THE
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE,
AND
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE,
IN A
Course of Lectures.

B Y F R E D E R I C K V O N S C H L E G E L.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY THE REV. A. J. W. MORRISON, M.A.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
1848.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

THESE fifteen Lectures on the Philosophy of Life are intended to give, as far as possible, a full and clear exposition of the most interesting topics that can engage human attention. In the opening they treat of the soul, first of all as forming the center of consciousness, and, secondly, of its co-operation with mind or spirit in science, that is, the acquisition of a right knowledge of man and nature, and of their several relations to the Deity. These matters occupy five Lectures of the whole series. The next three treat of the laws of divine wisdom and providence, as discernible in outward nature, in the world of thought, and in the history of mankind. The last seven contain an attempt to trace the development of man’s mind or spirit, both within himself and in science and public life. Tracing its gradual expansion, as unfolded either by the legitimate pursuit of a restoration to original excellence, or by the struggle with the opposing spirit of the times, they follow the human race through its progressive gradations, up to the closing term of perfection.

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

LECTURE I.
OF THE THINKING SOUL AS THE CENTER OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AND OF THE FALSE PROCEDURE OF REASON.

“THERE are,” says a poet as ingenious as profound,[1] “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” This sentiment, which Genius accidentally let drop, is in the main applicable also to the philosophy of our own day; and, with a slight modification, I shall be ready to adopt it as my own. The only change that is requisite to make it available for my purpose would be the addition—“and also between heaven and earth are there many things which are not dreamt of in our philosophy.” And exactly because philosophy, for the most part, does nothing but dream—scientifically dream, it may be—therefore is it ignorant, ay, has no inkling even of much which, nevertheless, in all propriety it ought to know. It loses sight of its true object, it quits the firm ground where, standing secure, it might pursue its own avocations without let or hinderance, whenever, abandoning its own proper region, it either soars up to heaven to weave there its fine-spun webs of dialectics, and to build its metaphysical castles in the air, or else, losing itself on the earth, it violently interferes with external reality, and determines to shape the world according to its own fancy, and to reform it at will. Half way between these two devious courses lies the true road; and the proper region of philosophy is even that spiritual inner life between heaven and earth.

On both sides, many and manifold errors were committed even in the earlier and better days of enlightened antiquity. Plato himself, the greatest of the great thinkers of Greece, set up in his Republic the model of an ideal polity, which, in this respect, can not bear the test of examination. His design indeed finds, in some measure, its apology in the disorders and corruption which, even in his day, had infected all the free states of Greece, whether great or small. His work, too, by the highly-finished style of the whole, the vivid perspicuity of its narrative, its rich profusion of pregnant ideas and noble sentiments, stands out in dignified contrast to the crude and ill-digested schemes of legislation so hastily propounded in our own day. Still, it will ever remain the weak point of this great man. One needs not to be a Plato to see how absolutely unfeasible, not to say practically absurd, are many of the propositions of this Platonic ideal. Accordingly, it has ever been the fruitful occasion, not only among cotemporaries, but also with posterity, of ridicule to the ignorant and of censure to the wise. In this respect it can not but excite our regret that such great and noble powers of mind should have been wasted in following a false direction, and in pursuit of an unattainable end. The oldest philosophers of Greece, on the other hand—those first bold adventurers on the wide ocean of thought—combined together the elements of things, water, or air, or fire, or atoms, or, lastly, the all-ruling intellect[2] itself, into as many different systems of the universe. If, however, each in his own way thus set forth a peculiar creed of nature, we must ever bear in mind that the popular religion, with its poetical imagery, and the fabulous mythology of antiquity, as affording not only no sufficient, but absolutely no answer to the inquiring mind, as to the essence of things, and the first cause of all, could not possibly satisfy these earlier thinkers. Consequently, they might well feel tempted to find, each for himself, a way to honor nature, and to contemplate the supreme Being. Since then, however, the world has grown older by nearly twenty-five centuries, and much, in the mean while, has been accomplished by, or fallen to the share of, the human race. But when philosophy would pretend to regard this long succession of ages, and all its fruits, as suddenly erased from the records of existence, and for the sake of change would start afresh, so perilous an experiment can scarcely lead to any good result, but in all probability, and to judge from past experience, will only give rise to numberless and interminable disputes. Such an open space in thought—cleared from all the traces of an earlier existence (a smoothly-polished marble tablet, as it were, like the tabula rasa of a recent ephemeral philosophy)—would only serve as an arena for the useless though daring ventures of unprofitable speculation, and could never form a safe basis for solid thought, or for any permanent manifestation of intellectual life.

In itself it is nothing surprising if young and inexperienced minds, occupying themselves prematurely, or in a perverted sense, with the grand ideas of God and Nature, liberty and the march of thought, should be wholly overmastered and carried away with them. It has often happened before now, and it is no new thing if youthful and ardent temperaments should either yield to the seductive temptation to make, not to say create, a new religion of their own; or else feel a deceitful impulse to censure and to change all that is already in existence, and, if possible, to reform the whole world by their newly-acquired ideas.

That this twofold aberration and misuse of philosophical thought must prove universally injurious, and prejudicial both to education and the whole world, is so evident that it can scarcely be necessary to dwell upon it. Its effect has been to cause men, especially those whose minds have been formed in the great and comprehensive duties of practical life, to view the thing altogether in an evil light, although it must be confessed there is much injustice in this sweeping condemnation. In several of the great statesmen of Rome we may observe a similar contempt for Grecian philosophy as useless and unprofitable. And yet, as is happily indicated by its Greek name, this whole effort was assuredly based upon a noble conception, and, when duly regulated, a salutary principle. For in this beautiful word, according to its original acceptation, science is not regarded as already finished and mature, but is rather set forth as an object of search—of a noble curiosity and of a pure enthusiasm for great and sublime truths, while at the same time it implies the wise use of such knowledge. Merely, however, to check and to hinder the aberrations of a false philosophy, is not by itself sufficient. It is only by laying down and leveling the right road of a philosophy of life, that a thorough remedy for the evil is to be found. True philosophy, therefore, honoring that which has been given from above and that which is existent from without, must neither raise itself in hostility to the one, nor attempt to interfere violently with the other. For it is exactly when, keeping modestly within its proper limits of the inner spiritual life, it makes itself the handmaid neither of theology nor of politics, that it best asserts its true dignity and maintains its independence on its own peculiar domain. And thus, even while it abstains most scrupulously from intermeddling with the positive and actual, will it operate most powerfully on alien and remote branches of inquiry, and by teaching them to consider objects in a freer and more general light, indirectly it will exercise on them a salutary influence. Thus, while it proceeds along its appointed path, it will, as it were without effort, disperse many a mist which spreads its dangerous delusion over the whole of human existence, or remove, perhaps, many a stone of stumbling, which offends the age and divides the minds of men in strife and discord. In this manner, consequently, will it most beautifully attest its healing virtue, and at the same time best fulfill its proper destination.

The object, therefore, of philosophy is the inner mental life (geistige Leben), not merely this or that individual faculty in any partial direction, but man’s spiritual life with all its rich and manifold energies. With respect to form and method: the philosophy of life sets out from a single assumption—that of life, or, in other words, of a consciousness to a certain degree awakened and manifoldly developed by experience—since it has for its object, and purposes to make known the entire consciousness, and not merely a single phase of it. Now, such an end would be hindered rather than promoted by a highly elaborate or minutely exhaustive form, and a painfully artificial method; and it is herein that the difference lies between a philosophy of life and the philosophy of the school. If philosophy be regarded merely as one part of a general scientific education, then is the instruction in method (whether under the old traditionary name of Logic or any other) the chief point to be regarded. For such a mere elementary course, passing over, or at least postponing for a while the consideration of the matter, as possessing as yet but a very remote interest for the student, and, in the default of an adequate internal experience of his own, incapable of being understood by him, concerns itself rather with the practice of methodical thought, both as necessary for the future, and as applicable to all matters. But the preliminary exercise in philosophical thinking is only the introduction to philosophy, and not philosophy itself. This school-teaching of philosophy might, perhaps, be rendered productive of the most excellent consequences, if only it were directed to the history of the human intellect. What could be more interesting than a history which should enter into the spirit, and distinctly embody the various systems which the inventive subtilety of the Greeks gave birth to, or which, taking a still wider range, should embrace the science of the Egyptians, and some Asiatic nations, and illustrate the no less wonderful nor less manifold systems of the Hindoos—those Greeks of the primeval world? But this, perhaps, would be to encroach upon the peculiar domain of erudition, and might, moreover, fail to furnish equal interest for all; and, at any rate, the history of philosophy is not philosophy itself.

Now, the distinction between the philosophy of life and the philosophy of the school will appear in very different lights, according to the peculiarity of view which predominates in the several philosophical systems. That species of philosophy which revolves in the dialectical orbit of abstract ideas, according to its peculiar character, presupposes and requires a well-practiced talent of abstraction, perpetually ascending through higher grades to the very highest, and even then boldly venturing a step beyond. In short, as may be easily shown in the instance of modern German science, the being unintelligible is set up as a kind of essential characteristic of a true and truly scientific philosophy. I, for my part, must confess that I feel a great distrust of that philosophy which dwells in inaccessible light, where the inventor indeed asserts of himself, that he finds himself in an unattainable certainty and clearness of insight, giving us all the while to understand thereby that he does see well enough how, of all other mortals, scarcely any, or, perhaps, strictly speaking, no one, understands or is capable of understanding him. In all such cases it is only the false light of some internal ignis fatuus that produces this illusion of the unintelligible, or, rather, of nonsense. In this pursuit of wholly abstract and unintelligible thought, the philosophy of the school is naturally enough esteemed above every other, and regarded as pre-eminently the true science—i.e., the unintelligible.

In such a system a philosophy of life means nothing more than a kind of translation of its abstruser mysteries into a more popular form, and an adaptation of them to the capacity of ordinary minds. But even such popular adaptations, though evincing no common powers of language and illustration, in spite of their apparent clearness, when closer examined, are found as unintelligible as the recondite originals. For, inasmuch as the subject-matter of these abstract speculations was, from the very first, confused and unintelligible, it was consequently incapable of being made clear even by the most perspicuous of styles. But the true living philosophy has no relation or sympathy with this continuous advance up to the unintelligible heights of empty abstraction. Since the objects it treats of are none other than those which every man of a cultivated mind, and, in any degree accustomed to observe his own consciousness, both has and recognizes within himself, there is nothing to prevent its exposition being throughout clear, easy, and forcible. Here the relation is reversed. In such a system the philosophy of life is the chief and paramount object of interest; while the philosophy of the school, or the scientific teaching of it in the schools, however necessary and valuable in its place, is still, as compared with the whole thing itself, only secondary and subordinate. In the philosophy of life, moreover, the method adopted must also be a living one. Consequently it is not, by any means, a thing to be neglected. But still it need not to be applied with equal rigor throughout, or to appear prominently in every part, but, on all occasions, must be governed in these respects by what the particular end in view may demand.

A few illustrations, drawn from daily experience, will, perhaps, serve to explain my meaning. Generally speaking, the most important arts and pursuits of life are ultimately based on mathematics. This science furnishes them, as it were, with the method they observe; but it is not practicable, nor, indeed, has man the leisure, to revert on every occasion, with methodical exactness, to these elements, but, assuming the principles to be well known and admitted, he attends rather to the results essential to the end he has in view. The economical management of the smallest as well as of the largest household, rests, in the end, on the elementary principles of arithmetic; but what would come of it if, on every occasion, we were to go back to the simple “one-times-one” of the multiplication table, and reflected upon and sought for the proofs that the principle is really valid and can confidently be relied on in practice? In the same way the art of war is founded on geometry; but when the general arranges his troops for battle, does he consult his Euclid to satisfy himself of the correctness and advantages of his position? Lastly, when the astronomer, whose vocation is pre-eminently dependent on accurate calculation, when he would make us acquainted with the phenomena of the sidereal heavens, confines himself almost entirely to them, without wearying those whom he wishes to interest, with the complicated reckonings which, however, in all probability, he was obliged himself to go through. With all these arts and pursuits of practical life, the intellectual business of thinking—of such thinking at least as is common to most men—and of communicating thought, has a sort of affinity and resemblance. For, unquestionably, it is one among the many problems of philosophy to establish a wise economy and prudent stewardship of that ever-shifting mass of incoming and outgoing thoughts which make up our intellectual estate and property. And this is the more necessary the greater are the treasures of thought possessed by our age. For, in the highly rapid interchange of and traffic in ideas, which is carrying on, the receipts and disbursements are not always duly balanced. There is much cause, therefore, to fear lest a thoughtless and lavish dissipation of the noblest mental endowments should become prevalent, or a false and baseless credit-system in thought spring up amid an absolute deficiency of a solid and permanent capital safely invested in fundamental ideas and lasting truths. As for the second simile: I should, by all means, wish to gain a victory, not indeed for you, but with you, over some of the many errors and many semblances of thought, which are, however, but cheats and counterfeits which distract the minds of the present generation, disturb the harmony of life, and banish peace even from the intellectual world. And as respects the third illustration: I should indeed rejoice as having, in a great measure, attained my object, if only I shall succeed in directing your attention to some star in the higher region of intellect, which hitherto was either totally unknown, or, at least, never before fully observed.

But above all, I think it necessary to observe further, that in the same way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter, when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics. In the middle of the last century scarcely was there to be found a German manual for any of the sciences that did not ape the mathematical style, and where every single position in the long array of interminable paragraphs did not conclude with the solemn act of demonstrative phraseology. But it is also well known that the philosophy which was propounded in this inappropriate form and method was crammed full of, nay, rather, was hardly any thing more than a tissue of arbitrary, now forgotten, hypotheses, which have not brought the world at all nearer to the truth—not at least to that truth which philosophy is in search of, and which is something higher than a mere example of accurate computation.

And even in the present day—although, indeed, the application is made in a very different way from formerly—German philosophy is any thing but free from those algebraic formularies, in which all things, even the most opposite, admit of being comprised and blended together. But, be it as it may, this elaborate structure of mechanical demonstration can never produce a true, intrinsic, and full conviction. The method which philosophy really requires is quite different, being absolutely internal and intellectual (geistige). As in a correct architectural structure it is necessary that all its parts should be in unison, and such as the eye can take in easily and agreeably, so in every philosophical communication, the solid simple basis being laid, the arrangement of all the parts, and the careful rejection and exclusion of all foreign matter, is the most essential point, both for internal correctness and external perspicuity. But, in truth, the matter in hand bears a far closer resemblance and affinity to natural objects which live and grow, than to any lifeless edifice of stone; to a great tree, for instance, nobly and beautifully spreading out on all sides in its many arms and branches. As such a tree strikes the hasty and passing glance, it forms a somewhat irregular and not strictly finished whole; there it stands, just as the stem has shot up from the root, and has divided itself into a certain number of branches, and twigs, and leaves, which livingly move backward and forward in the free air. But examine it more closely, and how perfect appears its whole structure! how wonderful the symmetry, how minutely regular the organization of all its parts, even of each little leaf and delicate fiber! In the same way will the ever-growing tree of human consciousness and life appear in philosophy, whenever it is not torn from its roots and stripped of its leaves by a pretended wisdom, but is vividly apprehended by a true science, and exhibited and presented to the mind in its life and its growth.

Not only, however, the arrangement of the whole, but also the connection of the several parts of a philosophical treatise or development, is of a higher kind than any mere mechanical joining, such, for instance, as that by which two pieces of wood are nailed or glued together. If I must illustrate this connection by a simile from animated nature, the facts of magnetism will best serve my purpose. Once magnetically excited, the iron needle comes into invisible contact and connection with the whole globe and its opposite poles; and this magnetic clew has guided the bold circumnavigator into new and unknown regions of the world. Now, the intrinsic vital coherence of the several thoughts of philosophy resembles this magnetic attraction; and no such rude, mechanical, and, in fact, mere external conjunction of thought, like that lately alluded to, can satisfy the requirements of philosophical connection.

But the supreme intrinsic unity of philosophical thought, or of a philosophical series of ideas, is quite different from every thing hitherto mentioned. It belongs not to nature, but to life; it is not derived from the latter by way of figure or illustration, but is a part and constituent of it, and goes to the very root and soil of the moral life. What I mean is, the unity of sentiment—the fixed character, remaining ever the same and true to itself—the inner necessary sequence of the thoughts—which, in life no less than in the system and philosophical theory, invariably makes a great and profound impression on our minds, and commands our respect, even when it does not carry along with it our convictions. This, however, is dependent on no form, and no mere method can attain to it. How often, for instance, in some famous political harangue, which perhaps the speaker, like the rhapsodist of old, poured forth on the spur of the moment, do we at once recognize and admire this character in the thoughts, this consistency of sentiment? How often, on the contrary, in another composed with the most exquisite research and strict method, and apparently a far more elaborate and finished creation of the intellect, we have only to pierce through the systematic exterior to find that it is nothing but an ill-connected and chance-medley of conflicting assumptions and opinions taken from all quarters, and the crude views of the author himself, devoid of all solidity, and resting on no firm basis, without character, and wholly destitute of true intrinsic unity?

If now, in the present course of Lectures, I shall succeed in laying before you my subject in that clearness and distinctness which are necessary to enable you to comprehend the whole, and, while taking a survey of it, to judge of the agreement of the several parts, you will find, I trust, no difficulty in discovering the fundamental idea and sentiment. And further, I would venture to entreat you not to judge hastily of this sentiment from single expressions, and least of all at the very outset, but, waiting for its progressive development, to judge of it on the whole. Lastly, I would also indulge a hope that the views of an individual thinker, if perspicuously enunciated, may, even where they fail of conviction, and though points of difference still subsist, produce no revolting impression on your minds; but, by exercising a healing influence on many a rankling wound in thought and life, produce among us some of the fairest fruits of true philosophy.

Hitherto we have been considering, first of all, the object and proper sphere of the philosophy of life; and, secondly, its appropriate form of communication, as well as all other methods which are alien and foreign to it. Of great and decisive importance for the whole course and further development of philosophical inquiry is it to determine, in the next place, the starting-point from which it ought to set out. It will not do to believe that we have found this in any axiom or postulate such as are usually placed at the head of a system. For such a purpose we must rather investigate the inmost foundation—the root out of which springs the characteristic feature of a philosophical view. Now, in the philosophy of life the whole consciousness, with all its different phases and faculties, must inevitably be taken for the foundation, the soul being considered as the center thereof. This simple basis being once laid, it may be further developed in very different ways. For it is, I might almost say, a matter of indifference from what point in the circumference or periphery we set out in order to arrive at the center, with the design of giving a further development to this as the foundation of the whole. But in order to illustrate this simple method of studying life from its true central point, which is intermediate between the two wrong courses already indicated, and in order to make, by contrast, my meaning the plainer, I would here, in a few words, characterize the false starting-point from which the prevailing philosophy of a day—whether that of France in the eighteenth century or the more recent systems of Germany—has hitherto, for the most part, proceeded. False do I call it, both on account of the results to which it has led, and also of its own intrinsic nature. In one case as well as in the other, the starting-point was invariably some controverted point of the reason—some opposition or other to the legitimacy of the reason—under which term, however, little else generally was understood than an opposition of the reason itself to some other principle equally valid and extensive. The principal, or, rather, only way which foreign philosophy took in this pursuit, was to reduce every thing to sensation as opposed to reason, and to derive every thing from it alone, so as to make the reason itself merely a secondary faculty, no original and independent power, and ultimately nothing else than a sort of chemical precipitate and residuum from the material impressions.[3] But however much may be conceded to these and to the external senses, and however great a share they may justly claim in the whole inner property of the thinking man, still it is evident that the perception of these sensuous impressions, the inner coherence—in short, the unity of the consciousness in which they are collected—can never, as indeed it has often been objected on the other side, have come into the mind from without. This was not, however, the end which this doctrine had exclusively, or even principally, in view. The ultimate result to which they hoped to come by the aid of this premise was simply the negation of the suprasensible. Whatever in any degree transcends the material impression, or sensuous experience, as well as all possible knowledge of, and faith therein, not merely in respect to a positive religion, but absolutely whatever is noble, beautiful, and great—whatever can lead the mind to, or can be referred to a something suprasensible and divine—all this, wherever it may be found, whether in life or thought, in history or in nature—ay, even in art itself—it was the ultimate object of this foreign philosophy to decry, to involve in doubt, to attack and to overthrow, and to bring down to the level of the common and material, or to plunge it into the skeptical abyss of absolute unbelief. The first step in this system was a seeming subordination of reason to sensation, as a derivative of it—a mere slough which it throws off in its transformations. Afterward, however, the warfare against the suprasensible was waged entirely with the arms of reason itself. The reason, indeed, which supplied these weapons was not one scientifically cultivated and morally regulated, but thoroughly sophistical and wholly perverted, which, however, put into requisition all the weapons of a brilliant but skeptical wit, and moved in the ever-varied turnings of a most ingenious and attractive style. Here, where the question was no longer the abrogation of any single dogma of positive religion, but where the opposition to the divine had become the ruling tendency of philosophy, it is not easy to refrain from characterizing it as atheistical—what, indeed, in its inmost spirit it really was, and also historically proved itself by its results.

The other course adopted by French philosophy, in the times immediately preceding the Revolution, was to lay aside the weapons of wit, and to employ a burning eloquence as more likely to attract and to carry away minds naturally noble. It had, consequently, if possible, still more fatal results than the former. The reason, as the peculiar character of man in a civilized state—so it was argued—is like civilized man himself, an artificial creation, and in its essence totally unnatural; and the savage state of nature is the only one properly adapted to man. As the means of emancipation from an artificial and corrupt civilization, the well-known theory of the social contract was advanced. Our whole age has learned dearly enough the lesson, that this dogma, practically applied on a large scale, may, indeed, lead to a despotism of liberty, and to the lust of conquest, but can as little effect the re-establishment of a true civilization as it can bring back the state of nature. It would be a work of supererogation to dwell upon the pernicious results or the intrinsic hollowness of this system. It is, however, worth while to remark, that, in this theory also, the beginning was made with an opposition to reason. Starting with a depreciation of it as an artificial state and a departure from nature, at the last it threw itself, and the whole existing frame of society, into the arms of reason, and thereby sought to gain for the latter an unlimited authority over all laws, both human and divine. A somewhat similar phenomenon may every where be observed, and the same course will invariably be taken when philosophy allows itself to set out with some question or impugning of the reason, and, in its exclusiveness, makes this dialectical faculty the basis of its investigations.

Modern German philosophy, wholly different from the French, both in form and spirit, has, from its narrow metaphysical sphere, been of far less extensive influence; and, even if it has occasionally led to anarchy, it has been simply an anarchy of ideas. And yet, notwithstanding its different character, a similar course of inversion is noticeable in it. Beginning with a strict, not to say absolute, limitation of the reason, and with an opposition to its assumptions, it also ended in its investiture with supreme authority—not to say in its deification. The founder[4] of the modern philosophy of Germany commenced his teaching with a lengthy demonstration that the reason is totally incapable of attaining to a knowledge of the suprasensible, and that, by attempting it, it does but involve itself in endless disputes and difficulties. And then, on this assumed incompetency of the reason for the suprasensible was based the doctrine of the need, the necessity of faith—nay, faith itself.[5] But this arbitrary faith appeared to have but little reliance on itself; and, when closely viewed, turned out to be the old reason, which, after being solemnly displaced from the front of the philosophical palace, was now again, slightly altered and disguised, set up behind it as a useful but humble postern. Dissatisfied with such a system, the philosophical Me (Ich, Ego) chose another and a new road, that of absolute science,[6] in which it might, from the very first, do as it pleased—might bluster and fluster at will. But soon it became plain, that in this idealistic doctrine there was no room for any but a subjective reason-god devoid of all objective reality. In it the absolute Ego or Me of each individual was substituted for and identified with the divine. Against this certainty of the “Me,” therefore, there arose first of all a suspicion, and lastly the reproach of atheism. But, in truth, we ought to be extremely scrupulous in applying this term in all cases where the question does not turn on a rude denial of the truth, but rather on a highly erroneous confusion of ideas. At least, it would be well if, in such a case, we were to distinguish the imputed atheism by the epithet of scientific, in order to indicate thereby that the censure and the name apply in truth only to the error of the system, and not to the character of the author. For with such a scientific atheism, the sternest stoicism in the moral doctrine may, as indeed was actually the case here, be easily combined. Quite weary, however, of the transcendent vacuity of this ideal reason and mere dialectical reasoning, German philosophy now took a different road. It turned more to the side of nature,[7] in whose arms she threw herself in perfect admiration, thinking to find there alone life and the fullness thereof. Now, although this new philosophy of nature has borne many noble fruits of science, still even it has been haunted by that delusive phantom of the Absolute, and it is not free from liability to the reproach of a pantheistic deification of Nature. But properly and accurately speaking, it was not nature itself that was set up as the supreme object of veneration, but this same phantom of reason, which was taken as the basis and fundamental principle of nature. It was, in short, nothing but the old metaphysical one-times-one[8] in a somewhat novel application and more vivid form. Here, therefore, also did the system commence with a seeming disgust at the reason, and with a subordination of it to nature, in order to conclude with the absolute principle of the reason.

Viewed, however, as a philosophical science of nature, it has rather to answer for some occasional errors and perverse extravagances, than for any thoroughly consequent and systematic carrying out of the ingrafted error into all its parts. Moreover, a broad distinction must undoubtedly be drawn between its different advocates and promulgators. In these last days German philosophy has, in a measure at least, reverted again into the empty vacuum of the absolute idea.[9] The latter, indeed, and the idol of absolute reason which is enshrined therein, is no more a mere inward conception, but is objectively understood and set up as the fundamental principle of all entity. But still, when we consider how the essence of mind is expressly made to consist in negation, and how also the spirit of negation is predominant through the whole system, a still worse substitution appears to have taken place, inasmuch as, instead of the living God, this spirit of negation, so opposed to Him, is, in erroneous abstraction, set up and made a god of. Here, therefore, as well as elsewhere, a metaphysical lie assumes the place of a divine reality.

Thus, then, do we every where observe a strange internal correspondence and affinity between the several aberrations of our age. Here the remotest mental extremes, which externally seem to repel each other, suddenly converge at the same point of delusive light, or rather of brilliant darkness. Instances of this correspondence startle us where we least expect to meet with them. An English poet,[10] perhaps the greatest, certainly the most remarkable poet of our age, in his tragic delineation of the oldest fratricide, has portrayed the prime mover of this deed, the enemy of the human race, and the king of the bottomless pit, as the bold censurer of the divine order of things, and the head of all discontented spirits, and leader of the opposition of the whole creation. In this light he has painted him with unparalleled boldness, and with such moving and astonishing truthfulness, that all previous descriptions by the greatest poets seem but arbitrary and unreal phantoms when compared with this portrait, which was evidently a favorite sketch, for the author’s secret partiality betrays itself in the skill and pains with which he has lavished on this dark figure all the magic colors of his fancy. Thus, then, in this poetic creation, the same hostile principle—the same absolute, i.e., evil spirit of negation and contradiction that forms the consummation of the errors of German philosophy, notwithstanding its abstract unintelligibility—is enthroned amid the disordered system. And so, by a strange law of “pre-established harmony,” the anti-Christian poet and these anti-Christian thinkers unexpectedly meet together at the point of a spurious sublimity. In any case, however, this last instance forms the third stage of idealistic confusion, and certainly the last grade of scientific atheism.

Now, briefly to recapitulate my own convictions and my view of the relation subsisting between the philosophy of life which I propose to set before you, and the prevalent philosophy and science of the age, the following few remarks will suffice. I honor and admire the discoveries so pregnant with important results which natural philosophy has made in our days, but especially the gigantic strides which the study of nature in France has taken; so far, at least, as they contain and have established a real and solid advance of human science; so far, too, as I am acquainted with them, and in my sphere understand them. On the other hand, I can not but take exception to that admixture of materialism which has been infused into them by the ruling philosophical system of a previous age, which in France has still so many followers. I honor, too, and love German science, with its diligent and comprehensive research. Nay, I value the natural philosophy of Germany even still more than that of France, since, while it adopts the same great discoveries, it views them in a more spiritual light. As for that idealistic jargon, however, which runs parallel and is interwoven with it, on which, indeed, it was originally based, and from which even now it is any thing but clear—this I can not regard in any other light than, what it really is, an intellectual delusion of the most pernicious kind, and one which will inevitably produce the most destructive and fatal consequences on the human mind.

What has been now said will suffice for our notice of the opposing systems of philosophy. Henceforward we shall have no need to turn our looks to this side, but shall be able to give our attention solely and calmly to the development of that which I have already announced, and have now to communicate to you. Previously, however, to entering upon this subject, it seemed to me advisable, by contrasting the false starting-point with the true center of philosophy, to set the latter before you in a clearer and distincter light.

The dialectical faculty of abstraction is naturally the predominant one, and the most completely evolved in the thinking mind. Accordingly, most thinkers have set it up as the basis of their speculations, in order to arrive the more rapidly at the desired end of an absolute science; or, if the habit of mind be more disposed that way, at an absolute not-knowing, and the rejection of all certainty; which, in the main, is quite as false, and, in this respect, identical with the former. But it is not sufficient to follow any such a partial course, and to start from any one side merely of the human consciousness. On the right and sure road of a complete and thorough investigation, our first duty is to study the human consciousness in its fullness and living development, in all its faculties and powers. And then, in the second place, when, by thus assuming a position in the center, man has enabled himself to take a complete survey of the whole, he may unquestionably proceed to inquire what kind and what degree of knowledge, with such a consciousness, he is capable of attaining, both of the external world and of the suprasensible, and how far the latter is conceivable and its existence possible. Now, just as generally the soul is the principle of all life in nature, so is the thinking soul the center of the human consciousness. But in the thinking soul is comprised the reason which distinguishes, combines, and infers, no less than the fancy which devises, invents, and suggests. Standing in the center between the two, the thinking soul embraces both faculties. But it also forms the turning-point of transition between the understanding and the will; and, as the connecting link, fills up the gulf which otherwise would lie between and divide the two. It comprises, also, all sorts and degrees of conceptions, from the absolutely necessary, precisely definite, and permanently unchangeable, down to those which arise and pass away half involuntarily—from those in no degree clearly developed up to those which have been advanced to the highest clearness of the understanding—those which are witnessed with a calm indifference, and those also which excite a gentle longing or kindle a burning resolve. The thinking soul is the common store-house where the whole of these conceptions are successively lodged. Indeed, to describe it in general terms, it is but the inner pulse of thought, corresponding to the pulsation of the blood in the living body.

This general description, it must be confessed, is very far from being an adequate explanation of the matter, and at best does but imperfectly convey our meaning. But perhaps a different line of thought, however bold and hazardous it may seem, may bring us far more simply to the point at present in view—a more accurate description, namely, of the peculiar property of the human mind, and of the characteristic feature which distinguishes man from other beings equally finite, but endowed in the same manner with consciousness. That the rational soul, or the reason, distinguishes him from the brutes, is a remark common and trite enough. But this is only one aspect of the matter: and must we always cast our looks downward, and never upward? What I mean is this: supposing that there are other created spirits and finite intelligences besides men, might not the comparison of their purely spiritual consciousness with man’s serve, perhaps in an eminent degree, to elucidate the distinctive properties of the human consciousness in that other aspect which is too commonly neglected? I am far from intending to make this matter a subject of investigation in the present place. I take it merely as an hypothesis, warranted, indeed, by universal tradition, and solely as an aid to elucidate the matter in hand. Universal, however, I may well call this tradition, since, agreeing in the main with what Holy Writ asserts, the oldest and most civilized nations of antiquity (among whom I need only mention the Egyptians, and especially the Persians and the Hindoos) have admitted, as a well-established fact, the existence of such finite intelligences and created spirits, invisible indeed to man, but not altogether alien to him. And as for the Greeks and Romans, if occasionally they allude to the genius of Socrates as something strange and singular, this was only because the wise Athenian spoke of this subject in peculiar language, and referred to it more habitually than was the wont of his countrymen and cotemporaries. Otherwise it was the general belief, both of Greeks and Romans, that every man has his guardian spirit or genius. Now this hypothesis being once admitted to be possible, let us inquire in what light were these ancients accustomed to regard, and what ought we to conceive of the peculiar nature of these spiritual beings in conformity with the representation of so universal a tradition?

Now, in the first place, they have always been thought of as pure spiritual beings, having no such gross terrestrial body as man has. At least, if they were supposed to require and possess a body as the organ and medium of their spiritual operations, it was considered to be of a special kind—an ethereal body of light, but invisible to the human eye. But this incorporeity is little more than a negative quality. A more positive and a profounder distinction lies perhaps in this, that these pure spiritual beings are wholly free from that weakness of character, or frailty, which is so peculiar to man. That pervading internal mutability, that undecided vacillation between doing and letting alone, that reciprocation between effort and relaxation—the wide gulf between volition and execution, the thought and the carrying into effect—nothing of all this admits of being applied or transferred to these pure spiritual beings without contradicting the very idea of their essence. It is thus only, or not at all, that we can conceive of them. Coming and going like the lightning, and rapid as the light, they never grow weary of their endless activity. They need no rest, except the spiritual contemplation which constitutes their essence. All their thoughts are marked with unity and identity. With them the conception is at the same time a deed, and the purpose and the execution are simultaneous. Every thing, too, in them has the stamp of eternity. This prerogative, however, has, it must be confessed, its disadvantages. When once they have deviated from the true center, they go on forever in their devious course.

But still, all this is little more than a description of the whole idea which I have allowed myself, merely with a view of employing it as a passage to the point which is at present in question. That purpose was, on the supposition of the existence of such superior beings, accurately to indicate which of man’s powers, or faculties of mind and soul, may rightly be attributed to them. Now, to my mind, the distinction is very strikingly suggested in the well-known sentiment of one of our famous poets. Thus he addresses man—“Thy knowledge thou sharest with superior beings;” superior, for in the clearness of their eternal science they undoubtedly stand far higher than men: and then he continues, “But art thou hast alone.”[11] But, now, what else is art than fancy become visible, and assuming a bodily shape, or word, or sound? It is, therefore, this nimble-footed, many-shaped, ever-inventive fancy, which forms the dangerous prerogative of man, and can not be ascribed to these pure spiritual beings. And as little justifiable would it be to ascribe to them that human reason, with its employment of means, and its slow processes of deduction and comparison. Instead of this, they possess the intuitive understanding, in which to see and to understand are simultaneous and identical. If, then, in an accurate sense of the terms, neither fancy nor reason belongs to them, it would further be wrong to attribute them a soul as distinct from the mind or spirit, and as being rather a passive faculty of inward productiveness, and change, and internal growth. Briefly to recapitulate what has been said: The existence of the brutes is simple, because in them the soul is completely mixed up and merged in the organic body, and is one with it; on the destruction of the latter it reverts to the elements, or is absorbed in the general soul of nature. Twofold, however, is the nature of created spirits, who besides this ethereal body of light are nothing but mind or spirit; but threefold is the nature of man, as consisting of spirit, soul, and body.[12] And this triple constitution and property, this threefold life of man, is, indeed, not in itself that pre-eminence, although it is closely connected with that superior excellence which ennobles and distinguishes man from all other created beings. I allude to that prerogative by which he alone of all created beings is invested with the Divine image and likeness. This threefold principle is the simple basis of all philosophy; and the philosophical system which is constructed on such a foundation is the philosophy of life, which therefore has even “words of life.” It is no idle speculation, and no unintelligible hypothesis. It is not more difficult, and needs not to be more obscure, than any other discourse on spiritual subjects; but it can and may be as easy and as clear as the reading of a writing, the observation of nature, and the study of history. For it is, in truth, nothing else than a simple theory of spiritual life, drawn from life itself, and the simple understanding thereof. If, however, it becomes abstract and unintelligible, this is invariably a consequence, and, for the most part, an infallible proof of its having fallen into error. When in thought we place before us the whole composite human individual, then, after spirit and soul, the organic body is the third constituent, or the third element out of which, in combination with the other two, the whole man consists and is compounded. But the structure of the organic body, its powers and laws, must be left to physical science to investigate. Philosophy is the science of consciousness alone. It has, therefore, primarily to occupy itself with soul and spirit, or mind, and must carefully guard against transgressing its limits in any respect. But the third constituent beside mind and soul, in which these two jointly carry on their operations, needs not always, as indeed the above instance proves, to be an organic body. In other relations of life, this third, in which both are united, or which they in unison produce, may be the word, the deed, life itself, or the divine order on which both are dependent. These, then, are the subjects which I have proposed for consideration. But in order to complete this scale of life, I will further observe—triple is the nature of man, but fourfold is the human consciousness. For the spirit or mind, like the soul, divides and falls asunder; or, rather, is split and divided into two powers, or halves—the mind, namely, into understanding and will, the soul into reason and fancy. These are the four extreme points, or, if the expression be preferred, the four quarters of the inner world of consciousness. All other faculties of the soul, or powers of mind, are merely subordinate ramifications of the four principal branches; but the living center of the whole is the thinking soul.

LECTURE II.
OF THE LOVING SOUL AS THE CENTER OF THE MORAL LIFE; AND OF MARRIAGE.

THE development of the human consciousness, according to the triple principle of its existence, or of its nature as compounded of spirit or mind, soul, and animated body, must begin with the soul, and not with the spirit, even though the latter be the most important and supreme. For the soul is the first grade in the progress of development. In actual life, also, it is the beginning and the permanent foundation, as well as the primary root of the collective consciousness. The development of the spirit or mind of man is much later, being first evolved in or out of, by occasion of, or with the co-operation of the soul. But even when thus developed, the mind (under which term we comprise the will, as well as the understanding) is neither in all men, nor always in the same individual, equally active. In this respect we may apply to it what has been said of the wind, which imparts vital motion and freshness to all the objects of outward nature: we “hear the sound thereof, but we can not tell whence it comes, nor whither it goeth.”[13] The thinking soul, on the contrary, is, properly speaking, always, though silently, working; and it is highly probable that it is never without conceptions. Of these, indeed, it may either possess a clear or an almost totally indistinct consciousness, according to that principle of unconscious representations propounded as a fundamental axiom of psychology by a great German philosopher[14] of earlier times, with whose opinions I often find myself agreeing, and with whom, before all other men, I would most gladly concur.

Applied to the alternating states of sleeping and waking in the outward organic life, this would merely mean that in sleep we always dream, even at those times when our vision leaves no traces on our memory. The great majority of dreams, even those which in the moment of awakening we still remember, are absolutely nothing but the conjoint impression of the bodily tone and the ever-varying temperament of life and health, and of the disorderly repetition of such ideas as previously to sleeping had principally engaged the attention. Now, since every opposite comes near to its correlative in one or more points of contact, which, as they establish, also serve to maintain the relationship between the two, so the state of the soul in dreaming will serve strikingly to illustrate its waking action. Of the great multitude of dreams, which are for the most part confused and unmeaning, some occasionally stand out from the rest extremely clear and well-connected, in which the feelings oftentimes discover a profound significance, or which, at least, as significant images, interest the fancy. And just in the same manner in the state of waking there passes before the soul no inconsiderable number of obscure and vague conceptions, which are not much if at all clearer or more methodically disposed than the train of images which in a dream succeed one another without the least intrinsic order or connection. Still we should greatly err were we to assume, that like the latter they leave no trace behind them on the soul. On the contrary, in these undeveloped beginnings of thought there often lies the germ of very definite ideas, and especially of the various peculiarities of mental character, as also of the impulses and determination which, at first slowly and spontaneously formed, eventuate in some definite susceptibility or direction of the will. Now, as the external life of man alternates between the waking activity and the state of repose in sleep, so, too, the thinking soul is divided between the abstracting and classifying Reason and the inventive Fancy.[15] These two are, as it were, the halves, so to speak, or the two poles of the thinking soul, of which the one may be regarded as the positive, the other as the negative. In respect to the inner fruitful cogitation itself—to the origination and production of thoughts—the imagination, as the reproductive faculty, is the positive pole. As for the fancy, properly so called—the poetic fancy, or that which plays an important part in the inclinations and passions—it is only a particular species and operation of this faculty, which in its general form also manifests itself in many other directions and spheres of human thought and action. To it belongs, for instance, that talent of extensive combination which distinguishes all the great discoverers in mathematics. Opposite to this productive faculty of thought, the negative pole is formed by the classifying faculty of reason, which further elaborates, closely determines, and limits the materials furnished to it by the fancy. Thus, then, the place which the fancy—with all the powers, emotions, and impressions which belong to it—assumes relatively to the external world, is subordinate and ministerial, since it is only within certain prescribed limits that it can duly make use of its rich productive energies, realize its inmost ideas, and act upon them.

Here, therefore, the first place belongs to the ordering and determining reason, and which here ought to hold the helm. In this respect it may justly be called the regulative faculty. And yet, since the reason is, so to speak, only one half of the soul, it must not pretend to exclusive authority; while, on the other hand, it is but little likely that that which we may have set before our mind and imagination as the innermost wish of our hearts, will simply on that account prove invariably a real and lasting good.

I called the understanding and the will, the reason and the fancy, the four principal branches of the human consciousness, of which all other mental powers or faculties of the soul, usually ascribed to man, are but so many offshoots. These other powers, however, can not with perfect propriety be called subordinate, since in another point of view they may, perhaps, be entitled to assume a higher rank. Assigned[16] faculties is, therefore, what I should prefer to term them. Now of such faculties belonging to the domain of the combining and distinguishing reason, the memory and the conscience are pre-eminently to be mentioned. For the memory also in another way is a combining, just as the conscience is a distinguishing faculty—the latter, however, being so not only in another, but even in a far higher sense. But we must postpone for the present the further consideration of this matter, and consider rather those faculties or functions which are under the influence of, or at least immediately connected with, the fancy. These are the senses, and the inclinations or instincts. With regard, then, to the senses: in the first place, I would simply call your attention to the fact, that the triple principle of human existence—according to which the latter consists of a spirit or mind, of a soul, and of a living body or a bodily manifestation—is repeated as it were in miniature in every smaller and narrower sphere of man’s consciousness. This is especially the case with the external senses. Thus viewing them, however, we should have to reckon but three senses instead of the usual number of five. This can be managed easily enough by taking the three lower and counting them as one, since they constitute pre-eminently the corporeal sense, as contradistinguished from the other two, which are both higher and more incorporeal. For to the three lower senses, not only is a material contact indispensable, but also, as in the case of smell, a sort of chemical assimilation with matter. No doubt, in the act of seeing and hearing there is likewise a certain but imperceptible contact of the nerves of the eye and ear with the waves of light and the undulations of the air; but still this contact is of a different kind from the former, and of another and indeed of a higher nature, producing the relations of tone, color, and shape. Now, in this classification, the eye is the mind or spirit’s sense for beauty of form and grace of motion. It is so in truth, not merely in those who are endowed with a taste for the arts or the artistic eye, but far more universally, being diffused in a greater or less degree through the whole human family. Special gifts of it, or, rather, higher though varying endowments, are to be found in some highly-favored individuals; and in the same way the ear for music is not imparted to all who possess the general organ of hearing, which we very properly term the soul’s sense. The external senses man shares, indeed, in common with the brutes, in some of whom they are found of an exquisite and highly-developed susceptibility. But these higher endowments of eye and ear, and above all the natural artistic feeling for beauty of form, and the musical talent, are the prerogatives of man, conferred upon him by his peculiar faculty of fancy. On this account they, like that faculty, are distributed unequally among men, though they are not on that account less real and undeniable.

The brutes, I said, do not possess them. No doubt there is a certain melodious rhythm perceptible in the songs of birds. Some, also, of the more eminently docile and sagacious of terrestial animals do indeed evince peculiar signs of pleasure in the music of man. Still I would call this but so many single, unconnected echoes or reverberations of fancy, since every thing like free choice, further development, or intrinsic coherence, is wanting to them—all is broken, abrupt, and incapable of being formed into a whole. In the same manner the artistic instinct and skill of some animals exhibits, no doubt, a certain likeness in its operations to the rational works of man, but still it ever remains a resemblance at best, and is forever divided from reason by a wide and impassable gulf. It is, as it were, the indistinct trace of a weather-worn and nearly obliterated inscription—the dying notes of some far-off music. And hence the agreeable, but, at the same time, melancholy, impression which such things make upon our feelings. A something human seems to be stirring in them. They appear to revive a faint but nearly-forgotten allusion to an originally close and intrinsic relation between animated nature in its highest developments and man as its former master and as the divinely-appointed lord of the whole earthly creation. But if the influence and the operation of the fancy on the external senses be thus indistinct and difficult to be traced, it is far more apparent, as also far greater and more decided, on the inclinations, instincts, and passions which form the second class of the faculties subordinate to the fancy. It can easily be shown how even the simplest instincts of self-preservation, and the gratification of the most natural wants, are in man perceptibly affected by the working of fancy, so as to be manifoldly diversified thereby. But still more is this the case with the higher impulses and instincts, as confirmed and strengthened by use and indulgence, especially when, in their most violent and intensest development, they become passions. For, in this shape, both by this excess and by the false direction they give to the mental powers, originally designed for nobler and more exalted purposes, they form so many moral perversities and faults of character. I would here, in the first place, call your attention to the fact, that in all the passions, when, by their intensity, they become immoral, the fancy exercises an essential and co-operating influence. And, in the second place, I would remind you that in the same way as in the external senses generally, so also in all the principal phases of ill-regulated passion, the threefold principle of human existence manifests itself once more, and is even repeated anew in all the several forms and subdivisions of these special spheres.

Now, the first of these false tendencies and moral infirmities—unbounded pride and haughtiness—is essentially a mental blindness and aberration; and vanity, with its delusions, is the same disease in a lower and milder phase. And all will admit that the source of this moral failing is an overweening love of self. But in self-conceit the co-operating influence of fancy is easily and distinctly traceable. As to the second of those infirmities which distract and disturb life: I should also be disposed to consider the sensual passionateness or passionate sensuality as a disease indeed, but of a brutalizing tendency—an inflammatory habit, a fever of the soul, which either spends itself in acute and violent paroxysms, or with slower but certain progress secretly undermines and subverts all man’s better qualities. In either case, the true source of the evil—the irresistible energy and the false magic of this passion—lies in an over-excited, deluded, or poisoned fancy. The natural instinct itself, in so far as it is inborn and agreeable to nature, is obnoxious to no reproach. The blame lies altogether in the want of principle, or that weakness of character which half-voluntarily concedes to the mere instinct an unlimited authority, or, at least, is incapable of exercising over it a due control. The third false direction of man’s instincts which, after the two already noticed, involves human society in the greatest disorder, and most fatally disturbs the peace of individuals, is an unlimited love of gain, selfishness, and avarice. No doubt, in a certain modified and lower sense, the hope of advantage or profit is the motive that prompts every enterprise; at least, according to the judgment of the world, nothing is undertaken or transacted without a view to some object of a selfishness more or less refined. But when we look to the worst and most violent cases of this disease—an insatiable avarice and a morbid love of gain, then we at once see the baneful effects which the fancy, dwelling exclusively on material property and chinking coin, has on this moral disease, where, with the golden treasure, mind and soul are shut up and buried, and both completely numbed and petrified, in the same way that, by certain organic diseases of the body, the heart becomes ossified.

By these pernicious passions, the higher moral organ of life is in different ways attacked and destroyed. In the first case, that of the blinding of the mind by pride and vanity, the moral judgment is perverted and falsified. In the second case, where the soul is brutalized by a life of sensuality, the moral sense is clouded, loses all its delicacy, and is at last totally obliterated. In the third instance, that of a thorough numbness of the inner life produced by selfishness and avarice, the idea of moral duty is in the end totally lost, dies away, and becomes extinct, while the dead Mammon is regarded as the supreme good of life, and, being set up as the sole object of human exertion, is substituted for the best and noblest acquisition of mind and soul. The three passions which we have already examined are founded indeed on a positive pursuit, however false may be the extent or perverted the direction in which it is carried out. We might now proceed with our speculation, and, progressively developing it from the same point of view, extend and apply it to the aggressive passions, which are based on a merely negative pursuit—the attack, annihilation, and destruction of their objects. I allude to the passion of hatred, in its three different elements or species, viz., anger, malice, and revenge. But to enter further upon such investigations would be inappropriate in the present place. Generally, indeed, in touching upon matters so universally known, my object has been merely to consider and exhibit them from their psychological side, in order to show partly how the triple principle of human existence, according to mind or spirit, and soul, and the third element, wherein the former two conjointly operate, finds its application, and is repeated, as it were, in miniature, in the narrower sphere of the natural inclination, both good and bad, and also in that of the external senses. At the same time it was also my wish to call attention to the fact, that the dominion of the fancy over its subordinate faculties, whether of the external senses or the instincts, manifests itself likewise in the pernicious passions, as exercising over them a very baneful influence, and, indeed, as being the principal source of the prevailing aberrations.

These three passions and leading defects of character, which destroy the inward peace of individuals and disturb the order of society, may be regarded as so many Stygian floods, so many dark subterranean streams of lava and fire, which, bursting from the crater of a burning fancy, pour down upon the region of the will, there again to break out in lawless deeds and violent catastrophes, or, perhaps, what is far worse, to lie smoldering in a life frittered away in worthless pursuits, without object or meaning, or in the frivolous routine of an ordinary existence.

Having thus fully set forth the injurious influence of a disordered fancy on the deadly and pernicious passions of man, we shall be more at liberty to consider the other and better aspect of this mental faculty. For fancy, which, as his peculiar prerogative, distinguishes man from all other intellectual beings, is a living and fruitful source of good no less than of evil. Accordingly, in the higher aims of his good instincts, noble inclinations, and true enthusiasms, fancy gives life and stability to his exertions, and arouses and calls to his aid all the energies of mind and intellect.

But here I must make the preliminary remark, that in the ethical domain generally, and in all moral matters and relations, nothing but a very fine line divides right from wrong. The fault lies not unfrequently in the undue exaggeration or false application of a right principle. Pride and vanity, for instance, are the commonest subjects of the world’s censure; but who would banish from existence a true sense of honor, and a noble thirst of fame. And how would society lose all its tone and its true ring, if we were to withdraw from it all those precious metals! Avarice and the love of gain are, no doubt, fruitful sources of evil, and bring into society a thousand—nay, we may rather say, without exaggeration, ten thousand times ten thousand woes. They are the occasion of countless feuds and endless litigation; so that the prevention and settlement of these numberless commercial quarrels and disputes about property occupy the chief part of the attention, and absorb the best energies of domestic government. But a gainful industry, directed to utility, and even to private utility—labor and assiduity which have no other end in view than a lawful gain and a fair profit, which not merely does not violate the rights of others, but even pays a due regard to their interests, will be universally recognized as an essential part of the frame of society. It forms, indeed, the alimentary sap of life, which, as it ascends through its different vessels, diffuses every where both health and strength.

Lastly, we will now consider that other instinct of our nature, which, even as the strongest, most requires moral regulation and treatment. By all noble natures among civilized nations, in their best and purest times, this instinct has, by means of various moral relations, been spontaneously associated with a higher element. And, indeed, taken simply as inclination, it possesses some degree of affinity therewith. Such a strong inclination and hearty love, elevated to the bond of fidelity, receives thereby a solemn consecration, and is even, according to the divine dispensation, regarded as a sanctuary. And it is in truth the moral sanctuary of earthly existence, on which God’s first and earliest blessing still rests. It is, moreover, the foundation on which is built the happiness and the moral welfare of races and nations. This soul-connecting link of love, which constitutes the family union, is the source from which emanate the strong and beautiful ties of a mother’s love, of filial duty, and of fraternal affection between brethren and kindred, which together make up the invisible soul, and, as it were, the inner vital fluid of the nerves of human society. And here, too, the great family problem of education must be taken into account—and by education I mean the whole moral training of the rising generation. For, however numerous and excellent may be the institutions founded by the state, or conducted by private individuals, for special branches and objects, or for particular classes and ages, still, on the whole, education must be regarded as pre-eminently the business and duty of the family. For it is in the family that education commences, and there, also, it terminates and concludes at the moment when the young man, mature of mind and years, and the grown-up maiden, leave the paternal roof to found a new family of their own. In seasons of danger, and of wide-spread and stalking corruption, men are wont to feel—but often, alas! too late—how entirely the whole frame, both of human and political society, rests on this foundation of the family union. Not merely by the phenomena of our own times, but by the examples of the most civilized nations of antiquity, may this truth be historically proved; and numerous passages can be adduced from their great historians in confirmation of it. In all times and in all places a moral revolution within the domestic circle has preceded the public outbreaks of general anarchy, which have thrown whole nations into confusion, and undermined the best-ordered and wisely-constituted states. When all the principal joists of a building have started, and all its stays and fastenings, from the roof to the foundation, have become loose, then will the first storm of accident easily demolish the whole structure, or the first spark set the dry and rotten edifice in flames.

Next in order and dignity to this soul-binding tie of a noble and virtuous love, which promotes and preserves the intimate union of all the parts of social life, another species or form of a lofty, a good, and a beautiful—nay, even of a sublime—endeavor, shows itself in what we call enthusiasm. The latter has for its positive object a thought which the soul having once intellectually embraced, is ever after filled and possessed with. But the mere inward idea does not suffice here, however it may in the case of the simple conception or admiration of a noble thought. The distinctive characteristic of enthusiasm is rather the untiring energy with which, even at great personal sacrifice, it labors to realize, or to preserve in realization, the idea which has once fully possessed the soul. The commonest form or species of this enthusiasm is patriotism, or the love of country, which best and most plainly manifests itself in seasons of national danger or calamity. As the daily life of the individual alternates between labor and rest, and the refreshing sleep of the night renews the strength which has been exhausted by the toils of the day, so is it on a larger scale with the public life of the state in its alternations between peace and war. For although peace is justly prized and desired, as the greatest of public blessings, still it is some comfort and compensation for its unavoidable absence, to know that the presence of war, and the struggle with its dangers and hardships, first awaken and call into being many of man’s best energies and noblest virtues, which, in uninterrupted peace and tranquillity, must have remained forever dormant. But, as is every where the case throughout the moral domain, a spurious enthusiasm stands close alongside of the true and genuine species, and requires to be carefully distinguished from it. Forced to speak of the love of country, and to paint its genuine traits, I rejoice that I am standing on one of its chosen and most familiar scenes, where my hearers will understand me at the first sound, when I declare that the true enthusiasm of patriotism reveals itself most plainly in misfortune—in the midst of deep and lasting calamities. Another characteristic is, that it does not arbitrarily set up its object, or capriciously make its own occasion, but at the first call of its hereditary sovereign rushes to the post of danger. The second mark, therefore, of a true patriotism is obedience, but an obedience associated with the forward energies of a fixed and prepared resolve, which far outruns the exact requisitions of duty, and gives rise to a true and real equality—the equality of self-sacrifice, wherein the high and noble vie with the poor and lowly in the magnanimous oblation to their country of their best and dearest possessions.

Another generally known and admitted species of enthusiasm, viz., a taste for the arts, has not so universal a foundation in the constitution of the human mind as the feeling of patriotism, but implies a particular mental disposition, and certain natural endowments, and consequently the sphere of its operation is far narrower. But here, also, as in the former case, enthusiasm manifests itself as a property or state of the soul which is far from being contented with a calm philosophical contemplation, or admiration, of its inward thought, but which, longing eagerly to realize and exhibit externally the idea with which it is possessed, knows no rest nor peace till it has accomplished its cherished object. And such an ideal enthusiasm is not confined to the sphere of art alone, but even in the calmer regions of science is its influence felt. It is, in short, the animating impulse of all great inventions, creations, and discoveries. Without it Columbus would never have been able to overcome all the dangers and obstacles which beset the first design and the final consummation of his bold conception. But in the latter instances the object of enthusiasm is no longer a pure ideal, like that which animates the artist, but something great or new in the region of useful science, or of practical life. In every case, however, enthusiasm has for its object a something positive and real, which, even if it be not one which captivates the soul with its transcendent beauty and excellence, yet, at least, by its exalted nature fills it with wonder and admiration. Quite otherwise is it with a longing—an indefinite feeling of profound desire, which is satisfied with no earthly object, whether real or ideal, but is ever directed to the eternal and the divine. And although it presupposes, as the condition of its existence, no special genius or peculiar talents, but proceeds immediately out of the pure source of the divinely created and immortal soul—out of the everlasting feelings of the loving soul—still, from causes which are easily conceivable, a pure development of this species is far rarer than even of the enthusiasm for art. No doubt, in certain happy temperaments, under circumstances favorable to their free expansion, this vague longing is peculiar to the age of youth, and is often enough observed there. Indeed, it is in that soft melancholy, which is always joined with the half-unconscious, but pleasant feeling of the blooming fullness of life, that lies the charm which the reminiscence of the days of youth possesses for the calm and quiet contemplations of old age. Here, too, the distinctive mark between the genuine and the spurious manifestations of this feeling is both simple enough, and easily found. For as this longing may in general be explained as an inchoate state—a love yet to be developed—the question reduces itself consequently to the simple one of determining the nature of this love. If, upon the first development and gratification of the passions, this love immediately passes over to and loses itself in the ordinary realities of life, then is it no genuine manifestation of the heavenly feeling, but a mere earthly and sensual longing. But when it survives the youthful ebullition of the feelings, when it does but become deeper and more intense by time, when it is satisfied with no joys, and stifled by no sorrows of earth—when, from the midst of the struggles of life, and the pressure of the world, it turns, like a light-seeing eye upon the storm-tossed waves of the ocean of time, to the heaven of heavens, watching to discover there some star of eternal hope—then is it that true and genuine longing, which, directing itself to the divine, is itself also of a celestial origin. Out of this root springs almost every thing that is intellectually beautiful and great—even the love of scientific certainty itself, and of a profound knowledge of life and nature. Philosophy, indeed, has no other source, and we might in this respect call it, with much propriety, the doctrine or the science of longing. But even that youthful longing, already noticed, is oftentimes a genuine, or, at least, the first foundation of the higher and truer species, although, unlike the latter, it is as yet neither purely evolved nor refined by the course of time.

One general remark remains to be added. This beautiful longing of youth, a fruitful fancy, and a loving soul, are the best and most precious gifts of benignant nature, that dispenses with so liberal a hand, or, rather, not of nature, but of that wonderful Intelligence that presides in and over it. They form, as it were, a fair garden of hidden life within man. But as the first man was placed in the garden of Eden, not merely for his idle enjoyment, but, as it is expressly stated, “to dress it and to keep it,” so here also, when this law of duty is neglected, the inmost heart of the most eminent characters and of the most richly-endowed natures becomes, as it were, a Paradise run wild and waste.

In the consideration of these three forms of man’s higher effort—viz., longing, true love, and genuine enthusiasm—I have throughout silently implied, what no one can possibly deny, the co-operating influence of fancy. As in the evil passions it exercises an injurious, inflammatory, and destructive effect, so also it co-operates beneficially with the longing which is directed to the good and the divine, and imparts to it its animating ardor, and its highest energy. In the pure longing, indeed, the inventive fancy is dissolved in what has ceased to be an earthly feeling, and has become completely identified with the living soul. But in the love and enthusiasm which are directed to some actual object, it is the sustaining flame of life, and of all loftier aspirations which, as they spring from the source of fancy, attest its co-operation. It may be that the pure spirits are filled and pervaded with that loving veneration of the Deity which makes up their blissful existence, simply by means of the intuitive understanding and the pure will, without even any admixture of fancy. A human love or enthusiasm, however, which should be totally devoid of fancy, and free from its influence, will very rarely, if ever, be met with, and is but barely conceivable. This, however, does not involve any reproach or censure against man’s love and enthusiasm, as though they were unreal and founded on an untruth. For nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the fancy must invariably be untrue and deceiving, or at least self-deceived. Such a supposition is derived merely from one species of it—the poetical fancy. And yet even this, in its genuine manifestations, contains beneath its privileged and permitted garb of external untruth, a rich store and living source of great and profound verities, of a peculiar kind, and belonging to an internal truth of nature. Or, perhaps, this misconception of fancy in general may have its origin in that abortion or corruption of it which operates so powerfully in the evil passions, which is undoubtedly in the highest degree deceptive and delusive. In and by itself, and taken in its widest signification, this faculty of fancy is, generally speaking, the living productive thought—the faculty of internal fertility—and which also with its outward organs, both of an earthly and a higher sense, apprehends the whole external world. It enters, therefore, with a living interest into every good as well as base pursuit of man, and giving new shapes of its own to all that it has once apprehended, labors to invest it with a living form, to apply and to realize it. In itself, therefore, and in its pure and uncorrupt state, far from clashing with the divine truth (which, however, is not in every case identical with the ordinary reality), fancy, as we shall show more fully in another place, admits of being easily reconciled with it. But of human things we must always judge by a human standard, and with due allowance. Even supposing that, in the case of a true love and a genuine enthusiasm, a passing thought may be detected, a momentary excitement or manifestation which goes beyond the exact line of the actual truth—even in such a case this love and this enthusiasm would not therefore be less real and genuine—still would not all be exaggeration that might seem so to the unsympathizing and unenthusiastic intellect. At all events, it must ever remain undeniable, that emergencies occur in human life which are not met by the rigorous and mathematical formularies of ethical science, and where by nothing but a noble sacrifice of love far transcending all the common and general requisitions of the practical reason—by nothing but a lofty energy and resolute enthusiasm—can a man extricate himself from his perplexities and arrive at a happy result. At least, it will not do to overlook or misrepresent this element of human life, even though it must be admitted that it is not exempt from those traces of human infirmity which are also but too apparent in the other aspect of it, the one, viz., in which the formal reason decides every thing, and is supreme.

As, therefore, the thinking soul is the living center of the human consciousness, so, on the other hand, the loving soul is the middle point and the foundation of all moral life, as it shows itself in that soul-bond of love, which, while it constitutes marriage, is tied and completed therein. On this union, then, which, as historically represented, appears to be the true commencement of civilized life, it will be necessary to say a few words; and the present seems the most appropriate place for them. Now, both in philosophy and in all general speculation, there are many reasoners who would derive every thing from material sensations, and seek to degrade all that is regarded as high and noble by mankind. So here, also, in the world’s mode of judging of this union—which, however, all publicly-acknowledged principles regard as holy—it, and all that belongs to it, is accounted for by some evanescent passion, some sensual impression, or some interested view or other, while the existence of any thing like true and genuine love is absolutely denied. But, in the first place, in the case of a union which embraces the entire man—his sensuous as well as his rational, or, as I should prefer to say, his earthly no less than his spiritual nature and temperament—it can not fairly be urged in objection to it, that both the elements of his mixed constitution are present in it. On the contrary, it is obviously most unjust, in our estimate of it, violently to separate what, even in the least corrupted disposition and purest characters, are most closely interwoven, or, rather, fused together, and to subject them to an invidious and destructive analysis. This is not the way to determine the characteristics of a true and of a false love. The distinction between them must rather be sought by a simpler method, similar to that which we followed in the case of longing and enthusiasm—by considering merely the total result. A feeling of this kind may appear at the beginning never so violent; it may even amuse itself with a thorough mental hallucination, which betrays itself in its very outward aspect, with the profoundest veneration, nay, deification of its admired object; but in married life this intense admiration soon gives place to satiety or indifference, and imbittered by mutual distrust and misunderstanding, it terminates in incurable discord. In such a case the feeling, even in its ardent beginnings, was no true love, but simply passion. But in those happy unions, where the first passionate ardor of youth yields only to an ever-growing and still purer development of mutual good-will and confidence—while self-sacrifice and patient endurance, both in good and evil fortune, do but cherish the same deep affection and calm friendship—here, from the very first, it was true and genuine love. For, however much the outward appearances of human life may seem to contradict it, there is not in nature, and even in the higher region, any love without a return. And as all true love is reciprocal, so also is true love lasting and indestructible; or, to “speak as a man,” even because it is the very inmost life of humanity, it is, therefore, true unto death.

Moreover, in the case of a union which extends to the whole of life, it is quite consistent that a due regard should be paid to the other circumstances and relations of existence; only no general rule can be laid down in this respect. This is a matter which has been left to the discretion of individuals, even by the divine laws, those sacred guardians of wedlock, which, however, rigorously insist on the absence of all compulsion, inasmuch as the free consent of all parties is an essential condition of this union. And as we should be justified in taking for granted that this reciprocal act of free will must not be any inconsiderate or extorted assent, or one induced by other interested feeling or consideration, so is this expressly asserted by the fact that, according to the spirit of these holy laws of matrimony, this union must be founded on mutual affection, and regarded as an indissoluble bond of souls, and not as a mere civil contract or deed of sale and transfer of rank and property. The latter, as well as all else, are mere subordinate matters. Three things, according to God’s moral government of the world, are indispensable to and required by the essence and spirit of these holy laws. In the first place, there must be a mutual consent of the will—a reciprocal fondness and liking, to which the will, whenever it is left free and unshackled, gives an appropriate utterance and expression. In the second place, these laws require that unison of temper which is indispensable to its permanence; while, thirdly and lastly, they provide that this union, so sacred in the sight of all civilized nations, should be indissoluble. In perfect harmony with this last condition is monogamy—the fundamental law of Christian wedlock. And even among the heathen nations of antiquity, though without the sanction of law, yet, nevertheless, under the influence of an instinctive sense of what is morally right and noble, monogamy had practically become the almost universal rule. Highly important to the welfare of the human race is the inviolable maintenance of this sacred law of marriage. So incalculable are the disasters which follow from its violation, that I can safely venture to assert, without fear of exaggeration, that a religion which would venture to desecrate or pull down the venerable sanctuary of wedlock, and consequently to expose the weaker sex to degradation and oppression, would even thereby bespeak its own falsity, and renounce all pretensions to a divine origin. Wherever, on the contrary, this noble institution and woman’s dignity are acknowledged and respected, there this union of souls in consecrated love operates, by the means of lasting personal intercourse, a reciprocal mental influence of the most diversified, salutary, and beautiful kind. And this influence tends to promote the development not only of the soul and character, but also of the mind or spirit. Accordingly in this, the first and the most intimate of all unions, all the three principles of human existence—body, soul, and spirit, or mind—alike meet together, and partake of a common evolution. And the result of this mutual influence relatively to the different characters of the mental capacities and consciousness of the two sexes, and the development of each produced thereby, forms, merely in its psychological aspect, a remarkable and pregnant phenomenon. Consistently, therefore, with the law I have proposed myself, in every case, to set out in my investigations from life itself, and from the very center thereof, I can not well avoid, while treating of the several grades of the development of man’s consciousness, to give some, though it must be but a partial, consideration to this interesting topic.

Congeniality of mind and temper forms, it is confessed, the sole basis of domestic peace and contentment, and of a happy, i.e., of a well-assorted marriage. But to determine on what this depends, in each individual case, is a problem which, considering the extremely great and infinite varieties of human dispositions, admits not of a precise or particular solution. On this point the closest observers are not unfrequently deceived in their predictions. How often do those agree very well of whom previously it would not have been supposed possible? On the contrary, those frequently live most unhappily together of whose blissful union the judgment of society and the ordinary estimate of human character had led to the most favorable anticipations. Nevertheless, for the latter fact a general reason may be given. It is not so much the similarity of tastes and pursuits, as, rather, the want in one of some mental quality possessed by the other, that forms the strongest source of attraction between the two sexes, so that the inner life or consciousness of the one finds its complement in that of the other, or, at least, receives from it a further development and elevation. For in the same way that a certain community of goods and property, even though not complete nor enforced by law, yet still, in some measure and by daily use, does practically take place in wedlock—so, also, by the constant interchange of every thought and feeling, a sort of community of consciousness is produced, which derives its charm and value from the very difference in the mental character of the two sexes. When I would attempt to give a more precise determination of this difference, I feel how difficult and incomplete must be every attempt generally to define the varieties of mental character. And this is especially the case when men take in hand to paint the characters of whole ages and nations, and by contrasts endeavor distinctly to limit and sharply to define them. Thus, for instance, the predominant element in the mental character of the Greeks is usually said to be intellect—comprising under this term every form and manifestation of it, the scientific as well as the artistic, profundity not less than acuteness, and vivid perspicuity, together with critical analysis; while energy of will, strength of mind, and greatness of soul, are assigned to the Romans as their distinguishing peculiarity. No doubt these descriptions are not in general untrue. How many nicer limitations, however, and modifications must they undergo, if we are not to rest contented with this historical antithesis and summary—which, no doubt, are correct enough, as far as they go—but desire, rather, to form in idea and to set down in words a full and complete image of these two nations in their whole intellectual life. So, too, as a general description of the middle ages, it might be said, with tolerable truth, that in them fancy was predominant; while in modern times reason has been gradually becoming more and more paramount. But how many particulars must be added in the latter case, if the truth of life is not to be swallowed up in a general notion. But in a still higher degree does this observation apply, when we come to speak not merely of nations and eras, but of the mental differences of the two sexes. Such mere outlines must be given and taken for nothing more than what they really are, mere sketchy thoughts. However, they may often lead us farther, giving rise occasionally to useful applications, or, at least, serving, not seldom, to exclude a false and delusive semblance of a thought. To attempt, therefore, something of the kind, I would make the following remark, in which most voices will, I think, concur. Of the several faculties or aspects of human consciousness previously described, soul appears to be most pre-eminent in the mental constitution of women; so that the prophet who said that women have no soul proved himself thereby a false prophet. For it is even this rich fullness of soul which manifests itself in all their thoughts, and words, and deeds—that constitutes the great charm of the social intercourse of civilized nations, as well as the winning attractiveness of their more familiar conversation, and in part, also, the harmonizing influence which they produce on the mind in the more intimate union of wedded life. Nevertheless, I think we should altogether miss the truth, if, from any love of antithesis, we should go on to append the remark, that, in like manner, mind [geist] generally predominates among men, and is commonly to be found in a higher degree among them than among women. For, in the first place, the measure both of natural capacity and also of acquired culture, not only in themselves, but also in the manifold spheres and modes of their application, are so exceedingly different in different individuals, that it is not easy to form therefrom any general and characteristic estimate of the whole sex. And just as it would be a most false exaggeration to deny to man altogether the possession of a soul with its rich fullness of feeling, since it is only of its preponderance among the other sex that it is allowable to speak, so can we with as little justice refuse absolutely to attribute mind to woman, or at best ascribe it to her only in a very limited degree. For even if the subtler abstractions of scientific reasoning are very rare among, and little suited to them, still sound reason and judgment are only the more common. The understanding which women possess is not so much dry, observant, cool, and calculating, as it is vivid and intuitively penetrating. And it is exactly this vividness of intellect that, when speaking of individuals, we call mind or spirit.

Another line of thought will, perhaps, lead us more directly and nearer to the end we have in view. The external influence of women on the whole human community is, for the most part (for here, too, there are great and memorable exceptions) confined to a narrow sphere of the immediate duties of the affections, or to similar relations in the wider social circle. So, too, is it inwardly as regards the consciousness. All the faculties of women and their several manifestations lie, if I may so express myself, close together, and, as it were, in a friendly circle around the loving soul, as their common center. With regard, then, to the comparison of the two sexes and their mental differences, I would venture to observe, that on the one side it seems to me that a certain harmonious fullness of the consciousness is the preponderating character; and, on the other, its eccentric evolution. Not that I mean that in the sex which is pre-eminently called to outward activity, the mind loses its grand center in the inner life, or, comet-like, delights to wander in vast, irregular orbits, as is, indeed, commonly enough asserted. My meaning is, simply, that the masculine mind will ever dare, as, indeed, it ought, to move in wider circles than the feminine. The extremes of the consciousness, if the expression be allowable—the farthest poles both of reason and fancy—are, so to speak, the property of the more active sex; while the harmonious union and contact of both in the soul belong to the more sensitive. All such general and characteristic sketches, however, must always be most imperfect. Still I believe it may be safely and truly said, that, with highly-favored dispositions and noble natures (and these must be always supposed and taken for the foundation of such general remarks), the gain to be derived from this intellectual community and influence, in which one individual consciousness completes the other, must be sought in the one sex in a greater development of mind and elevation of soul, and in the other in a more harmonious adjustment and softening of the mental powers, and in a far more sensitive excitement of the soul’s susceptibilities. But in this most intimate of unions, when regarded as divinely blessed, and when in reality it appears to be so, then on either side both mind and soul are, as it were, twice combined and joined together in closest association, and, if we may say so, even married and wedded together. Consequently, while external life derives from marriage its moral foundation and origin, the internal life of man is, as it were, mentally renewed by it, or fructified afresh and redoubled.

LECTURE III.
OF THE SOUL’S SHARE IN KNOWLEDGE; AND OF REVELATION.

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.

LECTURE IV.
OF THE SOUL IN RELATION TO NATURE.

“WE know in part,” exclaimed, with burning zeal, the honest man of God in Holy Scripture, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part.” How true the first member of this sentence is even in the case of that knowledge of God which alone deserves the name of knowledge, or repays the trouble of its acquisition, the previous Lecture must in many ways have served to convince us. The second member, which will chiefly occupy our attention in the present discussion, is in an eminent degree applicable to physical science. For what, in fact, is all our knowledge of nature, considered as a whole and in its inmost essence, but a mere speculation, conjecture, and guess upon guess? What is it but an endless series of tentative experiments, by which we are continually hoping to succeed in unveiling the secret of life, to seize the wonderful Proteus, and to hold him fast in the chains of science? Or is it not, perhaps, one ever-renewed attempt to decipher more completely than hitherto the sybilline inscriptions on the piled-up rows and layers of tombs, which as nature grows older convert its great body into one vast catacomb, and so perchance to find therein the key to unlock and bring to light the far greater—nay, the greatest of all riddles—the riddle of death? Now there are undoubtedly, even in nature itself, occasional indications of, scattered hints and remote allusions to, a final crisis, when even in nature and in this sensible and elementary world, life shall be entirely separated from death, and when death itself shall be no more. Gravely to be pondered and in nowise to be neglected are these hints, although without the aid of a higher illumination they must forever remain unintelligible to man. Thus considered, however, the universe itself appears replete with dumb echoes and terrestrial resounds of divine revelation. It is not, therefore, without reason and significance, if in this beautiful hymn the ancient prophetess of nature lends her concurrent testimony to the promises of the holy seer of a last day of creation, which nature shall celebrate as the great day of her renovation and toward which she yearns with an indescribable longing which is nowhere so inimitably depicted, so strongly and so vividly expressed, as in Holy Writ itself. Holy Scripture could not and can not contain a system of science, whether as a philosophy of reason or a science of nature. Nay, in this form of a manual and methodical compendium of divine knowledge, it could not inspire us with confidence either as revelation or as science. Condescending altogether to the wants of man, both in form and language, it consists of a collection of occasional and wholly practical compositions derived immediately from, and expressly designed for, life—in a certain sense it consists of nothing but the registers and social statutes either of the prophetic people or of the apostolical community. Accordingly, its contents are of a mixed nature: historical, legal, instructive, hortatory, consolatory, and prophetical, together with a rich abundance of minute and special allusions, while it enters every where into, and with watchful love adapts itself to, individual wants and local peculiarities. And the form of these writings, at once so singular in its kind—and in such marvelous wise, but yet so eminently human—is so far from being inconsistent with the divine character, that the very condescension of the Deity constitutes a new and additional but most characteristic proof of genuine revelation. Only the first foundation-stone and the key and corner-stone form an exception. Embracing within their spacious limits the beginning of nature and the end of the world, they form, as it were, the corner-rings and the bearing-staves of the ark of the covenant of revelation. And while on the one side as well as on the other, in the opening no less than in the closing book, which contain almost as many mysteries as words, the seven-branched candlestick of secret signification is set up, still all else that is inclosed within the holy ark receives therefrom sufficient light for its perfect elucidation. In all other respects the style is that of a plain narrative couched in very appropriate and simple words; and if the masters of criticism in classical antiquity have quoted a few passages from the beginning of Genesis as the most exalted instances of the sublime, still it was in the very simplicity and extreme plainness of the language that they recognized this character of sublimity. From these two ends, moreover—from this first root as well as from the last crown of the book, there proceeds many threads and veins, which, running through the tissue, bind it together more closely into a living unity, on which account, although consisting of so many and such divers books, it is justly considered as one, being called simply the “Book” (Bible). Consequently it would, as already said, be foolish to look for a system of science in the divine book for men. Nevertheless we do meet here and there with single words about nature and her secrets—hints occasionally dropped and seemingly accidental expressions—which, giving a clear and full information as to much that is hidden therein, furnish science consequently with so many keys for unlocking nature. These, indeed, are not scattered throughout in equal measure, but here, perhaps, more thinly, and there again more thickly. In all these passages, and especially those of the Old Testament, which not only depict the external beauties and visible glory of nature, but also touch upon its hidden powers and inmost secrets of life, we may observe a kind of intentional, I might, perhaps, say, cautious reserve and heedful circumspection, amounting at times almost to an indisposition to speak out fully and clearly, lest the abuse or probable misconception of what should be said might give encouragement to the heathenish and wide-spread deification of nature.

In the New Testament (if we may venture to speak of these things in the same natural and human fashion that Scripture itself employs) the Holy Spirit uses language far more precise and clear. On the whole, the relation in which Holy Writ and divine revelation stand to nature itself, and the science thereof, is a peculiar one. It is eminently tender and wonderful, but not, indeed, intelligible at the first glance, or broadly definable according to any rigorous and established notion. It is one, however, capable of being made clearer by means of a simile borrowed from Scripture itself. Those guileless men whom the Redeemer chose as His instruments for carrying out His great work of the redemption of the world, were endued with miraculous powers, which it was and ever will be apparent, were not of their own strength, but of His. Now, of the first of these apostles it is narrated that a healing power, and, as it were, an invisible stream of life proceeded from him, without his being conscious of, or, at least, without his regarding it, which healed the sick who were brought out and placed within the range of his shadow as he passed by.[20] In the same manner the fiery wain of divine revelation, as it passes on its way, scatters, in single words and images, many a bright spark. The radiant shadow of the word of God, as it falls, is sufficient to kindle and throw a new light over the whole domain of nature, by means of which the true science thereof may be firmly established, its inmost secrets explored and brought into coherence and agreement with all else.

I have already more than once called your attention to the method which all the philosophers of reason, without exception, pursue. In different ways, according to the special objects they have in view, they all alike presumed to set certain absolute and impassable limits to human reason (which, however, by some slight turn or other, they soon dextrously contrive to transgress) in order to bring within their system of absolute science—which is at best but a dead semblance—all that it will hold, and even what it can not contain. Quite different, however, is it with the truth, and with that living science which we take for the basis of our speculations. For from it it appears that the soul of man, however liable it may be to manifold error, is, nevertheless, capable of receiving the divine communications. Since, then, man can possess as many of these higher branches of knowledge, and can learn as much of divine things as it is given to him to know, and since, at the same time, it is God himself who is the primary source from which all man’s knowledge flows, and his guide to truth—who shall determine the measure and fix the limits—who shall dare to say how much of knowledge and of science God will vouchsafe to man?—who shall venture to prescribe the limits beyond which His illumination can not pass? This, it is evident, is illimitable. It may go on to an extent which, at the beginning, man would not have believed to be possible. In a word, though of himself, and by his own unassisted reason, man is incapable of knowing any thing, yet through God, if it be his will, he may attain to the knowledge of all things. And yet it is true, though in a very different sense from that intended by these philosophers of reason, that man’s knowledge is in reality limited. No absolute limit, indeed, is set to it. Yet because it is a mixed knowledge, composed of outward tradition and inward experience, and is founded on the perceptions of the external and internal senses, therefore is it made up of individual instances, extremely slow in its growth, and in no respect perfect and complete, and scarcely ever free from faults and deficiencies. Consequently, when considered in its totality, and as pretending to be a whole, it is invariably imperfect. But this character of imperfection belongs, in fact, to all real science, as derived from the experience of the senses. Seldom, indeed, is the first impression free from the admixture of error; numberless repeated observations, comparisons, essays, experiments, and corrections, which must often be carried on through many centuries, not to say many tens of centuries, are necessary before a pure and stable result can be attained to. In this way all truly human knowledge is imperfect, and “in part;” and although, on the contrary, the false conceited wisdom may parade itself from the very first as fully ripe and complete, yet in a very brief space indeed will its imperfection and rottenness appear.

