PR 
 
 4349 
 
 B52 
 
 K3 
 
 1919 
 
 MAIN 
 
GIFT OF 
 Albert Bender 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 (COUPLETS) 
 
 OF hAjI ABDU EL-YEZDI: 
 
 <^ LAY OF THE HIGHER LAJF 
 
 TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED 
 BY HIS FRIEND AND PUPIL 
 
 F.B. 
 
 (SIR RICHARD F. BURTON) 
 
 > > J > • . 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 MDCCCCXIX 
 
•\ *»,Jw r 
 
 
 Let his page 
 
 Which charms the chosen spirits of the age. 
 
 Fold itself for a serener clime 
 
 Of years to come, and find its recompense 
 
 In that just expeBation. 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 Let them laugh at ?ne for speaking of things 
 which they do not understand; and I must pity 
 them while they laugh at me. 
 
 St. Augustine. 
 
 fU A #)^^t De.de. 
 

 Yo, 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 .ou who would read this "Lay of the Higher Law," what seek you here f A Persian 
 poem splendidwith the color and glamour of the desert'? A statement of oriental philosophy , 
 such as the title-page promises? A spirit-child of fob or Koheleth ; a spirit-brother of 
 Omar-Khayyam ? Or further proof of the many-sided genius of Richard Burton, "Eng- 
 land's brave Burton, dowered of sun and wind," who left among the three score volumes 
 of his travels and translations the "Kasidah of Haj't Abdu El-Tezdi" ? Do you seek 
 poet or philosopher, Persian or Englishman? 
 
 Be warned, that if you find none of these in entirety, you will find all in part. 
 
 The Kasidah is a philosophic poem, written in rhymed iambic couplets, to which Burton 
 gives the name of Bahr Tawil [long verse). The first of its nine seStions is descriptive, 
 painting with living colors the desert and the waking caravan at dawn. The next four 
 are reminiscent and expository, setting forth: the emptiness of teaching from Moses to 
 Hiraz and Longfellow ; the brevity of man's life history; the inconsequence of religious 
 creeds; and the costliness and cruelty which have marked the evolution of the world and 
 the creatures living on it. The last four divisions state the lessons to be learned from the 
 foregoing summary of human thought and aBion : that man must forever be willing to 
 learn," to know and to unknow" ; that reason must be his arbiter; that self-salvation 
 through self-expression must be his goal; and finally that of life's two possible paths, it is 
 not the primrose path of dalliance but the one leading to daily battle with ignorance that 
 is worthy a man' s journeying. 
 
 Here is afascinating mosaic of ideas from the old world and the new, here are shreds of a 
 hundred philosophies, quotations from a score of poets, bits of the "ten great religions," and 
 finally here is the voice of a definite, fear less being crying down all false gods and preach- 
 ing a gospel of self-reliance and endless struggle to know and to do. Heterodox? Yes. 
 Materialistic? Tes. But heterodox in an effort to see truth with clarity, and materialistic 
 in order that good may be accomplished in the present and not dreamed of in the future. 
 
 [iii] 
 
 8M550 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The voice is not that of a Persian, Hdji Abdu, known by the sobriquet, Nabbiana, 
 from the province ofTezd, but the voice of England's greatest traveller of the nineteenth 
 century. Richard Burton in his long, unwearied life played ntany parts. To utilize the 
 materials of his unique intimacy with the peoples of Asia and Africa, and to wear the 
 mask of a pilgrim of the East as he writes a poetic handbook of philosophy, was certainly 
 less dangerous, if not less dificult, than to penetrate to Mohammed' s shrine as a Moslem 
 merchant, to sell goods as a bazaar owner and learn the secrets of Karachi, to treat ill- 
 nesses as a Greek doBor, and be in turn a dervise, a Pathan Hakim, or Arab shaykh. 
 The writing of some such poem, decrying the purblind thinking and narrow prejudices 
 of his contemporaries, had been in Burton' s mind as early as his first return to England 
 from Sind in 1 8^^. But it was not completed until 1880, when it was privately printed 
 by ^aritch, a hundred copies, of which nearly half were returned unsold to the author. 
 Nor was it again printed until Lady Burton wrote her husband's life in l8<pj. 
 
 Throughout, the Kasidah is remarkable for its eloquence and colorful imagery. As poetry 
 its music is sometimes dissonant. As philosophy it is desultory and its arguments not with- 
 out contradiBion. As aproduB of the genius of Richard Burton, it is a precious human 
 docutnent. It has a manly, marching vigor that compels admiration in lines where mono- 
 syllabic Anglo-Saxon words often predominate : 
 
 " T)o what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but selfexpe£t applause; 
 He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. 
 All other life is living death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell, 
 A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell." 
 
 It has the same manliness and ruthless vigor in treating confiiBing modes of thought 
 
 and in sending flying what are in Emersonian parlance "the half-gods," that Burton may 
 
 ereB in their stead ideals real and true. We remember Tennyson ' s plea, thirty years before 
 
 the Kasidah saw the light: 
 
 " ^here lives more faith in honest doubt. 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 We remember the increasing recognition of the individual, which the thirty years succeed- 
 ing the writing of the Kasidah has brought about, and we agree with Burton's assur- 
 ance that: 
 
 " In Days to come. Days slow to dawn, when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men, 
 'These echoes of a voice long stilled haply shall wake responsive strain." 
 
 [iv] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Certainly ytnore and more, is individual honesty of opinion given its human place and value 
 without apology. Theories of pessimistic negation find congenial soil in human minds too 
 rarely to threaten a strangling growth. They are discussed, if not more cordially, at least 
 less fearfully, than by the average reader of Burton' s day. 
 
 Men of the desert wrought out much of that we call Judaism and Christianity. Even 
 the western mind loses its restlessness and attains repose in the solemn quiet of the desert. 
 Upon the most adventurous and dramatic of English travellers, the desert exercised its 
 eternal charm. Naturally, then, from the vastness and mystery of the desert, the Kasidah 
 takes its chief beauty. There is elevation of mood in an allegory which shows the transient 
 life of man in the unmapped universe as a caravan passing through the uncharted desert, 
 "beyond the thin blue line that rims the far horizon-ring." There is loveliness in the deep 
 desert night luminous with stars; in the dawn "where Golden gates swing right and left"; 
 in the " brief gladness of Palms," the " refreshment of welling spring and rushing rain" 
 in the "tinkling of the camels bells." There is grandeur in the "drear wastes of sea-born 
 land" and the unmeasured silences. 
 
 The Kasidah ofHdji Abdu is not a translation. It is written by an Englishman whose 
 habits of life were orientalized by eastern experience, whose tongue spoke lovingly eastern 
 speech, and whose mind was furnished with the world-old literatures of eastern lands. 
 
 The Rubdiydt of Omar Khayyam, known to English readers, is a condensed version of 
 a Persian poem, its hundred perfeB quatrains being the quintessential part of four times 
 their original number. Edward Fitzgerald was so great a literary artist, that the trans- 
 lation becomes his own poetic tapestry with its nightingales, its roses, and its "cypress 
 slender minister of wine." In exquisite images Omar asks God to prove his good intent 
 toward man, and hearing no answer, the eastern pessimist turns contentedly to the verse, 
 the song, and the wine of his earthly Paradise. Burton's poem is often compared with 
 Fitzgerald's, but they have of content and form little in common. The Kasidah is in- 
 debted to the Rubdiydt for a dozen oft-quoted lines and phrases, but its philosophy is out- 
 wardly a contradiBion of the tent-maker's. Burton sums up the accumulated wisdom of 
 the world to cast it aside, and then passionately challenges each man to be his own seeker 
 after truth. 
 
 Were the Kasidah a poem less uneven in its inspiration, it might claim some kinship 
 with Kobe let h. The melancholy of the kingly cynic environed by the narrow horizon of 
 
 [v] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 the ancient Mediterranean world is prof ounder than that of Burton. The modern English- 
 man, busied always^^in going to and fro in the earth" is never melancholy for long. His 
 zest for life is too keen. Creation is ever widening to his eager view. His unappeasable 
 curiosity about tnan dispels sadness and rouses him to aBion. Besides, he boyishly loved 
 by his sayings and writings to give scandal to pious souls, and took so much satisfa£iion 
 in this, as well as in his energetic iconoclasm, that despair could only momentarily possess 
 his soul. But as poetry can we compare the abysmal dejeBion of Koheleth' s cry of" Vanity 
 of Vanities" with Burton s "I've tried them all, I find them all so same and tame, so 
 drear, so dry" ? The Hebraic " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might" 
 is somewhat in the strain of Burton' s vigorous advice to try "the unpaid toils and pains 
 that make the man to manhood true." To both writers, work as expressing man' s self is 
 the only worthy compensation for living. 
 
 Is the Kasidah akin to Job? No. The literary power of the Hebraic classic, with its 
 vivid charaBerization, the dramatic intensity of its dialogue, and the sustained magnifi- 
 cence of its imagery, make comparison ii7ipossible. 
 
 Despite a memory stored with poetic lore and an eye for earthly beauty. Burton as a 
 poet lacks delicacy of ear: "horrid hill aiid glootny glen" and "ghostly, ghastly dream." 
 He lacks distinBion of style: " My gorge ariseth at the thought, I commune with myself 
 and cry." He lacks a kind of humor of language when, forgetting the familiar connotation 
 of words he tries to lift them from the comedy of nursery tale into the tragedy of Mansur' s 
 death : "And though his blood a witness bore, no wisdom-might could mend his bones." 
 
 Richard Burton had been born in the faith of the Church of England. He was a youth 
 in the years that saw modern science make the universe anew with the ministrations of 
 Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and Huxley. As a dweller in the Orient he became a Mo- 
 hammedan adept, and then a master Sufi with something of Buddhistic cynicism. That he 
 never evolved a complete and coherent philosophy of life is proved not only by the Kasidah 
 but by thefaBs of his personal life. As a student of religions and speBator of ceremonials 
 in widely scattered temples frotn Somaliland to Salt Lake City, he grew to have an anthro- 
 pologist's view of religion, and narrowed his own creed to that of rational conduB. He 
 believed in work for every man. He believed in work for himself, as his uiitiring travels 
 and half a hundred volumes show. He was fond of quoting Pope: "He can't be wrong 
 whose life is in the right." He was faithful to his family motto, "Honor, not honors." 
 
 [vi] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In a word, then, the Kasidah is a poem philosophically inclusive, but not conclusive. 
 The promise of Hdji Abdu El-Tezdi is fulfilled in the line: " To seek the truth, to glad 
 the heart, such is the life of the Higher Law." 
 
 Because Richard Burton loved with the passion of its own child, the scent and savor 
 of the Orient, because he brought to England the fruits of his tireless research and un- 
 selfish endeavor, because the Kasidah is part of the literary heritage left by this most 
 versatile linguist, ethnologist, traveller and writer, I quote as most befitting his varied 
 achievements the stately praise of his friend, an Algerine exile in Damascus, Abd el 
 Kadir:" Allah favor the days of your far-famed learning, O wader of the sea of knowl- 
 edge, O cistern of learning of our globe, exalted above his age, whose exaltation is above the 
 mountains of increase and our rising place, opener by his books of day and night, traveller 
 by ship and foot and horse." 
 
 With these words I commend to the reader the Kasidah of Hdji Abdu El-Tezdi. 
 
 AuRELiA Henry Reinhardt. 
 
 Mills College. Nov. 14, igiQ. 
 
 [vii] 
 
TO THE READER 
 
 The Translator has ventured to entitle a ^^Lay of the 
 Higher Law " the following Composition, which aims at 
 being in advance of its time; and he has not feared the 
 danger of collision with such unpleasant forms as the 
 ^■^ Higher Culture.' ' Theprindples which justify the name 
 are as follows : — 
 
 The Author asserts that Happiness and Misery are 
 equally divided and distributed in the world. 
 
 He makes Self cultivation, with due regard to others, 
 the sole and sufficient objeSi of human life. 
 
 He suggests that the affeBions, the sympathies and the 
 ^'' divine gift of Pity'' are man's highest enjoyments. 
 
 He advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper 
 suspicion of^^Fa8is,the idlest of superstitions." 
 
 Finally, although destructive to appearance, he is es- 
 sentially reconstruSiive. 
 
 For other details concerning the Poem and the Poet, 
 the curious reader is referred to the end of the volume, 
 
 F.B. 
 
 Vienna. Nov.l88o. 
 
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 THE KASIDAH I. 
 
 I. 
 
 A HE hour is nigh ; the waning Queen walks forth to rule the later night; 
 Crown'd with the sparkle of a Star, and throned on orb of ashen light : 
 
 II. 
 
 The Wolf-tail' sweeps the paling East to leave a deeper gloom behind, 
 And Dawn uprears her shining head, sighing with semblance of a wind : 
 
 in. 
 
 The highlands catch yon Orient gleam, while purpling still the lowlands lie ; 
 And pearly mists, the morning-pride, soar incense-like to greet the sky. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The horses neigh, the camels groan, the torches gleam, the cressets flare ; 
 The town of canvas falls, and man with din and dint invadeth air : 
 
 V. 
 
 The Golden Gates swing right and left; up springs the Sun with flamy brow; 
 The dew-cloud melts in gush of light ; brown Earth is bathed in morning-glow. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Slowly they wind athwart the wild, and while young Day his anthem swells, 
 Sad falls upon my yearning ear the' tinkling of the Camel-bells : 
 
 VII. 
 
 O'er fiery wastes and frozen wold, o'er horrid hill and gloomy glen. 
 
 The home of grisly beast and Ghoul,* the haunts of wilder, grislier men ; — 
 
 VIII. 
 
 With the brief gladness of the Palms, that tower and sway o'er seething plain. 
 Fraught with the thoughts of rustling shade, and welling spring, and rushing rain ; 
 
 ' The False Dawn. 
 
 » The Demon of the Desert. 
 
 [H 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 With the short solace of the ridge, by gentle zephyrs played upon, 
 Whose breezy head and bosky side front seas of cooly celadon ; — 
 
 X. 
 
 'Tis theirs to pass with joy and hope, whose souls shall ever thrill and fill 
 Dreams of the Birthplace and the Tomb, — visions of Allah's Holy Hill.' 
 
 XI. 
 
