XXXIX
“AMICUS REDIVIVUS”
Josephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might well be applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of us has not at some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,” a “qualis ab incepto,” as it were, permeating his whole being, and bringing vividly before the retina the transitory state of all things worldly? As Chaucer said:
For who so wolde senge the cattes skin,
Than wol the cat wel dwellen in here in.
For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.
It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,” said:
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
but how pat is the application to-day! We are as clouds. You who boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all remember those lambent lines of his—I cannot translate adequately, so I will quote from the original German: