The Testament of Beauty/Ethick

by Robert Bridges

THE TESTAMENT OF BEAUTY

 BOOK IV Ethick

BEAUTY, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of GodBand Angel ofhis Presence thru' all creation,fashioning her new love-realm in the mind of man,attempteth every mortal child with influencesof her divine supremacy . . . ev'n as in a plantwhen the sap mounteth secretly and its wintry stalkbreaketh out in the prolific miracle of Spring,or as the red blood floodeth into a beating heartto build the animal body comely and strong; so she10in her transcendant rivalry would flush his spirit with pleasurable ichor of heaven: and where she hath foundresponsiv faculty in some richly favour'd soul—L'anima vaga delle cose belle, as saiththe Florentine,—she wil inaugurate her feastof dedication, and even in thatt earliest onset,when yet infant Desire hath neither goal nor clueto fix the dream, ev'n then, altho' it graspeth noughtand passeth in its airy vision away, and diethout of remembrance, 'tis in its earnest of life20and dawn of bliss purer and hath less of earthly tingethan any other after-attainment of the understanding:for all man's knowledge kenneth also of toil and flaw,and even his noblest works, tho' they illume the darkwith individual consummation, are cast uponby the irrelevant black shadows of time and fate. Hence is the fascination of amateurs in art,who renouncing accomplishment attain the prizeof their humbler devotion,—as Augustin saith,that fools may come at holiness where wise men miss,30Facit enim hoc quaedam etiam stoliditas,—arriving by short-coming, like to homely birdsof passage, nesting on the roofs of the workshops.And tho' of secret knowledge man's art is compact,yet not the loving study of any master-work, nor longest familiarity can ever effaceits birthday of surprisal; and great music to meis glorify'd by memory of one timeless hourwhen all thought fled scared from me in my bewilderment. See then the boy in first encounter with beauty,40his nativ wonder awaken'd by the motion of love;as when live air, breathing upon a smother'd fire,shooteth the smouldering core with tiny flames—so hekindleth at heart with eternal expectancies,and the dream within him looketh out at his eyes. 'Twas thru' worship of Christ that this thing came to men,whereat, when art achieved portrayal of tenderness,the christian painters throng'd their heav'n with cherubims,little amorini, who with rebel innocencedispossess'd the tall angels; and Mary's young babe50cast off his swaddling bands, and stood-up on her lapin grace of naked childhood for the image of God. But as 'tis with the Race, for which our hope draweththe only assurance of its high nobilityfrom rare examples, holy men and wise, reveredev'n by the common folk, that none the less pursuetheir common folly interminably, and more and morepamper despair that is the giant sorrow of earth—so in the child this glimpse or touch of immanence, being a superlativ brief moment of glory,60is too little to leaven the inveterate lump of life;and the instincts whose transform'd vitality should lustafter spiritual things, return to their vomitand wallow in the mire of their animal ruts. Nature hath something truly of her promise in all:yet, in the infinit disposition of random seeds,her full potency is rare; as in the end of his bookthat maketh the old school-benches yet to sprout in green,Aristotle confesseth: where the teacher saithvirtue cannot be taught to a mind not well disposed70by natur, and he that hath thatt rarest excellence,διά τινος θείας αἰτίας, may be above all menstyled truly fortunat; and with those four Greek wordshath proudly prick'd to virtue many a sluggard soul. Forsooth the need of Fortune stayeth not here, alas!Ther is no assurance of stability or fair growth,unless she stand by faithfully and foster the soul,fending from all evil and encompassing with good,the while these intimations come to be understoodand harmonized by Reason in the conduct of life.80 Now as Reason matured to the power of manhood,tutor'd by disciplin of natur, and orderingthe accumulated scrutiny of physical flux in various sciences, so education of spirit,in the dignity of its creativ enthusiasmsand honorable intelligence of Goddes gifts,mapp'd out its own science of conduct, aligninga pathway of happiness thru' the valley of death:and thatt science, call'd Ethick, dealing with the skilland manage of the charioteer in Plato's myth,90rangeth up here in place for the parley of this book.

 Since all Ethick implyeth a sense of Duty in man,'tis first to enquire whence that responsible ought arose;a call so universal and plain-spoken that somehav abstracted a special faculty, distinctfrom animal bias and underivable,whereby the creature kenneth the creator's Will,that, in stillness of sound speaking to gentle souls,dowereth all silence with the joy of his presence;but to men savage or superstitious a voice100of horror, maleficent, inescapable,hounding them with fearful conviction of sin, as whenAdam in Eden hid from the scour of God's eye.Which old tale of displeasur is true to life: becausethe imperativ obligation cannot be over-summ'd, being in itself the self-conscience of thatt Essencewhich is no other indeed than the prime ordinancethat we call Law of Nature,—in its grade the samewith the determin'd habit of electrons, the samewith the determining instinct of unreasoning life,110necessity become conscient in man—wheretoall insubordination is imperfection in kind.

 Reality appeareth in forms to man's thoughtas several links interdependent of a chainthat circling returneth upon itself, as doththe coil'd snake that in art figureth eternity. From Universal Mind the first-born atoms drawtheir function, whose rich chemistry the plants transmuteto make organic life, whereon animals feedto fashion sight and sense and give service to man,120who sprung from them is conscient in his last degreeof ministry unto God, the Universal Mind,whither all effect returneth whence it first began. The Ring in its repose is Unity and Being:Causation and Existence are the motion thereof.Thru'out all runneth Duty, and the conscience of itis thatt creativ faculty of animal mindthat, wakening to self-conscience of all Essences, closeth the full circle, where the spirit of manescaping from the bondage of physical Law130re-entereth eternity by the vision of God.

 This absolution of Reason is not for all to see:But any man may picture how Duty was born,and trace thereafter its passage in the ethic of man. Ther is a young black ouzel, now building her nestunder the Rosemary on the wall, suspiciouslyshunning my observation as I sit in the porch,intentiv with my pencil as she with her beak:Coud we discourse together, and wer I to ask for-whyshe is making such pother with thatt rubbishy straw,140her answer would be surely: 'I know not, but I must.'Then coud she take persuasion of Reason to desistfrom a purposeless action, in but a few days hencewhen her eggs were to hatch, she would look for her nest;and if another springtide found us here again,with memory of her fault, she would know a new word,having made conscient passage from the MUST to the OUGHT. I halt not then nor stumble at how the duteous callwas gotten in course of nature, rather it lieth to showhow it was after-shapen in man from physical150to moral ends, and came no longer only to affirm but sometimes even to oppose the bidding of instinct,positing beside ought the equivalent ought nots,the stern forbiddances of those tables of stonethat Moses fetch'd out of the thunder of Sinai. And since we see how man's judgment of Right and Wrongvarieth with education—and thatt without effectto strengthen or weaken Duty—, we conclude therefromthat education shapeneth our moralities.And when and whereas Conscience transfigureth the Instincts160—to affection, as aforesaid, from motherly selfhood,and to spiritual love from lust of breed—, we findDuty therewith extended in the moral field.Thus 'tis (as missionaries tell) that head-hunterswho seek relish in refinement of cruelty,wil yet to soft feelings respond at gentle appeal:my dog would do as well, coud he understand my speech.Yet tho' we see how birds in catering for their youngstint not their self-devotion, and punctiliously observedistributiv justice; and that dutiful dogs170urged by conflicting calls wil stand awhile perplex'din dumb deliberation—ne'ertheless, becausethe true spiritual combat is unknown to brutes,moralists teaching virtue as an end-in-itselfrepudiate any sanction from motivs engaged on animal welfare, and make utilitya cant term of reproach; tho' on their higher planespiritual conduct also is utilitarian:For virtue subserveth the soul's comfort and joy,therewithal no less useful, nay more requisit180than is material comfort to our full happinessin self-realization of perfected nature;the which a sound doctrin of pleasure wil confirm. Denial of Use hath done our virtue wrong, while somebelittle also our Ethick, saying the subject isof matter unknowledgeable in scientific sense,taking contingency from the imperfection of man.Granted, wer all men perfect, none would seek virtue;nor should I now debate of it; but neither againwer all omniscient, would any seek knowledge:190yet go we hunting after truth insatiablyas the Saints after holiness, who, comfortedby least attainment, persevere,—Seeking the Lordwhom they hav found: and if a check or fault show morein Ethick, 'tis that the hunter is on fuller cryafter true happiness than after mental truth;or he thinketh at least to hav well nosed his desire,and he nameth his quarry 'Satisfaction of soul.'Whereas of absolute Truth, whatever that may be, or is, he hath not an inkling, nay nor any cause,200save in spiritual faith, even to hope well of it.('Tis for such lack of stand that deep thinkers, who plotintellectual approaches to the unknown, will leanunconsciously upon ethick, or in the end inclinegraciously towards it.) Now any deficiencyis more discernible in an object known than ina thing unknown to us, and in the discussion of it ther is better likelihood of agreement.

