Today we traveled to the Chamonix Pass in France and went up to Mere de Glace. This is a very famous place because of a passage from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and also because of Coleridge's poem, "Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamonix." As we read this poem in the streets of Chamonix we discussed Coleridge's insistence that this sight intensified his belief in God. While Percy Shelley would later disagree, I believe Coleridge had it right. As we studied in Kant, the mountain truly shows us nothing, it is just a mountain. The meaning comes with our interpretation of the mountain.
In seeing the mountain we see the grandeur that God has created. While man is God's creation, how does he stand beside a mountain? The shadow the mountain casts over humanity is so deep that he/she can become aware of his/her insignificance. Man becomes only another voice praising God along with the mountain.
Similarly, the glacier creates the same awareness. The time that the glacier has existed and the power behind its creative force in moving down the mountain is humbling. A human life looks both grand and small next to this amazing force. Humanity is capable of imagination and creation and is therefore grand, but a human's life is fleeting and pass much more quickly and quietly than the glacier.
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