And Yet It Is True
For The Widest Horizon, And Read Out Of Doors Has Relation To The
Dim Mountain Line, And Is Native And Aboriginal There.
Most
books belong to the house and street only, and in the fields
their leaves feel very thin.
They are bare and obvious, and have
no halo nor haze about them. Nature lies far and fair behind
them all. But this, as it proceeds from, so it addresses, what
is deepest and most abiding in man. It belongs to the noontide
of the day, the midsummer of the year, and after the snows have
melted, and the waters evaporated in the spring, still its truth
speaks freshly to our experience. It helps the sun to shine, and
his rays fall on its page to illustrate it. It spends the
mornings and the evenings, and makes such an impression on us
overnight as to awaken us before dawn, and its influence lingers
around us like a fragrance late into the day. It conveys a new
gloss to the meadows and the depths of the wood, and its spirit,
like a more subtile ether, sweeps along with the prevailing winds
of a country. The very locusts and crickets of a summer day are
but later or earlier glosses on the Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos,
a continuation of the sacred code. As we have said, there is an
orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west
is but the farthest east. While we are reading these sentences,
this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu
with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the
mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a
race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the
only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with
its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a
place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.
Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There
must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words
a kind of blood must circulate forever. It is wonderful that
this sound should have come down to us from so far, when the
voice of man can be heard so little way, and we are not now
within ear-shot of any contemporary. The woodcutters have here
felled an ancient pine forest, and brought to light to these
distant hills a fair lake in the southwest; and now in an instant
it is distinctly shown to these woods as if its image had
travelled hither from eternity. Perhaps these old stumps upon
the knoll remember when anciently this lake gleamed in the
horizon. One wonders if the bare earth itself did not experience
emotion at beholding again so fair a prospect. That fair water
lies there in the sun thus revealed, so much the prouder and
fairer because its beauty needed not to be seen. It seems yet
lonely, sufficient to itself, and superior to observation. - So
are these old sentences like serene lakes in the southwest, at
length revealed to us, which have so long been reflecting our own
sky in their bosom.
The great plain of India lies as in a cup between the Himmaleh and
the ocean on the north and south, and the Brahmapootra and Indus,
on the east and west, wherein the primeval race was received.
We will not dispute the story. We are pleased to read in the
natural history of the country, of the "pine, larch, spruce, and
silver fir," which cover the southern face of the Himmaleh range;
of the "gooseberry, raspberry, strawberry," which from an
imminent temperate zone overlook the torrid plains. So did this
active modern life have even then a foothold and lurking-place in
the midst of the stateliness and contemplativeness of those
Eastern plains. In another era the "lily of the valley, cowslip,
dandelion," were to work their way down into the plain, and bloom
in a level zone of their own reaching round the earth. Already
has the era of the temperate zone arrived, the era of the pine
and the oak, for the palm and the banian do not supply the wants
of this age. The lichens on the summits of the rocks will
perchance find their level erelong.
As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned
to know what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any.
We can tolerate all philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists,
Atheists, Theists, - Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus,
Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius. It is the attitude of
these men, more than any communication which they make, that
attracts us. Between them and their commentators, it is true,
there is an endless dispute. But if it comes to this, that you
compare notes, then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes us
up into the serene heavens, whither the smallest bubble rises as
surely as the largest, and paints earth and sky for us. Any
sincere thought is irresistible. The very austerity of the
Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined
and nobler luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem
like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is
peaceful as a dream. "When that power awakes, then has this
world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil
spirit, then the whole system fades away." In the very
indistinctness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. It
hardly allows the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but
directly it hints at a supremer still which created the last, and
the Creator is still behind increate.
Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture; "From fire,
from air, and from the sun," it was "milked out." One might as
well investigate the chronology of light and heat.
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