Natures Bonfire, Million-fueled: The Poetic Cosmologies of

G. M. Hopkins and A. N. Whitehead

Robert E. Doud
Pasadena City College

The purpose of this article is to provide suggestions to aid in the critical interpretation
of Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry and vision of reality by comparing some of his focal
ideas with those of Alfred North Whitehead. More is at stake in Hopkins than the writing
of poetry and the invention of a Christian poetics. Perceiving inscapes and feeling
instresses1 lies at the heart of the human vocation of giving glory to God. They are part of
a discernment process that deepens and extends the work of St. Ignatius Loyola. They are
part of the poets personal project of finding God in all things.

This article is not so much about the poetry of Hopkins, as it is about his poetic ideas,
his Christological cosmology, his vision of reality, his underlying influences and
convictions. This article is a fusion of horizons between Hopkins and Whitehead. It
intends to improve the understanding of each by comparison to and correlation with the
other. This leads inevitably to a better understanding of Hopkins poems, but it is not on
the whole an analysis of or commentary on particular poems. It terminates, however, in
an appreciative consideration of The Windhover, by way of correlation with
Whiteheads notion of concrescence.

Hopkins does not write with the accuracy or consistency of a philosopher or

theologian, but his unique and idiosyncratic terminology and conceptuality tempt the
philosopher and theologian to probe his works for an underlying systematic unity. Some
of the colorful and engaging terms familiar to readers of Hopkins are: dappled, inscape,
instress, stress, outstress, selftaste, rhyming, chiming, selving, pitch, sake, scape, interest,
catch, and several others. These terms all seem to have to do with the variety of things in
nature, their inner energy, the unique inner pattern each thing has, and the patterned
impression they bestow upon the mind when communicating with it. Humans, with
sensation, consciousness, and the ability to appreciate beauty, are present in the world to
receive the impressions given off by natural objects and by scenes composed of several
objects in conjunction.

For Hopkins, the accumulation of poetic perceptions, fused with the attendant
sufferings and sacrifices required in a particular vocation, is the task of the Christian. In
Hopkins view, Gods goodness overflows into the abundance of creation, mysteriously
requiring suffering, but promising reward beyond this life. The neo-Platonic, Romantic,
and Franciscan principle of plentitude is important as background behind Hopkins
delight in the fecund abundance, differences, variety, and uniqueness in a world whose
deepest structures are imprinted with the face of Christ. The word dappled2 is the symbol
in the poem Pied Beauty for the profusion and diversity of entities in creation,
suggesting the myriad of actual entities or actual occasions3 present in the universe at
any instant in Whiteheads cosmology.

Glory be to God for dappled things -For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim . . .

Some of the Whiteheadian or process ideas used here are: creativity, actual entity,
concrescence, prehension, subjective form, initial aim, subjective aim, the reformed
subjectivist principle, the four phases of concrescence, transmutation, and the two
natures of God (primordial and consequent). Some of the comparisons or correlations
worked out in this article include: creativity in Whitehead with instress in Hopkins,
concrescence in Whitehead with inscape in Hopkins, style in Whitehead with inscape and
selving in Hopkins, selftaste4 with satisfaction, and transmutation in Whitehead with
rhyming in Hopkins.

Selving corresponds with the process by which the initial aim becomes the subjective
aim in Whitehead; it is also closely related to his reformed subjectivist principle. Sake,5 as
used by Hopkins, corresponds to the anticipation an actual entity entertains or
experiences as to its inclusion and relevance in future concrescences. The term interest6
as used by Hopkins is a function of the way in which worldly occasions become
everlasting, or objectively immortal. They are preserved and enhanced in Gods
consequent nature. Rhyming,7 a term also used idiosyncratically by Hopkins,
approximates to Whiteheads category of transmutation.8 Rhyming also suggests the
harmonizing of the very many subjective forms or affective tones within each actual
entity.

Influences on the work of Hopkins include St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis of Assisi,
Duns Scotus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and the New Testament. We refer to Arthur O.
Lovejoys The Great Chain of Being for understandings of Platos theology, NeoPlatonism, the principle of plentitude, and Romanticism. Lovejoy points to the principle
of plentitude9 in Romanticism, and this shows up strongly in Hopkins appreciation of the
variety of species and individuals, all of which have inscapes that are also Christscapes. 10
For Lovejoy, there are notions of fecundity, variety and diversity that connect Platonism
and Romanticism, and play important parts in the definition of Romanticism.

i. Ignatius, Scotus, and Inscape

The Ignatian influence in Hopkins is central and pervasive. It has to do with giving
back to God an appreciation for all that God has given to us.11 It also has to do with
making it worth Gods while to have created us. 12 Hearing the phrase worth Gods
while might make a Whiteheadian think of the consequent nature of God, 13 that is, the
preserving aspect of God to which we make our constant and unique contributions. It is a
metaphysical condition in Whitehead that all finite achievement rushes back into God for
everlasting preservation. There is also an idea of spiritual poverty in Ignatius, by which
devotees should give everything they possess back to God. Give beauty back . . . back
to God, beautys self and beautys giver.14

Beauty and glory are virtually the same for Hopkins; both are placed in nature and
destined for return to God, and it is the duty of humanity to achieve the latter. Boyle

treats of both as Shekinah, the overshadowing presence of God that hovers over the ark of
the covenant and over Mary in St. Lukes gospel. 15 Among other places, Shekinah was in
the smoke from the censer of the high priest which hung over the mercy seat in the
temple in Jerusalem. In the Kabbala, this Shekinah is associated with the revelatory and
redemptive descent of God into humanity as it is created. 16 People who bear this Shekinah
within them are called embers in the Kaballah. Embers also serve as an important
image in the poetry of Hopkins.

