LX.
1.—“Their task ineffable yields wondrous gain.”
“... I rest not from my great task;
To open the eternal worlds! To open the immortal eyes
Of man inwards; into the worlds of thought: into eternity
Ever expanding the human imagination.”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
2.—“Their energies celestial force attain.”
“Les écrivains du dix-huitième siècle ont sans doute rendu d’immenses services aux Sociétés; mais leur philosophie basée sur le sensualisme, n’est pas allée plus loin que l’épiderme humain. Ils n’ont considéré que l’univers extérieur, et, sous ce rapport seulement, ils ont retardé, pour quelque temps, le développement morale de l’homme.... L’étude des mystères de la pensée, la découverte des organes de l’AME humaine, la géométrie de ses forces, les phénomènes de sa puissance, l’appréciation de la faculté qu’elle nous semble posséder de se mouvoir indépendamment du corps, de se transporter où elle veut et de voir sans le secours des organes corporels, enfin les lois de sa dynamique et celles de son influence physique, constitueront la glorieuse part du siècle suivant dans le trésor des sciences humaines. Et nous ne sommes occupés peut être, en ce moment, qu’à extraire les blocs énormes qui serviront plus tard à quelque puissant génie pour bâtir quelque glorieux édifice.”—Balzac (“Physiologie du Mariage,” Méditation XXVI.).
3, 4.—“Their intermingled souls, with passion dight,
In aspiration soar past earthly height.”
“As yet we are in the infancy of our knowledge. What we have done is but a speck compared to what remains to be done. For what is there that we really know? We are too apt to speak as if we had penetrated into the sanctuary of truth and raised the veil of the goddess, when, in fact, we are still standing, coward-like, trembling before the vestibule, and not daring, from very fear, to cross the threshold of the temple. The highest of our so-called laws of nature are as yet purely empirical.
“... They who discourse to you of the laws of nature as if those laws were binding upon nature, or as if they formed a part of nature, deceive both you and themselves. The (so-called) laws of nature have their sole seat, origin, and function in the human mind. They are simply the conditions under which the regularity of nature is recognised. They explain the external world, but they reside in the internal. As yet we know scarcely anything of the laws of mind, and, therefore, we scarcely know anything of the laws of nature. We talk of the law of gravitation, and yet we know not what gravitation is; we talk of the conservation of force and distribution of forces, and we know not what forces are; we talk with complacent ignorance of the atomic arrangements of matter, and we neither know what atoms are nor what matter is; we do not even know if matter, in the ordinary sense of the word, can be said to exist; we have as yet only broken the first ground, we have but touched the crust and surface of things. Before us and around us there is an immense and untrodden field, whose limits the eye vainly strives to define; so completely are they lost in the dim and shadowy outline of the future. In that field, which we and our posterity have yet to traverse, I firmly believe that the imagination will effect quite as much as the understanding. Our poetry will have to reinforce our logic, and we must feel as much as we argue. Let us then hope, that the imaginative and emotional minds of one sex will continue to accelerate the great progress, by acting upon and improving the colder and harder minds of the other sex.”—Buckle (“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
6.—“... the vision to retain,”
As with Wordsworth’s nature-nurtured maiden:—
“... beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face ...
And vital feelings of delight
Shall rear her form to stately height ...
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend,
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.”
—(“Poems of the Imagination”).
Id.... “My hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man’s existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory.... He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.”—R. Jefferies (“The Pageant of Summer”).
7, 8.—“... mould their dreams of love, with conscious skill
To human living types ...”
“Her Brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom and loins
To put in act what her Heart wills.”
—William Blake (“Jerusalem”).
“These states belong so purely to the inner nature; are so deeply hidden beneath the strata of what we call the inner life, even, that only women, and of these, only such as have become self-acquainted, through seeing the depths within the depths of their own consciousness, can fully comprehend all that is meant in the words a ‘Purposed Maternity.’ I use them in their highest sense, meaning not the mere purpose of satisfying the maternal instincts, which the quadruped feels and acts from, as well as the human being, but the intelligent, artistic purpose (to which the maternal instinct is a fundamental motive), to act in harmony with Nature in producing the most perfect being which the powers and resources employed, can bring forth.... It is probable that we shall, ere long, arrive at truer views of maternity everywhere; and when we do, I think it will be seen that the office has a sacredness in Nature’s eyes above all other offices, and that she reserves for it the finest of her vital forces, powers, susceptibilities, and means of every sort.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 385; Vol. I., p. 93).
[It has been an intense delight to come upon these and the other words and thoughts of Eliza W. Farnham; “blazes” or axe-marks of this previous pioneer in the same exploration. It is only since completing the whole of the verses that the writer has found the passages quoted from Mrs. Farnham’s work, and deduces a not unnatural confirmation of the mutually shared views, from the singular concord and unanimity of their expression.]
8.—“... supreme of form and will.”
“The changes that have come over us in our social life during the past two decades are, in many respects, remarkable, but in no particular are they so remarkable as in the physical training and education of women....
“The results of this social change have been on the whole beneficial beyond expectation. The health of women generally is improving under the change; there is amongst women generally less bloodlessness, less of what the old fiction-writers called swooning; less of lassitude, less of nervousness, less of hysteria, and much less of that general debility to which, for want of a better term, the words ‘malaise’ and ‘languor’ have been applied. Woman, in a word, is stronger than she was in olden time. With this increase of strength woman has gained in development of body and of limb. She has become less distortioned. The curved back, the pigeon-shaped chest, the disproportioned limb, the narrow feeble trunk, the small and often distorted eyeball, the myopic eye, and puny ill-shaped external ear—all these parts are becoming of better and more natural contour. The muscles are also becoming more equally and more fully developed, and with these improvements, there are growing up amongst women models who may, in due time, vie with the best models that old Greek culture has left for us to study in its undying art.”—Dr. Richardson (“The Young Woman,” Oct., 1892).
Id.—“... prophetic scenes,
Spiritual projections ...
In one, the sacred parturition scene,
A happy, painless mother births a perfect child.”
—Walt Whitman (“Autumn Rivulets”).
Id.... “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.... It is absolutely incontrovertible that the ideal shape of the human being is attainable to the exclusion of deformities.... When the ambition of the multitude is fixed on the ideal form and beauty, then that ideal will become immediately possible, and a marked advance towards it could be made in three generations.”—Richard Jefferies (“The Story of My Heart,” pp. 32, 151, 131).
Id....
“‘The Gods?’ In yourselves will ye see them, when Venus shall favour your love,
And man, fitly mated with woman, believes that his love is divine:
When passion shall elevate woman to something so holy and grand
That she—the ideal enraptured—shall ne’er be a check upon Man,
Then the children they bear will be holy, and beauty shall make them her own,
And man in the eyes of his neighbour will gaze on the reflex divine
Of the God he inclines to in spirit—or trace in each feature and limb
The lines which the body inherits from souls which are noble and true.
Would thou couldst feel in deep earnest, how beautiful God will be then,
When we see Him as Jove or Apollo in men who inspire us with love,
As Juno and Venus the holy, in women who know not the mean,
And feel not the influence cruel of hardness and self-love and scorn.
Would thou couldst once know how real the presence of God will become,
How earnest and ever more earnest thy faith when thyself shall be great,
And from the true worship of others thoult learn what is holy in them,
And rise to the infinite fountain of glory which flows in us all.”
—C. G. Leland (“The Return of the Gods”).