The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
Science
The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
English literature -- 19th century; Literature, Modern; Science; Science in literature
I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud believers in Destiny.
They conspire with it; a loving resignation is with the event. But the
dogma makes a different impression, when it is held by the weak and lazy.
'Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of
Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. Rude and
invincible except by themselves are the elements. So let man be. Let him
empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by manners
and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him hold his purpose as with the tug
of gravitation. No power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up
his point. A man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or
a mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the expansion, and the
resistance of these.
'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Go face the fire at
sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or
what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the
cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at
least, for your good.
For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can confront
fate with fate. If the Universe have these savage accidents, our atoms are
as savage in resistance. We should be crushed by the atmosphere, but for
the reaction of the air within the body. A tube made of a film of glass
can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the same water. If
there be omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of recoil.
But Fate against Fate is only parrying and defense: there are, also, the
noble creative forces. The revelation of Thought takes man out of
servitude into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, we were born, and
afterward we were born again, and many times. We have successive
experiences so important, that the new forgets the old, and hence the
mythology of the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, the great day
of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to the Unity
in things, to the omnipresence of law--sees that what is must be, and
ought to be, or is the best. This beatitude dips from on high down to us,
and we see. It is not in us so much as we are in it. If the air come to
our lungs, we breathe and live; if not, we die. If the light come to our
eyes, we see; else not. And if truth come to our mind, we suddenly expand
to its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as lawgivers; we speak
for Nature; we prophesy and divine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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