"THE STORY OF MY HEART."
In the history of literature one happens, from time to time, upon a book
which has been written because the author had no choice but to write it.
He was compelled by hidden forces to write it. There was no rest for
him, day or night, so soon as the book was complete in his mind, until
he sat down to write it. And then he wrote it at a white heat. For
eighteen years, Jefferies says, he pondered over this book--he means,
that he brooded over these and cognate subjects from the time of
adolescence. At last his mind was full, and then--but not till then--he
wrote it.
Those who have not read it must understand at the outset that it is the
book of one who dares to question for himself on the most important
subject which can occupy the mind. To some men--very young men
especially--it seems an easy thing to question and to go on following
the questions to their logical end. An older man knows better; he has
learned, perhaps by his own experience, that to carry on unto the end
such an inquiry, fearless of whither it may lead, is an act requiring
very great courage, clearness and strength of mind, and carelessness of
other men's opinion. It is, in fact, an act which to begin and to carry
through is beyond the courage and the mental powers of most. I do not
mean the so-called intellectual process gone through by every young man
who takes up the common carping and girding at received forms of
religion, and boldly declares among an admiring circle that he renounces
them all--I mean a long, patient, and wholly reverent inquiry by
whatever line or lines may be possible to a man. For it must not be
forgotten that, though there are many lines of independent research and
inquiry, there are few men to whom even one is actually possible. This,
however, we do not openly acknowledge; every person, however illiterate
and untrained, considers himself, not only free, but also qualified, to
be an advocate, or an opponent, of religion. Freedom of thought is so
great a thing that one would not have it otherwise. As for the lines of
inquiry, scientific men, of whom there are few, apply scientific methods
to certain books held sacred by the Church, with whatever results may
happen; some scientific men, after this research, find that they can
remain Christians, others resigning, at least, the orthodox form of that
faith. Scholars of language, mythology, Oriental antiquities, of whom
also there are comparatively few, may approach the subject by these
lines. Others, like the late Mr. Cotter Morison, the like of whom are
rare, may consider the subject in relation to the history, development,
and proved effect of certain doctrines upon humanity. Others, again,
assuming that the pretensions of priests essentially belong to the
Christian religion, may compare these pretensions with those of other
and older religions. Again, the difficulty or impossibility of
reconciling statements in so-called inspired works, the incongruity of
ancient Oriental customs as compared with modern and European
ideas--these and many other points, all of which require a scholar to
deal with them, may furnish lines of investigation. But, indeed, the
modes of attack may be indefinitely varied. On all sides, doctrinal
religion has been, and is daily, attacked; at all points it has been,
and is daily, defended to the full satisfaction of the defenders. The
assailants can never perceive that they are beaten off at every point;
the defenders can never be made to understand that their stronghold has
been utterly demolished.
The Religious Problem at the present moment has been, in fact, so far
advanced that research, defence, or attack by persons not qualified by
special education in one or other of these lines is absolutely futile.
For the greater number, dulness of perception, ignorance, want of early
training, self-conceit, and that sheer incapacity either to perceive or
to tell the truth which seems to be a special firmity of the age, make
research impossible, attack futile, and defence powerless. And even for
those who seem to have the right to lead, the fact that we are born into
the ideas of our time, as well as into its creeds and traditions, is a
dire obstacle to clearness of vision. We are surrounded, from birth
upwards, by a network of ideas, many false, many conventional, many mere
prejudices. But, such as they are, they tear the flesh if we try to
break through them; by reason of these bonds we cannot march straight,
we cannot see clearly. Education, reading, the literature, and the
common talk of the day, so far from helping us, seem only to raise up
thicker clouds about us which we cannot disperse, neither can we pass
through them.
