The Maccabaean

RAPHAEL ERBEN drew a deep breath of relief when the door closed on the last garrulous member of the family group. He longed to be alone with his thoughts, to drop the masque which conventionality compelled him to wear when in the midst of those who could not or would not follow the trend of his reasoning. There was a time when Raphael Erben did not mind being “misunderstood”; indeed, he took a certain delight in posing as the superior member of the family—the martyr to idealism, who swallowed the sneers of relatives with the resignation of a true hero.

But in the past few years Raphael Erben had grown tired of his martyr’s role, and, in order to meet the cynics on a common ground, he had become a cynic himself. But this cynicism only formed the outer crust to the inner ingredients of his being, which was composed of contradictory elements. Within him the boldest scepticism vied with the simplest faith. materialism grappled for ascendancy over an innate leaning toward idealism; the romantic dwelled side by side with the practical, and solemn Hebraism crossed swords with aesthetic Hellenism. A lover of the Psalms of David, and a disciple of Nietzsche—such a man was Raphael Erben. In him the “subjective mind” was developed to an extraordinary degree, so that the life of soul or, in other words, the inner consciousness, was more real to him than the life of the body, that is, the material existence. It cost him no little mental pain before he succeeded in balancing the contending forces of his manifold personality. How little the material world is conscious of the fierce and furious battles which the thinking man wages with himself; how meagre the credit received: for the signal victories won.

But all this is not to the point. Our aim was to analyze the psychology of Raphael Erben, and we have arrived at the stage where he succeeded in appeasing within himself the

opposing elements. He was now no longer anxftous to be misunderstood, on the contrary, he avoided it as far as possible, dreading when among strangers lest his superiority crop out in an unguarded moment. It was far more convenient to merge one’s self in the passing crowd and remain unnoticed than to hold aloof and have every passerby point his finger at one with accompanying mysterious whispers. It was his anxiety to appear normal that taught Raphael Erben to wear a masque everywhere except in the privacy of his own study and on rare occasions, in the presence of the few friends who shared his ideals, even though they did not wholly understand the subtlety of his peculiar reasoning. Both Raphael Erben and his friends pursued the same ideals, but while the latter regarded their ideals as something apart from themselves, something to aspire to, something to reach out for, to the former their ideals were part and parcel of himself, or rather his real and predominant self. Raphael Erben did not merely philosophize on suffering—he suffered; Whatever he felt, or thought, or wanted—it was so thoroughly felt and thought and wanted that his whole being was affected with the stress of the absorbing idea, leaving room for nothing else. The fact that his ideals were mere vapory, airy fancies that could not be clothed in the garb of reality, did not at first disturb him; what did he, philosopher and disciple of Nietzsche, care for the visible commonplaces. He, the “Uebermensch,” scorned to look at that which constituted ordinary existence—he looked beyond the present, beyond reality, towards that subtle state of “Uebermenschheit” which one only arrives at after indefatigable mental exertion and the subtlest reasoning.

To-night it all came back to him. In the quiet of his room, his entire past life unfolded itself before him and he could not resist the temptation of making an inventory of the dif-