Hypatia. or New Foes with an Old Face

‘Say rather, veils, father.’

‘Veils, indeed, which were intended to baffle the rude gaze of the carnal-minded; but still vestibules, through which the enlightened soul might be led up to the inner sanctuary, to the Hesperid gardens and golden fruit of the Timaeus and the oracles.... And for myself, were but those two books left, I care not whether every other writing in the world perished to-morrow.‘[Footnote: This astounding speech is usually attributed to Proclus, Hypatia’s ‘great’ successor.]

‘You must except Homer, father.’

‘Yes, for the herd.... But of what use would he be to them without some spiritual commentary?’

‘He would tell them as little, perhaps, as the circle tells to the carpenter who draws one with his compasses.’

‘And what is the meaning of the circle?’ asked Philammon.

‘It may have infinite meanings, like every other natural phenomenon; and deeper meanings in proportion to the exaltation of the soul which beholds it. But, consider, is it not, as the one perfect figure, the very symbol of the totality of the spiritual world; which, like it, is invisible, except at its circumference, where it is limited by the dead gross phenomena of sensuous matter! and even as the circle takes its origin from one centre, itself unseen,—a point, as Euclid defines it, whereof neither parts nor magnitude can be predicated,—does not the world of spirits revolve round one abysmal being, unseen and undefinable—in itself, as I have so often preached, nothing, for it is conceivable only by the negation of all properties, even of those of reason, virtue, force; and yet, like the centre of the circle, the cause of all other existences?’

‘I see,’ said Philammon; for the moment, certainly, the said abysmal Deity struck him as a somewhat chill and barren notion.... but that might be caused only by the dulness of his own spiritual perceptions. At all events, if it was a logical conclusion, it must be right.

‘Let that be enough for the present. Hereafter you may be—I fancy that I know you well enough to prophesy that you will be—able to recognise in the equilateral triangle inscribed within the circle, and touching it only with its angles, the three supra-sensual principles of existence, which are contained in Deity as it manifests itself in the physical universe, coinciding with its utmost limits, and yet, like it, dependent on that unseen central One which none dare name.’

‘Ah!’ said poor Philammon, blushing scarlet at the sense of his own dulness, ‘I am, indeed, not worthy to have such wisdom wasted upon my imperfect apprehension.... But, if I may dare to ask.... does not Apollonius regard the circle, like all other curves, as not depending primarily on its own centre for its existence, but as generated by the section of any cone by a plane at right angles to its axis?’

‘But must we not draw, or at least conceive a circle, in order to produce that cone? And is not the axis of that cone determined by the centre of that circle?’

Philammon stood rebuked.

‘Do not be ashamed; you have only, unwittingly, laid open another, and perhaps, as deep a symbol. Can you guess what it is?’

Philammon puzzled in vain.

‘Does it not show you this? That, as every conceivable right section of the cone discloses the circle, so in all which is fair and symmetric you will discover Deity, if you but analyse it in a right and symmetric direction?’

‘Beautiful!’ said Philammon, while the old man added—

‘And does it not show us, too, how the one perfect and original philosophy may be discovered in all great writers, if we have but that scientific knowledge which will enable us to extract it?’

‘True, my father: but just now, I wish Philammon, by such thoughts as I have suggested, to rise to that higher and more spiritual insight into nature, which reveals her to us as instinct throughout—all fair and noble forms of her at least—with Deity itself; to make him feel that it is not enough to say, with the Christians, that God has made the world, if we make that very assertion an excuse for believing that His presence has been ever since withdrawn from it.’

‘Christians, I think, would hardly say that,’ said Philammon.

‘Not in words. But, in fact, they regard Deity as the maker of a dead machine, which, once made, will move of itself thenceforth, and repudiate as heretics every philosophic thinker, whether Gnostic or Platonist, who, unsatisfied with so dead, barren, and sordid a conception of the glorious all, wishes to honour the Deity by acknowledging His universal presence, and to believe, honestly, the assertion of their own Scriptures, that He lives and moves, and has His being in the universe.’

Philammon gently suggested that the passage in question was worded somewhat differently in the Scripture.

‘True. But if the one be true, its converse will be true also. If the universe lives and moves, and has its being in Him, must He not necessarily pervade all things?’

‘Why?—Forgive my dulness, and explain.’

