Nature Mysticism by John Edward Mercer
page 80 of 231 (34%)
page 80 of 231 (34%)
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excepting those deemed most fundamental, are being constantly
modified. How much more would change prevail in ages when structured knowledge had hardly come into existence. But whether the pace of change be slow or rapid, the same impelling cause is at work--man's determination to find fuller expression for his intuitional experience. Animism developed into mythology, mythology into gnomic philosophy, and this again became differentiated into science, art, philosophy, and theology. In the earlier stages, the instability of men's imaginings and conceptions was kaleidoscopic; but it was no more governed by wanton fickleness and caprice than is the course of modern thought. The human spirit was striving then, as now, to realise worlds vaguely experienced and dimly surmised. The more imperfect expression was continuously yielding place to the less imperfect--the lower concept continuously yielding place to the higher. And at the base of the whole great movement upwards was sensation, as the simplest mode of intuition--sensation being, in its various forms and developments, the outcome of man's intercourse with an external world that, in its essence, is spiritual like himself. The main error of animism was its failure to draw distinctions. It tended to look upon nature as equally and fully human in all its parts. It translated its intuitions of kinship into terms of undifferentiated similarity, and thereby entangled itself in hopeless confusions. But by degrees the stubborn facts of existence made their impression, and compelled men to realise that life on the human plane is one thing, and quite another on the plane of external nature. The attempt to absorb the larger truth thus sighted was only partially successful, and gave birth |
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