Part 13

Worship the Christ in your own heart, for He is there. Worship Him in the heart of your friend, for He is there. Worship Him in the heart of your enemy, for He is also there. Then slay if you can, when you know _whom_ you seek to slay.

A new spirit has entered the hearts of the soldiers. They fight on, but they have been told in dreams that they fight their brethren.

Murderers on the high seas, pirates under the eagle, they too are your brothers. “Forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Conquer them, because you must; but do not forget that they are your brothers.

The Christ who hovers over the battlefields carries no flag. He is the first of the neutrals, because he loves all, even the pirates under the eagle and the murderers on the high seas. The Roman soldiers on Golgotha were not execrated by Him.

When He took upon himself the limitations of the flesh, He understood limitation by transcending it. We can never understand any limitation until we transcend it.

Who should know better than He the agony of torn flesh and broken bones and mangled nerves? Can the wounded soldiers teach Him anything? Can the betrayed world give Him advice in settling with its Judas? “That thou doest, do quickly.”

The betrayer of the world has hanged himself already in his excess of zeal. When his effigy was burned in Rome, do not think that he did not feel the fire. He felt it. The supreme War Lord has had one moment of sanity. Yesterday I saw his demon go snarling along the battle line. He did not snarl when I met him first, now many months ago.

If I could only make you understand that I speak of facts, not fancies! I have seen what I describe, as clearly as you see the table before you, or the pencil in your hand. When I say that I have talked with demons, I mean that I have talked with demons. When I say that I have seen the Christ, I mean that I have seen the Christ. I am not weaving romances, nor have I come back from my journey among the stars to compete with the spinners of tales. I write to reveal what otherwise would be unrevealed, to show to the world the causes lest the world go wrong with the effects. I want to help even the race that all other races, including its ally the Turk, now execrate.

Only the charity of Christ is wide enough to cover this world-betrayal. And I tell you the betrayers were egged on, inspired and themselves betrayed by the _personal_ forces of evil, in their supreme effort to put back the clock of civilization.

But the Christ cast out devils and raised the dead. Can He not cast out these devils behind the purpose of war? Can He not raise the dead to the region of peace in the end? Can He not raise _you_ to the level of His charity?

_May 16._

LETTER XLIV

POISON GASES

TO-NIGHT I shall not prate to you of charity. Instead, we will speak of east winds and poison gases, and the demons that ride on poison gases.

All hell is again let loose upon the world. It is worse out here than during the month before the war.

For eleven days I have not been with you. I have had no time for eleven days to spend even an hour with you.

Were you strong enough to hear what I _could_ tell, you would never publish it for the world; but I can tell you much which you are strong enough to hear and which the world is worthy to know.

East winds and poison gases! The very idea seems infernal, for men die in indescribable agony from the gases borne on those winds from the German camps over to those camps where rational human beings wage war by human means. But poison gases are demonic, and demons ride on them.

I have seen them come rolling forward in droves, their eyes aflame with hate, their mouths horrible with rancor and triumph.

Oh, you safe there as yet in your native land! could you see behind the trenches of the enemy, could you see what lurks in the air above the camps of the enemy, you would even pity the enemy. I may tell you that many out there are stark raving mad.

When human beings, invoking the powers of hate, send such hell-fumes to choke and torture their fellow-beings, they have ceased to be quite human.

I, who see their souls, am sick with horror. It is perhaps well that you are alone now, for I may tell you things which you can best endure alone.

Were it not for the work which you have to do in future, were it not for this work and that which is to follow, I should take you out and away from the world for good, as far as this life is concerned. * * *

But you must endure to the end, as I shall endure to the end; for you have work to do.

Those who say that all is well in Germany lie in their throats, or they are hypnotized by the lie that holds Germany to the belief that she can conquer.

Could hell conquer heaven all souls would be destroyed. Should hate conquer now the world would be broken asunder.

Hate! You know not the meaning of the word. Hate of England, hate of America, hate of Italy! The race that inspired this war is poisoned to the last molecule with hate. Babes imbibe it with their mothers’ milk and their stomachs turn sour. Children see it in their parents’ eyes, and shrink away in fear of their own source. No, you know not the meaning of hate.

On the poison gases borne by the east wind there came across to me a demon with no eyes. Where did he come from? From some subterranean hell where no light is, and therefore no need for eyes. Could I draw, I could make you see him; but words were devised to express those things which are known in the experience of the race, and no one who has seen such things has used language to describe them. Groping his way, that astral monster fastened himself upon a human victim, a prisoner in the hands of the French--one who had spit at his keepers in the madness of hate.

No, I must not tell you what followed; but the astral soul of the prisoner went out of his body and remained out.

