Or crush the grape, or dig the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
“Consider the[169]lilies how they grow; they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass, which to-day is in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, oh ye of little faith!”
“Let us here adopt,” says Dr. Campbell, “a little of the tasteless manner of modern paraphrasts, by the substitution of more general terms, one of their many processes of infrigidating, and let us observe the effect produced by this change. ‘Consider the flowers how they gradually increase in their size; they do no manner of work, and yet I declare unto you, that no king whatever, in his most splendid habit, is dressed up like them. If, then, God in his providence doth so adorn the vegetable productions which continue but a little time on the land, and are afterwards devoted to the meanest uses, how much more will he provide clothing for you!’ How spiritless[170] is the same sentiment rendered by these small variations! The very particularising of to-day and to-morrow is infinitely more expressive of transitoriness than any description wherein the terms are general, that can be substituted in its room.”
Philosophers, then, have been mistaken in complaining of metaphors as a proof[171] of poverty. Tropes, it has been said, would disappear, if we had in every case a direct and independent expression, and metaphor is a coin struck only for the earth. How this may be we know not; although, if there be mysteries even for the angels, then for them also will the gracious analogies of a sublime symbolism be no less necessary. For us at any rate, since it is impossible to find a direct word for every phenomenon, metaphor is our only resource; the figure is necessitated by the non-existence of the proper term. Because poetry abounds in figures, it does not follow that it is “the dark murmur of a lie, instead of the clear cry of truth,” but that it deals for the most part with thoughts which transcend the exigencies of ordinary expression. We must not complain of the lunar beam of genius, because it has not the brightness of the sun. Our choice lies between an enchanting and beautiful twilight, or a darkness which may be felt.
If any one wishes to compare the difference between metaphorical language and the phraseology which studiously avoids the use of metaphor, and clings as far as possible to bare fact, let him contrast the nomenclature of science with the parallel nomenclature of the people.
The terminology of science is of necessity “conventional,[172] precise, constant; copious in words and minute in distinctions, according to the needs of the science;” but this very necessity kills the imagination, and leaves an uninviting argot in the place of warm and glowing human speech. It is absurd to quarrel with and ridicule the language of science, since in its researches an inaccurate or ill-defined name—a name that connotes many other things, or in itself involves an unproven theory—may be productive of the most disastrous consequences. But, at the same time, the mere nomenclature, in becoming steady and determinate, is too often uncouth and inharmonious,[173] and we see that if the language of common life were equally invariable, and unelastic, imagination would be cancelled, and genius crushed. Metaphor is no longer possible in a language which has the power of expressing everything. Such “lexical superfetations” as “chrysanthemum leukanthemum,” and “platykeros,” may be necessary to science, but who would exchange them for the popular names of “Reine Marguerite,” and “Stagbeetle” (cerf volant)? And is there not something almost repulsive in such a term as “Myosotis scorpioeides” (scorpion-shaped mouse’s ear!) when compared with the sweet vulgar names “Forget-me-not,” “Yeux de la Sainte Vierge,” and “Plus je vous vois, plus je vous aime?” The language of science is only picturesque, when, as in the case of astronomy, it borrows from shepherd philosophers such names as the “chariot,” “the serpent,” “the bear,” and “the milky way.”
Language, then, is a plummet[174] which can never fathom the abysses of existence; and yet by its means we can learn more of the world of spirit than the senses can ever tell us about the visible and the material. When we speak of any sensible object, we only adopt a convenient name for a certain synthesis of properties, and we do not thereby advance a single step towards the knowledge of the thing in its abstract essence. The very existence of substance as an absolute entity, an ens per se existens, the postulated residuum after the abstraction of all[175] separate qualities which are cognisable by the senses, is entirely denied by idealists, who would reduce all outward things to a mere relation, or a modification of the sentient subject. Nature itself is with them nothing more than “an apocalypse of the mind.” We speak of “gold,” and we mean thereby an object of which perhaps our first and main conceptions are that it is heavy, yellow, and valuable as a medium of exchange; yet the property which we call “heavy” is one which we can easily conceive capable of modification; the property of yellowness ceases when light no longer falls upon the metal; and the property of value is one purely conventional and continually varying. What, then, have we left except a philosophical figment—a something with the properties of nothing? We cannot assert the existence of any substance corresponding to the name “gold” apart from these and other properties, which, as we have seen, are mere relations. What, then, do we really learn from language even about the external world, the world of phenomena and of fact? When, on the other hand, we speak of “imagination,” we name one of the noblest faculties of the intellect, from the analogy afforded by the property of the glassy wave, which “refreshes and reflects” the flowers upon its banks; yet who shall say that our metaphor (“imagination”) gives us a less clear[176] and definable conception than is conveyed by our general term (“gold”)?
Nothing can be known of itself, but sensible things can only be named from the manner in which they affect the senses, and things invisible can only be pictured forth analogically, from the manner in which they affect the soul. And God has given us an intellect capable of observing the analogies of which the world is full, and not only of observing them, but of applying to them with perfect comprehension the words by which we describe our physical sensations. In the wise and noble language of the son[177] of Sirach: “All things are double one against another, and he hath made nothing imperfect.” There is a close, though mysterious, analogy between physical and intellectual phenomena. The continual metaphors by which we compare our thoughts and emotions to the changes of the outer world—sadness to a cloudy sky, calm to the silvery rays of the moonlight, anger to waves agitated by the wind—are not, as Schelling observed, a mere play of the imagination, but are an expression in two different languages of the same thought of the Creator, and the one serves to interpret the other. “Nature is visible spirit, spirit invisible nature.” It could have been no result of accident, no working of blind chance, that made the mind of man a mirror of the things whereby he is surrounded, and that created the world of matter under the guidance of laws which are an exact analogon of the laws of mind. Thus the Universe itself, with all that it contains, is a mighty emblem, and man is the analogist who, by the Word that lighteth him, is enabled to decipher it.