Read Ebook: The philosophy of life and philosophy of language in a course of lectures by Schlegel Friedrich Von Morrison A J W Alexander James William Translator

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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.

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.

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 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 , 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 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 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.

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" . 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 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. 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 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. 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 , 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 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.

This internal, invisible body-of-light 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 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 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 formulae. 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.

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, 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 that the earth was held in check and rested in its orbit. And, in like manner, for the changing phenomena of the astronomical day, the common expressions are equally true with the scientific, and equally significant. The sun's rise, the morning dawn, is, for all men, a figure, or, rather, a fact of pregnant meaning, while the setting sun fills all hearts with a melancholy feeling of separation. Equally true, however, is it, and in a symbolical sense it conveys perhaps a still more serious meaning, when we say, in scientific language, "The earth must go down before the sun can rise;" or, "When the earth goes up, then is it night, and darkness diffuses itself over all." Or if, perhaps, in the new and quickening spring, instead of the old phraseology, "The sun has returned, has come near to us again," we were to say, "The earth, or at least our side of it, is again brought nearer to the sun," would it not be as beautiful and significant a description? And happy, indeed, are those periods of the world wherein, to speak in a figurative but moral sense, that earth-soul which rules in the changes of time--the so-called public opinion, has declined toward, and approached more nearly to, its sun.

The comparison of a sentence in the Mosaic history of the creation, with a passage in the Hindoo cosmogony, somewhat similar in kind, but most different in the application, will serve, perhaps, to place this fact in the clearest light. In the former it is said, "God rested on the seventh day." Now, in this expression there is nothing to startle us. In explaining it, there is no need to have recourse to a figurative interpretation. It does not allude to God's inmost nature , but simply to His external operations. For in every case where an operation of the Deity takes place, whether in history or nature, an alternation between the first divine impulse, and a subsequent period of repose, is not only conceivable but actually noticeable. For the divine impulse or hand is, as it were, withdrawn, in order that this first impulse of the Creator may fully expand itself, and that the creature adopting it, may carry it out and develop his own energies in accordance therewith. But instead of this correct statement, we have, in the Hindoo cosmogony, that "Brahma sleeps." While he thus slumbers, the whole creation, with its worlds and mundane developments, is said to collapse into naught. Here, then, a single word hurries us from the sure ground of truth and divine revelation into the shifting domain of mythology. Of Him indeed, who is higher than the angels and created spirits, it is no doubt assumed throughout the New Testament that, while on earth, He slept like other men. Once, too, it is expressly stated, that during a great storm, while His disciples were filled with alarm, He was asleep in the hinder part of the ship; but that when He awoke the winds ceased. But here, also, the case is different. While implying many a great object and instructive lesson besides, this passage, like several others, seems designed to prove that our Lord's body was no mere phantom; but that He took upon Him a real human form, and was, in truth, a man who stood in need of sleep. And from this we may infer, that sleep is so indispensable a condition of natural existence, that even God Himself, as soon as He condescended to enter its limits by taking upon Him a human body, became subject to nature's essential law of sleep.

The important part which sleep plays, not only in nature, but also in man, her first-born son, appears from the earliest event that is recorded of his history, even in Paradise. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and out of his opened side took of his vital substance to invest it with a bodily veil and shape, and to present it before him on his awaking as the gentle helpmeet of his existence. Extremely significant also is the difference in the accounts of man's and of woman's material formation. Man is formed of the dust of the earth, and therefore shortly after invested with the dominion of the whole earthly globe as the deputy and vicegerent of Him from whom cometh all lordship and authority. But woman is taken and created out of the bosom or heart of man. Would human wit have ever invented, or even conceived the possibility of this great marvel of creative omnipotence?

