A STORY OF DIVINATION
I once knew a fortune-teller who really believed in the science that he professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy, to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it. During his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyō, but subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was then that he became a fortune-teller,—an itinerant uranaiya,—travelling on foot from town to town, and returning to his home rarely more than once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As a fortune-teller he was tolerably successful,—chiefly, I think, because of his perfect sincerity, and because of a peculiar gentle manner that invited confidence. His system was the old scholarly one: he used the book known to English readers as the Yî-King,—also a set of ebony blocks which could be so arranged as to form any of the Chinese hexagrams;—and he always began his divination with an earnest prayer to the gods.
The system itself he held to be infallible in the hands of a master. He confessed that he had made some erroneous predictions; but he said that these mistakes had been entirely due to his own miscomprehension of certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in my own case—(he told my fortune four times),—his predictions were fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve in fortune-telling,—intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by some diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. Imagine the result of knowing that there must happen to you, within the next two months, some terrible misfortune which you cannot possibly provide against!
He was already an old man when I first saw him in Izumo,—certainly more than sixty years of age, but looking very much younger. Afterwards I met him in Ōsaka, in Kyōto, and in Kobé. More than once I tried to persuade him to pass the colder months of the winter-season under my roof,—for he possessed an extraordinary knowledge of traditions, and could have been of inestimable service to me in a literary way. But partly because the habit of wandering had become with him a second nature, and partly because of a love of independence as savage as a gipsy’s, I was never able to keep him with me for more than two days at a time.
Every year he used to come to Tōkyō,—usually in the latter part of autumn. Then, for several weeks, he would flit about the city, from district to district, and vanish again. But during these fugitive trips he never failed to visit me; bringing welcome news of Izumo people and places,—bringing also some queer little present, generally of a religious kind, from some famous place of pilgrimage. On these occasions I could get a few hours’ chat with him. Sometimes the talk was of strange things seen or heard during his recent journey; sometimes it turned upon old legends or beliefs; sometimes it was about fortune-telling. The last time we met he told me of an exact Chinese science of divination which he regretted never having been able to learn.
“Any one learned in that science,” he said, “would be able, for example, not only to tell you the exact time at which any post or beam of this house will yield to decay, but even to tell you the direction of the breaking, and all its results. I can best explain what I mean by relating a story.
“The story is about the famous Chinese fortune-teller whom we call in Japan Shōko Setsu, and it is written in the book Baikwa-Shin-Eki, which is a book of divination. While still a very young man, Shōko Setsu obtained a high position by reason of his learning and virtue; but he resigned it and went into solitude that he might give his whole time to study. For years thereafter he lived alone in a hut among the mountains; studying without a fire in winter, and without a fan in summer; writing his thoughts upon the wall of his room—for lack of paper;—and using only a tile for his pillow.
“One day, in the period of greatest summer heat, he found himself overcome by drowsiness; and he lay down to rest, with his tile under his head. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when a rat ran across his face and woke him with a start. Feeling angry, he seized his tile and flung it at the rat; but the rat escaped unhurt, and the tile was broken. Shōko Setsu looked sorrowfully at the fragments of his pillow, and reproached himself for his hastiness. Then suddenly he perceived, upon the freshly exposed clay of the broken tile, some Chinese characters—between the upper and lower surfaces. Thinking this very strange, he picked up the pieces, and carefully examined them. He found that along the line of fracture seventeen characters had been written within the clay before the tile had been baked; and the characters read thus: ‘In the Year of the Hare, in the fourth month, on the seventeenth day, at the Hour of the Serpent, this tile, after serving as a pillow, will be thrown at a rat and broken.’ Now the prediction had really been fulfilled at the Hour of the Serpent on the seventeenth day of the fourth month of the Year of the Hare. Greatly astonished, Shōko Setsu once again looked at the fragments, and discovered the seal and the name of the maker. At once he left his hut, and, taking with him the pieces of the tile, hurried to the neighboring town in search of the tilemaker. He found the tilemaker in the course of the day, showed him the broken tile, and asked him about its history.
