No More Learning

Unless an author takes the material on which he writes out of
his own head,- that is to say, from his own observation,— he is
not worth reading. Book manufacturers, compilers, the common
run of history writers, and many others of the same class, take
their material immediately out of books; and the material goes
straight to their finger-tips without even paying freight or under-
going examination as it passes through their heads, to say noth-
ing of elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man
would be if he knew everything that was in his own books! The
consequence of this is, that these writers talk in such a loose
and vague manner that the reader puzzles his brains in vain to
understand what it is of which they are really thinking. They
are thinking of nothing. It may now and then be the case that
the book from which they copy has been composed exactly in the
same way; so that writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a
cast, and in the end the bare outline of the face- and that too
hardly recognizable—is all that is left of your Antinoüs. Let
compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is difficult to
avoid them altogether, since compilations also include those text-
books which contain in a small space the accumulated knowledge
of centuries.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the last
work is always the more correct; that what is written later on is
in every case an improvement on what was written before; and


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12953
that change always means progress. Real thinkers, men of right
judgment, people who are in earnest with their subject, these
are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the
world: it is always on the alert, taking the mature opinions of
the thinkers, and industriously seeking to improve upon them
(save the mark! ) in its own peculiar way.
If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him beware of
rushing to the newest books upon it, and confining his attention.
to them alone, under the notion that science is always advancing,
and that the old books have been drawn upon in the writing of
the new. They have been drawn upon, it is true; but how? The
writer of the new book often does not understand the old books
thoroughly, and yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so
he bungles them, and says in his own bad way that which has
been said very much better and more clearly by the old writers
who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. The
new writer frequently omits the best things they say, their most
striking illustrations, their happiest remarks, because he does not
see their value or feel how pregnant they are. The only thing
that appeals to him is what is shallow and insipid.
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.
THE ALUE OF PERSONALITY
―――
A
RISTOTLE divides the blessings of life into three classes: those
which come to us from without, those of the soul, and those
of the body. Keeping nothing of this division but the num-
ber, I observe that the fundamental differences in human lot may
be reduced to three distinct classes:
(1) What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest
sense of the word; under which are included health, strength,
beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.
(2) What a man has: that is, property and possessions of
every kind.
(3) How a man stands in the estimation of others: by which
is to be understood, as everybody knows, what a man is in the
eyes of his fellow-men,- or more strictly, the light in which they
regard him. This is shown by their opinion of him; and their


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
opinion is in its turn manifested by the honor in which he is
held, and by his rank and reputation.
The differences which come under the first head are those
which nature herself has set between man and man; and from
this fact alone we may at once infer that they influence the hap-
piness or unhappiness of mankind in a much more vital and
radical way than those contained under the two following heads,
which are merely the effect of human arrangements. Compared
with genuine personal advantages, such as a great mind or a
great heart, all the privileges of rank or birth, even of royal birth,
are but as kings on the stage to kings in real life. The same
thing was said long ago by Metrodorus, the earliest disciple
of Epicurus, who wrote as the title of one of his chapters, "The
happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which
we obtain from our surroundings. " And it is an obvious fact,
which cannot be called in question, that the principal element
in a man's well-being- indeed, in the whole tenor of his exist-
ence is what he is made of, his inner constitution. For this
is the immediate source of that inward satisfaction or dissatis-
faction resulting from the sum total of his sensations, desires, and
thoughts; whilst his surroundings, on the other hand, exert only
a mediate or indirect influence upon him. This is why the same
external events or circumstances affect no two people alike:
even with perfectly similar surroundings, every one lives in a
world of his own. For a man has immediate apprehension only
of his own ideas, feelings, and volitions; the outer world can
influence him only in so far as it brings these to life. The world
in which a man lives, shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he
looks at it, and so it proves different to different men: to one it is
barren, dull, and superficial; to another rich, interesting, and full
of meaning. On hearing of the interesting events which have
happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will
wish that similar things had happened in their lives too; com-
pletely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental
aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess
when he describes them: to a man of genius they were interest-
ing adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary indi-
vidual they would have been stale, every-day occurrences. This
is in the highest degree the case with many of Goethe's and
Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts;


