Tho’ filling more fully than the water did;
though holding
Thrice the weight of water in itself. (ll. 106-107.)
is yet accounted a negligible quantity, and the sphere is pronounced empty. Of the deeper, more subtle, thoughts and workings of the soul in Cleon and his fellows, the outcome of the labours of humanity in past generations, thoughts too deep for expression, ideas only destined to bear fruit in the years to come; of all these, and such as these, the contemporary world takes little heed. To the gods alone Cleon would refer for his appreciation. With David he would exclaim:
’Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do![21]
With Ben Ezra he would triumph
All, the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:
········
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped:
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me;
(“ignored” because incapable of the understanding essential to appreciation);
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.[22]
For Cleon, equally with the Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, accepts the entire subserviency of man to his creator. Both alike recognize the value of life, human life; its unity, its perfection in itself: both alike realize that this life means growth. “Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?” asks the Greek. “It was better,” writes the Jew as age approaches,