The Heroic Theme

MAN IS HARD TO HANDLE; often he rejects, let alone Gandalf, his God. For as long as man lives all nature and beyond are trying to relate to him, but there is something in Man, both divine and diabolic, that rejects this. When his dark side embraces nature it is to subdue it and harness it to his will. When his good side woos nature it is to excape his manhood and be subject within it. The body's chemistry, land, sea, sun and sky are all directed this way or that. What is eternal in the mind contains this record, but overlords it with a vain and brave attempt, encompassing catastrophe, to break free of his past, to relate or not relate as the will moves, not to share in love, but to control or to cower. Man leaps from ice floe to ice floe, from hummock to tussock, to avoid what the baying may bring forth, what will come from surrender of his will that causes so much woe, and yet without which he would not be.