COSMIC EMOTION. 



79 



Bagdad to Cordova, in the great days of the 

 caliphate, the best minds had faith in human 

 progress to be made by observation of the order 

 of Nature. Here, again, the true culture was 

 overridden and destroyed by the development of 

 the Mohammedan religion ; but not until the sa- 

 cred torch had been safely handed on to the new 

 nations of convalescent Europe. 



If the singer of the " Golden Verses " could 

 have contemplated on these lines the history of 

 the two thousand years that were to succeed him, 

 he would have seen an uninterrupted succession 

 of naturalists and physicians, philosophers and 

 statesmen, all steadily reaching forward to the 

 good things that were before, never losing hold 

 of what had already been attained. And we, 

 looking back, may see that through overwhelm- 

 ing difficulties, and dangers, and diseases, holy 

 Nature has indeed been leading onward the kin- 

 dred of the gods, slowly but surely unfolding to 

 them the roll of the heavenly mysteries. 



Of course, if we restrict our view to Europe 

 itself, we meet with a far more complex and dif- 

 ficult problem — a problem of pathology as op- 

 posed to one of healthy growth. We have to ex- 

 plain the apparent anomaly of two epochs of com- 

 parative sanity and civilization separated by the 

 disease and delirium of the Catholic episode. 



Just as the traveler, who has been worn to 

 the bone by years of weary striving among men 

 of another skin, suddenly gazes with doubting 

 eyes upon the white face of a brother, so, if we 

 travel backward in thought over the darker ages 

 of the history of Europe, we at length reach back 

 with such bounding of heart to men who had like 

 hopes with ourselves ; and shake hands across 

 that vast with the singers of the " Golden Verses," 

 our own true spiritual ancestors. 



Well may Greece sing to the earth her mother, 

 in the "Litany of Nations: " 



" I am she that made thee lovely with my beauty 



From north to south : 

 Mine, the fairest lips, took first the fire of duty 



From thine own mouth. 

 Mine, the fairest eyes, sought first thy laws and knew 

 them 



Truths undefiled; 

 Mine, the fairest hands, took freedom first into them, 



A weanling child." ' 



Let us now put together the view of Nature 

 and of lire which is presented to us by the " Gol- 

 den Verses," with a view to considering its fitness 

 for cosmic emotion. We are taught therein to 

 look upon Nature as a divine order or cosmos, 



1 Swinburne, " Songs before Sunrise." 



acting uniformly in all of its diverse parts ; which 

 order, by means of its uniformity, is continually 

 educating us and teaching us to act rightly. The 

 ideal character, that which is best fitted to re- 

 ceive the teaching of Nature, is one which has 

 conscience for its motive power and reason for 

 its guide. The main point to be observed is that 

 the two kinds of cosmic emotion run together 

 and become one. The macrocosm is viewed only 

 in relation to human action: Nature is presented 

 to the emotions as the guide and teacher of hu- 

 manity. And the microcosm is viewed only as 

 tending to complete correspondence with the ex- 

 ternal: human conduct is subject for reverence 

 only in so far as it is consonant to the demiurgic 

 law, in harmony with the teaching of divine 

 Nature. This union of the two sides of cosmic 

 emotion belongs to the essence of the philosophic 

 life, as the corresponding intellectual conception 

 is of the essence of the scientific view of things. 



There were other parts of the Pythagorean 

 conception of Nature and man which we cannot 

 at present so easily accept. And even so much 

 as is here suggested we cannot hold as the Py- 

 thagoreans held it, because there are the thoughts 

 and the deeds of two thousand years between. 

 These ideas fall in very well with the furniture 

 of our minds ; but a great deal of the furniture is 

 new since their time, and changes their place and 

 importance. Of the detailed machinery of the 

 Pythagorean creed these verses say nothing. Of 

 the sacred fire, the hearth of the universe, with 

 sun and planets and the earth's double antich- 

 thon revolving round it, the whole inclosed in a 

 crystal globe with nothing outside — of the " Great 

 Age " of the world, after which everything occurs 

 over again in exactly the same order — of ,the 

 mystic numbers, and so forth, we find no men- 

 tion in these verses, and they do not lose much 

 by it, though on that account Zeller calls them 

 " colorless." But a remembrance of these doc- 

 trines will help us to appreciate the change that 

 has come over our view of the world. 



First, then, the cosmos that we have to do 

 with is no longer a definite whole including ab- 

 solutely all existence. The old cosmos had a 

 boundary in space, a finite extent in time ; for 

 the great age might be regarded as a circle, on 

 which you return to the same point after going 

 once round. Beyond the crystal sphere of the 

 fixed stars was nothing; outside that circle of 

 time no history. But now the real universe ex- 

 tends at least far beyond the cosmos, the order 

 that we actually know of. The sum total of our 

 experience and of the inferences that can fairly 



