The Story of My Heart
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Richard Jefferies >> The Story of My Heart
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Of the three divisions, the last was of so little importance
that it scarcely deserved to be named in conjunction with the
others. Mechanism increases convenience--in no degree does it
confer physical or moral perfection. The rudimentary engines
employed thousands of years ago in raising buildings were in
that respect equal to the complicated machines of the present
day. Control of iron and steel has not altered or improved the
bodily man. I even debated some time whether such a third
division should be included at all. Our bodies are now conveyed
all round the world with ease, but obtain no advantage. As they start so
they return. The most perfect human families of ancient times were almost
stationary, as those of Greece. Perfection of form was found inSparta; how
small a spot compared to those continents over which we are now taken so
quickly! Such perfection of form might perhaps again dwell, contented and
complete in itself, on such a strip of land as I could see between me and
the sand of the sea. Again, a watch keeping correct time is no guarantee
that the bearer shall not suffer pain. The owner of the watch may be
soulless, without mind-fire, a mere creature. No benefit to the
heart or to the body accrues from the most accurate mechanism.
Hence I debated whether the third division should be included.
But I reflected that time cannot be put back on the dial, we
cannot return to Sparta; there is an existent state of things,
and existent multitudes; and possibly a more powerful engine,
flexible to the will, might give them that freedom which is the
one, and the one only, political or social idea I possess. For
liberty, therefore, let it be included.
For the flesh, this arm of mine, the limbs of others gracefully moving, let
me find something that will give them greater per-
fection. That the bones may be firmer, somewhat larger if that would be an
advantage, certainly stronger, that the cartilage and sinews may be more
enduring, and the muscles more powerful, something after the manner of those
ideal limbs and muscles sculptured of old, these in the flesh and real. That
the organs of the body may be stronger in their action, perfect, and
lasting. That the exterior flesh may be yet more beautiful; that the shape
may be finer, and the motions graceful. These are the soberest words I can
find, purposely chosen; for I am so rapt in the beauty of the human form,
and so earnestly, so inexpressibly, prayerful to see that form perfect, that
my full thought is not to be written. Unable to express it fully, I have
considered it best to put it in the simplest manner of words. I believe in
the human form; let me find something, some method, by which that form may
achieve the utmost beauty. Its beauty is like an arrow, which may be shot
any distance according to the strength of the bow. So the idea expressed in
the human shape is capable of indefinite expansion and elevation of beauty.
Of the mind, the inner consciousness, the soul, my prayer
desired that I might discover a mode of life for it, so that it
might not only conceive of such a life, but actually enjoy it on
the earth. I wished to search out a new and higher set of ideas
on which the mind should work. The simile of a new book of the
soul is the nearest to convey the meaning--a book drawn from
the present and future, not the past. Instead of a set of ideas based on
tradition, let me give the mind a new thought drawn straight from the
wondrous present, direct this very hour. Next, to furnish the soul with the
means of executing its will, of carrying thought into action. In other
words, for the soul to
become a power. These three formed the Lyra prayer, of which the two first
are immeasurably the in more important. I believe in the human being, mind
and flesh; form and soul.
It happened just afterwards that I went to Pevensey, and
immediately the ancient wall swept my mind back seventeen
hundred years to the eagle, the pilum, and the short sword. The
grey stones, the thin red bricks laid by those whose eyes had
seen Caesar's Rome, lifted me out of the grasp of house-life,
of modern civilisation, of those minutiae which occupy the
moment. The grey stone made me feel as if I had existed from
then till now, so strongly did I enter into and see my own
life as if reflected. My own existence was focused back on me;
I saw its joy, its unhappiness, its birth, its death, its
possibilities among the infinite, above all its yearning
Question. Why? Seeing it thus clearly, and lifted out of the
moment by the force of seventeen centuries, I recognised the
full mystery and the depths of things in the roots of the dry
grass on the wall, in the green sea flowing near. Is there
anything I can do? The mystery and the possibilities are not in
the roots of the grass, nor is the depth of things in the sea; they are in
my existence, in my soul. The marvel of existence,
almost the terror of it, was flung on me with crushing force by
the sea, the sun shining, the distant hills. With all their
ponderous weight they made me feel myself: all the time, all the
centuries made me feel myself this moment a hundred-fold. I
determined that I would endeavour to write what I had so long
thought of, and the same evening put down one sentence. There
the sentence remained two years. I tried to carry it on; I hesitated
because I could not express it: nor can I now, though in desperation I am
throwing these rude stones of thought together, rude as those of the ancient
wall.
