The Works of Honore de Balzac Part 65

"Yes, you too take pleasure in confusing my mind.--Who is she? What is your idea of her?"

"What I feel is inexplicable," said Minna, coloring.

"You are both mad!" said the pastor.

"Then we meet to-morrow," said Wilfrid, as he left.

IV

THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY

There are spectacles to which all the material magnificence at man's command is made to contribute. Whole tribes of slaves or divers go forth to seek in the sands of the sea, in the bowels of the rocks, the pearls and diamonds that adorn the spectators. These treasures, handed down from heir to heir, have blazed on crowned heads, and might be the most veracious historians of humanity if they could but speak. Have they not seen the joys and woes of the greatest as well as of the humblest? They have been everywhere--worn with pride at high festivals; carried in despair to the money-lender; stolen amid blood and pillage; treasured in miracles of artistic workmanship contrived for their safe keeping. Excepting Cleopatra's pearl, not one has perished.

The great and the rich are a.s.sembled to see a king crowned--a monarch whose raiment is the work of men's hands, but who, in all his glory, is arrayed in purple less exquisite than that of a humble flower. These festivities, blazing with light, bathed in music through which the words of men strive to be heard in thunder,--all these works of man can be crushed by a thought, a feeling. The mind of man can bring to his ken light more glorious, can make him hear more tuneful harmonies, show him among clouds the glittering constellations he may question; and the heart can do yet more! Man may stand face to face with a single being and find in a single word, a single look, a burden so heavy to be borne, a light so intense, a sound so piercing, that he can but yield and kneel. The truest splendors are not in outward things, but in ourselves.

To a learned man, is not some secret of science a whole new world of wonders? But do the clarions of force, the gems of wealth, the music of triumph, the concourse of the crowd, do honor to his joy? No. He goes off to some remote nook, where a man, often pale and feeble, whispers a single word in his ear. That word, like a torch in an underground pa.s.sage, lights up the whole of science.

Every human conception, arrayed in the most attractive forms that mystery can invent, once gathered round a blind man sitting in the mud by a roadside. The three worlds--the Natural, Spiritual, and Divine--were revealed to an unhappy Florentine exile; as he went he was escorted by the happy and by the suffering, by those who prayed and those who cursed, by angels and by the d.a.m.ned. When He who came from G.o.d, who knew and could do all things, appeared to three of His disciples, it was one evening at the common table of a poor little inn; there and then the Light broke forth, bursting material husks, and showing its spiritual power. They saw Him in His glory, and the earth clung to their feet no more than as the sandals they could slip off them.

The pastor, Wilfrid, and Minna were all three excited to alarm at going to the house of the extraordinary being they proposed to question. To each of them the Swedish castle was magnified into the scene of a stupendous spectacle, like those of which the composition and color are so skilfully arranged by poets, where the actors, though imaginary to men, are real to those who are beginning to enter into the spiritual world. On the seats of that amphitheatre the pastor beheld arrayed the dark legions of doubt, his gloomy ideas, his vicious syllogisms in argument; he called up the various philosophical and religious sects, ever contentious, and all embodied in the shape of a fleshless system, as lean as the figure of Time as imagined by man--the old mower who with one hand raises the scythe, and in the other carries a meagre world, the world of human life.

Wilfrid saw there his first illusions and his last hopes; he imagined human destiny incarnate there and all its struggles; religion and its triumphant hierarchies.

Minna vaguely found heaven there, seen through a vista; love held up a curtain embroidered with mystical figures, and the harmonious sounds that fell on her ears increased her curiosity. Hence this evening was to them what the supper at Emmaus was to the three travelers, what a vision was to Dante, what an inspiration was to Homer; to them, too, the three aspects of the world were to be revealed, veils rent, doubts dispelled, darkness lightened. Human nature in all its phases, and awaiting illumination, could find no better representatives than this young girl, this man, and these two elders, one of them learned enough to be sceptical, the other ignorant enough to believe. No scene could be simpler in appearance or more stupendous in fact.

