THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 ANITA D. S. BLAKE 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
KNOWLEDGE 
 AND LIFE BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARKWRIGHT 
 
 " Of the three cardinal sins in Buddhism 
 (raga, dosa, moha) the last and worst 
 is stupidity or dullness, the others 
 being sensuality and ill-will" 
 
 Early Buddhism by RHYS DAVIDS 
 
 LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 TORONTO BELL & COCKBURN MCMXI1I 
 
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON. LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH 
 
 GIFT 
 
To H. J. P. 
 
 055 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 TWO of these pieces, "A Ligurian 
 Paradise'' and "An Appreciation," 
 originally appeared in the Morning Post, 
 and to the courtesy of its Proprietor the 
 author is indebted for permission to publish 
 them. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE . . .13 
 THE THIEF ...... 27 
 
 THE ANT'S FIRST STORY . . . -35 
 THE BAMBINO ..... 47 
 
 AN IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER . . 59 
 THE ANT'S SECOND STORY ... 73 
 THE COCK CHAFFINCH .... 87 
 
 UNAWARES ...... 97 
 
 AGNI . . ..... 107 
 
 THE ANT'S LAST STORY . . . .121 
 
 A LIGURIAN PARADISE . . . .131 
 
 BONA MORS ...... 139 
 
 TREASURE TROVE ..... 147 
 
 AN APPRECIATION ..... 157 
 
 LONELINESS ...... 169 
 
 FROM AN OLD DIARY . . . .181 
 
 KAIRWAN ...... 195 
 
 THE TREE OF LIFE ..... 207 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 THE primeval struggles of humanity 
 to obtain civilization have been sym- 
 bolized in the mythologies of many nations 
 most poetically perhaps among the Greeks, 
 whose hero stole fire from heaven, but most 
 explicitly in the Jewish version where the 
 protagonists exploited a tree of knowledge. 
 
 In the Old Testament, the familiar para- 
 ble of the Garden of Eden has been treated 
 artlessly yet with conviction, so that from 
 the finite behaviour of the characters human, 
 divine, ophidian, the story actually gains 
 effectiveness. In it, of course, Jehovah is 
 by no means made to play the part of vindic- 
 tive tyrant that professional interpreters 
 have been inclined to assign to him ; he is, 
 on the contrary, a hasty, jealous, but essen- 
 tially kind-hearted deity of the traditional 
 type. 
 
 Apparently it has been the aim of the 
 13 
 
14 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 theologians, by embroidering the text with 
 far-fetched meanings, to represent him as 
 a demon unjustly punishing disobedience, 
 before that sin, or indeed any of the sins, 
 had crystallized in other words, before the 
 raiding of the Tree of Knowledge had intro- 
 duced this sin of disobedience into the 
 scheme of man's possibilities. Even " in 
 the beginning," however, it is plain that 
 bogey was rather a favourite with the Cloth 
 an effective shepherd's dog for the sub- 
 jugation of unruly flocks. 
 
 But that the original version was innocent 
 of such illogicality seems evident from the 
 homely account in the Book of Genesis ; 
 where the first speech of the Almighty to 
 Adam concerning the Tree of Knowledge 
 of good and evil reads as follows : " Thou 
 shalt not eat of it ; for in the day thou 
 eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Mani- 
 festly such a sentence, even snatched from 
 its context, is not of necessity a threat ful 
 command ! On the contrary, it savours 
 more of a warning against the Tree, because 
 of its inherently dangerous qualities. And 
 this view was certainly shared by Eve ; 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 15 
 
 since during her conversation on the sub- 
 ject with the Serpent, she actually quoted 
 the Lord's own words as having been " Ye 
 shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, 
 lest ye die." 
 
 The Serpent, we read, scouted this pre- 
 diction ; and by his comment that God did 
 not wish Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit 
 because by so doing their eyes would be 
 opened and they would be "as gods," he 
 introduced the suggestion of an ulterior 
 motive ; and it is certainly startling to find in 
 the sequel that his statement was as correct 
 as his insinuation was justified. For not only 
 did the venturesome pair survive the eating 
 of that fruit, but also, though Jehovah was 
 very angry with them for having ignored his 
 warning, his indignation, as he himself con- 
 fessed later, was mainly due to the very 
 reasons that the Serpent had outlined. The 
 Biblical account, moreover, makes it clear 
 that the expulsion of the culprits from Eden 
 was for the purpose of protecting the Tree of 
 Life from their possible depredation not to 
 punish them for disobedience; and Jehovah's 
 wrath must have been easily appeased, or 
 
16 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 he would not himself have made " coats of 
 skin and clothed them." 
 
 It is noteworthy, in this connection, that 
 the tasting of the fruit of the Tree of Know- 
 ledge was not supposed to give to our first 
 parents any perception of the advantage to 
 be gained by a prompt seizure on the Tree 
 of Life, or indeed to have brought them 
 immediate decision of any kind, as they 
 frittered away invaluable opportunity in 
 sewing fig-leaves and making aprons a 
 cynical touch to underline, as it were, the 
 consequences of feminine interference in 
 matters of importance. 
 
 Simultaneously with the expulsion of 
 Adam and Eve from Eden, the Tree of 
 Knowledge abruptly disappears from He- 
 brew legend ; but transplanted from ro- 
 mance into actuality, it flourished exceed- 
 ingly. The stupefying effect of the fruit on 
 primal innocence was succeeded by an in- 
 creasing stimulation in every province of 
 practical sapience ; although the benefac- 
 tions of civilization seem to have been 
 always limited to mundane matters, to 
 material life. 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 17 
 
 But in spite of these restrictions, the Tree 
 of Knowledge is a splendid inheritance and, 
 anyhow for the time being, its advantages 
 completely eclipse the unsubstantial mys- 
 teries of the Tree of Life ; so that, though 
 man's contentment only persists in inverse 
 proportion to his consumption of its fruit, 
 none but a fool could to-day deny that the 
 possession of knowledge was worth its price, 
 and none but a hypocrite could affect to 
 reproach Mother Eve and the Serpent for 
 their master-stroke. 
 
 Obviously the fruit of this tree of civiliza- 
 tion is a symbol of education ; and as such, 
 its curious mixture of good and evil is 
 assimilable by mankind either in an un- 
 cooked state, or in various condensations. 
 Even the dogs thrive by feeding on the 
 scraps and leavings ; and if they manage 
 in this way to pick up an undue share of the 
 knowledge of good, it is probably owing to 
 the fact that the good is not necessarily the 
 more pleasant to the human palate. 
 
 In times gone by, when individual exer- 
 tion was involved in the gathering of the 
 fruit, only a sufficiency for immediate con- 
 
 B 
 
18 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 sumption could be obtained : it was, there- 
 fore, wholesome and full of flavour. But 
 nowadays there is running through the 
 multitude a sort of mania for repletion, to 
 satisfy which the Tree has been forced in- 
 judiciously, and its produce has deteriorated 
 on account of this excessive cropping in 
 short, quality has been sacrificed to quantity, 
 the attainment of wisdom to the acquisition 
 of learning. Factories have been estab- 
 lished everywhere for the purpose of pulping 
 and boiling down educational matter into 
 books and similar patent preparations ; and, 
 although the salutary carbo-hydrates of re- 
 flection and practice evaporate from the 
 mess during this cooking process, it is 
 nevertheless crammed by law down the 
 throats of the children for their daily food, 
 in defiance of epidemic visitations of in- 
 digestion and surfeit evils that might be 
 expected to result from a highly concen- 
 trated diet in tablet form. 
 
 Fortunately, however, there is one ex- 
 ceptional conserve that retains the flavour, 
 the volatile juices, the essence of the natural 
 fruit, for which it seems actually to engender 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 19 
 
 a preference ; and this book has been named 
 Dictionary, of the genus encyclopaedia. Talk 
 of the hundred best books, there is but one ! 
 The dictionary holds in solution among its 
 cryptic pages all Shakespeare, all the Bible, 
 all science, the lore of the ages, every thought 
 and every imagining of men. Nay ! it alone 
 would outweigh the loss of paradise ! 
 
 I have by my side, at the present moment, 
 a transatlantic specimen, which is so un- 
 earthly in its acumen that, by means of 
 letterpress and picture, it contrives to make 
 intelligible all that is in heaven above, or 
 in the earth beneath, or in the waters under 
 the earth except, perhaps, the true pro- 
 portion of things American, and the intrica- 
 cies of English orthography. 
 
 At best, however, education is only the 
 nurse of mankind's abstract qualities, which 
 it is capable of guiding, occasionally of 
 shaping, but never of begetting ; for the 
 generation of these qualities is the function 
 of a universal law. 
 
 ^Eons before reason had quickened in the 
 mind of man, ages before the species itself 
 had developed, millenniums before the very 
 
20 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 Earth had consolidated, a duadic power, un- 
 conscious yet irresistible, was evolving little 
 by little, until it dominated the whole realm 
 of Nature, and created even the abstrac- 
 tions. This energy is the law of Sex : the 
 working of which among sentient beings is 
 self-evident, although in its more complex 
 relationships the necessity of such an ele- 
 ment seems to have escaped the attention 
 of minds preoccupied with the humdrum of 
 life. 
 
 The cosmogonies of the Hindu Vedas and 
 of the Mosaic Genesis proclaim this principle, 
 through the mystical blending of the Spirit 
 of God with Chaos ; while the immortal 
 Theogony of Hesiod is entirely based on 
 sexual imagery. 
 
 At the application of this law to 
 the realm of literature, serious checks, 
 which threaten to limit the production of 
 masterpieces at the present day, manifest 
 themselves immediately. A frequent ster- 
 ility of the male principle is evidenced by the 
 moth-plumes of formless fancies, too fragile 
 for condensation, floating in their myriads 
 through the brain ; whereas Idea to be of 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 21 
 
 any creative value must be both definite 
 and insistent. A true gem will stand polish- 
 ing, even grinding ; and the kingfisher's 
 nest loses interest in our eyes, because for 
 all its symmetry it will not bear translation. 
 Another disquieting phenomenon of to- 
 day is the superabundance of the feminine 
 ingredient so much more of vocabulary 
 than notion, of diction than concept ; 
 for which a probable reason may be found 
 in a comparison with the discoveries 
 of physiology. For as in this science 
 Professor Geddes has voiced the con- 
 clusion of numerous investigators that 
 " favourable nutritive conditions tend to 
 produce females," so by analogy it may be 
 inferred that the liberal pabulum of manuals 
 and primers now in vogue is responsible for 
 a similar overplus in the world of letters. 
 Again, as "in prosperity of summer " the 
 female green-flies, without male assistance, 
 produce an ephemeral offspring, so from a 
 redundant curriculum do parthenogenetic 
 writings make their appearance in greater 
 numbers than those that are legitimately 
 begotten. Wherefore, doubtless, each callow 
 
22 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 aspirant nowadays possesses droves of 
 ostentatious phrases, and is waiting for 
 thoughts with which to fertilize them only 
 as a rule he tires of waiting, and rushes into 
 print. 
 
 But the mighty law of Sex is not to be 
 turned aside by modern accidents ; it will 
 continue to achieve ! 
 
 There shall still be engendered original 
 idea, to mate with language of a quality 
 reminiscent of the moonlight rather than 
 the mist, of a halo rather than a fig-leaf : 
 language glowing with lustres rather than 
 dazzling by flashes, since to startle is also 
 to displease : language inexorably banish- 
 ing from its sentences the incongruous word 
 which grates like the squeak of a slate-pencil, 
 which jars like a stone in the plum-cake. 
 
 Of such an auspicious embrace must be 
 born Style, the enchantress, whose glamour 
 can gild the edges of the commonplace and 
 print its titles in amaranth whose charms 
 may one day entice from the empyrean, as 
 formerly the daughters of men did entice 
 the sons of God, that spirit of the green 
 flame, by name Inspiration. 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 23 
 
 Thus apparently by chance, of no pre- 
 concerted congruity, shall Genius, the sub- 
 lime arise. Concentration of intellectual 
 magic, it resembles electricity in its omni- 
 presence, though unique in its defiance 
 of formula ; and, being a hybrid, of mixed 
 race, it is both sexless and of twofold im- 
 pulse ever whirling, fluctuating, vacillating 
 between earth and heaven. 
 
 In the pursuit of truth, I may have wan- 
 dered somewhat from the ovine line of way 
 of the Ninety-and-nine ; but Spenser's noble 
 apology for an allegory will perhaps avail 
 mine also : " The general end of all the 
 booke, is to fashion a gentleman or noble 
 pei son in vertuous and gentle discipline." 
 
THE THIEF 
 
THE THIEF 
 
 HE was the dearly loved child of a young 
 widow, who herself had been educated 
 (alas !) in that school of Calvinistic savagery 
 which always assures to its adherents a sense 
 of infallibility of judgment. 
 
 He was scarcely six years old, a chubby, 
 cheery little mortal with one of those pure 
 souls that are still fragrant of paradise. His 
 faith was simple and intuitive he believed 
 in God and in his own mother, and he loved 
 them equally. In fact, to his mind, God and 
 Mother were ideas mystically blended to- 
 gether. At any rate, he would have placed 
 Mother infinitely higher than the Blessed 
 Virgin even without the constant dinning 
 into his ears that Mary was a mere woman, 
 which he was confident that his mother was 
 not ! He had, of course, heard much of the 
 sinfulness of little children, and of the 
 " chains, and fire, and gloom " in store for 
 27 
 
28 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 such on the slightest provocation ; but 
 these frenzied prognostications had slipped 
 easily from his mind, like the water from the 
 proverbial duck's back, leaving only fixed 
 there as an axiom, that grown-up people, in 
 contradistinction to the young, could not 
 sin could not even err ! 
 
 Sin, however, had little interest for him, 
 probably because it also lacked fascination, 
 but naturally at that time of his lif e he was 
 neither analytical nor introspective ; and 
 though he had, as the nurses say, " a sweet 
 tooth," there was always left unguarded on 
 the sideboard of the dining-room a bowl of 
 powdered sugar which he used to pass with- 
 out a feeling of temptation, though fully 
 alive to its potentialities of bliss. 
 
 There was to be a children's party at the 
 vicarage ; and to this he had been looking 
 forward with anticipations such as only 
 childhood can conjure up. It was his first 
 regular party, and he felt his joy mingled 
 with elation at being so " grown-up." The 
 eventful evening at last arrived, and proved 
 entrancing beyond the power of words ! 
 The eldest son of the house (a big boy !) even 
 
THE THIEF 29 
 
 condescended to play with him : and they 
 were hiding by turns from each other a tiny, 
 wooden poodle, when a cry of " Magic- 
 lantern in the dining-room ! " arose, at 
 which summons away they skeltered, the 
 wooden dog being completely forgotten in 
 the new excitement. Oh ! those pictures 
 on the sheet in the mysteriously darkened 
 room, how he laughed, and crowed, and 
 laughed again ! He had almost to be carried 
 home that night, and then Nurse had to be 
 told all about it ; and for long enough he 
 couldn't get to sleep, because just when he 
 was dropping off, a scud of laughter came 
 to stir him again. 
 
 Merriment, however, is on occasion as 
 good as sleep, and next morning after his 
 breakfast he danced down to the drawing- 
 room as usual, to see his mother. 
 
 She was standing with her back to the 
 door, and as she slowly confronted him, he 
 saw that her face was distorted, her eyes 
 strangely gleaming. In a hoarse, choking 
 voice she told him flatly that he was a thief, 
 and no child of hers ; but it was only by 
 degrees that he could understand that he 
 
30 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 was accused of having stolen the wooden 
 poodle, which the nurse had found in his 
 jacket-pocket. For the moment, he was 
 unable to remember how it had got there, 
 but he stoutly protested his innocence. In 
 vain, in vain ! The toy had been found in 
 his pocket : he only made matters far worse 
 by lying about it. Clearly he was a thief. 
 I swear that from his misery he cried out, 
 not from the pain of that rough grasp, not 
 from the stunning blow on his ear : so when 
 in escaping from the room he fell over Jet, 
 the big retriever, he lay there sobbing with 
 his eyes shut, while the old dog licked his face. 
 In the afternoon the destined punishment 
 was duly executed. It was that the cul- 
 prit should walk through the village to the 
 vicarage, with the word " THIEF " in huge 
 letters, fastened on his back, thus to restore 
 the plaything to its rightful owners. Try 
 to imagine the agony that all this meant to 
 a sensitive child almost a baby certain 
 that the whole world would read the wicked 
 placard, and would believe it, that in conse- 
 quence no one would ever trust him again, no 
 one forget such an awful, such a mean crime ! 
 
THE THIEF 31 
 
 The lying notice was duly produced, it 
 was pinned to his back, and amid struggling 
 and shrieking he was dragged by his mother 
 down the long street. 
 
 I hardly know what happened at the 
 vicarage. Bruised, cowed, collapsed, he of 
 course said in the end whatever they wanted, 
 which, I suppose, included some kind of con- 
 fession, for he was dimly conscious of the 
 shocked voice of the vicar's wife raised in 
 suitable homily. But I do know for cer- 
 tain that as he stumbled homewards he 
 felt the Devil lift the false motto from his 
 shoulders, only to replace it with another 
 one branded through with red-hot lettering : 
 
 " LIAR, MINE." 
 
 Overthrown, from that day forth, were 
 the old Faith, the old Mother, the old God- 
 not for a week : not for a year : not for his 
 youth : but for ever and the lees of those 
 tears still stagnate round his heart, after 
 half a century. 
 
 Fifty years ago. . . . Ah, well ! let us 
 hope that the powdered sugar afforded some 
 temporary consolation ! 
 
THE ANT'S FIRST STORY 
 
THE ANT'S FIRST STORY 
 
 LEVER men have always taken a 
 special interest in us, probably from 
 a superficial resemblance between the formic 
 character and the human, which, of course, 
 one finds impossible to repudiate. And un- 
 doubtedly they have discovered not a little 
 about our life ; while we on our side have 
 investigated their institutions with success 
 still more conspicuous. Although Solomon, 
 their greatest sage, urged on them to " go 
 to the Ant, consider her ways and be wise," 
 they, as is their custom, dallied over the 
 counsel : at any rate, consideration of our 
 ways would hardly be an appropriate term 
 by which to characterize sundry wild shots 
 at our history, hazarded from time to time 
 by various authors. 
 
 But after about three thousand years, a 
 certain Sir John Lubbock published a mono- 
 graph on our civilization, the result of really 
 35 
 
36 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 minute investigation. His book, perhaps a 
 little too intimate for the canons of strict 
 taste, was chiefly occupied with a recital of 
 the commonplaces of our domestic economy 
 but it fairly astounded the British public. 
 Since that time I understand that two French 
 astronomers, the Henry Brothers, have dis- 
 covered that ants can perceive certain rays 
 of light that are invisible to the denser 
 senses of mankind : and indeed, it is this 
 faculty that enables me to recount, as an 
 experience of my own, a story that may 
 enhance our potentialities in the estimation 
 of anthropoid readers. 
 
 One summer evening, on happening to 
 glance at an angel slowly sailing up the 
 valley, I was fascinated by the colour of 
 his wings which were literally like the 
 coming of the dawn. And altogether, he 
 looked so gorgeous, such a dazzling embodi- 
 ment of the ultra-violet ray, that partly 
 from admiration, partly from curiosity, I 
 felt impelled to follow him. So I spread my 
 own wings in pursuit. 
 
 Evidently attracted by the sound of 
 music from within, he hovered for a moment 
 
THE ANT'S FIRST STORY 37 
 
 over the cathedral of our quiet city, alighted 
 near its porch, and entered at the open door. 
 The scene inside was simple and impressive. 
 In the centre under an immense chandelier 
 reposed the sacred book on the back of a 
 brazen eagle : but, at the moment, bibliola- 
 try was not much in evidence, as the congre- 
 gation was seated to enjoy the relaxation 
 of the anthem, a device for showing off the 
 excellence of the singing. " The people that 
 walked in darkness have seen a great light/' 
 boomed out from the massive throat of the 
 bass singer : "A great light," shrilled the 
 trebles in melodious agreement. And then 
 the full chorus took up the joyous burden. 
 On the bosom of the great organ they tossed 
 the words to and fro, plunging with them 
 into the stream of the music and, so to speak, 
 scattering the spray hither and thither in 
 wildest abandon. But just as disaster 
 seemed inevitable, the incipient discord 
 became a divine plaint, and the storm was 
 stilled and reconciled in a current of rarest 
 harmony. A moment's pause ; and then 
 arose the wonder of the ages, a voice all 
 pearls and purity, that was carried effort- 
 
38 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 less to the rafters. It sang of the Redeemer 
 and of salvation, with inspired certainty : 
 but to my consternation I found that it 
 proceeded from a surpliced urchin, whom I 
 had seen only a moment before nudging 
 and laughing. How do the young rascals 
 manage it ? They fill the hearts of others 
 with tears of repentance, and visions of the 
 Almighty, while they themselves oh well ! 
 I don't suppose that in reality they are half 
 so conscientious as the average woman, de- 
 spite the contrast of the voices. The reason 
 may be that male emotionalism causes in 
 boys a momentary loss of self-consciousness, 
 such as the female can never know. 
 
