The Story of My Heart
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Richard Jefferies >> The Story of My Heart
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In these material things, too, I think that we require another circle of
ideas, and I believe that such ideas are possible, and, in a manner of
speaking, exist. Let me exhort every one to do their utmost to think outside
and beyond our present circle of ideas. For every idea gained is a hundred
years of slavery remitted. Even with the idea of organisation which promises
most I am not satisfied, but endeavour to get beyond and outside it, so that
the time now necessary may be shortened. Besides which, I see that many of
our difficulties arise from obscure and remote causes--obscure like the
shape of bones, for whose strange curves there is no familiar term. We must
endeavour to understand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves of the
conditions of life. Beyond that still there are other ideas. Never, never
rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider
one is still possible. For my
thought is like a hyperbola that continually widens ascending.
For grief there is no known consolation. It is useless to fill our hearts
with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone, and as to the future--even if there
is a future--it is unknown. To assure ourselves otherwise is to soothe the
mind with illusions; the bitterness of it is inconsolable. The sentiments of
trust chipped out on tombstones are touching instances of the innate
goodness of the human heart, which naturally longs for good, and sighs
itself to sleep in the hope that, if parted, the parting is for the benefit
of those that are gone. But these inscriptions are also awful instances of
the deep intellectual darkness which presses still on the minds of men. The
least thought erases them. There is no consolation. There is no relief.
There is no hope certain; the whole system is a mere illusion. I, who hope
so much, and am so rapt up in the soul, know full well that there is no
certainty.
The tomb cries aloud to us--its dead silence presses on the drum
of the ear like thunder, saying, Look at this, and erase your
illusions; now know the extreme value of human life; reflect on
this and strew human life with flowers; save every hour for the
sunshine; let your labour be so ordered that in future times the loved ones
may dwell longer with those who love them; open your
minds; exalt your souls; widen the sympathies of your hearts;
face the things that are now as you will face the reality of death; make joy
real now to those you love, and help forward the joy of those yet to be
born. Let these facts force the mind and the soul to the increase of
thought, and the consequent remission of misery; so that those whose time it
is to die may have enjoyed all that is possible in life. Lift up your mind
and see now in this bitterness of parting, in this absence of certainty, the
fact that there is no directing intelligence; remember that this death is
not of old age, which no one living in the world has ever seen; remember
that old age is possible, and perhaps even more than old age; and beyond
these earthly things-what? None know. But let us, turning away from the
illusion of a directing intelligence, look earnestly for something better
than a god, seek for something higher than
prayer, and lift our souls to be with the more than immortal
now.
A river runs itself clear during the night, and in sleep
thought becomes pellucid. All the hurrying to and fro, the
unrest and stress, the agitation and confusion subside. Like a
sweet pure spring, thought pours forth to meet the light, and
is illumined to its depths. The dawn at my window ever causes
a desire for larger thought, the recognition of the light at
the moment of waking kindles afresh the wish for a broad day of
the mind. There is a certainty that there are yet ideas further, and
greater--that there is still a limitless beyond. I know at that moment that
there is no limit to the things that may be yet in material and tangible
shape besides the immaterial perceptions of the soul. The dim white light of
the dawn speaks it. This prophet which has come with its wonders to the
bedside of every human being for so many thousands of years faces me once
again with the upheld finger of light. Where is the limit to that physical
sign?
>From space to the sky, from the sky to the hills, and the sea;
to every blade of grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect,
to the million waves of ocean. Yet this earth itself appears
but a mote in that sunbeam by which we are conscious of one
narrow streak in the abyss. A beam crosses my silent chamber
from the window, and atoms are visible in it; a beam slants
between the fir-trees, and particles rise and fall within, and cross it
while the air each side seems void. Through the heavens a beam slants, and
we are aware of the star-stratum in which our earth moves. But what may be
without that stratum? Certainly it is not a void. This light tells us much,
but I think in the course of time yet more delicate and subtle mediums than
light may be found, and through these we shall see into the shadows of the
sky. When will it be possible to be certain that the capacity of a single
atom has been exhausted? At any moment some fortunate incident may reveal a
fresh power. One by one the powers of light have been unfolded.
After thousands of years the telescope opened the stars, the
prism analysed the substance of the sun, the microscope showed
the minute structure of the rocks and the tissues of living
bodies. The winged men on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, the gods of
the Nile, the chariot-borne immortals of Olympus, not the
greatest of imagined beings ever possessed in fancied attributes
one-tenth the power of light. As the swallows twitter, the dim
white finger appears at my window full of wonders, such as all
the wise men in twelve thousand precedent years never even hoped
to conceive. But this is not all--light is not all; light conceals more than
it reveals; light is the darkest shadow of the sky; besides light there are
many other mediums yet to be explored. For thousands of years the sunbeams
poured on the earth, full as now of messages, and light is not a hidden
thing to be searched out with difficulty. Full in the faces of men the rays
came with their intelligence from the sun when the papyri were painted
beside the ancient Nile, but they were not understood.
