NATURE MYSTICISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20851, 18 April 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE MYSTICISM.

THE CELTIC SPIRIT.

BY KOTARE.

Mr. W. B. Yeats, who lias himself done more than any other man of our times to bring back the Celtic twilight to our literature, conceives that the great elemental truths by which men live and dio were grasped by primitive man living close to nature, and erhbodied by him in the folk-lore and sagas of all the peoples of early Europe. The calmly-functioning reasonable mind is not man's only organ of knowledge. Man is surrounded by the infinite mystery. His personality, if the approach is right, can bo flooded by the reality which is behind and above the things wo can see and tasto and handle. Wc have too long been hemmed in by the tyranny of fact. Wherever wo have been blinded by our eyes, shut off from tho things wo cannot see by our absorption in the things we can see, (ho old Celtic poets and seers will lead ns to tho only reality that matters. " Literature dwindles to a mere chroniclo of circumstance, or passionless phantasies and passionless meditations, unless it is constantly flooded with tho passions and beliefs of ancient times. Of all the fountains of the passions and beliefs of ancient times in Europe, the Celtic alone has been for centuries close to the main river of European literature. It has again and again brought the vivifying spirit of excess into the arts of Europe." Yeats sees tho spiritual hope for a matter-of-fact scientific age in a new intoxication of tho imagination of tho world at the fountains of Celtic legend. There alono shall wo find the quickening and inspiration of the reality that lies behind the utmost that the scientific mind and method can attain. Ancient Passions. I don't know any other critic or man of letters of eminence that would accept so sweeping a claim. One's attitude is largely determined by temperament. But the fact remains that a standard of values and an attitudo to truth arc found among ancient imaginative peoples living in far more intimate fellowship with nature than our modern civilisation will permit to us, which are a necessary corrective to our obsession with tho material and mechanistic sido of living. Yeats thinks the advantago of the primitive man lies in his possession of imaginative passions. And he had these because he did not " live within our strait limits, and was nearer to ancient chaos, every man's desire, and immortal models about him. . . Surely if one go far enough into the woods one will find there all that one is seeking ? Who knows how many centuries the birds of the woods havo been singing?" I cannot believe that Neil Munro ever worked out his mysticism to its ultimato elements as Yeats tried to do. I doubt whether you can ever explain mysticism and not loso its essence. Munro was a poet and dreamer. He inherited instinctivo attitudes and values that had nothing at all to do with the life lie was_ compelled to live in the towns and cities of the nineteenth century. He moved and worked in modern civilisation, but ho was conscious that ho was not wholly of it. lie could not accept the easy assumption that the impulses and urges within him which linked him with the past of his race were foolish survivals of outgrown superstition, and that they had no spiritual value because in tho present ago they had no material or commercial value. Man and Naturo. It seems to him that the artificiality of modern life has cut man off from the revelation thero is in nature and the healing power available there for man's comfort in sorrow. Man and nature are not hostile parts of creation; they are complementary. There is a unity beneath them and in them. They are both expressions of one spirit. Naturo can be cruel; she can wipe out tho work of man and man himself with no more concern than a child feels in erasing an irrelevant writing from a slate. How can yo chant, yo bonny birds, And I sao weary, fu' o' care. But nature can also bo kind. Man can enter into her solaces if he cares to put himself into the right relations with her. She can terrify, but she is a great kindred force where truth and understanding can be found when there is no help in tho wisdom of companionship of man. Botany and geology and biology can classify the externals of nature; but there is more in the earth and the teeming life of tho wild than science can ever bo aware of. A poet like Burns could find no kinship in nature. It gave to man a beautiful field against which he lived and had his being—an, exquisite coloured background that cared not for him and had no message for his spirit. Wordsworth felt the presenco of an ovcrsoul, a universal spirit brooding over nature and expressing itself in earth and sky and sea. Man who is also spirit can enter into relation «with this universal spirit through communion with its manifestations in naturo. A nature mystic like Mary Webb finds naturo always on the point of a supremo revelation of itself in terms man can understand. But somehow the final word is not spoken. We get so far; wo aro keyed up to a tremendous tension of expectation : and then tho tension relaxes and thero is left only the tragic memory of a door that quivered with the promise of a glorious opening and then denied tho vision in the end. Some day, who knows, perhaps tho door will swing ajar. In,-that faith we can content ourselves for the time with nature's minor consolations and gifts. Some day man will be able to fullil the conditions on his side, and the way to tho secret places will lie open to his feet. Neil Munro. Bui Munro and the others in whom the Celtic values still remain feel something more personal than this. Hie Celtic twilight is not an excuse for confused emotional thinking. Twlight 'is the wrong word. It is a clearer vision they seek and in a measure have achieved. The Irish Mountainy Singer MacCathmhaoil, in an exquisite poem, shows how nature in some moods precipitates clearly in his mind tho assurance of spiritual reality. When rooks fly homeward And shadows full, When roses fold On tho hay-yiird wall. "When blind moths flutter By door and tree. Then conies (lie quiet Of Christ to me. "When stars look out On the Children's Path And grey mists pntlier On enrn and rath. When the ni'dit is one With the brooding sea, Then comes fhe quiet Of Christ to me.

As far as an outsider can read an experience so personal it seems that to the nature mystic thero is no clear division between the unseen and the seen. The real, as you and T would name it, and the unreal—which to him is the greater reality, almost the only reality—mingle and interpenetrate. Jle does not seo why they should bo separated. Every path of life opetis out on mystery. The value of the seen is tho glimpse it gives us of the unseen. It is the attitude that created tho old nature religions of our distant ancestors, still persisting as a racial, characteristic after all the chances and changes of thousands of years. The easy way is to rule it all out as so much superstitious nonsense, unworthy to stand tho light of rational scrutiny at this time of day. But a sense of values built into the very fibre of a largo section of our British raco and emerging in gifted individuals at their moments of highest inspiration cannot bo so debonairly shrugged aside.