But now I remark farther: What in such a time as ours it requires a
Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor
undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,--this, the
ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for
itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine
to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face to
face. "All was Godlike or God:"--Jean Paul still finds it so; the giant
Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays: but there then were no
hearsays. Canopus shining down over the desert, with its blue diamond
brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we
ever witness here), would pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish
man, whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there. To his wild
heart, with all feelings in it, with no _speech_ for any feeling, it might
seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing out on him from the great deep
Eternity; revealing the inner Splendor to him. Cannot we understand how
these men _worshipped_ Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping
the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is
transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure;
that is worship. To these primeval men, all things and everything they saw
exist beside them were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God.

And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through
every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if we
will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that way now: but is
it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a "poetic nature,"
that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty in it; how every
object still verily is "a window through which we may look into Infinitude
itself"? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet!
Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what
he does,--in their own fashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever,