And Khalid goes on limping, drooling, alassing, to the end. After dinner he is introduced to his “poor dear Misfortune” by his Syrian friend. But being with Ahmed Bey he can not remain this evening. On the following day, however, he is invited to lunch; and on the terrace facing the sea, they pass the afternoon discussing various subjects. Mrs. Gotfry is surprised how a Syrian of Khalid’s mind can not see the beauties of Babism, or Bahaism, as it is now called, and the lofty spirituality of the Bab. But she forgives him his lack of faith, gives him her card, and invites him to her home, if he ever returns to the United States.
Now, maugre the fact that, in a postscript to this Letter, Khalid closes with these words, “And what have I to do with priests and priestesses?” we can not but harbour a suspicion that his “Union and Progress” tour is bound to have more than a political significance. By ill or good hap those words are beginning to assume a double meaning; and maugre all efforts to the contrary, the days must soon unfold the twofold tendency and result of the “Union and Progress” ideas of Khalid.
VI
Revolutions Within and Without
“Even Carlyle can be longwinded and shortsighted on occasions. ‘Once in destroying the False,’ says he, ‘there was a certain inspiration.’ And always there is, to be sure, my Master. For the world is not Europe, and the final decision on Who Is and What Is To Rule, was not delivered by the French Revolution. The Orient, the land of origination and prophecy, must yet solve for itself this eternal problem of the Old and New, the False and True. And whether by Revolutions, Speculations, or Constitutions, ancient Revelation will be purged and restored to its original pristine purity: the superannuated lumber that accumulated around it during centuries of apathy, fatalism, and sloth, must go: the dust and mould and cobwebs of the Temple will be swept away. Indeed, ‘a war must be eternally waged on evils eternally renewed.’ The genius of destruction has done its work, you say, O my esteemed Master? and there is nothing more to destroy? The gods might say this of other worlds than ours. In Europe, as in Asia, there is to be considered and remembered: if this mass of things we call humanity and civilisation were as healthy as the eternal powers would have them, the healthiest of the race would not be constantly studying and dissecting our social and political ills.
“In a certain sense, we are healthier today than the Europeans; but our health is that of the slave and not the master: it is of more benefit to others than it is to ourselves. We are doomed to be the drudges of neurasthenic, psychopathic, egoistic masters, if we do not open our minds to the light of science and truth. ‘Every age has its Book,’ says the Prophet. But every book, if it aspires to be a guide to life, must contain of the eternal truth what was in the one that preceded it. We can not afford to let aught of this die. Leave the principal original altar in the Temple, and destroy all the others. Light on that altar the torch of science, which the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing today? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes, but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste not a drop.
“O my Brothers, let us cease rejoicing in the Dustur; for at heart we know no freedom, nor truth, nor order. We elect our representatives to Parliament, but not unlike the Europeans; we borrow from France what the deeper and higher mind of France no longer believes; we imitate England in what England has long since discarded; but our Books of Revelation, which made France and Germany and England what they are, and in which is the divine essence of truth and right and freedom, we do not rightly understand. A thousand falsehoods are cluttered around the truth to conceal it from us. I call you back, O my Brothers, to the good old virtues of our ancestors. Without these the Revolution will miscarry and our Dustur will not be worth a date-stone. Our ancestors—they never bowed their proud neck to tyranny, whether represented in an autocrat or in a body of autocrats; they never betrayed their friends; they never soiled their fingers with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafés and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough of these today.
“Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind—these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. But through what thick, obscene growths we must pass today, through what cactus hedges and thistle-fields we must penetrate, before we rise again to