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.17

In discussing the experiential mysticism of St. Ignatius, Karl Rahner 18 finds a balance
between the themes of fuga saeculi and the cross, and a spirituality of joy in the goodness
of this world. This latter piety or spirituality is based on the notion of finding God
experientially in all things; everything then becomes transparent in relation to God, so
that everything is found in God and God in everything. 19 Ignatian piety involves the
sifting of individual experience, a process in which Gods will is sought in ones
particular situation. The piety of St. Ignatius is not a formula applicable to all in the same
way, but is a spiritual discernment by which one finds ones particular calling in concrete
circumstances.20 This discernment or discovery of Gods will in concrete particular cases
makes pervasive use of divine consolation as a spiritual compass. This God-given joy in

the world is also related to a certain holy indifference, or spiritual liberty, as regards the
particular circumstances in which one is called to serve.

Fused with the Ignatian spirituality of glory and sacrifice, which is converted into a
poetic sensibility by Hopkins, is the Franciscan 21 spirituality of greeting the image or
vestige of God in all created things, the nearness of God and the gentleness of Gods
loving will. It is thus that Hopkins resonates with the keen sense of the individuality of
the particular, as based in the Scotist notion of haecceitas.22 This particularity of each
creature in each novel circumstance is appreciated in Scotus haecceitas and in Ignatius
discernment of spirits.

On the question of particularity, a Whiteheadian might refer to The Aims of

Education,23 where Whitehead writes of style as the fashioning of power, (and) the
restraining of power. In Whitehead, style combines the aesthetic sense with the
foreseeing of ends to be attained. Style implies an exquisite fit between means of
expression and content expressed. Style has to do with the appropriate use of creative
power, without waste, stinting, or trivial application. In Whitehead, power is directed,
restrained, and shaped, as it is brought under the principle of limitation by the process of
concrescence. So, style is not the power or energy itself, but the fashioning of power as in
concrescence. Style is nothing if not combined with self-determination, giving to the
individual its uniqueness in function and production. Style would then involve discretion
and discernment in the Ignatian sense. Whiteheads style has to do with the internal

structure and organization of a thing, the particularity of a things self-patterning, and

thus corresponds to Hopkins inscape or selving.

Inscape can thus be characterized as style, structure, design, or pattern. Inscape as

structure reveals instress as the energy of the thing itself and as the energy of God in the
act of creating. The myriad forms of nature are unique, both self-inscaped and
individually inscaped by God. Each thing, from the lowest piece of inanimate matter to
the most highly pitched, selved and distinctive thing in creation, the human mind, has
its own inscape, which gives it its own self or identity.

When Hopkins speaks of a landscape, seascape, or even a lovescape,24 he is speaking

of the exterior or outer manifestation of something, of which the interior, organizing
reality is the inscape. The outer scape shows itself to the poet in such a way as to reveal
the inscape and the instress of what is beheld. Furthermore, this manifestation stirs or
excites the poets awareness of his or her personal instress. In a moment of poetic insight,
this contemplation stirs the resonating awareness of several attuned instances of instress
into intense harmony, called rhyme.

ii. Instress as Creativity

Instress in Hopkins is the underlying energy that organizes nature into pattern and
unity. Instress also runs through the human mind (which is part of nature), enabling it to
make sense of the world. It underlies all particular inscapes of natural structures, just as
the total life and personality of the artist lies behind any particular work of art he or she

may produce. Ultimately, this being or creative power must be a divine energy: creation
is not altogether a separation, but that God remains in things by his essence, presence,
and power, as the inmost being of things. 25 For Hopkins, instress is the creative energy
and activity of God within things.

By contemplation of simple objects flowers, trees, streams, and landscapes

Hopkins was at times raised to ecstasy, because he realized that the hidden energy
(instress) molding things into shapes, colors, and patterns (inscapes) was the very energy
of God. This outward and visible beauty was to him the reflection of the energy and
invisible beauty of God. So, in this sense all of nature was sacramental to him the
visible sign of an invisible, intelligent, and creative energy.

Instress is the undercurrent of creative energy that supports and binds together the
whole of the created world, giving things shape and form, and giving joy and meaning to
the beholder. Instress comes closest of all of Hopkins terms to an equation with
Whiteheads term creativity. Without this current of instress which runs through the
outside world and through the perceiving mind, there would be no bridge between the
two, and the world would be unintelligible.

There would be no bridge, no stem of stress

between us and things to bear us out and
carry the mind over.26

Instress or creativity, the universal energy of creation, aims at fierce intensity and
idiosyncratic haecceity. Inscape then refers to the patterns and perspectives in nature, to
the inner law of shapes and designs in all things. Hopkins looks at a handful of
bluebells, a chestnut tree, a dead tree, a fine sunset, or the breakers on the shore, and tries
to find a unique perspective which joins together all the elements of the scene in the
ecstasy of the moment. In each of these experiences a great deal of detail is fused into a
novel blend of instantaneous enjoyment. In such an ecstasy the inscape of the whole is
perceived and the instress giving it its inner energy it is appreciated.

All creatures have an inner and an outer aspect, according to which they express
themselves in order to become themselves: they necessarily express themselves in order
to attain their own nature.27 There is an invisible reality in things which manifests itself
through a visible outer reality. Walter Ong 28 writes of Hopkins own personal inscape. In
Whitehead, the objective reality of an actual occasion is preceded by phases of inner selfgeneration and subjective satisfaction. For Whitehead, this inner aspect of reality defeats
the thesis of mechanism, and makes his a philosophy of organism. The stages of
concrescence, especially the inner stages of process and satisfaction, as described by
Whitehead, correspond to the inscape of natural realities in Hopkins.

Inscape, that is, free internal self-constitution, is the very soul of art, according to
Hopkins. Art is not the reproduction of a surface reality. What matters is the internal selfshaping of the work of art, not its correspondence to anything outside itself. For Hopkins,
the work of art exercises its own inner, organic, even self-generating reality. The

sympathetic experience of this process as it happens in the self-constituting work of art is

our knowledge of inscape. The work of art, the poem, is both organic and symbolic,
expressing itself in order to become itself.

