Scenes and Portraits

by Frederic Manning

Now it chanced that at that time the High-priest Bagoas, who was High-priest of the temple of Bel at Nippur, was in the palace of the King; and Merodach sent for him, desiring him to speak comfortable doctrine and words cheering to the heart; and Bagoas came in unto Merodach, and did homage before him, bowing down before him and touching his feet; and there was no one in the cities of Babylonia more powerful than Bagoas, unless it were the King himself.

"As I walked in the garden in the evening," said Merodach, "I became afflicted with a sense of human transience and of the vanity of greatness. In a little time, I said, I shall be but a handful of dust. Then I comforted myself with the thought that I should live in the memory of man, through my monuments, while man survives upon the earth; but in a little time man himself disappears, I said, and even the stars are lost in darkness."

And Bagoas smiled.

"It is true, O King, man cometh upon the earth and rules it for a little space, like a god. In hollow ships, he sails over the pathless sea; and he has mapped out the heavens naming the stars; and he follows the courses of the planets round the sun; and he knoweth the seasons of reaping and sowing, by the constellations rising or setting in the sky. His cunning mind has devised screws to draw water up out of the earth, and pulleys and levers to uplift masses beyond his strength. He is a master of populous cities, a weaver of delicate textures, a limner of images in fair colours; he is a tamer of horses, skilled in the knowledge of flocks and herds; with hooks he draweth fish out of the sea, and with an arrow transfixes a bird on the wing; he fashions the metals in fire, beating the gold and stubborn bronze to his will. He understands the laws of Nature, and has named the force which draws the earth round the sun, and the moon round the earth; but time is his master, and he cannot find a remedy against death."

"Nor fashion a thumb for man," said Merodach.

"The fear of death is the greatest incitement to live," continued Bagoas. "It is the goad which incessantly urges us to action. Our desire to live, to persist in one form or another, impels us to beget children, to overpower the imagination of future ages by the splendour of our monuments and the record of our lives. We seek to stamp our image upon our time, and influence our generation by every means in our power. But even this is not enough, so we have built ourselves a little world beyond the grave, a little haven beyond the waves of time. We believe that our souls will exist when our bodies have fallen into decay and escaped into a thousand different forms of new life, to be woven eternally on the loom of perpetual change. We believe that death is merely a transition, and that through virtue man is able to scale the brazen ramparts of the city of the gods."

"If he is very good," said the Princess Candace.

"Little Princess," said Bagoas, smiling, "your beauty is like a bright rainbow in the sky; the sunlight streaming upon drifting rain. Have you ever considered the personality of man, O King? Everything that has existed in the past exists in the soul of man. In its depths are the primeval monsters, Apsu and Tiamat. In its heights are enthroned the gods; action in it is heaped upon action to become habit, and habit upon habit to become character; all that we have seen, all that we have touched, the experience of the senses, the illusions of the brain, the desires of the heart, our ancestors, our companions, our country and occupations, all move and work mysteriously in our being. Each has left its trace upon the personality of man. Do you seek immortality for these? You will leave them with the world. Seek for yourself before you seek for self's immortality. Beneath what you seem to be lies what you think you are, and beneath that again lies what you are indeed."

"Alas," cried Queen Parysatis, "such an immortality is too unsubstantial. It is our illusions, our experiences, and our aspirations, which give a savour to existence. What is the use of immortality if we leave everything we love?"

"Mankind, O King," answered Bagoas, "loves its imperfections more than its perfections, and values as nothing an immortality which is devoid of our human frailties, our pitiful human friendships, our personal predilections which we obtusely term our principles."