On December 15, 1947, Arthur Machen, one of the most important authors of British fantastic literature, left our world. In memory of him, we give a rereading to one of his most philosophical extracts, the prologue of the story The White People, written in the 1904.
βWitchcraft and holiness,β Ambrose said, βthese two are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, an escape from common life. "
Cotgrave listened, interested. He had been led by a friend to that dilapidated house in the northern suburb of the city, through an old garden that led to the room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over his books.
βYes,β he continued, βmagic is justified by its own children. There are many, I believe, who eat bread crusts and drink only water with an infinitely sharper joy than those who limit themselves to the experience of Epicurean 'practice'. "
"Are you talking about the saints?"
βYes, and of sinners at the same time. I think that you are falling into the widespread error of those who confine the spiritual world only to the souls of the supremely good; but even the supremely bewitched or evil, necessarily, know something about it. The purely carnal man, that is, addressed only to his own senses, has the possibility of being a great sinner no more and no less than he can become a great saint. Most of us men are made up of very confused creatures, indifferent to others; we wander through the world without the slightest hope of understanding the meaning and intrinsic sense of things, and, consequently, our tendency to magic and our holiness are also in the background, unimportant. "
"And do you think that the greatest of sinners, then, could be an ascetic, exactly like a great saint?"
βGreat people of all kinds shy away from imperfect copies, while looking for perfect originals. I have no doubt that many of the so-called saints have never done a 'good deed' (to use common sense words) in their lives. And that, on the other hand, there have been people who have known the innermost depths of sin, who on the contrary have never committed an 'rash act'.
For a moment he left the room, and Cotgrave, completely delighted, turned to his friend, thanking him for being introduced.
"He's an amazing person," he said. "I have never in my life met a lunatic of such an exceptional level."
Ambrose returned with some more whiskey and helped the other two men as best he could to achieve peace of mind. He almost ferociously abused his teetotaling status by pouring them soda, while he only took out a glass of water for himself. He was about to hang up with his monologue when Cotgrave spoke up - βI can't keep quiet, be patient,β he said, βyour paradoxes are too monstrous. A man can be a great sinner and still he never commits any sin! Come on! "
"You're very wrong," Ambrose said. βI never make paradoxes; I would like. I just said that a man can appreciate a precious bottle of RomanΓ©e Conti, and yet never even put his nose into a mug of beer. That's all, and it's more of an axiom than a paradox, isn't it? Your surprise at my statement is due to the fact that you have not yet understood what sin is. Oh, yes, there is some kind of connection between Sin with a capital letter, and the actions that are commonly referred to as sin: with murder, theft, adultery, and so on. Virtually the same connection that exists between A, B, C and the finest literature. But I think that the misunderstanding - it is anything but universal - comes largely from the fact that we look at the problem through the examples that society offers us. We think that a man who harms us and those around him must necessarily be very evil. And so he is, from a social point of view; but don't you realize that Evil in its essence is nothing but a solitary thing, the passion of a solitary and individual soul? Really, the common murderer, the murderer tout court, is in no way a sinner in the true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we must all get rid of in order to save our necks from his knife. I would classify him more among the tigers than among the sinners. "
"It seems a bit strange to me."
"I do not think so. The killer kills not on positive, but on negative qualities; he is missing something that non-killers have. Evil, of course, is totally positive - only it's on the wrong side. I think you will agree with me if I say that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is very likely that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your point of view is all directed towards practical and social purposes; we are all naturally inclined to think that a person who behaves very differently from how we behave must be a very great sinner! It is very unseemly to have someone's pockets emptied and we say that the thief is a great sinner. In truth, he is nothing but an underdeveloped man. He can't be a saint, of course; but he can be, and often is, an infinitely better creature than thousands of others who have never broken a single commandment. For us he represents a great annoyance, I admit, and therefore what we do is, rightly, if we take him, to lock him up; but between his acting so annoying and so socially inconvenient - Oh, the connection is one of the weakest. "
It was getting really late. The man who had accompanied Cotgrave had probably heard all of this before, which was why he had watched with a mild, judgmental smile, but Cotgrave began to think that this "lunatic" was perhaps turning into a sage.
βDo you know,β he said, βthat you arouse my greatest interest in me? Do you think, then, that we do not understand the true nature of evil? "
βNo, I don't think we do. We overestimate and underestimate it. We examine the most numerous infringements of our uses and customs - the most necessary and proper rules that hold the human assembly together - and we are frightened by the frequency of 'sin' and 'evil'. But all this makes no sense. Let's take theft, for example. Are you horrified when you think of Robin Hood, the warriors of the Highlands, the outcast veterans of the seventeenth century armies, the financial planners of our times?
