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Page 32
But now a third element comes into it. There is something spiritually
common to nature and man behind the one, within the other. This
Something is the origin, the responsible agent for man's and nature's
physical identity. This Something binds the separates into a sort of
whole. This, I suppose, is what Professor Hocking refers to when he
says, "the original source of the knowledge of God is an experience
which might be described as of _not being alone in knowing the world_,
and especially the world of nature."[23] Thus the religious man
recognizes beyond the gulf, behind the chasm, something more like
himself than it. When he contemplates nature, he sees something other
than nature; not a world which is what it seems to be, but a world
whose chief significance is that it is more than it seems to be. It is
a world where appearance and reality are inextricably mingled and yet
sublimely and significantly separate. In short, the naturalist, the
pagan, takes the world as it stands; it is just what it appears; the
essence of his irreligion is that he perceives nothing in it that
needs to be explained. But the religionist knows that the world
which lies before our mortal vision so splendid and so ruthless, so
beautiful and so dreadful, does really gain both its substance and
significance from immaterial and unseen powers. It is significant
not in itself but because it hides the truth. It points forever to a
beyond. It is the vague and insubstantial pageant of a dream. Behind
it, within the impenetrable shadows, stands the Infinite Watcher of
the sons of men.
[Footnote 23: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 236.]
In every age religious souls have voiced this unearthliness of
reality, the noble other-worldliness of the goals of the natural
order. "Heard melodies are sweet, but unheard melodies are sweeter."
Poet, philosopher and mystic have sung their song or proclaimed their
message knowing that they were moving about in worlds not realized,
clearly perceiving the incompleteness of the phenomenal world and the
delusive nature of sense perceptions. They have known a Reality which
they could not comprehend; felt a Presence which they could not grasp.
They have found strength for the battle and peace for the pain by
regarding nature as a dim projection, a tantalizing intimation of that
other, conscious and creative life, that originating and directive
force, which is not nature any more than the copper wire is the
electric fluid which it carries--a force which was before it, which
moves within it, which shall be after it.
So poet and believer and mystic find the key to nature, the
interpretation of that alien and cruel world, not by sinking to its
indifferent level, not by sentimental exaltation of its specious
peace, its amoral cruelty and beauty, but by regarding it as the
expression, the intimation rather, of a purposive Intelligence, a
silent and infinite Force, beyond it all. So the pagan effuses over
nature, gilding with his sentimentality the puddles that the beasts
would cough at. And the scientist is interested in efficient causes,
seeing nature as an unbroken sequence, an endless uniformity of cause
and effect, against whose iron chain the spirit of mankind wages a
foredoomed but never ending revolt. But the religionist, confessing
the ruthless indifference, the amorality which he distrusts and
fears, and not denying the majestic uniformity of order, nevertheless
declares that these are not self-made, that the amorality is but
one half and that the confusing half of the tale. The whole creation
indeed groaneth and travaileth in pain, but for a final cause, which
alone interprets or justifies it, and which eventually shall set it
free. As a matter of fact, nearly all poets and artists thus view
nature in the light of final causes, though often instinctively and
unconsciously so. For what they sing or paint or mould is not the
landscape that we see, the flesh we touch, but the life behind it,
the light that never was on land or sea. What they give us is not
a photograph or an inventory--it is worlds away from such na�ve and
lying realism. But they hint at the inexpressible behind expression;
paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature but not
identical with Nature. They make us see that not she, red in tooth and
claw, but that intangible and supernal something-more, is what gives
her the cleansing bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative
person needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely
mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who
would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with
philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright
band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely
forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative
standards against the quantitative, the imagination against
literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine in him.
Here, then, is the difference between the naturalist's and the
religionist's attitude toward Nature. The believer judges Nature, well
aware of the gulf between himself and her, hating with inexpressible
depth of indignation and repudiating with profound contempt the
sybarite's identification of human and natural law. But also he comes
back to her, not to accept in wonder her variable outward form, but to
worship in awe before her invariable inner meaning. Sometimes, like
so many of the humanists, he rises only to a vague sense of the mystic
unity that fills up the interspaces of the world, and cries with
Wordsworth:
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