{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_18539/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_18539","id":"gutenberg_18539","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18539","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Environmental Issues","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Mysticism","Nature -- Religious aspects","Philosophy of nature"],"text":"NATURE MYSTICISM\n\nBY\n\nJ. EDWARD MERCER, D.D., OXON.\nBISHOP OF TASMANIA\n\nLONDON\nGEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, Ltd.\n44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE\n\n1913\n\n_All rights reserved_\n\nPREFACE\n\nThe aims of this study of Nature Mysticism, and the methods\nadopted for attaining them, are sufficiently described in the\nintroductory chapter. It may be said, by way of special preface,\nthat the nature mystic here portrayed is essentially a \"modern.\"\nHe is assumed to have accepted the fundamentals of the\nhypothesis of evolution. Accordingly, his sympathy with the\npast is profound: so also is his sense of the reality and\ncontinuity of human development, physical, psychic, and\nmystical. Moreover, he tries to be abreast of the latest critical\nand scientific conclusions. Imperfections manifold will be\ndiscovered in the pages that follow; but the author asks that a\npercentage of them may be attributed to the difficulties of\nwriting in Tasmania and publishing at the antipodes.\n\nJ. E. M.\n\nBishop's Court, Hobart,\n_March_, 1912.\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nChapter I.      Introductory                              1\nChapter II.     Nature, and the Absolute                  7\nChapter III.    Mystic Intuition and Reason               15\nChapter IV.     Man and Nature                            23\nChapter V.      Mystic Receptivity                        30\nChapter VI.     Development and Discipline of Intuition   38\nChapter VII.    Nature not Symbolic                       45\nChapter VIII.   The Charge of Anthropomorphism            54\nChapter IX.     The Immanent Idea                         65\nChapter X.      Animism, Ancient and Modern               71\nChapter XI.     Will and Consciousness in Nature          79\nChapter XII.    Mythology                                 90\nChapter XIII.   Poetry and Nature Mysticism               97\nChapter XIV.    The Beautiful and the Ugly                106\nChapter XV.     Nature Mysticism and the Race             117\nChapter XVI.    Thales                                    123\nChapter XVII.   The Waters under the Earth                129\nChapter XVIII.  Springs and Wells                         138\nChapter XIX.    Brooks and Streams                        145\nChapter XX.     Rivers and Life                           151\nChapter XXI.    Rivers and Death                          158\nChapter XXII.   The Ocean                                 165\nChapter XXIII.  Waves                                     172\nChapter XXIV.   Still Waters                              179\nChapter XXV.    Anaximenes and the Air                    187\nChapter XXVI.   Winds and Clouds                          192\nChapter XXVII.  Heracleitus and the Cosmic Fire           203\nChapter XXVIII. Fire and the Sun                          211\nChapter XXIX.   Light and Darkness                        222\nChapter XXX.    The Expanse of Heaven--Colour             228\nChapter XXXI.   The Moon--A Special Problem               235\nChapter XXXII.  Earth, Mountains, and Plains              242\nChapter XXXIII. Seasons, Vegetation, Animals              248\nChapter XXXIV.  Pragmatic                                 257\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nINTRODUCTORY\n\nA wave of Mysticism is passing over the civilised nations. It is\nwelcomed by many: by more it is mistrusted. Even the minds to\nwhich it would naturally appeal are often restrained from\nsympathy by fears of vague speculative driftings and of\ntranscendental emotionalism. Nor can it be doubted that such an\nattitude of aloofness is at once reasonable and inevitable. For a\nsystematic exaltation of formless ecstasies, at the expense of\nsense and intellect, has a tendency to become an infirmity if it\ndoes not always betoken loss of mental balance. In order,\ntherefore, to disarm natural prejudice, let an opening chapter be\ndevoted to general exposition of aims and principles.\n\nThe subject is Nature Mysticism. The phenomena of \"nature\"\nare to be studied in their mystical aspects. The wide term\nMysticism is used because, in spite of many misleading\nassociations, it is hard to replace. \"Love of nature\" is too\ngeneral: \"cosmic emotion\" is too specialised. But let it at once\nbe understood that the Mysticism here contemplated is neither\nof the popular nor of the esoteric sort. In other words, it is not\nloosely synonymous with the magical or supernatural; nor is it a\nname for peculiar forms of ecstatic experience which claim to\nbreak away from the spheres of the senses and the intellect. It\nwill simply be taken to cover the causes and the effects involved\nin that wide range of intuitions and emotions which nature\nstimulates without definite appeal to conscious reasoning\nprocesses. Mystic intuition and mystic emotion will thus be\nregarded, not as antagonistic to sense impression, but as\ndependent on it--not as scornful of reason, but merely as more\nbasic and primitive.\n\nScience describes nature, but it cannot _feel_ nature; still less\ncan it account for that sense of kinship with nature which is so\ncharacteristic of many of the foremost thinkers of the day. For\nlife is more and more declaring itself to be something fuller\nthan a blind play of physical forces, however complex and\nsublimated their interactions. It reveals a ceaseless striving--an\n_\u00e9lan vital_ (as Bergson calls it) to expand and enrich the forms\nof experience--a reaching forward to fuller beauty and more\nperfect order.\n\nA certain amount of metaphysical discussion will be necessary;\nbut it will be reduced to the minimum compatible with\ncoherency. Fortunately, Nature Mysticism can be at home with\ndiverse world-views. There is, however, one exception--the\nworld-view which is based on the concept of an Unconditioned\nAbsolute. This will be unhesitatingly rejected as subversive of\nany genuine \"communion\" with nature. So also Symbolism will\nbe repudiated on the ground that it furnishes a quite inadequate\naccount of the relation of natural phenomena to the human\nmind. The only metaphysical theory adopted, as a generalised\nworking basis, is that known as Ideal-Realism. It assumes three\nspheres of existence--that which in a peculiar sense is _within_\nthe individual mind: that which in a peculiar sense is _without_\n(external to) the individual mind: and that in which these two\nare fused or come into living contact. It will be maintained, as a\nthesis fundamental to Nature Mysticism, that the world of\nexternal objects must be essentially of the same essence as the\nperceiving minds. The bearing of these condensed statements\nwill become plain as the phenomena of nature are passed in\nreview. Of formal theology there will be none.\n\nThe more certain conclusions of modern science, including the\nbroader generalisations of the hypothesis of evolution, will be\nassumed. Lowell, in one of his sonnets, says:\n\n    \"I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away\n        The charm that nature to my childhood wore\n    For, with that insight cometh, day by day,\n        A greater bliss than wonder was before:\n    The real doth not clip the poet's wings;\n        To win the secret of a weed's plain heart\n    Reveals some clue to spiritual things,\n        And stumbling guess becomes firm-rooted art.\"\n\nAdmirable--as far as it goes! But the modern nature-mystic\ncannot rest content with the last line. The aim of nature-insight\nis not art, however firm-rooted; for art is, so to speak, a\nsecondary product, a reflection. The goal of the nature-mystic is\nactual living communion with the Real, in and through its\nsensuous manifestations.\n\nNature Mysticism, as thus conceived, does not seek to glorify\nitself above other modes of experience and psychic activity. The\npartisanship of the theological or of the transcendental type is\nhere condemned. Nor will there be an appeal to any ecstatic\nfaculty which can only be the vaunted appanage of the few. The\nappeal will lie to faculties which are shared in some degree by\nall normal human beings, though they are too often neglected, if\nnot disparaged. Rightly developed, the capacity for entering into\ncommunion with nature is not only a source of the purest\npleasure, but a subtle and powerful agent in aiding men to\nrealise some of the noblest potentialities of their being.\n\nWhen treating of specific natural phenomena, the exposition\ndemands proof and illustration. In certain chapters, therefore,\nquotations from the prose and poetry of those ancients and\nmoderns who, avowedly or unavowedly, rank as nature-mystics,\nare freely introduced. These extracts form an integral part of the\nstudy, because they afford direct evidence of the reality, and of\nthe continuity, of the mystical faculty as above defined.\n\nThe usual method of procedure will be to trace the influence of\ncertain selected natural phenomena on the human mind, first in\nthe animistic stage, then in the mythological stage, and lastly in\nthe present, with a view to showing that there has been\na genuine and living development of deep-seated nature\nintuitions. But this method will not be too strictly followed.\nSpecial subjects will meet with special treatment, and needless\nrepetition will be carefully avoided. The various chapters, as far\nas may be, will not only present new themes, but will approach\nthe subject at different angles.\n\nIt is obvious that severe limitations must be imposed in the\nselection from so vast a mass of material. Accordingly, the\nphenomena of Water, Air, and Fire have received the fullest\nattention--the first of the triad getting the lion's share; but\nother marked features of the physical universe have not been\naltogether passed by. The realm of organic life--vegetable and\nanimal--does not properly fall within the limits of this study.\nFor where organised life reveals itself, men find it less difficult\nto realise their kinship with existences other than human. The\ncurious, and still obscure, history of totemism supplies abundant\nevidence on this point; and not less so that modern sympathy\nwith all living things, which is largely based on what may be\ntermed the new totemism of the Darwinian theory. But while\nattention will thus be focussed on the sphere of the inorganic,\nseemingly so remote from human modes of experience, some\nattempt will nevertheless be made to suggest the inner\nharmonies which link together all modes of existence. A further\nlimitation to be noted is that \"nature\" will be taken to cover only\nsuch natural objects as remain in what is generally called their\n\"natural\" condition--that is, which are independent of, and\nunaffected by, human activities.\n\nLet Goethe, in his Faust hymn, tell what is the heart and essence\nof Nature Mysticism as here to be expounded and defended.\n\n    \"Rears not the heaven its arch above?\n        Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie?\n    And with the tender gaze of love\n        Climb not the everlasting stars on high?\n        Do I not gaze upon thee, eye to eye?\n    And all the world of sight and sense and sound,\n        Bears it not in upon thy heart and brain,\n    And mystically weave around\n        Thy being influences that never wane?\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nNATURE, AND THE ABSOLUTE\n\nAs just stated, metaphysics and theology are to be avoided. But\nsince Mysticism is generally associated with belief in an\nUnconditioned Absolute, and since such an Absolute is fatal to\nthe claims of any genuine Nature Mysticism, a preliminary\nflying incursion into the perilous regions must be ventured.\n\nMysticism in its larger sense is admittedly difficult to define. It\nconnotes a vast group of special experiences and speculations\nwhich deal with material supposed to be beyond the reach of\nsense and reason. It carries us back to the strangely illusive\n\"mysteries\" of the Greeks, but is more definitely used in\nconnection with the most characteristic subtleties of the wizard\nEast, and with certain developments of the Platonic philosophy.\nExtended exposition is not required. Suffice it to state what may\nfairly be regarded as the three fundamental principles, or\ndoctrines, on which mystics of the orthodox schools generally\ndepend. These principles will be subjected to a free but friendly\ncriticism: considerable modifications will be suggested, and the\nway thus prepared for the study of Nature Mysticism properly\nso-called.\n\nThe three principles alluded to are the following. First, the true\nmystic is one possessed by a desire to have communion with the\nultimately Real. Second, the ultimately Real is to be regarded as\na supersensuous, super-rational, and unconditional Absolute--\nthe mystic One. Third, the direct communion for which the\nmystic yearns--the _unio mystica_--cannot be attained save by\npassive contemplation, resulting in vision, insight, or ecstasy.\n\nWith a view to giving a definite and concrete turn to the critical\nexamination of these three fundamentals, let us take a passage\nfrom a recently published booklet. The author tells how that on\na certain sunny afternoon he flung himself down on the bank of\na brimming mill-stream. The weir was smoothly flowing: the\nmill-wheel still. He meditates on the scene and concludes thus:\n\"Perhaps we are never so receptive as when with folded hands\nwe say simply, 'This is a great mystery.' I watched and\nwondered until Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling weir\nand the water's side, and the wheel with its untold secret.\"\n\nThere are certain forms, or modes, of experience here presented\nwhich are at least mystical in their tendency--the sense of a\ndeeper reality than that which can be grasped by conscious\nreason--a desire to penetrate a secret that will not yield itself to\narticulate thought and which nevertheless leaves a definite\nimpress on the mind. There is also a recognition of the passive\nattitude which the ordinary mystic doctrine avers to be essential\nto vision. Will these features warrant our regarding the\nexperiences as genuinely mystical?\n\nThe answer to this question brings into bold relief a vital\ndifference between orthodox mystics and those here called\nnature-mystics, and raises the issue on which the very existence\nof a valid Nature Mysticism must depend. The stricter schools\nwould unhesitatingly refuse to accord to such experiences the\nright to rank with those which result in true insight. Why?\nBecause they obviously rest on sense impressions. An English\nmystic, for example, states in a recent article that Mysticism is\nalways and necessarily extra-phenomenal, and that the man who\ntries to elucidate the visible by means of the invisible is no true\nmystic; still less, of course, the man who tries to elucidate the\ninvisible by means of the visible. The true mystic, he says, fixes\nhis eyes on eternity and the infinite; he loses himself when he\nbecomes entangled in the things of time, that is, in the\nphenomenal. Still more explicit is the statement of a famous\nmodern Yogi. \"This world is a delusive charm of the great\nmagician called Maya. . . . Maya has imagined infinite illusions\ncalled the different things in the universe. . . . The minds which\nhave not attained to the Highest, and are a prey to natural\nbeauties in the stage of Maya, will continually have to turn into\nvarious forms, from one to another, because nothing in the stage\nof Maya is stable.\" Nor would the Christian mystics allow of\nany intermediaries between the soul and God; they most of\nthem held that the soul must rise above the things of sense,\nmount into another sphere, and be \"alone with the Alone.\"\n\nWhat, then, is the concept of the ultimately Real which these\nstricter mystics have evolved and are prepared to defend? It is\nthat of pure and unconditioned Being--the One--the Absolute.\nBy a ruthless process of abstraction they have abjured the world\nof sense to vow allegiance to a mode of being of which nothing\ncan be said without denying it. For even to allow a shadow of\nfiniteness in the Absolute is to negate it; to define it is to\nannihilate it! It swallows up all conditions and relations without\nbecoming any more knowable; it embraces everything and\nremains a pure negation. It lies totally and eternally beyond the\nreach of man's faculties and yet demands his perfect and\nunreasoning surrender. A concept, this, born of the brains of\nlogical Don Quixotes.\n\nAnd it is for such a monstrous abstraction we are asked to give\nup the full rich world of sense, with all it means to us. It is\nsurely not an intellectual weakness to say: \"Tell us what you\nwill of existence above and beyond that which is known to us;\nbut do not deny some measure of ultimate Reality to that which\nfalls within our ken. Leave us not alone with the Absolute of the\northodox mystic, or we perish of inanity! Clearly the _\u00e9lan\nvital_--the will to live--gives us a more hopeful starting-point in\nour search for the Real. Clearly the inexhaustible variety of the\nuniverse of sense need not be dubbed an illusion to save the\nconsistency of a logic which has not yet succeeded in grasping\nits own first principles. No, the rippling weir and the mill-wheel\nwere real in their own degree, and the intuitions and emotions\nthey prompted were the outcome of a contact between the inner\nand the outer--a _unio mystica_--a communion between the\nsoul of a man and the soul in the things he saw.\n\n\"But\" (says the orthodox mystic) \"there is a special form of\ncraving--the craving for the Infinite. Man cannot find rest\nsave in communion with a supreme Reality free from all\nimperfections and limitations; and such a Reality can be found\nin nothing less than the Unconditioned Absolute.\" Now we may\ngrant the existence and even the legitimacy of the craving thus\nemphatically asserted while questioning the form which it is\nmade to assume. The man gazing at the mill-wheel longed to\nknow its secret. Suppose he had succeeded! We think of\nTennyson's \"little flower in the crannied wall.\" We think of\nBlake's lines:\n\n    \"To see the world in a grain of sand,\n        And a heaven in a wild flower,\n    Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,\n        And eternity in an hour.\"\n\nIs it really necessary to forsake the finite to reach the infinite--\nwhatever that term may be taken to mean? Do we not often\nbetter realise the infinity of the sky by looking at it through the\ntwigs of a tree?\n\nFor the craving itself, in its old mystic form, we can have\nnothing but sympathy. Some of its expressions are wonderfully\ntouching, but their pathos must not blind us to the maimed\ncharacter of the world-view on which they rest. Grant that the\nsphere of sense is limited and therefore imperfect, let it at any\nrate be valid up to the limit it does actually attain. The rippling\nweir and the mill-wheel did produce some sort of effect upon\nthe beholder, and therefore must have been to that extent real.\nWhat do we gain by flinging away the chance to learn, even\nthough the gain be small? And if, as the nature-mystic claims,\nthe gain be great, the folly is proportionately intensified.\n\nColeridge is quoted as an exponent of the feeling of the stricter\nmystics.\n\n        \"It were a vain endeavour,\n        Though I should gaze for ever\n    On the green light that lingers in the West;\n    I may not hope from outward forms to win\n    The passion and the life whose fountains are within.\"\n\nThis, however, is too gentle and hesitating, too tinged with love\nof nature, to convey the fierce conviction of the consistent\ndevotee of the Absolute, of the defecated transparency of pure\nBeing. If, as is urged by R\u00e9c\u00e9jac, we find among some of the\nstricter mystics a very deep and naive feeling for nature, such\nfeeling can only be a sign of inconsistency, a yielding to the\nsolicitations of the lower nature. Granted their premisses, the\nworld of sense can teach nothing. It is well to face this issue\nsquarely--let the mystic choose, either the Absolute and Maya,\nor a Ground of existence which can allow value to nature, and\nwhich therefore admits of limitations. Or, if there is to be a\ncompromise, let it be on the lines laid down by Spinoza and\nSchelling. That is to say, let the name God be reserved for the\nphenomenal aspect of the Absolute. But the nature-mystic will\nbe wise if he discards compromise, and once for all repudiates\nthe Unconditioned Absolute. His reason can then chime in with\nhis intuitions and his deepest emotions. He loses nothing; he\ngains intellectual peace and natural joy.\n\nThe never-ceasing influence of the genuine Real is bound to\ndeclare itself sooner or later. Buddhism itself is yielding, as\nwitness this striking pronouncement of the Buddhist Lord\nAbbot, Soyen Shaku. \"Buddhism does not, though sometimes\nunderstood by Western people to do so, advocate the doctrine of\nemptiness or annihilation. It most assuredly recognises the\nmulti-tudinousness and reality of phenomena. This world as it\nis, is real, not void. This life, as we live it, is true, and not\na dream. We Buddhists believe that all these particular things\nsurrounding us come from one Ultimate Source, all-knowing\nand all-loving. The world is the manifestation of this Reason, or\nSpirit, or Life, whatever you may designate it. However diverse,\ntherefore, things are, they all partake of the nature of the\nUltimate Being. Not only sentient beings, but non-sentient,\nreflect the glory of the Original Reason.\"\n\nAssuredly a comforting passage to set over against that of the\nYogi quoted above! But is not the good Abbot a little hard on\nthe Westerners? For the full truth is that while the Yogi\nrepresents the old Absolutism, the Abbot is feeling his way to a\nwider and more human world-view. Buddhism has evidently\nbetter days in store. Let our views of ultimate Reality be what\nthey may, the nature-mystic's position demands not only that\nman may hold communion with nature, but that, in and through\nsuch communion, he is in living touch with the Ground of\nExistence.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nMYSTIC INTUITION AND REASON\n\nSo much for the nature-mystic's relation to the concept of the\nAbsolute. It would be interesting to discuss, from the same\npoint of view, his relations to the rival doctrines of the monists,\ndualists, and pluralists. But to follow up these trails with any\nthoroughness would lead us too far into the thickets and\nquagmires of metaphysics. Fortunately the issues are not nearly\nso vital as in the case of the Absolute; and they may thus be\npassed by without serious risk of invalidating subsequent\nconclusions. It may be worth our while, however, to note that\nmany modern mystics are not monists, and that the supposed\ninseparable connection between Mysticism and Monism is\nbeing thrown overboard. Even the older mystics, when wrestling\nwith the problem of evil, were dualists in their own\ndespite. Of the moderns, so representative a thinker as Lotze\nsuggested that Reality may run up, not into one solitary peak,\nbut into a mountain chain. H\u00f6ffding contends that we have not\nyet gained the right to career rough-shod over the antinomies of\nexistence. James, a typical modern mystic, was an avowed\npluralist. Bergson emphasises the category of Becoming, and, if\nto be classed at all, is a dualist. Thus the nature-mystic is happy\nin the freedom to choose his own philosophy, so long as he\navoids the toils of the Absolute. For, as James remarks,\n\"oneness and manyness are absolutely co-ordinate. Neither is\nprimordial or more excellent than the other.\"\n\nIt remains, then, to subject to criticism the third principle of\nMysticism, that of intuitional insight as a mode of knowing\nindependent of the reasoning faculties, at any rate in their\nconscious exercise. Its root idea is that of directness and\nimmediacy; the word itself prepares us for some power of\napprehending at a glance--a power which dispenses with all\nprocess and gains its end by a flash. A higher stage is known as\nvision; the highest is known as ecstasy. Intuition has its own\nplace in general psychology, and has acquired peculiar\nsignificance in the domains of aesthetics, ethics, and theology;\nand the same root idea is preserved throughout--that of\nimmediacy of insight. The characteristic of passivity on which\ncertain mystics would insist is subsidiary--even if it is to be\nallowed at all. Its claims will be noted later.\n\nNow Nature Mysticism is based on sense perception, and this in\nitself is a form of intuition. It is immediate, for the \"matter\" of\nsensation presents itself directly to the consciousness affected; it\nsimply asserts itself. It is independent of the conscious exercise\nof the reasoning powers. It does not even permit of the\ndistinction between subject and object; it comes into the mind\nas \"a given.\" When conscious thought grips this \"given,\" it can\nput it into all manner of relations with other \"givens.\" It may\neven to some extent control the course of subsequent sensations\nby the exercise of attention and in accordance with a conscious\npurpose. But thought cannot create a sensation. The sensation is\nthus at the base of all mental life. It furnishes material for the\ndistinction between subject and object--between the outer and\nthe inner. The conscious processes, thus primed, rise through\nthe various stages of contemplation, reflection, abstraction,\nconception, and reasoning.\n\nThe study of sense perception is thus seen to be a study of\nprimary mystical intuition. But the similarity, or essential bond,\nbetween the two may be worked at a deeper level. When an\nexternal object stimulates a sensation, it produces a variety of\nchanges in the mind of the percipient. Most of these may remain\nin the depths of subconscious mental life, but they are none the\nless real as effectual agents of change. Now what is here\nimplied? The external object has somehow or other got \"inside\"\nthe percipient mind--has penetrated to it, and modified it.\nIn other words, a form of mystical communion has been\nestablished. The object has penetrated into the mind, and the\nmind has come into living touch with the Real external to itself.\nThe object and the subject are to this extent fused in a mystic\nunion. How could the fusion take place unless the two were\nlinked in some fundamental harmony of being? Other and\nhigher modes of mystical union may be experienced; but sense\nperception contains them all in germ. How vain, then, the\nabsolutist's attempt to sever himself from the sphere of sense!\n\nIntuition, we have seen, must be deemed to be independent of\nconscious reasoning processes. But this is not to say that it is\nindependent of reason, either objectively or subjectively. Not\nobjectively, for if the world is a cosmos, it must be rationally\nconstituted. Not subjectively, for man's reasoning faculties may\ninfluence many of his mental activities without rising to the\nlevel of reflective ratiocination. And thus man's communion\nwith the cosmos, of which he is himself a part, will be grounded\nin the reason which permeates the whole.\n\nIf we go on to ask what is the relation between intuition and\nconscious reflective processes, the answer would seem to be\nsomewhat of this kind. \"Intuition, in its wide sense, furnishes\nmaterial; reason works it up. Intuition moves about in worlds\nnot systematised; reason reduces them to order. Reflective\nthought dealing with the phenomena presented to it by sensation\nhas three tasks before it--to find out the nature of the objects, to\ntrace their causes, and to trace their effects. And whereas each\nintuitional experience stands alone and isolated in its\nimmediacy, reason groups these single experiences together,\ninvestigates their conditions, and makes them subserve definite\nconscious purposes.\n\nBut if mystics have too often made the mistake of underrating\nthe powers and functions of reflective reason, the champions of\nlogic have also been guilty of the counter-mistake of\ndisparaging intuition, more especially that called mystical. That\nis to say, the _form_ of thought is declared to be superior to the\n_matter_ of thought--a truly remarkable contention! What is\nreason if it has no material to work up? And whence comes the\nmaterial but from sensation and intuition? Moreover, even when\nthe material is furnished to the reasoning processes, the\nconclusions arrived at have to be brought continuously and\nrelentlessly to the bar, not only of physical fact, but also to that\nof intuition and sentiment, if serious errors are to be avoided.\nSystematising and speculative zeal have a tendency to run ahead\nof their data.\n\nBergson has done much to restore to intuition the rights which\nwere being filched or wrenched from it. He has shown (may it\nbe said conclusively?) that systematised thought is quite\nunequal to grappling with the processes which constitute actual\nliving. Before him, Schopenhauer had poured well-deserved\ncontempt on the idea that the brain, an organ which can only\nwork for a few hours at a stretch, and is dependent on all the\naccidents of the physical condition of the body, should be\nconsidered equal to solving the problems of existence.\n\"Certainly\" (writes Schwegler) \"the highest truths of reason, the\neternal, the divine, are not to be proved by means of\ndemonstration.\" But this is no less true of the simplest\nmanifestations of reality. Knowledge is compelled to move on\nthe surface when it aims at scientific method and demonstrated\nresults. Intuitive knowledge can often penetrate deeper, get\nnearer to the heart of things and divine their deeper relations.\nWhen intuitions can be gripped by conscious reasoning\nprocesses, man gains much of the knowledge which is power.\nBut the scope of knowledge in the fullest sense is indefinitely\ngreater than that of science and philosophy.\n\nNor is it hard to see why the sphere of reflective thought is thus\ncomparatively limited. For modern speculations, and even the\nstraitest psychology, have familiarised us with the idea of a\nlarger self that is beyond the reach of conscious analysis.\nObscure workings of the mind--emotions, moods, immediate\nperceptions, premonitions, and the rest--have a potent part to\nplay in the actual living of a life. Consider in this connection\nsuch a passage as the following, taken from Jefferies' \"Story of\nMy Heart.\" It means something, though it is not scientific.\n\n\"Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns\nthe inner consciousness since before written history began.\nThree things only in twelve thousand written, or sculptured\nyears, and in the dumb, dim time before them. Three ideas the\ncavemen wrested from the unknown, the night which is round\nus still in daylight--_the existence of the soul, immortality, the\ndeity_. These things . . . do not suffice me. I desire to advance\nfarther, and to wrest a fourth, and even still more than a fourth,\nfrom the darkness of thought. I want more ideas of soul-life. . . .\nMy naked mind confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the\nnoonday that this is not all; I see other and higher conditions\nthan existence; I see not only the existence of the soul, but, in\naddition, I realise a soul-life illimitable. . . . I strive to give\nutterance to a Fourth Idea. The very idea that there is another\nidea is something gained. The three gained by the cavemen are\nbut stepping-stones, first links of an endless chain.\"\n\nOf course, we are here reminded of Wordsworth's \"obstinate\nquestionings of sense and outward things\"; of his \"misgivings of\na creature moving about in worlds not realised.\" Intuition is\nfeeling its way outwards beyond the sphere of the known, and\nemotion is working in harmony with it, the reason still fails to\ngrip. Morris' description of a like sense of unrealised\npossibilities applies, in varying degrees, to men of all sorts and\nconditions, though the poets of whom he speaks are the most\nfavoured.\n\n    \"Blind thoughts which occupy the brain,\n        Dumb melodies which fill the ear,\n    Dim perturbations, precious pain,\n        A gleam of hope, a chill of fear--\n    These seize the poet's soul, and mould\n    The ore of fancy into gold.\"\n\nLanguage is thus employed to proclaim its own inadequacy.\nAnd who can fail to see that between the rich complexity of the\nworkings of the whole mind and the means by which we would\nfain render them articulate, there yawns a gap which no effort\ncan bridge over? Even the poet fails--much more the scientist!\nTo refuse to take cognisance of the fresh spontaneity of feeling\nand intuition is to rob life of its higher joys and its deeper\nmeanings.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nMAN AND NATURE\n\nMany thinkers of the present day pride themselves upon the\ngrowth of what they call the naturalistic spirit. What do they\nmean by this? They mean that the older ways of interpreting\nnature, animistic or supernatural, are being supplanted by\nexplanations founded on knowledge of physical facts and\n\"natural\" laws. And, up to a point, there are but few natural\nmystics who will not concur in their feelings of satisfaction that\nignorance and superstition are disappearing in rough proportion\nas exact knowledge advances. At any rate, in this study, the\nmore solid conclusions of science will be freely and gladly\naccepted. The very idea of a conflict between Science and\nNatural Mysticism is to be mercilessly scouted.\n\nBut this concurrence must be conditional. Tait, for example,\nwas scornful of any form of animism. He wrote thus: \"The\nPygmalions of modern days do not require to beseech Aphrodite\nto animate the world for them. Like the savage with his Totem,\nthey have themselves already attributed life to it. 'It comes,'\nas Helmholtz says, 'to the same thing as Schopenhauer's\nmetaphysics. The stars are to love and hate one another, feel\npleasure and displeasure, and to try to move in a way\ncorresponding to these feelings.' The latest phase of this\npeculiar non-science tells us that all matter is alive; or at least\nthat it contains the 'promise and potency' (whatever these may be)\n'of all terrestrial life.' All this probably originated in the very\nsimple manner already hinted at; viz., in the confusion of terms\nconstructed for application to thinking beings only, with others\napplicable only to brute matter, and a blind following of this\nconfusion to its necessarily preposterous consequences. So\nmuch for the attempts to introduce into science an element\naltogether incompatible with the fundamental conditions of its\nexistence.\"\n\nThis is vigorous! But how does the matter now stand? Since\nTait wrote his invective, many physicists of at least equal rank\nwith himself, and with some undreamt-of discoveries to the\ngood, have subscribed to the views which he so trenchantly\ncondemns. As for the metaphysicians, there are but few of the\nfirst flight who do not conceive of consciousness as the ultimate\nform of existence. Again, the reference to the Pygmalion myth\nimplies the view that mythology was a mere empty product of\nuntutored fancy and imaginative subjectivism. Here also he is\nout of harmony with the spirit now pervading the science of\nreligion and the comparative study of early modes of belief. It\nwill be well to devote some chapters to a survey of the problems\nthus suggested, and to preface them by an enquiry, on general\nlines, into man's relation to nature.\n\nWe shall best come to grips with the real issue by fastening on\nTait's \"brute matter.\" For the words contain a whole philosophy.\nOn the one hand, matter, inert, lifeless: on the other hand, spirit,\nliving, supersensuous: between the two, and linking the two,\nman, a spirit in a body. Along with this there generally goes a\ndogma of special creations, though it may perhaps be held that\nsuch a dogma is not essential to the distinction between the two\nrealms thus sharply sundered. It is at once obvious that, starting\nfrom such premisses, Tait's invective is largely justified. For if\nmatter is inert, brute, dead--it certainly seems preposterous to\nspeak of its having within it the potency of life--using \"life\" as a\nsynonym for living organisms, including man. The nature-mystic\nis overwhelmed with Homeric laughter.\n\nBut the whole trend of scientific investigation and speculation is\nincreasingly away from this crude and violent dualism. The\nrelation of soul to body is still a burning question, but does not\nat all preclude a belief that matter is one mode of the\nmanifestation of spirit. Indeed, it is hard to understand how\nupholders of the disappearing doctrine would ever bring\nthemselves to maintain, even on their own premisses, that any\ncreation of the Supreme Spirit could be \"brute\"--that is, inert\nand irrational! Regarded from the new view-point, all is what\nmay, for present purposes, be called spiritual. And when man\nappeared upon the globe, he was not something introduced from\nwithout, different from and alien to the world of matter, but\nmerely the outcome of a more intense activity of the same\nforces as were at work from the first and in the whole--in brief,\na higher manifestation of the life which is the ultimate Ground\nof all modes of existence. There are not two different realms,\nthat of brute matter and living spirit; but various planes, or\ngrades, of life and consciousness. Leibniz had the beautiful and\nprofound idea that life has three modes on earth--it sleeps in\nplants, it dreams in animals, and it wakes in man. Modern\nthought is expanding, universalising, this idea.\n\nMan's relation to nature, in the light of this newer doctrine, thus\nbecomes sufficiently clear. He is not an interloper, but an\nintegral part of a whole. He is the highest outcome (so far as our\nworld of sense is concerned) of a vast upward movement. Nay,\nmodern science links him on to other worlds and other aeons.\nCosmic evolution is \"all of a piece,\" so to speak, and man takes\nhis own special place in an ordered whole. The process is slow,\nmeasured by the standard of human life. Countless ages have\nlapsed to bring us and our world to its present degree of\nconscious life. Countless ages are yet to elapse. What shall be\nthe end--the goal? Who can tell? Judging by what we know, it\nwould seem simplest to say that the trend of the evolutionary\nprocess is towards the increase of internal spontaneity and\nconsciously formed and prosecuted purpose. In his \"Songs\nbefore Sunrise,\" Swinburne calls this spontaneity \"freedom.\"\n\n    \"Freedom we call it, for holier\n        Name of the soul's there is none;\n    Surelier it labours, if slowlier,\n        Than the metres of star and of sun;\n    Slowlier than life unto breath,\n    Surelier than time unto death,\n        It moves till its labour is done.\"\n\nThe nature-mystic, then, is bound to reject the \"brute\" matter\ndoctrine just as decidedly as the doctrine of the unconditioned\nAbsolute. Each, in its own way, robs nature of its true glory and\nsignificance. Nature, for him, is living: and that, not indirectly\nas a \"living garment\" (to quote Goethe's Time Spirit) of another\nReality, but as itself a living part of that Reality--a genuine,\nprimary manifestation of the ultimate Ground. And man is an\nintegral living part of living nature.\n\nThere is another aspect of this \"brute\" matter doctrine which\nleads to the same conclusions. If matter be held to possess no\nother properties than those known to the physicist, it might be\npossible to account for what may be termed the utilitarian side\nof human development, social and individualistic. Nature makes\ndemands upon man's energies and capacities before she will\nyield him food and shelter, and his material requirements\ngenerally. The enormously important and far-reaching range of\nfacts here brought to view have largely determined the\nchequered course of industrial and social evolution. But even\nso, weighty reservations must be made. There is the element of\nrationality (implicit in external phenomena) which has\nresponded to the workings of human reason. There are the\nmanifestations of something deeper than physics in the\noperations of so-called natural laws, and all the moral\ninfluences those laws have brought to bear on man's higher\ndevelopment. There is the significant fact that as the resources\nof civilisation have increased, the pressure of the utilitarian\nrelation has relaxed.\n\nAccording fullest credit, however, to the influence of the purely\n\"physical\" properties of nature, has man no other relation to his\nexternal environment than the utilitarian? The moral influence\nhas been just suggested; the exploitation of this rich vein has for\nsome time past engaged the attention of evolutionary moralists.\nOur more immediate concern is with the aesthetic influences.\nAnd in nature there is beauty as well as utility. Nor is the beauty\na by-product of utility; it exists on its own account, and asserts\nitself in its own right. As Emerson puts it--\"it is its own excuse\nfor being.\" As another writer puts it--\"in the beauty which we\nsee around us in nature's face, we have felt the smile of a\nspiritual Being, as we feel the smile of our friend adding light\nand lustre to his countenance.\" Yes, nature is beautiful and man\nknows it. How great the number and variety of the emotions and\nintuitions that beauty can stir and foster will be seen in detail\nhereafter.\n\nBut beauty is not the only agent in moulding and developing\nman's character. Nature, as will be shown, is a manifestation of\nimmanent ideas which touch life at every point. Ugliness, for\nexample, has its place as well as beauty, and will be dealt with\nin due course. So with ideas of life and death, of power and\nweakness, of hope and despondency--these and a thousand\nothers, immanent in external phenomena, have stimulated the\npowerful imaginations of the infant race, and still maintain their\nmagic to move the sensitive soul. The wonderful mythological\nsystems of the past enshrine science, philosophy, and poetry--\nand they were prompted by physical phenomena. The philosophy\nand poetry of the present are still largely dependent\non the same phenomena. So it will be to the end.\n\nThat the revelation of Reality is a partial one--that the highest\nsummits are veiled in mists--this is freely granted. But the very\nfact constitutes in itself a special charm. If what we see is so\nwonderful, what must that be which is behind!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nMYSTIC RECEPTIVITY\n\nThe general character of the nature-mystic's main contention\nwill now be sufficiently obvious. He maintains that man and his\nenvironment are not connected in any merely external fashion,\nbut that they are sharers in the same kind of Being, and\ntherefore livingly related. If this be sound, we shall expect to\nfind that wherever and whenever men are in close and constant\ntouch with nature they will experience some definite sort of\ninfluence which will affect their characters and their thoughts.\nNor, as will already have been obvious, are we disappointed in\nthis expectation. Let us turn to a somewhat more detailed study\nof the evidence for the reality and potency of the mystic\ninfluence continuously exercised by physical phenomena on\nman's psychic development.\n\nAs has been stated, the nature-mystic lays considerable, though\nby no means exclusive, stress upon what he calls \"intuition.\"\nHis view of this faculty or capacity is not quite that of the\nstrict psychologist. Herbert Spencer, for instance, in his\n\"Psychology,\" uses the term intuition in what he deems to be its\n\"common acceptation\"--\"as meaning any cognition reached by\nan undecomposable mental act.