diplomatizing or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according

to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme
over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realized; and the

Petition, _Thy Kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved
when he saw greedyworldly Barons clutch hold of the Church's property;

when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was
spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses,

education, schools, worship;--and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a
shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" This was Knox's

scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavored after, to realize
it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may

rejoice that he could not realize it; that it remained after two centuries
of effort, unrealizable, and is a "devout imagination" still. But how

shall we blame _him_ for struggling to realize it? Theocracy, Government
of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! All Prophets, zealous

Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy;
Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not

what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else
called, do essentially wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God's

Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in
Knox's time, and namable in all times, a revealed "Will of God") towards

which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All
true Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive

for a Theocracy.
How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what point

our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a
question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far

as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true faith of men, all men
ought to be more or less impatient always where they are not found

introduced. There will never be wanting Regent Murrays enough to shrug
their shoulders, and say, "A devout imagination!" We will praise the

Hero-priest rather, who does what is in him to bring them in; and wears
out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a God's Kingdom

of this Earth. The Earth will not become too godlike!
[May 19, 1840.]

LECTURE V.
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.

Hero-Gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of Heroism that belong to the
old ages, make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have

ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in
this world. The Hero as _Man of Letters_, again, of which class we are to

speak to-day, is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the
wondrous art of _Writing_, or of Ready-writing which we call _Printing_,

subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of
Heroism for all future ages. He is, in various respects, a very singular

phenomenon.
He is new, I say; he has hardly lasted above a century in the world yet.

Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a Great
Soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endeavoring to speak forth the

inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find place and
subsistence by what the world would please to give him for doing that.

Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain in the
market-place; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in

that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his
squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he does), from

his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would
not, give him bread while living,--is a rather curious spectacle! Few

shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected.
Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes:

the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his
aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude

admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him as
such; some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously follow

his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, a
Rousseau, should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to

amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown him, that he
might live thereby; _this_ perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a

still absurder phasis of things!--Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual
always that determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be

regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be, is
the soul of all. What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. The

world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant feature of the
world's general position. Looking well at his life, we may get a glance,

as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life of those singular
centuries which have produced him, in which we ourselves live and work.

There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in every kind there
is a genuine and a spurious. If _hero_ be taken to mean genuine, then I

say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a function for us
which is ever honorable, ever the highest; and was once well known to be

the highest. He is uttering forth, in such way as he has, the inspired
soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can do. I say _inspired_; for

what we call "originality," "sincerity," "genius," the heroic quality we
have no good name for, signifies that. The Hero is he who lives in the

inwardsphere of things, in the True, Divine and Eternal, which exists
always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial: his being is in

that; he declares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be in declaring
himself abroad. His life, as we said before, is a piece of the everlasting

heart of Nature herself: all men's life is,--but the weak many know not
the fact, and are untrue to it, in most times; the strong few are strong,

heroic, perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The Man of
Letters, like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can.

Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a man
Prophet, Priest, Divinity for doing; which all manner of Heroes, by speech

or by act, are sent into the world to do.
Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some forty years ago at Erlangen,

a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject: "_Ueber das Wesen
des Gelehrten_, On the Nature of the Literary Man." Fichte, in conformity

with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished
teacher, declares first: That all things which we see or work with in this

Earth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or
sensuous Appearance: that under all there lies, as the essence of them,

what he calls the "Divine Idea of the World;" this is the Reality which
"lies at the bottom of all Appearance." To the mass of men no such Divine

Idea is recognizable in the world; they live merely, says Fichte, among the
superficialities, practicalities and shows of the world, not dreaming that

there is anything divine under them. But the Man of Letters is sent hither
specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this

same Divine Idea: in every new generation it will manifest itself in a new
dialect; and he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such is Fichte's

phraseology; with which we need not quarrel. It is his way of naming what
I here, by other words, am striving imperfectly to name; what there is at

present no name for: The unspeakable Divine Significance, full of
splendor, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being of every man, of

every thing,--the Presence of the God who made every man and thing.
Mahomet taught this in his dialect; Odin in his: it is the thing which all

thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to teach.
Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, or as he prefers to

phrase it, a Priest, continuallyunfolding the Godlike to men: Men of
Letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men that

a God is still present in their life, that all "Appearance," whatsoever we
see in the world, is but as a vesture for the "Divine Idea of the World,"

for "that which lies at the bottom of Appearance." In the true Literary
Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he

is the light of the world; the world's Priest;--guiding it, like a sacred
Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Fichte

discriminates with sharp zeal the _true_ Literary Man, what we here call
the _Hero_ as Man of Letters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever

lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or living partially in it, struggles
not, as for the one good, to live wholly in it,--he is, let him live where

else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like, no Literary Man; he
is, says Fichte, a "Bungler, _Stumper_." Or at best, if he belong to the

prosaic provinces, he may be a "Hodman; " Fichte even calls him elsewhere a
"Nonentity," and has in short no mercy for him, no wish that _he_ should

continue happy among us! This is Fichte's notion of the Man of Letters.
It means, in its own form, precisely what we here mean.

In this point of view, I consider that, for the last hundred years, by far
the notablest of all Literary Men is Fichte's countryman, Goethe. To that

man too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call a life in the
Divine Idea of the World; vision of the inwarddivinemystery: and

strangely, out of his Books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike,
the workmanship and temple of a God. Illuminated all, not in fierce impure