He went home to his little dark studio, where the sunlight so rarely
entered, and where the big tomes and the skull and the fossils,
and the picture of the beautiful girl and her crimson roses, greeted
him with unchanged looks. All the room was pervaded with the aroma
of the belladonna plant in the balcony, and all the soul of the
old philosopher was filled with an atmosphere of silent liberality.
He stood before the bookshelves and laid his withered fingers
falteringly upon the volumes, one after another. I knew already
what was passing in his heart, and my rising perfume assisted the
noble sacrifice. Then he lifted the books from their places,--one,
two, three,--the volumes he prized the most, ancient classical
editions that must have been an El Dorado of themselves to such a
student and connoisseur as he. For a moment he lingered over the
open pages with a loving, tremulous tenderness of look and touch,
as though they had been faces of dear and life-long friends; then
he turned and looked at the picture in the dark corner. A name
rose to his lips; a soft-sounding German diminutive, but I hardly
heard it for the exceeding bitterness of the sigh that caught and
drowned the muttered utterance. But I knew that in that moment
his liberal heart renounced a double sweetness, for surely he had
cherished the gift of a dead love no less than he had treasured
the noble work of immortal genius.
Then, with his books under his arm, he went silently out of the
studio, and back again into the town, along many a dingy winding
court, avoiding the open squares and the market-place, until we
came to a tall dark-looking house in a narrow street. There Herr
Ritter paused and entered, passing through along vestibule into a
spacious apartment at the back of the house, where there was a
gentleman lounging in an easy attitude over the back of an armchair,
from which he seemed to have just risen, and slashing with an ivory
paper-knife the leaves of a book he was holding. The room in which
we found ourselves had a curiously hybrid appearance, and I could
not determine whether it were, indeed, part of a publisher's warehouse,
or of a literary museum, or only the rather expansive sanctum of
an opulent homme de lettres.
Herr Ritter laid down his three big volumes on a table that was
absolutely littered from end to end with old manuscripts and curious
fossilised-looking tomes in vellum covers.
"Ah, 'Giorno, Herr!" said the gentleman, looking up from his book;
"what is that?"
He came towards us as he spoke, and opening the topmost volume of
the pile which the old man had deposited on the table, examined
the title-page.
"Sancta Maria! " cried he, his whole manner changing in a moment
from easy indifference to earnest interest: "what, you will part
with this after all? Why, it is the same book I offered you two
hundred pistoles for at Rome! You wouldn't sell it then at any
price, you said!"
"No, Signor, but I will now."
Ah, it was a generous martyrdom, but the pangs of it were very
grievous; what wonder that the martyr sighed a little!
"The same price, then, Herr? Don't let us bargain about it. The
Eminenza is liberal in these things, you know; and you're poor,
my friend, I know."
He nodded at the old German with a sort of familiar patronage, as
though he would have said, "Don't be modest, I'll stand by you!"
But the Herr seemed to notice neither words nor manner, though I
thought the heart beneath the shabby coat recoiled at that instant
somewhat unusually.
"The same price, if you please, Signor."
The Cardinal's agent, for such I guessed this tender-hearted individual
before us to be, flashed a keen sudden glance of mingled scrutiny
and surprise at the calm dignified face of the philosopher, whistled
pleasantly a short aria of two notes, apparently with some design
of assisting his mental digestion to victory over a tough morsel;
and then turning to an iron-bound cashbox at his elbow, unlocked it,
and produced therefrom the stipulated sum, which he counted out
with much celerity, and forthwith handed to the old German. With
tremulous fingers the Herr gathered up the money, as though it had
been the price of a friend's betrayal, and drooped his noble head
upon his breast, like a war-horse smitten to the heart in the
passionate front of battle.
What he had done was registered in Heaven.
"Addio, Herr."
"Guten-tag, Signor."
Herr Ritter did not go back to his lodgings then. He went past
the low house with its green verandah, blistering under the fierce
noon-sun, and across the pastures to the cottage of 'Lora Delcor.
She was sitting at the open door, her thin transparent palms pressed
tightly together, as though she were praying, and her great fringed
eyelids dark and heavy with their burden of pain. Ah! 'Lora! 'Lora!
"blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted!" Not
in the world that men have made, daughter of earth, ah, not in that;
but in the world that God shall make hereafter!
"Herr Ritter! you have been? O tell me what she said! 'Tista is
not here, he is gone into the woods to gather herbs."
"Have you told 'Tista anything?"
"About this? Nothing. I thought I would wait until I knew--"
She had risen from her seat to greet him, with painful agitation;
and now she staggered, and I think would have fallen, but that the
old man timely caught and held her in his gentle grasp.
"Be comforted, dear 'Lora," he whispered; " bring you good news."
She dropped into her wooden chair and covered her face with her
bloodless hands, weeping and sobbing for joy, as only women can
who have suffered much and long and alone.
Herr Ritter stood by, watching her kindly, and stroking his white
flowing beard in silence, until she had wept her fill; and her
dark blissful eyes, dreamy with the mist of fallen tears, were lifted
again to his face, like caverned pools in summer refreshed with a
happy rain.
"What did she say? she sent me a note? a message?"
Herr Ritter poured his pistoles into her lap.
"I bring you these," said he, simply.
"Jesu-Maria! She sent me all this! how good! how generous! but
ought I to take it, Herr?"
"It is for 'Tista; to pay his apprenticeship. But there is a
condition, dear Frau; 'Tista is not to know who sends him this gift.
He is to be told it comes from an unknown friend. When he is older
he will know, perhaps."
"My kind dear 'Lotta! Ah, she would have 'Tista learn to love her,
then, before she tells him of her goodness! For him I cannot refuse
the money; can I, Herr? But I may go and thank her myself; I
may go and thank her?"
"Not just yet, 'Lora. Your sister is obliged to leave this place
tomorrow morning; Signor Nero's engagements compel him to proceed;
and so for the present time she charged me to bear you with the gift,
her greeting, and her farewell."
He was looking at her with grave mild eyes, while he leant against
the cottage-wall and stroked his silver beard.
Daughter of earth, let God be judge; for He alone understands the
heart of mortal man. As for me, I am only a flower of the dust of the
ground, yet I confess I thought the deceit the old philosopher used,
at least more graceful and gentle than the candour of Carlotta Nero.
"'Lora: you are happy now?"
She looked up and smiled in his eyes.
In that smile the philosopher had his reward.
Soon afterwards Battista Delcor was apprenticed to a chemist in
the town, and the cup of his content was filled to the brim; but
as yet, neither his mother nor Herr Ritter told him the name of
his unknown friend. Then it grew towards the end of summer, and
the ferns and the brake began to tarnish in the woodlands, and Dolores
Delcor sickened, and failed, and whitened more and more from day
to day, till at last she could do no work at all, but lived only
at the hands of 'Tista and Herr Ritter.
As for me, I blossomed still in the balcony beneath the green verandah,
looking always into the dark studio, and noting how, one by one,
the tall musty books upon the old German's shelves were bartered
away for gold.
But one morning, just at dawn, the woman of that sorrowful name
and dolorous life passed away into her rest, while she slept. And
when 'Tista, with his heart almost breaking for grief, came at the
hour of sunrise to tell Herr Ritter that she was dead, the old man
looked out across the hazy blue of the eastern reaches at the sea
of golden splendour breaking beyond them, and answered only in his
quiet patient way, that he had known it could not be for long.
I heard the words and understood them, but to the boy they meant nothing.
Then there came a night when the shelves stood empty, save for the
skull and the fossils, and Herr Ritter wore a strange luminous aspect
upon his placid face, that was not of the shadows nor of the lights
of earth. For five days he had broken no bread, and his strength
had failed him for want and for age, and no friend had been to visit
him. 'Tista, I suppose, had his business now, and of late his
presence in the dark studio had become more and more rare; not
that he was unkind, but that he was full of youth, and the vigorous
love of youth; and the old man's talk was wearisome to ears that
delighted in sounds of laughter and frolic. And besides all this,
he did not know how much he owed to the old philosopher, for Herr
Ritter still kept silence.
All the autumn day had been sultry, and the wind seemed to have
fallen asleep in some remote corner of the sky, for there had scarce
been air enough to stir the feathery tassels of the pasture grasses,
and the stillness of drought and heat had been everywhere unbroken.
