THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME
The perspicuity that has no riddles to expound, which is the object
of symbolic art and veritably the mark of Spirit self-clothed to the
perfect measure of its own substance, can only be attained on condition
that first and foremost the significance be presented to consciousness
distinct and separate from all the phenomena of external existence.
To the union of both immediately envisaged we have traced the absence
of art among the ancient Parsees. The contradiction involved in their
severation, followed by the association which it then stimulated
under the mode of immediacy, was the source of the fantastic type of
Hindoo symbolism. Finally, we have seen that in Egypt, too, the free
and unfettered recognition of the Inward principle and a significance
essentially independent from the phenomenon was lacking; and this
resulted in the mystery and obscurity of a symbolism still more
complete.
The first decisive act of purification, or, in other words, express
separation of the essential substance[67] from the sensuous present,
that is from the empirical facts of external appearance, we must
accordingly seek for in the Sublime, which exalts the Absolute above
every form of immediate existence, and thereby effects that initiatory
mode of its abstract liberation which is the basis of the spiritual
content. As Spirit in its concreteness the significance is not yet
apprehended; but it is, however, conceived as an Inwardness essentially
existent, reposing on its own resources, and of such a nature that
purely finite phenomena are alone inadequate to express its truth.
Kant has raised a very interesting distinction between the idea of the
sublime and the beautiful; and indeed all that he discusses in the
first part of his critique of the Judgment from the twentieth section
to the end--in spite of its considerable prolixity and its reduction of
every form of determination to a fundamentally subjective principle,
whether it be the content of feeling, imagination, or reason--still
possesses a real interest. We may in fact recognize this very reduction
on the ground of its general principle of relation to be just[68]; in
other words, to borrow Kant's own expressions, if the matter of our
consideration is primarily the Sublime in Nature, it is not in any fact
of Nature, but only in the content of our emotional life that such a
Sublime is to be discovered, and, further, only in so far as we are
conscious of a Nature peculiar to ourselves which involves the added
assumption of one that lies outside of us. The statement of Kant is
to be taken in this sense where he says: "The true sublime cannot be
enclosed in any sensuous form; it is only referable to the ideas of
reason, which, albeit no truly adequate representation can be given
them, are excited and awakened to life within the human soul by just
this very incompatibility of the permissibly sensuous representation
with its object[69]." The sublime is, in short, generally the attempt
to express the infinite, without being able to find an object in
the realm of phenomenal existence such as is clearly fitted for its
representation. The infinite, for the very reason that it is posited
independently as invisible and formless significance in contrast to
the complex manifold of objective fact, and is conceived under the
mode of inwardness, so long as it remains infinite remains indefinable
in speech and sublimely unaffected by every expression of the finite
categories.
The earliest content, then, which the significance secures at this
stage consists in this, that in contrast to the totality of the
phenomenal it is the essentially substantive _One_, which itself being
pure Thought is only present to thought in its purity. Consequently
it is no longer possible to inform this substance under the mode
of externality, and to that extent all real symbolical character
disappears. If, however, an attempt is made to envisage this essential
unity for sense-perception, such is only possible under a mode of
relation according to which, while retaining its substantive character,
it is further apprehended as the creative force of everything external,
in which it therefore discovers a means of revelation and appearance,
and with which it is accordingly joined in a positive relation. At the
same time it is an essential feature in the expressed content of this
relation that this substance is asserted above all particular phenomena
as such, no less than above their united manifold; from which it then
follows as a still more consequential result that the positive relation
is deposed for one that is _negative_; and the negative consists in
this that a purification of the substance is thus effected from the
phenomenal taken as any particular thing, that is, in other words, that
which is also not appropriate to it and which vanishes within it.
This mode of giving form, which is annihilated by the very thing which
it would set forth, so that it comes about that the exposition of
content affirms itself as that which renders the exposition null and
void is in fact the _Sublime._ We have therefore not, as we found to be
the view of Kant, to refer the Sublime exclusively to the subjective
content of the soul, and the ideas of reason which belong to it, but
rather form our conception of it as having its fundamental source
in the significance represented, in other words the one absolute
substance. We must, then, further deduce our classification of the
art-type of the Sublime from this twofold relation of the substantive
unity regarded as significance to the phenomenal world.
