Mathilda - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (reading in the dark .TXT) 📗

by lovely islands—When I have felt the soft breeze steal across my cheek & as the words of love it has soothed & cherished me—then my mind seemed almost to quit the body that confined it to the earth & with a quick mental sense to mingle with the scene that I hardly saw—I felt—Then I have exclaimed, oh world how beautiful thou art!—Oh brightest universe behold thy worshiper!—spirit of beauty & of sympathy which pervades all things, & now lifts my soul as with wings, how have you animated the light & the breezes!—Deep & inexplicable spirit give me words to express my adoration; my mind is hurried away but with language I cannot tell how I feel thy loveliness! Silence or the song of the nightingale the momentary apparition of some bird that flies quietly past—all seems animated with thee & more than all the deep sky studded with worlds!"—If the winds roared & tore the sea and the dreadful lightnings seemed falling around me—still love was mingled with the sacred terror I felt; the majesty of loveliness was deeply impressed on me—So also I have felt when I have seen a lovely countenance—or heard solemn music or the eloquence of divine wisdom flowing from the lips of one of its worshippers—a lovely animal or even the graceful undulations of trees & inanimate objects have excited in me the same deep feeling of love & beauty; a feeling which while it made me alive & eager to seek the cause & animator of the scene, yet satisfied me by its very depth as if I had already found the solution to my enquires [sic] & as if in feeling myself a part of the great whole I had found the truth & secret of the universe—But when retired in my cell I have studied & contemplated the various motions and actions in the world the weight of evil has confounded me—If I thought of the creation I saw an eternal chain of evil linked one to the other—from the great whale who in the sea swallows & destroys multitudes & the smaller fish that live on him also & torment him to madness—to the cat whose pleasure it is to torment her prey I saw the whole creation filled with pain—each creature seems to exist through the misery of another & death & havoc is the watchword of the animated world—And Man also—even in Athens the most civilized spot on the earth what a multitude of mean passions—envy, malice—a restless desire to depreciate all that was great and good did I see—And in the dominions of the great being I saw man [reduced?][97] far below the animals of the field preying on one anothers [sic] hearts; happy in the downfall of others—themselves holding on with bent necks and cruel eyes to a wretch more a slave if possible than they to his miserable passions—And if I said these are the consequences of civilization & turned to the savage world I saw only ignorance unrepaid by any noble feeling—a mere animal, love of life joined to a low love of power & a fiendish love of destruction—I saw a creature drawn on by his senses & his selfish passions but untouched by aught noble or even Human—

And then when I sought for consolation in the various faculties man is possessed of & which I felt burning within me—I found that spirit of union with love & beauty which formed my happiness & pride degraded into superstition & turned from its natural growth which could bring forth only good fruit:—cruelty—& intolerance & hard tyranny was grafted on its trunk & from it sprung fruit suitable to such grafts—If I mingled with my fellow creatures was the voice I heard that of love & virtue or that of selfishness & vice, still misery was ever joined to it & the tears of mankind formed a vast sea ever blown on by its sighs & seldom illuminated by its smiles—Such taking only one side of the picture & shutting wisdom from the view is a just portraiture of the creation as seen on earth

But when I compared the good & evil of the world & wished to divide them into two seperate principles I found them inextricably intwined together & I was again cast into perplexity & doubt—I might have considered the earth as an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake—a siding of the multitude—a dastardly applause which in their hearts the crowd gave to triumphant wick[ed]ness over lowly virtue that filled me with painful sensations. Meditation, painful & continual thought only encreased my doubts—I dared not commit the blasphemy of ascribing the slightest evil to a beneficent God—To whom then should I ascribe the creation? To two principles? Which was the upermost? They were certainly independant for neither could the good spirit allow the existence of evil or the evil one the existence of good—Tired of these doubts to which I could form no probable solution—Sick of forming theories which I destroyed as quickly as I built them I was one evening on the top of Hymettus beholding the lovely prospect as the sun set in the glowing sea—I looked towards Athens & in my heart I exclaimed—oh busy hive of men! What heroism & what meaness exists within thy walls! And alas! both to the good & to the wicked what incalculable misery—Freemen ye call yourselves yet every free man has ten slaves to build up his freedom—and these slaves are men as they are yet d[e]graded by their station to all that is mean & loathsome—Yet in how many hearts now beating in that city do high thoughts live & magnanimity that should methinks redeem the whole human race—What though the good man is unhappy has he not that in his heart to satisfy him? And will a contented conscience compensate for fallen hopes—a slandered name torn affections & all the miseries of civilized life?—

