Stains the white radiance of eternity.”
We talk of snow as if it were of no colour; but we are able to talk about it only because it is so colour-full. We talk arrogantly of ourselves as “white people,” and we are able to do so because we are not white people, but people with a rude amount of red in us—“animals with red cheeks,” as Nietzsche calls us; indeed, it is possible that the negro has more right to call himself a white man, for he is nearer to black than we are to white, and, according to the well-known formula, “Black is white, white is black, and black is no colour at all.”
ANEMONE SULPHUREA and GENTIANA EXCISA, painted directly in the fields at the end of May.
But what part does white play amongst the flowers? To begin with, I believe we have no right to restrict it to one particular place—between yellow and red. It would seem to have no precise position in the scale, for it is found appearing here, there, and everywhere along the line. It occurs amongst all colours, but if it has one more permanent place than another, that place is outside the line of colour altogether; and white, as a permanency, is an extreme. The appearance of a white form is often hailed as a case of anæmia in the coloured type; and no doubt this is so frequently, though it cannot be so always. Where a white form is the issue of a blue type-flower, such as a Gentian or a Campanula, it is most probable that it is a case of natural evolution, and that such a white plant is no more anæmic than is anything which arrives naturally, progressively, upon the higher plane of being. We of a lower plane are not a little apt to regard as weaklings things which emerge upon the higher plane. Certainly a white flower is not necessarily “too good to live.” If it be issue of a blue type-flower, it is more likely than not to be in every way well bred. Where, however, it is issue of a yellow or a red type-flower, then I think we are justified in suspecting anæmia, for yellow or red must pass through blue before it can healthily and with all warrant emerge as white. There are no leaps in progressive evolution; soundness is sequence.
Now in no instance, I think, have I been influenced by the unknown presence of yellow or of red as I have by that of white and sometimes of blue flowers. Why should this be: why should the influence of white be more remarkable than that of yellow? Is it not probable that in special cases the human organism is in pronouncedly sympathetic accord with the organism of flowers, in some such way as there is sympathetic attunement between transmitter and receiver in wireless telegraphy? Is it not possible that some natures are attuned to blue and white flowers, and will ignore yellow or red ones, while other natures are in accord with yellow or red flowers and are unresponsive to blue and white ones? I know of a judge at local flower shows who invariably, and without much demur, gave first prize to the table decoration containing scarlet; and if such a decoration was mainly composed of the Oriental Poppy it secured the top award without a moment’s hesitation. Is it not possible that this judge was in sympathetic attune with scarlet; is it not possible that, were he to have been blindfolded, and set down in a field of blue Cornflowers with one red Poppy hidden away amongst them, he would at once have been persuaded of the Poppy’s presence?
Thus we end upon a question mark. But let us not feel abashed. “A man is wise,” says Oliver Goldsmith, “while he continues in pursuit of wisdom, but when he once fancies that he has found the object of his inquiry he then becomes a fool.” Let us find comfort in this dictum, and confess that we have discovered scarcely a trace of that for which we have been inquiring. Cardinal Newman once observed that men know less of animals than they do of angels, and I think we may safely put the flowers by the side of the animals—especially when our knowledge deals, as it has here been dealing, with that mysterious subconsciousness which is the domain of angels. Familiarity is the much-travelled road to ignorance. We often deny to familiar things qualities that we stoutly insist belong to things of which we know really nothing. The flowers are too obvious, too near to us to share the intimacy in which we live with things hidden and secret. Even we ourselves suffer in this manner, and we deny to ourselves qualities we “see” and “know” in what we cannot see and do not know. What a very curious blend of contradictions we are! In one and the same breath we will unduly belaud and unduly belittle ourselves; but we are no more the restricted creatures of our fancy than we are the centre and hub of the universe. Although, manifestly short-sighted, we stumble about in most awkward fashion, still we are delicately receptive of subtle, moving influences. We are instruments of far-reaching powers, but we look upon ourselves as freer agents than the case warrants. We imagine we go here and go there entirely of our own volition, yet if we were really such lonely automatons as this we should be immeasurably more stupid than we are.
It must not surprise us, then, if Science some day convinces us that both in thought and in action we are moved by many things with which we now say we have no connection, and that amongst these things will be found the flowers; it must not astonish us if such a phrase as “The Call of the Wild” is possessed of an intrinsic meaning, the fulness and scope of which we now consider it an eccentric folly to admit. There is a wondrous education in store for us. We are, actually, in our right place, but we know little of how or why. When some day our eyes are opened more widely to the forces that direct our lives, we shall be humbler than at present. But we shall be happier. And I venture to predict that few things will help more materially towards this greater happiness than will a real and knowing intimacy with the flowers.