Part 13 (1/2)

[Sidenote: THE SQUARE, THE CIRCLE, THE PYRAMID]

To be and to act, two in Intellect (that mother of orderly mult.i.tude, and half-sister of Wisdom and Madness) but one in essence = to rest, and to move = [sq] and a [cir]! and out of the infinite combinations of these, from the more and the less, now of one now of the other, all pleasing figures and the sources of all pleasure arise. But the pyramid, that base of stedfastness that rises, yet never deserts itself nor can, approaches to the [cir]. Sunday. Midnight. Malta. December 16th, 1804.

[Sidenote: THE PYRAMID IN ART]

I can make out no other affinity [in the pyramid] to the circle but by taking its evanescence as the central point, and so, having thus gained a melting of the radii in the circ.u.mference [by proceeding to] _look_ it into the object. Extravagance! Why? Does not everyone do this in looking at any conspicuous three stars together? does not every one see by the inner vision, a triangle? However, this is in art; but the prototype in nature is, indeed, loveliness. In Nature there are no straight lines, or [such straight lines as there are] have the soul of curves, from activity and positive rapid energy. Or, whether the line seem curve or straight, yet _here_, in nature, is motion--motion in its most significant form. It is motion in that form which has been chosen to express motion in general, hieroglyphical from pre-eminence, [and by this very pre-eminence, in the particular instance, made significant of motion in its totality]. Hence, though it chance that a line in nature should be perfectly straight, there is no need here of any curve whose effect is that of embleming motion and counteracting actual solidity by that emblem. For here the line [in contra-distinction to the line in art] is actual motion, and therefore a balancing _Figurite_ of rest and solidity. But I will study the wood-fire this evening in the Palace.

[Sidenote: Wednesday Night, 11 o'clock, December 19]

I see now that the eye refuses to decide whether it be surface or convexity, for the exquisite oneness of the flame makes even its angles so different from the angles of tangible substances. Its exceeding oneness added to its very subsistence in motion is the very _soul_ of the loveliest curve--it does not need its body as it were. Its sharpest point is, however, rounded, and besides it is cased within its own penumbra.

[Sidenote: FOR THE ”SOOTHER IN ABSENCE” Friday Morning, Dec. 21, 8 o'clock]

How beautiful a circ.u.mstance, the improvement of the flower, from the root up to that crown of its life and labours, that bridal-chamber of its beauty and its two-fold love, the nuptial and the parental--the womb, the cradle, and the nursery of the garden!

_Quisque sui faber_--a pretty simile this would make to a young lady producing beauty by moral feeling.

Nature may be personified as the [Greek: polymechanos ergane], an ever industrious Penelope, for ever unravelling what she has woven, for ever weaving what she has unravelled.

[Sidenote: THE MEDITERRANEAN]

Oh, said I, as I looked at the blue, yellow, green and purple-green sea, with all its hollows and swells, and cut-gla.s.s surfaces--oh, what an _ocean_ of lovely forms! And I was vexed, teased that the sentence sounded like a play of words! _That_ it was not--the mind within me was struggling to express the marvellous distinctness and unconfounded personality of each of the million millions of forms, and yet the individual unity in which they subsisted.

A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the _alive_ sea, most interestingly combined with the number of white sea-gulls, that, repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing and had flown up--the white precisely-same-colour birds rose up so close by the ever-peris.h.i.+ng white-water wavehead, that the eye was unable to detect the illusion which the mind delighted to indulge in. O that sky, that soft, blue, mighty arch resting on the mountain or solid sea-like plain--what an awful omneity in unity! I know no other perfect union of the sublime with the beautiful, so that they should be felt, that is, at the same minute, though by different faculties, and yet, each faculty be predisposed, by itself, to receive the specific modifications from the other. To the eye it is an inverted goblet, the inside of a sapphire basin, perfect beauty in shape and colour. To the mind, it is immensity; but even the eye feels as if it were [able] to look through with [a] dim sense of the non-resistance--it is not exactly the feeling given to the organ by solid and limited things, [but] the eye feels that the limitation is in its own power, not in the object. But [hereafter] to pursue this in the manner of the old Hamburg poet [Klopstock].

[Sidenote: I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES TO THE HILLS]

One travels along with the lines of a mountain. Years ago I wanted to make Wordsworth sensible of this. How fine is Keswick vale! Would I repose, my soul lies and is quiet upon the broad level vale. Would it act? it darts up into the mountain-top like a kite, and like a chamois-goat runs along the ridge--or like a boy that makes a sport on the road of running along a wall or narrow fence!

[Sidenote: FORM AND FEELING]

One of the most noticeable and fruitful facts in psychology is the modification of the same feeling by difference of form. The Heaven lifts up my soul, the sight of the ocean seems to widen it. We feel the same force at work, but the difference, whether in mind or body that we should feel in actual travelling horizontally or in direct ascent, _that_ we feel in fancy. For what are our feelings of this kind but a motion imagined, [together] with the feelings that would accompany that motion, [but] less distinguished, more blended, more rapid, more confused, and, thereby, co-adunated? Just as white is the very emblem of one in being the confusion of all.

[Sidenote: VERb.u.m SAPIENTIBUS]

Mem.--Not to hastily abandon and kick away the means after the end is or seems to be accomplished. So have I, in blowing out the paper or match with which I have lit a candle, blown out the candle at the same instant.

[Sidenote: THE CONTINUITY OF SENSATIONS]

How opposite to nature and the fact to talk of the ”one moment” of Hume, of our whole being an aggregate of successive single sensations! Who ever felt a single sensation? Is not every one at the same moment conscious that there co-exist a thousand others, a darker shade, or less light, even as when I fix my attention on a white house or a grey bare hill or rather long ridge that runs out of sight each way (how often I want the German _unubersekbar_!) [untranslatable]--the pretended sight-sensation, is it anything more than the light-point in every picture either of nature or of a good painter? and, again, subordinately, in every component part of the picture? And what is a moment? Succession with inters.p.a.ce? Absurdity! It is evidently only the _icht-punct_ in the indivisible undivided duration.