and the Pilgrim's sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in the pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence 'self-love' is to make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for development (which is true), but the very root itself (which is false). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is reserved for
'—Lives
Lived in obedience to the inner law
Which cannot alter.'
"Note II.
"A few words concerning the Kasîdah itself. Our Hâjî begins with a mise-en-scène; and takes leave of the Caravan setting out for Mecca. He sees the 'Wolf's tail' (Dum-i-gurg), the υκαυγές, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the Zodiacal dawn-light, the first faint brushes of white radiating from below the Eastern horizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (Dam-i-Subh), the current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase of cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biyâbân (Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of man's fears and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The 'wold-where-none-save-He (Allah)-can dwell' is a great and terrible wilderness (Dash-i-la-siwa Hu); and Allah's Holy Hill is Arafât, near Mecca, which the Caravan reaches after passing through Medina. The first section ends with a sore lament that the 'meetings of this world take place upon the highway of Separation;' and the original also has—
'The chill of sorrow numbs my thought: methinks I hear the passing knell;
As dies across yon thin blue line the tinkling of the Camel-bell.'
"The next section quotes the various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-târîk o bîm-i-mauj, etc. Hûr is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly 'Houries.' Follows Umar-i-Khayyâm, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. The verses alluded to are—
'You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house,
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.'
(St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald's translation.)
"Here 'Wine' is used in its mystic sense of entranced Love for the Soul of Souls. Umar was hated and feared because he spoke boldly when his brethren the Soofis dealt in innuendoes. A third quotation has been trained into a likeness of the 'Hymn of Life,' despite the commonplace and the navrante vulgarité which characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same has been done to the words of Isâ (Jesus); for the author, who is well-read in the Ingîl (Evangel), evidently intended the allusion. Mansur el-Hallâj (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma Ana'l Hakk (I am the Truth, i.e. God), wa laysa fi-jubbatî il' Allah (and within my coat is nought but God). His blood traced on the ground the first-quoted sentence. Lastly, there is a quotation from 'Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes,' etc.: here παῑζε may mean sport; but the context determines the kind of sport intended. The Zâhid is the literal believer in the letter of the Law, opposed to the Soofi, who believes in its spirit: hence the former is called a Zâhiri (outsider), and the latter a Bâtini, an insider. Moses is quoted because he ignored future rewards and punishments. As regards the 'two Eternities,' Persian and Arab metaphysicians split Eternity, i.e. the negation of Time, into two halves, Azal (beginninglessness) and Abad (endlessness); both being mere words, gatherings of letters with a subjective significance. In English we use 'Eternal' (Æviternus, age-long, life-long) as loosely, by applying it to three distinct ideas; (1) the habitual, in popular parlance; (2) the exempt from duration; and (3) the everlasting, which embraces all duration. 'Omniscience-Maker' is the old Roman sceptic's Homo fecit Deos.
"The next section is one long wail over the contradictions, the mysteries, the dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all existence, and the arcanum of grief which, Luther said, underlies all life. As with Euripides 'to live is to die, to die is to live.' Hâjî Abdû borrows the Hindu idea of the human body. 'It is a mansion,' says Menu, 'with bones for its beams and rafters; with nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for cement; with skin for its outer covering; filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion infested by age and sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted with the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing.' The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. 'Sitting as a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Philæ) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris.' Hence the Genesitic 'breath.' Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being, 'by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated.' We find him next in Jeremiah's 'Arise and go down unto the Potter's house,' etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans (ix. 20), 'Hath not the potter power over the clay?' No wonder that the first Hand who moulded the man-mud is a lieu commun in Eastern thought. The 'waste of agony 'is Buddhism, or Schopenhauerism pure and simple. I have moulded 'Earth on Earth' upon 'Seint Ysidre''s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440)—