 But we ? Another shift of scene, another pang to rack the heart ; 
 
 Why meet we on the bridge of Time to 'change one greeting and to part? 
 
 XII. 
 
 We meet to part ; yet asks my sprite. Part we to meet ? Ah ! is it so ? 
 
 Man's fancy-made Omniscience knows, who made Omniscience nought can know. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Why must we meet, why must we part, why must we bear this yoke of MUST, 
 Without our leave or askt or given, by tyrant Fate on vidim thrust ? 
 
 XIV, 
 
 That Eve so gay, so bright, so glad, this Morn so dim, and sad, and grey ; 
 Strange that life's Registrar should write this day a day, that day a day ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 Mine eyes, my brain, my heart, are sad, — sad is the very core of me ; 
 All wearies, changes, passes, ends; alas! the Birthday's injury ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Friends of my youth, a last adieu ! haply some day we meet again ; 
 
 Yet ne'er the selfsame men shall meet ; the years shall make us other men : 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The light of morn has grown to noon, has paled with eve, and now farewell ! 
 Go, vanish from my Life as dies the tinkling of the Camel's bell. 
 
 ■ Arafat, near Mecca. 
 
 [2] 
 
THE KASIDAH II. 
 
 T ' 
 
 An these drear wastes of sea-born land, these wilds where none may dwell but He, 
 What visionary Pasts revive, what process of the Years we see : 
 
 II. 
 
 Gazing beyond the thin blue line that rims the far horizon-ring. 
 
 Our sadden'd sight why haunt these ghosts, whence do these spedral shadows spring ? 
 
 III. 
 
 What endless questions vex the thought, of Whence and Whither, When and How? 
 What fond and foolish strife to read the Scripture writ on human brow ; 
 
 IV. 
 
 As stand we percht on point of Time, betwixt the two Eternities, 
 
 Whose awful secrets gathering round with black profound oppress our eyes. 
 
 V. 
 
 " This gloomy night, these grisly waves, these winds and whirlpools loud and dread : 
 What reck they of our wretched plight who Safety's shores so lightly tread?" 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,' whose dream of Heaven ne'er could rise 
 Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup and Houris with the white-black eyes; 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ah me ! my race of threescore years is short, but long enough to pall 
 My sense with joyless joys as these, with Love and Houris, Wine and all. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Another boasts he would divorce old barren Reason from his bed, 
 
 And wed the Vine-maid in her stead ; — fools who believe a word he said ! * 
 
 ■ Haiiz of Shiraz. 
 
 * Omar-i-Kayyam, the tent-maker poet of Persia. 
 
 [3j 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 And "'Dust thou art to dust returning,' ne'er was spoke of human soul" 
 The Soofi cries, 'tis well for him that hath such gift to ask its goal. 
 
 X. 
 
 "And this is all, for this we 're born to weep a little and to die ! " 
 So sings the shallow bard whose life still labours at the letter " I." 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Ear never heard. Eye never saw the bliss of those who enter in 
 My heavenly kingdom," Isa said, who wailed our sorrows and our sin : 
 
 XII. 
 
 Too much of words or yet too few ! What to thy Godhead easier than 
 One little glimpse of Paradise to ope the eyes and ears of man ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " I am the Truth ! I am the Truth ! " we hear the God-drunk gnostic cry 
 " The microcosm abides in ME ; Eternal Allah 's nought but I ! " 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Mansur' was wise, but wiser they who smote him with the hurled stones ; 
 And, though his blood a witness bore, no wisdom-might could mend his bones. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Eat, drink, and sport ; the rest of life 's not worth a fillip," quoth the King ; 
 Methinks the saying saith too much ^ the swine would say the selfsame thing ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Two-footed beasts that browse through life, by Death to serve as soil design' d, 
 Bow prone to Earth whereof they be, and there the proper pleasures find : 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But you of finer, nobler stuff, ye, whom to Higher leads the High, 
 
 What binds your hearts in common bond with creatures of the stall and sty ? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " In certain hope of Life-to-come I journey through this shifting scene" 
 The Zahid* snarls and saunters down his Vale of Tears with confi'dent mien. 
 
 "A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy. 
 » The ' ' Philister " of " respeftable ' ' belief. 
 
 [4] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Wiser than Amran's Son' art thou, who ken'st so well the world-to-be, 
 The Future when the Past is not, the Present merest dreamery ; 
 
 XX. 
 
 What know'st thou, man, of Life ? and yet, forever twixt the womb, the grave. 
 Thou pratest of the Coming Life, of Heav'n and Hell thou fain must rave. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The world is old and thou art young ; the world is large and thou art small ; 
 Cease, atom of a moment's span, to hold thyself an All-in- All ! 
 
 ' Moses in the Koran. 
 
 [5] 
 
THE KASIDAH III. 
 
 IE, fie ! you visionary things, ye motes that dance in sunny glow. 
 Who base and build Eternities on briefest moment here below ; 
 
 II. 
 Who pass through Life liked caged birds, the captives of a despot will ; 
 Still wond'ring How and When and Why, and Whence and Whither, wond'ring still ; 
 
 III. 
 Still wond'ring how the Marvel came because two coupling mammals chose 
 To slake the thirst of fleshly love, and thus the " Immortal Being " rose ; 
 
 IV. 
 
 Wond'ring the Babe with staring eyes, perforce compel'd from night to day, 
 Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray ; 
 
 v. 
 Who comes imbecile to the world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; 
 The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, wrath and fears ; 
 
 VI. 
 
 Who knows not Whence he came nor Why, who kens not Whither bound and When, 
 Yet such is Allah's choicest gift, the blessing dreamt by foolish men ; 
 
 VII. 
 
 Who step by step perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold, 
 Lisping again his broken words till all the tale be fully told : 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Wond'ring the Babe with quenched orbs, an oldster bow'd by burthening years, 
 How 'scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how 'scaped the thread a thousand shears; 
 
 [6] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 How coming to the Feast unhid, he found the gorgeous table spread 
 
 With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit, with stones that bear the shape of bread : 
 
 X. 
 
 How Life was nought but ray of sun that clove the darkness thick and blind, 
 The ravings of the reckless storm, the shrieking of the rav'ening wind ; 
 
 XI. 
 
 How lovely visions 'guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, 
 Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn ; 
 
 XII. 
 
 Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze ; 
 The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days ; 
 
 XIII. 
 
 How every high heroic Thought that longed to breathe empyrean air, 
 Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and perisht of a sheer despair ; 
 
 XIV. 
 
 How, dower'd with heritage of brain, whose might has split the solar ray. 
 His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown of gold on brow of clay; 
 
 XV. 
 
 This House whose frame be flesh and bone, mortar'd with blood and faced with skin, 
 The home of sickness, dolours, age ; unclean without, impure within : 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom, the chambers haunted by the Ghost, 
 Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade stronger than all the heav'nly host. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This tube, an enigmatic pipe, whose end was laid before begun. 
 
 That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; — puzzle, machine, automaton; 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The first of Pots the Potter made by Chrysorrhoas' blue-green wave;' 
 Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave ! 
 
 • The Abana, the River of Damascus. 
 
 [7] • ■ 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 v 
 
 XIX. 
 
 How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes that round the drunkard reel ; 
 How " Being " meaneth not to be ; to see and hear, smell, taste and feel. 
 
 XX. 
 
 A drop in Ocean's boundless tide, unfathom'd waste of agony; 
 Where millions live their horrid lives by making other millions die. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 How with a heart that would through love, to Universal Love aspire, 
 Man woos infernal chance to smite, as Min'arets draw the Thunder-fire. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 How Earth on Earth builds tow'er and wall, to crumble at a touch of Time; 
 How Earth on Earth from Shinar-plain the heights of Heaven fain would climb. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 How short this Life, how long withal ; how false its weal, how true its woes, 
 This fever-fit with paroxysms to mark its opening and its close. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Ah ! gay the day with shine of sun, and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng 
 Met on the River-bank to play, when I was young, when I was young : 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Such general joy could never fade ; and yet the chilling whisper came 
 
 One face had paled, one form had failed ; had fled the bank, had swum the stream ; 
 
 XXVI, 
 
 Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod the hither bank of Time's deep tide, 
 Still one by one they left and fared to the far misty thither side ; 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 And now the last hath slipt away yon drear Death-desert to explore. 
 And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn still lingers on the lonely shore. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still; in Manhood streameth soft and slow; 
 See, as it nears the 'abysmal goal how fleet the waters flash and flow! 
 
 [8] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 And Deaths are twain ; the Deaths we see drop like the leaves in windy Fall ; 
 But ours, our own, are ruined worlds, a globe collapst, last end of all. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 We live our lives with rogues and fools, dead and alive, alive and dead. 
 
 We die 'twixt one who feels the pulse and one who frets and clouds the head: 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 And, — oh, the Pity ! — hardly conned the lesson comes its fatal term; 
 Fate bids us bundle up our books, and bear them bod'ily to the worm : 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Hardly we learn to wield the blade before the wrist grows stiff and old ; 
 Hardly we learn to ply the pen ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold : 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the Self, forget the " I," 
 When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man, begins to die : 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights, and sight the Pisgah-scene around. 
 
 And breathe the breath of heav'enly air, and hear the Spheres' harmonious sound ; 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 When swift the Camel-rider spans the howling waste, by Kismet sped. 
 And of his Magic Wand a wave hurries the quick to join the dead." 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 How sore the burden, strange the strife ; how full of splendour, wonder, fear ; 
 Life, atom of that Infinite Space that stretcheth 'twixt the Here and There. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 How Thought is imp'otent to divine the secret which the gods defend. 
 The Why of birth and life and death, that Isis-veil no hand may rend. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Eternal Morrows make our Day; our is is aye to be till when 
 
 Night closes in ; 'tis all a dream, and yet we die,— and then and THEN ? 
 
 ■ Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale hone. 
 
 [9] 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose warp and woof is wretched Man 
 Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark we doubt it owns a plan. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear, amid the storm of tears and blood, 
 Man say Thy mercy made what is, and saw the made and said 'twas good ? 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The marvel is that man can smile dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream ; — 
 Better the heedless atomy that buzzes in the morning beam ! 
 
 XLII. 
 
 O the dread pathos of our lives ! how durst thou, Allah, thus to play 
 With Love, AfFediion, Friendship, all that shows the god in mortal clay ? 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 But ah! what 'vaileth man to mourn ; shall tears bring forth what smiles ne'er brought ; 
 Shall brooding breed a thought of joy ? Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought! 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Silence thine immemorial quest, contain thy nature's vain complaint 
 
 None heeds, none cares for thee or thine ; — like thee how many came and went ? 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail ; enjoy thy shining hour of sun ; 
 We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun ? 
 
 [lo] 
 
THE KASIDAH IV. 
 
 What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed by many a moon that waxt and waned ? , 
 What Prophet-strain be his to sing ? What hath his old Experience gained ? 
 
 11. 
 
 There is no God, no man-made God ; a bigger, stronger, crueller man ; 
 Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began. 
 
 III. 
 
 Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,' "As Ishwara for one I nill, 
 Th' almighty everlasting Good who cannot 'bate th' Eternal ill : " 
 
 IV. 
 
 ' Your gods may be, what shows they are?" Hear China's Perfed: Sage declare ;= 
 'And being, what to us be they who dwell so darkly and so far?" 
 
 "All matter hath a birth and death ; 'tis made, unmade and made anew; 
 "We choose to call the Maker ' God'— such is the Zahid's owly view. 
 
 VI. 
 
 You changeful finite Creatures strain" (rejoins the Drawer of the Wine )3 
 • The dizzy depths of Infinite Power to fathom with your foot of twine ; " 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Poor idols of man's heart and head with the Divine Idea to blend ; 
 
 "To preach as 'Nature's Common Course' what any hour may shift or end." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show ? 
 "Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know? 
 
 ■ Buddha. 
 
 » Confucius. 
 
 I The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zahid. 
 
 [I^ 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 " How may the passing Now contain the standing Now — Eternity ? — 
 "An endless is without a was, the be and never the to-be? 
 
 X. 
 
 " Who made your Maker ? If Self-made, why fare so far to fare the worse 
 " Sufficeth not a world of worlds, a self-made chain of universe ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Grant an Idea, Primal Cause, the Causing Cause, why crave for more ? 
 
 " Why strive its depth and breadth to mete, to trace its work, its aid to 'implore ? 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Unknown, Incomprehensible, what e'er you choose to call it, call ; 
 " But leave it vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defin'd, 
 
 " What your five wits may wot ye weet ; what is you please to dub ' design'd ; ' 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " You bring down Heav'n to vulgar Earth ; your Maker like yourselves you make, 
 " You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break ; 
 
 XV. 
 
 "You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be, 
 " That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of Law to see ? 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Say, Man, deep learned in the Scheme that orders mysteries sublime, 
 " How came it this was Jesus, that was Judas from the birth of Time ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " How I the tiger, thou the lamb ; again the Secret, prithee, show 
 
 "Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt or Fate that drave the man, the bow? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Man worships self: his God is Man ; the struggling of the mortal mind 
 "To form its model as 'twould be, the perfedl of itself to find. 
 
 [12] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " The God became sage, priest and scribe where Nilus' serpent made the vale ; 
 " A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind, a neutral something cold and pale : 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Amid the high Chaldean hills a moulder of the heavenly spheres ; 
 " On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God who governs by his dual peers : 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " In Hebrew tents the Lord that led His leprous slaves to fight and jar ; 
 " Yahveh/ Adon or Elohim, the God that smites, the Man of War. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " The lovely Gods of lib'ertine Greece, those fair and frail humanities 
 
 " Whose homes o'erlook'd the Middle Sea, where all Earth's beauty cradled lies, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Ne'er left its blessed bounds, nor sought the barb'arous climes of barb'arous gods 
 " Where Odin of the dreary North o'er hog and sickly mead-cup nods : 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " And when, at length, ' Great Pan is dead ' uprose the loud and dol'orous cry 
 " A glamour wither'd on the ground, a splendour faded in the sky. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar'ene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, 
 " The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three and three is one ; 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Whose sadd'ening creed of herited Sin spilt o'er the world its cold grey spell ; 
 " In every vista showed a grave, and 'neath the grave the glare of Hell ; 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Till all Life's Po'esy sinks to prose ; romance to dull Real'ity fades ; 
 
 " Earth's flush of gladness pales in gloom and God again to man degrades. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " Then the lank Arab foul with sweat, the drainer of the camel's dug, 
 " Gorged with his leek-green lizard's meat, clad in his filthy rag and rug, 
 
 'Jehova. 
 
