,marius the ,epicurean ,,his ,,sensations ,,and ,,ideas by ,,walter ,,pater ,,volume ,,two ,london3 #aiaj4 7,the ,library ,edition47 ,contents ,,part ,,the ,,third #ae4 ,stoicism at ,court #af4 ,second ,thoughts #ag4 ,beata ,urbs #ah4 8,the ,ceremony of the ,dart0 #ai4 ,the ,will as ,vision ,,part ,,the ,,fourth #bj4 ,two ,curious ,houses--#a4 ,guests #ba4 ,two ,curious ,houses--#b4 ,the ,church in ,cecilia's ,house #bb4 8,the ,minor ,peace of the ,church0 #bc4 ,divine ,service #bd4 ,a ,conversation ,not ,imaginary #be4 ,sunt ,lacrimae ,rerum #bf4 ,the ,martyrs #bg4 ,the ,triumph of ,marcus ,aurelius #bh4 ,anima ,naturaliter ,christiana ,,notes ,,by ,,the ,e-,,text ,,editor3 ,notes3 ,i have placed an asterisk immediately after each of ,pater's footnotes and a sign after my own notes1 and have listed each of my notes at that chapter's end4 ,greek typeface3 ,for this full-text edition1 ,i have transliterated ,pater's ,greek quotations4 ,if there is a need for the original ,greek1 it can be viewed at my site1 http3_/_/www4ajdrake4com_/etexts1 a ,victorianist archive that contains the complete works of ,walter ,pater and many other nineteenth-century texts1 mostly in first editions4 1 8,a winter's dream1 when nights are longest40 ,lucian1 ,the ,dream1 ,vol4 #c4 ,,part ,,the ,,third ,,chapter ,,xv4 ,,stoicism ,,at ,,court ,the very finest flower of the same company--,aurelius with the gilded fasces borne before him1 a crowd of exquisites1 the empress ,faustina herself1 and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day1 who maintained1 people said1 their private 8sophists0 to whisper philosophy into their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet--was assembled again a few months later1 in a different place and for a very different purpose4 ,the temple of ,peace1 a 8modernising0 foundation of ,hadrian1 enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms1 had grown into an institution like something between a college and a literary club2 and here ,cornelius ,fronto was to pronounce a discourse on the ,nature of ,morals4 ,there were some1 indeed1 who had desired the emperor ,aurelius himself to declare his whole mind on this matter4 ,rhetoric was become almost a function of the state3 philosophy was upon the throne2 and had from time to time1 by request1 delivered an official utterance with well-nigh divine authority4 ,and it was as the delegate of this authority1 under the full sanction of the philosophic emperor--emperor and pontiff1 that the aged ,fronto purposed to-day to expound some parts of the ,stoic doctrine1 with the view of recommending morals to that refined but perhaps prejudiced company1 as being1 in effect1 one mode of comeliness in things--as it were music1 or a kind of artistic order1 in life4 ,and he did this earnestly1 with an outlay of all his science of mind1 and that eloquence of which he was known to be a master4 ,for ,stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing4 ,received at court1 it had largely decorated itself3 it was grown persuasive and insinuating1 and sought not only to convince men's intelligence but to allure their souls4 ,associated with the beautiful old age of the great rhetorician1 and his winning voice1 it was almost ,epicurean4 ,and the old man was at his best on the occasion2 the last on which he ever appeared in this way4 ,to-day was his own birthday4 ,early in the morning the imperial letter of congratulation had reached him2 and all the pleasant animation it had caused was in his face1 when assisted by his daughter ,gratia he took his place on the ivory chair1 as president of the ,athenaeum of ,rome1 wearing with a wonderful grace the philosophic pall1--in reality neither more nor less than the loose woollen cloak of the common soldier1 but fastened on his right shoulder with a magnificent clasp1 the emperor's birthday gift4 ,it was an age1 as abundant evidence shows1 whose delight in rhetoric was but one result of a general susceptibility--an age not merely taking pleasure in words1 but experiencing a great moral power in them4 ,fronto's quaintly fashionable audience would have wept1 and also assisted with their purses1 had his present purpose been1 as sometimes happened1 the recommendation of an object of charity4 ,as it was1 arranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers1 these amateurs of exquisite language1 with their tablets open for careful record of felicitous word or phrase1 were ready to give themselves wholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them1 applauding1 blowing loud kisses through the air sometimes1 at the speaker's triumphant exit from one of his long1 skilfully modulated sentences2 while the younger of them meant to imitate everything about him1 down to the inflections of his voice and the very folds of his mantle4 ,certainly there was rhetoric enough3--a wealth of imagery2 illustrations from painting1 music1 mythology1 the experiences of love2 a management1 by which subtle1 unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms1 like flies from morsels of amber1 to use ,fronto's own figure4 ,but with all its richness1 the higher claim of his style was rightly understood to lie in gravity and self-command1 and an especial care for the purities of a vocabulary which rejected every expression unsanctioned by the authority of approved ancient models4 ,and it happened with ,marius1 as it will sometimes happen1 that this general discourse to a general audience had the effect of an utterance adroitly designed for him4 ,his conscience still vibrating painfully under the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre1 and full of the ethical charm of ,cornelius1 he was questioning himself with much impatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his own elaborately thought-out intellectual scheme and the 8old morality40 ,in that intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far been allowed no place1 as seeming to demand from him the admission of certain first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his efforts towards a complete1 many-sided existence2 or distort the revelations of the experience of life2 or curtail his natural liberty of heart and mind4 ,but now 7his imagination being occupied for the moment with the noble and resolute air1 the gallantry1 so to call it1 which composed the outward mien and presentment of his strange friend's inflexible ethics7 he felt already some nascent suspicion of his philosophic programme1 in regard1 precisely1 to the question of good taste4 ,there was the taint of a graceless 8antinomianism0 perceptible in it1 a dissidence1 a revolt against accustomed modes1 the actual impression of which on other men might rebound upon himself in some loss of that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of life to allow so much4 ,and it was exactly a moral situation such as this that ,fronto appeared to be contemplating4 ,he seemed to have before his mind the case of one--,cyrenaic or ,epicurean1 as the courtier tends to be1 by habit and instinct1 if not on principle--who yet experiences1 actually1 a strong tendency to moral assents1 and a desire1 with as little logical inconsistency as may be1 to find a place for duty and righteousness in his house of thought4 ,and the ,stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purely sthetic beauty of the old morality1 as an element in things1 fascinating to the imagination1 to good taste in its most highly developed form1 through association--a system or order1 as a matter of fact1 in possession1 not only of the larger world1 but of the rare minority of lite intelligences2 from which1 therefore1 least of all would the sort of ,epicurean he had in view endure to become1 so to speak1 an outlaw4 ,he supposed his hearer to be1 with all sincerity1 in search after some principle of conduct 7and it was here that he seemed to ,marius to be speaking straight to him7 which might give unity of motive to an actual rectitude1 a cleanness and probity of life1 determined partly by natural affection1 partly by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour1 due in part even to the mere fear of penalties2 no element of which1 however1 was distinctively moral in the agent himself as such1 and providing him1 therefore1 no common ground with a really moral being like ,cornelius1 or even like the philosophic emperor4 ,performing the same offices2 actually satisfying1 even as they1 the external claims of others2 rendering to all their dues--one thus circumstanced would be wanting1 nevertheless1 in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him4 ,how tenderly--more tenderly than many stricter souls--he might yield himself to kindly instinct6 what fineness of charity in passing judgment on others6 what an exquisite conscience of other men's susceptibilities6 ,he knows for how much the manner1 because the heart itself1 counts1 in doing a kindness4 ,he goes beyond most people in his care for all weakly creatures2 judging1 instinctively1 that to be but sentient is to possess rights4 ,he conceives a hundred duties1 though he may not call them by that name1 of the existence of which purely duteous souls may have no suspicion4 ,he has a kind of pride in doing more than they1 in a way of his own4 ,sometimes1 he may think that those men of line and rule do not really understand their own business4 ,how narrow1 inflexible1 unintelligent6 what poor guardians 7he may reason7 of the inward spirit of righteousness1 are some supposed careful walkers according to its letter and form4 ,and yet all the while he admits1 as such1 no moral world at all3 no theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life4 ,but1 over and above such practical rectitude1 thus determined by natural affection or self-love or fear1 he may notice that there is a remnant of right conduct1 what he does1 still more what he abstains from doing1 not so much through his own free election1 as from a deference1 an 8assent10 entire1 habitual1 unconscious1 to custom--to the actual habit or fashion of others1 from whom he could not endure to break away1 any more than he would care to be out of agreement with them on questions of mere manner1 or1 say1 even1 of dress4 ,yes6 there were the evils1 the vices1 which he avoided as1 essentially1 a failure in good taste4 ,an assent1 such as this1 to the preferences of others1 might seem to be the weakest of motives1 and the rectitude it could determine the least considerable element in a moral life4 ,yet here1 according to ,cornelius ,fronto1 was in truth the revealing example1 albeit operating upon comparative trifles1 of the general principle required4 ,there was one great idea associated with which that determination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest1 the fullest1 the weightiest principle of moral action2 a principle under which one might subsume men's most strenuous efforts after righteousness4 ,and he proceeded to expound the idea of ,humanity--of a universal commonwealth of mind1 which becomes explicit1 and as if incarnate1 in a select communion of just men made perfect4 ,ho kosmos hsanei polis estin--the world is as it were a commonwealth1 a city3 and there are observances1 customs1 usages1 actually current in it1 things our friends and companions will expect of us1 as the condition of our living there with them at all1 as really their peers or fellow-citizens4 ,those observances were1 indeed1 the creation of a visible or invisible aristocracy in it1 whose actual manners1 whose preferences from of old1 become now a weighty tradition as to the way in which things should or should not be done1 are like a music1 to which the intercourse of life proceeds--such a music as no one who had once caught its harmonies would willingly jar4 ,in this way1 the becoming1 as in ,greek--to prepon3 or ta th mores1 manners1 as both ,greeks and ,romans said1 would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty4 ,righteousness would be1 in the words of 8,caesar0 himself1 of the philosophic ,aurelius1 but a 8following of the reasonable will of the oldest1 the most venerable1 of cities1 of polities--of the royal1 the law-giving element1 therein--forasmuch as we are citizens also in that supreme city on high1 of which all other cities beside are but as single habitations40 ,but as the old man spoke with animation of this supreme city1 this invisible society1 whose conscience was become explicit in its inner circle of inspired souls1 of whose common spirit1 the trusted leaders of human conscience had been but the mouthpiece1 of whose successive personal preferences in the conduct of life1 the 8old morality0 was the sum1--,marius felt that his own thoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the speaker2 not in the direction of any clearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth1 but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place1 the walls and towers of which1 so to speak1 he might really trace and tell1 according to his own old1 natural habit of mind4 ,it would be the fabric1 the outward fabric1 of a system reaching1 certainly1 far beyond the great city around him1 even if conceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest--as ,augustus or ,trajan might have conceived of them--however well the visible ,rome might pass for a figure of that new1 unseen1 ,rome on high4 ,at moments1 ,marius even asked himself with surprise1 whether it might be some vast secret society the speaker had in view3--that august community1 to be an outlaw from which1 to be foreign to the manners of which1 was a loss so much greater than to be excluded1 into the ends of the earth1 from the sovereign ,roman commonwealth4 ,humanity1 a universal order1 the great polity1 its aristocracy of elect spirits1 the mastery of their example over their successors--these were the ideas1 stimulating enough in their way1 by association with which the ,stoic professor had attempted to elevate1 to unite under a single principle1 men's moral efforts1 himself lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm4 ,but where might ,marius search for all this1 as more than an intellectual abstraction8 ,where were those elect souls in whom the claim of ,humanity became so amiable1 winning1 persuasive--whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful in the actual order he saw--whose faces averted from him1 would be more than he could bear8 ,where was that comely order1 to which as a great fact of experience he must give its due2 to which1 as to all other beautiful 8phenomena0 in life1 he must1 for his own peace1 adjust himself8 ,rome did well to be serious4 ,the discourse ended somewhat abruptly1 as the noise of a great crowd in motion was heard below the walls2 whereupon1 the audience1 following the humour of the younger element in it1 poured into the colonnade1 from the steps of which the famous procession1 or transvectio1 of the military knights was to be seen passing over the ,forum1 from their trysting-place at the temple of ,mars1 to the temple of the ,dioscuri4 ,the ceremony took place this year1 not on the day accustomed--anniversary of the victory of ,lake ,regillus1 with its pair of celestial assistants--and amid the heat and roses of a ,roman ,july1 but1 by anticipation1 some months earlier1 the almond-trees along the way being still in leafless flower4 ,through that light trellis-work1 ,marius watched the riders1 arrayed in all their gleaming ornaments1 and wearing wreaths of olive around their helmets1 the faces below which1 what with battle and the plague1 were almost all youthful4 ,it was a flowery scene enough1 but had to-day its fulness of war-like meaning2 the return of the army to the ,north1 where the enemy was again upon the move1 being now imminent4 ,cornelius had ridden along in his place1 and1 on the dismissal of the company1 passed below the steps where ,marius stood1 with that new song he had heard once before floating from his lips4 ,,notes #aj4 ,transliteration3 ,ho kosmos hsanei polis estin4 ,translation3 8,the world is like a city40 #aj4 ,transliteration3 to prepon 444 ta th4 ,translation3 8,that which is seemly 444 mores40 ,,chapter ,,xvi4 ,,second ,,thoughts ,and ,marius1 for his part1 was grave enough4 ,the discourse of ,cornelius ,fronto1 with its wide prospect over the human1 the spiritual1 horizon1 had set him on a review--on a review of the isolating narrowness1 in particular1 of his own theoretic scheme4 ,long after the very latest roses were faded1 when 8the town0 had departed to country villas1 or the baths1 or the war1 he remained behind in ,rome2 anxious to try the lastingness of his own ,epicurean rose-garden2 setting to work over again1 and deliberately passing from point to point of his old argument with himself1 down to its practical conclusions4 ,that age and our own have much in common--many difficulties and hopes4 ,let the reader pardon me if here and there ,i seem to be passing from ,marius to his modern representatives--from ,rome1 to ,paris or ,london4 ,what really were its claims as a theory of practice1 of the sympathies that determine practice8 ,it had been a theory1 avowedly1 of loss and gain 7so to call it7 of an economy4 ,if1 therefore1 it missed something in the commerce of life1 which some other theory of practice was able to include1 if it made a needless sacrifice1 then it must be1 in a manner1 inconsistent with itself1 and lack theoretic completeness4 ,did it make such a sacrifice8 ,what did it lose1 or cause one to lose8 ,and we may note1 as ,marius could hardly have done1 that ,cyrenaicism is ever the characteristic philosophy of youth1 ardent1 but narrow in its survey--sincere1 but apt to become one-sided1 or even fanatical4 ,it is one of those subjective and partial ideals1 based on vivid1 because limited1 apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience 7in this case1 of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there7 which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to express4 ,in the school of ,cyrene1 in that comparatively fresh ,greek world1 we see this philosophy where it is least blas1 as we say2 in its most pleasant1 its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form1 youthfully bright in the youth of ,european thought4 ,but it grows young again for a while in almost every youthful soul4 ,it is spoken of sometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men2 but in them it can hardly be sincere1 or1 by the nature of the case1 an enthusiasm4 8,walk in the ways of thine heart1 and in the sight of thine eyes10 is1 indeed1 most often1 according to the supposition of the book from which ,i quote it1 the counsel of the young1 who feel that the sunshine is pleasant along their veins1 and wintry weather1 though in a general sense foreseen1 a long way off4 ,the youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism1 the self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste1 which occurs1 quite naturally1 at the outset of every really vigorous intellectual career1 finds its special opportunity in a theory such as that so carefully put together by ,marius1 just because it seems to call on one to make the sacrifice1 accompanied by a vivid sensation of power and will1 of what others value--sacrifice of some conviction1 or doctrine1 or supposed first principle--for the sake of that clear-eyed intellectual consistency1 which is like spotless bodily cleanliness1 or scrupulous personal honour1 and has itself for the mind of the youthful student1 when he first comes to appreciate it1 the fascination of an ideal4 ,the ,cyrenaic doctrine1 then1 realised as a motive of strenuousness or enthusiasm1 is not so properly the utterance of the 8jaded ,epicurean10 as of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling1 fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daring theory1 while1 in the first genial heat of existence1 the beauty of the physical world strikes potently upon his wide-open1 unwearied senses4 ,he discovers a great new poem every spring1 with a hundred delightful things he too has felt1 but which have never been expressed1 or at least never so truly1 before4 ,the workshops of the artists1 who can select and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible life1 are open to him4 ,he thinks that the old ,platonic1 or the new ,baconian philosophy1 has been better explained than by the authors themselves1 or with some striking original development1 this very month4 ,in the quiet heat of early summer1 on the dusty gold morning1 the music comes1 louder at intervals1 above the hum of voices from some neighbouring church1 among the flowering trees1 valued now1 perhaps1 only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers1 or the mere skill and eloquence1 it may be1 of its preachers of faith and righteousness4 ,in his scrupulous idealism1 indeed1 he too feels himself to be something of a priest1 and that devotion of his days to the contemplation of what is beautiful1 a sort of perpetual religious service4 ,afar off1 how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await him6 ,at that age1 with minds of a certain constitution1 no very choice or exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm something like this4 ,life in modern ,london even1 in the heavy glow of summer1 is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to build its 8palace of art0 of2 and the very sense and enjoyment of an experience in which all is new1 are but enhanced1 like that glow of summer itself1 by the thought of its brevity1 giving him something of a gambler's zest1 in the apprehension1 by dexterous act or diligently appreciative thought1 of the highly coloured moments which are to pass away so quickly4 ,at bottom1 perhaps1 in his elaborately developed self-consciousness1 his sensibilities1 his almost fierce grasp upon the things he values at all1 he has1 beyond all others1 an inward need of something permanent in its character1 to hold by3 of which circumstance1 also1 he may be partly aware1 and that1 as with the brilliant ,claudio in ,measure for ,measure1 it is1 in truth1 but darkness he is1 8encountering1 like a bride40 ,but the inevitable falling of the curtain is probably distant2 and in the daylight1 at least1 it is not often that he really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weight above1 the narrow world and its company1 within4 ,when the thought of it does occur to him1 he may say to himself3--,well6 and the rude monk1 for instance1 who has renounced all this1 on the security of some dim world beyond it1 really acquiesces in that 8fifth act10 amid all the consoling ministries around him1 as little as ,i should at this moment2 though ,i may hope1 that1 as at the real ending of a play1 however well acted1 ,i may already have had quite enough of it1 and find a true well-being in eternal sleep4 ,and precisely in this circumstance1 that1 consistently with the function of youth in general1 ,cyrenaicism will always be more or less the special philosophy1 or 8prophecy10 of the young1 when the ideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the receptive1 if not of the reflective1 powers--precisely in this circumstance1 if we rightly consider it1 lies the duly prescribed corrective of that philosophy4 ,for it is by its exclusiveness1 and by negation rather than positively1 that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently2 and what they really need for their correction1 is the complementary influence of some greater system1 in which they may find their due place4 ,that ,sturm und ,drang of the spirit1 as it has been called1 that ardent and special apprehension of half-truths1 in the enthusiastic1 and as it were 8prophetic0 advocacy of which1 devotion to truth1 in the case of the young--apprehending but one point at a time in the great circumference--most usually embodies itself1 is levelled down1 safely enough1 afterwards1 as in history so in the individual1 by the weakness and mere weariness1 as well as by the maturer wisdom1 of our nature4 ,and though truth indeed1 resides1 as has been said1 8in the whole0--in harmonisings and adjustments like this--yet those special apprehensions may still owe their full value1 in this sense of 8the whole10 to that earlier1 one-sided but ardent pre-occupation with them4 ,cynicism and ,cyrenaicism3--they are the earlier ,greek forms of ,roman ,stoicism and ,epicureanism1 and in that world of old ,greek thought1 we may notice with some surprise that1 in a little while1 the nobler form of ,cyrenaicism--,cyrenaicism cured of its faults--met the nobler form of ,cynicism half-way4 ,starting from opposed points1 they merged1 each in its most refined form1 in a single ideal of temperance or moderation4 ,something of the same kind may be noticed regarding some later phases of ,cyrenaic theory4 ,if it starts with considerations opposed to the religious temper1 which the religious temper holds it a duty to repress1 it is like it1 nevertheless1 and very unlike any lower development of temper1 in its stress and earnestness1 its serious application to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection4 ,the saint1 and the ,cyrenaic lover of beauty1 it may be thought1 would at least understand each other better than either would understand the mere man of the world4 ,carry their respective positions a point further1 shift the terms a little1 and they might actually touch4 ,perhaps all theories of practice tend1 as they rise to their best1 as understood by their worthiest representatives1 to identification with each other4 ,for the variety of men's possible reflections on their experience1 as of that experience itself1 is not really so great as it seems2 and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formulae1 filtering down into men's everyday existence1 reach the same poor level of vulgar egotism1 so1 we may fairly suppose that all the highest spirits1 from whatever contrasted points they have started1 would yet be found to entertain1 in the moral consciousness realised by themselves1 much the same kind of mental company2 to hold1 far more than might be thought probable1 at first sight1 the same personal types of character1 and even the same artistic and literary types1 in esteem or aversion2 to convey1 all of them alike1 the same savour of unworldliness4 ,and ,cyrenaicism or ,epicureanism too1 new or old1 may be noticed1 in proportion to the completeness of its development1 to approach1 as to the nobler form of ,cynicism1 so also to the more nobly developed phases of the old1 or traditional morality4 ,in the gravity of its conception of life1 in its pursuit after nothing less than a perfection1 in its apprehension of the value of time--the passion and the seriousness which are like a consecration--la passion et le srieux qui consacrent--it may be conceived1 as regards its main drift1 to be not so much opposed to the old morality1 as an exaggeration of one special motive in it4 ,some cramping1 narrowing1 costly preference of one part of his own nature1 and of the nature of things1 to another1 ,marius seemed to have detected in himself1 meantime1--in himself1 as also in those old masters of the ,cyrenaic philosophy4 ,if they did realise the monochronos hdon as it was called--the pleasure of the 8,ideal ,now0--if certain moments of their lives were high-pitched1 passionately coloured1 intent with sensation1 and a kind of knowledge which1 in its vivid clearness1 was like sensation--if1 now and then1 they apprehended the world in its fulness1 and had a vision1 almost 8beatific10 of ideal personalities in life and art1 yet these moments were a very costly matter3 they paid a great price for them1 in the sacrifice of a thousand possible sympathies1 of things only to be enjoyed through sympathy1 from which they detached themselves1 in intellectual pride1 in loyalty to a mere theory that would take nothing for granted1 and assent to no approximate or hypothetical truths4 ,in their unfriendly1 repellent attitude towards the ,greek religion1 and the old ,greek morality1 surely1 they had been but faulty economists4 ,the ,greek religion was then alive3 then1 still more than in its later day of dissolution1 the higher view of it was possible1 even for the philosopher4 ,its story made little or no demand for a reasoned or formal acceptance4 ,a religion1 which had grown through and through man's life1 with so much natural strength2 had meant so much for so many generations2 which expressed so much of their hopes1 in forms so familiar and so winning2 linked by associations so manifold to man as he had been and was--a religion like this1 one would think1 might have had its uses1 even for a philosophic sceptic4 ,yet those beautiful gods1 with the whole round of their poetic worship1 the school of ,cyrene definitely renounced4 ,the old ,greek morality1 again1 with all its imperfections1 was certainly a comely thing4--,yes6 a harmony1 a music1 in men's ways1 one might well hesitate to jar4 ,the merely sthetic sense might have had a legitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice manners1 in those attractive conventions1 enveloping1 so gracefully1 the whole of life1 insuring some sweetness1 some security at least against offence1 in the intercourse of the world4 ,beyond an obvious utility1 it could claim1 indeed but custom--use-and-wont1 as we say--for its sanction4 ,but then1 one of the advantages of that liberty of spirit among the ,cyrenaics 7in which1 through theory1 they had become dead to theory1 so that all theory1 as such1 was really indifferent to them1 and indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible ministration to life7 was precisely this1 that it gave them free play in using as their ministers or servants1 things which1 to the uninitiated1 must be masters or nothing4 ,yet1 how little the followers of ,aristippus made of that whole comely system of manners or morals1 then actually in possession of life1 is shown by the bold practical consequence1 which one of them maintained 7with a hard1 self-opinionated adherence to his peculiar theory of values7 in the not very amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were things one could do without2 while another--,death's-advocate1 as he was called--helped so many to self-destruction1 by his pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life1 that his lecture-room was closed4 ,that this was in the range of their consequences--that this was a possible1 if remote1 deduction from the premisses of the discreet ,aristippus--was surely an inconsistency in a thinker who professed above all things an economy of the moments of life4 ,and yet those old ,cyrenaics felt their way1 as if in the dark1 we may be sure1 like other men in the ordinary transactions of life1 beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and absolutely legitimate knowledge1 admitting what was not of immediate sensation1 and drawing upon that 8fantastic0 future which might never come4 ,a little more of such 8walking by faith10 a little more of such not unreasonable 8assent10 and they might have profited by a hundred services to their culture1 from ,greek religion and ,greek morality1 as they actually were4 ,the spectacle of their fierce1 exclusive1 tenacious hold on their own narrow apprehension1 makes one think of a picture with no relief1 no soft shadows nor breadth of space1 or of a drama without proportionate repose4 ,yet it was of perfection that ,marius 7to return to him again from his masters1 his intellectual heirs7 had been really thinking all the time3 a narrow perfection it might be objected1 the perfection of but one part of his nature--his capacities of feeling1 of exquisite physical impressions1 of an imaginative sympathy--but still1 a true perfection of those capacities1 wrought out to their utmost degree1 admirable enough in its way4 ,he too is an economist3 he hopes1 by that 8insight0 of which the old ,cyrenaics made so much1 by skilful apprehension of the conditions of spiritual success as they really are1 the special circumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal1 the special felicities of his own nature1 to make the most1 in no mean or vulgar sense1 of the few years of life2 few1 indeed1 for the attainment of anything like general perfection6 ,with the brevity of that sum of years his mind is exceptionally impressed2 and this purpose makes him no frivolous dilettante1 but graver than other men3 his scheme is not that of a trifler1 but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own1 yet a very real one1 to those old words--,let us work while it is day6 ,he has a strong apprehension1 also1 of the beauty of the visible things around him2 their fading1 momentary1 graces and attractions4 ,his natural susceptibility in this direction1 enlarged by experience1 seems to demand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupation with the aspects of things2 with their sthetic character1 as it is called--their revelations to the eye and the imagination3 not so much because those aspects of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment1 as because to be occupied1 in this way1 with the sthetic or imaginative side of things1 is to be in real contact with those elements of his own nature1 and of theirs1 which1 for him at least1 are matter of the most real kind of apprehension4 ,as other men are concentrated upon truths of number1 for instance1 or on business1 or it may be on the pleasures of appetite1 so he is wholly bent on living in that full stream of refined sensation4 ,and in the prosecution of this love of beauty1 he claims an entire personal liberty1 liberty of heart and mind1 liberty1 above all1 from what may seem conventional answers to first questions4 ,but1 without him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea1 widely extended in time and place1 in a kind of impregnable possession of human life--a system1 which1 like some other great products of the conjoint efforts of human mind through many generations1 is rich in the world's experience2 so that1 in attaching oneself to it1 one lets in a great tide of that experience1 and makes1 as it were with a single step1 a great experience of one's own1 and with great consequent increase to one's sense of colour1 variety1 and relief1 in the spectacle of men and things4 ,the mere sense that one belongs to a system--an imperial system or organisation--has1 in itself1 the expanding power of a great experience2 as some have felt who have been admitted from narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church2 or as the old ,roman citizen felt4 ,it is1 we might fancy1 what the coming into possession of a very widely spoken language might be1 with a great literature1 which is also the speech of the people we have to live among4 ,a wonderful order1 actually in possession of human life6--grown inextricably through and through it2 penetrating into its laws1 its very language1 its mere habits of decorum1 in a thousand half-conscious ways2 yet still felt to be1 in part1 an unfulfilled ideal2 and1 as such1 awakening hope1 and an aim1 identical with the one only consistent aspiration of mankind6 ,in the apprehension of that1 just then1 ,marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own old self2 to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to ,rome1 with absolute sincerity1 on the search for perfection4 ,it defined not so much a change of practice1 as of sympathy--a new departure1 an expansion1 of sympathy4 ,it involved1 certainly1 some curtailment of his liberty1 in concession to the actual manner1 the distinctions1 the enactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits1 who have elected so1 and not otherwise1 in their conduct of life1 and are not here to give one1 so to term it1 an 8indulgence40 ,but then1 under the supposition of their disapproval1 no roses would ever seem worth plucking again4 ,the authority they exercised was like that of classic taste--an influence so subtle1 yet so real1 as defining the loyalty of the scholar2 or of some beautiful and venerable ritual1 in which every observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical1 yet is found1 the more carefully one considers it1 to have a reasonable significance and a natural history4 ,and ,marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent ,cyrenaic1 mistaken in his estimate of values1 of loss and gain1 and untrue to the well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to ,rome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if he did not make that concession1 if he did but remain just there4 ,,notes #ba4 ,transliteration3 monochronos hdon4 ,pater's definition 8the pleasure of the ideal present1 of the mystic now40 ,the definition is fitting2 the unusual adjective monochronos means1 literally1 8single or unitary time40 ,,chapter ,,xvii4 ,,beata ,,urbs 8,many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see40 ,the enemy on the ,danube was1 indeed1 but the vanguard of the mighty invading hosts of the fifth century4 ,illusively repressed just now1 those confused movements along the northern boundary of the ,empire were destined to unite triumphantly at last1 in the barbarism1 which1 powerless to destroy the ,christian church1 was yet to suppress for a time the achieved culture of the pagan world4 ,the kingdom of ,christ was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty of the kingdom of nature1 of the natural man1 with a partly mistaken tradition concerning it1 and an incapacity1 as it might almost seem at times1 for eventual reconciliation thereto4 ,meantime ,italy had armed itself once more1 in haste1 and the imperial brothers set forth for the ,alps4 ,whatever misgiving the ,roman people may have felt as to the leadership of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest2 though with