DANIEL BROWNdiscoveries, ones that question the principle of the "type" (LV, 7; LVI, 1), of a
core, soul-like, essence that fixes identity in the face of historical change. As
Tennyson mourns his dead friend, his most urgent concern is with the human
soul and its immortality: "that of the living whole I ... I No life may fail
beyond the grave" (LV, 1, 4). Here he appears to base his faith in the
Aristotelian doctrine of nous: "The likest God within the soul." Aristotle
claims that this individual soul distinguishes human beings from all other
creatures, which have only a reproducible species soul. 10 Consequently, the
casual brutality of organic nature - "so careful of the type she seems, / So
careless of the single life" (LV, 7-8) - does not threaten Tennyson's hopes for
human immortality. As long as nature respects the principle of "type," of
species identity, then there is reason to believe with Aristotle that humanity
is distinguished from all other species by the divine element of nous.
Once the fossil evidence of extinct creatures is introduced, however, this
argument by analogy with species-souls yields alarming conclusions about
the meaning of human life:
"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." (LVI, 1-8)Here nature articulates the voice of materialism, for which the "spirit"
means nothing more than its etymological origins in the Latin spiritus as
"breath" or "air." Such facets of nature, which were brought to the fore by
contemporary geology, generate another dream of nature and its creation
that Tennyson experiences as a nightmare. This is what Mother Nature
yields as a consequence of the approaches of "Science" in section XXI:
"Science reaches forth her arms / To feel from world to world, and charms /
Her secret from the latest moon" (18-20). Although it is gendered
feminine, Science is attributed with a conventionally masculine boldness
that roams over the curvaceous forms of nature's worlds with active
exploratory hands and charms cold and remote moons into revealing their
secrets. Viewed in the wider perspective of the poem, "To feel" in such a
lascivious manner means to interpellate Mother Nature as both primitive
and amoral. She thus becomes a chthonic principle alienated from God and
the other male protagonists of the poem: "God and Nature [are] then at
strife, / That Nature lends such evil dreams" (LV, 5-6). If "love reflects the
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