he world to solitude, from Bethlehem
to Egypt; or else suffering and death await us!--

_Herodes ist ein Feind; der Joseph der Verstand,
Dem machte Gott die Gefahr im Traum (in Geist) bekannt;
Die Welt ist Bethlehem, Aegypten Einsamkeit,
Fleuch, meine Seele! fleuch, sonst stirbest du vor Leid_.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Angelus Silesius, pseudonym for
Johannes Scheffler, a physician and mystic poet of the seventeenth
century (1624-77).]

Giordano Bruno also declares himself a friend of seclusion. _Tanti
uomini_, he says, _che in terra hanno voluto gustare vita
celeste, dissero con una voce, "ecce elongavi fugiens et mansi in
solitudine_"--those who in this world have desired a foretaste of the
divine life, have always proclaimed with one voice:

_Lo! then would I wander far off;
I would lodge in the wilderness._[1]

[Footnote 1: Psalms, lv. 7.]

And in the work from which I have already quoted, Sadi says of
himself: _In disgust with my friends at Damascus, I withdrew into
the desert about Jerusalem, to seek the society of the beasts of the
field_. In short, the same thing has been said by all whom Prometheus
has formed out of better clay. What pleasure could they find in the
company of people with whom their only common ground is just what is
lowest and least noble in their own nature--the part of them that is
commonplace, trivial and vulgar? What do they want with people who
cannot rise to a higher level, and for whom nothing remains but to
drag others down to theirs? for this is what they aim at. It is an
aristocratic feeling that is at the bottom of this propensity to
seclusion and solitude.

Rascals are always sociable--more's the pity! and the chief sign that
a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he
takes in others' company. He prefers solitude more and more, and, in
course of time, comes to see that, with few exceptions, the world
offers no choice beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the
other. This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus Silesius,
with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and love, was obliged to
admit the truth of it. However painful solitude may be, he says, be
careful not to be vulgar; for then you may find a desert everywhere:--

_Die Einsamkeit ist noth: doch sei nur nicht gemein,
So kannst du ueberall in einer Wueste sein_.

It is natural for great minds--the true teachers of humanity--to care
little about th