Spencer Heath's
Series
Spencer Heath Archive
Item 3112
Penciling on unlined notepad with MacCallum’s notation to microfilm just the handwritten version and not the typed version.
The
Testament of Beauty
By
Robert Bridges
Our prudence is an aid to Providence to keep us on an even keel through sun and storm.
Past middle life came a re-awakening in sensibility to Life and Love. Illustrations.
Man’s reason so enchained to sense. No miracle without this alliance.
Rapturous bird song of April dawn bursting into hymn to life’s God.
Nightingale — Sophocles — Keats — Bach — Mozart.
Birds most like men.
Music and dance — first artists.
Beauty, prime motive of all excellence, whereby man becomes creator. Why Nature not all-beauteous?
Wisdom admonishes against Why or Whence.
First learn What Is. Pure intellect, pure pleasure, true philosophy.
Wouldst thou play Creator, then be Nature thy chaos and thou God. And finding in Nature both fair and ugly, good and ill, distinguish moralities where none is. Remember, Nature in thee judgeth herself. Do not unseat her.
Reason is Nature’s oracle. But conscient reason so small a part of unconscious mind. Like the thin crust on the earth — bloom on the peach.
Life’s mighty mystery. From seeds in elemental fire, forms that fire destroys. On a thin crust — within a few degrees. And delicately self-balanced.
Intellect (imagination), nascent in all life, marks man apart. Lifts man above existence without care. Makes him corruptible.
Good and evil not commensurable. Do not deflect Life’s monarch-beam. Instinct for life dominates all desire for death.
Thought-burdened pain is enhanced. Negative thought gives bodily pain. Hope more abiding than despair.
Enough that reason heightens pleasure.
Reason infuses objects with spiritual quality.
Poetic vision is thought-inspired.
Brutes have keener senses, but sterile Animal satisfactions are but the bare cloth on which the human banquet is spread. Envy not their ease from pain.
Without the human capacity it would pall.
Dissatisfaction with the realm of Nature gives earnest of a diviner principle glimpsed, implicit in life.
This mystic vision may so absorb the spirit that sensuous pleasure is despised and shunned and bodily discomfort sought. Saint Francis, for example, in all his holy career (sketched out). Yet he made paen to Nature — Sun, moon and earth.
Storm-clouds, various, darkling the day.
Till night clears the heavenly rondure of its
veils. And day o’errideth all to display green earth and all it bears of rural glories that held
native painters till fashion took them to France.
Response to Nature, spiritual elation, generic to man. Glimpsed in the wild eyes of carnivores and sad eyes of ruminants. But first seen in children and in primitives — the primal fosting of all temples, science, art.
Divinest childhood’s incomparable bloom.
Man knows one thing: As he is so was he made.
And if conscient Reason is of his essence, then that was Nature’s purpose in making him.
But is there any Will or Purpose in Nature?
Are there blind atoms only, or vain and empty appearances merely?
Man’s mind, Nature’s own mirror, cannot be isolated from her other works.
All of man’s high abstractions are rooted in
the common base of Nature’s building.
Even the skeptic is tempted forth anon to
seek the truth and beauty whose lesser symbols he denies.
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From musing on all things, my disposition grew — as all things do — in the Pattern of Self.
As man is God’s image, so God is man’s.
And man’s image of God grows as man grows.
Until it shall reconcile “in Reason all wisdom, passion and love” — and so bring Christ’s Peace on Earth.
Whatever grows must be not unlike that it groweth on.
Conscience is a new specialized bud unique on
Nature’s stalk. It unfolds in beauty, thickens to fruit with seeds of infinite regeneration. Yet its miracle is but a differentiation out of the intrinsic potence of the infertile leaf.
Not foolish were those fire worshippers of Halles and Persia who symbolized God in the Sun — source of all life on earth.
All existence shows four gradations.
Atomic, Organic, Sensuous, Self-Conscient.
So it was no flaw in Liebnitz to endow his monad-atoms with “unconscious mind.” No self-contradiction here, unless we mistake lottery logic (verbalism) for the main organ of life.
