Hypatia by Charles Kingsley (good books to read for young adults txt) 📕

‘And what then?’ said Hypatia, fixing those glorious eyes full on his face, in an agony of doubt, but yet, as Raphael declared to his dying day, of hope and joy.

‘Well, Hypatia, and must not a son be of the same species as his father? “Eagles,” says the poet, “do not beget doves.” Is the word son anything but an empty and false metaphor, unless the son be the perfect and equal likeness of his father?’

‘Heroes beget sons worse than themselves, says the poet.’

‘We are not talking now of men as they are, whom Homer’s Zeus calls the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; we are talking— are we not?—of a perfect and archetypal Son, and a perfect and archetypal Father, in a perfect and eternal world, wherein is neither growth, decay, nor change; and of a perfect and archetypal generation, of which the only definition can be, that like begets its perfect like? .... You are silent. Be so, Hypatia …. We have gone up too far into the abysses….

And so they both were silent for a while. And Raphael thought solemn thoughts about Victoria, and about ancient signs of Isaiah’s, which were to him none the less prophecies concerning The Man whom he had found, because he prayed and trusted that the same signs might be repeated to himself, and a child given to him also, as a token that, in spite of all his baseness, ‘God was with him.’

But he was a Jew, and a man: Hypatia was a Greek, and a woman—and for that matter, so were the men of her school. To her, the relations and duties of common humanity shone with none of the awful and divine meaning which they did in the eyes of the converted Jew, awakened for the first time in his life to know the meaning of his own scriptures, and become an Israelite indeed. And Raphael’s dialectic, too, though it might silence her, could not convince her. Her creed, like those of her fellow-philosophers, was one of the fancy and the religious sentiment, rather than of the reason and the moral sense. All the brilliant cloud-world in which she had revelled for years,—cosmogonies, emanations, affinities, symbolisms, hierarchies, abysses, eternities, and the rest of it— though she could not rest in them, not even believe in, them—though they had vanished into thin air at her most utter need,—yet—they were too pretty to be lost sight of for ever; and, struggling against the growing conviction of her reason, she answered at last—

‘And you would have me give up, as you seem to have done, the sublime, the beautiful, the heavenly, for a dry and barren chain of dialectic—in which, for aught I know,—for after all, Raphael, I cannot cope with you—I am a woman—a weak woman!’

And she covered her face with her hands.

‘For aught you know, what?’ asked Raphael gently.

‘You may have made the worse appear the better reason.’

‘So said Aristophanes of Socrates. But hear me once more, beloved Hypatia. You refuse to give up the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly? What if Raphael Aben-Ezra, at least, had never found them till now? Recollect what I said just now—what if our old Beautiful, and Sublime, and Heavenly, had been the sheerest materialism, notions spun by our own brains out of the impressions of pleasant things, and high things, and low things, and awful things, which we had seen with our bodily eyes? What if I had discovered that the spiritual is not the intellectual, but the moral; and that the spiritual world is not, as we used to make it, a world of our own intellectual abstractions, or of our own physical emotions, religious or other, but a world of righteous or unrighteous persons? What if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which all others were contained, was righteousness; and that disharmony with that law, which we called unspirituality, was not being vulgar, or clumsy, or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull, but simply being unrighteous? What if I had discovered that righteousness, and it alone, was the beautiful righteousness, the sublime, the heavenly, the Godlike—ay, God Himself? And what if it had dawned on me, as by a great sunrise, what that righteousness was like? What if I had seen a human being, a woman, too, a young weak girl, showing forth the glory and the beauty of God? Showing me that the beautiful was to mingle unshrinking, for duty’s sake, with all that is most foul and loathsome; that the sublime was to stoop to the most menial offices, the most outwardly-degrading self-denials; that to be heavenly was to know that the commonest relations, the most vulgar duties, of earth, were God’s commands, and only to be performed aright by the help of the same spirit by which He rules the Universe; that righteousness was to love, to help, to suffer for—if need be, to die for—those who, in themselves, seem fitted to arouse no feelings except indignation and disgust? What if, for the first time, I trust not for the last time, in my life, I saw this vision; and at the sight of it my eyes were opened, and I knew it for the likeness and the glory of God? What if I, a Platonist, like John of Galilee, and Paul of Tarsus, yet, like them, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, had confessed to myself—If the creature can love thus, how much more its archetype? If weak woman can endure thus, how much more a Son of God? If for the good of others, man has strength to sacrifice himself in part, God will have strength to sacrifice Himself utterly. If He has not done it, He will do it: or He will be less beautiful, less sublime, less heavenly, less righteous than my poor conception of Him, ay, than this weak playful girl! Why should I not believe those who tell me that He has done it already? What if their evidence be, after all, only probability? I do not want mathematical demonstration to prove to me that when a child was in danger his father saved him—neither do I here. My reason, my heart, every faculty of me, except this stupid sensuous experience, which I find deceiving me every moment, which cannot even prove to me my own existence, accepts that story of Calvary as the most natural, most probable, most necessary of earthly events, assuming only that God is a righteous Person, and not some dream of an all- pervading necessary spirit-nonsense which, in its very terms, confesses its own materialism.’

