CHAPTER VI.THE MYSTICAL SIDE OF NATURE.
4th.The mystical feeling which the contemplation of Nature has awakened in poets of every age, but which our own day has so greatly expanded, while it is not directly suggested by Science, yet finds support from its disclosures. That great spectacle which from earliest ages has thrilled the poet’s soul with rapture and awe we know now to be produced by recognized laws, to be interpenetrated by numberless well-ordered forces, which, are indeed but thought localized, reason made visible. The intuitive wonder which the earliest poet felt is more than justified by the latest discoveries of Science.
And yet, be it observed, whatever support the truths of Science may give to the poet’s instinctive perceptions, it is not on the physical causes and operations revealed by Science that his eye chiefly dwells. He has an object of contemplation which is distinct from these and peculiar to himself, and that is the Beauty which he sees in the face of the Universe. Over and above the physical laws which uphold and carry on this framework of things, beyond all the uses whichthis mechanism subserves, there is this further fact, this additional result, that all these laws and forces in their combination issue in Beauty. This Beauty, while it is created by the collocation and harmonious working of the physical laws, is a thing distinct from them and their operation. It is an aspect of things with which the physicist as such does not intermeddle, but it is as real and as powerful over the minds of men as any force which Science has disclosed. Modern discovery may have enlarged and intensified it, but has in no way originated it. In this Beauty the poet from the first has found his favorite field, the main region of his energy. For ages the vision of this beauty has haunted, riveted, fascinated him. And if he is no longer as of old its sole guardian, he is still, whether speaking through verse or prose, its best and truest interpreter. This truth, that the Beauty of Nature is something in thought distinct, though in fact inseparable from the machinery of Nature, has been brought out and dwelt on with remarkable power by Canon Mozley in his most suggestive sermon on “Nature.” And he further insists with great force on the truth that it is this spectacle of beauty produced by the useful laws which is the special province of the poet:—
“He fixes his eye upon the passive spectacle, upon Nature as an appearance, a sight, a picture. To another he leaves the search and analysis; he is content to look, and to look only; this, andthis alone, satisfies him; he stands like a watcher or sentinel, gazing on earth, sea, and sky, upon the vast assembled imagery, upon the rich majestic representation on the canvas.”[7]
It is then the spectacle of beauty produced by the combination of physical laws, this beauty, and not the physical laws which produce it, on which the poet fixes his gaze. In the presence of it the poet’s first mental attitude is one of pure receptivity. As the clear windless lake, spread out on a still autumn day, takes into its steady bosom every feature of the surrounding mountains, every hue of the overhanging sky, so is his soul spread out to receive into itself the whole imagery of Nature. When this wise passiveness has been undergone, what images, sentiments, thoughts the poet will give back depends on the capaciousness, the depth, the clearness of soul within him. The highest poetry of Nature is that which receives most inspiration from the spectacle, which extracts out of it the largest number of great and true thoughts. And a thought or idea, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us, “is great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies and, in occupying, exercises and exalts the faculty by which it is received.”
There are no doubt poets who are mainly taken up with the forms and colors of things, and yet no poet can rest wholly in them, for this, if forno other reason, that in the power of rendering them his art necessarily falls so far below that of the painter. Even those poets who deal most humbly with Nature must, when they endeavor to make us feel its visible beauty, link the outward forms and colors to some simple thoughts of animal delight, or of comfort, or of childhood, or of home affection. This much he must do, if only to make them vivid, to bring them home to us. But he who does not go beyond this has not attained to those higher secrets of Nature, which are open to the meditative imagination. When a reflective man comes on some sudden beauty of scenery in the wilderness where no man is, how often has the thought arisen that all this beauty cannot be wasted on vacancy, that though man comes not that way to see it, there must be other eyes that behold the spectacle,—one Eye at least by which it is not unseen.
Whether we regard the beauty as something wholly external to us, as lying outside of us on the face of Nature, or as a creation resulting from the combination of certain external qualities, and of an intelligent mind which perceives them, whichever of these views we take, the beauty is there, no mere dream or phantasy, but something to whose existence the soul witnesses, as truly as the eye does to the existence of light or of those motions which perceived are light. What is it, whence comes it, what means it? It is not something we can reason from as we can from marksof contrivance and design. It will not lend itself to any syllogism. But notwithstanding this, or perhaps owing to this, it awakens deeper thoughts, it carries the mind farther than any mere proofs of design can do. The beautiful aspect of the outward world, and the delight which it inspires, are no doubt proofs of a goodness somewhere which supports these, just as food and air are proofs of it. But they are more: they have a mystic meaning, they are hints and intimations of something more than eye, or ear, or mere intellect discover. If the outward world and the mind of man are so constructed that they fall in with, and answer to, each other,—if mere physical qualities, such as height, depth, expansion, silence, solitude, sunshine, shadow, gloom, affect the soul in certain well-known ways, awakening in us emotions of awe and wonder, of peace, gladness, sadness, and solemnity,—we naturally ask ourselves, after being thus moved, why is it we were so affected, what is it in the outward world which awakens these emotions? It is a natural question for those who have felt the strange impulses from the changeful countenance of the world. It was not mere shape or color that so affected them: these feelings did not come by chance, they were not without meaning; they point to something outside of themselves, something inherent in the truth of things. When the spirit within them was so stirred, they felt that that which so addressedthem, though it came through physical things, was more than physical, was spiritual. For it carried their thoughts and feelings quite out of the natural and physical appearances, till they found themselves in commune with something akin to their own spirits, though higher and vaster. The beauty which came to them through eye, ear, and imagination, they felt to belong to the same order as that which more directly addresses their moral heart and conscience. It was the Great Being behind the veil who comes to us directly through the conscience, coming more indirectly, but not less really, through the eye and ear. Not otherwise can we account for the intense love which the sights and sounds of Nature have awakened in the best and purest of men, and the more so as they grew in maturity and serenity of soul.
