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The
Secret Of Strength
Epilogue
The
Secret of Strength
I
Strength
to step forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his
path. Where is this to be found? Looking round, it is not hard
to see where other men find their strength. Its source is profound
conviction. Through this great moral power is brought to birth
in the natural life of the man that which enables him, however
frail he may be, to go on and conquer. Conquer what? Not continents,
not worlds, but himself. Through that supreme victory is obtained
the entrance to the whole, where all that might be conquered
and obtained by effort becomes at once not his, but himself.
To
put on armor and go forth to war, taking the chances of death
in the hurry of the fight, is an easy thing; to stand still amid
the jangle of the world, to preserve stillness within the turmoil
of the body, to hold silence amid the thousand cries of the senses
and desires, and then, stripped of all armor and without hurry
or excitement take the deadly serpent of self and kill it, is
no easy thing. Yet that is what has to be done; and it can only
be done in the moment of equilibrium when the enemy is disconcerted
by the silence.
But
there is needed for this supreme moment a strength such as no
hero of the battlefield needs. A great soldier must be filled
with the profound convictions of the justness of his cause and
the rightness of his method. The man who wars against himself
and wins the battle can do it only when he knows that in that
war he is doing the one thing which is worth doing, and when
he knows that in doing it he is winning heaven and hell as his
servitors. Yes, he stands on both. He needs no heaven where pleasure
comes as a long-promised reward; he fears no hell where pain
waits to punish him for his sins. For he has conquered once for
all that shifting serpent in himself which turns from side to
side in its constant desire of contact, in its perpetual search
after pleasure and pain. Never again (the victory once really
won) can he tremble or grow exultant at any thought of that which
the future holds. Those burning sensations which seemed to him
to be the only proofs of his existence are his no longer. How,
then, can he know that he lives? He knows it only by argument.
And in time he does not care to argue about it. For him there
is then peace; and he will find in that peace the power he has
coveted. Then he will know what is that faith which can remove
mountains.
II Religion
holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward,
for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake
of distinguishing between good and evil. Nature knows no such
distinction; and the moral and social laws set us by our religions
are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode and
form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants
or the bees. We pass out of that state in which these things
appear to be final, and we forget them forever. This is easily
shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence
must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people.
These people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted
religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot
offend. Unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind,
he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his own.
What then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their
rules? And then if he dwells among them many years the sharp
edge of difference is worn away, and he forgets at last where
their faith ends and his commences. Yet is it for his own people
to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and remained
just?
I
am not attacking law and order; I do not speak of these things
with rash dislike. In their place they are as vital and necessary
as the code which governs the life of a beehive is to its successful
conduct. What I wish to point out is that law and order in themselves
are quite temporary and unsatisfactory. When a man's soul passes
away from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of law and order
do not accompany it. If it is strong, it is the ecstasy of true
being and real life which it becomes possessed of, as all know
who have watched by the dying. If the soul is weak, it faints
and fades away, overcome by the first flush of the new life.
Am
I speaking too positively? Only those who live in the active
life of the moment, who have not watched beside the dead and
dying, who have not walked the battlefield and looked in the
faces of men in their last agony, will say so. The strong man
goes forth from his body exultant.
Why?
Because he is no longer held back and made to quiver by hesitation.
In the strange moment of death he has had release given him;
and with a sudden passion of delight he recognizes that it is
release. Had he been sure of this before, he would have been
a great sage, a man to rule the world, for he would have had
the power to rule himself and his own body. That release from
the chains of ordinary life can be obtained as easily during
life as by death. It only needs a sufficiently profound conviction
to enable the man to look on his body with the same emotions
as he would look on the body of another man, or on the bodies
of a thousand men. In contemplating a battlefield it is impossible
to realize the agony of every sufferer; why, then, realize your
own pain more keenly than another's? Mass the whole together,
and look at it all from a wider standpoint than that of the individual
life. That you actually feel your own physical wound is a weakness
of your limitation. The man who is developed psychically feels
the wound of another as keenly as his own, and does not feel
his own at all if he is strong enough to will it so. Every one
who has examined at all seriously into psychic conditions knows
this to be a fact, more or less marked, according to the psychic
development. In many instances the psychic is more keenly and
selfishly aware of his own pain than of any other person's; but
that is when the development, marked perhaps so far as it has
gone, only reaches a certain point. It is the power which carries
the man to the margin of that consciousness which is profound
peace and vital activity. It can carry him no further. But if
he has reached its margin he is freed from the paltry dominion
of his own self. That is the first great release. Look at the
sufferings which come upon us from our narrow and limited experience
and sympathy. We each stand quite alone, a solitary unit, a pygmy
in the world. What good fortune can we expect? The great life
of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that
it will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. There is no
defence to be offered to it; no opposition army can be set up,
because in this life every man fights his own battle against
every other man, and no two can be united under the same banner.