some temporary regret for the loss of what had been1 after all1 a popular figure on the world's stage4 ,travelling fraternally in the same litter with ,aurelius1 ,lucius ,verus was struck with sudden and mysterious disease1 and died as he hastened back to ,rome4 ,his death awoke a swarm of sinister rumours1 to settle on ,lucilla1 jealous1 it was said1 of ,fabia her sister1 perhaps of ,faustina--on ,faustina herself1 who had accompanied the imperial progress1 and was anxious now to hide a crime of her own--even on the elder brother1 who1 beforehand with the treasonable designs of his colleague1 should have helped him at supper to a favourite morsel1 cut with a knife poisoned ingeniously on one side only4 ,aurelius1 certainly1 with sincere distress1 his long irritations1 so dutifully concealed or repressed1 turning now into a single feeling of regret for the human creature1 carried the remains back to ,rome1 and demanded of the ,senate a public funeral1 with a decree for the apothesis1 or canonisation1 of the dead4 ,for three days the body lay in state in the ,forum1 enclosed in an open coffin of cedar-wood1 on a bed of ivory and gold1 in the centre of a sort of temporary chapel1 representing the temple of his patroness ,venus ,genetrix4 ,armed soldiers kept watch around it1 while choirs of select voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or monologues from the great tragedians4 ,at the head of the couch were displayed the various personal decorations which had belonged to ,verus in life4 ,like all the rest of ,rome1 ,marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely disguised under the hood of a travelling-dress1 as the wearer hurried1 at night-fall1 along one of the streets below the palace1 to some amorous appointment4 ,unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces1 he was taken by surprise1 and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on1 by the piteous change there2 even the skill of ,galen having been not wholly successful in the process of embalming4 ,it was as if a brother of his own were lying low before him1 with that meek and helpless expression it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely4 ,meantime1 in the centre of the ,campus ,martius1 within the grove of poplars which enclosed the space where the body of ,augustus had been burnt1 the great funeral pyre1 stuffed with shavings of various aromatic woods1 was built up in many stages1 separated from each other by a light entablature of woodwork1 and adorned abundantly with carved and tapestried images4 ,upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structure lay the corpse1 hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incense brought by the women1 who from the first had had their fondness for the wanton graces of the deceased4 ,the dead body was surmounted by a waxen effigy of great size1 arrayed in the triumphal ornaments4 ,at last the ,centurions to whom that office belonged1 drew near1 torch in hand1 to ignite the pile at its four corners1 while the soldiers1 in wild excitement1 flung themselves around it1 casting into the flames the decorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead emperor's command4 ,it had been a really heroic order1 spoiled a little1 at the last moment1 through the somewhat tawdry artifice1 by which an eagle--not a very noble or youthful specimen of its kind--was caused to take flight amid the real or affected awe of the spectators1 above the perishing remains2 a court chamberlain1 according to ancient etiquette1 subsequently making official declaration before the ,senate1 that the imperial 8genius0 had been seen in this way1 escaping from the fire4 ,and ,marius was present when the ,fathers1 duly certified of the fact1 by 8acclamation10 muttering their judgment all together1 in a kind of low1 rhythmical chant1 decreed ,caelum--the privilege of divine rank to the departed4 ,the actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed ,lucilla1 when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine2 and the conveyance of them to the little cell1 already populous1 in the central mass of the sepulchre of ,hadrian1 still in all the splendour of its statued colonnades1 were a matter of private or domestic duty2 after the due accomplishment of which ,aurelius was at liberty to retire for a time into the privacy of his beloved apartments of the ,palatine4 ,and hither1 not long afterwards1 ,marius was summoned a second time1 to receive from the imperial hands the great pile of ,manuscripts it would be his business to revise and arrange4 ,one year had passed since his first visit to the palace2 and as he climbed the stairs to-day1 the great cypresses rocked against the sunless sky1 like living creatures in pain4 ,he had to traverse a long subterranean gallery1 once a secret entrance to the imperial apartments1 and in our own day1 amid the ruin of all around it1 as smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floor after the return of the emperor from the shows4 ,it was here1 on such an occasion1 that the emperor ,caligula1 at the age of twenty-nine1 had come by his end1 the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few moments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths at their exercise in the courtyard below4 ,as ,marius waited1 a second time1 in that little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain1 curious to look once more upon its painted walls--the very place whither the assassins were said to have turned for refuge after the murder--he could all but see the figure1 which in its surrounding light and darkness seemed to him the most melancholy in the entire history of ,rome4 ,he called to mind the greatness of that popularity and early promise--the stupefying height of irresponsible power1 from which1 after all1 only men's viler side had been clearly visible--the overthrow of reason--the seemingly irredeemable memory2 and still1 above all1 the beautiful head in which the noble lines of the race of ,augustus were united to1 he knew not what expression of sensibility and fineness1 not theirs1 and for the like of which one must pass onward to the ,antonines4 ,popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found2 but one bust1 in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish1 preserved in the museum of the ,capitol1 may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of ,roman art4 ,had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows1 reflected from his mirror1 suggested his insane attempt upon the liberties1 the dignity of men8--8,o humanity60 he seems to ask1 8what hast thou done to me that ,i should so despise thee80--,and might not this be indeed the true meaning of kingship1 if the world would have one man to reign over it8 ,the like of this3 or1 some incredible1 surely never to be realised1 height of disinterestedness1 in a king who should be the servant of all1 quite at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in such a position4 ,not till some while after his death had the body been decently interred by the piety of the sisters he had driven into exile4 ,fraternity of feeling had been no invariable feature in the incidents of ,roman story4 ,one long ,vicus ,sceleratus1 from its first dim foundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of a common deliverance so touching--had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory of unnatural violence8 ,romans did well to fancy the traitress ,tarpeia still 8green in earth10 crowned1 enthroned1 at the roots of the ,capitoline rock4 ,if in truth the religion of ,rome was everywhere in it1 like that perfume of the funeral incense still upon the air1 so also was the memory of crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty1 down to the erring1 or not erring1 ,vesta calmly buried alive there1 only eighty years ago1 under ,domitian4 ,it was with a sense of relief that ,marius found himself in the presence of ,aurelius1 whose gesture of friendly intelligence1 as he entered1 raised a smile at the gloomy train of his own thoughts just then1 although since his first visit to the palace a great change had passed over it4 ,the clear daylight found its way now into empty rooms4 ,to raise funds for the war1 ,aurelius1 his luxurious brother being no more1 had determined to sell by auction the accumulated treasures of the imperial household4 ,the works of art1 the dainty furniture1 had been removed1 and were now 8on view0 in the ,forum1 to be the delight or dismay1 for many weeks to come1 of the large public of those who were curious in these things4 ,in such wise had ,aurelius come to the condition of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy1 hardly persuaded to wear warm clothing1 or to sleep in more luxurious manner than on the bare floor4 ,but1 in his empty house1 the man of mind1 who had always made so much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation1 felt freer in thought than ever4 ,he had been reading1 with less self-reproach than usual1 in the ,republic of ,plato1 those passages which describe the life of the philosopher-kings--like that of hired servants in their own house--who1 possessed of the 8gold undefiled0 of intellectual vision1 forgo so cheerfully all other riches4 ,it was one of his happy days3 one of those rare days1 when1 almost with none of the effort1 otherwise so constant with him1 his thoughts came rich and full1 and converged in a mental view1 as exhilarating to him as the prospect of some wide expanse of landscape to another man's bodily eye4 ,he seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the imaginative influence of the philosophic reason--to its suggestions of a possible open country1 commencing just where all actual experience leaves off1 but which experience1 one's own and not another's1 may one day occupy4 ,in fact1 he was seeking strength for himself1 in his own way1 before he started for that ambiguous earthly warfare which was to occupy the remainder of his life4 8,ever remember this10 he writes1 8that a happy life depends1 not on many things--en oligistois keitai40 ,and to-day1 committing himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence of the great empty apartments1 he might be said to have escaped1 according to ,plato's promise to those who live closely with philosophy1 from the evils of the world4 ,in his 8conversations with himself0 ,marcus ,aurelius speaks often of that ,city on high1 of which all other cities are but single habitations4 ,from him in fact ,cornelius ,fronto1 in his late discourse1 had borrowed the expression2 and he certainly meant by it more than the whole commonwealth of ,rome1 in any idealisation of it1 however sublime4 ,incorporate somehow with the actual city whose goodly stones were lying beneath his gaze1 it was also implicate in that reasonable constitution of nature1 by devout contemplation of which it is possible for man to associate himself to the consciousness of ,god4 ,in that ,new ,rome he had taken up his rest for awhile on this day1 deliberately feeding his thoughts on the better air of it1 as another might have gone for mental renewal to a favourite villa4 8,men seek retirement in country-houses10 he writes1 8on the sea-coast1 on the mountains2 and you have yourself as much fondness for such places as another4 ,but there is little proof of culture therein2 since the privilege is yours of retiring into yourself whensoever you please1--into that little farm of one's own mind1 where a silence so profound may be enjoyed40 ,that it could make these retreats1 was a plain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind1 its dominion over circumstance1 its inherent liberty4--8,it is in thy power to think as thou wilt3 ,the essence of things is in thy thoughts about them3 ,all is opinion1 conception3 ,no man can be hindered by another3 ,what is outside thy circle of thought is nothing at all to it2 hold to this1 and you are safe3 ,one thing is needful--to live close to the divine genius within thee1 and minister thereto worthily40 ,and the first point in this true ministry1 this culture1 was to maintain one's soul in a condition of indifference and calm4 ,how continually had public claims1 the claims of other persons1 with their rough angularities of character1 broken in upon him1 the shepherd of the flock4 ,but after all he had at least this privilege he could not part with1 of thinking as he would2 and it was well1 now and then1 by a conscious effort of will1 to indulge it for a while1 under systematic direction4 ,the duty of thus making discreet1 systematic use of the power of imaginative vision for purposes of spiritual culture1 8since the soul takes colour from its fantasies10 is a point he has frequently insisted on4 ,the influence of these seasonable meditations--a symbol1 or sacrament1 because an intensified condition1 of the soul's own ordinary and natural life--would remain upon it1 perhaps for many days4 ,there were experiences he could not forget1 intuitions beyond price1 he had come by in this way1 which were almost like the breaking of a physical light upon his mind2 as the great ,augustus was said to have seen a mysterious physical splendour1 yonder1 upon the summit of the ,capitol1 where the altar of the ,sibyl now stood4 ,with a prayer1 therefore1 for inward quiet1 for conformity to the divine reason1 he read some select passages of ,plato1 which bear upon the harmony of the reason1 in all its forms1 with itself--8,could there be ,cosmos1 that wonderful1 reasonable order1 in him1 and nothing but disorder in the world without80 ,it was from this question he had passed on to the vision of a reasonable1 a divine1 order1 not in nature1 but in the condition of human affairs--that unseen ,celestial ,city1 ,uranopolis1 ,callipolis1 ,urbs ,beata--in which1 a consciousness of the divine will being everywhere realised1 there would be1 among other felicitous differences from this lower visible world1 no more quite hopeless death1 of men1 or children1 or of their affections4 ,he had tried to-day1 as never before1 to make the most of this vision of a ,new ,rome1 to realise it as distinctly as he could1--and1 as it were1 find his way along its streets1 ere he went down into a world so irksomely different1 to make his practical effort towards it1 with a soul full of compassion for men as they were4 ,however distinct the mental image might have been to him1 with the descent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below1 it must have retreated again1 as if at touch of some malign magic wand1 beyond the utmost verge of the horizon4 ,but it had been actually1 in his clearest vision of it1 a confused place1 with but a recognisable entry1 a tower or fountain1 here or there1 and haunted by strange faces1 whose novel expression he1 the great physiognomist1 could by no means read4 ,plato1 indeed1 had been able to articulate1 to see1 at least in thought1 his ideal city4 ,but just because ,aurelius had passed beyond ,plato1 in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-supposed there1 he had been unable really to track his way about it4 ,ah6 after all1 according to ,plato himself1 all vision was but reminiscence1 and this1 his heart's desire1 no place his soul could ever have visited in any region of the old world's achievements4 ,he had but divined1 by a kind of generosity of spirit1 the void place1 which another experience than his must fill4 ,yet ,marius noted the wonderful expression of peace1 of quiet pleasure1 on the countenance of ,aurelius1 as he received from him the rolls of fine clear manuscript1 fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied at the moment with the famous prospect towards the ,alban hills1 from those lofty windows4 ,,notes #cg4 ,transliteration3 en oligistois keitai4 ,definition 8it lies in the fewest things40 ,,chapter ,,xviii4 8,,the ,,ceremony ,,of ,,the ,,dart0 ,the ideas of ,stoicism1 so precious to ,marcus ,aurelius1 ideas of large generalisation1 have sometimes induced1 in those over whose intellects they have had real power1 a coldness of heart4 ,it was the distinction of ,aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness1 one might almost say the amenities1 of a humourist1 as also with the popular religion and its many gods4 ,those vasty conceptions of the later ,greek philosophy had in them1 in truth1 the germ of a sort of austerely opinionative 8natural theology10 and how often has that led to religious dryness--a hard contempt of everything in religion1 which touches the senses1 or charms the fancy1 or really concerns the affections4 ,aurelius had made his own the secret of passing1 naturally1 and with no violence to his thought1 to and fro1 between the richly coloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had still been human beings1 and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive1 universal soul--that circle whose centre is everywhere1 the circumference nowhere--of which a series of purely logical necessities had evolved the formula4 ,as in many another instance1 those traditional pieties of the place and the hour had been derived by him from his mother3--para ts mtros to theosebes4 ,purified1 as all such religion of concrete time and place needs to be1 by frequent confronting with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate religious sense in the possession of which ,aurelius differed from the people around him1 it was the ground of many a sociability with their simpler souls1 and for himself1 certainly1 a consolation1 whenever the wings of his own soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision4 ,a host of companions1 guides1 helpers1 about him from of old time1 8the very court and company of heaven10 objects for him of personal reverence and affection--the supposed presence of the ancient popular gods determined the character of much of his daily life1 and might prove the last stay of human nature at its weakest4 8,in every time and place10 he had said1 8it rests with thyself to use the event of the hour religiously3 at all seasons worship the gods40 ,and when he said 8,worship the gods60 he did it1 as strenuously as everything else4 ,yet here again1 how often must he have experienced disillusion1 or even some revolt of feeling1 at that contact with coarser natures to which his religious conclusions exposed him4 ,at the beginning of the year one hundred and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever2 and as before it brought people's superstition into unreserved play4 ,for seven days the images of the old gods1 and some of the graver new ones1 lay solemnly exposed in the open air1 arrayed in all their ornaments1 each in his separate resting-place1 amid lights and burning incense1 while the crowd1 following the imperial example1 daily visited them1 with offerings of flowers to this or that particular divinity1 according to the devotion of each4 ,but supplementing these older official observances1 the very wildest gods had their share of worship1--strange creatures with strange secrets startled abroad into open daylight4 ,the delirious sort of religion of which ,marius was a spectator in the streets of ,rome1 during the seven days of the ,lectisternium1 reminded him now and again of an observation of ,apuleius3 it was 8as if the presence of the gods did not do men good1 but disordered or weakened them40 ,some jaded women of fashion1 especially1 found in certain oriental devotions1 at once relief for their religiously tearful souls and an opportunity for personal display2 preferring this or that 8mystery10 chiefly because the attire required in it was suitable to their peculiar manner of beauty4 ,and one morning ,marius encountered an extraordinary crimson object1 borne in a litter through an excited crowd--the famous courtesan ,benedicta1 still fresh from the bath of blood1 to which she had submitted herself1 sitting below the scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose were slaughtered by the priests4 ,even on the last day of the solemnity1 when the emperor himself performed one of the oldest ceremonies of the ,roman religion1 this fantastic piety had asserted itself4 ,there were victims enough certainly1 brought from the choice pastures of the ,sabine mountains1 and conducted around the city they were to die for1 in almost continuous procession1 covered with flowers and well-nigh worried to death before the time by the crowds of people superstitiously pressing to touch them4 ,but certain old-fashioned ,romans1 in these exceptional circumstances1 demanded something more than this1 in the way of a human sacrifice after the ancient pattern2 as when1 not so long since1 some ,greeks or ,gauls had been buried alive in the ,forum4 ,at least1 human blood should be shed2 and it was through a wild multitude of fanatics1 cutting their flesh with knives and whips and licking up ardently the crimson stream1 that the emperor repaired to the temple of ,bellona1 and in solemn symbolic act cast the bloodstained spear1 or 8dart10 carefully preserved there1 towards the enemy's country-- towards that unknown world of ,german homes1 still warm1 as some believed under the faint northern twilight1 with those innocent affections of which ,romans had lost the sense4 ,and this at least was clear1 amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong on either side1 that the ruin of those homes was involved in what ,aurelius was then preparing for1 with1--,yes6 the gods be thanked for that achievement of an invigorating philosophy6--almost with a light heart4 ,for1 in truth1 that departure1 really so difficult to him1 for which ,marcus ,aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously1 came to test the power of a long-studied theory of practice2 and it was the development of this theory--a theria1 literally--a view1 an intuition1 of the most important facts1 and still more important possibilities1 concerning man in the world1 that ,marius now discovered1 almost as if by accident1 below the dry surface of the manuscripts entrusted to him4 ,the great purple rolls contained1 first of all1 statistics1 a general historical account of the writer's own time1 and an exact diary2 all alike1 though in three different degrees of nearness to the writer's own personal experience1 laborious1 formal1 self-suppressing4 ,this was for the instruction of the public2 and part of it has1 perhaps1 found its way into the ,augustan ,histories4 ,but it was for the especial guidance of his son ,commodus that he had permitted himself to break out1 here and there1 into reflections upon what was passing1 into conversations with the reader4 ,and then1 as though he were put off his guard in this way1 there had escaped into the heavy matter-of-fact1 of which the main portion was composed1 morsels of his conversation with himself4 ,it was the romance of a soul 7to be traced only in hints1 wayside notes1 quotations from older masters71 as it were in lifelong1 and often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden fleece1 or ,hesperidean fruit-trees1 or some mysterious light of doctrine1 ever retreating before him4 ,a man1 he had seemed to ,marius from the first1 of two lives1 as we say4 ,of what nature1 he had sometimes wondered1 on the day1 for instance1 when he had interrupted the emperor's musings in the empty palace1 might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant1 who from amid the pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked out1 as if surprised1 at the things and faces around4 ,here1 then1 under the tame surface of what was meant for a life of business1 ,marius discovered1 welcoming a brother1 the spontaneous self-revelation of a soul as delicate as his own1--a soul for which conversation with itself was a necessity of existence4 ,marius1 indeed1 had always suspected that the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his4 ,but here1 certainly1 was another1 in this respect like himself2 and again he seemed to detect the advent of some new or changed spirit into the world1 mystic1 inward1 hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external and objective habit of life1 which had been sufficient for the old classic soul4 ,his purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture4 ,it was in fact the position of the modern essayist1--creature of efforts rather than of achievements1 in the matter of apprehending truth1 but at least conscious of lights by the way1 which he must needs record1 acknowledge4 ,what seemed to underlie that position was the desire to make the most of every experience that might come1 outwardly or from within3 to perpetuate1 to display1 what was so fleeting1 in a kind of instinctive1 pathetic protest against the imperial writer's own theory--that theory of the 8perpetual flux0 of all things--to ,marius himself1 so plausible from of old4 ,there was1 besides1 a special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all4 ,the ,logos1 the reasonable spark1 in man1 is common to him with the gods--koinos aut pros tous theous--cum diis communis4 ,that might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy2 but in ,aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension4 ,there could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this1 unless there were indeed some one else1 aware of our actual thoughts and feelings1 pleased or displeased at one's disposition of one's self4 ,cornelius ,fronto too could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between men and ,god1 in many different ways4 ,but then1 he was a cheerful man1 and ,aurelius a singularly sad one2 and what to ,fronto was but a doctrine1 or a motive of mere rhetoric1 was to the other a consolation4 ,he walks and talks1 for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint by the way1 with what to the learned professor is but matter of philosophic eloquence4 ,in performing his public religious functions ,marcus ,aurelius had ever seemed like one who took part in some great process1 a great thing really done1 with more than the actually visible assistants about him4 ,here1 in these manuscripts1 in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or language1 in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an actual conversation1 in quotations from other older masters of the inward life1 taking new significance from the chances of such intercourse1 was the record of his communion with that eternal reason1 which was also his own proper self1 with the divine companion1 whose tabernacle was in the intelligence of men--the journal of his daily commerce with that4 ,chance3 or ,providence6 ,chance3 or ,wisdom1 one with nature and man1 reaching from end to end1 through all time and all existence1 orderly disposing all things1 according to fixed periods1 as he describes it1 in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of ,wisdom3--those are the 8fenced opposites0 of the speculative dilemma1 the tragic embarras1 of which ,aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the summary of man's situation in the world4 ,if there be1 however1 a provident soul like this 8behind the veil10 truly1 even to him1 even in the most intimate of those conversations1 it has never yet spoken with any quite irresistible assertion of its presence4 ,yet one's choice in that speculative dilemma1 as he has found it1 is on the whole a matter of will4--8',tis in thy power10 here too1 again1 8to think as thou wilt40 ,for his part he has asserted his will1 and has the courage of his opinion4 8,to the better of two things1 if thou findest that1 turn with thy whole heart3 eat and drink ever of the best before thee40 8,wisdom10 says that other disciple of the ,sapiential philosophy1 8hath mingled ,her wine1 she hath also prepared ,herself a table40 ,tou aristou apolaue3 8,partake ever of ,her best60 ,and what ,marius1 peeping now very closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind1 found a thing actually pathetic and affecting1 was the manner of the writer's bearing as in the presence of this supposed guest2 so elusive1 so jealous of any palpable manifestation of himself1 so taxing to one's faith1 never allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest4 ,only1 he would do his part1 at least1 in maintaining the constant fitness1 the sweetness and quiet1 of the guest-chamber4 ,seeming to vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour1 from the plainest account of experience1 to a sheer fantasy1 only 8believed because it was impossible10 that one hope was1 at all events1 sufficient to make men's common pleasures and their common ambition1 above all their commonest vices1 seem very petty indeed1 too petty to know of4 ,it bred in him a kind of magnificence of character1 in the old ,greek sense of the term2 a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his convictions1 or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever1 or talk about other people1 or speculation as to what was passing in their so visibly little souls1 or much talking of any kind1 however clever or graceful4 ,a soul thus disposed had 8already entered into the better life03--was indeed in some sort 8a priest1 a minister of the gods40 ,hence his constant 8recollection02 a close watching of his soul1 of a kind almost unique in the ancient world4--,before all things examine into thyself3 strive to be at home with thyself6--,marius1 a sympathetic witness of all this1 might almost seem to have had a foresight of monasticism itself in the prophetic future4 ,with this mystic companion he had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence4 ,here was already a master in that craft of self-direction1 which was about to play so large a part in the forming of human mind1 under the sanction of the ,christian church4 ,yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service1 a service on which one must needs move about1 solemn1 serious1 depressed1 with the hushed footsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying4 ,such was the impression which occurred to ,marius again and again as he read1 with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author4 ,by certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded1 in spite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor's ideas1 how he had sat1 essentially unconcerned1 at the public shows4 ,for1 actually1 his contemplations had made him of a sad heart1 inducing in him that melancholy--,tristitia--which even the monastic moralists have held to be of the nature of deadly sin1 akin to the sin of ,desidia or ,inactivity4 ,resignation1 a sombre resignation1 a sad heart1 patient bearing of the burden of a sad heart3--,yes6 this belonged doubtless to the situation of an honest thinker upon the world4 ,only1 in this case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is4 ,and there could be no true ,thodic in that2 no real accommodation of the world as it is1 to the divine pattern of the ,logos1 the eternal reason1 over against it4 ,it amounted to a tolerance of evil4 ,the soul of good1 though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little understand1 yet prospereth on the journey3 ,if thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature1 there can be nought of evil with thee therein4 ,if thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are communicant with the gods1 there also can be nothing of evil with thee--nothing to be afraid of3 ,whatever is1 is right2 as from the hand of one dispensing to every man according to his desert3 ,if reason fulfil its part in things1 what more dost thou require8 ,dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits8 ,that which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole4 ,the profit of the whole1--that was sufficient6 --,links1 in a train of thought really generous6 of which1 nevertheless1 the forced and yet facile optimism1 refusing to see evil anywhere1 might lack1 after all1 the secret of genuine cheerfulness4 ,it left in truth a weight upon the spirits2 and with that weight unlifted1 there could be no real justification of the ways of ,heaven to man4 8,let thine air be cheerful10 he had said2 and1 with an effort1 did himself at times attain to that serenity of aspect1 which surely ought to accompany1 as their outward flower and favour1 hopeful assumptions like those4 ,still1 what in ,aurelius was but a passing expression1 was with ,cornelius 7,marius could but note the contrast7 nature1 and a veritable physiognomy4 ,with ,cornelius1 in fact1 it was nothing less than the joy which ,dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect1 the outward semblance of which1 like a reflex of physical light upon human faces from 8the land which is very far off10 we may trace from ,giotto onward to its consummation in the work of ,raphael--the serenity1 the durable cheerfulness1 of those who have been indeed delivered from death1 and of which the utmost degree of that famed 8blitheness0 of the ,greeks had been but a transitory gleam1 as in careless and wholly superficial youth4 ,and yet1 in ,cornelius1 it was certainly united with the bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world2 real as an aching in the head or heart1 which one instinctively desires to have cured2 an enemy with whom no terms could be made1 visible1 hatefully visible1 in a thousand forms--the apparent waste of men's gifts in an early1 or even in a late grave2 the death1 as such1 of men1 and even of animals2 the disease and pain of the body4 ,and there was another point of dissidence between ,aurelius and his reader4--,the philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body4 ,since it is 8the peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself1 and to be proof against corporeal impressions1 suffering neither sensation nor passion to break in upon her10 it follows that the true interest of the spirit must ever be to treat the body--,well6 as a corpse attached thereto1 rather than as a living companion--nay1 actually to promote its dissolution4 ,in counterpoise to the inhumanity of this1 presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature1 the very person of ,cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that reverent delight ,marius had always had in the visible body of man4 ,such delight indeed had been but a natural consequence of the sensuous or materialistic character of the philosophy of his choice4 ,now to ,cornelius the body of man was unmistakeably1 as a later seer terms it1 the one true temple in the world2 or rather itself the proper object of worship1 of a sacred service1 in which the very finest gold might have its seemliness and due symbolic use3--,ah6 and of what awe-stricken pity also1 in its dejection1 in the perishing gray bones of a poor man's grave6 ,some flaw of vision1 thought ,marius1 must be involved in the philosopher's contempt for it--some diseased point of thought1 or moral dulness1 leading logically to what seemed to him the strangest of all the emperor's inhumanities1 the temper of the suicide2 for which there was just then1 indeed1 a sort of mania in the world4 8',tis part of the business of life10 he read1 8to lose it handsomely40 ,on due occasion1 8one might give life the slip40 ,the moral or mental powers might fail one2 and then it were a fair question1 precisely1 whether the time for taking leave was not come3--8,thou canst leave this prison when thou wilt4 ,go forth boldly60 ,just there1 in the bare capacity to entertain such question at all1 there was what ,marius1 with a soul which must always leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine1 touching him as it touched the flies in the air1 could not away with4 ,there1 surely1 was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power of apprehension4 ,it was the attitude1 the melancholy intellectual attitude1 of one who might be greatly mistaken in things--who might make the greatest of mistakes4 ,a heart that could forget itself in the misfortune1 or even in the weakness of others3--of this ,marius had certainly found the trace1 as a confidant of the emperor's conversations with himself1 in spite of those jarring inhumanities1 of that pretension to a stoical indifference1 and the many difficulties of his manner of writing4 ,he found it again not long afterwards1 in still stronger evidence1 in this way4 ,as he read one morning early1 there slipped from the rolls of manuscript a sealed letter with the emperor's superscription1 which might well be of importance1 and he felt bound to deliver it at once in person2 ,aurelius being then absent from ,rome in one of his favourite retreats1 at ,praeneste1 taking a few days of quiet with his young children1 before his departure for the war4 ,a whole day passed as ,marius crossed the ,campagna on horseback1 pleased by the random autumn lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture1 the shepherds in their picturesque dress1 the golden elms1 tower and villa2 and it was after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-town to the imperial residence4 ,he was struck by an odd mixture of stillness and excitement about the place4 ,lights burned at the windows4 ,it seemed that numerous visitors were within1 for the courtyard was crowded with litters and horses in waiting4 ,for the moment1 indeed1 all larger cares1 even the cares of war1 of late so heavy a pressure1 had been forgotten in what was passing with the little ,annius ,verus2 who for his part had forgotten his toys1 lying all day across the knees of his mother1 as a mere child's ear-ache grew rapidly to alarming sickness with great and manifest agony1 only suspended a little1 from time to time1 when from very weariness he passed into a few moments of unconsciousness4 ,the country surgeon called in1 had removed the imposthume with the knife4 ,there had been a great effort