IT is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words! We believe we have dived down to the most unfathomable depths, and when we reappear on the surface, the drop of water that glistens on our trembling finger-tips no longer resembles the sea from which it came. We believe we have discovered a grotto that is stored with bewildering treasure; we come back to the light of day, and the gems we have brought are false—mere pieces of glass—and yet does the treasure shine on, unceasingly, in the darkness! There is something between ourselves and our soul that nothing can penetrate; and there are moments, says Emerson, ‘in which we court suffering, in the hope that here at least we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth.’

I have said elsewhere that the souls of mankind seemed to be drawing nearer to each other, and even if this be not a statement that can be proved, it is none the less based upon deep-rooted, though obscure, convictions. It is indeed difficult to advance facts in its support, for facts are nothing but the laggards, the spies and camp followers of the great forces we cannot see. But surely there are moments when we seem to feel, more deeply than did our fathers before us, that we are not in the presence of ourselves alone. Neither those who believe in a God, nor those who disbelieve, are found to act in themselves as though they were sure of being alone. We are watched, we are under strictest supervision, and it comes from elsewhere than the indulgent darknesses of each man’s conscience! Perhaps the spiritual vases are less closely sealed now than in bygone days, perhaps more power has come to the waves of the sea within us? I know not: all that we can state with certainty is that we no longer attach the same importance to a certain number of traditional faults, but this is in itself a token of a spiritual victory.

It would seem as though our code of morality were changing—advancing with timid steps towards loftier regions that cannot yet be seen. And the moment has perhaps come when certain new questions should be asked. What would happen, let us say, if our soul were suddenly to take visible shape, and were compelled to advance into the midst of her assembled sisters, stripped of all her veils, but laden with her most secret thoughts, and dragging behind her the most mysterious, inexplicable acts of her life? Of what would she be ashamed? Which are the things she fain would hide? Would she, like a bashful maiden, cloak beneath her long hair the numberless sins of the flesh? She knows not of them, and those sins have never come near her. They were committed a thousand miles from her throne; and the soul even of the prostitute would pass unsuspectingly through the crowd, with the transparent smile of the child in her eyes. She has not interfered, she was living her life where the light fell on her, and it is this life only that she can recall.

Are there any sins or crimes of which she could be guilty? Has she betrayed, deceived, lied? Has she inflicted suffering or been the cause of tears? Where was she while this man delivered over his brother to the enemy? Perhaps, far away from him, she was sobbing; and from that moment she will have become more beautiful and more profound. She will feel no shame for that which she has not done; she can remain pure in the midst of terrible murder. Often, she will transform into inner radiance all the evil wrought before her. These things are governed by an invisible principle; and hence, doubtless, has arisen the inexplicable indulgence of the gods.

And our indulgence, too. Strive as we may, we are bound to pardon; and when death, ‘the great Conciliator,’ has passed by, is there one of us who does not fall on his knees and silently, with every token of forgiveness, bend over the departing soul? When I stand before the rigid body of my bitterest enemy: when I look upon the pale lips that slandered me, the sightless eyes that so often brought the tears to mine, the cold hands that may have wrought me so much wrong—do you imagine that I can still think of revenge? Death has come and atoned for all. I have no grievance against the soul of the man before me. Instinctively do I recognise that it soars high above the gravest faults and the cruellest wrongs (and how admirable and full of significance is this instinct!). If there linger still a regret within me, it is not that I am unable to inflict suffering in my turn, but it is perhaps that my love was not great enough and that my forgiveness has come too late....

