Nature Mysticism Part 3

something else, but one which, while it has a meaning of its own, points onward to another thing beyond itself, and suggests an ideal content which of itself it cannot fully embody. But are we really cleared of our difficulty by subst.i.tuting "suggests" for "stands for"? Again it must be insisted that the mystic aims at direct communion, not with that which is "suggested," but that which "is." An object may be low or high in the scale of existence, may be rich or poor in content--but it is what it is, and, as such, and in and for itself, may be the source of an intuition. The man lying on the bank of the mill-stream and meditating on the water-wheel wanted the secret of the wheel itself, not what the wheel "suggested." Jefferies, yearning for fuller soul-life, and sensitive to nature's aspects, felt that the life was there--that the universe _is_ the life--that the life is intuited in and through the universe, though not grasped as yet by the conscious reasoning processes.

As an interesting example, the symbol of the cross may be briefly considered. Why should a form so simple and so familiar have acquired an astonis.h.i.+ngly wide range and be generally regarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the problem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain--the choice has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an intuitional, subconscious factor. Is it possible that the negativing of a line in one direction by a line in another direction raises subliminally a sense of strain, then of effort, then of purposeful will, and so, lastly, of life? Probably a piece of pure imagination! And yet there must be some real power in the symmetrical form itself to account for its symbolic career.

Conscious reason, obscurely prompted by this power, evolved the symbolic use; and the strange interminglings of intuition, rational action, and force of circ.u.mstance, during the long course of civilised history, have accomplished the rest.

The train of reflection thus started will add special point to a pa.s.sage from an early letter of Kingsley's, quoted by Inge in a slightly curtailed form, but here given in full. "The great Mysticism is the belief that is becoming every day stronger with me, that all symmetrical natural objects, aye, and perhaps all forms, colours, and scents which show organisation or arrangement, are types of some truth or existence, of a grade between the symbolical type and the mystic type. When I walk the fields I am oppressed every now and then with an innate feeling, that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp, amounts to indescribable awe sometimes!

Everything seems to be full of G.o.d's reflex, if we could but see it."

The pa.s.sage is of profound significance when taken as a whole, and will serve as a remarkable description of the genuine mystic experience which can be prompted by nature, without going to the length of "vision," still less of ecstasy. But the stress now lies on the words--"a grade between the symbolical type and the mystic type." Kingsley evidently realised the insufficiency of symbolism to meet his demands, while he shrank from the vagueness of what was called Mysticism. Objects for him had a meaning in their own right, and he was casting about for a fitting term to express this fact. He also distinctly states that to him, "Everything seems to be full of G.o.d's reflex." Once grant that Nature Mysticism, as denned and ill.u.s.trated in the preceding chapters, is a genuine form of Mysticism, and his difficulty would be solved. The natural objects which stirred his emotions would be acknowledged as part and parcel of the ultimate Ground itself, and therefore competent to act, not as subst.i.tutes for something else not really present, but in their own right, and of their own sovereign prerogative. Nature, in short, is not a mere stimulus for a roving fancy or teeming imagination: it is a power to be experienced, a secret to be wrested, a life to be shared.

The famous "Canticle of the Sun" of St. Francis d'a.s.sisi gives naive and spontaneous expression to the same truth. Natural objects, for this purest of mystics, were no bare symbols, nor did they gain their significance by suggesting beyond themselves. He addressed them as beings who shared with him the joy of existence. "My Brother the Sun"--"my Sister the Moon"--"our Mother the Earth"--"my Brother the Wind"--"our Sister Water"--"Brother Fire." The same form of address is maintained for things living and things lifeless. And it is obvious that the endearing terms of relations.h.i.+p are more than metaphors or figures of speech. His heart evidently goes with them: he genuinely claims kins.h.i.+p. Differences dissolve in a sense of common being. It would be an anachronism to read into these affectionate names the more fully developed mysticism of Blake, or Sh.e.l.ley, or Emerson. But the absence of any tinge of symbolic lore is noteworthy.

Kingsley, as was just seen, was feeling about for something more satisfactory than mystic symbolism; so also was Emerson.