to bear this operation1 for the terrified child1 hardly persuaded to submit himself1 when his pain was at its worst1 and even more for the parents4 ,at length1 amid a company of pupils pressing in with him1 as the custom was1 to watch the proceedings in the sick-room1 the eminent ,galen had arrived1 only to pronounce the thing done visibly useless1 the patient falling now into longer intervals of delirium4 ,and thus1 thrust on one side by the crowd of departing visitors1 ,marius was forced into the privacy of a grief1 the desolate face of which went deep into his memory1 as he saw the emperor carry the child away--quite conscious at last1 but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and defeat--pressed close to his bosom1 as if he yearned just then for one thing only1 to be united1 to be absolutely one with it1 in its obscure distress4 ,,notes #db4 ,transliteration3 para ts mtros to theosebes4 ,translation3 8rites deriving from his mother40 #dg4 ,transliteration3 koinos aut pros tous theous4 ,translation3 8common to him together with the gods40 #di4 ,transliteration3 ,tou aristou apolaue4 ,translation3 8,always take the best40 #eb4 ,not indented in the original4 ,,chapter ,,xix4 ,,the ,,will ,,as ,,vision ,paratum cor meum deus6 paratum cor meum6 ,the emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the erection of images in memory of the dead prince2 that a golden one should be carried1 together with the other images1 in the great procession of the ,circus1 and the addition of the child's name to the ,hymn of the ,salian ,priests3 and so1 stifling private grief1 without further delay set forth for the war4 ,true kingship1 as ,plato1 the old master of ,aurelius1 had understood it1 was essentially of the nature of a service4 ,if so be1 you can discover a mode of life more desirable than the being a king1 for those who shall be kings2 then1 the true ,ideal of the ,state will become a possibility2 but not otherwise4 ,and if the life of ,beatific ,vision be indeed possible1 if philosophy really 8concludes in an ecstasy10 affording full fruition to the entire nature of man2 then1 for certain elect souls at least1 a mode of life will have been discovered more desirable than to be a king4 ,by love or fear you might induce such persons to forgo their privilege2 to take upon them the distasteful task of governing other men1 or even of leading them to victory in battle4 ,but1 by the very conditions of its tenure1 their dominion would be wholly a ministry to others3 they would have taken upon them 8the form of a servant03 they would be reigning for the well-being of others rather than their own4 ,the true king1 the righteous king1 would be ,saint ,lewis1 exiling himself from the better land and its perfected company--so real a thing to him1 definite and real as the pictured scenes of his psalter--to take part in or to arbitrate men's quarrels1 about the transitory appearances of things4 ,in a lower degree 7lower1 in proportion as the highest ,platonic dream is lower than any ,christian vision7 the true king would be ,marcus ,aurelius1 drawn from the meditation of books1 to be the ruler of the ,roman people in peace1 and still more1 in war4 ,to ,aurelius1 certainly1 the philosophic mood1 the visions1 however dim1 which this mood brought with it1 were sufficiently pleasant to him1 together with the endearments of his home1 to make public rule nothing less than a sacrifice of himself according to ,plato's requirement1 now consummated in his setting forth for the campaign on the ,danube4 ,that it was such a sacrifice was to ,marius visible fact1 as he saw him ceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the pageantry of an imperial departure1 yet with the air less of a sanguine and self-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated4 ,through the fortune of the subsequent years1 passing and repassing so inexplicably from side to side1 the rumour of which reached him amid his own quiet studies1 ,marius seemed always to see that central figure1 with its habitually dejected hue grown now to an expression of positive suffering1 all the stranger from its contrast with the magnificent armour worn by the emperor on this occasion1 as it had been worn by his predecessor ,hadrian4 ,totus et argento contextus et auro3 clothed in its gold and silver1 dainty as that old divinely constructed armour of which ,homer tells1 but without its miraculous lightsomeness--he looked out baffled1 labouring1 moribund2 a mere comfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of the labours of ,hercules1 through those northern1 mist-laden confines of the civilised world4 ,it was as if the familiar soul which had been so friendly disposed towards him were actually departed to ,hades2 and when he read the ,conversations afterwards1 though his judgment of them underwent no material change1 it was nevertheless with the allowance we make for the dead4 ,the memory of that suffering image1 while it certainly strengthened his adhesion to what he could accept at all in the philosophy of ,aurelius1 added a strange pathos to what must seem the writer's mistakes4 ,what1 after all1 had been the meaning of that incident1 observed as so fortunate an omen long since1 when the prince1 then a little child much younger than was usual1 had stood in ceremony among the priests of ,mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest at the sacred image reclining on the ,pulvinar8 ,the other crowns lodged themselves here or there2 when1 ,lo6 the crown thrown by ,aurelius1 the youngest of them all1 alighted upon the very brows of the god1 as if placed there by a careful hand6 ,he was still young1 also1 when on the day of his adoption by ,antoninus ,pius he saw himself in a dream1 with as it were shoulders of ivory1 like the images of the gods1 and found them more capable than shoulders of flesh4 ,yet he was now well-nigh fifty years of age1 setting out with two-thirds of life behind him1 upon a labour which would fill the remainder of it with anxious cares--a labour for which he had perhaps no capacity1 and certainly no taste4 ,that ancient suit of armour was almost the only object ,aurelius now possessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu collected by the ,caesars1 making the imperial residence like a magnificent museum4 ,not men alone were needed for the war1 so that it became necessary1 to the great disgust alike of timid persons and of the lovers of sport1 to arm the gladiators1 but money also was lacking4 ,accordingly1 at the sole motion of ,aurelius himself1 unwilling that the public burden should be further increased1 especially on the part of the poor1 the whole of the imperial ornaments and furniture1 a sumptuous collection of gems formed by ,hadrian1 with many works of the most famous painters and sculptors1 even the precious ornaments of the emperor's chapel or ,lararium1 and the wardrobe of the empress ,faustina1 who seems to have borne the loss without a murmur1 were exposed for public auction4 8,these treasures10 said ,aurelius1 8like all else that ,i possess1 belong by right to the ,senate and ,people40 ,was it not a characteristic of the true kings in ,plato that they had in their houses nothing they could call their own8 ,connoisseurs had a keen delight in the mere reading of the ,praetor's list of the property for sale4 ,for two months the learned in these matters were daily occupied in the appraising of the embroidered hangings1 the choice articles of personal use selected for preservation by each succeeding age1 the great outlandish pearls from ,hadrian's favourite cabinet1 the marvellous plate lying safe behind the pretty iron wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths' quarter4 ,meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the inspection of objects which had been as daily companions to people so far above and remote from them--things so fine also in workmanship and material as to seem1 with their antique and delicate air1 a worthy survival of the grand bygone eras1 like select thoughts or utterances embodying the very spirit of the vanished past4 ,the town became more pensive than ever over old fashions4 ,the welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great war being now over1 all ,rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet1 likely to last long1 as though bent only on watching from afar the languid1 somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself4 ,marius took advantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study than of old1 only now and then going out to one of his favourite spots on the ,sabine or ,alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of ,rome in the country air4 ,on one of these occasions1 as if by favour of an invisible power withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection from around him1 he enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession--the possession of his own best and happiest self4 ,after some gloomy thoughts over-night1 he awoke under the full tide of the rising sun1 himself full1 in his entire refreshment1 of that almost religious appreciation of sleep1 the graciousness of its influence on men's spirits1 which had made the old ,greeks conceive of it as a god4 ,it was like one of those old joyful wakings of childhood1 now becoming rarer and rarer with him1 and looked back upon with much regret as a measure of advancing age4 ,in fact1 the last bequest of this serene sleep had been a dream1 in which1 as once before1 he overheard those he loved best pronouncing his name very pleasantly1 as they passed through the rich light and shadow of a summer morning1 along the pavement of a city--,ah6 fairer far than ,rome6 ,in a moment1 as he arose1 a certain oppression of late setting very heavily upon him was lifted away1 as though by some physical motion in the air4 ,that flawless serenity1 better than the most pleasurable excitement1 yet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things and persons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life1 was to be wholly his to-day1 he thought1 as he rode towards ,tibur1 under the early sunshine2 the marble of its villas glistening all the way before him on the hillside4 ,and why could he not hold such serenity of spirit ever at command8 he asked1 expert as he was at last become in the art of setting the house of his thoughts in order4 8',tis in thy power to think as thou wilt30 he repeated to himself3 it was the most serviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by those imperial conversations4--8',tis in thy power to think as thou wilt40 ,and were the cheerful1 sociable1 restorative beliefs1 of which he had there read so much1 that bold adhesion1 for instance1 to the hypothesis of an eternal friend to man1 just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and material order1 but only just behind it1 ready perhaps even now to break through3--were they1 after all1 really a matter of choice1 dependent on some deliberate act of volition on his part8 ,were they doctrines one might take for granted1 generously take for granted1 and led on by them1 at first as but well-defined objects of hope1 come at last into the region of a corresponding certitude of the intellect8 8,it is the truth ,i seek10 he had read1 8the truth1 by which no one10 gray and depressing though it might seem1 8was ever really injured40 ,and yet1 on the other hand1 the imperial wayfarer1 he had been able to go along with so far on his intellectual pilgrimage1 let fall many things concerning the practicability of a methodical and self-forced assent to certain principles or presuppositions 8one could not do without40 ,were there1 as the expression 8one could not do without0 seemed to hint1 beliefs1 without which life itself must be almost impossible1 principles which had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very fact8 ,experience certainly taught that1 as regarding the sensible world he could attend or not1 almost at will1 to this or that colour1 this or that train of sounds1 in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and sound1 so it was also1 for the well-trained intelligence1 in regard to that hum of voices which besiege the inward no less than the outward ear4 ,might it be not otherwise with those various and competing hypotheses1 the permissible hypotheses1 which1 in that open field for hypothesis--one's own actual ignorance of the origin and tendency of our being--present themselves so importunately1 some of them with so emphatic a reiteration1 through all the mental changes of successive ages8 ,might the will itself be an organ of knowledge1 of vision8 ,on this day truly no mysterious light1 no irresistibly leading hand from afar reached him2 only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its first hour increased steadily upon him1 in a manner with which1 as he conceived1 the aspects of the place he was then visiting had something to do4 ,the air there1 air supposed to possess the singular property of restoring the whiteness of ivory1 was pure and thin4 ,an even veil of lawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky2 and under its broad1 shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellow old temples1 the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal ,sibyl1 the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamental rock4 ,some half-conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to have determined their grouping2 in part resisting1 partly going along with the natural wildness and harshness of the place1 its floods and precipices4 ,an air of immense age possessed1 above all1 the vegetation around--a world of evergreen trees--the olives especially1 older than how many generations of men's lives6 fretted and twisted by the combining forces of life and death1 into every conceivable caprice of form4 ,in the windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the immemorial waterfall1 plunging down so unassociably among these human habitations1 and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to count1 even in this time-worn place1 as an image of unalterable rest4 ,yet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was silently quickening everything in the late ,february afternoon1 and the unseen violet refined itself through the air4 ,it was as if the spirit of life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate revelation of itself1 in its slow1 wise1 maturing work4 ,through some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn where he rested1 ,marius had an unexpected delay4 ,he sat down in an olive-garden1 and1 all around him and within still turning to reverie1 the course of his own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some other world1 disparted from this spectacular point where he was now placed to survey it1 like that distant road below1 along which he had travelled this morning across the ,campagna4 ,through a dreamy land he could see himself moving1 as if in another life1 and like another person1 through all his fortunes and misfortunes1 passing from point to point1 weeping1 delighted1 escaping from various dangers4 ,that prospect brought him1 first of all1 an impulse of lively gratitude3 it was as if he must look round for some one else to share his joy with3 for some one to whom he might tell the thing1 for his own relief4 ,companionship1 indeed1 familiarity with others1 gifted in this way or that1 or at least pleasant to him1 had been1 through one or another long span of it1 the chief delight of the journey4 ,and was it only the resultant general sense of such familiarity1 diffused through his memory1 that in a while suggested the question whether there had not been--besides ,flavian1 besides ,cornelius even1 and amid the solitude he had which in spite of ardent friendship perhaps loved best of all things--some other companion1 an unfailing companion1 ever at his side throughout2 doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way1 patient of his peevishness or depression1 sympathetic above all with his grateful recognition1 onward from his earliest days1 of the fact that he was there at all8 ,must not the whole world around have faded away for him altogether1 had he been left for one moment really alone in it8 ,in his deepest apparent solitude there had been rich entertainment4 ,it was as if there were not one only1 but two wayfarers1 side by side1 visible there across the plain1 as he indulged his fancy4 ,a bird came and sang among the wattled hedge-roses3 an animal feeding crept nearer3 the child who kept it was gazing quietly3 and the scene and the hours still conspiring1 he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself1 beside him in his coming and going1 to those divinations of a living and companionable spirit at work in all things1 of which he had become aware from time to time in his old philosophic readings--in ,plato and others1 last but not least1 in ,aurelius4 ,through one reflection upon another1 he passed from such instinctive divinations1 to the thoughts which give them logical consistency1 formulating at last1 as the necessary exponent of our own and the world's life1 that reasonable ,ideal to which the ,old ,testament gives the name of ,creator1 which for the philosophers of ,greece is the ,eternal ,reason1 and in the ,new ,testament the ,father of ,men--even as one builds up from act and word and expression of the friend actually visible at one's side1 an ideal of the spirit within him4 ,in this peculiar and privileged hour1 his bodily frame1 as he could recognise1 although just then1 in the whole sum of its capacities1 so entirely possessed by him--,nay6 actually his very self--was yet determined by a far-reaching system of material forces external to it1 a thousand combining currents from earth and sky4 ,its seemingly active powers of apprehension were1 in fact1 but susceptibilities to influence4 ,the perfection of its capacity might be said to depend on its passive surrender1 as of a leaf on the wind1 to the motions of the great stream of physical energy without it4 ,and might not the intellectual frame also1 still more intimately himself as in truth it was1 after the analogy of the bodily life1 be a moment only1 an impulse or series of impulses1 a single process1 in an intellectual or spiritual system external to it1 diffused through all time and place--that great stream of spiritual energy1 of which his own imperfect thoughts1 yesterday or to-day1 would be but the remote1 and therefore imperfect pulsations8 ,it was the hypothesis 7boldest1 though in reality the most conceivable of all hypotheses7 which had dawned on the contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old ,greek thought1 alike3--the 8,world of ,ideas10 existent only because1 and in so far as1 they are known1 as ,plato conceived2 the 8creative1 incorruptible1 informing mind10 supposed by ,aristotle1 so sober-minded1 yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all4 ,might not this entire material world1 the very scene around him1 the immemorial rocks1 the firm marble1 the olive-gardens1 the falling water1 be themselves but reflections in1 or a creation of1 that one indefectible mind1 wherein he too became conscious1 for an hour1 a day1 for so many years8 ,upon what other hypothesis could he so well understand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittent consciousness of them1 for the intermittent consciousness of so many generations1 fleeting away one after another8 ,it was easier to conceive of the material fabric of things as but an element in a world of thought--as a thought in a mind1 than of mind as an element1 or accident1 or passing condition in a world of matter1 because mind was really nearer to himself3 it was an explanation of what was less known by what was known better4 ,the purely material world1 that close1 impassable prison-wall1 seemed just then the unreal thing1 to be actually dissolving away all around him3 and he felt a quiet hope1 a quiet joy dawning faintly1 in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as a really credible opinion4 ,it was like the break of day over some vast prospect with the 8new city10 as it were some celestial ,new ,rome1 in the midst of it4 ,that divine companion figured no longer as but an occasional wayfarer beside him2 but rather as the unfailing 8assistant10 without whose inspiration and concurrence he could not breathe or see1 instrumenting his bodily senses1 rounding1 supporting his imperfect thoughts4 ,how often had the thought of their brevity spoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life1 confusing even his present sense of them by the suggestion of disease1 of death1 of a coming end1 in everything6 ,how had he longed1 sometimes1 that there were indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he could commit his own most fortunate moments1 his admiration1 his love1 ,ay6 the very sorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense3--one strong to retain them even though he forgot1 in whose more vigorous consciousness they might subsist for ever1 beyond that mere quickening of capacity which was all that remained of them in himself6 8,oh6 that they might live before ,thee0--,to-day at least1 in the peculiar clearness of one privileged hour1 he seemed to have apprehended that in which the experiences he valued most might find1 one by one1 an abiding-place4 ,and again1 the resultant sense of companionship1 of a person beside him1 evoked the faculty of conscience--of conscience1 as of old and when he had been at his best1 in the form1 not of fear1 nor of self-reproach even1 but of a certain lively gratitude4 ,himself--his sensations and ideas--never fell again precisely into focus as on that day1 yet he was the richer by its experience4 ,but for once only to have come under the power of that peculiar mood1 to have felt the train of reflections which belong to it really forcible and conclusive1 to have been led by them to a conclusion1 to have apprehended the ,great ,ideal1 so palpably that it defined personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the shadows of the world1 left this one particular hour a marked point in life never to be forgotten4 ,it gave him a definitely ascertained measure of his moral or intellectual need1 of the demand his soul must make upon the powers1 whatsoever they might be1 which had brought him1 as he was1 into the world at all4 ,and again1 would he be faithful to himself1 to his own habits of mind1 his leading suppositions1 if he did but remain just there8 ,must not all that remained of life be but a search for the equivalent of that ,ideal1 among so-called actual things--a gathering together of every trace or token of it1 which his actual experience might present8 ,,part ,,the ,,fourth ,,chapter ,,xx4 ,,two ,,curious ,,houses ,i4 ,,guests 8,your old men shall dream dreams40 ,a nature like that of ,marius1 composed1 in about equal parts1 of instincts almost physical1 and of slowly accumulated intellectual judgments1 was perhaps even less susceptible than other men's characters of essential change4 ,and yet the experience of that fortunate hour1 seeming to gather into one central act of vision all the deeper impressions his mind had ever received1 did not leave him quite as he had been4 ,for his mental view1 at least1 it changed measurably the world about him1 of which he was still indeed a curious spectator1 but which looked further off1 was weaker in its hold1 and1 in a sense1 less real to him than ever4 ,it was as if he viewed it through a diminishing glass4 ,and the permanency of this change he could note1 some years later1 when it happened that he was a guest at a feast1 in which the various exciting elements of ,roman life1 its physical and intellectual accomplishments1 its frivolity and far-fetched elegances1 its strange1 mystic essays after the unseen1 were elaborately combined4 ,the great ,apuleius1 the literary ideal of his boyhood1 had arrived in ,rome1--was now visiting ,tusculum1 at the house of their common friend1 a certain aristocratic poet who loved every sort of superiorities2 and ,marius was favoured with an invitation to a supper given in his honour4 ,it was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own early boyish hero-worship1 yet with some sense of superiority in himself1 seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on the point of satisfaction at last1 and upon a juster estimate of its object1 that he mounted to the little town on the hillside1 the foot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gathered round a single great house under shadow of the 8haunted0 ruins of ,cicero's villa on the wooded heights4 ,he found a touch of weirdness in the circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet the writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages in his own fiction4 ,as he turned now and then to gaze at the evening scene through the tall narrow openings of the street1 up which the cattle were going home slowly from the pastures below1 the ,alban mountains1 stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses1 seemed close at hand--a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun--with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate volcanic formation4 ,the coolness of the little brown market-place1 for profit of which even the working-people1 in long file through the olive-gardens1 were leaving the plain for the night1 was grateful1 after the heats of ,rome4 ,those wild country figures1 clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork1 stained by wind and weather fortunately enough for the eye1 under that significant light inclined him to poetry4 ,and it was a very delicate poetry of its kind that seemed to enfold him1 as passing into the poet's house he paused for a moment to glance back towards the heights above2 whereupon1 the numerous cascades of the precipitous garden of the villa1 framed in the doorway of the hall1 fell into a harmless picture1 in its place among the pictures within1 and scarcely more real than they--a landscape-piece1 in which the power of water 7plunging into what unseen depths67 done to the life1 was pleasant1 and without its natural terrors4 ,at the further end of this bland apartment1 fragrant with the rare woods of the old inlaid panelling1 the falling of aromatic oil from the ready-lighted lamps1 the iris-root clinging to the dresses of the guests1 as with odours from the altars of the gods1 the supper-table was spread1 in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable petit-matre1 who entertained4 ,he was already most carefully dressed1 but1 like ,martial's ,stella1 perhaps consciously1 meant to change his attire once and again during the banquet2 in the last instance1 for an ancient vesture 7object of much rivalry among the young men of fashion1 at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes7 a toga1 of altogether lost hue and texture4 ,he wore it with a grace which became the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for the restoration of that disused garment1 in which1 laying aside the customary evening dress1 all the visitors were requested to appear1 setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed 8golden ways0 of its folds1 with harmoniously tinted flowers4 ,the opulent sunset1 blending pleasantly with artificial light1 fell across the quiet ancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries1 along the wide floor strewn with sawdust of sandal-wood1 and lost itself in the heap of cool coronals1 lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of old citron4 ,the crystal vessels darkened with old wine1 the hues of the early autumn fruit--mulberries1 pomegranates1 and grapes that had long been hanging under careful protection upon the vines1 were almost as much a feast for the eye1 as the dusky fires of the rare twelve-petalled roses4 ,a favourite animal1 white as snow1 brought by one of the visitors1 purred its way gracefully among the wine-cups1 coaxed onward from place to place by those at table1 as they reclined easily on their cushions of ,german eider-down1 spread over the long-legged1 carved couches4 ,a highly refined modification of the acroama--a musical performance during supper for the diversion of the guests--was presently heard hovering round the place1 soothingly1 and so unobtrusively that the company could not guess1 and did not like to ask1 whether or not it had been designed by their entertainer4 ,they inclined on the whole to think it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wild neighbourhood1 turning1 as it did now and then1 to a solitary reed-note1 like a bird's1 while it wandered into the distance4 ,it wandered quite away at last1 as darkness with a bolder lamplight came on1 and made way for another sort of entertainment4 ,an odd1 rapid1 phantasmal glitter1 advancing from the garden by torchlight1 defined itself1 as it came nearer1 into a dance of young men in armour4 ,arrived at length in a portico1 open to the supper-chamber1 they contrived that their mechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highly expressive dramatic action2 and with the utmost possible emphasis of dumb motion1 their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air1 they danced the ,death of ,paris4 ,the young ,commodus1 already an adept in these matters1 who had condescended to welcome the eminent ,apuleius at the banquet1 had mysteriously dropped from his place to take his share in the performance2 and at its conclusion reappeared1 still wearing the dainty accoutrements of ,paris1 including a breastplate1 composed entirely of overlapping tigers' claws1 skilfully gilt4 ,the youthful prince had lately assumed the dress of manhood1 on the return of the emperor for a brief visit from the ,north2 putting up his hair1 in imitation of ,nero1 in a golden box dedicated to ,capitoline ,jupiter4 ,his likeness to ,aurelius1 his father1 was become1 in consequence1 more striking than ever2 and he had one source of genuine interest in the great literary guest of the occasion1 in that the latter was the fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of wild beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of ,carthage1 where he resided4 ,still1 after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes of the emperor's son1 it was felt that with a guest like ,apuleius whom they had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs1 the conversation should be learned and superior1 and the host at last deftly led his company round to literature1 by the way of bindings4 ,elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient ,greek books passed from hand to hand about the table4 ,it was a sign for the visitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiosities from their bags1 as their contribution to the banquet2 and one of them1 a famous reader1 choosing his lucky moment1 delivered in tenor voice the piece which follows1 with a preliminary query as to whether it could indeed be the composition of ,lucian of ,samosata1 understood to be the great mocker of that day3-- 8,what sound was that1 ,socrates80 asked ,chaerephon4 8,it came from the beach under the cliff yonder1 and seemed a long way off4--,and how melodious it was6 ,was it a bird1 ,i wonder4 ,i thought all sea-birds were songless40 8,aye6 a sea-bird10 answered ,socrates1 8a bird called the ,halcyon1 and has a note full of plaining and tears4 ,there is an old story people tell of it4 ,it was a mortal woman once1 daughter of ,aeolus1 god of the winds4 ,ceyx1 the son of the morning-star1 wedded her in her early maidenhood4 ,the son was not less fair than the father2 and when it came to pass that he died1 the crying of the girl as she lamented his sweet usage1 was1 ,just that6 ,and some while after1 as ,heaven willed1 she was changed into a bird4 ,floating now on bird's wings over the sea she seeks her lost ,ceyx there2 since she was not able to find him after long wandering over the land40 8,that then is the ,halcyon--the kingfisher10 said ,chaerephon4 8,i never heard a bird like it before4 ,it has truly a plaintive note4 ,what kind of a bird is it1 ,socrates80 8,not a large bird1 though she has received large honour from the gods on account of her singular conjugal affection4 ,for whensoever she makes her nest1 a law of nature brings round what is called ,halcyon's weather1--days distinguishable among all others for their serenity1 though they come sometimes amid the storms of winter--days like to-day6 ,see how transparent is the sky above us1 and how motionless the sea6--like a smooth mirror40 ,true6 ,a ,halcyon day1 indeed6 and yesterday was the same4 ,but tell me1 ,socrates1 what is one to think of those stories which have been told from the beginning1 of birds changed into mortals and mortals into birds8 ,to me nothing seems more incredible40 8,dear ,chaerephon10 said ,socrates1 8methinks we are but half-blind judges of the impossible and the possible4 ,we try the question by the standard of our human faculty1 which avails neither for true knowledge1 nor for faith1 nor vision4 ,therefore many things seem to us impossible which are really easy1 many things unattainable which are within our reach2 partly through inexperience1 partly through the childishness of our minds4 ,for in truth1 every man1 even the oldest of us1 is like a little child1 so brief and babyish are the years of our life in comparison of eternity4 ,then1 how can we1 who comprehend not the faculties of gods and of the heavenly host1 tell whether aught of that kind be possible or no8--,what a tempest you saw three days ago6 ,one trembles but to think of the lightning1 the thunderclaps1 the violence of the wind6 ,you might have thought the whole world was going to ruin4 ,and then1 after a little1 came this wonderful serenity of weather1 which has continued till to-day4 ,which do you think the greater and more difficult thing to do3 to exchange the disorder of that irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this1 and becalm the whole world again1 or to refashion the form of a woman into that of a bird8 ,we can teach even little children to do something of that sort1--to take wax or clay1 and mould out of the same material many kinds of form1 one after another1 without difficulty4 ,and it may be that to the ,deity1 whose power is too vast for comparison with ours1 all processes of that kind are manageable and easy4 ,how much wider is the whole circle of heaven than thyself8--,wider than thou canst express4 8,among ourselves also1 how vast the difference we may observe in men's degrees of power6 ,to you and me1 and many another like us1 many things are impossible which are quite easy to others4 ,for those who are unmusical1 to play on the flute2 to read or write1 for those who have not yet learned2 is no easier than to make birds of women1 or women of birds4 ,from the dumb and lifeless egg ,nature moulds her swarms of winged creatures1 aided1 as some will have it1 by a divine and secret art in the wide air around us4 ,she takes from the honeycomb a little memberless live thing2 she brings it wings and feet1 brightens and beautifies it with quaint variety of colour3--and ,lo6 the bee in her wisdom1 making honey worthy of the gods4 8,it follows1 that we mortals1 being altogether of little account1 able wholly to discern no great matter1 sometimes not even a little one1 for the most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves1 may hardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortal gods concerning ,kingfisher1 or ,nightingale4 ,yet the glory of thy mythus1 as my fathers bequeathed it to me1 ,o tearful songstress6 that will ,i too hand on to my children1 and tell it often to my wives1 ,xanthippe and ,myrto3--the story of thy pious love to ,ceyx1 and of thy melodious hymns2 and1 above all1 of the honour thou hast with the gods60 ,the reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate1 almost uncontrollably1 the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of letters then present4 ,the impulse to speak masterfully was visible1 before the recital was well over1 in the moving lines about his mouth1 by no means designed1 as detractors were wont to say1 simply to display the beauty of his teeth4 ,one of the company1 expert in his humours1 made ready to transcribe what he would say1 the sort of things of which a collection was then forming1 the 8,florida0 or ,flowers1 so to call them1 he was apt to let fall by the way--no impromptu ventures at random2 but rather elaborate1 carved ivories of speech1 drawn1 at length1 out of the rich treasure-house of a memory stored with such1 and as with a fine savour of old musk about them4 ,certainly in this case1 as ,marius thought1 it was worth while to hear a charming writer speak4 ,discussing1 quite in our modern way1 the peculiarities of those suburban views1 especially the sea-views1 of which he was a professed lover1 he was also every inch a priest of ,aesculapius1 patronal god of ,carthage4 ,there was a piquancy in his rococo1 very ,african1 and as it were perfumed personality1 though he was now well-nigh sixty years old1 a mixture there of that sort of ,platonic spiritualism which can speak of the soul of man as but a sojourner in the prison of the body--a blending of that with such a relish for merely bodily graces as availed to set the fashion in matters of dress1 deportment1 accent1 and the like1 nay6 with something also which reminded ,marius of the vein of coarseness he had found in the 8,golden ,book40 ,all this made the total impression he conveyed a very uncommon one4 ,marius did not wonder1 as he watched him speaking1 that people freely attributed to him many of the marvellous adventures he had recounted in that famous romance1 