Muir’s empathy for all life began with identifying with the mind of the creatures whose intentions and moods he came to know.
“We worked with [oxen], sympathized with them in their rest and toil and play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should had we been only trained scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox and cow and calf had individual character. . . . The humanity we found in [oxen] came partly through the expression of their eyes when tired, their tones of voice when hungry and calling for food, their patient plodding and pulling in hot weather, their long-drawn-out sighing breath when exhausted and suffering like ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest with the same grateful looks as ours. We recognized their kinship also by their yawning like ourselves when sleepy and evidently enjoying the same peculiar pleasure at the roots of their jaws; by the way they stretched themselves in the morning after a good rest; by learning languages,—Scotch, English, Irish, French, Dutch,—a smattering of each as required in the faithful service they so willingly, wisely rendered; by their intelligent, alert curiosity, manifested in listening to strange sounds; their love of play; the attachments they made; and their mourning, long continued, when a companion was killed.”
Empathy, learned in the animal kingdom and then extended beyond it, is essential to the sense of expressiveness in nature. Muir found expressiveness everywhere.
Some people attribute this way of experiencing to imagination. If an Indian healer from Latin America is quoted on National Public Radio as saying that the earth is groaning and struggling during this time of environmental abuse, the average listener is expected to hear him sympathetically, as speaking not from poetic imagination but from deepened sensitivity—empathy. And, if and insofar as nature really is expressive, we might better speak of empathy rather than imagination. At the very least, we can say that both empathy and imagination affect perceptual life, and both bridge between perception and faith. Perception, abstracted from the fullness of experience, does not convey expressiveness. Muir’s empathy extended to embrace plant life and even the physical elements.
However, some of the expressiveness in which Muir delighted strikes the modern reader as simply a product of imagination. For example, Muir describes a glacier as like an oak tree in its “gnarled swelling base and wide-spreading branches.” But metaphor has been a normal tool of scientific description and should not be dismissed as a component of aesthetic experience. Muir uses metaphor to describe what he saw atop Alaska’s Genora Peak. “As I lingered, gazing on the vast show, luminous shadowy clouds seemed to increase in glory of color and motion, now fondling the highest peaks with infinite tenderness of touch, now hovering above them like eagles over their nests.” Here exquisite, imaginative, and playful sensitivity merges with a thorough identification with the processes of nature.
Muir connected physical and spiritual levels in describing the dance of sunlight on a waterfall as “the most divinely beautiful mass of rejoicing yellow light I ever beheld.” Here the distance between distinguishable sides, “subjective” rejoicing and “objective” light, falls away. Muir’s feeling of expressiveness in nature should not be too quickly dismissed as imaginative projection. If the physical creation is the work of an expressive Creator, then our efforts to empathize with natural phenomena may somehow reflect the feelings of God, even as knowing the laws of nature may count as human-level recognition of the thoughts of God. If God is on the other side of the phenomenon, so to speak, and if God is (in some analogous sense) rejoicing in the delight of the creature, then if Muir feels rejoicing “in” the yellow light, is it possible that his wild openness enabled him to gain an insight that a cautious mind would block? From a theistic perspective, an aesthetics that places all its weight on objective properties or all its weight on the response of the subject does not do justice to the Creator’s contributions to both sides of the equation.
What expressiveness do you feel in nature? How does your imagination play with nature?
Two days ago, while walking down the path, I came upon an amazing phenomenon. On each side of this path, there are wild weeds, wild flowers and plants. Some of the trees that also line this path have begun to shed their leaves, but leaves of the weeds and plants are still very vibrant with their green color. Looking a little closer at these plants, I discovered that one of the fallen brown leaves had landed on one of the green leaves of the plant. It seemed at if the green leaf of the plant had broken the fall of the brown leaf in an attempt to rescue it from falling to the ground. As I peered at this sight, it seemed to me that all the plants and trees were in someway connected, in someway a part of the whole cycle of life and death and contributing some vital essence to each other.