‘Because, if He did not pervade all things, those things which He did not pervade would be as it were interstices in His being, and in so far, without Him.’

‘True, but still they would be within His circumference.’

‘Well argued. But yet they would not live in Him, but in themselves. To live in Him they must be pervaded by His life. Do you think it possible—do you think it even reverent to affirm that there can be anything within the infinite glory of Deity which has the power of excluding from the space which it occupies that very being from which it draws its worth, and which must have originally pervaded that thing, in order to bestow on it its organisation and its life? Does He retire after creating, from the spaces which He occupied during creation, reduced to the base necessity of making room for His own universe, and endure the suffering—for the analogy of all material nature tells us that it is suffering—of a foreign body, like a thorn within the flesh, subsisting within His own substance? Rather believe that His wisdom and splendour, like a subtle and piercing fire, insinuates itself eternally with resistless force through every organised atom, and that were it withdrawn but for an instant from the petal of the meanest flower, gross matter, and the dead chaos from which it was formed, would be all which would remain of its loveliness....

‘Yes’—she went on, after the method of her school, who preferred, like most decaying ones, harangues to dialectic, and synthesis to induction.... ‘Look at yon lotus-flower, rising like Aphrodite from the wave in which it has slept throughout the night, and saluting, with bending swan-neck, that sun which it will follow lovingly around the sky. Is there no more there than brute matter, pipes and fibres, colour and shape, and the meaningless life-in-death which men call vegetation? Those old Egyptian priests knew better, who could see in the number and the form of those ivory petals and golden stamina, in that mysterious daily birth out of the wave, in that nightly baptism, from which it rises each morning re-born to a new life, the signs of some divine idea, some mysterious law, common to the flower itself, to the white-robed priestess who held it in the temple rites, and to the goddess to whom they both were consecrated.... The flower of Isis!.... Ah!—well. Nature has her sad symbols, as well as her fair ones. And in proportion as a misguided nation has forgotten the worship of her to whom they owed their greatness, for novel and barbaric superstitions, so has her sacred flower grown rarer and more rare, till now—fit emblem of the worship over which it used to shed its perfume—it is only to be found in gardens such as these—a curiosity to the vulgar, and, to such as me, a lingering monument of wisdom and of glory past away.’

Philammon, it may be seen, was far advanced by this time; for he bore the allusions to Isis without the slightest shudder. Nay—he dared even to offer consolation to the beautiful mourner.

‘The philosopher,’ he said, ‘will hardly lament the loss of a mere outward idolatry. For if, as you seem to think, there were a root of spiritual truth in the symbolism of nature, that cannot die. And thus the lotus-flower must still retain its meaning, as long as its species exists on earth.’

‘Idolatry!’ answered she, with a smile. ‘My pupil must not repeat to me that worn-out Christian calumny. Into whatsoever low superstitions the pious vulgar may have fallen, it is the Christians now, and not the heathens, who are idolaters. They who ascribe miraculous power to dead men’s bones, who make temples of charnel-houses, and bow before the images of the meanest of mankind, have surely no right to accuse of idolatry the Greek or the Egyptian, who embodies in a form of symbolic beauty ideas beyond the reach of words!

‘Idolatry? Do I worship the Pharos when I gaze at it, as I do for hours, with loving awe, as the token to me of the all-conquering might of Hellas? Do I worship the roll on which Homer’s words are written, when I welcome with delight the celestial truths which it unfolds to me, and even prize and love the material book for the sake of the message which it brings? Do you fancy that any but the vulgar worship the image itself, or dream that it can help or hear them? Does the lover mistake his mistress’s picture for the living, speaking reality? We worship the idea of which the image is a symbol. Will you blame us because we use that symbol to represent the idea to our own affections and emotions instead of leaving it a barren notion, a vague imagination of our own intellect?’

‘Then,’ asked Philammon, with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain his curiosity, ‘then you do reverence the heathen gods?’

Why Hypatia should have felt this question a sore one, puzzled Philammon; but she evidently did feel it as such, for she answered haughtily enough—

‘If Cyril had asked me that question, I should have disdained to answer. To you I will tell, that before I can answer your question you must learn what those whom you call heathen gods are. The vulgar, or rather those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings, subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations of personality. We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those children of the all-quickening spirit, which are but various emanations of the one primeval unity—say rather, various phases of that unity, as it has been variously conceived, according to the differences of climate and race, by the wise of different nations. And thus, in our eyes, he who reverences the many, worships by that very act, with the highest and fullest adoration, the one of whose perfection they are the partial antitypes; perfect each in themselves, but each the image of only one of its perfections.’