On entering, shown in by old David, they found Seraphita standing by the table, on which were spread the various items const.i.tuting a Tea, a meal which takes the place in the north of the pleasures of wine-drinking, reserved for southern lands. Nothing certainly betrayed in her--or in him--a wondrous being who had the power of appearing under two distinct forms, nothing that showed the various forces she could command. With a homely desire to make her three guests comfortable, Seraphita bid David to feed the stove with wood.

"Good-evening, neighbors," said she. "Dear Pastor Becker, you did well to come; you see me alive, perhaps, for the last time. This winter has killed me.--Be seated, pray," she added to Wilfrid.--"And you, Minna, sit there,"

and she pointed to an armchair near the young man. "You have brought your work, I see. Did you find out the st.i.tch? The pattern is very pretty. For whom is it to be? For your father or for this gentleman?" and she turned to Wilfrid. "We must not allow him to leave without some remembrance of the damsels of Norway."

"Then you were in pain again yesterday?" asked Wilfrid.

"That is nothing," she replied. "Such pain makes me glad; it is indispensable to escape from life."

"Then you are not afraid of dying?" said the minister, smiling, for he did not believe in her illness.

"No, dear pastor; there are two ways of dying--to some death means victory, to some it is defeat."

"And you think you have won?" said Minna.

"I do not know," said she. "Perhaps it is only a step more."

The milky radiance of her brow seemed to fade, her eyes fell under her lids, which slowly closed. This simple circ.u.mstance distressed the three inquirers, who sat quite still. The pastor was the boldest.

"My dear girl," said he, "you are candor itself; you are also divinely kind. I want more of you this evening than the dainties of your tea-table.

If we may believe what some people say, you know some most wonderful things; and if so, would it not be an act of charity to clear up some of our doubts?"

"Oh yes!" said Seraphita, with a smile. "They say that I walk on the clouds; I am on familiar terms with the eddies in the fiord; the sea is a horse I have saddled and bridled; I know where the singing flower grows, where the talking light shines, where living colors blaze that scent the air; I have Solomon's ring; I am a fairy; I give my orders to the wind, and it obeys me like a submissive slave; I can see the treasures in the mine; I am the virgin whom pearls rush to meet, and----"

"And we walk unharmed on the Falberg," Minna put in.

"What, you too?" replied the Being with a luminous glance at the girl, which quite upset her. "If I had not the power of reading through your brows the wish that has brought you here, should I be what you think I am?" she went on, including them all in her captivating gaze, to David's great satisfaction, and he went off rubbing his hands.--"Yes," she went on after a pause, "you all came overflowing with childish curiosity. You, my dear pastor, wondered whether it were possible that a girl of seventeen should know even one of the thousand secrets which learned men seek diligently with their noses to the ground instead of with their eyes raised to heaven! Now, if I were to show you how and where plant life and animal life mingle, you would begin to doubt your doubts.--You plotted to cross-question me, confess?"

"Yes, beloved Seraphita," said Wilfrid. "But is not such a desire natural to man?"

"And do you want to worry this child?" she said, laying her hand on Minna's hair with a caressing gesture.

The girl looked up, and seemed to long to be merged in the Being before her.

"The word is given for all," the mysterious Being went on very gravely.

"Woe to him who should keep silence even in the midst of the desert, thinking that none would hear. Everything speaks, everything hears here below. The word moves worlds.--I hope, Pastor Becker, not to speak in vain.

I know what difficulties trouble you most: would it not be a miracle if I could at once apprehend all the past experiences of your conscience? Well, that miracle will be accomplished.--Listen to me: you have never confessed your doubts in their full extent; I alone, immovable in my faith, can set them before you, and frighten you at your own image. You are on the darkest declivity of doubt. You do not believe in G.o.d, and everything on earth is of secondary importance to the man who attacks the first cause of everything.

"Let us set aside the discussions thrashed out without result by false philosophers. Generations of Spiritualists have made no less vain efforts to disprove the existence of matter than generations of Materialists have made to disprove the existence of the Spirit. Why these contests? Does not man, as he is, afford undeniable proofs of both? Is he not an union of matter and spirit? Only a madman can refuse to find an atom of matter in the human frame; when it is decomposed, natural science finds no difference between its elements and those of other animals. The idea which is produced in man by the power of comparing several different objects, on the other hand, does not seem to come within the domain of matter. On this I give no opinion; we have to deal with your doubts, not with my convictions.

