COSMIC EMOTION. 



75 



up and driven to play his proper part with force 

 and exactness of time and tune. If, on the other 

 hand, we consider the totality of our own actions 

 and of the feelings that go with them or spring 

 out of them, if we frame the highest possible gen- 

 eralization to express the character of those which 

 we call good, and if we contemplate this with the 

 feeling of vastness which belongs to that which 

 concerns all things that all men do, we shall ex- 

 perience a cosmic emotion of the secod kind. 

 Such an emotion finds voice in Wordsworth's 

 '• Ode to Duty : " 



" Stern daughter of the voice of God I 

 O Duty, if that name thou love, 

 "Who art a light to guide, a rod 



To check the erring, and reprove ; 

 Thou who art victory and law 

 AY hen empty terrors overawe ; 

 Prom vain temptations dost set free 

 And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! " 



A special form of each of these kinds of cos- 

 mic emotion has been expressed in a sentence by 

 Immanuel Kant, which has been perfectly trans- 

 lated by Lord Houghton : 



" Two things I contemplate with ceaseless awe : 

 The stars of heaven, and man's sense of law." 



For the star-full sky on a clear night is the most 

 direct presentation of the sum of things that we 

 can find, and from the nature of the circumstances 

 is fitted to produce a cosmic emotion of the first 

 kind. And the moral faculty of man was thought 

 of by Kant as possessing universality in a pe- 

 culiar sense ; for the form of all right maxims, ac- 

 cording to him, is that they are fit for universal 

 law, applicable to all intelligent beings whatever. 

 This mode of viewing the faculty is clearly well 

 adapted for producing cosmic emotion of the sec- 

 ond kind. 



The character of the emotion with which men 

 contemplate the world, the temper in which they 

 stand in the presence of the immensities and the 

 eternities, must depend first of all on what they 

 think the world is. The theory of the universe, 

 the viev of things, prevalent at any time and 

 place, will rouse appropriate feelings in those 

 who contemplate it ; not the same in all, for tem- 

 perament varies with the individual, and the same 

 facts stir differently different souls, yet so that, 

 on the whole, the character of cosmic emotion 

 depends on the nature of cosmic ideas. 



When, therefore, the inevitable progress of 

 knowledge has changed the prevalent cosmic 

 ideas, so that the world as we know it is not the 

 world which our fathers knew, the old cosmic 

 emotions are no longer found to tit. Knowledge 



must have been in men's possession for a long 

 time before it has acquired the certainty, the 

 precision, the familiarity, the wide diffusion and 

 comprehension which make it fit to rouse feelings 

 strong enough and general enough for true poetic 

 expression. For the true poetry is that which 

 expresses our feelings, and not my feelings only — 

 that which appeals to the universal in the heart 

 of each one of us. So it comes about that the 

 world of the poet, the world in its emotional as- 

 pect, always lags a little behind the world of sci- 

 ence, not merely as it appears to the few who are 

 able to assist at the birth of its conceptions, but 

 even as it is roughly and in broad strokes revealed 

 to the many. We always know a little more than 

 our imaginations have thoroughly pictured. To 

 some minds there is hope and renewing of youth 

 in the sense that the last word is not yet spoken, 

 that greater mysteries yet lie behind the veil. 

 The prophet himself may say with gladness, " He 

 that cometh after me shall be preferred before 

 me." But others see in the clearer and wider 

 vision that approaches them the end of all beauty 

 and joy in the earth ; because their old feelings 

 are not suited to the new learning, they think 

 that learning can stir no feelings at all. Even 

 the great poet already quoted, whom no science 

 will put out of date, complained of the prosaic 

 effects of explanation, and said, " We murder to 

 dissect." 



I propose to consider and compare an ancient 

 and a modern system of cosmic ideas, and to 

 show how the emotions suited to the latter have 

 already in part received poetic expression. 



In the early part of the fifth century of our 

 era, the Neoplatonic philosopher Hierokles was 

 teaching at Alexandria. He was an Alexandrian 

 by birth, and had studied with Proklos, or a lit- 

 tle before him, under Plutarch at Athens. He 

 was a man of great eloquence, and of better Greek 

 than most of his contemporaries. He astonished 

 his hearers everywhere, says Suidas, by the calm, 

 the magnificence, the width of his superlative in- 

 tellect, and by the sweetness of his speech, full of 

 the most beautiful words and things. A man of 

 manly spirit and courage ; for being once at By- 

 zantium he came into collision with the ecclesias- 

 tical authorities (rots Kparovai) and was scourged 

 in court; then, streaming with blood, he caught 

 some of it in his hand and threw it at the magis- 

 trate, with this verse of the Odyssey: " Here, 

 Cyclops, drink viine, since you eat human flesh!" 

 For which contempt of court he was banished, 

 but subsequently made his way back to Alexan- 

 dria. Here he lectured on various topics, fore- 



