Читать книгу Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 19

Life is the one universal soul, which, by virtue of the enlivening Breath, and the informing Word, all organized bodies have in common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals possess, and man as an animal. But, in addition to this, God transfused into man a higher gift, and specially imbreathed:—even a living (that is, self-subsisting) soul, a soul having its life in itself. "And man became a living soul." He did not merely possess it, he became it. It was his proper being, his truest self, the man in the man. None then, not one of human kind, so poor and destitute, but there is provided for him, even in his present state, a house not built with hands. Aye, and spite of the philosophy (falsely so called) which mistakes the causes, the conditions, and the occasions of our becoming conscious of certain truths and realities for the truths and realities themselves—a house gloriously furnished. Nothing is wanted but the eye, which is the light of this house, the light which is the eye of this soul. This seeing light, this enlightening eye, is Reflection.[16] It is more, indeed, than is ordinarily meant by that word; but it is what a Christian ought to mean by it, and to know too, whence it first came, and still continues to come—of what light even this light is but a reflection. This, too, is thought; and all thought is but unthinking that does not flow out of this, or tend towards it.

[16] The "dianoia" of 1 John v. 20, inaccurately rendered "understanding" in our translation. To exhibit the full force of the Greek word, we must say, a power of discernment by Reason.