Asceticism is like the will of one who, fearful of the dangers of the sea, fearful to go out on horseback to his wayfarings in the adventures of living, fearful of tragedies that may lurk in every thicket, became so fearful of the accidents that beset life in the living that he shut himself up in a strong castle, its rigid walls hewn from hardest stone—feared even to marry a wife lest she, wearying for another less fearful than he, should put poison in his cup. And the ship went sailing over the sea, and the horseman went riding over the hills, and the woman married her lover and knew life and became a laughing mother of babes, and—the castle fell into the earthquake’s maw....
To such like strange music jig they who suffer the itch of Asceticism’s distorted ideals—hermaphroditic, nay, wholly neuter. Virginity, the fantastic virtue of virtues! They come to find life’s glorification in the supreme denial of life—the chaste nun, she who stands with frantic eyes at issue with her godhood that says to her: “This is the sure and exquisite music of thy lifesong; this is thy office this; for this thy sweet body, thy fragrant breasts; thy every urging is touched with the finger of delicious shame that thou shouldst know with no common thrill the majesty of thy overwhelming significance—Be thou the mother of children.”
Nay, does not the Ascetic even approve the ridiculous lie called Illegitimacy? As though a child shall be illegitimate! As though a woman shall find shame in realizing her godhood! They that strive to be barren, alone, are the illegitimate.
Nay, had not the ancient churches even raised to solemn dignity of sainthood one Anthony, whose ridiculous virtue was the dread of the love of woman! for which the high God within him had chiefly builded him.
Wiser far, for all their grey and vasty faults, had been the sturdy old Protesters, rude, clumsy, bungling enough though they were—those wise rough men who had emptied abbey and priory of hermaphroditic ideals so that the monkish cell had given place to the family hearth, and the clatter and whisper of inordinate litanies to the laughter and shout of little children.
For the Masterfolk have no fear—neither of birth, nor of life, nor of death.
Noll took the books of the wisdom of Schopenhauer out of his pockets, and flung them from him into the river below—the pages fluttered, beating the air, and the books that tell of the Refuge from life in the contemplation of the Beautiful and in Asceticism, fell upon the messy flood and were borne along on the polluted waters of the city that went, bubbling filth, to cleanse themselves in the immensity of the mighty deep.
And as the books fell, they struck the body of a dead carter that passed in the darkness upon the tide.
There was law—how otherwise the evolving of the Masterfolk? There were the heights. How to reach them?
The grey towers of the cathedral took solid shape; and, beyond and low down, the coming dawn flushed up from afar, and the smoky heavens lifted and grew light; the vague world arose into palpable form; and the day gained possession of the steamy city.