Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts. August Strindberg

distinguish what.

      "What is it?" he asked a white-robed figure, which wore a laurel-wreath, but had a green face spotted blue like a corpse. "That is a temple of light," it answered; "but the initiated cannot see our black rays until he receives the white arsenic-kiss from the ultra-violet priestess."

      "Give me the kiss," answered the teacher, but he turned his back to her at the same time. However, she did not notice this, as she could not distinguish back from front. Now his eyes were opened, and he saw how within the temple they were offering incense to their "gods of light," as they called them. There stood the murderer Barabbas, a halo round his head, and a plate on his breast with the inscription: "Acquitted because of insufficient evidence." There sat Judas Iscariot under his fig-tree, with the thirty pieces of silver, in the bosom of his family, promoted to be general-director of customs. There were the Emperor Nero, fresh from the bath, with a white dove on his hand, and Julian the Apostate near an altar, with geese sacrificed upon it.

      The priests and priestesses sang a chant of New Birth and Resurrection, burned incense compounded of rose-leaves and arsenic-acid, and danced a snake-dance, which they called "the joy of life." Then they began to quarrel about a laurel-wreath, and fought one another. As the teacher went, they all sat there in the darkness and wept. But when a fresh north wind blew through the temple, they trembled like dry leaves.

      Blind and Deaf.—The teacher said: "There are, as you know, people with whom one cannot be angry. Perhaps it is because of their natural good-nature, which shines even through a cutting jest. And there are people whose malice comes to light long after one has met them. Such an after-effect I have experienced myself.

      "Five-and-twenty years after a conversation with a man, I felt angry with him. Naturally, during a sleepless night, when memory threw a new light on the scene which had taken place between us. Not till then did the insulting word he spoke receive its proper signification, which I now understood. There are words which can murder. Such a word this one was. What a good thing that I did not understand it at the time! It would have resulted in calamity to four people.

      "By developing a peculiar instinct I have succeeded in fabricating a kind of diving-costume, with which I protect myself in society. When the insulting word or the biting allusion is uttered, the sound certainly reaches my ear, but the receptive apparatus refuses to let it go further. In the same way I can make myself literally blind. I obliterate the face of the person I dislike. How it is done, I do not know, but it seems to be a psychological process. The face becomes a dirty whitish-grey spot and disappears. It is necessary to make oneself deaf and blind, or it is impossible to live.

      "One must cancel and go on! That is generally called 'forgiving,' but it may be a device of the revengeful for sparing himself trouble, or a scheme of the sensitive for not letting insults reach him. One cannot undertake more than one can bear!"

      The Disrobing Chamber.—The teacher continued: "Swedenborg says in his Inferno. … "

      "Say 'Hell,'" the pupil interrupted him. "I know that there is a hell, for I have been in it."

      "Well, Swedenborg has in his Hell a disrobing chamber into which the deceased are conducted immediately after their death. There they lay aside the dress they have had to wear in society and in the family. Then the angels see at once whom they have before them."

      "Does Swedenborg then mean that we are all hypocrites?"

      "Yes, in a certain way. An inborn modesty compels us to conceal what has to do with the animal; politeness obliges us to be silent on many points. Consideration, friendship, kinship, love, oblige us to overlook our neighbour's weaknesses, although we disapprove them even in ourselves. A man who is ashamed of his faults is also silent about them. To boast of one's faults is shamelessness."

      "Can one really call such consideration hypocrisy?"

      "Hardly; especially as things go wrong, however one behaves."

      "Yes, life is not easy; it is hard to be a man; almost impossible."

      The Character Mask.—The teacher said: "I knew in my youth a man who was imperious, quick to anger, revengeful, emotional. Accidentally his gifts as a speaker were discovered. He could thrill the minds of his hearers, bring them into touch with himself, lift them up—yes, and nearly carry them away. But on one occasion when he was at the height of his oratory he halted, became grotesque and ridiculous, and people laughed. The first time that this happened, he was depressed. But they thought he wished to produce a comical effect, and he obtained the reputation of a humorous speaker.

      "Out of his misfortune he made a virtue, accepted the rôle which had been assigned to him, and finally enjoyed a great popularity as a humourist. He often felt annoyed at having to play the part of a buffoon, but the desire to hear his own voice and to be greeted with applause unceasingly spurred him on to win new triumphs.

      "Society had made of him a sort of 'homunculus,' which it cultivated. But in his family and in his office it was not to be found."

      Youth and Folly.—The teacher said: "What do you think of the proverb, 'The young imagine that the old are fools, and the old know that the young are fools?'"

      "It is quite true. When I was young, I imagined that I understood everything better than the old, but I really understood nothing. I was young and stupid, confused my own knowledge with that of others', believed that what I had learnt was my own. When I had read a book, I went into society and proclaimed what I had read, as though it were my own discovery, I was therefore a thief.

      "But I was the victim of another delusion, i.e. I believed that I understood all that I remembered, or that I knew what I happened at the moment to remember. For instance, when I was fourteen I did not understand logarithms, but I learnt the way of proceeding with them by heart, and used logarithms as a short-cut.

      "When one studies a science in detail, one begins to collect material, else the result is nil. But the young man attacks the difficult science of life without experience, i.e. without material. And the result is what we see.

      "I can see myself now as a young student. How proud I was of borrowed knowledge and borrowed plumes! How I despised the old! And yet all that I had stolen from books was stolen from the old, who had written the text-books. The young write no text-books. O Youth! O Foolishness!

      When I was Young and Stupid.—"When I was young and stupid, I always had a band of hearers who saw a light in me. When I grew older, and wisdom came, I was left alone with my lecture and regarded as an old ass. But the passage from youth to age was bitter, when I discovered that the old could not be deceived. They read my secret thoughts behind my lofty words; they anticipated my evil purposes; they unmasked my crude desires; they prophesied the results of my actions; and found in my past the true cause of my present condition. They seemed to me to be wizards and prophets, although they were simple characters.

      "When I asked myself how they could know this and that, I found the answer later—because they had collected material; because they had passed through all the stages which were new to me; because they had also tried to deceive the old in the same way, but had not succeeded. Youth, however, is always believing that it can deceive old age, were it only by stealing a thought from him. I know, moreover, why the young obstinately imagine they are superior because they can deceive. There are old wise men who have come to terms with life, and therefore think it a duty to let themselves be deceived now and then; they let themselves be deceived tastefully.

      "Youth is only an idea, an abstraction, a boast, a theme for an essay, a song, a toast!"

      Constant Illusions.—The pupil continued: "When I was young I was never really happy, because my seniors oppressed me, because the future disquieted me, because I lived on my parents' money almost as though I were a pensionary. When the first symptoms of love showed themselves, life became a hell. I was never very well, for the most serious illnesses—measles, scarlet fever, agues, croup, and others—affect only the young. I could never satisfy an innocent fancy, for I had no money; every desire was nipped in the bud. I