"Everything classical is healthy, everything Romantic is sick." Goethe said this. Why did Goethe say this? What matters is what classicism and Romanticism really are. Goethe was not a Romanticist, definitely a romantic, but not a Romantic. This probably appears to be leading nowhere. So I will cut it off and come back to it, because the point isn't Goethe, the point is that what he said is true.

Whenever people talk of the end of the world, they always like to make it look like the Illiad. "No, there are the Four Horsemen and Fenrir and Loki and all the stars fall!" Maybe. But you know even G. K. Chesterton waxxed about the last "good pagan" dying with the Iliad on their lips. The last book of Terra Ignota series uses the Illiad too, and to warn people, even says "reread Faust" through a character. By Faust of course they mean Goethe's. I mean, he is important to this discussion, but not the point. Julian Jayne's makes a big deal of Homer's Iliad in his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Clearly what little the Western world has of history begins with the Iliad and ends with the Iliad. But I disagree with Chesterton's admiration of it. I don't think the civilization it was from was probably very glorious. I think it was probably glorious in the past, but Homer's mentality itself signified its decline rather than its culmination, so at Homer's time it could only be a dystopic mess. What evidence do I have? Plato and Socrates.

Plato said Socrates put forth a doctrine, sometimes people call it "the noble lie," as if it were intended to be a deliberate deception. However, it becomes clear from looking at Plato that Plato's doctrine would be believed most of all by the people at the top of the hierarcy, and this was no attempt by some Übermensch to deceive some Untermensch. The issue is simply, as humans, people cannot know everything, so people have to believe what is good enough. But Plato held people to a high standard of "good enough," his standard was directly in contrast to Homer spreading fables of gods. More interestingly, Plato and Socrates appear to be monotheists. Well, Plato is where we get ideas like the Monad that were mentioned later on by Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophers anyways. Plato and Socrates were not "Hellenists" though, that's just another Homeric fable.

There is one Truth, and not many. And the world shall begin and end with almost all people refusing to accept that, chasing after fables, even as they reenact the most horrific scenes of the Iliad like some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. For all evil is is lies, and therefore nothing, deprivation. And lies are powerless to change the truth. Evil's torment: desiring to act against God, yet being completely impotent to do so, because even that desire is God's will. And the circle is squared, and lead transmuted.

"Everything classical is healthy, everything Romantic is sick." Because everything classical is Plato's and Socrates' commitment to Truth, and everything Romantic is Homer's idle fables.

Sing, O heart. The Muses are dead.

The Truth about Plato’s “Noble Lie” - VoegelinView