Thus like the leviathan! We recall this overpowering weight in the scale of God's justice in regard to the man Job. There, where the deep sources of the ocean are, the leviathan lives; from there the all-destroying flood ascends, the all-engulfing flood of animal passion. That stifling, compressing feeling[81] of the onward-surging impulse is projected mythologically as a flood which, rising up and over all, destroys all that exists, in order to allow a new and better creation to come forth from this destruction.
Japhet:
The eternal will
Shall deign to expound this dream
Of good and evil; and redeem
Unto himself all times, all things;
And, gather'd under his almighty wings,
Abolish hell!
And to the expiated Earth
Restore the beauty of her birth.
Spirits:
And when shall take effect this wondrous spell?
Japhet:
When the Redeemer cometh; first in pain
And then in glory.
Spirits:
New times, new climes, new arts, new men, but still
The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill,
Shall be amongst your race in different forms;
But the same mortal storms
Shall oversweep the future, as the waves
In a few hours the glorious giants' graves.
