The Poet's Sacrifice.—The teacher continued: "This man's destiny reminds me of the Indian drama, Urvasi. A penitent who withdraws to solitude in order to purify his soul by renunciation, may finally attain such lofty spiritual heights that his power may become dangerous to the lower deities. In order to hinder such a penitent in his spiritual development, the god Indra sent an Apsara, a sort of celestial courtesan, in order to distract and seduce him.
"Does not that resemble the case which I mentioned just now? How can the one who has been seduced feel guilty in such a case, or have the right to repent a wrong he did not do? Now a poet is something different to a recluse, and in order to be able to describe life in all its aspects and dangers he must first have lived it. What sort of a poet would Shakespeare have been if he had lived as a steady young fellow, continued in his father's honourable profession, and in leisure hours written about his little affairs? Although one does not know much about the great Englishman, one sees from his works what a stormy life he must have led. There is hardly a misfortune which he has not experienced, hardly a passion which he has not felt. Hate and love, revenge and lust, murder and fire, all seem to have come within the circle of his experience as a poet. A real poet must sacrifice his person for his work. I can conceive of a symbolical monument to Shakespeare under the figure of Hercules kindling his own pyre on Mount Oeta, sacrificing his opulent life as an offering for mankind. That is a good idea, is it not?"
The pupil answered: "Truly you have the power of binding and loosing; now you have loosed me."
The Function of the Philistines.—The teacher said: "Israel had some unpleasant neighbours called Philistines, who guarded the coast-line along the sea. They worshipped weird gods, such as Dagon the Fish-god, Beelzebub the Lord of Dung, and Astarte. But unpleasant though they were, they seemed to have had a part to play in the life of Israel. As soon as the chosen people abandoned the temple, the Philistines came and closed the sanctuary, set the Lord of Dung upon the altar, and burned incense before the Fish-god. As often as the children of Israel quarrelled among themselves, the Philistines advanced irresistibly. The hand of the Lord was with them, so that they punished and chastised their enemies. Once they took possession of the Ark of the Covenant.
"We have our Philistines on the Bosphorus; they are called Turks. When the Christians were unfaithful to their Lord, the Turk took possession of Christ's grave, and St. Sophia became a mosque. Whenever the Christians fought with each other, the Turk appeared. After the Thirty Years' War, when the Christians had tom each other like bloodhounds, the Turk came as far as Vienna, and the Crescent surmounted the Cross in Hungary."
The pupil asked: "Why do not the great powers recapture the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of St. Sophia? They could do it in a moment!"
"I do not know. Perhaps they cannot. We need our Philistine, the bogie-man with whom one frightens children. In France the churches were shut by the pagans when people ceased to attend Mass. Now they set up the Lord of Dung on the altar. Marat, in his time, was buried in the Pantheon; but when Christ reentered, Marat was thrown into the sewer. The last to obtain apotheosis in the Pantheon was an engineer, who had a single merit—that of being murdered by a friend of freedom. When we become Christians again, we shall receive back both the Holy Sepulchre and Santa Sophia. We do not need to take them. Such is the great function of the Philistines in the spiritual economy of nature."
World-Religion.—The teacher continued: "Goethe wrote in his youth a treatise maintaining that the religion imposed by the State was the most favourable for the maintenance of the State."
The pupil objected: "But how will it fare with the individual conscience?"
"As it has done hitherto. The State determines the views of the individual in geometry, botany, history, and religion, by instruction in the schools, by religious services in the colleges, and prayers in camps and barracks."