And, indeed, the character of imperfection shows itself, as in all other human things, so also in the science of nature. From its birth among the earliest naturalists of Greece to its boasted maturity among ourselves, it counts an age of two millenniums and a half of unbroken cultivation. But now if, looking beyond the explanation of single isolated facts, we consider rather our knowledge of nature in its universal system and internal constitution, can we say that physical science has, during the time, made more than, perhaps, two steps and a half of progress? And this slow and toilsome advance which, in a certain sense, never arrives at more than “knowing in part,” is the law of every department of human science. Consequently it may be justly said of the development of man’s science, that with God a thousand years are as a day, and one day as a thousand years.[21] All knowledge drawn from the senses and experience is bound by this condition. It may, no doubt, apply immediately and principally to external experience, which is dependent on the lower and ordinary senses, whether we reckon them according to the number of their separate organs as five, or as three in compliance with a more scientific classification. But it also holds equally good of those which we pointed out and described in the last Lecture as being the four superior scientific senses, the organs of a knowledge founded on a higher and internal experience, the sense, viz., of reason, the sense of understanding, the sense for nature or fancy, and the proper sense for God, which lies in the inmost free will of man. Not merely as the faculty of suggestion [Ahndungsvermogen], is fancy to be regarded as the higher and internal sense for nature, or because it is from this side that the affinity of man, and of man’s soul with nature, is most distinctly revealed, but it also exhibits itself as such in the scientific apprehension of natural phenomena. That dynamical play of the inner life, that law of a living force which constitutes the essence of every phenomenon of nature, is a something so fleeting and evanescent that it can only be seized and fixed by the fancy alone, since, as is now pretty generally allowed by all profound observers of nature, in the abstract notion life eludes the grasp, and nothing remains but a dead formula.

The apprehension of a living object in thought, so as to seize and fix it in its mobile vitality and its fluctuating and fleeting states, is an act of the imagination, which, however, is naturally of a peculiar kind, and entirely distinct from artistic or poetical fancy. It is, in this respect, worthy of remark, that all the most characteristic and felicitous terms which are employed to designate the great discoveries in modern times of the profounder secrets of nature are, for the greater part, boldly figurative, and often even symbolical. Here, therefore, also, we have a manifestation of that affinity which subsists between nature and the faculty of fancy, by which alone its ever-stirring vitality is scientifically apprehended.

I formerly observed that, in the outer senses, as faculties of the soul subordinate to the fancy, a higher intellectual endowment, as a special gift of nature, is occasionally found to exist, namely, the sense of art, or the eye for beautiful forms, and the ear for musical sounds. But even the lower sense, the more purely organic feeling, is often evolved to higher degrees of susceptibility, which, however, do not fall within the sphere of the feeling for art, but form, as it were, a peculiar and special sense of nature. To this class belong those indescribable feelings of sympathy and inward attraction—the many vivid presentiments of a strange foreboding—traces of which may be observed among many other animals besides man, just as, in the case of musical tones and emotions, a light note of remote affinity seems to bring the soul of man in unison with a correspondent nature soul in the higher members of the brute creation. Numberless are the instances of such forebodings (among which we must reckon also the significant vision or dream) recorded of all times, countries, and spheres of life. No doubt, from their strange nature, and from the manifold difficulties with which man’s mode of observing and narrating these phenomena perplexes the consideration of them, it is any thing but easy, in any individual case, to arrive at a pure result, and to pass a final and decisive sentence. Still, on the whole, the fact can not well be denied, as, indeed, it is not even attempted, by any unprejudiced and profound observer of nature in the present day. But now, if such an immediate feeling of invisible light and life does freely develop and clearly manifest itself as an indubitable faculty and a perfectly distinct state of the consciousness, then assuredly we have herein a new organ of perception and a new natural sense. Though not, indeed, more infallible than any other of the senses, it may, nevertheless, be the source of very remarkable phenomena, which, perhaps, above all others require investigation, in order that their distinctive character may be precisely and accurately determined. It is, however, necessary to remember that the latter is not to be determined by any side-blow of caprice, any more than the electric phenomena of nature and the atmosphere, when they are actually lowering there, are to be got rid of by any such expedient.

It is only just and right, and not inconsistent with true human knowledge, if physical science should commence with the study of man. Still, if we would contemplate man from the side of nature, it seems the safer course to endeavor, first of all, to obtain a clear and leading idea of the whole of his constitution in this respect, rather than to lose ourselves in the contemplation of the special phenomena of a particular sphere. Now, with regard to the whole of man’s organization, the organic body as the third constituent of human existence, I will merely remark that, just as the triple principle of body, soul, and spirit is repeated in the special and narrower spheres of the senses, the instincts, and the passions, and even in the different forms in which a disordered intellect usually manifests itself, so also it admits of a further application to the organic body in general. That most wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles, the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense, the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of man—here consequently the organic soul—is in the blood and in the five or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood and afterward to provide for its circulation—or perhaps by maintaining a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. A third element—and, indeed, the principal one of the three, though only noticeable in its effects on the brain—exists within the higher senses and functions—in short, in the whole nervous tissue. But it lies not in the nervous filaments themselves: anatomy can not detect it, for it is not visible to the eye. On this account some have called it the æther of the nerves to indicate its incorporeal nature—incorporeal, i.e., relatively to, and in comparison with, the other two constituents of man—the blood-soul, and the external frame—as being the spirit of life in the organic body. Strictly and sharply enough does Holy Writ distinguish this spiritual body (as it calls it) of man from the body of the soul, or the organic blood-soul, considering the former, as it were, the seed of the resurrection, even because at the moment of death this ethereal body-of-light leaves its terrestrial veil to be in due time reunited to it after a more glorious fashion. And death itself is even nothing else than its total departure and painful emancipation from the organic body, on which the features, one might almost say, the physiognomy of corruption stamps itself, immediately that the immortal Psyche, the invisible seed of light and eternity, has put off the tabernacle of this body.

This internal, invisible body-of-light [Lichtkorper] is also the organ and the center of all the higher and spiritual powers of the human organization. For it is easily conceivable that a partial projection of this life of light which is latent in the sound organic body should produce such phenomena, while its complete projection, or rather total separation, would have death for its result, or rather would itself be death. A truly scientific view of nature can easily enter into or allow the legitimacy of this idea. The true rule, however, and standard for the right decision of phenomena of this kind can only be found in a higher region, even because they themselves lie on the extreme limits of nature and life, and in part also pass beyond them.

We therefore prefer to follow the more slow but sure course of development pursued by physical science itself, as commenced nearly twenty-five centuries ago by the Greeks. On the whole it began even there with the cognition of man—of his diseases and their cure. The naturalists, indeed, of the present day are in general disposed to laugh at the ideas of nature which were advanced by the first philosophers of Greece, and to despise the hypotheses of water, or air, or fire, as being the essence of all things, which, nevertheless, as the first beginnings of a clearer contemplation and of a higher view of nature, greatly recommend themselves by their extreme simplicity. But however modern observers of nature may be ready to hand these systems over to fancy as so many purely poetical cosmogonies, yet, on the other hand, the present masters of medicine, with greater gratitude and fuller acknowledgment of his merits, reverence Hippocrates as the founder of their art. For, indeed, as such, and not properly as a science, or at any rate as an art far more than as a science, was medicine regarded by its founder and the great masters who came after him. They looked upon it as the art of the diagnosis and treatment of disease, in which the unerring tact of a practiced and happy judgment is of primary importance, and where the rapid and searching glance of genius into the secret laboratories of life or into the hidden sources of disease is, and ever will be, the principal and most essential point. The mere historical acquaintance with the different forms of diseases and their remedies, with botany, and the anatomy of the human body, with the number and structure of its organs, forms merely the materials, the external sphere of medical practice; while the essential qualification is even this penetrating glance which searches out the inmost secrets of the bodily temperament. But now those who have been most richly gifted with this peculiar gift have ever been the last to believe themselves possessed of a perfect science. And yet, inasmuch as that physical knowledge which, by attaining to a complete understanding of life, shall be able to comprehend and explain the mystery of death would alone deserve the name of the science of nature; inasmuch also as the searching glance of the true physician arrives the nearest to such a point, penetrating, as it does, deep into the manifold fluctuation and struggle between the two, and into the secrets of their conflict, this, therefore, is perhaps to be considered as the first germ of life for a future science of nature, which, however as yet undeveloped, has for more than twenty centuries been slumbering on, hidden, as it were, in embryo, in the womb of medical art and lore. The physical, geographical, and astronomical observations of this whole period of gestation, form, it is true, a rich treasury of valuable materials, but they do not give us that profound knowledge, of which alone the physician’s penetrating glance into life and its constitution furnishes the first commencement and essay, however weak.

With respect to natural science in general, and the possibility of our attaining to it, the case stands thus:—If nature be a living force—if the life which reigns within it be in a certain though still very remote degree akin to the life of man and the human soul—then is a knowledge of nature easily conceivable, and right well possible (for nothing but the like, or at least the similar and cognate, can be known by the like) even though this cognition may still be extremely defective, and at best can never be more than partial. But if nature be a dead, stony mass, as many seem to suppose, then would it be wholly inconceivable how this foreign mass of petrifaction could penetrate into our inmost Ego; then at least would there seem to be good grounds for the idealistic doubt whether ultimately this external world be any thing but a mere phantom, having no existence save in our own thoughts—the outward reflection of ourselves—the pure creation of our own Me.

The question of innate ideas has been often mooted in philosophy. As, however, the essential functions and different acts of thought, together with its several notions, are, properly speaking, nothing but the natural division of man’s cogitative faculty, it is not on their account necessary to suppose such a preliminary intercalation of general ideas into the human mind. And as little necessary is it, in order to explain the universal belief in the existence of a Deity, to suppose that there is in the minds of all men an implanted idea of God; for this would lead to the purely arbitrary hypothesis, of that which is so difficult to conceive—the pre-existence of the spirit or soul of man. And as no created beings can have an idea of God, but those to whom He vouchsafes to communicate it, and to accord a knowledge of His existence, so can He bestow this privilege the very instant He pleases, without the intervention of any innate idea expressly for that end. And yet I am disposed, and not, I think, without reason, to assume that man, as at present constituted, does possess one, though only one, species of inborn ideas, viz., an innate idea of death. This, as a false root of life, and a true mental contagion, produces a dead cogitation, and is the origin of all dead and dead-born notions. For this idea of death, whether hereditary or inoculated in the soul, is, as its peculiar but fundamental error, transferred by the mind of man to every object with which it comes in contact. And thus, in man’s dead cogitation, the surrounding world and all nature appears to him a similar lifeless and inert mass, so long as sitting beneath this shadow of spiritual death, his mind [geist] has not sufficient strength to work its way out of its dark prison-house into the light. For not at all without higher aid, and even with it only slowly and tardily, does man discover that all that is really and naturally dead is within himself, or learn to recognize it for what it truly is, a something eminently null and naught. Another species of this false and dead conception of nature presents itself under the form of multiplicity. In this view nature is represented as forming something like a vast sandhill, where, apart from the pile they thus form together and their aggregation in it, the several grains are supposed to have no connection with each other; while, however, they are so diligently counted, as if every thing depended on their right enumeration. But through the sieve of such an atomistic, which would break up the universe into a number of separate and absolute individualities, the sand will ever run, however often and painfully man may strive to reckon or to measure the infinity of these grains of nature. Mathematical calculation and measuring hold the same place in physical science that is held in every living language by conjugating and declining, and other grammatical rules, which, in truth, are but a species of mathematical formulæ. In learning a foreign and especially a dead language, these are indispensable and necessary aids, which greatly promote and facilitate its acquisition; so also mathematics furnish indispensable helps and a most valuable organon for the cognition of nature. But with them alone man will never learn to understand even a word, not to talk of a whole proposition, out of nature’s strangely-sounding and most difficult hieroglyphics.

Somewhat different is it, when man seeks to understand the true living geometry in nature herself, i.e., attempts to discover the place which the circle and eclipse (passing from these up to the spheres in their sidereal orbits), or which the triangle, the square, the hexagon, and so forth, assume in the scale of its creations—or when, in a similar spirit, he investigates and ascertains the really dominant rule in the arithmetic of life; those numbers which the physician observes in the periodic developments of life, and which, in the fluctuating states of an abating and heightening malady, enable him, under certain conditions, to predict the moment of its crisis. Of a still higher kind is that spiritual, we might almost call it divine chronology, which, in universal history, marks out definite epochs of the mental development of the human race, and traces therein the influence of certain grades of life, or ages of the world, and the alternating phases of disease in whole communities, and those decisive moments and great critical emergencies in which God Himself appears as the healing Physician and Restorer of life. It was, in all probability, in reference to such an arithmetic, or in some similar sense, that Pythagoras taught that numbers are, or contain the essence of things. For such an arithmetic of life and geometry of nature do afford a positive cognition and a real knowledge. As commonly understood, however, mathematics are nothing more than a formal science—in other words, they are simply a scientific organon, rather than a science. But now, if nature be not regarded as dead, but living, who can doubt that it—or, as we are now speaking of man’s nearest neighbor—that the earth is akin to man? Was he not formed out of the dust of the earth, and is he not therefore the son, nay, in truth, the first-born of the earth?—does he not receive from it food and nourishment? and when the irrevocable summons goes forth from above, does he not give back again to its bosom the earthly tabernacle of his flesh? Do not chemists tell us that the principal constituent of the purest wheat-corn has a great affinity to the substance of man’s blood? and does not the blood, moreover, derive one of its ingredients from iron—the principal among the metals of the earth? And are not gold and other metallic substances either wholesome medicines or deadly poisons? And is there not also an inexhaustible store of both in the wonderful varieties of herbs and plants? Do not invigorating and healing springs burst from numberless rocks and fissures of the earth? Is not—to speak only of the heavenly bodies nearest to and immediately connected with our globe—is not the sun’s heat so specifically different from every other kind of warmth, the quickener of all that lives and moves, and for man under a milder clime, as it were, a soft renovating bath? And is not the other and lesser light—earth’s mighty satellite and companion, the moon—the cause of all those changes in the weather and atmosphere, which, from the earliest times, have been acknowledged to be most serviceable and highly beneficial to agriculture? Is not the great pulse of the ocean, in its ebb and flow, measured by it, as well as many periods, of the development of life? And is it not, when its operation is too powerful or violently exciting, the cause of a peculiar disease among men? As, therefore, the musical unisons in the melodious songs of birds, both find and wake a concordant echo in the heart of man, so, too, in a larger scale, the blood-soul of man, with its living pulsation and organic sensibility, is most nearly akin to and sympathizes with the earth and the whole earthly frame. And is not, in all probability, this sympathetic influence between the earth and man reciprocal? Must not, for instance, the respiration of nine hundred millions of human beings have affected the atmosphere? Has not the very air degenerated with the human race, and like it become corrupt and deteriorated? Are not certain pestilential diseases propagated by the air alone, being carried in fixed telluric directions, without material contact or pollution? And if, in answer to the inference which we would draw from these facts, any one should sit down to calculate the number of cubic miles in the atmospheric belt, and argue that the breath and evaporation from ever so many myriads of human beings would be insufficient to have any effect thereon, we might easily retort upon him the equally vast reckoning of the millions of seconds which make up a hundred and more generations, and by which these respirations must be counted. But, however this may be, it does appear that the air must, in primitive times, have been far more pure and balsamic, and more vital and more nutritive, than at present. For before the Flood men required neither flesh nor wine to recruit their strength, and yet, in duration of life and bodily vigor, and above all in energy of will and powers of mind, they far surpassed the sons of a later age; and it was even by the misuse of these great gifts and endowments that they brought down the divine vengeance on their sinful generation. And, lastly, if the earth were wholly without life, how could it, at the creation of the animals of this planetary world, have yielded obedience to the behest of the Creator, as it went forth on the sixth day, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind?” Highly important, moreover, as regards the true estimate of the whole realm of nature as contemplated by the Divine mind, and deeply significant, is the wide interval which, in the Mosaic history of the creation, separates the bringing forth of the beasts by the earth at the command of the Almighty, from the making of man, whereof it is written, “Let us make man in our own image.”

Physical science having thus sluggishly advanced through a definite period and number of centuries—having lived through almost two millenniums in little better than an embryo state—made at last the few steps of progress that it has yet taken. By a more rapid march of time, it hastened to suit itself to the riper age of man, and to come forth itself, as it were, mature, although, in many respects, this is even yet very far from being the case. The principal of these advances of physical science is the invention of the compass. For, in the first place, the phenomenon of magnetism presents a remarkable manifestation of the universal life of the world, which eludes all mathematical calculations of magnitude, while the little piece of this wonderful iron balances by its living agency the whole globe itself. And, in the second place, the results to which it has led have been no less important and marvelous. The magnetic index pointed the way to the discovery of the New World, and to a more perfect acquaintance with the figure of the earth, and thus, through an enlarged observation of geographical and astronomical facts, opened out a grander and more extensive view of the whole planetary system. Of the new world in the other hemisphere, a trace unquestionably is to be found in antiquity in the legend of the island of Atlantis. The general description of this island, as equal in extent to both Asia and Africa together, agrees remarkably with the size of America. But the fable contains the additional circumstance, that, having existed in the Western Ocean in very ancient times, it was subsequently swallowed up by the waves. From this circumstance I am led to infer, that the legend did not, as is generally supposed, owe its origin to Phœnician navigators, who, even if it be true that they did succeed in sailing round Africa, most assuredly never ventured so far westward. Like so much besides that is equally great and grand, and, indeed, far grander, the main fact of the legend seems to be derived from an original tradition from the primeval times, when, unquestionably, man was far better acquainted with his whole habitation of this earth than in the days of the infant and imperfect science of Greece, or even of the more advanced and enlightened antiquity. A vague traditionary notion of its existence lived on from generation to generation. But afterward, when even the Phœnician sailors, however far they penetrated into the wide ocean, were unable to give any precise information about, or adduce any proof of, the fact, the hypothesis was advanced, and finally added to the tradition, that the island had been swallowed up by the sea.

Modern astronomy, at its first rise, was extremely revolting to man’s feelings, which had become, as it were, habituated to the olden theory of the world’s shape. The system of Ptolemy, indeed, with its narrow egotistic conceit of making man the center of the sidereal universe, was as unsatisfactory as it was absurd, and little was lost when it was exploded. But, on the other hand, it was startling, and still has a staggering effect on our minds, to be told, that, when measured by the mathematical standard of the vast distances and periodic times of the planetary system, the earth, for which the Almighty has done such incalculably great things, and on which He has bestowed such high and precious gifts, is, as it were, but a little and insignificant splinter in the vast regions of infinite space. A true and profound science of nature, however, does not allow of the validity of mathematical magnitude as an exclusive standard of the value of things. Whether in a greater or less sphere of existence, it sees and discovers in far other properties the true center of life. If, even in our globe, the living magnetic pole does not coincide with the true mathematical north pole, but lies a considerable distance on one side of it, may it not, without prejudice to modern astronomy, be also the case with the whole planetary system? The first conceptions of nature are rarely, if ever, free from mistakes, and oftentimes, together with great truths, contain also great errors. And while the first fresh impression, the living intuition, ever recommends itself to the general feeling of mankind, and takes deep root therein, the notions, on the other hand, which new discoveries of nature introduce, not unfrequently do violence to the prevalent views as to the shape and form of the old world. Often, indeed, the former run directly counter to what we might call the old family feelings of mankind, which, transmitted through generations from father to son, have become, as it were, a custom of life, a holy habit. Afterward, however, as the new scientific discovery is more perfectly developed, it gradually conciliates the old hereditary and customary feeling of nature. The two at last fall into friendly relations with each other.

Now, in the article of the stars, the cherished creed of nature, professed by all ancient peoples, insisted, perhaps, on no one dogma so earnestly as that there are seven planets. That this deeply-rooted and habitual feeling of men was not uninfluenced by the general consideration of the number seven, is only natural to suppose. For not only does it comprise the three dimensions of time, together with the four cardinal points of space, but it is also found entering, under a variety of combinations, into the life, the thought, and history of men. And in the new astronomy, though the sun and moon have been ejected from the number of the planets, yet the earth has entered into the list, and the deficient member of the system having been discovered, we have again seven planets, as in the olden belief. For it is, to say the least, highly improbable that any new planetary body will ever be discovered beyond Uranus,[22] and as for the small bodies which are situate between Mars and Jupiter, it is pretty generally acknowledged that they are not properly to be counted as planets, from which they are even distinguished by their very names by some astronomers.

And as little ground is there to take exception or offense at modern astronomy, even on that side of it where difficulties were originally most felt and mooted. For Holy Writ was neither written exclusively nor designed pre-eminently for astronomers. In these matters, therefore, as in all others, it speaks the ordinary language which men employ among themselves in the business of daily life.

Now we know that in the pulse of the organic body its regular beating is occasionally interrupted by a hurried circulation or a momentary stoppage. Is it not in the same way possible that the pulsatory revolutions of the great planetary world do not observe, like a piece of dead clock-work, a mechanical uniformity, but are liable to many deviations and irregularities? If, then, a similar stoppage to that which sometimes occurs in the pulse of man, be here also supposable, as produced by a superior power and external influence, then in the case of such an extraordinary interruption, it is a matter of indifference whether it be said of this wonderful moment that the sun stood still, or (as seems to be the fact) that the earth was held in check and rested in its orbit. And, in like manner, for the changing phenomena of the astronomical day, the common expressions are equally true with the scientific, and equally significant. The sun’s rise, the morning dawn, is, for all men, a figure, or, rather, a fact of pregnant meaning, while the setting sun fills all hearts with a melancholy feeling of separation. Equally true, however, is it, and in a symbolical sense it conveys perhaps a still more serious meaning, when we say, in scientific language, “The earth must go down before the sun can rise;” or, “When the earth goes up, then is it night, and darkness diffuses itself over all.” Or if, perhaps, in the new and quickening spring, instead of the old phraseology, “The sun has returned, has come near to us again,” we were to say, “The earth, or at least our side of it, is again brought nearer to the sun,” would it not be as beautiful and significant a description? And happy, indeed, are those periods of the world wherein, to speak in a figurative but moral sense, that earth-soul which rules in the changes of time—the so-called public opinion, has declined toward, and approached more nearly to, its sun.

It is a remarkable, not to say wonderful, fact, that in ancient times the Pythagoreans held the same system of the universe which modern astronomy teaches, though, perhaps, they were not acquainted with the mathematic calculations of its distances. But still more surprising is it, that while they were thus perfectly acquainted with the number of the planets, and even arranged them in the same order that they are placed by modern astronomers, they admitted into their system two stars which we have not. One of these, as the sun of the gods [Geister-sonne],[23] they placed high above the visible sun. The latter, which they named the “counter-earth,” (αντἱχθν) was placed directly opposite to the real earth. It would seem, therefore, that they regarded these two bodies as the invisible centers of the whole sidereal universe, and, as it were, the choir-leaders or choragi of the apparently orderless and scattered host of heaven. Are these two stars now extinct? or is their light too pure and ethereal to penetrate our dense and thickened atmosphere; or, like so much besides, was it little else than a still surviving tradition from the primitive world? This, however, must ever remain conjectural. As for the fact itself, that the Pythagoreans did so teach, and understood by these names, not merely figurative symbols, but real stars, has been placed beyond doubt by modern investigations into the Pythagorean doctrines. At any rate, their knowledge of these stars must have been acquired by some other means than the telescope of modern astronomy, with which, in fact, they were not acquainted, and nothing but some new observation or phenomenon in the sidereal heavens can ever throw light on this matter. And who shall say that even our present astronomical science shall not advance still further, and that it has not closed too soon, and been in all too great a haste to sum up its doubtless most elaborate and complicated calculations?

Thus did the mind of man advance the first step toward the maturity of physical science, by attaining to a more comprehensive survey of the mundane system, and a more accurate knowledge of his own habitation, of this earthly planet. The next step in this sluggish progress was made by the chemical discoveries of modern times, and especially of the French chemists. In a merely negative point of view, these have been important, as establishing the fact that the old elements, water, for instance, and air, which had long been regarded as simple, are themselves decomposable into other constituents and aeriform parts. And, indeed, that such great powers of nature as these are, and must ever remain so long as the present constitution of the world shall last, could only subsist in the reciprocal dynamical relation of several conflicting forces, a profounder glance at nature would of itself have conjectured and presupposed. But in a positive sense, this second step has carried us very far toward the understanding of the hieroglyphics of nature. Those primary elements of things discovered and numbered by that chemical analysis which has subjected to its experiments almost every form and species of matter, constitute, as it were, the permanent material letters and consonants of the natural world around us. On the other hand, the vowels of human language are represented by the fundamental facts of the magnetism of the earth, together with the phenomena of electricity, the decomposition of light, and the chemical chain of the galvanic pile, in which the inner life of the terrestrial force, and of the eternally-moving atmosphere, as well as the soul whose pulse beats therein, finds an utterance, like a voice out of the lowest deep. And thus, by means of an alphabet of nature, which, however, is still most imperfect, we may hope to make a beginning, at least, and to decipher one or two entire words. But modern chemistry has made a more important advance toward a right understanding of nature as a whole. By analyzing and decomposing all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of a gaseous element, it has thereby destroyed forever that appearance of rigidity and petrifaction which the corporeal mass of visible and external nature presents to our observation. Every where we now meet with living elemental forces, hidden and shut up beneath this rigid exterior. The proportion of aqueous particles in the air is so great, that, if suddenly condensed, they would suffice for more than one flood. And a similar deluge of light would ensue, if all the luminous sparks which are latent in the darkness were simultaneously set free; and the whole globe itself would end in flame, were all the fiery elements that are at present dispersed throughout the world to be at once disengaged and kindled. The investigation of the salutary bonds which hold together these elementary forces in due equilibrium, controlling one by the other, and confining each within its prescribed limits, does not fall within the scope of our present inquiries, as neither does the question, whether these bonds be not of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose? More immediately connected with, as also more important for our general subject, is the result which chemical analysis has so indubitably established, that in the natural world every object consists of living forces, and that properly nothing is rigid and dead, but all replete with hidden life. This colossal mountain range of petrified mummies which forms nature on the whole—this pyramid of graves, piled one over the other, is therefore, it is true, a historical monument of the past—of all the bygone ages of the world in the advancing development of death; but nevertheless, there is therein a latent vitality. Beneath the vast tombstone of the visible world there slumbers a soul, not wholly alien, but more than half akin to our own. This planetary and sensible world, and the earth-soul imprisoned therein, is only apparently dead. Nature does but sleep, and will, perhaps, ere long awake again. Sleep generally is, if not the essence, yet, at least, an essential signature and characteristic of nature. Every natural object partakes of it more or less. Not the animals only, but the very plants sleep; while in the vicissitudes of the seasons, and of their influences on the productive surface of the earth, and, in truth, on the whole planet, a perpetual alternation is perceptible between an awakening of life and a state of slumbering repose. Whatever, consequently, partakes, and requires the refreshment of sleep, belongs, even on that account, to nature. Painters, indeed, have given us pictures of sleeping angels or genii; but the pure spirits sleep not, and stand, in truth, in no need of such rest, and their activity is not subject to this necessity of alternate repose.

The comparison of a sentence in the Mosaic history of the creation, with a passage in the Hindoo cosmogony, somewhat similar in kind, but most different in the application, will serve, perhaps, to place this fact in the clearest light. In the former it is said, “God rested on the seventh day.” Now, in this expression there is nothing to startle us. In explaining it, there is no need to have recourse to a figurative interpretation. It does not allude to God’s inmost nature (which admits not of such alternation of states or need of rest), but simply to His external operations. For in every case where an operation of the Deity takes place, whether in history or nature, an alternation between the first divine impulse, and a subsequent period of repose, is not only conceivable but actually noticeable. For the divine impulse or hand is, as it were, withdrawn, in order that this first impulse of the Creator may fully expand itself, and that the creature adopting it, may carry it out and develop his own energies in accordance therewith. But instead of this correct statement, we have, in the Hindoo cosmogony, that “Brahma sleeps.” While he thus slumbers, the whole creation, with its worlds and mundane developments, is said to collapse into naught. Here, then, a single word hurries us from the sure ground of truth and divine revelation into the shifting domain of mythology. Of Him indeed, who is higher than the angels and created spirits, it is no doubt assumed throughout the New Testament that, while on earth, He slept like other men. Once, too, it is expressly stated, that during a great storm, while His disciples were filled with alarm, He was asleep in the hinder part of the ship; but that when He awoke the winds ceased. But here, also, the case is different. While implying many a great object and instructive lesson besides, this passage, like several others, seems designed to prove that our Lord’s body was no mere phantom; but that He took upon Him a real human form, and was, in truth, a man who stood in need of sleep. And from this we may infer, that sleep is so indispensable a condition of natural existence, that even God Himself, as soon as He condescended to enter its limits by taking upon Him a human body, became subject to nature’s essential law of sleep.

The important part which sleep plays, not only in nature, but also in man, her first-born son, appears from the earliest event that is recorded of his history, even in Paradise. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and out of his opened side took of his vital substance to invest it with a bodily veil and shape, and to present it before him on his awaking as the gentle helpmeet of his existence. Extremely significant also is the difference in the accounts of man’s and of woman’s material formation. Man is formed of the dust of the earth, and therefore shortly after invested with the dominion of the whole earthly globe as the deputy and vicegerent of Him from whom cometh all lordship and authority. But woman is taken and created out of the bosom or heart of man. Would human wit have ever invented, or even conceived the possibility of this great marvel of creative omnipotence?

This was in Paradise—but with the loss of it man was deprived, in a great manner, of those higher powers of life and those secrets of nature which he had previously possessed and understood. For even in the body of his earthly tabernacle, which had fallen a prey to death, he had become deteriorated, and his organic constitution, as is expressly intimated, fell considerably lower in the scale of sensible existence, and sunk nearer to the level of the brute creation. On this account the cherubic sentinels, with the flaming sword, were placed at the gate of Paradise, that man might not stretch forth his hand to seize again the rights and privileges which he had formerly enjoyed. For now they would only have led to more mischievous abuse and deeper corruption. But since then, many great days of creation have come and gone. Again has the great relation between God and man been restored, and that also between man and the sensible world with the spirits and forces that rule therein, has changed and become new. And now that the beginning is made, and the foundation laid for the Redemption of the world, no man, no one at least who will loyally join the banner of the Redeemer, is forbidden, but every one has freely offered to him the divine, flaming, two-edged sword of the Spirit—or of the Word, and of the thoughts of the heart united to Him, enlightened by Him, and emanating from Him. This fact of itself furnishes at once the answer to the question concerning the secrets of nature, whether, since they are no longer to be kept close from man, impure and wicked hands may drag them to the light, or whether it be not better that they should be touched by the holy and conscientious alone, and faithfully guarded with a pious reserve and religious delicacy.

And here the very context suggests naturally the consideration of the last of the three steps which, following the course marked out for it by God, the human mind has at last made in very modern times toward a true physical science, and a right understanding of the most inmost secrets of nature. It consists in a closer observation and a commencing recognition of a sacred thread of ensouled life—of an internal soul-like link which holds together the whole frame of nature. The thing and force itself are as old as the world and every sphere of existence—all the leaves of tradition and history are full of its manifestations and effects. But the methodical observation and treatment of these phenomena (in which alone the true scientific character consists) dates its commencement within little more than half a century ago. To speak, therefore, agreeably to the measure of time in the slow development of science, it is of yesterday or the day before; and it is even on this account also that I have been constrained to count this third and last advance toward a higher science of nature, as nothing more than a half-step. For it is only a beginning which as yet has gained no firm footing in the minds of men, and, moreover, besides the right and direct road, it has already opened many by-paths of possible error. This only direct road, that higher standard of correct judgment which at the very commencement we alluded to as the guiding rule in these matters, must be sought by philosophy in that divine sword of the Spirit which pierces even to the marrow of life, dividing soul and spirit, and which also is a discerner of spirits. But, if another standard and a higher tribunal is to be set up, then I must leave it to others who, perhaps, know more about the matter than I do, and are better qualified to decide upon it. This spiritual warfare, at any rate, can not be much longer eluded or avoided. O that men would take therein Holy Writ exclusively for their guide! For it, indeed, regards the whole of life, and every important moment of it, as a conflict with invisible powers; as also it tacitly implies, or expressly intimates that the whole sensible world is to be looked upon as nothing else than an almost transparent, and, at all events, a very perishable veil of the spiritual world. To the leader of the rebel spirits the Bible ascribes so great an influence in creation, that it calls him the prince, nay, even the god of this world—the ruler of its principalities and powers. And in order that this might not be taken in a mere figurative sense, and be understood only of a race of men morally corrupt and depraved, these spiritual potentates are in other places expressly called the elementary powers of nature—powers of the air, which in this dark planetary world of ours is compounded of light and darkness, and ever struggling between life and death. The true key and explanation of the whole may, however, lie in the simple sentence—“Death came into the world by sin.” As, then, by the death of the first man, who was not created for, nor originally designed for death, death has passed upon the whole human race; so by the earlier fall of him, who had been the first and most glorious of created spirits, death passed upon the universe—that eternal death whose fire is unquenchable. Hence it is written: “Darkness was on the face of the deep, and the earth”—as the mere grave of that eternal death—“was without form and void;” but the “spirit of God moved on the face of the waters,” and therein lay the first germ of life for the new creation. We here see the difference between all heathen systems of natural philosophy and a divine knowledge of nature, i.e., one acquired in and by God, and also the key for a right understanding of the latter.

If now the dynamic play of the living forces of nature, which is unquestionably a living entity, and has a life in itself though not indeed of and from itself—if this dynamical alternation between life and death be regarded as a simple fact, and man is content to rest there, without seeking to explain it by a higher principle, then will he have ever the self-same One—an all-producing, all-absorbing, ruminating monster, whether we express it poetically, as in mythology, or in the scientific formularies of physiology. Quite different is it, however, if this great pyramid has been built upon the foundation of eternal death. Then is the whole creature of this earthly planet and sensible world merely a commencing life which, so long as the pyramid is still unfinished and incomplete, is, in parts, perpetually relapsing into death—into actual death, or at least into diseases and fractures of various kinds, which are only so many principia or germs of death. Then is nature itself nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which, step by step, leads upward, or, rather, is carried from the abyss of eternal death up to the apex of light in the heavenly illumination. For, understanding it in this sense, it is impossible to think of nature without remembering at the same time the divine hand which has built this pyramid, and which, along this ladder, brings life out of death. This view, moreover, accounts for the fact, that a state of slumber is essential to nature, and furnishes an explanation why that perpetually-recurring collapse into sleep, which to us appears so near akin to death, should be nature’s proper character. And just as the consuming fire of death appears in the more highly-organized beings to be somewhat subdued and restrained—mitigated or exalted into the quickening warmth of life—so also sleep is only the more than half-enlightened brother of death. And indeed as such, and the lovely messenger of hope to immortal spirits, was he ever regarded and described by the ancients; but that which for them was little more than a beautiful image of poetry is for us the profoundest of truths.

An exalted view and understanding of nature consists, then, in its being contemplated not merely as a dynamical play of reciprocal forces, but historically in its course of development, as a commencing life, perpetually relapsing into death, ever disposed to sleep, and only painfully raising itself, or, rather, raised and lovingly guided through all the intermediate grades into the light. But beneath the huge tombstone of outward nature there sleeps a soul, not wholly alien, but half akin to ourselves—which is distracted between the troubled and painful reminiscence of eternal death, out of which it issued, and the flowers of light which are scattered here and there on this dark earth, as so many lovely suggesters of a heavenly hope. For this earthly nature, as Holy Writ testifies,[24] is, indeed, subject to nullity, yet, without its will, and without its fault: and consequently in hope of Him who has so subjected it, it looks forward in the expectation that it shall one day be free, and have a part in the general resurrection and consummate revelation of God’s glory, before which both nature and death shall stand amazed—and for this last day of a new creation it sighs anxiously, and yearns with the profoundest longing.

LECTURE V.
OF THE SOUL OF MAN IN RELATION TO GOD.

A DIVINE science of nature—one, i.e., which is ever looking to and has its root in God, unlike the old heathen physiologies—sees something more in nature than a mere endless play of living forces and the alternations of dynamical action. Contemplating it rather as a whole, and in the connection of its several parts, it traces it from the first foundation on which it was originally raised, up to the final consummation which the Almighty has designed it to attain. Now, to such a mode of studying it, nature appears to be in its beginning, as it were, a bridge thrown across the abyss of eternal death and eternal nothingness. And in perfect agreement with this origin or foundation, it exhibits itself at the outset as a house of corruption, a character which, to a certain degree, it subsequently and long afterward retains. After a while, however, this house of corruption is transformed, by the omnipotence of the good Creator, into a laboratory of new life, and finally is raised into a ladder of resurrection, ascending, or, rather, is made to conduct, step by step, to the highest pitch of earthly glorification, in which nature, too, has a promise that she shall partake. This was the subject of the preceding Lecture, and it naturally enough suggests the further question, whether a similar scale of gradual exaltation exists for the human soul, which, even while it is in many respects akin to mother earth and to nature generally, is, nevertheless, far more excellent, and, by its innate dignity, claims to be regarded as the very head and crown of this earthly creation. The inquiry then, whether the soul of man, gradually rising out of the depths of this perishable existence and the bondage of corruption, up to God, can approach nearer to, and finally be totally identified with Him; or at least, whether it is capable of being united in a perfect and lasting harmony with the superior powers of a higher and a diviner region—this will form the theme of our present disquisition. In discussing it, however, our attention will be directed principally to its psychological aspect—its relation, i.e., to the theory of consciousness. For the moral examination of this subject, even if it be not allowable to assume that it, at all events, is well known, belongs to another department of inquiry.

Now, on this head, the following remark immediately and naturally suggests itself to the reflecting mind. Unless the soul be at unity with itself it can not hope ever to be one with, or to attain to an harmonic relation with that Being, who, as he is the one source and principle of all and on whom all depends, is in himself a pure harmony. But so far is this condition from being fulfilled in the actual state of the human consciousness, that the latter appears rather to consist of pure and endless discord. Fourfold, I said, is man’s consciousness; and I called its four conflicting forces, viz., understanding and will, reason and fancy, its four poles, or chief branches, or even the four quarters of the internal world of thought. How seldom, however, do the understanding and will agree together. Does not each of them prefer to follow an independent course of its own? How seldom do men really and perseveringly will and desire what they clearly see and acknowledge and perfectly understand to be the best! And how often, on the other hand, do we understand little or nothing of that, which yet in the inmost recesses of our hearts, we most desire and wish, and most ardently and determinedly resolve upon! Reason and fancy, too, both in the inner thought and in outward life also, are, on the whole, in hostile conflict with each other. Reason would wish to suppress or at least to dispense altogether with fancy, while fancy, caring, for the most part, but little or nothing for the reason, goes its own way. The will, moreover, unceasingly distracted, is never even at peace with itself, while the reason, standing alone in the endless evolution of its own thought, entangles itself at last in a labyrinth of irreconcilable contradictions. The understanding, again, has so many grades and species, and divides itself among so many spheres and functions, that in this respect we might be justified in saying: This one understanding understands not the other, even though it be equally correct both in itself and in its mode of operation. And thus, too, in the individual: his understanding, the sum, i.e., of all that he understands, consists, for the most part, but of rags and fragments of truth, which often enough do not match very well, and seldom, if ever, admit of being made to blend harmoniously together. And so, too, is it in all that belongs to, and is under the influence of fancy. The subjective views, for instance, and conceits of man—the delusions of his senses, the rapidly changing meteors and unsubstantial phantoms of human passion, are things only too well known, self-evident, and universally acknowledged.

