TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1427 



prefigure this and record it ? And what next — between Tragedy and 

 Achievement ? Here may be Life's supreme Rhythm — Hfe's highest 

 music, ranging, like Beethoven's, between the leaping joy of victory 

 and the funeral march of the hero. 



Here, then, is no small conclusion: that from (i) the simplest 

 chord, that of the acts of everyday life — with (2) the facts of its 

 ordinary experience — there may develop not only (3) the deep 

 chord of the inward Life of Thought, but (4) that also of Life in 

 Deed. 



1 



Acts 



Facts 



Deeds 



Thoughts 



And is it not a strange — and indeed at first an unsought, but now 

 evident result, that in this continuously reasoned presentment of 

 Life, in everyday modern scientific terms, as geographic, economic, 

 anthropological; and as psychological (elemental, and developed), 

 there should thus emerge this unexpected conclusion — that the 

 Greeks of old, whoever else, knew all this before, and had thought 

 it out, to these same conclusions — albeit in their own nobler way? 

 For our diagram turns out to be that of Parnassus — home of the 

 Nine Muses; and their very names, their significance, and their 

 Symbolisms will be found to answer to the nine squares above, and 

 connect them with those below. And this more and more precisely, 

 as the scheme is studied; not, indeed, without one or two difficulties 

 at first sight, but these easily cleared by a little psychological and 

 social reflection. 



Here, then, assuredly — even to mathematical probability, let 

 alone to reason — are the Nine Muses of Parnassus, neither less nor 

 more; and as Hesiod recorded them — it would seem from an even 

 then fading tradition, albeit four-score generations ago. Since then 

 at times they have inspired writers, as last at the Renaissance : but 

 too much always as mere literary revivals; till at length they have 

 come to seem too hackneyed for our fresh young poets of to-da\^ 



But none the less, they here reappear in Life and so prove them- 

 selves as immortal; not only as the source of inspiration of all poets, 

 past, present, and to come, but the very genii of will, the inspiration 

 of every worthy deed. And they come to all peoples, simplest as 

 well as highest : the first clue to this recovery came, indeed, not from 

 musings in Athens or at Olympia, from dreamings at Sunium or on 