over and above the wildest version of his own actual story--his extraordinary marriage1 his religious initiations1 his acts of mad generosity1 his trial as a sorcerer4 ,but a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for the company to separate4 ,he was entertaining his immediate neighbours at the table with a trick from the streets2 tossing his olives in rapid succession into the air1 and catching them1 as they fell1 between his lips4 ,his dexterity in this performance made the mirth around him noisy1 disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor3 the learned party broke up2 and ,marius withdrew1 glad to escape into the open air4 ,the courtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair1 were lurking for the guests1 with groups of curious idlers4 ,a great conflagration was visible in the distance4 ,was it in ,rome2 or in one of the villages of the country8 ,pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it1 ,marius was for the first time able to converse intimately with ,apuleius2 and in this moment of confidence the 8illuminist10 himself with locks so carefully arranged1 and seemingly so full of affectations1 almost like one of those light women there1 dropped a veil as it were1 and appeared1 though still permitting the play of a certain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets1 to be ready to explain and defend his position reasonably4 ,for a moment his fantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal vision seemed to fall into some intelligible congruity with each other4 ,in truth1 it was the ,platonic ,idealism1 as he conceived it1 which for him literally animated1 and gave him so lively an interest in1 this world of the purely outward aspects of men and things4--,did material things1 such things as they had had around them all that evening1 really need apology for being there1 to interest one1 at all8 ,were not all visible objects--the whole material world indeed1 according to the consistent testimony of philosophy in many forms--8full of souls08 embarrassed perhaps1 partly imprisoned1 but still eloquent souls8 ,certainly1 the contemplative philosophy of ,plato1 with its figurative imagery and apologue1 its manifold sthetic colouring1 its measured eloquence1 its music for the outward ear1 had been1 like ,plato's old master himself1 a two-sided or two-coloured thing4 ,apuleius was a ,platonist3 only1 for him1 the ,ideas of ,plato were no creatures of logical abstraction1 but in very truth informing souls1 in every type and variety of sensible things4 ,those noises in the house all supper-time1 sounding through the tables and along the walls3--were they only startings in the old rafters1 at the impact of the music and laughter2 or rather importunities of the secondary selves1 the true unseen selves1 of the persons1 nay6 of the very things around1 essaying to break through their frivolous1 merely transitory surfaces1 to remind one of abiding essentials beyond them1 which might have their say1 their judgment to give1 by and by1 when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life's table would be over8 ,and was not this the true significance of the ,platonic doctrine8--a hierarchy of divine beings1 associating themselves with particular things and places1 for the purpose of mediating between ,god and man--man1 who does but need due attention on his part to become aware of his celestial company1 filling the air about him1 thick as motes in the sunbeam1 for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he casts through it4 8,two kinds there are1 of animated beings10 he exclaimed3 8,gods1 entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode1 since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision--those mysterious stars6--in the eternity of their existence1 in the perfection of their nature1 infected by no contact with ourselves3 and men1 dwelling on the earth1 with frivolous and anxious minds1 with infirm and mortal members1 with variable fortunes2 labouring in vain2 taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps1 eternal2 but1 severally1 quitting the scene in irresistible succession4 8,what then8 ,has nature connected itself together by no bond1 allowed itself to be thus crippled1 and split into the divine and human elements8 ,and you will say to me3 ,if so it be1 that man is thus entirely exiled from the immortal gods1 that all communication is denied him1 that not one of them occasionally visits us1 as a shepherd his sheep--to whom shall ,i address my prayers8 ,whom1 shall ,i invoke as the helper of the unfortunate1 the protector of the good8 8,well6 there are certain divine powers of a middle nature1 through whom our aspirations are conveyed to the gods1 and theirs to us4 ,passing between the inhabitants of earth and heaven1 they carry from one to the other prayers and bounties1 supplication and assistance1 being a kind of interpreters4 ,this interval of the air is full of them6 ,through them1 all revelations1 miracles1 magic processes1 are effected4 ,for1 specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces1 with a ministry according to the disposition of each4 ,they go to and fro without fixed habitation3 or dwell in men's houses0-- ,just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder of the speaker carried him away1 and the discourse broke off suddenly4 ,its singular intimations1 however1 were sufficient to throw back on this strange evening1 in all its detail--the dance1 the readings1 the distant fire--a kind of allegoric expression3 gave it the character of one of those famous ,platonic figures or apologues which had then been in fact under discussion4 ,when ,marius recalled its circumstances he seemed to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction1 pleading1 from amidst a scene at best of elegant frivolity1 for so boldly mystical a view of man and his position in the world4 ,for a moment1 but only for a moment1 as he listened1 the trees had seemed1 as of old1 to be growing 8close against the sky40 ,yes6 the reception of theory1 of hypothesis1 of beliefs1 did depend a great deal on temperament4 ,they were1 so to speak1 mere equivalents of temperament4 ,a celestial ladder1 a ladder from heaven to earth3 that was the assumption which the experience of ,apuleius had suggested to him3 it was what1 in different forms1 certain persons in every age had instinctively supposed3 they would be glad to find their supposition accredited by the authority of a grave philosophy4 ,marius1 however1 yearning not less than they1 in that hard world of ,rome1 and below its unpeopled sky1 for the trace of some celestial wing across it1 must still object that they assumed the thing with too much facility1 too much of self-complacency4 ,and his second thought was1 that to indulge but for an hour fantasies1 fantastic visions of that sort1 only left the actual world more lonely than ever4 ,for him certainly1 and for his solace1 the little godship for whom the rude countryman1 an unconscious ,platonist1 trimmed his twinkling lamp1 would never slip from the bark of these immemorial olive-trees4--,no6 not even in the wildest moonlight4 ,for himself1 it was clear1 he must still hold by what his eyes really saw4 ,only1 he had to concede also1 that the very boldness of such theory bore witness1 at least1 to a variety of human disposition and a consequent variety of mental view1 which might--who can tell8--be correspondent to1 be defined by and define1 varieties of facts1 of truths1 just 8behind the veil10 regarding the world all alike had actually before them as their original premiss or starting-point2 a world1 wider1 perhaps1 in its possibilities than all possible fancies concerning it4 ,,notes #ge4 ,joel #b4bh4 #ha4 ,halcyone4 ,,chapter ,,xxi4 ,,two ,,curious ,,houses ,,ii4 ,,the ,,church ,,in ,,cecilia',s ,,house 8,your old men shall dream dreams1 and your young men shall see visions40 ,cornelius had certain friends in or near ,rome1 whose household1 to ,marius1 as he pondered now and again what might be the determining influences of that peculiar character1 presented itself as possibly its main secret--the hidden source from which the beauty and strength of a nature1 so persistently fresh in the midst of a somewhat jaded world1 might be derived4 ,but ,marius had never yet seen these friends2 and it was almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last lifted1 and1 with strange contrast to his visit to the poet's villa at ,tusculum1 he entered another curious house4 8,the house in which she lives10 says that mystical ,german writer quoted once before1 8is for the orderly soul1 which does not live on blindly before her1 but is ever1 out of her passing experiences1 building and adorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself1 only an expansion of the body2 as the body1 according to the philosophy of ,swedenborg1 is but a process1 an expansion1 of the soul4 ,for such an orderly soul1 as life proceeds1 all sorts of delicate affinities establish themselves1 between herself and the doors and passage-ways1 the lights and shadows1 of her outward dwelling-place1 until she may seem incorporate with it--until at last1 in the entire expressiveness of what is outward1 there is for her1 to speak properly1 between outward and inward1 no longer any distinction at all2 and the light which creeps at a particular hour on a particular picture or space upon the wall1 the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window1 become to her1 not so much apprehended objects1 as themselves powers of apprehension and door-ways to things beyond--the germ or rudiment of certain new faculties1 by which she1 dimly yet surely1 apprehends a matter lying beyond her actually attained capacities of spirit and sense40 ,so it must needs be in a world which is itself1 we may think1 together with that bodily 8tent0 or 8tabernacle10 only one of many vestures for the clothing of the pilgrim soul1 to be left by her1 surely1 as if on the wayside1 worn-out one by one1 as it was from her1 indeed1 they borrowed what momentary value or significance they had4 ,the two friends were returning to ,rome from a visit to a country-house1 where again a mixed company of guests had been assembled2 ,marius1 for his part1 a little weary of gossip1 and those sparks of ill-tempered rivalry1 which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire the intercourse of people in general society can strike out of them4 ,a mere reaction upon this1 as they started in the clear morning1 made their companionship1 at least for one of them1 hardly less tranquillising than the solitude he so much valued4 ,something in the south-west wind1 combining with their own intention1 favoured increasingly1 as the hours wore on1 a serenity like that ,marius had felt once before in journeying over the great plain towards ,tibur--a serenity that was to-day brotherly amity also1 and seemed to draw into its own charmed circle whatever was then present to eye or ear1 while they talked or were silent together1 and all petty irritations1 and the like1 shrank out of existence1 or kept certainly beyond its limits4 ,the natural fatigue of the long journey overcame them quite suddenly at last1 when they were still about two miles distant from ,rome4 ,the seemingly endless line of tombs and cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the west2 and it was just where a cross-road from the ,latin ,way fell into the ,appian1 that ,cornelius halted at a doorway in a long1 low wall--the outer wall of some villa courtyard1 it might be supposed-- as if at liberty to enter1 and rest there awhile4 ,he held the door open for his companion to enter also1 if he would2 with an expression1 as he lifted the latch1 which seemed to ask ,marius1 apparently shrinking from a possible intrusion3 8,would you like to see it80 ,was he willing to look upon that1 the seeing of which might define--yes6 define the critical turning-point in his days8 ,the little doorway in this long1 low wall admitted them1 in fact1 into the court or garden of a villa1 disposed in one of those abrupt natural hollows1 which give its character to the country in this place2 the house itself1 with all its dependent buildings1 the spaciousness of which surprised ,marius as he entered1 being thus wholly concealed from passengers along the road4 ,all around1 in those well-ordered precincts1 were the quiet signs of wealth1 and of a noble taste--a taste1 indeed1 chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with1 consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art1 here arranged and harmonised1 with effects1 both as regards colour and form1 so delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence in these matters than lay within the resources of the ancient world4 ,it was the old way of true ,renaissance--being indeed the way of nature with her roses1 the divine way with the body of man1 perhaps with his soul--conceiving the new organism by no sudden and abrupt creation1 but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements1 all of which had in truth already lived and died many times4 ,the fragments of older architecture1 the mosaics1 the spiral columns1 the precious corner-stones of immemorial building1 had put on1 by such juxtaposition1 a new and singular expressiveness1 an air of grave thought1 of an intellectual purpose1 in itself1 sthetically1 very seductive4 ,lastly1 herb and tree had taken possession1 spreading their seed-bells and light branches1 just astir in the trembling air1 above the ancient garden-wall1 against the wide realms of sunset4 ,and from the first they could hear singing1 the singing of children mainly1 it would seem1 and of a new kind2 so novel indeed in its effect1 as to bring suddenly to the recollection of ,marius1 ,flavian's early essays towards a new world of poetic sound4 ,it was the expression not altogether of mirth1 yet of some wonderful sort of happiness--the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom some all-subduing experience had wrought heroically1 and who still remembered1 on this bland afternoon1 the hour of a great deliverance4 ,his old native susceptibility to the spirit1 the special sympathies1 of places1--above all1 to any hieratic or religious significance they might have1--was at its liveliest1 as ,marius1 still encompassed by that peculiar singing1 and still amid the evidences of a grave discretion all around him1 passed into the house4 ,that intelligent seriousness about life1 the absence of which had ever seemed to remove those who lacked it into some strange species wholly alien from himself1 accumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first days at ,white-nights1 was as it were translated here1 as if in designed congruity with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision1 into an actual picture4 ,if the true value of souls is in proportion to what they can admire1 ,marius was just then an acceptable soul4 ,as he passed through the various chambers1 great and small1 one dominant thought increased upon him1 the thought of chaste women and their children--of all the various affections of family life under its most natural conditions1 yet developed1 as if in devout imitation of some sublime new type of it1 into large controlling passions4 ,there reigned throughout1 an order and purity1 an orderly disposition1 as if by way of making ready for some gracious spousals4 ,the place itself was like a bride adorned for her husband2 and its singular cheerfulness1 the abundant light everywhere1 the sense of peaceful industry1 of which he received a deep impression though without precisely reckoning wherein it resided1 as he moved on rapidly1 were in forcible contrast just at first to the place to which he was next conducted by ,cornelius still with a sort of eager1 hurried1 half-troubled reluctance1 and as if he forbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his companion4 ,an old flower-garden in the rear of the house1 set here and there with a venerable olive-tree--a picture in pensive shade and fiery blossom1 as transparent1 under that afternoon light1 as the old miniature-painters' work on the walls of the chambers within--was bounded towards the west by a low1 grass-grown hill4 ,a narrow opening cut in its steep side1 like a solid blackness there1 admitted ,marius and his gleaming leader into a hollow cavern or crypt1 neither more nor less in fact than the family burial-place of the ,cecilii1 to whom this residence belonged1 brought thus1 after an arrangement then becoming not unusual1 into immediate connexion with the abode of the living1 in bold assertion of that instinct of family life1 which the sanction of the ,holy ,family was1 hereafter1 more and more to reinforce4 ,here1 in truth1 was the centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness1 of the sanctity1 of the entire scene4 ,that 8any person may1 at his own election1 constitute the place which belongs to him a religious place1 by the carrying of his dead into it03--had been a maxim of old ,roman law1 which it was reserved for the early ,christian societies1 like that established here by the piety of a wealthy ,roman matron1 to realise in all its consequences4 ,yet this was certainly unlike any cemetery ,marius had ever before seen2 most obviously in this1 that these people had returned to the older fashion of disposing of their dead by burial instead of burning4 ,originally a family sepulchre1 it was growing to a vast necropolis1 a whole township of the deceased1 by means of some free expansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural limits4 ,that air of venerable beauty which characterised the house and its precincts above1 was maintained also here4 ,it was certainly with a great outlay of labour that these long1 apparently endless1 yet elaborately designed galleries1 were increasing so rapidly1 with their layers of beds or berths1 one above another1 cut1 on either side the path-way1 in the porous tufa1 through which all the moisture filters downwards1 leaving the parts above dry and wholesome4 ,all alike were carefully closed1 and with all the delicate costliness at command2 some with simple tiles of baked clay1 many with slabs of marble1 enriched by fair inscriptions3 marble taken1 in some cases1 from older pagan tombs--the inscription sometimes a palimpsest1 the new epitaph being woven into the faded letters of an earlier one4 ,as in an ordinary ,roman cemetery1 an abundance of utensils for the worship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around--incense1 lights1 flowers1 their flame or their freshness being relieved to the utmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself1 a volcanic sandstone1 cinder of burnt-out fires4 ,would they ever kindle again8--possess1 transform1 the place8--,turning to an ashen pallor where1 at regular intervals1 an air-hole or luminare let in a hard beam of clear but sunless light1 with the heavy sleepers1 row upon row within1 leaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time could move along1 cheek to cheek with them1 the high walls seemed to shut one in into the great company of the dead4 ,only the long straight pathway lay before him2 opening1 however1 here and there1 into a small chamber1 around a broad1 table-like coffin or 8altar-tomb10 adorned even more profusely than the rest as if for some anniversary observance4 ,clearly1 these people1 concurring in this with the special sympathies of ,marius himself1 had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope they entertained concerning the body2 a feeling which1 in no irreverent curiosity1 he would fain have penetrated4 ,the complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire1 so crushing to the spirits1 as he for one had found it1 had long since induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep1 as having something about it more home-like and hopeful1 at least in outward seeming4 ,but whence the strange confidence that these 8handfuls of white dust0 would hereafter recompose themselves once more into exulting human creatures8 ,by what heavenly alchemy1 what reviving dew from above1 such as was certainly never again to reach the dead violets8-- ,januarius1 ,agapetus1 ,felicitas2 ,martyrs6 refresh1 ,i pray you1 the soul of ,cecil1 of ,cornelius6 said an inscription1 one of many1 scratched1 like a passing sigh1 when it was still fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison-door4 ,all critical estimate of this bold hope1 as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim1 being set aside1 here at least1 carried further than ever before1 was that pious1 systematic commemoration of the dead1 which1 in its chivalrous refusal to forget or finally desert the helpless1 had ever counted with ,marius as the central exponent or symbol of all natural duty4 ,the stern soul of the excellent ,jonathan ,edwards1 applying the faulty theology of ,john ,calvin1 afforded him1 we know1 the vision of infants not a span long1 on the floor of hell4 ,every visitor to the ,catacombs must have observed1 in a very different theological connexion1 the numerous children's graves there--beds of infants1 but a span long indeed1 lowly 8prisoners of hope10 on these sacred floors4 ,it was with great curiosity1 certainly1 that ,marius considered them1 decked in some instances with the favourite toys of their tiny occupants--toy-soldiers1 little chariot-wheels1 the entire paraphernalia of a baby-house2 and when he saw afterwards the living children1 who sang and were busy above--sang their psalm ,laudate ,pueri ,dominum6--their very faces caught for him a sort of quaint unreality from the memory of those others1 the children of the ,catacombs1 but a little way below them4 ,here and there1 mingling with the record of merely natural decease1 and sometimes even at these children's graves1 were the signs of violent death or 8martyrdom10--proofs that some 8had loved not their lives unto the death0--in the little red phial of blood1 the palm-branch1 the red flowers for their heavenly 8birthday40 ,about one sepulchre in particular1 distinguished in this way1 and devoutly arrayed for what1 by a bold paradox1 was thus treated as1 natalitia--a birthday1 the peculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly centered4 ,and it was with a singular novelty of feeling1 like the dawning of a fresh order of experiences upon him1 that1 standing beside those mournful relics1 snatched in haste from the common place of execution not many years before1 ,marius became1 as by some gleam of foresight1 aware of the whole force of evidence for a certain strange1 new hope1 defining in its turn some new and weighty motive of action1 which lay in deaths so tragic for the 8,christian superstition40 ,something of them he had heard indeed already4 ,they had seemed to him but one savagery the more1 savagery self-provoked1 in a cruel and stupid world4 ,and yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw him onwards to-day1 as if towards an image of some still more pathetic suffering1 in the remote background4 ,yes6 the interest1 the expression1 of the entire neighbourhood was instinct with it1 as with the savour of some priceless incense4 ,penetrating the whole atmosphere1 touching everything around with its peculiar sentiment1 it seemed to make all this visible mortality1 death's very self--,ah6 lovelier than any fable of old mythology had ever thought to render it1 in the utmost limits of fantasy2 and this1 in simple candour of feeling about a supposed fact4 ,peace6 ,pax tecum6--the word1 the thought--was put forth everywhere1 with images of hope1 snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan world which had really afforded men so little of it from first to last2 the various consoling images it had thrown off1 of succour1 of regeneration1 of escape from the grave--,hercules wrestling with ,death for possession of ,alcestis1 ,orpheus taming the wild beasts1 the ,shepherd with his sheep1 the ,shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders4 ,yet these imageries after all1 it must be confessed1 formed but a slight contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hope there--a kind of heroic cheerfulness and grateful expansion of heart1 as with the sense1 again1 of some real deliverance1 which seemed to deepen the longer one lingered through these strange and awful passages4 ,a figure1 partly pagan in character1 yet most frequently repeated of all these visible parables--the figure of one just escaped from the sea1 still clinging as for life to the shore in surprised joy1 together with the inscription beneath it1 seemed best to express the prevailing sentiment of the place4 ,and it was just as he had puzzled out this inscription-- ,i went down to the bottom of the mountains4 ,the earth with her bars was about me for ever3 ,yet hast ,thou brought up my life from corruption6 --that with no feeling of suddenness or change ,marius found himself emerging again1 like a later mystic traveller through similar dark places 8quieted by hope10 into the daylight4 ,they were still within the precincts of the house1 still in possession of that wonderful singing1 although almost in the open country1 with a great view of the ,campagna before them1 and the hills beyond4 ,the orchard or meadow1 through which their path lay1 was already gray with twilight1 though the western sky1 where the greater stars were visible1 was still afloat in crimson splendour4 ,the colour of all earthly things seemed repressed by the contrast1 yet with a sense of great richness lingering in their shadows4 ,at that moment the voice of the singers1 a 8voice of joy and health10 concentrated itself with solemn antistrophic movement1 into an evening1 or 8candle0 hymn4 8,hail6 ,heavenly ,light1 from his pure glory poured1 ,who is the ,almighty ,father1 heavenly1 blest3-- ,worthiest art ,thou1 at all times to be sung ,with undefiled tongue40-- ,it was like the evening itself made audible1 its hopes and fears1 with the stars shining in the midst of it4 ,half above1 half below the level white mist1 dividing the light from the darkness1 came now the mistress of this place1 the wealthy ,roman matron1 left early a widow a few years before1 by ,cecilius 8,confessor and ,saint40 ,with a certain antique severity in the gathering of the long mantle1 and with coif or veil folded decorously below the chin1 8gray within gray10 to the mind of ,marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious and virile character of the best female statuary of ,greece4 ,quite foreign1 however1 to any ,greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care1 with which she carried a little child at rest in her arms4 ,another1 a year or two older1 walked beside1 the fingers of one hand within her girdle4 ,she paused for a moment with a greeting for ,cornelius4 ,that visionary scene was the close1 the fitting close1 of the afternoon's strange experiences4 ,a few minutes later1 passing forward on his way along the public road1 he could have fancied it a dream4 ,the house of ,cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house he had lately visited at ,tusculum4 ,and what a contrast was presented by the former1 in its suggestions of hopeful industry1 of immaculate cleanness1 of responsive affection6--all alike determined by that transporting discovery of some fact1 or series of facts1 in which the old puzzle of life had found its solution4 ,in truth1 one of his most characteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longing for escape--for some sudden1 relieving interchange1 across the very spaces of life1 it might be1 along which he had lingered most pleasantly--for a lifting1 from time to time1 of the actual horizon4 ,it was like the necessity under which the painter finds himself1 to set a window or open doorway in the background of his picture2 or like a sick man's longing for northern coolness1 and the whispering willow-trees1 amid the breathless evergreen forests of the south4 ,to some such effect had this visit occurred to him1 and through so slight an accident4 ,rome and ,roman life1 just then1 were come to seem like some stifling forest of bronze-work1 transformed1 as if by malign enchantment1 out of the generations of living trees1 yet with roots in a deep1 down-trodden soil of poignant human susceptibilities4 ,in the midst of its suffocation1 that old longing for escape had been satisfied by this vision of the church in ,cecilia's house1 as never before4 ,it was still1 indeed1 according to the unchangeable law of his temperament1 to the eye1 to the visual faculty of mind1 that those experiences appealed--the peaceful light and shade1 the boys whose very faces seemed to sing1 the virginal beauty of the mother and her children4 ,but1 in his case1 what was thus visible constituted a moral or spiritual influence1 of a somewhat exigent and controlling character1 added anew to life1 a new element therein1 with which1 consistently with his own chosen maxim1 he must make terms4 ,the thirst for every kind of experience1 encouraged by a philosophy which taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small1 good or evil1 had ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement1 in which the boy-priest survived1 prompting always the selection of what was perfect of its kind1 with subsequent loyal adherence of his soul thereto4 ,this had carried him along in a continuous communion with ideals1 certainly realised in part1 either in the conditions of his own being1 or in the actual company about him1 above all1 in ,cornelius4 ,surely1 in this strange new society he had touched upon for the first time to-day--in this strange family1 like 8a garden enclosed0--was the fulfilment of all the preferences1 the judgments1 of that half-understood friend1 which of late years had been his protection so often amid the perplexities of life4 ,here1 it might be1 was1 if not the cure1 yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows--of that constitutional sorrowfulness1 not peculiar to himself perhaps1 but which had made his life certainly like one long 8disease of the spirit40 ,merciful intention made itself known remedially here1 in the mere contact of the air1 like a soft touch upon aching flesh4 ,on the other hand1 he was aware that new responsibilities also might be awakened--new and untried responsibilities--a demand for something from him in return4 ,might this new vision1 like the malignant beauty of pagan ,medusa1 be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything but itself8 ,at least he suspected that1 after the beholding of it1 he could never again be altogether as he had been before4 ,,notes #ic4 ,emanuel ,swedenborg1 ,swedish mystic writer1 #afhh-aggb4 ,return4 ,,chapter ,,xxii4 8,,the ,,minor ,,peace ,,of ,,the ,,church0 ,faithful to the spirit of his early ,epicurean philosophy and the impulse to surrender himself1 in perfectly liberal inquiry about it1 to anything that1 as a matter of fact1 attracted or impressed him strongly1 ,marius informed himself with much pains concerning the church in ,cecilia's house2 inclining at first to explain the peculiarities of that place by the establishment there of the schola or common hall of one of those burial-guilds1 which then covered so much of the unofficial1 and1 as it might be called1 subterranean enterprise of ,roman society4 ,and what he found1 thus looking1 literally1 for the dead among the living1 was the vision of a natural1 a scrupulously natural1 love1 transforming1 by some new gift of insight into the truth of human relationships1 and under the urgency of some new motive by him so far unfathomable1 all the conditions of life4 ,he saw1 in all its primitive freshness and amid the lively facts of its actual coming into the world1 as a reality of experience1 that regenerate type of humanity1 which1 centuries later1 ,giotto and his successors1 down to the best and purest days of the young ,raphael1 working under conditions very friendly to the imagination1 were to conceive as an artistic ideal4 ,he felt there1 felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within himself1 the genius1 the unique power of ,christianity2 in exercise then1 as it has been exercised ever since1 in spite of many hindrances1 and under the most inopportune circumstances4 ,chastity1--as he seemed to understand--the chastity of men and women1 amid all the conditions1 and with the results1 proper to such chastity1 is the most beautiful thing in the world and the truest conservation of that creative energy by which men and women were first brought into it4 ,the nature of the family1 for which the better genius of old ,rome itself had sincerely cared1 of the family and its appropriate affections--all that love of one's kindred by which obviously one does triumph in some degree over death--had never been so felt before4 ,here1 surely6 in its genial warmth1 its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to it1 to its own immaculate naturalness1 in the hedge set around the sacred thing on every side1 this development of the family did but carry forward1 and give effect to1 the purposes1 the kindness1 of nature itself1 friendly to man4 ,as if by way of a due recognition of some immeasurable divine condescension manifest in a certain historic fact1 its influence was felt more especially at those points which demanded some sacrifice of one's self1 for the weak1 for the aged1 for little children1 and even for the dead4 ,and then1 for its constant outward token1 its significant manner or index1 it issued in a certain debonair grace1 and a certain mystic attractiveness1 a courtesy1 which made ,marius doubt whether that famed ,greek 8blitheness10 or gaiety1 or grace1 in the handling of life1 had been1 after all1 an unrivalled success4 ,contrasting with the incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher ,roman life1 of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil1 the new creation he now looked on--as it were a picture beyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty--had indeed all the appropriate freshness of a 8bride adorned for her husband40 ,things new and old seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house1 the brain full of science1 the heart rich with various sentiment1 possessing withal this surprising healthfulness1 this reality of heart4 8,you would hardly believe10 writes ,pliny1--to his own wife6--8what a longing for you possesses me4 ,habit--that we have not been used to be apart--adds herein to the primary force of affection4 ,it is this keeps me awake at night fancying ,i see you beside me4 ,that is why my feet take me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when ,i was wont to visit you there4 ,that is why ,i turn from the door of the empty chamber1 sad and ill-at-ease1 like an excluded lover40-- ,there1 is a real idyll from that family life1 the protection of which had been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the ,romans1 still surviving among them2 as it survived also in ,aurelius1 his disposition and aims1 and1 spite of slanderous tongues1 in the attained sweetness of his interior life4 ,what ,marius had been permitted to see was a realisation of such life higher still3 and with--,yes6 with a more effective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before1 in that fact1 or series of facts1 to be ascertained by those who would4 ,the central glory of the reign of the ,antonines was that society had attained in it1 though very imperfectly1 and for the most part by cumbrous effort of law1 many of those ends to which ,christianity went straight1 with the sufficiency1 the success1 of a direct and appropriate instinct4 ,pagan ,rome1 too1 had its touching charity-sermons on occasions of great public distress2 its charity-children in long file1 in memory of the elder empress ,faustina2 its prototype1 under patronage of ,aesculapius1 of the modern hospital for the sick on the island of ,saint ,bartholomew4 ,but what pagan charity was doing tardily1 and as if with the painful calculation of old age1 the church was doing1 almost without thinking about it1 with all the liberal enterprise of youth1 because it was her very being thus to do4 8,you fail to realise your own good intentions10 she seems to say1 to pagan virtue1 pagan kindness4 ,she identified herself with those intentions and advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and largeness4 ,the gentle ,seneca would have reverent burial provided even for the dead body of a criminal4 ,yet when a certain woman collected for interment the insulted remains of ,nero1 the pagan world surmised that she must be a ,christian3 only a ,christian would have been likely to conceive so chivalrous a devotion towards mere wretchedness4 8,we refuse to be witnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law10 boasts the dainty conscience of a ,christian apologist1 8we take no part in your cruel sports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre1 and we hold that to witness a murder is the same thing as to commit one40 ,and there was another duty almost forgotten1 the sense of which ,rousseau brought back to the degenerate society of a later age4 ,in an impassioned discourse the sophist ,favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants2 and there are ,roman epitaphs erected to mothers1 which gratefully record this proof of natural affection as a thing then unusual4 ,in this matter too1 what a sanction1 what a provocative to natural duty1 lay in that image discovered to ,augustus by the ,tiburtine ,sibyl1 amid the aurora of a new age1 the image of the ,divine ,mother and the ,child1 just then rising upon the world like the dawn6 ,christian belief1 again1 had presented itself as a great inspirer of chastity4 ,chastity1 in turn1 realised