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212 "And yet I must avoid him and his associates?" asked Baruch.

"I warned you," concluded his father, "against underhand work; you are sharp-sighted enough now to see through such. I have nothing against your being with Oldenburg."

Spinoza continued his visits to Olympia unhindered. He became more and more intimate with Oldenburg, while with Meyer their intellectual intercourse led, through their common zeal for study, to the same kind of intimacy which is brought about by travelling companionship, where, in the contemplation of the new and strange, they knew themselves to be in dear and trusted company. Meyer was, though in some respects shallow, well informed in modern speculation. The history of nations, the study of physical science, then followed with newly awakened zeal, above all, the Cartesian philosophy opened new fields of study with which Spinoza now made himself familiar. The "Letters" and the "Treatise on Mankind," which had appeared posthumously, Descartes being then but lately dead, made his doctrine, just because of the light thrown on one so lately gone from life, all the more impressive, for traces of the breath of that life yet lay therein, and even philosophy, which should remain independent of all contemporary influences, has an inexplicably special power in the presence of its origin. The treatise of

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 face on, it will be time enough when the accidents do come. Threatening for a storm, but it went off in the evening and the stars shone brightly. No yard for the sheep, and we have to keep a special sharp look out for the wild dogs that are up here in numbers, out of the way of the flood. Mosquitoes very bad, no sleep hardly.

3rd. I hope, as the day promises, it may be fine and dry, that we may get our things out to air, they being all more or less damp.

There was a horrid row about 2 Mr. McKinlay caught the man who should have been on watch, not only asleep but absolutely coiled up in his blanket most comfortably. My stars! he caught it, and no mistake. I mention no names, but if he ever sees this he will remember the circumstance. After breakfast Mr. McKinlay called us all round him, and standing on a small eminence addressed us to the effect that if ever he found any one asleep on his watch, or even sitting down, which was as bad, he should erase that man's name from the list of those receiving pay; and that for the future he would have to work for nothing. It is very hard to keep on your feet two or three hours without resting, after a long march; however, the edict has gone forth, and becomes a law.

Began shoeing horses to-day, as their feet are rather soft, and we shall have to tackle plenty of

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Rh Descartes on "Method" especially gave our young thinker more immediate insight, for Descartes here unites to the history of his own development the foundations of thought in general, and of his own system of philosophy in particular. Just this support from the individual facilitated his progress to the universal.

The studies and investigations of our young friend had hitherto merely been extended to the limits of what had been done, showing the limit of the territory illuminated by extinguished emotional life. His mind was turned to the movements that agitated the world around him. Human nature and its peculiarities, and the wide kingdom of the manifold forms of nature around us here, with its governing laws, must now be learned. Is it impossible? Must it not be possible to ascertain the movements of immutable human nature as well as under similarly fixed laws we understand the natural life around us? Is our knowledge merely a knowledge of the dead, of the dead around us and behind us? Is it not a knowledge of life alone? ...

These were the questions to which his new studies led our young friend; a presentiment arose in him that he would be one of the first to fix the science of life. His friends were astonished by his affirming once in this sense that they who were aroused to real and conscious life must draw

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214 from the living principle within them and around them, and that therein lay the meaning of the enigmatical expression of Christ (Mat. viii. 22), "Let the dead bury their dead." In thought and expression the expositions of Spinoza had something sacred and biblical, and this is exactly the spirit which, penetrates to the origin of all life; the eternal word is his also, if even it arises in a new form and with a partially new signification. Oldenburg, as well as Meyer, was often surprised at Spinoza's "philosophical naïveté," as the former called it, while Meyer designated it "an intellectually clean tongue." There seemed to be a contradiction in speaking of "philosophical naïveté," and yet this formed the original foundation of free thought as defined by Spinoza. In nothing could he accept the ordinary or traditional point of view; his individual perceptions remained uninfluenced by the doctrines set before him. He grasped the things of the material as well as the ideal world in a wholly original and unbiassed manner as though they were originated in him; as if he were the first to comprehend this given external world as well as the inner life of intellect.

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text: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 11

title: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 11


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 stony ground on our course. Mr. McKinlay and Ned went out on horseback to look after the lost bullock which had been left behind on coming to last camp. They found him with the stifle joint broken, so that we shall jerk him as soon as the sun comes out hotter. Made a stunning currie to-day for all hands, which was duly appreciated, but the want of salt was a great drawback to arriving at perfection. Middleton unwell again.

4th. This morning four men started with as many horses to kill and bring in the lame bullock. The country is very boggy and travelling heavy. Mr. McKinlay went out yesterday, after he returned from finding the bullock, to see the state of the flood. He had to swim his horse some distance, the water was still so high, but he found that the creek had gone down nine inches. The last flood (whenever that was) was some seven feet higher than the present one, from the marks left on the stone hills and trees.

The high land up here is perfectly infested with wild dogs, but we have plenty of strychnine, and that soon settles them. They are so hungry, or voracious perhaps is the word, that when one of their gang gets poisoned he is quickly torn in pieces by his fellows, and some of them pay the penalty of their repast, and are in turn devoured themselves.

Mr. McKinlay and Poole rode out to some high


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 London: 40 Museum Street, W.C.1

Auckland: 24 Wyndham Street Bombay: 15 Graham Road, Bollard Estate, Bombay 1 Calcutta: 17 Chittaranjan Avenue, Calcutta 13 Cape Town: 109 Long Street Karachi: Metherson's Estate, Wood Street, Karachi 2 New Delhi: 13-14 Ajmeri Gate Extension, New Delhi 1 São Paulo: Avenida 9 de Julho 1138–Ap. 51 Singapore, South East Asia and Far East, 36c, Prinsep Street Sydney, N.S.W.: Bradbury House, 55 York Street Toronto: 91 Wellington Street West


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 stone hills to the east to see from what quarter the creek flowed, but the haze was so great that the journey was of little use. From the stony hills to the west of north there was a perfect sea, nothing but the tops of trees to be seen here and there above the water. The ground was all but impassable in some places. Some days ago there was not a bird to be seen, but now thousands of cranes, gulls, ducks, etc., are here, and also a few black swans passed over our camp. We have seen very few of these birds up to the present time. The dews at night are very heavy, and you get quite damp on the watch, and those who sleep out in the open air have a wet blanket in the morning. Mosquitoes and sand still very troublesome, the latter blowing into the bread while it is being made, so you grind it up all the time you are eating, which is agreeable in the extreme.

5th. Every appearance of a magnificent day, the country beginning to look green, and pretty lilies in profusion in blossom for hundreds of yards. It is splendid, and the little birds chirping round and about give it quite the appearance of spring.

About dinner time the party returned with the bullock, in the shape of beef, in packages, and after dinner we all commenced the work of cutting up and jerking; while doing this an accident happened to Maitland, which might have been worse. One


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 of the men while splitting down the head with an axe and cutting it up for soup, the head of the axe flew off and buried itself in his (Maitland's) knee. He is laid up for a time, so we shall have to cook by turns, he being our chef de cuisine. We got all the meat jerked to-night, and if the weather continues as it is it will be "first chop."

It is very hot indeed to-day, and I am cook; the sun blisters my back and the fire my belly, and I thought I should have been done before the soup. I must tell you there was no shelter from the sun at the cooking place, it was just on the open sand. There was not a tree on the sand hill that could be called a shade. Jolly, my cooking day is over! This evening we draw lots for to-morrow and consecutive days. Mr. McKinlay rather unwell to-day, and kept his tent.

6th. Every appearance of a fine day, and the weather appears to have broken. No signs of more rain. Still busy shoeing horses. A very painful touch of rheumatism in my ancle [sic]. Wylde takes charge of the pots and kettles and relieves me. (N.B. It is a relief.) We are looking forward to some roast beef to-day, which will be a treat after the jerked mutton.

7th. Wind very changeable, veering all round the compass. All the beef cooked yesterday gone bad, I regret to say, so that we must put up with the soup made of the bones, etc. What brutes


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 those camels are for wandering; here they have left good food and are off over stone hills, where there is not a blade of green to be seen, so I had a nice walk after them, and found them going straight a-head, one after the other, and returned to a sorry supper of mildewed mutton and damper.

8th. (Camp vii.) In camp still. Mr. McKinlay calls this "Escape Camp." Finishing shoeing horses, and we shall make a start, if all be well, the day after to-morrow.

Extraordinary vegetation going on, grass springing up everywhere, in fact in places where you would think grass could not grow. This country will be beautiful in a short time, with flowers of all descriptions, and creepers, principally of the convolvulus family, are beginning to creep up all the trees along the creek. Innumerable black macaws flying about and discoursing anything but sweet music. Mr. McKinlay says, "in two or three months time from this date one could, with little difficulty (I am almost certain), start with any description of stock from the northern settled parts of South Australia, and go right across the continent to whatever point he might think fit."

The bullock has given us 116 lb. of dried meat besides what we have been using. 1 lb. of sugar to be served out to-day to each man, as this is the last, except a few pounds which will be preserved


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PINOZA and Oldenburg stood laughing at Meyer, who was playing with a ridiculously impish figure of glass in a long phial; it jumped up and down, and twisted about, as Meyer pressed the india-rubber stopper and declaimed magic incantations. He soon, however, ended the jest by remarking:

"Is philosophy from beginning to end anything more than this hollow imprisoned idea, the glass imp in the phial?" No one answered, and he continued, addressing Spinoza in particular: "What do you think of Descartes' imp? Two thousand years ago the creator of such a wonder might have been the founder of a religion; his praise would have been chanted in hymns to the furthest corners of the earth, and all mankind would have entreated his aid."

"That is very doubtful," was the reply. "Without some new world-stirring idea no mere worker of miracles has made his name immortal. Descartes' imp is nothing to the miracles the Jewish Cabbalists are said to have performed."

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2l6 "Tell us them," said Meyer, while Oldenburg made a wry face as Spinoza began:

"In my father's house we have an old servant named Chaje. She is German, and is full of the legends and superstitions of the German Jews. She once explained to me why at Prague on Friday evening they sing the hymn twice over by which Israel is united in mystic bonds of matrimony to the Sabbath. Once upon a time a great Cabbalist lived in Prague, called the Rabbi Low. He made a human figure of clay, and left a small aperture in the lesser brain in which he laid a parchment with the unutterable name of God written on it. The clod immediately arose and was a man; he performed all the duties of a servant for his creator, he fetched water, and hewed wood. All through the Jews' quarter he was known as the Golem of the great Rabbi Low. Every Friday evening the Rabbi took the parchment out of his head, and he was clay until Sunday morning. Once the Rabbi forgot this duty. All were in the synagogue, the Sabbath hymn was begun, when all the women and children in the assembly started and screamed out, 'The Golem! the Golem is destroying everything!' The Rabbi ordered the precentor to pause at the end of the prayer. It was yet possible to save all, but later naught would avail, the whole world would be destroyed. He hastened home, and saw the Golem already seizing the joists of his house

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Rh to tear down the building; he sprang forward, took the parchment out, and dead clay again lay at his feet. From that day they sang the Sabbath bridal song twice over in Prague. The great Rabbi Low certainly never thought of Descartes, and yet his Golem had as much life as any man, if we are to accept the new view, that the union between soul and body is so slight that at any moment it can be disjoined, and again reunited."

Meyer did not seem to notice the argumentative conclusion, for he said:

"When I publish my correspondence between Adam and Eve, your Golem shall have an honorable position therein."

With evident displeasure Oldenburg turned to Spinoza.

"Meyer is perpetually hunting after strange stories, which he arranges and classifies like his beetles and butterflies. To my taste your legend savors of Jewish spleen. To let a destroyer of the world, the creation of a Cabbalist, loose on the Jews' quarter! If, after the free manner of the popular legends, he had a love affair with a maiden, who every Sabbath awaited him in vain, or had he been a grand vizier, or advanced to be some other great minister, whom his master could reduce to dust, and raise again at will, there would at least be either poetry or satire in the thing; as it is the Golem of our lord and master pleases me

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 in case of sickness; so here goes the first of the stores; after all, what is it, we shall soon drink our tea (as long as that lasts,) without it, and think nothing about it! One of the fellows made all his into toffee, so that was soon done. Offers were made at 5s. per pound for sugar, and no sellers.

Had a nice job to-day to melt up all the extra fat to grease Mr. McKinlay's tent, but the sand was flying about so I was obliged to stop; it will make an additional weight of 50 lb. for the camels. There was a great game going on in the flat this afternoon, one of the nags could not be caught for two horn's; having been without hobbles for some days she had got rather fresh, and at last we lassoed her.

Sunday, 9th. We are getting all ready for a start to-morrow; it will be a relief to get out of this disagreeable sandy camp. Middleton still unwell, he has not quite got over the shaking he had at No. v. camp.

10th. We start this morning, all being ready for it. The bullocks very refractory at being packed; they don't seem to like it at all. We did not get away till mid-day in consequence. Our journey was over stony hills and flats, crossing several small creeks; on the way we crossed the outskirts of a flat, about sixteen miles from Escape Camp, with plenty of water and fine feed. Mr. McKinlay arrived at camp some time before we


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218 much better. Look, his bows are so graceful that no dame of the court of Louis XIV. could excel them."

"Lord and master!" replied Spinoza; "that is too strong. I am neither his servant nor his pupil."

"What do I hear?" asked Meyer in astonishment. "How long is it since you began to study his system with me, and you already go beyond him, while I am only glad if I can understand him?"

"I fear for our friendship," interrupted Oldenburg. "You have so often said that a similarity of intellectual power must exist between friends, and I have never once been able to grasp the system. It was principally the astonishing externals that attracted me first to the new teaching of Descartes; I investigated the entrails of a calf with him willingly; he called it his library, and found surprising evidences therein; but to the vital principle of his philosophical system I never could attain. I bolted my door, I curtained my window, I sat down in a corner alone, and concentrated my mind on the book; for two or three sentences, for half an hour, even an hour, I followed him completely; then arose, without my knowing it, some strange thought between the lines: a former experience, a wish, above all, the memory of a girl whom I once fervently loved, intervened between the propositions, axioms, corollaries, and I saw at last that I wished to penetrate to the foundation of things, and yet could

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Rh not distract myself from every-day life. I laid the book down and took another, or went out and dissipated my vexation and my cares."

"How is it then that you pass for so enthusiastic a disciple of Descartes, and sometimes are really such?"

"I must go rather far back for that. In the first place I am mostly a Cartesian, because I have gone through much the same career of doubt as the founder of the school. My father was pastor of the place where I was born; from childhood I sat in his library and read everything. Witch legends, history, anatomy, alchemy and theology, all came alike to me if I had something to read. When I was older, this miscellaneous knowledge mixed and fermented in my brain; religious doubts intervened; in nothing and in no occupation could I find any real pleasure. After my father's death, to the great scandal of the worthy citizens of my native town, I led a somewhat loose life, but that did not amuse me long. I tied up my bundle and followed the banners of Gustavus Adolphus as a volunteer. I was employed as commissioner to raise the contributions demanded by the Swedish host from my native town, and so gained considerable importance among my fellow citizens. The trade of war, for it was nothing more, soon wearied me. In camp and on the march doubts of all the faiths, for whose differences men fought so bloodily, overtook me. It was

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220 continual murder for no one knows what. The most superstitious of all popular ideas, that of bravery, alone made its value felt on its own merits. As Hugo Grotius says, towns and countries became as corpses, that men might no longer grieve for the fate of individuals. I long doubted whether I did right or not; a trivial circumstance at last decided me. I took my leave and went to the University of Utrecht. The students and professors there were divided into two parties; you can imagine that I did not hesitate long in ranking myself against the pious pastor, Gisbert Vötius, and on the side of Regius. He taught the new philosophy of Descartes. I was then twenty-one years of age, full of arrogance and restless energy, and as I had made something of a name as a swordsman I soon won a certain amount of authority among the students."

"Yes, I can assure you," interrupted Meyer, "I have faithfully seconded Oldenburg when he enforced the belief on the Vötiusians that they were predestined to have circumflex accents and all other marks of Cain written on their brows by us."

"What a much more active youth you had than I," sighed Spinoza.

"That is the question," answered Meyer, and Oldenburg resumed his narration.

"As Regius became more and more bitterly persecuted by Vötius the father and son, without the spirit, we went one evening to the house of his

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Rh and set up some cat's music there. I was expelled as a ringleader; Meyer slipped through with a whole head; so I was a martyr for a doctrine which, as I saw later, Regius himself did not rightly understand. I wandered about Holland and stayed for some months with Descartes himself. I know nearly every sentence of his doctrine, but I never could acquire the penetrative contemplativeness necessary to follow this germ through all its trellis work of development to the lattice of mathematical certainty."

"It is often so with me too," said Meyer; "I returned from my philosophical pilgrimage, on which I would conquer the Holy Sepulchre, wrong-side up, or, as our proverb says, 'feet foremost.'"

"Oldenburg has described the struggle better as one for contemplative power," replied Spinoza. "Look around; here, there and everywhere you see illusion and error. What assurance have you that all you see, all you know by experience, and feel in your heart is aught else than illusion and deception? What is so firmly and deeply founded that it cannot be torn up by doubts? So you close your eyes, cut loose from all your surroundings, and then, thus isolated, the whole visible world is cast into nonentity; you yourself perhaps a nonentity too? How do you know that you really exist? Here you are at the end of doubt, and here a still, small voice cries to you, 'I, I am, for I think, I

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 did; he thought shortly after that the water was gaining on us, or rather that the wind being high it was driving it up the flat; but no such thing, we were again to be flooded out and had to move the horse-gear from where it was and bring it up to the most elevated spot, where all the other things were. The bullocks did not get in till after sunset, and one of them gave an infinity of trouble. Mr. McKinlay thinks of leaving him behind rather than be bothered with him. The camels came over the rough stones admirably. Mr. McKinlay remarks that they are "certainly the best animals for this kind of work. They will eat anything, from a gum tree to the smallest shrub, and then come and lie down by you;" whereas horses and bullocks, if a chance offers, will ramble all over the country: with sheep and camels, one could travel over any practicable part of the continent, and keep them in good condition.

