L. Lind-af-Hageby

“ But we—how proud I am of that “we”!—who have chosen hard labour on the mountain know something which the mere visitors (though they be members of many Alpine Clubs) know not. We have a sense of home which no other habitation can impart—a passionate love of the soil, a unity with the little patch that is our own, bringing joys undimmed by any descriptions of other-worldly possessions. Our trees may be wrecked by an avalanche, our garden plot may be obliterated by a land slip; the stone walls we build up in defiance of the snow are always pulled down by mountain sprites. ”

“ You talk of Divine guidance and the sanctification of life. How do you respect life and the teaching of Jesus Christ? Jesus said, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' You, His professed followers, bless war and its 109 orgies of hate. You stand by hypocritically thanking God for your own sanctity, whilst Christians drench battlefields with the blood of Christians. The abolition of war is the reform to which you should all bend your lives and direct your prayers. ”

“ Do culture and morality grow like flowers in a garden, obedient to the will and taste of the gardener, but destined to fade and die with the turn of the season? Do not 92 the civilizations of the past with their perfection of knowledge and art mock our faith in the permanency of human achievement? Babylon and Egypt, Athens and Rome carried the seed of corruption within their husk of glory. They had elaborate systems of social organization, of laws, of elucidation of the mysteries of life. They saw beauty and pursued it, in colour and sound, by word and chisel. ”

“ War is seen to be but a symptom, a horrible outbreak of malignant forces, which we have nurtured and harboured in times of peace. These forces permeate the very structure of society. A new and fierce light beats on our slums, our industrialism, on the old divisions of class and quality, on the standards of comfort and success. Poverty, sickness, and child mortality—the whole hideous war of Mammon through which millions of our fellow-creatures are condemned to the perpetual service of Want—can no longer conveniently be left outside the operations of our religious consciousness. ”

“ He had the nature-mystic's thirst for a touch of the untamed power of Nature, for communion with the magnificence of death, shaking the mountain with wind and falling snow, with leaping rock and earth-eating 19 torrent. Such would fain die that they may experience the joys of being possessed by Nature. For they have entered on the marriage of life and death, heaven and hell, and out of the roaring cataclysm of destruction they rise winged with a new life. ”

“ Divine presences revealed themselves in brook and cornfield, on mountain-tops and in the faces of animals. Reformers of all kinds were amongst them: men of the sword with dreams of Empire and conquest for the good of the nation, priests who demanded sacrifice in the name of a god, orators who by skilful laying of words taught the art of philosophic calm. Problems faced them, social iniquities troubled them; they grappled with morals and strove to build up a better and happier future.
I was sinking into a reverie over the fall of Babylon and the problems of recurrence when Marie-Joseph arrived. ”

“ The study of psychic faculties is above all a study of consciousness. Maeterlinck speaks of “the gravest problem that can thrill mankind, the knowledge of the future.” The knowledge of the present, of the hidden powers and graces within our souls, is even more thrilling. I can imagine no science of greater importance, no investigation more worthy of devotion. The profundity of the problems is but an incitement. We have not hesitated to tabulate the stars, to weave precious conjectures as to their courses and destinies. Is the human soul more remote and inscrutable? ”

“ As I search for more self-revelation in my books by mountain-lovers, I find myself observed through the window. It is only a cow on her way to the hollow tree into which the water courses out of the earth. But the cow brings me back to the strenuous Alpine life, and I find myself concluding, as I replace the books on their shelves, that I do not care why men climb so long as they climb in spirit and body. ”

“ One is war and the other is peace. We may affectionately survey the hospitals and orphanages, the institutions for the blind and the mute, the asylums and the charities with which each belligerent country pays tribute to the virtues of the merciful life. Whatever we do, we cannot dispel the darkness by a frenzied denunciation of war. The monster is not outside ourselves; it is created and sustained by the hardness of our hearts and the obtuseness of our brains. The responsibility is ours in war as well as in peace. ”

“ The mountains sought her by their beauty and called forth the true mystic's ecstasy of communion. Mystics of all times and all religions have found inspiration and strength of spirit on the hilltops; they have forsaken the haunts of men for the silence of the heights, preparing themselves by meditation and self-purification to receive the Beatific Vision. They have gone up alone in anguish and uncertainty, they have come down inspired bearers of transcendental tidings to men. These messengers of the spirit have known the joys of illumination and the secret of the strength of the hills. ”

“ Negroes and negresses who have given offence to white people need harbour no illusions concerning the restraining influences of our Western civilization.
Like a mountain in eruption the war has thrown up the sordid passions, the hidden reserves of destructive hate and cruelty in our common human soul. In war all things are permissible. To murder, to maim, to 90 destroy, to deceive, to make hideous waste of fertile land, to cause weeping and wailing amongst the innocent—these are the necessities of warfare. They are the commonplace incidents of war. ”

