{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_36912/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_36912","id":"gutenberg_36912","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36912","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Essays","Mysticism","Spirituality"],"text":"</pre>\n\n\n\nProduced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Orpheus Series                              No. 1\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nHERO IN MAN\n\n\nBY\n\nA. E.\n\n[Transcriber's note: \"A.E.\" is a pseudonym of George William Russell]\n\n\n\n\nThe Orpheus Press, 1910\n\n\n\n\nFirst Edition (1,000 copies), May, 1909.\n\nSecond Edition (1,000 copies), September, 1910.\n\n\n\n\nPRELUDE.\n\n[Greek: _lampadia echontes diadosousin allelois_.]--PLATO.\n\n\nWe who live in the great cities could not altogether avoid, even if we\nwould, a certain association with the interests of our time.  Wherever\nwe go the minds of men are feverishly debating some new political\nmeasure or some new scheme for the reconstruction of society.  Now, as\nin olden times, the rumours of an impending war will engulf the subtler\ninterests of men, and unless we are willing to forego all intercourse\nwe find ourselves involved in a hundred sympathies.  A friendly group\nwill gather one evening and open their thoughts concerning the\nexperiences of the soul; they will often declare that only these\nmatters are of profound interest, and yet on the morrow the most of\nthem regard the enthusiasms of the mind as far away, unpractical, not\nof immediate account.  But even at noon the stars are above us and\nbecause a man in material difficulties cannot evoke the highest\nexperiences that he has known they have not become less real.  They\npertain to his immortal nature and if in the circumstance of life he\nloses memory of them it is because he is likewise mortal.  In the\nmeasure that we develop our interior selves philosophy becomes the most\npermanent of our interests and it may well be that the whole aim of Man\nis to acquire an unbroken and ever-broadening realisation of the\nSupreme Spirit so that in a far-off day he may become the master of all\nimaginable conditions.  He, therefore, who brings us back to our\ncentral selves and shows us that however far we may wander it is these\nhigh thoughts which are truly the most real--he is of all men our\ngreatest benefactor.\n\nNow those who thus care for the spiritual aspect of life are of two\nkinds,--the intellectual and the imaginative.  There are men of keen\nintellect who comprehend some philosophic system, who will defend it\nwith elaborate reasonings and proclaim themselves its adherents, but\nthe earth at their feet, the stars in the firmament, man himself and\ntheir own souls have undergone no transfiguration.  Their philosophies\nare lifeless, for imagination is to the intellect what breath is to the\nbody.  Thoughts that never glow with imagination, that are never\napplied to all that the sense perceives or the mind remembers--thoughts\nthat remain quite abstract, are as empty husks of no value.\n\nBut there are those who have studied by the light of imagination and\nthese know well that the inner life of thought, of experiment, and of\nwonder, though it may often be over-clouded, is the only life which can\nhenceforth give them content.  They know that it was not when they were\nmost immersed in the affairs of the day but rather when the whole world\nappeared for a little while to be pulsating with an almost\nuncontainable splendour, that they were most alive.  For the best mood\nwe have ever known, though it be lost for long, is yet the clearest\nrevelation of our true selves, and it is then that we learn most nearly\nwhat marvels life may hold.\n\nIf we read with imagination the Dialogues of Plato we dwell for a while\namong those ardent Greeks for whom the universe was changed by the\nwords of the poet-philosopher.  So too when we read the letter that was\nwritten by Plotinus to Flaccus, perhaps the serenest height the human\nsoul has ever attained, we become ourselves the recipients.  In either\ncase we feel that we have lived in the presence of a princely soul.  It\nis an inspiration to realise that we are of the one race with these and\nmay look out on the same beauty of earth and heaven.\n\nYet the magic of the mind is not enduring and to dream overlong of a\nbygone beauty is to make sorrowful the present.  What imaginative\nreader of Plato but has desired with a fruitless ardour that he might\nin truth have been numbered with those who walked on the daisied lawns\nof the Academy, might in truth have heard the voice of the hardly human\ninitiate, have seen him face to face, have responded to the influence\nof his presence? who but would willingly translate his life to another\ncentury if he could but hear Plotinus endeavouring to describe in human\nlanguage an ecstasy which makes of man a god?\n\nI know that one may easily injure whatever one most loves by speaking\nof it in superlative praise to those who as yet remain aloof with\ninterest unaroused, but for me it is hard to refrain from an expression\nof that admiration, and I would fain say also that affection, which\nburns up within me when I read the writings of A.E.  For they cause me\nto think of him as one of those rare spirits who bring to men the\nrealisation of their own divinity, who make the spiritual life seem\nadventurous, attractive, and vivid, so that we go forth into the world\nwith a new interest and a new joy at heart.  That, as I have sought to\nshow in the opening of this note, is the greatest of all things that\nanyone can do.  The life of such a man makes beautiful the generation\nwith which it coincides.  