The Disposition of the Apes.—The teacher continued: "This is the whole kernel of Darwinism, this madness which infected the mind of a generation which was overstrained with the pursuit of power and luxury. But this Beelzebub could only be driven out by another. That was Nietzsche. He was a demon let loose, who killed the ape, restored the man, and altered the old popular estimates. He was understood because he spoke the language of the apelings. That was the only way to compel them to listen, for they would never have heard a Christian prophet. But after he had his say his tongue was spiked and his tale was over.
"Joseph Peladan was a Christian prophet of the school of the Therapeutæ and Essenes. The apelings feared him, and could not name his name, for it stuck in their throats. Only the Christian upper class understood him. His Christianity was luminous and esoteric, perhaps too luminous. But after a pilgrimage to Christ's grave he discovered the deceit, turned his back on the 'reconciliation with life,' and forswore the worship of beauty which was merely the dressing up of the apes with white sheets and ivy leaves. He ceased to be interested in the bestial and the nude, saw through the 'joy of life' and Nora,[1] unmasked the humbug of tolerance, and took the cross in real earnest, as it is, on himself. Peladan was a living protest against apishness. He represented the undercurrent, not the surface-stream. Still the undercurrent is always ready to mount and overflow and cleanse the banks, which at the ebb-tide have served as a place for dumping down rubbish."
[1] The heroine of Ibsen's Doll's House.
The Secret of the Cross.—The teacher said: "The conflict between paganism and Christianity is now being fought out in the world. But just as surely as Christianity preceded paganism in time, so surely does the future belong to Christianity, although for the moment the apelings have the upper hand. Their edict of toleration allows them in the name of freedom to forbid the preaching of Christianity. They close the churches, declare Judas innocent, give mad women the vote, write heathenish schoolbooks for children, place forgers and pettifoggers in power, for their kingdom is of this world. But it is with Christianity as with the walnut-tree, whose fruit is knocked down with poles, and which is roughly treated in order that it may bear fruit and thrive. The night grows darker towards the dawn. Spinach-seed is trodden down that it may grow better; the ground must be harrowed, broken, and rolled in order to be able to yield a crop; gold must be refined in fire, and flax be steeped in water. The cross points upwards, downwards, sideways, to the four quarters of heaven at once; it is a completion of the compass. Suffering bums up the rubbish of the soul. I have seen a man who had suffered all the griefs endured by humanity; yet the more he suffered the more beautiful he became. That is the secret of the cross and of suffering. 'Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you. In the world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'"
Examination and Summer Holidays.—The teacher said: "When, on reaching maturity, one awakes to new consciousness and discovers that everything one has is borrowed, one begins to cut oneself down to the root, in order to let strike a new stem which is one's own. When we enter old age this stem withers down to the root (the process Swedenborg calls 'desolation'); the branches formerly cut down bloom again and put forth new foliage which is like, and yet not like the former. But when old and new flourish together, the whole result is confusing; but the root remains the same and reveals the nature of the plant. The dissonances of life increase with the years, and the material of life becomes so immense that it is impossible to survey it properly. Therefore one lives more in remembrance than in the present, and along the whole line of one's experience. Sometimes I live in my childhood, sometimes in my mature age.
"But it is strange that one does not feel old age to be the beginning of an end but the introduction to something new, i.e. when one has recovered the belief or assurance that there is a life on the other side. One feels as though one were preparing for an examination by doing preliminary exercises and one becomes literally young again. There is a little touch of examination fever with it, but also great hopes mingled with dreams of the future. These remind us of Christmas joys, summer holidays, family gatherings with reconciliations and wishes fulfilled. But there is also a scent of broken-off birch-leaves and the seashore; there is a sound of Sunday bells and organs, the attraction of new clothes, white linen, and a bath in green sea-water. There is a feeling like that of evening prayer and a good conscience, wife, home, and child after a journey, the hearth-fire after a snow-storm, the first ball and the one we loved to dance with most, the opening of the savings-box, and first and last the examination and the summer holidays."
Veering and Tacking.—The teacher continued: "The Theosophists speak of the seven planes of the Kama-Loka, the condition after death. I will admit that, in certain circumstances, I have lived simultaneously on several planes. This was difficult for me, and still more difficult for my enemies to understand. I should like to have explained these contradictions in existence by a cleavage of the personality or a multiplication of the ego. I have also sought the solution of the riddle in the self-adaptation to one's surroundings, to which St. Paul refers in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 'To the Jews I became a Jew.... To those who are under the law, I became as under the law.... To those who are without law, I became as one without law. To the weak I became as weak.' ... Kierkegaard speaks of Sympaschomenos who rejoices with the joyful, mourns with the sad, is coarse with the coarse, refined with the refined.
"Swedenborg makes another suggestion, 'When a man is to be born again, his desires and falsities cannot be stripped off at once, for that would be equivalent to destroying the whole man, because as yet he only lives in them. Therefore for a long while evil spirits are left with him, to stir up his desires that they may be dissolved in many ways.'
"Formerly I believed, when I was young with the youthful, old and wise with the old, mad with the mad, that I was doing them a service. As a poet, I lived for the moment in their life and their moods, which I then depicted and forgot myself. Often by these relapses into stages I had left behind, I seemed to have worked myself higher, as the ship tacks in order to get a more favourable wind."
Attraction and Repulsion.—The teacher continued: "There is both an attraction and a repulsion between similar souls. Like loves like, but not always; often the unlike seeks the unlike. A good man lamented to me that it was his lot always to be in bad society, and never to meet good men who could elevate him. Since he was strong he was at any rate not drawn down, but he did not observe that he exercised a good influence on his bad surroundings. He had, it is true, occasion to see and to hear evil; but, on the other hand, he was able to react against it through the disgust with which it inspired him. Without instituting a comparison we may say that Christ did not attract people of high position and good character, but poor devils and weak characters, the sick, the possessed, the wicked, thieves, publicans, and harlots. His disciples did not understand his doctrine, but interpreted it all in a material way. He answered their reproaches by saying, 'Only the sick need a physician.' I will suppress my former objection, for I bow myself experimentally before 'the folly of the cross,' since experience has taught me that wisdom can only be received by a humble mind, and that obedience is more than sacrifice. In recent times my constant prayer has been that I might come into good society which might elevate me, and avoid evil companionship which, to say the least, involves an injurious connection with the lower plane. It is in truth my fault that those who seek me seek my old ego, and, when they do not find it, believe that I am not to be found."