DISCIPLINE.
IN view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new fact,
that nature is a discipline. This use of the world includes the
preceding uses, as parts of itself.
Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals,
the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose
meaning is unlimited. They educate both the Understanding and the
Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding,
--its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its
divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures,
and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene.
Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of
thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and Mind.
1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths.
Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the
necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and
seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to
general; of combination to one end of manifold forces. Proportioned
to the importance of the organ to be formed, is the extreme care with
which its tuition is provided,--a care pretermitted in no single case.
What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending,
to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of
annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of
little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest,
--and all to form the Hand of the mind;--to instruct us that "good
thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!"
The same good office is performed by Property and its filial systems
of debt and credit. Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow,
the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate;--debt, which
consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great
spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons
cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it
most. Moreover, property, which has been well compared to snow,
--"if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,"--is
the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a
clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is
hiving in the foresight of the spirit, experience in profounder laws.
The whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the
least inequalities in the culture of the understanding; for example, in
the perception of differences. Therefore is Space, and therefore
Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped,
but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use,
and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink,
coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water
spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation,
in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as
nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every
man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and
what is not hateful, they call the best.
In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! She pardons no
mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.
The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zooelogy, (those first steps
which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's
dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed
sure and useful results.
How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the
laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters
into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the
privilege to BE! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines
in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the
universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are
known.
Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense
Universe to be explored. "What we know, is a point to what we do
not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the
problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism,
Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural
science is likely to be soon exhausted.
Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not
omit to specify two.
The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught in every
event. From the child's successive possession of his several senses
up to the hour when he saith, "Thy will be done!" he is learning the
secret, that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events,
but great classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all
facts to his character. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to
serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on
which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw
material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never
weary of working it up. He forges the subtile and delicate air into
wise and melodious words, and gives them wing as angels of
persuasion and command. One after another, his victorious thought
comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes, at
last, only a realized will,--the double of the man.
2. Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and
reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their boundless
changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is
nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the
remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up
to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first
principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and
antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to
Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong,
and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally
of Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.
Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn deeply from
this source. This ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow
of nature, as to seem the end for which it was made. Whatever
private purpose is answered by any member or part, this is its public
and universal function, and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is
exhausted in its first use. When a thing has served an end to the
uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. In God, every end
is converted into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded
by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an education in
the doctrine of Use, namely, that a thing is good only so far as it
serves; that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the production of an
end, is essential to any being. The first and gross manifestation of
this truth, is our inevitable and hated training in values and wants, in
corn and meat.
It has already been illustrated, that every natural process is a version
of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and
radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every
substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which
we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff
and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a
sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which
the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the
shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, have each
an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion:
because all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be doubted
that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the
grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man
and sinks into his soul. The moral influence of nature upon every
individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who
can estimate this? Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten
rock has taught the fisherman? how much tranquillity has been
reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the
winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no
wrinkle or stain? how much industry and providence and affection
we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? What a searching
preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of Health!
Herein is especially apprehended the unity of Nature,--the unity in
variety,--which meets us everywhere. All the endless variety of
things make an identical impression. Xenophanes complained in his
old age, that, look where he would, all things hastened back to Unity.
He was weary of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of
forms. The fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, a
crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the
perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully
renders the likeness of the world.
Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious, as
when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the
fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial
unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen music," by De Stael
and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "A
Gothic church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." Michael
Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is
essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination
not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but
colors also; as the green grass. The law of harmonic sounds
reappears in the harmonic colors. The granite is differenced in its
laws only by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it
away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the
air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtile currents;
the light resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each
creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is
more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.
A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout
nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under
the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal
Spirit. For, it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth which we
express in words, implies or supposes every other truth. _Omne
verum vero consonat_. It is like a great circle on a sphere,
comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and
comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute Ens
seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides.
The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. Words are
finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions
of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is
the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill
the eye, and to be related to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one
thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the
likeness of all which is done rightly."
Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. They
introduce us to the human form, of which all other organizations
appear to be degradations. When this appears among so many that
surround it, the spirit prefers it to all others. It says, 'From such as
this, have I drawn joy and knowledge; in such as this, have I found
and beheld myself; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it can yield
me thought already formed and alive.' In fact, the eye,--the mind,--is
always accompanied by these forms, male and female; and these are
incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that
lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately, every one of them bears the
marks as of some injury; is marred and superficially defective.
Nevertheless, far different from the deaf and dumb nature around
them, these all rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of
thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all organizations, are the
entrances.
It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their ministry to our
education, but where would it stop? We are associated in adolescent
and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are
coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain
affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack
power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or
even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. When much
intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of
excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of God
who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has,
moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character
retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid
and sweet wisdom,--it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he
is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time.