This was in Paradise--but with the loss of it man was deprived, in a great manner, of those higher powers of life and those secrets of nature which he had previously possessed and understood. For even in the body of his earthly tabernacle, which had fallen a prey to death, he had become deteriorated, and his organic constitution, as is expressly intimated, fell considerably lower in the scale of sensible existence, and sunk nearer to the level of the brute creation. On this account the cherubic sentinels, with the flaming sword, were placed at the gate of Paradise, that man might not stretch forth his hand to seize again the rights and privileges which he had formerly enjoyed. For now they would only have led to more mischievous abuse and deeper corruption. But since then, many great days of creation have come and gone. Again has the great relation between God and man been restored, and that also between man and the sensible world with the spirits and forces that rule therein, has changed and become new. And now that the beginning is made, and the foundation laid for the Redemption of the world, no man, no one at least who will loyally join the banner of the Redeemer, is forbidden, but every one has freely offered to him the divine, flaming, two-edged sword of the Spirit--or of the Word, and of the thoughts of the heart united to Him, enlightened by Him, and emanating from Him. This fact of itself furnishes at once the answer to the question concerning the secrets of nature, whether, since they are no longer to be kept close from man, impure and wicked hands may drag them to the light, or whether it be not better that they should be touched by the holy and conscientious alone, and faithfully guarded with a pious reserve and religious delicacy.

An exalted view and understanding of nature consists, then, in its being contemplated not merely as a dynamical play of reciprocal forces, but historically in its course of development, as a commencing life, perpetually relapsing into death, ever disposed to sleep, and only painfully raising itself, or, rather, raised and lovingly guided through all the intermediate grades into the light. But beneath the huge tombstone of outward nature there sleeps a soul, not wholly alien, but half akin to ourselves--which is distracted between the troubled and painful reminiscence of eternal death, out of which it issued, and the flowers of light which are scattered here and there on this dark earth, as so many lovely suggesters of a heavenly hope. For this earthly nature, as Holy Writ testifies, is, indeed, subject to nullity, yet, without its will, and without its fault: and consequently in hope of Him who has so subjected it, it looks forward in the expectation that it shall one day be free, and have a part in the general resurrection and consummate revelation of God's glory, before which both nature and death shall stand amazed--and for this last day of a new creation it sighs anxiously, and yearns with the profoundest longing.

OF THE SOUL OF MAN IN RELATION TO GOD.

Thus, then, the whole human consciousness is filled with unmitigated discord and division, not merely in its mixed rational and sensuous or terrestrial and spiritual nature, but thought itself is at issue with life. And, moreover, while in the thought the internal and the external, faith and science, are involved in a hostile contrariety, disturbing and destroying each other, so is it also in life with the finite and the infinite, the transitory and the imperishable. In such a state of things, therefore, and from this point of view, the problem of philosophy, as already remarked, can not well be any other than the restoration of the consciousness to its primary and true unity, so far as this is humanly possible. Now that this true and permanent unity, if it be at all attainable, must be looked for in God, is at all events an allowable hypothesis. For it will not be disputed, except by one who holds both this unity itself and its restitution to be absolutely impossible. But this is a point on which much may be advanced on both sides, and which, therefore, since mere disputing can avail nothing either one way or the other, can only be decided by the fact--the issue of the attempt. On this hypothesis, then, even philosophy must in every case take God for the basis of its speculations--set out from Him, and draw in every instance from this divine source. But then, considered from this point of view, and pursuing this route, it is no idle speculation and simple contemplation of the inner existence and thought alone--no dead science--but a vital effort and an effectual working of the thought for the restoration of a corrupt and degraded consciousness to its natural simplicity and original unity. And this is the way which we have marked out for the course of our speculations, or, rather, the end which we must strive, however imperfectly, yet at least to the best of our abilities, to attain to. And, accordingly, each of the four preceding Lectures, although in free sketchy outline, contains an attempt to put an end to and reconcile some particular schism among those which are the most marked and predominant in the consciousness, and which in essential points must disturb the whole of life. How far in these four introductory essays this problem has been satisfactorily or completely solved and happily settled, is a question which will be best and most fairly tested by the idea of philosophy, as having its true end and aim in the restoration of this corrupt consciousness to its sound state--to its original unity and full energy of life.

