The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures
by Friedrich von Schlegel · English · Gutenberg #43544 · 1,377,213 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures
Author: Friedrich von Schlegel
Translator: A. J. W. Morrison
Release date: August 23, 2013 [eBook #43544]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43544
Credits: Produced by Adam Buchbinder, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, IN A COURSE OF LECTURES ***
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typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. No
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(etext transcriber’s note)
THE
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE,
AND
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE,
IN A
_Course of Lectures_.
BY FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY THE REV. A. J. W. MORRISON, M.A.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
1848.
CONTENTS.
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
LECTURE I. Page
Of the thinking Soul as the Center of Consciousness, and of the false
Procedure of Reason 7
LECTURE II.
Of the loving Soul as the Center of the moral Life; and of Marriage 28
LECTURE III.
Of the Soul’s Share in Knowledge, and of Revelation 48
LECTURE IV.
Of the Soul in relation to Nature 70
LECTURE V.
Of the Soul of Man in relation to God 95
LECTURE VI.
Of the Wisdom of the divine Order of Things in Nature, and of the
Relation of Nature to the other Life and to the Invisible World 115
LECTURE VII.
Of the divine Wisdom as manifested in the Realm of Truth, and of
the Conflict of the Age with Error 141
LECTURE VIII.
Of the divine Order in the History of the World and the Relation of
States 162
LECTURE IX.
Of the true Destination of Philosophy: and of the apparent Schism
but essential Unity between a right Faith and highest Certainty, as
the Center of Light and Life in the Consciousness 185
LECTURE X.
Of the twofold Spirit of Truth and Error in Science; of the Conflict
of Faith with Infidelity 206
LECTURE XI.
Of the Relation of Truth and Science to Life, and of Mind in its application
to Reality 232
LECTURE XII.
Of the symbolical Nature and Constitution of Life with reference to
Art and the moral Relations of Man 256
LECTURE XIII.
Of the Spirit of Truth and Life in its application to Politics, or of the
Christian Constitution of the State and the Christian Idea of Jurisprudence
277
LECTURE XIV.
Of the Division of Ranks, and of the reciprocal Relations of States,
according to the Christian Idea. Of Science as a Power; of its Constitution,
and of the right Regulation of it 301
LECTURE XV.
Of the true Idea of a Theocracy; of the Might of Science, and of the
final Restoration and Perfection of the human Consciousness 320
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.
Preface of the German Editor 341
LECTURE I. 343
LECTURE II. 364
LECTURE III. 382
LECTURE IV. 402
LECTURE V. 424
LECTURE VI. 444
LECTURE VII. 469
LECTURE VIII. 493
LECTURE IX. 514
LECTURE X. 537
PREFACE.
These fifteen Lectures on the Philosophy of Life are intended to give,
as far as possible, a full and clear exposition of the most interesting
topics that can engage human attention. In the opening they treat of the
soul, first of all as forming the center of consciousness, and,
secondly, of its co-operation with mind or spirit in science, that is,
the acquisition of a right knowledge of man and nature, and of their
several relations to the Deity. These matters occupy five Lectures of
the whole series. The next three treat of the laws of divine wisdom and
providence, as discernible in outward nature, in the world of thought,
and in the history of mankind. The last seven contain an attempt to
trace the development of man’s mind or spirit, both within himself and
in science and public life. Tracing its gradual expansion, as unfolded
either by the legitimate pursuit of a restoration to original
excellence, or by the struggle with the opposing spirit of the times,
they follow the human race through its progressive gradations, up to the
closing term of perfection.
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
LECTURE I.
OF THE THINKING SOUL AS THE CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AND OF THE FALSE
PROCEDURE OF REASON.
“There are,” says a poet as ingenious as profound,[1] “more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” This sentiment,
which Genius accidentally let drop, is in the main applicable also to
the philosophy of our own day; and, with a slight modification, I shall
be ready to adopt it as my own. The only change that is requisite to
make it available for my purpose would be the addition--“and also
between heaven and earth are there many things which are not dreamt of
in our philosophy.” And exactly because philosophy, for the most part,
does nothing but dream--scientifically dream, it may be--therefore is it
ignorant, ay, has no inkling even of much which, nevertheless, in all
propriety it ought to know. It loses sight of its true object, it quits
the firm ground where, standing secure, it might pursue its own
avocations without let or hinderance, whenever, abandoning its own
proper region, it either soars up to heaven to weave there its fine-spun
webs of dialectics, and to build its metaphysical castles in the air, or
else, losing itself on the earth, it violently interferes with external
reality, and determines to shape the world according to its own fancy,
and to reform it at will. Half way between these two devious courses
lies the true road; and the proper region of philosophy is even that
spiritual inner life between heaven and earth.
On both sides, many and manifold errors were committed even in the
earlier and better days of enlightened antiquity. Plato himself, the
greatest of the great thinkers of Greece, set up in his Republic the
model of an ideal polity, which, in this respect, can not bear the test
of examination. His design indeed finds, in some measure, its apology in
the disorders and corruption which, even in his day, had infected all
the free states of Greece, whether great or small. His work, too, by the
highly-finished style of the whole, the vivid perspicuity of its
narrative, its rich profusion of pregnant ideas and noble sentiments,
stands out in dignified contrast to the crude and ill-digested schemes
of legislation so hastily propounded in our own day. Still, it will ever
remain the weak point of this great man. One needs not to be a Plato to
see how absolutely unfeasible, not to say practically absurd, are many
of the propositions of this Platonic ideal. Accordingly, it has ever
been the fruitful occasion, not only among cotemporaries, but also with
posterity, of ridicule to the ignorant and of censure to the wise. In
this respect it can not but excite our regret that such great and noble
powers of mind should have been wasted in following a false direction,
and in pursuit of an unattainable end. The oldest philosophers of
Greece, on the other hand--those first bold adventurers on the wide
ocean of thought--combined together the elements of things, water, or
air, or fire, or atoms, or, lastly, the all-ruling intellect[2] itself,
into as many different systems of the universe. If, however, each in his
own way thus set forth a peculiar creed of nature, we must ever bear in
mind that the popular religion, with its poetical imagery, and the
fabulous mythology of antiquity, as affording not only no sufficient,
but absolutely no answer to the inquiring mind, as to the essence of
things, and the first cause of all, could not possibly satisfy these
earlier thinkers. Consequently, they might well feel tempted to find,
each for himself, a way to honor nature, and to contemplate the supreme
Being. Since then, however, the world has grown older by nearly
twenty-five centuries, and much, in the mean while, has been
accomplished by, or fallen to the share of, the human race. But when
philosophy would pretend to regard this long succession of ages, and all
its fruits, as suddenly erased from the records of existence, and for
the sake of change would start afresh, so perilous an experiment can
scarcely lead to any good result, but in all probability, and to judge
from past experience, will only give rise to numberless and interminable
disputes. Such an open space in thought--cleared from all the traces of
an earlier existence (a smoothly-polished marble tablet, as it were,
like the _tabula rasa_ of a recent ephemeral philosophy)--would only
serve as an arena for the useless though daring ventures of unprofitable
speculation, and could never form a safe basis for solid thought, or for
any permanent manifestation of intellectual life.
In itself it is nothing surprising if young and inexperienced minds,
occupying themselves prematurely, or in a perverted sense, with the
grand ideas of God and Nature, liberty and the march of thought, should
be wholly overmastered and carried away with them. It has often happened
before now, and it is no new thing if youthful and ardent temperaments
should either yield to the seductive temptation to make, not to say
create, a new religion of their own; or else feel a deceitful impulse to
censure and to change all that is already in existence, and, if
possible, to reform the whole world by their newly-acquired ideas.
That this twofold aberration and misuse of philosophical thought must
prove universally injurious, and prejudicial both to education and the
whole world, is so evident that it can scarcely be necessary to dwell
upon it. Its effect has been to cause men, especially those whose minds
have been formed in the great and comprehensive duties of practical
life, to view the thing altogether in an evil light, although it must be
confessed there is much injustice in this sweeping condemnation. In
several of the great statesmen of Rome we may observe a similar contempt
for Grecian philosophy as useless and unprofitable. And yet, as is
happily indicated by its Greek name, this whole effort was assuredly
based upon a noble conception, and, when duly regulated, a salutary
principle. For in this beautiful word, according to its original
acceptation, science is not regarded as already finished and mature, but
is rather set forth as an object of search--of a noble curiosity and of
a pure enthusiasm for great and sublime truths, while at the same time
it implies the wise use of such knowledge. Merely, however, to check and
to hinder the aberrations of a false philosophy, is not by itself
sufficient. It is only by laying down and leveling the right road of a
philosophy of life, that a thorough remedy for the evil is to be found.
True philosophy, therefore, honoring that which has been given from
above and that which is existent from without, must neither raise itself
in hostility to the one, nor attempt to interfere violently with the
other. For it is exactly when, keeping modestly within its proper limits
of the inner spiritual life, it makes itself the handmaid neither of
theology nor of politics, that it best asserts its true dignity and
maintains its independence on its own peculiar domain. And thus, even
while it abstains most scrupulously from intermeddling with the positive
and actual, will it operate most powerfully on alien and remote branches
of inquiry, and by teaching them to consider objects in a freer and more
general light, indirectly it will exercise on them a salutary influence.
Thus, while it proceeds along its appointed path, it will, as it were
without effort, disperse many a mist which spreads its dangerous
delusion over the whole of human existence, or remove, perhaps, many a
stone of stumbling, which offends the age and divides the minds of men
in strife and discord. In this manner, consequently, will it most
beautifully attest its healing virtue, and at the same time best fulfill
its proper destination.
The object, therefore, of philosophy is the inner mental life (_geistige
Leben_), not merely this or that individual faculty in any partial
direction, but man’s spiritual life with all its rich and manifold
energies. With respect to form and method: the philosophy of life sets
out from a single assumption--that of life, or, in other words, of a
consciousness to a certain degree awakened and manifoldly developed by
experience--since it has for its object, and purposes to make known the
entire consciousness, and not merely a single phase of it. Now, such an
end would be hindered rather than promoted by a highly elaborate or
minutely exhaustive form, and a painfully artificial method; and it is
herein that the difference lies between a philosophy of life and the
philosophy of the school. If philosophy be regarded merely as one part
of a general scientific education, then is the instruction in method
(whether under the old traditionary name of Logic or any other) the
chief point to be regarded. For such a mere elementary course, passing
over, or at least postponing for a while the consideration of the
matter, as possessing as yet but a very remote interest for the student,
and, in the default of an adequate internal experience of his own,
incapable of being understood by him, concerns itself rather with the
practice of methodical thought, both as necessary for the future, and as
applicable to all matters. But the preliminary exercise in philosophical
thinking is only the introduction to philosophy, and not philosophy
itself. This school-teaching of philosophy might, perhaps, be rendered
productive of the most excellent consequences, if only it were directed
to the history of the human intellect. What could be more interesting
than a history which should enter into the spirit, and distinctly embody
the various systems which the inventive subtilety of the Greeks gave
birth to, or which, taking a still wider range, should embrace the
science of the Egyptians, and some Asiatic nations, and illustrate the
no less wonderful nor less manifold systems of the Hindoos--those Greeks
of the primeval world? But this, perhaps, would be to encroach upon the
peculiar domain of erudition, and might, moreover, fail to furnish equal
interest for all; and, at any rate, the history of philosophy is not
philosophy itself.
Now, the distinction between the philosophy of life and the philosophy
of the school will appear in very different lights, according to the
peculiarity of view which predominates in the several philosophical
systems. That species of philosophy which revolves in the dialectical
orbit of abstract ideas, according to its peculiar character,
presupposes and requires a well-practiced talent of abstraction,
perpetually ascending through higher grades to the very highest, and
even then boldly venturing a step beyond. In short, as may be easily
shown in the instance of modern German science, the being unintelligible
is set up as a kind of essential characteristic of a true and truly
scientific philosophy. I, for my part, must confess that I feel a great
distrust of that philosophy which dwells in inaccessible light, where
the inventor indeed asserts of himself, that he finds himself in an
unattainable certainty and clearness of insight, giving us all the while
to understand thereby that he does see well enough how, of all other
mortals, scarcely any, or, perhaps, strictly speaking, no one,
understands or is capable of understanding him. In all such cases it is
only the false light of some internal _ignis fatuus_ that produces this
illusion of the unintelligible, or, rather, of nonsense. In this pursuit
of wholly abstract and unintelligible thought, the philosophy of the
school is naturally enough esteemed above every other, and regarded as
pre-eminently the true science--_i.e._, the unintelligible.
In such a system a philosophy of life means nothing more than a kind of
translation of its abstruser mysteries into a more popular form, and an
adaptation of them to the capacity of ordinary minds. But even such
popular adaptations, though evincing no common powers of language and
illustration, in spite of their apparent clearness, when closer
examined, are found as unintelligible as the recondite originals. For,
inasmuch as the subject-matter of these abstract speculations was, from
the very first, confused and unintelligible, it was consequently
incapable of being made clear even by the most perspicuous of styles.
But the true living philosophy has no relation or sympathy with this
continuous advance up to the unintelligible heights of empty
abstraction. Since the objects it treats of are none other than those
which every man of a cultivated mind, and, in any degree accustomed to
observe his own consciousness, both has and recognizes within himself,
there is nothing to prevent its exposition being throughout clear, easy,
and forcible. Here the relation is reversed. In such a system the
philosophy of life is the chief and paramount object of interest; while
the philosophy of the school, or the scientific teaching of it in the
schools, however necessary and valuable in its place, is still, as
compared with the whole thing itself, only secondary and subordinate. In
the philosophy of life, moreover, the method adopted must also be a
living one. Consequently it is not, by any means, a thing to be
neglected. But still it need not to be applied with equal rigor
throughout, or to appear prominently in every part, but, on all
occasions, must be governed in these respects by what the particular end
in view may demand.
A few illustrations, drawn from daily experience, will, perhaps, serve
to explain my meaning. Generally speaking, the most important arts and
pursuits of life are ultimately based on mathematics. This science
furnishes them, as it were, with the method they observe; but it is not
practicable, nor, indeed, has man the leisure, to revert on every
occasion, with methodical exactness, to these elements, but, assuming
the principles to be well known and admitted, he attends rather to the
results essential to the end he has in view. The economical management
of the smallest as well as of the largest household, rests, in the end,
on the elementary principles of arithmetic; but what would come of it
if, on every occasion, we were to go back to the simple “one-times-one”
of the multiplication table, and reflected upon and sought for the
proofs that the principle is really valid and can confidently be relied
on in practice? In the same way the art of war is founded on geometry;
but when the general arranges his troops for battle, does he consult his
Euclid to satisfy himself of the correctness and advantages of his
position? Lastly, when the astronomer, whose vocation is pre-eminently
dependent on accurate calculation, when he would make us acquainted with
the phenomena of the sidereal heavens, confines himself almost entirely
to them, without wearying those whom he wishes to interest, with the
complicated reckonings which, however, in all probability, he was
obliged himself to go through. With all these arts and pursuits of
practical life, the intellectual business of thinking--of such thinking
at least as is common to most men--and of communicating thought, has a
sort of affinity and resemblance. For, unquestionably, it is one among
the many problems of philosophy to establish a wise economy and prudent
stewardship of that ever-shifting mass of incoming and outgoing thoughts
which make up our intellectual estate and property. And this is the more
necessary the greater are the treasures of thought possessed by our age.
For, in the highly rapid interchange of and traffic in ideas, which is
carrying on, the receipts and disbursements are not always duly
balanced. There is much cause, therefore, to fear lest a thoughtless and
lavish dissipation of the noblest mental endowments should become
prevalent, or a false and baseless credit-system in thought spring up
amid an absolute deficiency of a solid and permanent capital safely
invested in fundamental ideas and lasting truths. As for the second
simile: I should, by all means, wish to gain a victory, not indeed for
you, but with you, over some of the many errors and many semblances of
thought, which are, however, but cheats and counterfeits which distract
the minds of the present generation, disturb the harmony of life, and
banish peace even from the intellectual world. And as respects the third
illustration: I should indeed rejoice as having, in a great measure,
attained my object, if only I shall succeed in directing your attention
to some star in the higher region of intellect, which hitherto was
either totally unknown, or, at least, never before fully observed.
But above all, I think it necessary to observe further, that in the same
way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter,
when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with
external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts
to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics. In the middle of the last
century scarcely was there to be found a German manual for any of the
sciences that did not ape the mathematical style, and where every single
position in the long array of interminable paragraphs did not conclude
with the solemn act of demonstrative phraseology. But it is also well
known that the philosophy which was propounded in this inappropriate
form and method was crammed full of, nay, rather, was hardly any thing
more than a tissue of arbitrary, now forgotten, hypotheses, which have
not brought the world at all nearer to the truth--not at least to that
truth which philosophy is in search of, and which is something higher
than a mere example of accurate computation.
And even in the present day--although, indeed, the application is made
in a very different way from formerly--German philosophy is any thing
but free from those algebraic formularies, in which all things, even the
most opposite, admit of being comprised and blended together. But, be it
as it may, this elaborate structure of mechanical demonstration can
never produce a true, intrinsic, and full conviction. The method which
philosophy really requires is quite different, being absolutely internal
and intellectual (_geistige_). As in a correct architectural structure
it is necessary that all its parts should be in unison, and such as the
eye can take in easily and agreeably, so in every philosophical
communication, the solid simple basis being laid, the arrangement of all
the parts, and the careful rejection and exclusion of all foreign
matter, is the most essential point, both for internal correctness and
external perspicuity. But, in truth, the matter in hand bears a far
closer resemblance and affinity to natural objects which live and grow,
than to any lifeless edifice of stone; to a great tree, for instance,
nobly and beautifully spreading out on all sides in its many arms and
branches. As such a tree strikes the hasty and passing glance, it forms
a somewhat irregular and not strictly finished whole; there it stands,
just as the stem has shot up from the root, and has divided itself into
a certain number of branches, and twigs, and leaves, which livingly move
backward and forward in the free air. But examine it more closely, and
how perfect appears its whole structure! how wonderful the symmetry, how
minutely regular the organization of all its parts, even of each little
leaf and delicate fiber! In the same way will the ever-growing tree of
human consciousness and life appear in philosophy, whenever it is not
torn from its roots and stripped of its leaves by a pretended wisdom,
but is vividly apprehended by a true science, and exhibited and
presented to the mind in its life and its growth.
Not only, however, the arrangement of the whole, but also the connection
of the several parts of a philosophical treatise or development, is of a
higher kind than any mere mechanical joining, such, for instance, as
that by which two pieces of wood are nailed or glued together. If I must
illustrate this connection by a simile from animated nature, the facts
of magnetism will best serve my purpose. Once magnetically excited, the
iron needle comes into invisible contact and connection with the whole
globe and its opposite poles; and this magnetic clew has guided the bold
circumnavigator into new and unknown regions of the world. Now, the
intrinsic vital coherence of the several thoughts of philosophy
resembles this magnetic attraction; and no such rude, mechanical, and,
in fact, mere external conjunction of thought, like that lately alluded
to, can satisfy the requirements of philosophical connection.
