Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1906 — THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. [ARTICLE]

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

[Theme read at the Newton Township commencement by Miss Christenia Flock, aged 18.[J In studying this selection the aim is to arrive at its fullest meaning, so as to apply it to our own lives. The theme of this selection is soul growth in which we have a struggle of the soul to realize itself. The struggle between what the self and what it desires to be with alternating periods of freedom and bondage finds free expression in the life process of the Nautilus. The soul, the same as the Nautilus findsits resting place in humanity, but is continually seeking a higher plane or level, and continually passing out of the old into the new.

The Nautilus, in order to reach a fuller and more perfect existence, has to break loose from the narrow bounds of its shell and build another shell, which in time will become like the same part that it has just cast off. And thus we have the universal between the Nautilus and humanity through the voice of humanity. Man can be spoken of the same as the “frail tenant” shapes his growing shell; year after year it struggles on from bondage to freedom, from real to ideal and from freedom back to bondage again, showing in its growth the truth that when one act of advancement has been made, when they rise to a higher plane, they then see some other great thing or some other level that is still beyond. Here we may notice the intensity of grasp which the latter part of the fourth topic refers us to It can can be seen here that beyond a great plane, beyond a great act, there can be seen a greater thing to be accomplished and thus it is the same all through life.

Holmes has also created an ideal development which mankind can never reach. The Nautilus, in leaving its past year’s dwelling for the new, has done what man can never, do, “He” builds up the “idle door,” stretches himself in his last found home and knows the old no more. The triumph here over the old life is complete. The soul can not close the door which leads from the lower to the higher life, but returns again to dwell and live in the same old shell. Holmes here discerns a point of likeness with the soul and the nautilus; both are trying to free themselves from the old shell and the old limitations. In both there is a constant growth to larger works and deeper and greater life. They both try to cast off the old, to leave the ont-grown shell, or the old shell, by life’s unresting sea, but as before there involves a difference. The nautilus builds each season a larger cell and lives in it, while man builds a larger cell, but returns back to the old. The nautilus gets it freedom, but man has to still carry his old shell with him. The imaginary and the embodiment each give freedom to the thought. The mind, in picturing the real and the ideal, the low and higher levels, can feel the bondage and freedom and the struggle between what the soul has and what it has not. Progression from the lower to the higher speaks and reveals itself

to man, ’ the nature of itself, and thus it can claim kinsmanehip to the soul. Its joys and sorrows are not as our own are, as we are more able to realize. Now picturing the Nautilus in its home, it is nearly a “ship,” for in beginning as the soul it has no message to impart, jt has no life, but represents the lowest plane of being, rising higher and higher in the scale of life until it reaches the topmost round of the ladder. Still keeping the picture in view, the “dim, dreaming life” cannot yet reveal the message of the writer. The “dreamer” is transformed into a toiler. It has changed from a passive to an active state and gradually takes on' the power to shape and form itself. Let us look at it now in its active life dwelling in its own constructions which it leaves and builds at its own will. Thus through the imaginary it can claim kinsmanship with the higher race rind stand face to face with the soul and through the deep ocean caves of thought can sing, “Build the more stately mansions, O my soul. As the swift seasons roll, Leave thy low-vaulted past, Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free. Leaving thine outgrown shell by Ute’s unresting sea!

CHRISTENIA FLOCH.