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Footnote 1:
Dare to be wise.
Footnote 2:
The Greek word means, as is known, love of wisdom.
Footnote 3:
Bestimmbarkeit.
Footnote 4:
Bestimmung.
Footnote 5:
Lessing’s play, “Nathan the Wise,” act i. scene 3.
Footnote 6:
See “Æneid,” ii. 213–215.
Footnote 7:
Ibid, 216–217.
Footnote 8:
Pope’s “Iliad,” Book XIV. v. 225.
Footnote 9:
Art can make use of a proper solemnity. Its object is only to prepare
the mind for something important. When the poet is anxious to produce
a great impression he tunes the mind to receive it.
Footnote 10:
A play of Iffland.
Footnote 11:
“Odyssey,” book xiii. v. 397.
Footnote 12:
Δῖος ὑφορβὸς, “Odyssey,” xiv. 413, etc.
Footnote 13:
Werther, May 26, June 21, August 28, May 9, etc.
Footnote 14:
“Orlando Furioso,” canto i., stanza 32.
Footnote 15:
Pope’s “Iliad,” vi. 264–287.
Footnote 16:
“Iliad,” vi. 234–236.
Footnote 17:
“Siegwart,” a novel by J. Müller, published at Ulm, 1776.
Footnote 18:
Huxley, speaking of psychology and physiology (idealism and
materialism), says: “Our stem divides into two main branches, which
grow in opposite ways, and bear flowers which look as different as
they can well be. But each branch is sound and healthy, and has as
much life and vigor as the other. If a botanist found this state of
things in a new plant, I imagine he might be inclined to think that
his tree was monœcious, that the flowers were of different sexes, and
that, so far from setting up a barrier between the branches of the
tree, the only hope of fertility lay in bringing them together. This
is my notion of what is to be done with physics and metaphysics. Their
differences are complementary, not antagonistic, and thought will
never be completely fruitful until the one unites with the
other.”—HUXLEY, _Macmillan’s Mag._, May 1870.
Descartes’ method (according to Huxley) leads straight up to the
critical idealism of his great successor, Kant, in declaring that the
ultimate fact of all knowledge is a consciousness—_and therefore
affirming that the highest of all certainties, and indeed the only
absolute certainty, is the existence of mind_. But it stops short of
Berkeley in declaring that matter does not exist: his arguments
against its existence would equally tend to prove the non-existence of
soul. In Descartes’ system, the body is simply a machine, in the midst
of which the rational soul (peculiar to man) is lodged, and which it
directs at its will, as a skilful engineer familiar with its working
might do—through will and through affection he can “increase, slacken,
and alter their movements at his pleasure.” At the same time, he
admits, in all that regards its mere animal life—in active functions,
such as those connected with hunger, respiration, sleep, digestion; in
many passive ones, such as we are accustomed to call mental, as in
memory, the perception of color, sound—a purely automatic action of
the body, which it pursues simply by following out its own laws,
independent of the soul’s direction or interference.
Footnote 19:
But we have something more than the animal life of the animal (beast).
A beast lives an animal life in order that it may experience pleasant
sensations. It experiences pleasant sensations that it may preserve
the animal life. It lives now, therefore, in order that it may live
again to-morrow. It is happy now that it may be happy to-morrow. But
it is a simple, an uncertain happiness, which depends upon the action
of the organism, it is a slave to luck and blind chance; because it
consists in sensation only. Man, too, lives an animal life,—is
sensible of its pleasures and suffers its pains. But why? He feels and
suffers that he may preserve his animal life. He preserves his animal
life that he may longer have the power to live a spiritual one. Here,
then, the means differ from the end; there, end and means seem to
coincide. This is one of the lines of separation between man and the
animal.
Footnote 20:
Observations on Ferguson’s “Moral Philosophy,” p. 319.
Footnote 21:
Observations on Ferguson’s “Moral Philosophy,” p. 393.
Footnote 22:
See Schlözer’s Plan of his Universal History, § 6.
Footnote 23:
_Complacency_ and _Displacency_ perhaps more aptly express the meaning
of _Lust_ and _Unlust_, which we translate by _pleasure_ and _pain_.
Footnote 24:
“Life of Moor,” tragedy of Krake. Act. v. sc. 1.
Footnote 25:
Muzell’s “Medical and Surgical Considerations.”
Footnote 26:
Why, how one weeps
When one’s too weary!
Tears, tears! _why_ we weep,
’Tis worth inquiry:—that we’ve shamed a life,
Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps?
By no means. Simply, that we’ve walked too far,
Or talked too much, or felt the wind in the east, etc.
—_Aurora Leigh._
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