The Story of My Heart
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Richard Jefferies >> The Story of My Heart
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Not to-morrow but to-day. Not the to-morrow of the tumulus, the hour of the
sunshine now. This moment give me to live soul-life, not only after death.
Now is eternity, now I am in the
midst of immortality; now the supernatural crowds around me. Open my mind,
give my soul to see, let me live it now on earth, while I hear the burring
of the larger bees, the sweet air in the grass, and watch the yellow wheat
wave beneath me. Sun and earth and sea, night and day--these are the least
of things. Give me soul-life.
There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so dearly, would
let me perish on the ground, and neither bring forth food nor water. Burning
in the sky the great sun, of whose company I have been so fond, would merely
burn on and make no motion to assist me. Those who have been in an open boat
at sea without water have proved the mercies of the sun, and
of the deity who did not give them one drop of rain, dying
in misery under the same rays that smile so beautifully on the flowers. In
the south the sun is the enemy; night and coolness and rain are the friends
of man. As for the sea, it offers us salt water which we cannot drink. The
trees care nothing for us; the hill I visited so often in days gone by has
not missed me. The sun scorches man, and willing his naked state roast him
alive. The sea and the fresh water alike make no effort to
uphold him if his vessel founders; he casts up his arms in vain, they come
to their level over his head, filling the spot his body occupied. If he
falls from a cliff the air parts; the earth beneath dashes him to pieces.
Water he can drink, but it is not produced for him; how many thousands have
perished for want of it? Some fruits are produced which he can eat, but they
do not produce themselves for him; merely for the purpose of continuing
their species. In wild, tropical countries, at the first glance there
appears to be some consideration for him, but it is on the surface only. The
lion pounces on him, the rhinoceros crushes him, the serpent bites, insects
torture, diseases rack him. Disease worked its dreary will even among the
flower-crowned Polynesians. Returning to our
own country, this very thyme which scents my fingers did not grow for that
purpose, but for its own. So does the wheat beneath; we utilise it, but its
original and native purpose was for itself. By night it is the same as by
day; the stars care not, they pursue their courses revolving, and we are
nothing to them. There is nothing human in the whole round of nature.
All nature, all the universe that we can see, is absolutely indifferent to
us, and except to us human life is of no more value than grass. If the
entire human race perished at this hour, what difference would it make to
the
earth? What would the earth care? As much as for the extinct dodo, or for
the fate of the elephant now going.
On the contrary, a great part, perhaps the whole, of nature and
of the universe is distinctly anti-human. The term inhuman does
not express my meaning, anti-human is better; outre-human, in
the sense of beyond, outside, almost grotesque in its attitude
towards, would nearly convey it. Everything is anti-human. How
extraordinary, strange, and incomprehensible are the creatures
captured out of the depths of the sea! The distorted fishes; the ghastly
cuttles; the hideous eel-like shapes; the crawling shell-encrusted things;
the centipede-like beings; monstrous
forms, to see which gives a shock to the brain. They shock the
mind because they exhibit an absence of design. There is no
idea in them.
They have no shape, form, grace, or purpose; they call up a vague sense of
chaos, chaos which the mind revolts from. It
would be a relief to the thought if they ceased to be, and
utterly disappeared from the sea. They are not inimical of
intent towards man, not even the shark; but there the shark is,
and that is enough. These miserably hideous things of the sea
are not anti-human in the sense of persecution, they are outside, they are
ultra and beyond. It is like looking into
chaos, and it is vivid because these creatures, interred alive a
hundred fathoms deep, are seldom seen; so that the mind sees
them as if only that moment they had come into existence. Use
has not habituated it to them, so that their anti-human character is at once
apparent, and stares at us with glassy eye.
But it is the same in reality with the creatures on the earth.
There are some of these even now to which use has not accus-
tomed the mind. Such, for instance, as the toad. At its
shapeless shape appearing in an unexpected corner many people
start and exclaim. They are aware that they shall receive no
injury from it, yet it affrights them, it sends a shock to the
mind. The reason lies in its obviously anti-human character.
All the designless, formless chaos of chance-directed matter,
without idea or human plan, squats there embodied in the
pathway. By watching the creature, and convincing the mind
from observation that it is harmless, and even has uses, the
horror wears away. But still remains the form to which the
mind can never reconcile itself. Carved in wood it is still
repellent.
