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Ranolf and Amohia

VI

VI.

Next with uprooting Metaphysics toyed
The youth—their tangled subtleties enjoyed;
Nor, as his tutors counselled would confine
His tasks to careworn, truth-adoring Locke;
Eager to learn what "paying out more line "
Where Locke had cast it, led to—solid rock,
Mud, quicksand, or the fathomless profound.
The more line ran, more depth there seemed to sound.
It took him, as you know, to that rare creed,
Etherial, beautiful—the fertile seed,
First dropped by Locke, our goodly Bishop caught
And sowed and reared into rich food for thought,
Heavy with ears of amaranthine gold
That yet may yield their glorious hundredfold.
"All possible ideas are mere sensations,
Or our reflections on them," Locke insists;
"But half the first are Sense's own creations,
No faithful types of what in truth exists;
Not in the rose the red, nor in light-rays
Its texture splits, but in the eyes that gaze;
Not in the fire, but in our frames, the heat;
page 33 Not in the honey, but our tongues the sweet;
Not in the thunder, but our ears, the roar;
These are impressions on the brain—no more:
But form, solidity, extension, power
To move or rest, are Matter's genuine dower,
Her real outside existence." Nay—pursue
Your doubt," cries Berkeley; "probe them through
and through,
And you will find these qualities you flatter
Yourself you prove essential in this Matter,
No more substantial than its red and blue."
And then the mighty mitred Analyst,
Silk-aproned but sincere Psychologist
And Sage—by few believed, by all beloved,
"With subtlest power "unanswerably proved,
What no man in his senses can admit,"
(The phrase of little truth and not much wit,
Is Reid's—though Hume had first acknowledged it)
Proved that all things we hear, see, feel around,
Have no such base as Matter—only hold
Existence in pure Spirit—their sole ground:
Forces are they, from Infinite Mind proceeding.
Spiritually active, wheresoever it be,
On finite mind to print, in order due,
Sensations, not deceptive nor misleading—
But spiritual coin as spiritual Coiner, true,
And real with Spirit's sole reality.
So Berkeley said and proved his flawless case.
But Hume came sliding in with smiling face,
Veiling the grimmest strength in easy grace;
The pleasant playful Giant—gentle Chief
Of sceptics, dealing blows without a sign
Of effort—slashing with a sword so fine—
page 34 Killing with lightning-touches bright and brief;
So wise, so good; whose adversaries found
His silken glove a Cestus iron-bound,
When staggering all the gladiator press
He proved—or seemed to prove—to their distress
And ours, that Thought itself and Consciousness
Had no such base as Mind—which only meant
Trains of impressions and ideas that went
And came in nothing'—neither more nor less;
For no recipient spirit could be perceived,
And Matter was already gone and shent;
And he had settled to his own content
(To such a dogma, ye who can, consent!)
No Cause did ever yet produce Effect
However Custom may the two connect.
Therefore for pictures we within us find,
No Power without—above—of any kind
Need be, or could be, as their cause assigned.
So must we Matter, Mind, God, Soul, alike
Out of the ranks of real existence strike:
And yet as Mind and Matter both, without
Or spite of Reason, must be still believed—
Nature took care of that—that much achieved—
The only clear conclusion was dim Doubt.

Thus Locke by Berkeley—Berkeley thus by Hume,
Was pounced on in retributive swift doom,
Hand over hand, as children play, so pat,
Each crushing his great predecessor flat:
So swiftly hurried down the eddving tide
Of speculation which began to flow
In the far East three thousand years ago
When doubting dusky Sages threw aside
page 35 Their faith in those symbolic wheel spoke arms
And double heads of deities of Ind;
And some mild paddy-fed pale-blooded crew
Of subtle theorists argued nought was true,
Nought real but Brahma—him in whom inhere
All magic-lantern shadows that appear
As living shapes in this illusive sphere.
Then Brahma's essence, subtilised and thinned,
In Kapila's self-styled "Perfect Wisdom" grew
To Absolute Spirit—Thinking Substance pure
And abstract as that pure unworldly Jew,
The spiritual Spinoza, ever drew.
But earlier still, in wild recoil more sure
From Brahmin tyranny of creed and caste,
The o'er-refining Orient fancy passed
To dreams the maddest ever Reasoning spun.
In that high-moralled faith that still has charms
(Because its founder's self, made God, replaced
And vivified so soon for vulgar taste
The No-God he had taught) to sway such swarms,
Dusk Aryan and Turanian tawny-skinned;
That fullest-millioned Faith beneath the Sun,
Which Sakya Muni—princely eremite—
First saddened into—sickened with the sight
Of sorrow and pain inseparable seeming
From life—his own a pleasure-sated blight
With high desire forlornly through it gleaming;
So with a proud deliberate despair
Conceived his monstrous method of redeeming.
By guiding, souls back to their primal night
Of non-existence; which his pupil and friend
Kisyapa teaches they already share,
Therein are based—begin—and ought to end;
page 36 Nor rests, like Hume, content in doubt to pause,
But from his metaphysic "Basket" draws
Negation of all spirit—God—first cause—
Brahma or Absolute Being—all and each
Creator and created—matter—mind
Alike chimeras; wisdom's highest reach
To know this nothingness: the soul's true aim
To lose eustence and partake the same;
Extinguished then, with consciousness consigned
To darkness—blown out like a taper's flame,
To enter so "Nirvana"'—there to be
Absurdly blest with blan Noneentity.