But when I looked towards the west at sundown, I saw that all the
long low horizon was shrouded in twirling cumuli, with tops of lurid
flame; and great shafts of red tempestuous light, shot upward from
the dying sun, launched themselves over the heavens, and hung there
like fiery swords above a city of doom.
Herr Ritter sat up late that night, reading a packet of old worn-
looking letters, which he had taken out of a small wooden box beneath
his bed; and as he read them, burning them to tinder one by one
in the flame of his lamp. A little torn morsel of a note, yellow
with age, and half charred with the smoke of the destruction it
had escaped, fluttered down from the table through the open casement,
and fell in the balcony by my side. There were words on the paper,
written in stiff German characters, orthodox and methodical in every
turn and upstroke and formal pothook. They were these:--
"I distinctly refuse to give my daughter in marriage to a man who
is so great a fool as to throw away his chances of wealth and fame
for the sake of a mere whim. Yesterday you thought fit to decline
a Professorship which was offered you, on account of a condition
being attached to your acceptance of it. You fancied you could
not honestly fulfil that condition, and you lost your promotion.
Very well: you have also lost my daughter. I see plainly that
you will never be rich, for you will never get on in the world,
and no child of mine shall be wife to you. Consider your engagement
with her at an end."
Alas! In this, then, was the story of the crimson roses!
It was far into the night when the last letter dropped to powder
upon the table, and the old German, not pausing to undress, laid
himself wearily down upon the little bed in the dark corner to take
his rest. The oil of the lamp was well-nigh spent then, and its
languid flame quivered dimly upon the wan starved hands that were
folded above the rusty coat, and on the noble face with its pale
closed eyelids and patient lips, stedfast and calm as the face of
a marble king. Over his head the beautiful woman and her crimson
flowers ever and anon brightened in the fitful leaping light, and
shone like a beacon of lost hope upon a life that had been wrecked
and cast adrift in a night of storm. He died as he had lived, in
silence; and his death was the sacrifice of a martyr, the fall of
a warrior at his post.
Then the tempest broke over all the Piedmont lands, and the wind
arose as a giant refreshed with his rest, and drove the dark thunder-
clouds upward before the sounding pinions of his might like demon
hounds upon the track of a flying world. Then came the sharp swift
hiss of the stinging hail and rain, and the baying of the hurricane,
and the awful roll of the storm that shook the whole broad heaven
from end to end. Strange! that in the tumult of such a wild and
terrible night as this, so gentle and so calm a soul should be
destined to pass away!
Once again for a single instant I saw him, in the midst of a dazzling
flash of lightning that showed me, clear and distinct as in a mirror,
the whole of the silent chamber where the lamp had gone out, and
the charred tinder of the burnt letters was scattered over the
wooden table.
He lay motionless upon the white draped bed, a hero slain in the
hour of his triumph, with broad chivalrous brows and tranquil lips,
whence speech had fled for ever, grand and serene in the repose
of a sleep that, like 'Lora's, had borne him away into peace.
For him there was no longer storm, nor darkness, nor conflict. He
beheld his God face to face in the light of the Perfect Day.
Slowly at last, beyond the farthest bounds of the dull landscape,
broke the white ghostly lines of dawn; and the shouting of the wind,
and the rage of the chattering tempest fled down the watery sky
with the flying scuds of cloud, away into the distant horizon of
the west. But the belladonna-plant lay dead on the stones of the
balcony, torn and beaten by the hail and the wind, its trailing
stem and clinging tendrils seared with the lightning, its purple
blooms scattered among the shards of the broken flowerpot and the
burnt tinder on the floor of the desolate studio.
High above the white front of the coming morning, the wind, returning
into the bosom of God, bore upon its limitless wings a twofold burden,
the spirit of a perished flower, the oblation of a Gentle Life.
The grave, sonorous intonation sank and ended as it had begun, like
the organ-roll of minor cadences; and the countenance of the phantom
grew indistinct and fluctuating, till it seemed to blend with the
sombre purple atmosphere that surrounded us. But as I perceived
her bright eyes still fastened upon my face, I lifted my hands
imploringly towards the floating presence, and would fain have
caught her fading impalpable garments.
