Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation,
leaves death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of being
seems a mute prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance
of which it crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acme of
vegetable life, divides into correspondent organs with reciprocal
functions, and by instinctive motions and approximations seems
impatient of that fixure, by which it is differenced in kind from the
flower-shaped Psyche, that flutters with free wing above it. And
wonderfully in the insect realm doth the Irritability, the proper seat
of Instinct, while yet the nascent Sensibility is subordinated
thereto--most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular life in the
insect, and the musculo-arterial in the bird, imitate and typically
rehearse the adaptive Understanding, yea, and the moral affections and
charities, of man. Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the
mysterious Week, the teeming Work-days of the Creator: as they rose in
vision before the eye of the inspired historian _of the Generations of
the Heaven and the Earth, in the days that the Lord God made the Earth
and the Heavens_.[57] And who that hath watched their ways with an
understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving, still advanced
towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee; the home-building,
wedded, and divorceless swallow; and above all the manifoldly
intelligent[58] ant tribes, with their Commonwealths and
Confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husbandfolk, that fold
in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters, with
the holy instincts of maternal love, detached and in selfless
purity--and not say to himself, Behold the Shadow of approaching
Humanity, the Sun rising from behind, in the kindling Morn of
Creation! Thus all lower Natures find their highest Good in semblances
and seekings of that which is higher and better. All things strive to
ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop? Shall
his pursuits and desires, the _reflections_ of his inward life, be
like the reflected image of a tree on the edge of a pool, that grows
downward, and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element beneath it,
in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that
are yet better than itself and more noble, in as far as Substances
that appear as Shadows are preferable to Shadows mistaken for
Substance! No! it must be a higher good to make you happy. While you
labour for any thing below your proper Humanity, you seek a happy Life
in the region of Death. Well saith the moral poet--
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man![59]
[57] Gen. ii. 4.--ED.
[58] See Hüber on Bees, and on Ants.
[59] Samuel Daniel, 1562-1619:--
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
_To the Countess of Cumberland_, stanza 12.--ED.