\" Of course much would turn on\nwhat is implied by cognition, and it is impossible to embark on\nthe wide sea of epistemology, or even on that of the intuitional\ncontroversy, with a view to determining this point. Spencer's\nown illustration of an intuited fact for knowledge--relations\nwhich are equal to the same relation are equal to one another--\nwould appear to narrow its application to those so-called self-\nevident or necessary truths which are unhesitatingly accepted at\nfirst sight. The nature-mystic, however, while unreservedly\nrecognising this kind of intuition (whatever may be its\norigin) demands a wider meaning for the term. A nearer\napproach to what he wants is found in the feats of certain\ncalculating prodigies, who often seem to reach their astounding\nresults rather by insights than operations. The celebrated\nmathematician, Euler, is said to have possessed, in addition to\nhis extraordinary memory for numbers, \"a kind of _divining\npower_,\" by which he perceived almost at a glance, the most\ncomplicated relations of factors and the best modes of\nmanipulating them. As regards the calculating prodigies, a\nthought suggests itself. It has been almost invariably found that\nas they learnt more, their special power decreased. Has this any\nbearing on the loss of imaginative power and aesthetic insight\nwhich often accompanies the spread of civilisation?--or on the\nmaterialisms and the \"brute matter\" doctrines which so often\nafflict scientists?\n\nBut even this expansion of meaning does not satisfy the\nnature-mystic. Perhaps the case of musical intuition comes still\nnearer to what he is looking for, inasmuch as cognition, in the\nsense of definite knowledge, is here reduced to a minimum. On\nthe other hand there is more at work than mere feeling. The soul\nof the music-lover moves about in a world which is at once\nrealised and yet unrealised--his perceptions are vivid and yet\nindefinable. And it is important to note that the basis is\nsense-perception.\n\nAnd thus we say of mystical intuition that it is a passing of the\nmind, without reasoned process, behind the world of phenomena\ninto a more central sphere of reality--an insight into a\nworld beyond the reach of sense--a direct beholding of\nspiritual facts, guided by a logic which is implicit, though it\ndoes not emerge into consciousness. It is intuition of this fuller\nand deeper kind which in all likelihood forms the core of what\nsome would call the aesthetic and the moral senses.\n\nAnd here an interesting question presents itself. The older\nmystics, and the more orthodox of modern mystics, would have\nus believe that the intuition for which they contend is purely\npassive. The mind must be quieted, the will negated, until a\nstate of simple receptivity is attained. Is this contention valid? It\nis difficult to break away from venerable traditions, but the\nnature-mystic who would be abreast of the knowledge of his\nday must at times be prepared to submit even intuition itself to\ncritical analysis. And in this instance, criticism is all the more\nnecessary because the doctrine of pure passivity is largely a\ncorollary of belief in an unconditioned Absolute. If union with\nsuch an Absolute is to be enjoyed, the will must be pulseless,\nthe intellect atrophied, the whole soul inactive: otherwise the\nintroduction of finite thoughts and desires inhibits the divine\nafflatus!\n\nNow it was noted, when intuition was first mentioned, that, like\nsensation (which is an elementary form of intuition) it provides\n\"matter\" for the mind to work upon. So far, it may rightly be\ndeemed passive--receptive. But only half the story is thus told.\nThe mind reacts upon the \"matter\" so provided, and gives it\ncontext and meaning. Even the sense-organ reacts to the\nphysical stimulus, and conditions it in its own fashion; much\nmore will the mind as a whole assert itself. Indeed it is only on\ncondition of such action and reaction that any union, or\ncommunion, worthy of the name, can be effected. And should it\nbe suspected that the distinction between \"matter\" and \"form\" is\ntoo Kantian and technical (though it is not intended to be such)\nthe matter can be stated in more general terms by saying that in\nall forms of intuition, from the lowest to the highest, the mind\ngoes out to meet that which comes to it--there is always some\nmovement from within, be it desire, emotion, sympathy, or\nother like affection. In short, the self, as long as it is a self,\ncan never be purely passive.\n\nConsider from this point of view the following passage from\nJefferies. \"With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all\nthe intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky,\nthe stars hidden by the light, with the ocean--in no manner can\nthe thrilling depth of these feelings be written--with these I\nprayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument, of an organ,\nwith which I swelled forth the notes of my soul, redoubling my\nown voice by their power. The great sun burning with light; the\nstrong earth, dear earth; the warm sky; the pure air; the thought\nof ocean; the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a\nrapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I prayed.\"\nHow strong throughout the activity of the soul--culminating in\nprayer! And by \"prayer,\" Jefferies distinctly states that he\nmeans, not \"a request for anything preferred to a deity,\" but\nintense soul-emotion, intense aspiration, intense desire for fuller\nsoul-life--all the marks of the highest forms of mysticism, and\nproportionately strengthened soul-activities.\n\nAnd what, then, shall be said of Wordsworth?\n\n            \"I deem that there are Powers\n        Which of themselves our minds impress;\n    That we can feed these minds of ours\n        In a wise passiveness.\n    Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum\n        Of things for over speaking,\n    That nothing of itself will come,\n        But we must still be seeking.\"\n\nIs not this, it may be asked, in harmony with the older doctrine?\nNot so. There is a rightful and wholesome insistence on the\nnecessity for a receptive attitude of mind. Jefferies, too, was\nintensely receptive as well as intensely active. But Wordsworth\nis contrasting concentration of the mind on definite studies and\non book-lore with the laying of it open to the influences of\nnature. He calls this latter a \"wise passiveness\"--a \"dreaming\":\nbut is nevertheless an active passivity--a waking dream. All the\nsenses are to be in healthy working order; a deep consciousness\nis to be gently playing over the material which nature so\nspontaneously supplies. And so it comes that he can tell of\n\n    \"A Presence that disturbs me with the joy\n    Of elevated thoughts.\"\n\nIs not this the same experience as that of Jefferies, only passing\nthrough a mind of calmer tone. And if at times Wordsworth also\nis lifted into an ecstasy, when\n\n        \"the light of sense\n    Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed\n    The invisible world,\"\n\nhis mind is not in an Absolutist state of passivity, but, on the\ncontrary, is stirred to higher forms of consciousness. The\nexperiences may, or may not be such as subsequent reflection\ncan reduce to order--that is immaterial to the issue--but at any\nrate they imply activity. We may safely conclude, therefore, that\nintuition in all its grades necessitates a specialised soul-activity\nas well as a specialised soul-passivity.\n\nIt will have been apparent in what has preceded that there are\nmany grades of intuition, rising from sense-perception to what\nis known as ecstasy. Some may doubt the wisdom of admitting\necstasy among the experiences of a sane, modern nature-mystic.\nCertainly the word raises a prejudice in many minds. Certainly\nthe fanaticisms of religious Mysticism must be avoided. But\nJefferies was not frightened of the word to describe an\nunwonted experience of exalted feeling; nor was Wordsworth\nafraid to describe the experience itself:\n\n        \"that serene and blessed mood\n    In which the affections gently lead us on--\n    Until the breath of this corporeal flame,\n    And even the motion of our human blood\n    Almost suspended, we are laid asleep\n    In body, and become a living soul;\n    While with an eye made quiet by the power\n    Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,\n    We see into the life of things.\"\n\nThis is in many respects the same type of experience as that\ndescribed by Plotinus--\"the life of the gods, and of divine and\nhappy men\"--but shorn of its needless degradation of the\nbody and the senses, which, with Wordsworth are still and\ntranscended, but remain as a foundation for all the rest. There is\nyet another and very significant point of difference. Porphyry, a\ndisciple of Plotinus, tells us that his master attained to the\necstatic condition four times only in the six years which he\nspent in his company. How often Wordsworth attained to his\nform of ecstasy we do not know. But there is the little word\n\"we\" which occurs throughout his description: and this\nevidently links the past on to his readers. That is to say, he does\nnot sever his experience from that which is open to ordinary\nhumanity. He called for and anticipated genuine sympathy. Nor\nwas he wrong in making this demand, for there are few\nsensitive lovers of nature who are not able to parallel, in some\ndegree, what the English high-priest of Nature Mysticism has so\nwonderfully described. And as for the lower and simpler grades\nof feeling for nature, given that the conditions of life are\n\"natural,\" they are practically universal, though often\ninarticulate.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nDEVELOPMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF INTUITION\n\nAlthough the outstanding mark of intuition is its immediacy,\nthat does not imply that it is independent of mental\ndevelopment, of culture, or of discipline. So far all classes of\nmystics would be agreed. Nevertheless a certain amount of\ncomment and criticism will be useful even in this regard. For\nerroneous conceptions, especially in matters so largely\ninfluenced by belief in an unconditioned Absolute, may\nfrequently issue in harmful practices. For proof and illustration\nof the danger, need one do more than point to the terrible\nexcesses of asceticism still prevalent in India?\n\nAnd first, of the normal development of the mystic feeling for\nnature in the case of the individual mind. \"The child is father of\nthe man,\" said Wordsworth. But in what sense is this true? Let\nus turn to the immortal Ode, which is undoubtedly a record of\nvivid personal experience.\n\n    \"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!\n    Shades of the prison-house begin to close\n        Upon the growing boy,\n    But he beholds the light and whence it flows,\n        He sees it in his joy;\n    The youth who daily farther from the east\n    Must travel, still is Nature's priest,\n        And by the vision splendid\n        Is on his way attended;\n    At length the man perceives it die away\n    And fade into the light of common day.\"\n\nOf course the poet was in dead earnest in writing thus; but the\ntwo last lines give us pause. How about\n\n    \"The light that never was on land or sea\"?\n\nWas not that with the poet to the end? How about the\n\n    \"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears\"?\n\nWould those have been possible for the child or growing boy? If\nthere had been a loss, had there not also been a very real gain as\nthe years rolled over his head? Such questions are forced upon\nus by an examination of the records themselves. Somewhat of\nthe brightness and freshness of \"the vision splendid\" might\nevaporate; but the mystic glow, the joy, the exaltation,\nremained--and deepened--\n\n    \"So was it when I was a child,\n    So is it now I am a man,\n    So may it be when I am old,\n        Or let me die\"--\n\nonly that childlike fancy yields place to matured imagination.\nAnd if this was so with Wordsworth, whose childhood was so\nexceptional, still more shall we find it to be true of the average\nchild. The early freshness of the senses may be blunted; the\neager curiosity may be satiated; but where the nature remains\nunspoilt, the sense of wonder and of joy will extend its range\nand gain in fullness of content.\n\nIf we compare Kingsley's development, he was in a way a great\n\"boy\" to the end--but a boy with a deepening sense of mystery\nmellowing his character and his utterances. And thus it was that\nhe could say, looking back on his intercourse with the wonders\nof nature: \"I have long enjoyed them, never I can honestly say\nalone, because when man was not with me I had companions in\nevery bee and flower and pebble, and never idle, because I\ncould not pass a swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it\na fairy tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or\ntwo, and yet found them more interesting than all the books,\nsave one, which were ever written upon earth.\"\n\nTrue, there is another range of experiences to be reckoned with,\nsuch as that of Omar Khayyam--\n\n    \"Yet ah that Spring should vanish with the Rose!\n    That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!\n        The Nightingale that on the branches sang,\n    Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows?\"\n\nYes, but what might Omar have been with a nobler philosophy\nof life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blas\u00e9, toper as he\nwas, how did he begin his Rub\u00e1iyat? Thus finely!\n\n    \"Wake! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight\n    The stars before him from the Field of Night,\n        Drives Night along with them from Heav'n and strikes\n    The Sultan's turret with a Shaft of Light.\"\n\nThere was poetry in the man still--and that, too, of the kind\nstirred by nature. And from nature likewise comes the pathos of\na closing verse--\n\n    \"Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--\n    How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;\n        How oft hereafter rising look for us\n    Through this same Garden--and for _one_ in vain! \"\n\nAnd if in spite of all that is said, Wordsworth's haunting Ode\nstill asserts its sway, then let there be a still more direct appeal\nto its author. One of his loveliest sonnets is that which opens--\n\n    \"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.\"\n\nHe tells of the holy stillness, the setting of the broad sun, the\neternal motion of the sea. He is filled with a sense of mystic\nadoration. And then there is a sudden turn of thought--\n\n    \"Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,\n    If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought,\n    Thy nature is not therefore less divine.\"\n\nWhat is this but to regard the intuitional faculty as still largely\nlatent, awaiting the maturing processes of the passing years?\nThere is no place for further argument.\n\nWhat has just been said of the child may be said of the race,\nespecially if there is anything in the theory that the child\nrecapitulates in brief the stages through which the race has\npassed in its upward progress. In the dawn of civilisation the\nsenses would be comparatively fresh and keen, though lacking\nin delicacy of aesthetic discrimination; the imagination would\nbe powerful and active. Hence the products, so varied and\nimmense, of the animistic tendency and the mytho-poeic\nfaculty. To these stages succeed the periods of reflective\nthought and accurate research, which, while blunting to some\ndegree the sharp edge of sensibility, more than atone for the loss\nby the widening of horizons and the deepening of mysteries. We\nmust be careful, however, not to press the analogy, or parallel,\ntoo far. Important modifications of the recapitulation theory are\nbeing urged even on its biological side; it is wise, therefore, to\nbe doubly on guard when dealing with the complexities of\nsocial development. Still, it is safe to assert that, for the race as\nfor the individual, the modes of cosmic emotion grow fuller and\nricher in \"the process of the suns.\" Would it be easy to parallel\nin any previous period of history that passage from Jefferies?--\n\"With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the\nintense communion I held with the earth, the sun, and the sky,\nthe stars hidden by the light, with the ocean--in no manner can\nthe thrilling depth of these feelings be written--with these I\nprayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument.\"\n\nStarting from an acknowledgment that the intuitional faculty is\ncapable of development, it is an easy, and indeed inevitable,\nstep to the conclusion that training and discipline can aid that\ndevelopment. As noted above, mystics have gone, and still go,\nto lengths which make the world wonder, in their efforts to\nenjoy the higher forms of mystic communion with the Real. The\nnote of stern renunciation has persisted like a bourdon down the\nages in the lives of those who have devoted themselves to the\nquest of the Absolute. In the East, and more especially in India,\nthe grand aim of life has come to be the release from the\nappetites and the senses. The Buddhist struggles to suppress all\nnatural desires, and undergoes all manner of self-inflicted\ntortures, that he may rise above the world of illusion, and attain\nto absorption in the Universal Spirit. He sacrifices the body that\nthe soul may see. Similar views, though varying much in detail,\nhave flourished at the heart of all the great religions, and have\nformed almost the sole substance of some of the smaller. Nor\nhas Christianity escaped. An exaggerated and uncompromising\nasceticism has won for many Christian saints their honours on\nearth and their assurance of special privileges in heaven.\n\nContrast with this sterner and narrower type, the mystic who\nloves the natural world because he believes it to be, like\nhimself, a genuine manifestation of the ultimately Real, and to\nbe akin to his own inmost life. He, too, acknowledges the need\nfor the discipline of the body--he, too, has his _askesis_--but he\ncherishes the old Greek ideal which does not call for a sacrifice\nof sense as such, but for a wise abstinence from those sensual\npleasures, or over-indulgences in pleasure, which endanger the\nbalance of the powers of the body and the mind. The nature-\nmystic, more particularly, maintains that there is no form of\nhuman knowledge which may not be of service to him in\nattaining to deeper insight and fuller experience in his\nintercourse with nature. He is therefore a student, in the best\nsense of the word--not a slave to mere erudition, but an alert and\neager absorber of things new and old according to his abilities\nand opportunities. He tries to survey life as a whole, and to\nbring his complete self, body and soul, to the realisation of its\npossibilities. And he looks to nature for some of his purest joys\nand most fruitful experiences. He knows that the outward shows\nof heaven and earth are manifestations of a Reality which\ncommunes with him as soul with soul.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nNATURE NOT SYMBOLIC\n\nMysticism and symbolism are generally regarded as\ninseparable: some may go so far as to make them practically\nsynonymous. Hence the large space devoted to symbols in most\ntreatises on Mysticism. R\u00e9c\u00e9jac, for instance, in his treatise on\nthe \"Bases of the Mystic Belief,\" devotes about two-thirds of\nthe whole to this subject. Whence such preponderating\nemphasis? There are, of course, many conspiring causes, but the\nconception of the Absolute is still the strongest. Given an\nUnconditioned which is beyond the reach of sense and reason,\nthe phenomenal is necessarily degraded to the rank of the\nmerely symbolical. Nature, being at an infinite distance from\nthe Real, can only \"stand for\" the Real; and any knowledge\nwhich it can mediate is so indirect as to be hardly worthy of the\nname.\n\nTo this degradation of the phenomenal the true nature-mystic is\nbound to demur, if he is to be faithful to his fundamental\nprinciple. He desires direct communion with the Real, and looks\nto external nature as a means to attain his end. To palm off upon\nhim something which \"stands for\" the Real is to balk him of his\naim; for the moment the symbol appears, the Real disappears:\nits place is taken by a substitute which at the best is Maya--an\nillusion; or, to use technical phraseology of the metaphysical\nsort, is \"mere appearance.\"\n\nBut further, the symbolic conception of nature would seem to\ncontradict the requirement of immediacy--a requirement more\nvital to the Absolutist than to the genuine nature-mystic, and yet\napparently lost from the view of those who are the strongest\nadvocates of symbolism. For intuition implies direct insight,\nindependent of reasoning process and conceptual construction.\nWhereas, a symbol, in any ordinary acceptation of the word, is\nindisputably a product of conscious mental processes: its very\nreference beyond itself demands conscious analysis and\nsynthesis, and a conscious recognition of complicated systems\nof relations. The doctrine of symbols is thus in reality\nsubversive of Mysticism of any kind, and more especially of\nNature Mysticism.\n\nLet it not be supposed that to argue thus is to repudiate\nsymbolism as such. Whoever understands the nature and\nconditions of human knowledge sees that symbolic systems, of\nendless variety, are necessary instruments in almost every\ndepartment of theory, research, and practice. We cannot move\nwithout them. Some symbols are thoroughly abstract and\nartificial, but frequently of the utmost value, in spite of their\nbeing pure creations of the mind. Other symbols are founded on\nanalogies and affinities deep down in the nature of things, and\nso come nearer to the matter of genuine intuition. Between the\ntwo extremes there are an infinite number of graded systems,\nsome of which enter into the very texture of daily life. But so\nlong as, and in so far as, there is a \"standing for\" instead of a\n\"being,\" the mystic, qua mystic, is defrauded of his direct\ncommunion with the Ground of things.\n\nBut the mystic who champions symbolism may object that the\ndefinition of that term must not be taken so narrowly, and that\nthere is the wider sense in which it is taken by writers on\naesthetics. Some such definition as this may be attempted: A\nsymbol is something which does not merely \"stand for\"\nsomething else, but one which, while it has a meaning of its\nown, points onward to another thing beyond itself, and suggests\nan ideal content which of itself it cannot fully embody. But are\nwe really cleared of our difficulty by substituting \"suggests\" for\n\"stands for\"? Again it must be insisted that the mystic aims at\ndirect communion, not with that which is \"suggested,\" but that\nwhich \"is.\" An object may be low or high in the scale of\nexistence, may be rich or poor in content--but it is what it is,\nand, as such, and in and for itself, may be the source of an\nintuition. The man lying on the bank of the mill-stream and\nmeditating on the water-wheel wanted the secret of the wheel\nitself, not what the wheel \"suggested.\" Jefferies, yearning for\nfuller soul-life, and sensitive to nature's aspects, felt that the\nlife was there--that the universe _is_ the life--that the life is\nintuited in and through the universe, though not grasped as\nyet by the conscious reasoning processes.\n\nAs an interesting example, the symbol of the cross may be\nbriefly considered. Why should a form so simple and so familiar\nhave acquired an astonishingly wide range and be generally\nregarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the\nproblem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain--the choice\nhas not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an\nintuitional, subconscious factor. Is it possible that the negativing\nof a line in one direction by a line in another direction raises\nsubliminally a sense of strain, then of effort, then of purposeful\nwill, and so, lastly, of life? Probably a piece of pure\nimagination! And yet there must be some real power in the\nsymmetrical form itself to account for its symbolic career.\nConscious reason, obscurely prompted by this power, evolved\nthe symbolic use; and the strange interminglings of intuition,\nrational action, and force of circumstance, during the long\ncourse of civilised history, have accomplished the rest.\n\nThe train of reflection thus started will add special point to a\npassage from an early letter of Kingsley's, quoted by Inge in a\nslightly curtailed form, but here given in full. \"The great\nMysticism is the belief that is becoming every day stronger with\nme, that all symmetrical natural objects, aye, and perhaps all\nforms, colours, and scents which show organisation or\narrangement, are types of some truth or existence, of a grade\nbetween the symbolical type and the mystic type. When I walk\nthe fields I am oppressed every now and then with an innate\nfeeling, that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but\nunderstand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths\nwhich I cannot grasp, amounts to indescribable awe sometimes!\nEverything seems to be full of God's reflex, if we could but see\nit.\"\n\nThe passage is of profound significance when taken as a whole,\nand will serve as a remarkable description of the genuine mystic\nexperience which can be prompted by nature, without going to\nthe length of \"vision,\" still less of ecstasy. But the stress now\nlies on the words--\"a grade between the symbolical type and the\nmystic type.\" Kingsley evidently realised the insufficiency of\nsymbolism to meet his demands, while he shrank from the\nvagueness of what was called Mysticism. Objects for him had a\nmeaning in their own right, and he was casting about for a\nfitting term to express this fact. He also distinctly states that to\nhim, \"Everything seems to be full of God's reflex.\" Once grant\nthat Nature Mysticism, as denned and illustrated in the\npreceding chapters, is a genuine form of Mysticism, and his\ndifficulty would be solved. The natural objects which stirred his\nemotions would be acknowledged as part and parcel of the\nultimate Ground itself, and therefore competent to act, not as\nsubstitutes for something else not really present, but in their\nown right, and of their own sovereign prerogative. Nature, in\nshort, is not a mere stimulus for a roving fancy or teeming\nimagination: it is a power to be experienced, a secret to be\nwrested, a life to be shared.\n\nThe famous \"Canticle of the Sun\" of St. Francis d'Assisi gives\nnaive and spontaneous expression to the same truth. Natural\nobjects, for this purest of mystics, were no bare symbols, nor\ndid they gain their significance by suggesting beyond\nthemselves. He addressed them as beings who shared with him\nthe joy of existence. \"My Brother the Sun\"--\"my Sister the\nMoon\"--\"our Mother the Earth\"--\"my Brother the Wind\"--\"our\nSister Water\"--\"Brother Fire.\" The same form of address is\nmaintained for things living and things lifeless. And it is\nobvious that the endearing terms of relationship are more than\nmetaphors or figures of speech. His heart evidently goes with\nthem: he genuinely claims kinship. Differences dissolve in a\nsense of common being. It would be an anachronism to read\ninto these affectionate names the more fully developed\nmysticism of Blake, or Shelley, or Emerson. But the absence of\nany tinge of symbolic lore is noteworthy.\n\nKingsley, as was just seen, was feeling about for something\nmore satisfactory than mystic symbolism; so also was Emerson.\n\"Mysticism\" (he writes) \"consists in the mistake of an\naccidental and individual symbol for an universal one. . . . The\nmystic must be steadily told, 'All that you say is just as true\nwithout the tedious use of that symbol as with it.'\" Emerson's\nuneasiness is manifest. He is rebelling, but is not quite sure of\nhis ground. At one time he inclines to think the mystic in fault\nbecause he \"nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense\nfor a moment, but soon becomes old and false.\" At another time\nhe is inclined to condemn the symbol altogether as being of too\n\"accidental\" a character. But it is surely simpler to throw\nsymbolism overboard so far as genuine mystic experience is\nconcerned. What the mystic is in search of is \"meaning\" in its\nown right--\"meaning\" existing in and for itself. Anything less is\na fraud. Emerson nearly reached this conclusion, as witness the\nfollowing passage: \"A happy symbol is a sort of evidence that\nyour thought is just. . . . If you agree with me, or if Locke or\nMontesquieu agree, I may yet be wrong; but if the elm tree\nthinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if\ncrystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what I say, it\nmust be true.\" Here Emerson is all but clean out of the tangle.\nHe speaks of a \"happy symbol.\" But inasmuch as this \"happy\nsymbol\" is to express what the elm tree, the running water, and\nthe rest, _actually say_ in their several fashions, it is safer to\ndrop the idea of symbolism altogether; for what they _say_, is\nnot what they \"stand for,\" but what they actually _are_.\n\nIf the contention is renewed that the elm tree, running water,\nand the rest, _suggest_ truths and thoughts beyond themselves,\nof course the point may be readily granted. But this is only to\naffirm that every object is linked on to every other object by a\nmultiplicity of relations--that each part is woven into the texture\nof a larger whole in a universe of interpenetrations. The\nconsistent working out of the organic interdependence of the\nmodes and forms of existence is found in such a system as that\nof Hegel, where each part pre-supposes correlatives, and where\neach stage or \"moment\" includes all the past, and presses on to\nthat which dialectically succeeds. It is not necessary to be a\nHegelian to appreciate the grand idea of his doctrine--that all\nmodes and manifestations of the Real are logically and\norganically connected. But to say that one stage of the evolution\nof the Idea is dependent on another, or essentially involves\nanother, is not to make the lower of the stages symbolic of the\nhigher. Indeed to introduce the concept of symbolism at all into\nsuch a context is to court inextricable confusion. Let symbolism\nbe one thing, and let organic (or dialectic) connection be\nanother--then we know where we are when we claim for natural\nobjects that they have a being and a meaning in their own right,\nand that they are akin to the soul of man. Emerson had a firm\ngrasp of the nature-mystic's inevitable contention.\n\n    \"The rounded world is fair to see,\n    Nine-times folded in mystery:\n    Though baffled seers cannot impart\n    The secret of its labouring heart.\n    Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,\n    And all is clear from east to west.\n    Spirit that lurks each form within\n    Beckons to spirit of its kin;\n    Self-kindled every atom glows,--\n    And hints the future which it owes.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE CHARGE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM\n\nThere are many thinkers who are ready to acknowledge that the\ncontemplation of nature leads to various kinds of emotional and\naesthetic experience, but who at the same time deny that the\nresults of such contemplation have any other than a subjective\ncharacter; they argue that the validity of the results evaporates,\nso to speak, with the mood which brought them into being.\nMyths, for example, from this point of view are \"simply the\nobjectification of subjective impulses\"; and modern sympathy\nwith nature is aesthetic feeling which \"breaks free of the fetters\nlaid upon it by mythological thought, constantly to create at its\nown sovereign pleasure myths which pass with the passing of\nthe end that they have served and give place to other fancies.\"\nThis \"subjective\" doctrine will meet us often, and will call for\nvarious answers. Let it now be considered in its most general\nand formidable shape, that to which Wundt has given weighty\nsupport in his treatise on the \"Facts of the Moral Life.\" The\nsentences quoted just above are from those sections of this work\nwhich deal with man's aesthetic relation to nature; and it is with\ntheir teaching on the subject that this chapter will be chiefly\nconcerned.\n\nHere is a statement which raises a clear issue. The influence of\nnature, says Wundt, is not immutable. \"The same mountains and\nrivers and forests lie before the modern European that lay\nbefore his ancestors thousands of years ago; but the effect\nwhich they produce is very different. In this change there is\nreflected a change in man's _aesthetic_ view of the world, itself\nconnected with a change in his moral apprehension of life.\"\nNow every word of this passage may be welcomed by the\nnature-mystic without his thereby yielding his contention that\nmountains and rivers and forests have a definite and immanent\nobjective significance of their own. The phenomena of sunrise\nand sunset, which lay before our European ancestors thousands\nof years ago, are the same as those which present themselves to\nthe modern astronomer, and yet how differently interpreted!\nDoes the difference imply that the early observer had no\nobjective facts before him, and that modern astronomy has\nadvanced to a freedom which enables it to frame hypotheses at\nits sovereign will? Such a conclusion is just possible as we\nmeditate on the mutability of many scientific concepts! Still, the\nconclusion would be regarded as somewhat violent. But if it is\nallowed that in the latter case, the basis of objective fact gives\ncontinuity to the development of astronomic lore, why should\nthe same privilege not be accorded to the objective element\nin the continuity of mystical lore? As knowledge grows,\ninterpretations become more adequate to the objective facts, but\nit does not negate them. And Wundt himself allows that \"it is\nfrom the mythological form of the feeling (for nature), which\nreaches back to the first beginnings of human civilisation, that\nthe aesthetic feeling for nature with which we are ourselves\nfamiliar has been slowly and gradually evolved.\" How could\nsuch continuity be secured without some basis in the world of\nfact?\n\nAnd the basis in fact is surely easy of discovery. Man is not a\nsolitary being, suspended between earth and heaven. On the\ncontrary, he is related to all below him and all that is above him\nby ties which enter into the very fibre of his being. He is\nhimself a child of nature, nurtured on the bosom of Mother\nEarth and raising his eyes to the height of the Empyrean.\nEvolution, whatever it may be, is a cosmic process--and man is\na link in a chain, or rather, a living member of a living universe.\nFor an evolutionist to argue man's relation to his physical\nenvironment to be external in its physical aspects would be\ndeemed arrant folly. Is it less foolish for an evolutionist to\nisolate man's emotions, feelings, and thoughts?\n\n\"In proportion\" (says Wundt) \"as nature lost her immediate and\nliving reality\" (by the passing of mythology) \"did the human\nmind possess itself of her, to find its own subjective states\nreflected in her features.\" Much obviously turns on the\nimplications of the word \"reflected.\" We are led to hope much\nwhen he speaks of \"the kinship of the emotions set up by certain\nphenomena of nature with moods arising from within\"--but he\nempties his statement of mystic meaning by adding, \"at the\nmind's own instance.\" \"Nature\" (says Auerbach in plainer\nterms)\" has no moods, they belong to man alone.\" Tennyson\ngives expression to this view (not on his own behalf!):\n\n            \"all the phantom, Nature, stands,\n        With all the music in her tone\n    A hollow echo of my own--\n        A hollow form with empty hands.\"\n\nBut surely all this negation of moods in nature, this\ndetermination to empty natural phenomena of all definite\nhuman significance, is invalidated by one very simple\nconsideration. There must be _some_ correspondence between\ncause and effect. When certain moods are stimulated by certain\nphysical phenomena, there must be _some_ sort of real\ncausation. It is not _any_ scene that can harmonise with or\nfoster _any_ mood. The range of variety in the effects produced\nby mountains, rivers, sunsets, and the rest, is admittedly great,\nbut it is not chaotic. The nature-mystic admits variety, nay,\nrejoices in it, but he postulates an equivalent variety of\ninfluences immanent in the phenomena. Of course Auerbach is\nright if by mood in nature he means an experience similar to\nthat of the human observer: but he is wrong if he implies that\nthe mood is wholly a subjective creation, and that the object, or\ngroup of objects, which stimulates the mood has no quality or\npower which corresponds to, or is essentially connected with,\nthe mood.\n\nTurner's famous \"Fighting T\u00e9m\u00e9raire\" combines into an\nexquisite whole a group of human moods and natural phenomena.\nWas his choice of phenomena determined by purely subjective\nconsiderations? A veteran warship is being towed by a\nlittle steamer to her last berth. The human interest is\nintense. The problem is to give it a fitting and noble setting.\nStudy the nature-setting which the artist has chosen for his\ntheme--the wealth of glowing, but gently subdued colour--the\nsun setting, like the old ship, in mellow glory--the crescent\nmoon that speaks of the birth of a new economic era--the cool\nmists stealing up, precursors of the night when work is done--\nhow marvellously all these tone with the general sentiment.\nShall it be maintained that they are arbitrary conventions, mere\nfanciful products of the association of ideas? Armed with triple\nbrass must be the breast of the critic who could uphold such a\nview. For the common heart of humanity repudiates it, and\nintuitively feels that in such a picture there is more than a\ndisplay of artistic skill embodying subtle symbols--it feels that\nthere is a blending of elements which share a common spiritual\nnature.\n\nThe same conclusion is reached when the matter is brought to\nthe test of science and philosophy. Science, in its own domain,\nis every whit as anthropomorphic as Nature Mysticism--and\ninevitably so if it is to exist at all; for it rests upon the\nassumption that the behaviour of external objects is in harmony\nwith the workings of human reason. In other words, it postulates\na vital relationship between man's inner nature and the inner\nnature of his material environment. Human reason goes out into\nnature expecting to find there something akin to itself, and is\nnot disappointed of its hope. Man's conceptions of this kinship\nwere at first, like all his other conceptions, crude and confused;\nbut as his experience widened and ripened, his outlook became\nmore adequate to the infinite complexity and variety of the\nphenomena with which he has to deal. And throughout, both in\nthe lower and in the higher stages of intellectual development,\nthe same truth unchangingly asserts itself, that man is a\nmicrocosm. His reason proves it by finding itself in the\nmacrocosm. And what holds good of the imperfect and recently\ndeveloped rational faculties holds good even more substantially\nof the fundamental instincts and emotions, and of intuitions and\nspiritual promptings.\n\nThe scientist of a materialistic bent may here object that as the\nsphere of human knowledge extends it becomes increasingly\nevident that all the operations in the universe are under the sway\nof inexorable laws. The issues thus raised are obviously too\nlarge to be discussed at any length in the present context. But\ntwo observations of a general character will serve to indicate\nthat there are weighty counter-considerations. The first is that\nthe human heart rebels against the conception of a mechanically\ndetermined universe while conceiving itself a product of, or\nintegral part of, that universe. That is to say, we reject the\nstrange theory of a mechanical universe rebelling against itself!\nSome of the inexorable laws must, to say the least, be of a very\ndifferent character from that which the scientist postulates! The\nsecond consideration is almost a corollary of the first, but also\noccupies new ground. These \"laws\" which are so indefatigably\nhurled at us--what are they? Who can say? Even in their\nsimplest manifestations they pass out of our ken. The most\nfundamental of them all, from the scientific point of view--the\nlaw of the conservation of energy--is now being openly\nquestioned. Much more is there uncertainty as to the laws of\nlife, and the obscure trends and impulses grouped under the\nhead of evolution. So strongly does the stream of criticism bear\nupon the foundations of the house of the physical scientist, that\nthe old temptation to hasty, and sometimes arrogant, dogmatism\nis rapidly disappearing. The knowledge of \"laws\" still leaves,\nand ever will leave, ample breathing room for the poet, the\nartist, the nature-mystic, and the soul that loves.\n\nThere is, however, another aspect of the charge of\nanthropomorphism--one which is more difficult to deal with\nbecause it affects at times the nature-mystic himself. In\nattempting to deal with it, it will be well to let representative\nthinkers put their own case. Jefferies, for example, writes thus:\n\"There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so\ndearly, would let me perish on the ground, and neither bring\nforth food nor water. Burning in the sky, the great sun, of whose\ncompany I have been so fond, would merely burn on and make\nno motion to assist me. . . . As for the sea, it offers us salt water\nwhich we cannot drink. The trees care nothing for us; the hill I\nvisited so often in days gone by has not missed me. . . . There is\nnothing human in the whole round of nature. All nature, all the\nuniverse that we can see, is absolutely indifferent to us, and\nexcept to us human life is of no more value than grass.\"\n\nNow what does the charge, as thus stated, really amount to?\nThere is no implication that nature is hostile, as some (perhaps\nincluding Huxley) would have us think. There is simply a\nfeeling that nature is remote from human modes of experience,\nindifferent to human interests. And it would be puerile to\ndispute the rightness of this impression so long as the standpoint\nof the individual human being is adopted. The individual man is\na centre of self-consciousness in a peculiar sense. He has\nnumberless and interminable particular wants, hopes, fears,\npleasures, pains. Whereas, the infra-human objects in nature\nhave not attained to his particular mode of consciousness: theirs\ndiffers from his in degree, perchance in kind. A tree, a cloud, a\nmountain, a wave--these cannot enter into what we call\n\"personal\" relations with each other or with human beings. But\nthis is not to say that they may not possess a consciousness,\nwhich though different from man's consciousness, is yet akin to\nit and linked to it. Nay, the nature-mystic's experiences, as well\nas the metaphysician's speculations, declare that the linking\nup must be regarded as a fact. And when we examine more\ncarefully what Jefferies says, we find that he in no way disputes\nthis fact. How could it be, with his vivid sense of communion\nwith forms of being still more remote from the human than the\nsea-monsters he names? What oppressed him was a feeling of\nstrangeness. In other words, nature was \"remote\" for him\nbecause he felt he did not understand it well enough.\n\nFurther discussion of the important issues thus raised will be\npostponed until certain forms of modern animism come under\nreview. One or two preliminary observations, however, will be in\nplace at this earlier stage. It is wise, for example, not to forget\nthe limitations of our knowledge. A platitude! Yes--but one\nwhich even the greatest thinkers are apt to lose sight of, with\nconsequent tendency to hasty generalisation and undue neglect\nof deep-seated instincts and intuitions. The discovery of some\nnew cosmic law may change the whole face of nature, and set in\na new light its apparent remoteness or indifference. Again, as\nhas just been shown, natural phenomena are in definite\nrelationship to human reason. They are comprehensible--\ntherefore not alien. By their aid we can organise our conduct,\nand even our ideals--therefore they are factors in our\nself-realisation. Thus, underlying their seeming indifference,\nit is possible even now to trace their beneficent influences\nin the evolutionary process. And since they embody reason, beauty,\nand goodness, we can afford to await in patience the solution of\nmany problems which trouble us, and surrender ourselves\ntrustfully to the calm, resistless forces which are weaving the\nweb of cosmic destinies.