Nature Mysticism Part 2

And what, then, shall be said of Wordsworth?

"I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed these minds of ours In a wise pa.s.siveness.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things for over speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking."

Is not this, it may be asked, in harmony with the older doctrine?

Not so. There is a rightful and wholesome insistence on the necessity for a receptive att.i.tude of mind. Jefferies, too, was intensely receptive as well as intensely active. But Wordsworth is contrasting concentration of the mind on definite studies and on book-lore with the laying of it open to the influences of nature. He calls this latter a "wise pa.s.siveness"--a "dreaming": but is nevertheless an active pa.s.sivity--a waking dream. All the senses are to be in healthy working order; a deep consciousness is to be gently playing over the material which nature so spontaneously supplies. And so it comes that he can tell of

"A Presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts."

Is not this the same experience as that of Jefferies, only pa.s.sing through a mind of calmer tone. And if at times Wordsworth also is lifted into an ecstasy, when

"the light of sense Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed The invisible world,"

his mind is not in an Absolutist state of pa.s.sivity, but, on the contrary, is stirred to higher forms of consciousness. The experiences may, or may not be such as subsequent reflection can reduce to order--that is immaterial to the issue--but at any rate they imply activity. We may safely conclude, therefore, that intuition in all its grades necessitates a specialised soul-activity as well as a specialised soul-pa.s.sivity.

It will have been apparent in what has preceded that there are many grades of intuition, rising from sense-perception to what is known as ecstasy. Some may doubt the wisdom of admitting ecstasy among the experiences of a sane, modern nature-mystic.

Certainly the word raises a prejudice in many minds. Certainly the fanaticisms of religious Mysticism must be avoided. But Jefferies was not frightened of the word to describe an unwonted experience of exalted feeling; nor was Wordsworth afraid to describe the experience itself:

"that serene and blessed mood In which the affections gently lead us on-- Until the breath of this corporeal flame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul; While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things."

This is in many respects the same type of experience as that described by Plotinus--"the life of the G.o.ds, and of divine and happy men"--but shorn of its needless degradation of the body and the senses, which, with Wordsworth are still and transcended, but remain as a foundation for all the rest. There is yet another and very significant point of difference. Porphyry, a disciple of Plotinus, tells us that his master attained to the ecstatic condition four times only in the six years which he spent in his company. How often Wordsworth attained to his form of ecstasy we do not know. But there is the little word "we" which occurs throughout his description: and this evidently links the past on to his readers. That is to say, he does not sever his experience from that which is open to ordinary humanity. He called for and antic.i.p.ated genuine sympathy. Nor was he wrong in making this demand, for there are few sensitive lovers of nature who are not able to parallel, in some degree, what the English high-priest of Nature Mysticism has so wonderfully described. And as for the lower and simpler grades of feeling for nature, given that the conditions of life are "natural," they are practically universal, though often inarticulate.

CHAPTER VI

DEVELOPMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF INTUITION

Although the outstanding mark of intuition is its immediacy, that does not imply that it is independent of mental development, of culture, or of discipline. So far all cla.s.ses of mystics would be agreed. Nevertheless a certain amount of comment and criticism will be useful even in this regard. For erroneous conceptions, especially in matters so largely influenced by belief in an unconditioned Absolute, may frequently issue in harmful practices. For proof and ill.u.s.tration of the danger, need one do more than point to the terrible excesses of asceticism still prevalent in India?

And first, of the normal development of the mystic feeling for nature in the case of the individual mind. "The child is father of the man," said Wordsworth. But in what sense is this true? Let us turn to the immortal Ode, which is undoubtedly a record of vivid personal experience.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day."

Of course the poet was in dead earnest in writing thus; but the two last lines give us pause. How about

"The light that never was on land or sea"?

Was not that with the poet to the end? How about the

"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears"?

