Page:Vocation of Man (1848).djvu/196

196 higher perfection in a line that runs out into the Infinite.

The sun rises and sets, the stars sink and reappear, and all the spheres hold their circle-dance; but they never return again as they disappeared, and even in the bright fountain of life itself there is life and progress. Every hour which they lead on, every morning, and every evening, sinks with new increase upon the world; new life and new love descend from the spheres like dew-drops from the clouds, and encircle nature as the cool night the earth.

All Death in nature is Birth, and in Death itself appears visibly the exaltation of Life. There is no destructive principle in Nature, for Nature throughout is pure, unclouded life; it is not death which kills, but the new life, which, concealed behind the former, begins, and developes itself. Death and Birth are but the struggle of life with itself to assume a more glorious and congenial form. And my death,—how can it be aught else, since I am not a mere show and semblance of life, but bear within me the one original, true, and essential Life? It is impossible to conceive that Nature should annihilate a life which does not proceed from her; the Nature which exists for me, and not I for her.

Yet even my natural life, even this mere outward manifestation to mortal sight of the inward invisible Life, she cannot destroy without destroying herself,—she who only exists for me, and on account of me, and exists not if I am not. Precisely because she destroys me, must she animate me anew; it is only my higher life, unfolding itself in her, before which my present life can disappear; and what mortals call Death is the