BEAUTY, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God Band Angel ofhis Presence thru' all creation, fashioning her new love-realm in the mind of man, attempteth every mortal child with influences of her divine supremacy . . . ev'n as in a plant when the sap mounteth secretly and its wintry stalk breaketh out in the prolific miracle of Spring, or as the red blood floodeth into a beating heart to build the animal body comely and strong; so she 10in her transcendant rivalry would flush his spirit with pleasurable ichor of heaven: and where she hath found responsiv faculty in some richly favour'd soul— L'anima vaga delle cose belle, as saith the Florentine,—she wil inaugurate her feast of dedication, and even in thatt earliest onset, when yet infant Desire hath neither goal nor clue to fix the dream, ev'n then, altho' it graspeth nought and passeth in its airy vision away, and dieth out of remembrance, 'tis in its earnest of life 20and dawn of bliss purer and hath less of earthly tinge than any other after-attainment of the understanding: for all man's knowledge kenneth also of toil and flaw, and even his noblest works, tho' they illume the dark with individual consummation, are cast upon by the irrelevant black shadows of time and fate. Hence is the fascination of amateurs in art, who renouncing accomplishment attain the prize of their humbler devotion,—as Augustin saith, that fools may come at holiness where wise men miss, 30Facit enim hoc quaedam etiam stoliditas,— arriving by short-coming, like to homely birds of passage, nesting on the roofs of the workshops. And tho' of secret knowledge man's art is compact, yet not the loving study of any master-work, nor longest familiarity can ever efface its birthday of surprisal; and great music to me is glorify'd by memory of one timeless hour when all thought fled scared from me in my bewilderment. See then the boy in first encounter with beauty, 40his nativ wonder awaken'd by the motion of love; as when live air, breathing upon a smother'd fire, shooteth the smouldering core with tiny flames—so he kindleth at heart with eternal expectancies, and the dream within him looketh out at his eyes. 'Twas thru' worship of Christ that this thing came to men, whereat, when art achieved portrayal of tenderness, the christian painters throng'd their heav'n with cherubims, little amorini, who with rebel innocence dispossess'd the tall angels; and Mary's young babe 50cast off his swaddling bands, and stood-up on her lap in grace of naked childhood for the image of God. But as 'tis with the Race, for which our hope draweth the only assurance of its high nobility from rare examples, holy men and wise, revered ev'n by the common folk, that none the less pursue their common folly interminably, and more and more pamper despair that is the giant sorrow of earth— so in the child this glimpse or touch of immanence, being a superlativ brief moment of glory, 60is too little to leaven the inveterate lump of life; and the instincts whose transform'd vitality should lust after spiritual things, return to their vomit and wallow in the mire of their animal ruts. Nature hath something truly of her promise in all: yet, in the infinit disposition of random seeds, her full potency is rare; as in the end of his book that maketh the old school-benches yet to sprout in green, Aristotle confesseth: where the teacher saith virtue cannot be taught to a mind not well disposed 70by natur, and he that hath thatt rarest excellence, διά τινος θείας αἰτίας, may be above all men styled truly fortunat; and with those four Greek words hath proudly prick'd to virtue many a sluggard soul. Forsooth the need of Fortune stayeth not here, alas! Ther is no assurance of stability or fair growth, unless she stand by faithfully and foster the soul, fending from all evil and encompassing with good, the while these intimations come to be understood and harmonized by Reason in the conduct of life. 80Now as Reason matured to the power of manhood, tutor'd by disciplin of natur, and ordering the accumulated scrutiny of physical flux in various sciences, so education of spirit, in the dignity of its creativ enthusiasms and honorable intelligence of Goddes gifts, mapp'd out its own science of conduct, aligning a pathway of happiness thru' the valley of death: and thatt science, call'd Ethick, dealing with the skill and manage of the charioteer in Plato's myth, 90rangeth up here in place for the parley of this book.
Since all Ethick implyeth a sense of Duty in man, 'tis first to enquire whence that responsible ought arose; a call so universal and plain-spoken that some hav abstracted a special faculty, distinct from animal bias and underivable, whereby the creature kenneth the creator's Will, that, in stillness of sound speaking to gentle souls, dowereth all silence with the joy of his presence; but to men savage or superstitious a voice 100of horror, maleficent, inescapable, hounding them with fearful conviction of sin, as when Adam in Eden hid from the scour of God's eye. Which old tale of displeasur is true to life: because the imperativ obligation cannot be over-summ'd, being in itself the self-conscience of thatt Essence which is no other indeed than the prime ordinance that we call Law of Nature,—in its grade the same with the determin'd habit of electrons, the same with the determining instinct of unreasoning life, 110necessity become conscient in man—whereto all insubordination is imperfection in kind.
Reality appeareth in forms to man's thought as several links interdependent of a chain that circling returneth upon itself, as doth the coil'd snake that in art figureth eternity. From Universal Mind the first-born atoms draw their function, whose rich chemistry the plants transmute to make organic life, whereon animals feed to fashion sight and sense and give service to man, 120who sprung from them is conscient in his last degree of ministry unto God, the Universal Mind, whither all effect returneth whence it first began. The Ring in its repose is Unity and Being: Causation and Existence are the motion thereof. Thru'out all runneth Duty, and the conscience of it is thatt creativ faculty of animal mind that, wakening to self-conscience of all Essences, closeth the full circle, where the spirit of man escaping from the bondage of physical Law 130re-entereth eternity by the vision of God.
This absolution of Reason is not for all to see: But any man may picture how Duty was born, and trace thereafter its passage in the ethic of man. Ther is a young black ouzel, now building her nest under the Rosemary on the wall, suspiciously shunning my observation as I sit in the porch, intentiv with my pencil as she with her beak: Coud we discourse together, and wer I to ask for-why she is making such pother with thatt rubbishy straw, 140her answer would be surely: 'I know not, but I must.' Then coud she take persuasion of Reason to desist from a purposeless action, in but a few days hence when her eggs were to hatch, she would look for her nest; and if another springtide found us here again, with memory of her fault, she would know a new word, having made conscient passage from the MUST to the OUGHT. I halt not then nor stumble at how the duteous call was gotten in course of nature, rather it lieth to show how it was after-shapen in man from physical 150to moral ends, and came no longer only to affirm but sometimes even to oppose the bidding of instinct, positing beside ought the equivalent ought nots, the stern forbiddances of those tables of stone that Moses fetch'd out of the thunder of Sinai. And since we see how man's judgment of Right and Wrong varieth with education—and thatt without effect to strengthen or weaken Duty—, we conclude therefrom that education shapeneth our moralities. And when and whereas Conscience transfigureth the Instincts 160—to affection, as aforesaid, from motherly selfhood, and to spiritual love from lust of breed—, we find Duty therewith extended in the moral field. Thus 'tis (as missionaries tell) that head-hunters who seek relish in refinement of cruelty, wil yet to soft feelings respond at gentle appeal: my dog would do as well, coud he understand my speech. Yet tho' we see how birds in catering for their young stint not their self-devotion, and punctiliously observe distributiv justice; and that dutiful dogs 170urged by conflicting calls wil stand awhile perplex'd in dumb deliberation—ne'ertheless, because the true spiritual combat is unknown to brutes, moralists teaching virtue as an end-in-itself repudiate any sanction from motivs engaged on animal welfare, and make utility a cant term of reproach; tho' on their higher plane spiritual conduct also is utilitarian: For virtue subserveth the soul's comfort and joy, therewithal no less useful, nay more requisit 180than is material comfort to our full happiness in self-realization of perfected nature; the which a sound doctrin of pleasure wil confirm. Denial of Use hath done our virtue wrong, while some belittle also our Ethick, saying the subject is of matter unknowledgeable in scientific sense, taking contingency from the imperfection of man. Granted, wer all men perfect, none would seek virtue; nor should I now debate of it; but neither again wer all omniscient, would any seek knowledge: 190yet go we hunting after truth insatiably as the Saints after holiness, who, comforted by least attainment, persevere,—Seeking the Lord whom they hav found: and if a check or fault show more in Ethick, 'tis that the hunter is on fuller cry after true happiness than after mental truth; or he thinketh at least to hav well nosed his desire, and he nameth his quarry 'Satisfaction of soul.' Whereas of absolute Truth, whatever that may be, or is, he hath not an inkling, nay nor any cause, 200save in spiritual faith, even to hope well of it. ('Tis for such lack of stand that deep thinkers, who plot intellectual approaches to the unknown, will lean unconsciously upon ethick, or in the end incline graciously towards it.) Now any deficiency is more discernible in an object known than in a thing unknown to us, and in the discussion of it ther is better likelihood of agreement.
