Nineteen Impressions/Introduction

HE mesh of the net is very fine; so fine that even when the eye of the would-be observer is pressed close to this apparently impervious web, nothing can be seen. It is true that the scientist who habitually adopts this method of peering is occasionally visited by an impression of something bright beyond, something that shines. But he hardly ever records that impression. It is so elusive; and it comes only at those times when he is not deliberately seeking it. This impression of something elusive that shines cannot be counted as a contribution to exact knowledge.

Other methods of observation, all the tricks and devices of the impatient to penetrate this veil about us, are little more successful. Nevertheless we are stirred now and again by exciting reports of discovery. Some mystic, or poet, or philosopher, or it may be a professed researcher into the immediate mysteries beyond the net, comes to us with news. He claims to have seen or heard or experienced—occasionally even to have touched!—this commonly invisible, inaudible, intangible other thing. There is no news more wonderful than this, and our senses are stirred by strange thrills and ecstasies of hope. But always, after a little while, doubt returns. The great news appears on reflection to lack the authentic touch. At the moment we receive it, we respond without reservation. For a time we believe that we, too, have had a vision of the other thing. And, then, it is as if the tiny opening had drawn together again, and we find—an explanation. Nothing in the world is more depressing than an explanation. It is like dull, drab paint on what was once a shining surface. It hides the mystery of those half-seen depths that do reflect something, even if we cannot see clearly what the image is.

My metaphor has slid away from nets to mirrors, but I make no apology for that. The metaphor is of no importance. Any one will do, and the more you mix them the better chance you have to catch a passing impression of that elusive brightness. If you fix your thought on a single figure, on the net, for example, you will presently see the net and nothing else. And if you wish to look out, it is obviously useless to keep your eyes fixed on the sash bars or the deficiencies in the glass. Even this metaphor of "looking" will not hold for long; nor indeed any metaphor that belongs to the senses.

The best method of learning about the other thing is to keep all your senses employed, and your inner self free from any preoccupation with what your body is doing. This may appear to be a very difficult undertaking; and it is, as a matter of fact, impossible, if you deliberately try to set about it. Concentration, for example, is instantly fatal to success. What you want to achieve is dispersion. All these tiresome senses of ours must be amused, treated as little children, so that they may occupy themselves quietly and not come worrying us; and then for a moment or two we may find opportunity to leave them to themselves.

Genius through all time has sought desperate physical measures to distract the exigencies of these child senses. Alcohol and opiates and despairing excitements have been constantly used to evoke once more the opportunity for a released mind to seek the ultimate vision of inspiration. For when once that has come, no other satisfaction can take its place. It is a supernal joy that can find no equal in the acts and sensations of physical life. And all these desperate measures are but a means for escape to the deeper enjoyment that may follow them.

Another means that we do not consciously seek is that of pain. It seems as if that suffering inner being of ours could be goaded at last to separate itself. The perpetual nagging of the children becomes unendurable, and for a moment or two the mother closes her eyes and stops her ears and attains the peace of separation.

But perhaps the commonest means whereby we obtain an instant's separation, is through literature. Something in us responds, we forget our bodies, and for one fugitive moment it is as if there had come an opening and we had looked out. Or it is as if we crouched under a high cliff, driven by the pressure of a tempest, and that through the crashing, roaring tumult of wind and sea, we heard the mellow trumpet of a distant bell.

No enunciation of splendid maxims nor subtle turns of thought will bring these moments to us, through literature. Nor can I find them by reading the careful mysteries of those who write of fauns and naiads; the stories of those authors who appear to think that mystery died, if not with ancient Greece, at least in the Middle Ages. Indeed, I think that when we are reduced to seeking this other thing in the past, we have lost our ability to find it. This association of our delight with any such solid fantasy as the various we call fairies, is a denial of its true reality. This other thing of ours is not phenomenal, and once we give it a shape, however whimsical, we have given it a spatial, temporal substance.

There is, indeed, no one type of story that achieves the passing magic of our instant's separation. I have found it in poetry, and in prose, and in every kind of subject. Once I found it in an account of the chemical discovery that had sought to probe by laboratory methods the secret of the ultimate constitution of matter; and for one ecstatic moment the secret was revealed to me. So nearly had my author brought me to the verge of truth. …

And I am hoping that perhaps here and there a reader of these "impressions" of mine may find an instant's separation. In certain of the items that make up this collection, there are two motives. The first is undisguised, and is displayed as the distraction of a common story; the movement of modern life in an ordinary setting. The second motive is never explicit. It does not represent the actual discovery of separation, nor attempt any indication of what that moment might reveal. For anything approaching definition is completely destructive of a vision of the other thing which is in its nature indefinable. No, all that the second motive stands for is the hesitating suggestion that the other thing is there, the essential reality behind every expression, the immanent mystery of life independent of space or time. …

I have written this introduction because some of my friends who read these stories of mine when they appeared in some weekly journal or monthly review, have come to me and asked me to explain what I meant by such efforts as "The Little Town" or "The Empty Theatre." They appeared to think that I must know. And in a sense, their sense, I did not know. There was no careful allegory that I could interpret, no definite analogy. If I had said that the old man up in the flies of the Kosmos Theatre represented God, I should have grossly satirised my own idea. At the best I could only say that if the story meant anything at all—and I was not the least sure whether it did or not—it meant that under the stress of such an excitement as the discovery of an unknown town, a man might be moved to dream of the shadow of some relation between himself and the impersonal; that he might, in fact, achieve the moment's separation which reveals the apparently commonplace as a vision of wonder.

Lastly, these visions are personal mysteries, and as various in their manner of revelation as the modes of art or religion. We touch them here or there, according to our individual equipment. Any one of the five senses may be the immediate means of communication, conveying the sudden stimulus by which the inner self finds its brief eternity of release. And there are some who cannot find their ecstasy in any book; there are others who find it in a few books, but will not find it here. To them I offer an apology, and ask in return that they shall not write and ask me what I mean. I have done my best to explain, although, as I have said, an explanation is the most depressing thing in the world.