Nature Mysticism
J >> J. Edward Mercer >> Nature MysticismNATURE MYSTICISM
BY
J. EDWARD MERCER, D.D., OXON.
BISHOP OF TASMANIA
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, Ltd.
44 & 45 RATHBONE PLACE
1913
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
The aims of this study of Nature Mysticism, and the methods
adopted for attaining them, are sufficiently described in the
introductory chapter. It may be said, by way of special preface,
that the nature mystic here portrayed is essentially a "modern."
He is assumed to have accepted the fundamentals of the
hypothesis of evolution. Accordingly, his sympathy with the
past is profound: so also is his sense of the reality and
continuity of human development, physical, psychic, and
mystical. Moreover, he tries to be abreast of the latest critical
and scientific conclusions. Imperfections manifold will be
discovered in the pages that follow; but the author asks that a
percentage of them may be attributed to the difficulties of
writing in Tasmania and publishing at the antipodes.
J. E. M.
Bishop's Court, Hobart,
_March_, 1912.
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Introductory 1
Chapter II. Nature, and the Absolute 7
Chapter III. Mystic Intuition and Reason 15
Chapter IV. Man and Nature 23
Chapter V. Mystic Receptivity 30
Chapter VI. Development and Discipline of Intuition 38
Chapter VII. Nature not Symbolic 45
Chapter VIII. The Charge of Anthropomorphism 54
Chapter IX. The Immanent Idea 65
Chapter X. Animism, Ancient and Modern 71
Chapter XI. Will and Consciousness in Nature 79
Chapter XII. Mythology 90
Chapter XIII. Poetry and Nature Mysticism 97
Chapter XIV. The Beautiful and the Ugly 106
Chapter XV. Nature Mysticism and the Race 117
Chapter XVI. Thales 123
Chapter XVII. The Waters under the Earth 129
Chapter XVIII. Springs and Wells 138
Chapter XIX. Brooks and Streams 145
Chapter XX. Rivers and Life 151
Chapter XXI. Rivers and Death 158
Chapter XXII. The Ocean 165
Chapter XXIII. Waves 172
Chapter XXIV. Still Waters 179
Chapter XXV. Anaximenes and the Air 187
Chapter XXVI. Winds and Clouds 192
Chapter XXVII. Heracleitus and the Cosmic Fire 203
Chapter XXVIII. Fire and the Sun 211
Chapter XXIX. Light and Darkness 222
Chapter XXX. The Expanse of Heaven--Colour 228
Chapter XXXI. The Moon--A Special Problem 235
Chapter XXXII. Earth, Mountains, and Plains 242
Chapter XXXIII. Seasons, Vegetation, Animals 248
Chapter XXXIV. Pragmatic 257
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
A wave of Mysticism is passing over the civilised nations. It is
welcomed by many: by more it is mistrusted. Even the minds to
which it would naturally appeal are often restrained from
sympathy by fears of vague speculative driftings and of
transcendental emotionalism. Nor can it be doubted that such an
attitude of aloofness is at once reasonable and inevitable. For a
systematic exaltation of formless ecstasies, at the expense of
sense and intellect, has a tendency to become an infirmity if it
does not always betoken loss of mental balance. In order,
therefore, to disarm natural prejudice, let an opening chapter be
devoted to general exposition of aims and principles.
The subject is Nature Mysticism. The phenomena of "nature"
are to be studied in their mystical aspects. The wide term
Mysticism is used because, in spite of many misleading
associations, it is hard to replace. "Love of nature" is too
general: "cosmic emotion" is too specialised. But let it at once
be understood that the Mysticism here contemplated is neither
of the popular nor of the esoteric sort. In other words, it is not
loosely synonymous with the magical or supernatural; nor is it a
name for peculiar forms of ecstatic experience which claim to
break away from the spheres of the senses and the intellect. It
will simply be taken to cover the causes and the effects involved
in that wide range of intuitions and emotions which nature
stimulates without definite appeal to conscious reasoning
processes. Mystic intuition and mystic emotion will thus be
regarded, not as antagonistic to sense impression, but as
dependent on it--not as scornful of reason, but merely as more
basic and primitive.
Science describes nature, but it cannot _feel_ nature; still less
can it account for that sense of kinship with nature which is so
characteristic of many of the foremost thinkers of the day. For
life is more and more declaring itself to be something fuller
than a blind play of physical forces, however complex and
sublimated their interactions. It reveals a ceaseless striving--an
_elan vital_ (as Bergson calls it) to expand and enrich the forms
of experience--a reaching forward to fuller beauty and more
perfect order.
A certain amount of metaphysical discussion will be necessary;
but it will be reduced to the minimum compatible with
coherency. Fortunately, Nature Mysticism can be at home with
diverse world-views. There is, however, one exception--the
world-view which is based on the concept of an Unconditioned
Absolute. This will be unhesitatingly rejected as subversive of
any genuine "communion" with nature. So also Symbolism will
be repudiated on the ground that it furnishes a quite inadequate
account of the relation of natural phenomena to the human
mind. The only metaphysical theory adopted, as a generalised
working basis, is that known as Ideal-Realism. It assumes three
spheres of existence--that which in a peculiar sense is _within_
the individual mind: that which in a peculiar sense is _without_
(external to) the individual mind: and that in which these two
are fused or come into living contact. It will be maintained, as a
thesis fundamental to Nature Mysticism, that the world of
external objects must be essentially of the same essence as the
perceiving minds. The bearing of these condensed statements
will become plain as the phenomena of nature are passed in
review. Of formal theology there will be none.
The more certain conclusions of modern science, including the
broader generalisations of the hypothesis of evolution, will be
assumed. Lowell, in one of his sonnets, says:
"I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes away
The charm that nature to my childhood wore
For, with that insight cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before:
The real doth not clip the poet's wings;
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-rooted art."
Admirable--as far as it goes! But the modern nature-mystic
cannot rest content with the last line. The aim of nature-insight
is not art, however firm-rooted; for art is, so to speak, a
secondary product, a reflection. The goal of the nature-mystic is
actual living communion with the Real, in and through its
sensuous manifestations.
Nature Mysticism, as thus conceived, does not seek to glorify
itself above other modes of experience and psychic activity. The
partisanship of the theological or of the transcendental type is
here condemned. Nor will there be an appeal to any ecstatic
faculty which can only be the vaunted appanage of the few. The
appeal will lie to faculties which are shared in some degree by
all normal human beings, though they are too often neglected, if
not disparaged. Rightly developed, the capacity for entering into
communion with nature is not only a source of the purest
pleasure, but a subtle and powerful agent in aiding men to
realise some of the noblest potentialities of their being.
When treating of specific natural phenomena, the exposition
demands proof and illustration. In certain chapters, therefore,
quotations from the prose and poetry of those ancients and
moderns who, avowedly or unavowedly, rank as nature-mystics,
are freely introduced. These extracts form an integral part of the
study, because they afford direct evidence of the reality, and of
the continuity, of the mystical faculty as above defined.
The usual method of procedure will be to trace the influence of
certain selected natural phenomena on the human mind, first in
the animistic stage, then in the mythological stage, and lastly in
the present, with a view to showing that there has been
a genuine and living development of deep-seated nature
intuitions. But this method will not be too strictly followed.
Special subjects will meet with special treatment, and needless
repetition will be carefully avoided. The various chapters, as far
as may be, will not only present new themes, but will approach
the subject at different angles.
It is obvious that severe limitations must be imposed in the
selection from so vast a mass of material. Accordingly, the
phenomena of Water, Air, and Fire have received the fullest
attention--the first of the triad getting the lion's share; but
other marked features of the physical universe have not been
altogether passed by. The realm of organic life--vegetable and
animal--does not properly fall within the limits of this study.
For where organised life reveals itself, men find it less difficult
to realise their kinship with existences other than human. The
curious, and still obscure, history of totemism supplies abundant
evidence on this point; and not less so that modern sympathy
with all living things, which is largely based on what may be
termed the new totemism of the Darwinian theory. But while
attention will thus be focussed on the sphere of the inorganic,
seemingly so remote from human modes of experience, some
attempt will nevertheless be made to suggest the inner
harmonies which link together all modes of existence. A further
limitation to be noted is that "nature" will be taken to cover only
such natural objects as remain in what is generally called their
"natural" condition--that is, which are independent of, and
unaffected by, human activities.
Let Goethe, in his Faust hymn, tell what is the heart and essence
of Nature Mysticism as here to be expounded and defended.
"Rears not the heaven its arch above?
Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie?
And with the tender gaze of love
Climb not the everlasting stars on high?
Do I not gaze upon thee, eye to eye?
And all the world of sight and sense and sound,
Bears it not in upon thy heart and brain,
And mystically weave around
Thy being influences that never wane?"
CHAPTER II
NATURE, AND THE ABSOLUTE
As just stated, metaphysics and theology are to be avoided. But
since Mysticism is generally associated with belief in an
Unconditioned Absolute, and since such an Absolute is fatal to
the claims of any genuine Nature Mysticism, a preliminary
flying incursion into the perilous regions must be ventured.
Mysticism in its larger sense is admittedly difficult to define. It
connotes a vast group of special experiences and speculations
which deal with material supposed to be beyond the reach of
sense and reason. It carries us back to the strangely illusive
"mysteries" of the Greeks, but is more definitely used in
connection with the most characteristic subtleties of the wizard
East, and with certain developments of the Platonic philosophy.
Extended exposition is not required. Suffice it to state what may
fairly be regarded as the three fundamental principles, or
doctrines, on which mystics of the orthodox schools generally
depend. These principles will be subjected to a free but friendly
criticism: considerable modifications will be suggested, and the
way thus prepared for the study of Nature Mysticism properly
so-called.
The three principles alluded to are the following. First, the true
mystic is one possessed by a desire to have communion with the
ultimately Real. Second, the ultimately Real is to be regarded as
a supersensuous, super-rational, and unconditional Absolute--
the mystic One. Third, the direct communion for which the
mystic yearns--the _unio mystica_--cannot be attained save by
passive contemplation, resulting in vision, insight, or ecstasy.
With a view to giving a definite and concrete turn to the critical
examination of these three fundamentals, let us take a passage
from a recently published booklet. The author tells how that on
a certain sunny afternoon he flung himself down on the bank of
a brimming mill-stream. The weir was smoothly flowing: the
mill-wheel still. He meditates on the scene and concludes thus:
"Perhaps we are never so receptive as when with folded hands
we say simply, 'This is a great mystery.' I watched and
wondered until Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling weir
and the water's side, and the wheel with its untold secret."
There are certain forms, or modes, of experience here presented
which are at least mystical in their tendency--the sense of a
deeper reality than that which can be grasped by conscious
reason--a desire to penetrate a secret that will not yield itself to
articulate thought and which nevertheless leaves a definite
impress on the mind. There is also a recognition of the passive
attitude which the ordinary mystic doctrine avers to be essential
to vision. Will these features warrant our regarding the
experiences as genuinely mystical?
The answer to this question brings into bold relief a vital
difference between orthodox mystics and those here called
nature-mystics, and raises the issue on which the very existence
of a valid Nature Mysticism must depend. The stricter schools
would unhesitatingly refuse to accord to such experiences the
right to rank with those which result in true insight. Why?
Because they obviously rest on sense impressions. An English
mystic, for example, states in a recent article that Mysticism is
always and necessarily extra-phenomenal, and that the man who
tries to elucidate the visible by means of the invisible is no true
mystic; still less, of course, the man who tries to elucidate the
invisible by means of the visible. The true mystic, he says, fixes
his eyes on eternity and the infinite; he loses himself when he
becomes entangled in the things of time, that is, in the
phenomenal. Still more explicit is the statement of a famous
modern Yogi. "This world is a delusive charm of the great
magician called Maya. . . . Maya has imagined infinite illusions
called the different things in the universe. . . . The minds which
have not attained to the Highest, and are a prey to natural
beauties in the stage of Maya, will continually have to turn into
various forms, from one to another, because nothing in the stage
of Maya is stable." Nor would the Christian mystics allow of
any intermediaries between the soul and God; they most of
them held that the soul must rise above the things of sense,
mount into another sphere, and be "alone with the Alone."
What, then, is the concept of the ultimately Real which these
stricter mystics have evolved and are prepared to defend? It is
that of pure and unconditioned Being--the One--the Absolute.
