Tablets Part 11

BEING: _Flowing_, _Fixed_, Subjective. Objective.

I. III. II.

_Actions_, _Participles_, _Things_, Verbs. Nouns.

IV.

_Qualities_, Adverbs, Adjectives.

V.

_Relations_, Prepositions, Conjunctions, p.r.o.nouns.]

Thought's winged hand, Marshals in trope and tone The ideal band.

Genius alone Holds fast in eye The fleeing G.o.d-- Brings Beauty nigh-- Senses descry Footsteps he trod, Figures he drew, Shapes old and new, The fair, the true, In soul and sod.

Nature is thought immersed in matter, and seen differently as viewed from the one or the other. To the laborer it is a thing of mere uses; to the scholar a symbol and a muse. The same landscape is not the same as seen by poet and plowman. It stands for material benefit to the one, immaterial to the other. The artist's point of view is one of uses seen as means of beauty, that being the complement of uses. His faculties handle his organs; the hands, like somnambulists, playing their under parts to ideas; these, again, serving uses still higher. The poet, awakened from the sleep of things, beholds beauty in essence and form, being thus admitted to the secret of causes, the laws of pure Being.

The like of Persons. Every one's gla.s.s reflects his bias. If the thinker views men as troglodytes--like Plato's groundlings, unconscious of the sun s.h.i.+ning overhead; men of the senses, and mere makeweights--they in turn p.r.o.nounce him the dreamer, sitting aloof from human concerns, an unproductive citizen and waste power in the world. Still, thought makes the world and sustains it; atom and idea alike being its const.i.tuents.

Nor can thought, from its nature, at once become popular. It is the property and delight of the few fitted by genius and culture for discriminating truth from adhering falsehood, and of setting it forth in its simplicity and truth to the understandings of the less favored.

Apart by pursuit from the ma.s.s of mankind, or at most taking a separate and subordinate part in affairs that engage their sole attention, the thinker seems useless to all save those who can apprehend and avail themselves of his immediate labors; and the less is he known and appreciated as his studies are of lasting importance to his race. Yet time is just, and brings all men to the side of thought as they become familiar with its practical benefits, else the victory were not gained for philosophy, and wisdom justified in him of her chosen children.

Ideas alone supplement nature and complement mind. Our senses neither satisfy our sensibility nor intellect. The mind's objects are mind itself; imagination the mind's eye, memory the ear, ideas of the one imaging the other, and the mind thus rounding its history. And hence the pleasurable perspective experienced in surveying our personality from obverse sides in the landscape of existence--culture, in its inclusive sense, making the tour of our gifts, and acquainting us with ourselves and the world we live in. All men gain a residence in the senses and the family of natural things; few come into possession of their better inheritance and home in the mind--the Palace of Power and Personality.

Sons of earth rather by preference, and chiefly emulous for their little while of its occupancy, its honors, emoluments, they here pitch their tents, here plant fast their hopes, and roll through life they know not whither.

II.--THE GIFTS.

Instinct is the fountain of Personal power, and mother of the Gifts.

With instinct there may be an embryo, but sense must be superinduced to const.i.tute an animal--memory, moral sentiment, reason, imagination, personality, to const.i.tute the man. The mind is the man, not the outward shape: all is in the Will. The animal may mount to fancy in the grade of gifts; but reason, imagination, conscience, choice--the mediating, creative, ruling powers--the personality--belong to man alone. But not to all men, save in essence and possibility. Man properly traverses the hierarchy of Powers--spiritual, intellectual, moral, natural, animal--their full possession and interplay enabling him to hold free colloquy with all, giving the whole mind voice in the dialogue. Thus:

Asking for The Who? Will responds, The Person.

The Ought? Conscience " The Right.

The How? Imagination " The Idea.

The Why? Reason " The Truth.

The Thus? Fancy " The Image.

The Where? Understanding " The Fact.

The When? Memory " The Event.

The Which? Sense " The Thing.

The What? Instinct " The Life.

In accordance with this gradation of gifts, man and animals may be cla.s.sified as to their measures of intelligence respectively; instinct being taken as the initial gift and prompter of the rest in their order of genesis, growth and adaptability: man alone, when fully unfolded in harmony, being capable of ranging throughout the entire scale.[I]

[Footnote I: "One would think nothing were easier for us than to know our own mind, discern what was our main scope and drift, and what we proposed to ourselves as our end in the several occurrences of our lives. But our thoughts have such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and for this reason the right method is to give them voice and accent. And this, in our default, is what the philosophers endeavor to do to our hand, when, holding out a kind of vocal looking-gla.s.s, they draw sound out of our breast, and instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest manner."--LORD SHAFTESBURY.]

Thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch of human head marked with Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conscience, Personality]

CLa.s.s I. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conscience, Personality.

II. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conscience.

III. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination.

IV. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason.

V. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy.

VI. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding.

VII. Instinct, Sense, Memory.

VIII. Instinct, Sense.

MAN IS Spiritual as he experiences, Personality, Thought Moral " Choice, Conscience.

Intellectual " Imagination, Reason.

