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Show 93, following his method of study far enough with regard only for the spiritual reward, perhaps it would bring him to his final reward. One thinks of Ishmael on the Masthead, entertaining that disembodied state of mind that Emerson recommended so heartily: There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. . . . And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists! Melville believed, in other words, that men needed to keep a firm grip on themselves. Men did, alas, inhabit very limited physical bodies, and they were subject to mechanical laws which paid no mind to spiritual states. Worse perhaps was Melville's suggestion that men were also limited spiritual beings. Certainly Ishmael argued that men could go beyond their own spiritual depth. Could a man remain human after he had been immersed in the full power and glory of creation? Or would he, like Melville's Pip, when lost at sea, find that his horizon expanded so far, so limitlessly, that he would lose his identity altogether? That is what Muir had to consider when he sought the hard, cold, glacial truth. That was the |
