In the first Lecture our attention was directed to the thinking soul as
the center of the whole human consciousness; while in the second, I
attempted fully to set before you, and to delineate, the loving soul as
the true middle point of the moral life. The object of our present
disquisition will be to ascertain the part which the soul takes in the
knowledge to which man is able to attain. The general element, indeed,
which the soul furnishes as its contribution to human knowledge, is not
indeed very difficult to determine; but when we come to details, there
is much that requires to be well weighed and pondered.
Now, the soul furnishes the cognitive mind with language for the
expression of its cognitions; and it is even the distinctive character
of human knowledge, that it depends on language, which not only forms an
essential constituent of it, but is also its indispensable organ.
Language, however, the discursive, but at the same time also the vividly
figurative language of man, is entirely the product of the soul, which
in its production first of all, and pre-eminently, manifests its
fruitful and creative energy. In this wonderful creation the two
constituent faculties of the soul--fancy and reason--play an equal and
co-ordinate part. From the fancy it derives the whole of its figurative
and ornamental portion, and also its melodious rhythm and animated tone.
And, moreover, its inmost fundamental web and the primary natural roots
belong also to man’s original deep feeling of sympathy with outward
nature, and therefore to fancy, unless perhaps some would prefer to
ascribe them at once to the soul itself, as still more profoundly and
intimately akin to nature. To the reason, on the other hand, language
owes its logical order, and its grammatical forms and laws of
construction. Which part is the more important, or more highly to be
esteemed, is a question whose solution will vary according to the point
of view which in any case may be adopted as fundamental, or to the
different relations under which the whole shall be considered. Both
elements, however, are equally essential and indispensable. In all the
instances already considered of the reciprocal relation of reason and
fancy we found almost invariably a decided preponderance of one or the
other; but neither there nor elsewhere will reason and fancy be found
combining in such harmonious proportions, or working so thoroughly
together, or contributing so equally to the common product, as in the
wonderful production of language, and in language itself. And this is
the case, not only with language in general, but also with all its
species and noblest applications. Now this dependence of the cognitive
mind on its organ of language, discursive indeed, but yet almost always
figurative--this close and intimate connection between man’s knowledge
and his speech--is even the characteristic mark of human intelligence.
But the fault of most of the mere speculative thinkers lies even in
this, that they abandon the standard of humanity, by seeking to wrest,
and to conquer an unhuman, if we may so say, _i.e._, a wholly
independent and absolute knowledge, which, however, it is not in their
power to attain to, and in pursuit of which they lose the certainty
which lies within their reach, and so at last grasp nothing but an
absolute not-knowing, or an endless controversy. If, as we can not but
suppose, a communication does take place among those spiritual beings,
who in intelligence are preferred to man, then must the immediate speech
of these spirits be very different from our half-sensuous half-rational,
half-earthly half-heavenly language of nature and humanity. For, even as
spiritual, it can not but be immediate--never employing figure and those
grammatical forms which human language first analyzes, to form again out
of them new and fresh compounds. According to the two properties which
constitute the essence of mind [_geist_], it can only be a
communication, a transmission, an awakening or immission of
thought--some wholly definite thought--by the will, or else the
communicating, exciting, and producing by the thought of some equally
definite volition. It may be that something of this, or at least
something not absolutely dissimilar, occurs in human operations. It is
possible that this immediate language of mind, as a secret and invisible
principle of life--as a rare and superior element--is contained also in
human language, and, as it were, veiled in the outer body, which,
however, becomes visible only in the effects of a luminous and lofty
eloquence, in which is displayed the magic force of language and of a
ruling and commanding thought. Taken on the whole, however, human
speech is no such immediate and magically-working language of mind or
spirit. It is rather a figurative language of nature, in which its great
permanent hieroglyphics are mirrored again in miniature, and in rapid
succession. And it retains this natural and figurative character even in
the ordinary form of rational dialogue, which must observe so many
varieties and details of grammar, of which superior intelligences have
no need for their immediate intercommunion, but in which, as in all
other human things, many greater or less grammatical oversights creep in
and give rise to important consequences in science and thought, and also
in life itself. But in the next place, language is intimately connected
and co-ordinate with tradition, whether sacred or profane, with all the
recorded fruits of human speculation and inquiry. And as the word is the
root out of which the whole stem of man’s transmitted knowledge, or
tradition, has grown up, with all its branches and offshoots, so, too,
in the eloquent speech, in the elegant composition, and even in all
lofty internal meditation--which form, as it were, the leaves, flowers,
and fruits of this goodly tree of living tradition--it is again the word
by which the whole is carried on and ultimately perfected.