How foolish for man to hold his Reason primal above instinct when all her axiom-anchors must be in the eternal Mind and, as our Life is animal, so our conduct mainly instinctive.
Wise thinkers do not disregard commonsense
— which is often only common assent. Even their best systems do not agree. And time and clime conform the mind more than the body is confined.
Even the angelic Doctor (Aquinas) with all
his logic based on a divine fiasco at last
fell into a sudden trance at Mass and (whatever his vision, Aristotle or Christ) thereafter wrote or taught no more.
He told Reynolds it all had been of small worth and he hoped to God for end of doctrine as for end of life.
The Second Crusade was like the lemmings of
Norway. Destruction followed folly.
Reason (arrogant and vain) looks to social first-fruits for some rule towards social order among primitive men. Then turns away repelled by terror and savagery. Superstition, wherein nascent reason “hoodwinked mind”.
Take Europe since Christ: Incompetent disorder — terror, shame.
The virile Goth’s conquest and rule 300 years.
Rapine and blood. Strong to destroy, but left no trace, save in mingled blood with Hebrew, Roman, Vandal, Mussulman and Kelt.
In Spanish pride and effigy of power.
Yet the wise will live by faith, in the order of Nature and that her order is good.
The only saving consolation is faith.
The gift of God, as laughter is.
Laughter is at its highest when it is the
“laughter of reason.” Makes light of all the troubles that compel no tears.
Rejoice in ancient wisdom — imperfect.
Old delusions pass away. But new take fire from catch words and bring desolation. Reason cannot save or guide the herd. And minds else fit to rule must win by flattery and fraud and bring discredit on all authority. But only in sack cloth speaketh thus the Muse.
Wisdom so fashioned the earth that the energy of its life might bloom in Man.
“So she herself, the Essential Beauty of Holiness”, infused her creative joy into the creature’s heart to take back from his hand her Adoration Robes and royal crown of his Imagination and Love.”
Wisdom put worship in the hearts of creature
men. And they enshrined her godhead in enduring forms, Heaven-reaching spires to hallow cities thronged and proud, Transforming Nature’s wild by sovereignty of mind. To comfort his mortality with immortal grace.
Yet not to Old Nile’s temples and her mighty tombs Nor to her ensoiling stream of slavish, slothful thought ‘Tis not to Gizeh’s tombs nor double natured sphinx We look in faith for sorrow’s cease and ease of soul. Of ancient age and massive might to shame our
petty style, Though they for sixty cycles time-defying stood Still not in these is comfort found nor ancient wisdom justified.
Long had Hymnettus droned with plundering loves And Asia’s wrinkled visage westward gazed. Ere Aryan tribes adventured in Agean Isles. And laid their empire on craggy hills and smiling plains. Here wisdom sought a voice when Egypt’s kingdom failed.
The beauty of a lily born perfected symbols
an idea that can be felt but never told,
sensed but never described — the soul’s
language absolute but in perishable form,
giving awareness of imperishable beauty.
— A sense of immortality to the mortal.
So bloomed the mind of Hellas for a summer season and into everlasting fruit in its autumn dying. It scattered pregnant seeds to all the winds of time, yet never has been its like again. A glory of the past perhaps never to return.
Yet beauty is best in the mature, whatever childhood’s charm. But how shall it thrive under democratic governance that breeds noxious weeds instead of fruits and flowers?
Yet science bringing creature comfort and leisuring toil has humanized the animal man
with a dream of universal brotherhood, made
war a crying shame with branded brow.
The Greek Muses were graceful company.
Yet we have two: Musick and Mathematick that
could shame their Grecian wet-nurses.
And Apollo’s choir lacked voices now enrolled under Homer’s crown. And some English voices of mystic inspiration by their novelty stole the world away from the concinnity of Greek art and the severe ordering of its antique folds.
Hellas glorified the animal more than spiritual prowess. They relied on physical power.
