Hypatia — Ch 25: Seeking after a Sign, pt 2 (2899 words)
At last she rose, and sat, careless of her dishevelled locks, gazing out into vacancy.
‘Oh for a sign, for a token!
Oh for the golden days of which the poets sang, when gods walked among men, fought by their side as friends!
And yet....
are these old stories credible, pious, even modest?
Does not my heart revolt from them?
Who has shared more than I in Plato’s contempt for the foul deeds, the degrading transformations, which Homer imputes to the gods of Greece?
Must I believe them now?
Must I stoop to think that gods, who live in a region above all sense, will deign to make themselves palpable to those senses of ours which are whole aeons of existence below them?
Degrade themselves to the base accidents of matter?
Yes!
That, rather than nothing!....
Be it even so.
Better, better, better, to believe that Ares fled shrieking and wounded from a mortal man--better to believe in Zeus’s adulteries and Hermes’s thefts--than to believe that gods have never spoken face to face with men!
Let me think, lest I go mad, that beings from that unseen world for which I hunger have appeared, and held communion with mankind, such as no reason or sense could doubt--even though those beings were more capricious and baser than ourselves!
Is there, after all, an unseen world?
Oh for a sign, a sign!
’ Haggard and dizzy, she wandered into her ‘chamber of the gods’; a collection of antiquities, which she kept there rather as matters of taste than of worship.
All around her they looked out into vacancy with their white soulless eyeballs, their dead motionless beauty, those cold dreams of the buried generations.
Oh that they could speak, and set her heart at rest!
At the lower end of the room stood a Pallas, completely armed with aegis, spear, and helmet; a gem of Athenian sculpture, which she had bought from some merchants after the sack of Athens by the Goths.
There it stood severely fair; but the right hand, alas!
was gone;
and there the maimed arm remained extended, as if in sad mockery of the faith of which the body remained, while the power was dead and vanished.
She gazed long and passionately on the image of her favourite goddess, the ideal to which she had longed for years to assimilate herself;
till--was it a dream?
was it a frolic of the dying sunlight?
or did those lips really bend themselves into a smile?
Impossible!
No, not impossible.
Had not, only a few years before, the image of Hecate smiled on a philosopher?
Were there not stories of moving images, and winking pictures, and all the material miracles by which a dying faith strives desperately--not to deceive others--but to persuade itself of its own sanity?
It had been--it might be--it was--!
No!
there the lips were, as they had been from the beginning, closed upon each other in that stony self-collected calm, which was only not a sneer.
The wonder, if it was one, had passed: and now--did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes round that Medusa’s head upon the shield all writhing, grinning, glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with terror into their own likeness?
No!
that, too, passed.
Would that even it had stayed, for it would have been a sign of life!
She looked up at the face once more: but in vain--the stone was stone; and ere she was aware, she found herself clasping passionately the knees of the marble.
‘Athene!
Pallas!
Adored!
Ever Virgin!
Absolute reason, springing unbegotten from the nameless One!
Hear me!
Athene!
Have mercy on me!
Speak, if it be to curse me!
Thou who alone wieldest the lightnings of thy father, wield them to strike me dead, if thou wilt; only do something!
--something to prove thine own existence--something to make me sure that anything exists beside this gross miserable matter, and my miserable soul.
I stand alone in the centre of the universe!
I fall and sicken down the abyss of ignorance, and doubt, and boundless blank and darkness!
Oh, have mercy!
I know that thou art not this!
Thou art everywhere and in all things!
But I know that this is a form which pleases thee, which symbolises thy nobleness!
T know that thou hast deigned to speak to those who--Oh!
what do I know?
Nothing!
nothing!
nothing!
And she clung there, bedewing with scalding tears the cold feet of the image, while there was neither sign, nor voice, nor any that answered.
On a sudden she was startled by a rustling near; and, looking round, saw close behind her the old Jewess.
‘Cry aloud!
’ hissed the hag, in a tone of bitter scorn; ‘cry aloud, for she is a goddess.
Either she is talking, or pursuing, or she is on a journey; or perhaps she has grown old, as we all shall do some day, my pretty lady, and is too cross and lazy to stir.
What!
her naughty doll will not speak to her, will it not?
or even open its eyes, because the wires are grown rusty?
Well, we will find a new doll for her, if she chooses.
’ ‘Begone, hag!
What do you mean by intruding here?
’ said Hypatia, springing up; but the old woman went on coolly-- ‘Why not try the fair young gentleman over there?
’ pointing to a copy of the Apollo which we call Belvedere--‘What is his name?
Old maids are always cross and jealous, you know.
But he--he could not be cruel to such a sweet face as that.
Try the fair young lad!