"But to you, as to most thoughtful men, the relations which you have the faculty of discerning between things, of which the real existence is made certain to you through your senses, do not, I suppose, seem _material_. The natural Universe, then, of things and beings meets in man with the supernatural Universe of likeness or difference which he can discern between the innumerable forms in nature--relations so various that they seem to be infinite; for if, till the present day, no one has been able to enumerate the created things of this earth only, what man can ever enumerate their relations to each other? Is not the small fraction with which you are familiar, in regard to the grand total, as an unit to the infinite?

"Hence here you find yourself already made aware of the existence of the infinite, and this necessarily leads you to conceive of a purely spiritual sphere. Hence, too, man is in himself sufficient evidence of these two modes of life: Matter and Spirit. In him ends a finite, visible universe; in him begins an infinite and invisible universe--two worlds that do not know each other. Have the pebbles of the fiord any cognizance of their relative shapes, are they conscious of the colors seen in them by the eye of man, do they hear the music of the ripples that dance over them? Let us then leap the gulf we cannot fathom, the unthinkable union of a material with a spiritual universe, the concept of a visible, ponderable, tangible creation, conterminous with an invisible, imponderable, intangible creation; absolutely dissimilar, separated by a void, united by indisputable points of contact, and meeting in a being who belongs to both!

Let us, I say, mingle in one world these two worlds, which, in your philosophy, can never coalesce, and which, in fact, do coalesce.

"However abstract man may call it, the relation which binds two things together must stamp its mark. Where? On what? We have not now to inquire to what degree of rarity matter may be reduced. If that were indeed the question, I do not see why He who has linked the stars together at immeasurable distances by physical laws, to veil His face withal, should not have created substances that could think, nor why you will not allow that He should have given thought a body.

"To you, then, your invisible, moral, or mental universe, and your visible, physical universe, const.i.tute one and the same matter. We will not divide bodies from their properties, nor objects from their relations. Everything that exists, that weighs upon and overwhelms us from above and beneath us, before us or within us; all that our eyes or our minds apprehend, all that is named or nameless, must, to reduce the problem of Creation to the standard of your logic, be a finite ma.s.s of matter; if it were infinite, G.o.d could not be its master. Thus, according to you, dear pastor, by whatever scheme you propose to introduce G.o.d, who is infinite, into this finite ma.s.s of matter, G.o.d could no longer exist with such attributes as are ascribed to Him by man. If we seek Him through facts, He is not; if we seek Him through reason, still He is not; both spiritually and materially G.o.d is impossible. Let us hearken to the word of human reason driven to its utmost consequences.

"If we now conceive of G.o.d face to face with, this stupendous whole, we find only two conditions of relationship possible: Either G.o.d and Matter were contemporaneous, or G.o.d was alone and pre-existent. If all the wisdom that has enlightened the human race from the first day of its existence could be collected in one vast brain, that monstrous brain could invent no third mode of being, short of denying both G.o.d and Matter. Human philosophers may pile up mountains of words and ideas. Religions may acc.u.mulate emblems and beliefs, revelations and mysteries, still we are forced on to this terrible dilemma, and must choose one of the two propositions it offers. However, you have not much choice, for each leads the human mind to scepticism.

"The problem being thus stated, what signifies Spirit or Matter? What does it signify which way the worlds are moving if once the Being who guides them is proved to be absurd? Of what use is it to inquire whether man is advancing towards heaven or coming back from it, whether Creation is tending upwards towards the spirit, or downwards towards matter, if the worlds we question can give no answer? Of what consequence are theogonies and their armies, theologies and their dogmas, when, whichever alternative man chooses in answer to the problem, his G.o.d is no more?

