Nature
obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of
Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom
of children. These are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the
sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space,
but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The difference
between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by
the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an evening
knowledge, _vespertina cognitio_, but that of God is a morning
knowledge, _matutina cognitio_.
The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty, is
solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we
see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is
not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not
transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and
lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the
spirit. Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither
can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the
words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto
deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are
innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers,
but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their
faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their
subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer
also a study of truth,--a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite?
No man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. But when
a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal
relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time,
kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God
go forth anew into the creation.
It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for
objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in
the common. What is a day? What is a year? What is summer? What
is woman? What is a child? What is sleep? To our blindness, these
things seem unaffecting. We make fables to hide the baldness of the
fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. But
when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable
fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To the wise,
therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables.
These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man.
Man and woman, and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear,
fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of these things is
superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties
and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies
your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your
hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by
point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily history, with
the rise and progress of ideas in the mind.
So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer
the endless inquiry of the intellect,--What is truth? and of the
affections,--What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated
Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; 'Nature is not
fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or
bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid,
it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and
beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know
then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon
perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all
that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house,
heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call
yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a
scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion
is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore,
your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in
your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent
revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will
disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses,
prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more
seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the
wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the
snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so
shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and
carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it
shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic
acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man
over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such
as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more
wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect
sight.'