But now, in order to develop still more completely, and more accurately
to ascertain the part which the soul, as the creator of language,
contributes to human cognition and knowledge, it will be necessary to
examine nicely the essence of reason, and especially in relation to its
collateral and closely-connected, but subordinate faculties. Above all,
it will be advisable to determine, as accurately and carefully as
possible, the difference between reason and understanding. For otherwise
its proper share in this common fruit and joint product of human
knowledge can not be ascribed to each power of mind and to each faculty
of the soul, nor their proper places and due limits in the whole be
severally assigned.
The faculties, then, of the soul, which stand in the same close
relationship to the reason that the senses and the instincts or passions
do to the fancy, are memory and conscience. Now, memory may be
considered either as a gift, according to its greater or less power of
comprehension and retention, or as an art to strengthen and facilitate
its operations by artificial means of every kind, or as a problem to
determine how far the exercise of it constitutes an essential part of
man’s intellectual culture and development. But it is not in any of
these points of view that we have here to consider it, but simply in its
essential conjunction with the reason and rationality, which appear to
be dependent on this union.
In other words, we have to regard the memory principally as the inward
clew of recollection and of association in the consciousness, in the
ever-flowing stream of thought and interchange of ideas. We may, or, I
might rather say, we must, forget infinitely many things. But this
connecting thread of memory being once broken, or destroyed, or lost,
the reason invariably suffers with it, and is injured, or its exercise
limited, or, lastly, is rendered totally confused and extinct. Whenever,
in the extreme decrepitude of old age, memory fails, reason ceases in an
equal degree to be active and energetic, and is supplanted by more or
less of a foolish doting. In sleep, no doubt, consciousness is regularly
interrupted, but still it is immediately restored again on awaking. If
the contrary were to take place, if, as is the foundation of many an
ingenious story among the poets, when suddenly awakened we could not
recall our former memory and our knowledge, then should we be
continually falling into mistakes about ourselves and lose all identity
of consciousness. Some such violent interruption or rent in the inward
memory of self-consciousness is invariably to be found in madness, and
is a leading symptom of it. And here I would merely call upon you to
observe a further illustration of what has been already more than once
pointed out. The triple principle of body, soul, and spirit is again
repeated and manifested even in this sad state of mental alienation, and
in all its different forms and species. In true lunacy or
monomania--which is generally harmless and quiet--a radically false but
fixed idea is often associated, and is not inconsistent with an
extraordinary shrewdness on all other points. Nevertheless, this fixed
erroneous idea, being made the center of all other thoughts and of the
whole consciousness, produces that confusion and that disorganization of
the mind which characterizes this form of a disordered intellect. But in
true madness, or frenzy, the seat of the disease is in the soul, which,
having broken loose from all the ties and restraints of reason and
rational habit, appears to have fallen a prey to some hostile, wild, and
raging force of nature. In idiotcy, lastly, especially where it is
inborn and conjoined with the perfection of the external organs of
sense, we must assume the existence of some faulty organization, some
defect in the brain, or whatever else is the unknown but higher organ
both of thought and life. The source of the last is altogether physical
and corporeal, whereas moral causes often co-operate in the highest
degree to the production of the former two. The deaf and dumb, if left
wholly to themselves, would, in all probability, belong always to the
third class, since, with the loss of speech they are simultaneously
deprived of a leading condition of rationality. And, accordingly, the
first object with those who undertake the difficult task of training
these unfortunate beings is to furnish them with another language, by
means of signs, instead of the ordinary audible speech of which the
accident of birth has deprived them. This instance, therefore, is only a
further confirmation of what I have already advanced, that the
intellectual character is, in every respect, most intimately dependent
on the faculty of speech. A more minute examination of these matters
belongs to physical science. Nevertheless, our passing remark on the
triple character of this psychological evil, or misfortune, will not, I
hope, be found inappropriate here, as affording, even in this narrow and
special sphere of a disordered intellect, a further illustration of the
general principle of our theory of the human consciousness.
