GOD.

All perfections in the universe are united in God. God and nature are

two magnitudes which are quite alike. The whole sum of harmonic activity

which exists together in the divine substance, is in nature the antitype

of this substance, united to incalculable degrees, and measures, and

steps. If I may be allowed this expressive imagery, nature is an

infinitely divided God.

Just as in the prism a white ray of light is split up into seven darker

shades of color, so the divine personality or Ego has been broken into

countless susceptible substances. As seven darker shades melt together

in one clear pencil of light, out of the union of all these substances a

divine being would issue. The existing form of nature’s fabric is the

optical glass, and all the activities of spirits are only an endless

play of colors of that simple divine ray. If it pleased Omnipotence some

day to break up this prism, the barrier between it and the world would

fall down, all spirits would be absorbed in one infinite spirit, all

accords would flow together in one common harmony, all streams would

find their end in the ocean.

The bodily form of nature came to pass through the attractive force of

the elements. The attraction of spirits, varied and developed

infinitely, would at length lead to the cessation of that separation (or

may I venture the expression) would produce God. An attraction of this

kind is love.

Accordingly, my dear Raphael, love is the ladder by which we climb up to

likeness to God. Unconsciously to ourselves, without laying claim to it,

we aim at this.

Lifeless masses are we, when we hate;

Gods, when we cling in love to one another,

Rejoicing in the gentle bond of love.

Upwards this divinest impulse holdeth sway

Through the thousandfold degrees of creation

Of countless spirits who did not create.

Arm-in-arm, higher and still higher,

From the savage to the Grecian seer,

Who is linked to the last seraph of the ring,

We turn, of one mind, in the same magic dance,

Till measure, and e’en time itself,

Sink at death in the boundless, glowing sea.

Friendless was the great world’s Master;

And feeling this, he made the spirit world

Blessed mirrors of his own blessedness!

And though the Highest found no equal,

Yet infinitude foams upward unto Him

From the vast basin of creation’s realm.

Love is, Raphael, the great secret that can restore the dishonored king

of gold from the flat, unprofitable chalk; that can save the eternal

from the temporal and transient, and the great oracle of duration from

the consuming conflagration of time.

What does all that has been said amount to?

If we perceive excellence, it is ours. Let us become intimate with the

high ideal unity, and we shall be drawn to one another in brotherly

love. If we plant beauty and joy we shall reap beauty and joy. If we

think clearly we shall love ardently. “Be ye perfect, as your Father in

heaven is perfect,” says the Founder of our Faith. Weak human nature

turned pale at this command, therefore He explained himself in clearer

terms: “Love one another!”

Wisdom, with thy sunlike look,

Awful goddess! turn thee back,

And give way to Love;

Who before thee went, with hero heart,

Up the steep and stormy path

To the Godhead’s very throne;

Who, unveiling the Holiest,

Showed to thee Elysium

Through the vaulted sepulchre.

Did it not invite us in?

Could we reach immortality—

Or could we seek the spirit

Without Love, the spirit’s master?

Love, Love leadeth only to Nature’s Father,

_Only love the spirits_.

I have now given you, Raphael, my spirit’s confession of faith—a flying

outline of the creation I have undertaken. As you may perceive, the seed

which you scattered in my soul took root. Mock, or rejoice, or blush at

your scholar, as you please. Certain it is this philosophy has ennobled

my heart, and extended and beautified the perspective of my life. It is

possible, my excellent friend, that the entire structure of my

conclusions may have been a baseless and visionary edifice. Perhaps the

world, as I depicted it, nowhere exists, save in the brain of your

Julius. Perhaps, after the lapse of thousands on thousands of years,

when the wiser Judge promised in the future, sits on the judgment-seat,

at the sight of the true original, filled with confusion, I should tear

in pieces my schoolboy’s design. All this may happen—I expect it; and

even if not a vestige of reality is found in my dream, the reality will

fill me with proportionately greater delight and wonder. Ought my ideas

to be more beautiful than those of the Creator? How so? Could we

tolerate that His exalted artistic structure should fall beneath the

expectations of a mortal connoisseur? This is exactly the fiery

probation of His great perfection, and the sweetest triumph for the

Exalted Spirit, that false conclusions and deception do not injure His

acknowledgment; that all tortuous deviations of the wandering reason at

length strike into the straight road of everlasting truth; that all

diverging arms and currents ultimately meet in the main stream. What an

idea, Raphael, I form of the Great Artist, who, differently travestied

in a thousand copies, still retains identical features in all this

diversity, from which even the depreciating hand of a blunderer cannot

remove admiration.

