in mystical foundations by Thomas Aquinas, mean this and only this. They accompany the unit soul from birth to death and protect it against the diabolical powers that seek to nest themselves in its will. For to sell oneself to the Devil means to deliver up one's will to him. The Church Militant on earth is the visible community of those who are enabled, by enjoyment of the sacraments, to will. This certainty of free being is held to be guaranteed in the altar-sacrament, which accordingly suffers a complete change of meaning. The miracle of the holy tranformation which takes place daily under the hands of the priest — the consecrated Host in the high altar of the cathedral, wherein the believer sensed the presence of him who of old sacrificed himself to secure for his own the freedom to will — called forth a sigh of relief of such depth and sincerity as we moderns can hardly imagine. It was in thanksgiving, therefore, that the chief feast of the Catholic Church, Corpus Christi, was founded in 1264.[1]
But more important still — and by far — was the essentially Faustian prime-sacrament of Contrition. This ranks with the Mary-myth and the Devil-myth as the third great creation of the Gothic. And, indeed, it is from this third that the other two derive depth and meaning; it discloses the last secrets of this Culture's soul, and so sets it apart from all other Cultures. The effect of the Magian baptism was to incorporate a man in the great consensus — the one great "it" of the divine spirit took up its abode in him as in the others, and thereafter resignation to all that should happen became his duty. But in the Faustian contrition the idea of personality was implicit. It is not true that the Renaissance discovered personality[2]; what it did was to bring personality up to a brilliant surface, whereby it suddenly became visible to everyone. Its birth is in Gothic; it is the most intimate and peculiar property of Gothic; it is one and the same with Gothic soul. For this contrition is something that each one accomplishes for himself alone. He alone can search his own conscience. He alone stands rueful in the presence of the Infinite. He alone can and must in confession understand and put into words his own past. And even the absolution that frees his Ego for new responsible action is personal to himself. Baptism is wholly impersonal — one receives it because one is a man, not because one is this man — but the idea of contrition presupposes that the value of every act depends uniquely upon the man who does it. This is what differentiates the Western drama from the Classical, the Chinese, and the Indian. This is what directs our legislation more and more with reference to the doer rather than to the deed,
- ↑ After its confirmation in 1311, the character of this festival as one of popular joy became still more marked by its association with the nascent drama (see Ency. Brit., XI ed., articles "Corpus Christi," "Drama"; and Y. Hirn, op. cit., pp. 144-5. — Tr.
- ↑ Or even rediscovered it. For Classical man as a spirit-filled body is one amongst many quite independent units, while Faustian man is a centre in the universe, which with its soul embraces the whole. But personality (individuality) means, not something separate (einzelnes), but something single (einziges).