If we penetrate the human words and inhabit,\nso far as we are able, the mood which was passing in the soul as it\nshaped them, we may learn from the reveries that are here reprinted how\nto the mystic of this material age the world remains equally wonderful\nand human life equally holy as either seemed in the far-off days when\nbeauty was more greatly desired.  For of deeper value at all times than\nany particular thought is the pervading mood.  Perhaps the reader will\nremember here the following passage by Robert Louis Stevenson:--\"Such\nare the best teachers; a dogma learned is only a new error--the old one\nwas perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual\npossession.  These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of\nart; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they\ncommunicate.\"  To read the essays that follow, or the three volumes of\npoetry that A.E. has published, is to recognise one who has endeavoured\nalways to communicate the \"best in himself,\" and the mood which they\ninduce is a mood from which we may see the world once more in its\nprimal beauty, may recover a sense of the long-forgotten but\ninextinguishable grandeur of the soul.\n\nCLIFFORD BAX.\n\n_April_, 1909.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HERO IN MAN.\n\nI.\n\nThere sometimes comes on us a mood of strange reverence for people and\nthings which in less contemplative hours we hold to be unworthy; and in\nsuch moments we may set side by side the head of Christ and the head of\nan outcast, and there is an equal radiance around each, which makes of\nthe darker face a shadow and is itself a shadow around the head of\nlight.  We feel a fundamental unity of purpose in their presence here,\nand would as willingly pay homage to the one who has fallen as to him\nwho has become a master of life.  I know that immemorial order decrees\nthat the laurel and the crown be given only to the victor, but in those\nmoments I speak of a profound intuition changes the decree and sets the\naureole on both alike.\n\nWe feel such deep pity for the fallen that there must needs be a\njustice in it, for these diviner feelings are wise in themselves and do\nnot vaguely arise.  They are lights from the Father.  A justice lies in\nuttermost pity and forgiveness, even when we seem to ourselves to be\nmost deeply wronged; or why is it that the awakening of resentment or\nhate brings such swift contrition?  We are ever self-condemned; and the\ndark thought which went forth in us brooding revenge, when suddenly\nsmitten by the light, withdraws and hides within itself in awful\npenitence.  In asking myself why it is that the meanest are safe from\nour condemnation when we sit on the true seat of judgment in the heart,\nit seemed to me that their shield was the sense we have of a nobility\nhidden in them under the cover of ignoble things; that their present\ndarkness was the result of some too weighty heroic labour undertaken\nlong ago by the human spirit; that it was the consecration of past\npurpose which played with such a tender light about their ruined lives,\nand it was more pathetic because this nobleness was all unknown to the\nfallen and the heroic cause of so much pain was forgotten in life's\nprison-house.\n\nWhile feeling the service to us of the great ethical ideals which have\nbeen formulated by men, I think that the idea of justice intellectually\nconceived tends to beget a certain hardness of the heart.  It is true\nthat men have done wrong--hence their pain: but back of all this there\nis something infinitely soothing, a light which does not wound, which\nsays no harsh thing, even although the darkest of spirits turns to it\nin its agony, for the darkest of human spirits has still around him\nthis first glory which shines from a deeper being within, whose history\nmay be told as the legend of the Hero in Man.\n\nAmong the many immortals with whom ancient myth peopled the spiritual\nsphere of humanity are some figures which draw to themselves a more\nprofound tenderness than the rest.  Not Aphrodite rising in beauty from\nthe faery foam of the first seas, not Apollo with sweetest singing,\nlaughter, and youth, not the wielder of the lightning, could exact the\nreverence accorded to the lonely Titan chained on the mountain, or to\nthat bowed figure heavy with the burden of the sins of the world; for\nthe brighter divinities had no part in the labour of man, no such\nintimate relation with the wherefore of his own existence so full of\nstruggle.  The more radiant figures are prophecies to him of his\ndestiny, but the Titan and the Christ are a revelation of his more\nimmediate state; their giant sorrows companion his own, and in\ncontemplating them he awakens what is noblest in his own nature; or, in\nother words, in understanding their divine heroism he understands\nhimself.  For this in truth it seems to me to mean: all knowledge is a\nrevelation of the self to the self, and our deepest comprehension of\nthe seemingly apart divine is also our furthest inroad to\nself-knowledge; Prometheus, Christ, are in every heart; the story of\none is the story of all; the Titan and the Crucified are humanity.\n\nIf, then, we consider them as representing the human spirit and\ndisentangle from the myths their meaning, we shall find that whatever\nreverence is due to that heroic love which descended from heaven for\nthe redeeming of a lower nature, must be paid to every human being.\nChrist is incarnate in all humanity.  Prometheus is bound for ever\nwithin us.  They are the same.  