But the supreme intrinsic unity of philosophical thought, or of a
philosophical series of ideas, is quite different from every thing
hitherto mentioned. It belongs not to nature, but to life; it is not
derived from the latter by way of figure or illustration, but is a part
and constituent of it, and goes to the very root and soil of the moral
life. What I mean is, the unity of sentiment--the fixed character,
remaining ever the same and true to itself--the inner necessary sequence
of the thoughts--which, in life no less than in the system and
philosophical theory, invariably makes a great and profound impression
on our minds, and commands our respect, even when it does not carry
along with it our convictions. This, however, is dependent on no form,
and no mere method can attain to it. How often, for instance, in some
famous political harangue, which perhaps the speaker, like the
rhapsodist of old, poured forth on the spur of the moment, do we at once
recognize and admire this character in the thoughts, this consistency of
sentiment? How often, on the contrary, in another composed with the most
exquisite research and strict method, and apparently a far more
elaborate and finished creation of the intellect, we have only to pierce
through the systematic exterior to find that it is nothing but an
ill-connected and chance-medley of conflicting assumptions and opinions
taken from all quarters, and the crude views of the author himself,
devoid of all solidity, and resting on no firm basis, without character,
and wholly destitute of true intrinsic unity?
If now, in the present course of Lectures, I shall succeed in laying
before you my subject in that clearness and distinctness which are
necessary to enable you to comprehend the whole, and, while taking a
survey of it, to judge of the agreement of the several parts, you will
find, I trust, no difficulty in discovering the fundamental idea and
sentiment. And further, I would venture to entreat you not to judge
hastily of this sentiment from single expressions, and least of all at
the very outset, but, waiting for its progressive development, to judge
of it on the whole. Lastly, I would also indulge a hope that the views
of an individual thinker, if perspicuously enunciated, may, even where
they fail of conviction, and though points of difference still subsist,
produce no revolting impression on your minds; but, by exercising a
healing influence on many a rankling wound in thought and life, produce
among us some of the fairest fruits of true philosophy.
Hitherto we have been considering, first of all, the object and proper
sphere of the philosophy of life; and, secondly, its appropriate form of
communication, as well as all other methods which are alien and foreign
to it. Of great and decisive importance for the whole course and further
development of philosophical inquiry is it to determine, in the next
place, the starting-point from which it ought to set out. It will not do
to believe that we have found this in any axiom or postulate such as are
usually placed at the head of a system. For such a purpose we must
rather investigate the inmost foundation--the root out of which springs
the characteristic feature of a philosophical view. Now, in the
philosophy of life the whole consciousness, with all its different
phases and faculties, must inevitably be taken for the foundation, the
soul being considered as the center thereof. This simple basis being
once laid, it may be further developed in very different ways. For it
is, I might almost say, a matter of indifference from what point in the
circumference or periphery we set out in order to arrive at the center,
with the design of giving a further development to this as the
foundation of the whole. But in order to illustrate this simple method
of studying life from its true central point, which is intermediate
between the two wrong courses already indicated, and in order to make,
by contrast, my meaning the plainer, I would here, in a few words,
characterize the false starting-point from which the prevailing
philosophy of a day--whether that of France in the eighteenth century or
the more recent systems of Germany--has hitherto, for the most part,
proceeded. False do I call it, both on account of the results to which
it has led, and also of its own intrinsic nature. In one case as well as
in the other, the starting-point was invariably some controverted point
of the reason--some opposition or other to the legitimacy of the
reason--under which term, however, little else generally was understood
than an opposition of the reason itself to some other principle equally
valid and extensive. The principal, or, rather, only way which foreign
philosophy took in this pursuit, was to reduce every thing to sensation
as opposed to reason, and to derive every thing from it alone, so as to
make the reason itself merely a secondary faculty, no original and
independent power, and ultimately nothing else than a sort of chemical
precipitate and residuum from the material impressions.[3] But however
much may be conceded to these and to the external senses, and however
great a share they may justly claim in the whole inner property of the
thinking man, still it is evident that the perception of these sensuous
impressions, the inner coherence--in short, the unity of the
consciousness in which they are collected--can never, as indeed it has
often been objected on the other side, have come into the mind from
without. This was not, however, the end which this doctrine had
exclusively, or even principally, in view. The ultimate result to which
they hoped to come by the aid of this premise was simply the negation of
the suprasensible. Whatever in any degree transcends the material
impression, or sensuous experience, as well as all possible knowledge
of, and faith therein, not merely in respect to a positive religion, but
absolutely whatever is noble, beautiful, and great--whatever can lead
the mind to, or can be referred to a something suprasensible and
divine--all this, wherever it may be found, whether in life or thought,
in history or in nature--ay, even in art itself--it was the ultimate
object of this foreign philosophy to decry, to involve in doubt, to
attack and to overthrow, and to bring down to the level of the common
and material, or to plunge it into the skeptical abyss of absolute
unbelief. The first step in this system was a seeming subordination of
reason to sensation, as a derivative of it--a mere slough which it
throws off in its transformations. Afterward, however, the warfare
against the suprasensible was waged entirely with the arms of reason
itself. The reason, indeed, which supplied these weapons was not one
scientifically cultivated and morally regulated, but thoroughly
sophistical and wholly perverted, which, however, put into requisition
all the weapons of a brilliant but skeptical wit, and moved in the
ever-varied turnings of a most ingenious and attractive style. Here,
where the question was no longer the abrogation of any single dogma of
positive religion, but where the opposition to the divine had become the
ruling tendency of philosophy, it is not easy to refrain from
characterizing it as atheistical--what, indeed, in its inmost spirit it
really was, and also historically proved itself by its results.
The other course adopted by French philosophy, in the times immediately
preceding the Revolution, was to lay aside the weapons of wit, and to
employ a burning eloquence as more likely to attract and to carry away
minds naturally noble. It had, consequently, if possible, still more
fatal results than the former. The reason, as the peculiar character of
man in a civilized state--so it was argued--is like civilized man
himself, an artificial creation, and in its essence totally unnatural;
and the savage state of nature is the only one properly adapted to man.
As the means of emancipation from an artificial and corrupt
civilization, the well-known theory of the social contract was advanced.
Our whole age has learned dearly enough the lesson, that this dogma,
practically applied on a large scale, may, indeed, lead to a despotism
of liberty, and to the lust of conquest, but can as little effect the
re-establishment of a true civilization as it can bring back the state
of nature. It would be a work of supererogation to dwell upon the
pernicious results or the intrinsic hollowness of this system. It is,
however, worth while to remark, that, in this theory also, the beginning
was made with an opposition to reason. Starting with a depreciation of
it as an artificial state and a departure from nature, at the last it
threw itself, and the whole existing frame of society, into the arms of
reason, and thereby sought to gain for the latter an unlimited
authority over all laws, both human and divine. A somewhat similar
phenomenon may every where be observed, and the same course will
invariably be taken when philosophy allows itself to set out with some
question or impugning of the reason, and, in its exclusiveness, makes
this dialectical faculty the basis of its investigations.
Modern German philosophy, wholly different from the French, both in form
and spirit, has, from its narrow metaphysical sphere, been of far less
extensive influence; and, even if it has occasionally led to anarchy, it
has been simply an anarchy of ideas. And yet, notwithstanding its
different character, a similar course of inversion is noticeable in it.
Beginning with a strict, not to say absolute, limitation of the reason,
and with an opposition to its assumptions, it also ended in its
investiture with supreme authority--not to say in its deification. The
founder[4] of the modern philosophy of Germany commenced his teaching
with a lengthy demonstration that the reason is totally incapable of
attaining to a knowledge of the suprasensible, and that, by attempting
it, it does but involve itself in endless disputes and difficulties. And
then, on this assumed incompetency of the reason for the suprasensible
was based the doctrine of the need, the necessity of faith--nay, faith
itself.[5] But this arbitrary faith appeared to have but little reliance
on itself; and, when closely viewed, turned out to be the old reason,
which, after being solemnly displaced from the front of the
philosophical palace, was now again, slightly altered and disguised, set
up behind it as a useful but humble postern. Dissatisfied with such a
system, the philosophical _Me_ (Ich, Ego) chose another and a new road,
that of absolute science,[6] in which it might, from the very first, do
as it pleased--might bluster and fluster at will. But soon it became
plain, that in this idealistic doctrine there was no room for any but a
subjective reason-god devoid of all objective reality. In it the
absolute Ego or Me of each individual was substituted for and identified
with the divine. Against this certainty of the “Me,” therefore, there
arose first of all a suspicion, and lastly the reproach of atheism.
But, in truth, we ought to be extremely scrupulous in applying this term
in all cases where the question does not turn on a rude denial of the
truth, but rather on a highly erroneous confusion of ideas. At least, it
would be well if, in such a case, we were to distinguish the imputed
atheism by the epithet of scientific, in order to indicate thereby that
the censure and the name apply in truth only to the error of the system,
and not to the character of the author. For with such a scientific
atheism, the sternest stoicism in the moral doctrine may, as indeed was
actually the case here, be easily combined. Quite weary, however, of the
transcendent vacuity of this ideal reason and mere dialectical
reasoning, German philosophy now took a different road. It turned more
to the side of nature,[7] in whose arms she threw herself in perfect
admiration, thinking to find there alone life and the fullness thereof.
Now, although this new philosophy of nature has borne many noble fruits
of science, still even it has been haunted by that delusive phantom of
the Absolute, and it is not free from liability to the reproach of a
pantheistic deification of Nature. But properly and accurately speaking,
it was not nature itself that was set up as the supreme object of
veneration, but this same phantom of reason, which was taken as the
basis and fundamental principle of nature. It was, in short, nothing but
the old metaphysical one-times-one[8] in a somewhat novel application
and more vivid form. Here, therefore, also did the system commence with
a seeming disgust at the reason, and with a subordination of it to
nature, in order to conclude with the absolute principle of the reason.
Viewed, however, as a philosophical science of nature, it has rather to
answer for some occasional errors and perverse extravagances, than for
any thoroughly consequent and systematic carrying out of the ingrafted
error into all its parts. Moreover, a broad distinction must undoubtedly
be drawn between its different advocates and promulgators. In these last
days German philosophy has, in a measure at least, reverted again into
the empty vacuum of _the absolute_ idea.[9] The latter, indeed, and the
idol of absolute reason which is enshrined therein, is no more a mere
inward conception, but is objectively understood and set up as the
fundamental principle of all entity. But still, when we consider how the
essence of mind is expressly made to consist in negation, and how also
the spirit of negation is predominant through the whole system, a still
worse substitution appears to have taken place, inasmuch as, instead of
the living God, this spirit of negation, so opposed to Him, is, in
erroneous abstraction, set up and made a god of. Here, therefore, as
well as elsewhere, a metaphysical lie assumes the place of a divine
reality.
Thus, then, do we every where observe a strange internal correspondence
and affinity between the several aberrations of our age. Here the
remotest mental extremes, which externally seem to repel each other,
suddenly converge at the same point of delusive light, or rather of
brilliant darkness. Instances of this correspondence startle us where we
least expect to meet with them. An English poet,[10] perhaps the
greatest, certainly the most remarkable poet of our age, in his tragic
delineation of the oldest fratricide, has portrayed the prime mover of
this deed, the enemy of the human race, and the king of the bottomless
pit, as the bold censurer of the divine order of things, and the head of
all discontented spirits, and leader of the opposition of the whole
creation. In this light he has painted him with unparalleled boldness,
and with such moving and astonishing truthfulness, that all previous
descriptions by the greatest poets seem but arbitrary and unreal
phantoms when compared with this portrait, which was evidently a
favorite sketch, for the author’s secret partiality betrays itself in
the skill and pains with which he has lavished on this dark figure all
the magic colors of his fancy. Thus, then, in this poetic creation, the
same hostile principle--the same absolute, _i.e._, evil spirit of
negation and contradiction that forms the consummation of the errors of
German philosophy, notwithstanding its abstract unintelligibility--is
enthroned amid the disordered system. And so, by a strange law of
“pre-established harmony,” the anti-Christian poet and these
anti-Christian thinkers unexpectedly meet together at the point of a
spurious sublimity. In any case, however, this last instance forms the
third stage of idealistic confusion, and certainly the last grade of
scientific atheism.
Now, briefly to recapitulate my own convictions and my view of the
relation subsisting between the philosophy of life which I propose to
set before you, and the prevalent philosophy and science of the age, the
following few remarks will suffice. I honor and admire the discoveries
so pregnant with important results which natural philosophy has made in
our days, but especially the gigantic strides which the study of nature
in France has taken; so far, at least, as they contain and have
established a real and solid advance of human science; so far, too, as I
am acquainted with them, and in my sphere understand them. On the other
hand, I can not but take exception to that admixture of materialism
which has been infused into them by the ruling philosophical system of a
previous age, which in France has still so many followers. I honor, too,
and love German science, with its diligent and comprehensive research.
Nay, I value the natural philosophy of Germany even still more than that
of France, since, while it adopts the same great discoveries, it views
them in a more spiritual light. As for that idealistic jargon, however,
which runs parallel and is interwoven with it, on which, indeed, it was
originally based, and from which even now it is any thing but
clear--this I can not regard in any other light than, what it really is,
an intellectual delusion of the most pernicious kind, and one which will
inevitably produce the most destructive and fatal consequences on the
human mind.
What has been now said will suffice for our notice of the opposing
systems of philosophy. Henceforward we shall have no need to turn our
looks to this side, but shall be able to give our attention solely and
calmly to the development of that which I have already announced, and
have now to communicate to you. Previously, however, to entering upon
this subject, it seemed to me advisable, by contrasting the false
starting-point with the true center of philosophy, to set the latter
before you in a clearer and distincter light.
The dialectical faculty of abstraction is naturally the predominant one,
and the most completely evolved in the thinking mind. Accordingly, most
thinkers have set it up as the basis of their speculations, in order to
arrive the more rapidly at the desired end of an absolute science; or,
if the habit of mind be more disposed that way, at an absolute
_not-knowing_, and the rejection of all certainty; which, in the main,
is quite as false, and, in this respect, identical with the former. But
it is not sufficient to follow any such a partial course, and to start
from any one side merely of the human consciousness. On the right and
sure road of a complete and thorough investigation, our first duty is to
study the human consciousness in its fullness and living development, in
all its faculties and powers. And then, in the second place, when, by
thus assuming a position in the center, man has enabled himself to take
a complete survey of the whole, he may unquestionably proceed to inquire
what kind and what degree of knowledge, with such a consciousness, he is
capable of attaining, both of the external world and of the
suprasensible, and how far the latter is conceivable and its existence
possible. Now, just as generally the soul is the principle of all life
in nature, so is the thinking soul the center of the human
consciousness. But in the thinking soul is comprised the reason which
distinguishes, combines, and infers, no less than the fancy which
devises, invents, and suggests. Standing in the center between the two,
the thinking soul embraces both faculties. But it also forms the
turning-point of transition between the understanding and the will; and,
as the connecting link, fills up the gulf which otherwise would lie
between and divide the two. It comprises, also, all sorts and degrees of
conceptions, from the absolutely necessary, precisely definite, and
permanently unchangeable, down to those which arise and pass away half
involuntarily--from those in no degree clearly developed up to those
which have been advanced to the highest clearness of the
understanding--those which are witnessed with a calm indifference, and
those also which excite a gentle longing or kindle a burning resolve.
The thinking soul is the common store-house where the whole of these
conceptions are successively lodged. Indeed, to describe it in general
terms, it is but the inner pulse of thought, corresponding to the
pulsation of the blood in the living body.
This general description, it must be confessed, is very far from being
an adequate explanation of the matter, and at best does but imperfectly
convey our meaning. But perhaps a different line of thought, however
bold and hazardous it may seem, may bring us far more simply to the
point at present in view--a more accurate description, namely, of the
peculiar property of the human mind, and of the characteristic feature
which distinguishes man from other beings equally finite, but endowed in
the same manner with consciousness. That the rational soul, or the
reason, distinguishes him from the brutes, is a remark common and trite
enough. But this is only one aspect of the matter: and must we always
cast our looks downward, and never upward? What I mean is this:
supposing that there are other created spirits and finite intelligences
besides men, might not the comparison of their purely spiritual
consciousness with man’s serve, perhaps in an eminent degree, to
elucidate the distinctive properties of the human consciousness in that
other aspect which is too commonly neglected? I am far from intending to
make this matter a subject of investigation in the present place. I take
it merely as an hypothesis, warranted, indeed, by universal tradition,
and solely as an aid to elucidate the matter in hand. Universal,
however, I may well call this tradition, since, agreeing in the main
with what Holy Writ asserts, the oldest and most civilized nations of
antiquity (among whom I need only mention the Egyptians, and especially
the Persians and the Hindoos) have admitted, as a well-established fact,
the existence of such finite intelligences and created spirits,
invisible indeed to man, but not altogether alien to him. And as for the
Greeks and Romans, if occasionally they allude to the genius of Socrates
as something strange and singular, this was only because the wise
Athenian spoke of this subject in peculiar language, and referred to it
more habitually than was the wont of his countrymen and cotemporaries.
Otherwise it was the general belief, both of Greeks and Romans, that
every man has his guardian spirit or genius. Now this hypothesis being
once admitted to be possible, let us inquire in what light were these
ancients accustomed to regard, and what ought we to conceive of the
peculiar nature of these spiritual beings in conformity with the
representation of so universal a tradition?
Now, in the first place, they have always been thought of as pure
spiritual beings, having no such gross terrestrial body as man has. At
least, if they were supposed to require and possess a body as the organ
and medium of their spiritual operations, it was considered to be of a
special kind--an ethereal body of light, but invisible to the human eye.
But this incorporeity is little more than a negative quality. A more
positive and a profounder distinction lies perhaps in this, that these
pure spiritual beings are wholly free from that weakness of character,
or frailty, which is so peculiar to man. That pervading internal
mutability, that undecided vacillation between doing and letting alone,
that reciprocation between effort and relaxation--the wide gulf between
volition and execution, the thought and the carrying into
effect--nothing of all this admits of being applied or transferred to
these pure spiritual beings without contradicting the very idea of their
essence. It is thus only, or not at all, that we can conceive of them.
Coming and going like the lightning, and rapid as the light, they never
grow weary of their endless activity. They need no rest, except the
spiritual contemplation which constitutes their essence. All their
thoughts are marked with unity and identity. With them the conception is
at the same time a deed, and the purpose and the execution are
simultaneous. Every thing, too, in them has the stamp of eternity. This
prerogative, however, has, it must be confessed, its disadvantages. When
once they have deviated from the true center, they go on forever in
their devious course.