Does, then, this act of superlative courage, demanded by fearless
inquiry, always lead the man who has achieved it towards atheism or
agnosticism? Not so. The history of the Churches shows that there have
been many men who have embarked upon such an inquiry honestly and
boldly, and have come out of it armed and strengthened with a natural
religion upon which they have been able to graft a Christianity far
deeper, stronger, and more real than that which is commonly taught in
the pulpits, the schools, the catechisms, and the litanies of the
Churches. But, as we said before, such an inquiry is not possible for
every man.
In Jefferies' "Story of My Heart" we have a tale half told. You may read
in it, if you will, the abandonment, rather than the loss, of his early
faith; you cannot read in it, but you shall hear, if you persist to the
end of this volume, how he found it again. But the man who has once
thrown off the old yoke of Authority can never put it on again.
Henceforth he stands alone, yet not alone, for he is face to face with
his God.
Again, the network of custom and tradition which lies around us contains
all our friends as well as ourselves. Those who are unlucky (or lucky)
enough to break through and to get outside it have to separate
themselves from their friends; they have to find new friends--which is
difficult--new companions, at least. And then the novel position is a
kind of standing challenge to old friends. The old equality is gone,
because, if the new philosopher is right, he is intellectually far
above his associates. And since friendship cannot endure the loss of
equality, the ties of years are severed. Instead of the warmth of
friendship, one feels, with the coldness, the reproach of isolation.
This is a consideration, however, which would weigh little with
Jefferies, who lived, of free choice, in isolation.
Again, many men find a sufficient support on the great questions of
faith--which they seldom or never formulate to themselves--in the fact
that certain men, whom they very deeply venerate, believe in certain
doctrines. That such a man as Dean Stanley, for instance--a scholar, a
man of unblemished life, whose purity of soul and natural nobility of
character lifted him high above the average of man--was also a devout
Christian, and a pillar of the Church of England, has been, and is
still, a solid guarantee to thousands who remember his example that the
religion which was able to light his feet through the valley of death,
and to sustain his heart while life was ebbing, must be true. This is a
kindly and a natural aid to faith. And it is another illustration of
the immense, the boundless influence of example. The mediaeval scholar
believed in the Christian religion because even the horrible scandals of
Rome could not destroy it. The modern Churchman modestly and humbly
believes his creed mainly because men very greatly his superiors in
learning and in elevation of soul believe it, and find in it their
greatest consolation, and their only hope. Jefferies had no such
reverence. The great leaders of the Church came not to the Wiltshire
Downs. His own reason should suffice for himself. Was he, therefore,
presumptuous? While any rags of Protestant independence and freedom of
thought yet linger among us, let us, a thousand times, say, No!
Other men, as is well known, take refuge in Authority. This seems so
easy as to be elementary in its simplicity. Authority does not interfere
with the practical business of life, with the getting as much wealth as
we can, and as much enjoyment as we can, while life lasts. And after
death Authority kindly assures us that all shall be done for us to
ensure ultimate enjoyment of more good things. We cannot, certainly,
all seek into the origins and causes of things; some must listen and
obey. There is the Authority of example; there is also the Authority of
Church rule and discipline. But Jefferies was one of those who cannot
listen and obey.
Most books which deal with the difficulties and the loss of faith deal
also largely at the outset with the bitterness and the agonies of the
soul when doubt begins; with the long discussions based upon premises
which are first questioned tentatively, and then wholly denied; with the
consequent estrangement of friends; with the laying down of one set of
shackles in order to take up another, as when a man, after infinite
heart-searchings, exchanges one little sect for another.
Others, again, who think it necessary to put aside their religion, do so
with a curious rage. They vehemently despise, and have no words too
strong for their contempt of those who refuse to follow them. As for the
doctrines themselves, they are--these renegades cry aloud--unworthy the
consideration of any who have the least pretensions to intellect.
