A traveller should be devout to Hermes, and I have always loved him
above the other gods for that charming union which is found in him of
youth with experience, alacrity with prudence, modesty with laughter,
and a ready tongue with a sound heart. In him the first bubblings of
mockery subside at once into courtesy and helpfulness. He is the winged
Figaro of Olympus, willing to yield to others in station and to pretend
to serve them, but really wiser and happier than any of them. There
is a certain roguery in him, and the habit of winking at mischief. He
has a great gift for dissertation, and his abundant eloquence, always
unimpeachable in form and in point, does not hug the truth so closely
as pious people might expect in a god who, as they say sagaciously, can
have no motive for lying. But gods do not need motives. The lies of
Hermes are jests; they represent things as they might have been, and
serve to show what a strange accident the truth is. The reproach which
Virgil addresses to his Juno, "Such malignity in minds celestial?"
could never apply to this amiable divinity, who, if he is a rascal at
all (which I do not admit), is a disinterested rascal. He has given no
pawns to fortune, he is not a householder, he is not pledged against
his will to any cause. Homer tells us that Hermes was a thief; but the
beauty of mythology is that every poet can recast it according to his
own insight and sense of propriety; as, in fact, our solemn theologians
do also, although they pretend that their theology is a science, and
are not wide awake enough to notice the dreamful, dramatic impulse
which leads them to construct it. Now, in my vision, the thievery of
Hermes, and the fact that he was the patron of robbers, merchants,
rhetoricians, and liars, far from being unworthy of his divine nature,
are a superb and humorous expression of it. He did not steal the
cattle of Apollo for profit. Apollo himself--a most exquisite young
god--did not give a fig for his cattle nor for his rustic employment;
in adopting it he was doing a kind turn to a friend, or had a love-lorn
scheme or a wager afoot, or merely wished for the moment to be idyllic.
It was a pleasant _scherzo_ (after the _andante_ which he played in the
heavens, in his capacity of sun-god and inspirer of all prophets) to
lean gracefully here on his herdsman's staff, or to lie under a tuft of
trees on some mossy hillock, in the midst of his pasturing kine, and to
hold the poor peeping dryads spellbound by the operatic marvels of his
singing. In purloining those oxen, Hermes, who was a very little boy at
the time, simply wanted to mock these affectations of his long-haired
elder brother; and Apollo, truly an enraptured artist and not a prig,
and invulnerable like Hermes in his godlike freedom, did not in the
least mind the practical joke, nor the ridicule, but was the first to
join in the laugh.
When Hermes consents to be the patron of thieves and money-lenders it
is in the same spirit. Standing, purse in hand, in his little shrine
above their dens, he smiles as if to remind them that everything
is trash which mortals can snatch from one another by thieving or
bargaining, and that the purpose of all their voyages, and fairs, and
high-way robberies is a bauble, such as the dirty children playing
in the street set up as a counter in their game. But Hermes is not
impatient even of the gutter-snipes, with their cries and their
shrill quarrels. He laughs at their grimaces; their jests do not seem
emptier to him than those of their elders; he is not offended at
their rags, but sends sleep to them as they lie huddled under some
archway or stretched in the sun upon the temple steps. He presides
no less benignly over thieves' kitchens and over the shipyards and
counting-houses of traders; not that he cares at all who makes the
profit or who hoards the treasure, but that sagacity and the hum of
business are delightful to him in themselves. He likes to cull the
passion and sparkle out of the most sordid life, and the confused
rumble of civilization is pleasant to his senses, like a sweet vapour
rising from the evening sacrifice.
His admirable temper and mastery of soul appear in nothing more clearly
than in his love-affair with the beautiful Maia. She is ill-spoken of,
but he is very, very fond of her, and deeply happy in her love. It is
a secret relation, although everybody has heard of it; but the nymph
is a mystery; in fact, although everybody has seen her at one time
or another, no one has ever known then that it was she. Hermes alone
recognizes and loves her in her own person, and calls her by her name;
but privately. Sometimes, with that indiscretion and over-familiarity
which the young allow themselves in their cups, his brothers ask him
where he meets her; and he only smiles a little and is silent. She is
said to be a wild unmanageable being, half maenad and half shrew; a
waif always appearing and disappearing without any reason, and in her
fitful temper at once exacting and tedious. Her eyes are sometimes
blue and sometimes black, like heaven. Empty-headed and too gay, some
people think her; but others understand that she is constitutionally
melancholy and quite mad. They say she often sits alone, hardly
distinguishable in the speckled sunshine of the forest, or else by
the sea, spreading her hair to the wind and moaning: and then Hermes
flies to her and comforts her, for she is an exile everywhere and he
is everywhere at home. It is rumoured that in the East she has had a
great position, and has been Queen of the Universe; but in Europe she
has no settled metaphysical status, and it is not known whether she is
really a goddess, mistress over herself, or only a fay or a phantom
at other people's beck and call; and she has nowhere any temple or
rustic sanctuary or respectable oracle. Moreover, she has inexpressibly
shocked the virtuous, who think so much of genealogy, by saying, as
is reported, that she has no idea who is the father of her children.
