"Oh, there is nothing that would come amiss," answered Septimius; "for,
truly, as I have lived apart from men, yet it is really not because I have
no taste for whatever humanity includes: but I would fain, if I might,
live everybody's life at once, or, since that may not be, each in
succession. I would try the life of power, ruling men; but that might come
later, after I had had long experience of men, and had lived through much
history, and had seen, as a disinterested observer, how men might best be
influenced for their own good. I would be a great traveller at first; and
as a man newly coming into possession of an estate goes over it, and views
each separate field and wood-lot, and whatever features it contains, so
will I, whose the world is, because I possess it forever; whereas all
others are but transitory guests. So will I wander over this world of
mine, and be acquainted with all its shores, seas, rivers, mountains,
fields, and the various peoples who inhabit them, and to whom it is my
purpose to be a benefactor; for think not, dear Sibyl, that I suppose this
great lot of mine to have devolved upon me without great duties,--heavy
and difficult to fulfil, though glorious in their adequate fulfilment. But
for all this there will be time. In a century I shall partially have seen
this earth, and known at least its boundaries,--have gotten for myself the
outline, to be filled up hereafter."
"And I, too," said Sibyl, "will have my duties and labors; for while you
are wandering about among men, I will go among women, and observe and
converse with them, from the princess to the peasant-girl; and will find
out what is the matter, that woman gets so large a share of human misery
laid on her weak shoulders. I will see why it is that, whether she be a
royal princess, she has to be sacrificed to matters of state, or a
cottage-girl, still somehow the thing not fit for her is done; and whether
there is or no some deadly curse on woman, so that she has nothing to do,
and nothing to enjoy, but only to be wronged by man and still to love him,
and despise herself for it,--to be shaky in her revenges. And then if,
after all this investigation, it turns out--as I suspect--that woman is
not capable of being helped, that there is something inherent in herself
that makes it hopeless to struggle for her redemption, then what shall I
do? Nay, I know not, unless to preach to the sisterhood that they all kill
their female children as fast as they are born, and then let the
generations of men manage as they can! Woman, so feeble and crazy in body,
fair enough sometimes, but full of infirmities; not strong, with nerves
prone to every pain; ailing, full of little weaknesses, more contemptible
than great ones!"
"That would be a dreary end, Sibyl," said Septimius. "But I trust that we
shall be able to hush up this weary and perpetual wail of womankind on
easier terms than that. Well, dearest Sibyl, after we have spent a hundred
years in examining into the real state of mankind, and another century in
devising and putting in execution remedies for his ills, until our maturer
thought has time to perfect his cure, we shall then have earned a little
playtime,--a century of pastime, in which we will search out whatever joy
can be had by thoughtful people, and that childlike sportiveness which
comes out of growing wisdom, and enjoyment of every kind. We will gather
about us everything beautiful and stately, a great palace, for we shall
then be so experienced that all riches will be easy for us to get; with
rich furniture, pictures, statues, and all royal ornaments; and side by
side with this life we will have a little cottage, and see which is the
happiest, for this has always been a dispute. For this century we will
neither toil nor spin, nor think of anything beyond the day that is
passing over us. There is time enough to do all that we have to do."
"A hundred years of play! Will not that be tiresome?" said Sibyl.
"If it is," said Septimius, "the next century shall make up for it; for
then we will contrive deep philosophies, take up one theory after another,
and find out its hollowness and inadequacy, and fling it aside, the rotten
rubbish that they all are, until we have strewn the whole realm of human
thought with the broken fragments, all smashed up. And then, on this great
mound of broken potsherds (like that great Monte Testaccio, which we will
go to Rome to see), we will build a system that shall stand, and by which
mankind shall look far into the ways of Providence, and find practical
uses of the deepest kind in what it has thought merely speculation. And
then, when the hundred years are over, and this great work done, we will
still be so free in mind, that we shall see the emptiness of our own
theory, though men see only its truth. And so, if we like more of this
pastime, then shall another and another century, and as many more as we
like, be spent in the same way."
