Coleridge
Steiner
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The idea that our inner
world contains or represents the outer world in miniature; that each individual
human being embodies in small the whole of the universe; that, in the words
of Pico della Mirandola (quoted by Barfield
in RCA 237), "Whereas God contains in Him all things, because He
is their source, Man contains in him all things, because he is their centre"--belief
in the existence of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm--is an ancient one,
shared by East and West alike.1
Barfield's own version of it is drawn from a number of sources, including
the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,2
and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner.3
In "The Time-Philosophy
of Rudolf Steiner" we are told that "The human microcosm [is] a centre,
into which irradiated centripetally an unbroken influence from the macrocosm"
(RCA 187). And we learn from the Meggid
in
Unancestral Voice that macrocosm/microcosm is a "once and
future" idea. "The truth," the Meggid explains, "that the human body is
an epitome of nature was once known to the generality of mankind, and though
it has long been lost to their view, they will find the truth again. .
. ."
"If you would faithfully
trace the course taken by the mind of man since it first began to apprehend
regularity in nature, then you must distinguish, in the domain of nature
herself, between the earth and the universe beyond it. It was in the universe
beyond, among the stars and planets, that regularity and irregularity were
first distinguished. It was not until men had transferred the habit of
that discernment from the heavens to the earth that they beheld, upon earth
too, any "laws" of nature. And this they could do, because it is out of
that universe that the body of the earth has shrunk together. It has shrunk
together and gathered into itself the life of the universe, as the seed
shrinks together within the parent plant. All its exterior irregularities
point back to that origin. But the earth is not a lifeless relic; it is
also the living body of mankind, and, permeating an old machine, there
is the new life that looks forward to the future." (154)
See in particular
"The Time Philosophy of Rudolf Steiner" (RCA 184-204); Unancestral
Voice, passim. |
1In
the East, for example, Hindu teaching holds that the individual self, Atman,
is identical to Brahman, the divine being. In the west, Empedocles, Plato,
Aristotle, the Stoics-all proffered some version of the macrocosm/microcosm
idea, as have later thinkers like Meister Eckhart,
Nicolas of Cusa,
Bruno,
Leibniz, Emerson, and
Whitehead. (See DPR 324.) |
2In
What
Coleridge Thought, Barfield quotes (with obvious admiration) Coleridge
from his
Theory of Life on macrocosm/mircrocosm:
Man possesses the most perfect osseous
structure, the least and most insignificant covering. The whole force of
organic power has attained an inward and centripetal direction. He has
the whole world in counterpoint to him, but he contains an entire world
within himself. Now, for the first time at the apex of the living pyramid,
it is Man and Nature, but man himself is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature--the
Microcosm! Naked and helpless cometh man into the world. Such has been
the complaint from earliest time; but we complain of our chief privilege,
our ornament, and the connate mark of our sovereignty. (68)
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3Theodor
Schwenk's
Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and
Air presents a fascinating application of Steiner's version of macrocosm/microsm
in its demonstration of the way the same natural forces that shape the
creation of our inner world-the convolutions of the brain for example-also
function geologically-in, for example, the flow of a river or the patterning
of cloud movements. |
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