The characteristic which is held in common by both aspects of this
relation, whether we view it positively or negatively, consists in this
that the substance is posited above the particular appearance, in which
it is assumed to have found a representation, although it can only be
declared thereby under the form of a relation to the phenomenal in its
general terms, for the reason that as substance and ultimate essence
it is itself essentially without form and out of the reach of concrete
external existence. We may describe _pantheistic_ art as the first or
affirmative mode of conception at this stage, a type of conception
which we come across partly in India, and also to some extent in the
liberal atmosphere and mysticism of the more modern poets of Persian
Mohammedanism, and finally in the still profounder intensity of thought
and emotion which characterizes it when it reappears in western
Christianity.
Generally, defined substance is cognized at this stage as immanent in
all its created accidents, which for this reason are not as yet deposed
to a mere relation of service, viewed simply, that is, as an ornament
of glory to the Absolute, but are affirmatively conserved by virtue
of the indwelling substance; and this is so albeit it is the One and
the Divine alone which is set forth and exalted in all particularity.
By this means the poet, who contemplates and reveres this unity in
all things, and sinks his own individuality, no less than every other
object in this contemplation, is able to maintain a positive relation
to the substance, with which he associates all other objects.
The _second_ or _negative_ celebration of the Power and Glory of the
one God is that genuine type of Sublimity which we find in Hebrew
poetry. In this the positive immanence of the Absolute in the created
phenomena is done away with, and in place thereof we have the _one_
substance independently affirmed as sovereign Lord of the world, who
subsists over against the universe of His creations, which are posited
under a relation to this Supreme Being of essential and evanescent
powerlessness. If under such a view any representation is attempted of
the Power and Wisdom of this Unity under the form of the finite objects
of Nature and human destinies, we find nothing here that resembles the
Hindoo's distortion of such objects by the unlimited accretion to their
measure. The Sublimity of God is rather brought home to our senses by
means of a representation whose entire object is to show us that all
that exists in definite guise, with all its splendour, embellishment
and glory, is a loyal accident in His service, a show that vanishes
before the Divine essence and consistency.
A. THE PANTHEISM OF ART
Anyone who makes use of the word pantheism nowadays exposes himself
thereby to the grossest misunderstanding. For, to take but one aspect
of the difficulty, this word "all" signifies generally in our modern
acceptation of the term "all, and everything in its wholly empirical
particularity." We have at once recalled to us, for example, this
particular box with all its attributes, its specific colour, size,
form and weight, or that particular house, book, animal, table,
stool, oven, streak of cloud and so on, to the end of the list. When
we consequently find the charge advanced by not a few of our modern
theologians against philosophy, that it makes a God of everything in
general, it is quite obvious that this "everything" is taken in the
sense we have just adverted to, and this it is which is thus bodily
thrust upon her shoulders. In one word the complaint which attaches
to it is absolutely unwarranted. Such a conception of pantheism only
exists in the heads of stupidity, and is not discoverable in any form
of religion whatever, not even in those of the Iroquois and Esquimaux,
to say nothing of any philosophy. The "Everything" in what has been
termed pantheism is therefore neither this nor that particular thing,
but rather "Everything" in the sense of the "_All_," that is the One
substantive essence, which no doubt is immanent in particular things,
but is cognized in abstraction from their singularity and its empirical
reality, so that it is not the particular as such, but the universal
animating essence or soul, or to adopt a more popular way of speaking,
it is the true and the excellent, both equally a real presence in this
particular thing, which are here affirmed and indicated.
This it is which constitutes the real meaning of pantheism, and we
shall only have occasion now to employ the expression in this sense. It
applies first and foremost to the Orient, whose type of conception is
based on the thought of an absolute unity of Godhead and of everything
else as subsisting in this Unity. As such Unity and All the Divine
can only be presented to consciousness by means of the ever recurrent
evanescence of the limited number of particular objects, in which
its Presence is expressed. On the one hand we have here the Divine
envisaged as immanent in the most diverse objects, whether it be life
or death, mountain or sea, and with still closer intimacy no doubt
as the most excellent and pre-eminent among and in all determinate
existence. On the other hand, inasmuch as the One is this and again
that other and that other beyond it, and in short is discharged into
everything, all particular existence appears for that reason to be
a thing which is cancelled and vanishes, for no particular is alone
this One, but this One is this manifold of particulars which pass away
before semi-perception, as such particulars into the universe which
comprises them. For if the One is Life, it is also at another point
Death, and is to that extent not merely life, so that it is neither
as life nor the sun nor the sea that these or any other objective
realities constitute the Divine and One. At the same time we do not
find here, as in the genuine type of the Sublime, that the accidental
is expressly posited in the negative relation of mere service. So
far from this being so, substance is essentially identified with one
particular and accidental existence, inasmuch as it is this One in
everything. Conversely, however, this very particular, because it
is equally subject to change, and the imagination does not restrict
substance to one definite existence, but moves over every definition,
letting it fall that it may advance to another, is thereby relegated
in its turn to the accidental, over which the One is superposed in the
sublimity thus conjoined with it.
