94/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Poets have always sung the praises of Nature. The natural world sustains a close relation to the world of Philosophy of pure thought, as an embodiment of ideal visions. In “Music and Morals” Mr. Haweis has described the peculiarly intimate associations existing between the world of Religion the moral sphere, and the world of Music, which embodies emotions.
In dealing with deep soul-experiences all terms are hopelessly inadequate to convey one’s meaning intelligibly. Words can only suggest to another person such experiences as he is already acquainted with.
The world of Nature and Art (except Music, which is entitled to rank as a world of itself) is one of beauty; through it Absolute Reality is manifested as the Beautiful.
The world of Philosophy is essentially one of truth; through it Absolute Reality is manifested as the True.
The world of Religion is essentially one of goodness; through it Absolute Reality is manifested as the Good.
This trinity of spiritual qualities has stood from time immemorial as the foundation of all ideal expression.
To these three worlds there must also be added the world of Music, which is considered in the following chapter as the world of harmony; through it Absolute Reality is manifested as the Harmonious. The latter world reveals the Eternal. Nature through no essentially new attribute, but, in a measure, through all the foregoing so finely blended that they appear inseparable, so far as the general effect produced, is concerned.
The normal human mind is capable of recognizing three dimensions of space. The natural world consists of ideas presented outwardly in conformity to this conception of spatial relations.
In the order of evolution it is this world into which every man is first born; i.e., it is in it that he attains to self-consciousness as a human being. He gradually awakens to a knowledge of himself, discovers what manner of man he is, by finding his own nature revealed in this outer order.
The natural world conforms to certain models or types which are pre-existent in the mind; therefore it is symbolical of the inner life. It is an embodiment, a projection as it were, of ideas latent in the mind, waiting for some suggestion to call them forth and give them shape in actual expression.