The discord between philosophy itself and life was the first that I attempted to get rid of. But now, if in the place of abstract thought and the dialectical reason, we are entitled to look to the thinking and loving soul for the true center of man's consciousness, then the imaginary partition-wall between science and life at once crumbles away. Our second Lecture was occupied with the discord which subsists between the finite and the infinite--the eternal and the perishable; and, because this involved a problem which can only be solved by life and reality, I therefore confined myself to pointing out the way in which we may hope to discover their unity and equation. With this view, I attempted to establish a vivid conviction that there is a true enthusiasm wherein the illimitable feeling manifests itself as actual, and that even the earthly passion of love assumes, in the holy union of fidelity and wedlock, the stamp of the indissoluble and eternal, and becomes the source of many divine blessings, and of many moral ties, which are stronger, and furnish a firmer moral basis to society, than any general maxims, or than any ethical theory which is built upon such notional abstractions, far more than upon the pregnant results of the experience of life. And lastly, in pure longing, I pointed out an effort of man's consciousness directing itself to an infinite, eternal, and divine object. But, as this longing can only evince its reality by the fruits it brings forth, I reserved, to a future opportunity, the more precise determination of this question. The theme of our third Lecture was the existence and the reconciliation of that schism which, both in thought and life, divides the internal and the external worlds. If all knowing be a mere process of the reason, then must this discord between the inner and the outer be forever irreconcilable, and we should be utterly at a loss to conceive how a foreign and alien body could ever have found entrance from without into our Me, and become an object of its cognition. But if every species of knowing be positive--if, also, the cognition of the spiritual and divine be nothing else than an internal and higher science of experience, then the idea of revelation furnishes at once the key to explain, while it establishes the possibility of a knowledge of the divine. And this remark admits, also, of application to nature itself, when we consider it in its totality and internal constitution, and speak of a knowledge of these things--of the vital force which rules in it, or its animating soul; for this, indeed, eludes our grasp, but yet speaks plainly to us--to him, at least, who is wise to understand nature's language. For if, in attempting to understand nature, we isolate her, as it were, and exclude all reference to Him who gave her being, and has assigned, also, her limits and her end--if, in short, we disturb the two poles of a right understanding of nature, then, most assuredly, will the effort be fruitless, and all our labor unprofitable. Man, however, has gone still further, and by transferring the innate discord of his internal consciousness to outward objects, has forcibly rent asunder God and Nature--he has thus divorced the sensible world and its Maker, and set them in hostile array against each other, and thereby brought physical science in collision with the knowledge of divine things and with revelation. Our fourth Lecture, therefore, was consecrated to an attempt to effect here, also, a reconciliation, or, at least, to lay the first stone, and to mark out the road by which alone we could hope to arrive at so desirable a result: and this is a problem which is even the more important the truer it is, that this discord is not confined to science and the scientific domain, but extends, also, to real life, where these discrepant views and modes of thinking are arrayed against each other in so many hostile and conflicting parties. And although, as differing merely as to the form and direction of thought, they do not come forward in so distinct a shape, or under such characteristic names, as the parties in religion and politics, still this dissension is not, therefore, less real and universal, or its effects and influence less noticeable. Of these parties the first, and by far the most numerous, is the sect of the rationalists, who doubt indiscriminately of all things, and test every matter by the standard of their own skepticism. The second class is formed of the exclusive worshipers of nature, and has many members among scientific men; while, lastly, the third consists of those who derive, from the positive source of a divine decision, the law of their thinking and the standard of their judgment. Now, this last party, if it would only go a few steps farther, and draw still deeper from this source, would be able to assign its appropriate place and value to every potence and truth in the other species of thought and knowledge, and even thereby might qualify itself to dissolve and reconcile the all-pervading discord. But inasmuch as they do not adopt this conciliatory attitude toward natural, historical, and even artistic knowledge, so far as they are true, but, on the contrary, in a spirit of animosity, attempt to circumscribe and set negative limits to them, if not absolutely to reject them as worthless and profane--then, when they least wish it, they really sink into a party no less than the other two. And thus, while they might occupy a far higher position, they fall to the level of the rest, and contribute, on their part, an element to the intellectual strife, and tend to promote and perpetuate it. The three parties, then, which by their ruling ideas divide life and age, are the rational thinkers, the worshipers of nature, and those who, in all controverted questions, appeal absolutely to a higher and divine authority; for inasmuch as the sentence of the latter is only of a negative import, it is therefore insufficient to meet all the requisitions of life.

