Gospel of Mammonism
Reader, even Christian Reader as thy title goes, hast thou any
notion of Heaven and Hell? I rather apprehend, not. Often as
the words are on our tongue, they have got a fabulous or
semifabulous character for most of us, and pass on like a kind of
transient similitude, like a sound signifying little.
Yet it is well worth while for us to know, once and always, that
they are not a similitude, nor a fable nor semi-fable; that they
are an everlasting highest fact! "No Lake of Sicilian or other
sulphur burns now anywhere in these ages," sayest thou? Well, and if there did not! Believe that there does not; believe it if thou wilt, nay hold by it as a real increase, a rise to higher stages, to wider horizons and empires. All this has vanished, or has not vanished; believe as thou wilt as to all this. But that an Infinite of Practical Importance, speaking with strict arithmetical exactness, an _Infinite,_ has vanished or can vanish from the Life of any Man: this thou shalt not believe! O brother, the Infinite of Terror, of Hope, of Pity, did it not at any moment disclose itself to thee, indubitable, unnameable? Came it never, like the gleam of preternatural eternal Oceans, like the voice of old Eternities, far-sounding through thy heart of hearts? Never? Alas, it was not thy Liberalism then; it was thy Animalism! The Infinite is more sure than any other fact. But only men can discern it; mere building beavers, spinning arachnes, much more the predatory vulturous and vulpine species, do not discern it well!--
'The word Hell,' says Sauerteig, 'is still frequently in use
among the English People: but I could not without difficulty
ascertain what they meant by it. Hell generally signifies the
Infinite Terror, the thing a man is infinitely afraid of, and
shudders and shrinks from, struggling with his whole soul to
escape from it. There is a Hell therefore, if you will consider, which accompanies man, in all stages of his history, and religious or other development: but the Hells of men and Peoples differ notably. With Christians it is the infinite terror of being found guilty before the just Judge. With old Romans, I conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom probably they cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing unvirtuously, which was their word for un_man_fully. And now what is it, if you pierce through his Cants, his oft-repeated Hearsays, what he calls his Worships and so forth,--what is it that the modern English soul does, in very truth, dread infinitely, and contemplate with entire despair? What is his Hell; after all these reputable, oft-repeated Hearsays, what is it? With hesitation, with astonishment, I pronounce it to be: The terror of "Not succeeding;" of not making money, fame, or some other figure in the world,--chiefly of not making money! Is not that a somewhat singular Hell?
Yes, O Sauerteig, it is very singular. If we do not 'succeed,'
where is the use of us? We had better never have been born. "Tremble intensely," as our friend the Emperor of China says: _there_ is the black Bottomless of Terror; what Sauerteig calls the 'Hell of the English!'--But indeed this Hell belongs naturally to the Gospel of Mammonism, which also has its corresponding Heaven. For there is one Reality among so many Phantasms; about one thing we are entirely in earnest: The making of money. Working Mammonism does divide the world with idle game-preserving Dilettantism:--thank Heaven that there is even a Mammonism, anything we are in earnest about! Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money.