Religious Heathen.—Hardly anywhere are there such religious men as the Orientals. Five times a day the muezzin calls from each minaret in eastern lands: "God is great! I bear witness that there is no God but God! I bear witness that Muhammed is the Apostle of God! Come to prayer! Come to salvation! God is great! There is no God but God!" Early in the morning they cry in addition, "Prayer is better than sleep." On the streets and market-places, in the shops and inns, everywhere one is summoned to prayer.
Is it not impressive to see a whole people, of whom not one is ashamed of his God—not one! A people among whom, five times a day, this joyful message comes from the Lord, the All-Merciful, who "has not forsaken and has not repulsed thee!" And is it not uplifting in the midst of the severe and squalid tasks of every day to hear a voice from above witnessing, without attempting to convince, that God is God? Anything so perverse and stupid as free-thinking and atheism does not exist in the Orient. If anyone attempted to assert such an abominable tenet as the non-existence of God, he would be imprisoned or put to death. And if anyone came and tried to close the mosques ... but no one comes, for the mosques are never empty:
"By the splendour of the day,
By the darkness of the night,
Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee,
Neither hath He repelled thee."—Koran.
That is the implicit and childlike faith which Christian heathen called "intolerance," "fanaticism," and so on.
The Pleasure-Garden.—If the inexperienced man knew how much suffering a separation between a married pair involves, he would reflect before taking such a step. The two souls have so grown into each other, that the dissolution of the duplex personality which they form is the most painful operation possible. It is a kind of death.
When one uproots the weeds round a flower, the flower fades away—partly because its roots are injured, partly because it has been deprived of shade, moisture, and support, or perhaps merely companionship.
The sorrow in this case resembles that which follows on a death, but is not so uplifting and ennobling. The image of the separated wife is always present to one's eyes, and becomes idealised in memory; ugly traits are obliterated, one begins to reproach oneself, there is a painful emptiness and longing; one's soul is tom in pieces by her departure; she has carried off its finest-fibred roots, and one feels as though bleeding to death. One can no more exchange common recollections. The loss of the illusions of the first springtide of love shatters one's faith in everything. A cry of mourning rings through the universe as though an irreparable crime had been committed, such as the sin against the Holy Ghost. Love, God's creative power, the sun's warmth that fills the heavens, the origin of life has ceased to exist. Chaos and darkness resume their reign. It is a spiritual death, without comfort and without hope.
Nevertheless something remains, if there ever was something there. And though both may marry again, there is a recollection of the former tie. It cannot be as though it had not been, nor be forgotten. However unpleasant the relationship may have been, still in its best hours it resembled something which is not to be found on earth. In its glorious beginning it was a Garden of Eden, such a heightening of existence that one felt nearer God. That was no optical delusion, but a higher reality. Then came the Fall and the expulsion. But the memory of the first joy remains, and it is true that a real love never ends.
People ask whether it continues on the other side even when inclination has "changed its object." Probably some of it remains, but in an incomprehensible way, even if one were to suppose that the personality is resolved into several "monads," of which one seeks a similar one, and another another; and what is called love can here become friendship.
According to Plato's doctrine of reminiscence and the reincarnation theory of the theosophists, one might believe that when two fall in love it is only a meeting again. And all the beauty which they then see round them is the reflection of the memories of some far beautiful land where they have met before, but which they now remember for the first time. The continual illusions of love would then be connected with experiences on the other side, which now come up in memory from the side where all is completion and beauty. Therefore we have such a terrible awakening from our dreams of happiness when we find that everything down here is distorted, everything a caricature, even love itself.