Manhood

Directing also our investigative gaze upon this age, let us examine its external appearance, character, and life. This age is characterized by magnificence, beauty, brilliance, leadership, activity, energy, nobility, magnanimity, great deeds, and in general by that abundance of virtues through which man is truly revealed as an image and likeness of God. In it man is introduced into his spiritual life, and the reason for his appearance in the world is revealed. In it are born great and life-filled men, and in it are revealed the demigods; to it ages are adorned with the extraordinary beauty of virtues, whose lamp, forever brilliant, penetrates the depths of ages, so that it appears coming to all generations; its beauty has always inspired mankind. Homer’s songs are nothing but praise of virtue. Homer truly is the wonderful painter who more faithfully than any other depicted the beauty of virtue; virtue itself revealed the divine Homer, because he became a lover of it and praised it worthily. How wonderfully did he describe the magnificence of virtue in manhood! How artfully did he exalt his heroes to the height of that eminence, so that they fall short of the Gods by little! How loftily did he speak of man! With what power of language did he reveal demigods and superior beings destined rather for Heaven than for the world!

The character of each hero is a faithful image of a virtue; the virtue celebrated by Homer is the ideal of the beautiful. The whole of them is a kind of pantheon in which virtues, personified, have assembled in a chorus to describe the moral character of man. Consider the divine Achilles, the elder Agamemnon, the resourceful Odysseus, the godlike Patroclus, the good and noble Diomedes, the noble and fearless Hector, and the whole host of heroes, and you will receive the true image of virtue in manhood; in them man is elevated to the level of the Olympian Gods. The Gods come down to the earth to share with men as with kindred. Gods and men live so together that the Gods differ from men but little, not through the lowering of the Gods, for Zeus always maintained his lofty position and had his many epithets as attributes, and likewise the other gods, but because man has been elevated to the level of the gods. Thus in Homer this age inspired his wonderful epics which will remain immortal, because in them man has been described and depicted as he is, with all possible precision and delicacy; his true relation both to the earth and to Heaven is shown, and the ancient belief concerning a rational and immortal soul is expressed. In this age there shine spirit, talent, keen intelligence, quickness of understanding, and greatness of mind. The cognitive, the emotional, and the volitional—these three powers of the rational soul of man—are revealed full of extraordinary and unknown activity in the material world. He who looks not at the mechanism of the body, but at the results of the operations of the spirit, is convinced that something great and foreign to matter dwells in the body, spirit, and an alien force moves around. Behold, with a single glance he stirs the peoples, a single saying, a single word moves the fullness of all the Earth, and its soil trembles under his footsteps. His will is strong as the will of a god, his desires infinite as one who is eternal, and his counsels are eternal. His whole bearing has such remarkable magnificence as to draw respect to himself before all creatures. All submit to him and creep before his feet; even the wildest beasts are humbled before him; it is consciousness, not force, that has subjected them, for God put all things under his feet; not only the birds of the heaven and the beasts of the sea, but also the cattle of the field, the birds of the heaven, and the beasts of the sea; He has given them this foundation and disposition; and likewise in man, His leader, He has placed consciousness of superiority and dominion. For this reason we see in the elephant humiliation and willing submission, so that it is led by a child like a dog, and through its own willingness raises upon its back the inferior; and lions cast off their fierceness and like innocent lambs lick the hands of their masters. To what creature have such creatures submitted; what creature has recognized another as its lord or superior; none, never. Man’s preeminence is the cause of the submission and obedience of all beasts and animals in general; his preeminence provides the leadership, and this reveals man as king and autocrat of all creation. Manhood is the perfect character of man, raising him above all sensible nature, and presenting the man as superior.