OF THE THINKING SOUL AS THE CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AND OF THE FALSE
PROCEDURE OF REASON.
“There are,” says a poet as ingenious as profound,[1] “more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” This sentiment,
which Genius accidentally let drop, is in the main applicable also to
the philosophy of our own day; and, with a slight modification, I shall
be ready to adopt it as my own. The only change that is requisite to
make it available for my purpose would be the addition--“and also
between heaven and earth are there many things which are not dreamt of
in our philosophy.” And exactly because philosophy, for the most part,
does nothing but dream--scientifically dream, it may be--therefore is it
ignorant, ay, has no inkling even of much which, nevertheless, in all
propriety it ought to know. It loses sight of its true object, it quits
the firm ground where, standing secure, it might pursue its own
avocations without let or hinderance, whenever, abandoning its own
proper region, it either soars up to heaven to weave there its fine-spun
webs of dialectics, and to build its metaphysical castles in the air, or
else, losing itself on the earth, it violently interferes with external
reality, and determines to shape the world according to its own fancy,
and to reform it at will. Half way between these two devious courses
lies the true road; and the proper region of philosophy is even that
spiritual inner life between heaven and earth.
On both sides, many and manifold errors were committed even in the
earlier and better days of enlightened antiquity. Plato himself, the
greatest of the great thinkers of Greece, set up in his Republic the
model of an ideal polity, which, in this respect, can not bear the test
of examination. His design indeed finds, in some measure, its apology in
the disorders and corruption which, even in his day, had infected all
the free states of Greece, whether great or small. His work, too, by the
highly-finished style of the whole, the vivid perspicuity of its
narrative, its rich profusion of pregnant ideas and noble sentiments,
stands out in dignified contrast to the crude and ill-digested schemes
of legislation so hastily propounded in our own day. Still, it will ever
remain the weak point of this great man. One needs not to be a Plato to
see how absolutely unfeasible, not to say practically absurd, are many
of the propositions of this Platonic ideal. Accordingly, it has ever
been the fruitful occasion, not only among cotemporaries, but also with
posterity, of ridicule to the ignorant and of censure to the wise. In
this respect it can not but excite our regret that such great and noble
powers of mind should have been wasted in following a false direction,
and in pursuit of an unattainable end. The oldest philosophers of
Greece, on the other hand--those first bold adventurers on the wide
ocean of thought--combined together the elements of things, water, or
air, or fire, or atoms, or, lastly, the all-ruling intellect[2] itself,
into as many different systems of the universe. If, however, each in his
own way thus set forth a peculiar creed of nature, we must ever bear in
mind that the popular religion, with its poetical imagery, and the
fabulous mythology of antiquity, as affording not only no sufficient,
but absolutely no answer to the inquiring mind, as to the essence of
things, and the first cause of all, could not possibly satisfy these
earlier thinkers. Consequently, they might well feel tempted to find,
each for himself, a way to honor nature, and to contemplate the supreme
Being. Since then, however, the world has grown older by nearly
twenty-five centuries, and much, in the mean while, has been
accomplished by, or fallen to the share of, the human race. But when
philosophy would pretend to regard this long succession of ages, and all
its fruits, as suddenly erased from the records of existence, and for
the sake of change would start afresh, so perilous an experiment can
scarcely lead to any good result, but in all probability, and to judge
from past experience, will only give rise to numberless and interminable
disputes. Such an open space in thought--cleared from all the traces of
an earlier existence (a smoothly-polished marble tablet, as it were,
like the _tabula rasa_ of a recent ephemeral philosophy)--would only
serve as an arena for the useless though daring ventures of unprofitable
speculation, and could never form a safe basis for solid thought, or for
any permanent manifestation of intellectual life.
In itself it is nothing surprising if young and inexperienced minds,
occupying themselves prematurely, or in a perverted sense, with the
grand ideas of God and Nature, liberty and the march of thought, should
be wholly overmastered and carried away with them. It has often happened
before now, and it is no new thing if youthful and ardent temperaments
should either yield to the seductive temptation to make, not to say
create, a new religion of their own; or else feel a deceitful impulse to
censure and to change all that is already in existence, and, if
possible, to reform the whole world by their newly-acquired ideas.
That this twofold aberration and misuse of philosophical thought must
prove universally injurious, and prejudicial both to education and the
whole world, is so evident that it can scarcely be necessary to dwell
upon it. Its effect has been to cause men, especially those whose minds
have been formed in the great and comprehensive duties of practical
life, to view the thing altogether in an evil light, although it must be
confessed there is much injustice in this sweeping condemnation. In
several of the great statesmen of Rome we may observe a similar contempt
for Grecian philosophy as useless and unprofitable. And yet, as is
happily indicated by its Greek name, this whole effort was assuredly
based upon a noble conception, and, when duly regulated, a salutary
principle. For in this beautiful word, according to its original
acceptation, science is not regarded as already finished and mature, but
is rather set forth as an object of search--of a noble curiosity and of
a pure enthusiasm for great and sublime truths, while at the same time
it implies the wise use of such knowledge. Merely, however, to check and
to hinder the aberrations of a false philosophy, is not by itself
sufficient. It is only by laying down and leveling the right road of a
philosophy of life, that a thorough remedy for the evil is to be found.
True philosophy, therefore, honoring that which has been given from
above and that which is existent from without, must neither raise itself
in hostility to the one, nor attempt to interfere violently with the
other. For it is exactly when, keeping modestly within its proper limits
of the inner spiritual life, it makes itself the handmaid neither of
theology nor of politics, that it best asserts its true dignity and
maintains its independence on its own peculiar domain. And thus, even
while it abstains most scrupulously from intermeddling with the positive
and actual, will it operate most powerfully on alien and remote branches
of inquiry, and by teaching them to consider objects in a freer and more
general light, indirectly it will exercise on them a salutary influence.
Thus, while it proceeds along its appointed path, it will, as it were
without effort, disperse many a mist which spreads its dangerous
delusion over the whole of human existence, or remove, perhaps, many a
stone of stumbling, which offends the age and divides the minds of men
in strife and discord. In this manner, consequently, will it most
beautifully attest its healing virtue, and at the same time best fulfill
its proper destination.
The object, therefore, of philosophy is the inner mental life (_geistige
Leben_), not merely this or that individual faculty in any partial
direction, but man’s spiritual life with all its rich and manifold
energies. With respect to form and method: the philosophy of life sets
out from a single assumption--that of life, or, in other words, of a
consciousness to a certain degree awakened and manifoldly developed by
experience--since it has for its object, and purposes to make known the
entire consciousness, and not merely a single phase of it. Now, such an
end would be hindered rather than promoted by a highly elaborate or
minutely exhaustive form, and a painfully artificial method; and it is
herein that the difference lies between a philosophy of life and the
philosophy of the school. If philosophy be regarded merely as one part
of a general scientific education, then is the instruction in method
(whether under the old traditionary name of Logic or any other) the
chief point to be regarded. For such a mere elementary course, passing
over, or at least postponing for a while the consideration of the
matter, as possessing as yet but a very remote interest for the student,
and, in the default of an adequate internal experience of his own,
incapable of being understood by him, concerns itself rather with the
practice of methodical thought, both as necessary for the future, and as
applicable to all matters. But the preliminary exercise in philosophical
thinking is only the introduction to philosophy, and not philosophy
itself. This school-teaching of philosophy might, perhaps, be rendered
productive of the most excellent consequences, if only it were directed
to the history of the human intellect. What could be more interesting
than a history which should enter into the spirit, and distinctly embody
the various systems which the inventive subtilety of the Greeks gave
birth to, or which, taking a still wider range, should embrace the
science of the Egyptians, and some Asiatic nations, and illustrate the
no less wonderful nor less manifold systems of the Hindoos--those Greeks
of the primeval world? But this, perhaps, would be to encroach upon the
peculiar domain of erudition, and might, moreover, fail to furnish equal
interest for all; and, at any rate, the history of philosophy is not
philosophy itself.
Now, the distinction between the philosophy of life and the philosophy
of the school will appear in very different lights, according to the
peculiarity of view which predominates in the several philosophical
systems. That species of philosophy which revolves in the dialectical
orbit of abstract ideas, according to its peculiar character,
presupposes and requires a well-practiced talent of abstraction,
perpetually ascending through higher grades to the very highest, and
even then boldly venturing a step beyond. In short, as may be easily
shown in the instance of modern German science, the being unintelligible
is set up as a kind of essential characteristic of a true and truly
scientific philosophy. I, for my part, must confess that I feel a great
distrust of that philosophy which dwells in inaccessible light, where
the inventor indeed asserts of himself, that he finds himself in an
unattainable certainty and clearness of insight, giving us all the while
to understand thereby that he does see well enough how, of all other
mortals, scarcely any, or, perhaps, strictly speaking, no one,
understands or is capable of understanding him. In all such cases it is
only the false light of some internal _ignis fatuus_ that produces this
illusion of the unintelligible, or, rather, of nonsense. In this pursuit
of wholly abstract and unintelligible thought, the philosophy of the
school is naturally enough esteemed above every other, and regarded as
pre-eminently the true science--_i.e._, the unintelligible.
In such a system a philosophy of life means nothing more than a kind of
translation of its abstruser mysteries into a more popular form, and an
adaptation of them to the capacity of ordinary minds. But even such
popular adaptations, though evincing no common powers of language and
illustration, in spite of their apparent clearness, when closer
examined, are found as unintelligible as the recondite originals. For,
inasmuch as the subject-matter of these abstract speculations was, from
the very first, confused and unintelligible, it was consequently
incapable of being made clear even by the most perspicuous of styles.
