,■> -; •. i 
 
 THE COSMIC COMEDY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE VITAL URGE 
 
 BY 
 
 LEONARD STUART 
 ("h. c. Anglican") 
 
 Author of 'The Great God Pan," "The Eon," "The Suffragettes, 
 
 "The Violinist," "Life's Ideal," etc. Editor "New Century 
 
 Reference Library of World Knowledge," 
 
 "The People's Cyclopedia," etc. 
 
 When Time began, — then, — deathless eons met, 
 
 To good eternal down the ages plighted. 
 
 What? — Though their lives may never be united 
 By mortal bonds; while eras rise and set, 
 
 Their pure minds blend in glance of eyes delighted; 
 Clean hearts! white souls! they greet — without regret. 
 
 To E. E. M.—Cor Maria— "The Eon." 
 
 ARTletVeRIT^rO 
 
 BOSTON 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 
Copyright, 1919, by Charles L. Stuart 
 
 All Rights of Translation, etc., Reserved 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 iCi.A529371 
 
^ 
 
 r 
 
 PSYCHE COSMI 
 
 AD 
 
 LUCEM MUNDI 
 
 RB 
 
 ROSA SH ARONI 
 
 * * * 
 
 L.J.S., St.B., S.C. 
 
 A FRIEND IN DEED 
 IN TIME OF NEED 
 
 M.H, F H.M., S.S., F.R. 
 A.L., G.E.R., F.F., G.Y, 
 
 TO THE ABOVE GOOD COMRADES OF DIFFERENT FAITHS, WHOSE 
 
 HONEST CRITICISM, COMPANIONSHIP, ASSISTANCE AND 
 
 INSPIRATION WROUGHT ITS CONSUMMATION, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED 
 
 WITH THE SINCERE HOPE THAT IT MAY HELP TO ACCOMPLISH 
 
 IN UNIVERSAL MEASURE THE UNITY OF THOUGHT AND 
 
 PURPOSE THAT WELDED OUR FRIENDSHIPS 
 
 New York, New Year, igig 
 
"This is such an odd and incomprehensible world 
 . . . What a complex riddle, a complexity of complexi- 
 ties!" 
 
 "All human progress is in a circle ; or, to use a more 
 accurate figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While 
 we fancy ourselves going straight forward and at- 
 taining, at every step, an entirely new position of af- 
 fairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried 
 and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, 
 refined and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a 
 coarse and sensual prophecy of the future." 
 
 "At some brighter period, when the world shall have 
 grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth 
 will be revealed, in order to establish the whole rela- 
 tion between man and woman on a surer ground — of 
 mutual happiness." 
 
 "I have always envied the Catholics their faith in 
 that sweet sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between 
 them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful 
 splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the 
 worshiper more intelligibly to human comprehension 
 through the medium of a woman's tenderness." 
 
 — Haiuthorne. 
 
 "To see the best men move in sympathy and harmony 
 with the best women, and to see both linked together 
 by zeal and service to all ranks of their fellow-creatures, 
 this is what my heart desires, this is what American 
 men and women owe to the country whose debt to them 
 in the past may be recognized, while its claim upon 
 them in the future extends far beyond the limits and 
 the records with which we have become familiar." 
 
 — Julia Ward Hoiue. 
 
Quotations 
 
 "For this thy child, a woman earnest-eyed 
 
 Who wears thy gracious favors worthily, 
 Pledges her honest faith, her constant pride. 
 To live her life as one who holds in trust 
 God's gold to give again, who fearless must 
 Face the great days to be." 
 
 — Sophie Jeivett. 
 
 "How white then should be the soul of every Ameri- 
 can woman. Upon her influence depend largely the 
 spiritual forces which shall determine the status and 
 progress of our nation." 
 
 — Lydia Hoyt Farmer. 
 
 INSTRUCTIONS 
 
 HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF THIS 
 BOOK 
 
 Read first the prose version furnished by the Intro- 
 duction, the topical headings in italics to each 
 verse, and the extracts from the lecture on 
 "WISDOM" by LO-CARUS. 
 
 Then read uninterruptedly the narrative rhyme, 
 and for quotation purposes, commit to memory 
 any verses that take the fancy. Those here enu- 
 merated are especially commended to the readers 
 attention. 
 
 Verses 
 
 33 35 40 41 43 45-b-c 48 52 59 61 67 78 
 79 80 90 91 95 98 99 100 loi 102 103 107 
 
 108 109 no 112 119 128 133 147 149 150 155 156 
 
 166 167 168 169 178 179 182 189 190 194 195 196 
 
 197 198 199 2CX) 205 206 209 210 211 216 217 218 
 
 219 220 221 222 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introductory 
 
 PAGE 
 
 9 
 
 PART I 
 
 The Cosmic Comedy or The Vital Urge 
 Canto I Verses i- i8 . . . 
 
 (( 
 
 II 
 
 Inter! 
 
 ude " 
 
 Cantc 
 
 > III 
 
 " 
 
 IV 
 
 a 
 
 V 
 
 <( 
 
 VI 
 
 " 
 
 VII 
 
 (( 
 
 VIII 
 
 " 
 
 IX 
 
 (I 
 
 X 
 
 Postscript *' 
 
 19-4+ 
 
 45-a-b 
 
 46-58 
 
 59-76 45 
 
 77-96 S3 
 
 97-107 61 
 
 108-132 67 
 
 133-169 77 
 
 170-187 . . " 91 
 
 188-218 99 
 
 219-222 Ill 
 
 "Wisdom" by Lo-Carus 113 
 
 Author's Recapitulation 127 
 
 PART II 
 
 War and Peace 129 
 
 I. America to Britain — Chant of Brotherhood . 130 
 
 Militarism — A Threnody 131 
 
 The Vision; Death — Revelation — Faith . , 134 
 
 The Song of Peace 135 
 
 Unity: Life's Ideal: The Basis of Federation 
 
 — Hebrew-Catholic-Protestant 137 
 
 7 
 
'We are the music makers, 
 
 And we are the dreamers of dreams: 
 
 World-losers and world-forsakers. 
 On whom the pale moon gleams: 
 
 Yet we are the movers and shakers 
 Of the world forever, it seems. 
 
 With wonderful deathless ditties 
 We build up the world's great cities. 
 And out of a fabulous story 
 We fashion an empire's glory: 
 
 And overthrow them with prophesying 
 To the old of the new world's worth; 
 
 For each age is a dream that is dying. 
 Or one that is coming to birth." 
 
 A. O'Shaughnessy. 
 
THE COSMIC COMEDY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE VITAL URGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 In press dispatches of December, iQiS, the world 
 read that: "The ex-Kaiser is seen at the window of 
 the bedroom which he occupies in Amerongen 
 Castle, Holland, writing furiously all the day long. 
 He fills sheet after sheet of foolscap, which he vio- 
 lently tosses aside in his haste to get to the next. 
 What is he writingf^ 
 
 In the following pages, the author considers him- 
 self impersonally privileged to become the medium 
 in America for the transmission of the ex-ruler's 
 message, written for the benefit of his sons and their 
 progeny. He attempts to identify himself with each 
 character that appears and wading into the shallow 
 Hohenzollern temperament he dissects and analyzes 
 the unfortunate mentality's reflections upon its past 
 life. The Kaiser comes under the influence of the 
 spirits of five of Prussia's notorious apostles: — Bis- 
 marck, the apostle of ambition and imperial expan- 
 sion; Treitschke, the apostle of Pangermanism, eco- 
 nomic and military; Nietzsche, the anti-Christ 
 apostle of the ruthless oversoul or superman ; Miin- 
 sterberg, apostle of German "kultur" at Harvard 
 University (who to his honestly expressed astonish- 
 ment found superior civilization in the United 
 States), and Luther, the greatest German apostle, 
 
lo The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 who explains how his reformation aims were mis- 
 understood and overshot the mark. 
 
 The modern X-Quantity is made to realize that 
 the brutality inherent and sporadic In the Prussian 
 temperament arises from a lack of mental hygiene, 
 to the racial absence of innate respect for woman- 
 hood, young and old, which creates the hidden, inner 
 motherhood resentment of the species against the 
 male and reflects in the progeny. He — the Kaiser — 
 is the typical example of this reflected resentment, 
 long notorious for his lack of parental respect and 
 his unfilial treatment of his mother, the former 
 Crown Princess Elizabeth of England and Empress 
 of Germany, the first child of Queen Victoria; 
 against which her brother the Prince of Wales, later 
 King Edward VII, had to protest and interfere, to 
 bring his conceited nephew temporarily to his senses. 
 
 In the light of subsequent events, when he com- 
 pares the national vaunted German "kultur" with 
 the rising values of Latin, British and American 
 civilization, he further recognizes that evolution in 
 racial regeneration rises and falls in nations, accord- 
 ing to the respect and reverence accorded to the 
 mother-mind of womanhood by MAN, for the re- 
 production of the species. Luther gives him a paral- 
 lel to German ''kultur" and its products as ancient 
 as the Moloch-Minotaur period of Minoan or 
 Cretan *'kultur," while he finds that the "Yellow 
 Peril" against which he warned the Western World 
 is his own "yellow streak of Prusslanism" traced 
 back through Bismarckian aggression and the Teu- 
 tonic order of robber chieftains of the Dark Ages 
 to Attlla and Genseric, the Infamous leaders of the 
 Hun hordes who devastated Europe and northern 
 Africa in the third and fourth centuries A. D. 
 Those descendants of the mongrel tribes of Mon- 
 gols of northern Asia who Invaded the Chinese Em- 
 
Or the Vital Urge ii 
 
 pire In the second century B. C. and after various 
 migrations entered Europe and settled in the terri- 
 tory since called Germany. 
 
 ''A man of firm will can mold the world to his 
 thought," wrote Goethe, but ex-Kaiser William II 
 did not realize that Goethe meant a man of ''good- 
 will" endued with "righteous thought," hence 
 through his evil pride arose his "evil will," his "evil 
 thought" and all the horrors and ruin his "unmoral 
 will" brought upon the world with its holocaust of 
 millions of human victims. 
 
 Psychopath^/ically weakening to moral mental de- 
 pression, the ex-Kaiser realizes that he has been the 
 "insane despoiler of modern civilization, the ruler 
 of a nation taught with the mother s milk that 
 human right must yield to brutal might," as that In- 
 controvertible biological truth was so well synthe- 
 sized by the eloquent Japanese Viscount Ishil when 
 addressing the United States Senate 30 August, 
 191 7. He admits the inferiority of degenerate Ger- 
 manism which, with its domineering pride and evil 
 arrogance, its brutalit}^ and frightfulness, came to 
 look upon its particular brand of Christianity as the 
 most advanced type of "kultur" to be Imposed, as 
 even Miinsterberg advocated, by force upon the 
 earth, notwithstanding the inevitable failures that 
 history reveals of every similar attempt, religious 
 or political. And, in his mother's faith, in the virile 
 eclecticism of the Anglican-Episcopal Church, that 
 by tradition, history, precept and example, regards 
 itself as occupying a mediatory position for promot- 
 ing the cause of unity among all religious bodies, the 
 ex-Kaiser acknowledges the broad-minded blend of 
 Hebraic Catholicism, of Italo-French-American and 
 British-Hindu-Japanese thought and will, which, 
 with the splendid unification work of the new 
 World-Mother — the Red Cross Society — is federat- 
 
12 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 ing the men and women of the World in the Broth- 
 erhood and Sisterhood of Humanity. 
 
 Repentant, he implores forgiveness for the sins 
 and crimes of his evil pride. Confined within the 
 limits of that reverent upright, temperate, manly 
 regard which appeals to all well-balanced thought 
 when illumed with the exalted sentiment which 
 caused Homer, whenever he had occasion to use 
 the title, to prefix the adjective "revered" to the 
 word 
 
 "mother," 
 
 he finally turns greater light on "the shining figure 
 of the Truth Supreme which can ensure lasting 
 
 PEACE." 
 
 Emphasizing the vital principle of creation and 
 existence — the influence of the spirit of good in the 
 father on the mother-mind for the purification of 
 daily life and consequent unity of universal thought^ 
 — in its praise of modern womanhood, in its lesson 
 of reverence for motherhood, and the education and 
 training of girlhood and boyhood in the right prin- 
 ciples of self-knowledge, self-respect and self-con- 
 trol, for world service, "The Cosmic Comedy or 
 The Vital Urge" has a special viewpoint for all 
 women and should be of vital interest to the entire 
 human race. 
 
 "Si ignoscitis, gaudebo; si succensetis, feram; jacio 
 en aleara; libruraque scribo, seu presentibus seu posteris 
 legendum, nihil interest; expectet ille suum lectorem per 
 annos centum; si Deus ipse per annorum sena milia 
 contemplatorem praestolatus est." 
 
 "If you pardon me, I rejoice; if you reproach me, I 
 can endure it. The die is thrown; I write a book to 
 
Or the Vital Urge 13 
 
 be read; whether by the present or future ages, it mat- 
 ters not. It can wait for a reader a century, if God him- 
 self waited six thousand years for an observer of his 
 works." Joannis Kepleri — "Harmonices Mundi." 
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 The author wishes to emphasize the fact 
 that therfe is not a single condition, statement 
 or argument advanced throughout this book, 
 which cannot be substantiated by quotations 
 from acknowledged and reliable authorities 
 of high standing. Notes, however, were sup- 
 pressed, for, while they were of particular in- 
 terest, they ran to more than double the length 
 of the "Comedy." Should a call for further 
 information arise from criticism — or inquiry 
 — the notes will form the basis of a new book. 
 
 L.S. 
 
CANTO I 
 
 And a voice that was thick 
 From a soul that seemed sick 
 Came back from the Barrier, 
 GO! 
 
 For the secrets hidden 
 
 Are all forbidden 
 
 Till God means man to know. 
 
 —E. H. Wilson. 
 
THE COSMIC COMEDY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE VITAL URGE 
 
 CANTO I 
 
 Amerongen Castle, Hollandj 
 
 December, igi8. 
 
 I 
 The Kaiser writes to his sons and confesses to his 
 early spurning of mother love. 
 
 Oh sons ! Hell's blight is on the man 
 
 Who spurns the mother love divine 
 In God's revealed, evolving plan: 
 
 My eyes are bleared with bitter brine; 
 Too short is life's redeeming span, 
 
 For sons ! the curse of Cain is mine. 
 2 
 
 He tells of having had a prophetic nightmare or 
 **couchmare," (Fr. "cauchemare." ) 
 
 A couchmare came on me this night; 
 
 My spirit left the mortal clod : 
 In helpless and resistless flight 
 
 Up, starward through the skies I trod 
 The highw^ay leading unto Light 
 
 And there my naked soul saw God. 
 17 
 
1 8 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 3 
 After watching the Great Bear (representing his 
 bugbear Russia) and other stars. 
 
 Last eve I laid and watched the stars 
 
 And turned from where the Greater Bear, 
 
 Polaris stalking, ever mars 
 
 My sight; the Pleiads — sisters fair — 
 
 And Aldebaran, through window bars, 
 Like hot tears gleamed in crystal air. 
 
 4 ^ 
 He sees the Cross in Orion's constellation. 
 
 When eastward low, a cross afar, 
 
 Recumbent, formed within my ken; — 
 
 R^d Betelgeux, the Rigel star, 
 
 Orion's belt: "the Three Wise Men, 
 
 Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar, 
 
 For Christmas come," I said, and then 
 
 5 
 He apostrophizes his "Gott." 
 
 I sent a fervent, bold appeal 
 
 In strident prayer unto our God: — 
 "O Lord of Might! Thyself reveal! 
 
 Confer on me Thy gracious nod! 
 Didst THOU not place on ME THY seal 
 
 To rule the world with iron rod? 
 6 
 
 He boasts typically of German "Kultur" of might 
 and right divine. 
 
 Set on MY throne by might divine. 
 
 To preach the gospel of THY Son: 
 To spread the truth of light divine 
 
 The Kultur, Germany has won; 
 Did I not reign by right divine? 
 
 Say! — Was I not your chosen one? 
 
Or the Vital Urge 19 
 
 7 
 Braffs of the German Army, the ''Deutschland 
 iiber alles'' host. 
 
 To fill our foes with wild alarms, 
 
 The "Deutschland iiber alles" host, 
 In war's bright panoply and charms. 
 
 Is still our special pride and boast: 
 With victory endue our arms! 
 
 We do not mind how great the cost! 
 8 
 
 He reviles and "strafes'' his British cousins. 
 
 Those British who our efforts choke, 
 
 Who foil our naval aims in scorn; 
 O strafe and place them 'neath my yoke, 
 
 I — of an English princess born — 
 Since they My anger thus provoke; 
 
 Else all our schemes will be forsworn. 
 
 9 
 
 Who foil his naval and expansion plans. 
 
 For we prepared with foresight keen, 
 
 And watched and waited for '*The Day"; 
 On our side then you must be seen. 
 
 Or, shall we hear their Scotchmen say, 
 "The well-laid plans of mice — when mean, — 
 
 As evermore have gone astray?" 
 10 
 
 German "Kultur' and the envy of his foes. 
 
 Our foes encompass us around: 
 
 They envy us our wealth and might; 
 
 When *'Kultur" should on earth abound. 
 When we alone know what is right : 
 
 Say, on our side YOU still are found 
 
 So that "mein Deutschland" wins this fight! 
 
20 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 II 
 He gets bitter at God's silence. 
 
 Winds croaking with a laugh sweep by ; 
 
 Stars blink and wink sardonic glee; 
 The moon's face with a sly and dry, 
 
 Wry smile seems but to grin at me: 
 No sign is there, no swift reply, 
 
 Do I no favor find with THEE? 
 