But still, all this is little more than a description of the whole idea
which I have allowed myself, merely with a view of employing it as a
passage to the point which is at present in question. That purpose was,
on the supposition of the existence of such superior beings, accurately
to indicate which of man’s powers, or faculties of mind and soul, may
rightly be attributed to them. Now, to my mind, the distinction is very
strikingly suggested in the well-known sentiment of one of our famous
poets. Thus he addresses man--“Thy knowledge thou sharest with superior
beings;” superior, for in the clearness of their eternal science they
undoubtedly stand far higher than men: and then he continues, “But art
thou hast alone.”[11] But, now, what else is art than fancy become
visible, and assuming a bodily shape, or word, or sound? It is,
therefore, this nimble-footed, many-shaped, ever-inventive fancy, which
forms the dangerous prerogative of man, and can not be ascribed to
these pure spiritual beings. And as little justifiable would it be to
ascribe to them that human reason, with its employment of means, and its
slow processes of deduction and comparison. Instead of this, they
possess the intuitive understanding, in which to see and to understand
are simultaneous and identical. If, then, in an accurate sense of the
terms, neither fancy nor reason belongs to them, it would further be
wrong to attribute them a soul as distinct from the mind or spirit, and
as being rather a passive faculty of inward productiveness, and change,
and internal growth. Briefly to recapitulate what has been said: The
existence of the brutes is simple, because in them the soul is
completely mixed up and merged in the organic body, and is one with it;
on the destruction of the latter it reverts to the elements, or is
absorbed in the general soul of nature. Twofold, however, is the nature
of created spirits, who besides this ethereal body of light are nothing
but mind or spirit; but threefold is the nature of man, as consisting of
spirit, soul, and body.[12] And this triple constitution and property,
this threefold life of man, is, indeed, not in itself that pre-eminence,
although it is closely connected with that superior excellence which
ennobles and distinguishes man from all other created beings. I allude
to that prerogative by which he alone of all created beings is invested
with the Divine image and likeness. This threefold principle is the
simple basis of all philosophy; and the philosophical system which is
constructed on such a foundation is the philosophy of life, which
therefore has even “words of life.” It is no idle speculation, and no
unintelligible hypothesis. It is not more difficult, and needs not to be
more obscure, than any other discourse on spiritual subjects; but it can
and may be as easy and as clear as the reading of a writing, the
observation of nature, and the study of history. For it is, in truth,
nothing else than a simple theory of spiritual life, drawn from life
itself, and the simple understanding thereof. If, however, it becomes
abstract and unintelligible, this is invariably a consequence, and, for
the most part, an infallible proof of its having fallen into error. When
in thought we place before us the whole composite human individual,
then, after spirit and soul, the organic body is the third constituent,
or the third element out of which, in combination with the other two,
the whole man consists and is compounded. But the structure of the
organic body, its powers and laws, must be left to physical science to
investigate. Philosophy is the science of consciousness alone. It has,
therefore, primarily to occupy itself with soul and spirit, or mind, and
must carefully guard against transgressing its limits in any respect.
But the third constituent beside mind and soul, in which these two
jointly carry on their operations, needs not always, as indeed the above
instance proves, to be an organic body. In other relations of life, this
third, in which both are united, or which they in unison produce, may be
the word, the deed, life itself, or the divine order on which both are
dependent. These, then, are the subjects which I have proposed for
consideration. But in order to complete this scale of life, I will
further observe--triple is the nature of man, but fourfold is the human
consciousness. For the spirit or mind, like the soul, divides and falls
asunder; or, rather, is split and divided into two powers, or
halves--the mind, namely, into understanding and will, the soul into
reason and fancy. These are the four extreme points, or, if the
expression be preferred, the four quarters of the inner world of
consciousness. All other faculties of the soul, or powers of mind, are
merely subordinate ramifications of the four principal branches; but the
living center of the whole is the thinking soul.
LECTURE II.
OF THE LOVING SOUL AS THE CENTER OF THE MORAL LIFE; AND OF MARRIAGE.
The development of the human consciousness, according to the triple
principle of its existence, or of its nature as compounded of spirit or
mind, soul, and animated body, must begin with the soul, and not with
the spirit, even though the latter be the most important and supreme.
For the soul is the first grade in the progress of development. In
actual life, also, it is the beginning and the permanent foundation, as
well as the primary root of the collective consciousness. The
development of the spirit or mind of man is much later, being first
evolved in or out of, by occasion of, or with the co-operation of the
soul. But even when thus developed, the mind (under which term we
comprise the will, as well as the understanding) is neither in all men,
nor always in the same individual, equally active. In this respect we
may apply to it what has been said of the wind, which imparts vital
motion and freshness to all the objects of outward nature: we “hear the
sound thereof, but we can not tell whence it comes, nor whither it
goeth.”[13] The thinking soul, on the contrary, is, properly speaking,
always, though silently, working; and it is highly probable that it is
never without conceptions. Of these, indeed, it may either possess a
clear or an almost totally indistinct consciousness, according to that
principle of unconscious representations propounded as a fundamental
axiom of psychology by a great German philosopher[14] of earlier times,
with whose opinions I often find myself agreeing, and with whom, before
all other men, I would most gladly concur.
Applied to the alternating states of sleeping and waking in the outward
organic life, this would merely mean that in sleep we always dream, even
at those times when our vision leaves no traces on our memory. The great
majority of dreams, even those which in the moment of awakening we still
remember, are absolutely nothing but the conjoint impression of the
bodily tone and the ever-varying temperament of life and health, and of
the disorderly repetition of such ideas as previously to sleeping had
principally engaged the attention. Now, since every opposite comes near
to its correlative in one or more points of contact, which, as they
establish, also serve to maintain the relationship between the two, so
the state of the soul in dreaming will serve strikingly to illustrate
its waking action. Of the great multitude of dreams, which are for the
most part confused and unmeaning, some occasionally stand out from the
rest extremely clear and well-connected, in which the feelings
oftentimes discover a profound significance, or which, at least, as
significant images, interest the fancy. And just in the same manner in
the state of waking there passes before the soul no inconsiderable
number of obscure and vague conceptions, which are not much if at all
clearer or more methodically disposed than the train of images which in
a dream succeed one another without the least intrinsic order or
connection. Still we should greatly err were we to assume, that like the
latter they leave no trace behind them on the soul. On the contrary, in
these undeveloped beginnings of thought there often lies the germ of
very definite ideas, and especially of the various peculiarities of
mental character, as also of the impulses and determination which, at
first slowly and spontaneously formed, eventuate in some definite
susceptibility or direction of the will. Now, as the external life of
man alternates between the waking activity and the state of repose in
sleep, so, too, the thinking soul is divided between the abstracting and
classifying Reason and the inventive Fancy.[15] These two are, as it
were, the halves, so to speak, or the two poles of the thinking soul,
of which the one may be regarded as the positive, the other as the
negative. In respect to the inner fruitful cogitation itself--to the
origination and production of thoughts--the imagination, as the
reproductive faculty, is the positive pole. As for the fancy, properly
so called--the poetic _fancy_, or that which plays an important part in
the inclinations and passions--it is only a particular species and
operation of this faculty, which in its general form also manifests
itself in many other directions and spheres of human thought and action.
To it belongs, for instance, that talent of extensive combination which
distinguishes all the great discoverers in mathematics. Opposite to this
productive faculty of thought, the negative pole is formed by the
classifying faculty of reason, which further elaborates, closely
determines, and limits the materials furnished to it by the fancy. Thus,
then, the place which the fancy--with all the powers, emotions, and
impressions which belong to it--assumes relatively to the external
world, is subordinate and ministerial, since it is only within certain
prescribed limits that it can duly make use of its rich productive
energies, realize its inmost ideas, and act upon them.
Here, therefore, the first place belongs to the ordering and determining
reason, and which here ought to hold the helm. In this respect it may
justly be called the regulative faculty. And yet, since the reason is,
so to speak, only one half of the soul, it must not pretend to exclusive
authority; while, on the other hand, it is but little likely that that
which we may have set before our mind and imagination as the innermost
wish of our hearts, will simply on that account prove invariably a real
and lasting good.
I called the understanding and the will, the reason and the fancy, the
four principal branches of the human consciousness, of which all other
mental powers or faculties of the soul, usually ascribed to man, are but
so many offshoots. These other powers, however, can not with perfect
propriety be called subordinate, since in another point of view they
may, perhaps, be entitled to assume a higher rank. _Assigned_[16]
faculties is, therefore, what I should prefer to term them. Now of such
faculties belonging to the domain of the combining and distinguishing
reason, the memory and the conscience are pre-eminently to be
mentioned. For the memory also in another way is a combining, just as
the conscience is a distinguishing faculty--the latter, however, being
so not only in another, but even in a far higher sense. But we must
postpone for the present the further consideration of this matter, and
consider rather those faculties or functions which are under the
influence of, or at least immediately connected with, the fancy. These
are the senses, and the inclinations or instincts. With regard, then, to
the senses: in the first place, I would simply call your attention to
the fact, that the triple principle of human existence--according to
which the latter consists of a spirit or mind, of a soul, and of a
living body or a bodily manifestation--is repeated as it were in
miniature in every smaller and narrower sphere of man’s consciousness.
This is especially the case with the external senses. Thus viewing them,
however, we should have to reckon but three senses instead of the usual
number of five. This can be managed easily enough by taking the three
lower and counting them as one, since they constitute pre-eminently the
corporeal sense, as contradistinguished from the other two, which are
both higher and more incorporeal. For to the three lower senses, not
only is a material contact indispensable, but also, as in the case of
smell, a sort of chemical assimilation with matter. No doubt, in the act
of seeing and hearing there is likewise a certain but imperceptible
contact of the nerves of the eye and ear with the waves of light and the
undulations of the air; but still this contact is of a different kind
from the former, and of another and indeed of a higher nature, producing
the relations of tone, color, and shape. Now, in this classification,
the eye is the mind or spirit’s sense for beauty of form and grace of
motion. It is so in truth, not merely in those who are endowed with a
taste for the arts or the artistic eye, but far more universally, being
diffused in a greater or less degree through the whole human family.
Special gifts of it, or, rather, higher though varying endowments, are
to be found in some highly-favored individuals; and in the same way the
ear for music is not imparted to all who possess the general organ of
hearing, which we very properly term the soul’s sense. The external
senses man shares, indeed, in common with the brutes, in some of whom
they are found of an exquisite and highly-developed susceptibility. But
these higher endowments of eye and ear, and above all the natural
artistic feeling for beauty of form, and the musical talent, are the
prerogatives of man, conferred upon him by his peculiar faculty of
fancy. On this account they, like that faculty, are distributed
unequally among men, though they are not on that account less real and
undeniable.
The brutes, I said, do not possess them. No doubt there is a certain
melodious rhythm perceptible in the songs of birds. Some, also, of the
more eminently docile and sagacious of terrestial animals do indeed
evince peculiar signs of pleasure in the music of man. Still I would
call this but so many single, unconnected echoes or reverberations of
fancy, since every thing like free choice, further development, or
intrinsic coherence, is wanting to them--all is broken, abrupt, and
incapable of being formed into a whole. In the same manner the artistic
instinct and skill of some animals exhibits, no doubt, a certain
likeness in its operations to the rational works of man, but still it
ever remains a resemblance at best, and is forever divided from reason
by a wide and impassable gulf. It is, as it were, the indistinct trace
of a weather-worn and nearly obliterated inscription--the dying notes of
some far-off music. And hence the agreeable, but, at the same time,
melancholy, impression which such things make upon our feelings. A
something human seems to be stirring in them. They appear to revive a
faint but nearly-forgotten allusion to an originally close and intrinsic
relation between animated nature in its highest developments and man as
its former master and as the divinely-appointed lord of the whole
earthly creation. But if the influence and the operation of the fancy on
the external senses be thus indistinct and difficult to be traced, it is
far more apparent, as also far greater and more decided, on the
inclinations, instincts, and passions which form the second class of the
faculties subordinate to the fancy. It can easily be shown how even the
simplest instincts of self-preservation, and the gratification of the
most natural wants, are in man perceptibly affected by the working of
fancy, so as to be manifoldly diversified thereby. But still more is
this the case with the higher impulses and instincts, as confirmed and
strengthened by use and indulgence, especially when, in their most
violent and intensest development, they become passions. For, in this
shape, both by this excess and by the false direction they give to the
mental powers, originally designed for nobler and more exalted purposes,
they form so many moral perversities and faults of character. I would
here, in the first place, call your attention to the fact, that in all
the passions, when, by their intensity, they become immoral, the fancy
exercises an essential and co-operating influence. And, in the second
place, I would remind you that in the same way as in the external senses
generally, so also in all the principal phases of ill-regulated passion,
the threefold principle of human existence manifests itself once more,
and is even repeated anew in all the several forms and subdivisions of
these special spheres.
Now, the first of these false tendencies and moral
infirmities--unbounded pride and haughtiness--is essentially a mental
blindness and aberration; and vanity, with its delusions, is the same
disease in a lower and milder phase. And all will admit that the source
of this moral failing is an overweening love of self. But in
self-conceit the co-operating influence of fancy is easily and
distinctly traceable. As to the second of those infirmities which
distract and disturb life: I should also be disposed to consider the
sensual passionateness or passionate sensuality as a disease indeed, but
of a brutalizing tendency--an inflammatory habit, a fever of the soul,
which either spends itself in acute and violent paroxysms, or with
slower but certain progress secretly undermines and subverts all man’s
better qualities. In either case, the true source of the evil--the
irresistible energy and the false magic of this passion--lies in an
over-excited, deluded, or poisoned fancy. The natural instinct itself,
in so far as it is inborn and agreeable to nature, is obnoxious to no
reproach. The blame lies altogether in the want of principle, or that
weakness of character which half-voluntarily concedes to the mere
instinct an unlimited authority, or, at least, is incapable of
exercising over it a due control. The third false direction of man’s
instincts which, after the two already noticed, involves human society
in the greatest disorder, and most fatally disturbs the peace of
individuals, is an unlimited love of gain, selfishness, and avarice. No
doubt, in a certain modified and lower sense, the hope of advantage or
profit is the motive that prompts every enterprise; at least, according
to the judgment of the world, nothing is undertaken or transacted
without a view to some object of a selfishness more or less refined. But
when we look to the worst and most violent cases of this disease--an
insatiable avarice and a morbid love of gain, then we at once see the
baneful effects which the fancy, dwelling exclusively on material
property and chinking coin, has on this moral disease, where, with the
golden treasure, mind and soul are shut up and buried, and both
completely numbed and petrified, in the same way that, by certain
organic diseases of the body, the heart becomes ossified.
By these pernicious passions, the higher moral organ of life is in
different ways attacked and destroyed. In the first case, that of the
blinding of the mind by pride and vanity, the moral judgment is
perverted and falsified. In the second case, where the soul is
brutalized by a life of sensuality, the moral sense is clouded, loses
all its delicacy, and is at last totally obliterated. In the third
instance, that of a thorough numbness of the inner life produced by
selfishness and avarice, the idea of moral duty is in the end totally
lost, dies away, and becomes extinct, while the dead Mammon is regarded
as the supreme good of life, and, being set up as the sole object of
human exertion, is substituted for the best and noblest acquisition of
mind and soul. The three passions which we have already examined are
founded indeed on a positive pursuit, however false may be the extent or
perverted the direction in which it is carried out. We might now proceed
with our speculation, and, progressively developing it from the same
point of view, extend and apply it to the aggressive passions, which are
based on a merely negative pursuit--the attack, annihilation, and
destruction of their objects. I allude to the passion of hatred, in its
three different elements or species, viz., anger, malice, and revenge.
But to enter further upon such investigations would be inappropriate in
the present place. Generally, indeed, in touching upon matters so
universally known, my object has been merely to consider and exhibit
them from their psychological side, in order to show partly how the
triple principle of human existence, according to mind or spirit, and
soul, and the third element, wherein the former two conjointly operate,
finds its application, and is repeated, as it were, in miniature, in the
narrower sphere of the natural inclination, both good and bad, and also
in that of the external senses. At the same time it was also my wish to
call attention to the fact, that the dominion of the fancy over its
subordinate faculties, whether of the external senses or the instincts,
manifests itself likewise in the pernicious passions, as exercising over
them a very baneful influence, and, indeed, as being the principal
source of the prevailing aberrations.
These three passions and leading defects of character, which destroy the
inward peace of individuals and disturb the order of society, may be
regarded as so many Stygian floods, so many dark subterranean streams of
lava and fire, which, bursting from the crater of a burning fancy, pour
down upon the region of the will, there again to break out in lawless
deeds and violent catastrophes, or, perhaps, what is far worse, to lie
smoldering in a life frittered away in worthless pursuits, without
object or meaning, or in the frivolous routine of an ordinary existence.
Having thus fully set forth the injurious influence of a disordered
fancy on the deadly and pernicious passions of man, we shall be more at
liberty to consider the other and better aspect of this mental faculty.
For fancy, which, as his peculiar prerogative, distinguishes man from
all other intellectual beings, is a living and fruitful source of good
no less than of evil. Accordingly, in the higher aims of his good
instincts, noble inclinations, and true enthusiasms, fancy gives life
and stability to his exertions, and arouses and calls to his aid all the
energies of mind and intellect.
But here I must make the preliminary remark, that in the ethical domain
generally, and in all moral matters and relations, nothing but a very
fine line divides right from wrong. The fault lies not unfrequently in
the undue exaggeration or false application of a right principle. Pride
and vanity, for instance, are the commonest subjects of the world’s
censure; but who would banish from existence a true sense of honor, and
a noble thirst of fame. And how would society lose all its tone and its
true ring, if we were to withdraw from it all those precious metals!
Avarice and the love of gain are, no doubt, fruitful sources of evil,
and bring into society a thousand--nay, we may rather say, without
exaggeration, ten thousand times ten thousand woes. They are the
occasion of countless feuds and endless litigation; so that the
prevention and settlement of these numberless commercial quarrels and
disputes about property occupy the chief part of the attention, and
absorb the best energies of domestic government. But a gainful industry,
directed to utility, and even to private utility--labor and assiduity
which have no other end in view than a lawful gain and a fair profit,
which not merely does not violate the rights of others, but even pays a
due regard to their interests, will be universally recognized as an
essential part of the frame of society. It forms, indeed, the
alimentary sap of life, which, as it ascends through its different
vessels, diffuses every where both health and strength.
Lastly, we will now consider that other instinct of our nature, which,
even as the strongest, most requires moral regulation and treatment. By
all noble natures among civilized nations, in their best and purest
times, this instinct has, by means of various moral relations, been
spontaneously associated with a higher element. And, indeed, taken
simply as inclination, it possesses some degree of affinity therewith.
