Nature
That works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic.
In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids seem to him recent
and transitory. The freshness of youth and love dazzles him with its
resemblance to morning.
Take those lips away
Which so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes,--the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say, in passing, it would
not be easy to match in literature.
This transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the
passion of the poet,--this power which he exerts to dwarf the great,
to magnify the small,--might be illustrated by a thousand examples
from his Plays. I have before me the Tempest, and will cite only
these few lines.
ARIEL. The strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar.
Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo, and his
companions;
A solemn air, and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains
Now useless, boiled within thy skull.
Again;
The charm dissolves apace,
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Their understanding
Begins to swell: and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.
The perception of real affinities between events, (that is to say, of
_ideal_ affinities, for those only are real,) enables the poet thus to
make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the
world, and to assert the predominance of the soul.
3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he
differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes
Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not
less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of
things to the empire of thought. "The problem of philosophy,"
according to Plato, "is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a
ground unconditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith that a
law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena
can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty
is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a
beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of
both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions,
strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases,
that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid
seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a
thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses
of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their
harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained,
the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of
particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.
Thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the spiritual.
The astronomer, the geometer, rely on their irrefragable analysis,
and disdain the results of observation. The sublime remark of Euler
on his law of arches, "This will be found contrary to all experience,
yet is true;" had already transferred nature into the mind, and left
matter like an outcast corpse.
4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt
of the existence of matter. Turgot said, "He that has never doubted
the existence of matter, may be assured he has no aptitude for
metaphysical inquiries." It fastens the attention upon immortal
necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their
presence, we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a
shade. Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods, we think of nature as
an appendix to the soul. We ascend into their region, and know that
these are the thoughts of the Supreme Being. "These are they who
were set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth
was. When he prepared the heavens, they were there; when he
established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of
the deep. Then they were by him, as one brought up with him. Of
them took he counsel."
Their influence is proportionate. As objects of science, they are
accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being raised by
piety or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these
divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine.
Like a new soul, they renew the body. We become physically
nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and
we think it will never be so. No man fears age or misfortune or death,
in their serene company, for he is transported out of the district of
change. Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth,
we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or
relative. We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time,
_we exist_. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space
are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous
will, they have no affinity.
5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called,--the
practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life,--have an
analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and
suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein;
that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man;
the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God;
Ethics does not. They are one to our present design. They both put
nature under foot. The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things
that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It
puts an affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which
philosophy does for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that
may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is,
--"Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities,
dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." The
devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have arrived at a certain
hostility and indignation towards matter, as the Manichean and
Plotinus. They distrusted in themselves any looking back to these
flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was ashamed of his body. In short, they
might all say of matter, what Michael Angelo said of external beauty,
"it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which
he has called into time."
It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and
religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the
external world. But I own there is something ungrateful in
expanding too curiously the particulars of the general proposition,
that all culture tends to imbue us with idealism. I have no hostility to
nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like
corn and melons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones
at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest. I only wish to
indicate the true position of nature in regard to man, wherein to
establish man, all right education tends; as the ground which to
attain is the object of human life, that is, of man's connection with
nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and brings the
mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call real, and that real,
which it uses to call visionary. Children, it is true, believe in the
external world. The belief that it appears only, is an afterthought, but
with culture, this faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the first.
The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that
it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable
to the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both speculative
and practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the
light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue
subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in God. It
beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events,
of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after
atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture,
which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of
the soul. Therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and
microscopic study of the universal tablet. It respects the end too
much, to immerse itself in the means. It sees something more
important in Christianity, than the scandals of ecclesiastical history,
or the niceties of criticism; and, very incurious concerning persons
or miracles, and not at all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence,
it accepts from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the pure and
awful form of religion in the world. It is not hot and passionate at
the appearance of what it calls its own good or bad fortune, at the
union or opposition of other persons. No man is its enemy. It accepts
whatsoever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a watcher more than a
doer, and it is a doer, only that it may the better watch.
CHAPTER VII.
SPIRIT.
IT is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should
contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may
be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of
this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his
faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of
nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of
man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and
outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin.
It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual
effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands
with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest
man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most,
will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were,
distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe
himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless
as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in
propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the
noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is
the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual,
and strives to lead back the individual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do
not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some
related thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter?
Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the
evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being.
The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is
a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles
than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the
existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It
leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my
perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because