"And after that another play-day?" asked Sibyl Dacy.
"Yes," said Septimius, "only it shall not be called so; for the next
century we will get ourselves made rulers of the earth; and knowing men so
well, and having so wrought our theories of government and what not, we
will proceed to execute them,--which will be as easy to us as a child's
arrangement of its dolls. We will smile superior, to see what a facile
thing it is to make a people happy. In our reign of a hundred years, we
shall have time to extinguish errors, and make the world see the absurdity
of them; to substitute other methods of government for the old, bad ones;
to fit the people to govern itself, to do with little government, to do
with none; and when this is effected, we will vanish from our loving
people, and be seen no more, but be reverenced as gods,--we, meanwhile,
being overlooked, and smiling to ourselves, amid the very crowd that is
looking for us."
"I intend," said Sibyl, making this wild talk wilder by that petulance
which she so often showed,--"I intend to introduce a new fashion of dress
when I am queen, and that shall be my part of the great reform which you
are going to make. And for my crown, I intend to have it of flowers, in
which that strange crimson one shall be the chief; and when I vanish, this
flower shall remain behind, and perhaps they shall have a glimpse of me
wearing it in the crowd. Well, what next?"
"After this," said Septimius, "having seen so much of affairs, and having
lived so many hundred years, I will sit down and write a history, such as
histories ought to be, and never have been. And it shall be so wise, and
so vivid, and so self-evidently true, that people shall be convinced from
it that there is some undying one among them, because only an eye-witness
could have written it, or could have gained so much wisdom as was needful
for it."
"And for my part in the history," said Sibyl, "I will record the various
lengths of women's waists, and the fashion of their sleeves. What next?"
"By this time," said Septimius,--"how many hundred years have we now
lived?--by this time, I shall have pretty well prepared myself for what I
have been contemplating from the first. I will become a religious teacher,
and promulgate a faith, and prove it by prophecies and miracles; for my
long experience will enable me to do the first, and the acquaintance which
I shall have formed with the mysteries of science will put the latter at
my fingers' ends. So I will be a prophet, a greater than Mahomet, and will
put all man's hopes into my doctrine, and make him good, holy, happy; and
he shall put up his prayers to his Creator, and find them answered,
because they shall be wise, and accompanied with effort. This will be a
great work, and may earn me another rest and pastime."
[_He would see, in one age, the column raised in memory of some great
dead of his in a former one_.]
"And what shall that be?" asked Sibyl Dacy.
"Why," said Septimius, looking askance at her, and speaking with a certain
hesitation, "I have learned, Sibyl, that it is a weary toil for a man to
be always good, holy, and upright. In my life as a sainted prophet, I
shall have somewhat too much of this; it will be enervating and sickening,
and I shall need another kind of diet. So, in the next hundred years,
Sibyl,--in that one little century,--methinks I would fain be what men
call wicked. How can I know my brethren, unless I do that once? I would
experience all. Imagination is only a dream. I can imagine myself a
murderer, and all other modes of crime; but it leaves no real impression
on the heart. I must live these things."
[_The rampant unrestraint, which is the characteristic of
wickedness_.]
"Good," said Sibyl, quietly; "and I too."
"And thou too!" exclaimed Septimius. "Not so, Sibyl. I would reserve thee,
good and pure, so that there may be to me the means of redemption,--some
stable hold in the moral confusion that I will create around myself,
whereby I shall by and by get back into order, virtue, and religion. Else
all is lost, and I may become a devil, and make my own hell around me; so,
Sibyl, do thou be good forever, and not fall nor slip a moment. Promise
me!"
"We will consider about that in some other century," replied Sibyl,
composedly. "There is time enough yet. What next?"
