THE MYSTICAL SIDE OF NATURE.
_4th._ The mystical feeling which the contemplation of Nature has
awakened in poets of every age, but which our own day has so greatly
expanded, while it is not directly suggested by Science, yet finds
support from its disclosures. That great spectacle which from earliest
ages has thrilled the poet’s soul with rapture and awe we know now to
be produced by recognized laws, to be interpenetrated by numberless
well-ordered forces, which, are indeed but thought localized, reason made
visible. The intuitive wonder which the earliest poet felt is more than
justified by the latest discoveries of Science.
And yet, be it observed, whatever support the truths of Science may give
to the poet’s instinctive perceptions, it is not on the physical causes
and operations revealed by Science that his eye chiefly dwells. He has
an object of contemplation which is distinct from these and peculiar
to himself, and that is the Beauty which he sees in the face of the
Universe. Over and above the physical laws which uphold and carry on this
framework of things, beyond all the uses which this mechanism subserves,
there is this further fact, this additional result, that all these laws
and forces in their combination issue in Beauty. This Beauty, while it is
created by the collocation and harmonious working of the physical laws,
is a thing distinct from them and their operation. It is an aspect of
things with which the physicist as such does not intermeddle, but it is
as real and as powerful over the minds of men as any force which Science
has disclosed. Modern discovery may have enlarged and intensified it, but
has in no way originated it. In this Beauty the poet from the first has
found his favorite field, the main region of his energy. For ages the
vision of this beauty has haunted, riveted, fascinated him. And if he
is no longer as of old its sole guardian, he is still, whether speaking
through verse or prose, its best and truest interpreter. This truth, that
the Beauty of Nature is something in thought distinct, though in fact
inseparable from the machinery of Nature, has been brought out and dwelt
on with remarkable power by Canon Mozley in his most suggestive sermon on
“Nature.” And he further insists with great force on the truth that it is
this spectacle of beauty produced by the useful laws which is the special
province of the poet:—
“He fixes his eye upon the passive spectacle, upon Nature as an
appearance, a sight, a picture. To another he leaves the search and
analysis; he is content to look, and to look only; this, and this alone,
satisfies him; he stands like a watcher or sentinel, gazing on earth,
sea, and sky, upon the vast assembled imagery, upon the rich majestic
representation on the canvas.”[7]
It is then the spectacle of beauty produced by the combination of
physical laws, this beauty, and not the physical laws which produce
it, on which the poet fixes his gaze. In the presence of it the
poet’s first mental attitude is one of pure receptivity. As the clear
windless lake, spread out on a still autumn day, takes into its steady
bosom every feature of the surrounding mountains, every hue of the
overhanging sky, so is his soul spread out to receive into itself the
whole imagery of Nature. When this wise passiveness has been undergone,
what images, sentiments, thoughts the poet will give back depends on
the capaciousness, the depth, the clearness of soul within him. The
highest poetry of Nature is that which receives most inspiration from
the spectacle, which extracts out of it the largest number of great and
true thoughts. And a thought or idea, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us, “is
great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind,
and as it more fully occupies and, in occupying, exercises and exalts the
faculty by which it is received.”
There are no doubt poets who are mainly taken up with the forms and
colors of things, and yet no poet can rest wholly in them, for this,
if for no other reason, that in the power of rendering them his art
necessarily falls so far below that of the painter. Even those poets who
deal most humbly with Nature must, when they endeavor to make us feel its
visible beauty, link the outward forms and colors to some simple thoughts
of animal delight, or of comfort, or of childhood, or of home affection.
This much he must do, if only to make them vivid, to bring them home to
us. But he who does not go beyond this has not attained to those higher
secrets of Nature, which are open to the meditative imagination. When a
reflective man comes on some sudden beauty of scenery in the wilderness
where no man is, how often has the thought arisen that all this beauty
cannot be wasted on vacancy, that though man comes not that way to see
it, there must be other eyes that behold the spectacle,—one Eye at least
by which it is not unseen.
Whether we regard the beauty as something wholly external to us, as lying
outside of us on the face of Nature, or as a creation resulting from the
combination of certain external qualities, and of an intelligent mind
which perceives them, whichever of these views we take, the beauty is
there, no mere dream or phantasy, but something to whose existence the
soul witnesses, as truly as the eye does to the existence of light or
of those motions which perceived are light. What is it, whence comes
it, what means it? It is not something we can reason from as we can
from marks of contrivance and design. It will not lend itself to any
syllogism. But notwithstanding this, or perhaps owing to this, it awakens
deeper thoughts, it carries the mind farther than any mere proofs of
design can do. The beautiful aspect of the outward world, and the delight
which it inspires, are no doubt proofs of a goodness somewhere which
supports these, just as food and air are proofs of it. But they are more:
they have a mystic meaning, they are hints and intimations of something
more than eye, or ear, or mere intellect discover. If the outward world
and the mind of man are so constructed that they fall in with, and answer
to, each other,—if mere physical qualities, such as height, depth,
expansion, silence, solitude, sunshine, shadow, gloom, affect the soul
in certain well-known ways, awakening in us emotions of awe and wonder,
of peace, gladness, sadness, and solemnity,—we naturally ask ourselves,
after being thus moved, why is it we were so affected, what is it in the
outward world which awakens these emotions? It is a natural question for
those who have felt the strange impulses from the changeful countenance
of the world. It was not mere shape or color that so affected them: these
feelings did not come by chance, they were not without meaning; they
point to something outside of themselves, something inherent in the truth
of things. When the spirit within them was so stirred, they felt that
that which so addressed them, though it came through physical things,
was more than physical, was spiritual. For it carried their thoughts and
feelings quite out of the natural and physical appearances, till they
found themselves in commune with something akin to their own spirits,
though higher and vaster. The beauty which came to them through eye, ear,
and imagination, they felt to belong to the same order as that which more
directly addresses their moral heart and conscience. It was the Great
Being behind the veil who comes to us directly through the conscience,
coming more indirectly, but not less really, through the eye and ear. Not
otherwise can we account for the intense love which the sights and sounds
of Nature have awakened in the best and purest of men, and the more so as
they grew in maturity and serenity of soul.