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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
12955
where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so
many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that
mighty power of fantasy which was capable of turning a fairly
common experience into something so great and beautiful.
In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament will
make a scene in a tragedy out of what appears to the sanguine
man only in the light of an interesting conflict, and to a phleg-
matic soul as something without any meaning; - all of which
rests upon the fact that every event, in order to be realized and
appreciated, requires the co-operation of two factors,- namely, a
subject and an object; although these are as closely and neces-
sarily connected as oxygen and hydrogen in water. When there-
fore the objective or external factor in an experience is actually
the same, but the subjective or personal appreciation of it varies,
the event is just as much a different one in the eyes of differ-
ent persons as if the objective factors had not been alike; for
to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in the world
presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only poorly appre-
ciated,—like a fine landscape in dull weather, or in the reflection
of a bad camera oscura. In plain language, every man is pent
up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot directly
get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his
own skin; so external aid is not of much use to him. On the
stage, one man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant
or a soldier or a general, and so on,- mere external differences:
the inner reality, the kernel of all these appearances, is the same,
a poor player, with all the anxieties of his lot. In life it is
just the same. Differences of rank and wealth give every man
his part to play, but this by no means implies a difference of
inward happiness and pleasure; here too there is the same being
in all, a poor mortal, with his hardships and troubles. Though
these may, indeed, in every case proceed from dissimilar causes,
they are in their essential nature much the same in all their
forms; with degrees of intensity which vary, no doubt, but in no
wise correspond to the part a man has to play,-to the pres-
ence or absence of position and wealth. Since everything which
exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness, and
happens for it alone, the most essential thing for a man is the
constitution of this consciousness, which is in most cases far more
important than the circumstances which go to form its contents.
All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull
-


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12956
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
consciousness of a fool, is poor indeed compared with the imagi-
nation of Cervantes writing his 'Don Quixote' in a miserable
prison. The objective half of life and reality is in the hand of
fate, and accordingly takes various forms in different cases; the
subjective half is ourself, and in essentials it always remains the
same.
Hence the life of every man is stamped with the same char-
acter throughout, however much his external circumstances may
alter: it is like a series of variations on a single theme. No one
can get beyond his own individuality. An animal, under what-
ever circumstances it is placed, remains within the narrow limits
to which nature has irrevocably consigned it; so that our endeav
ors to make a pet happy must always keep within the compass of
its nature, and be restricted to what it can feel. So it is with
man: the measure of the happiness he can attain is determined
beforehand by his individuality. More especially is this the case
with the mental powers, which fix once for all his capacity for
the higher kinds of pleasure. If these powers are small, no efforts
from without, nothing that his fellow-men or that fortune can do
for him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of
human happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be: his only
resources are his sensual appetite,- a cozy and cheerful family
life at the most, low company and vulgar pastime; even education,
on the whole, can avail little if anything for the enlargement of
his horizon. For the highest, most varied, and lasting pleasures
are those of the mind, however much our youth may deceive us
on this point; and the pleasures of the mind turn chiefly on the
powers of the mind. It is clear, then, that our happiness depends
in a great degree upon what we are, upon our individuality;
whilst lot or destiny is generally taken to mean only what we
have, or our reputation. Our lot, in this sense, may improve; but
we do not ask much of it if we are inwardly rich: on the other
hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull blockhead, to his last hour,
even though he were surrounded by houris in Paradise. This is
why Goethe, in the West-östlicher Divan,' says that every man,
whether he occupy a low position in life or emerge as its victor,
testifies to personality as the greatest factor in happiness.
Translation of T. Bailey Saunders.