But the true living philosophy has no relation or sympathy with this
continuous advance up to the unintelligible heights of empty
abstraction. Since the objects it treats of are none other than those
which every man of a cultivated mind, and, in any degree accustomed to
observe his own consciousness, both has and recognizes within himself,
there is nothing to prevent its exposition being throughout clear, easy,
and forcible. Here the relation is reversed. In such a system the
philosophy of life is the chief and paramount object of interest; while
the philosophy of the school, or the scientific teaching of it in the
schools, however necessary and valuable in its place, is still, as
compared with the whole thing itself, only secondary and subordinate. In
the philosophy of life, moreover, the method adopted must also be a
living one. Consequently it is not, by any means, a thing to be
neglected. But still it need not to be applied with equal rigor
throughout, or to appear prominently in every part, but, on all
occasions, must be governed in these respects by what the particular end
in view may demand.
A few illustrations, drawn from daily experience, will, perhaps, serve
to explain my meaning. Generally speaking, the most important arts and
pursuits of life are ultimately based on mathematics. This science
furnishes them, as it were, with the method they observe; but it is not
practicable, nor, indeed, has man the leisure, to revert on every
occasion, with methodical exactness, to these elements, but, assuming
the principles to be well known and admitted, he attends rather to the
results essential to the end he has in view. The economical management
of the smallest as well as of the largest household, rests, in the end,
on the elementary principles of arithmetic; but what would come of it
if, on every occasion, we were to go back to the simple “one-times-one”
of the multiplication table, and reflected upon and sought for the
proofs that the principle is really valid and can confidently be relied
on in practice? In the same way the art of war is founded on geometry;
but when the general arranges his troops for battle, does he consult his
Euclid to satisfy himself of the correctness and advantages of his
position? Lastly, when the astronomer, whose vocation is pre-eminently
dependent on accurate calculation, when he would make us acquainted with
the phenomena of the sidereal heavens, confines himself almost entirely
to them, without wearying those whom he wishes to interest, with the
complicated reckonings which, however, in all probability, he was
obliged himself to go through. With all these arts and pursuits of
practical life, the intellectual business of thinking--of such thinking
at least as is common to most men--and of communicating thought, has a
sort of affinity and resemblance. For, unquestionably, it is one among
the many problems of philosophy to establish a wise economy and prudent
stewardship of that ever-shifting mass of incoming and outgoing thoughts
which make up our intellectual estate and property. And this is the more
necessary the greater are the treasures of thought possessed by our age.
For, in the highly rapid interchange of and traffic in ideas, which is
carrying on, the receipts and disbursements are not always duly
balanced. There is much cause, therefore, to fear lest a thoughtless and
lavish dissipation of the noblest mental endowments should become
prevalent, or a false and baseless credit-system in thought spring up
amid an absolute deficiency of a solid and permanent capital safely
invested in fundamental ideas and lasting truths. As for the second
simile: I should, by all means, wish to gain a victory, not indeed for
you, but with you, over some of the many errors and many semblances of
thought, which are, however, but cheats and counterfeits which distract
the minds of the present generation, disturb the harmony of life, and
banish peace even from the intellectual world. And as respects the third
illustration: I should indeed rejoice as having, in a great measure,
attained my object, if only I shall succeed in directing your attention
to some star in the higher region of intellect, which hitherto was
either totally unknown, or, at least, never before fully observed.
But above all, I think it necessary to observe further, that in the same
way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter,
when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with
external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts
to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics. In the middle of the last
century scarcely was there to be found a German manual for any of the
sciences that did not ape the mathematical style, and where every single
position in the long array of interminable paragraphs did not conclude
with the solemn act of demonstrative phraseology. But it is also well
known that the philosophy which was propounded in this inappropriate
form and method was crammed full of, nay, rather, was hardly any thing
more than a tissue of arbitrary, now forgotten, hypotheses, which have
not brought the world at all nearer to the truth--not at least to that
truth which philosophy is in search of, and which is something higher
than a mere example of accurate computation.
And even in the present day--although, indeed, the application is made
in a very different way from formerly--German philosophy is any thing
but free from those algebraic formularies, in which all things, even the
most opposite, admit of being comprised and blended together. But, be it
as it may, this elaborate structure of mechanical demonstration can
never produce a true, intrinsic, and full conviction. The method which
philosophy really requires is quite different, being absolutely internal
and intellectual (_geistige_). As in a correct architectural structure
it is necessary that all its parts should be in unison, and such as the
eye can take in easily and agreeably, so in every philosophical
communication, the solid simple basis being laid, the arrangement of all
the parts, and the careful rejection and exclusion of all foreign
matter, is the most essential point, both for internal correctness and
external perspicuity. But, in truth, the matter in hand bears a far
closer resemblance and affinity to natural objects which live and grow,
than to any lifeless edifice of stone; to a great tree, for instance,
nobly and beautifully spreading out on all sides in its many arms and
branches. As such a tree strikes the hasty and passing glance, it forms
a somewhat irregular and not strictly finished whole; there it stands,
just as the stem has shot up from the root, and has divided itself into
a certain number of branches, and twigs, and leaves, which livingly move
backward and forward in the free air. But examine it more closely, and
how perfect appears its whole structure! how wonderful the symmetry, how
minutely regular the organization of all its parts, even of each little
leaf and delicate fiber! In the same way will the ever-growing tree of
human consciousness and life appear in philosophy, whenever it is not
torn from its roots and stripped of its leaves by a pretended wisdom,
but is vividly apprehended by a true science, and exhibited and
presented to the mind in its life and its growth.