"Nay, this is enough for the present," said Septimius. "New vistas will
open themselves before us continually, as we go onward. How idle to think
that one little lifetime would exhaust the world! After hundreds of
centuries, I feel as if we might still be on the threshold. There is the
material world, for instance, to perfect; to draw out the powers of
nature, so that man shall, as it were, give life to all modes of matter,
and make them his ministering servants. Swift ways of travel, by earth,
sea, and air; machines for doing whatever the hand of man now does, so
that we shall do all but put souls into our wheel-work and watch-work; the
modes of making night into day; of getting control over the weather and
the seasons; the virtues of plants,--these are some of the easier things
thou shalt help me do."
"I have no taste for that," said Sibyl, "unless I could make an embroidery
worked of steel."
"And so, Sibyl," continued Septimius, pursuing his strain of solemn
enthusiasm, intermingled as it was with wild, excursive vagaries, "we will
go on as many centuries as we choose. Perhaps,--yet I think not
so,--perhaps, however, in the course of lengthened time, we may find that
the world is the same always, and mankind the same, and all possibilities
of human fortune the same; so that by and by we shall discover that the
same old scenery serves the world's stage in all ages, and that the story
is always the same; yes, and the actors always the same, though none but
we can be aware of it; and that the actors and spectators would grow weary
of it, were they not bathed in forgetful sleep, and so think themselves
new made in each successive lifetime. We may find that the stuff of the
world's drama, and the passions which seem to play in it, have a monotony,
when once we have tried them; that in only once trying them, and viewing
them, we find out their secret, and that afterwards the show is too
superficial to arrest our attention. As dramatists and novelists repeat
their plots, so does man's life repeat itself, and at length grows stale.
This is what, in my desponding moments, I have sometimes suspected. What
to do, if this be so?"
"Nay, that is a serious consideration," replied Sibyl, assuming an air of
mock alarm, "if you really think we shall be tired of life, whether or
no."
"I do not think it, Sibyl," replied Septimius. "By much musing on this
matter, I have convinced myself that man is not capable of debarring
himself utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy for many evils
that nothing else would cure. This means that we have discovered of
removing death to an indefinite distance is not supernatural; on the
contrary, it is the most natural thing in the world,--the very perfection
of the natural, since it consists in applying the powers and processes of
Nature to the prolongation of the existence of man, her most perfect
handiwork; and this could only be done by entire accordance and co-effort
with Nature. Therefore Nature is not changed, and death remains as one of
her steps, just as heretofore. Therefore, when we have exhausted the
world, whether by going through its apparently vast variety, or by
satisfying ourselves that it is all a repetition of one thing, we will
call death as the friend to introduce us to something new."
[_He would write a poem, or other great work, inappreciable at first, and
live to see it famous,--himself among his own posterity_.]
"Oh, insatiable love of life!" exclaimed Sibyl, looking at him with strange
pity. "Canst thou not conceive that mortal brain and heart might at length
be content to sleep?"
"Never, Sibyl!" replied Septimius, with horror. "My spirit delights in the
thought of an infinite eternity. Does not thine?"
"One little interval--a few centuries only--of dreamless sleep," said
Sibyl, pleadingly. "Cannot you allow me that?"
"I fear," said Septimius, "our identity would change in that repose; it
would be a Lethe between the two parts of our being, and with such
disconnection a continued life would be equivalent to a new one, and
therefore valueless."
In such talk, snatching in the fog at the fragments of philosophy, they
continued fitfully; Septimius calming down his enthusiasm thus, which
otherwise might have burst forth in madness, affrighting the quiet little
village with the marvellous things about which they mused. Septimius could
not quite satisfy himself whether Sibyl Dacy shared in his belief of the
success of his experiment, and was confident, as he was, that he held in
his control the means of unlimited life; neither was he sure that she
loved him,--loved him well enough to undertake with him the long march
that he propounded to her, making a union an affair of so vastly more
importance than it is in the brief lifetime of other mortals. But he
determined to let her drink the invaluable draught along with him, and to
trust to the long future, and the better opportunities that time would
give him, and his outliving all rivals, and the loneliness which an
undying life would throw around her, without him, as the pledges of his
success.
