Prof. Eric Steinhart (C) 1998
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Chapter by chapter commentary:
0.1 Our age is spiritually dead. Previous generations interacted with God directly; but our age interacts with God only indirectly, by studying the past, that is, the Bible. But we can also experience God directly. To do so, we have to turn away from the past, that is, away from church doctrine, and toward nature. So Emerson starts with an explicit attack on the Christian fundamentalism of his day.
0.2 Nature is self-describing; it has no secrets. Since God has made nature according to a plan, any question we put to nature is one that nature will answer. Nature is a great system of appearances. While scientists investigate the order in nature, we have to wonder why this order exists at all: "to what end is nature?". Why does nature exist? What is the purpose of nature?
0.3 Science tries "to find a theory of nature"; that is, science tries to find a theory of God's plan or design for creation. The key to finding this plan is abstract thought: "the most abstract truth is the most practical." The true scientific theory is supported by experimental evidence: "Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena." Emerson now gives a list of phenomena that need explanations; the list is interesting, since they are all phenomena that combine spirit with matter: "language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex."
0.4 Philosophers divide reality into "Nature and the Soul"; this is the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, spirit and matter, thought and extension. Nature is "all that is separate from us"; it is "the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body." The distinction between natural and artificial, between nature and technology, is superficial. Emerson will argue that the division or duality of nature and the soul is illusory. Nature and the soul really exist in harmony, but this harmony is an analogy. The system of relations in nature has the same structure as the system of relations in the soul. Soul and nature are not the same; they are not even similar; but they are analogous. Both have the same structure.
1.1 To have a direct relation with nature, with God's divine creation, simply go out and look at the stars.
1.2 The mind must be open to the appearances of nature in order to achieve true wisdom.
1.3 The mind that is truly open to nature's own truth is poetic. There is a difference between the poet and the engineer. The purpose or end of nature for the engineer or practical business person is that nature is a source of raw materials for human use; the purpose or end of nature for the poet is that nature is a beautiful order. The engineer sees the part; the poet sees the whole.
1.4 Because most of us look at nature only with our own desires in mind, we do not really see nature. We need to look at nature as if we were little children, without adult cares and needs. Adults are morally corrupt; children are innocent and able to have a direct relation with God's design. But an adult can be childlike if he or she is virtuous: "The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other." Nature arouses all the emotions in us, because there is something emotional in nature. The infinity of nature absorbs the finiteness of the human self. The finite self ascends to the divine perspective of God, it rises to the God's-Eye view of the world: "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." In the wilderness there is something that is as beautiful as humanity. Emerson's idea of the self in wilderness as an all-seeing spectator is very different than Thoreau's idea. For Thoreau, the self in wilderness is active.
1.5 There is a relation of correspondence or analogy between human being and all natural beings: for instance, there is a spiritual (occult) relation between people and plants. Nature and spirit mirror one another. This is an old Neoplatonic idea, which also flourished in the Rennaisance (Paracelsus), and which around Emerson's time was talked about by Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg founded a new semi-Christian religious sect. It was sort of "New Age".
1.6 What is essential is to be in harmony with nature. But to be in harmony with nature is to be in harmony with God's design; it is to be morally virtuous. Our relation with nature is emotional and spiritual: "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit." We project our emotions into nature, and nature reflects them back to us. Nature is a mirror of the moral state of the soul.
2.1 God made nature for a purpose; this purpose is to be useful to humanity. There are several classes of usefulness: "Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline."
2.2 Nature exists to serve human needs. Emerson's view of nature is Biblical. Nature remains something like the Garden of Eden, which God made as the perfect home for Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve were morally virtuous (before the original sin), they existed in a perfect harmony with nature -- nature was not alien or hostile, it was a kind of perfect technology that satisfied all human needs. But after the Fall of Humanity (original sin), humanity is morally corrupt and is no longer able to be in harmony with nature. This is the Biblical Curse: Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden and now have to work to be satisfied by nature. God's punishment is both just and merciful: despite our moral wickedness, nature still serves us if we work. Nature does not hate us: all the miseries we suffer at the hands of nature (earthquakes, tornadoes, disease, death) are just indications of our own moral corruption. But if we work on our Salvation, we can restore ourselves and the earth to that original state. We can become like Adam and Eve before the Fall, and we can restore the Earth to a perfect Garden of Eden.
2.3 Nature exists to serve human needs: "Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. . . . the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man." Human values are built into nature; what is good for us is naturally good. Science reveals a theoretical correspondence (truth) with nature; religion reveals a moral correspondence (goodness).
