# The Treasure of the Humble/On Women

ON WOMEN
ON WOMEN
IN these domains also are the laws unknown. Far above our heads, in the very centre of the sky, shines the star of our destined love; and it is in the atmosphere of that star, and illumined by its rays, that every passion that stirs us will come to life, even to the end. And though we choose to right or to left of us, on the heights or in the shallows; though, in our struggle to break through the enchanted circle that is drawn around all the acts of our life, we do violence to the instinct that moves us, and try our hardest to choose against the choice of destiny, yet shall the women we elect always have come ​to us straight from the unvarying star. And if, like Don Juan, we take a thousand and three to our embraces, still shall we find, on that evening when arms fall asunder and lips disunite, that it is always the same woman, good or bad, tender or cruel, loving or faithless, that is standing before us.
For indeed we can never emerge from the little circle of light that destiny traces about our footsteps; and one might almost believe that the extent and the hue of this impassable ring are known even to the men who are furthest from us. It is the tinge of its spiritual rays that they perceive first of all, and therefore will it come about that they will either smilingly hold out their hand to us or draw it back in fear. A superior atmosphere exists, in which we all know each other; and there is a mysterious truth—deeper far than the material truth—to which we at once have ​recourse, when we try to form a conception of a stranger. Have we not all experienced these things, which take place in the impenetrable regions of almost astral humanity? If you receive a letter that has come to you from some far-away island lost in the heart of the ocean, from a stranger whose very existence was unknown to you, are you quite sure that it is really a stranger who has written to you? And, as you read, do not certain deep-rooted, infallible convictions—to which ordinary convictions are as nothing—come to you concerning this soul that is thus meeting yours, in spheres known to the gods alone? And, further, can you not understand that this soul, that was dreaming of yours, heedless of time or space, that this soul, too, had certitudes akin to your own? Strangest recognitions take place on all sides, and we cannot hide our existence. Perhaps nothing brings into ​broader daylight the subtle bonds that interconnect all mankind than the little mysteries which attend the exchange of a few letters between two strangers. This is perhaps one of the minute crevices—wretchedly insignificant, no doubt, but so few there are that the faintest glimmer of light must content us—this is perhaps one of the minute crevices in the door of darkness, through which we are allowed to peer for one instant, and so conceive to ourselves what must be taking place in the grotto of treasures, undiscovered to this day. Look through the passive correspondence of any man, and you shall find in it an astonishing unity. I know neither of the two men who have written to me this morning, yet am I already aware that my reply to the one will differ in its essence from my reply to the other. I have caught a glimpse of the invisible. And, in my turn, when some one, whom I have ​never seen, writes to me, I know quite well that had he been writing to the friend who is now before me, his letter had not been exactly the same. A difference will there always be—but it is spiritual and intangible. It is the invisible signal of the soul that salutes its fellow. Doubtless must there be regions outside our ken where none are unknown; a common fatherland whither we may go and meet each other, and whence the return knows no hardship.
And it is in this common fatherland also that we chose the women we loved, wherefore it is that we cannot have erred, nor can they have erred either. The kingdom of love is, before all else, the great kingdom of certitude, for it is within its bounds that the soul is possessed of the utmost leisure. There, truly, they have naught to do but to recognise each other, offer deepest admiration, and ask their ​questions—tearfully, like the maid who has found the sister she had lost—while, far away from them, arm links itself in arm and breaths are mingling. . . . At last has a moment come when they can smile and live their own life—for a truce has been called in the stern routine of daily existence—and it is perhaps from the heights of this smile and these ineffable glances that springs the mysterious perfume that pervades love's dreariest moments, that preserves for ever the memory of the time when the lips first met. . . .
Of the true, pre-destined love alone, do I speak here. When Fate sends forth the woman it has chosen for us—sends her forth from the fastnesses of the great spiritual cities in which we, all unconsciously, dwell, and she awaits us at the crossing of the road we have to traverse when the hour is come—we are warned at the first glance. Some there are who ​attempt to force the hand of Fate. Wildly pressing down their eyelids, so as not to see that which had to be seen—struggling with all their puny strength against the eternal forces—they will contrive perhaps to cross the road to go towards another, sent thither but not for them. But, strive as they may, they will not succeed in 'stirring up the dead waters that lie in the great tarn of the future.' Nothing will happen; the pure force will not descend from the heights, and those wasted hours and kisses will never become part of the real hours and kisses of their life. . . .