CHAPTER III
THERE were grass-grown tumuli on the hills to which of old I used to walk,
sit down at the foot of one of them, and think. Some warrior had been
interred there in the antehistoric times. The sun of the summer morning
shone on the dome of sward, and the air came softly up from the wheat below,
the tips of the grasses swayed as it passed sighing faintly, it ceased, and
the bees hummed by to the thyme and heathbells. I became absorbed in the
glory of the day, the sunshine, the sweet air, the yellowing corn turning
from its sappy green to summer's noon of gold, the lark's song like a
waterfall in the sky. I felt at that moment that I was like the spirit of
the man whose body was interred in the tumulus; I could understand and feel
his existence the same as my own. He was as real to me two thousand years
after interment as those I had seen in the body. The abstract personality of
the dead seemed as existent as thought. As my
thought could slip back the twenty centuries in a moment to the forest-days
when he hurled the spear, or shot with the bow, hunting the deer, and could
return again as swiftly to this moment, so his spirit could endure from then
till now, and the time was nothing.
Two thousand years being a second to the soul could not cause
its extinction. Itwas no longer to the soul than my thought occupied to me.
Recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, death did
not seem to me to affect the personality.In dissolution there was no
bridgeless chasm, no unfathomable gulf of separation; the spirit did not
immediately become inaccesible, leaping at a bound to an immeasurable
distance. Look at another person while living;
the soul is not visible, only the body which it animates. Therefore, merely
because after death the soul is not visible is no demonstration that it does
not still live.
The condition of being unseen is the same condition which occurs
while the body is living, so that intrinsically there is nothing
exceptionable, or supernatural, in the life of the soul after death. Resting
by the tumulus, the spirit of the man who had been interred there was to me
really alive, and very close. This was quite natural, as natural and simple
as the grass waving in the wind, the bees humming, and the larks' songs.
Only by the strongest effort of the mind could I understand the idea of
extinction; that was supernatural, requiring a miracle; the immortality of
the soul natural, like earth. Listening to the sighing of the grass I felt
immortality as I felt the beauty of the summer morning, and I thought beyond
immortality, of other conditions, more beautiful than existence, higher than
immortality.
That there is no knowing, in the sense of written reasons,
whether the soul lives on or not, I am fully aware. I do not
hope or fear. At least while I am living I have enjoyed the
idea of immortality, and the idea of my own soul. If then,
after death, I am resolved without exception into earth, air,
and water, and the spirit goes out like a flame, still I shall
have had the glory of that thought.
It happened once that a man was drowned while bathing, and his
body was placed in an outhouse near the garden. I passed the
outhouse continually, sometimes on purpose to think about it,
and it always seemed to me that the man was still living.
Separation is not to be comprehended; the spirit of the man did not appear
to have gone to an in conceivable distance. As my thought flashes itself
back through the centuries to the luxury of Canopus, and can see the gilded
couches of a city extinct, so it slips through the future, and immeasurable
time in front is no bounandary to it. Certainly the man was not dead to me.
Sweetly the summer air came up to the tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the
butterflies went by, sometimes alighting on the green dome. Two thousand
years! Summer after summer the blue butterflies had visited the mound, the
thyme had flowered, the wind sighed in the grass. The azure morning had
spread its arms over the low tomb; and full glowing noon burned on it; the
purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, ruddy in the vapour of the
southern horizon, beamed at midnight through the mystic summer night, which
is dusky and yet full of light. White mists swept up and hid it; dews rested
on the turf; tender harebells drooped; the wings of the finches fanned the
air--finches whose colours faded from the wings how many centuries ago!