Such a way of viewing existence therefore can only be expressed in art
through poetry; the plastic arts are closed to it, inasmuch as they
bring before the vision the definite and particular, which in their
contrast to the substance present in the objects of Nature has to be
given up in a determinate and persistent form. Where we find pantheism
in its purity no plastic art is found as a mode of its presentation.
1. Once more we may adduce, as a first example of such pantheistic
poetry, the literature of the Hindoos, which along with its fantastic
symbolism has also elaborated the type of art under discussion with
distinction. In other words the Hindoo race, as we have seen, proceed
in their conceptions from the point of most abstract universality and
unity, which is then carried forward to the specific shaping of gods
such as Trimûrtis, Indras, and the rest. This process of definition,
however, is not adhered to with constancy; but to a like extent is
suffered once more to break up, so that we find inferior gods are
absorbed in superior gods, and the highest of all in Brahman. From
this it is sufficiently obvious that this Universal constitutes the
one persistent and unalterable basis of all. And if, as we freely
admit, the Hindoos evince the twofold impulse in their poetry, namely,
either to exaggerate the particular existence, in order that it may
appear to the senses compatible with the significance of the Absolute,
or, in the converse case, to suffer every form of definition to pass
as mere negation when contrasted with the one abstraction of Being,
yet at the same time there is another aspect of their literature, in
which we also find artistic representation under the purer mode of
imaginative pantheism we have just described, a mode in which the
immanence of the Divine is exalted above all particular existence
in which it is presented to sense and which as such disappears. We
may no doubt be rather inclined to recognize in this later mode of
conception a certain similarity with that type of the immediate unity
of pure thought which we found to be characteristic of the religious
consciousness of the Parsees. Among the Parsees, however, the One
and Excellent is conserved in its independence as itself a fact of
Nature, that is, Light. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the One,
or Brahman, is merely the formless One; and this it is which in its
transformations through the infinite variety of the phenomenal world,
first gives rise to the pantheistic mode of representation. So we read
of _Krishna_ (_Bhagavad-Gita_, Lect. VII, II. 4 _et seq._): "Earth,
water and wind, air and fire, reason and egoity are the eight pieces
of my essential force; yet knowest thou somewhat more in me, a more
exalted essence, which animates the earthly and supports the world. In
it all existences have their origin. Ay, verily, thou knowest I am the
origin of the entire universe as also its annihilation. Aught higher
than myself is not; in me is this All conjoined together, as a chaplet
of pearls on a thread. I am the taste of sweetness in all that flows;
I am the splendour in the sun and moon, the mystic Word in the sacred
writings, manhood in man, the clean savour in the Earth, brightness
in flame, in all Being Life, meditation in all who repent. In that
which has Life the Power of Life, in the wise Wisdom, in the glorious
Glory. Everything that is true of its kind, and everything that is
specious and obscure proceeds out of me. I am not in them, but they are
in me. Through the illusion of these three qualities all the world is
made foolish, and knows me not who am unalterable. Moreover also the
Divine illusion, even Mâya, is my own illusion, which is hard indeed to
surpass, albeit all who follow after me step over this illusion." In
this passage we have indicated in the most striking terms just such a
substantive unity as the one above discussed, not merely from the point
of view of its immanence in immediate sense, but also from that of its
advance beyond and over all singularity.
In a similar manner _Krishna_ affirms of himself that He is the most
Excellent among all the different forms of existence (Lect. X, 21):
"Among the star's I am the radiant sun, among the human signs the
moon, among the sacred Books the Book of Hymns, among the senses
the spiritual, Meru among the tops of the mountains, the lion among
animals, the vowel A among all letters, among the seasons of the year
the blooming spring-time, etc."
This enumeration, however, of superlative excellence, and we may add
the description of that which is merely a change of forms, among
which it is always one and the same thing that is envisaged, despite
any superficial appearance such may give us at first of a prodigal
imagination, is none the less, by reason of this very equality of
content, extremely monotonous and in general empty and tedious.
2. Under a higher mode and in a freer manner from the subjective point
of view we find, _secondly_, oriental pantheism is elaborated in
Mohammedanism more particularly among the _Persians._
And here we are confronted with a relation of some singularity when we
direct our attention expressly to the point of view of the individual
poet.
