CES. I see a smoking thurible, supported by an arm, and the legend which
says: "Illius aram," and then the following:--
42.
Now who shall say the breath of my desire
Of high and holy worship is demeaned
If decked in divers forms ornate she come
Through vows I offer to the shrine of Fame?
And if another work should call, and lead me on,
Who would aver that more it might beseem
If that, of Heaven so loved and eulogized,
Should hold me not in its captivity.
Leave, oh leave me, every other wish,
Cease, fretting thoughts, and give me peace;
Why draw me forth from looking at the sun,
From looking at the sun that I so love.
You ask in pity, wherefore lookest thou
On that, on which to look is thy undoing?
Wherefore so captivated by that light?
And I will say, because to me this pain
Is dearer than all other pleasures are.
MAR. In reference to this I told you that although one should be
attached to corporeal and external beauty yet he may honourably and
worthily be so attached; provided that, through this material beauty,
which is a glittering ray of spiritual form and action, of which it is
the trace and shadow, he comes to raise himself to the consideration and
worship of divine beauty, light and majesty; so that, from these visible
things his heart becomes exalted towards those things which are more
excellent in themselves and grateful to the purified soul, in so far as
they are removed from matter and sense. Ah me! he will say, if beauty so
shadowy, so dim, so fugitive, painted on the surface of bodily matter
pleases me so much, and moves my affections so much, and stamps upon my
spirit I know not what of reverence for majesty, captivates me, softly
binds me, and draws me, so that I find nothing that comes within the
senses that satisfies me so much,--how will it be with the
substantially, originally, primitively beautiful? How will it be with my
soul, the divine intellect, and the law of nature? It is right, then,
that the contemplation of this vestige of light lead me, through the
purification of my soul, to the imitation, and to conformity and
participation in that which is more worthy and higher, into which I am
transformed and unto which I unite myself: for I am certain that
nature, which has placed this beauty before my eyes and has gifted me
with an interior sense, through which I am able to infer a deeper and
incomparably greater beauty, wills that I be promoted to the altitude
and eminence of more excellent kinds. Nor do I believe that my true
divinity, as she shows herself to me in symbols and vestiges, will scorn
me if in symbols and vestiges I honour her and sacrifice to her; as my
heart and affections are always so ordered as to look higher. For who
may he be, that can honour in essence and real substance, if in such
manner he cannot understand it?
It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or
unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being. For is not a Symbol
ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer
revelation, of the Godlike?--("Sartor Resartus.")
CES. Right well do you demonstrate how, to men of heroic spirit, all
things turn to good and how they are able to turn captivity into greater
liberty, and the being vanquished into an occasion for greater victory.
Well dost thou know that the love of corporeal beauty to those who are
well disposed, not only does not keep them back from higher enterprises,
but rather does it lend wings to arrive at these, when the necessity for
love is converted into a study of the virtuous, through which the lover
is forced into those conditions in which he is worthy of the thing loved
and perchance of even a still higher, better and more beautiful thing;
so that he comes to be either contented to have gained that which he
desires, or so satisfied with its own beauty, that he can despise that
of others, which comes to be, by him, vanquished and overcome, so that
he either remains tranquil, or else he aspires to things more excellent
and grand. And so will the heroic spirit ever go on trying until it
becomes raised to the desire of divine beauty itself, without
similitude, figure, symbol, or kind, if it be possible, and what is more
one knows that he will reach that height.
MAR. You see, Cesarino, how this enthusiast is justified in his anger
against those who reproach him with being in captivity to a low beauty,
to which he dedicates his vows, and attributes these forms, so that he
is deaf to those voices which call him to nobler enterprises: for these
low things are derived from those, and are dependent upon them, so that
through these you may gain access to those, according to their own
degrees. These, if they be not God, are things divine, are living images
of Him, in the which, if He sees Himself adored, He is not offended.
For we have a charge from the supernal spirit which says: Adorate
sgabellum pedum eius. And in another place a divine messenger says:
Adorabimus ubi steterunt pedes eius.
CES. God, the divine beauty, and splendour shines and _is_ in all
things; and therefore it does not appear to me an error to admire Him in
all things, according to the way in which we have communion with them.
Error it would surely be if we should give to another the honour due to
Him alone. But what means the enthusiast when he says, "Leave, leave me,
every other wish"?
MAR. That he banishes every thought presented to him by different
objects, which have not the power to move him and which would rob him of
the sight of the sun which comes to him through that window more than
through others.
CES. Why, importuned by thoughts, does he continually gaze at that
splendour which destroys him, and yet does not satisfy him, as it
torments him ever so fiercely?
MAR. Because all our consolations in this state of controversy are not
without their discouragements, however vast those consolations may be.
Just as the fear of a king for the loss of his kingdom, is greater than
that of a mendicant who is in peril of losing ten farthings; and more
important is the care of a prince over a republic, than that of a rustic
over a herd of swine; as perchance the pleasures and delights of the one
are greater than the pleasures and delights of the other. Therefore the
loving and aspiring higher, brings with it greater glory and majesty,
with more care, thought, and pain: I mean in this state, where the one
opposite is always joined to the other, finding the greatest contrariety
always in the same genus, and consequently about the same subject,
although the opposites cannot be together. And thus proportionally in
the love of the supernal Eros, as the Epicurean poet declares of vulgar
and animal desire when he says:--
Fluctuat incertis erroribus ardor amantum,
Nec constat, quid primum oculis, manibusque fruantur:
Quod petiere, premunt arte, faciuntque dolorem
Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis,
Osculaque adfigunt, quia non est pura voluptas,
Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere id ipsum,
Quodcunque est, rabies, unde illa haec germina surgunt.
Sed leviter poenas frangit Venus inter amorem,
Blandaque refraenat morsus admixta voluptas;
Namque in eo spes est, unde est ardoris origo,
Restingui quoque posse ab eodem corpore flammam.
Behold, then, with what condiments the skill and art of nature works,
so that one is wasted with the pleasure of that which destroys him, is
happy in the midst of torment, and tormented in the midst of all the
satisfactions. For nothing is produced absolutely from a homoeogeneous
(pacifico) principle, but all from opposite principles, through the
victory and dominion of one part of the opposites, and there is no
pleasure of generation on one side without the pain of corruption on the
other: and where these things which are generated and corrupted are
joined together and as it were compose the same subject, the feeling of
delight and of sadness are found together; so that it comes to be called
more easily delight than sadness, if it happens that this predominates,
and solicits the senses with greater force.