 ['3l 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Bore his fierce Allah o'er his sands and broke, like lava-burst upon 
 
 " The realmswhere reigned pre- Adamite Kings, where rose theGrand Kayanian throne.' 
 
 XXX. 
 
 "Who now of ancient Kayomurs, of Zal or Rustam cares to sing, 
 
 " Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes that called the Camel-driver King ? 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw, the sceptre of Anushirwan 
 
 " The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's hall ?— Canst tell me, man ? 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " Gone, gone, where I and thou must go, borne by the winnowing wings of Death, 
 " The Horror brooding over life, and nearer brought with every breath : 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes, they rose and reigned, they fought and fell, 
 " As swells and swoons across the wold the tinkling of the Camel's bell. 
 
 ' Kayani— of the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes. 
 
 [H] 
 
THE KASIDAH V. 
 
 Xhere is no Good, there is no Bad; these be the whims of mortal will: 
 What works me weal that call I * good,' what harms and hurts I hold as ' ill : ' 
 
 II. 
 They change with place, they shift with race ; and, in the veriest span of Time, 
 Each Vice has won a Virtue's crown ; all Good was banned as Sin or Crime : 
 
 III. 
 Like ravelled skeins they cross and twine, while this with that connedts and blends ; 
 And only Khizr' his eye shall see where one begins, where other ends : 
 
 IV. 
 
 What mortal shall consort with Khizr, when Musa turned in fear to flee ? 
 What man foresees the flow'er or fruit whom Fate compels to plant the tree? 
 
 V. 
 
 For Man's Free-will immortal Law, Anagke, Kismet, Des'tiny read 
 
 That was, that is, that aye shall be. Star, Fortune, Fate, Urd, Norn or Need. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Man's nat'ural State is God's design ;" such is the silly sage's theme; 
 " Man's primal Age was Age of Gold ;" such is the Poet's waking dream : 
 
 VII. 
 
 Delusion, Ign'orance ! Long ere Man drew upon Earth his earli'est breath 
 The world was one contin'uous scene of anguish, torture, prey and Death ; 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Where hideous Theria of the wild rended their fellows limb by limb ; 
 Where horrid Saurians of the sea in waves of blood were wont to swim : 
 
 ' Supposed to be the Prophet Elijah. 
 
 [^5] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 The "fair young Earth" was only fit to spawn her frightful monster-brood ; 
 Now fiery hot, now icy frore, now reeking wet with steamy flood. 
 
 X. 
 
 Yon glorious Sun, the greater light, the " Bridegroom " of the royal Lyre, 
 A flaming, boiling, bursting mine ; a grim black orb of whirling fire : 
 
 XI. 
 
 That gentle Moon, the lesser light, the Lover's lamp, the Swain's delight, 
 A ruined world, a globe burnt out, a corpse upon the road of night. 
 
 XII. 
 
 What reckt he, say, of Good or 111 who in the hill-hole made his lair. 
 The blood-fed rav'ening Beast of prey, wilder than wildest wolf or bear ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 How long in Man's pre-Ad'amite days to feed and swill, to sleep and breed. 
 Were the Brute-biped's only life, a perfed: life sans Code or Creed ? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 His choicest garb a shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone ; 
 
 His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and holes to hang his bits of bone ; 
 
 XV. 
 
 Who fought for female as for food when Mays awoke to warm desire ; 
 And such the Lust that grew to Love when Fancy lent a purer fire. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Where then "Th' Eternal nature-law by God engraved on human heart?" 
 Behold his simiad sconce and own the Thing could play no higher part. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Yet, as long ages rolled, he learnt from Beaver, Ape and Ant to build 
 
 Shelter for sire and dam and brood, from blast and blaze that hurt and killed ; 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 And last came Fire ; when scrap of stone cast on the flame that lit his den. 
 Gave out the shining ore, and made the Lord of beasts a Lord of men. 
 
 [i6] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The "moral sense," your Zahid-phrase, is but the gift of latest years; 
 Conscience was born when man had shed his fur, his tail, his pointed ears. 
 
 XX. 
 
 What conscience has the murd'erous Moor, who slays his guest with felon blow, 
 Save sorrow he can slay no more, what prick of pen'itence can he know? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 You cry the " Cruelty of Things" is myst'ery to your purblind eye. 
 Which fixed upon a point in space the general proje<fl: passes by: 
 
 XXII. 
 
 For see ! the Mammoth went his ways, became a mem'ory and a name; 
 While the half-reasoner with the hand' survives his rank and place to claim. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Earthquake and plague, storm, fight and fray, portents and curses man must deem 
 Since he regards his self alone, nor cares to trace the scope, the scheme ; 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Quake that comes in eyelid's beat to ruin, level, 'gulf and kill. 
 Builds up a world for better use, to general Good bends special 111 : 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The dreadest sound man's ear can hear, the war and rush of stormy Wind 
 Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for humankind : 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain. 
 When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain ? 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 And thus the race of Being runs, till haply in the time to be 
 
 Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari^'-men another falling star shall see : 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Shall see it fall and fade from sight, whence come, where gone no Thought can tell,- 
 Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase the tinkling of the camel-bell ! 
 
 • ■•••>•••••••• 
 
 ■ The Elephant. 
 » The Planet Jupiter. 
 
 [^7] 
 
THE KASIDAH VI. 
 
 A. 
 
 -LL Faith is false, all Faith is true : Truth is the shattered mirror strown 
 In myriad bits ; while each believes his little bit the whole to own. 
 
 II. 
 
 What is the Truth ? was askt of yore. Reply all objedt Truth is one 
 
 As twain of halves aye makes a whole ; the moral Truth for all is none. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ye scantly-learned Zahids learn from Aflatun and Aristu,' 
 
 While Truth is real like your good : th' Untrue, like ill, is real too ; 
 
 IV. 
 
 As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies. 
 So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies. 
 
 V. 
 
 What see we here ? Forms, nothing more ! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye. 
 We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Faith mountains move" I hear: I see the practice of the world unheed 
 The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that serves our vanity to feed. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Faith stands unmoved ; " and why? Because man's silly fancies still remain. 
 And will remain till wiser man the day-dreams of his youth disdain. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " 'Tis blessed to believe ; " you say: the saying may be true enow 
 And it can add to Life a light : — only remains to show us how. 
 
 ' Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 [i8] 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 E'en if I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite. 
 Irksome as twice-sung tune that tries the dulled ear of drowsy wight. 
 
 X. 
 
 With God's foreknowledge man's free will ! what monster-growth of human brain, 
 What pow'ers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such aid to seek were hardly wise 
 
 For man must own the pitiless Law that sways the globe and sevenfold skies. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key ; " 
 So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven, — he. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Are these the words for men to hear? yet such the Church's general tongue. 
 The horseleech^cry so strong so high her heav'enward Psalms and Hymns among. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 What? Faith a merit and a claim, when with the brain 'tis born and bred? 
 Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy water buried dead ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 Yet follow not th' unwisdom-path, cleave not to this and that disclaim ; 
 Believe in all that man believes ; here all and naught are both the same. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But is it so? How may we know? Haply this Fate, this Law may be 
 A word, a sound, a breath ; at most the Zahid's moonstruck theory. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Yes Truth may be, but 'tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There, 
 But Where nor / nor you can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Enough to think that Truth can be : come sit we where the roses glow, 
 Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to'unknow. 
 
 [^9] 
 
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 THE KASIDAH VII. 
 
 M, 
 
 -AN hath no Soul, a state of things, a no-thing still, a sound, a word 
 Which so begets substantial thing that eye shall see what ear hath heard. 
 
 II. 
 
 Where was his Soul the savage beast which in primeval forests strayed. 
 What shape had it, what dwelling-place, what part in nature's plan it played ? 
 
 III. 
 
 This Soul to ree a riddle made; who wants the vain duality? 
 Is not myself enough for me ? what need of" I " within an " I " ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Words, words that gender things ! The soul is a new-comer on the scene ; 
 Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine ? 
 
 V. 
 
 We know the Gen'esis of the Soul ; we trace the Soul to hour of birth ; 
 We mark its growth as grew mankind to boast himself sole Lord of Earth ; 
 
 VI. 
 
 The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run ; 
 What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun : 
 
 VII. 
 
 Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes ; 
 Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies : 
 
 VIII. 
 
 No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity; 
 
 And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see. 
 
 [20] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Ghost, embodied natural Dread of dreary death and foul decay, 
 Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade with Hades' pale and wan array. 
 
 •X. 
 
 The Soul required a greater Soul, a Soul of Souls, to rule the host ; 
 Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies, all gendered by the savage Ghost. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book, these fairy visions fair and fond. 
 Got by the gods of Khemi-land' and faring far the seas beyond ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 "Th' immortal mind of mortal man ! " we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; 
 Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic" I." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean ; 
 In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "Tush ! "quoth the Zahid," well we ken the teaching of the school abhorr'd 
 "That maketh man automaton, mind a secretion, soul a word." 
 
 * 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Of molecules and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate ; 
 " Of jelly-speck, development and apes that grew to man's estate." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Vain cavil ! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law ; — 
 
 Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Why heap such hatred on a word, why " Prototype " to type assign. 
 Why upon matter spirit mass ? wants an appendix your design ? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Is not the highest honour his who from the worst hath drawn the best ; 
 May not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His hest ? 
 
 » Egypt ; Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl. ), in the Demotic Khemi. 
 
 [21] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand : 
 Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand. 
 
 XX.. 
 
 " Reason and Instindl! " How we love to play with words that please our pride; 
 Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide ! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain, 
 From Instindl differing in degree as golden mine from leaden vein. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: 
 Worlds lie above, beyond its ken ; what crosses it can ne'er be true. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Fools rush where Angels fear to tread ! " Angels and Fools have equal claim 
 To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame ! 
 
 [22] 
 
THE KASIDAH VIII. 
 
 T 
 
 .HERE is no Heav'en, there is no Hell; these be the dreams of baby minds; 
 Tools of the wily Fetisheer, to 'fright the fools his cunning blinds. 
 
 II. 
 
 Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell ; 
 In Life to find thy hell and heav'en as thou abuse or use it well. 
 
 III. 
 
 So deemed the doughty Jew who dared by studied silence^ low to lay 
 Orcus and Hades, lands of shades, the gloomy night of human day. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hard to the heart is final death : fain would an Ens not end in Nil; 
 Love made the senti'ment kindly good : the Priest perverted all to ill. 
 
 V. 
 
 While Reason sternly bids us die. Love longs for life beyond the grave : 
 Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears for life-to-be shall ever crave. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hence came the despot's darling dream, a Church to rule and sway the State ; 
 Hence sprang the train of countless griefs in priestly sway and rule innate. 
 
 VII. 
 
 For future Life who dares reply ? No witness at the bar have we ; 
 Save what the brother Potsherd tells, — old tales and novel jugglery. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Who e'er return'd to teach the Truth, the things of Heaven and Hell to limn ? 
 And all we hear is only fit for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn. 
 
 [23] 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Have mercy, man ! " the Zahid cries, " of our best visions rob us not ! 
 " Mankind a future life must have to balance life's unequal lot." 
 
 X. 
 
 " Nay," quoth the Magian " 'tis not so ; I draw my wine for one and all, 
 A cup for this, a score for that, e'en as his measure's great or small : 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight ; to poorest passion he was born ; 
 "Who drains the score must e'er exped: to rue the headache of the morn." 
 
 XII. 
 
 Safely he jogs along the way which ' Golden Mean ' the sages call ; 
 Who scales the brow of frowing Alp must face full many a slip and fall. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Here extremes meet, anointed Kings whose crowned heads uneasy lie. 
 Whose cup of joy contains no more than tramps that on the dunghill die. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred for dangling from the gallows-tree ; 
 To Saint who spends his holy days in rapt'urous hope his God to see ; 
 
 XV. 
 
 To all that breathe our upper air the hands of Dest'iny ever deal. 
 
 In fixed and equal parts, their shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " How comes it, then, our span of days in hunting wealth and fame we spend 
 " Why strive we ( and all humans strive ) for vain and visionary end ? " 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Reply; mankind obeys a law that bids him labour, struggle, strain ; 
 The Sage well knowing its unworth, the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 And who, 'mid e'en the Fools, but feels that half the joy is in the race 
 
 For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs when comes success to crown the chase ? 
 
 [24] 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Again : in Hind, Chin, Franguestan that accident of birth befell. 
 Without our choice, our will, our voice : Faith is an accident as well, 
 
 XX. 
 
 What to the Hindu saith the Frank : " Denier of the Laws divine ! 
 However godly-good thy Life, Hell is the home for thee and thine." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Go strain the draught before 't is drunk, and learn that breathing every breath, 
 " With every step, with every gest, some thing of life thou do'est to death." 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Replies the Hindu : " Wend thy way for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit; 
 
 " Your Pariah-par'adise woo and win ; at such dog-Heav'en I laugh and spit. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Cannibals of the Holy Cow ! who make your rav'ening maws the grave 
 
 " Of Things with self-same right to live ; — what Fiend the filthy license gave ? " 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 What to the Moslem cries the Frank? "A polygamic Theist thou! 
 " From an imposter-Prophet turn ; thy stubborn head to Jesus bow." 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Rejoins the Moslem: "Allah's one tho' with four Moslemahs I wive, 
 
 " One-wife-men ye and ( damned race ! ) you split your God to Three and Five." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The Buddhist to Confucians thus : " Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die ; 
 " Content ye rest with wretched earth; God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy." 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Retorts the Tartar: "Shall I lend mine only ready-money 'now,' 
 For vain usurious ' Then ' like thine, avaunt, a triple idiot Thou ! " 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " With this poor life, with this mean world I fain complete what in me lies ; 
 I strive to perfedt this my me; my sole ambition's to be wise." 
 
 [25] 
 
THEKASIDAH 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 When doftors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng ? 
 
 Who save the madman dares to cry: " 'Tis I am right, you all are wrong ?" 
 