Hermes laughs merrily at this, calling it one of her harmless sallies,
which she indulges in simply because they occur to her, and because
she likes to show her independence and to flout the sober censors of
this world. He is perfectly confident she has never had any wooer but
himself, nor would dream of accepting any other. Even with him she
is always reverting to stubborn refusals and denials and calling him
names; but when the spitfire is raging most angrily, he has only to
gaze at her steadily and throw his arm gaily about her, as much as to
say, "Don't be a fool," for her to be instantly mollified and confess
that it was all make-believe, but that she couldn't help it. Then it
is wonderful how reasonable she becomes, how perfectly trustful and
frank, so that no companion could be more deeply delightful. She is as
light as a feather, then, in his arms. The truth is, she lives only for
him; she really has no children, only young sisters who are also more
or less in love with him and he with them; and she sleeps her whole
life long in his absence. In all those strange doings and wanderings
reported of her she is only walking in her sleep. The approach of
Hermes awakes her and lends her life--the only life she has. Her
true name is Illusion; and it is very characteristic of him, so rich
in pity, merriment, and shrewdness, to have chosen this poor child,
Illusion, for his love.
Hermes is the great interpreter, the master of riddles. I should not
honour him for his skill in riddles if I thought he invented them
wantonly, because he liked to puzzle himself with them, or to reduce
other people to a foolish perplexity without cause. I hate enigmas;
and if I believed that Hermes was the inspirer of those odious persons
who are always asking conundrums and making puns I should renounce him
altogether, break his statue, turn his picture to the wall, and devote
myself exclusively to the cult of some sylvan deity, all silence and
simple light. But I am sure Hermes loves riddles only because they are
no riddles to him; he is never caught in the tangle, and he laughs
to see how unnecessarily poor opinionated mortals befool themselves,
wilfully following any devious scent once they are on it by chance,
and missing the obvious for ever. He gives them what sly hints he can
to break the spell of their blindness; but they are so wedded to their
false preconceptions that they do not understand him, and are only the
more perplexed. Sometimes, however, they take the hint, their wit grows
nimble, their thoughts catch fire, and insight, solving every idle
riddle, harmonizes the jarring cords of the mind.
The wand of Hermes has serpents wound about it, but is capped with
wings, so that at its touch the sting and the coil of care may vanish,
and that we may be freed from torpor and dull enchantment, and may see,
as the god does, how foolish we are. All these mysteries that befog
us are not mysteries really; they are the mother-tongue of nature.
Rustics, and also philosophers, think that any language but theirs
is gibberish; they are sorry for the stranger who can speak only an
unintelligible language, and are sure he will be damned unless the
truth is preached to him speedily by some impertinent missionary from
their own country. They even argue with nature, trying to convince her
that she cannot move, or cannot think, or cannot have more dimensions
than those of their understanding. Oh for a touch of the healing wand
of Hermes the Interpreter, that we might understand the language of the
birds and the stars, and, laughing first at what they say of us, might
then see our image in the mirror of infinity, and laugh at ourselves!
Here is a kindly god indeed, humane though superhuman, friendly though
inviolate, who does not preach, who does not threaten, who does not
lay new, absurd, or morose commands on our befuddled souls, but who
unravels, who relieves, who shows us the innocence of the things we
hated and the clearness of the things we frowned on or denied. He
interprets us to the gods, and they accept us; he interprets us to
one another, and we perceive that the foreigner, too, spoke a plain
language: happy he if he was wise in his own tongue. It is for the
divine herald alone to catch the meaning of all, without subduing his
merry voice to any dialect of mortals. He mocks our stammerings and
forgives them; and when we say anything to the purpose, and reach any
goal which, however wantonly, we had proposed to ourselves, he applauds
and immensely enjoys our little achievement; for it is inspired by him
and like his own. May he be my guide: and not in this world only, in
which the way before me seems to descend gently, quite straight and
clear, towards an unruffled sea; but at the frontiers of eternity let
him receive my spirit, reconciling it, by his gracious greeting, to
what had been its destiny. For he is the friend of the shades also,
and makes the greatest interpretation of all, that of life into truth,
translating the swift words of time into the painted language of
eternity. That is for the dead; but for living men, whose feet must
move forward whilst their eyes see only backward, he interprets the
past to the future, for its guidance and ornament. Often, too, he bears
news to his father and brothers in Olympus, concerning any joyful or
beautiful thing that is done on earth, lest they should despise or
forget it. In that fair inventory and chronicle of happiness let my
love of him be remembered.