Beside, allowing the possibility of some clear glimpses into
a higher state of being, what do we want of it now? All around us lies
what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for
this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves
to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural, before
we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these
things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the
wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.
_Free Hope_. And for me also. Nothing is truer than the Wordsworthian
creed, on which Carlyle lays such stress, that we need only look on the
miracle of every day, to sate ourselves with thought and admiration
every day. But how are our faculties sharpened to do it? Precisely by
apprehending the infinite results of every day.
Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The
ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his
eyes from the ground? No--but the poet who sees that field in its
relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the
ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth,
his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!
The mind, roused powerfully by this existence, stretches of itself into
what the French sage calls the "aromal state." From the hope thus
gleaned it forms the hypothesis, under whose banner it collects its
facts.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131