Would those have been possible for the child or growing boy? If there had been a loss, had there not also been a very real gain as the years rolled over his head? Such questions are forced upon us by an examination of the records themselves. Somewhat of the brightness and freshness of "the vision splendid" might evaporate; but the mystic glow, the joy, the exaltation, remained--and deepened--

"So was it when I was a child, So is it now I am a man, So may it be when I am old, Or let me die"--

only that childlike fancy yields place to matured imagination.

And if this was so with Wordsworth, whose childhood was so exceptional, still more shall we find it to be true of the average child. The early freshness of the senses may be blunted; the eager curiosity may be satiated; but where the nature remains unspoilt, the sense of wonder and of joy will extend its range and gain in fullness of content.

If we compare Kingsley's development, he was in a way a great "boy" to the end--but a boy with a deepening sense of mystery mellowing his character and his utterances. And thus it was that he could say, looking back on his intercourse with the wonders of nature: "I have long enjoyed them, never I can honestly say alone, because when man was not with me I had companions in every bee and flower and pebble, and never idle, because I could not pa.s.s a swamp or a tuft of heather without finding in it a fairy tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or two, and yet found them more interesting than all the books, save one, which were ever written upon earth."

True, there is another range of experiences to be reckoned with, such as that of Omar Khayyam--

"Yet ah that Spring should vanish with the Rose!

That Youth's sweet-scented ma.n.u.script should close!

The Nightingale that on the branches sang, Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows?"

Yes, but what might Omar have been with a n.o.bler philosophy of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blase, toper as he was, how did he begin his Rubaiyat? Thus finely!

"Wake! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight The stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n and strikes The Sultan's turret with a Shaft of Light."

There was poetry in the man still--and that, too, of the kind stirred by nature. And from nature likewise comes the pathos of a closing verse--

"Yon rising Moon that looks for us again-- How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same Garden--and for _one_ in vain! "

And if in spite of all that is said, Wordsworth's haunting Ode still a.s.serts its sway, then let there be a still more direct appeal to its author. One of his loveliest sonnets is that which opens--

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free."

He tells of the holy stillness, the setting of the broad sun, the eternal motion of the sea. He is filled with a sense of mystic adoration. And then there is a sudden turn of thought--

"Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine."

What is this but to regard the intuitional faculty as still largely latent, awaiting the maturing processes of the pa.s.sing years?

There is no place for further argument.

What has just been said of the child may be said of the race, especially if there is anything in the theory that the child recapitulates in brief the stages through which the race has pa.s.sed in its upward progress. In the dawn of civilisation the senses would be comparatively fresh and keen, though lacking in delicacy of aesthetic discrimination; the imagination would be powerful and active. Hence the products, so varied and immense, of the animistic tendency and the mytho-poeic faculty. To these stages succeed the periods of reflective thought and accurate research, which, while blunting to some degree the sharp edge of sensibility, more than atone for the loss by the widening of horizons and the deepening of mysteries. We must be careful, however, not to press the a.n.a.logy, or parallel, too far. Important modifications of the recapitulation theory are being urged even on its biological side; it is wise, therefore, to be doubly on guard when dealing with the complexities of social development. Still, it is safe to a.s.sert that, for the race as for the individual, the modes of cosmic emotion grow fuller and richer in "the process of the suns." Would it be easy to parallel in any previous period of history that pa.s.sage from Jefferies?-- "With all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun, and the sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean--in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written--with these I prayed, as if they were the keys of an instrument."

Starting from an acknowledgment that the intuitional faculty is capable of development, it is an easy, and indeed inevitable, step to the conclusion that training and discipline can aid that development. As noted above, mystics have gone, and still go, to lengths which make the world wonder, in their efforts to enjoy the higher forms of mystic communion with the Real. The note of stern renunciation has persisted like a bourdon down the ages in the lives of those who have devoted themselves to the quest of the Absolute. In the East, and more especially in India, the grand aim of life has come to be the release from the appet.i.tes and the senses. The Buddhist struggles to suppress all natural desires, and undergoes all manner of self-inflicted tortures, that he may rise above the world of illusion, and attain to absorption in the Universal Spirit. He sacrifices the body that the soul may see. Similar views, though varying much in detail, have flourished at the heart of all the great religions, and have formed almost the sole substance of some of the smaller. Nor has Christianity escaped. An exaggerated and uncompromising asceticism has won for many Christian saints their honours on earth and their a.s.surance of special privileges in heaven.