Not only, however, the arrangement of the whole, but also the connection
of the several parts of a philosophical treatise or development, is of a
higher kind than any mere mechanical joining, such, for instance, as
that by which two pieces of wood are nailed or glued together. If I must
illustrate this connection by a simile from animated nature, the facts
of magnetism will best serve my purpose. Once magnetically excited, the
iron needle comes into invisible contact and connection with the whole
globe and its opposite poles; and this magnetic clew has guided the bold
circumnavigator into new and unknown regions of the world. Now, the
intrinsic vital coherence of the several thoughts of philosophy
resembles this magnetic attraction; and no such rude, mechanical, and,
in fact, mere external conjunction of thought, like that lately alluded
to, can satisfy the requirements of philosophical connection.
But the supreme intrinsic unity of philosophical thought, or of a
philosophical series of ideas, is quite different from every thing
hitherto mentioned. It belongs not to nature, but to life; it is not
derived from the latter by way of figure or illustration, but is a part
and constituent of it, and goes to the very root and soil of the moral
life. What I mean is, the unity of sentiment--the fixed character,
remaining ever the same and true to itself--the inner necessary sequence
of the thoughts--which, in life no less than in the system and
philosophical theory, invariably makes a great and profound impression
on our minds, and commands our respect, even when it does not carry
along with it our convictions. This, however, is dependent on no form,
and no mere method can attain to it. How often, for instance, in some
famous political harangue, which perhaps the speaker, like the
rhapsodist of old, poured forth on the spur of the moment, do we at once
recognize and admire this character in the thoughts, this consistency of
sentiment? How often, on the contrary, in another composed with the most
exquisite research and strict method, and apparently a far more
elaborate and finished creation of the intellect, we have only to pierce
through the systematic exterior to find that it is nothing but an
ill-connected and chance-medley of conflicting assumptions and opinions
taken from all quarters, and the crude views of the author himself,
devoid of all solidity, and resting on no firm basis, without character,
and wholly destitute of true intrinsic unity?
If now, in the present course of Lectures, I shall succeed in laying
before you my subject in that clearness and distinctness which are
necessary to enable you to comprehend the whole, and, while taking a
survey of it, to judge of the agreement of the several parts, you will
find, I trust, no difficulty in discovering the fundamental idea and
sentiment. And further, I would venture to entreat you not to judge
hastily of this sentiment from single expressions, and least of all at
the very outset, but, waiting for its progressive development, to judge
of it on the whole. Lastly, I would also indulge a hope that the views
of an individual thinker, if perspicuously enunciated, may, even where
they fail of conviction, and though points of difference still subsist,
produce no revolting impression on your minds; but, by exercising a
healing influence on many a rankling wound in thought and life, produce
among us some of the fairest fruits of true philosophy.
