Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Special number))

ECCE HOMO

IN the din of wars, in the clash of wills, in the worker’s hopes and in the
poet’s dreams numberless lights have appeared. To man’s hungry vision
they looked like destiny’s features, revealed for his eternal guidance.
Which one of these has withstood the tide of being? Have not they all fled
like dream-spectres before the waking-hour, or dissolved like night’s images
in the morning’s first rays? Only our questions abide.
Was Prometheus’ fire heaven-born, in truth?
The million eyes, shining on heaven’s dark expanse, blindingly deepen the
profound endlessness beyond them. So does life’s flickering insight hide the
eternal purpose of man’s deed and will. Only the lure of inquiry, like a
Sisyphus task imposed upon being, shows its futile light on our horizon.
This frozen Sun—some call it Civilization.
Civilization—is it enigma’s echo? Whither calls its sound?
Who were the pyramid-builders ? The slaving hands or the master minds ?
What was their aim? A greater burden for the earth’s crust or an eminence
nearer to heaven? Was the Sphinx their last Thought, their final Doubt?
Civilization—?
Did Gautama follow its voice when enticed away from throne and wife
and child, in the gray hour before sunrise? Or was it the day-dreaming Yogi
who had listened to its whisper in a life-long lifelessness of contemplation?
Or did Jehovah’s stern law proclaim its message,—to the head and not the
heart,—with rainbow covenant against non-sanguine flood ?
And who kindled Herostrates’ fire-brand and whetted Alexander’s sword?
Were they Civilization’s tools—Pericles’ hosts of slaves? Were not Prax-
iteles’ gods rock-hewn, like the profuse mortgage-posts on Arcadia’s fields?
When unto Caesar what is Caesar’s was given, had Civilization to others
decreed blood-stained bread and tear-soaked play?
Is a hemlock cup forever for a Socrates ordained?
And by whose fatal verdict did Plato’s word cleave man’s own world
in twain,—not even Calvary could mend the break—leaving naught but
sin on our earth? Upon such earth the reasoner shuns the sun, to seek truth
with a lantern, with scholastic flame flashing blindingly into human eyes.
Upon such earth the man of faith seeks refuge in an anchorite’s cell, and the
man of deed in the clouded heavens of mysticism, even to this day of revolu-
tion. Upon such earth ideal flees from man’s home, to dwell beyond life’s
reach. To the land of “Tomorrow”—that sterile harlot gloating over “To-
day’s” prostrate form.
And are they of Civilization’s kin who have set themselves up on imag-
ination’s cloistered heights, within intellectual ramparts, on eminences steep
and hard, whence only dregs profusely run down—their abundance deemed
greatness—into the valley’s broad lands, thence to rise in deadly mists into
a steeple-bell-swelled atmosphere?
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