The appreciation of real particulars in nature, with their inscapes and instresses, makes
us and them glow with intensity and the fire of ecstasy. Each poem is also a real
particular or consrescence, and has its own inscape that is ready to communicate itself to
the attentive listener. Everything in the whole scale of creation strives, in its own way, to
realize what Duns Scotus called haecceitas its own self-crafted, God-created, and
Christ-filled identity, uniqueness, particularity, and selfhood. In doing this each thing
gives glory to God. Hopkins wrote of all things being charged (in virtue of their instress)
with love and with God; if we know how to touch them, they give off sparks and take
fire . . .29

iii. Particulars and Plentitude

Each thing in inanimate nature broadcasts its own inner identity, but does not
consciously give glory to God. It needs to be completed by contemplation in human
consciousness. The human reality alone is conscious, has freedom of choice, and can
therefore choose to return glory to God. We experience ourselves to be more highly
pitched, selved and distinctive than anything in the world.30

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

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Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.31

Selving in Hopkins is the key function of each being or nature, thereby becoming
complete, genuine, or authentic. To a Whiteheadian, becoming something like a self
would suggest the transformative process whereby the God-given initial aim becomes the
subjective aim32 during concrescence. The subjectivist principle provides that all entities
whatsoever are inchoately subjects.33 This means that, for the Whiteheadian, as for
Hopkins, all creatures, even inanimate ones, are capable of at least primitive mental
functions, that is, selving.34

Kingfishers and dragonflies give glory to God, but they are not aware of their
function or contribution. Embodied human consciousness perceives and enhances the
glory, and offers it back to God. The basis of this incarnational reality is the cosmic
Christ; that is, the Body of Christ made manifest in and through the bodies of those who
do Gods will, who choose Gods glory. It is important to Hopkins that this be the bodily
reality of the human Christ, and not simply the eternal Logos, the Holy Spirit, or God
functioning in any way lacking the full humanity demanded by the mystery of the
incarnation.

In the spirit of Duns Scotus, Hopkins shares the empirical temper that is the mark of
British thought and sensibililty. In the thought of Scotus, the importance of the bodily

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humanity of Christ, and its permanent significance for our redemption, is based on the
significance of matter. Matter has an essence of its own, independent of all form,
according to Scotus. Matter is for him a constituent of every created being, even the
angels, in whom spiritual matter is present. For Scotus, matter is by itself a positive
entity, not a pure potency, and can exist even in a condition of formlessness. At its initial
creation, matter is proleptically charged with the reality of the incarnation.

On the Scotist view, in creating primordial matter God already had in view the divine
incarnation of the eternal Logos in Jesus Christ. The redemption of the world is thus a
secondary reason for the incarnation, and the incarnation itself is the primary reason for
creation. Boyle points out that, for Hopkins, Gods first intention and his first creative
product is the humanity of Christ. 35 Everything else was created in, through, and for the
human Christ.

That is Christ playing at me playing at

Christ, only that it is no play but truth; That is
Christ being me and me being Christ.36

If matter is a primordial and essential element in Gods plan for Scotus, then there is
something more required to account for the unique individuality of every particular
creature. For him, neither form nor matter can account for the particularity of individual
beings.37 Scotus supplied this further element in his notion of haecceitas or thisness.
What finally makes a form real, as God creates a particular thing, is not the forms unity

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with matter, but a further principle which completes the individual form and is ultimately
responsible for the actuality of each particular being. It is this haecceity that Hopkins
intends his inscape to be. A Whiteheadian would think that the transformation of the
initial aim into the subjective aim is also at work here. It is Gods aim or intention for
each thing or scene in nature that it show itself forth in its own particular beauty. It is the
appreciation of this inscape and this transformation of initial aim into subjective aim that
gives glory to God in poetry.

The importance of the knowledge of concrete singular beings in Scotus anticipates the
empirical interest in later British philosophy. It also anticipates the celebration of nature
in all of its variety and particularity in Romantic poetry. Arthur O. Lovejoy38 finds in
Romanticism an inheritance of the Platonic principle of plentitude, that diversity itself is
of the essence of excellence, and that the best of all possible worlds is the most
variegated. In this neo-Platonic perspective, the overflowing fecundity and generativity
of the divine essence produces the myriad of species and individuals in nature. The
human imagination and the human faculty for language and expression extend this
plentitude with creativity and generativity of their own.

According to Lovejoy,39 Scotus accepted the divine fecundity, the principle of

plentitude, and the great chain of being. Gardner says: individual substances, according
to the metaphysical richness of their being, make up one vast hierarchy (or chain) with
God as their summit.40 What Hopkins did not accept was a necessitarian interpretation of

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plentitude; God freely created all things out of an overflowing abundance and personal
love. It was freely given love and not necessity that motivated the divine creative will.

Denis Donaghue 41 agrees with the placement of Hopkins within Romanticism in

constantly renewed delight in the plentitude of the world. Lovejoy adds to this idea the
dictum of William Blake as archromantic: Exuberance is beauty. Plentitude, diversity,
and exuberance, and the constant novel arising of these make up the Romantic sensibility.
These also constitute the dominant thematic and tonality of Whiteheads cosmology.

For Whitehead, the essence of Romanticism lies in its organic rather than mechanical
way of modeling reality.42 It lies in the intuition of the solidarity or interrelatedness in
nature. All things are internally related for Whitehead, and each modicum of reality
contains at its center something like the sensitivity and subjectivity enjoyed by humans.
Hopkins meets and matches Whiteheads reformed subjectivist principle with his notion
of selving, which applies to subhuman species and inanimate entities as well. Selving
adds something to the idea of inscape, continuing the theme of haecceity, by placing a
seed of subjectivity within each and every being.