Or suddenly there is a rustle like a faint hiss in the grass,
and a green snake glides over the bank. The breath in the
chest seems to lose its vitality; for an instant the nerves
refuse to transmit the force of life. The gliding yellow-streaked worm is so
utterly opposed to the ever present Idea in the mind. Custom may reduce the
horror, but no long pondering can ever bring that creature within the pale
of the human Idea. These are so distinctly opposite and anti-human that
thousands of years have not sufficed to soften their outline. Various
insects and creeping creatures excite the same sense in lesser degrees.
Animals and birds in general do not. The tiger is dreaded, but causes no
disgust. The exception is in those that feed on offal. Horses and dogs we
love; we not only do not recognise anything opposite in them, we come to
love them.
They are useful to us, they show more or less sympathy with us,
they possess, especially the horse, a certain grace of movement.
A gloss, as it were, is thrown over them by these attributes and
by familiarity. The shape of the horse to the eye has become
conventional: it is accepted. Yet the horse is not in any
sense human. Could we look at it suddenly, without previous
acquaintance, as at strange fishes in a tank, the ultra-human
character of the horse would be apparent. It is the curves of
the neck and body that carry the horse past without adverse
comment. Examine the hind legs in detail, and the curious
backward motion, the shape and anti-human curves become apparent.
Dogs take us by their intelligence, but they have no hand; pass
the hand over the dog's head, and the shape of the skull to the
sense of feeling is almost as repellent as the form of the toad
to the sense of sight. We have gradually gathered around us all
the creatures that are less markedly anti-human, horses and dogs
and birds, but they are still themselves. They originally
existed like the wheat, for themselves; we utilise them, but they are not of
us.
There is nothing human in any living animal. All nature, the universe as far
as we see, is anti- or ultra-human, outside, and has no concern with man.
These things are unnatural to him. By no course of reasoning, however
tortuous, can nature and the universe be fitted to the mind. Nor can the
mind be fitted to the cosmos. My mind cannot be twisted to it; I am separate
altogether from these designless things. The soul cannot be wrested down to
them. The laws of nature are of no importance to it. I refuse to be bound by
the laws of the tides, nor am I so bound. Though bodily swung round on this
rotating globe, my mind always remains in the centre. No tidal law, no
rotation, no gravitation can control my thought.
Centuries of thought have failed to reconcile and fit the mind
to the universe, which is designless, and purposeless, and
without idea. I will not endeavour to fit my thought to it any longer; I
find and believe myself to be distinct--separate; and I will labour in
earnest to obtain the highest culture for myself. As these natural things
have no connection with man, it follows again that the natural is the
strange and mysterious, and the supernatural the natural.
There being nothing human in nature or the universe, and all
things being ultra-human and without design, shape, or purpose,
I conclude that, no deity has anything to do with nature.
There is no god in nature, nor in any matter anywhere, either
in the clods on the earth or in the composition of the stars.
For what we understand by the deity is the purest form of Idea,
of Mind, and no mind is exhibited in these. That which
controls them is distinct altogether from deity. It is not
force in the sense of electricity, nor a deity as god, nor a
spirit, not even an intelligence, but a power quite different to anything
yet imagined. I cease, therefore, to look for deity in nature or the cosmos
at large, or to trace any marks of divine handiwork. I search for traces of
this force which is not god, and is certainly not the higher than deity of
whom I have written. It is a force without a mind. I wish to indicate
something more subtle than electricity, but absolutely devoid of
consciousness, and with no more feeling than the force which liftsthe tides.
Next, in human affairs, in the relations of man with man, in the
conduct of life, in the events that occur, in human affairs
generally everything happens by chance. No prudence in conduct,
no wisdom or foresight can effect anything, for the most trivial
circumstance will upset the deepest plan of the wisest mind. As
Xenophon observed in old times, wisdom is like casting dice and
determining your course by the number that appears. Virtue, humanity, the
best and most beautiful conduct is wholly in vain. The history of thousands
of years demonstrates it. In all these years there is no more moving
instance on record than that of Danae, when she was dragged to the
precipice, two thousand years ago. Sophron was governor of Ephesus, and
Laodice plotted to assassinate him. Danae discovered the plot,and warned
Sophron, who fled, and saved his life. Laodice--the murderess in intent--had
Danae seized and cast from a cliff. On the verge Danae said that some
persons despised the deity, and they might now prove the justice of their
contempt by her fate. For having saved the man who was to her as a husband,
she was rewarded in this way with cruel death by the deity, but Laodice was
advanced to honour. The bitterness of these words remains to this hour.