 12 
 The Kaiser sees Christ upon Orion's Cross and 
 grows reverent. 
 
 This said, I flung me on my bed 
 
 And gazed long in the starry space; 
 
 The Three Wise Men — upright — o'erhead, 
 Orion's cross had moved apace, 
 
 And sons! THE CHRIST was there outspread, 
 I looked up into Jesu's face. 
 
 13 
 Unlike Constantine the Great. 
 
 Not thus the greater Constantine 
 Above the Milvian bridge and coast, 
 
 Saw high in Heaven the Cross divine 
 And humbly made his pious boast. 
 
 *'Lead on! I conquer in this sign! 
 To triumph o'er the pagan host!" 
 
Or the Vital Urge 21 
 
 Jesus look of sad reproof. 
 
 In sad reproof a grieving glance 
 
 With pity mingled, pierced me through; 
 
 The look sank deep, as when the lance 
 Arterial blood and water drew; 
 
 I viewed the sacrifice askance, 
 
 Abased and humbled, for there grew, 
 
 The blood of the Kaiser s victims. 
 
 And poured from Him a living flood ; 
 
 His wounded heart gushed crimson streams; 
 Transfixed, I knew it was the blood 
 
 Of victims: God! I heard the screams, — 
 As petrified, erect, I stood, — 
 
 From Belgium, France, — Louvain and Rheims. 
 16 
 
 The Kaiser s doom foretold. 
 
 Slow, booming low, wild Belgian bells 
 Tolled through the gloom afar and near; 
 
 Sad Flemish chimes wove mystic spells 
 With looming dirge upon my ear; 
 
 Doomed! Damned! Damned! Doomed! so rang 
 their knells. 
 Shrink! shudder! in corroding fear! 
 
 17 _ 
 
 The spirits of the Lusitanian victims haunt him. 
 
 Around, about, before me went 
 
 Sweet female forms with mournful eyes ; 
 
 Sad baby faces o'er me bent 
 
 With drowning and with stifled cries: 
 
 The Lusitanian victims sent 
 
 To death 'neath smiling Maytime skies. 
 
22 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 i8 
 He even hears Hell appealing to avenge Edith 
 Cavell. 
 
 While up my flesh crept horror dire, 
 
 For welling even up from Hell, 
 In waves that higher rose and higher, 
 
 Swept up a litanizing yell, 
 Unwav'ring in its fierce desire, 
 
 Avenge, O God! Edith Cavell! 
 
 Avenge, O God! Edith Cavell! (ad libitum) 
 
 AVENGE! 
 
 O GOD! 
 
 EDITH 
 
 CAVELL! 
 
CANTO II 
 
 ''With him will we speak mouth to mouth even 
 transparently and not in dark speeches." 
 
 "Ho-Bab! We will do thee goodl" 
 
CANTO II 
 
 19 
 
 The Kaiser swoons and his naked soul flies star- 
 ward to meet God. 
 
 O'erwhelmed I swooned; my fainting soul 
 Left mortal clay and through the night 
 
 Rushed upward where the planets roll: 
 A ghastly crowd aligned my flight 
 
 To reach the everlasting goal, 
 
 The throne of God's eternal light. 
 
 20 
 // curdles as it meets on the Milky or Great 
 White Whey, Bismarck, Nietzsche, Treitschke and 
 Miinsterberg. 
 
 When on — that brute of power, vain 
 Bismarck, of iron blood bewitched, 
 
 Nietzsche, the anti-Christ insane, 
 
 Treitschke, with nasal squeak, high-pitched, 
 
 Miinsterberg, — urged in flame of pain. 
 In scorn of hell with shame enriched. 
 
 21 
 Who hiss some opinion of him. 
 
 Their wraiths came hissing in my ear, 
 
 "Incompetent! insensate one! 
 This infamy you'll never clear. 
 
 The ill your ignorance has done; 
 By all the foul work that you rear. 
 
 No place is won within the sun." 
 25 
 
26 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 22 
 Bismarck, howling, cuffs his spiritual ear, while 
 recalling his youthful insolence. 
 
 Loud Bismarck howled, ''Impertinence 
 
 Since youth," your gibe '*Ca-ve! adsum!" 
 Showed even then, through impudence 
 
 The fall to which your pride would come; 
 We then foretold your insolence, 
 
 With scorn would make the whole world hum. 
 23 
 
 Bismarck sums the Kaiser up. 
 
 You spurned the love of motherhood — 
 
 Your life became a tangled skein, 
 With hate of social brotherhood, 
 
 With pride, with false ambition, vain ; 
 You acted as no other would, 
 
 And now you bear the stain of Cain. 
 24 
 
 The Kaiser s ignorance, arrogance and malevo- 
 lence. 
 
 Why should you show such ignorance? 
 
 In chivalry your youth was trained: 
 But steeped in pride and insolence, 
 
 From breeding true, you ever strained: 
 Such stupid, crass malevolence 
 
 In your low mind has always reigned. 
 25 
 
 Treitschke, squeakifig, scorns his arrogance. 
 
 High Treitschke squeaked, "The mental twist 
 Showed that his brain was never right; 
 
 His fool and arrogant 'mailed fist'; 
 His prate of 'shining armor bright'; 
 
 How . . . 'mi-les gloriosus!' . . . trist, 
 To place all Germans in this light." 
 
Or the Vital Urge 27 
 
 26 
 Mocks the Kaiser s megalomania. 
 
 His pain-drawn face, his restless eye, 
 
 The studied attitudes he chose, 
 Were crazy; though for ease he'd try, 
 
 He never could acquire that pose 
 Which living true, w-ith purpose high. 
 
 Yields wisdom's look of calm repose. 
 27 
 
 Tells him rightj not mighty should be his aim. 
 
 Had he but sensed that right, not might. 
 
 Has greater force than fire and sword; 
 That evil he alone should fight 
 
 And o'er the right keep watch and ward, 
 He might have lived in glorious light 
 
 The economic World-Peace-Lord. 
 28 
 
 Next — Miinsterberg began — and scored his foiled 
 show-off before Nancy. 
 
 Of him can it be true what's said? 
 
 All haughty, with conceited glance he 
 Watched, nursing there, with pride o'erlaid, 
 
 A foppish, fool imperial fancy. 
 In coxcomb pomp of white arrayed. 
 
 To show off in — uncaptured — Nancy. 
 29 
 
 Sane opinion ranks hijn as the King consummate 
 silly ass. 
 
 Ye Gods ! what kink is it that binds 
 His thought in such a muddled pass? 
 
 When ridicule so swift unwinds 
 The sane opinion of the mass. 
 
 To rank him in all wholesome minds, 
 The King consummate silly ass. 
 
28 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 30 
 The Kaiser and the Holy Grail. 
 
 On Zion's Mount, brave British bands 
 
 Again his stupid efforts stale; 
 A monstrance, loot from Turkish hands, 
 
 He holds, and thinks he's gained "The Grail"; 
 That silly trick against him stands. 
 
 Egregious boob, of no avail. 
 
 31 
 The Prussian slob, snob, and S, O. B. 
 
 In sheer contempt of him unfurled. 
 
 He's styled the Hohenzollern snob; 
 In foul disgust, the outer world 
 
 Now calls each Prussian hog — a slob ; 
 Against them everywhere is hurled 
 
 Opprobrious, the term of S. O. B. 
 
 "And what may be S. O. B.?" I — der Kaiser 
 asked furiously sneering; then Miinsterberg turn- 
 ing on me personally and thundering, so that I 
 shuddering shrank, replied, "Sons of b-rrutes! you 
 snob, brutes from the male, not the female side, for 
 you and your kind have made women the subjective 
 — or resentful — vessels that some are to produce 
 such inhuman beasts." 
 
 32 
 
 The Skunk of Germany, — the rotten Kaiser. 
 
 To lowest depths our nation sunk. 
 
 How ill-considered each adviser; 
 With world-ambition graspings drunk, 
 
 Had they just been one whit the wiser. 
 You'd not be ranked now as "The Skunk 
 
 Of Germany, — the rotten Kaiser!" 
 
Or the Vital Urge 29 
 
 Degraded as a Knight of the Garter. 
 
 Spurned from King Arthur's noble class 
 
 Of Knights, who world-advance have sought; 
 
 Kickt out, unworthy of the pass 
 To chivalry, with uplift fraught; 
 
 You lost the goodwill of the mass, 
 When "evil followed evil thought." 
 
 34 
 The fierce white light that beats upon a throne. 
 
 When Belgium fair was overthrown, 
 
 The wrongs you wrought to seek your goal, 
 
 Repentance never will condone: 
 
 Now, clouds of darkness backward roll; 
 
 The fierce white light beats on the throne 
 Where shrinks your shivering, shriveled soul. 
 
 35 
 Plato's dictum: The nation is the man writ large, 
 or '^Qualis rex, talis grex — Like king, like peopled 
 
 Who follow peace and wisdom scan. 
 For them will joy and blessings bloom; 
 
 Who follow false gods, then the ban 
 Of hell is evermore their doom; 
 
 Writ large, the nation is the man, 
 As rulers are, the people loom. 
 
 36 
 
 Machiavel Be^hmann^Hollw egg's ''Scrap of 
 Paper." 
 
 Your Prussian clique will dwell in Hell 
 
 As violated Belgium's raper; 
 Your Bethmann-Hollweg Machiavel, 
 
 To him Old Eblis holds no taper; 
 To call our treaty, — vile to tell, — 
 
 Our Belgian pledge, — "A scrap of paper." 
 
30 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 37 
 The turpitude of Tirpitz and the vermin pirate 
 water-rats. 
 
 The turpitude of Tirpitz, while 
 
 His vermin pirate water rats, 
 On submarine campaigning vile, 
 
 Like crafty, crouching, creeping cats, 
 Went forth, — beamed with the greasy smile 
 
 Of porcine-fed and beer-blown "vats." 
 
 The cowardly Prussian Junker. 
 
 With lust of might and power drunker 
 Than could a speedy road-hog handle, 
 
 So arrogant your Prussian Junker, 
 No one to him can hold a candle, 
 
 And yet at death, a squealing funker. 
 To all brave men a mocking scandal. 
 
 39 
 The Prussian yellow mad dog streak. 
 
 Your mad dog strain, the world will boot: 
 
 The force of might, can you command it? 
 When Belgian lands you ravage, loot. 
 
 Your yellow streak none understand it; 
 When right you trample underfoot; 
 
 You rank — the rank unkultured bandit! 
 40 
 
 America the Melting Pot of the races of the 
 World. 
 
 America the melting pot 
 
 Of every race from every clime, 
 See how that nation's brave sons, hot. 
 
 Fused in the crucible of time, 
 Flock eager to avenge the blot 
 
 Of fiendish, autocratic crime. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 31 
 
 41 
 German servile subservience versus willing serv- 
 ice, 
 
 {Then "Quiddingly" sarcastic: — ) 
 ''Caligula!" stand in the light, 
 
 And see how by the world you're hated ; 
 Servile subservience to might 
 
 Your German "kultur" inculcated, 
 While willing service for the right, 
 
 The higher nations cultivated. 
 42 
 
 The women-rapers and baby-killers. 
 
 'Tis great — the race your caste has run, 
 Of human life the heedless spillers; 
 
 Deep, blood-red glows your setting sun, 
 You demon, brutal horror-thrillers! 
 
 Down history, the stigma won 
 Of woman-rapers ! baby killers ! 
 
 , 43 ^ 
 
 Miinsterberg invokes GOD'S Light upon the 
 hell-begotten pride of the War Lords. 
 
 Good GOD! upon such War-Lords roll, 
 
 In might and majesty unfurled, 
 So Wisdom may their wills control. 
 
 Their hell-born pride be hellward hurled, 
 THY LIGHT which should light every soul 
 
 That passes through the mortal world. 
 
 44 
 
 Nietzsche is requested to orate. 
 
 Here, Nietzsche! you of gifted word. 
 
 Whose mind has cleared beyond the veil. 
 
 The thought chaotic, nations stirred. 
 Take up the burden of our tale; 
 
 From you, let wholesome Truth be heard. 
 For great is Truth and will prevail. 
 
INTERLUDE 
 
 At this point, Miinsterberg vanished suddenly; 
 Nietzsche and Treitschke placed themselves on 
 either side of me, Bismarck followed uncomfort- 
 ably close in the rear, and this interlude began: 
 
45 
 The Procession on the Milky or "Great White 
 Wheyr 
 
 Then while but three kept pace with me 
 
 Up through the studded ''Great White Whey" 
 Of struggling shades who strive to free 
 
 The taint of sin from mortal clay, 
 As we sped onward to my goal, 
 
 His philosophic wraith ashake 
 With grief that quivered nerve and soul, 
 
 "Thus ZARATHUSTRA'S author spake":— 
 
 (Quoting enigmatically from unknown authors.) 
 
 TRUTH never dies, 
 
 "TRUTH answers not; it does not take offense; 
 
 But with a mighty silence bides its time: 
 As some great cliff that braves the elements 
 
 And lifts through all the storms its head sublime, 
 So TRUTH, unmoved, its puny foes defies. 
 But never dies." 
 
 Deep in the spring Pierian lies 
 
 The source of Truth that should convert you — 
 "To wise and watchful waiting rise, 
 
 When Vanity vaunts Vice as Virtue." 
 
 (Then addressing me — der Kaiser — he began: 
 "Now listen attentively and with your conceited 
 limited intelligence, try to grasp the following dis- 
 course on 'The Heliocentric Universe' and EU- 
 GEONISM— The Art of Right Living and Well- 
 Being, the Creed of the Well-Born and the Well- 
 Bred.' " 
 
 35 
 
CANTO III 
 
 "Metaphysics is the highest form of intellectual 
 enjoyment." — Aristotle. 
 
 The mathematical method in metaphysics by 
 which we arrive at the conclusion that the inner na- 
 ture of celestial things is analogous to our own inner 
 nature is formulated with marvelous simplicity and 
 lucidity by Professor W. K. Clifford, who revived 
 the theory of multiple connected spaces or "the 
 many mansions" of Scripture. The formula reads: 
 
 'As the physical configuration of your mental 
 image of the object 
 
 Is to the physical configuration of the object 
 
 So is your perception of the complex object of 
 your feelings 
 
 To the — 'thing-in-itself— '." 
 
 "If as Plato taught, and nature science takes for 
 granted, our universe is a geometrized or geometriz- 
 able affair, then one of the many geometrical the- 
 ories may be objectively valid in it. In the complex 
 world of thought, in the w^orld of pure mathesis, 
 all of them are valid. There they coexist and in- 
 terlace among themselves and others, as differing 
 strains of a hypercosmic harmony." N. W. 
 
CANTO III 
 
 46 
 
 Nietzsche rates the Kaiser s Cosmic status. 
 
 You star-dust speck within the whole 
 
 Predestinated final aim! 
 Infinitesimal thy goal, 
 
 Mere molecule! atomic flame! 
 Electron of that Cosmic Soul! 
 
 Whom we the One Almighty name! 
 
 (I — der Kaiser — glowered indignantly at the 
 familiar style of address, but Nietzsche calmly pro- 
 ceeded:) 
 
 47 
 GOD or GOOD the love of MIND DIVINE 
 the Cosmic TRUTH. 
 
 Learn that the primal cause is God! 
 
 The Cosmic Truth is Mind Divine! 
 'Tis God — or Good — that rules the sod, 
 
 And forthwith Nature's glories shine: 
 Earth, matter, dust, — the mortal clod — , 
 
 God's spirit can alone refine. 
 
 48 
 
 Earth's Creation. 
 
 Without beginning was your world 
 And without end ; but when in space 
 
 From seething Chaos, stars were hurled 
 To each its own appointed place; 
 
 With time, law, order, then unfurled, 
 That pilule earth of yours keeps pace. 
 39 
 
40 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 49 
 HEAVEN— the Cosmic Hearth the central 
 Zodiac core of the Heliocentric Universe. 
 
 Space — one vast circling sphere — enfolds 
 
 Rotating solar system spheres 
 Ringed round the Zodiac core which holds 
 
 Heav'n's cosmic hearth, whence flow the years 
 Of Time, the scientist beholds 
 
 The heliocentric fabric wears. 
 50 
 
 Outside surrounding all is HELL. 
 
 Outside is Hell where thoughts create 
 
 Subjectively, the raging storm; 
 There pride, lust, malice, envy, hate, 
 
 Earth's drear disasters, warfare, form; 
 Till good, again controlling fate, 
 
 Bids peace resume the primal norm. 
 
 51 
 Perpetual motion the electronizing principle of 
 life. 
 
 The principle of life and notion 
 
 That knoweth neither time nor end, 
 Is energy, perpetual motion. 
 
 Which vital urge and power lend 
 To atmosphere, mind, earth and ocean, 
 
 For their electronizing blend. 
 52 
 
 Star-dust birth and the radium soul of Eternal 
 Life. 
 
 Your earth both formless was and void, 
 
 But in it worked eternal life; 
 The radium soul of good, alloyed 
 
 With dross of earthly matter, rife; 
 Ormazd, the good, mind-spirit buoyed, 
 
 To purify the baser strife. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 41 
 
 53 _ 
 
 The vicious scales of lustful sin. 
 
 For Ahriman the devil flings 
 
 In matter the "do-evil" call 
 Of lust putrescent, which but springs 
 
 And stings from sloth and thoughts that gall 
 The flesh v^ith vile imaginings, 
 
 And all its better strivings pall. 
 
 54 
 Carnal lust the serpent that tempted Eve, 
 
 Thus Moses told of Adam's fall. 
 
