Obedience to what? The answer lies Within the word itself; for how obey What has no rule, asserts no absolute claim? Take inclination, taste-why, that is you, No rule above you. Science, reasoning On nature's order-they exist and move Solely by disputation, hold no pledge of final consequence, but push the swing Where Epicurus and the Stoic sit In endless see-saw. One authority, And only one, says simply this, Obey: Place yourself in that current (test it so!) Of spiritual order where at least
Lies promise of a high communion,
A Head informing members, Life that breathes With gift of forces over and above
The plus of arithmetic interchange.
The Church too has a body,' you object, 'Can be dissected, put beneath the lens And shown the merest continuity
Of all existence else beneath the sun.'
I grant you; but the lens will not disprove A presence which eludes it. Take your wit, Your highest passion, widest-reaching thought: Show their conditions if you will or can, But though you saw the final atom-dance Making each molecule that stands for sign Of love being present, where is still your love? How measure that, how certify its weight? And so I say, the body of the Church Carries a Presence, promises and gifts Never disproved-whose argument is found In lasting failure of the search elsewhere For what it holds to satisfy man's need. But I grow lengthy: my excuse must be
Your question, Hamlet, which has probed right through To the pith of our belief. And I have robbed
Myself of pleasure as a listener.
'Tis noon, I see; and my appointment stands For half-past twelve with Voltimand. Good-bye."
Brief parting, brief regret-sincere, but quenched In fumes of best Havannah, which consoles For lack of other certitude. Then said, Mildly sarcastic, quiet Guildenstern: "I marvel how the Father gave new charm To weak conclusions: I was half convinced
The poorest reasoner made the finest man, And held his logic lovelier for its limp."
“I fain would hear," said Hamlet, "how you find A stronger footing than the Father gave.
How base your self-resistance save on faith In some invisible Order, higher Right
Than changing impulse. What does Reason bid? To take a fullest rationality
What offers best solution: so the Church.
Science, detecting hydrogen aflame
Outside our firmament, leaves mystery
Whole and untouched beyond; nay, in our blood And in the potent atoms of each germ The Secret lives-envelops, penetrates Whatever sense perceives or thought divines. Science, whose soul is explanation, halts With hostile front at mystery. The Church Takes mystery as her empire, brings its wealth Of possibility to fill the void
'Twixt contradictions—warrants so a faith Defying sense and all its ruthless train
Of arrogant 'Therefores.' Science with her lens Dissolves the Forms that made the other half Of all our love, which thenceforth widowed lives To gaze with maniac stare at what is not. The Church explains not, governs-feeds resolve By vision fraught with heart-experience And human yearning."
"Ay," said Guildenstern,
With friendly nod, "the Father, I can see,
Has caught you up in his air-chariot.
His thought takes rainbow bridges, out of reach By solid obstacles, evaporates
The coarse and common into subtilties, Insists that what is real in the Church Is something out of evidence, and begs (Just in parenthesis) you'll never mind What stares you in the face and bruises you. Why, by his method I could justify
Each superstition and each tyranny That ever rode upon the back of man, Pretending fitness for his sole defence Against life's evil. How can aught subsist That holds no theory of gain or good? Despots with terror in their red right hand Must argue good to helpers and themselves,
Must let submission hold a core of gain
To make their slaves choose life. Their theory, Abstracting inconvenience of racks,
Whip-lashes, dragonnades and all things coarse Inherent in the fact or concrete mass, Presents the pure idea-utmost good Secured by Order only to be found In strict subordination, hierarchy
Of forces where, by nature's law, the strong Has rightful empire, rule of weaker proved Mere dissolution. What can you object? The Inquisition-if you turn away From narrow notice how the scent of gold Has guided sense of damning heresy- The Inquisition is sublime, is love
Hindering the spread of poison in men's souls: The flames are nothing: only smaller pain To hinder greater, or the pain of one To save the many, such as throbs at heart Of every system born into the world. So of the Church as high communion Of Head with members, fount of spirit force Beyond the calculus, and carrying proof In her sole power to satisfy man's need: That seems ideal truth as clear as lines That, necessary though invisible, trace The balance of the planets and the sun- Until I find a hitch in that last claim.