 Altho' good disposition (as Aristotle hath it)may be by beauty educated, and aspire210to theoretic wisdom (as Plato would teach)and Ethick therewithal claim honor of the same rankthat ideal philosophy ascribeth to man,yet, if for lack of faith he sink that claim, I seea thing of hap without place in Reality. On no hand is't deny'd that terms of Right and Wrongare wholly pertinent to man's condition on earth;nor that, whatever his destiny may be, his originwas bestial and his first ethick a rudiment,that shifting ever and shaping in the story of man220at every time is the index of his growth in grace;and, if the change of customs that the herd adopt for comfort and to insure what they most value in life,hath moral tendency upward, then that tendency isthe animal sanction of virtue, and wil take honor as such. But Duty instill'd with order is so almighty of kindthat 'twil make Law of Habit, whence all social codesoutlast their turn and time, and in arrear of lifehold the common folk backward from their nobler vaunt,lagging and dragging, whether as a garment outgrown230tatter'd and foolish, or as strong fetters and chainswherein they lie fast-bound in misery and iron. Hence cometh all the need and fame of Teachers, menof inborn nobility, call'd Prophets of God,Saviours of society, Seers of the promised land,—thatt white-filleted company that Aeneas foundcircled around Musæus in the Elysian fields,the loved and loveable whose names liv evermore,the sainted pioneers of salvation, unto whomall wisdom won and all man's future hope is due;240and with inspiration of their ampler air we seeour Ethick split up shear and sharply atwain; two kindsdiverse in kind ther be; the one of social need,lower, still holding backward in the clutch of earth,from old animal bondage unredeem'd; the otherhigher and spiritual, that by personal affiance with beauty hath made escape, soaring away to wherethe Ring of Being closeth in the Vision of God. Sticklers for equality wil hear nought of this,arguing that social is but a past-personal,250personal a future-social, tenses of one verb,the amatum and amabo on the stem of 'love,'virtue's pure nativ stock which hath no need of graft;—a doctrin kindly at heart, that cajoleth alikediffidence of the ruler and conceit of the crowd,who in collusion float its credit; and awhiletheir ship of state runneth like the yacht in the racethat with full bellying sail, for lack of seamanship,seemeth to forge ahead while it loseth leeway. No Politik admitteth nor did ever admit260the teacher into confidence: nay ev'n the Church,with hierarchy in conclave compassing to installSaint Peter in Cæsar's chair, and thereby win for manthe promises for which they had loved and worship'd Christ,relax'd his heav'nly code to stretch her temporal rule.For social Ethick with its legalized virtueis but in true semblance, alike for praise or blame,a friendly domestication of man's old wolf-foe,the adaptable subservient gentlemanly dog,beneath groom'd coat and collar in his passion unchanged. 270 Thus 'tis that levellers, deeming all ethick one,and for being Socialists thinking themselves Teachers,can preach class-hatred as the enlighten'd gospel of love;but should they look to find firm scientific ground,whereon to found their creed in the true historyof social virtue and of its progress hitherto,'twil be with them in their research, as 'twas with himwho yesteryear sat down in Mesopotamyto dig out Abram's birthplace in the lorn grave-yardof Asian monarchies;—and low hummocks of dust280betray where legendary cities lie entomb'd,Chaldaean Kish and Ur; while for all life todaypoor nomads, with their sparse flotilla of swarthy tentsand slow sand-faring camels, cruise listlessly o'erhead,warreners of the waste: Now this man duly unearth'dthe walls whence Terah flitted, but beneath those wallsmore walls, and the elder buildings of a dynastyof wider rule than Abram knew, a nation extinctere he was born: where-thru' sinking deeper their shaftsthe diggers came yet never on virgin soil, but still290wondering on earlier walls, arches and masonry,a city and folk undremt of in archeology,trodden-under ere any story of man began; and there,happening on the king's tomb, they shovel'd from the dust the relics of thatt old monarch's magnificence—Drinking vessels of beaten silver or of clean gold,vases of alabaster, obsidian chalices,cylinder seals of empire and delicat gemsof personal adornment, ear-rings and finger-rings,craftsmen's tools copper and golden, and for music a harp;300withal in silver miniatur his six-oar'd skiff,a model in build and trim of such as ply todayEuphrates' flowery marshes: all his earthly toysgather'd to him in his grave, that he might nothing lackin the unknown life beyond, but find ready to handhis jewel'd dice and gaming board and chamber-lamp,his toilet-box of paints and unguents—Therefore 'twasthe chariot of his pride whereon he still would ridewas buried with him; there lay yet the enamel'd filmof the inlaid perish'd wood, and all the metal gauds310that had emboss'd the rail: animal masks in gold,wild bulls and lions, and twin-figured on the prowgreat panther-heads to glare in silver o'er the course,impatient of their spring: and one rare master-workwhose grace the old warrior wist not should outliv the nameand fame of all his mighty doings, when he set it upthatt little nativ donkey, his mascot on the pole. 'Twas he who dug told me of these things and how, finding himself a housebreaker in the home of menwho sixty hundred years afore, when they left life,320had seal'd their tombs from sacrilege and there had lain,till from the secresy of their everlasting sleephe had torn the coverlet—his spirit, dazed awhilein wonder, suddenly was strick'n with great horror;for either side the pole, where lay the harness'd bonesof the yoke-mated oxen, there beside their boneslay the bones of the grooms, and slaughter'd at their postall the king's body-guard, each liegeman spear in hand,in sepulchred attention; and whereby lay the harpthe arm-bones of the player, as there she had pluck'd her dirge,330lay mingled with its fragments; and nearby disposed,two rows of skeletons, her sisterly audiencewhose lavish ear-pendants and gold-filleted hair,the uniform decoration of their young service,mark'd them for women of the harem, sacrificedto accompany their lord, the day when he set forthto enter into the presence of the scepter'd shadescongregated with splendour in the mansions of death. Leave Tigris now and Ur. Seek out our Aryan raceby Gunga and Hydaspes in the teeming realm340where Sakya Muni preach'd of gentleness and love,and took divinity before Christ came: see how at every Rajah's pyre, in Punjab or Kashmire,in Vijayanóggar, Kalikata and Udaipur,for liv-long centuries the mild Hindus hav burnttheir multitudinous girl-concubines alive,and still beneath our lax imperial rule wil deemany honest outlawry of their ritual Sutteea tyrannous impiety of our western mannerswhich none the less withheld not of our island kings350the last Henry, styled first Defendër of the Faith,from slaying his wives at will; nor was he for such crimeless esteem'd of the folk; altho' judged as a manby pagan ethic or christian or by the insightof poet or historian, more despicablethan we need to suppose that old monarch of Ur. See how cross-eyed the pride of our world-wide crusadeagainst Nigerian slavery, while the London poorin their Victorian slums lodged closer and filthierthan the outraged alien; and under liberty's name360our Industry is worse fed and shut out from the sun.—In every age and nation a like confusion is found.

