Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West/Part First, 9

by Ameen Rihani

IX

THE QUESTION OF PONTIUS PILATE

"TRUTH," says the philosopher, answering Pilate's question, "is the unity of universal and subjective will." But who is to elucidate for the Pilates of our time the meaning of universal will? I once made a heroic attempt to unhusk the logic of Schopenhauer and to unravel the metaphysical skein of Hegel. But something forbidding, even obnoxious, seemed to stand between me and my purpose. The husk of generalization was too thick, too hard, and, what is worse, too thorny. It was the exogenous growth, particularly the spinosity, of a purely subjective mind. The philosopher's ego, in other words, adumbrated the universal will. And in following it, we follow a shadow that aspires to Deity.

It aspires, moreover, in conflict, not in harmony. To put it mildly and plainly, there often lurks a personal interest in the generalization of philosophers. It is often too a personal grudge. For philosophers quarrel, not only with what they understand to be the universal will, but also with each other. Indeed, not infrequently, does the human heart cry out through their bulwarks of reason. To be sure, they quarrel not like the village crones or the town trollops; but their panoply of logic is saturated with gall. And their hatreds, their jealousies, their prejudices, wearing the masks of speculation, seldom fail to recognize each other.

But with their readers, the disguise invariably succeeds. Thus we are often the dupes of an abstract theory stretched out to cover the personal prejudices and heredities of the author. It is not ignorance which our philosopher is cudgeling, but a particular ignorant contemporary; not at error or prejudice does he aim his poisoned shafts, but at an erring and prejudiced colleague.

We have a striking instance of this in Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History, where Schopenhauer is disguised in one of the theories he tears to pieces; while Schopenhauer, in his Literary Essays, clothes Hegel in transcendental rags, sets him up as a target, and proceeds to exercise upon him his dialectic skill. This, in the way of evolving a noble theory of life, or answering the query of Pilate. For the privilege of philosophers, enjoying the respect of the world, is such that they can only flay each other under the deluding assumption that they are flaying Error and Falsehood. Indeed, their generalizations often cover many a sore spot in their hearts. Envy, envy, thou Persephone of this lower world, even philosophers are counted among thy slaves. For instead of the truth, or as much as a taste of its kernel, we get the thorny husks of their egotism. And yet, they are the psychologists and metaphysicians who have tried to approach the Creator in a scientific manner!

Even a popular Handbook on Mind Power, for instance, and How to Get It, I find more satisfactory. For in it are no bamboozling generalities, no disguised personal grievances, no attempt to elucidate the universal will or discover the truth of the universe. Instead of abstruse dissertations, we get a simple recipe of how to feed and develop the mind. And often, the practical method suggested makes the pursuit a pleasant and sometimes profitable adventure.

Indeed, those Manuels for the People are as wonderful and entertaining, even as transporting as the Movies. Mind and Will Training: What It Is and How It Is Done, Soul-Culture, Psychometry, Phrenometry, Mental and Magnetic Healing: What They Are and How To Get Them In An Hour,—these are improvements, methinks, on the dissertations and lucubrations of acerbic cynics and umbrageous philosophers. They take you into an enchanted land, where no Pilate or shadow of a Pilate ever haunts the scene.

And with a few directions you learn the whole business of miracles. Then suddenly, you leap out of your cribbed and cramped self, a full-fledged wizard, an extra-cosmic god, with no grudge against any one or any world, into the all-pervasive, all-absorbing, all-knowing. You become, indeed, as omnipotent and wonder-working as a hero or heroine of the Movies. Why then be but a walking protoplasm, why keep your soul in a vitalized cell, when a Manuel on Soul Culture: What It Is and How It Is Done can turn you into an exalted apotheosized ape? Apotheosis for a dollar! Nothing cheaper on or off the earth. With pincers of practical logic the wires that are held by Destiny are, not drawn, but neatly cut, and you are severed from the Tyrant forever. You become a free being, an infinite Mind, a divine Personality. The detachment from the senses, or the protoplasmic definiteness, or the vitalized cell they call the soul, is absolute; and you plunge thereupon clean into the Invisible, where you are certain to lose your tail.

But if you are of those who sneer at the Manuels of Enchantment or scoff at the generalities of disenchanted philosophers, and continue, like Pilate, to rub their hands and smile skeptically, may I not recommend to your distinguished consideration that Cometographer of the spirit-world, Henrik Ibsen? He it was who turned the pockets of the soul inside out and found in them only a bullet and a little cyanide of mercury.

For the underlying idea of Ibsen's Art and Philosophy seems to be that one should conceive the beautiful and the true in this terrestrial existence and wait to realize them in another. Or, apply the bullet or the cyanide, if you can not wait. Sow in your soul the seeds of the ideal, which is one way of answering Pilate, and let death shield them from the frost of life. In other words, as soon as the ideal begins to germinate, in order to preserve it in its vigor and purity, hasten hence to some more friendly clime beyond the valleys of the moon. I do not think it would be far from the truth to picture those Ibsen souls as comets sweeping through this world to others far and unseen, leaving in the disturbed atmosphere behind them a sinister portent of coming disaster. That is why I call him the Cometographer of the spirit-world.

And thus, what are called results are only beginnings according to Plato, who answered Pilate by offering him the Magic Carpet of Dreams. Which I, for one, prefer to Ibsen's cyanide of mercury or any other equivalent. For when I saw Brand, his master creation, dying on the snow-covered heights, I wished I were living in another age, when the art of caricature was not known. I thought of Socrates, the master creation of God, dying in prison, and I thought of the Christ dying on the cross. And what avails my philosopher's abstractions, and my Manuel Maker's practical wisdom, and my Dramatist's hectic inventions, in the face of these? Indeed, the world would be richer and happier for a few more seers and sages like Socrates and Tabrizi, who would not condescend to write a book. For not by the written word, or by mummery on the stage, but silent and head bowed we best answer the query of Pilate. The Christ on the cross, Socrates in prison—that is my answer to the Roman procurator of Judea.