βOn the other hand, we underestimate the evil. We attach such enormous importance to the 'sin' of meddling with our pockets (and with our wives) that we have almost forgotten how terrible true sin is. "
"And what is sin?" Cotgrave asked.
βI think I have to answer your question with another one. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or dog started talking to you, and arguing with you with a human accent? You would be overwhelmed with terror. I'm sure. And if the roses in your garden sang strange songs, you would go crazy. And suppose the stones in the street started to swell and grow before your eyes, what if the pebble you noticed one night, the next morning, brought out stone buds?
"Well, these examples can give you some idea of ββwhat real sin is."
βLook here,β said the third man, hitherto silent, βyou both seem very busy. But I have to go home. I missed the bus, and I have to set out. "
Ambrose and Cotgrave were more at ease when the other man had gone under the streetlight and through the early morning fog.
"You leave me speechless," Cotgrave said. "I had never thought about it. If so, everything should really be turned upside down. So, the essence of sin really consists ... "
βIn a storm that engulfs heaven itself, it would seem to me,β Ambrose said. βIt is my thought that this represents a pure and simple attempt to penetrate a different and higher degree of knowledge by passing through a forbidden path. So now you can understand why it is so risky. There are few men who really want to penetrate levels of knowledge different from ours, higher or lower, using allowed or forbidden systems. Ordinary men are content simply with life as they meet it. Precisely for this reason the saints exist in such small numbers, and sinners (in the proper sense of the word) in even fewer numbers, and men of genius, who belong a little to one group and a little to the other, they too are rare. Yup; in the end, it is perhaps more difficult to be a great sinner than a great saint. "
βIs there something deeply unnatural about sin? Is that what you mean? "
"Exactly. Holiness requires a commitment that is at least as great, or almost as great; but holiness works according to patterns that were once natural; it is an attempt to restore the ecstasy that existed before the Fall. But sin is the attempt to obtain the ecstasy and knowledge that belong only to the angels, and in the attempt to do this man becomes a demon. I have already explained to you that the common thief is not a sinner per se; this is true, but the sinner is sometimes also a murderer. Gilles de Raiz is an example of this. So you see that while good and evil are unnatural to man as he is in his present state - to man, the social and civilized being - evil is unnatural in an even deeper sense than good. The saint tries to recover a gift that he has lost; the sinner tries to get something that never belonged to him. In short, he just repeats the Fall. "
"Are you a Catholic?" Cotgrave asked.
"Yup; I am a member of the persecuted Anglican Church. "
"So what about those books that recognize as sin what you lead back to a simple abandonment to triviality?"
"Yup; but to begin with, the word 'sorcerers' could be used in the same sentence, isn't it? This has the very air of being the keystone of our affair. Consider this: Are you capable of thinking even for a moment that a false sentence capable of saving the life of an innocent man is a sin? No; very well, so not even the common liar can be excluded from those words; they are the 'sorcerers' who use material life, who use the fallacies inherent in material life as tools to achieve their infinitely evil ends. And allow me to say this: our finest senses are so blunt weapons, we are so imbued with materialism, that in all likelihood we would not be able to recognize true witchcraft even if we met it. "
"But shouldn't we be horrified - a terror like the one you mentioned when you talked about the possibility of a rosebush singing - when an evil man is revealed?"
βWe should if we behaved naturally: children and women feel this horror you speak of, animals feel it too. But all our living together and our civilization and our education have finally made us blind and obscured, they have weakened our natural reason. No, sometimes we can recognize evil for its hatred of good - it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand the influence that 'Blackwood' had, in a completely involuntary way, to review the early works of Keats - but this is purely incidental; and, as a rule, I suspect that even the kings of Tophet might go virtually unnoticed, or even, in some cases, might appear as men whose workings have not been fully understood. "
βBut right now, speaking of Keats's critics, you used the word 'involuntary'. Is witchcraft always involuntary? "
"All time. It has to be. In both this and other circumstances it behaves exactly like holiness and genius; it manifests itself as a rapture or ecstasy of the soul; a transcendent impulse to go beyond the confines of the ordinary. And so, by going beyond them, it also surpasses our capacity for understanding, the faculty that takes note of everything that comes first. No, a man can be infinitely and horribly evil and never realize it. But let me tell you, evil understood in this sense is rare, and I suspect it is becoming increasingly rare. "
βI'm trying to get the widest possible view,β Cotgrave said. "From what you say, do I understand that true evil differs fundamentally from what we normally call evil?"