Now, the outer and especially the higher senses may, by reason of the
supremacy of the fancy, to which they are subordinate, be termed, with
propriety, so many applied faculties of imagination. In the same way we
might give the same designation to the inclinations and impulses--the
good as well as the evil--if, perhaps, it would not be more accurate to
name them an imagination passed into life. In a similar way the memory
may be considered as an applied reason which in the application has
become quite mechanical and habitual; for unquestionably the logical
arrangement is the chief quality in memory. From this it derives both
its value and scientific utility. On the other hand, there are certain
acquired mental aptitudes which, though originally they can not be
formed without the voluntary exercise of memory, become at last a
completely unconscious and mechanical operation--the facility, for
instance, of learning by heart, or the acquisition of foreign languages,
or catching up of musical tunes. In all these the reason has become an
instinct, just as the instinct of animals, their artistic impulse and
skill, may be designated an unconscious analogy of reason.
In this subordinate faculty of the memory, the reason, agreeably to its
specific character, exhibits itself as a useful and ministering agent.
In conscience, on the contrary, as its highest function, it assumes a
somewhat negative character. But in both relations, whether as a
ministerial or negative faculty of thought, the reason, in its place, is
of the highest value. If occasionally we have seemed to detract from and
to limit its importance, such remarks have been called forth by the
undue and overweening authority which the present age would claim for
the reason. This is the sole end and meaning of our opposition, which is
directed exclusively against that spurious reason which claims to be
supreme, and arrogates to itself a productive power; whereas, in truth,
it ought not to be the one, and can never be the other. The thought
which distinguishes, divides, and analyzes, and that also which
combines, infers, and concludes--which, as such, make up the faculty of
reason--may be so carried on in indefinite and infinite process, as
ultimately to get entirely rid of its object-matter. It is this endless
thinking, without a correspondent object, that is the source of
scientific error, which, as in all cases it arises solely out of this
vacuum in thinking, can only lead to a thinking of nothing--a cogitation
absolutely null and false. Far different is the case where a memory,
stored with the rich materials of intellectual experience, forms the
useful basis of man’s studies and pursuits, or where, as is the case
with the apperception of the conscience, the object, even while it is
less extensive and manifold, is the more highly and more intensely
important. Now, as the reason generally is not only a combining and
connecting, but also a distinguishing faculty of thought, so likewise
the conscience is a similar power of drawing distinctions in the thought
and in the internal consciousness, though in a higher and special
degree, and also in a different form from that which, in all other
instances, is discursive reason. For it is by a simple feeling and
immediate perception that the conscience, in obedience to the voice
within man, draws between right and wrong, or good and evil, the
greatest of all distinctions. This voice of conscience, while it makes
itself heard among all nations, nevertheless, under the ever and
widely-varying influence of ruling ideas of the age, and of education,
and of custom, speaks in different times and places, in differing tones
and dialects. But these differences extend only to subordinate matters.
The primary and essential point remains unchanged and never to be
mistaken; the same dominant tone and key-note sounds through all these
variations--the common tongue and language of human nature and of an
untaught and innate fear of God. This fact has led many to regard the
conscience as the principal source of all higher and divine truth; with
whom I can readily concur, so long as they do not mean thereby that it
is the only source, to the exclusion of every other.
Now it is surely significant that in German--and all languages furnish
numerous instances of such significant allusions--the word and the name
of reason[17] is derived from that internal perception of the conscience
which constitutes its highest function. What, then, it may be asked, is
perceived by this wonderful perception, that before it the will inwardly
retires and withdraws even its earlier and most cherished wishes? The
warning voice it is called, in every age and nation. It is, as it were,
one who within us warns and remonstrates. It is not, therefore, our own
Me, but as it were another, and, as a vague feeling would suggest, of a
higher and a different nature. And now by its light that earlier and
retiring will appears in like manner as another self--a lower false and
seducing Ego--an alien power which would hurry away ourselves and our
proper Me. But between the two--this higher warning voice on the one
hand, and this constraining, compelling force on the other--there stands
a power which is free to decide between them. And this, as soon as the
decomposing process is finished, which in the as yet undecided will, or
its mixed states, separates and distinguishes between the good voice and
the evil inclination--remains to us as our own Ego and our proper self.