This attempt to tell the world what I know now is like trying to play Beethoven on a penny whistle. I feel as a mathematician would feel should he set himself down to teach addition to small children. I dare not tell you more than I do, for you could not contain it.

The world is old, and the world deemed itself wise, and the world has come to this!

There are many earnest souls who desire experience in the astral world. I have heard one say in your presence that a certain attack was “only astral.” I listened, and said no word.

Do you know what the astral world is, you who seek knowledge of it? The astral world is the world of _feeling_, the world of emotion, the world of love and hate. The astral world at this time is so thick with evil passions that one could cut it with a knife. It is often cut with knives now, with bayonets, and the crowding demons suffer from contact with the steel. “Only astral!” The astral world above New York, awful as you know it to be, is nothing to the astral world above those battlefields. Keep away! You can do no good there. If possible, go up among the mountains and seek in the pure breath of the pine-trees healing from the poison of the astral world above New York. Go there and stay there until the pressure is exhausted. You can do no good either where you are.

I can write better in the pure air of the pine woods. Get away from the poison fumes of unneutral New York, for devils ride on the winds of hate, and you are not to be destroyed by them.

You have work to do in the future.

_May 27._

LETTER XLV

THE SUPERMAN

IN one of the upper regions of the astral world--not in the region of pure mind but near it--I met a man last night who passed to and fro with his head bowed in thought.

“What troubles you, friend?” I asked, as I stood before him.

He paused in his restless walk and gazed at me.

“Who are you?” he enquired, listlessly.

“I am a Judge,” I answered.

His eyes brightened with interest.

“You must have come at the call of my thought,” he said, “for I have need of a Judge.”

“On whom do you wish me to pass judgment?” I asked, half smiling at his strange words.

“I would like you to pass judgment on me.”

“And your offence?”

“My offence--if it is an offence, and on that you shall give your opinion--is having led a nation to its undoing.”

“With malice aforethought?” I queried.

“With malice, perhaps,” he answered, “but not in the sense of your question. I never believed they had spirit enough to believe me.”

“You pique my curiosity,” I said. “Who are ‘they?’ and in what did they believe you?”

“They are the Germans,” he answered, “the Germans whom I despised, and they believed my theory that man becomes supreme by doing what he wills to do.”

“And the devil take the hindmost?”

“Yes, and the devil take the hindmost.”

He bent on me his sombre eyes, and I waited for his words.

“What a folk those Germans are!” he said. “Whatever they do, they do _too_ thoroughly. One cannot trust them with a great truth.”

“They do seem to have systematized you into the ground,” I answered.

“I wanted to make them gods,” he complained, “and I have made them devils.”

“God only can make gods,” I said. “Perhaps you were too ambitious.”

“Humph! Perhaps I was too confiding.”

“Hermeticism is safer,” I suggested. “You told them far too much.”

“Or far too little, maybe.”

“In how many volumes?”

“Go ask the librarians. Not the foreign ones--they bind my works in packages of salable size.”

“And how can I help you?” I asked.

“Judge me.”

“While you prosecute and defend yourself?”

“Who else is fit, either to prosecute or defend me?”

“Go on with the prosecution.”

“I have corrupted a whole people, and led them to their ruin.”

“Elaborate the charge.”

“I thought to remedy their spinelessness, and following me with characteristic thoroughness, they have become _all spine_; they have neither heart nor bowels.”

“Continue,” I said.

“I preached Beyond Man. They have practised below man.”

“So far,” I interrupted, “you have prosecuted them, not yourself.”

“How can I charge myself without charging them?” he demanded.

“Then I will step down from the bench,” I said, “and talk with you man to man.”

“I am glad you didn’t say soul to soul.”

“Oh, man is good enough for me! As I said before, you were too ambitious.”

“Yes, too ambitious for man, too sick of man, too much in love with what man might become!”

“We have come already to the defence,” I said.

“The smell of the court is still about you,” he growled.

“You asked me to be your judge.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“I am sorry for you,” I said.

He smiled a sad and searching smile.

“You seem to have both heart and bowels,” he observed.

“And you have been too long alone,” I replied. “You have lost your gift of words. Shall I prosecute, defend _and_ judge you? You can interrupt me whenever you like.”

“Go on,” he assented.

“You were born under a restless star,” I began. “You followed heroes; they disappointed you by being men. Then you made self your hero, and that disappointed you most of all.”

“You seem to know all about me.”

“That is the glory and the shame of your greatness, that one knows all about you.”

“I deny it! You do _not_ know all about me.”

“What is it that we do not know?”

“You do not know how I loved man!”

“You spoke of him with contempt.”

