Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (e book reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Charles Kingsley
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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?
CHAPTER XXVI: MIRIAM’S PLOT
He who has worshipped a woman, even against his will and conscience, knows well how storm may follow storm, and earthquake earthquake, before his idol be utterly overthrown. And so Philammon found that evening, as he sat pondering over the strange chances of the day; for, as he pondered, his old feelings towards Hypatia began, in spite of the struggles of his conscience and reason, to revive within him. Not only pure love of her great loveliness, the righteous instinct which bids us welcome and honour beauty, whether in man or woman, as something of real worth—divine, heavenly, ay, though we know not how, in a most deep sense eternal; which makes our reason give the lie to all merely logical and sentimental maunderings of moralists about ‘the fleeting hues of this our painted clay’; telling men, as the old Hebrew Scriptures tell them, that physical beauty is the deepest of all spiritual symbols; and that though beauty without discretion be the jewel of gold in the swine’s snout, yet the jewel of gold it is still, the sacrament of an inward beauty, which ought to be, perhaps hereafter may be, fulfilled in spirit and in truth. Not only this, which whispered to him—and who shall say that the whisper was of the earth, or of the lower world?—‘She is too beautiful to be utterly evil’; but the very defect in her creed which he had just discovered, drew him towards her again. She had no Gospel for the Magdalene, because she was a Pagan.... That, then, was the fault of her Paganism, not of herself. She felt for Pelagia, but even if she had not, was not that, too, the fault of her Paganism? And for that Paganism who was to be blamed? She?.... Was he the man to affirm that? Had he not seen scandals, stupidities, brutalities, enough to shake even his faith, educated a Christian? How much more excuse for her, more delicate, more acute, more lofty than he; the child, too of a heathen father? Her perfections, were they not her own?—her defects, those of her circumstances?.... And had she not welcomed him, guarded him, taught him, honoured him?.... Could he turn against her? above all now in her distress—perhaps her danger? Was he not bound to her, if by nothing else, by gratitude? Was not he, of all men, bound to believe that all she required to make her perfect was conversion to the true faith?.... And that first dream of converting her arose almost as bright as ever.... Then he was checked by the thought of his first utter failure.... At least, if he could not convert her, he could love her, pray for her.... No, he could not even do that; for to whom could he pray? He had to repent, to be forgiven, to humble himself by penitence, perhaps for years, ere he could hope to be heard even for himself, much less for another.... And so backwards and forwards swayed his hope and purpose, till he was roused from his meditation by the voice of the little porter summoning him to his evening meal; and recollecting, for the first time, that he had tasted no food that day, he went down, half-unwillingly, and ate.
But as he, the porter, and his negro wife were sitting silently and sadly enough together, Miriam came in, apparently in high good humour, and lingered a moment on her way to her own apartments upstairs.
‘Eh? At supper? And nothing but lentils and water-melons, when the flesh-pots of Egypt have been famous any time these two thousand years. Ah!
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