Altho' good disposition (as Aristotle hath it) may be by beauty educated, and aspire 210to theoretic wisdom (as Plato would teach) and Ethick therewithal claim honor of the same rank that ideal philosophy ascribeth to man, yet, if for lack of faith he sink that claim, I see a thing of hap without place in Reality. On no hand is't deny'd that terms of Right and Wrong are wholly pertinent to man's condition on earth; nor that, whatever his destiny may be, his origin was bestial and his first ethick a rudiment, that shifting ever and shaping in the story of man 220at every time is the index of his growth in grace; and, if the change of customs that the herd adopt for comfort and to insure what they most value in life, hath moral tendency upward, then that tendency is the animal sanction of virtue, and wil take honor as such. But Duty instill'd with order is so almighty of kind that 'twil make Law of Habit, whence all social codes outlast their turn and time, and in arrear of life hold the common folk backward from their nobler vaunt, lagging and dragging, whether as a garment outgrown 230tatter'd and foolish, or as strong fetters and chains wherein they lie fast-bound in misery and iron. Hence cometh all the need and fame of Teachers, men of inborn nobility, call'd Prophets of God, Saviours of society, Seers of the promised land,— thatt white-filleted company that Aeneas found circled around Musæus in the Elysian fields, the loved and loveable whose names liv evermore, the sainted pioneers of salvation, unto whom all wisdom won and all man's future hope is due; 240and with inspiration of their ampler air we see our Ethick split up shear and sharply atwain; two kinds diverse in kind ther be; the one of social need, lower, still holding backward in the clutch of earth, from old animal bondage unredeem'd; the other higher and spiritual, that by personal affiance with beauty hath made escape, soaring away to where the Ring of Being closeth in the Vision of God. Sticklers for equality wil hear nought of this, arguing that social is but a past-personal, 250personal a future-social, tenses of one verb, the amatum and amabo on the stem of 'love,' virtue's pure nativ stock which hath no need of graft; —a doctrin kindly at heart, that cajoleth alike diffidence of the ruler and conceit of the crowd, who in collusion float its credit; and awhile their ship of state runneth like the yacht in the race that with full bellying sail, for lack of seamanship, seemeth to forge ahead while it loseth leeway. No Politik admitteth nor did ever admit 260the teacher into confidence: nay ev'n the Church, with hierarchy in conclave compassing to install Saint Peter in Cæsar's chair, and thereby win for man the promises for which they had loved and worship'd Christ, relax'd his heav'nly code to stretch her temporal rule. For social Ethick with its legalized virtue is but in true semblance, alike for praise or blame, a friendly domestication of man's old wolf-foe, the adaptable subservient gentlemanly dog, beneath groom'd coat and collar in his passion unchanged. 270Thus 'tis that levellers, deeming all ethick one, and for being Socialists thinking themselves Teachers, can preach class-hatred as the enlighten'd gospel of love; but should they look to find firm scientific ground, whereon to found their creed in the true history of social virtue and of its progress hitherto, 'twil be with them in their research, as 'twas with him who yesteryear sat down in Mesopotamy to dig out Abram's birthplace in the lorn grave-yard of Asian monarchies;—and low hummocks of dust 280betray where legendary cities lie entomb'd, Chaldaean Kish and Ur; while for all life today poor nomads, with their sparse flotilla of swarthy tents and slow sand-faring camels, cruise listlessly o'erhead, warreners of the waste: Now this man duly unearth'd the walls whence Terah flitted, but beneath those walls more walls, and the elder buildings of a dynasty of wider rule than Abram knew, a nation extinct ere he was born: where-thru' sinking deeper their shafts the diggers came yet never on virgin soil, but still 290wondering on earlier walls, arches and masonry, a city and folk undremt of in archeology, trodden-under ere any story of man began; and there, happening on the king's tomb, they shovel'd from the dust the relics of thatt old monarch's magnificence— Drinking vessels of beaten silver or of clean gold, vases of alabaster, obsidian chalices, cylinder seals of empire and delicat gems of personal adornment, ear-rings and finger-rings, craftsmen's tools copper and golden, and for music a harp; 300withal in silver miniatur his six-oar'd skiff, a model in build and trim of such as ply today Euphrates' flowery marshes: all his earthly toys gather'd to him in his grave, that he might nothing lack in the unknown life beyond, but find ready to hand his jewel'd dice and gaming board and chamber-lamp, his toilet-box of paints and unguents—Therefore 'twas the chariot of his pride whereon he still would ride was buried with him; there lay yet the enamel'd film of the inlaid perish'd wood, and all the metal gauds 310that had emboss'd the rail: animal masks in gold, wild bulls and lions, and twin-figured on the prow great panther-heads to glare in silver o'er the course, impatient of their spring: and one rare master-work whose grace the old warrior wist not should outliv the name and fame of all his mighty doings, when he set it up thatt little nativ donkey, his mascot on the pole. 'Twas he who dug told me of these things and how, finding himself a housebreaker in the home of men who sixty hundred years afore, when they left life, 320had seal'd their tombs from sacrilege and there had lain, till from the secresy of their everlasting sleep he had torn the coverlet—his spirit, dazed awhile in wonder, suddenly was strick'n with great horror; for either side the pole, where lay the harness'd bones of the yoke-mated oxen, there beside their bones lay the bones of the grooms, and slaughter'd at their post all the king's body-guard, each liegeman spear in hand, in sepulchred attention; and whereby lay the harp the arm-bones of the player, as there she had pluck'd her dirge, 330lay mingled with its fragments; and nearby disposed, two rows of skeletons, her sisterly audience whose lavish ear-pendants and gold-filleted hair, the uniform decoration of their young service, mark'd them for women of the harem, sacrificed to accompany their lord, the day when he set forth to enter into the presence of the scepter'd shades congregated with splendour in the mansions of death. Leave Tigris now and Ur. Seek out our Aryan race by Gunga and Hydaspes in the teeming realm 340where Sakya Muni preach'd of gentleness and love, and took divinity before Christ came: see how at every Rajah's pyre, in Punjab or Kashmire, in Vijayanóggar, Kalikata and Udaipur, for liv-long centuries the mild Hindus hav burnt their multitudinous girl-concubines alive, and still beneath our lax imperial rule wil deem any honest outlawry of their ritual Suttee a tyrannous impiety of our western manners which none the less withheld not of our island kings 350the last Henry, styled first Defendër of the Faith, from slaying his wives at will; nor was he for such crime less esteem'd of the folk; altho' judged as a man by pagan ethic or christian or by the insight of poet or historian, more despicable than we need to suppose that old monarch of Ur. See how cross-eyed the pride of our world-wide crusade against Nigerian slavery, while the London poor in their Victorian slums lodged closer and filthier than the outraged alien; and under liberty's name 360our Industry is worse fed and shut out from the sun.— In every age and nation a like confusion is found.
