The Book of Khalid (25 page)

This seems to be the gist of Khalid’s gospel. This, through the labyrinths of doubt and contradiction, is the pinnacle of faith he would reach. And often in this labyrinthic gloom, where a gleam of light from some recess of thought or fancy reveals here a Hermit in his cloister, there an Artist in his studio, below a Nawab in his orgies, above a Broker on the Stock Exchange, we have paused to ask a question about these glaring contrarieties in his life and thought. And always would he make this reply: “I have frequently moved and removed between extremes; I have often worked and slept in opposing camps. So, do not expect from me anything like the consistency with which the majority of mankind solder and shape their life. Deep thought seems often, if not always, inconsistent at the first blush. The intensity and passiveness of the spirit are as natural in their attraction and repulsion as the elements, whose harmony is only patent on the surface. Consistency is superficial, narrow, one-sided. I am both ambitious, therefore, and contented. My ambition is that of the earth, the ever producing and resuscitating earth, doing the will of God, combatting the rasure of time; and my contentment is that of the majestic pines, faring alike in shade and sunshine, in calm and storm, in winter as in spring. Ambition and Contentment are the night and day of my life-journey. The day makes room for the fruits of solacement which the night brings; and the night gives a cup of the cordial of contentment to make good the promise of day to day.

“Ay, while sweating in the tortuous path, I never cease to cherish the feeling in which I was nourished; the West for me means ambition, the East, contentment: my heart is ever
in the one, my soul, in the other. And I care not for the freedom which does not free both; I seek not the welfare of the one without the other. But unlike my Phoenician ancestors, the spiritual with me shall not be limited by the natural; it shall go far above it, beyond or below it, saturating, sustaining, purifying what in external nature is but a symbol of the invisible. Nor is my idea of the spiritual developed in opposition to nature, and in a manner inimical to its laws and claims, as in Judaism and Christianity.

“The spiritual and natural are so united, so inextricably entwined around each other, that I can not conceive of them separately, independently. And both in the abstract sense are purportless and ineffectual without Consciousness. They are blind, dumb forces, beautiful, barbaric pageants, careering without aim or design through the immensities of No-where and No-time, if they are not impregnated and nourished with Thought, that is to say, with Consciousness, vitalised and purified. You may impregnate them with philosophy, nourish them with art; they both emanate from them, and remain as skidding clouds, as shining mirages, as wandering dust, until they find their exponent in Man.

“I tell thee then that Man, that is to say Consciousness, vitalised and purified, in other words Thought—that alone is real and eternal. And Man is supreme, only when he is the proper exponent of Nature, and spirit, and God: the three divine sources from which he issues, in which he is sustained, and to which he must return. Nature and the spiritual, without this embodied intelligence, this somatic being, called man or angel or ape, are as ermine on a wax figure. The human factor, the exponent intelligence, the intellective and sensuous faculties, these, my Brothers, are whole, sublime, holy, only when, in a state of continuous expansion,
the harmony among themselves and the affirmative ties between them and Nature, are perfect and pure. No, the spiritual ought not and can not be free from the sensuous, even the sensual. The true life, the full life, the life, pure, robust, sublime, is that in which all the nobler and higher aspirations of the soul AND THE BODY are given free and unlimited scope, with the view of developing the divine strain in Man, and realising to some extent the romantic as well as the material hopes of the race. God, Nature, Spirit, Passion—Passion, Spirit, Nature, God—in some such panorama would I paint the life of a highly developed being. Any of these elements lacking, and the life is wanting, defective, impure.

