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08 - Prospects - Nature - Ralph Waldo Emerson · Logic Library

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  Chapter eight prospects. In inquiries respecting the laws of the world in the frame
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  of things, the highest reason is always the truest. That which seems faintly
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  possible, it is so refined, is often faint and dim, because it
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  is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt
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  to cloud the sight, and by the very knowledge of functions and processes,
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  to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes
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  unpoetic. But the best read naturalist, who lends an entire and devoured attention
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  to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to
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  the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or
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  subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies
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  of the spirit, by a continual self recovery, and by entire humility.
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  He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness
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  and infallibility, that I guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable information,
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  and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a
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  hundred concerted experiments. Four. The problems to be solved are precisely those which
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  the physiologists and the naturalist omit to state. It is not so pertinent to
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  man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom as it is to know
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  whence and where? Too? Is this tyrannizing unity in its constitution, which
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  ever more separates and classifies things, endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one
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  form. When I behold a rich landscape, it is less my purpose to
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  recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata than to know why all thought
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  of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor
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  my nuteness and details, so long as there is no hint to explain the
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  relation between things and thoughts, no ray upon the metaphysics of conchology, of
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  botany of the arts to show the relation of the forms flowers, shells,
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  animals, architecture to the mind, and builds science upon ideas. In a
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  cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy
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  in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and
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  insect. The American, who has been confined in his own country to the
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  site of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering New York Minster
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  or Saint Peter's at Rome by the feeling that these structures are imitations, also
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  faint copies of an invisible archetype neuros. Science sufficient humanity, so long as
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  the naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world of which
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  he is lured, not because he is the most subtle inhabitant, but because
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  he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great
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  and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color,
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  fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence, which observation or analysis lay open.
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  A perception of this mystery inspires the muse of George Herbert, the beautiful
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  psalmist of the seventeenth century. The following lines are part of his little poem
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  on Man. Man is all symmetry, full of proportions, one limb to
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  another and to all the world. Besides, each part may call the farthest
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  brother, for head with foot have private amity and both with moons and tides.
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  Nothing hath got so far, but man hath caught and kept it as
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  his prey. His eyes dismount the highest star. He is in little all
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  the sphere, herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they find their acquaintance
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  there. For us. The winds do blow, the earth doth rest have
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  more, and fountains flow. Nothing we see but means our good, as
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  our delight or as our treasure. The whole is either our cupboard of food
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  or cabinet of pleasure. The stars have us to bed. Night draws the
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  curtain which the sun withdraws. Music and light attend our, And all things
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  unto our flesh are kind in their descent, and being to our mind in
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  their assent, and cause more servants weighed on man than he'll take notice of.
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  In every path he treads down that which doth befriend him, when sickness
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  makes him pale, and wan, oh mighty love. Man is one world,
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  and have another to attend him. The perception of this class of truth
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  makes the attraction which draws men to science, But the end is lost sight
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  of in attention to the means. In view of this half side of science.
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  We accept the sentence of Plato that poetry comes nearer to vital truth than
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  history. Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect,
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  and we learn to prefer imperfect theories and sentences which contain glimpses of truth,
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  to digested system which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will
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  feel that the ends of studying composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of
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  thought and communicating through hope new activity to the torpid spirit. I shall therefore
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  conclude this essay with some traditions of man in nature, which a certain poet
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  saying to me, and which, as they have always been in this world
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  and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. The
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  foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit. But the element
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  of spirit is eternity to it. Therefore, the longest series of events,
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  the oldest chronologies, are young and recent in the cycle of the universal man,
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  from whom the known individuals proceed. Centuries are points in all histories,
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  but the epoch of one degradation. We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with
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  nature we own and disown our relation to it. By turns, we are
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  like nebuchad Nezar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an
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  ox. But who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit? A
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  man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be
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  longer, and shall pass into the immortal as gently as we awake from dreams.
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  Now, the world would be insane and rabid if these disorganizations should last
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  for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and infancy.
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  Infancy is perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men and pleads
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  with them to return to paradise. Man is the dwarf from himself. Once
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  he was permeated and dissolved by spirit, he filled nature with his overflowing currents.
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  Out from him sprang the sun and moon from man, the sun from
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  woman, the moon, the laws of his mind, the periods of his
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  actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons.