"Mysticism" (he writes) "consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. . . . The mystic must be steadily told, 'All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it.'" Emerson's uneasiness is manifest. He is rebelling, but is not quite sure of his ground. At one time he inclines to think the mystic in fault because he "nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false." At another time he is inclined to condemn the symbol altogether as being of too "accidental" a character. But it is surely simpler to throw symbolism overboard so far as genuine mystic experience is concerned. What the mystic is in search of is "meaning" in its own right--"meaning" existing in and for itself. Anything less is a fraud. Emerson nearly reached this conclusion, as witness the following pa.s.sage: "A happy symbol is a sort of evidence that your thought is just. . . . If you agree with me, or if Locke or Montesquieu agree, I may yet be wrong; but if the elm tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fas.h.i.+ons, say what I say, it must be true." Here Emerson is all but clean out of the tangle.

He speaks of a "happy symbol." But inasmuch as this "happy symbol" is to express what the elm tree, the running water, and the rest, _actually say_ in their several fas.h.i.+ons, it is safer to drop the idea of symbolism altogether; for what they _say_, is not what they "stand for," but what they actually _are_.

If the contention is renewed that the elm tree, running water, and the rest, _suggest_ truths and thoughts beyond themselves, of course the point may be readily granted. But this is only to affirm that every object is linked on to every other object by a multiplicity of relations--that each part is woven into the texture of a larger whole in a universe of interpenetrations. The consistent working out of the organic interdependence of the modes and forms of existence is found in such a system as that of Hegel, where each part pre-supposes correlatives, and where each stage or "moment" includes all the past, and presses on to that which dialectically succeeds. It is not necessary to be a Hegelian to appreciate the grand idea of his doctrine--that all modes and manifestations of the Real are logically and organically connected. But to say that one stage of the evolution of the Idea is dependent on another, or essentially involves another, is not to make the lower of the stages symbolic of the higher. Indeed to introduce the concept of symbolism at all into such a context is to court inextricable confusion. Let symbolism be one thing, and let organic (or dialectic) connection be another--then we know where we are when we claim for natural objects that they have a being and a meaning in their own right, and that they are akin to the soul of man. Emerson had a firm grasp of the nature-mystic's inevitable contention.

"The rounded world is fair to see, Nine-times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its labouring heart.

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin; Self-kindled every atom glows,-- And hints the future which it owes."

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHARGE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM

There are many thinkers who are ready to acknowledge that the contemplation of nature leads to various kinds of emotional and aesthetic experience, but who at the same time deny that the results of such contemplation have any other than a subjective character; they argue that the validity of the results evaporates, so to speak, with the mood which brought them into being.

Myths, for example, from this point of view are "simply the objectification of subjective impulses"; and modern sympathy with nature is aesthetic feeling which "breaks free of the fetters laid upon it by mythological thought, constantly to create at its own sovereign pleasure myths which pa.s.s with the pa.s.sing of the end that they have served and give place to other fancies."

This "subjective" doctrine will meet us often, and will call for various answers. Let it now be considered in its most general and formidable shape, that to which Wundt has given weighty support in his treatise on the "Facts of the Moral Life." The sentences quoted just above are from those sections of this work which deal with man's aesthetic relation to nature; and it is with their teaching on the subject that this chapter will be chiefly concerned.

Here is a statement which raises a clear issue. The influence of nature, says Wundt, is not immutable. "The same mountains and rivers and forests lie before the modern European that lay before his ancestors thousands of years ago; but the effect which they produce is very different. In this change there is reflected a change in man's _aesthetic_ view of the world, itself connected with a change in his moral apprehension of life."

Now every word of this pa.s.sage may be welcomed by the nature-mystic without his thereby yielding his contention that mountains and rivers and forests have a definite and immanent objective significance of their own. The phenomena of sunrise and sunset, which lay before our European ancestors thousands of years ago, are the same as those which present themselves to the modern astronomer, and yet how differently interpreted!