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12957
OLIVE SCHREINER
(1863-)
N THE Summer of 1883 a little unheralded book, by an un-
known author, appeared in the rank and file of contempo-
rary fiction. Its title, The Story of an African Farm,'
arrested attention, for the ostrich farm of South Africa was then
virgin soil; not only virgin in its solemn monotony of unbroken
plain and fierce sunlight, but virgin in its traditions and its customs.
The most cursory glance at the first chapter was enough to show
the author of The Story of an African Farm' to be a virile and
dramatic genius, independent of her choice
of setting. Two facts, somewhat disguised
(for the book was written under the pen-
name of "Ralph Iron," and incident and
character were treated with masculine bold-
ness), betrayed to the omniscient critic that
the writer was a woman and young. Miss
Schreiner has a remarkable intuition regard-
ing the thoughts and feelings of men; but
she reveals her sex by her profound pre-
occupation with the problem of its relation
to the world. Moreover, only a girlish Am-
azon of the pen could have written a story
so harsh and hopeless. Only to eyes of
youthful intolerance could compromise and
extenuation (qualities rich in the temperance which Hamlet loved)
have been so immeasurably remote.
The girl author, it is plain, was enamored with the bottom of
things; she had made straight for the central mysteries of life and
faith, and looked, unblinking, at naked truths that wrest the soul.
So far and no farther, however, do age and sex affect the story.
There is none of the negligent superiority to the received dictums of
style, in which her literary kinswoman, Emily Bronté, expressed the
conventionally impossible. In strong, brief words and telling phrase
the tale is told. A few bold, masterly strokes-as though from very
familiarity she had wearied of local color, or disdained to use it-
indicate the hueless, treeless, monotonous landscape of the ostrich
farm, the grotesque, terrible caricature of deity that broods over it,

OLIVE SCHREINER


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OLIVE SCHREINER
and the strange, vulgar, elementary people who live there. These she
draws with bitter and cynical humor, sparing nothing of coarseness
or repulsiveness in the broad, high-light portraits. The rose has scent
and thorn, but she takes the thorn; and line by line sets down the
mean, ugly life, its commonplaceness, its gross content. Walsingham
wrote, "Her Majesty counts much on fortune, I wish she would trust
more to the Almighty;" and as we read this young girl's story, we
feel her to be another Elizabeth. The horoscope of her characters
once cast, they have no more power to divert it than to reverse the
laws of gravitation.
To three unhappy beings- unhappy because they are of finer
mold, physically and mentally, than the rest-she commits the task
of showing the relentlessness of fate. The boy Waldo worships the
fetish he has been taught to call God, and pours out his whole inno-
cent, ignorant soul into its deaf ear; the little English girl, Em,
begs for love; the beautiful, proud child Lyndall asks only for
freedom to experience-to know. They beat their wings against
the bars and fall back, the one despairing, the other rebellious,
the third exhausted; but all fall back on the dull animal existence,
wounded unto death.
-
Only at the last does a certain drowsy calm rest on their tired
eyelids. In the author's hopeless creed there is a single sweet nar-
cotic for the soul's unrest. "Come," she says, "to Nature, the great
healer, the celestial surgeon, who, before quenching forever conscious
identity, will, if thou wilt, fold thee in her kind arms. "
The dramatic power of 'The Story of an African Farm' takes
hold of the reader from the first chapter-when the African moon
pours its light from the blue sky to the wide lonely plain, and the
boy Waldo cries out in agony, "O God, save thy people, save a few
of thy people"-to the sculpturesque scene where the dying Lyn-
dall fights her last fight, inch by inch, along the weary road. In her
gospel, ardor and hope are put to shame, and all men are equal only
in the pity of their limitations and the terror of their doom. The
austere young dramatist fights a dark and sinister world with incal-
culable and unclassified energy.
A period of characteristic silence followed the immense popular
success of The Story of an African Farm. ' In 1890 the curiously
effective but unequal 'Dreams' appeared; and in 1893 'Dream Life
and Real Life,' a little African story, whose theme was the self-
sacrifice, the martyrdom, the aspirations of woman. Trooper Peter
Halket' was published in 1897. More than an exercise in polemics,
it is a scornful presentment of the policy and methods of the Char-
tered Company in South Africa. The experiment of writing a mod-
ern gospel is ambitious work, even for so bold and original a writer