 XXX. 
 
 ** You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say, 
 
 " For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day." 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Thy faith why false, my faith why true ? 't is all the work of Thine and Mine, 
 "The fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine." 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Cease then to mumble rotten bones ; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood 
 The skel'eton ; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " For gen'erous youth," an Arab saith, "Jahim's' the only genial state ; 
 " Give us the fire but not the shame with the sad, sorry blest to mate." 
 
 xxxiv. 
 And if your Heav'en and Hell be true, and Fate that forced me to be born 
 Forced me to Heav'en or Hell — I go, and hold Fate's insolence in scorn. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 I want not this, I want not that, already sick of Me and Thee ; 
 
 And if we 're both transform'd and changed, what then becomes of Thee and Me? 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Enough to think such things may be : to say they are not or they are 
 Were folly : leave them all to Fate, nor wage on shadows useless war. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expert applause ; 
 He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell, 
 A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell. 
 
 "Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell. 
 
 [26] 
 
THE KASIDAH IX. 
 
 -ow then shall man so order life that when his tale of years is told. 
 Like sated guest he wend his way; how shall his even tenour hold? 
 
 H< 
 
 II. 
 
 Despite the Writ that stores the skull ; despite the Table and the Pen ; ' 
 Maugre the Fate that plays us down, her board the world, her pieces men ? 
 
 III. 
 How when the light and glow of life wax dim in thickly gath'ering gloom. 
 Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death, shall scorn the vidlory of the Tomb ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 « 
 
 One way, two paths, one end the grave. This runs athwart the flow'ery plain. 
 That breasts the bush, the steep, the crag, in sun and wind and snow and rain : 
 
 v. 
 Who treads the first must look adown, must deem his life an all in all ; 
 Must see no heights where man may rise, must sight no depths where man may fall. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Allah in Adam form must view; adore the Maker in the made 
 Content to bask in Maya's smile,* in joys of pain, in lights of shade. 
 
 VII. 
 
 He breaks the Law, he burns the Book, he sends the Moolah back to school ; 
 Laughs at the beards of Saintly men ; and dubs the Prophet dolt and fool, 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Embraces Cypress' taper-waist ; cools feet on wavy breast of rill ; 
 Smiles in the Nargis' love-lorn eyes, and 'joys the dance of Daffodil ; 
 
 • Emblems of Kismet, or Destiny. 
 
 * Illusion. 
 
 [27] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 IX. 
 
 Melts in the saffron light of Dawn to hear the moaning of the Dove ; 
 Delights in Sundown's purpling hues when Bulbul woos the Rose's love. 
 
 X. 
 
 Finds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl ; toys with the Daughter of the vine ; 
 And bids the beauteous cup-boy say, " Master I bring thee ruby wine ! "' 
 
 XI. 
 
 Sips from the maiden's lips the dew; brushes the bloom from virgin brow: — 
 Such is his fleshly bliss that strives the Maker through the Made to know. 
 
 XII. 
 
 I've tried them all, I find them all so same and tame, so drear, so dry; 
 My gorge ariseth at the thought; I commune with myself and cry: — 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Better the myriad toils and pains that make the man to manhood true. 
 This be the rule that guideth life ; these be the laws for me and you : 
 
 XIV. 
 
 With Ignor'ance wage eternal war, to know thy self forever strain, 
 Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane ; 
 
 XV. 
 
 That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste ; that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes ; 
 Creates the thing that never was, the Thing that ever is defies. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The finite Atom infinite that forms thy circle's centre-dot. 
 So full-sufficient for itself, for other selves existing not, 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Finds the world mighty as 'tis small ; yet must be fought the unequal fray; 
 A myriad giants here ; and there a pinch of dust, a clod of clay. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Yes ! maugre all thy dreams of peace still must the fight unfair be fought ; 
 Where thou mayst learn the noblest lore, to know that all we know is nought. 
 
 ' That all the senses, even the ear, may enjoy. 
 
 [28] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XIX. 
 
 True to thy Nature, to Thy self, Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear : 
 Enough to thee the small still voice aye thund'ering in thine inner ear. 
 
 XX. 
 
 From self-approval seek applause : What ken not men thou kennest, thou ! 
 Spurn ev'ry idol others raise: before thine own Ideal bow: 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Be thine own Deus : Make self free, liberal as the circling air : 
 
 Thy Thought to thee an Empire be ; break every prison'ing lock and bar : 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Do thou the Ought to self aye owed ; here all the duties meet and blend, 
 In widest sense, withouten care of what began, for what shall end. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms which in the misty Past were thine. 
 To be again the thing thou wast with honest pride thou may'st decline ; 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 And, glancing down the range of years, fear not thy future self to see ; 
 Resign'd to life, to death resign'd, as though the choice were naught to thee. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 On Thought itself feed not thy thought ; nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze. 
 At darkling cloisters paved with tombs, where rot the bones of bygone days : 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Eat not thy heart," the Sages said ; " nor mourn the Past, the buried Past ; " 
 Do what thou dost, be strong, be brave ; and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Pluck the old woman from thy breast : be stout in woe, be stark in weal ; 
 
 Do good for Good is good to do : Spurn bribe of Heav'en and threat of Hell. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 To seek the True, to glad the heart, such is of life the HIGHER LAW, 
 Whose differ'ence is the Man's degree, the Man of gold, the Man of straw. 
 
 [29] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 See not that something in Mankind that rouses hate or scorn or strife, 
 Better the worm of Izrail' than Death that walks in form of life. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Survey thy kind as One whose wants in the great Human Whole unite;* 
 The Homo rising high from earth to seek the Heav'ens of Life-in-Light ; 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 And hold Humanity one man, whose universal agony 
 
 Still strains and strives to gain the goal, where agonies shall cease to be. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Believe in all things ; none believe ; judge not nor warp by " Fa6ts " the thought ; 
 See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem Maya and Mirage, Dream and Naught, 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Abjure the Why and seek the How: the God and gods enthroned on high. 
 Are silent all, are silent still ; nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 The Now, that indivis'ible point which studs the length of infinite line 
 Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Perchance the law some Giver hath : Let be ! let be ! what canst thou know? 
 A myriad races came and went ; this Sphinx hath seen them come and go. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Haply the Law that rules the world allows to man the widest range ; 
 And haply Fate's a Theist-word, subjedt to human chance and change. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 This" I " may find a future Life, a nobler copy of our own, 
 
 Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every knowledge shall be known ; 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Where 't will be man's to see the whole of what on Earth he sees in part ; 
 
 Where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought ; nor hope defer'd shall hurt the heart. 
 
 > The Angel of Death. 
 
 » The " Great Man " of the Enochites and the Mormons. 
 
 [30] 
 
THE KASIDAH 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 But! — faded flow'er and fallen leaf no more shall deck, the parent tree; 
 And man once dropt by Tree of Life what hope of other life has he ? 
 
 XL. 
 
 The shatter'd bowl shall know repair ; the riven lute shall sound once more ; 
 But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen breath to man restore ? 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The shiver'd clock again shall strike ; the broken reed shall pipe again : 
 But we, we die, and Death is one, the doom of brutes, the doom of men. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Then, if Nirwana' round our life with nothingness, 'tis, haply best; 
 
 Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length have won their guerdon — Rest. 
 
 XLIII. . 
 
 Cease, Abdu, cease ! Thy song is sung, nor think the gain the singer's prize ; 
 Till men hold Ignor'ance deadly sin, till man deserves his title"Wise:"* 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 In Days to come. Days slow to dawn, when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men, 
 These echoes of a voice long stilled haply shall wake responsive strain : 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy humble tale to tell : — 
 The whispers of the Desert-wind; the Tinkling of the camel's-bell. 
 
 iDbtD 
 
 ' Compararive annihilation. 
 * " Homo sapiens." 
 
 [31] 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note I: Hdji 
 
 Haji Abdu has been known to me for more 
 years than I care to record. A native, it is be- 
 lieved, of Darabghird in the Yezd Province, 
 he always preferred to style himself El-Hich- 
 makani, a facetious "lackab" or surname, 
 meaning " Of No-hall, Nowhere." He had 
 travelled far and wide with his eyes open ; as 
 appears by his "couplets." To a natural facil- 
 ity, a knack of language-learning, he added 
 a store of desultory various reading; scraps 
 of Chinese and old Egyptian; of Hebrew 
 and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, 
 especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, 
 including Romaic; of Berber, the Nubian 
 dialedl, and of Zend and Akkadian, besides 
 Persian, his mother-tongue, and Arabic, the 
 classic of the schools. Nor was he ignorant of 
 "the -ologies" and the triumphs of modern 
 scientific discovery. Briefly, his memory was 
 well-stored ; and he had every talent save that 
 of using his talents. 
 
 But no one thought that he "woo'd the 
 Muse," to speak in the style of the last cen- 
 tury. Even his intimates were ignorant of the 
 faft that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, 
 his Kasidahordistichs. He confided to me his 
 secret when we last met in Western India— 
 I am purposely vague in specifying the place. 
 When so doing he held in hand the long and 
 hoary honours of his chin with the points 
 towards me, as if to say with the Island-King: 
 
 Abdu, the Man 
 
 There is a touch of Winter in my beard, 
 
 A sign the Gods will guard me from imprudence. 
 
 And yet the piercing eye, clear as an onyx, 
 seemed to protest against the plea of age. The 
 MS. was in the vilest "Shikastah" or running- 
 hand; and, as I carried it off, the writer de- 
 clined to take the trouble of copying out his 
 cacograph. 
 
 We,his old friends,had long addressed Haji 
 Abdu by the sobriquet of Nabbiana ("our 
 Prophet"); and the reader will see that the 
 Pilgrim has, or believes he has, a message to 
 deliver. He evidentlyaspires to preach a Faith 
 ofhis own; an Eastern Version of Humanitar- 
 ianism blended with the sceptical or, as we now 
 say,thescientifichabitof mind. This religion, 
 of which Fetishism, Hinduism and Heathen- 
 dom; Judaeism, Christianity and Islamism 
 are mere fraftions, may, methi nks, be accepted 
 by the Philosopher: it worships with single- 
 minded devotion the Holy Cause of Truth, 
 of Truth for its own sake, not for the goods it 
 may bring; and this belief is equally accept- 
 able to honest ignorance, and to the highest 
 attainments in nature-study. 
 
 With Confucius the Haji cultivates what 
 Strauss has called the "stern common-sense of 
 mankind ; " while the reign of order is a para- 
 graph ofhis "Higher Law." He traces from 
 its rudest beginnings the all but absolute uni- 
 versality of some perception by man, called 
 
 [33] 
 
NOTES 
 
 "Faith; "that j^«j«jiV«OT/«/jwhich, by inheri- 
 tance or communication, is now universal ex- 
 cept in those who force themselves to oppose 
 it. And he evidently holds this general con- 
 sent of mankind to be so far divine that it 
 primarily discovered for itself, if it did not 
 create, a divinity. He does not cry with the 
 Christ of Novalis, "Children, you have no 
 father;" and perhaps he would join Renan in 
 exclaiming, Un monde sans Dieu est horrible! 
 
 But he recognizes the incompatibility of 
 the Infinite with the Definite; of a Beingwho 
 loves, who thinks, who hates; of an A£lus 
 purus who is called jealous, wrathful and re- 
 vengeful, with an " Eternal that makes for 
 righteousness." In the presence of the end- 
 less contradiftions, which spring from the idea 
 of a Personal Deity, with the Synthesis, the 
 Begriffoi Providence, our Agnostic takes ref- 
 uge in the sentiment of an unknown and an 
 unknowable. He objefts to the countless va- 
 riety of forms assumed by the perception of 
 a Causa Causans (a misnomer), and to that 
 intellediual adoption of general propositions, 
 capable of distindt statement but incapable of 
 proofs, which we term Belief. 
 
 He looks with impartial eye upon the end- 
 less variety of systems, mai ntained with equal 
 confidence and self-sufficiency, by men of 
 equal ability and honesty. He is weary of 
 wanderingover the world,and of finding every 
 petty race wedded to its own opinions; claim- 
 ing the monopoly of Truth; holding all others 
 to be in error, and raising disputes whose vio- 
 lence, acerbity and virulence are in inverse 
 ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. 
 A peculiarly active and acute observation 
 taught him that many of thesejarring families, 
 especially those of the same blood, are par in 
 
 the intellectual processes of perception and 
 reflection; that in the business of the visible 
 working world they are confessedly by no 
 means superior to one another; whereas in 
 abstruse matters of mere Faith, not admitting 
 dired: and sensual evidence, one in a hundred 
 will claim to be right, and immodestly charge 
 the other ninety-nine with being wrong. 
 
 Thus he seeks to discover a system which 
 will prove them all right, and all wrong; which 
 will reconcile their differences ; will unite past 
 creeds; will account for the present, and will 
 anticipate the future with a continuous and 
 uninterrupted development; this, too, by a 
 process, not negative and distinftive, but, on 
 the contrary, intensely positive and construc- 
 tive. I am not called upon to sit in the seat of 
 judgment; buti may say that it would be sing- 
 ular if the attempt succeeded. Such a system 
 would be all-comprehensive, because not lim- 
 ited by space, time, or race; its principle.would 
 be extensive as Matter itself, and, consequent- 
 ly, eternal. Meanwhile he satisfies himself,— 
 the main point. 
 
 Students of metaphysics have of late years 
 defined the abuse of their science as " the mor- 
 phology of common opinion." Contemporary 
 investigators, they say, have been too much 
 occupied with introspedbion; their labours 
 have become merely physiologico-biographi- 
 cal,and they have greatly negledted the study 
 of averages. For, says La Rochefoucauld, // 
 est plus aise de connoitre Vhomme en general que 
 de connoitre un homme enparticulier; and on so • 
 wide a subjedt all views must be one-sided. 
 
