IDEALISM.
Thus is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of the
world conveyed to man, the immortal pupil, in every object of sense. To
this one end of Discipline, all parts of nature conspire.
A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end be not the
Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature outwardly exists. It is
a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the World, that God will
teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of
congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house
and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report
of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond
with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up
there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the
soul? The relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the
same, what is the difference, whether land and sea interact, and worlds
revolve and intermingle without number or end,--deep yawning under deep,
and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space,--or, whether,
without relations of time and space, the same appearances are inscribed
in the constant faith of man? Whether nature enjoy a substantial
existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike
useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is ideal to me,
so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses.
The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal theory, as if its
consequences were burlesque; as if it affected the stability of nature.
It surely does not. God never jests with us, and will not compromise the
end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. Any
distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man.
Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is
perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of
the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but
like a house to stand. It is a natural consequence of this structure,
that, so long as the active powers predominate over the reflective, we
resist with indignation any hint that nature is more short-lived or
mutable than spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the
tollman, are much displeased at the intimation.
But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the
question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. It is
the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith
in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; but
to lead us to regard nature as phenomenon, not a substance; to attribute
necessary existence to spirit; to esteem nature as an accident and an
effect.
To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of
instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view,
man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they
never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith.
The first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses,
which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us nature
aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher agency intervened, the
animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and colored
surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens, to outline and surface are at
once added, grace and expression. These proceed from imagination and
affection, and abate somewhat of the angular distinctness of objects. If
the Reason be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines and surfaces
become transparent, and are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen
through them. The best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of
the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its
God.
Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. Our first
institution in the Ideal philosophy is a hint from nature herself.
Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Certain
mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position apprizes us
of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a
moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. The
last change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pictorial air.
A man who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach and traverse his
own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The men, the
women,--talking, running, bartering, fighting,--the earnest mechanic,
the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are unrealized at once, or,
at least, wholly detached from all relation to the observer, and seen as
apparent, not substantial beings. What new thoughts are suggested by
seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the
railroad car! Nay, the most wonted objects, (make a very slight change
in the point of vision,) please us most. In a camera obscura, the
butcher’s cart, and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. So a
portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down,
by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the
picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years!
In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference between
the observer and the spectacle,--between man and nature. Hence arises a
pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of the sublime is felt
from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized, that, whilst the
world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable.
2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates the same pleasure. By a few
strokes he delineates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, the
city, the hero, the maiden, not different from what we know them, but
only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes the
land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary
thought, and disposes them anew. Possessed himself by a heroic passion,
he uses matter as symbols of it. The sensual man conforms thoughts to
things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature
as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being
thereon. To him, the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he
invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the
Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason
makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of
subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets.
His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand,
and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his
mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest
sundered things are brought together, by a subtile spiritual connection.
We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all
objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his
sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to
be the _shadow_ of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his
_chest_; the suspicion she has awakened, is her _ornament_;
The ornament of beauty is Suspect,
A crow which flies in heaven’s sweetest air.
His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a
city, or a state.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the brow of thralling discontent;
It fears not policy, that heretic,
That works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic.
In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids seem to him recent and
transitory. The freshness of youth and love dazzles him with its
resemblance to morning.
Take those lips away
Which so sweetly were forsworn:
And those eyes,--the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say, in passing, it would not
be easy to match in literature.
This transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the
passion of the poet,--this power which he exerts to dwarf the great, to
magnify the small,--might be illustrated by a thousand examples from his
Plays. I have before me the Tempest, and will cite only these few lines.
ARIEL. The strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar.
Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo, and his
companions;
A solemn air, and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains
Now useless, boiled within thy skull.
Again;
The charm dissolves apace,
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Their understanding
Begins to swell: and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.
The perception of real affinities between events, (that is to say, of
_ideal_ affinities, for those only are real,) enables the poet thus to
make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, and
to assert the predominance of the soul.
3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he
differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty
as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the
poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire
of thought. “The problem of philosophy,” according to Plato, “is, for
all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and
absolute.” It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena,
which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the
mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the
true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is
beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato’s or
Aristotle’s definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of
Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted
to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and
dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the
vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in
their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is
attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of
particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.
Thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the spiritual. The
astronomer, the geometer, rely on their irrefragable analysis, and
disdain the results of observation. The sublime remark of Euler on his
law of arches, “This will be found contrary to all experience, yet is
true;” had already transferred nature into the mind, and left matter
like an outcast corpse.
4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of
the existence of matter. Turgot said, “He that has never doubted the
existence of matter, may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical
inquiries.” It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated
natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their presence, we feel that the
outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. Whilst we wait in this
Olympus of gods, we think of nature as an appendix to the soul. We
ascend into their region, and know that these are the thoughts of the
Supreme Being. “These are they who were set up from everlasting, from
the beginning, or ever the earth was. When he prepared the heavens, they
were there; when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened
the fountains of the deep. Then they were by him, as one brought up with
him. Of them took he counsel.”
Their influence is proportionate. As objects of science, they are
accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being raised by piety
or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these divine
natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. Like a new
soul, they renew the body. We become physically nimble and lightsome; we
tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be
so. No man fears age or misfortune or death, in their serene company,
for he is transported out of the district of change. Whilst we behold
unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference
between the absolute and the conditional or relative. We apprehend the
absolute. As it were, for the first time, _we exist_. We become
immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter;
that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no
affinity.
5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called,--the
practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life,--have an
analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and
suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein;
that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the
other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does
not. They are one to our present design. They both put nature under
foot. The first and last lesson of religion is, “The things that are
seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal.” It puts an
affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which philosophy
does for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that may be heard in
the churches of the most ignorant sects, is,--“Contemn the unsubstantial
shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities;
seek the realities of religion.” The devotee flouts nature. Some
theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards
matter, as the Manichean and Plotinus. They distrusted in themselves any
looking back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was ashamed of his
body. In short, they might all say of matter, what Michael Angelo said
of external beauty, “it is the frail and weary weed, in which God
dresses the soul, which he has called into time.”
It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and
religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the
external world. But I own there is something ungrateful in expanding too
curiously the particulars of the general proposition, that all culture
tends to imbue us with idealism. I have no hostility to nature, but a
child’s love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and
melons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones at my
beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest. I only wish to indicate the
true position of nature in regard to man, wherein to establish man, all
right education tends; as the ground which to attain is the object of
human life, that is, of man’s connection with nature. Culture inverts
the vulgar views of nature, and brings the mind to call that apparent,
which it uses to call real, and that real, which it uses to call
visionary. Children, it is true, believe in the external world. The
belief that it appears only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this
faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the first.
The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that
it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to
the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both speculative and
practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light
of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it
to the mind. Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle
of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion,
not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged
creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant
eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. Therefore the soul holds
itself off from a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal
tablet. It respects the end too much, to immerse itself in the means. It
sees something more important in Christianity, than the scandals of
ecclesiastical history, or the niceties of criticism; and, very
incurious concerning persons or miracles, and not at all disturbed by
chasms of historical evidence, it accepts from God the phenomenon, as it
finds it, as the pure and awful form of religion in the world. It is not
hot and passionate at the appearance of what it calls its own good or
bad fortune, at the union or opposition of other persons. No man is its
enemy. It accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a
watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer, only that it may the better
watch.