IF DUTY held us long, now as in the old adage, Pleasure may follow after, taking like second rankin Plato's myth, as I twist it: wherein we tracedDuty from the selfhood of individual lifegrowing to reach communion with life eternal;while in the younger horse was pleasur intensifiedby love, until it issueth in the love of God.And yet hath pleasure truly its main stronghold in Self,370because the greatest pleasure that man knoweth, is ayethe pleasur of life, even as his chief displeasur is death. This Life-joy, like the breath-kiss of the all-ambient airunnoticed til the lack of it bring pain and death,is coefficient with the untrammel'd energyof nativ faculty, and the autometric scaleof all functions and motions, which in the animalstruggle for Self persistently against all hindrance:it is the lordly heraldry of the banner'd flower,in brutes the vaunt of vigour and the pose of pride,380their wild impersonation of majesty; and in manthe grace and ease of health alike in body and mind,thatt right congruity of his parts, for lack whereofhis sanity is disabled maim'd and compromised.From personal pleasure then, seeing how good it is,and how a good man's pleasures all are good, it camean easy thought for men in quest of happiness to take it for their aim in all conduct, the accountand logic of Ethick. So, flaunting their motto"Pleasure for pleasure's sake," these doughty Hedonists,390having got rid of whatsoever oldfashion'd kinghad ruled by right divine, chose out for his good looksand crown'd this gay pretender, against whose privilegemen in the street and schoolmen are for once agreed;because none wil deny that some pleasures are bad,while all men honour them who for their honour's sakewil suffer pain, and risk the great displeasur of death. Pure Hedonism therefore is confuted off-hand;and its social pretension is but a will-o-the wisp;as if the honest pleasur of a wise man coud lie400in furthering or conniving at the pleasur of themwho know not ev'n their own unhappiness, nor howere they can win happiness they must learn wisdomby paths difficult and to them unpleasurable.Nor is spiritual Hedonism in better plight,for some are found to take spiritual pleasur in crime. 'Twould seem then the prime task of Ethick to discern'twixt pleasures good and bad: but first 'twer well to showhow ever it came that Pleasure, being the championof our integrity, should in the event appear410virtue's insidious foe; for-sure ther is no knowledge in the wisdom of conduct cardinal as is this. Now in my thought the manner of it was on this wise—As Pleasure came in man to the conscience of self,his Reason abstracted it as an idea, and whenhe found the pleasur increasing with the conscience of it,he dwelt thereon, and seeking more and more to enrichhis conscious pleasur, and bloating it with luxury,invented and indulged vices unknown to brutes.Thus was nature's intention thwarted: whereupon420(seeing also how brooding upon sensual delightprovoketh the desire, which, so long as the mindbe but engaged healthily or distracted apart,would never rise to emotion) Moralists took fright,and Teachers banishing pleasure from Ethick, wherethey should hav been content with a danger-signal,posted a prohibition, and not only forbadepleasur as a motiv for any conduct, but ruledthat any admixtur of intention or its chance presencedeprived conduct of merit: whence pleasure with them,430instead of being an in-itself absolute goodas nature would have had it, and which man would wishto be always present and with his perfection increase,came to be bann'd as the pollution of virtue;—And so,when the young poet my companion in study and friend of my heart refused a peach at my hands,he being then a housecarl in Loyola's menie,twas that he fear'd the savor of it, and when he waivedhis scruple to my banter, 'twas to avoid offence.But I, upon thatt day which after fifty years440is near as yesterday, was no stranger to fearof pleasure, but had grown fearful of thatt fear; yet sincethe sublimation of life whereto the Saints aspireis a self-holocaust, their sheer asceticismis justified in them; the more because the bentand nativ color of mind that leadeth them aloof,or driveth, is thatt very delicacy of sense,whereby a pinprick or a momentary whiffor hairbreadth motion freëth the detent of forcethat can distract them wholly from their high pursuit:450wherefor they fly God's garden, whose forbidden fruit(seemeth to them) was sweeten'd by a fiend's desireto make them fond and foolish. Nature ne'erthelesssingeth loud in her prison, and for all ecstasythese mystics find no language but to echo againthe psalm of her captivity; nay, furthermore,the doctrin esoteric in their rapt divinesand their diviner poets—this the novice knew—is the rëincarnation of their renounced desire.  The repudiation of pleasur is a reason'd folly460of imperfection. Ther is no motiv can rebateor decompose the intrinsic joy of activ life,whereon all function whatsoever in man is based.Consider how this mortal sensibilityhath a wide jurisdiction of range in all degrees,from mountainous gravity to imperceptiblefaintest tenuities:—The imponderable fragranceof my window-jasmin, that from her starry cupof red-stemm'd ivory invadeth my being,as she floateth it forth, and wantoning unabash'd470asserteth her idea in the omnipotent blazeof the tormented sun-ball, checquering the grey wallwith shadow-tracery of her shapely fronds; this frailunique spice of perfumery, in which she holdethmonopoly by royal licence of Nature,is but one of a thousand angelic species,original beauties that win conscience in man:a like marvel hangeth o'er the rosebed, and wherethe honeysuckle escapeth in serpentine spraysfrom its dark-cloister'd clamber thru' the old holly-bush,480spreading its joybunches to finger at the skyin revel above rivalry. Legion is their name;Lily-of-the-vale, Violet, Verbena, Mignonette, Hyacinth, Heliotrope, Sweet-briar, Pinks and Peas,Lilac and Wallflower, or such white and purple bloomsthat sleep i' the sun, and their heavy perfumes withholdto mingle their heart's incense with the wonder-dreams,love-laden prayers and reveries that steal forth from earth,under the dome of night: and tho' these blossomy breaths,that hav presumed the title of their gay genitors,490enter but singly into our neighboring sense, that hathno panorama, yet the mind's eye is not blindunto their multitudinous presences:—I knowthat if odour were visible as color is, I'd seethe summer garden aureoled in rainbow clouds,with such warfare of hues as a painter might chooseto show his sunset sky or a forest aflame;while o'er the country-side the wide clover-pasturesand the beanfields of June would wear a mantle, thickas when in late October, at the drooping of day500the dark grey mist arising blotteth out the landwith ghostly shroud. Now these and such-like influencesof tender specialty must not—so fine they be—fall in neglect and all their loveliness be lost,being to the soul deep springs of happiness, and fullof lovingkindness to the natural man, who is aptkindly to judge of good by comfortable effect. Thus all men ever hav judged the wholesomness of foodfrom the comfort of body ensuing thereupon,whereby all animals retrieve their proper diet;510but if when in discomfort 'tis for pleasant hopeof health restored we swallow nauseous medicines,So mystics use asceticism, and no manreadier than they to assert eventual happinessto justify their conduct. Whence it is not strange(for so scientific minds in search of truth digestassimilable hypotheses) they should extendtheir pragmatism, and from their happiness deducethe very existence and the natur of God, and takereligious consolation for the ground of faith:520as if the pleasur of life wer the sign-manualof Nature when she set her hand to her covenant. But man, vain of his Reason and thinking more to assureits independence, wil disclaim complicitywith human emotion; and regarding his Motherdeemeth it dutiful and nobler in honestycoldly to criticize than purblindly to love;and in pride of this quarrel he hath been led in the endto make distinction of kind 'twixt Pleasur and Happiness;observing truly enough how one may hav pleasure530and yet miss happiness; but this warpeth the sense and common use of speech, since all tongues in the worldcall children and silly folk happy and sometimes ev'n brutes. The name of happiness is but a wider termfor the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life,attendant on all function, and not to be deny'dto th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of naturespiritual is by definition unnatural. But I would not thus wrong nature; rather say Ithat as man realizeth his higher energies,540the quality and value of his pleasures wil so change,that tho' the animal life-joy persist thru'out,yet his transported joy developing thereoncometh by excellence to need a special term.And Aristotle in his tenth book thus summeth it—"Whatso thatt faculty may be which hath in man"natural governance and apprehendeth things"noble and divine,—it is the energy (so saith he)"of thatt faculty in its proper excellence, which is"the Perfect Happiness;" and with his predicatehe assumeth the less perfect also, and lower states.But these philosophers—their Ethick being concern'dwith man's perfection—used the abstracted terms wherebythey had pre-defined distinctions, which as they divergedin separat culmination obscured identity. Twas for that reason, I guess, that Aristotle himselfso harpeth on his doctrin, as if he was awarethat his conclusion had somehow miss'd its full premiss:But if we see Spiritual, Mental and Animalto be gradations merged together in growth and mix'd560in their gradations, and that the animal pleasurerunneth thru'out all grades heartening all energies,then Aristotle's wisdom goeth without saying;and the actual complexity of human conductwil appear nature's order in the condition of growth;and so the trouble and wonderment of baulk'd insightmay all be presently sponged from the treatises. Altho' in the distinction of pleasures good and badthe unparagon'd nobility of the great virtuesstandeth without controversy among them that know570—who instill them as duties—, yet they hav writ no rulenor rubric whereby conduct can in lesser affairsaccommodate these principles, when they conflictin upright personalities, nor square their usewith the intricat contingencies that knit our lives,and the interaction of unrelated sequences.In that uncharted jungle a good man wil go right,while an ill disposition wil miss and go wrong:yet in the worst we still may find something to praise, in the lame child that stumbleth, or the canker'd bud;580ev'n the poor blasted promise of desiderat fruithath true relation to the absent beauty thereof. Forever on the asses bridge and in the ship of foolslife is agog; and there the Muse hath set her stage,and in humorous compact with philosophyhideth her godlike face beneath a grinning mask,and donning the gay motley of idiotic manempersonateth him in his chance dilemmas;by the eternal comedy of the unfitness of thingsbeguiling the disconsolat with sympathy590and cheering contemplation with æsthetic mirth.Full many hav found happiness toiling all their timethus disporting with truth; and at carving such toyshav thru' love of children become Teachers of men:But here I wol nat han to do of swich matere.