 When I recovered from the effects of that 
 solo, for I am ashamed to confess that even 
 I was moved by it, I saw that the Angel was 
 busy collecting impressions from the minds 
 of the choir. I had lost both his questions 
 and the answers, but I could see that he was 
 dissatisfied. He next flitted, noiselessly as 
 an owl at sundown, to the side of the white- 
 robed clergyman lolling in a pinnacled stall, 
 beneath a window dedicated to Mary, which 
 concentrated its rubies at her peerless heart. 
 
THE ANTS FIRST STORY 39 
 
 His reverence was listening to this exploita- 
 tion of the Hebrew poesy with an air of 
 semi-detached sanctity about his thin, wide 
 mouth, not unmingled with the cultured 
 approbation of the connoisseur a model of 
 cool propriety, whose only decoration pro- 
 claimed the university of Oxford. Again I 
 missed the actual colloquy, amid the trium- 
 phant chords of the finale ; but the Angel, 
 evidently hard to please, after a momentary 
 investigation of the clerical conscience, took 
 to flight, with a rustle that evoked from his 
 victim such a shrug of petulant annoyance 
 as can only be executed by the elderly, and 
 that but at the suspicion of a draught. 
 
 Once outside the cathedral my pilot sprang 
 into the twilight, like a pigeon released from 
 a trap, and soared in circles above the houses 
 as if exulting in freedom regained, but after 
 a few dizzy pirouettes he was fluttering 
 outside a broad window-sill, near which a 
 lady sat at her writing-table. This time I 
 happened to overhear his whisper, which she 
 evidently mistook for the query of her own 
 sub-consciousness : " What of good have 
 you accomplished ? " 
 
40 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 " Accomplished ! " she repeated, and her 
 demeanour somehow reminded me of that 
 Bible-bearing eagle. " Why ! my tongue 
 is so glib, and my vocabulary so copious, 
 that I can put anything into language. I 
 can easily write thirty-five words a minute 
 in slow long-hand. I have founded a religion. 
 I am to be the saviour of my downtrodden 
 sex! ' Good,' indeed !" 
 
 But the Angel smiled half ruefully, and 
 we left her tapping at her typewriter. 
 
 He now flew straight away from the resi- 
 dential quarter, so we soon found ourselves 
 in a shabby district where we chanced on 
 the garret of a pale-faced man with a heavy 
 brow and shadowy eyes, who was gazing 
 into space, apparently at nothing at all. 
 There was a sheet of paper in front of him, 
 which glared at him pitilessly from the sur- 
 rounding gloom : a blank, except for its 
 scrawled heading of " The third and final 
 Communion," and for two or three brownish 
 smudges of tears or sweat. He still 
 seemed to be in trouble, but his eyes were 
 steady while he talked rapidly to himself. 
 
 " As our bodies are born of our mother's 
 
THE ANT'S FIRST STORY 41 
 
 anguish so must our spirits be born of our 
 own yet happiness will be the final guerdon. 
 Communion with Man is but the first step : 
 his dogmas are largely speculative. Nature 
 begins to instruct in her Communion at the 
 point where Man's powers become exhausted; 
 and she also has well-defined limits, on 
 reaching which the soul is still unsatisfied 
 and incomplete. Wonderment, not cer- 
 tainty, pervades Nature's realm in the 
 leaf as in the stars, in life as in death. She 
 herself is always seeking for light, more 
 light. How then can she expound the real 
 in its totality ? Besides, Nature with Man 
 forms a dualism, a system that has proved 
 fallacious in regard to the real life. To be 
 sure, many Christian thinkers have followed 
 the trimurti of the Vedas, the triad of the 
 ancient Egyptians, by postulating a trinity 
 in opposition to the duality of Isaiah. But 
 though many systems profess the triadic 
 theory, none on examination defines it satis- 
 factorily. Theosophists appear to have an 
 upper trinity of spirit, soul, and mind ; but 
 then it is burdened with a lower quaternary 
 of perishable attributes. Christians, through 
 
42 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 St. John's gospel, can readily trace the 
 flesh and the spirit, but the third element 
 is undefined. In the same manner my 
 theory lacks the third element, which con- 
 tinues to evade my thought. Yes ! the 
 third Communion is vital for mankind, and 
 I WILL find it ! " 
 
 And after having hurled forth this chal- 
 lenge, he buried his face in his hands, and 
 bowed himself over the bleak desk. 
 
 Then the Angel leaned towards him 
 but I could not realize that song, nor catch 
 its melody. I perceived, however, a great 
 astonishment spreading over the man's face, 
 uplifted afresh. 
 
 The Angel bent lower and touched with 
 his lips the dingy forehead, which for a 
 while glowed and wavered with the strange 
 tints of an opal. Then all of a sudden the 
 man cried out in loudest triumph : " With 
 God ! " And those transient gleams ex- 
 panded and intensified, bathing his counte- 
 nance in glory. He fell back as if consumed 
 by some divine flame. I saw his spirit dart 
 to the stars. . . . 
 
 I feel that I must add a note of personal 
 
THE ANT'S FIRST STORY 43 
 
 explanation, lest through the popular ignor- 
 ance of natural history my story fail to 
 obtain immediate comprehension. Among 
 ants, at any rate, the bachelors being en- 
 dowed with wings can fly at will. And the 
 word bachelor entices me on to introduce 
 another fact, interesting though perhaps 
 irrelevant : there is no such being as a 
 formic paterfamilias ! No ! we have all of 
 us to face the certainty that marriage, 
 though inevitable, will bring about our 
 immediate death : in curious parallel to 
 which, the author of the play, " Man and 
 Superman," makes his hero also recognize 
 a kind of death as the portion for human 
 bridegrooms ! 
 
THE BAMBINO 
 
THE BAMBINO 
 
 IT was Christmas time, and it was very 
 cold. A drab-coloured woman carrying 
 a bundle stopped and looked vacantly at 
 the porch of the church dedicated to SS. 
 Aura and Placida. It was certainly very 
 cold : and while she was shifting from one 
 foot to the other, to disconnect as it were the 
 numb feeling that arose through her worn 
 soles from the sodden pavement, she saw 
 that the door was ajar. Oh, well ! she 
 might as well go in and get a sit-down, and 
 there might be a hassock, or anyhow a 
 wood-floor, or something. 
 
 In she went accordingly, and dropped 
 into a seat ; anyhow it would be comfort- 
 able and quiet, without anyone to move 
 her on. She laid the ragged bundle across 
 her knees : the change of position did not 
 awaken it, but the action brought some more 
 disjointed thoughts into her sluggish brain. 
 47 
 
48 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 What a fool she'd been ! What a pity 
 she couldn't find its father ! Oh, those 
 Bank-holidays no good for nothing ! And 
 this little misery to keep her back, and get 
 in her way, and after all her trouble likely 
 enough to die in the end ! No good to her, 
 nor to itself, poor brat ! And yet she 
 hugged its tiny, wizened body, and kissed 
 its clammy face greedily. The child wriggled 
 away in its sleep, and the mother half 
 crossly straightened her back and looked 
 about her. 
 
 And there, in a little corner of the church, 
 she spied the most wonderful group she had 
 ever seen, all beautifully lit up like a 
 Christmas-tree ! A lot of great big dolls, 
 almost as large as life kneeling men, and 
 cows and things, in a crowd round a young 
 woman, and a baby in a manger ; and over 
 the baby's head was a big gold star ; and 
 all was bright, and warm, and lovely. 
 
 Then all of a sudden a notion took her. 
 And it was only the work of a moment to 
 hurry across, to step over the cord, to 
 pluck from the manger the waxen image, 
 and to substitute her own child there, 
 
THE BAMBINO 49 
 
 having swaddled it in the borrowed tinsel. 
 After which she picked up the denuded doll, 
 and ran for her life. . . . 
 
 The Reverend Father Hawkins, who had 
 formerly been a dissenting minister, had 
 arrived at the Catholic priesthood by 
 scrupulously following the dictates of his 
 conscience. An earnest young man with 
 that deficiency of humour in his outlook, 
 which is often associated with an engrained 
 reverence for the conventionalities. The 
 church of SS. Aura and Placida, in an un- 
 savoury district of London, was his first 
 cure of souls, and he felt the responsibility 
 somewhat acutely. 
 
 Now, although a convinced and faithful 
 son of the Church, his reverence had not 
 been able to embrace with enthusiasm its 
 more sugary devotions. Enslaved by its 
 authority and majestic tradition, he could 
 not help rebelling in secret against some of 
 the ultramontane forms of Catholic piety. 
 
 The Saints did not come easy to him : 
 
 indeed, his was one of those unemotional 
 
 natures that are much more attracted by 
 
 the Father than by the Son. So it was in 
 
 D 
 
50 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 a purely penitential spirit that he had 
 inaugurated a Holy Crib this Christmastide, 
 and that he had spent most of his slender 
 stipend in procuring resplendent examples 
 of the personages in the sacred mystery. 
 
 In all these preparations he had received 
 the most zealous assistance from the old 
 Irish church-cleaner, Bridget by name, in 
 conjunction with his own housekeeper ; and 
 these two were, at the moment of my story, 
 partaking of a dish of tea in the kitchen of 
 the adjoining presbytery. 
 
 When they re-entered the church, a few 
 minutes after the flight of the drab-coloured 
 mother, Bridget complacently approached 
 the holy group and knelt in front of it for 
 a soothing moment of prayer. Tenderly 
 and complacently was she regarding the 
 result of her handiwork, when a slight 
 movement of the sleeping infant caused 
 her to yell, "Holy Mother, they're all 
 coming to life ! " 
 
 Before long, the mingled cries of the 
 women reached Father Hawkins in his 
 study, and he hastened through the inter- 
 vening sacristy to discover the cause of the 
 
THE BAMBINO 51 
 
 hubbub. In front of the Holy Crib he found 
 both of the old dames, prostrate on the 
 pavement, gurgling from an extremity of 
 superstitious excitement, and incapable of 
 anything articulate. But as he was search- 
 ing for the explanation, he himself saw the 
 figure of the infant Jesus open its eyes and 
 gaze at him. 
 
 During the next beatific moment he 
 seemed to live a lifetime. Who was he that 
 he should receive such a blessed answer to 
 his prayers ? Who, that God should so 
 gently reprove his want of faith ? A miracle 
 vouchsafed to him ! O thrice-blessed Lord ! 
 And then the baby began to cry at its 
 novel surroundings : to howl : to bawl. 
 
 In an instant, something like the real 
 truth flashed through the brain of the priest, 
 and without pause he had reached the wailing 
 infant, had snatched it from the manger, 
 and had disappeared with it through the 
 sacristy door ; while the two crones still 
 grovelled, too dazed to grasp what had 
 happened, or in any way to realize later 
 events. 
 
 Once in his sitting-room, Father Hawkins 
 
52 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 experienced a reaction that was agonizing, 
 terrible ; but at length, roused by the per- 
 sistent outcry proceeding from the sofa, he 
 set himself in earnest to think and plan for 
 the future, despite those nerve-distracting 
 squalls. 
 
 The police ? No, no ! This horror must 
 for ever remain a secret from the world. 
 
 His sister Bessy at Brixton ? She had 
 babies of her own. Yes, that would do ! 
 
 In trembling haste he seized the now 
 exhausted child and hurried down the 
 street, challenged as he felt by thousands of 
 inquisitive eyes, until he gained the shelter 
 of a passing taxi-cab. 
 
 Now Bessy, though she had been just as 
 horrified as the rest at his perversion to 
 Rome, had not utterly cast off her only 
 brother, even when he put the final touch 
 to his iniquity by becoming a priest. Her 
 own faith, however, was unimpeachable : 
 her own feelings towards Catholicity were 
 as hostile as they were vague : her one visit 
 to a " Roman " church had been atoned by 
 surreptitiously spitting into the Holy-water 
 stoup. In her own mind she had always 
 
THE BAMBINO 53 
 
 construed the title " Father " in its most 
 primitive sense ; so when John, pale and 
 speechless, burst into her parlour with a 
 strange baby in his arms, she exclaimed in 
 a voice more scandalized than surprised : 
 " Oh, John, surely it has not come to this 
 already ! " 
 
 In the end, however, touched by his 
 distress, she accepted, though not without 
 some mental reservation, his version of the 
 affair, and she thereupon undertook the 
 placing of the infant in an Institution ; so 
 the poor fellow left her house easier in his 
 mind. But he was still much shaken ; and 
 when, as he stood in his porch fumbling with 
 the latchkey, he caught sight of the little 
 waxen figure of the bambino stuffed into a 
 corner, he wearily reached for it, carried it 
 into his study, and yielding to a momentary 
 impulse of disgust threw it on the fire. 
 
 He had next to force himself to revisit 
 the church, in order to devise the best 
 means for covering up all remaining traces 
 of the scandal. But on entering the sacristy 
 he heard to his bewilderment a sort of 
 quavering drone, which increased in volume 
 
54 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 as he pushed open the door of communica- 
 tion with the church. And there, on their 
 knees before the Crib, their faces congested 
 by excitement, he beheld a crowd of wor- 
 shippers, with old Bridget in frenzied 
 ecstasy leading them through the Devotion 
 of the litany of Our Lady. 
 
 With a gesture of hopeless impotence, 
 poor John stole from the church to his 
 study, where the fire was fluttering feebly 
 after its surfeit of wax, locked himself in, 
 and fell sobbing across the horsehair couch. 
 
 Next morning as soon as it was light, 
 arising from his miserable vigil, he slipped 
 out, and hurried to the house of the Bishop. 
 But his lordship was not at once visible, 
 and he had to hang about in suspense. 
 
 To while away the leaden minutes he 
 bought a morning paper, " The Ha'penny- 
 worth," on the front page of which his eye 
 was immediately caught by a head-line in 
 large type : 
 
 " ALLEGED MIRACLE IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC 
 
 CHURCH. 
 STATEMENTS OF EYE-WITNESSES." 
 
THE BAMBINO 55 
 
 Then followed the account : "A miracle 
 that completely eclipses the liquefaction of 
 the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, seems 
 to have occurred yesterday in the church 
 of SS. Aura and Placida, in the S.E. district ! 
 Mrs. Bridget Malone, a most intelligent 
 woman, was kneeling before the newly 
 erected shrine of the Holy Family, when 
 she suddenly saw the figure of the Infant 
 Saviour raise its hand and beckon to her. 
 In her astonishment, she cried aloud, and 
 thus brought to her side another lady, 
 housekeeper to the Reverend Father Haw- 
 kins, and together they beheld the Holy 
 Child fly upwards, after he had blessed them 
 in solemn tones ! This extraordinary story 
 receives corroboration from the disappear- 
 ance of the waxen image, leaving its 
 swaddling-clothes behind. The popular ex- 
 citement is, of course, intense, and the 
 church is besieged by ardent worshippers. 
 
 " What adds to the mystery is that Father 
 Hawkins, whom the women remember to 
 have seen immediately before the miracle, 
 seems also to have vanished. There is a 
 photograph of the miraculous church at 
 
56 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 page 5, with insets of Mrs. Malone and the 
 missing priest." 
 
 It is whispered that, when he was ushered 
 into the Bishop's presence and had stumbled 
 through the whole heartrending story, em- 
 phasizing it with the copy of the morning 
 paper, that eminent ecclesiastic was rocked 
 with spasms of uncontrollable merriment ; 
 but, however that may have been, he at 
 once despatched a tactful Irishman to the 
 task of explaining matters, and mollifying 
 the inflamed zeal of the congregation. 
 
 John Hawkins did not return to the 
 church of SS. Aura and Placida, which has 
 ever since been held in high repute as a 
 place of pilgrimage for childless persons. 
 
AN IMPRESSION OF WEST- 
 MINSTER 
 
AN IMPRESSION OF 
 WESTMINSTER 
 
 THROUGHOUT an April day in the 
 shine of morning, in the dust of after- 
 noon I had been dragged at the chariot- 
 wheel of a loquacious sightseer, but at last 
 I was alone. And as I, once more a free 
 man, strolled across the broad, white 
 bridge I heard the thrilling tone of Big 
 Ben awaken the sixth hour, herald of the 
 evening. 
 
 The reverberating clock-tower started me 
 on idle speculations as to the frequency 
 with which a fine voice is linked to a flam- 
 boyant exterior, until these fancies began 
 to blend with observation in that inconse- 
 quent reverie which visits a man, only when 
 the mind is off duty and the feet, having 
 taken temporary command, are the arbiters 
 of his whereabouts. With a numbing sense 
 of impersonality I became hyperconscious 
 59 
 
60 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 of the parapet, of the ultimate background 
 of glaucous sky, and of the metallic im- 
 mobility of the water stretching between 
 them, changing ever but so imperceptibly 
 that I was hypnotized by its stare and felt 
 myself under the same spell as the heavy 
 barges which slumbered alongside of the 
 Surrey bank quiet, bronze water sliding 
 so impassively through the arches. West- 
 wards and upwards, within the sun's direct 
 rule, a haze, iridescent as a cushat's breast, 
 was toying with the distances and even in- 
 vading the foreground. London, London, 
 whose voice is as the sea, murmurous and 
 intangible, who answerest like Echo to 
 the moods of thy lovers, fairyland of pale 
 tints, home of the faintly golden and the 
 gossamers of rose and pearl, pitiable are 
 the windowless souls, the mammon-clogged 
 minds, the eyes running down with fatness 
 that are closed against thee ! 
 
 For the moment overcome by the hectic 
 beauty of the scene, I instinctively turned 
 for encouragement to a man standing by 
 my side, of whose proximity I had been all 
 along half aware, at the very moment 
 
IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER 61 
 
 when he, oppressed I suppose by unwonted 
 sentiment, was producing from his pocket 
 a cigarette, which he lit clumsily before 
 shrinking back into the crowd. But, alas ! 
 by this trivial action he had brought me back 
 to earth with a thud, and had substituted 
 for a radiant day-dream sarcastic memories 
 of his kin. 
 
 It rushed into my recollection how I had 
 once watched, with an interest not at first 
 devoid of sympathy, a worthy British 
 matron as she resolutely climbed a mountain- 
 side. Her comfortable figure was not 
 designed for agility, but was it not written 
 in the guide-book, and emphasized with 
 asterisks, that " tourists should not miss 
 the view from the summit " ! She had a 
 large, honest countenance with infantile 
 eyes that were unacquainted of emotion 
 and opened only to instincts the most 
 primitive. Not that a soul was lacking (it 
 rarely is, except in the ranks of the rat- 
 eyed), but it had been so flattened and 
 squeezed among encroaching lumber that 
 its vitality was reduced to a state of col- 
 lapse, and it did not give one throb whilst it 
 
62 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 was being carried past wild flowers and 
 shimmering thickets, on the way to the 
 advertised marvel. 
 
 Before long, her feet began to tread pain- 
 fully, a handkerchief was in constant 
 demand for her forehead, and her heart was 
 scrawling scarlet lampoons across her cheeks ; 
 but still she unflinchingly laboured upwards. 
 She was a heroine. 
 
 When, however, she had arrived at the 
 top, and the splendour of the prospect 
 suddenly shone round about her when the 
 assemblage of peaks, veiled in dim violet, 
 enticed her eyesight to soar farther and 
 farther, from distance to distance, until it 
 found itself upon heaven's frontier her 
 soul tingled, and feebly fluttered its rudi- 
 mentary wings ; and this interior dis- 
 turbance, through causing a feeling of 
 faintness, impelled her to pull hurriedly 
 from her pocket from the spotlessness of 
 enveloping cartridge - paper some sand- 
 wiches. A typical herd-mother, unconquer- 
 able by bodily hardship yet routed at the 
 first stirring of emotion within her, she knew 
 the panacea for susceptibility to be victuals, 
 
IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER 63 
 
 and that sentimentality could be stayed by 
 bread and ham ! 
 
