“How have you guessed this, Master?”
“My poor boy! for fifty years have I not suffered from the same pain? And I shall suffer from it till I die. Do you imagine that I know Him better than you—that I have discovered what you have missed? That is the birth-pain that never ceases. Beside it other tortures are as nothing. People think that they suffer from hunger, from poverty, from thirst; in reality they suffer only from the thought that perhaps He has no existence. Who shall dare to say ‘He exists not?’ and yet what superhuman strength one must have to say, ‘He is‘!”
“Do you mean to say that you, even you, have never come near Him?”
“Thrice in my life have I borne the ecstacy of feeling myself wholly at one with Him. Plotinus felt it four times, Porphyrius five times. But as for me, the moments in my existence in which life was worth living were precisely three.”
“I have questioned your pupils on this subject; they knew nothing.”
“Have they the courage to know? The shell of wisdom is enough for them; the kernel, for almost everybody, is deadly.”
“Well, let me die, Master! Give the core to me!”
“Have you courage?”
“Yes; but speak—speak!”
“And what can I tell you? I do not know, ... and need I tell you? Listen to the calmness of the evening, and the secret will be yours without words of mine....”
He kept stroking Julian’s head; the boy was dreaming, “This, this is what I waited for,” and clasping the knees of Iamblicus he falteringly entreated—
“Master, have pity!... Reveal it all!... Do not desert me!”
With green and strangely motionless eyes kept steadily on the clouds, Iamblicus murmured, as if speaking to himself:
“Yes, we have all forgotten the voice of God. Like children estranged from the cradle from the face of their father, we hear Him, and we do not recognise Him. To hear His voice, every earthly cry in our souls must cease. Just so long as reason shines and illumines our souls, we remain imprisoned in ourselves and see not God. But when reason is put by, ecstacy falls upon us like the dew of night—that ecstacy which the evil cannot know. The wise, the good alone can become, of their own will, lyres vibrating under the hand of God. Whence comes that beam which falls into the soul? I do not know. It comes unawares, and when one least expects it. To search for it is useless. God is not remote from us. One must make ready, with a soul becalmed; and simply wait, as the eyes await (according to the saying of the poet) the rush of the sun from dark ocean. God does not come, God does not go away; He is revealed. He is, what the universe is not, the negation of everything that exists. He is nothing, and He is All.”
Iamblicus rose and slowly extended his wasted arms:
“Be still, be still, I tell you! Let all things listen for Him! He is here! Let the earth and the sea, let even the sky be dumb! Listen!... It is He who fills the universe, the very atoms sing with His breath; He who illumines matter and chaos—at which the gods tremble—just as the setting sun illumines that dark cloud.”
Julian listened. It seemed to him that the master’s calm weak voice was filling the world, was reaching the heights of the heaven, and the last confines of the sea. But the boy’s sadness was so deep that it escaped from his bosom in an involuntary sigh.
“Father, forgive me if the question is a folly; but if it is thus with the world why go on living? Why this eternal interchange of life and death? Why pain? Why evil? Why the burden of the body? Why doubt? Why this dark thirst for the impossible?”
Iamblicus looked at him with gentleness, and anew passed his hand over Julian’s head. He answered:
“Ah, my son, that is the very seat of the mystery! there is no evil, there is no body, there is no universe, if He exists! Think! it is He, or the universe! The body, evil, the universe, all are a mirage, a deception of the living senses. All we have once rested together upon the breast of God in the bosom of invisible light. But there came a time when we beheld from on high matter in its darkness and deadness, and each of us saw in matter its own image, as in a mirror. And the soul mused to itself, ‘I can, and I will to, be free! I am like Him! Why not dare to quit Him and contain all in myself?’ So the soul, like Narcissus gazing into the brook, fell under the spell of its own image, reflected in its body; and then she fell farther, and desired to fall for ever, to rend herself from God for ever. She cannot do so. The feet of mortal man touch earth, but his stature lifts him through the heavens.
“Upon the Eternal Ladder of births and of death, all souls, all things existing, are ascending and descending, sometimes towards Him, sometimes away from Him, seeking to leave the Father, and never fulfilling their endeavour. Each soul desires to be God. It weeps for the breast of God, has no rest upon earth, and aspires only to return to the Absolute. We must return to Him, and then all things will become God, and God will be in All. Do you imagine that you are alone in regretting Him! Are you not aware that the whole sum of things is yearning for Him? Listen!”