I am suffering from rheumatism fearfully in one of my legs, from being so long in water and wet clothes.

11th. Where we removed the horse-packs from last night is now a perfect sea, and even up to the foot of some of our blankets; one of the men had to shift his quarters during the night, as he found himself getting very cold and wet. We start after breakfast for a gap in the hills, and have to wade


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222 doubt my being; I, the thought, the doubt within me, I exist, even if all around me disappear in illusion and shadow.' Begin with doubt and you can stop at no arbitrary resting-place. Why doubt only the higher spiritual things? Has the physical world greater certainty because it is apparent to the senses? Are the deceptions of our senses more numerous than the illusions of our hearts and imaginations? Can you not imagine yourself a purely spiritual being. Can you not lay aside as prejudice all that hitherto appeared certainty, for example, the existence of your body? If not, you will strive in vain after incontrovertible truth. Can you do it, however. Then, if you have penetrated the central point of your self-consciousness, then forward! Open your eyes; let everything come before them that was hitherto confined to your thoughts; let nothing remain unexamined. You have a measure of the truth and existence of everything: what seems to you as incontrovertible as your knowledge of your own self, that alone is truth."

"I understand you," said Meyer. "You arrive at the fundamental axiom of the ancients, 'Man is the measure of all things.' The inner man as well as the outer man is a foot-rule, as we place the figures of men in pictures to show dimensions by contrast. Man is the ideal, universally accepted yard measure for the world."

"But if any spoke with further skepticism,"

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Rh Oldenburg. "I have no perfect assurance of that fundamental truth which should serve me as a rule, and I still do not know whether any inner intelligence dwells in me or not?"

"Either such an one would speak against his own consciousness, or we must believe that there are men who, by birth or prejudice, that is, through outward circumstances, are spiritually blind. For such do not think about themselves; whether they agree with or doubt anything, they do not know what they do; they say they do not know, and then even do not know that they do not know. They do not say it absolutely, for they are afraid to recognize their existence as know-nothings, so they must remain silent if they will not recognize anything that yet comprises a truth. In short, with such it is impossible to speak of knowledge, for in daily life and intercourse they are obliged to recognize of necessity that they exist, that they use their judgment, and witness on oath in favor of one and against another. But if anything is proved to them, they do not know whether the proof is there; deny, agree with, or dispute, they know naught of it; they are soulless automatons. For reasonable men, however, proof lies in the spiritual eyes. We can see the unseen things, which are but the objects of our thoughts, with no other eyes than with these proofs."

"You are becoming quite enthusiastic," said

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224 Meyer, "Lucian disposed of the whole in a jest by making a radical doubter be sold as a slave, and still doubt under the lash of slavery."

"But what does Descartes mean," asked Oldenburg, "by his unprofitable dicing with quadrangles, triangles, and the devil knows what angles?"

"Mathematical proof," answered Meyer, "is alone admissible. The definitions are the exact representations of an object described with its name and attributes; the postulates and axioms by which the proposition is proved are such truisms that whoever knows the alphabet must see them."

"You must come yet nearer, and be yet more definite," interposed Spinoza. "Definitions merely affirm the essence of a thing; attributes cannot be learned by definitions, they must be learned by experience. By mathematical laws alone can we understand and follow up all things, all processes of both the external and internal world. Everything is the necessary and inevitable result of its primal cause. Mathematical truths alone have the same inherent necessity and external evidence as our consciousness of ourselves. By the same means that I know certainly that I am, I also know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. The intricacies of higher mathematical problems make no difference, for they all rest on the same simple and incontrovertible principles, and every link of their necessary progress is as

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Rh as the principle itself. A number, as such, is the earliest definite idea; it is without regard to the characteristics of things, and merely, includes their existence. Apples, trees, men and beasts are all included. Larger growth does not increase the number, but draws from the first abstract idea a second, and letters are set in the place of numbers. The individual objects now lie far apart, but at all times we must be prepared to retrace their origin. To the building up of the whole intelligence, however, this would be a hindrance; here we have only to deal with pure thought—"

"And he who gets dizzy over it let him remain on the ground," jestingly interrupted Meyer. And Oldenburg inquired:

"Do you believe in the possibility of mathematical psychology?"

"Call it so if you like," continued Spinoza; "the conditions and laws of action of our intelligence and sensations have as definite rules as anything in nature; they are as ascertainable, they must be so; all that prevents us from being so to ourselves is—"

"And custom and passion put a stroke through the calculation," interposed Meyer. "In you Descartes is a second time Renatus. If the master

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 through the water for a mile or more before we get to the foot of the sand hills. There are rather high table-topped ranges in the distance to the north and south of our course; then to the top of a high red sand hill and across a stony plain, with plenty of feed, thence to another sand hill, from whence there is a perfect sheet of water as far as you could see. Camped on a myall creek, after passing table-topped hills right and left; passed a native camp, with the fire still burning, and the tracks quite fresh, but we saw no human being. One of the bullocks did not come into camp to-night; knocked up, and charged the men who were with him, so they left him to his fate; he won't hurt, for there is plenty of good feed and water where he is. It is a great pity he should be left, for we want him for food. The cook not recovered yet, so we still do a little in the culinary line by turns. The men with the rest of the bullocks not in till late.

12th. Off early this morning; the bullock that was left never came into camp. We crossed several myall creeks on our course, over stony ground, the flood obliging us to diverge continually, over broken and stony hills and several creeks, to camp on a small creek with a frizzly barked tree growing about it, quite new, no one of us knowing the name; it is a beautiful, finely-grained wood, very heavy, and something like rosewood; would make very nice furniture. One of the bullocks dropped down


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226 called the inside of a calf his library, you have a much better. You have learned the weapons of both sides in the enemy's camp. The Jesuit school educated and inspired Descartes—the Talmud school you. What wonderful ways hath history! But you will go further yet. I see you with a broom at the mast-head, like our Admiral Tromp, sailing the ocean, as a sign that you have cleared the elements of life of arbitrary prejudices."

Spinoza entered into the jesting humor of his friend, only so far pursuing his object as to explain that even this stroke through the calculation must be an effect of the same cause; that the passions must not be regarded as exceptional, but recognized as natural laws. Meyer tried in all ways to analyze Spinoza's intellectual method, and bent on this study he came again to talk with him.

"I have been thinking," he said to him one day, "of what you once said to me about the study of the Talmud, and think I understand how it is that you Jews can clamber up and down such intellectual ladders; if you jump over two or three rounds you do not miss your footing. It all comes by studying the Talmud, which accustoms you so early to free intellectual gymnastics. We, however—I can only use myself for an example—we were very differently trained. If one of us bring a thought into the world the midwives of the catechism come, and in accordance with immemorial

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Rh custom and manipulation, the embryo is brought to light, then it is wrapped in cotton-wool and tied into a pillow that it may not freeze, and when it is older goes in leading strings."

"I know your methods of education too little," replied Spinoza, "and so cannot rightly understand how a religion with a dogmatic-historic basis can be developed in a Socratic manner; but what you say of the Jews may be true enough. It has often happened that, like David, they have overthrown a champion well armed and practised in rules of fence with a well-directed pebble; but this want of discipline destroys all true, well-founded learning among the Jews. My endeavor is to withdraw myself from that vagabond intellectual life, and follow the progress of a study from point to point. Herein Descartes is my surest leader."

How wonderful it is that the thousand buds on a tree open at once! They are but one flower-cup, and the innumerable trees but one blooming tree, but to the eyes of men they are thousands. So bloom the flowers in the heart of man. It is but one force that awakens our intelligence, will, benevolence and love; we, however, can only see them individually.

The kingdom of knowledge and the joys of friendship awoke in Spinoza together; indeed, they were but one; for knowledge is the joyful recognition of external laws, the endeavor after, and

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228 of agreement with them; and friendship is the living practice of them in more defined form, impelling us by the same forces.

Yet a third powerful influence worked on Spinoza which he dared not name to himself.

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text: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 12

title: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 12


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Editor :

Your recent editorial urging more extended trial of motor cars in winter suggests to me that, as there are a large number of steam runabouts like mine, at least in New England, their owners may be interested in the two photographs I send with this, showing respectively my summer and winter arrangements. Perhaps no explanation is needed, further than to say that after entering the car as it is shown in winter rig I can close the side openings by letting down extensions of the side curtains and buttoning them to the front. The “extensions” referred to appear in the photo rolled up and held by straps. Except in the most inclement weather, however, they are not needed, the front alone contributing greatly to one’s comfort and proving sufficient protection for short trips, even in zero weather. The only precautions taken against freezing are to empty the tank gauge glass and to add a special ﬁtting provided by the builders which makes it easy to ﬁll the steam gauge and its pipe with glycerine.