 But as that woman and the defilement of 
 her paper had passed away, so did my 
 present discomfiture gradually evanesce ; 
 though meanwhile a spirit of restlessness 
 had taken the place of my former con- 
 tentment. People walked those broad 
 pathways in their hundreds, and I tried to 
 guess their thoughts, or, at any rate, their 
 stations in life. I saw for a moment a face 
 that was magnetically congenial ; but it 
 disappeared, never to occur again this side 
 of death our friendly intercourse limited 
 to one glance. I turned, and walked like 
 the rest. 
 
 After a few steps I was face to face with 
 the Houses of Parliament, a great christen- 
 ing-cake overladen by trivial ornament, 
 obvious and sugary. In disgustedly turning 
 my back on these mincing pinnacles, my 
 eye was caught by the rounded top of a 
 distant tower ; it appeared to be of a faint 
 rosy lilac, and for reasons inscrutable it 
 drew me like a lodestone. Henceforth, it 
 was my object to reach that tower, and I 
 
64 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 perceived to my joy that by hugging the left 
 I could keep it constantly in sight. 
 
 I passed the comfortable old Abbey brood- 
 ing like a hen, with one small chick appearing 
 at her feathery flank and goodness knows 
 how many more concealed underneath : 
 her two heads so obviously an architectural 
 afterthought that they availed nothing to 
 weaken the analogy, while the dishevelled 
 appearance of the turf round about seemed 
 to augment the impression of a poultry- 
 yard. 
 
 On the right hand, unembarrassed by its 
 cage of scaffolding, squatted the Central 
 Wesleyan Hall, substantial but uninspiring 
 as the Faith it stands for, and so plethoric 
 that if it uttered a sound, that sound could 
 be but a snore. More directly in my course, 
 I encountered the Sanctuary (what pro- 
 fanation of a lovely word !), dominated by 
 a set of buildings sacred for the most part 
 to mechanical engineering. Certainly, in 
 this Pilgrim's Progress of mine, there was 
 a complete absence of temptation to dally 
 among the side-shows ! 
 
 But the individually incongruous and the 
 
IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER 65 
 
 individually commonplace produce no more 
 effect on London than the individually 
 artistic : its magnificence is one of totality, 
 and, as such, is in the realm of subjective 
 impression. 
 
 I wandered down a long street, where I 
 began to realize that in its seeming posses- 
 sion of some secret message lay the essential 
 attraction of the pale turret. I watched its 
 crest as a beacon until, just opposite a little 
 church, surrounded by a dish-like garniture 
 of lawn and formal flowers, it altogether 
 vanished from my sight. Quite disquieted 
 I crossed the road, but still not a sign of it 
 was visible ; so I had to return to the left 
 side, where I rambled onwards in uncertainty 
 and some tribulation. 
 
 Before long, however, at a turning there 
 suddenly sprang into view the entirety of 
 my tower, which I then perceived to be the 
 complement of a great cathedral, whose 
 real colour was red with bands of transversal 
 white. Startled and perhaps a little dis- 
 appointed, I now began to find that this 
 soaring steeple was extravagant and its 
 height unending, and to question even its 
 E 
 
66 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 suitability for a belfry : rather did it seem 
 intended for some gigantic speaking-trumpet 
 with which to compel the ear of the Al- 
 mighty ! 
 
 Nevertheless, before I had walked half- 
 way across the space in front of the facade, 
 at the very opening of my preliminary tour 
 round the exterior walls of the building, 
 all such cavilling nonsense was swept away, 
 and I was rilled with a half - frightened 
 veneration which has ever since persisted. 
 I cannot describe the architecture, for I 
 have never been able to remember its 
 features. I only know that the sensations 
 with which the scheme of it filled my mind 
 are not peculiar to myself ; for I saw that 
 some street-urchin, in possession of a piece 
 of chalk, had been trying to scribble on 
 those sacred walls, but that even he was 
 conquered by the same feeling of reverential 
 fear : he had been forced to draw, instead 
 of inanities, arches and lines of rough but 
 genuine nobility. 
 
 On pushing aside the door of the inner 
 porch and entering the narthex of the 
 cathedral, the overpowering impression is 
 
IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER 67 
 
 one of majesty in all nakedness. After- 
 wards, when the eye is able to comprehend 
 details, it notices that the clusters of marble 
 columns, but half aroused from their 
 primeval repose, support arches of scarred, 
 burnt-out clay, themselves enclosed in other 
 arches more remote, which wander in some 
 elusive rhythm of their own ; and that the 
 whole superstructure of the nave quickens as 
 it offers itself in agonized abandon before a 
 huge image of the Crucified, which hangs 
 from the shadows of the ever-deepening 
 roof. 
 
 Illusion like the summer lightning is 
 incessantly playing over the scene, often 
 appearing to promise the key of its secrets, 
 yet shuddering again into the silence of the 
 unfulfilled. All that seems certain is that 
 man is here confronted with a work of genius 
 unbridled by Cardinals or County Councils 
 with a taste beyond the canons of taste, 
 supreme because unaffected and unique. 
 
 The cathedral realizes the spirit of its 
 dedication to the Most Precious Blood, 
 utterly aye, frightfully. Every brick in the 
 walls, like a living vertebrate, conceals its 
 
68 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 corpuscles ; but the ruddy consciousness of 
 them pervades the whole nave and even the 
 dove-colours of the sanctuary. The inten- 
 tion of encrusting the interior with mosaics 
 and marbles may be ultimately consum- 
 mated, but this can never shut out the 
 perpetual manifestation of the Liquefaction : 
 for the very conception is clothed with a 
 vesture dipped in blood, as was the Word of 
 God in the Apocalypse. The atmosphere is 
 impregnated with an intoxication of sacri- 
 fice, which whirls the worshipper on its 
 flood : this may be pre-Christian, this may 
 be Pagan, but it brings its tragedy into the 
 grasp of actuality. It makes certain of a 
 victim of a frenzied deity who demands 
 appeasement by his own body of us all as 
 accomplices in the act. No wonder that we 
 steal across the floor with catlike footsteps 
 and abated breath, for the place reeks with 
 that which is of our shedding : we are 
 agitated, even shamefaced, at our share in 
 this God-inspired crime ! 
 
 Eventually, the fading light, as it filtered 
 through the beauty of silvery windows all 
 moonstones and cobwebs and the mist of 
 
IMPRESSION OF WESTMINSTER 69 
 
 tears somewhat restored my composure ; 
 for it insisted on the mystic canopy of the 
 High Altar, that inspired commingling of 
 vault and triumphal arch. Thenceforward 
 I was able almost impassively to witness the 
 gradual supersession of the day. The blur 
 of gold from the chapel of the Blessed 
 Sacrament became more evident, and a 
 yellowish tinge, as if in faint protest, 
 appeared through the tracery of the lunette 
 at the western end of the nave. The 
 Crucifix and the arches were thrown into 
 grander relief, as the lamps by twos and 
 threes stole to their places and glimmered 
 beneath the gloomy capitals, while the win- 
 dows, after being subdued into translucent 
 tablets of jade, ultimately lost all lustre, 
 like eyes that have wept exceedingly. . . . 
 The architect who planned this mighty 
 scheme is dead ; and that is well. After 
 having unlocked a chamber of the infinite, 
 how could he have exploited the ephemeral ! 
 He had fulfilled. Disciple of Elias, he also 
 had called down fire from heaven fire 
 that is still feeding on his offering. He was 
 assured of his message to mankind : alas, 
 
70 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 that it should have been a groan ! His 
 lamentation never ceases : " Behold, and 
 see if there be any sorrow like unto my 
 sorrow ! " It is his agony and bloody 
 sweat that eternally discolour each cube in 
 those dull-brown walls : I know it. For I, 
 too, once wrote in my own blood, and like 
 rubies the characters sparkled on the page ; 
 but though they soon shrivelled and seared, 
 they had once been within my heart they 
 were for ever. . . . 
 
 Shall we in the future find the English 
 people worshipping like a Cingalese convert, 
 whom I beheld kneeling in penitential 
 ecstasy with a cross on his shoulders, a crown 
 of thorns on his brow ? 
 
 Can the desolation of a church infect 
 London nowadays, as Toledo, the derelict, 
 has been infected ? 
 
 Is this the renascence of Christianity 
 or its twilight ? 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 
 
 I WAS perched on the funnel of the little 
 steamer, optimistically called a pleasure- 
 steamer, that plies between Coblenz and 
 Mainz. I, at any rate, was enjoying myself, 
 for the wave -like thrills of warmth were 
 rippling up my legs into my body, and I did 
 not feel disposed to regard the warning 
 clapper of the bell when it kept on urging all 
 except ticket-holders to go ashore. 
 
 After all, I might just as well journey to 
 Mainz as remain at Coblenz in fact, better ; 
 because, though I felt for the nonce in 
 charity with all men, I had a presentiment 
 that my benevolent mood would not prove 
 a permanency and it would be prudent to 
 get a little more in touch with the frontier 
 before voicing antagonistic heresies as to 
 the impregnability of Ehrenbreitstein, or 
 even as to the charm of Stolzenfels. 
 
 That which had conduced to my some- 
 73 
 
74 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 what rudderless state of mind was, I must 
 admit, an act of indiscretion. For having 
 felt hungry, and having flown in at the 
 window of a fashionable restaurant, I had 
 been attracted by the aroma emanating from 
 a crystal jug, full of a liquid called, I believe, 
 Mai-trank. First of all I only sniffed the 
 air, and from afar gazed at that flagon in 
 admiration of the silver haze that veiled its 
 mysteries. Then, irresistibly summoned by 
 the lumps of tinkling ice, I hovered above 
 this sense-compeller to behold a strawberry 
 upon its amber bosom, springing like a lotus- 
 flower from a wealth of soft greenery be- 
 neath. I have never been a professional tee- 
 totaller, only an amateur of a grade to be 
 classed in sporting parlance as " distinctly 
 useful " : under such temptation, therefore, 
 my hover degenerated into a settle, and 
 eventually into a crawl to the brink of the 
 mixture, whose witchery by no means 
 lessened at the tasting. 
 
 After a time, I found myself on the funnel 
 of the little Rhine steamer, toasting my feet 
 and not quite certain if the boat had left 
 her moorings. However, after a few whiffs 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 75 
 
 of awakening breeze, I felt a wish to flutter 
 among my fellow-passengers gathered amid- 
 ships ; but a full-flavoured stolidity that was 
 reigning there did not encourage me to 
 linger, despite an excellent chance of im- 
 proving my knowledge of the German 
 tongue. 
 
 On the other hand I discovered, in a 
 group of English tourists, an objective more 
 harmonious with the silver haze that still 
 bore me company ; and I felt certain that 
 these lads would very soon be all the jollier 
 for not having been formally introduced by 
 Mrs. Grundy, but rather by glorious chance, 
 by congeniality, and by love of mirth. 
 All of them had evidently expected to be 
 under the spell of vine-clad hills, and grim 
 castles, and the rest of the hypocritical gush 
 of the guide-book ; but at the moment 
 when I joined them they were just beginning 
 to realize a sluggish river, on whose broad, 
 sallow face not an emotion was written, as 
 it plodded among insignificant hills vul- 
 garized by the dust and dirt of utilitarian 
 cultivation and to discover the pitiless 
 monotony of its much vaunted castles. 
 
76 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 Following the law of necessity, the bubble 
 of awe-inspiring Beauty burst suddenly in 
 their midst, and in a moment the air became 
 a-tingle with suspicions of merriment, elusive 
 as roebucks venturing forth from the dimness 
 of sanctuary. Each one of these youths had 
 previously assumed his primmest behaviour, 
 expectant of edification : each one had been 
 deceived and now the chorus of laughter 
 expanded, until the bows of the little steamer 
 seethed with the ferment of hilarity. 
 
 Before long one of their number proposed, 
 as a game to while away the tedium of ever- 
 recurring castle, that everyone in turn should 
 tell a story, to commence as soon as one 
 of these ruins was passed, to conclude when 
 the boat was exactly abreast of the next 
 venerable pile : this competition to be a 
 sweepstake, and judgment therein to be 
 obtained by a referendum. 
 
 Substantially, the following was the prize- 
 winning legend : a contribution from such 
 a spirited example of bright-eyed British 
 boyhood, as to outsiders can almost restore 
 faith in the future of the human primate. 
 His tale may perhaps be voted intrinsically 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 77 
 
 foolish, if criticized by cold canons, and its 
 theme may seem trite ; but, anyhow, it was 
 felicitous enough for its occasion, when 
 wreathed in the halo of the spontaneous, 
 of the irresponsible of the Mai-trank. 
 
 The circumstances themselves were ex- 
 ceptional ; for we were approaching two 
 ruined castles, one immediately above the 
 other. They followed the selfsame, eternal 
 pattern, although they differed in im- 
 portance : the upper one being as superior 
 in size as in position to the dwarfish castlet 
 below. When our bowsprit was parallel 
 with these, the official referee gave the 
 signal, and we were plunged forthwith into 
 mediaeval romance : " It is now many, 
 many years, O my brothers, since yonder 
 fortresses were in the heyday of their 
 existence ; but it is to this remote period 
 that I must transport you in my relation of 
 a calamity, with which I should have no 
 right to lacerate your feelings, did it not 
 contain a moral salutary as bitter. Once 
 on a time in the smaller of these strongholds 
 dwelt the Baron von Arglos, a widower 
 with an only daughter, Hilda by name." 
 
78 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 " I say," remonstrated a doubter, " do 
 you think he was really a baron, who lived 
 in that tiny hovel ? " 
 
 " He must have been a baron," was the 
 decisive reply, " otherwise, in Rhineland, 
 he would have been a serf : there is no 
 intermediate rank. Please not to interrupt ! 
 
 " The great castle aloft belonged to the 
 young Count von Dummundreich, whose 
 possessions were second only to those of the 
 Sovereign. There were certainly whispers 
 about imbecilities and even intemperance, 
 but the mothers of the neighbourhood in 
 their motherliness felt sure that he must be 
 lonesome and pining for the society of some 
 nice girls, so in their charity they yearned 
 towards him all the more. At the period 
 I am talking of, he had but lately taken up 
 his abode in the ancestral home, just at a 
 time when tourneys and pageants, and a 
 multitude of amusements (so-called), were 
 springing up as if by magic to galvanize the 
 usually sleepy country-side into a sort of 
 incongruous sprightliness. This, of course, 
 was purely a coincidence ; but somehow, 
 possibly from the impulsive kindliness of 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 79 
 
 the dowagers, our conceited stripling began 
 to misinterpret his welcome and even to 
 fancy himself the axis on which this succes- 
 sion of gaieties revolved so much so, 
 indeed, that he became quite satiated and 
 disgusted. 
 
 " Up to this time he had never seen Hilda 
 von Arglos, as she did not go into Society. 
 She gave out that she had no taste for 
 frivolities, but the other ladies indulgently 
 brushed aside this damaging assumption of 
 austerity they said that she had no clothes. 
 
 " His introduction to her came to pass 
 during a stroll towards the river, when idly 
 lifting his eyes he spied the figure of a girl, 
 clad in virginal white, reclining on a bank 
 in an attitude of such extremely unstudied 
 grace that he could not refrain from going 
 a little nearer : at his approach she screamed 
 delicately and sat erect. And the young 
 man, though impressed with his own auda- 
 city, felt somehow encouraged to seat himself 
 by her side on an accommodating tussock. 
 I don't quite know how they manage such 
 affairs, but true it is that from the very first 
 the pair were firm friends, and he naturally 
 
8o KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 insisted on escorting her to her home when 
 she seemed a little frightened at the lengthen- 
 ing shadows. After this he spent his days 
 almost entirely at the house of his new 
 acquaintances, where Hilda, who evidently 
 admired his voice, never wearied of accom- 
 panying it on her lute, nor of listening 
 sympathetically to the hurdy-gurdy of his 
 aspirations ; while she in her turn poured 
 out, in strictest confidence, all the domestic 
 discouragements of which she was the 
 innocent victim. In a week they were 
 engaged. 
 
 " Hilda yielding, as she properly said, to 
 the importunity of her lover, arranged for 
 the marriage to take place without delay, 
 which precluded an elaborate trousseau ; 
 but all the same, there was the borrowing 
 of the traditional flounces of lace from her 
 first-cousin-once-removed, the bespeaking 
 of an archbishop, the magnanimous selection 
 of bridesmaids from the most disappointed 
 of her friends, besides many minor details 
 which kept her congenially employed until 
 the very eve of the wedding day. 
 
 "But, oh! the shame of it! In the 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 81 
 
 meantime the ungrateful Dummundreich 
 had actually sickened of his good fortune, 
 and after rallying from a state of apathy 
 looked about him for some means of escape. 
 But not a loophole could he discover ; for 
 so absorbed in her love-dream was Hilda, 
 and so flawless her temper, that she did not 
 appear to perceive his coldness, and she 
 ignored altogether his clumsy attempts to 
 provoke a quarrel. And so, one fine day, 
 to his horror he found himself at the altar- 
 rail the damsel by his side the marriage 
 service in full swing. 
 
 " So also, when the Archbishop put the 
 solemn question to him ' Wilt thou take 
 this woman to be thy wedded wife ? ' he 
 for answer screeched with the violence of 
 despair an impromptu, but quite unmistak- 
 able ' NO ! ' 
 
 " Of course, the immediate results were 
 appalling. The unfortunate bride had only 
 time to gather up the priceless Brussels 
 flounce before she fainted, and in conse- 
 quence she put her foot through a vexa- 
 tiously expensive veil : her father, the 
 Baron, swore loudly and exhaustively, 
 
82 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 which so overwhelmed the Archbishop that 
 his mitre fell off ! All the ladies were more 
 or less in hysterics, and a state of panic 
 prevailed. Amid the general confusion its 
 author fled. . . . 
 
 " Six months afterwards a solitary horse- 
 man was slowly wending his upward way 
 towards the Castle of Dummundreich ; 
 needless to say, this was its owner returning 
 from a prudently undertaken tour, and, as 
 he reached the spot that had witnessed 
 their first meeting, Hilda suddenly stood 
 before him but, oh ! how altered. Her 
 eyes seemed swollen, her cheeks were white, 
 her nose was red in short, she had about 
 her all the accepted signs of genuine woe. 
 Even such a recreant nature must have been 
 shamed by its handiwork, for he exclaimed 
 almost impulsively : ' Anything in my 
 power, O Lady, will I promise for the redress 
 of thy wrongs, anything but marriage ! ' 
 She slowly turned upon him her gaze, far- 
 away and filmy, and when at last she spoke 
 her voice was unearthly as the passing-bell : 
 ' Count, you have disgraced me. I am now 
 a byword to my former companions, who 
 
THE ANT'S SECOND STORY 83 
 
 sneer in Rhenish metaphor that I angled 
 for you nearly hooked you but was 
 caught in my own net.' After another 
 impressive pause, she evidently nerved 
 herself to continue. ' But if you would 
 pretend that we were once more engaged ; 
 and at the wedding ceremony you answered 
 " I will," and left it to me this time to 
 say " NO," my maidenly reputation would 
 perhaps be again in part restored to 
 me.' 
 
 " ' Be it as thou wiliest ! ' said Dummund- 
 reich, who was still feeling considerably 
 penitent. And thus it came about that the 
 neighbours were startled by hearing that 
 the engagement was renewed ; and the 
 ladies, who flocked to call on her, reported 
 that Hilda tried to conceal her very natural 
 elation, by still dressing in that short- 
 waisted frock, by smiling pathetically, and 
 by retaining a wistful droop in both mouth 
 and mantle." 
 
 " I see the next castle looming in the 
 distance," chuckled one of the audience. 
 " Lucky fellow, for you don't know how to 
 finish, and are only spinning it out ! " 
 
84 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 " The next castle ! Just in time ! " cried 
 the historian. " Now, listen to the fierce 
 catastrophe, which will pelt you like a 
 thunderstorm in its lurid career ! 
 