"Spirit!" I cried, "one question more! The boy 'Tista surely came
with the morning, and learned at last, even though too late, who
had been his unknown friend?"
"Daughter of mortality," returned the dying voice of the phantom,
"I cannot tell. That night my mission upon earth was ended. But
some of my sister-flowers, which bloom about the graves of the dead,
have sent me messages from time to time by the breath of God's
messenger, the errant breeze of heaven. And they tell me that a
certain rich chemist of a large town in Piedmont, a handsome
prosperous young man, named Battista Delcor, has caused a great
white cross to be set above the resting-place of Herr Ritter. And
upon the base of the cross these words are graven in letters of gold:
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this;
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
oneself unspotted from the world."
And again, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these
My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
VIII. St. George the Chevalier*
During the last few years a growing interest in the subject of
religious metaphysic has shown itself in certain strata of our
intellectual world. This interest has taken many forms, and
attached itself to many developments, some of which have been
chiefly distinguished for
-----------
* Although, strictly, neither a "dream" nor a "dream-story," this paper
is included by the express wish of its writer, the interpretations
contained in it being largely the product of instructions received by
her in sleep.--Ed.
----------
eccentricity, and have attracted attention rather by this quality
than by their intrinsic value as solid contributions to thought.
Phrases, symbols, and expositions of theosophical doctrine gathered
from sources unfamiliar to the ordinary Western mind, and requiring
for their comprehension the study of a foreign tongue and of a strange
and intricate psychology, task too much the intellect of a seeker
trained in the Christian faith and seriously bent on the profitable
study of its mysteries. Fain would he learn what are these mysteries
without recourse to a foreign interpreter. His own Church, his
own creed, he thinks, should teach him all that he seeks to know,
and he cares not to set aside and reject names and symbols hallowed
by the use of ages among his people, in favour of others new to
his ear and tongue. If a revival of religious metaphysic is imminent
among us, let it then be directed along the old channels worn deep
by the prayers and aspirations of our fathers. Let us hear what
the tradition of our faith has to unfold to us of arcane secrets,
and to what mystic heights of transcendental thought the paths
trodden by Christian saints can lead us. For the legends and visions
of the saints are full of precious testimonies to the esoteric origin
and nature of Catholic dogma; and the older and more venerable
the tradition, the more fundamental and spiritual its character.
Chiefest for us, and most important among such sacred legends, is
that of ST. GEORGE the Champion, not only because he is for English
folk pre-eminent among the saintly throng celebrated by our Church
as each November-tide comes round, but also because his story is
thoroughly typical of the class of esoteric tradition in which
Catholic truth and faith crystallised themselves in simpler and
purer-hearted times than these. Students of religious mystic thought
can scarce do better than turn to such a tale by way of proem to
more elaborate research. There, in softened outlines and graceful
language, they will find an exposition of the whole argument of
spiritual metaphysics, and a complete vindication of the method of
theosophy. At the outset of a new line of inquiry the mind is
usually more quickened to interest by parable than by dissertation.
All great religious teachers have recognised this fact, and have
directed their instructions accordingly. Nor can those who care
to pursue a systematic study of Christian mysticism afford to despise
these poetic embodiments.
The highest form of thought is, after all, imaginative. Man ends,
as he begins, with images. Truth in itself is unutterable. The
loftiest metaphysic is as purely symbolic as the popular legend.
The Catholic tale of St. George, our national patron and champion,
was once of worldwide renown. But since our youth have taken to
reading Mill and Huxley, Spencer and Darwin, in place of the old
books wherein their ancestors took delight, the romances of the
Paladins and the knights-errant of Christian chivalry lie somewhat
rusty in the memories of the present generation. I propose, then,
first to recite the legend of the great St. George and his famous
conquest, and next to offer an interpretation of the story after
the esoteric manner.
According to Catholic legend, St. George was born in Cappadocia,
and early in the fourth century came to Lybia in quest of chivalrous
adventure. For this great saint was the noblest and bravest knight-
errant the ranks of chivalry have ever known, and the fame of his
prowess in arms vied with, the glory of his virtue, and made his
name a terror to all evil-doers the wide world over.
In Lybia there was, in those days, a city called Silena, near whose
walls lay a great lake, inhabited by a monstrous and fearsome dragon.