‘Why, then,’ said Philammon, much relieved by this explanation, ‘do you so dislike Christianity? may it not be one of the many methods—’

‘Because,’ she answered, interrupting him impatiently, ‘because it denies itself to be one of those many methods, and stakes its existence on the denial; because it arrogates to itself the exclusive revelation of the Divine, and cannot see, in its self-conceit, that its own doctrines disprove that assumption by their similarity to those of all creeds. There is not a dogma of the Galileans which may not be found, under some form or other, in some of those very religions from which it pretends to disdain borrowing.’

‘Except,’ said Theon, ‘its exaltation of all which is human and low-born, illiterate, and levelling.’

‘Except that—. But look! here comes some one whom I cannot—do not choose to meet. Turn this way—quick!’

And Hypatia, turning pale as death, drew her father with unphilosophic haste down a side-walk.

‘Yes,’ she went on to herself, as soon as she had recovered her equanimity. ‘Were this Galilean superstition content to take its place humbly among the other “religiones licitas” of the empire, one might tolerate it well enough, as an anthropomorphic adumbration of divine things fitted for the base and toiling herd; perhaps peculiarly fitted, because peculiarly flattering to them. But now—’

‘There is Miriam again,’ said Philammon, ‘right before us!’

‘Miriam?’ asked Hypatia severely. ‘You know her then? How is that?’

‘She lodges at Eudaimon’s house, as I do,’ answered Philammon frankly. ‘Not that I ever interchanged, or wish to interchange, a word with so base a creature.’

‘Do not! I charge you!’ said Hypatia, almost imploringly. But there was now no way of avoiding her, and perforce Hypatia and her tormentress met face to face.

‘One word! one moment, beautiful lady,’ began the old woman, with a slavish obeisance. ‘Nay, do not push by so cruelly. I have—see what I have for you!’ and she held out with a mysterious air, ‘The Rainbow of Solomon.’

‘Ah! I knew you would stop a moment—not for the ring’s sake, of course, nor even for the sake of one who once offered it to you.—Ah! and where is he now? Dead of love, perhaps! at least, here is his last token to the fairest one, the cruel one.... Well, perhaps she is right.... To be an empress—an empress!.... Far finer than anything the poor Jew could have offered.... But still.... An empress need not be above hearing her subject’s petition....’

All this was uttered rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there was no escaping.

‘What do you mean? What have I to do with this ring?’ asked Hypatia, half frightened.

‘He who owned it once, offers it to you now. You recollect a little black agate—a paltry thing..... If you have not thrown it away, as you most likely have, he wishes to redeem it with this opal.... a gem surely more fit for such a hand as that.’

‘He gave me the agate, and I shall keep it.’

‘But this opal—worth, oh, worth ten thousand gold pieces—in exchange for that paltry broken thing not worth one?’

‘I am not a dealer, like you, and have not yet learnt to value things by their money price. It that agate had been worth money, I would never have accepted it.’

‘Take the ring, take it, my darling,’ whispered Theon impatiently; ‘it will pay all our debts.’

‘Ah, that it will—pay them all,’ answered the old woman, who seemed to have mysteriously overheard him.

‘What!—my father! Would you, too, counsel me to be so mercenary? My good woman,’ she went on, turning to Miriam, ‘I cannot expect you to understand the reason of my refusal. You and I have a different standard of worth. But for the sake of the talisman engraven on that agate, if for no other reason, I cannot give it up.’

‘Ah! for the sake of the talisman! That is wise, now! That is noble! Like a philosopher! Oh, I will not say a word more. Let the beautiful prophetess keep the agate, and take the opal too; for see, there is a charm on it also! The name by which Solomon compelled the demons to do his bidding. Look! What might you not do now, if you knew how to use that! To have great glorious angels, with six wings each, bowing at your feet whensoever you called them, and saying, “Here am I, mistress; send me.” Only look at it!’