 " The day and the hour had arrived, and 
 with them the bridegroom and the guests. 
 They waited in some suspense for the bride ; 
 and when, supported by her father, she at 
 length swept along the aisle like some icy 
 vapour, most of them, as they afterwards 
 agreed, felt the premonition of sacrifice. 
 The bridegroom shivered as he glanced at 
 Hilda's sternly resolute face, but on being 
 asked the all-important question he managed 
 to make answer in a fairly confident affirma- 
 tive. 
 
 " The Archbishop then turned to our 
 heroine : ' Wilt thou take this man to be 
 thy wedded husband ? ' he asked, and in a 
 still, small voice the reply came ' I will.' " 
 
THE COCK CHAFFINCH 
 
THE COCK CHAFFINCH 
 
 TO a casual observer, I dare say, he 
 would have been only a pert little 
 bird, hopping along the wall that bounded 
 the narrow garden of the Carmelite mon- 
 astery, peering everywhere with the in- 
 quisitiveness of a hardened trespasser, while 
 he recited, over and over, in doggerel song his 
 newly remembered rosary of love and spring- 
 time. 
 
 To an ornithologist, if he had given it a 
 second thought, the sight would doubtless 
 have recalled the Linnaean title of ccelebs, 
 which the absence of the hens during the 
 winter months has procured for the chaffinch. 
 But evidently to a young monk, who was 
 inside that garden, reading his office as he 
 walked the moist pathway under the shadow 
 of the wall, the advent of this little intruder 
 must have been of unusual interest ; for he 
 interrupted his pacings to listen intently to 
 87 
 
88 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 those strident chirps. He watched the little 
 fellow fluttering down to the path, and noted 
 with pleasure the pink front, the pied wings, 
 and the eager crest flirted as if in full 
 appreciation of a gay bachelorhood. 
 
 And as the monk watched and listened, 
 a dull red broke over his face, and mounted 
 even to his forehead. With a smothered ex- 
 clamation he made a quick step towards the 
 finch, which thereupon, with a saucy jerk 
 of the tail, flitted away over the garden 
 wall. A happy little bird with no soul worth 
 the saving ! 
 
 But the flush lingered on the face of the 
 young man, and his eyes grew darker as 
 they moistened, and he shivered slightly 
 once or twice. When at length he moved, 
 it was to cross himself hurriedly, to knit his 
 brows over his breviary, and to glide from 
 the garden into the adjacent chapel. 
 
 Now, from that time forth, despite of all 
 scruples and struggles, the bird kept on 
 singing in his heart by day and by night, by 
 night and by day. And that wilding song 
 persisted in his innermost being, until it 
 gradually corrupted the sacred meaning of 
 
THE COCK CHAFFINCH 89 
 
 the lights, the incense, the chaunts until 
 the very sacrifice of the Mass no longer rang 
 true, and the idea of the Christ, aforetime 
 so poignantly beautiful, became almost 
 repulsive to him, as the story of the Sacred 
 Passion appeared more unlikely, and its 
 sufferings more theatrical. 
 
 Unheeded the weeks and months crawled 
 through his consciousness ; and then one 
 morning, at the first grey, as he passed the 
 porter's lodge, he saw that the keys had 
 been inadvertently left on a table. He 
 picked them up quietly, and stood in con- 
 templation for an instant, rubbing them 
 absently with his fingers. Suddenly, quicker 
 than thought, he had unlocked the outer 
 door and had returned the keys to their 
 resting-place the faint protest of a turning 
 handle, a slight concussion from a closing 
 door, and he was in the world once more. 
 
 During his first moment outside the 
 monastery, he felt so bewildered that he was 
 compelled to lean against the wall, or he 
 would have fallen. He began to feel 
 frightened, and he looked round expectantly 
 for the chaffinch, but the bird was not there. 
 
90 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 Thoroughly unnerved by this circumstance, 
 he slunk down the street, until he happened 
 to spy an empty outhouse into which he 
 bolted. He cowered there in an extremity 
 of terror, from which he was eventually 
 stirred by a twittering among the eaves, 
 and this seemed to rouse him out of his 
 lethargy and to restore his courage. There- 
 upon, he cautiously quitted his hiding-place, 
 to find the streets still deserted, the blinds 
 still down : in consequence of which, 
 despite the heaviness of his habit that 
 impeded his movements as if unwilling, he 
 was able to hurry unobserved out of the 
 town. Soon he came to a roadside cottage, 
 on which the early sun was beaming so 
 pleasantly that he approached, just to peep 
 inside ; and he saw there, through the un- 
 shuttered window, some clothes thrown 
 carelessly across a chair. In exchange for 
 these he cast off his own cumbrous gar- 
 ment, and in delight at his regained activity 
 he capered like a fawn as he danced along 
 the road to nowhere. 
 
 He was now transformed into a wild 
 thing, fresh and exultant, without thought 
 
THE COCK CHAFFINCH 91 
 
 or wish but in the present. Sufficient for 
 him was the smell of the furze-bloom, the 
 spangling of campions on hedge-banks, the 
 tingle of the warm blood that waltzed so 
 merrily through artery and vein. 
 
 Attracted by the sparkle of water in the 
 distance, he raced up a hill to obtain a 
 clearer view of such a wonder, and as he 
 ran the springiness of the turf caused him 
 to bound into the air like an india-rubber 
 ball. Onward, upward he sped till he 
 reached a smooth plateau overhanging the 
 sea ; and here he threw himself on the 
 ground, crooning to it as he rubbed his 
 cheek lovingly against the short herbage. 
 Oh ! the rapturous ownership of that patch 
 of glaucous grass and sandy soil, studded 
 with the star-sapphires of the scabious, 
 about which he could roll at his ease, and 
 revel in the creeping of his flesh at the 
 touch of the crisp sward ! 
 
 Now, when lying prone, his eyes de- 
 liberately thrown out of focus, he could 
 create a lush woodland from the stalks of 
 the scant pasturage around : again, when 
 stretched on his back, he could fancy the 
 
92 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 hurrying cloudlets to be aerial ships, with a 
 favouring wind astern to start them blithely 
 on their long voyage their goal the un- 
 attainable. 
 
 All of a sudden a troop of bright-winged 
 rays, escaping from the upper air, precipi- 
 tated themselves seaward in a headlong 
 helter-skelter. Like grebes they dived 
 under the surface and up again. But alas ! 
 during that momentary plunge the ravening 
 wave had robbed all their gold from these 
 truant children of the sun ; and crippled, 
 helpless, their glory dulled into the sadness 
 of silver, they drifted on the tide until they 
 were devoured by some prowling shadow. 
 
 By and by the wind began to rise, and 
 dreamily he watched its progress. He saw 
 it flick with its lash the faces of sky and sea. 
 The clouds did not resist : they fled from 
 its onslaughts. But the waves confronted 
 it boldly, only glittering the more for its 
 teasing ; though from time to time white 
 teeth snarled, and livid patches scowled, in 
 contradiction of the mask of harmony. 
 
 His mind swathed in an infinite content- 
 ment, the young man was beginning to feel 
 
THE COCK CHAFFINCH 93 
 
 that the elements themselves were playing 
 expressly for him a scene from their great 
 comedy and so and so his thoughts were 
 insensibly becoming more and more dis- 
 connected and inconsequent. It seemed 
 a matter of course for him to slide into the 
 action of the drama, yet to lie watching as 
 this other self, armed with the sword of 
 science, was invading the depths to fight 
 King Neptune for the gold stolen from the 
 sunbeams. But when he had brought the 
 treasure to land, it crumbled in his hands, 
 and scattered itself as buttercups and so 
 in this wise his adventures floated over the 
 borderland, into the kingdom of Sleep. . . . 
 
 Yes ! It was the exclamations of many 
 persons that awoke him at last startled 
 exclamations, accompanied by the tramp 
 of hurrying feet ! 
 
 In a moment, impelled by a new-born 
 instinct of self-preservation, he had sprung 
 to his feet. He saw them all, his would-be 
 captors, toiling towards him, so he darted 
 at a scornful pace still higher up the moun- 
 tain-side. He was never to be a prisoner 
 again : he was a demigod : he was free ! 
 
94 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 Once more he felt the blood tingling at 
 his extremities, before it surged with trium- 
 phant swirl into his heart, his brain ; for, 
 once more the song of his friend, the chaf- 
 finch, came to him throbbing through the 
 air and this time it seemed charged with 
 a definite message. 
 
 With a laugh that was almost cruel in its 
 boyish glee, he skipped aside from the path : 
 one poised instant 'twixt blue and blue, and 
 he shot from sight over the tall cliff. 
 
 Husht ! a mighty pillar of purest spume 
 Nature's momentary obsequies are ful- 
 filled. 
 
 O Mermen, O Mermaidens, may he find 
 in your home the welcome, the love, the 
 playtime that he lacked during his sojourn 
 among earthlings ! 
 
UNAWARES 
 
UNAWARES 
 
 RECKONED by the headlong calendar 
 of Nature, it must be generations 
 since the puling New Year first appeared at 
 the breast of the Earth-mother, for here is 
 one of that year's own daughters attained to 
 peerless maidenhood ! Peerless ? Yes, there 
 can be no doubt that an English June, all 
 her greys and greens clinging mistily round 
 her, is far more desirable than her conti- 
 nental sisters, with their full-blown charms. 
 Seductive damsels, no doubt, through their 
 bold, melting glances : but a trifle vulgar 
 when compared with the exquisite rarity of 
 a goddess." 
 
 Thus were my thoughts trickling in lazy 
 current, whilst I watched, from my terrace, 
 the countryside quivering at the first hint 
 of evening, and the sun peeping askance at 
 the laburnum-clusters, as if suspicious of 
 rivalry. Gradually, with the privilege of an 
 G 97 
 
98 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 irresponsible day-dream, the streamlet broad- 
 ened as it splashed over some generalities 
 about gardens, even babbling a little when 
 I began idly to sort a few of their varieties 
 into catalogue form. 
 
 " The Kitchen Garden. Domain of senti- 
 ment and stomach, memories of childhood's 
 first gooseberry and kindred anticipations 
 of the asparagus-crop, with possible ambi- 
 tions for the local show. Useful, of course, 
 but hardly indispensable in these days of 
 the greengrocer rampant. 
 
 " The Garden of Jezebel. Despoiled daily 
 of its jewels by scissoring nymphs, so intent 
 on the decoration of house and person that 
 they never recognize the corpse in the cut 
 blossom. 
 
 " The Garden of Dives. Often miscalled 
 the Italian garden. Remarkable for hordes 
 of uninspired gardeners, and marvels in 
 carpet patterns : colours swearing like tom- 
 cats. A promenade on occasion for the 
 pomps and vanities. 
 
 " The Garden of Science. A collection of 
 labelled specimens arranged in their genera, 
 valued according to their scarcity, and vivi- 
 
UNAWARES 99 
 
 sected to establish theory. Where beauty 
 is pinched by the forceps, and dies on the 
 microscope's slide/' 
 
 But by degrees the stream of fancy 
 deepened and flowed more quietly, for it 
 had reached the confines of the ideal, the 
 true Pleasaunce. A lovely land, fragrant 
 and full of shade, agreeable not only to 
 butterflies and birds, but also to the poet, 
 even to the angels : where should be found 
 the symbolism of pagan philosophy : where 
 should be mystically embodied and ex- 
 pressed the dimensions of Reality, by some 
 reflection of sublimities in the ephemeral 
 of Seasons, of Elements, of Universe, of 
 Eternity. 
 
 On emerging from this reverie, I found 
 myself standing close to my gate, and I saw 
 through the bars a stranger who smiled at 
 me ; and I smiled in return, for he looked 
 so pleasant. I unlatched the gate, and 
 begged him to have a look round my garden, 
 to which suggestion he nodded his friendly 
 assent. 
 
 In silent sympathy we strolled along the 
 frontage of my house, and I remember to 
 
ioo KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 have noticed for the first time how like the 
 daisies were to sparkles cresting the deep 
 lawn, an unruffled lake of chrysolite mar- 
 gined by the amethystine hills of beeches 
 in bud. As we passed two spiral trunks, 
 the sentinels of the inner garden, their 
 drooping heads became murky clouds ob- 
 scuring the sky, while shrinking from them 
 the leafage of the yew-trees fell earthwards 
 with the heavy abandonment of a thunder- 
 shower ; and as we walked the length of a 
 path carpeted with moss, its colours seemed, 
 in their unexpected blendings of the vivid 
 and the sombre, to typify the journeying 
 of Time. Similarly, to my quickened per- 
 ception, the long streamers of mermaids' 
 hair flung by a willow over the coral of 
 some commingling maples, enshrined a 
 subtle illusion of the sea-floor : the primrose 
 hue of a blossom-clad mound, a sanctuary 
 of the moon : the flickering of sunbeams 
 under the wing-spreading cedars, the op- 
 pression of existence for a while among the 
 shadows of death. 
 
 Still wordless, we wandered on, lulled by 
 the everlasting murmur of distance, till I 
 
UNAWARES 101 
 
 happened to glance at my visitor ; and 
 forthwith the garden took fresh lustre, its 
 very air seeming to be filled with incense 
 and pale gold. A drift of glaucous foliage 
 appeared to be agleam with stolen starlight 
 as it shimmered through its frame of dark 
 cypresses, and the knots of flushing rose- 
 colour on its bosom to symbolize the birth 
 of spring out of the greys of winter. Junipers 
 from their spangled branchlets were sprout- 
 ing clusters of turquoises, whilst at their feet 
 the purple bugle strewed the soil as with 
 ripened grapes. A cloud of peach-blossom 
 tinged the sky in a second dawn ; and the 
 spires of distant larkspurs, like woodland 
 smoke, offered their own essence to the 
 worship of infinity. 
 
 I longed to speak. I turned again to my 
 companion and, as I met his eyes with their 
 strange beam, words unconsidered, and 
 almost at random, broke from me : "A 
 God walks in this garden sometimes I 
 believe it, I feel it, I know it ! Maybe he 
 deigns to visit this place, being desirous of 
 the refreshment of mortal flowers, green- 
 throated flowers ; or of the shelter of dusky 
 
102 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 trees, after the glow of heaven ; or of the 
 wayward warbling of birds, after the vibra- 
 tion of the everlasting harps and the 
 repetitions of the Song Celestial. Never 
 yet have I beheld him ; though I believe 
 that one day we shall meet in the halo of an 
 hour like the present. Perhaps this very 
 evening but, Friend, if 'twere so, there 
 would be nothing for us to fear, because 
 our God is Life. 
 
 Then He smiled once more, and the 
 splendour of His eyes was like the lightning, 
 brighter than I could bear. 
 
 I was on my knees among the white 
 blossoms, the curtains of my lids close- 
 drawn, when I heard a spirit singing low 
 to the thrilling of my heart-strings : 
 
 Even on the tangles 
 
 of thy phantasy 
 
 is borne, is borne 
 a garland for the Highest 
 
 for God, for God ! 
 
 I half opened my eyes : the mists of 
 evening seemed to be mingling with the 
 
UNAWARES 103 
 
 folds of the stranger's cloak. I looked up 
 I was alone. 
 
 The Sun had set : he was softly dis- 
 engaging his rays from the delicate skies, 
 and was charming home his tints from tree 
 and flower. Night was at hand : I was 
 conscious of the first, soundless throbbing 
 in that overture. 
 
AGNI 
 
AGNI 
 
 THIS is the true history of Torquil 
 Macaulay's heart, told in language 
 as plain as the libel-law of this excellent 
 country has made expedient. No doubt the 
 weather played a part in it, but the rules 
 of a drama allow of some latitude : besides, 
 this is the truth. 
 
 He was a young carpenter ; and, although 
 by blood a son of the mythopoeic North- 
 west, he for his part cultivated intellect, and 
 the facts of life : he was a member of the 
 local Polytechnic. He had long perceived 
 that a tree, to be vigorous and well balanced, 
 must stand alone especially should it be 
 free from all creepers, which only sapped 
 strength and promoted decay : hence he 
 fought rather shy of society in general, and 
 of women in particular. He was not 
 artistic in the sense of a fancy for plush- 
 framed mirrors, for Japanese fans fettered 
 107 
 
io8 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 in ribands, for lamp-shades all blond-lace 
 and flutter, or even for draperies on that 
 piano from which he raised grave harmony 
 when the mood so inclined him : on the 
 other hand, he invented his own designs, 
 and these were of a taste pure, and severely 
 classical. Thus he lived serious, self- 
 contained, and happy. 
 
 But one night he dreamed a dream as 
 vivid as the life-dream itself, so vivid that 
 it upset his balance altogether. 
 
 His body seemed to be a sort of cottage, 
 in which his head was the front room, and 
 this was well furnished and in good order ; 
 while the back room, his heart, was un- 
 warmed and entirely neglected. The damp 
 there had even congealed with the rubbish 
 into a lump that almost blocked the en- 
 trance. 
 
 Now, it happened one day that an im- 
 pudent ray of the sun outside dared to 
 thrust its way through a crack in the shutter ; 
 and the result was a thaw that made the 
 atmosphere of the back room colder than 
 ever, that contracted him as with a spasm, 
 while grits of semi-liquefied matter by their 
 
AGNI 109 
 
 attrition made him feel all over sore and 
 uncomfortable. He was annoyed at this 
 intrusion ; for although he at once barri- 
 caded, with a makeshift panel, against the 
 recurrence of such a trespass, the incident 
 had called his uneasy attention to a possi- 
 bility beforehand dormant and negligible. 
 Yes, certainly he had grounds for annoy- 
 ance ! 
 
 Worse, however, was to follow. For, under 
 stress of a stormy wind, not only was the 
 new barrier blown inwards, but it carried 
 away with it the whole casement, to the 
 rottenness of which it had been too securely 
 nailed. Then he felt really angry ; and he 
 started off in a hurry for bricks, and mortar, 
 and a trowel to make a permanent job of it. 
 But while he was collecting these materials 
 the storm ceased, and the sun reappeared 
 in all its power ; so, of course, the defences 
 being temporarily down, it glowed straight 
 into his starved heart and filled him with 
 glory. On which, in a moment, he experi- 
 enced such astonishment of happiness that 
 he was fain to proclaim to the crowd that 
 ,for all he cared the heap of bricks might 
 
i io KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 revert to its original clay, and the trowel 
 find its way into the local museum as a 
 relic of the Iron Age and it was the laughter 
 over this sally that awoke him. 
 
 Now, Torquil was much troubled all that 
 day, firstly because dreams had hitherto been 
 almost unknown to him, secondly because 
 romance was altogether so. As he went 
 to his work next morning, he gazed at 
 the sun with a puzzled admiration, and 
 on his return in the evening he studied 
 his fire, and appreciated its warmth as 
 never before. 
 
 All the next day, also, the bewilderment 
 of his strange vision grew and grew upon 
 him, so that when he chanced to meet 
 Louisa, the daughter of the first-floor 
 tenants, he actually stopped to consult her 
 on the subject. Now she, being attracted 
 by industry, respectability, and a bulging 
 forehead, had long cherished a secret in- 
 clination for such an eminent embodiment 
 of these attributes ; when, therefore, he 
 innocently confided this wonderful dream 
 and asked for her opinion, she replied with 
 decision, though perhaps somewhat in- 
 
AGNI in 
 
 consequently, as she ran downstairs : " Now, 
 I often wonder why you don't get married, 
 Mr. Macaulay ! " 
 
 Well, he did get married to Louisa, of 
 course ! And afterwards the neighbours saw 
 no traces of disappointment they never 
 so much as looked for them, and neither he 
 nor she ever mentioned such a possibility, 
 even to each other ; but all the same, they 
 both had to pay the penalty of meddling 
 with fire. 
 
 Oh ! would that tender-hearted women, 
 who are all alike in their longing to be 
 cherished, were but able to realize that the 
 original thinker is frequently a reversion to 
 ancestral type, in as far as being only fitted 
 to dwell in unpaired community, or by 
 himself as a " rogue " a recluse ; and that 
 the ideal family-man is to be looked for 
 among the ranks of the conventional, of 
 the unquestioning conf ormers to the artificial 
 laws of our civilization ! For it does seem 
 pitiful that so many of these domestic ones 
 must needs select the brazier instead of the 
 warming-pan ! 
 
