Saint Theresa, in one of her autobiographical sketches, says that she was shown her own self, on one occasion of introspection, not as she was wont to view it, but as it was in naked reality, and she could never after recall the vision without a shudder.
Who sees himself as he is? Who wishes to do so? Who would not be offended were you to exhibit to his eyes a picture of himself as he is? No one likes his own photograph, for the sun does not flatter. But no photographs have yet been taken of man’s interior self; if they were, no one would consent to look on his own; he would spend all his fortune in buying up the copies and destroying the plates.
We are accustomed to view ourselves as those do who stand on the Brocken, magnified a thousand fold, with rainbow haloes about our heads. I have known a little fellow, who reached my elbow, strut with infinite consequence and gesticulate with tragic dignity on the Brocken, before his own shadow projected on a cloud, nimbus-girded, and vast as the All-Father of Norse mythology. A breath of wind passed, and the phantom vanished. But we carry our Brocken shadow about with us everywhere, and posture to it, and look up to it with an awe and admiration that slides into worship; and very rarely does the cold east wind sweep it away. But there remains this consolation to the Brocken shadow worshipper, that when the phantom form disappears, nothing remains behind, and it is a satisfaction, a poor one, but still a satisfaction, when the blast has dispelled our ideal self before which we have bowed, to discover behind it simple nonentity. There would be disenchantment indeed, and a graver walk, and a more subdued voice, and a less self-asserting tone, but there would not be that exquisite, that annihilating horror that ensues when the scattering of the vapour discloses a reality the reverse at every point of what we had imagined.
In the Egyptian temples hung purple curtains embroidered with gold, and censers perpetually smoked before the veil, and golden lamps, ever burning, diffused a mellow light through the sacred enclosure. What was behind that pictured spangled veil, within the holy of holies? Sometimes a hippopotamus wallowing on straw—or a chattering crane—sometimes Nothing. We are engaged all our lives in the erection of magnificent temples about ourselves, and in embroidering gold-besprent curtains, and in the burning of frankincense, and in the kindling and feeding of lamps, in these tabernacles; and what is behind the veil? Do we know? Do we ever look? We paint and plate with gold ideal representations of the god within on the propylæum of our temple, but what resemblance does this figure bear to the reality? Do we know? Do we care to know? Will we not rather put out our eyes than compare them? If, by chance, a sudden gleam of sun, a puff of pure air, stir the curtain and reveal the mystery, with what haste we fly to duplicate the veils, to blind the windows, to nail the curtains to the gilded sideposts, and weight them with lead. How we redouble our prostrations, and make more dense the cloud of incense; how we elaborate our ceremonial, and when the hippopotamus within yawns, or the ibis chatters, we clash our symbals, boom our drums, peal our trumpets to drown the utterance of the god.
There was in Alexandria no god like unto Serapis, whose temple was the wonder of the world. But one day an impious hand struck off the head, and out of the gilded idol rushed a legion of rats. There is no god, no idol, like the ideal self within the veil; but it does not chance to every one as it chanced to Giles Inglett Saltren, to have its head knocked off and see the vermin scamper out of it. When that does happen, that is a moment never to be forgotten. It is a moment of infinite importance in the life-history, it is a moment determinative of the future. The worshippers of Serapis, after that terrible spectacle, which was also extremely laughable, stood in consternation; and at that moment stood also at the fork of two roads. Either they shuffled off to the left, with their hands in their pockets, damning all religion, and vowing they would believe in nothing thenceforth, or they moved with firm steps along the right-hand road that led to a truer faith.
The same takes place with us when the Serapis of our ideal self is broken and reveals the nest of rats within, Either our moral nature becomes disintegrated, and breaks down utterly and irremediably into unsightly débris, or we turn from the worship of ourselves to seek elsewhere our ideal, and looking to it, attain to a nobler, more generous, an altruistic life.
Mr. James Welsh had not spared Jingles; he had told him plainly, even coarsely, what he thought of him, but no words of his could express the intensity of the sense of infamy that Giles Inglett felt. For a moment he had been stunned, numbed as hand and foot become numbed for awhile, and then with a tingling and needle-pricking, the moral juices began once more to flow, and the agony of inner pain he felt was the pledge of moral recovery.
As soon as Giles Inglett Saltren began to consider what were the consequences drawn upon him and Arminell by his folly, an almost overpowering desire came over him to fly from England. He had sufficient money to pay his passage across the Atlantic, and to maintain him in a new world till he could obtain a suitable situation. In a new world he might begin life anew, leaving behind his old follies and faults, and make a smooth table of the past. In the old world he could do nothing to remedy what he had wrought; but he put the temptation from him. He saw that to yield to it would be an act of cowardice, and would result in moral ruin. Instinctively, without self-analysis, he reached the conclusion that a single course lay open before him if he were to save his moral self from wreck. The same moment that he became conscious of this, he stood up, and hailed a passing empty hansom.
That moment saw the beginning of a new life in him; new ends, new visions rose before his eyes.
Thus it was that Giles Inglett Saltren entered the sitting-room where his uncle was engaged with Arminell, and thus it was that he entered it a very different man from what Mr. Welsh had described him.