But one thing they did, whatever else: they put men into a new relation with the universe. Cæsar opened Gaul, Germany and Britain, and let the gleam of ice and snow, the shagginess of the north, the mystery of the menhir and the mistletoe in upon the rather stuffy soul of Rome, and of the Orient. And Cicero was discovering the moral nature of man, as citizen chiefly, and so putting man in new relation to man. But Cæsar was greater than Cicero. He put man in new relation to ice and sun. Only Cæsar was, perhaps, also too much an egoist; he never knew the mysteries he moved amongst. But Cæsar was great _beyond_ morality. Man’s life consists in a connection with all things in the universe. Whoever can establish, or initiate a new connection between mankind and the circumambient universe is, in his own degree, a saviour. Because mankind is always exhausting its human possibilities, always degenerating into repetition, torpor, _ennui_, lifelessness. When _ennui_ sets in, it is a sign that human vitality is waning, and the human connection with the universe is gone stale. Then he who comes to make a new revelation, a new connection, whether he be soldier, statesman, poet, philosopher, artist, he is a saviour. When George Stephenson invented the locomotive engine, he provided a _means of communication_, but he didn’t alter in the slightest man’s vital relation to the universe. But Galileo and Newton, _discoverers_, not inventors, they made a big difference. And the energy released in mankind because of them was enormous. The same is true of Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. The same is true of Voltaire, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Rousseau. They established a _new_ connection between mankind and the universe, and the result was a vast release of energy. The _sun_ was reborn to man, so was the moon. To man, the very sun goes stale, becomes a habit. Comes a saviour, a seer, and the very sun dances new in heaven. That is because the _sun_ is always _sun beyond sun beyond sun_. The sun is every sun that ever has been, Helios or Mithras, the sun of China or of Brahma, or of Peru or of Mexico: great gorgeous suns, besides which our puny “envelope of incandescent gas” is a smoky candle-wick. It is our fault. When man becomes stale and paltry, his sun is the mere stuff that our sun is. When man is great and splendid, the sun of China and Mithras blazes over him and gives him, not radiant energy in the form of heat and light, but life, life, life! The world is to us what we take from it. The sun is to us what we take from it. And if we are puny, it is because we take punily from the superb sun. Man is great according as his relation to the living universe is vast and vital.