By a ruthless process of abstraction they have abjured the world
of sense to vow allegiance to a mode of being of which nothing
can be said without denying it. For even to allow a shadow of
finiteness in the Absolute is to negate it; to define it is to
annihilate it! It swallows up all conditions and relations without
becoming any more knowable; it embraces everything and
remains a pure negation. It lies totally and eternally beyond the
reach of man's faculties and yet demands his perfect and
unreasoning surrender. A concept, this, born of the brains of
logical Don Quixotes.
And it is for such a monstrous abstraction we are asked to give
up the full rich world of sense, with all it means to us. It is
surely not an intellectual weakness to say: "Tell us what you
will of existence above and beyond that which is known to us;
but do not deny some measure of ultimate Reality to that which
falls within our ken. Leave us not alone with the Absolute of the
orthodox mystic, or we perish of inanity! Clearly the _elan
vital_--the will to live--gives us a more hopeful starting-point in
our search for the Real. Clearly the inexhaustible variety of the
universe of sense need not be dubbed an illusion to save the
consistency of a logic which has not yet succeeded in grasping
its own first principles. No, the rippling weir and the mill-wheel
were real in their own degree, and the intuitions and emotions
they prompted were the outcome of a contact between the inner
and the outer--a _unio mystica_--a communion between the
soul of a man and the soul in the things he saw.
"But" (says the orthodox mystic) "there is a special form of
craving--the craving for the Infinite. Man cannot find rest
save in communion with a supreme Reality free from all
imperfections and limitations; and such a Reality can be found
in nothing less than the Unconditioned Absolute." Now we may
grant the existence and even the legitimacy of the craving thus
emphatically asserted while questioning the form which it is
made to assume. The man gazing at the mill-wheel longed to
know its secret. Suppose he had succeeded! We think of
Tennyson's "little flower in the crannied wall." We think of
Blake's lines:
"To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
Is it really necessary to forsake the finite to reach the infinite--
whatever that term may be taken to mean? Do we not often
better realise the infinity of the sky by looking at it through the
twigs of a tree?
For the craving itself, in its old mystic form, we can have
nothing but sympathy. Some of its expressions are wonderfully
touching, but their pathos must not blind us to the maimed
character of the world-view on which they rest. Grant that the
sphere of sense is limited and therefore imperfect, let it at any
rate be valid up to the limit it does actually attain. The rippling
weir and the mill-wheel did produce some sort of effect upon
the beholder, and therefore must have been to that extent real.
What do we gain by flinging away the chance to learn, even
though the gain be small? And if, as the nature-mystic claims,
the gain be great, the folly is proportionately intensified.
Coleridge is quoted as an exponent of the feeling of the stricter
mystics.
"It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On the green light that lingers in the West;
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life whose fountains are within."
This, however, is too gentle and hesitating, too tinged with love
of nature, to convey the fierce conviction of the consistent
devotee of the Absolute, of the defecated transparency of pure
Being. If, as is urged by Recejac, we find among some of the
stricter mystics a very deep and naive feeling for nature, such
feeling can only be a sign of inconsistency, a yielding to the
solicitations of the lower nature. Granted their premisses, the
world of sense can teach nothing. It is well to face this issue
squarely--let the mystic choose, either the Absolute and Maya,
or a Ground of existence which can allow value to nature, and
which therefore admits of limitations. Or, if there is to be a
compromise, let it be on the lines laid down by Spinoza and
Schelling. That is to say, let the name God be reserved for the
phenomenal aspect of the Absolute. But the nature-mystic will
be wise if he discards compromise, and once for all repudiates
the Unconditioned Absolute. His reason can then chime in with
his intuitions and his deepest emotions. He loses nothing; he
gains intellectual peace and natural joy.
The never-ceasing influence of the genuine Real is bound to
declare itself sooner or later. Buddhism itself is yielding, as
witness this striking pronouncement of the Buddhist Lord
Abbot, Soyen Shaku. "Buddhism does not, though sometimes
understood by Western people to do so, advocate the doctrine of
emptiness or annihilation. It most assuredly recognises the
multi-tudinousness and reality of phenomena. This world as it
is, is real, not void. This life, as we live it, is true, and not
a dream. We Buddhists believe that all these particular things
surrounding us come from one Ultimate Source, all-knowing
and all-loving. The world is the manifestation of this Reason, or
Spirit, or Life, whatever you may designate it. However diverse,
therefore, things are, they all partake of the nature of the
Ultimate Being. Not only sentient beings, but non-sentient,
reflect the glory of the Original Reason."
