The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
age, and take a decided and an active part in the great philanthropic
reforms now so widely agitated, and live henceforth for mankind, and not
for myself alone.”
“Is this true?”
“Most assuredly; as true as that I am here present.”
Slowly conviction seemed to fasten on her mind as she saw my serious and
earnest manner, and indeed my agitation, as I rose from my chair and
stood before her. A brilliant joy suddenly sparkled from her large,
liquid, deep blue eye, and radiated over her whole face. Springing from
her seat, and seizing me by both my hands, “This is too much,” she
exclaimed. “This I had wished, had prayed for, but had not dared hope.”
Her eyes filled with sweet tears, and, as if overcome with her emotions,
she sunk into my arms, and rested her head upon my shoulder. I pressed
her to my breast. But she instantly recovered herself, and we both
resumed our seats. After a few moments’ silence, Priscilla, with an
animated and contented look, exclaimed:—
“Now, my dear, dearest friend, I have hope. The good work will now go
bravely on. Pure, noble, and strong-minded women to coöperate with me, I
have found, but a man, a full-grown man, with a clear head, and a
well-balanced mind, heretofore found I not. The men who have been ready
to embark with me, are dwarfs, pigmies, simpletons, needy adventurers,
cheats, knaves, or crack-brained enthusiasts, with but one idea in their
heads, and that only half an idea. Drill them as I may, I can make
nothing of them.”
“But,” said I, maliciously, “is not your dear James a philanthropist and
reformer?”
“My dear James is my husband,” she said, with dignity and spirit. “But
you are slow to comprehend these things. The great and glorious work of
regenerating man and society, cannot be carried on either by man alone
or by woman alone. The two must be united and coöperate, or there can be
no spiritual, as there can be no natural, offspring. But in
regeneration, in the palingenesia, it is not at all necessary that they
be husband and wife after the flesh. Married and made one in spirit they
must be, but not married and made one flesh. Man and woman are each
other’s half, and they must be brought together to make a complete,
active, and productive whole. But the relation of husband and wife is a
purely domestic relation, and looks solely to a domestic end. If each
finds the complementary half in the other, both are satisfied,
contented, and neither has any wish or motive to look beyond the circle
of the purely domestic affections.”
“That is, they who find their bliss at home have no need and no
temptation to go a-roaming.”
“Precisely.”
“Then it is unhappiness, discontent, uneasiness, want, at home, that
makes men and women turn philanthropists, and take to world-reform?”
“Yes; and herein you learn the deep philosophy of life, and the
significance of that Religion of Sorrow, of which Carlyle speaks so
touchingly, and which the world has professed for two thousand years,
but which it has never understood. Hear my favorite poet:—
‘The Fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest;
The Lethe of nature
Can’t trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
‘Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame then restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in the stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
‘Eterne alternation,
Now follows, now flies,
Under pain, pleasure,
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway,
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.’
“The ‘love of the Best’ is our innate and deathless desire of happiness,
our being’s end and aim. Happiness is ever the coy maiden, that still
woos us onward, and flies ever as pursued,
‘Man never is, but always to be blest.’
In this deep ever-recurring want of the soul for happiness, the source
of all our pain and sorrow, is the spring and motive of all our
activity, and in activity is all our life and joy. Hence, ‘under pain
pleasure, under pleasure pain lies.’ All our life and joy have their
root in pain and sorrow, in this eternal craving of the soul to be what
we are not, and to have what we have not. The pain and sorrow spur us
on, and lead us to acquire and possess. But no possession satisfies us.
The most coveted is no sooner obtained than it is loathed and cast away.
‘The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.’
“Love dies in the wooing. The acquiring is more than the possessing. All
possessing leaves the heart empty,—an aching void within, which nothing
fills or can fill. This aching void will not let us rest, will not leave
us in repose, which is only another name for inaction, death, but
compels us to exert ourselves, to struggle with all our strength and
energy to make new acquisitions. In this struggle, in these efforts,
humanity is developed, and the progress of the race carried on.”
“Carried on, my dear Priscilla, towards what? Sings not your poet,
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive,
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive?’”
“That is the glorious secret, my dear friend. The end of man is not the
possession, but the pursuit, of happiness, or rather eternal progress
and growth. By the fact that the pain, the want, the aching void,
remains eternally, there is and must be eternal activity, therefore
eternal development and progress of humanity.”