Moreover, my representation may certainly be fallacious, wholly an

invention,—nay, I am persuaded that it must necessarily be so; and yet

it is possible that all results of this may come to pass. All great

sages are agreed that our whole knowledge moves on ultimately to a

conventional deception, with which, however, the strictest truth can

co-exist. Our purest ideas are by no means images of things, but only

their signs or symbols determined by necessity, and co-existing with

them.

Neither God, nor the human soul, nor the world, are really what we

consider them. Our thoughts of these are only the endemic forms in which

the planet we inhabit hands them to us. Our brain belongs to this

planet; accordingly, also, the idioms of our ideas, which are treasured

up in it. But the power of the soul is peculiar, necessary, and always

consistent: the capricious nature of the materials through which it

finds expression changes nothing in the eternal laws, as long as this

capriciousness does not stand in contradiction with itself, and so long

as the sign remains true to the thing it designates. As the thinking

power develops the relations of the idioms, these relations of things

must also really be present in them. Therefore, truth is no property of

the idioms, but of the conclusion; it is not the likeness of the sign

with the thing signified, of the conception with the object; but the

agreement of this conception with the laws of thought. In a similar

manner, the doctrine of quantity makes use of cyphers which are nowhere

present, except upon paper, and yet it finds with them what is present

in the world of reality. For example, what resemblance is there between

the letters A and B, the signs: and =, +, and -, and the fact that has

to be ascertained? Yet the comet, foretold centuries before, advances

from a remote corner of the heavens, and the expected planet eclipses

the disk at the proper time. Trusting to the infallibility of his

calculation, the discoverer Columbus plunges into unknown regions of the

sea to seek the missing other half of the known hemisphere—the great

island of Atlantis—to fill up a blank in his geographical map. He found

this island of his paper calculation, and his calculation was right.

Would it have been less great if a hostile storm had shattered his fleet

or driven it back? The human mind makes a similar calculation when it

measures the supersensual by means of the sensible, and when mathematics

applies its conclusions to the hidden physics of the superhuman. But the

last test of its calculations is still wanting, for no traveller has

come back from that land to relate his discovery. Human nature has its

proper bounds, and so also has the individual. We will give each other

mutual comfort respecting the former: Raphael will concede this to the

boyish age of his Julius. I am poor in conceptions, a stranger in many

branches of knowledge which are thought to be essential in inquiries of

this nature. I have not belonged to any philosophical school, nor have I

read many printed books. It may quite well be that I occasionally

substitute my fancies in the place of stricter logical proofs, that I

mistake the rush of my blood or the hopes of my heart for sound wisdom;

yet, my dear friend, you must not grudge me the moments I have thus

lost. It is a real gain for universal perfection: it was the provision

of the Wisest Spirit that the erring reason should also people the

chaotic world of dreams, and make fruitful even the barren ground of

contradiction. It is not only the mechanical artist who polishes the

rough diamond into a brilliant whom we ought to value, but also that one

who ennobles mere ordinary stones by giving them the apparent dignity of

the diamond. The industry displayed in the forms may sometimes make us

forget the massive truth of the substance. Is not every exercise of the

thinking power, every sharpening of the edge of the spirit, a little

step towards its perfection; and every perfection has to obtain a being

and substantial existence in a complete and perfect world. Reality is

not confined to the absolutely necessary; it also embraces the

conditionally necessary: every offspring of the brain, every work

elaborated by the wit, has an irresistible right of citizenship in this

wider acceptation of creation. In the measureless plan of nature no

activity was to be left out, no degree of enjoyment was to be wanting in

universal happiness. The great Inventive Spirit would not even permit

error to be wasted, nor allow this wide world of thought to remain empty

and chaotic in the mind of man. For the Great Ruler of His world does

not even allow a straw to fall without use, leaves no space uninhabited

where life may be enjoyed; for He converts the very poison of man into

the food of vipers; He even raises plants from the realm of corruption,

and hospitably grants the little glimmer of pleasure that can co-exist

with madness. He turns crime and folly into excellence, and weaves out

of the very vices of a Tarquin the great idea of the universal monarchy

of Rome. Every facility of the reason, even in error, increases its

readiness to accept truth.

Dear friend of my soul, suffer me to add my contribution to the great

woof of human wisdom. The image of the sun is reflected differently in

the dewdrop and in the majestic mirror of the wide-stretching ocean.

