There is a part of the divine essence unborn as yet into the world, unmanifest. And there is a part of it which men and gods have wrought into the manifest, each according to his nature and comprehension of his duty. From the highest to the lowest departments of human life this way of work is possible, to search out duty and do it.
But "duty" has here a very full meaning. The soul of the Beethoven searches, and is illumined by, the divine essence, whatever his name for it or thought of it. Then he renders it or manifests it for the world. The craftsman might search it as he designed a wall-paper; he who did so, who worked that he might manifest it for men, would find his invention grow ever richer and readier. The divine has no one kind of manifestation or inspiration. The mother might search it to learn the highest ways of conduct with her children, not even waiting for their birth; and their souls would in time show her what she had done for them. The gardener might thus work among his flowers and would find in them a new responsiveness. There is no one who has not some work which can be fruitfully done in this spirit of bringing forth for the world. This use of will in no metaphoric sense is the real magic. When all men and women work in this way the world will begin to be for the first time an expression of the divine plan, governed—through them and of their will and choice—by the divine. By that time work will have been raised to its highest terms and there will be modes of work as inconceivable to us now as the work of Beethoven to a savage. Each of us will have found his work—that is, will have found that aspect of the divine which he is uniquely constituted to deliver forth to the rest. No one can be spared. All will need all the others. All will stand unveiled as artists, creators, or showers-forth or thinkers-out of something good and necessary for the work of their fellows. We have ourselves made life dark and work monotonous, stifled the latent or nascent craftsman or thinker in ourselves and the others, and created forms of work that should never have been to do at all. Now we must live them through and be thankful that some few, the thinkers, the musicians, the poets, the artists, have in some sort broken through into a corner of their heritage and can serve us and lighten our lives and make the day nearer when we too can break through.
Here then is what we may mean by "real character." It is the veiled creator or shower-forth. No man is what he seems. He is waiting for his own nature, and the divine in nature is waiting for him, to give him the ray he alone can transmit. Neither Händel nor Beethoven could have given us the music of the other; and the music of both was made possible by every bit of divine-serving and divine-revealing work that was ever done since man began. That principle holds throughout, in small and great. The humblest work, if it have one ray of the divine put into it, helps the whole world for all time to come. And no work need lack that ray, no life need lack such work.
REVIEWS
"Life of Leonardo da Vinci"
by Professor Osvald Sirén
—
by Carolus
WE have just received another important work from the indefatigable and accomplished pen of Professor Osvald Sirén, PH. D., of the Stockholm University. It is a study of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work, a most complete and thorough monograph of 468 pages, magnificently illustrated by hundreds of full-page and smaller reproductions, the majority taken from Leonardo's pictures, sketches and diagrams; the rest are mostly from the works of other painters which throw light upon the special points discussed; there are also some pleasing views of places referred to. The first edition consists of 700 numbered copies, beautifully printed on thick paper, and is in all respects but one a perfect example of what such a book should be; the one thing lacking is an index to the subject-matter and illustrations. This can easily be remedied in the next edition, for there is no doubt that another will immediately be called for, as the work will be invaluable to all lovers of art who wish to read the latest and most complete analysis of Leonardo's career and to learn the results of the most recent research. This edition is, of course, written in Swedish, but we understand that in response to the demand, it will soon appear in other languages, and so be made accessible to a much larger public. Dr. Sirén has spent a long time in Italy and elsewhere studying everything connected with Leonardo and his contemporaries, and this volume is largely the result of his original researches. It has been very favorably received by the most competent Swedish critics.
The monograph is founded upon a series of lectures lately given in the University of Stockholm (in which Dr. Sirén occupies the chair of Art-history) and it has been the author's aim to show the great master as he appears in his works and writings, with as little of the "personal equation" of the writer visible as possible—to make Leonardo tell his own story—but at the same time, one cannot help feeling and approving of the warm glow of appreciation which inspires every word Dr. Sirén writes about his hero. His admiration for the master seems to have influenced his style, for there is a greater simplicity and clearness, and a more easy flow of words and sentences than we have observed in previous works from his able pen.