And this the silent stars beheld, looking downfrom heaven, and told it not again. This, likewise, the Frau Himmelhahn beheld, looking from her chamber-window, and was not so discreet as the silent stars.
CHAPTER VI. GLIMPSES INTO CLOUD-LAND.
“There are many things, which, having no corporeal evidence, can be perceived and comprehended only by the discursive energies of reason. Hence the ambiguous nature of matter can be comprehended only by adulterated opinion. Matter is the principle of all bodies, and is stamped with the impression of forms. Fire, air, and water derive their origin and principle from the scalene triangle. But the earth was created from right-angled triangles, of which two of the sides are equal. The sphere and the pyramid contain in themselves the figure of fire; but the octaedron was destined to be the figure of air, and the icosaedron of water. The right-angled isosceles triangle produces from itself a square, andthe square generates from itself the cube, which is the figure peculiar to earth. But the figure of a beautiful and perfect sphere was imparted to the most beautiful and perfect world, that it might be indigent of nothing, but contain all things, embracing and comprehending them in itself, and thus might be excellent and admirable, similar to and in concord with itself, ever moving musically and melodiously. If I use a novel language, excuse me. As Apuleius says, pardon must be granted to novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate the obscurity of things.”
These words came from the lips of the lion-like philosopher, who has been noticed before in these pages. He was sitting with Flemming, smoking a long pipe. As the Baron said, he was indeed a strange owl; for the owl is a grave bird; a monk, who chants midnight mass in the great temple of Nature; — an anchorite, — a pillar saint, — the very Simeon Stylites of his neighbourhood. Such, likewise, was the philosophical Professor. Solitary, but with a mighty current, flowed the river of his life, like the Nile, without a tributary stream, and making fertile only a single strip in the vast desert. His temperament had been in youth a joyous one; and now, amid all his sorrows and privations, for he had many, he looked upon the world as a glad, bright, glorious world. On the many joys of life he gazed still with the eyes of childhood, from the far-gone Past upward, trusting, hoping; — and upon its sorrows with the eyes of age, from the distant Future, downward, triumphant, not despairing. He loved solitude, and silence, and candle-light, and the deep midnight. “For,” said he, “if the morning hours are the wings of the day, I only fold them about me to sleep more sweetly; knowing that, at its other extremity, the day, like the fowls of the air, has an epicurean morsel, — a parson’s nose; and on this oily midnight my spirit revels and is glad.”
Such was the Professor, who had been talking in a half-intelligible strain for two hours or more. The Baron had fallen fast asleep in his chair; but Flemming sat listening with excited imagination, and the Professor continued in the following words, which, to the best of his listener’s memory, seemed gleaned here and there from Fichte’s Destiny of Man, and Shubert’s History of the Soul.
“Life is one, and universal; its forms many and individual. Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and fro. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle it flies from Birth to Death, from Death to Birth; from the beginning seeks the end, and finds it not, for the seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new out-going and endeavour after the end. As the ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath of the summer sun breathes upon it, melts, and divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of the sun; so life, in the smile of God’s love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing in it and reflecting an image of God’s love. Of all these forms the highest and most perfect inits god-likeness is the human soul. The vast cathedral of Nature is full of holy scriptures, and shapes of deep, mysterious meaning; but all is solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no uplifted eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast cathedral comes the human soul, seeking its Creator; and the universal silence is changed to sound, and the sound is harmonious, and has a meaning, and is comprehended and felt. It was an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all the lands to find the Lord of the Earth; and the flame of the Fire, when it awakes, gazes no more upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek the Lord of Heaven; and here and there the Earth has built the great watch-towers of the mountains, and they lift their heads far up into the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the World comes not! Thus in Nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting, and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown somewhat. Yes; when, above there, where the mountain lifts its head over all others, that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray dawn, to see if the day comes not! when, by the mountain torrent, the brooding raven listens to hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly pasture in the valley; and when the soon uprising sun calls out the spicy odors of the thousand flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven’s deep blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves; — then there awakes in Nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God’s majesty. It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field and forest rest at noon, and through the stillness is heard only the song of the grasshopper and the hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises, or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his shining armour, to walk forth in the fields of heaven. But in the soul of man alone is this longing changed to certainty and fulfilled. For lo! thelight of the sun and the stars shines through the air, and is nowhere visible and seen; the planets hasten with more than the speed of the storm through infinite space, and their footsteps are not heard, but where the sunlight strikes the firm surface of the planets, where the stormwind smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the one seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory of God made visible, and may be seen, where in the soul of man it meets its likeness changeless and firm-standing. Thus, then, stands Man; — a mountain on the boundary between two worlds; — its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other. From this summit the manifold landscape of life is visible, the way of the Past and Perishable, which we have left behind us; and, as we evermore ascend, bright glimpses of the daybreak of Eternity beyond us!”