IF DUTY held us long, now as in the old adage, Pleasure may follow after, taking like second rank in Plato's myth, as I twist it: wherein we traced Duty from the selfhood of individual life growing to reach communion with life eternal; while in the younger horse was pleasur intensified by love, until it issueth in the love of God. And yet hath pleasure truly its main stronghold in Self, 370because the greatest pleasure that man knoweth, is aye the pleasur of life, even as his chief displeasur is death. This Life-joy, like the breath-kiss of the all-ambient air unnoticed til the lack of it bring pain and death, is coefficient with the untrammel'd energy of nativ faculty, and the autometric scale of all functions and motions, which in the animal struggle for Self persistently against all hindrance: it is the lordly heraldry of the banner'd flower, in brutes the vaunt of vigour and the pose of pride, 380their wild impersonation of majesty; and in man the grace and ease of health alike in body and mind, thatt right congruity of his parts, for lack whereof his sanity is disabled maim'd and compromised. From personal pleasure then, seeing how good it is, and how a good man's pleasures all are good, it came an easy thought for men in quest of happiness to take it for their aim in all conduct, the account and logic of Ethick. So, flaunting their motto "Pleasure for pleasure's sake," these doughty Hedonists, 390having got rid of whatsoever oldfashion'd king had ruled by right divine, chose out for his good looks and crown'd this gay pretender, against whose privilege men in the street and schoolmen are for once agreed; because none wil deny that some pleasures are bad, while all men honour them who for their honour's sake wil suffer pain, and risk the great displeasur of death. Pure Hedonism therefore is confuted off-hand; and its social pretension is but a will-o-the wisp; as if the honest pleasur of a wise man coud lie 400in furthering or conniving at the pleasur of them who know not ev'n their own unhappiness, nor how ere they can win happiness they must learn wisdom by paths difficult and to them unpleasurable. Nor is spiritual Hedonism in better plight, for some are found to take spiritual pleasur in crime. 'Twould seem then the prime task of Ethick to discern 'twixt pleasures good and bad: but first 'twer well to show how ever it came that Pleasure, being the champion of our integrity, should in the event appear 410virtue's insidious foe; for-sure ther is no knowledge in the wisdom of conduct cardinal as is this. Now in my thought the manner of it was on this wise— As Pleasure came in man to the conscience of self, his Reason abstracted it as an idea, and when he found the pleasur increasing with the conscience of it, he dwelt thereon, and seeking more and more to enrich his conscious pleasur, and bloating it with luxury, invented and indulged vices unknown to brutes. Thus was nature's intention thwarted: whereupon 420(seeing also how brooding upon sensual delight provoketh the desire, which, so long as the mind be but engaged healthily or distracted apart, would never rise to emotion) Moralists took fright, and Teachers banishing pleasure from Ethick, where they should hav been content with a danger-signal, posted a prohibition, and not only forbade pleasur as a motiv for any conduct, but ruled that any admixtur of intention or its chance presence deprived conduct of merit: whence pleasure with them, 430instead of being an in-itself absolute good as nature would have had it, and which man would wish to be always present and with his perfection increase, came to be bann'd as the pollution of virtue;—And so, when the young poet my companion in study and friend of my heart refused a peach at my hands, he being then a housecarl in Loyola's menie, twas that he fear'd the savor of it, and when he waived his scruple to my banter, 'twas to avoid offence. But I, upon thatt day which after fifty years 440is near as yesterday, was no stranger to fear of pleasure, but had grown fearful of thatt fear; yet since the sublimation of life whereto the Saints aspire is a self-holocaust, their sheer asceticism is justified in them; the more because the bent and nativ color of mind that leadeth them aloof, or driveth, is thatt very delicacy of sense, whereby a pinprick or a momentary whiff or hairbreadth motion freëth the detent of force that can distract them wholly from their high pursuit: 450wherefor they fly God's garden, whose forbidden fruit (seemeth to them) was sweeten'd by a fiend's desire to make them fond and foolish. Nature ne'ertheless singeth loud in her prison, and for all ecstasy these mystics find no language but to echo again the psalm of her captivity; nay, furthermore, the doctrin esoteric in their rapt divines and their diviner poets—this the novice knew— is the rëincarnation of their renounced desire. The repudiation of pleasur is a reason'd folly 460of imperfection. Ther is no motiv can rebate or decompose the intrinsic joy of activ life, whereon all function whatsoever in man is based. Consider how this mortal sensibility hath a wide jurisdiction of range in all degrees, from mountainous gravity to imperceptible faintest tenuities:—The imponderable fragrance of my window-jasmin, that from her starry cup of red-stemm'd ivory invadeth my being, as she floateth it forth, and wantoning unabash'd 470asserteth her idea in the omnipotent blaze of the tormented sun-ball, checquering the grey wall with shadow-tracery of her shapely fronds; this frail unique spice of perfumery, in which she holdeth monopoly by royal licence of Nature, is but one of a thousand angelic species, original beauties that win conscience in man: a like marvel hangeth o'er the rosebed, and where the honeysuckle escapeth in serpentine sprays from its dark-cloister'd clamber thru' the old holly-bush, 480spreading its joybunches to finger at the sky in revel above rivalry. Legion is their name; Lily-of-the-vale, Violet, Verbena, Mignonette, Hyacinth, Heliotrope, Sweet-briar, Pinks and Peas, Lilac and Wallflower, or such white and purple blooms that sleep i' the sun, and their heavy perfumes withhold to mingle their heart's incense with the wonder-dreams, love-laden prayers and reveries that steal forth from earth, under the dome of night: and tho' these blossomy breaths, that hav presumed the title of their gay genitors, 490enter but singly into our neighboring sense, that hath no panorama, yet the mind's eye is not blind unto their multitudinous presences:—I know that if odour were visible as color is, I'd see the summer garden aureoled in rainbow clouds, with such warfare of hues as a painter might choose to show his sunset sky or a forest aflame; while o'er the country-side the wide clover-pastures and the beanfields of June would wear a mantle, thick as when in late October, at the drooping of day 500the dark grey mist arising blotteth out the land with ghostly shroud. Now these and such-like influences of tender specialty must not—so fine they be— fall in neglect and all their loveliness be lost, being to the soul deep springs of happiness, and full of lovingkindness to the natural man, who is apt kindly to judge of good by comfortable effect. Thus all men ever hav judged the wholesomness of food from the comfort of body ensuing thereupon, whereby all animals retrieve their proper diet; 510but if when in discomfort 'tis for pleasant hope of health restored we swallow nauseous medicines, So mystics use asceticism, and no man readier than they to assert eventual happiness to justify their conduct. Whence it is not strange (for so scientific minds in search of truth digest assimilable hypotheses) they should extend their pragmatism, and from their happiness deduce the very existence and the natur of God, and take religious consolation for the ground of faith: 520as if the pleasur of life wer the sign-manual of Nature when she set her hand to her covenant. But man, vain of his Reason and thinking more to assure its independence, wil disclaim complicity with human emotion; and regarding his Mother deemeth it dutiful and nobler in honesty coldly to criticize than purblindly to love; and in pride of this quarrel he hath been led in the end to make distinction of kind 'twixt Pleasur and Happiness; observing truly enough how one may hav pleasure 530and yet miss happiness; but this warpeth the sense and common use of speech, since all tongues in the world call children and silly folk happy and sometimes ev'n brutes. The name of happiness is but a wider term for the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life, attendant on all function, and not to be deny'd to th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature spiritual is by definition unnatural. But I would not thus wrong nature; rather say I that as man realizeth his higher energies, 540the quality and value of his pleasures wil so change, that tho' the animal life-joy