So profound, then, even in a psychological point of view, and apart from the multiplied phases which the moral aspect presents, appears the discord which reigns in our whole mind as at present constituted! Dissension seems to be interwoven into its fundamental fabric. Instead, therefore, of saying the human consciousness is fourfold, with equal, if not with greater correctness, we might and ought to say, it is divided, or, rather, split, into four or more pieces. It is common enough to speak of facts of consciousness. And yet how seldom among philosophers is any thing more meant by this expression than the mere thinking of thoughts, in the eternal repetition of the same empty process in which the thinking Ego thinks itself, and by means of which the Me is, as it were, seized in the very act, and then, as the first beginning, the imaginary Creator and Demiurge of the ideal world, this Me is hung out like a gilded pennon from the top of the whole artificial system.[25] The only fact of the consciousness that really deserves to be so named is its internal dissension. And this discord not only reveals itself in thought between the Me and Not Me, but pervades the whole and all its branches, or parts and forms, its species and spheres, in mind and soul, understanding and will, reason and fancy, which every where manifests itself, and of which the thousandfold material discords of man’s outer life is only the reflection—its natural consequence and further development. From this fact of the manifold and ever-varying dissension of the human consciousness an exposition of philosophy might not inappropriately set out, in order from this point to seek the solution of its peculiar problem, and the right road for the attainment of its end. For the problem of philosophy, as contemplated from this side, would consist in the restoration of that original, natural, and true state of the consciousness in which it was at unity and in harmony with itself. It is a leading error of philosophy that it views the present state of the human consciousness as even its right one, which requires only to be raised to a higher power in order to be cleansed from the taint of commonness of the ordinary way of thinking which clings to it among the ignorant and unphilosophical, and thereupon to be comprised in strangely artificial and seemingly most profound formulæ. But by such an involution to a higher power the error is not got rid of, but rather the evil itself is aggravated, since it is contained in the root itself, and is to be found in the inmost structure of the consciousness. Besides, it can not have been the original constitution of man’s mind to be thus a prey to manifold dissension, and split, as it were, into pieces and quartered. This discord is, undoubtedly, in the true meaning of the word, a fact, the only one which every individual can without hesitation vouch for on the immediate and independent testimony of his own experience. For the cause of this well-authenticated fact we have only to look to that event which revelation has made known, of which each man must perceive the sad traces within his own heart. It began with that eclipse of the soul which preceded and commenced the present state of man, and was occasioned by the intervention of a foreign body between it and the sun which gave it light. But if the soul, the thinking as well as the loving soul, be the center of consciousness, then, in this great and general darkening of the center, the entire sphere, in its whole essence and structure, must have been altered. And, consequently, in its philosophical aspect, and apart from all special moral depravity in the independent actions, evil habits and passions of individuals, the soul is no longer what it was originally, as created and designed by the Almighty.

Thus, then, the whole human consciousness is filled with unmitigated discord and division, not merely in its mixed rational and sensuous or terrestrial and spiritual nature, but thought itself is at issue with life. And, moreover, while in the thought the internal and the external, faith and science, are involved in a hostile contrariety, disturbing and destroying each other, so is it also in life with the finite and the infinite, the transitory and the imperishable. In such a state of things, therefore, and from this point of view, the problem of philosophy, as already remarked, can not well be any other than the restoration of the consciousness to its primary and true unity, so far as this is humanly possible. Now that this true and permanent unity, if it be at all attainable, must be looked for in God, is at all events an allowable hypothesis. For it will not be disputed, except by one who holds both this unity itself and its restitution to be absolutely impossible. But this is a point on which much may be advanced on both sides, and which, therefore, since mere disputing can avail nothing either one way or the other, can only be decided by the fact—the issue of the attempt. On this hypothesis, then, even philosophy must in every case take God for the basis of its speculations—set out from Him, and draw in every instance from this divine source. But then, considered from this point of view, and pursuing this route, it is no idle speculation and simple contemplation of the inner existence and thought alone—no dead science—but a vital effort and an effectual working of the thought for the restoration of a corrupt and degraded consciousness to its natural simplicity and original unity. And this is the way which we have marked out for the course of our speculations, or, rather, the end which we must strive, however imperfectly, yet at least to the best of our abilities, to attain to. And, accordingly, each of the four preceding Lectures, although in free sketchy outline, contains an attempt to put an end to and reconcile some particular schism among those which are the most marked and predominant in the consciousness, and which in essential points must disturb the whole of life. How far in these four introductory essays this problem has been satisfactorily or completely solved and happily settled, is a question which will be best and most fairly tested by the idea of philosophy, as having its true end and aim in the restoration of this corrupt consciousness to its sound state—to its original unity and full energy of life.

The discord between philosophy itself and life was the first that I attempted to get rid of. But now, if in the place of abstract thought and the dialectical reason, we are entitled to look to the thinking and loving soul for the true center of man’s consciousness, then the imaginary partition-wall between science and life at once crumbles away. Our second Lecture was occupied with the discord which subsists between the finite and the infinite—the eternal and the perishable; and, because this involved a problem which can only be solved by life and reality, I therefore confined myself to pointing out the way in which we may hope to discover their unity and equation. With this view, I attempted to establish a vivid conviction that there is a true enthusiasm wherein the illimitable feeling manifests itself as actual, and that even the earthly passion of love assumes, in the holy union of fidelity and wedlock, the stamp of the indissoluble and eternal, and becomes the source of many divine blessings, and of many moral ties, which are stronger, and furnish a firmer moral basis to society, than any general maxims, or than any ethical theory which is built upon such notional abstractions, far more than upon the pregnant results of the experience of life. And lastly, in pure longing, I pointed out an effort of man’s consciousness directing itself to an infinite, eternal, and divine object. But, as this longing can only evince its reality by the fruits it brings forth, I reserved, to a future opportunity, the more precise determination of this question. The theme of our third Lecture was the existence and the reconciliation of that schism which, both in thought and life, divides the internal and the external worlds. If all knowing be a mere process of the reason, then must this discord between the inner and the outer be forever irreconcilable, and we should be utterly at a loss to conceive how a foreign and alien body could ever have found entrance from without into our Me, and become an object of its cognition. But if every species of knowing be positive—if, also, the cognition of the spiritual and divine be nothing else than an internal and higher science of experience, then the idea of revelation furnishes at once the key to explain, while it establishes the possibility of a knowledge of the divine. And this remark admits, also, of application to nature itself, when we consider it in its totality and internal constitution, and speak of a knowledge of these things—of the vital force which rules in it, or its animating soul; for this, indeed, eludes our grasp, but yet speaks plainly to us—to him, at least, who is wise to understand nature’s language. For if, in attempting to understand nature, we isolate her, as it were, and exclude all reference to Him who gave her being, and has assigned, also, her limits and her end—if, in short, we disturb the two poles of a right understanding of nature, then, most assuredly, will the effort be fruitless, and all our labor unprofitable. Man, however, has gone still further, and by transferring the innate discord of his internal consciousness to outward objects, has forcibly rent asunder God and Nature—he has thus divorced the sensible world and its Maker, and set them in hostile array against each other, and thereby brought physical science in collision with the knowledge of divine things and with revelation. Our fourth Lecture, therefore, was consecrated to an attempt to effect here, also, a reconciliation, or, at least, to lay the first stone, and to mark out the road by which alone we could hope to arrive at so desirable a result: and this is a problem which is even the more important the truer it is, that this discord is not confined to science and the scientific domain, but extends, also, to real life, where these discrepant views and modes of thinking are arrayed against each other in so many hostile and conflicting parties. And although, as differing merely as to the form and direction of thought, they do not come forward in so distinct a shape, or under such characteristic names, as the parties in religion and politics, still this dissension is not, therefore, less real and universal, or its effects and influence less noticeable. Of these parties the first, and by far the most numerous, is the sect of the rationalists, who doubt indiscriminately of all things, and test every matter by the standard of their own skepticism. The second class is formed of the exclusive worshipers of nature, and has many members among scientific men; while, lastly, the third consists of those who derive, from the positive source of a divine decision, the law of their thinking and the standard of their judgment. Now, this last party, if it would only go a few steps farther, and draw still deeper from this source, would be able to assign its appropriate place and value to every potence and truth in the other species of thought and knowledge, and even thereby might qualify itself to dissolve and reconcile the all-pervading discord. But inasmuch as they do not adopt this conciliatory attitude toward natural, historical, and even artistic knowledge, so far as they are true, but, on the contrary, in a spirit of animosity, attempt to circumscribe and set negative limits to them, if not absolutely to reject them as worthless and profane—then, when they least wish it, they really sink into a party no less than the other two. And thus, while they might occupy a far higher position, they fall to the level of the rest, and contribute, on their part, an element to the intellectual strife, and tend to promote and perpetuate it. The three parties, then, which by their ruling ideas divide life and age, are the rational thinkers, the worshipers of nature, and those who, in all controverted questions, appeal absolutely to a higher and divine authority; for inasmuch as the sentence of the latter is only of a negative import, it is therefore insufficient to meet all the requisitions of life.

Thus, then, have I led your consideration to four different points, in order to seize and exhibit, in as many different forms and spheres, this great fact of the dissension in man’s consciousness, as it exists at present. In a similar manner, too, a fourfold attempt has been made to remedy its hereditary disease, which has been inherent in it since the original darkening of the soul at the Fall, and, by appeasing the discord which, as it is all-pervading and universal, assumes manifold shapes and forms, to make the first step of return and approximation toward the original harmonic unity. Having considered the matter in these four special points of view, it will not, I hope, appear premature if I now propose the question in a more general point of view, which will embrace the whole human consciousness itself; but, at the same time, limit our consideration of it exclusively to its psychological aspect.

Now it is in nowise difficult to conceive of the human soul as much simpler than it is, and apart from that division of it into several faculties, which is at most, and properly, but an accident of its existence. One of the first among the modern philosophers of Germany, says somewhere of the soul, that the supposition of its existence is superfluous, and that it is a pure fiction.[A] But this statement was the result of his having abandoned in his system the true center of life and consciousness; whoever, on the contrary, adheres steadily thereto, will never concur in a position which simply, as contradicting the general feeling of human nature, requires no elaborate refutation. But as regards the two parts into which the soul is divided, viz., Reason and Fancy—these, at any rate, are no fiction, but exist really and truly within the consciousness, where, as in life itself, they often stand confronting each other in hostile array. This division can not well be called superfluous, but yet it does not admit of being considered absolutely necessary, and belonging to the soul’s original essence. If all thinking were a living cogitation—if the thinking and the loving soul had remained at unity in their true center, then the external methodical thought and the internal productive thinking, meditating, and invention, would not be separate and divorced—at least they would not come into hostile conflict with each other, but would rather be harmoniously combined in the living cogitation of the loving soul. The several forms, too, of a higher love and a higher endeavor, aye, every lawful earthly inclination, would be blended in this harmony of the soul, and no longer stand out as a separate and isolated faculty, occasionally conflicting with all the others. Even the conscience would no longer appear as a special act or function of the judgment, of a distinct and peculiar kind, but would be absorbed in the whole as a delicate internal sensibility and the pulse of the moral life.

As for sensation and memory, they are in any case but ministering faculties, which only appear distinct and independent under the influence of the prevailing tendency to separation and disunion, but on the supposition of a simpler and more harmonious consciousness, would be counted merely as bodily organs. If, then, the soul had not suffered an eclipse—if it had remained undisturbed in the clear light of God—then would man’s consciousness also have been much simpler than it now is, with all those several faculties which we at present find and distinguish in it. In such a case, it would consist only of understanding, soul, and will. For if, according to the three directions of its activity, any one should still be disposed to divide it into the thinking, the feeling, and the loving soul, still this would not be founded on any intrinsic strife or discord, but they would all combine harmoniously together, and in this harmonious combination be at unity among themselves. As for the distinction between understanding and will, that would still remain, since it is essential to mind or spirit, and may, in a certain sense, be ascribed even to the uncreated spirits. But in this garden of the soul of inward illumination—on this fruitful soil of harmonized thought and feeling—they would walk amicably together, and work in common, and would not, as hostile beings, turn aside in opposite directions, or as is mostly the case in actual life, be divided from each other by an impassable gulf, and never meet in friendly contact.

Thus nearly, or somewhat similarly, must we conceive of, and attempt to represent to ourselves, the human mind in its original state, before it was darkened, rent asunder, and condemned to lasting discord, but was as yet eminently simple and perfectly harmonious.

And now as regards understanding and will, as a division of powers essential to the mind or spirit, which, however, as such, is not necessarily inharmonious: the expression already touched upon of another of our modern German philosophers, will serve as a transition to and commencing point for my remarks. According to this memorable assertion with regard to the mind [geist], and which will serve as an appropriate pendent to that last quoted about the soul, the essence of mind or spirit in general consists in the negation of the opposite.[26] Now I can not stop at present to inquire what sense this would give, if applied to the uncreated spirit, and the Creator of all other spiritual beings. But as concerns created spirits: their essence, contrariwise, consists principally in an eternal affirmation. But this, however, they have not of and from themselves, but it is the affirmation of the one to which God has exclusively destined them. But it is not of themselves, but of God and His energy, of whom these created spirits are, as it were, but a ray—a spark of His light—therefore, in this ray, not only sight and understanding, but also thought and deed, will and execution, are simultaneous and identical. And it is in this respect that they are so totally different from men. Now this ray of light, imparted to them from God, is nothing less than the thought of their destination—of the purpose of their being—in a word, their mission, if we may speak after a human fashion, and in the prevailing phraseology. And, indeed, in all ancient languages, the pure created intelligences have these names from that mission which constitutes their essence; for their essence is even perfectly identical with this divine mission or inborn eternal affirmation. To the fallen spirits, on the other hand, the maxim above quoted applies truly enough: their essence consists, not in the divine affirmation, or the mission which they have abandoned, but rather in the eternal, though bootless, denial of their opposite, which is even nothing less than the divine order. For to their ambitious intellect and perverse wills, the latter, in all probability, appeared far too loving, and, therefore, unintelligible; while, to their censorious judgment, it seemed deficient in rigor of consequence, and not unconditional and absolute enough.

All that has hitherto been said reduces itself to the following result. As by the first obscuration and eclipse of the human soul the very body of man was deteriorated, and having been originally created with a capacity of immortality, fell a prey to death, and received the germs, or became liable to many diseases, as roots of death—which is not guilt itself, but the natural result of guilt—so in his consciousness there was then implanted, and has ever since been propagated, a germ of intellectual death, and manifold seeds of error, which, however, are not a new sin, but merely the natural consequences of the first sin and the original corruption of the soul. In four different forms, according to the four cardinal points and fundamental faculties of the human consciousness, does this inborn error and fruitful germ of erroneous and false thinking show and develop itself. We have already spoken of this futile idea of the deadness of all external life, which has taken such deep root in the center of all human thought—in the dead abstract notion and the empty formula, and which, clinging as an original taint to the human mind as at present constituted, renders it so difficult for all those who, not content with merely observing nature, wish really to understand it in its living operation, and, moreover, to imitate in thought its dynamical law, and the inner pulse of its vital forces. For in the abstract notion all this evaporates, and when confined within such dead formularies, the true life of nature quickly becomes extinct. This, therefore, is the primary source of error—the leading species of barren and futile thinking in the abstract understanding. But now this dead and lifeless cogitation of abstract ideas, with its processes of combining and inferring, or of analyzing and drawing distinctions, may be carried on into infinity, as being that wherein the essence or function of reason consists, and also as giving rise to interminable disputes and contradictions. Consequently this form of the reason, which is ever pursuing dialectical disputations, or else skeptically renouncing its own authority, even because it never allows itself to proceed in what alone is its legitimate course, becomes thereby a second source of error and false thinking among men. And, indeed, this erroneous procedure of the dialectical reason, which is incessantly working out or analyzing its abstract notions, is the effect of the present constitution of the human mind; so that no individual can in justice be blamed on its account, nor can its perverted conclusions and corrupting results be fairly imputed to ulterior views and principles of an immoral character.

In considering the imagination as a source of error, we have no need to select the instance of a fancy satanically inflamed to passion, or satanically deluded, or even one of a purely materialistic bias and leaning. For fancy, even in its greatest exaltation and purest form, is at best but a subjective view and mode of cogitative apprehension, and, consequently, as such, is ever a fruitful parent of delusion. How very rarely an imagination is to be found which is not predominantly subjective, is shown precisely in the very highest grade of its development—in the creations of imitative art. Of the exalted geniuses who in single ages and nations have distinguished themselves from the great mass, and attained to that rare eminence—the reputation of the true artist; out of this short list of great names, how few can be selected of whose productions it can be truly said and boasted—Here in this picture we have something more than a mere general view, or the peculiar fantasy of an individual; here life and nature stand before us in their full truth and objective reality, and speak to us in that universal language, which is intelligible to men of all countries and all times! And the same remark applies to the whole domain of scientific thought in general; but especially to physical and historical science.

In like manner, in the sphere of the will, it is not merely immoral volitions, which, as such, must ever be false and wrong, that are exclusively the source of erroneous thought. The spring of those errors which we are at present considering lies in the very form of the will itself, i.e., in the absolute willing, even though its object and end be, in themselves, perfectly legitimate and unexceptionable. That this absolute willing—or, to speak more humanly, and in ordinary language, self-will and obstinacy—is a fundamental and hereditary failing of the human character, as at present constituted, which shows itself in the very youngest children, with the first dawn of reason, and requires to be most watchfully checked, is but too well known to every teacher and every mother. But not in infancy only, but also in the most important and comprehensive relations of life—nay, even in the history of the world—this same absolute willing proves the most pernicious of all the sources of error and corruption in the soul and life of man, even when its object is not unmitigatedly bad, or when, perhaps, it may even deserve to be called great and noble. It is through this absolute willing that the sovereign with unlimited authority, even though he be gifted with a strong and comprehensive intellect, and possessed of many estimable qualities and moral virtues, becomes, nevertheless, the oppressor of his people and the merciless tyrant. Through it, also, in states which are not monarchical, but where the supreme authority is divided among several estates, views and principles which, calmly considered and duly limited by opposing principles, are true and beneficial, by being advanced absolutely, and without qualification, are converted into so many violent factions, which, distracting the minds of men and inflaming their passions, produce a wide-spread and fearful anarchy.

The dead abstract notions of the intellect, the dialectical disputes of the reason, the purely subjective and one-sided apprehension of objects by a deluded fancy, and the absolute will, are the four sources of human error. Considered apart from the aberrations of passion, special faults of character, and prejudices of education, as well as the false notions and wrong judgments to which the latter give rise—these four are the springs from which flows all the error of the soul which makes itself the center of the terrestrial reality, and which, springing out of this soil, is nourished and propagated by it. To what, then, are we to look to dispel these manifold delusions but to a closer and more intimate union of the soul with God as the source of life and truth?

What, let us therefore ask, is the organ by which such closer union with and immediate cognition of God is to be effected? Plainly not the understanding, even though as the cognitive sense of a revelation of spirit, and of the spirit of revelation, it carries us through the first steps toward a right understanding of ourselves and the Creator. For so long as we confine ourselves to the understanding, which, at most, is but a preparatory and auxiliary faculty, we shall only make an approximation. It is only when the divine idea, passing beyond the understanding—the mere surface, as it were, of our consciousness—penetrates into the very center of our being, and strikes root there, that it is possible, with a view to this end, to draw immediately from the primary source of all life. Now, the organ which essentially co-operates in this work is the will, which, in such co-operation however, divests itself entirely of its absoluteness. On this account I called the will the sense for God, or the sense which is appropriated to the perception of Deity.

But before I proceed in my attempt to define and elucidate the nature of this reciprocal action, and show how it is possible or generally conceivable, it will be necessary to premise one essential remark. I have already attempted to discover and establish a special and characteristic mark for every sphere of life, and its highest and lowest grades. Thus, the proper and distinctive signature of nature, and all that belongs to it, is a state of slumber or sleep; the characteristic property of man, which distinguishes him from all other intellectual beings, is fancy; while the essential property of the pure created spirits is the stamp of eternity which is impressed on all their operations, by means of which they perform, with untiring energies, their allotted duties, without the alternation of repose or the necessity of sleep, and by reason of which they remain forever what they once begin to be. Applying the same line of thought to a higher region, I would now attempt to discover there some characteristic sign, by observing which man may, perhaps, be able to find his true position. Proceeding, then, in this line of thought, and preserving a due regard to the weakness of the human capacity, I would observe as follows. The characteristic, not, indeed, of the divine essence—for that is too great for man’s powers of apprehension—but of the divine operations and His influence on the creation and all created beings, consists in His incredible condescension toward these His creatures, and especially toward man. Incredible, however, it may, nay, must and ought to be called, inasmuch as it transcends every notion, nay, all belief, even the most confiding and childlike, and the more it is contemplated, appears the more inconceivable and amazing. Only it admits of question, whether the expression be sufficiently simple and appropriate, and, consequently, well-chosen; for the fact itself of this divine condescension is affirmed in every line and word of revelation. And by revelation I mean not merely the written revelation, but every manifestation more or less distinct of God, and His divine operations and providence—history, nature, and life. Now, on no one point are the voices of all, who on such a matter can be regarded as authorities, so perfectly concordant and unanimous, as on this wonderful attribute of the Godhead, which, on the supposition that the belief in one living God is universal, may be considered as placed beyond doubt or question.

In order to demonstrate how essential is the co-operation of the will to that living intercommunion with God, which is something more than a mere understanding, we advance the following assumptions. Supposing that in the incredible condescension of His love, God has made Himself known to a man, just as in the first books of our Holy Scripture He is described as conversing with Moses, and as familiarly as one friend talks to another; supposing also that He revealed to him all the secret things of heaven and earth without reserve; that He at the same time laid open to him His will and hidden counsels, and that not summarily and in a general way, but definitely and in detail—expressly making known to him His gracious purposes, both in what He at present requires of him and designs for him hereafter; that He has also pointed out to man the means which will enable him to accomplish His will, and, moreover, has added the highest possible promises for his encouragement; supposing all this, is it not evident that it nevertheless could not help or profit man unless he consented to receive it? The whole divine communication would be in vain if man obstinately continued in his old Egoism, mixed and compounded of evil habits, fears, and sensual desires, and, unable to tear himself away, still clung close to the narrow limits of self and his own Me.

Now it is nothing but this intrinsic consent and concurrence in the will of God, this calm affirmation of it, that can help man, who is now left to his own free determination even as regards the Deity, and that can lead him to God. On this account I called the will, rather than the understanding, man’s sense for the divine. But all that is here required is the internal assent, and not the power of actual performance; for that varies even according to the standard of nature, or rather of that which is imparted to him from above, since of himself man has no capacity for that which is higher and more excellent, nothing being man’s own but his will. Now this internal assent and submission of man’s own will to the divine is clearly inconceivable where it has not, to a certain degree, withdrawn from the sensible world which surrounds him with so many ties and allurements, and where it has not loosened and set itself free from the narrow domain of self to which his Ego so closely clings.

Here, then, naturally arises the question, how far a renunciation of the world and self-sacrifice, on which even the Platonic philosophy so greatly insisted, is necessary, if we would advance one degree, or at least one step, nearer to God, as the supreme good and all-perfect Being, and what are its true and proper limits? In obedience to this idea of the renunciation of the world as indispensable to communion with God, the Hindoo fakir will sit for thirty years in one spot, with his eyes fixed immutably in the same direction, so that he not only surpasses all the limits of human nature, but also erases and extinguishes all traces of it in himself. Or perhaps, in spite of the simple principle and rule of sound reason, that man, as he is not the author of his own being, has no right to terminate it, he follows a false idea of self-sacrifice, and mounts the flaming pile in order to be the sooner united to the Deity. In the fundamental idea of these extravagances there is doubtless a germ of beauty and of truth, though in the perverse application and gigantic scale of exaggeration that we meet with it among the primeval nations of Asia, it is distorted into monstrous falsehood. A simple illustration, taken from the different ages of man’s life, will perhaps serve to set in a clear light the point on which every thing turns in this matter of the assent of the human to the divine will, and to determine the sense and the degree in which man ought not to give himself up entirely to the world, or to revolve closely round the center of self, if he would yield a sincere and hearty submission to a higher voice and that guiding hand which conducts the education of the whole human race, and watches with equal care the development of individuals and of ages. The child may and must play, for such exercise is wholesome and even necessary for the free expansion of its bodily powers; but at its mother’s call, for to the child hers is the higher voice, it ought to leave its play. Youth, again, ought to be merry and enjoy the verdant spring; but when honor and duty summon to earnest action, then must he be ready to lay aside all light-hearted amusement for sterner avocations; or to take another view of the youthful temperament, should its joyousness touch too rudely, not to say overstep, the bounds of morality, then at the first hint of warning it must abandon its treacherous pleasures. The full-grown man, too, having to make his way in the world and to fight with fortune in the hard struggle of life, has little leisure for idle feelings and meditations; only he must not renounce all higher and nobler sentiments, nor dismiss from his mind the thought of the Godhead and the divine (which indeed for its mere preservation requires no outward ordinance or loss of time), as belonging to the boy, and suitable only for the unripe years of youth. Or to regard life under its passive aspect, let us think of the happy wife by the side of a husband she loves, and living only in her children, and possessing of worldly good as much as she wishes or requires: suddenly, by one of those changes and chances which prevail in this transitory life, she is bereaved of all—the partner of her joys and cares, the children of her bosom, and perhaps, too, of her rank and consideration, while beneath the repeated strokes of affliction her very health sinks. Who would check her tears or blame her natural sorrow if she feels and tells her woes? No one: for holier eyes than man’s look upon her with compassion. One thing, however, may fairly and reasonably be expected of her—that she do not give way entirely to despair, nor murmur against Providence. More, therefore, than man requires of man in the ordinary relations of life, God requires not of the human will; and on that alone does He make any requisition, in respect to that free assent and internal concurrence which alone can bind us in personal union with the Godhead, and bring us near to Him; a consummation which no mere intellectual apprehension of all possible revelations, whether written on the pages of inspiration, or on the open tablets of nature, or engraven on the imperishable annals of history, is sufficient to bring about.

So much and nothing more is required for this essential concurrence of the human will with the divine, in the general relations of life. But, in the case of any special vocation and profession—if, for instance, a man feels himself disposed to become a minister of the revealed Word, an instrument and messenger of the divine communications—then, no doubt, higher and sterner requisitions must come into consideration. To men of native courage, what vocation can be more universal than that of a soldier and defender of his country? but does not it require, besides undaunted courage and contempt of death, the patient and enduring fortitude which bears up under countless hardships and privations? What vocation, again, can be simpler and more fully founded in nature, than that of the softer sex to become a mother? but how many sufferings, and fears, and dangers, compass it about, and how infinite are the great and little anxieties to which a mother’s love—that purest and truest of all earthly affections—is exposed? And it is even herein that human love most betrays its weakness; it may suffice for some one determinate direction, some transitory period of life, for some single effort of magnanimity or self-sacrifice, but it rarely survives the changes of time and fortune, and its faith and ardor too often are extinguished amid the petty trials of every-day life, and its numberless cares and anxieties.

And as with the love, so also is it with the faith of men: it enters not sufficiently into minutiæ; it is not personal enough, nor sufficiently childlike and confiding; it is not made to refer enough to ourselves. Most men, indeed, have only too high an opinion of their own worth—an overweening confidence in their own powers; at least, the opposite fault of extreme diffidence is a rare exception. But yet, it is true, men generally take far too low an estimate of their true vocation and proper destiny; they believe not in its high dignity; and as viewed in its place among the vast universe, they hold it and themselves as comparatively insignificant. But this is a total misconception. Every man is an individual entity—an inner world of his own, full of life—a true microcosm (as has already been said in a different sense) in the eye of God and in the scheme of creation: every man has a vocation of his own, and an appropriate destiny. Could men’s eyes be but once opened to see it, how would they be amazed at the infinity which they have neglected, and might have attained to, and which generally in the world remains neglected and unattained. But of the many thousands whom this remark concerns, how very few ever attain to a clear cognition of their real destination! And the reason of this is simply the fact, that the faith of men is all too weak, and, above all, that it is too vaguely general, too superficial, too little searching or profound—not sufficiently personal and childlike.

A childlike faith, and a love that endureth unto the end—these are the true bonds to hold the soul of man in intimate union with God. But it is in hope, such as is at present found among men, that the chief defect lies; for hope ought to be strong and heroic, otherwise it is not that which the name expresses. Few men, perhaps, are entirely devoid of faith and love, only they are not sufficiently carried into the details and trifles of life, as human wants require; for it is exactly to these that all that is divine in men’s thoughts and deeds ought to be directed. In hope, on the contrary, the inner man must raise himself and ascend up to God: it must, therefore, be strong and energetic, if it is to be efficacious. On this account we might well expect it to be far more rare, comparatively, than faith and love, considered according to the human scale of reasoning; on the other hand, probably, there are many men who, internally, are almost totally destitute of hope.

The longing after the eternal and divine, which has been already described, is the seeking of God; but this calm, inward assent of the will, whenever, with a childlike faith and enduring love, and in steadfast hope, it is carried through and maintained with unwavering fidelity throughout life, is the actual finding of Him within us, and a constant adherence to Him when once we have found Him. As the root and principle of all that is best and noblest in man, this divine longing can not be too highly estimated, and nowhere is it so inimitably described, and its excellence so fully acknowledged, as in Holy Writ itself. A remarkable instance of it is the fact that a prophet who was set apart and called by God Himself to his office, and was for that purpose endued with miraculous gifts, is expressly called in Holy Writ the man of longings.[27] And yet this longing is nothing but the source, the first root, from which springs that triple flower in the lovely symbol of faith, hope, and charity, which afterward, spreading over every grade and sphere of moral and intellectual existence, expands into the richest and most manifold fruits.

Now, it is very possible in some serious and intellectual work to feel a pleasure in this triple union of holy thoughts and sentiments, as with any deeply-significant picture in general, without duly entering the while into its precise requisitions and profound meaning. But from one particular end of a philosophy of life, i.e., of a thorough knowledge of the human consciousness, the psychological aspect of the subject assumes a peculiar importance, and essentially demands our attention. With this view, I venture to assert that the human consciousness, which otherwise and in itself is entirely a prey to discord, and split into irreconcilable contraries, is, by faith, hope, and love, redeemed from this dissension—is raised from its innate law, of an erring and dead thought, and of an absolute will, which is no less dead and null, being restored gradually to a perfect state of unison and harmony. Under the influence of faith—and by this term I understand, not the cold and heartless repetition of a customary formulary, but a living and personal faith in a living and personal God and Savior—under the influence of such a faith, the living spirit of truth steps into that place of the consciousness which before was usurped by the mere abstract thinking of a degraded understanding. And whenever, on the other hand, a refined goodness and love have in patient endurance become the soul of existence, there is no room for the stormy obstinacy or passionate wildness of an absolute will. Even in the will itself all is now life; discord is banished from it, and all the threatening elements of strife are forever appeased. And in that trusting confidence with which the loving soul leans upon God—in the strong godlike hope which takes its stand upon the Eternal, the reason, with its ordering, regulating, and methodical processes, and the fancy, with its dreams of the infinite, are again completely reconciled, and thereby the harmony of the human consciousness restored. Fancy, I remarked formerly, is the characteristic property of man, as distinguished by it from other spiritual intelligences; for reason, as a mere faculty of negation, affords only a negative distinction of his nature as compared with irrational creatures. But now, in a more comprehensive view, and, at the same time, with profounder significance and greater truth of description, we may say of man, in the same sense and in the same relation, hope forms his characteristic property and his inmost essence.

Here, then, in this holy hope, is longing, that marvelous flower of the soul, expanded into its perfect and noblest fruit. If, in judging of the three, man looks to the end to which he is to attain—if, in thought, he places himself at this point of view, then assuredly will love appear the highest and the best; for hope ceases when fulfillment comes in, and sight enters into the place of faith, but love abideth forever.[28] As long, however, as man has not yet attained unto that which is perfect, and is still in pursuit of it, hope must be regarded as the greatest, for it is even the true vital flame of faith, as well as of love, and of all higher existence.

This divine hope is even the fruit-bearing principle and the fructification of the immortal soul by the Holy Spirit of Eternal Truth—the luminous center and focus of grace, where the dark and discordant soul is illuminated and restored to unison with itself and with God.

LECTURE VI.
OF THE WISDOM OF THE DIVINE ORDER OF THINGS IN NATURE, AND OF THE RELATION OF NATURE TO THE OTHER LIFE AND TO THE INVISIBLE WORLD.

THE highest and loftiest language would fail us were it our purpose to speak of the inmost essence of the Godhead, since He is that which no thought or conception can comprehend, and which no words are sufficient completely to describe or adequately to express. On the other hand, when we reflect on God’s work in creation, and of His superintending providence which rules the course of this earthly world, our thoughts can not be simple enough, nor, to judge by that principle of the divine condescension which formed the nucleus of our remarks in the last Lecture, too familiar or affectionate. In a general way this is commonly enough admitted, but practically it is neglected. Men do not clearly present to their minds all that is involved in it, and the remote consequences to which it leads. And so, in spite of their better convictions, they insensibly adopt a high-sounding and solemn strain, when the tone of a childlike reverence is alone the suitable and appropriate style for expressing the relation between the benignant Creator and His creatures, and man especially, as simply and as naturally as it is in reality.

I said as naturally, because it is implied in the very nature of things that if God did originally create free beings like men, He would give them all things needful, keep them constantly in His regard, and every where lend them a helping and directing hand. But from time to time He might, it is not inconsistent to suppose, withdraw, as it were, His guidance; for otherwise they would cease to be free beings. In this respect the divine Providence may be likened to a mother teaching her child to walk. Having chosen a clear spot, free from all things likely to hurt the infant in its fall, she places it firmly on its feet. For a little while she holds and supports it, and then, going back a few steps, she waits for its love to set its little limbs in motion and to follow her. But how watchful is her eye, how outstretched her arms to catch her babe the instant it begins to totter! Such nearly, and equally simple, is the relation of God to man; and not to individuals only, but also to the whole human race. For in the divine education and higher guidance of mankind we may trace the same degrees and natural gradation of developments as form the basis of the education of individuals, and may also be observed in all the processes of nature.

Now we take it for granted that God has willed the creation not only of free and pure spirits, but also of the natural world; for that He has so willed is a fact that, as it were, stares us in the face. If, then, along with the free spirits He has also created a nature, i.e., a living reproductive power, capable of and designed to develop and propagate itself, it is plain that we can not and ought not to think of such a nature as independent and self-subsisting. For, first of all, it had not its beginning in itself. Moreover, it would move as a blind force, and as such manifest itself only in destruction and desolation, if its Maker had not originally fixed and assigned to it the end toward which all its efforts were ultimately to be directed. Nature, indeed, is not free like man; but still it is not a piece of dead clock-work, which, when it is once wound up, works on mechanically till it has run itself down again. There is life in it. And if a few abstract but superficial thinkers have failed to discern, or even ventured expressly to deny this truth, the general feeling of mankind, on the other hand, bears witness to it. Yes, man feels that there is life rustling in the tree, as with its many arms and branches, its leaves and flowers, it moves backward and forward in the free air; and that, as compared with the clock, with all its ingenious but dead mechanism, it is even a living thing. And what the common feeling of mankind thus instinctively assumes is confirmed by the profounder investigations of physical science. Thus we know that even plants sleep, and they, too, as much as animals, though after a different sort, have a true impregnation and propagation. And is not nature, on the whole, a life-tree, as it were, whose leaves and flowers are perpetually expanding themselves and seeking nourishment from the balsamic air of heaven, while, as the sap rises from the deep-hidden root into the mighty stem, the branches stir and move, and invisible forces sweep to and fro in its waving crown. Most shallow and superficial, in truth, is that physical science which would consider the system of nature, with all the marvels of beauty and majesty wherewith its Maker has adorned it, as nothing more than a piece of lifeless clock-work. In such a system the all-mighty Creator must appear at best but a great mechanical artist who has at his command infinite resources; or, if we may be allowed so absurd an expression, as the fittest to expose the absurdity of those who would regard the divine work, both in its whole and in its parts, as dead, an omnipotent clockmaker. If, however, to meet the needs of man’s limited capacity, we must, when speaking of the Creator, employ such trifling and childish similes, then of all human avocations and pursuits that of the gardener will serve best to illustrate the divine operations in nature. All-mighty and omniscient, however, He has Himself created the trees and flowers that He cultivates, has Himself made the good soil in which they grow, and brings down from heaven the balmy spring, the dews and rain, and the sunshine that quicken and mature them into life and beauty.

If, then, there be life in nature, as, indeed, observation teaches, and the general feeling of man avouches, it must also possess a vital development, which in its movements observes a uniform course and intrinsic law. In truth, the Creator has not reserved to himself the beginning and the end alone, and left the rest to follow its own course; but in the middle, and at every point, also, of its progress, the Omnipotent Will can intervene at pleasure. If He pleases He can instantaneously stop this vital development, and suddenly make the course of nature stand still; or, in a moment, give life and movement to what before stood motionless and inanimate. Generally speaking, it is in the divine power to suspend the laws of nature, to interfere directly with them, and, as it were, to intercalate among them some higher and immediate operation of His power, as an exception to their uniform development. For, as in the social frame of civil life, the author and giver of the laws may occasionally set them aside, or, in their administration, allow certain special cases of exception, even so is it, also, with nature’s Lawgiver.

Now, this immediate operation, and occasional interference of Supreme Power with the order of nature, is exactly what constitutes the idea of miracle. The general possibility of miracles is a principle which man’s sound and unsophisticated reason has never allowed him to deny. But, on the other hand, it is evidently essential to their very idea that they should be thought of simply as deviations from the usual course of nature’s operations; if they were not exceptions to the laws of nature, then were they no miracles. Such miraculous exceptions, however, it may be observed, need not invariably to be contrary to the course of nature, though above nature, and far transcending its ordinary standard, they always are. Exceptions, therefore, they are; but such, at the same time, as do not permanently disturb the natural course and flow of the vital development, which, on the whole, continues unchanged. For it is only agreeable with Creative wisdom to maintain the world so long as the present state of things subsists, and the final consummation has not yet arrived, in the order originally prescribed to it by His omnipotence.

To this an objection might be made in the opposite sense. Taken then in their principle, the laws of nature, no less than those exceptions to them which are usually called miracles, are one and the same; they are alike from the Creator of all—and the laws themselves, therefore, are equally miraculous. This remark is quite true; but it only teaches us that we ought not to be too ready to see a miracle in every extraordinary event. But still, there will ever remain an essential difference between an immediate operation of omnipotence and the Creator’s original production of a living force, implanting in this creature an inner law, and thereupon leaving to it the further evolution of its powers in the course marked out for and assigned to it.

Now, if such a creature, like this terrestrial nature, be of a mixed constitution, composed of a principle of destruction as well as of a principle of productive development and progression—if its life be a constant struggle with death, then it is manifest that only by the same hand which first formed it, gave it laws, and prescribed its order, can its wise and divine economy be preserved, and the permanence of the organic evolution of its whole system be secured, and the outbursts of elementary dissolution, which are perpetually menacing it, held in check and averted. If this restraint be once relaxed, if the destructive energy of the wild elements be once let loose, and free scope given to their fury—and this globe presents the manifest traces of one such catastrophe, at least—then this, too, must be regarded as an exception, and is only explicable by the higher principle of divine permission. Viewed, however, as the retribution of divine justice on a guilty world, it forms an exception and a miracle of a peculiar kind, and must be distinguished from those other extraordinary operations properly called miracles, wherein, with some saving or quickening purpose, the Almighty, as it were, raises nature above herself, and takes her out of her usual course.

