are there, and they only require homes to become the finest body in
the world, a rampart to the nation, a support not only to
agriculture but to every industry that needs the help of labour. For
physique they have ever been noted, and if it is not valued at home
it is estimated at its true value in the colonies. From Australia,
America, all countries desiring sinews and strength, come earnest
persuasions to these men to emigrate. They are desired above all
others as the very foundation of stability. It is only at home that
the agricultural labourer is despised. If ever there were grounds
for that contempt in his illiterate condition they have disappeared.
I have always maintained that intelligence exists outside education,
that men who can neither read nor write often possess good natural
parts. The labourer at large possesses such parts, but until quite
lately he has had no opportunity of displaying them. Of recent years
he or his children have had an opportunity of displaying their
natural ability, since education was brought within reach of them
all. Their natural power has at once shown itself, and all the young
men and young women are now solidly educated. The reproach of being
illiterate can no longer be hurled at them. They never were
illiterate mentally; they are now no more illiterate in the partial
sense of book-knowledge. A young agricultural labourer to-day can
speak almost as well as the son of a gentleman. There is, of course,
a little of the country accent remaining, and some few technical
words are in use. Why should they not be? Do not gentlemen on the
Exchange use technical terms? I cannot see myself that 'contango' is
any better English, or 'backwardation' more indicative of
intelligence, than the terms used in the field. The labourer of
to-day reads, and thinks about what he reads. The young, being
educated, have brought education to their parents, the old have
caught the new tone from the young. It is acknowledged that the farm
labourer is the most peaceful of all men, the least given to
agitation for agitation's sake. Permit him to live and he is
satisfied. He has no class ill-feeling, either against farmer or
landowner, and he resists all attempts to introduce ill-feeling. He
maintains a steady and manly attitude, calm, and considering,
without a trace of hasty revolutionary sentiments. I say that such
a race of men are not to be despised; I say that they are the very
foundation of a nation's stability. I say that in common justice
they deserve settled homes; and further, that as a matter of sound
policy they should be provided with them.
ON THE DOWNS
A trailing beam of light sweeps through the combe, broadening out
where it touches the ground, and narrowing up to the cloud with
which it travels. The hollow groove between the hills is lit up
where it falls as with a ray cast from a mirror. It is an acre wide
on the sward, and tapers up to the invisible slit in the cloud; a
mere speck of light from the sky enlightens the earth, and one
thought opens the hearts of all men. On the slope here the furze is
flecked with golden spots, and black-headed stonechats perch on
ant-hills or stray flints, taking no heed of a quiet wanderer. Afar,
blue line upon blue line of down is drawn along in slow curves, and
beneath, the distant sea appears a dim plain with five bright
streaks, where the sunshine pours through as many openings in the
clouds. The wind smells like an apple fresh plucked; suddenly the
great beam of light vanishes as the sun comes out, and at once the
single beam is merged in the many.
Light and colour, freedom and delicious air, give exquisite pleasure
to the senses; but the heart searches deeper, and draws forth food
for itself from sunshine, hills and sea. Desiring their beauty so
deeply, the desire in a measure satisfies itself. It is a thirst
which slakes itself to grow the stronger. It springs afresh from the
light, from the blue hill-line yonder, from the gorse-flower at
hand; to seize upon something that seems in them, which they
symbolize and speak of; to take it away within oneself; to absorb it
and feel conscious of it--a something that cannot be defined, but
which corresponds with all that is highest, truest, and most ideal
within the mind. It says, Hope and aspire, strive for largeness of
thought. The wind blows, and declares that the mind has capacity for
more than has ever yet been brought to it. The wind is wide, and
blows not only here, but along the whole range of hills--the hills
are not broad enough for it; nor is the sea--it crosses the ocean
and spreads itself whither it will. Though invisible, it is
material, and yet it knows no limit. As the wind to the fixed
boulder lying deep in the sward, so is the immaterial mind to the
wind. There is capacity in it for more than has ever yet been placed
before it. No system, no philosophy yet organized in logical
sequence satisfies the inmost depth--fills and fully occupies the
well of thought. Read the system, and with the last word it is
over--the mind passes on and requires more. It is but a crumb tasted
and gone: who should remember a crumb? But the wind blows, not one
puff and then stillness: it continues; if it does cease there
remains the same air to be breathed. So that the physical part of
man thus always provided with air for breathing is infinitely better
cared for than his mind, which gets but little crumbs, as it were,
coming from old times. These are soon gone, and there remains
nothing. Somewhere surely there must be more. An ancient thinker
considered that the atmosphere was full of faint images--spectra,
reflections, or emanations retaining shape, though without
substance--that they crowded past in myriads by day and night.
