“There is a gentleness that no amount of force of any kind can penetrate or conquer.”

CHAPTER XXXI

It is the horizontal view of life, which most men have, that brings them ever face to face with the insuperable, until they weary and lie looking upward with a worm’s-eye view of things, or downward seeing only mud and death and misery. The way over an obstacle is upward. Men forget that birds fly, and that the thought has stronger wings than any eagle.

FRAGMENT FROM THE DIARY OF OLYMPUS,

“….The Father-Hierophant should come to me,” said Caesar; but Cleopatra whispered to him and he let it appear that he was willing to accept some trivial excuse, now that he had asserted his own precedence.

“Our Father-Hierophant- is very old,” said a priest in a sauve restrained voice. Proud they might be; but they were discreet, those priests of Philae.

“What language have we in common that we can converse in?” Caesar demanded. He did not want an interpreter—particularly not Cleopatra, who, he felt confident, would color such a conversation to suit her own views. He was relieved to learn that the Father-Hierophant knew Greek. He turned to Cleopatra and remarked, with an apparently confiding courtesy that hid his secret satisfaction:

“I will give these priests clearly to understand that there shall be no two governments in Egypt.”

She let him think she believed he could overawe the Father-Hierophant. He followed the two priests, striding alone majestically, a splendid figure, looking younger than his years, one hand holding a roll of papyrus behind him, and his head bowed slightly forward in deep thought. Two anchorites preceded them, each swinging a jeweled censer that sent up clouds of incense smoke—delicious, soothing, fragrant stuff from Yemen, that encouraged the thought to wander in realms of opulence and dignity and peace.

He expected a repetition of the devious passages through which he and Cleopatra had gone hand in hand that night in Alexandria when they visited the shrine of Isis. But though they passed a few priests standing like statues in niches between graven columns there was no challenge and reply,  no mummery of secrecy. When they came to the end of a long corridor the censer-bearers turned aside, the priests drew back curtains of golden leather, there was a sound as of a voice that whispered very far away, one of the priests swung wide a single door, a foot thick, and Caesar passed alone into a room, aware that the door had closed, with an almost inaudible thud, behind him.

For a moment he stood accustoming his eyes to dimness. There was only one window, near the roof, that let swimming Sunlight stream against a corner of one wall; it produced an effect of being under water, and the silence enhanced that effect. Caesar stared about him. His eyes gradually grew used to the solemn dimness. He became aware of a very old man seated motionless on an ivory chair by a table made of tare wood, carved, and partly covered by a cloth that was woven with symbols in various colors.  He stared at mm, Neither spoke.

The old man’s clothing was of some rare eastern stuff, so snow-white that it was puzzling how it blended with the darker hue of marble, and so ample that its folds were like carvings in stone. He had a white beard, long, and beautifully cared for, gray hair, very heavy iron-gray eyebrows, an acquiline nose and dark eyes. He looked as if he had been an athlete in his day, but his splendid old shoulders stooped considerably now and he supported his chin on one hand that rested on the chair-arm, as if that great head with its mane of gray were over-heavy for the wasted neck. He had a great gold ring on his right thumb and some sort of necklace underneath his beard, but no other jewelry, which made a marked contrast to Caesar’s martial .splendor. Caesar had emeralds on his belt and on his scabbard that were easily worth a whole year’s temple revenues.

The two studied each other in silence for a long time. Not a sound came through the window or the thick walls, and the old man’s breathing was inaudible; but Caesar could hear his own breath and the pulses singing in his ears, until the silence grew intolerable.

“I have heard,” he said at last, “that you priests of Philae are the proudest prelates in the world. I wish to assure you that it is no concession to your pride, but to your old age that brings me here to visit you instead of requiring you to visit me.”

“You are welcome, my son. Be seated.”

The answering voice was clear and strong, although it sounded even older than the man looked. It was a voice that had fathomed the depths of experience. There was no fear in it, no haste, no curiosity.

There was only one chair, of ivory, like the other, close to the table. Caesar sat down, crossing his legs and tapping his knee with the roll of papyrus. Having reached the holds of the reins of Philae’s far-reaching influence, he proposed to begin by establishing his own supremacy. But he found difficult to be firm where there was no resistance.

“You have no need to fear me, my son,” said the ancient of days, “nor any need to try to make me fear you. For, as have told you, you are welcome, and what I can do for you I will.”

“It was at your request that I came here,” Caesar as-swered.

