The providing of food, money, and amusement belongs, truly, to the servant class.
The providing of life belongs to the aristocrat. If a man, whether by thought or action, makes life, he is an aristocrat. So Cæsar and Cicero are both strictly aristocrats. Lacking these two, the first century B.C. would have been far less vital, less vividly alive. And Antony, who seemed so much more vital, robust and robustious, was, when we look at it, comparatively unimportant. Cæsar and Cicero lit the flame.
How? It is easier asked than answered.
But one thing they did, whatever else: they put men into a new relation with the universe. Cæsar opened Gaul, Germany and Britain, and let the gleam of ice and snow, the shagginess of the north, the mystery of the menhir and the mistletoe in upon the rather stuffy soul of Rome, and of the Orient. And Cicero was discovering the moral nature of man, as citizen chiefly, and so putting man in new relation to man.
But Cæsar was greater than Cicero. He put man in new relation to ice and sun.
Only Cæsar was, perhaps, also too much an egoist; he never knew the mysteries he moved amongst. But Cæsar was great beyond morality.
Man’s life consists in a connection with all things in the universe. Whoever can establish, or initiate a new connection between mankind and the circumambient universe is, in his own degree, a saviour. Because mankind is always exhausting its human possibilities, always degenerating into repetition, torpor, ennui, lifelessness. When ennui sets in, it is a sign that human vitality is waning, and the human connection with the universe is gone stale.
Then he who comes to make a new revelation, a new connection, whether he be soldier, statesman, poet, philosopher, artist, he is a saviour.
When George Stephenson invented the locomotive engine, he provided a means of communication, but he didn’t alter in the slightest man’s vital relation to the universe. But Galileo and Newton, discoverers, not inventors, they made a big difference. And the energy released in mankind because of them was enormous. The same is true of Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. The same is true of Voltaire, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Rousseau. They established a new connection between mankind and the universe, and the result was a vast release of energy. The sun was reborn to man, so was the moon.
To man, the very sun goes stale, becomes a habit. Comes a saviour, a seer, and the very sun dances new in heaven.