The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 4

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.

And so the long years roll by; and the unconquered spirit has left the earth: left time and s.p.a.ce and self, and dwells where never man has dwelt before. And then one day the door of the dungeon is opened, and his chains are shattered, and the slaves lead him up to the light of day.

It is the banquet-hall; and there is the tyrant, and there the guests--there is the world.

He is aged, and weak, and white, and terrible. They stare at him; and he stares at them, for he is dazed. They begin to mock at him, and then at last he realizes, and he covers his face and weeps--beholding the world, and the way that it must come. They jeer at him, they strike him; and when he answers not, they call to the slaves to torture him.

This man has lived for ten years with _himself_. He is nothing but a will. And now they will conquer him!

I recall the highest moment of my being. I saw that moment, and all the others of my life. I saw them as something that I could not bear to see, and I cried out that from that hour I would change them. I have not kept the vow; there was no one to drive me.

But this man they drive; they pinch him and burn him and tear him; they crush his limbs, they break his bones, they grind his flesh, they make his brain a living fire of anguish. And he fights them.

Into the deep recesses of his being goes the cry--for all that he has--for all that he is! For every ounce of his strength, for every throb of his will, for every vision, every truth that he knows! To bear this, to save him here! And so he wrestles, so he rises, so he gropes and gasps; and in the moment of his fiercest straining, with the throb of all his being he bursts the barrier, he rends the veil; and infinite pa.s.sion rolls in in floods upon him, he clutches all existence in his arms; and from his lips there bursts a mad frenzied shout of rapture--that makes his torturers stand transfixed, listening, trembling with terror.

And so they drag him back to his dungeon; and there, unable to move, he lies upon the stones and pants out his ecstasy and his life.

That is The Captive.

April 29th.

What counts in this thing is momentum--spiritual momentum. You are filled with it all the time, it never leaves you; it drives behind you like a gale of wind; it roars in your ears when you are awake, it rocks you to sleep when you are weary; whenever you are dull or do not heed it, it nags at you, it goads you, it beats into your face. Each day it is more, each day it is harder, more unattainable; but only do not stop, it carries you with it like a wave; you mount upon each day's achievement to reach the next, you move with the power of all the days before. It is momentum that counts.

Do not stop!--I cry it all day--Do not stop!

April 30th.

It is weak of me, but sometimes I can not help but look ahead--and think that it is done! I could not find any words to tell the joy that that will be to me--to be free, after so long--to be free!

I do not care anything about the fame--it would not be anything to me to be a great author. If it could be done, nothing would please me better than to publish it anonymously--to let no one ever know that it was mine. If I could only have the little that I need to be free, I would publish all that I might ever write anonymously.

Yes, that is the thing that makes my blood bound. To be free! Let it only be done--let it only be real, as it will be--and the naked force of it will shake men to the depths of their souls. I could not write it, if I did not believe that I was writing words that would grip the soul of any man--I care not how dull or how coa.r.s.e he might be.

I finished the first act just now.

May 1st.