Thus, then, have I led your consideration to four different points, in order to seize and exhibit, in as many different forms and spheres, this great fact of the dissension in man's consciousness, as it exists at present. In a similar manner, too, a fourfold attempt has been made to remedy its hereditary disease, which has been inherent in it since the original darkening of the soul at the Fall, and, by appeasing the discord which, as it is all-pervading and universal, assumes manifold shapes and forms, to make the first step of return and approximation toward the original harmonic unity. Having considered the matter in these four special points of view, it will not, I hope, appear premature if I now propose the question in a more general point of view, which will embrace the whole human consciousness itself; but, at the same time, limit our consideration of it exclusively to its psychological aspect.

Now it is in nowise difficult to conceive of the human soul as much simpler than it is, and apart from that division of it into several faculties, which is at most, and properly, but an accident of its existence. One of the first among the modern philosophers of Germany, says somewhere of the soul, that the supposition of its existence is superfluous, and that it is a pure fiction. But this statement was the result of his having abandoned in his system the true center of life and consciousness; whoever, on the contrary, adheres steadily thereto, will never concur in a position which simply, as contradicting the general feeling of human nature, requires no elaborate refutation. But as regards the two parts into which the soul is divided, viz., Reason and Fancy--these, at any rate, are no fiction, but exist really and truly within the consciousness, where, as in life itself, they often stand confronting each other in hostile array. This division can not well be called superfluous, but yet it does not admit of being considered absolutely necessary, and belonging to the soul's original essence. If all thinking were a living cogitation--if the thinking and the loving soul had remained at unity in their true center, then the external methodical thought and the internal productive thinking, meditating, and invention, would not be separate and divorced--at least they would not come into hostile conflict with each other, but would rather be harmoniously combined in the living cogitation of the loving soul. The several forms, too, of a higher love and a higher endeavor, aye, every lawful earthly inclination, would be blended in this harmony of the soul, and no longer stand out as a separate and isolated faculty, occasionally conflicting with all the others. Even the conscience would no longer appear as a special act or function of the judgment, of a distinct and peculiar kind, but would be absorbed in the whole as a delicate internal sensibility and the pulse of the moral life.

As for sensation and memory, they are in any case but ministering faculties, which only appear distinct and independent under the influence of the prevailing tendency to separation and disunion, but on the supposition of a simpler and more harmonious consciousness, would be counted merely as bodily organs. If, then, the soul had not suffered an eclipse--if it had remained undisturbed in the clear light of God--then would man's consciousness also have been much simpler than it now is, with all those several faculties which we at present find and distinguish in it. In such a case, it would consist only of understanding, soul, and will. For if, according to the three directions of its activity, any one should still be disposed to divide it into the thinking, the feeling, and the loving soul, still this would not be founded on any intrinsic strife or discord, but they would all combine harmoniously together, and in this harmonious combination be at unity among themselves. As for the distinction between understanding and will, that would still remain, since it is essential to mind or spirit, and may, in a certain sense, be ascribed even to the uncreated spirits. But in this garden of the soul of inward illumination--on this fruitful soil of harmonized thought and feeling--they would walk amicably together, and work in common, and would not, as hostile beings, turn aside in opposite directions, or as is mostly the case in actual life, be divided from each other by an impassable gulf, and never meet in friendly contact.

Thus nearly, or somewhat similarly, must we conceive of, and attempt to represent to ourselves, the human mind in its original state, before it was darkened, rent asunder, and condemned to lasting discord, but was as yet eminently simple and perfectly harmonious.