Or, perhaps, if you are bashful, the old Jewess might try him for you?
’ These last words were spoken with so marked a significance, that Hypatia, in spite of her disgust, found herself asking the hag what she meant.
She made no answer for a few seconds, but remained looking steadily into her eyes with a glance of fire, before which even the proud Hypatia, as she had done once before, quailed utterly, so deep was the understanding, so dogged the purpose, so fearless the power, which burned within those withered and shrunken sockets.
‘Shall the old witch call him up, the fair young Apollo, with the beauty-bloom upon his chin?
He shall come!
He shall come!
I warrant him he must come, civilly enough, when old Miriam’s finger is once held up.
’ ‘To you?
Apollo, the god of light, obey a Jewess?
’ ‘A Jewess?
And you a Greek?
’ almost yelled the old woman.
‘And who are you who ask?
And who are your gods, your heroes, your devils, you children of yesterday, compared with us?
You, who were a set of half-naked savages squabbling about the siege of Troy, when our Solomon, amid splendours such as Rome and Constantinople never saw, was controlling demons and ghosts, angels and archangels, principalities and powers, by the ineffable name?
What science have you that you have not stolen from the Egyptians and Chaldees?
And what had the Egyptians which Moses did not teach them?
And what have the Chaldees which Daniel did not teach them?
What does the world know but from us, the fathers and the masters of magic--us, the lords of the inner secrets of the universe!
Come, you Greek baby--as the priests in Egypt said of your forefathers, always children, craving for a new toy, and throwing it away next day--come to the fountainhead of all your paltry wisdom!
Name what you will see, and you shall see it!
’ Hypatia was cowed; for of one thing there was no doubt,--that the woman utterly believed her own words; and that was a state of mind of which she had seen so little, that it was no wonder if it acted on her with that overpowering sympathetic force, with which it generally does, and perhaps ought to, act on the human heart.
Besides, her school had always looked to the ancient nations of the East for the primeval founts of inspiration, the mysterious lore of mightier races long gone by.
Might she not have found it now?
The Jewess saw her advantage in a moment, and ran on, without giving her time to answer-- ‘What sort shall it be, then?
By glass and water, or by the moonlight on the wall, or by the sieve, or by the meal?
By the cymbals, or by the stars?
By the table of the twenty-four elements, by which the Empire was promised to Theodosius the Great, or by the sacred counters of the Assyrians, or by the sapphire of the Hecatic sphere?
Shall I threaten, as the Egyptian priests used to do, to tear Osiris again in pieces, or to divulge the mysteries of Isis?
I could do so, if I chose; for I know them all and more.
Or shall I use the ineffable name on Solomon’s seal, which we alone, of all the nations of the earth, know?
No; it would be a pity to waste that upon a heathen.
It shall be by the sacred wafer.
Look here!
--here they are, the wonder-working atomies!
Eat no food this day, except one of these every three hours, and come to me to-night at the house of your porter, Eudaimon, bringing with you the black agate; and then--why then, what you have the heart to see, you shall see!
’ Hypatia took the wafers, hesitating-- ‘But what are they?
’ ‘And you profess to explain Homer?
Whom did I hear the other morning lecturing away so glibly on the nepenthe which Helen gave the heroes, to fill them with the spirit of joy and love; how it was an allegory of the inward inspiration which flows from spiritual beauty, and all that?
--pretty enough, fair lady; but the question still remains, what was it?
and I say it was this.
Take it and try; and then confess, that while you can talk about Helen, I can act her; and know a little more about Homer than you do, after all.
’ ‘I cannot believe you!
Give me some sign of your power, or how can I trust you?
’ ‘A sign?
--A sign?
Kneel down then there, with your face toward the north; you are over tall for the poor old cripple.
’ ‘I?
I never knelt to human being.
’ ‘Then consider that you kneel to the handsome idol there, if you will--but kneel!
’ And, constrained by that glittering eye, Hypatia knelt before her.
‘Have you faith?
Have you desire?
Will you submit?
Will you obey?
Self-will and pride see nothing, know nothing.
If you do not give up yourself, neither God nor devil will care to approach.
Do you submit?
’ ‘I do!
I do!
’ cried poor Hypatia, in an agony of curiosity and self-distrust, while she felt her eye quailing and her limbs loosening more and more every moment under that intolerable fascination.
The old woman drew from her bosom a crystal, and placed the point against Hypatia’s breast.
A cold shiver ran through her....
The witch waved her hands mysteriously round her head, muttering from time to time, ‘Down!
down, proud spirit!
’ and then placed the tips of her skinny fingers on the victim’s forehead.
Gradually her eyelids became heavy;
again and again she tried to raise them, and dropped them again before those fixed glaring eyes....