Assuredly a comforting passage to set over against that of the
Yogi quoted above! But is not the good Abbot a little hard on
the Westerners? For the full truth is that while the Yogi
represents the old Absolutism, the Abbot is feeling his way to a
wider and more human world-view. Buddhism has evidently
better days in store. Let our views of ultimate Reality be what
they may, the nature-mystic's position demands not only that
man may hold communion with nature, but that, in and through
such communion, he is in living touch with the Ground of
Existence.
CHAPTER III
MYSTIC INTUITION AND REASON
So much for the nature-mystic's relation to the concept of the
Absolute. It would be interesting to discuss, from the same
point of view, his relations to the rival doctrines of the monists,
dualists, and pluralists. But to follow up these trails with any
thoroughness would lead us too far into the thickets and
quagmires of metaphysics. Fortunately the issues are not nearly
so vital as in the case of the Absolute; and they may thus be
passed by without serious risk of invalidating subsequent
conclusions. It may be worth our while, however, to note that
many modern mystics are not monists, and that the supposed
inseparable connection between Mysticism and Monism is
being thrown overboard. Even the older mystics, when wrestling
with the problem of evil, were dualists in their own
despite. Of the moderns, so representative a thinker as Lotze
suggested that Reality may run up, not into one solitary peak,
but into a mountain chain. Hoeffding contends that we have not
yet gained the right to career rough-shod over the antinomies of
existence. James, a typical modern mystic, was an avowed
pluralist. Bergson emphasises the category of Becoming, and, if
to be classed at all, is a dualist. Thus the nature-mystic is happy
in the freedom to choose his own philosophy, so long as he
avoids the toils of the Absolute. For, as James remarks,
"oneness and manyness are absolutely co-ordinate. Neither is
primordial or more excellent than the other."
It remains, then, to subject to criticism the third principle of
Mysticism, that of intuitional insight as a mode of knowing
independent of the reasoning faculties, at any rate in their
conscious exercise. Its root idea is that of directness and
immediacy; the word itself prepares us for some power of
apprehending at a glance--a power which dispenses with all
process and gains its end by a flash. A higher stage is known as
vision; the highest is known as ecstasy. Intuition has its own
place in general psychology, and has acquired peculiar
significance in the domains of aesthetics, ethics, and theology;
and the same root idea is preserved throughout--that of
immediacy of insight. The characteristic of passivity on which
certain mystics would insist is subsidiary--even if it is to be
allowed at all. Its claims will be noted later.
Now Nature Mysticism is based on sense perception, and this in
itself is a form of intuition. It is immediate, for the "matter" of
sensation presents itself directly to the consciousness affected; it
simply asserts itself. It is independent of the conscious exercise
of the reasoning powers. It does not even permit of the
distinction between subject and object; it comes into the mind
as "a given." When conscious thought grips this "given," it can
put it into all manner of relations with other "givens." It may
even to some extent control the course of subsequent sensations
by the exercise of attention and in accordance with a conscious
purpose. But thought cannot create a sensation. The sensation is
thus at the base of all mental life. It furnishes material for the
distinction between subject and object--between the outer and
the inner. The conscious processes, thus primed, rise through
the various stages of contemplation, reflection, abstraction,
conception, and reasoning.
The study of sense perception is thus seen to be a study of
primary mystical intuition. But the similarity, or essential bond,
between the two may be worked at a deeper level. When an
external object stimulates a sensation, it produces a variety of
changes in the mind of the percipient. Most of these may remain
in the depths of subconscious mental life, but they are none the
less real as effectual agents of change. Now what is here
implied? The external object has somehow or other got "inside"
the percipient mind--has penetrated to it, and modified it.
In other words, a form of mystical communion has been
established. The object has penetrated into the mind, and the
mind has come into living touch with the Real external to itself.
The object and the subject are to this extent fused in a mystic
union. How could the fusion take place unless the two were
linked in some fundamental harmony of being? Other and
higher modes of mystical union may be experienced; but sense
perception contains them all in germ. How vain, then, the
absolutist's attempt to sever himself from the sphere of sense!