For those who have read in your columns Mr. Damon’s recent tale of woe I will add that I have run this car practically every day since early last spring without any delays on the road and without mishap worth mentioning. At least four times a day it covers the mile between my house and office; nearly all my frequent journeys to Boston (65 miles the round trip, as I go) have been taken in it, until winter set in; and I have done much riding for pleasure besides.

But the point I mainly wish to make is this: There seems to be no difficulty whatever in traction, and I have seen no reason for winding the rear tires with rope, as I supposed I should have to do. To reach home I have to surmount a rise of about too feet, including two or three pretty fair grades; and even on “glare ice,” when horses not newly sharpened could hardly travel, I have had no slipping of consequence. Of course, it goes without saying that I use reasonable caution. There has been no snowfall, as yet, exceeding 4 or 5 inches, and I judge I could get through twice that amount, for the few miles I need to run daily. On the whole, I am surprised and gratified to ﬁnd that my car is so nearly weatherproof and so serviceable. I do not claim any beauty for my home made rig, but it certainly is practical and useful.

If any reader knows of a decision or expression of opinion by the courts on the subject of the constitutionality of any State passing a law to prohibit the use of automobiles on any road commonly used for horse drawn vehicles, will he kindly refer to the decision in such a manner that we can obtain a copy of it?

Editor :

In regard to belt and friction drive. I am quite sure it will not do for high powered cars. I enclose a diagram of a runabout change speed gear that has two friction surfaces, but is rather more complicated than the one described in of December 25. The friction disc A has a slight end play on the sprocket collar, and can be pressed tightly against the paper wheels B. Said wheels can be slid in unison toward or from each other on the squared shaft C. The shaft and wheels are driven by bevel gears D, one of which is keyed to the engine shaft, the reverse is of the usual planetary band brake form. This device, if made of liberal proportions and protected from dust and oil, will give good results on light runabouts

Editor :

Kindly publish in your columns the temperature at which gasoline freezes. W. E. T.

[We do not believe that gasoline has ever been frozen, and are quite certain that it will not freeze at the lowest atmospheric temperatures in this latitude. It could, of course, be solidiﬁed artificially, but we believe the experiment has never been made. The freezing point would, no doubt, vary considerably for different grades of gasoline.—.]

Editor :

Is there any difference, so far as delivery of power is concerned, between a two cylinder horizontal engine placed under the body of an automobile and the same style, same size engine placed in front? C. L. C. [No.—.]

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Rh subjects referred to in his paper, and he voluntarily gave up much of his time in preparing his sketches for this work.

The Rev. William Ridley, M.A., of Sydney, whose name is foremost amongst those connected with Australian philological researches, has, with extreme kindness, contributed a paper in which he relates a few of the most remarkable traditions that have come under his observation—selecting, as he informs me in a letter, those that seem most emphatically to silence the long-current assumption that the Aborigines of Australia are a race destitute of all ideas concerning the unseen world and of all imagination and hope. No one who has perused the published works of the learned author of the paper which appears in this compilation will need to be reminded that he is the highest authority in Australia on all matters that relate to the Aboriginal natives.

I have received ready assistance also from the Rev. F. A. Hagenauer, the Superintendent of the Aboriginal Station at Lake Wellington in Gippsland; the Rev. A. Hartmann, the Rev. F. W. Spieseke, and the Rev. Horatio Ellermann, of Lake Hindmarsh; the Rev. Amos Brazier and Mr. Joseph Shaw, of Lake Condah; Mr. H. B. Lane, of Warrnambool; Mr. Goodall, the Superintendent of the Aboriginal Station at Framlingham; Mr. Charles Gray, of Nareeb Nareeb; Mr. J. A. Panton, Police Magistrate and Warden at Geelong; the late Mr. W. H. Wright, Sheriff; the late Mr. A. F. A. Greeves and Mr. M. Hervey; Mr. N. Munro; the Rev. H. P. Kane; Mr. A. Sullivan, of Bulloo Downs; Mr. Alfred Telo, Mr. Sydenham Bowden; Mr. F. M. Krausé, Mr. Reginald A. F. Murray, and Mr. Norman Taylor, Geological Surveyors in Victoria; the Honorable Frederick Barlee, M.P., Colonial Secretary in West Australia; Mr. H. Y. L. Brown, Geological Surveyor; Mr. George Bridgman, of Gooneenberry, Mackay, Queensland; the Rev. S. McFarlane, New Guinea Mission, of Somerset, Cape York; Capt. Cadell; Mr. W. E. Stanbridge, Daylesford; Mr. F. M. Hughan; Mr. John W. Amos, Surveyor; Mr. J. Cosmo Newbery, B.Sc; Mr. Suetonius H. Officer, Murray Downs; Mr. Ronald Gunn, F.R.S., Launceston; Mr. Hugh M. Hull, Clerk of the House of Assembly, Hobart Town; Mr. J. W. Agnew, Hon. Sec. of the Royal Society of Tasmania; Miss E. M. a'Beckett, who was so good as to make a drawing of a characteristic Tasmanian plant; and others whose names are mentioned in the work.

In conclusion, I have to refer to the great help and encouragement I have received from Professor McCoy, of the Melbourne University, who has

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Rh utterly unnerve the candidates, and discompose the principal actors in the performance.

In Africa, where similar customs are observed, the fetich-man blows a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, and the sound is probably a signal to those not privileged to keep away; just as the Witarna is used for this purpose in Australia.

The practice of mutilating the body prevails in all parts of Australia. In New South Wales, the women, at an early age, are subjected to an uncommon mutilation of the two first joints of the little finger of the left hand. The operation is performed when they are very young, and is done under an idea that these joints of the little finger are in the way when they wind their fishing lines over the hand. This amputation is termed Mal-gun.

Knocking out the teeth, boring the septum of the nose, cutting and scarring the skin, and circumcision, division, perforation, and depilation are practised—some in one part and some in another—throughout the continent. In all these strange customs, as used by them, the natives do but follow the habits of savages and barbarians in other parts of the world; and one is made to believe and to repeat that man, spring from what race he may, will, under the same set of circumstances, and under like conditions of food and climate, originate and adopt similar practices. The mutilation known as Mal-gun is not confined, it is believed, to New South Wales. Knocking out the teeth is an ancient custom, and has spread widely. Dampier observed it amongst the natives of the north-west coast, and it is perhaps the most common of all their superstitious observances.

Circumcision and other similar mutilations are, it has been suggested, of modern date, and may have been derived from intercourse with the Malay trepang-fishers. The custom, as observed by the most ancient amongst the peoples of the earth, is, and was some thousands of years ago, a religious rite, and differs altogether from the practice of the blacks, who in this merely endeavour to test the powers of endurance of a candidate for admission to a certain rank in the tribe. In considering the effect, however, of this and other practices that are mentioned, one may believe that they are really indigenous, and that they have originated either in consequence of a peculiarity of climate or from the necessity of limiting the population.

It is undoubtedly true that some customs that could have originated in no other manner than in the pressing necessities of their mode of existence are exactly similar to many that have been regarded heretofore as peculiar to ancient forms of civilization, and it is unwise and unphilosophical to decide hastily that even such a rite as that of circumcision is not born of the circumstances of the people.

The savage, in many things, is—as it were by nature—cruel. What, for instance, could be more dreadful than to seize an unsuspecting youth, drag him from the camp, and subject him to hunger and cold for days and nights, knock out a tooth with a piece of wood, scar his skin, and compel him to submit to

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 he would add, "I began with a king's grave," and then grin. A mild joke, not in the best of taste perhaps, but then everything about Philip was mild; his nearsighted brown eyes, his tall, shambling frame, his face that never had been quite young. Even his shy way of showing off, of hoping, a little wistfully, that he could shock people or make them laugh.

As a matter of fact, His Majesty the King had been dead about 3,000 years when Philip and his father, the late and distinguished James K. Martin, Ph.D., had dug him up. It is generally considered respectable to rob a man's grave if he has been dead long enough. The Martins, father and son, had always made a most correct and respectable thing of grave-robbing, just as they had of everything else they turned their well-kept, somewhat dry Bostonian hands to. That anything could ever change this (or indeed his own prim, proper personal life) Philip never dreamed when he set out for Greece to carry on the work of the late Dr. Kimon Dragoumis. He was contemptuously amused when, at a farewell dinner, a slightly tipsy Parisian savant said to him:

"Some day you may rob one grave too many, my friend."

Philip grinned. "You mean curses? That old tripe about ancient tombs having invisible guardians?"