in the whole scope of its conditions1 fortified that rehabilitation of peaceful labour1 after the mind1 the pattern1 of the workman of ,galilee1 which was another of the natural instincts of the catholic church1 as being indeed the long-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness1 as a true lover of the industry--so to term it--the labour1 the creation1 of ,god4 ,and this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman1 of the family1 of industry1 of man's work in life1 so close to the truth of nature1 was also1 in that charmed hour of the minor 8,peace of the church10 realised as an influence tending to beauty1 to the adornment of life and the world4 ,the sword in the world1 the right eye plucked out1 the right hand cut off1 the spirit of reproach which those images express1 and of which monasticism is the fulfilment1 reflect one side only of the nature of the divine missionary of the ,new ,testament4 ,opposed to1 yet blent with1 this ascetic or militant character1 is the function of the ,good ,shepherd1 serene1 blithe and debonair1 beyond the gentlest shepherd of ,greek mythology2 of a king under whom the beatific vision is realised of a reign of peace--peace of heart--among men4 ,such aspect of the divine character of ,christ1 rightly understood1 is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in man's nature1 which had sustained him so far through his immense labours1 his immense sorrows1 and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life1 is but a minor achievement4 ,sometimes one1 sometimes the other1 of those two contrasted aspects of its ,founder1 have1 in different ages and under the urgency of different human needs1 been at work also in the ,christian ,church4 ,certainly1 in that brief 8,peace of the church0 under the ,antonines1 the spirit of a pastoral security and happiness seems to have been largely expanded4 ,there1 in the early church of ,rome1 was to be seen1 and on sufficiently reasonable grounds1 that satisfaction and serenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts of life1 which all hearts had desired1 though for the most part in vain1 contrasting itself for ,marius1 in particular1 very forcibly1 with the imperial philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy4 ,it was ,christianity in its humanity1 or even its humanism1 in its generous hopes for man1 its common sense and alacrity of cheerful service1 its sympathy with all creatures1 its appreciation of beauty and daylight4 8,the angel of righteousness10 says the ,shepherd of ,hermas1 the most characteristic religious book of that age1 its ,pilgrim's ,progress--8the angel of righteousness is modest and delicate and meek and quiet4 ,take from thyself grief1 for 7as ,hamlet will one day discover7 'tis the sister of doubt and ill-temper4 ,grief is more evil than any other spirit of evil1 and is most dreadful to the servants of ,god1 and beyond all spirits destroyeth man4 ,for1 as when good news is come to one in grief1 straightway he forgetteth his former grief1 and no longer attendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard1 so do ye1 also6 having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding of these good things4 ,put on therefore gladness that hath always favour before ,god1 and is acceptable unto ,him1 and delight thyself in it2 for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good1 and thinketh good thoughts1 despising grief40--,such were the commonplaces of this new people1 among whom so much of what ,marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion4 ,some transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts1 to deepen expression--a spirit which1 in its dealing with the elements of ancient life1 was guided by a wonderful tact of selection1 exclusion1 juxtaposition1 begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness1 a grave yet wholesome beauty1 because the world of sense1 the whole outward world was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of a certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within1 among the prerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom4 ,the reader may think perhaps1 that ,marius1 who1 ,epicurean as he was1 had his visionary aptitudes1 by an inversion of one of ,plato's peculiarities with which he was of course familiar1 must have descended1 by foresight1 upon a later age than his own1 and anticipated ,christian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of ,saint ,francis of ,assisi4 ,but if he dreamed on one of those nights of the beautiful house of ,cecilia1 its lights and flowers1 of ,cecilia herself moving among the lilies1 with an enhanced grace as happens sometimes in healthy dreams1 it was indeed hardly an anticipation4 ,he had lighted1 by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of his life1 upon a period when1 even more than in the days of austere ascsis which had preceded and were to follow it1 the church was true for a moment1 truer perhaps than she would ever be again1 to that element of profound serenity in the soul of her ,founder1 which reflected the eternal goodwill of ,god to man1 8in whom10 according to the oldest version of the angelic message1 8,he is well-pleased40 ,for what ,christianity did many centuries afterwards in the way of informing an art1 a poetry1 of graver and higher beauty1 we may think1 than that of ,greek art and poetry at their best1 was in truth conformable to the original tendency of its genius4 ,the genuine capacity of the catholic church in this direction1 discoverable from the first in the ,new ,testament1 was also really at work1 in that earlier 8,peace10 under the ,antonines--the minor 8,peace of the church10 as we might call it1 in distinction from the final 8,peace of the church10 commonly so called1 under ,constantine4 ,saint ,francis1 with his following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts--the voice of ,dante1 the hand of ,giotto--giving visible feature and colour1 and a palpable place among men1 to the regenerate race1 did but re-establish a continuity1 only suspended in part by those troublous intervening centuries--the 8dark ages10 properly thus named--with the gracious spirit of the primitive church1 as manifested in that first early springtide of her success4 ,the greater 8,peace0 of ,constantine1 on the other hand1 in many ways1 does but establish the exclusiveness1 the puritanism1 the ascetic gloom which1 in the period between ,aurelius and the first ,christian emperor1 characterised a church under misunderstanding or oppression1 driven back1 in a world of tasteless controversy1 inwards upon herself4 ,already1 in the reign of ,antoninus ,pius1 the time was gone by when men became ,christians under some sudden and overpowering impression1 and with all the disturbing results of such a crisis4 ,at this period the larger number1 perhaps1 had been born ,christians1 had been ever with peaceful hearts in their 8,father's house40 ,that earlier belief in the speedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world1 with the consequences it so naturally involved in the temper of men's minds1 was dying out4 ,every day the contrast between the church and the world was becoming less pronounced4 ,and now also1 as the church rested awhile from opposition1 that rapid self-development outward from within1 proper to times of peace1 was in progress4 ,antoninus ,pius1 it might seem1 more truly even than ,marcus ,aurelius himself1 was of that group of pagan saints for whom ,dante1 like ,augustine1 has provided in his scheme of the house with many mansions4 ,a sincere old ,roman piety had urged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes1 no offences against humanity4 ,and of his entire freedom from guile one reward had been this singular happiness1 that under his rule there was no shedding of ,christian blood4 ,to him belonged that half-humorous placidity of soul1 of a kind illustrated later very effectively by ,montaigne1 which1 starting with an instinct of mere fairness towards human nature and the world1 seems at last actually to qualify its possessor to be almost the friend of the people of ,christ4 ,amiable1 in its own nature1 and full of a reasonable gaiety1 ,christianity has often had its advantage of characters such as that4 ,the geniality of ,antoninus ,pius1 like the geniality of the earth itself1 had permitted the church1 as being in truth no alien from that old mother earth1 to expand and thrive for a season as by natural process4 ,and that charmed period under the ,antonines1 extending to the later years of the reign of ,aurelius 7beautiful1 brief1 chapter of ecclesiastical history671 contains1 as one of its motives of interest1 the earliest development of ,christian ritual under the presidence of the church of ,rome4 ,again as in one of those mystical1 quaint visions of the ,shepherd of ,hermas1 8the aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful4 ,and in the third vision she was quite young1 and radiant with beauty3 only her hair was that of an aged woman4 ,and at the last she was joyous1 and seated upon a throne--seated upon a throne1 because her position is a strong one40 ,the subterranean worship of the church belonged properly to those years of her early history in which it was illegal for her to worship at all4 ,but1 hiding herself for awhile as conflict grew violent1 she resumed1 when there was felt to be no more than ordinary risk1 her natural freedom4 ,and the kind of outward prosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first 8,peace10 her modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground1 was re-inforced by the decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history4 ,in the history of the church1 as throughout the moral history of mankind1 there are two distinct ideals1 either of which it is possible to maintain--two conceptions1 under one or the other of which we may represent to ourselves men's efforts towards a better life--corresponding to those two contrasted aspects1 noted above1 as discernible in the picture afforded by the ,new ,testament itself of the character of ,christ4 ,the ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially a sacrifice1 the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another1 that it may live the more completely in what survives of it2 while the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious development of all the parts of human nature1 in just proportion to each other4 ,it was to the latter order of ideas that the church1 and especially the church of ,rome in the age of the ,antonines1 freely lent herself4 ,in that earlier 8,peace0 she had set up for herself the ideal of spiritual development1 under the guidance of an instinct by which1 in those serene moments1 she was absolutely true to the peaceful soul of her ,founder4 8,goodwill to men10 she said1 8in whom ,god ,himself is well-pleased60 ,for a little while1 at least1 there was no forced opposition between the soul and the body1 the world and the spirit1 and the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people of ,christ4 ,tact1 good sense1 ever the note of a true orthodoxy1 the merciful compromises of the church1 indicative of her imperial vocation in regard to all the varieties of human kind1 with a universality of which the old ,roman pastorship she was superseding is but a prototype1 was already become conspicuous1 in spite of a discredited1 irritating1 vindictive society1 all around her4 ,against that divine urbanity and moderation the old error of ,montanus we read of dimly1 was a fanatical revolt--sour1 falsely anti-mundane1 ever with an air of ascetic affectation1 and a bigoted distaste in particular for all the peculiar graces of womanhood4 ,by it the desire to please was understood to come of the author of evil4 ,in this interval of quietness1 it was perhaps inevitable1 by the law of reaction1 that some such extravagances of the religious temper should arise4 ,but again the church of ,rome1 now becoming every day more and more completely the capital of the ,christian world1 checked the nascent ,montanism1 or puritanism of the moment1 vindicating for all ,christian people a cheerful liberty of heart1 against many a narrow group of sectaries1 all alike1 in their different ways1 accusers of the genial creation of ,god4 ,with her full1 fresh faith in the ,evangele--in a veritable regeneration of the earth and the body1 in the dignity of man's entire personal being--for a season1 at least1 at that critical period in the development of ,christianity1 she was for reason1 for common sense1 for fairness to human nature1 and generally for what may be called the naturalness of ,christianity4--,as also for its comely order3 she would be 8brought to her king in raiment of needlework40 ,it was by the bishops of ,rome1 diligently transforming themselves1 in the true catholic sense1 into universal pastors1 that the path of what we must call humanism was thus defined4 ,and then1 in this hour of expansion1 as if now at last the catholic church might venture to show her outward lineaments as they really were1 worship--8the beauty of holiness10 nay6 the elegance of sanctity--was developed1 with a bold and confident gladness1 the like of which has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age4 ,the tables in fact were turned3 the prize of a cheerful temper on a candid survey of life was no longer with the pagan world4 ,the sthetic charm of the catholic church1 her evocative power over all that is eloquent and expressive in the better mind of man1 her outward comeliness1 her dignifying convictions about human nature3--all this1 as abundantly realised centuries later by ,dante and ,giotto1 by the great medieval church-builders1 by the great ritualists like ,saint ,gregory1 and the masters of sacred music in the middle age--we may see already1 in dim anticipation1 in those charmed moments towards the end of the second century4 ,dissipated or turned aside1 partly through the fatal mistake of ,marcus ,aurelius himself1 for a brief space of time we may discern that influence clearly predominant there4 ,what might seem harsh as dogma was already justifying itself as worship2 according to the sound rule3 ,lex orandi1 lex credendi--,our ,creeds are but the brief abstract of our prayer and song4 ,the wonderful liturgical spirit of the church1 her wholly unparalleled genius for worship1 being thus awake1 she was rapidly re-organising both pagan and ,jewish elements of ritual1 for the expanding therein of her own new heart of devotion4 ,like the institutions of monasticism1 like the ,gothic style of architecture1 the ritual system of the church1 as we see it in historic retrospect1 ranks as one of the great1 conjoint1 and 7so to term them7 necessary1 products of human mind4 ,destined for ages to come1 to direct with so deep a fascination men's religious instincts1 it was then already recognisable as a new and precious fact in the sum of things4 ,what has been on the whole the method of the church1 as 8a power of sweetness and patience10 in dealing with matters like pagan art1 pagan literature was even then manifest2 and has the character of the moderation1 the divine moderation of ,christ himself4 ,it was only among the ignorant1 indeed1 only in the 8villages10 that ,christianity1 even in conscious triumph over paganism1 was really betrayed into iconoclasm4 ,in the final 8,peace0 of the ,church under ,constantine1 while there was plenty of destructive fanaticism in the country1 the revolution was accomplished in the larger towns1 in a manner more orderly and discreet--in the ,roman manner4 ,the faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan temples than on their conversion to a new and higher use2 and1 with much beautiful furniture ready to hand1 they became ,christian sanctuaries4 ,already1 in accordance with such maturer wisdom1 the church of the 8,minor ,peace0 had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom2 as being indeed a living creature1 taking up1 transforming1 accommodating still more closely to the human heart what of right belonged to it4 ,in this way an obscure synagogue was expanded into the catholic church4 ,gathering1 from a richer and more varied field of sound than had remained for him1 those old ,roman harmonies1 some notes of which ,gregory the ,great1 centuries later1 and after generations of interrupted development1 formed into the ,gregorian music1 she was already1 as we have heard1 the house of song--of a wonderful new music and poesy4 ,as if in anticipation of the sixteenth century1 the church was becoming 8humanistic10 in an earlier1 and unimpeachable ,renaissance4 ,singing there had been in abundance from the first2 though often it dared only be 8of the heart40 ,and it burst forth1 when it might1 into the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music2 the ,jewish psalter1 inherited from the synagogue1 turning now1 gradually1 from ,greek into ,latin--broken ,latin1 into ,italian1 as the ritual use of the rich1 fresh1 expressive vernacular superseded the earlier authorised language of the ,church4 ,through certain surviving remnants of ,greek in the later ,latin liturgies1 we may still discern a highly interesting intermediate phase of ritual development1 when the ,greek and the ,latin were in combination2 the poor1 surely6--the poor and the children of that liberal ,roman church--responding already in their own 8vulgar tongue10 to an office said in the original1 liturgical ,greek4 ,that hymn sung in the early morning1 of which ,pliny had heard1 was kindling into the service of the ,mass4 ,the ,mass1 indeed1 would appear to have been said continuously from the ,apostolic age4 ,its details1 as one by one they become visible in later history1 have already the character of what is ancient and venerable4 8,we are very old1 and ye are young60 they seem to protest1 to those who fail to understand them4 ,ritual1 in fact1 like all other elements of religion1 must grow and cannot be made--grow by the same law of development which prevails everywhere else1 in the moral as in the physical world4 ,as regards this special phase of the religious life1 however1 such development seems to have been unusually rapid in the subterranean age which preceded ,constantine2 and in the very first days of the final triumph of the church the ,mass emerges to general view already substantially complete4 8,wisdom0 was dealing1 as with the dust of creeds and philosophies1 so also with the dust of outworn religious usage1 like the very spirit of life itself1 organising soul and body out of the lime and clay of the earth4 ,in a generous eclecticism1 within the bounds of her liberty1 and as by some providential power within her1 she gathers and serviceably adopts1 as in other matters so in ritual1 one thing here1 another there1 from various sources--,gnostic1 ,jewish1 ,pagan--to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen4 ,it was thus the liturgy of the church came to be--full of consolations for the human soul1 and destined1 surely6 one day1 under the sanction of so many ages of human experience1 to take exclusive possession of the religious consciousness4 ,,tantum ,,ergo ,,sacramentum ,,veneremur ,,cernui3 ,,et ,,antiquum ,,documentum ,,novo ,,cedat ,,ritui4 ,,chapter ,,xxiii4 ,,divine ,,service4 8,wisdom hath builded herself a house3 she hath mingled her wine3 she hath also prepared for herself a table40 ,the more highly favoured ages of imaginative art present instances of the summing up of an entire world of complex associations under some single form1 like the ,zeus of ,olympia1 or the series of frescoes which commemorate ,the ,acts of ,saint ,francis1 at ,assisi1 or like the play of ,hamlet or ,faust4 ,it was not in an image1 or series of images1 yet still in a sort of dramatic action1 and with the unity of a single appeal to eye and ear1 that ,marius about this time found all his new impressions set forth1 regarding what he had already recognised1 intellectually1 as for him at least the most beautiful thing in the world4 ,to understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must remember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of vacuity in life4 ,the fairest products of the earth seemed to be dropping to pieces1 as if in men's very hands1 around him4 ,how real was their sorrow1 and his6 8,his observation of life0 had come to be like the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary1 day after day2 till1 as if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind1 the eye also1 the very senses1 were grown faint and sick4 ,and now it happened as with the actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing4 ,the long winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness4 ,at last1 on this day he awoke with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest twilight3 in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air3 the clear light was abroad2 and1 as though the spring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things1 the whole scene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky of delicate blue4 ,under the spell of his late depression1 ,marius had suddenly determined to leave ,rome for a while4 ,but desiring first to advertise ,cornelius of his movements1 and failing to find him in his lodgings1 he had ventured1 still early in the day1 to seek him in the ,cecilian villa4 ,passing through its silent and empty court-yard he loitered for a moment1 to admire4 ,under the clear but immature light of winter morning after a storm1 all the details of form and colour in the old marbles were distinctly visible1 and with a kind of severity or sadness--so it struck him--amid their beauty3 in them1 and in all other details of the scene--the cypresses1 the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass1 the curves of the purple hills of ,tusculum1 with the drifts of virgin snow still lying in their hollows4 ,the little open door1 through which he passed from the court-yard1 admitted him into what was plainly the vast ,lararium1 or domestic sanctuary1 of the ,cecilian family1 transformed in many particulars1 but still richly decorated1 and retaining much of its ancient furniture in metal-work and costly stone4 ,the peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls2 and here1 though at that moment in absolute silence1 a great company of people was assembled4 ,in that brief period of peace1 during which the church emerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life1 the rigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed4 ,and so it came to pass that1 on this morning ,marius saw for the first time the wonderful spectacle--wonderful1 especially1 in its evidential power over himself1 over his own thoughts--of those who believe4 ,there were noticeable1 among those present1 great varieties of rank1 of age1 of personal type4 ,the ,roman ingenuus1 with the white toga and gold ring1 stood side by side with his slave2 and the air of the whole company was1 above all1 a grave one1 an air of recollection4 ,coming thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly1 so entirely united1 in a silence so profound1 for purposes unknown to him1 ,marius felt for a moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy4 ,yet that could scarcely be1 for the people here collected might have figured as the earliest handsel1 or pattern1 of a new world1 from the very face of which discontent had passed away4 ,corresponding to the variety of human type there present1 was the various expression of every form of human sorrow assuaged4 ,what desire1 what fulfilment of desire1 had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of humble condition8 ,those young men1 bent down so discreetly on the details of their sacred service1 had faced life and were glad1 by some science1 or light of knowledge they had1 to which there had certainly been no parallel in the older world4 ,was some credible message from beyond 8the flaming rampart of the world0--a message of hope1 regarding the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of things--already moulding anew their very bodies1 and looks1 and voices1 now and here8 ,at least1 there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work in them1 which seemed to make everything else ,marius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean4 ,there were the children1 above all--troops of children--reminding him of those pathetic children's graves1 like cradles or garden- beds1 he had noticed in his first visit to these places2 and they more than satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them1 wondering in what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the daylight1 if awakened from sleep4 ,children of the ,catacombs1 some but 8a span long10 with features not so much beautiful as heroic 7that world of new1 refining sentiment having set its seal even on childhood71 they retained certainly no stain or trace of anything subterranean this morning1 in the alacrity of their worship--as ready as if they had been at play--stretching forth their hands1 crying1 chanting in a resonant voice1 and with boldly upturned faces1 ,christe ,eleison6 ,for the silence--silence1 amid those lights of early morning to which ,marius had always been constitutionally impressible1 as having in them a certain reproachful austerity--was broken suddenly by resounding cries of ,kyrie ,eleison6 ,christe ,eleison6 repeated alternately1 again and again1 until the bishop1 rising from his chair1 made sign that this prayer should cease4 ,but the voices burst out once more presently1 in richer and more varied melody1 though still of an antiphonal character2 the men1 the women and children1 the deacons1 the people1 answering one another1 somewhat after the manner of a ,greek chorus4 ,but again with what a novelty of poetic accent2 what a genuine expansion of heart2 what profound intimations for the intellect1 as the meaning of the words grew upon him6 ,cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur--says an ancient eucharistic order2 and certainly1 the mystic tone of this praying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance1 of grateful assurance and sincerity1 upon the faces of those assembled4 ,as if some searching correction1 a regeneration of the body by the spirit1 had begun1 and was already gone a great way1 the countenances of men1 women1 and children alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy reflected upon himself--an amenity1 a mystic amiability and unction1 which found its way most readily of all to the hearts of children themselves4 ,the religious poetry of those ,hebrew psalms--,benedixisti ,domine terram tuam3 ,dixit ,dominus ,domino meo1 sede a dextris meis--was certainly in marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own character4 ,those august hymns1 he thought1 must thereafter ever remain by him as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify the soul4 ,one could never grow tired of them6 ,in the old pagan worship there had been little to call the understanding into play4 ,here1 on the other hand1 the utterance1 the eloquence1 the music of worship conveyed1 as ,marius readily understood1 a fact or series of facts1 for intellectual reception4 ,that became evident1 more especially1 in those lessons1 or sacred readings1 which1 like the singing1 in broken vernacular ,latin1 occurred at certain intervals1 amid the silence of the assembly4 ,there were readings1 again with bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a difficult path1 in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy1 haunting men's minds from of old1 recurred with clearer accent than had ever belonged to it before1 as if lifted1 above its first intention1 into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine1 at length complete4 ,and last of all came a narrative which1 with a thousand tender memories1 every one appeared to know by heart1 displaying1 in all the vividness of a picture for the eye1 the mournful figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently turned--a figure which seemed to have absorbed1 like some rich tincture in his garment1 all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the experiences of the past4 ,it was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated to-day4 ,astiterunt reges terrae3 so the ,gradual1 the 8,song of ,degrees10 proceeded1 the young men on the steps of the altar responding in deep1 clear1 antiphon or chorus-- ,astiterunt reges terrae-- ,adversus sanctum puerum tuum1 ,jesum3 ,nunc1 ,domine1 da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum-- ,et signa fieri1 per nomen sancti pueri ,jesu4 ,and the proper action of the rite itself1 like a half-opened book to be read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions1 and carried them forward into the present1 as having reference to a power still efficacious1 still after some mystic sense even now in action among the people there assembled4 ,the entire office1 indeed1 with its interchange of lessons1 hymns1 prayer1 silence1 was itself like a single piece of highly composite1 dramatic music2 a 8song of degrees10 rising steadily to a climax4 ,notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible to the eye1 the entire ceremonial process1 like the place in which it was enacted1 was weighty with symbolic significance1 seemed to express a single leading motive4 ,the mystery1 if such in fact it was1 centered indeed in the actions of one visible person1 distinguished among the assistants1 who stood ranged in semicircle around him1 by the extreme fineness of his white vestments1 and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head4 ,nor had ,marius ever seen the pontifical character1 as he conceived it--sicut unguentum in capite1 descendens in oram vestimenti--so fully realised1 as in the expression1 the manner and voice1 of this novel pontiff1 as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by the young men1 and received his long staff into his hand1 or moved his hands--hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious power--at the ,lavabo1 or at the various benedictions1 or to bless certain objects on the table before him1 chanting in cadence of a grave sweetness the leading parts of the rite4 ,what profound unction and mysticity6 ,the solemn character of the singing was at its height when he opened his lips4 ,like some new sort of rhapsdos1 it was for the moment as if he alone possessed the words of the office1 and they flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him4 ,the table or altar at which he presided1 below a canopy on delicate spiral columns1 was in fact the tomb of a youthful 8witness10 of the family of the ,cecilii1 who had shed his blood not many years before1 and whose relics were still in this place4 ,it was for his sake the bishop put his lips so often to the surface before him2 the regretful memory of that death entwining itself1 though not without certain notes of triumph1 as a matter of special inward significance1 throughout a service1 which was1 before all else1 from first to last1 a commemoration of the dead4 ,a sacrifice also1--a sacrifice1 it might seem1 like the most primitive1 the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices1 of the simplest fruits of the earth4 ,and in connexion with this circumstance again1 as in the actual stones of the building so in the rite itself1 what ,marius observed was not so much new matter as a new spirit1 moulding1 informing1 with a new intention1 many observances not witnessed for the first time to-day4 ,men and women came to the altar successively1 in perfect order1 and deposited below the lattice-work of pierced white marble1 their baskets of wheat and grapes1 incense1 oil for the sanctuary lamps2 bread and wine especially--pure wheaten bread1 the pure white wine of the ,tusculan vineyards4 ,there was here a veritable consecration1 hopeful and animating1 of the earth's gifts1 of old dead and dark matter itself1 now in some way redeemed at last1 of all that we can touch or see1 in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things1 and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them4 ,certain portions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop's hands2 and thereafter1 with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite proceeded4 ,still in a strain of inspired supplication1 the antiphonal singing developed1 from this point1 into a kind of dialogue between the chief minister and the whole assisting company-- ,,sursum ,,corda6 ,,habemus ,,ad ,,dominum4 ,,gratias ,,agamus ,,domino ,,deo ,,nostro6-- ,it might have been thought the business1 the duty or service of young men more particularly1 as they stood there in long ranks1 and in severe and simple vesture of the purest white--a service in which they would seem to be flying for refuge1 as with their precious1 their treacherous and critical youth in their hands1 to one--,yes6 one like themselves1 who yet claimed their worship1 a worship1 above all1 in the way of ,aurelius1 in the way of imitation4 ,adoramus te ,christe1 quia per crucem tuam redemisti mundum6--they cry together4 ,so deep is the emotion that at moments it seems to ,marius as if some there present apprehend that prayer prevails1 that the very object of this pathetic crying himself draws near4 ,from the first there had been the sense1 an increasing assurance1 of one coming3--actually with them now1 according to the oft-repeated affirmation or petition1 ,dominus vobiscum6 ,some at least were quite sure of it2 and the confidence of this remnant fired the hearts1 and gave meaning to the bold1 ecstatic worship1 of all the rest about them4 ,prompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old ,jewish psalmody1 so new to him--lesson and hymn--and catching therewith a portion of the enthusiasm of those beside him1 ,marius could discern dimly1 behind the solemn recitation which now followed1 at once a narrative and a prayer1 the most touching image truly that had ever come within the scope of his mental or physical gaze4 ,it was the image of a young man giving up voluntarily1 one by one1 for the greatest of ends1 the greatest gifts2 actually parting with himself1 above all1 with the serenity1 the divine serenity1 of his own soul2 yet from the midst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of his success1 as if foreseeing this very worship499 ,as centre of the supposed facts which for these people were become so constraining a motive of hopefulness1 of activity1 that image seemed to display itself with an overwhelming claim on human gratitude4 ,what ,saint ,lewis of ,france discerned1 and found so irresistibly touching1 across the dimness of many centuries1 as a painful thing done for love of him by one he had never seen1 was to them almost as a thing of yesterday2 and their hearts were whole with it4 ,it had the force1 among their interests1 of an almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers' fathers might have known4 ,from memories so sublime1 yet so close at hand1 had the narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered2 though again the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it4 ,and it seemed as if the very dead were aware2 to be stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchres which lay so near1 that they might associate themselves to this enthusiasm--to this exalted worship of ,jesus4 99 ,psalm xxii4 #bb-ca4 ,one by one1 at last1 the faithful approach to receive from the chief minister morsels of the great1 white1 wheaten cake1 he had taken into his hands--,perducat vos ad vitam aeternam6 he prays1 half-silently1 as they depart again1 after discreet embraces4 ,the ,eucharist of those early days was1 even more entirely than at any later or happier time1 an act of thanksgiving2 and while the remnants of the feast are borne away for the reception of the sick1 the sustained gladness of the rite reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn3 a hymn like the spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies1 contending accordantly together1 heightening1 accumulating1 their witness1 provoking one another's worship1 in a kind of sacred rivalry4 ,ite6 ,missa est6--cried the young deacons3 and ,marius departed from that strange scene along with the rest4 ,what was it8--,was it this made the way of ,cornelius so pleasant through the world8 ,as for ,marius himself1--the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied as never before4 ,he felt1 as he left that place1 that he must hereafter experience often a longing memory1 a kind of thirst1 for all this1 over again4 ,and it seemed moreover to define what he must require of the powers1 whatsoever they might be1 that had brought him into the world at all1 to make him not unhappy in it4 ,,chapter ,,xxiv4 ,a ,,conversation ,,not ,,imaginary ,in cheerfulness is the success of our studies1 says ,pliny--studia hilaritate proveniunt4 ,it was still the habit of ,marius1 encouraged by his experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of stimulants1 to seize the morning hours for creation1 making profit when he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night4 8,the morning for creation10 he would say2 8the afternoon for the perfecting labour of the file2 the evening for reception--the reception of matter from without one1 of other men's words and thoughts--matter for our own dreams1 or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain1 brooding thereon silently1 in its dark chambers40 ,to leave home early in the day was therefore a rare thing for him4 ,he was induced so to do on the occasion of a visit to ,rome of the famous writer ,lucian1 whom he had been bidden to meet4 ,the breakfast over1 he walked