Such a strong inclination and hearty love, elevated to the bond of
fidelity, receives thereby a solemn consecration, and is even, according
to the divine dispensation, regarded as a sanctuary. And it is in truth
the moral sanctuary of earthly existence, on which God’s first and
earliest blessing still rests. It is, moreover, the foundation on which
is built the happiness and the moral welfare of races and nations. This
soul-connecting link of love, which constitutes the family union, is the
source from which emanate the strong and beautiful ties of a mother’s
love, of filial duty, and of fraternal affection between brethren and
kindred, which together make up the invisible soul, and, as it were, the
inner vital fluid of the nerves of human society. And here, too, the
great family problem of education must be taken into account--and by
education I mean the whole moral training of the rising generation. For,
however numerous and excellent may be the institutions founded by the
state, or conducted by private individuals, for special branches and
objects, or for particular classes and ages, still, on the whole,
education must be regarded as pre-eminently the business and duty of the
family. For it is in the family that education commences, and there,
also, it terminates and concludes at the moment when the young man,
mature of mind and years, and the grown-up maiden, leave the paternal
roof to found a new family of their own. In seasons of danger, and of
wide-spread and stalking corruption, men are wont to feel--but often,
alas! too late--how entirely the whole frame, both of human and
political society, rests on this foundation of the family union. Not
merely by the phenomena of our own times, but by the examples of the
most civilized nations of antiquity, may this truth be historically
proved; and numerous passages can be adduced from their great historians
in confirmation of it. In all times and in all places a moral revolution
within the domestic circle has preceded the public outbreaks of general
anarchy, which have thrown whole nations into confusion, and undermined
the best-ordered and wisely-constituted states. When all the principal
joists of a building have started, and all its stays and fastenings,
from the roof to the foundation, have become loose, then will the first
storm of accident easily demolish the whole structure, or the first
spark set the dry and rotten edifice in flames.
Next in order and dignity to this soul-binding tie of a noble and
virtuous love, which promotes and preserves the intimate union of all
the parts of social life, another species or form of a lofty, a good,
and a beautiful--nay, even of a sublime--endeavor, shows itself in what
we call enthusiasm. The latter has for its positive object a thought
which the soul having once intellectually embraced, is ever after filled
and possessed with. But the mere inward idea does not suffice here,
however it may in the case of the simple conception or admiration of a
noble thought. The distinctive characteristic of enthusiasm is rather
the untiring energy with which, even at great personal sacrifice, it
labors to realize, or to preserve in realization, the idea which has
once fully possessed the soul. The commonest form or species of this
enthusiasm is patriotism, or the love of country, which best and most
plainly manifests itself in seasons of national danger or calamity. As
the daily life of the individual alternates between labor and rest, and
the refreshing sleep of the night renews the strength which has been
exhausted by the toils of the day, so is it on a larger scale with the
public life of the state in its alternations between peace and war. For
although peace is justly prized and desired, as the greatest of public
blessings, still it is some comfort and compensation for its unavoidable
absence, to know that the presence of war, and the struggle with its
dangers and hardships, first awaken and call into being many of man’s
best energies and noblest virtues, which, in uninterrupted peace and
tranquillity, must have remained forever dormant. But, as is every where
the case throughout the moral domain, a spurious enthusiasm stands close
alongside of the true and genuine species, and requires to be carefully
distinguished from it. Forced to speak of the love of country, and to
paint its genuine traits, I rejoice that I am standing on one of its
chosen and most familiar scenes, where my hearers will understand me at
the first sound, when I declare that the true enthusiasm of patriotism
reveals itself most plainly in misfortune--in the midst of deep and
lasting calamities. Another characteristic is, that it does not
arbitrarily set up its object, or capriciously make its own occasion,
but at the first call of its hereditary sovereign rushes to the post of
danger. The second mark, therefore, of a true patriotism is obedience,
but an obedience associated with the forward energies of a fixed and
prepared resolve, which far outruns the exact requisitions of duty, and
gives rise to a true and real equality--the equality of self-sacrifice,
wherein the high and noble vie with the poor and lowly in the
magnanimous oblation to their country of their best and dearest
possessions.
Another generally known and admitted species of enthusiasm, viz., a
taste for the arts, has not so universal a foundation in the
constitution of the human mind as the feeling of patriotism, but implies
a particular mental disposition, and certain natural endowments, and
consequently the sphere of its operation is far narrower. But here,
also, as in the former case, enthusiasm manifests itself as a property
or state of the soul which is far from being contented with a calm
philosophical contemplation, or admiration, of its inward thought, but
which, longing eagerly to realize and exhibit externally the idea with
which it is possessed, knows no rest nor peace till it has accomplished
its cherished object. And such an ideal enthusiasm is not confined to
the sphere of art alone, but even in the calmer regions of science is
its influence felt. It is, in short, the animating impulse of all great
inventions, creations, and discoveries. Without it Columbus would never
have been able to overcome all the dangers and obstacles which beset the
first design and the final consummation of his bold conception. But in
the latter instances the object of enthusiasm is no longer a pure ideal,
like that which animates the artist, but something great or new in the
region of useful science, or of practical life. In every case, however,
enthusiasm has for its object a something positive and real, which, even
if it be not one which captivates the soul with its transcendent beauty
and excellence, yet, at least, by its exalted nature fills it with
wonder and admiration. Quite otherwise is it with a longing--an
indefinite feeling of profound desire, which is satisfied with no
earthly object, whether real or ideal, but is ever directed to the
eternal and the divine. And although it presupposes, as the condition of
its existence, no special genius or peculiar talents, but proceeds
immediately out of the pure source of the divinely created and immortal
soul--out of the everlasting feelings of the loving soul--still, from
causes which are easily conceivable, a pure development of this species
is _far_ rarer than even of the enthusiasm for art. No doubt, in certain
happy temperaments, under circumstances favorable to their free
expansion, this vague longing is peculiar to the age of youth, and is
often enough observed there. Indeed, it is in that soft melancholy,
which is always joined with the half-unconscious, but pleasant feeling
of the blooming fullness of life, that lies the charm which the
reminiscence of the days of youth possesses for the calm and quiet
contemplations of old age. Here, too, the distinctive mark between the
genuine and the spurious manifestations of this feeling is both simple
enough, and easily found. For as this longing may in general be
explained as an inchoate state--a love yet to be developed--the question
reduces itself consequently to the simple one of determining the nature
of this love. If, upon the first development and gratification of the
passions, this love immediately passes over to and loses itself in the
ordinary realities of life, then is it no genuine manifestation of the
heavenly feeling, but a mere earthly and sensual longing. But when it
survives the youthful ebullition of the feelings, when it does but
become deeper and more intense by time, when it is satisfied with no
joys, and stifled by no sorrows of earth--when, from the midst of the
struggles of life, and the pressure of the world, it turns, like a
light-seeing eye upon the storm-tossed waves of the ocean of time, to
the heaven of heavens, watching to discover there some star of eternal
hope--then is it that true and genuine longing, which, directing itself
to the divine, is itself also of a celestial origin. Out of this root
springs almost every thing that is intellectually beautiful and
great--even the love of scientific certainty itself, and of a profound
knowledge of life and nature. Philosophy, indeed, has no other source,
and we might in this respect call it, with much propriety, the doctrine
or the science of longing. But even that youthful longing, already
noticed, is oftentimes a genuine, or, at least, the first foundation of
the higher and truer species, although, unlike the latter, it is as yet
neither purely evolved nor refined by the course of time.
One general remark remains to be added. This beautiful longing of youth,
a fruitful fancy, and a loving soul, are the best and most precious
gifts of benignant nature, that dispenses with so liberal a hand, or,
rather, not of nature, but of that wonderful Intelligence that presides
in and over it. They form, as it were, a fair garden of hidden life
within man. But as the first man was placed in the garden of Eden, not
merely for his idle enjoyment, but, as it is expressly stated, “to dress
it and to keep it,” so here also, when this law of duty is neglected,
the inmost heart of the most eminent characters and of the most
richly-endowed natures becomes, as it were, a Paradise run wild and
waste.
In the consideration of these three forms of man’s higher effort--viz.,
longing, true love, and genuine enthusiasm--I have throughout silently
implied, what no one can possibly deny, the co-operating influence of
fancy. As in the evil passions it exercises an injurious, inflammatory,
and destructive effect, so also it co-operates beneficially with the
longing which is directed to the good and the divine, and imparts to it
its animating ardor, and its highest energy. In the pure longing,
indeed, the inventive fancy is dissolved in what has ceased to be an
earthly feeling, and has become completely identified with the living
soul. But in the love and enthusiasm which are directed to some actual
object, it is the sustaining flame of life, and of all loftier
aspirations which, as they spring from the source of fancy, attest its
co-operation. It may be that the pure spirits are filled and pervaded
with that loving veneration of the Deity which makes up their blissful
existence, simply by means of the intuitive understanding and the pure
will, without even any admixture of fancy. A human love or enthusiasm,
however, which should be totally devoid of fancy, and free from its
influence, will very rarely, if ever, be met with, and is but barely
conceivable. This, however, does not involve any reproach or censure
against man’s love and enthusiasm, as though they were unreal and
founded on an untruth. For nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose
that the fancy must invariably be untrue and deceiving, or at least
self-deceived. Such a supposition is derived merely from one species of
it--the poetical fancy. And yet even this, in its genuine
manifestations, contains beneath its privileged and permitted garb of
external untruth, a rich store and living source of great and profound
verities, of a peculiar kind, and belonging to an internal truth of
nature. Or, perhaps, this misconception of fancy in general may have its
origin in that abortion or corruption of it which operates so
powerfully in the evil passions, which is undoubtedly in the highest
degree deceptive and delusive. In and by itself, and taken in its widest
signification, this faculty of fancy is, generally speaking, the living
productive thought--the faculty of internal fertility--and which also
with its outward organs, both of an earthly and a higher sense,
apprehends the whole external world. It enters, therefore, with a living
interest into every good as well as base pursuit of man, and giving new
shapes of its own to all that it has once apprehended, labors to invest
it with a living form, to apply and to realize it. In itself, therefore,
and in its pure and uncorrupt state, far from clashing with the divine
truth (which, however, is not in every case identical with the ordinary
reality), fancy, as we shall show more fully in another place, admits of
being easily reconciled with it. But of human things we must always
judge by a human standard, and with due allowance. Even supposing that,
in the case of a true love and a genuine enthusiasm, a passing thought
may be detected, a momentary excitement or manifestation which goes
beyond the exact line of the actual truth--even in such a case this love
and this enthusiasm would not therefore be less real and genuine--still
would not all be exaggeration that might seem so to the unsympathizing
and unenthusiastic intellect. At all events, it must ever remain
undeniable, that emergencies occur in human life which are not met by
the rigorous and mathematical formularies of ethical science, and where
by nothing but a noble sacrifice of love far transcending all the common
and general requisitions of the practical reason--by nothing but a lofty
energy and resolute enthusiasm--can a man extricate himself from his
perplexities and arrive at a happy result. At least, it will not do to
overlook or misrepresent this element of human life, even though it must
be admitted that it is not exempt from those traces of human infirmity
which are also but too apparent in the other aspect of it, the one,
viz., in which the formal reason decides every thing, and is supreme.
As, therefore, the thinking soul is the living center of the human
consciousness, so, on the other hand, the loving soul is the middle
point and the foundation of all moral life, as it shows itself in that
soul-bond of love, which, while it constitutes marriage, is tied and
completed therein. On this union, then, which, as historically
represented, appears to be the true commencement of civilized life, it
will be necessary to say a few words; and the present seems the most
appropriate place for them. Now, both in philosophy and in all general
speculation, there are many reasoners who would derive every thing from
material sensations, and seek to degrade all that is regarded as high
and noble by mankind. So here, also, in the world’s mode of judging of
this union--which, however, all publicly-acknowledged principles regard
as holy--it, and all that belongs to it, is accounted for by some
evanescent passion, some sensual impression, or some interested view or
other, while the existence of any thing like true and genuine love is
absolutely denied. But, in the first place, in the case of a union which
embraces the entire man--his sensuous as well as his rational, or, as I
should prefer to say, his earthly no less than his spiritual nature and
temperament--it can not fairly be urged in objection to it, that both
the elements of his mixed constitution are present in it. On the
contrary, it is obviously most unjust, in our estimate of it, violently
to separate what, even in the least corrupted disposition and purest
characters, are most closely interwoven, or, rather, fused together, and
to subject them to an invidious and destructive analysis. This is not
the way to determine the characteristics of a true and of a false love.
The distinction between them must rather be sought by a simpler method,
similar to that which we followed in the case of longing and
enthusiasm--by considering merely the total result. A feeling of this
kind may appear at the beginning never so violent; it may even amuse
itself with a thorough mental hallucination, which betrays itself in its
very outward aspect, with the profoundest veneration, nay, deification
of its admired object; but in married life this intense admiration soon
gives place to satiety or indifference, and imbittered by mutual
distrust and misunderstanding, it terminates in incurable discord. In
such a case the feeling, even in its ardent beginnings, was no true
love, but simply passion. But in those happy unions, where the first
passionate ardor of youth yields only to an ever-growing and still purer
development of mutual good-will and confidence--while self-sacrifice and
patient endurance, both in good and evil fortune, do but cherish the
same deep affection and calm friendship--here, from the very first, it
was true and genuine love. For, however much the outward appearances of
human life may seem to contradict it, there is not in nature, and even
in the higher region, any love without a return. And as all true love
is reciprocal, so also is true love lasting and indestructible; or, to
“speak as a man,” even because it is the very inmost life of humanity,
it is, therefore, true unto death.
Moreover, in the case of a union which extends to the whole of life, it
is quite consistent that a due regard should be paid to the other
circumstances and relations of existence; only no general rule can be
laid down in this respect. This is a matter which has been left to the
discretion of individuals, even by the divine laws, those sacred
guardians of wedlock, which, however, rigorously insist on the absence
of all compulsion, inasmuch as the free consent of all parties is an
essential condition of this union. And as we should be justified in
taking for granted that this reciprocal act of free will must not be any
inconsiderate or extorted assent, or one induced by other interested
feeling or consideration, so is this expressly asserted by the fact
that, according to the spirit of these holy laws of matrimony, this
union must be founded on mutual affection, and regarded as an
indissoluble bond of souls, and not as a mere civil contract or deed of
sale and transfer of rank and property. The latter, as well as all else,
are mere subordinate matters. Three things, according to God’s moral
government of the world, are indispensable to and required by the
essence and spirit of these holy laws. In the first place, there must be
a mutual consent of the will--a reciprocal fondness and liking, to which
the will, whenever it is left free and unshackled, gives an appropriate
utterance and expression. In the second place, these laws require that
unison of temper which is indispensable to its permanence; while,
thirdly and lastly, they provide that this union, so sacred in the sight
of all civilized nations, should be indissoluble. In perfect harmony
with this last condition is monogamy--the fundamental law of Christian
wedlock. And even among the heathen nations of antiquity, though without
the sanction of law, yet, nevertheless, under the influence of an
instinctive sense of what is morally right and noble, monogamy had
practically become the almost universal rule. Highly important to the
welfare of the human race is the inviolable maintenance of this sacred
law of marriage. So incalculable are the disasters which follow from its
violation, that I can safely venture to assert, without fear of
exaggeration, that a religion which would venture to desecrate or pull
down the venerable sanctuary of wedlock, and consequently to expose the
weaker sex to degradation and oppression, would even thereby bespeak its
own falsity, and renounce all pretensions to a divine origin. Wherever,
on the contrary, this noble institution and woman’s dignity are
acknowledged and respected, there this union of souls in consecrated
love operates, by the means of lasting personal intercourse, a
reciprocal mental influence of the most diversified, salutary, and
beautiful kind. And this influence tends to promote the development not
only of the soul and character, but also of the mind or spirit.
Accordingly in this, the first and the most intimate of all unions, all
the three principles of human existence--body, soul, and spirit, or
mind--alike meet together, and partake of a common evolution. And the
result of this mutual influence relatively to the different characters
of the mental capacities and consciousness of the two sexes, and the
development of each produced thereby, forms, merely in its psychological
aspect, a remarkable and pregnant phenomenon. Consistently, therefore,
with the law I have proposed myself, in every case, to set out in my
investigations from life itself, and from the very center thereof, I can
not well avoid, while treating of the several grades of the development
of man’s consciousness, to give some, though it must be but a partial,
consideration to this interesting topic.
Congeniality of mind and temper forms, it is confessed, the sole basis
of domestic peace and contentment, and of a happy, _i.e._, of a
well-assorted marriage. But to determine on what this depends, in each
individual case, is a problem which, considering the extremely great and
infinite varieties of human dispositions, admits not of a precise or
particular solution. On this point the closest observers are not
unfrequently deceived in their predictions. How often do those agree
very well of whom previously it would not have been supposed possible?
On the contrary, those frequently live most unhappily together of whose
blissful union the judgment of society and the ordinary estimate of
human character had led to the most favorable anticipations.
Nevertheless, for the latter fact a general reason may be given. It is
not so much the similarity of tastes and pursuits, as, rather, the want
in one of some mental quality possessed by the other, that forms the
strongest source of attraction between the two sexes, so that the inner
life or consciousness of the one finds its complement in that of the
other, or, at least, receives from it a further development and
elevation. For in the same way that a certain community of goods and
property, even though not complete nor enforced by law, yet still, in
some measure and by daily use, does practically take place in
wedlock--so, also, by the constant interchange of every thought and
feeling, a sort of community of consciousness is produced, which derives
its charm and value from the very difference in the mental character of
the two sexes. When I would attempt to give a more precise determination
of this difference, I feel how difficult and incomplete must be every
attempt generally to define the varieties of mental character. And this
is especially the case when men take in hand to paint the characters of
whole ages and nations, and by contrasts endeavor distinctly to limit
and sharply to define them. Thus, for instance, the predominant element
in the mental character of the Greeks is usually said to be
intellect--comprising under this term every form and manifestation of
it, the scientific as well as the artistic, profundity not less than
acuteness, and vivid perspicuity, together with critical analysis; while
energy of will, strength of mind, and greatness of soul, are assigned to
the Romans as their distinguishing peculiarity. No doubt these
descriptions are not in general untrue. How many nicer limitations,
however, and modifications must they undergo, if we are not to rest
contented with this historical antithesis and summary--which, no doubt,
are correct enough, as far as they go--but desire, rather, to form in
idea and to set down in words a full and complete image of these two
nations in their whole intellectual life. So, too, as a general
description of the middle ages, it might be said, with tolerable truth,
that in them fancy was predominant; while in modern times reason has
been gradually becoming more and more paramount. But how many
particulars must be added in the latter case, if the truth of life is
not to be swallowed up in a general notion. But in a still higher degree
does this observation apply, when we come to speak not merely of nations
and eras, but of the mental differences of the two sexes. Such mere
outlines must be given and taken for nothing more than what they really
are, mere sketchy thoughts. However, they may often lead us farther,
giving rise occasionally to useful applications, or, at least, serving,
not seldom, to exclude a false and delusive semblance of a thought. To
attempt, therefore, something of the kind, I would make the following
remark, in which most voices will, I think, concur. Of the several
faculties or aspects of human consciousness previously described, soul
appears to be most pre-eminent in the mental constitution of women; so
that the prophet who said that women have no soul proved himself thereby
a false prophet. For it is even this rich fullness of soul which
manifests itself in all their thoughts, and words, and deeds--that
constitutes the great charm of the social intercourse of civilized
nations, as well as the winning attractiveness of their more familiar
conversation, and in part, also, the harmonizing influence which they
produce on the mind in the more intimate union of wedded life.