\n\nA fine example of the trustful attitude is found in an article of\nLord Dunraven's describing his life in the woods of New\nBrunswick: \"The earth sleeps. A silence that can be felt has\nfallen over the woods. The stars begin to fade. A softer and\nstronger light wells up and flows over the scene as the broad\nmoon slowly floats above the tree tops. . . . The tree trunks\nstand out distinct in the lessening gloom; the dark pine boughs\noverhead seem to stoop caressingly towards you. Amid a\nstillness that is terrifying, man is not afraid. Surrounded by a\nmajesty that is appalling, he shrinks not nor is he dismayed. In a\nscene of utter loneliness he feels himself not to be alone. A\nsense of companionship, a sensation of satisfaction, creep over\nhim. He feels at one with Nature, at rest in her strong protecting\narms.\"\n\nThere is no need, then, to be afraid of a charge ofanthropomorphism,\nif only our conceptions of nature do not lag behind our\nclear knowledge of its forms and forces. Man, being what\nhe is, is, of course, compelled to think as man and to speak\nas man; he cannot jump off his own shadow. But since he is\nhimself part and parcel of the cosmos, his thinking and speaking\nare _within_, not external to, the material cosmos. So\ncompletely is he within, that his knowledge of himself comes to\nhim only by seeing himself reflected in the greater whole. And\nthus, provided we are true to the highest principles we have\nattained, we shall be safer when we look out on nature with the\nanalogy of human agency in our mind, than when we regard its\ncourse as alien and indifferent. In other words, Nature is not\nmerely an AEolian harp which re-echoes tones given out by the\nhuman soul--though that would be much!--but an indispensable\nagent in producing them. The action is reciprocal, just because\nman and his external world interpenetrate at every point, and are\nunited organically in a common life.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE IMMANENT IDEA\n\nSo much by way of direct answer to the formidable attack upon\nthe nature-mystic's position. In turning to more constructive\nwork, which will furnish many indirect answers, it will be\nnecessary to take another brief but exhilarating plunge into\nmetaphysics.\n\nWe found that external objects somehow, through sensations,\nobtain admission into the mind, and become part of its\npossessions in the form of experience. Intuition of various\ngrades is at the base of all mental development. Reflective\nthought goes to work on the material thus provided, and weaves\ncertain portions of it into the structure of systematised\nknowledge. Much of it, however, never emerges into clear\nconsciousness--it is felt rather than known--sometimes not even\nfelt, though it influences the mind, affects its mood or tone, and\nlargely moulds its character and the products of its more\nconscious processes. Intuition thus contains implicitly what\nreflection and reason strive to render explicit.\n\nIt will be remembered that, in the first chapter, the metaphysical\ntheory broadly adopted was that which may be called Ideal-Realism.\nThe distinctive teaching is that while Materialism stops\nshort at external objects which can resist, and while Subjective\nIdealism stops short at the perceiving mind, Ideal-Realism\naffirms the reality of objects and perceiving mind alike,\nbut regards them as mutually dependent, and as fused in the\nactivity of consciousness. Can the conclusions just summed up\nand the metaphysical theory adopted be brought into helpful\nconnection?\n\nYes, if the human mind and the external world are made of the\nsame stuff--if the mind is invisible nature, and nature visible\nmind. For Materialism cannot bridge the gap between matter\nand consciousness; Subjective Idealism can never move out into\na real world. But if nature and mind are genuinely akin, as the\nnature-mystic holds, there is no gap to bridge, no mind\ncondemned to hopeless isolation. Nature is then seen to be a\nmanifestation of the same mental factors which we discover\nwhen we analyse our inner experience--namely, consciousness,\nfeeling, will, and reason. The nature-mystic's communion with\nthe external world takes its place as a valid mode of realising\nthe essential sameness of all forms of existences and of all\ncosmic activities. Science is another such valid mode, art\nanother, philosophy another, religion yet another--none of them\nultimately antagonistic, but mutually supplementary. Some\nmystics will say that the union of man with nature is actually at\nany moment complete, but has to be brought into the light of\nconscious experience. Other mystics, who hold dualistic,\npluralistic, or pragmatic views, will maintain that the union may\nassume ever new forms and develop ever new potentialities. But\nsuch differences are subsidiary, and cannot obscure the\nfundamental doctrine on which all consistent nature-mystics\nmust be agreed, that man and nature are essentially\nmanifestations of the same Reality.\n\nIt is deeply significant to note that, at the very dawn of\nreflective thought, a conviction of the essential sameness of all\nexistence seized upon the minds of the fathers of Western\nphilosophy, and dominated their speculations. The teaching of\nthese bold pioneers was inevitably coloured and limited by their\nsocial environment; but it was also so shot through with flashes\nof intuition and acute reasonings, that it anticipated many of the\nlatest developments of modern research. A study of its main\nfeatures will occupy us at a later stage, when _we_ come to deal\nwith certain of nature's most striking phenomena. The simple\nfact is here emphasised that the earliest effort of human\nreflective thought was to discover the _Welt-stoff_--the\nsubstance which underlies all modes and forms of existence,\nand that man was regarded as an integral and organic part of the\nwhole.\n\nGreek philosophy, which started with these crude, but brilliant\nspeculations, had developed a wonderful variety and subtlety,\nwhen Plato, animated by the same desire to discover the Ground\nof things, introduced his doctrine of Ideas. He held that bodies\nare not, in themselves, the true reality; they are manifestations\nof something else. Reality, for him, is a system of real thoughts\nwhich he calls Ideas, and the world of objects gets its reality by\nparticipating in them or by copying them. The senses, under\nsuch conditions, cleave to the copies, whereas the mind, in\nthinking by general ideas, apprehends the true reality. These\nideas must not be regarded as mere products of the mind, but as\nreal existences, which, when manifested under conditions of\ntime and space, multiply themselves in innumerable objects. In\nfact, so real are they that without them there would be no\nobjects at all.\n\nSchopenhauer adopted this doctrine of Ideas, and brought it into\nconnection with his characteristic theory of Will as the ultimate\nGround. The Ideas, for him, represent definite forms of\nexistence, manifested in individual things and beings. There are\nthus, he said, Ideas of the simple elementary forces of nature,\nsuch as gravity and impenetrability; there are Ideas of the\ndifferent forms of individual things; and there are Ideas of the\ndifferent species of organic beings, including man. He followed\nPlato in refusing any true reality to individual objects and\nseparated the Idea from its sensuous form. \"By Idea, then\" (he\nwrites), \"I understand every definite and fixed grade of the\nobjectification of will, so far as it is a thing-in-itself, and\ntherefore has no multiplicity. These grades are related to\nindividual things as their eternal forms or prototypes.\" Hence,\nthe world known to the senses could be nothing other than mere\nphenomenal appearance.\n\nNow it is manifestly an enormous stride in the direction of\nNature Mysticism to recognise in material objects a factor, or\nelement, which is akin to the highest activities of the human\nmind. But, as already stated, in expounding the view known as\nIdeal-Realism, the nature-mystic cannot be content to stop here.\nNor indeed was Schopenhauer consistent in stopping here. If he\nhad been faithful to his conception of Will as the Ground of all\nexistence, he could not well have denied some degree of reality\nto objects in their own right. This particular tree, this particular\ntable, this particular cloud--what are they, each in its individual\ncapacity, but objectifications of will?--therefore real! Each\nindividual object is _unique_, and fills a place of its own in the\ntotality of objects--each is related to all the rest in particular and\ndefined manners and degrees--each exhibits a special kind of\nbehaviour in a special environment. Why, then, deny to each\nindividual thing its own grade and degree of reality?\n\nThus there is in each object an immanent idea; but this is fused\nwith the sensuous form, and presents itself to conscious human\nthought as an objective manifestation of the Real. There is an\norganic interpenetration of the sensuous and the spiritual; and it\nis by virtue of this interpenetration that the human reason can go\nout into the external world and find itself there. As Emerson\nwell puts it--\"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a\nthought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind\nprecipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again\ninto the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of\nthe influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic\nor organised.\"\n\nThe nature-mystic is not without authoritative support, even on\nthe Idealist side, in his demand that individual objects shall be\nallowed some grade and measure of reality. Spinoza, for\ninstance, allows that each individual thing is a genuine part of\nthe total Idea. Hegel also grants to individual things a certain\n\"self-reference,\" which constitutes them real existences. The\nnature-mystic, therefore, may be of good cheer in asserting that\neven the most transient phenomenon not only \"participates\" in\nan immanent Idea, but embodies it, gives it a concrete form and\nplace. He thus substantiates his claim that communion with\nnature is communion with the Ground of things.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nANIMISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\nAfter this metaphysical bath we return invigorated to the world\nof concrete experience dear alike to the common-sense thinker\nand the modern investigator. Do the facts of life, as ordinarily\npresented, or as systematised in reflection, at all point in the\ndirection of the doctrine of immanent ideas? It will be seen that\nthis question admits of an affirmative answer. But the term\n\"idea\" must be taken as embracing psychic existence in its\nentirety--that is to say, feeling and will, as well as reason. The\ndry bones of reason must be clothed with flesh and blood. The\nappeal is to actual experience. Let Walt Whitman give us his.\n\"Doubtless there comes a time when one feels through his\nwhole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity\nbetween himself subjectively and Nature objectively which\nSchelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know\nnot, but I often realise a presence here--in clear moods I am\ncertain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning, nor aesthetics\nwill give the least explanation.\"\n\nWalt Whitman mentions Fechner. Here is James's masterly\nsummary of Fechner's general view in this regard. \"The original\nsin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and our scientific\nthinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as\nthe rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. Instead of\nbelieving our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our\nindividuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which\nmust necessarily have more consciousness and more independence\nthan all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever\nlies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of\nlife only; or if we believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on\nthe one side as bodiless and nature as soulless on the other.\nWhat comfort or peace, Fechner asks, can come from such a\ndoctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into\nstone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks into\na tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into\na volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as\na sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between\nus and all that is higher than ourselves, and God becomes a nest\nof thin abstractions.\"\n\nIt is sufficiently well known that primitive man did not indulge\nin these \"thin\" views of nature. He interpreted the events and\nchanges around him on the analogy of human activities; he\nlooked upon them as manifestations of living wills. And indeed\nhow could he do otherwise? For as yet he knew of no mode of\nactivity other than his own. At first those objects and\nhappenings were singled out which were of most practical\ninterest, or which most distinctly forced themselves upon the\nattention. The beast of prey which threatened his life, the noisy\nbrook, the roaring waves, the whisperings and cracklings in the\nwoods--all argued the presence of life and will. So too with\nmountains, avalanches, sun, moon, stars, clouds, caves, fire,\nlight, dark, life, death. So more especially with the storm which\nsweeps across the land, the thunder which shakes the solid\nearth, and the lightning which flashes from the one side of\nheaven to the other. Such were the phenomena on which his\nintellect worked, and in which he discovered all manner of\nuseful or harmful causal relations. Such were the phenomena\nwhich produced in him emotions of awe and terror, joy and\ndelight. To all of them he ascribed mental life like unto his own.\nIndeed it was only by such a view that he could at all\nunderstand them, or bring himself into living connection with\nthem.\n\nFrom these primitive times onward, each century in the history\nof civilisation has brought a wider outlook. But the original\ntendency to animism has persisted and still persists. It has\nbehind it an undying impulse. It manifests its vitality, not only\namong the uninstructed masses, but in the most select ranks of\nscientists and philosophers. And thus it is not too much to say\nthat the idea of a universal life in nature is as firmly rooted\ntoday as it was in the dawn of man's intellectual development.\nThe form in which the idea has been presented has changed\nwith the ages. Mythology succeeded animism, and has in turn\nyielded to many curious and vanished theories, polytheistic,\ngnostic, pantheistic, and the rest. Now, the belief in distinct\nbeings behind natural phenomena has virtually disappeared. Not\nso the belief in some form of universal life or consciousness--of\nwhich belief representative types will be given directly.\n\nOf the persistence of the mental attitude in the modern child,\nRuskin gives a charming example, in his \"Ethics of the Dust.\"\n\"One morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad and\nrestless when she got up; and went about, looking into all the\ncorners, as if she would find Alice in them, and at last she came\nto me, and said, 'Is Alie gone over the great sea?' And I said,\n'Yes, she is gone over the great deep sea, but she will come\nback again some day.' Then Dotty looked round the room; and I\nhad just poured some water out into the basin; and Dotty ran to\nit, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hand through the water,\nagain and again; and cried, 'Oh, deep, deep sea! Send little Alice\nback to me.'\" On this, Ruskin remarks--\"The whole heart of\nGreek mythology is in that; the idea of a personal being in the\nelemental power; of its being moved by prayer; and of its\npresence everywhere, making the broken diffusion of the\nelement sacred.\" It would seem that Dotty did not definitely\npersonify the element, but was rather in the animistic stage. The\nidentifying of the natural element or object with a definite\npersonality is a further step taken, as Ruskin says, by the Greeks\npreeminently. But the beauty and the suggestive quality of the\nincident remain, whichever view be taken.\n\nA still more deeply suggestive example is found in Wordsworth's\ndescription of a boyish night adventure of his on Esthwaite\nLake. For it shows the inner workings of a mind impressed\nby specially striking natural objects, and by the obscurely\nrealised powers which they dimly manifest.\n\n    \"I dipped my oars into the silent lake,\n    And as I rose upon the stroke my boat\n    Wont heaving through the waters like a swan;--\n    When, from behind that craggy steep till then\n    The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,\n    As if with voluntary power instinct\n    Upreared its head. I struck and struck again;\n    And, growing still in stature, the grim shape\n    Towered up between me and the stars, and still,\n    For so it seemed, with purpose of its own,\n    And measured motion like a living thing,\n    Strode after me. With trembling oar I turned,\n    And through the silent waters made my way\n    Back to the covert of the willow-tree;\n    There in her mooring-place I left my bark,\n    And through the meadows homeward went, in grave\n    And serious mood. But after I had seen\n    That spectacle, for many days my brain\n    Worked with a dim and undetermined sense\n    Of unknown modes of being.\"\n\nThere we have revealed to us the soul of animism whether\nancient or modern!\n\nThe older animism was crude and uncritical. In proportion as\nmen learnt to reflect upon their experience, it was bound to be\nmodified, and to submit to reactionary influences. Such was the\ncase at the very beginning of philosophical and scientific\nenquiry--and such was the case also at the opening of the\n\"modern\" era. Speaking generally, it may be said that as\nknowledge of natural law extended, the idea of mental activities\nin external nature was ousted. Mechanical views of the universe\ngradually prevailed, and reached a passing climax in Descartes'\ncontention that even animals are automata!\n\n\"A passing climax\"--for worse was to come. Man himself was\nto be brought under the remorseless sway of physics interpreted\nby mathematics. The _Homme Machine_ idea found stalwart\nsupporters, and gained many adherents. All forms of animism\nseemed to be overwhelmed once for all. The nature-mystic\nappeared to be an idle dreamer or a deluded simpleton. Nor is\nthe course of such exaggerations yet ended. In the pages of the\n\"Nineteenth Century,\" Huxley could seriously propound as a\nthesis for discussion the question--\"Are animals automata?\"\nAnd books with such titles as \"The Human Machine\" have still\nconsiderable circulation.\n\nBut just as criticism undermined the immaturities and\nexaggerations of the older animism, so is it undermining the\nmore dangerous arrogance of an exaggerated and soulless\nmaterialism. Speculation is now trending back to a critical\nanimism, and, enriched by all that physical science has had to\ngive, is opening out new world-views of transcendent interest.\nThe nature-mystic is coming into his own again. It must be his\ncare to keep abreast of thought and discovery, and so avoid that\ntendency to exaggeration, and even fanaticism, which has, in\nthe past, so greatly damaged the cause of Mysticism at large.\n\nThe animistic theory is now being propounded thus. Why should\nnot all transfers of energy, whether in living or non-living\nbodies, be accompanied by a \"somewhat \"that is akin to\nman's mental life? The arguments in favour of such a view are\nnumerous, many-sided, and cumulative. The hypothesis of\nevolution gives them keen edge and gathering force. Behind the\ncosmic process men feel there must be a creative power, an\nanimating impulse. The struggle upwards must mean something.\nMechanism is but a mode of working--its Ground is soul, or spirit.\n\nThus a new day is dawning for a soundly critical animism. It is\nrealised that to formulate \"laws\" in accordance with which\ncertain modes of happening take place is not to pierce to the\nheart of things, but to rest on the surface. Mechanism explains\nnothing and leaves us poor indeed! Whereas, the universe is a\nmajestic manifestation of Becoming--of a veritable\ndevelopment of life.\n\nThe line between organic and inorganic is fading more and\nmore from the minds of investigators. Protoplasm, for instance,\nmingles together mechanical, chemical, and vital in a fused\nwhole, which it passes the wit of man to analyse. The\nconnection between body and soul is similarly found to defy the\nold distinctions between matter and mind. Clearly a universal\nlife is pulsating in the whole; genuine impulses, not mechanical\nstresses and strains, are the causes of the upward sweep into\nfuller consciousness and richer complexity of experience. The\nold conception of a world soul is achieving a new lease of life,\nand is dowering science with the human interest and the mystic\nglow it so sorely lacks.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nWILL AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN NATURE\n\nThe idea that inorganic nature is not merely informed by reason,\nbut is also possessed of will and consciousness, will strike many\nserious students as bizarre and fanciful. There is an enormous\namount of initial prejudice still to be overcome before it can\nsecure a fair general hearing. It will therefore be advisable to\npass in review the teachings of certain modern thinkers, of\nrecognised authority, who have espoused and openly advocated\nthis bizarre idea. And with a view to insuring further\nconfidence, the _ipsissima verba_ of these authorities will be\nfreely quoted, where there may be fear of misunderstanding or\nmisrepresentation. The review will be confined to modern\nthinkers, because the views of the ancients in this regard,\nthough frequently of intense interest, will not carry weight in a\nmatter which so largely depends upon recent research and\nspeculation.\n\nLeibniz profoundly influenced the course of what we may term\n\"animistic\" thought by his doctrine of monads. Whereas\nDescartes had defined substance as extension, Leibniz\nconceived it as activity, or active force, and as divided up into\nan infinite number and variety of individual centres, each with\nits own force or life, and, up to a certain point, each with its\nown consciousness. All beings are thus essentially akin, but\ndiffer in the grades of consciousness to which they attain. But\nsince consciousness depends on organisation, and since\norganisation is constantly developing, there is continuous\nprogress. Each individual monad develops from within by\nvirtue of a spiritual element which it possesses--that is to say,\nnot mechanically, but from an internal principle, implying\nsensation and desire. These monads, when looked at from\nwithout, are grouped together into various extended objects. If\nwe ask Leibniz how such inwardly developing centres are\ncombined together into a universe, his reply is that God has so\nordered things that each monad develops in definite relation to\nall the rest; they all keep time, like clocks with different works,\nsprings, pendulums, but regulated to mark simultaneously each\nperiod of time as it passes. This is the famous theory of\npre-established harmony.\n\nThis doctrine grants the nature-mystic all he needs, but in an\nartificial way which fails to carry conviction. The universe is\nsplit up into isolated units which have no real connection with\neach other save through ideas in the mind of God. Communion\nwith nature, however, should be more direct and more organic\nthan that effected by a pre-established harmony. Is it possible to\nretain the strong points of the theory while securing organic\ninterpenetration of all modes of existence? Lotze, for one,\ndeemed it possible. Here is an interesting and typical passage\nfrom his \"Philosophy of Religion.\" \"If it is once held\nconceivable that a single supreme intelligence may exert an\ninfluence on the reciprocal relations of the elements of the\nworld, then similar intelligence may also be imagined as\nimmediately active in all these individual elements themselves;\nand instead of conceiving them as controlled merely by blindly\noperative forces, they may be imagined as animated spiritual\nbeings, who strive after certain states, and offer resistance to\ncertain other states. In such case there may be imagined the\ngradual origin of ever more perfect relations, from the\nreciprocal action of these elements, almost like the reciprocal\naction of a human society; and that too without necessarily\narriving at the assumption to which we are here inclined, of a\nsingle, supreme, intelligent Being. Our reasoning issues rather\nin a sort of polytheistic or pantheistic conception, and that too in\nquite tolerable agreement with experience.\"\n\nLotze, then, conceives the monads to be organically related, and\nso combined into one world. He himself inclines to regard them\nas all dependent upon one supreme Being. But it is to be\ncarefully observed that he does not negative the pluralist\nhypothesis as inconceivable or impracticable. Indeed, a little\nlater in the same context, he allows that \"a multiplicity of beings\nwho share with each other in the creation and control of the\nworld\" is more in harmony with the immediate impressions of\nexperience than \"the hasty assumption of one only supreme\nwisdom, from which as their source the imperfections of the\nworld, that in fact are manifest to us, are much more difficult to\ncomprehend.\" Lotze may thus be summoned as a supporter of\nthe contention (urged in an earlier chapter) that the Pluralist\nmay be a genuine mystic. Interpenetration and co-operation may\nsupply the place of the metaphysical unity at which the\nAbsolutists aim. But the main point here is, that Lotze\nconceives the universe as organically and spiritually related in\nall its parts. It all shares in a common life.\n\nOf a monadistic character, also, are the two closely related\nviews known as the Mind-Dust theory, and the Mind-Stuff\ntheory. The former postulates particles or atoms of mind,\ndistinct from material atoms, but, like them, pervading all\nnature, and, under certain conditions, combining to form\nconscious mind. The latter does not thus separate mind and\nmatter, but assumes that primordial units of mind-stuff sum\nthemselves together and engender higher and more complex\nstates of mind, and themselves constitute what appears to us as\nmatter. James in his larger Psychology keenly criticised this\n\"psychic monadism,\" and has in his Oxford Lectures on a\n\"Pluralistic Universe,\" substantially modified his criticism. It is\nnot necessary to enter into further detail, but to grasp the fact\nthat such modern scientists as Clifford inclined to see in the\nworld, at every point, a manifestation of some grade of\nconsciousness, and therefore of kinship. The noted French\nphilosopher, Renouvier, has also resuscitated the monadistic\ntheory in a form more closely allied to that of Leibniz.\n\nDiscussion of the merits and demerits of these various views is\nnot now in question, but only their value as evidence of the\ntrend towards a critical animism. The inadequacy of the\nmechanical view came home even to a mathematician like\nClifford!\n\nWe turn to a very different form of speculation, yet one equally\nfavourable to the essential contention of the nature-mystic--that\nof Schopenhauer, a philosopher whose system is attracting\ncloser and keener attention as the years pass by. Certain of his\nviews have been cursorily mentioned in what has preceded, and\nwill find further mention in what is to follow. But here, the aim\nis to focus attention on his fundamental doctrine, that the\nGround of all existence is Will. His line of argument in arriving\nat this conclusion is briefly to be stated thus. The nature of\nthings-in-themselves would remain an eternal secret to us, were\nit not that we are able to approach it, not by knowledge of\nexternal phenomena, but by inner experience. Every knowing\nbeing is a part of nature, and it is in his own self-consciousness\nthat a door stands open for him through which he can approach\nnature. That which makes itself most immediately known within\nhimself is will; and in this will is to be found the _Welt-stoff_.\nLet Schopenhauer speak for himself. \"Whoever, I say, has\nwith me gained this conviction . . . will recognise this will\nof which we are speaking, not only in those phenomenal\nexistences which exactly resemble his own, in men and animals,\nas their inmost nature, but the course of reflection will lead him\nto recognise the force which germinates and vegetates in the\nplant, and indeed the force through which the crystal is formed,\nthat by which the magnet turns to the North Pole, the force\nwhose shock he experiences from the contact of two different\nkinds of metal, the force which appears in the elective affinities\nof matter as repulsion and attraction, decomposition and\ncombination, and, lastly, even gravitation, which acts so\npowerfully throughout matter, draws the stone to the earth and\nthe earth to the sun--all these, I say, he will recognise as\ndifferent only in their phenomenal existence, but in their inner\nnature as identical, as that which is directly known to him so\nintimately and so much better than anything else, and which in\nits most distinct manifestation is called will.\"\n\nHere again we have standing ground for the creed and the\nexperiences of the nature-mystic. All forms and modes of\nexistence are akin, and differ only in their phenomenal\nconditions. Whether Schopenhauer has not laid too exclusive an\nemphasis on will; whether he has not unnecessarily chosen the\nlowest types of will as primitive--these are questions to be\ndiscussed elsewhere. Enough that we have in this theory a\ndefinite return to critical animism. He holds the universe to be\nthroughout of the same \"stuff,\" and that stuff is psychic or\nspiritual. Body and soul, matter and spirit, are but different\naspects of the same underlying Reality.\n\nNevertheless, one question does press upon the nature-mystic.\nIs the will to be conscious of its activities? Schopenhauer's\nGround-will is a blindly heaving desire. If his contention be\ngranted, Nature Mysticism will be shorn of its true glory.\nCommunion with nature, though it rest on passive intuition,\nmust somehow be associated with consciousness, if it is to be\nthat which we best know. That is to say, nature's self-activity\nmust be analogous to our own throughout--analogous, not\nidentical. And such a conclusion commends itself to a thinker as\ncareful and scientific as Stout, who in his \"Manual of\nPsychology\" writes as follows: \"The individual consciousness,\nas we know it, must be regarded as a payment of a wider whole,\nby which its origin and its changes are determined. As the brain\nforms only a fragmentary portion of the total system of natural\nphenomena, so we must assume the stream of individual\nconsciousness to be in like manner part of an immaterial\nsystem. We must further assume that this immaterial system in\nits totality is related to nervous processes taking place in the\ncortex of the brain.\"\n\nSo, too, James, in his \"Varieties of Religious Experience,\"\ndeclares that \"our normal waking consciousness, rational\nconsciousness as we call it, is but one special type of\nconsciousness; whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest\nof screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely\ndifferent. We may go through life without suspecting their\nexistence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they\nare there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality\nand adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be\nfinal which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite\ndisregarded.\"\n\nA thinker of a very different type, Royce, in his \"World and the\nIndividual,\" concurs in this idea of a wider, universal\nconsciousness. \"We have no right whatever to speak of really\nunconscious Nature, but only of uncommunicative Nature, or of\nNature whose mental processes go on at such different time-rates\nfrom ours that we cannot adjust ourselves to a live appreciation\nof their inward fluency, although our consciousness does\nmake us aware of their presence. . . . Nature is thus a vast\nconscious process, whose relation to time varies vastly,\nbut whose general characteristics are throughout the\nsame. From this point of view evolution would be a series of\nprocesses suggesting to us various degrees and types of\nconscious processes. The processes, in case of so-called\ninorganic matter are very remote from us, while in the case of\nthe processes of our fellows we understand them better.\" Again\nhe calls Nature \"a vast realm of finite consciousness of which\nyour own is at once a part and an example.\"\n\nA thinker of still another type, Paulsen, whose influence in\nGermany was so marked, and whose death we so lately\nlamented, was whole-heartedly a sympathiser with Fechner's\nviews. How James also sympathised with them we saw at the\nbeginning of the last chapter. Paulsen, on his own account,\nwrites thus: \"Is there a higher, more comprehensive psychical\nlife than that which we experience, just as there is a lower one?\nOur body embraces the cells as elementary organisms. We\nassume that in the same way our psychical life embraces the\ninner life of the elementary forms, embracing in it their\nconscious and unconscious elements. Our body again is itself\npart of a higher unity, a member of the total life of our planet,\nand together with the latter, articulated with a more\ncomprehensive cosmical system, and ultimately articulated with\nthe All. Is our psychical life also articulated with a higher unity,\na more comprehensive system of consciousness? Are the\nseparate heavenly bodies, to start with, bearers of a unified\ninner life? Are the stars, is the earth an animated being? The\npoets speak of the earth-spirit; is that more than a poetic\nmetaphor? The Greek philosophers, among them Plato and\nAristotle, speak of astral spirits; is that more than the last\nreflection of a dream of childish fancy?\"\n\nAnd thus we have come to the fullness of the nature-mystic's\nposition. Reason, will, feeling, consciousness, below us and\nabove us. As N\u00e4geli, the famous botanist puts it, \"the human\nmind is nothing but the highest development on our earth of the\nmental processes which universally animate and move nature.\"\nTo this world-view the child of nature and the philosopher\nreturn again and again. Deep calls unto deep. The exaggerated\nand dehumanising claims of purely physical and mechanical\nconcepts may for a time obscure the intuition by their specious\nclarity, but the feelings and the wider consciousness in man\nreassert themselves. The stars of heaven no longer swing as\nmasses of mere physical atoms in a dead universe, they shine in\ntheir own right as members in a living whole. Wordsworth\nspeaks for the forms of life beneath us when he exclaims:\n\n    \"And 'tis my faith that every flower\n    Enjoys the air it breathes.\"\n\nEmerson speaks for the realm of the inorganic when he assures\nthat:\n\n    \"The sun himself shines heartily\n    And shares the joy he brings.\"\n\nThe great world around us is felt to pulse with inner life and\nmeaning. It is seen, not only as real, not only as informed with\nreason, but as sentient. The old speculations of Empedocles that\nlove and hate are the motive forces in all things gleams out in a\nnew light. And that sense of oneness with his physical\nenvironment which the nature-mystic so often experiences and\nenjoys is recognised as an inevitable outcome of the facts of\nexistence. Goethe is right:\n\n    \"Ihr folget falsche Spur;\n        Denkt nicht, wir scherzon!\n    Ist nicht der Kern der Natur\n        Menschen im Herzen.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nMYTHOLOGY\n\nThe materials are now fairly complete for understanding the rise\nand development of animism. The untrained primitive intellect\nwas stirred by vague intuitions--stimulated by contact with an\nexternal world constituted of essentially the same \"stuff\" as\nitself--and struggled to find concrete expression for its\nexperiences. The root idea round which all else grouped itself\nwas that of the agency of indwelling powers like unto man's, but\nendowed with wider activities, and unhampered by many\nhuman limitations. The forms of expression adopted often\nappear to us to be almost gratuitously absurd; but when we put\nourselves as nearly as may be at the primitive point of view, we\nrealise that they were not even illogical. The marvel is that out\nof the seething chaos of sensations and emotions there could\narise the solid structure of even the simplest kinds of\nconceptual, ordered knowledge.\n\nThere are few critics, however, who are not now prepared to put\nthemselves into sympathetic touch with the primitive thinker;\nbut there are still many who hesitate, or refuse, to allow any\nvalue to the products of his thinking. These products are too\nfrequently dismissed as the fancies and babblings of ages in\nwhich real knowledge was not as yet a practicable achievement.\nSuch an estimate is as unfair as it is unphilosophical. It\ndisregards the part played by intuition, and it is blind to the\ngerms of truth which were destined to ripen into noble fruit.\nMother Earth, with air and sunshine, and starry heaven above,\nnurtured men's thoughts and souls as well as their bodies.\n\nThere is more than an analogy between the childhood of the\nrace and the childhood of the individual. And just as the child\nplunges us at times, by questions, into problems of the deepest\nimport, so is it with unexpected flashes of insight preserved for\nus in the records, written or unwritten, of the earliest workings\nof the human mind. \"The soul of man\" (says Caird), \"even at its\nworst, is a wonderful instrument for the world to play on; and in\nthe vicissitudes of life, it cannot avoid having its highest chords\nat times touched, and an occasional note of perfect music drawn\nfrom it, as by a wandering hand on the strings.\"\n\nIt is remarkable how, in spite of the enormous advances made\nby civilised thought, our concepts and hypotheses, not\nexcepting those deemed most fundamental, are being constantly\nmodified. How much more would change prevail in ages when\nstructured knowledge had hardly come into existence. But\nwhether the pace of change be slow or rapid, the same impelling\ncause is at work--man's determination to find fuller expression\nfor his intuitional experience. Animism developed into\nmythology, mythology into gnomic philosophy, and this again\nbecame differentiated into science, art, philosophy, and\ntheology. In the earlier stages, the instability of men's\nimaginings and conceptions was kaleidoscopic; but it was no\nmore governed by wanton fickleness and caprice than is the\ncourse of modern thought. The human spirit was striving then,\nas now, to realise worlds vaguely experienced and dimly\nsurmised. The more imperfect expression was continuously\nyielding place to the less imperfect--the lower concept\ncontinuously yielding place to the higher. And at the base of the\nwhole great movement upwards was sensation, as the simplest\nmode of intuition--sensation being, in its various forms and\ndevelopments, the outcome of man's intercourse with an\nexternal world that, in its essence, is spiritual like himself.\n\nThe main error of animism was its failure to draw distinctions.\nIt tended to look upon nature as equally and fully human in all\nits parts. It translated its intuitions of kinship into terms of\nundifferentiated similarity, and thereby entangled itself in\nhopeless confusions. But by degrees the stubborn facts of\nexistence made their impression, and compelled men to realise\nthat life on the human plane is one thing, and quite another on\nthe plane of external nature. The attempt to absorb the larger\ntruth thus sighted was only partially successful, and gave birth\nto the wondrous world of mythology. Its chief characteristic\nwas that the will which was at first conceived to be within, or\nidentical with, the object, was separated from the object and\naccorded a personal, or quasi-personal existence. In other\nwords, the non-human character of external nature was\nacknowledged, while at the same time the human type of will\nwas preserved. The river, for example, was at first regarded as\nitself an animated being; then the will it manifests was\nseparated from the material phenomena, and by personification\nbecame a river-god who rules the phenomena. So the sun gave\nrise to the conception of Apollo; and, by a double remove, the\nlightning became a weapon in the hand of Zeus. There was thus\nadded to man's world of things a second world of spiritual\nbeings who animated and swayed the things. The change was\nmomentous; but it held fast to the original root idea of nature as\na manifestation of spiritual powers.\n\nIt was inevitable that the mythological system should collapse\nwhen once the spontaneous play of imaginative thought gave\nplace to self-conscious, systematising reflection. The mass of\nincoherent, and often contradictory myths, in which the true was\nso strangely blended with the false, the beautiful with the ugly\nor revolting, fell almost by its own weight. The more solid\nmaterials it contained were first transmuted into allegories, and\nthen expressed in the language of science and philosophy. The\noriginal intuitions, which had been encumbered with degrading\nsuperstitions and deadening ceremonies, again declared their\npower and their persistence, though sometimes under disguises\nwhich rendered them hard to recognise.\n\nAnd very instructive and arresting it is to note how haltingly\nconscious reflection assimilated the rich store of ideas which\nspontaneous intuition had seized upon whole ages previously.\nFor instance, Anaxagoras taught that since the world presents\nitself as an ordered and purposeful whole, the forming force or\nagency must also be purposeful. Following up this line of\nthought, and guided by the analogy of human activities, he\ndeclared this agency to be Nous, or reason--or, better still,\n\"reason-stuff.\" This conclusion was rightly deemed to be of\nprofound importance. And yet, when we analyse it, it seems at\nfirst sight difficult to see wherein consists its originality. For\nwhat else but this had been taught by the age-old animism that\nhad preceded it? And yet all who were fitted to judge hailed the\nteaching as something radically new. It stirred far-reaching\ncurrents in the deep ocean of Greek philosophic thought! How\ncan we explain the apparent anomaly? The fact is we have here\na typical instance of the transition from intuition to reflective\nthought. There is a conscious grasp of promptings dimly felt--a\ngrasp that rendered possible the advance from mythology to\nscience and philosophy. The gain was enormous, and bore\nabundant fruit; but it should not be allowed to obscure the merit,\nnor the value, of the primitive intuition on which it was based.\n\nIt must be evident that similar examples might be multiplied\nindefinitely, and certain of them will be adduced when typical\nnature-myths are under more detailed consideration. It is\nbecause of these germ truths enshrined in the ancient myths that\nso many bygone modes of thought and expression last on into\nthe new order. Ruskin, in genuine mythological style, often\nused the term \"gods,\" and explains his meaning thus: \"By gods,\nin the plural, I mean the totality of spiritual powers delegated by\nthe Lord of the universe to do in their several heights, or offices,\nparts of His will respecting man, or the world that man is\nimprisoned in; not as myself knowing, or in security believing,\nthat there are such, but in meekness accepting the testimony and\nbelief of all ages . . . myself knowing for indisputable fact, that\nno true happiness exists, nor is any good work ever done by\nhuman creatures, but in the sense or imagination of such\npresences.