In truth the deity, if responsible for such a thing, or for
similar things which occur now, should be despised. One must
always despise the fatuous belief in such a deity. But as
everything in human affairs obviously happens by chance, it is
clear that no deity is responsible. If the deity guides chance
in that manner, then let the deity be despised. Apparently the
deity does not interfere, and all things happen by chance. I
cease, therefore, to look for traces of the deity in life,
because no such traces exist.
I conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than
soul--higher, better, and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I
pray to find this something better than a god. There is something superior,
higher,more good. For this I search, labour, think, and pray. If after all
there be nothing, and my soul has to go out like a flame, yet even then I
have thought this while it lives. With the whole force of my existence, with
the whole force of my thought, mind, and soul, I pray to find this Highest
Soul, this greater than deity, this better than god. Give me to live the
deepest soul-life now and always with this Soul. For want of words I write
soul, but I think that it is something beyond soul.
CHAPTER V
IT is not possible to narrate these incidents of the mind in
strict order. I must now return to a period earlier than
anything already narrated, and pass in review other phases of my
search from then up till recently. So long since that I have
forgotten the date, I used every morning to visit a spot where I
could get a clear view of the east. Immediately on rising I
went out to some elms; thence I could see across the dewy fields
to the distant hill over or near which the sun rose. These elms partially
hid me, for at that time I had a dislike to being seen, feeling that I
should be despised if I was noticed. This happened once or twice, and I knew
I was watched contemptuously,
though no one had the least idea of my object. But I went
every morning, and was satisfied if I could get two or three minutes to
think unchecked. Often I saw the sun rise over the line of the hills, but if
it was summer the sun had been up a long time.
I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass, and then up through
the elm branches to the sky. In a moment all that was behind
me, the house, the people, the sounds, seemed to disappear, and to leave me
alone. Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I
breathed slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up through the
illumined sky, and I was lost in a moment of exaltation. This only lasted a
very short time, perhaps only
part of a second, and while it lasted there was no formulated wish. I was
absorbed; I drank the beauty of the morning; I was exalted. When it ceased
I did wish for some increase or enlargement of my existence to correspond
with the largeness of feeling I had momentarily enjoyed. Sometimes the wind
came through the tops of the elms, and the slender boughs bent, and gazing
up through them, and beyond the fleecy clouds, I felt lifted up. The light
coming across the grass and leaving itself on the dew-drops, the sound of
the wind, and the sense of mounting to the lofty heaven, filled me with a
deep sigh, a wish to draw something out of the beauty of it, some part of
that which caused my admiration, the subtle inner essence.
Sometimes the green tips of the highest boughs seemed gilded,
the light laid a gold on the green. Or the trees bowed to a
stormy wind roaring through them, the grass threw itself down, and in the
east broad curtains of a rosy tint stretched along. The light was turned to
redness in the vapour, and rain hid the
summit of the hill. In the rush and roar of the stormy wind the
same exaltation, the same desire, lifted me for a moment. I went there every
morning, I could not exactly define why; it was like going to a rose bush to
taste the scent of the flower and feel the dew from its petals on the lips.
But I desired the beauty--the inner subtle meaning--to be in me, that I
might have it, and with it an existence of a higher kind.
Later on I began to have daily pilgrimages to think these things. There was
a feeling that I must go somewhere, and be alone. It was a necessity to have
a few minutes of this separate life every day; my mind required to live its
own life apart from other things. A great oak at a short distance was one
resort, and sitting on the grass at the roots, or leaning against the trunk
and looking over the quiet meadows towards the bright southern sky, I could
live my own life a little while. Behind the trunk I was alone; I liked to
lean against it; to touch the lichenon the rough bark. High in the wood of
branches the birds were not alarmed; they sang, or called, and passed to and
fro happily. The wind moved the leaves, and they replied to it softly; and
now at this distance of time I can see the fragments of sky up through the
boughs. Bees were always humming in the green field; ring-doves went over
swiftly, flying for the woods.