This hour, rays or undulations of more subtle mediums are
doubtless pouring on us over the wide earth, unrecognised, and
full of messages and intelligence from the unseen. Of these we
are this day as ignorant as those who painted the papyri were of
light. There is an infinity of knowledge yet to be known, and
beyond that an infinity of thought. No mental instrument even has yet been
invented by which researches can be carried direct to the object. Whatever
has been found has been discovered by fortunate accident; in looking for one
thing another has been chanced on. A reasoning process has yet to be
invented by which to go straight to the desired end. For now the slightest
particle is enough to throw the search aside, and the most minute
circumstance sufficient to conceal obvious and brilliantly shining truths.
One summer evening sitting by my window I watched for the first star to
appear, knowing the position of the brightest in the southern sky. The dusk
came on, grew deeper, but the star did not shine. By-and-by, other stars
less bright appeared, so that it could not be the sunset which obscured the
expected one. Finally, I considered that I must have mistaken its position,
when suddenly a puff of air blew through the branch of a pear-tree which
overhung the window, a leaf moved, and there was the star behind the leaf.
At present the endeavour to make discoveries is like gazing at
the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful star
shines clearly; here a constellation is hidden by a branch; a
universe by a leaf. Some mental instrument or organon is
required to enable us to distinguish between the leaf which may
be removed and a real void; when to cease to look in one direction, and to
work in another. Many men of broad brow and great intellect lived in the
days of ancient Greece, but for lack of the accident of a lens, and of
knowing the way to use a prism, they could but conjecture imperfectly. I am
in exactly the position they were when I look beyond light. Outside my
present knowledge I am exactly in their condition. I feel that there are
infinities to be known, but they are hidden by
a leaf. If any one says to himself that the telescope, and the microscope,
the prism, and other discoveries have made all plain, then he is in the
attitude of those ancient priests who worshipped the scarabaeus or beetle.
So, too, it is with thought; outside our present circle of ideas I believe
there is an infinity of idea. All this that has been effected with light
has been done by bits of glass--mere bits of shaped glass, quickly broken,
and made of flint, so that by the rude flint our subtlest ideas are gained.
Could we employ the ocean as a lens, and force truth from the sky, even then
I think there would be much more beyond.
Natural things are known to us only under two conditions--matter
and force, or matter and motion. A third, a fourth, a fifth--no
one can say how many conditions--may exist in the ultra-stellar
space, and such other conditions may equally exist about us now
unsuspected. Something which is neither matter nor force is difficult to
conceive, yet, I think, it is certain that there are other conditions. When
the mind succeeds in entering on a wider series, or circle of ideas, other
conditions would appear
natural enough. In this effort upwards I claim the assistance
of the soul--the mind of the mind. The eye sees, the mind
deliberates on what it sees, the soul understands the operation
of the mind. Before a bridge is built, or a structure erected,
or an interoceanic canal made, there must be a plan, and before
a plan the thought in the mind. So that it is correct to say
the mind bores tunnels through the mountains, bridges the
rivers, and constructs the engines which are the pride of the
world.
This is a wonderful tool, but it is capable of work yet more
wonderful in the exploration of the heavens. Now the soul is
the mind of the mind. It can build and construct and look beyond
and penetrate space, and create. It is the keenest, the
sharpest tool possessed by man. But what would be said if a
carpenter about to commence a piece of work examined his tools
and deliberately cast away that with the finest edge? Such is
the conduct of those who reject the inner mind or psyche
altogether. So great is the value of the soul that it seems to
me, if the soul lived and received its aspirations it would not
matter if the material universe melted away as snow. Many turn
aside the instant the soul is mentioned, and I sympathise with
them in one sense; they fear lest, if they acknowledge it, they
will be fettered by mediaeval conditions. My contention is that
the restrictions of the mediaeval era should entirely be cast
into oblivion, but the soul recognised and employed. Instead of
slurring over the soul, I desire to see it at its highest
perfection.
CHAPTER XII
SUBTLE as the mind is, it can effect little without knowledge.
It cannot construct a bridge, or a building, or make a canal, or
work a problem in algebra, unless it is provided with
information. This is obvious, and yet some say, What can you
effect by the soul? I reply because it has had no employment. Mediaeval
conditions kept it in slumber: science refuses to accept it. We are taught
to employ our minds, and furnished with materials. The mind has its logic
and exercise of geometry, and thus assisted brings a great force to the
solution of problems. The soul remains untaught, and can effect little.
