The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed
out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its
Creator--permit me to use this human simile--the first duty of all
thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great
reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the
compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure
to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one
appearance in nature--the thinking being. The great compound called the
world is only remarkable to me because it is present to shadow forth
symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All in me and out
of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to me. The laws of
nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds on to make itself
understandable to intelligence--the alphabet by means of which all
spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with one another.
Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they
transport me into the active state of their author, of their possessor,
because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling Being, and let
me perceive my relationship with that Being. A new experience in this
kingdom of truth: gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the natural
system of Linnaeus, correspond essentially in my mind to the discovery of
an antique dug up at Herculaneum--they are both only the reflections of
one spirit, a renewed acquaintance with a being like myself. I speak
with the Eternal through the instrument of nature,--through the world's
history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.
If you wish to be convinced, my clear Raphael, look back. Each state of
the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is
shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most
abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we
name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it;
eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth
dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny
of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily
creation. Each coming spring, forcing the sprouts of plants out of the
earth, gives me explanations of the awful riddle of death, and
contradicts my anxious fears about an everlasting sleep. The swallow
that we find stiffened in winter, and see waking up to life after; the
dead grub coming to life again as the butterfly and rising into the
air,--all these give excellent pictures of our immortality.
How strange all seems to me now, Raphael! Now all seems peopled round
about me. To me there is no solitude in nature. Wherever I see a body I
anticipate a spirit. Wherever I trace movement I infer thought.
Where no dead lie buried, where no resurrection will be, Omnipotence
speaks to me this through His works, and thus I understand the doctrine
of the omnipresence of God.