 When lust — the serpent — tempted Eve; 
 
 And both infect, begetting all 
 
 The deadly sins which but conceive 
 
 The ills that life with misery pall, 
 In self-control, would not believe. 
 
 55 
 Dante, Milton and Goethe's views. 
 
 So Dante sang of Heaven and Hell; 
 
 Blind Milton too, each hyper realm; 
 While Goethe told how manhood fell 
 
 From grace, when vices overwhelm 
 The purity of love's clear well. 
 
 If evil thought sways reason's helm. 
 
 The Satyric Byronic ''Weltschmerz" of the "Satan- 
 ic School' of immorality. 
 
 Parental stained incontinence. 
 
 His nobler thought demoralized; 
 Incestuous lust in foul offense, 
 
 His dual nature bestialized; 
 Learn how fair England's moral sense, 
 
 Satyric Byron stigmatized. 
 
42 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 57 
 Swinburne's awful tale of Ancient France. 
 
 Read Swinburne's screed In allied form, 
 Of ancient France, an awful tale; 
 
 When lust-abandoned lives, a swarm 
 Of lepers bred, yet in the scale 
 
 Of death, slow, canc'rous, putrid, warm. 
 How pity, love, could still prevail. 
 
 Joan of Arc the White Lily of France. 
 
 But from that sin-stained era dark. 
 Whose purity marks mind's advance? 
 
 The martyr who through trials stark, 
 Still bore the virgin, stainless glance; 
 
 The Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc, 
 The lily chaste and white of France. 
 
CANTO IV 
 
 ''Imagination: — the child of sentiment and 
 thought, has wings and for all her erratic flights in 
 the kingdom of fancy, she now and then alights on 
 a lofty crag in the ethereal realms of moral or re- 
 ligious aspiration to find there an important truth, 
 which slow-paced but sure-footed reason and science 
 cannot as easily reach. . . . The metaphysical, the 
 mystical, is so far from being outside of experience, 
 that it is the very cornerstone of the possibility of 
 experience." — Carus. 
 
 "The Time needs heart — 'tis tired of head." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "Vainly might Plato's head revolve it; 
 Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." 
 
 Lanier. 
 
 * 
 
CANTO IV 
 
 59 
 The wisdom of the Sages of the Ages, 
 
 Pythagoras of old who heard 
 
 The harmony that rules the spheres; 
 Wise Plato, Aristotle stirred 
 
 By cosmic thought in far-off years; 
 A clearer view of good inferred, 
 
 Than in your modern reign appears. 
 60 
 
 The Evolution of the comprehension of the Holy 
 Trinity in God. 
 
 In pagan days, good was the sun 
 
 Whose spirit through Creation planed; 
 
 Till good in father, good in son. 
 
 Soul-good through mother-spirit reigned: 
 
 At-ONE-ment in the TRIUNE, won 
 
 GOD! MIND IMMACULATE was gained. 
 
 61 
 As simple as the solution of flight. 
 
 As simple as from sand dune slips. 
 
 The Wrights anew solved human flight; — 
 
 Saw^ how the birds with tilting tips 
 Of wings kept even balance right, 
 
 'Neath tense control in windy dips; 
 
 From Heaven to them again came light. 
 45 
 
46 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 62 
 All knowledge comes of super-nature or is of 
 celestial origin. 
 
 Of knowledge all that MIND received, 
 
 In art and beauty on the Earth; 
 Fond dreams by genius bright conceived; 
 
 Of life beyond is but poor dearth; 
 Let not the ego be deceived, 
 
 From Heaven it sprang, there had its birth. 
 
 63 
 
 The evolution of humankind. 
 
 Prolonged the way, of devious plan. 
 
 As on through Time the ages sped, 
 Who can the power of Wisdom scan. 
 
 Which rules the living and the dead? 
 The evolution long of man. 
 
 The final goal to which we're led ? 
 
 Ascent and descent of humankind through ani- 
 mal ignorance continuous. 
 
 Man rose from sea-slime high to will, 
 
 To reason, godliness and worth; 
 With woman, born of grace, to fill 
 
 Redemption's work upon the earth ; 
 Low they descend again to ill. 
 
 When lust to deadly sins give birth. 
 
 65 
 
 The "Riddle of the Universe" unraveling. 
 
 The ''Riddle of the Universe," 
 
 Man's concept broadens with the years; 
 
 No longer pulpits now rehearse 
 The cruder, medieval fears 
 
 Of Heaven and Hell, for men's converse. 
 The truth that knowledge views, appears. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 47 
 
 66 
 
 Abuse of free-will in carnal lust and its dire con- 
 sequences. 
 With reason graced for good or ill, 
 
 By light that comes from heaven above; 
 Abuse the gift of your free will, 
 
 Abuse the lesson of pure love, 
 In flame you perish and are nil; 
 
 As dust alone your ashes rove. 
 
 67,, 
 
 Examples from modern "Gott strafed'' aliens. 
 
 O ! illustrations without number 
 
 I could quote as dire example; 
 They all history encumber, 
 
 Our race yields us many a sample: 
 
 (Aside to ME — der Kaiser — "You remember 
 Krupp, and Max Harden's expose of Philipp 
 von Eulenburg, Kuno von Moltke, etc.") 
 Let their ghosts in silence slumber, 
 
 Four from the Aliens Vice-Book ample. 
 68 
 
 Parnell, the Irish leader s treacherous adultery. 
 Thus perished he of Erin's sons, 
 
 A leader rare of brilliant worth, 
 Whose life work, lust-perverted ones. 
 
 Made but a theme for mocking mirth ; 
 High o'er his grave, the story runs, 
 
 His spirit flashed, flame-dust, to earth. 
 
 69 
 
 Oscar Wilde the Anglo-Irish poet's bestiality. 
 That esthete poet also, who 
 
 In lust, a genius mind debased. 
 And lived his bestial crimes to rue 
 
 When from the prison house he faced 
 The world anew, — with pit>ang few, — 
 
 He died in foreign land, — disgraced. 
 
48 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 70 
 Boulanffers adulterous intrigue and suicide. 
 
 See! snared by frail adulteress glance, 
 
 From patriotic aims seduced, 
 "Un maquereau" who dwelt in France; 
 
 Aspiring Boulanger induced 
 To lose brave fame in passion's trance; 
 
 His fate, — to suicide reduced. 
 
 71 
 
 Stanford White the New York architect's liber- 
 tinage and murder. 
 
 Likewise of glorious New York fame 
 
 That architect whose evil lust 
 Young maiden innocence to shame 
 
 Seduced in aging passion's gust; 
 Beneath the mad avenger's aim 
 
 He fell, — a clod of worthless dust. 
 72 
 
 Hell, — the Creation of Pride and the deadly 
 sins. 
 
 From outer Hell, foul minds create 
 
 Again I say, the raging storm; 
 There pride, lust, malice, envy, hate. 
 
 Disasters, tumults, warfare, form; 
 Till good anew controlling fate, 
 
 Bids peace resume the primal norm. 
 
 73 
 Souls awaiting Redemption. 
 
 For we within the pit and veil. 
 
 Who have not passed to ultimate 
 Of good ; whose souls have dropt the scale 
 
 Of matter, now perceive with hate, 
 The ill which keeps without the pale. 
 
 The egoists who fool with fate. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 49 
 
 74 
 God's Everlasting Mercy. 
 
 Yet, stars glean for the Cosmic Soul 
 The cores of loving hearts which fail 
 
 To reach Eternity's sure goal; 
 Outside of Heaven now they sail 
 
 In periods on from pole to pole, 
 Until the Judgment Day they hail. 
 
 75 
 AT-ONE-ment with the Universal Mind. 
 
 Until the kin of their own race. 
 
 The loved ones left in worlds behind, 
 The rightful path to Heaven trace. 
 
 And in the Universal Mind, 
 Rejoined by love's redeeming grace, 
 
 The peace of God through Christ, shall find. 
 76 
 
 The JUDGMENT DAY. 
 
 For then that great resplendent Day 
 
 In light will merge the Universe ; 
 While evil swept in flame away, 
 
 To outer darkness wull disperse; 
 And Good — eternal GOD — alway, 
 
 Shall lift from humankind, its curse. 
 
CANTO V 
 
 "There's not the smallest orb that thou beholdest, 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
 But while this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close us in we cannot hear it." 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 "Bards of Passion and of Mirth 
 Who have left your souls on earth! 
 Have ye souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions ntw? 
 
 — Yes, and those of heaven commune 
 With the spheres of sun and moon; 
 With the noise of fountains wonderous 
 And the parle of voices thunderous; 
 With the whisper of heaven's trees 
 And one another, in soft ease 
 Underneath large blue-bells tented, 
 Where th«e daisies are rose-scented, 
 And the rose herself has got 
 Perfume which on earth is not; 
 Where the nightingale doth sing 
 Not a senseless, tranced thing. 
 But divine melodious truth ; 
 Philosophic numbers smooth; 
 Tales and golden histori^es 
 Of heaven and its mysteries." 
 
 Keats, 
 
CANTO V 
 
 77 
 ''GOD is a SPIRIT r 
 
 To those who seek HIM from their youth, 
 
 "GO(0)D is a Spirit," said the CHRIST, 
 And they who worship HIM in truth 
 
 And spirit, find Faith has sufficed 
 To bring to them in love's pure ruth 
 
 The peace of HIM,— THE SACRIFICED! 
 78 
 
 St. Augustine s formula for resignation to the 
 will of Go(o)d. 
 Thou made us for Thyself, O Lord ! 
 
 And restless is each mind, until 
 Thy grace divine Thou dost accord. 
 
 To find true peace, no heart is still 
 Until Thou dost Thine help afford, 
 
 Until we yield unto Thy Will. 
 
 79 
 Faith corrects the defects of Science, 
 
 Where Science slow and Reason fail, 
 
 Where mortal brain no change discernest; 
 There Faith for all defects avail; 
 
 There Faith the lesson quickly learnest; 
 The love of GO(0)D will still prevail 
 
 If but the seeking mind be earnest. 
 80 
 
 Vaughn s vision of Heaven. 
 For here in outer darkness bound. 
 
 We view from shades of starlit night. 
 The solar systems circling round 
 
 "Eternity's great ring of light," 
 The Heaven that Vaughn in vision found, 
 
 *'Of endless calm, all pure and bright". 
 53 
 
54 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 8i 
 Sanctus bells and the beauty of celestial calm. 
 
 No evil minds there ever mar 
 
 The beauty of celestial calm; 
 Pure thoughts of love alone, afar, 
 
 Like incense rise and fragrant balm, 
 With Sanctus bells, — w^hen Heaven ajar 
 
 On God's day hears the noontide psalm. 
 82 
 
 The Halls of Heaven. 
 
 Then, — far beyond the stars, the Halls 
 Of Heaven we see, abodes of rest; 
 
 Grand organ tones, glad trumpet calls, 
 The cohorts summon of the blest. 
 
 To hear along the jasper v^^alls, 
 The joy by faithful souls possest. 
 
 83 
 
 Archanffels and the Angel Host. 
 
 From palaces, whose towers dim, 
 
 In lucent glory high, are lost; 
 From temple, fane, — saint, seraphim. 
 
 Archangels and the angel host, 
 Laud evermore in rising hymn, 
 
 GOD— Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 
 
 84 
 The raiment robes of color cloud. 
 
 The corridors of Heav'n they crowd; 
 
 With love their radiant faces glow; 
 In fleece-like raiment robed of cloud. 
 
 In gorgeous colors, to and fro 
 They go, they fly, they sing aloud, 
 
 "Through Good, eternal blessings flow!" 
 
Or the Vital Urge 55 
 
 85 
 The concord of the Cosmic Octave. 
 
 Bright overtones each outer sphere, 
 
 Arpeggic, brilliant, harplike, sound: 
 While inner spheres reecho clear 
 
 The cosmic octave in them found: 
 Harmonic chords of beauty rear 
 
 Concordant anthems, rolling round. 
 86 
 
 The tone color of the Heavenly Spheres. 
 
 Tone colors, springing near and far, 
 
 Prismatic, fill the auroral dark; 
 Impinging on each distant star, 
 
 Sound flashes with a golden spark, 
 And reaching space's farthest bar. 
 
 With tints and hues supernal mark. 
 
 87 
 
 MUSIC — the Language of Heaven. 
 
 The Heavenly ramparts thrill with song; 
 
 Rare music in divinest strains, 
 Becomes the universal tongue. 
 
 The language of the Heavenly plains: 
 "To GOD, our homage, praise, belong!" 
 
 Rise evermore the glad refrains. 
 88 
 
 The Blessed Damozel or Life, Youth and Hope. 
 
 No languid sigh, resounding tear. 
 
 The product of nepenthic dreams; 
 No "blessed damozel" we hear; 
 
 The "bar her bosom warms," her squeams 
 Are there unknown ; for vision clear 
 
 Of youth, life, hope, eternal gleams. 
 
^6 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 89 
 The Wise and Radiant EONS. 
 
 There wise and radiant EONS chaste 
 
 Of human love, rare symphonies; 
 A virile blend, in glory haste 
 
 On rising, swelling harmonies, 
 The joys of Paradise to taste 
 
 In MIND'S divinest purities. 
 90 
 
 Their asexual gift of Self-Control. 
 
 The gift theirs was on mundane spheres 
 
 To gain of sexless self-control; 
 Their bodies, passions, hopes and fears. 
 
 Refined through mind in heart and soul; 
 Until transfigured, each appears 
 
 In Heaven, a glorious, blended whole. 
 
 91 
 The natural beauties of Heaven. 
 
 In gardens of delight they rove. 
 
 Where beast and bird and tree and flower, 
 From fountain, mountain, hill and grove, 
 
 From river, vale, and leafy bower, 
 With attributes of mind and love, 
 
 Proclaim God's all-pervading power. 
 92 
 
 The TRIUNE LOGOS Praise of Heaven. 
 
 They with the Heavenly hosts combine 
 To sing the swelling TRIUNE song; 
 
 "GOD! MOTHER-SPIRIT! CHRIST 
 DIVINE! 
 The strain on high rings clear and strong; 
 
 The LOGOS 'Life-Lov^-Light'— is THINE!" 
 On fragrant winds is borne along. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 57 
 
 93 
 The Safeguarded Faith of Christ's Church, 
 
 For ever singing round GOD'S throne, 
 How full of joy their lays, they are; 
 
 Revealing in each holy tone 
 
 Safeguarded Faith, in praise they are; 
 
 Through Father, Mother-Spirit, Son! 
 Sancta! MATER! Ecclesia! 
 
 94 
 The curse of Eve atoned for through the pure- 
 horn Eon-Child. 
 
 The curse of Eve is reconciled, 
 
 The path from Earth to Heaven is run; 
 
 Each Eon-Mother's pure born child, 
 For both God's Paradise has v^ron: 
 
 The Father and the Virgin mild, 
 
 With joy look on the Exemplar Son. 
 
 95 
 Desire of Nations! God's great Avatar, 
 
 While higher still the anthems ring, 
 "Before all vv^orlds that were and are, 
 
 Of David's line, root, stem, offspring, 
 Christ is the bright and morning star! 
 
 'Desire of Nations!' loud they sing, 
 'God's Son!' His own great Avatar!" 
 
 . . 96 
 
 The Beatific Vision of the Sacred Trinity, 
 
 And then appears a radiant sight; 
 
 Three auras blend upon the gaze; 
 Harmonious rings high Heaven with might, 
 
 The TRINITY— a perfect blaze,— 
 True God— ONE GOD— The God of light, 
 
 We view with awe, in mute amaze. 
 
CANTO VI 
 
 We are "the owners of the sphere, 
 Of the Milky Way and the solar year, 
 Of Phidias' art and Mozart's strain, 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Plato's brain." 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 "Give us the Consoler who may soothe away the 
 fear of death." 
 
 Socrates. 
 
CANTO VI 
 
 97 
 
 Eddy J Channing, Swedenborg in mind-visions. 
 
 E'en Eddy, Channing, Swedenborg, seers 
 
 Of atavistic Catholic birth, 
 In MIND could see celestial spheres 
 
 Beyond this solar system's girth: 
 Their thought — the mortal brain reveres, 
 
 They walked with GOD upon the earth. 
 
 98 
 
 The Transcendentalism of New England. 
 Their Transcendentalism, what 
 
 Is it but spirit vision pure? 
 The Church of Christ has always taught 
 
 Will come to those, who firm and sure, 
 The peace of God through faith have sought; 
 
 That joy which can alone endure. 
 
 99 
 The Faith in Heaven made secure. 
 
 Their eyes are gleaming lamps of prayer, 
 
 Whose lives in higher love endure; 
 And from them glows the radiance rare 
 
 That kindred souls with hope assure; 
 For in them dwells the spirit fair 
 
 Of faith in Heaven made secure. 
 100 
 
 The Light of Christ the Love of God. 
 To search the cosmic spheres clysian. 
 
 Faith leading high from earth abroad, 
 True, noble minds of purpose, mission, 
 
 Gain swift the gift upon the road. 
 To view in beatific vision, 
 
 The Light of Christ! the Love of God! 
 61 
 
62 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 lOI 
 
 They find immortal Life in Death. 
 
 So when from earthly scenes away, 
 Their souls pass on the fleeting breath 
 
 To light of everlasting day, 
 
 Theirs is the gain, the Spirit saith, 
 
 To dwell with God in love alway, 
 To find immortal life in death. 
 
 102 
 The crown of faith. Immortal life, 
 
 glorious hope to mortals given. 
 
 Who there, where grief and woe are rife, 
 By hell-born warring passion riven. 
 
 Now faint and fall beneath the strife, 
 To find eternal joy in Heaven, 
 
 The crown of faith. Immortal life! 
 
