Turner, in his "Liber Studiorum," attempted to depict a calm at

sea. The picture is not one of his most successful efforts: but so

great an artist could not fail to seize on the essential features of

his subject. The sun is heralding his advent by flinging upward

athwart the mists and cloudlets a stream of diffused light which

fills the scene with a soft pervading glow. The surface of the

water is glassy, not much more substantial than the haze which

floats above it. But deep as is the calm, old ocean cannot quite

forget his innate restlessness; he gently urges onward a

succession of slow risings and fallings, with broad ripples to

mark their boundaries, and to tell of spent billows and

far-heaving tides. The movement of the waters is, as it were,

subconsciously felt rather than perceived; or, if perceived, it is

lost in the pervading sense of placid spaciousness. The boats

and their occupants, so far from disturbing the sense of calm,

are made to enhance it. And the unruffled surface of the water is

rendered palpably impalpable by the magic of reflections.

Morris has given us a word-picture of similar import.

"Oh, look! the sea is fallen asleep,

The sail hangs idle evermore;

Yet refluent from the outer deep

The low wave sobs upon the shore.

Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills

Silent the broad weeds wave and sway;

Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray

Is born of surges vast as hills."

Jefferies gives us a companion picture of a calm sea in full

sunshine. "Immediately in front dropped the deep descent of the

bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the faint

sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of

the sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as

though the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there was no

distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it, and looked farther away

than the horizon would have done."

In each of these seascapes, the same essential features find a

place--the calm expanse without any defined boundary--the

silence--the play of delicate colour--the suggestions of rest after

toil, of peace after storm--and chiefest of all, the strangely

moving contrast of power and gentleness, the suggestion of

hidden strength. Doubtless we have in these the secret of much

of the mystic influence of the mighty ocean in its serenest

moods; doubtless we have in these the manifestations of

immanent ideas which have subtle power to subdue the human

soul to pensive thought and unwonted restfulness.

Not unlike them in general character and function, save for the

element of vastness, are the influences immanent in the calm of

evening or night landscapes. Goethe has an exquisite fragment

which is a fitting pendent to his Meeresstille:

Ueber alien Gipfeln

Ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.

Warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

Thus translated by Bowring:

"Hush'd on the hill

Is the breeze;

Scarce by the zephyr

The trees

Softly are pressed;

The woodbird's asleep on the bough.

Wait, then, and thou

Soon wilt find rest."

Who does not sympathise, in the measure possible to him, with

Wordsworth's interpretations and premonitions?

"It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven is on the sea."

And a less well-known passage:

"Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal eve,

But long as godlike wish, or hope divine,

Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe

That this magnificence is wholly thine!

--From worlds not quickened by the sun

A portion of the gift is won."

Yes, the nature-mystic might well be content to rest his case on

the influences of a calm at sea or a peaceful sunset. These will

maintain their power as long as there are human eyes to see and

human emotions to be stirred.

Not the least of the charms of still water is one which was

mentioned in the description of Turner's picture--the charm of

reflections. And here we discover a fresh vein of Nature

Mysticism. As Hawthorne says, there is "no fountain so small

but that heaven may be reflected in its bosom." Nay, as painters

well know, the very puddles in a country lane, or in a London

street, may be transfigured by thus reflecting lights and colours,

and become indispensable factors in a composition.

The phenomena of perfect reflection are often of exceptional

beauty. How perfect the effect of Wordsworth's lines:

"The swan on sweet St. Mary's Lake

Floats double, swan and shadow."

And, more generally, of another lake:

"The mere

Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear,

And motionless; and, to the gazer's eye,

Deeper than ocean, in the immensity

Of its vague mountains and unreal sky."

So on the broad, slowly moving waters of peaty rivers, the

reflections of sky and landscape seem almost to exceed the

originals in lustre and delicate detail. Some of the Tasmanian

rivers possess this reflecting quality in an exceptional degree.

Nor are the phenomena of broken reflections inferior in beauty

and suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail,

there are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of

colour, light, and shadow--a capricious hurrying from surface to

surface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel

and their glamour. And if such be their effect on the modern

mind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws

of reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still

surface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, sinking

downwards, another world, another sky, losing themselves in

mystery. Mere wonder would yield place to meditation. Ah!

what secrets must lurk in those crystal depths, if only one could

surprise them--wrest them from the beings who inhabit that

nether realm! Possibly even the world-riddle might so be

solved! And thus it came to pass that most water spirits were

deemed to be dowered with prophetic gifts.

The Teutonic water-gods were "wise"--they could foretell the

future. In classical mythology, Proteus, the old man of the sea,

presents himself as a well-developed embodiment of this belief.

Old Homer knew how to use the material thus provided, and

Virgil, in his choicest manner, follows the lead so given. In the

fourth book of the Georgics, Aristaeus, who had lost his bees, in

despair appealed to his mother, the river-nymph, Cyrene. She

bids him consult Proteus, the old prophet of the sea. He follows

her counsel, captures Proteus, and compels him to tell the cause

of his trouble. "The seer at last constrained by force, rolled on

him eyes fierce-sparkling with grey light, and gnashing his teeth

in wrath, opened his lips to speak the oracles of fate."

Once more the transient must be allowed to fall away, and the

central intuition be recognised and grasped. The sense of a

secret to be gained, of a mystery to be revealed--of a broken

reflection of some fuller world--has been nurtured by the

reflections of form and light and colour in nature's mirror. The

older, simpler impressions made by such phenomena persist

with deeper meanings. The "natural" emotion they stimulate

affords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can

thrive. Longfellow, in his poem, "The Bridge," strikes the

deeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections

away from a world of imperfection to the sphere of the ideal.

"And for ever and for ever,

As long as the river flows,

As long as the heart has passions,

As long as life has woes;

The moon and its broken reflection

And its shadows shall appear,

As the symbol of love in heaven

And its wavering image here."

And thus the mountain tarn, the placid lake, the quiet river

reaches, the hidden pool, and the ocean at rest, have each and all

their soul language, and can speak to man as a sharer of

soul-nature. Well might the Hebrew psalmist give us one of the

marks of the Divine Shepherd--"He leadeth me beside the still

waters."

CHAPTER XXV

ANAXIMENES AND THE AIR

Hitherto our attention has been almost exclusively fixed upon

the mystical influences of water in motion or at rest. And even

though we went no farther afield, a fair presentment has been

gained of what a modern nature-mystic might advance in

explanation and defence of his characteristic views and modes

of experience. We now turn to consider other ranges of physical

phenomena, which, though of equal dignity and significance,

will not meet with equal fullness of treatment--otherwise the

limits proposed for this study would be seriously exceeded.

We have seen how and why Thales deemed water to be the

_Welt-stoff_. His immediate successors, while adhering to his

principles and aims, were not content with his choice. They

successively sought for something less material. One of them,

Anaximenes, was attracted by the qualities and functions of the

atmosphere, and his speculations will serve as an introduction to

the mysticism of winds and storms and clouds. Only a single

statement of his is preserved in its original form; but fortunately

it is full of significance. "As our soul" (said the sage), "which

is air, holds us together, so wind and air encompass the whole

world." This, interpreted in the light of ancient comments,

shows that Anaximenes compared the breath of life to the air,

and regarded the two as essentially related--indeed as identical.

For the breath, he thought, holds together both animal and

human life; and so the air holds together the whole world in a

complex unity. He reached the wider doctrine by observing that

the air is, to all appearance, infinitely extended, and that earth,

water, and fire seem to be but islands in an ocean which spreads

around them on all sides, penetrating their inmost pores, and

bathing their smallest atoms. It was on such facts and

appearances that he based his main doctrine. If we think of the

modern theory of the luminiferous ether, we shall not be far

from his view-point. But the simpler and more obvious qualities

of the air would of course not be without their influence--its

mobility and incessant motion; its immateriality; its

inexhaustibility; its seeming eternity. It is, therefore, not

astonishing that with his attention thus focussed on a group of

truly wonderful phenomena, the old nature-philosopher should

have selected air as his primary substance--as the universal

vehicle of vital and psychic force.

It is of especial interest to the nature-mystic to find that

Anaximenes was faithful to the doctrine that the primary

substance must contain in itself the cause of its own motion.

And the interest is intensified in view of the fact that his

insistence on the life-giving properties of air rests on a widely

spread group of animistic notions which have exercised an

extraordinary influence on the world at large. Let Tylor furnish

a summary. "Hebrew shows _nephesh_, 'breath,' passing into all

the meanings of life, soul, mind, animal, while _ruach_ and

_neshamah_ make the like transition from 'breath' to 'spirit'; and

to these the Arabic _nefs_ and _ruh_ correspond. The same is

the history of the Sanskrit atman and prana, of Greek _psyche_

and _pneuma_, of Latin _anima, animus, spiritus_. So Slavonic

_duch_ has developed the meaning of 'breath' into that of 'soul'

or 'spirit'; and the dialects of the gypsies have this word _duk_

with the meanings of 'breath, spirit, ghost,' whether these

pariahs brought the word from India as part of their inheritance

of Aryan speech, or whether they adopted it in their migration

across Slavonic lands. German _geist_ and English _ghost_,

too, may possibly have the same original sense of breath." How

marvellously significant this ascent from the perceptions of

wind and breath to what we now understand by soul and spirit!

The most attenuated concepts have their basis in the physical

world. Even to this present day, as Max Müller remarks, "the

soul or the spirit remains a breath, an airy breath, for this is the

least material image of the soul which they can conceive."

Another doctrine of Anaximenes is most worthy of note by

nature mystics, as well as by scientists. It is well stated by

Theophrastus. "The air differs in rarity and in density as the

nature of things is different; when very attenuated it becomes

fire, when more condensed, wind, and then cloud; and when

still more condensed, water and earth and stone; and all other

things are composed of these; and he regards motion as eternal,

and by this changes are produced." We have here a distinct

adumbration of the atomic theory in its most defensible form--

that is to say, a conception which makes the differences in

various substances consist in differences in condensation or

rarefaction of the particles of the primary substance. The simple

normal condition of this substance he deemed to be air. In its

rarefied condition, it becomes fire, and in its condensed

condition it progresses by stages from liquid to solid. And just

as the modern chemist is beginning to have good ground for

believing that all substances, or so-called elements, may be the

result of a series of differentiations and compositions of an

originally homogeneous substance, in spite of the fact that he is

not yet able to effect the transformations in his laboratory, so,

all those centuries ago, the Milesian sage seized on the same

root idea and made it the basis of a world philosophy. It is a

long cry from the old idea, familiar to Homer, that mist or

vapour is condensed air to the cosmology of a Herbert Spencer,

and yet nature is so rich in material for prompting intuitions of

her deepest truths that one ultimate cause of material evolution

was revealed in days when science was hardly brought to the

birth.

