Nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at Martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, the need of fatalism, of resignation. He grew to believe that man was better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. Thus in his art he aimed at repose, the quietism of the Buddhists. His knowledge of Buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes, Buddhism, too, was a vain revolt against nature--but his respect for Buddhistic doctrine remained greater than his respect for Christianity. At the bottom of his soul there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die." As he put it later in the pages of his Tahitian recital:-- "To the eyes of Tagatha (the God) the most splendid glories of kings and their ministers are but dust and spittle: "To his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six serpents: "To his eyes, the search for the Way of Buddha is like the coming of flowers." It is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man who was never more than half an European, that we are able to understand how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the bas-relief, _Soyez Amoureuses et vous serez Heureuses_ and the somber despair of _Le Christ au Jardin d'Oliviers_. That mind, as we have seen, was neither wholly Christian or Pagan--though the untamed Pagan element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined Christian side. Therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether Gauguin as an artist, displayed more of the Classic tradition than of the Gothic. Gothic as well as Classical strains remained mingled in him up to the last. Throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure, tormented, and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion: a religion that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis. V By the end of the year 1889, Gauguin's name had acquired a certain renown, and he naturally gravitated back to Paris. Being however still without resources, he took residence once more with Emile Schuffenecker. At that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. Paris was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. A small group of writers, chief of whom were Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, had proclaimed a sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled Decadents. This title was soon abandoned for the better designation of Symbolists.