Volume Ii Part 40 (2/2)
anything, this feeling of shame, provided that we surrender ourselves to this point of view in a spirit of Christian contemplation, becomes habitual, because upon such a one G.o.d seems continually to be conferring his blessing and his favours. Apart from this Christian interpretation, the state of habitual shame will be possible even to the entirely G.o.dless sage, who clings firmly to the basic non-responsibility and non-meritoriousness of all action and being. If he be treated as if he had deserved this or that, he will seem to have won his way into a higher order of beings, who do actually deserve something, who are free and can really bear the burden of responsibility for their own volition and capacity. Whoever says to him, ”You have deserved it,” appears to cry out to him, ”You are not a human being, but a G.o.d.”
70.
THE MOST UNSKILFUL TEACHER.-In one man all his real virtues are implanted on the soil of his spirit of contradiction, in another on his incapacity to say ”no”-in other words, on his spirit of acquiescence. A third has made all his morality grow out of his pride as a solitary, a fourth from his strong social instinct. Now, supposing that the seeds of the virtues in these four cases, owing to mischance or unskilful teachers, were not sown on the soil of their nature, which provides them with the richest and most abundant mould, they would become weak, unsatisfactory men (devoid of morality). And who would have been the most unskilful of teachers, the evil genius of these men? The moral fanatic, who thinks that the good can only grow out of the good and on the soil of the good.
71.
THE CAUTIOUS STYLE.-_A._ But if this were known to _all_, it would be injurious to the _majority_. You yourself call your opinions dangerous to those in danger, and yet you make them public?
_B._ I write so that neither the mob, nor the _populi_, nor the parties of all kinds can read me. So my opinions will never be ”public opinions.”
_A._ How do you write, then?
_B._ Neither usefully nor pleasantly-for the three cla.s.ses I have mentioned.
72.
DIVINE MISSIONARIES.-Even Socrates feels himself to be a divine missionary, but I am not sure whether we should not here detect a tincture of that Attic irony and fondness for jesting whereby this odious, arrogant conception would be toned down. He talks of the fact without unction-his images of the gadfly and the horse are simple and not sacerdotal. The real religious task which he has set himself-to _test_ G.o.d in a hundred ways and see whether he spoke the truth-betrays a bold and free att.i.tude, in which the missionary walked by the side of his G.o.d. This testing of G.o.d is one of the most subtle compromises between piety and free-thinking that has ever been devised.-Nowadays we do not even need this compromise any longer.
73.
HONESTY IN PAINTING.-Raphael, who cared a great deal for the Church (so far as she could pay him), but, like the best men of his time, cared little for the objects of the Church's belief, did not advance one step to meet the exacting, ecstatic piety of many of his patrons. He remained honest even in that exceptional picture which was originally intended for a banner in a procession-the Sistine Madonna. Here for once he wished to paint a vision, but such a vision as even n.o.ble youths without ”faith” may and will have-the vision of the future wife, a wise, high-souled, silent, and very beautiful woman, carrying her first-born in her arms. Let men of an older generation, accustomed to prayer and devotion, find here, like the worthy elder on the left, something superhuman to revere. We younger men (so Raphael seems to call to us) are occupied with the beautiful maiden on the right, who says to the spectator of the picture, with her challenging and by no means devout look, ”The mother and her child-is not that a pleasant, inviting sight?” The face and the look are reflected in the joy in the faces of the beholders. The artist who devised all this enjoys himself in this way, and adds his own delight to the delight of the art-lover. As regards the ”messianic” expression in the face of the child, Raphael, honest man, who would not paint any state of soul in which he did not believe, has amiably cheated his religious admirers. He painted that freak of nature which is very often found, the man's eye in the child's face, and that, too, the eye of a brave, helpful man who sees distress.
This eye should be accompanied by a beard. The fact that a beard is wanting, and that two different ages are seen in one countenance, is the pleasing paradox which believers have interpreted in accordance with their faith in miracles. The artist could only expect as much from their art of exposition and interpretation.
74.
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