\"\n\nThe nature-mystic need not be ashamed of mythology. Sympathetically\nstudied, it affords abundant proof of the working of intuition\nand mystic insight. It enabled multitudes of men, long\nbefore science and philosophy became conscious aims, to\nenter into some of the deepest truths of existence, and\nto live as members of a vast spiritual hierarchy embracing earth\nand heaven.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nPOETRY AND NATURE MYSTICISM\n\nWhat a charm the nature deities of Greece and Rome can still\nexercise! How large the place they still occupy in poetry, art,\nand general culture! At times some of our moderns are tempted\nto look back with a very real measure of regret to the golden age\nof mythology, feeling that in comparison the present is often\nsadly dull and sordid. Wordsworth's great sonnet gives classical\nexpression to this mood, and rises to a white heat of\nindignation:\n\n            \"Great God! I'd rather be\n        A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--\n    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,\n        Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;\n    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;\n        Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.\"\n\nIt may be said that the poet is carried away by the feeling of the\nmoment. It finds expression, however, more calmly, though no\nless decidedly, in a less well-known passage:\n\n    \"O fancy, what an age was that for song!\n    That age, when not by laws inanimate,\n    As men believed, the waters were impelled,\n    The air controlled, the stars their courses held;\n    But element and orb on _acts_ did wait\n    Of Powers endued with visible form instinct,\n    With will, and to their work by passion linked.\"\n\nClearly mythology and nature-poetry are closely allied though\ncenturies come between: they breathe the same air though\n\"creeds outworn\" have yielded place to deeper faiths. And we are\ndriven to ask--Is poetry in its turn to go?--poetry, at any rate,\nof the old, simple, direct sort? Reflective reason is asserting\nitself: critical methods play havoc with the spontaneous\ncreations of imagination. Coleridge, in one of his moods, would\nalmost persuade us so. In his \"Piccolomini\" Max is conversing\nwith the Countess:\n\n    \"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,\n    The fair humanities of old religion,\n    The power, the beauty and the majesty,\n    That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,\n    Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,\n    Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished;\n    They live no longer in the faith of reason.\"\n\nAnd yet Coleridge did not allow that the outlook was wholly\nsad. His young soldier continues:\n\n    \"But still the heart doth need a language, still\n    Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.\"\n            . . . and even at this day\n    'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,\n    And Venus who brings everything that's fair.\"\n\nNo, poetry is not dead, and never will die. Certain stages in\nhuman progress may favour its spontaneity more than others--\ncritical reflection may cloud over the naive and fresh directness\nof experience--but behind each natural phenomenon is the\nimmanent idea, the phase of cosmic will and consciousness,\nwhich science, and logic and critical analysis can never exhaust.\nThe intuition has its rights as well as the syllogism, and will\nalways ultimately assert them. Whereas science reduces the\nworld to mechanism, poetry intuits and struggles to express its\ninner life; and since this inner life is inexhaustible, poetry is\nimmortal. Emerson seized upon this truth with characteristic\nkeenness of perception allied with feeling.\n\n    \"For Nature beats in perfect time\n    And rounds with rhyme her every rune,\n    Whether she work in land or sea,\n    Or hide underground her alchemy.\n    Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,\n    Or dip thy paddle in the lake,\n    But it carves the bow of beauty there,\n    And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.\n    The wood is wiser far than thou;\n    The wood and the wave each other know\n    Not unrelated, unaffected,\n    But to each thought and thing allied\n    Is perfect Nature's every part,\n    Rooted in the mighty heart.\"\n\nAnd again in his \"Ode to Beauty,\" he rejoices in the\n\n    \"Olympian bards who sung\n    Divine Ideas below,\n    Which always find us young\n    And always keep us so.\"\n\nThank Heaven, we have not yet come to think that the highest\nform of wisdom is enshrined in the _sesquipedalia monstra_ of\nchemical formulae, still less in the extreme abstractions of\nmathematics. Not that such formulae have not a beauty, and\neven a Mysticism of their own; their harmfulness comes from\nthe exclusiveness of their claims when they are advanced as an\nadequate description (sometimes explanation!) of existence at\nlarge and of life in particular. The biological formulas, based on\nmathematics, at which Le Dantec, for instance, has arrived, if\ntaken at their author's valuation, and if consistently applied,\nwould make the sublimest poetry to be greater folly than the\nbabble of a child. The nature-mystic may, or may not, allow\nthem a relative value according as he considers them to be valid\nor invalid abstractions from observed facts; but he knows that\nthe most valid of them are exceedingly limited in their scope\nand superficial in their bearing: and it remains a standing\nwonder to him that any trained intellect can fail to realise their\nmiserable inadequacy, in view of the full rich current of living\nexperience.\n\nOne of the chief merits of genuine nature-poetry is that it keeps\nus in close and constant touch with sense experience, and at the\nsame time brings home nature's inner life and meaning. It is not\na mere string of metaphors and symbols based on accidental\nassociations of ideas, but an expression and interpretation of\ndefinite sensations and intuitions which result from the action of\nman's physical environment upon his deepest and most delicate\nfaculties. \"High art\" (says Myers) \"is based upon unprovable\nintuitions; and of all arts it is poetry whose intuitions take the\nbrightest glow, and best illumine the mystery without us from\nthe mystery within.\"\n\nBut more especially, poetry is essentially animistic. It produces\nits characteristic effect by creating in the mind the sensuous\nimages which best stimulate the mind to grasp the immanent\nidea, and it presents those images as instinct with life and\nmovement--sometimes it goes so far as to personify them. This\nis what Matthew Arnold meant when he declared poetry to be\n\"simple, sensuous, passionate.\" Coleridge has a good illustration\n(quoted by Nisbet). He observes that the lines:\n\n    \"Behold yon row of pines that shorn and bowed\n    Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve\"--\n\ncontain little or no poetry if rearranged as a sentence in a book\nof topography or description of a tour. But the same image, he\nsays, rises into the semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:\n\n    \"Yon row of black and visionary pines\n    By twilight glimpse discerned! Mark how they flee\n    From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild\n    Streaming before them.\"\n\nThe difference in the two presentations consists in this, that in\nthe second of them there is a suggestion of life and movement\nwhich is lacking in the first. But why the different effect upon\nthe mind? Nisbet answers--\"the visual and motor centres\ncontribute to the creation of the image\"--an answer admirably\ntypical of the fashionable psychology of the day, not necessarily\nwrong in itself, but so curiously incomplete! Nisbet holds that\nman himself is a machine, and thus could not easily go farther--\nespecially as his own machinery evidently would not work any\nfarther. The nature-mystic begins at the other end. He holds that\neven the inorganic world is more than machinery--that it is\ninstinct with life and meaning. When, therefore, life and\nmovement are attributed to seemingly inert or motionless\nobjects, there is a responsive thrill caused by the subconscious\nplay of primitive intuitions that are based on the facts of\nexistence. Spirit realises more vividly than in normal experience\nthat it is in touch with spirit.\n\nContrast with the psychological dictum the proud claim\nadvanced by Emerson.\n\n    \"The gods talk in the breath of the woods,\n    They talk in the shaken pine,\n    And fill the reach of the old sea-shore\n    With melody divine.\n    And the poet who overhears\n    Some random word they say\n    Is the fated man of men,\n    Whom the ages must obey.\"\n\nThere are two claims presented here--one directly, the other\nindirectly. The direct claim is that there are seers and\ninterpreters who can catch the mystic words that nature utters.\nThe indirect is that the general mass of humanity have the\ncapacity for sharing the experiences of their poet leaders. The\none class are endowed to an exceptional degree with receptivity;\nthe other are also receptive, but are dependent on those who can\ngive expression to the intuitions which are, though in varying\ndegrees, a possession common to humanity at large. As Sir\nLewis Morris puts it:\n\n    \"All men are poets if they might but tell\n    The dim ineffable changes which the sight\n    Of natural beauty works on them.\"\n\nHe, too, recognises the mediating function of the poet.\n\n            \"We are dumb,\n    Save that from finer souls at times may rise\n    Once in an age, faint inarticulate sounds,\n    Low halting tones of wonder, such as come\n    From children looking on the stars, but still\n    With power to open to the listening ear\n    The Fair Divine Unknown, and to unseal\n    Heaven's inner gates before us evermore.\"\n\nAnd what is this but to claim for the mass of men, in varying\nbut definite degrees, a capacity for the experiences of the\nnature-mystic? Poetry and Nature Mysticism are linked together\nin an imperishable life so long as man is man and the world is\nthe world.\n\nIt will have been apparent that in what has been said about the\nrelation of poetry to science, there has been no shadow of\nhostility to science as such, but only to the exclusive claims so\noften preferred on its behalf. Let a French philosopher of the\nday conclude this chapter by a striking statement of the\nrelationship that should exist between these seemingly\nincompatible modes of mental activity. In a recent number of\nthe \"Revue Philosophique,\" Joussain writes as follows:\n\n\"On peut ainsi se demander si le savant, \u00e0 mesure qu'il tend vers\nune connaissance plus compl\u00e8te du r\u00e9el, n'adopte pas, en un\ncertain sens, le point de vue propre au po\u00e8te. Boileau disait de la\nphysique de Descartes qu'elle avait coup\u00e9 la gorge \u00e0 la po\u00e9sie.\nLa raison en est qu'elle s'en tenait au pur m\u00e9canisme et ne\ndefinissait la mati\u00e8re que par l'\u00e9tendue et le mouvement. Mais la\nphysique de Descartes n'a pu subsister. Et, avec la gravitation\nuniverselle que Leibniz consid\u00e9rait \u00e0 juste titre, du point de vue\ncart\u00e9sien, comme une _qualit\u00e9 occulte_, avec les attractions, les\nr\u00e9pulsions, les affinit\u00e9s chimiques, avec la th\u00e9orie de\nl'\u00e9volution, la science tend de plus en plus \u00e0 p\u00e9n\u00e9trer la vie r\u00e9ele\ndes choses. Elle se rapproche, bon gr\u00e9, mal gr\u00e9, de la\nmetaphysique et de la po\u00e9sie, en prenant une conscience plus\nprofonde de la force et du devenir. C'est qu'au fond la pens\u00e9e\nhumaine est une, quelle que soit la diversit\u00e9 des objets auxquels\nelle s'applique, art, science, po\u00e9sie, m\u00e9taphysique, r\u00e9pondant,\nchacun \u00e0 sa fa\u00e7on au m\u00eame d\u00e9sir, chacun refl\u00e9tant dans la\nconscience humaine les multiples aspects de la vie\ninnombrable.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nTHE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY\n\nA charge frequently brought against the nature-mystic is that he\nignores the dark side of nature, and shuts his eyes to the ugly\nand repulsive features of the world of external phenomena. If\nnature can influence man's spiritual development, what (it is\nasked) can be the effect of its forbidding and revolting aspects?\nIs the champion of cosmic emotion and of Nature Mysticism\nprepared to find a place for the ugly in his general scheme? The\nissue is grave and should not be shirked. It is, moreover, of long\nstanding, having been gripped in its essentials by many thinkers\nof the old world, more especially by Plato, Aristotle, and\nPlotinus.\n\nLet us begin by examining one or two characteristic statements\nof the indictment that there are ugly, and even revolting, objects\nin a world we would fain think fair. Jefferies says of certain\ncreatures captured in the sea: \"They have no shape, form, grace,\nor purpose; they call up a vague sense of chaos which the mind\nrevolts from. . . . They are not inimical of intent towards man,\nnot even the shark; but there the shark is, and that is enough.\nThese miserably hideous things of the sea are not anti-human in\nthe sense of persecution, they are outside, they are ultra and\nbeyond. It is like looking into chaos, and it is vivid because\nthese creatures, interred alive a hundred fathoms deep, are\nseldom seen; so that the mind sees them as if only that moment\nthey had come into existence. Use has not habituated it to them,\nso that their anti-human character is at once apparent, and stares\nat us with glassy eye.\"\n\nKingsley, in his \"At Last,\" asks, \"Who will call the Puff Adder\nof the Cape, or the Fer-de-lance, anything but horrible and ugly;\nnot only for the hostility signified, to us at least, by a flat\ntriangular head and heavy jaw, but by the look of malevolence\nand craft signified, to us at least, by the eye and lip?\"\n\nFrederic Harrison puts the case from the more general point of\nview: \"The world is not all radiant and harmonious; it is often\nsavage and chaotic. In thought we can see only the bright, but in\nhard fact we are brought face to face with the dark side. Waste,\nruin, conflict, rot, are about us everywhere. . . . We need as little\nthink this earth all beauty as think it all horror. It is made up of\nloveliness and ghastliness; of harmony and chaos; of agony,\njoy, life, death. The nature-worshippers are blind and deaf to the\nwaste and the shrieks which meet the seeker after truth. . . . The\npoets indeed are the true authors of the beauty and order of\nnature; for they see it by the eye of genius. And they alone see\nit. Coldly, literally examined, beauty and horror, order and\ndisorder seem to wage an equal and eternal war.\"\n\nIn considering the substance of these strong statements,\ncharacteristic of very different types of mind, we note in the\nfirst place that two different problems are to some extent fused--\nthat of the ugly, and that of the morally evil. Of course, it is\nfrequently impossible to separate them; still, for purposes of\nanalysis, the attempt should be made; especially as our present\nquest is aesthetic rather than ethical.\n\nIn the second place it must be remembered that the nature-mystic\nis by no means a nature-worshipper. His claim of kinship\nwith nature surely implies the contrary! He knows that\nevil and ugliness (however interpreted) are in man, and he\nexpects therefore to find them permeating the whole.\n\nConfining our attention as far as may be to the aesthetic aspect\nof the objections raised, let us at once define and face the\nreal issue now before us, namely, the significance for the\nnature-mystic of what is called \"ugliness.\"\n\nThere are certain judgments known as aesthetic--so called\nbecause they determine the aesthetic qualities of objects. And it\nis agreed, with practical unanimity, that they rest much more\nupon feeling and intuition than upon discursive reason. To this\nextent they rank as genuine \"mystical\" modes of experience,\nand from this point of view have bulked largely in the systems\nof mystics like Plato and Plotinus. But while claiming them as\nmystical, it is necessary to note that they possess a characteristic\nwhich constitutes them a special class. They imply reference to\na standard, or an ideal. The reference need not be made, indeed\nseldom is made, with any conscious apprehension of the\nstandard; but the reference is none the less there, and a\njudgment results. The place of reflective reasoning process\nwhich characterises the logical judgment is filled by a peculiar\nthrill which accompanies a feeling of congruence or incongruence,\naccording as the ideal is satisfied or otherwise.\n\nIt is in accord with this view of the aesthetic judgment that\nwhile, for reason, the outward form and semblance of the object\nis of subsidiary import, save from the point of view of abstract\nform and physical quality, for the aesthetic feeling or intuition it\nis paramount. For example, a botanist, _qu\u00e2_ botanist, will reck\nlittle of beauty of colour, or curve, or scent--indeed at times his\ninterest in a plant may be in inverse ratio to its beauty. But the\nlover of flowers, or the poet, or the artist, will fix upon such\naesthetic qualities as determining his mood and judgment. Not\nthat the reflective and the aesthetic judgments are antagonistic--\nthey are supplementary, and, when rightly appreciated, they are\ninterdependent; nevertheless, they must not be confused.\n\nThe doctrine of Plotinus, the prince of mystics, is very helpful\nwhen the problem of the ugly is in debate, and fits in admirably\nwith the considerations just advanced. His theory was that\nmaterial objects are beautiful in proportion as they share in\nreason and form. The converse of this proposition is, that\nobjects are ugly in proportion as they lack the capacity for\nsharing in reason and form. Passing over certain other phases of\nhis doctrine, let us see how far this theory will carry us in\nanswering the question--Is there in nature such a thing as\nugliness, in any absolute sense of the term?\n\nMatter, as known to the modern scientist, is universally\npossessed of form of some kind, and is, moreover, found to\nshare in reason, when tested by its responsiveness, so to speak,\nto the processes of human ratiocination--or, in other words, by\nits obedience to natural law. It would seem to follow that there\nis no object in nature which is absolutely ugly. And the\nconclusion surely commends itself to common sense. If, in spite\nof this, certain objects are called \"ugly,\" what is intended?\nFollowing up the lead of Plotinus, we seem to be driven to the\nconception of \"degrees of beauty\"--of \"higher\" and \"lower\"\nforms of beauty. And the moment the existence of such\n\"degrees\" is accepted, the aesthetic horizon is indefinitely\nextended. The whole problem assumes larger and more generous\nproportions, especially when viewed in the light of the\nevolution hypothesis. For where there are degrees, or stages, it\nis an easy step to conceive of transition from stage to stage. An\nugly object is only relatively ugly; and by entering into new\nrelations with its environment may be raised to even higher rank\nin the aesthetic scale of values. In brief, true progress becomes\npossible for the whole universe. Herbert Spencer stopped short\nat progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. It is\nmore interesting, not to say, inspiring, to postulate increase of\ncapacity for sharing in reason and form. The vast process of\nevolution may then be viewed as an upward sweep into fuller\nbeauty and into correspondingly fuller life.\n\nOf the fact that there is such an upward process, there is\nabundant and accumulating evidence. The struggle upwards of\norganic life, culminating so far, in man as we know him--the\nincreasingly complex beauty of natural forms--the haste of\nnature to conceal her scars--all alike speak of a striving upward.\nNay, we are being told that the atoms themselves, so long\nregarded as ultimates, have been subjected to the evolutionary\nstress and strain, and have advanced from the simplest forms to\nhigher and more complex symmetries. And in another field, the\narts, more particularly painting and the drama, almost demand\nthe recognition of some such principle of progress; for they are\nconstantly and necessarily using elements which in themselves\nare accounted ugly, for the production of their supremest\nbeauties.\n\nThe use of discords in music is singularly suggestive in this\nregard. There are combinations of musical sounds which, when\nproduced as isolated combinations, are harsh, and even painful.\nBut let them be heralded by other chords, and let them be parted\nfrom by suitable resolutions, and they can charm, or thrill, or\nkindle deep emotion. What does this fact imply? That discords\nin music, when used with knowledge and mastery, do not take\ntheir places as aliens in musical progressions--as insertions of\nugliness in a texture of surrounding beauty--_but as themselves\nbeautiful_. Their aesthetic value is gained by their being linked\nup in a network of relations which makes them part and parcel\nof that which is an ordered and rational whole. In short, discords\nare potential beauties; they have capacity for form and reason.\n\nThe ugly, then, is not to be opposed to the beautiful as its\ncontrary, but as standing in the relation to it of the less to the\nmore perfect. There will thus be grades of beauty as there are\ngrades of reality. And mystic intuition will have corresponding\ngrades of dignity and insight. The grand process of evolution is\nthus revealed as a many-sided whole--the amount of real\nexistence increases in proportion to the increase of capacity for\nsharing in form and reason; and along with this goes a growth in\npower to appreciate the ever higher forms of beauty which\nemerge in the upward-striving universe.\n\nA further thought calls for emphasis. For beings like ourselves,\nliving under conditions which involve so many limitations, a\n_purely_ aesthetic judgment is practically out of our reach. And\non this score also we may venture to tone down the strong\nexpressions used by Jefferies in his estimate of the anti- or\nultra-human character of the strange creatures in the sea. Individual\nlikings and dislikings are the resultants of an enormously\ncomplex system of impulses, instincts, prejudices, motives,\nhabits, associations, and the rest. Few of these factors appear\nabove the threshold of consciousness, though they are\ncontinually and influentially operative. Hence it by no means\nfollows that because a particular object is displeasing or\ndisgusting to one individual, or group of individuals, it will be\nso to all. So undoubted is the resulting relativity of our aesthetic\njudgments that Hegel was inclined to hold that below the level\nof man and art there is no real ugliness at all. \"Creatures\" (he\nsays) \"seem ugly to us whose forms are typical of qualities\nopposed to vitality in general, or to what we have learnt to\nregard as their own special or typical form of animate existence.\nThus the sloth as wanting in vitality, and the platypus as\nseeming to combine irreconcilable types, and crocodiles and\nmany kinds of insects, simply, it would appear, because we are\nnot accustomed to consider their forms as adequate expressions\nof life, are all ugly.\"\n\nJust as, in music, discords become beautiful by being brought\ninto fitting relations with other parts of an ordered whole, so is\nit with objects which are usually considered ugly, but which are\ncapable of aesthetic beauty when treated in pictures by masters\nof their craft. To set them in new and fitting relations of light\nand shade, of colour and composition, is to transform them.\nSchopenhauer lays great stress on the transforming power of art.\nHe instances many typical paintings of the Dutch school, simple\ninteriors, homely scenes, fruit, vegetables, the commonest tools\nand utensils, even dead flesh--all are taken up into material for\npictures, and, in their special setting, compel our admiration.\n\nWe have in these facts concerning pictorial art, a strong\ncorroboration of the inference from the use of discords in\nmusic--the relativity of ugliness, and the possibility of its\nprogressive transformation. But there is a further point to be\nemphasised, one which music, by reason of its abstractness,\ncould not well enforce, and one which is of profound\nsignificance for the nature-mystic. Pictorial art is concerned\nwith the representation of external objects. How explain its\ntransforming power? Schopenhauer has an excellent answer to\nthe question. He says that the artist is endowed with an\nexceptional measure of intuitive insight. He enjoys a genuine\nvision of the Idea immanent in the object he reproduces in his\nparticular medium--he fixes attention upon this Idea, isolates it,\nand reveals much that would otherwise escape notice. The result\nis that his skill enables others to slip into his mood and share his\ninsight.\n\nIt is on some such lines as those tentatively traced in the last\nfew paragraphs that the most hopeful solution of the problem of\nthe ugly must be sought. The heart of the matter is that there is\nno object in external nature which is absolutely ugly--no object\nwhich cannot, even as things are, be transformed to some\ndegree by being set in fitting relation to others--no object which\nis not capable of progress in its capacity for sharing and\nmanifesting the form and reason towards which the universe is\nstriving. Should there be thinkers who, like Kingsley, cannot\nquite rid themselves of the feeling that ugliness is an absolute\nreality--a positive mode of existence over against beauty--they\ncan only take refuge in the wider problem of evil. But care must\nbe exercised, as before observed, to distinguish between moral\nevil and physical ugliness. To what extent the one may be\nreflected in the other is a question on which it would not be safe\nto dogmatise. The main theory, however, stands out clearly, and\ninvolves a belief that the material phenomena of the universe, as\na grand whole, enjoy a wholesome freedom from positive\nugliness. Tennyson's \"Ancient Sage\" expresses the nature-mystic's\nhopes concerning the fundamental beauty of the world he loves.\n\n    \"My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves,\n    So dark, that men cry out against the Heavens,\n    Who knows but that the darkness is in man?\n    The doors of Night may be the gates of Light;\n    For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then\n    Suddenly healed, how wouldst thou glory in all\n    The splendours and the voices of the world!\n    And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet\n    No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore,\n    Await the last and largest sense to make\n    The phantom walls of this illusion fade,\n    And show us that the world is wholly fair.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nNATURE MYSTICISM AND THE RACE\n\nThe fundamental postulates and principles of a consistent\nNature Mysticism have now been expounded with a fullness\nsufficient to allow of a soberly enthusiastic study of the detail of\nour subject. Let it be noted, however, that though a detailed\napplication of general conclusions is henceforth to be the main\nbusiness, there will be no forsaking of the broadly human\nstandpoint. For it has been shown, more especially in the\nchapter on poetry, that the nature-mystic does not arrogate to\nhimself any unique place among his fellows, nor seek to enjoy,\nin esoteric isolation, modes of experience denied to the mass of\nhumanity. Wordsworth, for instance, though a prince among\nmodern mystics, appealed with confidence to his countrymen at\nlarge: his \"we\" was in constant evidence--and an ever-growing\nmultitude of nature-lovers responds to his appeal. That is to say,\nthe faculty of intuition he demands is to be found, in varying\ndegrees, latent at least, if not evolved, in the normal human\nbeing. The gifted seer seizes and interprets what his less gifted\nbrother obscurely feels. Can we trace this mystic power of\nnature on the scale of history at large? If the power is real, it\nshould be possible to recognise its grander workings. Moreover,\na wide outlook will help us to avoid exaggerations, preciosities,\nand fanaticisms.\n\nHere, then, is our starting-point for detailed study. If it be true\nthat all normal members of the race share in varying degrees the\nfaculty of mystic intuition, then nature must have had a\nmoulding effect not only on certain gifted individuals, but on\nthe character and destiny of whole communities, peoples, and\nempires. As behind the language of the Greeks there were\nage-long promptings of subconscious metaphysics, so behind the\naesthetic and spiritual development of this remarkable people\nthere must have been age-long promptings of subconscious\nmystical intuitions stimulated by the influences of natural\nphenomena. The moulding force of the immanent ideas, and of\nthe inner life of things, is, for the race at large, and for certain\npeoples in particular, continuous, cumulative, massive. True, it\ntakes effect chiefly in the sphere of the subconscious. But he\nwill be a poor student of history who fails to reckon with those\nsubtler forces which, though obscure in their action, often\nextend so widely and go so deep.\n\nAn eloquent evidence of nature's power to mould is to be found\nin the contrasted characteristics of the great religions. The hardy\npeoples of northwestern Europe were nurtured under stormy\nskies, were girt in by stern, avalanche-swept mountains, and\nstruggled strenuously against the hardships of rigorous and\nlengthy winters. What wonder that they filled their heaven with\n_Sturm und Drang_--with titanic conflicts of the gods--and\nheard it echoing with the whirl of hunting, the riot of feasting,\nand the clang of battle? Their religion was strenuous as their\nlives--free and fierce--yet tinged with a melancholy that\npromised rich developments.\n\nThe favoured Greeks of classical times, \"ever delicately\nwalking on most pellucid air,\" or rocked on the isle-strown\nwaters of the sapphire AEgaean, expanded their soul-life in an\nenvironment teeming with light and colour, with harmony and\nform. For them, therefore, Apollo bent his burnished bow and\nlaunched his myriad shafts of gold; Aphrodite embodied visions\nof foam-born beauty; Athene stood forth in panoply of reason\nand restraint. Nature herself lured them to evolve ideals of law\nand order, of disciplined thought and perfectly proportioned art.\nWhat wonder that, prompted by mystic impulses and visions,\nthey purged their inherited religion of its grosser features, and\nmade it a vehicle for philosophic thought and spiritual\naspiration.\n\nPass to the wandering children of the desert, cradled amid the\ngreat silences of space and time, swallowed up of vastness.\nAbove them by day the burning vault of blue, by night the\nwheeling galaxies--around them the trackless levels of a thirsty\nland. Such influences sank deep into their souls, and imparted\ndepth and intensity to their views of the source and meaning of\nthat vastness. Nor can we wonder that in such an environment,\nthe premonitions of the spiritual unity of existence, that were\nstirring in many hearts, found special sustenance.\n\nLet it be clearly understood that in the striking and\nunmistakable illustrations just adduced, there is no mere\nquestion of the influences of physical environment on social\norganisation or economic development--though these also react\nin a thousand ways upon ideas and ideals--but a question of\nmoulding spiritual concepts by the direct influence of the ideas\nand impulses manifested in external nature. Man's soul was in\nconstant, if generally subconscious, communion with his\nmaterial environment, and his thinking was thereby largely\ncoloured and fashioned. And if the kind and quality of the\ninfluence vary from age to age, and from people to people, it is\nnot the less continuously potent. The complexities of modern\nlife, the interminglings of civilisations, tend to obscure its\nmanifestations; science, wrongly pursued, seems hostile to\ncontinued vigour. But underneath the play of the cross-currents\non the surface, is the resistless swing of the tide.\n\nAn illustration of another class is found in Max M\u00fcller's\nbrilliant lectures on \"Physical Religion,\" the chief theme of\nwhich is the development of Agni, the Vedic god of fire. The\nstarting-point was the sensuous perception of the physical\nqualities of fire. The Idea and the will immanent in these\nqualities gradually raised men's thoughts from the material to\nthe spiritual, until the Eastern world attained to what Max\nM\u00fcller calls \"a precious line from the Veda\"--\"He who above\nthe gods was the One God\"--composed at least one thousand\nyears before the Christian era. It was not the result of a\nsupernatural revelation, but a natural outcome of man's thoughts\nguided and moulded by impressions of outward phenomena.\nThat is to say, as Max M\u00fcller observes, there was nothing in it\nartificial--simply that which man could not help saying, being\nwhat he was and seeing what he saw.\n\nIn the instances just advanced, the broad principle is most\nassuredly established that nature has a definite and continuous\neffect upon the development of man's conduct and thought. And\nas a consequence of this, we may affirm that Wordsworth's\nexperience is true, in its measure, of all normal members of the\nrace who are in touch with nature:\n\n            \"Therefore am I still\n    A lover of the meadows and the woods\n    And mountains; and of all that we behold\n    Of this green earth; both what they half create\n    And what perceive; well pleased to recognise\n    In nature and the language of the sense,\n    The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,\n    The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul\n    Of all my moral being.\"\n\nWhy, even old Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary days would write\nto his friend Langton, in Lincolnshire: \"I shall delight to hear\nthe ocean roar, or see the stars twinkle, in the company of men\nto whom Nature does not spread her volumes or utter her voice\nin vain.\" And let us observe, that the naturalness of his feeling\nkeeps him to the simplest, almost monosyllabic, English!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHALES\n\nIn an earlier chapter mention was made of that truly remarkable\ngroup of thinkers who, in the sixth century before the Christian\nera, made the momentous transition from mythology and\ntradition to philosophy and science. It was also pointed out that\nthese pioneers, bold as they were, could not shake themselves\nfree from the social and intellectual conditions of their day. And\nit is precisely this fact of what may be termed contemporary\nlimitations that makes a review of their speculations so valuable\nto a student of Nature Mysticism. For they lived in times when\nthe old spontaneous nature beliefs were yielding to reflective\ncriticism. Their philosophising took its spring from the fittest\nproducts of the mytho-poeic faculty, and thus remained in living\ncontact with the primitive past, while reaching forward, in the\nspirit of the future, to an ordered knowledge of an ordered\nwhole. The chief object of their search was the _Welt-stoff_--\nthe substance of the universe--and they were guided in their\nsearch by the dominating concepts which had emerged in the\nlong course of the animistic and mythological stages. Certain\nforms of external existence have impressed themselves upon the\ngeneral mind, notably those of water, air, and fire; and to these\nthe reflecting mind naturally turned in its earliest efforts to\ndiscover the Ground of things. The interest taken by the\nnature-mystic in this group of thinkers is twofold. Firstly, he\nfinds that in their speculations there is a large element of\nprimitive intuition, embodied in concepts fashioned by the\nspontaneous play of reflective thought and free imagination.\nCloseness to nature is thus secured. And secondly, he rejoices\nin the fact that these speculations, crude and premature as\nthey inevitably were, contained germs of thought and flashes\nof insight which anticipate the most advanced speculative science\nand philosophy of the present day. He maintains that here is\ncorroboration of his view of intuition. Nature was the teacher--\nand it was to intuition that she chiefly addressed herself; and the\nintellect--keen and fresh, but untrained--was able to seize upon\nthe material presented, and to fix it in concepts and theories\nwhich share in nature's universal and unending life.\n\nWater, air, and fire--what an enormous number and variety of\nnatural phenomena range themselves under these heads! If we\ntry to understand why they were singled out in turn, in the\nsearch for the _Welt-stoff_, we shall have penetrated far into the\nNature Mysticism of these famous \"elements.\"\n\nStarting, then, with Thales, we ask why he fixed upon water in\nhis attempt (the earliest recorded) to determine the constitution\nof the universe? What were the properties, qualities, and\nfunctions of that \"element\" which arrested his attention, and\ngoverned his crude, but acute and original, speculations? As\nalready remarked, existing cosmological conceptions played an\nimportant r\u00f4le, more especially that of the great primeval ocean\non which the world was supposed to float. This cosmographical\nocean and its accompanying myths will be considered in a\nsubsequent chapter. But restricting our view at present to the\nphysical aspects of water, it is not wholly impossible to recover,\nand sympathise with, his train of reasoning.\n\nWater is wonderfully mobile, incessantly changing, impelled\napparently by some inherent principle of movement. Its\nvolatility, also, is very marked; it passes from solid to liquid,\nand liquid to vapour, and easily reverses the series. More\nespecially would the old-world thinker be struck by the\nphenomena of the circulation of water. He would see the vapour\ndrawn up by the sun from lake and ocean, seeming to feed the\nheavenly fires, and returning to earth in the form of rain. He\nconcluded that this must represent the flow of the cosmic\nprocess as a whole. Again, in the falling of dew, in the\ngatherings of mists, and in the welling-up of fountains, the solid\nmaterials of the world are apparently passing into a liquid state.\n\nThales was not the first to note these things. They had been\nsubtly modifying the thoughts of men for untold generations.\nBut he was the first whom we know to have gathered together\ninto a definite theory the vague intuitions which had been so\nlong unconsciously operative. He singled out this mobile\nelement and saw in it the substance of the flux of the world as a\nwhole.\n\nHis theory of movement took a wide range. He did not separate\nthe thing moved from the moving force; nor did he draw any\ndistinction between the organic and inorganic--the mechanical\nand the vital. He regarded all modes of motion as essentially\nspontaneous and self-determined. Moreover (as Aristotle tells\nus) he identified this inherent principle of change with what is\ndivine in nature and in the soul. That is to say, the Real, for\nThales, is living impulse and continuous process. It is\nexperienced in man's conscious activities, and constitutes the\nprinciple of unity in every mode and form of existence.\n\nIt is on the organic side of this speculation that Aristotle,\nprobably biased by his biological studies, chiefly dwells. Is it\npossible to trace the grounds of which Thales based his wider\ninduction? Aristotle helps us. He supposes his predecessor to\nhave noted that water and life seem to be inseparable, and that\nmoisture is necessary to the germination and development of all\nknown organisms. It was natural to conclude that the principle\nof life is in the water--the conclusion of the reason also\nharmonising with the intuition stimulated by movement. Nor\nwas the inference altogether unwarranted. Put into historical\nperspective, it still retains its force and value. The latest\nbiological authorities tell us that all branches of the zoological\nfamily tree were formed on the moist shores of large water\nbasins, and that there is no form of life, not only terrestrial, but\neven of the deep seas which has not passed through a littoral\nphase. In other words, it is still allowable to hold that the\n\"moist,\" as Thales generally called his primal element, contains\none of the secrets of life. So close is the earliest to the latest\npronouncement on the origin of life on the globe!\n\nReviewing this brief exposition of the leading doctrine of an\nancient speculation, what bearing has it on the principles of\nNature Mysticism as laid down in preceding chapters? Certain\nfairly obvious ones. Thales was guided by impressions received\nfrom the qualities, behaviour, and functions of water; and they\nled him to attribute a plastic life to matter. It would be\nmodernising him too severely to style him a hylozoist. But his\nascription of a soul to the magnet and to amber carries him far\non the way to that metaphysical world-view. Deeply suggestive\nalso is the saying which, if not rightly attributed to him, is at\nleast characteristic of his school--\"All things are full of the\ngods.\" We may therefore infer that the physical properties of\nwater are such as to suggest the ideas which have culminated in\nmodern animism. That is to say, water is capable of producing\nintellectual and spiritual, as well as what are termed physical\neffects. The deeper view of intuition is justified. And Thales, by\nvirtue of the whole trend and outcome of his speculations, may\nclaim an honoured place in the ranks of the nature-mystics.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nTHE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH\n\nWe have found that the constant movement and change\nmanifested in the circulation of the waters of the globe\nimpressed the mind of Thales and largely determined the course\nof his speculation. When his great successor, Heracleitus,\npassed from water to fire, in his search for the _Welt-stoff_, he\nby no means became insensible to the mystic appeal of running\nwater. \"All things are flowing.\" Such was the ancient expression\nof the universal flux; and it is plainly based on the analogy of a\nstream. If Heracleitus was not its author, at any rate it became\nhis favourite simile. \"We cannot step\" (he said) \"into the same\nriver twice, for fresh and ever fresh waters are constantly\npouring into it.\" And yet, in a sense, though the waters change,\nthe river remains. Hence the statement assumed a form more\nparadoxical and mystical--\"We step into the same river, and we\ndo not step into it; we are, and we are not.\"\n\nMoving water, then, has the power of stimulating emotion and\nprompting intuition; and this power is manifested in exceptional\ndegree when the source from which the water issues, and the\ngoal to which it flows, are unknown. These conditions are best\nsatisfied in the case of streams that flow in volume through\nsubterranean caverns. The darkness contributes its element of\nundefined dread, and the hollow rumblings make the darkness\nto be felt. What more calculated to fill the mind of the child of\nnature with a sense of life and will behind the phenomena? The\nweird reverberations are interpreted by him as significant\nutterances of mighty, unseen powers, and the caves and chasms\nare invested with the awe due to entrances into the gloomy\nregions where reign the monarchs of the dead.