And now as regards understanding and will, as a division of powers essential to the mind or spirit, which, however, as such, is not necessarily inharmonious: the expression already touched upon of another of our modern German philosophers, will serve as a transition to and commencing point for my remarks. According to this memorable assertion with regard to the mind , and which will serve as an appropriate pendent to that last quoted about the soul, the essence of mind or spirit in general consists in the negation of the opposite. Now I can not stop at present to inquire what sense this would give, if applied to the uncreated spirit, and the Creator of all other spiritual beings. But as concerns created spirits: their essence, contrariwise, consists principally in an eternal affirmation. But this, however, they have not of and from themselves, but it is the affirmation of the one to which God has exclusively destined them. But it is not of themselves, but of God and His energy, of whom these created spirits are, as it were, but a ray--a spark of His light--therefore, in this ray, not only sight and understanding, but also thought and deed, will and execution, are simultaneous and identical. And it is in this respect that they are so totally different from men. Now this ray of light, imparted to them from God, is nothing less than the thought of their destination--of the purpose of their being--in a word, their mission, if we may speak after a human fashion, and in the prevailing phraseology. And, indeed, in all ancient languages, the pure created intelligences have these names from that mission which constitutes their essence; for their essence is even perfectly identical with this divine mission or inborn eternal affirmation. To the fallen spirits, on the other hand, the maxim above quoted applies truly enough: their essence consists, not in the divine affirmation, or the mission which they have abandoned, but rather in the eternal, though bootless, denial of their opposite, which is even nothing less than the divine order. For to their ambitious intellect and perverse wills, the latter, in all probability, appeared far too loving, and, therefore, unintelligible; while, to their censorious judgment, it seemed deficient in rigor of consequence, and not unconditional and absolute enough.

All that has hitherto been said reduces itself to the following result. As by the first obscuration and eclipse of the human soul the very body of man was deteriorated, and having been originally created with a capacity of immortality, fell a prey to death, and received the germs, or became liable to many diseases, as roots of death--which is not guilt itself, but the natural result of guilt--so in his consciousness there was then implanted, and has ever since been propagated, a germ of intellectual death, and manifold seeds of error, which, however, are not a new sin, but merely the natural consequences of the first sin and the original corruption of the soul. In four different forms, according to the four cardinal points and fundamental faculties of the human consciousness, does this inborn error and fruitful germ of erroneous and false thinking show and develop itself. We have already spoken of this futile idea of the deadness of all external life, which has taken such deep root in the center of all human thought--in the dead abstract notion and the empty formula, and which, clinging as an original taint to the human mind as at present constituted, renders it so difficult for all those who, not content with merely observing nature, wish really to understand it in its living operation, and, moreover, to imitate in thought its dynamical law, and the inner pulse of its vital forces. For in the abstract notion all this evaporates, and when confined within such dead formularies, the true life of nature quickly becomes extinct. This, therefore, is the primary source of error--the leading species of barren and futile thinking in the abstract understanding. But now this dead and lifeless cogitation of abstract ideas, with its processes of combining and inferring, or of analyzing and drawing distinctions, may be carried on into infinity, as being that wherein the essence or function of reason consists, and also as giving rise to interminable disputes and contradictions. Consequently this form of the reason, which is ever pursuing dialectical disputations, or else skeptically renouncing its own authority, even because it never allows itself to proceed in what alone is its legitimate course, becomes thereby a second source of error and false thinking among men. And, indeed, this erroneous procedure of the dialectical reason, which is incessantly working out or analyzing its abstract notions, is the effect of the present constitution of the human mind; so that no individual can in justice be blamed on its account, nor can its perverted conclusions and corrupting results be fairly imputed to ulterior views and principles of an immoral character.

In considering the imagination as a source of error, we have no need to select the instance of a fancy satanically inflamed to passion, or satanically deluded, or even one of a purely materialistic bias and leaning. For fancy, even in its greatest exaltation and purest form, is at best but a subjective view and mode of cogitative apprehension, and, consequently, as such, is ever a fruitful parent of delusion. How very rarely an imagination is to be found which is not predominantly subjective, is shown precisely in the very highest grade of its development--in the creations of imitative art. Of the exalted geniuses who in single ages and nations have distinguished themselves from the great mass, and attained to that rare eminence--the reputation of the true artist; out of this short list of great names, how few can be selected of whose productions it can be truly said and boasted--Here in this picture we have something more than a mere general view, or the peculiar fantasy of an individual; here life and nature stand before us in their full truth and objective reality, and speak to us in that universal language, which is intelligible to men of all countries and all times! And the same remark applies to the whole domain of scientific thought in general; but especially to physical and historical science.