 Since then all promise of spiritual advancementlieth in two things, good disposition and (as 'twas said)right education, it followeth here to speak of these. First then of Disposition.—Unless there truly bemore good than bad absolutely in the make of man,600ther is no security for him and little hope,except the inherent harmony and unity of good be such as must in the end outweigh the surplusageof all discordant enmity; and this well may be:but should we inquire if Nature hath by any meansinclined man's disposition to the virtuous choice,we may find how she hath done this, and by the energyof the imitativ faculty hath assured her end."For Mimicry is inborn in man from childhood up:"and in this differeth he from other animals,610"being the most imitativ: and his first approach"to learning maketh he in mimicry, and hath delight"in imitations of all kinds." I would indeedthat Aristotle had set this pregnant verityin forefront of his Ethick also, as now 'tis foundto stablish his Poetick; for the assumption of ithere and there in the Morals escapeth noticeand all the consequences thereof are unseen.But if the cradled child imitateth the showsthat happen around him, he for-sure will most attend620to those that most attract, and must therefore be drawnand held by the inborn love of Beauty inconscientlyof preference to imitate the more beautiful things.And because Virtue is an activity, and lieth notin doctrin and theory but in practice and conduct,co-ordinating potencies into energy, (and here 'tis Aristotle again speaketh, not I)the preferential imitation of right actionis the habit of virtue: and thus a child well-bredin good environment, so soon as he is aware630of personality, wil know and think himselfa virtuous being and instinctivly, in the proudrealization of Self common to all animals,becometh to be his own ideal, a such-a-oneas would WILL and Do this (saith he) and never do thatt,refraining there from shame, consenting here for love,winning new beauty of soul from the embrace of beauty,and strength by practised combat against folly and wrong,to perfect as he may his idea of himself. Spiritual life being thus imagin'd in the child640thru' conscient personality and love of beauty,—which on so tender a plant budding hath power to bearthe richest fruit of all creation, incomparable—ther is nought in all his nurtur of more intrinsic needthan is the food of Beauty: as mammals milk to his flesh,which admitteth no proxy, so Beauty is to his soul,that calleth for this comforting of nature's breast,tho' its outcries be unheard when it pineth in pain:and since the hunger of mimicry is so strong in him,that in the lack of milk 'twil ravin gall, and draw infection and death from evil as quickly as life from good,651the first intrinsic need in education is found. Thus Christ, who knew what was in man and taughtman's perfect happiness to be the wonted realmof heav'n within his heart, spake thus Take hede (he said)Se that ye offende not won of these litell wons;and once again on this wise, "If ther be any sin'"unpardonable even in the wide compassion of God,"'tis the denial and blasphemy of his Holy Spirit,"and the quenching in others of its nascent flame."660 Delicat and subtle are the dealings of nature,whereby the emotionable sense secretly is touch'dto awareness and by glimpse of heav'nly vision drawnwithin the attraction of the creativ energythat is the ultimat life of all being soe'er:While Science sitteth apart in her exile, attenton her other own invisibles; and working backto the atoms, she handleth their action to harnessthe gigantic forces of eternal motion,in serviceable obedience to man's mortal needs;670and not to be interrupted nor call'd off her task,dreaming, amid the wonders of her sightly works,thru' her infinitesimals to arrive at lastat the unsearchable immensities of Goddes realm.  But while the intellectual faculty is yet unborn,spiritual things to children are even as Music is,thatt firstborn pleasur of animal conscience that nowhath for its human honour its origin forgot;the which a child absorbeth readily and without thought,tho' in after years, if thatt initiation hav lack'd,680scarce can a man by grammar come at the elements.Their twain affinity may be seen also in this,that both are companied by the same full delightof progress in performance, while the same methodserveth for both; if but the teacher be himselfvirtuous or musical—an examplar as such,he wil be keenly follow'd, and often in his lovethat his pupil surpass him is his best reward.

 Of intellectual training 'tis not here to tell;thatt cometh later, and then the trouble is evermore690the lack of teachers; yet wer teachers plentiful,and gentle environment as common as bramble-scrub,never coud human wit discern to accommodatethe countless idiosyncracies of mind withal;indeterminable are they and never can be told.But 'twer well to consider in what a fusty cryptthe awakening mind is caged when—like a butterfly that newly hath slipp'd its crysalis to sport i' the sun—it thrusteth out its finely adapted tentaclesin their first palping movements to the encounter of life,700with confidence exploring its nativ yearnings.How, when this apprehensiv expectancy is metby fenced obstruction! How, when ev'n the syllableswhich with such duteous pains the child had learn'd to tongue,the secret spell whereat the fabled treasure-houseshould open its doors—how, when thatt magic Sesamëhath proved a foreign jargon and, like a rusty key,by long mishandling already hath hamper'd the lock!How should not childish effort, thus thwarted and teased,recoil dishearten'd bruized and stupefy'd beneath710the rough-shod inculcation of inculcated minds,case-harden'd by their own thoughtless reiterations? The mud-fish may be happy and at home in the pond,but live Imagination, conscient of its joy,ranketh oft with the dunces in such scholarship,finding its happiness in freedom to maturethe personality of its nativ potency.Others in after-growth at heavy cost repairtheir early damage, since in intellectual thingsall errors are remediable; but 'tis not so720in the spiritual life, nay ev'n the soul wash'd pure of absorb'd taint may take a strange gloss of the lye.