2.4 Technology is the arrangement of natural forces and causes for the benefit of humanity, to serve human needs: "The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors." Technology is human work. Nature responds to this work. Technology is magical, but it is a kind of magic that requires effort. If we were morally virtuous, we would not have to work, but our wishes would become realities. Emerson thinks that the true relation of humanity with nature is magical.
2.5 There is no need to list all the benefits humanity gains from its technological or practical work. But these benefits are not ends in themselves: "A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work." The work Emerson has in mind is moral work on the soul.
3.1 People have animal needs, but these are morally low: "A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty."
3.2 Nature is a totality of appearances; but these appearances are ordered aesthetically. The fact that we find beauty in nature shows that nature is organized according to the same principles of the human soul. Beauty is a spiritual value.
3.3 For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of Beauty in a threefold manner.
3.4. Nature refreshes humanity; it restores the human spirit.
3.5 Philosophical thought (abstract conceptual reasoning) is mirrored in the appearances of nature: "broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams." Natural appearances organize themselves according to the principles of thought.
3.6 Nature speaks to humanity: "What was it that nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakspeare could not reform for me in words?" For Emerson, the metaphor that "nature speaks to man" is a profound spiritual truth, as the chapter on "Language" will argue. There is a structure of concepts in or behind the play of appearances; this is the Platonic world of forms. Nature in process is like music; there is a correspondence between human culture and nature. Nature and humanity once spoke the same language (the Adamic language, that Adam and Eve spoke in the Garden of Eden), a language with which we could command nature; but now we have forgotten that original Adamic language.
3.7 That we are out of tune with nature is shown by the fact that we do not appreciate nature always; we prefer summer to winter, but both are equally beautiful and have equal spiritual value.
3.8 It's easy to be seduced by the superficial show of appearances; but mere entertainment is not the ultimate point of natural beauty.
3.9 2. The ultimate purpose of natural beauty is spiritual and moral; it is to raise us to harmony with nature's true organization, which is a divine moral order: natural law is divine law. Virtuous acts, like those of heroes, are spiritually and morally beautiful. Heroic acts illustrate our true relation with nature. We can all be heroes: "We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. . . . he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself." The idea that we are all truly heroes is one Emerson takes up again in "Self-Reliance". Nature is in fact morally organized, so that causes and effects are morally linked. If you are good, nature rewards you directly; if you are evil, nature itself punishes you directly. The probability that you will achieve your goal is directly proportional to the goodness of your goal and the goodness of your character: "A virtuous man is in unison with [nature's] works . . . The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus." Nature cooperates with human moral virtue. This has got to be the most outrageous thing I ever heard.
3.10 Nature is sensually beautiful, it is beautiful morally, and it is beautiful intellectually: "Beside the relation of things to virtue, they have a relation to thought." Science maps the mind of God: "The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God." Reason and emotion are not enemies; the logos (the cyclical alternation of opposites) binds them together. Reason deciphers the word of God in nature; the word of God is not just in a dead book (the Bible), but is written in the book of nature. Nature is also scripture, and science studies this other book.
3.11 Emerson now turns to human art, not merely technological art that serves human needs ("Commodity"), but art for the sake of beauty. This is a higher spiritual art.
3.12 Human art imitates nature. While the particular partial details of nature are unique and seem to be isolated, they all work together and are harmonious; nature is entirely consistent with itself. Beauty at its highest spiritual intensity is the order of the whole of nature. Ugliness and evil are partial and limited; the whole is beautiful and good. Art is the power of divine creation working through humanity: "Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works." Human artifice, such as technology, ought to be a second nature totally harmonious with the first. We can see how far we have fallen morally because our technology destroys or degrades the natural environment. A truly morally virtuous humanity would make technology in harmony with nature.
3.13 The ultimate purpose of nature is to satisfy the human soul; beauty is one way that nature satisfies the soul. Although beauty is an end in itself, it is not the highest ultimate end of nature. Natural beauty symbolizes spiritual beauty, the order of ideas in the mind of God. Nature is the mirror of God's mind, in which we can see God's mind and converse with God, if only we remember the language.
4.1 Language also shows how nature is designed for humanity. Here Emerson makes 3 radical statements: "1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit."
4.2 It's obviously true that "Words are signs of natural facts", but the use of metaphors like "crooked" for corrupt shows how natural signs are symbols of spiritual facts too. Language reveals an analogy between nature and spirit, it shows that nature mirrors spirit. Spirit and nature have the same structure.
