RICHARD JEFFERIES’ FOURTH, AND OTHER IDEAS

RICHARD JEFFERIES’ FOURTH, AND OTHER IDEAS

By Sheila Kinsella


“I conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than soul – higher, better and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I pray to find this something better than a god. There is something superior, higher, more good.”




Richard was born In 1848 in the hamlet of Coate near Swindon, Wiltshire, England, of farming stock, and as a child and youth roamed the surrounding fields and hills excited and mesmerised by the beauty of nature. However he did not succeed his father on the farm, but became a self educated journalist and writer. Sadly, Richard Jefferies’ work not as widely known as it deserves to be, and that, mainly for his essays and stories celebrating the natural world, which he documented with great sensitivity through observation and experience. He was so enraptured by the deep feelings evoked in him by the wonders of nature that in 1883 he wrote a ‘soul biography’ entitled The Story of My Heart’. The seeds for this work were sewn in his youth and pondered upon throughout his life. (“I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me”).

The book’s deeply philosophical and mystical content must have baffled his ‘naturalist’ following and so the work never received the attention it deserved. They were also probably unsympathetic to his humanist tendencies. The ‘Story of My Heart’ is both prophetic and profound considering that, although he had rejected institutional religion and considered ‘tradition’ to be ‘a deadening influence’, he was acutely aware of his ‘soul life’ and understood this to embrace his deepest sub-conscious feelings. In truth he espoused a theology, which is strangely more 20th century than 19th century. A hundred years before the 20th century Theologian Paul Tillich wrote of “a God above the God of theism”, and dared to consider that humanity had restricted God to an extension of itself, Richard Jefferies pondered on “something infinitely higher, better and more perfect than deity”.

Of Man and Religion >“Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns the inner consciousness since written history began. Three ideas the cavemen primeval wrested from the unknown….(’the existence of the soul’; ‘mortality’ and ‘deity)’. These things found, prayer followed as a sequential result. Since then nothing further has been found as if men had been satisfied and had found these to suffice. I desire to advance further and wrest a ‘fourth’ idea from the darkness of thought. The three ideas of the cavemen became encumbered with superstition; ritual grew up, and ceremony, and long ranks of souls were painted on papyri waiting to be weighed in the scales and to be punished or rewarded. These cobwebs grotesque have sullied the original discoveries and cast them into discredit. Erase them altogether, and consider only the underlying principles. The principles do not go far enough, but I shall not discard them for that. …I realise the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely higher than deity. The very idea that there is another idea is something gained. The three found by the cavemen are but steppingstones: first links of an endless chain. Left to itself, (the mind of man) will not be satisfied with an invisible idol any more than with a wooden one.

…I conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than soul – higher, better and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I pray to find this something better than a god. There is something superior, higher, more good. For this I search, labour, think and pray. If after all there is nothing, and my soul has to go out like a flame, yet even then I have thought this while it lives. For want of words I write ‘soul’, but I think it is something beyond ‘soul’. …. By the word ‘soul’, or psyche, I mean that inner consciousness which aspires. By ‘prayer’ I do not mean a request for anything preferred to a deity; I mean intense soul-emotion, intense aspiration. The word ‘immortal’ is very inconvenient, and yet there is no other to convey the idea of ‘soul-life’.
Of deity’s influence on Man “Next, in human affairs, in the relations of man with man, in the conduct of life, in the events that occur, in human affairs generally, everything happens by chance. No prudence in conduct, no wisdom or foresight can effect anything, for the most trivial circumstance will upset the deepest plan of the wisest mind….Virtue, humanity, the best and most beautiful conduct is wholly in vain. The history of thousands of years demonstrates it. (Here Jefferies cites a Greek tragedy of good being vanquished and evil triumphant). In truth, the deity, if responsible for such a thing, or for similar things which occur now, should be despised. One must always despise the fatuous belief in such a deity. But as everything in human affairs obviously happens by chance, it is clear that no deity is responsible. I cease therefore to look for traces of the deity in life, because no such traces exist. …There is not the least trace of directing intelligence in human affairs. This is the foundation of hope, because if the present condition of things were ordered by a superior power, there would be no possibility of improving it for the better in spite of that power. Acknowledging that no such direction exists, all things become at once plastic to our will. …So long as men firmly believe that everything is fixed for them, so long is progress impossible. That which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from pain, assisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy. We must do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an ‘intelligence’ to do for us.

Of Man’s supposed dominion over nature There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so dearly, would let me perish on the ground, and neither bring forth food nor water.

… Those who have been in an open boat at sea without water have proved the mercies of the sun and of the deity who did not give them one drop of rain. ….The trees care nothing for us; the hill I visited so often in days gone by has not missed me*. The sea and the fresh water alike make no effort to uphold (man) if his vessel founders. …If he falls from a cliff the air parts; the earth beneath dashes him to pieces. Man can drink water, but it is not produced for him; how many thousands have perished for want of it? Some fruits are produced which he can eat, but they do not produce themselves for him; merely for the purpose of continuing their species. All nature, all the universe that we can see, is absolutely indifferent to us. If the entire human race perished at this hour, what difference would it make to the earth? What would the earth care? As much as for the extinct dodo! On the contrary, a great part, perhaps the whole of nature is distinctly anti-human.