 But if Louisa did make this perverse 
 
ii2 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 mistake, she bore with stoicism its conse- 
 quences : she just put in an extra hour or 
 two at the laundry where she worked, and 
 said nothing. As for Torquil, he spent the 
 most of his leisure in a little toolshed, carving 
 the pedestal for a statue, seemingly a simple 
 work ; although in his hands it proved to 
 be an interminable affair, for its refinements 
 were only consummated by fits and starts. 
 It was decorated with no elaborate pattern, 
 but it ascended in a series of flickering 
 curves, and the design might have given to 
 the imaginative an impression of flames 
 rushing upwards. Torquil himself never 
 discussed it, and to most of his critics it was 
 simply a pillar, rather unfortunately asym- 
 metrical, though carved with decision and 
 boldness, a sort of compelling boldness : 
 his wife, however, noticed that, before 
 visiting his workshop, he invariably studied 
 the fire, exciting its blaze meanwhile with 
 titbits of fuel, and that if the sun were 
 showing he would also scrutinize the inci- 
 dence of its rays. 
 
 I dare say that he might have become at 
 this period a definite Sun- worshipper, had 
 
AGNI 113 
 
 he realized the possibility ; though after all 
 it seemed as if a fire of coal, burning steadily, 
 burning away its life on the hearth, attracted 
 him most. He fell into the custom of sitting 
 over its embers late into the night, because 
 apparently he was loath to leave them 
 untended. With his elbows on his knees, 
 and his chin above his hands, he would 
 gaze at its orderly, beneficent existence, 
 pondering maybe on the immutability of 
 Law. 
 
 When the others remonstrated with him, 
 he would reply : " What a mystery is Fire ! 
 One strikes a match whence does it come ? 
 One blows it out whither does it go ? 
 To-morrow we may find it replaced by wave- 
 generated power, or by incandescence in the 
 earth below, so to-night I'll watch." But 
 when they quoted as shocking his taunt to 
 the minister that in order to frighten him 
 they would have to invent a new style of 
 hell, Louisa, the maternal, only exclaimed 
 in indulgent tones : " Lord, 'tis only his 
 hobby ! " 
 
 Not long afterwards, when he came home 
 one cold evening, his face seemed to be 
 H 
 
114 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 stained with a dusky flush, and his lips were 
 so livid that she was frightened. But in 
 answer to her he only mumbled something 
 about a pain in his side, so she did not like 
 to appear importunate. For two nights and 
 a day he brooded over the fire in a silence 
 broken only by hacking coughs, but on the 
 second morning he was found in his work- 
 shop, dead of pneumonia, with his arms 
 around his pedestal : he evidently had been 
 busy giving it the finishing touches. . . . 
 
 His furniture was eventually consigned 
 as a job-lot to the dealer at the corner of the 
 street ; and there for long stood the pedestal, 
 desolate amidst a miscellaneous stock-in- 
 trade. Customers looked round the shop, 
 some idly, others to make purchases, but 
 none particularly noticed the pedestal, as 
 none perceived anything arresting about 
 it. 
 
 One day, however, a stout, overdressed 
 lady exclaimed : " Oh, I want a stand about 
 the size of that one, will you show me some ? " 
 The shopkeeper, after the usual conventional 
 survey of his stock, replied : "I'm very 
 sorry, Madam, but to-day we seem to be 
 
AGNI 115 
 
 sold out of pedestals like that." " Oh, 
 dear ! what a pity, for this one is so plain 
 and common," with a glance at her florid 
 reflection in a neighbouring mirror, " that 
 I really couldn't put it among all the nice 
 things in my drawing-room." With the 
 wiliness of his kind the salesman murmured : 
 " Would you allow me to suggest, Madam, 
 that if it was enriched with a band of 
 polished brass and two or three of these 
 French-ormolu ornaments, it would look 
 quite distinguished ? " " Very well, if you 
 can make it presentable ; but, mind, if I 
 don't like it, I shall return it ! " " Certainly, 
 Madam, but I flatter myself I can make it 
 agreeable to a refined taste." 
 
 And so the pedestal was duly tricked out 
 with adornment as incongruous to it as a 
 ballet-skirt would be to the Venus of Milo : 
 but still the inspiration of its maker, and 
 his last sobbing breath, clung to it ; for love, 
 unlike lust, will never be driven out by 
 objective disfigurement. 
 
 After a while a nephew of the lady, an 
 art-student, happened to call on her, and 
 as he was talking of the furnishing of a 
 
u6 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 prospective studio, his eye chanced on the 
 sacred pedestal standing in its niche near 
 the fire. At a glance he saw through its 
 shameless, brazen bedizenments ; he was 
 able to dissociate it from the dyed pampas- 
 grass that flaunted upon it ; he may even have 
 had some inkling of its astral glory, when he 
 exclaimed : " That's a rummy old stand, 
 Aunt, it looks like the flame of a furnace ; 
 if it was mine I should paint it red and 
 yellow, it would look ripping but I should 
 knock off those brass fal-lals that have been 
 stuck on it." Now his aunt had always felt 
 an uneasy suspicion that it was rather too 
 plain for her drawing-room, so she generously 
 insisted on his accepting the admired object, 
 as her contribution to his new rooms. 
 
 But that very night a lithe serpent was 
 born of a long-smouldering beam, and glided 
 into the room raising its orange head hither 
 and thither, prying everywhere with tingling 
 glances. It found the pedestal, and hastened 
 to entwine the slender stem. In the agony 
 of those purifying coils the garish dross 
 shrivelled and peeled off the carven wood, 
 which gradually quickened and quickened 
 
AGNI 117 
 
 until all of a sudden a very column of fire 
 burst forth ; and the flame, hurling itself 
 heavenward, hung trembling in mid-air like 
 the magic ladder of an Indian juggler Agni 
 had claimed his own. 
 

 THE ANT'S LAST STORY 
 
THE ANT'S LAST STORY 
 
 IT has just come to my knowledge, O my 
 human readers ! that I am accused of 
 having in former anecdotes invariably ele- 
 vated some man or other into a hero. Now, 
 though it might tend to glorify the power of 
 my imagination, I could not submit to an 
 imputation of the vulgar error of hero- 
 worship, and worse than that of human 
 hero-worship, and worst of all of senti- 
 mental, human hero-worship. I shall, there- 
 fore, try to refute this slander, albeit to-day 
 I hardly feel in the vein for story-telling, by 
 an account of the only human event that I 
 can recall where there was not a man in the 
 case : which account, from its precision con- 
 cerning the vagaries of one of your hand- 
 made deities, may also prevent my being 
 classified among those neophytes who, pros- 
 trate before the humano-divine ideal, are 
 necessarily out of position to envisage 
 actuality. 
 
 121 
 
122 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 In my extreme youth, in my salad days 
 as Shakespeare so refreshingly calls them, 
 I took once on a time so heedless a flight 
 that I had lost all idea of my bearings, before 
 I was recalled to the practicalities of the 
 situation. The sun was stooping wearily 
 towards the western horizon, and I noted a 
 curious glare in the sky, which caused me 
 to murmur to myself : " Surely these are 
 the signs of divine wrath. The God of this 
 land is out of sorts, not thunderously but 
 with acidity. Someone will suffer for it." 
 
 At this moment I happened to hear a 
 female voice raised in anger (than which 
 sound there is none more penetrating), so 
 out of callow curiosity I poised on my wings, 
 and listened. The voice issued from a house 
 close by, wherein a middle-aged woman, 
 beside herself with spite, was hissing taunts 
 at a pale girl. " Surely the day was accurst 
 when my son brought home as his wife the 
 bastard daughter of a wanton ! " after 
 which final touch she rustled out of the 
 room, her lips narrowed to a scythe's edge. 
 But the bride swayed brokenly, and fell to 
 the floor and lay there in silence ; while, 
 
THE ANT'S LAST STORY 123 
 
 outside the casement, the wind of heaven 
 was watching catlike, though he feigned to 
 laugh with the purple flowers of the clematis, 
 which in the consciousness of youth and 
 popularity were tossing their silly heads 
 till they reeled giddily against the pane. 
 
 In my dismay at what I had seen, I cried 
 out impulsively to the God of that country : 
 " Forgo this once Thy right to pain, and 
 tears, and misery ! Comfort, O Lord, this 
 
 white lamb, and I will " Here I broke 
 
 off in confusion, for the commencement of 
 my prayer had come tumbling about my 
 head, flapping like an empty sail. A 
 practical reminder that I was in the country 
 of a jealous God, who had no intention of 
 granting informal audiences to foreigners 
 much less to insects. 
 
 But see ! the girl has stirred ! She is 
 standing now ! Love and home have been 
 dethroned by the horror gibbering at her 
 heart, and she scatters futile words in her 
 agony. She huddles a cloak around her and 
 stumbles along the passage, to the outer 
 door. In blind haste she drags it open, 
 crosses the threshold, ventures a few paces 
 
i2 4 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 and hesitates. But God's wind, having 
 deserted the garden, has crept behind her 
 down the passage, and he is shutting that 
 door. 
 
 Ah ! now she is hurrying back, to regain 
 the shelter of the house. " Quick, girl ! " 
 
 Alas ! she is too late listen to the click 
 of the latch in its socket ! 
 
 A moan the glimmer of a form flying 
 to the shadow and the sun goes down. 
 
 Bah ! how curiously emotional I am this 
 evening. I cannot continue the story : I 
 don't feel in the humour. It really does not 
 matter if I be misjudged ; and I forget what 
 happened afterwards, it was so long ago. 
 I would rather speak about my own feelings, 
 about my own folk. I understand them 
 better perhaps and, anyway, I can count 
 on a wholesale ignorance in my readers. 
 
 After all, there may be some sort of 
 sympathy, of clannishness, of trades-union- 
 ism, among males of all sorts and sizes. It 
 is only natural ; when we have to describe 
 the other sex as of twice our size with a 
 powerful jaw, and a sting. This is not a 
 prophetic picture of woman made perfect 
 
THE ANT'S LAST STORY 125 
 
 according to the hopes of the suffragettes, 
 it is the actuality of the female ant ; and to 
 prove that I have no intention of ribald 
 comparison I will add that the first action 
 of our female, when she settles down to 
 the care of a nursery, is actually to tear off 
 her wings. 
 
 The male emmet is only physically 
 superior to the female at one point, he has 
 thirteen joints to his antennae, one more 
 than the equipment of his mate ; but this 
 only gives him a more delicate sensibility, 
 which is a drawback in this brazen world. 
 Now man is more fortunate, in that his 
 superiority over his female, says Haeckel, 
 consists in having an extra ounce of brain. 
 I can't remember the exact wording of the 
 text, but his idea is embodied in the following 
 hymn, which I picked up at a school-feast or 
 somewhere : 
 
 The ounce left out in Woman's brain, 
 That most important ounce of all, 
 
 Will many curious things explain 
 The broken vow, the frequent fall. 
 
 In His own image God had wrought 
 Man for His masterpiece, His best : 
 
 Woman was but an afterthought, 
 And one that showed His need of rest. 
 
126 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 To return. Although your naturalists 
 during the last thirty years have made 
 great discoveries about insects, partly from 
 observation and partly from lucky guesses, 
 they have by no means mastered their 
 subject : for instance, our flights, educa- 
 tional and nuptial, are still to them sealed 
 mysteries. They clearly perceive that we 
 are not harassed by industrial strikes, but 
 it has been hidden from them that we are 
 stoically conscious of our inevitable doom 
 death by matrimony death on the honey- 
 moon. 
 
 Again, the question is completely un- 
 answered whether among males in general, 
 among men as well as ants, the love-passion 
 is attributable to Aphrodite Urania, or to 
 Aphrodite Pandemos whether it is ob- 
 jectively inspired by one outside personality, 
 or is a subjective growth, and as such, only 
 in need of some fortuitous peg on which to 
 hang itself like a swarm of bees. In this 
 connection it would be of value to ascertain 
 if his hens represent " the fair sex " to the 
 mind of a peacock, and if the hover- 
 ing Vapourer-moth regard his wingless, 
 
THE ANT'S LAST STORY 127 
 
 maggot-like mate as the incarnation of 
 pure grace. 
 
 Personally I am in some suspense nowa- 
 days, as I don't much relish the prospect 
 of my Happy Despatch. If it were 
 possible, I should so much prefer to live on 
 comfortably, like a human old-bachelor. I 
 often wonder, in fact, when I fancy that our 
 workers are looking askance at me, what 
 would really be my fate if I were to try to 
 introduce the fashion. . . . 
 
 And yet the marriage flight : dancing 
 and shimmering through the pale vapour, 
 from morn till morn again the being in 
 love with love ! Thousands of us moving 
 together, in unison, rhythmically, up and 
 down in the bridal dance like the motes in 
 a sunbeam, like the waves of the sea ! 
 
 Ah, that Rhythm ! It has caught me ! 
 I feel it swaying, surging, struggling through 
 body and limbs, breath and brain ! It is 
 running like quicksilver ! And the quivering 
 and the crackling of my wings how the 
 flashing colours are streaming ! Ah ! for the 
 force of the wind and the upper air ! 
 
 On, on, it matters not where ! On, on, 
 
128 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 my beloved ; for to-night thou art mine, 
 and there is no to-morrow ! 
 
 The drumming of my wings the whirring 
 of my wings ! Quick ! away, away ! I 
 come ! I come ! 
 
A LIGURIAN PARADISE 
 
A LIGURIAN PARADISE 
 
 MADEIRA was all very well, and so 
 were the Ionian Isles, but all the 
 time a feeling of exile pervaded me. I 
 really was a long way from home. So when 
 I spread the wings of departure, it was done 
 with a sense of finality, of closed episode : 
 Faustlike, I was not desirous of bidding the 
 fleeting hour to stay. 
 
 Since those days I have visited many 
 parts of Europe, in quest of my ideal for 
 hibernation, which I have eventually de- 
 cided to be on the Riviera Ponente, between 
 Genoa and the French frontier, a coastline 
 almost within a day's journey of England ; 
 for I found that at San Remo, Bordighiera, 
 and Ospedaletti the winter months were for 
 the most part dry and sunny, without that 
 perilous bitter-sweetness, the Judas-kiss of 
 a waspish wind. 
 
 Having discovered so much, it only 
 
132 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 remained to determine the exact focus of 
 my aspirations, and this I found on the 
 southern slopes above the little town of 
 Alassio. Here perpetual summer seems to be 
 enthroned ; and I fancy that to distinguish 
 the seasons a floral calendar must be neces- 
 sary, with items such as mimosa-time, for 
 example, or "the promise of the almond- 
 bloom." 
 
 During my first January in Alassio 
 there was only one day without any sun, 
 only two on which rain fell ; and this amid 
 rumours of devastating floods in France, of 
 snow at Monte Carlo, and of tempest at 
 neighbouring San Remo. On most days 
 one could lunch in the open air, at a table 
 comely with violets and sweet-peas, where 
 the waves plashed a distant accompaniment 
 to the chaunting of the bees in some creepers 
 overhead. And roses ? Yes, yes, every- 
 where ; for in this serene land the rose might 
 be chosen as the emblem of eternity ! 
 
 He who unearths a treasure is generally 
 inclined to silence : for which reason I have 
 been somewhat reticent in the past. The 
 motive for this discretion, however, has 
 
A LIGURIAN PARADISE 133 
 
 lately ceased to exist : as I perceive from 
 the freshly laid foundations of many hotels 
 that the outside world has at last begun to 
 take an independent interest in this quaint 
 town of the one long street, hushed and 
 narrow as the nave of some ruined abbey, 
 which is so close to the sea that the gloom 
 of its southern transepts is irradiated by an 
 ineffable turquoise. 
 
 But, O Anglo-Saxon stranger, mind that 
 you come here in the character of a gentle- 
 mannered guest rather than as a super- 
 cilious divinity so that you yourself may 
 be in the picture ! Do not import too 
 exclusive notions of behaviour, and even 
 sacrifice occasionally the propriety of dress- 
 clothes or if this be too hard a saying, take 
 care that you do not wear them didactically ! 
 Learn the language : imitate Italian polite- 
 ness : frequent the cafes : attend the 
 parish church ; and, above all, do not infect 
 the atmosphere with northern boredom and 
 modernity ! 
 
 In Alassio there is a blessed absence of 
 forced amusements : no golf, no casino, no 
 patchoulied peris in short, none of the 
 
134 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 usual vulgarities for the vacuous. But in 
 their place there is an infinity of walks and 
 clamberings among mountains clothed with 
 soft colours, and all the charm of an unspoilt 
 Italy where you may listen to the delicate 
 notes of the blackcap, and perhaps surprise 
 the distant flash of an oriole, as you wander 
 through shining olive-yards, whose owners 
 gaze at the intruder with the large-eyed 
 tolerance of a Jersey cow. 
 
 Other whiles, when indisposed for exertion, 
 you can choose the broken bench of some 
 nestling shrine and, like the Quietist of a 
 bygone day, allow the peace of God to soak 
 its way into your soul. These shrines, 
 lovely mementoes of the truths in a more 
 ancient worship that the Church came not 
 to destroy but to fulfil, are sprinkled over 
 the hills, dedicated to loneliness, and to the 
 Blessed Virgin in her various aspects of 
 omnipotent benevolence the Madonna del 
 vento, the Madonna delle grazie, and, for 
 anything I know, to the Madonna del 
 farniente, surely the most grateful of them 
 all to the overwrought brains of the present 
 century. Infallibly soothing, also, is the 
 
A LIGURIAN PARADISE 135 
 
 fellowship of the olive-trees, with their elusive 
 tendency to blend with the atmosphere in 
 a silvern wedding : a wonder, approaching 
 perhaps to the magic reconciliations in the 
 web of the rainbow Nature's supreme 
 sermon on the virtues of tact. 
 
 I have tried to outline a few of the simple 
 joys of this country : but in justice I must 
 also draw attention to the more ambitious 
 possibilities of its gardens, by instancing 
 one that I have often visited which steals 
 like a smile across the face of the hill, three 
 hundred feet or more above the bay and the 
 tiny town on its shore. Rock, and pool, and 
 jewelled flowers in profusion, are to be 
 found along terraces that are overarched by 
 greenery translucent with entangled sun- 
 beams : but all this is as nothing compared 
 with the wonder of its nightly transfigura- 
 tion. 
 
 No sooner has the westering sun vanished 
 behind the mountains, and the sky assumed 
 its robe of indigo, than the surroundings 
 melt into the realm of Faerie. Phantasy 
 enhances the sables of the carob-trees the 
 mystic finger of the cypress the gleaming 
 
136 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 and writhing of the weird agaves, symbols 
 of Laocoon and the serpents the transverse 
 foliage of the eucalyptus conjuring sparkles 
 out of shadow the shuddering of the palms 
 at the touch of some departed zephyr 
 even the crimsons of that villa which is 
 vaporously exhaling a rhapsody of broken 
 organ-chords. 
 
 But see ! the diamond lights of the town 
 below are combining with the stars above, 
 in one glittering panoply, to guard this couch 
 of Endymion ! Or is it that the garden, 
 embosomed in a constellation, is floating, 
 floating away into space among a limitless 
 assemblage of the shining ones ? I feel 
 myself encompassed by twinkling, twirling 
 
 orbs, and I A thin, matter-of-fact 
 
 voice at my elbow disillusions me by its 
 perfunctory inquiry : " Did not you tell me 
 at dinner that it took about twenty-nine 
 hours to reach Charing Cross ? " 
 
BONA MORS 
 

 BONA MORS 
 
 I ^RESH from the sunlight : fresh from 
 JL the warm street, where tiled roof and 
 lime-washed wall have been combining to 
 riddle my eyelids through and through with 
 rays intensified, the bleak corridor of the 
 village hospital is too violent a transition. 
 Its brick flooring and discreet tints react 
 unpleasantly, so I push through some faded 
 curtains to fall on my knees before a great 
 mystery. 
 
 This, then, must be the chapel, very tiny, 
 very quiet. It is mid-afternoon, and there 
 is a vague feeling of suspense, perhaps only 
 of waiting and in hospitals they are always 
 waiting. Kyrie eleison ! 
 
 A sickly smell of iodoform emanates from 
 the wards, which are merely partitioned off 
 by the folding-doors that form the entire 
 sides of the chapel. Mawkish light is 
 struggling through a yellow fan-window 
 
140 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 above the altar, and it touches uncertainly 
 a sheaf of arum lilies, ghostly serpents with 
 eager tongues, and a handful of tulips 
 scarlet and sin-like, hanging their heavy 
 heads in abasement before the Presence. 
 For He is there, Lord of Hosts, King of 
 Kings, surrounded by rows of brazen 
 candlesticks arranged for the office of 
 Benediction. 
 