(_a_) To explain this more fully we would point out that so long as
the poet yearns to behold the Divine in everything, and really so
beholds it, he also surrenders his own personality; but, while doing
so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence of the Divine in his
spiritual world thus expanded and delivered; and consequently there
grows up within him that joyful ardour of the soul, that liberal
happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the Oriental,
who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems wholly to
sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to know
and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things. Such a
self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in
God borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is more
famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi, of which Rückert, with the help of
his marvellous powers of expression, which enable him to make light of
both words and rhymes with all the wealth and freedom of the phantasy
that comes so natural to the Persian poet, has supplied us with the
fairest examples. Love to God, with whom man identifies himself in most
boundless surrender, beholding Him as the One through every part of His
Universe, with whom and to whom every and each thing is related and
referred--this it is that gives us the focus of this type of thought, a
centre which radiates in every direction.
(_b_) And, further, while in the true type of the sublime, as will
appear shortly, the most excellent objects and the most glorious
shapes are employed merely as the ornament of God, and as servants to
celebrate the splendour and majesty of the One, being set before our
eyes to do Him honour as Lord of all creation, in pantheism, on the
contrary, it is the immanence of the Divine in external fact which
exalts the determinate existence itself of the world, Nature, and
humanity to its own self-substantial glory. The identical Life of
Spirit in the phenomena of Nature and all human relations animates and
spiritualizes the same in their own nature, and is further the source
of that characteristic attitude of subjective feeling in the soul of
the poet toward the objects he celebrates in his song. Suffused with
the animating influx of this glory the soul is essentially serene,
independent, free, secure in its comprehension and greatness; and
in this positive identification of itself with such qualities it
penetrates imaginatively with its life into the very heart of objective
existence, sharing the restful unity that it finds there, and grows up
in most blissful, most blithesome intimacy with the natural world and
its munificence, with the drinking-booth no less than the beloved,
and, in short, all that is held worthy of praise or affection. We find,
no doubt, the same kind of self-absorption in the romantic temperament
of the West. Generally speaking, however, and more particularly in
the North, it is not so gladsome, spontaneous, or free from yearning;
or, at least, it remains more exclusively shut up in itself, and is
consequently selfish and sentimental. A spiritual mood of this type, in
its depression and gloom, finds its most forceful outlet in the popular
songs of barbarous peoples. The spontaneous and joyful emotional
atmosphere is, on the contrary, congenial to the East, and particularly
characteristic of the Mohammedan Persians, who openly and gladly
surrender themselves with all their soul to the Divine influence, and
indeed to everything that appears to merit such devotion, while they
do not fail to retain the freedom of independence in such surrender,
and consciously to preserve the same in their attitude to the world and
all that surrounds them. We may, in fact, observe in the ardour of this
passion, the most expansive ecstasy and parrhesia[70] of the emotional
life, through which, in its inexhaustible wealth of gorgeous and
splendid images, one emphatic note of joy, beauty, and happiness rings
again and again. If the Oriental suffers or is unfortunate he takes
his reverses as the unalterable fiat of Destiny, and falls back upon
the strength of his own resources without any increase of depression,
sensitiveness, or vexation of spirit. In the poetry of Hafis we hear
often enough of the lover's woes and laments[71], as of many another
kind, but our poet persists through grief, no less than in happiness,
as free of care as ever. This is the mood of that sometime refrain:
/$
For thanks, in that the present glow
Of friendship circles thee,
Light strong the taper e'en in woe,
And joyful be.
$/
The taper teaches us both to laugh and to weep; it laughs through the
flame of shining merriment, albeit it melts at the same time in hot
tears; in the act of consumption it spreads wide the brightness of
joviality. This is also the general character throughout of this type
of poetry.
Among the objects frequently referred to in Persian poetry we
may mention flowers and jewels, and, above all, the rose and the
nightingale. It is a matter of frequent occurrence to represent the
nightingale as bridegroom of the rose. This gift of personality to the
rose and love to the nightingale may be abundantly illustrated from
Hafis. "Out of gratefulness, O rose," he sings, "that thou art the
sultana of Beauty, see to it that thou settest not a proud face to the
love of the nightingale." The poet himself speaks of the nightingale
of his own soul. When we of the West, on the contrary, refer in our
poetry to roses, nightingales, or wine, and such matters, we do so in
a wise much nearer to prose. The rose merely serves us for ornament,
as in the expression, among others, "garlanded with roses." If we
listen to the nightingale it is but to follow the bird with our own
emotions; we think of the grape-juice, and call it "the breaker of
our cares." Among the Persians, however, the rose is no mere image or
ornament, no symbol, but itself appears to the poet as possessed with a
soul, as loving bride, and he transpierces with his spirit the rose's
very heart. Precisely the same character of a gorgeous Pantheism is
still impressed on the most modern Persian poems. Herr von Hammer, for
instance, has given us a description of a poem which was forwarded,
among other gifts of the Shah, to the Emperor Francis in the year 1819.
