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PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.

Preface of the German Editor 341

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.

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, "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 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 --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 , 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 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.

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.

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 . 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. 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.

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.

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 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." 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. 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.

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 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." 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 of earlier times, with whose opinions I often find myself agreeing, and with whom, before all other men, I would most gladly concur.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 , 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.

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 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 , 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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