To satisfy man's need.' Sir, that depends: We settle first the measure of man's need Before we grant capacity to fill. John, James or Thomas, you may satisfy; But since you choose ideals I demand Your Church shall satisfy ideal man, His utmost reason and his utmost love.
And say these rest a-hungered-find no scheme Content them both, but hold the world accursed, A Calvary where Reason mocks at Love, And Love forsaken sends out orphan cries Hopeless of answer; still the soul remains Larger, diviner than your half-way Church, Which racks your reason into false consent, And soothes your Love with sops of selfishness."
"There I am with you," cried Laertes. "What To me are any dictates, though they came With thunders from the Mount, if still within
I see a higher Right, a higher Good Compelling love and worship? Though the earth Held force electric to discern and kill
Each thinking rebel-what is martyrdom But death-defying utterance of belief, Which being mine remains my truth supreme Though solitary as the throb of pain Lying outside the pulses of the world? Obedience is good: ay, but to what? And for what ends? For say that I rebel Against your rule as devilish, or as rule Of thunder-guiding powers that deny Man's highest benefit: rebellion then Were strict obedience to another rule Which bids me flout your thunder.”
Said Osric, delicately, "how you come, Laertes mine, with all your warring zeal As Python-slayer of the present age— Cleansing all social swamps by darting rays Of dubious doctrine, hot with energy
Of private judgment and disgust for doubt- To state my thesis, which you most abhor When sung in Daphnis-notes beneath the pines To gentle rush of waters. Your belief- In essence what is it but simply Taste? I urge with you exemption from all claims. That come from other than my proper will, An Ultimate within to balance yours, A solid meeting you, excluding you, Till you show fuller force by entering My spiritual space and crushing Me To a subordinate complement of You: Such ultimate must stand alike for all. Preach your crusade, then all will join who like The hurly-burly of aggressive creeds; Still your unpleasant Ought, your itch to choose What grates upon the sense, is simply Taste, Differs, I think, from mine (permit the word, Discussion forces it) in being bad."
The tone was too polite to breed offence, Showing a tolerance of what was “bad” Becoming courtiers. Louder Rosencranz
Took up the ball with rougher movement, wont To show contempt for doting reasoners Who hugged some reasons with a preference,
As warm Laertes did he gave five puffs
Intolerantly sceptical, then said,
"Your human good, which you would make supreme, How do you know it? Has it shown its face
In adamantine type, with features clear,
As this republic, or that monarchy ? As federal grouping, or municipal ? Equality, or finely shaded lines
Of social difference? ecstatic whirl
And draught intense of passionate joy and pain, Or sober self-control that starves its youth And lives to wonder what the world calls joy? Is it in sympathy that shares men's pangs Or in cool brains that can explain them well? Is it in labour or in laziness?
In training for the tug of rivalry
To be admired, or in the admiring soul? In risk or certitude? In battling rage
And hardy challenges of Protean luck, Or in a sleek and rural apathy
Full fed with sameness? Pray define your Good Beyond rejection by majority;
Next, how it may subsist without the Ill
Which seems its only outline. Show a world
Of pressure not resisted; or a world
Of pressure equalised, yet various
In action formative; for that will serve As illustration of your human good- Which at its perfecting (your goal of hope) Will not be straight extinct, or fall to sleep In the deep bosom of the Unchangeable. What will you work for, then, and call it good With full and certain vision-good for aught Save partial ends which happen to be yours? How will you get your stringency to bind Thought or desire in demonstrated tracks Which are but waves within a balanced whole?
Is 'relative' the magic word that turns
Your flux mercurial of good to gold? Why, that analysis at which you rage As anti-social force that sweeps you down The world in one cascade of molecules, Is brother relative'-and grins at you Like any convict whom you thought to send Outside society, till this enlarged
And meant New England and Australia too. The Absolute is your shadow, and the space
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