Hitherto we have been considering, first of all, the object and proper
sphere of the philosophy of life; and, secondly, its appropriate form of
communication, as well as all other methods which are alien and foreign
to it. Of great and decisive importance for the whole course and further
development of philosophical inquiry is it to determine, in the next
place, the starting-point from which it ought to set out. It will not do
to believe that we have found this in any axiom or postulate such as are
usually placed at the head of a system. For such a purpose we must
rather investigate the inmost foundation--the root out of which springs
the characteristic feature of a philosophical view. Now, in the
philosophy of life the whole consciousness, with all its different
phases and faculties, must inevitably be taken for the foundation, the
soul being considered as the center thereof. This simple basis being
once laid, it may be further developed in very different ways. For it
is, I might almost say, a matter of indifference from what point in the
circumference or periphery we set out in order to arrive at the center,
with the design of giving a further development to this as the
foundation of the whole. But in order to illustrate this simple method
of studying life from its true central point, which is intermediate
between the two wrong courses already indicated, and in order to make,
by contrast, my meaning the plainer, I would here, in a few words,
characterize the false starting-point from which the prevailing
philosophy of a day--whether that of France in the eighteenth century or
the more recent systems of Germany--has hitherto, for the most part,
proceeded. False do I call it, both on account of the results to which
it has led, and also of its own intrinsic nature. In one case as well as
in the other, the starting-point was invariably some controverted point
of the reason--some opposition or other to the legitimacy of the
reason--under which term, however, little else generally was understood
than an opposition of the reason itself to some other principle equally
valid and extensive. The principal, or, rather, only way which foreign
philosophy took in this pursuit, was to reduce every thing to sensation
as opposed to reason, and to derive every thing from it alone, so as to
make the reason itself merely a secondary faculty, no original and
independent power, and ultimately nothing else than a sort of chemical
precipitate and residuum from the material impressions.[3] But however
much may be conceded to these and to the external senses, and however
great a share they may justly claim in the whole inner property of the
thinking man, still it is evident that the perception of these sensuous
impressions, the inner coherence--in short, the unity of the
consciousness in which they are collected--can never, as indeed it has
often been objected on the other side, have come into the mind from
without. This was not, however, the end which this doctrine had
exclusively, or even principally, in view. The ultimate result to which
they hoped to come by the aid of this premise was simply the negation of
the suprasensible. Whatever in any degree transcends the material
impression, or sensuous experience, as well as all possible knowledge
of, and faith therein, not merely in respect to a positive religion, but
absolutely whatever is noble, beautiful, and great--whatever can lead
the mind to, or can be referred to a something suprasensible and
divine--all this, wherever it may be found, whether in life or thought,
in history or in nature--ay, even in art itself--it was the ultimate
object of this foreign philosophy to decry, to involve in doubt, to
attack and to overthrow, and to bring down to the level of the common
and material, or to plunge it into the skeptical abyss of absolute
unbelief. The first step in this system was a seeming subordination of
reason to sensation, as a derivative of it--a mere slough which it
throws off in its transformations. Afterward, however, the warfare
against the suprasensible was waged entirely with the arms of reason
itself. The reason, indeed, which supplied these weapons was not one
scientifically cultivated and morally regulated, but thoroughly
sophistical and wholly perverted, which, however, put into requisition
all the weapons of a brilliant but skeptical wit, and moved in the
ever-varied turnings of a most ingenious and attractive style. Here,
where the question was no longer the abrogation of any single dogma of
positive religion, but where the opposition to the divine had become the
ruling tendency of philosophy, it is not easy to refrain from
characterizing it as atheistical--what, indeed, in its inmost spirit it
really was, and also historically proved itself by its results.
The other course adopted by French philosophy, in the times immediately
preceding the Revolution, was to lay aside the weapons of wit, and to
employ a burning eloquence as more likely to attract and to carry away
minds naturally noble. It had, consequently, if possible, still more
fatal results than the former. The reason, as the peculiar character of
man in a civilized state--so it was argued--is like civilized man
himself, an artificial creation, and in its essence totally unnatural;
and the savage state of nature is the only one properly adapted to man.
As the means of emancipation from an artificial and corrupt
civilization, the well-known theory of the social contract was advanced.
Our whole age has learned dearly enough the lesson, that this dogma,
practically applied on a large scale, may, indeed, lead to a despotism
of liberty, and to the lust of conquest, but can as little effect the
re-establishment of a true civilization as it can bring back the state
of nature. It would be a work of supererogation to dwell upon the
pernicious results or the intrinsic hollowness of this system. It is,
however, worth while to remark, that, in this theory also, the beginning
was made with an opposition to reason. Starting with a depreciation of
it as an artificial state and a departure from nature, at the last it
threw itself, and the whole existing frame of society, into the arms of
reason, and thereby sought to gain for the latter an unlimited
authority over all laws, both human and divine. A somewhat similar
phenomenon may every where be observed, and the same course will
invariably be taken when philosophy allows itself to set out with some
question or impugning of the reason, and, in its exclusiveness, makes
this dialectical faculty the basis of its investigations.
Modern German philosophy, wholly different from the French, both in form
and spirit, has, from its narrow metaphysical sphere, been of far less
extensive influence; and, even if it has occasionally led to anarchy, it
has been simply an anarchy of ideas. And yet, notwithstanding its
different character, a similar course of inversion is noticeable in it.
Beginning with a strict, not to say absolute, limitation of the reason,
and with an opposition to its assumptions, it also ended in its
investiture with supreme authority--not to say in its deification. The
founder[4] of the modern philosophy of Germany commenced his teaching
with a lengthy demonstration that the reason is totally incapable of
attaining to a knowledge of the suprasensible, and that, by attempting
it, it does but involve itself in endless disputes and difficulties. And
then, on this assumed incompetency of the reason for the suprasensible
was based the doctrine of the need, the necessity of faith--nay, faith
itself.[5] But this arbitrary faith appeared to have but little reliance
on itself; and, when closely viewed, turned out to be the old reason,
which, after being solemnly displaced from the front of the
philosophical palace, was now again, slightly altered and disguised, set
up behind it as a useful but humble postern. Dissatisfied with such a
system, the philosophical _Me_ (Ich, Ego) chose another and a new road,
that of absolute science,[6] in which it might, from the very first, do
as it pleased--might bluster and fluster at will. But soon it became
plain, that in this idealistic doctrine there was no room for any but a
subjective reason-god devoid of all objective reality. In it the
absolute Ego or Me of each individual was substituted for and identified
with the divine. Against this certainty of the “Me,” therefore, there
arose first of all a suspicion, and lastly the reproach of atheism.