 103 
 Nietzsche, the self -thought Master of Universal 
 Knowledge. 
 
 The sciences as taught in college. 
 
 Philosophy and language, arts. 
 The sphere entire of finite knowledge. 
 
 Humanities and social parts, 
 
 1 thought I had in full controllage, 
 A master of all wisdom's marts. 
 
 104 
 The definite Theology of CHRIST the 
 CRUCIFIED. 
 
 So spurned in Time's cosmology, 
 That vast, revolving, ceaseless grind, 
 
 Through lessons of mytholog}', 
 Till Bible history we find, 
 
 The definite theology 
 
 In CHRIST the CRUCIFIED enshrined. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 63 
 
 105 
 The fate of Minoan Kultur, 
 
 Learn back from evil mythic days, 
 
 How Daedalus gained human flight; 
 Coached Pasiphae in vicious ways, 
 
 Till Cretan "Kultur," at its height, 
 Fell in foul ruin, vile, ablaze, 
 
 Beneath avenging Grecian might. 
 106 
 
 Education without true religion ever fails, 
 
 O Lord! how long will history teach 
 
 That education riseth never, 
 When from religious spirit, each 
 
 Proud system will its purpose sever! 
 (To me, — der Kaiser — ) 
 See, fool! how ''kultur," Germans reach, 
 
 Greeks, Cretans, all, — fails — faileth ever, 
 107 
 
 Masters of fate and Captains of Souls, 
 
 You may be master of your fate. 
 
 You may be captain of your soul; 
 The old conventions you may hate 
 
 And scornful satire on them roll; 
 But strait — through Wisdom — is the gait 
 
 That leads the soul to Heaven's goal. 
 
CANTO VII 
 
 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
 are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
 your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." 
 
 "O for the Poet Voice that swells 
 To lofty truths or noblfe curses; 
 I only wear the cap and bells 
 
 And yet some tears are in my verses." 
 
 Frederick Locker, 
 
CANTO VII 
 
 1 08 
 
 Music, prose, verse, the facile gifts of agile minds. 
 The lilt of music, prose and verse, 
 
 From life's rut still the human lifts; 
 The agile mind will oft rehearse 
 
 And exercise such facile gifts; 
 In "Stiirm und Drang" of fate adverse, 
 
 The grievous burden off it shifts. 
 109 
 
 Wit evermore Griefs greatest grafter. 
 The heart in pain, the soul in tears, 
 
 The mind that masks its woe with laughter; 
 Who thinks upon Time's flying years, 
 
 On vast Eternity's hereafter; 
 In saving humor drowns all fears; 
 
 Wit evermore is grief's great grafter, 
 no 
 
 The Byronic Weltzschmerz: the Cosmic Agony. 
 With reason plain, to bring — in vain — 
 
 Ideal and real in harmony, 
 My arrogant, conceited brain 
 
 Strove 'neath the vast theogony. 
 And snapt in pain of 'Sveltzschmerz" strain, 
 
 The cosmic world-birth agony. 
 Ill 
 
 Gethsemane and Calvary. Nietzsche^s last 
 Admission. 
 Gethsemane! GETHSEMANE! 
 
 The innocence of ONE who died! 
 The lesson of HIS agony 
 
 For ever humbles ego pride ! 
 My soul goes seared to CALVARY ! 
 
 My last sigh was "THE CRUCIFIED !'' 
 67 
 
68 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 112 
 
 Historic appeals against lust. 
 
 Fair Eden's blighted bowers sighed 
 
 On whispering winds of lust that cloyed ; 
 
 Young Abel's bier; Mount Sinai cried 
 
 At lust, — while thundering light deployed; 
 
 Mount Calvary's quivering victim died, 
 Sad, moaning, — *'Lust must be destroyed!" 
 
 113 
 Remembrance : Crime: Remorse. 
 
 Remembrance clear recalls each deed; 
 
 Reflected back in madd'ning throng; 
 Reacted, crimes anew will bleed, 
 
 Will reappear, dire scenes of wrong; 
 Remorse for evermore will breed 
 
 In all, — however weak or strong. 
 114 
 
 Heaven s liffht-fixinff record of all earthly deeds. 
 
 For flashed from Earth by God's clear light, 
 
 Each incident of mortal life 
 Reflects right into Heaven's own bright 
 
 Resplendent lens; a record rife 
 Of good — or ill — for all who fight 
 
 To win — or perish — in the strife. 
 
 115 
 
 Nietzsche laments his ignorance^ evil thought 
 and writing. 
 
 Now when upon my w^ork I think 
 
 That "Sacred Lore" with scorn tradudes; 
 
 To darkest depths my spirits sink; 
 "For blessings, curses and such uses," 
 
 (From evil that I wrote, I shrink,) 
 ^'Another mans wife, GOD seducesl" 
 
 (The vilest imperceptive thought ever penned by 
 any man.) 
 
Or the Vital Urge 69 
 
 116 
 TRUTH, Voltaire, and the Cartesian method. 
 
 Had I Truth's elemental seat, 
 
 Cartesian-like sought and imparted; 
 No ridicule in self-conceit 
 
 On base Voltairean ideas started; 
 I might have led to Wisdom's feet 
 
 The world, — and shone as great, wise-hearted. 
 
 117 
 Subjective womanhood and Religion s aim. 
 
 And yet the aim has been for good. 
 
 But class and pride to reason blind, 
 Have held subjective womanhood. 
 
 And tell me where on Earth you find 
 Pure sisterhood and brotherhood, 
 
 CHRIST taught should govern humankind? 
 118 
 
 Sex-comrades' Purity of Mind and Thought 
 brings the AGE OF WISDOM. 
 For equal rites arise appeals, 
 
 Mind comradeships of sex enfold: 
 Your 'kiiche-kinder-kirche' spiels 
 
 For w^omanhood no longer hold: 
 Sex purity of thought reveals 
 
 The AGE OF WISDOM long foretold. 
 
 119 ^ 
 
 Renan, Zola and Nietzsche's perceptive failure 
 to grasp in Eugenics the theory of "The IMMAC- 
 ULATE CONCEPTION'' formulated finally in 
 1854, only. 
 Like Renan, Zola, I sought Truth, 
 
 But how we failed in pure perception, 
 Nor grasped the Churchman brain, in ruth, 
 
 Was seeking for the grand inception. 
 As mentor both for love and youth. 
 
 Of CHRIST'S IMMACULATE CONCEP- 
 TION. 
 
70 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 1 20 
 THE VIRGIN BIRTH. 
 
 Of that Divine and Virgin Birth — 
 
 The Church still vainly strives to teach 
 To minds of lower mental girth ; 
 
 Its symbolism fails to reach 
 The men and w^omen of the Earth; — 
 
 For blind men still to blind men preach* 
 121 
 
 Modern ethic teachings of Gentiles and Hebrews 
 compared. 
 
 In vain most Christian sects, surprised, 
 Bewail the fact vrith loud beseechings ; 
 
 The varied churches w^hich they prized, 
 Are bare and empty to their preachings; 
 
 Through movies, Hebrews once despised, 
 With profit spread clean, ethic teachings. 
 
 (and N. B. mostly from Gentile examples of un- 
 clean living.) 
 
 122 
 Luther s successful revolt encouraged Henry 
 VIII's crimes. 
 
 With Luther's erring at their root. 
 
 The crimes of Henry Tudor rise; 
 Faith-killer! wife-beheading brute! 
 
 Through you the vicious strain outvies 
 To yield an evil, viler fruit: 
 
 The whole world bears the sacrifice. 
 
 * Showing but little comprehension of Catholic or even 
 Calvinistic doctrines, it must be remembered that Nietz- 
 sche's virulent diatribes were aimed at the Lutheran 
 Church whose confused teachings he could not fathom, 
 although the son of a Lutheran divine. 
 
 \ 
 
Or the Vital Urge 71 
 
 123 
 The fate of Charles of England: Louis of 
 France; and the Kaiser s doom. 
 
 King Charles of England lost his head, 
 
 And France's Louis: — victims they, 
 Inheriting the vice inbred 
 
 That swines your stripe of regal sway; 
 Both you and yours in fear and dread, 
 
 Now tread that fated lost-head way. 
 124 
 
 Also his weak kinsman Czar Nicholas of Rus- 
 sians fate. 
 Czar Nicholas of Russia, too, 
 
 Has met the death of foul disgrace; 
 Your poor, weak 'Nicky', false, untrue. 
 
 Has paid the martyr debt of race; 
 And you and yours, your fate is due, 
 
 Death's firing squad to stand and face. 
 1,25 
 
 Nietzsche dodges a kick from Bismarck as he 
 tells of the Canossian Kulturkampf. 
 His 'Kulturkampf (b) old Bismarck waged 
 
 Against the Church of Christ in vain: 
 A world aghast, a world enraged, 
 
 Some German 'Kultur' sees again: 
 The heathen in foul terror staged : 
 
 Brute man, fierce, rank and stenched with stain. 
 126 
 
 Eucken, Freud and German scientists failure to 
 grasp elemental essentials. 
 Sage Eucken, pottering around. 
 
 Mimes, "Can we still all Christians be?" 
 And mired in German crime is found: 
 
 Freud's lust-brained confreres cannot see 
 That high above Earth's narrow bound 
 
 The spirit soars in vision free. 
 
72 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 127 
 Revelation, the basis of all knowledge and science. 
 
 And from the hidden Universe 
 
 Draws light from God's eternal light: 
 For scientists in facts they verse, 
 
 Confirm and but retell aright 
 The truth revealed, divines rehearse 
 
 By faith and hope through God's good might. 
 128 
 
 Michael, the guardian spirit of Israel's faith, 
 gathers his hosts for the Battle of Armagedon. 
 
 The final fight o'er lust to score. 
 
 The victory of God to win, 
 Michaelian western hosts for war, 
 
 At Har-Magedon gather in 
 To slay — the Cross of Christ before, — 
 
 Your devil-spirits, steeped in sin. 
 129 
 
 Flagellum Dei — the Scourge of God. 
 
 Flagellum Dei! Scourge of God! 
 
 Again you stalked the lust-stained earth; 
 To lay vice bare with iron rod, 
 
 Attilaesque, of vicious birth. 
 You steeped with blood the reeking sod, 
 
 That man might learn Christ's precious worth. 
 
 130 
 Civilization sacrificed and Humanity crucified. 
 
 By pride of "will to power" enticed, 
 
 A racial bred insanity; 
 All civilization sacrificed 
 
 To your egregious vanity; 
 The cost, the world now sees was priced 
 
 In crucified humanity. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 73 
 
 131 
 The Era of Federated Humanity. 
 
 Still from your crimes will spring the good 
 THE CRUCIFIED,— THE MARTYR, 
 — taught : 
 Sealed in your sacrifice of blood 
 
 By man and womankind 'tis sought 
 The Age of Federal Humanhood, 
 The goal, in arrogance you fought. 
 
 132 
 Apostate Julian and the Pale Galilean s Triumph. 
 
 While you will voice the Julian cry 
 
 That late repentant Tartarean 
 Apostate, on his dying sigh, 
 
 Sent down through Time, a soulful paean : 
 "Old gods are dead and from on high 
 
 THOU CONQUEREST! PALE GALI- 
 LEAN !" 
 
 With this climax, I — "der Kaiser" — hoped that 
 the nightmare had finished, when— 
 
CANTO VIII 
 
 "For this purpose have I raised thee up to show 
 in thee my power and that my name may be de- 
 clared among all the nations of the earth." 
 
 "Wherever Jesus Christ is worshiped there is 
 the Catholic Church." — Ignatius. 
 
 "Clear and positive as an Alp in the sunrising 
 stands forth that sublime ideal." — Netuman Smyth. 
 
 "Lo! the Kingdom of God is within you!" Puri- 
 fied above all the sphere of controversy, Catholi- 
 cism in America has asserted its rightful position, 
 not as a system, nor as a creed, but as an individual, 
 a personal ideal in each human soul. 
 
 The Third Advent of Christ. — "For as the light- 
 ning when it lighteneth out of the one part of the 
 heaven under the heaven, shinteth unto the other 
 part under heaven, so shall be the great day of the 
 coming of Christ." 
 
CANTO VIII 
 
 Luther suddenly appeared and started up with- 
 out any preliminaries. 
 
 133 
 
 The Kaiser s paltry boast of German power in 
 the United States. 
 O you ! you dared to utter boast 
 
 That in the fair United States, 
 You! paltry Kaiser! was a toast 
 
 For beer and sausage fed-up pates; 
 That they would rise a mighty host? — 
 
 Let them beware — their evil fates! 
 
 134 
 
 America lost to Britain through German autoc- 
 racy. 
 That greatest gem of Britain's crown 
 
 Was lost just through a German fool; 
 The third George tried his best to down 
 
 America's free will to rule ; 
 Grand Imbecile! again a clown 
 
 His race has bred, — another mule! 
 
 "You surely are not lese-majestically alluding to 
 me?" I — der Kaiser — asked furiously and threaten- 
 ingly, but Luther went on serenely: — 
 
 135 
 Honest opinion of German vermin. 
 
 For there is heard on every side 
 
 In honest nostrils stink the German; 
 
 Far worse than Jews long scarified; 
 Ach! every Fritz (h)un)d* every Hermann, 
 
 Through all your damnable fool-pride. 
 
 They rank as — yes! rank German vermin. 
 
 * "hun-hund-und" take your choice: — A. 
 
 77 
 
78 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 Gerard's suggestion for rebellious German aliens, 
 
 "No wonder," interjected Luther; "Ambassador 
 Gerard told your emissaries: — 
 'Five hundred thousand lamp-posts there 
 
 Await such evil-brewing thinkers; 
 Let them a rise for favor dare; 
 
 Strung up will be your fat beer drinkers ; 
 A bunch for carrion crow to share 
 
 Will fateful fall such heedless tinkers/ 
 
 137 
 The braggart sneer: ''America wont fight/' 
 
 Why did you sneer, you braggart bright! 
 
 "America won't fight": they've lickt us; 
 With vim of right, with vim they smite, 
 
 For submarining foul, they've kickt us; 
 Truth — Virtue — Valor, win o'er might. 
 
 You woke in them "Virtus Vim Victus!" 
 
 138 
 
 The swollen-headed Megalomanian demoniac. 
 
 O swollen-headed autocrat! 
 
 Stuck-up megalomaniac! 
 You, saphead! soon will find you're at 
 
 No place within the zodiac; 
 Your overbearing all will bat. 
 
 Proud, arrogant demoniac! 
 
 139 
 Efficiency : The Kaiser s shibboleth and gibberish. 
 
 Efficiency — your vaunt deplored, — 
 
 In self-pride you for conquest cherish; 
 
 Loud you addr^ess your "Gott" and Lord! 
 With shibboleth, with gih-berish ; 
 
 (Luther shaking his forefinger at me — der Kaiser:) 
 
 Who would force peace by might of sword, 
 As ever by the sword shall perish. 
 
 I 
 
Or the Vital Urge 79 
 
 140 
 The Crucifixion of Satan in the Kaiser, 
 
 Hung high as Haman, trussed and triced, 
 
 Humanity — the world to win, 
 The DEVIL should be sacrificed 
 
 In you — Satanus! — and your kin, 
 Since GOD was crucified in CHRIST, 
 
 Humanity to save from sin. 
 
 141 
 
 The Kaiser s love of the democratic propaganda, 
 
 Ach ! w^hen you think of speakers bold, 
 
 You rage and fume, you fuss and fret, 
 And wish they w^ould their truths withhold, 
 
 Or act so that within your net, 
 The tribe entire you could enfold. 
 
 For there you hope to get them yet. 
 142 
 
 The curse of a lust- filled race. 
 
 But touch a hair of one brave head! 
 
 Both you and yours will haste to go 
 Where you will ever rue in dread 
 
 The horrors you have worked below: 
 Such are the curses in you bred, 
 
 You on our lust-filled race bestow. 
 
 143 
 The Kaiser s silly notion. 
 
 You alkaloidal poison drop 
 
 In great Eternity's vast ocean! 
 The world to dominate and top. 
 
 Was your conceited, silly notion ; 
 Democracy, your game to stop, 
 
 Soon set its forces all in motion. 
 
8o The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 144 
 
 '' W eltmacht" or "Niederganff'' World-domina- 
 tion or downfall. 
 "Weltmacht" or "niedergang" your aim, 
 
 ''World-domination" or "downfall"! 
 Lust — Moloch- — known of old, by name, 
 
 Your ''good old god", on whom you call. 
 Your "machtfrage — trial of strength" in shame, 
 
 A "nauf rage-ship wreck" now does sprawl. 
 
 145 
 
 '^Abshrecken — an awful example^' like Napo- 
 leon the Third. 
 "War is hell-fire", you truly said 
 
 For all who madly enter in : 
 Like Nap the Third, you lost your head 
 
 And wallowed in his wake of sin ; 
 "Abschrecken" you, in hell-fire red, 
 
 The penalty of pride to win. 
 146 
 
 The Devils brood of Supermen s war against 
 federated democracy. 
 The perils of autocracy 
 
 That drench the world with human blood; 
 The pride of aristocracy, 
 
 Of supermen, — the Devil's brood! — 
 The triumph of democracy 
 
 Shall see in federal humanhood. 
 
 147 
 
 Mary, the Mother, and John, the Evangelic 
 Eagle, the Guardian Spirits of the United States. 
 For through the Western hemisphere. 
 
 That eagle land of liberal thought; 
 From bias free, in vision clear 
 
 To you the lesson has been brought: 
 The MOTHER-SPIRIT guards the sphere 
 
 And will redress the wrongs you wrought. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 8i 
 
 148 
 The bisex struggle everlasting. 
 
 While sages prophesied for good, 
 
 In expectation firm forecasting 
 The dawn of peace, the reign of God! 
 