 But this is not the fashion of Easterns. They 
 have still to treat great questions ex analogia 
 universi, instead of ex analogia hominis. They 
 must learn the basis of sociology, the philo- 
 
 [34 
 
NOTES 
 
 sophic convidion that mankind should be great French Revolution, he broke with the 
 
 studied, not as a congeries of individuals, but Past ; and he threw overboard the whole cargo 
 
 as an organic whole. Hence the Zeitgeist, of human tradition. The result has been an 
 
 or historical evolution of the colleftive con- immense movement of the mind which we 
 
 sciousness of the age, despises the obsolete love to call Progress, when it has often been 
 
 opinion that Society, the State, is bound by retrograde; together with a mighty develop- 
 
 the same moral duties as the simple citizen, ment of egotism resulting from the pampered 
 
 Hence, too, it holds that the "spirit of man, sentiment of personality, 
 
 being of equal and uniform substance, doth The Haji regrets the excessive importance 
 
 usually suppose and feign in nature a greater attached to a possible future state: he looks 
 
 equality and uniformity than is in Truth." upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day 
 
 Christianity and Islamism have been on dream, whose revulsion and reaftion disorder 
 
 their trial for the last eighteen and twelve cen- waking life. The condition may appear hum- 
 
 turies. They have been ardent in proselytiz- ble and prosaic to those exalted by the fumes 
 
 ing, yet they embrace only one-tenth and one- of Fancy,by a spiritual dram-drinking which, 
 
 twentieth of the human race. Haji Abdii like the physical, is the pursuit of an ideal 
 
 would account for the tardy andunsatisfadory happiness. But he is too wise to affirm or to 
 
 progress of what their votaries call "pure deny the existence of another world. For life 
 
 truths," by the innate imperfedtions of the beyond the grave there is no consensus of 
 
 same. Both propose a reward for mere belief, mankind, no Catholic opinion held semper , et 
 
 and a penalty for simple unbelief; rewards and ubique, et ab omnibus.The intelledual faculties 
 
 punishments being, by the way, very dispro- (perception and refledion) are mute upon the 
 
 portionate. Thus they reduce everything to subjed: they bear no testimony to fads; they 
 
 the scale of a somewhat unrefined egotism ; show no proof Even the instindive sense of 
 
 and their demoralizing effisds become clearer our kind is here dumb. We may believe what 
 
 to every progressive age. we are taught: we can know nothing. He 
 
 Haji Abdu seeks Truth only, truth as far would, therefore, cultivate that receptive 
 
 as man, in the present phase of his develop- mood which, marching under the shadow of 
 
 ment, is able to comprehend it. He disdains mighty events, leads to the highest of goals,— 
 
 to associate utility, like Bacon(Nov. Org. I. the development of Humanity. With him 
 
 Aph. i24)ythe High Priest of the English suspension of judgment is a system. 
 
 Creed, le gros bon sens, with the /umen siccum Man has done much during the sixty-eight 
 
 ac purum notionum verarum. He seems to see centuries which represent his history. This 
 
 the injury inflided upon the sum of thought assumes the first Egyptian Empire, following 
 
 by the h posteriori superstition, the worship the pre-historic, to begin with b. c. 5000, and 
 
 of "fads," and the deification of synthesis, to end with B.c.3249. It was the Old, as op- 
 
 Lastly,camethereckless way in which Locke posed to the Middle, the New, and the Low: 
 
 "freed philosophy from the incubus of innate it contained the Dynasties from I to X, and 
 
 ideas." Like Luther and the leaders of the it was the age ofthe Pyramids, at once simple, 
 
 [35] 
 
NOTES 
 
 solid, and grand. When thepraiser of the Past 
 contends that modern civilization has im- 
 proved in nothing upon Homer and H erodo- 
 tus, he is apt to forget that every schoolboy 
 is a miracle of learning compared with the 
 Cave-man and the paleolithic race. And, as 
 the Past has been, so shall the Future be. 
 
 The Pilgrim's view of life is that of the Soofi, 
 with the usual dash of Buddhistic pessimism. 
 The profound sorrow of existence, so often 
 sung by the dreamy Eastern poet, has now 
 passed into the practical European mind. 
 Even the light Frenchman murmurs,— 
 
 Moi, moi, chaque jour courbant plus bas ma tete 
 Je passe— et refroidi sous ce soleil joyeux, 
 
 Je m'en irai bientot, au milieu de la fete, 
 Saos que rien manque au monde immense et radieux. 
 
 But our Haji is not nihilistic in the "no-noth- 
 ing" sense of Hood's poem, or, as the Amer- 
 ican phrases it, "There is nothing new, noth- 
 ing true,and it do n't signify." His is a healthy 
 wail over the shortness, and the miseries of 
 life, because he finds all created things- 
 Measure the World, with "Me" immense. 
 
 HeremindsusofSt.Augustine(Med.c.2i). 
 "Vita haeCjvita misera,vita caduca, vita incer- 
 ta, vita laboriosa, vita immunda, vita domina 
 malorum, regina superborum, plena miseriis 
 et erroribus . . . Quam humores tumidant, 
 escae inflant, jejunia macerant, joci dissolvunt, 
 tristitiae consumunt; sollicitudo coardlat, se- 
 curitas hebetat,divitia2 inflant et jadant. Pau- 
 pertas dejicit, juventus extollit, seneftus in- 
 curvat, importunitas frangit, maeror deprimit. 
 Et his malis omnibus morsfuribundasucced- 
 it." But for furibunda the Pilgrim would, 
 perhaps, read benediSla. 
 
 With Cardinal Newman, one of the glories 
 
 of our age, Haji Abdu finds "the Light of the 
 world nothing else than the Prophet's scroll, 
 full of lamentations and mourning and woe." 
 I cannot refrain from quoting all this fine pas- 
 sage, if it be only for the sake of its lame and 
 shallow deduction. "To consider the world 
 in its length and breadth, its various history 
 and the many races of men, their starts, their 
 fortunes, their mutual alienation, their con- 
 fli(5ts, and then their ways, habits, govern- 
 ments, forms of worship; their enterprises, 
 their aimless courses, their random achieve- 
 ments and acquirements, the impotent con- 
 clusion of long-standing fadls, the tokens so 
 faint and broken of a superintending design, 
 the blind evolution (!) of what turn out to be 
 great powers or truths, the progress of things 
 as if from unreasoning elements, not towards 
 final causes; the greatness and littleness of 
 man, his far-reaching aims and short duration, 
 the curtain hung over his futurity, the disap- 
 pointments of life, the defeat of good, the suc- 
 cess of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the 
 prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading 
 idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless 
 irreligion, that condition of the whole race so 
 fearfully yet exaftly described in the Apos- 
 tle's words, ' having no hope and without God 
 in the world'— d// this is a vision to dizzy and 
 appal., and infliSls upon the mind the sense of a 
 profound mystery which is absolutely without 
 human solution." Hence that admirable writer 
 postulates some "terrible original calamity;" 
 and thus the hateful dodrine, theologically 
 called "original sin," becomes to him almost 
 as certain as that " the world exists, and as the 
 existence of God." Similarly the " Schedule 
 of Dodtrines" of the most liberal Christian 
 Church insists upon human depravity,and the 
 
 [36] 
 
NOTES 
 
 "absolute need of the Holy Spirit's agency in 
 man's regeneration and sanftification." 
 
 But what have we here? The "original ca- 
 lamity" was either caused by God or arose 
 without leave of God,in either case degrading 
 God to man. It is the old dilemma whose 
 horns are the irreconcilable attributes of good- 
 ness and omniscience in the supposed Creator 
 of sin and suffering. If the one quality be pred- 
 icable, the other cannot be predicable of the 
 same subjedt. Far better and wiser is the es- 
 sayist's poetical explanation now apparently 
 despised because it was the fashionable doc- 
 trine of the sage bard's day :— 
 
 All nature is but art . . . 
 
 All discord harmony not understood ; 
 
 All partial evil universal good.— (Essay 289-292.) 
 
 The Pilgrim holds with St. Augustine Abso- 
 Uite Evil is impossible because it is always 
 rising up into good. He considers the theory 
 of a beneficent or maleficent deity a purely 
 sentimental fancy, contradi(5ted by human rea- 
 son and the aspedl of the world. Evil is often 
 the adtive form of good ; as F. W. Newman 
 says, "so likewise is Evil the revelation of 
 Good." With him all existences are equal: so 
 Jong as they possess the Hindu Agasa, Life- 
 fluid or vital force, it matters not they be,— 
 Fungus or oak or worm or man. 
 
 War, he says, brings about countless individ- 
 ual miseries, but it forwards general progress 
 by raising the stronger upon the ruins of the 
 weaker races. Earthquakes and cyclones rav- 
 age small areas; but the former builds up 
 earth for man's habitation, and the latter ren- 
 ders the atmosphere fit for him to breathe. 
 Hence he echoes: 
 
 —The universal Cause 
 Afts not by partial but by general laws. 
 
 Ancillary to the churchman's immoral view 
 of" original sin "is the unscientific theory that 
 evil came into the world with Adam and his 
 seed. Let us ask what was the state of our 
 globe in the pre- Adamite days, when the ty- 
 rants of the Earth, the huge Saurians and other 
 monsters lived in perpetual strife, in a de- 
 stru6liveness of which we have now only the 
 feeblest examples? What is the aftual state of 
 the world of waters, where the only obje6l of 
 life is death, where the Law of murder is the 
 Law of Development? 
 
 Some will charge the Hajiwith irreverence, 
 and hold him a "lieutenant of Satan who sits 
 in the chair of pestilence." But he is not in- 
 tentionally irreverent. Like men of far higher 
 strain,who deny divinely the divine, he speaks 
 the things that others think and hide. With 
 the author of "Supernatural Religion," he 
 holds that we "gain infinitely more than we 
 lose in abandoning belief in the reality of 
 revelation;" and he looks forward to the 
 day when "the old tyranny shall have been 
 broken, and when the anarchy of transition 
 shall have passed away." But he is an Eastern. 
 When he repeats the Greek's "Remember 
 not to believe," he means Strive to learn, to 
 know, for right ideas lead to right adions. 
 Among the couplets not translated for this 
 eclogue is:— 
 
 Of all the safest ways of Life the safest way is still 
 
 to doubt. 
 Men win the future world with Faith, the present 
 
 world they win without. 
 
 This is the Spaniard's :— 
 
 De las cosas mas seguras, mas seguro es duvidar ; 
 
 a typically modern sentiment of the Brazen 
 Age of Science following the Golden Age of 
 Sentiment. But the Pilgrim continues:— 
 
 [37] 
 
NOTES 
 
 The sages say : I tell thee no ! with equal faith all 
 
 Faiths receive ; 
 None more, none less, for Doubt is Death : they 
 
 live the most who most believe. 
 
 Here again is an oriental subtlety; a man 
 who believes in everything equally and gen- 
 erally may be said to believe in nothing. It is 
 not a simple European view which makes 
 honest Doubt worth a dozen of the Creeds. 
 And it is in direft opposition to the noted 
 writer who holds that the man of simple faith 
 is worth ninety-nine of those who hold only 
 to the egotistic interests of their own individ- 
 uality. This dark saying means ( if it mean 
 anything), that the so-called moral faculties 
 of man, fancy and ideality, must lord it over 
 the perceptive and refleftive powers,— a sim- 
 ple absurdity! It produced a Turricremata, 
 alias Torquemada, who, shedding floods of 
 honest tears, caused his vidims to be burnt 
 alive ; and an Anchieta, the Thaumaturgist of 
 Brazil, who beheaded a converted heretic lest 
 the latter by lapse from grace lose his immor- 
 tal soul. 
 
 But this vein of speculation, which bigots 
 brandas"Doubt, Denial, and Destru6tion;" 
 this earnest religious scepticism; this curious 
 inquiry," Has the universal tradition any base 
 of fadl ? " ; this craving after the secrets and 
 mysteries of the future, the unseen, the un- 
 known, is common to all races and to every 
 age. Even amongst the Romans,whose model 
 man in Augustus' day was Horace, the philo- 
 sophic, the epicurean, we find Propertius ask- 
 ing:- 
 
 An fifta in miseras descendit fabula gentes 
 Et timor haud ultra quam rogus esse potest ? 
 
 To return: the Pilgrim's dodlrines upon 
 the subjedt of conscience and repentance will 
 
 startle those who do not follow his train of 
 thought : — 
 
 Never repent because thy will with will of Fate be 
 
 not at one : 
 Thmk, an thou please, before thou (lost, but never 
 
 rue the deed when done. 
 
 This again is his modified fatalism. Hewould 
 not accept the boisterous mode of cutting the 
 Gordian-knot proposed by the noble British 
 Philister— "we know we 're free and there's 
 an end on it!" He prefers Lamarck's, "The 
 will is, in truth, never free." He believes man 
 to be a co-ordinate term of Nature's great pro- 
 gression ; a result of the interadtion of organ- 
 ism and environment, working through cos- 
 mic sedlions of time. He views the human 
 machine, the pipe of flesh, as depending upon 
 the physical theory of life. Every corporeal 
 fad: and phenomenon which, like the tree, 
 grows from within orwithout, is a mere prod- 
 u6l of organization ; living bodies being sub- 
 jed: to the natural law governing the lifeless 
 and the inorganic. Whilst the religionist as- 
 sures us that man is not a mere toy of fate, 
 but a free agent responsible to himself, with 
 work to do and duties to perform, the Haji, 
 with many modern schools, holds Mind to be 
 a word describing a special operation of mat- 
 ter; the faculties generally to be manifesta- 
 tions of movements in the central nervous 
 system ; and every idea, even of the Deity, to 
 be a certain little pulsation of a certain little 
 mass of animal pap,— the brain. Thus he 
 would not objed to relationship with a tailless 
 catarrhine anthropoid ape, descended from a 
 monad or a primal ascidian. 
 
 Hence he virtually says, " I came into the 
 world without having applied for or having 
 obtained permission ; nay, more, without my 
 
 [38] 
 
NOTES 
 
 leave being asked or given. Here I find my- 
 self hand-tied by conditions, and fettered by 
 laws and circumstances, in making which my 
 voice had no part. While in the womb I was 
 an automaton ; and death will find me a mere 
 machine. Therefore not I, but the Law, or, if 
 you please, the Lawgiver, is answerable for all 
 my actions." Let me here observe that to the 
 Western mind "Law" postulates a Lawgiver; 
 not so to the Eastern, and especially to the 
 Soofi,who holds these ideas to be human, un- 
 justifiably extended to interpreting the non- 
 human, which men call the Divine. 
 