But, in truth, we ought to be extremely scrupulous in applying this term
in all cases where the question does not turn on a rude denial of the
truth, but rather on a highly erroneous confusion of ideas. At least, it
would be well if, in such a case, we were to distinguish the imputed
atheism by the epithet of scientific, in order to indicate thereby that
the censure and the name apply in truth only to the error of the system,
and not to the character of the author. For with such a scientific
atheism, the sternest stoicism in the moral doctrine may, as indeed was
actually the case here, be easily combined. Quite weary, however, of the
transcendent vacuity of this ideal reason and mere dialectical
reasoning, German philosophy now took a different road. It turned more
to the side of nature,[7] in whose arms she threw herself in perfect
admiration, thinking to find there alone life and the fullness thereof.
Now, although this new philosophy of nature has borne many noble fruits
of science, still even it has been haunted by that delusive phantom of
the Absolute, and it is not free from liability to the reproach of a
pantheistic deification of Nature. But properly and accurately speaking,
it was not nature itself that was set up as the supreme object of
veneration, but this same phantom of reason, which was taken as the
basis and fundamental principle of nature. It was, in short, nothing but
the old metaphysical one-times-one[8] in a somewhat novel application
and more vivid form. Here, therefore, also did the system commence with
a seeming disgust at the reason, and with a subordination of it to
nature, in order to conclude with the absolute principle of the reason.
Viewed, however, as a philosophical science of nature, it has rather to
answer for some occasional errors and perverse extravagances, than for
any thoroughly consequent and systematic carrying out of the ingrafted
error into all its parts. Moreover, a broad distinction must undoubtedly
be drawn between its different advocates and promulgators. In these last
days German philosophy has, in a measure at least, reverted again into
the empty vacuum of _the absolute_ idea.[9] The latter, indeed, and the
idol of absolute reason which is enshrined therein, is no more a mere
inward conception, but is objectively understood and set up as the
fundamental principle of all entity. But still, when we consider how the
essence of mind is expressly made to consist in negation, and how also
the spirit of negation is predominant through the whole system, a still
worse substitution appears to have taken place, inasmuch as, instead of
the living God, this spirit of negation, so opposed to Him, is, in
erroneous abstraction, set up and made a god of. Here, therefore, as
well as elsewhere, a metaphysical lie assumes the place of a divine
reality.
Thus, then, do we every where observe a strange internal correspondence
and affinity between the several aberrations of our age. Here the
remotest mental extremes, which externally seem to repel each other,
suddenly converge at the same point of delusive light, or rather of
brilliant darkness. Instances of this correspondence startle us where we
least expect to meet with them. An English poet,[10] perhaps the
greatest, certainly the most remarkable poet of our age, in his tragic
delineation of the oldest fratricide, has portrayed the prime mover of
this deed, the enemy of the human race, and the king of the bottomless
pit, as the bold censurer of the divine order of things, and the head of
all discontented spirits, and leader of the opposition of the whole
creation. In this light he has painted him with unparalleled boldness,
and with such moving and astonishing truthfulness, that all previous
descriptions by the greatest poets seem but arbitrary and unreal
phantoms when compared with this portrait, which was evidently a
favorite sketch, for the author’s secret partiality betrays itself in
the skill and pains with which he has lavished on this dark figure all
the magic colors of his fancy. Thus, then, in this poetic creation, the
same hostile principle--the same absolute, _i.e._, evil spirit of
negation and contradiction that forms the consummation of the errors of
German philosophy, notwithstanding its abstract unintelligibility--is
enthroned amid the disordered system. And so, by a strange law of
“pre-established harmony,” the anti-Christian poet and these
anti-Christian thinkers unexpectedly meet together at the point of a
spurious sublimity. In any case, however, this last instance forms the
third stage of idealistic confusion, and certainly the last grade of
scientific atheism.
Now, briefly to recapitulate my own convictions and my view of the
relation subsisting between the philosophy of life which I propose to
set before you, and the prevalent philosophy and science of the age, the
following few remarks will suffice. I honor and admire the discoveries
so pregnant with important results which natural philosophy has made in
our days, but especially the gigantic strides which the study of nature
in France has taken; so far, at least, as they contain and have
established a real and solid advance of human science; so far, too, as I
am acquainted with them, and in my sphere understand them. On the other
hand, I can not but take exception to that admixture of materialism
which has been infused into them by the ruling philosophical system of a
previous age, which in France has still so many followers. I honor, too,
and love German science, with its diligent and comprehensive research.