They are a host, and the divine\nincarnation was not spoken of one, but of all those who descending into\nthe lower world tried to change it into the divine image and to wrest\nout of chaos a kingdom for the empire of light.  The angels saw below\nthem in chaos a senseless rout blind with elemental passion for ever\nwarring with discordant cries which broke in upon the world of divine\nbeauty; and that the pain might depart, they grew rebellious in the\nMaster's peace, and descending to earth the angelic lights were\ncrucified in men; leaving so radiant worlds, such a light of beauty,\nfor earth's grey twilight filled with tears, that through this\nelemental life might breathe the starry music brought from Him.  If the\n\"Foreseer\" be a true name for the Titan, it follows that in the host\nwhich he represents was a light which well foreknew all the dark paths\nof its journey; foreseeing the bitter struggle with a hostile nature,\nbut foreseeing perhaps a gain, a distant glory o'er the hills of\nsorrow, and that chaos, divine and transformed, with only gentle\nbreathing, lit up by the Christ-soul of the universe.  There is a\ntransforming power in the thought itself: we can no longer condemn the\nfallen, they who laid aside their thrones of ancient power, their\nspirit ecstasy and beauty, on such a mission.  Perhaps those who sank\nlowest did so to raise a greater burden, and of these most fallen it\nmay in the hour of their resurrection be said, \"The last shall be\nfirst.\"\n\nSo, placing side by side the head of the outcast with the head of\nChrist, it has this equal beauty--with as bright a glory it sped from\nthe Father in ages past on its redeeming labour.  Of his present\ndarkness what shall we say?  \"He is altogether dead in sin?\"  Nay,\nrather with tenderness forbear, and think that the foreseeing spirit\nhas taken its own dread path to mastery; that that which foresaw the\nsorrow foresaw also beyond it a greater joy and a mightier existence,\nwhen it would rise again in a new robe, woven out of the treasure\nhidden in the deep of its submergence, and shine at last like the stars\nof the morning triumphant among the Sons of God.\n\n\nII.\n\nOur deepest life is when we are alone.  We think most truly, love best,\nwhen isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we call soul.\nNothing external can equal the fulness of these moments.  We may sit in\nthe blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by the hearth, half\nwhispering, or in a silence populous with loving thoughts mutually\nunderstood; then we may feel happy and at peace, but it is only because\nwe are lulled by a semblance to deeper intimacies.  When we think of a\nfriend, and the loved one draws nigh, we sometimes feel half-pained,\nfor we touched something in our solitude which the living presence shut\nout; we seem more apart, and would fain wave them away and cry, \"Call\nme not forth from this; I am no more a spirit if I leave my throne.\"\nBut these moods, though lit up by intuitions of the true, are too\npartial, they belong too much to the twilight of the heart, they have\ntoo dreamy a temper to serve us well in life.  We should wish rather\nfor our thoughts a directness such as belongs to the messengers of the\ngods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences bent on purposes well\nunderstood.\n\nWhat we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated into\nseership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love shall see\nclearly its way and hope.  To this end we have to observe more intently\nthe nature of the interior life.  We find, indeed, that it is not a\nsolitude at all, but dense with multitudinous being: instead of being\nalone we are in the thronged highways of existence.  For our guidance\nwhen entering here many words of warning have been uttered, laws have\nbeen outlined, and beings full of wonder, terror, and beauty described.\nYet there is a spirit in us deeper than our intellectual being which I\nthink of as the Hero in man, who feels the nobility of its place in the\nmidst of all this, and who would fain equal the greatness of perception\nwith deeds as great.  The weariness and sense of futility which often\nfalls upon the mystic after much thought is due to this, that he has\nnot recognised that he must be worker as well as seer, that here he has\nduties demanding a more sustained endurance just as the inner life is\nso much vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind.\n\nNow the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those\nwhich it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied\nbeing.  What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world: how\nanswer the dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes that\nlaugh?  It is the saddest of all sorrows to think that pity with no\nhands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly\nheap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure.  But there is a\ntruth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless.\nThere are fewer barriers than we think: there is, in truth, an inner\nalliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is in\nneed.  Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all our\nthoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the\nmagical elixirs love distils is wasted.  Let us consider how this may\nbe.  There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in.  We weave little\nstories in our minds, expending love and pity upon the imaginary beings\nwe have created, and I have been led to think that many of these are\nnot imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are living just in\nthat way, and we merely reform and live over again in our life the\nstory of another life.  