 Of two young thoro'breds galoping neck to neckI'd choose the colt that with least effort held his course.Of two runners abreast my liking would crown himwho had greater grace of limb and show'd no trouble of face,tho' he by such complacency might miss the prize:But virtue in the soldier is the martyr's heartthat, battling for supremacy, out-stayeth defeat,firing the citadel ere he yield it to the foe:730and 'tis nobility that pulleth our favourupon the weaker side in any unequal match. Now in spiritual combat, altho' I must deemthem the most virtuous who with least effort excell,yet, virtue being a conflict, moralisers holdthat where conflict is hardest virtue must be at best;and in the rub of life and physical hindrancea man who has striven heroically and done great deeds,in spite of frailty or bodily disease or pain,may win more admiration and praise in the end than he740who with comfort to himself, indolently as it wer,hath done as well; nay, for the very impedimentsmay ev'n be envied, as old navigators werein the glory they had got to hav outridden their storms. And yet from Zion's hill-top to the Dead-Sea shore,between the Teacher sitting on the Mount and them,the nethermost unfortunats, that cannot learn,—in all the mid-mass crowding on the flowery slopes,hearers o' the Word, ther is little difference to be told:The same incarnat traitor routeth in all hearts;750nay, since 'tis an æthetic delicacy of mindthat, refining the enticement of carnal pleasure,voideth the shame, the elect are oft in straits extreme:the mastery of warriorship, their apparent grace,was won by disciplin of deadly strife: in themease is no indolence: indolence rather is theirswho, ill-disposed to training, are unexercisedin good habit of war; and 'tis the lack thereofmaketh the soldier unready and the conflict so hard,rather than any unwonted virulence or rage760of the onslaught; for thatt same happeneth anon to all.

 AND here my thought plungeth into the darksome groveand secret penetralia of ethic lore, whereinI hav wander'd often and long and thought to know my way,and now shall go retracing my remember'd paths,tho' no lute ever sounded there nor Muse hath sung, deviously in the obscure shadows, and none follow meentering where erst I enter'd, and all enter free,at the great clearing made by Socrates of yore,when he said know thyself; for true to his chief premiss770that ignorance is the root of all men's folly, he taughtto turn the lamp of Reason inwardly upon the mind.And truly with thatt keen Γνῶθι σεαυτόν of hiswas great felling of trees: for not Socrates knewnor any hath ever kenn'd how man thinketh; and lesshow thought thinketh itself; nor how in thatt provinceReason hath right to rule; nor of what stuff the reinscan be, wherewith the Charioteer bridled the steedsin that same vision of his which Plato saith he toldto Phaedrus, as they sat together on the banks780of the Ilissus talking of the passions of men.

 All terrestrial Life, in all functions and motions,operateth thru' alliance of living entitiesdisparate in their structure but logicallycorrelated in action under some final cause.Suchlike co-ordinations may be acquired in manwith reason'd purpose consciently, as when a learneron viol or flute diligently traineth his handto the intricat fingering of the stops and strings; or may be innate, as the spontaneous flight of birds;790or antenatal and altogether inconscient,as the food-organs, call'd vegetativ becausesuch cellular connivance is the life of plants. The main co-ordinations whereon life hangethwere ever automatous, and such states when acquiredtend to become self-working as they are perfected,dropping out of our ken: the proverb truly spakeHabit is second nature, and 'twil function bestwithout superintendence, for the least brain-waveor timid rippling of self-consciousness can rob800 the bodily movements of their nativ grace.Now these perfected unify'd organities,whether of inconscient birth or such as when acquiredproudly stand off from conscience, all act in responseto external stimulants that vary in kind, and rangefrom mere material contact to untraceable thought. Thus the digestiv kind is stirr'd by touch of foodwithin the body, or by the sight or sound or smellof the object, or ev'n by the unconscious thought thereof;and thence thru' appetite by mere thought of the sense;810and can decipher a message in the secret codeof language, and prick up at sound of the symbol:For never can those privy-councilors in the brain withhold official knowledge from the corporat mind;ther is no deliberation or whisper'd thought, not ev'nunspoken intention among them, but it will leak outto thatt swarming intelligence where life began,and where ideas wander at liberty to findtheir procreativ fellowship; thatt fluid seain which all problems, spiritual or logical820æsthetic mathematic or practic, resolvemelting as icebergs launch'd on the warm ocean-stream:and wheresoe'er this corporat alchemy is at best,'tis call'd by all men genius, and its aptitudeslike virtuous disposition may be inherited. Thus must all kind of stimulus hav come some wayacross the misty march-land, whereon men would fixtheir disputable boundary between Matter and Mind,—as every sensation must suffer translationere it can mediate in the live machinery830of any final cause or purpose: whence 'twould seemthat science went astray thinking to appropriatesome nervous reactions wholly to her material sphere,and rather should hav thought to extend the mental field. Now this spontaneous life oweth nought to Reason(the conscient faculty which Socrates invoked);and so her claim to be the "very consciousness of things judging themselves" is "vain above measure":for every Essence hath its own Idea, and socometh thereby to its own full conscient life in man:840for-sure the idea of Beauty is not Reason's idea,nor hath Reason the idea of Courage or of Mirth,of Faith or Love or Poetry or of Music's delight;if Reason as an essence owneth to any idea,let her make good her claim and therewith be content:so be it; and surely Reason's property will bethe idea of Order;—and ifso, I think to findhow by the very natur of her own facultyshe was deceived to imagin its universal scope;for since all natur is order'd (nor none will deny850that 'tis by Reason alone we are of such order aware),all things must of their ordinance come in her courtfor judgment; and 'twas thus Pythagoras coud holdNUMBER to be the universal essence of things:nay, see the starry atoms in the seed-plot of heavenstripp'd to their nakedness are nothing but Number;and see how Mathematick rideth as a queencheer'd on her royal progress thru'out nature's realm;see how physical Science, which is Reason's tradeand high profession, booketh ever and docketeth860all things in order and pattern;how Philosophy, shuttling out in the unknown like a hungry spider,blindly spinneth her geometric webs, testingand systematizing even her own disorders,her solipsism and her gossamer ontologiesgnostic or cabbalist: and 'twas thus Socratescoud evoke Reason to order and disciplin the mind—the divine Logos that should shine in the darkness,—a good physician who must heal himself withal.[The assumed docility is by English moraliststerm'd the 'Good Will' and fetch'd in as' twer from without;871yet 'tis but the old animal instinct of selfhoodto'ard realisation, which continueth onwith the animal promoted to spiritual life;wherein desire for betterment is the promiseand premiss of all virtue; or if the willingnessbe but desire of knowledge, thatt will find the goalwhere Truth and Virtue and Beauty are all as one.] Now seeing the aim of Socrates we must inquirewhat the Mind's contents are; how disorder'd; and why880ther should in the good mind be any disorder at all.