Perhaps there may be thoughts invisible, but floating round us, if
we could only render ourselves sensitive to their impact. Such a
remark must not be taken literally--it is only an effort to convey a
meaning, just as shadow throws up light. The light is that there are
further thoughts yet to be found.
The fulness of Nature and the vacancy of mental existence are
strangely contrasted. Nature is full everywhere; there is no chink,
no unfurnished space. The mind has only a few thoughts to recall,
and those old, and that have been repeated these centuries past.
Unless the inner mind (not that which deals with little matters of
daily labour) lets itself rest on every blade of grass and leaf, and
listens to the soothing wind, it must be vacant--vacant for lack of
something to do, not from limit of capacity. For it is too strong
and powerful for the things it has to grasp; they are crushed like
wheat in a mill. It has capacity for so much, and it is supplied
with so little. All the centuries that have gone have gathered
hardly a bushel, as it were, and these dry grains are quickly rolled
under strong thought and reduced to dust. The mill must then cease,
not that it has no further power, but because the supply stops.
Bring it another bushel, and it will grind as long as the grain is
poured in. Let fresh images come in a stream like the apple-scented
wind; there is room for them, the storehouse of the inner mind
expands to receive them, wide as the sea which receives the breeze.
The Downs are now lit with sunlight--the night will cover them
presently--but the mind will sigh as eagerly for these things as in
the glory of day. Sooner or later there will surely come an opening
in the clouds, and a broad beam of light will descend. A new thought
scarcely arrives in a thousand years, but the sweet wind is always
here, providing breath for the physical man. Let hope and faith
remain, like the air, always, so that the soul may live. That such a
higher thought may come is the desire--the prayer--which springs on
viewing the blue hill line, the sea, the flower.
Stoop and touch the earth, and receive its influence; touch the
flower, and feel its life; face the wind, and have its meaning; let
the sunlight fall on the open hand as if you could hold it.
Something may be grasped from them all, invisible yet strong. It is
the sense of a wider existence--wider and higher. Illustrations
drawn from material things (as they needs must be) are weak to
convey such an idea. But much may be gathered indirectly by
examining the powers of the mind--by the light thrown on it from
physical things. Now, at this moment, the blue dome of the sky,
immense as it is, is but a span to the soul. The eye-glance travels
to the horizon in an instant--the soul-glance travels over all
matter also in a moment. By no possibility could a world, or a
series of worlds, be conceived which the mind could not traverse
instantaneously. Outer space itself, therefore, seems limited and
with bounds, because the mind is so penetrating it can imagine
nothing to the end of which it cannot get. Space--ethereal space, as
far beyond the stars as it is to them--think of it how you will,
ends each side in dimness. The dimness is its boundary. The mind so
instantly occupies all space that space becomes finite, and with
limits. It is the things that are brought before it that are
limited, not the power of the mind.
The sweet wind says, again, that the inner mind has never yet been
fully employed; that more than half its power still lies dormant.
Ideas are the tools of the mind. Without tools you cannot build a
ship. The minds of savages lie almost wholly dormant, not because
naturally deficient, but because they lack the ideas--the tools--to
work with. So we have had our ideas so long that we have built all
we can with them. Nothing further can be constructed with these
materials. But whenever new and larger materials are discovered we
shall find the mind able to build much more magnificent structures.
Let us, then, if we cannot yet discover them, at least wait and
watch as ceaselessly as the hills, listening as the wind blows over.
