PARTISAN REVIEW
tablets of the old values in order to trace new characters on new tab–
lets,
unque leonis.
He wants to give a new testament to the
s~me
old
Egypt-to "transvaluate" the same heathen family inheritance. He joins
the community of the great carvers of the ideal; the iconoclast, the image
breaker becomes an image painter. But what is this to you-you thirst
for cool water, not for hot blood; for you are only a wanderer in the
desert not at all a beast of prey; and in Egypt itself you are not at all a
wrecker, but perhaps only-faced by the inquisitional tribunal of the
priests-a sower of suspicion, doubt, disintegration; and it is not to your
liking to legislate, and in point of fact there is nothing to be transvalu–
ated, for your own valuations would essentially, in their very core, per–
haps coincide with the recognized values; but for some reason you must
begin with a supposed dethronement and dramatic abrogation of the
latter.
·
Perhaps it seems to you that
if
values are to be revived they must
first be killed-that they are not immortal gods if they do not withstand
the ordeal of death. I think that you are motivated by a deep and
secret impulse, diametrically opposed to those impulses which throughout
the past centuries determined all the creation of idols in the world that
the Scriptures call the heathen world. The genius of paganism projected
its noblest part into a transcendental image or an invisible but trans–
cendental idea-a suprasensual image-and objectified its highest part
into a symbol, a likeness, an icon, a graven image; and even "on the
shoals of history," as you like to say, in the century of Kant and the
definitive enclosure and immuring of the spirit by reflection into the
solitary well of individual personality, it strove to save "the idea" as "the
regulative idea" in man's rational consciousness. You, without realizing
it, are a typical representative of another, equally ancient and always
iconoclastic impulse, to absorb the idea in the twilight of the unconscious.
You do not need the "regulative idea"-whether transcendent or im-
•
manent, it is always an idea;-in itself it oppresses you despotically;
what you need is a regulative instinct. You know and want God not in
the visible sky nor in man's invisible skies, but in the fiery soul of the
living creature,
in
the breath of its life, in the pulsation of its veins.
I repeat, a hoary old time, no less ancient than the hieroglyphs
of Egypt, is with you in this thought. I recall my verses about primitive
man who did not fear death as we fear it:
Ancient man, thou art mightier than we–
Because before inexorable fate
Thou didst not lower thy youthful eyes.
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