Upton Sinclair

“ They know that the veil is not lifted. It is not that for which they seek—life 85is their task, and life only; to behold its endless fruition; to dwell in the beauty of it, to wield power of it; to toil at its whirling loom, to build up palaces of music from it. Ah, my brother, why have you never lived a symphony?”
“These people have no physical life?” I asked.
“Assuredly, they have,” was his answer, “it is a life which does not enter their consciousness—any more than, for instance, the beating of your heart and the renewing of your tissues. ”

“ Then I began once more: “Let me ask you, Daniel; perhaps you do not understand how difficult it is for one mind to believe that it cannot grasp what is in another mind. But this—this knowledge to which you have come—you must surely have come to it by degrees, by a process?” ”

“ I said. “I can make them for you.”
“But they would be of no use to me,” he answered.
“And all your music—you have given it up?”
24“The music I have to do with,” he said, “has long ceased to be music that anyone could play.”
“But, Daniel!” I protested.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Have you never read that Beethoven never heard some of his greatest symphonies? Do you not understand how a musician can comprehend music from a score? And from that, how he can create it in his own mind and enjoy it, without ever writing it down or hearing it?” ”

“ I strive to put into words something that cannot be put into words—but I was like a man groping in utter darkness, and touching something alive. I had fought my way into this unknown land, and everywhere I had gone, so far, the things that I achieved were of my own power, the impulses were those of my own will. ”

“ It is endless—that is the first thing that a man learns about it—it is the very presence of the infinite. And also he learns that it is at his command—that it is no accident, but his being itself; that he has but to call, and it comes; that he has but to knock, and it is opened unto him. It is that for which pilgrims and crusaders have fought, which prophets and saints have sung. And it is that, of course, which is the life 70of music. Music lies nearest to this mystery; to him who understands, it is the living presence of the spirit. ”

“ It was all, I think; always it involved contemplation, the beholding of a universe of being, and the comprehending of it as an utterance of power; and always it was emotion, the flooding of one’s being with an oceantide of joy and exultation; and always it was will—it was the concentration of all the powers of one’s soul in one colossal effort. But 69chiefest of all, I think—and what is hardest even to hint at—it was the fourth, and the highest of the faculties of the mind—it was imagination. ”

“ I toiled at the cave, I played hunter and naturalist. I was busy with my hands, but very seldom was I happy or at peace. For day after day that silent figure roamed here and there before my eyes, and hour 53after hour those strange, silent vigils to the black cavern continued. I grew more and more restless and oppressed, until at last, one night, at the end of a long and exhausting vigil, my impatience reached its climax.
I remember how I sat by his side and caught his hand, like a supplicating child. “Daniel,” I asked, “has it never occurred to you that you are unkind to me?” ”

“ I sat in a state which there is no imagining—I ate nothing for days, I sat for days without moving, until at last there came the climax, a desperate resolve, a mounting up, a battling with unseen forces, a knocking upon unseen doors—and then a sudden rending away of barriers, and the 74inpouring of a sea of life. ”

“ I asked him.
“When you speak of the soul as being infinite,” said Daniel, “you do not mean that it extends merely beyond your thoughts, but you mean that you may heap quantity upon quantity, and multiply quantity by quantity, in any ratio and at any speed you please, and still have infinity before you.”
“You mean that these beings understand what is going on in each other’s mind?”
“They understand all minds as you understand your own. 81It is of the nature of spiritual passion to mingle at a certain stage of intensity, like electricity in the lightning flash. ”

“ As 65I had expected, my violin soon became useless, and, no ship appearing, I perceived in the end that I had to give up that thought, too.
“I have already hinted the grounds of my argument to you. It is my belief that life is its own end, and needs no justification. It is also my belief that each individual soul is a microcosm self-sufficient, and its own excuse for being. ”

“ For the thing I do I can 34no more help doing than I could help the beating of my heart. All the world of love that I might bear to you, or to any other human soul, could no more enable me to stop than it would enable the grass to stop growing. ”

“ The voyage had restored my health, and I had my violin; and when I ascertained that the place sheltered no wild beasts or men, I was myself well content to remain as long as might be necessary. I had no doubt that some ship would appear in the end; and meanwhile there was nothing to trouble me, except the enforced companionship of men who did not understand me. In the end, I escaped from that trouble with the plea that if I took up my residence at the other side of the island I could better watch the sea ”

“ THE OVERMAN
3 The Overman This is the story of Edward ——, as he told it to me only a few days before he died; he told it as he lay half paralysed, and knowing that the hand of death was upon him.
I am by profession a scientist. My story goes back some fifty years, when I was a student. I had one brother, Daniel, five years younger than myself, a musician of extraordinary promise. We lived abroad together for a number of years, 4each pursuing his own work. About my brother, suffice it to say that music to him was everything—love and friendship, ambition and life. ”

“ I could not go with him, so for the first time we parted; and it was twenty years after that before I ever heard of him again.
5It was believed that the ship had been wrecked in the South Seas; and I had given him up for dead many years, when it chanced that, as a man advanced in life, I was travelling as a naturalist in Ceylon, and met an old sailor who had been with my brother, and who told me a strange story—how one boat containing five men, including Daniel, had outlived the storm and landed upon an uninhabited island ”

“ That was in order that he might have to call no man master, and no thing—least of all his own body. And can you not see that a man’s own 28soul is his soul just the same, whether he be on a desert island or in the midst of a city of millions? And that mind, emotion, will—he has the life of his soul to live?”
I sat surprised into silence; then suddenly I felt Daniel’s arm tighten about me. ”

“ I did my best to convince 37myself that solitude and suffering had unhinged my brother’s mind. There is no use telling a scientist that he cannot understand a certain matter, and expecting him to let it rest ”

“ Its movement is the building up of that ecstasy, its complexity is the infiniteness of that vision—all the fulness and the wonder and the glory of it are there.”
I give but my recollection of my brother’s words. He paused again and sat gazing before him. “I do not know,” he said, “how much these metaphors convey to you. ”