The dead abstract notions of the intellect, the dialectical disputes of the reason, the purely subjective and one-sided apprehension of objects by a deluded fancy, and the absolute will, are the four sources of human error. Considered apart from the aberrations of passion, special faults of character, and prejudices of education, as well as the false notions and wrong judgments to which the latter give rise--these four are the springs from which flows all the error of the soul which makes itself the center of the terrestrial reality, and which, springing out of this soil, is nourished and propagated by it. To what, then, are we to look to dispel these manifold delusions but to a closer and more intimate union of the soul with God as the source of life and truth?

What, let us therefore ask, is the organ by which such closer union with and immediate cognition of God is to be effected? Plainly not the understanding, even though as the cognitive sense of a revelation of spirit, and of the spirit of revelation, it carries us through the first steps toward a right understanding of ourselves and the Creator. For so long as we confine ourselves to the understanding, which, at most, is but a preparatory and auxiliary faculty, we shall only make an approximation. It is only when the divine idea, passing beyond the understanding--the mere surface, as it were, of our consciousness--penetrates into the very center of our being, and strikes root there, that it is possible, with a view to this end, to draw immediately from the primary source of all life. Now, the organ which essentially co-operates in this work is the will, which, in such co-operation however, divests itself entirely of its absoluteness. On this account I called the will the sense for God, or the sense which is appropriated to the perception of Deity.

But before I proceed in my attempt to define and elucidate the nature of this reciprocal action, and show how it is possible or generally conceivable, it will be necessary to premise one essential remark. I have already attempted to discover and establish a special and characteristic mark for every sphere of life, and its highest and lowest grades. Thus, the proper and distinctive signature of nature, and all that belongs to it, is a state of slumber or sleep; the characteristic property of man, which distinguishes him from all other intellectual beings, is fancy; while the essential property of the pure created spirits is the stamp of eternity which is impressed on all their operations, by means of which they perform, with untiring energies, their allotted duties, without the alternation of repose or the necessity of sleep, and by reason of which they remain forever what they once begin to be. Applying the same line of thought to a higher region, I would now attempt to discover there some characteristic sign, by observing which man may, perhaps, be able to find his true position. Proceeding, then, in this line of thought, and preserving a due regard to the weakness of the human capacity, I would observe as follows. The characteristic, not, indeed, of the divine essence--for that is too great for man's powers of apprehension--but of the divine operations and His influence on the creation and all created beings, consists in His incredible condescension toward these His creatures, and especially toward man. Incredible, however, it may, nay, must and ought to be called, inasmuch as it transcends every notion, nay, all belief, even the most confiding and childlike, and the more it is contemplated, appears the more inconceivable and amazing. Only it admits of question, whether the expression be sufficiently simple and appropriate, and, consequently, well-chosen; for the fact itself of this divine condescension is affirmed in every line and word of revelation. And by revelation I mean not merely the written revelation, but every manifestation more or less distinct of God, and His divine operations and providence--history, nature, and life. Now, on no one point are the voices of all, who on such a matter can be regarded as authorities, so perfectly concordant and unanimous, as on this wonderful attribute of the Godhead, which, on the supposition that the belief in one living God is universal, may be considered as placed beyond doubt or question.

In order to demonstrate how essential is the co-operation of the will to that living intercommunion with God, which is something more than a mere understanding, we advance the following assumptions. Supposing that in the incredible condescension of His love, God has made Himself known to a man, just as in the first books of our Holy Scripture He is described as conversing with Moses, and as familiarly as one friend talks to another; supposing also that He revealed to him all the secret things of heaven and earth without reserve; that He at the same time laid open to him His will and hidden counsels, and that not summarily and in a general way, but definitely and in detail--expressly making known to him His gracious purposes, both in what He at present requires of him and designs for him hereafter; that He has also pointed out to man the means which will enable him to accomplish His will, and, moreover, has added the highest possible promises for his encouragement; supposing all this, is it not evident that it nevertheless could not help or profit man unless he consented to receive it? The whole divine communication would be in vain if man obstinately continued in his old Egoism, mixed and compounded of evil habits, fears, and sensual desires, and, unable to tear himself away, still clung close to the narrow limits of self and his own Me.