Nevertheless, I think we should altogether miss the truth, if, from any
love of antithesis, we should go on to append the remark, that, in like
manner, mind [_geist_] generally predominates among men, and is commonly
to be found in a higher degree among them than among women. For, in the
first place, the measure both of natural capacity and also of acquired
culture, not only in themselves, but also in the manifold spheres and
modes of their application, are so exceedingly different in different
individuals, that it is not easy to form therefrom any general and
characteristic estimate of the whole sex. And just as it would be a most
false exaggeration to deny to man altogether the possession of a soul
with its rich fullness of feeling, since it is only of its preponderance
among the other sex that it is allowable to speak, so can we with as
little justice refuse absolutely to attribute mind to woman, or at best
ascribe it to her only in a very limited degree. For even if the subtler
abstractions of scientific reasoning are very rare among, and little
suited to them, still sound reason and judgment are only the more
common. The understanding which women possess is not so much dry,
observant, cool, and calculating, as it is vivid and intuitively
penetrating. And it is exactly this vividness of intellect that, when
speaking of individuals, we call mind or spirit.
Another line of thought will, perhaps, lead us more directly and nearer
to the end we have in view. The external influence of women on the whole
human community is, for the most part (for here, too, there are great
and memorable exceptions) confined to a narrow sphere of the immediate
duties of the affections, or to similar relations in the wider social
circle. So, too, is it inwardly as regards the consciousness. All the
faculties of women and their several manifestations lie, if I may so
express myself, close together, and, as it were, in a friendly circle
around the loving soul, as their common center. With regard, then, to
the comparison of the two sexes and their mental differences, I would
venture to observe, that on the one side it seems to me that a certain
harmonious fullness of the consciousness is the preponderating
character; and, on the other, its eccentric evolution. Not that I mean
that in the sex which is pre-eminently called to outward activity, the
mind loses its grand center in the inner life, or, comet-like, delights
to wander in vast, irregular orbits, as is, indeed, commonly enough
asserted. My meaning is, simply, that the masculine mind will ever dare,
as, indeed, it ought, to move in wider circles than the feminine. The
extremes of the consciousness, if the expression be allowable--the
farthest poles both of reason and fancy--are, so to speak, the property
of the more active sex; while the harmonious union and contact of both
in the soul belong to the more sensitive. All such general and
characteristic sketches, however, must always be most imperfect. Still I
believe it may be safely and truly said, that, with highly-favored
dispositions and noble natures (and these must be always supposed and
taken for the foundation of such general remarks), the gain to be
derived from this intellectual community and influence, in which one
individual consciousness completes the other, must be sought in the one
sex in a greater development of mind and elevation of soul, and in the
other in a more harmonious adjustment and softening of the mental
powers, and in a far more sensitive excitement of the soul’s
susceptibilities. But in this most intimate of unions, when regarded as
divinely blessed, and when in reality it appears to be so, then on
either side both mind and soul are, as it were, twice combined and
joined together in closest association, and, if we may say so, even
married and wedded together. Consequently, while external life derives
from marriage its moral foundation and origin, the internal life of man
is, as it were, mentally renewed by it, or fructified afresh and
redoubled.
LECTURE III.
OF THE SOUL’S SHARE IN KNOWLEDGE; AND OF REVELATION.
In the first Lecture our attention was directed to the thinking soul as
the center of the whole human consciousness; while in the second, I
attempted fully to set before you, and to delineate, the loving soul as
the true middle point of the moral life. The object of our present
disquisition will be to ascertain the part which the soul takes in the
knowledge to which man is able to attain. The general element, indeed,
which the soul furnishes as its contribution to human knowledge, is not
indeed very difficult to determine; but when we come to details, there
is much that requires to be well weighed and pondered.
Now, the soul furnishes the cognitive mind with language for the
expression of its cognitions; and it is even the distinctive character
of human knowledge, that it depends on language, which not only forms an
essential constituent of it, but is also its indispensable organ.
Language, however, the discursive, but at the same time also the vividly
figurative language of man, is entirely the product of the soul, which
in its production first of all, and pre-eminently, manifests its
fruitful and creative energy. In this wonderful creation the two
constituent faculties of the soul--fancy and reason--play an equal and
co-ordinate part. From the fancy it derives the whole of its figurative
and ornamental portion, and also its melodious rhythm and animated tone.
And, moreover, its inmost fundamental web and the primary natural roots
belong also to man’s original deep feeling of sympathy with outward
nature, and therefore to fancy, unless perhaps some would prefer to
ascribe them at once to the soul itself, as still more profoundly and
intimately akin to nature. To the reason, on the other hand, language
owes its logical order, and its grammatical forms and laws of
construction. Which part is the more important, or more highly to be
esteemed, is a question whose solution will vary according to the point
of view which in any case may be adopted as fundamental, or to the
different relations under which the whole shall be considered. Both
elements, however, are equally essential and indispensable. In all the
instances already considered of the reciprocal relation of reason and
fancy we found almost invariably a decided preponderance of one or the
other; but neither there nor elsewhere will reason and fancy be found
combining in such harmonious proportions, or working so thoroughly
together, or contributing so equally to the common product, as in the
wonderful production of language, and in language itself. And this is
the case, not only with language in general, but also with all its
species and noblest applications. Now this dependence of the cognitive
mind on its organ of language, discursive indeed, but yet almost always
figurative--this close and intimate connection between man’s knowledge
and his speech--is even the characteristic mark of human intelligence.
But the fault of most of the mere speculative thinkers lies even in
this, that they abandon the standard of humanity, by seeking to wrest,
and to conquer an unhuman, if we may so say, _i.e._, a wholly
independent and absolute knowledge, which, however, it is not in their
power to attain to, and in pursuit of which they lose the certainty
which lies within their reach, and so at last grasp nothing but an
absolute not-knowing, or an endless controversy. If, as we can not but
suppose, a communication does take place among those spiritual beings,
who in intelligence are preferred to man, then must the immediate speech
of these spirits be very different from our half-sensuous half-rational,
half-earthly half-heavenly language of nature and humanity. For, even as
spiritual, it can not but be immediate--never employing figure and those
grammatical forms which human language first analyzes, to form again out
of them new and fresh compounds. According to the two properties which
constitute the essence of mind [_geist_], it can only be a
communication, a transmission, an awakening or immission of
thought--some wholly definite thought--by the will, or else the
communicating, exciting, and producing by the thought of some equally
definite volition. It may be that something of this, or at least
something not absolutely dissimilar, occurs in human operations. It is
possible that this immediate language of mind, as a secret and invisible
principle of life--as a rare and superior element--is contained also in
human language, and, as it were, veiled in the outer body, which,
however, becomes visible only in the effects of a luminous and lofty
eloquence, in which is displayed the magic force of language and of a
ruling and commanding thought. Taken on the whole, however, human
speech is no such immediate and magically-working language of mind or
spirit. It is rather a figurative language of nature, in which its great
permanent hieroglyphics are mirrored again in miniature, and in rapid
succession. And it retains this natural and figurative character even in
the ordinary form of rational dialogue, which must observe so many
varieties and details of grammar, of which superior intelligences have
no need for their immediate intercommunion, but in which, as in all
other human things, many greater or less grammatical oversights creep in
and give rise to important consequences in science and thought, and also
in life itself. But in the next place, language is intimately connected
and co-ordinate with tradition, whether sacred or profane, with all the
recorded fruits of human speculation and inquiry. And as the word is the
root out of which the whole stem of man’s transmitted knowledge, or
tradition, has grown up, with all its branches and offshoots, so, too,
in the eloquent speech, in the elegant composition, and even in all
lofty internal meditation--which form, as it were, the leaves, flowers,
and fruits of this goodly tree of living tradition--it is again the word
by which the whole is carried on and ultimately perfected.
But now, in order to develop still more completely, and more accurately
to ascertain the part which the soul, as the creator of language,
contributes to human cognition and knowledge, it will be necessary to
examine nicely the essence of reason, and especially in relation to its
collateral and closely-connected, but subordinate faculties. Above all,
it will be advisable to determine, as accurately and carefully as
possible, the difference between reason and understanding. For otherwise
its proper share in this common fruit and joint product of human
knowledge can not be ascribed to each power of mind and to each faculty
of the soul, nor their proper places and due limits in the whole be
severally assigned.
The faculties, then, of the soul, which stand in the same close
relationship to the reason that the senses and the instincts or passions
do to the fancy, are memory and conscience. Now, memory may be
considered either as a gift, according to its greater or less power of
comprehension and retention, or as an art to strengthen and facilitate
its operations by artificial means of every kind, or as a problem to
determine how far the exercise of it constitutes an essential part of
man’s intellectual culture and development. But it is not in any of
these points of view that we have here to consider it, but simply in its
essential conjunction with the reason and rationality, which appear to
be dependent on this union.
In other words, we have to regard the memory principally as the inward
clew of recollection and of association in the consciousness, in the
ever-flowing stream of thought and interchange of ideas. We may, or, I
might rather say, we must, forget infinitely many things. But this
connecting thread of memory being once broken, or destroyed, or lost,
the reason invariably suffers with it, and is injured, or its exercise
limited, or, lastly, is rendered totally confused and extinct. Whenever,
in the extreme decrepitude of old age, memory fails, reason ceases in an
equal degree to be active and energetic, and is supplanted by more or
less of a foolish doting. In sleep, no doubt, consciousness is regularly
interrupted, but still it is immediately restored again on awaking. If
the contrary were to take place, if, as is the foundation of many an
ingenious story among the poets, when suddenly awakened we could not
recall our former memory and our knowledge, then should we be
continually falling into mistakes about ourselves and lose all identity
of consciousness. Some such violent interruption or rent in the inward
memory of self-consciousness is invariably to be found in madness, and
is a leading symptom of it. And here I would merely call upon you to
observe a further illustration of what has been already more than once
pointed out. The triple principle of body, soul, and spirit is again
repeated and manifested even in this sad state of mental alienation, and
in all its different forms and species. In true lunacy or
monomania--which is generally harmless and quiet--a radically false but
fixed idea is often associated, and is not inconsistent with an
extraordinary shrewdness on all other points. Nevertheless, this fixed
erroneous idea, being made the center of all other thoughts and of the
whole consciousness, produces that confusion and that disorganization of
the mind which characterizes this form of a disordered intellect. But in
true madness, or frenzy, the seat of the disease is in the soul, which,
having broken loose from all the ties and restraints of reason and
rational habit, appears to have fallen a prey to some hostile, wild, and
raging force of nature. In idiotcy, lastly, especially where it is
inborn and conjoined with the perfection of the external organs of
sense, we must assume the existence of some faulty organization, some
defect in the brain, or whatever else is the unknown but higher organ
both of thought and life. The source of the last is altogether physical
and corporeal, whereas moral causes often co-operate in the highest
degree to the production of the former two. The deaf and dumb, if left
wholly to themselves, would, in all probability, belong always to the
third class, since, with the loss of speech they are simultaneously
deprived of a leading condition of rationality. And, accordingly, the
first object with those who undertake the difficult task of training
these unfortunate beings is to furnish them with another language, by
means of signs, instead of the ordinary audible speech of which the
accident of birth has deprived them. This instance, therefore, is only a
further confirmation of what I have already advanced, that the
intellectual character is, in every respect, most intimately dependent
on the faculty of speech. A more minute examination of these matters
belongs to physical science. Nevertheless, our passing remark on the
triple character of this psychological evil, or misfortune, will not, I
hope, be found inappropriate here, as affording, even in this narrow and
special sphere of a disordered intellect, a further illustration of the
general principle of our theory of the human consciousness.
Now, the outer and especially the higher senses may, by reason of the
supremacy of the fancy, to which they are subordinate, be termed, with
propriety, so many applied faculties of imagination. In the same way we
might give the same designation to the inclinations and impulses--the
good as well as the evil--if, perhaps, it would not be more accurate to
name them an imagination passed into life. In a similar way the memory
may be considered as an applied reason which in the application has
become quite mechanical and habitual; for unquestionably the logical
arrangement is the chief quality in memory. From this it derives both
its value and scientific utility. On the other hand, there are certain
acquired mental aptitudes which, though originally they can not be
formed without the voluntary exercise of memory, become at last a
completely unconscious and mechanical operation--the facility, for
instance, of learning by heart, or the acquisition of foreign languages,
or catching up of musical tunes. In all these the reason has become an
instinct, just as the instinct of animals, their artistic impulse and
skill, may be designated an unconscious analogy of reason.
In this subordinate faculty of the memory, the reason, agreeably to its
specific character, exhibits itself as a useful and ministering agent.
In conscience, on the contrary, as its highest function, it assumes a
somewhat negative character. But in both relations, whether as a
ministerial or negative faculty of thought, the reason, in its place, is
of the highest value. If occasionally we have seemed to detract from and
to limit its importance, such remarks have been called forth by the
undue and overweening authority which the present age would claim for
the reason. This is the sole end and meaning of our opposition, which is
directed exclusively against that spurious reason which claims to be
supreme, and arrogates to itself a productive power; whereas, in truth,
it ought not to be the one, and can never be the other. The thought
which distinguishes, divides, and analyzes, and that also which
combines, infers, and concludes--which, as such, make up the faculty of
reason--may be so carried on in indefinite and infinite process, as
ultimately to get entirely rid of its object-matter. It is this endless
thinking, without a correspondent object, that is the source of
scientific error, which, as in all cases it arises solely out of this
vacuum in thinking, can only lead to a thinking of nothing--a cogitation
absolutely null and false. Far different is the case where a memory,
stored with the rich materials of intellectual experience, forms the
useful basis of man’s studies and pursuits, or where, as is the case
with the apperception of the conscience, the object, even while it is
less extensive and manifold, is the more highly and more intensely
important. Now, as the reason generally is not only a combining and
connecting, but also a distinguishing faculty of thought, so likewise
the conscience is a similar power of drawing distinctions in the thought
and in the internal consciousness, though in a higher and special
degree, and also in a different form from that which, in all other
instances, is discursive reason. For it is by a simple feeling and
immediate perception that the conscience, in obedience to the voice
within man, draws between right and wrong, or good and evil, the
greatest of all distinctions. This voice of conscience, while it makes
itself heard among all nations, nevertheless, under the ever and
widely-varying influence of ruling ideas of the age, and of education,
and of custom, speaks in different times and places, in differing tones
and dialects. But these differences extend only to subordinate matters.
The primary and essential point remains unchanged and never to be
mistaken; the same dominant tone and key-note sounds through all these
variations--the common tongue and language of human nature and of an
untaught and innate fear of God. This fact has led many to regard the
conscience as the principal source of all higher and divine truth; with
whom I can readily concur, so long as they do not mean thereby that it
is the only source, to the exclusion of every other.
Now it is surely significant that in German--and all languages furnish
numerous instances of such significant allusions--the word and the name
of reason[17] is derived from that internal perception of the conscience
which constitutes its highest function. What, then, it may be asked, is
perceived by this wonderful perception, that before it the will inwardly
retires and withdraws even its earlier and most cherished wishes? The
warning voice it is called, in every age and nation. It is, as it were,
one who within us warns and remonstrates. It is not, therefore, our own
Me, but as it were another, and, as a vague feeling would suggest, of a
higher and a different nature. And now by its light that earlier and
retiring will appears in like manner as another self--a lower false and
seducing Ego--an alien power which would hurry away ourselves and our
proper Me. But between the two--this higher warning voice on the one
hand, and this constraining, compelling force on the other--there stands
a power which is free to decide between them. And this, as soon as the
decomposing process is finished, which in the as yet undecided will, or
its mixed states, separates and distinguishes between the good voice and
the evil inclination--remains to us as our own Ego and our proper self.
This inward voice, and the immediate perception of it, is an anchor on
which the vessel of man’s existence rides safely on the stormy sea of
life, and the ebb and the flow of the will. In other words, it is a
divine focus, or a sacred stay of truth. But further, it must be
observed, that the understanding of this inner perception, as I have
just painted it, does not belong to the reason, to which alone the
perceiving can itself be ascribed. The true intelligence thereof--its
higher interpretation, and explanation, which adds to it, or recognizes
in it a reference to the divine--must, even because it is an
intellectual act, be ascribed to the understanding.
The present, therefore, is the place for a close and accurate
investigation of the difference between reason and understanding--a
question of the highest importance for the whole theory of the
consciousness, and its true philosophical interpretation, as well as
absolutely for every branch of science. For this purpose I shall follow
a line of thought somewhat unusual, perhaps, but which on that account
is even the more likely to carry us quickly to the desired end, and to
place the distinction in a full and clear light. I lately employed the
somewhat hypothetical comparison between man and a superior order of
intelligences, as a means of illustrating the faculty of the fancy as
the peculiar property of the human consciousness. And now I would go a
step higher, and from the acknowledged characteristics of the divine
intelligence, derive the means of determining the different functions of
the human consciousness, and of setting the relations they stand in, not
only to one another, but also to a superior intellect. In this course,
however, I shall take nothing for granted but what is well known and
generally intelligible. That God is a Spirit, is the concurrent voice of
all men, wherever a belief in the one God is professed, or the idea of a
Divine Being is diffused. God is a Spirit, and therefore an omniscient
intellect and an all-mighty will are unanimously attributed to Him. This
axiom, with which a child even of the most ordinary intelligence can
associate some kind of meaning, is at the same time the fundamental
principle which is involved in all that the deepest thinker can know of
God. The same faculties, therefore, that make up the essence and the two
functions of created spirits--understanding and will--may, without
hesitation, be attributed to the uncreated Spirit; and although this
attribution must be understood according to the exalted standard of the
infinite distance between the creature and the Creator, still it is made
properly and not merely by way of figure.