 Further he would say, " I am an individual 
 (qui nil habet dividui), a circle touching and 
 intersefting my neighbours at certain points, 
 but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blend- 
 ing. Physically I am not identical in all points 
 with other men. Morally I differ from them: 
 in nothing do the approaches of knowledge, 
 my five organs of sense ( with their Shelleyan 
 " interpretation " ), exadly resemble those of 
 any other being, ^rj'o, the effedt of the world, 
 of life, of natural objeds, will not in my case 
 be the same as with the beings most resem- 
 bling me. Thus I claim the right of creating 
 or modifying for my own and private use, the 
 system which most imports me ; and if the 
 reasonable leave be refused to me, I take it 
 without leave. 
 
 "But my individuality, however all-sufH- 
 cient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an 
 atom subjedt in all things to the Law of Storms 
 called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But 
 I cannot know what is or what is not fated to 
 befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfec- 
 tion as an individual lies my highest, and in- 
 deed my only duty, the* I ' being duly blended 
 with the ' We.' I objed to be a ' selfless man,' 
 
 which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. 
 I am bound to take careful thought concern- 
 ing the consequences of every word and deed- 
 When, however, the Future has become the 
 Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to 
 grieve or to repent over that which was de- 
 creed by universal Law." 
 
 The usual objection is that of man's prac- 
 tice. 1 1 says, "This is well in theory ; but how 
 carry it out? For instance, why would you 
 kill, or give over to be killed, the man com- 
 pelled by Fate to kill your father?" Haji 
 Abdu replies,"! do as others do, not because 
 the murder was done by him, but because 
 the murderer should not be allowed another 
 chance of murdering. He is a tiger who has 
 tasted blood and who should be shot. I am 
 convinced that he was a tool in the hands 
 of Fate, but that will not prevent my taking 
 measures, whether predestined or not, in or- 
 der to prevent his being similarly used again." 
 
 Aswith repentance so with conscience. Con- 
 science may be a "fear which is the shadow of 
 justice;" even as pity is the shadow of love. 
 Though simply a geographical and chrono- 
 logical accident,which changes with every age 
 of the world, it may deter men from seeking 
 and securing the prize of successful villainy. 
 But this incentive to beneficence must be ap- 
 plied to adions that will be done, not to deeds 
 that have been done. 
 
 The Haji, moreover, carefully distinguishes 
 between the working of fate under a personal 
 God, and under the Reign of Law. In the 
 former case the contradidlion between the 
 foreknowledge of a Creator, and the free-will 
 of a Creature, is direc5t, palpable, absolute. 
 We might as well talk of black-whiteness and 
 of white-blackness. A hundred generations 
 
 [39] 
 
NOTES 
 
 of divines have never been able to ree the 
 riddle ; a million will fail. The difficulty is in- 
 surmountable to the Theist whose Almighty- 
 is perforce Omniscient, and as Omniscient, 
 Prescient. But it disappears when we convert 
 the Person into Law, or a settled order of 
 events ; subje6t, moreover, to certain excep- 
 tions fixed and immutable, but at present un- 
 known to man. The difference is essential as 
 that between the penal code with its narrow 
 forbiddal,and the broad commandment which 
 is a guide rather than a task-master. 
 
 Thus, too, the belief in fixed Law, versus 
 arbitrary will, modifies the Haji's opinions 
 concerning the pursuit of happiness. Man- 
 kind, das rastlose Ursachenthier, is born to be 
 on the whole equally happy and miserable. 
 The highest organisms, the fine porcelain of 
 ourfamily,enjoythe most and suffer the most: 
 they have a capacity for rising to the empy- 
 rean of pleasure and for plunging deep into 
 the swift-flowing river of woe and pain. Thus 
 Dante ( I nf. vi. 1 06 ) : 
 
 — tua scienza 
 Che vuol, quanto la cosa e piu perfetta 
 Piu senta '1 bene, e cosi la doglienza. 
 
 So Buddhism declares that existence in itself 
 implies effort,pain and sorrow;and,the higher 
 the creature, the more it suffers. The common 
 clay enjoys little and suffers little. Sum up 
 the whole and distribute the mass; the result 
 will be an average; and the beggar is, on the 
 whole, happy as the prince. Why, then, asks 
 the objedtor,does man everstrive and struggle 
 to change, to rise; a struggle which involves 
 the idea of improving his condition ?, The 
 Haji answers, " Because such is the Law un- 
 der which man is born: it may be fierce as 
 famine, cruel as the grave, but man must obey 
 
 it with blind obedience." He does not enter 
 into the question whether life is worth living, 
 whether man should eledl to be born. Yet his 
 Eastern pessimism,which contrasts so sharply 
 with the optimism of the West, re-echoes the 
 
 With large results so little rife. 
 Though bearable seems hardly worth 
 This pomp of words, this pain of birth. 
 
 Life, whatever may be its consequence, is 
 built upon a basis of sorrow. Literature, the 
 voice of humanity, and the verdidt of man- 
 kind proclaim that all existence is a state of 
 sadness. The"physicians of the Sour'would 
 save her melancholy from degenerating into 
 despair by doses of steadfast belief in the pres- 
 ence of Godjin the assurance of Immortahty, 
 and in visions of the final viftory of good. 
 Were Haji Abdu a mere Theologist,he would 
 add that Sin, not the possibility of revolt, but 
 the revolt itself against conscience, is the pri- 
 mary form of evil, because it produces error, 
 moral and intelledtual. This man, who omits 
 to read the Conscience-law, however it may 
 differ from the Society-law, is guilty of negli- 
 gence. That man, who obscures the light of 
 Nature with sophistries, becomes incapable 
 of discerning his own truths. In both cases 
 error, deliberately adopted, is succeeded by 
 suffering which, we are told, comes in justice 
 and benevolence as a warning, a remedy, and 
 a chastisement. 
 
 But the Pilgrim is dissatisfied with the idea 
 that evil originates in the individual adtions of 
 free agents, ourselves and others. This doc- 
 trine fails to account for its charadleristics,— 
 essentiality and universality. That creatures 
 endowed with the mere possibility of liberty 
 should not always choose the Good appears 
 
 [40] 
 
NOTES 
 
 natural. But that of the milliards of human 
 beings who have inhabited the Earth, not one 
 should have been found invariably to choose 
 Good, proves how insufficient is the solution. 
 Hence no one believes in the existence of 
 the complete man under the present state of 
 things.TheHajirejeds all popular and myth- 
 ical explanation by the Fall of "Adam, "the in- 
 nate depravity of human nature,and the abso- 
 lute perfedlion of certain Incarnations, which 
 argues theirdivinity. He canonly wail overthe 
 prevalence of evil, assume its foundation to 
 be error, and purpose to abate it by uproot- 
 ing that Ignorance which bears and feeds it. 
 
 His " eschatology," like that of the Soofis 
 generally,isvague and shadowy. He may lean 
 towards the dodrine of Marc Aurelius," The 
 unripe grape, the ripe and the dried : all things 
 are changes not into nothing, but into that 
 which is not at present." This is one of the 
 monstruosa opinionum portenta mentioned by 
 the XlXth General Council, alias the First 
 Council of the Vatican. But he only accepts it 
 with a limitation. He cleaves to the ethical, 
 not the intelledhial, worship of " Nature," 
 which moderns define to be an "unscientific 
 and imaginary synonym for the sum total 
 of observed phenomena." Consequently he 
 holds to the " dark and degrading dodlrines 
 of the Materialist," the "Hylotheist;" in op- 
 position to the spiritualist, a distinftion far 
 more marked in the West than in the East. 
 Europe draws a hard, dry line between Spirit 
 and Matter : Asia does not. 
 
 Among us the Idealist objefts to the Mate- 
 rialists that the latter cannot agree upon fun- 
 damental points ; that they cannot define what 
 is an atom; that they cannot account for the 
 transformation of physical adlion and molecu- 
 
 lar motion into consciousness ; and vice versh^ 
 that they cannotsay what matteris;and,lastly, 
 that Berkeley and his school have proved the 
 existenceofspiritwhiledenyingthatof matter. 
 
 The Materialists reply that the want of 
 agreement shows only a study insufficiently 
 advanced; that man cannot describe an atom, 
 because he is still an infant in science, yet 
 there is no reason why his mature manhood 
 should not pass through error and incapacity 
 to truth and knowledge; that consciousness 
 becomes a property of matter when certain 
 conditions are present; that Hyle {ykt]) or 
 Matter may be provisionally defined as " phe- 
 nomena with a substrudture of their own, tran- 
 scendental and eternal, subjedt to the adlion, 
 dired: or indired, of the five senses, whilst its 
 properties present themselves in three states, 
 the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous." To 
 casuistical Berkeley they prefer the common 
 sense of mankind. They ask the idealist and 
 the spiritualist why they cannot find names for 
 themselves without borrowing from a "dark 
 and degraded" school; why the former must 
 call himself after his eye {idein); the latter 
 after his breath (j^/r//aj) ? Thus the Haji twits 
 them with affixing their own limitations to 
 their own Almighty Power, and, as Socrates 
 said, with bringing down Heaven to the mar- 
 ket-place. 
 
 Modern thought tends more and more to 
 rejed crude idealism and to support the mon- 
 istic theory,the double aspe(5t,the transfigured 
 realism. It discusses the Nature of Things in 
 Themselves. Tothequestion,isthereanything 
 outside of us which corresponds with our sen- 
 sations ? that is to say, is the whole world sim- 
 ply " I," they reply that obviously there is a 
 something else ; and that this something else 
 
 [41] 
 
NOTES 
 
 produces the brain-disturbancewhich is called 
 sensation. I nstindt orders us to do something ; 
 Reason (the balance of faculties) diredts; and 
 the strongest motive controls. Modern Sci- 
 ence, by the discovery of Radiant Matter, a 
 fourth condition, seems to conciliate the two 
 schools. " La decouverte d'un quatrieme etat 
 de lamatiere,"says a Reviewer, "c'est la porte 
 ouverte a I'infini de ses transformations; c'est 
 I'homme invisible et impalpable de meme 
 possible sans cesser d'etre substantiel ; c'est 
 le monde des esprits entrant sans absurdite 
 dans la domaine des hypotheses scientifiques; 
 c'est la possibilite pour le materialiste de croire 
 a la vie d'outre tombe,sans renoncer au sub- 
 stratum materiel qu'il croit necessaire au main- 
 tien de I'individualite." 
 
 With Haji Abdu the soul is not material, 
 for that would be a contradiction of terms. He 
 
 ulties ; nor can we afford to ignore the senti- 
 ments, the affeftions which are, perhaps, the 
 most potent realities of life. Their loud af- 
 firmative voice contrasts strongly with the tit- 
 ubant accents of the intelleft. They seem to 
 demand a future life, even a state of rewards 
 and punishmentsfrom the Maker of theworld, 
 the Ortolano Eterno^ the Potter of the East, 
 the Watchmaker of the West. They protest 
 against the idea of annihilation. They revolt 
 at the notion of eternal parting from parents, 
 kinsmen and friends. Yet the dogma of a fu- 
 ture life is by no means catholic and universal. 
 The Anglo-European race apparently cannot 
 exist without it, and we have lately heard of 
 the "Aryan Soul-land," On the other hand, 
 many of the Buddhist and even the Brahman 
 Schools preach Nirwana (comparative non- 
 existence)and Parinirwana(absolute nothing- 
 
 regards it, with many moderns, as a state of ness). Moreover, the great Turanian family. 
 
 things, not a thing; a convenient word denot- 
 ingthe sense of personality,of individual iden- 
 tity. In its ghostly signification he discovers 
 an artificial dogma which could hardly belong 
 to the brutal savages of the Stone Age, He 
 finds it in the funereal books of ancient Egypt, 
 whence probably it passed to the Zendavesta 
 and the Vedas. In the Hebrew Pentateuch, of 
 which part is still attributed to Moses,it is un- 
 known, or, rather,it is deliberately ignored by 
 the author or authors. The early Christians 
 could not agree upon the subjedt; Origen 
 advocated the pre-existence of men's souls, 
 supposing them to have been all created at 
 one time and successively embodied. Others 
 make Spirit born with the hour of birth: and 
 so forth. 
 
 But the brain-aftion or, if you so phrase it, 
 the mind, is not confined to the reasoning fac- 
 
 adtually occupying all Eastern Asia, has ever 
 ignored it ; and the 200,000,000 of Chinese 
 Confucians, the mass of the nation, protest 
 emphatically against the mainstay of the west- 
 ern creeds, because it"unfits men for the busi- 
 ness and duty of life by fixing their specula- 
 tions on an unknown world," And even its 
 votaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot 
 deny that the next world is a copy, more or 
 less idealized, of the present; and that it lacks 
 a single particularsavouring of originality. It 
 is in fad: a mere continuation : and the con- 
 tinuation is "not proven." 
 
 It is most hard to be a man ; 
 
 and the Pilgrim's sole consolation isin self-cul- 
 tivation, and in the pleasures of the affections. 
 This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a 
 refle6tion of the light of egotism; still it is so 
 
 { locatus est in 
 
 > The Eternal Gardener : »o the old inscription saying ; — Homo X , 
 
 ' •' " \ humatus est in 
 
 \. renatus est in 
 
 borto 
 
 [42] 
 
NOTES 
 
 transferred as to imply a different system of 
 convidtions. 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: The Kasidah Itself 
 
 A few words concerning the Kasidah itself. 
 OurHajl begins with a ww-ifH-jf^w^; and takes 
 leave of the Caravan setting out for Mecca. 
 He sees the "Wolf's tail " {Dum-i-gurg), the 
 Xu/cauyc's, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the 
 Zodiacal dawn-light, the first faint brushes of 
 white radiating from below the Eastern hori- 
 zon. 1 1 is accompanied by the morning-breath 
 (Z)fl»«-/-<S'«M),thecurrentofair,almost imper- 
 ceptible 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-Biyaban ( 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-dweH" is a great and terrible wil- 
 derness ( Dasht-i-Ul-siwa Hu ) ; and Allah's 
 Holy Hill is Arafat, near Mecca, which the 
 Caravan reaches after passing through Me- 
 dina. The first se6Hon 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 icnell ; 
 As dies across yon thin blue line the tinkling of the 
 
 Camel-bell. 
 