Everybody knows this kind. The pervert--the renegade--is the fiercest of
persecutors, the most intolerant in practice. The bitterness in his mind
is caused, or it is increased, by the galling fact that though he is a
rebel, he is always, whatever sect he has abandoned, an unsuccessful
rebel. His old king yet reigneth; he cannot dethrone that king; it is
impossible for him; at the most he can but seduce from their allegiance
a few, and for all his railing the loyal subjects of that king remain
loyal.
Jefferies, for his part, has no agonies of soul to chronicle, nor does
he watch for and set down the stages of unbelief, nor does he tell us of
any arguments with friends. The local curate is never considered or
consulted; friends are neglected; and he is not in the least degree
angry with those who remain loyal to their old religion.
In point of fact, this remarkable book never mentions the old religion
at all. This is a very singular--even an unique--method of treatment.
There is no question of the common lines of research: not one of them is
followed. The author begins, and he goes on, with the assumption that
there is no religion at all which need be considered. On the broad downs
the only bell ever heard is the distant sheep-bell, the only hymn of
praise is the song of the lark. He has wandered among these lonely hills
until he has forgotten the village church and all that he was taught
there. Everything has clean escaped his memory. It is not that the old
teaching no longer guides his conduct; the old teaching no longer lives
at all in his mind.
He has communed so much with Nature that he is intoxicated with her
fulness and her beauty. Nothing else seems worth thinking of. He lies
upon the turf and feels the embrace of the great round world.
"I used to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back,
so as to feel the embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above
me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face. I
looked up at the sky, with half-closed eyes to bear the dazzling
light. Bees buzzed over, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a
hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually entering
into the intense life of the summer days--a life which burned
around as if every grass-blade and leaf were a torch--I came to
feel the long-drawn life of the earth back into the dimmest past,
while the sun of the moment was warm on me.... This sunlight linked
me through the ages to that past consciousness."
Again, he says that, wandering alone, he spoke in his soul to the earth,
the sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight:
"I thought of the earth's firmness--I felt it bear me up; through
the grassy couch there came an influence as if I could feel the
great earth speaking to me. I thought of the wandering air--its
pureness, which is its beauty; the air touched me and gave me
something of itself. I spoke to the sea, though so far, in my mind
I saw it, green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean; I
desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory."
Everything is so full of life, everything around him, the grass-blades,
the flowers, the leaves, the grasshoppers, the birds; all the air is so
full of life that he himself seems to live more largely only by being
conscious of this multitudinous life. And at length he prays. He prays
for a deeper and a fuller soul, that he may take from all something of
their grandeur, beauty, and energy, and gather it to himself. In
answer--let us think--to this prayer there was granted unto him a
Vision. To every man who truly meditates and prays, there comes in the
end a Vision--a Vision of a Flying Roll; a Vision of Four Chariots; a
Vision of a Basket of Summer Fruit. To this man came the Vision, rarely
granted, of the infinite possibilities in man. He saw how much greater
and grander he might become, how his senses might be intensified, how
his frame might be perfected, how his soul might become fuller. Morning,
noon, and night he sees this Vision, and he prays continually for that
increased fulness of soul which is the chief splendour of his Vision.
"Sometimes I went to a deep, narrow valley in the hills, silent and
solitary. The sky crossed from side to side, like a roof supported
on two walls of green. Sparrows chirped in the wheat at the verge
above, their calls falling like the twittering of swallows from the
air. There was no other sound. The short grass was dried gray as it
grew by the heat; the sun hung over the narrow vale as if it had
been put there by hand. Burning, burning, the sun glowed on the
sward at the foot of the slope where these thoughts burned into me.
How many, many years, how many cycles of years, how many bundles of
cycles of years, had the sun glowed down thus on that hollow? Since
it was formed how long? Since it was worn and shaped, groove-like,
in the flanks of the hills by mighty forces which had ebbed. Alone
with the sun which glowed on the work when it was done, I saw back
through space to the old time of tree-ferns, of the lizard flying
through the air, the lizard-dragon wallowing in sea foam, the
mountainous creatures, twice elephantine, feeding on land; all the
crooked sequence of life. The dragon-fly which passed me traced a
continuous descent from the fly marked on stone in those days. The
immense time lifted me like a wave rolling under a boat; my mind
seemed to raise itself as the swell of the cycles came; it felt
strong with the power of the ages. With all that time and power I
prayed: that I might have in my soul the intellectual part of it;
the idea, the thought. Like a shuttle the mind shot to and fro the
past and the present, in an instant."