Shame to the turbid, murky swamp, which never receives and never

reflects this image! Millions of plants drink from the four elements of

nature; a magazine of supplies is open for all: but they mix their sap

in a thousand different ways, and return it in a thousand new forms. The

most beautiful variety proclaims a rich Lord of this house. There are

four elements from which all spirits draw their supplies: their Ego or

individuality, Nature, God, and the Future. All intermingle in millions

of ways and offer themselves in a million differences of result: but one

truth remains which, like a firm axis, goes through all religions and

systems—draw nigh to the Godhead of whom you think!

LETTER V.

_Raphael to Julius._

It would be very unfortunate, my dear Julius, if there were no other way

of quieting you than by restoring the first fruits of your belief in

you. I found with delight these ideas, which I saw gaining in you,

written down in your papers. They are worthy of a soul like yours, but

you could not remain stationary in them. There are joys for every age

and enjoyments for each degree of spirits. It must have been a difficult

thing for you to sever yourself from a system that was entirely made to

meet the wants of your heart. I would wager that no other system will

strike such deep roots in you, and, possibly, if left quite to your own

direction, you would sooner or later become reconciled to your favorite

ideas. You would soon remark the weakness of the opposite system, and

then, if both systems appeared equally deficient in proof, you would

prefer the most desirable one, or, perhaps, you would find new arguments

to preserve at least the essential features of your former theory, even

if a few more doubtful points had to be given up.

But all this is remote from my plan. You must arrive at a higher

_freedom of mind_, where you no longer require support. I grant that

this is not the affair of a moment. The first aim of the earliest

teaching is commonly the subjugation of the mind, and among all the

artifices of the art of education this generally succeeds the first.

Even you, though endowed with great elasticity of character, yet appear

destined to submit readily to the sway of _opinions_, and even more

inclined to this than thousands; and this state of infancy might last

very long with you, as you do not readily feel the oppression of it.

Your head and heart are in very close connection. A doctrine is sweet to

you on account of the teacher. You soon succeeded in finding an

interesting side in this doctrine, you ennobled it according to the

wants of your heart, and you suffered your mind to be resigned to other

points that must needs appear strange to you. You regarded attacks on

this doctrine as boyish revenge taken by a slavish soul against the rod

of its tutor. You played with your chains, which you thought you carried

by your own free will.

I found you in this situation, and the sight gave me pain—how, in the

midst of the enjoyment of your glowing life, and while giving expression

to your noblest powers, you were hemmed in by narrow considerations. The

very logical consistency with which you acted according to your

convictions, and the strength of soul that made every sacrifice light to

you, were twofold hinderances to your activity and to your joys. I then

resolved to set aside these clumsy efforts by which it had been

endeavored to cramp a soul like yours in the measure of ordinary

natures. The result of your first exertions favored my intentions. I

admit that your imagination was more actively employed upon the work

than was your penetration. The loss of your fondest convictions was more

than atoned for by your presentiments, which gathered results much more

rapidly than the tortoise pace of cold scientific inquiry, passing from

the known to the unknown. Your kind of inspired system gave you your

first enjoyment in this new field of activity, and I was very careful

not to destroy a welcome enthusiasm which was very favorable to the

development of your excellent disposition. The scene is now changed. A

return into the restrictions of infancy is closed forever. Your way

leads onwards, and you require no further precautions.

You must not be surprised to find that a system such as yours cannot

resist the searching of a severe criticism. All essays of this kind,

equal in breadth and boldness to yours, have had no other fate. It was

also most natural that your philosophical progress began with you

individually, as with the human race in general. The _first object_ on

which man’s spirit of inquiry first attempted its strength was, at all

times, the universe. Hypotheses relating to the origin of the world, and

the combination of its parts, had occupied the greatest thinkers for

ages, when Socrates called down the philosophy of his day from heaven to

earth. But the limits of human wisdom were too narrow for the proud

intellect of his followers. New systems arose on the ruins of the former

ones. The penetrating mind of subsequent ages explored the immeasurable

field of possible answers to those ever-recurring questions, bearing on

the mysterious interior of nature, which could not be disclosed by any

human intellect. Some, indeed, succeeded in giving a certain coloring of

distinctness, completeness, and evidence to their views. There are many

conjuring tricks by which the pride of reason seeks to avoid the

disgrace of not being able to exceed the bounds of human nature in

extending the circle of its knowledge. It is a frequent conceit with men

to believe that they have discovered new truths, when they have

dissected a conception into the separate elements out of which it was

first compounded by an act of caprice. Not unfrequently an imperceptible

assumption lies at the basis of a chain of consequences, whose breaks

and deficiencies are cunningly concealed, while the false conclusions

are admired as sublime wisdom. In other cases, partial experiences are

accumulated to found a hypothesis, and all contradictory phenomena are

either ignored, or the meaning of words is changed according to the

requirements of the reasoning. Nor is it only the philosophical quack

who employs these conjuring tricks to deceive the public; without being

conscious of it, the most upright and the least prejudiced thinker uses

analogous means to satisfy his thirst for knowledge directly that he

issues from the only sphere where reason can legitimately enjoy the

fruit of its activity.

