Читать книгу Albert Dürer - T. Sturge Moore - Страница 16

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'Wherever poetry, imagination, or art had been busy, there had appeared, both in Judea and Greece, some degree of rebellion against the empire of fact.. When Jesus said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you," he recognised that the human reason was the antagonist of all other known forces, and he declared war on the god of this world and prophesied the downfall of--the empire of the apparent fact;--not with fume and fret, not with rant and rage, as poets and seers had done, but mildly affirming that with the soul what is best is strongest, has in the long run most influence; that there is one fact in the essential nature of man which, antagonist to the influence of all other facts, wields an influence destined to conquer or absorb all other influences. He said: "My Father which is in heaven, the master influence within me, has declared that I shall never find rest to my soul until I prefer His kingdom, the conception of my heart, to the kingdoms of earth and the glory of the earth." 'We have seen that Dürer describes the miracle; the work of art, thus:

"The secret treasure which a man conceived in his heart shall appear as a thing" (see page 10).

And we know that he prized this, the master thing, the conception of the heart, above everything else.

Much learning is not evil to a man, though some be stiffly set against it, saying that art puffeth up. Were that so, then were none prouder than God who hath formed all arts, but that cannot be, for God is perfect in goodness. The more, therefore, a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted.

The learning Dürer chiefly intends is not book-learning or critical lore, but knowledge how to make, by which man becomes a creator in imitation of God; for this is of necessity the most perfect knowledge, rivalling the sureness of intuition and instinct.