* * * * *
"Full to the brim of the wondrous past, I felt the wondrous
present. For the day--the very moment I breathed, that second of
time then in the valley, was as marvellous, as grand, as all that
had gone before. Now, this moment, was the wonder and the glory.
Now, this moment, was exceedingly wonderful. Now, this moment, give
me all the thought, all the idea, all the soul expressed in the
cosmos around me. Give me still more, for the interminable
universe, past and present, is but earth; give me the unknown soul,
wholly apart from it, the soul of which I know only that when I
touch the ground, when the sunlight touches my hand, it is not
there. Therefore the heart looks into space to be away from earth.
With all the cycles, and the sunlight streaming through them, with
all that is meant by the present, I thought in the deep vale and
prayed."
Presently, the vague yearning--this passionate prayer for the
realization of a splendid Vision--takes a more definite shape:
"First, I desired that I might do or find something to exalt the
soul, something to enable it to live its own life, a more powerful
existence now. Secondly, I desired to be able to do something for
the flesh, to make a discovery or perfect a method by which the
fleshly body might enjoy more pleasure, longer life, and suffer
less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more flexible engine with which
to carry into execution the design of the will."
As for the soul, his prayer was for the life beyond this.
"Recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly,
death did not seem to me to affect the personality. In dissolution
there was no bridgeless chasm, no unfathomable gulf of separation;
the spirit did not immediately become inaccessible, leaping at a
bound to an immeasurable distance. Look at another person while
living; the soul is not visible, only the body which it animates.
Therefore, merely because after death the soul is not visible is no
demonstration that it does not still live. The condition of being
unseen is the same condition which occurs while the body is living,
so that intrinsically there is nothing exceptional, or
supernatural, in the life of the soul after death. Resting by the
tumulus, the spirit of the man who had been interred there was to
me really alive, and very close. This was quite natural, as natural
and simple as the grass waving in the wind, the bees humming, and
the larks' songs. Only by the strongest effort of the mind could I
understand the idea of extinction; that was supernatural, requiring
a miracle; the immortality of the soul natural, like earth.
Listening to the sighing of the grass I felt immortality as I felt
the beauty of the summer morning."
Three things, he says, were found twelve thousand years ago by
prehistoric man: the existence of the soul, immortality, the Deity.
Since then, nothing further has been found. Well, he would find
something more. What is it he would find? It can only be discovered by
one who has that fulness of the soul for which he prays.
"As I write these words, in the very moment, I feel that the whole
air, the sunshine out yonder lighting up the ploughed earth, the
distant sky, the circumambient ether, and that far space, is full
of soul-secrets, soul-life, things outside the experience of all
the ages. The fact of my own existence as I write, as I exist at
this second, is so marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and
supernatural to me, that I unhesitatingly conclude I am always on
the margin of life illimitable, and that there are higher
conditions than existence. Everything around is supernatural;
everything so full of unexplained meaning."