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OLIVE SCHREINER
12959
as Olive Schreiner: but it must be conceded that she has blended
the baldest realism and the ideal and the supernatural with such
powerful dramatic handling, that the struggle between the forces
of good and evil, between Christian obligation and the way of the
world, becomes an absorbing, exciting conflict; while the tragedy
of the end, the old hopelessness that bounded and pervaded The
Story of an African Farm,' is its most pathetic episode. The author
of these remarkable books is as artistic in construction as she is
strong in dramatic power.
Olive Schreiner was born in 1863 in Cape Town, Africa. She
was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, and at twenty years of
age published her first book. In 1890 she married Mr. Cronwright,
an Anglo-African resident of her native colony.
SHADOWS FROM CHILD LIFE
From the Story of an African Farm›
THE WATCH
THE
HE full African moon poured down its light from the blue
sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth,
with its coating of stunted "karroo" bushes a few inches
high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with
their long finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and
an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.
In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain
broken. Near the centre a small solitary "kopje " rose. Alone
it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another,
as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of
grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones;
and on the very summit a clump of prickly pears lifted thei
thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on
their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the "kopje" lay the
homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffir huts;
beyond them the dwelling-house,-a square red brick building
with thatched roof. Even on its bare red walls, and the wooden
ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a kind of
dreamy beauty; and quite etherealized the low brick wall that
ran before the house, and which inclosed a bare patch of sand
and two straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great


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12960
OLIVE SCHREINER
open wagon-house, on the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted
from its side, the moonlight glinted with a quite peculiar bright-
ness, till it seemed that every rib in the metal was of burnished
silver.
Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet
than the solitary plain.
In the farm-house, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant' San-
nie, the Boer-woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.
She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes; and
the night was warm, and the room close: and she dreamed bad
dreams,—not of the ghosts and devils that so haunted her waking
thoughts; not of her second husband, the consumptive English-
man, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich camps, nor of
her first, the young Boer, but only of the sheep's trotters she had
eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in
her throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side and
snorted horribly.
In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the
shutter, the white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as
day. There were two small beds against the wall. In one lay a
yellow-haired child, with a low forehead and a freckled face; but
the loving moonlight hid defects here as elsewhere, and showed
only the innocent face of a child in its first sweet sleep.
The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the
moonlight, for it was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had
dropped her cover on the floor, and the moonlight looked in at
the naked little limbs. Presently she opened her eyes, and looked
at the moonlight that was bathing her.
"Em! " she called to the sleeper in the other bed, but re-
ceived no answer. Then she drew the cover from the floor,
turned her pillow, and pulling the sheet over her head, went to
sleep again.
Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon-
house, there was some one who was not asleep. The room was
dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered
anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged,
lay sleeping soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms
folded, and his bushy gray-and-black beard rising and falling on
his breast. But one in the room was not asleep. Two large
eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small hands were
smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box


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OLIVE SCHREINER
12961
under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He
drew the quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but
a great head of silky black curls, and the two black eyes. He
stared about in the darkness. Nothing was visible; not even the
outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table on which
lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went
to bed. No one could tell where the tool-box was, and where
the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child
in the complete darkness.
At the head of his father's bed hung a great silver hunting-
watch. It ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began
mechanically to count. Tick-tick-tick! one, two, three, four!
He lost count presently, and only listened. Tick-tick - tick-
tick!
It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it
ticked, a man died! He raised himself a little on his elbow
and listened. He wished it would leave off.
How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down ? A
thousand times, a million times, perhaps.
He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.
“Dying, dying, dying! " said the watch; "dying, dying, dy-
ing! "
Where were they going to, all those
He heard it distinctly.
people?
He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head;
but presently the silky curls reappeared.
"Dying, dying, dying! " said the watch; "dying, dying, dy-
ing! "
He thought of the words his father had read that evening:
"For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. "
"Many, many, many! " said the watch.
"Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, that
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. "
"Few, few, few! " said the watch.
The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him
a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in
one direction; then they came to the dark edge of the world,
and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there
was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that
XXII-811


