Hearing the Sea in a Shell

It is an experience every child should have for the first time:  Holding a large shell to one's ear and hearing the sound of "the sea" supposedly still in the shell. How many parents or grandparents have initiated their child or grandchild to seashore wonders by instructing the child to "hear the ocean" in that way?  How many children have smiled upon first hearing the sound a large seashell makes, imagining for a moment they really heard the sea?  I recognize that an acoustical scientist could give a good, detailed explanation for the perhaps puzzling effect.  But I am more interested in how that experience can be an opening to how we and all things are part of a larger whole.  That is the very matter the poet William Wordsworth explored in his long poem The Excursion.

Even though the sea-in-seashell symbol could be a good literary opening, it appears in the middle of Wordsworth's poem when, in his memory, he sees himself as a boy:

"A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for from within were heard

Murmurings, whereby the monitor [the shell] expressed

Mysterious union with its native sea."

In the very next line, Wordsworth opens up the metaphor of how -- if we orient ourselves properly -- we can "hear" in the natural world intimations ("Murmurings") of a larger, deeper reality:  "Even such a shell the universe itself / Is to the ear of Faith...."  Moreover, Wordsworth later addresses his words to a larger divine Spirit that includes all of our own spirits, just "as the sea her waves."

The magic of children innocently believing (at least for a moment) they are hearing the sea in a shell derives from a child's wonderful delight in first discovering the world.  And so, a stanza early in the poem began with the statement "Such was the Boy."

oil portrait of
William Wordsworth
by Benjamin Haydon

Even though we adults cannot actually return to our childhoods, Wordsworth expresses how, even in old age, our memory can restore to us some of our original exaltation. That ability of memory to recreate something not physically present is similar to the seashell's ability to recreate the physical ocean, which is not physically present:

"If the dear faculty of sight should fail,

Still, it may be allowed me to remember

What visionary powers of eye and soul

In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top

Of some huge hill -- expectant, I beheld

The sun rise up, from distant climes returned....

... my spirit was entranced

With joy exalted to beatitude...."

~~~

Are there some particular experiences in Nature that allows your spirit to feel how it is included as part of some larger Spirit of life and of the universe?

(The two large excerpts are from Book IV, "Despondency Corrected" of The Excursion [1814]

That full section of the book-like poem can be read at this external link:  The Excursion, Book IV.)

A Great Book Open for Learning

The popularity of books with "for Dummies" in the title must be attributed in part to the rapid spread of ever-changing technologies into workplaces and homes.  Even after a person no longer feels like a total dummy when sitting down at a computer keyboard, that person can feel their intellect and patience challenged each time a new software program comes out. Those Dummies guides are, however, not the first books to educate people.

The promise that a book could be a tutor became increasingly appealing from the late 19th through the 20th century as books became less expensive, sometimes even cheap.  Despite the prevalence of publications whose titles began with "How to," their content could sometimes be tricky.  An 1878 article in Popular Science Monthly entitled. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" turned out to be a dense exploration of logic by the American philosopher Charles Peirce.  If I had been alive in 1924, I might have purchased a newly published copy of How to Write Short Stories, only to discover that it was a collection of stories by Ring Lardner lampooning the writing of his time. Another 20th-century title, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, seemed to offer potential buyers the temptation of learning without effort, but it was really a stage drama.  In contrast, Dale Carnegie's earnestly titled How to Win Friends and Influence People promised that learning intangible social skills -- usually requiring years of decades of maturation -- could be accelerated with a simple purchase.  My favorite of these titles is the paradoxical How to Read a Book.  It sounds like a dog trying to chase its tail.

That proverbial dog might prompt a question:  How do real dogs and other animals learn without reading instruction manuals or "How To" books?  Only half a century ago, we thought dogs' abilities came virtually entirely from inborn instincts, but we are increasingly learning how dogs also learn.  For example, dogs learn that humans who show teeth when they smile are actually happy, thus overcoming the canine instinct to interpret the baring of teeth as a threat.  Animals that are not pets also learn in the wild.  When green parrots raised in captivity were released in the U.S.'s western mountains, the birds could not at first fend for themselves.  We thus discovered that such parrots had no instinct for how to get seeds out of pine cones, but learned that technique by observing other members of their species.

I might imagine all natural terrains such as those western mountains as being an immense book, opened and laid out flat, upon which animals learn by observing, exploring, and experiencing.  Each feature of Nature is like a letter, word, or sentence, around which animals discover the shape of the land's vocabulary and grammar.  The language of Nature itself.

To me, one advantage of turning to the Book of Nature is that it can keep our ideas from becoming turned in upon themselves. It can keep us from chasing our own tails.  The thoughts of individuals, organizations and societies can easily become enclosed and provincial.  Turning our attention to Nature can wake us up and help us learn.

~~~

How do you think we can learn and grow by turning our attention to Nature?

(The photo of the tree-lined river is by Dr Richard Murray

and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.)