Hypatia took the tempting bait, and examined it with more curiosity than she would have wished to confess; while the old woman went on—

‘But the wise lady knows how to use the black agate, of course? Aben-Ezra told her that, did he not?’

Hypatia blushed somewhat; she was ashamed to confess that Aben-Ezra had not revealed the secret to her, probably not believing that there was any, and that the talisman had been to her only a curious plaything, of which she liked to believe one day that it might possibly have some occult virtue, and the next day to laugh at the notion as unphilosophical and barbaric; so she answered, rather severely, that her secrets were her own property.

‘Ah, then! she knows it all—the fortunate lady! And the talisman has told her whether Heraclian has lost or won Rome by this time, and whether she is to be the mother of a new dynasty of Ptolemies, or to die a virgin, which the Four Angels avert! And surely she has had the great demon come to her already, when she rubbed the flat side, has she not?’

‘Go, foolish woman! I am not like you, the dupe of childish superstitions.’

‘Childish superstitions! Ha! ha! ha!’ said the old woman, as she turned to go, with obeisances more lowly than ever. ‘And she has not seen the Angels yet!.... Ah well! perhaps some day, when she wants to know how to use the talisman, the beautiful lady will condescend to let the poor old Jewess show her the way.’

And Miriam disappeared down an alley, and plunged into the thickest shrubberies, while the three dreamers went on their way.

Little thought Hypatia that the moment the old woman had found herself alone, she had dashed herself down on the turf, rolling and biting at the leaves like an infuriated wild beast..... ‘I will have it yet! I will have it, if I tear out her heart with it!’

CHAPTER XVI: VENUS AND PALLAS

As Hypatia was passing across to her lecture-room that afternoon, she was stopped midway by a procession of some twenty Goths and damsels, headed by Pelagia herself, in all her glory of jewels, shawls, and snow-white mule; while by her side rode the Amal, his long legs, like those of Gang-Rolf the Norseman, all but touching the ground, as he crushed down with his weight a delicate little barb, the best substitute to be found in Alexandria for the huge black chargers of his native land.

On they came, followed by a wondering and admiring mob, straight to the door of the Museum, and stopping began to dismount, while their slaves took charge of the mules and horses.

There was no escape for Hypatia; pride forbade her to follow her own maidenly instinct, and to recoil among the crowd behind her; and in another moment the Amal had lifted Pelagia from her mule, and the rival beauties of Alexandria stood, for the first time in their lives, face to face.

‘May Athene befriend you this day, Hypatia!’ said Pelagia with her sweetest smile. ‘I have brought my guards to hear somewhat of your wisdom this afternoon. I am anxious to know whether you can teach Ahem anything more worth listening to than the foolish little songs which Aphrodite taught me, when she raised me from the sea-foam, as she rose herself, and named me Pelagia.’

Hypatia drew herself up to her stateliest height, and returned no answer.

‘I think my bodyguard will well hear comparison with yours. At least they are the princes and descendants of deities. So it is but fitting that they should enter before your provincials. Will you show them the way?’

No answer.

‘Then I must do it myself. Come, Amal!’ and she swept up the steps, followed by the Goths, who put the Alexandrians aside right and left, as if they had been children.

‘Ah! treacherous wanton that you are!’ cried a young man’s voice out of the murmuring crowd. ‘After having plundered us of every coin out of which you could dupe us, here you are squandering our patrimonies on barbarians!’

‘Give us back our presents, Pelagia,’ cried another, ‘and you are welcome to your herd of wild bulls!’

‘And I will!’ cried she, stopping suddenly; and clutching at her chains and bracelets, she was on the point of dashing them among the astonished crowd—

‘There! take your gifts! Pelagia and her girls scorn to be debtors to boys, while they are worshipped by men like these!’

But the Amal, who, luckily for the students, had not understood a word of this conversation, seized her arm, asking if she were mad.

‘No, no!’ panted she, inarticulate with passion. ‘Give me gold—every coin you have. These wretches are twitting me with what they gave me before—before—oh Amal, you understand me?’ And she clung imploringly to his arm.

‘Oh! Heroes! each of you throw his purse among these fellows! they say that we and our ladies are living on their spoils!’ And he tossed his purse among the crowd.

In an instant every Goth had followed his example: more than one following it up by dashing a bracelet or necklace into the face of some hapless philosophaster.