 What the Mind is, this thing bidden to know itself?First I bethink me naturally of every man as a unique creature, a personalityin whom we lucidly distinguish body and mind,and talk readily of either tho' inseparableand mutually dependent, together or apartthe created expression of Universal Mind.And of the body I think as the machineryof our terrestrial life evolving towards conscience890in the Ring of Reality; and thence of the mindas thatt evolved conscience, the which in every-oneis different, as the body differeth also in each. And human Intellect I see form'd and compactof the essential Ideas, wherewith soever each manhath come in contact personally, and in so faras he is kindly disposed to absorb their influencesto build his personality; and since all ideascome to him thru' the senses, thatt old provisonisi ipse intellectus is futile to me;900for intellectus here seemeth to exclude itself,as being thatt all-receptiv conscient energywhich is the mind of man; thatt ultimat issueof the arch-creativ potency of Being, wherefromthe senses took existence. Thus I come to thinkthat if the mind held all ideas in plenitude'twould be complete, at one with natur and harmonized with as good harmony as we may find in nature. Now as our optic science teacheth pure white lightto be the consummation of all the colour-bands910into which by diffraction it can be separated,whereof if any ray went missing, the sunlightwer impure and imperfect (or so we may think);a suchlike imperfection must be in all men's minds,because the complemental ideas parcel'd in eachare incomplete, being only such as that one manmay hav happ'd on, and those only in the measure wherebyhe is tuned to take cognisance of them: thus it isall men differ each from each, since neither environmentnor disposition can ever in any two men920be the same or alike, and therefor (as was said)true individuality within the specieswould seem reach'd in mankind. Again likewise 'tis seenhow national mentalities are mutuallyincomprehensible and irreconcilable;since each group as it rose was determin'd apartby conditions of life which none other coud share,by climate, language, and historic traditionestranging evermore; nor are such obstinat bondsthe weaker for any intrinsic absurdity:930Nay, see the Armenian folk in their snow-burrows, as if distrustful of their high mountainous plateaubetween the seas, hav riveted their patriotismby stubborn adherence to an ancient heresy,a paradoxy anent the two natures of Christ,which some theologic bishop, peering in the fogof his own exhalations, thought pleasing to God;altho' no creature might possibly understand it. Again from this same cause it wil follow no lessthat men commonly run so near to the average;940for the animal ideas are common propertyand, being the greatest common measure of all mankind,wil stand-out as the mean statistical features. Again we now may see—and 'tis pleasant to see—how simple characters hav such extreme beauty,for that the soul's nobility consisteth notin riches of imagination or intellectbut in harmony of Essences, which hath full powerwhere a few fundamentals in purity attaintheir self-cöordination; as honest pots and pans950may for their unsophisticated beauty excella prize diploma-picture of our academy:like as in music, when true voices blend in song,the perfect intonation of the major triadis sweetest of all sounds; its inviting embrace resolveth all discords; and all the ambitious flightsof turbulent harmony come in the end to restwith the fulfilment of its liquidating cloze. Again we hence rebutt that old dilemma of Art,which would set man in lordly enmity against nature960for that his pensiv play transcendeth her beauty;—as when Sebastian preludeth, all her voicesthat ever have reach'd our ears are crest-fal'n and abash'd:for tho' man cannot wield her infinit resourceof delicacy and strength, yet hath he in lieu thereofa range triumphant, where his exorbitant thoughtdefying Space and Time hath power to blend all thingsvisible and invisible, and freely redisposeevery essence that he knoweth, to parcel them at will—or so he thinketh—, like an occult magician970whose summons all spirits must attend and obey,from the heart-blaze of heaven to the unvisited deep;tho' he hav no wizardry to exorcise them withal.Now this dilemma (I say) is rebutted hereby,because man's faculty of creation, rare in himand not at his command, is but Nature herself,who danceth in her garden at the blossoming-time'mong the flowers of her setting; and tho' true it bethat Art needeth as full devotion and diligence in the performance as doth Virtue, yet i' the mind980of the artist Nature's method surely is on this wise;—the Ideas which thru' the senses hav found harborage,being come to mortal conscience work-out of themselvestheir right co-ordinations and, creativlyseeking expression, draw their natural imageryfrom the same sensuous forms whereby they found entrance;thus linking up with all the long tradition of Art. The manner of this magic is purest in musick,but by the learner is seen more clearly in poetry,wherein each verbal symbol exposeth its idea;990so that 'tis manifest by what promptings of thoughtthe imaginativ landscape is built and composed,and how horizon'd: And the secret of a poemlieth in this intimat echo of the poet's life. Now in its selfcreativness the manner of Artcannot be simulated, altho' Mimicryis Beauty's cradle: But, as in the Spirit of Manall manner of grades are found, so wil it be in his Art,with such disorder of thought as is not here to tell;for every man, whom Beauty hath laid beneath her spell,1000—tho' but by glimpse or dream, and him full ignorantof what idea hath moved him and even by what means;—wil feel about to express some mintage of himself, by imitation or birdlike hymeneal lilt,to fix his hold on joy, his cogito ergo sum.Thus may a jingle of words fasten his faith on God,as schoolboys memorize their lesson better in rhyme.

 Inasmuch then as the ideas in any one mindare a promiscuous company muster'd at random,ther wil be such disorder as Reason can perceive1010and may hav skill to amend; but tho' we grant her artvalid in principle and salutary in effect,the debit of failure is heavy in her accounts.Yet we discredit not all Medicine becausether be incurable maladies that end in death,—nor yet because the leech, when he is call'd in to healan indigestiv stomach, can hav no dealingdirectly with the embroil'd co-ordinating cells,—and, for the lack of any intelligent knowledgeof their intimat bickerings, wil hav recourse1020to palliativs and sentimental assurancesof favorable conditions, exercise and air,hoping thus to entice them to a better behaviour,—or observing some chemical excess in their chymewil deftly neutralize it with a pinch of salt;so we shall also allow Reason her claim to rule: and to judge by oneself, as each man must, I findReason wil diagnose the common ailment of Minda lack of harmony; for with the Ideas at war—now one Idea in mastery and now another,1030acting at call o' the moment indiscriminatly,—the man is foolish, unreasonable as we say,inept, without set purpose, weak of will; whereasif all should work together in concert, he wil bedetermin'd and consistent: And I see man's Willis here no independent concentrated force,like the steel spring box'd up in a French clock and woundfor local distribution, but is rather itselfthe concentrating of a predistributedintrinsic power;—the emotions, passions and desires,1040concurrent with the Ideas, being surely of themselveswilful enough, and able among themselves at strifeto make a fool, and in co-ordination a sage. Will, then, in the good mind a sustain'd harmony,is in the bad a dissonance, or it may be a strangeco-ordination, or the tyranny of one idea;from which our great civic convulsions mostly ariseand popular rebellions, when the Demagoghath fulminated some mighty essential idea,which entereth wildly into the loose minds of the herd 1050and, finding there no governance, runneth riotand, drawing all wilful authority to itself,wil seem the only live thing; like a firebrand at nightflaring afar, that in the sunlight wer a troublous smoke:and if such insurrection by contagion attainpredominance uncontrollable, to the overthrowof any existing rule, then the Will of the folkis dubb'd by history's pen the Will of God.But since this over-mastering prevalent ideamay be good in itself while it wreaketh but wrong,1060and since I see that all human activitiesmay be order'd equally for ravage or defence,Reason herself here questioneth me how I trusther mere ordering of life to make for happiness—whereto my answer is my good faith in what I hav writ. How the mind of man from inconscient existencecometh thru' the animal by growth of reasoningto'ard spiritual conscience hath been duly told:And Reason—being essentially (as in place 'twas found)the idea of Order, and thus itself the appurtenance1070of essences, with them passing from physicalunto spiritual order in a mind enduedwith conscience of the higher spiritual essences—Reason (say I) wil rise to awareness of its rank in the Ring of Existence, where man looketh upto the first cause of all; and wil itself decreeand order discreetly the attitude of the soulseeking self-realization in the vision of God,becoming at the last thatt arch-conscience of all,to which the Greek sage who possess'd it made appeal.1080 The attraction of this motion is our conscience of it,our love of wisdom and of beauty; and the attitudeof those attracted wil be joyful obediencewith reverence to'ard the omnificent Creatorand First Cause, whose Being is thatt beauty and wisdomwhich is to be apprehended only and only approach'dby right understanding of his creation, and foundin thatt habit of faith which some thinkers hav styledThe Life of Reason; and this only true bond of loveand reasonable relation (if relation ther be)1090'twixt creature and creator, man and nature's God,the which we call Religion,—is fundamental,physically and metaphysically in fashionor force undistinguishable from Duty itself:sprung from the same primal reality, it alsoaborted in like dolorous superstition, whenthe first-born intimations of spiritual lifescared man's animal mind, that in childish terror seeking protection from the unseen, fenced his dark cavewith codes of fearful fantasy and———flush'd by the stir1100of the irresistible impulse which drave him (yea, stilldriveth) with fierce exultation (albeit we may deplorethatt barbarous aberration),———with credulous magiccloggeth his airy spirit and discreditethhis Reason and Faith alike . . . . . so old a trouble and greatthat the honest indictment of the Epicureangoeth unrefuted, and his famous verse tantumreligio potuit suadere malorumyet ringeth true as when he thought to benefitmankind, and from his woes rescue him for ever,1110drowning the thought of God from off the face of the earthin his deluge of atoms; and made in the minda second Void, the which his sect should keep inaneby the inventiv levity of their enlightenment;til, as with animals that hav fasted too longand aking within for their emptiness wil eattoo greedily, we see in our fellows todayfresh recrudescence of forgonn superstition;the while our generation, sicken'd by the grimeof murky slums, slagheaps and sooty bushes,1120wil plan garden-cities and for her soilure makereddition to Nature, replanting the fair lands which our industrial grandsires disaforested. This hankering after lost Beauty, in sickness of hearta disconsolat sentiment, is the remnant graceof nature's covenant, the starved germ athirst for Godev'n for the living God, that singeth in the psalmquemadmodum cervus, and now amidst the blanktyranny of ugliness maketh many a rebelpining for enlargement and plotting to recall1130thatt old arrant exile who, for all her mischief,hid neath her cloak the master-key of happiness. In truth "spiritual animal" wer a term for mannearer than "rational" to define his genus;Faith being the humanizer of his brutal passions,the clarifier of folly and medicine of care,the clue of reality, and the driving motivof thatt self-knowledge which teacheth the ethick of life.