Donoghue credits Hopkins for his intimacy of contact with the world, seeking his
knowledge of the world by attending to its fullness and individuality. 43 Hopkins feels
the organic bond between God, wider nature, and humanity, and thinks at times of the
natural world as a great body mediating between himself and God.44 The reticular or
interwoven relationship between God, world, and humanity tends at times to melt into

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near identity, as in other Romantic poetry. Yet, Hopkins stronger devotion, like Blakes,
is given at length to minute particulars rather than to general truths.45

iv. Parmenides and Heraclitus

Milward finds in Hopkins ecstatic experiences of inscape a kind of perceiving in

which inscape holds many parts together as one. 46 To a Whiteheadian, this suggests the
confluence and locking together of data or prehensa in the process stage of concrescence.
Hopkins experienced being ecstatically, intuiting being as vital force and creative energy.
As the instress behind all inscapes, being brings everything together and is one with itself
throughout. Being is felt as having gathering power, and exercises an active triumph over
nonbeing. The is which gathers all things in nature is the same is that instresses the
poetic consciousness. Language mediates this awareness: it carries the mind over into
things and things over into the mind. 47 All language is expression of this ubiquitous
being. There is a stress of being in the mind that answers to the stress of being in nature.
Being within and being without are felt together epistemologically as they arise from the
same source, being itself.

Being comes out of itself, comes to expression in and as language. This is the basis in
the universe for incarnation, sacrament, and symbol. Here too is evidence for plentitude.
Being is one, but its expressions are lavishly, almost inexhaustibly, multiple. Being
overflows, almost compulsively, but ultimately with the prodigal gratuity of love. Nature
is the garment, or rather, the prodigious wardrobe of being. To the poet, being in language

15

is an experience of intimate self-possession, unique particularity, and munificent

exuberance.

Balancing the Parmenidean perception of being everywhere in Hopkins, Milward

discerns as well the Heraclitean flux, the river of passing time, which swells into the
paradoxical images of both water and fire. Comparing The Wreck of the Deutschland
with Heraclitean Fire, Milward finds images of time flowing away and the world
burning away.
Million-fueled, natures bonfire burns on.48

The Whiteheadian is not without categories for understanding the Hopkinsian

extremes of both flux and permanence. Hopkins poem on Heraclitean Fire could serve
as a hymn to proclaim Whiteheads doctrine of perpetual perishing. The perishing49 of
actual occasions, especially when these actual occasions are keenly felt as ones own, can
also be felt with the subjective form of terror. One can feel terribly isolated, abandoned
and forlorn, as does Hopkins in the terrible sonnets. Especially, the one-time enraptured
mystic can feel utterly separated from God, long after ones connection with God has
become the supremely important and defining value in the spiritual life.

David Daiches50 points to the financial meaning of the word interests in The Lantern
out of Doors. Christ is interested in us, and he adds to the value of what we do. As
redemption and ransoming are financial terms, so is interest. Perhaps Hopkins also
intended the idea of inter (bury) to link with the word mould in the following verse. We

16

meet Christ in dying, and he is between (in Latin: inter est) us and our reward. Christ here
is like Whiteheads consequent nature of God,51 crediting us with an increase, while
preserving our holdings everlastingly.

v. Organicity and Concrescence

Lovejoy52 begins his tracing of the path of the principle of plentitude in Western
thought with Platos theology. Lovejoy sees two gods in Plato. As the Idea of the good, or
the form of the good, God for Plato was the apotheosis of unity and the source of all other
forms. The demiurge, by contrast, an inferior deity or aspect of divinity, was the part of
the godhead that entrapped the forms or souls in matter, thus initiating diversity,
fecundity, and particularity. Haecceity would have been, for Plato, due to the unfortunate
meddling of a lesser aspect of divinity. For Hopkins, haecceity is the blessed acme of
divine creativity. Fecundity and particularity, for Hopkins, reveal the true bounty and
genius of the divine.

In Neo-platonism, the first God, like the God of later Christian theology, was the goal
of the ascent of souls as they moved back to their true source. Accordingly, the liberated
soul turned from all finite and created things, and ascended back to the immutable
perfection in which it then found rest and identity. The other or lesser god was the source
and energy of the descending process by which being flows through all the levels of
reality, ever more diluted and derived, down to the very lowest. The first God invited

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liberating flight from the many to the one, leading to true delight. The second deity
offered the false delight of emanation into the many and away from the one.

This tension, or something related to it, shows up in Whitehead, who also bases his
theodicy in the Timaeus of Plato. Whitehead produces in speculation a dipolar deity, who
has both a primordial nature53 and a consequent nature. The primordial nature enjoys the
classical attributes associated with transcendence, while the consequent nature absorbs
back into itself the diversity of perfections realized by the finite entities of the world. In
Whitehead, it is God, operating from the primordial nature, who supplies in every instant
a myriad of initial aims as seeds initiating what God sees as the self-creation of all the
entities in the universe.

In Whitehead, each actual entity or actual occasion, even the most trivial and
inanimate, enjoys a modicum of feeling and satisfaction. Just as God is dipolar,54 each
entity is dipolar,55 with mental as well as physical aspects. Each entity constitutes itself in
virtue of a decision56 by which it brings itself to full determination. This resonates
perfectly with selving in Hopkins, and with the haecceity of Scotus. Not only does each
occasion have a unique thisness, but the occasion itself is subjectively responsible for
achieving self-enactment. The supreme achievement of the divine creativity is the
evocation of self-production on the part of creatures.

Whiteheads creativity57 is a principle of novelty which is realized only in the myriad

actual occasions that constitute the universe at any instant. In virtue of creativity,

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constantly new entities are at once self-creating and then perishing in the universe. For
Whitehead, God, as the principle of limitation, is the chief supplier of order or discipline
in the universe. For him, creativity is a principle independent of God, with it own
initiative, energy, and ability to construct itself into concrescences. 58 A Christian
philosopher with Whiteheadian sympathies must critically recognize discrepancies
between the Whiteheadian cosmology and a Christian metaphysics in which God is sole
creator.