Oh Sun how beautiful thou art! And how glorious is the golden ocean that receives thee! My heart is at peace—I feel no sorrow—a holy love stills my senses—I feel as if my mind also partook of the inexpressible loveliness of surrounding nature—What shall I do? Shall I disturb this calm by mingling in the world?—shall I with an aching heart seek the spectacle of misery to discover its cause or shall I hopless leave the search of knowledge & devote myself to the pleasures they say this world affords?—Oh! no—I will become wise! I will study my own heart—and there discovering as I may the spring of the virtues I possess I will teach others how to look for them in their own souls—I will find whence arrises this unquenshable love of beauty I possess that seems the ruling star of my life—I will learn how I may direct it aright and by what loving I may become more like that beauty which I adore And when I have traced the steps of the godlike feeling which ennobles me & makes me that which I esteem myself to be then I will teach others & if I gain but one proselyte—if I can teach but one other mind what is the beauty which they ought to love—and what is the sympathy to which they ought to aspire what is the true end of their being—which must be the true end of that of all men then shall I be satisfied & think I have done enough—

Farewell doubts—painful meditation of evil—& the great, ever inexplicable cause of all that we see—I am content to be ignorant of all this happy that not resting my mind on any unstable theories I have come to the conclusion that of the great secret of the universe I can know nothing—There is a veil before it—my eyes are not piercing enough to see through it my arms not long enough to reach it to withdraw it—I will study the end of my being—oh thou universal love inspire me—oh thou beauty which I see glowing around me lift me to a fit understanding of thee! Such was the conclusion of my long wanderings I sought the end of my being & I found it to be knowledge of itself—Nor think this a confined study—Not only did it lead me to search the mazes of the human soul—but I found that there existed nought on earth which contained not a part of that universal beauty with which it [was] my aim & object to become acquainted—the motions of the stars of heaven the study of all that philosophers have unfolded of wondrous in nature became as it where [sic] the steps by which my soul rose to the full contemplation & enjoyment of the beautiful—Oh ye who have just escaped from the world ye know not what fountains of love will be opened in your hearts or what exquisite delight your minds will receive when the secrets of the world will be unfolded to you and ye shall become acquainted with the beauty of the universe—Your souls now growing eager for the acquirement of knowledge will then rest in its possession disengaged from every particle of evil and knowing all things ye will as it were be mingled in the universe & ye will become a part of that celestial beauty that you admire—[98]

Diotima ceased and a profound silence ensued—the youth with his cheeks flushed and his eyes burning with the fire communicated from hers still fixed them on her face which was lifted to heaven as in inspiration—The lovely female bent hers to the ground & after a deep sigh was the first to break the silence—

Oh divinest prophetess, said she—how new & to me how strange are your lessons—If such be the end of our being how wayward a course did I pursue on earth—Diotima you know not how torn affections & misery incalculable misery—withers up the soul. How petty do the actions of our earthly life appear when the whole universe is opened to our gaze—yet there our passions are deep & irrisisbable [sic] and as we are floating hopless yet clinging to hope down the impetuous stream can we perceive the beauty of its banks which alas my soul was too turbid to reflect—If knowledge is the end of our being why are passions & feelings implanted in us that hurries [sic] us from wisdom to selfconcentrated misery & narrow selfish feeling? Is it as a trial? On earth I thought that I had well fulfilled my trial & my last moments became peaceful with the reflection that I deserved no blame—but you take from me that feeling—My passions were there my all to me and the hopeless misery that possessed me shut all love & all images of beauty from my soul—Nature was to me as the blackest night & if rays of loveliness ever strayed into my darkness it was only to draw bitter tears of hopeless anguish from my eyes—Oh on earth what consolation is there to misery?

Your heart I fear, replied Diotima, was broken by your sufferings—but if you had struggled—if when you found all hope of earthly happiness wither within you while desire of it scorched your soul—if you had near you a friend to have raised you to the contemplation of beauty & the search of knowledge you would have found perhaps not new hopes spring within you but a new life distinct from that of passion by which you had before existed[99]—relate to me what this misery was that thus engroses you—tell me what were the vicissitudes of feeling