SPIRIT.
IT is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it
should contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that
may be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true
of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his
faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of
nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man
an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and
outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its
origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a
perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun
behind us.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands
with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is
he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most,
will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were,
distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe
himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as
fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions,
but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of
nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through
which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to
lead back the individual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do
not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some related
thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence
is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory
answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance.
Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of
our own being, and the evidence of the world's being. The one is
perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is a part of
the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may
presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a
hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of
carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of matter,
it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me.
It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander
without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections
in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded
with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in
every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does
not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it.
Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as
a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal
distinction between the soul and the world.
But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to
inquire, Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out of
the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is present to
the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom,
or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is
that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that
spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is
present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without,
that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves:
therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up
nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree
puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As a
plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is
nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible
power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the
upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and
truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the
Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. This view, which
admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and power lie, and points to
virtue as to
“The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,”
carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it
animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul.
The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a
remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the
unconscious. But it differs from the body in one important respect. It
is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is
inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the
divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure.
As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more
evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God.
We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away
from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more
than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is
not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of
him? Yet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for
you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in
the field hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight,
until he is out of the sight of men.