It is nevertheless just to Van Helmont to add that his conception of the vital principle was very far from being as purely materialistic as it would seem to those unacquainted with his writings; for he carefully distinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to a gas, and by which he means the sensuous animal life, from the intellectual immortal principle of soul. Van Helmont, indeed, was a sincere believer of Divine Revelation. "The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life," says with earnest humility this daring genius, in that noble chapter "On the completing of the mind by the 'prayer of silence,' and the loving offering tip of the heart, soul, and strength to the obedience of the Divine will," from which some of the most eloquent of recent philosophers, arguing against materialism, have borrowed largely in support and in ornament of their lofty cause.
CHAPTER XXV.
My intercourse with Margrave grew habitual and familiar. He came to my house every morning before sunrise; in the evenings we were again brought together: sometimes in the houses to which we were both invited, sometimes at his hotel, sometimes in my own home.
Nothing more perplexed me than his aspect of extreme youthfulness, contrasted with the extent of the travels, which, if he were to be believed, had left little of the known world unexplored. One day I asked him bluntly how old he was.
"How old do I look? How old should you suppose me to be?"
"I should have guessed you to be about twenty, till you spoke of having come of age some years ago."
"Is it a sign of longevity when a man looks much younger than he is?"
"Conjoined with other signs, certainly!"
"Have I the other signs?"
"Yes, a magnificent, perhaps a matchless, constitutional organization. But you have evaded my question as to your age; was it an impertinence to put it?"
"No. I came of age--let me see--three years ago."
"So long since? Is it possible? I wish I had your secret!"
"Secret! What secret?"
"The secret of preserving so much of boyish freshness in the wear and tear of man-like passions and man-like thoughts."
"You are still young yourself,--under forty?"
"Oh, yes! some years under forty."
"And Nature gave you a grander frame and a finer symmetry of feature than she bestowed on me."
"Pooh! pooh! You have the beauty that must charm the eyes of woman, and that beauty in its sunny forenoon of youth. Happy man! if you love and wish to be sure that you are loved again."
"What you call love--the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish folly--left behind me, I think forever, when--"
"Ay, indeed,--when?"
"I came of age!"
"Hoary cynic! and you despise love! So did I once. Your time may come."
"I think not. Does any animal, except man, love its fellow she-animal as man loves woman?"
"As man loves woman? No, I suppose not."
"And why should the subject animals be wiser than their king? But to return: you would like to have my youth and my careless enjoyment of youth?"
"Can you ask,--who would not?" Margrave looked at me for a moment with unusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt changes common to his capricious temperament, began to sing softly one of his barbaric chants,--a chant different from any I had heard him sing before, made, either by the modulation of his voice or the nature of the tune, so sweet that, little as music generally affected me, this thrilled to my very heart's core. I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when he paused,--
"Is not that a love-song?"
"No;" said he, "it is the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the serpent."
CHAPTER XXVI.
Increased intimacy with my new acquaintance did not diminish the charm of his society, though it brought to light some startling defects, both in his mental and moral organization. I have before said that his knowledge, though it had swept over a wide circuit and dipped into curious, unfrequented recesses, was desultory and erratic. It certainly was not that knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assures us is "the wing on which we mount to heaven." So, in his faculties themselves there were singular inequalities, or contradictions. His power of memory in some things seemed prodigious, but when examined it was seldom accurate; it could apprehend, but did not hold together with a binding grasp what metaphysicians call "complex ideas." He thus seemed unable to put it to any steadfast purpose in the sciences of which it retained, vaguely and loosely, many recondite principles. For the sublime and beautiful in literature lie had no taste whatever. A passionate lover of nature, his imagination had no response to the arts by which nature is expressed or idealized; wholly unaffected by poetry or painting. Of the fine arts, music alone attracted and pleased him. His conversation was often eminently suggestive, touching on much, whether in books or mankind, that set one thinking; but I never remember him to have uttered any of those lofty or tender sentiments which form the connecting links between youth and genius; for if poets sing to the young, and the young hail their own interpreters in poets, it is because the tendency of both is to idealize the realities of life,--finding everywhere in the real a something that is noble or fair, and making the fair yet fairer, and the noble nobler still.