perception of the divine, to a right
understanding of their individuality. It amounts to _us_ to fall
into gross hideous anthropomorphism; the worst of them into
superstitions of their own.--When one quotes Chwangtse as
speaking of "the delegated adaptability of _God,_" one must
remember that one has to use some English word for his totally
impersonal _Tao_ or _Tien,_ or even _Shangti,_ or whatever it
may be.

This Tao, you say, something far off,--a principle in philosophy
or a metaphysical idea,--may be very nice to discuss in a lecture
or write poetry about; but dear me! between whiles we have a
great deal to do, and really--But no! it is actually, as Mohammed
said, "nearer to thee than thy jugular vein." It is a simple
adjustment of oneself to the Universe,--of which, after all, one
cannot escape being a part; it is the attainment of a true
relationship to the whole. What obscures and hinders that, is
simply our human brain-mind consciousness. "Consider the lilies
of the field," that attain a perfection of beauty. The thing
that moves us, or ought to move us, in flowers, trees, seas and
mountains, is this: that lacking this fretting, gnawing sense of
I-am-ness, their emanations are pure Tao, and may reach us along
the channel we call beauty: may flood our being through "the
gateway of the eyes." Beauty is Tao made visible. The rose and
peony do not feel themselves 'I,' distinct from 'you' and the
rest; they are in opposition to nothing; they do not fall in
love, and have no aversions: they simply worship Heaven and are
unanxious, and so beautiful. When we know this, we see what
beauty means; and that it is not something we can afford to
ignore and treat with stoic indifference or puritan dislike. It
is Tao visible; I call every flower an avatar of God. Now you
see how Taoism leads to poetry; is the philosophy of poetry; is
indeed _Poetics,_ rather than _Metephysics._ Think of all the
little jewels you know in Keats, in Shelley, or Wordsworth:
the moments when the mists between those men and the divine
"defecated to a thin transparency";--those were precisely the
moments when the poets lost sight of their I-am-ness and entered
into true relations with the Universe. A daffodil, every second
of its life, holds within itself all the real things poets have
ever said, or will ever say, about it; and can reach our souls
directly with edicts from the Dragon Throne of the Eternal.--I
watched the linarias