Hypatia answered with a forced smile.

‘Raphael Aben-Ezra has deserted the method of the severe dialectician for that of the eloquent lover.’

‘Not altogether,’ said he, smiling in return. ‘For suppose that I had said to myself, We Platonists agree that the sight of God is the highest good.’

Hypatia once more shuddered at last night’s recollections.

‘And if He be righteous, and righteousness be—as I know it to be— identical with love, then He will desire that highest good for men far more than they can desire it for themselves …. Then He will desire to show Himself and His own righteousness to them …. Will you make answer, dearest Hypatia, or shall I? ....or does your silence give consent? At least let me go on to say this, that if God do desire to show His righteousness to men, His only perfect method, according to Plato, will be that of calumny, persecution, the scourge, and the cross, that so He, like Glaucon’s righteous man, may remain for ever free from any suspicion of selfish interest, or weakness of endurance …. Am I deserting the dialectic method now, Hypatia? .... You are still silent? You will not hear me, I see …. At some future day, the philosopher may condescend to lend a kinder ear to the words of her greatest debtor …. Or, rather, she may condescend to hear, in her own heart, the voice of that Archetypal Man, who has been loving her, guiding her, heaping her with every perfection of body and of mind, inspiring her with all pure and noble longings, and only asks of her to listen to her own reason, her own philosophy, when they proclaim Him as the giver of them, and to impart them freely and humbly, as He has imparted them to her, to the poor, and the brutish, and the sinful, whom He loves as well as He loves her …. Farewell!’

‘Stay!’ said she, springing up: ‘whither are you going?’

‘To do a little good before I die, having done much evil. To farm, plant, and build, and rescue a little corner of Ormuzd’s earth, as the Persians would say, out of the dominion of Ahriman. To fight Ausurian robbers, feed Thracian mercenaries, save a few widows from starvation, and a few orphans from slavery …. Perhaps to leave behind me a son of David’s line, who will be a better Jew, because a better Christian, than his father …. We shall have trouble in the flesh, Augustine tells us …. But, as I answered him, I really have had so little thereof yet, that my fair share may probably be rather a useful education than otherwise. Farewell!’

‘Stay!’ said she. ‘Come again And her …. Bring her …. I must see her! She must be noble, indeed, to be worthy of you.’

‘She is many a hundred miles away.’

‘Ah! Perhaps she might have taught something to me—me, the philosopher! You need not have feared me …. I have no heart to make converts now …. Oh, Raphael Aben-Ezra, why break the bruised reed? My plans are scattered to the winds, my pupils worthless, my fair name tarnished, my conscience heavy with the thought of my own cruelty …. If you do not know all, you will know it but too soon …. My last hope, Synesius, implores for himself the hope which I need from him….And, over and above it all …. You! .... Et tu, Brute! Why not fold my mantle round me, like Julius of old, and die!’

Raphael stood looking sadly at her, as her whole face sank into utter prostration.

...............

‘Yes—come …. The Galilaean …. If He conquers strong men, can the weak maid resist Him? Come soon …. This afternoon …. My heart is breaking fast.’

‘At the eighth hour this afternoon?’

‘Yes …. At noon I lecture …. take my farewell, rather, for ever of the schools….Gods! What have I to say? .... And tell me about Him of Nazareth. Farewell!’

‘Farewell, beloved lady! At the ninth hour, you shall hear of Him of Nazareth.’

Why did his own words sound to him strangely pregnant, all but ominous? He almost fancied that not he, but some third person had spoken them. He kissed Hypatia’s hand, it was as cold as ice; and his heart, too, in spite of all his bliss, felt cold and heavy, as he left the room.

As he went down the steps into the street, a young man sprang from behind one of the pillars, and seized his arm.

‘Aha! my young Coryphaeus of pious plunderers! What do you want with me?’

Philammon, for it was he, looked at him an instant, and recognised him.

‘Save her! for the love of God, save her!’

‘Whom?’

‘Hypatia!’

‘How long has her salvation been important to you, my