Sometimes these faraway intimates assume so\nvivid a shape, they come so near with their appeal for sympathy that\nthe pictures are unforgettable; and the more I ponder over them the\nmore it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of some soul\nwhose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to meet with\nan answer, perhaps to hear only silence.  I will supply an instance.  I\nsee a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the doorstep\nof a house.  It is an alley in some great city, and there is a gloom of\nevening and vapour over the sky.  I see the child is bending over the\npath; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and as I ponder, I\nbecome aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a\nhouse, the mansion of his dream.  Here spread along the pavement are\nlarge rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that\nis his own.  So his thought plays.  Just then I catch a glimpse of the\ncorduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes\nthrough the cinders.  I feel the pain in the child's heart as he\nshrinks back, his little love-lit house of dreams all rudely shattered.\nAh, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, yet\nnigher, truer in intent than many a stately, gold-rich palace reared by\nprinces, thou wert not forgotten by that mighty spirit who lives\nthrough the falling of empires, whose home has been in many a ruined\nheart.  Surely it was to bring comfort to hearts like thine that that\nmost noble of all meditations was ordained by the Buddha.  \"_He lets\nhis mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love, and so\nthe second, and so the third, and so the fourth.  And thus the whole\nwide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to\npervade with heart of Love far-reaching, grown great and beyond\nmeasure._\"\n\nThat love, though the very fairy breath of life, should by itself and\nso imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who\nhave felt the sunlight fall from distant friends who think of them;\nbut, to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love, Eros,\nis a being.  It is more than a power of the soul, though it is that\nalso; it has a universal life of its own, and just as the dark heaving\nwaters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with blinding\nradiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the ray of Eros\nwithin it, does not know that often a part of its nature nearer to the\nsun of love shines with a brilliant light to other eyes than its own.\nMany people move unconscious of their own charm, unknowing of the\nbeauty and power they seem to others to impart.  It is some past\nattainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old battle which it may\nhave forgotten, but none the less this gleams on its tiara and the\nstar-flame inspires others to hope and victory.\n\nIf it is true here that many exert a spiritual influence they are\nunconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within.  Once the soul\nhas attained to any possession like love, or persistent will, or faith,\nor a power of thought, it comes into spiritual contact with others who\nare struggling for these very powers.  The attainment of any of these\nmeans that the soul is able to absorb and radiate some of the diviner\nelements of being.  The soul may or may not be aware of the position it\nis placed in or its new duties, but yet that Living Light, having found\na way into the being of any one person, does not rest there, but sends\nits rays and extends its influence on and on to illumine the darkness\nof another nature.  So it comes that there are ties which bind us to\npeople other than those whom we meet in our everyday life.  I think\nthey are most real ties, most important to understand, for if we let\nour lamp go out, some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt\na steady will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out\nonce again in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and\nfold the hands in despair.  Often we allow gloom to overcome us and so\nhinder the bright rays in their passage; but would we do it so often if\nwe thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us, we do not know why,\nwas caused by someone drawing nigh to us for comfort, whom our lethargy\nmight make feel still more his helplessness, while our courage, our\nfaith, might cause \"our light to shine in some other heart which as yet\nhas no light of its own\"?\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe night was wet: and, as I was moving down the streets, my mind was\nalso journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were bodily\npresent before me were no less with me in my unseen travelling.  Every\nnow and then a transfer would take place, and some of the moving\nshadows in the street would begin walking about in the clear interior\nlight.  The children of the city, crouched in the doorways, or racing\nthrough the hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began their elfin\nplay again in my heart; and that was because I had heard these tiny\noutcasts shouting with glee.  I wondered if the glitter and shadow of\nsuch sordid things were thronged with magnificence and mystery for\nthose who were unaware of a greater light and deeper shade which made\nup the romance and fascination of my own life.  In imagination I\nnarrowed myself to their ignorance, littleness and youth, and seemed\nfor a moment to flit amid great uncomprehended beings and a dim\nwonderful city of palaces.