[103]: We speak of the volume of Nature: and truly a volume it is,—whose author and writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? With its words, sentences, and grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar systems, and thousands of years, we shall not try thee. It is a volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of science, they strive bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some letters in the vulgar character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic recipe, of high avail in practice. That Nature is more than some boundless volume of such recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible domestic cookery-book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself.
And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian tale) set in a basin, to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,—but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought without reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous.
[104]: Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's artillery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth, then plunge again into the Inane.
But whence?—O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from God and to God.
[105]: Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning? Is what we call Duty no divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly fantasm, made up of desire and fear, of emanations from the gallows and from Doctor Graham's celestial bed? Happiness of an approving conscience! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he was the "chief of sinners;" and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (wohlgemuth), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish word-monger and motive-grinder, who in thy logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out virtue from the husks of pleasure,—I tell thee, Nay!
[106]: Only this I know, if what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the liver! Not on Morality, but on cookery let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things which he has provided for his Elect!
[107]: On Heroes, p. 244, 71.
[108]: The hero is who lives in the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine, Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial; his being is in that.... His life is a piece of the everlasting heart of nature itself.
(On Heroes, p. 245.)
[109]: Knowest thou that "Worship of sorrow?" The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures. Nevertheless, venture forward: in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the altar still there, and its sacred lamp perennially burning.