We shall not cease from
exploration
and the end of all our
exploring
will be to arrive where we
started
and know the place for the
first time.
* * *
No planet know that this
our wayside planet, carrying
land and wave,
love and life multiply, and
pain and bliss,
bears, as chief treasure,
one forsaken grave…
But in the eternities,
doubtless we shall compare
together, hear
a million alien
gospels. In what guise
He trod the Plaiedes, the
Lyre, the Bear?
O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable,
to scan
the million forms of God
those stars unroll
when, in our turn, we show
to them a Man.
by Alice Meynell
* * *
I
name you three metamorphoses of the spirit, how the spirit shall become a
camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
There
are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, weight-bearing spirit in
which dwell respect and awe: its strength longs for the heavy, for the
heaviest.
What
is heavy? thus asks the weight-bearing spirit, thus it kneels down like the
camel and wants to be well laden.
What
is the heaviest thing, you heroes? so asks the weight-bearing spirit, that I
may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength!…
But in the loneliest desert the second
metamorphosis occurs: the spirit here becomes a lion; it wants to capture
freedom and be lord of his own desert.
It
seeks here its ultimate lord: it will be an enemy to him and to its ultimate
God. It will struggle for victory with
the great dragon.
What
is the great dragon that the spirit no longer wants to call lord and God? The great dragon is called “Thou
shalt”. But the spirit of the lion says
“I will!”…
My
brothers, why is the lion needed in the spirit? Why does the beast of burden, that renounces and is reverent, not
suffice?
To
create new values – even the lion is incapable of that. But to create itself freedom for new
creation – that the might of the lion can do.
To
create freedom for itself and a sacred “No” even to duty: the lion is needed
for that, my brothers.
To
seize the right to new values – that in the most terrible proceeding for a
weight-bearing and reverential spirit.
Truly, to this spirit it is a theft and a work of an animal of prey.
Once
it loved this “Thou shalt” as its holiest thing: now it has to find illusion
and caprice even in the holiest, that it may steal freedom from its love: the
lion is needed for this theft.
But
tell me, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion cannot? Why must the preying lion still become a
Child?
The
child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, self-propelling
wheel, a first motion, a sacred ‘Yes’.
Yes,
a sacred ‘Yes’ is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit
now wills ITS OWN will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins ITS OWN
world.
I
have named you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit became a
camel, and then the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
by Frederick
Nietzsche