“I have no faith in men who were conceived in a perfunctory manner, on a pragmatical system, so to speak; the wife receiving her husband in bed as she would a tedious guest at an afternoon tea. Only two flames uniting produce a third; but a flame and a name, or a flame and a spunge, produce a hiff and nothing. Oh, that the children of the race are all born phœnix-like in the fire of noble and sacred passion, in the purgatory, as it were, of Love. What a race, what a race we should have. What men, what women! Yes, that is how the children of the earth should be conceived, not on a pragmatical system, in an I-don’t-care-about-the-issue manner. I believe in evoking the spirit, in dreaming a little about the gods of Olympus, and a little, too, about the gods of the abysmal depths, before the bodily communion. And in earnest, O my Brother, let us do this, despite what old Socrates says about the propriety and wisdom of approaching your wife with prudence and gravity.…”

And thus, if we did not often halloo, Khalid, like a huntsman pursuing his game, would lose himself in the pathless, lugubrious damp of the forest. If we did not prevent him at
times, holding firmly to his coat-tail, he would desperately pursue the ghost of his thoughts even on such precipitous paths to those very depths in which Socrates and Montaigne always felt at home. But he, a feverish, clamorous, obstreperous stripling of a Beduin, what chance has he in extricating his barbaric instincts from such thorny hedges of philosophy? And had he not quoted Socrates in that last paragraph, it would have been expunged. No, we are not utterly lost to the fine sense of propriety of this chaste and demure age. But no matter how etiolated and sickly the thought, it regains its colour and health when it breathes the literary air. Prudery can not but relish the tang of lubricity when flavoured with the classical. Moreover, if Socrates and Montaigne speak freely of these midnight matters, why not Khalid, if he has anything new to say, any good advice to offer. But how good and how new are his views let the Reader judge.

‘Tis very well to speak “of evoking the spirit before the bodily communion,” but those who can boast of a deeper experience in such matters will find in Socrates’ dictum, quoted by Montaigne, the very gist of reason and wisdom. Those wise ones were as far-sighted as they were far gone. And moderation, as it was justly said once, is the respiration of the philosopher. But Khalid, though always invoking the distant luminary of transcendentalism for light, can not arrogate to himself this high title. The expansion of all the faculties, and the reduction of the demands of society and the individual to the lowest term;—this, as we understand it, is the aim of transcendentalism. And Khalid’s distance from the orbit of this grand luminary seems to vary with his moods; and these vary with the librations and revolutions of the moon. Hallucinated, moonstruck Khalid, your harmonising and affinitative efforts do not always succeed.
That is our opinion of the matter. And the Reader, who is no respecter of editors, might quarrel with it, for all we know.

Only by standing firmly in the centre can one preserve the equilibrium of one’s thoughts. But Khalid seldom speaks of equilibrium: he cares not how he fares in falling on either side of the fence, so he knows what lies behind. Howbeit, we can not conceive of how the affinity of the mind and soul with the senses, and the harmony between these and nature, are possible, if not exteriorised in that very superman whom Khalid so much dreads, and on whom he often casts a lingering glance of admiration. So there you are. We must either rise to a higher consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness, rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one. Meanwhile, Khalid’s rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall heed and try to echo.

“On the high road of the universal spirit,” he sings, “the world, the whole world before me, thrilling and radiating, chanting of freedom, faith, hope, health and power, and joy. Back to the City, O Khalid,—the City where Truth, and Faith, and Honesty, and Wisdom, are ever suffering, ever struggling, ever triumphing. No, it matters not with me if the spirit of intelligence and power, of freedom and culture, which must go the rounds of the earth, is always dominated by the instinct of self-interest. That must be; that is inevitable. But the instinct of self-interest, O my Brother, goes with the flesh; the body-politic dies; nations rise and fall; and the eternal Spirit, the progenitor of all ideals, passes to better or worse hands, still chastening and strengthening itself in the process.

“The Orient and Occident, the male and female of the
Spirit, the two great streams in which the body and soul of man are refreshed, invigorated, purified—of both I sing, in both I glory, to both I consecrate my life, for both I shall work and suffer and die. My Brothers, the most highly developed being is neither European nor Oriental; but rather he who partakes of the finer qualities of both the European genius and the Asiatic prophet.

“Give me, ye mighty nations of the West, the material comforts of life; and thou, my East, let me partake of thy spiritual heritage. Give me, America, thy hand; and thou, too, Asia. Thou land of origination, where Light and Spirit first arose, disdain not the gifts which the nations of the West bring thee; and thou land of organisation and power, where Science and Freedom reign supreme, disdain not the bounties of the sunrise.

