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THE TWO PARENTS OF VISION
It would seem that when a heavenly body ceases to shine by its own light, it becomes capable of breeding eyes with which to profit by the light other bodies are shedding; whereas, so long as it was itself on fire, no part of it could see. Is life a gift which cooling stars receive from those still incandescent, when some ray falls upon a moist spot, making it a focus of warmth and luminous energy, and reversing at that point the general refrigeration? It is certain, at any rate, that if light did not pour down from the sun no earthly animal would have developed an eye. Yet there was another partner in this business of seeing, who would have flatly refused to undertake it, had the sole profit been the possibility of star-gazing.
Star-gazing is an ulterior platonic homage which we pay to our celestial sources, as a sort of pious acknowledgment of their munificence in unconsciously begetting us. But this is an acknowledgment which they are far from demanding or noticing, not being vain or anxious to be admired, like popular gods; and if we omitted it, they would continue to perform their offices towards us with the same contemptuous regularity. Star-gazing is, therefore, a pure waste of time in the estimation of the other partner in vision, besides celestial light—I mean, that clod of moist earth which the light quickens, that plastic home-keeping parent of the mind, whom we might call old mother Psyche, and whose primary care is to keep the body in order and guide it prudently over the earth's surface. For such a purpose the direct rays of the sun are blinding, and those of the moon and stars fit only to breed lunatics. To mother Psyche it seems a blessing that the view of the infinite from the earth is so often intercepted; else it might have sunk into her heart (for she has watched through many a night in her long vegetative career), and might have stretched her comfortable industrious sanity into a sort of divine madness or reason, very disconcerting in her business. Indeed, she would never have consented to look or to see at all, except for this circumstance, that the rays coming from heavenly bodies are reflected by earthly bodies upon one another; so that by becoming sensitive to light the Psyche could receive a most useful warning of what to seek or to avoid. Instead of merely stretching or poking or sniffing through the world, she could now map it at a glance, and turn instinct into foresight.
This was a great turn in her career, wonderful in its tragic possibilities, and something like falling in love; for her new art brought her a new pleasure and a new unrest, purer and more continual than those drowsy and terrible ones which she knew before. Reflected light is beautiful. The direct downpour of light through space leaves space wonderfully dark, and it falls on the earth indiscriminately upon the wise and the foolish, to warm or to scorch them; but the few rays caught by solid matter or drifting vapour become prismatic, soft, and infinitely varied; not only reporting truly the position and material diversity of things, but adding to them an orchestration in design and colour bewitching to the senses. It was not the stars but the terrestrial atmosphere that the eyes of the flesh were made to see; even mother Psyche can love the light, when it clothes or betrays something else that matters; and the fleshly-spiritual Goethe said most truly: Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben.
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AVERSION FROM PLATONISM
Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve, and in those Mediterranean regions that nurtured the classic mind, by continually repeating the same definite scenes, nature forced it to fix its ideas. Every one learned to think that the earth and the gods were more permanent than himself; he perused them, he returned to them, he studied them at arm's length, and he recognized their external divinity. But where the Atlantic mists envelop everything, though we must repeatedly use the same names for new-born things, as we continue to christen children John and Mary, yet we feel that the facts, like the persons, are never really alike; everything is so fused, merged, and continuous, that whatever element we may choose to say is repeated seems but a mental abstraction and a creature of language. The weather has got into our bones; there is a fog in the brain; the limits of our own being become uncertain to us. Yet what is the harm, if only we move and change inwardly in harmony with the ambient flux? Why this mania for naming and measuring and mastering what is carrying us so merrily along? Why shouldn't the intellect be vague while the heart is comfortable?