Visible world

“ Looking at the earth as simply one among the innumerable hosts of heaven, it, like each one of them, becomes to the imagination a mere point of light, a “star among stars.” But, when we shift our point of view, and leaving the cosmical or universal for the special, for what pertains to the individual life, the mere point of light flames up into a great, busy world, full of phenomena demanding investigation and thought. ”

“ A new world is here revealed to your gaze—a world in which the whole miracle of the earth's multiple aspects is epitomised, where the eternal play of light and shade constitutes an ever-changing picture that creates a world-drama in inanimate Nature. ”

“ ARGUMENT. The primary light of reflection which awakens the human mind to a distinct consciousness of itself at the same time reveals a world of unknown forms, the universe of space and succession, teeming with evolutions of order, beauty, and power. With the dawn of reason comes also the principle of causality, and man asks himself, What mean these mighty changes on earth and in the sky? ”

“ As we look about us, we find the horizon peopled with thousands and millions and infinite quantities of objects, which may one by one attract our attention, and may be gathered up in the vast, unbounded picture surveyed by the eye as it moves on from thing to thing, incessantly, without ever reaching the last. The world which we first discover is the world of matter, of things which strike our senses. This world rushes impetuously into our mind at the beginning of our natural experience. ”

“ Lovely forms and vivid colors, the hidden harmonies of life as well as its dazzling brightness and bloom, alike claim mysterious connection with that golden mist diffused by the sun over the world.
From this point of view, modern science finds reason in the simple worship paid by primitive man. ”

“ This to us is the realm of real existence. In this we are at home. The march of the planets, the evolution of a world, the whole process of nature, is like the view from a window; and, gazing upon it, sits feeling, thinking, aspiring man. ”

“ Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years!
In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference between the observer and the spectacle,—between man and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized, that, whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable. ”

“ Outward in every direction reaches the broad earth, a crowded pageantry of color and form and sound and stir. Just at the center, the meeting point of all these energies, stands a man, thinking, feeling, willing. Upon him as a focus converge all rays of influence from the inclosing world. ”

“ The world here, the novel, picturesque world, which seems to belong to some other solar system than ours, leaves such an impression of absolute difference on the mind that even familiar objects put on an unusual expression. ”

“ A light in the sky and a vision. What intensity of light, what brilliancy of vision, would be sufficient to change the belief and the character of a modern man of the world or a professional politician? ”

“ The same writer attempts a projection, upon the screen of thought, of "a great source of life and mind, the prototype of our physical sun," which may be supposed to hold the same relation to the world of human thought that the sun holds to our world of matter. ”

“ Instead of searching for light which will illuminate the meaning of things in the external physical world, as the vision of young people usually does, it begins to search for light which will illuminate the meaning of what is going on in the internal world, the spiritual world of our soul. ”

“ What is demanded is a change in our imaginative picture of the [Pg 2] world—a picture which has been handed down from remote, perhaps pre-human, ancestors, and has been learned by each one of us in early childhood. ”

“ But the picture which the world presents to us for contemplation is not composed merely of land and water, ranging through different zones, with their respective floras and faunas, and physical phenomena: the soul of the picture is the observer himself—man ”

“ While as the highest phase of feeling aesthetic experience appears to belong to our subjective life, the hidden region of the soul, it is connected just as clearly, through the act of sense-perception, with the world of objects which is our common possession. ”

“ When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. ”

“ The picture to the eye, he gives with marvellous vividness; and he puts forth, with equal power, that sort of world-wide reflection which a thinking being might be supposed to make on his first visit to our planet ”

“ The world is, as it were, the human, unseen world turned inside out, that we may see it. On the walls of the house that he has built for us, God has hung up the pictures—ever-living, ever-changing pictures—of all that passes in our souls. Form and colour and motion are there,—ever-modelling, ever-renewing, never wearying. ”

“ He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the 216 upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; Band he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day? ”

“ We add a lot of conceptual experiences to them, making these strong also in imagination, and building out the remoter parts of the physical world by their means; and around this core of reality the world of laxly connected fancies and mere rhapsodical objects floats like a bank of clouds. In the clouds, all sorts of rules are violated which in the core are kept. ”

“ Wherever I move, whether by rays or waves of light, from the farthest star to the nearest leaf with its complexity of vein and tint, there comes to that pinpoint of space, the eye, a multitudinous vision. ”

“ What the sun and light are to this world, that are the Supreme Good and Truth to the intellectual and invisible universe; and as our corporeal eyes have a distinct perception of objects enlightened by the sun, thus our souls acquire certain knowledge by meditating on the light of truth which emanates from the Being of beings; that is the light by which alone our minds can be directed to the path of beatitude. ”

“ If we are ever poring over the same page, the sphere of vision is bounded by the four corners of our book; if we will never lift our eyes, we may shut out even the glories of Nature and the light of Heaven, until we come insensibly to forget them. ”

“ That many images of objects rove In many modes to every region round— So thin that easily the one with other, When once they meet, uniteth in mid-air, Like gossamer or gold-leaf. For, indeed, Far thinner are they in their fabric than Those images which take a hold on eyes And smite the vision, since through body's pores They penetrate, and inwardly stir up The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense. ”