An examination, albeit cursory and partial, of this ancient

speculation, has thus revealed at any rate two results of prime

importance in the study of Nature Mysticism. The one is that

the air has furnished the primary type of the soul as the

principle of life--man's fleeting breath has suggested and

fostered the idea of immortality; the wind that bloweth where it

listeth, the idea of a realm of changeless spirit! The other result

is that certain of nature's most obvious phenomena, when seized

by intuition, can supply a key to some of her profoundest

secrets. Shall not these results be as true for the world of to-day

as for the flourishing times of old-world Miletus?

CHAPTER XXVI

WINDS AND CLOUDS

The recognition of the mystic element in external nature has had

its fluctuations in most ages and climes, and not least so in

England. Marvel, in his day, felt the numbness creeping on that

comes of divorce from nature, and uttered his plaint of "The

Mower against Gardens."

"Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,

While the sweet fields do lie forgot,

Where willing nature does to all dispense

A wild and fragrant innocence."

And declared of the polished statues made to adorn the gardens,

that

"howsoe'er the figures do excel,

The gods themselves with us do dwell."

His protests, however, did not avail to ward off the artificiality

of the reign of Pope. Here are two lines from the "Essay on

Man."

"Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind."

"Untutored!" The poor Indian could have taught Pope many

things, and perhaps made a nobler man of him! For the poetry

and mystic influence of the winds were experienced and

expressed with a fullness of experience and feeling to which the

town-bred poet was all too great a stranger. The range, the

beauty and vigour of the myth of the four winds as developed

among the native races of America (says Tylor) had scarcely a

rival elsewhere in the mythology of the world. They evolved

"the mystic quaternion"--the wild and cruel North Wind--the

lazy South, the lover--the East Wind, the morning bringer--and

the West, Mudjekeewis, the father of them all. Outside the

quaternion were the dancing Pauppukkeewis, the Whirlwind,

and the fierce and shifty hero, Monobozho, the North-West

Wind. The spirit of these legends, if not their accurate detail,

can be appreciated in Longfellow's "Hiawatha."

The magnificent imagery of the Hebrew psalmists should have

given to Pope at least a touch of sympathy with "the untutored

mind"; for they love to represent God making "the winds His

messengers," or as Himself "flying on the wings of the wind."

Or the prophet Ezekiel could have brought home to him some of

the deeper thoughts that the winds have stirred in the soul of

man. "Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy,

son of man, and say to the wind: . . . Come from the four winds,

O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." The

Indian undoubtedly lacked tuition, but not exactly of the kind

his would-be tutor could bestow. Man, says Browning,

"imprints for ever

His presence on all lifeless things: the winds

Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,

A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh."

That is better. But why "lifeless"? Why "imprints"? Best is the

Hebrew apostrophe--"come from the four winds, O breath, and

breathe--that we may live. Give us of the life that is in you."

And that is the mystic's prayer.

The winds of heaven were bound to make indelible impressions

on the primitive mind. But few will be prepared for Max

Müller's statement that the wind, next to fire, is the

most important phenomenon in nature which has led to the

conception of a divine being. But our surprise ceases when we

realise how manifest and universal are the parts played by the

wind in relation to man's weal or woe--they bring the rain, they

drive the storm, they clear the air. The landsman knows much--

the sailor more. Guy de Maupassant makes the sailor say, "Vous

ne le (vent) connaissez point, gens de la terre! Nous autres, nous

le connaissons plus que notre père ou que notre mère, cet

invisible, ce terrible, ce capricieux, ce sournois, ce féroce. Nous

l'aimons et nous le redoutons, nous savons ses malices et ses

colères . . . car la lutte entre nous et lui ne s'interrompt

jamais."

Wind-gods and wind-myths are practically of world-wide

diffusion. Those of the American Indians have already been

noted. Similar, if less striking and poetical, are those which

prevail among the Polynesians and Maoris. Those of the Greeks

and Romans are best known, but have abundant parallels in

other lands. The Mâruts of the Vedic hymns are unequivocally

storm-gods, who uproot forests and shatter rocks--strikers,

shouters, warriors--though able anon to take the form of

new-born babes. The Babylonians had their wind-gods, good and

bad, created in the lower part of the heaven, and joining at times

in the fateful fight against the dragon. And our Teutonic fathers

had their storm-gods who were brave warriors, Odin, or Wodin,

being the chief. Grimm thus sums up Wodin's characteristics.

"He is the all-pervading and formative power, who bestows

shape and beauty on man and all things, from whom proceeds

the gift of song, and the management of war and victory, on

whom at the same time depends the fertility of the soil, nay,

wishing and all the highest gifts and blessings." We have here a

typical transition. The abstract conception of "the all-pervading

creative and formative power is evidently later than that of the

storm-god, rushing through the air in the midst of the howling

tempest--later even than that of the god who quaffs the draught

of inspiration and shares it with seers, bards, and faithful fallen

warriors. The idea of life or soul emerges, and frees itself

from its cruder elements; the tempest god yields place to the

All-Father, sitting on the throne of the world. The same evolution

is seen in the case of the cloud-compelling Zeus. Nay, Jehovah

Himself would seem to have been originally a god of storms,

sitting above the canopy of the aerial water-flood, "making the

clouds His chariot," and "walking upon the wings of the wind,"

His voice the thunder, His shaft the lightning. How strange and

unexpected the transformations of these immanent ideas! Yet

there is organic continuity throughout. So large is the place

filled by the phenomena of the winds, that human imagination

has not always stopped short at their mere personification or

deification. In many American languages, we are told, the same

word is used for storm and for god; so, too, with certain tribes

in Central Africa. That is to say, the name for the storm-wind

has become the general name for deity!

But how about the present? Can it be said that in the present

day, among civilised peoples, the phenomena of the winds have

any important part to play? An appeal to literature is decisive on

the point. No description of open-air life, or even of life within

doors where nature is not altogether shut out, can pass over the

emotional influences of the winds. They sob, they moan, they

sigh; they rustle, roar, or bellow; they exhilarate or depress;

they suggest many and varied trains of thought.

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude"--

the connection here is not altogether based on fancy--the biting

winds of winter have their own emotional "tone" for susceptible

minds, just as truly as the spanking breeze "that follows fast,"

or the balmy zephyr of summer, and have moulded modern

thought in manifold and unsuspected modes. Shelley, who has

been called the great laureate of the wind, contemplating the

coming storm and the wild whirling of the autumn leaves, is

profoundly moved and exclaims:

"O wild West-Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being--

. . . Be thou, spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one,

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth."

Alexander Smith, with a spirit rendered buoyant by the blast,

tells how

"The Wind, that grand old harper, smote

His thunder harp of pines."

Guy de Maupassant, in the passage already partly quoted, shows

that the modern sailor can still personify. "Quel personnage, le

vent, pour les marins! On en parle comme d'un homme, d'un souverain

tout puissant, tantôt terrible et tantôt bienveillant. . . .

Aucun ennemi ne nous donne que lui la sensation du combat, ne

nous force a tant de prévoyance, car il est le maitre de la mer,

celui qu'on peut éviter, utiliser ou fuir, mais qu'on ne dompte

jamais." Kingsley breaks forth:

"Welcome, wild North-Easter!

Shame it is to see

Odes to every zephyr;

Ne'er an ode to thee.

. . .

Come as came our fathers,

Heralded by thee,

Conquering from the eastward,

Lords by land and sea.

Come, and strong within us

Stir the Viking's blood,

Bracing brain and sinew;

Blow, thou wind of God!"

No, the power of vision is not dim, on man's part; nor, on the

part of the winds of heaven, is abated their natural power to rule

men's moods as they rule the responsive ocean. Those whose

mystic insight is undulled by the materialistic tendencies of the

age can still have glimpses of

"heaven's cherubim, hors'd

Upon the sightless couriers of the air."

The untutored mind of the Indian, says Pope, sees God not only

in winds, but in clouds. Clouds are, so to speak, the creations of

the air, and share its mystic fortunes. Even Keble could respond

to their suggestion of life, and asks:

"The clouds that wrap the setting sun,

Why, as we watch their floating wreath,

Seem they the breath of life to breathe?"

Wordsworth could not fail to have this experience:

"I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills."

These are genuine echoes of primitive feeling. Needless to

elaborate the evidence of the ancient myths or of the beliefs of

primitive peoples. Not that the evidence will not amply repay

study, but that for the purpose of grasping general principles,

that just adduced in the case of the winds has sufficiently served

our turn. The following old Finnish prayer, however, is so

fraught with significance that it would be unpardonable to pass

it by. It is addressed to Ukko, the Heaven-god:

"Ukko, thou, O God above us,

Thou, O Father in the heavens,

Thou who rulest in the cloud-land,

And the little cloud-lambs leadest,

Send us down the rain from heaven,

Make the drops to drop with honey,

Let the drooping corn look upward,

Let the grain with plenty rustle."

This beautiful little poem-prayer places us about midway in the

development of the conscious expression of the mystic

influences exercised by cloud-land. We see how, as with the

winds, the clouds have played a severely practical rôle among

the conditions which have rendered human life possible upon

the globe. The original animistic conception of the clouds as

themselves personal agents has yielded to that of a god who

rules the clouds, though the animistic tendency still remains in

the expression, "the little cloud-lambs." Now we have passed to

the stage of modern animism which regards the clouds as a part

of a vast system, the essential being of which must be described

as consciousness.

The chief of the ideas immanent in cloud scenery would seem to

be the vagueness and unsubstantiality of its ever-changing

pageantry, prompting dreams of glorious possibilities which our

earthly environment is yet too gross to realise. At any rate, it is

safe to assert that this constituted its main charm for the

passionately visionary soul of Shelley. Study this description of

a cloud-scape--one among a host which could be gathered from

his poems:

"The charm in which the sun has sunk, is shut

By darkest barriers of enormous cloud,

Like mountain over mountain huddled--but

Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,

And over it a space of watery blue,

Which the keen evening star is shining through."

Or study that poem, unsurpassable of its kind, devoted wholly

to this theme--especially the stanza which closes it:

"I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb

I arise and unbuild it again."

How crammed are these lines with the purest Nature Mysticism

as moderns understand it! The sense of living process reigns

supreme. They are the offspring, not of fancy, nor even of

imagination as ordinarily conceived--but of insight, of vision, of

living communion with a living world.