In this way, then, we ought unquestionably to refer every thing in the world to its author and preserver, whether it be conformable to the usual course and order of nature, or, as an extraordinary phenomenon, bespeak a higher and more immediate operation of divinity. But, at the same time, we must never forget that nature itself is a living force endowed with a capacity of self-development. Nature, indeed, is not free in the same sense that man is, possessed and conscious of a power of self-determination and choice; but as all life contains in itself the germ of a free movement and expansion, and while it expands itself a hidden and slumbering consciousness begins to stir and awake, so also in nature, an initiatory or preparatory grade of it, if not fully out-spoken, is at least indicated. In this respect it may be regarded as the vestibule of that temple of freedom which in man, the crowning work of this earthly creation, and made after the divine image and likeness, stands forth in its full dimensions and proportions. Considered from another point of view, the sensible world may be looked upon as a veil thrown over the spiritual world—the light-flowing and almost transparent robe, and, as it were, in all its parts the significant costume of the invisible powers. But in no point of view can we rightly consider nature as properly self-subsisting, or independent of its Creator, and, therefore, in no case as isolated by itself and apart from all reference to a superior being. Rather is it a living force, and one, too, doubly significant, both from within and from without; to which property an allusion is contained in the simile already employed, of a book written both on the inside and the outside. These two ideas, then, of the free will of man and of the living development of nature, must be taken as the basis, and serve as the fixed point of every attempt to ascertain the divine order in nature. On this account we have placed them in the foreground of the present Lecture, which will, in the main, be consecrated to such an investigation.

If, now, this demonstration of a divine order in nature seem to contain nothing less than a kind of Theodicée[29] (so far as man can establish a justification of God’s ways), I, for my part, must confess that I would much rather have before my eyes a Theodicée for the feelings, conceived in the very spirit of love, than any purely rational theory. For such theories, founded in general on far-fetched hypotheses, subtilly introduce into nature numberless divine purposes and designs, of which, however, we are able neither clearly to understand, much less to prove that they were intended by the everlasting counsels, or even that such vestiges of a divine purpose are really discernible in the universe. In this province of speculation we must not be too rigorous in our determinations, and especially we must guard against systematizing. But, above all, we can not be too watchful against the fault which so many reasoners fall into, of transferring into the realm of nature, or of God, that logical necessary connection which is a part of and connatural with our rational constitution, and an indispensable aid to our limited intellectual powers. Such a way of thinking would inevitably lead us to that most mistaken notion of a blind fate—the phantom of destiny.

On the other hand, how many are the questioning feelings and perplexities which arise in the human heart at the sight of certain natural objects. And these even, because they are far from amounting to doubts and objections, or at least from assuming a definite expression or a scientific dignity, seem, on that account, only the more loudly to demand an answer. The mournful cry of some helpless and innocent animal when killed by man—or in a different category—the hissing of the venomous serpent; the lothsome mass of maggots in the putrid corpse: all these are but so many dumb exclamations which, as it were, do but keep back the question, Are, then, these the productions of the all-perfect Being—of the Supreme Intelligence?

The sufferings of animals are indeed a theme for man to reflect upon; and I, for my part, can not concur with him who would regard this as a topic unworthy of his thoughts, and expel from the human bosom all sympathy with the animal creation. The consideration, however, of this subject, naturally enough gives rise to the question as to the soul of animals. Now, it certainly would do no discredit to philosophy, if it should succeed in giving a satisfactory answer to this question, and enable us to follow a middle course; as remote from the exaggerated assumptions of ancient nations with regard to animal existence, on the one hand, as on the other, from the unfeeling conclusions of modern science, which refuses to regard or to sympathize with any pains, and absolutely is unable to conceive the sufferings of any being which does not possess the character of rationality exactly in the same manner and degree as man. As greatly, on the other side, does the Hindoo theology err. Its dogma of the metempsychosis not only ascribes an immortal soul to animals, but it also further teaches that human souls are imprisoned in animal bodies, as the penalty of a guilt incurred in a previous state of existence. Beautiful, however, as is the compassionate sympathy with the sufferings of the brute creation, which this theory has occasioned, and confirmed by the sanction of a religious duty, still the assumption on which it is founded is wholly arbitrary, and the extension of the immortality of the soul to these creatures of our globe is an unwarrantable exaggeration, and has no foundation in observed phenomena. Moreover, the hypothesis of such a migratory state of departed souls is inconsistent with every notion of the divine government of the world; inasmuch as such a temporary punishment can produce no salutary effect, either of purification or of preparation, and consequently would be wholly motiveless and absurd.

Very questionable, moreover, does it seem, whether, with propriety, an individual soul can be attributed to animals. With those that are most closely domesticated with man, there does undoubtedly arise, as it were, by a sort of mental contagion, the appearance of individuality and difference of character, just as the artistic structures of certain species form a kind of analogy to human reason, and as the melodious intonations and feelings of some others seemed to me entitled, in a similar sense, to be termed reverberations of fancy. In all those kinds, however, which remain undisturbed in their natural state, the whole species possesses the same character, and have, consequently, the same common soul.[30] The species itself is only an individual; and, consequently, the several species must be considered as so many living forms of the general organic force of animated nature, since an immortality of individual souls can, in the case of animals, neither be assumed nor allowed to be assumable.

Among those perplexities, or, as I termed them, questioning feelings about nature and its animating principle, I turn now to the consideration of the last instance, that of the maggots of putrefaction. Is not this one of the clearest possible proofs that all nature is animated?[31] So much so, and so eminently is this the case, that even in death and corruption, in foulness and disease, it still livingly operates and produces life—the lowest grade, undoubtedly, of life—or, if any so prefers to call it, a false life—but still a life. Now, can such morbid productions of nature, the worms, e.g. [entozoa], which in certain diseases are engendered in the bowels, be regarded as real creatures? Naught are they but the dissolving and crumbling matter of life, which even in dissolution is still living.[32] And this fact is not confined merely to organic corruption and disease. Even the element—the fresh water from the spring—is full of life, and it is the more so the clearer and the better it is and the purer from the microscopic animalculæ, which swarm in it more and more the longer it stagnates and becomes foul, until at last, as frequently happens when it has been kept long on shipboard, with the growing foulness of the water they increase in size, and swim about as worms of visible magnitude. Many other instances might be adduced in proof of this origination of worms and vermin out of corruption, and testifying to it as a general principle of nature. And are not those swarms of locusts which in Asiatic countries are a general plague of the lands over which they sweep with their thick and dark migratory hordes, a sickly proof that the atmosphere that has engendered them is passing, or has already fallen into corruption beneath the influence of some other contagious element?

That the air and atmosphere of our globe is in the highest degree full of life, I may, I think, take here for granted and generally admitted. It is, however, of a mixed kind and quality, combining the refreshing and balsamic breath of spring with the parching simoons of the desert, and where the healthy odors fluctuate in chaotic struggle with the most deadly vapors. What else, in general, is the wide-spread and spreading pestilence, but a living propagation of foulness, corruption, and death? Are not many poisons, especially animal poisons, in a true sense, living forces?

Now, may we not give a further extension to this mode of view, and apply the fact of a diseased propagation of a false life, as in the worms of putrefaction, to other unsightly productions of nature. May we not, for instance, consider serpents and snakes as the entozoa or intestinal worms of the earth? That the evil spirits are not without some influence on our terrestrial habitation, and that in many places their malignant influence is distinctly traceable is, at all events, undeniable. And accordingly, some have supposed the monkey tribe not to be an original creation of the Deity, but a satanic device and malicious parody upon man, as the envied favorite of God. That the “Prince of this world”—which expression, in its latter half, is surely not to be understood exclusively of man’s fallen race, but very evidently and expressively alludes to the existing fabric of nature and the corrupted world of sense—that the Prince of this world can exercise a certain degree of pernicious influence on the productive energies of the natural system in its present corrupt and vitiated condition, and that also, there is in nature itself a power to produce evil, are facts which do not admit of denial, and are noways inconsistent with revelation. Only we must not suppose that this baneful influence is not confined within certain limits. He to whom the Prince of this world, no less than the world itself, is subject, has, in His infinite wisdom, set a definite limit both of quantity and duration to this pernicious influence, as, in general, He does to every permission of evil.

At all events we must not for one moment suppose that in the book of nature we have a pure and uncorrupt text of God, and such as it originally came from the hands of its Author. It is of the highest consequence, for a due and right appreciation of the divine economy in nature, that we give full consideration to this fact. On this account it is important to keep in mind the distinction implied in that expression already quoted from the Mosaic history—“Let the earth bring forth.” For, according to this, it does not seem indispensably necessary to ascribe immediately to the good and wise Creator every thing that the earth brought forth; no, nor every thing that is produced by a nature now so imperfect—so diseased, too, in many parts—and visibly constrained to submit to hostile and foreign influences.

Many writers who, with the best intentions, undertake the task of indicating the divine wisdom in the existing order of things, and of defending the ways of Providence against the objections of human presumption and conceit, generally err by taking too narrow a view of their subject, and rigorously insisting on some one general principle, which, by means of very hazardous assertions, they succeed in finding in the whole and every part of the system of the universe. They leave out of sight altogether that Mosaic distinction already alluded to, which in appearance indeed is trifling enough, but yet in reality most essentially important. Consequently, the good work which they take in hand, instead of producing that general concurrence and conviction that it otherwise might, gives rise rather to fresh doubts and objections. The best solution of all such doubts—the most satisfactory answer to all such or similar questions or questioning feelings—lies in the final cause of the present constitution of things, considered as a whole and in general, and judged of from a regard to its triple character and triple destination. Now, according to this triple principle, we have, as already shown, to regard the present system of nature as being primarily a tombstone raised by Almighty benevolence—a bridge of safety thrown across the gulf of eternal death—a bridge, however, which we must not think of as quite so simple, broad, and straight as a bridge made by human hands, but an animated and ensouled bridge of life, and multiform, with many arms and branches, and presenting in some parts nothing more than a narrow footing, where the first false stop precipitates into the abyss beneath. But secondarily, according to this view, nature is grounded on and devoted to progress; a wonderful laboratory of manifold, diversified, and universal reproduction; and lastly, a glorious scale of resurrection, ascending up to the last and highest summit of terrestrial transfiguration. Now this laboratory lies in the hidden womb of nature, while in the noble outward structure of its organic formations this gradational scale manifests itself with a warning, a prognostication of the height of excellence to which it eventually leads. But now, if nature—as, judging from its original design, we may and must assume—were a Paradise for the blessed spirits of the previous creation, for the first-born sons of light, then most assuredly has it not continued so, any more than the first man has remained in the garden of Eden. No doubt, over a few favored spots of the existing globe, a rich fullness of ravishing beauty still hovers, awakening in the heart, as it were, the fleeting images of Paradisaical innocence—dying strains of a primal harmony—mournful reminiscences of the happy infancy of creation. For the powers of darkness and hostile spirits broke in upon the fair beauty of primeval nature, and laid it waste and wild. The garden of the earth in which the first man was placed, “to dress it and to keep it,” is, no doubt, called Paradise; and assuredly it was infinitely more beautiful, more wonderful, purer, and fuller of life, than the loveliest scenery which meets the eye in the fairest spots of the earth, and seems to be of an almost celestial beauty. But this is said only of the immediate inclosure, the immediate habitation of our first parent; the spot chosen and blessed by God—the garden watered and surrounded by the four streams. All the rest of nature, the whole of the world besides, must have ceased at that time to be a Paradise; for, otherwise, whence could the serpent have come? So that even according to the simple sense of the expression, “that old serpent,” he was already there, in the midst of the natural world. And was it not probably a part of the destination of man—at least, in its natural aspect—that, setting out from this divine starting-point of a Paradise prepared for and given to him, he was to go forth and convert the rest of the world into a similar Eden?

But this destination he did not, however, fulfill, and consequently lost even this beginning and model of the first Paradise. The names of the four streams which watered it are indeed still preserved in those regions of Asia, which even to this day are the richest and most fruitful, and, according to history, were the earliest inhabited. But the one source out of which they all took their rise has disappeared, and no vestige of it remains. With the loss of Paradise all is changed, not only in man himself, but in the earth as his place of abode.

The way of return out of this bewildered nature, or, if men prefer so to speak, out of this sunk and degraded, not to say unsound and sickly, state of the earthly and sensible world (and this way of return is even the way of obedience to the course of the divine order in nature), is indicated even by these three grades of its inmost character, its tendency, and ultimate destination. And in these, and in the final cause of the whole constitution of things, is contained its true key and interpretation, as well as the answer to so many questions about nature, which engage not merely the curious intellect of man, but also attract the sympathies of his soul, sweeping across it either with dark doubts and fears, or with bright intimations of life and glorious anticipation.

I spoke deliberately when I said to many of these questioning feelings and perplexities of the human mind, and not all of them. For to expect a satisfactory answer to them all in the present state of science, or generally in this terrestrial life, brief as it is, and limited on all sides and short-sighted, would be agreeable neither with the course nor whole constitution of human affairs. A thoroughly complete and perfectly systematic demonstration of the wisdom in the divine order of nature, which should meet and explain every difficulty, would, even on account of such a pretension, command little respect, and be of slight influence. Much is there in nature which is to remain long hidden from man; much, too, which we shall see first of all in the other world, when death shall have opened our eyes and made us clear-sighted in one direction or another. But the beginning and the end are even here and now placed clearly and intelligibly before us, if only we are ready and willing to walk by the light that is so graciously given us, and here, as elsewhere, invariably to refer the first cause and the final consummation to the Creator and to God. Without such a reference, without thus, as it were, placing its two poles in God, the right understanding of nature is absolutely impossible, and every scientific attempt to attain it apart from and independently of God, must simply as such prove vain and involve itself in absurdities. Hence it is, however paradoxical it may sound, that we can recognize more distinctly, and better understand the end of nature, its meaning and significance as a whole, than we can the final cause of many a single object in it, which, however, as contrasted with the whole, appears inconsiderable and trifling. For the clear perception that we have of the final cause of nature comes immediately from the divine illumination, which therefore we can, so far as it is given to us, see and understand. But in the darker levels, in the subterranean shaft of the obscure sensible world, the prophetic candle of an antlike burrowing science, even though it be originally kindled at that higher light, can not reach to every quarter, can not illuminate every object in this mine of darkness.

But this final cause of creation, such as it is given to us clearly and intelligibly, will be rendered most clear by a comparison and contrast with the conceptions of the end of nature which human reason has put forth. If the proposition already quoted from one of the latest of German philosophers, that the essence of mind consists in the negation of the opposite, be now applied (which was the application I then had in my mind) to the Creator of the world and uncreated Intelligence, then the following must be the meaning involved in it. That which is the opposite of God or the Creator is nothing; and so far the proposition is quite true, since man can not but admit that the Almighty has created the world out of nothing. For if, with some of the ancient philosophers, we were to suppose a matter existing from all eternity, out of which God did not so much create as form the world, then in this case we should have two Gods, and both imperfect and finite, instead of the one all-perfect and self-sufficient Being. But if, on the other hand, the Deity be regarded as merely a not-nothing; if the final cause of creation be simply the negation of naught, then would such a view ascribe a sort of imaginary reality to the nothing, and it would seem that the world was created solely in order to get rid of the nothing, which comes pretty much to the same as saying—if we may allow ourselves so Lessing-like a boldness of expression—the Infinite made the world out of ennui. Thus, in every case do the skeptical views and empty negations of idealism lead to a contradictory nothing.

But, in reality and truth, it was out of love that God made the worlds; and, indeed, out of a superabundant love. This we may well venture to assert, and even to call it a fact; and that the divine love is also the final cause, as well as the beginning of creation. A superabundance of love in God we must, however, call the final cause-ground of creation, inasmuch as He stood in no need of it; no need of the love of the creature, nor absolutely of the world itself, or created things. For in His inmost essence, where one depth of eternal love responds fully and eternally to the other, He was perfectly sufficient for himself. And yet it is even so: there is in God the superabundance of love, for He has created the worlds, and it is the divine will to be loved by His creatures. For this end and purpose has He created them; and because He would have their love, He has created them free, and given both to the pure spirits and to men a free will. The whole secret in the relation subsisting between the creature, and man especially, and the Creator, lies even in this great fact, that He has created them out of love, and requires in return the service of their love. There is, perhaps, something awful in this requisition, and in the relation thus found to subsist between a weak and imperfect creature and the infinite and omnipotent Being. But it is even so: we are really free, and are really required by God to give him our love. But now a finite and created being can only be free so far as God leaves him free; and this is only conceivable in the light I have already set it in by the simile of a fond mother teaching her babe to walk, and in order to tempt it to make the first essay with its little limbs, stepping back from it a few steps, and leaving it a moment to itself. No creature could be free did not God, in a similar way, leave it to itself, and, after the first impulse of creation, withhold from it His controlling energy. But if He did not do so—were He, on the contrary, to act upon His creatures without reserve, and with the whole infinite extent of his might—then the liberty of the latter, overwhelmed in His omnipotence, must be destroyed, as being only possible through the spontaneous limitation of the divine power, which results from the superabundance of creative love.

Now we can, it is true, distinguish in the essence or energy of God, between His intelligence and His will—His omniscience and His omnipotence; but they can not be absolutely separated from and opposed to each other, for in Him and in His operations, they, as indeed all else in Him, are one. It would, therefore, be nothing but a foolish and unmeaning subtlety to demand, “Why, then, has the Omniscient created rational beings, of whom He must assuredly have known beforehand that they would fall and perish?” For it is but a logical illusion, when we transfer from the human to the divine mind a form of thought fluctuating between the conceivably possible and the apparently necessary. Man’s freedom undoubtedly consists in the choice between one possibility and another, or in that indefinite possibility which subsists half way between one necessity and another. But God’s freedom is not as man’s: in Him there is neither contingent possibility nor unconditional necessity. All in Him is truly actual, living, and positive. His freedom lies even in the superabundance of His essence—the fact, viz., that He is not bound by any law of necessity to remain contented with this His own internal fullness. For otherwise He were a Fate rather than a free God, and to that conclusion the doctrine of the Stoics consistently enough arrived at last. Extremely difficult must it ever be, in such a system and with such a conception of an intrinsically necessary God, and one bound by this necessity, consistently to account for the creation of the world, which, in appearance, is so irreconcilable with the idea of the self-sufficiency of the divine Being. On this account some of the similarly rationalizing systems of ancient times had recourse to the ingenious device of ascribing the work of creation to a spiritual being of an inferior order, and degrading this secondary deity far below the infinite perfections of the supreme and all-sufficient God. But by this expedient men did but fall, as is, alas! but too commonly the case, from one error into another still greater and even more monstrous. It is, in short, nothing but a mere logical delusion and an illegitimate transference from our limited faculty of thought to the divine intelligence, which gives rise to these pernicious doctrines of an absolute and unconditional predestination, which fundamentally amount and bring us back to a blind and heathenish fatalism.

Thus much, as connected with our subject, will be sufficient on the difficult subject both of the freedom of the pure created spirits and also of man’s will, as regarded solely from its philosophical aspect, and without any reference to the moral theory, and solely in relation to the system of the universe. Difficult, however, is this subject, merely on one account. The logical illusion, from which springs all error, strife, and confusion, and which we are too apt to transfer to the divine mind, is so far innate in the very form of man’s finite intellect, than even when we have recognized it for what it really is; yet, so long as we confine ourselves to mere logical reasoning, and are seduced by its seeming rigor of consequence, we are ever ready to fall anew into this dangerous error without even remarking it.

In the same way, now, that the existence of free beings follows naturally from the love of God, as the final cause of creation, so, on the other hand, the permission of moral evil is a mere result of that freedom in and through which these created beings have to run their appointed time. For this freedom, as considered with a reference to God and futurity, or to the immortality of the soul, is nothing else than the time of trial and the state of probation itself. But, perhaps it will be asked, “Why, then, does not God, by one nod of retributive justice, by one breath of His omnipotence, annihilate forever, as He so easily might, the whole company of evil and rebellious spirits, together with their leader, the Prince of this world, and so purify the whole visible creation, and release external nature from their desolating influence?” To this the answer is simple and at hand. Man is placed in this world on his trial and for a struggle with evil, and this warfare is not yet ended. But by such an annihilation of evil, the living development of nature would be precipitated in that course which God originally designed it to advance through, and cut short before the appointed time of final purification, when, according to His promise, He will, as Holy Writ expresses it, create new heavens and a new earth, and make perfect the whole creation.[33]

Man is free, but utterly unripe as yet; and thoroughly incomplete also is nature, or the sensible world, and material creation; consequently, the immortality of the soul is the corner-stone and key for understanding the whole. For the mere beginning of creation is perfectly unintelligible so long as we do not take into consideration the other extreme or end—its final completion and ultimate consummation. Just as the half of human life on this side the grave can not be understood unless we contemplate, at the same time with it, its second half on the other side of the tomb, as its complement, and as a necessary element toward the elucidation of the whole.

As, then, the permission of evil finds a satisfactory explanation in man’s probationary state, and in God’s love, as the final cause of the creation, so also the physical evils and sufferings to which the free being is liable are fully accounted for on that principle. This is the key of the enigma of their existence. None of the sufferings of the free being, on either side of the grave, are unprofitable and without a motive. They all serve, either in this preparatory state of earthly existence, for probation, for discipline, or for confirmation, or else, after it, for the perfect healing of the soul, and its purification from all the remaining dross and taints of earth.[34] Scarcely ever can the diseased matter be got rid of and expelled from the organic body with out a struggle, and very seldom without pain. Gold is purified by the fire, and pain is the fiery purification of the body. This belief is one which ought least of all to have been called into question, inasmuch as it is only consonant to the simple feelings of human nature. For otherwise, how narrowly must the hopes of the future be confined, if nothing that is unclean shall enter into heaven—the Holy of Holies—the immediate presence of the pure and holy God!

It is not, however, my intention to make this consolatory and blessed hope of a loving and longing heart the topic of dispute, especially since it lies altogether beyond my present limits. I will only allude to the words of the Savior, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” By the “Father’s house” we must, it is clear, understand the future world. On other side, therefore, of the grave, as well as on this, many divisions, many degrees, and many different states, and also manifold transitions, are not merely conceivable and possible, but must of necessity be assumed as actually existent, even though we can not be too cautious in avoiding all hasty decisions as to what is going on in this hidden world. Only we must ever remember that any absolute line of demarcation which on one side has nothing but white, while all that lies on the other is black, is very rarely the line of truth. And this principle holds good, it is plain, in every relation and every possible application. For such a trenchant line of sharp and unmitigated contrast between black and white is even one of those intellectual deceptions connatural to man, which disposes him too hastily to transfer to all without him the limited form of his own finite intellect. All the pains, therefore, and all the sufferings of the creature, whether on this or the other side of the grave, serve either to exercise and strengthen, or to heal and purify, the yet imperfect being, with the single exception of that bitterest of all agonies—the pain of being left eternally to ourselves. But even here, although there is no hope of a salutary effect, a species of converse propriety seems to hold.

It is, we remarked, the problem of philosophy, leaving to physics the whole development of life that lies intermediate between the beginning and end, to explain the two extremes of nature. As, therefore, we have examined one of these extremes, and have discovered in the whole terrestrial creation a Paradise as the blessed state of the still innocent infancy of nature, before the revolt of the rebellious spirits and the fall of the first man, the present seems the place for a few words touching the opposite extreme—the regions of outer darkness. We can safely admit that the figurative representations, not merely of painters and poets, but occasionally also of the preacher, are so horrible, and heaped together with so little consistency—the dark colors laid on so thick, that the whole assumes to the feelings an appearance of improbability, and, on this account, makes, for the most part, no very deep impression. But the spiritual significance of these sufferings, and the sort of propriety and design which holds, even in this unnatural state, on the utmost borders of creation, may, perhaps, be made clear by a very simple illustration. Most reluctantly, and with a heavy heart assuredly, would an earthly parent resolve to turn out of his house, and formally to disinherit, his first-born and beloved son, even though he should have proved himself utterly worthless and hopelessly depraved. But even if an earthly parent might be too hasty in his anger, and actually be harsh and unjust, still we may boldly assume that the love of our Heavenly Father, in patience and gentleness, far transcends the truest parental love that is to be found on earth. But when it actually comes to this point of offended mercy and justice, then the disinherited, cast out into the regions of darkness, joins the band of robbers who in the night lurk about his father’s house, seeking where they may break into it. No other choice is left him than to become a robber, and, whether he will or no, he must obey the leader of the band. But better taught and as yet softer of heart than the rest, he must go through many hardships and sufferings ere he becomes quite like the others—as hard-hearted as the “murderers from the beginning,” who the while look down upon him with scorn and contempt.

What I would say is this: many degrees, and undoubtedly extreme degrees, of pain and torment, are necessary before the man cast out from the presence of God can be wholly and completely transformed into an evil spirit. And this is, perhaps, the proper meaning and essential character under which we are to think of these endless torments of spiritual death and ruin. If, moreover, this eternal death is often described as an unquenchable fire, then unquestionably there lies in this figure, even physically considered, a certain truth, inasmuch as even in this world and in visible nature, fire, when left to itself and to its true essential character, is the proper element of destruction. In the sun’s genial influence, indeed, and in the blood of the living soul, it is constrained and moderated into the wholesome warmth of life; but in itself, and working in its elementary state, it is destructive and opposed to all the other elements. To the light all that has life turns instinctively, and in the air it breathes and pulsates, and from water it draws a part at least of its nourishment. It is only incidentally that the air and water become destructive, but the fire is so in its proper nature. A perfectly organized animal that lived in fire would, in a greater or less degree, fill every mind with horror and alarm, as having no part in and wholly alien from that nature which is known to and friendly to man. On this account, many even of the ancient philosophers taught that the end of the present visible and the external and sensible world, would be brought about by a general conflagration.

The permission of evil is an immediate consequence of the creation of free beings. But although it may be regarded as a fact, that God has created free both the spirits and man, still we must be on our guard how we introduce into this matter any notion of necessity, and suppose that God must have made them free, and could not have created any other. For man is only too prone to transfer his own imaginary conceit of necessity to the Deity himself, and to feign to see it in Him. This, however, were a most grievous error; and yet it is one into which men almost inevitably fall when they adopt either a rigorously systematic or purely logical view of the matter. Could not God in his omnipotence have created powers and dominions which, even though they were living energies and ensouled principalities, should, nevertheless, be without the property of self-determination and a true liberty, and which would consequently require some other nature, but similar to themselves, to rule and direct them? In this sense we read of the spirits of nature, ensouled elementary powers and living forces, which are described as being seized and taken possession of by the power of evil, but as hereafter to be set free by the efficacy of redeeming love, and again subjected to and united to God. Now, as connected with this subject, it is deserving of consideration, that in all the declarations and allusions of the Eternal Truth this present earthly nature is spoken of as the battle-place of invisible powers, the debatable ground on which the two armies of good and evil spirits and elements are posted in hostile array against each other, and perpetually coming into collision.[35]

Could not God, had such been His pleasure, have created other beings, and by the fiat of His all-mighty will have raised them at once above all the dangers of liberty, and enduing them with perfect holiness, and exempt from all liability to fall, have drawn them to Himself in eternal love?

I have hitherto, wherever it has been my object to give a clearer and sharper characterization of the human consciousness by means of a comparison with the faculties of intellect and will possessed by superior but created spirits, confined myself to the idea of the pure spirits, genii or angels. But if it should have been the divine pleasure to create other spiritual beings with an organic body—one, perhaps, not like the human, but still of a very noble though animal form, endued of course with an immortal soul and with a knowledge of God—who is there in such a case to set limits to the omnipotent will? Now if, as already supposed, they were created in perfect holiness, and exempt from the liability to fall, it is easily conceivable how in this respect they would be higher than frail and imperfect man, and must be regarded as a part of the spiritual world, rather than as belonging to the human race or to the existing system of nature.

All these are not so much inappropriate and impertinent conjectures and idle fancies, as calmly mooted questions for explanation, which arise out of and are suggested by certain traditions and points of revelation.

Lastly, if the Almighty had resolved to create a perfect being, so far above and before all the other creatures of His will, as to stand next to Himself, and be, as it were, the mirror and reflection of His own infinite perfections—and many a word in Holy Writ seems to allude to something of the kind—then it is not difficult to see how the already-quoted expression of a soul of God would receive a better sense. This being, so superior to all other created spirits, must in any case be regarded as a soul, and for the most part of a passive essence, for otherwise it would stand too close and near to Deity itself. And it is manifest, that even here the ever-immeasurable interval which separates the Creator from the most perfect of creatures must be most carefully kept in view. And at all events this expression must in no case be applied to the second or third persons of the Godhead, nor be confounded therewith, otherwise this designation would not only be false, but altogether an abomination.

Revelation contains an inexhaustible mine of verities, and I have only wished, by the way, to call attention to these as yet unexplored treasures. But it is above all important, for the philosophical point of view, steadily to insist upon and enforce the truth, that in no respect can we form a notion adequately grand and lofty, or rich and manifold enough, of the Creation. The compactly-closed and orderly-arranged system is almost always the death of truth. So also is that line—which, however, seems to be a connatural fault in the very form of man’s faculty of judgment—that straight line between black and white, for even if it be not radically wrong, it yet leaves much on both sides unconsidered and ill understood.

With this impression, I shall allow myself to notice an opinion but little known, which, moreover, if I had not met with it in writers who, in this province of inquiry, are of the highest authority, I should scarcely have ventured to adduce. In this department of spiritual knowledge, a man would much rather confine himself to the simple primary truth than call attention to mere opinions. The opinion I allude to is to be found in St. Jerome, i.e., in that very Father who, for theological judgment, is acknowledged by all to be the first and the greatest. It was held also by St. Francis de Sales, that holy saint of spiritual love, and who, even on that account, is so superior to the many hundreds of the schoolmen before him, as also to so many ideologists after him. Lastly, it occurred to Leibnitz, who, of all philosophers, was most possessed of a true and fine intellectual tact to perceive and discover all the most secret, delicate traits of a great system, even though most remote in character from his own. But still, with this array of great authorities, it remains nothing more than a wholly problematical opinion, on which, as an article of positive faith, nothing is or ever can be decided. Now this opinion is, that in the revolt of the rebellious spirits, while those who remained in their state of innocence and in their allegiance rallied only the closer round their Creator, a considerable number, fearful and undecided, vacillated between good and evil, and, as we might justly say, with the weakness of the human character, remained neutral in the conflict, and thereby lost their original place in the hierarchy of the heavenly host, without, however, being counted among the utterly lost. As a fourth authority for this opinion, I might adduce Dante. He is indeed a poet, but still a theological poet, and deeply versed in theology, who would never have arbitrarily devised or invented, or even adopted such a notion, had he not found it existing among others before him, and had he not been able to adduce a good and valid authority for it. As a good Ghibelline, he was, moreover, no friend of neutral spirits, either in this world or the other; and he passes the most severe sentence upon those beings whom, as he says, heaven has cast out, and hell would not receive.[36]

But what—if we may propound the question with something more of philosophical indifference than the poet—what, according to the analogy of the divine economy and merciful justice, as elsewhere displayed, are we to suppose the doom of these undecided and wavering spirits? In the first place, we may well suppose that they would be submitted to a new probation: just as a general gives another opportunity to the troops, who in some evil moment have shown a want of spirit, to retrieve their honor. Now, if it be allowable to assume that this, or some similar idea, or some tradition of the kind, had an influence on and gave rise to the doctrine of the pre-existence of men, which is so generally diffused among the Hindoos, and which was also held by the Platonists, and even Christian Platonists, of the first centuries, we can then conceive how this otherwise so arbitrary assumption and groundless hypothesis could have arisen. Groundless, however, it may well be named, not only because no cause or explanation of it is adduced, but as being agreeable neither to the nature of the soul nor to the constitution of things; so that, regarded even in this light, it must be looked upon as a singular instance, and consequently as an exception from the laws of nature and as a miraculous intervention of divine power. But a mere pre-existence of spirits would, however, be no true pre-existence in the sense of the Hindoo theology, or of the Platonists, since, by its union with and by the accession of a soul, it becomes a wholly different and quite a new being. Moreover, in this hypothesis, as it is further worked out in the Hindoo and Platonic systems, the whole character and true destination of human life is entirely misunderstood, inasmuch as it is represented as a place and period of punishment; whereas, rightly conceived, and even philosophically contemplated, it appears rather as a battle-place, and the time of discipline and preparation for eternity.

It is the problem and vocation of philosophy not merely to set forth the truth clearly and simply, but also, whenever it can be done incidentally and easily, to account for and explain great and remarkable errors, especially such as were prevalent among the earliest nations and ages. Now, among those errors which are most remarkable in ancient history, this of the Hindoos and Platonists holds in my eyes a very prominent place. But philosophically to explain an error, means not to reject it at once as absurd and undeserving of notice, but requires rather that we should first of all really understand it, i.e., that we should study it, and, to a certain degree, enter into its spirit, and seek to discover its best significance, or, in other words, that interpretation which is nearest to the truth, and then in conclusion accurately to determine the point where error begins and truth is violated.

All this, however, may now be left to its own merits. In touching upon it, my only object has been to call attention to the wonderful variety of God’s creative power, even in the copious theme of the immortality of the soul. And in this view it appeared to me not unprofitable to notice even the most discrepant theories on the subject, as being nevertheless well calculated to throw a clear and steady light on the simple truth. In the last age, since the Hindoo metempsychosis, as it is now accurately and authentically known, appeared too serious and sad a doctrine to meet with the welcome and concurrence of the existent generation, a brighter and more fanciful theory was propounded. In it this life has been astronomically depicted in the brightest and most attractive colors as a walk among the stars, continually ascending from one sidereal existence to another. In the limited range of human knowledge, it is alike impossible to deny or to prove the possibility of such a migration among the stars. But it is evidently a wiser course, and one far more agreeable to the nature and limits of man’s powers of understanding, for him to confine his views to his own immediate home—the earth—investigating, sifting, and divining its mysteries, than to lose himself in airy dreams amid the whole starry universe. For, perhaps, that which man is seeking so far off he may find much closer to his own doors than he suspects. For it is not improbable that this planet of our earth contains in its interior many subterranean courses and secret chambers of death, together with the seeds of light which are to spring up into the future resurrection.

But this may be reserved for consideration in another place. Here I will only add, in conclusion, that opposite to that gradational scale, already so often mentioned, which the vast pyramid of nature forms in relation to God and its own living development, stands another scale for man, adapted to his needs and suited to his narrow position and limited intelligence. In this scale, nature, i.e., in this sense, the nature which most immediately surrounds and environs man, this planet of our earth which bears and nourishes the human race, is first of all man’s habitation, teeming, indeed, with life, and even itself a living thing, in which, however, he is ever meeting here and there with something that tells him it is not his proper home. In the second step of this view of nature, which contemplates it principally in its relation to man and man’s wants, the natural world in its present form appears as the battle-place and debatable ground of the still undecided, or, rather, not as yet terminated, struggle between the good and evil powers, and the fiercer the strife again begins to be, the more necessary is it not to overlook this aspect of the matter. The third gradation in this view of nature, considered relatively to the mind or spirit of man in his finite existence, is that which teaches him to look upon it as the visible veil of the invisible world, covered all over and richly ornamented with significant symbols and hieroglyphics. And even because nature itself is even a symbolical being, therefore, when we speak of its inmost life and its spirit, or its meaning as a whole, i.e., when we attempt to study and to understand it, not physically only, but even philosophically, we can only hope to convey our meaning symbolically, by employing scientific illustrations and living symbols.

LECTURE VII.
OF THE DIVINE WISDOM AS MANIFESTED IN THE REALM OF TRUTH, AND OF THE CONFLICT OF THE AGE WITH ERROR.

GOD is a spirit of truth; and in the realm of truth, therefore, the divine order, and the law of wisdom which reigns therein, shines forth with an especial clearness—with a higher degree of evidence or greater perspicuity than even in the region of nature, which for us is for the most part half-dark, or at the very best but a chiaro-oscuro—a mixture of light and darkness. But man, formed out of the dust of the earth, placed, as it were, in the very center of nature, as its first-born son or its earthly lord, is in this respect himself a natural being. Even in his susceptibility for higher and divine truth, man is tied to and is dependent on a similar and collateral grade of development in the life of nature, which can in no case be violently broken, nor a step in it arbitrarily overleaped, without involving the most disastrous consequences as the penalty of so unnatural a course. Even in education there reigns a similar law of gradual development according to the natural progression of the different ages of life. With the boy of good and natural abilities, who shows an aptness and willingness to learn when knowledge is presented to his mind, and implanted in a true and living form, the teacher’s first care is to improve this disposition, and to strengthen and to foster it, and, by furnishing it with the due measure and the right quality of intellectual culture, gradually to develop its powers. At this age the moral part of education will wisely confine itself to laying a foundation of good habits, to the careful exclusion of all evil communication and the deadly contagion of wicked example. In the soft and yielding character of the child there can scarcely be as yet any question about principles or sentiments. But the case is very different with youth. If at this time of life the moral character be not carefully formed simultaneously with its scientific cultivation, then is the good season irreparably lost, and rarely, if ever, can the deficiency be afterward supplied. For when this stage of intellectual and moral culture is once passed, when the mind has begun at last to move with greater freedom and to mature itself, the young man is at once admitted to the full light of science, or enters into the busy course of active life, to be there brought to the touchstone of experience.

And a similar series of gradation may be observed on a larger scale in the historical succession and development of the ages of the world. For such is, in every case, the gradual expansion of man’s consciousness, as he is at present constituted. His senses must be first excited and expanded; then, and then only, with any good result, can the soul be led to the good and divine, which, however, not content to dismiss them after the first look of wonder and amazement, it must rather dwell upon with the full and deep feelings of admiration and reverence; until at last, being wholly filled with them, it derives from their inspiration a new stimulus and excitement, and thereby is forever and permanently directed to the true end and aim of existence. And now at last can the free spirit apprehend aright the divine truth, and, in the spirit of this knowledge, act with vital energy, conformably to that position in God’s great world which has been assigned and allotted to him.

And this order can not be transgressed with impunity. None of its intermediate steps can be overleaped without involving the most fearful consequences. If the senses be not first of all excited and expanded, then will it be lost labor to attempt to win and fortify the heart, or to turn the soul toward the never-setting sun of divine truth. And, accordingly, how many attempts, both on a large and a small scale, at the moral regeneration of mankind have totally failed even for want of the first step of a forerunning light and previous illumination, by which the observation should have been roused, the senses stimulated, and the eye opened. But when, on the contrary, the full light is imparted to or gained by the mind, while the soul still remains enveloped in darkness and fast wedded to its evil habits, without attaining to a higher exaltation, then, indeed, the result is equally grievous, though different from that which follows from the mistake of overleaping at the first step. It has an effect; it does not remain without an influence. So long as the moral part of man is wholly neglected, and is either left rude and barbarous, or suffered to become degenerate, then science works indeed, but only as a destroying element. In so bad a soil the true knowledge is ever transformed into false, and the more profoundly it is apprehended—the more vividly and vigorously it is pursued—the more fatally, perniciously, and destructively does it work. The examples and the proofs of the injurious consequences of too rapid and premature development of scientific enlightenment amid a general prevalence of moral depravity, and the subversion of those principles which are the foundation of national existence and prosperity, might easily be found at no great distance from our own age. And they admit also of being demonstrated as clearly and convincingly by earlier instances from the history of the Greeks and Romans. The production of these proofs, however, would carry us beyond our present limits, and the truth they would establish is not, moreover, the end to which our present disquisitions are directed. The theme of this Lecture is the course observed by eternal wisdom, or the divine order in the realm of truth. My object is to call your attention to the care with which Providence observes a gradual progression in its mental development of the human race, lovingly suiting and adapting itself to the weakness and finiteness of humanity, and to the imperfection of earthly creatures, according to that principle of divine condescension, so often mentioned already, which, throughout the divine operations in the world, and His influence on man, is distinctly visible.