The sun had set. The edges of the flaming clouds had sunk into ashes. The sea had become pale, light, flocculent as the sky; the sky deep and diaphanous as the sea. Upon the road a cart was passing by; a young man and woman were in it—two lovers, perhaps. The woman was singing a melancholy love song. When they had passed all things were plunged into silence again, and became sadder still. With hastened strides, the oriental night swept over the earth. Julian murmured:
“How many times have I asked myself why Nature was so sad, and why, when she is proudest then saddest of all....”
Iamblicus answered by a smile—
“Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the appearance of reality. Nature, that sleeping Cybele, never lifts her eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face to face....”
The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure. More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them—
“Julian, to what should one compare the universe of all those stars? One might liken it to a fisherman’s net thrown into the sea. God fills the universe as the water fills the net, which moves, but which cannot retain the waters; and the universe desires, but cannot keep God in her meshes. The net is drawn, but God remains. If the universe made no stir God would create nothing—would not issue from the calm that surrounds Him. For whither should He sweep, and to what end? Yonder, in the realm of the eternal Mothers, in the soul of Calm, dwell the seeds, the Forms, the Ideas, of all that is, has been, and shall be. The germ of hearth-cricket and of atom, together with the germ of the Olympian god.”
Then Julian cried aloud, and his voice rang in the silence of Nature like a cry of mortal pain—
“But who then is He; why does He not answer when we call Him? What is His name? I wish to know, I desire to know Him, to hear Him—to see Him—why
does He escape my thought? Where is He? Where does He dwell?”
“My poor boy! What matters thought to Him? What means it? He has no name. He is such, that we can say that He must exist, but it is impossible for us to say what He is. But do you think that you can suffer love, or curse Him, without singing His praises? The All-Creator is Himself, having no likeness to His creations. When you say, ‘He is not,’ you are exalting Him as much as if you said ‘He is.’ One can affirm nothing about Him, because He is above existence, reality, and life. That is why I have said to you that He is the negation of the universe and of your thought. Deny, renounce all that exists for us here, and yonder, in the soundless profundity of darkness, as in the light, you shall find Him still. Give Him friends, family, country, heaven, earth, yourself, your reason, then you will no longer see light, you shall yourself be it. You will not say, ‘He and I,’ because you will feel that He and you are ‘one‘; and your soul will smile at your body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall become silence, you shall no more find utterance. And if at that moment the world should crumble away, you would be happy: for what would the world signify to you, since you shall be with Him? Your soul shall not desire, because He has no desires; it shall no longer live, because He is above living; it shall no longer think, because He is above thought. Thought is the search for light. He seeks not, because He is Himself the light. He penetrates the whole soul—He laps it in Himself. And then, impartial and solitary, it rests above reason higher than goodness, higher than beauty, reposes in the infinite, on the breast of God the Father of Light. The Soul becomes God, or, to put it better, it remembers that in the night of ages it has been, is, and shall be, God.... Such, my son, is the life of the Olympians; such is the life of the wise and heroic among men; renunciation of the universe, contempt of earthly passions, the flight of the Soul towards God, whom at last it sees face to face.”
Iamblicus ceased speaking. Julian fell at his feet without daring to touch them, and kissed the earth where they rested. Then he raised his head and gazed into those strange green eyes, in which dwelt the wisdom of the serpent. They appeared calmer and deeper than the sky, and as if exhaling a miraculous power.
Julian murmured—
“Master! thou canst do all things. I believe! Command the mountains, and they shall approach each other! Be like God. Work a miracle, create the impossible. Grant my prayer! I believe!”
“My poor boy, what are you asking for? Is not the miracle which may be accomplished in your soul more beautiful than any wonders which I can work? Son, is it not a terrible and a happy miracle, this power in the name of which you can dare to say: ‘He is,’ and if ‘He is not’ it matters nothing, ‘He will be,’ and you say ‘Let God exist! Amen, so be it!’”
* * *
VIII
When Iamblicus and Julian, returning from their walk, were crossing Panormos, the crowded harbour-quarter of Ephesus, they noticed an unusual tumult; folk running hither and thither, waving torches and shouting—
“The Christians are destroying the temples! Woe be on us!” and others: “Death to the Olympian gods! Astarte is vanquished by Christ!”
Iamblicus attempted a detour through less frequented streets, but the howling mob caught and swept them in its course towards the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. The superb temple, built by Dynocrates, stood out sharply, dark and austere, against the starry sky. The gleam of the torches flickered up gigantic colonnades, pedestalled on beautiful little groups of caryatids. Up to this period, not only the Romans, but all tribes in the country had adored this goddess. Someone in the crowd cried out in a quavering voice—
“Hail to the divine Diana of the Ephesians!”