\n\nTrue, it may be said, for the child of nature. But are such\nexperiences possible for the modern mind? Yes, if we can\npierce through the varied disguises which the intuitional\nmaterial assumes as times and manners change. Coleridge, for\ninstance, is thrown into a deep sleep by an anodyne. His\nimagination takes wings to itself; images rise up before him,\nand, without conscious effort, find verbal equivalents. The\nenduring substance of the vision is embodied in the fragment,\n\"Kubla Khan,\" the glamour of which depends chiefly on the\nmystical appeal of subterranean waters. We are transported to\nwhere\n\n    \"Alph, the sacred river, ran\n    Through caverns measureless to man,\n    Down to a sunless sea.\"\n\nThese three lines make a deeper impression than any others in\nthe poem, and form its main theme.\n\nNor is the feeling of the supernatural unrecognised. Spirits are\nnear with prophetic promptings. From a deep chasm the sacred\nriver throws up a mighty fountain, and for a short space\nwanders through wood and dale, only to plunge again into its\nmeasureless caverns, and sink in tumult to a lifeless ocean:\n\n    \"And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far\n    Ancestral voices prophesying war.\"\n\nThus when Coleridge's imagination was set free, the mode of\nfeeling declared itself which had persisted down the ages to the\npresent. The primitive experience is there in its essentials,\nenriched by the aesthetic and intellectual gains of the\nintervening centuries. Doubtless there is a living idea, or rather\na group of living ideas, behind the phenomena of subterranean\nwaters.\n\nWordsworth has described a more personal experience which\nchimes in with all that has been said.\n\n            \"Through a rift\n    Not distant from the shore on which we stood,\n    A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing place--\n    Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams\n    Innumerable, roaring with one voice!\n    Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,\n    For so it seemed, felt by the starry heavens.\"\n\nIf the modern poet could be thus affected, how much more the\nprimitive man who looked down on water falling into chasms,\nor rushing through their depths. It was natural that such\nexperiences should find expression in his systems of\nmythology. The general form they assume is that of springs and\nrivers in the underworld, the best known of which appear in the\nGraeco-Roman conceptions of Hades. Homer makes Circe\ndirect Odysseus thus. He is to beach his ship by deep-eddying\nOceanus, in the gloomy Cimmerian land. \"But go thyself\nto the dank house of Hades. Thereby into Acheron flow\nPyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx,\nand there is a rock and the meeting of the two roaring waters.\"\n\nSuch were the materials which, with many additions and\nmodifications, developed into the Hades of Virgil's sixth\nAEneid, with its lakes, and swamps and dismal streams. The\nsubterranean waters figured also in the Greek mysteries, and are\nelaborated with much detail in Plato's great Phaedo Myth--in all\nthese cases with increasing fullness of mystical meaning. In the\npopular mind they were incrusted with layers of incongruous\nnotions and crude superstitions. But, as Plato, for one, so clearly\nsaw, there is always at their core a group of intuitions which\nhave their bearing on the deepest problems of human life, and\nare capable of moulding spiritual concepts.\n\nStill more obviously suffused with mystic meaning and\ninfluence are the Teutonic myths concerning the waters of the\nunderworld. The central notion is that of Yggdrasil, the tree of\nthe universe--the tree of time and life. Its boughs stretched up\ninto heaven; its topmost branch overshadowed Walhalla, the\nhall of the heroes. Its three roots reach down into the\ndark regions beneath the earth; they pierce through three\nsubterranean fountains, and hold together the universal structure\nin their mighty clasp. These three roots stretch in a line from\nnorth to south. The northernmost overarches the Hvergelmer\nfountain with its ice-cold waters. The middle one overarches\nMimur's well with its stores of creative force. The southernmost\noverarches Urd's well with its warmer flow. They are gnawed\ndown below by the dragon Nidh\u00f6gg and innumerable worms;\nbut water from the fountain of Urd keeps the world-ash ever\ngreen.\n\nHvergelmer is the mother fountain of all the rivers of the world--\nbelow, on the surface of the earth, and in the heaven above.\nFrom this vast reservoir issue all the waters, and thither they\nreturn. On their outward journey they are sucked up and lifted\naloft by the northern root of the world tree, and there blend into\nthe sap which supplies the tree with its imperishable strength\nand life. Rising through the trunk, they spread out into the\nbranches and evaporate from its crown. In the upper region,\nthus attained, is a huge reservoir, the thunder-cloud, which\nreceives the liquid and pours it forth again in two diverse\nstreams. The one is the stream of fire-mist, the lightning, which\nwith its \"terror-gleam\" flows as a barrier round Asgard, the\nhome of the gods; the other falls in fructifying shower upon the\nearth, to return to its original source in the underworld. The\nfamous maelstrom is the storm-centre, so to speak, of the\ndown-tending flood. The fountain Hvergelmer may therefore be\nregarded as embodying impressions made on the Teuton mind\nby the physical forces of the universe in the grand activities of\ntheir eternal circulation. But their source was hidden.\n\nThe southernmost well has the warmer water of the sunny\nclimes--the fountain of Urd. The Norns, the three sisters who\nmade known the decrees of fate, come out of the unknown\ndistance, enveloped in a dark veil, to the world tree, and\nsprinkle it daily with water from this fountain, that its foliage\nmay be ever green and vigorous. Urd is the eldest of the three,\nand gazes thoughtfully into the past; Werdandi gazes at the\npresent; and Skuld gazes into the future. For out of the past and\npresent is the future born. The fountain of Urd may be regarded\nas the embodiment of impressions of a spiritual force which\nupholds and renews the universe.\n\nMimur, the king of the lower world, is the warder of the central\nfountain, and round its waters are ranged his golden halls. The\nfountain itself is seven times overlaid with gold, and above it\nthe holy tree spreads its sheltering branches. It is the source of\nthe precious liquid, the mead, which belongs to Mimur alone,\nand rises from an unknown depth to water the central root. In its\npurity, it gives the gods their wisdom and power. But the mead\nwhich rises in the sap is not entirely pure; it is mixed with the\nliquids from the other fountains. Thus earth is not like heaven.\nNevertheless, though thus diluted, it is a fructifying blessing to\nwhomsoever may obtain it. Around it grow delightful beds of\nreeds and bulrushes; and bordering it are the Glittering Fields,\nin which grow flowers that never fade and harvests that are\nnever reaped; in which grow also the seeds of poetry. In short,\nMimur's well is the source of inspiration and creative power.\n\nThese Teutonic notions of the waters under the earth have been\ndwelt upon somewhat fully, partly because they are not so well\nknown as the classical myths--partly because they present such\na decided contrast to the classical myths--but mainly because of\ntheir wealth of mystic suggestiveness. Let it not be thought that\nthey form a group of elaborate symbols--were that the case their\ninterest for the natural mystic would be vastly decreased. They\nare almost wholly the spontaneous product of the mythopoeic\nfaculty; they were genuinely believed as presentations of\nrealities. They are primitive intuitions embodied to form a\nprimitive philosophy of life. They glow with mystic insight.\nUnder the forms of subterranean fountains that well forth life,\nphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, is mirrored the life of the universe,\nwhich wells from unknown depths, and returns to the deeps\nfrom which it emanated. And inasmuch as these ideas were\nlargely suggested by the circulation of the waters of the globe, the\nTeutonic child of nature joins hands with the nature-philosopher\nThales. The Reality is ultimately the same for both; the\nsubstance of the universe is living movement.\n\nYet another type of the mystic influence of subterranean\nwatercourses will serve to illustrate the deepening processes to\nwhich all concrete forms, derived from intuitions, must be\nsubjected. Near to Banias in Northern Palestine, at the base of\nan extensive cup-shaped mound, afar from human habitations,\nis one of the two chief sources of the Jordan. The rushing waters\npour out of the ground in sufficient volume to form at once a\nriver. The roar and tumult are strikingly impressive. Peters, on\nwhose description of the place I have largely drawn, presumes\nthat this was the site of an ancient temple of Dan. The worship\nat this temple was of the primitive sort, \"such as was befitting\nthe worship of the God who exhibited himself in such nature\nforces.\" We are therefore carried back to the mythological\nstage, for which the gushing forth, in volume, of subterranean\nwaters was a manifestation of the life in, or behind, the natural\nphenomenon, and roused a peculiar kind of emotion.\n\nWe are carried on to a much more advanced stage when we\ncome to the feelings represented in the 42nd Psalm. Peters\nargues that this Psalm, which so vividly describes the roaring of\nthe waters was, \"in its original form, a liturgical hymn sung at\nthe great autumnal festival by worshippers at this shrine, where\nserved, according to tradition, the descendants of Moses.\" On\nthis supposition how pregnant with historical import become the\nwell-known words: \"One deep calleth another because of the\nnoise of the water-pipes; all thy waves and billows are gone\nover me.\" It is no mere analogy or symbol that is here employed\n(though such elements may be mingled in the complex whole)\nbut an intuition yearning to express itself that life's burden\nwould be lightened if the secret of the gushing waters could be\nread.\n\nAnd it is thus that we arrive at the fundamental intuition\ncommon to the various modes of experience just reviewed. The\nsubterranean waters spring from an unknown source, or fall into\nan unknown abyss. In both cases there is a sense of having\nreached the limits of the knowable, combined with a sense of\ninexhaustible power. The beyond is vague and insubstantial, but\nit is instinct with life and purpose. Man's spirit may shrink\nbefore the unknown--but he fills the empty regions with forms\nand objects which rob them of much of their strangeness and\naloofness, and bring them within the range of his hopes and\nfears. There, as here (he feels), there must be interpenetration\nof spirit by spirit.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nSPRINGS AND WELLS\n\nMilton, in his noble \"Ode on the Nativity,\" sings that, with the\nadvent of the Saviour,\n\n    \"From haunted spring and dale,\n    Edged with poplars pale,\n        The parting genius is with sighing sent.\"\n\nIs this a statement of fact? Largely so, if the reference is to the\nriver gods, the Naiads, and water sprites, of classical\nmythology. But not true if the vaguer belief in spirits who\npreside over mossy wells and bubbling springs be taken into\naccount, or if the faith in the healing or other virtues of the\nwaters that issue from them be included in the underlying idea.\nNo, not even in the most Christian countries of to-day is such\nfaith extinct. One has but to remember the famous well at\nAuray, or the sacred fountain in the crypt of the church at St.\nMelars, to which whole crowds of pilgrims still resort, to realise\nhow far this is from being the case. Scotland herself, for all her\ncenturies of Puritanism, has not wiped her slate quite clean; still\nless the countries like Ireland and Brittany, which are so\nretentive of the past. Nay, the present age is not content with its\nliberal supply of sacred springs, it must be adding new ones of\nits own! Let Lourdes be witness. And who shall say how many\nmore are yet to come?\n\nVery remarkable, both as illustrating Milton's Ode, and also the\npersistency of this particular form of superstition, is the story of\nthe only real spring close to Jerusalem--Enrogel. It is identified\nby high authorities with the Dragon's Well, mentioned in a\nromantic passage of the book of the patriot, Nehemiah.\nAssuming the validity of this identification, we have a glimpse\nof times far earlier than the Hebrew occupation of the land.\nPrimitive peoples often associated serpents with springs and\nwells, as incarnations of the spirit of the waters. A link is thus\nsupplied which carries back the history to the animistic and\nmythological periods, in this case, prehistoric.\n\nRetracing our course, we arrive at the time of the Hebrew\noccupation of the country. A purer form of religion has rejected\nmost of the mythological material. But the old name of the\nspring remains, and, what is still more pertinent, the old belief\nin its healing power. We have evidence of this belief in St.\nJohn's Gospel, which contains the peculiar story of the healing\nat the pool of Bethesda, most probably connected with this same\nspring. The popular view that at times an angel came to trouble\nthe water is perhaps an attempted explanation of its intermittent\naction.\n\nNow should have come the time, according to Milton, for the\ndeparture of the sighing genius--the dying out of the\nsuperstition. But those who anticipate such a _d\u00e9nouement_\nwill be grievously disappointed. For the Jews still bathe in its\nwaters, at the times of overflow, for cure of various maladies.\nAnd on the Christian side of the history, it has gained the name\nof the Virgin's Pool!\n\nSimilar stories might be found in any part of the globe where\ntradition is sufficiently continuous to preserve them, testifying\nto the almost astounding persistency of belief in the power of\nspringing water. No doubt simple faith healing has played its\npart--but that part is very subsidiary; the strongest influence has\nbeen that exercised by the movement of the water itself,\nsuggesting as it does the idea of spontaneous life. Not less\nsurprising is the hold such springs retain upon the imagination\nand affections. Pathetic proof of this meets the traveller at every\nturn on the west coast of Ireland. As he tramps the byways and\nunfrequented paths of County Clare, his eye is caught from time\nto time by an artless array of shelves on the sloping banks of\nsome meadow spring. On the shelves are scanty votive offerings,\npiteous to see. Piteous, not on the score of the superstition\nwhich prompts them--that is a matter to be dealt with\nin a spirit of broad sympathy, on its historic and social\nmerits--but because of the dire poverty they reveal. Even its of\nbroken crockery are held worthy of a place at these little\nshrines; so bereft are the peasantry of the simplest\naccompaniments of civilised life.\n\nHow thoroughly natural is the growth of such sentiments and\nbeliefs! Jefferies felt the charm. \"There was a secluded spring\"\n(he writes) \"to which I sometimes went to drink the pure water,\nlifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking the lucid water,\nclear as light itself in solution, I absorbed the beauty and the\npurity of it. I drank the thought of the element; I desired\nsoul-nature pure and limpid.\"\n\nNor has the charm ceased to be potent for the new man in the\nnew world. Walt Whitman knew it. Here is a delightful\nparagraph from his notes of \"Specimen Days\": \"So, still\nsauntering on, to the spring under the willows--musical and soft\nas clinking glasses--pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck,\npure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like\na great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth roof--gurgling,\ngurgling ceaselessly--meaning, saying something of course (if\none could only translate it)--always gurgling there, the whole\nyear through--never going out--oceans of mint, blackberries in\nsummer--choice of light and shade--just the place for my July\nsun-baths and water-baths too--but mainly the inimitable soft\nsound-gurgles of it, as I sit there hot afternoons. How they and\nall grow into me, day after day--everything in keeping--the\nwild, just palpable, perfume, and the dapple of leaf-shadows,\nand all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the\nspot.\"\n\nIf these two passages be taken together, there will be few\nelements of mystic influence left unnoted. And how deeply\nsignificant the fact that each author instinctively and\nspontaneously associates with the limpid flow of the water the\nideas of life and health! Were the old mythologists so very far\nfrom the truth? Is it so very hard to understand why wells and\nsprings have had their thousands of years of trust and affection?\nWas it mere caprice that led our Teutonic fathers to place under\nthe roots of the world-tree the three wells of force and life and\ninspiration?\n\nA fine example of a more definitely mystic use of the ideas\nprompted by the sight of springing water, is found in Dante's\n\"Earthly Paradise\"--an example the more interesting because of\nits retention of what may be called the \"nature-elements\" in the\nexperience.\n\n    \"The water, thou behold'st, springs not from vein,\n    Restored by vapour, that the cold converts;\n    As stream that intermittently repairs\n    And spends his pulse of life; but issues forth\n    From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure:\n    And, by the will omnific, full supply\n    Feeds whatsoe'er on either side it pours;\n    On this, devolved with power to take away\n    Remembrance of offence; on that, to bring\n    Remembrance back of every good deed done.\n    From whence its name of Lethe on this part;\n    On the other, Eunoe: both of which must first\n    Be tasted, ere it work; the last exceeding\n    All flavours else.\"\n\nThis passage, say the authorities, is linked on to the old\nProserpine mystery, and is parallel to the Teutonic conceptions\ndescribed in the last chapter. Of quite exceptional character, yet\nbest treated in the present connection, are the \"wells\" of eastern\nlands. Where the sources of springing water are rare and far\ndistant from one another, the supply of water has to be\nsupplemented by that from artificial pits, sunk with hard toil,\noften into the solid rock, and valued accordingly. Such \"wells,\"\nin the stricter sense, are too directly associated with human\nlabour in historic times, to allow much mythical material to\naccumulate around them. Still, from the simple fact of their\ndispensing water in arid and thirsty lands, they possess not\nunfrequently a rich store of family and tribal legends. And\nfurther, by reason of their very freedom from the cruder\nsuperstitions, the intuitions they prompted were from the first\ntransparent and spiritual. Under such conditions the water is\nliterally \"life.\" And as the conception of life deepened, so did\nintuition become more delicate.\n\nWe have the early freshness of the feeling stimulated in an\nancient strain, delightful in its naive spontaneity.\n\n    \"Then sang Israel this song:\n        Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it:\n    The well which the princes digged,\n    Which the nobles of the people delved,\n        With the sceptre and with their staves.\"\n\nThe deepening of the feeling came rapidly, and took exquisite\nform in the prophet's assurance that his people should \"draw\nwater out of the wells of salvation.\" But here mysticism was\nbeginning to blend with symbolism, and the later developments\nof the idea pass over almost wholly into the sphere of reflective\nanalogy.\n\nSo far as the nature-mystic is concerned, he emphasises the\ncontinuity of the feeling, from the earliest ages to the present,\nthat in the phenomena of water gushing from a source we have\na manifestation of self-activity, as immanent Idea and concrete\nwill. And convinced of the validity of his contention, he is not\nsurprised, as some may be, at the influence which wells and\nsprings have wielded, and still do wield, over the human soul.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nBROOKS AND STREAMS\n\nThere is a striking passage in Tylor's \"Primitive Culture\" which\nwill admirably serve as an introduction to this chapter and the\none which is to follow, on \"Rivers and Waterfalls.\" \"In those\nmoments of the civilised man's life when he casts off hard dull\nscience, and returns to childhood's fancy, the world-old book of\nnature is open to him anew. Then the well-worn thoughts come\nback fresh to him, of the stream's life that is so like his own;\nonce more he can see the rill leap down the hill-side like a child,\nto wander playing among the flowers; or can follow it as, grown\nto a river, it rushes through a mountain gorge, henceforth in\nsluggish strength to carry heavy burdens across the plain. In all\nthat the water does, the poet's fancy can discern its personality\nof life. It gives fish to the fisher, and crops to the husbandman;\nit swells in fury and lays waste the land; it grips the bather with\nchill and cramp, and holds with inexorable grasp its drowning\nvictim. . . . What ethnography has to teach of that great element\nof the religion of mankind, the worship of well and lake, brook\nand river, is simply this--that what is poetry to us was\nphilosophy to early man; that to his mind water acted not by\nlaws of force, but by life and will; that the water-spirits of\nprimeval mythology are as souls which cause the water's rush\nand rest, its kindness and its cruelty; that lastly man finds, in the\nbeings with such power to work him weal or woe, deities with a\nwider influence over his life, deities to be feared and loved, to\nbe prayed to and praised and propitiated with sacrificial gifts.\"\n\nTylor has here given a masterly r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of a large group of\nfacts, and has viewed them from a particular angle--not quite\nthat of the nature-mystic, though not so far removed as might\nappear. He does not make it appear that there was any organic\nconnection between the phenomena and the mythology, nor\neven between the phenomena and the feelings which the\nmodern man, in certain moods, feels stirring within him at their\nprompting. These myths are simply \"fancies\"; the \"feelings\" are\nsimply those of \"the poet.\" The wider view adopted by so many\nphilosophers and scientists (as was shown in the chapter on\nanimism) does not seem to have won his adherence--perchance\nwas not known to him. And yet in sentence after sentence he\nhovers on the brink of genuine Nature Mysticism. His sympathy\nwith the leaping rill and the rushing river is deep and\nspontaneous; he is evidently well pleased to open afresh \"the\nworld-old book of nature,\" and to read it in the light of\n\"childhood's fancy.\" The nature-mystic avers that what he\ndeemed a recurrence of meaningless, if pleasant, \"well-worn\nthoughts\" was really an approach to the heart of nature from\nwhich an imperfect understanding of the place and function of\nscience had carried him away. Not that the old forms should be\nperpetuated, but that the childlike insight should be cherished.\n\nWater in movement in brooks and streams! Have we discovered\nthe secret of it when we tell of liquids in unstable equilibrium\nwhich follow lines of least resistance? It is a valuable advance\nto have gained such abstract terms and laws, so long as we\nremember they _are_ abstractions. But it is a deadly thing to\nrest in them. How infinitely wiser is Walt Whitman, in his\naddress to a brook he loved, than the man who coldly analyses,\nwith learned formulae to help him, and sees and feels nothing\nbeyond. \"Babble on, O brook\" (Walt Whitman cries), \"with that\nutterance of thine! . . . Spin and wind thy way--I with thee a\nlittle while at any rate. As I haunt thee so often, season by\nseason, thou knowest, reckest not me (yet why be so certain--\nwho can tell?)--but I will learn from thee, and dwell on thee--\nreceive, copy, print, from thee.\"\n\nIs this to indulge in vague anthropomorphic fancies--though not\nof the cruder sort, still of subjective value only? The\npersistence, the vividness, and the frequency of such\n\"imaginings\" prove that the subjective explanation does not tell\nthe whole tale. How natural, in the simplest sense of the word,\nis Coleridge:\n\n    \"A noise like of a hidden brook\n    In the leafy month of June,\n    That to the sleeping woods all night\n    Singeth a quiet tune.\"\n\nHow earnest is Wordsworth as he opens out glimpses of\nunknown modes of being in his address to the Brook:\n\n    \"If wish were mine some type of thee to view\n    Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do\n    Like Grecian artists, give the human cheeks\n    Channels for tears; no Naiad shouldst thou be,--\n    Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints, nor hairs;\n    It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee\n    With purer robes than those of flesh and blood,\n    And hath bestowed on thee a safer good;\n    Unwearied joy, and life without its care.\"\n\nAgain, what natural feeling declares itself in the delightful\nSpanish poem translated by Longfellow:\n\n    \"Laugh of the mountain! lyre of bird and tree!\n    Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn!\n    The soul of April, unto whom are born\n    The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee!\"\n\nHow deep, once more, the note sounded by Brown in his lines\non \"The Well\":\n\n    \"I am a spring--\n    Why square me with a kerb?\n    . . .\n    O cruel force,\n    That gives me not a chance\n    To fill my natural course;\n    With mathematic rod\n    Economising God;\n    Calling me to pre-ordered circumstance\n    Nor suffering me to dance\n    Over the pleasant gravel,\n    With music solacing my travel--\n    With music, and the baby buds that toss\n    In light, with roots and sippets of the moss!\"\n\nThe longing for freedom to expand the dimly realised and\nmystic elements in his soul-life was stirred within him by the\njoyous bubbling of a spring. To kerb the artless, natural flow is\nto \"economise God\"--so the limitations and restrictions of the\nlife that now is artificialise and deaden the divine within us.\nThere is more than metaphor in such a comparison; there is the\nlinkage of the immanent idea. His emotion culminates in the\nconcluding lines:\n\n    \"One faith remains--\n    That through what ducts soe'er,\n    What metamorphic strains,\n    What chymic filt'rings, I shall pass\n    To where, O God,\n    Thou lov'st to mass\n    Thy rains upon the crags, and dim the sphere.\n    So, when night's heart with keenest silence thrills,\n    Take me, and weep me on the desolate hills.\"\n\nThere are indeed but few with any feeling for nature who have\nnot been moved to special trains of thought, the outcome of\ncharacteristic moods, by the babblings and wayward wanderings\nof brooks and rivulets. The appeal, therefore, is to a\nwide experience. Can we be satisfied to join with Tylor in his\nsense of disillusionment? Or shall we strive to get yet nearer to\nthe heart of things? If we cling to the deeper view, to us, as to\nthe men of old, the running stream will sing of the soul in\nnature.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nRIVERS AND LIFE\n\nA river is but a larger brook. And yet by virtue of its volume, it\nmanifests features which are peculiarly its own, and exerts\ninfluences which have not alone affected individual moods and\nimaginings, but often profoundly modified and moulded the\ndestinies of peoples and civilisations. The two outstanding\ninstances are the Nile and the Ganges.\n\nThe Nile has attracted to itself, from the dawn of history to the\npresent day, a peculiar share of wonder and renown. It is the\nlongest river of its continent--possibly of the world; and the\nexploration of its sources is only just completed. It flows\nthrough a limestone country over which, save for its beneficent\naction, would drive the parched sands of the Libyan desert. Its\nperiodic inundations, with their rich deposits of alluvial soil,\nrepel the encroaching wastes, and solve the problem of the food\nsupply. Egypt has with good reason been called \"the gift of the\nNile.\"\n\nThis river therefore possesses in a marked degree all the mystic\ninfluences of moving water, and emphasises them by physical\nand historical features of exceptional import. What wonder that\nit has had so direct a bearing on the spiritual development of the\npeople on its banks, and that it entered into the very texture of\ntheir lives! It was, for the Egyptian, pre-eminently the sacred\nriver--deemed to be one of the primitive essences--ranked with\nthose highest deities who were not visible objects of adoration.\nAs a form of God \"he cannot (says an ancient hymnist) be\nfigured in stone; he is not to be seen in the sculptured images\nupon which men place the united crowns of the North and the\nSouth, furnished with uraei.\" The honour thus conferred was but\ncommensurate with the blessings he brought. For in what would\nhave been a valley of death he was the sole source and sustainer\nof life. A further quotation from the beautiful hymn just\nmentioned will indicate the affection and mystic emotion he\ninspired. \"Homage to thee, O Hapi! (i.e. the Nile). Thou comest\nforth in this land, and dost come in peace to make Egypt to live,\nO thou hidden one, thou guide of the darkness whensoever it is\nthy pleasure to be its guide. Thou waterest the fields which Ra\nhath created, thou makest all animals to live, thou makest the\nland to drink without ceasing; thou descendest the path of\nheaven, thou art the friend of meat and drink, thou art the giver\nof the grain, and thou makest every place of work to flourish, O\nPtah! . . . If thou wert to be overcome in heaven the gods would\nfall down headlong, and mankind would perish.\"\n\nIn this passage the mystic observes how the natural power of\nrunning water to suggest spontaneous movement, and therefore\nlife, is accentuated and denned by the actual results of the river's\nbeneficent overflow. And a further step is taken when Hapi is\naddressed by the names of Ptah (as above) and Khnemu; for he\nis not thus confused with the gods so named, but being the great\nlife-supplier for the land, he is, like them, regarded as a creative\npower. The development of the ideas suggested is thus\nessentially parallel to that described in the chapter on the\nTeutonic myths of the three subterranean wells and the\nWorld-tree.\n\nBut can any distinctive features of the Egyptian religion be\ntraced to the influences exerted by the phenomena of the Nile?\nMost decidedly so--in two directions more especially. That\nreligion is one of contrasts; it represents the world as a scene of\ntitanic conflict. The realm of Osiris is opposed to that of\nTyphon--creation to destruction. And the master influence in\nshaping the form in which these contrasts were conceived was\nundoubtedly the Nile. On one side barren rocks and parched\nsands, and on the other the fertilising powers of the sacred\nstream. All around, vast solitudes, and along the river the hum\nof teeming communities and the rich fullness of prosperous\ncivilisations. The world was visibly, for the Egyptian, a fierce\nrecurring battle between life and death.\n\nAnd springing out of this appears the second great influence to\nbe attributed to the famous river. The Egyptian grasped firmly\nand developed fully the doctrine of immortality. Doubtless\nmany factors contributed to the peculiar form which his belief\nassumed, but none would be of more importance than the ever\nrenewed gift of life which the Nile brought from an unknown\nand an unseen world. Hence also the connection between the\nNile-god and Osiris, the god of the resurrection. So deeply were\nthe world-views and spiritual experiences of the Egyptians\ninfluenced by the mystic's powers of the Nile--by the immanent\nideas therein made concrete. The Egyptians, in their turn,\ninfluenced the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans; and these,\nagain, have influenced the race. Who shall estimate the effect\non the human mind of the physical phenomena of this single\nriver!\n\nWhen we turn to the story of the Ganges, a further mystical\nconcept comes into view--that of purification. It is manifestly\nsuggested by the cleansing qualities of water, and has exercised\nan important function in the development of certain moral ideas\nand ideals. Bathing in running water to cleanse the stains of the\nbody led on to, and combined with, the concept of cleansing the\nstains of the soul. But even thus the dominant suggestion of life\ndeclares itself, as is specially obvious in the case of Christian\nbaptism, where the washing with water symbolises not only the\ncleansing of the soul, but the new birth, the higher life of the\nspirit. It is by keeping in mind these blended concepts that we\nshall best understand the story of the Ganges.\n\nAll the larger rivers of India are looked upon as abodes and\nvehicles of the divine essence, and therefore as possessed of\npower to cleanse from moral guilt. Their banks, from source to\nsea, are holy ground, and pilgrims plod their way along them to\nwin merit--a merit that is measured by the years of travel and\nthe sanctity of the stream. Of all the great rivers in this ancient\nland, the Ganges is the noblest. Mother Ganga, stands supreme.\nNo water such as hers for washing away the stains of the most\nheinous crimes. She has bands of priests who call themselves\nher \"Sons,\" and who conduct pilgrims down the flights of steps\nthat line her banks, aid them in their ablutions, and declare them\nclean. To die and to be buried near the stream is in itself\nsufficient to win an entrance to the realms of bliss. \"Those who,\neven at a distance of a hundred leagues, cry Ganga, Ganga,\natone for the sins committed during three previous lives.\" In\nshort, the hold the river has obtained upon the affections and\nimaginations of the Hindus is marvellously firm and lasting.\n\nOf course a river so renowned has its wreath of myths and\nlegends, characterised, in this instance, by the prodigality of the\nEastern mind. It is not necessary to linger over these, save in so\nfar as to note that they ascribe a divine origin to the sacred\nstream; the sense of power and movement issuing from the\nworld of the unseen is no less strong than that aroused by the\nNile; though it finds strangely different modes of expression, its\nessential character is the same. Interesting and typical is the\nHindu belief that the spot where flow together the waters of the\nGanges, the Jumna and the Sarasvati is one of the most\nhallowed in a land of holy places. \"These three sacred rivers\nform a kind of Tri-murti, or triad, often personified as\ngoddesses, and called 'Mothers.'\" With such facts in view, it\nwould be hard to exaggerate the influence of rivers on the\ndevelopment of the Hindu's speculation and practice, and more\nespecially of his mysticism.\n\nSuch intuitions and beliefs find their full flower in the\nconception of the river of life--the stream, pure as crystal, that,\nwith exulting movement onward, brings to men the thrill of\nhope and the inspiration of progress to a world beyond. It pulses\nand swings in the glorious sunshine--it reflects the blue of\nheaven--it sweeps superbly with unsullied current past every\nobstacle, and bursts through every barrier:\n\n            at ille\n    Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.\n\nYes, the Nile, the Ganges, the Rhine, the Thames, and a\nthousand other rivers of renown have had, and still have, their\npart to play in the cosmic drama and in the development of\nman's spiritual nature. Generation after generation has found\nthem to be capable of stirring peculiar emotions, and of\nstimulating profound thoughts on the mystery of life. And all\nthese powers are concentrated and sublimated in this glorious\nvision of \"the river of water of life that flows from the throne\nof God.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nRIVERS AND DEATH\n\nThe world of fact, no less than the world of abstract thought, is\nfull of contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such\ncontradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it has been shown, is\nsuggestive of life. But over against it we find a suggestion of\ndeath. Indeed there has been a widely diffused belief in a river\nof death--a striking foil to the inspiring mysticism of the river of\nlife. The old-world mythology taught, in varying forms, but\nwith underlying unity of concept, that there is a river, or gulf,\nwhich must be crossed by the departing soul on its way to the\nland of the departed. Evidently the extension of the original\nthought to cover its seeming opposite has a basis in the nature\nof things. Its most elaborate presentment is in the ancient myths\nof the nether regions and of the seven streams that watered\nthem--from Styx that with nine-fold weary wanderings bounded\nTartarus, to where\n\n    \"Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,\n    Lethe the river of oblivion runs.\"\n\nNor has Christianity disdained to adapt the idea. Bunyan, for\nexample, brings his two pilgrims within sight of the heavenly\nCity. \"Now I saw further that between them and the gate was a\nriver; but there was no bridge, and the river was very deep. At\nthe sight therefore of this river, the pilgrims were much stunned;\nbut the men that went with them said, you must go through or\nyou cannot come at the gate.\"\n\nWhat suggestive power has the river to induce this more sombre\ntrain of reflection? Surely that embodied in the old proverb--\nFollow the river and you will come to the sea. Clough, in his\nlittle poem, \"The Stream of Life,\" concludes with a note of\nsadness, almost of despair:\n\n    \"O end to which all currents tend,\n        Inevitable sea,\n    To which we flow, what do we know,\n        What shall we guess of thee?\n\n    A roar we hear upon thy shore,\n        As we our course fulfil;\n    Scarce we divine a sun will shine\n        And be above us still.\"\n\nThe rushing rapid and the plunging waterfall have an influence\nall their own in rousing intuitions of more than human life and\npower. The dazzling and dashing rainbows of spray appeal to\nthe sense of sight--the internal rhythmic sound from the lighter\ntones which are flung around like notes from a Str\u00f6m Karl's\nmagic harp, or the alluring song of a Lorelei, to the thunder of a\nNiagara, nature's diapason sounding the lowest note that mortal\nears can catch, appeal to the sense of hearing--and underlying\nall is a vague sense of irresistible power. How touching, how\nprofoundly true, the story in \"Eckehard\" of the little lad and his\nsister who wandered off until they came to the Rheinfal. There,\ngazing at the full sweep of that magnificent fall the little fellow\nthrows into the swirling emerald of the waters at his feet a\ngolden goblet, as an offering to the God whom he felt to be so\nnear. Unconsciously he was a natural mystic. Movement, sound,\nand colour combined to produce in him, what it should produce\nin all, a sense of immanent Reality, self-moving, self-sustained.\nAnd yet even a waterfall may suggest far other thoughts--a\ndownward course from the freshness of the uplands of youth to\nthe broadening stream of manhood declining towards old age\nand the final plunge. The fall itself would thus convey vague\nfeelings of loss of power and vigour--a loss that gathers speed\nas it approaches the end. So in Campbell's well-known \"River\nof Life\":\n\n    \"When joys have lost their bloom and breath\n        And life itself is vapid,\n    Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,\n        Feel we its course more rapid? \"\n\nIf so sad a train of reflections can be stimulated by the rapids\nand the falls of rivers, how much more so by their ending in the\nocean! Old age and death can hardly fail to assert themselves in\nthe minds of those who sail down some noble river and\nmeditate:\n\n    \"As the banks fade dimmer away,\n    As the stars come out, and the night wind\n        Brings up the stream\n    Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.\"\n\nGranting that the river's merging in the sea suggests the close\nof life as we know it here, must we also grant that the\nnatural-mystic must give way to a partial, if not an absolute,\ntendency to pessimism? That a natural-mystic should be a pessimist\nwould seem to be an anomaly. For he holds that he can hold\nliving communion with the Real; and such communion would\ncarry with it, surely, a strong hope, if not a conviction, that\nchange in material form cannot affect the inner being, call it the\nspiritual essence, of which that form is a particular\nmanifestation. Deny that nature has a soul and optimism\nbecomes a ghastly mockery. Believe that nature and man are\nlinked together as kindred forms of spiritual existence, and then,\nthough there will not indeed be formal proof of immortality,\nthere will be intuitive trust in the future. What the implications\nof such a trust may be is for the various philosophies and\ntheologies to determine; but taken at its lowest value, it would\nsecure a man from pessimism.\n\nIn the light of these general observations, let us consider the\nparticular case now presented. The river is merged in the sea--it\nis absorbed--its existence as a river is terminated. But the\n\"substance\" of its being remains; diffused in a vaster whole, but\nnot lost. What is this vaster whole? If we regard it as an\nAbsolute, there may perchance be ground for pessimism. If,\nwith certain scientists, we stop short at the conservation of\nenergy, there is nothing ahead but a blank. But if we hold to the\nconservation of values, as at least a parallel to this conservation\nof energy, we are impelled to hold also to the conservation of all\nthat is ultimate in individualities. For values imply modes of\nbeing which can allow of the experience of values as such. And\nthe Nature-Mystic's direct communion with his environment is\nseen to be one mode by which the individual centre of life\nlearns to live increasingly in the life of the Whole--the total\nReality. There is, then, no absorption where values are\nconserved, but an ever richer content of experience, an ever\ndeepening insight into its significance, and an ever keener\nenjoyment of the material it affords.\n\nAs a specific case of an optimistic creed based on an intuition of\nthe essential kinship of all things, it is profitable to study the\npoetry of a Sufi mystic of the thirteenth century. How delicate\nthe thought enshrined in the following lines:\n\n    \"When man passed from the plant to the animal state,\n    He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,\n    Except the inclination he felt for the world of plants,\n    Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers.\"\n\nWhat is this but an anticipation of Wordsworth's \"Daffodils,\" or\neven of his \"Ode on Immortality\"?\n\nThe concepts and phraseology of the transmigration theory are\nmerely temporary forms in which a deep thought clothes itself:\nat any rate, they are not necessary adjuncts of the thought; nor\ndo they preclude sympathy with the following condensed\nstatement of this same mystic's world-philosophy:\n\n    \"I died from the mineral and became a plant;\n    I died from the plant and reappeared as an animal;\n    I died from the animal and became a man.\n    Wherefore then should I fear? When did I grow less by\n        dying?\n    Next time I shall die from the man\n    That I may grow the wings of angels.\n    From the angel, too, I must advance.\n    All things shall perish save His face.\"\n\nWith an insight like unto this, a mystic need not fear because\nthe river flows into the sea! In spite of appearances, the idea of\nlife can still reign supreme. The river of death embodies a true\ninsight--but of a transition only, not of an abiding state. We die\nto live more fully.\n\nThis sense of continuity in the flow of the stream of life, and of\nthe abidingness of its existence through all vicissitudes has been\nstrikingly expressed by Jefferies. He is sitting on the\ngrass-grown tumulus where some old warrior was buried two\nthousand years ago, and his thought slips back over the interval.