On The Art of Reading Part 3

Around the ancient track march'd, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law--

he was merely witnessing a series of predictable or invariable recurrences, I answer that he may be right, it suffices for my argument that they _are_ recurrent, are invariable, can be predicted. Anyhow the Universe is not Chaos (if it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it at all). It stands and is renewed upon a harmony: and what Plato called 'Necessity'

is the Duty--compulsory or free as you or I can conceive it--the Duty of all created things to obey that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth tells in his n.o.ble Ode.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

III

Now the other and second great belief is, that the Universe, the macrocosm, cannot be apprehended at all except as its rays converge upon the eye, brain, soul of Man, the microcosm: on you, on me, on the tiny percipient centre upon which the immense cosmic circle focuses itself as the sun upon a burning-gla.s.s--and he is not shrivelled up! Other creatures, he notes, share in his sensations; but, so far as he can discover, not in his percipience --or not in any degree worth measuring. So far as he can discover, he is not only a bewildered actor in the great pageant but 'the ring enclosing all,' the sole intelligent spectator. Wonder of wonders, it is all meant for _him_!

I doubt if, among men of our nation, this truth was ever more clearly grasped than by the Cambridge Platonists who taught your forerunners of the 17th century. But I will quote you here two short pa.s.sages from the work of a sort of poor relation of theirs, a humble Welsh parson of that time, Thomas Traherne-- unknown until the day before yesterday--from whom I gave you one sentence in my first lecture. He is speaking of the fields and streets that were the scene of his childhood:

Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the womb, and that divine light wherewith I was born are the best unto this day, wherein I can see the Universe.... The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me.... Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die....

The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces.

The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.

Then:

News from a foreign country came, As if my treasure and my wealth lay there; So much it did my heart inflame, 'Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear; Which thither went to meet The approaching sweet, And on the threshold stood To entertain the unknown Good....

What sacred instinct did inspire My Soul in childhood with a hope to strong?

What secret force moved my desire To expect new joys beyond the seas, so young?

Felicity I knew Was out of view,

And being here alone, I saw that happiness was gone From me! For this I thirsted absent bliss, And thought that sure beyond the seas, Or else in something near at hand-- I knew not yet (since naught did please I knew) my Bliss did stand.

But little did the infant dream That all the treasures of the world were by: And that himself was so the cream And crown of all which round about did lie.

Yet thus it was: the Gem, The Diadem, The Ring enclosing all That stood upon this earthly ball, The Heavenly Eye, Much wider than the sky, Wherein they all included were, The glorious Soul, that was the King Made to possess them, did appear A small and little thing!

And then comes the n.o.ble sentence of which I promised you that it should fall into its place:

You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.

Man in short--you, I, any one of us--the heir of it all!

_Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos!_

Our best privilege to sing our short lives out in tune with the heavenly concert--and if to sing afterwards, then afterwards!

IV

But how shall Man ever attain to understand and find his proper place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus?

His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of others until it falls dark:

If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

Yet the Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to man save in so far as _he_ apprehends it: and lacking him (so far as he knows) it utterly lacks the compliment of an audience. Is all the great orchestra designed for nothing but to please its Conductor?

Yes, if you choose: but no, as I think. And here my other quotation:

That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact.... Spirit to spirit-- as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.

Yes and, all spirit being mutually attractive, far more than this! I preach to you that, through help of eyes that are dim, of ears that are dull, by instinct of something yet undefined--call it soul--it wants no less a name--Man has a native impulse and attraction and yearning to merge himself in that harmony and be one with it: a spirit of adoption (as St Paul says) whereby we cry _Abba, Father!_

And because ye are Sons, G.o.d hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying _Abba, Father._

That is to say, we know we have something within us correspondent to the harmony, and (I make bold to say) unless we have deadened it with low desires, worthy to join in it. Even in his common daily life Man is for ever seeking after harmony, in avoidance of chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees, governments, hierarchies, laws, const.i.tutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are childish imitations, underplay on the great motive:

The Kingdom of G.o.d is within you.

Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans?

V

Gentlemen, you may be thinking that I have brought you a long way round, that the hour is wearing late, and that we are yet far from the prey we first hunted on the line of common-sense. But be patient for a minute or two, for almost we have our hand on the animal.

If the Kingdom of G.o.d, or anything correspondent to it, be within us, even in such specks of dust as we separately are, why that, and that only, can be the light by which you or I may hope to read the Universal: that, and that only, deserves the name of '_What Is_.' Nay, I can convince you in a moment. Let me recall a pa.s.sage of Emerson quoted by me on the morning I first had the honour to address an audience in Cambridge:

It is remarkable (says he) that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures ... anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most at home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself.

It is remarkable, as Emerson says; and yet, as we now see, quite simple. A learned man may patronise a less learned one: but the Kingdom of G.o.d cannot patronise the Kingdom of G.o.d, the larger the smaller. There _are_ large and small.

Between these two mysteries of a harmonious universe and the inward soul are granted to live among us certain men whose minds and souls throw out filaments more delicate than ours, vibrating to far messages which they bring home, to report them to us; and these men we call prophets, poets, masters, great artists, and when they write it, we call their report literature. But it is by the spark in us that we read it: and not all the fire of G.o.d that was in Shakespeare can dare to patronise the little spark in me. If it did, I can see--with Blake--the angelic host

throw down their spears And water heaven with their tears.

VI

To nurse that spark, common to the king, the sage, the poorest child--to fan, to draw up to a flame, to 'educate'

_What Is_--to recognise that it is divine, yet frail, tender, sometimes easily tired, easily quenched under piles of book-learning--to let it run at play very often, even more often to let it rest in what Wordsworth calls

a wise pa.s.siveness

pa.s.sive--to use a simile of Coventry Patmore--as a photographic plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, simply by waiting with its face turned upward--to mother it, in short, as wise mothers do their children--this is what I mean by the Art of Reading.

For all great Literature, I would lastly observe, is gentle towards that spirit which learns of it. It teaches by _apprehension_ not by _comprehension_--which is what many philosophers try to do, and, in trying, break their jugs and spill the contents. Literature understands man and of what he is capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be 'harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' but the trouble with most of its pract.i.tioners is that they try to _comprehend_ the Universe. Now the man who could comprehend the Universe would _ipso facto_ comprehend G.o.d, and be _ipso facto_ a Super-G.o.d, able to dethrone him, and in the arrogance of his intellectual conceit full ready to make the attempt.

[Footnote 1: Do you remember, by the by, Samuel Rogers's lines on Lady Jane Grey? They have always seemed to me very beautiful:

Like her most gentle, most unfortunate, Crown'd but to die--who in her chamber sate Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown, And every ear and every heart was won, And all in green array were chasing down the sun!]

LECTURE III

CHILDREN'S READING (I)