Of the sun I was conscious; I could not look at it, but the boughs held back
the beams so that I could feel the sun's
presence pleasantly. They shaded the sun, yet let me know that
it was there. There came to me a delicate, but at the same time
a deep, strong, and sensuous enjoyment of the beautiful green
earth, the beautiful sky and sun; I felt them, they gave me
inexpressible delight, as if they embraced and poured out their love upon
me. It was I who loved them, for my heart was broader than the earth; it is
broader now than even then, more thirsty and desirous. After the sensuous
enjoyment always came the thought, the desire: That I might be like this;
that I might have the inner meaning of the sun, the light, the earth, the
trees and grass, translated into some growth of excellence in myself, both
of body and of mind; greater perfection of physique, greater perfection of
mind and soul; that I might be higher in myself. To this oak I came daily
for a long time; sometimes only for a minute, for just to view the spot was
enough. In the bitter cold of spring, when the north wind blackened
everything, I used to come now and then at night to look from under the bare
branches at the splendour of the southern sky. The stars burned with
brilliance, broad Orion and flashing Sirius--there are more or brighter
constellations visible then than all the year: and the clearness of the air
and the blackness of the sky--black, not clouded--let them gleam in their
fulness. They lifted me--they gave me fresh vigour of soul. Not all that the
stars could have given, had they been destinies, could have satiated me.
This, all this, and
more, I wanted in myself.
There was a place a mile or so along the road where the hills
could be seen much better; I went there frequently to think the
same thought. Another spot was by an elm, a very short walk,
where openings in the trees, and the slope of the ground,
brought the hills well into view. This too, was a favourite
thinking-place. Another was a wood, half an hour's walk
distant, through part of which a rude track went, so that it was
not altogether inclosed. The ash-saplings, and the trees, the
firs, the hazel bushes--to be among these enabled me to be
myself. From the buds of spring to the berries of autumn, I
always liked to be there. Sometimes in spring there was a sheen of
blue-bells covering acres; the doves cooed; the blackbirds whistled sweetly;
there was a taste of green things in the air. But it was the tall firs that
pleased me most; the glance rose up the flame-shaped fir-tree, tapering to
its green tip, and above was the azure sky. By aid of the tree I felt the
sky more. By aid of everything beautiful I felt myself, and in that intense
sense of consciousness prayed for greater perfection of soul and body.
Afterwards, I walked almost daily more than two miles along the
road to a spot where the hills began, where from the first rise
the road could be seen winding southwards over the hills, open
and uninclosed. I paused a minute or two by a clump of firs, in
whose branches the wind always sighed--there is always a movement of the air
on a hill. Southwwards the sky was illumined by the sun, southwards the
clouds moved across the opening or pass in the amphitheatre, and southwards,
though far distant, was the sea. There I could think a moment. These
pilgrimages gave me a few sacred minutes daily; the moment seemed holy when
the thought or desire came in its full force.
A time came when, having to live in a town, these pilgrimages
had to be suspended. The wearisome work on which I was engaged
would not permit of them. But I used to look now and then, from
a window, in the evening at a birch-tree at some distance; its
graceful boughs drooped across the glow of the sunset. The
thought was not suspended; it lived in me always. A bitterer
time still came when it was necessary to be separated from those
I loved. There is little indeed in the more immediate suburbs
of London to gratify the sense of the beautiful. Yet there was a cedar by
which I used to walk up and down, and think the
same thoughts as under the great oak in the solitude of the sunlit meadows.
In the course of slow time happier circumstances brought us together again,
and, though near London, at a spot where there was easy access to meadows
and woods. Hills that purify those who walk on them there were
not. Still I thought my old thoughts.