βThat's right. There is, no doubt, an analogy between the two; a similarity that allows us to legitimately use terms such as 'at the foot of the mountain' or 'the leg of the table'. And, sometimes, of course, the two speak, as it once was, the same language. The crude miner, also called the 'puddle man', the ignorant, underdeveloped farmhand, warmed up by a quarter pint or two more than he is used to, comes home and kicks his irritating as well as wicked wife until he kills her. He is a killer. And Gilles de Raiz was too. But can you see the strait that separates the two? The 'word', if I may say so, is accidentally the same in both cases, but the 'meaning' is completely different. It would be like saying that saying 'Hobson' is the same as saying 'Jobson', or it would be like saying that the Juggernaut and the Argonauts have something in common etymologically. And there is no doubt that the same very faint resemblance exists between all 'social' sins and true spiritual sins, and that in some cases, perhaps, the smaller ones can serve as 'training' for the older ones - from the shadow to reality. If you have ever been interested in Theology, you will easily understand the importance of all this. "
βI must sadly say,β Cotgrave added, βthat I have devoted too little time to the study of theology. In fact, I have often wondered on what grounds do theologians claim the title of Science of Sciences for their study; and this is because no matter how much I looked inside the 'theological' books, they have always seemed to me to be interested in the most trivial and obvious religious aspects, or in the kings of Israel and Judah: I was never interested in hearing about these kings. "
Ambrose grinned a little.
"We must avoid the theological discussion," he said. βI feel that you would be too fierce an opponent for me. But perhaps the 'times of kings' have to do with theology as much as the nails in a miner's boot have to do with wickedness. "
"So, to get back to the main question, do you think that sin is an esoteric and occult thing?"
"Yup. It represents the infernal miracle, just as holiness represents the celestial one. Every now and then it is raised to such a level in the consideration of peoples that it is impossible for us to understand even their existence alone; it is like the note that comes out of the great pedals of the pipe organ, so low that we cannot hear it. In some specific cases it can lead to the asylum, or to even more unexpected shores. But you must never confuse it with mere social deviance. Remember how the Apostle, speaking of the 'other Kingdom', makes a distinction between 'charitable' actions and charity. And how it is possible that a man can give all his possessions to the poor and still be lacking in charity; just as, remember, a man can avoid incurring any crime and yet be a sinner. "
"Your psychology is absolutely unusual to me," Cotgrave said, "but I must confess that I like it, and I suppose at the end of your premises it can be concluded that the true sinner can upset an observer who has put himself in the head like no other. to identify it, leaving it completely defenseless. "
"Of course; this because true wickedness has nothing to do with social life or social laws, or if it does, it has only incidentally and accidentally. It is a lonely passion of the soul - or the passion of a lonely soul - whichever you prefer. If, by pure chance, we could understand it, and were able to grasp its full meaning, then, surely, it would fill us with horror and intimidate us deeply. But this emotion is entirely different from the fear and disgust with which we usually view common criminals, since these feelings are mostly or entirely grounded in how much we value our own skin or bags. . We hate a murderer because we know we would hate to be murdered, or to have someone we like murdered. Thus, on the 'other side', we worship the saints, but we do not love them as much as we love our friends. Can you be sure that you would be comfortable in the company of St. Paul? Can you say without a doubt that you and I could ever have been friends with Sir Galahad?
βThe same thing that applies to saints also applies to sinners. If you met a truly wicked man, and recognized his wickedness; he would undoubtedly succeed in filling you with fear and horror; but there is no reason for him to be 'unpleasant' for this. Conversely, it is very likely that if you can shut the idea of ββsin out of your mind, you can find that sinner of exceptional sympathy, and in an instant you will be forced to fight with yourself to escape the horror of him. . However you look at it, it's a horrible thing. If the roses and lilies suddenly began to sing tomorrow morning; if the furniture began to move in procession as in Maupassant's story! "
βI'm glad you went back to that exact comparison,β Cotgrave said, βbecause I wanted to ask you what it is that for man can correspond to these imaginary actions done by inanimate things. In a word - what is sin? I admit you have already given me an abstract definition, but I would like a more concrete example. "
"I already told you it was a very strange case," said Ambrose, who seemed to want to avoid giving a too direct answer. βThe materialism of our day, which seems well on its way to finally suppressing all sanctity, has perhaps done more to suppress wickedness. For us, the Earth is so comfortable that we find no thrust in us either for ascent or fall. It would be as if the scholar who decided to specialize on the ancient city of Tophet was degraded to having to deal with simple antiques searches. No paleontologist will ever be able to show you a living pterodactyl. "
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