“If the discoveries and attainments of Science will make the body of man cleaner, healthier, stronger, happier, the inexhaustible Oriental source of romantic and spiritual beauty will never cease to give the soul of man the restfulness and solacement it is ever craving. And remember, Europa, remember, Asia, that foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries. Elsewise, thy materialism, Europa, or thy spiritualism, Asia, no matter how trenchant and impregnable, no matter how deep the foundation, how broad the superstructure thereof, is vulgar, narrow, mean—is nothing, in a word, but parochialism.

“I swear that neither religious nor industrial slavery shall forever hold the world in political servitude. No; the world shall be free of the authority, absolute, blind, tyrannical, of both the Captains of Industry and the High Priests of the Temple. And who shall help to free it? Science alone can not do it; Science and Faith must do it.

“I say with thee, O Goethe, ‘Light, more light!’ I say with thee, O Tolstoi, ‘Love, more love!’ I say with thee, O Ibsen, ‘Will, more will!’ Light, Love, and Will—the one is as necessary as the other; the one is dangerous without the others. Light, Love, and Will, are the three eternal, vital sources of the higher, truer, purer cosmic life.

“Light, Love, and Will—with corals and pearls from their seas would I crown thee, O my City. In these streams would I baptise thy children, O my City. The mind, and the heart, and the soul of man I would baptise in this mountain lake, this high Jordan of Truth, on the flourishing and odoriferous banks of Science and Religion, under the sacred
sidr
of Reason and Faith.

“Ay, in the Lakes of Light, Love, and Will, I would baptise all mankind. For in this alone is power and glory, O my European Brothers; in this alone is faith and joy, O my Brothers of Asia.

“The Hudson, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Ganges—every one of these great streams shall be such a Jordan in the future. In every one of them shall flow the confluent Rivers of Light, Love, and Will. In every one of them shall sail the barks of the higher aspirations and hopes of mankind.

“I come now to be baptised, O my City. I come to slake my thirst in thy Jordan. I come to launch my little skiff, to do my little work, to pay my little debt.

“In thy public-squares, O my City, I would raise monuments to Nature; in thy theatres to Poesy and Thought; in thy bazaars to Art; in thy homes, to Health; in thy temples of worship, to universal Goodwill; in thy courts, to Power and Mercy; in thy schools, to Simplicity; in thy hospitals,
to Faith; and in thy public-halls to Freedom and Culture. And all these, without Light, Love, and Will, are but hollow affairs, high-sounding inanities. Without Light, Love, and Will, even thy Nabobs in the end shall curse thee; and with these, thy hammals under their burdens shall thank the heavens under which thy domes and turrets and minarets arise.”

AND KHALID, PACKING HIS FEW WORLDLY belongings in one of his reed baskets, gives the rest to his neighbours, leaves his booth in the pines to the swallows, and bids the monks and his friend the Hermit farewell. The joy of the wayfaring! Now, where is the jubbah, the black jubbah of coarse wool, which we bought from one of the monks? He wraps himself in it, tightens well his shoestrings, draws his fur cap over his ears, carries his basket on his back, takes up his staff, lights his cigarette, and resolutely sets forth. The joy of the wayfaring! We accompany him on the open highway, through the rocky wilderness, down to the fertile plains, back to the city. For the account he gives us of his journey enables us to fill up the lacuna in Shakib’s
Histoire Intime
, before we can have recourse to it again.

“From the cliffs ‘neath which the lily blooms,” he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, “to the cliffs round which the eagles flit,—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, the meandering rivulets,
the fertile plains, the silent villages, and on the distant horizon, the sea, rising like a blue wall, standing like a stage scene; on the other, a howling immensity of boulders and prickly shrubs and plants, an arid wilderness—the haunt of the eagle, the mountain bear, and the goatherd. One step in this direction, and the entire panorama of verdant hills and valleys is lost to view. Its spreading, riant beauty is hidden behind that little cliff. I penetrate through this forest of rocks, where the brigands, I am told, lie in ambush for the caravans traveling between the valley of the Leontes and the villages of the lowland. But the brigands can not harm a dervish; my penury is my amulet—my salvation.