“After having carefully examined the shards, the tilemaker said: —‘This tile was made in my house; but the characters in the clay were written by an old man—a fortune-teller,—who asked permission to write upon the tile before it was baked.’ ‘Do you know where he lives?’ asked Shōko Setsu. ‘He used to live,’ the tilemaker answered, ‘not very far from here; and I can show you the way to the house. But I do not know his name.’
“Having been guided to the house, Shōko Setsu presented himself at the entrance, and asked for permission to speak to the old man. A serving-student courteously invited him to enter, and ushered him into an apartment where several young men were at study. As Shōko Setsu took his seat, all the youths saluted him. Then the one who had first addressed him bowed and said: ‘We are grieved to inform you that our master died a few days ago. But we have been waiting for you, because he predicted that you would come to-day to this house, at this very hour. Your name is Shōko Setsu. And our master told us to give you a book which he believed would be of service to you. Here is the book;—please to accept it.’
“Shōko Setsu was not less delighted than surprised; for the book was a manuscript of the rarest and most precious kind,—containing all the secrets of the science of divination. After having thanked the young men, and properly expressed his regret for the death of their teacher, he went back to his hut, and there immediately proceeded to test the worth of the book by consulting its pages in regard to his own fortune. The book suggested to him that on the south side of his dwelling, at a particular spot near one corner of the hut, great luck awaited him. He dug at the place indicated, and found a jar containing gold enough to make him a very wealthy man.”
My old acquaintance left this world as lonesomely as he had lived in it. Last winter, while crossing a mountain-range, he was overtaken by a snowstorm, and lost his way. Many days later he was found standing erect at the foot of a pine, with his little pack strapped to his shoulders: a statue of ice—arms folded and eyes closed as in meditation. Probably, while waiting for the storm to pass, he had yielded to the drowsiness of cold, and the drift had risen over him as he slept. Hearing of this strange death I remembered the old Japanese saying,—Uranaiya minouyé shiradzu: “The fortune-teller knows not his own fate.”
SILKWORMS
I
I was puzzled by the phrase, “silkworm-moth eyebrow,” in an old Japanese, or rather Chinese proverb:—The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man. So I went to my friend Niimi, who keeps silkworms, to ask for an explanation.
“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that you never saw a silkworm-moth? The silkworm-moth has very beautiful eyebrows.”
“Eyebrows?” I queried, in astonishment. “Well, call them what you like,” returned Niimi;—“the poets call them eyebrows…. Wait a moment, and I will show you.”
He left the guest-room, and presently returned with a white paper-fan, on which a silkworm-moth was sleepily reposing.
“We always reserve a few for breeding,” he said;—“this one is just out of the cocoon. It cannot fly, of course: none of them can fly…. Now look at the eyebrows.”
I looked, and saw that the antennae, very short and feathery, were so arched back over the two jewel-specks of eyes in the velvety head, as to give the appearance of a really handsome pair of eyebrows.
Then Niimi took me to see his worms.
In Niimi’s neighborhood, where there are plenty of mulberrytrees, many families keep silkworms;—the tending and feeding being mostly done by women and children. The worms are kept in large oblong trays, elevated upon light wooden stands about three feet high. It is curious to see hundreds of caterpillars feeding all together in one tray, and to hear the soft papery noise which they make while gnawing their mulberry-leaves. As they approach maturity, the creatures need almost constant attention. At brief intervals some expert visits each tray to inspect progress, picks up the plumpest feeders, and decides, by gently rolling them between forefinger and thumb, which are ready to spin. These are dropped into covered boxes, where they soon swathe themselves out of sight in white floss. A few only of the best are suffered to emerge from their silky sleep,—the selected breeders. They have beautiful wings, but cannot use them. They have mouths, but do not eat. They only pair, lay eggs, and die. For thousands of years their race has been so well-cared for, that it can no longer take any care of itself.
It was the evolutional lesson of this latter fact that chiefly occupied me while Niimi and his younger brother (who feeds the worms) were kindly explaining the methods of the industry. They told me curious things about different breeds, and also about a wild variety of silkworm that cannot be domesticated:—it spins splendid silk before turning into a vigorous moth which can use its wings to some purpose. But I fear that I did not act like a person who felt interested in the subject; for, even while I tried to listen, I began to muse.