“That he might rise to Beyond Man.”

“Oh! And drown the children on the _Lusitania_, and hack his way through Belgium, and turn every friend against him, and be the curse of the planet!”

He raised an arresting finger.

“You are speaking of the Germans,” he said.

“They are the only ones who have followed your philosophy to its logical conclusion.”

“And you taunt me with that?”

“I taunt you with nothing. I am stating facts. It was you who taunted them--to their undoing.”

“I only preached Beyond Man.”

“So far beyond man that man misunderstood you.”

“Is that my fault?”

“Whose else?”

“Not theirs?”

“Not altogether theirs. You hated too much. You taught them to hate man.”

“I taught them to hate all that was not Beyond Man.”

“But man is not Beyond Man, and so you taught them to hate man.”

“But they themselves are not Beyond Man!”

“They aspire to be. You taught them to aspire to be. They believed themselves Beyond Man, beyond good and evil. You taught chemistry to babes and sucklings, and they have blown up the nursery of the world.”

“I wanted only to teach them.”

“You should have begun with the a-b-c.”

“And what do you think is the a-b-c of Beyond Man?” he asked.

“The a is love, the b is humility, the c is truth,” I answered.

“And why did I not teach them love, humility and truth?”

“You knew not love, humility and truth.”

“I knew not love?”

“You knew not love.”

“And I knew not humility?”

“Your arrogance is a by-word.”

“And I knew not truth?”

“You knew but half the truth, and half the truth is not truth, as half an apple is not an apple.”

“Do you think I taught them falsehood?”

“The supreme falsehood, that _they_ could be Beyond Man. They are not ready for Beyond Man.”

“But man must be surpassed!”

“Man must surpass himself,” I answered. “You see, there is a difference.”

“What should I have taught them?”

“That Beyond Man is the servant of man, not the bully and the tyrant.”

“But they would not have understood.”

“Be not too sure of that. Some few have understood the Son of Man.”

“Oh, him!”

“Whom you repudiated.”

“But he taught men to be slaves!”

“A good servant maketh a good master, and he that is greatest among you let him be the servant of all.”

“Oh, if you are going to quote Scripture--”

“I quote _the_ Beyond Man.”

“And you believe----”

“I believe that you repudiated the only _well-known_ example of your own ideal.”

“And you also believe----”

“Yes, I also believe that you went mad because you saw too late that all your teaching was a lie. I believe that you had not the courage to repudiate yourself, and so surpass yourself; so surpass yourself and become yourself Beyond Man.”

“Then you think I knew?”

“I know that you knew. I know that you had a vision of Him, that you saw where you yourself had failed to understand, and that you would not acknowledge your own new understanding--which came too late.”

“You know too much,” he said.

“You asked me to be your judge,” I retorted.

“But not my executioner.”

“You have been your own executioner, and the executioner of your people.”

“My people!” His tone was scornful.

“Did I not say that you had no love?” I demanded.

“And what do you now bid me do?”

“Go back to the earth, and teach mankind how man can surpass himself. Go back to the earth, and teach men to follow the carpenter’s Son whom you taught them to despise. Go back to Germany, and repudiate yourself.”

“And how shall I go back?”

“In another body, of course, a clean and wholesome body, which you are to keep clean.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know very well what I mean! I have told you that you had no love. You had only fastidiousness, and arrogance, and the desire for sensation.”

“You have set me a hard task,” he said.

“Eternity is long,” I replied, “and the new Germany will have need of your new teaching.”

“Shall I thank you?” he asked.

“There is no need. It is I who thank you for not appealing from my decision.”

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” I repeated.

And the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche passed on. Was it toward the gate of rebirth?

_June 1._

LETTER XLVI

THE ENTERING WEDGE

AFTER our writing of last night, in which I told you of the tortured soul who asked my judgment on a course of teaching which had corrupted a nation, I went back to the battle line in France. (The Germans cannot sink me with their torpedoes.)

Passing slowly along on the German side, I saw again the tall majestic form, dark-veiled about the head, which I described to you in a previous letter.

This time I hailed him, without waiting for him to hail me.

“How goes your work?” I asked.

He threw back the veil which covered him, and I saw the dark and splendid face, marked deep by thought and evil.

“My work goes as it goes,” he answered. “And what have you been doing?”

“Writing to the world this evening,” I replied.

He laughed.

“Have you been writing about peace?”

“Not this time. I have been writing about a conversation I had with a great and troubled soul.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You know, do you? Were you listening?”

“Through my long-distance telephone.”

“Brilliant invention, the telephone,” I observed. “Did you inspire the invention?”

“I? Oh, no! I worked against it.”

“And why?”

“It is not well that man should know too much.”