To the extent that God supplies the order or discipline of the universe, creativity is that
which is disciplined. For Whitehead, God supplies discipline and direction in the universe
and functions as the principle of limitation.59 For Whitehead, creativity is infinite
fecundity, and is the principle of plentitude. Fecundity is a synonym for plentitude.
Fecundity here may not be unlimited; it may be simply lavish, generous, and profuse, and
still be limited. God, for Whitehead, is a creature and supreme instantiation of this
fecundity or creativity; whereas, for traditional Christianity, God is the creator of
creativity and director of its proliferation. Whitehead eschews the term matter, but, to the
Christian, his creativity seems to function as a material principle, not as pure potency or
passive receptivity, but as an active energy60 that follows the discipline of concrescence in
urging the relative self-production of every new occasion. Whiteheads creativity, with
the accommodations suggested here, closely approximates Hopkins instress, as the active
energy vitalizing the self-particularizing of each created entity.

vi. Initial Aim, Selving, and Prehension

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In Whitehead, every self-creating actual entity enjoys at least a modicum of

subjectivity. It also exercises freedom or self-determination, and has a stage of decision
as part of its concrescence. God supplies to every actual entity an initial aim 61 or ideal
aim, which constitutes a package of ideal possibilities for its realization. The ideal aim
serves as a seed of origination for each novel occasion. It instigates a purpose for the new
entity, but in appropriating this aim, the occasion transforms it. The ideal aim is really
only the beginning phase of the subjective aim, which latter aim is an inner purpose
generated by the entity itself.

Hopkins selving is to be correlated with the process by which the initial aim is
transformed into the subjective aim. Here the individual entity comes into possession of
itself, and shows Gods glory by achieving its own self-enactment in determining its own
purpose. God sets the range of possibility for the entity, and the entity determines itself
within that range. On the human level, we can think of this as a covenantal bargaining
between obedience to divine direction and authentic self-determination, remembering that
this bargaining is instigated and intended by God as supplier of the ideal aims. It is Gods
intention that the entity freely self-enact, at times inspiring the entity to give special
attention to God as the source of its ideal aim, and to discern Gods preference for it
within the range of its own freedom.

The process by which each new occasion of experience arises in Whitehead is that of
concrescence.62 Variously described, concrescence has four phases: datum, process,
satisfaction, and decision63 (also called anticipation). In the datum phase, all the occasions

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of the past flow in upon a newly concrescing occasion to take their places in its internal
constitution. In the process phase, each of the occasions included in the new occasion or
entity are assigned a place and a value. In the decision phase, the new occasion, no longer
new, becomes an object for inclusion in successor occasions, anticipating the influence it
will have as an ingredient. In the satisfaction phase, the satisfaction is identified with the
completed actual entity, and is superject,64 not subject. The actual entity as such is the
subject of its own immediacy; 65 this would include and entail all four phases of
concrescence Because concrescence is the intimate inner self-structuring of the actual
occasion, it correlates with the term inscape in Hopkins.

The final and public phase of concrescence, anticipation, corresponds with Hopkins;
sake, which is the outer manifestation of the essential inscape. Sake is a seed of hope and
seed of shaping offered by a predecessor entity to a successor entity. It is somewhat like
the ideal aim that is given to each actual occasion by God. It is a suggestion regarding
purpose.

No account of Whiteheads philosophy of organism is complete without the idea of

prehension.66 A prehension is a real, internal, and constitutive relationship between an
earlier actual occasion and a later actual occasion. By prehension, the earlier occasion
becomes immanent in and part of the later occasion. The process by which a great
number of occasions become one in a single new occasion is that of prehension. The
dynamic by which each occasion is included in the consequent nature of God is
prehension.

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A prehension is made up of an entity that is prehended and the entity that is

prehending that entity. Relating and combining the two is a subjective form 67 or affective
mode, which is the specific and individual way in which one occasions prehends another.
Subjective forms have to do with moods and affections, such as love, fear, gratitude, joy,
terror. In The Wreck of the Deutschland, many extremes of emotion are depicted. Many
of the external circumstances are prehended with terror, while in the midst of it all comes
Christ, who is prehended with joy. This poem embodies and portrays a span of passing
moments, from an acute awareness of imminent perishing, to that of calming embrace in
the consequent nature of God.

Christ, in Hopkins Wreck, serves the function of Whiteheads consequent nature of

God. Christ is there to receive us. Christ is enduringly present in his physical, material,
bodily being to absorb and preserve us and the beauty that we have achieved or added to
nature. Redemption, for Hopkins, is not mere absorption into God, but union with God
that intensifies the uniqueness of each self. Christ confirms our selving, enhances it, and
seals it into everlastingness. Just as being, for Hopkins, is the origin, fecundity, and
source of unity, inclusion, and dispersion, so Christ is the goal, collector, and finisher of
reality, achievement, and preservation. Whitehead refers to the consequent nature as the
Kingdom of God.68 In Hopkins, Christ, as the perfect synthesis of all spirit and matter, is
cosmic in proportion, saving in efficacy, and all-embracing in scope.

vii. The Windhover Appreciated

22

The Windhover69 is a poem about consolation or spiritual joy, and it is about a brief
moment of unexpected consolation in an otherwise arid time. The glory glimpsed
suggests perishing as well as exaltation, pouring out as well as lifting up. This moment is
like a sillion or row of heaped up earth bordered by furrows, or the sighting of a rare and
reclusive bird of prey in a gray sky. In a time of monotony or trouble, the promised
meaning for enduring it all unexpectedly reveals itself. With images of holy wimple,
folded wings, furrowed field Hopkins records a corrugated chiaroscuro of bittersweet
transcendence, catching a glimpse of the kestrel about to catch its prey, that is, catching
Christ.

