SPIRIT.
It is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should
contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may be,
and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of this
brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties
find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of nature admit
of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite
scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things,
it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin. It always speaks
of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is a
great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands
with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is
he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most,
will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were,
distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe
himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as
fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions,
but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of
nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through
which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead
back the individual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do not
include the whole circumference of man. We must add some related
thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence is
it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory
answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance.
Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of
our own being, and the evidence of the world’s being. The one is
perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is a part of
the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may
presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a
hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of
carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of matter,
it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me.
It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander
without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections
in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded
with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in
every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does
not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it.
Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as a
useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal
distinction between the soul and the world.
But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to inquire,
Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out of the
recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is present to the
soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or
love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that
for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit
creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one
and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in
space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that
spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us,
but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new
branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As a plant upon the
earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by
unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. Who
can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the upper air,
being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and
we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is
himself the creator in the finite. This view, which admonishes me where
the sources of wisdom and power lie, and points to virtue as to
“The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,”
carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it
animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul.
The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a
remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the
unconscious. But it differs from the body in one important respect. It
is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is
inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the
divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure.
As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident.
We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not
understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us;
the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few
plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the
landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? Yet
this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot
freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field
hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is
out of the sight of men.