This inward voice, and the immediate perception of it, is an anchor on
which the vessel of man’s existence rides safely on the stormy sea of
life, and the ebb and the flow of the will. In other words, it is a
divine focus, or a sacred stay of truth. But further, it must be
observed, that the understanding of this inner perception, as I have
just painted it, does not belong to the reason, to which alone the
perceiving can itself be ascribed. The true intelligence thereof--its
higher interpretation, and explanation, which adds to it, or recognizes
in it a reference to the divine--must, even because it is an
intellectual act, be ascribed to the understanding.
The present, therefore, is the place for a close and accurate
investigation of the difference between reason and understanding--a
question of the highest importance for the whole theory of the
consciousness, and its true philosophical interpretation, as well as
absolutely for every branch of science. For this purpose I shall follow
a line of thought somewhat unusual, perhaps, but which on that account
is even the more likely to carry us quickly to the desired end, and to
place the distinction in a full and clear light. I lately employed the
somewhat hypothetical comparison between man and a superior order of
intelligences, as a means of illustrating the faculty of the fancy as
the peculiar property of the human consciousness. And now I would go a
step higher, and from the acknowledged characteristics of the divine
intelligence, derive the means of determining the different functions of
the human consciousness, and of setting the relations they stand in, not
only to one another, but also to a superior intellect. In this course,
however, I shall take nothing for granted but what is well known and
generally intelligible. That God is a Spirit, is the concurrent voice of
all men, wherever a belief in the one God is professed, or the idea of a
Divine Being is diffused. God is a Spirit, and therefore an omniscient
intellect and an all-mighty will are unanimously attributed to Him. This
axiom, with which a child even of the most ordinary intelligence can
associate some kind of meaning, is at the same time the fundamental
principle which is involved in all that the deepest thinker can know of
God. The same faculties, therefore, that make up the essence and the two
functions of created spirits--understanding and will--may, without
hesitation, be attributed to the uncreated Spirit; and although this
attribution must be understood according to the exalted standard of the
infinite distance between the creature and the Creator, still it is made
properly and not merely by way of figure.
But now, in Holy Writ, and in the language of pious adoration and
prayer, among other nations as well as the Jewish, a multitude of
properties, faculties, and senses are ascribed to the Deity in perfectly
anthropomorphic descriptions and imagery. Thus mention is even made of
His eye, His ear, His guiding hand, His mighty arm, and the omnipotent
breath of His mouth. In so far as these are admitted to be mere images
there can be no objection to them, and it is not easy to see how they
can lead to any abuse. And this is equally the case even with such
expressions as it is plain can only be applicable to the Deity in a
figurative sense--for instance, when human passions are ascribed to
Him--since, if employed properly and literally, they all involve more or
less of imperfection. And in the same way, where no forgetfulness is
possible or conceivable, it can only be in a figurative sense that it is
allowable to speak of memory. And with still less propriety can the
faculty of conscience, in its human sense, be ascribed to God. His
balance of justice--His regulative thought--is something very different
from our mere sense of right. To ascribe conscience to the Deity would
be to confound the judge on the bench with the criminal at the bar. Even
the first man, as long as he was yet innocent, knew not conscience. For
the sense of guilt, and the faculty of perceiving it, must at the very
earliest have come simultaneously with the transgression itself, if it
was not, rather, consequent upon it. In the application to the Deity of
such figurative language, great license is of course allowable. The
question, however, which concerns us in a philosophical point of view is
whether, in the same proper sense as understanding and will, so also the
other faculties which are so peculiarly distinctive of man--reason and
fancy, or the soul--can be attributed to the Divine Being. Now it is at
once evident that, far beyond all other figurative expressions, it would
be perfectly unsuitable to ascribe fancy to God. We feel clearly enough
that by so doing we should be leaving the safe ground of truth for the
treacherous domain of mythology. That inner mine of intellectual riches
which man in his weak measure finds in the faculty of fancy, is, in the
case of the Divine Being, furnished once and for all by His omnipotent
will; which of itself creates and produces its object, and, unlike
created beings, is not confined to any limited data or to a choice
between them. Here, then, the Almighty will itself is the full fatherly
heart--embracing, nourishing, and sustaining all creatures--or even the
living maternal womb of eternal generation, and requires no new and
special faculty for this end. In the next place, as to the soul: the
expression of the soul of God does, indeed, occur in some of the less
known Christian writers of the first centuries of the church, but it
soon fell into disuse--from a fear, probably, of its leading to a
confusion of idea, and being identified with a mere soul of the world.