4.3 Analogies are correspondences. Every pattern in natural reality corresponds to some pattern in spiritual reality: "Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture." This would be obviously true if Emerson were talking about sensual perception and imagination; but Emerson is talking about moral-spiritual perception and imagination. Nature is a kind of mirror in which we see moral-spiritual qualities: we see human innocence in the lamb. There are two levels of perception: sensual and moral-spiritual. When you percieve something (the lamb), you see both its sensual features (white, fluffy) and its moral-spiritual features (innocence). Metaphors like "the angry sky" show that human moral values exist in the structure of natural appearances. The appearance of the stormy sky corresponds to the mental turbulence of an angry person. But is this true or is it delusional?
4.4 If you look deep enough into nature, you see that there is both a universal soul in nature and yourself; this universal soul is Reason. Later Emerson will call this universal soul "the oversoul". Reason has no particular human identity, but it is nevertheless personal (God is a person). Reason in nature is Spirit. Spirit is a divine creative power in nature. Spirit is self-moving (Hegel); it is a vital life-force.
4.5 The moral-spiritual structure in nature really does correspond to the moral-spiritual structure of humanity. The moral-spiritual analogies and correspondences between humanity and nature are not accidental myths, but constant and universal. Emerson wants to claim that the analogies are objective, not subjective. Of course, this is exactly where Emerson is open to radical criticism. While the analogies may not be accidental, they may just be conventional. It is certainly true that there is a correspondence between human anger and the storm, but this correspondence might be so superficial that it is false to say "the sky is angry" and wrong to think that there is any analogy between human emotions and the weather. I do not think there is the slightest validity to Emerson's reasoning; but he is raising an extremely important moral problem: what is the relation between human morality and nature?
4.6 Anthropologically, it's somewhat true that "The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages"; Emerson wants this universality to serve as evidence for the objectivity of the analogy between spirit and nature, but all this universality might reveal is a fact about humanity: people personify nature, people project their own values and emotions into nature. The fact that everybody does it does not make it true or real. Everybody might think they can fly, but then everybody would be delusional. Universal irrationality is still irrationality. Suppose Emerson is wrong, so that no analogies or trivially true analogies hold between humanity and nature; is it then true that nature and humanity have nothing in common morally? If this is true, then one is led to the conclusion that nature is valueless and meaningless, and our values are absurd. Consider the proposition "It is morally wrong for one person to murder another person" -- is this proposition a natural fact like e = mc2 or like 1+1=2, or is it just a fact about human cultural conventions? Is there a scientific basis for human morality and values? I think Emerson's arguments are weak; but that does not mean his claim that nature and humanity are morally analogous is wrong.
4.7 Emerson has argued that there is a moral-spiritual analogy between humanity and nature. Other theologians have claimed that this analogy exists, so Emerson isn't very original so far. But now he makes two radically original claims. Now he gets extreme. First, he claims that people are able to intellectually understand the moral-spiritual analogy only in proportion to the goodness or virtue of their character: "The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language." Second, he claims that people are able to practically utilize the moral-spiritual analogy only in proportion to the goodness or virtue of their character, so that insofar as we are morally corrupt "the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost." Of course, initially he is just talking about speech in a vague way; but Emerson will claim in the end that true speech directly commands nature, that true speech has magical power over nature. Emerson has in mind poetic speech, emotional speech. If our desires were truly good, all we would have to do to satisfy them would be to say what they are. Wishes and dreams that are truly spoken would be true in reality just because of the truth of the speech. This is the power of poetical truth.
4.8 A person who uses the moral-spiritual analogy correctly "is a man in alliance with truth and God." Pure poetic speech "is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause", and hence pure poetic speech is able to command and master nature. Think about it: if your character were truly morally good, your speech would be pure poetry that would make your wishes come true, because your speech would have the divine power of the word of God.
4.9 Pure poetic speech (the speech of the perfectly good person) is like a magical spell: "And with these [poetic] forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands." Just say the magic words, and your desires will be satisfied. You will be able to work miracles just by talking.
4.10 Because we are morally corrupt, we do not comprehend the true power of language and we use it only to express the corrupted facts of our corrupted desires. But the poetic speech of the morally good person has the power to command nature: "Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. . . . The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics." Emerson knows that science has found that true speech is the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature, and that if we talk to nature by acting on it using mathematical laws, we are able to master nature; but such action is work, and is not yet pure poetical speech. It is useful speech, but not yet magical speech.
4.11 In proverbs, natural facts illustrate spiritual facts.
4.12 The moral-spiritual analogy "between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men." You can become a divine magician if you totally subordinate your will to the will of God. The physical world is just the concrete manifestation of the spiritual world; physical laws are imitations of higher spiritual laws. The material world imitates the spiritual world; physical things "preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit." Material things are actually just the concrete thoughts of God, uttered in a kind of physical speech. When God speaks a word, a thing is created. God says: "Let there be light," and there is light. Light is just a word of God. Our words can have this same power if we are truly morally good.
