Читать книгу The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures - Friedrich von Schlegel - Страница 12

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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.