away with the learned guest1 having offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a well-known ,greek rhetorician and expositor of the ,stoic philosophy1 a teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of ,rome4 ,on reaching the place1 however1 they found the doors closed1 with a slip of writing attached1 which proclaimed 8a holiday02 and the morning being a fine one1 they walked further1 along the ,appian ,way4 ,mortality1 with which the ,queen of ,ways--in reality the favourite cemetery of ,rome--was so closely crowded1 in every imaginable form of sepulchre1 from the tiniest baby-house1 to the massive monument out of which the ,middle ,age would adapt a fortress-tower1 might seem1 on a morning like this1 to be 8smiling through tears40 ,the flower-stalls just beyond the city gates presented to view an array of posies and garlands1 fresh enough for a wedding4 ,at one and another of them groups of persons1 gravely clad1 were making their bargains before starting for some perhaps distant spot on the highway1 to keep a dies rosationis1 this being the time of roses1 at the grave of a deceased relation4 ,here and there1 a funeral procession was slowly on its way1 in weird contrast to the gaiety of the hour4 ,the two companions1 of course1 read the epitaphs as they strolled along4 ,in one1 reminding them of the poet's--,si lacrimae prosunt1 visis te ostende videri6--a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her dreams4 ,their characteristic note1 indeed1 was an imploring cry1 still to be sought after by the living4 8,while ,i live10 such was the promise of a lover to his dead mistress1 8you will receive this homage3 after my death1--who can tell80--post mortem nescio4 8,if ghosts1 my sons1 do feel anything after death1 my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent coming to me here60 8,this is a privileged tomb2 to my family and descendants has been conceded the right of visiting this place as often as they please40 8,this is an eternal habitation2 here lie ,i2 here ,i shall lie for ever40 8,reader6 if you doubt that the soul survives1 make your oblation and a prayer for me2 and you shall understand60 ,the elder of the two readers1 certainly1 was little affected by those pathetic suggestions4 ,it was long ago that after visiting the banks of the ,padus1 where he had sought in vain for the poplars 7sisters of ,phaethon erewhile7 whose tears became amber1 he had once for all arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to what might lie beyond its 8flaming barriers40 ,and at the age of sixty he had no misgivings4 ,his elegant and self-complacent but far from unamiable scepticism1 long since brought to perfection1 never failed him4 ,it surrounded him1 as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine aristocratic manners1 with 8a rampart10 through which he himself never broke1 nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him4 ,gay1 animated1 content with his old age as it was1 the aged student still took a lively interest in studious youth4--,could ,marius inform him of any such1 now known to him in ,rome8 ,what did the young men learn1 just then8 and how8 ,in answer1 ,marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young student1 the son1 as it presently appeared1 of parents of whom ,lucian himself knew something3 and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming along briskly--a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the sane mind in the healthy body1 though a little slim and worn of feature1 and with a pair of eyes expressly designed1 it might seem1 for fine glancings at the stars4 ,at the sight of ,marius he paused suddenly1 and with a modest blush on recognising his companion1 who straightway took with the youth1 so prettily enthusiastic1 the freedom of an old friend4 ,in a few moments the three were seated together1 immediately above the fragrant borders of a rose-farm1 on the marble bench of one of the exhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside1 from which they could overlook the grand1 earnest prospect of the ,campagna1 and enjoy the air4 ,fancying that the lad's plainly written enthusiasm had induced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual with him1 ,marius listened to the conversation which follows4-- 8,ah6 ,hermotimus6 ,hurrying to lecture6 --if ,i may judge by your pace1 and that volume in your hand4 ,you were thinking hard as you came along1 moving your lips and waving your arms4 ,some fine speech you were pondering1 some knotty question1 some viewy doctrine--not to be idle for a moment1 to be making progress in philosophy1 even on your way to the schools4 ,to-day1 however1 you need go no further4 ,we read a notice at the schools that there would be no lecture4 ,stay therefore1 and talk awhile with us4 --,with pleasure1 ,lucian4--,yes6 ,i was ruminating yesterday's conference4 ,one must not lose a moment4 ,life is short and art is long6 ,and it was of the art of medicine1 that was first said--a thing so much easier than divine philosophy1 to which one can hardly attain in a lifetime1 unless one be ever wakeful1 ever on the watch4 ,and here the hazard is no little one3--,by the attainment of a true philosophy to attain happiness2 or1 having missed both1 to perish1 as one of the vulgar herd4 --,the prize is a great one1 ,hermotimus6 and you must needs be near it1 after these months of toil1 and with that scholarly pallor of yours4 ,unless1 indeed1 you have already laid hold upon it1 and kept us in the dark4 --,how could that be1 ,lucian8 ,happiness1 as ,hesiod says1 abides very far hence2 and the way to it is long and steep and rough4 ,i see myself still at the beginning of my journey2 still but at the mountain's foot4 ,i am trying with all my might to get forward4 ,what ,i need is a hand1 stretched out to help me4 --,and is not the master sufficient for that8 ,could he not1 like ,zeus in ,homer1 let down to you1 from that high place1 a golden cord1 to draw you up thither1 to himself and to that ,happiness1 to which he ascended so long ago8 --,the very point1 ,lucian6 ,had it depended on him ,i should long ago have been caught up4 ',tis ,i1 am wanting4 --,well6 keep your eye fixed on the journey's end1 and that happiness there above1 with confidence in his goodwill4 --,ah6 there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed a certain distance1 but lose heart when they light on the obstacles of the way4 ,only1 those who endure to the end do come to the mountain's top1 and thereafter live in ,happiness3--live a wonderful manner of life1 seeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny ants4 --,what little fellows you make of us--less than the pygmies--down in the dust here4 ,well6 we1 #8the vulgar herd1' as we creep along1 will not forget you in our prayers1 when you are seated up there above the clouds1 whither you have been so long hastening4 ,but tell me1 ,hermotimus6--when do you expect to arrive there8 --,ah6 that ,i know not4 ,in twenty years1 perhaps1 ,i shall be really on the summit4--,a great while6 you think4 ,but then1 again1 the prize ,i contend for is a great one4 --,perhaps6 ,but as to those twenty years--that you will live so long4 ,has the master assured you of that8 ,is he a prophet as well as a philosopher8 ,for ,i suppose you would not endure all this1 upon a mere chance--toiling day and night1 though it might happen that just ere the last step1 ,destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence1 with your hope still unfulfilled4 --,hence1 with these ill-omened words1 ,lucian6 ,were ,i to survive but for a day1 ,i should be happy1 having once attained wisdom4 --,how8--,satisfied with a single day1 after all those labours8 --,yes6 one blessed moment were enough6 --,but again1 as you have never been1 how know you that happiness is to be had up there1 at all--the happiness that is to make all this worth while8 --,i believe what the master tells me4 ,of a certainty he knows1 being now far above all others4 --,and what was it he told you about it8 ,is it riches1 or glory1 or some indescribable pleasure8 --,hush6 my friend6 ,all those are nothing in comparison of the life there4 --,what1 then1 shall those who come to the end of this discipline--what excellent thing shall they receive1 if not these8 --,wisdom1 the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty1 with the sure and certain knowledge of all things--how they are4 ,riches and glory and pleasure--whatsoever belongs to the body--they have cast from them3 stripped bare of all that1 they mount up1 even as ,hercules1 consumed in the fire1 became a god4 ,he too cast aside all that he had of his earthly mother1 and bearing with him the divine element1 pure and undefiled1 winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame4 ,even so do they1 detached from all that others prize1 by the burning fire of a true philosophy1 ascend to the highest degree of happiness4 --,strange6 ,and do they never come down again from the heights to help those whom they left below8 ,must they1 when they be once come thither1 there remain for ever1 laughing1 as you say1 at what other men prize8 --,more than that6 ,they whose initiation is entire are subject no longer to anger1 fear1 desire1 regret4 ,nay6 ,they scarcely feel at all4 --,well6 as you have leisure to-day1 why not tell an old friend in what way you first started on your philosophic journey8 ,for1 if ,i might1 ,i should like to join company with you from this very day4 --,if you be really willing1 ,lucian6 you will learn in no long time your advantage over all other people4 ,they will seem but as children1 so far above them will be your thoughts4 --,well6 ,be you my guide6 ,it is but fair4 ,but tell me--,do you allow learners to contradict1 if anything is said which they don't think right8 --,no1 indeed6 ,still1 if you wish1 oppose your questions4 ,in that way you will learn more easily4 --,let me know1 then--,is there one only way which leads to a true philosophy--your own way--the way of the ,stoics3 or is it true1 as ,i have heard1 that there are many ways of approaching it8 --,yes6 ,many ways6 ,there are the ,stoics1 and the ,peripatetics1 and those who call themselves after ,plato3 there are the enthusiasts for ,diogenes1 and ,antisthenes1 and the followers of ,pythagoras1 besides others4 --,it was true1 then4 ,but again1 is what they say the same or different8 --,very different4 --,yet the truth1 ,i conceive1 would be one and the same1 from all of them4 ,answer me then--,in what1 or in whom1 did you confide when you first betook yourself to philosophy1 and seeing so many doors open to you1 passed them all by and went in to the ,stoics1 as if there alone lay the way of truth8 ,what token had you8 ,forget1 please1 all you are to-day--half-way1 or more1 on the philosophic journey3 answer me as you would have done then1 a mere outsider as ,i am now4 --,willingly6 ,it was there the great majority went6 ',twas by that ,i judged it to be the better way4 --,a majority how much greater than the ,epicureans1 the ,platonists1 the ,peripatetics8 ,you1 doubtless1 counted them respectively1 as with the votes in a scrutiny4 --,no6 ,but this was not my only motive4 ,i heard it said by every one that the ,epicureans were soft and voluptuous1 the ,peripatetics avaricious and quarrelsome1 and ,plato's followers puffed up with pride4 ,but of the ,stoics1 not a few pronounced that they were true men1 that they knew everything1 that theirs was the royal road1 the one road1 to wealth1 to wisdom1 to all that can be desired4 --,of course those who said this were not themselves ,stoics3 you would not have believed them--still less their opponents4 ,they were the vulgar1 therefore4 --,true6 ,but you must know that ,i did not trust to others exclusively4 ,i trusted also to myself--to what ,i saw4 ,i saw the ,stoics going through the world after a seemly manner1 neatly clad1 never in excess1 always collected1 ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce #8golden4' --,you are trying an experiment on me4 ,you would fain see how far you can mislead me as to your real ground4 ,the kind of probation you describe is applicable1 indeed1 to works of art1 which are rightly judged by their appearance to the eye4 ,there is something in the comely form1 the graceful drapery1 which tells surely of the hand of ,pheidias or ,alcamenes4 ,but if philosophy is to be judged by outward appearances1 what would become of the blind man1 for instance1 unable to observe the attire and gait of your friends the ,stoics8 --,it was not of the blind ,i was thinking4 --,yet there must needs be some common criterion in a matter so important to all4 ,put the blind1 if you will1 beyond the privileges of philosophy2 though they perhaps need that inward vision more than all others4 ,but can those who are not blind1 be they as keen-sighted as you will1 collect a single fact of mind from a man's attire1 from anything outward8--,understand me6 ,you attached yourself to these men--did you not8--because of a certain love you had for the mind in them1 the thoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to be improved thereby8 --,assuredly6 --,how1 then1 did you find it possible1 by the sort of signs you just now spoke of1 to distinguish the true philosopher from the false8 ,matters of that kind are not wont so to reveal themselves4 ,they are but hidden mysteries1 hardly to be guessed at through the words and acts which may in some sort be conformable to them4 ,you1 however1 it would seem1 can look straight into the heart in men's bosoms1 and acquaint yourself with what really passes there4 --,you are making sport of me1 ,lucian6 ,in truth1 it was with ,god's help ,i made my choice1 and ,i don't repent it4 --,and still you refuse to tell me1 to save me from perishing in that #8vulgar herd4' --,because nothing ,i can tell you would satisfy you4 --,you are mistaken1 my friend6 ,but since you deliberately conceal the thing1 grudging me1 as ,i suppose1 that true philosophy which would make me equal to you1 ,i will try1 if it may be1 to find out for myself the exact criterion in these matters--how to make a perfectly safe choice4 ,and1 do you listen4 --,i will2 there may be something worth knowing in what you will say4 --,well6--only don't laugh if ,i seem a little fumbling in my efforts4 ,the fault is yours1 in refusing to share your lights with me4 ,let ,philosophy1 then1 be like a city--a city whose citizens within it are a happy people1 as your master would tell you1 having lately come thence1 as we suppose4 ,all the virtues are theirs1 and they are little less than gods4 ,those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be seen in their streets4 ,they live together in one mind1 very seemly2 the things which beyond everything else cause men to contend against each other1 having no place upon them4 ,gold and silver1 pleasure1 vainglory1 they have long since banished1 as being unprofitable to the commonwealth2 and their life is an unbroken calm1 in liberty1 equality1 an equal happiness4 --,and is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a city such as that1 and take no account of the length and difficulty of the way thither1 so only they may one day become its freemen8 --,it might well be the business of life3--leaving all else1 forgetting one's native country here1 unmoved by the tears1 the restraining hands1 of parents or children1 if one had them--only bidding them follow the same road2 and if they would not or could not1 shaking them off1 leaving one's very garment in their hands if they took hold on us1 to start off straightway for that happy place6 ,for there is no fear1 ,i suppose1 of being shut out if one came thither naked4 ,i remember1 indeed1 long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there1 offering himself to be my leader1 and enrol me on my arrival in the number of the citizens4 ,i was but fifteen--certainly very foolish3 and it may be that ,i was then actually within the suburbs1 or at the very gates1 of the city4 ,well1 this aged man told me1 among other things1 that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar4 ,among them were barbarians and slaves1 poor men--aye6 and cripples--all indeed who truly desired that citizenship4 ,for the only legal conditions of enrolment were--not wealth1 nor bodily beauty1 nor noble ancestry--things not named among them--but intelligence1 and the desire for moral beauty1 and earnest labour4 ,the last comer1 thus qualified1 was made equal to the rest3 master and slave1 patrician1 plebeian1 were words they had not--in that blissful place4 ,and believe me1 if that blissful1 that beautiful place1 were set on a hill visible to all the world1 ,i should long ago have journeyed thither4 ,but1 as you say1 it is far off3 and one must needs find out for oneself the road to it1 and the best possible guide4 ,and ,i find a multitude of guides1 who press on me their services1 and protest1 all alike1 that they have themselves come thence4 ,only1 the roads they propose are many1 and towards adverse quarters4 ,and one of them is steep and stony1 and through the beating sun2 and the other is through green meadows1 and under grateful shade1 and by many a fountain of water4 ,but howsoever the road may be1 at each one of them stands a credible guide2 he puts out his hand and would have you come his way4 ,all other ways are wrong1 all other guides false4 ,hence my difficulty6--,the number and variety of the ways6 ,for you know1 ,there is but one road that leads to ,corinth4 --,well6 ,if you go the whole round1 you will find no better guides than those4 ,if you wish to get to ,corinth1 you will follow the traces of ,zeno and ,chrysippus4 ,it is impossible otherwise4 --,yes6 ,the old1 familiar language6 ,were one of ,plato's fellow-pilgrims here1 or a follower of ,epicurus--or fifty others--each would tell me that ,i should never get to ,corinth except in his company4 ,one must therefore credit all alike1 which would be absurd2 or1 what is far safer1 distrust all alike1 until one has discovered the truth4 ,suppose now1 that1 being as ,i am1 ignorant which of all philosophers is really in possession of truth1 ,i choose your sect1 relying on yourself--my friend1 indeed1 yet still acquainted only with the way of the ,stoics2 and that then some divine power brought ,plato1 and ,aristotle1 and ,pythagoras1 and the others1 back to life again4 ,well6 ,they would come round about me1 and put me on my trial for my presumption1 and say3--#8,in whom was it you confided when you preferred ,zeno and ,chrysippus to me8--and me8--masters of far more venerable age than those1 who are but of yesterday2 and though you have never held any discussion with us1 nor made trial of our doctrine8 ,it is not thus that the law would have judges do--listen to one party and refuse to let the other speak for himself4 ,if judges act thus1 there may be an appeal to another tribunal4' ,what should ,i answer8 ,would it be enough to say3--#8,i trusted my friend ,hermotimus8'--#8,we know not ,hermotimus1 nor he us1' they would tell me2 adding1 with a smile1 #8your friend thinks he may believe all our adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in malice4 ,yet if he were umpire in the games1 and if he happened to see one of our wrestlers1 by way of a preliminary exercise1 knock to pieces an antagonist of mere empty air1 he would not thereupon pronounce him a victor4 ,well6 don't let your friend ,hermotimus suppose1 in like manner1 that his teachers have really prevailed over us in those battles of theirs1 fought with our mere shadows4 ,that1 again1 were to be like children1 lightly overthrowing their own card-castles2 or like boy-archers1 who cry out when they hit the target of straw4 ,the ,persian and ,scythian bowmen1 as they speed along1 can pierce a bird on the wing4' --,let us leave ,plato and the others at rest4 ,it is not for me to contend against them4 ,let us rather search out together if the truth of ,philosophy be as ,i say4 ,why summon the athletes1 and archers from ,persia8 --,yes6 let them go1 if you think them in the way4 ,and now do you speak6 ,you really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver4 --,well then1 ,lucian6 to me it seems quite possible for one who has learned the doctrines of the ,stoics only1 to attain from those a knowledge of the truth1 without proceeding to inquire into all the various tenets of the others4 ,look at the question in this way4 ,if one told you that twice two make four1 would it be necessary for you to go the whole round of the arithmeticians1 to see whether any one of them will say that twice two make five1 or seven8 ,would you not see at once that the man tells the truth8 --,at once4 --,why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the ,stoics only1 in their enunciation of what is true1 should adhere to them1 and seek after no others2 assured that four could never be five1 even if fifty ,platos1 fifty ,aristotles said so8 --,you are beside the point1 ,hermotimus6 ,you are likening open questions to principles universally received4 ,have you ever met any one who said that twice two make five1 or seven8 --,no6 only a madman would say that4 --,and have you ever met1 on the other hand1 a ,stoic and an ,epicurean who were agreed upon the beginning and the end1 the principle and the final cause1 of things8 ,never6 ,then your parallel is false4 ,we are inquiring to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs1 and you seize on it by anticipation1 and assign it to the ,stoics1 alleging1 what is by no means clear1 that it is they for whom twice two make four4 ,but the ,epicureans1 or the ,platonists1 might say that it is they1 in truth1 who make two and two equal four1 while you make them five or seven4 ,is it not so1 when you think virtue the only good1 and the ,epicureans pleasure2 when you hold all things to be material1 while the ,platonists admit something immaterial8 ,as ,i said1 you resolve offhand1 in favour of the ,stoics1 the very point which needs a critical decision4 ,if it is clear beforehand that the ,stoics alone make two and two equal four1 then the others must hold their peace4 ,but so long as that is the very point of debate1 we must listen to all sects alike1 or be well-assured that we shall seem but partial in our judgment4 --,i think1 ,lucian6 that you do not altogether understand my meaning4 ,to make it clear1 then1 let us suppose that two men had entered a temple1 of ,aesculapius1--say6 or ,bacchus3 and that afterwards one of the sacred vessels is found to be missing4 ,and the two men must be searched to see which of them has hidden it under his garment4 ,for it is certainly in the possession of one or the other of them4 ,well6 if it be found on the first there will be no need to search the second2 if it is not found on the first1 then the other must have it2 and again1 there will be no need to search him4 --,yes6 ,so let it be4 --,and we too1 ,lucian6 if we have found the holy vessel in possession of the ,stoics1 shall no longer have need to search other philosophers1 having attained that we were seeking4 ,why trouble ourselves further8 --,no need1 if something had indeed been found1 and you knew it to be that lost thing3 if1 at the least1 you could recognise the sacred object when you saw it4 ,but truly1 as the matter now stands1 not two persons only have entered the temple1 one or the other of whom must needs have taken the golden cup1 but a whole crowd of persons4 ,and then1 it is not clear what the lost object really is--cup1 or flagon1 or diadem2 for one of the priests avers this1 another that2 they are not even in agreement as to its material3 some will have it to be of brass1 others of silver1 or gold4 ,it thus becomes necessary to search the garments of all persons who have entered the temple1 if the lost vessel is to be recovered4 ,and if you find a golden cup on the first of them1 it will still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments of the others2 for it is not certain that this cup really belonged to the temple4 ,might there not be many such golden vessels8--,no6 we must go on to every one of them1 placing all that we find in the midst together1 and then make our guess which of all those things may fairly be supposed to be the property of the god4 ,for1 again1 this circumstance adds greatly to our difficulty1 that without exception every one searched is found to have something upon him--cup1 or flagon1 or diadem1 of brass1 of silver1 of gold3 and still1 all the while1 it is not ascertained which of all these is the sacred thing4 ,and you must still hesitate to pronounce any one of them guilty of the sacrilege--those objects may be their own lawful property3 one cause of all this obscurity being1 as ,i think1 that there was no inscription on the lost cup1 if cup it was4 ,had the name of the god1 or even that of the donor1 been upon it1 at least we should have had less trouble1 and having detected the inscription1 should have ceased to trouble any one else by our search4 --,i have nothing to reply to that4 --,hardly anything plausible4 ,so that if we wish to find who it is has the sacred vessel1 or who will be our best guide to ,corinth1 we must needs proceed to every one and examine him with the utmost care1 stripping off his garment and considering him closely4 ,scarcely1 even so1 shall we come at the truth4 ,and if we are to have a credible adviser regarding this question of philosophy--which of all philosophies one ought to follow--he alone who is acquainted with the dicta of every one of them can be such a guide3 all others must be inadequate4 ,i would give no credence to them if they lacked information as to one only4 ,if somebody introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest of all men1 we should not believe that1 unless we knew that he had seen all the people in the world4 ,fair he might be2 but1 fairest of all--none could know1 unless he had seen all4 ,and we too desire1 not a fair one1 but the fairest of all4 ,unless we find him1 we shall think we have failed4 ,it is no casual beauty that will content us2 what we are seeking after is that supreme beauty which must of necessity be unique4 --,what then is one to do1 if the matter be really thus8 ,perhaps you know better than ,i4 ,all ,i see is that very few of us would have time to examine all the various sects of philosophy in turn1 even if we began in early life4 ,i know not how it is2 but though you seem to me to speak reasonably1 yet 7,i must confess it7 you have distressed me not a little by this exact exposition of yours4 ,i was unlucky in coming out to-day1 and in my falling in with you1 who have thrown me into utter perplexity by your proof that the discovery of truth is impossible1 just as ,i seemed to be on the point of attaining my hope4 --,blame your parents1 my child1 not me6 ,or rather1 blame mother ,nature herself1 for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of making us as long-lived as ,tithonus4 ,for my part1 ,i have but led you from premise to conclusion4 --,nay6 you are a mocker6 ,i know not wherefore1 but you have a grudge against philosophy2 and it is your entertainment to make a jest of her lovers4 --,ah6 ,hermotimus6 what the ,truth may be1 you philosophers may be able to tell better than ,i4 ,but so much at least ,i know of her1 that she is one by no means pleasant to those who hear her speak3 in the matter of pleasantness1 she is far surpassed by ,falsehood3 and ,falsehood has the pleasanter countenance4 ,she1 nevertheless1 being conscious of no alloy within1 discourses with boldness to all men1 who therefore have little love for her4 ,see how angry you are now because ,i have stated the truth about certain things of which we are both alike enamoured--that they are hard to come by4 ,it is as if you had fallen in love with a statue and hoped to win its favour1 thinking it a human creature2 and ,i1 understanding it to be but an image of brass or stone1 had shown you1 as a friend1 that your love was impossible1 and thereupon you had conceived that ,i bore you some ill-will4 --,but still1 does it not follow from what you said1 that we must renounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness8 --,when did you hear me say that8 ,i did but assert that if we are to seek after philosophy1 whereas there are many ways professing to lead thereto1 we must with much exactness distinguish them4 --,well1 ,lucian6 that we must go to all the schools in turn1 and test what they say1 if we are to choose the right one1 is perhaps reasonable2 but surely ridiculous1 unless we are to live as many years as the ,phoenix1 to be so lengthy in the trial of each2 as if it were not possible to learn the whole by the part6 ,they say that ,pheidias1 when he was shown one of the talons of a lion1 computed the stature and age of the animal it belonged to1 modelling a complete lion upon the standard of a single part of it4 ,you too would recognise a human hand were the rest of the body concealed4 ,even so with the schools of philosophy3--the leading doctrines of each might be learned in an afternoon4 ,that over-exactness of yours1 which required so long a time1 is by no means necessary for making the better choice4 --,you are forcible1 ,hermotimus6 with this theory of ,the ,whole by the ,part4 ,yet1 methinks1 ,i heard you but now propound the contrary4 ,but tell me2 would ,pheidias when he saw the lion's talon have known that it was a lion's1 if he had never seen the animal8 ,surely1 the cause of his recognising the part was his knowledge of the whole4 ,there is a way of choosing one's philosophy even less troublesome than yours4 ,put the names of all the philosophers into an urn4 ,then call a little child1 and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall follow all the rest of your days4 --,nay6 be serious with me4 ,tell me2 did you ever buy wine8 --,surely4 --,and did you first go the whole round of the wine-merchants1 tasting and comparing their wines8 --,by no means4 --,no6 ,you were contented to order the first good wine you found at your price4 ,by tasting a little you were ascertained of the quality of the whole cask4 ,how if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn1 and said1 #8,i wish to buy a cotyl of wine4 ,let me drink out the whole cask4 ,then ,i shall be able to tell which is best1 and where ,i ought to buy4' ,yet this is what you would do with the philosophies4 ,why drain the cask when you might taste1 and see8 --,how slippery you are2 how you escape from one's fingers6 ,still1 you have given me an advantage1 and are in your own trap4 --,how so8 --,thus6 ,you take a common object known to every one1 and make wine the figure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself1 and about which all men are at variance1 because it is an unseen and difficult thing4 ,i hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike unless it be in this1 that the philosophers exchange their ware for money1 like the wine-merchants2 some of them with a mixture of water or worse1 or giving short measure4 ,however1 let us consider your parallel4 ,the wine in the cask1 you say1 is of one kind throughout4 ,but have the philosophers--has your own master even--but one and the same thing only to tell you1 every day and all days1 on a subject so manifold8 ,otherwise1 how can you know the whole by the tasting of one part8 ,the whole is not the same--,ah6 and it may be that ,god has hidden the good wine of philosophy at the bottom of the cask4 ,you must drain it to the end if you are to find those drops of divine sweetness you seem so much to thirst for6 ,yourself1 after drinking so deeply1 are still but at the beginning1 as you said4 ,but is not philosophy rather like this8 ,keep the figure of the merchant and the cask3 but let it be filled1 not with wine1 but with every sort of grain4 ,you come to buy4 ,the merchant hands you a little of the wheat which lies at the top4 ,could you tell by looking at that1 whether the chick-peas were clean1 the lentils tender1 the beans full8 ,and then1 whereas in selecting our wine we risk only our money2 in selecting our philosophy we risk ourselves1 as you told me--might ourselves sink into the dregs of #8the vulgar herd4' ,moreover1 while you may not drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting1 ,wisdom grows no less by the depth of your drinking4 ,nay6 if you take of her1 she is increased thereby4 ,and then ,i have another similitude to propose1 as regards this tasting of philosophy4 ,don't think ,i blaspheme her if ,i say that it may be with her as with some deadly poison1 hemlock or aconite4 ,these too1 though they cause death1 yet kill not if one tastes but a minute portion4 ,you would suppose that the tiniest particle must be sufficient4 --,be it as you will1 ,lucian6 ,one must live a hundred years3 one must sustain all this labour2 otherwise philosophy is unattainable4 --,not so6 ,though there were nothing strange in that1 if it be true1 as you said at first1 that ,life is short and art is long4 ,but now you take it hard that we are not to see you this very day1 before the sun goes down1 a ,chrysippus1 a ,pythagoras1 a ,plato4 --,you overtake me1 ,lucian6 and drive me into a corner2 in jealousy of heart1 ,i believe1 because ,i have made some progress in doctrine whereas you have neglected yourself4 --,well6 ,don't attend to me6 ,treat me as a ,corybant1 a fanatic3 and do you go forward on this road of yours4 ,finish the journey in accordance with the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it4 ,only1 be assured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged4 ,reason still says1 that without criticism1 without a clear1 exact1 unbiassed intelligence to try them1 all those theories--all things--will have been seen but in vain4 #8,to that end1' she tells us1 #8much time is necessary1 many delays of judgment1 a cautious gait2 repeated inspection4' ,and we are not to regard the outward appearance1 or the reputation of wisdom1 in any of the speakers2 but like the judges of ,areopagus1 who try their causes in the darkness of the night1 look only to what they say4 --,philosophy1 then1 is impossible1 or possible only in another life6 --,hermotimus6 ,i grieve to tell you that all this even1 may be in truth insufficient4 ,after all1 we may deceive ourselves in the belief that we have found something3--like the fishermen6 ,again and again they let down the net4 ,at last they feel something heavy1 and with vast labour draw up1 not a load of fish1 but only a pot full of sand1 or a great stone4 --,i don't understand what you mean by the net4 ,it is plain that you have caught me in it4 --,try to get out6 ,you can swim as well as another4 ,we may go to all philosophers in turn and make trial of them4 ,still1 ,i1 for my part1 hold it by no means certain that any one of them really possesses what we seek4 ,the truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found4 ,you have twenty beans in your hand1 and you bid ten persons guess how many3 one says five1 another fifteen2 it is possible that one of them may tell the true number2 but it is not impossible that all may be wrong4 ,so it is with the philosophers4 ,all alike are in search of ,happiness--what kind of thing it is4 ,one says one thing1 one another3 it is pleasure2 it is virtue2--what not8 ,and ,happiness may indeed be one of those things4 ,but it is possible also that it may be still something else1 different and distinct from them all4 --,what is this8--,there is something1 ,i know not how1 very sad and disheartening in what you say4 ,we seem to have come round in a circle to the spot whence we started1 and to our first incertitude4 ,ah6 ,lucian1 what have you done to me8 ,you have proved my priceless pearl to be but ashes1 and all my past labour to have been in vain4 --,reflect1 my friend1 that you are not the first person who has thus failed of the good thing he hoped for4 ,all philosophers1 so to speak1 are but fighting about the #8ass's shadow4' ,to me you seem like one who should weep1 and reproach fortune because he is not able to climb up into heaven1 or go down into the sea by ,sicily and come up at ,cyprus1 or sail on wings in one day from ,greece to ,india4 ,and the true cause of his trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a dream1 or his own fancy has put together2 without previous thought whether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compass of human nature4 ,even so1 methinks1 has it happened with you4 ,as you dreamed1 so largely1 of those wonderful things1 came ,reason1 and woke you up from sleep1 a little roughly3 and then you are angry with ,reason1 your eyes being still but half open1 and find it hard to shake off sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein4 ,only1 don't be angry with me1 because1 as a friend1 ,i would not suffer you to pass your life in a dream1 pleasant perhaps1 but still only a dream--because ,i wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the proper business of life1 and send you to it possessed of common sense4 ,what your soul was full of just now is not very different from those ,gorgons and ,chimaeras and the like1 which the poets and the painters construct for us1 fancy-free3--things which never were1 and never will be1 though many believe in them1 and all like to see and hear of them1 just because they are so strange and odd4 ,and you too1 methinks1 having heard from some such maker of marvels of a certain woman of a fairness beyond nature--beyond the ,graces1 beyond ,venus ,urania herself--asked not if he spoke truth1 and whether this woman be really alive in the world1 but straightway fell in love with her2 as they say that ,medea was enamoured of ,jason in a dream4 ,and what more than anything else seduced you1 and others like you1 into that