One might almost believe that these things were already understood by us, deep down in our soul. We do not judge our fellows by their acts—nay, not even by their most secret thoughts; for these are not always undiscernible, and we go far beyond the undiscernible. A man shall have committed crimes reputed to be the vilest of all, and yet it may be that even the blackest of these shall not have tarnished, for one single moment, the breath of fragrance and ethereal purity that surrounds his presence; while at the approach of a philosopher or martyr our soul may be steeped in unendurable gloom. It may happen that a saint or hero shall choose his friend from among men whose faces bear the stamp of every degraded thought; and that, by the side of others, whose brows are radiant with lofty and magnanimous dreams, he shall not feel a ‘human and brotherly atmosphere’ about him. What tidings do these things bring us? And wherein lies their significance? Are there laws deeper than those by which deeds and thoughts are governed? What are the things we have learned and why do we always act in accordance with rules that none ever mention, but which are the only rules that cannot err? For it may be boldly declared that, appearances notwithstanding, neither hero nor saint has chosen wrongly. They have but obeyed, and even though the saint be deceived and sold by the man he has preferred, still will there abide with him something imperishable, something by which he shall know that he was right and that he has nothing to regret. The soul will ever remember that the other soul was pure....

When we venture to move the mysterious stone that covers these mysteries, the heavily charged air surges up from the gulf, and words and thoughts fall around us like poisoned flies. Even our inner life seems trivial by the side of these unchanging deepnesses. When the angels stand before you, will you glory in never having sinned; and is there not an inferior innocence? When Jesus read the wretched thoughts of the Pharisees who surrounded the paralytic of Capernaum, are you sure that as He looked at them, He judged their soul—and condemned it—without beholding, far away behind their thoughts, a brightness that was perhaps everlasting? And would He be a God if His condemnation were irrevocable? But why does He speak as though He lingered on the threshold? Will the basest thought or the noblest inspiration leave a mark on the diamond’s surface? What god, that is indeed on the heights, but must smile at our gravest faults, as we smile at the puppies on the hearthrug? And what god would he be who would not smile? If you become truly pure, do you think you will try to conceal the petty motives of your great actions from the eyes of the angels before you? And yet are there not in us many things that will look pitiful indeed before the gods assembled on the mountain? Surely that must be, and our soul knows full well that it will have to render its account. It lives in silence, and the hand of a great judge is ever upon it, though his sentences are beyond our ken. What accounts will it have to render? Where shall we find the code of morality that can enlighten us? Is there a mysterious morality that holds sway in regions far beyond our thoughts? Are our most secret desires only the helpless satellites of a central star, that is hidden from our eyes? Does a transparent tree exist within us, and are all our actions and all our virtues only its ephemeral flowers and leaves? Indeed we know not what are the wrongs that our soul can commit, nor what there can be that should make us blush before a higher intelligence or before another soul; and yet which of us feels that he is pure and does not dread the coming of the judge? And where is there a soul that is not afraid of another soul?

*

Here, we are no longer in the well-known valleys of human and psychic life. We find ourselves at the door of the third enclosure: that of the divine life of the mystics. We have to grope timidly, and make sure of every footstep, as we cross the threshold. And even when the threshold is crossed, where shall certainty be found? Where shall we discover those marvellous laws that we are perhaps constantly disobeying: laws of whose existence our conscience is ignorant, though our soul has been warned? Whence comes the shadow of a mysterious transgression that at times creeps over our life and makes it so hard to bear? What are the great spiritual sins of which we can be guilty? Will it be our shame to have striven against our soul, or is there an invisible struggle between our soul and God? And is this struggle so strangely silent that not even a whisper floats on the air? Is there a moment when we can hear the queen whose lips are sealed? She is sternly silent when events do but float on the surface; but there are others perhaps that we scarcely heed, which have their roots deep down in eternity. Some one is dying, some one looks at you, or cries, some other is coming towards you for the first time, or an enemy is passing by—may she not perhaps whisper then? And if you listened to her, while already you no longer love, in the future, the friend at whom you now are smiling? But all this is nothing, and is not even near to the outer lights of the abyss. One cannot speak of these things—the solitude is too great. ‘In truth,’ says Novalis, ‘it is only here and there that the soul bestirs itself; when will it move as a whole, and when will humanity begin to feel with one conscience?’ It is only when this takes place that some will learn. We must wait in patience till this superior conscience be gradually, slowly, formed. Then perhaps some one will come to whom it will be given to express what it is that we all feel as regards this side of the soul, which is like to the face of the moon, that none have perceived since the world began.