“But as that development and progress leave us as far as ever from
happiness, or fixed and durable good, I see not in what consists their
value.”
“Their value is obvious. Good is relative to the end of a being, and
consists in going to the end for which it exists. Progress being our
end, of course our good must consist in making progress. This progress
is the progress of the race, and is effected by the activity of
individuals, and to it all the activity of individuals, whether what is
called vicious or virtuous, alike contributes.”
“If all our activity, our vices, and crimes, as well as our virtues,
contribute to this progress, or to the realization of our destiny, I do
not see any great call for us to be world reformers. Moreover, our
destiny seems to be any thing but a cheering one. Your poet-philosophy
is apparently very sad. If we are destined to chase forever a happiness
that flies us, a good that recedes as we advance, all exertion seems to
me as idle, as useless as that of the child striving to grasp the
rainbow.”
“So it may seem to you, for you are, as yet, not a philanthropist. You
are still affected by your egotism, and unable to appreciate any
activity that does not bring something solid and durable to the
individual. Here is the rock on which all old-fashioned morality splits.
Individuals are nothing in themselves; they are real, substantial, only
in humanity. The race is every thing. Individuals die, the race
survives. Men and women have no substantiality of their own. They are
merely the bubbles that rise on the surface of the broad ocean of
humanity, burst, disappear, and become as if they had not been. Foolish
bubbles, ye forget your own nothingness, and would arrogate to
yourselves all the rights and prerogatives, glory and happiness of
humanity. The race is not for individuals; individuals are for the race.
They are simply the sensations, sentiments, and cognitions of the race,
in which it manifests its own inherent virtuality, and through which it
is developed and carried forward in its endless career through the
ages,—through which it grows and realizes its own eternal and glorious
destiny. The progress you are to seek is not the progress of
individuals, for individuals have, properly speaking, no progress; but
the progress of the race, which is and can be effected only by the
activity of individual men and women.”
“Still, I do not comprehend the work there is for world-reformers.”
“Why, you are stupid, Doctor. All activity, whether called vicious or
criminal, is good, for it aids progress. But nothing is vicious,
criminal, or sinful, except that which represses the free activity of
individuals, and thus hinders the development and growth of the race. It
was, therefore, not a friend, but an enemy, that imposed upon our first
parents the prohibition to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. It was a friend, not an enemy, that inspired Eve with the
thought and the courage to disregard that prohibition, to reach forth
her hand and pluck the fruit, and having eaten thereof, to give it also
unto her husband. The fable was invented by priests and governors as a
means of imposing their system of restraints, of establishing their
restrictive policy, to which they have adhered, as old fogie politicians
adhere to protection. They have always had a horror of free trade, as
incompatible with their monopoly, and have made it their study to
repress our native activity, to keep us cabined, cribbed, and confined,
within the narrow enclosure of their hidebound systems, of their
immoral, contracted, galling, and senseless conventionalism. They will
not allow nature, humanity, fair play. They brand, as from the enemy of
souls, all free activity. The heart must move according to their rules,
and love or hate as they bid; the mind must run only in the grooves
which they have hollowed out, and never dare search beneath their solemn
shams, or send sharp and piercing glances into the artificial world they
have built up around us. We must repress our purest and noblest
instincts, and crucify our sweetest and holiest affections. Everywhere
restraint, repression, tyranny. The church tyrannizes over the state;
the state tyrannizes over man and society; man and society tyrannize
over woman, making her a puppet, a toy, or a drudge. Here, my dear, dear
friend, behold your work, and that of your fellow-reformers. Go forth
and break down this vast system of tyranny. Emancipate the state from
the church, man and society from the state, and woman from man and
society.”
“But some government, some restraint is necessary to keep our appetites,
passions, and lusts within bounds, and to maintain peace and order in
the community.”
“Alas! my friend, how hard it is for you to cease to be an egotist, and
to learn to be a philanthropist. Know, that philanthropy seeks no
individual, no exclusive good, and does not consist in loving and
seeking the welfare of our fellow men and women. It is the love of man,
not men, and seeks the welfare of the race, not of individuals. The
welfare of the race consists in progress, which is effected only by free
activity. All free activity is good, virtuous, right. Virtue is in