 Gaunt, meagre, yet strangely harmonious 
 the altar glooms forth, relieved by an occa- 
 sional glint from dull metal, while the rosy 
 lamp, emblem of Bethlehem's star, twinkles 
 and flickers fitfully in front of the sanctuary. 
 
 So this is the court of the Most High, of 
 the King Omnipotent ! This, the abiding- 
 place of the Lord resurrected, and glorious 
 after His eclipse ! This, the seat of the 
 promised deliverance ! 
 
 Inhuman, but not malevolent, the reproof 
 of the austere sister-in-charge, when I had 
 once proposed to bring some cheerful 
 pictures for the inmates, flaps heavily 
 across my mind : " The hospital is for 
 a good death." And somehow it almost 
 seems as if Death were the master here. 
 
BONA MORS 141 
 
 What if this place were to prove, after all, 
 to be under his dominion ! 
 
 In the wards the patients are reminded of 
 evening devotions by the rising animation 
 of their nurses. An aged dotard, whose 
 vision, focussed on the joys of heaven, can 
 behold nothing less august, feebly salutes 
 as the Madonna a homely sister, to her 
 evident contentment. A consumptive boy 
 lies supine : his eyes are staring, as the eyes 
 of a sparrow stare when, having ceased to 
 struggle, it lies passive in your hand. A 
 faint, blurred copy of his Master, his body 
 also is sacrificed day by day, and his ex- 
 hausted lips are even now enshadowed by 
 the purple ritual. His gaze, charged with 
 both knowledge and apprehension, fixes 
 itself suddenly on me, and thus taken by 
 surprise I stammer, " Courage, you will live 
 again ! " Instantly there spits forth a 
 " Speriamo di No ! " in a hiss that is half 
 a groan. Speriamo di No f Father Al- 
 mighty, is it possible that this child has 
 neither memory, nor anticipation of joy at 
 an age when joy, though shallow, should 
 ripple through the days ! His cry is for 
 
142 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 covert, for darkness, for oblivion, for the 
 grave : he is terrified at the prospect of an 
 immortality, all glare and exertion ! 
 
 " Towm-m ! " resounds lingeringly from 
 a deep-voiced clock, followed by pulsations 
 of the disturbed ether : " Towm-m ! " 
 the recrudescence of medicinal odours : 
 " Towm-m ! " the impotent writhings of 
 vitality : " Towm-m ! " the drawing back 
 of the wooden walls of the chapel. 
 
 Hush ! Now should we be in the very 
 presence of the Lord of the Word made 
 flesh to receive His special blessing. For 
 there, behind boards almost as bare as the 
 manger of Bethlehem, reposes His Body 
 summoned this day by the incantations of 
 the priest ; and this glorious mystery, en- 
 shrined in a monstrance, will soon be lifted 
 up so that all men may verify the Presence 
 by their corporeal sense. Hush ! Oh, hush ! 
 
 An attendant begins to light the little 
 rows of tapers on the altar. At first I am 
 only dimly conscious of the process, but 
 before long I find myself anxiously watching 
 the third one from the left, wondering if that 
 perverse point of flame will ever succeed in 
 
BONA MORS 143 
 
 kindling the entire wick it looks so sickly, 
 it wavers so perilously. A heavy-jowled 
 priest, enveloped in flowing cope, invades 
 the sacred precincts, and to the accompani- 
 ment of a thready, spiritless drone the 
 service proceeds. But, alas ! for the hostile 
 brightness of the candles, in sharp contrast 
 with the drawling hymns, and the vacant 
 faces of the patients ! It reveals the kneeling 
 celebrant as a pyramid of tawdry tinsel : 
 the flowers as hags rather than penitents : 
 the entire chapel as garish and unreal to the 
 core. In this environment of sham, the 
 divine office seems so mechanical, such a 
 matter of routine, that even the exposition 
 of the Holy Body becomes almost tame, 
 while the tiresome tinkle of a cracked bell 
 adds to the bathos. The priest expectorates, 
 and departs. The smouldering wicks are 
 finally quenched by a thumb and finger, 
 which succeed the tin extinguisher : the 
 partitions roll jarringly along their grooves. 
 A parting glance shows the face of the 
 imbecile still in flaccid ecstasy, the sharp 
 profile of the boy petulantly averted, the 
 chilly precision of a just-emptied bed ; but 
 
144 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 it also reveals Death folding his great, noise- 
 less wings, as he alights to nestle over his 
 children his own once more. 
 
 I return to the chapel, for my heart is tired. 
 I watch the grey shadows, creeping silently 
 from their hiding-places to resume their 
 flittings hither and thither, as they wreathe 
 their veils over the wan altar : and again, 
 in the twilight, I ponder over the meaning 
 of this place where gloom is the mantle and 
 adornment. It is no temple of life, present 
 or future. It must be it is the vestibule 
 of Death, of cool, soothing, velvety Death. 
 To shut him out my hands violently close 
 my eyes, but stars flying upwards in a 
 tumult are my brain's immediate homage 
 to his omnipotence : I let my hands fall, 
 only to become conscious of a white body 
 emerging from the dusk, the symbol of 
 suffering softened by silence. 
 
 O pale figure, with the outstretched arms, 
 art thou the Christ ? Or art thou a Saviour 
 indeed, but one older, more universal than 
 He ? If so be, thou hast no sting, and of 
 thy victory we all partake ! Into thy peace ! 
 Into thine everlasting peace ! 
 
TREASURE TROVE 
 
TREASURE TROVE 
 
 IN the smoking-room of the great liner 
 a desultory discussion on art was 
 flickering, when I chanced to give utterance 
 to a somewhat vehement lament that none 
 of the works of Apelles had survived for our 
 edification ; and as I finished my harangue, 
 I met the eyes of a man who had hitherto 
 rebuffed the advances of his fellow-passen- 
 gers. It struck me that he was regarding 
 me with the expression of a master, appre- 
 ciative of the effort of an intelligent pupil, 
 and by that look my curiosity was so piqued 
 that when next I saw him on deck I went 
 straight up to him and without any cir- 
 cumlocution reopened the subject. " I feel 
 sure, Sir, that you are learned in Greek 
 antiquitiy. Might I enquire if you have 
 ever travelled in search of its relics ? " 
 He seemed rather startled, and again 
 regarded me earnestly before he stammered 
 
148 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 out : " Travelled ! Yes ! I have travelled 
 and searched. But all is now faint in my 
 memory all save one hour." He still 
 hesitated for a second or two, and then 
 plunged into the following statement : 
 
 " I was dabbling in archaeology, and I had 
 gone with a guide to visit some far-away 
 ruins in Macedonia : I no longer recall their 
 name. I only remember that I had a guide 
 with me, and that we travelled for days, 
 eating and sleeping as best we could. 
 
 " We had arrived late one evening at a 
 village adjacent to our goal and had secured 
 some sort of lodging ; but during the night 
 there was a sudden oscillation, and a growl 
 as of a train passing, at which everyone 
 rushed into the street and remained there, 
 watching for the deliverance of the morning. 
 
 " As soon as it was daylight we set out 
 on foot for the ruins, but before long we 
 were brought to a standstill by a landslip 
 across the path, a huge mass of sand and 
 gravel fallen from an overhanging cliff. 
 With difficulty we scrambled up the yielding 
 side of this mound ; but when my guide, 
 who was somewhat ahead of me, reached 
 
TREASURE TROVE 149 
 
 the top, he uttered a cry of astonishment, 
 and hung back as if spellbound. I hastened 
 to his side, where I saw that he was staring 
 at a doorway conspicuous in the freshly 
 denuded face of the hill. To break through 
 rusty hinges with a kick was the work of 
 a moment. The door fell inwards with a 
 hollow crash, carrying with it a further 
 portion of the crumbling wall : and when 
 the dust had subsided somewhat, the day- 
 light and I entered together. 
 
 " At first, all seemed blackness to my 
 contracted pupils, but there gradually ap- 
 peared through the gloom, massive pillars 
 supporting a ceiling above walls that were 
 decorated with large frescoed panels ; and 
 as my sight grew still clearer, my attention 
 
 was first attracted, then absorbed to the 
 
 I 
 
 obliteration of all else, by the picture nearest 
 to the entrance. 
 
 " I perceived at a glance the subject of 
 this breathless glory ! It was the Sun-god 
 dashing through the upper air, scattering 
 the clouds and trampling them underfoot. 
 His body shone white, the incarnation of 
 the purest ray, and its dazzling intensity 
 
150 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 prevented aught but an impression of this 
 lord of flame and beauty too blinding for 
 mortal vision. The light neither preceded 
 nor followed him, it was He ! The sparkles 
 from him floated and hovered like birds, 
 eventually to crystallize in starry pathways 
 across the cobwebbed air, while one diamond 
 beam seemed to pour directly from the 
 god into my brain. 
 
 " Simultaneously their father and their 
 fate, he vaporized the lizard-like wraiths as 
 they were whirled by his very momentum 
 into his presence and perished before his 
 fiery glances arrow-tipped by the swiftness 
 of the steel-blue : the inevitable overthrow 
 of shadows by that energy which is Light 
 Eternal. 
 
 " His blazing hair, the emeralds of his 
 eyes, the glitter of his limbs, the shrivelling 
 of the darkness at his touch, the necessity 
 of his headlong advent, all united to 
 proclaim Phoebus Apollo the Sun ! the 
 Sun! 
 
 " But as the breeze fails before the 
 majesty of noon, so was the power of my 
 mind sapped by this contemplation ; and 
 
TREASURE TROVE 151 
 
 I escaped thankfully, and, as it were, 
 thirstily, to the second panel. 
 
 "A cool, luminous grey prevailed in the 
 portico that framed the noble figure of a 
 man leaning slightly forward, held between 
 trance and swoon, listening. In his promi- 
 nent eyeballs, in his slightly parted lips, in 
 the quiver of sensitive nostril he recalled 
 the ecstasy of some Spanish saint, although 
 the fulfilment of his peace was far removed 
 from the reminiscent agony of a Zurbaran 
 or an El Greco. 
 
 " His eyes were not for sight : they glowed 
 like quiet lamps before the shrine of the 
 Immortal ! In this manner Pythagoras, 
 philosopher supreme, was listening to the 
 Music of the Spheres, listening to the song 
 of the Celestial Brothers of the universe, as 
 they hymn an eternity where space and 
 time have no meaning the song of the 
 Quintessential of the Real. 
 
 " My whole being concentrated itself upon 
 the face of the sage, from whom in very 
 deed I seemed about to gather the mystic 
 power of intercommunion of the senses. 
 And as I gazed, I began to understand how 
 
152 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 all men, if freed from the tyrannies of this 
 gross dream, miscalled Life, might realize 
 those harmonies. I even fancied for the 
 moment that faint, far echoes were mur- 
 muring to me, in a sea-shell rhythm, the 
 prelude to the sacramental poem the 
 wordless song of God. . . . 
 
 " But surely my eyes were becoming over- 
 strained, as well might be ! An undulating 
 shiver seemed to run over the surface of the 
 wall. Or what was the horrid dimness that was 
 intervening like a veil. I felt that the picture 
 was receding, and that this was happening 
 in patches. Soon, I could hardly see some 
 parts, while others were fairly distinct. The 
 face itself of Pythagoras was vanishing ! 
 
 " Then first I realized that the fresco was 
 actually fading away. 
 
 " I rushed past the other panels, no longer 
 containing anything but blurs of colour and 
 unintelligible lines : I rushed past the space 
 opened to the sunlight, through which I had 
 entered. Alas ! the glorious Sun-god had 
 set for ever, and in the place so lately sacred 
 to his radiance a toad-like stain of dull drab 
 now squatted. 
 
TREASURE TROVE 153 
 
 " I staggered into the open air : I heard 
 the guide's voice mumbling something 
 about ' exposure to the atmosphere ' : then 
 suddenly there was a terrific roar, with a 
 shock that hurled me to the ground, as the 
 chamber tottered inwards and collapsed. 
 
 " Since that day, I have unceasingly 
 mourned the transiency of my vision, the 
 poorness of my memory. But I have gained 
 this much of knowledge from the painter 
 of two thousand years ago : that each 
 individual soul must be suns and winds unto 
 itself, even if the light fade and the song 
 die." 
 
AN APPRECIATION 
 
AN APPRECIATION 
 
 IN his former book, which is concerned 
 with the creed of Christ, the author has 
 adopted a summary method of discarding 
 as spurious all incidents that do not dovetail 
 into his own exalted conception, but their 
 excision seems more desirable than con- 
 vincing more acceptable to the heart than 
 to the head. And again, in spite of the 
 crystalline beauty of his ideas, there persists 
 an uncomfortable suspicion that his selected 
 gospel stories are being stretched almost 
 beyond their capacity that the old bottles 
 are being filled with new wine. 
 
 But throughout the text of " The Creed 
 of Buddha " there reigns a certainty akin to 
 inspiration. 
 
 The reticence of the Buddha on what may 
 be termed matters of doctrine, an inten- 
 tional reticence as this book triumphantly 
 proves it to have been, has permitted the 
 
158 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 development of latent ideas, which are 
 to-day flashing their gleams of salvation to 
 the spiritually-minded of the present age. 
 In like manner a thousand years hence shall 
 the philosophers be able to adapt the same 
 teachings to the needs of that period for 
 Buddha's evangel is as elastic as the eternal 
 must ever be. 
 
 With its earnest sympathy and its keen 
 logic, " The Creed of Buddha " is, as far as 
 I know, the first popular illumination of the 
 deep soul of Buddhism that has been 
 vouchsafed to our generation. In any case, 
 the labours of Dr. Rhys Davids seem more 
 scholastic than didactic in their aim, and 
 those of Dr. Paul Carus lack spirituality : 
 while Mr. Sinnett's " Esoteric Buddhism " 
 savours of the conjurer's bag, and the various 
 clergymen, who bear Balaam-like witness to 
 the more obvious virtues of Buddhism, treat 
 of the subject from a Christian standpoint, 
 which naturally fails to visualize the more 
 volatile essences. 
 
 Again, from the very circumstance of 
 their being written in poetry, Sir Edwin 
 Arnold's wonderful books, though permeated 
 
AN APPRECIATION 159 
 
 with recondite Buddhistic truth, excite a 
 sense of unreality in many minds the 
 choice of rhythmical words suggesting arti- 
 fice to the matter-of-fact. 
 
 The author of " The Creed of Buddha " 
 for the moment preferred an anonymity 
 most acceptable to independent readers who 
 resent the present-day custom of involving 
 personality with literary work which gave 
 him some protection from the ha'penny zeal 
 that might have already told us the number 
 of his daily meals and the brand of his under- 
 clothing ! Thus he descended upon us as if 
 from another world, to preach a spiritual 
 philosophy that could stand of itself, on its 
 own merits. And his clear thinking, his clear 
 language, the logical procession of his solemn 
 chapters lead us gradually but irresistibly 
 to the conclusion that the Universal Soul 
 is the true self of all men, though the process 
 of soul-growth will alone enable us to realize 
 this ; and that the most inexorable of all 
 Nature's laws is the law that makes the 
 universe one living whole, the law of 
 centripetal tendency, the law of love. 
 
 In the preface an appeal to common sense 
 
160 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 rather than to erudition is made. " The 
 indisputable fact that Buddha himself kept 
 silence with regard to the ultimate realities 
 and ultimate issues of life shows that the 
 task of interpreting his creed is one for 
 ' criticism ' (in the widest and deepest sense 
 of the word) rather than for ' scholarship '- 
 for judgment that enables a man to make 
 use of the learning of others, rather than for 
 learning as such." 
 
 The first chapter, "East and West," 
 contains a comparison of the differences 
 that underlie the religious thought of two 
 continents. But though it points out that 
 " for all but a chosen few the figure of 
 Brahma [the world-soul, the all-embracing 
 life] must needs recede into the dim back- 
 ground," and " as it recedes, lesser Gods 
 some beautiful, some terrible, some loath- 
 some, some grotesque emerge from the 
 darkness and claim man's homage," it shows 
 that these strange cults are all of them 
 stepping-stones by which the awakened 
 soul can make its way out of the morass of 
 a wholly material existence. 
 
 Clarity, beauty, truth are mingled in the 
 
AN APPRECIATION 161 
 
 following august exposition, which must 
 compel the admiration due to a master- 
 piece ! " The soul, or inward life, alone is 
 real. Eternity is a vital aspect of reality. 
 Birthlessness and deathlessness are the 
 temporal aspects of eternity. The present 
 existence of the soul is not more certain than 
 its pre-existence and its past existence : and 
 these three the past, the present, and the 
 future lives are stages in an entirely 
 natural process. . . . Issuing from the Uni- 
 versal Soul, it must eventually be re- 
 absorbed into its divine source. Beginning 
 its individualized career as a spiritual germ, 
 it passes through innumerable lives on its 
 way to the goal of spiritual maturity. The 
 development of the germ-soul takes the 
 form of the gradual expansion of its con- 
 sciousness and the gradual universalization 
 of its life. As it nears its goal the chains of 
 individuality relax their hold upon it and, 
 at last with the final extinction of egoism, 
 with the final triumph of selflessness, with 
 the expansion of consciousness till it has 
 become all-embracing the sense of separate- 
 ness entirely ceases, and the soul finds its 
 L 
 
162 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 true self, or, in other words, becomes fully 
 and clearly conscious of its oneness with 
 the living Whole." 
 
 Chapters 3 and 4, " The Path of Life " 
 and " The Teaching of Buddha," are as 
 plain and practical in their teaching as their 
 forerunners are idealistic. Indeed, so much 
 to the point are they that the average man 
 will soon be terrified by the tottering of his 
 rampart of excuses, and at a most un- 
 comfortable sense of an unsubstantial, 
 objective world slipping from under him. 
 They insist that before all else self-control 
 is necessary, though only as a means of 
 establishing healthy " soul-growth " : that 
 this in its turn will slowly but surely lead 
 up to the acquisition of true knowledge or 
 grace, which is erroneously represented as 
 a supernatural gift. They condemn super- 
 naturalism (the abrogation of natural law) 
 with no uncertain voice : they condemn also 
 the " false dualism " that admits of no 
 intermediates, that distorts polar opposites 
 into alternatives that divides by a hair's- 
 breadth South Heaven from North Hell! 
 We learn from them that there is nothing 
 
AN APPRECIATION 163 
 
 heroic about entering the Path and prac- 
 tising the simple life of the soul, no convul- 
 sive storming of high heaven and therein, 
 maybe, lies its principal hardship for this 
 melodramatic generation. 
 
 Chapter 5, "A Misreading of Buddha," 
 is perhaps the least satisfactory portion of 
 this remarkable book. Not from any failure 
 on the author's part to demolish entirely 
 the arguments of the " metaphysical atom- 
 ists," based on Buddha's supposed denial 
 of the Ego : but simply from a feeling of 
 regret that so eminent an architect should 
 have had to undertake even temporarily the 
 work of the housebreaker. 
 
 Chapter 6, " The Silence of Buddha," and 
 chapter 7, " The Secret of Buddha," are so 
 continuous in their stream of subtle reason- 
 ing that any attempted abridgment would 
 fail in its object. There is no superfluous 
 sentence to omit : these treatises must be 
 studied at first-hand. 
 
 It is curious to find that the dilettante in 
 religion, the man of much curiosity to little 
 purpose, who while prattling of summits is 
 contented to walk the plains, existed even 
 
164 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 in early days ; though he received scant 
 encouragement from the Buddha, who 
 declined to discuss secrets of existence, 
 which had to be discovered by each one for 
 himself. For, the Exalted One saw clearly 
 that no one could appreciate truths so long 
 as they were above the level of his present 
 understanding, that wisdom was not to be 
 learned from any ready-made formula, and 
 that enlightenment could be won by him 
 alone who, having swept the rubbish out 
 of his soul, succeeded in deciphering the 
 shadowy characters that were thus laid bare. 
 
 Chapter 8, " The Bankruptcy of Western 
 Thought/' is an indictment of the religious 
 materialism of Europe, ironically clothed in 
 the language of commercial finance ; while 
 the concluding chapter, " Light from the 
 East," is an eloquent appeal to Europe to 
 fertilize its barrenness by the influence of 
 the spiritual thought of India, by the ethical 
 philosophy of the Buddha and for so doing 
 Christ's own example is cited as a precedent. 
 
