"Before the Revolution of 1688," says Coleridge, "metaphysics ruled
without experimental philosophy. Since the Revolution, experimental
psychology has in like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result.
In like manner, from Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A. D. 250 to
A. D. 450, philosophy was set up as a substitute for religion; during
the dark ages, religion superseded philosophy, and the consequences are
equally instructive."
"The great maxim in legislation, intellectual or physical, is
_subordinate, not exclude_. Nature, in her ascent, leaves nothing
behind; but at each step subordinates and glorifies,--mass, crystal,
organ, sensation, sentience, reflection."
Taken in reverse order of descent, Spirit puts itself before, at each
step protrudes faculty in feature, function, organ, limb, subordinating
to glorify also,--person, volition, thought, sensibility, sense,
body,--animating thus and rounding creation to soul and sense alike.
The naturalist cannot urge too strongly the claims of physical, nor
the plea of the idealist be too vigorously pressed for metaphysical
studies. One body in one soul. Nature and spirit are inseparable, and
are best studied as a unit. "Either without the other," as Plato said
of sex, "is but half itself." Nature ends where spirit begins. The
idealist's point of view is the obverse of the naturalist's, and each
must accost his side with a first love, before use has worn off the
bloom and seduced their vision.
Goethe said of Aristotle that "he had better observed nature than any
modern, but was too rash in his inferences and conclusions"; and he
adds, "we must go to work slowly, and more indulgently with Nature, if
we would get anything from her."
Inspired by his example of dealing thus reverently and lovingly with
nature, the great naturalists of our time are reading secrets hitherto
hidden from less careful and pious observers. If the results thus
far have not satisfied the idealist, it becomes him to consider that
his methods are the reverse of theirs, and that when they shall have
tracked Life in its manifold shapes and modes of working in nature up
to Spirit, their office is fulfilled, their work complete, and their
discoveries are passed over to him for a higher generalization and
genesis. "A physical delineation of nature," says Humboldt, "terminates
at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world is
opened to our view; it marks the limit, but does not pass it."
Whether man be the successor or predecessor of his inferiors in nature,
is to be determined by exploring faithfully the realms of matter and
of spirit alike, and complementing the former in the latter. Whether
surveyed in order descending or ascending, in genesis or process, from
the side of the idealist or of the naturalist, the keystone of the arch
in either case is an ideal, underpropped by matter or upheld by mind.
"If men be worlds, there is in every one
Something to answer in fit proportion
All the world's riches, and in substance this,--
PERSON his form's form, and soul's soul, is."
Man, the sum total of animals, transcends all in being a Person, a
responsible creature. "The distinguishing mark," says Aristotle,
"between man and the lower animals is this: that he alone is endowed
with the power of knowing good and evil, justice and injustice, and
it is a participation in this that constitutes a family and a city."
Man is man in virtue of being a Person, a self-determining will, held
accountable to a spiritual Ideal. To affirm that brute creatures are
endowed with freedom and choice, the sense of responsibility, were to
exalt them into a spiritual existence and personality; whereas, it is
plain enough that they are not above deliberation and choice, but below
it, under the sway of Fate, as men are when running counter to reason
and conscience. The will bridges the chasm between man and brute,
and frees the fated creature he were else. Solitary, not himself,
the victim of appetite, inmate of the den, is man till freed from
individualism, and delivered into his free Personality. "Ye must be
born again."
The conflict between man's desires and satisfactions declares his
defection from Personal holiness. While at one personally with
himself, life suffices, his wants are seconded as they rise, and his
self-respect preserved inviolate. But lapsed from personal rectitude,
fallen out of and below himself, he is at variance with things around
as within, his senses deceive, his will is divided, and he becomes the
victim of duplicities, discontents, the prey of remorse.
"'Tis a miserable thing," says Glanvil, "to have been happy; and a
self-contented wretchedness is a double one. Had felicity always
been a stranger to humanity, our present misery had not been. And
had not ourselves been the authors of our ruin, less. We might have
been made unhappy; but since we are miserable, we chose it. He that
gave our outward enjoyments might have taken them from us, but none
could have robbed us of innocence but ourselves. While man knows no
sin, he is ignorant of nothing that it imports humanity to know; but
when he has sinned, the same transgression that opens his eyes to see
his own shame, shuts them against most things else but that, and the
newly-purchased misery. With the nakedness of his body, he sees that of
his soul, and the blindness and disarray of his faculties to which his
former innocence was a stranger; and that which shows them to him makes
them. No longer the creature he was made, he loses not only his Maker's
image, but his own. And does not much more transcend the creatures
placed at his feet, than he comes short of his ancient self."
Whose the decree
Souls Magdalens must be
To know felicity,
The path to it
Through pleasure's pit,
Soft sin undress
Them of their holiness,--
Hath heaven so writ?
Happier the fate
That opes heaven's gate
With crystal key
Of purity,
And thus fulfils life's destiny.
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