 How vile defilement, ever-blasting, 
 Immortal love has lustward trod 
 
 In bisex struggle everlasting. 
 149 
 
 The Eighteenth Century Cyclopedic error. 
 
 When cyclopedists woke all men 
 
 To life, from feudalistic trance 
 For liberty! what crimes were then 
 
 Committed in the world advance! 
 Through pride of will, of thought, of pen, 
 
 Hell's "red fool fury" burst in France. 
 150 
 
 The Guardian Spirits of the British Isles. 
 
 Saints Michael, George, and Andrew strove 
 Throughout the world, lust's evil seeds 
 
 To slay: while brave Saint Patrick drove 
 Those serpents from old Ireland's meads: 
 
 But Satan still the world w^ould rove 
 Should Prussia triumph in ill deeds. 
 
 151 
 
 The Allied Nations' battle cry. 
 
 "Lord! Triune God of Israel!" 
 
 The allied nations battling, cry, 
 "Our people save from sin and hell, 
 
 Thy Cross and standard raise on high, 
 In faith. Thy foes we now defy, 
 
 God! — Christ with us — Emmanuel!" 
 
82 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 152 
 The British redeemers of ancient Germany. 
 
 How you have strayed beyond the fold ! 
 
 Since Ferghil wise, great Boniface, 
 Sane Britons bold with hearts of gold, 
 
 Lioba, Thecla, brave of race. 
 The "Vaterland" in days of old. 
 
 Illumed with God's redeeming grace. 
 
 153 
 The Union Jack, the Stripes and Bars: the Wis- 
 dom leading to the Stars, 
 
 Still, borne above the storm and loss 
 Of world-uplift, — when warfare mars. 
 
 Great Britain bears its double cross; 
 America, — blood stripes and bars; 
 
 O'er chaos foul, where proud fiends toss 
 The wisdom leading to the stars. 
 
 154 
 The Trinity's bright oriflamrnes of France. 
 
 The German cross — as black of old, 
 The Russian blue cross shadows — see! 
 
 While Italy's white cross — b^ehold! 
 
 And France's, — points, with lilies three, — 
 
 On flags, white, blue, red, green and gold, 
 Still wave for God's great Trinity! 
 
 ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity") 
 
 155 
 The ''Accent of the Holy Ghost/' 
 
 Each faithless, godless generation 
 
 In war, religion's aim has tossed; 
 And yet the gain of feneration 
 
 Your sinful world has never lost; 
 The Mother guards with veneration 
 
 Her "accent of the 'Holy Ghost.' " 
 
Or the Vital Urge 83 
 
 156 
 Veneration of Motherhood the World's Re- 
 demption. 
 
 Raise motherhood to Heaven's bar; 
 
 The world redeemed shall find salvation; 
 Go! spread that gospel wide and far 
 
 To every tribe and every nation, 
 Until there glows in Rose and Star, 
 
 The federated consummation! 
 
 157 
 The sneers and laughter of petty minds and 
 ignorant muck-rakers. 
 
 Small, vicious brains may sneer and laugh, 
 Muck rakers with their eyes on dung; 
 
 The wheat is winnowed from the chaif ; 
 The Church's praise — for God — is sung; 
 
 The Shepherd wields the guiding staff. 
 The Mother guards her infant young. 
 
 158 
 
 ''Things in Themselves/' Mind; Reason; 
 Wisdom. 
 
 "Things in themselves" that are, she knows, 
 
 But wisdom bids her bide her time. 
 Till from the laic MIND there flows 
 
 Perception fit for age and clime; 
 Adoption from her teaching grows, 
 
 Though slow is Reason's upward climb. 
 
 159 
 CHRIST and HIS CHURCH comes to bring 
 PEACE. 
 
 To bring it peace and not the sword. 
 
 The Church of Christ comes down to Earth ; 
 
 The lesson of the dying Lord, 
 
 Had you but sensed its moral worth. 
 
84 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 To dwell in brotherly accord, 
 
 You might have given the world "New Birth!" 
 
 (Luther aside, "You will anyway, but at what 
 sacrifice.") 
 
 160 
 Do all roads lead through ROME to GOD? 
 
 Pride always goes before a fall, 
 
 Howe'er exalted is the clod; 
 Life's mystery o'erwhelms us all; 
 
 And you shall bow beneath the rod; 
 The pill no doubt is bitter gall: 
 WHAT? (as I — der Kaiser — cynically asked: — ) 
 
 Must all roads lead through ROME— to GOD? 
 161 
 
 The Great Fact of the Church of Christ. 
 
 Luther quite impersonally continuing: — 
 
 Aye! from and through, for there Christ's Church 
 
 Its firm foundations set intact: 
 Though mortal errors sway and lurch. 
 
 And blindly imperceptive act; 
 Though Truth and Faith they foul and smirch, 
 
 PETRUS— it stands— A ROCK— A FACT! 
 162 
 
 The Stronghold of Faith, WISDOM and the 
 Sciences. 
 
 The stronghold of reliances 
 
 On Faith — the mind of Cosmos vast; 
 The key to all the sciences 
 
 The WISDOM of the ages past. 
 She steadfast clasps. Defiances 
 
 In vain are hurled, against her cast. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 
 
 163 
 Children of the Carnal Devil. 
 
 You of the swine-fed coarsened mind; 
 
 You children of the carnal devil; 
 Material, gross, to spirit blind ; 
 
 Who cannot rise above earth's level; 
 She seeks to save by precept kind; 
 
 You who in lust of flesh will revel. 
 164 
 
 Idealized life. Divine Philosophy , and the sepa- 
 rated brethren. 
 
 Idealizing human life. 
 
 The lowest elements, she reaches. 
 To harmonize the faction rife. 
 
 The separated brethren teaches 
 In reverent prayer, to end the strife: 
 
 Divine philosophy she preaches. 
 
 165 
 
 The Mothering care of Christ's^ Church — God's 
 Light. 
 
 O'er all the earth with parent care, 
 
 Christ's Church, the bridegroom and the bride, 
 The burden of the Cross they bear: 
 
 Although the children, erring wide, 
 Her counsel flaunt through evil snare, 
 
 God's Light still shines at eventide. 
 166 
 
 The Call of Jesus — GOD through Mary- 
 Maiden. 
 
 Come unto Me, ye heavy-laden! 
 All ye who grieve and are distrest! 
 O come and I will give you rest! 
 
86 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 Pleads Jesus — GOD — through Mary, maiden, 
 
 Of all beliefs, the highest, best : 
 CHRIST'S CHURCH is Earth's own Heavenly 
 Aiden 
 For all who with true Faith are blest. 
 
 167 
 The Divine Vision safeguarded by the 
 CHURCH. 
 
 To keep in view the Heavenly vision, 
 
 His sons their lives have sacrificed; 
 They bear through ill the priestly mission, 
 
 Their faith in God's will has sufficed 
 To gain for them the gift elysian, 
 
 They dwell with CHRIST— 
 
 Their CHURCH is CHRIST. 
 168 
 
 Christendom and the World finally united 
 through Zionism at Jerusalem, 
 
 GOD IS IN HEAVEN. The Cosmic Mind 
 Is working still through ancient Rome; 
 
 The Age of Womanhood refined 
 
 Will surely through her teaching come; 
 
 And Christ the World uniting find 
 Again on Zion's Mount His home. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 87 
 
 169 
 THE WORLD implores GOD'S sign, 
 
 SUPPLICATION 
 
 O God ! we cry, LORD ! give the sign ! 
 O talk to folk and end all sin! 
 
 GOD! haste the day for which we pine! 
 
 A warring world THY GRACE would win ! 
 
 The WILL OMNIPOTENT is THINE! 
 CHRIST! let THY KINGDOM now begin! 
 
 AMEN. 
 
 Here Luther ending, vanished, and I — der Kaiser 
 — your father, must continue the recital of this 
 awful nightmare to the bitter end. 
 
CANTO IX 
 
 "Sub diversis speciebus 
 Signus tantum et non rebus 
 Latent res eximiae." 
 
 — Aquinas. 
 
 "Someday one will get a sign 
 And talk to folk and put an end to sin 
 And then God's blessed kingdom will begin." 
 
 — Masefield. 
 
 "Lily of Israel! 
 Lily of Purity! 
 Lily of Righteousness! 
 
 COR MARIAE! 
 As America to her again 
 Has turned with filial respect, 
 Upholding her in might of right! 
 May Britain! 
 "Mary's Dower!" 
 Return to CHRIST! 
 CHRIST'S CHURCH! 
 AMEN! 
 — American-Catholic Prayer. 
 
CANTO IX 
 
 170 
 
 Bismarck kicks the Kaiser. 
 "Now go," said Bismarck, with a kick 
 
 That spluttered my ethereal frame, 
 And like a rocket on a stick, 
 
 Sent me with helpless, raging shame, 
 CANOSSA-ward? No! slick and quick, 
 
 Straight into hell's eternal flame. 
 171 
 
 The kick beats TNT, DYN, or Terrorall. 
 O Trinitrotol-lol-uol ! 
 
 O Dynamite, they're very good! 
 While best of all is Terrorall ! 
 
 They're great to make cadaver food ! 
 MIHI! that kick their powers pall, 
 
 You never would believe it could. 
 172 
 
 The Kaiser s non-stop passage to Hell. 
 
 Throughout the fourteen rolling spheres, 
 
 'Tis said, a blazing meteor fell: 
 My sinful soul, it now appears. 
 
 Passed as a streak, a shriek, a yell; 
 Beelzebubs and Lucifers 
 
 Yanked me with glee deep into Hell. 
 
 173 
 The King of the German murderers. 
 
 There e'en in Hell my nerve went cold 
 
 As dancing round me in a string, 
 The devils bold with scorn and scold. 
 
 All proud and loud, this chant did sing: — 
 "Those German murderers! — Behold! 
 
 This thing — der Kaiser — was their King!" 
 
 (Sons, that will tell you — what in Hell you- 
 amount to.) 
 
 91 
 
92 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 174 _ 
 Satan s Tribute to the Kaiser. 
 
 While off hfs throne Abaddon came 
 
 With bow profound down to my level; 
 You "brilliant First!" now we with shame 
 
 But homage must around you revel; 
 No need to ask your name and fame, 
 
 You're Kaiser Bill who beats the Devil. 
 
 (And then he too kicked me.) 
 
 175 
 Those ice-cold haberdasher London snickerers, 
 
 "Mein Gott!" I cried, when toed with flames, 
 
 "Lord! is it I alone who sinned?" 
 For on the banks of London Thames, 
 
 There ice-cold haberdashers grinned, 
 As if these were Olympic games, 
 
 Where to and fro my soul was shinned. 
 176 
 
 Earth's Salt the Breeds Superior. 
 
 While rooting in my frame there came 
 
 This arriere-pensee — thought posterior, — 
 To Latins, Angles, Yanks aflame 
 
 With righteous wrath, how far inferior 
 We are, I now admit in shame: 
 
 They are Earth's salt, — the breeds superior. 
 177 
 
 The eonic sexless blend of English lanffuage. 
 
 And from my mother's language clear 
 Jhere flashed to mind the neuter tend 
 
 That tongue has, on this Babel sphere. 
 Attained through male and female end; 
 
 Eonic in its speech sincere. 
 
 The consummated sexless blend. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 93 
 
 The Hiffhest Good — the Purity of Mind Con- 
 ception. 
 
 Think! in that language for the mass 
 
 The highest good in pure conception, 
 King Arthur's white-souled sons of class — 
 
 Maintain with truth of faith's inception: 
 Light to the world has come to pass, 
 
 Revealed by the7n through mind perception. 
 179 
 
 Impanation, Consubstantiation and Transub- 
 stantiation. 
 
 For in the substance there does flow 
 
 In light that springs from impanation, 
 And with the substance shining show, 
 
 Revealed with consubstantiation, 
 Christ's presence from the substance glow 
 
 Beyond, through transubstantiation. 
 180 
 
 Wesley and the demoralized period of the Angli- 
 can church. 
 Johy Wesley who restored with power 
 
 The method, discipline and order 
 Of Christ's true Church, when pervert, lower 
 
 Had sunk the English Church — a warder 
 Of moral might became, — a tower 
 
 Of Catholic truth — a firm recorder. 
 181 
 
 The Catholic-minded author of the "Age of 
 Reason.'' 
 Also that Deist, Thomas Paine, 
 
 The author of "The Age of Reason," 
 Was simply struggling back again 
 
 In mind a firmer faith to season; 
 To make the Catholic virtues plain ; 
 
 His work for God was never treason. 
 
94 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 182 
 The Despair of Science; the Hope of Faith. 
 
 Of faith and science — which is dafter? 
 
 Faith sparkling bright with inspiration, 
 Or science, reason, groping after 
 
 In hopeless, mental flagellation. 
 Their fruit — despair! while faith with laughter, 
 
 Draws hope and joy from revelation. 
 
 183 
 
 The regenerated race of new men. 
 
 "Lead, kindly light," and recreate 
 
 New men, "the faith our fathers knew," 
 Sang Newman, Faber, Manning, great 
 
 In British scholarship to view 
 The errors that with evil fate 
 
 God's grace long from their race withdrew. 
 184 
 
 Faith restored in Great Britain. 
 
 To blend in social humanhood, 
 
 O'er Britain's isle with hovering wing, 
 
 The Mother-Spirit seems to brood: 
 Her great cathedrals soon will ring 
 
 With faith, long lost, misunderstood, 
 
 Of Christ— through Mary— GOD, our King. 
 
 Faith revivified and the Golden Age revived in 
 Ireland 
 
 While Erin, too, fair Irish isle. 
 
 Where peace, a thousand years, once reigned, 
 Wisdom again shall reconcile 
 
 The Mother-faith, so long enchained; 
 The Golden Age again shall smile, 
 
 God's love there ever be sustained. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 95 
 
 186 
 The Redemption of the chosen race of Israel, 
 
 And Hebrew maids of Mary's line. 
 
 And scattered Judah's prophet race, 
 The Rose of Sharon will refine 
 
 And their long martyrdom efface ; 
 On them the Light of Christ will shine, 
 
 On them will dawn Emmanuel's grace. 
 
 187 
 
 The Dispute of the Sacrament ended. 
 
 While all who doubted and contended, 
 
 In intellectual pride upstanding, 
 Will find their thought in Wisdom blended. 
 
 According to each mind's expanding; 
 Till there shall come when wars have ended, 
 
 God's peace to every understanding. 
 
CANTO X 
 
 "The passionate will, the pride, the wrath 
 That bore him headlong on his path, 
 Shall stumble and stagger him into fear, 
 And fail him in his mad career: 
 Contrition, penitence, and remorse, 
 Shall come with overwhelming force. 
 By days of penance, nights of prayer, 
 To try and frustrate deep despair." 
 
 "Romantic irony is the necessary state of mind 
 which enables us to recognize the appearance of life 
 and poetry as mere allegories of infinite meanings. 
 . . . Universal or cosmic poetry giv^s in endless 
 progression, intimations of the infinite, through 
 earthly symbols." — Schlegel. 
 
CANTO X 
 
 i88 
 
 The Kaiser s repenting soul sees God. 
 My soul illumed looked up and there 
 
 I saw God on His great white throne; 
 He sensed my thought, my cry, my prayer; 
 
 His glance like granite bite of stone 
 Fell by, until it rested where 
 
 Sat Mary wise with Joseph's son. 
 189 
 
 God's Son through spiritual parenthood. 
 
 GOD'S SON, through spirit fatherhood 
 
 And motherhood, when lives refine 
 Free from the taint of carnal brood 
 
 The mother through the mother's line, 
 In pure conception understood, 
 
 IMMACULATE,— true love divine. 
 190 
 
 The curses of pre-natal sin. 
 And softened grew his glance, as there 
 
 Kneeling and pleading for my soul, 
 My mother and her mother were: 
 
 Pre-natal sin beyond control. 
 Of rank sires born, was in their prayer, 
 
 Their plea for crimes that curse our scroll. 
 
 99 
 
100 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 191 
 
 Hell's Triple Execution of the Kaiser, Tirpitz 
 and Bethmann-Hollweg. 
 
 Still — as I woke, I saw we hung, 
 
 Three on a flaming gallows-tree; 
 Tirpitz and Bethmann-Hollweg strung, 
 
 Each one on either side of me; 
 Against Hell's lurid roof we swung, 
 
 While howling Hades danced with glee. 
 192 
 
 Damnable low German cunning , vile plotting, and 
 the hour of fateful doom. 
 
 Such damnable low cunning and 
 
 Vile plotting now, I see, was ours: 
 Efficiency, a rope of sand, 
 
 When evil guides its ordered powers: 
 Grim, sullen, gloomy, darkling grand. 
 
 Our fateful hour of doom now lours. 
 
 193 
 Dr. Wood's tear-gas versus real lachrymose mel- 
 ancholia. 
 
 O Doctor Robert W. Wood ! 
 
 Beryl-bromide, chloracetone. 
 No lachrymose or tear-gas could 
 
 The real tears rival that with moan 
 Reveal my penitential mood: 
 
 Our race, can they our crimes condone? 
 
Or the Vital Urge loi 
 
 194 
 
 President Wilsorij educator^ gentleman and ruler 
 of wisdom. 
 
 See how inferior now we look 
 
 In high-bred, knightly, courteous eyes, 
 
 Since Wilson, educator, took 
 
 Our deeds to book in cool, firm guise; 
 
 Our hybrid neck-scruff sternly shook, 
 The gentleman, bold scholar wise. 
 