M. de Lesseps smiled. "You think me a foolish old man, hein? Not all ancient things are toothless. Yet you may be wise, my young friend. Perhaps it is safer to rob the tombs of the ancient dead, of those who have had time to forget their wrongs. When I was young I too went to Greece, to Maina where the old blood is purest, to write a book. But I saw what I dared not write. There are dead there who need no curses—they can act!" He shuddered and crossed himself.

Philip said indulgently, "If dead men could walk because they had reason for revenge, a lot of them would have done it these last few years. The men who died in concentration camps, for instance."

The savant said seriously, "That depends on the man, my friend. On what he studied while he was alive, what he knew and believed. On what his background was. Among simple yet ancient peoples, who are still near the source of things, there are survivals—" He rambled on, learnedly yet drunkenly, about primeval man, about vision and gifts that his modern descendants had lost. Until Philip got very bored, and took too many drinks.

He had a headache next morning, when he boarded the plane for Athens. But it was only the beginning of his headaches. For when he reached the little seaside village that had been the site of Dragoumis' work he found—nothing. Only the few tholoi that the great Greek had first found and explored were still visible. The bulk of that underground collection of mysterious Mycenean tomb-chambers had vanished as if the hills out of whose sides they had been carved had swallowed them up again.

It seemed strange, in spite of the disaster that had come upon Dr. Dragoumis and his co-workers; the guerrilla warfare that had raged for years afterward through this grim land, of sea and mountains, and was still uncomfortably near. So near, in fact, that it had taken Philip years to get his own permit to dig.

A landslide had covered the excavations; that was all he could learn. Though some of the villagers must have known the approximate location of the buried sites they would tell him nothing. They acted either sullen or blandly ignorant—too ignorant. He had a queer and unreasonable feeling that they were afraid.

Sophoulis, the local school-teacher, advised him to go to Mme. Dragoumis, "She may still have some of her husband's papers, kyrie."

"You mean she still lives here?" Philip asked in surprise. He had heard of Mme. Dragoumis as one of the famous beauties of the Balkans, a very gay and fashionable woman, much younger than her husband. "In that island villa of theirs?"

"She will not leave it, kyrie. Not for an hour. Not once since that night the doctor died has she set foot on the mainland. She says that her husband is still alive—that she must be there to greet him if he returns."


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natives of Australia are generally described as omniverous. There is scarcely any part of the country in which they cannot find food, and there is nothing in the nature of food, or of substances which can by any possibility contribute to the maintenance of life, that they will not eat. When driven to extremity by hunger, the black tightens his belt, and when overcome by thirst, he covers his stomach with earth; but it is not often that he is forced to adopt such measures. He eats of the fruits of the earth, literally, in due season, and he catches wild animals when he can. He understands the nature of every vegetable product in his district, and knows what to eat and what to avoid; and he is thoroughly conversant with the habits of the beasts and birds and fishes that are to be found within the boundaries of his domain. Every species of marsupial, from the largest kangaroo to the smallest mouse; every kind of bird, from the swift-footed emu to the little dicæum that feeds on the berries of the loranthus; every egg that every bird lays; every reptile; every one of the amphibia; every fish, whether in fresh or in salt water; every shell-fish; and every crustacean and insect—he is familiar with, and in general knows how to procure each by the easiest and quickest method. From poisonous plants he is able to extract a wholesome farina, and he roasts roots and grinds seeds into flour. He gathers manna in the heats of summer. In the arid tracts he obtains water from the roots of trees; and, unless the region were inhospitable indeed, he could never actually perish of hunger.

He makes a drink that, if not intoxicating, is certainly of a character to exhilarate; and he chews or smokes a plant that stands in the stead of tobacco.

It is wholly impracticable to give a complete list of all the indigenous products which serve him for food, nor is it possible to describe all the methods he has of catching wild animals, or preparing the roots and seeds on which, in certain seasons, he has to depend mainly for subsistence; but I have collected from numerous sources a great deal of information, much of which I trust will be useful and interesting.

Many of the statements relate to the practices of the natives in parts of the continent far distant from Victoria; but each is calculated to throw light on the modes of procuring food that were usual amongst our blacks before Port Phillip was colonized.

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 "She dares not leave it," Mrs. Sophoulis said with a hard little smile. "Her family has been worried about her, and once they even sent doctors to take her away, but she locked herself in her room and said she would kill herself if they broke the doors down—that it would be better to die that way than to go ashore."

Philip felt a little apprehensive. The lady might not be sane enough to be of any help to him.

"I thought the Nazis shot Dr. Dragoumis," he said.

"So it is said. None knows," Sophoulis said heavily. "They suspected him of hiding arms, arms smuggled in from British submarines; and perhaps he was. Or perhaps he had found tombs in which there were precious things—treasures that he feared the Nazis might carry off to Germany. Certainly he was doing something that he wished to keep secret. He was a giant who could outdig any of his men, and toward the last he dug oftenest by moonlight—and alone."

"It must have been the tombs themselves that he wished to protect," Philip said stiffly. "No true scientist would risk such monuments of tiie past by storing arms in them."

"Who knows, kyrie? A true patriot will risk anything. At least there was talk. Too much talk. Perhaps even someone who wished to talk too much. So the Nazis waited for him, that night at the villa. Kyria Dragoumis says that they shot him as he was escaping through the French windows, but that so great was his strength that he ran on, with their bullets in him. And later, when they searched the tholoi where they thought he might be hiding, the mountain itself slid forward and covered them—yes, the very mountains seemed angry that the invaders should dare go poking about among their bowels. It took them two days to dig out the bodies of their Gestapo men, kyrie."

RS. SOPHOULIS cut in excitedly, her dark eyes bright, "But they never found the doctor, kyrie! And some of our people say that they have seen him since, by moonlight, pacing the cliffs above the sea, and looking out toward his home across the waters."

Her husband laughed a littie uneasily. "Our peasants hereabouts are still very superstitious, kyrie. They can see anything."

"So it seems," said Philip dryly. "You think that Mine. Dragoumis might be able to help me then?"

"She would not!"Mrs. Sophoulis snorted. "She never knew anything about it; she took no interest in it. Or in anything but parties and young men. She stays on the island now only because she is afraid—not for love of her dear dead husband, poof! Keep away from her, kyrie; she is bad luck, that one."

Sophoulis' fist pounded the table. "Be still, woman! None has any right to speak against Kyria Dragoumis; I have told you that I will have no idiotic women's gossip in my house."

There was evidently some local feeling against Mme. Dragoumis, Philip thought as he left. Possibly only among the women; Sophoulis was clearly either too fair-minded or too cautious to lend himself to it. Yet what fear could they possible think kept Mme. Dragoumis on the island—surely government guards could have kept her safe from any guerrilla ambush? The whole business was a puzzle. Why should Dragoumis have been fool enough, that night, to attempt escape? He could not have hidden anything incriminating in the tombs. "Attempted escape" was an age-old, trite pretext to cover murder; but why should anybody have wanted to murder Dragoumis, a scientist who had surely had too much sense to take any interest in anything but his work?

Well, it was none of his business. What concerned him was to find a way into those lost Mycenean vaults without blasting holes in their sides while he was at it. He took a boat and had himself rowed out to the island. To the little landing-stage from which broad steps led up to a white villa above the sea; a villa set like a pearl upon a terrace made green and silver by the foliage of orange and olive trees.

Or so he thought until he saw Anthi


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 Dragoumis and knew the difference between pearl and setting. Between life and mere existence.

She was a beauty. She was delight, and wonder, and youth—the youth that Philip had never had. She set fire to the dry man as flame fires tinder.

And she was gracious to him, she was kind. Yes, she still had some of her husband's papers, she would show them to him, and search for more. He could help her search if he liked. He did. He went again and again to that villa on the island. He filled his eyes and ears with her; with the soft music of her voice, with the curves of her body, that made softer music whenever she moved. With the warm red of her lips, and the depths of her shining eyes.

And then one day she let him fill his arms...

He tried, after that, to get her to marry him and go away with him. "Your husband is dead, Anthi. He has been dead these five years. It cannot hurt you to accept that now. You do not love him any more."

But she shook her head. "He was not too badly hurt that night; he rowed himself back to the mainland. He was a peasant, born in a hut in Maina—not civilized, like you and me, for all his learning. He was very strong, Philip; strong like the men of an earlier world. It would be hard for him to die"

EALOUSY leapt in him. So that was it—Dragoumis' brute strength had dazzled her, his hard peasant heritage! That was what she liked in a man. He said roughly, "If he's alive, why hasn't he come back to you? What could he have been afraid of, after the Nazis left? Afraid enough to make him stay away from a wife like you?" He kissed her, hard and savagely. He strained her close, trying to hurt her, to prove that he too was strong.

She laughed up into his face and stroked his cheek. "You would not stay away from me, would you, my Philip? Don't worry; I love you more than I ever loved him. You are much younger than he was. Though he loved me very much; as much as you could ever do."