Does the difference imply that the early observer had no objective facts before him, and that modern astronomy has advanced to a freedom which enables it to frame hypotheses at its sovereign will? Such a conclusion is just possible as we meditate on the mutability of many scientific concepts! Still, the conclusion would be regarded as somewhat violent. But if it is allowed that in the latter case, the basis of objective fact gives continuity to the development of astronomic lore, why should the same privilege not be accorded to the objective element in the continuity of mystical lore? As knowledge grows, interpretations become more adequate to the objective facts, but it does not negate them. And Wundt himself allows that "it is from the mythological form of the feeling (for nature), which reaches back to the first beginnings of human civilisation, that the aesthetic feeling for nature with which we are ourselves familiar has been slowly and gradually evolved." How could such continuity be secured without some basis in the world of fact?

And the basis in fact is surely easy of discovery. Man is not a solitary being, suspended between earth and heaven. On the contrary, he is related to all below him and all that is above him by ties which enter into the very fibre of his being. He is himself a child of nature, nurtured on the bosom of Mother Earth and raising his eyes to the height of the Empyrean.

Evolution, whatever it may be, is a cosmic process--and man is a link in a chain, or rather, a living member of a living universe.

For an evolutionist to argue man's relation to his physical environment to be external in its physical aspects would be deemed arrant folly. Is it less foolish for an evolutionist to isolate man's emotions, feelings, and thoughts?

"In proportion" (says Wundt) "as nature lost her immediate and living reality" (by the pa.s.sing of mythology) "did the human mind possess itself of her, to find its own subjective states reflected in her features." Much obviously turns on the implications of the word "reflected." We are led to hope much when he speaks of "the kins.h.i.+p of the emotions set up by certain phenomena of nature with moods arising from within"--but he empties his statement of mystic meaning by adding, "at the mind's own instance." "Nature" (says Auerbach in plainer terms)" has no moods, they belong to man alone." Tennyson gives expression to this view (not on his own behalf!):

"all the phantom, Nature, stands, With all the music in her tone A hollow echo of my own-- A hollow form with empty hands."

But surely all this negation of moods in nature, this determination to empty natural phenomena of all definite human significance, is invalidated by one very simple consideration. There must be _some_ correspondence between cause and effect. When certain moods are stimulated by certain physical phenomena, there must be _some_ sort of real causation. It is not _any_ scene that can harmonise with or foster _any_ mood. The range of variety in the effects produced by mountains, rivers, sunsets, and the rest, is admittedly great, but it is not chaotic. The nature-mystic admits variety, nay, rejoices in it, but he postulates an equivalent variety of influences immanent in the phenomena. Of course Auerbach is right if by mood in nature he means an experience similar to that of the human observer: but he is wrong if he implies that the mood is wholly a subjective creation, and that the object, or group of objects, which stimulates the mood has no quality or power which corresponds to, or is essentially connected with, the mood.

Turner's famous "Fighting Temeraire" combines into an exquisite whole a group of human moods and natural phenomena.

Was his choice of phenomena determined by purely subjective considerations? A veteran wars.h.i.+p is being towed by a little steamer to her last berth. The human interest is intense. The problem is to give it a fitting and n.o.ble setting.

Study the nature-setting which the artist has chosen for his theme--the wealth of glowing, but gently subdued colour--the sun setting, like the old s.h.i.+p, in mellow glory--the crescent moon that speaks of the birth of a new economic era--the cool mists stealing up, precursors of the night when work is done-- how marvellously all these tone with the general sentiment.

Shall it be maintained that they are arbitrary conventions, mere fanciful products of the a.s.sociation of ideas? Armed with triple bra.s.s must be the breast of the critic who could uphold such a view. For the common heart of humanity repudiates it, and intuitively feels that in such a picture there is more than a display of artistic skill embodying subtle symbols--it feels that there is a blending of elements which share a common spiritual nature.