II
First of all, I found myself thinking about a delightful revery by M. Anatole France, in which he says that if he had been the Demiurge, he would have put youth at the end of life instead of at the beginning, and would have otherwise so ordered matters that every human being should have three stages of development, somewhat corresponding to those of the lepidoptera. Then it occurred to me that this fantasy was in substance scarcely more than the delicate modification of a most ancient doctrine, common to nearly all the higher forms of religion.
Western faiths especially teach that our life on earth is a larval state of greedy helplessness, and that death is a pupa-sleep out of which we should soar into everlasting light. They tell us that during its sentient existence, the outer body should be thought of only as a kind of caterpillar, and thereafter as a chrysalis;—and they aver that we lose or gain, according to our behavior as larvæ, the power to develop wings under the mortal wrapping. Also they tell us not to trouble ourselves about the fact that we see no Psyché-imago detach itself from the broken cocoon: this lack of visual evidence signifies nothing, because we have only the purblind vision of grubs. Our eyes are but half-evolved. Do not whole scales of colors invisibly exist above and below the limits of our retinal sensibility? Even so the butterfly-man exists,—although, as a matter of course, we cannot see him.
But what would become of this human imago in a state of perfect bliss? From the evolutional point of view the question has interest; and its obvious answer was suggested to me by the history of those silkworms,—which have been domesticated for only a few thousand years. Consider the result of our celestial domestication for—let us say—several millions of years: I mean the final consequence, to the wishers, of being able to gratify every wish at will.
Those silkworms have all that they wish for,—even considerably more. Their wants, though very simple, are fundamentally identical with the necessities of mankind,—food, shelter, warmth, safety, and comfort. Our endless social struggle is mainly for these things. Our dream of heaven is the dream of obtaining them free of cost in pain; and the condition of those silkworms is the realization, in a small way, of our imagined Paradise. (I am not considering the fact that a vast majority of the worms are predestined to torment and the second death; for my theme is of heaven, not of lost souls. I am speaking of the elect—those worms preördained to salvation and rebirth.) Probably they can feel only very weak sensations: they are certainly incapable of prayer. But if they were able to pray, they could not ask for anything more than they already receive from the youth who feeds and tends them. He is their providence,—a god of whose existence they can be aware in only the vaguest possible way, but just such a god as they require. And we should foolishly deem ourselves fortunate to be equally well cared-for in proportion to our more complex wants. Do not our common forms of prayer prove our desire for like attention? Is not the assertion of our “need of divine love” an involuntary confession that we wish to be treated like silkworms,—to live without pain by the help of gods? Yet if the gods were to treat us as we want, we should presently afford fresh evidence,—in the way of what is called “the evidence from degeneration,”—that the great evolutional law is far above the gods.
An early stage of that degeneration would be represented by total incapacity to help ourselves;—then we should begin to lose the use of our higher sense-organs;—later on, the brain would shrink to a vanishing pin-point of matter;—still later we should dwindle into mere amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would be the physical consequence of that kind of divine love which we so lazily wish for. The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual peace might well seem a malevolent inspiration from the Lords of Death and Darkness. All life that feels and thinks has been, and can continue to be, only as the product of struggle and pain,—only as the outcome of endless battle with the Powers of the Universe. And cosmic law is uncompromising. Whatever organ ceases to know pain,—whatever faculty ceases to be used under the stimulus of pain,—must also cease to exist. Let pain and its effort be suspended, and life must shrink back, first into protoplasmic shapelessness, thereafter into dust.
Buddhism—which, in its own grand way, is a doctrine of evolution—rationally proclaims its heaven but a higher stage of development through pain, and teaches that even in paradise the cessation of effort produces degradation. With equal reasonableness it declares that the capacity for pain in the superhuman world increases always in proportion to the capacity for pleasure. (There is little fault to be found with this teaching from a scientific standpoint,—since we know that higher evolution must involve an increase of sensitivity to pain.) In the Heavens of Desire, says the Shōbō-nen-jō-kyō, the pain of death is so great that all the agonies of all the hells united could equal but one-sixteenth part of such pain.[1]
The foregoing comparison is unnecessarily strong; but the Buddhist teaching about heaven is in substance eminently logical. The suppression of pain—mental or physical,—in any conceivable state of sentient existence, would necessarily involve the suppression also of pleasure;—and certainly all progress, whether moral or material, depends upon the power to meet and to master pain. In a silkworm-paradise such as our mundane instincts lead us to desire, the seraph freed from the necessity of toil, and able to satisfy his every want at will, would lose his wings at last, and sink back to the condition of a grub….