persist thru'out, yet his transported joy developing thereon cometh by excellence to need a special term. And Aristotle in his tenth book thus summeth it— "Whatso thatt faculty may be which hath in man "natural governance and apprehendeth things "noble and divine,—it is the energy (so saith he) "of thatt faculty in its proper excellence, which is "the Perfect Happiness;" and with his predicate he assumeth the less perfect also, and lower states. But these philosophers—their Ethick being concern'd with man's perfection—used the abstracted terms whereby they had pre-defined distinctions, which as they diverged in separat culmination obscured identity. Twas for that reason, I guess, that Aristotle himself so harpeth on his doctrin, as if he was aware that his conclusion had somehow miss'd its full premiss: But if we see Spiritual, Mental and Animal to be gradations merged together in growth and mix'd 560in their gradations, and that the animal pleasure runneth thru'out all grades heartening all energies, then Aristotle's wisdom goeth without saying; and the actual complexity of human conduct wil appear nature's order in the condition of growth; and so the trouble and wonderment of baulk'd insight may all be presently sponged from the treatises. Altho' in the distinction of pleasures good and bad the unparagon'd nobility of the great virtues standeth without controversy among them that know 570—who instill them as duties—, yet they hav writ no rule nor rubric whereby conduct can in lesser affairs accommodate these principles, when they conflict in upright personalities, nor square their use with the intricat contingencies that knit our lives, and the interaction of unrelated sequences. In that uncharted jungle a good man wil go right, while an ill disposition wil miss and go wrong: yet in the worst we still may find something to praise, in the lame child that stumbleth, or the canker'd bud; 580ev'n the poor blasted promise of desiderat fruit hath true relation to the absent beauty thereof. Forever on the asses bridge and in the ship of fools life is agog; and there the Muse hath set her stage, and in humorous compact with philosophy hideth her godlike face beneath a grinning mask, and donning the gay motley of idiotic man empersonateth him in his chance dilemmas; by the eternal comedy of the unfitness of things beguiling the disconsolat with sympathy 590and cheering contemplation with æsthetic mirth. Full many hav found happiness toiling all their time thus disporting with truth; and at carving such toys hav thru' love of children become Teachers of men: But here I wol nat han to do of swich matere.
Since then all promise of spiritual advancement lieth in two things, good disposition and (as 'twas said) right education, it followeth here to speak of these. First then of Disposition.—Unless there truly be more good than bad absolutely in the make of man, 600ther is no security for him and little hope, except the inherent harmony and unity of good be such as must in the end outweigh the surplusage of all discordant enmity; and this well may be: but should we inquire if Nature hath by any means inclined man's disposition to the virtuous choice, we may find how she hath done this, and by the energy of the imitativ faculty hath assured her end. "For Mimicry is inborn in man from childhood up: "and in this differeth he from other animals, 610"being the most imitativ: and his first approach "to learning maketh he in mimicry, and hath delight "in imitations of all kinds." I would indeed that Aristotle had set this pregnant verity in forefront of his Ethick also, as now 'tis found to stablish his Poetick; for the assumption of it here and there in the Morals escapeth notice and all the consequences thereof are unseen. But if the cradled child imitateth the shows that happen around him, he for-sure will most attend 620to those that most attract, and must therefore be drawn and held by the inborn love of Beauty inconsciently of preference to imitate the more beautiful things. And because Virtue is an activity, and lieth not in doctrin and theory but in practice and conduct, co-ordinating potencies into energy, (and here 'tis Aristotle again speaketh, not I) the preferential imitation of right action is the habit of virtue: and thus a child well-bred in good environment, so soon as he is aware 630of personality, wil know and think himself a virtuous being and instinctivly, in the proud realization of Self common to all animals, becometh to be his own ideal, a such-a-one as would WILL and Do this (saith he) and never do thatt, refraining there from shame, consenting here for love, winning new beauty of soul from the embrace of beauty, and strength by practised combat against folly and wrong, to perfect as he may his idea of himself. Spiritual life being thus imagin'd in the child 640thru' conscient personality and love of beauty, —which on so tender a plant budding hath power to bear the richest fruit of all creation, incomparable— ther is nought in all his nurtur of more intrinsic need than is the food of Beauty: as mammals milk to his flesh, which admitteth no proxy, so Beauty is to his soul, that calleth for this comforting of nature's breast, tho' its outcries be unheard when it pineth in pain: and since the hunger of mimicry is so strong in him, that in the lack of milk 'twil ravin gall, and draw infection and death from evil as quickly as life from good, 651the first intrinsic need in education is found. Thus Christ, who knew what was in man and taught man's perfect happiness to be the wonted realm of heav'n within his heart, spake thus Take hede (he said) Se that ye offende not won of these litell wons; and once again on this wise, "If ther be any sin '"unpardonable even in the wide compassion of God, "'tis the denial and blasphemy of his Holy Spirit, "and the quenching in others of its nascent flame." 660Delicat and subtle are the dealings of nature, whereby the emotionable sense secretly is touch'd to awareness and by glimpse of heav'nly vision drawn within the attraction of the creativ energy that is the ultimat life of all being soe'er: While Science sitteth apart in her exile, attent on her other own invisibles; and working back to the atoms, she handleth their action to harness the gigantic forces of eternal motion, in serviceable obedience to man's mortal needs; 670and not to be interrupted nor call'd off her task, dreaming, amid the wonders of her sightly works, thru' her infinitesimals to arrive at last at the unsearchable immensities of Goddes realm. But while the intellectual faculty is yet unborn, spiritual things to children are even as Music is, thatt firstborn pleasur of animal conscience that now hath for its human honour its origin forgot; the which a child absorbeth readily and without thought, tho' in after years, if thatt initiation hav lack'd, 680scarce can a man by grammar come at the elements. Their twain affinity may be seen also in this, that both are companied by the same full delight of progress in performance, while the same method serveth for both; if but the teacher be himself virtuous or musical—an examplar as such, he wil be keenly follow'd, and often in his love that his pupil surpass him is his best reward.
Of intellectual training 'tis not here to tell; thatt cometh later, and then the trouble is evermore 690the lack of teachers; yet wer teachers plentiful, and gentle environment as common as bramble-scrub, never coud human wit discern to accommodate the countless idiosyncracies of mind withal; indeterminable are they and never can be told. But 'twer well to consider in what a fusty crypt the awakening mind is caged when—like a butterfly that newly hath slipp'd its crysalis to sport i' the sun— it thrusteth out its finely adapted tentacles in their first palping movements to the encounter of life, 700with confidence exploring its nativ yearnings. How, when this apprehensiv expectancy is met by fenced obstruction! How, when ev'n the syllables which with such duteous pains the child had learn'd to tongue, the secret spell whereat the fabled treasure-house should open its doors—how, when thatt magic Sesamë hath proved a foreign jargon and, like a rusty key, by long mishandling already hath hamper'd the lock! How should not childish effort, thus thwarted and teased, recoil dishearten'd bruized and stupefy'd beneath 710the rough-shod inculcation of inculcated minds, case-harden'd by their own thoughtless reiterations? The mud-fish may be happy and at home in the pond, but live Imagination, conscient of its joy, ranketh oft with the dunces in such scholarship, finding its happiness in freedom to mature the personality of its nativ potency. Others in after-growth at heavy cost repair their early damage, since in intellectual things all errors are remediable; but 'tis not so 720in the spiritual life, nay ev'n the soul wash'd pure of absorb'd taint may take a strange gloss of the lye.