It is only by the soul that one lives. As for Nature, everything in her
is anti-human. Nothing in Nature cares for man. The earth would let him
perish, and would not trouble, for his sake, to bring forth food or
water. The sun would scorch and burn him. He cannot drink the sea. The
wild creatures would mangle and slay him. Diseases would rack him. The
very things which most he loves live for themselves, and not for him. If
all mankind were to die to-morrow, Nature would still go on, careless of
his fate. There is no spirit, no intelligence in Nature. And in the
events of human life, everything, he says, happens by pure chance. No
prudence in conduct, no wisdom or foresight, can effect anything. The
most trivial circumstance--the smallest accident is sufficient to upset
the deepest plan of the wisest mind. All things happen by chance. This,
then, is the melancholy outcome of all his passionate love of Nature. It
is to this conclusion that he has been brought by his solitary communion
with Nature. Man is quite alone, he says, without help and without hope
of guidance. The Deity--but, then, what does he mean by a Deity? He
means, I think, only the popular and vulgar conception--suffers
everything to take place by chance. Yet there is, there must be, because
he feels it and sees it, something higher and beyond. "For want of words
I write soul."
The book is full of this Vision of the Life beyond the present; he
tries, but sometimes in vain, to clothe his Vision with words. It never
leaves him. It is with him in the heart of London, where the tides of
life converge to the broad area before the Royal Exchange. If he goes to
see the pictures in the National Gallery, it is with him. If he looks at
the old sculpture in the Museum, it is still with him. Always the dream
of the perfect man superior to death and to change; perfect in physical
beauty, perfect in mind.
"I went down to the sea. I stood where the foam came to my feet,
and looked out over the sunlit waters. The great earth bearing the
richness of the harvest, and its hills golden with corn, was at my
back; its strength and firmness under me. The great sun shone
above, the wide sea was before me, the wind came sweet and strong
from the waves. The life of the earth and the sea, the glow of the
sun filled me; I touched the surge with my hand, I lifted my face
to the sun, I opened my lips to the wind. I prayed aloud in the
roar of the waves--my soul was strong as the sea and prayed with
the sea's might. 'Give me fulness of life like to the sea and the
sun, to the earth and the air; give me fulness of physical life,
mind equal and beyond their fulness; give me a greatness and
perfection of soul higher than all things, give me my inexpressible
desire which swells in me like a tide, give it to me with all the
force of the sea.'
"Then I rested, sitting by the wheat; the bank of beach was between
me and the sea, but the waves beat against it; the sea was there,
the sea was present and at hand. By the dry wheat I rested; I did
not think; I was inhaling the richness of the sea; all the strength
and depth of meaning of the sea and earth came to me again. I
rubbed out some of the wheat in my hands, I took up a piece of clod
and crumbled it in my fingers--it was a joy to touch it--I held my
hand so that I could see the sunlight gleam on the slightly moist
surface of the skin. The earth and sun were to me like my flesh and
blood, and the air of the sea life.
"With all the greater existence I drew from them I prayed for a
bodily life equal to it, for a soul-life beyond my thought, for my
inexpressible desire of more than I could shape even into idea.
There was something higher than idea, invisible to thought as air
to the eye; give me bodily life equal in fulness to the strength of
earth, and sun, and sea; give me the soul-life of my desire. Once
more I went down to the sea, touched it, and said farewell. So deep
was the inhalation of this life that day, that it seemed to remain
in me for years. This was a real pilgrimage."
There is much more--a great deal more--in this remarkable book; but what
follows is mostly an amplification of what has gone before. He dwells
upon the striving after physical perfection, the sacred duty of every
man and woman to enrich and strengthen their physical life, by care,
exercise, and in every possible way.
"I believe all manner of asceticism to be the vilest
blasphemy--blasphemy towards the whole of the human race. I believe
in the flesh and the body, which is worthy of worship--to see a
perfect human body unveiled causes a sense of worship. The ascetics
are the only persons who are impure. Increase of physical beauty is
attended by increase of soul beauty. The soul is the higher even by
gazing on beauty. Let me be fleshly perfect."
Do not misunderstand him. This intense craving after physical
perfection, this yearning after beauty, is not a sensual craving. It is
not the Greek's love of perfect form, though Jefferies had this love, as
well. It is far more than this; it means, in the mind of this man, that
without perfection of the body there can be no perfect life of the soul.
