It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that
the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as
we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory
Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms
enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of
Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he
courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious,
world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round
him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely
grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has
looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly
hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision,
the interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed.
Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains
to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us
safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be
considered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with
better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section
we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible;
but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating.
Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect
is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment,
shall study to do ours:--
"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly
begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile,
the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that
Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried
with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a
miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific,
do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I
please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or
shut Turnpike?
"'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?'
ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of
Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation
of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first
penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been,
brought to bear on us with its Material Force.
"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground
shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore
he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such
declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the
First Century, was full of meaning.
"'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries
an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move
by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must
believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without
variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be
prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable
rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same
unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may
possibly be?
"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated
records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the
Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific
individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and
gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that
they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say,
This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise!
These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are;
have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is
infinite, without bottom as without shore.
"Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets,
with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in
a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have
succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this
what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;'
this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen
thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons,
and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the
Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their
How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane?
"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature
remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and
all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and
measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little
fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what
deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes)
our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble,
and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become
familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic
Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all
which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time
to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a
minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable
All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of
Providence through AEons of AEons.
"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose
Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as
well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand
descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar
Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume
written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which
even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line.
As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely;
and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic
writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar
Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic
Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some
boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible
Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one
day evolve itself, the fewest dream.
"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all.
Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers;
and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby
indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our
houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most,
forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from
the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that
our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest
simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what
is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an
ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and so
become Transcendental?
"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of
all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the
Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is
by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein
is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she
is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when,
in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I
to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen
it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in
Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine,
for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial
gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be
spun, and money and money's worth realized.
"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of
Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding
Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology,
we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting
that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are
Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific,
altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through
this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name
the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it
were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest
Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire;
out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built
together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a
habitable flowery Earth rind.
"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many
other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances,
SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth
itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind
it,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof,
whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint
themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip
them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look
through.
"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself
Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed
over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but
all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of
Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world
we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side
of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his
fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating!
Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of
this latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were
Anywhere, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap on your other felt,
and, simply by wishing that you were _Anywhen_, straightway to be
_Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the
Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically
present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and
Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to
face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth
of that late Time!
"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past
annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only
future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already
answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded
summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet
darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down,
the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both
_are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe
what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all
Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space
are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal
HERE, so is it an everlasting Now.
"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the
white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left
behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully
receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have
journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend
still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with
God!--know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are
perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and
whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily
seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years,
or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou
canst not.
"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are
sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole
Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings,
seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should,
furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind
us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit
Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou
wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then,
with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest
God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my
hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand
and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither.
Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of
distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the
true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch
forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith?
Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding
stupefactions, which Space practices on us.
"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician,
and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the
Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves
in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and
feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and
man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without
one.
"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the
walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built
these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to
dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with
frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and
Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not
the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the
divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus
walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing
in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and,
being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now
with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our
hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which
happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in
two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but
without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no
work that man glories in ever done.
"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from
the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came
transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a
stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh,
could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from
the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou
that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in
very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through
every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a
present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God,
and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.
"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic
Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could
not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and
tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye
as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human
Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The
good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish;
well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his
side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the
threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we?
Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and
that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it
is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, take
figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is
Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not
tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song
of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our
discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide
bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in
our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us
to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now
is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce
battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all
vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and
his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the
veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made
Night hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million
walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished
from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.
"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only
carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with
its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered
round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence
is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse,
fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but
warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more.
Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the
Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink
beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow
them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are
not, their very ashes are not.
"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation
after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing
from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and
Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one
hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly
dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and
then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away,
and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some
wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this
mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding
grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created,
fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully
across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's
mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the
Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality
and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped
in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But
whence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that
it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.
'We _are such stuff_
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep!'"