It contains an account of the exploits of the Shah in 33,000 distiches,
who made a present of his own name to the Court poet in question.
(_c_) Goethe, too--here in contrast with the more perturbed atmosphere
and the concentrated emotion of the poetry of his youth--was carried
away in advanced age by the breadth of this careless and blithesome
spirit; and though already a veteran, swept through by the breath
of the East, dedicated the evening glow of his poetic passion, in a
flood of extraordinary fervour to this freedom of emotion which, even
where controversy is the sub ect-matter, still retains the beauty of
its careless temper. The songs of his Westöstlicher Divan, are by no
means the mere play of trivial social urbanities, but originate in a
precisely similar spirit of free and unrestrained emotion. In a song of
his to Suleica they are thus described by himself:
/$
Pearls from the poet,
Thine is the treasure,
Thine was the big swell
Of passion tumultuous,
Which strewed them on desolate
Strand of his life.
Gold-tips I call it,
Pierced with bright jewels,
Tenderly conned o'er
By tapering fingers.
$/
"Take them," he exclaims to his beloved:
/$
Circle thy neck with them,
Close, close to thy breast!
These raindrops of Allah
The meek shell hath ripened.
$/
Poetry such as this is the product of an experience of the widest
range, a sense which has held its own in many storms, a depth and also,
too, a youth of the heart--in other words:
/$
World of Life's own drift of forces,
World, the wealth of whose wave-roll
Caught afar the bulbul's passion,
Won the song which shook the soul.
$/
3. In this unity of pantheism, moreover, if emphasized in its relation
to _personal_ life, which feels itself united with God thereby, and
the Divine as this presence intuitively cognized, we have, speaking
generally, that type of _mysticism_ which, under this more intimate
mode, has also been elaborated in the pale of Christendom. We will
adduce but one example, namely, that of Angelus Silecius, who, with the
greatest audacity and depth of conception and emotional fervour, has
expressed the essential presence of God in objective Nature, the union
of the self with God, and the Divine with human personality, with an
extraordinary power of mystical presentment. The more genuine type of
Oriental pantheism, on the contrary, is inclined to insist more upon
the vision of the One substance in all phenomena and the self-surrender
of the individual, who thereby secures the most supreme expansion of
conscious life no less than the bliss of absorption into all that is
most noble and excellent by virtue of the absolute release from all
finitude.
B. THE ART OF SUBLIMITY
The One substance, however, which is here conceived as the real
significance of the entire universe, is only truly posited as
_substance_ where we find it suffered to retire into itself as pure
Inwardness and substantive Power out of its presence and realization
beneath the shifting forms of the phenomenal, and thereby is _set
forth_ in self-consistency as against all finitude. It is not till
we come to this intuitive vision of the essence of God as absolutely
Spiritual and apart from all image, and thus opposed to the things of
the World and Nature, that the Spiritual is completely wrested from all
that pertains to mere sense-perception and Nature, and delivered from
determinate existence in the finite. While conversely, however, the
absolute substance still maintains a relation to the phenomenal world
from which it is reflected back upon itself. In this relation is now
asserted that _negative_ aspect already adverted to, which consists
in this, that the entire universe, despite all the fulness, power,
and glory of its phenomenal contents, is expressly affirmed in its
relation to substance as that which is essentially of a purely negative
subsistence, a creation of God, subject to His power and service. The
world is therefore envisaged as the revelation of God, and He is the
_Goodness_ which permits the created thing that has no essential claim
to exist, none the less to exist in relation to Himself, nay, further
to have independent existence and thereby freely to conserve Him. This
conservation on the part of the finitude, however, is without real
substance, and in opposition to God the creature is here assumed to
be that which passes away and is powerless, so that at the same time
its _claim to existence_[72] is exhibited as a part of the goodness of
the Creator, which not only veritably affirms the impotence of that
which is essentially nothing apart from Himself, but thereby asserts
His substance as the source of all Power. It is this relation, so far
as it is set forth by art as the fundamental relation, both of content
and form, which brings before us the art-type of the real _Sublime._
The Beauty of the Ideal and Sublimity no doubt present features of
contrast. In the Ideal the Inward transpierces external reality, whose
inward essence it really is under the mode at least, that both aspects
are adequate to each other, and consequently appear to be in perfect
fusion with one another. In the Sublime, on the contrary, the external
existence, in which substance is envisaged for sense, is deposed
in its opposition to that substance, such deposition and vassalage
constituting the only mode, by means of which the God who is in His own
seclusion without form, and in His positive essence incapable of being
expressed by aught that is of the world and finite, can be envisualized
by artistic means. The Sublime pre-supposes the significance in the
self-subsistence of One, in relation to which externality is defined as
in subjection, in so far as that Inward substance fails to appear, but
its transcendent character is so asserted, that in the end nothing can
be represented save just this essential and active transcendency[73].