But now, in Holy Writ, and in the language of pious adoration and
prayer, among other nations as well as the Jewish, a multitude of
properties, faculties, and senses are ascribed to the Deity in perfectly
anthropomorphic descriptions and imagery. Thus mention is even made of
His eye, His ear, His guiding hand, His mighty arm, and the omnipotent
breath of His mouth. In so far as these are admitted to be mere images
there can be no objection to them, and it is not easy to see how they
can lead to any abuse. And this is equally the case even with such
expressions as it is plain can only be applicable to the Deity in a
figurative sense--for instance, when human passions are ascribed to
Him--since, if employed properly and literally, they all involve more or
less of imperfection. And in the same way, where no forgetfulness is
possible or conceivable, it can only be in a figurative sense that it is
allowable to speak of memory. And with still less propriety can the
faculty of conscience, in its human sense, be ascribed to God. His
balance of justice--His regulative thought--is something very different
from our mere sense of right. To ascribe conscience to the Deity would
be to confound the judge on the bench with the criminal at the bar. Even
the first man, as long as he was yet innocent, knew not conscience. For
the sense of guilt, and the faculty of perceiving it, must at the very
earliest have come simultaneously with the transgression itself, if it
was not, rather, consequent upon it. In the application to the Deity of
such figurative language, great license is of course allowable. The
question, however, which concerns us in a philosophical point of view is
whether, in the same proper sense as understanding and will, so also the
other faculties which are so peculiarly distinctive of man--reason and
fancy, or the soul--can be attributed to the Divine Being. Now it is at
once evident that, far beyond all other figurative expressions, it would
be perfectly unsuitable to ascribe fancy to God. We feel clearly enough
that by so doing we should be leaving the safe ground of truth for the
treacherous domain of mythology. That inner mine of intellectual riches
which man in his weak measure finds in the faculty of fancy, is, in the
case of the Divine Being, furnished once and for all by His omnipotent
will; which of itself creates and produces its object, and, unlike
created beings, is not confined to any limited data or to a choice
between them. Here, then, the Almighty will itself is the full fatherly
heart--embracing, nourishing, and sustaining all creatures--or even the
living maternal womb of eternal generation, and requires no new and
special faculty for this end. In the next place, as to the soul: the
expression of the soul of God does, indeed, occur in some of the less
known Christian writers of the first centuries of the church, but it
soon fell into disuse--from a fear, probably, of its leading to a
confusion of idea, and being identified with a mere soul of the world.
But however that may be, the soul is simply a passive faculty, and
therefore, on that account alone, is highly inappropriate as applied to
God. That third property which in the Divine nature is associated with
an omniscient intelligence or understanding, and an omnipotent will, can
not be called the soul of God, but is even the spirit of love, in which
both understanding and will unite and are one. And if this third
property be added to the axiomatic definition of the Deity already
alluded to, then in the proposition, God is a spirit of love, the double
predicate in its essential import involves all that man in general, and
even the profoundest thinker, can properly know of God. All besides is a
mere expansion or elucidation of this primary and fundamental thought.
Moreover, if it is not allowable to ascribe fancy or a soul to God, so
neither can He be spoken of as possessing reason as an essential faculty
in the same proper sense as understanding and will are attributed to
Him. God is indeed the author of reason; and the sound reason is even
that which adheres to the center of truth, as He, in creating it,
designed and ordered. But from this it does not by any means follow that
He is himself the reason which He has created, or that He is even one
with it. Were it so, then the advocates of absolute science, the
rationalists, would be in the right; in such a case, the knowledge of
God were in truth a science of reason, inasmuch as like can only be
known by like.
But now, if it be not reason, but rather understanding, that, with the
co-operation of all the other faculties both of soul and spirit, is the
proper organ for acquiring a knowledge of the divine, and the only means
by which man can arrive at a right apprehension thereof; then is the
knowledge of God simply and entirely a science of experience, although
of a high and peculiar kind, by reason of the finiteness and frailty of
man as compared with such an object. As the fancy is the apprehension or
seizing of an object, the reason a combination or distinction, so the
understanding is the faculty which penetrates, and, in its highest
degree, clearly sees through its object. We understand a phenomenon, a
sensation, an object, when we have discerned its inmost meaning, its
peculiar character and proper significance. And the same is the case
even when this object be a speech and communication addressed to us--a
word or discourse given us to extract its meaning. If we have discerned
the design which is involved in such a communication, its real meaning
and purpose, then may we be said to have understood it, even though some
minutiæ in the expression may still remain unintelligible, which, as not
belonging essentially to the whole, we put aside and leave unconsidered.
There are, therefore, many steps and degrees in understanding--very
different phases and species of it. A familiar instance will, perhaps,
elucidate this matter. We will suppose the case of an extremely rare and
remarkable, or, perhaps, hitherto wholly unknown, plant, brought to our
country from a foreign clime. The naturalist, having examined its
structure and organs, assigns it to a particular class of the higher
botanical genera, where it either belongs to some lower species or forms
an exception. The chemist, again, when the plant is brought before his
notice, conjectures, from certain other characters, that it is formed of
such or such elementary parts; while the physician, on other grounds,
concludes that in certain diseases it will probably serve as a remedy,
equally if not more efficacious than other herbs or roots previously
employed for that purpose. Now, if the two last have judged correctly,
if their conjectures be confirmed by trial and experiment, then will all
the three have understood the plant, and each in his own department have
learned and discerned its intrinsic character. Again: how slowly, step
by step and gradually, do men attain to the understanding of some
ancient, foreign, and difficult language. It commences, perhaps, with
the long and difficult deciphering of a manuscript or inscription, with
an alphabet incomplete or imperfectly known, and after much painful
labor the final discovery of its true meaning is made perhaps by some
fortunate accident which all at once throws a full light upon it. A
remarkable instance, in our own days, will both elucidate the matter,
and serve at the same time to prove how a higher Providence regulates
even the progress of science. For more than a millenium and a half had
the hieroglyphics of an ancient race remained unintelligible to and
undeciphered by a posterity of aliens, when at last, amid the recent
commotions and tempests of the political world, a happy accident brought
the secret to light. Who can forget the brilliant and dazzling
expectations which hailed the departure of the French expedition for
Egypt? How was all Europe electrified at the bold project of planting at
the foot of the Pyramids a colony of European art and civilization. The
enterprise itself failed, and was soon forgotten amid still more
important events and greater revolutions; and the humble monument with
its triple inscription, which was carried away from Egypt, is all, if we
may so speak, that remains of it. But that has unquestionably founded a
great epoch in the peaceful empire of science.[18] For a whole
generation the learned labored to decipher it with but slow and very
imperfect success, when at last a happy coincidence presents itself, and
suddenly the key is found. And although of the seven hundred secret
symbols, scarcely more than one hundred are as yet made out, still even
these have opened a wide vista into the spacious domain of the dark
_origines_ of man’s history. And this was effected at a time when man
had just learned to put together a few characters of the great alphabet
of nature, and here and there to decipher a word or two of its
hieroglyphical language, while at the same time streams of historical
knowledge began to flow down from the remotest antiquity of the human
race, confirming and setting in the clearest light the best of all that
we had before possessed, and exciting a hope that we might, perhaps, be
also able to understand the obscure hieroglyphics of our own age, and
the fearful war of minds which is commencing in it.
Such is the course of things, or, rather, the higher Providence that
rules therein; and it was to this, chiefly, that I wished to call your
attention by this digression. Thus slow and gradual, but permanent, are
the progressive steps in the growth and development of true human
science, which is founded on experience--the internal as well as
external, the higher as well as the lower--and on tradition, language,
and revelation. But, on the contrary, that false, or, as I termed it at
the outset, that unhuman and absolute knowledge, as it pretends to
embrace all at once, and by one step to place us in full possession of
the whole sum of human knowledge, so, ever fluctuating between being and
non-being, it soon dissolves into thin air, and leaves nothing behind
but a baseless void of absolute non-knowing. Ill would it fare with the
knowledge of God and of divine things, if they were left to be
discovered, and, as it were, first established by human reason. Even
though, in such a case, the intellectual edifice were never so well
built and compact, still, as it had originally issued out of man’s
thoughts, it would be ever shaking before the doubt whether it were any
thing better than an idea, or had any reality out of the human mind.
For this doubt is the foundation of all idealism, to which, often
recurring under differing forms of error, it does but give a fresh
creation and new shape. Even from this side, consequently, it is
apparent that no living certainty and complete reality is attainable by
it. Easy, in truth, were it from this position to evolve the ideas of
the illimitable, and the infinite, and the absolute; and of such
developments there is no lack. But they are at best but pure negations,
which do not serve in the least to explain that which is most necessary
for us to understand. Curious, indeed, should I be to see the process by
which, out of this pet metaphysical idea of the absolute, any one
positive notion of God--His patience, for example, and long-suffering--is
to be deduced. Strange, too, must be the way in which alone it could
carry out the proof that the absolute Deity, or as man prefers, it
seems, to say, _the Absolute_, can not dispense with the possession of
this attribute of patience, on which, however, before all others, it is
important for man to insist. Moreover, this character of absoluteness
is applied to the Deity in a manner which is altogether false and
erroneous. That God, in the mode of his existence, is unlimited--that
the First Cause is not dependent on, and can not be qualified by any
other being, is self-evident, and is nothing but a mere identical
proposition. But this character does not admit of being applied to
his inner essence, or His essential attributes in relation to man and
the whole creation. Wo to all men, nay, we might rather say, wo to
all created beings, if God were really absolute--if, for instance,
His justice, which, however, is the first and principal of all His
attributes, were not manifoldly modified, limited, and conditioned by
His goodness, His mercy, and His patience. Before such a justice of
God, if it were at once to make such an unconditional manifestation of
itself, the whole world in terror would sink in dust and ashes. But it
is not so. Man does hope--he must believe--ay, we may go on and add,
man does know, that the divine justice is not unconditional, but is in
an eminent degree limited by His fatherly love and goodness.
No doubt, too, it must not, on the other hand, be forgotten, that the
divine love and grace are also conditioned by the attribute of justice,
what, however, in a certain effeminate theology of a recent day, seems
to have been totally overlooked. However, this grave error of a too
sentimental view of divine things is now pretty generally recognized as
such, and, for the most part, abandoned. Moreover, it does not properly
lie within the scope of our present disquisition. Now, the position that
the justice and the grace of God mutually limit each other, involves
nothing unintelligible, or, in this sense, inconceivable; as, however,
is the case with the baseless phantom of the absolute, where the empty
phrase becomes only the more unintelligible the more frequently it is
repeated. How much more correct, in this respect, were the definitions
and distinctions of the great philosophers of antiquity, especially the
Pythagoreans. With them the limitless and the indeterminate were even
the imperfect and the evil, and the former they regarded as the
characteristic marks of the latter; while the fixedly definite and
positive, which forms the very heart and core of personality, was with
them identical with the good: and unquestionably, God’s personality--the
fundamental notion, the proper and universal dogma of every religion
that acknowledges the one true God--is the true center around which the
whole inquiry revolves. For the question is, whether philosophy, while
it allows this idea to stand indeed externally, and apparently--for even
in Germany only one has been found bold enough to deny it expressly and
without reserve--intends all the while to put it quietly aside, and
secretly to entomb it by refusing to see in it any thing more than an
illusion of the natural feelings. The point at issue is whether, by so
teaching, philosophy is to come into direct collision with one of man’s
most universal and deeply-rooted feelings, and to produce an eternal
schism--an irreconcilable discord--not only between science and faith,
but even between science and life. For to unsettle life, is even the
necessary result of rationalism.
But let us now turn from the “_Absolute_” of reason to the personal God
of the believers among all peoples and times. If, now, the knowledge of
God be not a discovery of the reason, whose proper office is to analyze
and investigate--if, on the contrary, we are only able to understand of
Him so much as is given and imparted to us, then the matter assumes
quite another aspect. If God has conferred a knowledge of Himself upon
man--if He has spoken to him, has revealed Himself to him--as is the
common tradition of all ancient nations, the more unanimously
corroborated the older they are--then is the power to understand this
divine communication given together and at the same time with it, even
though we should be forced to allow that this intellectual capacity be
limited by human frailty and extremely imperfect. To take our estimate
of it as low as possible, we will conceive it to be something like the
degree of intelligence with which a child eighteen months old
understands its mother. Much it does not understand at all; other things
it mistakes, or perhaps does not fully attend to, and its answers, too,
are not much to the purpose; but something, nevertheless, it does
understand--this we see clearly enough. On this point we should not be
likely to be led astray, even though the theorist should wish to raise a
doubt on the matter, by attempting to prove that the child could not
properly understand its mother, since for that purpose it would be
necessary for it to have previously learned thoroughly and methodically
the elements of grammar. We believe, however, what, indeed, we see, that
man’s power of understanding divine things is really very imperfect. For
the relation between the child a year and a half old and its mother
completely represents that of man to God, with the more than
half-imperfect organs that are given him for this purpose--with his so
manifoldly limited mind or spirit, which is a spark of heavenly light,
indeed, but still only a spark--a drop out of the ocean of the infinite
whole--and, moreover, with his half-soul. For half-soul we may and must
call it in this respect, since with the one half it is turned to the
earth, and still wholly fraternizes with the sensible world; while with
the other it is directed to, and is percipient of, the divine. But such
a childlike and humble docility will not satisfy the proud reason, and
so it is ever turning again to the other absolute road of a false,
imaginary, and unhuman knowledge. Fundamentally, however, those two
words,[19] which alone man can be certain of with respect to God, would,
since God invariably imparts to every creature its due measure, be quite
enough, if only man would always rightly apply and faithfully preserve
them.
Now, to this first hypothesis we might append the further
question:--supposing that God has imparted a knowledge of Himself to
mankind--has spoken to them, and revealed Himself to them--is it not
highly probable that He has ordained some institution for the further
propagation and diffusion of revealed truth, and also for the
maintenance as well of its original integrity as also of the right
interpretation of it? But I must content myself with merely advancing
this question. I can not attempt to prosecute it in the present place;
for its further consideration would carry us out of the established
limits of philosophy into the domain of history, and it involves,
moreover, the positive articles of faith.
But the previous question, whether the knowledge of God, which we either
possess or are capable of possessing, be a science of absolute reason,
or rather an understanding of given data, and consequently a science of
experience, and resting, ultimately, on revelation--this certainly falls
within the scope of philosophical investigation. Indeed, it forms the
chiefest and most essential problem of philosophy, inasmuch as it is
properly the very question of _being_ and _non-being_--of a true and
human, or of an empty and imaginary science--that is here to be decided.
On this account, a precise and correct phraseology is of the utmost
importance toward a right solution of this leading topic of
philosophical inquiry. Now, it is a fact deserving of remark, and well
calculated to arrest our attention, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nowhere
in all antiquity, or in any of the great teachers and philosophers of
olden time, is there any mention made of God’s reason--but universally
it is intelligence or understanding, an omniscient intelligence that is
ascribed to Him. The wrongful interchange of the two words was reserved
exclusively for our modern times, and for the epoch of the absolute rule
of reason, and of the worse than Babylonish confusion of scientific
terms which has arisen out of it. The only exceptions from the previous
remark, which may be found in antiquity, are confined to one or two of
the Stoics. But when we reflect how greatly their whole chapter on the
Deity labors under the evil influence of that doctrine of an inevitable
necessity and blind fate, which forms the reproach of the whole Stoical
theory, this apparent exception serves to confirm the general rule, that
a wrong use of language invariably has its source in a rationalistic
basis of speculation, or, perhaps, is itself the spring and occasion of
that erroneous point of view. God is unquestionably the author of
reason. If, therefore, any one be disposed to call the divine order of
things (which, however, is not the Deity himself) a divine reason, this
is a mere matter of indifference. Only in such a case the question to
be agitated would not involve the mere expression, but rather the
meaning which is associated with it. But, for my part, I should prefer
to avoid a mode of speaking which might give rise to great
misconception. And this is the more desirable the more needful it is at
all times carefully to distinguish between the true and sound reason and
its contrary. God is the author of the sound reason, _i.e._, of the
reason which follows and is obedient to the divine order. But the other,
the rebellious reason, has for its source that spirit of negation which
every where opposes God, and has drawn so great a part of creation after
him in his fall. For, having lost his true center, and finding none in
himself, that evil spirit, with indescribable desire and raging
passionateness, seeks to find one in the disordered world of sense, and
in its noblest ornament--even in the soul of man, the very jewel of
creation. And this is even the origin of the rebellious reason. And it
is rebellious even because having wandered from its center in the loving
soul, which again has its center in God, it has thrown off the obedience
of love, that holy bond which retains the soul in subjection to the
divine order. How far in the present day, amid the fermenting
rationalistic medley which constitutes the spirit of the age, that sound
reason which willingly follows and observes the divine order, or that
rebellious reason which is absolute in itself, has the upper hand, and
forms the predominant element, is a question easy of solution. It is one
which I am content to leave to the decision of all who are in any degree
acquainted with the prevailing tone of science and of life.
The philosophy which I have here undertaken to develop, setting out from
the soul as the beginning and first subject of its speculations,
contemplates the mind or spirit as its highest and supreme object.
Accordingly, in its doctrine of the Deity, directly opposing every
rationalistic tendency, it conceives of Him and represents him as a
living spirit, a personal God, and not merely as an absolute reason, or
a rational order. If, therefore, for the sake of distinction, it
requires some peculiar and characteristic designation, it might, in
contrast with those errors of Materialism and Idealism which I have
described and condemned, be very aptly termed Spiritualism. But our
doctrine is not any such system of reason as the others pretend to be.
It is an inward experimental science of a higher order. Such a
designation, consequently, bespeaking as it does, a pretension of
system, is not very appropriate, and is, at all events, superfluous. It
is best indicated by a simple name, such as we have given it in calling
it a philosophy of life.
Moreover, the revelation by which God makes himself known to man, does
not admit of being limited exclusively to the written word. Nature
itself is a book written on both sides, both within and without, in
every line of which the finger of God is discernible. It is, as it were,
a Holy Writ in visible form and bodily shape--a song of praise on the
Creator’s omnipotence composed in living imagery. But besides Scripture
and nature--those two great witnesses to the greatness and majesty of
God--there is in the voice of conscience nothing less than a divine
revelation within man. This is the first awakening call to the two other
louder and fuller proclamations of revealed truth. And, lastly, in
universal history we have set before us a real and manifold application
and progressive development of revelation. Here the luminous threads of
a divine and higher guidance glimmer through the remarkable events of
history. For, not only in the career of whole ages and nations, but also
in the lives of individuals, the ruling and benignant hand of Providence
is every where visible.
Fourfold, consequently, is the source of revelation, from which man
derives his knowledge of the Deity, learns his will, and understands his
operation and power--conscience, nature, Holy Writ, and universal
history. The teaching of the latter is often of that earnest and awful
kind, to which we may, in a large sense, apply the adage, “Who will not
learn must feel.” How often does it show us some mighty edifice of
fortune, which, having no firm basis in the deep soil of truth and the
divine order, owed its rapid growth and false splendor to some evil
influence, falling suddenly in ruins, as if stricken by the invisible
breath of a superior power. On such occasions the public feeling
recognizes the hand which sets a limit to every temerity in the history
of the world--to every extravagance of a false confidence--and appoints
it its ultimate term. And the olden notion (which, with men of the day,
had become little more than an antiquated legend) of God’s retributive
justice, resumes its place among the actuating sentiments of life, with
new and intense significance. The sublime truth, however, is only too
soon forgotten, and the temporary alarm subsides but too quickly into
the habitual calm of a false security--that old and hereditary feeling
of human nature.