Flemming would fain have interrupted this discourse at times, to answer and inquire, but the Professor went on, warming and glowing more andmore. At length, there was a short pause, and Flemming said;
“All these indefinite longings, — these yearnings after an unknown somewhat, I have felt and still feel within me; but not yet their fulfilment.”
“That is because you have not faith;” answered the Professor. “The Present is an age of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the second part of Goethe’s Faust, there is a grand and striking scene, where in the classical Walpurgis Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimæra, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides, striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides’ arrows! Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens, singing their wondrous songs from the rocking branches of the willow trees! Even thus does a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between an unknown Future and a too believing Past, and question and challenge the gigantic forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time, and gazing forward steadfastly into the night, whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate vex and soothe the ear of man! — But the time will come, when the soul of man shall return again childlike
and trustful to its faith in God; and look God in the face and die; for it is an old saying, full of deep, mysterious meaning, that he must die, who hath looked upon a God. And this is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually. No sooner here on earth does it awake to its peculiar being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend the Spirit of Life. In the first dim twilight of its existence, it beholds this spirit, is pervaded by its energies, — is quick and creative likethe spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death after having seen it. But the image it has seen, remains, in the eternal procreation, as a homogeneal existence, is again renewed, and the seeming death, from moment to moment, becomes the source of kind after kind of existences in ever-ascending series. The soul aspires ever onward to love and to behold. It sees the image more perfect in the brightening twilight of the dawn, in the ever higher-rising sun. It sleeps again, dying in the clearer vision; but the image seen remains as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes anew and ever higher after its own image, till at length, in the full blaze of noonday, a being comes forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the sun and die not. Then both live on, even when this bodily element, the mist and vapor through which the young eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to earth.”
“I am not sure that I understand you,” said Flemming; “but if I do, you mean to say, that, as the body continually changes and takes unto itselfnew properties, and is not the same to-day as yesterday, so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies, and is changed by acquiring new powers, and thus may be said to die. And hence, properly speaking, the soul lives always in the Present, and has, and can have, no Future; for the Future becomes the Present, and the soul that then lives in me is a higher and more perfect soul; and so onward forevermore.”
“I mean what I say,” continued the Professor; “and can find no more appropriate language to express my meaning than that which I have used. But as I said before, pardon must be granted to the novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate the obscurity of things. And I think you will see clearly from what I have said, that this earthly life, when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered; — that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward. And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a transition not from one existence to another, but from one state of existence to another. No link is broken in the chain of being; any more than in passing from infancy to manhood, from manhood to old age. There are seasons of reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its consciousness of what is passing around it; and takes no longer cognizance of objects which are near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved its connexion with the body. It has passed as it were into another state of being. It lives in another world. It has flown over lands and seas; and holds communion with those it loves, in distant regions of the earth, and the more distant heaven. It sees familiar faces, and hears beloved voices, which to the bodily senses are no longer visible and audible. And this likewise is death; save that when we die, the soul returns no more to the dwelling it has left.”
“You seem to take it for granted,” interrupted Flemming, “that, in our reveries, the soul really goes out of the body into distant places, instead of summoning up their semblance within itself by the power of memory and imagination!”
