When turning from contemplation we throw ourselves into the work and the battle, a pulse of divine energy blends with our noblest effort, touches our joy with an ineffable sweetness, and hushes our sorrow like a child folded in its mother's arms.
The key of the world is given into our hands when we throw ourselves unreservedly into the service of the highest truth we know, "with fidelity to the right as God gives us to see the right." So it is that we may find ourselves
"Wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion."
III
A TRAVELER'S NOTE-BOOK
A tourist who roams for a brief while through some great country like England or Russia may jot down a few of the impressions which come home to him, making no pretense at completeness or symmetry of description. So, one who has journeyed like a hasty traveler over some passages in that vast tract of years which we describe as the classic and Christian civilizations, notes down in the following pages a few of the salient features that have impressed him. He has already prefaced this with a sort of outline map, drawn largely from familiar authorities, under the title "Our Spiritual Ancestry;" and has further ventured to interpret some phases of our own time, as "The Ideal of To-Day." Now he goes on to group a few observations on some special phases of the historical survey, disclaiming any attempt at exact proportion and perspective, but lingering where the prospect has pleased his fancy, or at points which seemed to yield some necessary clew or fruitful suggestion.
When, in the poems bearing the name of Homer, the curtain rises on the drama of man as it was acted in Greece, after the immeasurable prehistoric space, we are amazed at the sudden brilliance. The men and deeds brought before us are various in character and worth,—savage, heroic, repulsive, beautiful, by turns. But the ever-present charm is man seeing the world about him. It is the vividness with which every object is seen in its distinctive form and spirit, and conveyed by the fit word and phrase. So seen and spoken, the commonest object becomes a thing of delight. The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes,—the tawny oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars,—the wine-dark sea, the rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning,—Hector of the nodding plume, the white-armed Nausicaa,—so in long procession moves the spectacle. A like distinctness invests all the actions and emotions of the story with charm. To us, as to the poet, the world becomes enchanted simply in being seen.
And presently we discover a strange transfiguration that is being wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one another. The Odyssey depicts a long strife with hardship and danger. The men who heard those songs were themselves familiar with the fight, with the wounds and terrors mixed with its energies and elations; they had tasted the perils of shipwreck and of pirates. But as they listened, the rehearsal of trials the counterpart of their own filled them with exhilaration. We who read in modern days, if less experienced in bloodshed and bodily peril, yet in some fashion have had our share of battle and storm; and we, too, like the first listeners, drink in the tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a later stage we may perhaps in a degree analyze the change of view; we may partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is strengthened and ennobled; how in such strife courage and sympathy and tenderness are engendered. But long before we can thus philosophize, and to a degree which our philosophy can hardly explain, we are affected by this beauty and elevation imparted to the spectacle of human life by the true poets.
We moderns read Homer with delight in the roll of the music, the vividness of the pictures, the humanity so near us in its essence and so unlike in its dress. When we inquire what are the moral ideals, we are often uncertain how far the impressions made on us may differ from those of the original audience, or the intention of the singer. But often his work is like the painting of great Nature herself. We pass upon it as we pass upon the facts of life.
The supernal features in the story are not here discussed. The deities, judged by our standards, have little of divinity. Beyond the grave lies a dim and dreamy realm. All this, with its great significance, we here omit, to linger a little on the essential and permanent humanity.