For seventy years, Marathon to Issus, their cities rivaled for power until they fell from Xerxes to Alexander and into the great alloy
of Rome.
Then came Jesus to found a creative kingdom new-born in the hearts of men. (Not worldly dominion, not Caesar’s Iron Rule, but a creative kingdom of the Golden Rule in the hearts and lives of men.)
They who keep not his commandment call him
Master, Lord. He who once preached to the herd now calleth the wise. But the great light shineth in great darkness. The seed that fell by the wayside hath been trodden under foot.
That on the rock is nigh withered away. Loud and louder through the dazed head of the
Sphinx the old lion’s voice roareth o’er all
the lands.
(End of the Introduction)
The
Testament of Beauty
II SELFHOOD
Plato’s Charioteer and Steeds:
SELFHOOD and BREED driven hy REASON.
Who broke and yoked them? Who planned and built the car? How did Reason mount? Of what fine stuff are the reins? These two steeds are the animal
Not good and evil, but both good. Selfhood the older and stronger, but Breed, since her , more
The plant seed strives for selfhood. Even in darkness it reaches towards the slightest ray or gleam. And it will smother all lesser and younger in its shade.
The child of man likewise strives for self. From atom to man, striving for selfhood is the first degree.
Reason alone can keep selfhood within bounds.
Yet creatures by instinct unite to prey or
for self defence. And maternal instinct protects the young.
Apostrophe to mother love.
Mater fons amoris.
Let now the spirit awaken to diviner dreams
— “a new self-hood of spirit” in all that
“ennobleth the society or the person of man”.
Leave biological Self-hood and look back on
“how Nature wrought where she withheld from life the gift of Motherhood.” Consider the lazy-breeding insects. System and order without reason, despite the look of it.
Beautiful deprecation of the regimental
organization of life versus individual development
— and how it shortens life.
Plato’s abolition of private family finely castigated.
It is enough to suppose that bees have “the same organic socialism” as do the cells whereof their bodies are composed.
Think how the human egg proliferates far more
than any queen bee. And each cell to its appointed place. Even changing its nature when transplanted.
Incomparable complexity more than bees can
boast.
Freedom of the individual affords mechanism whereby a common purpose works.
The mutual fellowship of distributed cells so confounds thought that we seek chemical
explanation because here mathematical relations
are so general we call them laws — and mere
description passes for Efficient Cause.
Sometimes when we wake from deep sleep we are
for a while bewildered. So, when we enter as babe into this life it all seems strange. Yet slowly our senses respond to the environment whence they came. Lungs inhale as though long accustomed. Eyes and skin welcome the sun.
Mouth to the milk. Soft cradling is more strange to him than the crude contacts from which it shields.
Bees are vastly older and their ways more native to him — as flowers and their strategems are to bees. Flowers determine the life of bees.
But with more charm than need fixes the ways
of slavish man. And so the ancients thought them somewhat divine and model for the life of man.
Yet they are ephemeral, born to wearying toil and unrewarding death. Even this their queen is but an egg-casting machine to be discarded when worn out.
Bees are less like us than we like them. Rulers murder rivals as do queen bees. Mobs massacre masses as do hives their drones. Compared to them, slave plantations were abodes of bliss.
Reason, channel of spiritual joy, linked also to pain, both negligible in the primitive forms of life — felt no more than a pleasure boat feels the hand on her tiller that keeps her head forward and her sails full. And spiritual pain comes most through Reason whether from weakness or from sin. Savagery has its terrors as does childhood for lack of reason.
Yet in childhood we picture simple happiness in its rich fare of wonders, from its natural toys to sciences’ commentary on Nature’s book. Its spirit, mingling in the inventory of man finds birthright therein as vast as the body’s heritage “in the immemorial riches of
immortality”. And in adulthood he passes brightly out of Eden with spear-point confidence, a Chevalier “in the joyous travail of the everlasting dawn“. There will be rude shocks that affray, yet to the enamored soul evil is irrelevant and will be brushed aside.
As in Art, special beauty springs from
barriers burned away, so life’s lovers make resistance serve as good warriors welcome the challenge of death.
