X Practical Transcendentalism

§ 13

But of what avail are transcendental themes like these for the conduct and comfort of life? What light are they to our path? To what goal do they point?

It is not a question that needs to be asked. Were no investigation to be undertaken, no theories formed, save for some definite and preconceived purpose, it may be that no new path would be found, no more distant goal discerned.

And yet these meditations, such as they were, crude in matter, inchoate in form, mere adumbrations of a truth all too dimly perceived, brought comfort. Once more they took me away from the trivial and the ephemeral. Above all, they took me away from the geocentric. So many creeds, so many religions, pin me down to this little planet. How many earths are there in the visible heavens? Are there terrestrial sinners on each and all? If so, for how many deaths did the vicarious mercy of the Almighty call? And even if we travel outside the realm of Christendom, still we find our little earth regarded as the centre of thought, the only scene upon which the great drama of Being is enacted: for so many philosophies and religions accentuate the isolated existence of individual human beings, and limit their application to the periphery of this speck in space.

I like the larger aspect. When we look up to the stars and remember that they are suns about which probably revolve an infinitude of habitable earths—earths of every conceivable and inconceivable kind, and peopled probably with an infinitude of beings—also of every conceivable and inconceivable kind—some perhaps as gross as we, others breathing airs of heaven, requiring neither senses nor anatomical organs, enjoying "the communion of saints" by powers and processes outside the ken of touch or speech or vision ... we link ourselves with the immensity of Being; we are not separate little entities trudging a few miles of earth, but particles of Omnipresent Life, partakers in the history and destiny of All that Is.

§ 14

There is a practical side, too, to these transcendental themes. For what is Conscience, that inward monitor which, whatever your creed, bids you walk thus and not otherwise, that applauds you when you do right, and shames you when you go wrong? From one point of view, Conscience is the evolved consensus of mankind, that inherited instinct which declares that only such actions as subserve the welfare of the race are right, and that all others are wrong; and that distributes its sanctions accordingly. From another, and perhaps a rather fanciful, point of view (and yet one that may appeal to those who look forward to a life after death and cling to a possibility of communication between dead and living)—from another point of view, Conscience may be the inaudible voice of myriads of fellow-creatures like unto ourselves, who, having passed through the trials and temptations of this life, and viewing this life from the plane of a life supernal, shout spiritually, warningly, in our psychic ears when they see us doing the things that brought them ill. But from another and cosmic point of view, it is that absolute and categorical imperative which dictates that each attenuated portion of the All shall act in Unison with the All, in the history and destiny of which each attenuated portion partakes.

But I digress.