Part 4 (1/2)
The man may accept this life, if it please him, and its chances; but while he does he can never be a soul. So long as he accepts this life and its chances, he is the slave of tyranny. When the day comes that mind is sovereign, I will give myself into the hands of this life. But meanwhile I will know myself for what I am--a bubble upon the surface of a whirling torrent, an insect borne aloft upon a flying wheel.
It is by your will that you are free; by your will you are one with the infinite freedom, by your will you are master of time and your fate, lord of the stars and the endless ages, thinker of all truth, hearer of all music, beholder of all beauty, doer of all righteousness. That is the truth which I have brought out of my deepest brooding.
So long as your happiness is in anything about yourself--your wealth, or your fame, or your life--you are not free. So long as your happiness is in houses and lands, in sons and in daughters, you are not free. You give one atom of your soul to these things at your own peril; for when your hour comes you tear them from you, though they be as your eyes; and by your _will_ you save your soul alive.
Therefore I write The Captive. I put aside childish things--I grip my hands upon naked Reality.
There are nine characters in The Captive: a tyrant, two slaves, six guests, and a man. There are two scenes--a dungeon, and a banquet-hall.
A tyrant: I understand by a tyrant a man whose happiness is the unhappiness of others. I read of the discoverers of Mexico, and how they found a pyramid of human skulls, raised as a monument; that has been to me, ever since, the type of tyranny. The forms of tyranny vary through the ages, but the principle is always the same; a tyrant is a man who is made great by the toil and sorrow of others.
The slave also remains the same through all time; and likewise the guest.
The guest is the man who takes the world as he finds it, and likes a good dinner. The population of society is made up of tyrants, slaves, and guests.
The man is a character of my own imagining.
The first scene of The Captive is the dungeon. When I was very young I was in Europe, and I was in a dungeon; I have never forgotten it. There enter the tyrant and the two slaves with the man. They chain him to the wall, and then the tyrant speaks. That first speech--I have written it now--I have gotten the hammer-thuds! Tyranny is an iron thing--you had to feel the tread of it, the words had to roll like thunder. It is an advantage to me that I am full of Wagner; I always hear the music with my poetry. (I shall be disappointed if some one does not make an opera out of The Captive.)
The man is there, and he is there forever. After that, once a day, bread and water are shoved in through an opening. But the door of the dungeon does not open again until the last act--when ten years have pa.s.sed.
That is all. And now the man will battle with that problem. Will he go mad with despair? Will he sink into a wild beast? Will he commit suicide? Or what _will_ he do? Day by day he sinks back from the question, numb with agony; day by day the grim hand of Fate drags him to it; and so, until from the chaos of his soul he digs out, blow by blow, a faith.
Here there will be Reality; no shams and no lies will do here--here is iron necessity, and cries out for iron truth. G.o.d--duty--will--virtue--let such things no more be names, let us see what they _are_!
These are awful words. Sometimes I shrink from this thing as from fire, sometimes I rush to it with a song; I am writing about it now because I am worn out, and yet I can not think of anything else.
This man will find the truth; being delivered from the captivity of the world and set free to be a soul. Superst.i.tion blinds him; doubt and despair and weakness blind him; but still he gropes and strives, cries out and battles for truth; until at last, shut up in his own being, he tears his way out to the very source of it, and knows for himself what it is.
_Infinite it is, and unthinkable; glorious, all-consuming, all-sufficing; food and drink, friends.h.i.+p and love, ambition and victory, joy, power, and eternity it is to him who finds it; and all things in this world are nothing to him who finds it._
And so comes the victory to this soul. Hour by hour he catches gleams of the light; day by day he toils toward it, with fear and agony and prayer; until at last he knows his salvation--to rest never, and to toil always, and to dwell in this Presence of his G.o.d. In one desperate hour he flings away the world and the hope of the world, and vows this consecration, and lives.
He keeps the vow; it is iron necessity that drives him. He finds himself, he finds his way--each day his step is surer.
Each day the channels of his being deepen. He lays broad plans for his life--he gathers all knowledge, he solves all problems; lord of the infinite mind, he ranges all existence, and beholds it as the symbol of himself. Into the deeps and yawning s.p.a.ces of it he plunges; blind, he sees what men have never seen; deaf, he hears what men have never heard--singer he is, prophet and poet and maker. New worlds leap into being in the infinite fulness of his heart, visions of endless glory that make his senses reel; as a column of incense towering to the sky is the ecstasy of his adoration and his joy.