The old man paused before he commented on that:

“If you had come otherwise, you would not have found me,” he said at last, “though I am glad to be of service to you if I can. There is a gentleness that no amount of force of any kind can penetrate or conquer. Conquerors, my son, have thrown down the temples of Philae; other kings and conquerors have builded them again; time and the overflow of Nile—sun and wind, and human passions, and the sloth of priests have ruined Philae many times. And yet—you come to Philae seeking.”

“Seeking what?” asked Caesar tartly, but his truculence was not so noticeable as it had been.

“That which you will not learn—not though I should do my best to teach it to you,” the old man answered, smiling at him. Mockery was not there, but there was humor brooding in the depths of his eyes.

“Why then did you ask to see me?” Caesar retorted. He was increasingly less irritable—growing curious.

“Because, my son, though I can teach you very little, having no wisdom at all of my own that is applicable to your purposes, it may be that nevertheless I can remove from your mind some misconceptions, and thus save not yourself alone but hosts of others from unnecessary evil. For you are a man on whom the destiny of nations may depend for many a generation.”

“Speak. I will listen to you,” said Caesar.

The Father-Hierophant took no apparent notice of the condescension. He looked straight at Caesar and for a long time there was silence. Then at last:

“These temples are old, but the foundations on which they ‘stand are immemorially old. They have seen Egypt rise, descend again in the depths of ignorance, and reascend to heights of civilization, times out of number. But the sacred sciences for which men built are older. Before Egypt was, they were. When Egypt shall have ceased to be, they will be. Men have forgotten what was before Egypt was. They will forget Egypt in the time to come. But Nature, two of whose aspects are life and death, eternally alternating, Swill continue even though the earth should perish; and as there never has been, so there never will be time when truth is false or falsity is true, though all men should unite in one opinion to the contrary.”

‘Do you know the truth?” asked Caesar. “I am a high Priest myself, and I am familiar with many theories, but the truth, it seems to me, is still a subject of opinion.”  “Then it is not truth,” said the Hierophant. “My son, all men and women are high priests, in that they hide the truth about themselves behind a veil of what they seem to as I have seen, appear to me always to have been, a struggle for supremacy.”

“And you propose to put an end to that?” “I intend to establish a government that will make such practises impossible, at least in my lifetime.”

“Did you ever hear of the man, my son, who proposed to abolish danger by preventing motion? His difficulty was that he did not begin by standing still. Men fled from him as he moved about to oblige them to obey. Does it occur to you that wisdom possibly may flee from you if you attempt to define its limits and to enforce their observance?”

Caesar began to feel irritated. “I will enforce,” he said, “obedience to one central government, and I will permit no priesthood to interfere.”

“That is Wise, my son. The universe obeys one law, and it is safe to be obedient. Neither priesthood nor yet armies can delay the sun on its appointed path or change the alternation of the seasons or the tides of life and death. But whose law will you obey? And whence will you derive the wisdom for this government?”

“You suggest,” said Caesar with a trace of icy sarcasm, “that I might derive that wisdom from yourself and from a study of your teachings?”

“No, my son; for as I said, I have no wisdom applicable to your purpose. And as for the study of the teachings that I have spent my life-long learning: as I told you, they have body, soul and spirit; words, that is, in which it is possible to suggest them to an attentive mind—meaning, which may be perverted because opinion can be brought to bear on it—and the substance within the meaning, which is pure and incorruptible but not perceptible to many. I would not presume to try to teach you what I know, because I recognize—” He paused.

“That I am one of the many?” Caesar suggested with a trace in his voice of irony.

“—that you base your estimate of value on the judgment of the many, who will tell you, for instance, that fame is greatness. Whereas I would tell you it is more blinding to you and to others than the strongest sunlight and more confusing than the mirage of the desert; it prevents you from discerning that the essence of an idea is included in itself and lies within it, not without it. Whereas you see the rind of ideas, I look for the juice and the heart of the juice. You will build an empire, as men have built temples on Pilak.”

Behind that veil they meditate in secret. You yourself however frankly you may seem to speak or to write about your inmost thought, have deeper thoughts that you know are inexpressible, behind those that you spread before the world. For that which becomes expressed is no more than the outer rind of a fruit that has’ already fallen from the tree Has thought not body and soul and spirit, even as a man has or a tree has, or a rock has? Is the body of a thought the truth about it any more than your body is the truth about you? Still less true are the clothes in which the thought in dressed, though they may be beautiful, or they may be coarse and ragged. They are a veil, behind which is the truth that is a truth about the shadow of the Truth.”

“I have heard much talk at various times about with drawing or lifting that veil of which you speak,” said Caesar “but though I have questioned, for instance, the Druids of Gaul, who make great claims to profundity, and though I have studied Plato and Pythagoras and such translations of the Hermetic writings as I could find, it has appeared to me that all the explanations they offer are merely words—or ganized sound without any inner meaning that a man may grasp. But a sword remains a sword. And if I wish to build a bridge, I build it. If I wish to conquer people I defeat their armies; they are conquered; there is nothing further they can do about it.”