\n\nThen another transfer took place and I was pondering anew, for a face I\nhad seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me; it entered\ninto the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware by the pale\ncheeks, and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by some inward\nknowledge, that there the Tree of Life was beginning to grow, and I\nwondered why it is that it always springs up through a heart in ashes:\nI wondered also if that which springs up, which in itself is an\nimmortal joy, has knowledge that its shoots are piercing through such\nanguish; or again, if it was the piercing of the shoots which caused\nthe pain, and if every throb of the beautiful flame darting upward to\nblossom meant the perishing of some more earthly growth which had kept\nthe heart in shadow.\n\nSeeing too how many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing, I\nquestioned whether that which started the impulse had any share in the\noutcome, and if these musings of mine in any way affected their\nsubject.  I then began thinking about those secret ties on which I have\nspeculated before, and in the darkness my heart grew suddenly warm and\nglowing, for I had chanced upon one of those shining imaginations which\nare the wealth of those who travel upon the hidden ways.  In describing\nthat which comes to us all at once, there is a difficulty in choosing\nbetween what is first and what is last to say: but, interpreting as\nbest I can, I seemed to behold the onward movement of a Light, one\namong many Lights, all living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations,\nand now again clear, and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some\nmore shadowy shining, and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it\nwas invisible, I knew to be the Lamp of the World.  This Light which I\nbeheld I felt to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed\nit were its struggles and passionate longings for something, and that\nwas for a more brilliant shining of the light within itself.  It was in\nlove with its own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity; and I saw\nthat as these things were more beloved they grew paler, for this light\nis the love which the Mighty Mother has in her heart for her children,\nand she means that it shall go through each one unto all, and whoever\nrestrains it in himself is himself shut out; not that the great heart\nhas ceased in its love for that soul, but that the soul has shut itself\noff from influx, for every imagination of man is the opening or the\nclosing of a door to the divine world: now he is solitary, cut off,\nand, seemingly to himself, on the desert and distant verge of things:\nand then his thought throws open the swift portals; he hears the chant\nof the seraphs in his heart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of\na sudden aureole.  This soul which I watched seemed to have learned at\nlast the secret love: for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it\nfollowed the departing glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it\nceased altogether; and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of\nattainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pity arose\nin the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still in hope, for\nthey had not come to the vain end of their endeavours.  I understood\nthat such pity is the last of the precious essences which make up the\nelixir of immortality, and when it is poured into the cup it is ready\nfor drinking.  And so it was with this soul which grew brilliant with\nthe passage of the eternal light through its new purity of\nself-oblivion, and joyful in the comprehension of the mystery of the\nsecret love, which, though it has been declared many times by the\ngreatest of teachers among men, is yet never known truly unless the\nMighty Mother has herself breathed it in the heart.\n\nAnd now that the soul had divined this secret, the shadowy shining\nwhich was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow-lights grew\nclearer; and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed,\nstrengthened and placed in its keeping: along these it was to send the\nmessage of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness of\nits own being.  Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more\npathetic than the old desolation, because it was brought about by the\nvery nobility of the spirit.  This soul, shedding its love like rays of\nglory, seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears: it sent\nforth love and the arrowy response came hate-impelled: it whispered\npeace and was answered by the clash of rebellion: and to all this for\ndefence it could only bare more openly its heart that a profounder love\nfrom the Mother Nature might pass through upon the rest.  I knew this\nwas what a teacher, who wrote long ago, meant when he said: \"Put on the\nwhole armour of God,\" which is love and endurance, for the truly divine\nchildren of the Flame are not armed otherwise: and of those protests,\nsent up in ignorance or rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I\nsaw that some melted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and\nthere came in their stead a golden response which made closer the ties,\nand drew these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the\novershadowing nature.  And this is part of the plan of the Great\nAlchemist, whereby the red ruby of the heart is transmuted into the\ntenderer light of the opal; for the beholding of love made bare acts\nlike the flame of the furnace: and the dissolving passions, through an\nanguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through an adoring\npity, are changed into the image they contemplate, and melt in the\necstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit the thorn-crowned\nbrows, which perceived only in its last agony the retribution due to\nits tormentors, and cried out, \"Father, forgive them, for they know not\nwhat they do.