Brown autumn dwelt in the woods beneath; the rime of winter whitened the
beech clump on the ridge; again the buds came on the wind-blown hawthorn
bushes, and in the evening the broad constellation of Orion covered the
east. Two thousand times! Two thousand times the woods grew green, and
ring-doves built their nests. Day and night for two thousand years--light
and shadow sweeping over the mound--two thousand years of labour by day and
slumber by night. Mystery gleaming in the stars, pouring down in the
sunshine, speaking in the night, the wonder of the sun and of far space, for
twenty centuries round about this low and green-grown dome. Yet all that
mystery and wonder is as nothing to the Thought that lies therein, to the
spirit that I feel so close.
Realising that spirit, recognising my own inner consciousness,
the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is
eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the
sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden
air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is
the immortal life. Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth,
now; I exist in it. The years, the centuries, the cycles are
absolutely nothing; it is only a moment since this tumulus was raised; in a
thousand years it will still be only a moment. To the soul there is no past
and no future; all is and will be
ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed
on, but is really no such thing. The shadow goes on upon the dial, the index
moves round upon the clock, and what is the difference? None whatever. If
the clock had never been set going, what would have been the difference?
There may be time for the clock, the clock may make time for itself; there
is none for me.
I dip my hand in the brook and feel the stream; in an instant
the particles of water which first touched me have floated
yards down the current, my hand remains there. I take my hand
away, and the flow--the time--of the brook does not exist to me.
The great clock of the firmament, the sun and the stars, the
crescent moon, the earth circling two thousand times, is no
more to me than the flow of the brook when my hand is withdrawn; my soul has
never been, and never can be, dipped in
time. Time has never existed, and never will; it is a purely
artificial arrangement. It is eternity now, it always was eternity, and
always will be. By no possible means could I get into time if I tried. I am
in eternity now and must there remain. Haste not, be at rest, this Now is
eternity. Because the idea of time has left my mind--if ever it had any
hold on it--to me the man interred in the tumulus is living now as I live.
We are both in eternity.
There is no separation-no past; eternity, the Now, is
continuous. When all the stars have revolved they only produce
Now again. The continuity of Now is for ever. So that it
appears to me purely natural, and not super natural, that the
soul whose temporary frame was interred in this mound should be
existing as I sit on the sward. How infinitely deeper is thought than the
million miles of the firmament! The wonder is here, not there; now, not to
be, now always. Things that have been miscalled supernatural appear to me
simple,more natural than nature, than earth, than sea,or sun. It is beyond
telling more natural that I should have a soul than not, that there should
be
immortality; I think there is much more than immortality. It
is matter which is the supernatural, and difficult of under-standing. Why
this clod of earth I hold in my hand? Why this water which drops sparkling
from my fingers dipped in the brook?
Why are they at all? When? How? What for? Matter is beyond understanding,
mysterious, impenetrable; I touch it easily, comprehend it, no. Soul,
mind--the thought, the idea--is easily understood, it understands itself and
is conscious.
The supernatural miscalled, the natural in truth, is the real.
To me everything is supernatural. How strange that condition of mind which
cannot accept anything but the earth, the sea, the tangible universe!
Without the misnamed supernatural these to me seem incomplete, unfinished.
Without soul all these are dead. Except when I walk by the sea, and my soul
is by it, the sea is dead. Those seas by which no man has stood-- which no
soul has been--whether on earth or the planets, are dead. No matter how
majestic the planet rolls in space, unless a soul be there it is dead. As I
move about in the sunshine I feel in the midst of the supernatural: in the
midst of immortal things. It is impossibble to wrest the mind down to the
same laws that rule pieces of timber, water, or earth. They do not control
the soul, however rigidly they may bind matter. So full am I always of a
sense of the immortality now at this moment round about me, that it would
not surprise me in the least if a circumstance outside physical experience
occurred. It would seem to me quite natural. Give the soul the power it
conceives, and there would be nothing wonderful in it.
I can see nothing astonishing in what are called miracles.
Only those who are mesmerised by matter can find a difficulty in
such events. I am aware that the evidence for miracles is
logically and historically untrustworthy; I am not defending
recorded miracles. My point is that in principle I see no
reason at all why they should not take place this day. I do not
even say that there are or ever have been miracles, but I maintain that they
would be perfectly natural. The wonder rather is that they do not happen
frequently. Consider the limitless conceptions of the soul: let it possess
but the power to realise those conceptions for one hour, and how little, how
trifling would be the helping of the injured or the sick to regain health
and happiness--merely to think it. A soul-work would require but a thought.