The same conclusion is reached when the matter is brought to the test of science and philosophy. Science, in its own domain, is every whit as anthropomorphic as Nature Mysticism--and inevitably so if it is to exist at all; for it rests upon the a.s.sumption that the behaviour of external objects is in harmony with the workings of human reason. In other words, it postulates a vital relations.h.i.+p between man's inner nature and the inner nature of his material environment. Human reason goes out into nature expecting to find there something akin to itself, and is not disappointed of its hope. Man's conceptions of this kins.h.i.+p were at first, like all his other conceptions, crude and confused; but as his experience widened and ripened, his outlook became more adequate to the infinite complexity and variety of the phenomena with which he has to deal. And throughout, both in the lower and in the higher stages of intellectual development, the same truth unchangingly a.s.serts itself, that man is a microcosm. His reason proves it by finding itself in the macrocosm. And what holds good of the imperfect and recently developed rational faculties holds good even more substantially of the fundamental instincts and emotions, and of intuitions and spiritual promptings.

The scientist of a materialistic bent may here object that as the sphere of human knowledge extends it becomes increasingly evident that all the operations in the universe are under the sway of inexorable laws. The issues thus raised are obviously too large to be discussed at any length in the present context. But two observations of a general character will serve to indicate that there are weighty counter-considerations. The first is that the human heart rebels against the conception of a mechanically determined universe while conceiving itself a product of, or integral part of, that universe. That is to say, we reject the strange theory of a mechanical universe rebelling against itself!

Some of the inexorable laws must, to say the least, be of a very different character from that which the scientist postulates! The second consideration is almost a corollary of the first, but also occupies new ground. These "laws" which are so indefatigably hurled at us--what are they? Who can say? Even in their simplest manifestations they pa.s.s out of our ken. The most fundamental of them all, from the scientific point of view--the law of the conservation of energy--is now being openly questioned. Much more is there uncertainty as to the laws of life, and the obscure trends and impulses grouped under the head of evolution. So strongly does the stream of criticism bear upon the foundations of the house of the physical scientist, that the old temptation to hasty, and sometimes arrogant, dogmatism is rapidly disappearing. The knowledge of "laws" still leaves, and ever will leave, ample breathing room for the poet, the artist, the nature-mystic, and the soul that loves.

There is, however, another aspect of the charge of anthropomorphism--one which is more difficult to deal with because it affects at times the nature-mystic himself. In attempting to deal with it, it will be well to let representative thinkers put their own case. Jefferies, for example, writes thus: "There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so dearly, would let me perish on the ground, and neither bring forth food nor water. Burning in the sky, the great sun, of whose company I have been so fond, would merely burn on and make no motion to a.s.sist me. . . . As for the sea, it offers us salt water which we cannot drink. The trees care nothing for us; the hill I visited so often in days gone by has not missed me. . . . There is nothing human in the whole round of nature. All nature, all the universe that we can see, is absolutely indifferent to us, and except to us human life is of no more value than gra.s.s."

Now what does the charge, as thus stated, really amount to?

There is no implication that nature is hostile, as some (perhaps including Huxley) would have us think. There is simply a feeling that nature is remote from human modes of experience, indifferent to human interests. And it would be puerile to dispute the rightness of this impression so long as the standpoint of the individual human being is adopted. The individual man is a centre of self-consciousness in a peculiar sense. He has numberless and interminable particular wants, hopes, fears, pleasures, pains. Whereas, the infra-human objects in nature have not attained to his particular mode of consciousness: theirs differs from his in degree, perchance in kind. A tree, a cloud, a mountain, a wave--these cannot enter into what we call "personal" relations with each other or with human beings. But this is not to say that they may not possess a consciousness, which though different from man's consciousness, is yet akin to it and linked to it. Nay, the nature-mystic's experiences, as well as the metaphysician's speculations, declare that the linking up must be regarded as a fact. And when we examine more carefully what Jefferies says, we find that he in no way disputes this fact. How could it be, with his vivid sense of communion with forms of being still more remote from the human than the sea-monsters he names? What oppressed him was a feeling of strangeness. In other words, nature was "remote" for him because he felt he did not understand it well enough.