Many a redoubted knight had fallen in conflict with this terrible
beast; none had obtained the least advantage over it; and now
for a long time it had laid waste and ravaged all the country round,
no man daring to attack or hinder it. Every day for many a long
year past the miserable inhabitants of Silena had delivered up to
the dragon a certain number of sheep or kine from their herds, so
that at least the monster might be appeased without the sacrifice
of human life. At last all the flocks and the kine were devoured,
and the townspeople found themselves reduced to a terrible strait.
The dragon besieged the walls of the city, and infected all the
air with his poisonous breath, so that many persons died, as though
smitten by a pestilence. Then, in order to save the people, lots
were cast among all those who had children, and he to whom the die
fell was forced to give a son or daughter to the monster. This
terrible state of things had already continued for some time, when
one day the fatal lot fell to the king, none being exempted from
the tax.
Now the king had an only child, a fair and virgin daughter. To
save her from so horrible a doom he offered to any man who would
redeem the tax, his crown, his kingdom, and all his wealth. But
the people would hear of no exchange. They demanded that the king
should bear the stroke of fate in common with the meanest citizen.
Then the king asked for a reprieve of eight days to lament his child
and prepare her for her death. Meanwhile the dragon, infuriated at
the unusual delay, hung continually about the city gates, expecting
his victim, and poisoned all the sentinels and men-at-arms who guarded
the walls. Wherefore the people sent messengers to the king and
reproached him with his faint-heartedness. "Why," said they, "do
you suffer your subjects to die for your daughter's sake? Why doom
us to perish daily by the poisonous breath of the dragon?"
Then the king, perceiving that he could put off the evil hour no
longer, clad his daughter in royal apparel, embraced her tenderly,
and said, "Alas! dear child, I thought to see my race perpetuated
in thine heirs; I hoped to have welcomed princes to thy nuptials;
but now thou must perish in the flower of thy youth, a sacrifice
to this accursed monster! Why did not the Gods decree my death
before I brought thee into the world?"
When the princess heard these sorrowful words she fell at her father's
feet, and, with tears, besought his blessing. Weeping, he gave it,
and folded her a last time in his arms. Then, followed by her
afflicted women and a great concourse of people, she was led like
a lamb to the gates of the city. Here she parted from her companions,
the drawbridge was lowered across the deep moat, and alone she passed
forth and went towards the lake to meet her destroyer.
Now it chanced that just then St. George, in his shining armour,
came riding by, and, seeing a fair damsel alone and in tears, he
sprang from his horse, and hastened to offer her his knightly service.
But she only waved him back, and cried, "Good sir, remount your
steed and fly in haste, that you perish not with me!" But to this
the Saint responded, "Tell me first why thou art here with such
sad mien, and why this crowd of people on the city walls gaze after
us so fearfully." And the Princess answered him, "Thou hast, I see,
a great and noble heart; but make the more haste to be gone therefore.
It is not meet that one so good should die unworthily."
"I will not go," returned the knight, "until thou tell me what I
seek to know."
So she told him, weeping, all the woeful tale; and St George made
answer with a brave heart, in a voice that all the townfolk on the
walls could hear, "Fear not, fair maid; in the name of Christ I
will do battle for thee against this dragon."
Then the Princess loved him, and wrung her hands and cried, "Brave
knight, seek not to die with me; enough that I should perish. There
is no man living that can stand against this dragon. Thou canst
neither aid nor deliver me. Thou canst but share my doom."
As she spoke the words, the waters of the lake divided, and the
monster rose from its depths and espied its prey. At that the
virgin trembled, and cried again, "Fly! fly! O knight! stay not to
see me perish!"
For all answer St George flung himself upon his steed, made the
holy sign of the cross, and, commending himself to Christ, lowered
his lance and rushed full on the open jaws of the hideous beast.
With such force he directed his aim that the dragon was instantly
overthrown, and lay, disabled and powerless, at the feet of the saint.
Then, with the words of a holy spell, St. George cast a great fear
upon the monster, so that it was shorn of all its fury, and durst
not lift its body from the dust. Thereupon the blessed knight
beckoned to the Princess to approach, and bade her loose her girdle,
and, without fear, bind it about the dragon's neck. And when this
was done, behold, the beast followed the maid, spellbound, and thus
they entered the city.