The inscape of The Windhover coincides with the actual occasions structure of
concrescence. In this way, The Windhover is taken here to typify all the poems of
Hopkins. The poems datum phase, or phase of converging and merging data, is a phase
of gathering in evidence, a phase of receptiveness. Thus the dappled spots on the birds
body are gathered together, with all the other data they represent, into the tense unity of
the hovering kestrel. The dappled sky is also gathered into this unity, and the morning
itself composes the place as it gathers all the contributing elements for the dauphin or
chevalier. All elements flow together and lock suddenly into an instant of gathered
meaning from a welter of fortuitously confluent prehensions.

There is a process or valuation phase, as all the elements, with their myriads of distinct
inscapes and selves, settle into one common and novel inscape, with which they are all

23

now reconciled. All data, that is, prehensions of actual entities, buckle together, and the
novel set of relations, the self-integrated composition of the novel occasion of experience,
is achieved. Here beauty is manifested as a function of the relatedness of all contributors.
Furthermore, the subjective forms by which each of the data are prehended are kindled at
this point, and they include affections of joy, ecstasy, rapture, or consolation. In Hopkins
poem, the impression of Christ, latently present in each and every prehended datum, is
now manifested from within the concrescing modicum of novel being. Christ is now the
scape or inner constitution of the emergent poem, and hovers intensely in the electrified
air as the value also distilled out of all the data and prehensa.

In The Windhover, buckling most likely has to do with the bird locking in upon its
prey and immediately taking the posture that begins its stoup. Here beauty is caught as a
glimpse of glinting sun against the bird and against the background of a gray sky. In the
same moment, Christ is caught in a glimpse that suggests his redemptive descent to catch
souls in general, or to catch up the poet in ecstasy. Christ is the one caught and the one
who does the catching. A Whiteheadian thinks of the buckling together of all the data in
the process phase of concrescence. The stoup or dive of the falcon is the kinesis and
kenosis that occurs as the initial aim becomes the subjective aim in the heart of
concrescence.

The third phase is that of satisfaction. Here emerges the poets heart in hiding. The
poets joy is the satisfaction recorded in the poem. Actually, a double satisfaction is
suggested here, as if the poet enjoys a self-feeling (. . . my heart in hiding / Stirred for a

24

bird . . .) in function of Christs enjoyment, symbolized as the birds ecstasy. This

suggests two concrescences: one of the poet, and one of Christ. It suggests as well a
communion in which the poet prehends Christs satisfaction or completed actual occasion
with the same sense of intimacy with which he enjoys his own actual occasion. What is
presented here are two satisfactions being enjoyed simultaneously, the ecstasy of Christ
and the stirring heart of the poet, both recorded in the poem.

It is in the satisfaction phase that selving primarily takes place. Here the initial aim,
which is given to each occasion in the universe by God as its instigation to become and
its package of possibilities for realization, is appropriated and transformed by freedom
into the subjective aim, which is unique and freely developed by each occasion. If
satisfaction is selftaste, then the subjective aim makes the occasion the chief participant
in its own creation. Furthermore, this reveals Gods will to have freedom as a part of the
self-enactment of every creature.

The fourth phase is the one in which gold-vermillion flame bursts out of blue-bleak
embers. The objectified entity now reaches its final phase, satisfaction or anticipation, in
which it offers itself as a new datum for inclusion into the composition of successor
occasions. Here it gives itself back with all that is has achieved to God and to the
universe. This is the phase of sacrifice in which what is returned registers everlastingly in
the consequent nature of God. We remind ourselves of the Shekinah or divine presence,
and, the Kabbalistic doctrine, in which embers signify the radiant divine presence that

25

hides and abides within the Temple. From the embers, the smoke of the sacrificial incense
joins the cloud of presence hovering over the sanctuary.

The success of comparing Hopkins and Whitehead lies in reaching greater insight into
the cosmological vision and horizon of both for having compared them one to the other.
Each poem of Hopkins is a confluence of many influences Parmenidean, Heraclitean,
Platonic, neo-Platonic, Scotist, Franciscan, and Ignatian. But, like the genius of the poet,
each individual poem transcends all of its influences, orchestrates and directs them from
within to achieve its own eminent particularity, its own haecceity. It is the expression and
appreciation of particularity and plentitude, and of all the complex multiplicity becoming
one, that gives glory to God. It is the celebration of being, with its unifying inscape of
Christ and its instress or creativity that returns to God the reflection of grandeur.

26

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W. H. Gardner (New York:

Penguin Books, 1985), xx-xxii. As a name for that individually distinctive form (made up of various
sense data) which constitutes the rich and revealing oneness of the natural object, he coined the word
inscape: and for that energy of being by which all things are upheld . . . he coined the term instress.
I will put the technical or idiosyncratic terms of Hopkins in italics the first time I use them and when
referring to them as terms.
2

Peter Milward, S.J., Hopkins on Man and Being, The Fine Delight, ed. Francis L. Fennell (Chicago,

Loyola Press, 1989), 130; For it is in his eyes the dappledness in form that constitutes the uniqueness
and originality of things in nature, where no two objects are precisely alike. See also, Denis
Donaghue, The Ordinary Universe (New York, Macmillan, 1968), 84-5, and Walter Ong, S.J., Hopkins,
the Self, and God (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 3.
3

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New

York: The Free Press, 1978), 18. Actual entities also termed actual occasions -- are the final real
things of which the world is made up. Microscopic building blocks of the universe, they perish as
soon as they are realized, and so, in every instant the world is made up of a novel set of occasions.
Nevertheless, complex patterns of inheritance provide for endurance. See Process and Reality, 18-20;
Sherburne, A Key to Whiteheads Process and Reality (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1966), 247. I will put the technical terms of Whitehead in italics the first time I use them and when
referring to them as terms.
4

Hopkins, Poems and Prose, 140; . . . that selftaste which nothing in the world can match. The

universal cannot taste this taste of self as I taste it.