Soul-work is an expression better suited to my meaning than "miracle," a
term like others into which a special sense has been infused.
When I consider that I dwell this moment in the eternal Now that
has ever been and will be, that I am in the midst of immortal
things this moment, that there probably are Souls as infinitely
superior to mine as mine to a piece of timber, what then, pray,
is a "miracle"? As commonly understood, a "miracle" is a mere nothing. I can
conceive soul-works done by simple will or thought a thousand times greater.
I marvel that they do not
happen this moment. The air, the sunlight, the night, all that
surrounds me seems crowded with inexpressible powers, with the
influence of Souls, or existences, so that I walk in the midst
of immortal things. I myself am a living witness of it.
Sometimes I have concentrated myself, and driven away by continued will all
sense of outward appearances, looking
straight with the full power of my mind inwards on myself.
I find "I" am there; an "I" I do not wholly understand, or know--something
is there distinct from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. Recognising
it, I feel on the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it:
on the verge of powers which if I could grasp would give me an immense
breadth of existence, an ability to execute what I now only conceive; most
probably of far more than that. To see that "I" is to know that I am
surrounded with immortal things. If, when I die, that "I" also dies, and
becomes extinct, still even then I have had the
exaltation of these ideas.
How many words it has taken to describe so briefly the feelings
and the thoughts that came to me by the tumulus; thoughts that
swept past and were gone, and were succeeded by others while yet
the shadow of the mound had not moved from one thyme flower to
another, not the breadth of a grass blade. Softly breathed the sweet south
wind, gently the yellow corn waved beneath; the ancient, ancient sun shone
on the fresh grass and the flower, my heart opened wide as the broad, broad
earth. I spread my arms out, laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, to
take the fulness of the days. Could I have my own way after death I would be
burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of
the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad--not collected urn an
urn--freely sown wide and broadcast. That is the natural interment of
man--of man whose Thought at least has been among the immortals; interment
in the elements. Burial is not enough, it does not give sufficient solution
into the elements speedily; a furnace is confined. The high open air of the
topmost hill, there let the tawny flame lick up the fragment called the
body; there cast the ashes into the space it longed for while living. Such
a luxury of interment is only for the wealthy; I fear I shall not be able to
afford it. Else the smoke of my resolution into the elements should
certainly arise in time on the hill-top.
The silky grass sighs as the wind comescarrying the blue butterfly more
rapidly thanhis wings. A large humble-bee burrs round the green dome against
which I rest; my hands are scented with thyme. The sweetness of the day,
the fulness of the earth, the beauteous earth, how shall I say it?
Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns the inner
consciousness since before written history began. Three things only in
twelve thousand written, or sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time
before then. Three ideas the Cavemen primeval wrested from the unknown, the
night which is round us still in daylight--the existence of the soul, im-
mortality, the deity. These things found, prayer followed as a sequential
result. Since then nothing further has been found in all the twelve thousand
years, as if men had been satisfied and had found these to suffice. They do
not suffice me. I desire to advance further, and to wrest afourth, and even
still more than a fourth, from the darkness of thought. I want more ideas of
soul-life. I am certain that there are more yet to be found. A great
life--an entire civilisation--lies just outside the pale of common thought.
Cities and countries, inhabitants, intelligences, culture--an entire
civilisation. Except by illustrations drawn from familiar things, there is
no way of
indicating a new idea. I do not mean actual cities, actual civilisation.
Such life is different from any yet imagined. A nexus of ideas exists of
which nothing is known--a vast system of ideas--a cosmos of thought. There
is an Entity, a Soul-Entity, as yet unrecognised. These, rudely expressed,
constitute my Fourth Idea. It is beyond, or beside, the three discovered by
the Cavemen; it is in addition to the existence of the soul; in addition to
immortality; and beyond the idea of the deity. I think there is something
more than existence.
