Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts. August Strindberg
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Conversion of the Cheerful Pagan, Horace.—"Among the conventional falsehoods of the apes,[1] one of the best known is that conversion from irreligion is a purely Christian doctrine. By looking into Kumlin's Swedish translation of Horace, even a schoolboy can find this heading to the thirty-fourth ode of the first book, 'The Religious Conversion of the Poet.'
"Horace belonged to the Epicurean sect who only believed in phantom gods, because they held that the divinities did not trouble themselves with the course of the world or of events, but enjoyed a careless life of continual ease. Horace accordingly had not been remarkably zealous in his religious duties. But a sudden flash of lightning and a heavy peal of thunder from a clear sky taught him at last that it was no blind unconscious force of nature, but the hand of a God, which hurled the lightning. Thereby he was awoken to reflection, and tried to warn and sober his frivolous countrymen by dwelling on the power of Jupiter. 'God can change the lowest with the highest; He puts down the exalted and uplifts the obscure.'
"After this Horace preached like a Jeremiah against the corruption of religion and morals. A modern 'ape' might feel justified in calling him a pietist since he was converted!
Cheerful Paganism and its Doctrine of Hell.—"Origen against Celsus is the title of the first refutation of the lying accusations which the pagans have brought against Christianity. Who will write a second? Who will show that the hell of the pagans was seven times worse than that of the Christians? In some Christian countries the Christian religion may not be taught in the schools, but boys are obliged to read Virgil's Sixth Æneid, which describes the terrors of the underworld.
"There is the Lernæan Hydra, the Chimæra, Gorgons, and Harpies. On the banks of Cocytus roam crowds of the unburied; there they must roam for centuries because they have never found a grave. Is that humane? Then there are the poor suicides everlastingly immersed in the Styx. And the field of mourning where unhappy lovers hide themselves. 'Even after death their pangs are not ended.'
"But these were comparatively innocent. Criminals, however, are punished first by the fury Tisiphone. She seizes the damned, mocks them with hellish laughter, and threatens them with snakes. A Hydra opens fifty black jaws. … And so on till we come to the sieve of the Danaids, the wheel of Ixion, the thirst of Tantalus.
"Let us remember, however, that the men of the Renaissance, Dante and Michael Angelo, have depicted the most extreme torments, as though they believed in them. Anyone who wants to see how the cheerful Japanese describe hell, can look at the pictures which Riotor and Leofanti published in Paris, 1895, in the Enfers Bouddhiques."
[1] Materialistic evolutionists.
Faith the Chief Thing.—The teacher continued: "Pietism is a condition of repentance, which men pass through like a purifying bath and gain a consciousness of inward cleanliness. It is therefore no hypocrisy, as the children of the Lord of Dung suppose. He who is severe towards himself may easily appear malicious to the unintelligent; and he who has suffered for his wickednesses feels himself freed from the past. This feeling the unbelievers call 'self-satisfaction.'
"A penitent never attains perfection, but ceaselessly relapses into the desires of the flesh. This may easily cause him to appear a hypocrite. Luther quickly saw that it is impossible to make one's acts correspond to one's belief. Therefore he laid stress on faith, let acts go, and adduced as his authority St. Paul's solution of the paradox: 'So I obey the law of God with the spirit, but with the flesh the law of sin.'
"Faith, Hope, and Love: that is the essence and kernel of religion. One's acts never come up to one's faith, and often lag far behind it. But there are some pious souls who persist in remaining in the condition of penance, and it may easily seem as though they wished to gain heaven in advance of the rest. But we should not blame them for it. There may be secret reasons which we do not know, and have never experienced.
"Socrates regarded the sense of shame and conscience as what distinguished man from the beasts. To these two Christ added pity."
Penitents.—The teacher continued: "Muhammed early traversed the stage of desolation and became a pietist, when he believed himself persecuted by devils. Set free finally by suffering and prayer, he exclaims in the 93rd Sura: 'By the forenoon, and the night when it darkens, thy Lord has not forsaken thee or hated thee, and surely the future for thee will be better than the past. And thy Lord will give thee sufficient, and thou shalt be satisfied. Did He not find thee an orphan and give thee shelter? and find thee erring and guide thee? and find thee poor with a family and nourish thee? But as for the orphan, oppress him not; and as for the beggar, drive him not away; and as for the favour of thy Lord, discourse thereof!' When Buddha left his father's palace and saw the sufferings of men and the instability of life, he became a penitent, left wife and child, went into the wilderness, and chastened himself by fasting and renunciation. But after he had undergone the severest penances, he cautiously returned to ordinary life, and allowed himself moderate enjoyments in order not to devastate his soul. Some of his disciples deserted him and called him a recreant, but that did not trouble him.
"Goethe himself passed through religious crises, and was at one period intimate with the Hermhuters, the pietists of that time. In his old age, when he grew wise, he became a mystic, i.e. he discovered that there are things between heaven and earth of which the 'Beans' have never let themselves dream."
Paying for Others.—The pupil said: "I must confess that I do not understand the Atonement." "You mean, understand it with everyday intelligence. No one can. The highest questions cannot be solved by us, just as little as problems of the fourth dimension. But the solution is given to us, if we ask for it in a proper way.
"As regards the redemptive work of Christ, you can comprehend it by an analogy. You remember, when you owed so many debts, that there were knocks at your door all day long, that you had to go out early in the morning in order to borrow, or to escape your creditors. Finally you feared your room so, that you dared not go home to sleep. You sat on a seat in the park, and said to yourself, 'It is hell!' Then there came a man who knew you; he paid your debts; you called him your saviour. Do you not see that one can pay for another, and deliver him?"
"Yes, but one cannot make an evil deed undone."
"No, but the Almighty can obliterate it from our memory, and from the memory of others. But mark this well: every time that you rummage in the past of another, although it has been atoned for, the memory of your own evil deeds starts up. Just like a badly washed stain which goes through the stuff and appears on the other side. All miracles are conditional, just as vows are."
The Lice-King.—As the teacher roamed one day in Qualheim he came into a wood under whose shadow many decaying funguses grew. On a footpath he saw what he thought at first was a snake writhing about. It was no snake, however, but a mass of grubs clotted together. The teacher asked his guide: "What is the meaning of that?"
"Ask first what it is; then I will tell you the meaning of it."
"Well?"
"These are the larvæ of the snake-worm, which are obliged, like clay and wadded straw, to hold together in order not to perish. They love poisonous funguses, and cannot bear the light. They maintain their existence by a mutual interchange of slime, without which they become dead and dry. But they call darkness light, because the sun would kill them. They feed on the poisonous funguses. They hate each other, but must keep together. Do you understand now, or not?"
"What is the name of the creature?"
"It is called the snake-worm or lice-king, appears once in every generation, and is a herald of evil times."
"What does it mean then?"
"It is a symbol of the men who talk with their faces turned backwards, and therefore see everything distorted; who call evil good, and good evil. Because they live in pride and self-love they cannot see God, but elect