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Nature a Divine Language.

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of its individual terms, than to interpret Paradise Lost, for example, by the light of grammars and dictionaries. The moral and spiritual are as truly contained and expressed in it, as the scientific. The poet does not bring his thoughts and impose them upon nature, or merely link them to its forms; they are there already, as truly as what are called natural or organic laws. He simply finds them, apprehends them by the power of imagination. He does not read the inscriptions written upon things, as many are fond of saying, but he reads things themselves, i. e. the real thought and meaning of which they are the language and expression. In other words, what we call the language of nature is not an artificial language, the arbitrary association of natural forms and phenomena with human feelings and fancies, but the true and appropriate vehicle of God's thoughts. Poetry, in its true sense, is the translation of the language of nature into the language of feeling. As science is rightly called the interpretation of nature, i. e. if we understand ourselves, the reading of God's thoughts in nature; so poetry is only a deeper and more thoughtful reading of the same book; viz. an insight into its interior and spiritual meaning, its beauty, its pathos and its passion. Poetry is indeed "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science."

The last and deepest insight we get into nature, is when we read it religiously, as a divine revelation, with a heart to understand in it what God would say to his creatures, his intelligent and spiritual, but sinful and alienated creatures; when we connect this language vitally with a living, personal and omnipresent Spirit, who is evermore speaking through these outward symbols to our hearts.

Here we can see the reason of the close affinity between the human mind and nature, and why the latter is such a perfect mould and mirror of the former. It is because there is mind in nature, because it is itself the language of a universal mind, that the human mind can find in it the vehicles of its own thought. Nature supplies human language with its materials, i. e. with forms and symbols to convey human thoughts, but only because they have first been moulded and organized to convey the thoughts of God. There is thus a twofold union and affinity between language and nature; language has all its roots in nature, but the life which vitalizes it is derived from mind, which is present equally in both.

The fundamental law of language, or the expression of human thoughts, is that they be embodied in the very forms or images in which the like thoughts are embodied in nature. Hence a close familiarity with nature, with all its aspects and phenomena, especially VOL. VI. No. 22.

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with the spirit expressed in and through them, is essential to the perfection of language. For this reason poets surpass other men in the use and mastery of language. A true poet reproduces nature in his

own verse. The streams flow, the forests wave, the birds soar and sing with all the truth and reality of nature; and the reason is, that the very spirit which lives and works in nature, animates and moulds his words.

Again, there is in nature a manifoldness of meaning. It has not only innumerable voices, but each voice has many tones, which together make up a whole infinitude of meanings. Every individual thing, every leaf and flower and pebble, is crowded with divine thoughts, of which the wisest student may read a part, but not all. Shakspeare, who if any man ever did or could, may be said to have looked through nature, saw in the humblest and meanest thing a world of truth, where ordinary minds saw nothing. Yet not even Shakspeare comprehended the whole meaning of nature, or of a single object. Nature is an inexhaustible book, not only in its extent but its profundity; and for the reason that it is the product and expression of an infinite mind. In like manner we might expect that human language, which is a copy of that of nature, in proportion as it approaches the divine, would be distinguished by the same manifoldness of meaning. This many-sidedness of things we might look to see reflected in the words of the greatest and wisest minds, i. e. of those who see the deepest into things. This, we need not say, is eminently the fact. Without citing lower instances, look only at the words left us of Christ. What manifold treasures of thought are piled up in a single one of his sublime aphorisms. The profoundest thinker will find in these words enough to task and baffle his deepest insight; and new and still deeper meanings will continue to be found in them to the end of time. So also of the language in other parts of the Bible, especially the symbolic language of prophecy; which, being the language of things rather than of words or abstract terms, has necessarily many meanings. The Bible is the most figurative book in existence, and for this reason contains more of truth; or rather, having more of truth to convey, it necessarily resorts to figures or symbols as the only adequate vehicles. Finding therefore one truth or meaning in a text, we are not hastily to conclude that this is all there is in it, or that what another finds is of course false; since in most texts there are many meanings, thought within thought, as law within law in nature. If it be said that we are here advocating the obnoxious and "refuted" doctrine of a "double sense," it may be sufficient to reply, that the Bible was written for persons having two senses as well as one. We hold to an inward and

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Inadequacy of Symbols.

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spiritual, as well as logical insight, one which looks through the latter as the soul looks through the eyes. The logical faculty is very welcome to all it can see in the Bible and elsewhere; only let it not hinder other and higher faculties from seeing too.

But more seriously. Since the Bible is a universal book, designed for the whole race and for all capacities, there must be in it a universality of import, as there is in nature, so that the highest and humblest may each find therein his own level of truth; and one level no more supersedes or interferes with another, than the laws or truths of mechanics interfere with those of chemistry, or these with the deeper laws of life. On the other hand, since there are truths in the Bible which transcend any one form of expression, a single truth will often require many forms or figures to express it; and the greater the truth the more forms will it permit and demand, as in nature, the more general or universal the law, the greater the number of its specific manifestations. Every idea truly such, comprehends in it many minor thoughts, and hence can be adequately set forth only by many and manifold symbols. We may say that a spiritual truth never can be adequately expressed in language, since every symbol employed is specific and limited, and expresses the idea only in part, holds to it only on one side or border. It therefore requires many and often opposite and even contradictory forms of expression, in order that it may be included and upheld as it were between them. Accordingly, he who looks only at one side of the idea through one symbol, and takes that for the whole, will assuredly err, and this in a twofold degree: first, because he sees only a side or border of the truth; and secondly, because he deems the real truth to be included in the symbol, whereas it is only included by or between this and many others. Only the deep-seeing and comprehensive mind, who can look through all the symbols to the central idea, and again through the idea at the surrounding symbols, and thus harmonize all in one total view, can be said to comprehend the truth.

