But if we hold to the
conservation of values, as at least a parallel to this conservation
of energy, we are impelled to hold also to the conservation of all
that is ultimate in individualities. For values imply modes of
being which can allow of the experience of values as such. And
the Nature-Mystic's direct communion with his environment is
seen to be one mode by which the individual centre of life
learns to live increasingly in the life of the Whole--the total
Reality. There is, then, no absorption where values are
conserved, but an ever richer content of experience, an ever
deepening insight into its significance, and an ever keener
enjoyment of the material it affords.
As a specific case of an optimistic creed based on an intuition of
the essential kinship of all things, it is profitable to study the
poetry of a Sufi mystic of the thirteenth century. How delicate
the thought enshrined in the following lines:
"When man passed from the plant to the animal state,
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,
Except the inclination he felt for the world of plants,
Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers."
What is this but an anticipation of Wordsworth's "Daffodils," or
even of his "Ode on Immortality"?
The concepts and phraseology of the transmigration theory are
merely temporary forms in which a deep thought clothes itself:
at any rate, they are not necessary adjuncts of the thought; nor
do they preclude sympathy with the following condensed
statement of this same mystic's world-philosophy:
"I died from the mineral and became a plant;
I died from the plant and reappeared as an animal;
I died from the animal and became a man.
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