Of two young thoro'breds galoping neck to neck I'd choose the colt that with least effort held his course. Of two runners abreast my liking would crown him who had greater grace of limb and show'd no trouble of face, tho' he by such complacency might miss the prize: But virtue in the soldier is the martyr's heart that, battling for supremacy, out-stayeth defeat, firing the citadel ere he yield it to the foe: 730and 'tis nobility that pulleth our favour upon the weaker side in any unequal match. Now in spiritual combat, altho' I must deem them the most virtuous who with least effort excell, yet, virtue being a conflict, moralisers hold that where conflict is hardest virtue must be at best; and in the rub of life and physical hindrance a man who has striven heroically and done great deeds, in spite of frailty or bodily disease or pain, may win more admiration and praise in the end than he 740who with comfort to himself, indolently as it wer, hath done as well; nay, for the very impediments may ev'n be envied, as old navigators were in the glory they had got to hav outridden their storms. And yet from Zion's hill-top to the Dead-Sea shore, between the Teacher sitting on the Mount and them, the nethermost unfortunats, that cannot learn,— in all the mid-mass crowding on the flowery slopes, hearers o' the Word, ther is little difference to be told: The same incarnat traitor routeth in all hearts; 750nay, since 'tis an æthetic delicacy of mind that, refining the enticement of carnal pleasure, voideth the shame, the elect are oft in straits extreme: the mastery of warriorship, their apparent grace, was won by disciplin of deadly strife: in them ease is no indolence: indolence rather is theirs who, ill-disposed to training, are unexercised in good habit of war; and 'tis the lack thereof maketh the soldier unready and the conflict so hard, rather than any unwonted virulence or rage 760of the onslaught; for thatt same happeneth anon to all.
AND here my thought plungeth into the darksome grove and secret penetralia of ethic lore, wherein I hav wander'd often and long and thought to know my way, and now shall go retracing my remember'd paths, tho' no lute ever sounded there nor Muse hath sung, deviously in the obscure shadows, and none follow me entering where erst I enter'd, and all enter free, at the great clearing made by Socrates of yore, when he said know thyself; for true to his chief premiss 770that ignorance is the root of all men's folly, he taught to turn the lamp of Reason inwardly upon the mind. And truly with thatt keen Γνῶθι σεαυτόν of his was great felling of trees: for not Socrates knew nor any hath ever kenn'd how man thinketh; and less how thought thinketh itself; nor how in thatt province Reason hath right to rule; nor of what stuff the reins can be, wherewith the Charioteer bridled the steeds in that same vision of his which Plato saith he told to Phaedrus, as they sat together on the banks 780of the Ilissus talking of the passions of men.
All terrestrial Life, in all functions and motions, operateth thru' alliance of living entities disparate in their structure but logically correlated in action under some final cause. Suchlike co-ordinations may be acquired in man with reason'd purpose consciently, as when a learner on viol or flute diligently traineth his hand to the intricat fingering of the stops and strings; or may be innate, as the spontaneous flight of birds; 790or antenatal and altogether inconscient, as the food-organs, call'd vegetativ because such cellular connivance is the life of plants. The main co-ordinations whereon life hangeth were ever automatous, and such states when acquired tend to become self-working as they are perfected, dropping out of our ken: the proverb truly spake Habit is second nature, and 'twil function best without superintendence, for the least brain-wave or timid rippling of self-consciousness can rob 800the bodily movements of their nativ grace. Now these perfected unify'd organities, whether of inconscient birth or such as when acquired proudly stand off from conscience, all act in response to external stimulants that vary in kind, and range from mere material contact to untraceable thought. Thus the digestiv kind is stirr'd by touch of food within the body, or by the sight or sound or smell of the object, or ev'n by the unconscious thought thereof; and thence thru' appetite by mere thought of the sense; 810and can decipher a message in the secret code of language, and prick up at sound of the symbol: For never can those privy-councilors in the brain withhold official knowledge from the corporat mind; ther is no deliberation or whisper'd thought, not ev'n unspoken intention among them, but it will leak out to thatt swarming intelligence where life began, and where ideas wander at liberty to find their procreativ fellowship; thatt fluid sea in which all problems, spiritual or logical 820æsthetic mathematic or practic, resolve melting as icebergs launch'd on the warm ocean-stream: and wheresoe'er this corporat alchemy is at best, 'tis call'd by all men genius, and its aptitudes like virtuous disposition may be inherited. Thus must all kind of stimulus hav come some way across the misty march-land, whereon men would fix their disputable boundary between Matter and Mind, —as every sensation must suffer translation ere it can mediate in the live machinery 830of any final cause or purpose: whence 'twould seem that science went astray thinking to appropriate some nervous reactions wholly to her material sphere, and rather should hav thought to extend the mental field. Now this spontaneous life oweth nought to Reason (the conscient faculty which Socrates invoked); and so her claim to be the "very consciousness of things judging themselves" is "vain above measure": for every Essence hath its own Idea, and so cometh thereby to its own full conscient life in man: 840for-sure the idea of Beauty is not Reason's idea, nor hath Reason the idea of Courage or of Mirth, of Faith or Love or Poetry or of Music's delight; if Reason as an essence owneth to any idea, let her make good her claim and therewith be content: so be it; and surely Reason's property will be the idea of Order;—and ifso, I think to find how by the very natur of her own faculty she was deceived to imagin its universal scope; for since all natur is order'd (nor none will deny 850that 'tis by Reason alone we are of such order aware), all things must of their ordinance come in her court for judgment; and 'twas thus Pythagoras coud hold NUMBER to be the universal essence of things: nay, see the starry atoms in the seed-plot of heaven stripp'd to their nakedness are nothing but Number; and see how Mathematick rideth as a queen cheer'd on her royal progress thru'out nature's realm; see how physical Science, which is Reason's trade and high profession, booketh ever and docketeth 860all things in order and pattern;how Philosophy, shuttling out in the unknown like a hungry spider, blindly spinneth her geometric webs, testing and systematizing even her own disorders, her solipsism and her gossamer ontologies gnostic or cabbalist: and 'twas thus Socrates coud evoke Reason to order and disciplin the mind— the divine Logos that should shine in the darkness,— a good physician who must heal himself withal. [The assumed docility is by English moralists term'd the 'Good Will' and fetch'd in as' twer from without; 871yet 'tis but the old animal instinct of selfhood to'ard realisation, which continueth on with the animal promoted to spiritual life; wherein desire for betterment is the promise and premiss of all virtue; or if the willingness be but desire of knowledge, thatt will find the goal where Truth and Virtue and Beauty are all as one.] Now seeing the aim of Socrates we must inquire what the Mind's contents are; how disorder'd; and why 880ther should in the good mind be any disorder at all.