 195 
 Education the International guiding force. 
 
 The universal guiding force 
 
 Is education: in it lies 
 The world of welfare: fountain source 
 
 Of purpose high, when teachers wise 
 Now, for its bright and onward course. 
 
 The virgin-spirit crystallize. 
 196 
 
 The purity of mother-nature, the secret of life. 
 
 Know ! learning must go hand in hand 
 
 With purity, until there grows 
 True character in every land, 
 
 Which in God's wisdom only glows; 
 That spirit, when all understand. 
 
 Forth from the mother-nature flows. 
 
 197 
 True love's secret. Heaven is what we make it 
 here for Eternity. 
 
 The w^orld is of the heliosphere 
 
 A part of Heaven, if we can learn 
 That Heaven is what we make it here; 
 
 On earth its joys we all can earn 
 And share the glories waiting there. 
 
 If love's true purpose we discern. 
 
102 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 198 
 The seven virtues and the seven deadly sins. 
 
 The seven virtues, — chastity, 
 
 Faith, justice, temperance, — full of joy — 
 Prudence, fortitude, charity. 
 
 The seven deadly sins destroy, 
 Lust, coveting, edacity, 
 
 Pride, envy, anger, sloth, that cloy. 
 199 
 
 The moral breeding of sons and daughters. 
 
 In moral breeding, sane and pure. 
 
 Fond parents! rear your sons and daughters! 
 Warn them in time, that safe and sure 
 
 They may avoid the vicious cauters 
 Of sex-appeal, the Devil's lure 
 
 That sinks the soul in foul waters. 
 200 
 
 Earn while learning: learn while earning. 
 
 Teach youth the noble worth of work. 
 
 To earn while learning, learn while earning; 
 In idle youth real dangers lurk: 
 
 If early training be discerning, 
 From duty's path, they seldom shirk, 
 
 No honest labor ever spurning. 
 201 
 
 Der Kaiser's ingratiating repentance. 
 
 With high ideal and purpose true. 
 
 Thou knowest, Lord! how in pure ruth, 
 
 Though pride of mind upon me grew, 
 I sought the Grail in white-souled youth, 
 
 And failed; but now, when woes (or foes) subdue, 
 Help me, mein Gott! to spread the truth. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 103 
 
 202 
 Rectified Spirits and the pervert German philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 Could but the world — in neutral guise, — 
 
 Forget its all-consuming ire ; 
 Our spirits, — rectified, — might rise 
 
 Through Hell's regenerating fire, 
 A sublimated phcenix, wise. 
 
 From our perverted "Kultur" pyre. 
 203 
 
 Manifest destiny: Repent! Reform! Repay! 
 
 Return to God! Repent! Reform! 
 
 Repay! though Lloyd George cries ''Too late!" 
 We reap the whirlwind and the storm 
 
 Of perfidy and kinsmen hate: 
 Is destiny in brooding norm, 
 
 To manifest relentless fate? 
 204 
 
 Personal and national reform or revolution. 
 
 In personal reform fulfill 
 
 Your destiny; the nation then 
 Will purified arise, until 
 
 The stain is cleansed: O God! but w^hen? 
 In revolution must and will 
 
 Our race regain goodwill from men? 
 205 
 
 The Second Commandment against phallicism 
 always up-to-date. 
 
 Sons! Thou shalt not set up nor make 
 
 Lewd images, vile and obscene; 
 Nude likenesses thou shalt not take 
 
 To gloat o'er them in thought, unseen; 
 Thus — youths the love of GO(0)D forsake, 
 
 To revel in Hell's vice unclean. 
 
104 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 206 
 
 SinnerSj saints, pure minds, chaste bodies,, white 
 souls. 
 
 When mind should now control life's feud, — 
 
 White souls — clean bodies chaste — enfold, 
 Experience nude from lessons crude, 
 
 In prophets, kings and saints, behold! 
 The greatest sinner, bold and lewd. 
 
 The greatest saint became of old. 
 207 
 
 Solomon s opinion of women and how they play 
 with men. 
 
 Seven hundred wives, three hundred flames, 
 
 Wise (?) Solomon, the vice-born, had; 
 His imperception male defames. 
 
 When every one he said "was bad," 
 Not deeming that his lusts w^ere games, 
 
 Mere play, for them, to fool and gad. 
 208 
 
 The "Pearl of his soul" ; a Hindu King's tribute 
 to a woman. 
 
 How different to that Hindu King 
 
 Who in the Taj Mahal has raised 
 An architectural pearl to bring 
 
 His mute and reverent homage phrased. 
 To marriage chaste, — the purest thing, 
 
 That man or woman ever praised. 
 209 
 
 Kipling's less than a cigar worth woman. 
 
 Still — while good women all admire, 
 
 The well-bred mind refined extol! 
 Blame not paid bawd, nor foul vampire, 
 
 But flirts who flaunting virtue's role. 
 Raise man-desire — with Kipling ire, — 
 
 The chaste coquette with harlot soul. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 105 
 
 210 
 
 Bestial hoggishness, a type of manhood that most 
 German educators vaunt. 
 And man — lewd men — blame not the least, 
 
 Who make the vampire and the bawd; 
 Who on their vice indifferent feast, 
 
 And hoggishness as manhood laud; 
 The sensual brute and minotaur beast. 
 
 Vile libertine, seducing fraud. 
 211 
 
 The perils of incontinence. Mind circumcision 
 and continence. 
 Incontinence, dire evil bold, 
 
 To every nation brings damnation: 
 Sons! circumcise the mind! withhold 
 
 And kill the curse of fornication : 
 For continence, long taught of old, 
 
 Illumes each soul with life, salvation. 
 212 
 
 Napoleon s doom or Siberian mines for the 
 Kaiser? His mild suggestion. 
 
 Damned ! Doomed ! Doomed ! Damned ! clang Bel- 
 gian bells. 
 
 Napoleon's doom? — portentous signs 
 Boom, loom and gloom from those fell bells: 
 
 For me no ray of comfort shines; 
 Around me but blank horror wells. 
 
 Just doom for us — Siberian mines. 
 
 213 
 Goth, Vandal, Hun, and Scourge of God. 
 
 In atavistic streams of hate 
 
 From Hell, our breed in stages run : 
 
 Goth! Vandal! Genseric ingrate! 
 Attila, proud vainglorious one! 
 
 That ''Scourge of God" to emulate 
 I tried,^ — precox demented Hun! 
 
io6 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 214 
 
 The squealing Hohenzollern Hog, the modern 
 Minotaur. 
 
 ''O bellow Moloch! Minotaur! 
 
 And squeal, O Hohenzollern Hog! 
 You Beast of Berlin, Brute and Boar! 
 
 Remorse shall all your efforts clog! 
 Thus yell and roar the dogs of war! 
 
 Our pride in Hell to flay and flog." 
 215 
 
 The Kaiser s bitter-brine blear-eyed remorse. 
 
 For sons! Hell's blight blasts man and clan 
 
 Who spurn the mother love divine 
 In God's revealed, evolving plan: 
 
 My eyes are bleared with bitter brine, 
 Too short is life's redeeming span: 
 
 Remorse ! the curse of Cain is mine. 
 216 
 
 The Red Cross and the Crown of Glory. 
 
 The Red Cross on their brows who bear, 
 
 White hosts of women good arise; 
 What crowns of glory they will wear ! 
 
 Suppressed the sighs, the tears in eyes, 
 Christ's Mother-sorrows now they share, 
 
 And comforted, the soldier dies. 
 217 
 
 The Mind Maternal rules the world. 
 
 The Mind Maternal rules the world! 
 
 The Rose of Sharon pure, divine, 
 Her spirit in your souls unfurled. 
 
 Your hearts and bodies will refine, 
 And lusthood's evil hellward hurled. 
 
 The noble man will henceforth shine. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 107 
 
 218 
 
 The arch-crirninar s final advice: — Reverence 
 Motherhood! 
 
 Dead millions haunt me! stark, alone, 
 
 World criminal of foulest brood, 
 I stand. The Hohenzollern throne 
 
 Stinks, — stenched with lust and human blood. 
 (Sternly, energetic and commanding spteaking 
 aloud as he finishes writing: — ) 
 Sons! Sons! for all our crimes atone, — 
 Learn! Learn to reverence 
 
 MOTHERHOOD! 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 lYHVHTHSTSRCDMNDKNWTM ! 
 
 "JEHOVAH ! Thou hast searched me and knoweth 
 me!" 
 "LORD ! Let not my frailties be remembered !" 
 
 "Create in me a clean heart, O God ! and renew 
 a right spirit within me." 
 
 "Cast me not away from Thy Presence; and take 
 not Thy Holy Spirit from me." 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 For a few moments the Kaiser remained ab- 
 sorbed in thought and then, looking with affection 
 and reverence on the Kaiserin, he added this post- 
 script : — 
 
 219 
 
 Love is the spirit pure, refined of GO(0)D. 
 
 Love is not vice, lust, passion nude ; 
 
 Love springs from heart and thought refined; 
 Love spurns the vulgar, tough, and lewd; 
 
 Love is the spirit pure of mind; 
 Love rises o'er the common, crude, 
 
 The body in the soul enshrined. 
 220 
 
 EVE the temptress and EVE the MOTHER of 
 WISDOM. 
 
 To womanhood who gave release 
 
 From Eve the temptress, weak, obscene; 
 Who bade their former sufferings cease? 
 
 The EVE of WISDOM, calm, serene. 
 The mother harbinger of peace, 
 
 The fount of honor, chaste and clean. 
 221 
 
 Mary the Mother of Christ; The Comforter, the 
 Paraclete. 
 
 The virgin daughter taught aright, 
 
 Of w^isdom pure, the mind concrete. 
 Who through the Son has won the fight, ^ 
 
 The serpent lust, holds in defeat; 
 Effulgence of the Father's light, 
 
 The Comforter, the Paraclete! 
 Ill 
 
112 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 222 
 Third Person in the Trinity! GOD Infinite! 
 
 Shrine, temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 
 Third Person in the Trinity! 
 Long from man's view through evil lost! 
 
 In mercy Thy divinity 
 Revealed, through sorrow tempest-tost; 
 
 GOD! in HIS vast infinity! 
 
Or the Vital Urge 113 
 
 Post Post Scriptum. — Sons: — I append for 
 your careful reading the following abridged discourse 
 on 
 
 "WISDOM" 
 
 Transcribed from a farewell lecture delivered to 
 an assembly of students and friends, on "Religions 
 of the World," by LO-CARUS ("Citizen of the 
 World"), SInlco-Japanese philosopher and educa- 
 tor, international exchange professor to the leading 
 universities of the world. 
 
 SECRETA VITAE 
 
 Ah! for the simple guileless faith 
 That raves not at the bolts of fate; 
 
 Ah ! for the patient tongue that salth 
 
 "Though late he cometh, not too late!" 
 
 The heart that beats in coolest rhyme 
 
 With "God's good time," and "In God's good time." 
 
 Long sought, long dreamed of, long withstood, 
 
 Cajoled by youth, and foiled by sin, 
 Ethereal Love! Immortal Good! 
 
 O, thine own pathway to me w^In ; 
 Nor let me faint in hopeless strife. 
 Until I clasp the core of life! 
 
 — EdmUnd Gosse. 
 
 "In all ages entering into holy souls. She — ^Wis- 
 dom — maketh them friends of God, and prophets." 
 — Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 27. 
 
114 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 WISDOM 
 
 "What is Wisdom?" said Lo-Carus. '*It must 
 not be confounded with education, learning, knowl- 
 edge, although these should inculcate wisdom." Wis- 
 dom, as defined by the ancient classical writers, is 
 "the holy spirit, the angel of good counsel, the work- 
 er of all things, the pure emanation of the glory of 
 the Almight}' God. The holy spirit of wisdom is 
 the Mother of the wonderful counselor, the Prince 
 of Peace, Father for ever." The child is inseparable 
 from the mother, the mother from the father, and 
 the three in one — the triunity — blends through the 
 holy spirit of wisdom enshrined in motherhood, for 
 the clean life of humanity. From the dim mists of 
 antiquity, the voices of the old Hebrew prophets 
 ring with the unmistakable world-born curse, "The 
 sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto 
 the third and fourth generations." Since the time 
 of Mary, daughter of Anne and mother of Jesus, 
 for over nineteen hundred years, the Christian doc- 
 trine based on Hebrew and Greek wisdom has been 
 preached, "The virginity or purity of mind of the 
 mother descends upon the daughter and the chil- 
 dren of all succeeding generations." Obversely, the 
 impurity of the mother, generated by the father, is 
 hereditary. But, very few seem to understand this, 
 or seem afraid even to discuss asexually such a sim- 
 ple biological principle. "Born of the Holy Spirit" 
 was Mary the divine daughter of Joachim and Anne 
 of Bethlehem, and "born of the Holy Spirit" was 
 Jesus the pure son of the Virgin Mary of Bethlehem 
 and of Joseph of Nazareth, a double purification of 
 birth daily recited in the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 This is confirmed by the Earliest "Introductory 
 
Or the Vital Urge 115 
 
 Prayer" dating from 1583 A. D., known to Free- 
 masonry : 
 
 *'Ye mighte of ye Father of Heaven and ye 
 wysdome of ye gloriouse Sonne through ye grace 
 and ye goodness of ye holly ghoste, yt bee three 
 psons & one God, be wh vs at or beginning and 
 give vs grace to govrne vs here in or lyving that 
 wee maye come to his blisse that nevr shall have 
 endying. AMEN." 
 
 Of this a modern paraphrase reads: 
 
 ''Work and pray until the federated w^orld ac- 
 claims that in the name of the Holy Trinity, in 
 God the Father, God the Mother, through God 
 in Christ, God's only Son, blended in the HOLY 
 SPIRIT, thus we praise 
 
 GOD— THREE yet ONE! AMEN!" 
 
 That great upholder of high Anglican principles, 
 Lord Beaconsfield, whose father D'Israeli the Elder, 
 seceded from the Hebrew Church owing to intoler- 
 ant imposition, said: "In what condition do we 
 find Christianity? Without clear understanding, 
 half of its followers worship a Jew; the other half 
 worship the Jew^ and his mother." You ask me, 
 "What church do you suppose Christ would enter 
 if he again came down to earth?" I answer, "I do 
 not know" ; all have erred and come short of the 
 glory of God" ; out of His boundless heart of char- 
 ity all would appeal to Him, still I cannot help but 
 feeling that His preference would be for those 
 churches where the message of His supreme sacrifice 
 on Calvary is daily celebrated with rites of remem- 
 brance, and where womanhood is revered in His 
 Mother, and w^here God the Father is reverenced 
 and worshiped as of old in th^s temple where His 
 Mother was educated, in all the glory and beauty 
 
ii6 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 of holiness bestowed upon the earth. "Why do 
 not the Jews accept the Hebraic Christian Mes- 
 siah?" "Let me answer you from their own au- 
 thorities. In 1700, at the ducal court of Hanover, 
 Rabbi Joseph of Stadthagen, refuting from Scripture 
 all the arguments of his antagonist Eliezer Edzard, 
 who had instigated the discussion, with the full ap- 
 proval of the court, declined to answer under oath 
 the question as to which religion was the best. He 
 said: 'We condemn no creed based upon the belief 
 in the Creator of heaven and earth. We believe 
 what we have been taught; let the Christians ad- 
 here to — and practice — what they have been 
 taught.' " Nahmanides the Hebrew, disputing with 
 Pablo Christiani at Barcelona, 20 July, 1263, in 
 presence of James I of Aragon and his court, reply- 
 ing to the question, "Has the Messiah come?" fear- 
 lessly replied, "I cannot believe that the Messiah 
 has come as long as the promised cessation of all 
 warfare has not been realized." And now in the 
 Capture of Jerusalem on Britain's Day, 191 7, we 
 see the approaching federation of the world to be 
 brought about by the Christ-spirit of humanity and 
 internationalism proclaimed of old from Mount 
 Zion and Uru-Salim the City of Peace, and where 
 now the new Great World Mother, the Red Cross 
 Society, is federating her work. God hasten the 
 day. 
 
 Let me repeat, "Born of the Holy Spirit of Wis- 
 dom of God the Father, were Mary and Her Son 
 Jesus Christ," as foretold by Moses and the proph- 
 ets of old in "the woman herself will win the vic- 
 tory, she will be victorious through her child," an(f 
 by Isaiah, "The Lord hath created a new thing upon 
 the earth. The woman shall protect the man," to 
 which Church commentators add, "She shall come 
 to regard herself as the fount and guardian of 
 
Or the Vital Urge 117 
 
 man's honor; through the regenerated woman, 
 guilty nations will return to the friendship of God" ; 
 truths especially confirmed by Timothy and John of 
 Patmos. Unfortunately, you will find a multitude 
 of men and women of Christian sects, differing on 
 minor points of doctrinal teaching mostly unimpor- 
 tant, who, judging from their individual inherited 
 weaknesses, regard this creed as an impossible ideal 
 for human life. 
 
 The attitude of average civilized humanity 
 towards religion is that of Benjamin Franklin, who 
 wrote at 84 years of age : "As to Jesus of Nazareth, 
 my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think 
 his system of morals and his religion, the best the 
 world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it 
 has received various corrupting changes, and I have 
 with most of the present dissenters in England, some 
 doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I 
 do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and 
 think it needless to busy m^'self with it now, wheia 
 I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth 
 with less trouble." And this will be the attitude 
 of average decent humankind, until theologians can 
 "get together" and bring their philosophy of reli- 
 gion down to the clear, comprehensible, scientific 
 basis of unity which can be found in the doctrine of 
 the trinity of the spirit of goodw^ill governing 
 father, mother and son. 
 
