OUR PRIVILEGES AND NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3030, 10 April 1912, Page 81

OUR PRIVILEGES AND NATURE

A STUDY IN EMOTIONS. By Thos. J. Pemberton. A kiss depends for its rapture less .ipon ' the loveliness of the lips that are kissed than upon that subtle exchange of an 'inseen force that pours through the lips of lovers. The finest emotions of life ajre W 4 only by those who open their hearts to the great inpourings. We may be moving daily amidst a veritable Garden of Eden, yet in oucr haste see nought of it. A thousand things of beauty we pass by. The' senses do their work and bear their message to the brain; but have we time to read those messages? Perhaps we cannot read them, if wo would. There is no sound, no sight, no scent unless we be attentive to their presence. More and more the law of Nature presses itself upon the mind: that we ar« to receive just so much of the permanent in life, of the things that are lice to aJi, as we afo able to bear, just so much as we ask for end can understand. The more wo have the more we shall be thought worthy to possess. In short, to him that hath shall be given. Never more plainly can we see the application of this law than 'in our love for and our appreciation of this garden of the southern seas. One risks being designated provincial if one extols the beauty of those familiar scenes which the hundreds that pass Us in the street have' seen, and alas! too often seen without reverence and awe. But we take the risk. As X _ write ■ I can see through my open windows, this delightful autumn afternoon, the three sentinels that guard this corner of the world where we have placed our homes. No poet had the choosing of the names we know thean by, but there are numbers of people here in our midst who have expanded their souls at least a trifle by mounting and looking down from the topmost rocks of Signal Hill, Flagstaff, and Mount Cargill. Here they have realised the significance of the old symbolism of " going up to the mountain to\ pray," and as they glance at the peaks from the valley below they can recall in a moment the almost sacred emotions they experienced as they looked out over the vast expanse of God's everlasting hills and the kingdom of the sea. Here it was they contemplated the eternity of things and knew that the lofty thoughts inspired were eternal too. .The great lesson of proportion was truly tauarht: that those feelings which words cannot body forth but which are in _ hrrmony with an immense but apparently inanimate creation are infinitely more important than the hundred little oircumstances that vex the soul from day to day. Again, who has not at some time or other visited the wonderful canyon that serves as an approach to the most beautiful of our waterfalls I In truth, it suffers from that very popularity. The noblest scenes of Nature are not intended for_ man's daily food. His very presence injures them. Whereas the mountain peaks are emblematic of the divine constancy, the imagery of a low-nestling ravine with its sylvan wealth and traceries of moss and fern is "a divine discourse delicately written, which the irreverent hand of man in a moment can deface. The writing is there, nay even the voice, but the voice sinks into a whisper when man draws near. The more we see

oi cms canyon, stuaying it siuwi.y anu w detail, the more we learn to love it and to understand it; —to understand it not so that •we may coldly explain its meaning in mere words, but to understand it as a musician may feel the full emotional flood as he becomes more familiar with one of Beethoven's symphonies. Nature and musio appeal to the higher emotions, not so much to the intellect; the object of poetry is to strike in varying proportions the chords of both reason and emotion. Hence, in European countries the nearest approach we have to the Language of emotions is found in verse. It is the object of the poet, by means of word pictures and musical combinations of sound, to set up vibrations which will call into being in the hearts and minds of readers the same thoughts and feelings as ho himself has experienced at the moment of inspiration. A prose paraphrase of the verses will have no suoh effect; it needs the music and the rhythm pj the lines to recreate the inspiration. Perhaps we find an explanation of this fact in the mystical theory that all Nature is sot to rhythmical vibrations, and therefore it needs musio or musio in combination with words to carry Nature's message to the hearts of those who have not heard the message spoken by the mellifluous voice of Nature herself. She speaks to_ all of us through the higher emotions in various ways; to some more clearly than to others. There are these who ©an comprehend only the fierce and brilliant manifestations, but there are those who draw nearer to the Spirit of the World by means of the delicate and tenderly mysterious works which must be sought for with reverence and in silence. I

Western culture has done its best to foster a knowledge and love of Nature's handiwork. It has taught men to look upon the earth and its wonders as the direct creation of the Master Architect. For that reason alone we treat those wonders with respect, and in the presence of that which we call beautiful our feelings are exalted. But we must seek some other explanation for that exaltation than the mere fact that wo are standing in the presence of a work designed by the mind of a Master. A child who has not yet learned to read may refrain from destroying a sheet of paper he has seen his father write upon. The sheet may be of great value or of none—that concerns not the mind of the child; it is the respect he feels for his father that causes him to refrain from destroying his father's property. The parallel is obvious. We may feel awe and reverence in the presence of Nature's great .manifestations if our only knowledge is that it bears the imprimatur of the Creator; but that knowledge alone cannot account for the more complex and rapturous feelings that, ofttimos stir our souls. Perhaps we find a solution of the problem in the miscalled polytheism of the East. To the unobservant ai;d unthinking tho people of Tndia seem to worship many gods, but in reality their doctrine of the omnipresence of the one God leads them to worship Him in many forms. The Divine fluid permeates all animate and inanimate creation, and if the pious Hindoo venerates a stick or a stone, or a river or an image, it is only because his philosophy teaches him that the essence of God flows through it just as it flows through the thunder of the heavens or the soul of a saint. Penetrating yet deeper into the philosophy of the East, we find tho natural source of the doctrine of omnipresence. " God brooded over the face of the waters." He sent forth his thoughts throughout space. They were not thoughts of how shall I mould thfs planet, how shall I form this leaf or this shell? They were thoughts far beyond the highest comprehension of man, but a s they passed out from the Master mind they took a myriad shapes and colours, moulded in tho subtle fluid of the highest spiritual atmosphere. Such perfect thoughts were so powerful as to retain their forms through the ages, and gradually around these centres of spiritual activity the less rare atmospheres gathered until, finally, dense matter came out of the void and shaped itself about the Divine thought-forms which had existed since the beginning of time. We cannot tell the meaning of these forms, but we see them in the planets and the suns, wo see them in the leaves and flowers, the ice and snow, the million shapes of the ocean's treasures, wo 6ee them in the forest giants and tho mountain peaks, the diamond drops that silently thread their way down the mosscovered cliff, we see them in the curling waves and the changing colours of the sunset It matters not that man may change or destroy tho physical manifestations of these thought-forms; the forms remain, though unperceivod bv the human eye. Nay: even if the world itself wore shattered once more into liquid fire tho forms would still remain, and when the cooling hnnd of Time had dono its work the denser particles of matter would bo gathered intC place anew. Surely such a theory draws us nearer ia the mind of the Creator. Wo seo in a flower not merely a beautiful cluster of coloured vegetable fragments, but the outward and visible form of an unseen

of a lily cannot be grasped by the conscious mind, but the soul instinct within us tells us we are in the presence of a thought of divine beauty. We cannot know what are the thoughts that mould the changing colours of the sunset or the shimmer of the moonlight on the resting waters, but the rapturous delight they call forth tell us that there is about us something more than particles of liquid and vibrations of reflected light. There is a mind actingand vaguely stirring us to greater heights of consciousness. Whether we seek the mountain tops or the seashore, the valleys or the hillside, or roam amidst the ferns and trees, we are compassed about by eternal thoughts, and the less the hand of man has altered or destroyed the more perfect is the message to be read in the changing face of Nature or in the deep, perpetual silences.