Hypatia

which it very probably is⁠—at every mountebank ‘ism’ which ever tumbled and capered on the philosophic tightrope; and they are every one of them dead dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are petitiones principii.⁠ ⁠… Each philosopher begs the question in hand, and then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides himself⁠—on proving it all afterwards. No wonder that his theory fits the universe, when he has first clipped the universe to fit his theory. Have I not tried my hand at many a one⁠—starting, too, no one can deny, with the very minimum of clipping,⁠ ⁠… for I suppose one cannot begin lower than at simple ‘I am I’⁠ ⁠… unless⁠—which is equally demonstrable⁠—at ‘I am not I.’ I recollect⁠—or dream⁠—that I offered that sweet dream, Hypatia, to deduce all things in heaven and earth, from the Astronomics of Hipparchus to the number of plumes in an archangel’s wing, from that one simple proposition, if she would but write me out a demonstration of it first, as some sort of ποῦ στῶ for the apex of my inverted pyramid. But she disdained.⁠ ⁠… People are apt to disdain what they know they cannot do.⁠ ⁠… ‘It was an axiom,’ it was, ‘like one and one making two.’.⁠ ⁠… How cross the sweet dream was, at my telling her that I did not consider that any axiom either, and that one thing and one thing seeming to us to be two things, was no more proof that they really were two, and not three hundred and sixty-five, than a man seeming to be an honest man, proved him not to be a rogue; and at my asking her, moreover, when she appealed to universal experience, how she proved that the combined folly of all fools resulted in wisdom!

“ ‘I am I’ an axiom, indeed! What right have I to say that I am not anyone else? How do I know it? How do I know that there is anyone else for me not to be? I, or rather something, feel a number of sensations, longings, thoughts, fancies⁠—the great devil take them all⁠—fresh ones every moment, and each at war tooth and nail with all the rest; and then on the strength of this infinite multiplicity and contradiction, of which alone I am aware, I am to be illogical enough to stand up, and say, ‘I by myself I,’ and swear stoutly that I am one thing, when all I am conscious of is the devil only knows how many things. Of all quaint deductions from experience, that is the quaintest! Would it not be more philosophical to conclude that I, who never saw or felt or heard this which I call myself, am what I have seen, heard, and felt⁠—and no more and no less⁠—that sensation which I call that horse, that dead man, that jackass, those forty thousand two-legged jackasses who appear to be running for their lives below there, having got hold of this same notion of their being one thing each⁠—as I choose to fancy in my foolish habit of imputing to them the same disease of thought which I find in myself⁠—crucify the word!⁠—The folly of my ancestors⁠—if I ever had any⁠—prevents my having any better expression.⁠ ⁠… Why should I not be all I feel⁠—that sky, those clouds⁠—the whole universe? Hercules! what a creative genius my sensorium must be!⁠—I’ll take to writing poetry⁠—a mock-epic, in seventy-two books, entitled ‘The Universe: or, Raphael Aben-Ezra,’ and take Homer’s Margites for my model. Homer’s? Mine! Why must not the Margites, like everything else, have been a sensation of my own? Hypatia used to say Homer’s poetry was a part of her⁠ ⁠… only she could not prove it⁠ ⁠… but I have proved that the Margites is a part of me⁠ ⁠… not that I believe my own proof⁠—scepticism forbid! Oh, would to heaven that the said whole disagreeable universe were annihilated, if it were only just to settle by fair experiment whether any of master ‘I’ remained when they were gone! Buzzard and dogmatist! And how do you know that that would settle it? And if it did⁠—why need it be settled?⁠ ⁠…

“I daresay there is an answer pat for all this. I could write a pretty one myself in half an hour. But then I should not believe it⁠ ⁠… nor the rejoinder to that⁠ ⁠… nor the demurrer to that again.⁠ ⁠… So.⁠ ⁠… I am both sleepy and hungry⁠ ⁠… or rather, sleepiness and hunger are me. Which is it! Heigh-ho.⁠ ⁠…” and Raphael finished his meditation by a mighty yawn.

This hopeful oration was delivered in a fitting lecture-room. Between the bare walls of a doleful fire-scarred tower in the Campagna of Rome, standing upon a knoll of dry brown grass, ringed with a few grim pines, blasted and black with smoke; there sat Raphael Aben-Ezra, working out the last formula of the great world problem⁠—“Given Self; to find God.” Through the doorless stone archway he could see a long vista of the plain below, covered with broken trees, trampled crops, smoking villas, and all the ugly scars of recent war, far onward to the quiet purple mountains and the silver sea, towards which struggled, far in the distance, long dark lines of moving specks, flowing together, breaking up, stopping short, recoiling back to surge forward by some fresh channel, while now and then a glitter of keen white sparks ran through the dense black masses.⁠ ⁠… The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire of the world⁠—and lost.

“Brave old Sun!” said Raphael, “how merrily he flashes off the sword-blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny spark brings a death-shriek after it! Why should he? It is no concern of his. Astrologers are fools. His business is to shine; and on the whole, he is one of my few satisfactory sensations. How now? This is questionably pleasant!”

As he spoke, a column of troops came marching across the field, straight towards his retreat.

“If these new sensations of mine find me here, they will