Of Walks and Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a CreedHaultain, Arnold
Philosophy
Of Walks and Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a Creed
Haultain, Arnold
Outdoor life; Walking
"The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
. . . . . .
Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way."[36]
There must survive in the cosmic consciousness of the race, deep-seated
and ineradicable memories of primæval nuptials. What a pity it is that
that supreme, that sacred drama called "Love" should be enacted by
youths and damsels, not in secluded groves amidst perfumed and amorous
blooms, but in ball-rooms and boudoirs.[37]
§ 55
It is a complex, it is a profound enigma, this of the appeal of the
beauty of nature to the senses and emotions of man. For Beauty, we must
remember, is not an attribute of the external thing. Beauty is in the
soul that feels, the mind that thinks, the memory that remembers. _That_
is beautiful which brings to mind and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill,
exalted feeling. _That_ is beautiful which makes for the preservation
and propagation and (which should make for the) elevation of the
race.--And this is why Beauty is of various kinds. There is a Beauty of
the senses, and there is a beauty of the soul--as there is a terrestrial
Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian.[38] Though why the earthly and the
heavenly Aphrodites should not join hands, I do not know. Perhaps it is
only when they do join hands--when there is at one and the same time
a spiritual obsession and a physical oblation--that Beauty becomes
transfigured before us, reveals her divine nature radiant through
fleshly vestments. Ah! this occurs only when we are on the Mount.
§ 56
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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