 It has been a difficult task to give any 
 idea of a book, in which all is memorable and 
 all interwoven by chains of reasoning as 
 
AN APPRECIATION 165 
 
 strong as they are unobtrusive. Its facts 
 are familiar to many, but its deductions are 
 startling in their boldness and originality. 
 In very truth, many of these deductions are 
 so momentous that I have not dared even 
 to hint at them, for fear of doing them 
 injustice within the narrow limits of this 
 essay. 
 
LONELINESS 
 
LONELINESS 
 
 ON my way to Java I had the good 
 fortune to fall in with two congenial 
 fellow-travellers, and we journeyed thence- 
 forward in company. Our goal was the 
 derelict Buddhist temple of Boro-Budur, 
 but on leaving Batavia we often turned 
 aside to visit the famous monuments that 
 were adjacent to our route. 
 
 On the outskirts of the ruined palace of 
 Kratonja Sultane stood an elliptical arch, 
 under which we had to pass. In designing 
 it, the architect must have dreamed of a 
 glory of wings and blossoms, and have 
 endeavoured to reproduce on its spandrels 
 the supreme moment of his vision : for the 
 conception was not of this world, either in 
 subject or in treatment. 
 
 Afterwards, as I rode along, my mind was 
 
 continually returning to that gateway, 
 
 which, despite the lofty distinction of the 
 
 palace, did not somehow assimilate with its 
 
 169 
 
i;o KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 scheme ; and I did not feel at ease until I 
 had decided that such a masterpiece must 
 have been really intended for the first 
 introduction to the distant Boro-Budur 
 that I had come from so far to visit, that 
 I was ever approaching. Moreover, the en- 
 chantment of peerless Java, where the skies 
 are pale from scattering their sapphires 
 broadcast over the landscape, contributed 
 to a state of exaltation in which I began to 
 believe that the very highway was to me, 
 who had already passed through its portal, 
 but an avenue leading to the great shrine. 
 
 It was in the early morning, when the 
 guide announced to us that we were in sight 
 of Boro-Budur ; but through the mist I 
 could only see the trees standing like 
 sentinels, as I did not know what to expect, 
 what to look for. Before long, however, I 
 descried in the distance that which at first 
 seemed to be a grey village on a slope, backed 
 by the high peaks of volcanic mountains. 
 
 Frankly, my first feeling was one of dis- 
 enchantment at the general effect of this 
 roofless pile of building : it did not realize 
 my ideal. 
 
LONELINESS 171 
 
 It seemed, as I kept drawing nearer, that 
 I saw before me a square citadel occupying 
 an entire hill, a vast equilateral, converging 
 gradually toward its summit on which stood 
 a large rotunda, surrounded by a cluster of 
 subsidiary bell-shaped cupolas : the aspect 
 of the whole being that of a confusion of 
 ramparts and throned images. 
 
 I walked up a broad approach, bristling 
 with stone lions of heroic dimensions, before 
 I reached the steps to the lower galleries. 
 There were four of these, curiously alike 
 though, of course, diminishing in size. The 
 walls were covered with sacred bas-reliefs, 
 exquisitely chiselled, but with such pro- 
 fusion of detail that they dazed the beholder : 
 they formed a background to over four 
 hundred enshrined statues of the Buddha, 
 nearly life-size, which were separated from 
 each other by the sitting figure of a man and 
 a woman alternately. Above these four 
 terraces had been placed a rampart of bold 
 and attractive design, which divided the 
 whole structure into two portions. The 
 upper part was possessed by three tiers of 
 small domes, each of which protected a 
 
i;2 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 lotus-throned statue of the Master in 
 meditation. Here aloft, he was invariably 
 in meditation, which contrasted with his 
 presentment throughout the lower galleries, 
 where he was frequently in the acts of 
 preaching and receiving his disciples. 
 
 By the time we had roughly explored the 
 precincts, the heat was almost overpowering, 
 so we retired for the midday rest. . . . 
 
 I had been dozing, I suppose. For the 
 first words that I gathered from a conversa- 
 tion between my companions were : "It 
 seems to me that the difference is that 
 Buddhism only lends one a soul, while 
 Christianity gives it. And I must own that 
 a definite Heaven seems to me better worth 
 struggling after than Nirvana the supreme 
 negative." 
 
 " I don't know about that," laughed the 
 other voice. " I have been educated to a 
 Heaven that is a kind of Walhalla for 
 prosperous, middle-class people. All of us 
 know by heart its hackneyed trivialities, 
 and we have reconnoitred in anticipation 
 every corner of that swept and garnished 
 spot with its Salvation choirs, its mo- 
 
LONELINESS 173 
 
 notony, and, unkindest cut of all, its resur- 
 rection of the body. But there ! I suppose that 
 most of us like to touch bottom, to keep one 
 foot on the definite even if it be the unlikely : 
 anything to shirk the deciding for ourselves 
 on such subjects/' I did not wait to hear 
 any more : I stole away. All the same, 
 when I got outside I found myself harping 
 on the same string : " Yes, yes ! In fact, 
 we really resemble the ladybirds, which 
 sham death, and will resign themselves to 
 its reality, rather than take the trouble to 
 spread their ample wings, even for the sake 
 of freedom and security ! " 
 
 I climbed into the cool silence of the 
 temple, into a solitude shared only by a pair 
 of soaring kites, and by some wild bees 
 attracted to the flowers rooted in crannies of 
 the masonry an association that restored my 
 faith that wing and blossom were the tokens 
 to gain me admittance into the true Boro- 
 Budur. Anyway, as I scaled the side of that 
 storied mount, all inquisitiveness, all criti- 
 cism seemed to die away before the growth 
 of understanding and appreciation not of 
 technicalities in the architecture, but of its 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 hidden meaning. The numberless Buddhas 
 tranquillized the senses, diffusing serenity 
 and peace, as do the beads of rosaries with 
 their reiterations so mechanical that they 
 become merely a harmonious accompani- 
 ment to independent thought ; while the 
 subordinated bas-reliefs typified the toss and 
 turmoil of the world outside. 
 
 I gained the dividing rampart, and passed 
 into the upper calm. Here were the rarified 
 surroundings in which to envisage verities ; 
 for in such a place discussion and argument, 
 sacrifice and worship, prayer and praise 
 would have been alike impertinent. This 
 was the abode of exalted meditation, where 
 conventional routine was sterilized by the 
 comprehension of its proper function. I 
 sat in the stairway at the feet of the solemn 
 conclave images with their features heavy 
 in that concentration, which like some 
 majestic undertone supported their musings. 
 
 An incident that had happened to me 
 before I left England drifted across my 
 mind. I had been induced to consult a 
 wizard, a man of great repute as palmist and 
 soothsayer. His diagnosis of my character 
 
LONELINESS 175 
 
 was sufficiently correct, although in it, of 
 course, my virtues were rather over-coloured. 
 But there came a sudden catch in his voice, 
 with the exclamation : " Oh ! it is painful 
 your loneliness. I am sorry for you, so 
 tired, and so very, very lonely. Even your 
 gifts would seem to be curses in your entire 
 solitude." " But I have many excellent 
 friends ! " I objected, startled into words 
 by this outburst. " Not spiritual friends," 
 he retorted, " though you may be thrown 
 among good people who like you, and of 
 whom you are fond : there is no one that 
 satisfies your inner self, and there never will 
 be. Like Tantalus, you will be at hirst, 
 although surrounded by plenty. Others 
 possess their affinities, but you were born 
 an odd number ! " After this speech he 
 drew back, almost as if his light touch must 
 be hurting my hand. " Do you mean," 
 I questioned, " that my lovers and friends 
 are to be like those of the Psalmist, that I 
 have virtually drawn a bye in life ? " He 
 bowed his head, and would speak no more 
 on the subject. 
 Although I was not altogether a believer 
 
176 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 in the man, his dictum had certainly rankled ; 
 for I was impressed by that curious break 
 in his voice. But by a flash of enlighten- 
 ment, I now perceived that he had only 
 uttered a commonplace of superficial criti- 
 cism about a career in which the centripetal 
 trend was just becoming apparent in 
 which instinctive segregation had become 
 a factor, as in the caterpillar when impelled 
 to cocoon-spinning. 
 
 Indeed, the evolution of the butterfly is 
 altogether emblematic of the journeyings 
 of a soul through the world firstly as the 
 ovum before the attainment of sentience ; 
 secondly as the larva or caterpillar, active 
 and communistic ; thirdly as the pupa or 
 chrysalis, in quiet seclusion ; finally as the 
 winged Imago which floats away to life and 
 the sunshine. In like manner, the intelli- 
 gence has to pass through four phases 
 the germinal, the material, the spiritual, 
 the divine before the Soul can arrive at 
 the absolute realization of self, that entitles 
 it to salvation. 
 
 Wherefore, it is not by minimizing but 
 by expanding selfhood that a man can make 
 
LONELINESS 177 
 
 progress. As phosphorus stores up the sun- 
 rays to diffuse them in dark places, so must 
 he collect wisdom against barren days : as 
 a silkworm extracts from itself the golden 
 fabric wherewith to shut out the world, so 
 must he weave home-grown beauty into a 
 veil to interpose between his consciousness 
 and the actualities of this life. What 
 matter whether the sky be clear or overcast, 
 whether the flower be rose or thistle, since 
 all phenomena are manifestations of the 
 same energy ! 
 
 After a while, the lethargy of fatigue stole 
 over me. I was wide awake, but my volition 
 was failing, my vitality was giving out. 
 The blood in these tropical countries be- 
 comes thin and curiously volatile : I could 
 feel it trickling away from my brain. There 
 is, I suppose, a like experience in the 
 shadow of the death-hour. If so, the joy 
 of surrender must surpass the joy of victory ! 
 
 I was aware of Mount Sumbing thousands 
 of feet above me, together with the other 
 cones glowing and gleaming in Java's 
 mysterious purples. I was aware of the 
 creation of a far sunset-land over the western 
 
1/8 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 rampart : of the heavy clouds changing 
 into dreamy hills crossed by rays of spectral 
 light, angel-paths from glory to glory : of 
 the tongues of fire and the shallows of pea- 
 cock-green melting into each other, only 
 to separate like earthly loves and to fade 
 eventually into the all-conquering grey. 
 
 Then, as always, the cicadas struck up 
 their immediate paean to the night, and 
 I listened passively to their chorus, un- 
 ceasing and monotonous as the crying of the 
 seraphim ; until at last I was released from 
 my reverie by the cheery voices of my 
 companions, on their way to the summit for 
 a view of the moonrise. . . . 
 
 Long ago the saffron-robed monks have 
 passed away, long ago the volcanoes have 
 ceased to offer their incense, but Boro- 
 Budur still ponders over the Nirvana of 
 final accomplishment. 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 
 
 IN the opening days of the year 1889 I 
 found myself at Marsala, a mock- 
 oriental sort of place bearing the same 
 relation to the genuine East as does its wine 
 to sherry. I had just finished a tour 
 through Sicily, and was in quest of a steamer 
 to take me to North Africa. 
 
 In the hall of the hotel a German was 
 addressing his dried-up wife in a tender 
 guttural, reminiscent of the outpourings of 
 a slender-necked bottle, and I sighed at the 
 thought of such as they being my only fellow- 
 guests. But my despondency was prema- 
 ture, for shortly afterwards in strolled an 
 American debonair, preternaturally know- 
 ing as is the habit of his countrymen, and 
 a traveller to the tips of his sensitive fingers. 
 In the circumstances we of course frater- 
 nized, and were soon laughing and talking 
 like old friends. 
 
 181 
 
182 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 shall never forget how he charmed and 
 amused me by his witty sallies, and by 
 the solemnity with which he would in- 
 troduce the ultra-ludicrous. He had his 
 irrelevant flashes of genuine seriousness too 
 ah, well ! I shall never forget that 
 evening ! 
 
 I remember that he set himself to per- 
 suade me that I had hitherto only wandered 
 around, not having so much as touched the 
 hem of oriental truth ; to which I retorted 
 that certainly a paradise paint-box had 
 never been included in my luggage, if that 
 were what he meant. 
 
 " To condense a fact into its smallest 
 possible compass," said he, "is to make it 
 look unnatural as well as inelegant, like your 
 clothes would appear after being crushed 
 in the packing." And he gravely recom- 
 mended me to close my eyes each day at a 
 fixed hour, imagining myself in the farthest 
 orient ; after which discipline, to write 
 down my recollections of the journey 
 through space. This he called the culture 
 of subjective or elsewhere truth. 
 
 " I believe," was my comment, " that I 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 183 
 
 catch your idea, which exhibits a novel facet 
 of this gigantic abstraction : 
 
 " Say what you will ; yea, heights unrivalled dare, 
 There is no lie that's not a truth somewhere ! " 
 
 And so on, with chaff and laughter till 
 nearly midnight, when the porter came to 
 warn me of my necessary departure for the 
 boat. 
 
 My companion vowed that he wished it 
 had been possible to go with me to Tunis, 
 and he added : " You say you are going 
 through Algeria afterwards, so why shouldn't 
 we meet at Hammam Meskoutine to-day 
 fortnight, and make together that expedi- 
 tion into the desert, from Biskra ? " 
 
 " I will be there/' I gladly promised, 
 " though it will be at your risk, for my 
 conscientiousness may tend to ossify your 
 fairy-like adventures." 
 
 In due time my ship arrived at Goletta, 
 the port of Tunis, and I disembarked amid 
 the usual yelling of aborigines, from whom 
 I was delivered by a small Israelite, agleam 
 with silver stars and crescents on a ground- 
 work of dark blue. I felt as if I were in the 
 presence of a power of the night at a 
 
1 84 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 Covent Garden ball : but no ! he proved 
 to be only an understudy of the porter at 
 the Grand Hotel. My new protector was 
 genially loquacious ; but he frightened me 
 by his clairvoyant acumen he knew my 
 name, had seen me previously in Marseilles, 
 and probably was well versed in all the 
 arcana of my career. 
 
 Next morning, despite torrents of rain, 
 he worried me into starting upon the round 
 of the sights. I have a dislike to official 
 sight-seeing at its best, and my powers of 
 observation are always depressed thereby ; 
 however, I was taken to the Bardo palace, 
 which I found to be furnished in the crudest 
 European taste. The glare of its gold 
 created wild longings for a cup of cold 
 water, or a dinner of herbs, or any other of 
 the stereotyped antidotes ; and gave me 
 reason to doubt the inspiration of those 
 prophecies about heaven that encrust it 
 with bullion, which, at any rate, when 
 coupled with magenta satin, seems more 
 indicative of quite another place. 
 
 The day after, even in bed, I was invaded 
 by my self-constituted guide, armed with 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 185 
 
 two sinister-looking muskets ; and I felt quite 
 relieved when I discovered his object to 
 be plunder without assassination that he 
 merely wished to sell me the weapons. 
 Nevertheless, to escape purchasing them, I 
 had to promise that he should personally 
 conduct me to Carthage. 
 
 I went to Carthage ; but alas, it had been 
 so " blotted out " that even sentiment 
 could not reconstruct it ! A few cisterns 
 here, some broken pillars there, and a 
 handful of insignificant relics wrapped in 
 a peasant's dirty apron, were the only 
 visible indications of Rome's former rival. 
 They prated of the palace of Dido, the 
 Forum, the temple of ^Esculapius but one 
 stone was not left on another (nay, there 
 was hardly the one stone, not to mention 
 the other !) to mark their former where- 
 abouts ; and I suspected that the brand- 
 new Catholic cathedral, so flamboyantly 
 perched on a neighbouring hill, probably 
 contained far more of Carthage than did 
 the forlorn site itself. . . . 
 
 It was on Tuesday, after my return from 
 an expedition down the coast, that I 
 
1 86 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 remembered my rendezvous at Hammam 
 Meskoutine on the Friday ; so there was 
 not much time to be lost. I was to travel 
 by the newly constructed railway that 
 connected Tunisia with Algeria, but I heard 
 a rumour that the line was broken by the 
 heavy rains, and that traffic was suspended 
 an ugly rumour that I could not verify 
 from the sphinx-like authorities. My train 
 was due to start soon after five o'clock next 
 morning, but not until bedtime did I 
 receive official notice that tickets would be 
 issued only to Ghardimaou, a place about 
 half-way to my destination. I was warned 
 against starting but, of course, I had to 
 start ! 
 
 Towards noon the train duly reached 
 Ghardimaou, a desolate place enough. Appa- 
 rently there was no hope of proceeding any 
 farther by rail, so I importuned the Caid 
 of the village for mules to convey me over 
 the mountains to Souk-aras, the other side 
 of the break ; but I could extract from him 
 no definite promise, only the information 
 that such a journey would take eleven hours 
 at least. 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 187 
 
 However, on my crestfallen return to 
 the station I was gladdened by one ray of 
 hope. I got an inkling of the arrival of a 
 secret telegram announcing that on the 
 morrow a special train would run right up 
 to the break, as the engineer and a director 
 wished to inspect the disaster. There would 
 surely be means of getting to the other side, 
 if only I were allowed a seat in that special ! 
 
 Next morning before six o'clock I was 
 on the platform, though the station-master 
 professed to know nothing of any special. 
 But in an hour's time an engine stole up 
 with a carriage and a van, and by the 
 courtesy of the director, who respected my 
 impassioned appeal, I was allowed to be one 
 of the seven to make that journey. The 
 train, like Agag of old, went delicately ; for 
 the line was all the time on the banks of a 
 river, which it had to recross thirteen times 
 between Ghardimaou and Souk-aras, and 
 there was no certainty where the heavy flood 
 might not have undermined the railroad. 
 
 We ventured cautiously along for more 
 than an hour, anxiously watching the metals 
 and listening to the spiteful hissings of the 
 
i88 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 torrent, until the train finally stopped close 
 to the complete ruin of a hundred yards 
 of embankment at an elbow of the river, 
 where the current in passing seemed to 
 snatch savage bites at the hill-side round 
 which the rails were hanging like a necklace, 
 forty feet above the water. 
 
 From this spot we had to scramble as 
 best we could over the boulders and rubbish, 
 our luggage being dragged after us by a 
 horde of Arabs, until we reached a place of 
 safety on the opposite side, where we waited 
 for the news of our successful crossing to be 
 telegraphed forward. And, indeed, there 
 was plenty with which to occupy our minds 
 as we stood there ; for without any warning, 
 the hill that we had just skirted seemed to 
 heave a deep sigh, and down crashed the 
 suspended metals into the stream, accom- 
 panied by huge masses of earth and rocks. 
 
 Half an hour afterwards we were carried 
 off on a trolley shoved by relays of natives 
 running along the metals, soon to be trans- 
 ferred to another engine and carriage which 
 bore us through a blinding snow-storm to 
 Souk-aras. 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 189 
 
 So, after all, I arrived at Hammam 
 Meskoutine on the Thursday night ; and 
 next morning I visited the phenomenon 
 known as the petrified cascade, which is little 
 more than a stone-throw from the hotel. 
 
 Imagine the head of Medusa to have been 
 flashed before the varying tints and shadows 
 of a waterfall, with the result that the rush 
 and swirl of its foam upon foam, the deep 
 honey-green of its elusive eddies, the rain- 
 bows of its sparkling drops were transfixed 
 in the midst of their play, and became for 
 evermore motionless, tangible ! To this 
 extent you may conjure up some reflection 
 of this supreme tribute to sleeping beauty, 
 though none but an eyewitness will ever 
 understand the thrill of the involuntary 
 expectancy that, while he is watching, it 
 will it must reawaken. 
 
 After this supreme sensation I walked 
 languidly among pearl-lined basins of boiling 
 water, and fissures snorting forth steam, to 
 see the famous cones, which by Arab 
 tradition are really the desiccated participa- 
 tors in the rites of an incestuous marriage 
 these persons, together with the entire 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 landscape, having been thus metamorphosed 
 in the twinkling of an eye. Now this is not 
 an edifying tale, for it hints at the possible 
 failure of divine retribution, like Balaam's 
 curses and occasionally butter, to material- 
 ize ; since to flourish, a rose-tinted monu- 
 ment crowned with ferns and bedecked 
 with delicate lichens, in a woodland of wild 
 olives, is certainly a kinder fate than to 
 fester, an offensive skeleton in a box, which 
 would have resulted from more orthodox 
 behaviour. 
 
