Essays, Second Series | Page 7

images of the splendor of intellectual
perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the unapparent periods
of intellectual natures." Therefore science always goes abreast with the
just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics;
or the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. Since
everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon
remains brute and dark it is that the corresponding faculty in the
observer is not yet active.
No wonder then, if these waters be so deep, that we hover over them
with a religious regard. The beauty of the fable proves the importance
of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, every man
is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature; for
all men have the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. I find
that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does
not? Is it only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with
her? No; but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they
express their affection in their choice of life and not in their choice of
words. The writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in
riding, in horses and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk
with him he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is
sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is commanded in nature, by
the living power which he feels to be there present. No imitation or
playing of these things would content him; he loves the earnest of the
north wind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not
explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is
nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed
by life which he worships with coarse but sincere rites.
The inwardness and mystery of this attachment drives men of every
class to the use of emblems. The schools of poets and philosophers are
not more intoxicated with their symbols than the populace with theirs.
In our political parties, compute the power of badges and emblems. See
the great ball which they roll from Baltimore to Bunker hill! In the
political processions, Lowell goes in a loom, and Lynn in a shoe, and

Salem in a ship. Witness the cider-barrel, the log-cabin, the
hickory-stick, the palmetto, and all the cognizances of party. See the
power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a
lion, an eagle, or other figure which came into credit God knows how,
on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at the ends of
the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most
conventional exterior. The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are
all poets and mystics!
Beyond this universality of the symbolic language, we are apprised of
the divineness of this superior use of things, whereby the world is a
temple whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and
commandments of the Deity,--in this, that there is no fact in nature
which does not carry the whole sense of nature; and the distinctions
which we make in events and in affairs, of low and high, honest and
base, disappear when nature is used as a symbol. Thought makes
everything fit for use. The vocabulary of an omniscient man would
embrace words and images excluded from polite conversation. What
would be base, or even obscene, to the obscene, becomes illustrious,
spoken in a new connexion of thought. The piety of the Hebrew
prophets purges their grossness. The circumcision is an example of the
power of poetry to raise the low and offensive. Small and mean things
serve as well as great symbols. The meaner the type by which a law is
expressed, the more pungent it is, and the more lasting in the memories
of men: just as we choose the smallest box or case in which any needful
utensil can be carried. Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an
imaginative and excited mind; as it is related of Lord Chatham that he
was accustomed to read in Bailey's Dictionary when he was preparing
to speak in Parliament. The poorest experience is rich enough for all the
purposes of expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge of new facts?
Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us
as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having
exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to
use them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not need that a poem
should be long. Every word was once