Of Cæsar’s hand and Plato’s brain,
Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakspeare’s strain.
In the spirit of the same philosophy, Angelus Silesius hints at the possibility of such an empire. He reminds his readers that there is no greatness which makes the glory of the past that may not be realized by themselves in the present. Thus he asks—
Dost prize alone King Solomon as wisest of the wise?
Thou also canst be Solomon, and all his wisdom thine.[[191]]
But what is only potential with him is claimed as actual by mystical brethren bolder yet than he.
The first endeavour of the Sufi (as of so many Christian mystics) is to achieve that simplifying, purifying process which shall remove from the mind everything earthly and human—all its creaturely accidents, and reduce it to that abstract essence which mirrors Deity, and is itself ultimately divine. An apologue in the Mesnevi of Jelaleddin Rumi (a Sufi poet who wrote in the first half of our thirteenth century) teaches this doctrine quite in the oriental manner.
The Greeks and the Chinese dispute before a certain sultan as to which of the two nations is the more skilful in the art of decoration. The sultan assigns to the rival painters two structures, facing each other, on which they shall exercise their best ability, and determine the question of precedence by the issue:—
The Chinese ask him for a thousand colours,
All that they ask he gives right royally;