It is tempting, while dealing with the airy realms of cloud-land,

to dwell at length on the mystic influence of the queen of aerial

phenomena--the rainbow. That influence in the past has been

immense; it still is, and ever will be, a power to be reckoned

with. Science cannot rob it of its glories. The gold-winged Iris

of Homer, swifter-footed than the wind, has passed. The

Genesis story of "the bow in the cloud" may dissolve in the

alembic of criticism--but the rainbow itself remains, still a

sevenfold bridge of souls from this solid-seeming earth to a

rarer land beyond. Who is there who cannot sympathise with

Wordsworth?

"My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky.

So was it when I was a child;

So it is now I am a man;

So let it be when I am old--

Or let me die."

Tempting is it also to treat of the birds--the denizens of the air--

to comment on the exquisite trio of bird-poems, Wordsworth's

"Cuckoo," Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark," and Keats' "Ode to a

Nightingale." For assuredly it is the medium in which these

delicate creatures pass their lives that gives them the chiefest

share of their magic and their mystery. But this gem from

Victor Hugo must suffice for all the tuneful choir:

"Like a songbird be thou on life's bough,

Lifting thy lay of love.

So sing to its shaking,

So spring at its breaking,

Into the heaven above."

The dome of air thus expands into the dome of heaven with its

eternal fires, and bids us turn to the third of the ancient sages

whose speculations are aiding our steps in this tentative study.

CHAPTER XXVII

HERACLEITUS AND THE COSMIC FIRE

Heracleitus is a philosopher whose speculations are of

surpassing interest for the student of Nature Mysticism. He was

born about 540 B.C., at Ephesus, and lived some sixty years. He

was one of the most remarkable thinkers of antiquity, and the

main substance of his teaching remains as a living and

stimulating element in the most advanced scientific and

metaphysical doctrines of the present day. But taking the point

of view of the nature-mystic, he derives his special significance

from the manner of his early training, and from the source of his

early inspirations.

While still a youth, he forsook the bustle of the city for the

solitude and charm of the lovely country which surrounded his

home, and he definitely set himself to feed his imagination on

the concrete and sensuous imagery of the poets. He laid

himself open to the impressions and intuitions which such an

environment so richly provided, and thus laid the foundation for

those speculations on the nature of the universe and of life

which have rendered his influence so lasting and his fame so

great.

He is undoubtedly difficult to understand, and his cryptic

utterances earned for him the doubtful title of the Dark. But his

champions have pointed out that his obscurity of diction was

not the outcome of pride or intentional assumption of mystery,

but of the genuine difficulty he found in giving expression to

his novel thoughts. He waxes vehement in his struggles to

subdue his language to his purposes, his vague intuitions, his

movements in worlds not fully realised; and in this regard he

can at any rate claim the sympathy of mystics of every school.

Such was the man and such his training. What was his central,

dominating thought? What was his conception of the universal

Ground of existence? It was this--Pure Fire--motion is the secret

of the eternal change which characterises all known phenomena

of every grade and kind. "All things flow" is the far-famed

aphorism which sums up his philosophy. This eternal movement

is not, however, formless, but is determined to ever-recurrent

forms, and is obedient to law and rhythm.

He taught, then, that the eternal movement which constitutes

existence is Fire. "This one order of all things (he affirms) was

created by none of the gods, nor yet by any of mankind; but it

was ever, and is, and shall be, eternal fire-ignited by measure

and extinguished by measure." But more--he held that this

Fire-motion is alive. It will be remembered that Thales had placed

the cause of motion in matter itself, not in something other than

matter; that is to say, he was to all intents and purposes a

hylozoist. Heracleitus went a step farther, and maintained that

the life in Fire-motion is _organic_, like to that which is

manifested in the plant and animal worlds. His idea of the

essential kinship of all things is very clear and complete.

He conceived, therefore, that soul is in no way fundamentally

distinct from any other of the transformations of the ever-living

Fire. And thus the problem which so grievously torments

modern psychologists, that of the connection between soul and

body, did not exist for him. And a notable corollary of his view

is this. Since man has essential kinship with his environment, he

can apprehend both the outer surface of things and their inner

law; and it is in this recognition of their inner law that his true

nature is to be found. Now if it be granted that this inner law

can be apprehended by intuition as well as by conscious reasoning

process, the corollary is one to which the nature-mystic can

of his own master principle.

The soul, as fire, depends on the cosmic Fire for sustenance, the

breath being the physical medium; and in this regard, all that

was said of Anaximenes and "Breath," or Air, will have its

place. But Heracleitus has a further thought which is in full

harmony with the nature-mystic's chief contention. He holds

that _sense perception_ is also a medium, for the outer fire is

thereby absorbed by the inner fire. The value of this thought

remains in spite of the sage's doctrine of the body. For though

the body is regarded by him as a clog on the activity of the inner

fire, because it consists of water and earth (two forms in which

the movement of the Fire is greatly reduced) it is nevertheless

akin to the soul, and is itself destined, in the course of ceaseless

change, to become Fire in its most living and active form.

Such is the central doctrine of this noted thinker, round which

all his other teaching turned. Let us now ask, as in the

corresponding cases of Thales and Anaximander, why the

particular element was chosen as the Ground of all things. The

answer to this question will furnish, as in the previous cases,

much matter for our special purpose, since the emphasis will lie

rather on the physical properties and functions of fire, than on

its more abstract ontology.

It is obvious that Heracleitus would start with a knowledge of

the speculations of his more immediate predecessors, and of the

data on which they were based--the phenomena of circulation in

nature, evaporation, mist, rain, melting, freezing, and the rest.

And we find that in this direction he merely amplified the older

systems, taking fire, instead of water or air, as his _Welt-stoff_.

He also observed, with special care, certain suggestive cases of

rarefaction by heat and condensation by cold; as also the facts

of constant decomposition and renewal in the vegetable and

animal worlds. But the phenomenon which stands out as the

chiefest determinant of his thought is one which is always

bound to act as a powerful stimulant on a thoughtful mind--that

of combustion.

The flame of an ordinary fire can still be a thing of wonder to

the man whose mind is open to receive impressions even from

the commonplace. How illusive it is!--dancing, darting,

flickering, flashing--appearing, disappearing--unsubstantial yet

active and almost miraculously potent. The effect upon the

mind of primitive man must have been keen and vivid to the

highest degree, and must have produced results of corresponding

significance upon his spiritual development.

But the deeper kind of wonder is reserved for the systematic

speculative thinker, whose attention is arrested by the

phenomena of a steadily burning flame, say that of a lamp. The

oil is sucked up into the wick and slowly decreases in volume.

At the point where the flame begins it rises in vapour, becomes

brilliant, and, in the case of a clear flame, disappears. There is

thus a constant movement from below upwards. The flame has

all the appearance of a "thing," with comparatively definite

form and continued existence, and yet is never really the same,

not for the minutest fraction of a moment. It is an appearance

born of incessant motion--let the motion stop, the flame is gone.

Where the burning is accompanied by smoke, there is an

apparent return of volatilised matter to solid form.

Now let a philosopher like Heracleitus be meditating on nature

as a circulatory system, and let him, by chance or otherwise,

bring together in his mind the phenomena of a burning lamp and

the cosmic facts for which he seeks an explanation--is it

difficult to imagine his Eureka? At any rate, Heracleitus felt that

in the phenomena of combustion he had gained an insight into

the ultimate constitution of nature. And he concluded from them

that there is no such thing as substance, properly so called, but

simply constant movement; the movement _is_ substance. The

great solid-seeming cosmos is motion; some of it visible, some

of it imperceptible; some of it rising upward to serve as fuel,

some of it falling downward, after having fed the flame, to form

the constituents of the present world. The motion is constant,

the stream ever-flowing: no "thing" is ever at rest, and, if it

were at rest, would disappear.

The marvel is that with such scanty data, Heracleitus was able

to attain to views which are in truly remarkable harmony with

the most advanced theories as to the constitution of matter.

Nowadays the very qualities of hardness and impenetrability are

being ascribed to motion--to the almost inconceivable rapidity

of the whirling of electrons within the system of the atom. Le

Bon, for example, in his "Evolution of Matter" and his

"Evolution of Forces," contends that atoms are continually

breaking down, radium presenting merely an extreme case of a

general rule, and that the final product is something which is

no longer matter. Robbed of motion, what we call matter

disappears! It eludes detection by any methods known to us, and

ceases, therefore, so far as we are concerned, to be existent.

Atoms, then, according to this modern doctrine, are complex

systems of motion; and bodies, all agree, are aggregates of

atoms. It seems to follow that the ground of reality, from the

point of view of physics, is motion. In short, as Heracleitus

taught, the world is the result of ceaseless motion. Tyndall's

doctrine of "heat as a mode of motion" is being generalised until

it covers the whole field of material phenomena. Or approach

the theory of Heracleitus from the side of modern astronomy,

the harmony between old and new is equally striking. All

substances, said he, spring from fire and to fire they are bound

to return. It does not require much special knowledge to realise

that this statement contains the pith of the latest theories of the

birth and death of worlds. From fire-mist, says the modern

astronomer, they were condensed, and to fire-mist, by collisions

or otherwise, they will return. What the particular stages may

be, what the significance of the nebula;, what the cosmic

functions of electricity, and other like problems--may be, and

will be, matter for keen debate. But the grand generalisation

remains--from fire-mist back again to fire-mist. How modern,

also, the grand unity which such a theory gives to existence as a

whole. Physics, psychology, sociology, even spiritual facts, all

come under the sway of the vast generalisation, because all

concerned with the same ultimate Reality. The most striking

parallel is found, perhaps, in the doctrine of Energy, which is

attracting so much attention at the present time, and of which

Ostwald is a champion so doughty. It embodies an attempt to

bring into one category the various physical forces together with

the phenomena of organic evolution, of psychology, and of

sociology in the largest sense. Whether the attempt is successful

or not, it is a tribute to the genius of the ancient sage, though it

seems to lack that definite element of consciousness, or soul-life,

which was so adequately recognised by its great predecessor.

Many other points in the system of Heracleitus are worthy of

the closest study. Intensely interesting, for example, is his

doctrine that strife is the condition of harmony, and indeed of

existence. Schelling reproduced this idea in his well-known

theory of polarity; Hegel developed it in his dialectic triad--

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis; and the electrical theories of

matter and force now in vogue fall easily into line with it--not to

speak of the dominant theory of evolution as involving a

struggle for existence, and as applied in well-nigh all

departments of enquiry and research. But it is enough to have

grasped the central principle of Fire-motion to prove that the

phenomena of fire have had an influence in the development of

man's intellectual and spiritual life--an influence which cannot

easily be exaggerated. Heracleitus claims an honoured place in

the line of nature-mystics.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FIRE AND THE SUN

There can be no doubt, as already stated, that, of all physical

phenomena, fire had the most marked effect upon the imagination

of primitive man. He saw that it was utterly unlike anything

else known to him, both in its properties and in its action.