“And if you slay ten thousand men, what then?” asked the Hierophant.

“Then they are dead,” said Caesar.

“And you have conquered them?”

“I have conquered their country. Those who remain must obey me, including their priests, who must cease to teach insubordination if I so order it.”

“Truly, my son, it is possible to burn a forest and to turn the goats in lest the young shoots grow again. But finally ever the goats will starve. And what then? Will you make a desert and say, ‘This is Caesar’s kingdom?’ “

“I impose peace,” Caesar answered. “Under my rule all reasonable men have liberty.”

“That is a bold boast, my son. But you limit reason? You yourself define the liberty?”

“Somebody must do that,” Caesar answered. “I have observed that men struggle among themselves until the ablest few prevail; and they again until the ablest of them all asserts himself. Then it is his opinion that governs all the others. There is otherwise anarchy. The history of the world as I have read it, and the perpetual conditions of such land

And you can destroy these temples easily, as men will destroy your empire easily when time has wrought a change in the affairs of men. But when the carcass of your empire shall have been dissolved, its soul shall die not so swiftly, and the dying soul shall enter into many associations, deceiving men less able than yourself to their own undoing. So you shall be identified with evil, and many men will praise you. Others, cursing you, nevertheless will imitate you. Being imitators, they will do worse and will call it better.”

“Do you see no merit in my course?” asked Caesar.

“What is merit, my son? Generations will remember your name, who will never hear of mine, and who will think of Philae as a heap of ruins where priests once made sacrifices to forgotten gods.”

“Then what is immortality?” asked Caesar. “If the soul dies, as you say, and gods pass out of memory, then is not that, whatever it is, that endures the longest, preferable?”

“Preferred by whom? By you or me? Caesar, time, too, comes to an end. If you could raise the soul of your ideas until the spirit entered into them, you would never ask me, what is immortality?”

“Nevertheless, I have asked and you have not answered,” Caesar retorted. “Are you one of those who prate about it without knowing what you mean?”

The old man eyed him thoughtfully a moment.

“Let me be sure,” he said, “that I know what you mean, Caesar. Tell me what you yourself suppose that immortality might be.”

“I have sometimes tried to imagine it as the opposite of death,” said Caesar.

“But with what have you tried to imagine it? With your brain? That dies when you are dead. What you imagine with your brain is less than you are, even as the picture that an artist paints is less than he is, though the picture may suggest ideas that are infinitely greater than himself, and by his own picture that he paints a man may lift himself into the company ‘of gods. You think of life and death as opposites, which they are indeed, but they are not that which we have spoken of as immortality, since immortality includes them both. You can identify yourself with that which you imagine until, like Narcissus, you perish in pursuit of mere phenomena. Are you sure you. are not doing that?”

Caesar smiled conceitedly. “I have never compared myself to Narcissus,” he answered. “Who would you say is my Echo?” He began to think of many women, and particularly  of  Cleopatra.  “Dido,”  he continued,  “is  reputed to have died for love of Aeneas, from whom I trace descent, but no woman hitherto, that I ever heard of, has died for love of me. It has been my experience that women recover from these heart-burnings; so that I find that even love is mortal—more so, in fact, than hatred, which I have noticed frequently replaces love and persists with remarkable tenacity. Who would you suggest is Echo in this instance?”

“Echo is the Spirit brooding over you,” said the Hiero-phant. “For I tell you, all those ancient tales are allegories. Forsaken for the image in the pool of alternating life and death, the deathless Spirit becomes, to you, a mere sound in the void and a name that is entirely without meaning.”

“Do not you priests also set up images,” asked Caesar, “that persuade the common herd to worship them to the neglect of the spirit that you so much advocate to me? As I said, I am myself a high priest. It is I who order images placed or replaced in the temples of Rome. I have often performed the sacrifices, which I consider a good thing for the people, since it keeps their thought for a while from baser matters and makes government easier by persuading them that I, for instance, who perform the sacrifices, am a person having a higher authority. If they are too base to perceive my merit, nevertheless that mummery convinces them.”

“Of your merit? Then you are not bound, in turn, to seek that merit in yourself, and to cultivate it, and to identify yourself with it? Are the images not sign-posts on the road of life? Are you not their interpreter? And when you come to a sign-post what is there to do?”

“One can pass to the right or the left,” said Caesar. “It makes small difference. Both roads lead to death.”

