The Hero in Man (Classic Reprint)

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Hero in ManYet 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 in¿uence 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 what ever one most loves by speaking of it in superlative praise to those who as yet remain aloof with interest unaroused, but for me it is hard to refrain from an expression of that admiration, and I would fain say also that affection, which burns up within me when Iread the writings of A. E. For they cause me to think of him as one of those rare spirits who bring to men the realisation of their own divinity, who make the spiritual life seem adventurous, attractive, and vivid, so that we go forth into the world with a new interest and a new joy at heart. That, as I have sought to show in the opening of this note, is the greatest of all things that anyone can do. The life of such a man makes beautiful the generation with which it coincides. If we penetrate the human words and inhabit, so far as we are able, the mood which was passing in the soul as it shaped them, we may learn from the reveries that are here reprinted how to the mystic of this material age the world remains equally wonderful and human life equally holy as either seemed in the far off days when beauty was more greatly desired. For of deeper value at all times than any particular thought is the pervading mood. Perhaps the reader will remember here the following passage by Robert Louis Stevenson Such are the best teachers, a dogma learned is only a new error - the old one was perhaps as good, but a spirit com municated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art, it is themselves, and what isbest in themselves, that they communicate.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.