Dr Perry
What a stunning observation! The writing enables the reader to visualize the scene. And the particular focus–connected with imaginative play–brings up something altogether new in my experience: it is common to observe that plant decay nourishes the soil for life (or the redwood seeds that do not germinate unless the tree at their center is consumed in fire caused normally by lightening. But to think of life supporting death–ah, that is unprecedented in my thought. And inasmuch as dying is not just an instant but also a process, the cells in the falling leaf may not have completed their process.
Thanks so much for this great post, Jeff! “If the physical creation is the work of an expressive Creator, then our efforts to empathize with natural phenomena may somehow reflect the feelings of God” – how very true!! It’s striking and saddening to ponder all which is left unnoticed, let alone not perceived, not understood from this perspective.
I’m easily inspired by Nature. I admire fantastic, ever varying images Nature bestows on us. My wife has her own delights in communicating with flowers. Many times I have seen a plant reacting to her presence. And again, we know so little…
Philosophers of science sometimes note the scientific advantages of empathy with plants in the research of one of the most extraordinary scientists it has ever been my privilege to learn of: Barbara McClintock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock).
Thanks Jeff. Do you happen to have a link to a paper/study about empathy with plants?
“God rejoicing in the delight of the creature…” Wonderful!
I often touch the belief that we, of Creation, are made, indeed, to share delight with our God and each other. For me, this is the basis of piety. Muir seems to me to be a holy teacher in his ability to articulate awe and delight in the “natural world” and to have enacted a mission to bring this revelation to others.
I have been very blessed to have been awed in/by “nature” in many exotic and mundane places but it’s always the sounds of the natural world that fill me with awe and delight. As a sensory experience, the surround of the colour and texture and immensity of “nature” all come together in the unique sound of a particular experience. I have a more difficult time accessing ‘nature’ in human congregation even though I know that a perspective of genuine empathy of the sort that Muir speaks would give me such access. If only I could hear the babble of conversation the way I hear the wind in the forest, or if I could see the array of colours and textures the way I see an array of foliage or marshland, or if I could feel the liberating movement of the ocean tides in the ebb and flow of human congress perhaps I could sense the kind of delight that our Creator feels in all of Creation. But I am grateful for the glimpses I am blessed to have been given in both the “natural world” and in the noisy world of my social enterprise.
“God rejoicing in the delight of the creature…” What a great thought to close the day.
Glory begets glory.
Among the glories of your post and your personality, I especially rejoice in your problematizing the concept of nature by putting quotation marks around it. You remind us of some of what this concept has gone through in the West, not to mention elsewhere. “Creation” speaks well. What do you think of the term “physical creation”?
[Been traveling southward; forgive the lateness of my reply.]
Well, yes, “nature”, the word/concept/utterance freights in so much cultural baggage. And why not? It’s one of those essential parts of experience. Personally, I like the word, “incarnation” to envelope all of what one might call “physical creation” because I hold the belief that ALL of physical creation reveals Godself (I know, I know… it’s a clunky semantic. ) Also, I am aware of my own psychological reaction against much of what Natural Law theology has effected. With these caveats, I would feel a little prickly about the term “physical creation” nontheless.
Two quick responses: I’m not sure the term is robust enough to carry the weight of what I think (presumptuously) you are trying to say. AND, secondly, the implied sequestration of the material world draws a line I’m uncomfortable with. (Remember, I’m one who believes my ‘soul’ resides in my ‘self’ as in the surface of my skin; in my gut; in the very molecular structure of “me” as well as in the ineffable spirit less visible.
I don’t mean this to be argumentative and perhaps my semantic is inefficient but I take your project to be one that does NOT segregate Truth and Beauty, and as such invites us to see both harmonies and disjunctions as part of the overarching fabric of reality which is Goodness. It’s an exciting and demanding invitation!
Elaine, I’m so grateful to have a friend who wrestles with ideas and who experiences deeply, loves God, and adds meaning to the concept of “incarnation.” I love your thought of intertwined Truth and Beauty, whose harmonies and disjunctions are part of the overarching fabric of reality which is Goodness. It’s fun just to type it out, looking at your reply as I sit here unaware at the moment of being part of nature.
When we get to Bach next month, we’ll see a concept of harmony that includes dissonance.