The Crown of Wild Olive
or 'unmaking' of everything;--even of stones. By the way, you were all
reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other day?
SIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it could
not be ascended.
L. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But do
you recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first felt
sure of reaching the summit?
SIBYL. Yes, it was, 'Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, vous etes
morte!'
L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now can you at all
fancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a mountain's
death; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its life--
'Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis
Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gandetque nivali
Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras.'
DORA. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please,--whatever
the cave-keepers may know about it.
MARY. Will Dryden do?
L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody will 'do.' You
can't translate it. But this is all you need know, that the lines are
full of a passionate sense of the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting
power over Italy; and of sympathy with their joy in their snowy strength
in heaven; and with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of
their forests.
MARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you know, one can't
help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to imagine the
mountains to be alive; but then,--_are_ they alive?
L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the purest
and most mightily passioned human souls are likely to be the truest.
Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth, or blind
themselves to it that they may please themselves with passion; for then
they are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the
truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the
integrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the
sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will
be most in the right, so.
DORA _and_ JESSIE (_clapping their hands_). Then we really may believe
that the mountains are living?
L. You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of the spirit
which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the
dust of the earth begins to assume any orderly and lovely state. You
will find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation
from that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or
wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily
examined instance--the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree
and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is
nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the child-blossom is
bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the
time of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the
egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never
lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is
fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the buttercup; or
persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose;
or harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as
in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of
life. And the gradations which thus exist between the different members
of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of
organism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but
there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life--it
admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler
than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust.
MARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla and
May want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you frightened
Violet so about the ant-hill, that she can't say a word; and May is
afraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you
are always telling them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half
believed in them; and you represent them as good; and then we see there
is really a kind of truth in the stories about them; and we are all
puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to
ourselves;--it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask
you all we should like to know.
L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the
most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try
to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen gods, which
you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases.
Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be
interested, has three distinct characters:--
I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the great powers
or objects of nature--sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea.
And the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively,
the action of the natural power which it represents; such as the rising
and setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on.
II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the
moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the
sun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life
contending with corruption. Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the
breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the
sea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.
III. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds
of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to
face, as a man speaks to his friend.
Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of a
national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one
prevails over the other. Each enquirer usually takes up one of these
ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others: no impartial
effort seems to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen
imagination in its successive phases. For the question is not at all
what a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in
each subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.
Exactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its
mythological figures mean more to it, and become more real. An early and
savage race means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by
its Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation
of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically,
little more than the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate of
alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the
storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold of
the highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally,
the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of
knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no
study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the
different meanings which have been created by great nations, and great
poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter
simplicity. But when we approach them in their third, or personal,
character (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is far
the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all
of you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they
so usurp the place of the true God? Or were they actually real
beings--evil spirits,--leading men away from the true God? Or is it
conceivable that they might have been real beings,--good
spirits,--entrusted with some message from the true God? These were the
questions you wanted to ask; were they not, Lucilla?
LUCILLA. Yes, indeed.
L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness of your
faith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book
of your own religion;--their personality, observe, as distinguished from
merely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision
of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this
which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also,
when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the
bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;--you do not think
of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But
when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense
of personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you might, in
a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the fourth rider on
the pale horse was merely a symbol of the power of death,--in your
stronger and more earnest moods you will rather conceive of him as a
real and living angel. And when you look back from the vision of the
Apocalypse to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born,
and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David's vision at the
threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in this death-angel
becomes entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to
Abraham, Manoah, or Mary.
Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal spirit,
must not the question instantly follow: 'Does this spirit exercise its
functions towards one race of men only, or towards all men? Was it an
angel of death to the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?' You find a
certain Divine agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed
angel, executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to lower
his kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the same) agency, made
visible to a Christian prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling
to the birds that fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh
of kings. Is there anything impious in the thought that the same agency
might have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar
visions?--that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with the
sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood), and exercising
especially its power in the humiliation of the proud, might, at first,
have been called only 'Destroyer,' and afterwards, as the light, or sun,
of justice, was recognised in the chastisement, called also 'Physician'
or 'Healer?' If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility of
such a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, partly
indeed by such trivial things as the difference to your ear between
Greek and English terms; but, far more, by uncertainty in your own mind
respecting the nature and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible.
Have any of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them?
You, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such
things?
LUCILLA. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. I know they
must be true in some way or other; and I like reading about them.
L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I like reading
other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both to do more than like it?
Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His words merely
for the sake of an entirely meaningless poetical sensation?
LUCILLA. But do not the people who give themselves to seek out the
meaning of these things, often get very strange, and extravagant?
L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That abandonment of the
mind to religious theory, or contemplation, is the very thing I have
been pleading with you against. I never said you should set yourself to
discover the meanings; but you should take careful pains to understand