The volume of Holy Writ, as it is transmitted to us, and was first
commenced about three-and-thirty centuries ago, does not exclude the
possibility of an earlier sacred tradition in the twenty-four centuries
which preceded it. So far, indeed, is the supposition of such an
original revelation from being inconsistent with Scripture, that, on the
contrary, it contains explicit allusions to the fact, that such a
manifold enlightenment was imparted to the first man, as well as to that
patriarch who, after the destruction of the primeval world of giants,
was the second progenitor of mankind. But as this divine knowledge,
derived immediately from the primary source of all illumination, flowed
down in free and unconfined channels to succeeding generations, and to
the different nations which branched off from the parent stock, the
original sacred traditions were soon disfigured and overloaded with
fictions and fables. In these, however, a rich abundance of remarkable
vestiges and precious germs of divine truth were mixed up with
Bacchanalian rites and immoral mysteries. And thus, amid a multitude of
sensuous and stimulating images, the pure and simple truth was buried,
as in a second chaos, under a mass of contradictory symbols. Hence arose
that Babylonish confusion of languages, emblems, and legends, which is
universally to be met with among ancient, and even the most primitive
nations. In the great work, therefore, of purification, and of a
restoration of true religion (which we may call a second revelation, or,
at least, as a second stage thereof), a rigid exclusion of this
heathenish admixture of fable and immorality was the first and most
essential requisite. But those older revelations, imparted to the first
man and the second progenitor of mankind, are expressly laid down as the
groundwork of that evangel of the creation, which forms the introduction
to the whole volume of Scripture, and furnishes us thereby with a key to
understand the history and religion of the primitive world--or, to speak
absolutely, the true Genesis of the existing world, its history and its
science. This double principle, expressly recognizing, on the one hand,
an original revelation and divine illumination of the first progenitors
of the human race, of which the olden and less corrupted monuments of
heathenism still retain many a trace; and, on the other, strictly
rejecting the additions of a corrupt and degenerated heathenism, with
all its tissue of fables and false, godless mysteries, must be kept
steadily in view in examining the earliest portions of the sacred
Scriptures. For the neglect, or imperfect consideration of it, has
already led, and is ever likely to give rise to many complicated doubts
and perverted views, which imperil not only the simple understanding of
the whole body of revealed Scripture, but even the right conception of
revelation.
It would seem, then, that not only philosophical, but absolutely every
higher species of knowledge is an internal science of experience. For
the formal science of mathematics is not a positive science for the
cognition of a real object, so much as an organon and aid for other
sciences, which, however, as such, is both excellent in itself, and
admits of many useful applications. We may, therefore, on this
hypothesis consider each of these four faculties of man, which I have
called the principal poles or leading branches of human consciousness,
as a peculiar sense for a particular domain of truth. For all experience
and all science thereof rests on some cognitive sense as the organ of
its immediate perceptions. Now, the reason, which, in its form of
conscience, announces itself as an internal sense of right and wrong,
is, as the faculty for the development and communication of thought,
usually named the common sense. It constitutes the bond of connection
between men and their thoughts, which is dependent on and conditioned by
language and its organ, and may be called the sense for all that is
distinctively human. In this respect it forms the foundation and first
grade of all other senses for, and immediate organs of, a higher
knowledge. Fancy, again, being itself but a reflection of life and of
the living powers of the natural world, is the inward sense for nature,
which, as will hereafter be more fully shown, first lends and assures to
natural science its due import and true living significance. And,
inasmuch as the perfect intellection of a single object results from the
totality alone--the significance and spirit of the whole--therefore the
understanding is the sense for that mind [_geist_] which manifests
itself in the sensible world, whether this be a human or natural, or the
supreme Divine intelligence.
Now, if we may venture to consider the fourfold revelation of God in
conscience, in nature, in Holy Writ, and the world’s history, as so many
living springs or fertilizing streams of a higher truth, we must suppose
the existence of a good soil to receive the water of life and the good
seed of divine knowledge. For without an organ of susceptibility for
good to receive the divine gift from above, no amount of revelation
would benefit man. Now, the soul, so susceptible of good on all sides,
both from within and from without, is even this organ for the reception
of revelation. And this function of the soul, together with its creation
of language as the outer form of human knowledge, constitutes its
contribution to science, and especially to internal science. And even
with the understanding, as the sense which discerns the meaning and
purport of revelation, the soul is co-operative--since nothing divine
can be understood merely in the idea, and of and by itself alone, but in
every case a feeling for it must have preceded, or, at least,
contributed toward its complete understanding. The soul, consequently,
which is thus susceptible of the divine, is ever informing itself about,
or co-operating in the acquisition of a knowledge of the Godlike. And
this, the soul’s love and pursuit of divine truth, when, unfolding
itself in thought, it comes forth in an investiture of words, is even
philosophy--not, indeed, the dead sophistic of the schools, but one
which, as it is a philosophy of life, can be nothing less than living.
And the soul, thus ardently yearning for the divine, and both receiving
and faithfully maintaining the revealed Word, is the common center
toward which all the four springs of life and streams of truth converge.
In free meditation it reconciles and combines them.
On this account the oldest and most natural form of philosophy was that
of dialogue, which did not, however, exclude the occasional introduction
of a simple narrative, or the continuous explanation of higher and
abstruser questions. Philosophy, accordingly, might not inappropriately
be defined as a dialogue of the soul in its free meditation on divine
things. And this was the very form it actually possessed among the
earliest and noblest of the philosophers of antiquity--first of all
really and orally, as with Pythagoras and Socrates, and lastly in its
written exposition, of which style Plato was the great and consummate
master. But it was only to the noblest and best of all ranks, though
without distinction of age or sex, that these the greatest men of
antiquity communicated their treasures of philosophical wisdom. In this
course Pythagoras first set the example, which, on the whole, was
followed also by Socrates and Plato. For, in general, the latter
confined their philosophical teaching to a select circle, and imparted
it, as it were, under the seal of friendship, to such only as in the
social intercourse of life they admitted to close and familiar intimacy.
Occasional exceptions were, perhaps, furnished by their disputes with
the sophists, in the course of which they were constrained to adopt, not
only the weapons, but also the method of their adversaries--a license of
which Plato, perhaps, has too often availed himself, even if he has not
sometimes abused it. For about this time the sophists introduced a
practice as erroneous as their doctrine was false. Publishing their
philosophemes to the whole people, they treated it and quarreled about
it in the market-place as a common party matter. Such a procedure was in
every sense pernicious, and one which must have brought even truth
itself into contempt. Lastly, Aristotle comprised in his manuals the
collective results of all earlier philosophical speculation, and
intrusted his treasury of mature knowledge and well-sifted and
newly-arranged thoughts to the keeping of a school. Now, we should be
far from justified were we to make this a reproach against this master
of subtlety and profoundest of thinkers; for at this time all true
intellectual life had, together with public spirit, become extinct among
the Greeks, amid the disorders of democracy, or under the pressure of
the armed supremacy of Macedonia. Still it must ever remain a matter of
profound regret. For philosophy, as standing in the center between the
guiding spirit of the divine education of man and the external force of
civil right and material power, ought to be true mundane soul
[_Weltseele_] which animates and directs the development of ages and of
the whole human race. Deeply, therefore, is it to be deplored whenever
science, and especially philosophy, are withdrawn from this wide sphere
of universal operation, and from human life itself, to remain banished
and cooped up in the narrow limits of a school.
LECTURE IV.
OF THE SOUL IN RELATION TO NATURE.
“We know in part,” exclaimed, with burning zeal, the honest man of God
in Holy Scripture, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part.” How true
the first member of this sentence is even in the case of that knowledge
of God which alone deserves the name of knowledge, or repays the trouble
of its acquisition, the previous Lecture must in many ways have served
to convince us. The second member, which will chiefly occupy our
attention in the present discussion, is in an eminent degree applicable
to physical science. For what, in fact, is all our knowledge of nature,
considered as a whole and in its inmost essence, but a mere speculation,
conjecture, and guess upon guess? What is it but an endless series of
tentative experiments, by which we are continually hoping to succeed in
unveiling the secret of life, to seize the wonderful Proteus, and to
hold him fast in the chains of science? Or is it not, perhaps, one
ever-renewed attempt to decipher more completely than hitherto the
sybilline inscriptions on the piled-up rows and layers of tombs, which
as nature grows older convert its great body into one vast catacomb, and
so perchance to find therein the key to unlock and bring to light the
far greater--nay, the greatest of all riddles--the riddle of death? Now
there are undoubtedly, even in nature itself, occasional indications of,
scattered hints and remote allusions to, a final crisis, when even in
nature and in this sensible and elementary world, life shall be entirely
separated from death, and when death itself shall be no more. Gravely to
be pondered and in nowise to be neglected are these hints, although
without the aid of a higher illumination they must forever remain
unintelligible to man. Thus considered, however, the universe itself
appears replete with dumb echoes and terrestrial resounds of divine
revelation. It is not, therefore, without reason and significance, if in
this beautiful hymn the ancient prophetess of nature lends her
concurrent testimony to the promises of the holy seer of a last day of
creation, which nature shall celebrate as the great day of her
renovation and toward which she yearns with an indescribable longing
which is nowhere so inimitably depicted, so strongly and so vividly
expressed, as in Holy Writ itself. Holy Scripture could not and can not
contain a system of science, whether as a philosophy of reason or a
science of nature. Nay, in this form of a manual and methodical
compendium of divine knowledge, it could not inspire us with confidence
either as revelation or as science. Condescending altogether to the
wants of man, both in form and language, it consists of a collection of
occasional and wholly practical compositions derived immediately from,
and expressly designed for, life--in a certain sense it consists of
nothing but the registers and social statutes either of the prophetic
people or of the apostolical community. Accordingly, its contents are of
a mixed nature: historical, legal, instructive, hortatory, consolatory,
and prophetical, together with a rich abundance of minute and special
allusions, while it enters every where into, and with watchful love
adapts itself to, individual wants and local peculiarities. And the form
of these writings, at once so singular in its kind--and in such
marvelous wise, but yet so eminently human--is so far from being
inconsistent with the divine character, that the very condescension of
the Deity constitutes a new and additional but most characteristic proof
of genuine revelation. Only the first foundation-stone and the key and
corner-stone form an exception. Embracing within their spacious limits
the beginning of nature and the end of the world, they form, as it were,
the corner-rings and the bearing-staves of the ark of the covenant of
revelation. And while on the one side as well as on the other, in the
opening no less than in the closing book, which contain almost as many
mysteries as words, the seven-branched candlestick of secret
signification is set up, still all else that is inclosed within the holy
ark receives therefrom sufficient light for its perfect elucidation. In
all other respects the style is that of a plain narrative couched in
very appropriate and simple words; and if the masters of criticism in
classical antiquity have quoted a few passages from the beginning of
Genesis as the most exalted instances of the sublime, still it was in
the very simplicity and extreme plainness of the language that they
recognized this character of sublimity. From these two ends,
moreover--from this first root as well as from the last crown of the
book, there proceeds many threads and veins, which, running through the
tissue, bind it together more closely into a living unity, on which
account, although consisting of so many and such divers books, it is
justly considered as one, being called simply the “Book” (Bible).
Consequently it would, as already said, be foolish to look for a system
of science in the divine book for men. Nevertheless we do meet here and
there with single words about nature and her secrets--hints occasionally
dropped and seemingly accidental expressions--which, giving a clear and
full information as to much that is hidden therein, furnish science
consequently with so many keys for unlocking nature. These, indeed, are
not scattered throughout in equal measure, but here, perhaps, more
thinly, and there again more thickly. In all these passages, and
especially those of the Old Testament, which not only depict the
external beauties and visible glory of nature, but also touch upon its
hidden powers and inmost secrets of life, we may observe a kind of
intentional, I might, perhaps, say, cautious reserve and heedful
circumspection, amounting at times almost to an indisposition to speak
out fully and clearly, lest the abuse or probable misconception of what
should be said might give encouragement to the heathenish and
wide-spread deification of nature.
In the New Testament (if we may venture to speak of these things in the
same natural and human fashion that Scripture itself employs) the Holy
Spirit uses language far more precise and clear. On the whole, the
relation in which Holy Writ and divine revelation stand to nature
itself, and the science thereof, is a peculiar one. It is eminently
tender and wonderful, but not, indeed, intelligible at the first glance,
or broadly definable according to any rigorous and established notion.
It is one, however, capable of being made clearer by means of a simile
borrowed from Scripture itself. Those guileless men whom the Redeemer
chose as His instruments for carrying out His great work of the
redemption of the world, were endued with miraculous powers, which it
was and ever will be apparent, were not of their own strength, but of
His. Now, of the first of these apostles it is narrated that a healing
power, and, as it were, an invisible stream of life proceeded from him,
without his being conscious of, or, at least, without his regarding it,
which healed the sick who were brought out and placed within the range
of his shadow as he passed by.[20] In the same manner the fiery wain of
divine revelation, as it passes on its way, scatters, in single words
and images, many a bright spark. The radiant shadow of the word of God,
as it falls, is sufficient to kindle and throw a new light over the
whole domain of nature, by means of which the true science thereof may
be firmly established, its inmost secrets explored and brought into
coherence and agreement with all else.
I have already more than once called your attention to the method which
all the philosophers of reason, without exception, pursue. In different
ways, according to the special objects they have in view, they all alike
presumed to set certain absolute and impassable limits to human reason
(which, however, by some slight turn or other, they soon dextrously
contrive to transgress) in order to bring within their system of
absolute science--which is at best but a dead semblance--all that it
will hold, and even what it can not contain. Quite different, however,
is it with the truth, and with that living science which we take for the
basis of our speculations. For from it it appears that the soul of man,
however liable it may be to manifold error, is, nevertheless, capable of
receiving the divine communications. Since, then, man can possess as
many of these higher branches of knowledge, and can learn as much of
divine things as it is given to him to know, and since, at the same
time, it is God himself who is the primary source from which all man’s
knowledge flows, and his guide to truth--who shall determine the measure
and fix the limits--who shall dare to say how much of knowledge and of
science God will vouchsafe to man?--who shall venture to prescribe the
limits beyond which His illumination can not pass? This, it is evident,
is illimitable. It may go on to an extent which, at the beginning, man
would not have believed to be possible. In a word, though of himself,
and by his own unassisted reason, man is incapable of knowing any thing,
yet through God, if it be his will, he may attain to the knowledge of
all things. And yet it is true, though in a very different sense from
that intended by these philosophers of reason, that man’s knowledge is
in reality limited. No absolute limit, indeed, is set to it. Yet because
it is a mixed knowledge, composed of outward tradition and inward
experience, and is founded on the perceptions of the external and
internal senses, therefore is it made up of individual instances,
extremely slow in its growth, and in no respect perfect and complete,
and scarcely ever free from faults and deficiencies. Consequently, when
considered in its totality, and as pretending to be a whole, it is
invariably imperfect. But this character of imperfection belongs, in
fact, to all real science, as derived from the experience of the senses.
Seldom, indeed, is the first impression free from the admixture of
error; numberless repeated observations, comparisons, essays,
experiments, and corrections, which must often be carried on through
many centuries, not to say many tens of centuries, are necessary before
a pure and stable result can be attained to. In this way all truly human
knowledge is imperfect, and “in part;” and although, on the contrary,
the false conceited wisdom may parade itself from the very first as
fully ripe and complete, yet in a very brief space indeed will its
imperfection and rottenness appear.
And, indeed, the character of imperfection shows itself, as in all other
human things, so also in the science of nature. From its birth among the
earliest naturalists of Greece to its boasted maturity among ourselves,
it counts an age of two millenniums and a half of unbroken cultivation.
But now if, looking beyond the explanation of single isolated facts, we
consider rather our knowledge of nature in its universal system and
internal constitution, can we say that physical science has, during the
time, made more than, perhaps, two steps and a half of progress? And
this slow and toilsome advance which, in a certain sense, never arrives
at more than “knowing in part,” is the law of every department of human
science. Consequently it may be justly said of the development of man’s
science, that with God a thousand years are as a day, and one day as a
thousand years.[21] All knowledge drawn from the senses and experience
is bound by this condition. It may, no doubt, apply immediately and
principally to external experience, which is dependent on the lower and
ordinary senses, whether we reckon them according to the number of their
separate organs as five, or as three in compliance with a more
scientific classification. But it also holds equally good of those which
we pointed out and described in the last Lecture as being the four
superior scientific senses, the organs of a knowledge founded on a
higher and internal experience, the sense, viz., of reason, the sense of
understanding, the sense for nature or fancy, and the proper sense for
God, which lies in the inmost free will of man. Not merely as the
faculty of suggestion [_Ahndungsvermogen_], is fancy to be regarded as
the higher and internal sense for nature, or because it is from this
side that the affinity of man, and of man’s soul with nature, is most
distinctly revealed, but it also exhibits itself as such in the
scientific apprehension of natural phenomena. That dynamical play of the
inner life, that law of a living force which constitutes the essence of
every phenomenon of nature, is a something so fleeting and evanescent
that it can only be seized and fixed by the fancy alone, since, as is
now pretty generally allowed by all profound observers of nature, in the
abstract notion life eludes the grasp, and nothing remains but a dead
formula.
The apprehension of a living object in thought, so as to seize and fix
it in its mobile vitality and its fluctuating and fleeting states, is an
act of the imagination, which, however, is naturally of a peculiar kind,
and entirely distinct from artistic or poetical fancy. It is, in this
respect, worthy of remark, that all the most characteristic and
felicitous terms which are employed to designate the great discoveries
in modern times of the profounder secrets of nature are, for the greater
part, boldly figurative, and often even symbolical. Here, therefore,
also, we have a manifestation of that affinity which subsists between
nature and the faculty of fancy, by which alone its ever-stirring
vitality is scientifically apprehended.
I formerly observed that, in the outer senses, as faculties of the soul
subordinate to the fancy, a higher intellectual endowment, as a special
gift of nature, is occasionally found to exist, namely, the sense of
art, or the eye for beautiful forms, and the ear for musical sounds. But
even the lower sense, the more purely organic feeling, is often evolved
to higher degrees of susceptibility, which, however, do not fall within
the sphere of the feeling for art, but form, as it were, a peculiar and
special sense of nature. To this class belong those indescribable
feelings of sympathy and inward attraction--the many vivid presentiments
of a strange foreboding--traces of which may be observed among many
other animals besides man, just as, in the case of musical tones and
emotions, a light note of remote affinity seems to bring the soul of man
in unison with a correspondent nature soul in the higher members of the
brute creation. Numberless are the instances of such forebodings (among
which we must reckon also the significant vision or dream) recorded of
all times, countries, and spheres of life. No doubt, from their strange
nature, and from the manifold difficulties with which man’s mode of
observing and narrating these phenomena perplexes the consideration of
them, it is any thing but easy, in any individual case, to arrive at a
pure result, and to pass a final and decisive sentence. Still, on the
whole, the fact can not well be denied, as, indeed, it is not even
attempted, by any unprejudiced and profound observer of nature in the
present day. But now, if such an immediate feeling of invisible light
and life does freely develop and clearly manifest itself as an
indubitable faculty and a perfectly distinct state of the consciousness,
then assuredly we have herein a new organ of perception and a new
natural sense. Though not, indeed, more infallible than any other of the
senses, it may, nevertheless, be the source of very remarkable
phenomena, which, perhaps, above all others require investigation, in
order that their distinctive character may be precisely and accurately
determined. It is, however, necessary to remember that the latter is not
to be determined by any side-blow of caprice, any more than the electric
phenomena of nature and the atmosphere, when they are actually lowering
there, are to be got rid of by any such expedient.
