A Strange Story — Volume 08Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Philosophy
A Strange Story — Volume 08
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
"I cannot bring myself to think that all the uses for which a reason,
always so lovely even in its errors, has been restored, are yet fulfilled.
It seems to me as if your union, as yet so imperfect, has still for its
end that holy life on earth by which two mortal beings strengthen each
other for a sphere of existence to which this is the spiritual ladder.
Through yourself I have hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that rank
you high in the manifold orders of man,--thoughtful, laborious, and brave;
with a heart that makes intellect vibrate to every fine touch of humanity;
in error itself, conscientious; in delusion, still eager for truth; in
anger, forgiving; in wrong, seeking how to repair; and, best of all,
strong in a love which the mean would have shrunk to defend from the fangs
of the slanderer,--a love, raising passion itself out of the realm of the
senses, made sublime by the sorrows that tried its devotion,--with all
these noble proofs in yourself of a being not meant to end here, your life
has stopped short in its uses, your mind itself has been drifted, a bark
without rudder or pilot, over seas without shore, under skies without
stars. And wherefore? Because the mind you so haughtily vaunted has
refused its companion and teacher in Soul.
"And therefore, through you, I hope that she will be spared yet to live
on; she, in whom soul has been led dimly astray, by unheeding the checks
and the definite goals which the mind is ordained to prescribe to its
wanderings while here; the mind taking thoughts from the actual and
visible world, and the soul but vague glimpses and hints from the instinct
of its ultimate heritage. Each of you two seems to me as yet incomplete,
and your destinies yet uncompleted. Through the bonds of the heart,
through the trials of time, ye have both to consummate your marriage. I
do not--believe me--I do not say this in the fanciful wisdom of allegory
and type, save that, wherever deeply examined, allegory and type run
through all the most commonplace phases of outward and material life. I
hope, then, that she may yet be spared to you; hope it, not from my skill
as physician, but my inward belief as a Christian. To perfect your own
being and end, 'Ye will need one another!'"
I started--the very words that Lilian had heard in her vision!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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