What the Mind is, this thing bidden to know itself? First I bethink me naturally of every man as a unique creature, a personality in whom we lucidly distinguish body and mind, and talk readily of either tho' inseparable and mutually dependent, together or apart the created expression of Universal Mind. And of the body I think as the machinery of our terrestrial life evolving towards conscience 890in the Ring of Reality; and thence of the mind as thatt evolved conscience, the which in every-one is different, as the body differeth also in each. And human Intellect I see form'd and compact of the essential Ideas, wherewith soever each man hath come in contact personally, and in so far as he is kindly disposed to absorb their influences to build his personality; and since all ideas come to him thru' the senses, thatt old proviso nisi ipse intellectus is futile to me; 900for intellectus here seemeth to exclude itself, as being thatt all-receptiv conscient energy which is the mind of man; thatt ultimat issue of the arch-creativ potency of Being, wherefrom the senses took existence. Thus I come to think that if the mind held all ideas in plenitude 'twould be complete, at one with natur and harmonized with as good harmony as we may find in nature. Now as our optic science teacheth pure white light to be the consummation of all the colour-bands 910into which by diffraction it can be separated, whereof if any ray went missing, the sunlight wer impure and imperfect (or so we may think); a suchlike imperfection must be in all men's minds, because the complemental ideas parcel'd in each are incomplete, being only such as that one man may hav happ'd on, and those only in the measure whereby he is tuned to take cognisance of them: thus it is all men differ each from each, since neither environment nor disposition can ever in any two men 920be the same or alike, and therefor (as was said) true individuality within the species would seem reach'd in mankind. Again likewise 'tis seen how national mentalities are mutually incomprehensible and irreconcilable; since each group as it rose was determin'd apart by conditions of life which none other coud share, by climate, language, and historic tradition estranging evermore; nor are such obstinat bonds the weaker for any intrinsic absurdity: 930Nay, see the Armenian folk in their snow-burrows, as if distrustful of their high mountainous plateau between the seas, hav riveted their patriotism by stubborn adherence to an ancient heresy, a paradoxy anent the two natures of Christ, which some theologic bishop, peering in the fog of his own exhalations, thought pleasing to God; altho' no creature might possibly understand it. Again from this same cause it wil follow no less that men commonly run so near to the average; 940for the animal ideas are common property and, being the greatest common measure of all mankind, wil stand-out as the mean statistical features. Again we now may see—and 'tis pleasant to see— how simple characters hav such extreme beauty, for that the soul's nobility consisteth not in riches of imagination or intellect but in harmony of Essences, which hath full power where a few fundamentals in purity attain their self-cöordination; as honest pots and pans 950may for their unsophisticated beauty excell a prize diploma-picture of our academy: like as in music, when true voices blend in song, the perfect intonation of the major triad is sweetest of all sounds; its inviting embrace resolveth all discords; and all the ambitious flights of turbulent harmony come in the end to rest with the fulfilment of its liquidating cloze. Again we hence rebutt that old dilemma of Art, which would set man in lordly enmity against nature 960for that his pensiv play transcendeth her beauty; —as when Sebastian preludeth, all her voices that ever have reach'd our ears are crest-fal'n and abash'd: for tho' man cannot wield her infinit resource of delicacy and strength, yet hath he in lieu thereof a range triumphant, where his exorbitant thought defying Space and Time hath power to blend all things visible and invisible, and freely redispose every essence that he knoweth, to parcel them at will— or so he thinketh—, like an occult magician 970whose summons all spirits must attend and obey, from the heart-blaze of heaven to the unvisited deep; tho' he hav no wizardry to exorcise them withal. Now this dilemma (I say) is rebutted hereby, because man's faculty of creation, rare in him and not at his command, is but Nature herself, who danceth in her garden at the blossoming-time 'mong the flowers of her setting; and tho' true it be that Art needeth as full devotion and diligence in the performance as doth Virtue, yet i' the mind 980of the artist Nature's method surely is on this wise;— the Ideas which thru' the senses hav found harborage, being come to mortal conscience work-out of themselves their right co-ordinations and, creativly seeking expression, draw their natural imagery from the same sensuous forms whereby they found entrance; thus linking up with all the long tradition of Art. The manner of this magic is purest in musick, but by the learner is seen more clearly in poetry, wherein each verbal symbol exposeth its idea; 990so that 'tis manifest by what promptings of thought the imaginativ landscape is built and composed, and how horizon'd: And the secret of a poem lieth in this intimat echo of the poet's life. Now in its selfcreativness the manner of Art cannot be simulated, altho' Mimicry is Beauty's cradle: But, as in the Spirit of Man all manner of grades are found, so wil it be in his Art, with such disorder of thought as is not here to tell; for every man, whom Beauty hath laid beneath her spell, 1000—tho' but by glimpse or dream, and him full ignorant of what idea hath moved him and even by what means;— wil feel about to express some mintage of himself, by imitation or birdlike hymeneal lilt, to fix his hold on joy, his cogito ergo sum. Thus may a jingle of words fasten his faith on God, as schoolboys memorize their lesson better in rhyme.
Inasmuch then as the ideas in any one mind are a promiscuous company muster'd at random, ther wil be such disorder as Reason can perceive 1010and may hav skill to amend; but tho' we grant her art valid in principle and salutary in effect, the debit of failure is heavy in her accounts. Yet we discredit not all Medicine because ther be incurable maladies that end in death,— nor yet because the leech, when he is call'd in to heal an indigestiv stomach, can hav no dealing directly with the embroil'd co-ordinating cells,— and, for the lack of any intelligent knowledge of their intimat bickerings, wil hav recourse 1020to palliativs and sentimental assurances of favorable conditions, exercise and air, hoping thus to entice them to a better behaviour,— or observing some chemical excess in their chyme wil deftly neutralize it with a pinch of salt; so we shall also allow Reason her claim to rule: and to judge by oneself, as each man must, I find Reason wil diagnose the common ailment of Mind a lack of harmony; for with the Ideas at war —now one Idea in mastery and now another, 1030acting at call o' the moment indiscriminatly,— the man is foolish, unreasonable as we say, inept, without set purpose, weak of will; whereas if all should work together in concert, he wil be determin'd and consistent: And I see man's Will is here no independent concentrated force, like the steel spring box'd up in a French clock and wound for local distribution, but is rather itself the concentrating of a predistributed intrinsic power;—the emotions, passions and desires, 1040concurrent with the Ideas, being surely of themselves wilful enough, and able among themselves at strife to make a fool, and in co-ordination a sage. Will, then, in the good mind a sustain'd harmony, is in the bad a dissonance, or it may be a strange co-ordination, or the tyranny of one idea; from which our great civic convulsions mostly arise and popular rebellions, when the Demagog hath fulminated some mighty essential idea, which entereth wildly into the loose minds of the herd 1050and, finding there no governance, runneth riot and, drawing all wilful authority to itself, wil seem the only live thing; like a firebrand at night flaring afar, that in the sunlight wer a troublous smoke: and if such insurrection by contagion attain predominance uncontrollable, to the overthrow of any existing rule, then the Will of the folk is dubb'd by history's pen the Will of God. But since this over-mastering prevalent idea may be good in itself while it wreaketh but wrong, 1060and since I see that all human activities may be order'd equally for ravage or defence, Reason herself here questioneth me how I trust her mere ordering of life to make for happiness— whereto my answer is my good faith in what I hav writ. How the mind of man from inconscient existence cometh thru' the animal by growth of reasoning to'ard spiritual conscience hath been duly told: And Reason—being essentially (as in place 'twas found) the idea of Order, and thus itself the appurtenance 1070of essences, with them passing from physical unto spiritual order in a mind endued with conscience of the higher spiritual essences— Reason (say I) wil rise to awareness of its rank in the Ring of Existence, where man looketh up to the first cause of all; and wil itself decree and order discreetly the attitude of the soul seeking self-realization in the vision of God, becoming at the last thatt arch-conscience of all, to which the Greek sage who possess'd it made appeal. 1080The attraction of this motion is our conscience of it, our love of wisdom and of beauty; and the attitude of those attracted wil be joyful obedience with reverence to'ard the omnificent Creator and First Cause, whose Being is thatt beauty and wisdom which is to be apprehended only and only approach'd by right understanding of his creation, and found in thatt habit of faith which some thinkers hav styled The Life of Reason; and this only true bond of love and reasonable relation (if relation ther be) 1090'twixt creature and creator, man and nature's God, the which we call Religion,—is fundamental, physically and metaphysically in fashion or force undistinguishable from Duty itself: sprung from the same primal reality, it also aborted in like dolorous superstition, when the first-born intimations of spiritual life scared man's animal mind, that in childish terror seeking protection from the unseen, fenced his dark cave with codes of fearful fantasy and———flush'd by the stir 1100of the irresistible impulse which drave him (yea, still driveth) with fierce exultation (albeit we may deplore thatt barbarous aberration),———with credulous magic cloggeth his airy spirit and discrediteth his Reason and Faith alike . . . . . so old a trouble and great that the honest indictment of the Epicurean goeth unrefuted, and his famous verse tantum religio potuit suadere malorum yet ringeth true as when he thought to benefit mankind, and from his woes rescue him for ever, 1110drowning the thought of God from off the face of the earth in his deluge of atoms; and made in the mind a second Void, the which his sect should keep inane by the inventiv levity of their enlightenment; til, as with animals that hav fasted too long and aking within for their emptiness wil eat too greedily, we see in our fellows today fresh recrudescence of forgonn superstition; the while our generation, sicken'd by the grime of murky slums, slagheaps and sooty bushes, 1120wil plan garden-cities and for her soilure make reddition to Nature, replanting the fair lands which our industrial grandsires disaforested. This hankering after lost Beauty, in sickness of heart a disconsolat sentiment, is the remnant grace of nature's covenant, the starved germ athirst for God ev'n for the living God, that singeth in the psalm quemadmodum cervus, and now amidst the blank tyranny of ugliness maketh many a rebel pining for enlargement and plotting to recall 1130thatt old arrant exile who, for all her mischief, hid neath her cloak the master-key of happiness. In truth "spiritual animal" wer a term for man nearer than "rational" to define his genus; Faith being the humanizer of his brutal passions, the clarifier of folly and medicine of care, the clue of reality, and the driving motiv of thatt self-knowledge which teacheth the ethick of life.
