No More Learning

I'm tired.
This is not a little sermon on slums. 'It conveys more than two dozen or two hundred magazine stories about the comedy of slum-work. As the memoir of a physician, it is keener than Spiess' notes of an advocate in the Genevan law courts. It is more compact than Vildrac's "Auberge," and has not Vildrac's tendency to
? 246 INSTIGATIONS
sentiment. It is a poem that could be translated into French or any other modern language and hold its own with the contemporary product of whatever country one chose.
A PISTINCTION
A journalist has said to me : "We, i. e. we journalists, are like mediums. People go to a spiritist seance and hear what they want to hear. It is the same with a leading article: we write so that the reader will find what he wants to find. "
That is the root of the matter ; there is good journal- ism and bad journalism, and journalism that "looks" like "literature" and literature etc. . . .
But the root of the difference is that in journalism the reader finds what he is looking for, whereas in liter- ature he must find at least a part of what the author intended.
That is why "the first impression of a work of genius" is "nearly always disagreeable. " The public loathe the violence done to their self-conceit whenever any one conveys to them an idea that is his, not their own.
This difference is lasting and profound. Even in the vaguest of poetry, or the vaguest music, where the re- ceiver may, or must make half the beauty he is to receive, there is alin^ys something of the author or composer which must be transmitted.
In journalism or the "bad art," there is no such strain on the public.
THE CLASSICS "ESCAPE"
It is well that the citizen should be acquainted with thelawsofhiscountry. Inearliertimesthelawsofa
? IN THE VORTEX 247
nation were graven upon tablets and set up in the market place. I myself have seen a sign: "Bohemians are not permitted within the precincts of this commune"; but the laws of a great republic are too complex and arcane topermitofthissimpletreatment. Iconfesstohaving been a bad citizen, to just the extent of having been ignorant that at any moment my works might be classed in law's eye with the inventions of the late Dr. Condom.
It is possible that others with only a mild interest in literature may be equally ignorant ; I quote therefore the law:
Section 211 of the United States Criminal Code pro- vides :
"Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character and every arti- cle or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose ; and every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, adver- tisement, or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of the hereinbeforementioned mat- ters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means conception may be prevented or abortion produced, whether sealed or un- sealed; and every letter, packet, or package, or other
? 248
INSTIGATIONS
/
mail matter containing any filthy, vile or indecent thing, device, or substance; any and every paper, writing, ad- vertisement, or representation that any article, instru- ment, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can, be used or applied for preventing conception or producing abortion or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and every description calculated to induce or incite a person to so use or apply any such article, instrument, sub- stance, drug, medicine, or thing, is hereby declared to be non-mailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post-office or by any letter carrier. Whoever shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be non-mailable, or shall knowingly take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. "
It is well that the citizens of a country should be aware of its laws.
It is not for me to promulgate obiter dicta ; to say that whatever the cloudiness of its phrasing, this law was obviously designed to prevent the circulation of immoral advertisements, propaganda for secret cures, and slips of paper that are part of the bawdy house business; that it was not designed to prevent the mailing of Dante, Villon, and Catullus. Whatever the subjective attitude of the framers of this legislation, we have fortunately a decision from a learned judge to guide us in its working.
"I have little doubt that numerous really great writ- ings would come under the ban if tests that are fre- quently current were applied, and these approved pub- lications doubtless at times escape only because they
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come within the term "classics," which means, for the purpose of the application of the statute, that they are ordinarily immune from interference, because they have the sanction of age and fame and USUALLY APPEAL TO A COMPARATIVELY LIMITED NUMBER OF READERS. "
The capitals are my own.
The gentle reader will picture to himself the state of America IF the classics were widely read; IF these books which in the beginning lifted mankind from sav- agery, and which from A. D. 1400 onward have gradually redeemed us from the darkness of medievalism, should
be read by the millions who now consume Mr. Hearst and the Ladies' Home Journal! ! ! ! ! !
Also there are to be no additions. No living man is to contribute or to attempt to contribute to the classics. Obviously even though he acquire fame before publish- ing, he can not have the sanction of "age. "
Our literature does not fall under an inquisition; it does not bow to an index arranged by a council. It is subject to the taste of one individual.