But the people, when they saw the dragon approaching, fled tumultuously
on every side, crying out that they would all surely perish. St.
George therefore struck off the monster's head with his sword, and
bade them take heart and fear nothing, because the Lord had given
him grace over all evil things to deliver the earth from plagues.
So, when the people saw that the dragon was slain, they thronged
about St. George, and kissed his hands and his robe; and the king
embraced him joyfully, praising his valour and prowess above the
fame of all mortal men. And when the saint had preached to them
the faith of Christ, the whole city was straightway baptised; and
the king thereafter built a noble church to the honour of our Lady
and of the brave St. George. And from the foot of the altar flowed
forth a marvellous stream, whose waters healed all manner of sickness;
so that for many a long year no man died in that city.
Such is the legend of the patron saint of England,--a legend
reproduced in Spenser's poem of the "Faery Queen," wherein St.
George appears as the Red Cross Knight, and the Princess as Una,
the mystical maid, who, after the overthrow of the dragon, becomes
the bride of her champion.
Need I recall to any student of classic story the resemblance between
this sacred romance and that of the Greek hero Perseus, who rescued
the fair Andromeda from the fangs of the sea-monster which would
have devoured her? Or whose divine favour it was that directed
and shielded the Argive champion; whose winged sandals bore him
unharmed across sea and land; whose magic sword and helm armed
and defended him?
With all these symbols the name of HERMES is indissolubly connected.
His are the Wings of Courage, the Rod of Science, and the Helmet
of Secrecy. And his, too, is the Sword of Power, the strong and
steadfast Will, by which the elemental forces are overcome and
controlled, and the monsters of the abyss bound in obedience,--those
spiritual dragons and chimeras that ravage the hopes of humanity
and would fain devour the "King's Daughter."
For Hermes--Archangel, Messenger of Heaven, and slayer of Argos
the hundred-eyed (type of the stellar powers)--is no other than
Thought: Thought which alone exalts man above the beast, and sets
him noble tasks to do and precious rewards to win, and lifts him
at last to shine evermore with the gods above the starry heights
of heaven.
All the heroes are sons of Hermes, for he is the Master and Initiator
of spiritual chivalry. The heroes are the knights-errant of Greek
legend. Like St. George and his six holy peers; like Arthur's
knights; like the Teuton Siegfried, the British Artegal, and many
another saintly chevalier "sans peur et sans reproche," the heroes
of yet older days--Heracles, Bellerophon, Theseus, Jason, Perseus--
roamed the earth under divine guidance, waging ceaseless warfare
with tyranny and wrong; rescuing and avenging the oppressed,
destroying the agents of hell, and everywhere delivering mankind
from the devices of terrorism, thrall, and the power of darkness.
The divine Order of Chivalry is the enemy of ascetic isolation and
indifferentism. It is the Order of the Christ who goes about doing
good. The Christian knight, mounted on a valiant steed (for the
horse is the symbol of Intelligence), and equipped with the panoply
of Michael, is the type of the spiritual life,--the life of heroic
and active charity.
All the stories about knights and dragons have one common esoteric
meaning. The dragon is always Materialism in some form; the fearsome,
irrepressible spirit of Unbelief, which wages war on human peace
and blights the hopes of all mankind. In most of these tales, as
in the typical legend of St. George, there is a princess to be
delivered,--a lady, sweet and lovely, whose sacrifice is imminent
at the moment of her champion's arrival on the scene. By this
princess is intended the Soul:--the "Woman of Holy Writ," and the
central figure of all sacred dramatic art of every date and country.
That the allegory is of such wide and ancient repute, proves the
identity of the needs and troubles of humanity throughout the ages.
Yet one cannot fail to be struck with its special bearing on the
present state of thought. It seems, indeed, as though the story
of St. George and the Dragon might have been written yesterday,
and dedicated to the men and women of our own times. Never, surely,
has the dragon ravaged and despoiled the earth as he does now. When
at first he came upon us, it was not much that the monster's appetite
demanded. It was satisfied with the sacrifice of a few superstitions
and antique beliefs, which we could well spare, and the loss of
which did not greatly affect us. These were the mere sheep and
kine of our outlying pastures. But at length all these were swept
away, and the genius of Materialism remained unsatisfied. Then
we began, reluctantly, to yield up to it far more precious things,--
our religious convictions, our hold on sacred Scriptures, our trust
in prayer, our confidence in heavenly providence,--the very children
of our hearts, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, endeared to
us by the hereditary faith which had become even as nature itself.