Hundreds of voices responded—
“Death to the Olympians and to your Diana!”
Above the Arsenal and its towering monument rose a blood-red light. Julian glanced at his divine master, and scarcely recognised him. Iamblicus was transformed back into a sickly and timid old man. He complained of headache, expressed his fear of an attack of rheumatism, and doubted whether his servant had not forgotten to prepare his fomentations. Julian lent him his own cloak; but he remained chilly, and stopped his ears, with a dolorous grimace, against the shouts and laughter of the crowd, which he dreaded. Iamblicus used to say there was nothing more stupid and disgusting than the spirit of the people. He pointed out to his pupil the faces hurrying past—
“Look at the monstrous vice in that expression! What hopeless triviality! what self-confident assertion!... Does it not make one ashamed of being human, to share human form with mud like that!”
An old Christian woman hobbled along, telling a story—
“And my grandson, he says to me, ‘Grandmother, make me some meat-broth.’ Well, I tell him, ‘Yes, darling, I’ll go to the market soon,’ and to myself I’m thinking meat is nowadays cheaper than bread. So I buy some meat for five obols and have it cooked. And in comes a neighbour and screams at me, ‘What are you cooking there? Don’t you know that the meat of the market is not fit to touch to-day?’
“‘Why so?’
“‘The priests of the goddess have sprinkled the whole market with water from the sacrifices! There’s not a Christian in the town eating the meat so spoiled. And they’re going to kill the sacrificers, and pull down the devilish temple!’
“I threw the broth to the dogs; just think! five obols, all wasted!—more than a day’s wage thrown away—but all the same I wouldn’t make my own grandson unclean!”
Others were telling how, in the previous year, some miserly Christian had eaten of the impure meat, which had so rotted his intestines that his very relatives had had to abandon him, on account of the contagion.
In the public square rose a beautiful little temple to Diana-Selene-Phœbe-Astarte—the triple goddess Hecate, mother of the gods. Like enormous wasps greedily intent upon a honeycomb, monks had surrounded the temple on all sides, crawling along the lovely white cornice, clambering up ladders, and to the chant of psalms, smashing the statues and bas-reliefs.
The columns were trembling on their bases, fragments of marble flying in all directions. The delicate edifice seemed to wince like a living creature. Finally an attempt was made to set the temple on fire; but as it was wholly built of marble, all efforts in this direction were fruitless.
Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening and resonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose to the sky.
“Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!”
In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes, dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, which had been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down.
“Cast her in the fire! in the fire!”
The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the brother of Constantius—
“‘Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be abolished’ (Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!).
“Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of demons!” Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the following words from the book De errore profanarum religionum, by Firmicus Maternus—
“Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch (Sacrificans diis eradicabitur). Thou shalt deliver him to death; thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!”
And over the crowd swept the exultant shout—
“Death! Death to the gods of Olympus!”
An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered to his sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where to strike.
A voice advised�
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“In the belly! In her abominable belly!”
The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless, leaving gaps bitten in the metal.
An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He was secretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the end of everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth a blade of corn.
A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin, wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder, stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand—
“This forty years I have never washed, that I might not see my nakedness, nor fall into temptation. And yet coming into cities, straight one perceives these accursed gods without a rag upon them. How long must we endure these devilish temptations! At the hearth, in the street, on the roof, in the baths, these idols everywhere above one’s head?... Faugh! Faugh! Faugh! How can I spit enough disgust on things like these?”
The old man spurned the prostrate woman’s form with his sandal in energetic horror; stamped on the bare breast as if it were alive, and kept scoring it with the sharp nails of his sandals, stuttering with rage—
“Take that, and that—and that, O foul immodesty!”
The lips of the goddess lay with their calm smile under the soles of his feet.
The crowd began to haul the statue upright in order to tilt it into the bonfire. Drunken garlic-smelling apprentices spat in the metal face. An enormous blaze, built of the massed wreckage of market-booths, quickly arose. The statue was dropped into the flames to be melted into silver bullion.
“There are five talents’ worth! think—thirty thousand pieces of silver! We’ll send half to the Emperor to pay the army, and take the other half for famished folk here. Cybele will bring solace to mankind at last, anyhow! Thirty thousand pieces of silver for the soldiers and the poor!”
The Death of the Gods Page 6