Three-fourths of the mind still sleeps. That little atom of it
needed to conduct the daily routine of the world is, indeed, often
strained to the utmost. That small part of it, again, occasionally
exercised in re-learning ancient thoughts, is scarcely half
employed--small as it is. There is so much more capacity in the
inner mind--a capacity of which but few even dream. Until favourable
times and chances bring fresh materials for it, it is not conscious
of itself. Light and freedom, colour, and delicious air--sunshine,
blue hill lines, and flowers--give the heart to feel that there is
so much more to be enjoyed of which we walk in ignorance.
Touching a flower, it seems as if some of this were absorbed from
it; it flows from the flower like its perfume. The delicate odour of
the violet cannot be written; it is material yet it cannot be
expressed. So there is an immaterial influence flowing from it which
escapes language. Touching the greensward, there is a feeling as if
the great earth sent a mystic influence through the frame. From the
sweet wind, too, it comes. The sunlight falls on the hand; the light
remains without on the surface, but its influence enters the very
being. This sense of absorbing something from earth, and flower, and
sunlight is like hovering on the verge of a great truth. It is the
consciousness that a great truth is there. Not that the flower and
the wind know it, but that they stir unexplored depths in the mind.
They are only material--the sun sinks, darkness covers the hills,
and where is their beauty then? The feeling or thought which is
excited by them resides in the mind, and the purport and drift of it
is a wider existence--yet to be enjoyed on earth. Only to think of
and imagine it is in itself a pleasure.
The red-tipped hawthorn buds are full of such a thought; the tender
green of the leaf just born speaks it. The leaf does not come forth
shapeless. Already, at its emergence, there are fine divisions at
the edge, markings, and veins. It is wonderful from the
commencement. A thought may be put in a line, yet require a
life-time to understand in its completeness. The leaf was folded in
the tiny red-tipped bud--now it has come forth how long must one
ponder to fully appreciate it?
Those things which are symbolized by the leaf, the flower, the very
touch of earth, have not yet been put before the mind in a definite
form, and shaped so that they can be weighed. The mind is like a
lens. A lens can examine nothing of itself, but no matter what is
put before it, it will magnify it so that it can be searched into.
So whatever is put before the mind in such form that it may be
perceived, the mind will search into and examine. It is not that the
mind is limited, and unable to understand; it is that the facts have
not yet been placed in front of it. But because as yet these things
are like the leaf folded in the bud, that is no reason why we should
say they are beyond hope of comprehension.
Such a course inflicts the greatest moral injury on the world.
Remaining content upon a mental level is fatal, saying to ourselves,
'There is nothing more, this is our limit; we can go no farther,' is
the ruin of the mind, as much sleep is the ruin of the body. Looking
back through history, it is evident that thought has forced itself
out on the world by its own power and against an immense inertia.
Thought has worked its way by dint of its own energy, and not
because it was welcomed. So few care or hope for a higher mental
level; the old terrace of mind will do; let us rest; be assured no
higher terrace exists. Experience, however, from time to time has
proved that higher terraces did exist. Without doubt there are
others now. Somewhere behind the broad beam of life sweeping so
beautifully through the combe, somewhere behind the flower, and in
the wind. Yet to come up over the blue hill line, there are deeper,
wider thoughts still. Always let us look higher, in spite of the
narrowness of daily life. The little is so heavy that it needs a
strong effort to escape it. The littleness of daily routine; the
care felt and despised, the minutiae which grow against our will,
come in time to be heavier than lead. There should be some comfort
in the thought that, however these may strain the mind, it is
certain that hardly a fiftieth part of its real capacity is occupied
with them. There is an immense power in it unused. By stretching one
muscle too much it becomes overworked; still, there are a hundred
other muscles in the body. In truth, we do not fully understand our
own earth, our own life, yet. Never, never let us permit the weight
of little things to bear us wholly down. If any object that these
are vague aspirations, so is the wind vague, yet it is real. They
may direct us as strongly as the wind presses on the sails of a
ship.
