Nature
perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully
renders the likeness of the world.
Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious, as
when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the
fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial
unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen music," by De Stael
and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "A
Gothic church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." Michael
Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is
essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination
not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but
colors also; as the green grass. The law of harmonic sounds
reappears in the harmonic colors. The granite is differenced in its
laws only by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it
away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the
air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtile currents;
the light resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each
creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is
more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.
A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout
nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under
the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal
Spirit. For, it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth which we
express in words, implies or supposes every other truth. _Omne
verum vero consonat_. It is like a great circle on a sphere,
comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and
comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute Ens
seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides.
The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. Words are
finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions
of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is
the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill
the eye, and to be related to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one
thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the
likeness of all which is done rightly."
Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. They
introduce us to the human form, of which all other organizations
appear to be degradations. When this appears among so many that
surround it, the spirit prefers it to all others. It says, 'From such as
this, have I drawn joy and knowledge; in such as this, have I found
and beheld myself; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it can yield
me thought already formed and alive.' In fact, the eye,--the mind,--is
always accompanied by these forms, male and female; and these are
incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that
lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately, every one of them bears the
marks as of some injury; is marred and superficially defective.
Nevertheless, far different from the deaf and dumb nature around
them, these all rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of
thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all organizations, are the
entrances.
It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their ministry to our
education, but where would it stop? We are associated in adolescent
and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are
coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain
affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack
power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or
even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. When much
intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of
excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of God
who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has,
moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character
retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid
and sweet wisdom,--it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he
is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time.
CHAPTER VI.
IDEALISM.
THUS is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of
the world conveyed to man, the immortal pupil, in every object of
sense. To this one end of Discipline, all parts of nature conspire.
A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end be not
the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature outwardly
exists. It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the
World, that God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the
receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call
sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade. In my utter
impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to
know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with
outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up
there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of
the soul? The relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining
the same, what is the difference, whether land and sea interact, and
worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end,--deep
yawning under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout
absolute space,--or, whether, without relations of time and space, the
same appearances are inscribed in the constant faith of man?
Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in
the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to
me. Be it what it may, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the
accuracy of my senses.
The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal theory, if its
consequences were burlesque; as if it affected the stability of nature.
It surely does not. God never jests with us, and will not compromise
the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.
Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties
of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein
is perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the
hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship
to be tossed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural consequence of
this structure, that, so long as the active powers predominate over
the reflective, we resist with indignation any hint that nature is more
short-lived or mutable than spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the
carpenter, the toll-man, are much displeased at the intimation.
But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws,
the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. It
is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to shake our
faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote;
but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance; to
attribute necessary existence to spirit; to esteem nature as an
accident and an effect.
To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of
instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view,
man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and
they never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars
this faith. The first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of
the senses, which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and
shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher
agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy,
sharp outlines and colored surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens,
to outline and surface are at once added, grace and expression.
These proceed from imagination and affection, and abate somewhat
of the angular distinctness of objects. If the Reason be stimulated to
more earnest vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, and
are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen through them. The
best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher
powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God.
Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. Our first
institution in the Ideal philosophy is a hint from nature herself.
Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Certain
mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position apprizes
us of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from
a moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky.
The least change in our point of view, gives the whole world a
pictorial air. A man who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach
and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The
men, the women,--talking, running, bartering, fighting,--the earnest
mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are unrealized
at once, or, at least, wholly detached from all relation to the observer,
and seen as apparent, not substantial beings. What new thoughts are
suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid
movement of the rail-road car! Nay, the most wonted objects, (make
a very slight change in the point of vision,) please us most. In a
camera obscura, the butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own
family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us.
Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through
your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it
any time these twenty years!
In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference
between the observer and the spectacle,--between man and nature.
Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of
the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby
apprized, that, whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself
is stable.
2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates the same pleasure. By
a few strokes he delineates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the
camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not different from what we
know them, but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye.
He unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis
of his primary thought, and disposes them anew. Possessed himself
by a heroic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it. The sensual
man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his
thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as
fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, the refractory world
is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and
makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be
defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world.
Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the
purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses
the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody
any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest
spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are
brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made
aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects
shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his
sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to
be the _shadow_ of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is
his _chest_; the suspicion she has awakened, is her _ornament_;
The ornament of beauty is Suspect,
A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air.
His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a
city, or a state.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the brow of thralling discontent;
It fears not policy, that heretic,