[1] This statement refers only to the Heavens of Sensuous Pleasure,—not to the Paradise of Amida, nor to those heavens into which one enters by the Apparitional Birth. But even in the highest and most immaterial zones of being,—in the Heavens of Formlessness,—the cessation of effort and of the pain of effort, involves the penalty of rebirth in a lower state of existence.
III
I told the substance of my revery to Niimi. He used to be a great reader of Buddhist books.
“Well,” he said, “I was reminded of a queer Buddhist story by the proverb that you asked me to explain,—The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man. According to our doctrine, the saying would be as true of life in heaven as of life upon earth…. This is the story:—
“When Shaka[2] dwelt in this world, one of his disciples, called Nanda, was bewitched by the beauty of a woman; and Shaka desired to save him from the results of this illusion. So he took Nanda to a wild place in the mountains where there were apes, and showed him a very ugly female ape, and asked him: ‘Which is the more beautiful, Nanda, —the woman that you love, or this female ape?’ ‘Oh, Master!’ exclaimed Nanda, ‘how can a lovely woman be compared with an ugly ape?’ ‘Perhaps you will presently find reason to make the comparison yourself,’ answered the Buddha;—and instantly by supernatural power he ascended with Nanda to the San-Jūsan-Ten, which is the Second of the Six Heavens of Desire. There, within a palace of jewels, Nanda saw a multitude of heavenly maidens celebrating some festival with music and dance; and the beauty of the least among them incomparably exceeded that of the fairest woman of earth. ‘O Master,’ cried Nanda, ‘what wonderful festival is this?’ ‘Ask some of those people,’ responded Shaka. So Nanda questioned one of the celestial maidens; and she said to him:—‘This festival is to celebrate the good tidings that have been brought to us. There is now in the human world, among the disciples of Shaka, a most excellent youth called Nanda, who is soon to be reborn into this heaven, and to become our bridegroom, because of his holy life. We wait for him with rejoicing.’ This reply filled the heart of Nanda with delight. Then the Buddha asked him: ‘Is there any one among these maidens, Nanda, equal in beauty to the woman with whom you have been in love?’ ‘Nay, Master!’ answered Nanda; ‘even as that woman surpassed in beauty the female ape that we saw on the mountain, so is she herself surpassed by even the least among these.’
“Then the Buddha immediately descended with Nanda to the depths of the hells, and took him into a torture-chamber where myriads of men and women were being boiled alive in great caldrons, and otherwise horribly tormented by devils. Then Nanda found himself standing before a huge vessel which was filled with molten metal;—and he feared and wondered because this vessel had as yet no occupant. An idle devil sat beside it, yawning. ‘Master,’ Nanda inquired of the Buddha, ‘for whom has this vessel been prepared?’ ‘Ask the devil,’ answered Shaka. Nanda did so; and the devil said to him: ‘There is a man called Nanda,—now one of Shaka’s disciples,—about to be reborn into one of the heavens, on account of his former good actions. But after having there indulged himself, he is to be reborn in this hell; and his place will be in that pot. I am waiting for him.’”[3]
[2] Sâkyamuni.
[3] I give the story substantially as it was told to me; but I have not been able to compare it with any published text. My friend says that he has seen two Chinese versions,—one in the Hongyō-kyō (?), the other in the Zōichi-agon-kyō (Ekôttarâgamas). In Mr. Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translations (the most interesting and valuable single volume of its kind that I have ever seen), there is a Pali version of the legend, which differs considerably from the above.—This Nanda, according to Mr. Warren’s work, was a prince, and the younger half-brother of Sâkyamuni.
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