By high plains I do not mean table-lands; table-lands do not interest
one very much. They seem to involve the bore of a climb without the
pleasure of a peak. Also they arc vaguely associated with Asia and those
enormous armies that eat up everything like locusts, as did the army
of Xerxes; with emperors from nowhere spreading their battalions
everywhere; with the white elephants and the painted horses, the dark
engines and the dreadful mounted bowmen of the moving empires of the
East, with all that evil insolence in short that rolled into Europe in
the youth of Nero, and after having been battered about and abandoned by
one Christian nation after another, turned up in England with Disraeli
and was christened (or rather paganed) Imperialism.
Also (it may be necessary to explain) I do not mean “high planes” such
as the Theosophists and the Higher Thought Centres talk about. They
spell theirs differently; but I will not have theirs in any spelling.
They, I know, are always expounding how this or that person is on a
lower plane, while they (the speakers) are on a higher plane: sometimes
they will almost tell you what plane, as “5994” or “Plane F, sub-plane
304.” I do not mean this sort of height either. My religion says nothing
about such planes except that all men are on one plane and that by no
means a high one. There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint
only means a man who really knows he is a sinner.
Why then should I talk of the plains as high? I do it for a rather
singular reason, which I will illustrate by a parallel. When I was at
school learning all the Greek I have ever forgotten, I was puzzled by
the phrase OINON MELAN that is “black wine,” which continually occurred.
I asked what it meant, and many most interesting and convincing answers
were given. It was pointed out that we know little of the actual liquid
drunk by the Greeks; that the analogy of modern Greek wines may suggest
that it was dark and sticky, perhaps a sort of syrup always taken with
water; that archaic language about colour is always a little dubious, as
where Homer speaks of the “wine-dark sea” and so on. I was very properly
satisfied, and never thought of the matter again; until one day, having
a decanter of claret in front of me, I happened to look at it. I then
perceived that they called wine black because it is black. Very thin,
diluted, or held-up abruptly against a flame, red wine is red; but seen
in body in most normal shades and semi-lights red wine is black, and
therefore was called so.
On the same principles I call the plains high because the plains always
are high; they are always as high as we are. We talk of climbing a
mountain crest and looking down at the plain; but the phrase is an
illusion of our arrogance. It is impossible even to look down at the
plain. For the plain itself rises as we rise. It is not merely true
that the higher we climb the wider and wider is spread out below us
the wealth of the world; it is not merely that the devil or some other
respectable guide for tourists takes us to the top of an exceeding high
mountain and shows us all the kingdoms of the earth. It is more than
that, in our real feeling of it. It is that in a sense the whole
world rises with us roaring, and accompanies us to the crest like some
clanging chorus of eagles. The plains rise higher and higher like swift
grey walls piled up against invisible invaders. And however high a peak
you climb, the plain is still as high as the peak.
The mountain tops are only noble because from them we are privileged to
behold the plains. So the only value in any man being superior is that
he may have a superior admiration for the level and the common. If there
is any profit in a place craggy and precipitous it is only because from
the vale it is not easy to see all the beauty of the vale; because
when actually in the flats one cannot see their sublime and satisfying
flatness. If there is any value in being educated or eminent (which is
doubtful enough) it is only because the best instructed man may feel
most swiftly and certainly the splendour of the ignorant and the simple:
the full magnificence of that mighty human army in the plains. The
general goes up to the hill to look at his soldiers, not to look down at
his soldiers. He withdraws himself not because his regiment is too small
to be touched, but because it is too mighty to be seen. The chief climbs
with submission and goes higher with great humility; since in order to
take a bird's eye view of everything, he must become small and distant
like a bird.
The most marvellous of those mystical cavaliers who wrote intricate
and exquisite verse in England in the seventeenth century, I mean
Henry Vaughan, put the matter in one line, intrinsically immortal and
practically forgotten--
“Oh holy hope and high humility.”
That adjective “high” is not only one of the sudden and stunning
inspirations of literature; it is also one of the greatest and gravest
definitions of moral science. However far aloft a man may go, he is
still looking up, not only at God (which is obvious), but in a manner
at men also: seeing more and more all that is towering and mysterious in
the dignity and destiny of the lonely house of Adam. I wrote some part
of these rambling remarks on a high ridge of rock and turf overlooking a
stretch of the central counties; the rise was slight enough in reality,
but the immediate ascent had been so steep and sudden that one could not
avoid the fancy that on reaching the summit one would look down at the
stars. But one did not look down at the stars, but rather up at the
cities; seeing as high in heaven the palace town of Alfred like a lit
sunset cloud, and away in the void spaces, like a planet in eclipse,
Salisbury. So, it may be hoped, until we die you and I will always look
up rather than down at the labours and the habitations of our race; we
will lift up our eyes to the valleys from whence cometh our help. For
from every special eminence and beyond every sublime landmark, it is
good for our souls to see only vaster and vaster visions of that dizzy
and divine level; and to behold from our crumbling turrets the tall
plains of equality.