To illustrate still further what we mean, by an example: God, the greatest of all possible ideas, is truly said to be expressed in every one of his works. All creatures and things "declare his glory," i. e. are so many symbols expressing each according to its measure, the one great and ineffable Idea. This, we say, and truly, is the end of their existence. Yet no one creature or thing, surely, can express or declare the whole glory of God. This can be done only by the whole created universe, all worlds, systems, beings, minds; all events past and to come; all opposites of good and evil; all that exists or comes to pass, in time or place. This is done and is doing forever. Who

ever, therefore, shall approach this idea from without, i. e. through any one of these symbols, (for obviously none but the infinite mind itself can survey them all,) will find something of God therein; but he will be equally sure, unless inwardly enlightened, to include God within this one form or symbol. Here we may see the truth and the falsehood of idolatry, which is nothing but a misinterpreting of symbols, through a defect of spiritual insight. But if God himself cannot be adequately expressed in any finite form, neither can those truths relating to his being and government, truths which partake of his infinity and eternity, be adequately set forth in the forms of space and time, or in words drawn from them, but only shadowed forth, as eternity itself is shadowed forth by time. It is from losing sight of this, and the mistaking of the shadow for the substance, that all the wars of doctrine have arisen, and never can they cease till interpreters have learned to look beyond the shadow, and above the finite to the infinite; and to read both in and through each other.

We have alluded already in the course of this essay, to the power of imagination. As there is no element so absolutely essential to language, so constantly active in the use and interpretation of it, and at the same time so little understood, we shall devote the remainder of this Article to the consideration of this power and its relation to language, by tracing out as briefly as we can some of its workings.

Imagination may be regarded as twofold; or at least as acting in a twofold capacity, viz. as a perceptive and a creative power. The first is when it is employed to read external objects; by which we mean, the looking through the outward form or appearance to the thought or idea conveyed by it. In this sense it is the power to see in all which meets the senses, all the objects and aspects of the material universe, that which they mean or express; whether individual features, or their combination in what is called the face of nature. It is the same thing as when we look thoughtfully into the countenance of a fellowbeing, to read therein the spirit and character of the man. It is preeminently the eye of the mind, without which it may grope and calculate about things, but has no real insight into them. Hence it is no less essential to the philosopher, who investigates the science of nature, than to the poet, who looks beyond to its spirit, since both are after the true meaning of nature. Thus Kepler, looking long and thoughtfully at the stars, reads in them the laws of physical astronomy, those thoughts or ideas after which the planetary system is constructed, and which had heretofore existed consciously only in the mind of Deity. In the enthusiasm of a true philosopher he exclaims, " O God,

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I think thy thoughts after Thee!" Milton, looking on the same objects with the eye of a poet, thus interprets their motions around the

sun:

"Where the great luminary

Aloof the vulgar constellations thick,

That from his lordly eye keep distance due,
Dispenses light from far; they as they move
Their starry dance in numbers that compute

Days, months and years, towards his all-cheering lamp,
Turn swift their various motions, or are turn'd

By his magnetic beam, that gently warms

The universe, and to each inward part
With gentle penetration, though unseen,
Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep."

Here the poet anticipates the discovery of the philosopher, and seizes with his imagination the grand truth, which Newton afterwards demonstrates by calculation.

Finally, the Hebrew Psalmist, regarding the same religiously with the eye of devout contemplation, represents the heavens as telling to the earth, night discoursing unto night, of "the glory of God." All these are instances of imagination looking through the outward form or letter of the universe, to its inward law or spirit. Imagination always has to do with the truth of things. It is not as sometimes represented a false and lawless faculty, but the truest of all, since it pierces into the inmost laws and spirit of nature, and does not stop with the bare truth of science. It is no less sure in its operations than reason, but it works more directly and intuitively. It reaches its conclusions, not by slow deduction or calculation, but by direct insight. It is the pioneer and torch of reason, which she sends on before to explore the way and guide her footsteps, or rather it is reason itself kindled to its intensest glow, and lighting up the universe with its penetrating lustre.

Imagination is sometimes confounded with fancy, which has to do only with outward and accidental relations or resemblances, and is therefore a superficial and often deceptive faculty. There is the same difference between imagination and fancy, that there is between looking at the stars in the light of modern astronomy, and as they appear to the eye under the aspect of constellations; or between perusing a book by its meaning, and amusing ourself with coincidences in the size and shape of the letters. Hence the analogies, so called, which fancy detects in nature, and the poetaster deals in, are always those which strike the senses chiefly, and are most apparent, while those which imagination apprehends and embodies are outwardly false, and