Thus, then, in the knowledge immediately imparted to man by a higher providence we may discern a preliminary period—a previous illumination, in order to reopen the eye of man, which heathenism had blinded to the truth, that it might be able to see and discern God. This first step of revelation was little more than a preparation for the future; but the second was, or has been, an illumination of the soul—a vital renewal of it—a total conversion of it from the state of darkness to the Everlasting Light and the Sun of Righteousness. But in this living development of the highest life, which is even the divine light of the Spirit, the third and last step (which indeed commences in and is involved in the second, even as it also had its germ in the first) is the full enlightenment of the spirit or mind. And accordingly this full revelation is in Scripture itself, as being the close and completion of the whole, expressly described, and named the last time.

Before attempting, however, to point out the divine order in the education of the human race, by the gradual revelation of truth, two general and preliminary remarks seem called for. I observe, then, first of all, that when we speak of sense, soul, and spirit, as the successive terms in the growing capacity of the human consciousness for a higher knowledge and heavenly training, and for truth in general, but more especially for divine truth, then the general sense of truth, which such an hypothesis supposes, and which indeed is its essential foundation, must be understood as comprising all those other particular species, branches, or departments which we have already enumerated. I mean the common sense of sound reason. For that susceptibility for the impressions of nature, and the understanding, which, as I said before, constitute the sense for the revelation of spirit, or the spirit of revelation—whether written or historical—are alike comprised in that one and common sense for truth. Or perhaps we may rather say, that by their joint operations they form it; while, however, in its special application, now this now that constituent preponderates—or perhaps that this one and universal sense for truth is called into action, and made to co-operate now in this direction and now in that. Moreover, that internal concurrence and assent of the will, which I have endeavored to show is the proper sense in man for God and for divine things, belongs also, as an essential and element of its constitution, to this general sense for truth. For that the opposite fault of self-will and obstinacy is in the highest degree a hinderance of good, even in the acquisition of knowledge and the recognition of truth, is found by experience in the earliest essays of education. But not only in the elementary principles of learning, but even in the most highly-finished and elaborate systems of metaphysical ideas, constructed by the profoundest thinkers and philosophers, does this spirit of negation and contradiction show itself, and prove the greatest obstacle to truth and the most fruitful source of error.

The second remark which we have to make before entering upon the immediate subject of our Lecture refers to the natural progression of the living development of the human consciousness. This gradation, we would observe, holds good, and is applicable, not merely to the moral education of man, but also to the intellectual improvement of man’s capacity, as at present constituted, for all higher and divine verities. But, however true this may be, where the general sense for truth is not from the first open and full of light, where the soul is not already perfectly free and pure; yet on the other hand there is nothing against—on the contrary, every thing favors the supposition, that the earliest revelation imparted to mankind—the illumination which was given to the first man, and bestowed upon him as his heavenly inheritance on earth, was a full and perfect enlightenment of his mind [geist]. For his senses were open and clear, his soul as yet incorrupt, pure, and free. Both were directed to God, and being one with and at unison with nature, were keenly alive to and deeply impressed by every token of God’s glory and majesty in creation. It is quite an error to assume, or, rather, to fancy, that this state of purity and innocence was a state of ignorance like that of the child or of the wild man. The tree of life was given to him entirely and without reserve, as also dominion over the earth, whose first-made living creatures the Lord subjected to his dominion, bringing them before him to call and to name them. The knowledge of death was indeed designedly withheld from him, as also the existence of the evil spirits, even because it was exactly therein that his trial and probation were to consist. And so both are perfectly reconcilable: that height of knowledge in the clearest light of nature, which the sacred traditions of all primitive nations so positively and unanimously assign to the first man, is in nowise inconsistent with that ignorance of death which is no less expressly ascribed to him. Moreover, had man but preserved and kept alive in his heart this feeling of God, he would immediately have recognized his enemy, and even thereby have triumphed over him, and become the redeemer of nature, instead of requiring, now that he has failed in that his high destination, a Redeemer for his own fallen race. This first revelation, therefore, was, we may well assume, in the beginning as it will also be in the end, a full enlightenment of the spirit of man, but which, however, was soon darkened by his disobedience and fall. This, too, is the shape which the matter assumes in the legendary history of all the primeval nations of antiquity, and these are the threads of light which in the labyrinthine confusion of legends, symbols, and tongues of earliest heathendom, carry us safely out of its mazes and back to the clear starting-point of the pure and undefiled revelation of God. It were not difficult to show how, through the first two millenniums and a half, or five-and-twenty centuries, a higher providence and divine guidance was ever quietly carrying on these luminous threads of original truth, and from time to time renewing them. But this history of the human mind in the primeval world, however highly attractive, would take us out of our proper limits. Upon the eclipse of man’s soul, when spiritual darkness universally prevailed, the senses originally open to a higher light were closed against it. His better perceptions were overwhelmed or buried beneath a chaos of true and false or half-true images and symbols. Then it was that the natural law of spiritual development commenced in its full force. It followed the progression already described. In the first term the numbed and deadened sense had to be awakened and quickened again, and in its second the soul renewed, purified, and converted, before either could become susceptible of the full and perfect illumination of the Spirit. To trace this natural law in the human consciousness and in the divine education of mankind, and to ascertain the progressive steps in the divine revelations, expressly given and designed to effect that gradual development, is the object of the present Lecture.

The first step or term thereof was the selection of a single people to be the schoolmaster of the whole human race.[37] When the heathenish mass of legends or myths and symbols had reached the height of confusion, and the evil had become otherwise incurable, one nation was chosen and set apart by God as His instrument in opening the eyes of men to the abyss of error in which the whole world was plunged, and to direct their looks exclusively to the future. Many prophets were sent to the chosen people, and it was at first guided and ruled by none but prophets. And, perhaps, we can not form a more correct notion of the character and history of this people, so peculiarly distinguished from all the other nations of the ancient world, than by thinking of it absolutely and in its destination as the prophetic people exclusively intended to point to a distant future, and whose leading ideas and inmost feelings were to be attached to, and to look far into, a remote futurity. Three strokes or words, at most, comprise the highly-simple revelation of the first stage—the first ray of light at the beginning—in which, however, lies contained the hidden key and solution for the chaos of legends, and all the enigmas of the primitive world and of primeval history. But this brief and simple revelation was accompanied with a strict line of demarcation between the Gentiles and the chosen people, who were separated from all the heathen nations by customs and laws, while a long ray of hope reached far into the distant future. This point of light at the beginning was, however, but little considered and ill-understood; the line of demarcation, too, was often transgressed upon the slightest pretext and most ordinary temptations. And when at last it was more strictly kept, it was observed, not in its spirit, but in the letter; and, in consequence, even that high and lofty-hope which irradiated it was totally misunderstood, being interpreted, in a narrow spirit of national exclusiveness, of a temporal Redeemer, and a political redemption from the yoke of the Roman oppressor. This delusion, and the extreme ingratitude with which, consequently, the Light that came into the world was, on the whole, received by those to whom It was in the first place communicated, has been often painted in the darkest colors of indignant censure by the stern pen of history. The stiffneckedness of the Jews has been a fruitful theme for virtuous indignation. But, for my part, I hardly know whether, in this respect, a different and more favorable sentence can be passed on the generations which have witnessed the subsequent steps of divine revelation in its further development. Full time was allowed to the prophetic people to develop itself; and, after the lapse of twenty-fire centuries, which make up the first age of the world, a millennium and a half was allowed to this initiatory step of revelation. And now, at length, after forty centuries of preparation and hope, when the long, dark winter of the olden idolatry was over, the historical development of the human race reached its culminating point, and with the vernal solstice [Fruhling’s-Solstitium] of this new manifestation commenced the second term in this series of revelation or of the divine education of the human race. Even from its very first opening, every thing characterizes this second term of development as not intended for a complete and final revelation of spirit and knowledge. Promising, and reserving to the future that final manifestation, it forms, in this respect, a marked contrast to the highly-cultivated science of the Greeks, which, however, in spite of its high pretensions, did but become continually more and more sensuous in its character. The immediate object of this second enlightenment of the whole human race was to be a total conversion of the soul from its previous earthly darkness to the everlasting light and the one and only Sun of Truth, and thereby to effect a complete renewal of life, and a reformation of all its habits, customs, and institutions. This alone did God require; and glorious, and noble, and deeply-touching was the conflict in which this wholly new but heaven-descended sentiment had to engage with the opposing spirit of the old world.

But men soon relapsed into their former discord; and it is now our painful task to point out the rise and growth of this dissension through the succeeding eras of history. For thus only—by considering, in every period, man’s relation, or, rather, his opposition, to the divine revelation—is it possible, amid the rapid progress of the widening disagreement, to trace the divine order which rules amid the anarchy of mind, and to follow it along its path of light up to its appointed end, and to its close and conclusion.

In the first three or four centuries of Christianity, this spirit of opposition showed itself in two different forms. In the one, the new and simple faith was first of all perverted into a chaos of philosophical fictions of an old Asiatic character.[38] In the other, a secret and half infidelity hid itself behind a veil of words,[39] against which the faith must defend itself behind an outwork of words also; and in this period of history, a subtile and refined logomachy first of all attained to a great and lasting importance for mankind. In this dispute, the simple foundation of the faith was indeed maintained and defended, in its purity and integrity, against all hostile attacks; but the first-love lost much of its freshness and ardor. Consequently the new life, which sprung up with the new faith, was unable to fulfill the hopes which at its first rise men had reasonably entertained of it, and, by reforming the corrupt civilization of the old Roman world, to renew it entirely in God. Accordingly, an alien and purely physical element had to be associated with it. The northern nations were called in to infuse fresh energy into the worn-out races of England.

In this work of physical regeneration three centuries were again spent. But at the close of this first period, it was seen, on a sudden, how little the olden spirit of dissension had been really conquered, or even mollified. The faith, it was said, may, in all essential points, be perfectly identical, but a division may be, and still subsists, notwithstanding. But what does that mean, but that the God and Savior of the world worshiped by the East, is different from Him whom the West acknowledges? And thus the one God and the one faith was in the life of man again divided into two; and this singular schism, without any adequate cause, still subsists to the present day.[40] In the following great period a fresh life blossomed in rich and manifold expansion out of that revelation of love which, properly speaking, now first of all put forth its full vital energies, giving a new shape to all the institutions of human society, and impressing on art, as well as on moral and political science, a new character, totally different from that which they possessed among the most enlightened nations of antiquity. Viewed in its loving aspect, i.e., in its chivalry, there is much in this period to attract and engage our enthusiasm and sympathies, but for the fearful discord which broke out within it, and set one half of the world in hostile array against the other. The two powers which ought to work together for one divine end—the two swords of which the Lord had said, “It is enough,”[41]—the spiritual sword of the kingdom of faith and truth, and the civil sword of earthly justice, were drawn and held in threatening attitude against each other, by which, however, the minds of men were torn and distracted by the inward struggle of conflicting duties in a far greater degree than the external peace of society was disturbed. But it was not merely in such a collision that the strife alone showed itself; but it extended even to the confusion of the two domains, and a forgetfulness of their proper duties and respective positions.

In the instance, it is true, of the mailed ecclesiastic, however, at first sight, the union in one person of such opposite characters as the soldier and priest may startle the mind, the gallant and noble bearing of the spiritual knight soon reconciles us to the strange phenomenon. So, too, when he whose vocation it was to hold the pastoral staff began also to sway the scepter of a civil prince, the eminent skill and judgment with which the difficult task of discharging the double and often conflicting duties of so mixed a sovereignty was accomplished, silence every murmur of a protest. But when he who ought to carry the crosier of peace hoisted the pennon of war, such a sight naturally gave great offense, and sadly perplexed the minds of men.

Thus, then, passed seven centuries more, making, with the eight already described, fifteen altogether that have elapsed from that great center of the world’s history, when the spiritual sun reached its meridian altitude in this earthly life. These, added to the fifteen which had previously passed from the first shining of the light of revelation, make no less than three millenneums. And to these, again, three centuries more are to be added. Such is the extremely slow course of the divine guidance of the world, as regulated by the inexhaustible patience and long-suffering of God in the education of his human creatures.

In this last period, however, the spirit of discord has become still more general, and has broken out in all its violence, gradually attacking and drawing into the dispute every institution of society and every department of life. In the wonderful coincidence of many and great discoveries, simultaneously made in widely-distinct and independent branches of science, the spirit of man read the proclamation of his majority. Conscious of this intellectual ripeness, in the first use of its new powers it assumed toward the faith an attitude of estrangement and controversy, instead of calmly advancing along the assigned path toward perfection. Even at the very commencement of this period, the hostile relation between the new science and the ancient faith is perceptible enough. But it soon showed itself more distinctly, as the rupture became wider and more general, till at last the discord extended to the very faith itself, which was henceforth broken up into bitter and opposing parties. Still later, a newer and deeper animosity divided the faith in general from the whole civil and political life, from which in many places its religious foundation was altogether removed. And now that life was thus deprived of its higher and spiritual significance, the strife became universal and complete. Involving science and life into the discord, it set them also in deadly array against each other—for life thus unspiritualized could no longer reconcile itself to the dreamy ideal of a science which at most was but partially true, while life itself could not satisfy the requisitions of science. And fearful was the outbreak in which this last antagonism of principle openly displayed its animosity.

This fourfold schism, then—first, between science and faith; secondly, in the faith itself; thirdly, between life and faith; and lastly, between the new science (which usurped the place of the faith it had discarded) and life itself—this fourfold schism, with its several branches and ramifications, extending to every department of human existence, lies now before us, in the present age, as the still-unsolved problem of life.

And who but God alone shall or is able to solve it? As a question of dispute, this problem—and especially its inmost root, the schism in the faith—can be profitably discussed only in the spirit of love and mutual forbearance between cognate and kindred minds, who, while they think differently on a few points, yet agree in most. Many works might be adduced on both sides, composed in that conciliatory spirit of approximation which is most accordant with true philosophy, whose first effort is, in all cases, directed to reconciling and removing the deeply-rooted animosities of human nature. To a complete decision, however, of the whole matter in question, we shall never arrive on the road of disputation. Even though the dispute were maintained with the most valid reasoning, and were conducted with the most dignified forbearance and mildness, the attempt would only be lost labor. For there exists no supreme court of appeal to whose sentence both sides would be ready to submit. On the one side, the reason—which advances with unlimited freedom in its investigations—and faith on the other, with its assumed authority to decide in the last instance, would alike refuse to acknowledge its adversary as a competent tribunal.

Thus deeply piercing into the very marrow of humanity, and thus mortal is the conflict. Indeed, a man can scarcely touch upon it without being carried almost involuntarily into the very midst of the strife, and very fortunate may he account himself if he retires from it unscathed. And if it were only from a mere human point of view of a scientific dispute that I had to consider it, good reason should I have to be on my guard, lest on this matter my mind should be, as it were, forcibly rent and divided into two halves. I have, however, at present no anxiety of the kind. For my purpose is solely and entirely to trace out the divine order in the revelation progressively given to mankind, and following this luminous thread to lead reflection up to the finishing close of God’s education of the human race, where, in the full shining of the perfect day, there shall be no more controversy and no more doubt. Viewing the matter in this light, I see but little to attract my sympathies in the publicly-conducted controversy, however highly important and pre-eminent a place it may hold in the history of the world. Far more attractive to me are those isolated and retiring spirits on both sides who, taking but little, if any, part in the prevailing dispute, have their eyes directed rather to the future, in watchful expectation of that full and final illumination, with all its attendant promises—among which we must reckon, first and foremost, the peace and joy of believing—in the last revelation of divine mind. Of these calmer spirits, however, some have actually fallen, and others have been on the very brink of falling, into the plausible error of regarding this third step of enlightenment as an absolutely new revelation, whereas it is quite clear that it will be nothing more than the simple completion of the earlier steps. For a revelation which should give itself out as perfectly new, apart from and independent of that saving illumination of the soul which marks the second step, and which we are already in possession of—which should disavow this earlier divine revelation of the heart, of love and life in faith, which is withheld from no one, and which every one knows, would, even by such an announcement, proclaim its own falsity. New heavens and a new earth are indeed expressly promised among the blessings of this last age. Mention is also made of a Gospel that shall be preached “unto all them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”[42] This Gospel, however, is nowhere called a new one; since in the old one there is enough for life, if only it be duly observed, and also for knowledge, if only it be rightly understood. But it is called the “everlasting” Gospel; and by this term it is plain that nothing is to be understood but this full light of divine knowledge now made perfect in God, and which has become one with faith, and, consequently, fully reconciled with life also. In this domain, and in this spiritual sense, it is not necessary that the fair morning-star of faith, which has guided us through the dark night, and lighted us to the day-spring, should become extinct when the sun ascends the heavens in his full meridian splendor. On the contrary, it shall burn the more brightly; or, rather, to speak more correctly—for here no such contrast finds a place—it is the morning-star itself that shall expand into the full sun, and illuminate the whole world with its light.

Waiting, therefore, for this manifestation, we must endure with the more patience the existing discord so long as our lot is placed amid it, and show greater moderation toward it, since we are subject to it in hope. Only let me not be thought of as recommending a spurious impartiality, which, in truth, is little better than a culpable indifference to questions the most important that can agitate our own generation and all humanity—or the indiscriminating contempt of an arrogated superiority, which is even still more offensive and baneful to truth than the most vehement adoption of either of the conflicting views, if associated with honesty of purpose and conviction. As little, too, would I be thought to favor the presumptuous decisions of individuals, which, adopting a peculiar principle, or, as it is styled, a higher point of view, even though occasionally it does justice to each in part, yet on the whole materially wrongs them both. In the first ages of this intellectual disease, great names were arrayed on either side; and that through all its variations brilliant talents and scientific attainments maintained the conflict, while there was much that was false and wrong in both parties, is equally unquestionable. But what avails the unrighteousness of man against the righteousness of the cause, when, as we must, we regard the latter as the cause of God?

The painful feature of the conflict is the fact that, in a certain measure, God Himself has become the object of man’s rancor and animosity. In sacred lore and tradition, but pre-eminently in revelation, God Himself became as it were a child; and in the childlike language of the heart, and in the most confiding manner, gave Himself into the hands of men. But now, even this marvelous child and the divine word is near being torn asunder by the disputants, like the child in the old story or parable. Two mothers, we are told, came and stood before the king, disputing violently whose was the child that had been overlaid, and whose was the living one. But the true mother, for both had fallen asleep in the night, was recognized by her prayer that the child might not be divided in two by the sword of justice, but preferred that her son should live, even though she must lose it by resigning it to the other. Whereupon the king ordered his officers in no wise to slay the living child, but to give it to her who by her love had proved herself its mother.[43]

But for us the great sentence which is to decide all controversies, and can alone put an end to this discord, is not yet pronounced. But, in truth, the more confirmed symptoms of the deepening intellectual strife which mark the present generation, furnish one proof the more of the near approach of the day of final decision. And then the perfect triumph of divine revelation and the fiery baptism of the Spirit, which in those last days shall be administered, shall bring with it the long-promised universal peace of the soul when under a divine leader—the invisible One now become visible—all that hope in Him, of all kindreds and families, shall be reunited in Him in one love and one fellowship. A universal and perfect peace like this, which, according to revealed truth, is the last that is to be imparted to the human race, and is even to continue for ever, must, it is natural to suppose, be preceded by a violent but closing conflict. And do we not in our own age see such a one developing itself in a manner unparalleled by all that have gone before in it? To this conflict of our age, then, I must now devote a few words, and consider pre-eminently the relations subsisting between it and science.

In many and various ways, unquestionably, was the spirit of man called upon in this beautiful era of the restoration of science to consider itself ripe and mature; its feelings, too, answered to the call, and, in some respects, perhaps it was even so. But let us examine the matter by the same law of sound reason that we should judge of a corresponding case in ordinary and social life. Let us suppose a youth to have attained his legal majority, or, perhaps, by his father’s will, declared of age at a still earlier period. Is it right for him, all at once, to forget the love wherewith his mother has nursed and reared him? Is it right in him, misinterpreting altogether the motive of his father’s dying wish, to cast off and trample under foot all the wise and useful lessons with which, according to the measure of his years, his mind was stored at school, merely because he has remarked or experienced that there is much in life which was not touched upon in his school-learning? If we saw this in private life, should we not form a very bad opinion of such a youth who so suddenly throws off all restraint, and take care that sooner or later he should fall under another and stricter oversight, since he has all at once outgrown parental control. Why, then, should we form a different judgment in the realm of science and truth? All eyes and universal expectation were directed to this restoration of science. And these hopes were right in so far as through the lapse of these last times which are hastening to a close, the course and trial of human nature are even to lie therein. But if, as already pointed out, they fell into a grave error, who, even while they kept within the bounds of faith, looked upon the promised completion and final triumph of the divine and eternal revelation in the light of a new manifestation of truth, and almost as a new religion; far greater was the aberration of those who formed the conception of, and hoped to attain to, an ever-advancing science altogether without God, or at least one which, proceeding side by side with Him, should never come into vital contact with Him! But men can not thus pass along by the side of Omnipotence, without coming into contact with him; and every effort to rise into the higher regions of truth, which is begun and intended to remain wholly without God, will, sooner or later, be directed against Him. And every branch of knowledge, and more especially the highest, if it be without God, is but a false light of the mind [geist], which will only too soon beguile it into the olden darkness of the soul. And so it came to pass then. For under this smooth surface of a seeming moral mildness, the lurking poison suddenly broke out, as it were, by a fearful conspiracy of the times, spreading its contagion far and wide, and corrupting every thing that came within its reach—even as it had been predicted of it in the second book of the future.[44]

For even out of the struggle of good against evil, the latter suddenly arose again in a new and unexpected shape, coming forth, as it were, out of the sea, and the moral world was transformed into a sea of blood. And so, indeed, in these prophetic pages, it is predicted of the enigmas of the last days. Now, throughout this great catastrophe of the world, so far as it can be regarded as a peculiar and especial, but historical warning from God, and a revelation of the divine will, we may trace, among the better disposed, the same gradation of illumination, advancing through the ascending series of sense, soul, and spirit, that we have already noticed, on a larger scale, in the course of the history of mankind. The senses of many individuals become, indeed, more and more open, the more clearly they recognized, by its historical characters, the fatal abyss to which the age of the world was drawing nigh. The epoch of the restoration was, moreover, followed by a general revolution in the sentiments, the moral principles, and prevailing pursuits of men. The third step, however, of a right and true knowledge which, from the position of a full scientific enlightenment of the mind or spirit, should penetrate into the profoundest depths of truth, is still wanting, or at any rate exists as yet only in a very imperfect degree. This property is the defective point in the problem of the age, and in all attempts hitherto made to solve it.

The false science, even that unhuman and godless science which has been already described, can only be overcome and conquered by the true. The mere method of negation—which, generally, indeed, is seldom the right one—is here, too, insufficient for the purpose. And so, in fact, when clouds of dust darken the air, or swarms of noxious insects fill it, it may suffice if the goodman of the house shuts to his casement, as he may lawfully do, even because it is his own; but when the fearful thunderstorm is lowering in the heavens, the closed window will but little insure the safety of his dwelling, unless he has more wisely provided against the danger, by a good lightning-conductor. But what is that? And how came man first to think of it? Why, by studying the electrical phenomena, and arriving at a full understanding of its nature, and so, in obedience to its laws, contriving a counteracting and diverting agent for the electric current, and converting the natural action of the threatening element into an instrument of protection. And just in the same way will a true wisdom proceed in the domain of science and truth. It is only by a good power, of a like kind and similar action to its own, that the supremacy of evil can be overcome. Even, therefore, and to this purport was the earnest warning uttered by the mouth of Truth Itself against those who, although they sat in Moses’s seat, neither went in themselves nor suffered others that were entering to go in.[45]

And what a different picture does Holy Writ set before us in the noble example of Moses! No doubt the preparation for the work to which he was to be called, of leading successfully the people intrusted to him by God out of their Egyptian darkness through the fearful Red Sea and all the wanderings in the wilderness, to the borders of the promised land, was even the forty years of solitude among the noble pastoral people with whom he spent the long period of his exile. But still it is not without a deep significance that it is written that the daughter of the Egyptian monarch, having adopted the foundling of the waters, brought him up and educated him as her own son. So, too, assuredly is it not without design that it is said so emphatically of him, that he “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”[46] In the first place, we have good reason to rejoice at and to acknowledge the comprehensive spirit and wide standard of judgment which Holy Writ here sets up. For whereas it passes a severer sentence of reprobation on the Egyptians than on any other heathen nation or people, for their moral depravity, it yet acknowledges that they possessed a scientific wisdom, which amply rewarded the labor of its acquisition, while it proved the very errors wherewith in their extreme corruption they had overloaded it, to be only the more culpable and deserving of punishment. Shallow and superficial skeptics may, indeed, as many have already done, avail themselves of such an admission, and cry, “There! it is plain enough—Moses borrowed every thing from Egypt and the hieroglyphics.”

But this is not the case. No doubt both the first ten and the last twelve letters of the Hebrew alphabet are hieroglyphics, as their very names indicate; but in its primary natural roots, nevertheless, and, above all, in its whole spirit, and structure, and tone, this language differs widely from the hieroglyphical Egyptian. Certainly Moses did learn from Egypt all that there was for him to learn. And this learning enabled him the more easily to disperse the thick Egyptian darkness, and the less cause, consequently, had he to fear the false arts of the Egyptian magicians and serpent-charmers. He took from them all that was available for his purpose, but he made it quite new again, and gave it another nature by the end to which he employed it. He despoiled them of their “jewels of gold and jewels of silver,” by a theft permissible in the realm of science and truth. For it is lawful for man to wrest from the evil power all that may be converted into a means of honoring the things of God and His revealed truth, and which thereby is better employed, spiritualized, and invested with a higher and better significance. This is true even of our own days, as it was then, and, indeed, always has been.

Oh, that the many great men who, in our own generation, have deserved so well of mankind, by devoting themselves to the noble work of re-establishing right sentiments and principles, had, in this their good design, followed the great example set them by this man so highly preferred of God! But, with one or two exceptions, it is impossible to boast of them that, like Moses, they were “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” And hence the fact is at once explicable why, with such ardent and unbounded zeal, they should have effected comparatively so little against the modern Egyptians, and the new Egyptian darkness of our own days.

An intellectual conflict about truth, and, indeed, about divine truth, is the struggle of our age. This fact is already seen and admitted by a few, but, ere long, it will be still more generally acknowledged. God is a spirit of truth; and even on this account is His adversary, the spirit of contradiction, termed “a liar from the beginning;” and, of all the powerful instruments and wicked devices of that evil one, the lie is the first and chiefest. And this suggests to me to notice, in passing, a point in the moral systems of our day, notwithstanding that it does not properly lie within our prescribed limits. In most of our ethical treatises the question of falsehood and untruth is but carelessly treated, and seldom discussed with that prominence and gravity which its great importance demands. Overt transgressions of the laws belong rather to jurisprudence than to ethics, which properly treats of and analyzes the leading faults of human character as so many diseases of the soul. Now, the worst among these are usually denominated mortal, i.e., likely to bring the soul unto death; but the lie, in the full import of the term—the intrinsic proper lie of the soul, as the predominant fault in a character of untruth—a whole life become, as it were, one great lie, is far more than mortal—it is even death itself. And it is even of this sin—this secret revolting against and wounding of the Spirit, even the divine Spirit of Eternal Truth—that is said in Holy Writ, that it shall be forgiven neither in this world nor in the next.

On this point, then, I think that moral theory and teaching can never be stern and rigorous enough in its precepts, especially as regards individuals. It is not, indeed, a question about words, but about their interpretation, and what is meant by those who use them; and in this respect there may be, and often is a false and over-scrupulous delicacy of conscience. When, however, we remember how, in particular ages of history, oaths have been played with—millions of oaths lavishly proffered and shortly retaken in quite a different and opposite sense, and soon again abjured with as little difficulty; and when we consider the evil effects this trifling with the most solemn of obligations must have had on the moral character of a people, we can not but see some excuse in this monstrous fact for certain small communities of Christians who absolutely refuse to take an oath in any case. For when, in the important point of truth and falsehood, a grave error has been committed on one side, it is better to meet it on the other by too great strictness. A rigorous severity can never entail such fearful consequences in such a case, as the opposite fault of an over-indulgent laxity, or, what is even still more false and erroneous, the regarding the matter as trifling and indifferent. But the further prosecution of this topic would lead me out of my proper province, and I have only touched upon it in passing to that which lies more immediately before us.

If, then, there is nothing so dangerous to the character of an individual, both inwardly and outwardly—if there is nothing that works so insidiously, conveying its secret poison to the very lowest roots and extremities of the moral character, as untruth and the spirit of lying, how much more fearful must its malignant influence prove when it is become the universal and prevailing fault of an age which has not only wandered far from the truth, but is even animated with a deadly hatred of it!

It is to this spirit of lies, and the false splendor of his colossal empire, and to the final conflict which truth will have to wage with it on earth, that the most awful of the prophecies already alluded to refer. And the application is easily made, since a greater part of their warning denunciations have in our age already come to an actual fulfillment. If, then, this giant spirit of destruction and untruth was strong enough even in his cradle to throttle two quarters of the world,[47] what must it be now that the permitted interval of rest has passed away without being profitably employed to the cause of truth, and now that this same spirit of murder and lies, with a far greater body, and endued with far more magical powers, is let loose again to tread the earth for a while with iron feet, and to deceive the nations?

Those whose responsible position in public life, or comprehensive sphere of intellectual activity, enable them to take in at one glance all the various elements of evil and pernicious principles and destructive tendencies which are so actively at work in our days, will not, perhaps, be disposed to regard these remarks as groundless or exaggerated; others, perhaps, may make a mock at them—but they may go on in their delusion for a while.

In conclusion, I have but three observations to add. The first regards the divine permission of evil, and is intended to form a supplement to that Theodicée which I have attempted, in the only way that such a justification of the divine ways is permissible to man, by appealing, viz., to his feelings, rather than by attempting to force his conviction by the rigor of demonstration. The full justification of the ways of Providence is reserved for a future day, when all mouths shall be stopped, whether that awful crisis be near at hand or yet tarries for a while. If, now, the human race be actually sick and in a sickly state, as indeed can not well be denied, then must God’s overruling providence in the affairs of the world be judged of in the same light as, and be compared to, the wise treatment of a skillful physician. For as the latter, in the case of a patient whose death was to be apprehended from a total prostration of his bodily powers and energy, might wish for or even venture to super-induce a violent paroxysm, in the hope that in it he might perhaps be able to throw off his fatal lethargy; even so, in God’s government of the world, those predetermined counsels, which seem so singular, but, nevertheless, are so expressly foretold, may have a somewhat similar design. In the times of the last struggle the power of darkness will probably work itself to death on the earth; and while the remnant shall come out of the crisis and fiery trial purer and healthier, the divine truth is to gain a complete triumph over sin and death.

The second remark I have to make applies to ourselves and all the well-disposed among our cotemporaries, and refers to the disunion which subsists in these evil times even among the best of men. Were two nations threatened in common by a formidable enemy, would they not, however widely they might differ in, or perhaps be estranged from each other by their respective constitutions languages, and customs, forget in the moment of danger their characteristic differences, and, laying aside all previous feelings of jealousy or estrangement, unite for their mutual protection and safety? My heart’s wish, therefore, is that all the truly pious and well-wishers of truth, on whichever of the two sides of the now divided faith they may stand, would unite together without sacrificing those more intimate differences which can not at present be got rid of or reconciled, and, making a righteous peace of mutual forbearance, join together in a firm alliance against the common enemy of all truth and all faith. For that the dearest interests of religion are in our generation exposed to a violent assault, and menaced with great and immediate danger, will not be denied by any lover of truth, even though his conception of the truth may differ from mine.

Lastly, the third observation that I promised will not take the form of the utterance of a wish, as rather of the expression of the firmest conviction, that, however awful and severe this final conflict may prove, the good cause will not eventually be lost, but that the great battle will have a favorable issue in the complete victory of divine revelation, and the celestial wisdom in the government of this kingdom of truth will be fully manifest both to men and angels.

LECTURE VIII.
OF THE DIVINE ORDER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD AND THE RELATIONS OF STATES.

“THE history of the world is the world’s tribunal,”[48] says one of our most famous poets. If by these words he meant to convey an opinion that no other tribunal of judgment is to be expected than that which is even now set up in the history of the world, then such an opinion, implying that the human race is to live forever in its present state, and in this particular terrestrial life, would be even as groundless as that of the fanciful conceit that the human race had existed from all eternity, if, in sooth, any of the philosophical dreamers of antiquity had ever fallen on such a fancy, or, in modern times, any of the antipodes to the usual current mode of thinking should ever stumble upon it. The poet himself, as dramatist and artist, would but have taken it ill had any one laid before him a great drama, composed of several acts and scenes, from which, however, the beginning was torn off, and which, ever going on, untied the existing perplexities only to fall again into new and fresh complications; or like a poor journal ever referring to a continuation, had no true end, no conclusion or proper termination. But unquestionably a better sense is also contained in the poet’s words. He may have merely meant to say that the mind which rules the course of mundane affairs is a mind that inflicts retribution on the world; and that all the great epochs and incidents of history have a retributive character and vindicatory significance.[49] Such an interpretation of the words, which indeed suits well with the author’s serious mind and character, would bring them in perfect unison with my own sentiments, and adequately express the truth which forms the theme of our present consideration on the divine order in the history of the human race.

The human race, then, as it had a beginning, so also will it have an end; it will not continue forever in this present form, but must eventually come to a termination. But, to speak according to the measure of a divine chronology, where a thousand years are but as one day, who can say, who shall dare, off-hand, to decide whether six or seven of these great days of God are fixed for its duration? Enough to know that we stand on the borders of the fourth age, and on the passage from the third to the fourth. And not unimportant is it, on the other hand, for the clear understanding of the whole, to form a right conception of each of these, its great divisions and epochs. The first age is made up of the twenty-five centuries of obscure primeval history. The second, which we called the age of preparation, is formed by the fifteen hundred years which we reckon from the end of the first up to the center and turning-point of the history of the world as known to us, and from which modern history takes its commencement. Even in the oldest traditionary history of the Gentile nations of antiquity we do not meet with any statements that can be relied upon, or any tenable data beyond, if indeed so far back as, the fifteenth century before the epoch of the commencement of modern history. The fifteen centuries which follow this epoch form the third age, in which this principle of a new life in the spiritual, moral, and political world had to develop and completely to unfold itself. In the last Lecture I also reckoned in this period the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries of our era. But if it seems to any more advisable to consider these as the introductory portion of the fourth and subsisting age, there is nothing positively to condemn such a mode of reckoning; only, for my part, I can not but regard it as less correct and more inaccurate than the one which I have proposed. In one case as well as the other the same important consideration will be involved. Reckoning from some point or other within these last forty years, we have, it must be acknowledged by all, entered upon a grand and decisive epoch in the history of the world; and our attention can not be too often or too strongly directed to the fact, that we stand at the critical point of transition from one great period to another.

Now one of the most characteristic signs by which such important moments of general revolution in the history of the world are, for the most part, known and distinguished, is a number of great events pressed closely together and following each other in rapid succession; or, in other words, the accelerated course of time. It is no new remark, that, in the political history of our own age, modern Europe has, in the short space of two-and-twenty years, ran through all the epochs of the old Roman world, from the first party struggles of the republic, and its long wars with Carthage, that mistress of the seas, up to the imperial rule of the Cæsars, in the first reigns mild and indulgent, but at the last so fearfully oppressive and cruel; and even up to the final immigration of the northern nations. Such a simple remark is alone sufficient proof that another law now rules in the history of the world—a quicker life pulsates in its arteries than beat in the calmer days of old. Whether, however, this life be thoroughly sound, or, on the contrary, sickly and feverish, that is quite another question.

But not only in the political world, but also in the intellectual domain of science has the same accelerated course been noticeable. Only, as compared with that of antiquity, the course or direction pursued by modern science is altogether different. We have traveled with equal celerity, but in quite an opposite course to the ancients. Starting from the last term, we have reversed the series of their mental progression. First of all, in the last decades of the preceding century, the Epicurean cast of thought, or one very nearly resembling it, was the one chiefly predominant in the philosophical world. And then, together with but subordinate to it, came scholastic subtilties and hair-splitting distinctions, similar to those of the later Greek schools, not unaccompanied, perhaps, with the same patient industry of research and extensive erudition, and exercising altogether on the minds of men an influence no less wide, nor less pernicious, than did the most brilliant of the sophists of Greece. All the erroneous systems which it was possible for the human mind to embrace, and which are grounded in its essential qualities, or which could possibly originate in any (so to speak) of its inborn misconceptions, which it took the Greeks several centuries to evolve in slow succession, our age has rapidly, and almost simultaneously, run through in as many decades. And in this fact, if I do not greatly deceive myself, there is much ground of consolation. It encourages me to hope that this inverse progression is leading us back again to the truth—that in this ascending line we are gradually coming nearer to the better times of the first great philosophers of Greece—of a Plato, a Socrates, and a Pythagoras. It must be self-evident, that in this case, and still more so in that analogy of political history which I have so recently noticed, as generally, in all such historical parallels, nothing more is intended to be asserted than a general resemblance, which, however, as such, is eminently remarkable. It would not, perhaps, be difficult anxiously to work out the general resemblance into points of detail, but such an overwrought assimilation could only lead to false conclusions and results.

Now that the conflict which our age has to go through is eminently intellectual is implied simply in the prevailing notion of a public opinion and its influence. But, at the same time, we must observe, that in the very notion of opinion, and in the word itself, there is involved a certain character of extreme vagueness and uncertainty. No doubt that which man can properly be said to know is extremely limited and confined. Of very much all that we can have is merely an opinion, and with that must we be content to put up. Nay, inasmuch as all scientific certainty admits not of being imparted to all men, very much of that which we do properly and certainly know is best and most beneficially set forth to others merely as an opinion, in order that we may not seem to force their minds to the admission of this higher certainty. And what is there that the passions of a prejudiced or excited multitude can not be made to adopt as an opinion, which, if presented to them as a sober conviction of reason, would never make an impression? So devoid are they, generally, of that intelligence and accurate knowledge of men and things which are essential and necessary to the formation of a right judgment. If, instead of public opinion (which, unquestionably, is a great power, but which, if it takes a wrong direction, is also a very dangerous one), the appeal were to be made to a public conscience, this would be, to my mind, far more impressive and serious. To illustrate my meaning:—the impression which the events of 1793 made on the general feeling of all Europe, and the universal movement of discontent which, among all European nations, preceded the great political catastrophe of our own days, are instances to which the old maxim, vox populi vox Dei, may, without hesitation, be applied. Such feelings are founded on a true and higher judgment—often on a correct presentiment of evil and wrong—even though, as we must admit, that in their utterance more or less of passion and exaggeration reveals itself, and that individual prejudices are not unfrequently mixed up with them. But now seldom, in the ebbing and flooding tide, in the ever-changing course of the stream of public opinion, flows there aught that truly deserves to be called a public judgment. And yet public opinion is even that on which, in this respect, and relatively to the theme of our present Lecture, every thing mainly and principally turns.