\n\"Two thousand years being a second to the soul could not cause\nits extinction. . . . Resting by the tumulus, the spirit of the man\nwho had been interred there was to me really alive, and very\nclose. This was quite natural and simple as the grass waving in\nthe wind, the bees humming, and the lark's songs. Only by the\nstrongest effort of the mind could I understand the idea of\nextinction; that was supernatural, requiring a miracle; the\nimmortality of the soul natural, like the earth. Listening to the\nsighing of the grass I felt immortality as I felt the beauty of the\nsummer morning, and I thought beyond immortality, of other\nconditions, more beautiful than existence, higher than\nimmortality.\"\n\nLet Morris sum up the thoughts and emotions aroused by the\nmystical influences of water flowing onward to join the ocean.\n\n    \"Flow on, O mystical river, flow on through desert and city;\n    Broken or smooth flow onward into the Infinite sea.\n    Who knows what urges thee on?\n    . . .\n    Surely we know not at all, but the cycle of Being is eternal,\n    Life is eternal as death, tears are eternal as joy.\n    As the stream flowed it will flow; though 'tis sweet, yet the\n        sea will be bitter;\n    Foul it with filth, yet the Deltas grow green and the ocean is\n        clear.\n    Always the sun and the winds will strike its broad surface\n        and gather\n    Some purer drops from its depths to float in the clouds of the\n        sky;--\n    Soon these shall fall once again, and replenish the\n\tfull-flowing river.\n    Roll round then, O mystical circle! flow onward, ineffable\n        stream!\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII\n\nTHE OCEAN\n\nThe Ocean! What is its mystic significance? A question as\nfraught with living issues as its physical object is spacious and\nprofound. Infinitely varied and yet unchanging; gentle and yet\nterrible; radiant and yet awful;\n\n    \"Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,\n    Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime\n    Dark heaving\"--\n\nthere is not a mood with which the ocean cannot link itself, nor\na problem to which it cannot hint, albeit darkly, a solution. To\nattempt a description of its external phenomena were a hardy\ntask--much more to grapple with its protean influences on the\nsouls of men.\n\nLet the approach be by way of mythology. It was shown how\nthat Thales was partly guided to his choice of Water as the\n_Welt-stoff_ by its place and function in the ancient\ncosmologies. Numerous and widely diffused were the myths of\na primeval ocean out of which the structured universe arose.\nThe Babylonian tablet tells of the time before the times \"when\nabove were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a\nplant had not grown up; the abyss also had not broken up its\nboundary. The chaos, the sea, was the producing mother of\nthem all.\" A passage from the Rig Veda speaks likewise of the\ntime, or rather the no-time, which preceded all things. \"Death\nwas not then, nor immortality; there was no distinction of day or\nnight. Only _Something_ breathed without breath, inwardly\nturned towards itself. Other than it there was nothing.\" And how\ndid these ancient mystics best picture to themselves the\nprimeval, or timeless, _Something_?--\"What was the veiling\ncover of everything?\"--they themselves ask. And they answer\nwith another question--\"Was it the water's deep abyss?\" They\nthink of it as \"an ocean without light.\" \"Then (say they) from\nthe nothingness enveloped in empty gloom, Desire (Love)\narose, which was the first germ of mind. This loving impulse\nthe Sages, seeking in their heart, recognised as the bond\nbetween Being and Non-Being.\" How deep the plunge here into\nthe sphere of abstract thought! Yet so subtle and forceful had\nbeen the mystic influence of the ocean on the primitive mind\nthat it declares itself as a working element in their abstrusest\nspeculations.\n\nNor has this mystic influence as suggesting the mysteries of\norigin ceased to be operative. Here is Tennyson, addressing his\nnew-born son:\n\n    \"Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep.\"\n\nAnd again, when nearing the end of his own life, he strikes the\nsame old mystic chord:\n\n    \"When that which drew from out the boundless deep\n    Turns again home.\"\n\nWordsworth, of course, felt the power of this ocean-born\nintuition, and assures us that here and now:\n\n    \"Tho' inland far we be,\n    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea\n    Which brought us hither.\"\n\nAnd of intense interest as modernising the ancient concept of\n\"_Something_ which breathed without breath,\" is his appeal:\n\n    \"Listen, the mighty Being is awake,\n    And doth with his eternal motion make\n    A sound like thunder--everlastingly.\"\n\nIt will not be possible to do more than draw attention to those\nchief characteristics of the ocean which have given it so large a\nplace in the minds of men. And first would come the vastness of\nthe sea, which prompts vague intuitions of mystery and infinity.\nThe sight of its limitless expanse still has this power. \"The sea\n(says Holmes) belongs to eternity, and not to time, and of that it\nsings for ever and ever.\" How natural, then, the trend of the\nmythology just mentioned, and the belief in a primeval ocean--a\nformless abyss--Ti\u00e2mat--which, as Milton puts it in a splendid\nline, is:\n\n    \"The womb of nature and perhaps her grave.\"\n\nBut added to the mystic influence of sheer limitlessness are the\nmanifestations of power and majesty, which compel the awe\nand wonder of those who \"go down to the sea in ships and do\ntheir business in great waters.\" In the minds of early navigators,\nthe experience of the terrors of the sea begot a sense of\nrelationship to hostile powers. One of the oldest Aryan words\nfor sea, the German _Meer_, Old English _Mere_, means death\nor destruction; and the destructive action of the ocean's\nuntutored elementary force found personifications in the\nTeutonic Oegir (Terror), with his dreaded daughter, and the\nsea-goddess, Ran, his wife, who raged in storms and overwhelmed\nthe ships. The eastern peoples, including the Hebrews, regarded\nthe sea as the abode of evil powers, as certain of the visions in\nthe Book of Daniel strikingly testify. Nor is this feeling of the\naction of hostile powers yet extinct. Victor Hugo makes fine use\nof it in his description of the storm in \"The Toilers of the Sea.\"\n\nJefferies was always deeply affected by the vast-ness and\nstrength of the sea. \"Let me launch forth\" (he writes) \"and sail\nover the rim of the sea yonder, and when another rim rises over\nthat, and again onwards into an ever-widening ocean of idea and\nlife. For with all the strength of the wave, and its succeeding\nwave, the depth and race of the tide, the clear definition of the\nsky; with all the subtle power of the great sea, there rises the\nequal desire. Give me life strong and full as the brimming\nocean; give me thoughts wide as its plain. . . . My soul rising to\nthe immensity utters its desire-prayer with all the strength of the\nsea.\"\n\nIn many of its aspects, the ocean can stimulate and soften\nmoods of sadness. The peculiar potency of the play of the\nwaves is reserved for the next chapter. But the more general\ninfluences of this character are many and of undoubted\nsignificance. The vast loneliness of its watery, restless plains;\nits unchangeableness; its seeming disregard for human destinies;\nthe secrets buried under its heaving waters--these and a\nmultitude of like phenomena link themselves on to man's sadder\nreveries. Morris asks:\n\n    \"Peace, moaning sea; what tale have you to tell,\n    What mystic tidings, all unknown before?\"\n\nHis answer is in terms of longing for the unrealised:\n\n    \"The voice of yearning, deep but scarce expressed,\n        For something which is not, but may be yet;\n        Too full of sad continuance to forget,\n    Too troubled with desires to be at rest,\n    Too self-conflicting ever to be blest.\"\n\nIn strong contrast with this is the exhilarating, tonic power of\nthe sea. Coleridge, revisiting the seashore, cries:\n\n    \"God be with thee, gladsome Ocean!\n    How gladly greet I thee once more.\"\n\nMyers emphasises the fact that Swinburne, in his principal\nautobiographical poem, \"Thalassius, or Child of the Sea,\"\nreveals a nature for which the elemental play of the ocean is the\nintensest stimulus. The author of that poem tells how once he\nwandered off into indulgence of personal feelings, and how his\nmother, the sea, recalled him from such wanderings to\n\n        \"charm him from his own soul's separate sense\n    With infinite and invasive influence,\n    That made strength sweet in him and sweetness strong,\n    Being now no more a singer, but a song.\"\n\nAnd akin to this exhilarating effect on a poet's sensibility is that\nwhich it has exercised on the large scale in moulding the\ncharacters and fortunes of seafaring nations. Longfellow had a\nfirm grip of this historical fact:\n\n    \"Wouldst thou (so the helmsman answered)\n    Learn the secret of the sea?\n    Only those who brave its dangers\n    Comprehend its mystery.\"\n\nAllan Cunningham's sea songs furnish the classical expression\nof the spirit in its modern guise as embodied in the British\nsailor--the defender of the isle that is \"compassed by the\ninviolate sea\":\n\n    \"The sea! the sea! the open sea!\n    The ever fresh, the ever free.\"\n\nByron may be criticised as too consciously \"posing\" in his\nwell-known apostrophe to the ocean; nevertheless it contains a\ntang of the Viking spirit:\n\n    \"And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy\n    Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be\n    Borne like thy bubbles onward: from a boy\n    I wantoned with thy breakers.\"\n\nWhat is the core of this Viking buoyancy and exhilaration?\nSurely a sense of freedom, inspired by a life on the ocean, and\nfostered by the very hardships and dangers which that life\nentails.\n\nThus cumulative is the evidence that the present, for all its\nmaterialism, inherits the essence of the ancient mysticism; or\nrather, it is open to the same impulses and intuitions, however\nchanged and changing the forms they may assume. On the one\nhand, the infinite complexity of man's developing soul-life; on\nthe other, the limitless range of the moods and aspects of the\nocean: the two are spiritually linked by ultimate community of\nnature: deep calls to deep: the response is living and eternal.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\n\nWAVES\n\nThe most familiar appeal of the Ocean is that of the wave which\nspeeds over its surface or breaks upon its shores. Poets have\nfound here an inexhaustible theme. Painters have here expended\ntheir utmost skill. Whether it is the tiny ripple that dies along\nthe curving sands, or the merry, rustling, crested surf that\nhurries on to wanton in the rocky pools, or the storm billow that\nrushes wildly against an iron-bound coast to spurt aloft its\nsheets of spray or to hurl its threatening mass on the trembling\nstrand--in each and every form the wave is a moving miracle.\nThrough every change of contour and interplay of curves, its\nlines are ever of inimitable grace. Its gradations of colour, its\ntranslucent opalescence framed in gleaming greens and tender\ngreys, wreathed with the radiance of the foam, are of inimitable\ncharm. Its gamuts of sounds, the faint lisp of the wavelet on the\npebbly beach, the rhythmic rise and fall of the plashing or\nplunging surf, the roar and scream of the breaker, and the boom\nof the billow, are of inimitable range. What marvel is it that\neven the commonplace of the sons of men yield themselves\ngladly to a spell they cannot analyse, content to linger, to gaze,\nand to ponder!\n\nIf the spell of the waves enthralls the ordinary mortal, how\nmuch more those whose aesthetic and spiritual senses are keen\nand disciplined? Coleridge, while listening to the tide, with eyes\nclosed, but with mind alert, finds his thoughts wandering back\nto\n\n\n        \"that blind bard who on the Chian strand\n    By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,\n    Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee\n    Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.\"\n\nSwinburne, listening to the same music, exclaims:\n\n    \"Yea, surely the sea like a harper\n    Laid his hand on the shore like a lyre.\"\n\nSometimes the emphasis is on the sympathy with the striving\nforces manifested in the ceaseless activity of the ocean as it\n\n        \"beats against the stern dumb shore\n    The stormy passion of its mighty heart.\"\n\nSometimes the emphasis is on the subjective mood which that\nactivity arouses:\n\n    \"Break, break, break,\n    On thy cold gray stones, O sea.\n    And I would that my tongue could utter\n    The thoughts that arise in me,\"\n\nSometimes the two are indissolubly blended as in the song,\n\"Am Meer,\" so exquisitely set to music by Schubert--where the\nrhythmic echoes of the heaving tide accompany the surging\nemotions of a troubled heart.\n\nThe direct impression made by the objective phenomena of the\nplay of waves finds abundant expression in the whole range of\nliterature--not the least forcefully in Tennyson. How fine his\npainting of the wave on the open sea.\n\n    \"As a wild wave in the wide North-Sea\n    Green glimmering towards the summit, bears, with all\n    Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,\n    Down on a bark, and overbears the bark,\n    And him that helms it.\"\n\nHow perfect also the description of a wave breaking on a level,\nsandy beach:\n\n        \"The crest of some slow-arching wave,\n    Heard in dead night along that table-shore,\n    Drops flat, and after the great waters break\n    Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,\n    Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,\n    From less and less to nothing.\"\n\nAs to the moods thus stimulated, the one most frequently\nprovoked would seem to be that of sadness. Or would it be truer\nto say that those whose thoughts are tinged with melancholy, or\nweighted with sorrow, find in the restless, endless tossing and\nbreaking of the waves their fittest companions?\n\nHow sad this passage from the French poet-philosopher, Guyot.\n\"I remember that once, sitting on the beach, I watched\nthe serried waves rolling towards me. They came without\ninterruption from the expanse of the sea, roaring and white.\nBeyond the one dying at my feet I noticed another; and farther\nbehind that one, another; and farther still another and another--a\nmultitude. At last, as far as I could see, the whole horizon\nseemed to rise and roll on towards me. There was a reservoir of\ninfinite, inexhaustible forces there. How deeply I felt the\nimpotency of man to arrest the effort of that whole ocean in\nmovement! A dike might break one of the waves; it could break\nhundreds and thousands of them; but would not the immense\nand indefatigable ocean gain the victory? And this rising tide\nseemed to me the image of the whole of nature assailing\nhumanity, which vainly wishes to direct its course, to dam it in,\nto master it. Man struggles bravely; he multiplies his efforts.\nSometimes he believes himself to be the conqueror. That is\nbecause he does not look far enough ahead, and because he does\nnot notice far out on the horizon the great waves which, sooner\nor later, must destroy his work and carry himself away.\"\n\nSimilar is the train of thought which finds poetical expression in\nMatthew Arnold's \"Dover Beach.\"\n\n    \"Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!\n    Only, from the long line of spray\n    Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land\n    Listen! you hear the grating roar\n    Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling,\n    At their return, up the high strand,\n    Begin, and cease, and then again begin,\n    With tremulous cadence slow, and bring\n    The eternal note of sadness in.\n    . . .\n    Sophocles heard it long ago,\n    Heard it on the AEgaean, and it brought\n    Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow\n    Of human misery; we\n    Find also in the sound a thought;\n    Hearing it by this distant northern sea.\"\n\nAnd the thought! \"The melancholy, long, withdrawing roar\" of\nthe Sea of Faith, retreating down the \"naked shingles of the\nworld!\"\n\nBut if the pessimistic mood may thus find support in watching\nthe waves of the sea, so no less surely can the hopeful and\njoyous mood be evolved and stimulated by the same influence.\nBefore Sophocles came AEschylus. The greatest hero of this\nearlier poet was Prometheus, the friend of man, who, tortured\nbut unshaken, looked out from his Caucasian rock on the\npresentments of primeval nature. How sublime his appeal!\n\n    \"Ether of heaven, and Winds untired of wing,\n    Rivers whose fountains fail not, and thou Sea\n    Laughing in waves innumerable!\"\n\nTo him the winds and waves brought a message of untiring,\nindomitable energy--the movement, the gleam, inspired fresh\nlife and hope. The ideas immanent in the ocean wave are as\nvaried as the human experiences to which they are akin.\n\nOr take another group of these ideas immanent in the\nphenomena of the wave--the group which rouse and nurture the\naesthetic side of man's nature. Very significant in this regard is\nthe fact that not for the Greeks alone, but also for the Hindus\nand the Teutons, the goddesses of beauty were wave-born.\nWhen Aphrodite walked the earth, flowers sprang up beneath\nher feet; but her birthplace was the crest of a laughing wave. So\nKama, the Hindu Cupid, and the Apsaras, lovely nymphs, rose\nfrom the wind-stirred surface of the sea, drawn upward in\nstreaming mists by the ardent sun. So, too, the Teutonic Freyja\ntook shape in the sea-born cloudlets of the upper air.\n\nThe loveliness of the wave, dancing, tossing, or breaking must\nhave entered, from earliest days, deeply into the heart and\nimagination of man, and have profoundly influenced his\nmythology, his art, and his poetry. We trace this influence in\nolden days by the myths of Poseidon with his seahorses and the\nbands of Tritons, Nereids, and Oceanides--each and all giving\nsubstance to vague intuitions and subconscious perceptions of\nthe physical beauty of the ocean.\n\nAnd as for our own more immediate forefathers, the mystic\nspell of the ocean wave sank deep into their rugged souls.\n\"When you so dance\" (says Shakespeare to a maiden) \"I wish\nyou a wave o' the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.\"\nThe experiences of countless watchers of the wave went to the\nframing of that wish!\n\nAnd, as has been richly proved by quotations from our modern\npoets, the mystic spell gains in potency as man's aesthetic\npowers are keener and more disciplined. The present-day\nnature-mystic needs no imaginary personifications to bring him\ninto communion with the beauty, the mystery, of the ocean\nwave. He conceives of it as a manifestation of certain modes of\nbeing which are akin to himself and which speak to him in\nlanguage too plain to be ignored or misinterpreted. Human\nknowledge has not yet advanced far enough to define more\nclosely such modes of experience; but the fact of the experience\nremains.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nSTILL WATERS\n\n    Tiefer Stille herrscht im Wasser,\n    Ohno Regung ruht das Meer,\n    Und bek\u00fcmmert sieht der Schiffer\n    Glatte Flache rings umher.\n\n    Keine Luft von keiner Seite!\n    Todesstille f\u00fcrchterlich!\n    In der ungeheuern Weite\n    Reget keine Welle sich.\n\nThus does Goethe, in this little poem of two verses, with a\nmasterly ease that carries conviction, suggest to us the subtle\npower of a calm at sea. The mountain tarn, alone with the sky,\nhas a charm that is all its own. The shining levels of the lake, in\nthe lower hollows of the hills; the quiet reaches of a river where\nthe stream seems to pause and gather strength for its onward\ncourse; even the still pool that hides in the meadows among the\nalders and willows: each of these has its own peculiar charm--a\ncharm which is hard to analyse but almost universal in its range\nof appeal. But potent above them all is this Meeresstille, this\ncalm at sea--when, as Bowring finely translates Goethe's second\nverse:\n\n    \"Not a zephyr is in motion!\n    Silence fearful as the grave!\n    In the mighty waste of ocean\n    Sunk to rest is every wave.\"\n\nTurner, in his \"Liber Studiorum,\" attempted to depict a calm at\nsea. The picture is not one of his most successful efforts: but so\ngreat an artist could not fail to seize on the essential features of\nhis subject. The sun is heralding his advent by flinging upward\nathwart the mists and cloudlets a stream of diffused light which\nfills the scene with a soft pervading glow. The surface of the\nwater is glassy, not much more substantial than the haze which\nfloats above it. But deep as is the calm, old ocean cannot quite\nforget his innate restlessness; he gently urges onward a\nsuccession of slow risings and fallings, with broad ripples to\nmark their boundaries, and to tell of spent billows and\nfar-heaving tides. The movement of the waters is, as it were,\nsubconsciously felt rather than perceived; or, if perceived, it is\nlost in the pervading sense of placid spaciousness. The boats\nand their occupants, so far from disturbing the sense of calm,\nare made to enhance it. And the unruffled surface of the water is\nrendered palpably impalpable by the magic of reflections.\n\nMorris has given us a word-picture of similar import.\n\n    \"Oh, look! the sea is fallen asleep,\n        The sail hangs idle evermore;\n    Yet refluent from the outer deep\n        The low wave sobs upon the shore.\n    Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills\n        Silent the broad weeds wave and sway;\n        Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray\n    Is born of surges vast as hills.\"\n\nJefferies gives us a companion picture of a calm sea in full\nsunshine. \"Immediately in front dropped the deep descent of the\nbowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the faint\nsound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of\nthe sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as\nthough the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there was no\ndistinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it, and looked farther away\nthan the horizon would have done.\"\n\nIn each of these seascapes, the same essential features find a\nplace--the calm expanse without any defined boundary--the\nsilence--the play of delicate colour--the suggestions of rest after\ntoil, of peace after storm--and chiefest of all, the strangely\nmoving contrast of power and gentleness, the suggestion of\nhidden strength. Doubtless we have in these the secret of much\nof the mystic influence of the mighty ocean in its serenest\nmoods; doubtless we have in these the manifestations of\nimmanent ideas which have subtle power to subdue the human\nsoul to pensive thought and unwonted restfulness.\n\nNot unlike them in general character and function, save for the\nelement of vastness, are the influences immanent in the calm of\nevening or night landscapes. Goethe has an exquisite fragment\nwhich is a fitting pendent to his Meeresstille:\n\n    Ueber alien Gipfeln\n    Ist Ruh,\n    In allen Wipfeln\n    Sp\u00fcrest du\n    Kaum einen Hauch;\n    Die V\u00f6gelein schweigen im Walde.\n    Warte nur, balde\n    Ruhest du auch.\n\nThus translated by Bowring:\n\n    \"Hush'd on the hill\n        Is the breeze;\n    Scarce by the zephyr\n        The trees\n    Softly are pressed;\n    The woodbird's asleep on the bough.\n    Wait, then, and thou\n    Soon wilt find rest.\"\n\nWho does not sympathise, in the measure possible to him, with\nWordsworth's interpretations and premonitions?\n\n    \"It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free,\n    The holy time is quiet as a Nun\n    Breathless with adoration; the broad sun\n    Is sinking down in its tranquillity;\n    The gentleness of heaven is on the sea.\"\n\nAnd a less well-known passage:\n\n    \"Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal eve,\n    But long as godlike wish, or hope divine,\n    Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe\n    That this magnificence is wholly thine!\n    --From worlds not quickened by the sun\n    A portion of the gift is won.\"\n\nYes, the nature-mystic might well be content to rest his case on\nthe influences of a calm at sea or a peaceful sunset. These will\nmaintain their power as long as there are human eyes to see and\nhuman emotions to be stirred.\n\nNot the least of the charms of still water is one which was\nmentioned in the description of Turner's picture--the charm of\nreflections. And here we discover a fresh vein of Nature\nMysticism. As Hawthorne says, there is \"no fountain so small\nbut that heaven may be reflected in its bosom.\" Nay, as painters\nwell know, the very puddles in a country lane, or in a London\nstreet, may be transfigured by thus reflecting lights and colours,\nand become indispensable factors in a composition.\n\nThe phenomena of perfect reflection are often of exceptional\nbeauty. How perfect the effect of Wordsworth's lines:\n\n    \"The swan on sweet St. Mary's Lake\n    Floats double, swan and shadow.\"\n\nAnd, more generally, of another lake:\n\n            \"The mere\n    Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,\n    And motionless; and, to the gazer's eye,\n    Deeper than ocean, in the immensity\n    Of its vague mountains and unreal sky.\"\n\nSo on the broad, slowly moving waters of peaty rivers, the\nreflections of sky and landscape seem almost to exceed the\noriginals in lustre and delicate detail. Some of the Tasmanian\nrivers possess this reflecting quality in an exceptional degree.\n\nNor are the phenomena of broken reflections inferior in beauty\nand suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail,\nthere are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of\ncolour, light, and shadow--a capricious hurrying from surface to\nsurface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel\nand their glamour. And if such be their effect on the modern\nmind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws\nof reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still\nsurface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, sinking\ndownwards, another world, another sky, losing themselves in\nmystery. Mere wonder would yield place to meditation. Ah!\nwhat secrets must lurk in those crystal depths, if only one could\nsurprise them--wrest them from the beings who inhabit that\nnether realm! Possibly even the world-riddle might so be\nsolved! And thus it came to pass that most water spirits were\ndeemed to be dowered with prophetic gifts.\n\nThe Teutonic water-gods were \"wise\"--they could foretell the\nfuture. In classical mythology, Proteus, the old man of the sea,\npresents himself as a well-developed embodiment of this belief.\nOld Homer knew how to use the material thus provided, and\nVirgil, in his choicest manner, follows the lead so given. In the\nfourth book of the Georgics, Aristaeus, who had lost his bees, in\ndespair appealed to his mother, the river-nymph, Cyrene. She\nbids him consult Proteus, the old prophet of the sea. He follows\nher counsel, captures Proteus, and compels him to tell the cause\nof his trouble. \"The seer at last constrained by force, rolled on\nhim eyes fierce-sparkling with grey light, and gnashing his teeth\nin wrath, opened his lips to speak the oracles of fate.\"\n\nOnce more the transient must be allowed to fall away, and the\ncentral intuition be recognised and grasped. The sense of a\nsecret to be gained, of a mystery to be revealed--of a broken\nreflection of some fuller world--has been nurtured by the\nreflections of form and light and colour in nature's mirror. The\nolder, simpler impressions made by such phenomena persist\nwith deeper meanings. The \"natural\" emotion they stimulate\naffords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can\nthrive. Longfellow, in his poem, \"The Bridge,\" strikes the\ndeeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections\naway from a world of imperfection to the sphere of the ideal.\n\n    \"And for ever and for ever,\n        As long as the river flows,\n    As long as the heart has passions,\n        As long as life has woes;\n\n    The moon and its broken reflection\n        And its shadows shall appear,\n    As the symbol of love in heaven\n        And its wavering image here.\"\n\nAnd thus the mountain tarn, the placid lake, the quiet river\nreaches, the hidden pool, and the ocean at rest, have each and all\ntheir soul language, and can speak to man as a sharer of\nsoul-nature. Well might the Hebrew psalmist give us one of the\nmarks of the Divine Shepherd--\"He leadeth me beside the still\nwaters.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV\n\nANAXIMENES AND THE AIR\n\nHitherto our attention has been almost exclusively fixed upon\nthe mystical influences of water in motion or at rest. And even\nthough we went no farther afield, a fair presentment has been\ngained of what a modern nature-mystic might advance in\nexplanation and defence of his characteristic views and modes\nof experience. We now turn to consider other ranges of physical\nphenomena, which, though of equal dignity and significance,\nwill not meet with equal fullness of treatment--otherwise the\nlimits proposed for this study would be seriously exceeded.\n\nWe have seen how and why Thales deemed water to be the\n_Welt-stoff_. His immediate successors, while adhering to his\nprinciples and aims, were not content with his choice. They\nsuccessively sought for something less material. One of them,\nAnaximenes, was attracted by the qualities and functions of the\natmosphere, and his speculations will serve as an introduction to\nthe mysticism of winds and storms and clouds. Only a single\nstatement of his is preserved in its original form; but fortunately\nit is full of significance. \"As our soul\" (said the sage), \"which\nis air, holds us together, so wind and air encompass the whole\nworld.\" This, interpreted in the light of ancient comments,\nshows that Anaximenes compared the breath of life to the air,\nand regarded the two as essentially related--indeed as identical.\nFor the breath, he thought, holds together both animal and\nhuman life; and so the air holds together the whole world in a\ncomplex unity. He reached the wider doctrine by observing that\nthe air is, to all appearance, infinitely extended, and that earth,\nwater, and fire seem to be but islands in an ocean which spreads\naround them on all sides, penetrating their inmost pores, and\nbathing their smallest atoms. It was on such facts and\nappearances that he based his main doctrine. If we think of the\nmodern theory of the luminiferous ether, we shall not be far\nfrom his view-point. But the simpler and more obvious qualities\nof the air would of course not be without their influence--its\nmobility and incessant motion; its immateriality; its\ninexhaustibility; its seeming eternity. It is, therefore, not\nastonishing that with his attention thus focussed on a group of\ntruly wonderful phenomena, the old nature-philosopher should\nhave selected air as his primary substance--as the universal\nvehicle of vital and psychic force.\n\nIt is of especial interest to the nature-mystic to find that\nAnaximenes was faithful to the doctrine that the primary\nsubstance must contain in itself the cause of its own motion.\nAnd the interest is intensified in view of the fact that his\ninsistence on the life-giving properties of air rests on a widely\nspread group of animistic notions which have exercised an\nextraordinary influence on the world at large. Let Tylor furnish\na summary. \"Hebrew shows _nephesh_, 'breath,' passing into all\nthe meanings of life, soul, mind, animal, while _ruach_ and\n_neshamah_ make the like transition from 'breath' to 'spirit'; and\nto these the Arabic _nefs_ and _ruh_ correspond. The same is\nthe history of the Sanskrit atman and prana, of Greek _psyche_\nand _pneuma_, of Latin _anima, animus, spiritus_. So Slavonic\n_duch_ has developed the meaning of 'breath' into that of 'soul'\nor 'spirit'; and the dialects of the gypsies have this word _duk_\nwith the meanings of 'breath, spirit, ghost,' whether these\npariahs brought the word from India as part of their inheritance\nof Aryan speech, or whether they adopted it in their migration\nacross Slavonic lands. German _geist_ and English _ghost_,\ntoo, may possibly have the same original sense of breath.\" How\nmarvellously significant this ascent from the perceptions of\nwind and breath to what we now understand by soul and spirit!\nThe most attenuated concepts have their basis in the physical\nworld. Even to this present day, as Max M\u00fcller remarks, \"the\nsoul or the spirit remains a breath, an airy breath, for this is the\nleast material image of the soul which they can conceive.\"\n\nAnother doctrine of Anaximenes is most worthy of note by\nnature mystics, as well as by scientists. It is well stated by\nTheophrastus. \"The air differs in rarity and in density as the\nnature of things is different; when very attenuated it becomes\nfire, when more condensed, wind, and then cloud; and when\nstill more condensed, water and earth and stone; and all other\nthings are composed of these; and he regards motion as eternal,\nand by this changes are produced.\" We have here a distinct\nadumbration of the atomic theory in its most defensible form--\nthat is to say, a conception which makes the differences in\nvarious substances consist in differences in condensation or\nrarefaction of the particles of the primary substance. The simple\nnormal condition of this substance he deemed to be air. In its\nrarefied condition, it becomes fire, and in its condensed\ncondition it progresses by stages from liquid to solid. And just\nas the modern chemist is beginning to have good ground for\nbelieving that all substances, or so-called elements, may be the\nresult of a series of differentiations and compositions of an\noriginally homogeneous substance, in spite of the fact that he is\nnot yet able to effect the transformations in his laboratory, so,\nall those centuries ago, the Milesian sage seized on the same\nroot idea and made it the basis of a world philosophy. It is a\nlong cry from the old idea, familiar to Homer, that mist or\nvapour is condensed air to the cosmology of a Herbert Spencer,\nand yet nature is so rich in material for prompting intuitions of\nher deepest truths that one ultimate cause of material evolution\nwas revealed in days when science was hardly brought to the\nbirth.\n\nAn examination, albeit cursory and partial, of this ancient\nspeculation, has thus revealed at any rate two results of prime\nimportance in the study of Nature Mysticism. The one is that\nthe air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the\nprinciple of life--man's fleeting breath has suggested and\nfostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it\nlisteth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result\nis that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized\nby intuition, can supply a key to some of her profoundest\nsecrets. Shall not these results be as true for the world of to-day\nas for the flourishing times of old-world Miletus?\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\n\nWINDS AND CLOUDS\n\nThe recognition of the mystic element in external nature has had\nits fluctuations in most ages and climes, and not least so in\nEngland. Marvel, in his day, felt the numbness creeping on that\ncomes of divorce from nature, and uttered his plaint of \"The\nMower against Gardens.\"\n\n    \"Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,\n        While the sweet fields do lie forgot,\n    Where willing nature does to all dispense\n        A wild and fragrant innocence.\"\n\nAnd declared of the polished statues made to adorn the gardens,\nthat\n\n        \"howsoe'er the figures do excel,\n    The gods themselves with us do dwell.\"\n\nHis protests, however, did not avail to ward off the artificiality\nof the reign of Pope. Here are two lines from the \"Essay on\nMan.\"\n\n    \"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind\n    Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind.\"\n\n\"Untutored!\" The poor Indian could have taught Pope many\nthings, and perhaps made a nobler man of him! For the poetry\nand mystic influence of the winds were experienced and\nexpressed with a fullness of experience and feeling to which the\ntown-bred poet was all too great a stranger. The range, the\nbeauty and vigour of the myth of the four winds as developed\namong the native races of America (says Tylor) had scarcely a\nrival elsewhere in the mythology of the world. They evolved\n\"the mystic quaternion\"--the wild and cruel North Wind--the\nlazy South, the lover--the East Wind, the morning bringer--and\nthe West, Mudjekeewis, the father of them all. Outside the\nquaternion were the dancing Pauppukkeewis, the Whirlwind,\nand the fierce and shifty hero, Monobozho, the North-West\nWind. The spirit of these legends, if not their accurate detail,\ncan be appreciated in Longfellow's \"Hiawatha.\"\n\nThe magnificent imagery of the Hebrew psalmists should have\ngiven to Pope at least a touch of sympathy with \"the untutored\nmind\"; for they love to represent God making \"the winds His\nmessengers,\" or as Himself \"flying on the wings of the wind.\"\nOr the prophet Ezekiel could have brought home to him some of\nthe deeper thoughts that the winds have stirred in the soul of\nman. \"Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy,\nson of man, and say to the wind: . . . Come from the four winds,\nO breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.\" The\nIndian undoubtedly lacked tuition, but not exactly of the kind\nhis would-be tutor could bestow. Man, says Browning,\n\n        \"imprints for ever\n    His presence on all lifeless things: the winds\n    Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,\n    A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh.\"\n\nThat is better. But why \"lifeless\"? Why \"imprints\"? Best is the\nHebrew apostrophe--\"come from the four winds, O breath, and\nbreathe--that we may live. Give us of the life that is in you.\"\nAnd that is the mystic's prayer.\n\nThe winds of heaven were bound to make indelible impressions\non the primitive mind. But few will be prepared for Max\nM\u00fcller's statement that the wind, next to fire, is the\nmost important phenomenon in nature which has led to the\nconception of a divine being. But our surprise ceases when we\nrealise how manifest and universal are the parts played by the\nwind in relation to man's weal or woe--they bring the rain, they\ndrive the storm, they clear the air. The landsman knows much--\nthe sailor more. Guy de Maupassant makes the sailor say, \"Vous\nne le (vent) connaissez point, gens de la terre! Nous autres, nous\nle connaissons plus que notre p\u00e8re ou que notre m\u00e8re, cet\ninvisible, ce terrible, ce capricieux, ce sournois, ce f\u00e9roce. Nous\nl'aimons et nous le redoutons, nous savons ses malices et ses\ncol\u00e8res . . . car la lutte entre nous et lui ne s'interrompt\njamais.\"\n\nWind-gods and wind-myths are practically of world-wide\ndiffusion. Those of the American Indians have already been\nnoted. Similar, if less striking and poetical, are those which\nprevail among the Polynesians and Maoris. Those of the Greeks\nand Romans are best known, but have abundant parallels in\nother lands. The M\u00e2ruts of the Vedic hymns are unequivocally\nstorm-gods, who uproot forests and shatter rocks--strikers,\nshouters, warriors--though able anon to take the form of\nnew-born babes. The Babylonians had their wind-gods, good and\nbad, created in the lower part of the heaven, and joining at times\nin the fateful fight against the dragon. And our Teutonic fathers\nhad their storm-gods who were brave warriors, Odin, or Wodin,\nbeing the chief. Grimm thus sums up Wodin's characteristics.\n\"He is the all-pervading and formative power, who bestows\nshape and beauty on man and all things, from whom proceeds\nthe gift of song, and the management of war and victory, on\nwhom at the same time depends the fertility of the soil, nay,\nwishing and all the highest gifts and blessings.\" We have here a\ntypical transition. The abstract conception of \"the all-pervading\ncreative and formative power is evidently later than that of the\nstorm-god, rushing through the air in the midst of the howling\ntempest--later even than that of the god who quaffs the draught\nof inspiration and shares it with seers, bards, and faithful fallen\nwarriors. The idea of life or soul emerges, and frees itself\nfrom its cruder elements; the tempest god yields place to the\nAll-Father, sitting on the throne of the world. The same evolution\nis seen in the case of the cloud-compelling Zeus. Nay, Jehovah\nHimself would seem to have been originally a god of storms,\nsitting above the canopy of the aerial water-flood, \"making the\nclouds His chariot,\" and \"walking upon the wings of the wind,\"\nHis voice the thunder, His shaft the lightning. How strange and\nunexpected the transformations of these immanent ideas! Yet\nthere is organic continuity throughout. So large is the place\nfilled by the phenomena of the winds, that human imagination\nhas not always stopped short at their mere personification or\ndeification. In many American languages, we are told, the same\nword is used for storm and for god; so, too, with certain tribes\nin Central Africa. That is to say, the name for the storm-wind\nhas become the general name for deity!\n\nBut how about the present? Can it be said that in the present\nday, among civilised peoples, the phenomena of the winds have\nany important part to play? An appeal to literature is decisive on\nthe point. No description of open-air life, or even of life within\ndoors where nature is not altogether shut out, can pass over the\nemotional influences of the winds. They sob, they moan, they\nsigh; they rustle, roar, or bellow; they exhilarate or depress;\nthey suggest many and varied trains of thought.\n\n    \"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,\n    Thou art not so unkind\n    As man's ingratitude\"--\n\nthe connection here is not altogether based on fancy--the biting\nwinds of winter have their own emotional \"tone\" for susceptible\nminds, just as truly as the spanking breeze \"that follows fast,\"\nor the balmy zephyr of summer, and have moulded modern\nthought in manifold and unsuspected modes. Shelley, who has\nbeen called the great laureate of the wind, contemplating the\ncoming storm and the wild whirling of the autumn leaves, is\nprofoundly moved and exclaims:\n\n    \"O wild West-Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being--\n    . . . Be thou, spirit fierce,\n    My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one,\n    Drive my dead thoughts over the universe\n    Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth.\"\n\nAlexander Smith, with a spirit rendered buoyant by the blast,\ntells how\n\n    \"The Wind, that grand old harper, smote\n    His thunder harp of pines.\"\n\nGuy de Maupassant, in the passage already partly quoted, shows\nthat the modern sailor can still personify. \"Quel personnage, le\nvent, pour les marins! On en parle comme d'un homme, d'un souverain\ntout puissant, tant\u00f4t terrible et tant\u00f4t bienveillant. . . .\nAucun ennemi ne nous donne que lui la sensation du combat, ne\nnous force a tant de pr\u00e9voyance, car il est le maitre de la mer,\ncelui qu'on peut \u00e9viter, utiliser ou fuir, mais qu'on ne dompte\njamais.\" Kingsley breaks forth:\n\n    \"Welcome, wild North-Easter!\n        Shame it is to see\n    Odes to every zephyr;\n        Ne'er an ode to thee.\n    . . .\n    Come as came our fathers,\n        Heralded by thee,\n    Conquering from the eastward,\n        Lords by land and sea.\n\n    Come, and strong within us\n        Stir the Viking's blood,\n    Bracing brain and sinew;\n        Blow, thou wind of God!