passion1 for a vain idol of the fancy1 is1 that he who told you about that fair woman1 from the very moment when you first believed that what he said was true1 brought forward all the rest in consequent order4 ,upon her alone your eyes were fixed2 by her he led you along1 when once you had given him a hold upon you--led you along the straight road1 as he said1 to the beloved one4 ,all was easy after that4 ,none of you asked again whether it was the true way2 following one after another1 like sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd4 ,he moved you hither and thither with his finger1 as easily as water spilt on a table6 ,my friend6 ,be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet1 lest you die of hunger6 ,i saw one who poured water into a mortar1 and ground it with all his might with a pestle of iron1 fancying he did a thing useful and necessary2 but it remained water only1 none the less40 ,just there the conversation broke off suddenly1 and the disputants parted4 ,the horses were come for ,lucian4 ,the boy went on his way1 and ,marius onward1 to visit a friend whose abode lay further4 ,as he returned to ,rome towards evening the melancholy aspect1 natural to a city of the dead1 had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of the early day4 ,he could almost have fancied ,canidia there1 picking her way among the rickety lamps1 to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb2 for these tombs were not all equally well cared for 7,post mortem nescio67 and it had been one of the pieties of ,aurelius to frame a severe law to prevent the defacing of such monuments4 ,to ,marius there seemed to be some new meaning in that terror of isolation1 of being left alone in these places1 of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so full4 ,a blood-red sunset was dying angrily1 and its wild glare upon the shadowy objects around helped to combine the associations of this famous way1 its deeply graven marks of immemorial travel1 together with the earnest questions of the morning as to the true way of that other sort of travelling1 around an image1 almost ghastly in the traces of its great sorrows--bearing along for ever1 on bleeding feet1 the instrument of its punishment--which was all ,marius could recall distinctly of a certain ,christian legend he had heard4 ,the legend told of an encounter at this very spot1 of two wayfarers on the ,appian ,way1 as also upon some very dimly discerned mental journey1 altogether different from himself and his late companions--an encounter between ,love1 literally fainting by the road1 and ,love 8travelling in the greatness of his strength10 ,love itself1 suddenly appearing to sustain that other4 ,a strange contrast to anything actually presented in that morning's conversation1 it seemed nevertheless to echo its very words--8,do they never come down again10 he heard once more the well-modulated voice3 8,do they never come down again from the heights1 to help those whom they left here below80--8,and we too desire1 not a fair one1 but the fairest of all4 ,unless we find him1 we shall think we have failed40 ,,chapter ,,xxv4 ,,sunt ,,lacrimae ,,rerum ,it was become a habit with ,marius--one of his modernisms--developed by his assistance at the ,emperor's 8conversations with himself10 to keep a register of the movements of his own private thoughts and humours2 not continuously indeed1 yet sometimes for lengthy intervals1 during which it was no idle self-indulgence1 but a necessity of his intellectual life1 to 8confess himself10 with an intimacy1 seemingly rare among the ancients2 ancient writers1 at all events1 having been jealous1 for the most part1 of affording us so much as a glimpse of that interior self1 which in many cases would have actually doubled the interest of their objective informations4 8,if a particular tutelary or genius10 writes ,marius1--8according to old belief1 walks through life beside each one of us1 mine is very certainly a capricious creature4 ,he fills one with wayward1 unaccountable1 yet quite irresistible humours1 and seems always to be in collusion with some outward circumstance1 often trivial enough in itself--the condition of the weather1 forsooth6--the people one meets by chance--the things one happens to overhear them say1 veritable enodioi symboloi1 or omens by the wayside1 as the old ,greeks fancied--to push on the unreasonable prepossessions of the moment into weighty motives4 ,it was doubtless a quite explicable1 physical fatigue that presented me to myself1 on awaking this morning1 so lack-lustre and trite4 ,but ,i must needs take my petulance1 contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness1 as a sign of the ageing of appetite1 of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment4 ,we need some imaginative stimulus1 some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope1 and transform it into effective desire1 to carry us year after year1 without disgust1 through the routine-work which is so large a part of life4 8,then1 how if appetite1 be it for real or ideal1 should itself fail one after awhile8 ,ah1 yes6 is it of cold always that men die2 and on some of us it creeps very gradually4 ,in truth1 ,i can remember just such a lack-lustre condition of feeling once or twice before4 ,but ,i note1 that it was accompanied then by an odd indifference1 as the thought of them occurred to me1 in regard to the sufferings of others--a kind of callousness1 so unusual with me1 as at once to mark the humour it accompanied as a palpably morbid one that could not last4 ,were those sufferings1 great or little1 ,i asked myself then1 of more real consequence to them than mine to me1 as ,i remind myself that #8nothing that will end is really long'--long enough to be thought of importance8 ,but to-day1 my own sense of fatigue1 the pity ,i conceive for myself1 disposed me strongly to a tenderness for others4 ,for a moment the whole world seemed to present itself as a hospital of sick persons2 many of them sick in mind2 all of whom it would be a brutality not to humour1 not to indulge4 8,why1 when ,i went out to walk off my wayward fancies1 did ,i confront the very sort of incident 7my unfortunate genius had surely beckoned it from afar to vex me7 likely to irritate them further8 ,a party of men were coming down the street4 ,they were leading a fine race-horse2 a handsome beast1 but badly hurt somewhere1 in the circus1 and useless4 ,they were taking him to slaughter2 and ,i think the animal knew it3 he cast such looks1 as if of mad appeal1 to those who passed him1 as he went among the strangers to whom his former owner had committed him1 to die1 in his beauty and pride1 for just that one mischance or fault2 although the morning air was still so animating1 and pleasant to snuff4 ,i could have fancied a human soul in the creature1 swelling against its luck4 ,and ,i had come across the incident just when it would figure to me as the very symbol of our poor humanity1 in its capacities for pain1 its wretched accidents1 and those imperfect sympathies1 which can never quite identify us with one another2 the very power of utterance and appeal to others seeming to fail us1 in proportion as our sorrows come home to ourselves1 are really our own4 ,we are constructed for suffering6 ,what proofs of it does but one day afford1 if we care to note them1 as we go--a whole long chaplet of sorrowful mysteries6 ,sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt4 8,men's fortunes touch us6 ,the little children of one of those institutions for the support of orphans1 now become fashionable among us by way of memorial of eminent persons deceased1 are going1 in long file1 along the street1 on their way to a holiday in the country4 ,they halt1 and count themselves with an air of triumph1 to show that they are all there4 ,their gay chatter has disturbed a little group of peasants2 a young woman and her husband1 who have brought the old mother1 now past work and witless1 to place her in a house provided for such afflicted people4 ,they are fairly affectionate1 but anxious how the thing they have to do may go--hope only she may permit them to leave her there behind quietly4 ,and the poor old soul is excited by the noise made by the children1 and partly aware of what is going to happen with her4 ,she too begins to count--one1 two1 three1 five--on her trembling fingers1 misshapen by a life of toil4 #8,yes6 yes6 and twice five make ten'--they say1 to pacify her4 ,it is her last appeal to be taken home again2 her proof that all is not yet up with her2 that she is1 at all events1 still as capable as those joyous children4 8,at the baths1 a party of labourers are at work upon one of the great brick furnaces1 in a cloud of black dust4 ,a frail young child has brought food for one of them1 and sits apart1 waiting till his father comes--watching the labour1 but with a sorrowful distaste for the din and dirt4 ,he is regarding wistfully his own place in the world1 there before him4 ,his mind1 as he watches1 is grown up for a moment2 and he foresees1 as it were1 in that moment1 all the long tale of days1 of early awakings1 of his own coming life of drudgery at work like this4 8,a man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has already begun--the only child--whose presence beside him sweetened the father's toil a little4 ,the boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work1 yet1 with an effort1 he rides boldly on his father's shoulders4 ,it will be the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long as possible1 though with that miserably shattered body4--#8,ah6 with us still1 and feeling our care beside him6'--and yet surely not without a heartbreaking sigh of relief1 alike from him and them1 when the end comes4 8,on the alert for incidents like these1 yet of necessity passing them by on the other side1 ,i find it hard to get rid of a sense that ,i1 for one1 have failed in love4 ,i could yield to the humour till ,i seemed to have had my share in those great public cruelties1 the shocking legal crimes which are on record1 like that cold-blooded slaughter1 according to law1 of the four hundred slaves in the reign of ,nero1 because one of their number was thought to have murdered his master4 ,the reproach of that1 together with the kind of facile apologies those who had no share in the deed may have made for it1 as they went about quietly on their own affairs that day1 seems to come very close to me1 as ,i think upon it4 ,and to how many of those now actually around me1 whose life is a sore one1 must ,i be indifferent1 if ,i ever become aware of their soreness at all8 ,to some1 perhaps1 the necessary conditions of my own life may cause me to be opposed1 in a kind of natural conflict1 regarding those interests which actually determine the happiness of theirs4 ,i would that a stronger love might arise in my heart6 8,yet there is plenty of charity in the world4 ,my patron1 the ,stoic emperor1 has made it even fashionable4 ,to celebrate one of his brief returns to ,rome lately from the war1 over and above a largess of gold pieces to all who would1 the public debts were forgiven4 ,he made a nice show of it3 for once1 the ,romans entertained themselves with a good-natured spectacle1 and the whole town came to see the great bonfire in the ,forum1 into which all bonds and evidence of debt were thrown on delivery1 by the emperor himself2 many private creditors following his example4 ,that was done well enough6 ,but still the feeling returns to me1 that no charity of ours can get at a certain natural unkindness which ,i find in things themselves4 8,when ,i first came to ,rome1 eager to observe its religion1 especially its antiquities of religious usage1 ,i assisted at the most curious1 perhaps1 of them all1 the most distinctly marked with that immobility which is a sort of ideal in the ,roman religion4 ,the ceremony took place at a singular spot some miles distant from the city1 among the low hills on the bank of the ,tiber1 beyond the ,aurelian ,gate4 ,there1 in a little wood of venerable trees1 piously allowed their own way1 age after age--ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last1 one over the other1 and all caught1 in that early ,may-time1 under a riotous tangle of wild clematis--was to be found a magnificent sanctuary1 in which the members of the ,arval ,college assembled themselves on certain days4 ,the axe never touched those trees--,nay6 it was forbidden to introduce any iron thing whatsoever within the precincts2 not only because the deities of these quiet places hate to be disturbed by the harsh noise of metal1 but also in memory of that better age--the lost ,golden ,age--the homely age of the potters1 of which the central act of the festival was a commemoration4 8,the preliminary ceremonies were long and complicated1 but of a character familiar enough4 ,peculiar to the time and place was the solemn exposition1 after lavation of hands1 processions backwards and forwards1 and certain changes of vestments1 of the identical earthen vessels--veritable relics of the old religion of ,numa6--the vessels from which the holy ,numa himself had eaten and drunk1 set forth above a kind of altar1 amid a cloud of flowers and incense1 and many lights1 for the veneration of the credulous or the faithful4 8,they were1 in fact1 cups or vases of burnt clay1 rude in form3 and the religious veneration thus offered to them expressed men's desire to give honour to a simpler age1 before iron had found place in human life3 the persuasion that that age was worth remembering3 a hope that it might come again4 8,that a ,numa1 and his age of gold1 would return1 has been the hope or the dream of some1 in every period4 ,yet if he did come back1 or any equivalent of his presence1 he could but weaken1 and by no means smite through1 that root of evil1 certainly of sorrow1 of outraged human sense1 in things1 which one must carefully distinguish from all preventible accidents4 ,death1 and the little perpetual daily dyings1 which have something of its sting1 he must necessarily leave untouched4 ,and1 methinks1 that were all the rest of man's life framed entirely to his liking1 he would straightway begin to sadden himself1 over the fate--say1 of the flowers6 ,for there is1 there has come to be since ,numa lived perhaps1 a capacity for sorrow in his heart1 which grows with all the growth1 alike of the individual and of the race1 in intellectual delicacy and power1 and which will find its aliment4 8,of that sort of golden age1 indeed1 one discerns even now a trace1 here and there4 ,often have ,i maintained that1 in this generous southern country at least1 ,epicureanism is the special philosophy of the poor4 ,how little ,i myself really need1 when people leave me alone1 with the intellectual powers at work serenely4 ,the drops of falling water1 a few wild flowers with their priceless fragrance1 a few tufts even of half-dead leaves1 changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but light and shadow in it2 these1 for a susceptible mind1 might well do duty for all the glory of ,augustus4 ,i notice sometimes what ,i conceive to be the precise character of the fondness of the roughest working-people for their young children1 a fine appreciation1 not only of their serviceable affection1 but of their visible graces3 and indeed1 in this country1 the children are almost always worth looking at4 ,i see daily1 in fine weather1 a child like a delicate nosegay1 running to meet the rudest of brick- makers as he comes from work4 ,she is not at all afraid to hang upon his rough hand3 and through her1 he reaches out to1 he makes his own1 something from that strange region1 so distant from him yet so real1 of the world's refinement4 ,what is of finer soul1 of finer stuff in things1 and demands delicate touching--to him the delicacy of the little child represents that3 it initiates him into that4 ,there1 surely1 is a touch of the secular gold1 of a perpetual age of gold4 ,but then again1 think for a moment1 with what a hard humour at the nature of things1 his struggle for bare life will go on1 if the child should happen to die4 ,i observed to-day1 under one of the archways of the baths1 two children at play1 a little seriously--a fair girl and her crippled younger brother4 ,two toy chairs and a little table1 and sprigs of fir set upright in the sand for a garden6 ,they played at housekeeping4 ,well6 the girl thinks her life a perfectly good thing in the service of this crippled brother4 ,but she will have a jealous lover in time3 and the boy1 though his face is not altogether unpleasant1 is after all a hopeless cripple4 8,for there is a certain grief in things as they are1 in man as he has come to be1 as he certainly is1 over and above those griefs of circumstance which are in a measure removable--some inexplicable shortcoming1 or misadventure1 on the part of nature itself--death1 and old age as it must needs be1 and that watching for their approach1 which makes every stage of life like a dying over and over again4 ,almost all death is painful1 and in every thing that comes to an end a touch of death1 and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one1 of remorse1 of loss and parting1 of outraged attachments4 ,given faultless men and women1 given a perfect state of society which should have no need to practise on men's susceptibilities for its own selfish ends1 adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own interest or amusement1 there would still be this evil in the world1 of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation1 felt1 just in proportion to the moral1 or nervous perfection men have attained to4 ,and what we need in the world1 over against that1 is a certain permanent and general power of compassion--humanity's standing force of self-pity--as an elementary ingredient of our social atmosphere1 if we are to live in it at all4 ,i wonder1 sometimes1 in what way man has cajoled himself into the bearing of his burden thus far1 seeing how every step in the capacity of apprehension his labour has won for him1 from age to age1 must needs increase his dejection4 ,it is as if the increase of knowledge were but an increasing revelation of the radical hopelessness of his position3 and ,i would that there were one even as ,i1 behind this vain show of things6 8,at all events1 the actual conditions of our life being as they are1 and the capacity for suffering so large a principle in things--since the only principle1 perhaps1 to which we may always safely trust is a ready sympathy with the pain one actually sees--it follows that the practical and effective difference between men will lie in their power of insight into those conditions1 their power of sympathy4 ,the future will be with those who have most of it2 while for the present1 as ,i persuade myself1 those who have much of it1 have something to hold by1 even in the dissolution of a world1 or in that dissolution of self1 which is1 for every one1 no less than the dissolution of the world it represents for him4 ,nearly all of us1 ,i suppose1 have had our moments1 in which any effective sympathy for us on the part of others has seemed impossible2 in which our pain has seemed a stupid outrage upon us1 like some overwhelming physical violence1 from which we could take refuge1 at best1 only in some mere general sense of goodwill--somewhere in the world perhaps4 ,and then1 to one's surprise1 the discovery of that goodwill1 if it were only in a not unfriendly animal1 may seem to have explained1 to have actually justified to us1 the fact of our pain4 ,there have been occasions1 certainly1 when ,i have felt that if others cared for me as ,i cared for them1 it would be1 not so much a consolation1 as an equivalent1 for what one has lost or suffered3 a realised profit on the summing up of one's accounts3 a touching of that absolute ground amid all the changes of phenomena1 such as our philosophers have of late confessed themselves quite unable to discover4 ,in the mere clinging of human creatures to each other1 nay6 in one's own solitary self-pity1 amid the effects even of what might appear irredeemable loss1 ,i seem to touch the eternal4 ,something in that pitiful contact1 something new and true1 fact or apprehension of fact1 is educed1 which1 on a review of all the perplexities of life1 satisfies our moral sense1 and removes that appearance of unkindness in the soul of things themselves1 and assures us that not everything has been in vain4 8,and ,i know not how1 but in the thought thus suggested1 ,i seem to take up1 and re-knit myself to1 a well-remembered hour1 when by some gracious accident--it was on a journey--all things about me fell into a more perfect harmony than is their wont4 ,everything seemed to be1 for a moment1 after all1 almost for the best4 ,through the train of my thoughts1 one against another1 it was as if ,i became aware of the dominant power of another person in controversy1 wrestling with me4 ,i seem to be come round to the point at which ,i left off then4 ,the antagonist has closed with me again4 ,a protest comes1 out of the very depths of man's radically hopeless condition in the world1 with the energy of one of those suffering yet prevailing deities1 of which old poetry tells4 ,dared one hope that there is a heart1 even as ours1 in that divine #8,assistant' of one's thoughts--a heart even as mine1 behind this vain show of things60 ,,notes #agb4 ,virgil1 ,aeneid ,book #a1 line #dfb4 8,there are the tears of things4440 ,see also page #age of this chapter1 where the same text is quoted in full4 #agc4 ,transliteration3 enodioi symboloi4 ,pater's ,definition3 8omens by the wayside40 #age4 ,sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt4 ,virgil1 ,aeneid ,book #a1 line #dfb4 ,translation3 8,here also there be tears for what men bear1 and mortal creatures feel each other's sorrow10 from ,vergil1 ,aeneid1 ,theodore ,c4 ,williams4 trans4 ,boston4 ,houghton ,mifflin ,co4 #aiaj4 ,,chapter ,,xxvi4 ,,the ,,martyrs 8,ah6 voil les mes qu'il falloit la mienne60 ,rousseau4 ,the charm of its poetry1 a poetry of the affections1 wonderfully fresh in the midst of a threadbare world1 would have led ,marius1 if nothing else had done so1 again and again1 to ,cecilia's house4 ,he found a range of intellectual pleasures1 altogether new to him1 in the sympathy of that pure and elevated soul4 ,elevation of soul1 generosity1 humanity--little by little it came to seem to him as if these existed nowhere else4 ,the sentiment of maternity1 above all1 as it might be understood there1--its claims1 with the claims of all natural feeling everywhere1 down to the sheep bleating on the hills1 nay6 even to the mother-wolf1 in her hungry cave--seemed to have been vindicated1 to have been enforced anew1 by the sanction of some divine pattern thereof4 ,he saw its legitimate place in the world given at last to the bare capacity for suffering in any creature1 however feeble or apparently useless4 ,in this chivalry1 seeming to leave the world's heroism a mere property of the stage1 in this so scrupulous fidelity to what could not help itself1 could scarcely claim not to be forgotten1 what a contrast to the hard contempt of one's own or other's pain1 of death1 of glory even1 in those discourses of ,aurelius6 ,but if ,marius thought at times that some long-cherished desires were now about to blossom for him1 in the sort of home he had sometimes pictured to himself1 the very charm of which would lie in its contrast to any random affections3 that in this woman1 to whom children instinctively clung1 he might find such a sister1 at least1 as he had always longed for2 there were also circumstances which reminded him that a certain rule forbidding second marriages1 was among these people still in force2 ominous incidents1 moreover1 warning a susceptible conscience not to mix together the spirit and the flesh1 nor make the matter of a heavenly banquet serve for earthly meat and drink4 ,one day he found ,cecilia occupied with the burial of one of the children of her household4 ,it was from the tiny brow of such a child1 as he now heard1 that the new light had first shone forth upon them--through the light of mere physical life1 glowing there again1 when the child was dead1 or supposed to be dead4 ,the aged servant of ,christ had arrived in the midst of their noisy grief2 and mounting to the little chamber where it lay1 had returned1 not long afterwards1 with the child stirring in his arms as he descended the stair rapidly2 bursting open the closely-wound folds of the shroud and scattering the funeral flowers from them1 as the soul kindled once more through its limbs4 ,old ,roman common-sense had taught people to occupy their thoughts as little as might be with children who died young4 ,here1 to-day1 however1 in this curious house1 all thoughts were tenderly bent on the little waxen figure1 yet with a kind of exultation and joy1 notwithstanding the loud weeping of the mother4 ,the other children1 its late companions1 broke with it1 suddenly1 into the place where the deep black bed lay open to receive it4 ,pushing away the grim fossores1 the grave-diggers1 they ranged themselves around it in order1 and chanted that old psalm of theirs--,laudate pueri dominum6 ,dead children1 children's graves--,marius had been always half aware of an old superstitious fancy in his mind concerning them2 as if in coming near them he came near the failure of some lately-born hope or purpose of his own4 ,and now1 perusing intently the expression with which ,cecilia assisted1 directed1 returned afterwards to her house1 he felt that he too had had to-day his funeral of a little child4 ,but it had always been his policy1 through all his pursuit of 8experience10 to take flight in time from any too disturbing passion1 from any sort of affection likely to quicken his pulses beyond the point at which the quiet work of life was practicable4 ,had he1 after all1 been taken unawares1 so that it was no longer possible for him to fly8 ,at least1 during the journey he took1 by way of testing the existence of any chain about him1 he found a certain disappointment at his heart1 greater than he could have anticipated2 and as he passed over the crisp leaves1 nipped off in multitudes by the first sudden cold of winter1 he felt that the mental atmosphere within himself was perceptibly colder4 ,yet it was1 finally1 a quite successful resignation which he achieved1 on a review1 after his manner1 during that absence1 of loss or gain4 ,the image of ,cecilia1 it would seem1 was already become for him like some matter of poetry1 or of another man's story1 or a picture on the wall4 ,and on his return to ,rome there had been a rumour in that singular company1 of things which spoke certainly not of any merely tranquil loving3 hinted rather that he had come across a world1 the lightest contact with which might make appropriate to himself also the precept that 8,they which have wives be as they that have none40 ,this was brought home to him1 when1 in early spring1 he ventured once more to listen to the sweet singing of the ,eucharist4 ,it breathed more than ever the spirit of a wonderful hope--of hopes more daring than poor1 labouring humanity had ever seriously entertained before1 though it was plain that a great calamity was befallen4 ,amid stifled sobbing1 even as the pathetic words of the psalter relieved the tension of their hearts1 the people around him still wore upon their faces their habitual gleam of joy1 of placid satisfaction4 ,they were still under the influence of an immense gratitude in thinking1 even amid their present distress1 of the hour of a great deliverance4 ,as he followed again that mystical dialogue1 he felt also again1 like a mighty spirit about him1 the potency1 the half-realised presence1 of a great multitude1 as if thronging along those awful passages1 to hear the sentence of its release from prison2 a company which represented nothing less than--orbis terrarum--the whole company of mankind4 ,and the special note of the day expressed that relief--a sound new to him1 drawn deep from some old ,hebrew source1 as he conjectured1 ,alleluia6 repeated over and over again1 ,alleluia6 ,alleluia6 at every pause and movement of the long ,easter ceremonies4 ,and then1 in its place1 by way of sacred lection1 although in shocking contrast with the peaceful dignity of all around1 came the ,epistle of the churches of ,lyons and ,vienne1 to 8their sister10 the church of ,rome4 ,for the 8,peace0 of the church had been broken--broken1 as ,marius could not but acknowledge1 on the responsibility of the emperor ,aurelius himself1 following tamely1 and as a matter of course1 the traces of his predecessors1 gratuitously enlisting1 against the good as well as the evil of that great pagan world1 the strange new heroism of which this singular message was full4 ,the greatness of it certainly lifted away all merely private regret1 inclining one1 at last1 actually to draw sword for the oppressed1 as if in some new order of knighthood-- 8,the pains which our brethren have endured we have no power fully to tell1 for the enemy came upon us with his whole strength4 ,but the grace of ,god fought for us1 set free the weak1 and made ready those who1 like pillars1 were able to bear the weight4 ,these1 coming now into close strife with the foe1 bore every kind of pang and shame4 ,at the time of the fair which is held here with a great crowd1 the governor led forth the ,martyrs as a show4 ,holding what was thought great but little1 and that the pains of to-day are not deserving to be measured against the glory that shall be made known1 these worthy wrestlers went joyfully on their way2 their delight and the sweet favour of ,god mingling in their faces1 so that their bonds seemed but a goodly array1 or like the golden bracelets of a bride4 ,filled with the fragrance of ,christ1 to some they seemed to have been touched with earthly perfumes4 8,vettius ,epagathus1 though he was very young1 because he would not endure to see unjust judgment given against us1 vented his anger1 and sought to be heard for the brethren1 for he was a youth of high place4 ,whereupon the governor asked him whether he also were a ,christian4 ,he confessed in a clear voice1 and was added to the number of the ,martyrs4 ,but he had the ,paraclete within him2 as1 in truth1 he showed by the fulness of his love2 glorying in the defence of his brethren1 and to give his life for theirs4 8,then was fulfilled the saying of the ,lord that the day should come1 ,when he that slayeth you will think that he doeth ,god service4 ,most madly did the mob1 the governor and the soldiers1 rage against the handmaiden ,blandina1 in whom ,christ showed that what seems mean among men is of price with ,him4 ,for whilst we all1 and her earthly mistress1 who was herself one of the contending ,martyrs1 were fearful lest through the weakness of the flesh she should be unable to profess the faith1 ,blandina was filled with such power that her tormentors1 following upon each other from morning until night1 owned that they were overcome1 and had no more that they could do to her2 admiring that she still breathed after her whole body was torn asunder4 8,but this blessed one1 in the very midst of her #8witness1' renewed her strength2 and to repeat1 ,i am ,christ's6 was to her rest1 refreshment1 and relief from pain4 ,as for ,alexander1 he neither uttered a groan nor any sound at all1 but in his heart talked with ,god4 ,sanctus1 the deacon1 also1 having borne beyond all measure pains devised by them1 hoping that they would get something from him1 did not so much as tell his name2 but to all questions answered only1 ,i am ,christ's6 ,for this he confessed instead of his name1 his race1 and everything beside4 ,whence also a strife in torturing him arose between the governor and those tormentors1 so that when they had nothing else they could do they set red-hot plates of brass to the most tender parts of his body4 ,but he stood firm in his profession1 cooled and fortified by that stream of living water which flows from ,christ4 ,his corpse1 a single wound1 having wholly lost the form of man1 was the measure of his pain4 ,but ,christ1 paining in him1 set forth an ensample to the rest--that there is nothing fearful1 nothing painful1 where the love of the ,father overcomes4 ,and as all those cruelties were made null through the patience of the ,martyrs1 they bethought them of other things2 among which was their imprisonment in a dark and most sorrowful place1 where many were privily strangled4 ,but destitute of man's aid1 they were filled with power from the ,lord1 both in body and mind1 and strengthened their brethren4 ,also1 much joy was in our virgin mother1 the ,church2 for1 by means of these1 such as were fallen away retraced their steps--were again conceived1 were filled again with lively heat1 and hastened to make the profession of their faith4 8,the holy bishop ,pothinus1 who was now past ninety years old and weak in body1 yet in his heat of soul and longing for martyrdom1 roused what strength he had1 and was also cruelly dragged to judgment1 and gave witness4 ,thereupon he suffered many stripes1 all thinking it would be a wickedness if they fell short in cruelty towards him1 for that thus their own gods would be avenged4 ,hardly drawing breath1 he was thrown into prison1 and after two days there died4 8,after these things their martyrdom was parted into divers manners4 ,plaiting as it were one crown of many colours and every sort of flowers1 they offered it to ,god4 ,maturus1 therefore1 ,sanctus and ,blandina1 were led to the wild beasts4 ,and ,maturus and ,sanctus passed through all the pains of the amphitheatre1 as if they had suffered nothing before3 or rather1 as having in many trials overcome1 and now contending for the prize itself1 were at last dismissed4 8,but ,blandina was bound and hung upon a stake1 and set forth as food for the assault of the wild beasts4 ,and as she thus seemed to be hung upon the ,cross1 by her fiery prayers she imparted much alacrity to those contending ,witnesses4 ,for as they looked upon her with the eye of flesh1 through her1 they saw ,him that was crucified4 ,but as none of the beasts would then touch her1 she was taken down from the ,cross1 and sent back to prison for another day3 that1 though weak and mean1 yet clothed with the mighty wrestler1 ,christ ,jesus1 she might by many conquests give heart to her brethren4 8,on the last day1 therefore1 of the shows1 she was brought forth again1 together with ,ponticus1 a lad of about fifteen years old4 ,they were brought in day by day to behold the pains of the rest4 ,and when they wavered not1 the mob was full of rage2 pitying neither the youth of the lad1 nor the sex of the maiden4 ,hence1 they drave them through the whole round of pain4 ,and ,ponticus1 taking heart from ,blandina1 having borne well the whole of those torments1 gave up his life4 ,last of all1 the blessed ,blandina herself1 as a mother that had given life to her children1 and sent them like conquerors to the great ,king1 hastened to them1 with joy at the end1 as to a marriage-feast2 the enemy himself confessing that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and great as hers4 8,nor even so was their anger appeased2 some among them seeking for us pains1 if it might be1 yet greater2 that the saying might be fulfilled1 ,he that is unjust1 let him be unjust still4 ,and their rage against the ,martyrs took a new form1 insomuch that we were in great sorrow for lack of freedom to entrust their bodies to the earth4 8,neither did the night-time1 nor the offer of money1 avail us for this matter2 but they set watch with much carefulness1 as though it were a great gain to hinder their burial4 ,therefore1 after the bodies had been displayed to view for many days1 they were at last burned to ashes1 and cast into the river ,rhone1 which flows by this place1 that not a vestige of them might be left upon the earth4 ,for they said1 ,now shall we see whether they will rise again1 and whether their ,god can save them out of our hands40 ,,chapter ,,xxvii4 ,,the ,,triumph ,,of ,,marcus ,,aurelius ,not many months after the date of that epistle1 ,marius1 then expecting to leave ,rome for a long time1 and in fact about to leave it for ever1 stood to witness the triumphal entry of ,marcus ,aurelius1 almost at the exact spot from which he had watched the emperor's solemn return to the capital on his own first coming thither4 ,his triumph was now a 8full0 one--,justus ,triumphus justified1 by far more than the due amount of bloodshed in those ,northern wars1 at length1 it might seem1 happily at an end4 ,among the captives1 amid the laughter of the crowds at his blowsy upper garment1 his trousered legs and conical wolf-skin cap1 walked our own ancestor1 representative of subject ,germany1 under a figure very familiar in later ,roman sculpture2 and1 though certainly with none of the grace of the ,dying ,gaul1 yet with plenty of uncouth pathos in his misshapen features1 and the pale1 servile1 yet angry eyes4 ,his children1 white-skinned and golden-haired 8as angels10 trudged beside him4 ,his brothers1 of the animal world1 the ibex1 the wild-cat1 and the reindeer1 stalking and trumpeting grandly1 found their due place in the procession2 and among the spoil1 set forth on a portable frame that it might be distinctly seen 7no mere model1 but the very house he had lived in71 a wattled cottage1 in all the simplicity of its snug contrivances against the cold1 and well-calculated to give a moment's delight to his new1 sophisticated masters4 ,andrea ,mantegna1 working at the end of the fifteenth century1 for a society full of antiquarian fervour at the sight of the earthy relics of the old ,roman people1 day by day returning to light out of the clay--childish still1 