If of anything a divine nature could be predicated, it was

fire--the standing miracle--at once destroying and life-giving--

material and immaterial--pre-eminently an agent with strange

and vast powers, known and unknown. For many objects and

institutions a divine origin was sought; it could not fail to be the

case with fire. Even the poor Tasmanian natives felt it could not

be a thing of earth, and told each other how it was thrown down

like a star by two black fellows who are now in the sky, the twin

stars, Castor and Pollux. A great gap separates this simple tale

from the elaborate Prometheus myth, and yet the same essential

features appear in both: and between the two are found a varied

series of stories and legends, belonging to many climes and

ages, which ring the changes on the same fundamental ideas.

The whole of the ancient world believed that the origin of fire

must be divine. And the various steps can be clearly traced by

which the worship, originally accorded to the nature-power

itself, was transferred to a spirit behind the power, and centred

at last on the supreme Deity.

For primitive man, as Max Müller well points out, the

phenomena of fire would present a dual aspect--on the one hand

as a fatal and destructive element, on the other hand, as a

beneficent and even homely agency. The lightning would be

seen flashing from the one end of heaven to the other, darting

down at times to set ablaze the forests and prairies, at times to

maim and kill both animals and men. Thus experienced, it

would strike terror into the beholders, and impress them with a

vivid sense of the presence of spiritual powers. As a late

product of the emotions and conceptions thus stimulated, we

have the fine myth of the ancient nature goddess, Athene--

sprung from the head of Zeus, the austere virgin, who was to

become the personification of prudence, self-restraint, and

culture, the celestial representative of the loftiest intellectual

and spiritual ideals of the Greek world at its best. Hence, too,

the group of conceptions which make the lightning and

thunderbolts the weapons of the sky, putting them into the

hands of the supreme ruler, and making them at last the symbols

of law and order. "Out of the fire" (says Ezekiel) "went forth

lightning." "Out of the throne" (says the seer of the Apocalypse)

"went forth lightnings."

In strong contrast is the beneficent aspect of fire, which, once

known and "tamed," becomes almost a necessity for human life.

It affords new protection against the cold, makes man peculiarly

the cooking animal, and above all establishes the family hearth

with all that is meant by "home." Of more distinctly utilitarian

import are the uses of fire in fashioning tools and instruments,

and the smelting of metals. And it is significant to note that

man's use of fire almost certainly owed its origin to his

emotional attitude towards it, culminating in worship. As many

anthropologists have pointed out, the fire on the hearth had its

unmistakable religious aspect, the result of the feeling of

veneration for the "element" of fire before its production or use

had been understood. And the kindling of the fire on the hearth

was as much a sacrifice to the gods as a means to the cooking of

food. Each house became a veritable temple of fire.

Wonderfully instructive, as well as fascinating it is to trace the

development of the home idea as based on the emotional

experiences stimulated by the mystic influences of fire. Each

house, as was just stated, was regarded as a temple of the divine

element; but the common house, the tribe house, was specially

singled out for this honour, and became a temple properly

so-called. When bands of citizens set out to found colonies in

strange lands, they took with them glowing embers from the

tribal or national hearth, as AEneas brought with him to Italy

the sacred fire of Troy. Until lately, we are told, the German

peasant just married would take to his new home a burning log

from the family hearth.

The classical instance of the development of this idea is found

in the cult of the Greek Hestia, the Latin Vesta, a goddess who

was the personification of fire, the guardian of the household

altar and of the welfare of cities and nations. She was

worshipped fairly widely in Greece and Asia Minor, but

principally in Rome, where a beautiful circular temple was

dedicated to her service; her ministers, the Vestal virgins, were

held in the greatest honour and were chosen from among the

loveliest and noblest of Roman maidens. In this temple was

kept ever brightly burning the sacred fire supposed to have been

kindled by the rays of the sun, and to have been brought by

AEneas when he founded his kingdom in the new land of Italy.

The extinction of this fire would have been regarded as the

gravest public calamity, foreboding disaster. Its flames were

intended to represent the _purity_ of the goddess, thus

emphasising the mystic aspect of another physical property of

fire--its purifying power. "Our God" (said the writer of the

Epistle to the Hebrews) "is a consuming fire."

Greece had its common hearth at Delphi. It was also supposed

that at the centre of the earth there was a hearth which answered

to that. In the Apocalypse we read of the altar with its sacred

fire as central in heaven. Truly these concepts are persistent!

And why? Because there is more than imagination in them; they

are the products of ideas immanent in the material phenomena

in which they are embodied, and through which they manifest

themselves to the human soul.

There could not fail to be fire-gods many, and a study of their

respective characters, especially in the earlier stages of their

development, often furnishes a key to the intuitional workings

of the primitive mind as prompted by the always arresting, and

often terrorising phenomena of fire and flame. Max Müller's

detailed study of the development of the Hindu god, Agni, was

mentioned in an earlier chapter. The name originally means the

Mover, and arose, doubtless, from the running, darting, leaping

movement of flame. Beginning his career as a purely physical

god, he advanced through various stages of spiritualisation until

he became the supreme deity. Is not the problem of motion

still one of the most fascinating and profound? Bergson's

"L'Evolution créatrice" is one of the latest attempts to grapple

with it, and those who in early India personified fire as the

Mover were his legitimate predecessors.

The Greek Hephaestus personified the brightness of flame, and

took shape as a god of ripe age, of muscular form, of serious

countenance, but lame. Why lame? Why this physical defect

as a drawback to so much physical beauty and strength? A

Frenchman, Emérie, suggests--"attendu la marche inégale et

vacillante de la flamme." Certainly fire, as compared with water

and air, is dependent on sustenance, as Heracleitus so well

realised, as also its consequent limitations in regard to free and

independent movement: but the sage solved this difficulty by

making the Fire-motion feed, as it were, upon itself. The god

was represented as puny at birth because flame, especially as

kindled artificially, so often starts from a tiny spark. His

marriage to Aphrodite typifies "the association of fire with the

life-giving forces of nature." So, remarks Max Müller, the

Hindu Agni was the patron of marriage. How many lines of

thought open out before us here, bringing us face to face, by

pre-scientific modes of mental activity, with some of the

deepest mysteries of human life!

Vulcan, the Latin parallel of Hephaestus, suggests to us the

awe-inspiring phenomena of volcanoes, which, though not of

frequent occurrence, are calculated by virtue of their magnitude

and grandeur to stimulate emotion and intuition to an

exceptional degree. Fear would naturally predominate, but, even

for the primitive mind, would be one factor only in a complex

whole. Matthew Arnold has attempted to portray the soul-storm

raised by the sight of the molten crater of AEtna. He makes

Empedocles, the poet-philosopher, climb the summit of the

mountain, gaze for the last time on the realm of nature spread

around, and apostrophise the stars above and the volcanic fires

beneath his feet.

"And thou, fiery world,

That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount

Upon whose charred and quaking crust I stand--

Thou, too, brimmest with life."

Note here again the sense of life--of kinship, so fundamental to

Nature Mysticism. And so to the close.

"And therefore, O ye elements! I know--

Ye know it too--it hath been granted me

Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.

I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud

Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free,

Is it but for a moment?

--Ah, boil up, ye vapours!

Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!

My soul glows to meet you.

Ere it flag, ere the mists

Of despondency and gloom

Rush over it again,

Receive me, save me!

[He plunges into the crater.]"

Out of the ancient beliefs and myths concerning subterranean

fires grew up the enormously important beliefs in Hell and

Purgatory, which attained such abnormal proportions in

medieval times, and which are by no means yet extinct. The

most vivid picture of Hell, founded largely on ancient material,

though with a Biblical basis, is found in Milton. In language

which recalls the Titanomachy, the poet tells of Satan and his

myrmidons hurled from heaven.

"Him the almighty Power

Hurled headlong flaming from th' aetherial sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire."

Confounded for a time by his fall, he lies rolling in the fiery

gulf; but at length, rolling round his baleful eyes, he sees

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all; but torture without end

Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed."

What manner of intuitions are embodied here? Perchance we

are beginning to treat them too lightly, as also the Hindu

doctrine of Karma; for the universe, after all, is the scene of the

reign of law. But however this may be, we are glad to emerge,

with Dante, from the regions of punitive flames into the regions

of the fires that purge--into the pure air that surrounds the Isle

of Purgatory.

"Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread

O'er the serene aspect of the pure air,

High up as the first circle, to mine eyes

Unwonted joy renewed, soon as I 'scaped

Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom

That had mine eyes and bosom filled with grief."

Shall we invest with like purgatorial powers the flaming swords

that barred the way to Paradise? Is such the inner meaning of

the appeal:

"do thou my tongue inspire

Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire"?

The more hostile aspects of fire are most strikingly embodied in

the Teutonic giant Logi (Flame) with his children, who were

supposed to be the authors of every great conflagration, and

who might be seen in the midst of the flames, their heads

crowned with chaplets of fire. They may be taken, like the

Greek giants and Titans, as personifications of the wild brute

forces of nature, which strive to hinder man's work and destroy

what he has made. For, as Schiller says:

"the elements are hostile

To the work of human hand."

For such are but some out of the many forms in which man has

struggled to give expression to his intuitions that there is

something wrong in nature--to his deep sense of division and

conflict in the cosmic process. Heracleitus, as we saw, held that

conflict is an essential condition of existence. At any rate, it is

true, that order is only won by severe conflict with destructive

and irregular powers. An ancient expression of this experience

is found in the long contest waged between Zeus and the other

children of Cronos. A modern expression is found in Huxley's

illustration of the fenced garden that, if untended, speedily

returns to its wild condition. In the framing and moulding of

this experience, the hostile aspects of fire have played no

insignificant part.

In this context it would be natural to treat of the Sun as the

predominant manifestation of fire, of which Shelley, in his

hymn to Apollo, has said:

"I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine."

The various sun-gods would be passed in review, Ra of the

Egyptians, Apollo of the Greeks, and the various forms of

sun-worship, from the most primitive times down through the

Persian religion, that of the Peruvians, the "children of the sun,"

to that of the modern Parsees--and that of the unnamed

multitudes who in substance have echoed the words which

Moore puts into the mouths of the Hyperboreans:

"To the Sun-god all our hearts and lyres

By day, by night belong;

And the breath we draw from his living fires

We give him back in song."