There is only one way of escape from this terrible danger which
we battle against every hour. Turn round, and instead of standing
against the forces, join them; become one with Nature, and go
easily upon her path. Do not resist or resent the circumstances
of life any more than the plants resent the rain and the wind.
Then suddenly, to your own amazement, you find you have time
and strength to spare, to use in the great battle which it is
inevitable every man must fight, -- that in himself, that which
leads to his own conquest.
Some
might say, to his own destruction. And why? Because from the
hour when he first tastes the splendid reality of living he forgets
more and more his individual self. No longer does he fight for
it, or pit its strength against the strength of others. No longer
does he care to defend or to feed it. Yet when he is thus indifferent
to its welfare, the individual self grows more stalwart and robust,
like the prairie grasses and the trees of untrodden forests.
It is a matter of indifference to him whether this is so or not.
Only, if it is so, he has a fine instrument ready to his hand;
and in due proportion to the completeness of his indifference
to it is the strength and beauty of his personal self. This is
readily seen; a garden flower becomes a mere degenerate copy
of itself if it is simply neglected; a plant must be cultivated
to the highest pitch, and benefit by the whole of the gardener's
skill, or else it must be a pure savage, wild, and fed only by
the earth and sky. Who cares for any intermediate state? What
value or strength is there in the neglected garden rose which
has the canker in every bud? For diseased or dwarfed blossoms
are sure to result from an arbitrary change of condition, resulting
from the neglect of the man who has hitherto been the providence
of the plant in its unnatural life. But there are wind-blown
plains where the daisies grow tall, with moon faces such as no
cultivation can produce in them. Cultivate, then, to the very
utmost; forget no inch of your garden ground, no smallest plant
that grows in it; make no foolish pretence nor fond mistake in
the fancy that you are ready to forget it, and so subject it
to the frightful consequences of half-measures. The plant that
is watered today and forgotten tomorrow must dwindle or decay.
The plant that looks for no help but from Nature itself measures
its strength at once, and either dies and is re-created or grows
into a great tree whose boughs fill the sky. But make no mistake
like the religionists and some philosophers; leave no part of
yourself neglected while you know it to be yourself. While the
ground is the gardener's it is his business to tend it; but some
day a call may come to him from another country or from death
itself, and in a moment he is no longer the gardener, his business
is at an end, he has no more duty of that kind at all. Then his
favorite plants suffer and die, and the delicate ones become
one with the earth. But soon fierce Nature claims the place for
her own, and covers it with thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses
some sapling in it till its branches shade the ground. Be warned,
and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can pass away utterly
and let it return to Nature and become the wind-blown plain where
the wild-flowers grow. Then, if you pass that way and look at
it, whatever has happened will neither grieve nor elate you.
For you will be able to say, "I am the rocky ground, I am the
great tree, I am the strong daisies," indifferent which it is
that flourishes where once your rose-trees grew. But you must
have learned to study the stars to some purpose before you dare
to neglect your roses, and omit to fill the air with their cultivated
fragrance. You must know your way through the trackless air,
and from thence to the pure ether; you must be ready to lift
the bar of the Golden Gate.
Cultivate,
I say, and neglect nothing. Only remember, all the while you
tend and water, that you are impudently usurping the tasks of
Nature herself. Having usurped her work, you must carry it through
until you have reached a point when she has no power to punish
you, when you are not afraid of her, but can with a bold front
return her her own. She laughs in her sleeve, the mighty mother,
watching you with covert, laughing eye, ready relentlessly to
cast the whole of your work into the dust if you do but give
her the chance, if you turn idler and grow careless. The idler
is father of the madman in the sense that the child is the father
of the man. Nature has put her vast hand on him and crushed the
whole edifice. The gardener and his rose-trees are alike broken
and stricken by the great storm which her movement has created;
they lie helpless till the sand is swept over them and they are
buried in a weary wilderness. From this desert spot Nature herself
will re-create, and will use the ashes of the man who dared to
face her as indifferently as the withered leaves of his plants.
His body, soul, and spirit are all alike claimed by her.
