



Produced by Al Haines










The Orpheus Series                              No. 1





THE

HERO IN MAN


BY

A. E.

[Transcriber's note: "A.E." is a pseudonym of George William Russell]




The Orpheus Press, 1910




First Edition (1,000 copies), May, 1909.

Second Edition (1,000 copies), September, 1910.




PRELUDE.

[Greek: _lampadia echontes diadosousin allelois_.]--PLATO.


We who live in the great cities could not altogether avoid, even if we
would, a certain association with the interests of our time.  Wherever
we go the minds of men are feverishly debating some new political
measure or some new scheme for the reconstruction of society.  Now, as
in olden times, the rumours of an impending war will engulf the subtler
interests of men, and unless we are willing to forego all intercourse
we find ourselves involved in a hundred sympathies.  A friendly group
will gather one evening and open their thoughts concerning the
experiences of the soul; they will often declare that only these
matters are of profound interest, and yet on the morrow the most of
them regard the enthusiasms of the mind as far away, unpractical, not
of immediate account.  But even at noon the stars are above us and
because a man in material difficulties cannot evoke the highest
experiences that he has known they have not become less real.  They
pertain to his immortal nature and if in the circumstance of life he
loses memory of them it is because he is likewise mortal.  In the
measure that we develop our interior selves philosophy becomes the most
permanent of our interests and it may well be that the whole aim of Man
is to acquire an unbroken and ever-broadening realisation of the
Supreme Spirit so that in a far-off day he may become the master of all
imaginable conditions.  He, therefore, who brings us back to our
central selves and shows us that however far we may wander it is these
high thoughts which are truly the most real--he is of all men our
greatest benefactor.

Now those who thus care for the spiritual aspect of life are of two
kinds,--the intellectual and the imaginative.  There are men of keen
intellect who comprehend some philosophic system, who will defend it
with elaborate reasonings and proclaim themselves its adherents, but
the earth at their feet, the stars in the firmament, man himself and
their own souls have undergone no transfiguration.  Their philosophies
are lifeless, for imagination is to the intellect what breath is to the
body.  Thoughts that never glow with imagination, that are never
applied to all that the sense perceives or the mind remembers--thoughts
that remain quite abstract, are as empty husks of no value.

But there are those who have studied by the light of imagination and
these know well that the inner life of thought, of experiment, and of
wonder, though it may often be over-clouded, is the only life which can
henceforth give them content.  They know that it was not when they were
most immersed in the affairs of the day but rather when the whole world
appeared for a little while to be pulsating with an almost
uncontainable splendour, that they were most alive.  For the best mood
we have ever known, though it be lost for long, is yet the clearest
revelation of our true selves, and it is then that we learn most nearly
what marvels life may hold.

If we read with imagination the Dialogues of Plato we dwell for a while
among those ardent Greeks for whom the universe was changed by the
words of the poet-philosopher.  So too when we read the letter that was
written by Plotinus to Flaccus, perhaps the serenest height the human
soul has ever attained, we become ourselves the recipients.  In either
case we feel that we have lived in the presence of a princely soul.  It
is an inspiration to realise that we are of the one race with these and
may look out on the same beauty of earth and heaven.

Yet the magic of the mind is not enduring and to dream overlong of a
bygone beauty is to make sorrowful the present.  What imaginative
reader of Plato but has desired with a fruitless ardour that he might
in truth have been numbered with those who walked on the daisied lawns
of the Academy, might in truth have heard the voice of the hardly human
initiate, have seen him face to face, have responded to the influence
of his presence? who but would willingly translate his life to another
century if he could but hear Plotinus endeavouring to describe in human
language an ecstasy which makes of man a god?

I know that one may easily injure whatever one most loves by speaking
of it in superlative praise to those who as yet