Further discussion of the important issues thus raised will be postponed until certain forms of modern animism come under review. One or two preliminary observations, however, will be in place at this earlier stage. It is wise, for example, not to forget the limitations of our knowledge. A plat.i.tude! Yes--but one which even the greatest thinkers are apt to lose sight of, with consequent tendency to hasty generalisation and undue neglect of deep-seated instincts and intuitions. The discovery of some new cosmic law may change the whole face of nature, and set in a new light its apparent remoteness or indifference. Again, as has just been shown, natural phenomena are in definite relations.h.i.+p to human reason. They are comprehensible-- therefore not alien. By their aid we can organise our conduct, and even our ideals--therefore they are factors in our self-realisation. Thus, underlying their seeming indifference, it is possible even now to trace their beneficent influences in the evolutionary process. And since they embody reason, beauty, and goodness, we can afford to await in patience the solution of many problems which trouble us, and surrender ourselves trustfully to the calm, resistless forces which are weaving the web of cosmic destinies.

A fine example of the trustful att.i.tude is found in an article of Lord Dunraven's describing his life in the woods of New Brunswick: "The earth sleeps. A silence that can be felt has fallen over the woods. The stars begin to fade. A softer and stronger light wells up and flows over the scene as the broad moon slowly floats above the tree tops. . . . The tree trunks stand out distinct in the lessening gloom; the dark pine boughs overhead seem to stoop caressingly towards you. Amid a stillness that is terrifying, man is not afraid. Surrounded by a majesty that is appalling, he shrinks not nor is he dismayed. In a scene of utter loneliness he feels himself not to be alone. A sense of companions.h.i.+p, a sensation of satisfaction, creep over him. He feels at one with Nature, at rest in her strong protecting arms."

There is no need, then, to be afraid of a charge ofanthropomorphism, if only our conceptions of nature do not lag behind our clear knowledge of its forms and forces. Man, being what he is, is, of course, compelled to think as man and to speak as man; he cannot jump off his own shadow. But since he is himself part and parcel of the cosmos, his thinking and speaking are _within_, not external to, the material cosmos. So completely is he within, that his knowledge of himself comes to him only by seeing himself reflected in the greater whole. And thus, provided we are true to the highest principles we have attained, we shall be safer when we look out on nature with the a.n.a.logy of human agency in our mind, than when we regard its course as alien and indifferent. In other words, Nature is not merely an AEolian harp which re-echoes tones given out by the human soul--though that would be much!--but an indispensable agent in producing them. The action is reciprocal, just because man and his external world interpenetrate at every point, and are united organically in a common life.

CHAPTER IX

THE IMMANENT IDEA

So much by way of direct answer to the formidable attack upon the nature-mystic's position. In turning to more constructive work, which will furnish many indirect answers, it will be necessary to take another brief but exhilarating plunge into metaphysics.

We found that external objects somehow, through sensations, obtain admission into the mind, and become part of its possessions in the form of experience. Intuition of various grades is at the base of all mental development. Reflective thought goes to work on the material thus provided, and weaves certain portions of it into the structure of systematised knowledge. Much of it, however, never emerges into clear consciousness--it is felt rather than known--sometimes not even felt, though it influences the mind, affects its mood or tone, and largely moulds its character and the products of its more conscious processes. Intuition thus contains implicitly what reflection and reason strive to render explicit.

It will be remembered that, in the first chapter, the metaphysical theory broadly adopted was that which may be called Ideal-Realism.

The distinctive teaching is that while Materialism stops short at external objects which can resist, and while Subjective Idealism stops short at the perceiving mind, Ideal-Realism affirms the reality of objects and perceiving mind alike, but regards them as mutually dependent, and as fused in the activity of consciousness. Can the conclusions just summed up and the metaphysical theory adopted be brought into helpful connection?

Yes, if the human mind and the external world are made of the same stuff--if the mind is invisible nature, and nature visible mind. For Materialism cannot bridge the gap between matter and consciousness; Subjective Idealism can never move out into a real world. But if nature and mind are genuinely akin, as the nature-mystic holds, there is no gap to bridge, no mind condemned to hopeless isolation. Nature is then seen to be a manifestation of the same mental factors which we discover when we a.n.a.lyse our inner experience--namely, consciousness, feeling, will, and reason. The nature-mystic's communion with the external world takes its place as a valid mode of realising the essential sameness of all forms of existences and of all cosmic activities. Science is another such valid mode, art another, philosophy another, religion yet another--none of them ultimately antagonistic, but mutually supplementary. Some mystics will say that the union of man with nature is actually at any moment complete, but has to be brought into the light of conscious experience. Other mystics, who hold dualistic, pluralistic, or pragmatic views, will maintain that the union may a.s.sume ever new forms and develop ever new potentialities. But such differences are subsidiary, and cannot obscure the fundamental doctrine on which all consistent nature-mystics must be agreed, that man and nature are essentially manifestations of the same Reality.

