[1] Shakspeare. Hamlet, Act I., Scene V.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Schlegel seems to have read _our_, which is the reading of the folio of
1623.--_Trans._
[2] The νοὑς of Anaxagoras. A brief, but characteristic
sketch of these earlier philosophemes is given in Thirlwall’s History
of Greece, vol ii. See, also, Ritter’s History of Philosophy, vol.
i--_Trans_.
[3] Schlegel is here alluding to Condillac and his theory of
transformed sensations.--_Trans._
[4] Kant. For a full and systematic view or modern German philosophy,
see Michelet’s Geschichte d. letzten Systeme d. Phil. in Deutschland,
Berlin, 1837-8. Some able and ingenious essays on its errors and
abuses are to be found in Fred. Ancillon’s Essais de Philosophie, de
Politique, et de Littérature.--_Trans._
[5] Jacobi, in his Glauben’s-Philosophie.--_Trans._
[6] Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre.--_Trans._
[7] Schelling’s Natur-Philosophie.--_Trans._
[8] Schlegel is alluding to those systems which suppose a primary and
original essence, which, by its successive spontaneous developments,
produce every thing else out of itself. This absolute original of all
things was by Schelling, after Spinosa, called _natura naturans_,
while, by a phraseology which happily indicates the identity of the
self-developing subject and its objective developments, the totality of
the objects derived from it are termed _natura naturata_.--_Trans._
[9] Hegel. For a view of his philosophy, see the Article Hegel, in the
Penny Cyclopædia, and Morel’s Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the
Nineteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 131.--_Trans._
[10] Schlegel is speaking of Byron, and his Cain, a Mystery.--_Trans._
[11]
“Dein Wissen theilest du mit vorgezogenen Geistern;
Die Kunst, o Mensch, hast du allein.”
SCHILLER’S _Kunstlehre.--Trans._
[12] That by geist, spirit, and not mind merely, is here meant, will be
doubted by no one who considers the scriptural basis of these Lectures.
Schlegel seems to have had in view 1 Thess., v., 23. In the German
_geist_ stands both for mind and spirit, which, however, in English
are equivalent neither in use nor meaning. Whenever, therefore, the
translator is compelled by the English idiom to translate _geist_ and
its derivatives by mind and its cognates, and it is essential to keep
in view the identity of the matter by the sameness of expression, he
will indicate it by adding the German original in a bracket.
[13] St. John, iii., 8.--_Trans._
[14] Leibnitz.--_Trans._
[15] It is clear from what follows, that Schlegel used the term Fancy
in a wide and general sense, which embraces, first, its original use
in ancient philosophy, as the faculty of conception (φαντασια), which
reproduces the images of objects whether present or absent; secondly,
imagination, which is essential to all authors; and thirdly, fancy, in
a narrow sense--or the poetic fancy. It is in this wide sense that the
translator employs it after Milton who uses it, as more extensive than
imagination, when he says of fancy,
“Of all the external things
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes.”
_Par. Lost, Book V._
Indeed the whole of the speech of Raphael in this fifth book contains
a striking affinity of thought and idea with Schlegel. We have
there man’s triple constituents, body, soul, and spirit--reason and
fancy in the soul, of which reason is the being or essence--while
discursive reason is appropriated to man, but intuitive reason is made
the prerogative of the “purest spirits”--“the pure intelligential
substances.”--_Trans._
[16] In the original _zugetheilte_, said of a matter assigned for
investigation to a particular judge, or of the judge appointed to
examine and report upon it.--_Trans._
[17] Vernunft, from Vernehmen.
[18] The Rosetta stone, which led to the hieroglyphical discoveries of
Young and of Champollion.--_Trans._
[19] “God is _a loving Spirit_,” page 57.--_Trans._
[20] Schlegel is here alluding to, and adapting to the purpose of his
illustration, Acts, v., 15, 16.--_Trans_.
[21] 2 Peter, iii., 8.
[22] These words were uttered scarcely twenty years ago, and now beyond
Uranus, another planet, whose “vibrations have been long felt upon
paper,” is added to the heavenly choir. On the other hand, if Sir Wm.
Hamilton’s hopes are realized, will not the discovery of the center
around which the solar system revolves establish another point of
resemblance between modern astronomy and the Pythagorean system with
its central fire; and, also, as Schlegel subsequently implies, that the
former has yet further advances to make?--_Trans._
[23] Or the central fire, according to Boeckh, around which the whole
planetary heavens revolve, and which is also the source of light, which
being collected by the visible sun, is transmitted to the earth. By
the αντἱχθν or counter-earth, whose revolution is
parallel and concentric with that of the earth, Boeckh understands
that half of the terrestrial globe which, as turned away from the sun,
is in darkness. Sea August. Boeckh “de Platonico systemate cœlestium
globorum, et de vere indole astronomiæ Philolaicæ,” or his “Philolaus,”
pp. 114-136, and Ideler “Ueber d. Verhaltniss d. Copernicus zum
Alterthum,” in the Museum d. Alterthumswissenschaft, Bd. ii., St. ii.,
§ 405, &c.--_Trans._
[24] Romans, viii., 20.