Our hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants desire their literature sifted for them by one individual selected without any examination of his literary qualificatons.
I can not write of this thing in heat. It is a far too serious matter.
Theclassics"escape. " Theyare"immune""ordinar- ily. " I can but close with the cadences of that blessed little Brother of Christ, San Francesco d'Assisi
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INSTIGATIONS
CANTICO DEL SOLE
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
Nunc dimittis. Now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America, The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like If the classics had a wide circulation . . .
Oh well
It troubles my sleep.
Oraviwus
? PART SECOND
? V
OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
(A divagation from Jules Laforgue)
There arose, as from a great ossified sponge, the comic-opera, Florence-Nightingale light-house, with junks beneath it clicking in vesperal meretricious mono- tony; behind them the great cliff obtruded solitary into the oily, poluphloisbious ocean, lifting its confection of pylons ; the poplar rows, sunk yards, Luna Parks, etc. , of the Tetrarchal Palace polished jasper and basalt, funereal undertakerial, lugubrious, blistering in the high- lights under a pale esoteric sun-beat; encrusted, bespat- tered and damascened with cynocephali, sphinxes, wingedbulls,bulbuls,andothersculpturalby-laws. The screech-owls from the jungle could only look out upon the shadowed parts of the sea, which they did without optic inconvenience, so deep was the obscured contagion
of their afforested blackness.
The two extraneous princes went up toward the stable-
yard, gaped at the effulgence of peacocks, glared at the derisive gestures of the horse-cleaners, adumbrated in- sults, sought vainly for a footman or any one to take up their cards.
The tetrarch appeared on a terrace, removing his cere- monial gloves.
The water, sprinkled in the streets in anticipation of the day's parade, dried in little circles of dust. The
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INSTIGATIONS
tetrarch puffed at his hookah with an exaggeration of dignity; he was disturbed at the presence of princes, he was disturbed by the presence of Jao; he desired to observe his own ruin, the slow deHquescence of his posi- tion, with a fitting detachment and lassitude. Jao had distributed pamphlets, the language was incomprehen- sible; Jaohadbeenstoredinthecellarage,hisfollowing distributed pamphlets.
In the twentieth century of his era the house of Emer- aud Archytypas was about to have its prize bit of fire- works: a war with the other world . . . after so many ages of purely esoteric culture
Jao had declined both the poisoned coffee and the sacred sword of the Samurai, courtesies offered, in this case, to an incomprehensible foreigner. Even now, with a superlation of form, the sacred kriss had been sent to the court executioner, it was no mere eveiy-day imple- ment. The princejs arrived {at this juncture. There sounded from the back alleys the preparatory chirping of choral societies, and the wailing of pink-lemonade sellers. To-morrow the galley would be gone.
Leaning over the syrupy clematis, Emeraud crumbled brioches for the fishes, reminding himself that he had not yet collected the remains of his wits. There was no galvanization known to art, science, industry or the ministrations of sister-souls that would rouse his long since respectable carcass.
Yet at his birth a great tempest had burst above the dynastic manor; credible persons had noticed the light- nings scrolling Alpha and Omega above it; and nothing had happened. He had given up flagellation. He walked daily to the family necropolis : a cool place in the summer. HesummonedtheArrangerofInanities.
254
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? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 255 II
Strapped, pomaded, gloved, laced; with patulous beards, with their hair parted at the backs of their heads with their cork-screw curls pulled back from their fore- heads to give themselves tone on their medallions; with helmets against one hip ; twirling the musk-balls of their sabres with their disengaged restless fingers, the hyper- borean royalties were admitted. And the great people
received them, in due order: chief mandarins in clump, the librarian of the palace (Conde de las Navas), the Arbiter Elegantium, the Curator major of Symbols, the Examiner of the High Schools, the Supernumerary priest of the Snow Cult, the Administrator of Death, and the Chief Attendant Collector of Death-duties.
