Читать книгу The Philosophy of Life and Language - Friedrich von Schlegel - Страница 5

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“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.