Natural " Fancy, Understanding.

Brute " Memory, Sense.

Demonic " Appet.i.te, Pa.s.sion.

Nature does not contain the Personal man. He is the mind with the brute omitted, or, conversely, the animal transfigured and divinized by the Spirit. It is a slow process; long for the individual, longeval for the race. Centuries, millenniads elapse, mind meanwhile travailing with man, the birth arrested for the most part, or premature, the translation from germ to genius being supernatural, thought hardly delivered from spine and occiput into face and forehead, the mind uplifted and crowned in personality.

Pure mind alone is face, Brute matter surface all; As souls immersed in s.p.a.ce, Ideal rise, or idol fall.

III.--PERSON.

The lapsed Personality, or deuce human and divine, has played the prime part in metaphysical theology of times past, as it does still. But rarely has thought freed itself from the notion of duplicity, triplicity, and grounded its faith in the Idea of the One Personal Spirit, as a pure theism, and planted therein a faith and cultus. If we claim this for the Hebrew thought, as it rose to an intuition in the mind of its inspired thinker, it pa.s.sed away with him; since Christendom throughout mythologizes, rather than thinks about his attributes; is divided, subdivided into sects, schools of doctrine; each immersed so deeply in its special individualism as to be unable to rise to the comprehension of the Personal One. Nor, considering the demands mind makes upon the senses,--these inclining always to idolatry,--is it surprising that this spiritual theism, seeking its symbols in pure thought, without image graven or conceived, should find any considerable number of followers. Yet a faith less supersensuous and ideal, any school of thought, code of doctrine, creed founded on substance, force, law, tradition, authority, miracle, is a covert superst.i.tion, ending logically in atheism, necessity, nihilism, disowning alike personality, free agency. Nature is sufficient for the creature, but person alone for man, without whose immanency and inspirations, man were heartless and wors.h.i.+pless. The Person wanting all is wanting. For where G.o.d is disembosomed, spectres rule the chaos within and without.[J]

[Footnote J: "The first principle of all things is Living Goodness, armed with Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a man's soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert, from the sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold conceit that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or in the stark root of unknowing nature and brute necessity, all the subtle cords of reason, without the timely recovery of that divine torch within the hidden spirit of his heart, will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit of atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and piety than subtle argument, and sincere devotion than curious dispute. But contemplations concerning the dry essence of the G.o.dhead have for the most part been most confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape, to smell the rose than to chew the stalk. And blessed be G.o.d, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successful in the latter; and the less, because the reports of those that have busied themselves that way have not only seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one another. But we should in charity refer this to the nature of the _pigeon's neck_ than to mistake and contradiction.

One and the same object in nature affords many different aspects. And G.o.d is infinitely various and simple; like a circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform line, or an infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible perfections of G.o.d than rashly to deny what appears not to us from our particular posture."--HENRY MORE.]

"Make us a G.o.d," said man: Power first the voice obeyed, And soon a monstrous form Its wors.h.i.+ppers dismayed; Uncouth and huge, by nations rude adored, With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred.

"Make us a G.o.d," said man: Art next the voice obeyed, Lovely, serene, and grand, Uprose the Athenian maid: The perfect statue, Greece with wreathed brows, Adores in festal rites and lyric vows.

"Make us a G.o.d," said man: Religion followed art, And answered, "Look within; Find G.o.d in thine own heart-- His n.o.blest image there, and holiest shrine, Silent revere--and be thyself divine."

IV.--CHOICE.

Heaven h.e.l.l's pit copes: Nor fathoms any sin's abyss, or clambers out, Save by the steps his choice hath delved.

The G.o.ds descend in the likeness of men, and ascending transfigure the man into their Personal likeness. Descending below himself he debases and disfigures this image; as by choice he leaps upwards, so by choice he lapses downwards. Yet, while free to choose, he sinks himself never beneath himself absolutely, his _beneath_ subsisting by his election only. His choices free or fetter, elevate or debase, deify or demonize his humanity. Superior to all forces is the Spirit within, doing or defying his determinations, ever holding him fast to the consequences.

Obeying its dictates or disobeying, frees or binds. It has golden chains for the good, for others iron. Love is its soft, yet mighty curb; freedom its easy yoke; fate its fetter.

Nor man in evil willingly doth rest, Nor G.o.d in good unwillingly is blest.

There is no appeal from the decisions of this High Court of Duty in the breast. The Ought is the Must and the Inevitable. One may misinterpret the voice, may deliberate, disobey the commandment, but cannot escape the consequences of his election. The deed decides. Nor is the Conscience appeased till sooner or later our deserts are p.r.o.nounced--The welcome "well done," or the dread "depart."

"'Tis vain to flee till gentle mercy show Her better eye. The further off we go The swing of justice deals the mightier blow."

Only the repenting consciousness of freedom abused restores the lost holiness, redeems from the guilty lapse--the sin that in separating us from the One, revealed the fearful Doubleness within, opening the yawning pit down which we stumbled, to become the prey of the undying worm.

"Meek love alone doth wash our ills away."