Their Highnesses bowed and addressed the Tetrarch: ". . . felicitous wind . . . day so excessively glorious . . . wafted . . . these isles . . . notwithstanding not also whereof . . . basilica far exceeding . . . . Ind, Ormus . . . Miltonesco . . . etc. . . . to say nothing of the seven-stopped barbary organ and the Tedium lauda- mus. . . etc. . . . "
(Lunch was brought in. )
Kallipagous artichokes, a light collation of tunny-fish,
asparagus served 011 pink reeds, eels pearl-gray and dove- gray, gamut and series of compotes and various wines (without alcohol).
Under impulsion of the Arranger of Inanities the pomaded princes next began their inspection of the build- ings. A pneumatic lift hove them upward to the outer rooms of Salome's suite. The lift door clicked on its gilt-brass double expansion-clamps; the procession ad- vanced between rows of wall-facing negresses whose naked shoulder-blades shone like a bronze of oily opacity.
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? 256 INSTIGATIONS
They entered the hall of majolica, very yellow with thick blue incrustations, glazed images, with flushed and pro- tuberant faces; in the third atrium they came upon a basin of joined ivory, a white bath-sponge, rather large, a pair of very pink slippers. The next room was littered with books bound in white vellum and pink satin; the next with mathematical instruments, hydrostats, sextants, astrolabial discs, the model of a gasolene motor, a nickel- plated donkey engine. . . . They proceeded up metal stairs to the balcony, from which a rustling and swaying and melodiously enmousselined figure, jonquil-colored and delicate, preceded or rather predescended them by dumb-waiter, a route which they were not ready to fol- low. The machine worked for five floors : usage private and not ceremonial.
The pomaded princes stood to attention, bowed with deference and with gallantry. The Arranger ignored the whole incident, ascended the next flight of stairs and began on the telescope:
"^Grand equatorial, 22 yards inner tube length, revolv- able cupola (frescoes in water-tight paint) weight 200,089 kilos, circulating on fourteen steel castors in a groove of chloride of magnesium, 2 minutes for com- plete revolution. The princess can turn it herself. "
The princes allowed their attention to wander, they noted their ship beneath in the harbor, and calculated the drop, they then compared themselves with the bro- caded and depilated denizens of the escort, after which they felt safer. They were led passively into the Small Hall of Perfumes, presented with protochlorine of mer- cury, bismuth regenerators, cantharides, lustral waters guaranteed free from hydrated lead. Were conducted thence to the hanging garden, where the form her- metically enmousselined, the jonquil-colored gauze with
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE
257
the pea-sized dark spots on it, disappeared from the opposite slope. Molossian hounds yapping and romping about her.
The trees lifted their skinned-salmon trunks, the heavy blacknesswasbrokenwithasteely,metallicsunshine. A sea wind purred through the elongated forest like an express-train in a tunnel. Polychrome statues obtruded themselves from odd corners. An elephant swayed ab- sentmindedly, the zoo was loose all over the place. The keeper of the aquarium moralized for an hour upon the calm life of his fishes. From beneath the dark tanks the hareem sent up a decomposed odor, and a melancholy slave chantey saturated the corridors, a low droning osmosis. They advanced to the cemetery, wanting all the time to see Jao.
This exhibit came at last in its turn. They were let down in a sling-rope through a musty nitrated grill, ob- serving in this descent the ill-starred European in his bath-robe, his nose in a great fatras of papers over- scrawled with illegible pot-hooks.
He rose at their hefty salutation; readjusted his spec- tacles, blinked ; and then it came over him : These damn pustulent princes! Here! and at last! Memory over- whelmed him. How many, on how many rotten De- cember and November evenings had he stopped, had he not stopped in the drizzle, in the front line of workmen, his nose crushed against a policeman, and craning his scraggy neck to see them getting out of their state ba- rouche, going up the interminable front stairway to the
big-windowed rococo palace ; he muttering that the "Times" were at hand.
Andnowtherevolutionwasaccomplished. Theprole- tariat had deputed them. They were here to howk him out of quod ; a magnificent action, a grace of royal
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humility, performed at tlie will of the people, the new era had come into being. He saluted them automatically, searching for some phrase European, historic, fraternal, of course, but still noble.
The Royal Nephew, an oldish military man with a bald-spot, ubiquitarian humorist, joking with every one in season and out (like Napoleon), hating all doctri- naires (like Napoleon), was however the first to break silence: "Huk, heh, old sour bean, bastard of Jean Jacques Rousseau, is this where you've come to be hanged ? Eh ? I'm damned if it ain't a good thing. "
The unfortunate publicist stiffened.