III The
man who is strong, who has resolved to find the unknown path,
takes with the utmost care every step. He utters no idle word,
he does no unconsidered action, he neglects no duty or office
however homely or however difficult. But while his eyes and hands
and feet are thus fulfiling their tasks, new eyes and hands and
feet are being born within him. For his passionate and unceasing
desire is to go that way on which the subtile organs only can
guide him. The physical world he has learned, and knows how to
use; gradually his power is passing on, and he recognizes the
psychic world. But he has to learn this world and know how to
use it, and he dare not lose hold of the life he is familiar
with till he has taken hold of that with which he is unfamiliar.
When he has acquired such power with his psychic organs as the
infant has with its physical organs when it first opens its lungs,
then is the hour for the great adventure. How little is needed
- yet how much that is! The man does but need the psychic body
to be formed in all parts, as is an infant's; he does but need
the profound and unshakable conviction which impels the infant,
that the new life is desirable. Once those conditions gained
and he may let himself live in the new atmosphere and look up
to the new sun. But then he must remember to check his new experience
by the old. He is breathing still, though differently; he draws
air into his lungs, and takes life from the sun. He has been
born into the psychic world, and depends now on the psychic air
and light. His goal is not here: this is but a subtile repetition
of physical life; he has to pass through it according to similar
laws. He must study, learn, grow, and conquer; never forgetting
the while that his goal is that place where there is no air nor
any sun or moon.
Do
not imagine that in this line of progress the man himself is
being moved or changing his place. Not so. The truest illustration
of the process is that of cutting through layers of crust or
skin. The man, having learned his lesson fully, casts off the
physical life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the
psychic life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the
contemplative life, or life of adoration.
All
are cast aside at last, and he enters the great temple where
any memory of self or sensation is left outside as the shoes
are cast from the feet of the worshipper. That temple is the
place of his own pure divinity, the central flame which, however
obscured, has animated him through all these struggles. And having
found this sublime home he is sure as the heavens themselves.
He remains still, filled with all knowledge and power. The outer
man, the adoring, the acting, the living personification, goes
its own way hand in hand with Nature, and shows all the superb
strength of the savage growth of the earth, lit by that instinct
which contains knowledge. For in the inmost sanctuary, in the
actual temple, the man has found the subtile essence of Nature
herself. No longer can there be any difference between them or
any half-measures. And now comes the hour of action and power.
In that inmost sanctuary all is to be found: God and his creatures,
the fiends who prey on them, those among men who have been loved,
those who have been hated. Difference between them exists no
longer. Then the soul of man laughs in its strength and fearlessness,
and goes forth into the world in which its actions are needed,
and causes these actions to take place without apprehension,
alarm, fear, regret, or joy.
This
state is possible to man while yet he lives in the physical;
for men have attained it while living. It alone can make actions
in the physical divine and true.
Life
among objects of sense must forever be an outer shape to the
sublime soul, - it can only become powerful life, the life of
accomplishment, when it is animated by the crowned and indifferent
god that sits in the sanctuary.
The
obtaining of this condition is so supremely desirable because
from the moment it is entered there is no more trouble, no more
anxiety, no more doubt or hesitation. As a great artist paints
his picture fearlessly and never committing any error which causes
him regret, so the man who has formed his inner self deals with
his life.
But
that is when the condition is entered. That which we who look
towards the mountains hunger to know is the mode of entrance
and the way to the Gate. The Gate is that Gate of Gold barred
by a heavy bar of iron. The way to the threshold of it turns
a man giddy and sick. It seems no path, it seems to end perpetually,
its way lies along hideous precipices, it loses itself in deep
waters.
Once
crossed and the way found it appears wonderful that the difficulty
should have looked so great. For the path where it disappears
does but turn abruptly, its line upon the precipice edge is wide
enough for the feet, and across the deep waters that look so
treacherous there is always a ford and a ferry. So it happens
in all profound experiences of human nature. When the first grief
tears the heart asunder it seems that the path has ended and
a blank darkness taken the place of the sky. And yet by groping
the soul passes on, and that difficult and seemingly hopeless
turn in the road is passed.
So
with many another form of human torture. Sometimes throughout
a long period or a whole lifetime the path of existence is perpetually
checked by what seem like insurmountable obstacles. Grief, pain,
suffering, the loss of all that is beloved or valued, rise up
before the terrified soul and check it at every turn. Who places
those obstacles there? The reason shrinks at the childish dramatic
picture which the religionists place before it, -- God permitting
the Devil to torment His creatures for their ultimate good! When
will that ultimate good be attained? The idea involved in this
picture supposes an end, a goal. There is none. We can any one
of us safely assent to that; for as far as human observation,
reason, thought, intellect, or instinct can reach towards grasping
the mystery of life, all data obtained show that the path is
endless and that eternity cannot be blinked and converted by
the idling soul into a million years.