There are times when destiny shuts her eyes, but she knows full well that, when evening falls, we shall return to her, and that the last word must be hers. She may shut her eyes, but the time till she re-open them is time that is lost. . . .
It would seem that women are more ​largely swayed by destiny than ourselves. They submit to its decrees with far more simplicity; nor is there sincerity in the resistance they offer. They are still nearer to God, and yield themselves with less reserve to the pure workings of the mystery. And therefore is it, doubtless, that all the incidents in our life in which they take part seem to bring us nearer to what might almost be the very fountainhead of destiny. It is above all when by their side that moments come, unexpectedly, when a 'clear presentiment' flashes across us, a presentiment of a life that does not always seem parallel to the life we know of. They lead us close to the gates of our being. May it not be during one of those profound moments, when his head is pillowed on a woman's breast, that the hero learns to know the strength and steadfastness of his star? And indeed will any true sentiment of the future ever come ​to the man who has not had his resting-place in a woman's heart?
Yet again do we enter the troubled circles of the higher conscience. Ah! how true it is that, here, too, 'the so-called psychology is a hobgoblin that has usurped, in the sanctuary itself, the place reserved for the veritable images of the gods.' For it is not the surface that always concerns us—nay, nor is it even the deepest of hidden thoughts. Do you imagine that love knows only of thoughts, and acts, and words, and that the soul never emerges from its dungeon? Do I need to be told whether she whom I take in my arms to-day is jealous or faithful, gay or sad, sincere or treacherous? Do you think that these wretched words can attain the heights whereon our souls repose and where our destiny fulfils itself in silence? What care I whether she speak of rain or jewels, of pins or feathers; what care I though she ​appear not to understand? Do you think that it is for a sublime word I thirst when I feel that a soul is gazing into my soul? Do I not know that the most beautiful of thoughts dare not raise their heads when the mysteries confront them? I am ever standing at the sea-shore; and, were I Plato, Pascal, or Michael Angelo, and the woman I loved merely telling me of her earrings, the words I would say and the words she would say would appear but the same as they floated on the waves of the fathomless inner sea, that each of us would be contemplating in the other. Let but my very loftiest thought be weighed in the scale of life or love, it will not turn the balance against the three little words that the maid who loves me shall have whispered of her silver bangles, her pearl necklace, or her trinkets of glass. . . .
It is we who do not understand, for that we never rise above the earth-level of our ​intellect. Let us but ascend to the first snows of the mountain, and all inequalities are levelled by the purifying hand of the horizon that opens before us. What difference then between a pronouncement of Marcus Aurelius and the words of the child complaining of the cold? Let us be humble, and learn to distinguish between accident and essence. Let not 'sticks that float' cause us to forget the prodigies of the gulf. The most glorious thoughts and the most degraded ideas can no more ruffle the eternal surface of our soul than, amidst the stars of Heaven, Himalaya or precipice can alter the surface of the earth. A look, a kiss, and the certainty of a great invisible presence: all is said; and I know that she who is by my side is my equal. . . .
But truly this equal is admirable, and strange; and, when love comes to her, even the lowest of wantons possesses that which we never have, inasmuch as, in her thoughts, ​love is always eternal. Therefore it is, perhaps, that, besides their primitive instincts, all women have communications with the unknown that are denied to us. Great is the distance that separates the best of men from the treasures of the second boundary; and, when a solemn moment of life demands a jewel from this treasure, they no longer remember the paths that thither lead, and vainly offer to the imperious, undeceivable circumstance the false trinkets that their intellect has fashioned. But the woman never forgets the path that leads to the centre of her being; and no matter whether I find her in opulence or in poverty, in ignorance or in fulness of knowledge, in shame or in glory, do I but whisper one word that has truly come forth from the virgin depths of my soul, she will retrace her footsteps along the mysterious paths that she has never forgotten, and without a moment's hesitation will she ​bring back to me, from out her inexhaustible stories of love, a word, a look, or a gesture that shall be no less pure than my own. It is as though her soul were ever within call; for by day and night is she prepared to give answer to the loftiest appeals from another soul; and the ransom of the poorest is undistinguishable from the ransom of a queen. . . .