[25] Schlegel is alluding to such principles as the “_Cogito ergo sum_”
of Des Cartes, and especially to the cognate axiom of Fichte: “Das ich
setzt sich selbst.” “The Me posits or affirms itself.”--_Trans._
[26] Hegel.
[27] Daniel, ix., 23. In our authorized translation it stands
“greatly beloved,” but in the Hebrew it is as given in the margin,
“a man of desires;” in the Septuagint, ἁνἡρ ἑτιθυμἱων.--_Trans._
[28] 1 Cor., xiii., 13.
[29] Theodicée, or justification of the ways of God in the world. The
word originated with Leibnitz, who, in his “Essai de Theodicée sur la
bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal,” published
in 1710, maintained that the existence of moral evil has its origin
in the free will of the creature, while metaphysical evil is nothing
but the limitation which is involved in the essence of finite beings,
and that out of this both physical and moral evil naturally flow. But
these finite beings are designed to attain to the utmost felicity they
are capable of enjoying, which each, as a part, contributes to the
perfection of the whole, which, of the many worlds that were possible,
is the very best. On this account it has been called the theory of
Optimism.--_Trans._
[30] Does not this appearance of a common character among brutes of the
same species arise rather from the imperfection of our observation? Is
not every sheep an individual to the shepherd?--_Trans._
[31] Schlegel appears to have believed in the theory of equivocal
generation. But microscopic research and experiments forbid us
any longer to believe that fermentative or putrefactive matter
spontaneously gives birth to living creatures. Such matters do but
furnish the necessary circumstances for hatching the germs or ova which
are present in such immense numbers in the atmosphere. The doctrine of
equivocal or spontaneous generation seems conclusively refuted by the
experiment of Schulze, detailed in volume 23 of Jameson’s Journal. “I
filled a glass flask half full with distilled water, in which I had
mixed various vegetable and animal substances. I then closed it with
a good cork, through which I passed two glass tubes, bent at right
angles, the whole being air-tight. It was next placed in a sand-bath
and heated until the water boiled violently, and thus all parts had
reached a temperature of 212° Fahrenheit. While the watery vapor was
escaping by the glass tubes, I fastened at each end an apparatus which
chemists employ for collecting carbonic acid; that to the left was
filled with sulphuric acid, and the other with a solution of potash.
By means of the boiling heat, every thing living and all the germs in
the flask or in the tubes were destroyed, and all access was cut off
by the sulphuric acid on the one side, and by the potash on the other.
I placed this easily-moved apparatus before my window, where it was
exposed to the action of light, and also, as I performed my experiments
in the summer, to that of heat. At the same time I placed near it an
open vessel with the same substances that had been introduced into the
flask, and also after having subjected them to a boiling temperature.
In order now to renew the air constantly within the flask, I sucked
with my mouth, several times a-day, the open end of the apparatus
filled with solution of potash; by which process, the air entered my
mouth from the flask, through the caustic liquid, and the atmospheric
air from without entered the flask through the sulphuric acid. The air
was, of course, not altered in its composition by passing through the
sulphuric acid into the flask; but if sufficient time was allowed for
the passage, all the portions of living matter, or of matter capable of
becoming animated, were taken up by the sulphuric acid and destroyed.
From the 28th of May until the early part of August, I continued
uninterruptedly the renewal of the air in the flask, without being
able, by the aid of a microscope, to perceive any living animal or
vegetable substance, although, during the whole of the time, I made
my observations almost daily on the edge of the liquid; and when at
last I separated the different parts of the apparatus, I could not
find in the whole liquid the slightest trace of Infusoria, Confervæ,
or of Mold. But all the three presented themselves in a few days after
I left the flask open. And the open vessel too, which I placed near
the apparatus, contained on the following day, Vibriones and Monades,
to which were soon added larger Polygastric Infusoria, and afterward,
Rotatoria.”--_Trans._
[32] Although, in the case of the entozoa, the induction is not very
large, still, of some of them it is an established fact that they are
generated from ova, and it is therefore a fair presumption that such
is the general law, and that these parasitical beings are, in every
case, hatched from ova, which are every where present, but remain
undeveloped until they meet with the necessary nutriment and heat for
their development.--_Trans._
[33] Isaiah, lxv., 17.
[34] In this and the following paragraph it is necessary to bear in
mind that Schlegel, as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, held the
doctrine of a purgatory, which the catechism of the Council of Trent
describes as a fire, “in which the souls of the _pious_ are tortured
for a certain time, and expiated, that they may be qualified to enter
that eternal country into which nothing enters that is unclean.”
“Purgatorius ignis, quo piorum animæ ad definitum tempus cruciatæ
expiantur, ut eis in æternam patriam ingressus patere possit, in quam
nihil coinquinatum ingreditur.”--_Cat. Conc. Trid._, pars i., art. v.,
c. 5.--_Trans._
[35] Eph., vi., 12; Col., ii., 15, &c.
[36] Dell’ Inferno, Canto III.
“............ quel cattivo coro
Degli angeli che non furon rebelli,
Nè fur fedeli a Dio, ma per ae foro.
Cacciarli i Ciel, per non esser men belli;
Nè lo profundo Inferno gli riceve,
Ch’ alcuna gloria i rel avrebber d’ elli.”