NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.
It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that the
Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have
witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory
Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms
enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial
Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he
courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious,
world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him,
perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely
grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has
looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls
and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the
interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed.
Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to
Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into
the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be considered
as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right
than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long
painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the
contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the
reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him,
do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to
do ours:--
"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly begins
the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the
question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch
King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an
air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my
Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a
miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I please to pay
twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or shut Turnpike?
"'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?' ask
several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of Nature?
To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these
Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated
into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to
bear on us with its Material Force.
"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground shall
one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach
Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were
inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was
full of meaning.
"'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries an
illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by
unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must
believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without
variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that Nature,
that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from
calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of
you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable rules,
forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be?
"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated
records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the
Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific
individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged
everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read
His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands
marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! These
scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen
some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite,
without bottom as without shore.
"Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets,
with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a
course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have
succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this
what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;'
this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen thousand
Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, and inert
Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the Zodiacal
Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their
Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane?
"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature
remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all
Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and
measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little
fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper
courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our
little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and
quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar:
but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the
Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition
of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time
(unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is
Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his
Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through
AEons of AEons.
"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose Author
and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know
the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive
Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and
Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in
celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets
are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your
Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from amid
the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick
out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and
therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in
Practice. That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes,
or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole
secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream.
"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all. Consider
well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers; and weaves
air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed these dwell
with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but
their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy
complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do
everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us
boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we
have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a
continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the
sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?
"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of
all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the
Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by
this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is
Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a
fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our
resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view
the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or
two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art
why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the
divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is
to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and
money's worth realized.
"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of
Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding
Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we
have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that
still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves?
Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether
_infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted
Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was
Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within
the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world
of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his
world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as
on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth rind.
"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many
other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances,
SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself,
to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,--lie
all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor
Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In
vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can,
at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.
"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself
Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over
Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was
Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of
Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we
should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the
street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made
Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase,
were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap on your
felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straightway to be
_There_! Next to clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you
were _Anywhen_, straightway to be _Then_! This were indeed the grander:
shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its
Fire-Consummation; here historically present in the First Century,
conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the
Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas,
who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time!
"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past
annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only future?
Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already
through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past
and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute
beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow
roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both _are_. Pierce through the
Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written
in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have
devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of
God; that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting Now.
"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the
white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left
behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully
receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have
journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend
still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with God!--know
of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable;
that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be,
is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest
ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty
centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not.
"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent
into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole Practical
reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit,
just, and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway
over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying
close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as
Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of
Realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide
from us the brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could
I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily
stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it
hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle
lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to
see that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I
can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught
therewith? Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and
wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practices on us.
"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician, and
universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the
Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in
a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats
of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man,
poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one.
"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the
walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built
these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to
dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with
frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic
pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not the still
higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music
of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in
Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild
native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth
sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousand-fold
accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates,
and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and
does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was
Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some
inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever
done.
"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near
moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came transmitted
through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the
last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I (with the
Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings, to the
Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the
Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe,
were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed
City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most
through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But
Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise,
hides Him from the foolish.
"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost?
The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though
he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on
coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as
with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so
loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a
Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of
Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep
away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three
minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are
shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air
and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _fact_:
we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as
round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as
years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial
harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we
squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and
recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar
(_poltern_), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the
morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake
and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that
yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or
have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon
too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other
than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that
made Night hideous, flitted away?-- Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand
million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have
vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks
once.
"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry
each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These
Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its
burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round
our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to
be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire
flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior
and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they
tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a
film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's
sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little
while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very
ashes are not.
"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation
after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing from
Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in
each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like
climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on
the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is
recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a
vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of
Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in
long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus,
like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane;
haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the
Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our
passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits
which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of
us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the
earliest Van. But whence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows
not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.
'We _are such stuff_
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep!'"