It is only just and right, and not inconsistent with true human
knowledge, if physical science should commence with the study of man.
Still, if we would contemplate man from the side of nature, it seems the
safer course to endeavor, first of all, to obtain a clear and leading
idea of the whole of his constitution in this respect, rather than to
lose ourselves in the contemplation of the special phenomena of a
particular sphere. Now, with regard to the whole of man’s organization,
the organic body as the third constituent of human existence, I will
merely remark that, just as the triple principle of body, soul, and
spirit is repeated in the special and narrower spheres of the senses,
the instincts, and the passions, and even in the different forms in
which a disordered intellect usually manifests itself, so also it admits
of a further application to the organic body in general. That most
wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles,
the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense,
the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of
man--here consequently the organic soul--is in the blood and in the five
or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood
and afterward to provide for its circulation--or perhaps by maintaining
a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the
vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. A third
element--and, indeed, the principal one of the three, though only
noticeable in its effects on the brain--exists within the higher senses
and functions--in short, in the whole nervous tissue. But it lies not in
the nervous filaments themselves: anatomy can not detect it, for it is
not visible to the eye. On this account some have called it the æther of
the nerves to indicate its incorporeal nature--incorporeal, _i.e._,
relatively to, and in comparison with, the other two constituents of
man--the blood-soul, and the external frame--as being the spirit of life
in the organic body. Strictly and sharply enough does Holy Writ
distinguish this spiritual body (as it calls it) of man from the body of
the soul, or the organic blood-soul, considering the former, as it were,
the seed of the resurrection, even because at the moment of death this
ethereal body-of-light leaves its terrestrial veil to be in due time
reunited to it after a more glorious fashion. And death itself is even
nothing else than its total departure and painful emancipation from the
organic body, on which the features, one might almost say, the
physiognomy of corruption stamps itself, immediately that the immortal
Psyche, the invisible seed of light and eternity, has put off the
tabernacle of this body.
This internal, invisible body-of-light [_Lichtkorper_] is also the organ
and the center of all the higher and spiritual powers of the human
organization. For it is easily conceivable that a partial projection of
this life of light which is latent in the sound organic body should
produce such phenomena, while its complete projection, or rather total
separation, would have death for its result, or rather would itself be
death. A truly scientific view of nature can easily enter into or allow
the legitimacy of this idea. The true rule, however, and standard for
the right decision of phenomena of this kind can only be found in a
higher region, even because they themselves lie on the extreme limits of
nature and life, and in part also pass beyond them.
We therefore prefer to follow the more slow but sure course of
development pursued by physical science itself, as commenced nearly
twenty-five centuries ago by the Greeks. On the whole it began even
there with the cognition of man--of his diseases and their cure. The
naturalists, indeed, of the present day are in general disposed to
laugh at the ideas of nature which were advanced by the first
philosophers of Greece, and to despise the hypotheses of water, or air,
or fire, as being the essence of all things, which, nevertheless, as the
first beginnings of a clearer contemplation and of a higher view of
nature, greatly recommend themselves by their extreme simplicity. But
however modern observers of nature may be ready to hand these systems
over to fancy as so many purely poetical cosmogonies, yet, on the other
hand, the present masters of medicine, with greater gratitude and fuller
acknowledgment of his merits, reverence Hippocrates as the founder of
their art. For, indeed, as such, and not properly as a science, or at
any rate as an art far more than as a science, was medicine regarded by
its founder and the great masters who came after him. They looked upon
it as the art of the diagnosis and treatment of disease, in which the
unerring tact of a practiced and happy judgment is of primary
importance, and where the rapid and searching glance of genius into the
secret laboratories of life or into the hidden sources of disease is,
and ever will be, the principal and most essential point. The mere
historical acquaintance with the different forms of diseases and their
remedies, with botany, and the anatomy of the human body, with the
number and structure of its organs, forms merely the materials, the
external sphere of medical practice; while the essential qualification
is even this penetrating glance which searches out the inmost secrets of
the bodily temperament. But now those who have been most richly gifted
with this peculiar gift have ever been the last to believe themselves
possessed of a perfect science. And yet, inasmuch as that physical
knowledge which, by attaining to a complete understanding of life, shall
be able to comprehend and explain the mystery of death would alone
deserve the name of the science of nature; inasmuch also as the
searching glance of the true physician arrives the nearest to such a
point, penetrating, as it does, deep into the manifold fluctuation and
struggle between the two, and into the secrets of their conflict, this,
therefore, is perhaps to be considered as the first germ of life for a
future science of nature, which, however as yet undeveloped, has for
more than twenty centuries been slumbering on, hidden, as it were, in
embryo, in the womb of medical art and lore. The physical, geographical,
and astronomical observations of this whole period of gestation, form,
it is true, a rich treasury of valuable materials, but they do not give
us that profound knowledge, of which alone the physician’s penetrating
glance into life and its constitution furnishes the first commencement
and essay, however weak.
With respect to natural science in general, and the possibility of our
attaining to it, the case stands thus:--If nature be a living force--if
the life which reigns within it be in a certain though still very remote
degree akin to the life of man and the human soul--then is a knowledge
of nature easily conceivable, and right well possible (for nothing but
the like, or at least the similar and cognate, can be known by the like)
even though this cognition may still be extremely defective, and at best
can never be more than partial. But if nature be a dead, stony mass, as
many seem to suppose, then would it be wholly inconceivable how this
foreign mass of petrifaction could penetrate into our inmost Ego; then
at least would there seem to be good grounds for the idealistic doubt
whether ultimately this external world be any thing but a mere phantom,
having no existence save in our own thoughts--the outward reflection of
ourselves--the pure creation of our own Me.
The question of innate ideas has been often mooted in philosophy. As,
however, the essential functions and different acts of thought, together
with its several notions, are, properly speaking, nothing but the
natural division of man’s cogitative faculty, it is not on their account
necessary to suppose such a preliminary intercalation of general ideas
into the human mind. And as little necessary is it, in order to explain
the universal belief in the existence of a Deity, to suppose that there
is in the minds of all men an implanted idea of God; for this would lead
to the purely arbitrary hypothesis, of that which is so difficult to
conceive--the pre-existence of the spirit or soul of man. And as no
created beings can have an idea of God, but those to whom He vouchsafes
to communicate it, and to accord a knowledge of His existence, so can He
bestow this privilege the very instant He pleases, without the
intervention of any innate idea expressly for that end. And yet I am
disposed, and not, I think, without reason, to assume that man, as at
present constituted, does possess one, though only one, species of
inborn ideas, viz., an innate idea of death. This, as a false root of
life, and a true mental contagion, produces a dead cogitation, and is
the origin of all dead and dead-born notions. For this idea of death,
whether hereditary or inoculated in the soul, is, as its peculiar but
fundamental error, transferred by the mind of man to every object with
which it comes in contact. And thus, in man’s dead cogitation, the
surrounding world and all nature appears to him a similar lifeless and
inert mass, so long as sitting beneath this shadow of spiritual death,
his mind [_geist_] has not sufficient strength to work its way out of
its dark prison-house into the light. For not at all without higher aid,
and even with it only slowly and tardily, does man discover that all
that is really and naturally dead is within himself, or learn to
recognize it for what it truly is, a something eminently null and
naught. Another species of this false and dead conception of nature
presents itself under the form of multiplicity. In this view nature is
represented as forming something like a vast sandhill, where, apart from
the pile they thus form together and their aggregation in it, the
several grains are supposed to have no connection with each other;
while, however, they are so diligently counted, as if every thing
depended on their right enumeration. But through the sieve of such an
atomistic, which would break up the universe into a number of separate
and absolute individualities, the sand will ever run, however often and
painfully man may strive to reckon or to measure the infinity of these
grains of nature. Mathematical calculation and measuring hold the same
place in physical science that is held in every living language by
conjugating and declining, and other grammatical rules, which, in truth,
are but a species of mathematical formulæ. In learning a foreign and
especially a dead language, these are indispensable and necessary aids,
which greatly promote and facilitate its acquisition; so also
mathematics furnish indispensable helps and a most valuable organon for
the cognition of nature. But with them alone man will never learn to
understand even a word, not to talk of a whole proposition, out of
nature’s strangely-sounding and most difficult hieroglyphics.
Somewhat different is it, when man seeks to understand the true living
geometry in nature herself, _i.e._, attempts to discover the place which
the circle and eclipse (passing from these up to the spheres in their
sidereal orbits), or which the triangle, the square, the hexagon, and so
forth, assume in the scale of its creations--or when, in a similar
spirit, he investigates and ascertains the really dominant rule in the
arithmetic of life; those numbers which the physician observes in the
periodic developments of life, and which, in the fluctuating states of
an abating and heightening malady, enable him, under certain conditions,
to predict the moment of its crisis. Of a still higher kind is that
spiritual, we might almost call it divine chronology, which, in
universal history, marks out definite epochs of the mental development
of the human race, and traces therein the influence of certain grades of
life, or ages of the world, and the alternating phases of disease in
whole communities, and those decisive moments and great critical
emergencies in which God Himself appears as the healing Physician and
Restorer of life. It was, in all probability, in reference to such an
arithmetic, or in some similar sense, that Pythagoras taught that
numbers are, or contain the essence of things. For such an arithmetic of
life and geometry of nature do afford a positive cognition and a real
knowledge. As commonly understood, however, mathematics are nothing more
than a formal science--in other words, they are simply a scientific
organon, rather than a science. But now, if nature be not regarded as
dead, but living, who can doubt that it--or, as we are now speaking of
man’s nearest neighbor--that the earth is akin to man? Was he not formed
out of the dust of the earth, and is he not therefore the son, nay, in
truth, the first-born of the earth?--does he not receive from it food
and nourishment? and when the irrevocable summons goes forth from above,
does he not give back again to its bosom the earthly tabernacle of his
flesh? Do not chemists tell us that the principal constituent of the
purest wheat-corn has a great affinity to the substance of man’s blood?
and does not the blood, moreover, derive one of its ingredients from
iron--the principal among the metals of the earth? And are not gold and
other metallic substances either wholesome medicines or deadly poisons?
And is there not also an inexhaustible store of both in the wonderful
varieties of herbs and plants? Do not invigorating and healing springs
burst from numberless rocks and fissures of the earth? Is not--to speak
only of the heavenly bodies nearest to and immediately connected with
our globe--is not the sun’s heat so specifically different from every
other kind of warmth, the quickener of all that lives and moves, and for
man under a milder clime, as it were, a soft renovating bath? And is not
the other and lesser light--earth’s mighty satellite and companion, the
moon--the cause of all those changes in the weather and atmosphere,
which, from the earliest times, have been acknowledged to be most
serviceable and highly beneficial to agriculture? Is not the great pulse
of the ocean, in its ebb and flow, measured by it, as well as many
periods, of the development of life? And is it not, when its operation
is too powerful or violently exciting, the cause of a peculiar disease
among men? As, therefore, the musical unisons in the melodious songs of
birds, both find and wake a concordant echo in the heart of man, so,
too, in a larger scale, the blood-soul of man, with its living pulsation
and organic sensibility, is most nearly akin to and sympathizes with the
earth and the whole earthly frame. And is not, in all probability, this
sympathetic influence between the earth and man reciprocal? Must not,
for instance, the respiration of nine hundred millions of human beings
have affected the atmosphere? Has not the very air degenerated with the
human race, and like it become corrupt and deteriorated? Are not certain
pestilential diseases propagated by the air alone, being carried in
fixed telluric directions, without material contact or pollution? And
if, in answer to the inference which we would draw from these facts, any
one should sit down to calculate the number of cubic miles in the
atmospheric belt, and argue that the breath and evaporation from ever so
many myriads of human beings would be insufficient to have any effect
thereon, we might easily retort upon him the equally vast reckoning of
the millions of seconds which make up a hundred and more generations,
and by which these respirations must be counted. But, however this may
be, it does appear that the air must, in primitive times, have been far
more pure and balsamic, and more vital and more nutritive, than at
present. For before the Flood men required neither flesh nor wine to
recruit their strength, and yet, in duration of life and bodily vigor,
and above all in energy of will and powers of mind, they far surpassed
the sons of a later age; and it was even by the misuse of these great
gifts and endowments that they brought down the divine vengeance on
their sinful generation. And, lastly, if the earth were wholly without
life, how could it, at the creation of the animals of this planetary
world, have yielded obedience to the behest of the Creator, as it went
forth on the sixth day, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after its kind?” Highly important, moreover, as regards the true
estimate of the whole realm of nature as contemplated by the Divine
mind, and deeply significant, is the wide interval which, in the Mosaic
history of the creation, separates the bringing forth of the beasts by
the earth at the command of the Almighty, from the making of man,
whereof it is written, “Let us make man in our own image.”
Physical science having thus sluggishly advanced through a definite
period and number of centuries--having lived through almost two
millenniums in little better than an embryo state--made at last the few
steps of progress that it has yet taken. By a more rapid march of time,
it hastened to suit itself to the riper age of man, and to come forth
itself, as it were, mature, although, in many respects, this is even yet
very far from being the case. The principal of these advances of
physical science is the invention of the compass. For, in the first
place, the phenomenon of magnetism presents a remarkable manifestation
of the universal life of the world, which eludes all mathematical
calculations of magnitude, while the little piece of this wonderful iron
balances by its living agency the whole globe itself. And, in the second
place, the results to which it has led have been no less important and
marvelous. The magnetic index pointed the way to the discovery of the
New World, and to a more perfect acquaintance with the figure of the
earth, and thus, through an enlarged observation of geographical and
astronomical facts, opened out a grander and more extensive view of the
whole planetary system. Of the new world in the other hemisphere, a
trace unquestionably is to be found in antiquity in the legend of the
island of Atlantis. The general description of this island, as equal in
extent to both Asia and Africa together, agrees remarkably with the size
of America. But the fable contains the additional circumstance, that,
having existed in the Western Ocean in very ancient times, it was
subsequently swallowed up by the waves. From this circumstance I am led
to infer, that the legend did not, as is generally supposed, owe its
origin to Phœnician navigators, who, even if it be true that they did
succeed in sailing round Africa, most assuredly never ventured so far
westward. Like so much besides that is equally great and grand, and,
indeed, far grander, the main fact of the legend seems to be derived
from an original tradition from the primeval times, when,
unquestionably, man was far better acquainted with his whole habitation
of this earth than in the days of the infant and imperfect science of
Greece, or even of the more advanced and enlightened antiquity. A vague
traditionary notion of its existence lived on from generation to
generation. But afterward, when even the Phœnician sailors, however
far they penetrated into the wide ocean, were unable to give any precise
information about, or adduce any proof of, the fact, the hypothesis was
advanced, and finally added to the tradition, that the island had been
swallowed up by the sea.
Modern astronomy, at its first rise, was extremely revolting to man’s
feelings, which had become, as it were, habituated to the olden theory
of the world’s shape. The system of Ptolemy, indeed, with its narrow
egotistic conceit of making man the center of the sidereal universe, was
as unsatisfactory as it was absurd, and little was lost when it was
exploded. But, on the other hand, it was startling, and still has a
staggering effect on our minds, to be told, that, when measured by the
mathematical standard of the vast distances and periodic times of the
planetary system, the earth, for which the Almighty has done such
incalculably great things, and on which He has bestowed such high and
precious gifts, is, as it were, but a little and insignificant splinter
in the vast regions of infinite space. A true and profound science of
nature, however, does not allow of the validity of mathematical
magnitude as an exclusive standard of the value of things. Whether in a
greater or less sphere of existence, it sees and discovers in far other
properties the true center of life. If, even in our globe, the living
magnetic pole does not coincide with the true mathematical north pole,
but lies a considerable distance on one side of it, may it not, without
prejudice to modern astronomy, be also the case with the whole planetary
system? The first conceptions of nature are rarely, if ever, free from
mistakes, and oftentimes, together with great truths, contain also great
errors. And while the first fresh impression, the living intuition, ever
recommends itself to the general feeling of mankind, and takes deep root
therein, the notions, on the other hand, which new discoveries of nature
introduce, not unfrequently do violence to the prevalent views as to the
shape and form of the old world. Often, indeed, the former run directly
counter to what we might call the old family feelings of mankind, which,
transmitted through generations from father to son, have become, as it
were, a custom of life, a holy habit. Afterward, however, as the new
scientific discovery is more perfectly developed, it gradually
conciliates the old hereditary and customary feeling of nature. The two
at last fall into friendly relations with each other.
Now, in the article of the stars, the cherished creed of nature,
professed by all ancient peoples, insisted, perhaps, on no one dogma so
earnestly as that there are seven planets. That this deeply-rooted and
habitual feeling of men was not uninfluenced by the general
consideration of the number seven, is only natural to suppose. For not
only does it comprise the three dimensions of time, together with the
four cardinal points of space, but it is also found entering, under a
variety of combinations, into the life, the thought, and history of men.
And in the new astronomy, though the sun and moon have been ejected from
the number of the planets, yet the earth has entered into the list, and
the deficient member of the system having been discovered, we have again
seven planets, as in the olden belief. For it is, to say the least,
highly improbable that any new planetary body will ever be discovered
beyond Uranus,[22] and as for the small bodies which are situate between
Mars and Jupiter, it is pretty generally acknowledged that they are not
properly to be counted as planets, from which they are even
distinguished by their very names by some astronomers.
And as little ground is there to take exception or offense at modern
astronomy, even on that side of it where difficulties were originally
most felt and mooted. For Holy Writ was neither written exclusively nor
designed pre-eminently for astronomers. In these matters, therefore, as
in all others, it speaks the ordinary language which men employ among
themselves in the business of daily life.
Now we know that in the pulse of the organic body its regular beating is
occasionally interrupted by a hurried circulation or a momentary
stoppage. Is it not in the same way possible that the pulsatory
revolutions of the great planetary world do not observe, like a piece of
dead clock-work, a mechanical uniformity, but are liable to many
deviations and irregularities? If, then, a similar stoppage to that
which sometimes occurs in the pulse of man, be here also supposable, as
produced by a superior power and external influence, then in the case of
such an extraordinary interruption, it is a matter of indifference
whether it be said of this wonderful moment that the sun stood still, or
(as seems to be the fact) that the earth was held in check and rested in
its orbit. And, in like manner,
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