"Idealogue! " said the Nephew.
The general strike had been unsuccessful. Jao bent
with emotion. Tears showed in his watery eyes, slid down his worn cheek, trickled into his scraggy beard. There was then a sudden change in his attitude. He began to murmur caresses in the gentlest of European diminutives.
They started. There was a tinkle of keys, and through a small opposite doorway they discerned the last flash of the mousseline, the pale, jonquil-colored, blackspotted.
The Nephew readjusted his collar. A subdued cortege reascended.
Ill
The ivory orchestra lost itself in gay fatalistic impro- visation ; the opulence of two hundred over-fed tetrarchal Dining-Companions swished in the Evening salon, and overflowedcoruscatedcouches. Theyslitheredthrough their genuflections to the throne. The princes puffed out their elbows, simultaneously attempting to disentangle their Collars-of-the-Fleece in the idea that these would
;
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 259
be a suitable present for their entertainer. Neither suc- ceeded ; suddenly in the midst of the so elaborate setting they perceived the aesthetic nullity of the ornament, its connotations were too complex to go into.
The tetrarchal children (superb productions, in the strictly esoteric sense) were led in over the jonquil-col- oredreed-matting. Awater-jetshotupfromthecentre of the great table, and fell plashing above on the red and white rubber awning. A worn entertainment beset the diminutive music-hall stage: acrobats, flower-dancers, contortionists, comic wrestlers, to save the guests con- versation. A trick skater was brought in on real ice, did the split, engraved a gothic cathedral. The Virgin Ser- pent as she was called, entered singing "Biblis, Biblis"; she was followed by a symbolic Mask of the Graces which gave place to trapeze virtuosi.
An horizontal geyser of petals was shot over the audi- torium. The hookahs were brought in. Jao presumably heard all this over his head.
The diners' talk became general, the princes supporting the army, authority, re- ligion a bulwark of the state, international arbitration, the perfectibility of the race; the mandarins of the pal- ace held for the neutrahzation of contacts, initiated cen- acles, frugality and segregation.
The music alone carried on the esoteric undertone, si- lencespreadwithgreatfeathers,poisedhawk-wise. Sa- lome appeared on the high landing, descended the twisted stair,stillstiffinhersheathofmousseline; asmallebony lyre dangled by a gilt cord from her wrist; she nodded toherparent; pausedbeforetheAlcazarcurtain,balanc- ing, swaying on her anaemic pigeon-toed little feet--until every one had had a good look at her. She looked at no one in particular; her hair dusty with exiguous pollens curled down over her narrow shoulders, ruffled over her
:
? 26o INSTIGATIONS
forehead, with stems of yellow flowers twisted into it. From the dorsal joist of her bodice, from a sort of pearl matrix socket there rose a peacock tail, moire, azure, glittering with shot emerald: an halo for her marble- white face.
Superior, graciously careless, conscious of her unique- ness, of her autochthonous entity, her head cocked to the left, her eyes fermented with the interplay of contradic- tory expiations, her lips a pale circonflex, her teeth with still paler gums showing their super-crucified half-smile. An exquisite recluse, formed in the island aesthetic, there alone comprehended. Hermetically enmousselined, the black spots in the fabric appeared so many punctures in the soft brightness of her sheath. Her arms of angelic nudity, the two breasts like two minute almonds, the scarf twined just above the adorable umbilical groove (nature desires that nude woman should be adorned with a girdle) composed in a cup-shaped embrace of the hips. Behind her the peacock halo, her pale pigeon-toed feet covered only by the watered-yellow fringe and by the bright-yellow anklet. She balanced, a little budding messiah; her head over-weighted; not knowing what to do with her hands ; her petticoat so simple, art long, very long, and life so very inextensive ; so obviously ready for the cosy-corner, for little talks in conservatories . . .
And she was going to speak . . .
The Tetrarch bulged in his cushions, as if she had already said something. His attention compelled that of the princes; he brushed aside the purveyor of pine- apples.
