On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History | Page 7

here; never-resting whirlwind, high as
Immensity, old as Eternity. What is it? God's Creation, the religious
people answer; it is the Almighty God's! Atheistic science babbles
poorly of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and what not,
as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Leyden jars and sold
over counters: but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he will
honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing,--ah, an
unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after
never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul;
worship if not in words, then in silence.
But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it requires a
Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor
undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,--this, the
ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for
itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then
divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it
face to face. "All was Godlike or God:"--Jean Paul still finds it so; the
giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays: but there
then were no hearsays. Canopus shining down over the desert, with its
blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far
brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the
wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste
there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for any
feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing out on him
from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner Splendor to him.
Cannot we understand how these men worshipped Canopus; became
what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret
of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for
which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. To these
primeval men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them
were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God.
And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through
every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if
we will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that way now:
but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a "poetic

nature," that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty in it;
how every object still verily is "a window through which we may look
into Infinitude itself"? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we
call him Poet! Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor
Sabeans did even what he does,--in their own fashion. That they did it,
in what fashion soever, was a merit: better than what the entirely stupid
man did, what the horse and camel did,--namely, nothing!
But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon are emblems to us
of the Highest God, I add that more so than any of them is man such an
emblem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in
reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation of
God, among the Hebrews: "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even
so: this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence of our being,
the mystery in us that calls itself "I,"--ah, what words have we for such
things?--is a breath of Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in
man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture
for that Unnamed? "There is but one Temple in the Universe," says the
devout Novalis, "and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier shall
that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this
Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a
human body!" This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric; but it
is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the
expression, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing.
We are the miracle of miracles,--the great inscrutable mystery of God.
We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may
feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so.
Well; these truths were once more readily felt than now. The young
generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young
children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they
had finished off all things in Heaven and