Heroes and Hero Worship [40]
Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him! He will read the world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on _this_ matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about the world.--
Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _Vates_ means both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls "the open secret." "Which is the great secret?" asks one.--"The _open_ secret,"--open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, "the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance," as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the _vesture_, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery _is_ in all times and in all places; veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realized Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter,--as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together! It could do no good, at present, to _speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise!
But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _Vates_, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message; he is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it;--I might say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a _Vates_, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the "open secret," are one.
With respect to their distinction again: The _Vates_ Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the _Vates_ Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. "The lilies of the field,"--dressed finer than earthly princes, springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful _eye_ looking out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: "The Beautiful," he intimates, "is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good." The _true_ Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, "differs from
Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _Vates_ means both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls "the open secret." "Which is the great secret?" asks one.--"The _open_ secret,"--open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, "the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance," as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is but the _vesture_, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery _is_ in all times and in all places; veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realized Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter,--as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together! It could do no good, at present, to _speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise!
But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _Vates_, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message; he is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it;--I might say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a _Vates_, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the "open secret," are one.
With respect to their distinction again: The _Vates_ Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the _Vates_ Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how else shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. "The lilies of the field,"--dressed finer than earthly princes, springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful _eye_ looking out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: "The Beautiful," he intimates, "is higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it the Good." The _true_ Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, "differs from