Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other EssaysCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays
Carpenter, Edward
Civilization; Crime; Evolution; Science
Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know the law of
the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally; and the law of
ourselves is not learnt, except subordinately, by intellectual
investigation; it is mainly learnt by life. The relation of gravity to
vitality is learnt not so much by outer experiment in a laboratory as by
long experience within ourselves from the day when as infants we cannot
lift ourselves above the floor, through the years of the proud strength
of manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our
disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the attraction of
the earth; and just as the sense of weight--which first appears as a
quite external sensation--is thus at last found to stand in most
pregnant relation with our deepest selves, so of the other senses which
feed the individual life--the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of
sound, of smell. Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the
tongue, becomes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which
identifies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body; the
pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface pleasure, and
its discrimination of food more than a mere regard for the nutrition of
the ordinary corporeal functions. The sense of Light, which begins in
the material eye, grows and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of
it pervades the whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination
or divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding the
sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the same manner is
related to and leads up to Love; and Sound, in the voices of our friends
or the divine chords of music, has passed away from being an external
phenomenon and has established itself as the language of our most tender
and intimate emotions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account