“Something I must take for granted,” replied the Professor. “We will not discuss that point now. I speak not without forethought. Just observe what a glorious thing human life is, when seen in this light; and how glorious man’s destiny. I am; thou art; he is! seems but a school-boy’s conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery. These words are significant of much. We behold all round about us one vast union, in which no man can labor for himself without laboring at the same time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which by the universal harmony of things becomes an inward benediction, and lifts the soul mightily upward. Still more so, when a man regards himself as a necessary member of this union. The feeling of our dignity and our power grows strong, when we say to ourselves; My being is not objectless and in vain; I am a necessary link in the great chain, which, from the full development of consciousness in the first man, reaches forward into eternity. All the great, and wise, and good among mankind, all the benefactors of the human race, whose names I read in the world’s history, and the still greater number of those, whose good deeds have outlived their names, — all those have labored for me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in their footsteps, from which blessings grow. I can undertake the sublime task, which they once undertook, the task of making our common brotherhood wiser and happier. I can build forward, where they were forced to leave off; and bring nearer to perfection the great edifice which they left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave it, and go hence. O, this is the sublimest thought of all! I can never finish the noble task; therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can never cease to work, and consequently never cease to be. What men call death cannot break off this task, which is never-ending; consequently no periodis set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks, and to the roaring cataract, and to the storm-clouds swimming in the fire-sea overhead and say; I am eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over me! and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in the wild tumult! and ye Elements foam and rage, and destroy this atom of dust, — this body, which I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose, shall hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of the universe; for I have comprehended my destiny; and it is more durable than ye! It is eternal; and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal! Tell me, my friend, have you no faith in this?”
“I have;” answered Flemming, and there was another pause. He then said;
“I have listened to you patiently and without interruption. Now listen to me. You complain of the skepticism of the age. This is one form in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents itself. Let me tell you, that another form, whichit assumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the cloud-land and dream-land of this poetic philosophy. Pleasant and cool upon their souls lie the shadows of the trees under which Plato taught. From their whispering leaves comes wafted across the noise of populous centuries a solemn and mysterious sound, which to them is the voice of the Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized and transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful, vague dreams of the real and the ideal, they live in this green world, like the little child in the German tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland lake, and hears the blue heaven and the branches overhead dispute with their reflection in the water, which is the reality and which the image. I willingly confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal strongly to my imagination. Visitants and attendants are they of those lofty souls, which, soaring ever higher and higher, build themselves nests under the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that theycannot live on air, but must descend to earth for food. Yet I recognise them as day-dreams only; as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence with which an old idea, folded in a new garment, looks you in the face and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from childhood. I remember an English author who, in speaking of your German Philosophies, says very wisely; `Often a proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with, and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth terminology, — and dragged forth into the open light of day, to be seen by the natural eye and tried by merely human understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently the anxious novice is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books; there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the
farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut.’ — Can you believe, thatthese words ever came from the lips of Carlyle! He has himself taken up the uncouth terminology of late; and many pure, simple minds are much offended at it. They seem to take it as a personal insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed of praise. It is, however, hardly worth while to lose our presence of mind. Let us rather profit as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and wrapped about with that strange and antique garb, there walks a kingly, a most royal soul, even as the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters under a monk’s cowl; — a monarch still in soul. Such things are not new in the history of the world. Ever and anon they sweep over the earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of Truth seems more serene. Why would you preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers? Better sit quiet, and see them pass over like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast.”
The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said not a word. Flemming continued;
“I will add no more than this; — there are many speculations in Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and lying under the shadow of great names, yet lead to no important result. They resemble rather those roads in the western forests of my native land, which, though broad and pleasant at first, and lying beneath the shadow of great branches, finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a tree!”
The Professor hardly knew whether he should laugh or be offended at this sally; and, laying his hand upon Flemming’s arm, he said seriously;
“Believe me, my young friend, the time will come, when you will think more wisely on these things. And with you, I trust, that time will soon come; since it moves more speedily with some than with others. For what is Time? The shadow on the dial, — the striking of the clock, — the running of the sand, — day and night, — summerand winter, — months, years, centuries! These are but arbitrary and outward signs, — the measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what it is?”
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 158