Now it is nothing but this intrinsic consent and concurrence in the will of God, this calm affirmation of it, that can help man, who is now left to his own free determination even as regards the Deity, and that can lead him to God. On this account I called the will, rather than the understanding, man's sense for the divine. But all that is here required is the internal assent, and not the power of actual performance; for that varies even according to the standard of nature, or rather of that which is imparted to him from above, since of himself man has no capacity for that which is higher and more excellent, nothing being man's own but his will. Now this internal assent and submission of man's own will to the divine is clearly inconceivable where it has not, to a certain degree, withdrawn from the sensible world which surrounds him with so many ties and allurements, and where it has not loosened and set itself free from the narrow domain of self to which his Ego so closely clings.

Here, then, naturally arises the question, how far a renunciation of the world and self-sacrifice, on which even the Platonic philosophy so greatly insisted, is necessary, if we would advance one degree, or at least one step, nearer to God, as the supreme good and all-perfect Being, and what are its true and proper limits? In obedience to this idea of the renunciation of the world as indispensable to communion with God, the Hindoo fakir will sit for thirty years in one spot, with his eyes fixed immutably in the same direction, so that he not only surpasses all the limits of human nature, but also erases and extinguishes all traces of it in himself. Or perhaps, in spite of the simple principle and rule of sound reason, that man, as he is not the author of his own being, has no right to terminate it, he follows a false idea of self-sacrifice, and mounts the flaming pile in order to be the sooner united to the Deity. In the fundamental idea of these extravagances there is doubtless a germ of beauty and of truth, though in the perverse application and gigantic scale of exaggeration that we meet with it among the primeval nations of Asia, it is distorted into monstrous falsehood. A simple illustration, taken from the different ages of man's life, will perhaps serve to set in a clear light the point on which every thing turns in this matter of the assent of the human to the divine will, and to determine the sense and the degree in which man ought not to give himself up entirely to the world, or to revolve closely round the center of self, if he would yield a sincere and hearty submission to a higher voice and that guiding hand which conducts the education of the whole human race, and watches with equal care the development of individuals and of ages. The child may and must play, for such exercise is wholesome and even necessary for the free expansion of its bodily powers; but at its mother's call, for to the child hers is the higher voice, it ought to leave its play. Youth, again, ought to be merry and enjoy the verdant spring; but when honor and duty summon to earnest action, then must he be ready to lay aside all light-hearted amusement for sterner avocations; or to take another view of the youthful temperament, should its joyousness touch too rudely, not to say overstep, the bounds of morality, then at the first hint of warning it must abandon its treacherous pleasures. The full-grown man, too, having to make his way in the world and to fight with fortune in the hard struggle of life, has little leisure for idle feelings and meditations; only he must not renounce all higher and nobler sentiments, nor dismiss from his mind the thought of the Godhead and the divine , as belonging to the boy, and suitable only for the unripe years of youth. Or to regard life under its passive aspect, let us think of the happy wife by the side of a husband she loves, and living only in her children, and possessing of worldly good as much as she wishes or requires: suddenly, by one of those changes and chances which prevail in this transitory life, she is bereaved of all--the partner of her joys and cares, the children of her bosom, and perhaps, too, of her rank and consideration, while beneath the repeated strokes of affliction her very health sinks. Who would check her tears or blame her natural sorrow if she feels and tells her woes? No one: for holier eyes than man's look upon her with compassion. One thing, however, may fairly and reasonably be expected of her--that she do not give way entirely to despair, nor murmur against Providence. More, therefore, than man requires of man in the ordinary relations of life, God requires not of the human will; and on that alone does He make any requisition, in respect to that free assent and internal concurrence which alone can bind us in personal union with the Godhead, and bring us near to Him; a consummation which no mere intellectual apprehension of all possible revelations, whether written on the pages of inspiration, or on the open tablets of nature, or engraven on the imperishable annals of history, is sufficient to bring about.