It is a true instinct when men are led to regard the beauty of the world that comes to them through the eye, and the moral light which shines from behind upon the soul, as coming from one centre, and leading upward to the thought of one Being who is above both. In this way all visible beauty becomes a hint and a foreshadowing of something more than itself. But if Nature is to be the symbol of something higher than itself, to convey intimations of Him from whom both Nature and the soul proceed, man must come to the spectacle with the thought of God already in his heart. He will not get a religion out of the mere sight of Nature, neitherfrom the uses it subserves as indicating design, nor from the beauty it manifests as hinting at character. No doubt beauty is a half-way element, mediating between the physical laws and the moral sentiments, partaking more of the latter than of the former, as being itself a spiritual perception. No doubt it does in some measure act as a reconciler between those two elements which so often seem to stand out in contrast irreconcilable. But if it is to do this, if it is really to lead the soul upward, man must come to the contemplation of it with his moral convictions clear and firm, and with faith in these as connecting him directly with God. Neither morality nor religion will he get out of beauty taken by itself. If out of the splendid vision spread before him—the sight of earth, sea, and sky, of the clouds, the gleams, the shadows—man could arrive directly at the knowledge of Him who is behind them, how is it that in early ages whole nations, with these sights continually before them, never reached any moral conception of God? how is it that even in recent times many of the most gifted spirits, who have been most penetrated by that vision, and have given it most magnificent expression, have been in revolt against religious faith? It is because they sought in Nature alone, that which alone she was never intended to give. It is because the spectacle of the outward world, however splendid, if we begin with it, and insist on extracting our mainlight from it, is powerless to satisfy our human need, to speak any word which fits in to man’s moral yearning. Nay, Nature taken alone will often appear no benign mother at all, no dwelling-place of a kindly spirit, but an inexorable and cruel Sphinx, who rears children and makes them glad a little while, only that she may the more relentlessly destroy them.
But he who takes the opposite road, who, instead of looking to visible Nature for his first teaching, begins with the knowledge of himself, of his need, his guilt, his helplessness, and listens to the voice that tells of a strength not his own, and a redemption not in him but for him, he will learn to look on Nature with other and calmer eyes, and to discern a meaning in it which taken by itself it cannot give. Man may then find in the beauty which he sees a hint and intimation of a higher beauty which he does not see—a something revealed to the eye which corresponds to the religious truth revealed to the heart, harmonizing with it and confirming it. He can regard the glory of Nature, not only in itself and for its own sake, but as the foreshadow and prophecy of a higher glory yet to be. And so the sight of Nature, instead of intoxicating, maddening, and rousing to rebellion, soothes, elevates, spiritualizes, chiming in unison with our best thoughts, our purest aspirations.
Canon Mozley, in his sermon on “Nature” already alluded to, has dwelt very powerfully onthis, as the use which the highest Poetry makes of Nature, and has shown that it is at once in accordance with the teaching and practice of Scripture, and true to our human instincts. He shows how sight, the noblest of our senses here, is made the pattern and type of the highest attitude of the soul hereafter. For heaven is represented as “a perfected sight,” and he who attains to it is to be a beholder. It is not mere self-rapt thought or inward contemplation, but a future vision of God which is promised. Meanwhile Nature and her works are employed in Scripture, not only as proofs of goodness in God, but also as symbols representative of what He has in keeping for them who shall attain. Out of the storehouse of Nature are taken the materials—the light the rainbow, the sapphire, and the sea of glass—to set forth, as far as can be set forth, the things that shall be,—sight, the noblest sense here, made the type of the highest mental act hereafter; and Nature the spectacle given to employ sight now, and to adumbrate the things that shall be in heaven:—this is the high function assigned by Scripture to sight and to Nature.
When, therefore, in the light of these thoughts we study Nature in this, her highest poetic aspect, we may well feel that we are engaged in no trivial employment, but in one befitting an immortal being. Even the most common acts of minutely observing Nature’s handiwork may in this waypartake of a religious character. How much more when the great spectacle of Nature lends itself to devout imagination, and becomes as it were the steps of a stair ascending toward the Eternal!