Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
her mind ripening under my eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought! O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the universe, — have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God.
But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space. Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart our secrets only to the pure.
The most terrible part of the ordeal is in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is not possible ; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour!
Never since the distant day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects ; though, alas! the extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought to soften distress, and to convert from sin.
My power has been hostile only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought, compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we
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are allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile !
EXTRACTS FROM LETTER II.
Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her above her human heart, for that has a heaven of its own. I have just looked on her in sleep, —I have heard her breathe my name. Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me ; for I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a dream, — when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we examine it coarsely, —if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction, — how strange it seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced all societies and all times ; that to this the loftiest and loveliest genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there were no civilization, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the brute’s. But examine it in its heavenlier shape, —in its utter abnegation of self ; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and subtle in the spirit, —its power above all that is sordid in existence ; its mastery over the idols of the baser worship ; its ability to create a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the Iceland, — where it breathes, and fertilizes, and glows ; and the wonder rather becomes how
p. 325
her mind ripening under my eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought! O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the universe, — have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God. But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space. Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is not possible ; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of Viola that I rely, as you more vainly have relied on the courage or the genius of your pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects ; though, alas! the extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought to soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostile only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought, compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we
p. 324
are allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile !
EXTRACTS FROM LETTER II.
Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her above her human heart, for that has a heaven of its own. I have just looked on her in sleep, —I have heard her breathe my name. Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me ; for I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a dream, — when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we examine it coarsely, —if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction, — how strange it seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced all societies and all times ; that to this the loftiest and loveliest genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there were no civilization, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the brute’s. But examine it in its heavenlier shape, —in its utter abnegation of self ; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and subtle in the spirit, —its power above all that is sordid in existence ; its mastery over the idols of the baser worship ; its ability to create a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the Iceland, — where it breathes, and fertilizes, and glows ; and the wonder rather becomes how
p. 325
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