 Another local legend, less popular but 
 more suggestive, relates that Solomon, 
 when on frolic bent, used to patronize these 
 hot springs ; but in his proverbial wisdom 
 dreading tell-tale gossip, he deputed as his 
 attendants some genii who were blind and 
 deaf and dumb, a triple padlock on intimate 
 matters. And to this day those faithful 
 genii, all unknowing, continue to fill and 
 empty his bath. . . . 
 
 When I returned to the hotel, I found that 
 my American acquaintance had arrived, as 
 well as four English ladies travelling to- 
 gether, and a rather solemn-looking youth 
 
FROM AN OLD DIARY 191 
 
 who was returning from a protracted tour 
 in the East. 
 
 That evening we all sat round the fire ; 
 and whether for my benefit or from pure 
 mischief, my new friend absolutely scin- 
 tillated with his " elsewhere truths." 
 
 The company was spellbound ; until as 
 he was picturing some impossibly radiant 
 place, the stolid youth gasped out : " Where 
 did you say ? " 
 
 " In Siam, of course," replied the Yankee 
 imperturbably. " Don't you recollect it ? " 
 
 " Not exactly," stammered the English- 
 man. 
 
 " Ah ! " with inconsequent compassion, 
 " then perhaps you don't keep a journal, 
 and didn't master the language." 
 
 And the others looked superciliously at 
 that abashed stripling, as if to say : " Yes, 
 he is an idle and ignorant person, indeed ! " 
 
 Before long my friend had transported us 
 to Seville ; and to illustrate the necessity of 
 the guitar among Spaniards, he told us in the 
 course of his anecdote how " after the dinner 
 I was beginning to recount my day's 
 wanderings through the wonders of their 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 city, when the eldest son arose and fetched 
 a guitar, which he handed to me with these 
 words : ' Sing your adventures to this, O 
 stranger, they will sound better so ! ' 
 
 But shortly afterwards, when he was 
 enlarging upon a palace of ivory somewhere 
 or other, that solemn youth reappeared with 
 a battered old post-horn ; and as he respect- 
 fully laid it across the knees of the narrator, 
 he murmured : " Proclaim your adventures 
 with this, O stranger, they will sound better 
 so!" 
 
KAIRWAN 
 
 N 
 
KAIRWAN 
 
 {CONFESS that I do not appreciate 
 the slumbering ocean, at any rate 
 when it breathes so heavily ! " Such was 
 my comment to the captain as, after a night 
 of ground-swell, we stood on the deck of the 
 Italian boat, watching the gradual aggran- 
 dizement of Suza, fair herself as the dawn, 
 with the moon like an aureole hanging 
 heavily behind her white minarets. 
 
 Down rattled the anchor ; and a skiff 
 came alongside, to which I committed 
 myself. The moment it touched the shore, 
 two young fellows seized my bag at different 
 ends, and eventually fought for it. This 
 fighting among the natives is of curious 
 procedure, and seemingly one of infinite 
 possibilities to the thoughtful ; for its 
 ritual consists in each one tearing up and 
 spoiling his own clothes. 
 
 I was bound on a pilgrimage to Kairwan, 
 
196 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 the safest and the most accessible of the 
 sacrosanct cities of Mahommedanism ; but 
 on enquiry at the hotel I learned that the 
 tram (locally known as "la plate-forme ") 
 went there only once a week, and that it 
 started in connection with the French boat ; 
 so I had to conclude the hire of a private 
 carriage. During its equipment I strolled 
 along the shore of the bay, where the sea 
 lay glistening like opals in a setting of dull 
 gold. Did primitive life do well, in arising 
 from the sea and migrating inland ? I took 
 a sip of the sea-water, and still felt uncertain 
 about the answer. 
 
 From the porch of the hotel I made a 
 magnificent start with four horses abreast, 
 harnessed to a sort of brougham, which, 
 however, before long began to disintegrate ; 
 but as it seemed only to lose its ornamental 
 parts (now a window, then a door), we were 
 able to proceed in some sort of safety. 
 
 On our road we were passing a very black 
 Black, who looked tired, so I gave him a 
 lift as he said that he also was bound for 
 the holy city ; and on the morrow I had 
 practical proof that even blackness is only 
 
KAIRWAN 197 
 
 skin-deep, for he waited an hour outside my 
 lodging merely to reiterate his gratitude. 
 
 We passed at first through groves of 
 dusty olives, which looked as if, tired of 
 comparing their diffident silver with the 
 blatant sand, they had lapsed into the 
 oblivion of disgust. Then we crossed a 
 hideous plain unrelieved by anything except 
 an occasional camel, which now, for the 
 first time in memory, became by contrast en- 
 dowed with an uncouth comeliness. There 
 was a curious resemblance between these 
 camels and their masters the same im- 
 passivity, the same lower lip, the same 
 inward kink at the hock. I have become 
 possessed of a biting form of reproach, used 
 by the Arab to his camel, something that 
 impeaches the behaviour of her maternal 
 aunts for three generations : it is but no, 
 I will emulate the silence of the victim, a 
 silence almost religiously impressive, in the 
 mouth of an insulted female ! 
 
 My driver pointed out to me some robbers, 
 but they were distinctly below the standard ; 
 in fact, we escaped molestation of any sort, 
 except from a small sparrow-like bird whose 
 
198 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 prejudices we must have unwittingly of- 
 fended, for it dashed at us with extreme 
 violence. 
 
 The track was all the way bad ; but we 
 coped with it at a gallop over it, through 
 it, and seemingly at times under it for five 
 hours. Like dice were my bag and myself 
 rattled, before the final shake-out on the 
 doorstep of the squalid, provisionless " Hotel 
 de 1'Europe," just at the gate of Kairwan. 
 
 On the advice of my host I did not venture 
 within the city walls that evening, but 
 instead I wandered away towards a solitary 
 mound that seemed to beckon. In my path 
 there lay a dead donkey, which is pro- 
 verbially stated to be a contradiction in 
 terms. But somehow this one seemed real, 
 and very pathetic ; and as I passed him by, 
 the words kept ringing in my ears, " where 
 the weary are at rest/' Yes ! poor brute, 
 wherever you had gone I hoped it was to a 
 rest an Arab donkey at rest ! The happi- 
 ness of suchlike in this world is confined to 
 the few seconds a day that they can snatch 
 for a roll but during the process heaven 
 itself is in their eyes ; and by the same law 
 
KAIRWAN 199 
 
 of compensation, the more degraded the 
 beast, the more itching the skin, and conse- 
 quently the more exquisite his enjoyment 
 of this one relaxation. 
 
 I gained my hillock ; from which I 
 watched the blossoming of evening around 
 this spotless city of pure domes the blues 
 of the nearer atmosphere shading to slate- 
 colour on the horizon, where sky and plain 
 were united by bands of pink and orange, 
 in the presence of a congregation of salmon- 
 breasted clouds. 
 
 In the morning, I received the permit of 
 the French consul to view the mosques, and 
 he sent one of his own men to accompany 
 me ; with whom I walked through dirty 
 streets and dirtier lanes, gazing with rever- 
 ence at the heavy doors and the intricate 
 lattice- work that never, never shall reveal. 
 
 I was shown a huge basin, 150 yards in 
 diameter, with a chamber as its centre 
 to which the sultan used to be rowed in 
 a boat no need of boat any more, for all 
 was dry and dusty as a threshing-floor. 
 We inspected the tombs of many Saints on 
 the way to the sacred well of El Barota, 
 
200 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 where the camels that drew the water were 
 walking upstairs to the first landing, as if 
 no drawing-room could be complete without 
 them : where also the narrowness of the 
 stairway, and the adroitness of the animals 
 in minimizing themselves, caused me to feel 
 more hopeful about that famous problem 
 which connects them with the eye of a 
 needle. 
 
 The great mosque of Sidi Okba I found 
 to be a building impressive in both size and 
 sentiment, despite its want of height ; and 
 despite the transgressions of the white- 
 washer, who, not content with hiding the 
 beautiful stonework, had splashed and 
 spotted even the marble columns, in some 
 cases effacing the capitals with his pharisaic 
 compound. The prayer-chamber is im- 
 mense in size, and it may well have been 
 the original inspiration for the mosque at 
 Cordova : it is divided* into seventeen aisles 
 by more than three hundred superb columns 
 which, like those in St. Mark's at Venice, 
 have been plundered from older buildings. 
 Set up in the midst are two pillars, between 
 which it is impossible for any sinner to pass ! 
 
KAIRWAN 201 
 
 I was anxious to put my own status to the 
 test, but this was not allowed another 
 unfortunate one condemned without trial. 
 
 Formerly five hundred sages used to 
 teach simultaneously in the mosque ; but 
 at the time of my visit there was only one 
 of them to the fore, and he was instructing 
 some small boys, who were playing high- 
 jinks with the Koran, reciting its sober 
 precepts in tones and inflections appropriate 
 only to a nursery rhyme. 
 
 How like is this Mahommedanism to the 
 Dissenting faiths of England in its con- 
 tempt for the quality of awe, in its abhorrence 
 of imagery, in its intolerance, in its squaring 
 of virtue with desire ! A splendidly virile 
 religion no doubt, but, like the rest of the 
 Semitic group, instinct with oppression, 
 war, bloodshed ! 
 
 I was to leave Kairwan by the tram ; so 
 at six o'clock next morning I hurried through 
 the drizzle and the darkness to its starting- 
 place, to find certainly the car, an antique 
 vehicle devoid of anything save the frame- 
 work, which was adapted to the narrowest 
 of gauges. But there was no sign of a 
 
202 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 departure even in contemplation, unless it 
 were the presence of three solemn Arabs, 
 looking as if they were the efflorescence of 
 those gaunt benches, as they squatted with 
 not a leg visible and nothing to encourage 
 belief that they had ever been endowed 
 with motive action. Half an hour passed, 
 and still no sign, except that two or three 
 more travellers had trickled to the spot. 
 Suddenly a throbbing tumult, as of distant 
 drums, became audible, and folk stared at 
 one another apprehensively and whispered, 
 " the river ? " At this crisis, one of the 
 passengers extricated his valise from under 
 the seat, and retired to his home, saying 
 resignedly : " The platform will not get to 
 Suza to-day. I have heard that sound 
 before, the embankment has given way." 
 Imagine the general consternation at a man 
 of evident experience going home for another 
 week, because he bowed before the inevit- 
 able ! 
 
 At this juncture, however, while the 
 survivors (if I may so call them) were staring 
 blankly at one another, two ragged-hipped 
 mules lounged into view, followed by two 
 
KAIRWAN 203 
 
 attendants, and amid novel excitements the 
 past was forgotten. For, when the traces 
 were fastened, neither mule would stir a 
 step, so we all got out again to lighten the 
 machine, returning to it by more or less 
 successful headers when the pair rushed 
 suddenly, and violently, forward. The pace 
 was terrific for about a hundred yards, and 
 then another long pause. A man fetched 
 the leaf of a neighbouring cactus to apply 
 as a plaster to the " white one " which 
 was so free with its heels ; but meantime 
 the maledictions of the united company, 
 reinforced by all available sticks and 
 umbrellas, had induced these interesting 
 creatures to reconsider their strategy, 
 during which time of truce they tolerated 
 propulsion in front of the car by a band of 
 natives shoving behind it, and eventually 
 even consented to a temporary resumption 
 of normal function. 
 
 Just, however, as we were congratulating 
 ourselves, there was one more abrupt stop 
 accompanied this time by a sullen splash; 
 and behold ! there wallowed both our mules 
 in a swamp by the side of the track, their 
 
204 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 heads alone visible. With a promptitude 
 evidently born of previous experience the 
 conductor, when he had detached the 
 traces from their swingle-bars, sprang after 
 the bathers, and ladled water into those 
 expansive ears, a course of action that was 
 instantaneously effective. But afterwards, 
 till we had escaped from the marshes, the 
 white mule, in deep disgrace, was tied at the 
 rear of the car, and we certainly progressed 
 with more regularity, drawn by the brown 
 one alone. 
 
 Our adventures for the day were over ; 
 and falsifying all evil predictions, when we 
 reached the river we passed over and not 
 into it ! 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 
 
 WHILE it was yet spring while the 
 world was full of the morning while 
 youth surged through me, a flame flickering, 
 from its very intensity, like the wings of a 
 seraph while all was sunlit, morrowless 
 emotion I was first told of the Buddha, 
 of his rule. And I was so captivated by the 
 idea that in my eagerness I could not wait 
 to consider, I must become his pupil from 
 that very day ! 
 
 Having the will success was assured to 
 me ! My predilections during my previous 
 career had been quite definite and well 
 marked : they could, therefore, be stamped 
 out at my pleasure. Everything seemed to 
 come to me naturally. This new teacher 
 had declared that the future depended on 
 one's own efforts, not on prayers to a 
 whimsical deity that needed coaxing ; and 
 the diamonds on the Path only sparkled, 
 207 
 
208 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 they did not cut my nimble feet at first. 
 It was all to be so delightfully easy. 
 
 But, ah, me ! success along that path is 
 not possible for a spirit that is immature : 
 in the flowery meadows such a one should 
 be still playing, heedless of the future, as 
 long as he can be happy there. So, of course, 
 I failed ; and my failure was heralded by 
 the usual questions and doubts and excuses, 
 which in my case finally unified into the 
 demand for some hypothesis capable of 
 suggesting why an individual soul should 
 emanate from the universal, incorporate 
 itself with matter, and undergo cycles of 
 painful wanderings only in the end to win 
 back its original status by reabsorption. 
 
 Now the Buddha had always refused 
 absolutely to discuss mysteries, because their 
 reality transcended the thought of un- 
 trained humanity because they could only 
 be solved by each one for himself, through 
 the gradual expansion of consciousness. 
 " Measure not with words Th' Immeasur- 
 able ; nor sink the string of thought Into 
 the Fathomless. Who asks doth err, Who 
 answers errs." 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 209 
 
 And so I sorrowfully turned away to 
 collect ready-made information from other 
 sources, for it would be illogical to accept a 
 religion not based on certainty, especially 
 if it involved considerable sacrifice and 
 discomfort ! 
 
 After this, I began to fancy that the 
 anthropomorphism of the Semitic religions 
 must have more common sense at its earth- 
 imbedded roots than the transcendentalists 
 would allow ; and that, confused by the 
 vastness of Reality, it might be well to 
 narrow one's vision till by concentration one 
 could apprehend at any rate a little, could 
 throw some sort of figure on to the blank 
 of one's mind. I would imitate the astrono- 
 mers in darkening my glasses before I tried 
 to gaze at the sun. In this frame of mind I 
 started my search after the Tree of Life, 
 whose faint radiance seemed to soften even 
 the prosaic dogmas of Judaism, and the 
 crude blacks-and-whites of ecclesiastical 
 Christianity. 
 
 But in the Holy Canon information proved 
 to be scanty indeed ! According to the 
 Book of Genesis, Jehovah never once men- 
 o 
 
210 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 tioned the Tree of Life toT Adam and Eve ; 
 and even after their eyes were opened they 
 could have had but a hazy notion of its 
 virtues, although the Lord God, as soon as 
 he perceived that man was " become as one 
 of us," hasted to place him beyond the 
 possibility of gaining eternal life. Again, 
 the legend in its development tended to 
 create a pessimistic bias in the most sanguine 
 seeker, for its alternatives seemed to be 
 either possession of the Garden in ignorant 
 innocence, or automatic banishment at the 
 birth of consciousness ; while it was out of 
 the question to win access to the Tree by 
 stratagem, in opposition to a forewarned 
 deity assisted in his defence by cherubim, 
 specially told off, and by a flashing sword 
 which turned every way. 
 
 Nevertheless these difficulties did not make 
 one whit less contemptible the antics of that 
 crowd of the conventional from every sect in 
 Christendom, which continued to sprawl in 
 front of the well-guarded portal of paradise, 
 bewailing and imploring. Imploring Jehovah 
 for what ? To reverse, forsooth, his own 
 policy by granting them facilities to visit 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 211 
 
 that very tree, the protection of which 
 caused him in the first instance to expel 
 them from the garden. No impartial in- 
 telligence could doubt the unfitness of such 
 as these to become " as gods/' these lazy 
 ones with their invertebrate supplications ! 
 
 After the close of the Edenic story, the 
 beautiful simile of the Tree of Life died out 
 from the pages of the Bible, except for two 
 unintelligible passages at the end of the 
 Apocalypse. I found, however, a saying 
 of Christ, quoted in all the synoptics, which 
 appeared to refer to the same idea : " He 
 that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that 
 loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 
 But this was counsel more epigrammatic 
 than practical ; as from it I could extract 
 no hint of how to lose my life for his sake. 
 To lay down this earthly existence would 
 be useless, for it was impossible to prevent 
 rebirth. Clearly death was but a temporary 
 repose ; and not until I had found Wisdom 
 should I be entitled to the privilege of getting 
 rid of myself, of arriving at communion 
 with the Life Eternal the Life Universal. 
 Moses, Jesus, St. John and none would 
 
212 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 help they gave but words and mocking 
 subtleties ! 
 
 Chagrined and cast down, I began by 
 chance to study, in the rudiments of as- 
 tronomy, the material wonders of the 
 universe. I was amazed at the immensities 
 of interstellar space, so far beyond the power 
 of figures that they had to be computed in 
 " years of light," of light that travelled 
 with a swiftness of nearly 200,000 miles a 
 second. I read of stars, from which each 
 ray of this light took 5000 years to reach 
 our world so that after the destruction 
 of such a star, for 5000 years would its 
 unaltered radiance in our skies preserve 
 the secret of a sublime non-existence. I 
 read that in reality these stars were suns, 
 each one probably surrounded by satellites 
 like those of our own sun, which in its own 
 insignificant system ruled a planet at a 
 distance of 2800 million miles. I read that 
 each successive improvement in our tele- 
 scopes had revealed myriads of stars pre- 
 viously invisible, and that the universe was 
 to the best of our understanding limitless 
 and eternal. 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 213 
 
 From these preliminaries, I soon perceived 
 that my mind was incapable of assimilating 
 all of man's discoveries on this plane, and 
 that in my brain bewilderment often de- 
 throned admiration. But if my imagination 
 were thus staggered by the physical aspect 
 of a mere fragment of cosmos, how could 
 it be expected to apprehend the totality of 
 the First Cause ? In that hour of reflection 
 I learned a much-needed lesson in propor- 
 tional values the relation of the universe 
 to the solar system, of the solar system to 
 the earth, of the earth to mankind, of 
 mankind to myself : after which, braced 
 with these certainties, my new life dawned 
 full of contentment and a sweet philosophy. 
 
 Thus I came to perceive that neither 
 the Buddha, nor the Christ, could tell the 
 world that which he knew, any more than 
 can the men of to-day who are with God, 
 who are God the men who have attained. 
 For these perfect ones have entered into 
 Reality, and they no longer belong to this 
 hectic life-dream of ours, though they may 
 outwardly conform to its usages. No one 
 of experience has ever spoken, or ever will 
 
214 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 do so, for language is impotent to clothe the 
 mystery ; but the neophyte is only following 
 a natural sequence in theorizing, then in 
 dreaming before he in his turn becomes 
 silent. To-day, therefore, we can many of 
 us guess you can guess, I can guess but 
 we cannot apprehend, that the perception 
 of unity may be the grace that is symbolized 
 by the fruit of the Tree of Life. 
 
 Sometimes, however, during the present 
 stage of evolution, we all are conscious of a 
 strange power within us ; and whoever has 
 once vibrated to the beauty of an abstrac- 
 tion, may know that he possesses a soul, 
 possesses God in embryo. And this stirring, 
 this quickening of the divine that is dormant 
 in each of us, is the faint prelude to that 
 great awakening in the future when, the 
 dreamland of desire having melted away, 
 we shall find to our amazement the Tree of 
 Life, for which we have been searching far 
 and wide, to be rooted in our own souls. 
 
 Then also shall we realize that, although 
 by means of the Tree of Knowledge mankind 
 may have achieved some equality with 
 elementals and tutelary deities, it is beyond 
 
THE TREE OF LIFE 215 
 
 the realm of Dagon, beyond the realm of 
 bright Baal, beyond even the realm of 
 Jehovah that the fruit is hanging which 
 mellows only in the presence of the Absolute. 
 
 THE END 
 
BY EDMOND HOLMES 
 
 THE CREED OF BUDDHA 
 
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