ABSTRACT
Every action, even the smallest, moves towards its opposite, and then relapses into its first condition. Thus a physical act progresses from inertia to violence, and returns to inertia again.2 A civilization passes from barbaric materialism to a search for its opposite, the spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual achievement which is symbolized in part by Byzantium. Athens, Greece, Alexandria, types of the rational, is destroyed by the impact of the irrational in The Resurrection; 'the heart of a phantom is beating'. Every personality desires its opposite. The cat and the moon, the earthbound and the heavenly body, are attracted and linked by material sympathy. Man not only seeks his opposite but 'always tries to become his opposite - to become what he would abhor if he did not desire it'. He desires it because he feels that he needs, not merely the fullness and roundness of personality, but the dramatic complement of those whose lack has given rise to frustration. So the Saint would become the swordsman, the scholar-recluse the soldier and lover. In the mutations of history the same principle is perceived. If the Greek civilization is fully subjective, the Hebrew which precedes it must be objective. And this principle holds good for all ages, even the present.:
When a civilization ends, task having led to task, until everybody was bored, the whole thing turns bottom upwards, Nietzsche's 'transvaluation of all values'.3 1 W. & B., p. 103. 2 This is the opening argument of the Summa of Aquinas. 3 On the Boiler, p. 25. For a discussion of the debt to Nietszche, see
In this way the fighting hero Cuchulain has for his daemons 'convicted cowards'. Yeats' daemon in 'Byzantium' is death to his life, life to his death. It is another variant of the often repeated gnomic quotation from Heraclitus: 'Men and gods die each other's life, live each other's death.' These are the words with which 'The Greek' concludes The Resurrection.