4.13 When we want to permanently preserve our thoughts, we write them down in a book; when God wants to permanently preserve his thoughts, he writes them down in matter. The world is a book that is written by God; we can learn to read that book: "A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her [nature's] text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause." Of course, this is what scientists do when they formulate theories of nature in mathematical language; Emerson said that already in the Introduction. But mathematical language is just a degraded form of the true poetic language, which is magical.
4.14 True speech becomes true power.
5.1 Scientific reasoning is a kind of moral-spiritual discipline; this discipline purifies the soul and so lets us master nature.
5.2 Reason studies God's will and thought by reading the book of nature scientifically.
5.3 1. Science is sensual-intellectual discipline because it forces our minds to submit to the morally pure order in nature: "Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces." But this sensual-intellectual discipline is not absolute, like pure poetry.
5.4 Obedience to human laws and social conventions, the order of society, is also an intellectual discipline, though not perfect.
5.5 Scientific discipline leads to technological mastery; practical wisdom leads to technical improvement of social relations.
5.6 Nature is strict truth without ambiguity.
5.7 The utility of reason even in primitive technology proves that nature is ordered rationally.
5.8 The study of physics for its own sake is morally edifying; it raises the human mind to the level of God's divine mind.
5.9 The mind of God is infinitely complex, and scientific progress is the steady harmonization of human will with God's will.
5.10 Examples follow.
5.11 Scientific reasoning leads to technological power: man is able to "reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character." Applied science transforms the world into an image of the human mind: "One after another, his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will, -- the double of the man."; but the human mind is only an image of God's divine mind.
5.12 2. The rational scientific order of nature is also a rational moral and spiritual order. It is clear that we gain great practical power by studying the rational scientific order of nature; when we master the rational moral-spiritual order of nature, we will have godlike power.
5.13 The true meaning of physics is moral: "every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process."
5.14 Nature is One; it is a unified whole; that is, it is ultimately God. But every part perfectly imitates the whole in its own way: "Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world." This is part of the key to magical speech: each part of nature is a thought in the mind of God, and so can be spoken to in the pure divine poetical language.
5.15 Everything in nature resembles everything else, everything is thus magically interconnected: "A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For, it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth which we express in words, implies or supposes every other truth."
5.16 Human rational speech, the kind of rational speech that orders nature in engineering and technology, is a lousy imitation of the poetical magical speech that directly commands nature.
5.17 Although we can speak technically and scientifically to nature, and it will listen and obey our speech, we can also speak poetically or spiritually to nature -- we can hear God's words in nature, and we can learn to respond to them: to converse with God is true magic.
5.18 Friendship among humans is just a symbol of the ideal relation between humanity and nature. Two friends see that they think alike; if we were friends with nature, we would see that humanity and nature think alike, since both are thoughts of God.
6.1 We move from practical discipline to theoretical idealism.
6.2 Idealism says that reality is ultimately mental, that whatever exists is an idea in some mind, either our finite minds or God's infinite mind. Materialism is degenerate idealism.
6.3 Idealism is not silly because God is not capricious. God's thoughts are a permanently fixed rational order; laws of nature are like divine promises, and God keeps his promises because his will is good. Thus we can depend on the rational order of nature for our technology.
6.4 Nature is not ultimately real; it is a system of appearances.
6.5 The eye of the body sees colors; the senses perceive concrete qualities; but the eye of the soul sees abstract forms. This is Emerson's Platonism, filtered through Berkeley and Hegel.
6.6 & 7 It's easy to see that idealism is true.
6.8 Nature itself helps us to see that idealism is true when we change our perspectives on the system of appearances.
6.9 Change of perspective reveals that while perceptions change, the perciever remains constant; so appearances exist in the mind; but if nature is just a system of appearances, nature exists in the mind.
6.10 Poetic speech is the most powerful technology: "To [the poet], the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world." True poetic speech is as powerful as the word of God that created the world; God's speech is poetry.
6.11 Poetry has power over time since it is eternally true.
6.12 Poetry is able to transform matter: "This transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the passion of the poet". Of course, today this power occurs only in the imagination; but if we were truly morally virtuous, it would occur in perception.
6.13 Thought moves our bodies, but pure thought moves the body of the world: "The perception of real affinities between events, (that is to say, of _ideal_ affinities, for those only are real,) enables the poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, and to assert the predominance of the soul."
