ilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal
worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an
object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot
surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart _be_ honestly full of it,
the whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one
word, let him entirely _believe_ in his Fetish,--it will then be, I
should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be
made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there.

But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era
of the Prophets, no man's mind _is_ any longer honestly filled with
his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through
it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt
that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is _insincere_ Idolatry.
Doubt has eaten-out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging
spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half-feels now to
have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls
are no longer _filled_ with their Fetish; but only pretend to be
filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. "You
do not believe," said Coleridge; "you only believe that you believe."
It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure
symptom that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call
Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more
immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning
of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any
morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralysed thereby,
cast into fatal magnetic sleep! Men are no longer _sincere_ men. I do
not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes
it with unextinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, are at
death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is _Cant_, and even what one may call
Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of
Worship ends with this phasis.

I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any other
Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax,
were not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons of Sin, made of
sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero,
in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to
reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. Acc