Oh, they asked me no questions; it seemed that they already knew all, and they wished to remove all trace of suffering from my face as quickly as they might.
IV
Again, grant that it was only a dream. But the sensation of the love of those beautiful and innocent people has remained with me for ever, and even now I feel that their love breathes upon me from yonder. I saw them with my own eyes, I came to know them, and to know that I loved them; afterwards I suffered for them. Oh, I knew immediately even then that in many things I would not understand them at all. To me, a modern Russian radical, and an abominable Petersburger, it seemed for instance unintelligible that, knowing so much, they yet did not possess our science. But I soon perceived that their knowledge was achieved and nourished by other intuitions than those we have on earth, and that their aspirations were quite other.
They desired nothing, but were calm; they did not aspire to a knowledge of life, as we aspire to knowledge, because their life was fulfilled. But their knowledge was deeper and higher than our science, for our science seeks to explain what is life, she aspires to know life, that she may teach others how to live; but they, without seience, knew how to live. That also I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge. They showed me their trees, but I could not understand the depth of love with which they looked at them; exactly as though they spoke with their fellows. And perhaps I should not be wrong if I said they did speak with them.
Yes, they had found their language and I am convinced that the trees understood them. In the same way did they regard all nature — the animals which lived at peace with them, did not attack them, but loved them, subdued by their love. They pointed out the stars to me and told me something about them that I could not understand, but I am convinced that in some way they were in contact with the stars of heaven, having connection with them not by thought alone but in some physical way.
Oh, they did not try to make me understand them; they loved me without that. But I knew they would never understand me, and therefore I hardly spoke to them of our earth. I only kissed the earth on which they lived, in their presence, and without words I adored them, and they saw it and let themselves be adored, and felt no shame that I adored them, because they loved much.
They did not suffer for me when I in tears kissed their feet, joyfully knowing in my heart with how great power of love they would requite me. Sometimes I asked myself in amazement, how could it be that they should not have offended sueh an one as myself all this while, and never have aroused in me either jealousy or envy? Many times I asked myself, how could it be that I, a braggart and a liar, had not told them of my learning, of which, of course, they had no notion — how could it be that I had not wished to surprise them with it, even though only for the love I bore them? They were playful and happy as children.
They wandered through their beautiful groves and forests, sang their lovely songs, fed on ambrosial food, the fruits of their trees, the honey of their forests, and the milk of the beasts that loved them. For their food and raiment they laboured but little and with ease. Love was amongst them and children were born, but never did I see amongst them the transports of that cruel sensuality whieh overtakes almost all men on our earth, and is the one source of nearly all their sins.
They rejoiced in the children born to them as in new partners of their bliss. There were no quarrels among them, neither any jealousy: they did not even understand what it meant. Their children were the children of all, beeause they were all one family. There was hardly any disease among them, though there was death; but their old folk died quietly, as though they fell asleep, surrounded by friends who took leave of them, whom they blessed and smiled upon, themselves well sped by their friends’ bright smiles.
At this parting I never saw sorrow, neither tears: there was only love, as it were multiplied to ecstasy, but to an ecstasy quiet, consummated, and full of contemplation. One could have believed that they still had communion with their dead even after death, and that their earthly union was not severed by the grave. They hardly understood me when I asked them eoneern-ing eternal life, but they were evidently so convinced of it that it was no question to them.
They had no temples, but they had a real, living, and continual communion with the whole universe; they had no religion, but they had the firm knowledge that when their earthly joy had been consummated to the limit of their earthly nature, then would begin for them, living as well as dead, a yet greater expansion of their contact with the whole universe. They awaited this moment with joy, but without impatience, with no anguished longing for it, but already as it were partaking of it in the presentiments of their hearts which they communicated each to the other. In the evenings, before they went to rest, they loved to sing sweetly and harmoniously in chorus.
In these songs they expressed all the feelings which the dying day had given them; they glorified it and bade it farewell. They glorified nature, the earth, the sea, the forests. They loved to make songs to each other, which rose from the heart and touched the heart. And not in songs alone, for it seemed that all their life was spent in mutual admiration. They were enamoured one of the other, completely, universally.
Others of their solemn and exalted songs I could hardly understand at all. I understood the words, but I could never penetrate their deep meaning, which remained as it were inaccessible to my mind, but, unaccountably, my heart felt it only the more. I often told them that long ago I had had a presentiment of all this, that all their joy and praise had appeared to me while still upon our earth, with an anguish of yearning which sometimes reached intolerable pain; that I had anticipated them and their grace in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that often, on earth, I could not look toward the setting sun without tears . . . that in my hatred of the people on the earth was always anguish — why could I not hate them without loving them?
Why could I not but forgive them; and in my love for them was also anguish: why could I not love them without hating them? They listened to me, and I saw that they could not understand what I said, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: for I knew that they understood all the force of my anguish for those whom I had left.
Yes, when they looked at me with their dear, love-suffused eyes, when I felt that in their presence my heart too had become as innocent and truthful as their own, then I did not regret that I did not understand them. My feeling of the completeness of their life deprived me of speech, and I revered them in silence.
Oh, every one now laughs in my face, and tells me that it is impossible even in a dream to see such details as I am telling now. They tell me that in my dream I saw or felt but one thing, begotten of my own heart in delirium, but that I myself created the particulars when I was awake. And when I said that perhaps it was so — my God, how they burst out laughing in my face, and what pleasure I gave them!
Oh yes, of course, I was overcome by the sensation cf that dream alone, and that alone remained whole in my bleeding heart: yet the real images and forms of my dream, which I indeed saw at the very moment of my dream, were perfected to such a harmony, were so enchanting and beautiful, and so true, that when I awoke I certainly could not clothe them in our weak words.
Therefore they must needs have blurred in my mind, and perhaps I myself unconsciously was obliged to compose the details afterwards, of course distorting them, above all by reason of my passionate desire to tell it instantly even though only in part.
But, for all that, how could I not believe that all these things had really been? It was perhaps a thousand times better, brighter, and more joyful than I have told. Let it be a dream, but yet all this could not but have really been.
I will tell you a secret: perhaps all this was not a dream at all! For something happened, a thing to such a degree of horror true that it eould not have belonged to