On the reality of death For grief there is no known consolation. It is useless to fill our hearts with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone, and as to the future – even if there is a future – it is unknown. To assure ourselves otherwise is to sooth the mind with illusions. The sentiments of trust chipped out on tombstones are touching instances of the innate goodness of the human heart, which naturally longs for good and sighs itself to sleep in the hope that, if parted, the parting is for the benefit of those that are gone. But these inscriptions are also awful instances of the deep intellectual darkness which presses still on the minds of men. …. Know the extreme value of human life; reflect on this and strew human life with flowers; save every hour for the sunshine; let your labour be so ordered that in future times the loved ones may dwell longer with those who love them; open your minds; exalt your souls; widen the sympathies of your hearts; face the things that are now as you will face the reality of death; make joy real now to those you love, and help forward the joy of those yet to be born. …. There is no separation – no past; eternity, the Now, is continuous.


On Work, poverty and Capitalism The most extraordinary spectacle, as it seems to me, is the vast expenditure of labour and time wasted in obtaining mere subsistence. … With transcendent improvidence, the world works only for to-day, as the world worked 12,000 years ago and our children’s children will still have to toil and slave for the bare necessities of life. …. There are people so infatuated, or, rather of so limited of view, that they glory in this state of things, declaring that work is the main object of man’s existence and glorying in their wasted time. The human race has for ages upon ages been enslaved by ignorance and by interested persons whose object it has been to confine the minds of men, thereby doing more injury than if with infected hands they purposely imposed disease on the heads of the people. Almost worse than these are those persons incessantly declaring, teaching and impressing upon all that to work is man’s highest condition. This falsehood is the interested superstition of an age infatuated with money. It is a falsehood propagated for the doubtful benefit of two or three out of ten thousand. It is the lie of a morality founded on money only, and utterly outside and having no association whatever with the human being in itself.


…..I deny altogether that idleness is an evil, and I am well aware why the interested are so bitter against idleness – namely, because it gives time for thought, and if men had time to think, their (the interested’s) reign would come to an end! Why have millions upon millions to toil from morning to evening just to gain a mere crust of bread? Because of the absolute lack of organisation by which such labour should produce its effect, the absolute lack of distribution, the absolute lack even of the very idea that such things are possible. Madness could hardly go farther. …. It matters not that the poor be improvident, or drunken, or evil in any way. Food, drink, roof and clothes are the inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does not provide it freely, then the world is mad.

On the need for new thought There is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is enclosed in a husk. …Once well impress on the mind that it has already all, that advance is impossible because there is nothing further, and it is chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground. It is the most deadly, the most fatal poison of the mind. … As the world and the universe at large was not constructed to a plan, so it is clear that the sequence or circle of ideas which includes plan, and cause and effect, are not in the circle of ideas which would correctly explain it. There is no inherent necessity for a first cause, or that it was shaped out of existing matter, or that it evolved itself and its inhabitants. ….The only idea I can give, is the idea that there is another idea. …If at some time we should obtain an altogether different and broader sequence of ideas, we may discover that there are various other alternatives. I am firmly convinced that there is an immense range of thought quite yet unknown.


Richard Jefferies was a contradictory thinker. He was living in a time of great scientific discovery including Darwinism, electricity, microscopy, chemistry etc. yet he was frustrated by what he perceived as the lack of interest in new ideas that were not empirical. (“I think that, seeing how great a part chance plays in human affairs, it is essential that study should be made of chance!”). He was also a visionary and foresaw many things which exercise us to-day.


Technology/Renewable energy >“I maintain that a tenth, nay a hundredth part of the labour and slavery now gone through will be sufficient and that in the course of time as organisation perfects itself and discoveries advance, even that will diminish, for the rise and fall of the tides alone furnish forth sufficient power to do automatically all the labour that is done on the earth”.


Work/life balance “I hope succeeding generations will be able to be idle. I hope that nine-tenths of their time will be leisure time; that they may enjoy their days, and the earth, and the beauty of this beautiful world; and that they may rest by the sea and dream. If employment they must have, and the restlessness of mind will insure that some will be followed – then they will find scope enough in the perfection of their physical frames, in the expansion of the mind and in the enlargement of the soul. They shall not work for bread, but for their souls.”


Freud and Jung…”Then there is the inner consciousness – the psyche – that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions.”



Radiography “Through the heavens a beam slants, and we are aware of the star-stratum in which the earth moves.(the work of Gustav Kirchhoff, 1857)… But what may be without that stratum? This light tells us much, but I think in the course of time yet more delicate and subtle mediums than light may be found, and through these we shall see into the shadows of the sky.”


Nuclear power >“When will it be possible to be certain that the capacity of a single atom has been exhausted? At any moment some fortunate incident may reveal a fresh power.”


Edited from “The Story of My Heart”, Richard Jefferies, England 1883.


By


Sheila Kinsella.
Wiltshire, England 22 Sept. 2005