Subtle as the mind is, it can effect little without knowledge. It
cannot construct a bridge, or a building, or make a canal, or work a
problem in algebra, unless it is provided with information. This is
obvious, and yet some say, What can you effect by the soul? I reply
because it has had no employment. Mediaeval conditions kept it in
slumber: science refuses to accept it. We are taught to employ our
minds, and furnished with materials. The mind has its logic and
exercise of geometry, and thus assisted brings a great force to the
solution of problems. The soul remains untaught, and can effect little.
I consider that the highest purpose of study is the education of the
soul or psyche. It is said that there is no proof of the existence of
the soul, but, arguing on the same grounds, there is no proof of the
existence of the mind, which is not a tangible thing. For myself, I
feel convinced that there is a soul, a mind of the mind—and that it
really exists. Now, glancing at the state of wild and uneducated men,
it is evident that they work with their hands and make various things
almost instinctively. But when they arrive at the idea of mind, and say
to themselves, I possess a mind, then they think and proceed farther,
forming designs and constructions both tangible and mental.
Next then, when we say, I have a soul, we can proceed to shape things
yet further, and to see deeper, and penetrate the mystery. By denying
the existence and the power of the soul—refusing to employ it—we should
go back more than twelve thousand written years of human history. But
instead of this, I contend, we should endeavour to go forward, and to
discover a fourth Idea, and after that a fifth, and onwards
continually.
I will not permit myself to be taken captive by observing physical
phenomena, as many evidently are. Some gases are mingled and produce a
liquid; certainly it is worth careful investigation, but it is no more
than the revolution of a wheel, which is so often seen that it excites
no surprise, though, in truth, as wonderful. So is all motion, and so
is a grain of sand; there is nothing that is not wonderful; as, for
instance, the fact of the existence of things at all. But the intense
concentration of the mind on mechanical effects appears often to render
it incapable of perceiving anything that is not mechanical. Some
compounds are observed to precipitate crystals, all of which contain
known angles. Thence it is argued that all is mechanical, and that
action occurs in set ways only. There is a tendency to lay it down as
an infallible law that because we see these things therefore everything
else that exists in space must be or move exactly in the same manner.
But I do not think that because crystals are precipitated with fixed
angles therefore the whole universe is necessarily mechanical. I think
there are things exempt from mechanical rules. The restriction of
thought to purely mechanical grooves blocks progress in the same way as
the restrictions of mediæval superstition. Let the mind think, dream,
imagine: let it have perfect freedom. To shut out the soul is to put us
back more than twelve thousand years.
Just as outside light, and the knowledge gained from light, there are,
I think, other mediums from which, in times to come, intelligence will
be obtained, so outside the mental and the spiritual ideas we now
possess I believe there exists a whole circle of ideas. In the
conception of the idea that there are others, I lay claim to another
idea.
The mind is infinite and able to understand everything that is brought
before it; there is no limit to its understanding. The limit is in the
littleness of the things and the narrowness of the ideas which have
been put for it to consider. For the philosophies of old time past and
the discoveries of modern research are as nothing to it. They do not
fill it. When they have been read, the mind passes on, and asks for
more. The utmost of them, the whole together, make a mere nothing.
These things have been gathered together by immense labour, labour so
great that it is a weariness to think of it; but yet, when all is
summed up and written, the mind receives it all as easily as the hand
picks flowers. It is like one sentence—read and gone.
The mind requires more, and more, and more. It is so strong that all
that can be put before it is devoured in a moment. Left to itself it
will not be satisfied with an invisible idol any more than with a
wooden one. An idol whose attributes are omnipresence, omnipotence, and
so on, is no greater than light or electricity, which are present
everywhere and all-powerful, and from which perhaps the thought arose.
Prayer which receives no reply must be pronounced in vain. The mind
goes on and requires more than these, something higher than prayer,
something higher than a god.
I have been obliged to write these things by an irresistible impulse
which has worked in me since early youth. They have not been written
for the sake of argument, still less for any thought of profit, rather
indeed the reverse. They have been forced from me by earnestness of
heart, and they express my most serious convictions. For seventeen
years they have been lying in my mind, continually thought of and
pondered over. I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric
meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and
indefinable aspirations filled me. I found them in the grass fields,
under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night. There
was a deeper meaning everywhere. The sun burned with it, the broad
front of morning beamed with it; a deep feeling entered me while gazing
at the sky in the azure noon, and in the star-lit evening.
I was sensitive to all things, to the earth under, and the star-hollow
round about; to the least blade of grass, to the largest oak. They
seemed like exterior nerves and veins for the conveyance of feeling to
me. Sometimes a very ecstasy of exquisite enjoyment of the entire
visible universe filled me. I was aware that in reality the feeling and
the thought were in me, and not in the earth or sun; yet I was more
conscious of it when in company with these. A visit to the sea
increased the strength of the original impulse. I began to make efforts
to express these thoughts in writing, but could not succeed to my own
liking. Time went on, and harder experiences, and the pressure of
labour came, but in no degree abated the fire of first thought. Again
and again I made resolutions that I would write it, in some way or
other, and as often failed. I could express any other idea with ease,
but not this. Once especially I remember, in a short interval of
distasteful labour, walking away to a spot by a brook which skirts an
ancient Roman wall, and there trying to determine and really commence
to work. Again I failed. More time, more changes, and still the same
thought running beneath everything. At last, in 1880, in the old castle
of Pevensey, under happy circumstances, once more I resolved, and
actually did write down a few notes. Even then I could not go on, but I
kept the notes (I had destroyed all former beginnings), and in the end,
two years afterwards, commenced this book.
After all this time and thought it is only a fragment, and a fragment
scarcely hewn. Had I not made it personal I could scarcely have put it
into any shape at all. But I felt that I could no longer delay, and
that it must be done, however imperfectly. I am only too conscious of
its imperfections, for I have as it were seventeen years of
consciousness of my own inability to express this the idea of my life.
I can only say that many of these short sentences are the result of
long-continued thought. One of the greatest difficulties I have
encountered is the lack of words to express ideas. By the word soul, or
psyche, I mean that inner consciousness which aspires. By prayer I do
not mean a request for anything preferred to a deity; I mean intense
soul-emotion, intense aspiration. The word immortal is very
inconvenient, and yet there is no other to convey the idea of
soul-life. Even these definitions are deficient, and I must leave my
book as a whole to give its own meaning to its words.
Time has gone on, and still, after so much pondering, I feel that I
know nothing, that I have not yet begun; I have only just commenced to
realise the immensity of thought which lies outside the knowledge of
the senses. Still, on the hills and by the seashore, 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-grey wave, where the wind-quivering
foam is loth 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 have 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.