In that letter where the Apostle Paul speaks at length of Death and the
Resurrection, he concludes with the assurance--he writes for his own
consolation, I think, as well as that of his disciples--that the body,
as well as the soul, shall live again; but the body glorified, made
perfect and beautiful beyond human power of thought, to be wedded to the
soul purified beyond human power of understanding. Is it not strange
that this solitary questioner, longing and praying for a deeper and
fuller understanding--a fuller soul--should also have arrived at the
perception of the wonderful truth that the perfect soul demands the
perfect body? In his mind there are no echoes ringing of Paul's great
Vision--the whole of his old creed, all of it, has fallen from him and
is lost: it is his own Vision granted to himself. How? After long and
solitary meditation on the hillside, as in the old times great Visions
came to those who fasted in their lonely cells and solitary caves. Great
thoughts come not to those who seek them not. The mind which would
receive them must be first prepared. The example of Jefferies, whose
great thoughts only came to him after long years of meditation apart
from man, may make us understand the Visions which used to reward the
monk, the fakir, the hermit of the lonely laura.
Then he goes back to his theory that everything happens by chance. So
long as men believe that everything is done for them, progress is
impossible. Once grasp the truth that nothing is done for man, and that
he has everything to do for himself, and all is possible. Still, this is
not a proof that chance rules the world. And, again, the fact that man,
alone of created beings, is able to grasp this, or any other truth, is
not that gift everything in itself?
"Nothing whatsoever is done for us. We are born naked, and not even
protected by a shaggy covering. Nothing is done for us. The first
and strongest command (using the word to convey the idea only) that
nature, the universe, our own bodies give is to do everything for
ourselves. The sea does not make boats for us, nor the earth of her
own will build us hospitals. The injured lie bleeding, and no
invisible power lifts them up. The maidens were scorched in the
midst of their devotions, and their remains make a mound hundreds
of yards long. The infants perished in the snow, and the ravens
tore their limbs. Those in the theatre crushed each other to the
death-agony. For how long, for how many thousand years, must the
earth and the sea, and the fire and the air, utter these things and
force them upon us before they are admitted in their full
significance?
"These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every human being
whose body has been racked by pain, from every human being who has
suffered from accident or disease, from every human being drowned,
burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a
continually-increasing cry louder than the thunder. An
awe-inspiring cry dread to listen to, which no one dares listen to,
against which ears are stopped by the wax of superstition, and the
wax of criminal selfishness:--These miseries are your doing,
because you have mind and thought, and could have prevented them.
You can prevent them in the future. You do not even try.
"It is perfectly certain that all diseases without exception are
preventible, or if not so, that they can be so weakened as to do no
harm. It is perfectly certain that all accidents are preventible;
there is not one that does not arise from folly or negligence. All
accidents are crimes. It is perfectly certain that all human beings
are capable of physical happiness. It is absolutely
incontrovertible that the ideal shape of the human being is
attainable to the exclusion of deformities. It is incontrovertible
that there is no necessity for any man to die but of old age, and
that if death cannot be prevented life can be prolonged far beyond
the farthest now known. It is incontrovertible that at the present
time no one ever dies of old age. Not one single person ever dies
of old age, or of natural causes, for there is no such thing as a
natural cause of death. They die of disease or weakness which is
the result of disease, either in themselves or in their ancestors.
No such thing as old age is known to us. We do not even know what
old age would be like, because no one ever lives to it."
This remarkable book is a record almost, if not quite, unique. The
writer is not a man of science; he has not been trained in logic and
dialectics, he is not a scholar, though he has read much. But he can
think for himself, and he has the gift of carrying on the same line of
thought unwearied, persistent, like a bloodhound on the scent, year
after year. And as a record it is absolutely true; there are no
concealments in it, no affectations; it is all true. He has gone to
Nature--the Nature he loves so well--for an answer to the problems that
vex his soul. Nature replies with a stony stare; she has no answer. What
is man? She cares nothing for man. Everything, so far as she knows, and
so far as man is concerned, takes place by chance. Then he gets his
Vision of the Perfect Soul, and it fills his heart and makes him happy,
and seems to satisfy all his longings. And the old Christian teaching,
the prayer to the Father, the village church and its services, the quiet
churchyard--where are they? Out on the wild downs you do not see or hear
of them at all. They are not in the whisper of the air, or in the rustle
of the grass-blades; they are not in the sunshine; they are not in the
cloud; they are not in the depths of the azure sky.