, and in another moment she lost consciousness....
When she awoke, she was kneeling in a distant part of the room, with dishevelled hair and garments.
What was it so cold that she was clasping in her arms?
The feet of the Apollo!
The hag stood by her, chuckling to herself and clapping her hands.
‘How came I here?
What have I been doing?
’ ‘Saying such pretty things!
--paying the fair youth there such compliments, as he will not be rude enough to forget in his visit to-night.
A charming prophetic trance you have had!
Ah ha!
you are not the only woman who is wiser asleep than awake!
Well, you will make a very pretty Cassandra-or a Clytia, if you have the sense....
It lies with you, my fair lady.
Are you satisfied now?
Will you have any more signs?
Shall the old Jewess blast those blue eyes blind to show that she knows more than the heathen?
’ ‘Oh, I believe you--I believe,’ cried the poor exhausted maiden.
‘I will come; and yet--’ ‘Ah!
yes!
You had better settle first how he shall appear.
’ ‘As he wills!
--let him only come!
only let me know that he is a god.
Abamnon said that gods appeared in a clear, steady, unbearable light, amid a choir of all the lesser deities, archangels, principalities, and heroes, who derive their life from them.
’ ‘Abamnon was an old fool, then.
Do you think young Phoebus ran after Daphne with such a mob at his heels?
or that Jove, when he swam up to Leda, headed a whole Nile-flock of ducks, and plover, and curlews?
No, he shall come alone--to you alone; and then you may choose for yourself between Cassandra and Clytia....
Farewell.
Do not forget your wafers, or the agate either, and talk with no one between now and sunset.
And then--my pretty lady!
’ And laughing to herself, the old hag glided from the room.
Hypatia sat trembling with shame and dread.
She, as a disciple of the more purely spiritualistic school of Porphyry, had always looked with aversion, with all but contempt, on those theurgic arts which were so much lauded and employed by Iamblicus, Abamnon, and those who clung lovingly to the old priestly rites of Egypt and Chaldaea.
They had seemed to her vulgar toys, tricks of legerdemain, suited only for the wonder of the mob....
She began to think of them with more favour now.
How did she know that the vulgar did not require signs and wonders to make them believe?....
How, indeed?
for did she not want such herself?
And she opened Abamnon’s famous letter to Porphyry, and read earnestly over, for the twentieth time, his subtle justification of magic, and felt it to be unanswerable.
Magic?
What was not magical?
The whole universe, from the planets over her head to the meanest pebble at her feet, was utterly mysterious, ineffable, miraculous, influencing and influenced by affinities and repulsions as unexpected, as unfathomable, as those which, as Abamnon said, drew the gods towards those sounds, those objects, which, either in form, or colour, or chemical properties, were symbolic of, or akin to, themselves.
What wonder in it, after all?
Was not love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy, the law of the universe?
Philosophers, when they gave mechanical explanations of natural phenomena, came no nearer to the real solution of them.
The mysterious ‘Why?
’ remained untouched....
All their analyses could only darken with big words the plain fact that the water hated the oil with which it refused to mix, the lime loved the acid which it eagerly received into itself, and, like a lover, grew warm with the rapture of affection.
Why not?
What right had we to deny sensation, emotion, to them, any more than to ourselves?
Was not the same universal spirit stirring in them as in us?
And was it not by virtue of that spirit that we thought, and felt, and loved?
--Then why not they, as well as we?
If the one spirit permeated all things, if its all-energising presence linked the flower with the crystal as well as with the demon and the god, must it not link together also the two extremes of the great chain of being?
bind even the nameless One itself to the smallest creature which bore its creative impress?
What greater miracle in the attraction of a god or an angel, by material incense, symbols, and spells, than in the attraction of one soul to another by the material sounds of the human voice?
Was the affinity between spirit and matter implied in that, more miraculous than the affinity between the soul and the body?
--than the retention of that soul within that body by the breathing of material air, the eating of material food?
Or even, if the physicists were right, and the soul were but a material product or energy of the nerves, and the sole law of the universe the laws of matter, then was not magic even more probable, more rational?
Was it not fair by every analogy to suppose that there might be other, higher beings than ourselves, obedient to those laws, and therefore possible to be attracted, even as human beings were, by the baits of material sights and sounds?....
If spirit pervaded all things, then was magic probable; if nothing but matter had existence, magic was morally certain.
All that remained in either case was the test of experience....
And had not that test been applied in every age, and asserted to succeed?
What more rational, more philosophic action than to try herself those methods and ceremonies which she was assured on every hand had never failed but through the ignorance or unfitness of the neophyte?....
Abamnon must be right....
She dared not think him wrong; for if this last hope failed, what was there left but to eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?
