MARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground.
It is that breathing of the life which we want to understand.
L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that
first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces.
Discern the molding hand of the potter commanding the clay, from
his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. If you can find
incense, in the vase, afterwards,--well: but it is curious how far
mere form will carry you ahead of the philosophers. For instance,
with regard to the most interesting of all their modes of force--
light;--they never consider how far the existence of it depends on
the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into the
formal arrangement which we call an eye. The German philosophers
began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us,
there was no such thing--as light at all, unless we chose to see
it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines,
and insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is,
though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force
must be there, and the eyes there; and "light" means the effect of
the one on the other;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into
that mystery than any one has since, that I know of),--on
something a little way within the eyes; but we may stand quite
safe, close behind the retina, and defy the philosophers.
SIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if
only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.
L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of
yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you about
inspiration, and the golden bough, and the like; only I remembered
I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, at least, tell us
whether the ideas of Life, as the power of putting things
together, or "making" them; and of Death, as the power of pushing
things separate, or "unmaking" them, may not be very simply held
in balance against each other?
SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you
anything.
L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is
little more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, "Il
s'ensuit de la, que tout ce qu'ily a de beau est dans les
dictionnaires; il n'y a que les mots qui sont transposes." But
when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there
was (and there remains still in some small measure), beyond the
merely formative and sustaining power, another, which we painters
call "passion"--I don't know what the philosophers call it; we
know it makes people red, or white; and therefore it must be
something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly "poetic" or
"making" force of all, creating a world of its own out of a
glance, or a sigh: and the want of passion is perhaps the truest
death, or "unmaking" of everything;--even of stones. By the way,
you were all reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the
other day?
SIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it
could not be ascended.
L Yes, I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But
do you recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first
felt sure of reaching the summit.
SIBYL. Yes, it was, "Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, vous
etes morte!"
L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now, can you at
all fancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a
mountain's death; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its
life--
"Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis Quum fremit
ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali Vertice, se attollens pater
Apenninus ad auras."
DORA. You must translate for us mere housekeepers, please--
whatever the carekeepers may know about it.
MAY. I'll try then to?
L. No Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody will "do"
You can't translate it. But this is all you need know, that the
lines are full of a passionate sense of the Apennines' fatherhood,
or protecting power over Italy; and of sympathy with, their joy in
their snowy strength in heaven, and with the same joy, shuddering
through all the leaves of their forests.
MARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed, but then, you know, one
can't help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to
imagine the mountains to be alive; but then,--are they alive?
L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the
purest and most mightily passioned human souls are likely to be
the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth,
or blind themselves to it that they may please themselves with
passion; for then they are no longer pure: but if, continually
seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, they
trust their Maker for the integrity of the instincts. He has
gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a higher truth which
they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be most in the right,
so.
DORA and JESSIE (clapping their hands). Then we really may believe
that the mountains are living?
L. You may at least earnestly believe that the presence of the
spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning,
wherever the dust of the earth begins to assume any orderly and
lovely state. You will find it impossible to separate this idea of
gradated manifestation from that of the vital power. Things are
not either wholly alive, or wholly dead. They are less or more
alive. Take the nearest, most easily examined instance--the life of
a flower. Notice what a different degree and kind of life there is
in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is nothing but the
swaddling clothes of the flower; the child-blossom is bound up in
it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time
of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the
egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it
never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its
task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the
buttercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is
dead, as in the rose; or harmonize itself so as to share in the
aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in
the corolla's bright passion of life. And the gradations which
thus exist between the different members of organic creatures,
exist no less between the different ranges of organism. We know no
higher or more energetic life than our own; but there seems to me
this great good in the idea of gradation of life--it admits the
idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler than
ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust.
MARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla
and May want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you
frightened Violet so about the anthill, that she can't say a word;
and May is afraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are
wondering why you are always telling them about heathen gods and
goddesses, as if you half believed in them; and you represent them
as good; and then we see there is really a kind of truth in the
stories about them; and we are all puzzled: and, in this, we
cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves;--it
would be such a long confused question, if we could ask you all we
should like to know.
L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and
the most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I
will try to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen
gods, which you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge
increases.
Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be
interested, has three distinct characters:--
I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the great
powers or objects of nature--sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds,
or the sea. And the fables first related about each deity
represent, figuratively, the action or the natural power which it
represents; such as the rising and setting of the sun, the tides
of the sea, and so on.
II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history,
the moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first,
physically, the sun contending with darkness; but morally, the
power of divine life contending with corruption. Athena is,
physically, the air; morally, the breathing of the divine spirit
of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the sea; morally, the supreme
power of agitating passion; and so on.
III. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realized in the
minds of its worshipers as a living spirit, with whom men may
speak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.
Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any period of
a national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one
prevails over the other. Each inquirer usually takes up one of
these ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others; no
impartial effort seems to have been made to discern the real state
of the heathen imagination in its successive phases. For the
question is not at all what a mythological figure meant in its
origin; but what it became in each subsequent mental development
of the nation inheriting the thought. Exactly in proportion to the
mental and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures
mean more to it, and become more real. An early and savage race
means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) by its
Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every
operation of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt,
meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air; but the
Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, represented the
wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents of her aegis; and
the lightning and cold of the highest thunderclouds, by the Gorgon
on her shield: while morally, the same types represented to him
the mystery and changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and
helm its ruling and defensive power. And no study can be more
interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the different
meanings which have been created by great nations, and great
poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter
simplicity. But when we approach them in their third, or personal,
character (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this
is far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may
well put all of you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real
beings? and did they so usurp the place of the true God? Or were
they actually real beings,--evil spirits,--leading men away from
the true God? Or is it conceivable that they might have been real
beings,--good spirits,--entrusted with some message from the true
God? These were the questions you wanted to ask; were they not,
Lucilla?
LUCILLA. Yes, indeed.
L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness
of your faith in the personality of the spirits which are
described in the book of your own religion;--their personality,
observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical visions. For
instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with
its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a
real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zachariah
sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you
still may suppose the vision symbolical;--you do not think of them
as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But
when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct
sense of personality begins to force itself upon you. And though
you might, in a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all)
the fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the
power of death,--in your stronger and more earnest moods you will
rather conceive of him as a real and living angel. And when you
look back from the vision of the Apocalypse to the account of the
destruction of the Egyptian first-born, and of the army of
Sennacherib, and again to David's vision at the threshing floor of
Araunah, the idea of personality in this death-angel becomes
entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to
Abraham, Manoah, or Mary.
Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal
spirit, must not the question instantly follow: "Does this spirit
exercise its functions towards one race of men only, or towards
all men? Was it an angel of death to the Jew only, or to the
Gentile also?" You find a certain Divine agency made visible to a
King of Israel, as an armed angel, executing vengeance, of which
one special purpose was to lower his kingly pride. You find
another (or perhaps the same) agency, made visible to a Christian
prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling to the birds that
fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings. Is
there anything impious in the thought that the same agency might
have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar
visions?--that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with
the sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood), and
exercising especially its power in the humiliation of the proud,
might, at first, have been called only "Destroyer," and
afterwards, as the light, or sun, of justice, was recognized in
the chastisement, called also "Physician" or "Healer"? If you feel
hesitation in admitting the possibility of such a manifestation, I
believe you will find it is caused, partly indeed by such trivial
things as the difference to your ear between Greek and English
terms; but, far more, by uncertainty in your own mind respecting
the nature and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible. Have
any of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them?
You, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of
such things?
LUCILLA. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. I know
they must be true in some way or other; and I like reading about
them.
L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I like
reading other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both to do more
than like it? Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read
His words, merely for the sake of an entirely meaningless poetical
sensation?
LUCILLA. But do not the people who give themselves to seek out the
meaning of these things, often get very strange, and extravagant?
L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That abandonment of
the mind to religious theory, or contemplation, is the very thing
I have been pleading with you against. I never said you should set
yourself to discover the meanings; but you should take careful
pains to understand them, so far as they are clear; and you should
always accurately ascertain the state of your mind about them. I
want you never to read merely for the pleasure of fancy; still
less as a formal religious duty (else you might as well take to
repeating Paters at once; for it is surely wiser to repeat one
thing we understand, than read a thousand which we cannot).
Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for the
present, unintelligible to you; or else determine the sense in
which you at present receive them; or, at all events, the
different senses between which you clearly see that you must
choose. Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite; but
do not go on, all through your life, believing nothing
intelligently, and yet supposing that your having read the words
of a divine book must give you the right to despise every religion
but your own. I assure you, strange as it may seem, our scorn of
Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our disbelief, of
our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient clue to the
meaning of either; but you will always find that, in proportion to
the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to accept a
spiritual personality increases: and that the most vital and
beautiful Christian temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the
multitudinous ministry of living angels, infinitely varied in rank
and power. You all know one expression of the purest and happiest
form of such faith, as it exists in modern times, in Richter's
lovely illustrations of the Lord's Prayer. The real and living
death-angel, girt as a pilgrim, for journey, and softly crowned
with flowers, beckons at the dying mother's door; child-angels sit
talking face to face with mortal children, among the flowers;--
hold them by their little coats, lest they fall on the stairs;
whisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over their pillows;
carry the sound of the church bells for them far through the air;
and even descending lower in service, fill little cups with honey,
to hold out to the weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the
other children that story about your little sister, and Alice, and
the sea?
LILY. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don't think I did to
anybody else. I thought it wasn't worth.
L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you will
tell it us. How old is Dotty, again? I forgot.
LILY. She is not quite three; but she has such odd little old
ways, sometimes.