 The next se(5tion quotes the various aspeds 
 underwhichLifeappeared to thewise and fool- 
 ish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, 
 
 whose well-known lines are quoted beginning 
 with Shab-i-tarik o bim-i-mauj, etc. Hur 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-Khayyam, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or 
 Sooffeism,even as the Soofis (Gnostic) spirit- 
 ualized Moslem Puritanism. The verses al- 
 luded 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 innuen- 
 does. A third quotation has been trained into 
 a likeness of the "Hymn of Life," despite 
 the commonplace and the navrante vulgar- 
 it'e which charadlerize the pseudo-Schiller- 
 Anglo-American School. The same has been 
 done to the words of Isa (Jesus ) ; for the au- 
 thor, who is well-read in the Ingil ( Evangel ), 
 evidently intended the allusion. Mansur el- 
 Hallaj the (Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for 
 crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma Ana 
 'I Hakk ( I am the Truth, ;. e.., God), wa lay- 
 sa fi-jubbati W Allah (and within my coat is 
 
 [43] 
 
NOTES 
 
 nought but God). His blood traced on the 
 ground thefirst-quotedsentence.Lastly,there 
 is a quotation from "Sardanapalus,son of An- 
 acyndaraxes,"etc.: here Trai^e may mean sport; 
 but the context determines the kind of sport 
 intended. The Zahid 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 Zahiri (outsider), and the latter a 
 Batini, 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, y^z«/(be- 
 ginninglessness)andy^^<2^(endlessness);both 
 being mere words, gatherings of letters with 
 a subjective significance. In English we use 
 "Eternal" [yEviternus, age-long, life-long) 
 as loosely, by applying it to three distinct 
 ideas :(i) the habitual,in popular parlance; (2) 
 the exempt from duration ; and (3) the ever- 
 lasting, which embraces all duration. "Omni- 
 science-Maker" is the old Roman sceptic's 
 Homo fecit Deos. 
 
 The next sed;Ion is one long wail over the 
 contradiftions, the mysteries, the dark end, 
 the infinite sorrowfulness of all existence,and 
 the arcanum of grief which, Luther said, un- 
 derlies all life. As with Euripides "to live is 
 to die, to die is to live." Haji Abdu 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 ageand sorrow; the seat of 
 malady; harassed with pains; haunted with the 
 quality of darkness(Tama-guna), and incapa- 
 
 ble of standing." The Pot and Potter began 
 with the ancient Egyptians. " Sitting as a pot- 
 ter at the wheel, Cneph ( at Philae) 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 fidlile 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 ) :— 
 
 Erthe out of Erthe is wondirii wrouzt, 
 
 Erthe of Erthe hath gete a dignite of nouzt, 
 
 Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt 
 
 How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc. 
 
 The " Camel-rider," suggests Ossian, "yet 
 afewyearsand the blast of the desert comes." 
 The dromedary was chosen as Death's vehicle 
 by the Arabs, probably because it bears the 
 Bedouin's corpse to thedistant burial-ground, 
 where he will lie among his kith and kin. The 
 end of this sed:ion reminds us of: — 
 
 How poor, how rich ; how abjeft, how august. 
 How complicate, how wonderful is Man ! 
 
 The Haji now passes to the results of his 
 long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely 
 twisted his exordium into an echo of Milton:— 
 
 Till old experience doth attain 
 To something of prophetic strain. 
 
 He boldly declares that there is no God as 
 man has created his Creator. Here he is at 
 
 [44]- 
 
NOTES 
 
 one with modern thought:—" En general les 
 croyants font le Dieu comme ils sont eux- 
 memes," (says J. J. Rousseau, "Confessions," 
 1 . 6 ) : " les bons le font bon : les mechants le 
 font mechant: les devots haineux et bilieux, 
 ne voient que I'enfer, parce qu'ils voudraient 
 damner tout le monde; les ames aimantes et 
 douces n'y croient guere; et I'un des etonne- 
 ments dont je ne reviens pas est de voir le bon 
 FenelonenparlerdanssonTelemaquecomme 
 s'il y croyoit tout de bon: mais j'espere qu'il 
 mentoit alors ; car enfin quelque veridique 
 qu'on soit, il faut bien mentir quelquefois 
 quand on est eveque." " Man depifts himself 
 in his gods," says Schiller. Hence the Natur- 
 goU, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with 
 which every system began, allowed and ap- 
 proved of actions distinctly immoral, often 
 diabolical. Beliefbecame moralizedonlywhen 
 the conscience of the community, and with it 
 of the individual items, began aspiring to its 
 golden age,— Perfeftion. " Dieu est le super- 
 latif, dont le positif est I'homme," says Carl 
 Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea of a 
 nutnen is that of a magnified and non-natural 
 man. 
 
 He then quotes his authorities. Buddha, 
 whom the Catholic Church converted to Saint 
 Josaphat, refused to recognize Ishwara(the 
 deity), on account ofthe mystery of the "cru- 
 elty of things." Schopenhauer, Miss Cobbe's 
 model pessimist,who at the humblestdistance 
 represents Buddha in the world of Western 
 thought, found the vision of man's unhappi- 
 ness, irrespedtive of his adiions, so overpower- 
 ing that he concluded the SupremeWill to be 
 malevolent, " heartless, cowardly, and arro- 
 gant." Confucius, the"Throneless king,more 
 powerful than all kings," denied a personal 
 
 deity. The Epicurean idea rules the China of 
 the present day. " God is great, but He lives 
 too far off," say the Turanian Santals in Aryan 
 India; and this is the general language of man 
 in the Turanian East. 
 
 HajiAbdu evidently holds that idolatry be- 
 gins with a personal deity. And let us note 
 that the latter is deliberately denied by the 
 " Thirty-nine Articles." With them God is 
 " a Being without Parts ( personality ) or Pas- 
 sions." He professes a vague Agnosticism, 
 and attributes popular faith to the fad that 
 Timor fecit Deos; "every religion being,with- 
 out exception, the child offear and ignorance" 
 (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the "Drawer 
 of Wine," the "Ancient Taverner," the " Old 
 Magus," the "Patron ofthe Mughan or Ma- 
 gians;" all titles applied to the Soofi as op- 
 posed to the Zahid. His "idols" are the eidola 
 (illusions) of Bacon, "having their founda- 
 tions in the very constitution of man," and 
 therefore appropriately called fabula. That 
 "Nature's Common Course" is subjedt to 
 various interpretation, may be easily proved. 
 Aristotle was as great a subverter as Alexan- 
 der; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite ofthe 
 Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end 
 of the thirteenth century, became the " twice 
 execrable " of Martin Luther ; and was finally 
 abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have 
 excised two stanzas. The first is : — 
 
 Theories for truths, fable for faft ; system for science 
 
 vex the thought 
 life 's one great lesson you despise — to know that 
 
 all we know is nought. 
 
 This is in fad: — 
 
 Well didst thou say, Athena's noblest son. 
 The most we know is nothing can be known. 
 
 [45] 
 
NOTES 
 
 The next is : — 
 
 Essence and substance, sequence, cause, beginning, 
 ending, space and time. 
 
 These be thetoys of manhood's mind, at once ridic- 
 ulous and sublime. 
 
 He is not the only one who so regards 
 "bothering Time and Space." A late defini- 
 tion of the"infinitelygreat,"viz., that the idea 
 arises from denying form to anyfigure; of the 
 "infinitely small/'from refusing magnitude to 
 any figure, is a fair specimen of the " dismal 
 science "— metaphysics. 
 
 Another omitted stanza reads :— 
 
 How canst thou, Phenomen ! pretend the Noume- 
 non to mete and span ? 
 
 Say which were easier probed and proved. Abso- 
 lute Being or mortal man ? 
 
 One would think that he had read Kant on 
 the" Knowableandthe Unknowable," or had 
 heard of the Yankee lady, who could "differ- 
 entiate between the Finite and the Infinite." 
 It is a commonplace of the age, in the West 
 as well as the East, that Science is confined to 
 phenomena, and cannot reach the Noumena, 
 the things themselves. This is the scholastic 
 realism, the " residuum of a bad metaphysic," 
 which deforms the system of Comte.With all 
 its pretensions, it simply means that there are, 
 or can be conceived, things in themselves (/.^. 
 unrelated to thought); that we know them to 
 exist; and, at the same time, that we cannot 
 know what they are. But who dares say "can- 
 not"? Who can measure man's work when 
 he shall be as superior to our present selves 
 as we are to the Cave-man of past time ? 
 
 The "Chain of Universe" alludes to the 
 Jain idea that the whole, consisting of intel- 
 ledtual as well as of natural principles, existed 
 from all eternity; and that it has been subjedt 
 
 to endless revolutionSjWhose causes are the in- 
 herent powers of nature, intelledtual as well as 
 physical, without the intervention of a deity. 
 But the Poet ridicules the " non-human," /. e., 
 the not-ourselves, the negation of ourselves 
 andconsequentlya non-existence. MostEast- 
 erns confuse the contradidlories, in which one 
 term stands for something, and the other for 
 nothing (^.^., ourselves and not ourselves), 
 with the contraries (f.^., rich and not rich= 
 poor), in which both terms express a some- 
 thing. So the positive-negative "infinite" is 
 not the complement of" finite," but its nega- 
 tion. The Western man derides the process by 
 making " not-horse " the complementary en- 
 tity of " horse." The Pilgrim ends with the 
 favourite Soofi tenet that the five ( six ?) senses 
 are the doors of all human knowledge, and 
 that no form of man, incarnation of the deity, 
 prophet, apostle or sage, has ever produced an 
 idea not conceived within his brain by the sole 
 operation of these vulgar material agents. Evi- 
 dently he is neither spiritualist nor ideahst. 
 
 He then proceeds to show that man depidls 
 himself in his God, and that" God is the racial 
 expression;" a pedagogue on the Nile, an ab- 
 stra6tion in India, and an astrologer in Chal- 
 daea; where Abraham,saysBerosus(Josephus, 
 Ant. 1. 7, §2, and II. 9,§2) was"skilflil in the 
 celestial science." He notices the Akarana- 
 Zaman (endless Time) of the Guebres, and 
 the working dual, Hormuzd and Ahriman. 
 He brands the God of the Hebrews with pug- 
 nacity and cruelty. He has heard of the beau- 
 tiful creations of Greek fancy which, not at- 
 tributing a moral nature to the deity, included 
 Theology in Physics ; and which, like Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall, seemed to consider all matter 
 everywhere alive. We have adopted a very dif- 
 
 [46] 
 
NOTES 
 
 ferent Unitarianism; Theology, with its one 
 Creator; Pantheism with its"one Spirit's plas- 
 tic stress;" and Science with its one Energy. 
 He is hard upon Christianity and its "trinal 
 God : " I have not softened his expression 
 ( VMi^= a riddle), although it may offend read- 
 ers. There is nothing more enigmatical to 
 the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitar- 
 ianism: all other objedions they can get over, 
 not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism, 
 which, like Christianity, has its ascetic He- 
 braism and its Hellenic hedonism; with the 
 world of thought moving between these two 
 extremes.Theformer,defined as predominant 
 or exclusive care for the pradtice of right, is 
 resented by Semitic and Arab influence, Ko- 
 ranic and Hadisic. The latter, the religion 
 of humanity, a passion for life and light, for 
 culture and intelligence ; for art, poetry and 
 science, is represented in Islamism by the 
 fondly and impiously-cherished memory of 
 the old Guebre kings and heroes, beauties, 
 bards and sages. Hence the mention of Zal 
 and his son Rostam ; of Cyrus and of the Jam- 
 i-Jamshid,whichmaybe translatedeithergrail 
 (cup) or mirror: it showed the whole world 
 within its rim; and hence it was called Jam-i- 
 Jehan-numa (universe-exposing). The con- 
 temptuous expressions about the diet of cam- 
 el's milk and the meat of the Susmar, or green 
 lizard, are evidently quoted from Firdausi's 
 famous lines beginning: — 
 
 Arab-ra be-jai rasid'est kar. 
 
 The Haji is severe upon those who make 
 of the Deity a Khwan-i-yaghma (or tray of 
 plunder) as the Persians phrase it. He looks 
 upon the shepherds as men, 
 
 —Who rob the sheep themselves to clothe. 
 
 So Schopenhauer ( Leben, etc., by Wilhelm 
 Gewinner) furiously shows how the" English 
 nation ought to treat that set of hypocrites, 
 imposters and money-graspers, the clergy, 
 that annually devours ^^3, 500,000." 
 
 The Haji broadly asserts that there is no 
 Good and no Evil in the absolute sense as man 
 has made them. Here he is one with Pope:— 
 
 And spite of pride, in erring nature's spite 
 One truth is clear— whatever is, is right. 
 
 Unfortunately the converse is just as true:— 
 whatever is, is wrong. Khizris the Elijah who 
 puzzled Milman. He represents the Soofi, 
 the Batini, while Musa (Moses) is the Zahid, 
 theZahiri; and the strange adventures of the 
 twain, invented by the Jews, have been ap- 
 propriated by the Moslems. He derides the 
 Freewill of man ; and, like Diderot, he detedls 
 "pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a president, 
 a pig in a priest, an ostrich in a minister, and 
 a goose in a chief clerk." He holds to For- 
 tune, the Tvx*] of Alcman, which is, Ewo/Aias 
 T€ Ktti Xlei^ou? dSeXi^a, koI Ilpofiad€La<; dvy 
 arqp,— Chance, the sister of O rder and Trust, 
 and the daughter of Forethought. The Scan- 
 dinavian Spinners of Fate were Urd(theWas, 
 the Past),Verdandi (the Becoming, or Pres- 
 ent), and Skuld (the To-be, or Future). He 
 alludes to Plato, who made the Demiourgos 
 create the worlds by the Logos (the Hebrew 
 Dabar)or Creative Word, through the iEons. 
 These Aiwi^es of the Mystics were spiritual 
 emanations from Aicov, lit. a wave of influx,an 
 age,period,orday; hence the Latin «n;aw,and 
 theWelshAwen,the stream of inspiration fall- 
 ing upon a bard. Basilides, the Egypto-Chris- 
 tian, made the Creator evolve seven ^ons or 
 Pteromata ( fulnesses ) ; from two of whom. 
 