She cleared her throat, laughing, as if not to be taken too seriously; the sexless, timbreless voicelet, like that of a sick child asking for medicine, began to the lyre accompaniment
--
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 261
"Canaan, excellent nothingness; nothingness-latent, circumambient, about to be the day after to-morrow, in- cipient, estimable, absolving, coexistent . . . "
The princes were puzzled. "Concessions by the five senses to an all-inscribing affective insanity; latitudes, altitudes, nebulas, Medusae of gentle water, affinities of the ineradicable, passages over earth so eminently iden- tical with incalculably numerous duplicates, alone in in- definite infinite. Do you take me? I mean that the pragmatic essence attracted self-ward dynamically but more or less in its own volition, whistling in the bag- pipes of the soul without termination. --But to be nat- ural passives, to enter into the cosmos of harmonics. Hydrocephalic theosophies, act it, aromas of populace, phenomena without stable order, contaminated with pru- dence. --Fatal Jordans, abysmal Ganges--to an end with 'em--insubmersible sidereal currents--nurse-maid cos- mogonies. "
She pushed back her hair dusty with pollens, the soft handclapping began; her eyelids drooped slightly, her faintly-suggested breasts lifted slightly, showed more rosy through the almond-shaped eyelets of her corsage. She was still fingering the ebony lyre.
"Bis, bis, brava ! " cried her audience.
Still she waited.
"Go on! You shall have whatever you Hke. Go on,
my dear," said the Tetrarch; "we are all so damned bored. Go on, Salome, you shall have any blamed thing you like: the Great-Seal, the priesthood of the Snow Cult, a job in the University, even to half of my oil stock. But inoculate us with . . . eh . . . with the gracious salve of this cosmoconception, with this parthenospotless- ness. "
The company in his wake exhaled an inedited bore-
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? 262 INSTIGATIONS
dom. They were all afraid of each other. Tiaras nod- ded, but no one confessed to any difficulty in following the thread of her argument. They were, racially, so very correct.
Salome wound oh in summary rejection of theogonies, thebdicies, comparative wisdoms of nations (short shift, tone of recitative). Nothing for nothing, perhaps one measure of nothing. She continued her mystic loquac- ity: "O tides, lunar oboes, avenues, lawns of twilight, winds losing caste in November, haymakings, vocations manquees, expressions of animals, chances. "
Jonquil colored mousselines with black spots, eyes fer- mented, smiles crucified, adorable umbilici, peacock aure- oles, fallen carnations, inconsequent fugues. One felt reborn, reinitiate and rejuvenate, the soul expiring sys- tematically in spirals across indubitable definitive show- ers, for the good of earth, understood everywhere, palp of Varuna, air omniversal, assured if one were but ready.
Salome continued insistently: "The pure state, I tell you, sectaries of the consciousness, why this convention of separations, individuals by mere etiquette, indivisible? Breathe upon the thistle-down of these sciences, r's you call them, in the orient of my pole-star. Is it life to per- sist in putting oneself au courant with oneself, constantly to inspect oneself, and then query at each step: am I wrong? Species! Categories! and kingdoms, bah! Nothing is lost, nothing added, it is all reclaimed in ad- vance. There is no ticket to the confessional for the heir of the prodigies. Not expedients and expiations, but vintages of the infinite, not experimental but in fa- tality. "
The little yellow vocalist with the black funereal spots broke the lyre over her knee, and regained her dignity. Theintoxicatedcrowdmoppedtheirforeheads. Anem-
!
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 263
barrassing silence. The hyperboreans Icxiked at each other: "What time will they put her to bed? " But neither ventured articulation; they did not even inspect their watches. It couldn't have been later than six. The slender voice once more aroused them:
"And now, father, I wish you to send me the head of Jao Kanan, on any saucer you like. I am going upstairs. I expect it. "
"But. . . but. . . mydear. . . this. . . this. . . " However--the hall was vigorously of the opinion that the Tiara should accomplish the will of Salome.
Emeraud glanced at the princes, who gave sign neither of approbation nor of disapprobation. The cage-birds again began shrieking. The matter was none of their business.
Decide
The Tetrarch threw his seal to the Administrator of Death. Theguestswerealreadyup,changingthecon- versation on their way to the evening tepidarium.