5

Milward, S.J., A Commentary on the Sonnets of G.M. Hopkins, 79; Milward quotes Hopkins Journal

thus: I mean by it (sake) the being a thing has outside itself . . . and also that in the thing by virtue of
which especially it has this being abroad . . . Hopkins also takes sake to mean distinctive quality in
genius.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose, ed. W. H. Gardner (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 28-

9. In his poem, The Lantern out of Doors, Hopkins writes:

Christ minds: Christs interest, what to avow or amend
There, eyes them, heart wants, care haunts, foot follows kind.
Their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend.
7

Phillip A. Ballinger, The Poem as Sacrament: The Theological Aesthetic of Gerard Manley Hopkins

(Leuven, Belgium: Peeters Press, 2000), 144. For Hopkins, . . . through the Incarnation everything
rhymes in Christ.
8

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 251; (Transmutation) arises by reason of the analogies between the

various members of the prehended nexus (group of data), and eliminates their differences. Apart from
transmutation our feeble intellectual operations would fail to penetrate into the dominant characteristics
of things. In virtue of the category of transmutation many data are felt as one in a single prehension
and are assigned a single subjective form.
9

Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 52.

According to the principle of plentitude, the universe is a plenum formarum in which the range of
conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified . . . Applied to Hopkins,
the principle of plentitude means the profuse variety of individuals and species, but not the necessary
and exhaustive appearance of all possible beings and kinds of beings.
10

For Hopkins, the universe itself is a Christscape. The image of the incarnate Christ is impressed upon

the universe and everything in it, indeed by every scene or scape perceived by the human eye.
11

Milward, S.J., Hopkins on Man and Being, The Fine Delight, 141. . . . . his (Hopkins)

readiness to give beauty back . . . to God as beautys self and beautys giver brings him a renewal
of hope and a reaffirmation of being.
12

Hopkins, The Principle or Foundation, Poems and Prose, 143. . . . we make it worth Gods while

to have created us. . . . This is a thing to live for.

13

14

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343-51.

Hopkins, The Golden Echo, Poems and Prose, 54. Or, Hopkins, Selected Poetry (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1998), 139.

15

Robert R. Boyle, Metaphor in Hopkins (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1961),

48. For the connection between glory and Shekinah, see Walter J. Ong, S. J., Hopkins, the Self, and
God (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 78-81.
16

Leo Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbala (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1974), 154-6.

The Shekinah is a term used to mean the mystical body of Israel. It rests upon the community in
dispersion, and continues to radiate only in weak reflections. Nevertheless, Kabbalists as embers have
continued to flare up with an increased light, and, sporadically, its (the Shekinahs) true grandeur has
been recaptured among the elect.
17

18

Hopkins, The Windhover, Poems and Prose, 30.

Karl Rahner, Theological Thinking and Religious Experience, Karl Rahner in Dialogue:

Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982, ed. Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons (New York:
Crossroad, 1986), 328; In my theology the givenness of a genuine, original experience of God and his
spirit is of fundamental importance. . . .
19

Egan, Harvey, The Spiritual Exercises and The Ignatian Mystical Horizon (St, Louis, MO: The

Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1976), 98; . . . Ignatius phrase, finding God in all things, must often be
understood christocentrically. . . . The phrase, therefore, often means finding Jesus Christ in all
things. See also, Walter J. Burghardt, Long Have I Loved You: A Theologian Reflects on His Church
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 194; Ignatius asks me to consider how God (i.e., Christ) works
and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth . . .
20

Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church, 115. They (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) are

rather an attempt, to provide and give practice in a formal, systematical method of discovering this
individual will of God.

21

Ballinger, The Poem as Sacrament, 100; I claim Hopkins was more Franciscan than Jesuit.

What is more likely the case is that Ignatius and Jesuit spirituality had inherited some of its
particularism from earlier Franciscan and Scotist influences. Hopkins draws upon the richness of both
of these sources, as parts of a single continuous tradtion.
22

Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven, CN: Yale

University Press, 1986), 87. Rather, it (haecceitas) is a principle which completes a thing in its
concreteness: the ultimate specific difference is simply to be different from everything else. Thus
Eco quotes Scotus.
23

Whitehead, The Aims of Education, 12; It (style) is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the

direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste.

24

Hopkins pictures Christ dying on the cross as Lovescape crucified in his poem The Wreck of the

Deutschland, See Milward, S.J. and Raymond Schoder, S.J., eds., Readings of the Wreck: Essays in
Commemoration of G.M. Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland (Chicago: Loyola University
Press, 1976), 28. See also, Todd Bender, Scope, Scape, and Word Formation in the Lexicon of
Hopkins, The Fine Delight, 122, and W. A. M. Peters, S.J., Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Critical Essay
towards the Understanding of His Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 2.
25

Rahner, Panentheism, Theological Dictionary, trans. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 333-4.

Panentheism does not simply identify the world with God in pantheistic fashion . . . but sees the All
of the world within God as an interior modification and manifestation of God, although God is not
absorbed into the world.
26

Ballinger, The Poem as Sacrament, 192; The stem of stress between human beings and nature is

the word itself . . . Again, Ballinger quotes Hopkins thus: . . . stress means the making a thing
more, or making it markedly, what it already is: it is the bringing out of its nature (83). See also,
Hopkins, Parmenides, The Journals and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Humphrey House
and Graham Storey (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 127.

27

Rahner, The Theology of Symbol, Theological Investigations, vol. IV, trans. Kevin Smith

(Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 224. Thus Hopkins idea of inscape has much in common with
Rahners theology of the symbol.
28

Walter J. Ong, S. J., Hopkins, the Self, and God (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 154-9.

Ong describes Hopkins Own Inscape as his unique sensitivity to differentiation or particularity in
the external world . . . and his equally exquisite sensitivity to the differentiation or particularity that
constitutes the internal world (of the self).
29

Hopkins, The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Christopher Devlin,

S.J. (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 195.

