Chapter 9
"But for what should he call? For Pagan? For Christian? For neither, and for both. Paganism speaks for the men in Man, Christianity for the Man in men. The fruit that was eaten in Paradise, sown in the soul of man, bore in Hellas its first and fairest harvest. There rose upon the world of mind the triple sun of the Ideal. Aphrodite, born of the foam, flowered on the azure main, Tritons in her train and Nereids, under the flush of dawn. Apollo, radiant in hoary dew, leapt from the eastern wave, flamed through the heaven, and cooled his hissing wheels in the vaporous west. Athene, sprung from the brain of God, armed with the spear of truth, moved grey-eyed over the earth probing the minds of men. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, behold the Pagan Trinity! Through whose grace only men are men, and fit to become Man. Therefore, the gods are eternal; not they die, but we, when we think them dead. And no man who does not know them, and knowing, worship and love, is able to be a member of the body of Man. Thus it is that the sign of a step forward is a look backward; and Greece stands eternally at the threshold of the new life. Forget her, and you sink back, if not to the brute, to the insect. Consider the ant, and beware of her! She is there for a warning. In universal Anthood there are no ants. From that fate may men save Man!
"But the Pagan gods were pitiless; they preyed upon the weak. Their wisdom was rooted in folly, their beauty in squalor, their love in oppression. So fostered, those flowers decayed. And out of the rotting soil rose the strange new blossoms we call Faith, and Hope, and Charity. For Folly cried, 'I know not, but I believe'; Squalor, 'I am vile, but I hope'; and the oppressed, 'I am despised, but I love.' That was the Christian Trinity, the echo of man's frustration, as the other was the echo of his accomplishment. Yet both he needs. For because he grows, he is dogged by imperfection. His weakness is mocked by those shining forms on the mountain-top. But Faith, and Hope, and Charity walk beside him in the mire, to kindle, to comfort and to help. And of them justice is born, the plea of the Many against the Few, of the nation against the class, of mankind against the nation, of the future against the present. In Christianity men were born into Man. Yet in Him let not men die! For what profits justice unless it be the step to the throne of Olympus? What profit Faith and Hope without a goal? Charity without an object? Vain is the love of emmets, or of bees and coral-insects. For the worth of love is as the worth of the lover. It is only in the soil of Paganism that Christianity can come to maturity. And Faith, Hope, Charity, are but seeds of themselves till they fall into the womb of Wisdom, Beauty, and Love. Olympus lies before us, the snow-capped mountain. Let us climb it, together, if you will, not some on the corpses of the rest; but climb at least, not fester and swarm on rich meadows of equality. We are not for the valley, nor for the forests or the pastures. If we be brothers, yet we are brothers in a quest, needing our foremost to lead. Aphrodite, Apollo, Athene, are before us, not behind. Majestic forms, they gleam among the snows. March, then, men in Man!
"But is it men who attain? Or Man? Or not even he, but God? We do not know. We know only the impulse and the call. The gleam on the snow, the upward path, the urgent stress within, that is our certainty, the rest is doubt. But doubt is a horizon, and on it hangs the star of hope. By that we live; and the science blinds, the renunciation maims, that would shut us off from those silver rays. Our eyes must open, as we march, to every signal from the height. And since the soul has indeed 'immortal longings in her' we may believe them prophetic of their fruition. For her claims are august as those of man, and appeal to the same witness. The witness of either is a dream; but such dreams come from the gate of horn. They are principles of life, and about them crystallizes the universe. For will is more than knowledge, since will creates what knowledge records. Science hangs in a void of nescience, a planet turning in the dark. But across that void Faith builds the road that leads to Olympus and the eternal gods."
By the time he had finished speaking the sun had risen, and the glamour of dawn was passing into the light of common day. The birds sang loud, the fountain sparkled, and the trees rustled softly in the early breeze. Our party broke up quietly. Some went away to bed; others strolled down the gardens; and Audubon went off by appointment to bathe with my young nephew, as gay and happy, it would seem, as man could be. I was left to pace the terrace alone, watching the day grow brighter, and wondering at the divers fates of men. An early bell rang in the little church at the park-gate; a motor-car hooted along the highway. And I thought of Cantilupe and Harington, of Allison and Wilson, and beyond them of the vision of the dawn and the daybreak, of Woodman, the soul, and Vivian, the spirit. I paused for a last look down the line of bright statues that bordered the long walk below me. I fancied them stretching away to the foot of Olympus; and without elation or excitement, but with the calm of an assured hope, I prepared to begin the new day.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
AFTER TWO THOUSAND YEARS PLATO AND HIS DIALOGUES THE MEANING OF GOOD JUSTICE AND LIBERTY A POLITICAL DIALOGUE RELIGION AND IMMORTALITY RELIGION: A CRITICISM AND A FORECAST THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE LETTERS FROM JOHN CHINAMAN APPEARANCES: BEING NOTES ON TRAVEL AN ESSAY ON THE CIVILIZATIONS OF INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN CONTRIBUTION OF ANCIENT GREECE TO MODERN LIFE THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY, 1904-1914 EVOLUTION IN RE-ACTION IN MODERN FRANCE 1789-1871 THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY WAR: ITS NATURE, CAUSE AND CUBE CAUSES OF INTERNATIONAL WAR THE CHOICE BEFORE US DOCUMENTS AND STATEMENTS RELATING TO PEACE PROPOSALS AND WAR AIMS, DECEMBER 1916-1918
ETC.
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End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Symposium, by G. Lowes Dickinson