The Star in the West

172 THE STAR IN THE WEST Now hear another : he has written all the old false hoods . And now hear the reason : He conversed with Angels who are all religious , and conversed not with the Devils who all hate religion Goethe , in Faust , also depicted this same moral idea , and most religions have experienced this unity of Virtue and Vice ; the early Christians applauded it, and even now in Christian Churches is still sung the beautiful hymn : Nearer , my God , to thee , Nearer to thee , E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me ! Still all my song shall be Nearer , my God , to thee , Nearer to thee . To raise oneself through the vicious and the virtuous , to reside , as Adonis did , six months with Proserpine , and six with Venus , to be as day and night , winter and summer , is no easy path to tread ; and if it be necessary for the initiate to gaze on the back parts of Jahveh , it is, however , most certainly not necessary for him to kiss the hind quarters of the goat of Mendes , or to revel in the secret orgies of the Agapae ; for the tempting of man is but the temper ing of the metal .' The flower which springs from the dunghill assimi lates into itself particles of matter , transforming them into the ruby of the poppy and the sapphire of the cornflower ; so with us , it is synthetically that we rise , and not analytically . Blake grasped this idea and so did Joseph de Maistre . The Arcanum of Solomon is 1 Yet the virtue of one man may be the vice of another .