The Sphinx


How true, for example, is that other old Fable of the Sphinx, who
sat by the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers,
which if they could not answer she destroyed them! Such a Sphinx
is this Life of ours, to all men and societies of men. Nature,
like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and
tenderness; the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in claws
and the body of a lioness. There is in her a celestial beauty,--
which means celestial order, pliancy to wisdom; but there is
also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are infernal.
She is a goddess, but one not yet disimprisoned; one still
half-imprisoned,--the inarticulate, lovely still encased in the
inarticulate, chaotic. How true! And does she not propound her
riddles to us? Of each man she asks daily, in mild voice, yet
with a terrible significance, "Knowest thou the meaning of this
Day? What thou canst do Today; wisely attempt to do?" Nature,
Universe, Destiny, Existence, howsoever we name this grand
unnameable Fact in the midst of which we live and struggle, is as
a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who
can discern her behests and do them; a destroying fiend to them
who cannot. Answer her riddle, it is well with thee. Answer it
not, pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself; the
solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws; Nature is a
dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. Thou
art not now her victorious bridegroom; thou art her mangled
victim, scattered on the precipices, as a slave found treacherous,
recreant, ought to be and must.