No More Learning

If he held a heresy so singular, I
cannot understand how no rumours of it came to the ears of Dante; and
Dante made no peace with the enemies of the Church. '

'Joachim of Flora acknowledged openly the authority of the Church, and
even asked that all his published writings, and those to be published
by his desire after his death, should be submitted to the censorship of
the Pope. He considered that those whose work was to live and not to
reveal were children and that the Pope was their Father; but he taught
in secret that certain others, and in always increasing numbers, were
elected, not to live, but to reveal that hidden substance of God which
is colour and music and softness and a sweet odour; and that these
have no father but the Holy Spirit. Just as poets and painters and
musicians labour at their works, building them with lawless and lawful
things alike, so long as they embody the beauty that is beyond the
grave, these children of the Holy Spirit labour at their moments with
eyes upon the shining substance on which Time has heaped the refuse of
creation; for the world only exists to be a tale in the ears of coming
generations; and terror and content, birth and death, love and hatred,
and the fruit of the Tree, are but instruments for that supreme art
which is to win us from life and gather us into eternity like doves
into their dove-cots.

'I shall go away in a little while and travel into many lands, that I
may know all accidents and destinies, and when I return, will write
my secret law upon those ivory tablets, just as poets and romance
writers have written the principles of their art in prefaces; and when
I know what principle of life, discoverable at first by imagination
and instinct, I am to express, I will gather my pupils that they may
discover their law in the study of my law, as poets and painters
discover their own art of expression by the study of some Master. I
know nothing certain as yet but this--I am to become completely alive,
that is, completely passionate, for beauty is only another name for
perfect passion. I shall create a world where the whole lives of men
shall be articulated and simplified as if seventy years were but one
moment, or as they were the leaping of a fish or the opening of a
flower. '

He was pacing up and down, and I listened to the fervour of his words
and watched the excitement of his gestures with not a little concern.
I had been accustomed to welcome the most singular speculations, and
had always found them as harmless as the Persian cat who half closes
her meditative eyes and stretches out her long claws before my fire.
But now I would battle in the interests of orthodoxy, even of the
commonplace: and yet could find nothing better to say than: 'It is
not necessary to judge everyone by the law, for we have also Christ's
commandment of love. '

He turned and said, looking at me with shining eyes: 'Jonathan Swift
made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbour as
himself. '

'At any rate, you cannot deny that to teach so dangerous a doctrine is
to accept a terrible responsibility. '

'Leonardo da Vinci,' he replied, 'has this noble sentence: "The hope
and desire of returning home to one's former state is like the moth's
desire for the light; and the man who with constant longing awaits
each new month and new year, deeming that the things he longs for are
ever too late in coming, does not perceive that he is longing for his
own destruction. " How, then, can the pathway which will lead us into
the heart of God be other than dangerous? Why should you, who are no
materialist, cherish the continuity and order of the world as those do
who have only the world?
You do not value the writers who will express
nothing unless their reason understands how it will make what is called
the right more easy; why, then, will you deny a like freedom to the
supreme art, the art which is the foundation of all arts? Yes, I shall
send out of this chapel saints, lovers, rebels and prophets: souls who
will surround themselves with peace, as with a nest made with grass;
and others over whom I shall weep. The dust shall fall for many years
over this little box; and then I shall open it; and the tumults, which
are, perhaps, the flames of the last day, shall come from under the
lid. '

I did not reason with him that night, because his excitement was great
and I feared to make him angry; and when I called at his house a few
days later, he was gone and his house was locked up and empty. I have
deeply regretted my failure both to combat his heresy and to test the
genuineness of his strange book. Since my conversion I have indeed done
penance for an error which I was only able to measure after some years.


II

I was walking along one of the Dublin quays, on the side nearest the
river, about ten years after our conversation, stopping from time
to time to turn over the books upon an old bookstall, and thinking,
curiously enough, of the terrible destiny of Michael Robartes, and his
brotherhood; when I saw a tall and bent man walking slowly along the
other side of the quay. I recognized, with a start, in a lifeless mask
with dim eyes, the once resolute and delicate face of Owen Aherne. I
crossed the quay quickly, but had not gone many yards before he turned
away, as though he had seen me, and hurried down a side street; I
followed, but only to lose him among the intricate streets on the north
side of the river. During the next few weeks I inquired of everybody
who had once known him, but he had made himself known to nobody; and I
knocked, without result, at the door of his old house; and had nearly
persuaded myself that I was mistaken, when I saw him again in a narrow
street behind the Four Courts, and followed him to the door of his
house.

I laid my hand on his arm; he turned quite without surprise; and indeed
it is possible that to him, whose inner life had soaked up the outer
life, a parting of years was a parting from forenoon to afternoon.
He stood holding the door half open, as though he would keep me from
entering; and would perhaps have parted from me without further words
had I not said: 'Owen Aherne, you trusted me once, will you not trust
me again, and tell me what has come of the ideas we discussed in this
house ten years ago? --but perhaps you have already forgotten them. '

'You have a right to hear,' he said, 'for since I have told you the
ideas, I should tell you the extreme danger they contain, or rather the
boundless wickedness they contain; but when you have heard this we must
part, and part for ever, because I am lost, and must be hidden! '

I followed him through the paved passage, and saw that its corners were
choked, and the pictures gray, with dust and cobwebs; and that the
dust and cobwebs which covered the ruby and sapphire of the saints on
the window had made it very dim. He pointed to where the ivory tablets
glimmered faintly in the dimness, and I saw that they were covered with
small writing, and went up to them and began to read the writing.