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OLIVE SCHREINER
stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past
how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless
millions of China and India, they were going over now. Since
he had come to bed, how many had gone!
And the watch said, "Eternity, eternity, eternity! "
"Stop them! stop them! " cried the child.
And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God's
will, that never changes or alters, you may do what you please.
Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy's forehead. He
climbed out of bed, and lay with his face turned to the mud
floor.
"O God, God! save them! " he cried in agony. "Only some;
only a few! Only, for each moment I am praying here, one! "
He folded his little hands upon his head. "God! God! save
them! "
He groveled on the floor.
over!
Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone
Oh, the long, long future, in which they would pass
away! O God! the long, long, long eternity, which has no end!
The child wept, and crept closer to the ground.
THE SACRIFICE
THE farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight.
The plain was a weary flat of loose red sand, sparsely covered
by dry karroo bushes, that cracked beneath the tread like tinder,
and showed the red earth everywhere. Here and there a milk-
bush lifted its pale-colored rods, and in every direction the ants
and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red walls of the
farm-house, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of
the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and
blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The
two sunflowers that stood before the door, outstared by the sun,
drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like
insects cried aloud among the stones of, the "kopje. "
The Boer-woman seen by daylight was even less lovely than
when, in bed, she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in
the great front room, with her feet on a wooden stove, and
wiped her flat face with the corner of her apron, and drank
coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather was


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OLIVE SCHREINER
12963
damned. L lovely, too, by daylight was the dead English-
man's child, her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low
wrinkled forehead the sunlight had no mercy.
"Lyndall," the child said to her little orphan cousin, who
sat with her on the floor threading beads, "how is it your beads
never fall off your needle ?
»
"I try," said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger,
"That is why. "
The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing
a shabby suit, and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands
and nodding his head prodigiously when pleased at anything. He
stood out at the kraals, in the blazing sun, explaining to two
Kaffir boys the approaching end of the world. The boys, as
they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and worked as
slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it.
Away beyond the "kopje," Waldo, his son, herded the ewes
and lambs, a small and dusty herd,-powdered all over from
head to foot with red sand, wearing a ragged coat, and shoes
of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes looked out.
His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes, concealing
completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small figure.
His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to
move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush as though
they hoped to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps.
He himself crept under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of
the "kopje," stretched himself on his stomach, and waved his
dilapidated little shoes in the air.
Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he pro-
duced a fragment of slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceed-
ing to put down a sum with solemn and earnest demeanor, he
began to add it up aloud: "Six and two is eight, and four is
twelve, and two is fourteen, and four is eighteen. " Here he
paused. "And four is eighteen-and-four — is eighteen. "
—
The last was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped
from his fingers, and the slate followed it into the sand. For
a while he lay motionless; then began muttering to himself,
folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might
have been asleep but for a muttering sound that from time to
time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at
him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did,
he looked at the far-off hills with his heavy eyes.


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OLIVE SCHREINER
"Ye shall receive, ye shall receive,-shall, shall, shall," he
muttered.
He sat up then. Slowly the dullness and heaviness melted
from his face; it became radiant. Midday had come now, and
the sun's rays were poured down vertically; the earth throbbed
before the eye.
The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the
bushes which covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve
small stones of somewhat the same size; kneeling down, he
arranged them carefully on the cleared space in a square pile,
in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag where his
dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice
of brown bread. The boy took them out, and turned the bread
over in his hand, deeply considering it. Finally he threw it
away, and walked to the altar with the meat, and laid it down
on the stones. Close by, in the red sand, he knelt down. Sure,
never since the beginning of the world was there so ragged
and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it
solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his
hands. He prayed aloud:
"O God, my Father, I have made thee a sacrifice. I have
only twopence, so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine
I would give thee one: but now I have only this meat; it is my
dinner-meat. Please, my Father, send fire down from heaven to
burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto this mount-
ain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be done.
I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. "
He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded
his hands upon his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat
upon his head and upon his altar. When he looked up he
knew what he should see, the glory of God! For fear, his very
heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half suffocated.
He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above
him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there
were the clumps of silent ewes and his altar-that was all.
He looked up: nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue
overhead. He looked round in astonishment; then he bowed again,
and this time longer than before.
When he raised himself the second time, all was unaltered.
Only the sun had melted the fat of the little mutton-chop, and it
ran down upon the stones.
-
-