But however that may be, the soul is simply a passive faculty, and
therefore, on that account alone, is highly inappropriate as applied to
God. That third property which in the Divine nature is associated with
an omniscient intelligence or understanding, and an omnipotent will, can
not be called the soul of God, but is even the spirit of love, in which
both understanding and will unite and are one. And if this third
property be added to the axiomatic definition of the Deity already
alluded to, then in the proposition, God is a spirit of love, the double
predicate in its essential import involves all that man in general, and
even the profoundest thinker, can properly know of God. All besides is a
mere expansion or elucidation of this primary and fundamental thought.
Moreover, if it is not allowable to ascribe fancy or a soul to God, so
neither can He be spoken of as possessing reason as an essential faculty
in the same proper sense as understanding and will are attributed to
Him. God is indeed the author of reason; and the sound reason is even
that which adheres to the center of truth, as He, in creating it,
designed and ordered. But from this it does not by any means follow that
He is himself the reason which He has created, or that He is even one
with it. Were it so, then the advocates of absolute science, the
rationalists, would be in the right; in such a case, the knowledge of
God were in truth a science of reason, inasmuch as like can only be
known by like.
But now, if it be not reason, but rather understanding, that, with the
co-operation of all the other faculties both of soul and spirit, is the
proper organ for acquiring a knowledge of the divine, and the only means
by which man can arrive at a right apprehension thereof; then is the
knowledge of God simply and entirely a science of experience, although
of a high and peculiar kind, by reason of the finiteness and frailty of
man as compared with such an object. As the fancy is the apprehension or
seizing of an object, the reason a combination or distinction, so the
understanding is the faculty which penetrates, and, in its highest
degree, clearly sees through its object. We understand a phenomenon, a
sensation, an object, when we have discerned its inmost meaning, its
peculiar character and proper significance. And the same is the case
even when this object be a speech and communication addressed to us--a
word or discourse given us to extract its meaning. If we have discerned
the design which is involved in such a communication, its real meaning
and purpose, then may we be said to have understood it, even though some
minutiæ in the expression may still remain unintelligible, which, as not
belonging essentially to the whole, we put aside and leave unconsidered.
There are, therefore, many steps and degrees in understanding--very
different phases and species of it. A familiar instance will, perhaps,
elucidate this matter. We will suppose the case of an extremely rare and
remarkable, or, perhaps, hitherto wholly unknown, plant, brought to our
country from a foreign clime. The naturalist, having examined its
structure and organs, assigns it to a particular class of the higher
botanical genera, where it either belongs to some lower species or forms
an exception. The chemist, again, when the plant is brought before his
notice, conjectures, from certain other characters, that it is formed of
such or such elementary parts; while the physician, on other grounds,
concludes that in certain diseases it will probably serve as a remedy,
equally if not more efficacious than other herbs or roots previously
employed for that purpose. Now, if the two last have judged correctly,
if their conjectures be confirmed by trial and experiment, then will all
the three have understood the plant, and each in his own department have
learned and discerned its intrinsic character. Again: how slowly, step
by step and gradually, do men attain to the understanding of some
ancient, foreign, and difficult language. It commences, perhaps, with
the long and difficult deciphering of a manuscript or inscription, with
an alphabet incomplete or imperfectly known, and after much painful
labor the final discovery of its true meaning is made perhaps by some
fortunate accident which all at once throws a full light upon it. A
remarkable instance, in our own days, will both elucidate the matter,
and serve at the same time to prove how a higher Providence regulates
even the progress of science. For more than a millenium and a half had
the hieroglyphics of an ancient race remained unintelligible to and
undeciphered by a posterity of aliens, when at last, amid the recent
commotions and tempests of the political world, a happy accident brought
the secret to light. Who can forget the brilliant and dazzling
expectations which hailed the departure of the French expedition for
Egypt? How was all Europe electrified at the bold project of planting at
the foot of the Pyramids a colony of European art and civilization. The
enterprise itself failed, and was soon forgotten amid still more
important events and greater revolutions; and the humble monument with
its triple inscription, which was carried away from Egypt, is all, if we
may so speak, that remains of it. But that has unquestionably founded a
great epoch in the peaceful empire of science.[18] For a whole
generation the learned labored to decipher it with but slow and very
imperfect success, when at last a happy coincidence presents itself, and
suddenly the key is found. And although of the seven hundred secret
symbols, scarcely more than one hundred are as yet made out, still even
these have opened a wide vista into the spacious domain of the dark
_origines_ of man’s history. And this was effected at a time when man
had just learned to put together a few characters of the great alphabet
of nature, and here and there to decipher a word or two of its
hieroglyphical language, while at the same time streams of historical
knowledge began to flow down from the remotest antiquity of the human
race, confirming and setting in the clearest light the best of all that
we had before possessed, and exciting a hope that we might, perhaps, be
also able to understand the obscure hieroglyphics of our own age, and
the fearful war of minds which is commencing in it.
