A THEORY OF BEAUTY

In tfae silence of tfae greenwood I knew tfae secret of the growth of the f ems ;

I saw their délicate leaflets tremble, breathing an undescribed and nnuttered life ;

And, bdow, the océan lay sleeping ;

And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in glad oompanionship for ever.

And a voice came to me, saying :

In every créature, in forest and océan, in leaf and treé and bird and beast and man, there moves a spirit other than its mortal own.

Pure, fluid as air — ^intense as fire,

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits of ail other créatures, drawing them dose to itself ,

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality ; ^ And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.

And whatsoever créature hath this spirit, to it no harm may befàll ;

No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested home, and to it every loss oomes charged ^th an equal gain ;

It gives — but to receive a thousand-fold ;

It yields its life — but at the hands of Ipve ;

And death is the law of its etemal growth.

And I saw that was the law of every créature — that this spirit should enter in and take possession of it,

That it might hâve no more f ear or doubt or be at war within itself any longer.

And lo ! in the greenwood ail around me it moved,

Where the sunlight âoated fragrant under the boughs, and the fem-fronds winnowed the air ;

In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and in the small shy things that rustled among them ;

In the songs of the birds, and the broad shadowing leaves overhead ;

In the fièlds sleeping bdow, and in the river and the high dreaming air ;

AM0N6 THE FERNS" 70

Gleaming ecstatic it moved — with joy incarnate.

And it seemed to me, as I lookad, thàt it penetrated ail thèse things, suffusing them ;

And wherever it penetrated, bdioldl tiiere was nothing left down to the smaUest atom wbîch was not a winged spirit instinct with lifs.^

It is one thing, however, to theorize about Nature as an organism of salves entering into relations with each other, and it is another thing to be consdous of one' s identity with Nature in actual expérience. The former arises out of the latter ; that is to say, ail that has just been written about Carpenter's peculiar feeUng for Nature, and his doctrines concerning it, are the formulation in artistic and intellectual tenus of his expérience of being consdous in what we hâve called the third unity. There is nothing for us to do hère except to receive the personal witness. Such testimonies are constantly multipljdng, and there is no reason to doubt either the sanity or the sincerity of those who offer them. It is apparently possible for an individual to enter a deeply inward and practically boundless area of consdousness in which the ordinary boundaries of individuaUty are dissolved or submerged, and the man becomes aware not simply of " something far more deeply interfused," but that he himself is that Something. It is as if the consdousness of the mountain-peak, descending down through its own heart, and without losing

T6 CONSCIOUSNESSINTHETHIRDUNITY

its own self-awareness, should expérience its identity with the range-consdousness, and more deeply still with the matrix-consdousness of that earth-crust in which the ranges are rooted. It must be exœedingly dififtcult to give literary expression to this prof ound expérience ; and not less difficult for those whose lives are usually far removed from that mystic région to discover any sensé — as they would say — in words which attempt to describe it. Such an attempt Carpenter has made in a poem entitled " By the Shore."

I am a bit of the shore ; the waves feed upon me, they corne pasturing over me ;

I am glad, O waves, that you oome pasturing over me.

I am a little arm of the sea; the same tmnbling, swooning dream goes on — I feel the waves ail around me, I spread myself through them.

How delidous f I spread and spread. The waves tmnble through and over me — they dash through my îauce and hair. . . .

Suddenly I am the Océan itsèlf ; the great soft wind creeps over my face.

I am in love with the wind — I reach my lips to its kisses. . . .

I am not sure any more which my own particular bit of shore is ;

Ail the bays and inlets know me ; I glide along in and out under the sun by the beautiful ooast-line ;

My hair floats leagues behind me ; millions together my children dash against my face ;

I hear what they say and am marvellously content.^

And then the inévitable transition of thought and feeling to Humanity :

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