"Then why would he stay away from you?" Philip muttered.

She looked up at him very seriously then, her eyes gone grave. "Because, that last night, he accused me of betraying him to the Nazis. Because the officer who came to arrest him was young and very handsome—a man I had danced with several times in Athens." She shivered. "But he was not handsome when they dug him out from under the mountain, after he had tried to follow my husband into the ancient tombs."

Philip stared at her in horror. "You don't mean that Dragoumis did have explosives in there and deliberately set them off—that he'd have destroyed tholoi just to kill a few men?"

She laughed. "Not a few men, no. One man—the man he thought had taken me from him. You would not do that, would you, my archaeologist, my ruin-lover? After all, it was Kimon, my poor, aging Kimon, who loved me best."

Suspicion stabbed him suddenly, like a knife twisting in his flesh. He shook her. "Did you love the German then, Anthi? He was younger than your husband, too—and so handsome!"

But that insulted her. She stormed at him, she raged and wept until he practically had to go down on his knees and apologize to her. Until suspicion faded, became a shameful outrage that he dared not even remember.

When she was quiet again he tried once more to persuade her that her husband must be dead. "No living man could have stayed away from you so long. Whatever he was fool or mad enough to believe for the moment he could not—you are so beautiful, Anthi!" But she only wept again and shivered.

"You did not know Kimon, my Philip. I did." She peered nervously over her shoulder, at the shadows that seemed to have grown, blacker, over the bed. "He was so strong, Philip. He was like the giant who could not die so long as he could touch his mother, the earth. Nothing could ever kill him completely, here in his own hills. I think that he is still waiting somewhere, inside the mountain, in his tholoi—waiting.


text: The Aborigines of Victoria/Volume 1

title: The Aborigines of Victoria/Volume 1


text: The Aborigines of Victoria/Volume 2

title: The Aborigines of Victoria/Volume 2


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 watching for me. That is why I never dare set foot on the mainland. Why I never can unless he is found—and laid."

Philip stared at her blankly. "But even if he were there, Anthi—a madman, in hiding, getting food somehow—he'd have stolen a boat arid come out here long ago. You must see that."

She looked very straight at him then. Her eyes were pits of blackness, blacker than the shadows. Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper: "There are those who cannot cross water."

For a minute he did not understand. Then his face went whiter, than hers. With an incredulous, yet comprehending horror. For now at last he knew. Evil things could not cross water—the unalive yet undead could not, the terrible vrykolakes of Greek belief.

All these years she had been lying, all these years she had believed her husband dead! A man no longer, but a thing of supernatural evil, an avenger who was seeking her.

Why? About what else had she lied?

But she had risen, she was coming toward him. Her eyes held his. Their warm brightness was all around him, and her arms were round his neck.

"You will do that for me, my Philip? You will find him and lay him, so that we can go away together and be married? So that we can forget him and love each other, always?" She pressed her cheek against his. "You will set me free from fear. You will do that for your Anthi, Philip? For me?" Her lips moved along his cheek softly, touched his ear.

He stood quite still in her arms. He said hoarsely, "How could I find him, even if he were there?"

She said softly, almost crooning, "You will find him. You will lay him. For your Anthi. For me."

He did not answer. He stood there horrified, trying to think. In England and in Poland they used to bury the unquiet dead with stakes through their hearts. To keep them down, to keep them from walking. What had been done to such dead men in Greece? He could not remember. Something not so simple as a stake, he thought—something horrible—

She pressed herself closer against him. She whispered, "It will not be so hard. I can tell you where to find the last tomb he found—the greatest, the royal tholos, the one he said he kept secret for fear the Nazis would loot it."

"You think he would have gone there, knowing that you knew the place?" Philip laughed harshly.

"He would have, to save what he could. He loved it more than anything, even me. Night after night he used to tell me of it, to describe his precious day's work when I wanted to sleep. But now at last that will be useful. It will help you to find him, and then you will cut off his arms and legs—so that he will have no feet to follow us, no hands to strike us!"

Philip said bitterly, "Do you want to tie them under his armpits, as murderers used to do in Solon's time? Are you mad, Anthi? I am, to listen to you."

She flung back her head, her eyes hard with suspicion, "No, I do not want them tied under his armpits. I want them brought here to me, tonight! There are signs by which I shall know them—do not think that you can deceive me. If I do not get them I will never marry you—you shall never touch me again!"

IGHT found Philip on the mountainside; high above the lights of the village. He had one man with him, a big fellow with the brawn of an ox and almost as few brains. He came from another village, and if by any unlucky chance he should see Dr. Dragoumis' body he would not recognize it. He had said nothing, only looked scared and crossed himself when Philip had explained the need for this secret digging by night.

"There may be treasures in this tomb, Costa, golden things that it would be risky to let the guerrillas hear of. Though there is probably nothing but pottery and old stones. And perhaps fragments of some old king's body—if it is not well-preserved I may bring them up."

Costa would not be surprised, now, if


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 he saw pieces of a corpse. Philip gagged at the thought, It would hardly look human now, after so many years in the musty dark. Or would it? Philip did not know. He shuddered. How could Anthi be afraid of such a thing, lying there helpless, horrible in its rottenness and decay; pitiful because of the very hideousness that cancelled its onetime humanity?

She was waiting for him now, below, in a boat about a hundred yards offshore. She had to come so far to show him which particular crag covered the buried entrance to the dromos, to that great passageway leading into the mountain's heart. He had expected her to go back after that, but she was still there, her boat a tiny dark speck upon the moonlit waters. Waiting vulture-like, eager for her prey.

She was grimly thorough, he thought. Ancient murderers were supposed to have been satisfied with cutting off their victims' hands and feet, but she could imagine the corpse running after her fleetly on the stumps of footless legs, catching and crushing her in handless arms, in an embrace that would break the bones—

He shuddered again, mopped his forehead. Easy for a man to have fancies here, amid all this bleak wilderness of rock.

"What is it? Are you tired, kyrie?" asked Costa hopefully. "We have been digging almost four hours now. You could go down to the boat, to the lady. Did she bring wine for us, kyrie?"

Philip hesitated. He was tired, and the light was very bad. He had expected the moon to be bright tonight, to make the mountain almost as light as day. But instead, though it shone clear and bright upon the sea, some trick of cloud-shadows cut it off from the slopes, shrouded them in pitch. He and Costa had to work by lantern-light, and they kept the lantern muffled, for feat it might be seen from the village below. The shadows all around them were dancing, dancing, like immense black cats playing with two trapped mice.

What if he were to assert himself, to go down to Anthi and tell her that he would do her work another night, when the light was better—?

But then she would laugh at his weakness. And she would be right. Was it not weakness?

He answered Costa's proposition shortly: "No." He set his teeth and plunged his spade into the earth. Hard, with renewed vigor. And suddenly the spade struck hollowness; sank into the earth as if hands had reached up from below and seized it. A dislodged pebble went rattling on down inside the hole, down, down, into gulf-like space.

Costa crossed himself again and gasped, "May the Panagia—may the Virgin and all the blessed saints preserve us!"

Earth and massive stones fell together with a great thud. A pit opened, almost beneath their feet. The Greek cried out and jumped back. But Philip laughed. His eyes were shining. He forgot Anthi; he forgot Dragoumis. This was what he had come to Greece to find; the discovery he had dreamed for years of making; this was triumph and fulfilment!

He dug feverishly; he urged Costa on with both praise and curses. Until the hole lay like a wide-open mouth at their feet, a mouth blacker, more thickly solid, than the blackness of the night.

Philip tied a rope to the lantern. He lowered it into the pit and leaned over, watching course after course of great stone blocks appear and disappear as its golden eye sank deeper, farther into the dark. At last it came to rest upon a rock floor many feet below, making a tiny brilliant island there.

Philip took an axe, a flashlight, and some cloths, set another rope around his waist and prepared to follow the lantern.

"Wait here, Costa. When I jerk the rope raise me."

He wondered fleetingly why he had said that. Surely it would have been simpler to say that he would shout up from the depths? Then he forgot it as he swung dowwarddownward [sic] into space.

E LOOKED about him eagerly as he landed. To his right, within a few feet of his descent, the passageway was blocked by rough masses of earth and rock.


text: The Aborigines of Victoria

title: The Aborigines of Victoria


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 Probably these covered the real entrance to the dromos, that which had been hidden for tens of centuries until Dragoumis pierced its age-old seals; on that fatal night it must have been crushed by the landslide that had buried his pursuers. But to the left the passage stretched on, seemingly endless, into the mountain's heart. For a little way only the lantern s light pierced it, breaking the darkness into pieces, into dancing shadows.

Did one of those shadows dart back as he looked, one a little thicker, a little blacker, than its fellows?

