Anima Poetae Part 12

[Sidenote: WE ASK NOT WHENCE BUT WHAT AND WHITHER]

I addressed a b.u.t.terfly on a pea-blossom thus, "Beautiful Psyche, soul of a blossom, that art visiting and hovering o'er thy former friends whom thou hast left!" Had I forgot the caterpillar? or did I dream like a mad metaphysician that the caterpillar's hunger for plants was self-love, recollection, and a l.u.s.t that in its next state refined itself into love? Dec. 12, 1804.

[Sidenote: a.n.a.lOGY]

Different means to the same end seem to const.i.tute a.n.a.logy. Seeing and touching are a.n.a.logous senses with respect to magnitude, figure, &c.--they would, and to a certain extent do, supply each other's place.

The air-vessels of fish and of insects are a.n.a.logous to lungs--the end the same, however different the means. No one would say, "Lungs are a.n.a.logous to lungs," and it seems to me either inaccurate or involving some true conception obscurely, when we speak of planets by a.n.a.logy of ours--for here, knowing nothing but likeness, we presume the difference from the remoteness and difficulty, in the vulgar apprehension, of considering those pin-points as worlds. So, likewise, instead of the phrase "a.n.a.logy of the past," applied to historical reasoning, nine times out of ten I should say, "by the example of the past." This may appear verbal trifling, but "_animadverte quam sit ab improprietate verborum p.r.o.num hominibus prolabi in errores circa res_." In short, a.n.a.logy always implies a difference in kind and not merely in degree.

There is an a.n.a.logy between dimness and numbness and a certain state of the sense of hearing correspondent to these, which produces confusion with _magnification_, for which we have no name. But between light green and dark green, between a mole and a lynceus, there is a gradation, no a.n.a.logy.

[Sidenote: COROLLARY]

Between beasts and men, when the same actions are performed by both, are the means a.n.a.logous or different only in degree? That is the question!

The sameness of the end and the equal fitness of the means prove no ident.i.ty of means. I can only read, but understand no arithmetic. Yet, by Napier's tables or the _House-keepers' Almanack_, I may even arrive at the conclusion quicker than a tolerably expert mathematician. Yet, still, reading and reckoning are utterly different things.

[Sidenote: THOMAS WEDGWOOD AND REIMARUS]

In Reimarus on _The Instincts of Animals_, Tom Wedgwood's ground-principle of the influx of memory on perception is fully and beautifully detailed.

["Observations Moral and Philosophical on the Instinct of Animals, their Industry and their Manners," by Herman Samuel Reimarus, was published in 1770. See _Biographia Literaria_, chapter vi. and _Note_, by Mrs. H. N.

Coleridge in the Appendix, _Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, iii.

225, 717.]

[Sidenote: HINC ILLA MARGINALIA]

It is often said that books are companions. They are so, dear, very dear companions! But I often, when I read a book that delights me on the whole, feel a pang that the author is not present, that I cannot _object_ to him this and that, express my sympathy and grat.i.tude for this part and mention some facts that self-evidently overset a second, start a doubt about a third, or confirm and carry [on] a fourth thought.

At times I become restless, for my nature is very social.

[Sidenote: CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA]

"Well" (says Lady Ball), "the Catholic religion is better than none."

Why, to be sure, it is called a religion, but the question is, Is it a religion? Sugar of lead! better than no sugar! Put oil of vitriol into my salad--well, better than no oil at all! Or a fellow vends a poison under the name of James' powders--well, we must get the best we can--better that than none! So did not our n.o.ble ancestors reason or feel, or we should now be slaves and even as the Sicilians are at this day, or worse, for even they have been made less foolish, in spite of themselves, by others' wisdom.

[Sidenote: REIMARUS AND THE "INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS"]

I have read with wonder and delight that pa.s.sage of Reimarus in which he speaks of the immense mult.i.tude of plants, and the curious, regular _choice_ of different herbivorous animals with respect to them, and the following pages in which he treats of the pairing of insects and the equally wonderful processes of egg-laying and so forth. All in motion!

the sea-fish to the sh.o.r.es and rivers--the land crab to the sea-sh.o.r.e! I would fain describe all the creation thus agitated by the one or other of the three instincts--self-preservation, childing, and child-preservation. Set this by Darwin's theory of the maternal instinct--O mercy! the blindness of the man! and it is imagination, forsooth! that misled him--too much poetry in his philosophy! this abject deadness of all that sense of the obscure and indefinite, this superst.i.tious fetish-wors.h.i.+p of lazy or fascinated fancy! O this, indeed, deserves to be dwelt on.

