PROLOGUE FOURTH. SCENERY AND DRAMATIS PERSONE OF THE DIVINE DRAMA. WE are now prepared with some of the vital and elemental principles of the drama, and to rise from the analysis of its minor to the contemplation of its major form-from the human to the divine; and in doing so we must first look for the five acts, the scenery and the dramatis persona. The theatre in which the drama is performed is the world at large; the drama itself is the history of man and the development of humanity; the geographical earth is the stage, and the succession of ages the time. But in an especial manner the great stage is the arena of civilisation which is the work of progressive development, and the limits of that stage are as definitely described as if they had been determined by a land surveyor. For the Western civilisation there can be no doubt that its history begins with the history of the Church in the nation of the Hebrews. Their political existence constitutes the first act. Other nations may have preceded them, and did precede them, but they have left no records and no institutions which we have trans planted. They exist in tradition, like submerged antiquities, antediluvian relics, or Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. To us they have transmitted no definite memorials; and if even such are buried, and henceforth dug up, they will appear too late in the theatre of civilisation to be entitled to hold any higher place than the preliminary preparation behind the curtain. Mount Sinai and Palestine therefore constitute the scenery of the first act; and the Hebrews, in their political and religious capacity, are the performers. The direction of the performance is North-westward, like the movement of the sun in the heavens, from East to West, and the obliquity of the ecliptic in combination with it. In following this line, the next great people that left their impress on the civilisation of the world, are the Greeks. In their national capacity they laid the foundation of abstract philosophy, polite literature, and the fine arts. The region which the Greeks inhabited constitutes, therefore, the scenery of the second act, and the Greeks themselves are the performers. Next come the Romans, for the third act, and exhibiting the special characteristic of a third act, in a splendid human attempt to solve the problem and attain the consummation, and even apparently reaching the summit, like Macbeth; though the Ghost of the murdered victims and the rivalry of Banquo flit about the firmament and disturb its repose. Then come the Western continental nations, or the empire dissolved into vernacular portions, centralised in France, and characterised by a chaos of doctrina controversy and sanguinary struggles between the free and the absolute principles. And, last of all, comes a larger idea than that of nationality; namely, universality, the Atlantic and cosmopolitan era, centralised or commenced in the British Isles, as the opening scene of the fifth and final act of the Western Drama. This is merely an outline of the Drama of Western civilisation. A clearer view of the performance and the scenery is the task we have undertaken. The Western nations are all included. But the direct line, the great river of civilisation from East to West, flows right through Greece, Italy, and France, from Palestine to England; thus distinguishing these five great cities, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, Paris, and London, as the capitals of memorial civilisation. Five distinct and original missions belong to these great cities, in a manner so special, characteristic, and primordial, that each individually is not only the head, but the founder of one of the principal elements of Western society. A similar division applies to the Eastern hemisphere, on the other side of "The Desert;" but, as that belongs to the mystic or deeply recondite aspect of the subject, it is not proposed to enter upon its analysis in this book. But the five great acts of the Eastern Drama are as definitely described on the map of the world as our own, and consist of Chaldea, Persia, India (in which, as being the third act, the great Oriental scheme of Brahminism, the monarch of Eastern theology, arose); China as the fourth (which, like France in the West, is the great arena of philosopy in the East); and Japan, in which the Oriental system has attained its ultimate in the perfect despotism of law over emperors, nobles, and people, in a manner unparalleled in any other portion of the globe. America is a new world altogether; a young giant who bides his time. It belongs by relationship to the Pentalogue or Drama of the Western World, but occupies a special position in the great Mundane Drama, and enacts a character which will be better described on a future occasion. Here, then, we have the great theatre of the old world, divided into an Eastern and Western system, each consisting of five principal stages, in the line of its own career. But our attention is now to be especially directed to the Western hemisphere, or the Orbis Romanus, because that is the stage upon which the most brilliant of the two dramas has been performed. It may, however, be well in the first place to discover the reason why these two great hemispheric divisions exist. Why not one? Because two are more perfect than one, as the representatives of the two sexes; the bipolarity of universal nature; its two motive powers, the positive and the negative. The ancients were early aware of this all-prevalent bipolarity, symbolised by sex. We are informed in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, that the Oriental was considered masculine and the Occidental feminine. The Western, therefore, according to this analogy, is the feminine division of the drama-the collective woman, of whom it is said that her seed should bruise the Serpent's head. It is the sphere of intellectual light, the birthplace of the Word of God in all its acceptations, whether it be the Word theological, or the Word philosophical, scientific, or poetical. In the Levant the light has arisen, and it is only by Westward progression that it has increased; "for, as the light riseth in the East, and shineth even to the West, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." Such is the analogical teaching of the greatest of masters, who did not fail to show us a brilliant example of that wisdom that looks for the revelation of the plan of Divine Providence in the analogies of Nature. Poetry also, which belongs to the graduated scale of prological as well as logical revelation, which contains its higher and lower, and even its dissonant or discordant forms, like a musical scale, has long been familiar with that sexual analogy which represents the arts and the sciences as feminine. Painting and sculpture have borrowed this idea from their elder sister, and never fail to personify all of them by women; and yet man is the chief cultivator of each! Is this inconsistent? No, indeed it is pure inspiration and perfect poetry. Reason is feminine, because it brings forth by labour. Love is masculine, because it : |