In
man, taken individually or as a whole, there clearly exists a
double constitution. I am speaking roughly now, being well aware
that the various schools of philosophy cut him up and subdivide
him according to their several theories. What I mean is this:
that two great tides of emotion sweep through his nature, two
great forces guide his life; the one makes him an animal, and
the other makes him a god. No brute of the earth is so brutal
as the man who subjects his godly power to his animal power.
This is a matter of course, because the whole force of the double
nature is then used in one direction. The animal pure and simple
obeys his instincts only and desires no more than to gratify
his love of pleasure; he pays but little regard to the existence
of other beings except in so far as they offer him pleasure or
pain; he knows nothing of the abstract love of cruelty or of
any of those vicious tendencies of the human being which have
in themselves their own gratification. Thus the man who becomes
a beast has a million times the grasp of life over the natural
beast, and that which in the pure animal is sufficiently innocent
enjoyment, uninterrupted by an arbitrary moral standard, becomes
in him vice, because it is gratified on principle. Moreover he
turns all the divine powers of his being into this channel, and
degrades his soul by making it the slave of his senses. The god,
deformed and disguised, waits on the animal and feeds it.
Consider
then whether it is not possible to change the situation. The
man himself is king of the country in which this strange spectacle
is seen. He allows the beast to usurp the place of the god because
for the moment the beast pleases his capricious royal fancy the
most. This cannot last always; why let it last any longer? So
long as the animal rules there will be the keenest sufferings
in consequence of change, of the vibration between pleasure and
pain, of the desire for prolonged and pleasant physical life.
And the god in his capacity of servant adds a thousand-fold to
all this, by making physical life so much more filled with keenness
of pleasure, - rare, voluptuous, aesthetic pleasure, - and by
intensity of pain so passionate that one knows not where it ends
and where pleasure commences. So long as the god serves, so long
the life of the animal will be enriched and increasingly valuable.
But let the king resolve to change the face of his court and
forcibly evict the animal from the chair of state, restoring
the god to the place of divinity.
Ah,
the profound peace that falls upon the palace! All is indeed
changed. No longer is there the fever of personal longings or
desires, no longer is there any rebellion or distress, no longer
any hunger for pleasure or dread of pain. It is like a great
calm descending on a stormy ocean; it is like the soft rain of
summer falling on parched ground; it is like the deep pool found
amidst the weary, thirsty labyrinths of the unfriendly forest.
But
there is much more than this. Not only is man more than an animal
because there is the god in him, but he is more than a god because
there is the animal in him.
Once
force the animal into his rightful place, that of the inferior,
and you find yourself in possession of a great force hitherto
unsuspected and unknown. The god as servant adds a thousand-fold
to the pleasures of the animal; the animal as servant adds a
thousand-fold to the powers of the god. And it is upon the union,
the right relation of these two forces in himself, that man stands
as a strong king, and is enabled to raise his hand and lift the
bar of the Golden Gate. When these forces are unfitly related,
then the king is but a crowned voluptuary, without power, and
whose dignity does but mock him; for the animals, undivine, at
least know peace and are not torn by vice and despair.
That
is the whole secret. That is what makes man strong, powerful,
able to grasp heaven and earth in his hands. Do not fancy it
is easily done. Do not be deluded into the idea that the religious
or the virtuous man does it! Not so. They do no more than fix
a standard, a routine, a law, by which they hold the animal in
check. The god is compelled to serve him in a certain way, and
does so, pleasing him with the beliefs and cherished fantasies
of the religious, with the lofty sense of personal pride which
makes the joy of the virtuous. These special and canonized vices
are things too low and base to be possible to the pure animal,
whose only inspirer is Nature herself, always fresh as the dawn.
The god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous
power of production.
The
animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great
powers of service and of strength.
You
forget, you who let your animal self live on, merely checked
and held within certain bounds, that it is a great force, an
integral portion of the animal life of the world you live in.
With it you can sway men, and influence the very world itself,
more or less perceptibly according to your strength. The god,
given his right place, will so inspire and guide this extraordinary
creature, so educate and develop it, so force it into action
and recognition of its kind, that it will make you tremble when
you recognize the power that has awakened within you. The animal
in yourself will then be a king among the animals of the world.
This
is the secret of the old-world magicians, who made Nature serve
them and work miracles every day for their convenience. This
is the secret of the coming race which Lord Lytton foreshadowed
for us.
But
this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty.
Make your animal ruler over yourself, and he will never rule
others.
Secreted
and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of man
is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the
past. Shall we not search for it? Surely some must do so. And
then perhaps those will add what is needed to this poor fragment
of thought.
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