And yet hath prayer, the heav'n-breathing foliage of faith, found never a place in ethick: for Philosophy 1140filtering out delusions from her theory of life, in dread of superstition gave religion away to priests and monks, who rich in their monopoly furbish and trim the old idols, that they dare not break, for fear of the folk and need of good disciplin. But since all men alike, in any strain of heart or great emotion of soul, credulous or sceptic, fall instinctivly to prayer for thatt solace and strength which they who use the habit may be seen to hav found— nay, had Prayer no effect other than reverence for the self-knowledge, which the Greek enjoin'd, whereby 1151'tis sovran to bind character, concentrate Will, and purify intention—nay, ev'n so 'twould claim a place among the causes of determin'd flux. Ah! tho' it may be a simple thing in reach of all, Best ever is rare, a toilsome guerdon; and prayer is like those bodily exercises that athletes wil use, which each must humbly learn, and ere he win to power so diligently practice, and in such strict course as wil encroach unkindly on the agreements of life: 1160whence men slouch in the laxity that they call ease, rather than rouse to acquiring thatt strength, without which the body cannot know the pleasur of its full ease, the leisur of strength in the hard labor of life. Now every emotion hath the bodily expression beseeming each; and since the body cannot be without some attitude, so Prayer wil hav its own: and here just as in any athletic exercise ther be postures and motions foolish in themselves and often undignified, so too the postur of prayer may shame our pride of spirit, which would grudge the limbs 1171warrant of entry upon her sacred solitudes; albeit the body come there in full abject guize to do submission and pay fealty to the soul: And since our speech, in its mere vocal cries and calls, hath less natural beauty and true significance than the bodily gestures which convey our desires, so ev'n the words of prayer wil lack in dignity and seem impertinent; as full often they be, and ever had been, unless man's language had upgrown 1180from makeshift unto mastery of his thought, and learn'd by its fine musing art to redeem for his soul the beauty of holiness, marrying creativly his best earthly delight with his heav'nliest desire, when he calleth on God, Send forth thy light and truth that they may lead me and bring me unto thy Holy Hill, to thatt fair place which is the joy of the whole earth. See! ther is never dignity in a concourse of men, save only as some spiritual gleam hearteneth the herd. Any idea whatsoe'er new-born to consciousness, 1190if it infect the folk, taketh repetend life and exuberant difformity of disorder'd growth from physical communion of emotion and thought; and of its nascent appetency 'twil embrace affinity in its host, to stagger and eliminate all other ideas, thus improportionably surmounting its own province in Nature's order; so that unless itself it be a thing of Beauty, insurmountable of kind, more beauteous in excess— as when the glow reverberating in a golden cup 1200multiplyeth the splendour,—it cometh that the herd, being in its empassionment ever irrational, wil even of harmless enthusiasm breed disgrace. Thus in our English sport, the spectacular games, where tens of thousands flock throttling the entrance-gates like sheep to th' pen, wherein they sit huddled to watch the fortune of the football, ther is often here and there mid the seething glomeration of thatt ugly embankment of gazing faces, one that came to enjoy the sight knowingly, and yet looketh never on the contest: to him 1210the crowd is the spectacle; its wrestle and agony is more than the actors, and its contagion so thick and irresistible, that ere he feel surprise he too may find himself, yea philosophy and all, carried away—as when a strong swimmer in the sea who would regain the shore, is by the headlong surf toss'd out of action, and like a drifted log roll'd up breathless and unresisting on the roaring beach. But if he join the folk, when at the cloze of Lent they kneel in the vast dimness of a city church, 1220while on the dense silence the lector's chant treadeth from cadence to cadence the long dolorous way of the great passion of Christ,—or anon when they rise to free their mortal craving in the exultant hymn that ringeth with far promise of eternal peace . . . or should it happen to him, in strange lands far from home, to watch the Moslem host, when at their hour of prayer they troop in wild accoutrement their long-drill'd line motionless neath the sun upon the Arabian sands, hush'd to th' Imam's solemnel invocation of God, 1230as their proud tribal faith savagely draweth strength from the well-spring of life,—then at the full Amen of their deep-throated respond he wil feel his spirit drawn into kinship and their exaltation his own; the more that he himself can be no part thereof, incomprehensible because comprehending: —and they be muddied pools whereat the herd water. Such is the dignity of prayer in the common folk; and its humility is the robe of intellect. So whenever it hath been by some mystics renounced 1240in sanctuary of their sublime abstraction—as if utter abnegation had left no manners else to abjure,— they appear to lack in use and duty of fellowship. Yet in such solitaries, pallid clerks of heaven, souls blanch'd for lack of sunjoys (as 'twould seem to hav been), their contemplation (it may be) of very intensity generateth ideas of higher irradiance; for ideas born to human personality, having their proper attractions like as atom or cell, from soul to soul pass freely; and 'twas this mystery, whereof they kenn'd the need who set that clause i' the creed, 1251which, compelling belief in the communion of saints, foldeth the sheep in pastures of eternal life.
Nor doubt I that as this thinking machinery perisheth with the body, so animal thought with all its whimper and giggle must perish therewith, with all shames, all vain ostentation and ugliness, and all personality of all other ideas; except it be that, like as in unconscient things whence conscience came, ther is also thru'out conscient life 1260the same emergent evolution, persisting in our spiritual life to the goal of conscience. This mind perisheth with this body, unless the personal co-ordination of its ideas hav won to Being higher fhan animal life, at thatt point where the Ring cometh upward to reach the original creativ Energy which is God, with conscience entering into life everlasting.