Beneath the firmament of his soul’s spaceless dome, man liveth in the glow of celestial fire, fed by timeless ________ in which our small obedient sun is as a cast-off satellite and all man’s little works, strewn on the sands of time sparkle like cut jewels on the beatific face of God.
But though man’s chariot heavenward point, strong faith alone can keep the Charioteer in heart and steeds in hand. Let him but glance earthward and they follow down to all he fears. His soul, dismayed, despairs and night’s most fearsome dark gathers in blind fury the self-destructive passions, the pestilent poison of man’s hideous sins.
In slavery to sorrow, men imagine ghastly creeds, looking to death’s opium for their only cure or privately embrace melancholy for a wisdom to enable woe.
They lie in Hall like sheep, death gnaweth upon them; whose prophet, sage and preacher is the old Ecclesiast, pseudo Solomon, who cryeth in the wilderness, calling all to Baptism in the Slough of Despond: vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas.
Life at all levels functions in discrete units and in multiples thereof interfunctioning. Thus in Self-hood always is it first manifest, and in Self-hood is all virtue first born. The Spartan general respected courage in a mouse for that courage is what redeems man nobly from unworth.
Those who shrink battle in defense of self are doomed. Yet wanton killing so horrifies mankind that some would be slain ere they would slay. But parenthood knows not this vain taboo. The mighty must protect the weak, for in savagery there must be war. The protecting warrior’s valor, the guardian’s virtue, needs no defence.
Children and puppies mimic war in games and well-bred offspring play romantic Cherokees in camp and trail. The choir boy, devotions ended, reads not the parables, poetry and beatitudes but bloody
books of war, the braggart annals of Judges
and kings, all for worldly glory of a chosen race. And historians, too, jaunt on their prancing pens to honor men of war who carve the earth in kingdoms. Thus prowess is magnified and cruelty condoned.
Since all empire springs from bloody invasion,
man has pretended heavenly sanction and example.
In Zeus against the Titans, God versus Lucifer, saints against dragons, heavenly war is praised, as though all-might could ere do more than thus exalt the foe.
And Poetry, too, honors the steeds above the Charioteer.
Once she exalted Self-hood but now she doffs her armor for a silken robe and in sapphic languor still kneels to Homer and his epic war that began in shame and climaxed in tearful woe.
Nothing wholly perishes.
All good bears some taint of evil, imperfection from its past.
So, let Reason give account of her high condemnation of war, her spiritual judgement. Whence comes her wisdom?
But Reason answers: “I am the consciousness of things judging themselves.
Self-hood is ever fundamental in all individual Being.
Through motherhood it comes in animals to altruistic feeling and rises in men to spiritual affection.
Inscrutable and dark the Wisdom of God, and no man cometh to it but by me.”
But in the dark unconscious is the potency of life.
Reason is not full grown as Adam was but born a helpless nursling of the animal mind, yet stands so far apart as its own judge and to judge all while ready to serve all impartially.
Plato held that all earthly thoughts and things were but shadow forms of Ideas treasured up in God. And this today still lives invulnerable — because indefinable forms are less absurd than denial of existence to man’s thoughts.
If all that is expresses Mind, then ideas themselves must be most true of all.
Powers unseen are the fountains of life. All life is sentient to light and shade, but only man makes dials, spreads out the spectrum, pierces the stormy night in ecstasy and awe.
He has a knowingness of things beyond his reason and falls into prayer. But vague spiritual perception is unordered by abstract intelligence and man is disconcerted twixt their rival promises until he
Metadata
| Title | Subject - 3112 |
| Collection Name | Spencer Heath Archive |
| Series | Subject |
| Box number | 19:3031-3184 |
| Document number | 3112 |
| Date / Year | |
| Authors / Creators / Correspondents | |
| Description | Penciling on unlined notepad with MacCallum’s notation to microfilm just the handwritten version and not the typed version. |
| Keywords | Testament Of Beauty Poetry Bridges |