In discussing the theory of consciousness a chasm remained, or, rather, was intentionally left open, and the present seems the appropriate place for filling it up and supplying it. The power, or, rather, the faculty of judgment has not, as yet, had its place assigned it. The reason, with its immediate subordinates, memory and conscience—the fancy, with its subordinates, the senses and inclinations, form six faculties of the inner man, with which the understanding and will make together eight. The ninth is the living, loving, feeling soul, which, although it be the center of the whole consciousness, must, nevertheless, be counted as an independent and peculiar faculty. As for the heart [Gemuth]—as some peculiarly designate the collective sum of the tender, moral emotions of the soul, and which, at any rate, must be carefully distinguished from the conscience, and also from love—it is, however, a kind of application of the triple relation and function of the soul rather than an independent faculty. But the tenth faculty, which completes the whole cycle and theory of the human consciousness, and which may be regarded as its crown and perfection, is the judgment, or, in other words, the judging mind [geist].

But now, if this term judgment be understood purely in a logical sense, as that process of thought which forms combinations and deductions, and by means of which we ascribe to a subject A a predicate B, this would fall very far short of the signification in which I here intend it to be taken. Moreover, it would be, in truth, quite a superfluous task to separate this cogitative relation, or this relative cogitation, from the other logical functions of the understanding, and to make of it a special and independent faculty. The judgment is something higher than this mere coupling in the thought of some special A with some general B. Understanding is the cognition of spirit and of that which it has uttered; and judgment is the decision between two things understood, or the “discerning of spirits.” Of how great a multitude of intellectual relations does a scientific or even an artistic judgment imply the coincidence and concurrent action! And yet these are merely private judgments, which involve an assenting feeling in the individual, but beyond that can not pretend to any valid authority. In practical life the judicial function in the state alone furnishes an adequate standard for estimating the high rank which the faculty of judgment holds as the center of the human consciousness. For, in the deliberative sentence of the judge there is comprised both the mature art of the understanding—which has taken due cognizance of the matter, and impartially discerned between two objects equally well understood—and also a determination of the will: for, though the actual carrying into effect—that which properly and peculiarly constitutes a willing—belong not to, but is independent of, the judge’s office, still the conclusion of a positive judgment implies the existence of the first determining motive of the will. In this one act of judging, therefore, there is contained both functions of the mind [geist], understanding and willing; and as the loving soul is the center of the consciousness, so the judging mind, or spirit, is the highest of all its operations.

In the Book of Truth there is a sentence which admits of application here. “There is none good,” it is there written, “but one, that is, God.” However harsh and severe this judgment may sound at the first hearing, still, upon a little reflection, we shall see ample cause to admit its justice. Man is not wholly and purely good; at the very best he is not free from faults, and more or less of imperfection cleaves to all that he does or is. And even granting that a man might be found devoid of all admixture of imperfection, and quite faultless and thoroughly good, still he was not so always and from the first. And even if any should here urge that the angels, who have continued such as they were originally created, were good from the beginning, we must remember that, at least, they are not good in and by themselves, but that, that they are good, comes from God, who is the source of all goodness. Now, just in the same sense can we also say, Who judges rightly? There is none that judges rightly but one, i.e., God. He is Himself the truth; and, therefore, He alone has the standard of truth in Himself, and all truth has its ground and principle in Him alone. Every individual judgment and decision, in all important matters, has its ground, either mediately or immediately, in this divine basis, and its rectitude must be estimated according to this standard. But this latter condition need not make us foolishly anxious, for nothing impossible is required of us by God; and this requisition, like every other which He lays upon man, is modified by, and adjusted to, the measure of human finiteness. The conscientious judge, who, after a patient investigation of the cause as it is laid before him, and after a careful weighing of all the possible reasons and motives, nevertheless errs, or is deceived by a rare coincidence of circumstances, stands, nevertheless, exonerated, even though he should have passed an unjust sentence, and have had the misfortune to condemn the innocent. Although, when he becomes aware of it, the thought must be painful enough to his own feelings, yet who, in justice, can reproach him merely because he was not omniscient? He who, in thought, in science, and in faith, adheres to this divine foundation—the best and most certain that he can find, or that is any where offered to him, may rest calm and composed; he has done the utmost that lies in his power. He alone, who makes a bad use of what he has and what has been given to him, like an unjust steward, need fear to give an account of his stewardship.

This reference of all judicial sentences to, and their foundation in a divine authority, is an idea which was not unknown even to the republican states of antiquity, as is evident from the way they expressed themselves on the irrefragable sanctity of the laws and the inviolability of the supreme judicial power, and also in the maxims which they practically advanced on this subject. They honored herein a higher and a diviner principle, of which, however, in theory they possessed no clear and perfect knowledge, though in practical life they were taught by a correct feeling of sound reason and the natural conscience accurately enough to recognize and steadily and distinctly to respect it. With us still more generally is it become an admitted doctrine that all sovereignty and kingly power is of God, and that all obedience to the laws and to the supreme authority in the state rests ultimately on a divine foundation and sanction. If very recently men were for a while disposed to argue that political institutions must be founded on the reason and its unconditional liberty, yet bitter experience quickly convinced them of their error, and it was soon fully refuted by the convincing argument of actual fact. And, accordingly, theory has for the most part reverted to a right principle, and recognized the divine authority as the true foundation of political authority.

But the principle being thus generally recognized, it is, I think, still necessary to distinguish with care and accurately to define in what sense the supreme ruler of the state is the vicegerent of God. The indefinite titles which are assumed by Eastern despots have always been alien to the habits of the West. But it is not enough to avoid such exaggerated titles of honor, if, nevertheless, the appeal to divine right be made so very vaguely, and simply in general terms to God himself. In His absolute essence, God is wholly inconceivable; it is only in his operations on man and nature, and in His relations to the human race, that we can at all think precisely of Him. It is only as Creator of the world, as the Lawgiver of nature, or as the Benefactor and Redeemer of mankind, and so forth, that we can form a clear and distinct notion of the Godhead.

Now, is the supreme ruler of the state God’s deputy as Creator of the world? Who would venture to assert any thing of the kind? It is true that the paternal rule of the earthly parent, and the universal feeling among all peoples and nations of the sanctity of a father’s authority, rests on a resemblance—which is, however, only symbolical—between his relation and that of our unseen Father which is in heaven. And it is no less true, also, that the reign of a truly paternal monarch over his people may be regarded as a mere amplification of the father’s government of his family; a good king is the father of his people. But such remote, although most significant analogies, furnish us with no precise notion of right; and it is on such alone that the whole question here turns. No doubt when a people is governed well and wisely—which is even the same as to say, paternally governed—it exhibits a wonderful power of natural development; productive industry flourishes, population increases, and its physical and mental cultivation advances rapidly. Unfavorable seasons may undoubtedly check this tendency, and it will be entirely stopped as soon as the subject refuses to follow with loving confidence the guiding hand of the paternal monarch. Whenever they whose duty it is to obey seek to be supreme, then are the natural energies of a great people transmuted into a fearful element of universal desolation.

If now we inquire in the next place how far it is allowable to compare the highest authority in the state to the Lawgiver of nature, we shall find that even in this respect the difference is so very great that analogy almost entirely fails us. Holy, unquestionably, are the laws of every political community in respect to the duty of obedience which they suppose and require; but this is not paid spontaneously and naturally, but needs to be enforced and maintained by pains and penalties. And not to speak of the stem laws of retributive justice, but rather of those mild and equitable enactments designed for the general benefit and the improvement of the whole community; these are still more subject to the imperfection and manifold changes of human things. Suppose, for instance, a measure promulgated in any country with the design of balancing in some degree the agricultural and the manufacturing interests—however wisely designed, it is found within a few years to have totally failed; under it misery has but increased on both sides, and the law must be repealed or modified. But it is not so with the laws which God has implanted in the system of the universe: they never fail of their intended effect.

Do we further ask in what, if in any respect, the earthly sovereign is the deputy of God, as Redeemer, Emancipator, and Liberator? A notion of grace and mercy does, we must admit, attach itself to our idea of supreme authority; and in this respect it presents a sort of analogy and resemblance to the idea of the Godhead. Properly speaking, however, the exercise of grace and mercy forms an exception to the general rule of man’s sovereignty, and belongs to him only in his special function as administrator of justice. Moreover, the most paternal and beneficent of earthly rulers can at most provide only for the physical happiness of his people. He may alleviate or avert heavy calamities, or procure many temporal blessings and advantages for his subjects; but the unhappy soul can be helped by One alone. The distinction I have just made will become more apparent by means of a contrast. Wherever the clergy are not regarded merely as teachers of the people, but as is the case in the greater part of Western and of Eastern Christendom, as priests speaking with a divine authority, this their public vicegerency relates primarily and immediately to the Redeemer; its judicial functions over the conscience ought to shun a visible publicity, and to be left entirely to the conscience and guarded by its seal of secrecy. And in this respect lies the distinctive peculiarity of the relation subsisting between the supreme authority in the state and God, which, however, refers pre-eminently to His attribute of justice. And here it is no mere remote analogy and weak resemblance, dependent on the principle of human weakness and imperfection; but it is a true and real vicegerency, publicly admitted and recognized, and exercising consequently a great public influence. And therefore it is, that among the divers elements or branches of the supreme political authority (which, however, fundamentally and in its essence is one and indivisible), a special sanctity is, as I have already remarked, ascribed to its judicial functions. In a word, the earthly head of the state is the dispenser of the divine justice, the vicegerent of the Judge of the world; he is a divine functionary, and, so to say, the supreme judge in the world’s tribunal. And this is the point of view from which all matters and questions connected with this subject may most fully be answered and most correctly determined. But that this exalted dignity of the earthly ruler may not be interpreted too literally, I must here observe, that the divine Judge is one who allows mercy to take the place of justice, not merely occasionally, and by way of exception, but always and invariably; so long, at least, as it is in any way possible. And here comes in the application of the principle which we previously advanced:—That God is in nowise absolute, but that on the contrary His justice is in every case limited by His love and grace; while the latter again is restricted and modified by His justice, and both, indeed, reciprocally by each other. Whoever has formed in his heart the least vivid notion of God will not entertain the slightest doubt of this union of justice and of mercy in the divine essence.

When, however, we speak of kings being the dispensers of divine justice, we mean it in quite a different sense from that in which, during the great immigration of the northern hordes of Asia, the barbarian conqueror proclaimed himself the scourge of God. By assuming this title he merely meant to terrify his adversaries by the thought of having to encounter in himself a fearful and destructive power of evil, whom, in order to chastise a degenerate world, the Almighty had permitted to do as he pleased and to let loose his fury on the nations of the earth. And phenomena of this kind are not confined to the period of the great migration; for the true notion of the representation of the divine Judge of the world by the supreme power in the state combines together with the sternest severity of justice, which in this respect is both wholesome and necessary, the greatest clemency—for where is there, or can there be, a clemency greater than the divine? But most especially does this idea imply that which is here pre-eminently requisite, and insists with a prominence proportionate to its great importance on the strictest conscientiousness in the discharge of the duties of this vicegerency. But the superior excellence of this idea over many other explanations of a similar kind, but laboring under the defect of extreme vagueness, consists even in this, that it comprises and inseparably combines those two important conditions, both that the supreme governor is responsible to God alone, and, as following therefrom, that he is unquestionably responsible to Him, and that it also determines in what sense and in what way he is so.

Every great and remarkable event which marks an epoch in the political history of nations and the world, may, perhaps, be regarded as a dispensation of justice. If, then, such an event, however partial and confined to a single people or empire, or at most extending to an entire age, may be looked upon as a sign of judgment already commencing, or at least of a retribution threatening, but mercifully suspended, the same mode of consideration may, with as good reason, be applied to every resolution of the political world on the grave questions of peace and war: for the power of making war and peace is, at all events, the peculiar and characteristic prerogative of the supreme authority in the state. Now, the simplest standard, perhaps, of judging of the justice of either is, if we may so speak, to ask, Is the proclamation of war or the treaty of peace so entirely founded on truth, so perfectly correspondent to the righteous and judicial character of God, that man need not fear to lay them before the Judge of the whole world for His ratification? If such be the case, then most assuredly are they right and righteous, whatever be their consequences, or whatever be the judgment that men may pass upon them. But, otherwise, if the manifesto of war contain nothing but shallow and specious pretexts painfully raked together, or of fine-colorable phrases which even the eye of the world can see through, if a light touch of truth be only thrown over it in the hope of concealing the conqueror’s lust of aggrandizement, or the equally destructive principle of an old national feud or jealousy—if, in the pacification, under ambiguous terms and cunningly-devised phrases, the seeds of a future war be carefully sown, and thus the worst disease of the political world be propagated and multiplied from generation to generation, then most assuredly the guardian eye of Eternal Justice has not watched over its completion, and bestowed on it His blessing, but another and a very different coadjutor has had his hand in the game—the spirit of untruth, viz., and of corruption, of strife and ruin, whom no name so exactly describes as that of a “liar from the beginning.”

Now, as not only the annihilation of the race of giants in the universal deluge, with which our sacred history opens, and to which the ancient traditions of almost every people allude, more or less directly, but also the partial overthrow of a single nation, the tragical closing catastrophe of particular ages, is, as it were, a prelude of the final judgment of all nations and peoples of the earth at the end of time; so, on the other hand, the original corruption of the primal lie is propagated as an hereditary evil from millennium to millennium, and from century to century. For even now, may many a fertile spot, the seat of a happy and united community in the midst of prosperous times, and of peace unbroken at home or abroad, be considered, if not a garden of innocence, still the blissful dwelling of peace and quiet. But into these happy precincts the evil spirit of untruth and discontent ever and anon steals, to repeat over again in the history of the human race the same scene of temptation which marked its commencement. Upward and downward, and in a twofold direction, does the lying spirit of strife ply his seductive arts. Now, on the one side, he whispers in the ear of the rising generation, “That is the true knowledge and the real science which men are most anxious to withhold from you; but seek first of all to be free—shake off this unworthy spirit of slavish obedience, then shall all that is noble and intellectually great be at once yours. In this way, and thus only, was it attained by the great and good in ancient times.” But, on the other hand, he directs himself to the individual invested with authority; and if the potentate be unrighteous, his ear is already more than half open—and even if he be upright, still, as a man, he is not always inaccessible to such whisperings. “Why,” he insidiously asks, “dost thou draw back so fearfully before that which the people call their rights? These are nothing but childish notions which the school-boy may do well to declaim about, but practically they are worthless and unreal; no one means them seriously—the whole world puts no faith in this comedy. Rule your subjects with an iron hand, that is all they know how to respect; nay, they even admire the bold spirit that defies them, and they will suppliantly reverence thy greatness of mind and strength of character if, betraying no infirmness of purpose, you boldly and sternly encroach upon or disregard all their pretended rights and privileges. If only your sovereignty be solidly established from within, and well rounded from without, then, besides a great name with posterity, you will also secure to yourself the present enjoyment of very great and solid advantages.”

In this wise, from the original source of the one lie, is the inheritance of the old evil transmitted from generation to generation in the political world, in the two opposite forms of popular anarchy, and the despotic lust of power and aggrandizement. These two forms of evil are more closely allied than at the first look they appear to be in reality; but history, the great teacher of truth, gives its sure witness to their affinity. Nothing is more common in great republics, than for the discord of the citizens to be put an end to by some victorious general, whom all parties, weary of their dissensions, hail as the benefactor of the whole community. But how seldom is the pacificator content with the glorious title of the restorer of domestic peace, and does not go a step farther, and become the scheming tyrant and the aggressive conqueror. The whole history of the world is, in short, little more than the continuous struggle between the purifying fire of the divine retribution and this spirit of political lying, which is ever renewing itself in these twofold forms of anarchy and despotism.

Moreover, while we acknowledge the divine authority invested in the supreme ruler of the state, we must take heed how we mix up with our conceptions on this head the notion, so highly dangerous and so pregnant with fatal errors, of the absolute and unconditional, which, as we have already remarked, can not be applied even to the Godhead without giving rise to misconceptions. If, therefore, in any country a party—for now-a-days even justice is made a party matter—if any where a party of otherwise well-disposed men call themselves “absolutists,” such a designation is of itself sufficient to excite our apprehension, lest, with so absolute a way of thinking, some spark of evil be slumbering beneath the ashes; inasmuch as one absolute, i.e., one unconditional element of destruction invariably calls forth another.

Absolute, if this pernicious term must be used, the supreme power of the legitimate sovereign of a state may indeed be called in so far as he is responsible to God alone. For were the supreme ruler responsible to man, then the only difference would be, that instead of one, the many to whom he is answerable would be absolute. But in another sense, it is impossible to call the supreme power, wherever lodged, absolute or unlimited; for it is limited in many ways. Its exercise is checked and controlled by the treaties subsisting between it and other powers—by the laws which it finds in existence from the times of his predecessors, and which are still in force by the family laws of succession, and all matters pertaining to or connected therewith. If he who is invested with the highest power in the state, is determined to interfere with all these institutions, and violently to subvert existing customs and compacts, then is there, in such a case, no one really justified or entitled either to make objections to his measures or to oppose them. By such arbitrary and violent proceedings, however, he is himself undermining the very foundation of his own power. And a regard to and consideration of the possible consequences of such injustice will in most instances furnish the necessary and salutary check. Lastly, if we look a moment from the right itself to its actual exercise and influence, how often and how greatly are the latter limited by adverse circumstances and evil times. Nothing, in short, is more at issue with and opposed to nature and to life, than the very notion of unlimited power, and generally all that is absolute or destructive.

But there is yet another side on which the supreme political power is essentially checked and controlled. It is bound to consider and pay respect to the principles of religious society, which rests no less than itself on a divine authority. For the church, although very different in its nature, and flowing from a wholly different origin from that of the state, is, nevertheless, equally inviolable. If, however, the civil and political ruler, not content with a co-ordinate jurisdiction and the revision of ecclesiastical affairs—with a joint authority and influence, should attempt to make the religious polity also entirely subject to his own arbitrary will, no one perhaps will be able to oppose force to force, and probably no one would be justified in so doing. But by such an attempt, as indeed by every act of religious oppression, the supreme civil power would most fatally undermine the very basis of its own authority. If, for instance, the ruler of a great nation places the third estate in the painful alternative of making, what in any case must be most pernicious, a choice between divine and human authority—or, rather, to speak more correctly, between two claims to its allegiance equally divine, he does but smooth the road which must lead at last to his own ruin.

And here, too, in the spiritual community of the faith, in the same way as in the political body, man’s patrimony of original evil branches out into two directions. In the one it turns longingly back toward the past, and in the other it tends restlessly forward into the indefinite future. Both of these aberrations are wholly independent of the outer form as well as of the subject-matter of belief. They are consequently to be found in the old covenant, as the first grade of divine revelation, no less than in the second. The first of these hereditary faults of man’s nature is deadness, or, in a somewhat different phase, lukewarmness—manifesting itself outwardly in a close and literal adherence to the old in its mere external forms. In a word, it is spiritual death. For though in the abundance of His love, God may have made a revelation of His will to man, and even died to make an atonement for him, still it is left to the free will of the individual to receive it or not; and its retention and observance is the trial of his goodness, and, consequently, in this point, as in others, his hereditary and inborn spiritual death strongly manifests itself. The second of these hereditary faults, or, rather, the same in a different form, is the spirit of innovation, or a false semblance of life, by which, in fact, this inner death is merely propagated.

On both these faults and erroneous ways of thinking on religious matters, Revelation expresses itself equally in the tone of stern reprobation, though perhaps its language with regard to the former is even still more severe. As regards the spirit of innovation, all changes in this domain, which are merely human, and not visibly and manifestly of a divine spirit and origin, must simply on that account be opposed and condemned. Now, in both the parties into which the faith is unhappily divided, there are many who are captivated and led away by this spirit of change. For among those who were originally seduced by it not a few are now animated with a sincere and profound respect for whatever is old and sterling, while of the innovation-mongers of our days, many are to be found in the ranks of those who originally strove to stem the tide of alteration and change. Oh that all who are pervaded by this evil spirit, and are ever casting their views forward into the future, would only advance a little farther still in their thoughts, so as to take in the end and conclusion of all. In the knowledge of the final judgment of the world (and what is this philosophy of revelation but such a reminiscence of death and the end—in which light philosophy was even in olden times explained—not, indeed, in a narrow-minded limitation to ourselves, but in a far wider sense, embracing in its universal sympathy the final catastrophe of the whole human race), in the warnings and allusions to this last day of account, so long and so often given, men will find all the information that they seek, and will no longer need any human innovations, since by this key all that is old and eternal shall receive a trebly-exalted significance and a doubly-new life.

But besides the political body and the religious community, the world of letters forms a third society. Though numerically smaller, yet in its effects on the minds of men, whether it moves freely and diffuses itself without the rigid restraints of form, or is narrowly confined to the formalism of the school, it is, perhaps, as great as either. Spiritual in its matter and in its dissemination, it either renounces a divine sanction, and stands under the protection and supervision of the state—such, at least, is the predominant relation in recent times—or, as was formerly the case, it grows and flourishes beneath the shelter and through the fostering care of ecclesiastical institutions. Holding an intermediate place between the two other bodies of human society—in its subject-matter more akin to the one, but deriving from the other its external support—it is also of a mixed nature and partakes of both. But the inborn and original sin of science is exactly similar to that which infects political life. Manifesting itself in a twofold aberration, it either assumes, in the spirit of anarchy, an hostile position toward all that exists from without, or is given to men from above, or, perhaps, comes forward in a predominant love of system or scientific sectarianism, which not unfrequently is as fanatical as the political party-spirit with which, moreover, it is often very nearly and closely allied.

The nature of the divine order which rules the history of the world, and its stern, retributive law, must, in all essential points, be now apparent from the preceding remarks. It is an all-pervading alternation between the purifying fire of God’s punitive justice and the inheritance of the old evil, which breaks out, now in anarchy, now in despotism—at one time in spiritual deadness and lukewarmness of faith—at another in the pernicious lust of innovation and change. This purifying fire, it must also be clear, while, confining its immediate operation to single nations or to marked and distinct epochs of history, it gives them a new shape and form, invariably gains for itself a wider extension, so as, at last, to embrace the whole world. Moreover, every one must feel that, in investigating the fiery track of this judging spirit in its stern course through centuries, we must reverently follow at a respectful distance to learn from it what it is and how it manifests itself, and take good heed how we presume to confine it within any narrow law, or reduce it to any precise and rigorous definition. We can not be too carefully on our guard against ascribing to Providence in its guidance of mankind many and subtile designs, which, after all, perhaps, are nothing but the mere fancies and conceits of man. In general, however, it may safely be said that the subordinate views and higher ends which are visible in the leading catastrophes of nations and empires, or even of entire ages, have especial reference to that gradation in the divine revelation which I explained to you in the previous Lecture as having a regard to, and comprising the whole human race in, its comprehensive design. By way of exemplification, and as an instance of the right application of the ideas here advanced, I will now, in conclusion, add a few words on those events and catastrophes of universal history, which, in this respect, seem the most important.

The universal deluge, of which the whole surface of our globe presents so many and so great traces and proofs, forms a partition-wall, sternly separating the earliest races of men from the subsequent generations. Of the former it is only probable that they were very different from the latter, not only in their manner of life, but also in their physical and intellectual powers and endowments, and likewise, perhaps, in the nature and mode of their moral corruption and depravity. My remarks, therefore, may well be confined to this side of that great partition-wall. The next great catastrophe, which is both expressly given out as a divine retribution (and, as such, can be proved from profane history as much, though not so universally, as the former), is the so-called Babylonian confusion of tongues and the dispersion of nations. This, and that which is so inseparably connected with it, the confusion of mythical ideas and legends, is rather hinted at than fully and clearly detailed. The time, too, is not given, though the locality is expressly mentioned. It is the same one which, according to all other historical statements, was the very spot of Western Central Asia, where that contagious malady of the lust of conquest first arose, or, if we may be allowed the expression, where this unhappy invention was first made. This dispersion of nations, however, was its natural punishment, since every unity which is either politically false or intellectually untrue, must terminate in chaotic dissolution. This historical fact is distinctly traceable in the world of the ancients among the West Asiatic, South European, and North African nations which dwell around the shores of the Mediterranean. Here we can scarcely find our way out of the labyrinth of traces of reciprocal relationship which abound, in their medley of cognate languages and their chaos of legends, so remarkably agreeing, and yet frequently so inconsistent in their ideas of nature, their far-reaching theogonies, and the divine origination of their heroic families. These chaotic contradictions, however, in which the poetry of heathendom indulged without restraint, gradually undermined the old popular belief, and led, consequently, at a later period, to a very favorable result.

For by this means the Greeks—to whom our present remarks apply especially and pre-eminently—gained free space for the unshackled development of a philosophy which, though it may have run and wandered through many systems of error, yet in so far as it was an honest and sincere search after truth and certainty, served and deserves to be considered as a preparation and introduction to a higher knowledge and the adoption of revelation. For because of this intellectual development (and the fact serves to prove that a pure sensibility to the beautiful, and a clear and pregnant thought on human life and on nature, is ever highly pleasing to God), the Greeks were chosen as the second people of the world, to be the medium and the instruments of the further diffusion of revelation in the course of the development of humanity.

In political life, the erroneous tendency of the Greek mind was to the abuse of liberty and to anarchy. When this evil had been carried to its wildest extreme, it was overtaken by its natural penalty (which inwardly follows close upon its track), in the armed supremacy of Macedon (which, however, was only a brief paroxysm), and the final subjugation of Greece to the Roman yoke. Among the Romans both forms of political evil met together, and were closely connected with each other. To escape from domestic anarchy, they entered on a victorious career of foreign conquest and aggrandizement; and when intestine dissension had reached its greatest height, a perfect despotism was established, both at home and in the provinces.

We recently remarked that the whole of that mixture of ideas, confusion of legends and traditions, and that continual alternation between anarchy and despotism, which in the olden times of heathendom ran through its whole course of development, from the first dispersion of nations to the establishment of the Roman empire over the world, immediately applies to and is only to be understood of the West Asiatic and South European races. In the East of Asia, two great nations or empires, which together make up a third, if not the half, nearly, of the population of the whole earth, have remained in a great measure free from and uninfluenced by it. It would almost seem as if the Almighty, with some special design, had kept and reserved them unto these last times. For three if not four thousand years India has preserved unchanged its institution of castes, and all its essential customs and laws. The very fact that this ancient empire, so extensive, so abundant in riches, and so singular in its nature, and with a civilized population equal to that of the whole of Europe put together, should be now conquered and held in subjection by the sea-ruling isles of Britain, which the ancients named the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, and described as the ultimate limits of the habitable world, is one of the most remarkable signs of our days. That in such great historical events, and such singular juxtapositions, there rules some grand and mysterious design of the Mind which regulates the course of human affairs, we can not but feel; only we shall greatly err if we precipitately determine its particular nature. The wiser and the safer course is to look forward with attentive expectation to its further development. Already has this remarkable approximation of the extreme East and West led to important consequences. The enlargement of our historical information, by the sources discovered in the East, has alone been so considerable as to give greater coherence and consistency to our knowledge of the earlier, and, indeed, of the very earliest times, and of the origin of mankind, and to have afforded a growing testimony and a strong confirmation of the truth of the sacred narrative.

The Celestial Empire too, with its monosyllabic language, remained until very recently within its walls separate from and never mixing with the rest of the world. Although China has been several times subjugated by northern conquerors, it has, nevertheless, continued in all essential respects the same. But now, in these modern times of universal ferment and of change throughout the political world, China, too, has been set in movement, and has become so far a conquering power, that she who in the earlier centuries of Christianity was only known by name, through fable, has become the immediate neighbor of two great European powers.

The close of the ancient history of the Eastern world, in its westerly regions, is formed by the tragic overthrow of the Jewish people and the fearful destruction of Jerusalem; events which are properly described, as also they were long previously announced, as a partial judgment on an individual nation. And in this light and in similar colors they are, moreover, depicted even by heathen writers. Few things in the whole course of history furnish so singular and striking a phenomenon as this total dissolution of the Jewish nation. The dispersion over all parts of the earth, for so many centuries, of a people that has exercised so great and so decisive an influence on the progress of ideas and the higher cultivation of the human mind, both naturally and scientifically, makes a sad and melancholy impression on our minds. With so much the more of reason, then, may we regard it as a sign of the times, and one, too, full of good promise and of bright and cheerful hope, if this long and cruelly-oppressed people seems suddenly to be aroused again or awakened from its degradation, and in manifold ways evincing an intellectual, moral, and social activity, begins to partake of a more liberal development and culture. And on one account the fact appears still more consolatory. Such a reawakening of this long ill-treated and degraded race is, in their oldest prophecies, fixed for the last decisive days of the world’s history.

In the medieval period of modern history we meet with all the elements of the Christian state. The idea of a pure monarchy also was here carried far higher toward perfection, and much more manifoldly developed than in heathen antiquity. But the civil and spiritual powers soon came into collision, and in their mutual conflict were alike guilty of despotic encroachments on each other. In this sad dissension the whole state of things fell more and more into a new kind of anarchy. And in the same way, in our own times, after a great part of the Christian world had, in sentiment at least, reverted to heathenism, then as a natural consequence of the ruling tone of thought and opinion, there was a great relapse into the double evil of a wild and fatal popular anarchy, and of a still more destructive military despotism. And the whole history of the old heathen world is nothing but one continual alternation between these two evils.

In the Christian West, indeed, both now and in the middle ages, the predominant tendency to error inclined toward the side of anarchy. Among the Mohammedan nations, on the contrary, from the very earliest days of their religion, the despotic lust of conquest has been, as it were, an inborn and homebred hereditary failing. It was indeed fed and encouraged by their national creed. But here also the greatest changes have taken place. The largest and most powerful of all the Mohammedan empires, that, viz., in India, is entirely overthrown, and scarcely a vestige of it remains in these times. By a natural revolution of things, the first irresistible conquerors are now themselves conquered and brought under the yoke of others. And so, too, on the other and western side of their once wide rule, they who formerly threatened the existence of civilized Europe are now dependent upon, essentially mixed up with, and owe their political existence to, European policy and the balance of power. This total change of the relative position of the Mohammedan states in general belongs undoubtedly to the characteristic signs which so peculiarly mark and distinguish our own age.

In the three centuries of modern history which fill up the interval between the middle ages and the revolutionary epoch of our own days, the moral constitution of the monarchy has been far more fully and clearly developed than in any previous era. But the most striking event of this period of history is furnished by the sad and melancholy phenomenon of the religious wars. These were the lamentable consequence of the schism in the faith, not indeed by any indispensable and necessary law, nor even as its natural, but still its perfectly explicable, result. In those lands where, as in England and France, there existed a weaker party of either side, which had either been fully conquered or was kept under by oppressive civil disabilities, this unhappy phenomenon assumed the most revolting appearance. But the same state of things took a very different turn in Germany. Here the religious disputes terminated in a higher and a nobler result. In a long and fruitless struggle of thirty years, which wasted and consumed the best energies of the nation, the two contending parties were taught, that with so nicely-balanced strength, no decisive result either way was to be expected. Coming at length to a wiser mind, they acknowledged their respective rights, and by a peaceable compromise they agreed to live together in the same social community. This great and famous religious peace, which, considered merely in the light of a treaty of general pacification, is a master-piece of policy, without equal or parallel, and serving for the basis for all subsequent treaties and questions of peace, is become for Germany a species of inborn national necessity, and, as it were, a second national character. She finds in it a full and perfect compensation for many disadvantages she labors under as compared with other lands, while she has acquired from it a great and important position in the world of the future. Considered with regard to the whole world, one can not well avoid ascribing to this indestructible religious peace in Germany a still higher importance, however little it is commonly understood or regarded in this light. Indeed, we can not but look upon it as the precursor, with hopeful promises, of a far greater and completer religious peace—a peace, I mean, which shall reconcile not only all differences in the faith, but also that more universal and more pervading dissension between faith and unbelief; the quarrel between science and faith being first adjusted, and unity restored thereby between them, and, consequently, also to life. But to effect this object, God, who wills nothing but peace and unity, must take the upper hand and be stronger than man, who loves and desires strife, or, at least, without loving and seeking it, is still ever relapsing into it.

In such or some similar way a religious view of universal history, and of the divine order therein, admits of being developed; which, however, can not be truly done with too much of scientific rigor, or by violently introducing into its plans any arbitrary and, consequently, false designs and purposes.

My prescribed limits compel me to confine myself to these few hints, and in these I have wished principally to call attention to their reference to our own age, and to exhibit them in the light in which they appear of universal interest and to possess an eminent and remarkable destination. Comprised, then, in one result, the following are the characteristic signs of the present age: the two greatest heathen nations, which for thousands of years stood by themselves apart from the rest of the world, have lately come into the closest contact with Europe—the Mohammedan empires are every where falling into decay, more rapidly than men had been led to expect their fall—the Hebrew race is beginning to rise from its long degradation—in Christian states and communities there is here and there visible a strong inclination to the old evil of anarchy—and if the great human peace, which has now lasted twelve years, appears in some points insecure, or at least endangered from within, it is only because it is devoid of a firm foundation of the internal sentiment of men. What event, then, could be more happy for our age, what better turn could the present posture of affairs take, than by bringing about such a triple divine peace as we have already sketched, to give a new foundation and a firmer basis to the external peace of society? May not this, in God’s good purpose, be the theme which is to occupy the next era of the world?

LECTURE IX.
OF THE TRUE DESTINATION OF PHILOSOPHY, AND OF THE APPARENT SCHISM BUT ESSENTIAL UNITY BETWEEN A RIGHT FAITH AND HIGHEST CERTAINTY, AS THE CENTER OF LIGHT AND LIFE IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE philosophy of life can not be any mere science of reason, and least of all an unconditional one. For such does but lead us into a domain of dead abstractions alien to life, which, by the dialectical spirit of disputation connatural to the reason, is soon converted into a labyrinthine maze of contradictory opinions and notions, out of which the reason, with all its logical means and appliances, can not extricate itself. And life, consequently—the inner spiritual life, that is—is disturbed and destroyed by it. And it is even this disturbing and destroying principle of the dialectical reason that most requires to be got rid of and brought into subjection. In the mere form, however, of abstract thought there is nothing in and by itself opposed to the truth. There is nothing in it that it is absolutely and invariably necessary to avoid, or that never and in no case admits of application. It is, no doubt, most certain that every system of philosophy is on a wrong track which borrows its method exclusively from mathematics, and copies it throughout from beginning to end. Still, in the progressive development of philosophical ideas certain points may occur—there may be certain places in the entire system—where occasionally and by the way such formulas and abstract equations may be profitably employed. Such a case may happen in the present Lecture. But by thus employing them only by way of illustration, and episodically in passing, I hope to establish such a use of them, and to make it evident that the perspicuity of the exposition does not essentially suffer thereby.

Philosophy, as the universal science, embraces in its consideration the whole man. As, therefore, it evidently involves the occasion, so it is not unlikely that cases may occur where it can happily borrow, now from one now from another of the sciences, its external form and peculiar formularies. It can, in short, advantageously avail itself of all in turn. Only, such a use, to be profitable, must be free. And this freedom will best evince itself in the deliberate choice and the diversity of the images. The method of free speculation, i.e., of philosophy, must not resemble a coat of mail with its infinite number of little uniform chains and rings. It ought not, as is the case nearly with the mathematical method, to be composed, by mechanical rule and measure, of simple propositions scientifically linked together, and then formed again into higher logical concatenations. In short, the method of philosophy can not properly be uniform. The spirit must not be made subservient to the method; the essence must not be sacrificed to the form.

Philosophical thought and knowledge, with that diversity of illustration and variety in method which follows from its universality, is, in this respect, somewhat in the same case with poetry. Of all the imitative arts poetry alone embraces, and by its nature is intended to embrace, the whole man. It is, therefore, free to borrow its similes or colors, and manifold figurative expressions, from every sphere of life and nature, and to take them now from this, now from that object, as on each occasion appears most striking and appropriate. Now, no one would think of prescribing unconditionally to poetry, and compelling her to take all her similes and figures either from flowers and plants, or from the animal world, or exclusively from any one of the several pursuits of man—from the sailor’s life, for instance, or the shepherd’s, or the huntsman’s—or from any of his handicrafts or mechanical arts. For although all such similes, and colors, and expressions, appropriately, introduced, are equally allowable in every poetical composition, and none of them need be rejected, still the exclusive use of any one class of them as a law would hamper the free poetic spirit and extinguish the living fancy. In the same way, philosophy is not confined to any one invariable and immutable form. At one time it may come forward in the guise of a moral, legislative, or a judicial discussion; at another, as a description of natural history. Or, perhaps, it may assume the method of an historical and genealogical development and derivation of ideas as best fitted to exhibit the thoughts which it aims at illustrating in their mutual coherence and connection. On other occasions, perhaps, it will take the shape of a scientific investigation of nature—of an experiment in a higher physiology—in order to test the existence of the invisible powers which it is its purpose to establish. Or again, by the employment of an algebraic equation, or of a mathematical form (which, however, it regards as nothing more than a symbol and visible hieroglyphic for a higher something that is invisible), it will, perhaps, most conveniently attain to its loftier aim. Every method and every scientific form is good; or, at least, when rightly employed, is good. But no one ought to be exclusive. No one must be carried out with painful uniformity, and with wearying monotony be invariably followed throughout.

The philosophy of life, then, can not be any mere absolute philosophy of reason. And as little can, or ought it to be purely and absolutely a philosophy of nature; not, at least, an exclusive one, that is, exactly such and nothing more. Such a philosophy of nature may, indeed, in its physiological aspect, possess unequaled scientific wealth, and be full of profound and ingenious thoughts. But still the right principles and the regulative ideas of human life can never be deduced from it easily, and without having recourse to forced constructions. For even man is, in his life, something higher than nature; even he is something more than a mere physical being. Still less possible, then, were it, from such a philosophy of nature, to derive, establish, and to render clear and intelligible the idea and being of God—the pervading reference to whom, however, makes man what he is. The idea of God deduced from such a source alone would, and indeed could only be, some great final cause of the system of nature.

Neither the conclusions of sound reason, and least of all those of the conscience—no, nor even dialectic itself (so far as it is profitably employed, by the knowledge of it being made available for the detection of error), nor physical science, when cultivated in a noble and lofty spirit, ought in any way to be excluded from the borders, or even the very domain of philosophy. On the contrary, she may, in her own peculiar way, adopt them all, and, giving them a more extensive sense and spirit, employ them for her own higher aims. In its primary and most essential respects, the philosophy of life is a thoroughly human science. It is nothing less than the cognition of man. Now, even on this account, and because it is only by means of his all-pervading relation to God that man stands above nature and is something superior to a mere physical being, and something higher, too, than a mere rational machine, therefore is the philosophy of life actually and in fact a true philosophy of God. The philosophy of life attains this high dignity beyond a mere philosophy of reason, or of nature, simply on this account—that the supreme life and the ultimate source of all other degrees of life is even God. Now this Supreme Life, which has its life in itself, is the subject of my present disquisitions. For it is even with the correct and complete notion of this Supreme Life that the Spirit of Truth first enters the human consciousness; and then, in the inner world of man, which before was “without form and void,” that light begins to shine which never shall become darkness, and of which even this Spirit of Truth has said “that it was good.” This divine but initiatory illumination is the first step in that progressive development of the internal light and truth in human life and consciousness, and which, as starting from this point and passing through its successive stages of advancement, it will be our object to trace in the last seven of the present Lectures. In the eight preceding disquisitions I have endeavored, by advancing step by step, to arrive at this last end of all. We have now reached the culminating point; and the Supreme Life, which, according to what has been already said, is the primary source of all other life, and which has life in itself, is now, together with the full and true notion of this life, to occupy our common consideration. And then again, descending from this summit of light and truth—for which, in the mean time, I entreat your entire and closest attention—I propose, with hasty step, to retrace our way through all the grades of man’s spiritual enlightenment, to carry back your regards and mine into all the several spheres of life and consciousness.

But now, it has been said that the philosophy of life, in every case and instance, invariably ascends to the highest object of every sphere that it contemplates, and that that supreme object is God. From this, further, it has been argued that it is even and truly a philosophy of God. How, then, does it differ from theology?

