And this Man-God who created Being--that is to say, a stable world, a world which can be reckoned with, and in which the incessant kaleidoscopic character of things is entirely absent--this same Man-God who found the earth "without form" and "void," and whose magnificent Spirit "moved upon the face of the waters"; when people grew too weak to look upon him as their brother and God at the same time,[46] was relegated to his own world, and from a great distance they now pray to him and worship him and say: "For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, For ever and ever. Amen."
"For ever and ever;" this was something they could not say of the world as it is; and the thought of stability and of Being was a delight to them.
It may be difficult for us to picture how great the rejoicings must have been which followed upon every fresh ordering and arranging of the universe, every fresh interpretation of the world in the terms of man.
Perhaps only a few people to-day, who are beginning to cast dubious glances at Life, and to question even the justification of man's existence, may be able to form some conception of the thrill that must have passed through an ancient community, when one of its higher men uprose and ordered and adjusted Life for them, and, in so ordering it, transfigured it.
How much richer they must have felt! And how inseparable the two notions "artist" and "giver" must have appeared to them!
"If indeed this is Life," they must have said; "if Life is really as he orders it"--and his voice and eye allowed them to prefix no such "if" with genuine scepticism--"then of a truth it is a well of delight and a fountain of blessedness."
Thus Art--this function which "is with us in order that we may not perish through truth,"[47] this "enhancement of the feeling of Life and Life's stimulant,"[48] which "acts as a tonic, increases strength and kindles desire"[49]--became the "great seducer" to earth and to the world;[50] and we can imagine the gratitude that swelled in the hearts of men for him whose function it was. How could he help but become a god! Even tradition was not necessary for this. For at the very moment when his creative spirit lent its glory to the earth, man must have been conscious of his divinity or of his use as a mouthpiece by a Divinity.[50]