He did not heed it. His heart felt light, exultant, as he levelled his flashlight and walked on, toward the blackness that looked solid as a wall. He no longer even felt horror of the axe beneath his arm. If Dragoumis could have chosen, surely he would have had his dead body dismembered a thousand times rather than let his great discovery be lost again, hidden from mankind, perhaps for more centuries. For on no other terms would Anthi ever have disclosed the secret. Poor girl! Later, when her hysterical, superstitious obsession was over, she would regret this, she would be kind and gentle and fastidious again, as a woman should be. Now he must do whatever was necessary to bring her peace.

He went on into the shadows, and they retreated before him slowly, steadily. He followed them down that stone corridor that led through the earth's bowels.

Once or twice it seemed to him that he heard a faint curious rustling among those dark, wavering shapes that recoiled before his flashlight. As if someone were walking ahead of him, stealthily. He decided that it must be some trick of echoes, reverberating oddly in that subterranean place. It could not be bats, for there was never anything where the light came; throw his flashlight where he would, its beams found only great, bare blocks of stone.

Then he came at last to the black rectangle of the inner portal, the opening into that great, circular chamber Anthi had told him of. There Dragoumis had found golden vessels and golden filigree-work, and images of gods that no man had worshipped for ages. There he had found bones, and there, perhaps, be had left his own.

And there, at last, fear took Philip. It closed round his throat like an icy hand. In his inner ears a far-off voice seemed to cry: "Do not disturb the dead! Do not disturb the dead!"

He shrugged. That voice came out of his childhood, out of superstitions and conventional moralities engraved upon the young mind as a phonograph record is engraved upon wax. He thought, "I am being foolish as Anthi. I have handled many mummies, I have felt their dry, withered flesh slough off my hands. What difference is there, what real difference? A man can be as dead in three minutes as he will be in three thousand years."

He swung the flashlight forward, toward the inner chamber.

He saw the gleam of gold, he saw strange, grotesque shapes of stone. He saw carved stone larnaki, and, in the far corner, a table of red marble. Its legs gleamed under the light, like blood.

Was there something on top of the table, among the shadows? Something long and dark and still, like the outstretched form of a man?

Once again fear took him. He could not bear to throw the flashlight upon the tabletop, to see. He edged slowly into the chamber, moving cautiously, laboriously, as if through invisible barriers. There were no more echoes. In the deathly silence he heard nothing but the fierce, hard pounding of his heart.

Suddenly he stopped. He could not bear to go farther, to come within touching distance of that thing that might be lying there.

He set his teeth and his will. Slowly, as if it were a rock too heavy for him to move, the flashlight came up. Its beams touched something; something upon the table-top.

A man's hand that lay, lax and brown and leathery, upon red marble. A large hand, larger than most men's. Firm and sleek as leather it looked; and yet, in some curious and subtle way, as lifeless. None could have mistaken it for the hand of a living man. Philip's brain reeled; through it


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Rh words signifying the same object having no similarity whatever in tribes not far removed; but it is a singular fact, showing the common origin of the language, that although an individual of a tribe may not be able to understand the dialect of the natives a hundred miles from his birthplace, yet, take him considerably further, and he will probably meet with those speaking a very similar language to his own, and with whom he can converse.

The girls are betrothed when very young, sometimes as infants; and at the age of thirteen or fourteen are taken possession of in a very summary manner by their future lords. If they will not go quietly to his mia-mia, they get a tap over the head with a waddy to enforce obedience. They are often promised to men of a neighbouring tribe. In that case, they are taken at some general meeting. In all my long experience of native life I have only met with one instance of anything like love being shown. This was in the case of a pretty young girl, who was given to a man old enough to be her father, and who already had one wife, showing a most decided preference for a young man of her tribe. Charley—for that was the favored one's name—took possession of his lady-love when her intended husband was absent on a hunting expedition. On the return of the latter to the camp, he vowed vengeance, and at once endeavoured to recover the girl by force of arms. He armed himself, and approached Charley's mia-mia, waddy and malka in hand. Charley arose, and, taking up his weapons, coolly awaited his opponent—the poor girl cowering and trembling behind him, for well she knew what her fate would be if her lover was defeated. A desperate fight now took place between the two men. Charley was much the smaller of the two, but younger and very active, and I am glad to say victory declared for him, as he gave his opponent a terrible thrashing. However, as he had committed a breach of tribal usage, all were against him, and he had to take himself off with his fair one until the affair had blown over. The Goulburn and Murray blacks had a curious custom or superstition with regard to betrothment. The mother of the betrothed girl would never look at or meet her intended son-in-law if at all possible to avoid him; but if compelled to pass close to him, she would cover up her head and face with her opossum cloak and shuffle past in a most ridiculous fashion. I never could get at the meaning of this apparently absurd custom, called by the Goulburn tribe Ulandibe or Ulandibo.

Polygamy is universal; but it is generally the old men of the tribe who have the greatest number of wives. The reason of this is that they exchange their young daughters for young wives for themselves. Many of the young men are consequently without any, and the result is perpetual fights and quarrels about the women. They;, unfortunate creatures, lead a wretched life of drudgery. They have to collect yams for their husbands—which alone is no joke, as they eat an immense quantity—fetch wood and water, and when on the move carry everything—the man walking along majestically with his tomahawk and a few spears, his poor lubra trudging behind loaded. Their life depends much upon the temper of their generally morose and sullen masters, who beat them brutally with the first thing they can lay their hands on, tomahawk or waddy, for the veriest trifles. When eating, the man sits in

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LYMPIA sat at the window and looked in the window seat mirror, the so-called "spy," a standing evidence of Dutch love of comfort and sight-seeing. A young man stood by the lady. He was of middle height; his oval face, when seen in profile, might have been called handsome; it had some resemblance to Olympia's, but there was none of the restless fire in his glance that shone from Olympia's eyes. His left hand rested on the gilt handle of his rapier, and with his right he stroked his blonde whiskers. Every now and then he screwed up his eyes and looked out of the corners at every point in his costume. It was all faultless: the white cravat was in its proper position, the black mantle of finest Venetian velvet fell in majestic folds, and the tassel of gold thread hung gracefully on his breast, the quilted satin breeches were tied ornamentally at the knees, the silk stockings, and shoes with gold buckles, all were irreproachable. "Look there," said Olympia, and the well-dressed individual looked at her amiably; "do you see that young man who is coming so thoughtfully down the street?"

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Glacan, Nial


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230 The person addressed quickly drew a red morocco case from his pocket, and took a jewelled opera-glass from it.

"Do you mean that one?" he then said. "He is of middle height and brown complexion; is he not a Jew?"

"Whatever he is," replied Olympia, "he comes of an honorable Spanish family. My father respects him highly, and I—I consider him one of my dearest friends. Just because he was born a Jew, whom the whole world is against, he has attained to an unprejudiced conscientiousness of judgment, an unswerving rectitude, which command our regard, and often put us to shame."

"But what do you say to my physiognomical guess?" continued the stranger as he curled his moustache round his first finger, and let his glance wander complacently to the window-glass in which he saw himself reflected. "I too find the Jews very interesting; they are a sort of historical relic, and I have to thank you for my taste for history. I look upon the Jews as a fragment of some Asiatic root which we can study in this strange form."

"Had you much intercourse with Jews in Hamburg?" inquired Olympia.

"You jest," was the reply, "but I know the Jews thoroughly. En détail, there may be many honorable men among them. In my native town there was an old rogue to whom I used to sell my old

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 ran dizzily words he had heard among the Greek peasants and never heeded; the bodies of the walking dead—of those whom the earth had not loosed—were incorrupible undecaying!

And as he looked the hand changed. The lingers tensed, the long tendons on the back of it rose and stiffened, as if that dark recumbent form were bracing itself to rise!

With a strangled cry of horror Philip hurled himself forward, the axe gleaming above his head.

OSTA shivered. The night wind was cold, and once a cry had seemed to drift up from the depths below. He had listened closely after that, but he had not been able to tell whether the cry was repeated, whether a faint horrible screaming, muffled by distance, had come up from the earth.

The rope at his feet jerked suddenly, convulsively, like a great snake. He cried out and jumped bade, then remembered and gasped with relief.

The signal!

Gladly he hauled his master up. "The saints be thanked, kyrie! You are safe! I thought I heard something—"

The tall man did not answer. He turned and strode off down the mountainside, with long, swift strides. "He goes very fast," Costa thought, "as if there were something before—or behind him—for which he could not bear to wait. He does not even stop to give me any of the bundles he carries." He followed with the lantern, looking curiously at those bundles. They were long and narrow, they looked like human arms and legs. When he saw a limp hand dangling from one of them he crossed himself.

"The old king must have come all to pieces. Who would have thought he would still have looked so human?"

He gained a little on his master. The lantern rays fell on those packages, and Costa's eyes grew large and round. After that he walked more slowly, and let the distance widen between himself and the tall figure ahead. For through the cloth wrappings something dark was seeping, something that stained the white linen.

He dropped farther behind, when they came within sight of the shore and his master spurted suddenly, running out with daemonic speed onto the white sands. The clouds had left the moon; the beach was almost as bright as day.