But the subject is too great and is deserving of special

treatment. Certain of the more essential conceptions involved

will come before us in the chapter on light. Mirabeau on his

death-bed would seem to have put the whole matter in the

briefest space--"Si ce n'est pas là Dieu, c'est du moins son

cousin-german." Turner, on his deathbed, was briefer and

bolder still--"The sun is God." Knowing the man and knowing

his work, we can understand what he meant. Put it the other

way round, we have the same, and yet the fuller truth--"the Lord

God is a Sun."

CHAPTER XXIX

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian, who died in 1637, wrote

a treatise on the universe, in which he taught that man was a

microcosm of the macrocosm, and that light and darkness are

the two great principles of existence, the one of animate, the

other of inanimate nature. He held that soul and life are every

day shed from the sun upon all objects open to his beams. For

such doctrines as these he was denounced as practically an

atheist! Fortunately the times have changed, though we have

still much to learn in the way of rational tolerance and

sympathetic receptivity.

Who shall say how old is this idea of two distinct, and generally

opposing principles, the light and the dark? The Babylonian

cosmology carries us a long way back, but not to the beginning

of such mystical conceptions. For in that cosmology Marduk is

a well-developed god of light, with Tiâmat as his antithesis, the

goddess of the dark, and the nature and course of the deadly

contest between them has taken form in a well-defined series of

myths.

One of the most obvious emotional effects of darkness is to

inspire fear, and there are few who have not in some degree and

on some occasions experienced a sense of discomfort in the

dark--a chill, or a shrinking, which in certain cases, especially

with children, may amount to terror. It is possible that we have

here, as is often contended, an organic reminiscence of the

experience of our remote ancestors. Certainly it is not difficult

for us to sympathise with the primitive dread of darkness, nor to

understand the transition to the conception of darkness as a

hostile power. But there is also an element which may be

regarded as simply personal and individual--a natural

anticipation of unknown dangers, and a sense of helplessness

should the apprehensions be realised. There is, moreover, an

element of a still more directly mystical character, that which

Everett describes as a feeling that in the darkness the familiar

world is swept away and that we are touching the limits of the

natural. Hence the chill of the unknown and supernatural.

However this may be, the fact remains that from the earliest

known times, there have been powers of darkness set over

against the powers of light; and the conflict between them has

suggested with exceptional vividness the conflict between good

and evil. The opening verses of the Bible, with their chaos and

darkness, and the sublime command--"Let there be light"--are in

line with a vast body of primitive myth and speculation which

represents the good God as the Creator of light, or as light itself

over against the dark. The mysticism of the prologue to St.

John's Gospel both represented and fostered ideas which were

current in the earliest Christian communities and have coloured

the whole of the primitive Christian literature.

So in the most ancient of the classical mythologies, Night was

one of the oldest deities, daughter of Chaos, and sister of

Erebus, the dark underworld. So in Persian dogmatic we have

the same essential concepts. From the beginning existed

uncreated light and uncreated darkness--the opposing kingdoms

of Ahura and Ahriman.

Who shall say what great cosmic facts lie behind these vague

and looming intuitions? The physical merges by insensible

degrees into the aesthetic, the moral, the spiritual. On the one

hand, the chill, the blankness, the negation, sometimes the

horror, of the darkness. And on the other hand the purity and

beauty, the colour and effulgence of the light--above all, its

joy-giving, life-giving, though noiseless, energy.

Coming down to the present, we ask if these mystic influences

of light and of darkness still retain their power. Can we doubt

it? We have Milton's Melancholy, "of Cerberus and blackest

Midnight born"--"where brooding darkness spreads his jealous

wings." All this no mere refurbishing of classical lore, but the

outcome of deep sympathy with the poets of the prime. And the

same is true of his buoyant lines that describe the breaking of

the day, when morn

"Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand

Unbarr'd the gates of light."

In sympathy, too, with the old belief in Ahura's final victory is

Emerson's declaration that "the night is for the day, but the day

is not for the night."

Browning finely discriminates the grades of darkness in

Sordello, where he addresses Dante as

"pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume;

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye

In gracious twilights where His chosen lie."

Homer and Job are at one in associating darkness with the

grave, and all that the grave implies. "Before I go whence I shall

not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of

death." Homer and Ecclesiastes are one in love of the sunlit sky:

"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes

to behold the sun." And Shakespeare in fullest sympathy cries:

"See how the sun

Walks o'er the top of yonder eastern hill."

And sunrises and sunsets wake in Wordsworth's soul the

thought of

"The light that never was on sea or land."

And it is the world-old feeling of life and joy that breathes in

Blake's lines "To Morning":

"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,

Unlock heaven's golden gates and issue forth;

Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light

Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring

The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day.

O radiant morning, salute the sun,

Roused like a huntsman to the chase, and with

Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills."

But what of modern science? Does not that eliminate the mystic

element? Far from that, it increases it. The dominant theory is

that light is a sensation caused by waves in ether which travel at

a speed of 186,000 miles a second. Of this theory Whewell

wrote in 1857 that Optics had "reached her grand generalisation

in a few years by sagacious and happy speculations." But it was

not thus that a halting-place was gained. For there succeeded the

discoveries of Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Hertz, and other great

physicists who used the old theory merely as a foundation for a

superstructure of unsuspected and wondrous proportions. The

theory of electrons came to the front, and the phenomena of

light are being linked on to those of electricity. The phenomena

of electricity, again, are being linked on to those of life. And

thus, as ever where our deepest intuitions are concerned, the

nature-mystic finds himself in harmony with and abreast of the

latest developments of modern knowledge.

At the dawn of human thought light and life were dimly but

persistently felt to be akin, if not identical. And now we know it

was a deep prompting of mother nature which caused men to

give to their divine beings the simple name--"the Bright Ones."

CHAPTER XXX

THE EXPANSE OF HEAVEN--COLOUR

"The broad open eye of the solitary sky."

Charles Lamb, with his native sensitiveness, considered this line

to be too terrible for art. Its suggestion of "the irresponsive

blankness of the universe" was for him too naked and poignant.

And yet, in certain of his aspects, nature is undoubtedly

irresponsive to man--aloof from his affairs--more especially in

her pageantry of the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars.

But this feeling of aloofness is not constant, nor even normal, as

witness the exquisite lines in Peter Bell:

"At noon, when by the forest's edge

He lay beneath the branches high,

The soft blue sky did never melt

Into his heart--he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky!"

Whether in its friendly or its alien aspects, the widespread,

all-embracing arch of the heavens has, in all times and climes,

profoundly influenced human thought, more particularly so in

lands where the sky is clear and bright and the horizons

extended. Its effect, in flat and desert regions, on the

development of monotheistic beliefs was noted in an early

chapter. In India it has played the chiefest part in fostering

abstract universalism and the conception of a pantheistic

Absolute, and has tempted men to views which leave no room

for human initiative nor for belief in objective reality. And

when we recognise the wide and deep influence exerted by

Buddhism upon ethics and metaphysics ancient and modern, we

realise that the dome of heaven has proved itself a mystic force

of the first rank.

We must be on our guard, however, lest we exaggerate this

pantheistic or universalistic influence. We have a sufficient

corrective in the development of Dyaus, an ancient god of the

sky, who became, in one of his later forms, the Greek Zeus--that

is to say, a king of gods as well as of men--the ruler of

Olympus--the supreme member of a polytheistic community.

And this development is but representative of a large class

which have proceeded on similar lines--the class which come to

their own in the concept of a Heaven-Father. For example,

Tylor shows that, in the religion of the North American Indians,

"the Heaven-god displays perfectly the gradual blending of the

material sky itself with its personal deity"; and that the Chinese

Tien, Heaven, the highest deity of the state religion, underwent

a like theologic development. The mystic influence remains in

Christianity, as witness Keble:

"The glorious sky embracing all

Is like the Maker's love."

It may be affirmed, then, without fear of contradiction, that the

elemental phenomena of the sky, overarching all with its unlimited

span, has provided men with the idea of an all-embracing

deity--this idea, among others, is immanent there and awaits

still further development.

Awaits further development--for the mystic influences persist

and suggest deeper interpretations. Browning, though not an

avowed nature-mystic, felt the thrill and the emotion of the sky.

"The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops

With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour."

As for the emotional value of the universal span of the sky, its

power to tranquillise by a sense of vast harmony and unity,

Christina Rossetti knew it:

"Heaven o'erarches you and me,

And all earth's gardens and her graves.

Look up with me, until we see

The day break and the shadows flee.

What though to-night wrecks you and me

If so to-morrow saves?"

Here, as is almost inevitable, the thought of the expanse is

associated with the alternate coming on of darkness and the

breaking of the dawn; but the change and alternation gains its

unity and ultimate significance from the all-inclusiveness of the

sky as the abiding element.

Walt Whitman brings out another aspect of this subtle but

powerful influence. He addresses the sky: "Hast Thou, pellucid,

in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the

physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.)

And dost Thou subtly, mystically now drip it through the air

invisibly upon me?"

In similar mood Jefferies writes: "I turned to the blue heaven

over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and

sweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky

drew my soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is

rest of heart."

And thus "the witchery of the soft blue sky" launches us

naturally into the subject of the sky as colour; and not of blue

only, but of that vast range of hues and gradations which

display their beauty and their glory in the four quarters of

heaven during each move onwards of the earth from sunrise to

sunrise. Tennyson's description is vivid and splendid. The

shipwrecked Enoch Arden is waiting for a sail, and sees

"Every day

The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts

Among the palms and ferns and precipices;

The blaze upon the waters to the east;

The blaze upon his island overhead;

The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,

The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

The scarlet shafts of sunrise."

But of special interest here is the fact that the blue of the vault

is never mentioned--only the scarlet shafts of sunrise and the

blaze. Whether this omission was intentional or not, may be

uncertain.

But it brings to mind the strange fact that the perception and

naming of this blue are comparatively recent acquirements. In

the old hymns of the Rigveda the chariot of the sun is described

as glowing with varied colour, and its horses as gold-like or

beaming with sevenfold hues; but although there was a word for

the blue of the sea and for indigo dye, this word is never applied

to the brightness of the sunlit vault. So, still more strangely, we

find that notwithstanding the laughing blue of the Greek sky,

old Homer never calls it blue! He has his rosy-fingered dawn,

the parallel of Tennyson's scarlet shafts; but the daylight sky

seems to have been for him as for Enoch Arden, a "blaze." Nor

is the omission supplied in the later classical literature; and the

older Greek writers on science use such epithets as "air-coloured,"

as substitutes for more specific terms. A German scholar

who has examined the ancient writings of the Chinese claims

for them priority in the recognition of the blue of the sky,

and points out that in the Schi-king, a collection of songs from

about 1709 to 618 B.C., the sky is called the vaulted blue, as in

the more modern language it is called the reigning blue.

