Poor and puny now indeed the crown, the wealth, the royalty of Mind.  Their value lay alone in this, that some day they should devolve on her, that for her they were being garnered and stored and cherished.

So the dragon triumphs; and the Soul, cast out of the city, stands face to face with the black abyss, expecting her Destroyer.

Then, even at that last and awful hour, the Divine Deliverer appears, the Son of Hermes, Genius of Interpretation, Champion of the Spiritual Life.  As Hercules slew the Hydra, the Lion, and many another noxious thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity.

This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the Reason that knows (gnosis) as distinguished from the Lower Reason of mere opinion (doxa).  He is no earthly warrior.  He carries celestial arms, and bears the ensigns of the God.  Thus the commemoration of St. George, and of the famous legend of which he is the hero, involves the praise of all valiant knights of the Hermetic art throughout the ages.  Every divine man who has carried the enchanted sword, or worn the sandals of the winged God, who has fought with monsters and championed the King’s daughter—­Una, the one peerless maid—­is celebrated in the person of our national patron saint.  The Order to which he belongs is a Spiritual Order of the Garter, or Girdle of the Virgin; and its ensign is the armed chevalier trampling under his horse’s hoofs the foul and furious agent of the nether world.

The idea of knighthood implies that of activity.  The pattern saint and flower of chivalry is one who gladly fights and would as gladly die in noble causes.  The words pronounced of old times on the dubbing of a knight, “Be gentle, valiant, and fortunate,” are not words which could realise themselves in the dullard or the churl.  To the good knight, the ardent love of beauty, in all its aspects is indispensable.  The fair lady of his dreams is the spiritual bright-shining of goodness, which expresses itself to him fitly and sweetly in material and visible things.  Hence he is always poet, and fighter in some cause.  And he is impelled to fight because the love of beauty burns so hot within him that he cannot abide to see it outraged.  His very gentleness of heart is the spur of his valour.  Champion and knight as well as thinker and student, the Son of Hermes is of necessity a reformer of men, a redeemer of the world.  It is not enough for him to know the doctrine, he must likewise do the will of the gods, and bid the kingdom of the Lord come upon earth without, even as in the heaven within his heart.

For the rule of his Order is the Law of Love, and “Love seeketh ssnot her own.”

The End