All these we gave and with tears; many of them had made life lovely
and desirable to us, and without them our hearth seemed desolate.
But complaint and resistance we knew to be in vain; materialistic
science devoured them one by one; none were left in all that ancient
city, the Human Kingdom, whose ruler and monarch is Mind. This
our sovereign-Mind--had hitherto cherished with fond delight one
lovely and only child, the Soul. He believed that she would survive
and perpetuate him, and that for ever her heirs should sit on the
throne of his kingdom. To part with her would be blight and ruin
to all his hopes and aspirations. Better that he should never have
drawn breath than that he should be forced to see the child he had
brought into the world perish before his eyes.
Still, with ominous persistence the terrible monster hangs about
the gates of the city. All the air is filled with the pestilent
effluvium of his nostrils. Relentless, indeed, is this pessimistic
science. It demands the sacrifice of the Soul itself, the last
lovely and precious thing remaining to despoiled humanity. Into
the limbo of those horrid jaws must be swept--with all other and
meaner beliefs and hopes--faith in the higher Selfhood and its
immortal Life. The Soul must perish! Despair seizes the Mind of man.
For some time he resists the cruel demand; he produces argument
after argument, appeal after appeal. All are unavailing. Why
should the Soul be respected where nothing else is spared? Forced
into surrender, the Mind at last yields up his best-beloved. Life
is no more worth living now; black death and despair confront him;
he cares no longer to be ruler over a miserable kingdom bereft of
its fairest treasure, its only hope. For of what value to man is
the Mind without the Soul?
Poor and puny now indeed the crown, the wealth, the royalty of Mind.
Their value lay alone in this, that some day they should devolve
on her, that for her they were being garnered and stored and cherished.
So the dragon triumphs; and the Soul, cast out of the city, stands
face to face with the black abyss, expecting her Destroyer.
Then, even at that last and awful hour, the Divine Deliverer appears,
the Son of Hermes, Genius of Interpretation, Champion of the Spiritual
Life. As Hercules slew the Hydra, the Lion, and many another noxious
thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as
Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and
Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its
insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity.
This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the Reason that
knows (gnosis) as distinguished from the Lower Reason of mere opinion
(doxa). He is no earthly warrior. He carries celestial arms, and
bears the ensigns of the God. Thus the commemoration of St. George,
and of the famous legend of which he is the hero, involves the praise
of all valiant knights of the Hermetic art throughout the ages.
Every divine man who has carried the enchanted sword, or worn the
sandals of the winged God, who has fought with monsters and championed
the King's daughter--Una, the one peerless maid--is celebrated in
the person of our national patron saint. The Order to which he
belongs is a Spiritual Order of the Garter, or Girdle of the Virgin;
and its ensign is the armed chevalier trampling under his horse's
hoofs the foul and furious agent of the nether world.
The idea of knighthood implies that of activity. The pattern saint
and flower of chivalry is one who gladly fights and would as gladly
die in noble causes. The words pronounced of old times on the
dubbing of a knight, "Be gentle, valiant, and fortunate," are not
words which could realise themselves in the dullard or the churl.
To the good knight, the ardent love of beauty, in all its aspects
is indispensable. The fair lady of his dreams is the spiritual
bright-shining of goodness, which expresses itself to him fitly
and sweetly in material and visible things. Hence he is always
poet, and fighter in some cause. And he is impelled to fight because
the love of beauty burns so hot within him that he cannot abide
to see it outraged. His very gentleness of heart is the spur of
his valour. Champion and knight as well as thinker and student,
the Son of Hermes is of necessity a reformer of men, a redeemer
of the world. It is not enough for him to know the doctrine, he
must likewise do the will of the gods, and bid the kingdom of the
Lord come upon earth without, even as in the heaven within his heart.
For the rule of his Order is the Law of Love, and "Love seeketh
ssnot her own."
