No Doubt In Cases Of This Kind, When A First Impression And The
Emotion Accompanying It Endures Through Life, The
Feeling changes
somewhat with time; imagination has worked on it and has had its
effect; nevertheless the endurance of the
Image and emotion serves to
show how powerful the mind was moved in the first instance.
I have related this case because there were interesting circumstances
connected with it; but there were other flowers which produced a
similar feeling, which, when recalled, bring back the original
emotion; and I would gladly travel many miles any day to look again at
any one of them. The feeling, however, was evoked more powerfully by
trees than by even the most supernatural of my flowers; it varied in
power according to time and place and the appearance of the tree or
trees, and always affected me most on moonlight nights. Frequently,
after I had first begun to experience it consciously, I would go out
of my way to meet it, and I used to steal out of the house alone when
the moon was at its full to stand, silent and motionless, near some
group of large trees, gazing at the dusky green foliage silvered by
the beams; and at such times the sense of mystery would grow until a
sensation of delight would change to fear, and the fear increase until
it was no longer to be borne, and I would hastily escape to recover
the sense of reality and safety indoors, where there was light and
company. Yet on the very next night I would steal out again and go to
the spot where the effect was strongest, which was usually among the
large locust or white acacia trees, which gave the name of Las Acacias
to our place. The loose feathery foliage on moonlight nights had a
peculiar hoary aspect that made this tree seem more intensely alive
than others, more conscious of my presence and watchful of me.
I never spoke of these feelings to others, not even to my mother,
notwithstanding that she was always in perfect sympathy with me with
regard to my love of nature. The reason of my silence was, I think, my
powerlessness to convey in words what I felt; but I imagine it would
be correct to describe the sensation experienced on those moonlight
night among the trees as similar to the feeling a person would have
if visited by a supernatural being, if he was perfectly convinced that
it was there in his presence, albeit silent and unseen, intently
regarding him, and divining every thought in his mind. He would be
thrilled to the marrow, but not terrified if he knew that it would
take no visible shape nor speak to him out of the silence.
This faculty or instinct of the dawning mind is or has always seemed
to me essentially religious in character; undoubtedly it is the root
of all nature-worship, from fetishism to the highest pantheistic
development. It was more to me in those early days than all the
religious teaching I received from my mother.
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