The blue hill line arouses a perception of a current of thought
which lies for the most part unrecognized within--an unconscious
thought. By looking at this blue hill line this dormant power within
the mind becomes partly visible; the heart wakes up to it.
The intense feeling caused by the sunshine, by the sky, by the
flowers and distant sea is an increased consciousness of our own
life. The stream of light--the rush of sweet wind--excites a deeper
knowledge of the soul. An unutterable desire at once arises for more
of this; let us receive more of the inner soul life which seeks and
sighs for purest beauty. But the word beauty is poor to convey the
feelings intended. Give us the thoughts which correspond with the
feeling called up by the sky, the sea afar, and the flower at hand.
Let us really be in ourselves the sunbeam which we use as an
illustration. The recognition of its loveliness, and of the
delicious air, is really a refined form of prayer--the purer because
it is not associated with any object, because of its width and
openness. It is not prayer in the sense of a benefit desired, it is
a feeling of rising to a nobler existence.
It does not include wishes connected with routine and labour. Nor
does it depend on the brilliant sun--this mere clod of earth will
cause it, even a little crumble of mould. The commonest form of
matter thus regarded excites the highest form of spirit. The
feelings may be received from the least morsel of brown earth
adhering to the surface of the skin on the hand that has touched the
ground. Inhaling this deep feeling, the soul, perforce, must
pray--a rude imperfect word to express the aspiration--with every
glimpse of sunlight, whether it come in a room amid routine, or in
the solitude of the hills; with every flower, and grass-blade, and
the vast earth underfoot; with the gleam on the distant sea, with
the song of the lark on high, and the thrush lowly in the hawthorn.
From the blue hill lines, from the dark copses on the ridges, the
shadows in the combes, from the apple-sweet wind and rising grasses,
from the leaf issuing out of the bud to question the sun--there
comes from all of these an influence which forces the heart to lift
itself in earnest and purest desire.
The soul knows itself, and would live its own life.
THE SUN AND THE BROOK
The sun first sees the brook in the meadow where some roach swim
under a bulging root of ash. Leaning against the tree, and looking
down into the water, there is a picture of the sky. Its brightness
hides the sandy floor of the stream as a picture conceals the wall
where it hangs, but, as if the water cooled the rays, the eye can
bear to gaze on the image of the sun. Over its circle thin threads
of summer cloud are drawn; it is only the reflection, yet the sun
seems closer seen in the brook, more to do with us, like the grass,
and the tree, and the flowing stream. In the sky it is so far, it
cannot be approached, nor even gazed at, so that by the very virtue
and power of its own brilliance it forces us to ignore, and almost
forget it. The summer days go on, and no one notices the sun. The
sweet water slipping past the green flags, with every now and then a
rushing sound of eager haste, receives the sky, and it becomes a
part of the earth and of life. No one can see his own face without a
glass; no one can sit down and deliberately think of the soul till
it appears a visible thing. It eludes--the mind cannot grasp it. But
hold a flower in the hand--a rose, this later honeysuckle, or this
the first harebell--and in its beauty you can recognize your own
soul reflected as the sun in the brook. For the soul finds itself in
beautiful things.
Between the bulging root and the bank there is a tiny oval pool, on
the surface of which the light does not fall. There the eye can see
deep down into the stream, which scarcely moves in the hollow it has
worn for itself as its weight swings into the concave of the bend.
The hollow is illumined by the light which sinks through the stream
outside the root; and beneath, in the green depth, five or six roach
face the current. Every now and then a tiny curl appears on the
surface inside the root, and must rise up to come there. Unwinding
as it goes, its raised edge lowers and becomes lost in the level.
Dark moss on the base of the ash darkens the water under. The light
green leaves overhead yield gently to the passing air; there are but
few leaves on the tree, and these scarcely make a shadow on the
grass beyond that of the trunk. As the branch swings, the gnats are
driven farther away to avoid it. Over the verge of the bank, bending
down almost to the root in the water, droop the heavily seeded heads
of tall grasses which, growing there, have escaped the scythe.
