"Thought is an eternal simplification - a seeing out, beyond the things of the eye; the attempt to construct a world of pure intelligence. But you craftsmen take the most perishable of all things to your hearts, and, in their very transcience and corruption, you herald the meaning of the world. You never look beyond or above it, you give yourselves up to it, and yet, by your very devotion, you change it into the highest of all, till it seems the epitome of eternity. We thinkers strive to reach our God by drawing the world away from before His face. You come to Him, loving His creation, and fashioning it all over again. Both these are imperfect, human works; yet, of the two, art is the more innocent."
“But seen from above – as God might see it – were this
patterned order and morality, this giving up of the world, and the joys of
sense, this aloof withdrawal from blood and mire into prayer and philosophy,
any better? Were men really made to live an ordered life, its virtues and
duties set to the ringing of a bell? Was man created to study Aristotle and the
Summa, to know Greek, extinguish his sense, fly the
world? Had not God made man with lusts and pride in him, with blood and
darkness in his heart, with the freedom to sin, love and despair?
...Yes, and
perhaps it was not merely simpler and more human to live a Goldmund-life in the
world. Perhaps in the end it was more valiant, and greater in God’s sight, to
breast the currents of reality, sin, and accept sin’s bitter consequence,
instead of standing apart, with well-washed hands, living in sober, quiet
security, planting a pretty garden of well-trained thoughts, and walking then,
in stainless ignorance, among them – the sheltered beds of a little paradise.
It was harder perhaps, and need a stouter heart to walk with broken shoes
through forest-glades, to trudge the roads, suffer rain and snow, want and
drought, playing all the games of the senses, and paying one’s losses with much
grief.”