Delitzsch, from whom much of what is just stated has been

derived (as also from Gladstone's paper on Homer's colour-sense)

does not find the blue of the sky recognised in Europe earlier

than the oldest Latin poets of the third century B.C., who

use _caerulus_ of the sky, and henceforth this epithet takes its

place in literature, Pagan and Christian. And the appreciation of

the heaven-colour develops apace until we have Wordsworth's

"Witchery of the soft blue sky."

The explanation of this late development is a problem of much

interest from the point of view of the physiologist and the

psychologist, in its bearing on the history of the special senses.

It would not be safe to say that the colour was not perceived, in

a somewhat loose sense of that term, but rather that it was not

consciously distinguished. As with the child, so with primitive

man, the strong sensations are the first to be definitely

apprehended--the glow of flame, the scarlet and crimson of

dawn and sunset, the gold of the sun and moon and stars. Red

and yellow were the first to assert themselves; and the two are

significantly combined in Homer's descriptions of the dawn--the

yellow of the crocus as a garment, and the flush of the rose for

the fingered rays.

We must not imagine, however, that the failure to distinguish

the hues and grades of blue argued any lack of appreciation of

the quality of pure, translucent depth which characterises the

clear sunlit sky. A striking proof to the contrary is found in a

description in the book of Exodus, where a vision of God is

described, and where we read that under His feet was as it were

a work of transparent sapphire, and as it were the body of

heaven in its clearness." We recall also the exquisite expression,

"the clear shining after rain."

The nature-mystic, therefore, need not eliminate the blue of the

vault, the brightness of the sky, as an influence in moulding

man's spiritual nature in the early days. It remains true,

however, that the delicate discrimination of colour is a

comparatively recent acquirement, and that thus the modern

world has gained a new wealth of phenomena in the sphere of

direct sensation. And this recently acquired subtlety of

colour-sense is bound to bring with it a corresponding wealth of

mystical intuition. The older attempts at colour symbolism point

the way--the red of blood, the crimson of flame, the white of the

lily, the blush of the rose, the gleam of steel or silver, the glow

of gold, the green of the mantle worn by mother-earth, all these,

and numberless others have played their part as subtle mystic

influences. But there is more and better yet to come. Milton

could write:

"O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!"

As tints, so significances, more delicate shall be won by man's

soul in contact with nature. For colour is as varied as love.

"Colour" (says Ruskin) "is the type of love. Hence it is

especially connected with the blossoming of the earth, and with

its fruits; also with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the

morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of

love about the birth and death of man."

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MOON--A SPECIAL PROBLEM

The contention of the nature-mystic is that man can enter into

direct communion with the objects in his physical environment,

inasmuch as they are akin to himself in their essential nature.

Now Goethe says:

"The stars excite no craving,

One is happy simply in their glory."

And Schopenhauer asks why the sight of the full moon has

upon us an influence so soothing and elevating. His explanation

is in harmony with the general trend of his philosophical

doctrine. He says that the moon has so little relation to our

personal concerns that it is not an object of willing. We are

content to contemplate her in passive receptivity. We have here

a problem which is well worthy of discussion. Let us bring the

matter to the test of actual experience as embodied in modern

prose and poetry. For while it goes without saying that the

qualities of physical remoteness, elevation, and vastness, have

their own peculiar mystical power, and that they are especially

manifested in the phenomena of the starry heaven, there is a

danger of emphasising this fact to the detriment of the basic

principle of Nature Mysticism. In order to bring the discussion

within reasonable limits, let it be confined to Schopenhauer's

example:

"That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the moon."

Is it true that there is, alongside of the feeling of her remoteness,

none of the active emotion which essential kinship would lead

us to anticipate?

Appeal might at once be made to the proverbial "crying for the

moon"; and there would be more in the appeal than might

appear at first sight. For there comes at once into mind the

sublimination of this longing in the lovely myth of Endymion

which so powerfully affected Keats, and fascinated even

Browning. Appeal might also be made to the sweet naturalism

of St. Francis with his endearing name, "Our sister, the Moon."

There is, moreover, the enormous mass of magical and

superstitious lore which gives the moon a very practical and

direct influence over human affairs. This may be ruled out as

not based on facts; but it remains as an evidence of a sense of

kinship of a practical kind. And if this fails, there is the teaching

of modern science. We now know that the tides are evidence of

the moon's never-ceasing interposition in terrestrial affairs, and

that, apart from her functions as a light-giver, innumerable

human happenings are dependent on her motion and position.

There is even a theory that she is part and parcel of the earth

itself, having been torn out of the bed of the Pacific. And, in any

case, her surface has been explored, so far as it is turned to us,

and, with a marvellous accuracy of detail, mapped out, and

named. Science, then, while measuring her distance, certainly

does not increase the sense of our alienation from her.

But let us turn, as proposed, to the writings of modern seers and

interpreters. See how Keats associates the moon with the

humblest and most homely things of earth:

"Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in."

There is no sense of a gap here, in passing from heaven to earth.

In a strain of stronger emotion, he makes Endymion speak:

"Lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge

The loveliest moon that ever silvered o'er

A shell from Neptune's goblet; she did soar

So passionately bright, my dazzled soul

Commingling with her argent spheres did roll

Through clear and cloudy."

There is little of Schopenhauer's passive and contemplative

receptivity here! Rather a mingling of being in a sweep through

space.

Catullus sang how that:

"Near the Delian olive-tree Latonia gave thy life to thee

That thou shouldst be for ever queen

Of mountains and of forests green;

Of every deep glen's mystery;

Of all streams in their melody."

And Wordsworth, in fullest sympathy enforces the old-world

imaginings. He dwells on the homely aspect:

"Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near

To human life's unsettled atmosphere;

Who lov'st with Night and Silence to partake,

So might it seem, the cares of them that wake;

And through the cottage-lattice softly peeping,

Dost shield from harm the humblest of the sleeping"--

And links on these friendly thoughts to the mythical spirit of the

past:

"well might that fair face

And all those attributes of modest grace,

In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,

Down to the green fields fetch thee from thy sphere,

To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear."

Or take the famous Homeric simile so finely translated by

Tennyson:

"As when in Heaven the stars above the moon

Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,

And every height comes out, and jutting peak

And valley, and the immeasurable heavens

Break open to their highest, and all the stars

Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart."

The stars are here associated with the moon--so much the better

for the principle now defended.

Compare this with some lines from Goethe himself--the Goethe

who would persuade us that the stars excite no craving, and that

we are happy simply in their glory. He thus addresses the

Moon:

"Bush and vale thou fill'st again

With thy misty ray

And my spirit's heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,

Watching, like a gentle friend,

O'er my destiny."

Browning felt the charm of a lambent moon:

"Voluptuous transport rises with the corn

Beneath a warm moon like a happy face."

So with an English picture from Kirke White:

"Moon of harvest, herald mild

Of plenty, rustic labour's child,

Hail! O hail! I greet thy beam,

As soft it trembles o'er the stream,

And gilds the straw-thatched hamlet wide,

Where Innocence and Peace reside;

'Tis thou that gladd'st with joy the rustic throng,

Promptest the tripping dance, th' exhilarating song."

To emphasise this aspect is not to forget that there is another.

Wordsworth experienced both types of emotion. Time, he sings:

"that frowns

In her destructive flight on earthly crowns,

Spares thy cold splendour; still those far-shot beams

Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams

With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise

Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays."

But abundant evidence is available to prove that the position

taken by Goethe and Schopenhauer may easily lead to a loss of

true perspective. The moon and stars, though remote, are also

near: though they start trains of passive and contemplative

thought, they also stimulate active emotions and even

passionate yearnings. What more passionate than Shelley?

"The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow."

There do not seem to be many poets who have brought into

clear antithesis and relief this dual aspect of the mystic

influence of the heavenly bodies. But it definitely arrested the

imagination and thought of Clough, whose poem, "Selene,"

deals wholly with this theme. It is too long for quotation here,

though the whole of it would be admirably in place. Enough is

given to show its general drift. The Earth addresses the Moon:

"My beloved, is it nothing

Though we meet not, neither can,

That I see thee, and thou me,

That we see and see we see,

When I see I also feel thee;

Is it nothing, my beloved?

. . .

O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not,

Lookest onward, look'st before,

Yet I follow evermore.

Cruel, cruel, didst thou only

Feel as I feel evermore,

A force, though in, not of me,

Drawing inward, in, in, in,

Yea, thou shalt though, ere all endeth,

Thou shalt feel me closer, closer,

My beloved!

. . .

The inevitable motion

Bears us both upon its line

Together, you as me,

Together and asunder,

Evermore. It so must be."

It behoves the nature-mystic, then, to be wholehearted in

defence of his master principle. _Homo sum, et humani a me nil

alienum puto_--so said Terence. The nature-mystic adopts and

expands his dictum. He substitutes _mundani_ for _humani_,

and includes in his _mundus_, as did the Latins, and as did the

Greeks in their _cosmos_, not only the things of earth but the

expanse of heaven.

CHAPTER XXXII

EARTH, MOUNTAINS, AND PLAINS

And thus the three great nature-philosophers of the old world,

Thales, Anaximenes, and Heracleitus, have been our guides, so

to speak, in surveying the most striking phenomena of water,

air, and fire. The fourth member of the ancient group of

"elements" has received but incidental treatment. Obviously it

could hardly be otherwise, especially within the limits which

such a study as this imposes. The varied and wondrous forms of

vegetable and animal life have likewise made but brief and

transient appearances; but this omission has been due to a

definite intention expressed at the outset. It may nevertheless be

well, before concluding, to cast a glance over the rich provinces

which still lie open to the nature-mystic for further discovery

and research.

The more striking features of the landscape have always

arrested attention and stimulated the mystic sense. The peculiar

influence of heights has been noted at an earlier stage, though

but cursorily. Much might be said of the enormous effect of

mountain scenery. The most direct form of nature-feeling finds

expression in Scott and Byron; and the description of crags,

ravines, peaks and gorges, bulks largely in their writings.

Typical are these lines from "Manfred":

"Ye crags upon whose extreme edge

I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath

Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs

In dizziness of distance."

or Shelley with his

"Eagle-baffling mountain

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured, without herb,

Insect, or beast, or shape, or sound of life."