 [47] 
 
NOTES 
 
 Wisdom and Power, proceeded the 365 de- 
 grees of Angels. All were subjed to a Prince 
 of Heaven, called Abraxas, who was himself 
 under guidance of the Chief iEon, Wisdom. 
 Others represent the first Cause to have pro- 
 duced an ^on or Pure Intelligence ; the first 
 a second, and so forth till the tenth. This was 
 material enough to afFedt Hyle, which thereby 
 assumed a spiritual form. Thus the two incom- 
 patibles combined in the Scheme of Creation. 
 
 He denies the three ages of the Buddhists: 
 the wholly happy; the happy mixed with mis- 
 ery,and the miserable tinged with happiness,— 
 the present. The Zoroastrians had four, each 
 of 3,000 years. In the first, Hormuzd, the 
 good-god,ruledalone; then Ahriman,the bad- 
 god, began to work subserviently : in the third 
 both ruled equally; and in the last, now cur- 
 rent, Ahriman has gained the day. 
 
 Against the popular idea that man has caused 
 the misery of this world, he cites the ages,when 
 the Old Red Sandstone bred gigantic cannibal 
 fishes ; when the Oolites produced the mighty 
 reptile tyrants of air, earth, and sea; and when 
 the monsters of the Eocene and Miocene pe- 
 riods shook the ground with their ponderous 
 tread. And the world of waters is still a hide- 
 ous scene of cruelty, carnage, and destrudtion. 
 
 He declares Conscience to be a geographi- 
 cal and chronological accident. Thus he an- 
 swers the modern philosopherwhose soul was 
 overwhelmed by the marvel and the awe of 
 two things, " the starry heaven above and the 
 moral law within." He makes the latter sense 
 a development of the gregarious and social in- 
 stindls; and so travellers have observed that 
 the moral is the last step in mental progress. 
 His Moors are the savage Dankali and other 
 negroid tribes, who offer a cup of milk with 
 
 one hand and stab with the other. He trans- 
 lates literally the Indian word Hathi (an ele- 
 phant), the animal with the Hath (hand, or 
 trunk). Finally he alludes to the age of ad:ive 
 volcanoes, the present, which is merely tem- 
 porary, the shifting of the Pole, and the spec- 
 tacle to be seen from Mushtari, or the planet 
 Jupiter. 
 
 The Haji again asks the old, old question. 
 What is Truth ? And he answers himself, after 
 the fashion of the wise Emperor of China, 
 "Truth hath not an unchanging name." A 
 modern English writer says : " I have long 
 been convinced by the experience of my life, 
 as a pioneer of various heterodoxies which are 
 rapidly becoming orthodoxies, that nearly all 
 truth is temperamental to us, or given in the 
 affediions and intuitions; and that discussion 
 and inquiry do little more than feed tempera- 
 ment." Our poet seems to mean that the Per- 
 ceptions, when they perceive truly, convey 
 objeftive truth, which is universal; whereas 
 the Reflexives and the Sentiments, the work- 
 ing of the moral region, or the middle lobe 
 of the phrenologists, supplies only subjective 
 truth, personal and individual. Thus to one 
 man the axiom. Opes irritamenta malorum, 
 represents a distinft fadl; while another holds 
 wealth to be an incentive for good. Evidently 
 both are right, according to their lights. 
 
 Haji Abdu cites Plato and Aristotle, as 
 usual with Eastern songsters, who delight in 
 Mantic (logic). Here he appears to mean that 
 a false proposition is as real a proposition as 
 one that is true. " Faith moves mountains " 
 and"Manetimmotafides"are evidently quo- 
 tations. He derides the teaching ofthe" First 
 Council of the Vatican" (cap. v.)"all the faith- 
 ful are little children listening to the voice of 
 
 [48] 
 
NOTES 
 
 St. Peter," who is the " Prince of the Apos- 
 tles." He glances at the fancy of certain 
 modern physicists, "devotion is a definite 
 molecular change in the convolution of grey 
 pulp." He notices with contumely the riddle 
 of which Milton speaks so glibly, where the 
 Dialoguists, 
 
 — reasoned high 
 Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate. 
 Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. 
 
 In opposition to the orthodox Mohamme- 
 dan tenets which make Man's soul his per- 
 cipient Ego, an entity, a unity, the Soofi con- 
 siders it a fancy, opposed to body, which is a 
 fad:; at most a state of things, not a thing; a 
 concensus of faculties whereof our frames are 
 but the phenomena. This is not contrary to 
 Genesitic legend. The Hebrew Ruach and 
 Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or 
 spirit, simply signify wind or breath, the out- 
 ward and visible sign of life.Their later schools 
 are even more explicit: " For that which be- 
 falls man befalls beasts; as the one dies, so 
 does the other; they have all one death; all go 
 untooneplace"(Eccles.iii.i9). But the mod- 
 ern soul, a nothing, a string of negations, a 
 negative in chief, is thus described in the 
 Mahabharat:"It is indivisible,inconceivable, 
 inconceptible: it is eternal, universal, perma- 
 nent, immovable: it is invisible and unalter- 
 able." Hence the modern spiritualism which, 
 rejecting materialism, can use only material 
 language. 
 
 These, says the Haji,are mere sounds. He 
 would not assert "Verba gignunt verba," but 
 "Verba gignunt res," a step further. The idea 
 is Bacon's"idola fori,omnium molestissima," 
 the twofold illusions of language ; either the 
 
 names of things that have no existence in faft, 
 or the names of things whose idea is confused 
 and ill-defined. 
 
 He derives the Soul-idea from the "savage 
 ghost "which Dr. Johnson defined to be a 
 "kind of shadowy being." He justly remarks 
 that it arose (perhaps) in Egypt; and was not 
 invented by the "People of the Book." By this 
 term Moslems denote Jews and Christians 
 who have a recognized revelation, while their 
 ignorance reflxses it to Guebres, Hindus, and 
 Confucians. 
 
 He evidently holds to the doftrine of prog- 
 ress. With him protoplasm is the Yliastron, 
 the Prima Materies. Our word matter is de- 
 rived from the Sanskrit f{| ^| (matra),which, 
 however, signifies properly the invisible type 
 of visible matter ; in modern language, the 
 substance distind; from the sum of its physical 
 and chemical properties. Thus, Matra exists 
 only in thought,and is not recognizable by the 
 adUon of the five senses. His" Chain of Be- 
 ing " reminds us of Prof. Huxley's Pedigree 
 oftheHorse,Orohippus,Mesohippus,Meio- 
 hippus,Protohippus,Pleiohippus and Equus. 
 He has evidently heard of modern biology, or 
 Hylozoism, which holds its quarter-million 
 species of living beings, animal and vegetable, 
 to be progressive modifications of one great 
 fundamental unity,an unity of so-called"men- 
 tal faculties" as well as of bodily strudture. 
 And this is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the 
 popular idea that man is the great central fig- 
 ure round which all things gyrate like mari- 
 onettes; in fad, the anthropocentric era of 
 Draper,which, strange to say, lives by the side 
 of the telescope and the microscope. As man 
 is of recent origin, and may end at an early 
 epoch of the macrocosm, so before his birth 
 
 [49] 
 
NOTES 
 
 all things revolved round nothing, and may 
 continue to do so after his death. 
 
 The Hajijwho elsewhere denounces "com- 
 pound ignorance," holds that all evil comes 
 from error; and that all knowledge has been 
 developed by overthrowing error, the ordi- 
 nary channel of human thought. He ends this 
 sedtion with a great truth. There are things 
 which human Reason or Instind: matured, in 
 its undeveloped state,cannot master; but Rea- 
 son is a Law to itself. Therefore we are not 
 bound to believe, or to attempt belief in, any 
 thing which is contrary or contradictory to 
 Reason. Here he is diametrically opposed to 
 Rome, who says,"Do not appeal to History; 
 that is private judgment. Do not appeal to 
 Holy Writ; that is heresy. Do not appeal to 
 Reason; that is Rationalism." 
 
 He holds with the Patriarchs of Hebrew 
 Holy Writ, that the present life is all-suffi- 
 cient for an intelleftual ( not a sentimental ) 
 being; and, therefore, that there is no want of 
 a Heaven or a Hell. With far more contra- 
 diftion the Western poet sings:— 
 
 Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed 
 In one self-place; but when we are in hell. 
 And where hell is there must we ever be. 
 And, to be short, when all this world dissolves. 
 And every creature shall be purified. 
 All places shall be hell which are not heaven. 
 
 For what want is there of a Hell when all are 
 pure? He enlarges upon the ancient Bud- 
 dhist theory, that Happiness and Misery are 
 equally distributed among men and beasts ; 
 some enjoy much and suffer much; others the 
 reverse. Hence Diderot declares, " Sober pas- 
 sions produce only the commonplace . . , the 
 man of moderate passion lives and dies like a 
 brute." And again we have the half-truth:— 
 
 That the mark of rank in nature 
 Is capacity for pain. 
 
 The latter implies an equal capacity for pleas- 
 ure, and thus the balance is kept. 
 
 Haji AbdG then proceeds to showthat Faith 
 is an accident of birth. One of his omitted dis- 
 tichs says : — , 
 
 Race makes religion ; true ! but aye upon the Maker 
 
 afts the made, 
 A finite God, and infinite sin, in lieu of raising man, 
 
 degrade. 
 
 In a manner of dialogue he introduces the va- 
 rious races each fighting to establish its own 
 belief The Frank (Christian) abuses the Hin- 
 du, who retorts that he is of Mlenchha, mixed 
 or impure, blood, a term applied to all non- 
 Hindus. The same is done by Nazarene and 
 Mohammedan; by the Confucian, who be- 
 lieves in nothing, and by the Soofi,who natu- 
 rally has the last word. The association of the 
 Virgin Mary and St. Joseph with theTrinity, 
 in the Roman and Greek Churches, makes 
 many Moslems conclude that Christians be- 
 lieve not in three but in five Persons. So 
 an Englishman writes of the early Fathers, 
 "Theynot onlysaid thatj = i,and that i =3 : 
 they professed to explain how that curious 
 arithmetical combination had been brought 
 about. The Indivisible had been divided, and 
 yet was not divided: it was divisible, and yet 
 it was indivisible; black was white, and white 
 was black ; and yet there were not two colours 
 but one colour; and whoever did not believe 
 it would be damned." The Arab quotation 
 runs in the original: — 
 
 Ahsanu 'I-Makanijl il- Fata 'la-Jehanamu 
 
 The best of places for (the generous) youth is 
 Gehenna: 
 
 [50] 
 
NOTES 
 
 Gehenna, alias Jahim, being the fiery place of 
 eternal punishment. And the second saying, 
 Al-nar wa la ' l-'Jr-" Fire (of Hell) rather 
 than Shame,"— is equally condemned by the 
 Koranist. The Gustakhi (insolence) of Fate 
 is the expression of Umar-i-Khayyam (St. 
 XXX ) : — 
 
 What, without asking hither hurried whence? 
 And, without asking whither hurried hence ! 
 
 Oh many a cup of this forbidden wine 
 Must drown the memory of that insolence. - 
 
 Soofistically, the word means "the coquetry 
 
 of the beloved one," the divinas particula 
 
 auras. And the sedion ends with Pope's:— 
 
 He can't be wrong whose life b in the right. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Here the Haji ends his pradical study of 
 mankind. The image of Destiny playing with 
 men as pieces is a view common amongst 
 Easterns. His idea of wisdom is once more 
 Pope's: — 
 
 And all our knowledge is ourselves to know. 
 
 (Essay IV. 398.) 
 
 Regret,/, e. repentance, was one of the forty- 
 two deadly sins of the Ancient Egyptians. 
 "Thou shalt not consume thy heart," says 
 the Ritual of the Dead, the negative justifica- 
 tion of the soul or ghost ( Lepsius "Alteste 
 TextedesTotdenbuchs").Wehaveborrowed 
 competitive examination from the Chinese; 
 and, in these morbid days of weak introspec- 
 tion and retrosped;ion,we might learn wisdom 
 from the sturdy old Khemites.When he sings 
 "Abjure the Why and seek the How," he re- 
 fers to the old Scholastic diflFerence of the 
 Demonstratio propter quid {why is a thing?), as 
 opposed to Demonstratio quia [i.e. that a thing 
 is). The "great Man" shall end with becom- 
 ing deathless, as Shakespeare says in his noble 
 sonnet: — 
 
 And Death once dead, there 's no more dying then ! 
 
 Like the great Pagans, the Haji holds 
 that man was born good, while the Christian, 
 "tormented by the things divine," cleaves to 
 
 the comforting dodtrine of innate sinfulness. 
 Hence the universal tenet, that man should do 
 good in order to gain by it here or hereafter; 
 the " enlightened selfishness," that says. Ad 
 well and get compound interest in a future 
 state. The allusion to the "Theist-word" ap- 
 parently means that the votaries of a personal 
 Deity must believe in the absolute foreknowl- 
 edge of the Omniscient in particulars as in 
 generals. The Rule of Law emancipates man ; 
 and its exceptions are the gaps left by his ig- 
 norance. The wail over the fallen flower, etc., 
 reminds us of the Pulambal( Lamentations) of 
 the Anti-Brahminical writer, " Pathira-Giri- 
 yar." The allusion to Maya is from Das 
 Kabir:- 
 
 Maya mare, na man mare, mar mar gaya sarir. 
 
 Illusion dies, the mind dies not though dead and 
 gone into flesh. 
 
 Nirwana, I have said, is partial extindlion by 
 being merged in the Supreme, not to be con- 
 founded with Pari-nirwana or absolute anni- 
 hilation. In the former also, dying gives birth 
 to a new being, the embodiment of karma 
 (deeds), good and evil, done in the countless 
 ages of transmigration. 
 
 Here ends my share of the work. On the 
 whole it has been considerable. I have omitted. 
 
 [51] 
 
NOTES 
 
 as has been seen, sundry stanzas, and I have was the Bahr 'Tawil {long verse), I thought 
 changed the order of others. The text has it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to 
 nowhere been translated verbatim; in fad:, a fringe it with the rough, unobtrusive rhyme 
 familiar European turn has been given to of the original, 
 many sentiments which were judged too Ori- 
 ental. As the metre adopted by Haji Abdu Vive, valeque ! 
 
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