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  But having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired. He no
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  longer fills the veins and veinlets. He is shrunk to a drop. He
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  sees that the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally. Say,
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  rather once it fitted him, now it corresponds to him from far and on
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  high. He adores timidly his own work. Now is man the follower of
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  the sun, and woman the follower of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts
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  in his slumber and wonders at himself in his house, and muses strangely at
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  the resemblance betwixt him. And he perceives that if his law is still paramount,
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  if still he have elemental power, if his word is sterling. Yet
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  in nature it is not conscious power. It is not inferior, but superior
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  to his will. It is instinct. Thus my orphic poet saying, at
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  present man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world
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  with his understanding alone. He lives in it and masters it by a penny
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  wisdom. And he that works most in it is but a half met And
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  whilst his arms are strong and digestion good, his mind is imbrouded, and
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  he is a selfish sad. His relation to nature, his power over it,
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  is through the understanding, as by manure, the economic use of fire,
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  wind water, and the mariner's needle steam coal, chemical agriculture, the
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  repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. This is such
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  a resumption of power as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by
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  inch instead of vaulting at once into his throne. Meantime, in the thick
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  darkness there are not wanting gleams of a better light. Occasional examples of the
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  action of man upon nature with his entire force, with reason as well as
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  understanding. Such examples are the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all
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  nations, the history of Jesus Christ, the achievements of a principle, as
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  in religious and political revolutions and in the abolition of the slave trade. The
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  miracles of enthusiasm as those reported of Spuedenberg, Hooenlo and the Shakers. Many
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  obscured yet contested facts arrange under the name of animal magnetism, prayer, eloquence,
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  self healing, and the wisdom of children. These are examples of reasons.
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  Momentary grasp of the scepter, the exertions of a power which exists not
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  in time or space, but an instantaneous in streaming causing power. The difference
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  between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen
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  in saying that the knowledge of Man is an evening knowledge Vespertina cognitio, but
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  that of God is a mourning knowledge Matutina cognitiu. The problem of restoring to
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  the world original internal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul. The
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  ruin of the blank that we see when we look at nature is in our
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  own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things,
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  and so they appear not transparent but opaque. The reason why the world
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  lacks unity and lies broken in heaps is because the man is disunited with himself.
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  He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit.
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  Love is as much its demand as perception. Indeed, neither can be
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  perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is
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  devout and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep, but in actual life
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  the marriage is not celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after the
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  tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to
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  the use of all their faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they
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  freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer also
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  a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite.
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  No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker resolute
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  to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought,
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  shall at the same time kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections.
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  Then will God go forth anew into the creation. It will not need
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  when the mind is prepared for study to search for objects. The invariable mark
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  of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common What is a day?
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  What is a year? What is summer? What is woman? What is
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  a child? What is sleep? To our blindness, these things seem unaffecting.
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  We make fables to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it,
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  as we say, to the higher law of the mind. But when the
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  fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades in
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  triveles. We behold the real higher law to the wise. Therefore, a
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  fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These wonders are
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  brought to our own door. You also are a man, man and woman,
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  and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune
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  are known to you. Learn that none of these things is superficial, but
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  that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind.
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  Whats the abstract question occupies your intellect? Nature brings it in the concrete to
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  be solved by your hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet to
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  compare point by point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily history,
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  with the rise and progress of ideas in the mind. So shall become
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  to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless increy
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  of the intellect what is truth? And of the affections? What is good?
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  By yielding itself passive to the educated, will then shall come to pass
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  what my poet said. Nature is not fixed, but fluid. Spirit alters
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  mold makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature is the absence of spirit.
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  To pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is
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  obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world,
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  and beyond its world a heaven. Know then that the world exists for
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  you, for you, who is the phenomenon perfect what we are that only
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  can we see all that Adam had, all that Caesar, could you have
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  and can do. Adam called his house heaven and earth. Caesar called his
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  house room. You perhaps call yours a cobblished trade, a hundred acres of
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  plaid land, or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for
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  point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names.
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  Build therefore your own world as fast as you can form your life to the
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  pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent
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  revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable
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  appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies
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  vanish. They are temporary and shall be no more seen. Disorder and filths
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  of nature then shall dry up, and the wind ex hail, as when
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  the summer comes from the south, the snow banks melt, and the face
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  of the earth becomes green. Before it, so shall the advancing spirit create
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  its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits.
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  And the song which enchants it. It shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts,
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  wise discourse, and heroic acts around its way, until evil is no
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  more seen. The Kingdom of Man over nature, which cometh not with observation,
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  a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God. He shall
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  enter without more wonder than the blind man feels, who is gradually restored to
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  perfect sight. End of Nature