to operate with æther-waves. According to Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences, good men exhale sweet perfume, and bad men a stench like that of corpses. He says that misers smell like rats, and so on. Legends of the saints relate that the corpses of those who have kept their souls and bodies pure, when they dissolve, exhale a flower-like perfume. In short, every soul has its scent, which varies according to its characteristics.
"This sixth sense the clothes-hygienist Jäger believed he had discovered after he had begun to observe and train his outer and inner man. I will speak now of my own experiences in the matter. They did not begin till I had passed through the great purgatorial fire which burnt up the rubbish of my soul, and after I had scrambled out of the worst of the mire by self-discipline and asceticism. They are accustomed to boil off the gum from raw silk before it is spun, and so my nerve-fibres seemed to have been 'scoured' by the sufferings of life, and gone through a process like the 'fining' of silk."