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"It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a Man."
More truculently still, he insists upon the worship of a deity, not white-bearded, but as young as Hercules, a scandal to prudent Lutheran theologians, a prototype of violent strength. Yet Brand's own mission remains undefined to him if it ever takes exact shape until Agnes reveals it to him: Choose thy endless loss or gain! In ourselves is that young Earth, Ripe for the divine new-birth.
In all this we are passing from the second element in George Sand to the third, her aspiration for a social new-birth, a renaissance sociale. It is eminently the ideal of France; it was hers. Her religion connected itself with this ideal. In the convent where she was brought up, she had in youth had an awakening of fervent mystical piety in the Catholic form. That form she could not keep.
At once the question comes to the front, Shall the labour-pangs of this immense new-birth or transformation of English be encountered all at once? or shall they be spread over years, and little by little the necessary changes introduced?
When the brightness of the so-called Renaissance faded, and it faded very suddenly, a deadly chill fell upon the arts: that New-birth mostly meant looking back to past times, wherein the men of those days thought they saw a perfection of art, which to their minds was different in kind, and not in degree only, from the ruder suggestive art of their own fathers: this perfection they were ambitious to imitate, this alone seemed to be art to them, the rest was childishness: so wonderful was their energy, their success so great, that no doubt to commonplace minds among them, though surely not to the great masters, that perfection seemed to be gained: and, perfection being gained, what are you to do? you can go no further, you must aim at standing still which you cannot do.
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