IV
With her elbows on the observatory railing, Salome, disliking popular fetes, listened to her familiar polu- phloisbious ocean. Calm evening.
Stars out in full company, eternities of zeniths of em- bers. Why go into exile ?
Salome, milk-sister to the Via Lactea, seldom lost her- self in constellations. Thanks to photo-spectrum analy- sis the stars could be classified as to color and magni- tudes; she had commanded a set of diamonds in the proportionate sizes to adorn nocturnally her hair and her person, over mousseline of deep mourning-violet with gold dots in the surface. Stars below the sixteenth mag-
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? 264 INSTIGATIONS
nitude were not, were not in her world, she envisaged her twenty-four millions of subjects.
Isolated nebulous matrices, not the formed nebulae, were her passion; she ruled out planetiform discs and soughtbuttheunformed,perforated,tentacular. Orion's gaseous fog was the Brother Benjamin of her galaxy. But she was no more the "little" Salome, this night brought a change of relations, exorcised from her vir- ginity of tissue she felt peer to these matrices, fecund as they in gyratory evolutions. Yet this fatal sacrifice to the cult (still happy in getting out of so discreetly) had obliged her in order to get rid of her initiator, to undertake a step (grave perhaps), perhaps homicide; finally to assure silence, cool water to contingent people, --elixir of an hundred nights' distillation. It must serve.
Ah, well, such was her life. She was a specialty, a minute specialite.
There on a cushion among the debris of her black ebony lyre, lay Jao's head, like Orpheus' head in the old days, gleaming, encrusted with phosphorus, washed, anointed, barbered, grinning at the 24 million stars.
As soon as she had got it, Salome, inspired by the true spirit of research, had commenced the renowned ex- periments after decollation; of which we have heard so much. She awaited. The electric passes of her hyp- notic manual brought from it nothing but inconsequential grimaces.
She had an idea, however.
She perhaps lowered her eyes, out of respect to Orion, stiffening herself to gaze upon the nebulae of her puber- ties . . . for ten minutes. What nights, what nights in the future! Who will have the last word about it? Choral societies, fire-crackers down there in the city.
Finally Salome shook herself, like a sensible person,
? OUR TETRARCHAL PRECIEUSE 265
reset, readjusted her fichu, took off the gray gold-spotted symbol-jewel of Orion, placed it between Jao's lips as an host, kissed the lips pityingly and herrrietically, sealed them with corrosive wax (a very speedy procedure).
Then with a "Bah ! " mutinous, disappointed, she seized the genial boko of the late Jao Kanan, in delicate fem- inine hands.
As she wished the head to land plumb in the sea with- out bounding upon the cliffs, she gave a good swing in turning. The fragment described a sufficient and phos- phorescent parabola, a noble parabola. But unfortu- nately the little astronomer had terribly miscalculated her impetus, and tripping over the parapet with a cry finally human she hurtled from crag to crag, to fall, shattered, into the picturesque anfractuosities of the breakers, far from the noise of the national festival, lacerated and naked, her skull shivered, paralyzed with a vertigo, in short, gone to the bad, to suffer for nearly an hour.
She had not even the viaticum of seeing the phospho- rescentstar,thefloatingheadofJaoonthewater. And the heights of heaven were distant.
Thus died Salome of the Isles (of the White Esoteric Isles, in especial) less from uncultured misventure than from trying to fabricate some distinction between herself andeveryoneelse; liketherestofus.
? VI
GENESIS, OR, THE FIRST BOOK IN THE BIBLE *
("Subject to Authority")
The sacred author of this work, Genesis, complied withtheideasacceptabletohisera; itwasalmostneces- sary ; for without- this condescension he would not have beenunderstood. Thereremainforusmerelyafewre- flections on the physics of those remote times. As for the theology of the book : we respect it, we believe it most firmly, we would not risk the faintest touch to its surface.
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth. " That is the way they translate it, yet there is scarcely any one so ignorant as not to know that the original reads "thegodscreatedheavenandearth"; whichreadingcon- forms to the Phoenician idea that God employed lesser divinities to untangle chaos. The Phoenicians had been long established when the Hebrews broke into some few provinces of their land. It was quite natural that these latter should have learned their language and borrowed
their ideas of the cosmos.