"Let us examine the first: Suppose G.o.d and matter to have been co-existent from the beginning. Can He be G.o.d who suffers the action and co-existence of a substance that is not Himself? On this theory G.o.d is but a secondary agent constrained to organize matter. Who constrained Him? And as between that coa.r.s.er other half and Him, who was to decide? Who paid the Great Workman for the six days' labor attributed to Him? If there were, indeed, some coercing force which was neither G.o.d nor matter, if G.o.d were compelled to make the machinery of the universe, it would be no less absurd to call Him G.o.d than to call a slave set to turn a mill a Roman citizen. And, in fact, the difficulty is just as insoluble in the case of that Supreme Intelligence as in that of G.o.d Himself. It only carries the problem a step further back; and is not this like the Indian philosophers, who place the world on a tortoise, and the tortoise on an elephant, but cannot say on what their elephant's feet rest? Can we conceive that this Supreme Will, evolved from the conflict of G.o.d with matter--this G.o.d greater than G.o.d--should have existed during eternity without Willing what He Willed, granting that eternity can be divided into two periods? Wherever G.o.d may be, if He knew not what His future Will would be, what becomes of His intuitive perceptions? And of these two eternities, which is the superior--uncreated eternity or created eternity?

"If G.o.d from all eternity willed that the world should be what it is, this fresh view of necessity, which is in harmony no doubt with the motion of a Sovereign Intelligence, implies the co-eternity of matter. Whether matter be co-eternal by the Divine Will, which must at all times be at one with itself, or whether it be independently co-eternal, since the power of G.o.d must be absolute, it perishes if He has not His freewill. He would always have found within Himself a supreme reason which would have ruled Him. Is G.o.d G.o.d if He cannot separate Himself from the works of His creation in subsequent as well as in anterior eternity?

"This aspect of the problem is then insoluble so far as cause is concerned.

Let us examine it in its effects.

"If G.o.d the Creator, under compulsion to create the universe from all eternity, is inconceivable, He is no less so as perpetually one with His work. G.o.d, eternally constrained to exist in His creatures, is no less dishonored than in His former position as a workman. Can you conceive of a G.o.d who can no more be independent of His work than dependent on it? Can He destroy it without treason to Himself? Consider and make your choice: Whether He should some day destroy it, or not destroy it; either alternative is equally fatal to attributes, without which He cannot subsist. Is the world a mere experiment, a perishable mould which must be destroyed? Then G.o.d must be inconsistent and impotent. Inconsistent--for ought He not to have known the issue before making the experiment, and why does He delay destroying that which is to be destroyed? Impotent--or how else could He have created an imperfect world?

"And if an imperfect creation belies the faculties that man ascribes to G.o.d, let us, on the other hand, suppose it to be perfect. This idea is in harmony with our conception of a G.o.d of supreme intelligence who could make no mistake; but, then, why any deterioration? Why Regeneration? Then a perfect world is necessarily indestructible, its forms must be imperishable; it can neither advance nor retrocede; it rolls on in an eternal orbit whence it can never deviate. Thus is G.o.d dependent on His work; thus it is co-eternal with Him, which brings us back to one of the propositions which most audaciously attacks G.o.d. If the universe is imperfect, it allows of advance and progress; if perfect, it is stationary.

If it is impossible to conceive of a progressive G.o.d, not knowing from all eternity what the result would be of His creation, can we then admit a stationary G.o.d? Would not that be the apotheosis of matter, the greatest possible negation? Under the first hypothesis, G.o.d deceases by want of power; under the second, He deceases by the force of inertia.

"Hence, alike in the conception and the execution of creation, to every honest mind the notion of matter as contemporaneous with G.o.d is a denial of G.o.d.

"Compelled to choose between these two aspects of the question, in order to govern the nations, many generations of great thinkers have chosen the second. This gave rise to the dogma of two moral elements, as conceived of by the Magians, which has spread in Europe under the image of Satan contending with the Father of all. But are not this dogmatic formula and the endless deifications that are derived from it crimes of high treason to the divine Majesty? By what other name can we call a belief that makes the personification of Evil the rival of G.o.d, for ever struggling in the throes of a supreme intellect without any hope of victory? The laws of statics show that two forces thus placed must neutralize each other.

"Now, turn to the other side of the problem: G.o.d was pre-existent and alone.