\"\n\nNo, the power of vision is not dim, on man's part; nor, on the\npart of the winds of heaven, is abated their natural power to rule\nmen's moods as they rule the responsive ocean. Those whose\nmystic insight is undulled by the materialistic tendencies of the\nage can still have glimpses of\n\n        \"heaven's cherubim, hors'd\n    Upon the sightless couriers of the air.\"\n\nThe untutored mind of the Indian, says Pope, sees God not only\nin winds, but in clouds. Clouds are, so to speak, the creations of\nthe air, and share its mystic fortunes. Even Keble could respond\nto their suggestion of life, and asks:\n\n    \"The clouds that wrap the setting sun,\n    Why, as we watch their floating wreath,\n    Seem they the breath of life to breathe?\"\n\nWordsworth could not fail to have this experience:\n\n    \"I wandered lonely as a cloud\n    That floats on high o'er vales and hills.\"\n\nThese are genuine echoes of primitive feeling. Needless to\nelaborate the evidence of the ancient myths or of the beliefs of\nprimitive peoples. Not that the evidence will not amply repay\nstudy, but that for the purpose of grasping general principles,\nthat just adduced in the case of the winds has sufficiently served\nour turn. The following old Finnish prayer, however, is so\nfraught with significance that it would be unpardonable to pass\nit by. It is addressed to Ukko, the Heaven-god:\n\n    \"Ukko, thou, O God above us,\n    Thou, O Father in the heavens,\n    Thou who rulest in the cloud-land,\n    And the little cloud-lambs leadest,\n    Send us down the rain from heaven,\n    Make the drops to drop with honey,\n    Let the drooping corn look upward,\n    Let the grain with plenty rustle.\"\n\nThis beautiful little poem-prayer places us about midway in the\ndevelopment of the conscious expression of the mystic\ninfluences exercised by cloud-land. We see how, as with the\nwinds, the clouds have played a severely practical r\u00f4le among\nthe conditions which have rendered human life possible upon\nthe globe. The original animistic conception of the clouds as\nthemselves personal agents has yielded to that of a god who\nrules the clouds, though the animistic tendency still remains in\nthe expression, \"the little cloud-lambs.\" Now we have passed to\nthe stage of modern animism which regards the clouds as a part\nof a vast system, the essential being of which must be described\nas consciousness.\n\nThe chief of the ideas immanent in cloud scenery would seem to\nbe the vagueness and unsubstantiality of its ever-changing\npageantry, prompting dreams of glorious possibilities which our\nearthly environment is yet too gross to realise. At any rate, it is\nsafe to assert that this constituted its main charm for the\npassionately visionary soul of Shelley. Study this description of\na cloud-scape--one among a host which could be gathered from\nhis poems:\n\n    \"The charm in which the sun has sunk, is shut\n        By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,\n    Like mountain over mountain huddled--but\n        Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,\n    And over it a space of watery blue,\n    Which the keen evening star is shining through.\"\n\nOr study that poem, unsurpassable of its kind, devoted wholly\nto this theme--especially the stanza which closes it:\n\n    \"I am the daughter of earth and water,\n        And the nursling of the sky;\n    I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;\n        I change, but I cannot die.\n    For after the rain, when with never a stain\n        The pavilion of heaven is bare,\n    And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,\n        Build up the blue dome of air,\n    I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,\n        And out of the caverns of rain,\n    Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb\n        I arise and unbuild it again.\"\n\nHow crammed are these lines with the purest Nature Mysticism\nas moderns understand it! The sense of living process reigns\nsupreme. They are the offspring, not of fancy, nor even of\nimagination as ordinarily conceived--but of insight, of vision, of\nliving communion with a living world.\n\nIt is tempting, while dealing with the airy realms of cloud-land,\nto dwell at length on the mystic influence of the queen of aerial\nphenomena--the rainbow. That influence in the past has been\nimmense; it still is, and ever will be, a power to be reckoned\nwith. Science cannot rob it of its glories. The gold-winged Iris\nof Homer, swifter-footed than the wind, has passed. The\nGenesis story of \"the bow in the cloud\" may dissolve in the\nalembic of criticism--but the rainbow itself remains, still a\nsevenfold bridge of souls from this solid-seeming earth to a\nrarer land beyond. Who is there who cannot sympathise with\nWordsworth?\n\n    \"My heart leaps up when I behold\n        A rainbow in the sky.\n    So was it when I was a child;\n        So it is now I am a man;\n    So let it be when I am old--\n        Or let me die.\"\n\nTempting is it also to treat of the birds--the denizens of the air--\nto comment on the exquisite trio of bird-poems, Wordsworth's\n\"Cuckoo,\" Shelley's \"Ode to a Skylark,\" and Keats' \"Ode to a\nNightingale.\" For assuredly it is the medium in which these\ndelicate creatures pass their lives that gives them the chiefest\nshare of their magic and their mystery. But this gem from\nVictor Hugo must suffice for all the tuneful choir:\n\n    \"Like a songbird be thou on life's bough,\n        Lifting thy lay of love.\n    So sing to its shaking,\n    So spring at its breaking,\n        Into the heaven above.\"\n\nThe dome of air thus expands into the dome of heaven with its\neternal fires, and bids us turn to the third of the ancient sages\nwhose speculations are aiding our steps in this tentative study.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\nHERACLEITUS AND THE COSMIC FIRE\n\nHeracleitus is a philosopher whose speculations are of\nsurpassing interest for the student of Nature Mysticism. He was\nborn about 540 B.C., at Ephesus, and lived some sixty years. He\nwas one of the most remarkable thinkers of antiquity, and the\nmain substance of his teaching remains as a living and\nstimulating element in the most advanced scientific and\nmetaphysical doctrines of the present day. But taking the point\nof view of the nature-mystic, he derives his special significance\nfrom the manner of his early training, and from the source of his\nearly inspirations.\n\nWhile still a youth, he forsook the bustle of the city for the\nsolitude and charm of the lovely country which surrounded his\nhome, and he definitely set himself to feed his imagination on\nthe concrete and sensuous imagery of the poets. He laid\nhimself open to the impressions and intuitions which such an\nenvironment so richly provided, and thus laid the foundation for\nthose speculations on the nature of the universe and of life\nwhich have rendered his influence so lasting and his fame so\ngreat.\n\nHe is undoubtedly difficult to understand, and his cryptic\nutterances earned for him the doubtful title of the Dark. But his\nchampions have pointed out that his obscurity of diction was\nnot the outcome of pride or intentional assumption of mystery,\nbut of the genuine difficulty he found in giving expression to\nhis novel thoughts. He waxes vehement in his struggles to\nsubdue his language to his purposes, his vague intuitions, his\nmovements in worlds not fully realised; and in this regard he\ncan at any rate claim the sympathy of mystics of every school.\n\nSuch was the man and such his training. What was his central,\ndominating thought? What was his conception of the universal\nGround of existence? It was this--Pure Fire--motion is the secret\nof the eternal change which characterises all known phenomena\nof every grade and kind. \"All things flow\" is the far-famed\naphorism which sums up his philosophy. This eternal movement\nis not, however, formless, but is determined to ever-recurrent\nforms, and is obedient to law and rhythm.\n\nHe taught, then, that the eternal movement which constitutes\nexistence is Fire. \"This one order of all things (he affirms) was\ncreated by none of the gods, nor yet by any of mankind; but it\nwas ever, and is, and shall be, eternal fire-ignited by measure\nand extinguished by measure.\" But more--he held that this\nFire-motion is alive. It will be remembered that Thales had placed\nthe cause of motion in matter itself, not in something other than\nmatter; that is to say, he was to all intents and purposes a\nhylozoist. Heracleitus went a step farther, and maintained that\nthe life in Fire-motion is _organic_, like to that which is\nmanifested in the plant and animal worlds. His idea of the\nessential kinship of all things is very clear and complete.\n\nHe conceived, therefore, that soul is in no way fundamentally\ndistinct from any other of the transformations of the ever-living\nFire. And thus the problem which so grievously torments\nmodern psychologists, that of the connection between soul and\nbody, did not exist for him. And a notable corollary of his view\nis this. Since man has essential kinship with his environment, he\ncan apprehend both the outer surface of things and their inner\nlaw; and it is in this recognition of their inner law that his true\nnature is to be found. Now if it be granted that this inner law\ncan be apprehended by intuition as well as by conscious reasoning\nprocess, the corollary is one to which the nature-mystic can\nof his own master principle.\n\nThe soul, as fire, depends on the cosmic Fire for sustenance, the\nbreath being the physical medium; and in this regard, all that\nwas said of Anaximenes and \"Breath,\" or Air, will have its\nplace. But Heracleitus has a further thought which is in full\nharmony with the nature-mystic's chief contention. He holds\nthat _sense perception_ is also a medium, for the outer fire is\nthereby absorbed by the inner fire. The value of this thought\nremains in spite of the sage's doctrine of the body. For though\nthe body is regarded by him as a clog on the activity of the inner\nfire, because it consists of water and earth (two forms in which\nthe movement of the Fire is greatly reduced) it is nevertheless\nakin to the soul, and is itself destined, in the course of ceaseless\nchange, to become Fire in its most living and active form.\n\nSuch is the central doctrine of this noted thinker, round which\nall his other teaching turned. Let us now ask, as in the\ncorresponding cases of Thales and Anaximander, why the\nparticular element was chosen as the Ground of all things. The\nanswer to this question will furnish, as in the previous cases,\nmuch matter for our special purpose, since the emphasis will lie\nrather on the physical properties and functions of fire, than on\nits more abstract ontology.\n\nIt is obvious that Heracleitus would start with a knowledge of\nthe speculations of his more immediate predecessors, and of the\ndata on which they were based--the phenomena of circulation in\nnature, evaporation, mist, rain, melting, freezing, and the rest.\nAnd we find that in this direction he merely amplified the older\nsystems, taking fire, instead of water or air, as his _Welt-stoff_.\nHe also observed, with special care, certain suggestive cases of\nrarefaction by heat and condensation by cold; as also the facts\nof constant decomposition and renewal in the vegetable and\nanimal worlds. But the phenomenon which stands out as the\nchiefest determinant of his thought is one which is always\nbound to act as a powerful stimulant on a thoughtful mind--that\nof combustion.\n\nThe flame of an ordinary fire can still be a thing of wonder to\nthe man whose mind is open to receive impressions even from\nthe commonplace. How illusive it is!--dancing, darting,\nflickering, flashing--appearing, disappearing--unsubstantial yet\nactive and almost miraculously potent. The effect upon the\nmind of primitive man must have been keen and vivid to the\nhighest degree, and must have produced results of corresponding\nsignificance upon his spiritual development.\n\nBut the deeper kind of wonder is reserved for the systematic\nspeculative thinker, whose attention is arrested by the\nphenomena of a steadily burning flame, say that of a lamp. The\noil is sucked up into the wick and slowly decreases in volume.\nAt the point where the flame begins it rises in vapour, becomes\nbrilliant, and, in the case of a clear flame, disappears. There is\nthus a constant movement from below upwards. The flame has\nall the appearance of a \"thing,\" with comparatively definite\nform and continued existence, and yet is never really the same,\nnot for the minutest fraction of a moment. It is an appearance\nborn of incessant motion--let the motion stop, the flame is gone.\nWhere the burning is accompanied by smoke, there is an\napparent return of volatilised matter to solid form.\n\nNow let a philosopher like Heracleitus be meditating on nature\nas a circulatory system, and let him, by chance or otherwise,\nbring together in his mind the phenomena of a burning lamp and\nthe cosmic facts for which he seeks an explanation--is it\ndifficult to imagine his Eureka? At any rate, Heracleitus felt that\nin the phenomena of combustion he had gained an insight into\nthe ultimate constitution of nature. And he concluded from them\nthat there is no such thing as substance, properly so called, but\nsimply constant movement; the movement _is_ substance. The\ngreat solid-seeming cosmos is motion; some of it visible, some\nof it imperceptible; some of it rising upward to serve as fuel,\nsome of it falling downward, after having fed the flame, to form\nthe constituents of the present world. The motion is constant,\nthe stream ever-flowing: no \"thing\" is ever at rest, and, if it\nwere at rest, would disappear.\n\nThe marvel is that with such scanty data, Heracleitus was able\nto attain to views which are in truly remarkable harmony with\nthe most advanced theories as to the constitution of matter.\nNowadays the very qualities of hardness and impenetrability are\nbeing ascribed to motion--to the almost inconceivable rapidity\nof the whirling of electrons within the system of the atom. Le\nBon, for example, in his \"Evolution of Matter\" and his\n\"Evolution of Forces,\" contends that atoms are continually\nbreaking down, radium presenting merely an extreme case of a\ngeneral rule, and that the final product is something which is\nno longer matter. Robbed of motion, what we call matter\ndisappears! It eludes detection by any methods known to us, and\nceases, therefore, so far as we are concerned, to be existent.\nAtoms, then, according to this modern doctrine, are complex\nsystems of motion; and bodies, all agree, are aggregates of\natoms. It seems to follow that the ground of reality, from the\npoint of view of physics, is motion. In short, as Heracleitus\ntaught, the world is the result of ceaseless motion. Tyndall's\ndoctrine of \"heat as a mode of motion\" is being generalised until\nit covers the whole field of material phenomena. Or approach\nthe theory of Heracleitus from the side of modern astronomy,\nthe harmony between old and new is equally striking. All\nsubstances, said he, spring from fire and to fire they are bound\nto return. It does not require much special knowledge to realise\nthat this statement contains the pith of the latest theories of the\nbirth and death of worlds. From fire-mist, says the modern\nastronomer, they were condensed, and to fire-mist, by collisions\nor otherwise, they will return. What the particular stages may\nbe, what the significance of the nebula;, what the cosmic\nfunctions of electricity, and other like problems--may be, and\nwill be, matter for keen debate. But the grand generalisation\nremains--from fire-mist back again to fire-mist. How modern,\nalso, the grand unity which such a theory gives to existence as a\nwhole. Physics, psychology, sociology, even spiritual facts, all\ncome under the sway of the vast generalisation, because all\nconcerned with the same ultimate Reality. The most striking\nparallel is found, perhaps, in the doctrine of Energy, which is\nattracting so much attention at the present time, and of which\nOstwald is a champion so doughty. It embodies an attempt to\nbring into one category the various physical forces together with\nthe phenomena of organic evolution, of psychology, and of\nsociology in the largest sense. Whether the attempt is successful\nor not, it is a tribute to the genius of the ancient sage, though it\nseems to lack that definite element of consciousness, or soul-life,\nwhich was so adequately recognised by its great predecessor.\n\nMany other points in the system of Heracleitus are worthy of\nthe closest study. Intensely interesting, for example, is his\ndoctrine that strife is the condition of harmony, and indeed of\nexistence. Schelling reproduced this idea in his well-known\ntheory of polarity; Hegel developed it in his dialectic triad--\nThesis, Antithesis, Synthesis; and the electrical theories of\nmatter and force now in vogue fall easily into line with it--not to\nspeak of the dominant theory of evolution as involving a\nstruggle for existence, and as applied in well-nigh all\ndepartments of enquiry and research. But it is enough to have\ngrasped the central principle of Fire-motion to prove that the\nphenomena of fire have had an influence in the development of\nman's intellectual and spiritual life--an influence which cannot\neasily be exaggerated. Heracleitus claims an honoured place in\nthe line of nature-mystics.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\n\nFIRE AND THE SUN\n\nThere can be no doubt, as already stated, that, of all physical\nphenomena, fire had the most marked effect upon the imagination\nof primitive man. He saw that it was utterly unlike anything\nelse known to him, both in its properties and in its action.\nIf of anything a divine nature could be predicated, it was\nfire--the standing miracle--at once destroying and life-giving--\nmaterial and immaterial--pre-eminently an agent with strange\nand vast powers, known and unknown. For many objects and\ninstitutions a divine origin was sought; it could not fail to be the\ncase with fire. Even the poor Tasmanian natives felt it could not\nbe a thing of earth, and told each other how it was thrown down\nlike a star by two black fellows who are now in the sky, the twin\nstars, Castor and Pollux. A great gap separates this simple tale\nfrom the elaborate Prometheus myth, and yet the same essential\nfeatures appear in both: and between the two are found a varied\nseries of stories and legends, belonging to many climes and\nages, which ring the changes on the same fundamental ideas.\nThe whole of the ancient world believed that the origin of fire\nmust be divine. And the various steps can be clearly traced by\nwhich the worship, originally accorded to the nature-power\nitself, was transferred to a spirit behind the power, and centred\nat last on the supreme Deity.\n\nFor primitive man, as Max M\u00fcller well points out, the\nphenomena of fire would present a dual aspect--on the one hand\nas a fatal and destructive element, on the other hand, as a\nbeneficent and even homely agency. The lightning would be\nseen flashing from the one end of heaven to the other, darting\ndown at times to set ablaze the forests and prairies, at times to\nmaim and kill both animals and men. Thus experienced, it\nwould strike terror into the beholders, and impress them with a\nvivid sense of the presence of spiritual powers. As a late\nproduct of the emotions and conceptions thus stimulated, we\nhave the fine myth of the ancient nature goddess, Athene--\nsprung from the head of Zeus, the austere virgin, who was to\nbecome the personification of prudence, self-restraint, and\nculture, the celestial representative of the loftiest intellectual\nand spiritual ideals of the Greek world at its best. Hence, too,\nthe group of conceptions which make the lightning and\nthunderbolts the weapons of the sky, putting them into the\nhands of the supreme ruler, and making them at last the symbols\nof law and order. \"Out of the fire\" (says Ezekiel) \"went forth\nlightning.\" \"Out of the throne\" (says the seer of the Apocalypse)\n\"went forth lightnings.\"\n\nIn strong contrast is the beneficent aspect of fire, which, once\nknown and \"tamed,\" becomes almost a necessity for human life.\nIt affords new protection against the cold, makes man peculiarly\nthe cooking animal, and above all establishes the family hearth\nwith all that is meant by \"home.\" Of more distinctly utilitarian\nimport are the uses of fire in fashioning tools and instruments,\nand the smelting of metals. And it is significant to note that\nman's use of fire almost certainly owed its origin to his\nemotional attitude towards it, culminating in worship. As many\nanthropologists have pointed out, the fire on the hearth had its\nunmistakable religious aspect, the result of the feeling of\nveneration for the \"element\" of fire before its production or use\nhad been understood. And the kindling of the fire on the hearth\nwas as much a sacrifice to the gods as a means to the cooking of\nfood. Each house became a veritable temple of fire.\n\nWonderfully instructive, as well as fascinating it is to trace the\ndevelopment of the home idea as based on the emotional\nexperiences stimulated by the mystic influences of fire. Each\nhouse, as was just stated, was regarded as a temple of the divine\nelement; but the common house, the tribe house, was specially\nsingled out for this honour, and became a temple properly\nso-called. When bands of citizens set out to found colonies in\nstrange lands, they took with them glowing embers from the\ntribal or national hearth, as AEneas brought with him to Italy\nthe sacred fire of Troy. Until lately, we are told, the German\npeasant just married would take to his new home a burning log\nfrom the family hearth.\n\nThe classical instance of the development of this idea is found\nin the cult of the Greek Hestia, the Latin Vesta, a goddess who\nwas the personification of fire, the guardian of the household\naltar and of the welfare of cities and nations. She was\nworshipped fairly widely in Greece and Asia Minor, but\nprincipally in Rome, where a beautiful circular temple was\ndedicated to her service; her ministers, the Vestal virgins, were\nheld in the greatest honour and were chosen from among the\nloveliest and noblest of Roman maidens. In this temple was\nkept ever brightly burning the sacred fire supposed to have been\nkindled by the rays of the sun, and to have been brought by\nAEneas when he founded his kingdom in the new land of Italy.\nThe extinction of this fire would have been regarded as the\ngravest public calamity, foreboding disaster. Its flames were\nintended to represent the _purity_ of the goddess, thus\nemphasising the mystic aspect of another physical property of\nfire--its purifying power. \"Our God\" (said the writer of the\nEpistle to the Hebrews) \"is a consuming fire.\"\n\nGreece had its common hearth at Delphi. It was also supposed\nthat at the centre of the earth there was a hearth which answered\nto that. In the Apocalypse we read of the altar with its sacred\nfire as central in heaven. Truly these concepts are persistent!\nAnd why? Because there is more than imagination in them; they\nare the products of ideas immanent in the material phenomena\nin which they are embodied, and through which they manifest\nthemselves to the human soul.\n\nThere could not fail to be fire-gods many, and a study of their\nrespective characters, especially in the earlier stages of their\ndevelopment, often furnishes a key to the intuitional workings\nof the primitive mind as prompted by the always arresting, and\noften terrorising phenomena of fire and flame. Max M\u00fcller's\ndetailed study of the development of the Hindu god, Agni, was\nmentioned in an earlier chapter. The name originally means the\nMover, and arose, doubtless, from the running, darting, leaping\nmovement of flame. Beginning his career as a purely physical\ngod, he advanced through various stages of spiritualisation until\nhe became the supreme deity. Is not the problem of motion\nstill one of the most fascinating and profound? Bergson's\n\"L'Evolution cr\u00e9atrice\" is one of the latest attempts to grapple\nwith it, and those who in early India personified fire as the\nMover were his legitimate predecessors.\n\nThe Greek Hephaestus personified the brightness of flame, and\ntook shape as a god of ripe age, of muscular form, of serious\ncountenance, but lame. Why lame? Why this physical defect\nas a drawback to so much physical beauty and strength? A\nFrenchman, Em\u00e9rie, suggests--\"attendu la marche in\u00e9gale et\nvacillante de la flamme.\" Certainly fire, as compared with water\nand air, is dependent on sustenance, as Heracleitus so well\nrealised, as also its consequent limitations in regard to free and\nindependent movement: but the sage solved this difficulty by\nmaking the Fire-motion feed, as it were, upon itself. The god\nwas represented as puny at birth because flame, especially as\nkindled artificially, so often starts from a tiny spark. His\nmarriage to Aphrodite typifies \"the association of fire with the\nlife-giving forces of nature.\" So, remarks Max M\u00fcller, the\nHindu Agni was the patron of marriage. How many lines of\nthought open out before us here, bringing us face to face, by\npre-scientific modes of mental activity, with some of the\ndeepest mysteries of human life!\n\nVulcan, the Latin parallel of Hephaestus, suggests to us the\nawe-inspiring phenomena of volcanoes, which, though not of\nfrequent occurrence, are calculated by virtue of their magnitude\nand grandeur to stimulate emotion and intuition to an\nexceptional degree. Fear would naturally predominate, but, even\nfor the primitive mind, would be one factor only in a complex\nwhole. Matthew Arnold has attempted to portray the soul-storm\nraised by the sight of the molten crater of AEtna. He makes\nEmpedocles, the poet-philosopher, climb the summit of the\nmountain, gaze for the last time on the realm of nature spread\naround, and apostrophise the stars above and the volcanic fires\nbeneath his feet.\n\n            \"And thou, fiery world,\n    That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount\n    Upon whose charred and quaking crust I stand--\n    Thou, too, brimmest with life.\"\n\nNote here again the sense of life--of kinship, so fundamental to\nNature Mysticism. And so to the close.\n\n    \"And therefore, O ye elements! I know--\n    Ye know it too--it hath been granted me\n    Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.\n    I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud\n    Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free,\n    Is it but for a moment?\n    --Ah, boil up, ye vapours!\n    Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!\n    My soul glows to meet you.\n    Ere it flag, ere the mists\n    Of despondency and gloom\n    Rush over it again,\n    Receive me, save me!\n        [He plunges into the crater.]\"\n\nOut of the ancient beliefs and myths concerning subterranean\nfires grew up the enormously important beliefs in Hell and\nPurgatory, which attained such abnormal proportions in\nmedieval times, and which are by no means yet extinct. The\nmost vivid picture of Hell, founded largely on ancient material,\nthough with a Biblical basis, is found in Milton. In language\nwhich recalls the Titanomachy, the poet tells of Satan and his\nmyrmidons hurled from heaven.\n\n        \"Him the almighty Power\n    Hurled headlong flaming from th' aetherial sky,\n    With hideous ruin and combustion, down\n    To bottomless perdition, there to dwell\n    In adamantine chains and penal fire.\"\n\nConfounded for a time by his fall, he lies rolling in the fiery\ngulf; but at length, rolling round his baleful eyes, he sees\n\n    \"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,\n    As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames\n    No light, but rather darkness visible\n    Served only to discover sights of woe,\n    Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace\n    And rest can never dwell, hope never comes\n    That comes to all; but torture without end\n    Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed\n    With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.\"\n\nWhat manner of intuitions are embodied here? Perchance we\nare beginning to treat them too lightly, as also the Hindu\ndoctrine of Karma; for the universe, after all, is the scene of the\nreign of law. But however this may be, we are glad to emerge,\nwith Dante, from the regions of punitive flames into the regions\nof the fires that purge--into the pure air that surrounds the Isle\nof Purgatory.\n\n    \"Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread\n    O'er the serene aspect of the pure air,\n    High up as the first circle, to mine eyes\n    Unwonted joy renewed, soon as I 'scaped\n    Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom\n    That had mine eyes and bosom filled with grief.\"\n\nShall we invest with like purgatorial powers the flaming swords\nthat barred the way to Paradise? Is such the inner meaning of\nthe appeal:\n\n            \"do thou my tongue inspire\n    Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire\"?\n\nThe more hostile aspects of fire are most strikingly embodied in\nthe Teutonic giant Logi (Flame) with his children, who were\nsupposed to be the authors of every great conflagration, and\nwho might be seen in the midst of the flames, their heads\ncrowned with chaplets of fire. They may be taken, like the\nGreek giants and Titans, as personifications of the wild brute\nforces of nature, which strive to hinder man's work and destroy\nwhat he has made. For, as Schiller says:\n\n        \"the elements are hostile\n    To the work of human hand.\"\n\nFor such are but some out of the many forms in which man has\nstruggled to give expression to his intuitions that there is\nsomething wrong in nature--to his deep sense of division and\nconflict in the cosmic process. Heracleitus, as we saw, held that\nconflict is an essential condition of existence. At any rate, it is\ntrue, that order is only won by severe conflict with destructive\nand irregular powers. An ancient expression of this experience\nis found in the long contest waged between Zeus and the other\nchildren of Cronos. A modern expression is found in Huxley's\nillustration of the fenced garden that, if untended, speedily\nreturns to its wild condition. In the framing and moulding of\nthis experience, the hostile aspects of fire have played no\ninsignificant part.\n\nIn this context it would be natural to treat of the Sun as the\npredominant manifestation of fire, of which Shelley, in his\nhymn to Apollo, has said:\n\n    \"I am the eye with which the Universe\n    Beholds itself and knows itself divine.\"\n\nThe various sun-gods would be passed in review, Ra of the\nEgyptians, Apollo of the Greeks, and the various forms of\nsun-worship, from the most primitive times down through the\nPersian religion, that of the Peruvians, the \"children of the sun,\"\nto that of the modern Parsees--and that of the unnamed\nmultitudes who in substance have echoed the words which\nMoore puts into the mouths of the Hyperboreans:\n\n    \"To the Sun-god all our hearts and lyres\n        By day, by night belong;\n    And the breath we draw from his living fires\n        We give him back in song.\"\n\nBut the subject is too great and is deserving of special\ntreatment. Certain of the more essential conceptions involved\nwill come before us in the chapter on light. Mirabeau on his\ndeath-bed would seem to have put the whole matter in the\nbriefest space--\"Si ce n'est pas l\u00e0 Dieu, c'est du moins son\ncousin-german.\" Turner, on his deathbed, was briefer and\nbolder still--\"The sun is God.\" Knowing the man and knowing\nhis work, we can understand what he meant. Put it the other\nway round, we have the same, and yet the fuller truth--\"the Lord\nGod is a Sun.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nLIGHT AND DARKNESS\n\nRobert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian, who died in 1637, wrote\na treatise on the universe, in which he taught that man was a\nmicrocosm of the macrocosm, and that light and darkness are\nthe two great principles of existence, the one of animate, the\nother of inanimate nature. He held that soul and life are every\nday shed from the sun upon all objects open to his beams. For\nsuch doctrines as these he was denounced as practically an\natheist! Fortunately the times have changed, though we have\nstill much to learn in the way of rational tolerance and\nsympathetic receptivity.\n\nWho shall say how old is this idea of two distinct, and generally\nopposing principles, the light and the dark? The Babylonian\ncosmology carries us a long way back, but not to the beginning\nof such mystical conceptions. For in that cosmology Marduk is\na well-developed god of light, with Ti\u00e2mat as his antithesis, the\ngoddess of the dark, and the nature and course of the deadly\ncontest between them has taken form in a well-defined series of\nmyths.\n\nOne of the most obvious emotional effects of darkness is to\ninspire fear, and there are few who have not in some degree and\non some occasions experienced a sense of discomfort in the\ndark--a chill, or a shrinking, which in certain cases, especially\nwith children, may amount to terror. It is possible that we have\nhere, as is often contended, an organic reminiscence of the\nexperience of our remote ancestors. Certainly it is not difficult\nfor us to sympathise with the primitive dread of darkness, nor to\nunderstand the transition to the conception of darkness as a\nhostile power. But there is also an element which may be\nregarded as simply personal and individual--a natural\nanticipation of unknown dangers, and a sense of helplessness\nshould the apprehensions be realised. There is, moreover, an\nelement of a still more directly mystical character, that which\nEverett describes as a feeling that in the darkness the familiar\nworld is swept away and that we are touching the limits of the\nnatural. Hence the chill of the unknown and supernatural.\n\nHowever this may be, the fact remains that from the earliest\nknown times, there have been powers of darkness set over\nagainst the powers of light; and the conflict between them has\nsuggested with exceptional vividness the conflict between good\nand evil. The opening verses of the Bible, with their chaos and\ndarkness, and the sublime command--\"Let there be light\"--are in\nline with a vast body of primitive myth and speculation which\nrepresents the good God as the Creator of light, or as light itself\nover against the dark. The mysticism of the prologue to St.\nJohn's Gospel both represented and fostered ideas which were\ncurrent in the earliest Christian communities and have coloured\nthe whole of the primitive Christian literature.\n\nSo in the most ancient of the classical mythologies, Night was\none of the oldest deities, daughter of Chaos, and sister of\nErebus, the dark underworld. So in Persian dogmatic we have\nthe same essential concepts. From the beginning existed\nuncreated light and uncreated darkness--the opposing kingdoms\nof Ahura and Ahriman.\n\nWho shall say what great cosmic facts lie behind these vague\nand looming intuitions? The physical merges by insensible\ndegrees into the aesthetic, the moral, the spiritual. On the one\nhand, the chill, the blankness, the negation, sometimes the\nhorror, of the darkness. And on the other hand the purity and\nbeauty, the colour and effulgence of the light--above all, its\njoy-giving, life-giving, though noiseless, energy.\n\nComing down to the present, we ask if these mystic influences\nof light and of darkness still retain their power. Can we doubt\nit? We have Milton's Melancholy, \"of Cerberus and blackest\nMidnight born\"--\"where brooding darkness spreads his jealous\nwings.\" All this no mere refurbishing of classical lore, but the\noutcome of deep sympathy with the poets of the prime. And the\nsame is true of his buoyant lines that describe the breaking of\nthe day, when morn\n\n    \"Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand\n    Unbarr'd the gates of light.\"\n\nIn sympathy, too, with the old belief in Ahura's final victory is\nEmerson's declaration that \"the night is for the day, but the day\nis not for the night.\"\n\nBrowning finely discriminates the grades of darkness in\nSordello, where he addresses Dante as\n\n            \"pacer of the shore\n    Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,\n    Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume;\n    Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope\n    Into a darkness quieted by hope;\n    Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye\n    In gracious twilights where His chosen lie.\"\n\nHomer and Job are at one in associating darkness with the\ngrave, and all that the grave implies. \"Before I go whence I shall\nnot return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of\ndeath.\" Homer and Ecclesiastes are one in love of the sunlit sky:\n\"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes\nto behold the sun.\" And Shakespeare in fullest sympathy cries:\n\n            \"See how the sun\n    Walks o'er the top of yonder eastern hill.\"\n\nAnd sunrises and sunsets wake in Wordsworth's soul the\nthought of\n\n    \"The light that never was on sea or land.\"\n\nAnd it is the world-old feeling of life and joy that breathes in\nBlake's lines \"To Morning\":\n\n    \"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,\n    Unlock heaven's golden gates and issue forth;\n    Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light\n    Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring\n    The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day.\n    O radiant morning, salute the sun,\n    Roused like a huntsman to the chase, and with\n    Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills.\"\n\nBut what of modern science? Does not that eliminate the mystic\nelement? Far from that, it increases it. The dominant theory is\nthat light is a sensation caused by waves in ether which travel at\na speed of 186,000 miles a second. Of this theory Whewell\nwrote in 1857 that Optics had \"reached her grand generalisation\nin a few years by sagacious and happy speculations.\" But it was\nnot thus that a halting-place was gained. For there succeeded the\ndiscoveries of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, and other great\nphysicists who used the old theory merely as a foundation for a\nsuperstructure of unsuspected and wondrous proportions. The\ntheory of electrons came to the front, and the phenomena of\nlight are being linked on to those of electricity. The phenomena\nof electricity, again, are being linked on to those of life. And\nthus, as ever where our deepest intuitions are concerned, the\nnature-mystic finds himself in harmony with and abreast of the\nlatest developments of modern knowledge.\n\nAt the dawn of human thought light and life were dimly but\npersistently felt to be akin, if not identical. And now we know it\nwas a deep prompting of mother nature which caused men to\ngive to their divine beings the simple name--\"the Bright Ones.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXX\n\nTHE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN--COLOUR\n\n\"The broad open eye of the solitary sky.\"\n\nCharles Lamb, with his native sensitiveness, considered this line\nto be too terrible for art. Its suggestion of \"the irresponsive\nblankness of the universe\" was for him too naked and poignant.\nAnd yet, in certain of his aspects, nature is undoubtedly\nirresponsive to man--aloof from his affairs--more especially in\nher pageantry of the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars.\nBut this feeling of aloofness is not constant, nor even normal, as\nwitness the exquisite lines in Peter Bell:\n\n    \"At noon, when by the forest's edge\n    He lay beneath the branches high,\n    The soft blue sky did never melt\n    Into his heart--he never felt\n    The witchery of the soft blue sky!\"\n\nWhether in its friendly or its alien aspects, the widespread,\nall-embracing arch of the heavens has, in all times and climes,\nprofoundly influenced human thought, more particularly so in\nlands where the sky is clear and bright and the horizons\nextended. Its effect, in flat and desert regions, on the\ndevelopment of monotheistic beliefs was noted in an early\nchapter. In India it has played the chiefest part in fostering\nabstract universalism and the conception of a pantheistic\nAbsolute, and has tempted men to views which leave no room\nfor human initiative nor for belief in objective reality. And\nwhen we recognise the wide and deep influence exerted by\nBuddhism upon ethics and metaphysics ancient and modern, we\nrealise that the dome of heaven has proved itself a mystic force\nof the first rank.\n\nWe must be on our guard, however, lest we exaggerate this\npantheistic or universalistic influence. We have a sufficient\ncorrective in the development of Dyaus, an ancient god of the\nsky, who became, in one of his later forms, the Greek Zeus--that\nis to say, a king of gods as well as of men--the ruler of\nOlympus--the supreme member of a polytheistic community.\nAnd this development is but representative of a large class\nwhich have proceeded on similar lines--the class which come to\ntheir own in the concept of a Heaven-Father. For example,\nTylor shows that, in the religion of the North American Indians,\n\"the Heaven-god displays perfectly the gradual blending of the\nmaterial sky itself with its personal deity\"; and that the Chinese\nTien, Heaven, the highest deity of the state religion, underwent\na like theologic development. The mystic influence remains in\nChristianity, as witness Keble:\n\n    \"The glorious sky embracing all\n    Is like the Maker's love.\"\n\nIt may be affirmed, then, without fear of contradiction, that the\nelemental phenomena of the sky, overarching all with its unlimited\nspan, has provided men with the idea of an all-embracing\ndeity--this idea, among others, is immanent there and awaits\nstill further development.\n\nAwaits further development--for the mystic influences persist\nand suggest deeper interpretations. Browning, though not an\navowed nature-mystic, felt the thrill and the emotion of the sky.\n\n    \"The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops\n    With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour.\"\n\nAs for the emotional value of the universal span of the sky, its\npower to tranquillise by a sense of vast harmony and unity,\nChristina Rossetti knew it:\n\n    \"Heaven o'erarches you and me,\n        And all earth's gardens and her graves.\n    Look up with me, until we see\n    The day break and the shadows flee.\n    What though to-night wrecks you and me\n        If so to-morrow saves?\"\n\nHere, as is almost inevitable, the thought of the expanse is\nassociated with the alternate coming on of darkness and the\nbreaking of the dawn; but the change and alternation gains its\nunity and ultimate significance from the all-inclusiveness of the\nsky as the abiding element.\n\nWalt Whitman brings out another aspect of this subtle but\npowerful influence. He addresses the sky: \"Hast Thou, pellucid,\nin Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the\nphysical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.)\nAnd dost Thou subtly, mystically now drip it through the air\ninvisibly upon me?\"\n\nIn similar mood Jefferies writes: \"I turned to the blue heaven\nover, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and\nsweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky\ndrew my soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is\nrest of heart.