Nay, I value the natural philosophy of Germany even still more than that
of France, since, while it adopts the same great discoveries, it views
them in a more spiritual light. As for that idealistic jargon, however,
which runs parallel and is interwoven with it, on which, indeed, it was
originally based, and from which even now it is any thing but
clear--this I can not regard in any other light than, what it really is,
an intellectual delusion of the most pernicious kind, and one which will
inevitably produce the most destructive and fatal consequences on the
human mind.
What has been now said will suffice for our notice of the opposing
systems of philosophy. Henceforward we shall have no need to turn our
looks to this side, but shall be able to give our attention solely and
calmly to the development of that which I have already announced, and
have now to communicate to you. Previously, however, to entering upon
this subject, it seemed to me advisable, by contrasting the false
starting-point with the true center of philosophy, to set the latter
before you in a clearer and distincter light.
The dialectical faculty of abstraction is naturally the predominant one,
and the most completely evolved in the thinking mind. Accordingly, most
thinkers have set it up as the basis of their speculations, in order to
arrive the more rapidly at the desired end of an absolute science; or,
if the habit of mind be more disposed that way, at an absolute
_not-knowing_, and the rejection of all certainty; which, in the main,
is quite as false, and, in this respect, identical with the former. But
it is not sufficient to follow any such a partial course, and to start
from any one side merely of the human consciousness. On the right and
sure road of a complete and thorough investigation, our first duty is to
study the human consciousness in its fullness and living development, in
all its faculties and powers. And then, in the second place, when, by
thus assuming a position in the center, man has enabled himself to take
a complete survey of the whole, he may unquestionably proceed to inquire
what kind and what degree of knowledge, with such a consciousness, he is
capable of attaining, both of the external world and of the
suprasensible, and how far the latter is conceivable and its existence
possible. Now, just as generally the soul is the principle of all life
in nature, so is the thinking soul the center of the human
consciousness. But in the thinking soul is comprised the reason which
distinguishes, combines, and infers, no less than the fancy which
devises, invents, and suggests. Standing in the center between the two,
the thinking soul embraces both faculties. But it also forms the
turning-point of transition between the understanding and the will; and,
as the connecting link, fills up the gulf which otherwise would lie
between and divide the two. It comprises, also, all sorts and degrees of
conceptions, from the absolutely necessary, precisely definite, and
permanently unchangeable, down to those which arise and pass away half
involuntarily--from those in no degree clearly developed up to those
which have been advanced to the highest clearness of the
understanding--those which are witnessed with a calm indifference, and
those also which excite a gentle longing or kindle a burning resolve.
The thinking soul is the common store-house where the whole of these
conceptions are successively lodged. Indeed, to describe it in general
terms, it is but the inner pulse of thought, corresponding to the
pulsation of the blood in the living body.
This general description, it must be confessed, is very far from being
an adequate explanation of the matter, and at best does but imperfectly
convey our meaning. But perhaps a different line of thought, however
bold and hazardous it may seem, may bring us far more simply to the
point at present in view--a more accurate description, namely, of the
peculiar property of the human mind, and of the characteristic feature
which distinguishes man from other beings equally finite, but endowed in
the same manner with consciousness. That the rational soul, or the
reason, distinguishes him from the brutes, is a remark common and trite
enough. But this is only one aspect of the matter: and must we always
cast our looks downward, and never upward? What I mean is this:
supposing that there are other created spirits and finite intelligences
besides men, might not the comparison of their purely spiritual
consciousness with man’s serve, perhaps in an eminent degree, to
elucidate the distinctive properties of the human consciousness in that
other aspect which is too commonly neglected? I am far from intending to
make this matter a subject of investigation in the present place. I take
it merely as an hypothesis, warranted, indeed, by universal tradition,
and solely as an aid to elucidate the matter in hand. Universal,
however, I may well call this tradition, since, agreeing in the main
with what Holy Writ asserts, the oldest and most civilized nations of
antiquity (among whom I need only mention the Egyptians, and especially
the Persians and the Hindoos) have admitted, as a well-established fact,
the existence of such finite intelligences and created spirits,
invisible indeed to man, but not altogether alien to him. And as for the
Greeks and Romans, if occasionally they allude to the genius of Socrates
as something strange and singular, this was only because the wise
Athenian spoke of this subject in peculiar language, and referred to it
more habitually than was the wont of his countrymen and cotemporaries.
Otherwise it was the general belief, both of Greeks and Romans, that
every man has his guardian spirit or genius. Now this hypothesis being
once admitted to be possible, let us inquire in what light were these
ancients accustomed to regard, and what ought we to conceive of the
peculiar nature of these spiritual beings in conformity with the
representation of so universal a tradition?
Now, in the first place, they have always been thought of as pure
spiritual beings, having no such gross terrestrial body as man has. At
least, if they were supposed to require and possess a body as the organ
and medium of their spiritual operations, it was considered to be of a
special kind--an ethereal body of light, but invisible to the human eye.