In the symbol the mode of the _external form_ was the main point
emphasized. It must possess a significance, and yet fail completely
to express it. In contrast to symbol of this kind and its obscure
content we have now a _significance_ in the absolute sense of the
term conjoined with its full recognition. A work of art is now the
actual discharge of pure essence conceived as the intensive purport of
everything, of an essence, however, which deliberately affirms that
very incompatibility of form to significance, which was only implicitly
present in the symbol, to be the actually transcendent significance of
God Himself within the sphere of worldly existence, and above all that
is contained therein.
It is a significance which is therefore sublime in the work of art,
which is exclusively concerned to express the same as thus explicitly
declared. We may no doubt with justice accept the description of
"_sacred_," as applicable generally to symbolical art, in so far as it
accepts the Divine as comprised in the content of its productions; but
the art of the Sublime alone can make good its claim to the distinction
without any deduction, for it is here alone that God receives all the
honour. In this sphere, owing to the fundamental character of the
significance implied, the content is generally of a more restricted
nature than that we find in genuine symbolism, whose relation to
the Spiritual is that of an effort and nothing more, and which in
the continuously shifting nature of its relations to to the world
offers such a wide field, either for transformations of that which is
spiritual into natural images, or of that which is essentially material
under accordant fusion with the Spirit.
We find as nowhere else this art of the Sublime, as a mode of its
original appearance, in the religious conceptions of the Hebrew race
and their sacred poetry. We say poetry advisedly, because plastic art
cannot possibly be in question here, where it is assumed that no image
whatever is adequate to express the nature of the Divine, and that
the part of poetry alone by means of the spoken or written word can
be employed for such a purpose. A closer examination of this type of
religious conception will secure to us the following points of view
most worthy of our general attention.
1. If we look at the content of this poetry under the aspect of its
most universal import, one of our first conclusions will be that God,
as Lord of a world created to serve Him, is not conceived as incarnated
in any form of the external, but rather as personality withdrawn
from all determinate and worldly existence into the solitude of His
pure Unity. For this reason that[74] which in genuine symbolism was
still associated with supreme Unity, falls apart under the view we
are considering into its twofold aspect, on one side the abstract
subsistency of God, on the other the concrete existence of the world.
(_a_) Now God Himself as this pure self-subsistency of the One
substance is essentially without form, and under this abstract
conception cannot be brought closer to the envisagement of sense. That
which therefore the imagination is able to seize at this stage is
not the Divine content viewed under the aspect of its pure essence,
inasmuch as this latter precludes the possibility of artistic
representation under any form adequate to it whatever. The only content
therefore that is left open to it is that of the _relation_ of God to
His created world.
(_b_) God is the creator of the universe. This is the purest expression
of the Sublime itself. In other words we find that here for the first
time all those fanciful conceptions of _generation_ and purely physical
_procreation_ of external fact by God disappear. Each and all give
place to the thought of creation by virtue of spiritual power and
activity. "God spake: Let there be Light, and there was Light." A
sentence dong ago cited, as a striking illustration of the Sublime by
Longinus. And such indeed it is. The Lord of all, the One substance,
proceeds, it is true, under the mode of self-expression; but the type
of this bringing forth is the purest, nay, a mode of expression,
aetherial so to speak, and without material form, the Word that is to
say, the medium of thought as the ideal Power, in conjunction with
whose mandate that it shall exist, the existing thing is veritably and
immediately posited under the relation of tacit obedience.
(_c_) Into this created world, however, God is not conceived to pass
over as into His reality; rather He abides withdrawn behind Himself,
albeit this opposition supplies no secure ground for a logically
developed dualism. For that which has been brought into being is His
work, possesses no self-consistency as apart from Him. It is solely a
witness to _His_ Wisdom, Goodness, and Justice in general, just that
and no more. The One is Lord over all; His dwelling is not in the facts
of Nature. They are solely the accidents of His Greatness, without
potency in themselves, which can indeed suffer the show of His essence
to appear, but are unable to make the reality of it visible[75]. And
this it is which constitutes the Sublime in its reference to the Divine.