Indeed there are few poets, even those who are chiefly

concerned with man and his doings, who do not often turn to

mountain scenery at least for similes. And it could not be

otherwise; for the immanent ideas here manifested are

self-assertive in character and specially rich in number and

variety. As it has been well expressed, nature's pulse here seems

to beat more quickly. In olden days the high places of the earth

associated themselves with myths of gods and Titans. Fully

representative of the world of to-day, Tennyson asks:

"Hast thou no voice, O Peak,

That standest high above all?"

And his answer turns on the mystic bonds that bind the deep

and the height into a cycle of interdependent activities.

"The deep has power on the height,

And the height has power on the deep.

A deep below the deep

And a height beyond the height!

Our hearing is not hearing,

And our seeing is not sight."

Or Morris gives the mysticism a more personal turn:

"Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!

I lift to you a hopeless eye,

I see your icy ramparts drawn

Between the sleepers and the dawn;

I see you when the sun has set

Flush with the dying daylight yet.

. . .

Oh, snows so pure! oh, peaks so high!

I shall not reach you till I die."

And now that modern geology is revealing to us more and more

of the origin and structure of the mountain ranges of the world,

and telling us more and more of the wondrous materials which

go to their building, the field for mysticism is being widely

extended.

Different, but hardly less powerful, is the influence of hill

scenery--whether they

"in the distance lie

Blue and yielding as the sky,"

or whether their gentle slopes are climbed and their delicate

beauties seen close at hand. As Ruskin has averred, even the

simplest rise can suggest the mountain; but it also has a mystic

charm of its own, complementary to that of the sheltered vale,

which is exquisite alike in its natural simplicity, and in its

response to the labours of man, where some

"kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God."

But though the influence of mountains, hills, ravines, and vales,

is obvious even to the superficial enquirer, it should not obscure

for us the very real, if less potent influence of lowlands, plains,

and deserts. More especially subtle in its effect upon the spirit

of man, is the loneliness of wildernesses, the prairies, the

pampas, the tundras, the Saharas. The Greek Pan was essentially

a god of the wild, unploughed surfaces of the earth. Hence,

also, the frequent conjunction of the wilderness and silent

meditation and ascetic discipline. Schopenhauer suggests

that one secret of the spell of mountain scenery is the

permanence of the sky-line. Shall we say that one secret of the

solitary place is the turning in of the human spirit upon itself

because of the sameness of the permanent sky-line?

The effect of scenery upon religion was treated of in illustration

of the general principle of Nature Mysticism--the kinship of

man and his physical environment. No less marked has been the

effect of scenery upon art. The theme is now somewhat well

worn, but its true significance is seldom apprehended. For if art

is concerned with the realm of the ideal, or rather, perhaps, with

the real in its more ideal aspects, then it follows that whatever

has an influence on art has an influence on the spiritual

development of the people among whom any particular mode or

school of art may-establish itself. An interesting phase of such

influence is found in Geikie's suggestion as to the presence of

the humorous element in the myths and legends of northern

Europe. "The grotesque contours" (he says) "of many craggy

slopes where, in the upstanding pinnacles of naked rock, an

active imagination sees forms of men and of animals in endless

whimsical repetitions, may sometimes have suggested the

particular form of the ludicrous which appears in the popular

legend. But the natural instinct of humour which saw physical

features in a comic light, and threw a playful human interest

over the whole face of nature, was a distinctively. Teutonic

characteristic." There opens out here an unexplored region for

original research. Taking the nature-mystic's mode of

experience as a basis for enquiry, how far is the comic a purely

subjective affair, concerned only, as Bergson contends, with

man, and only found in external phenomena by virtue of their

reflecting his affairs; or how far has it a place of its own in the

universe at large?

To conclude this slight sketch of the Nature Mysticism of the

solid earth, let us bring together an ancient and a recent

expression of the emotion these purely terrestrial phenomena

can arouse. There is one of the Homeric hymns which is

addressed to "the Earth, Mother of All." Its beginning and its

ending are as follows (in Shelley's translation):

"O universal mother, who dost keep

From everlasting thy foundations deep,

Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee.

. . .

Mother of gods, thou wife of starry Heaven,

Farewell! be thou propitious."

Is there not a living continuity between the emotional element

in that grand old hymn and the strong full modern sentiment in

this concluding stanza of Brown's "Alma Mater"?

"O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,

I love thee, O, I love thee!

So let me leave thee never,

But cling to thee for ever,

And hover round thy mountains,

And flutter round thy fountains,

And pry into thy roses fresh and red;

And blush in all thy blushes,

And flush in all thy flushes,

And watch when thou art sleeping,

And weep when thou art weeping,

And be carried with thy motion,

As the rivers and the ocean,

As the great rocks and the trees are--

O mother, this were glorious life,

This were not to be dead.

O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,

I love thee, O, I love thee! "

CHAPTER XXXIII

SEASONS, VEGETATION, ANIMALS

The seasons and the months, especially those of the temperate

zones--how saturated with mysticism! The wealth of illustration

is so abounding that choice is wellnigh paralysed. Poets and

nature lovers are never weary of drawing on its inexhaustible

supplies. Take these verses from Tennyson's "Early Spring":

"Opens a door in Heaven;

From skies of glass

A Jacob's ladder falls

On greening grass,

And o'er the mountain-walls

Young angels pass.

For now the Heavenly Power

Makes all things new

And thaws the cold and fills

The flower with dew;

The blackbirds have their wills,

The poets too."

Or take these exultant lines from Coventry Patmore's

"Revulsion" Canto:

"'Twas when the spousal time of May

Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths,

And air's so sweet the bosom gay

Gives thanks for every breath it breathes;

When like to like is gladly moved,

And each thing joins in Spring's refrain,

'Let those love now who never loved;

Let those who have loved, love again.'"

Recall the poems that celebrate in endless chorus the emotions

stirred by the pomp and glory of the summer; by the fruitfulness

or sadness of the mellow autumn; by the keen exhilaration or

the frozen grip of winter. Some poets, like Blake, have written

special odes or sonnets on all the four; some like Keats, in his

"Ode to Autumn," have lavished their most consummate art on

the season which most appealed to them. Each month, too, has

its bards; its special group of qualities and the sentiments they

stimulate. Truly the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices as he

reflects on the inexhaustibility of material and of significance

here presented!

And what of the flowers? Once again the theme is inexhaustible.

The poets vie with one another in their efforts to give

to even the humblest flowers their emotional and mystic

setting. Some of the loveliest of the old-world myths are busied

with accounting for the form or colour of the flowers.

Wordsworth's Daffodils, Burns's Daisy, Tennyson's "Flower in

the Crannied Wall," these are but fair blooms in a full and

dazzling cluster. Flowers (said a certain divine) are the sweetest

things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. The

nature-mystic thankfully acknowledges the sweetness, but he questions

the absence of the soul! The degree of individuality is matter for

grave debate; but to assume its absence is to place oneself out of

focus for gaining true and living insight into nature's being.

How much more deep-founded is Wordsworth's faith "that

every flower enjoys the air it breathes."

Let us bring this matter to the test in regard to the big brothers

of the flowers--the trees. Passing by the ample range of striking

and beautiful myths and legends (packed as many of them are

with mystic meaning), let us turn to the expressions of personal

feeling which the literature of various ages provides in

abundance--limiting the view to certain typical examples. The

Teutonic myth of the World-tree was dealt with fully in the

chapter on Subterranean Waters. But it is well to mention it now

in connection with the far-extended group of myths which

centre in the idea of a tree of life, which preserved their vitality

in changing forms, and which even appear in Dante in his

account of the mystical marriage under the withered tree. Virgil

was a lover of trees; the glade and the forest appealed to him by

the same magic of suggested life as that which works on the

modern poet or nature-lover.

It is generally supposed that, in England, the loving insight of

the nature-mystic was practically unknown until Collins,

Thomson, and Crabbe led the way for the triumph of the Lake

poets.

This may be true for many natural objects--but it is not true for

all. How fresh these lines from an address to his muse by

Wither:

"By the murmur of a spring,

Or the least bough's rustelling;

By a daisy whose leaves spread,

Shut when Titan goes to bed;

Or a shady bush or tree,--

She could more infuse in me

Than all Nature's beauties can

In some other wiser man."

Surely this is the voice of Wordsworth in Tudor phraseology.

Still more startling is this passage from Marvell, out of the

midst of the Commonwealth days: so remarkable is its Nature

Mysticism and its Wordsworthian feeling and insight, that it

must be given without curtailment. It occurs in the poem on the

"Garden."

"Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,

Withdraws into its happiness;

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find;

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds, and other seas,

Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade,

Here at the fountain's sliding foot,

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,

Casting the body's vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide:

There, like a bird, it sits and sings,

Then whets and combs its silver wings,

And, till prepared for longer flight,

Waves in its plumes the various light."

Every line of this extract is worthy of close study--not only for

its intrinsic beauty, but for its evidence of the working of the

immanent ideas, and the vivid sense of kinship with tree life.

The two lines

"Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in a green shade,"

are justly famous. But more significant are the three less known

ones:

"Casting the body's vest aside

My soul into the boughs does glide:

There like a bird it sits and sings."

Did Wordsworth, or Tennyson, or Shelley, ever give token of a

more vivid sense of kinship with the life of the tree? Is it not

palpable that the same essential form of intuitive experience is

struggling in each and all of these poets to find some fitting

expression? For Marvell, as for Wordsworth,

"The soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs"

seemed to fluctuate with an interior life and to call for joyous

sympathy.

Or, finally, study these passages from Walt Whitman, the sturdy

Westerner; his feeling for the mystic impulses from tree life is

exceptional, if not in its intensity, at any rate in his

determination to give it utterance. If trees do not talk, he says,

they certainly manage it "as well as most speaking, writing,

poetry, sermons--or rather they do a great deal better. I should

say indeed that those old dryad reminiscences are quite as true

as any, and profounder than most, reminiscences we get."

Farther on, speaking of evening lights and shades on foliage

grass, he says, "In the revealings of such light, such exceptional

hour, such mood, one does not wonder at the old story fables

(indeed, why fables?) of people falling into love-sickness with

trees, seiz'd ecstatic with the mystic realism of the resistless

silent strength in them--strength which, after all, is perhaps the

last, completest, highest beauty." In another place, he says, "I

hold on boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and

shade, wrestle with their inmost stalwartness--and _know_ the

virtue thereof passes from them into me. (Or maybe we

interchange--maybe the trees are more aware of it all than I ever

thought.)" And once again, speaking of a yellow poplar tree,

"How strong, vital, enduring! How dumbly eloquent! What

suggestions of imperturbability and _being_, as against the

human trait of _seeming_. Then the qualities, almost emotional,

palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet

so savage. It _is_, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough

and equable serenity all weathers." All this is unconventional!