There is an immense ocean over which the mind can sail, upon which the
vessel of thought has not yet been launched. I hope
to launch it. The mind of so many thousand years has worked
round and round inside the circle of these three ideas as a
boat on an inland lake. Let us haul it over the belt of land,
launch on the ocean, and sail outwards.
There is so much beyond all that has ever yet been imagined.
As I write these words, in the very moment, I feel that the
whole air, the sunshine out yonder lighting up the
ploughed earth, the distant sky, the circumambient ether, and
that far space, is full of soul-secrets, soul-life, things
outside the experience of all the ages. The fact of my own
existence as I write, as I exist at this second, is so
marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and supernatural to me,
that I unhesitatingly conclude I am always on the margin of life
illimitable, and that there are higher conditions than
existence. Everything around is supernatural; everything so
full of unexplained meaning.
Twelve thousand years since the Caveman stood at the mouth of his cavern and
gazed out at the night and the stars. He looked again and saw the sun rise
beyond the sea. He reposed in the noontide heat under the shade of the
trees, he closed his eyes and looked into himself. He was face to face with
the earth, the sun, the night; face to face with himself. There was nothing
between; no wall of written tradition; no builtup system of
culture--his naked mind was confronted by naked earth. He made
three idea-discoveries, wresting them from the unknown; the
existence of his soul, immortality, the deity. Now, to-day, as
I write, I stand in exactly the same position as the Caveman.
Written tradition, systems of culture, modes of thought, have
for me no existence. If ever they took any hold of my mind it
must have been very slight; they have long ago been erased.
>From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day,
the trees, the hills, from my own soul--from these I think. I
stand this moment at the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with
nature, face to face with the supernatural, with myself. My naked mind
confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all;
I see other and higher conditions than existence; I see not only the
existence of the soul, immortality, but, in addition, I realise a soul-life
illimitable; I realise the existence of a cosmos of thought; I
realise the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely
higher than deity. I strive to give utterance to a Fourth Idea.
The very idea that there is another idea is something gained.
The three found by the Cavemen are but steppingstones: first
links of an endless chain. At the mouth of the ancient cave,
face to face with the unknown, they prayed. Prone in heart to-
day I pray, Give me the deepest soul-life.
CHAPTER IV
THE wind sighs through the grass, sighs in the sunshine; it has
drifted the butterfly eastwards along the hill. A few yards
away there lies the skull of a lamb on the turf, white and
bleached, picked clean long since by crows and ants. Like the
faint ripple of the summer sea sounding in the hollow of the
ear, so the sweet air ripples in the grass. The ashes of the
man interred in the tumuius are indistinguishable; they have
sunk away like rain into the earth; so his body has disappeared.
I am under no delusion; I am fully aware that no demonstration can be given
of the three stepping-stones of the Cavemen. The soul is inscrutable; it is
not in evidence to show that it exists; immortality is not tangible. Full
well I know that
reason and knowledge and experience tend to disprove all three;
that experience denies answer to prayer. I am under no delusion
whatever; I grasp death firmly in conception as I can grasp this
bleached bone; utter extinction, annihilation. That the soul is
a product at best of organic composition; that it goes out like
a flame. This may be the end; my soul may sink like rain into
the earth and disappear. Wind and earth, sea, and night and
day, what then? Let my soul be but a product, what then? I say it is nothing
to me; this only I know, that while I have lived--now, this moment, while I
live--I think immortality, I lift my mind to a Fourth Idea. If I pass into
utter oblivion, yet I have had that.
The original three ideas of the Cavemen became encumbered with
superstition; ritual grew up, and ceremony, and long ranks of
souls were painted on papyri waiting to be weighed in the scales,and to be
punished or rewarded. These cobwebs grotesque have sullied the original
discoveries and cast them
into discredit. Erase them altogether, and consider only the underlying
principles. The principles do not go far enough, but I shall not discard all
of them for that. Even supposing the pure principles to be illusions, and
annihilation the end, even then it is better--it is something gained to have
thought them. Thought is life; to have thought them is to have lived them.
Accepting two of them as true in principle, then I say that these are but
the threshold. For twelve thousand years no effort
has been made to get beyond that threshold. These are but the primer of
soul-life; the merest hieroglyphics chipped out, a little shape given to the
unknown.
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