 And yet hath prayer, the heav'n-breathing foliage of faith,found never a place in ethick: for Philosophy1140filtering out delusions from her theory of life,in dread of superstition gave religion awayto priests and monks, who rich in their monopolyfurbish and trim the old idols, that they dare not break,for fear of the folk and need of good disciplin. But since all men alike, in any strain of heartor great emotion of soul, credulous or sceptic, fallinstinctivly to prayer for thatt solace and strengthwhich they who use the habit may be seen to hav found—nay, had Prayer no effect other than reverencefor the self-knowledge, which the Greek enjoin'd, whereby1151'tis sovran to bind character, concentrate Will,and purify intention—nay, ev'n so 'twould claima place among the causes of determin'd flux. Ah! tho' it may be a simple thing in reach of all,Best ever is rare, a toilsome guerdon; and prayer is likethose bodily exercises that athletes wil use,which each must humbly learn, and ere he win to powerso diligently practice, and in such strict courseas wil encroach unkindly on the agreements of life:1160whence men slouch in the laxity that they call ease,rather than rouse to acquiring thatt strength, without whichthe body cannot know the pleasur of its full ease, the leisur of strength in the hard labor of life.Now every emotion hath the bodily expressionbeseeming each; and since the body cannot bewithout some attitude, so Prayer wil hav its own:and here just as in any athletic exercisether be postures and motions foolish in themselves and often undignified, so too the postur of prayermay shame our pride of spirit, which would grudge the limbs1171warrant of entry upon her sacred solitudes;albeit the body come there in full abject guizeto do submission and pay fealty to the soul:And since our speech, in its mere vocal cries and calls,hath less natural beauty and true significancethan the bodily gestures which convey our desires,so ev'n the words of prayer wil lack in dignityand seem impertinent; as full often they be,and ever had been, unless man's language had upgrown1180from makeshift unto mastery of his thought, and learn'dby its fine musing art to redeem for his soulthe beauty of holiness, marrying creativlyhis best earthly delight with his heav'nliest desire,when he calleth on God, Send forth thy light and truththat they may lead me and bring me unto thy Holy Hill,to thatt fair place which is the joy of the whole earth. See! ther is never dignity in a concourse of men,save only as some spiritual gleam hearteneth the herd.Any idea whatsoe'er new-born to consciousness,1190if it infect the folk, taketh repetend lifeand exuberant difformity of disorder'd growthfrom physical communion of emotion and thought; and of its nascent appetency 'twil embraceaffinity in its host, to stagger and eliminateall other ideas, thus improportionablysurmounting its own province in Nature's order;so that unless itself it be a thing of Beauty,insurmountable of kind, more beauteous in excess—as when the glow reverberating in a golden cup1200multiplyeth the splendour,—it cometh that the herd,being in its empassionment ever irrational,wil even of harmless enthusiasm breed disgrace. Thus in our English sport, the spectacular games,where tens of thousands flock throttling the entrance-gateslike sheep to th' pen, wherein they sit huddled to watchthe fortune of the football, ther is often here and theremid the seething glomeration of thatt ugly embankmentof gazing faces, one that came to enjoy the sightknowingly, and yet looketh never on the contest: to him1210the crowd is the spectacle; its wrestle and agonyis more than the actors, and its contagion so thickand irresistible, that ere he feel surprisehe too may find himself, yea philosophy and all,carried away—as when a strong swimmer in the seawho would regain the shore, is by the headlong surftoss'd out of action, and like a drifted log roll'd up breathless and unresisting on the roaring beach. But if he join the folk, when at the cloze of Lentthey kneel in the vast dimness of a city church,1220while on the dense silence the lector's chant treadethfrom cadence to cadence the long dolorous wayof the great passion of Christ,—or anon when they riseto free their mortal craving in the exultant hymnthat ringeth with far promise of eternal peace . . .or should it happen to him, in strange lands far from home,to watch the Moslem host, when at their hour of prayerthey troop in wild accoutrement their long-drill'd linemotionless neath the sun upon the Arabian sands,hush'd to th' Imam's solemnel invocation of God,1230as their proud tribal faith savagely draweth strengthfrom the well-spring of life,—then at the full Amenof their deep-throated respond he wil feel his spiritdrawn into kinship and their exaltation his own;the more that he himself can be no part thereof,incomprehensible because comprehending:—and they be muddied pools whereat the herd water. Such is the dignity of prayer in the common folk;and its humility is the robe of intellect.So whenever it hath been by some mystics renounced1240in sanctuary of their sublime abstraction—as if utter abnegation had left no manners else to abjure,—they appear to lack in use and duty of fellowship.Yet in such solitaries, pallid clerks of heaven,souls blanch'd for lack of sunjoys (as 'twould seem to hav been),their contemplation (it may be) of very intensitygenerateth ideas of higher irradiance;for ideas born to human personality,having their proper attractions like as atom or cell,from soul to soul pass freely; and 'twas this mystery,whereof they kenn'd the need who set that clause i' the creed,1251which, compelling belief in the communion of saints,foldeth the sheep in pastures of eternal life.

 Nor doubt I that as this thinking machineryperisheth with the body, so animal thoughtwith all its whimper and giggle must perish therewith,with all shames, all vain ostentation and ugliness,and all personality of all other ideas;except it be that, like as in unconscient thingswhence conscience came, ther is also thru'out conscient life1260the same emergent evolution, persistingin our spiritual life to the goal of conscience. This mind perisheth with this body, unlessthe personal co-ordination of its ideas hav won to Being higher fhan animal life,at thatt point where the Ring cometh upward to reachthe original creativ Energy which is God,with conscience entering into life everlasting.