So much and nothing more is required for this essential concurrence of the human will with the divine, in the general relations of life. But, in the case of any special vocation and profession--if, for instance, a man feels himself disposed to become a minister of the revealed Word, an instrument and messenger of the divine communications--then, no doubt, higher and sterner requisitions must come into consideration. To men of native courage, what vocation can be more universal than that of a soldier and defender of his country? but does not it require, besides undaunted courage and contempt of death, the patient and enduring fortitude which bears up under countless hardships and privations? What vocation, again, can be simpler and more fully founded in nature, than that of the softer sex to become a mother? but how many sufferings, and fears, and dangers, compass it about, and how infinite are the great and little anxieties to which a mother's love--that purest and truest of all earthly affections--is exposed? And it is even herein that human love most betrays its weakness; it may suffice for some one determinate direction, some transitory period of life, for some single effort of magnanimity or self-sacrifice, but it rarely survives the changes of time and fortune, and its faith and ardor too often are extinguished amid the petty trials of every-day life, and its numberless cares and anxieties.

And as with the love, so also is it with the faith of men: it enters not sufficiently into minutiae; it is not personal enough, nor sufficiently childlike and confiding; it is not made to refer enough to ourselves. Most men, indeed, have only too high an opinion of their own worth--an overweening confidence in their own powers; at least, the opposite fault of extreme diffidence is a rare exception. But yet, it is true, men generally take far too low an estimate of their true vocation and proper destiny; they believe not in its high dignity; and as viewed in its place among the vast universe, they hold it and themselves as comparatively insignificant. But this is a total misconception. Every man is an individual entity--an inner world of his own, full of life--a true microcosm in the eye of God and in the scheme of creation: every man has a vocation of his own, and an appropriate destiny. Could men's eyes be but once opened to see it, how would they be amazed at the infinity which they have neglected, and might have attained to, and which generally in the world remains neglected and unattained. But of the many thousands whom this remark concerns, how very few ever attain to a clear cognition of their real destination! And the reason of this is simply the fact, that the faith of men is all too weak, and, above all, that it is too vaguely general, too superficial, too little searching or profound--not sufficiently personal and childlike.

A childlike faith, and a love that endureth unto the end--these are the true bonds to hold the soul of man in intimate union with God. But it is in hope, such as is at present found among men, that the chief defect lies; for hope ought to be strong and heroic, otherwise it is not that which the name expresses. Few men, perhaps, are entirely devoid of faith and love, only they are not sufficiently carried into the details and trifles of life, as human wants require; for it is exactly to these that all that is divine in men's thoughts and deeds ought to be directed. In hope, on the contrary, the inner man must raise himself and ascend up to God: it must, therefore, be strong and energetic, if it is to be efficacious. On this account we might well expect it to be far more rare, comparatively, than faith and love, considered according to the human scale of reasoning; on the other hand, probably, there are many men who, internally, are almost totally destitute of hope.

The longing after the eternal and divine, which has been already described, is the seeking of God; but this calm, inward assent of the will, whenever, with a childlike faith and enduring love, and in steadfast hope, it is carried through and maintained with unwavering fidelity throughout life, is the actual finding of Him within us, and a constant adherence to Him when once we have found Him. As the root and principle of all that is best and noblest in man, this divine longing can not be too highly estimated, and nowhere is it so inimitably described, and its excellence so fully acknowledged, as in Holy Writ itself. A remarkable instance of it is the fact that a prophet who was set apart and called by God Himself to his office, and was for that purpose endued with miraculous gifts, is expressly called in Holy Writ the man of longings. And yet this longing is nothing but the source, the first root, from which springs that triple flower in the lovely symbol of faith, hope, and charity, which afterward, spreading over every grade and sphere of moral and intellectual existence, expands into the richest and most manifold fruits.

Here, then, in this holy hope, is longing, that marvelous flower of the soul, expanded into its perfect and noblest fruit. If, in judging of the three, man looks to the end to which he is to attain--if, in thought, he places himself at this point of view, then assuredly will love appear the highest and the best; for hope ceases when fulfillment comes in, and sight enters into the place of faith, but love abideth forever. As long, however, as man has not yet attained unto that which is perfect, and is still in pursuit of it, hope must be regarded as the greatest, for it is even the true vital flame of faith, as well as of love, and of all higher existence.

This divine hope is even the fruit-bearing principle and the fructification of the immortal soul by the Holy Spirit of Eternal Truth--the luminous center and focus of grace, where the dark and discordant soul is illuminated and restored to unison with itself and with God.

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.

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