After what you have heard me say on former occasions, Julius, these

expressions must cause you no little astonishment; yet they are not the

product of a sceptical caprice. I could lay before you the foundations

on which they rest, but this would require, as prelude, a somewhat dry

examination into the nature of human knowledge,—and I prefer to reserve

this for a time when you will feel the want of it. You have not yet

arrived at that state of mind when humiliating truths on the limits of

human knowledge can have any interest for you. Make a first essay with

the system which has supplanted your own in your mind. Examine it with

the same impartiality as severity. Proceed in the same manner with other

theories with which you have recently become acquainted; and if none of

them can fully satisfy your requirements, you will ask yourself if,

after all, these requirements are reasonable.

Perhaps you will tell me this is a poor consolation. You will infer that

resignation is your only refuge after so many brilliant hopes had been

raised. “Was it worth while,” you will say, “to challenge me to a full

exercise of my reason in order to set bounds to it at the very moment

when it was beginning to bear the noblest fruit? Was I only to become

acquainted with a higher enjoyment in order to feel with a double

keenness how painful it is to be thus bounded?”

Nevertheless, it is this very feeling of discouragement that I expressly

wish to banish from your soul. My aim is this: to remove all that places

an obstacle to the free enjoyment of your being, to bring to life in you

the germ of all lofty inspiration—the consciousness of the nobility of

your soul. You have been awakened from the slumber in which you were

rocked by the slavery of others’ opinions; but you would never reach the

degree of grandeur to which you are called if you dissipated your

strength in the pursuit of an unattainable end. This course was all

proper up to the present time; it was the natural consequence of your

recently acquired freedom. It was necessary that the ideas which had

most engaged you previously should give the first impulse to the

activity of your mind. Among all possible directions that your mind

could take, is its present course the most fertile in results? The

answer would be given, sooner or later, by your own experience. My part

was confined to hastening, if possible, this crisis.

It is a common prejudice to take as a measure of the greatness of man

that matter on which he works, and not the manner of his work. But it is

certain that a superior Being honors the stamp of perfection even in the

most limited sphere, whilst He casts an eye of pity on the vain attempts

of the insect which seeks to overlook the universe. It follows from this

that I am especially unwilling to agree to the proposition in your

papers, which assumes that the high destiny of man is to detect the

spirit of the Divine Artist in the work of creation. To express the

activity of infinite perfection, I admit that I do not know any sublimer

image than art; but you appear to have overlooked an important

distinction. The universe is not the pure expression of an ideal, like

the accomplished work of a human artist. The latter governs despotically

the inanimate matter which he uses to give a body to his ideas. But in

the divine work the proper value of each one of its parts is respected,

and this conservative respect with which the Great Architect honors

every germ of activity, even in the lowliest creature, glorifies it as

much as the harmony of the immeasurable whole. Life and liberty to all

possible extent are the seal of divine creation; nowhere is it more

sublime than where it seems to have departed most widely from its ideal.

But it is precisely this highest perfection that prevents us from

grasping the limits in which we are at present confined. We embrace only

too small a part of the universe, and the explanation of most of its

discords is inaccessible to our faculties. Each step we climb in the

scale of being will make us more susceptible of these enjoyments of art;

but even then their only value will be that of means, and to excite us

to an analogous exercise of our activity. The idle admiration of a

greatness foreign to ourselves can never be a great merit. A superior

man is never wanting in matter for his activity, nor in the forces

necessary to become himself a creator in his sphere. This vocation is

yours also, Julius; when you have recognized this you will never have a

thought of complaining of the limits that your desire of knowledge

cannot overstep.

When you have arrived at this conviction I expect to find you wholly

reconciled to me. You must first know fully the extent of your strength

before you can appreciate the value of its freest manifestation. Till

then, continue to be dissatisfied with me, but do not despair of

yourself.