 "Christianity is a bigger thing than any Church. 
 If religion in the churches does not begin very 
 soon, religion without the churches will begin to 
 establish the unity of God's family in the brother- 
 hood [and sisterhood! — Ed.] of His children, and 
 the gospel of Jesus will sanction it," thus wrote the 
 Rev. Karl Reiland of New York city, 12 Dec. 
 1915. "There is beauty in all religions," said Julian 
 the Apostate. As Littre has written, "To discard 
 
1 1 8 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 religion as mere superstition betrays an unphilo- 
 sophical mind . . . The main idea of developing 
 the religions of the past, which are not false, but 
 only incomplete religions, into a religion that shall 
 be in accord with the science of our day, is not a 
 vagary, but a great and important ideal." 
 
 We Orientals, with the rest of humanity, strug- 
 gling, groping upward to the higher light that we 
 see in Christian civilization must therefore look at 
 the question from all viewpoints and the conclu- 
 sions which we gather and the lesson which we must 
 learn to go back and teach our millions, still steeped 
 with the rest of the world in the fallacies of phal- 
 licism is this: — **Mind is the ultimate reality and 
 virginity is to be understood as that mental state of 
 moral reverence for bodily integrity w^hich exists in 
 male or female, even if physical violation is perpe- 
 trated against the will. Those purists who phari- 
 saically plume themselves on physical virginity are 
 not really virtuous when this state co-exists with 
 vicious mental and secret desires of carnal lust." 
 
 In a glorious wave of reform along these lines, 
 through the Anglican work of the Holy Catholic 
 Churches of Japan and China, Light has come to 
 our Buddhist priesthood, and all churches must 
 similarly be reformed and renew Faith in terms 
 that meet the times. As the Catholic Roman and 
 Greek churches celebrate Buddha in Saint Josaphat 
 the convert of Barlaam, so the Buddhists see in 
 Christ Jesus the ultimate incarnation of the spirit 
 of Buddha, and are preaching 
 
 ''Buddha is Light, and Light is Wisdom." 
 
 For the teaching of children a modern illustrated 
 card represents the holy mother crowned as "Wis- 
 dom," her heart symbolizes the Church, in her arms 
 is the holy child Christ-Buddha the Eternal GOD 
 
Or the Vital Urge 119 
 
 and FATHER. "Circumcise your heart," preached 
 the great prophet Moses, "and not your body." 
 Another card illustration is the Mother-Nurse with 
 the scarlet symbol of the Red Cross not on the 
 brow and mind as in the Occident, but covering the 
 heart, the seat of affections. She is guiding the 
 beautiful child-daughter clad in the snow-white 
 garb of innocence and purity who is holding the 
 hand of the protecting child-son dressed in a mili- 
 tary uniform, the latter symbolizing that the mili- 
 tary virtues must be cultivated in the male — not for 
 offense — but ever ready for the defense of girlhood 
 and womanhood, of the weak and helpless, of justice 
 and righteousness. You who may be incredulous or 
 curious on this subject may see these illustrations re- 
 produced with typical imperceptive western com- 
 ment in the Literary Digest of 22 September 191 7, 
 page 33. 
 
 As already said, the prophets of old continuously 
 preached, and the preaching still continues with 
 every generation, against the indiscriminate abuse 
 of carnal lust, and the rank weeds of debasement, 
 coarseness, evils, sin, disease, cancer, hereditary de- 
 generacy, leprosy and death it entails. Plant cul- 
 ture — Mendelism — is a great illustrator of this 
 physical fact, as the differences between wild and 
 cultivated products show; while the difference be- 
 tween the undisciplined, unclean mind, and the 
 clean, refined mind of humankind, is just as ap- 
 parent. 
 
 '"East and West the twain can meet" and learn 
 the lesson of Humanity in the common-sense Anglo- 
 American Creed of mind purity in womanhood, in- 
 culcated w^ith virile reverence. Free from that 
 mawkish sentimentality which has produced so much 
 moral ruin in some Latin and Oriental countries, 
 and by reversion, the carnal bestiality and rampant 
 
120 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 brutality of Germany, to say nothing of other north- 
 ern countries, as revealed by both earnest and flip- 
 pant novelists. Hear what Merrill, the spiritual 
 sage of California, says: — 
 
 "Judea, Greece, Italy, — ^What were these glori- 
 ous countries and their peoples but a trinity of spir- 
 itual kindergartens to prepare the way for Jesus 
 and his Word. Afterwards they had to undergo 
 a second incarnation in the spiritual womb of the 
 mighty mother church of Rome to gestate properly 
 the infantile and even the larval man of those 
 times, which she received at the hands of barbarian 
 Goths, Vandals and Huns that overran Italy and 
 Greece so often during the early ages of Christian- 
 ity (and who with atavistic recrudescence have since 
 attempted the domination of the world. — Ed.) Near- 
 ly all the lowest races of mankind to-day are little 
 else than spiritual larvae of men who will be obliged 
 to pass through the spiritual womb of the churches 
 to enable them to ascend into the spiritual, rational 
 and celestial planes of being. 'Rome,' said Froude, 
 'is the most marvelous institution that humanity 
 ever threw out of itself.' It gave law and perfect 
 form to all things concerning life, and its priesthood 
 became the spiritual nurse of humankind and de- 
 cided for it what was proper, spiritual food for its 
 spiritual infants. In doing this her priesthood and 
 the later priesthoods of Protestantism conferred an 
 infinite benefit on the entire human race. In the 
 formulation of the religions of humankind Rome 
 has done for modern civilization what the Jewish 
 priesthood has done for that people that gave Christ 
 to the world. The high spiritual truths taught by 
 Jesus were most of them out of the spiritual reach 
 of the greater portions of the mankind of his times. 
 Jesus recognized this spiritual inability of the men 
 of his time — even the learned men of the Jewish 
 
Or the Vital Urge 121 
 
 church. 'They seeing, see not, and hearing, hear 
 not, neither do they understand,' and sometimes he 
 even reproved his own disciples for their lack of 
 spiritual perception. Regarding the division of the 
 church in later years into several leading branches, 
 that also is a wise arrangement of Divine Provi- 
 dence, better fitting it for its divine uses, giving the 
 human intelligence greater freedom of action by bet- 
 ter adapting it to the various mental and spiritual 
 estates into which that intelligence naturally differ- 
 entiates itself." 
 
 Historical analysis shows that modern civilization 
 is in direct relation to a blend of the Calvinistic- 
 Catholic form of Christianty. Civilizations are the 
 results of philosophic religious sj^stems that syn- 
 chronize with earlier systems. Hebrew culture arose 
 from a blend of the better elements of Assyrian- 
 Egyptian religion. Greek culture was the outcome 
 of faith in Egypto-Greek religion and philosophy. 
 Roman culture was the outcome of faith in the 
 Hellenized religion of Rome. Christian Catholic 
 culture sprang from the blend of Hebraic, Greek 
 Roman and Alexandrian philosophy and re- 
 ligion. German **Kultur" is the outcome of 
 the protesting Lutheran Reformation. Russia's con- 
 dition of civilization, — does that arise from the re- 
 ligion of the Greek Catholic Church, which, through 
 Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, in 431 at the 
 Council of Ephesus, rejected the doctrine of the 
 divinity of motherhood? The Latin Catholic cul- 
 ture of the Renaissance sprang from readjusted 
 faith in the Catholic form of Christianity. Similarly 
 the civilization of the British Empire and in a higher 
 degree of America, is the outcome of faith in the 
 Hebraic-Calvinistic-Catholic form of Christian phil- 
 osophy and religion adjusting all creeds and races. 
 But why should Hebraic-Calvinistic-Catholicism 
 
122 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 travesty its cardinal fundamentals by calling itself 
 Protestant instead of Christian? True, the united 
 soul of the World, Buddhist-CHRISTIAN-Mo- 
 hammedan and their interrelations, cry aloud in 
 "protest" against the animalism and brutality of 
 German-born Protestantism that, ''true faith and 
 real religion can be found alone in the Catholic 
 principles of Christianity." We Orientals, how- 
 ever, must attribute the former idea solely to — 
 imperception — , to a lack of understanding, to the 
 need of the "Light of Wisdom." As celestial light 
 always comes from the East, must terrestrial light 
 again come from the Farther East? In a cycle 
 of Cathay (the Chinese cycle of 60 years) MEIJI 
 (1868-1912) the famous "Era of Enlightened Gov- 
 ernment" in Japan, has been succeeded by TAI- 
 SHO— The Millennium— or "Era of Great Right- 
 eousness." How soon will Occidental nations get 
 in line with the Orient? Analogy should localize 
 the new unified religious system in the "melting 
 pot" of America, — in the New World, which Can- 
 ning, the great British statesman, told the German- 
 English King George III had evidently "been 
 brought into existence to right the evils of the Old 
 World." 
 
 In this way is seen a solution to the problem 
 whicli must occur to average well-balanced hu- 
 manity, decent, clean living men and women, indif- 
 ferent to unimportant theological differences but 
 keen for practical unity of religious thought for the 
 higher life of the world evolved from the best of the 
 beliefs governing the past history of mankind. 
 
 Matthew Arnold wrote: — "The mass of man- 
 kind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing 
 things as they are ; very inadequate ideas will always 
 satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and 
 must repose, the general practice of the world. Who- 
 ever sets himself to see things as they are will find 
 
Or the Vital Urge 123 
 
 himself one of a very small group, but it is only 
 by small groups resolutely doing set work that 
 adequate ideas will ever get current at all." 
 
 Somewhat pessimistically, but firm in faith of 
 eventual triumph, he also wrote: — 
 
 "Creep into thy narrow bed, 
 Creep, and let no more be said! 
 Vain thy onset! all stands fast. 
 Thou thyself must break at last. 
 
 Let the long contention cease! 
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese, 
 Let them have it how they will ! 
 Thou art tired; best be still. 
 
 They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee? 
 Better men fared thus before thee; 
 Fired their ringing shot and passed, 
 Hotly charged — and sank at last. 
 
 Charge once more, then, and be dumb! 
 Let the victors, when they come, 
 When the forts of folly fall, 
 Find thy body by the wall!" 
 
 It is not necessary to "crucify the natural in- 
 stincts" as imperceptive realists and novelists sug- 
 gest to acquire self-knowledge and exercise self- 
 respect and self-control ; to avoid indiscriminate self- 
 indulgence and abuse, the cause of the ills to which 
 the flesh is heir. "See no evil; Hear no evil; Speak 
 no evil" ; "Think evil and you create evil," are uni- 
 versal world-old proverbs. Avoid sexual perversion 
 of thought, word and deed, abnormal gratification 
 of carnal desires, so that mental freedom is not 
 weakened, perverted or destroyed, and delusions, in- 
 ferences from delusions, abnormal emotional states, 
 delirium, incoherence of ideas or dementia are not 
 induced in you and your progeny. With the vicious 
 
124 ^^^ Cosmic Comedy 
 
 inherited example of Lucifer Incarnate — ex-Kaiser 
 Wilhelm II of Germany — before us, avoid the pre- 
 eminent ego, the delusion of powerful equipment, 
 mental and physical, expansiveness, elation, extrava- 
 gance, garrulity, overweening pride and arrogance. 
 Such a condition is hyperabulia which caused such 
 mattoidism to imagine that the quadricentennial 
 anniversary of Lutheranism on 31 October 191 7> 
 three j^ears from the start of the Great World War, 
 would have been a wonderful psychological climax 
 to his great scheme of world domination. Of this 
 thought, long-standing and world-wide proof is re- 
 vealed in German propaganda, if needed, dating 
 from 1888, the year of the ex-Kaiser's accession to 
 the throne and his studied abandonment of the joint 
 German and British episcopal see, hitherto main- 
 tained in the interests of Protestantism at Jerusalem ; 
 the subsequent caricature of himself on Mount Zion, 
 masquerading as the Christian Crusader in quest of 
 the Grail; and before the Capture of Jerusalem he 
 arranging with the Turkish authorities to send him 
 the Sangreal monstrance from the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre as loot. Also, where stood of old 
 the statue of Jove (JHWAH) on the Capitoline 
 Hill, Rome, in the Palazzo Cafarrelli, the German 
 embassy, an allegorical painting representing Wil- 
 helm as the superman coequal with the father of gods 
 and men — Shades of Jupiter! Such a condition in- 
 evitably induces abulia, — the reaction to depression, 
 dejection, despondency, apathy, melancholia, failure, 
 acute self-analysis and self-recrimination, bitter re- 
 morse, hopelessness, and— MORAL SUICIDE. In 
 a collegiate thesis at the University of Vienna in 
 1879, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (191 8, first presi- 
 dent of the Czecho-Slovak Republic), dealing with 
 ''suicide" as a pathological symptom of the condition 
 of Europe, attributed its chief cause to the decline 
 of religious sentiment. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 125 
 
 In the course of my journey ings over the world 
 in search of Truth, I find the same lesson taught 
 everywhere by the ministers of God. Among the 
 Kafirs of Afghanistan, when ofHciating at the rites 
 of oblation, even now in fancy, I can hear through 
 intervening space the priests crying aloud to the 
 world "Such! such!" ("Be pure!") The history of 
 the literature of the world from the earliest records 
 teems with the message. Leviticus comes to mind, 
 and from out of intervening ages flashes the "Pra- 
 bodha-Candrodaya" — "Rise of the Moon of Wis- 
 dom," the eleventh century Sanskrit drama by 
 Krishna Misra, who wrote it for Kirtivarman the 
 Chandella (1056-1116) ; in it the hosts of Passion 
 are overthrown. Reason triumphs and by union with 
 Revelation produces the Truth and annihilates the 
 Reign of Terror. 
 
 There is no need to be a "holier than thou prig," 
 w^ith what Freudians (unconsciously self -accusing) 
 call, "an impurity complex." As a modern Ameri- 
 can poet sings, — his name escapes me for the mo- 
 ment : — 
 
 "There is one creed and only one 
 That justifies GOD'S excellence; 
 
 So cherish that His Will be done. 
 
 The common creed of common-sense." 
 
 Rational repression, sublimation and perfect in- 
 tegrity of body are readily obtainable by personal 
 culture, by mental hygiene and discipline of will. 
 Enhanced by the purpose of mental and bodily chas- 
 tity they are known to produce a special likeness to 
 Christ and to create a crown of three "aureolae" 
 which the history of theology' mentions. These 
 aureolae or halos which seem to radiate from a glori- 
 fied, transfigured condition of the face, head and 
 hair in childhood and youth, in honored priesthood 
 and sisterhood, in men and women of clean life, and 
 
126 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 in the unifying resemblance that comes to each 
 other among happily married people, appear like 
 earthly rewards added to the future essential hap- 
 piness of eternity. They are like laurel wreaths 
 crowning three conspicuous virtues and victories and 
 three special points of resemblance to Jesus. As 
 Michelangelo ("Michael the Angel") said, "Pur- 
 ity enjoys eternal youth." Therefore I say unto 
 you strive for these rewards. Gain the victory over 
 the flesh in chastity; the victory over evil in the 
 preaching of truth; the victory over the world — 
 if need be — in martyrdom! 
 
 In 1893 the Right Reverend Zitsuzen Asitzu of 
 Japan, visiting the United States, said: "You Oc- 
 cidental nations w^orking in harmony for humanity 
 and universal brotherhood, have wrought out the 
 material civilization of the nineteenth century. But 
 who will it be that establishes the spiritual civiliza- 
 tion of the twentieth century? It must be you." 
 Time has revealed that it must be the principle of 
 right over might which governed the Allied nations 
 in their fight against the recrudescence of the Hun 
 horror, intensified as it was by unmoral education. 
 
 And now the time has come to part from our Oc- 
 cidental friends. 
 
 "This body is my house — it is not I ! 
 Triumphant in this faith I live and die!" 
 sings another fine American poet, F. L. Knowles 
 (1869-1905), and with that glorious modern con- 
 viction in the blessed assurance of immortality and 
 reunion with kindred spirits in a future life, permit 
 me to add, 
 
 "Om Mani Padme Hum! 
 
 "O the Jewel in the Lily of Purity!" 
 
 "Ite! Missa Est!" 
 
 Again — the Message is delivered! 
 
 FAREWELL! 
 
FINALE 
 
 THE GOLDEN ERA OF RECONSTRUC- 
 TION 
 
 The Author's Recapitulation 
 
 THE THREE R'S OF MODERN HISTORY 
 
 Reformation — Renaissance — Reconstruction 
 
 The REFORMATION, no reform 
 
 Evolved in spite of wide instruction: 
 
 The RENAISSANCE bred but a swarm 
 Of warring pride and foul destruction: 
 
 WORLD FEDERATION rides the storm, 
 
 CONCILIATION— RECONSTRUCTION. 
 
 — Leonard Stuart. 
 
 The End 
 
WAR AND PEACE 
 
 1914— 1919 
 
 "From the very beginning all the conceivable bar- 
 barities implied in the Satanic principles and pur- 
 poses for which the war was begun by the Un- 
 speakable Beast who wrought all the wreck and 
 ruin, were understood by men of clear vision." — 
 —N. y. T. Feb. 9, 19 19. 
 
 "The motif of Milton's Taradise Lost,' the 
 casting out of Heaven, proud Lucifer and his devils, 
 has never had an apter, more appropriate earthly 
 exemplification than in the downfall and overthrow 
 of the arrogant ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany 
 and his brutal entourage." — S. L. C. 
 