‘I have no lady, my young friends,’ said old Wulf, in good enough Greek, ‘and owe you nothing: so I shall keep my money, as you might have kept yours; and as you might, too, old Smid, if you had been as wise as I.’

‘Don’t be stingy, prince, for the honour of the Goths,’ said Smid, laughing.

‘If I take in gold I pay in iron,’ answered Wulf, drawing half out of its sheath the huge broad blade, at the ominous brown stains of which the studentry recoiled; and the whole party swept into the empty lecture-room, and seated themselves at their ease in the front ranks.

Poor Hypatia! At first she determined not to lecture—then to send for Orestes—then to call on her students to defend the sanctity of the Museum; but pride, as well as prudence, advised her better; to retreat would be to confess herself conquered—to disgrace philosophy—to lose her hold on the minds of all waverers. No! she would go on and brave everything, insults, even violence; and with trembling limbs and a pale cheek, she mounted the tribune and began.

To her surprise and delight, however, her barbarian auditors were perfectly well behaved. Pelagia, in childish good-humour at her triumph, and perhaps, too, determined to show her contempt for her adversary by giving her every chance, enforced silence and attention, and checked the tittering of the girls, for a full half-hour. But at the end of that time the heavy breathing of the slumbering Amal, who had been twice awoke by her, resounded unchecked through the lecture-room, and deepened into a snore; for Pelagia herself was as fast asleep as he. But now another censor took upon himself the office of keeping order. Old Wulf, from the moment Hypatia had begun, had never taken his eyes off her face; and again and again the maiden’s weak heart had been cheered, as she saw the smile of sturdy intelligence and honest satisfaction which twinkled over that scarred and bristly visage; while every now and then the graybeard wagged approval, until she found herself, long before the end of the oration, addressing herself straight to her new admirer.

At last it was over, and the students behind, who had sat meekly through it all, without the slightest wish to ‘upset’ the intruders, who had so thoroughly upset them, rose hurriedly, glad enough to get safe out of so dangerous a neighbourhood. But to their astonishment, as well as to that of Hypatia, old Wulf rose also, and stumbling along to the foot of the tribune, pulled out his purse, and laid it at Hypatia’s feet.

‘What is this?’ asked she, half terrified at the approach of a figure more rugged and barbaric than she had ever beheld before.

‘My fee for what I have heard to-day. You are a right noble maiden, and may Freya send you a husband worthy of you, and make you the mother of kings!’

And Wulf retired with his party.

Open homage to her rival, before her very face! Pelagia felt quite inclined to hate old Wulf.

But at least he was the only traitor. The rest of the Goths agreed unanimously that Hypatia was a very foolish person, who was wasting her youth and beauty in talking to donkey-riders; and Pelagia remounted her mule, and the Goths their horses, for a triumphal procession homeward.

And yet her heart was sad, even in her triumph. Right and wrong were ideas as unknown to her as they were to hundreds of thousands in her day. As far as her own consciousness was concerned, she was as destitute of a soul as the mule on which she rode. Gifted by nature with boundless frolic and good-humour, wit and cunning, her Greek taste for the physically beautiful and graceful developed by long training, until she had become, without a rival, the most perfect pantomime, dancer, and musician who catered for the luxurious tastes of the Alexandrian theatres, she had lived since her childhood only for enjoyment and vanity, and wished for nothing more. But her new affection, or rather worship, for the huge manhood of her Gothic lover had awoke in her a new object—to keep him—to live for him—to follow him to the ends of the earth, even if he tired of her, ill-used her, despised her. And slowly, day by day, Wulf’s sneers bad awakened in her a dread that perhaps the Amal might despise her.... Why, she could not guess: but what sort of women were those Alrunas of whom Wulf sang, of whom even the Amal and his men spoke with reverence, as something nobler, not only than her, but even than themselves? And what was it which Wulf had recognised in Hypatia which had bowed the stern and coarse old warrior before her in that public homage?.... it was not difficult to say what.... But why should that make Hypatia or any one else attractive? And the poor little child of nature gazed in deep bewilderment at a crowd of new questions, as a butterfly might at the pages of the book on which it has settled, and was sad and discontented—not with herself, for was she not Pelagia the perfect?—but with these strange fancies which came into other people’s heads.—Why should not every one be as happy as they could? And who knew better than she how to be happy, and to make others happy?....