But this incorporeity is little more than a negative quality. A more
positive and a profounder distinction lies perhaps in this, that these
pure spiritual beings are wholly free from that weakness of character,
or frailty, which is so peculiar to man. That pervading internal
mutability, that undecided vacillation between doing and letting alone,
that reciprocation between effort and relaxation--the wide gulf between
volition and execution, the thought and the carrying into
effect--nothing of all this admits of being applied or transferred to
these pure spiritual beings without contradicting the very idea of their
essence. It is thus only, or not at all, that we can conceive of them.
Coming and going like the lightning, and rapid as the light, they never
grow weary of their endless activity. They need no rest, except the
spiritual contemplation which constitutes their essence. All their
thoughts are marked with unity and identity. With them the conception is
at the same time a deed, and the purpose and the execution are
simultaneous. Every thing, too, in them has the stamp of eternity. This
prerogative, however, has, it must be confessed, its disadvantages. When
once they have deviated from the true center, they go on forever in
their devious course.
But still, all this is little more than a description of the whole idea
which I have allowed myself, merely with a view of employing it as a
passage to the point which is at present in question. That purpose was,
on the supposition of the existence of such superior beings, accurately
to indicate which of man’s powers, or faculties of mind and soul, may
rightly be attributed to them. Now, to my mind, the distinction is very
strikingly suggested in the well-known sentiment of one of our famous
poets. Thus he addresses man--“Thy knowledge thou sharest with superior
beings;” superior, for in the clearness of their eternal science they
undoubtedly stand far higher than men: and then he continues, “But art
thou hast alone.”[11] But, now, what else is art than fancy become
visible, and assuming a bodily shape, or word, or sound? It is,
therefore, this nimble-footed, many-shaped, ever-inventive fancy, which
forms the dangerous prerogative of man, and can not be ascribed to
these pure spiritual beings. And as little justifiable would it be to
ascribe to them that human reason, with its employment of means, and its
slow processes of deduction and comparison. Instead of this, they
possess the intuitive understanding, in which to see and to understand
are simultaneous and identical. If, then, in an accurate sense of the
terms, neither fancy nor reason belongs to them, it would further be
wrong to attribute them a soul as distinct from the mind or spirit, and
as being rather a passive faculty of inward productiveness, and change,
and internal growth. Briefly to recapitulate what has been said: The
existence of the brutes is simple, because in them the soul is
completely mixed up and merged in the organic body, and is one with it;
on the destruction of the latter it reverts to the elements, or is
absorbed in the general soul of nature. Twofold, however, is the nature
of created spirits, who besides this ethereal body of light are nothing
but mind or spirit; but threefold is the nature of man, as consisting of
spirit, soul, and body.[12] And this triple constitution and property,
this threefold life of man, is, indeed, not in itself that pre-eminence,
although it is closely connected with that superior excellence which
ennobles and distinguishes man from all other created beings. I allude
to that prerogative by which he alone of all created beings is invested
with the Divine image and likeness. This threefold principle is the
simple basis of all philosophy; and the philosophical system which is
constructed on such a foundation is the philosophy of life, which
therefore has even “words of life.” It is no idle speculation, and no
unintelligible hypothesis. It is not more difficult, and needs not to be
more obscure, than any other discourse on spiritual subjects; but it can
and may be as easy and as clear as the reading of a writing, the
observation of nature, and the study of history. For it is, in truth,
nothing else than a simple theory of spiritual life, drawn from life
itself, and the simple understanding thereof. If, however, it becomes
abstract and unintelligible, this is invariably a consequence, and, for
the most part, an infallible proof of its having fallen into error. When
in thought we place before us the whole composite human individual,
then, after spirit and soul, the organic body is the third constituent,
or the third element out of which, in combination with the other two,
the whole man consists and is compounded. But the structure of the
organic body, its powers and laws, must be left to physical science to
investigate. Philosophy is the science of consciousness alone. It has,
therefore, primarily to occupy itself with soul and spirit, or mind, and
must carefully guard against transgressing its limits in any respect.
But the third constituent beside mind and soul, in which these two
jointly carry on their operations, needs not always, as indeed the above
instance proves, to be an organic body. In other relations of life, this
third, in which both are united, or which they in unison produce, may be
the word, the deed, life itself, or the divine order on which both are
dependent. These, then, are the subjects which I have proposed for
consideration. But in order to complete this scale of life, I will
further observe--triple is the nature of man, but fourfold is the human
consciousness. For the spirit or mind, like the soul, divides and falls
asunder; or, rather, is split and divided into two powers, or
halves--the mind, namely, into understanding and will, the soul into
reason and fancy. These are the four extreme points, or, if the
expression be preferred, the four quarters of the inner world of
consciousness. All other faculties of the soul, or powers of mind, are
merely subordinate ramifications of the four principal branches; but the
living center of the whole is the thinking soul.