I was much in London, and, engagements completed, I wandered about in the
same way as in the woods of former days. From the
stone bridges I looked down on the river; the gritty dust, the
straws that lie on the bridges, flew up and whirled round with
every gust from the flowing tide; gritty dust that settles in
the nostrils and on the lips, the very residuum of all that is
repulsive in the greatest city of the world. The noise of the
traffic and the constant pressure from the crowds passing,
their incessant and disjointed talk, could not distract me. One moment at
least I had, a moment when I thought of the push of the great sea forcing
the water to flow under the feet of these crowds, the distant sea strong and
splendid; when I saw the sunlight gleam on the tidal wavelets; when I felt
the wind, and was conscious of the earth, the sea, the sun, the air, the
immense forces working on, while the city hummed by the river. Nature was
deepened by the crowds and foot-worn stones. If the tide had ebbed, and the
masts of the vessels were tilted as the hulls rested on the shelving mud,
still even the blackened mud did not prevent me seeing the water as water
flowing to the sea. The sea had drawn down, and the wavelets washing the
strand here as they hastened were running the faster to it. Eastwards from
London Bridge the river raced to the ocean.
The bright morning sun of summer heated the eastern parapet of
London Bridge; I stayed in the recess to acknowledge it. The
smooth water was a broad sheen of light, the built-up river
flowed calm and silent by a thousand doors, rippling only where
the stream chafed against a chain. Red pennants drooped, gilded
vanes gleamed on polished masts, black-pitched hulls glistened
like a black rook's feathers in sunlight; the clear air cut out
the forward angles of the warehouses, the shadowed wharves were
quiet in shadows that carried light; far down the ships that
were hauling out moved in repose, and with the stream floated
away into the summer mist. There was a faint blue colour in the
air hovering between the built-up banks, against the lit walls,
in the hollows of the houses. The swallows wheeled and climbed, twittered
and glided downwards. Burning on, the great sun stood in the sky, heating
the parapet, glowing steadfastly upon me as when I rested in the narrow
valley grooved out in prehistoric
times. Burning on steadfast, and ever present as my thought.
Lighting the broad river, the broad walls; lighting the least speck of dust;
lighting the great heaven; gleaming on my
finger-nail. The fixed point of day--the sun. I was intensely
conscious of it; I felt it; I felt the presence of the immense
powers of the universe; I felt out into the depths of the ether. So
intensely conscious of the sun, the sky, the limitless space, I felt too in
the midst of eternity then, in the midst of the supernatural, among the
immortal, and the greatness of the material realised the spirit. By these I
saw my soul; by these I knew the supernatural to be more intensely real than
the sun. I touched the supernatural, the immortal, there that moment.
When, weary of walking on the pavements, I went to rest in the
National Gallery, I sat and rested before one or other of the
human pictures. I am not a picture lover: they are flat surfaces, but those
that I call human are nevertheless
beautiful. The knee in Daphnis and Chloe and the breast are
like living things; they draw the heart towards them, the heart
must love them. I lived in looking; without beauty there is no
life for me, the divine beauty of flesh is life itself to me.
The shoulder in the Surprise, the rounded rise of the bust, the
exquisite tints of the ripe skin, momentarily gratified the sea-
thirst in me. For I thirst with all the thirst of the salt sea,
and the sun-heated sands dry for the tide, with all the sea I
thirst for beauty. And I know full well that one lifetime,
however long, cannot fill my heart. My throat and tongue and
whole body have often been parched and feverish dry with
this measureless thirst, and again moist to the fingers' ends
like a sappy bough. It burns in me as the sun burns in the
sky.
The glowing face of Cytherea in Titian's Venus and Adonis, the
heated cheek, the lips that kiss each eye that gazes on them,
the desiring glance, the golden hair--sunbeams moulded into
features--this face answered me. Juno's wide back and mesial
groove, is any thing so lovely as the back ? Cythereals poised
hips unveiled for judgment; these called up the same thirst I
felt on the green sward in the sun, on the wild beach listening
to the quiet sob as the summer wave drank at the land. I will
search the world through for beauty. I came here and sat to
rest before these in the days when I could not afford to buy so
much as a glass of ale, weary and faint from walking on stone
pavements. I came later on, in better times, often straight
from labours which though necessary will ever be distasteful, always to rest
my heart with loveliness. I go still; the divine beauty of flesh is life
itself to me. It was, and is, one of my London pilgrimages.
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