“But the post points upward!”

“I had never thought of that,” said Caesar. He proceeded there and then to think of it, knitting his brows and musing, while the Hierophant sat still and watched him:

“It is from above and from behind you that the true light comes,” said the Hierophant at last. “It is through you that the light shines on the images you see. And you will see them true or false according as you identify yourself with gods or devils.”

“You mean that we ourselves must be as gods?” asked Caesar.

“We must be gods,” said the Hierophant. “We must admit to ourselves that we are gods. But it is only one by one, and very gradually, with great effort and much humility,  that we attain to a perception of the meaning of that. And there are many pitfalls, needing wisdom to avoid.”

“Does your wisdom indicate to you a policy that you would recommend me to pursue in Egypt?” Caesar asked him. He stared hard. There was a cold light in his eyes.

“It indicates to me a pitfall,” the old man answered calmly. “It is no affair of mine to govern Egypt.”

“You are wise in that,” said Caesar. “If your priesthood avoids politics I have no objection to it.”

“My son,” said the Hierophant, “Pythagoras came nearer than any other, in the world that you know, to establishing a doctrine that would have drawn the world upward toward the sources of wisdom. But his followers proposed to purify effects by dealing with effects. They interfered with government. They went down among the wolves to teach wolves to be gentle. And the wolves devoured them. So the teachings of Pythagoras are now an empty echo, like the voice of which I spoke to you a while ago.”

“Nevertheless, you have advised Queen Cleopatra frequently,” said Caesar. “You or your agents never cease from giving her advice.”

“As to what?” the Hierophant retorted. “As to the means of ever keeping in mind her divinity that is above her royalty, lest Wisdom leave her, as it did Narcissus! She is a woman—earthy of the earth in some ways, being born into a heritage that will give her strong soul terrible adventures on its upward path toward the Spirit. But it is the strongest souls that are called upon to face the greatest difficulties, Caesar. See you to it that you set in her path no greater snares than you have done already!”

“I have set her on the throne,” said Caesar. “Do you recommend that I should leave her to her own devices?”

“I will give to you the advice that I will give to her also,” said the Hierophant. “And I will change no word of it: that whether we are kings and queens, conquerors or conquered; whether we are priests or goatherds; whether we are poor or wealthy, whether the world acclaims us favorites, or whether it despises us; whether we die by violence, or in the peace of old age—one by one we come into the presence of the gods, whom we will never recognize as anything but empty echoes in the darkness, unless we remember in this life that we came forth from among the gods, and unless we take care to return to them with godliness in nowise dimmed. For like sees like. If you identify yourself with husks and the death that devours from without, how shall you see life and the spirit ever emanating from within?”

“Then you mean, we are gods? We are all of us gods?” Caesar asked him.

“When we know it,” said the Hierophant. “But not otherwise. And as I told you: between statement and example there are many pitfalls and many a place where sign-posts seem to indicate more ways than one. Remember that the post points upward.”

“Why the secrecy?” asked Caesar. “Why do you priests, who think you know so much, not stand out openly and tell men they are gods? I tell men they are Romans, and they behave as such.”

“And is that not already bad enough?” the old man answered, smiling. “Tell them they are gods and they will be even worse than Romans! A blind man with a weapon in his hands is more dangerous than a blind beast; and a blind god is worse than either.”

“They have called me a god here in Egypt,” said Caesar. “They have set my image in temples.”

“Apd does that deceive you?” asked the Hierophant. “Is that any more than an invitation to you to be godlike?”

“I am wondering,” said Caesar, “what Rome will think of it.”

“As to that, my son, I can enlighten you. Egypt has called you a god to get rid of you as a problem that needs to be faced. As a man they would be ashamed not to struggle against you, but as a god you are above them and beyond reach—to be endured but not disputed. But if you call yourself a god in Rome, will the Romans not bid you prove it? And can you?”

“We will see,” said Caesar, rising. He had made up his mind. Immortality was nonsense. A man was neither more nor less than what he claimed to be and could compel other men to confess him to be. A little propaganda, and a little violence— “I recognize your essential harmlessness,” he said, “and I will take no steps to limit you in.the practise of your religion. In fact, on the contrary, I will make a contribution to your temple, for I wish to be remembered as your benefactor. But keep in mind that I can be as stern as I am now forbearing toward you, and that I will brook no interference with affairs of state!” He rose. “I will accept your blessing,” he said, standing with both hands behind him and his head bowed stiffly.

The old man rose and blessed him hardly audibly. Then: “Farewell, my son,” he said and, standing, watched the man who had missed his opportunity because he could not recognize it go striding proudly from the room.