A cry came from the boat. The waiting woman tugged at the oars and swung it in, closer. She leaped out upon the sands. Her voice pealed out, a song of gladness:

"You have them, Philip! You have them—"

She ran forward, her arms outstretched, her face bright with triumph. The man waited for her. He had stopped and stood very still; he made no move, either to meet or welcome her. And when she reached him she did not even look at him. She only clutched, with hands as terribly eager as her eyes, at those packages he carried.

Silently, he let her take them. Silently, he stood over her as she unwrapped them. As their ugly, stained contents fell from her paralyzed hands to the earth—

And then she screamed. Terribly and horribly she screamed. For the first time she looked up into his face, and saw it. He took off his hat, Philip Martin's hat, and moved toward her, and in that clear moonlight, for all the distance, Costa saw that his head was not Philip Martin's head.

After that Costa's eyes closed and he knelt and prayed. He did not see what made the lady scream again. Her cries kept on for quite a long time, but at last the beach was silent. There was no sound on it, even the sound of a retreating footstep. And then, and only then, did Costa find the strength to run away.

Later, the Athenian newspapers carried feature headlines: ! On a nearby beach had been found the bodies of Kyria Anthi Dragoumis and of a man who must have been one of the guerrilla murderers. A giant of a man, whose body, unaccountably, crumbled and fell apart when it was touched.


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Rh clothes. I had many a joke with him; he took everything in good part if he could make a good bargain; covetous as he was, I have still seen several instances of his uprightness; but looked at en gros all Jews are pickpockets; a dirty, disgusting lot, who, alas! my father has often said, will soon have all the trade of our town to themselves. Only think! I had a friend staying with me once who actually condescended to a noble passion for a Jewess, so much so, indeed, that he actually thought of uniting himself to his Rachel. I cannot yet understand how a man of honorable family could bear to have a dirty Jew for a brother-in-law smelling of leeks. But the maiden appears to have been educated above her greasy locked compatriots. One morning my friend was in Cuxhaven when they were dragging a corpse out of the water. He recognized it as Rachel. We had to hold him to prevent him from doing himself a mischief. I was right sorry for my friend's trouble. He swore hard and fast that he would never belong to another, but one knows what those vows are. He recovered sooner than we expected, and in a year he was the happy spouse of a town councillor's daughter. When we remind him of his earlier passion he only laughs quietly. Surely Jufrow Olympia either jests or plays with paradoxes when she honors a Jew with the enviable title of her best friend."

During this discourse Olympia had placed

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232 at the organ and lightly played a prelude. She looked quietly at the stranger, who emphasized his words and beat time with his thumb and finger, which he had passed through a ring.

"You have gained much experience of life," she said at last, "but you forget that you are in Holland, where religions are not divided into dominant and subordinate. I believe Amsterdam is the only town in the world which has carried toleration so far that Christians have been converted to Judaism. You must be acquainted with de Spinoza; believe me, he is a remarkable man. You are not ill-natured; be friendly with him for my sake. But hush! here he comes."

Spinoza entered.

"Here is Herr Kerkering at last," said Olympia, "of whom I have often spoken to you as my pupil of years ago, and who was prevented from returning to us by his father's death."

"You will assuredly approve of my resolution, Herr de Spinoza," interrupted Kerkering, "to return again to Jufrow Olympia, and hear the wisdom of the ancients from her honeyed lips."

"A questionable compliment," replied Olympia; "you say I have yellow lips, and remind me of my age." Kerkering protested. Spinoza helped him out by saying:

"You have probably forgotten, Herr Kerkering, that Jufrow Olympia demands, like the highest

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text: Weird Tales/Volume 42/Issue 4/At the End of the Corridor


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Rh Being, that we should make no image of her of things heavenly or earthly."

"O you heretic!" said Olympia, and her flashing eyes seemed indeed capable of an auto-da-fé. "You will surely permit Herr Kerkering," she continued after a pause, "to join our Latin conversations. I cannot call them lessons now."

Spinoza agreed, and while he was speaking Oldenburg entered. He looked Kerkering over, as Olympia introduced him, with a rapid glance.

"I thought I should meet thee here," he said turning to Spinoza, "and so spared myself the journey to thy house."

"Thou?" said Olympia. "Oh, the cordial thou! how lucky men are that they can address their friends so when they please without hesitation. The Romans little knew their good fortune in addressing each other as thou. I am proud that you two are already so intimate, as I was the means of it."

"If two quantities are equal to a third then the three are equal," jested Spinoza.

"And not a fourth also?" inquired Olympia.

"We are here the representatives of four great powers; we will conclude a quadruple alliance. You must represent Moses, Herr von Spinoza; you Calvin, Herr Oldenburg; Herr Kerkering, you must stand up for your Luther, and I—I will represent the Pope; he cannot object, for I am called Olympia

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234 Maria Honoria. Herr Kerkering, give the two gentlemen your hands. We have long been allies; we four will represent the circle which includes and reconciles all religious differences."

"I am afraid that is the reverse problem of the squaring of the circle," said Oldenburg as he joined them, and added, "You go even further than Hugo Grotius, who also dreamed of an eternal Peace of the Religions, but forgot the Jews in his projected union."

Olympia took Kerkering's hands and placed them in the hands of the two friends.

"Always extravagant and arbitrary!" said Oldenburg to Spinoza, as they went away. "Women never can resist match-making; if they are married, they try to find similar good fortune for others; if they have one friend, another must be his friend also, even if by force. What has this Kerkering, whom she treats like an automaton, to do with us?"

"You should not be so discontented with such alliances," replied Spinoza; "it is another example for your lord and master, Descartes. Without the perpetual external interference of a higher third element no real existence can be imagined; all would fall to pieces."

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HILE Spinoza was absorbed in consideration of the actual existence of things, the inherent cause of their existence, their necessary and accidental destinies, and the appropriate mathematical demonstrations of Descartes, his father had also been considering the sufficient cause of actual existence, and his demonstrations were not less founded on ciphers and numbers than the philosopher's.

"Are you still resolved not to be a Rabbi?" he said one day to his son. "Have you thought over all the consequences to both you and me? I, alas! see my greatest joy sink before me into the grave."

"In the sayings of the Fathers it is written," answered Baruch in a low voice, "that Rabbi Zadok said, 'Make not a crown of glory of thy knowledge of the sacred law to pride thyself thereon, neither make a spade thereof wherewith to dig.' It always goes ill with a religion if its expounders earn wages thereby."

"Good, I am of Rabbi Zadok's opinion; but what if a man hath no other spade? Listen to me; I will be open with you. Our Miriam is now the

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text: Author:Evangeline Wilna Ensley

title: Author:Evangeline Wilna Ensley


text: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 13

title: Spinoza: A novel/Chapter 13


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236 betrothed of Samuel Casseres; he wishes, with Rebecca's husband, to enlarge the diamond mill; he has fresh secrets. My daughters are now, with God's help, taken care of; you alone remain. Should I have concealments from you? My lawsuit is going against me, and what I have to leave you at my death is so little that you could not live on it. May God preserve my children and my children's children from saying with sorrow in their daily prayers, 'Lord, let us not be bounden to them of flesh and blood for alms!' So tell me what is to be done?"

"Must I go into trade?"

"No, I should never agree to that; from childhood up you have had no inclination for trade. Now, indeed, there are new channels for commerce, and we need not be so confined as we are in Holland here, where each one snaps the opportunity from before the other's face. There is no use in going to Batavia, for it goes so ill with those that are there that many wish to return; but there is a report that Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel, who is treating with the Lord Protector, may probably obtain leave for the Jews to go to England again."

"I heard of it," answered Baruch. "Rabbi Manasseh won most votes by saying that the true coming of the Messiah could not be until the fulfilment of the prophecy that the Jews would be

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Oglander, John


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Rh scattered through all lands. It was a sophistical trick."

"That may be," said his father, "the greater proportion of people cannot be treated any other way than by being duped, so we do them that favor. But that is not what concerns us. Consider how you are to ensure a livelihood in the future."

"Rabbi Gamaliel teaches that 'Study of the law united with a trade is good; diligence in both causes us to forget sin; study without work is idleness, and leads to sin.'" Baruch then gave several examples of fathers of the synagogue who were handicraftsmen, and concluded with the words, "I should like to learn a handicraft."

"You need not quote the Talmud so much for it; I have nothing against your learning an honorable craft."

Spinoza was glad that his father was not merely moved by his examples to agree to his purpose, for he had in a measure thereby lent himself to wellknown "pious deceptions." He was firmly resolved never to join in the usual routine, and sell his knowledge and convictions for daily bread. If he could earn his livelihood by the labor of his hands, his convictions would remain free from the necessities and constraints of every-day life. Or even to minds of the first order does that vague, unsatisfied longing occur, which so often comes over us if we are fated always and always to drive the pen,

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