“ Light comes into those open windows, the moving panorama of external nature passes before them, but distinct vision, which recognizes and individualizes objects, is something more than a mere passive, bodily sensation. ”

“ In the eye, for example, how wide a scene is open to us, wherever our glance maybe turned?—woods, fields, mountains, rivers, the whole atmosphere of light, and that magnificent luminary, which converts into light the whole space through which it moves, as if incapable of existing but in splendour. The mere opening of our eyelid is like the withdrawing of a veil, which before covered the universe:—It is more; it is almost like saying to the universe, which had perished, Exist again! ”

“ I cannot imagine that within the whole compass of nature's varied aspects, there is presented to the human eye a scene so well adapted for promoting deep and serious reflection, for lifting the thoughts from trivial things of every day life to others of the highest import. ”

“ And the pictures of natural scenery, simple or mingled with art, in life or in ruins, in the various landscapes drawn from different parts of the earth and presented to the eye of the mind as in thought, we stand in the midst of them as they arise, admiring them in their own grandeur and loveliness, or finding in them a fit place for reflection and prayerful meditation, are well worth beholding, recalling, and gazing upon with quickened and cultured powers and imagination, extracting, combining and storing. ”

“ The fully developed 'world,' in which all our sensations ultimately find location, is nothing but an imaginary object framed after the pattern of the field of vision, by the addition and continuation of one sensation upon another in an orderly and systematic way. ”

“ Where other eyes see only darkness, we behold 'the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.' Where other men see only cloudland and mists, our vision will pierce into the unseen, and there behold 'the things which are,' the only real things, of which all that the eye of sense sees are only the fleeting shadows, seen as in a dream, while these are the true, and the sight of them is sight indeed. ”

“ When we try to represent to our minds the highest reality, the spiritual world, as distinguished from the world of appearance, we are obliged to form images; and we can hardly avoid choosing one of the following three images. ”

“ But beyond the heat and light, I felt the presence of the sun as I felt it in the solitary valley, the presence of the resistless forces of the universe; the sun burned in the sky as I stood and pondered. Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed, is there any system or culture, any formulated method able to meet and satisfy each separate item of this agitated pool of human life? ”

“ As the medium of vision—as the cause of colour—as a power influencing in a most striking manner all the forms of organisation around us, light presented to the inquiring minds of all ages a subject of the highest interest. ”

“ I know that I have not been alone in such imaginations for there are few whose intent will has tried to scale the Heavens who have not been met by messages from the gods who are the fountains of this shadowy beauty, and who are, I think, ourselves beyond this mirage of time and space by which we are enchanted. I have spoken to others, seekers like myself upon this quest, and recognise identity of vision and experience. ”

“ The eloquence of the eyes of one who has, from her birth, no other language than the expression of the face, is unlimited, unfathomable, deep and vast—much like the transparent sky, the silent stage of the rising and setting of the bright orbs, of light and shade. In this speechless creature there was a lonesome majesty as that of Great Nature herself. ”

“ The thoughtful mind is awed by the contemplation of this scene, and when the reflection comes that these vast spaces are but grains of sand upon an infinite shore of creation, and that there are worlds of beauty as far and varied between the tiny flowers and the ultimate researches of the microscope as those which exist, on an ascending scale, between the flowers and the great globe itself, the mind is overwhelmed with wonder and admiration. It is in vain that one strives to describe the scene. ”

“ In such we have a scene taken from the world of spiritual life, in which that which is inorganic, the natural environment, is more abstract, in other words must not appear in its natural completeness and isolated manner of effect, and the varied tints of landscape in all the profusion of their gradations are less suitable. ”

“ Sight, then, which comprehends all the varieties of colour, is the object, and the only object, of the sense which we are considering. But, simple as it is, of what instruction, and joy, and beauty, and ever-varying magnificence, is it the source! ”

“ The substantial basis for what we actually see becomes therefore no mere potential universe, or objective mystery, but something much more definite than either of these. The spectacle of Nature, as we behold it, becomes nothing else than the spectacle of all the living bodies that compose the universe, each one of them with its corresponding invisible soul-monad. ”

“ This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life of ours—which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to the grave—than those relating to the employment of the sense of vision in the study of nature. ”

“ Sometimes day and night there flash before my eyes—my mind’s eyes—pictures of you and me in places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! ”

“ Standing on the same green earth, under the same glorious sky, and amid the same perennial influences, he was able to look at things from their point of view and in their spirit, and thus virtually to realise—to make real to himself—their thoughts and feelings regarding Nature. ”

“ That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body, and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as living gods exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving earth. ”

“ But if from the earth, and from these minute wonders, the philosophic eye is raised towards the heavens, what a stupendous scene there opens to its view!—those brilliant lights that sparkle to the eye of ignorance as gems adorning the sky, or as lamps to guide the traveller by night, assume an importance that amazes the understanding!—they appear to be worlds, formed like ours for a variety of inhabitants—or suns, enlightening numberless other worlds too distant for our discovery! ”