\"\n\nNow although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the\nignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of anyone to withstand\nfor ever this warfare; for by the perpetual wounding of the inner\nnature it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a tabernacle\ngrown too frail to support the increase of light within and the jarring\nof the demoniac nature without; and at length comes the call which\nmeans, for a while, release, and a deep rest in regions beyond the\nparadise of lesser souls.  So, withdrawn into the Divine Darkness,\nvanished the Light of my dream.  And now it seemed as if this wonderful\nweft of souls intertwining as one being must come to naught; and all\nthose who through the gloom had nourished a longing for the light would\nstretch out hands in vain for guidance: but that I did not understand\nthe love of the Mother, and that although few, there is no decaying of\nher heroic brood; for, as the seer of old caught at the mantle of him\nwho went up in the fiery chariot, so another took up the burden and\ngathered the shining strands together: and to this sequence of\nspiritual guides there is no ending.\n\nHere I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through the\nburnished will of the hero, is wrought to highest uses, is in reality\neverywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the homeliest\ncircumstance of daily life; and there is not lacking, even among the\nhumblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy which follows upon\nevery effort of the divine nature bowing itself down in pity to our\nshadowy sphere; an understanding in which the nature of the love is\ngauged through the extent of the sacrifice and the pain which is\novercome.  I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he\nlay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in his leg, forgot himself\nin making drawings, rude yet reverently done, of incidents in the life\nof the Galilean teacher.  One of these which he showed me was a\ncrucifixion, where, amidst much grotesque symbolism, were some tracings\nwhich indicated a purely beautiful intuition; the heart of this\ncrucified figure, no less than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns\nand radiant with light: \"For that,\" said he, \"was where he really\nsuffered.\"  When I think of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his\nown bodily pain through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his\nMaster, my memory of him shines with something of the transcendent\nlight he himself perceived; for I feel that some suffering of his own,\nnobly undergone, had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart\nin love against the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by\nunnumbered spears yet burning with undying love.\n\nThough much may be learned by observance of the superficial life and\nactions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life of\nmeditation and imagination that it can be truly realised; for the soul\nis a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream, and its perfect\nbloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven:\nthere it feels what celestial dews descend on it, and what influences\ndraw it up to its divine archetype: here in the shadow of earth root\nintercoils with root and the finer distinctions of the blossom are not\nperceived.  If we knew also who they really are, who sometimes in\nsilence, and sometimes with the eyes of the world at gaze, take upon\nthem the mantle of teacher, an unutterable awe would prevail: for\nunderneath a bodily presence not in any sense beautiful may burn the\nglory of some ancient divinity, some hero who has laid aside his\nsceptre in the enchanted land to rescue old-time comrades fallen into\noblivion: or again, if we had the insight of the simple old peasant\ninto the nature of this enduring love, out of the exquisite and\npoignant emotions kindled would arise the flame of a passionate love\nwhich would endure long aeons of anguish that it might shield, though\nbut for a little, the kingly hearts who may not shield themselves.\n\nBut I too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in\nlethargy have ofttimes gone down the great drift numbering myself among\nthose who not being with must needs be against: therefore I make no\nappeal; they only may call who stand upon the lofty mountains; but I\nreveal the thought which arose like a star in my soul with such bright\nand pathetic meaning, leaving it to you who read to approve and apply\nit.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ORPHEUS SERIES, ETC.\n\nThis series of booklets will be issued in connection with \"Orpheus,\" a\nQuarterly Magazine of Mystical Art, which may be had for four shillings\nand sixpence a year.  It is hoped that some of the succeeding numbers\nmay also be composed of reprints from the early writings of A. E.  The\nfollowing is a list of the books that A. E. has at present published:\n\n\nVERSE:\n\n  \"The Earth-Breath.\"              John Lane\n  \"Homeward Songs by the Way.\"     John Lane\n  \"The Divine Vision.\"             Macmillan\n\n\nPROSE:\n\n  \"The Mask of Apollo\" (Dream-Stories).     Macmillan\n  \"Some Irish Essays\" (The Tower Press Series, No. I.) Maunsell, Dublin\n\n\n\n\nWomen's Printing Society, Ltd., Brick Street, Piccadilly\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"The Hero in Man","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":5911}