"I have yet to disbelieve that every perfect work of man—ship, watch, engine—has a semi-conscious life of its own—a life derived from the immortal soul that gave its idea birth—for all these things—these ships, watches, engines, are ideas, spiritual, subtle, invisible, till man hides their nakedness with wood, iron, steel, brass—the fig-leaves of the Ideal World. Some people cannot feel an idea, or be introduced to one, unless it be dressed up in matter. Sometimes we lay it on paper or canvas, and draw pencil lines around, or color it, and then it can be seen; else we take one and plant it out of doors, and then put brick and iron, marble and glass sides to it, rendering the spirit visible, and then the people see the Idea's Clothing, and fancy they behold the thing itself, just as others, when looking at a human body, imagine they behold the man, the woman, or the child. A mistake! None but God ever yet beheld a human Soul, and this it is, and not the body or its accidents, that constitutes the Ego.
"And the ship surged through the boiling seas, and her timbers strained and cracked in the combat, and her cordage shrieked as the blast tore through, and the tattered sails cried, almost humanly—like a man whose heart is breaking because his wife loves him not, and all the world for him is robed in mourning—and they cried, as if in deadly fear they were craving mercy at the Storm-King's hands. He heard the cries, but he laughed 'ho! ho!' and he laughed 'ha! ha!' and he tore away another sail and hurled it in the sea, laughing madly all the while; and he blew, and he rattled, and he roared in frightful glee; and he laughed 'ha! ha!' and he laughed 'ho! ho!' as the bridegroom laughs in triumph.
"And still the storm came down; and the yards bent before the gale, and then snapped asunder, like pipe-clay stems, and the billows leaped and dashed angrily at her sides, like a trained blood-hound at the throat of the mother, whose crime is being black—Chivalrous, well-trained blood-hounds! And the waves swept the decks of the bark—swept them clean, and whirled many a man into the weltering main, and sent their souls to heaven by water, and their bodies to the coral caves of Ocean. Poor Sailors! The Storm-King's spirit was roused, and his soul up in arms; and the angry waves danced attendance; the lightning held high revelry, and flashed its applause in the very face of heaven, and lit up the night with terrible, ghastly smiles; and the sullen growl of distant thunder was the only requiem over the dead upon that dismal deep.
"It was night. Day had long left the earth, and gone to renew his youth in his Western bath of fire—as we all must—for death is our West—and the gloomy eidolon had usurped Day's throne, arrayed in black garments, streaked with flaming red, boding no good, but only ill to all that breathed the upper air. And the turmoil woke the North, and summoned him to the wassail; and he leaped from his couch of snow, with icebergs for his pillow, and he stood erect upon his throne at the Pole, and he blew a triumphant, joyous blast, and sent ten thousand icy deaths to represent him at the grand, tempestuous revel. They came, and as the waters leaped into the rigging, they lashed them there with frost-fetters; and they loaded the fated ship with fantastic robes of pearly, heavy, glittering ice—loaded her down as sin loads down the transgressor.
"And still the noble ship wore on—still refused the bitter death. Enshrouded with massy sheets and clumps of ice, the good craft nearly toppled with the weight, or settled forever in the yawning deep; for despite her grand endeavors—her almost human will and resolution—her desperate efforts to save her precious freight of human souls—she nearly succumbed, and seemed ready to yield them to the briny waters below. Lashed to staunch timbers, the trembling remnant of the crew soon found out, while terror crowned their pallid brows, that the tornado was driving them right straight upon a rock-bound coast—foaming and hopeless for them, notwithstanding that from the summit of the bold cliffs, a light-house gleamed forth its eye coldly—cynically upon the night—in mockery lighting the way to watery death and ruin. Steadily, clearly it glimmered out upon the darkness, distinctly showing them the white froth at the foot of the cliff—the anger-foam of the demon of the storm. Ah, God! Have mercy! have mercy!
"Look yonder, at the stern of the ship! What frightful gorgon is that? You know not! Well, that is Death sitting on the taffrail. See, he moves about. Death is standing at the cabin door; he is gazing down below, looking up aloft, glaring out over the bleak, into the farther night. See! he is stalking about the deck—the icy deck—very slippery it is, and where you fall you die, for he has trodden on the spot. Ah, me! ah, me! Woe, woe, a terrible woe is here, Tom Clark! Tom Clark, don't you hear? Death stands glamoring on you! Hark! he is whistling in the rigging; he is swinging on the snapping ends of yonder loosened halliards; if they strike you you are dead, for they are Whips, and Death is snapping them! He is calling you, Tom Clark; don't you hear him?—calling from his throne, and his throne is the Tempest, Tom Clark—the Tempest. Now he is watching you—don't his glance trouble you? Don't you know that he is gazing down into your eyes? How cold is his glance! how colder his breath! It is very, very cold. Ah! I shiver as I think—and Death is freezing you, Tom Clark;—he is freezing your very heart, and turning your blood to ice. He is freezing you, and has tried to freeze me, in various ways. But I bade him stand back—to stay his breath—for, unlike you, Tom Clark, I am a Brother of the Rosie Cross, and I have been over Egypt, and Syria, and Turkey; on the borders of the Caspian, and Arabia's shores; over sterile steppes, and weltered through the Deserts—and all in search of the loftier knowledge of the Soul, that can only there be found; and I found what I sought, Tom Clark—the nature of the Soul, its destiny, and how it may be trained to any end or purpose. And the History and Mystery of Dream, Tom Clark, from the lips of the Oriental Dwellers in the Temple—and Pul Ali Beg—Tom Clark—our Persian Ramus and our lordly Chief—and I learned the worth of Will, and how to say, and mean,—'I will be well, and not sick—alive, and not dead!' and achieve the purpose. How? That is our secret—the Rosicrucians'—strange order of men; living all along the ages, till they are ready to die—for Death comes only because man will not beat him back. They die through feebleness of will. But not so with us, Tom Clark; we leave not until our work is done, and mine is not yet finished. We exercise our power over others, too, but ever for their good. Well do I remember, how, when I lived in Charlestown, there was an old man dying, but I bade him live. He exists to-day. And long years before that, there reached me—lightning borne, on the banks of the Hudson, a message saying, 'Come, she is dying!' and I went, and stood beside the bed of the sick child, and I prayed, and I invoked the Adonim of the Upper Temple; and they came and bade her live. And she liveth yet—but how ungrateful!
"Till our work is done! What work? you ask me, and from over the steaming seas I answer, and I tell you through the boundless air that separates us: Our work is to help finish that begun lang syne upon the stony heights of Calvary; in the shade beneath the olive in Gethsemane, where I have stood and wept—begun when Time was thousands of years younger than to-day. Our work, Tom Clark, is to make men, by teaching them to make themselves. We strive to impress a sense upon the world of the priceless value of a MAN!
"And the vessel drove before the gale straight upon the cliff. All hope was at an end; all hope of rescue was dead. There was great sorrowing on board that fated bark. Heads were downcast, hearts beat wildly, ears drank in the mournful monody of the scene, and lo! the strong man lifted up his voice and wept aloud. Did you ever see a man in tears—tears tapped from his very soul? When they laugh at his misery, whose lives he has saved? When he discovers that the man he has loved as a brother, and for whom he has sacrificed his all during long years, was all the while a traitor and a foe, a mean and conscienceless traitor, and a secret, bitter Judas Iscariot, yet wearing a smile on his face continually? God grant you never may.