Such is the course of things, or, rather, the higher Providence that
rules therein; and it was to this, chiefly, that I wished to call your
attention by this digression. Thus slow and gradual, but permanent, are
the progressive steps in the growth and development of true human
science, which is founded on experience--the internal as well as
external, the higher as well as the lower--and on tradition, language,
and revelation. But, on the contrary, that false, or, as I termed it at
the outset, that unhuman and absolute knowledge, as it pretends to
embrace all at once, and by one step to place us in full possession of
the whole sum of human knowledge, so, ever fluctuating between being and
non-being, it soon dissolves into thin air, and leaves nothing behind
but a baseless void of absolute non-knowing. Ill would it fare with the
knowledge of God and of divine things, if they were left to be
discovered, and, as it were, first established by human reason. Even
though, in such a case, the intellectual edifice were never so well
built and compact, still, as it had originally issued out of man’s
thoughts, it would be ever shaking before the doubt whether it were any
thing better than an idea, or had any reality out of the human mind.
For this doubt is the foundation of all idealism, to which, often
recurring under differing forms of error, it does but give a fresh
creation and new shape. Even from this side, consequently, it is
apparent that no living certainty and complete reality is attainable by
it. Easy, in truth, were it from this position to evolve the ideas of
the illimitable, and the infinite, and the absolute; and of such
developments there is no lack. But they are at best but pure negations,
which do not serve in the least to explain that which is most necessary
for us to understand. Curious, indeed, should I be to see the process by
which, out of this pet metaphysical idea of the absolute, any one
positive notion of God--His patience, for example, and long-suffering--is
to be deduced. Strange, too, must be the way in which alone it could
carry out the proof that the absolute Deity, or as man prefers, it
seems, to say, _the Absolute_, can not dispense with the possession of
this attribute of patience, on which, however, before all others, it is
important for man to insist. Moreover, this character of absoluteness
is applied to the Deity in a manner which is altogether false and
erroneous. That God, in the mode of his existence, is unlimited--that
the First Cause is not dependent on, and can not be qualified by any
other being, is self-evident, and is nothing but a mere identical
proposition. But this character does not admit of being applied to
his inner essence, or His essential attributes in relation to man and
the whole creation. Wo to all men, nay, we might rather say, wo to
all created beings, if God were really absolute--if, for instance,
His justice, which, however, is the first and principal of all His
attributes, were not manifoldly modified, limited, and conditioned by
His goodness, His mercy, and His patience. Before such a justice of
God, if it were at once to make such an unconditional manifestation of
itself, the whole world in terror would sink in dust and ashes. But it
is not so. Man does hope--he must believe--ay, we may go on and add,
man does know, that the divine justice is not unconditional, but is in
an eminent degree limited by His fatherly love and goodness.
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.