6.14 In science, philosophy, and poetry "a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; ... the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; ... this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law."
6.15 Mathematics is ultimately religious, so that even physical science is ultimately religious insofar as it uses mathematics.
6.16 The fact that nature is mathematically ordered shows that physical things "are the thoughts of the Supreme Being;" here Emerson is talking about the Platonic forms.
6.17 Science is hard intellectual work that only a few can do; but all persons are able to do the moral work that purifies their characters so that they can have a poetic or magical relation with God.
6.18 Religion and ethics affirm idealism. They lead to direct relations of humans with God.
6.19 Athletics, poetry, science, and religion, all affirm idealism: "all culture tends to imbue us with idealism." But we must not be hostile to nature; that is morally wrong. Nature is our friend.
6.20 Idealism is true religion; nature is God's true scripture. This is a direct attack on Christian fundamentalism, which claims that the Bible is God's true scripture.
7.1 The scientific theory of nature is not complete; it needs to be spiritually extended.
7.2 Science needs to be supplemented with a relious theory of nature; nature is the incarnation of God; Jesus is nature.
7.3 Spirit is the inner reality of nature; religiously, nature "is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it."
7.4 Religion includes science.
7.5 Science is not able to answer the ultimate questions, like "why is there something rather than nothing?" and "why is the natural system of appearances mathematically ordered?". These questions require a religious answer: "the world is a divine dream".
7.6 Science does not need to think of idealism as anything more than a useful hypothesis; but in religion we can go beyond science.
7.7 Religion is able to say why there is something rather than nothing, that is, why there is a material world. It tells us "that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us." Nature is produced in the human mind by the action of God: God's power enters the human soul, where it is transformed by human spiritual processes into the system of natural appearances. We create nature! Therefore: "we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. If we were truly virtuous, our spiritual processes would be pure, so that we would have divine magical power like God.
7.8 We have mental power over our own bodies: our bodies respond directly to our will, as if by magic. The world is like our bodies: "The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious." But we do not have will-power over the world; it is not "now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us." But this is only because we are morally corrupt: "As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us." Our natural enemies (predators and diseases) are like insane thoughts that occur in our unconscious minds due to our moral impurity. We hurt ourselves. We can have the same magical power over the whole natural world that we do over our bodies if our wills are virtuous. If we are morally pure, the whole natural world will be as transparent to our (collective or social) human will as our bodies are now.
8.1 Science must become poetry: "a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments."
8.2 Science does not yet even approach the deepest problems, which are problems of the human soul. To solve these problems, science must become metaphysical and then poetical.
8.3 Science is very good, and should not be despised; but it is not the highest level of human spiritual culture; poetry is superior, if it is the poetry of the morally virtuous soul.
8.4 Here is an image of poetic truth.
8.5 Nature is really the Universal Human, but that Human is fallen and has lost its true powers.
8.6 Humanity today is insane and acts on nature like animals. We have forgotten, in our madness, our true powers. Nebuchadnezzar was a king who went mad and thought he was an animal; he forgot his true kingly powers.
8.7 If we could preserve our childhood innocence into adulthood, if we could do science with the innocence of a child and not just as a means to corrupt adult ends, we would be like gods.
8.8 We have magical power over nature; our true poetic speech commands nature because in speaking to nature poetically, we speak with the voice of God. But we have lost this power.
8.9 Our technological power over nature is trivial compared with our true poetic power over nature. Technology "is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne." The miracles performed in the Bible, such as the miracles of Christ, are not really miraculous at all. Christ had a good will, and so his speech was poetical and had divine power. Christ's miracles are not supernatural, they are wholly natural, because Christ's will was morally good. We can all perform miracles and exert "a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power." We can command nature to do our bidding, because nature is human will.
8.10 To gain poetic power over nature, to work miracles, we must restore our souls to their original condition: "when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation." The world will be like the Garden of Eden.
8.11 You can do this work on your soul; you don't have to be a special person, everybody can achieve salvation.
8.12 When our souls are saved and restored to their original condition, then we will have magical powers equal to those of God, and we will be able to work miracles. Instead of existing in nature that has predators and diseases and evil, we will exist in heaven, for God's power pouring through a purified soul will produce heaven in us as it now produces nature in our unconsciousnesses: "Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven." You will be able to perform miracles. The world will become paradise; evil is an illusion that will vanish as the soul becomes pure: "A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen." When you have perfected your soul, you will be divine; just as a blind man cannot imagine the power of sight until he sees, so you cannot imagine the power of goodness until you become good: "The kingdom of man over nature . . . a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, -- he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight." Wow.