So much the better! The identity of underlying sentiment comes

out the more clearly. Trees are not only alive (and yet how

much that fact alone contains!) but they have a character, an

individuality of their own; they can speak directly to the heart

and soul of man, and man can sympathise with them.

As for the animal world in the widest sense, it is plain that its

study, from the mystical point of view, forms a department to

itself. Granted that the transition from the mineral to the

organism is gradual, and that from the vegetable to the animal

still more gradual, the broad fact remains that, when we reach

the higher forms of the realm of living matter, we definitely

recognise many of the characteristics which are found in the

human soul--will, emotion, impulse, even intellectual activities.

Not only primitive man, but those also who are often far

advanced in mental development, attribute souls to animals, and

find it difficult to believe otherwise--as witness the totemistic

systems followed by theories of metempsychosis. And

Darwinism, far from destroying these old ideas, has simply

furnished a scientific basis for a new totemism.

As was remarked at the outset, this subject of what we may call

Animal Mysticism, lies outside our present province.

Nevertheless, a word or two showing how the physical, the

vegetable, and the animal are linked together in living mystical

union may fittingly bring this chapter to a close. Many of our

deepest and most original thinkers are feeling their way to this

larger Mysticism. Here are two examples taken almost at

random. Anatole France, in one of the many charming episodes

which render his story of the old savant, Sylvestre Bonnard, at

once so touching and so philosophic, takes his old hero under

the shade of some young oaks to meditate on the nature of the

soul and the destiny of man. The narrative proceeds thus: "Une

abeille, dont le corsage brun brillait au soleil comme une armure

de vieil or, vint se poser sur une fleur de mauve d'une sombre

richesse et bien ouverte sur sa tige touffue. Ce n'était

certainement pas la première fois que je voyais un spectacle si

commun, mais c'était la première que je le voyais avec une

curiosité si affectueuse et si intelligente. Je reconnus qu'il y

avait entre l'insecte et la fleur toutes sortes de sympathies et

mille rapports ingénieux que je n'avais pas soupconnés jusque

là. L'insecte, rassasié de nectar, s'élanca en ligne hardie. Je me

relevai du mieux que je pus, et me rajustai sur mes jambes--

Adieu, dis-je à la fleur et a l'abeille. Adieu. Puissé-je vivre

encore le temps de deviner le secret de vos harmonies. . . .

Combien le vieux mythe d'Antée est plein de sens! J'ai touché la

terre et je suis un nouvel homme, et voici qu'à soixante-dix ans

de nouvelles curiosités naissent dans mon âme comme on voit

des rejetons s'élancer du tronc creux d'un vieux saule."

"May I live long enough to solve the secret of your harmonies!"

There is the spirit of the true nature-mystic! But how will it be

solved? By intuition first--if ever the intellect does seize the

secret, it will be on the basis of intuition. It is with this

conviction in his mind that Maeterlinck meditates on the same

theme as that which arrested Anatole France. "Who shall tell us,

oh, little people (the bees), that are so profoundly in earnest,

that have fed on the warmth and the light and on nature's purest,

the soul of the flowers--wherein matter for once seems to smile

and put forth its most wistful effort towards beauty and

happiness--who shall tell us what problems you have resolved,

but we not yet; what certitudes you have acquired, that we have

still to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems,

acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive

impulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma,

more insoluble still, are you not urging us on?"

Such is the leaven that is working in much of the foremost

thinking of our time. The reign of materialism is passing--that

of mysticism waxing in imperative insistence and extent of

sway. And the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices to know that

his master-principle of kinship universal is coming to its own.

Anatole France and Maeterlinck are striving to seize on the

harmonies between the physical, the vegetable, and the animal

spheres--the air and sunshine, the flowers, and the bees; add the

moral and spiritual harmonies, and Mysticism stands complete--

it strives to read the secret of existence as a whole, of the "_élan

vital_" in this or any other world.

CHAPTER XXXIV

PRAGMATIC

The programme laid down in the introductory chapter has been

fulfilled. There has been no attempt to make any single section,

much less the study as a whole, a complete or exhaustive

exposition of its subject matter. The purpose throughout has

been to bring to light the fundamental principles of Nature

Mysticism, to consider the validity of the main criticisms to

which they are subjected, and to illustrate some of their most

typical applications. A formal summary of the conclusions

reached would be tedious and unnecessary. But it may be well

to show that even when brought to the tests imposed by the

reigning Pragmatism, the nature-mystic can justify his existence

and can proselytise with a good conscience.

"Back to the country"--a cry often heard, though generally with

a significance almost wholly economic, or at any rate utilitarian.

It gives expression to the growing conviction that the life of

great cities is too artificial and specialised to permit of a healthy

all-round development of their populations. From the eugenic

point of view, physique is lowered. From the economic point of

view, large areas are deprived of their healthy independence by

the disturbance of the balance of production as between town

and country. Each of these considerations is evidently of

sufficient seriousness to arouse widespread apprehension.

But there is the nature-mystic's view of the situation which,

when really attained, is seen to be of no less importance, though

it is too often left in comparative obscurity. It is easily

approached from the purely aesthetic side. The city may

develop a quick and precocious intelligence, but it is at the cost

of eliminating a rich range of experiences which should be the

heritage of all normal human beings. In the city, the mind tends

to be immersed in a restricted and specialised round of duties

and pleasures, and loses "natural" tone. While, on the one hand,

there is over-stimulation of certain modes of sensation, others

are largely or wholly atrophied. The finest susceptibilities

decay. The eye and ear, the most delicate avenues of the soul,

are deprived of their native stimulants. In short, city conditions

unduly inhibit the natural development of many elements of the

higher self.

The evils thus briefly touched upon are undoubtedly forcing

themselves more and more into notice, and are evoking much

philanthropic thought and activity. They are more especially

bewailed by many who, themselves lovers of art and lovers of

nature, keenly appreciate the loss sustained, and the danger

incurred. Ruskin's teachings have affected the views and lives

of thousands who have never read his books. Those who have

penetrated most deeply into the play of aesthetic cause and

effect, well know that the very existence of truly great and

creative art is at stake. Science, literature, politics, and a

thousand specialised distractions tend to "saturate our limited

attention," and to absorb our energies, to the detriment of our

feeling for nature and of our enjoyment of her beauties. And yet

it is only by keeping in living touch with nature that fine art can

renew its inspiration or scale the heights.

There is, of course, the counter peril of an unhealthy

aestheticism, marked by an assumption of susceptibility which

is insufferable. Feeling, ostensibly expended upon external

beauty, can become an odious form of self-admiration; and

priggishness is the least of the diseases that will ensue. For with

the loss of spontaneity and freshness in the feeling there goes

mortification of the feeling itself. Still, this danger is not

general, and is therefore less noteworthy. It may safely be left to

the healing remedies instinctively applied by common sense.

The nature-mystic, however, does not linger long on the merely

aesthetic plane. He goes deeper down to the heart of things, and

holds that to lose touch with nature is to lose touch with Reality

as manifested in nature. It is sad, he declares, to miss the pure

enjoyment of forms and colours, of sounds and scents; it is

sadder to miss the experience of communing with the spirit

embodied in these external phenomena. For it is not mere lack

of education of the senses that must then be lamented (though

that is lack enough!) but the stunting of the soul-life that ensues

on divorce from nature, and from the great store of primal and

fundamental ideas which are immanent therein. The loss may

thus become, not simply sad, but tragic.

And the weightiness of these considerations is not diminished

when we relate them to the special needs of the day. Our time is

one of deep unrest--showing itself in religion and ethics, in

literature and art, in politics and economics. Unrest manifests

itself in what we have learnt to call "the social question." How

shall civilisation regain and increase its healthy restfulness?

Unless a cure be found, there will be disaster ahead. Democracy

has brought with it great hopes; it also stirs unwonted fears. The

people at large must be lifted on to a higher plane of living; they

must win for themselves wider horizons; they must kindle their

imaginations, and allow play to their non-egoistic and nobler

emotions. How better secure these ends than by bringing "the

masses" into touch with the elemental forces and phenomena

of nature? "Democracy" (says Walt Whitman) "most of all

affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy and sane only

with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is required to

temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess,

morbidity. . . . I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements

of Democracy . . . without the Nature element forming a main

part--to be its health-element and beauty-element--to really

underlie the whole politics, sanity, religion, and art of the New

World." Yes, converse with Nature--even the simplest form of

converse--has a steadying effect, and brings that kind of quiet

happiness which has for its companions good-will and delicate

sympathy. To sever oneself from such converse is to induce

selfishness, boorishness (veneered or un-veneered), and

inhumanity. The influence of nature means development; the

lack of that influence means revolution.

Hence Wordsworth's invitation has its social, as well as its

individual bearings:

"Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books,

Or surely you'll grow double!

. . .

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which

Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives."

So Emerson, of the man who can yield himself to nature's

influences. "And this is the reward: that the ideal shall be real

to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like

summer rain, copious but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable

essence." So, once again, Matthew Arnold in his striking

sonnet, "Quiet Work":

"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,

One lesson which in every wind is blown,

One lesson of two duties kept at one

Though the loud world proclaim their enmity--

Of toil unsevered from tranquillity,

Of labour that in lasting fruit outgrows

Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose,

Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.

Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,

Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil,

Still do thy quiet ministers move on,

Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting:

Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,

Labourers that shall not fail when man is gone."

It is in nature, then, and in her subtle but potent workings on the

human soul that we shall find at least one antidote for the undue

and portentous tension of our day. To say this is not to

depreciate science, but to put it in its rightful setting. Nor is it

to depreciate culture, but to bring it into due perspective, and to

vitalise it. Nor is it to depreciate art, but to endow it with glow,

with variety, with loyalty to truth.

According to Pope, the proper study of mankind is man. How

shallow, how harmful such a dictum! Contrast Kant's deeper

insight. "Two things fill me with awe--the starry heaven

without, and the moral law within." That famous apophthegm

leads us nearer to the saving truth. For it contemplates man, not

in his isolation, but as placed in a marvellous physical

environment: to understand one you must understand the other

also. Add the thought expressed in the fundamental principle of

Nature Mysticism--the thought that nature is spiritually akin to

ourselves--and we see that the proper study of mankind is

human nature as a part of a living whole.

But the nature-mystic is not content to "study." He desires to

hold communion with the spirit and the life which he feels and

knows to be manifested in external nature. For him there is no

such thing as "brute" matter, nor even such a thing as "mere"

beauty. He hears deep calling unto deep--the life within to the

life without--and he responds.