But let us now turn from the “_Absolute_” of reason to the personal God
of the believers among all peoples and times. If, now, the knowledge of
God be not a discovery of the reason, whose proper office is to analyze
and investigate--if, on the contrary, we are only able to understand of
Him so much as is given and imparted to us, then the matter assumes
quite another aspect. If God has conferred a knowledge of Himself upon
man--if He has spoken to him, has revealed Himself to him--as is the
common tradition of all ancient nations, the more unanimously
corroborated the older they are--then is the power to understand this
divine communication given together and at the same time with it, even
though we should be forced to allow that this intellectual capacity be
limited by human frailty and extremely imperfect. To take our estimate
of it as low as possible, we will conceive it to be something like the
degree of intelligence with which a child eighteen months old
understands its mother. Much it does not understand at all; other things
it mistakes, or perhaps does not fully attend to, and its answers, too,
are not much to the purpose; but something, nevertheless, it does
understand--this we see clearly enough. On this point we should not be
likely to be led astray, even though the theorist should wish to raise a
doubt on the matter, by attempting to prove that the child could not
properly understand its mother, since for that purpose it would be
necessary for it to have previously learned thoroughly and methodically
the elements of grammar. We believe, however, what, indeed, we see, that
man’s power of understanding divine things is really very imperfect. For
the relation between the child a year and a half old and its mother
completely represents that of man to God, with the more than
half-imperfect organs that are given him for this purpose--with his so
manifoldly limited mind or spirit, which is a spark of heavenly light,
indeed, but still only a spark--a drop out of the ocean of the infinite
whole--and, moreover, with his half-soul. For half-soul we may and must
call it in this respect, since with the one half it is turned to the
earth, and still wholly fraternizes with the sensible world; while with
the other it is directed to, and is percipient of, the divine. But such
a childlike and humble docility will not satisfy the proud reason, and
so it is ever turning again to the other absolute road of a false,
imaginary, and unhuman knowledge. Fundamentally, however, those two
words,[19] which alone man can be certain of with respect to God, would,
since God invariably imparts to every creature its due measure, be quite
enough, if only man would always rightly apply and faithfully preserve
them.
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.
But the previous question, whether the knowledge of God, which we either
possess or are capable of possessing, be a science of absolute reason,
or rather an understanding of given data, and consequently a science of
experience, and resting, ultimately, on revelation--this certainly falls
within the scope of philosophical investigation. Indeed, it forms the
chiefest and most essential problem of philosophy, inasmuch as it is
properly the very question of _being_ and _non-being_--of a true and
human, or of an empty and imaginary science--that is here to be decided.
On this account, a precise and correct phraseology is of the utmost
importance toward a right solution of this leading topic of
philosophical inquiry. Now, it is a fact deserving of remark, and well
calculated to arrest our attention, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nowhere
in all antiquity, or in any of the great teachers and philosophers of
olden time, is there any mention made of God’s reason--but universally
it is intelligence or understanding, an omniscient intelligence that is
ascribed to Him. The wrongful interchange of the two words was reserved
exclusively for our modern times, and for the epoch of the absolute rule
of reason, and of the worse than Babylonish confusion of scientific
terms which has arisen out of it. The only exceptions from the previous
remark, which may be found in antiquity, are confined to one or two of
the Stoics. But when we reflect how greatly their whole chapter on the
Deity labors under the evil influence of that doctrine of an inevitable
necessity and blind fate, which forms the reproach of the whole Stoical
theory, this apparent exception serves to confirm the general rule, that
a wrong use of language invariably has its source in a rationalistic
basis of speculation, or, perhaps, is itself the spring and occasion of
that erroneous point of view. God is unquestionably the author of
reason. If, therefore, any one be disposed to call the divine order of
things (which, however, is not the Deity himself) a divine reason, this
is a mere matter of indifference. Only in such a case the question to
be agitated would not involve the mere expression, but rather the
meaning which is associated with it. But, for my part, I should prefer
to avoid a mode of speaking which might give rise to great
misconception. And this is the more desirable the more needful it is at
all times carefully to distinguish between the true and sound reason and
its contrary. God is the author of the sound reason, _i.e._, of the
reason which follows and is obedient to the divine order. But the other,
the rebellious reason, has for its source that spirit of negation which
every where opposes God, and has drawn so great a part of creation after
him in his fall. For, having lost his true center, and finding none in
himself, that evil spirit, with indescribable desire and raging
passionateness, seeks to find one in the disordered world of sense, and
in its noblest ornament--even in the soul of man, the very jewel of
creation. And this is even the origin of the rebellious reason. And it
is rebellious even because having wandered from its center in the loving
soul, which again has its center in God, it has thrown off the obedience
of love, that holy bond which retains the soul in subjection to the
divine order. How far in the present day, amid the fermenting
rationalistic medley which constitutes the spirit of the age, that sound
reason which willingly follows and observes the divine order, or that
rebellious reason which is absolute in itself, has the upper hand, and
forms the predominant element, is a question easy of solution. It is one
which I am content to leave to the decision of all who are in any degree
acquainted with the prevailing tone of science and of life.
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 (which, with men of the day,
had become little more than an antiquated legend) 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 (which we may call a second revelation, or,
at least, as a second stage thereof), 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 [_geist_] 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
[_Weltseele_] 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.