30

Hopkins, Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Prose and Poems, 145-6.

Nothing else in nature comes near this unspeakable stress of pitch, distinctiveness, and selving, this
self being of my own.
31

Hopkins, As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame, Prose and Poems, 51, and xxv. See

also, Milward, Hopkins on Man and Being, The Fine Delight, 130; Above all, the emphasis of
Hopkins moves from the thisness which is in all things to the selfhood that is most marked in man.
32

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 25; The subjective aim, which controls the becoming of a subject,

is that subject feeling a proposition with the subject form of purpose to realize it in that process of selfcreation.
33

Ibid, 166. The Subjectivist principle is that the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in the

analysis of subjects. Process is the becoming of experience.

34

William A. M. Peters, S.J., Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Critical Essay towards the Understanding of

His Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 7. There is evidence in his writing that Hopkins
was acutely aware of the fact that, in spite of profound generic and specific differences, man and beast
and inanimate nature were all alike selves,

35

Boyle, Metaphor in Hopkins, 304. See also, Ballinger, The Poem as Sacrament, 120; . . . for

Scotus, creation was dependent on the decree of the Incarnation.

36

37

Hopkins, The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 154.
Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, part I (New York: Doubleday Image

Books, 1962), 236.

38

39

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 304.
Ibid, 81-85; The other God (in Neoplatonism) was the source and informing energy of that

descending process by which being flows through all the levels of possibility down to the very lowest
(83).
40

Gardner, Gerard Manley Hopkins, vol. I, 27.

41

Dennis Donoghue, The Ordinary Universe, 84-5. This (poetry) was his (Hopkins) way of certifying

his imagination, giving it a crucial part in the worship of God.

42

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press), 1969, 75-94. The concrete

enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the
various subordinate organisms which enter into it (79).
43

Donoghue, The Ordinary Universe, 81.

44

Ibid, 83.

45

Ibid, 85. Donoghue notes an entry in Hopkins Journal: All the world is full of inscape and, and

chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose . . .

46

Milward, S.J., Hopkins on Man and Being, The Fine Delight, 136. Here Hopkins rather associates

the thought of Parmenides with the perception of instress in things, as it were a perception of the divine
energy at work in the world. And further on, Here he seems to see the inscape of a thing as that
which holds its many parts together as one, arisng as it were from the depths of its inmost being or
instress.

47

Joseph Hillis Miller, The Univocal Chiming, Hopkins: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Geoffrey

Hartman (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966), 109.

48

MIlward, Hopkins on Man and Being, The Fine Delight, 143. See also Hopkins, That Nature is a

Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection, Poems and Prose, 66.
49

Whitehead, Process and Reality, xiv; . . . the creative advance of the world is the becoming, the

perishing, and the objective immortalites of those things which jointly constitute stubborn fact.
50

David Daiches, Since 1890, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II, ed. Meyer Abrams

(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962), 1238-41. See also, Daiches, God and the Poets (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985), 105-7.
51

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 349; The consequent nature of God is the fulfillment of his

experience by his reception of the multiple freedom of actuality into the harmony of his own
actualization. God absorbs into himself all the perfection achieved by the world as it perishes away.
52

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 82-4. Lovejoy notes the transformation of Platonism into

romanticism: Thus, at last, the Platonistic scheme of the universe is turned upside down. Not only had
the originally complete and immutable Chain of Being been converted into a Becoming . . .(325-6).
53

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 344; The primordial nature of God is the acquirement by creativity

of a primordial character.
54

Ibid, 345. Thus analogously to all actual entities, the nature of God is dipolar. He has a primordial

nature and a consequent nature. The consequent nature of God is conscious . . . The primordial nature
is conceptual . . .
55

Ibid, 348; In each actuality (actual entity) there are two concrescent poles of realization

enjoyment and appetition, that is, the physical, and the conceptual.
56

Ibid, 60; This concrete finality of the individual (actual entity) is nothing else than a decision

referent beyond itself.

57

Ibid, 21; Creativity is the principle of novelty. And also, Creativity achieves its supreme task of

transforming disjointed multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into concrescent unity . . .
(348).
58

Ibid, 149. The four stages constitutive of an actual entity (concrescence) . . . can be named, datum,

process, satisfaction, (and) decision.

59

Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 333. Lovejoy points out that Whitehead gives the name of God,

not to the Infinite Fecundity of emanationism, but to the principle of limitation. Lovejoy quotes
Whitehead: God is the ultimate limitation, and his existence is the ultimate irrationality. On this, see
Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 178.
60

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 31; . . . it (creativity) is the pure notion conditioned by the

objective immortality of the actual world . . .

61

Ibid, 108; . . . pure mental originality (the initial aim) works by the canalization of relevance

arising from the primordial nature of God.

62

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 179. For Whitehead, creativity is

a factor of activity, indeed, the ultimate principle of activity and activation. The creativity is the
actualization of potentiality, and the process of actualization is an occasion of experiencing (actual
entity).
63

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 149-50. For discussion of the satisfaction stage as superject and not

subject, and as following, not preceding, the decision stage, see Process and Reality, 84-5.
64

Ibid, 289; An actual entity in reference to the publicity (in distinction from the internal immediacy)

of things is a superject . . . it adds itself to the publicity which it transmits.

65

Ibid, 25. An actual entity is called the subject of its own immediacy.

66

Ibid, 19; The analysis of an actual entity into prehensions is that mode of analysis which exhibits

the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities. And also, The actuality (actual entity) is
the totality of prehensions with subjective unity in process of concrescence into concrete unity (235).

67

Ibid, 23. That every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the subject which is prehending,

namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the datum which is
prehended; (c) the subjective form which is how that subject prehends that datum.
68

Ibid, 351.

69

Hopkins, Poems and Prose, 30. Or, Hopkins, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 69.