“But when man makes discoveries, notwithstanding your efforts to hinder him, you attempt to use those discoveries against him, do you not?”

“Of course.”

“You interest me,” I said. “And were you interested by my conversation with the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche?”

“More interested than you can imagine, until I tell you why.”

“And you will tell me why?”

“There is no reason for my not telling you. I am frank with those who see through me.”

“Why don’t you teach that to the Germans?”

“Because it would spoil my game. I want to destroy them after I have used them, and if they should turn frank, they would be so thorough in their frankness that they would disarm the indignant world.”

“They are frank enough in their brutality,” I said.

“Oh, yes! But that is another matter. Should they be frank in their repentance, the world would forgive them.”

“But what of Nietzsche?” I questioned.

“Only this, that it was I who inspired him.”

“You did your work thoroughly.”

“I do my work as thoroughly as it can be done.”

“Tell me more,” I urged.

“What a worker was lost in you,” he exclaimed, “when you chose good for your standard!”

“But I am an excellent worker,” I insisted. “I have even balked some of your work.”

He laughed, a quick, sharp laugh.

“Don’t think that I care too much for that,” he said. “There is more than one road for me. If you block the door, I can go in by the window.”

“And how did you go in to Nietzsche?”

“Sometimes by one way, sometimes by another. He only locked his door against man, and you see I also am Beyond Man.”

“I perceived that at our first meeting. He who goes beyond man must make the choice between good and evil.”

“There is no fooling you,” he said, “and so I no longer try. Yes, it was I who inspired Nietzsche to preach Beyond Man to the Germans, who could only choose evil when they believed themselves strong.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

For answer, he asked a question:

“Did you ever play chess?”

“Often, in many lives,” I answered.

“Did you have an interest in the game?”

“A great interest.”

“Did you play for stakes?”

“No.”

“Then what interested you?”

“Why, the game.”

“Of course,” he said. “That is how I enjoy my game. I play to win, if I can. When I do not win, I have had the pleasure of the game.”

“And you played with that great man’s soul?”

“As a cat plays with a mouse. I found in him an earnest spirit, with a sore spot in his head and in his heart. He was an easy one.”

“How did you go about it?”

“By the usual method.”

“And that is?”

“Flattery.”

“And he did not smell a rat?”

“The rats were perfumed. He is an aesthete.”

“Do you always perfume the rats?”

“It isn’t always necessary. I perfumed yours.”

“Yes,” I said, “with the patchouli of peace. But I have a keen scent.”

“Yes, the Others have taught you too well.”

“Did Nietzsche ever see you as I see you?”

“He saw my distinguished face, and he felt the thrill of my power, and he envied and desired to be like me. It is great sport when these earnest mortals are ambitious to emulate me!”

“And so you taught him Beyond Man?”

“Yes, and I taught him to despise the One who was really Beyond Man.”

“Then you are not really Beyond Man yourself?”

“My head is. My other members are nearer the earth.”

“Notwithstanding the dignity of your presence?”

“Oh, there is a dignity in the earth and in what belongs to the earth!”

“Did the German philosopher ever know you for what you are?”

“Yes, toward the end, but then it was too late to undo my work.”

“Then also at the end,” I exclaimed, “he saw the two forms of Beyond Man, you and the Christ!”

“Yes, he saw. The seeing drove him mad.”

“And you have no remorse for your work?”

“Remorse? What is that?”

“Remorse is an emotion which men feel when they are conscious of having done evil.”

“An emotion that _men_ feel,” he repeated. “But I only feel those emotions of men which give me pleasure in the feeling.”

“Such as----”

“You are really too curious and inquisitive!”

“Granted, my curiosity and my inquisitiveness,” I said. “But it interests me, this labor of a lifetime, a man’s lifetime, to make him an instrument through which _all this_ could be produced,” and I indicated by a gesture the battle line beneath us.

His eyes were brilliant with fire as he answered:

“What is the lifetime of a man in comparison to the glory of all this? One might labor a thousand years and produce nothing in comparison with this!”

“It pleases you then, this slaughter?”

“What a trifling question! It gratifies me, glorifies me, exalts me--all this carnage of battle brought forth by me and my kind.”

“And did you have all this in mind while you were preparing one man to corrupt a nation by his writings?”

“Yes. He was the one perfect instrument. None other could have served our purpose so well--ambitious, dissatisfied, aristocratic, arrogant, unloving in the broader sense, capable of infatuation and hence of disenchantment, and last but not least, with eyes open to the vision.”

“The vision of you?”

“Yes. He saw me first in dreams, and admired me, and desired to emulate me.”

“And then you spoke to him of Beyond Man?”