2. Moreover, inasmuch as the one God is thus severed from the
concreteness of the phenomenal world and posited in isolated fixity,
while the externality of determinate existence is on its side defined
and placed in subordination as the finite, both natural and human
existence are now viewed under the novel aspect that they cannot be
conceived as manifesting the Divine without at the same time making
visible their essential finiteness.
(_a_) The most direct way of bringing home to ourselves the
significance of the above contrasted relations may be expressed in the
statement that here for the first time we have Nature and the human
form set before us _cut off from the Divine_, prosaic fact in short.
It is a Greek tale that when the heroes of the Argonautic Expedition
passed in their ships through the straits of the Hellespont, the
rocks which hitherto had crashed open and shut like shears suddenly
came to a standstill rooted firmly for evermore in the ground. In a
manner somewhat similar the process of the finite toward stability in
intelligible definition, as contrasted with the infinite essence, moves
onward in the sacred poetry of the Sublime, while in the conceptions of
symbolism, where we have the finite overturned in the Divine and the
latter quite as frequently thrust forth from its own substance into
temporal existence, nothing is permitted to keep its due position. If
we turn, for example, from ancient Hindoo poetry to the Old Testament
we find ourselves at once in a totally different atmosphere, one
in which we feel ourselves thoroughly at home, however much we may
discover in the circumstances, events, actions, and characters an
environment either alien or different to that in which we live. From a
world of tumble and confusion we are transported to another, and have
human figures presented to us, which appear as natural as those we see
with our eyes, characters with the stable outlines of patriarchal life,
which in the truth of their delineation stand so near that they receive
an immediate assent from our intelligence.
(_b_) In a general view of existence such as the above which is able
to grasp the natural process of life and to accept as valid the claim
of natural laws, _wonder_ for the first time is a really active
force. In Hindooism everything is a wonder and consequently is no
longer wonderful. No wonder can enter a world where the intelligible
connection of facts is invariably broken, where everything is wrested
from its place and turned topsy-turvy. For the wonderful presupposes
the rational sequence of events no less than the clear perceptions of
ordinary consciousness which, when it meets with some example of causal
effect produced by a higher law breaking the customary chain of events
now for the first time notifies the exception as a wonder. Wonders of
this kind, however, are no real or specific expression of the Sublime,
for the reason that the ordinary course of natural phenomena is
conceived as quite as much the product of the Will of God and evidence
of Nature's submission as such interruption of the same.
(_c_) We must rather look for the real Sublime in the fact that under
this view the entire created world is limited in time and space, with
no independent stability or consistency, and as such an adventitious
product which exists solely to celebrate the praise of Almighty God.
3. This recognition of the nullity of objective fact and the exaltation
and extolment of God are at this stage the source of man's _own_
self-respect, and in these he looks for his own consolation and
satisfaction.
(_a_) In this connection the Psalms supply us with classical examples
of the genuine Sublime, and are set forth as a precedent for all
times of what our humanity at the highest point of its spiritual
exultation has superbly expressed as the reflection of its religious
consciousness. Nothing in the world can here make good its claim to
independent subsistence, inasmuch as everything exists and subsists
simply through the Power of God, and only exists as in duty bound to
extol His mightiness no less than to acknowledge its own essential
nothingness. In the imagination of pantheism, which mainly unfolded in
the direction of material substance an infinite _extension_ of range
was most remarkable: what we most are amazed at here is the power of
spiritual exaltation which suffers everything else to fall away that
it may declare the unique Almightiness of God. An extraordinarily
forceful illustration of this temper is the 104th Psalm, "The Light is
Thy mantle which Thou wearest; Thou spreadest out the heavens like a
carpet, etc." Light, heavens, clouds, the pinions of the winds, each
and all are here nothing by themselves, merely an external vesture, the
chariot or messenger in the service of God. A further expansion of the
same idea is the extolment of the Wisdom of God, which has ordained
all things. The springs, which leap from their sources, the waters,
which flow between the hills, by the banks of which the birds of the
air sit and carol among the branches; the grassy vine, which gladdens
the heart of men and the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord hath planted;
the sea, and its swarms without number; the whales which sport therein,
all these hath the Lord made. And all that God has created He also
preserves. "Thou hidest Thy Face, and they are affrighted; Thou takest
their breath away and they are gone and become again as dust." The 90th
Psalm, that prayer of Moses, the man of God, insists expressly on the
nothingness of man, where we read: "Thou sufferest them to pass away
like a brook; they are like as a sleep, even as the grass, which is
soon withered, and in the evening is cut down and dried up. Thy scorn
maketh us to pass away; Thou showest Thine anger and we are gone."