It is a true instinct when men are led to regard the beauty of the world
that comes to them through the eye, and the moral light which shines
from behind upon the soul, as coming from one centre, and leading upward
to the thought of one Being who is above both. In this way all visible
beauty becomes a hint and a foreshadowing of something more than itself.
But if Nature is to be the symbol of something higher than itself, to
convey intimations of Him from whom both Nature and the soul proceed,
man must come to the spectacle with the thought of God already in his
heart. He will not get a religion out of the mere sight of Nature,
neither from the uses it subserves as indicating design, nor from
the beauty it manifests as hinting at character. No doubt beauty is a
half-way element, mediating between the physical laws and the moral
sentiments, partaking more of the latter than of the former, as being
itself a spiritual perception. No doubt it does in some measure act as a
reconciler between those two elements which so often seem to stand out
in contrast irreconcilable. But if it is to do this, if it is really to
lead the soul upward, man must come to the contemplation of it with his
moral convictions clear and firm, and with faith in these as connecting
him directly with God. Neither morality nor religion will he get out
of beauty taken by itself. If out of the splendid vision spread before
him—the sight of earth, sea, and sky, of the clouds, the gleams, the
shadows—man could arrive directly at the knowledge of Him who is behind
them, how is it that in early ages whole nations, with these sights
continually before them, never reached any moral conception of God? how
is it that even in recent times many of the most gifted spirits, who have
been most penetrated by that vision, and have given it most magnificent
expression, have been in revolt against religious faith? It is because
they sought in Nature alone, that which alone she was never intended to
give. It is because the spectacle of the outward world, however splendid,
if we begin with it, and insist on extracting our main light from it, is
powerless to satisfy our human need, to speak any word which fits in to
man’s moral yearning. Nay, Nature taken alone will often appear no benign
mother at all, no dwelling-place of a kindly spirit, but an inexorable
and cruel Sphinx, who rears children and makes them glad a little while,
only that she may the more relentlessly destroy them.
But he who takes the opposite road, who, instead of looking to visible
Nature for his first teaching, begins with the knowledge of himself, of
his need, his guilt, his helplessness, and listens to the voice that
tells of a strength not his own, and a redemption not in him but for
him, he will learn to look on Nature with other and calmer eyes, and to
discern a meaning in it which taken by itself it cannot give. Man may
then find in the beauty which he sees a hint and intimation of a higher
beauty which he does not see—a something revealed to the eye which
corresponds to the religious truth revealed to the heart, harmonizing
with it and confirming it. He can regard the glory of Nature, not only
in itself and for its own sake, but as the foreshadow and prophecy
of a higher glory yet to be. And so the sight of Nature, instead of
intoxicating, maddening, and rousing to rebellion, soothes, elevates,
spiritualizes, chiming in unison with our best thoughts, our purest
aspirations.
Canon Mozley, in his sermon on “Nature” already alluded to, has dwelt
very powerfully on this, as the use which the highest Poetry makes of
Nature, and has shown that it is at once in accordance with the teaching
and practice of Scripture, and true to our human instincts. He shows how
sight, the noblest of our senses here, is made the pattern and type of
the highest attitude of the soul hereafter. For heaven is represented
as “a perfected sight,” and he who attains to it is to be a beholder.
It is not mere self-rapt thought or inward contemplation, but a future
vision of God which is promised. Meanwhile Nature and her works are
employed in Scripture, not only as proofs of goodness in God, but also
as symbols representative of what He has in keeping for them who shall
attain. Out of the storehouse of Nature are taken the materials—the light
the rainbow, the sapphire, and the sea of glass—to set forth, as far as
can be set forth, the things that shall be,—sight, the noblest sense
here, made the type of the highest mental act hereafter; and Nature the
spectacle given to employ sight now, and to adumbrate the things that
shall be in heaven:—this is the high function assigned by Scripture to
sight and to Nature.
When, therefore, in the light of these thoughts we study Nature in this,
her highest poetic aspect, we may well feel that we are engaged in no
trivial employment, but in one befitting an immortal being. Even the most
common acts of minutely observing Nature’s handiwork may in this way
partake of a religious character. How much more when the great spectacle
of Nature lends itself to devout imagination, and becomes as it were the
steps of a stair ascending toward the Eternal!