" This is not to the point, since
in fact neither Georg Brandes nor Galileo, as hero of a mystical drama,
could have produced such a capacity for evolution as is presented by the
stern priest whose absolute certitude, although founded, one admits, on
no rational theory of theology, is yet of the very essence of religion.
Brand becomes intelligible when we regard him as a character of the
twelfth century transferred to the nineteenth. He has something of Peter
the Hermit in him. He ought to have been a crusading Christian king,
fighting against the Moslem for the liberties of some sparkling city of
God. He exists in his personage, under the precipice, above the fjord,
like a rude mediaeval anchorite, who eats his locusts and wild honey in
the desert. We cannot comprehend the action of Brand by any reference to
accepted creeds and codes, because he is so remote from the religious
conventions as hardly to seem objectively pious at all. He is violent
and incoherent; he knows not clearly what it is he wants, but it must be
an upheaval of all that exists, and it must bring Man into closer
contact with God.
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