It is deeply significant to note that, at the very dawn of reflective thought, a conviction of the essential sameness of all existence seized upon the minds of the fathers of Western philosophy, and dominated their speculations. The teaching of these bold pioneers was inevitably coloured and limited by their social environment; but it was also so shot through with flashes of intuition and acute reasonings, that it antic.i.p.ated many of the latest developments of modern research. A study of its main features will occupy us at a later stage, when _we_ come to deal with certain of nature's most striking phenomena. The simple fact is here emphasised that the earliest effort of human reflective thought was to discover the _Welt-stoff_--the substance which underlies all modes and forms of existence, and that man was regarded as an integral and organic part of the whole.

Greek philosophy, which started with these crude, but brilliant speculations, had developed a wonderful variety and subtlety, when Plato, animated by the same desire to discover the Ground of things, introduced his doctrine of Ideas. He held that bodies are not, in themselves, the true reality; they are manifestations of something else. Reality, for him, is a system of real thoughts which he calls Ideas, and the world of objects gets its reality by partic.i.p.ating in them or by copying them. The senses, under such conditions, cleave to the copies, whereas the mind, in thinking by general ideas, apprehends the true reality. These ideas must not be regarded as mere products of the mind, but as real existences, which, when manifested under conditions of time and s.p.a.ce, multiply themselves in innumerable objects. In fact, so real are they that without them there would be no objects at all.

Schopenhauer adopted this doctrine of Ideas, and brought it into connection with his characteristic theory of Will as the ultimate Ground. The Ideas, for him, represent definite forms of existence, manifested in individual things and beings. There are thus, he said, Ideas of the simple elementary forces of nature, such as gravity and impenetrability; there are Ideas of the different forms of individual things; and there are Ideas of the different species of organic beings, including man. He followed Plato in refusing any true reality to individual objects and separated the Idea from its sensuous form. "By Idea, then" (he writes), "I understand every definite and fixed grade of the objectification of will, so far as it is a thing-in-itself, and therefore has no multiplicity. These grades are related to individual things as their eternal forms or prototypes." Hence, the world known to the senses could be nothing other than mere phenomenal appearance.

Now it is manifestly an enormous stride in the direction of Nature Mysticism to recognise in material objects a factor, or element, which is akin to the highest activities of the human mind. But, as already stated, in expounding the view known as Ideal-Realism, the nature-mystic cannot be content to stop here.

Nor indeed was Schopenhauer consistent in stopping here. If he had been faithful to his conception of Will as the Ground of all existence, he could not well have denied some degree of reality to objects in their own right. This particular tree, this particular table, this particular cloud--what are they, each in its individual capacity, but objectifications of will?--therefore real! Each individual object is _unique_, and fills a place of its own in the totality of objects--each is related to all the rest in particular and defined manners and degrees--each exhibits a special kind of behaviour in a special environment. Why, then, deny to each individual thing its own grade and degree of reality?

Thus there is in each object an immanent idea; but this is fused with the sensuous form, and presents itself to conscious human thought as an objective manifestation of the Real. There is an organic interpenetration of the sensuous and the spiritual; and it is by virtue of this interpenetration that the human reason can go out into the external world and find itself there. As Emerson well puts it--"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organised."

The nature-mystic is not without authoritative support, even on the Idealist side, in his demand that individual objects shall be allowed some grade and measure of reality. Spinoza, for instance, allows that each individual thing is a genuine part of the total Idea. Hegel also grants to individual things a certain "self-reference," which const.i.tutes them real existences. The nature-mystic, therefore, may be of good cheer in a.s.serting that even the most transient phenomenon not only "partic.i.p.ates" in an immanent Idea, but embodies it, gives it a concrete form and place. He thus substantiates his claim that communion with nature is communion with the Ground of things.

CHAPTER X

ANIMISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN