Musings on the Matterhorn, July 27, 1868. 



" Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain from its 

 higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the impression it made was that of 

 savage strength ; here we had inexorable decay. But this notion of decay 

 implied a reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the full 

 strength of mountainhood. Thought naturally ran back to its remoter 

 origin and sculpture. Nor did thought halt there, but wandered on 

 through molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have 

 regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate source of all material 

 things. I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within itself the 

 prediction of all that has since occurred ; I tried to imagine it as the seat 

 of those forces whose action was to issue in solar and stellar systems, 

 and all that they involve. Did that formless fog contain potentially the 

 sadness with which I regarded the Matterhorn ? Did the thought which 

 now ran back to it simply return to its primeval home ? If so, had we 

 not better recast our definitions of matter and force ; for if life and 

 thought be the very flower of both, any definition which omits life and 

 thought must be inadequate, if not untrue. Are questions like these 

 warranted ? Why not ? If the final goal of man has not been yet 

 attained ; if his development has not been yet arrested, who can say that 

 such yearnings and questionings are not necessary to the opening of a 

 finer vision, to the budding and the growth of diviner powers ? When I 

 look at the heavens and the earth, at my own body, at my strength and 

 weakness of mind, even at these ponderings, and ask myself, is there no 

 being or thing in the universe that knows more about these matters than 

 I do ; what is my answer ? Supposing our theologic schemes of crea- 

 tion, condemnation, and redemption, to be dissipated ; and the warmth 

 of denial which they excite, and which, as a motive force, can match the 

 warmth of affirmation dissipated at the same time ; would the undeflected 

 human mind return to the meridian of absolute neutrality as regards these 

 ultra-physical questions ? Is such a position one of stable equilibrium ? 

 The channels of thought being already formed, such are the questions 

 without replies, which could run athwart consciousness during a ten- 

 minutes, halt upon the weathered point of the Matterhorn." 



