Chapter VIII: Part 8

Then his eyes fell on a little toy cupboard, which lay in a paper-basket. There occurred to his mind the faint recollection of a moment like a Christmas evening, a child's eyes, little white milk teeth, the first musical-box which the little one played to the Christmas-tree, the rocking-horse, and her dolls Rosa and Brita.

He opened the toy cupboard; it contained no musical-box, but a phonograph, very small and simple, a toy which could only utter a single word! He did not remember which. The key lay close by; he wound it up and set it going. At first it hummed like a bee; it did not sting, however, but whispered the only word it could, "Darling!"

And in her voice! Yes, she had spoken it into the phonograph, though he had forgotten it.

"Darling!"

Then he cried to God, then he raged against fate, and then he fell to the ground! And as he lay there he could only lament, "If they were at least only dead! If...."

For they were not dead. They lived.

That was the thing which could not be altered nor atoned for, and all these things were not relics; they were the flotsam and jetsam of a wreck.

=The Sculptor.=--Even when a man has found a masterpiece of creation in his wife, he still tries to improve away little faults in design and colour, in order to make his work of art as free from faults as possible. His little wife does not always understand that, and often becomes irritable.

"You only see faults in me."

"On the contrary, you are for me the most beautiful that exists, but I want to have you perfect. You should, for example, never be angry, for then your beautiful eyes grow ugly, and I suffer. You must not dress in verdigris-colour, for that does not suit you, and you look poisonous, so that I turn my looks away." And so on.

Eating is not beautiful, and to watch one's darling stowing away food in her beautiful mouth, which ought to speak beautiful words, smile bewitchingly, and purse up her tender lips to a kind of flower-bud which one inhales in a kiss--that may be downright repugnant! Therefore one is accustomed to hide this unseemly function under light conversation, and forgets what the beautiful mouth is occupied with.

"You are always finding fault! Say something nice for once."

"Can you not read in my eyes that I admire you; I do not generally say it first with my lips. But I want you to be perfect. That is the whole matter!"

=On the Threshold at Five Years of Age.=--A certain Dr. Ogle states in his statistics that in six-and-twenty years four cases of suicide have taken place among children between five and ten years old. When I read that, "between five and ten years old," I thought, "No! between five and ten! Is that possible? And the reason of it?" I could not think more, but I saw one scene, two scenes, three scenes....

The little girl was five years old; she was playing in the room near her mother; children must have something to do, but the mother was nervous, because she had been going into gaiety and flirting beyond measure.

"Don't rock the horse; it makes mamma's head ache."

The little one took the cat, and pinched it, so that it mewed.

"Don't do that, child; mamma is ill."

The child was good, and did not wish to be troublesome. She sat down at the table, and was silent in order not to irritate mamma.

But a child's little body cannot be still; nor ought it indeed; it moves of itself. Probably the child must have been singing a song to itself, for the little unruly feet beat time against the legs of the chair.

The mother started up, "Go to Ellen in the kitchen, disobedient child!"

The child was not disobedient; doubly wounded in her little heart, she went into the kitchen, good and obedient. But immediately afterwards she reappeared in the doorway, "Ellen was washing up."

There stood the child on the threshold, turned out and repulsed from both sides, and could not go anywhere. She looked like a despairing child, tearless, but with all the terror of the lonely in her face. Dumb, turned to stone, as though in the whole world there were no place for her, as though no one would have her, and she knew not why. At this moment she really stood on the threshold of life, for she suddenly brightened up, and approached the open window, which was high above the ground.

To the honour of the mother, I must confess that she has described this scene to me with the greatest remorse; it ended by her springing up, taking the child in her arms, and playing with her till the sun went down.

"If anything had happened to the child, I should have lived in a hell of self-reproach! And now I think; for every moment which I had not devoted to my child, for every little joy which I had denied her, I would, if it had departed, weep my soul out of my body; I would plunge into space and seek the child under the stars in order to beg her forgiveness, if I could be forgiven...."

To think of it! At five years old, on the threshold of life!

=Goethe on Christianity and Science.=--As I waded in Professor Delitzsch's dung-heap,[1] I reached at last his third lecture. In the last lines of the last page I found a pearl, which I will set, in order to show it to those who misuse poor Goethe's name for their heathenish propaganda. In a conversation with Eckermann, on March 11, 1832, that is, eleven days before his death, Goethe spoke these ever memorable words: "Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it shines in the Gospel."

That was the fruit of a life of eighty years spent in seeking God and His Son. After long useless detours, Goethe found it again at the end of his life, as is apparent from the conclusion of the second part of _Faust_. I will only add some words of Goethe's on superstition, as it is not comprehended by the apelings: "Superstition is an inheritance of powerful, earnest, progressive natures; unbelief is peculiarly characteristic of weak, petty, retrogressive men." Such is unbelief as Goethe said in 1808.

[Footnote 1: The work entitled _Babel und Bibel_.]

=Summa Summarum.=--Since destructive science has proved itself so hollow, consisting as it does of guesses, false inferences, self-deceit, hair-splittings, why does the State support these armies of conjecturers and soothsayers?

Rousseau's first prize-essay regarding the curse of culture and learning should be repondered.

A Descartes ought to return and teach men to doubt the untruths of the sciences.

Another Kant might write a new _Critique of Pure Reason_ and re-establish the doctrine of the Categorical Imperative and Postulate, which, however, is already to be found in the Ten Commandments and the Gospels.

And a prophet must be born to teach men the simple meaning of life in a few words, though it has been already so well summed up: "Fear God, and keep His commandments," or "Pray and work."

All the errors and mistakes which we have made should serve to instil into us a lively hatred of evil, and to impart to us fresh impulses to good; these we can take with us to the other side, where they can first bloom and bear fruit.

That is the true meaning of life, at which the obstinate and impenitent cavil in order to escape trouble.

Pray, _but_ work; suffer, _but_ hope; keeping both the earth and the stars in view. Do not try and settle permanently, for it is a place of pilgrimage; not a home, but a halting-place. Seek truth, for it is to be found, but only in one place, with Him who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Zones of the Spirit, by August Strindberg