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12965
Then the third time he bowed himself. When at last he
looked up, some ants had come to the meat on the altar. He
stood up, and drove them away. Then he put his hat on his
hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his hands about his
knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass.
The glory
of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.
"My dear God is trying me," he said; and he sat there through
the fierce heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited
when the sun began to slope; and when it neared the horizon
and the sheep began to cast long shadows across the karroo,
he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays touched the
hills, till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he
called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the
meat far, far away into the field.
He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He
reasoned so: "God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came.
I am
like Cain, I am not his. He will not hear my prayer. God
hates me. "
-
The boy's heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate
the two girls met him.
"Come," said the yellow-haired Em, "let us play coop. '
There is still time before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go
and hide on the 'kopje'; Lyndall and I will shut eyes here, and
we will not look. "
The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep kraal,
and the boy clambered half-way up the "kopje. " He crouched
down between two stones, and gave the call. Just then the milk-
herd came walking out of the cow kraal with two pails. He was
an ill-looking Kaffir.
"Ah! " thought the boy, "perhaps he will die to-night, and go
to hell! I must pray for him, I must pray! "
Then he thought, "Where am I going to? " and he prayed
desperately.
"What
"Ah! this is not right at all," little Em said, peeping between
the stones, and finding him in a very curious posture.
are you doing, Waldo? It is not the play, you know. You
should run out when we come to the white stone. Ah, you do
not play nicely. "
"I-I will play nicely now," said the boy, coming out and
standing sheepishly before them; "I-I only forgot; I will play
now. "


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12966
OLIVE SCHREINER
"He has been to sleep," said freckled Em.
"No," said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him:
"he has been crying. "
She never made a mistake.
THE CONFESSION
ONE night, two years after, the boy sat alone on the "kopje. ”
He had crept softly from his father's room, and come there.
He often did, because when he prayed or cried aloud his father
might awake and hear him; and none knew his great sorrow,
and none knew his grief but he himself, and he buried them
deep in his heart.
He turned up the brim of his great hat, and looked at the
moon, but most at the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just
before him. They glinted, and glinted, and glinted, just like his
own heart, cold, so hard, and very wicked. His physical heart
had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of glass that hurt. He
had sat there for half an hour, and he dared not go back to the
close house.
He felt horribly lonely.
There was not one thing so wicked
as he in all the world, and he knew it. He folded his arms and
began to cry-not aloud: he sobbed without making any sound,
and his tears left scorched marks where they fell. He could
not pray: he had prayed night and day for so many months;
and to-night he could not pray. When he left off crying, he
held his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have
gone up to him and touched him kindly-poor ugly little thing!
Perhaps his heart was almost broken.
With his swollen eyes he sat there on a flat stone at the very
top of the "kopje "; and the tree, with every one of its wicked
leaves, blinked, and blinked, and blinked at him. Presently he
began to cry again, and then stopped his crying to look at it.
He was quiet for a long while, then he knelt slowly and bent
forward. There was a secret he had carried in his heart for a
year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not whispered it
to himself; but for a year he had carried it. "I hate God! " he
said. The wind took the words and ran away with them, among
the stones, and through the leaves of the prickly pear. He
thought it died away half down the "kopje. " He had told it
now.
-


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OLIVE SCHREINER
12967
"I love Jesus Christ, but I hate God. "
The wind carried away that sound as it had done the first.
Then he got up, and buttoned his old coat about him. He knew
he was certainly lost now; he did not care. If half the world
were to be lost, why not he too? He would not pray for mercy
any more. Better so better to know certainly. It was ended
now. Better so.
He began scrambling down the sides of the "kopje" to go
home.
-----
-
Better so, but oh, the loneliness, the agonized pain, for that
night, and for nights on nights to come! The anguish that
sleeps all day on the heart like a heavy worm, and wakes up
at night to feed!
There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, "Now
deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us
never again suffer as we suffered when we were children. "
The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its
intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.
THREE DREAMS IN A DESERT
From 'Dreams'
As
s I traveled across an African plain the sun shone down hotly.
Then I drew my horse up under a mimosa-tree, and I took
the saddle from him and left him to feed among the
parched bushes. And all to right and to left stretched the brown.
earth. And I sat down under the tree, because the heat beat
fiercely, and all along the horizon the air throbbed. And after
a while a heavy drowsiness came over me, and I laid my head
down against my saddle, and I fell asleep there.
And in my
sleep I had a curious dream.
I thought I stood on the border of a great desert, and the
sand blew about everywhere. And I thought I saw two great
figures like beasts of burden of the desert; and one lay upon the
sand with its neck stretched out, and one stood by it. And I
looked curiously at the one that lay upon the ground; for it had
a great burden on its back, and the sand was thick about it, so
that it seemed to have piled over it for centuries.