“ The rejection of the crude theories of spiritualism is not altogether the result of wilful blindness. In our innermost minds, in the region beyond the grasp of the brain and its ready generalizations, we hunger for inexpressible reality, for life beyond the stars. We have eaten of the tree of sense-knowledge: we have seen, heard, felt, tasted. We want a reality above the traffic and deception of the senses. Vaguely, but insistently we feel the call to the life of the spirit, and when its definition eludes us, we prefer silence and faith. ”

“ For the darkness with which we are afflicted lay heavily around me, and seemed greater even than the blindness of the eyes. The war has brought the mystery of death to our hearts with pitiless insistence. Every bullet that finds its mark kills more than the soldier who falls. Ties of love and friendship are shattered hour by hour and day by day, as the guns of war roar out their message of destruction. ”

“ Of all generalizations—false and semi-false—the one dividing human beings into those who are content with the world as it is and those who wish to reform it is the most comforting to me. No division of sheep and goats was ever more blatantly simple. Some are born dull-witted, conservative, insensitive, unimaginative—they cling passive to the old planet, content to be whirled round in the purposeless dance of the heavenly bodies. ”

“ The war has not taught us what civilization is. But it has taught us what it is not. We know now that it is not mechanical ingenuity or clever inventions or commercialism carried to its utmost perfection. Civilization is not railways or telephones or vast cities or material prosperity. A satisfactory definition of civilization is well-nigh impossible. The past has born a bewildering number of different types, and it is a matter of personal taste where we place the line of demarcation between barbarism and culture. ”

“ The advocates of the theory that nations and nationalities are eternally distinct and separate can see no analogy of unity in the simple examples of everyday life. They tell us conclusively that England is England and France is France, and our humble retort that we know as much and something besides is silenced by the further information that each nation has a soul that will tolerate no interference from other souls. They forget, our apostles of the creed of separateness, that the States of to-day are built up on a vast mixture of races and nationalities. ”

“ The general destructiveness of war is patent to everybody. The destruction of life, of property, of trade, strikes the most superficial observer as inevitable consequences of a state of war. At the outbreak of hostilities most of us foresaw that the uprooting would not stop short at the sacrifices of livelihood and occupation which were demanded by military necessities. We expected a sweeping revision of our habits, our prejudices, our conventions. We have got infinitely more than we expected. ”

“ Democracy is finding her international unity. A great many wars of the past are recognized as having been, not only unnecessary, but positively foolish. The force of an idea is threatening to dispel the force of arms. The idea which rises dominant out of the European war is the conviction that nations have a right to choose their own allegiance or independence; that there must be freedom instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is drawn by affection. ”

“ Not only have we made acquaintance with the State—the State as a relentless master of human fate and service; not only have we learnt that individualism—philosophic or commercial—is borne like a bubble on the waters of national tribulation and counts for nothing in the mass of collective effort demanded from us. Industry, commerce, art, learning, science, energy, enthusiasm, every gift and power within the range of human capacity, is 180 requisitioned for the efficient pursuit of war. ”

“ The worst of it is that Mercury does not seem exempt from the general curse of nothingness which seems to brood over all physical existence. There is no stability even in solar systems. Even we puny creatures can divine something of their birth and death. Out of whirling nebulæ suns and planets are born; souls slowly evolve on worlds which were once balls of fire. There are endless diversity and specialization, myriads of creatures rise out of the furnace of life. Some gain ascendancy and lay claim to mental supremacy, to science and religion and the overlordship of the universe. ”

“ We have cajoled and magnified Death until he has outgrown all natural proportions; through centuries of war and preparation for war we have appealed to him to settle our national differences. We have outdone the earthquake and the cyclone in valid claims upon his power and presence; we have outwitted pestilence and famine in our efforts to hold his attention. We, of the twentieth century, have attained mastery in the art of killing. We kill by fire and bursting shell, we kill by mine and gas. ”

“ The same psychic may rise to unaccustomed levels of spiritual clearsight in the presence of a visitor who demands the truth only.
The ladder of psychic development is long and arduous to mount. The number of the climbers steadily diminishes as the top is reached. Here, as elsewhere, there is a common crowd, content with the steps nearest the earth, in morals a faithful reflection of average humanity. They are neither better nor worse, they are merely different. They are the masons of the mind, a race of builders, addicted to a workmanship of their own. ”

“ Your social order, your laws, your constitution, your personal liberties, your lives and those of your children, are thrown to the Juggernaut of war, and yet you continue your futile pursuit of shadows. Without peace there can be no reform. ”

“ There are moments in every life when the ebb of physical force is so low that death seems but a step across the border—a change by which we desire to cure the weariness of thought. The soldier goes into battle charged with youth and life, buoyant with energy of muscle and nerve. Death seizes him at the noontide of life and leaves us blindly groping for other-worldly compensation. ”

“ Comparative studies of the great religions of the world, their past and present forms, do not support the view that civilization is identical with religion. Religions have on many occasions ranged themselves on the side of brute force to the suppression of gentleness and sympathetic tolerance. It is really all a question of the meaning which we attach to the word “religion.” Do we mean the Church, set forms of worship and ceremonial, or do we mean the human craving for spiritual truth with the consequent strife to reach certainty, and, in certainty, peace of soul? ”