With reverence must we draw near to them, be they lowly or arrogant, inattentive or lost in dreams, be they smiling still or plunged in tears; for they know the things that we do not know, and have a lamp that we have lost. Their abiding-place is at the foot itself of the Inevitable, whose well-worn paths are visible to them more clearly than to us. And thence it is that their strange institutions have come to them, their gravity at which we wonder; and we feel that, even in their most trifling actions, they are conscious of being upheld by the ​strong, unerring hands of the gods. I said before that they drew us nearer to the gates of our being: verily might we believe, when we are with them, that that primeval gate is opening, amidst the bewildering whisper that doubtless waited on the birth of things, then when speech was yet hushed, for fear lest command or forbidding should issue forth, unheard. . . .
She will never cross the threshold of that gate; and she awaits us within, where are the fountain-heads. And when we come and knock from without, and she opens to our bidding, her hand will still keep hold of latch and key. She will look, for one instant, at the man who has been sent to her, and in that brief moment she has learned all that had to be learned, and the years to come have trembled to the end of time. . . . Who shall tell us of what consists the first look of love, 'that magic wand made of a ray of broken light,' the ​ray that has issued forth from the eternal home of our being, that has transformed two souls, and given them twenty centuries of youth? The door may open again, or close; pay no heed, nor make further effort, for all is decided. She knows. She will no longer concern herself with the things you do, or say, or even think; and if she notice them, it will be but with a smile, and unconsciously will she fling from her all that does not help to confirm the certitudes of that first glance. And if you think you have deceived her, and that her impression is wrong, be sure that it is she who is right, and you yourself who are mistaken; for you are more truly that which you are in her eyes than that which in your soul you believe yourself to be, and this even though she may forever misinterpret the meaning of a gesture, a smile or a tear. . . .
Hidden treasures that have not even a ​name! . . . I would that all those who have suffered at women's hands, and found them evil, would loudly proclaim it, and give us their reasons; and if those reasons be well founded we shall be indeed surprised, and shall have advanced far forward in the mystery. For women are indeed the veiled sisters of all the great things we do not see. They are indeed nearest of kin to the infinite that is about us, and they alone can still smile at it with the intimate grace of the child, to whom its father inspires no fear. It is they who preserve here below the pure fragrance of our soul, like some jewel from Heaven, which none know how to use; and were they to depart, the spirit would reign in solitude in a desert. Theirs are still the divine emotions of the first days; and the sources of their being lie, deeper far than ours, in all that was illimitable. Those who complain of them know not the heights whereon the true kisses are ​to be found, and verily do I pity them. And yet, how insignificant do women seem when we look at them as we pass by! We see them moving about in their little homes; this one is bending forward, down there another is sobbing, a third sings and the last sews; and there is not one of us who understands. . . . We visit them, as one visits pleasant things; we approach them with caution and suspicion, and it is scarcely possible for the soul to enter. We question them, mistrustfully—they, who know already, answer naught, and we go away, shrugging our shoulders, convinced that they do not understand. . . . 'But what need for them to understand,' answers the poet, who is always right, 'what need for them to understand, those thrice happy ones who have chosen the better part, and who, even as a pure flame of love in this earth of ours, token of the celestial fire that irradiates all things, shine forth only from ​the pinnacles of temples and the mastheads of ships that wander? Some of Nature's strangest secrets are often revealed, at sacred moments, to these maidens who love, and ingenuously and unconsciously will they declare them. The sage follows in their footsteps to gather up the jewels, that in their innocence and joy they scatter along the path. The poet, who feels what they feel, offers homage to their love, and tries, in his songs, to transplant that love, that is the germ of the age of gold, to other times and other countries.' For what has been said of the mystics applies above all to women, since it is they who have preserved the sense of the mystic in our earth to this day. . . .