\"\n\nAnd thus \"the witchery of the soft blue sky\" launches us\nnaturally into the subject of the sky as colour; and not of blue\nonly, but of that vast range of hues and gradations which\ndisplay their beauty and their glory in the four quarters of\nheaven during each move onwards of the earth from sunrise to\nsunrise. Tennyson's description is vivid and splendid. The\nshipwrecked Enoch Arden is waiting for a sail, and sees\n\n            \"Every day\n    The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts\n    Among the palms and ferns and precipices;\n    The blaze upon the waters to the east;\n    The blaze upon his island overhead;\n    The blaze upon the waters to the west;\n    Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,\n    The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again\n    The scarlet shafts of sunrise.\"\n\nBut of special interest here is the fact that the blue of the vault\nis never mentioned--only the scarlet shafts of sunrise and the\nblaze. Whether this omission was intentional or not, may be\nuncertain.\n\nBut it brings to mind the strange fact that the perception and\nnaming of this blue are comparatively recent acquirements. In\nthe old hymns of the Rigveda the chariot of the sun is described\nas glowing with varied colour, and its horses as gold-like or\nbeaming with sevenfold hues; but although there was a word for\nthe blue of the sea and for indigo dye, this word is never applied\nto the brightness of the sunlit vault. So, still more strangely, we\nfind that notwithstanding the laughing blue of the Greek sky,\nold Homer never calls it blue! He has his rosy-fingered dawn,\nthe parallel of Tennyson's scarlet shafts; but the daylight sky\nseems to have been for him as for Enoch Arden, a \"blaze.\" Nor\nis the omission supplied in the later classical literature; and the\nolder Greek writers on science use such epithets as \"air-coloured,\"\nas substitutes for more specific terms. A German scholar\nwho has examined the ancient writings of the Chinese claims\nfor them priority in the recognition of the blue of the sky,\nand points out that in the Schi-king, a collection of songs from\nabout 1709 to 618 B.C., the sky is called the vaulted blue, as in\nthe more modern language it is called the reigning blue.\n\nDelitzsch, from whom much of what is just stated has been\nderived (as also from Gladstone's paper on Homer's colour-sense)\ndoes not find the blue of the sky recognised in Europe earlier\nthan the oldest Latin poets of the third century B.C., who\nuse _caerulus_ of the sky, and henceforth this epithet takes its\nplace in literature, Pagan and Christian. And the appreciation of\nthe heaven-colour develops apace until we have Wordsworth's\n\"Witchery of the soft blue sky.\"\n\nThe explanation of this late development is a problem of much\ninterest from the point of view of the physiologist and the\npsychologist, in its bearing on the history of the special senses.\nIt would not be safe to say that the colour was not perceived, in\na somewhat loose sense of that term, but rather that it was not\nconsciously distinguished. As with the child, so with primitive\nman, the strong sensations are the first to be definitely\napprehended--the glow of flame, the scarlet and crimson of\ndawn and sunset, the gold of the sun and moon and stars. Red\nand yellow were the first to assert themselves; and the two are\nsignificantly combined in Homer's descriptions of the dawn--the\nyellow of the crocus as a garment, and the flush of the rose for\nthe fingered rays.\n\nWe must not imagine, however, that the failure to distinguish\nthe hues and grades of blue argued any lack of appreciation of\nthe quality of pure, translucent depth which characterises the\nclear sunlit sky. A striking proof to the contrary is found in a\ndescription in the book of Exodus, where a vision of God is\ndescribed, and where we read that  under His feet was as it were\na work of transparent sapphire, and as it were the body of\nheaven in its clearness.\" We recall also the exquisite expression,\n\"the clear shining after rain.\"\n\nThe nature-mystic, therefore, need not eliminate the blue of the\nvault, the brightness of the sky, as an influence in moulding\nman's spiritual nature in the early days. It remains true,\nhowever, that the delicate discrimination of colour is a\ncomparatively recent acquirement, and that thus the modern\nworld has gained a new wealth of phenomena in the sphere of\ndirect sensation. And this recently acquired subtlety of\ncolour-sense is bound to bring with it a corresponding wealth of\nmystical intuition. The older attempts at colour symbolism point\nthe way--the red of blood, the crimson of flame, the white of the\nlily, the blush of the rose, the gleam of steel or silver, the glow\nof gold, the green of the mantle worn by mother-earth, all these,\nand numberless others have played their part as subtle mystic\ninfluences. But there is more and better yet to come. Milton\ncould write:\n\n    \"O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,\n    Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!\"\n\nAs tints, so significances, more delicate shall be won by man's\nsoul in contact with nature. For colour is as varied as love.\n\"Colour\" (says Ruskin) \"is the type of love. Hence it is\nespecially connected with the blossoming of the earth, and with\nits fruits; also with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the\nmorning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of\nlove about the birth and death of man.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\n\nTHE MOON--A SPECIAL PROBLEM\n\nThe contention of the nature-mystic is that man can enter into\ndirect communion with the objects in his physical environment,\ninasmuch as they are akin to himself in their essential nature.\nNow Goethe says:\n\n    \"The stars excite no craving,\n    One is happy simply in their glory.\"\n\nAnd Schopenhauer asks why the sight of the full moon has\nupon us an influence so soothing and elevating. His explanation\nis in harmony with the general trend of his philosophical\ndoctrine. He says that the moon has so little relation to our\npersonal concerns that it is not an object of willing. We are\ncontent to contemplate her in passive receptivity. We have here\na problem which is well worthy of discussion. Let us bring the\nmatter to the test of actual experience as embodied in modern\nprose and poetry. For while it goes without saying that the\nqualities of physical remoteness, elevation, and vastness, have\ntheir own peculiar mystical power, and that they are especially\nmanifested in the phenomena of the starry heaven, there is a\ndanger of emphasising this fact to the detriment of the basic\nprinciple of Nature Mysticism. In order to bring the discussion\nwithin reasonable limits, let it be confined to Schopenhauer's\nexample:\n\n    \"That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,\n    Whom mortals call the moon.\"\n\nIs it true that there is, alongside of the feeling of her remoteness,\nnone of the active emotion which essential kinship would lead\nus to anticipate?\n\nAppeal might at once be made to the proverbial \"crying for the\nmoon\"; and there would be more in the appeal than might\nappear at first sight. For there comes at once into mind the\nsublimination of this longing in the lovely myth of Endymion\nwhich so powerfully affected Keats, and fascinated even\nBrowning. Appeal might also be made to the sweet naturalism\nof St. Francis with his endearing name, \"Our sister, the Moon.\"\n\nThere is, moreover, the enormous mass of magical and\nsuperstitious lore which gives the moon a very practical and\ndirect influence over human affairs. This may be ruled out as\nnot based on facts; but it remains as an evidence of a sense of\nkinship of a practical kind. And if this fails, there is the teaching\nof modern science. We now know that the tides are evidence of\nthe moon's never-ceasing interposition in terrestrial affairs, and\nthat, apart from her functions as a light-giver, innumerable\nhuman happenings are dependent on her motion and position.\nThere is even a theory that she is part and parcel of the earth\nitself, having been torn out of the bed of the Pacific. And, in any\ncase, her surface has been explored, so far as it is turned to us,\nand, with a marvellous accuracy of detail, mapped out, and\nnamed. Science, then, while measuring her distance, certainly\ndoes not increase the sense of our alienation from her.\n\nBut let us turn, as proposed, to the writings of modern seers and\ninterpreters. See how Keats associates the moon with the\nhumblest and most homely things of earth:\n\n    \"Some shape of beauty moves away the pall\n    From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,\n    Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon\n    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils\n    With the green world they live in.\"\n\nThere is no sense of a gap here, in passing from heaven to earth.\nIn a strain of stronger emotion, he makes Endymion speak:\n\n    \"Lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge\n    The loveliest moon that ever silvered o'er\n    A shell from Neptune's goblet; she did soar\n    So passionately bright, my dazzled soul\n    Commingling with her argent spheres did roll\n    Through clear and cloudy.\"\n\nThere is little of Schopenhauer's passive and contemplative\nreceptivity here! Rather a mingling of being in a sweep through\nspace.\n\nCatullus sang how that:\n\n    \"Near the Delian olive-tree Latonia gave thy life to thee\n    That thou shouldst be for ever queen\n    Of mountains and of forests green;\n    Of every deep glen's mystery;\n    Of all streams in their melody.\"\n\nAnd Wordsworth, in fullest sympathy enforces the old-world\nimaginings. He dwells on the homely aspect:\n\n    \"Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near\n    To human life's unsettled atmosphere;\n    Who lov'st with Night and Silence to partake,\n    So might it seem, the cares of them that wake;\n    And through the cottage-lattice softly peeping,\n    Dost shield from harm the humblest of the sleeping\"--\n\nAnd links on these friendly thoughts to the mythical spirit of the\npast:\n\n            \"well might that fair face\n    And all those attributes of modest grace,\n    In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,\n    Down to the green fields fetch thee from thy sphere,\n    To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear.\"\n\nOr take the famous Homeric simile so finely translated by\nTennyson:\n\n    \"As when in Heaven the stars above the moon\n    Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,\n    And every height comes out, and jutting peak\n    And valley, and the immeasurable heavens\n    Break open to their highest, and all the stars\n    Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart.\"\n\nThe stars are here associated with the moon--so much the better\nfor the principle now defended.\n\nCompare this with some lines from Goethe himself--the Goethe\nwho would persuade us that the stars excite no craving, and that\nwe are happy simply in their glory. He thus addresses the\nMoon:\n\n    \"Bush and vale thou fill'st again\n        With thy misty ray\n    And my spirit's heavy chain\n        Castest far away.\n    Thou dost o'er my fields extend\n        Thy sweet soothing eye,\n    Watching, like a gentle friend,\n        O'er my destiny.\"\n\nBrowning felt the charm of a lambent moon:\n\n    \"Voluptuous transport rises with the corn\n    Beneath a warm moon like a happy face.\"\n\nSo with an English picture from Kirke White:\n\n        \"Moon of harvest, herald mild\n        Of plenty, rustic labour's child,\n        Hail! O hail! I greet thy beam,\n        As soft it trembles o'er the stream,\n        And gilds the straw-thatched hamlet wide,\n        Where Innocence and Peace reside;\n    'Tis thou that gladd'st with joy the rustic throng,\n    Promptest the tripping dance, th' exhilarating song.\"\n\nTo emphasise this aspect is not to forget that there is another.\nWordsworth experienced both types of emotion. Time, he sings:\n\n            \"that frowns\n    In her destructive flight on earthly crowns,\n    Spares thy cold splendour; still those far-shot beams\n    Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams\n    With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise\n    Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays.\"\n\nBut abundant evidence is available to prove that the position\ntaken by Goethe and Schopenhauer may easily lead to a loss of\ntrue perspective. The moon and stars, though remote, are also\nnear: though they start trains of passive and contemplative\nthought, they also stimulate active emotions and even\npassionate yearnings. What more passionate than Shelley?\n\n    \"The desire of the moth for the star,\n        Of the night for the morrow,\n    The devotion to something afar\n        From the sphere of our sorrow.\"\n\nThere do not seem to be many poets who have brought into\nclear antithesis and relief this dual aspect of the mystic\ninfluence of the heavenly bodies. But it definitely arrested the\nimagination and thought of Clough, whose poem, \"Selene,\"\ndeals wholly with this theme. It is too long for quotation here,\nthough the whole of it would be admirably in place. Enough is\ngiven to show its general drift. The Earth addresses the Moon:\n\n    \"My beloved, is it nothing\n    Though we meet not, neither can,\n    That I see thee, and thou me,\n    That we see and see we see,\n    When I see I also feel thee;\n    Is it nothing, my beloved?\n    . . .\n    O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not,\n    Lookest onward, look'st before,\n    Yet I follow evermore.\n    Cruel, cruel, didst thou only\n    Feel as I feel evermore,\n    A force, though in, not of me,\n    Drawing inward, in, in, in,\n    Yea, thou shalt though, ere all endeth,\n    Thou shalt feel me closer, closer,\n    My beloved!\n    . . .\n    The inevitable motion\n    Bears us both upon its line\n    Together, you as me,\n    Together and asunder,\n    Evermore. It so must be.\"\n\nIt behoves the nature-mystic, then, to be wholehearted in\ndefence of his master principle. _Homo sum, et humani a me nil\nalienum puto_--so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and\nexpands his dictum. He substitutes _mundani_ for _humani_,\nand includes in his _mundus_, as did the Latins, and as did the\nGreeks in their _cosmos_, not only the things of earth but the\nexpanse of heaven.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\n\nEARTH, MOUNTAINS, AND PLAINS\n\nAnd thus the three great nature-philosophers of the old world,\nThales, Anaximenes, and Heracleitus, have been our guides, so\nto speak, in surveying the most striking phenomena of water,\nair, and fire. The fourth member of the ancient group of\n\"elements\" has received but incidental treatment. Obviously it\ncould hardly be otherwise, especially within the limits which\nsuch a study as this imposes. The varied and wondrous forms of\nvegetable and animal life have likewise made but brief and\ntransient appearances; but this omission has been due to a\ndefinite intention expressed at the outset. It may nevertheless be\nwell, before concluding, to cast a glance over the rich provinces\nwhich still lie open to the nature-mystic for further discovery\nand research.\n\nThe more striking features of the landscape have always\narrested attention and stimulated the mystic sense. The peculiar\ninfluence of heights has been noted at an earlier stage, though\nbut cursorily. Much might be said of the enormous effect of\nmountain scenery. The most direct form of nature-feeling finds\nexpression in Scott and Byron; and the description of crags,\nravines, peaks and gorges, bulks largely in their writings.\nTypical are these lines from \"Manfred\":\n\n        \"Ye crags upon whose extreme edge\n    I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath\n    Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs\n    In dizziness of distance.\"\n\nor Shelley with his\n\n            \"Eagle-baffling mountain\n    Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured, without herb,\n    Insect, or beast, or shape, or sound of life.\"\n\nIndeed there are few poets, even those who are chiefly\nconcerned with man and his doings, who do not often turn to\nmountain scenery at least for similes. And it could not be\notherwise; for the immanent ideas here manifested are\nself-assertive in character and specially rich in number and\nvariety. As it has been well expressed, nature's pulse here seems\nto beat more quickly. In olden days the high places of the earth\nassociated themselves with myths of gods and Titans. Fully\nrepresentative of the world of to-day, Tennyson asks:\n\n    \"Hast thou no voice, O Peak,\n        That standest high above all?\"\n\nAnd his answer turns on the mystic bonds that bind the deep\nand the height into a cycle of interdependent activities.\n\n    \"The deep has power on the height,\n        And the height has power on the deep.\n    A deep below the deep\n        And a height beyond the height!\n    Our hearing is not hearing,\n        And our seeing is not sight.\"\n\nOr Morris gives the mysticism a more personal turn:\n\n    \"Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!\n    I lift to you a hopeless eye,\n    I see your icy ramparts drawn\n    Between the sleepers and the dawn;\n    I see you when the sun has set\n    Flush with the dying daylight yet.\n    . . .\n    Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!\n    I shall not reach you till I die.\"\n\nAnd now that modern geology is revealing to us more and more\nof the origin and structure of the mountain ranges of the world,\nand telling us more and more of the wondrous materials which\ngo to their building, the field for mysticism is being widely\nextended.\n\nDifferent, but hardly less powerful, is the influence of hill\nscenery--whether they\n\n            \"in the distance lie\n    Blue and yielding as the sky,\"\n\nor whether their gentle slopes are climbed and their delicate\nbeauties seen close at hand. As Ruskin has averred, even the\nsimplest rise can suggest the mountain; but it also has a mystic\ncharm of its own, complementary to that of the sheltered vale,\nwhich is exquisite alike in its natural simplicity, and in its\nresponse to the labours of man, where some\n\n            \"kneeling hamlet drains\n    The chalice of the grapes of God.\"\n\nBut though the influence of mountains, hills, ravines, and vales,\nis obvious even to the superficial enquirer, it should not obscure\nfor us the very real, if less potent influence of lowlands, plains,\nand deserts. More especially subtle in its effect upon the spirit\nof man, is the loneliness of wildernesses, the prairies, the\npampas, the tundras, the Saharas. The Greek Pan was essentially\na god of the wild, unploughed surfaces of the earth. Hence,\nalso, the frequent conjunction of the wilderness and silent\nmeditation and ascetic discipline. Schopenhauer suggests\nthat one secret of the spell of mountain scenery is the\npermanence of the sky-line. Shall we say that one secret of the\nsolitary place is the turning in of the human spirit upon itself\nbecause of the sameness of the permanent sky-line?\n\nThe effect of scenery upon religion was treated of in illustration\nof the general principle of Nature Mysticism--the kinship of\nman and his physical environment. No less marked has been the\neffect of scenery upon art. The theme is now somewhat well\nworn, but its true significance is seldom apprehended. For if art\nis concerned with the realm of the ideal, or rather, perhaps, with\nthe real in its more ideal aspects, then it follows that whatever\nhas an influence on art has an influence on the spiritual\ndevelopment of the people among whom any particular mode or\nschool of art may-establish itself. An interesting phase of such\ninfluence is found in Geikie's suggestion as to the presence of\nthe humorous element in the myths and legends of northern\nEurope. \"The grotesque contours\" (he says) \"of many craggy\nslopes where, in the upstanding pinnacles of naked rock, an\nactive imagination sees forms of men and of animals in endless\nwhimsical repetitions, may sometimes have suggested the\nparticular form of the ludicrous which appears in the popular\nlegend. But the natural instinct of humour which saw physical\nfeatures in a comic light, and threw a playful human interest\nover the whole face of nature, was a distinctively. Teutonic\ncharacteristic.\" There opens out here an unexplored region for\noriginal research. Taking the nature-mystic's mode of\nexperience as a basis for enquiry, how far is the comic a purely\nsubjective affair, concerned only, as Bergson contends, with\nman, and only found in external phenomena by virtue of their\nreflecting his affairs; or how far has it a place of its own in the\nuniverse at large?\n\nTo conclude this slight sketch of the Nature Mysticism of the\nsolid earth, let us bring together an ancient and a recent\nexpression of the emotion these purely terrestrial phenomena\ncan arouse. There is one of the Homeric hymns which is\naddressed to \"the Earth, Mother of All.\" Its beginning and its\nending are as follows (in Shelley's translation):\n\n    \"O universal mother, who dost keep\n    From everlasting thy foundations deep,\n    Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee.\n    . . .\n    Mother of gods, thou wife of starry Heaven,\n    Farewell! be thou propitious.\"\n\nIs there not a living continuity between the emotional element\nin that grand old hymn and the strong full modern sentiment in\nthis concluding stanza of Brown's \"Alma Mater\"?\n\n    \"O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,\n    I love thee, O, I love thee!\n    So let me leave thee never,\n    But cling to thee for ever,\n    And hover round thy mountains,\n    And flutter round thy fountains,\n        And pry into thy roses fresh and red;\n    And blush in all thy blushes,\n    And flush in all thy flushes,\n    And watch when thou art sleeping,\n    And weep when thou art weeping,\n    And be carried with thy motion,\n    As the rivers and the ocean,\n    As the great rocks and the trees are--\n    O mother, this were glorious life,\n        This were not to be dead.\n    O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,\n    I love thee, O, I love thee! \"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIII\n\nSEASONS, VEGETATION, ANIMALS\n\nThe seasons and the months, especially those of the temperate\nzones--how saturated with mysticism! The wealth of illustration\nis so abounding that choice is wellnigh paralysed. Poets and\nnature lovers are never weary of drawing on its inexhaustible\nsupplies. Take these verses from Tennyson's \"Early Spring\":\n\n    \"Opens a door in Heaven;\n        From skies of glass\n    A Jacob's ladder falls\n        On greening grass,\n    And o'er the mountain-walls\n        Young angels pass.\n\n    For now the Heavenly Power\n        Makes all things new\n    And thaws the cold and fills\n        The flower with dew;\n    The blackbirds have their wills,\n        The poets too.\"\n\nOr take these exultant lines from Coventry Patmore's\n\"Revulsion\" Canto:\n\n    \"'Twas when the spousal time of May\n        Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths,\n    And air's so sweet the bosom gay\n        Gives thanks for every breath it breathes;\n    When like to like is gladly moved,\n        And each thing joins in Spring's refrain,\n    'Let those love now who never loved;\n        Let those who have loved, love again.'\"\n\nRecall the poems that celebrate in endless chorus the emotions\nstirred by the pomp and glory of the summer; by the fruitfulness\nor sadness of the mellow autumn; by the keen exhilaration or\nthe frozen grip of winter. Some poets, like Blake, have written\nspecial odes or sonnets on all the four; some like Keats, in his\n\"Ode to Autumn,\" have lavished their most consummate art on\nthe season which most appealed to them. Each month, too, has\nits bards; its special group of qualities and the sentiments they\nstimulate. Truly the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices as he\nreflects on the inexhaustibility of material and of significance\nhere presented!\n\nAnd what of the flowers? Once again the theme is inexhaustible.\nThe poets vie with one another in their efforts to give\nto even the humblest flowers their emotional and mystic\nsetting. Some of the loveliest of the old-world myths are busied\nwith accounting for the form or colour of the flowers.\nWordsworth's Daffodils, Burns's Daisy, Tennyson's \"Flower in\nthe Crannied Wall,\" these are but fair blooms in a full and\ndazzling cluster. Flowers (said a certain divine) are the sweetest\nthings God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. The\nnature-mystic thankfully acknowledges the sweetness, but he questions\nthe absence of the soul! The degree of individuality is matter for\ngrave debate; but to assume its absence is to place oneself out of\nfocus for gaining true and living insight into nature's being.\nHow much more deep-founded is Wordsworth's faith \"that\nevery flower enjoys the air it breathes.\"\n\nLet us bring this matter to the test in regard to the big brothers\nof the flowers--the trees. Passing by the ample range of striking\nand beautiful myths and legends (packed as many of them are\nwith mystic meaning), let us turn to the expressions of personal\nfeeling which the literature of various ages provides in\nabundance--limiting the view to certain typical examples. The\nTeutonic myth of the World-tree was dealt with fully in the\nchapter on Subterranean Waters. But it is well to mention it now\nin connection with the far-extended group of myths which\ncentre in the idea of a tree of life, which preserved their vitality\nin changing forms, and which even appear in Dante in his\naccount of the mystical marriage under the withered tree. Virgil\nwas a lover of trees; the glade and the forest appealed to him by\nthe same magic of suggested life as that which works on the\nmodern poet or nature-lover.\n\nIt is generally supposed that, in England, the loving insight of\nthe nature-mystic was practically unknown until Collins,\nThomson, and Crabbe led the way for the triumph of the Lake\npoets.\n\nThis may be true for many natural objects--but it is not true for\nall. How fresh these lines from an address to his muse by\nWither:\n\n    \"By the murmur of a spring,\n    Or the least bough's rustelling;\n    By a daisy whose leaves spread,\n    Shut when Titan goes to bed;\n    Or a shady bush or tree,--\n    She could more infuse in me\n    Than all Nature's beauties can\n    In some other wiser man.\"\n\nSurely this is the voice of Wordsworth in Tudor phraseology.\nStill more startling is this passage from Marvell, out of the\nmidst of the Commonwealth days: so remarkable is its Nature\nMysticism and its Wordsworthian feeling and insight, that it\nmust be given without curtailment. It occurs in the poem on the\n\"Garden.\"\n\n    \"Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,\n    Withdraws into its happiness;\n    The mind, that ocean where each kind\n    Does straight its own resemblance find;\n    Yet it creates, transcending these,\n    Far other worlds, and other seas,\n    Annihilating all that's made\n    To a green thought in a green shade,\n    Here at the fountain's sliding foot,\n    Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,\n    Casting the body's vest aside,\n    My soul into the boughs does glide:\n    There, like a bird, it sits and sings,\n    Then whets and combs its silver wings,\n    And, till prepared for longer flight,\n    Waves in its plumes the various light.\"\n\nEvery line of this extract is worthy of close study--not only for\nits intrinsic beauty, but for its evidence of the working of the\nimmanent ideas, and the vivid sense of kinship with tree life.\nThe two lines\n\n    \"Annihilating all that's made\n    To a green thought in a green shade,\"\n\nare justly famous. But more significant are the three less known\nones:\n\n    \"Casting the body's vest aside\n    My soul into the boughs does glide:\n    There like a bird it sits and sings.\"\n\nDid Wordsworth, or Tennyson, or Shelley, ever give token of a\nmore vivid sense of kinship with the life of the tree? Is it not\npalpable that the same essential form of intuitive experience is\nstruggling in each and all of these poets to find some fitting\nexpression? For Marvell, as for Wordsworth,\n\n    \"The soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs\"\n\nseemed to fluctuate with an interior life and to call for joyous\nsympathy.\n\nOr, finally, study these passages from Walt Whitman, the sturdy\nWesterner; his feeling for the mystic impulses from tree life is\nexceptional, if not in its intensity, at any rate in his\ndetermination to give it utterance. If trees do not talk, he says,\nthey certainly manage it \"as well as most speaking, writing,\npoetry, sermons--or rather they do a great deal better. I should\nsay indeed that those old dryad reminiscences are quite as true\nas any, and profounder than most, reminiscences we get.\"\nFarther on, speaking of evening lights and shades on foliage\ngrass, he says, \"In the revealings of such light, such exceptional\nhour, such mood, one does not wonder at the old story fables\n(indeed, why fables?) of people falling into love-sickness with\ntrees, seiz'd ecstatic with the mystic realism of the resistless\nsilent strength in them--strength which, after all, is perhaps the\nlast, completest, highest beauty.\" In another place, he says, \"I\nhold on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and\nshade, wrestle with their inmost stalwartness--and _know_ the\nvirtue thereof passes from them into me. (Or maybe we\ninterchange--maybe the trees are more aware of it all than I ever\nthought.)\" And once again, speaking of a yellow poplar tree,\n\"How strong, vital, enduring! How dumbly eloquent! What\nsuggestions of imperturbability and _being_, as against the\nhuman trait of _seeming_. Then the qualities, almost emotional,\npalpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet\nso savage. It _is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough\nand equable serenity all weathers.\" All this is unconventional!\nSo much the better! The identity of underlying sentiment comes\nout the more clearly. Trees are not only alive (and yet how\nmuch that fact alone contains!) but they have a character, an\nindividuality of their own; they can speak directly to the heart\nand soul of man, and man can sympathise with them.\n\nAs for the animal world in the widest sense, it is plain that its\nstudy, from the mystical point of view, forms a department to\nitself. Granted that the transition from the mineral to the\norganism is gradual, and that from the vegetable to the animal\nstill more gradual, the broad fact remains that, when we reach\nthe higher forms of the realm of living matter, we definitely\nrecognise many of the characteristics which are found in the\nhuman soul--will, emotion, impulse, even intellectual activities.\nNot only primitive man, but those also who are often far\nadvanced in mental development, attribute souls to animals, and\nfind it difficult to believe otherwise--as witness the totemistic\nsystems followed by theories of metempsychosis. And\nDarwinism, far from destroying these old ideas, has simply\nfurnished a scientific basis for a new totemism.\n\nAs was remarked at the outset, this subject of what we may call\nAnimal Mysticism, lies outside our present province.\nNevertheless, a word or two showing how the physical, the\nvegetable, and the animal are linked together in living mystical\nunion may fittingly bring this chapter to a close. Many of our\ndeepest and most original thinkers are feeling their way to this\nlarger Mysticism. Here are two examples taken almost at\nrandom. Anatole France, in one of the many charming episodes\nwhich render his story of the old savant, Sylvestre Bonnard, at\nonce so touching and so philosophic, takes his old hero under\nthe shade of some young oaks to meditate on the nature of the\nsoul and the destiny of man. The narrative proceeds thus: \"Une\nabeille, dont le corsage brun brillait au soleil comme une armure\nde vieil or, vint se poser sur une fleur de mauve d'une sombre\nrichesse et bien ouverte sur sa tige touffue. Ce n'\u00e9tait\ncertainement pas la premi\u00e8re fois que je voyais un spectacle si\ncommun, mais c'\u00e9tait la premi\u00e8re que je le voyais avec une\ncuriosit\u00e9 si affectueuse et si intelligente. Je reconnus qu'il y\navait entre l'insecte et la fleur toutes sortes de sympathies et\nmille rapports ing\u00e9nieux que je n'avais pas soupconn\u00e9s jusque\nl\u00e0. L'insecte, rassasi\u00e9 de nectar, s'\u00e9lanca en ligne hardie. Je me\nrelevai du mieux que je pus, et me rajustai sur mes jambes--\nAdieu, dis-je \u00e0 la fleur et a l'abeille. Adieu. Puiss\u00e9-je vivre\nencore le temps de deviner le secret de vos harmonies. . . .\nCombien le vieux mythe d'Ant\u00e9e est plein de sens! J'ai touch\u00e9 la\nterre et je suis un nouvel homme, et voici qu'\u00e0 soixante-dix ans\nde nouvelles curiosit\u00e9s naissent dans mon \u00e2me comme on voit\ndes rejetons s'\u00e9lancer du tronc creux d'un vieux saule.\"\n\n\"May I live long enough to solve the secret of your harmonies!\"\nThere is the spirit of the true nature-mystic! But how will it be\nsolved? By intuition first--if ever the intellect does seize the\nsecret, it will be on the basis of intuition. It is with this\nconviction in his mind that Maeterlinck meditates on the same\ntheme as that which arrested Anatole France. \"Who shall tell us,\noh, little people (the bees), that are so profoundly in earnest,\nthat have fed on the warmth and the light and on nature's purest,\nthe soul of the flowers--wherein matter for once seems to smile\nand put forth its most wistful effort towards beauty and\nhappiness--who shall tell us what problems you have resolved,\nbut we not yet; what certitudes you have acquired, that we have\nstill to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems,\nacquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive\nimpulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma,\nmore insoluble still, are you not urging us on?\"\n\nSuch is the leaven that is working in much of the foremost\nthinking of our time. The reign of materialism is passing--that\nof mysticism waxing in imperative insistence and extent of\nsway. And the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices to know that\nhis master-principle of kinship universal is coming to its own.\nAnatole France and Maeterlinck are striving to seize on the\nharmonies between the physical, the vegetable, and the animal\nspheres--the air and sunshine, the flowers, and the bees; add the\nmoral and spiritual harmonies, and Mysticism stands complete--\nit strives to read the secret of existence as a whole, of the \"_\u00e9lan\nvital_\" in this or any other world.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\n\nPRAGMATIC\n\nThe programme laid down in the introductory chapter has been\nfulfilled. There has been no attempt to make any single section,\nmuch less the study as a whole, a complete or exhaustive\nexposition of its subject matter. The purpose throughout has\nbeen to bring to light the fundamental principles of Nature\nMysticism, to consider the validity of the main criticisms to\nwhich they are subjected, and to illustrate some of their most\ntypical applications. A formal summary of the conclusions\nreached would be tedious and unnecessary. But it may be well\nto show that even when brought to the tests imposed by the\nreigning Pragmatism, the nature-mystic can justify his existence\nand can proselytise with a good conscience.\n\n\"Back to the country\"--a cry often heard, though generally with\na significance almost wholly economic, or at any rate utilitarian.\nIt gives expression to the growing conviction that the life of\ngreat cities is too artificial and specialised to permit of a healthy\nall-round development of their populations. From the eugenic\npoint of view, physique is lowered. From the economic point of\nview, large areas are deprived of their healthy independence by\nthe disturbance of the balance of production as between town\nand country. Each of these considerations is evidently of\nsufficient seriousness to arouse widespread apprehension.\n\nBut there is the nature-mystic's view of the situation which,\nwhen really attained, is seen to be of no less importance, though\nit is too often left in comparative obscurity. It is easily\napproached from the purely aesthetic side. The city may\ndevelop a quick and precocious intelligence, but it is at the cost\nof eliminating a rich range of experiences which should be the\nheritage of all normal human beings. In the city, the mind tends\nto be immersed in a restricted and specialised round of duties\nand pleasures, and loses \"natural\" tone. While, on the one hand,\nthere is over-stimulation of certain modes of sensation, others\nare largely or wholly atrophied. The finest susceptibilities\ndecay. The eye and ear, the most delicate avenues of the soul,\nare deprived of their native stimulants. In short, city conditions\nunduly inhibit the natural development of many elements of the\nhigher self.\n\nThe evils thus briefly touched upon are undoubtedly forcing\nthemselves more and more into notice, and are evoking much\nphilanthropic thought and activity. They are more especially\nbewailed by many who, themselves lovers of art and lovers of\nnature, keenly appreciate the loss sustained, and the danger\nincurred. Ruskin's teachings have affected the views and lives\nof thousands who have never read his books. Those who have\npenetrated most deeply into the play of aesthetic cause and\neffect, well know that the very existence of truly great and\ncreative art is at stake. Science, literature, politics, and a\nthousand specialised distractions tend to \"saturate our limited\nattention,\" and to absorb our energies, to the detriment of our\nfeeling for nature and of our enjoyment of her beauties. And yet\nit is only by keeping in living touch with nature that fine art can\nrenew its inspiration or scale the heights.\n\nThere is, of course, the counter peril of an unhealthy\naestheticism, marked by an assumption of susceptibility which\nis insufferable. Feeling, ostensibly expended upon external\nbeauty, can become an odious form of self-admiration; and\npriggishness is the least of the diseases that will ensue. For with\nthe loss of spontaneity and freshness in the feeling there goes\nmortification of the feeling itself. Still, this danger is not\ngeneral, and is therefore less noteworthy. It may safely be left to\nthe healing remedies instinctively applied by common sense.\n\nThe nature-mystic, however, does not linger long on the merely\naesthetic plane. He goes deeper down to the heart of things, and\nholds that to lose touch with nature is to lose touch with Reality\nas manifested in nature. It is sad, he declares, to miss the pure\nenjoyment of forms and colours, of sounds and scents; it is\nsadder to miss the experience of communing with the spirit\nembodied in these external phenomena. For it is not mere lack\nof education of the senses that must then be lamented (though\nthat is lack enough!) but the stunting of the soul-life that ensues\non divorce from nature, and from the great store of primal and\nfundamental ideas which are immanent therein. The loss may\nthus become, not simply sad, but tragic.\n\nAnd the weightiness of these considerations is not diminished\nwhen we relate them to the special needs of the day. Our time is\none of deep unrest--showing itself in religion and ethics, in\nliterature and art, in politics and economics. Unrest manifests\nitself in what we have learnt to call \"the social question.\" How\nshall civilisation regain and increase its healthy restfulness?\nUnless a cure be found, there will be disaster ahead. Democracy\nhas brought with it great hopes; it also stirs unwonted fears. The\npeople at large must be lifted on to a higher plane of living; they\nmust win for themselves wider horizons; they must kindle their\nimaginations, and allow play to their non-egoistic and nobler\nemotions. How better secure these ends than by bringing \"the\nmasses\" into touch with the elemental forces and phenomena\nof nature? \"Democracy\" (says Walt Whitman) \"most of all\naffiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy and sane only\nwith Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is required to\ntemper both--to check them, restrain them from excess,\nmorbidity. . . . I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements\nof Democracy . . . without the Nature element forming a main\npart--to be its health-element and beauty-element--to really\nunderlie the whole politics, sanity, religion, and art of the New\nWorld.\" Yes, converse with Nature--even the simplest form of\nconverse--has a steadying effect, and brings that kind of quiet\nhappiness which has for its companions good-will and delicate\nsympathy. To sever oneself from such converse is to induce\nselfishness, boorishness (veneered or un-veneered), and\ninhumanity. The influence of nature means development; the\nlack of that influence means revolution.\n\nHence Wordsworth's invitation has its social, as well as its\nindividual bearings:\n\n    \"Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books,\n    Or surely you'll grow double!\n    . . .\n    One impulse from a vernal wood\n    May teach you more of man,\n    Of moral evil and of good,\n    Than all the sages can.\n\n    Sweet is the lore which\n    Nature brings;\n    Our meddling intellect\n    Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things\n    We murder to dissect.\n\n    Enough of Science and of Art;\n    Close up those barren leaves;\n    Come forth and bring with you a heart\n    That watches and receives.\"\n\nSo Emerson, of the man who can yield himself to nature's\ninfluences. \"And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real\nto thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like\nsummer rain, copious but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable\nessence.\" So, once again, Matthew Arnold in his striking\nsonnet, \"Quiet Work\":\n\n    \"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,\n    One lesson which in every wind is blown,\n    One lesson of two duties kept at one\n    Though the loud world proclaim their enmity--\n    Of toil unsevered from tranquillity,\n    Of labour that in lasting fruit outgrows\n    Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,\n    Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.\n    Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,\n    Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil,\n    Still do thy quiet ministers move on,\n    Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting:\n    Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,\n    Labourers that shall not fail when man is gone.\"\n\nIt is in nature, then, and in her subtle but potent workings on the\nhuman soul that we shall find at least one antidote for the undue\nand portentous tension of our day. To say this is not to\ndepreciate science, but to put it in its rightful setting. Nor is it\nto depreciate culture, but to bring it into due perspective, and to\nvitalise it. Nor is it to depreciate art, but to endow it with glow,\nwith variety, with loyalty to truth.\n\nAccording to Pope, the proper study of mankind is man. How\nshallow, how harmful such a dictum! Contrast Kant's deeper\ninsight. \"Two things fill me with awe--the starry heaven\nwithout, and the moral law within.\" That famous apophthegm\nleads us nearer to the saving truth. For it contemplates man, not\nin his isolation, but as placed in a marvellous physical\nenvironment: to understand one you must understand the other\nalso. Add the thought expressed in the fundamental principle of\nNature Mysticism--the thought that nature is spiritually akin to\nourselves--and we see that the proper study of mankind is\nhuman nature as a part of a living whole.\n\nBut the nature-mystic is not content to \"study.\" He desires to\nhold communion with the spirit and the life which he feels and\nknows to be manifested in external nature. For him there is no\nsuch thing as \"brute\" matter, nor even such a thing as \"mere\"\nbeauty. He hears deep calling unto deep--the life within to the\nlife without--and he responds.","title":"Nature Mysticism","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":57660}