St. Simon, forsooth!--why, his doctrine was, that, to comprehend
the nature of crime, one had first to commit crime himself. Pah! according
to that, he who would most thoroughly learn the philosophy of our carnal
lusts must exchange natures with the goat. Pray, why do not you solicit
Herr Urian to give you a hircine metamorphosis, Clarian?"
"Nay, Mac, can it be thus put off with a jest and a sneer, after all? What
do you think of these words I came across last night?"--and opening his
note-book, Clarian read as follows: "For of old it hath been clearly
proven, action without passion is nought save idle folly. _Passio Christi
hominis redemptio_. For as sin came into the world by suffering, so also
the gift of knowledge, which man would have confessedly lacked, had he not
purchased it _pretio mortis_,--even whereat, meseemeth, 'tis not a
commodity too high-priced. And as Philo Judaeus hath well observed, (as that
arch heretic doth but seldom, wherefore let us ascribe to him the full
credit,) '_Materia parens est (etiam ipsa mater) peccali_,' so, to attain
to anything really spiritual, we have even to be born again of this our
parent, by the reentrance of whose womb, in pain and darkness, we come back
to the true and the living, and have provision given us wherewith we shall
conquer worlds. For, to fix the pure thought and to identify it with the
true and holy, we must first divide it from the base clogs of matter; and
how can we effect this disjunction, save, as it hath ever been done, by
passion,--not simulate nor taken at second hand, cold,'_bis coctum quasi_,'
but rather presently and in our very selves reiterate? So Naaman dipt in
Jordan,--a task unto him, a sin in the eyes of his gods, and painful
exceedingly to his pride-gorged humor, that would only have Abana and
Pharpar,--yet only so was his skin made whole again, and soft like an
infant's.
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