These are the days of the convolvulus, of ripening berry, and
dropping nut. In the gateways, ears of wheat hang from the hawthorn
boughs, which seized them from the passing load. The broad aftermath
is without flowers; the flowers are gone to the uplands and the
untilled wastes. Curving opposite the south, the hollow side of the
brook has received the sunlight like a silvered speculum every day
that the sun has shone. Since the first violet of the meadow, till
now that the berries are ripening, through all the long drama of the
summer, the rays have visited the stream. The long, loving touch of
the sun has left some of its own mystic attraction in the brook.
Resting here, and gazing down into it, thoughts and dreams come
flowing as the water flows. Thoughts without words, mobile like the
stream, nothing compact that can be grasped and stayed: dreams that
slip silently as water slips through the fingers. The grass is not
grass alone; the leaves of the ash above are not leaves only. From
tree, and earth, and soft air moving, there comes an invisible touch
which arranges the senses to its waves as the ripples of the lake
set the sand in parallel lines. The grass sways and fans the
reposing mind; the leaves sway and stroke it, till it can feel
beyond itself and with them, using each grass blade, each leaf, to
abstract life from earth and ether. These then become new organs,
fresh nerves and veins running afar out into the field, along the
winding brook, up through the leaves, bringing a larger existence.
The arms of the mind open wide to the broad sky.
Some sense of the meaning of the grass, and leaves of the tree, and
sweet waters hovers on the confines of thought, and seems ready to
be resolved into definite form. There is a meaning in these things,
a meaning in all that exists, and it comes near to declare itself.
Not yet, not fully, nor in such shape that it may be formulated--if
ever it will be--but sufficiently so to leave, as it were, an
unwritten impression that will remain when the glamour is gone, and
grass is but grass, and a tree a tree.
NATURE AND ETERNITY
The goldfinches sing so sweetly hidden in the topmost boughs of the
apple-trees that heart of man cannot withstand them. These four
walls, though never so well decorated with pictures, this flat white
ceiling, feels all too small, and dull and tame. Down with books and
pen, and let us away with the goldfinches, the princes of the birds.
For thirty of their generations they have sung and courted and built
their nests in those apple-trees, almost under the very windows--a
time in their chronology equal to a thousand years. For they are so
very busy, from earliest morn till night--a long summer's day is
like a year. Now flirting with a gaily-decked and coy lady-love,
chasing her from tree to tree; now splashing at the edge of a
shallow stream till the golden feathers glisten and the red topknot
shines. Then searching in and out the hedgerow for favourite seeds,
and singing, singing all the while, verily a 'song without an end.'
The wings never still, the bill never idle, the throat never silent,
and the tiny heart within the proud breast beating so rapidly that,
reckoning time by change and variety, an hour must be a day. A life
all joy and freedom, without thought, and full of love. What a
great god the sun must be to the finches from whose wings his beams
are reflected in glittering gold! The abstract idea of a deity
apart, as they feel their life-blood stirring, their eyelids
opening, with the rising sun; as they fly to satisfy their hunger
with those little fruits they use; as they revel in the warm
sunshine, and utter soft notes of love to their beautiful mates,
they cannot but feel a sense, unnamed, indefinite, of joyous
gratitude towards that great orb which is very nearly akin to the
sensual worship of ancient days. Darkness and cold are Typhon and
Ahriman, light and warmth, Osiris and Ormuzd, indeed to them; with
song they welcome the spring and celebrate the awakening of Adonis.
Lovely little idolaters, my heart goes with them. Deep down in the
mysteries of organic life there are causes for the marvellously
extended grasp which the worship of light once held upon the world,
hardly yet guessed at, and which even now play a part unsuspected in
the motives of men. Even yet, despite our artificial life, despite
railroads, telegraphs, printing-press, in the face of firm
monotheistic convictions, once a year the old, old influence breaks
forth, driving thousands and thousands from cities and houses out
into field and forest, to the seashore and mountain-top, to gather
fresh health and strength from the Sun, from the Air--Jove--and old
Ocean. So the goldfinches rejoice in the sunshine, and who can sit
within doors when they sing?