Contrast with this sterner and narrower type, the mystic who loves the natural world because he believes it to be, like himself, a genuine manifestation of the ultimately Real, and to be akin to his own inmost life. He, too, acknowledges the need for the discipline of the body--he, too, has his _askesis_--but he cherishes the old Greek ideal which does not call for a sacrifice of sense as such, but for a wise abstinence from those sensual pleasures, or over-indulgences in pleasure, which endanger the balance of the powers of the body and the mind. The nature- mystic, more particularly, maintains that there is no form of human knowledge which may not be of service to him in attaining to deeper insight and fuller experience in his intercourse with nature. He is therefore a student, in the best sense of the word--not a slave to mere erudition, but an alert and eager absorber of things new and old according to his abilities and opportunities. He tries to survey life as a whole, and to bring his complete self, body and soul, to the realisation of its possibilities. And he looks to nature for some of his purest joys and most fruitful experiences. He knows that the outward shows of heaven and earth are manifestations of a Reality which communes with him as soul with soul.

CHAPTER VII

NATURE NOT SYMBOLIC

Mysticism and symbolism are generally regarded as inseparable: some may go so far as to make them practically synonymous. Hence the large s.p.a.ce devoted to symbols in most treatises on Mysticism. Recejac, for instance, in his treatise on the "Bases of the Mystic Belief," devotes about two-thirds of the whole to this subject. Whence such preponderating emphasis? There are, of course, many conspiring causes, but the conception of the Absolute is still the strongest. Given an Unconditioned which is beyond the reach of sense and reason, the phenomenal is necessarily degraded to the rank of the merely symbolical. Nature, being at an infinite distance from the Real, can only "stand for" the Real; and any knowledge which it can mediate is so indirect as to be hardly worthy of the name.

To this degradation of the phenomenal the true nature-mystic is bound to demur, if he is to be faithful to his fundamental principle. He desires direct communion with the Real, and looks to external nature as a means to attain his end. To palm off upon him something which "stands for" the Real is to balk him of his aim; for the moment the symbol appears, the Real disappears: its place is taken by a subst.i.tute which at the best is Maya--an illusion; or, to use technical phraseology of the metaphysical sort, is "mere appearance."

But further, the symbolic conception of nature would seem to contradict the requirement of immediacy--a requirement more vital to the Absolutist than to the genuine nature-mystic, and yet apparently lost from the view of those who are the strongest advocates of symbolism. For intuition implies direct insight, independent of reasoning process and conceptual construction.

Whereas, a symbol, in any ordinary acceptation of the word, is indisputably a product of conscious mental processes: its very reference beyond itself demands conscious a.n.a.lysis and synthesis, and a conscious recognition of complicated systems of relations. The doctrine of symbols is thus in reality subversive of Mysticism of any kind, and more especially of Nature Mysticism.

Let it not be supposed that to argue thus is to repudiate symbolism as such. Whoever understands the nature and conditions of human knowledge sees that symbolic systems, of endless variety, are necessary instruments in almost every department of theory, research, and practice. We cannot move without them. Some symbols are thoroughly abstract and artificial, but frequently of the utmost value, in spite of their being pure creations of the mind. Other symbols are founded on a.n.a.logies and affinities deep down in the nature of things, and so come nearer to the matter of genuine intuition. Between the two extremes there are an infinite number of graded systems, some of which enter into the very texture of daily life. But so long as, and in so far as, there is a "standing for" instead of a "being," the mystic, qua mystic, is defrauded of his direct communion with the Ground of things.

But the mystic who champions symbolism may object that the definition of that term must not be taken so narrowly, and that there is the wider sense in which it is taken by writers on aesthetics. Some such definition as this may be attempted: A symbol is something which does not merely "stand for"