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OLIVE SCHREINER
And I looked very curiously at it. And there stood one be-
side me watching. And I said to him, "What is this huge creat-
ure who lies here on the sand? "»
And he said, "This is woman; she that bears men in her
body. "
And I said, "Why does she lie here motionless with the sand
piled round her? "
And he answered, "Listen, I will tell you! Ages and ages
long she has lain here, and the wind has blown over her. The
oldest, oldest, oldest man living has never seen her move; the
oldest, oldest book records that she lay here then, as she lies
here now, with the sand about her. But listen! Older than
the oldest book, older than the oldest recorded memory of man,
on the Rocks of Language, on the hard-baked clay of Ancient
Customs, now crumbling to decay, are found the marks of her
footsteps! Side by side with his who stands beside her you
may trace them; and you know that she who now lies there,
once wandered free over the rocks with him. "
And I said, "Why does she lie there now? "
And he said, "I take it, ages ago the Age-of-dominion-of-
muscular-force found her; and when she stooped low to give
suck to her young, and her back was broad, he put his burden of
subjection on to it, and tied it on with the broad band of Inevi-
table Necessity. Then she looked at the earth and the sky, and
knew there was no hope for her; and she lay down on the sand
with the burden she could not loosen. Ever since she has lain
here. And the ages have come, and the ages have gone, but the
band of Inevitable Necessity has not been cut. "
And I looked and saw in her eyes the terrible patience of the
centuries; the ground was wet with her tears, and her nostrils
blew up the sand.
And I said, "Has she ever tried to move? »
And he said, "Sometimes a limb has quivered. But she is
wise: she knows she cannot rise with the burden on her. "
And I said, «< Why does not he who stands by her leave her
and go on? "
And he said, "He cannot. Look->
And I saw a broad band passing along the ground from one
to the other, and it bound them together.
He said, "While she lies there, he must stand and look across
the desert. "


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OLIVE SCHREINER
12969
And I said, “Does he know why he cannot move? "
And he said, "No. "
And I heard a sound of something cracking, and I looked,
and I saw the band that bound the burden on to her back broken
asunder; and the burden rolled on the ground.
And I said, "What is this? »
And he said, "The Age-of-muscular-force is dead. The Age-
of-nervous-force has killed him with the knife he holds in his
hand; and silently and invisibly he has crept up to the woman,
and with that knife of Mechanical Invention he has cut the band
that bound the burden to her back. The Inevitable Necessity is
broken. She might rise now. "
And I saw that she still lay motionless on the sand, with her
eyes open and her neck stretched out. And she seemed to look
for something on the far-off border of the desert that never came.
And I wondered if she were awake or asleep. And as I looked
her body quivered, and a light came into her eyes like when a
sunbeam breaks into a dark room.
I said, "What is it? "
He whispered, "Hush! the thought has come to her, 'Might I
not rise? ' »
And I looked. And she raised her head from the sand, and
I saw the dent where her neck had lain so long. And she looked
at the earth, and she looked at the sky, and she looked at him
who stood by her; but he looked out across the desert.
And I saw her body quiver; and she pressed her front knees
to the earth, and veins stood out: and I cried, "She is going to
rise! "
her.
But only her sides heaved, and she lay still where she was.
But her head she held up; she did not lay it down again.
And he beside me said, "She is very weak. See, her legs have
been crushed under her so long. "
And I saw the creature struggle; and the drops stood out on
And I said, “Surely he who stands beside her will help her? "
And he beside me answered, "He cannot help her: she must
help herself. Let her struggle till she is strong. "
And I cried, "At least he will not hinder her! See, he moves
farther from her, and tightens the cord between them, and he
drags her down. "


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