And so he concludes:
"I have only just commenced to realize the immensity of thought
which lies outside the knowledge of the senses. Still, on the hills
and by the sea-shore, I seek and pray deeper than ever. The sun
burns southwards over the sea and before the wave runs its shadow,
constantly slipping on the advancing slope till it curls and covers
its dark image at the shore. Over the rim of the horizon waves are
flowing as high and wide as those that break upon the beach. These
that come to me and beat the trembling shore are like the thoughts
that have been known so long; like the ancient, iterated, and
reiterated thoughts that have broken on the strand of mind for
thousands of years. Beyond and over the horizon I feel that there
are other waves of ideas unknown to me, flowing as the stream of
ocean flows. Knowledge of facts is limitless, they lie at my feet
innumerable like the countless pebbles; knowledge of thought so
circumscribed! Ever the same thoughts come that have been written
down centuries and centuries.
"Let me launch forth and sail over the rim of the sea yonder, and
when another rim arises over that, and again and onwards into an
ever-widening ocean of idea and life. For with all the strength of
the wave, and its succeeding wave, the depth and race of the tide,
the clear definition of the sky; with all the subtle power of the
great sea, there rises an equal desire. Give me life strong and
full as the brimming ocean; give me thoughts wide as its plain;
give me a soul beyond these. Sweet is the bitter sea by the shore
where the faint blue pebbles are lapped by the green-gray wave,
where the wind-quivering foam is loath to leave the lashed stone.
Sweet is the bitter sea, and the clear green in which the gaze
seeks the soul, looking through the glass into itself. The sea
thinks for me as I listen and ponder: the sea thinks, and every
boom of the wave repeats my prayer.
"Sometimes I stay on the wet sands as the tide rises, listening to
the rush of the lines of foam in layer upon layer; the wash swells
and circles about my feet, I lave my hands in it, I lift a little
in my hollowed palm, I take the life of the sea to me. My soul
rising to the immensity utters its desire-prayer with all the
strength of the sea. Or, again, the full stream of ocean beats upon
the shore, and the rich wind feeds the heart, the sun burns
brightly;--the sense of soul-life burns in me like a torch.
"Leaving the shore, I walk among the trees; a cloud passes, and the
sweet short rain comes mingled with sunbeams and flower-scented
air. The finches sing among the fresh green leaves of the beeches.
Beautiful it is, in summer days, to see the wheat wave, and the
long grass foam-flecked of flower yield and return to the wind. My
soul of itself always desires; these are to it as fresh food. I
have found in the hills another valley grooved in prehistoric
times, where, climbing to the top of the hollow, I can see the sea.
Down in the hollow I look up; the sky stretches over, the sun burns
as it seems but just above the hill, and the wind sweeps onward. As
the sky extends beyond the valley, so I know that there are ideas
beyond the valley of my thought; I know that there is something
infinitely higher than Deity. The great sun burning in the sky,
the sea, the firm earth, all the stars of night are feeble--all,
all the cosmos is feeble; it is not strong enough to utter my
prayer-desire. My soul cannot reach to its full desire of prayer. I
need no earth, or sea, or sun to think my thought. If my
thought-part--the psyche--were entirely separated from the body,
and from the earth, I should of myself desire the same. In itself
my soul desires; my existence, my soul-existence is in itself my
prayer, and so long as it exists so long will it pray that I may
have the fullest soul-life."