Think of all this as an absolute revelation, a real presence of Deity, and compare it with historical traditionary religion. There are two revelations--the material and the moral--and the former is not to be seen but by the latter. As St. Paul has so well observed: "By worldly wisdom no man ever arrived at G.o.d;" but having seen Him by the moral sense, then we _understand_ the outward world. Even as with books, no book of itself teaches a language in the first instance; but having by sympathy of soul learnt it, we then understand the book--that is, the _Deus minor_ in His work.

The _hirschkafer_ (stag-beetle) in its worm state makes its bed-chamber, prior to its metamorphosis, half as long as itself. Why? There was a stiff horn turned under its belly, which in the fly state must project and harden, and this required exactly that length.

The sea-snail creeps out of its house, which, thus hollowed, lifts him aloft, and is his boat and cork jacket; the Nautilus, additionally, spreads a thin skin as a sail.

All creatures obey the great game-laws of Nature, and fish with nets of such meshes as permit many to escape, and preclude the taking of many.

So two races are saved, the one by taking part, and the other by part not being taken.

[Sidenote: ENTOMOLOGY VERSUS ONTOLOGY]

Wonderful, perplexing divisibility of life! It is related by D. Unzer, an authority wholly to be relied on, that an _ohrwurm_ (earwig) cut in half ate its own hinder part! Will it be the reverse with Great Britain and America? The head of the rattlesnake severed from the body bit it and squirted out its poison, as is related by Beverley in his History of Virginia. Lyonnet in his Insect. Theol. tells us that he tore a wasp in half and, three days after, the fore-half bit whatever was presented to it of its former food, and the hind-half darted out its sting at being touched. Stranger still, a turtle has been known to live six months with his head off, and to wander about, yea, six hours after its heart and intestines (all but the lungs) were taken out! How shall we think of this compatibly with the monad soul? If I say, what has spirit to do with s.p.a.ce?--what odd dreams it would suggest! or is every animal a republic _in se_? or is there one Breeze of Life, "at once the soul of each, and G.o.d of all?" Is it not strictly a.n.a.logous to generation, and no more contrary to unity than it? But IT? Aye! there's the twist in the logic. Is not the reproduction of the lizard a complete generation? O it is easy to dream, and, surely, better of these things than of a 20,000 prize in the lottery, or of a place at Court. Dec. 13, 1804.

[Sidenote: FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"]

To trace the if not absolute birth, yet the growth and endurancy of language, from the mother talking to the child at her breast. O what a subject for some happy moment of deep feeling and strong imagination!

Of the Quintetta in the Syracuse opera and the pleasure of the voices--one and not one, they leave, seek, pursue, oppose, fight with, strengthen, annihilate each other, awake, enliven, soothe, flatter and embrace each other again, till at length they die away in one tone.

There is no sweeter image of wayward yet fond lovers, of seeking and finding, of the love-quarrel, and the making-up, of the losing and the yearning regret, of the doubtful, the complete recognition, and of the total melting union. Words are not interpreters, but fellow-combatants.

t.i.tle for a Medical Romance:--The adventures, rivalry, warfare and final union and partners.h.i.+p of Dr. Hocus and Dr. Pocus.

Idly talk they who speak of poets as mere indulgers of fancy, imagination, superst.i.tion, etc. They are the bridlers by delight, the purifiers; they that combine all these with reason and order--the true protoplasts--G.o.ds of Love who tame the chaos.

To deduce instincts from obscure recollections of a pre-existing state--I have often thought of it. "Ey!" I have said, when I have seen certain tempers and actions in Hartley, "that is I in my future state."

So I think, oftentimes, that my children are my soul--that mult.i.tude and division are not [O mystery!] necessarily subversive of unity. I am sure that two very different meanings, if not more, lurk in the word One.

The drollest explanation of instinct is that of Mylius, who attributes every act to pain, and all the wonderful webs and envelopes of spiders, caterpillars, etc., absolutely to fits of colic or paroxysms of dry belly-ache!

This Tarantula-dance of repet.i.tions and vertiginous argumentation _in circulo_, begun in imposture and self-consummated in madness!

While the whole planet (_quoad_ its Lord or, at least, Lord-Lieutenancy) is in stir and bustle, why should not I keep in time with the tune, and, like old Diogenes, roll my tub about?

I cannot too often remember that to be deeply interested and to be highly satisfied are not always commensurate. Apply this to the affecting and yet unnatural pa.s.sages of the _Stranger_ or of _John Bull_, and to the finest pa.s.sages in Shakspere, such as the death of Cleopatra or Hamlet.

[Sidenote: A SUNDOG Dec. 15, 1804]

Saw the limb of a rainbow footing itself on the sea at a small apparent distance from the sh.o.r.e, a thing of itself--no substrate cloud or even mist visible--but the distance glimmered through it as through a thin semi-transparent hoop.