EARLY YOUTH 17 



" fixed star " in the Milky Way is to him a 

 flaming sun, the pulsing heart of a whole world, 

 in which, perchance, human hearts like ours throb 

 and leap on a hundred planets. The red, mur- 

 derous flames of hate close over Bruno, but they 

 cannot dim the light of the new stars. It is in 

 the eye and the brain of the new men that arise, 

 and will nevermore fade from them. 



The seventeenth century, opening amid the last 

 glare of the martyr-fires, quickens with a vague 

 yearning and expectation. 



In the eighteenth century the old world breaks 

 up. From the new stars, from the new world, 

 new ideas come. On all sides is the crash and 

 roar of conflict. Dread flames break out in the 

 social, moral, and aesthetic life of men. But the 

 century ends in the birth of a greater artist than 

 Michael Angelo. 



Goethe, on the morn of the nineteenth century, 

 paints a new Sixtine Chapel in his poetry. But 

 he no longer depicts the old ideas. He speaks of 

 God-Nature. To him God is the eternal force 

 of the All. His thoughts turn no longer on 

 Creation and the Last Judgment. An eternal 

 evolution is the source of his inspiration. He 

 regards the whole universe as a single, im- 

 measurable revelation of spirit. But this spirit is 

 the rhythmic outflow of infinite developments. It 

 becomes Milky Way and sun and planet, blue 

 lotus-flowers and gay butterfly. At last it takes 

 the form of man, and reads the stars as an open 

 book. In Homer and Goethe it directs the style 



2 



