Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III. SYMBOLISM. " Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and, while I have life and strength, I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy exhorting every one whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: ' O, my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all ?' " —SOCRATES. "Life is too short to waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand: 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark !" —RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 78 SYMBOLISM. That Jesus is worthy of premiership among the poets, '' the hierophants of an un- apprehended revelation,'' legitimate criticism affirms. He had the poetic instinct and insight. Prolixity was alien to His thinking. Similes, metonymies, metaphors, and synecdoches dropped from His lips in richest profusion. His thought was tropical in its luxuriance. He was a melodist whose symphonies and cadences are like the music of deep-toned bells and the roundelays of field larks. The inner sense of persons and things found in Him a voice both charming and compelling. The symbolist is the real poet. Before him the secret of the universe lies open. He bows before the sacred mystery. He walks the earth with unshod feet. He is consciousof all ground being holy ground. In stone, in sea, in cloud, in fire, in bird, in beast, in man, he beholds the divine idea. Appearances are not for him a finality. They are symbolic of finality. The heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, are the real...