The amateurs of mountain scenery whom the rail may bring up here will not be so single-minded about it as we were. They will look for something else to lie upon than a gritty stone bed. They will allow a wooden barrier to intercept the pulsation of nature on its way to their souls. They will not catch in full the gracious calls which pass in the stillness between heaven and earth, and roll in harmoniously upon the mind, as a sonorous shore echoes the beat of the waves. My young companion, more restless because the situation was so overmasteringly novel, looked around for distractions which I needed not. I have often stood, or lain, like that, looking from the outside upon the play of life in which I otherwise bear my faint part. I like to withdraw from the stage of the company directed by Messrs. Time and Space in which we are, with as much humbleness as the master dramatists could be with pride, composers, actors, and managers of some small theatrical contribution. I am then doubtful whether I feel some approach in me to the lotus eater’s frame of mind, or whether I rejoice in the overflowing energy of the superman.
There is a deep meaning in the Gospel passage that shows us the Son of man being led upon a hill, and upon a temple pinnacle, that He may be tempted by the sight of those aspects of the world which it was His mission to forswear, combat and finally to overcome by the spirit and succumb to in the flesh. It is on pinnacles such as these that we may behold ourselves.
Let us see. Is he who learns his philosophy by conversation with the mountains not at once a lotus eater and a superman? He acquires from them a firm conviction that—
“Il mondo va da sè.
Le monde se fait lui-même;”
which apophthegm breathes the spirit of abdication and is a source of weakness for him.
On the other hand, the conscious personal power by which he overcomes the savage forces and the blind puttings-forth of might by Nature, does mark him out as instancing in himself human courage, a well-created physique and some superiority.
When his energy is excited, he caresses the illusion that he could crush his fellow beings, if he thought it worth doing. But his dignity forbids. His fellows need have no fear, for there is some taming effect in his haughtiness. The loftiness of his spirit lames his hand for battle against those in whom he hardly recognises his like.
He cannot take the affairs of men so seriously that he would whip up in himself the ambition to take after Napoleon or Cæsar.