moreover1 and with no more suspicion of pasteboard than the old ,romans themselves1 in its unabashed love of open-air pageantries1 has invested this1 the greatest1 and alas6 the most characteristic1 of the splendours of imperial ,rome1 with a reality livelier than any description4 ,the homely sentiments for which he has found place in his learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than the great public incidents of the show1 there depicted4 ,and then1 with all that vivid realism1 how refined1 how dignified1 how select in type1 is this reflection of the old ,roman world6--now especially1 in its time-mellowed red and gold1 for the modern visitor to the old ,english palace4 ,it was under no such selected types that the great procession presented itself to ,marius2 though1 in effect1 he found something there prophetic1 so to speak1 and evocative of ghosts1 as susceptible minds will do1 upon a repetition after long interval of some notable incident1 which may yet perhaps have no direct concern for themselves4 ,in truth1 he had been so closely bent of late on certain very personal interests that the broad current of the world's doings seemed to have withdrawn into the distance1 but now1 as he witnessed this procession1 to return once more into evidence for him4 ,the world1 certainly1 had been holding on its old way1 and was all its old self1 as it thus passed by dramatically1 accentuating1 in this favourite spectacle1 its mode of viewing things4 ,and even apart from the contrast of a very different scene1 he would have found it1 just now1 a somewhat vulgar spectacle4 ,the temples1 wide open1 with their ropes of roses flapping in the wind against the rich1 reflecting marble1 their startling draperies and heavy cloud of incense1 were but the centres of a great banquet spread through all the gaudily coloured streets of ,rome1 for which the carnivorous appetite of those who thronged them in the glare of the mid-day sun was frankly enough asserted4 ,at best1 they were but calling their gods to share with them the cooked1 sacrificial1 and other meats1 reeking to the sky4 ,the child1 who was concerned for the sorrows of one of those ,northern captives as he passed by1 and explained to his comrade--8,there's feeling in that hand1 you know60 benumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain1 seemed1 in a moment1 to transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel4 ,yes6 these ,romans were a coarse1 a vulgar people2 and their vulgarities of soul in full evidence here4 ,and ,aurelius himself seemed to have undergone the world's coinage1 and fallen to the level of his reward1 in a mediocrity no longer golden4 ,yet if1 as he passed by1 almost filling the quaint old circular chariot with his magnificent golden-flowered attire1 he presented himself to ,marius1 chiefly as one who had made the great mistake2 to the multitude he came as a more than magnanimous conqueror4 ,that he had 8forgiven0 the innocent wife and children of the dashing and almost successful rebel ,avidius ,cassius1 now no more1 was a recent circumstance still in memory4 ,as the children went past--not among those who1 ere the emperor ascended the steps of the ,capitol1 would be detached from the great progress for execution1 happy rather1 and radiant1 as adopted members of the imperial family--the crowd actually enjoyed an exhibition of the moral order1 such as might become perhaps the fashion4 ,and it was in consideration of some possible touch of a heroism herein that might really have cost him something1 that ,marius resolved to seek the emperor once more1 with an appeal for common-sense1 for reason and justice4 ,he had set out at last to revisit his old home2 and knowing that ,aurelius was then in retreat at a favourite villa1 which lay almost on his way thither1 determined there to present himself4 ,although the great plain was dying steadily1 a new race of wild birds establishing itself there1 as he knew enough of their habits to understand1 and the idle contadino1 with his never-ending ditty of decay and death1 replacing the lusty ,roman labourer1 never had that poetic region between ,rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunless day of early autumn1 under which all that fell within the immense horizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear1 penitential blue4 ,stimulating to the fancy as was that range of low hills to the northwards1 already troubled with the upbreaking of the ,apennines1 yet a want of quiet in their outline1 the record of wild fracture there1 of sudden upheaval and depression1 marked them as but the ruins of nature2 while at every little descent and ascent of the road might be noted traces of the abandoned work of man4 ,from time to time1 the way was still redolent of the floral relics of summer1 daphne and myrtle-blossom1 sheltered in the little hollows and ravines4 ,at last1 amid rocks here and there piercing the soil1 as those descents became steeper1 and the main line of the ,apennines1 now visible1 gave a higher accent to the scene1 he espied over the plateau1 almost like one of those broken hills1 cutting the horizon towards the sea1 the old brown villa itself1 rich in memories of one after another of the family of the ,antonines4 ,as he approached it1 such reminiscences crowded upon him1 above all of the life there of the aged ,antoninus ,pius1 in its wonderful mansuetude and calm4 ,death had overtaken him here at the precise moment when the tribune of the watch had received from his lips the word ,aequanimitas6 as the watchword of the night4 ,to see their emperor living there like one of his simplest subjects1 his hands red at vintage-time with the juice of the grapes1 hunting1 teaching his children1 starting betimes1 with all who cared to join him1 for long days of antiquarian research in the country around3--this1 and the like of this1 had seemed to mean the peace of mankind4 ,upon that had come--like a stain6 it seemed to ,marius just then--the more intimate life of ,faustina1 the life of ,faustina at home4 ,surely1 that marvellous but malign beauty must still haunt those rooms1 like an unquiet1 dead goddess1 who might have perhaps1 after all1 something reassuring to tell surviving mortals about her ambiguous self4 ,when1 two years since1 the news had reached ,rome that those eyes1 always so persistently turned to vanity1 had suddenly closed for ever1 a strong desire to pray had come over ,marius1 as he followed in fancy on its wild way the soul of one he had spoken with now and again1 and whose presence in it for a time the world of art could so ill have spared4 ,certainly1 the honours freely accorded to embalm her memory were poetic enough--the rich temple left among those wild villagers at the spot1 now it was hoped sacred for ever1 where she had breathed her last2 the golden image1 in her old place at the amphitheatre2 the altar at which the newly married might make their sacrifice2 above all1 the great foundation for orphan girls1 to be called after her name4 ,the latter1 precisely1 was the cause why ,marius failed in fact to see ,aurelius again1 and make the chivalrous effort at enlightenment he had proposed to himself4 ,entering the villa1 he learned from an usher1 at the door of the long gallery1 famous still for its grand prospect in the memory of many a visitor1 and then leading to the imperial apartments1 that the emperor was already in audience3 ,marius must wait his turn--he knew not how long it might be4 ,an odd audience it seemed2 for at that moment1 through the closed door1 came shouts of laughter1 the laughter of a great crowd of children--the 8,faustinian ,children0 themselves1 as he afterwards learned--happy and at their ease1 in the imperial presence4 ,uncertain1 then1 of the time for which so pleasant a reception might last1 so pleasant that he would hardly have wished to shorten it1 ,marius finally determined to proceed1 as it was necessary that he should accomplish the first stage of his journey on this day4 ,the thing was not to be--,vale6 anima infelicissima6--,he might at least carry away that sound of the laughing orphan children1 as a not unamiable last impression of kings and their houses4 ,the place he was now about to visit1 especially as the resting-place of his dead1 had never been forgotten4 ,only1 the first eager period of his life in ,rome had slipped on rapidly2 and1 almost on a sudden1 that old time had come to seem very long ago4 ,an almost burdensome solemnity had grown about his memory of the place1 so that to revisit it seemed a thing that needed preparation3 it was what he could not have done hastily4 ,he half feared to lessen1 or disturb1 its value for himself4 ,and then1 as he travelled leisurely towards it1 and so far with quite tranquil mind1 interested also in many another place by the way1 he discovered a shorter road to the end of his journey1 and found himself indeed approaching the spot that was to him like no other4 ,dreaming now only of the dead before him1 he journeyed on rapidly through the night2 the thought of them increasing on him1 in the darkness4 ,it was as if they had been waiting for him there through all those years1 and felt his footsteps approaching now1 and understood his devotion1 quite gratefully1 in that lowliness of theirs1 in spite of its tardy fulfilment4 ,as morning came1 his late tranquillity of mind had given way to a grief which surprised him by its freshness4 ,he was moved more than he could have thought possible by so distant a sorrow4 8,to-day60--they seemed to be saying as the hard dawn broke1--8,to-day1 he will come60 ,at last1 amid all his distractions1 they were become the main purpose of what he was then doing4 ,the world around it1 when he actually reached the place later in the day1 was in a mood very different from his3--so work-a-day1 it seemed1 on that fine afternoon1 and the villages he passed through so silent2 the inhabitants being1 for the most part1 at their labour in the country4 ,then1 at length1 above the tiled outbuildings1 were the walls of the old villa itself1 with the tower for the pigeons2 and1 not among cypresses1 but half-hidden by aged poplar-trees1 their leaves like golden fruit1 the birds floating around it1 the conical roof of the tomb itself4 ,in the presence of an old servant who remembered him1 the great seals were broken1 the rusty key turned at last in the lock1 the door was forced out among the weeds grown thickly about it1 and ,marius was actually in the place which had been so often in his thoughts4 ,he was struck1 not however without a touch of remorse thereupon1 chiefly by an odd air of neglect1 the neglect of a place allowed to remain as when it was last used1 and left in a hurry1 till long years had covered all alike with thick dust --the faded flowers1 the burnt-out lamps1 the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who had had something to do there4 ,a heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen and chipped open one of the oldest of the mortuary urns1 many hundreds in number ranged around the walls4 ,it was not properly an urn1 but a minute coffin of stone1 and the fracture had revealed a piteous spectacle of the mouldering1 unburned remains within2 the bones of a child1 as he understood1 which might have died1 in ripe age1 three times over1 since it slipped away from among his great-grandfathers1 so far up in the line4 ,yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up in him feelings vivid enough1 bringing him intimately within the scope of dead people's grievances4 ,he noticed1 side by side with the urn of his mother1 that of a boy of about his own age--one of the serving-boys of the household--who had descended hither1 from the lightsome world of childhood1 almost at the same time with her4 ,it seemed as if this boy of his own age had taken filial place beside her there1 in his stead4 ,that hard feeling1 again1 which had always lingered in his mind with the thought of the father he had scarcely known1 melted wholly away1 as he read the precise number of his years1 and reflected suddenly--,he was of my own present age2 no hard old man1 but with interests1 as he looked round him on the world for the last time1 even as mine to-day6 ,and with that came a blinding rush of kindness1 as if two alienated friends had come to understand each other at last4 ,there was weakness in all this2 as there is in all care for dead persons1 to which nevertheless people will always yield in proportion as they really care for one another4 ,with a vain yearning1 as he stood there1 still to be able to do something for them1 he reflected that such doing must be1 after all1 in the nature of things1 mainly for himself4 ,his own epitaph might be that old one eskhatos tou idiou genous --,he was the last of his race6 ,of those who might come hither after himself probably no one would ever again come quite as he had done to-day2 and it was under the influence of this thought that he determined to bury all that1 deep below the surface1 to be remembered only by him1 and in a way which would claim no sentiment from the indifferent4 ,that took many days--was like a renewal of lengthy old burial rites--as he himself watched the work1 early and late2 coming on the last day very early1 and anticipating1 by stealth1 the last touches1 while the workmen were absent2 one young lad only1 finally smoothing down the earthy bed1 greatly surprised at the seriousness with which ,marius flung in his flowers1 one by one1 to mingle with the dark mould4 ,,notes #bjg4 ,transliteration3 eskhatos tou idiou genous4 ,translation3 8he was the last of his race40 ,,chapter ,,xxviii4 ,,anima ,,naturaliter ,,christiana ,those eight days at his old home1 so mournfully occupied1 had been for ,marius in some sort a forcible disruption from the world and the roots of his life in it4 ,he had been carried out of himself as never before2 and when the time was over1 it was as if the claim over him of the earth below had been vindicated1 over against the interests of that living world around4 ,dead1 yet sentient and caressing hands seemed to reach out of the ground and to be clinging about him4 ,looking back sometimes now1 from about the midway of life--the age1 as he conceived1 at which one begins to redescend one's life--though antedating it a little1 in his sad humour1 he would note1 almost with surprise1 the unbroken placidity of the contemplation in which it had been passed4 ,his own temper1 his early theoretic scheme of things1 would have pushed him on to movement and adventure4 ,actually1 as circumstances had determined1 all its movement had been inward2 movement of observation only1 or even of pure meditation2 in part1 perhaps1 because throughout it had been something of a meditatio mortis1 ever facing towards the act of final detachment4 ,death1 however1 as he reflected1 must be for every one nothing less than the fifth or last act of a drama1 and1 as such1 was likely to have something of the stirring character of a dnouement4 ,and1 in fact1 it was in form tragic enough that his end not long afterwards came to him4 ,in the midst of the extreme weariness and depression which had followed those last days1 ,cornelius1 then1 as it happened1 on a journey and travelling near the place1 finding traces of him1 had become his guest at ,white-nights4 ,it was just then that ,marius felt1 as he had never done before1 the value to himself1 the overpowering charm1 of his friendship4 8,more than brother60--he felt--like a son also60 contrasting the fatigue of soul which made himself in effect an older man1 with the irrepressible youth of his companion4 ,for it was still the marvellous hopefulness of ,cornelius1 his seeming prerogative over the future1 that determined1 and kept alive1 all other sentiment concerning him4 ,a new hope had sprung up in the world of which he1 ,cornelius1 was a depositary1 which he was to bear onward in it4 ,identifying himself with ,cornelius in so dear a friendship1 through him1 ,marius seemed to touch1 to ally himself to1 actually to become a possessor of the coming world2 even as happy parents reach out1 and take possession of it1 in and through the survival of their children4 ,for in these days their intimacy had grown very close1 as they moved hither and thither1 leisurely1 among the country-places thereabout1 ,cornelius being on his way back to ,rome1 till they came one evening to a little town 7,marius remembered that he had been there on his first journey to ,rome7 which had even then its church and legend--the legend and holy relics of the martyr ,hyacinthus1 a young ,roman soldier1 whose blood had stained the soil of this place in the reign of the emperor ,trajan4 ,the thought of that so recent death1 haunted ,marius through the night1 as if with audible crying and sighs above the restless wind1 which came and went around their lodging4 ,but towards dawn he slept heavily2 and awaking in broad daylight1 and finding ,cornelius absent1 set forth to seek him4 ,the plague was still in the place--had indeed just broken out afresh2 with an outbreak also of cruel superstition among its wild and miserable inhabitants4 ,surely1 the old gods were wroth at the presence of this new enemy among them6 ,and it was no ordinary morning into which ,marius stepped forth4 ,there was a menace in the dark masses of hill1 and motionless wood1 against the gray1 although apparently unclouded sky4 ,under this sunless heaven the earth itself seemed to fret and fume with a heat of its own1 in spite of the strong night-wind4 ,and now the wind had fallen4 ,marius felt that he breathed some strange heavy fluid1 denser than any common air4 ,he could have fancied that the world had sunken in the night1 far below its proper level1 into some close1 thick abysm of its own atmosphere4 ,the ,christian people of the town1 hardly less terrified and overwrought by the haunting sickness about them than their pagan neighbours1 were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr2 and even as ,marius pressed among them to a place beside ,cornelius1 on a sudden the hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion1 around the whole compass of the horizon4 ,for a moment ,marius supposed himself attacked with some sudden sickness of brain1 till the fall of a great mass of building convinced him that not himself but the earth under his feet was giddy4 ,a few moments later the little marketplace was alive with the rush of the distracted inhabitants from their tottering houses2 and as they waited anxiously for the second shock of earthquake1 a long-smouldering suspicion leapt precipitately into well-defined purpose1 and the whole body of people was carried forward towards the band of worshippers below4 ,an hour later1 in the wild tumult which followed1 the earth had been stained afresh with the blood of the martyrs ,felix and ,faustinus--,flores apparuerunt in terra nostra6--and their brethren1 together with ,cornelius and ,marius1 thus1 as it had happened1 taken among them1 were prisoners1 reserved for the action of the law4 ,marius and his friend1 with certain others1 exercising the privilege of their rank1 made claim to be tried in ,rome1 or at least in the chief town of the district2 where1 indeed1 in the troublous days that had now begun1 a legal process had been already instituted4 ,under the care of a military guard the captives were removed on the same day1 one stage of their journey2 sleeping1 for security1 during the night1 side by side with their keepers1 in the rooms of a shepherd's deserted house by the wayside4 ,it was surmised that one of the prisoners was not a ,christian3 the guards were forward to make the utmost pecuniary profit of this circumstance1 and in the night1 ,marius1 taking advantage of the loose charge kept over them1 and by means partly of a large bribe1 had contrived that ,cornelius1 as the really innocent person1 should be dismissed in safety on his way1 to procure1 as ,marius explained1 the proper means of defence for himself1 when the time of trial came4 ,and in the morning ,cornelius in fact set forth alone1 from their miserable place of detention4 ,marius believed that ,cornelius was to be the husband of ,cecilia2 and that1 perhaps strangely1 had but added to the desire to get him away safely4--,we wait for the great crisis which is to try what is in us3 we can hardly bear the pressure of our hearts1 as we think of it3 the lonely wrestler1 or victim1 which imagination foreshadows to us1 can hardly be one's self2 it seems an outrage of our destiny that we should be led along so gently and imperceptibly1 to so terrible a leaping-place in the dark1 for more perhaps than life or death4 ,at last1 the great act1 the critical moment itself comes1 easily1 almost unconsciously4 ,another motion of the clock1 and our fatal line--the 8great climacteric point0--has been passed1 which changes ourselves or our lives4 ,in one quarter of an hour1 under a sudden1 uncontrollable impulse1 hardly weighing what he did1 almost as a matter of course and as lightly as one hires a bed for one's night's rest on a journey1 ,marius had taken upon himself all the heavy risk of the position in which ,cornelius had then been--the long and wearisome delays of judgment1 which were possible2 the danger and wretchedness of a long journey in this manner2 possibly the danger of death4 ,he had delivered his brother1 after the manner he had sometimes vaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his destiny2 though indeed always with wistful calculation as to what it might cost him3 and in the first moment after the thing was actually done1 he felt only satisfaction at his courage1 at the discovery of his possession of 8nerve40 ,yet he was1 as we know1 no hero1 no heroic martyr--had indeed no right to be2 and when he had seen ,cornelius depart1 on his blithe and hopeful way1 as he believed1 to become the husband of ,cecilia2 actually1 as it had happened1 without a word of farewell1 supposing ,marius was almost immediately afterwards to follow 7,marius indeed having avoided the moment of leave-taking with its possible call for an explanation of the circumstances71 the reaction came4 ,he could only guess1 of course1 at what might really happen4 ,so far1 he had but taken upon himself1 in the stead of ,cornelius1 a certain amount of personal risk2 though he hardly supposed himself to be facing the danger of death4 ,still1 especially for one such as he1 with all the sensibilities of which his whole manner of life had been but a promotion1 the situation of a person under trial on a criminal charge was actually full of distress4 ,to him1 in truth1 a death such as the recent death of those saintly brothers1 seemed no glorious end4 ,in his case1 at least1 the ,martyrdom1 as it was called--the overpowering act of testimony that ,heaven had come down among men--would be but a common execution3 from the drops of his blood there would spring no miraculous1 poetic flowers2 no eternal aroma would indicate the place of his burial2 no plenary grace1 overflowing for ever upon those who might stand around it4 ,had there been one to listen just then1 there would have come1 from the very depth of his desolation1 an eloquent utterance at last1 on the irony of men's fates1 on the singular accidents of life and death4 ,the guards1 now safely in possession of whatever money and other valuables the prisoners had had on them1 pressed them forward1 over the rough mountain paths1 altogether careless of their sufferings4 ,the great autumn rains were falling4 ,at night the soldiers lighted a fire2 but it was impossible to keep warm4 ,from time to time they stopped to roast portions of the meat they carried with them1 making their captives sit round the fire1 and pressing it upon them4 ,but weariness and depression of spirits had deprived ,marius of appetite1 even if the food had been more attractive1 and for some days he partook of nothing but bad bread and water4 ,all through the dark mornings they dragged over boggy plains1 up and down hills1 wet through sometimes with the heavy rain4 ,even in those deplorable circumstances1 he could but notice the wild1 dark beauty of those regions--the stormy sunrise1 and placid spaces of evening4 ,one of the keepers1 a very young soldier1 won him at times1 by his simple kindness1 to talk a little1 with wonder at the lad's half-conscious1 poetic delight in the adventures of the journey4 ,at times1 the whole company would lie down for rest at the roadside1 hardly sheltered from the storm2 and in the deep fatigue of his spirit1 his old longing for inopportune sleep overpowered him4--,sleep anywhere1 and under any conditions1 seemed just then a thing one might well exchange the remnants of one's life for4 ,it must have been about the fifth night1 as he afterwards conjectured1 that the soldiers1 believing him likely to die1 had finally left him unable to proceed further1 under the care of some country people1 who to the extent of their power certainly treated him kindly in his sickness4 ,he awoke to consciousness after a severe attack of fever1 lying alone on a rough bed1 in a kind of hut4 ,it seemed a remote1 mysterious place1 as he looked around in the silence2 but so fresh--lying1 in fact1 in a high pasture-land among the mountains--that he felt he should recover1 if he might but just lie there in quiet long enough4 ,even during those nights of delirium he had felt the scent of the new-mown hay pleasantly1 with a dim sense for a moment that he was lying safe in his old home4 ,the sunlight lay clear beyond the open door2 and the sounds of the cattle reached him softly from the green places around4 ,recalling confusedly the torturing hurry of his late journeys1 he dreaded1 as his consciousness of the whole situation returned1 the coming of the guards4 ,but the place remained in absolute stillness4 ,he was1 in fact1 at liberty1 but for his own disabled condition4 ,and it was certainly a genuine clinging to life that he felt just then1 at the very bottom of his mind4 ,so it had been1 obscurely1 even through all the wild fancies of his delirium1 from the moment which followed his decision against himself1 in favour of ,cornelius4 ,the occupants of the place were to be heard presently1 coming and going about him on their business3 and it was as if the approach of death brought out in all their force the merely human sentiments4 ,there is that in death which certainly makes indifferent persons anxious to forget the dead3 to put them--those aliens--away out of their thoughts altogether1 as soon as may be4 ,conversely1 in the deep isolation of spirit which was now creeping upon ,marius1 the faces of these people1 casually visible1 took a strange hold on his affections2 the link of general brotherhood1 the feeling of human kinship1 asserting itself most strongly when it was about to be severed for ever4 ,at nights he would find this face or that impressed deeply on his fancy2 and1 in a troubled sort of manner1 his mind would follow them onwards1 on the ways of their simple1 humdrum1 everyday life1 with a peculiar yearning to share it with them1 envying the calm1 earthy cheerfulness of all their days to be1 still under the sun1 though so indifferent1 of course1 to him6--as if these rude people had been suddenly lifted into some height of earthly good-fortune1 which must needs isolate them from himself4 ,tristem neminen fecit--he repeated to himself2 his old prayer shaping itself now almost as his epitaph4 ,yes6 so much the very hardest judge must concede to him4 ,and the sense of satisfaction which that thought left with him disposed him to a conscious effort of recollection1 while he lay there1 unable now even to raise his head1 as he discovered on attempting to reach a pitcher of water which stood near4 ,revelation1 vision1 the discovery of a vision1 the seeing of a perfect humanity1 in a perfect world--through all his alternations of mind1 by some dominant instinct1 determined by the original necessities of his own nature and character1 he had always set that above the having1 or even the doing1 of anything4 ,for1 such vision1 if received with due attitude on his part1 was1 in reality1 the being something1 and as such was surely a pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might be1 observant of him4 ,and how goodly had the vision been6--one long unfolding of beauty and energy in things1 upon the closing of which he might gratefully utter his 8,vixi60 ,even then1 just ere his eyes were to be shut for ever1 the things they had seen seemed a veritable possession in hand2 the persons1 the places1 above all1 the touching image of ,jesus1 apprehended dimly through the expressive faces1 the crying of the children1 in that mysterious drama1 with a sudden sense of peace and satisfaction now1 which he could not explain to himself4 ,surely1 he had prospered in life6 ,and again1 as of old1 the sense of gratitude seemed to bring with it the sense also of a living person at his side4 ,for still1 in a shadowy world1 his deeper wisdom had ever been1 with a sense of economy1 with a jealous estimate of gain and loss1 to use life1 not as the means to some problematic end1 but1 as far as might be1 from dying hour to dying hour1 an end in itself--a kind of music1 all-sufficing to the duly trained ear1 even as it died out on the air4 ,yet now1 aware still in that suffering body of such vivid powers of mind and sense1 as he anticipated from time to time how his sickness1 practically without aid as he must be in this rude place1 was likely to end1 and that the moment of taking final account was drawing very near1 a consciousness of waste would come1 with half-angry tears of self-pity1 in his great weakness--a blind1 outraged1 angry feeling of wasted power1 such as he might have experienced himself standing by the deathbed of another1 in condition like his own4 ,and yet it was the fact1 again1 that the vision of men and things1 actually revealed to him on his way through the world1 had developed1 with a wonderful largeness1 the faculties to which it addressed itself1 his general capacity of vision2 and in that too was a success1 in the view of certain1 very definite1 well-considered1 undeniable possibilities4 ,throughout that elaborate and lifelong education of his receptive powers1 he had ever kept in view the purpose of preparing himself towards possible further revelation some day--towards some ampler vision1 which should take up into itself and explain this world's delightful shows1 as the scattered fragments of a poetry1 till then but half-understood1 might be taken up into the text of a lost epic1 recovered at last4 ,at this moment1 his unclouded receptivity of soul1 grown so steadily through all those years1 from experience to experience1 was at its height2 the house ready for the possible guest2 the tablet of the mind white and smooth1 for whatsoever divine fingers might choose to write there4 ,and was not this precisely the condition1 the attitude of mind1 to which something higher than he1 yet akin to him1 would be likely to reveal itself2 to which that influence he had felt now and again like a friendly hand upon his shoulder1 amid the actual obscurities of the world1 would be likely to make a further explanation8 ,surely1 the aim of a true philosophy must lie1 not in futile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to the circumstances in which he chances to find himself1 but in the maintenance of a kind of candid discontent1 in the face of the very highest achievement2 the unclouded and receptive soul quitting the world finally1 with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered the world still unimpaired1 and going on its blind way at last with the consciousness of some profound enigma in things1 as but a pledge of something further to come4 ,marius seemed to understand how one might look back upon life here1 and its excellent visions1 as but the portion of a race-course left behind him by a runner still swift of foot3 for a moment he experienced a singular curiosity1 almost an ardent desire to enter upon a future1 the possibilities of which seemed so large4 ,and just then1 again amid the memory of certain touching actual words and images1 came the thought of the great hope1 that hope against hope1 which1 as he conceived1 had arisen--,lux sedentibus in tenebris--upon the aged world2 the hope ,cornelius had seemed to bear away upon him in his strength1 with a buoyancy which had caused ,marius to feel1 not so much that by a caprice of destiny1 he had been left to die in his place1 as that ,cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him also from death4 ,there had been a permanent protest established in the world1 a plea1 a perpetual after-thought1 which humanity henceforth would ever possess in reserve1 against any wholly mechanical and disheartening theory of itself and its conditions4 ,that was a thought which relieved for him the iron outline of the horizon about him1 touching it as if with soft light from beyond2 filling the shadowy1 hollow places to which he was on his way with the warmth of definite affections2 confirming also certain considerations by which he seemed to link himself to the generations to come in the world he was leaving4 ,yes6 through the survival of their children1 happy parents are able to think calmly1 and with a very practical affection1 of a world in which they are to have no direct share2 planting with a cheerful good-humour1 the acorns they carry about with them1 that their grand-children may be shaded from the sun by the broad oak-trees of the future4 ,that is nature's way of easing death to us4 ,it was thus too1 surprised1 delighted1 that ,marius1 under the power of that new hope among men1 could think of the generations to come after him4 ,without it1 dim in truth as it was1 he could hardly have dared to ponder the world which limited all he really knew1 as it would be when he should have departed from it4 ,a strange lonesomeness1 like physical darkness1 seemed to settle upon the thought of it2 as if its business hereafter must be1 as far as he was concerned1 carried on in some inhabited1 but distant and alien1 star4 ,contrariwise1 with the sense of that hope warm about him1 he seemed to anticipate some kindly care for himself2 never to fail even on earth1 a care for his very body--that dear sister and companion of his soul1 outworn1 suffering1 and in the very article of death1 as it was now4 ,for the weariness came back tenfold2 and he had finally to abstain from thoughts like these1 as from what caused physical pain4 ,and then1 as before in the wretched1 sleepless nights of those forced marches1 he would try to fix his mind1 as it were impassively1 and like a child thinking over the toys it loves1 one after another1 that it may fall asleep thus1 and forget all about them the sooner1 on all the persons he had loved in life--on his love for them1 dead or living1 grateful for his love or not1 rather than on theirs for him--letting their images pass away again1 or rest with him1 as they would4 ,in the bare sense of having loved he seemed to find1 even amid this foundering of the ship1 that on which his soul might 8assuredly rest and depend40 ,one after another1 he suffered those faces and voices to come and go1 as in some mechanical exercise1 as he might have repeated all the verses he knew by heart1 or like the telling of beads one by one1 with many a sleepy nod between-whiles4 ,for there remained also1 for the old earthy creature still within him1 that great blessedness of physical slumber4 ,to sleep1 to lose one's self in sleep--that1 as he had always recognised1 was a good thing4 ,and it was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuring voices of the people who had kept and tended him so carefully through his sickness1 now kneeling around his bed3 and what he heard confirmed1 in the then perfect clearness of his soul1 the inevitable suggestion of his own bodily feelings4 ,he had often dreamt he was condemned to die1 that the hour1 with wild thoughts of escape1 was arrived2 and waking1 with the sun all around him1 in complete liberty of life1 had been full of gratitude for his place there1 alive still1 in the land of the living4 ,he read surely1 now1 in the manner1 the doings1 of these people1 some of whom were passing out through the doorway1 where the heavy sunlight in very deed lay1 that his last morning was come1 and turned to think once more of the beloved4 ,often had he fancied of old that not to die on a dark or rainy day might itself have a little alleviating grace or favour about it4 ,the people around his bed were praying fervently--,abi6 ,abi6 ,anima ,christiana6 ,in the moments of his extreme helplessness their mystic bread had been placed1 had descended like a snow-flake from the sky1 between his lips4 ,gentle fingers had applied to hands and feet1 to all those old passage-ways of the senses1 through which the world had come and gone for him1 now so dim and obstructed1 a medicinable oil4 ,it was the same people who1 in the gray1 austere evening of that day1 took up his remains1 and buried them secretly1 with their accustomed prayers2 but with joy also1 holding his death1 according to their generous view in this matter1 to have been of the nature of martyrdom2 and martyrdom1 as the church had always said1 a kind of sacrament with plenary grace4 #ahha-ahhd4 ,,the ,,end ,,notes #bag4 8,he made no one unhappy40 #bah4 8,i have lived60 #bba4 ,from the ,latin ,vulgate ,bible1 ,matthew #d3af3 8populus qui sedebat in tenebris lucem vidit magnam et sedentibus in regione et umbra mortis lux orta est eis40 ,king ,james ,bible translation3 8,the people which sat in darkness saw great light2 and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up40 #bbd4 8,depart6 ,depart6 ,christian ,soul60 ,the thought is from the ,catholic prayer for the departing4