Did the ancient Phoenician philosophers in "the time
of Moses" know enough to regard the earth as a point in relation to the multitude of globes which God has placed in immensity? The very ancient and false idea
* Translated from an eighteenth-century author. 266
? GENESIS 267
that heaven was made for the earth has nearly always prevailed among ignorant peoples. It is scarcely pos- sible that such good navigators as the Phoenicians should not have had a few decent astronomers, but the old preju- dices were quite strong, and were gently handled by the author of Genesis, who wrote to teach us God's ways and not to instruct us in physics.
"The earth was all tohu bohu and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, the spirit of God was borne on the waters. "
"Tohu bohu" means precisely chaos, disorder. The earth was not yet formed as it is at present. Matter ex- isted, the divine power had only to straighten things out. The "spirit of God" is literally the "breath" or "wind" whichstirredupthewaters. Thisideaisfoundinfrag- ments of the Phoenician author, Sanchoniathon. The Phoeniciins, like all the other peoples of antiquity, be- lieved matter eternal. There is not one author of all those times who ever said that one could make something ofnothing. EvenintheBiblethereisnopassagewhich claims that matter was made out of nothing, not but what this creation from nothing is true, but its verity was un- known to the carnal Jews.
Men have been always divided on the eternity of the world, but never on the eternity of matter.
"Gigni dfe nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse re- verti," writes Persius, and all antiquity shared his opin- ion. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light, and he saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from darkness, and he called the light day and the darkness night, and this was the evening and the morning of the first day. And God also said that the firmament, etc. , the second day . . . saw that it was good.
Let us begin by seeing whether the bishop of Av-
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ranches Huet, Leclerc, etc. , are right, against those who claim that this is a subHme piece of eloquence.
The Jewish author lumps in the light with the other objects of creation; he uses the same turn of phrase, "saw that it was good. " The sublime should lift itself abovetheaverage. Lightisnobettertreatedthanany- thing else in this passage. It was another respected opinion that light did not come from the sun. Men saw it spread through the air before sunrise and after sunset they thought the sun served merely to reinforce it. The author of Genesis conforms to popular error: he has the sun and moon made four days after the light. It is un- likely that there was a morning and evening before the sun came into being, but the inspired author bows to the vague and stupid prejudice of his nation. It seems prob- able that God was not attempting to educate the Jews in philosophy or cosmogony. He could lift their spirits straight into truth, but he preferred to descend to their level. One can not repeat this answer too often.
The separation of the light from the darkness is not part of another physical theory; it seems that night and day were mixed up like two kinds of grain ; and that they were sifted out of each other. It is sufficiently well es- tablished that darkness is nothing but the deprivation of light, and that there is light only in so far as our eyes receive the sensation, but no one had thought of this at that time.
The idea of the firmament is also of respectable an- tiquity. People imagined the skies very solid, because the same set of things always happened there. The skies circulated over our heads, they must therefore be very strong. The means of calculating how many exhalations of the earth and how many seas would be needed to keep
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the clouds full of water? There was then no Halley to write out the equations. There were tanks of water in heaven. These tanks were held up on a good steady dome ; but one could see through the dome ; it must have been made out of crystal. In order that the water could be poured over the earth there had to be doors, sluices, cataracts which could be opened, turned on. Such was the current astronomy, and one was writing for Jews ; it was quite necessary to take up their silly ideas, which they had borrowed from other peoples only a little less stupid.
"God made two great lights, one to preside over the day, the other the night, and he made also the stars. "
True, this shows the same continuous ignorance of na- ture. The Jews did not know that the moonlight is merely reflection. The author speaks of the stars as luminous points, which they look like, although they are at times suns with planets swinging about them. But holy spirit harmonized with the mind of the time. If he had said that the sun is a million times as large as the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one would have understood him. They appear to be two stars of sizes not very unequal.
"God said also : let us make man in our image, let him rule over the fishes, etc. "
What did the Jews mean by "in our image"? They meant, like all antiquity:
Pinxit in eMgiem moderantum cuncta deorum.
One can not make "images" save of bodies.