 'TWAS at thatt hour of beauty when the setting sunsquandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood1270his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;and all the towers and temples and mansions of menface him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pompnaked beneath the darkness;—while to mortal eyes'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strainat lamplit tasks—'tis given, as for a royal boonto beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watchwhere uncurtain'd behind the great windows of spaceHeav'n's jewel'd company circleth unapproachably— 'Twas at sunset that I, fleeing to hide my soul1280in refuge of beauty from a mortal distress,walk'd alone with the Muse in her garden of thought,discoursing at liberty with the mazy dreamsthat came wavering pertinaciously about me; as whenthe small bats, issued from their hangings, flitter o'erheadthru' the summer twilight, with thin cries to and fro hunting in muffled flight atween the stars and flowers. Then fell I in strange delusion, illusion strange to tell;for as a man who lyeth fast asleep in his bedmay dream he waketh, and that he walketh upright1290pursuing some endeavour in full conscience—so 'twaswith me; but contrawise; for being in truth awakemethought I slept and dreamt; and in thatt dream methoughtI was telling a dream; nor telling was I as onewho, truly awaked from a true sleep, thinketh to tellhis dream to a friend, but for his scant remembrancesfindeth no token of speech—it was not so with me;for my tale was my dream and my dream the telling,and I remember wondring the while I told ithow I told it so tellingly. And yet now 'twould seem1300that Reason inveigled me with her old orderings;as once when she took thought to adjust theology,peopling the inane that vex'd her between God and manwith a hierarchy of angels; like those asteroidswherewith she later fill'd the gap'twixt Jove and Mars. Verily by Beauty it is that we come at wisdom,yet not by Reason at Beauty: and now with many wordspleasing myself betimes I am fearing lest in the endI play the tedious orator who maundereth onfor lack of heart to make an end of his nothings. 1310Wherefor as when a runner who hath run his roundhandeth his staff away, and is glad of his rest,here break I off, knowing the goal was not for methe while I ran on telling of what cannot be told.

 For not the Muse herself can tell of Goddes love;which cometh to the child from the Mother's embrace,an Idea spacious as the starry firmament'sinescapable infinity of radiant gaze,that fadeth only as it outpasseth mortal sight:and this direct contact is't with eternities,1320this springtide miracle of the soul's nativitythat oft hath set philosophers adrift in dream;which thing Christ taught, when he set up a little childto teach his first Apostles and to accuse their pride,saying, Unless ye shall receive it as a child,ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. So thru'out all his young mental apprenticehoodthe child of very simplicity, and in the graceand beauteous attitude of infantine wonder,is apt to absorb Ideas in primal purity,1330and by the assimilation of thatt immortal foodmay build immortal life; but ever with the growthof understanding, as the sensible images are more and more corrupt, troubled by questioning thought,or with vainglory alloy'd, 'tis like enough the boyin prospect of his manhood wil hav cast to th' windshis Baptism with his Babyhood; nor might he escapethe fall of Ev'ryman, did not a second callof nature's Love await him to confirm his Faithor to revoke him if he is wholly lapsed therefrom.1340 And so mighty is this second vision, which comethin puberty of body and adolescence of mindthat, forgetting his Mother, he calleth it "first Love";for it mocketh at suasion or stubbornness of heart,as the oceantide of the omnipotent Pleasur of God,flushing all avenues of life, and unawaresby thousandfold approach forestalling its full floodwith divination of the secret contacts of Love,—of faintest ecstacies aslumber in Nature's calm,like thought in a closed book, where some poet long since1350sang his throbbing passion to immortal sleep—with coytendernesses delicat as the shifting huesthat sanctify the silent dawn with wonder-gleams,whose evanescence is the seal of their glory,consumed in self-becoming of eternity;till every moment as it flyeth, cryeth "Seize! Seize me ere I die! I am the Life of Life."  'Tis thus by near approach to an eternal presenceman's heart with divine furor kindled and possess'dfalleth in blind surrender; and finding therewithal1360in fullest devotion the full reconcilementbetwixt his animal and spiritual desires,such welcome hour of bliss standeth for certain pledgeof happiness perdurable: and coud he sustainthis great enthusiasm, then the unbounded promisewould keep fulfilment; since the marriage of true mindsis thatt once fabled garden, amidst of which was setthe single Tree that bore such med'cinable fruitthat if man ate thereof he should liv for ever. Friendship is in loving rather than in being lov'd,1370which is its mutual benediction and recompense;and tho' this be, and tho' love is from lovers learn'd,it springeth none the less from the old essence of self.No friendless man ('twas well said) can be truly himself;what a man looketh for in his friend and findeth,and loving self best, loveth better than himself,is his own better self, his live lovable idea,flowering by expansion in the loves of his life. And in the nobility of our earthly friendshipswe hav all grades of attainment, and the best may claim1380perfection of kind; and so, since ther be many bonds other than breed (friendships of lesser motiv, foundeven in the brutes) and since our politick is basedon actual association of living men, 'twil comethat the spiritual idea of Friendship, the hugevastidity of its essence, is fritter'd awayin observation of the usual habits of men;as happ'd with the great moralist, where his book saiththat ther can be no friendship betwixt God and manbecause of their unlimited disparity. From this dilemma of pagan thought, this poison of faith,1391Man-soul made glad escape in the worship of Christ;for his humanity is God's Personality,and communion with him is the life of the soul. Of which living ideas (when in the struggle of thoughtharden'd by language they became symbols of faith)Reason builded her maze, wherefrom none should escape,wandering intent to map and learn her tortuous clews,chanting their clerkly creed to the high-echoing stonesof their hand-fashion'd temple: but the Wind of heav'nbloweth where it listeth, and Christ yet walketh the earth,1401and talketh still as with those two disciples onceon the road to Emmaus—where they walk and are sad;whose vision of him then was his victory over death,thatt resurrection which all his lovers should share, who in loving him had learn'd the Ethick of happiness;whereby they too should come where he was ascendedto reign over men's hearts in the Kingdom of God. Our happiest earthly comradeships hold a foretasteof the feast of salvation and by thatt virtue in them1410provoke desire beyond them to out-reach and surmounttheir humanity in some superhumanityand ultimat perfection: which, howe'er 'tis foundor strangely imagin'd, answereth to the need of eachand pulleth him instinctivly as to a final cause.Thus unto all who hav found their high ideal in Christ,Christ is to them the essence discern'd or undiscern'dof all their human friendships; and each lover of himand of his beauty must be as a bud on the Vineand hav participation in him; for Goddes love1420is unescapable as nature's environment,which if a man ignore or think to thrust it offhe is the ill-natured fool that runneth blindly on death. This Individualism is man's true Socialism.This is the rife Idea whose spiritual beautymultiplieth in communion to transcendant might.This is thatt excelent way whereon if we wil walkall things shall be added unto us—thatt Love which inspiredthe wayward Visionary in his doctrinal ode to the three christian Graces, the Church's first hymn1430and only deathless athanasian creed,—the which"except a man believe he cannot be savèd".This is the endearing bond whereby Christ's companyyet holdeth together on the truth of his promisethat he spake of his great pity and trust in man's love,Lo, I am with you always ev'n to the end of the world. Truly the Soul returneth the body's lovingwhere it hath won it . . . and God so loveth the world . . .and in the fellowship of the friendship of ChristGod is seen as the very self-essence of love,1440Creator and mover of all as activ Lover of all,self-express'd in not-self, without which no self were.In thought whereof is neither beginning nor endnor space nor time; nor any fault nor gap therein'twixt self and not-self, mind and body, mother and child'twixt lover and loved, God and man: but eternalin the love of Beauty and in the selfhood of Love.

FINIS