'TWAS at thatt hour of beauty when the setting sun squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood 1270his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night; and all the towers and temples and mansions of men face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp naked beneath the darkness;—while to mortal eyes 'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strain at lamplit tasks—'tis given, as for a royal boon to beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watch where uncurtain'd behind the great windows of space Heav'n's jewel'd company circleth unapproachably— 'Twas at sunset that I, fleeing to hide my soul 1280in refuge of beauty from a mortal distress, walk'd alone with the Muse in her garden of thought, discoursing at liberty with the mazy dreams that came wavering pertinaciously about me; as when the small bats, issued from their hangings, flitter o'erhead thru' the summer twilight, with thin cries to and fro hunting in muffled flight atween the stars and flowers. Then fell I in strange delusion, illusion strange to tell; for as a man who lyeth fast asleep in his bed may dream he waketh, and that he walketh upright 1290pursuing some endeavour in full conscience—so 'twas with me; but contrawise; for being in truth awake methought I slept and dreamt; and in thatt dream methought I was telling a dream; nor telling was I as one who, truly awaked from a true sleep, thinketh to tell his dream to a friend, but for his scant remembrances findeth no token of speech—it was not so with me; for my tale was my dream and my dream the telling, and I remember wondring the while I told it how I told it so tellingly. And yet now 'twould seem 1300that Reason inveigled me with her old orderings; as once when she took thought to adjust theology, peopling the inane that vex'd her between God and man with a hierarchy of angels; like those asteroids wherewith she later fill'd the gap'twixt Jove and Mars. Verily by Beauty it is that we come at wisdom, yet not by Reason at Beauty: and now with many words pleasing myself betimes I am fearing lest in the end I play the tedious orator who maundereth on for lack of heart to make an end of his nothings. 1310Wherefor as when a runner who hath run his round handeth his staff away, and is glad of his rest, here break I off, knowing the goal was not for me the while I ran on telling of what cannot be told.
For not the Muse herself can tell of Goddes love; which cometh to the child from the Mother's embrace, an Idea spacious as the starry firmament's inescapable infinity of radiant gaze, that fadeth only as it outpasseth mortal sight: and this direct contact is't with eternities, 1320this springtide miracle of the soul's nativity that oft hath set philosophers adrift in dream; which thing Christ taught, when he set up a little child to teach his first Apostles and to accuse their pride, saying, Unless ye shall receive it as a child, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. So thru'out all his young mental apprenticehood the child of very simplicity, and in the grace and beauteous attitude of infantine wonder, is apt to absorb Ideas in primal purity, 1330and by the assimilation of thatt immortal food may build immortal life; but ever with the growth of understanding, as the sensible images are more and more corrupt, troubled by questioning thought, or with vainglory alloy'd, 'tis like enough the boy in prospect of his manhood wil hav cast to th' winds his Baptism with his Babyhood; nor might he escape the fall of Ev'ryman, did not a second call of nature's Love await him to confirm his Faith or to revoke him if he is wholly lapsed therefrom. 1340And so mighty is this second vision, which cometh in puberty of body and adolescence of mind that, forgetting his Mother, he calleth it "first Love"; for it mocketh at suasion or stubbornness of heart, as the oceantide of the omnipotent Pleasur of God, flushing all avenues of life, and unawares by thousandfold approach forestalling its full flood with divination of the secret contacts of Love,— of faintest ecstacies aslumber in Nature's calm, like thought in a closed book, where some poet long since 1350sang his throbbing passion to immortal sleep—with coy tendernesses delicat as the shifting hues that sanctify the silent dawn with wonder-gleams, whose evanescence is the seal of their glory, consumed in self-becoming of eternity; till every moment as it flyeth, cryeth "Seize! Seize me ere I die! I am the Life of Life." 'Tis thus by near approach to an eternal presence man's heart with divine furor kindled and possess'd falleth in blind surrender; and finding therewithal 1360in fullest devotion the full reconcilement betwixt his animal and spiritual desires, such welcome hour of bliss standeth for certain pledge of happiness perdurable: and coud he sustain this great enthusiasm, then the unbounded promise would keep fulfilment; since the marriage of true minds is thatt once fabled garden, amidst of which was set the single Tree that bore such med'cinable fruit that if man ate thereof he should liv for ever. Friendship is in loving rather than in being lov'd, 1370which is its mutual benediction and recompense; and tho' this be, and tho' love is from lovers learn'd, it springeth none the less from the old essence of self. No friendless man ('twas well said) can be truly himself; what a man looketh for in his friend and findeth, and loving self best, loveth better than himself, is his own better self, his live lovable idea, flowering by expansion in the loves of his life. And in the nobility of our earthly friendships we hav all grades of attainment, and the best may claim 1380perfection of kind; and so, since ther be many bonds other than breed (friendships of lesser motiv, found even in the brutes) and since our politick is based on actual association of living men, 'twil come that the spiritual idea of Friendship, the huge vastidity of its essence, is fritter'd away in observation of the usual habits of men; as happ'd with the great moralist, where his book saith that ther can be no friendship betwixt God and man because of their unlimited disparity. From this dilemma of pagan thought, this poison of faith, 1391Man-soul made glad escape in the worship of Christ; for his humanity is God's Personality, and communion with him is the life of the soul. Of which living ideas (when in the struggle of thought harden'd by language they became symbols of faith) Reason builded her maze, wherefrom none should escape, wandering intent to map and learn her tortuous clews, chanting their clerkly creed to the high-echoing stones of their hand-fashion'd temple: but the Wind of heav'n bloweth where it listeth, and Christ yet walketh the earth, 1401and talketh still as with those two disciples once on the road to Emmaus—where they walk and are sad; whose vision of him then was his victory over death, thatt resurrection which all his lovers should share, who in loving him had learn'd the Ethick of happiness; whereby they too should come where he was ascended to reign over men's hearts in the Kingdom of God. Our happiest earthly comradeships hold a foretaste of the feast of salvation and by thatt virtue in them 1410provoke desire beyond them to out-reach and surmount their humanity in some superhumanity and ultimat perfection: which, howe'er 'tis found or strangely imagin'd, answereth to the need of each and pulleth him instinctivly as to a final cause. Thus unto all who hav found their high ideal in Christ, Christ is to them the essence discern'd or undiscern'd of all their human friendships; and each lover of him and of his beauty must be as a bud on the Vine and hav participation in him; for Goddes love 1420is unescapable as nature's environment, which if a man ignore or think to thrust it off he is the ill-natured fool that runneth blindly on death. This Individualism is man's true Socialism. This is the rife Idea whose spiritual beauty multiplieth in communion to transcendant might. This is thatt excelent way whereon if we wil walk all things shall be added unto us—thatt Love which inspired the wayward Visionary in his doctrinal ode to the three christian Graces, the Church's first hymn 1430and only deathless athanasian creed,—the which "except a man believe he cannot be savèd". This is the endearing bond whereby Christ's company yet holdeth together on the truth of his promise that he spake of his great pity and trust in man's love, Lo, I am with you always ev'n to the end of the world. Truly the Soul returneth the body's loving where it hath won it . . . and God so loveth the world . . . and in the fellowship of the friendship of Christ God is seen as the very self-essence of love, 1440Creator and mover of all as activ Lover of all, self-express'd in not-self, without which no self were. In thought whereof is neither beginning nor end nor space nor time; nor any fault nor gap therein 'twixt self and not-self, mind and body, mother and child 'twixt lover and loved, God and man: but eternal in the love of Beauty and in the selfhood of Love.