(_b_) Two ideas are therefore associated together with the Sublime,
if viewed in its relation to the human soul, first, that of man's
finiteness, and secondly, that of the insurmountable aloofness of God.
(_α_) For this reason the idea of _immortality_ is not to be found
where this mode of conception obtains in its original purity; for this
idea involves the assumption that the individual self, the soul, the
spirit of man is essentially a self-subsistent entity. In the religion
of the Sublime it is only the One that is apprehended as imperishable;
opposed to that all else merely subsists and passes away, is neither
essentially free nor infinite.
(_β_) And, further, on a similar ground man is conceived in his
absolute _unworthiness_ before God; his exaltation consists in the fear
of the Lord, in a trembling before His scorn. Over and over again, with
a directness which tears aside every veil and opens the very depths, we
have the cry of the soul to God depicted, the sorrow over the sense of
its nothingness, increasing lament and groanings unutterable.
(_γ_) On the other hand if the individual persist in his finiteness of
opposition to God, this deliberately willed persistence is wickedness,
which as _evil_ and _sin_ belongs only to the natural and human
condition, and is conceived as remote from the One undifferentiated
substance as pain and everything else that is essentially negative.
(_c_) _Thirdly_, however, within this very condition of spiritual
nakedness, and, in despite of it, man secures a freer and more
independent position. On the one hand out of the fundamental repose and
constancy of God viewed in reference to His Will and the commands which
that Will imposes upon humanity, arises the _Law_; while under another
point of view the wholly unambiguous distinction between that which is
human and that which is Divine, between the finite and the Absolute, is
implied in this type of human exaltation. Therewith the judgment upon
good and evil, and the onus of decision in respect to either the one or
the other is transferred to the individual soul itself. This relation
to the Absolute, and the question it involves as to the fittingness or
unfittingness of man over against the same presents, therefore, also
an aspect, which applies to the individual himself, his own behaviour
and action. In other words we may trace in man's rightful acts and his
following of the Law a relation to God which is, side by side with
the former one, an affirmative relation, a relation which has to
bring generally the external condition of his existence, whether it
be positive or negative, weal, enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain,
unhappiness and oppression into union with the obedience of his heart
or his stubbornness of spirit against the Law, and accept the same in
the one case as favour and reward, in the other as trial and punishment.
[Footnote 67: _Des An-und-für-sich-seyenden, i.e._, the explicit
content of all that is implied in actuality cognized as an object in
itself.]
[Footnote 68: According to Hegel the conception of Kant is right in
that (_a_) He makes the Sublime to consist in a relation between the
phenomenal fact and something which it is not; and (_b_) that he lays
it down that no mere representation by means of phenomenal form can
adequately express it. He is wrong, however, in that he refers the
Sublime for its source wholly to the subjective content, _i.e._, that
Nature which is peculiar to ourselves (_in uns._)]
[Footnote 69: "Critique of the Judgment," 3rd ed., p. 77.]
[Footnote 70: Parrhesia, _i.e._, πἀρρἥσια,--speaking freely or beyond
ordinary bound.]
[Footnote 71: _Den Schenken_ should be _die Schenken_, and a few
lines below _der Kerze_ should be _die Kerze._ I omit the _Schenken_
altogether. Of course it is possible _der Kerze_ is Genitive, "in the
woe of the taper," and the verb intransitive; but this is very harsh.]
[Footnote 72: This appears to be the meaning of _Garechtigkeit._]
[Footnote 73: _Sondern so darüber hinausgeht, dass eben nichts als
dieses Hinauseyn und Hinausgehen zur Darstellung kommen kann._ That
is, the art of the Sublime is based essentially on a contradiction,
for while it assumes the One substance to be the significance of the
external world, it is the truth of that significance that it points to
that which transcends externality.]
[Footnote 74: The thought here is not strictly logical. What is
associated by symbolism with Unity is the external Other, what is
divided by Hebraic conception is the entire content of the Real
both in its spiritual and external aspect. But the general sense is
sufficiently clear.]
[Footnote 75: This I take to be the point of the contrast between the
words _scheinen_ and _erscheinen_.]