 "An examination of British m.ethods upon the 
 intellectual life of the colonies and dependencies of 
 the nation is a profitable and a fascinating study. 
 In several directions, particularly in Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, New Zealand and India, it has had a signifi- 
 cant bearing upon world education. Wherever the 
 flag of Britain has been raised, there schools have 
 quickly resulted, and there order and system have 
 led speedily to the generation of intellectual energy 
 and to the diffusion of learning. Kipling's virile 
 verse is not without sufficient reason: 
 
 "They terribly carpet the earth with dead 
 
 And before their cannon cool 
 They walk unarmed by twos and threes 
 To call the living to school." 
 
 — E. A., New York, 1904. 
 129 
 
130 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 AMERICA TO BRITAIN 
 CHANT OF BROTHERHOOD 
 
 (Revised from an impromptu contribution penciled on 
 a Long Island train between 7.30 and 9 a.m. 21 Oct. 
 1914, which appeared in the next morning's issue of the 
 New York Tribune, in response to Harold Begbie's ap- 
 peal for an alliance of the English speaking races against 
 insidious German propaganda.) 
 
 **Oft in danger, oft in woe" 
 Antiphonal Tune — Racine 
 
 Metre 4- 7s Edwards 
 
 British brothers! loyal, true, 
 
 English-Welsh and Irish-Scot! 
 Hands around the world to you; 
 
 On your honor stain is not. 
 
 Celt and Angle of the race, 
 
 Who for righteousness and peace, 
 Till the reign of law they place. 
 
 Never in their efforts cease! 
 
 Brave colonial sons who go 
 
 Fighting for the motherland, 
 Where the Empire bugles blow, 
 
 Grip! — a cordial grasp of hand. 
 
 Faith defenders of the world, 
 
 Open-hearted, brave and free, 
 While against you hate is hurled, 
 
 Stands your ancient chivalry. 
 
 History reveals the tale, 
 
 Though war-stained and scarred your page; 
 Pledge and treaties never fail — 
 
 Right succeeds your battle rage. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 131 
 
 Onward, upward as you climb, 
 Runs the humanizing plan. 
 
 Foremost in the strife of time 
 For the brotherhood of man. 
 
 Up the civilizing scale, 
 
 Helping on each weaker strain; 
 Shall brute envy then prevail? 
 
 Shall your efforts be in vain? 
 
 Never! though a Prussian Hun 
 Scorns the tie of motherhood. 
 
 When an English daughter's son 
 Stains the world with human blood. 
 
 Stains his noble race with crime, 
 Violates their sacred troth. 
 
 Blots upon the scroll of time 
 
 Neutral nations' righteous wroth. 
 
 Envy of the devil, still 
 
 Spurning through the human clod, 
 Good, the universal will 
 
 Of the ever-living God. 
 
 God, the spirit pure of good. 
 Who by faith in human will. 
 
 Can alone through brotherhood 
 Triumph o'er the beast of ill. 
 
 Onward, then, to battle move; 
 
 In the strife maintain the fight; 
 With your Allied brothers prove 
 
 Right still conquers over might. 
 
132 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 Pray! — but fight! — since fight alone 
 Makes the prayer for peace avail- 
 Makes all ruthless hate atone 
 For the evils w^hich assail. 
 
 But when peace shall crown the strife, 
 Humanize the conquered clan, 
 
 Teach them that the crown of life 
 Is the brotherhood of man. 
 
 'Neath the grand imperial wing, 
 'Neath the British flag unfurled, 
 
 Hear the strain their poets sing, 
 "Brothers! federate the world!" 
 
 MILITARISM: A THRENODY 
 
 From the Globe, New York, Sept. 26, 191 4- 
 
 ["Sixty-two thousand aluminum identification 
 tags bearing the names and numbers of German sol- 
 diers who have been killed In France have been re- 
 ceived In Brussels to be forwarded to Berlin." — 
 Press Dispatch.] 
 
 Of gallant youth, of manly prime. 
 
 Who marched away 'neath waving flags; 
 
 How fare they on the scroll of time? 
 Some sixty thousand metal tags! 
 
Or the Vital Urge 133 
 
 Flung heedless from a living flood, 
 This needless sacrifice of blood 
 
 The spirit vile of force 
 
 Spills on its evil course, 
 The beast of war, 
 The Minotaur, 
 
 Who stalks the European plains 
 
 With legions shackled in their chains 
 To lust of power, to ruthless might. 
 To wrong that tramples truth and right. 
 
 Soldiers of Christ, arise! 
 
 And heed the sacrifice ; 
 In just and righteous wrath. 
 Across the vicious path, 
 For manhood and for freedom — fight! 
 This scourge of war and terror — smite! 
 That right may triumph over might. 
 Crash! Crumble in the dust! 
 Mad pride and warring lust. 
 Demon and man-killing brute 
 Extirpate both stock and root. 
 The baleful beast of war. 
 
 The preying Minotaur; 
 Till in the hosts of peace aligned 
 The brotherhood of humankind 
 Shall see a glorious flag unfurled — 
 'The Federation of the World." 
 
 Of noble youth, of golden prime, 
 
 Who marched away 'neath warring flags. 
 
 Their record on the scroll of time. 
 So many thousand metal tags. 
 
 DEUS MISEREATUR. 
 The sin and the pity of it. 
 
134 '^he Cosmic Comedy 
 
 THE VISION 
 
 Death — Revelation — Faith 
 
 Hymn and Invocation 
 
 [Inscribed to grieving friends In memory of dear 
 dead sons killed in battles on both sides.] 
 
 From The Living Church, Milwaukee, Wis., 
 6 November, 19 15. 
 
 Hymn 
 Metre. 4-ios Tune. Langran 
 
 Death? What is death? Is death eternal sleep? 
 
 Eternal rest for grief-torn heart and brain? 
 
 Peace — from the earth-born throes of strife and 
 pain? 
 Or — Does each soul, the spirit's burden reap? 
 
 The spirit that for good — or evil — rules 
 The freedom of the will in all our deeds? 
 A light to guide in all our human needs ? 
 
 Or — Cloud the wisdom taught in godly schools? 
 
 With faith in prayer that breathes of hopes and 
 fears, 
 Through starlit space, a myriad voices rise. 
 While, on rapt thought, beyond the midnight 
 skies. 
 Harmonious pealing move the ordered spheres. 
 
 Dark clouds of doubt, dissolving, outward roll: 
 Through solar systems, circling, on faith's sight, 
 Heaven opens on God's central throne of light! 
 
 Where — Sin-absolved, Christ greets each ransomed 
 soul. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 135 
 
 Invocation 
 
 When Light through Truth will reign and wars 
 shall cease, 
 
 When wrong is vanquished and subdued by 
 
 right, 
 When righteousness has conquered evil 
 might, 
 Join all, O God ! in Triune love and peace. 
 New York, September, 191 5. 
 
 Circling the world let the cry go forth ''The Great 
 God Pan is deadr 
 
 THE SONG OF PEACE 
 
 From the Knickerbocker Press, Albany, N. Y. 
 Metre Tune — Creation 
 
 L.M.D. Haydn 
 
 I 
 
 "Peace! Peace on Earth, to men good will," 
 The strain that from Judea's hill, 
 Sings ever to our warring earth. 
 Of love divine — the human birth: 
 Still from that hill by faith profound, 
 Sends forth with pealing, clarion sound, 
 The message Christ to mankind brings 
 Love's mandate from the God of kings. 
 
 II 
 
 And still that other cry is borne, 
 Which on the glorious Easter morn, 
 Ionian seas in darkness, stirred. 
 The voice by wond'ring sailors heard! 
 
136 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 "Great Pan Is dead! his rule is o'er!* 
 Rejoice! O mortals, evermore! 
 Proclaim the news! uplift the strain! 
 Love conquers death, and sin, and pain !" 
 
 Ill 
 
 Dead w^as the god of Nature rude, 
 
 But still on earth a pagan brood, 
 
 With arrogance and evil, plan 
 
 ''Man's inhumanity to man." 
 
 Spirit of Christ! arise in might, 
 
 Lest "Peace" — God's Will— fail in the fight; 
 
 Throughout the world, O let there shine, 
 
 HUMANITY— True Love Divine. 
 
 Note: Plutarch, In De orac, defectu, 17, and 
 other classic writers, relate that on Easter morn 
 in the reign of Tiberias, Thamus, a pilot, with 
 crew and passengers Including some Roman cour- 
 tiers, sailed the Ionian sea near the island of Paxi 
 in the Echinades. Suddenly, they heard a great cry 
 from space: 
 
 *"Tha-mouz! Tha-?nouzf pan-rna-gaz teth-nekej" 
 
 Thamous! Thamous! the all-Great Is dead. 
 
 This, probably a Lenten lament of the dying win- 
 ter time, for the great Thamous or Adonis, raised 
 by pagan worshipers assembled around some crude 
 hill-top altar and, borne through the clear Egean 
 air, the courtiers interpreted as a proclamation to 
 be made to Tiberias as a warning against his licen- 
 tious conduct. By tradition it is supposed to have 
 announced the end of the old world of pagan 
 cruelty and fear while heralding the beginning of 
 the new world of Christian love and humanity. 
 
 Albany, Christmas Eve, 191 8. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 137 
 
 UNITY 
 
 LIFE'S IDEAL 
 
 The Basis of Federation 
 
 hebrew — catholic — protestant 
 
 "The earnest hope and expectation of the creation 
 awaiteth the revealing of the sons of God." 
 
 "A person, man or woman, who can say more 
 ably, forcibly and pungently than others what those 
 others are longing to have said, will sweep into unity 
 an irresistible body of support." 
 
 ''What is needed is to solidify sentiment, to focus 
 it, and to apply it at white heat to the particular 
 barrier separating religious bodies which must be 
 burnt away." 
 
 "Those who suppose that modern facilities foi* 
 the transmission and presentation of intelligence 
 have lessened the value of the individual with a 
 fiery message in the brain, and the heart and soul in 
 the words, are deceived." 
 
 "People think with considerable looseness on 
 many points, and even when their thought is earnest 
 it is seldom coordinated with the thought of others 
 so as to become effective." 
 
 "Youth especially is hard to teach and to con- 
 vince. Loitering by the way, it wastes its precious 
 chances, arriving at the realization of what it might 
 have become only at the time when by yielding to 
 ease and sloth and blandishment, it has set itself into 
 ways that bar it from doing its best." 
 
138 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 "If the youth of the land, of the world, could 
 grasp the great Truth, there might be in the next 
 generation such forward strides as would dwarf the 
 progress of the last 400 years since the slowly mov- 
 ing, unaccomplished Re-Formation." 
 
 — K. P., 9 Feb. 19 19. 
 
 ''Such inborn gentlemen is what they are, those 
 splendid American soldiers. Remembering their 
 mothers and sisters they respect all women; they 
 help our mothers, they fight alongside of our hus- 
 bands and fathers for the right, and one of the 
 things that touches me most is the love of all of 
 them for our little children." — Marquise de Noailles 
 on American Soldiers in France, February, 1919. 
 
 "Woman herself has won the victory! She has 
 become victorious through her children." 
 
 "And a great sign was seen in Heaven ! a woman 
 arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, 
 and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." 
 
Or the Vital Urge 139 
 
 UNITY 
 
 Prayer and Hymn 
 
 Inscribed to the 
 Motherhood of the Great Red Cross Society 
 
 Raise Motherhood to Heaven's bar! 
 
 The World redeemed has found salvation! 
 Go! spread the Gospel wide and far 
 
 To every tribe and every nation! 
 For now there glows in Rose and Star, 
 
 The federated consummation! 
 
 "And God created man in His own image, in the 
 Image of God created He him, male and female." 
 
 "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom 
 ye were sealed unto the day of Redemption." 
 
 For neither Time nor Might dissolves 
 Identity that Life evolves. Tr. 
 "Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstuckelt 
 Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt." 
 
 — Goethe. 
 
 "Be of good cheer! I have overcome the World!" 
 
 "When the Comforter — the Paraclete — is come 
 whom I will send unto you from the Father, the 
 Spirit of Truth which proceedeth from the Father 
 shall bear witness of me." 
 
 See Genesis 1:26; 3:15; John, chapters 14, 15, 
 16; Ephesians 4:30; i Timothy 2:15; Revelation 
 12:1. 
 
140 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 PRAYER 
 III 
 
 The Mothe 
 
 Intercessor ! 
 
 Advocate ! Comforter ! Pleader ! 
 
 Paraclete ! 
 
 MARY! 
 MOTHER of CHRIST! 
 
 May the influence of Thy holy spirit 
 
 Evermore attend us! 
 
 Guard! strengthen! defend us! 
 
 Virgin Daughter of Joachim and Anne! 
 
 Divine Desire of Parenthood! 
 
 Chaste Bride of Joseph! 
 
 Full of the Grace of Wisdom ! 
 
 The LORD was with Thee ! 
 
 Temple of Purity! 
 
 Shrine of the HOLY GHOST! 
 
 Sanctifier and Giver of Life! 
 
 Blessed wert Thou among women! 
 
 And blest was the fruit of Thy pure mind! 
 
 The gift of God ! 
 
 The Heaven-born Child ! 
 
 JESUS! 
 
Or the Vital Urge 141 
 
 II 
 
 The Son 
 
 CHRIST! 
 
 Son of Man! Son of Mary! 
 
 Calvary's Innocent Victim! 
 
 Sion's Supreme Sacrifice! 
 
 Crucified that humankind might learn 
 
 The sin and sting of death! 
 
 Messiah ! 
 
 Incarnation of the Word! 
 
 Desire of Nations! 
 
 Savior ! 
 
 Redeemer of the World! 
 
 Prince of Peace! 
 
 SON of GOD! 
 
 Coequal with 
 
 I 
 
 The Father 
 
 OUR FATHER I 
 
 Who in Heaven art of Good the Spirit pure! 
 
 THY NAME be hallowed in each heart 
 
 While Life and Time endure! 
 
 THY WISDOM come! 
 
 THY WILL be done 
 
 On Earth as done in Heaven ! 
 
 THY BREAD— THE WORD OF LIFE— 
 
 Be given 
 
 To us. Forgive 
 
 Our sins, as those who sin 
 
 Against us, we forgive: 
 
 In temptation let us not, O GOD! be led astray! 
 
 From evil, LORD ! deliver us 
 
 NOW! 
 
 Henceforth and alway. 
 
142 The Cosmic Comedy 
 
 God 
 
 ONE! 
 
 Father ! Son ! 
 
 ONE! 
 
 HOLY GHOST! 
 
 In MIND! 
 
 In WILL! 
 
 In POWER! 
 
 JEHOVAH! 
 
 GOD of ISRAEL! 
 
 From Time's remotest hour! 
 
 THY TRIUNE glory we adore! 
 
 In UNITY for evermore, 
 
 AMEN! 
 
 HYMN 
 
 "Lead, Kindly Light!" 
 
 "Grace"— Tune— ''Austria" 
 
 Metre 8-7S. Haydn, 
 
 Glorious Light! to mortals given! 
 
 Spirit pure that breathes new birth! 
 Make our lives a blend with Heaven! 
 
 Christ! come down and dwell on earth 
 In the sacred troth unending, 
 
 Coeternal, Three in One ! 
 Good — the Holy Spirit — blending 
 
 Father-Mother in the Son. 
 
Or the Vital Urge 143 
 
 II 
 
 In the Bride and Bridegroom wedded, 
 
 See the Church of Christ appears! 
 Sin and death no more are dreaded, 
 
 Fled are pain and mortal fears! 
 Faith and Hope on Love depending 
 
 For the Life Immortal won; 
 Evermore our strains ascending, 
 
 Hymn "God's Will on earth is done!' 
 
 Ill 
 
 Generations swift succeeding 
 
 In the same recurrent strain, 
 To the Life Immortal leading, 
 
 Raise the Triune hymn again! 
 By the everliving merit 
 
 Of Christ crucified, our Lord ! 
 Father, Son and Holy Spirit] 
 
 Hail the Trinity adored! 
 
 IV 
 
 Anthem, chant and hymn ascending, 
 
 Rise to God's eternal throne. 
 Where the saints with joy unending, 
 
 Laud in Unity the Son, 
 Through the Holy Spirit, living 
 
 As JEHOVAH! GOD! our LORD! 
 Unto Whom in glad thanksgiving. 
 
 Let our praises be outpoured. 
 
 Albany, N. Y., i Feb., 1919. 
 
TO THE READERS OF THIS BOOK 
 
 If you believe in what is set forth in this book, 
 or if you desire that the question be threshed out, 
 is it not worth your while to tell others about it? 
 The Cause it stands for is the best of all causes. 
 You cannot help it along in any better way than 
 by helping to spread far and wide what Leonard 
 Stuart has said so well and forcefully as the mouth- 
 piece of the mighty fallen. 
 If you wish the cause of Universal MORAL 
 Education well, you will talk this book over 
 with your most able and sympathetic 
 friends. 
 
 THE READERS' DUTY 
 
 Truth spreads by testimony. There is a spirit 
 of hyperphysical compulsion, fate, supernal or di- 
 vine guidance, — call it what you will, — w^hich all 
 lofty minds recognize, to bear witness to the Truth 
 — wherever found. That is how the best books 
 get their circulation. A reader who has dug treas- 
 ures from a book spreads the news of his discovery 
 to others whom he desires to enrich. 
 If this book has aroused your curiosity, 
 interested you, pleased or helped you, talk 
 about it to the most appreciative persons 
 you know. 
 
 |H 
 
^\<p 
 
 * '*^ .■ 
 
 
 
 9^ 
 
 
 
 V^^ ' 
 
 . • «Js*s^.^'.. O 
 
 
 0^ c ^'J! " ♦ 
 
 
 
 v.^ 
 
 rs' /v 
 
 
^^°^ • 
 
 ^ ♦/'XT' A <r 'o.." .0^ "^ ^'TTs' ,<