At the very commencement of these Lectures I confessed that philosophy in general, and especially a philosophy of life, by reason of the common object which they both treat of, could not avoid coming into frequent and close contact with theology. But, at the same time, I asserted that the former, in its whole essence, is completely and materially different from the latter, and requires to be carefully restricted within its own limits. We must take heed lest it either violently encroach upon the proper domain of theology, or, on the other hand, become its servile handmaid at the sacrifice of its own peculiar character and destination. The true relation of these two kindred sciences, as occupied with a common subject, which is often entirely identical, and their, nevertheless, so strongly-marked and distinct limits, may perhaps be most clearly illustrated by a comparison with the mathematical sciences.

Dogmatic theology, or the science of positive belief, resembles pure mathematics. Its ideas and formularies can not be too strictly, or too simply, defined; nor, where it admits of demonstration, can its proofs be carried out with too rigorous and mathematical a precision. For in these matters it is impossible to give the least room or influence to individual caprice without hazarding the loss of all that is most essential in the positive articles of faith. Philosophy, on the other hand, in treating of such subjects—or, at least, that part of it which is occupied with these matters—resembles rather mixed geometry in its several applications, such as practical mensuration, or the science of fortification and the art of war. For philosophy is, if we may so speak, an applied theology. Adopting the universal ideas of the one living God and his overruling Providence, and, what is so closely connected therewith, of the soul’s immortality and man’s free will, it adapts them, in many valuable practical applications, to the whole and almost boundless field of historical knowledge and the development of the human race, as well as to all physical and experimental sciences, and even to the wide domain of scientific disputes and merely human opinion, with its several conflicting systems. In this course of practical application philosophy needs not, in its expressions and formularies, scrupulously to confine itself to the terminology of its sister science, or to repeat its words with a careful exactness. On the contrary, its best and wisest course is to move with freedom, changing and varying its expressions at pleasure. For inasmuch as it is not itself so rigorously tied up as theology is to authority, so it can not appeal to it with equal justice in order to enforce assent to its own teaching. In the same way, too, that in algebraic equations a mere hypothetical calculation is oftentimes introduced, which, moreover, afterward suggests many a valuable practical application, so, also, a similar hypothetical use of the theological magnitudes or axioms, if we may so speak, is quite open and allowable to philosophy in the pursuit of its merely scientific ends. It is only the most general articles of the faith that philosophy makes use of. At least, the minuter and sharply-defined determinations of a positive creed are not immediately and indispensably necessary for its object. Now, an overruling Providence, the soul’s immortality, and the freedom of the will, are articles of universal belief, which, although, perhaps, not couched in express words and definite notions, yet still as germs and vague feelings exist, however deeply they may slumber, in every human breast that is as yet pure and uncontaminated by that captious skepticism which frets and corrodes itself with its seeming perplexities. These, philosophy may safely take for granted. Nay, it is its duty so to do; and where it does so in the right way, then will it never, on that account, meet with any considerable obstacle or opposition. On the contrary, by pursuing this course it will the more surely arouse and awaken these universal feelings from their slumber in the human mind, and gradually shape and convert them into fixed and stable points from which to carry on the further progress and development of the principle of faith.

And it is even herein that philosophy will most display its art, or, rather, its intellectual power over the minds of men. It is in this, pre-eminently, that lies its vocation. But if, on the contrary, it makes this mission to consist rather in demonstrating, in a strictly scientific form, the existence of a Deity, with its natural train of those eternal verities—the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will, then at the very first outset it will lose sight of its true aim, and set up a false one. For, were such a demonstration possible, still nothing essential would be gained by its actual attainment. For, in such a case, the existence of God, and God himself, would naturally become dependent, in thought at least, on that from and by means of which the proof was established, and would, consequently, appear to us no longer as the first cause of all, but, rather, a secondary and derivative being. In such the primal essence would be made to depend on our human knowledge and science of reasoning, so to speak; the latter must, in the plenitude of its power, first confer upon and guaranty to the former its existence. This would, indeed, be a complete inversion of the true and natural order of things, such as, alas, has but too often occurred and manifested itself in actual experience.

These remarks, however, must be understood as applying to a strict demonstration of this great verity, or at least to all attempts of the kind. To point to this truth, to trace every indication of it, to elucidate it, to confirm it by analogy or other corroborative evidences, is quite a different matter. All this is perfectly allowable. But God does not allow his existence to be proved. By force of reasoning such a belief is not to be impressed on the mind of that man who is unwilling spontaneously to admit it. As life generally, so also this supreme life must be learned and concluded from every man’s own experience; it must be adopted with the vividness of a feeling.

Let us now, for a moment, revert to the old scholastic forms and the designations usually given in the schools to the several philosophical sciences, and compare with them the division on which our present disquisitions are based. We might, in this respect, say that the first five sections of our treatise have been exclusively devoted to psychology; though not indeed in the ordinary narrow sense of the word, but in one far more extensive, and embracing the whole universe. According to this wider extent and signification of psychology, we have considered the soul relatively, first of all, to the whole of philosophy and its several systems; secondly, to moral life; and, lastly, to revelation, to nature, and to God Himself. The three following Lectures were devoted to an examination of the divine order of things in the several spheres of existence, and to the indications of a ruling Providence discoverable therein. They constitute, therefore, a species of theology; but one, however, empirically conceived and historically worked out from observations in nature and in history, not only in the annals of the external world, but also in the spiritual history of the progressive terms in the development of truth. Such a theological essay exactly corresponds to that notion we so lately advanced, of an applied or mixed science of theology as the peculiar sphere for this part or branch of philosophy which concerns itself with the doctrine of the supreme essence, and the right understanding thereof.

Now if, in compliance with olden forms of division and a scholastic phraseology, it be necessary to deliver a scheme of ontology as the philosophical science and cognition of really existent things, and also of their true and real essence, it is clear that such is only conceivable and possible by means of such an applied theology. For how can things be truly real, and how can they as such be known in their inmost essence, except so far as they have their existence and determination in God, and, in this respect, admit of being known by us?

In any case, however, the name of natural theology, which ever and anon we still hear applied to the philosophical cognition of the Divine Being and His existence, ought carefully to be avoided. Such a designation is based on a thorough misconception and total inversion of ideas. Every system of theology that is not supernatural, or at least that does not profess to be so, but pretends to understand naturally the idea of God, and regards the knowledge of the divine essence as a branch of natural science, or derives the idea simply from nature, is even on that account false. Missing and entirely mistaking its proper object, it must, in short, prove absolutely null and void. Properly, indeed, this inquiry needs no peculiar word nor special division and scientific designation. The name generally of philosophy, or specially of a philosophy of God, is perfectly sufficient to designate the investigation into science and faith, and their reciprocal relation—their abiding discord, or its harmonious reconciliation and intrinsic concord. And this is properly the point which is here in question; it forms the essential part of the topic which we have at present to examine.

The internal schism in the faith itself I formerly excluded from our inquiry, as not lying properly within the limits of philosophy, and belonging to a higher tribunal. I at the same time expressed my conviction that God alone could universally and totally reconcile it. By this, however, I would not by any means wish to be understood as asserting that works on this subject, written with a thorough knowledge of historical facts, and in a luminous and instructive style, can not contribute much to the refutation of error. Works of this nature may, in their degree, tend to bring about a mutual approximation of sentiment. For they serve to elucidate and clear up points which, even though they do not involve the essential articles of positive belief; do, nevertheless, greatly and extensively co-operate in keeping alive a mutual spiritual alienation and estrangement of mind. The great merit of treatises of this kind, when composed with high intellectual powers and in that noble spirit which is at once just and desirous of peace, must not in any case be denied or depreciated. Nevertheless, it is idle to pretend that the influence of such essays, whether greater or less, is not confined to a limited sphere, extending to a few individuals, or at most to classes.

To judge by the usual course of the divine order in the realm of truth, a total conversion of the whole mind of the age, or a reawakening of entire nations, is only to be expected from a higher and universal impulse imparted from above. As a preparation, however, for that divine peace in a universal unity of faith, which so repeatedly and so many ways is promised most distinctly even to this life, nothing can be so effective as to remove, if possible, or at least to reconcile, that triple discord already described as dividing and distracting the inner man. And this is a matter which, as lying within the sphere of human consciousness and science, unquestionably belongs to the domain of philosophical investigation. And it is even the duty of philosophy, whenever it follows its prevailing mediatory and atoning tendency, to attempt scientifically to bring about the reconciliation of that strife, and, undiscouraged by repeated failures, still to labor to re-establish the perfect and profound harmony of consciousness and of life.

Now the first dissension, that, viz., between science and faith, whether actual or apparent, requires for its removal before all things a mutual understanding and compromise. The second dissension between faith in general, even a mere philosophical and natural faith, and that unbelief which is so general and prevalent in our age, can only end with the perfect triumph of the truth. For only by the full light of divine knowledge and truth—by the triumphant exposition of this true light, and by the magic power of such a display on the minds of men—shall doubt and infidelity be fully eradicated and destroyed. The third dissension, between both faith and science on the one hand, and life on the other, needs, for the removal of all misunderstanding, something more than a mere peace and compromise on the disputed points. For this purpose there is required a thorough union of both carried out into fruitful and practical application, by which the living faith and the living science may evince themselves as such, and manifest their true and wholesome influence on life, however at present estranged from and adverse to it.

The second and the third of these dissensions are reserved for consideration in the two following Lectures; but the first, that, viz., which subsists between faith and science, is to form the subject, and its reconciliation the problem of our present disquisition.

Now, is this dissension necessarily and really grounded in the thing itself, and in the nature of the thing? Or, rather, does the blame of it lie with men, and in their defective apprehension and form? I have no hesitation in saying that a living faith and a living science will never be at issue together, at least on essential points. In three cases, no doubt, a dissension, a reciprocal misunderstanding, and endless conflict between both is perfectly conceivable. It is possible, either when the faith is a mere matter of memory and of a few acquired notions, rather than a deeply-rooted conviction of the soul. Or, secondly, since all the faculties of the human mind ought to co-operate in giving a full internal development and an external shape to the truth thus divinely imparted, it may spring up even when the soul receives it with a full love, but is nevertheless principally, or at least too much, under the dominion of a lively fancy, to the exclusion of a due admixture of clearness of understanding, and the circumspection which belongs to the distinguishing judgment. Or, thirdly, it may arise, on the other side, when a conceited and presumptuous science seeks to establish itself rather than truth, and places more dependence on its own conclusions than on its announcements.

What, then, is faith, taken in itself, but the reception into the soul of the divine and divinely-communicated verities? And what is science, more than the apprehension thereof by the mind [geist]? Are there, then, two truths, of which, however, one or the other is not true? Undoubtedly there exists, along with the spirit of truth, another spirit—that of contradiction and negation. But the latter is no spirit of truth, but the spirit of untruth and delusion so often described, which invariably triumphs whenever the mind of man, in its pursuit of knowledge, seeks itself rather than the truth, and consequently finds, perceives, and retains nothing but its own Me. And this evil spirit the soul even meets half way whenever it is incapable of embracing and retaining the life and the spirit of the holy faith, and when, consequently, these quickly flee away, and nothing but the letter and the empty form remain behind. But where the spirit of truth has once departed, error in manifold shapes and forms finds, one way or other, an entrance into the soul. Is it not one and the same truth which, on the one side, speaking from the one revelation, impresses itself on the soul of man as the commanding voice of love enjoining faith, and which, on the other, condescendingly offers and presents itself to the mind or spirit of the believer as a mystery, in order that he may, if he will, investigate it in order to discover and adopt the meaning and the light that are veiled and inclosed within it? Is there, then, to be a party feud and a civil war in the heart of man, between soul and spirit, the two elements of his existence; just as if it were some ill-organized state where, in opposition to the supreme political power, some insubordinate body sets itself up in authority, and presumes to give the law? Ought, forsooth, the soul in secret to be liberal, and, in half-unbelief, to grant immunity to all manner of lusts and desires, while the spirit is legitimist in sentiment and constitutional in language? Or ought the soul to be honestly ultra and a thorough legitimist in its established faith, while the mind, on its part, by its liberal measures, is perfectly falling into error? So far is this from being allowable, that even these names and these parties would soon cease and disappear altogether, if, instead of party, the knowledge, and the might, and the inspiration of life—the supreme life, i.e., or God, were once to take full possession of the minds of men, and so animate them anew and ardently inspire them with the common spirit and ardor of the one faith and the one science.

Now, the intermediate link which unites science with faith—the mean function between both which admits of demonstration within the limits of the consciousness and of philosophy, is discernment [erkennen]. Of this there are two kinds: the one distinguishes between right and wrong, and, consequently, as a separate function, directs itself outwardly in its operation, and observes differences. By the other we see and comprehend, or understand and discern, that two objects apparently different, are properly and essentially one and the same. It is with this intrinsic and inwardly-directed discernment that we are here concerned. For it is by this highest function of thought, which penetrates into the inmost essence of each of two ideas, and by its sentence declaring their similarity, that we perceive and discern that this science and that faith are essentially identical. Discerning in this sense is something different from knowing; it is, as it were, a second knowing; or, if we may be allowed to express ourselves mathematically, “knowing raised to a higher power.” It is this that discovers the essential unity of Science and Faith, and that must bring about the restoration of concord between them, and reconcile them with each other. If, however, this second and higher knowing, or this science of science, be referred and confined to one’s own Me or Self, as is too often done, such a course will only lead us out of the common error of the ordinary self-delusion into one still more profound, which will prove the more complex and aggravated, the more scientifically it is evolved, and which I have already depicted to you in its true colors.

Now this unity of science with faith can only be found and discovered in their common object—in truth, consequently, and i.e. in God, who is the sum of all truth. Mere negations—like that of the idea of the infinite, or the notion of the immeasurable, which is applicable even to nature itself, or that of the absolute or unconditional, of which many palpably erroneous applications might easily be made—no such pure negations, nor even any mere enumeration of predicates and properties devoid of intrinsic coherence, can furnish us with an adequate conception of the Deity. But now if a cognition, an understanding of life in general, be attainable (and no skeptical perplexities have yet been able to deter or seduce man’s sound common sense from entertaining and acting upon such a supposition), then it is clear that there is no reason for holding the notion of the supreme life in and by itself to be impossible or utterly unattainable by man.

Now, this is the path which a profounder science and philosophy has invariably marked out for itself in this respect; and in the three different powers, which, however, are at the same time but one, in the trine energy of the one first cause of all, has it ever sought and discovered this highest notion. In this notion belonging to the supreme science, as advanced by philosophy in very different ages of the world and among widely-remote nations, there is a remarkable resemblance, although in the subordinate statements there is a greater or less admixture of error. In the midst of many subordinate aberrations, it has recognized the one great fact, that in the Supreme Life, who has His life in Himself, and is the prime source of all other life, there is, at the same time, a creative intelligence and thought which from the beginning issued therefrom as the Eternal Word self-subsistent and ordering all things, and that the Light which proceeded therefrom was itself also the first life. But now, just as this original life, which was from the beginning, was not simply Infinite, but even the source of all finite and infinite existence, and as this Life is an illumination which illuminates Itself and all other things, so is this Light also a living entity, and not merely spiritual and immaterial (for as such even It might still be a part of nature), but one thoroughly supernatural and holy, and, if man will have it so, an awful light which repels all darkness from itself, and, eternally rejecting, annihilates it.

Now, this Life, this Word, and this Light, these three different powers in the same energy and in the one substance, which even, therefore, is called the Supreme, is at once the highest object of all science, and the center and fundamental source of all faith. And this science of the Highest, even when regarded exclusively from this single aspect of knowing, does not exhibit itself as entirely separate from, and independent of, faith, but even, as such, is from the very first in contact with it, and, taken simply as knowing, involves in it a concurrence and co-operation of faith.

In very many and different, not to say infinitely various ways it may be shown, pointed out, and established, that without this full and correct notion of the Supreme Being, every other species of existence and of knowledge must be without coherence and proper significance. However, as has been so often observed already, there is not involved in it any strict necessity. It does not possess any rigor of logical sequence, constraining the assent of one who in his heart is otherwise disposed, and in his sentiments has otherwise determined. For so must it ever be: the final resolve of conviction is left to the free assent, that quiet internal concurrence of the will already mentioned, which in general brings man into actual communion with God, and opens and enlarges his sense for the divine—since such assent is itself even that sense, or, at least, the principle and commencement of it.

And this complement of the highest science, which is furnished by the free internal assent, is even of itself nothing less than an act of faith. Consequently, the complete and correct notion of the Supreme Essence is the mystical ring in which science and faith are at the first beginning indissolubly connected. Nothing but the perversity and shortsightedness of men in regard both to science and faith, tears them asunder again, and, separating what in God is one and what He has joined together, sets science and faith in hostile opposition, mutually obstructing and destroying one another. Moreover, this highest notion of the highest science is the scientific vertex or the scientifically culminating expression of man’s universal belief in the one living God. For if this one God is necessarily to be conceived of as endued with life, it will be sufficient for me to appeal to the fact, that physical science knows not, and no one even can conceive or comprehend or think of a mode of life in any sphere of existence, without implying a plurality, or, at least, a duality of co-operating forces. But if, further, we are to think of it as a perfect life, then must there be in it a third living energy or operation. Thus, therefore, on this side also the highest notion of a science which has attained to its end, and to the summit of all existence and all knowledge, is in perfect unison with the universal feeling of truth and the natural and simple faith of man.

But now, if the highest science and a divine faith intrinsically and essentially be properly one, it will naturally turn and depend on the preservation of the true ratio and correct proportion between the two powers and elements of human existence, whether or not in their further application and actual life they are to continue at unity, without coming into hostile collision and discord. The believing soul, like the mistress of a family, ought to hold and retain the chief place in the house; the spirit that knows, or that aims at knowledge, as the master, may pursue out of doors whatever avocations it pleases, only it must be continually returning to the domestic hearth, and there warm itself at the pure ascending flame of devotion and pious meditation. And if in its wanderings it should most love to stray in the rich and blooming garden of nature, then of the rare aromatic woods and seeds it there gathers, it may throw one or more into the fire, in order to add some sweet, ethereal incense to its warming and illuminating flames.

Or, leaving figure, to express myself in more precise and exact terms—the believing part of the consciousness observing its due proportion, ought not to refuse and reject the true and Godlike science together with that which is Godless, pernicious, and false. So, too, the cognitive or scientific portion ought to abstain from all hostile attacks on the other domain and on positive faith, which in all probability it has not sufficiently studied, and still less perfectly understands. And thus, also, when this cognitive part (as it ought, and as is essential to its truth and correctness as science) carefully watches itself and rigorously abstains from all arbitrary, presumptuous, and egoistic opinions and ideas, suggestions or beginnings of ideas, as involving the first disposition to false science and every species of error, then there is no need for it to be held in check by the other part, nor to be limited by it.

But in any case we must be ready to admit that the fault lies in man, and on no account suppose that the dissension has its ground in the thing itself. For the thing here is nothing less than truth itself, which can not be twofold, since God Himself is this truth and the sum thereof. It is therefore important, on the one hand, by means of the old spirit, to be ever giving new life and energy to faith, by carrying it back continually to its own eternal foundations, in order to avert the danger, which is ever threatening it, of spiritual deadness and of the ascendency of the letter that killeth. And, on the other hand, we ought never to cease from or to become weary of refining more and more the higher philosophical science from all the egoistic dross of arbitrary opinions and fancied apodictic conclusions, laboring the while to complete it according to the threefold dimensions (to hazard the expression) of this so utterly immeasurable essence of everlasting truth, by keeping incessantly in view the unfathomable depth, the inaccessible height, the inexhaustible center of bliss of the one inconceivable and ineffable Being. For the fault and the cause of the dissension must in no case be ascribed to the thing itself, but invariably either to a dead, imperfectly enlightened, and untelligent faith, on the one hand, or on the other, to the arbitrary assumptions or one-sided conclusions of a science, which in this respect and degree at least is false and erroneous.

But inasmuch as the fault and origin of the dissension has partly its foundation in human imperfection and finiteness, we must rest content, even if we can not all at once get rid of and remove it. We must be satisfied if in this ceaseless struggle with man’s hereditary and connatural fault of error, the progress though slow is sure. It is enough if in this surely advancing progression, each step, however short, brings us nearer to the truth, and to the perfect cognition of the unity of the highest science and divine faith. But this is a point on which even individuals, with the most perfect honesty of purpose and a sincere love of truth, too often go wrong. Unable, perhaps, to reconcile to their own minds some conflicting claim of science and of faith, and to see their way clear out of their perplexities, then to cut the knot of the problem to which they despair of soon finding a satisfactory solution, they precipitately adopt some partial and overhasty conclusion. But slow, extremely slow, is the advance of man’s mental enlightenment in the realm of truth. And if the course of Providence, according to the very gradual progression of divine order in this domain, must be counted by millenniums, then in the life of individuals, years and decades must be reckoned as days and hours. Even though some grave doubt, distracting the inmost feelings, but scarcely definable in express terms—some oppressive problem suggested by the peculiar mental temperament of the individual, can not be resolved in three hours, or even three days, still it may perhaps in three years; and if three years be too little, then thirty years may probably suffice. While in spite of this inward doubt we follow uninterruptedly our vocation in outer life, many a silent change is effected in our minds, and so at length with altered views and enlarged experience we attain to a calm and clear conviction on the points which at an earlier period had appeared to us obscure, had held us in suspense, and oppressed us with perplexing difficulties.

This is the only road that can be safely trod by those who desire above all things to retain a divine faith, but at the same time not to renounce the pursuit of higher science. And is not this the difficult position in the present day of every well-disposed person who is in any way connected with science, or whose pursuits in life require him to occupy himself with it? But now, in the case of physical science, we are all content to observe this law of tardy progress; indeed we think it quite natural, and hold it to be the only correct method. And it is only by following a similar course in the internal investigations of philosophy that we shall ever arrive at a stable position and the firm ground of eternal truth. By any other method, we shall most assuredly lose ourselves among the ever-shifting systems which change with the fashions of the day, or be carried away by the baseless hypotheses of this or that sect or school, which, like the sterile blossoms in the spring, fall fruitless to the ground.

In respect to this tardiness of progress, which most assuredly is at least not inconsistent with true philosophy, I can appeal to my own instance, which in such a case is, I hope, allowable. It is now nine-and-thirty years since I first read, with indescribable avidity, the entire works of Plato in the original; and ever since, amid many other scientific studies, philosophical research has been my principal and favorite avocation. In this pursuit many and various have been the systems of science—of discord and of error—that I have had to wander through. Satisfied neither with the opinions of others nor with my own views, I felt reluctant to come forward with a system of my own. In the mean while my view of philosophy has been in a state of inchoation and of tardy but progressive development. Slowly and incompletely, little by little, incidentally and fragmentarily, at different epochs, has some of its principles come to the light, or escaped me in my earlier literary works and compositions—an explanation which I do not consider superfluous, even for those who are best acquainted with them. But the more I held fast to the two poles of divine faith and of supreme science, which as such is also divine, the firmer footing did I gain in that point and that center in the everlasting Beginning, in which both are one and cease to be at issue, but rather intimately cohering, do but lend fresh life, strength, and elevation to each other. And now at length I believe I have attained to that point when, fully persuaded myself of this unity of science and faith as grounded in God, I may safely indulge the wish to impart to others this important truth, publicly to set it forth, and develop it to the whole world. And it is to me no slight cause of congratulation that I am to enter upon this task in the present place and in the present manner.

Besides those points of correlation already pointed out, between the highest science and faith, there is still another way in which the former, in its all-embracing notion of the triple life of the primal cause and force, is referred to faith, and even to its positive articles and its divine authority. It is obliged to appeal to this, in order to find and maintain its guiding rule and correct standard for the further application and development of this highest and fundamental notion, and to keep it dear of all erroneous and extravagant excrescences. The necessity of this will be best and most simply shown by a few historical instances.

When we open any of the ancient writings of the Hindoos, whether it be their scientific systems, their books of laws and customs for practical life, or their merely mythological poems, we find them, in every instance, based on the notion of a divine trinity, and, in some cases, asserting it in express words and phrases. But inasmuch as, forgetting to maintain the unity together with the trinity, they abandoned the simple truth and made thereout three distinct gods, the metaphysical theory (which otherwise contains so many and distinct traces of ancient truth) and the trinity of the Hindoos has become a pure mythology, comprising as long a genealogy of gods as any other. But the retention, however, of this fundamental notion, their mythology has acquired a theistic hue and coloring, which forms a strong contrast between it and the better known mythology of Greece, notwithstanding that in other respects, and in its purely poetic portion, it exhibits many and strong features of resemblance and affinity. Thus, in this wonderful chaos of distorted truth, of monstrous error, and pure fiction, we meet with ten fabulous creations of men, instead of the single true one with which, only within the last three centuries, the Hindoos have formed a more thorough and permanently-based acquaintance. Moreover, in life and in practice there is exhibited a renunciation of the world, and a mortification of the body, which, far surpassing the rigorous self-denial of the early Christian solitaries in Egypt, is carried to an intensity and an extreme which it is almost incredible that human nature should be capable of. But co-existing with all this, we meet with immoral practices and licentious excesses sanctified by falsehood and superstition, similar to those we have already become acquainted with in the more sensual heathenism of antiquity, that, I mean, which prevailed among the ancient races of this our western portion of the globe. Into such a frightful abyss of error even the most spiritual system of metaphysics inevitably falls, or at least easily becomes associated with falsehood, whenever it is left entirely to itself, and is devoid of a divine rule for its guidance, and the simple standard of a higher and heaven-descended authority.

In the history, too, of the development of the Grecian mind we discover a similar doctrine advanced in one of its latest epochs. The Neo-Platonists were very well acquainted with this doctrine and idea of a divine trinity; as, indeed, it may also be traced in the still earlier writings of Plato himself. How far the expressions and formularies employed by the former writers scientifically to convey this idea were perfect and correct is a question which does not concern us at present to inquire. Moreover, the determination of it would carry us far beyond our proper limits, inasmuch as its exact solution would require a nice and accurate classification of the several writers and systems which belong to this school. It is, however, sufficient to remark that this profound metaphysical school of the Neo-Platonists, which reckoned among its adherents the Emperor Julian, stood in direct and hostile collision with Christianity. To adapt to the purpose of their opposition the old Grecian mythology, a faith in which had sensibly declined even among the masses, they attempted to mold it according to their own views and notions, into such a theological shape and direction as would make it more closely resemble the Indian. By this means they believed it possible to revive and reanimate the popular faith. But, even if their ulterior view and their whole object and actuating motive had not taken a direction so decidedly hostile to the truth, still their enterprise, even as such, could not but miscarry. No doubt the mythology of Greece, in its earliest times and original shape, did contain, in some of its less prominent and more hidden passages, esoterically interpreted, a few symbolical doctrines and somewhat theistic ideas, as many a profound examiner of it, in modern times, has recognized and demonstrated. But, notwithstanding all these traces, which we must regard as the remains of an older tradition of the primary knowledge and full revelation belonging to primeval times, still, in subsequent ages, the Grecian mythology had, on the whole, assumed exclusively and pre-eminently a poetic development and form, which even subordinated to itself that political tendency which in so many of its details is so strong. It was, therefore, nothing less than an absurd and inconsistent attempt to try, so late in the day, to metamorphose this beautiful world of fable into a factitious theory of metaphysics, and a colossal system of mysticism, after the manner and fashion of the Indian. Accordingly, like every other attempt that is fundamentally false and directly opposed to the spirit of the age, it passed away at last, without leaving a trace of its influence.

This inclination to the poetic aberration of polytheism and a deification of nature, so universally prevalent in the heathen antiquity of the West, renders it easily conceivable why, in the first and Jewish portion of written revelation, such great stress is laid pre-eminently and primarily on the oneness of the living God. All other expressions—such as that of the eternal creative Word, of the life-giving Spirit of God—are, as it were, but allusions full of hidden meaning for the more clear-sighted and profounder inquirers. How numerous, nevertheless, such indications are; how frequent the reference to three powers or persons—the time, energy, and property of the one Supreme Being—an allusion to which is contained even in the different Hebrew names of the Godhead, is known and acknowledged, even by those who would, if they could, deny it, both to themselves and others.

The tradition of the Jews, which, lying without the strictly-defined body of Scripture, yet proceeds concurrently with it, while it possesses of itself no authority, is, nevertheless, a very useful though too much neglected source of illustration for the sacred volume. Now, in the Talmud the doctrine and notion of the divine trinity is expressed quite fully and distinctly, and without reserve; although in the mode and manner of conceiving it there is much that is both false and objectionable.

In that second portion of revelation with which our present era commences, together with the fulfilling and perfection of the object of faith, this supreme science is brought prominently and clearly forward. No doubt a certain caution and degree of reserve on this doctrine of the Trinity are distinctly visible in the earliest teaching and statements, so long as the preaching of the new faith was confined within the Jewish nation, on whose mind the idea of the oneness of God was still deeply imprinted, even though, like every other principle of their religion, it was ill understood and had long ceased to be embraced with a living energy, being taken merely in the dead letter. But ere long this thin veil was also removed from the All-holy One, and the great mystery of faith set forth as the introduction to the fourth and last Gospel. From the latter I have accordingly borrowed that designation of this great mystery which is even the most appropriate to science; of the supreme life which is itself omnipotence, of the eternal word which is ominisence, and of the uncreated light which is the All-holy.

Certain great thinkers, who, however, in many respects can not be classed among proper Christians, have indeed recognized and acknowledged the profound significance of this opening of the Gospel. Only they adopted a spirit of hostile analysis, which, as it attacked so many of the great works of olden time, did not spare even this divine monument. They lost themselves in all sorts of superfluous hypotheses as to the source from which this or that passage was derived, and with what object it was introduced. Much simpler were it, without having recourse to any such artificial explanations, to receive the divine truth in sincerity as it is offered to us. If we must ascribe some special design for its composition, it will be sufficient to suppose, that after the Evangel of Life and the new era commencing therewith had been sufficiently set forth as history in a triple narrative, it was requisite to add thereto this Evangel of the Beginning—as the Gospel according to the spirit of the highest science, in so far as this is fully identical with the divine faith, and henceforward was always to continue one with it. It was quite in the natural order of things that the word which was uttered at the beginning of the material creation, and is the basis of the first revelation, should also at the opening of the second revelation, and the spiritual creation of a new era, be repeated (though in a different and far higher sense) for the soul in the realm of truth:—“And God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”

LECTURE X.
OF THE TWOFOLD SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND ERROR IN SCIENCE; OF THE CONFLICT OF FAITH WITH INFIDELITY.

IN the terrestial creation, in the realm of nature, no sooner did the behest go forth, “Let there be light,” than the accomplishment forthwith followed. Scarcely was this light and life-creating word spoken, than it was succeeded, spontaneously and immediately, without let or hinderance, by the second word of the joyful conclusion: “And there was light.” Quite otherwise, however, is it in the life and in the world of free-created man, in the progression of his intellectual development, in the history of his mind [geist], in his now advancing, now retrograding thought and knowledge. Here, indeed, the first call to light and divine truth does not pass over even man’s stubborn and taciturn heart altogether unheeded and unanswered, and without eliciting some faint response. But lasting is the struggle between light and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, between faith and infidelity. Ever wavering from side to side, and fluctuating from one extreme to another, the victory long remains undecided. And centuries often, nay, thousands of years, pass away ere with perfect truth that word of fulfillment and completion can be uttered, and we can go on, undoubtedly, to say, “And there was light.” Even when the true end is pursued along the direct road, the right track is often lost amid the endless strife and controversy of men, while a long train of useless discussion raises so thick a cloud of dust as shuts it entirely out of sight, and so a new route has to be sought and opened from quite an opposite quarter.

How deeply was the Gentile world sunk in wild and cruel superstition, when the Great Prophetic Spirit and the Disperser of that Egyptian darkness, which hung over it, repeated or wrote down those first words of light for the spiritual no less than the material creation! Assuredly he had in view thereby a new genesis for his people—a new life and a new beginning of light. Then followed fifteen centuries of probation. And what was this long period but one ceaseless though alternating struggle between light and darkness? At the end of it, in spite of its great and noble gifts and superior knowledge, the whole nation had fallen into the lowest depths of luxury and corruption, on the one hand a prey to the wilder passions, on the other spiritually dead and rotten. But, the shadow of its former self, it dragged on a miserable existence, oppressed by a foreign yoke and torn by intestine sects and parties. The one claiming to be the only legal sect (and as concerned the letter of the law, and the outward ritual, it was so in fact), and arrogant and obstinate, closely adhering to the dead letter, was widely estranged and alienated from the spirit of love and mildness. And thus the very name of Pharisee has become odious and hateful, having passed into a proverb and a by-word. Wholly mistaking the meaning of the revelation imparted to them, they misunderstood the future to which it referred, no less than the immediate fortunes of their nation and their own condition. Consequently they went totally wrong in the interpretation of the former, as well as of the problem of the present which was laid before them. For they took it in the narrow and perverted spirit of party. No doubt the Pharisees reckoned among their members many truly pious, well-disposed, and right-thinking individuals—men, who in the beginning of the new era of the world, as appeals from the simple history of those times, acknowledged the truth, and recognized the hand of God pointing and leading onward to the future. These men mourned in silence over the revolting pride and stiffneckedness of their cotemporaries. But though endued with great learning and talents, and burning zeal for right and truth, they did not venture openly to oppose and to teach differently from their brethren, even because in reality the law, the dead and external law, was on their side.

But the other party was that of the Sadducees. Quite different in principle, these were the innovators among the Jews. Explaining away the theological creed of their nation, they went so far in this direction as to throw into shade, and to question, or, rather, absolutely to deny, the immortality of the soul. In civil matters and questions of law and policy, they were the liberal free-thinkers of their day.

From amid these two dark clouds, which, if they shone at all, glimmered only with the deceptive halo of the false light and hue of party, broke the new dawn and sun of Truth—at first unobserved, nor understood by any, so thickly had these mists overspread the horizon. But this new genesis, and this full illumination, was no longer destined exclusively for a single people. Accordingly, it gradually spread over the ten or twelve great nations who occupy two parts of the habitable globe, and also possess and govern the greatest portion of the third and the most ancient. And it is, in short, by means of that intellectual superiority and civilization which they owe to this springing of a new era, and this first light, that the former bear rule in the remotest regions of the earth.

Since the dawning of that day-spring eighteen centuries have elapsed, and sadly torn and distracted is the present aspect of Christianity. We should, no doubt, give a very distorted picture of the state of Christendom were we anxiously to trace its resemblance, through every minuter trait and nicer shade, to the old world at its close and at the end of those fifteen centuries of Jewish preparation. Such a minute parallel would be false, whether we were to compare it to the moral state and character of that nation, mentally blinded and hurrying with hasty steps toward its ruin, or even to the old heathen world of Rome, already condemned by anarchy and infidelity. Still it is generally true. For it is undeniable that man is perpetually relapsing into dissension and party quarrels, even while the hand which sways the destinies of the world, in ever-recurring epochs of renovation, is continually presenting to him anew both truth and life, health and peace. And every one can answer for himself the question whether this new proclamation of light and truth, this divine message of peace and salvation, has yet reached its full accomplishment. Has the Sun of Righteousness yet penetrated, and cast its bright beams on all the relations of life, to the very inmost joints of soul and spirit? Can it with perfect truth be said, relatively to the whole human race, “And there is light”—that light, at least, which alone is good, even because it shall remain forever? For those meteoric sparks which flash across the universal night and darkness, from the systems of man’s wisdom, which, crossing and recrossing each other’s path, are soon again extinguished forever; or those clouds of public opinion, charged with electric fluid and with pestilence, which, for the most part, is but the public outburst of some party passion; these emit no lasting, no salutary, and, therefore, no true light. Dark and gloomy, too, perhaps, in its future prospects, appears the long struggle between divine truth and human discord, between light and darkness, between faith and infidelity. But the more difficult and intricate the problem is which forms the theme of our present disquisition, the more diligently and the more conscientiously ought we to seek out and dwell upon every bright and quiet spot. For such alone can cheer us on our way along the rugged path that leads to the blissful goal of internal and spiritual peace, which will essentially contribute to give a solid basis to the public and social tranquillity, and to insure its permanence.

Slowly and gradually is it that the individual mind, distracted and vacillating between God and a divine faith on the one hand, and a higher, or even the highest, science on the other, advances in its progress toward the perfect truth. Arriving, step by step, at fuller and better convictions, it attains at last to a clear discernment that, properly and fundamentally, these two apparently-conflicting objects are not distinct, but in their inmost essence are perfectly one. But for the final attainment of this end, the most important condition to be observed is that scientific patience to which I called your attention in the last Lecture. The chief thing to be guarded against is a precipitate and over-hasty decision. For by such we should incur the great danger of sacrificing the sacred deposit of faith to science, or of foolishly rejecting the treasures of true science, which as such is indispensable to the higher life, and even necessary and useful for the confirmation of faith itself. And why, in the pursuit of truth—that proper spiritual theme and highly interesting matter of the otherwise flat and insipid drama of life—should we feel indisposed to such a scientific patience, as I called it? Why should we be unwilling to recognize it as what it really is—both salutary and indispensable to human frailty, and, as an intellectual virtue, no less necessary than even moral patience? And the latter is even the fundamental condition of every great or little business, and almost every pursuit of life, if it is to attain to a happy result, and is not to fail of its true end and aim. For patience is, as it were, the indispensable portion which their earthly existence brings to all men. Not only is it needed by the invalid on the bed of sickness, in the long and tedious observance of his physician’s precise and rigid prescriptions—not only is it wanted by the teacher in his troublesome task of giving the first development to the intellectual powers of the child—not only is patience requisite for the judge who has to settle the complicated quarrel of two litigants, of whom each claims his sympathy, each desires to win him to his own side and to bias his judgment—but it is also indispensable to the warrior whom ambition hurries forward in the pursuit of honor for himself and his country. For numberless are the hardships and privations, and many, too, are the miseries which the soldier must undergo before he can gain the object of his hopes, the hard-fought battle and the glorious victory. The statesman, too, with his wide sphere of influence and authority, stands eminently in need of patience. How watchful and comprehensive must be his vigilance, how deliberate his precautions, lest the organic course of his administration should come to a check or stop, in consequence of his having neglected, or failed to provide for any single member of the great body, or any regulating-wheel in the complicated machinery of the state.

But, on the other hand, there are also moments in human life where the final issue turns not so much on a steady and uniform perseverance in continuous activity, as on a decided resolution and firmness of purpose. Among these we may place foremost, perhaps, in an intellectual relation, the dissension between faith and infidelity, and the choice at the point where the two branch off forever.

It is not here my design to set up, to commend, and to extol faith, nor to decry, to attack, and to make war upon infidelity. For the former would take me beyond my present limits; the latter would lead me into a boundless field of details, and require me to take an exhaustive survey, not only of all actually existent, but also of all conceivable, prejudices and delusions. My principal object is rather to sketch a true and exact picture of both, comprising, at the same time, all their historical manifestations, and explaining their psychological causes, in order to exhibit them both in their true light, so that man may choose for himself and decide between them.

Now the apparent—or it may be real, but still only accidental—schism between science and faith is, in the first place, internal. It is often, indeed, profoundly hidden and concealed in the inmost depths of the heart. It is therefore inwardly only that it admits of being adjusted and finally reconciled. When this task is once accomplished in the heart of an individual, and the choice is at least made one way or the other, then this decision manifests itself outwardly, either as the triumph of truth in the unity of science and faith, or as infidelity and skepticism, shows itself in the form of a determined opposition to this unity, or to faith itself. And the latter is the form it also assumes in the intermediate case when the schism between science and faith is declared to be irreconcilable. Openly expressed, therefore, these two views go far beyond the original dissension, and pass into the second schism and conflict between faith and infidelity. And although this problem be itself an original and internal one, still it reveals itself pre-eminently as a practical schism in actual life, and it is as such, also, that it develops and manifests itself in history.