I consider that the highest purpose of study is the education of the soul or
psyche. It is said that there is no proof of the existence of the soul, but,
arguing on the same grounds, there is no proof of the existence of the mind,
which is not a tangible thing. For myself, I feel convinced that there is a
soul, a mind of the mind--and that it really exists. Now, glancing at the
state of wild and uneducated men, it is evident that they work with their
hands and make various things almost instinctively. But when they arrive at
the idea of mind, and say to themselves, I possess a mind, then they think
and proceed
farther, forming designs and constructions both tangible and
mental.
Next then, when we say, I have a soul, we can proceed to shape
things yet further, and to see deeper, and penetrate the
mystery. By denying the existence and the power of the soul--
refusing to employ it--we should go back more than twelve
thousand written years of human history. But instead of this,
I contend, we should endeavour to go forward, and to discover a fourth Idea,
and after that a fifth, and onwards continually.
I will not permit myself to be taken captive by observing
physical phenomena, as many evidently are. Some gases are
mingled and produce a liquid; certainly it is worth careful
investigation, but it is no more than the revolution of a
wheel, which is so often seen that it excites no surprise,
though, in truth, as wonderful. So is all motion, and so is a
grain of sand; there is nothing that is not wonderful; as, for
instance, the fact of the existence of things at all. But the
intense concentration of the mind on mechanical effects appears
often to render it incapable of perceiving anything that is not
mechanical. Some compounds are observed to precipitate crystals, all of
which contain known angles. Thence it is argued that all is mechanical, and
that action occurs in set ways only. There
is a tendency to lay it down as an infallible law that because
we see these things therefore everything else that exists in
space must be or move exactly in the same manner. But I do not
think that because crystals are precipitated with fixed angles
therefore the whole universe is necessarily mechanical. I think
there are things exempt from mechanical rules. The restriction
of thought to purely mechanical grooves blocks progress in the
same way as the restrictions of mediaeval superstition. Let the
mind think, dream, imagine: let it have perfect freedom. To
shut out the soul is to put us back more than twelve thousand
years.
Just as outside light, and the knowledge gained from light,
there are, I think, other mediums from which, in times to come,
intelligence will be obtained, so outside the mental and the spiritual ideas
we now possess I believe there exists a whole circle of ideas. In the
conception of the idea that there are others, I lay claim to another idea.
The mind is infinite and able to understand everything that is
brought before it; there is no limit to its understanding. The
limit is in the littleness of the things and the narrowness of
the ideas which have been put for it to consider. For the
philosophies of old time past and the discoveries of modern
research are as nothing to it. They do not fill it. When they
have been read, the mind passes on, and asks for more. The
utmost of them, the whole together, make a mere nothing. These
things have been gathered together by immense labour, labour
so great that it is a weariness to think of it; but yet, when
all is summed up and written, the mind receives it all as
easily as the hand picks flowers. It is like one sentence--
read and gone.
The mind requires more, and more, and more. It is so strong
that all that can be put before it is devoured in a moment.
Left to itself it will not be satisfied with an invisible
idol any more than with a wooden one. An idol whose attributes are
omnipresence, omnipotence, and so on, is no greater than light or
electricity, which are present everywhere and all-powerful, and from which
perhaps the thought arose. Prayer which receives no reply must be pronounced
in vain. The mind goes on and requires more than these, something higher
than prayer, something higher than a god.
I have been obliged to write these things by an irresistible
impulse which has worked in me since early youth. They have not
been written for the sake of argument, still less for any thought of profit,
rather indeed the reverse. They have been forced from me by earnestness of
heart, and they express my most serious convictions. For seventeen years
they have been lying in my mind, continually thought of and pondered over. I
was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come
to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me.
I found them in the grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at
sunrise, and in the night. There was a deeper meaning everywhere. The sun
burned with it, the broad front of morning beamed with it; a deep feeling
entered me while gazing at the sky in the azure noon, and in the star-lit
evening.
I was sensitive to all things, to the earth under, and the
star-hollow round about; to the least blade of grass, to the
largest oak. They seemed like exterior nerves and veins
for the conveyance of feeling to me. Sometimes a very ecstasy
of exquisite enjoyment of the entire visible universe filled
me. I was aware that in reality the feeling and the thought were
in me, and not in the earth or sun; yet I was more conscious of
it when in company with these. A visit to the sea increased
the strength of the original impulse. I began to make efforts
to express these thoughts in writing, but could not succeed to
my own liking. Time went on, and harder experiences, and the
pressure of labour came, but in no degree abated the fire of
first thought. Again and again I made resolutions that I would
write it, in some way or other, and as often failed. I could
express any other idea with ease, but not this. Once especially I remember,
in a short interval of distasteful labour, walking away to a spot by a brook
which skirts an ancient Roman wall, and there trying to determine and really
commence to work. Again I failed. More time, more changes, and still the
same thought running beneath everything. At last, in 1880, in the old castle
of Pevensey, under happy circumstances, once more I resolved, and actually
did write down a few notes. Even then I could not go on, but I kept the
notes(I had destroyed all former begin-
nings), and in the end, two years afterwards, commenced this book.
After all this time and thought it is only a fragment, and a fragment
scarcely hewn. Had I not made it personal I could scarcely have put it into
any shape at all. But I felt that I could no longer delay, and that it must
be done, however imperfectly. I am only too conscious of its imperfections,
for I have as it were seventeen years of consciousness of my own inability
to express this the idea of my life. I can only say that many of these short
sentences are the result of long-continued thought. One of the greatest
difficulties I have encountered is the lack of words to express ideas. By
the word soul, or psyche, I mean that inner consciousness which aspires. By
prayer I do not mean a request for anything preferred to a deity; I mean
intense soul-emotion, intense aspiration. The word immortal is very
inconvenient, and yet there is no other to convey the idea of soul-life.
Even these definitions are deficient, and I must leave my book as a whole to
give its own meaning to its words.
Time has gone on, and still, after so much pondering, I feel
that I know nothing, that I have not yet begun; I have only just
commenced to realise the immensity of thought which lies outside the
knowledge of the senses. Still, on the hills and by the seashore, I seek and
pray deeper than ever.
The sun burns southwards over the sea and before the wave runs
its shadow, constantly slipping on the advancing slope till it curls and
covers its dark image at the shore. Over the rim of the horizon waves are
flowing as high and wide as those that break upon the beach. These that come
to me and beat the trembling shore are like the thoughts that have been
known so long; like the ancient, iterated, and reiterated thoughts that have
broken on the strand of mind for thousands of years. Beyond and over the
horizon I feel that there are other waves of ideas unknown to me, flowing as
the stream of ocean flows. Knowledge of facts is limitless: they lie at my
feet innumerable like the countless pebbles; knowledge of thought so
circumscribed! Ever the same thoughts come that have been written down
centuries and centuries.
Let me launch forth and sail over the rim of the sea yonder,
and when another rim arises over that, and again and onwards
into an ever-widening ocean of idea and life. For with all the
strength of the wave, and its succeeding wave, the depth and
race of the tide, the clear definition of the sky; with all the
subtle power of the great sea, there rises an equal desire.
Give me life strong and full as the brimming ocean; give me
thoughts wide as its plain; give me a soul beyond these. Sweet
is the bitter sea by the shore where the faint blue pebbles are
lapped by the green-grey wave, where the wind-quivering foam is
loth to leave the lashed stone. Sweet is the bitter sea, and
the clear green in which the gaze seeks the soul, looking through the glass
into itself. The sea thinks for me as I listen and ponder; the sea thinks,
and every boom of the wave repeats my prayer.
Sometimes I stay on the wet sands as the tide rises, listening
to the rush of the lines of foam in layer upon layer; the wash
swells and circles about my feet, I have my hands in it, I lift
a little in my hollowed palm, I take the life of the sea to me.
My soul rising to the immensity utters its desire-prayer with all the
strength of the sea. Or, again, the full stream of ocean beats upon the
shore, and the rich wind feeds the heart,
the sun burns brightly; the sense of soul-life burns in me like
a torch.
Leaving the shore I walk among the trees; a cloud passes, and
the sweet short rain comes mingled with sunbeams and flower-
scented air. The finches sing among the fresh green leaves of the beeches.
Beautiful it is, in summer days, to see the wheat
wave, and the long grass foam--flecked of flower yield and return to the
wind. My soul of itself always desires; these are to it as fresh food. I
have found in the hills another valley grooved in prehistoric times, where,
climbing to the top of the hollow, I can see the sea. Down in the hollow I
look up; the sky stretches over, the sun burns as it seems but just above
the hill, and the wind sweeps onward. As the sky extends beyond the valley,
so I know that there are ideas beyond the valley of my thought; I know that
there is something infinitely higher than deity. The great sun burning in
the sky, the sea, the firm earth, all the stars of night are feeble--all,
all the cosmos is feeble; it is not strong enough to utter my prayer-desire.
My soul cannot reach to its full desire of prayer. I need no earth, or sea,
or sun to think my thought. If my thought-part--the psyche--were entirely
separated from the body, and from the earth, I should of myself desire the
same. In itself my soul desires; my existence, my soul-existence is in
itself my prayer, and so long as it exists so long will it pray that I may
have the fullest soul-life.
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